103perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 raising the achievement of all pupils within an inclusive setting: practical strategies for developing best practice belle wallace, sue leyden, diane montgom ery, carrie winstanley, mic h a el po m er a n tz a n d sa lly fitto n routledge, london, 2010 r eview ed b y ca r o l va n der w esth u izen a n d k o b u s m a r ee on the outside t he dramatic green white and black colours in this soft cover book form an effective backdrop for the depiction of the figures in white of an adult and a child holding hands and standing first at the bottom of a mountain, then on the summit and, in the third stage, on the summit of an even higher mountain. t hese three stages appear to dovetail with the notion in the book title of adult involve ment in raising the achievement of children, i.e. first enabling children’s ascent of the lower moun tain, then the higher one. o ne could also interpret the illustration as depicting the ascent of the less able to the summit of the lower and the ascent of more able pupils to the higher mountain with the aid of an adult/s. t he authors’ and publisher’s names and the book title as well as the sub title appear in promi nent white letters against a dark background, whilst turquoise is used to emphasise the words “all pupils” in the title. t he sub title is a clear indication that the potential reader can expect to gain practical advice on developing best practice in regard to the raising of pupil achievement on reading the book. t he blurb on the back cover is neatly divided into two sections. t he first, printed in white letters, briefly describes the book’s twelve school case study background, its link to the “every child m atters” government policy initiative and the target audience. the second section printed in turquoise offers brief author biographies, which serve as testimonial to the value of the book as a leader in the field of developing best practice in varied inclusive educational settings. on the inside t he blurb from the back cover is repeated on the very first pages of the book before the title page, but includes only the editor, b elle w allace’s brief biography, but all authors’ slightly extended bio graphies feature again on the first page after the table of contents. t he dedication acknowledges the contribution of the teachers who contributed to the fulfilment of pupils’ intellectual potential and the development of their individual and joint social and emotional responsibility. t he introduction offers a succinct overview of the six chapters and, besides the conclusion and reflection written by the editor in a sep arate section at the end, a number of useful appendices regarding the case study schools, referral sheets and planning schedules are included. in chapter 1 b elle w allace places the spotlight on achievement and attainment and classifies the typologies of underachievers to “heighten teacher awareness and, possibly, to extend existing conceptions’ (p. 5). w allace therefore includes a range of strategies used by the case study schools to overcome the “syndrome of underachievement” (p. 16), with an emphasis on the development of a creative curriculum within school environments where pupils feel “safe and happy and can have dreams and visions for their future” (p. 29). subsequent chapters expand on w allace’s summary of strategies for overcoming underachieve ment and allowing pupils to discover gifts and talents to “prepare them for lifelong learning” (p. 29). t he development of a positive self concept is the focus in chapter 2 (sue leyden). t he author uses m aslow’s hierarchy of needs to illustrate the significance of understanding the social and emotional needs of “able and talented” (p. 64) children and young people at school and at home. in 104 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 her detailed examples of best practice strategies observed in the 12 case study schools she empha sises the establishment of an ethos of “care and concern for the individ ual” (p. 64) to nurture the talents of children and staff alike, taking into account their needs and the ambitions. a number of valuable points for reflection are listed at the end of the chapter for use by school managers and teachers. d iane m ontgomery, in chapter 3, investigates the phenomenon of potentially able or specially gifted children with a special educational need, i.e. the dual or double exceptionality syndrome, using the case study schools as a context for the chapter, as well as individual case studies and guidelines from her learning d ifficulties r esearch project and postgraduate students. in addition to using data from various sources and detailed descriptions of special needs, the authors includes numerous authentic examples to illustrate various types of needs. t he chapter aims to enable tea chers recognise the often hidden gifts in potentially able pupils with special educational needs, to identify underachievement and to apply the values of teaching and learning to “develop cognitive challenge and stretch and communication skills” (p. 97). in chapter 4 carrie w instanley focuses on main two aspects, viz. using challenge to motivate and support children in school and key aspects of best practice distilled from the findings on chal lenge in the case study schools (p. 104). b esides including tables based on, among others, bloom’s t axonomy (the cognitive domain) (p. 115) and the anderson and krathwohl influenced (affective domain) hierarchy (p. 116), the author utilises t asc (thinking actively in a social framework) and philosophy for children (p4c) in the section on best practice. m ichael pomerantz, in chapter 5, writes about the potential of “carefully assembled” gifted and talented pupils in p upil r esearch c ommunities to “solve many complicated and serious prob lems facing individuals and schools” (p. 131). an added advantage to this approach is that it offers “considerable scope” (p. 162) for able underachievers to “redress problems” and take ownership of school problems and to allow those (able underachievers) “with the strongest vested interests to recommend school improvements” (p. 162). in chapter 6 sally fitton expands the common principles that were generated from the case studies and that underpin “successful leadership and curriculum provision that constitute the sig nificant drivers in tackling the underachievement of all pupils” (p. 165). t he author concludes that leadership (teacher support) should be dynamic and committed and that pupil voice is an “important element in this negotiated development … ” (p. 173). summarised comments e ach chapter in the book fulfils the expectations created by the title, and focuses on raising the achievement of all pupils. t he authors make liberal use of the findings from the twelve school case study to support their views and to illustrate best practice. m ost chapters feature a section at the end, with “points for reflection”, which can be used as a guideline by readers when implementing the strategies described in the specific chapters. in addition to the clear heading and neat structure, each chapter features an extremely useful concept map which serves to summarise chapter contents. t he numerous examples of children’s writing, text boxes, speech bubbles and other illustrations and figures contribute to the readability of this highly relevant, and even necessary, tome of practical wisdom, which can be used by managers and teachers at all levels to raise the achievement of all pupils. critical reflection as is always the case, there are a number of minor issues that we wish to highlight here, even though these issues do not detract from the overall positive impression. t he interchangeable use of the words “pupil” and “learner” could be confusing to some readers. t here is intense focus on “able” and “more able” pupils, but the authors regularly reiterate the value of the strategies for all pupils. t hese aspects do not, however, detract at all from the general value of the publication. 105perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 since the text is geared to u k schools, what is not referred to directly, perhaps, is the crucial aspect of how to best deal with particularly south african issues, for example: how to facilitate best practice in classrooms that cater for millions of learners from (often seriously) disadvantaged contexts where schools are woefully underresourced; the challenge of teaching that takes place in learners’ second (or even third) mother tongue; lack of resources; the twin challenges of inadequately trained teachers and insufficient time spent in classrooms; and dealing with underachievement in the gateway subjects, m athematics and physical sciences. t hat said, we realise that books are never intended to be everything to everyone but, instead, serve a specific purpose (which is what this volume does). facilitating “best practice” in our schools is a matter that deserves the attention of all of us in volved in teaching and learning. t aken as a whole, the main issues tackled in this volume do have a relevance for (south) africa in the year 2010. t he contents of the book certainly has currency for (south africa) in the 21st century. t his statement is borne out by, for example, a brief glance at our ever declining grade 12 results, followed by careful perusal of systemic evaluations that consistently reveal south african learners’ backlog in terms of the most basic reading, writing and arithmetic skills, as well as taking note of repeated calls by various stakeholders for something to be done to help learners achieve according to their potential. every effort at contributing to an increase in the numbers of learners that qualify for university entrance, for sought after fields of study, irrespective of whether studies are completed at a university, university of technology, further education and training (fet ) college, or accredited private fe t provider or se t a linked (skills education training authorities) learnership, is to be welcomed. t he issues highlighted here (viz. the challenge of “un derachievement”, development of a positive self concept, dealing with potentially able or specially gifted children with special educational needs, finding ways to motivate and support all learners, and how best to handle gifted and talented pupils), are justifiably linked to the notion of “best practice” (one would like to add: reflective practice), throughout. indeed: the professional management of our schools and classrooms are of pivotal importance if we are to have any hope of dealing effectively with the underachievement of all learners. c arol van der w esthuizen and k obus m aree u niversity of pretoria 87 the game object model and expansive learning: creation, instantiation, expansion, and re-representation alan amory university of johannesburg bolepo molomo university of johannesburg seugnet blignaut north-west university in this paper, the collaborative development, instantiation, expansion and re-representation as research instrument of the game object model (gom) are explored from a cultural historical activity theory perspective. the aim of the paper is to develop insights into the design, integration, evaluation and use of video games in learning and teaching. the first part of the research deductively analyses the historical development of the gom over the past 12 years against the expansive learning cycle. thereafter the openended reflections of participants who attended a workshop to re-represent the gom as an instrument to evaluate computer games for the classroom were analyzed using both interpretive and deductive qualitative approaches. the development of the gom and associated models showed that the prime unit of analysis was collective, tool-mediated and object-oriented activity. findings show that, during each expansive learning cycle, the model functioned first as object and then as tool. analyses of the activity associated with the development of the gom instrument to evaluate computer video games fostered individual understanding of the role of games in education and transformed world views in all non-positivist participants. the development of the gom and associated models supported multiple points of view in which activity system and individual contradictions drove expansive learning cycles and individual transformations. future research should investigate the efficacy of the gom-based game evaluation instrument developed as a product of this research. keywords: game object model, game achievement model, expansive learning, cultural historical activity theory, tool mediation, computer video games, transformation, non-positivist participants introduction while the use of computer video games in the classroom is advocated as an artefact to support contemporary learning practices, there are insufficient insights into the learning processes associated with the design of educational games and their use in the classroom. our narrative makes use of a decade of research from a single research group and cultural historical activity theory (chat) as a heuristic to explore the notion of collaborative tool building and individual transformations. the paper is divided into a number of sections. first, a brief introduction to chat (engeström, 2000, 2001; roth & lee, 2007) is provided, then the collaborative production and use of the game object model (gom) version ii (amory, 2007) is analysed using published research (development, instantiation and expansion) and new research which employs the gom as a model to develop an instrument to evaluate computer games for classroom use (re-representation). finally, the implications of these analyses are discussed. this paper is a detailed exploration not of the gom ii and associated models but rather of the use of these models to investigate tool-mediated collaborative knowledge construction. our exploration begins with chat concepts applicable to this paper. 89amory, molomo & blignaut — the game object model whether mediation operates through direct intervention or through language and signs, individual transformation includes both extrinsic and intrinsic modes of mediation. also, edwards (2008) argued that mediation is hierarchical, with the tools ranging from simple and material to the sophisticated (for example, technological systems and ideologies), and that tools help humans to master their world and thereby transform themselves. the object of the activity kaptelinin (2005) explained that the russian objekt and predmet both translate to “object” in english. while an objekt refers to actual items that exist in the real world and are independent of the mind, predmet refers to the target, or content, associated with a thought. kaptelinin (2005:8) supposed that the reader should rely on the context, taking into account that ‘object’ is likely to have the meaning of predmet if emphasis is placed on intentional, social, meaningful, and integrated qualities. running the risk of oversimplification, one can say that predmet is more ‘subjective,’ and objekt is more ‘objective’ … in the expression ‘the object of activity’ and related uses, ‘object’ has the meaning of predmet … in the ‘subject–object’ distinction and related uses, ‘object’ has the meaning of object. expansive learning and activity contradictions are an integral part of any learning system. engeström (2004) argued that learning takes place along two dimensions: emergence of a new object through activity on one axis, and exploration for new knowledge and the exploitation of existing knowledge along the other axis. incremental exploration is concerned with experimentation and expansive learning is therefore connected to new knowledge production associated with emerging activities. thus, expansive learning includes a cyclic sequence of learning activities: (1) questioning: primary contradiction; (2) analyzing historical contradictions: secondary contradictions; (3) modelling a new solution; (4) examining the model; (5) implementing the new model: tertiary contradictions; (6) reflecting on the process: quaternary contradictions; and (7) consolidating the new practice (engeström, 1999, 2004). contradictions (conflicts, dilemmas, disturbances and local innovations) “become the actual driving forces of expansive learning when they are dealt with in such a way that an emerging new object is identified and turned into a motive” (engeström & sannino, 2010:7). in addition, these authors posited that expansive learning results in an enlarged pattern of activity associated with a new theoretical concept, and a new type of work. theoretical frames social interactions, tool mediations and contradictions associated with the meaning of the object are used to frame our analyses of the gom and gom-based tools. the main objective of these analyses and their results is to develop insights into the developments of complex learning systems and tools to support the design, integration, evaluation and use of video games in learning and teaching. expansive learning cycles associated with each of the creation, instantiation, expansion, and re-representation (new research) aspects of the gom are explored in the following sections. analysis creation of the gom – expansive learning cycle 1 the development of computer games during the early 1990s evoked a debate as to how such artefacts could be used as educational tools (primary contradiction). a research project was therefore initiated to (1) identify types of computer games that, according to students, might be useful in teaching and learning; (2) evaluate student opinions related to computer games; (3) develop a game based on student opinions; and (4) assess the impact of computer video games on teaching and learning. amory, naicker, vincent and adams (1999) reported that students preferred adventure and strategy games and identified a number 91amory, molomo & blignaut — the game object model the concrete attributes of the gom and envisaged an educational game as a three-act narrative play with embedded puzzles that were to be the stratagem for attaining learning outcomes. each act includes any number of scenes that bring to fruition its aims and narratives, but the acts are not arranged linearly. it was argued that such a reductionist model would not only simplify these conceptualizations of educational computer video games but also explicate game and puzzle designs. however, the use of the gom and gam with large development teams (amory & seagram, 2003; seagram & amory, 2004) and small ones (baxter & amory, 2004, 2006) brought forth a number of other contradictions: puzzle design through reduction was more complex than envisaged by the gam (baxter & amory, • 2004). writing a non-linear narrative was complex and difficult, especially when professional scriptwriters • attempted to argue their linear storytelling positions (amory & seagram, 2003). dialectical tensions existed between the narrative, puzzles and individual belief systems (baxter & • amory, 2006). to address these contradictions and to include recent advances it was necessary to expand the gom. expansion of the gom – expansive learning cycle 3 amory (2007) extended the gom (fig. 3, below) so that educational computer games were conceived to: be relevant, explorative, emotive and engaging, and include complex challenges • support authentic learning activities that are designed as narrative social spaces in which learners are • transformed through exploration of multiple representation, and reflection be gender inclusive, include non-confrontational outcomes, and provide appropriate role models• develop democracy and social capital through dialogue that is supported by means of computer-• mediated communication tools include challenges, puzzles or quests, which form the core of the learning process, and provide • access to explicit knowledge, conversations, and reflection, resulting in the construction of tacit knowledge. 93amory, molomo & blignaut — the game object model the re-representation of the gom version ii model as an evaluation instrument could solve the problem of computer video game selection for teaching and learning. the design of such an instrument was socially constructed during a workshop attended by a group of researchers and postgraduate students. the workshop included two primary activities: development of the instruments based on the gom version ii, and playing a number of computer video games. the workshop was designed from a social constructivist position from which dialogue and consensus seeking were used to develop the instrument (reported in this paper) and to explore a number of commercial and educational games. methodology in conducting the research we followed a qualitative interpretive approach. the data set consisted of reflections written by the six participants after the completion of the workshop. first, we incorporated the reflection data into an integrated dataset on atlas.ti™, a computer-assisted qualitative data analysis system. second, we used the concepts of the gom version ii as theoretical codes and deductively coded and categorized the data set. this analysis allowed for the development of an initial understanding of participants’ perceptions of and contributions to the workshop. third, we combined codes closely related to each other in order to build a better understanding of the activity associated with the workshop (selective coding). however, some of the meanings embedded in the data were not yet sufficiently categorized; therefore, during the final phase a grounded-theory approach with inductive reasoning was applied for a conceptual analysis of the data set. this resulted in eleven categorized conceptual codes revealing the dynamics of and individual positions articulated during the workshop activity. data analysis the findings of the qualitative analyses of participants’ reflective writing are presented here according to the eleven conceptual codes arranged in descending frequency, namely thinking critically; multiple world view; transformation; inclusivity; empiricist viewpoint; personal world view; social capital; narrative spaces; challenges; authenticity; and exclusion. most of the comments related to thinking critically were made by two participants, and pertained to the way the workshop supported individual development and how participants built their individual understanding of the gom: “but for me the most rewarding outcome is that i realized that such processes do lead to transformation and while it might appear that we go round in circles, we in fact are moving … along a spiral...” “i knew from previous workshops that involved the gom how easily participants reinterpret the model from their own perspectives that might be different from mine (different world views) ... we had hardly made any progress during the first day when the group started to articulate their own world views that at time clash with the underlying principles of the model. …why do we just go round and round in circles?” participants also commented on the importance of multiple world views: “... that people are coming from varying disciplines … did not cause any social, cultural, educational, ethnicity, religious, gender, age etc. problems.” “i then came to realize that with many people, there will be many world views.” participation in the workshop presented transformational opportunities to all the participants, articulated by two with regard to how they had influenced their thinking: “the first port of call for the change of my thought process was the deviation from my tradition or authority of deriving conclusion.” “the design of the experimental questionnaire to deal with factors of motivation such as challenge, curiosity, fantasy, collaboration and cooperation was a great learning outcome for me.” 94 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 participation in the workshop appeared to support individuals (inclusion) who were inexperienced in playing modern computer video games: “i was also confronted with how strong others’ opinions of female roles, likes and dislikes are and what the perceptions were of what females really are.” “for example, in a computer game, other people would prefer to die and start all over again; while others would feel demoralized by the word ‘die’.” however, a single and very strong voice was associated with an empiricist position: “the development of the survey used for the children had a number of positives and some negatives. a theme that should always be remembered and reminded is that this is a gender study in computer games – all other variables should be controlled for and not allowed to influence results ... only through ethnographic research where we expose some children to games and guard another group of children against exposure to games (while controlling all other variables), will we be able to establish the learning benefits of games over time” (our emphasis). this empiricist world view aligned with the participants’ personal world views: “the sample must be carefully chosen or sub-samples established within the sample of those who (i) play games, (ii) those who are able to play games but don’t (choice), (iii) those who are unable to play games (lack of income, illiteracy, computer illiteracy, disability, etc.).” all of the participants, except the empiricist, made remarks related to social capital, narrative spaces, challenges, authenticity and exclusion. in the following examples these comments are contrasted with the views of the empiricist. with regard to social capital participants remarked: “… will not play them on my own, but in the group it was easier for me to accept the aggression.” “to me it seemed that the majority of members involved in the workshop were not very familiar with computer games. excluding [facilitator] (given his past research experience) and myself (as i have 20+ years of experience dealing [playing, reviewing, and researching] with computer games) … (nb: playing solitaire or using edutainment doesn’t classify as computer gaming). this brings into question the validity/appropriateness of some survey statements agreed by a majority.” the workshop was seen as a place to explore ideas through stories (a narrative space): “playing games that are challenging, engaging, gender inclusive [and] explorative with multiple views could bring about a huge learning paradigm [change].” “the questionnaire seemed straightforward to me, but its appropriateness in design will require a trial with children.” the workshop was challenging: “the discussion … was quite thought provoking where we worked together to resolve our differences in opinion amicably.” “an issue i cannot emphasize enough is the issue of balance. balance, [i] feel, should be included as an additional dimension. reading crawford and kostikayan will strengthen this claim. it is crucial to creating a game that is immersive.” many of the participants, and the empiricist, felt that the workshop included authentic tasks: “the selection of the games to be used for the first phase of the experiments was in itself a great challenge as most of them were full experimentation and exploration of ideas, which in turn led to unexpected discoveries and excitement.” “in terms of positives, having a group of (1) people of diverse backgrounds and different specializations provided a fairly (2) rigorous assessment of survey statements and a (3) wide perspective for means of questioning/assessing computer games.” the code exclusion was part of the writings of the empiricist: 96 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 the collaborative design and development of an educational game on evolution, i.e. the object of the activity, resulted in the production of tools, the educational computer video game itself and a framework to support game development, the gom. actors subsequently involved in the design and production of other educational games found the gom difficult to understand and use. therefore, before the gom could act as a tool to mediate game development, it functioned as an object in order to build individual understanding of the model. however, the contradictions associated with the gom precipitated the development of the gam. here, the gom again functioned as part of the object of the activity to support the production of a gam. the gam, in turn, operated both as a tool when used to support game design and as an object when critiqued. the gam proved useful as a tool to extrinsically mediate educational computer video game production. however, the gam provided insufficient depth to support puzzle design, non-linear versus linear narratives, and the integration of narrative and puzzles. these dialectical struggles might have been due to individual ideologies and resulted in additional contradictions. in order to extend the gom, the model functioned as the object of activity and the outcome was a more complex model, the gom version ii. the development of an instrument based on the gom version ii to evaluate the educational fit of computer games required the gom to act as the object of the activity first. therefore, a socially constructed tool acted as object first and then as a tool. the oscillation between object and tool may be a natural part of the expansive learning cycle, as discussed in the next section. the expansive learning cycle includes a number of cycles, for example, questioning, analysing, modelling a solution, examination of the model, implementation, reflection and consolidation (engeström, 1999, 2004). initial research to produce a game, i.e. the creation phase, led to the production of a game and the development of the gom. this creation phase included the questioning, analyses and modelling of solution steps of the expansive learning model. an examination and implementation on the gom and reflection of these two processes brought to the fore a number of contradictions. therefore, during the instantiation phase it became necessary to develop a production-oriented model, the gam, to support game design and production. the development of the gam initiated a second expansive cycle. within this cycle additional contradictions related to puzzle design, non-linear versus linear narratives and the integration of narrative and puzzles emerged. as a consequence, the gom was expanded to address the identified contradictions – the third expansive cycle. the gom version ii formed the theoretical substrate for the development of an instrument to evaluate computer video games for classroom use. this instrument is not directly related to the production of educational games, but to their assessment for teaching and learning, and is therefore a part of a different activity system and the start of a new expansive cycle. building consensus and understanding collaboratively required resolute effort to work from a social constructivist framework which brought to the fore contradictions related to social constructed meaning making, puzzle design, non-linear narratives and game design. however, the development of the game evaluation instrument highlighted important points pertaining to individual transformation. many team participants accepted and understood the gom and were able to use the model as a tool to design the evaluation instrument. the participant holding very strong empiricist and positivist views showed little transformation in thinking and attempted to perturb the system. for other individuals the use of social constructivism resulted in a transformation of their belief system related to teaching and learning. analyses of the development of the gom, associated models and educational computer video games support the five principles of activity theory (engeström, 2001), namely: the prime unit of analysis was collective, tool mediated (extrinsic and intrinsic) and object • oriented. collaboration allowed multiple points of view.• current understanding of game design and pedagogy has developed over more than 10 years of • activity. numerous expansive learning cycles were driven by system and individual contradictions.• 97amory, molomo & blignaut — the game object model collective journeys resulted in expansive transformations in most participants.• in conclusion, the development and use of the gom illustrates stetsenko’s (2005) argument that “human activity – material, practical, and always, by necessity, social collaborative processes aimed at transforming the world and human beings themselves with the help of collectively created tools – is the basic form of life for people”. extending this idea, the use of computer games in the classroom will only lead to individual transformation, and thus deep learning, when they, the games, function as tools that extrinsically and intrinsically mediate specific learning outcomes. in addition, future research should be undertaken to investigate the efficacy of the gom-based instrument developed to evaluate the educational value of a games. acknowledgements we would like to thank the south african department of science and technology who provided funding for this project, and kathy morgan and geoff lautenbach for their critical reading of the manuscript. references amory a 2001. building an educational adventure game: theory, design, and lessons. journal of interactive learning research, 12(2/3):249-263. amory a 2007. game object model version ii: a theoretical framework for educational game development. education technology and research development, 55(1):51-77. amory a, naicker k, vincent j & adams c 1999. the use of computer games as an educational tool: identification of appropriate game types and game elements. british journal of educational technology, 30(4):311-321. 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matters for prospective teachers 1. the shift from teacher training to initial teacher education in south africa initial teacher education (ite) programmes are expected to prepare teachers who have the capacity to develop conceptually strong, responsive and inclusive teaching practices. the extent to which ite programmes have been successful in this endeavour has been questioned both internationally (e.g. lancaster & auhl, 2013) and within the south african context (council on higher education [che], 2010). in retrospect, it is not surprising that the review of initial teacher education (ite) programmes conducted by the che between 2005 and 2007 found that the sector was experiencing tension between “the theoretical and conceptual rigour expected of a professional degree and the vocation-specific training of teachers” for classroom readiness (che, 2010: 103). the institutional mergers between teacher training colleges, faculties of education and universities of technologies meant that teacher educators were encountering approaches to the preparation of teachers very different to the ones they had previously used (gordon, 2008; kruss, 2008). the first national policy governing the provision of teacher education, the norms and standards for educators (department of education, 2000) posed additional challenges to the newly merged sector: it stipulated that ite programmes should prepare prospective teachers for 7 different ‘roles of the educator’. by the end of their ite, qualifying teachers should have achieved 10 exit level outcomes, verified against a set of 89 assessment criteria. south african teacher educators thus found themselves grappling with how to organise coursework and practicum expectations around these (extensive) lists of discrete roles, outcomes and competences (e.g. fraser, killen & nieman, 2005). the che review noted that tensions around academic depth and contextual relevance were particularly prominent in programmes where a conceptual framework was absent. lee rusznyak robert balfour willie van vollenhoven lungi sosibo doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i1.1 issn 0258-2236 eissn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(1): 1-9 © uv/ufs http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.1 2 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) in response to the findings of the che review and the imperative to strengthen ite programmes offered to south african pre-service teachers, a symposium entitled ‘academic depth and rigour in initial teacher education’ was jointly organised by four universities in south africa. this symposium, held in october 2014, attracted 125 delegates from 18 south african higher education institutions (heis). representatives from the department of higher education and training (dhet), the department of basic education and a delegation from the european union also attended. the forty-eight papers presented over two days enabled teacher educators to engage in robust conversations about the academic depth and rigour of courses offered to pre-service teachers. presentations ranged from considerations of the overall conceptual coherence of ite curricula and benchmarking quality to contributions that grappled with academic depth and rigour in specific subjects and courses offered in ite programmes. this special issue of perspectives in education arises from that symposium and provides a space for teacher educators who have been working to strengthen academic depth and rigour associated with ite programmes to share their research, conceptualisation of courses, pedagogical innovations and assessment strategies with the sector more broadly. a contribution of this special issue to the national conversation about ite is to show how a wide range of teacher educators, from different institutions and working in different subject areas, are working with academic depth and rigour to support the development of conceptually informed practice. before introducing the papers included in this special issue, we make a case for why academic depth and rigour in university-based coursework is crucial for preparing prospective teachers for their work within the south african context. 2. academic depth and rigour in initial teacher education since shulman’s (1987) seminal work on the knowledge bases for teaching and the importance of pedagogic reasoning for effective teaching, it has been increasingly recognised that a skills-based approach to teacher preparation is inadequate. this is especially true when the education system from which prospective teachers emerge and return to after qualification, is in dire need of transformation. attention in the ‘learning to teach’ literature has increasingly turned to focussing on understanding the knowledge that supports the complex conceptual work that teachers do in their classrooms, their schools and their communities (ball, thames & phelps, 2008; cochran-smith & lytle, 1999; darling-hammond & bransford, 2005; loughran, berry & mulhall, 2006). some of this complexity resides in the conceptual work teachers need to do as they select, organise and represent complex concepts in ways that learners find understandable. by the time they qualify, teachers need to have a solid grounding in the content and pedagogical knowledge required to mediate their subjects effectively (banks et al., 2005; darling-hammond & bransford, 2005). the complexity of teaching also exists in relation to managing the ‘busyness’ of classroom life and understanding the way that diverse learners think, learn and behave. this is especially crucial in the south african context, as schools become more inclusive and representative of the diversities in society. universitybased coursework in initial teacher education has to ensure that prospective teachers understand how children develop and learn and what barriers might impede their ability to engage in learning opportunities. they also need to understand the complexity in the broad socio-economic, political and policy contexts in which they will begin their teaching careers. in addition, teachers have an ethical obligation to be agents of change for social justice in their institutions and the wider communities in which they work. to contribute to the transformation rusznyak, balfour, van vollenhoven & sosibo why academic depth and rigour in university-based ... 3 of the education system, teachers need to recognise and resist exclusionary practices that exist and instead identify and promote inclusionary practices. while skilled-based approaches to teacher training ensures that prospective teachers have mastered techniques associated with existing practices, theoretical knowledge is powerful precisely because it opens up possibilities for the transformation of present contextual realities and prevailing practices. it is for this reason that there has been recent critique (e.g. shalem & slonimsky, 2013; young & muller, 2014) of an ‘anti-intellectual’ approach in teacher training that undervalues the power of theoretical knowledge for enabling teachers to make sense of classroom interactions and guides the development of their teaching practices. because teaching is so complex, university-based coursework in ite, like in other fields, has a crucial role to play in enabling prospective teachers to undertake “conscious reflection on and systematic investigation of established knowledge” (slonimsky & shalem, 2006: 46), in order for them to expose, challenge and transcend prevalent assumptions about teaching and learning. this, we believe, is essential if newly qualified teachers are to develop the kind of teaching expertise that supports their core role of introducing their learners to the knowledgebased practices of the subjects they teach and support the development of rational judgement for ethical practices. 3. understanding academic depth and rigour understanding the depth of a body of knowledge encompasses the structure, philosophy and skills of that discipline. schwab (1978) distinguished between a subject’s substantive knowledge (the ways in which subject matter is delineated and thought about within a discipline) and syntactic knowledge (how new knowledge is acquired and validated) and argues that both are essential for academic depth. the work of winch (2013) contributes to an understanding of what it means to ‘know’ a subject and to use that knowledge for practical action. to claim to ‘know’ a subject it is necessary to know the existing stock of core knowledge (its propositions and the connections between them) and be able to make valid inferences from that knowledge (winch, 2013). furthermore, to ‘know’ a subject is to be able to identify and use the established methods for knowledge acquisition and creation in order to establish claims and validate inferences. those who can claim to ‘know’ a subject can navigate its knowledge structures – such as the extent to which the subject develops by moving towards greater levels of abstraction (a vertical knowledge structure) or recognising how competing paradigms vie for dominance within that field (what bernstein [1999] termed a horizontal knowledge structure). from our perspective, a further means of knowing a subject includes identifying its epistemological origins and thus being able to critique, counter and adapt the assumptions that underwrite such epistemes to be able to open them to further development arising from sources of knowledge not previously canonised into what is considered ‘core knowledge’. rigour is regarded as an individual pursuit of careful, continual self-motivated action towards excellence in thinking, feeling, choosing, evaluating, relating to others, learning to learn and becoming one’s own teacher (unks, 1979). increased opportunities for intellectual rigour prompt students to adopt a “deep approach” to how they engage with the content to be learnt (trigwell, prosser & waterhouse, 1999). this kind of rigour is prevalent when students perceive their coursework to be intellectually challenging with high quality teaching and assessment. strategic knowledge is activated when a student is confronted with situations or problems where no simple solutions are possible and opportunities for inference and the 4 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) application of knowledge are created. by way of contrast, a high workload paired with recall type assessments results in students adopting a less rigorous (surface) approach to learning characterised by memorising facts, procedures and routines. rigour is thus compromised when students engage with coursework with the aim of knowledge reproduction merely to meet the requirements for assessment (geiser, 2009). garber (2011) and braxton (1993) contend that increasing rigour in academic coursework implies higher levels of cognitive demand in the assessment tasks that support student learning. various frameworks have been devised for teachers and teacher educators intentionally to design and assess learning tasks that engage in rigorous ways with course content. the taxonomy for learning, teaching and assessing (anderson, krathwohl & bloom, 2001) has reconstituted bloom’s (1956) taxonomy of educational objectives to describe increasingly complex ways one can work with knowledge. teaching and assessing at higher cognitive levels can challenge students to engage with deep learning approaches, reaching the extent of their own abilities while participating in the thorough, logical and scientific process of solving real problems (miller & shih, 1999). aside from setting learning tasks that promote rigorous engagement, the tools that teacher educators use to recognise and extend rigour in learning are equally important. the structure of the observed learning outcome (solo) taxonomy developed by biggs and collis (1982) suggest grounds on which teachers could recognise the structural complexity reflected in student responses to open-ended questions. the rigour revealed by an answer is demonstrated by students’ ability to identify multiple relevant aspects of a phenomenon, explore relevant relationships between those aspects, account for or reconcile apparent contradictions and recognise a particular case as illustrative of a more generalisable concept. 4. the contribution of papers in this special issue to understanding academic depth and rigour in ite in the south african context a common theme that runs through the papers in this special issue is the extent to which theoretical knowledge in university-based coursework is able to strengthen the teaching practices of prospective teachers and prepare them for the challenges that exist within the south african schooling system. several contributors grapple with academic depth and rigour as a means of deepening content and pedagogical knowledge. others contribute to debates on providing prospective teachers with the conceptual knowledge that teachers need to address legacies of apartheid through opportunities for personal and institutional transformation. the importance of conceptual depth in ite programmes is reflected in the current policy, the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications (dhet, 2015). it firmly rejects “a purely skills-based approach [to ite], which relies almost exclusively on evidence of demonstrable outcomes as measures of success, without paying attention to how knowledge should underpin these skills for them to impact effectively on learning” (dhet, 2015: 9). the shift of emphasis in the design of ite qualifications from technical training to a graduate level of expertise demands that teachers develop a “deep and systematic understanding of current thinking, practice, theory and method” with “intellectual enrichment”, so that as practising teachers, they will be able to work with “flexibility in changing circumstances” (dhet, 2015: 54). the authors who have contributed papers to this special issue have interrogated these rusznyak, balfour, van vollenhoven & sosibo why academic depth and rigour in university-based ... 5 principles and demonstrate how they can be embodied in the courses they teach so that academic depth and rigour enhances the development of students’ teaching practices. two papers, one by taylor and another by bowie and reed, analyse the extent to which heis are producing primary school teachers who have the capacity to improve the levels of literacy and numeracy among south african learners. in their paper, bowie and reed find that the depth and rigour in which primary school teachers are prepared for teaching english and mathematics varies between and within the ite programmes offered by five heis. while preservice teachers who elect to specialise in one of these subjects have high levels of content and pedagogical knowledge, those who have not specialised in these subjects do not even demonstrate basic levels of competence in these subjects. these findings are troubling when considering that many intermediate phase teachers find themselves teaching english and mathematics (often through the medium of english), irrespective of whether they specialised in these subjects or not. taylor argues that the ability of teachers to use inferential reasoning is crucial for prospective teachers, as it establishes the conditions for their own literacy and supports their ability to engage in professional reasoning. moreover, he argues that rigour and depth in the content and pedagogy of mathematics and english should be essential for all primary school teachers. bowie and reed take this further and suggest what types of university-based coursework would prepare primary school teachers to teach mathematics and english competently. in their paper, walton and rusznyak consider the trade-offs in authenticity and academic depth that occur when an inclusive education module adopts knowledge-for-practice, knowledgein-practice and knowledge-of-practice approaches to assessing student learning. drawing on examples of actual assessment tasks, they show that when a knowledge-for-practice approach is used to assess student learning, academic depth is privileged at the expense of authenticity. the converse is true when a knowledge-in-practice approach to assessment is used. a knowledge-for-practice approach to assessing learning has the potential to contribute to academic depth and practice-based authenticity. based on this analysis, the authors suggest ways in which assessment tasks for prospective teachers can be designed to enhance academic depth without compromising authenticity. the special issue contains two papers that consider academic depth and rigour in relation to mathematics education for secondary teachers. in his paper, van jaarsveld tackles the contentious matter of discipline-specific language use by teachers within a reconsidered perspective concerning ambiguity and correctness. with reference to discourse excerpts from a mathematics teacher’s actual teaching, van jaarsveld demonstrates how ambiguity in language use concerning mathematics creates misunderstandings and incorrect knowledge, unwittingly making it impossible for learners to solve mathematics problems. arguing for an authentic language of mathematics as an aspect of academic rigour, the paper shows such usage can promote meaningful mathematical dialogue and problem solving. in the second paper in mathematics education, pournara analyses two incidents from a course on financial mathematics, which created opportunities for pre-service teachers to explore their understanding of compound and exponential growth. when a student unexpectedly produced a quadratic model for an exponential relationship, opportunities opened up to study the usefulness of the quadratic function as a model of the given situation. pournara’s article reflects on how suitable opportunities for engaging with peers’ mathematical contributions 6 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) might be included in a pre-service programme for secondary mathematics teachers in order to enhance depth and rigour. a theme addressed by four papers in this issue considers the potential of university-based coursework for enhancing transformation at a deeply personal level for teacher educators and prospective students. a paper by geduld and sathorar included in this special issue reflects on how a framework of a humanising pedagogy helped diverse staff in a merged institution confront the pain and limitations of their own personal and educational pasts, reconstitute their identities as south african teacher educators and move towards a shared vision of teacher education. geduld and sathorar examine how this process of personal transformation enhanced the conceptual coherence of their ite curriculum design and enabled connections to be made between course offerings. mendelowitz and dixon provide a pedagogical framework for rethinking the role of risk in teaching and learning, with particular reference to linguistic diversity and students’ lived experience as part of the curriculum. they demonstrate how a heteroglossic pedagogy, with reference to students’ discourse concerning risky topics in the context of literary discussions enables awareness of genre and register. in another paper on this theme, giorza reports on her use of artworks displayed at the constitutional court of south africa as a basis for undertaking enquiry-based teaching. by asking pre-service teachers to respond to works of art through a social semiotic approach, they develop their understanding of concepts such as art, justice, equality and humanity in a very personal process of meaning making. this, giorza argues, is important for them as students of art, as academics and as prospective teachers. also in the field of visual art education, westraadt demonstrates that visual art provides opportunities for students (in ite programmes and in schools) to develop as readers, writers and thinkers. her paper reports on a research project in which pre-service teachers ‘read’, interpret and decode works by contemporary artists and then negotiate the meaning generated in their interpretations in writing. she argues that this process strengthened the reading comprehension and visual literacy of the pre-service teacher who participated in her study. two papers in this issue consider how introducing student teachers to metacognition with respect to their own experiences of being assessed can enhance their professional development. steinberg and waspe’s paper emanates from a realisation that pre-service teachers’ expectations of assessment were fundamentally different from those of their lecturers. students expected high grades with minimum effort whereas lecturers expected student learning with high effort. the authors argue student expectations need to be informed by deep theoretical understandings of what constitutes rigour in assessment for their development as intellectuals and as prospective teachers. rembach and dison draw on biggs and collis’ (1982) solo taxonomy to prompt pre-service teachers to analyse their own responses to the demands of assessment tasks. working across the studies of social science and inclusive education, the authors argue that the solo taxonomy provides a useful instrument for preservice teachers to participate meaningfully in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of their assessment responses, thereby developing students’ metacognition with respect to their own learning. this is directly beneficial to understanding assessment and evaluation in their future classroom practices. two papers in this special issue discuss the challenges of preparing pre-service teachers for the complex and differentiated nature of south african schools and society. a paper by nomlomo and sosibo analyse student voices and reflect on the inherent limitations of a one-year pgce rusznyak, balfour, van vollenhoven & sosibo why academic depth and rigour in university-based ... 7 programme in terms of the exposure of pre-service teachers to contextual diversity, which they argue is a trade-off with respect to the depth of subject content knowledge gained by a three-year bachelor’s degree. their paper explores the implications for the disconnect that pgce graduates experience as newly qualified teachers teaching in contexts very different to the context in which they had undertaken a teaching practicum. in seeking academic depth, they remind us of the necessity of listening to the voice of all stakeholders. the second paper, by pennefather, considers the converse: exploring how a practicum experience for pgce student teachers in a rural schooling context contributes to their personal and professional development. the model she presents seeks to understand the student teacher learning through three interconnected and complementary aspects: situated learning, rurality and early professional learning. pennefather is concerned that the preparation of pre-service teachers should not reproduce the existing schemata of rurality or replicate examples of ineffectual teaching in the rural context. 5. conclusion this special issue provides a timely contribution to discussions in the sector regarding the academic depth and rigour in university-based coursework offered to prospective teachers. the knowledge-based work undertaken by teachers includes the advancement of literacy, deepening of knowledge practices and the ability to recognise and resist marginalising practices that exist in schooling. the contributions exemplify what wally morrow alluded to when he referred to teaching as a “theory-laden practice” that “cannot be understood independently of the theorising (understandings and concepts) that make it the practice it is” (morrow, 2007: 79). as the editors of this special issue, we have been encouraged by the manner in which contributors have turned to research to strengthen the design, pedagogy and assessment of coursework offered in ite programmes. in so doing, they create potentially powerful opportunities for prospective teachers to think deeply and critically about teaching and learning in their subjects, about exclusionary and inclusionary practices in schools and about opening up opportunities for student teachers to think meta-cognitively about their development as teachers. although there is still much work to do in this regard, the set of papers included in this special issue open possibilities for further interrogation. through a deepening engagement with knowledge the integration of theory and practice becomes possible so that knowledge becomes a critique of marginalising practices found throughout south africa’s education system and a means of enabling teacher educators, prospective teachers and ultimately learners alike to move beyond the assimilation of knowledge to using it for advancing transformation. 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37, 57-70. http://dx.doi. org/10.1023/a:1003548313194 unks, g. 1979. the scholastic perspectives on understanding children’s undersdtanding. childhood education, 72, 258-259. winch, c. 2013. curriculum design and epistemic ascent. journal of philosophy of education, 47(1), 128-146. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12006 young, m. & muller, j. 2014. from the sociology of professions to the sociology of professional knowledge. in j. muller & m. young (eds.). knowledge, expertise and the professions. london: routledge. pp. 3-17. http://dx.doi.org/10.17763/haer.57.1.j463w79r56455411 http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/a:1003548313194 http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/a:1003548313194 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12006 _enref_23 139 the quality of doctoral education in south africa: a question of significance jonathan d. jansen university of the free state introduction one of the underlying concerns in the study panel on the south african phd, a large-scale, overview investigation of the academy of science of south africa (assaf), was the negative consequences of signalling the need for more doctoral graduates to boost the presumed link to national competitiveness within a global knowledge economy. there was evidence that institutional behaviour in response to increased incentives for more accredited publications led to increased quantity at the cost of quality. understandably, therefore, the panel feared that policy signals and incentives to produce more doctorates would compromise quality phds from the 23 universities. at the heart of this concern was the significance of doctoral research and not simply more phds. this article seeks to advance thinking about how significance in doctoral research can be attained against the background of this national study, and its concerns, about quality phds. the quest for significance in doctoral research most of the research produced through theses, dissertations, journal articles and books make very little difference in the world of scholarship for one common reason: the lack of significance. to be sure, there are many other reasons why research produced does not attract the attention of scholars, practitioners and policymakers (such as the quality and reach of the research undertaken), but significance ranks up there as one of the most fundamental reasons for not taking published research seriously. for the moment i am not talking about statistical significance, that specific measure of difference used in survey or experimental research to indicate whether a particular finding from a sample is likely to be true (or not) in the general population being studied. this is an important measure for those who work in statistics or surveys, and here the differences between statistical significance (e.g. the effects of a drug are significant in statistical terms) and scientific significance (e.g. the effects of the drug are significant in medical terms). but my concern in this article is broader, covering both statistical and other kinds of quantitative and qualitative research. it has to do with the significance of any kind research as an intellectual practice, and why this is the single most important question in determining the worthwhileness of a scholarly study. no doubt many students ponder over this question for a very long time: if i am to embark on this study for four or five years, or more, how do i know that my research will carry any weight, or be of any consequence? will my research have something to say to the scholarly community or, in some fields, to the professional community of policymakers or planners or practitioners? will anyone even read or take notice of my research findings? will what i have to say merit turning my thesis into a book or my book into an award-winning publication? these are crucially important questions especially to the primary audience for this article i.e. young academics and new phds, who wish to establish themselves in their fields as top scholars who make ground-breaking contributions to our understanding of a set of intellectual problems. this article is not intended, therefore, for those who simply wish to get by. it will not be helpful to persons who only wants to get the research over-and-done-with and to move on with their lives. it will not help drones, that species within academic ecologies that simply wants to put their heads down and get on with the mechanics of research, those routines that will deliver a standard academic project. it is aimed at those who are ambitious (in the best sense of that word) and who want to ensure that their research 140 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 contributes to a deepening of understanding, a resolution of a problem, the improvement of a practice, or the advancement of our thinking. the first requirement for significance is intimate knowledge of the subject you cannot claim significance until and unless you know everything that has ever been researched and published on the topic in focus. now of course you can never really “know everything” on the topic, in an absolute sense, for practical reasons that include research and knowledge claims published in other languages. but you can achieve mastery of the literatures on and around your research topic, and it will show. i cannot think of anything more fundamental to good scholarship than having a grip on every major (and minor) piece of thought or research on your topic. this is what distinguishes top scholars from the rest: the capacity to read voraciously, a hunger to know what’s ‘out there’ in the literature on the subject, a never-ending quest for grasping new knowledge in the field. why is this important? because without knowing what exists and what is cutting-edge knowledge in your field, and on your specific topic, you cannot begin to make the claim for anticipated significance in the research you are about to embark on. your justificatory claim for why your research is expected to be significant must have its basic argument the fact that you recognise but move beyond what is known. a made-up example follows: until now, the dominant theories of democracy made the assumption that history, culture and politics • made spontaneous uprisings in arab states unlikely, if not impossible. my research will show the opposite that the very seeds of democratic uprising are deeply embedded in the political cultures of arabic nations. what we do not know, however, is how exactly those democratic impulses come to prominence in street-uprisings after decades of stable authoritarianism. the made-up example above links what is known to what is not; the existing literature (on democratic theories) to potentially new theoretical developments; what is taken for granted to what now can be tested. and the only way a scholar can make these claims for significance is, again, through an intimate knowledge of what exists in the corpus on the subject. this kind of scholar has “research alerts’ to the major journals; she has a specific librarian who is prepared to find and notify the young scholar of new publications in the field; she attends the two international conferences in the specific field in part to take note of what the cutting-edge research on the topic is, and what kinds of bibliographic resources (including to-be-published manuscripts) are invoked to make the arguments around that topic. she regularly reads “reviews of the literature” that appear on the topic, and personally subscribes to at least two major journals in the field. in other words, to fulfil this requirement, the young scholar organises her research thinking and her working space in ways that create an open conduit for the flow of literary information on the topic such that it is easier to master the knowledge of the field and the topic on a regular basis. this kind of organisation of personal and professional lives is fundamental for access to knowledge and to the capacity for original argument. the second requirement for significance is recognising the class of problems within which your research topic falls this entails the capacity to connect a local problem to its correlates elsewhere. all too often young scholars come to me with the claim that they cannot find much on the topic under discussion. of course, i send them away to keep looking. there are technologies and techniques for searching that need to take up time here, but suffice to say that after some guidance students find volumes of research on their subject. very often scholars young (this is understandable) and old (this is distressing) would make the claim that their research is so particular to their context (drinking habits of teachers on the south-side of the city, to use a flippant example), that nobody has ever done research on this area or topic. or the person would 141jansen — the quality of doctoral education in south africa make some claim to unique experience in a particular setting that cannot possibly apply elsewhere (like the migration patterns of the kalahari san peoples). the problem with this claim is the failure to connect the specific setting or problem to allied problems of the same kind in other settings. a project on the san finds its literatures first on the expansive san research but also on the encompassing research on migrations among indigenous peoples everywhere, to use but one example. your research is only significant to the extent that it can excite scholars anywhere in the world of research who work on that topic (or its correlates). the study of democracy in arab states is a concern to thousands of scholars of the subject; your specific focus on the democratic impulse in tunisia is a subclass of the broader problem. how then do you achieve significance through recognition of the class of problems within which your research falls? with practice, exposure and good mentoring. a good supervisor or mentor should be able to look at your problem and help guide you to “see” the class of problems within which to locate your study. a study on how governments use policy to achieve acquiescence among the citizenry might well fall within that class of problems called “political symbolism” in social policymaking. what is the point being made here? quite simply, that when you can relate a specific problem to a broader class of problems you can then locate your study in the relevant literature, and signal departures from and advance on the existing knowledge in the field. the third requirement for claiming significance is the capacity to articulate an independent argument this is partly about knowing how to write well in academic contexts. but it is also about the ability ‘to spot a gap,’ in a manner of speaking, and to claim it with authority. this requirement follows on the other two, the grasp of the literature on the topic and the location of the class of problems under which the topic falls. it is of course true, as the wise man said, that ‘there is nothing new under the sun.” yet it is also true that every study deemed significant will make the claim to have discovered something new, however modest. and the word is modest, especially in the social sciences but in general across disciplines. the scientist(s) who discovers the cure for aids, a massive breakthrough as it will be, would have built on years of anxious research that pushed the state of knowledge towards the point of great discovery. and so the requirement is that something will be “found” that advances our understanding even if only a little bit at a time. there are considerable influences of culture and personality that impact on this requirement. in conservative, calvinist and south african culture, any attempt to stand-out, to assert confidently, to claim significance in your work is frowned upon. god must get the glory. you must stand-back, and become invisible. ‘children must be seen and not heard’ is the earliest rebuke in our culture that targets young children, and somehow we never emerge from this silencing. the false modesty and self-deprecatory talk of adults is a consequence of such socialisation, and it is therefore very difficult to train young doctoral students or new phds to grow out of what i regard as bad social habits. this scholarly requirements demands not arrogance, but assertion of what you know and claim to be true. it requires confident statements of what you know is available (or not) in the existing literature on the topic, and then, on the basis of that knowledge, state clearly what it is your research will add to what is known. a few more words on the consequences of the silencing of one’s own voice in a south african upbringing. i noticed over the years that my doctoral students had great difficulty overcoming the constraints of culture and socialization in the way they framed their arguments. they engaged, firstly, in what could be called confirmatory research—that it, the tendency to want to confirm what was already known, to place oneself within the existing corpus and then share that space, so to speak, rather than stand out from the crowd and stake an independent position. there is safety and non-exposure in hiding behind what others say or said. this stance called confirmatory research goes hand-in-hand with concealing one’s own voice in favour of the voice of scholarly authority. when you read such a student or scholar’s work you constantly find expressions such as the following: 142 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 according to williams and gould...... novak avers...... as freire said in pedagogy of the oppressed.... jackson claims that .... there is of course nothing wrong with citing authority; my point is a different one. it is the over-use (actually, abuse) of such citations throughout a research proposal or a research report that is the concern. by constantly referring to what others say, you reveal a lack of confidence in what you say or what you have to say. a good supervisor or mentor reading such “he-said-she-said” scripts would come back with a singular comment: what do you say? that mentor would insist on your voice appearing in the text, that you take a stand on the literature having critically evaluated existing scholarly claims. merely citing authority is one thing; being able to chew through reported research in order to stake an independent claim is another thing altogether. a command over the literature is what is in question, and a confident command of what came before is expressed in the statement ‘we stand on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see further than they could’ (the value of insight) or, more crassly, ‘we stand on the shoulders of giants, then we step on their toes’ (the role of criticism). the fourth requirement for significance is the skill to recognise the limitations of existing research—and on that basis to make the justificatory argument for your research how do you read 100 research articles on, say, the relationship between class size and student achievement in ways that enable insight into the limitations of that research? once again, the combination of solid research training, strong supervision or mentorship, appropriate exposure to – for example – top research conferences, and sheer practice, together create the capacity and chutzpah for being able to “read through” the literature. using the example of class size and student achievement: this is one of the most well-researched topics in educational research. the basic finding is that the size of a class of learners will impact on how those learners achieve; few arguments with that proposition. but surely that depends on a host of factors that the research may or may not take into account. what about the qualification levels of the teachers in question? what about the physical size of the classroom within which 35 learners are taught? what about the learner characteristics by, say, socioeconomic status? what about the conditions outside of the classroom – the school or the community? surely the context of mozambique and france would have something to say to the achievement outcomes apart from class size? what about the teacher’s salary levels? what about the culture of the school? what about when these studies were done? what about the socio-cultural meanings of the tests used to measure the effects of the independent variable (class size)? what about the upper and lower limits of class size within which such achievement is measured? what is intended with these questions is to demonstrate the kinds of interrogations of a simple claim – that class size affects learner achievement – that the practised mind would run through even as the research literature on this topic is being surveyed. it is in honing the capacity to ask such questions that the young scholar prises open opportunities to identify gaps in the literature and formulate a significant research problem. such a skill, well developed, would come to recognise categories of limitations commonly cited in reviews of the literature that lay the foundation for a significant new study: the sample sizes used this far was too small• the sample sizes are unrepresentative of the broader population• the findings were generated in culturally homogenous populations• 143jansen — the quality of doctoral education in south africa the findings did not account for changes in social attitudes or language populations over time• the research design was flawed in relying too heavily on quantitative indices to account for complex • social issues the survey findings on attitudes towards social welfare in middle-class suburbs do not apply in poor • neighbourhoods the original research contain ethical biases, failing to protect the identities of women in asking their • attitudes towards abortion in a conservative community, thereby potentially skewing the findings in short, spotting limitations of research enables the scholar-researcher to justify a new departure. the broader categories of limitations include: theoretical limitations (how the problem was understood)• methodological limitations (how the study was done)• contextual limitations (where the study was done)• ideological limitations (perspective on the problem e.g. particular conceptions of children)• historical-time limitations (when the study was done)• framing limitations (what research questions were asked, and what not)• the fifth requirement for significance is the ability to make the justificatory claim in writing there is of course a difference between ordinary writing for communication, professional writing for practitioners in the field (such as nurses, lawyers, teachers etc), and scholarly writing for research purposes. how then do you write the argument claiming significance? the short answer: with great difficulty. first you need to practise writing claims for significance. as with all writing, this kind of writing is not easy, at first, and requires constant practice. second, you need exemplars of writing to guide your own, original writing; some of these will follow shortly. third, you need to find your own voice or style of writing within this frame. lets us turn now to some examples of powerful writing statements that make the case for significance. what follows is an extract from a study on the impact of grade retention (holding back a student with low marks) on student academic achievement; the opposite of grade retention is ‘social promotion’—or automatic promotion as in the lower grades in south africa. i use this example in part because of its common sense among parents and learners, and the simplicity of the case for significance. source: jon lorence et al., grade retention and social promotion in texas, 1994-99: academic achievement among elementary school students, in brookings papers on education policy, 2002 (editor diane ravitch), brookings institution press, washington d.c., usa shortcomings of previous research although considerable research examines the impact of grade retention on student academic achievement, various shortcomings exhibited across these studies make it difficult to derive any concrete generalisations about the effectiveness of requiring students to repeat a grade. reported effects of retaining students vary across studies because of the differences in sample sizes, the degree to which retained and promoted students were similar, the measures of academic performance, the presence of alternatives to retention, the content of alternative programmes, and the extent to which promoted students were socially promoted but given accelerated instruction to bring then up to grade level or simply socially promoted with no additional assistance. many studies are based on dated samples of students, some of which are many decades old. it is questionable whether old studies based on predominantly white school populations in which 5 percent of the students were retained in grade are applicable to contemporary urban schools where large percentages 144 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 of ethnic minorities and economically disadvantaged pupils are retained in grade. retention studies are often based on small samples that are unrepresentative of ethnically diverse educational systems. for example, several recent published analyses by shane jimerson and others are based on a panel with fewer than thirty students who were retained in grade. further, many studies indicating that school retention is ineffective are unpublished student master’s theses or dissertations or research reports issued by school districts. the generalisability of such studies is often suspect because of the unknown quality of the research. with only a few exceptions, another major problem of many retention studies is that students who were held back were followed for only a short period of time (for example, only a year or two). most research on grade retention focuses only on the short-term effects of being held in grade and do not study the long-term consequences on students (for example, academic performance three or four years later). in addition, many studies follow only the performance of retained students without examining the academic achievement of comparable low-performing pupils who were not required to repeat the same grade. as a result of these flaws in research design, it is difficult to summarise the extent to which grade retention affects later student achievement. contributions of the present study by utilising data based on a cohort of all low-achieving elementary students in the state of texas over a number of years, we can overcome some of the weaknesses observed in previous studies on grade retention and social promotion. our purpose is to ascertain whether holding low-achieving students back a year in grade contributes to enhancing academic performance. we believe that the findings presented here provide many advantages unavailable in previous research. first, the state data set analysed is much larger than used in earlier studies. instead of investigating only a small number of students, the data consist of the entire population of elementary students in texas. second, the data include all academically challenged students who were retained in grade or promoted to the next grade. the academic achievement of low-performing pupils who were promoted to the next grade can be compared with the educational performance of similar low-performing students required to repeat a grade. also, the state data set made available by the texas education agency (tea) is detailed enough to enable better comparisons of the academic achievement of low-performing students of various ethnic backgrounds who were retained with comparable students who were socially promoted. the longitudinal nature of the available data allows us to follow the academic progress of the same students over a six-year period. in sum, the existing state data can be analysed in a manner that permits better estimation of the effects of retention in grade on student academic performance than has heretofore been possible. what is commendable about the link between shortcomings (limitations) and contributions (significance) of the research position staked out in this example, is the clarity of writing, the confidence of authorship, the skilfulness of analysis (of the literature), the command of the corpus, and the ease of classification (the class of problems) of the study undertaken. the sixth requirement for significance is knowing what leading thinkers in your field believe is significant in that area of research there are limits to what you can learn from the published research on what is significant, or not, in the scholarship in your area. there is a lag-time of at least between 2-4 years between what is published and when the new idea or concept or strategy was first discovered, explained or applied. by the time a piece of significant research is published, the publishing author has already moved on to something else in her research and new manuscripts stand ready for submission. but you would not know this if you simply relied on the next journal issue. that is why the really top young scholars find themselves in the laboratories of leading scholars around the world; in the latest conferences that assemble leading minds on that topic; and in the seminar rooms where such top scholars read and test their work. some of south africa’s top researchers worked in the laboratories of nobel laureates in the sciences. in fact none of this country’s science nobel laureates 145jansen — the quality of doctoral education in south africa spent their academic and research time only in south africa; their discoveries were often made elsewhere. you know what is a significant question or technique or theory or method by constantly rubbing shoulders with the leading thinkers in the world. how you access such leading thinkers is a different question. in postgraduate and postdoctoral studies, especially, the questions of where you study and with whom you study are absolutely important in the context of this argument. if you received all your degrees at one south african university, i can tell with a high degree of confidence that your research will seldom achieve “significance” simply because of the enormous capacity of our universities for low-level intellectual inbreeding. many of the top universities in the world refuse to take their masters graduates into phd studies for a very good reason: you need to broaden the repertoires of reading and thinking, theories and methodologies, ideologies and perspectives, beyond the circle of intellectual influence within a particular department or school. most departments hold one or two lines of thinking on a topic; this is not bad, but it does mean that your capacity to have a much broader grasp of the subject is limited. at a crucial point, therefore, especially in phd and post-doctoral studies, the associational value of your research attachment will determine whether your research rises to high significance in the field, or not. the seventh requirement for achieving significance is the capacity of the young scholar for learning nothing can undermine the quest for significance more than hard-headedness. more than a few of my doctoral students came in so hard with their favoured research question or ideological commitment to a research project that they were impervious to advice from the supervisor, and ended up with a routine research report. openness to learning, the capacity to change course are vital personal characteristics of the young scholar. this does not mean you must be “blown away by every wind of doctrine,” for that is another danger – constantly changing your mind rather than taking a position on the basis of scholarly conviction. but it does mean that you listen carefully to advice, preferably from different quarters, and then adjust or redirect the scholarly pursuit. stubbornness in the face of good supervisorial or mentorship advice can undercut the quest for significance. kinds of significance i now wish to turn attention to the kinds of significance that can be claimed or anticipated in outlining a research programme (for purposes of funding, for example) or reporting on research findings (for purposes of publication). the first category of significance could be called practical significance. what is envisaged here is a new technological discovery that comes through applied research, for example. it could include the testing of a new drug whose adoption could have major implications for the treatment of a health ailment. research in the science, technology and engineering commonly has applications in real-life and therefore a high level of practical significance. i would caution, though, against what seems to me to be excessive claims for practical significance in the social sciences and humanities. too many of my former students start with the notion that they will develop a model in educational psychology or curriculum policy that will somehow improve practice in these fields. i have not yet seen this happen, and as a result time and resources are wasted developing models that nobody takes seriously. the social and human worlds are a lot more complex than easy models can address, but the real problem is that this quest for practical significance in the human sciences precedes the quest for understanding first before the rush towards practical applications. the second category of significance could be called theoretical significance, by which i mean the discovery of new conceptual understandings or insights into old or familiar problems. with any research, the first obligation is to understand not to solve. truly significant research advances our understanding or, in humboldtian terms, pushes back the frontiers of knowledge. the quest for theoretical significance starts of course with recognising an anomaly, a puzzle, a contradiction, and then determining how existing 146 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 theories make sense of that problem, if at all, and then on the basis of extensive data, trying to improve on or extend existing explanations for the problem. this is the gold standard for significance in social and scientific research: the yielding of new insights or discoveries as a result of the research. permit a personal example. i struggled for months to understand how my white students (mainly afrikaans) students at the university of pretoria came to have such firm views about the past, such negative views about black people, and such pessimistic views about the future. what did not make sense was that they were all small children or born after the tragedy of apartheid. i scanned existing theoretical work on the subject and found little in south africa except for descriptive accounts of racial attitudes and practices among white students. but i stumbled across international work on “second generation knowledge” (starting with eva hoffman’s remarkable book after such knowledge) where she tells her own story of how she came to acquire knowledge of the holocaust from her parents (who eventually escaped poland) even though she herself was not there. the elementary insights from her experiences i then used to build theory on how knowledge is acquired among white afrikaans youth at the university of pretoria, identifying the “channels” along which second-hand knowledge of the past came alive in the consciousness, preferences and decisions of young people who grew up in a democracy but lived, in a manner of speaking, in another era. the third category of significance is what i would like to call emotional significance---the potential of the research to generate new feelings or attachments towards self or others. this kind of significance is seldom found in research textbooks, though patti lather once spoke of the capacity of research to induce resonance, coining the intriguing term resonance validity. contrary to popular perception, research can mobilise people towards action (studies on climate change, for example) and resonate with the experiences of the poor (studies on the impact of asbestos on mining communities, for example). it is often expressed by someone who read your book or article and say “i was touched by your research.” knowledge in the blood seems to have met the standards of emotional significance judged by the hundreds of responses of people claiming to have “felt” the impact of this work as they revisited their racial attitudes and behaviours, as well as difficult memories of the past. emotions, in the new research on this human attribute, are not simply a negative experience but can also be a powerful response to difficult subjects. for this reason emotional significance, while still not seriously regarded in mainstream research, must be taken-up as a category of significance in scholarship in the future. of course measuring emotional significance is a problem at the moment, for some might argue that you cannot rely only on subjective responses from random groups. nor can powerful human responses of this kind of “moving research” be discounted as “mere emotions” for such responses signal a positive value and impact of the research within the user community, and this must count in the estimation of significance. these are the three major kinds of significance, even though the medical and pharmaceutical literatures also refer to other categories such as clinical significance, defined as the effectiveness of a treatment or therapy such that the patient or client is no longer regarded as ill or dysfunctional. i have also seen research that has personal significance for the scholar, such as a doctoral student friend of mine who changed, at a late stage, her mainstream research to an award-winning doctoral dissertation on the experiences of lesbian mothers raising their children; it allowed her to “come out” and in the process, release a creative energy and level of dedication to the research that transformed knowledge itself. conclusion this article has drawn attention to the personal characteristics, cultural contexts and strategic considerations vital to securing significance in research especially for the young, up-and-coming scholar determined to make a significant contribution in a particular field of research. it makes the central argument that significance rests principally on the foundations of prior research, its insights but especially its limitations, and that having a firm grasp of that literature (knowledge) makes the difference between routine research and significance in research. 38 parental partnerships in the governance of schools in the black townships of port elizabeth sindiswa madgie mbokodi nelson mandela metropolitan university prakash singh nelson mandela metropolitan university this article focuses on the functionality of school-governing bodies (sgbs) as the voice of parents in the governance of schools. after nearly sixteen years since the south african schools act 84 of 1996 (sasa) came into effect, the question that still raises many concerns among stakeholders in education is whether black parents through their sgbs are aptly fulfilling their roles as rightful partners in the governance of their children’s schools. the aim of this study was therefore to determine whether section 18 of sasa was being appropriately realised in the black townships of port elizabeth. using the qualitative research method, a sample of ten schools – five primary and five secondary schools – was intentionally selected from the black townships of port elizabeth. a total of forty in-depth open-ended interviews were conducted. the study found that, although the schools had legally constituted sgbs, these sgbs were not functional. the findings of this study shed light on the challenges why a partnership cannot materialise if black parents do not have the capacity to be partners in the governance of schools. hence, this study provides new insight into the status quo of black parental involvement in the governance of schools. keywords: school-governing body (sgb), black parents, parental partnerships in education. background to the problem after nearly sixteen years since the south african schools act 84 of 1996 (sasa) came into effect, the question that still evokes many concerns is whether black parents as members of school-governing bodies (sgbs) are currently fulfilling their expected roles as partners with schools in the education of their children. sgbs are expected to play a leading role in establishing effective schools that guarantee learners equal and quality educational opportunities (joubert, de waal & rossouw, 2004; probyn, murray, botha, botya, brooks & westphal, 2002). in this study a black person refers to a person who is darkskinned and of african origin. black schools are those schools that were historically serviced by the former department of education and training (det) as opposed to former model a, b and c schools. in this article, parental partnerships in schools denote the interaction between teachers and other school personnel through officially elected sgb members. in earlier studies on the subject of the role of sgbs, it was found that sgbs did not realise the goals clearly set out in sasa (singh, mbokodi & msila, 2004; mabasa & themane, 2002). ntshingila (2006) states that one in three south africans over the age of twenty has no schooling at all or has not completed primary school. cooter (2006:698) adds that intergenerational illiteracy is a sociocultural phenomenon whereby illiterate parents sponsor home conditions that may seriously hinder their children’s cognitive development, thus perpetuating a cycle of illiteracy. in their research on black parental involvement in education, singh, mbokodi and msila (2004) report that without effective black proactive involvement, historically disadvantaged schools in south africa are less likely to succeed in their efforts to improve education. now seven years later, the question once again surfaces as to whether the lack of black parental involvement in education is attributable to lower expectations and consequently poor results in black township schools. the problem investigated in this study was whether the planned partnerships between black parents as members of sgbs and the 39mbokodi & singh — parental partnerships in the governance of schools schools are taking place as envisaged in sasa. hence, the functionality of black parents as members of sgbs is the prime issue in this article. theoretical framework this article is written against the background of section 24(1)(a) of sasa which requires parents to be partners in the governance of schools (mabasa & themane, 2002). this partnership should happen through a legally constituted sgb. section 18 of sasa clearly stipulates that parents are the official partners in the governance of their children’s school. according to singh, mbokodi and msila (2004), black parents, especially those from impoverished backgrounds, need to be empowered if they are to make a significant contribution to their children’s education. a partnership between parents and schools is an instrument to improve and develop the schools as parents involve themselves in the schools’ activities in order to benefit their children’s education (hoover-dempsey, battiato, walker, reed, de jong & jones, 2001; calitz, fuglestad & lillejord, 2002; vatterott, 2009; petesch, 2007). this relationship creates the opportunity for parents and teachers to become involved in a more formal and structured partnership relating to the education of the child. the importance of this partnership is emphasised by vatterott (2009:55), who avers that the “power relationship between schools and parents must be realigned to embrace parents as equal partners in their child’s education”. in their study on adolescent violence in urban secondary schools, bender and emslie (2010:55) argue that much research still needs to be done with the focus on learner development and effective family-school partnerships. the latter study also clearly illustrates the need for a stronger parent-school partnership. the envisaged partnership between parents and the school lies in the management of organisational systems, physical and financial resources, human resource management, the management of teaching and learning including extra-curricular activities, and the management of policy, planning, school development and governance. as aptly pointed out by baeder (2010:57), teachers’ lives are increasingly disconnected from those of their learners. many teachers commute to school from distant suburbs or live in different neighbourhoods from those in which they teach. bridging the gap is especially important to foster the partnership between the school and the community it serves (molepo, 2000). sasa provides for this partnership through the sgbs in whom the governance of schools is vested. figure 1 illustrates how this relationship is structured and the complementary nature of its functions. 40 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 figure 1: parental partnerships in school governance the parent component constitutes 60% of the sgb whose chairperson should be a parent. research has consistently shown that with the increase in parent partnerships in the governance of schools, there is a concomitant increase in student achievement (ramirez, 2001:130). gonzalez (2002:132) cites numerous studies that identified the existence of relationships between parental partnerships and such student variables as academic achievement, sense of well-being, school attendance, attitude, homework readiness, grades, and educational aspirations. while these studies may not be linked directly to schools in south africa, the findings are universally significant in terms of parent-school relationships. blankstein (2004:167) and cotton (2001:4) believe that nothing motivates a child more than when learning is valued by schools and communities working together in partnership. they note that parent partnerships lead to greater achievement irrespective of factors such as socio-economic status, background, educational level and whether or not parents are employed. edwards and alldred (2000:3) state that across the political spectrum, parental partnerships are regarded as enhancing the educational performance of children from deprived socio-economic backgrounds. in addition, such partnerships serve as a market mechanism or even a communication approach to improve the schools’ effectiveness for all learners. gonzalez (2002:132) observes that the lack of parental partnerships in schools leads to excessive peer influence on learners. this inevitably creates negative educational outcomes which range from truancy to drug abuse and from depression to low grades. poor attendance and disciplinary problems resulting public school (south african schools act) governance of the school professional management governing body governors: parents, educators, administration staff and principal principal support: smt members tasks policy formulation: admission, • language, religion, code of conduct, mission statement, employment of additional staff administration duties: • administration & control of property, opening and maintenance of bank account, purchasing equipment & learning material, etc. tasks manage educators• manage professional • matters ensure teaching and • learning at the school complimentary functions 41mbokodi & singh — parental partnerships in the governance of schools in violence are also negative outcomes when parents do not participate as partners in governing their children’s schools (bender & emslie, 2010; irin, 2008). heystek (in calitz et al., 2002:112) believes that a partnership between parents and schools is an instrument to improve and develop the schools because parents through their sgbs involve themselves in the schools’ activities as they firmly believe that this involvement will benefit their children’s education. cotton (2001:4) and hornby (2000:1-2) add that parent partnerships have positive effects on student attitudes and social behaviour, and more positive parental attitudes towards teachers and schools. van deventer and kruger (2003:260) point out that community input into the school curriculum (e.g. language policy) could also help to ensure that learners develop desirable attitudes. the researchers (of this article) therefore identified the following criteria as important indicators of parental partnerships in the governance of schools: the existence of a functional legally constituted sgb;• attendance at school meetings by parents as part of the sgb protocol;• financial support for schools by parents as members of sgbs, and• the role of parents as sgb members regarding home-school communication.• the above conceptual framework was employed to investigate the functionality of parents as members of sgbs in the black townships of port elizabeth. aim and objectives of this study the aim of this study was to determine whether section 18 of sasa was being appropriately realised in the black townships of port elizabeth. in order to achieve this aim, the objectives of the study were to: ascertain whether sgbs are functional in black townships in port elizabeth;• determine whether black parents in port elizabeth have the capacity to serve as effective partners in • the governance of schools, and determine the mitigating factors that militate against black parents in fulfilling their roles as required • in terms of section 18 of sasa. in the light of the above aim and objectives, it is hoped that this study will provide new insight into the current status quo of black parental involvement in school governance. research design and method qualitative research method the qualitative research method was chosen as the most suitable method of data collection for this investigation. locke, spirduso and silverman (1993:99) and hammersley (2000:2) concur that a qualitative research method is a systematic, empirical strategy for answering questions about people in a bounded social context where the focus of attention is on the perceptions and experiences of participants. in this study, the point of departure is the dictates of sasa, which expects parents to be partners in the governance of schools. people in a bounded social context whose perceptions were investigated were the principals, teachers, learners and chairpersons of the sgbs: learners: how they perceived the extent of involvement (or non-involvement) of their parents in • school activities; principals and teachers: how they perceived the involvement (or non-involvement) of parents in • school activities, and 42 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 the sgb chairpersons (representing the parents): how they perceived their involvement and the • involvement of the entire parent body in the activities of the schools. the advantage of using qualitative research methods is to permit the researchers to study selected issues in depth without being constrained by predetermined categories. this contributes to openness and detail that typically produce a wealth of detailed information about a much smaller number of people and cases. this article therefore focuses on the current involvement of black parents in education. sample a sample of ten schools – five primary and five secondary schools – was purposely selected. nine of the schools are public schools and the tenth school is a private church primary school – the only black private school in port elizabeth. all the schools are situated in the poor, disadvantaged areas of the black townships. the majority of the learners attending these schools come from the neighbouring informal settlements. in each school the principal, the teachers, the learners and the chairpersons of the sgbs were interviewed. a total of 40 interviews were conducted as follows: 10 one-on-one interviews were conducted with the principals;• 10 one-on-one interviews were conducted with the chairpersons of the sgbs;• 10 focus group interviews were conducted with groups of six teachers from each school, and • 10 focus group interviews were conducted with groups of six learners from each school.• appropriate measures were taken to ensure that the sample was inclusive with equal representation of male and female teachers. the learners’ group included boys and girls who were equally represented from all grades. all the interviews were in-depth, open-ended and each lasted 30-45 minutes. focus-group participants were asked to commit to confidentiality as they were also assured of the confidentiality of their comments by the researcher who conducted the interviews. the respondents were encouraged to be as open and honest as possible. interviews were captured on a tape recorder with the permission of the interviewees, and field notes were also taken to authenticate the recorded responses. neuman (2003:124) advises that informed consent to participate in the study must be sought from the participants. to fulfil this requirement, prior permission was sought from the district office of the department of education in port elizabeth to conduct the research in the schools. the principals, teachers and chairpersons of the sgbs agreed to sign the consent forms after the forms had been explained to them. individual learner consent forms were not elicited as these were signed by the principals in their role as in loco parentis for the learners. data analysis all the tape-recorded interviews were fully transcribed and complemented with field notes. the data was then analysed using the inductive approach, which reflects frequently reported patterns (thomas, 2003:1). this approach allows research findings to emerge from the frequent, dominant or significant themes in raw data without restrictions imposed by the structural methodologies. the next step was to generate categories, themes and patterns. in this study, six categories were created. to be included as a theme, supporting data had to be evident in all of the participating groups. the six themes identified for this study were: non-functional sgbs;• illiteracy of sgb members;• non-attendance of black parents at sgb meetings;• lack of teacher support for sgb members;• lack of financial support by sgb members for schools, and• lack of home-school communication (role of sgb in this process).• 43mbokodi & singh — parental partnerships in the governance of schools research findings the study found that black parents were aware of their obligation to be partners in the governance of the schools, but they could not involve themselves because of factors militating against their anticipated involvement. these factors are discussed in the ensuing paragraphs. non-functional sgbs according to the respondents, all the schools in the study had legally constituted sgbs which were, however, non-functional. the study found that the relationship between the teachers and the sgb parent members was not always ideal. one sgb chairperson remarked: the teachers undermine the authority of the sgb and abalawuleki [they are ungovernable], because andifundanga [i am not educated]. an sgb chairperson described how teachers told him that they never signed a contract with the sgb and therefore, they cannot be held accountable to the sgb on any educational matters affecting their learners. teachers, on the other hand, mentioned that the sgbs are part of the problem in school governance rather than part of the solution because they lack the professional skills to be partners with them. this was confirmed by the chairpersons themselves that the doe never empowered them to perform their functions. only five of the ten chairpersons interviewed received some form of training on school governance. they regarded this as being insufficient training to prepare them adequately to execute all their delegated tasks. the question is whether workshops on an ad hoc basis are sufficient to develop the capacity of sgb members. in terms of this finding, it appears that more training needs to be done by the doe to strengthen the role of sgbs in the governance of schools. it becomes futile to have an sgb in any school if such a body is not functional. this only causes unnecessary tension and conflict as evidenced by the teachers’ responses quoted earlier. the relationship frustrates the teachers as it does not contribute to a healthy environment conducive to effective teaching and learning. teachers maintained that they received no training in working with parents and vice versa. one teacher commented: when the doe introduced parental involvement in education, parents were not empowered on how to be meaningfully involved in school. it is not our duty to train them. another teacher stated: we were never prepared to work with parents. the doe first introduced the concept but never followed up with training. the study found that even during their initial teacher training period, teachers were never empowered or skilled to work in partnerships with parents. both the chairpersons of the sgbs and the teachers intimated that they need the intervention of the doe to conduct workshops for them on a continuous basis on how to work meaningfully together, identify areas in which they should work together, and generally set boundaries of each party’s involvement in order to avoid conflict between the two parties. illiteracy illiteracy was found to be one of the major reasons why parents do not form a partnership with other stakeholders in the governance of schools. because parents lack literacy skills and cannot contribute much to issues of governance, chairpersons of sgbs admitted that they keep away from schools for fear of embarrassment due to their shortcomings. for similar reasons, they cannot support their children’s education at home. the chairpersons of the sgbs pointed this out very clearly in their interviews. it was therefore not unusual to hear teachers describing parents as follows: they fear that because they are themselves not educated, they cannot contribute anything. parents cannot help with the work they themselves do not understand. 44 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 they are not acquainted with school policies and therefore they cannot participate in policy implementation. learners concurred with their teachers that their parents cannot help them in subjects that require their parents to be educated. the chairpersons of the sgbs expressed similar views. interviewees’ responses revealed that poor black parents are not fully aware that they need to have at least some education to be sufficiently literate in order to involve themselves in the governance of their children’s schools. non-attendance at parent meetings as partners in education, schools schedule general and specific parent meetings throughout the year with the purpose of sharing information pertaining to planned activities in the school. the finding was that generally township parents do not attend such meetings, not even to collect progress reports at the end of the year. one teacher remarked: we are keeping reports dating back to 1995. the chairpersons of the sgbs concurred that very few parents attend parent meetings even though many of them are not employed. reasons cited for non-attendance of parent meetings include: work commitments;• fear of being ridiculed and embarrassed for not paying school fees;• the possibility that their children have been involved in some kind of misdemeanour, and• the fear of being undermined by teachers who talk to them as if they are talking to young children.• learners also admitted that they discouraged their parents from attending meetings because they do not see the rationale for parents individually attending meetings when they have the sgb to represent their interests and concerns. it was also found that learners prefer their parents not to visit the school for fear of ridicule by other learners. peer pressure came out strongly as a factor affecting parent visits to schools. this allegedly happens mostly to poor families who live in informal settlements. when the school insists on learners bringing their parents to school, they prefer to hire a presentable parent rather than bring their own. some historical factors were also found to contribute to the parents’ non-attendance of school meetings. it was found that parents do not understand why they have to attend school meetings when their own parents were never required to do so. the study also found that family structures militated against attendance of parent meetings. these include: grandmother-headed households where the grandmother is too old or sickly to attend meetings;• child-headed households;• households with absent fathers, and• households with child mothers.• a partnership would require that the partners sit together at meetings and discuss issues of mutual interest. parents’ non-attendance at parent meetings forces teachers to unilaterally make decisions for the parents about their children. this untenable situation could alienate parents from their children. ultimately, the quality of education to these learners would suffer. lack of teacher support the study revealed that parents as members of sgbs do not provide adequate support to teachers to perform their core duty of teaching. the general feeling among teachers was that parents do not value education, and this attitude rubs off on their children. it is difficult to teach such children and they become their worst enemies. teachers identified the following areas in which parental partnership through their sgbs could make a difference: 45mbokodi & singh — parental partnerships in the governance of schools positive role modelling and discipline at home by parents;• parents could assist teachers to create a safer environment at school;• parents should ensure that their children attend school and arrive at school on time. teachers • remarked that learners who were frequently absent from school were associated with drug and alcohol consumption, and gangsterism. naidoo (2007) suggested that when learners bunk school, they do not merely sit idly at home, but engage in antisocial behaviour. teachers concurred that the high rate of pregnancy among the girls was attributed to lack of support by parents. for effective teaching and learning to take place, a supportive environment needs to be guaranteed by a partnership between the schools and other community support services such as the police, health, as well as social and psychological services. of the ten schools in this study, none had access to such services, which was found to be a cause for concern to teachers. they mentioned lack of services for hiv-positive learners and pregnant girls. in all the schools participating in the study, cases of theft and robberies on school premises were reported. an environment conducive to teaching and learning does not exist. the teachers blamed the parents (sgbs) for such a state of affairs in their schools. learners felt dejected that their parents were not sufficiently empowered to assume their rightful roles as partners in education. lack of financial support schools in south africa receive money from the doe according to their quintile classification. the principals and the teachers admitted that the allocation they receive is insufficient to run a school, and parents should make up the shortfall by paying school fees. sasa also makes provision to supplement the government allocation by requiring the sgbs to raise funds for their schools. however, learners felt strongly that historically disadvantaged schools should have greater capital injection by the doe to improve the quality of resources available in their schools. the study revealed that approximately 60% of parents fail to meet their financial obligations towards the schools. the reason advanced for this non-payment of school fees was that many parents are poor and unemployed. for those who receive a government child grant, paying school fees is not a priority. high-school learners in the study confessed that they did not see the rationale for their parents to pay fees if there was no transparency in the way the money was spent. they (learners), in fact, discourage their parents from paying school fees. another reason cited for parents not meeting their financial obligations is that media reports inform them that education is free in south africa so there is no need for them to pay school fees. one sgb chairperson mentioned that paying or not paying school fees is closely related to the culture of south africans paying for services. he mentioned that township people are not used to paying municipal rates and service charges and that they treat school fee payments in the same manner. all the chairpersons admitted honestly that they never engaged in fundraising because they were not aware that it was obligatory for them to do so. lack of home-school communication for effective partnerships between home and school, communication lines need to be open between the two parties and boundaries need to be permeable for information to flow freely from school to the learners’ homes and vice versa because the parties involved have a common interest – exposing the child to equal and quality education. the study sought to investigate the extent to which parents, as partners in education, communicate with the school and vice versa. the study found that there was a one-way communication between home and school. it was from the schools to the homes and never the other way round. the perception, in this instance, might be that teachers want to communicate with the parents but the same cannot be said of the parents. the truth is that teachers send letters and notices home with the learners. this type of communicating cannot be effective for illiterate parents who rely on their children to read the letters for them. learners decide what to tell their parents or what to keep from them, based on the contents of the letter. sending a letter with a tear-off 46 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 slip was no guarantee that the reply slip was signed by the parent. learners admitted to signing the tear-off slips themselves. the principals admitted that, although they are aware that this form of communication is not effective, they nevertheless continue to use it because the telephone is expensive and most parents do not have telephones. word of mouth is also not reliable as the message may depend on the interpretation of the message by the messenger – in this case the learner. realising that the means of communication is not effective, teachers despondently stated that they have stopped communicating with parents. in essence, the study found that there is no home-school communication through the sgbs. teachers work in isolation and make all kinds of decisions on behalf of the parents because there is no partnership between them and the sgbs. the learners in the study noted that communication between their homes and schools flows in one direction – from teachers to parents. meaningful communication must be two-way, constantly alternating between informing and listening. teachers must seek effective ways of communicating with black township parents. it is recommended that schools organise workshops for these parents and invite other partners in education to address them. it is in such workshops that it would be impressed upon the parents the importance of being role models as well as informing them of some ways in which they can assist their children even if they do not have an education. this study was conducted among a homogeneous population of the township’s poor and disadvantaged schools. the findings shed light on the challenges posed by sasa that requires township schools to partner with black parents in the governance of schools. however, further investigation with a broader sample population is needed to extend this research to include multicultural, multiracial societies as well as rural populations in different geographical areas and settings. conclusions and recommendations it is now nearly sixteen years since sasa came into effect but the planned partnerships between black parents in the black townships of port elizabeth and their children’s schools are far from being realised, as this research confirms. township black parents as sgb members and teachers are not working in partnership with each other. even though many years have passed, it appears from this research that the doe needs to allocate even greater financial and human resources to develop black parents to become effective members of their sgbs. evidently, while several studies have been done on the subject of parental involvement in education, this study provided new insight into the status quo of black parental involvement in the governance of schools. based on the findings of this study, it can therefore be argued that schools must serve as learning centres for both black parents and their children. in addition, it is imperative that schools in impoverished areas need to revisit what educators can expect from these parents. involving parents in school implies change. it implies that teachers have to learn to accommodate the sgb and to work hand in hand with them. it implies a change of mindset in both these parties. both parties have to accept that the imperative to change was imposed by legislation in the form of sasa. it also implies that the parties involved must recognise a need for change. it is the responsibility of both the educational managers and the teachers to initiate the participation and involvement of parents in school activities as active involvement will not happen by itself, by accident, naturally or easily or even by invitation. it demands hard work and initiative, planning and leadership skills from the educational leaders to achieve the goal of effective parental involvement. it must happen by explicit strategic intervention by the doe and other relevant stakeholders and be purposely cultivated. school leaders who genuinely value learning communities must find ways to include and support the parents of every child in their school. effective communication systems must be created between schools, parents and the broader community (blankstein, 2004). with the assistance of the doe, the school should initiate the partnership process, with the principal acting as a catalyst. it is important that both staff and the sgb know and appreciate the rationale for their partnership. both parties should know what they want to achieve and should therefore jointly draw up the 47mbokodi & singh — parental partnerships in the governance of schools school’s mission and vision. it should be realised that this involvement is not a once-off situation: it is a collegial process that never stops. the doe cannot negate on its responsibility to empower the sgbs on how to fulfil their roles and perform their functions and to understand the dictates of sasa. in addition, school leaders who genuinely value their communities must form enduring partnerships and provide support for the parents of every child in their school and not leave it solely to the doe. references baeder a 2010. stepping into students’ worlds. educational leadership, 67(5):56-60. bender gcj & emslie a 2010. an analysis of family-school collaboration in preventing adolescent violence in urban secondary schools. perspectives in education, 28(3):55-69. blankstein am 2004. failure is not an option: six principles that guide student achievement in highperforming schools. california: corwin. calitz l, fuglestad ol & lillejord m 2002. leadership in education. cape town: heinemann. cooter k 2006. when mama can’t read: counteracting intergenerational illiteracy. reading teacher, 59(7):698-702. cotton k 2001. parent involvement in education. school improvement research series. retrieved on 7 march 2008 from www.nwrel.org/scpd/sirs/3/cu6.html. edwards r & alldred p 2000. a typology of parental involvement in education centering on children and young people: negotiating familiarization, institutionalization and individualization. british journal of sociology of education, 21(3):1-18. gonzalez ar 2002. parental involvement: its contribution to high school students’ motivation. the clearing house, 75(13):132-133. retrieved on 7 march 2008 from http://www.google.com. hammersley m 2000. the relevance of qualitative research. oxford review of education, 26(3/4):393404. hoover-dempsey kv, battiato ac, walker jmt, reed rp, de jong jm & jones kp 2001. parental involvement in homework. educational psychologist, 36(3):1-23. hornby g 2000. improving parental involvement. london: cassell. irin humanitarian news and analysis. 2008. south africa: school safety influences literacy rate. retrieved on 7 march 2008 from www.irinews.org/printreport.aspx?reportid=76634. joubert r, de waal e & rossouw jp 2004. discipline: impact on access to equal educational opportunities. perspectives in education, 22(3):77-87. locke lf, spirduso ww & silverman sj 1993. proposals that work:. a guide for planning dissertations and grant proposals. 3rd edn. new york: sage. mabasa lt & themane mj 2002. stakeholder participation in school governance in south africa. perspectives in education, 20(3):111-116. molepo mm 2000. parental empowerment in the democratisation of education. journal of education and training, 21(2):70-85. naidoo t 2007. innocent bunking can lead to sex, drugs and crime. sunday times, 7 october:6. neuman wl 2003. social research methods: qualitative and quantitative approaches. boston: pearson education. ntshingila f 2006. third of sa adults have little or no schooling. sunday times, 11 september:5. petesch c 2007. the fight against poverty lagging. herald, 12 june:6. probyn m, murray s, botha l, botya p, brooks m & westphal v 2002. minding the gaps: an investigation into language policy and practice in four eastern cape districts. perspectives in education, 20(1):29-45. ramirez ay 2001. parent involvement is like apple pie: a look at parental involvement in two states. high school journal 85(1):112-122. retrieved on 23 january 2008 from http://www.google.com. republic of south africa 1996. south african schools act 84 of 1996. pretoria: government printers. singh p, mbokodi sm & msila vt 2004. black parental involvement in education. south african journal of education, 24(4):301-307. 48 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 thomas dr 2003. a general inductive approach for qualitative data analysis. school of population health, university of auckland. van deventer i & kruger ag 2003. an educator’s guide to school management skills. pretoria: van schaik. vatterott c 2009. rethinking homework: best practices that support diverse needs. alexandria, virginia: ascd. perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 176 problematising the standardisation of leadership and management development in south african schools clarence williams in 2007 the department of education introduced the standards-based advanced certificate in education: school management and leadership. the standardisation of leadership and management development in south african schools has been uncritically accepted by most academics and professionals. the purpose of this article is to problematise the standardisation of leadership and management development, using the critiques of the interstate school leadership licensure consortium standards of the united states as the basis of analysis. this article indicates the following areas of concern: the lack of clarity regarding the empirical basis of the unit standards; the incorporation of certain non-empirical ideals into the programme; the generic instead of contextualised approaches to leadership and management development; the use of a generic programme for school principals, deputy principals, and heads of department in spite of their differentiated roles; and the lack of a single, generally accepted policy document containing an exposition of the role of school principals that could form the basis of leadership and management development. this emphasises the need for the unit standards to be subjected to regular scrutiny and revision to address areas of concern and to ensure relevance thereof in the face of current developments and empirical research findings. key words: development, leadership, management, unit standards, standardisation introduction since 1994 numerous policies have been formulated in an attempt to transform south african schools into democratic, professional, and collaborative learning and teaching environments. a variety of factors have been responsible for the slow pace clarence williams department of education studies e-mail: cwilliams@uwc.ac.za tel: 021 959 2272/2246 problematising the standardisation of leadership and management development in south african schools clarence williams 177 of implementation of education policy, and for preventing the development of a praxis in which policy and practice mesh to form a coherent whole. one of the main contributing factors has been the lack of effective leaders and managers at school level. in 2007 in response to the leadership and management development needs that exist within south african schools education system the former department of education introduced the advanced certificate in education: school management and leadership (henceforth referred to as ace: sml). the main purpose of this programme is “[t]o provide structured learning opportunities that, while recognising the diverse contexts in which schools operate, promote quality education in south african schools through the development of a corps of education leaders who apply critical understanding, values, knowledge, and skills to school leadership in line with the vision of democratic transformation” (doe, 2008: 3). one major innovation of the ace: sml programme is the fact that it is based on unit standards generated by the standards generating body (sgb), which was established by the south african qualifications authority (saqa). the sgb had a brief to contribute towards the development of programmes in education management and leadership at, amongst others, ace level by generating unit standards that could serve as the basis for the continuing professional development of school management teams and departmental officials. part of the rationale for the generation of unit standards as the basis of the ace: sml is the assumption that “a measure of standardisation is essential if the course is to become an entry-level requirement for new principals” (bush, kiggundu & moorosi, 2011: 35). exisiting research on the ace: sml generally tends to focus on the formulation and implementation of the ace: sml. for example, bush et al.’s research (2011) contains a summary of the main findings from the evaluation of the pilot programme focussing on aspects like the teaching materials, contact sessions, mentoring, networking, assessment, and the impact of the programme on leadership and management practice. mestry and singh (2007) explore the rationale behind why school principals decided to enrol for the ace: sml programme and its impact on their leadership style, while msila (2012) investigates the implementation of the mentoring component of the ace: sml programme in selected cases in the eastern cape and kwazulu-natal. van der westhuizen and van vuuren (2007) probe the development of the ace: sml, amongst others, as an attempt at professionalising principalship in south africa. a lacuna in the research exists in terms of a systematic analysis of standardisation of leadership and management development. the purpose of this article is to problematise the standardisation of leadership and management development in south african schools. perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 178 a background to the utilisation of standards-based education as the basis for leadership and management development during the mid 1990s the national policy board for educational administration (npbea) of the united states of america, which consisted of various stakeholder groups in educational leadership, established the interstate school leadership licensure consortium (isllc) with the express purpose of creating a set of professional standards for school leadership. the isllc consisted of individuals representing various professional organisations and 24 states. in 1996 this initiative resulted in the formulation of the initial set of isllc standards which were intended to provide “a framework for reconceptualising leadership in schools” (pitre & smith, 2004: iv). since its initial use to guide performance, it has progressed to become a tool to determine principal licensure (catano & stronge, 2007: 264; ucea, 2012: 1) and a set of standards to assess competency (glenewinkel, 2011: 27). by 2006 the isllc standards had been adopted by 48 states in the usa. the isllc model has since been emulated in many different countries, notably australia, canada, england and south africa. this is part of what mombourquette (2013: 10) refers to as an international trend to define and codify the role of school leaders. in the formation of this framework the isllc standards played a pivotal role. although the isllc standards elicited a favourable response from various quarters and gained widespread acceptance, the standards met with a fair degree of criticism. murphy (2003), who served as the head of isllc, provides a comprehensive response to the wide-ranging criticisms levelled at the isllc standards. murphy (2003: 21) expresses scepticism at the fact that most of the detractors have emanated from the field of academia, while colleagues from what he refers to as “the practice and policy domains of the profession” have provided no criticism of the standards or the implementation thereof. while murphy (2003: 21) acknowledges “the responsibility of university faculty to provide critical perspectives”, he emphasises the fact that the position of the academics on “the intellectual and reform landscape and the perspectives (they employ)” to a great degree determined their critiques and resulted in numerous contradictions and ambiguities. unlike in the united states of america, there has been no adverse criticism of the standardisation of leadership and management development in south africa. the introduction of the ace: sml has generally been welcomed in academic and professional quarters. the adoption of the programme by the majority of south african universities, the financial support for the programme provided by provincial education departments, as well as the support provided by professional organisations are indicative of this support. one notable exception is heystek (2007: 500) to whom the ace: sml represents an attempt by the south african government to maintain power and control over leadership training for principals, and an example problematising the standardisation of leadership and management development in south african schools clarence williams 179 of leadership moulding rather than training. the relatively uncritical acceptance of the standardisation of leadership and management development in south african schools is problematic, especially given the amount of criticism that a similar move in the united states of america has elicited. this has served as the main rationale for the writing of this article. problematising the use of standards-based education as the basis for leadership and management development in the ace: sml this critique of the standardisation of leadership and management development which underpins the ace: sml is based on an analysis of the unit standards as contained in official ace: sml documents, official policy documents relating to the role of school leaders and managers and their development, as well the results of some south african empirical research on the implementation of the ace: sml. for the purpose of this article a decision has been taken to only focus on the five core unit standards. a conscious decision was taken not to use the ace: sml study materials as the basis of the critique as these are not always in compliance with the unit standards. examples exist where the material developers ignored certain learning outcomes, or included their own learning outcomes in order to ensure the relevance of the study material. the study materials are thus not always a true reflection of the unit standards on which they are supposed to be based. in this article murphy’s (2003: 23-39) categorisation of the critiques of the interstate school leadership licensure consortium (isllc) standards around six issues is used as the basis of analysis. issue # 1: the standards lack an empirical basis. the sgb consisted of representatives nominated by the national department of education, six provincial education departments, six universities, one technikon, three primary schools, and eight other organisations involved in leadership and management development in schools (saqa, 2004). in preparation for the formulation of the unit standards the sgb consulted some international authorities, like the national college for school leaders in the united kingdom, the scottish executive, and the interstate school leaders licensure consortium (islcc) in the united states. the unit standards were further based on various policy documents in south africa, like the norms and standards for educators, and qualifications for the educators in schooling. the sgb has not made explicit the empirical knowledge base on which the standards were premised. interested parties are thus compelled to speculate regarding the origin of the ace: sml unit standards. bush and jackson (2002: 420421) performed a comparative study of leadership development centres in australia, canada, china, new zealand, singapore, sweden, and the united states of america. their main finding is that the content of leadership development programmes at these centres shows remarkable similarities. most of the courses focus on vision, mission and transformational leadership, issues of learning and teaching, and the perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 180 task areas of management, such as human resources and professional development, finances, curriculum, and external relations. this also applies to the unit standards of the ace: sml. from this can be inferred that the sgb based its unit standards primarily on the work done in first world countries, and not empirical research done in south africa. this makes the relevance of the unit standards questionable. the sgb made some attempt to validate the unit standards. the draft unit standards were published in the government gazette of 11 june 2004, and comments were invited and had to be submitted by 13 july 2004, little more than a month later. a preliminary survey amongst academics involved in leadership and management development programmes indicated that many academics did not attend the road shows that were held at provincial level to publish the draft unit standards, nor did they respond to the publication thereof. this validity exercise was thus flawed. the unit standards were given a measure of legitimacy by the establishment of the national management and leadership committee (nmlc) whose brief it was to develop appropriate curriculum outlines for each of the specific outcomes of the unit standards and to identify possible assessment activities to ascertain whether the assessment criteria had been fulfilled. the national management and leadership committee comprised representatives of the national department of education, the universities that had indicated an interest to implement the new programme, as well as non-governmental organisations like delta foundation, mark shuttleworth foundation, and zenex foundation. according to van der westhuizen and van vuuren (2007: 440) the universities provided “consultative constituency through their nominated members on the nmlc and accordingly mandate(d) the process through representation”. this was a strategic ploy on the side of the department of education. the fact remains that “a mutually agreed understanding of what the country’s education system expects of those who are entrusted with the leadership and management of its schools” does not exist in south africa (van der westhuizen & van vuuren, 2007: 439). based on the above-mentioned it is thus not possible to conclude, as murphy (2003: 18) did, regarding the isllc standards, that the ace: sml standards were built on “deep historical analysis, the best available research, and sound professional judgment”. a mitigating factor is the fact that the research base on leadership and management in south african schools is very limited (hoadley & ward, 2008: 4). those studies that have been undertaken tended to focus on policy rather than practice. issue # 2: the standards are based too heavily on non-empirical ideals. one recurring theme in the core unit standards is the emphasis that is placed on transformational leadership as a vehicle for actualising quality education in south african schools. this propagation of transformational leadership which is regarded as problematising the standardisation of leadership and management development in south african schools clarence williams 181 the panacea for the ills that prevail in the south african schooling system is not based on empirical evidence; neither does it exhibit a consciousness regarding the limitations of transformational leadership. transformational leadership still represents the traditional view of leadership as centred in individual role or responsibility instead of placing the focus on multiple sources of leadership. this represents “superhero images of leadership” (sergiovanni, 2001: 55). transformational leadership is a form of charismatic leadership that can, according to fullan (2001: 2), at most result in “episodic improvement” and eventually “frustrated or despondent dependency”. distributed and other forms of participative leadership are not afforded the same prominence as transformational leadership in the core unit standards. what should be guarded against is an approach in which the various notions of leadership are regarded as “ready made or universally applicable theories that we can simply pull off the shelf” (law & glover, 2000:4). the viability of any form of leadership in schools is dependent on several contextual variables. these are the level of control and autonomy allowed by departmental officials at provincial and district levels, the organisational structure and agency of the school, the social and cultural context of the school, and the source of the impetus for developing the preferred form of leadership (bennett, et al., 2003:8). in some instances other forms of leadership or a combination thereof might be more desirable and advantageous to the school. these realities should be reflected in the critical outcomes and assessment criteria of the unit standards. closely linked to the aforementioned is the strong dependence placed on the school principal in the ace: sml. the whole programme is geared towards the development of existing and aspiring school principals who are regarded as being responsible for the overall development and implementation of policies and procedures that will enable the school to achieve its mission and vision of providing quality teaching and learning. ironically, bush, joubert , kiggundu, and van rooyen (2009: 7), who evaluated the pilot programme of the ace: sml, recommend that the programme should focus even more on the learning needs of school principals, rather than on those of the rest of the school management team and learners. while much emphasis is placed on school principals as curriculum leaders, extensive empirical research done by hoadley, christie, and ward (2009: 381) indicates that school principals do not consider curriculum leadership as their main task; instead they focus on routine administrative matters and learner discipline. the strong dependence placed on the school principal as an agent of transformation in the ace: sml is thus also based on a non-empirical ideal. issue # 3: the standards do not cover everything; or they do not include concept “x” or examine concept “y” deeply enough. the ace: sml is relatively comprehensive and it would be tantamount to nit-picking to list each and every bit of knowledge, disposition, and performance that has not been included in the unit standards. to expect the unit standards to include everything perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 182 and to do so at sufficient depth is unrealistic. instead, the focus in this critique of the ace: sml will be on those areas of concern that have been discerned by isllc critics. research undertaken by van der berg, taylor, gustafsson, spaull, and armstrong (2011: 24) indicates that the south african school system consists of two subsystems that function at different levels. the majority of schools serve historically disadvantaged communities consisting mainly of black and coloured children. within the second sub-system are schools that consist mainly of white and indian children, and increasing numbers of black and coloured children. taylor (2008) ascribes the under-achievement of learners in the majority of schools to the problem of absenteeism and latecoming amongst teachers which he (2008: 9-13) regards as a manifestation of “a very weakly framed regulative order; the focus on routineadministrative matters; the low levels of subject knowledge exhibited by many south african teachers; and the use of conventional chalk and talk teaching methods. unsurprisingly, fleisch (2008: 121) describes the classroom as “the major source of crisis in primary education”. other contributing factors are ill health, poverty, and lack of resources (fleisch, 2008: 121). christie (2010: 694) avers that discourses that do not engage earnestly with the local context and the day-to-day experiences of school principals are likely to result in “distorted depictions” and “unrealistic expectations of principals’ work”. in the ace: sml the unit standard that one would expect to help students to engage with the local context and day-to-day experiences of school leaders and managers is known as understand school leadership and management in the south african context. however, in this unit standard the focus is on acquainting school leaders and managers with regulative legislative and policy frameworks affecting schools. these legislative and policy frameworks include the south african constitution and the integrated quality management system. while it is important for school leaders and managers to be acquainted with these regulative frameworks, these are adequately dealt with in the other modules, especially in the module called manage policy, planning, school development and governance. in the module understand school leadership and management in the south african context the focus should be on acquainting the school leaders and managers with the real challenges that they will have to face given the contexts within which they find themselves. instead, the module focuses on developing and applying “the ability to highlight generic leadership and management principles with regard to planning, organising, governance, evaluation and control” (doe, 2008: 17). christie (2010: 708) cautions against generic instead of situated approaches to principalship. much more appropriate would be “to recognise the situated complexities of the work of running schools”. unfortunately, the ace: sml does not contribute towards a more thorough understanding of what christie describes as “the landscapes of leadership”. the nullification of the social, cultural, and political context within which schooling occurs means that the ace: sml programme does not contribute towards ensuring social equity, but in fact contributes towards the reinforcement and perpetuation of problematising the standardisation of leadership and management development in south african schools clarence williams 183 social inequities. this is exacerbated by the fact that the core modules require school leaders and managers to understand and implement state policies unquestioningly as state functionaries. the students should be required to critically analyse the state policies that they are intended to implement. this should have been reflected in the assessment criteria. in the ace: sml unit standards, sufficient attention is given to the day-to-day management of the school. in the core module called manage organisational systems, physical and financial resources, topics like financial and physical resources management as well as the use of icts to manage organisational systems are covered in sufficient depth to equip students with sound management knowledge, competencies, and dispositions. the inclusion of the core module manage teaching and learning, in which the focus is on curriculum leadership, ensures that the core business of school leadership and management is not neglected in the ace: sml programme. the inclusion of the core module lead and manage people ensures that sufficient prominence is given to the people orientation of school leaders and managers. in this module, topics such as the employment and deployment of staff, staff evaluation, and personal and professional development are dealt with, thereby ensuring a measure of balance between task and people orientation within the programme. issue #4: the standards are over (or under) specified. in this section the focus will be on ascertaining the specificity of the learning outcomes and assessment criteria. an analysis of the core unit standards that constitute the ace: sml indicates that the learning outcomes and assessment criteria are not over specified. in fact, some of the assessment criteria tend to be under specified. one of the assessment criteria of the unit standard understand school leadership and management in the south african context reads as follows: “demonstrate a basic understanding of the principles and values informing educational transformation in south africa …” (doe, 2008: 16). the expectation is that the principles and values which are included in the preamble of all state policies that are intended to transform south africa would be specified under the section dealing with curriculum content. these are left unspecified except for perfunctory reference to the south african constitution. the inclusion of curriculum content as well as obligatory study material as an integral part of the unit standards that underpin the ace: sml indicates a tendency towards specificity and prescriptiveness. the cited examples of a lack of specificity is thus of minor concern. another shortcoming of the ace: sml is the fact that it is a generic programme intended for school principals, deputy principals, and heads of department in spite perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 184 of the fact that they are required to fulfil quite unique roles. here too a measure of specificity is required in order to cater for the differentiated development needs of the various promotion post holders. issue #5. there is no legitimate place for dispositions in the standards. south african literature on the subject seems to indicate a general acceptance of the legitimate place for dispositions in the standards that are used for leadership and management development. christie (2010: 696) provides the following justification for this: “… (school leadership) inevitably involves normative judgements of right and wrong, good and bad.” in the south african standard for principalship (dbe, 2014: 4) it is suggested that the core educational and social values form the basis of all that happens in the schools. this includes the leadership and management by the school principal. the inclusion of dispositions in the unit standards that form the basis of the ace: sml thus seem to be relatively unproblematic. in four of the five core modules, equal prominence is given to dispositions, and knowledge and action. issue #6. the standards are exerting undue influence on the profession. initially, the intention was that the ace: sml would become an entrance qualification for appointment to principalship. if this had been realised it would have provided the ace: sml with a privileged status. as no public statement has been made in this regard, it is not clear why this has not been realised. while there seems to have been general acceptance of the ace: sml, professional organisations seem to disagree whether the ace: sml should be the only entrance qualification. one can only assume that this point of disagreement has been the main cause of the deadlock. if the unit standards had formed the basis of the evaluation of school leaders and managers, it would have afforded them considerable influence. however, in south african schools the unit standards that forms the basis of the ace: sml are not used as the framework within which the evaluation of school leaders is undertaken. the dbe (2014: 1) acknowledges that there is no clear understanding of the role of school leadership and management other than the limited definitions that are contained in the personnel administration measures (pam) and the integrated quality management system (iqms). in fact, the role of the school principals that finds manifestation in the unit standards is at variance with the role of the school principals as contained in pam and iqms. in pam, which sets out the terms and conditions of school principals and other educators, general and administrative duties and responsibilities are placed in the foreground, while only cursory reference is made to professional leadership (christie, 2010: 704). problematising the standardisation of leadership and management development in south african schools clarence williams 185 some research has been done to determine the efficacy of the ace: sml. bush et al. (2011: 38) finds that, although most candidates that took part in the pilot project of the programmes indicated improvement in their management practice, this did not translate into improved teaching and learning. it is thus evident that the unit standards that have been generated by the sgb under the auspices of saqa, other than forming the basis for the ace: sml, are fairly inconsequential. concluding remarks this analysis indicates that there are some areas of concern: the uncritical acceptance of the saqa unit standards as the basis for leadership and management development; the lack of clarity regarding the empirical basis of the unit standards; the incorporation of certain non-empirical ideals into the programme; the generic instead of contextualised approaches to leadership and management; the use of a generic programme for school principals, deputy principals, and heads of department in spite of their differentiated roles; and the lack of a single, generally accepted policy document containing an exposition of the role of school principals that could form the basis of leadership and management development. it is imperative that the unit standards be subjected to regular scrutiny and revision to address areas of concern and to ensure that they keep abreast of the latest developments within the education system and of current findings of empirical research. the purpose of such a revision should be to examine the validity and effectiveness of the standards (glenewinkel, 2011: 18). the pilot programme of the ace: sml was subjected to a relatively comprehensive evaluation. the evaluation team was commissioned by the erstwhile department of education “… to inform the development of the course and to provide advice to the minister of basic education about the suitability and sustainability of the qualification for its intended purpose” (bush et al., 2011: 33). the evaluation focused on the teaching materials, formal contact sessions, mentoring support, networks of candidates, site-based assessment, and the impact of the programme on leadership and management practice. in this evaluation no attempt was made to evaluate the standards–based approach to leadership and management development. the unit standards that form the basis of the ace: sml have thus not been subjected to scrutiny and revision since the inception of the programme in 2007. the replacement of the current ace: sml by the advanced diploma in education: school leadership and management (advdip: slm) in compliance with the higher education qualifications sub-framework and the minimum requirements for teacher education qualification has provided an excellent opportunity to systematically review and revise the unit standards on which the ace: sml was based. however, this has hitherto not been done. instead, the formulation of the new advdip: slm has entailed the following procedure: the completion of a seriously flawed external literature review by prof t bush (university of nottingham, uk) and dr d glover perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 186 (witwatersrand university); the drafting of a core curriculum outline by the south african institute of distance education; and the approval of the core curriculum outline by the national management and leadership committee based on a twoday workshop. this procedure is problematic as it means that no provision has been made for a reflection on the appropriateness and effectiveness of the unit standards that had been generated by the standards generating body. the lessons that have been learnt since july 2007 have simply been ignored. based on the above-mentioned it is not surprising that the proposed advdip: sml is really the old ace: sml in a new guise. except for the addition of a new module (working with and for the community) and the deletion of an old module (language skills in school management), the specific outcomes, curriculum content, assessment criteria, and possible assessment activities of the old modules have remained largely unaltered in spite of the fact that the advdip: slm is meant to be offered at a different nqf level (7) than the old ace: slm (6). the development of the draft south african standard for school principalship in government gazette 37897, which was published by the department of basic education for comment on 7 august 2014, shows a similar indifference to the lessons that could have been learnt from the ace: sml experience. the south african standard for school principalship is a policy document that is intended to serve as a template for the design of professional leadership and management development programmes for aspirant and serving principals. furthermore, it has the potential to become a tool to determine principal licensure and a set of standards to assess competency. it is problematic that the south african standard for school principalship has been formulated without taking due cognisance of the lessons that were learnt from the first attempt at the standardisation of leadership and management development in south african schools and without consulting the role players that were instrumental in the implementation of this first attempt. the standardisation of leadership and management development in south african schools is a welcome initiative by the erstwhile department of education and more recently the department of basic education to address the pressing and widespread needs of south african school leaders and managers. while policy makers have borrowed liberally from related international policies they are ostensibly unmindful of the lessons that can be learnt from international and south african experiences. this is something that needs to be addressed on the way forward in order to avoid an unnecessary repetition of past mistakes. list of references bennett n, harvey ja, wise c & woods pa 2003. distributed leadership: a review of literature. london: national college for school leadership. available at retrieved www.ncsl.org.uk/literaturereviews. accessed 31 august 2007. problematising the standardisation of leadership and management development in south african schools clarence williams 187 bush t & jackson d 2002. preparation for school leadership: international perspectives. educational management and administration, 30(4): 417-429. bush t, joubert r, kiggundu e & van rooyen j 2009. managing teaching and learning in south african schools. international journal of educational development, 1-7. available at http://repository.up.ac.za/bitstream/handle/2263/11085/ bush_managing(2009).pdf?sequence=1. accessed 19 may 2014. bush t, kiggundu e & moorosi p 2011. preparing new principals in south africa: the ace: school leadership programme. south african journal of education, 31: 31-43. available at http://www.ajol.info/index.php/saje/article/ viewfile/63489/51332. accessed 12 may 2014. catano n & stronge jh 2007. what do we expect of school principals? congruence between principal evaluation and performance. international journal in education, 10(4): 379-399. available at http://alex.state.al.us/leadership/ principals%20%20files/rc-7,%20virginia%20study%20of%20eval%20 instruments.pdf. accessed 23 june 2014. christie p 2010. landscapes of leadership in south african schools: mapping the changes. educational management administration & leadership, 38(6): 694– 711. available at http://www.education.uct.ac.za/sites/default/files/image_ tool/images/104/landscapes.pdf. accessed 15 june 2014. department of education (doe) 2008. core curriculum outline. advanced certificate: education (school management and leadership). pretoria: government printers. department of higher education and training (dhet) 2011. the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications. pretoria: government printers. fleisch b 2008. primary education in crisis: why south african children underachieve in reading and mathematics. cape town: juta. fullan m 2001. leading in a culture of change. san francisco: jossey-bass. glenewinkel jr 2011. how do superintendents use the isllc standards to evaluate principals? or do they? ded dissertation. washington: washington state university. available at https://research.wsulibs.wsu.edu/xmlui/ handle/2376/3025. accessed 4 april 2014. heystek j 2007. reflecting on principals as managers or moulded leaders in a managerialistic school system. south african journal of education, 27(3): 491-505. available at http://www.ajol.info/index.php/saje/article/ download/25114/4328. accessed 12 june 2014. hoadley u, christie u & ward cl 2009. managing to learn: instructional leadership in south african secondary schools. school leadership and management, 29(4): 373-389. available at http://www.education.uct.ac.za/sites/default/files/ image_tool/images/104/managingtolearn.pdf. accessed 13 april 2014. hoadley u & ward cl 2008. managing to learn: instructional leadership in south african secondary schools. pretoria: hsrc press. available at https://nicspaull. files.wordpress.com/2011/04/hoadley-ward-2008-managing_to_learn_-_ entire_ebook.pdf. accessed 15 may 2014. law s & glover d 2000. educational leadership and learning: practice, policy and research. buckingham: open university press. perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 188 mestry r & singh p 2007. continuing professional development for principal: a south african perspective. south african journal of education, 27(3): 477-490. available at http://reference.sabinet.co.za/sa_epublication_article/educat_ v27n3a10. accessed 15 june 2013. msila v 2012. mentoring and school leadership: experiences from south africa. journal of social science, 32(1): 47-57. available at http://www.krepublishers. com/02-journals/jss/jss-32-0-000-12-web/jss-2-1-000-12-abst-pdf/jss-32-1047-12-1336-msila/jss-32-1-047-12-1336-msila-v-ab%5b5%5d.pdf. accessed 6 june 2014. mombourquette c 2013. principal leadership: blending the historical perspective with the current focus on competencies in the alberta context. canadian journal of educational administration and policy, 147: 1-19. available at http://www.uleth. ca/vp_research/sites/vp_research/files/2014celebrating_research_booklet. pdf. accessed 30 july 2014. murphy j 2003. reculturing educational leadership: the isllc standards ten years out. fairfax, va: national policy board for educational administration. available at http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed481619.pdf. accessed 15 april 2014. pitre p & smith w 2004. standards and school leadership: who’s leading this band? teachers college record. available at http://www.tcrecord.org. accessed: 19 august 2014. sergiovanni t 2001. leadership: what’s in it for schools? london: routledge falmer. south african qualifications authority (saqa) 2004. advanced certificate: education (school management and leadership). government gazette no. 26443, 11 june. pretoria. available at www.gov.za/documents/download.php?f=59718. accessed 10 may 2014. taylor n 2008. what’s wrong with south african schools? presentation to the conference what’s working in school development. jet education services, 2829 february. available at http://www.jet.org.za/events/conferences/what%20 works%20in%20school%20development/papers/taylor%20whats%20 wrong%20with%20sa%20schools%20jet%20schools%20conf%20final.pdf. accessed 2 june 2014. university council for educational administration (ucea) 2012. designing purposeful and coherent leadership preparation curriculum: a curriculum mapping guide. charlottesville, virginia. available at http://ucea.org/storage/publications/ curriculum%20mapping%20guide%20for%20leadership%20development. pdf. accessed 15 may 2014. van der berg s, taylor s, gustafsson m, spaull n & armstrong p 2011. improving education quality in south africa. report for the national planning commission. stellenbosch: university of stellenbosch, department of economics. available at http://resep.sun.ac.za/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/2011-report-for-npc. pdf. accessed 31 july 2014. van der westhuizen p & van vuuren h 2007. professionalising principalship in south africa. south african journal of education, 27(3): 431-445. available at www. ajol.info/index.php/saje/article/download/25110/4324. accessed 10 june 2013. 99 a maximum likelihood based offline estimation of student capabilities and question difficulties with guessing abstract: in recent years, the computerised adaptive test (cat) has gained popularity over conventional exams in evaluating student capa­ bilities with desired accuracy. however, the key limitation of cat is that it requires a large pool of pre­calibrated questions. in the absence of such a pre-calibrated question bank, offline exams with uncalibrated questions have to be conducted. many important large exams are offline, for example the graduated aptitude test in engineering (gate) and japanese university entrance examination (juee). in offline exams, marks are used as the indicator of the students’ capabilities. in this work, our key contribution is to question whether marks obtained are indeed a good measure of students’ capabilities. to this end, we propose an evaluation methodology that mimics the evaluation process of cat. in our approach, based on the marks scored by students in various questions, we iteratively estimate question parameters such as difficulty, discrimination and the guessing factor as well as student parameters such as capability using the 3­parameter logistic ogive model. our algorithm uses alternating maximisation to maximise the log likelihood estimate for the questions and students’ parameters given the marks. we compare our approach with marks­based evaluation using simulations. the simulation results show that our approach out performs marks­based evaluation. keywords: 3-parameter logistic irt model, alternating optimisation, offline exams, computerised adaptive test. 1. introduction the multiple choice exams are the most popular assess­ ment scheme for large scale exams such as the compu­ terised adaptive test (cat), graduate record examinations (gre), scholastic aptitude test (sat) and so on. the important features of multiple­choice exams that make it more popular are that these exams are easy to evaluate and the evaluation criteria can be implemented uniformly without any bias. in subjective exams where students give descriptive answers for every question, the question of partial correctness comes into play, which may result in a biased evaluation. in addition, the time and effort required for evaluating a subjective exam is quite high. on the other hand, in the case of multiple­choice exams, there will be exactly one correct answer and the whole notion of a shana moothedath department of electrical engineering, indian institute of technology bombay email: shana@ee.iitb.ac.in prasanna chaporkar department of electrical engineering, indian institute of technology bombay email: chaporkar@ee.iitb.ac.in madhu n. belur department of electrical engineering, indian institute of technology bombay email: belur@ee.iitb.ac.in doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i4.7 issn 0258­2236 e­issn 2519­593x perspectives in education 2016 34(4): 99­115 © uv/ufs 100 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) “partially correct answer” disappears. however, the effect of guessing appears in multiple­ choice exams. by way of example, consider an item with four options out of which exactly one is the correct answer and the remaining three are distractors. in this case, a student of extremely low ability who is unprepared for the exam has a 0.25 probability of answering it correctly through guessing. thus, a guessed response even though it does not give any information about the actual capability of a candidate contributes to his/her test score and thus skews the assessment. moreover, in situations with “partial knowledge” the guessing factor becomes more significant, since even without knowing the correct answer to an item if a candidate is successful in eliminating a few distractors of the item with his/her partial information about the item, his/her chances of getting it correct is greater. thus, the probability that a candidate with partial knowledge about the item getting it correct through guessing is greater that particular item fails to distinguish a candidate with partial knowledge from a candidate with full information. on the other hand, a student who knows the basic method to solve an item can make minor errors, which can lead to the wrong choice of response and get zero credit for that item. therefore, the effect of guessing depends on the nature of the item and is thus an item parameter. cat is one of the most popular evaluation schemes (van der linden, wim & glas, 2000). the important feature of cat that popularises it, is the “adaptive” feature of conducting the exam. in cat, the test item that a candidate is going to answer next depends on his/her responses to the previous questions. if a candidate answers a question of a certain difficulty level correctly, s/he will be given a question of slightly greater difficulty level. however, if the response is not correct, then the next question will be slightly less difficult. for the adaptive selection of items for all the test takers, cat maintains an item pool that consists of a large number of items spanning a range of content levels and difficulty levels and every item is selected based on a selection algorithm. in this way, every candidate taking a cat exam will undergo a self­tailored exam. even though cat exams are superior to other exams in various aspects, it does have some shortcomings as well (way, davis & fitzpatric, 2006). the difficult task of conducting a cat exam is the construction and maintenance of the item pool. the item pool is the prime requirement and it should contain questions in a wide range of difficulty levels so that the exam is good enough to estimate the capabilities of low and high capability candidates. the challenges associated with constructing and maintaining the item pool is: 1) questions in the item pool should be pre­calibrated. for calibrating questions, extra test items are given as field tests in every exam. these are uncalibrated questions that are given in the exam which do not affect the test score of a candidate but whose difficulties are determined from the responses of the candidates whose capabilities are estimated from the pre­calibrated questions. the difficulty of an item is fixed only after taking a sufficient number of field tests. the problem associated here is that, as a number of students see these questions, the difficulty of the question is no longer the estimated one. thus, the questions that the candidates see will not have the calculated difficulties when they are used for testing. therefore, the entire process of calibrating questions and then estimating the capabilities of candidates using those calibrated questions will be erroneous in a cyclic manner. 2) the item pool should be periodically repopulated. items that are frequently given for the exam will become known to the examinees. consequently, the difficulty of the question is different from the calibrated value as time progresses. this will result in the wrong estimation of capabilities. to avoid this, the pool should be restored and fresh items should replace the 101 moothedath, chaporkar & belur a maximum likelihood based offline estimation... known ones. however, accurately finding the time point at which an item in the pool is to be replaced is not an easy task. 3) in exams with many disciplines, constructing and maintaining an item pool for each discipline is quite a difficult task. it is very expensive and requires plenty of effort to construct an item pool. 4) one other issue with cat exams is the option to go back in the exam. more clearly, a candidate can return to a previous question and reattempt it at any point in time in the exam. while there is variation across various adaptive tests on whether or not to allow modifying past attempts, there is disagreement about to what extend this will help in estimating the parameters (way et al., 2006). since this feature of reattempting items is not incorporated in our analyses, we will not pursue it in this work. apart from all these difficulties, security issues are also a major concern in cat exams. charles spearman came up with the first theory of psychometric test analysis known as the classical test theory (ctt) in 1906. sixty years later, lord and novick reformulated ctt using a modern mathematical statistical approach (lord, novick & birnbaum, 1968). the main shortcoming of ctt is that it does not consider the item properties. to be precise, in multiple­choice exams where the total score is considered as the measure of the candidate’s capability, the items that a candidate answered correctly does not play any role in deciding his/her capability. in such a situation, answering an easy question correctly and a very difficult question correctly fetches him/her the same credit that does not seem to be appropriate. binet and simon (1916) introduced the item based test theory known as the item response theory (irt) in 1916, where the item parameters such as the difficulty of the question are also considered in the assessment. this paper uses an irt model for all the analyses conducted. in this paper, we are focusing on offline exams. by the term “offline”, we mean the exams in which the scores of the test takers are not available after the end of the test. in cat exams, by the end of the test, each examinee gets to know his test score. however, in offline exams the test score is disclosed to the public as well as the test takers after a certain timeframe. in these exams, test scores of a candidate not only depends on his/her sole performance but also on the general nature of the exam. in addition, here the questions are not pre­calibrated. the main point that we are focusing on in this work is that in offline exams when total marks are used as the input measure for estimating the capabilities of the students, then score comparison across disciplines, years and sessions is not justified. scores need to be compared across disciplines when students with scores in different disciplines apply for a common programme. for example, a student with a score in computer science engineering can apply for a programme in electrical engineering and vice versa. similarly, many interdisciplinary courses consider scores from various disciplines while applying. therefore, score comparison across disciplines becomes vital. score comparison across years becomes relevant in those exams that have a validity of more than a year. in such exams, a candidate can apply for a programme while his/her score is valid. in such a case, it is imperative to compare scores across years. the third scenario is a multiple session exam, where students take exams in different batches answering different question papers and are finally ranked in a single rank list. for example, in cases of large­scale offline exams such as gate, students take tests in different test centres for the same discipline by answering different question papers and are finally ranked in a common rank list. here question papers are different for different batches and therefore comparison of scores cannot be justified if total marks are used as the only deciding parameter. 102 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) summary of contribution we propose a maximum likelihood based alternating optimisation algorithm for the three­ parameter logistic model for estimating the student parameter, capability and the question parameters, difficulty, discrimination and guessing. in our previous work, we proposed an alternating optimisation based estimation of student capabilities and question difficulties (moothedath, 2016) for the two­parameter rasch model. the effect of guessing is not considered in that work. in this paper, the effect of guessing is included and experimental results are demonstrated to compare the proposed maximum likelihood based algorithm with the mark­based method. however, the exams considered in this work are not adaptive and negative marking is not considered here. organisation of the paper section 2 details the model employed in this work for estimating the student parameter, capability and the question parameters, difficulty, discrimination and guessing. the details of the maximum likelihood estimation are given in section 3 and the likelihood function of the concerned problem is formulated here. section 4 summarises the pseudocode for the proposed scheme. for verifying the performance of the proposed maximum likelihood based scheme, we conducted a few experiments. the details of the experiments conducted and the metrics that are used for the comparison is given in section 5. simulation results corresponding to these experiments are given in section 6. section 7 and section 8 comprises of concluding remarks and references respectively. 2. model this section discusses the model used in this paper for assessment. we employed birnbaum’s three­parameter model for all the analyses done in this work. birnbaum proposed an item characteristic curve which (baker, 1985) gives the probability of jth student answering ith question correctly. pi(cj) = gi + (1­gi) exp{ai(cj­di )} 1+exp{ai(cj­di )} (1) where cj denotes the capability of the j th student and di , ai and gi denotes the difficulty, discrimi­ nation and guessing factor of the ith question respectively. the guessing factor is the likelihood that a student of extremely low ability answers the item correctly. the parameters of the model are as follows: (1) capability cj, (2) difficulty di , (3) discrimination ai , (4) guessing factor gi . henceforth, i stands for the question index and j denotes student index. 103 moothedath, chaporkar & belur a maximum likelihood based offline estimation... ­2.0 ­1.5 ­1.0 ­0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 capability a=4.255, d=0.5 p ro ba bi lit y of c or re ct re sp on se 1.0 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 figure 1: icc for correct response with d = 0.5, a = 4.255 and g = 0.25 figure 1 is the item characteristic curve (icc) which shows the variation of probability of answering a question of difficulty 0.5 correctly when 0.25 guessing factor is involved. the plot shows that an unprepared candidate who has no knowledge about the item can answer it correctly with 0.25 probability. in addition, as capability increases the probability of answering correctly also increases and finally saturates to 1. ­2.0 ­1.5 ­1.0 ­0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 difficulty a=4.255, c=0.5 p ro ba bi lit y of in co rr ec t r es po ns e 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 0.1 0.0 figure 2: icc for incorrect response with c = 0.5, a = 4.255 and g = 0.25 figure 2 shows the item characteristic curve that shows the variation of probability of answering incorrectly as a function of question difficulty. the plot shows that for quite a low difficulty 104 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) question the probability of answering incorrectly is very low and as the difficulty increases the probability of answering incorrectly saturates to a value lower than 1. thus, even when the question difficulty is very high when compared to the capability, there is still the probability of answering it correctly because of the guessing factor involved. ­2.0 ­1.5 ­1.0 ­0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 capability p ro ba bi lit y of c or re ct re sp on se 1.0 0.9 0.8 0.7 0.6 0.5 0.4 0.3 0.2 a=4.255 a=6 a=10 figure 3: icc for correct response with d = 0.5 and g = 0.25 figure 3 shows the variation of probability of answering correctly for questions for different discrimination values. it is clear from the plot that as the discrimination value increases the plot becomes more and more steep. the steeper the curve, the better the item is, as it can differentiate candidates of diverse capabilities. thus, it is always advisable to include questions of large discrimination values in the test. however, constructing items with large discrimination levels is very difficult. 3. maximum likelihood estimation maximum likelihood estimation is a technique for estimating the parameters of a statistical model, given the observations. it estimates the parameter values that maximise the likelihood of making the observations, given the parameters. the likelihood of a set of parameters, q, given the response x is given by, l(θ|x) = p(x|θ) (2) the objective of this paper is to estimate the capabilities of the test takers and the difficulty, discrimination and guessing of the items of the test, given the responses. the responses of the candidates are a dichotomous data set denoted as r, the response matrix. the matrix r has students as the rows and questions forming the columns of the matrix. let ns denote 105 moothedath, chaporkar & belur a maximum likelihood based offline estimation... the number of students and nq denote the number of questions. thus, the matrix r is a ns × nq matrix. negative marking is not considered in this paper and so every entry in r is either 0 or 1. one corresponds to a correct response of the student and 0 corresponds to an incorrect response or an unattended question. thus, the problem can be formulated as, given the response matrix r of an exam, we need to estimate the capability vector, c = [c1,c2,...,cns], the difficulty vector, d = [d1,d2,...,dnq], the discrimination factor, a = [a1,a2,...,anq] and the guessing vector g = [g1,g2,...,gnq] . the likelihood function for the above problem is: l(c,d,a) = prob(r|c,d,a) (3) the likelihood function of a student depends on his/her response to all the questions. while for a question, the likelihood function depends on the responses to that particular question by all the students. therefore, the likelihood function of the entire test is the product of the likelihood functions of each student for all questions under the assumption that all examinees are independent. for l(c,d,a) = prob(r|c,d,a), the logistic ogive model, the logistic function is given by pij:=gi + (1­gi) exp{ai(cj­di )} 1+exp{ai(cj­di )} (4) qij:= (1­gi) 1 1+exp{ai(cj­di )} (5) where cj denotes the capability of the j th student, di , ai and gi denotes the difficulty, discrimination and guessing factor of the ith question respectively. then the global likelihood function of the exam is formulated as prob(r|c,d,a :=πj=1 πi=1 ns nq pij mij (1­pij) 1-mij, (6) where ns is the number of students taking the test, nq is the number of questions in the test and mij is the entry in the response matrix r corresponding to the (i,j) th location. if student i made item j correct, then mij =1, else it is 0. using the logarithm, we get the log likelihood function as l(c,d,a):=logprob(r|c,d,a)= ∑j=1 ∑i=1 mij logpij + (1­mij)log(1­pij) ns nq . (7) 4. proposed algorithm we propose a maximum likelihood based alternating optimisation algorithm for solving this. alternating optimisation, otherwise called the gauss siedel optimisation method, is a technique for optimising functions involving a large number of variables by partitioning the set of variables into different blocks. in every step, optimisation is done in one block of variables keeping the other sets fixed and this is done sequentially. we want to maximise the likelihood of the exam given by equation (6). however, maximising (6) is equivalent to maximising (7), since the log is a monotonically increasing function. thus the objective function here is the log likelihood function given by equation (7) and the variables over which optimisation is carried out, the c, d, a and g vectors. the pseudocode for the proposed algorithm is given below. 106 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) algorithm input: raw marks matrix output: student capability vector c, question difficulty vector d and question discrimination vector a. 1: initialise d,a,g. 2: while error norms of estimated levels in previous iteration ≥ tolerance value do 3: for each student j do 4: using d, a and g find cϵ[0,1] such that l is maximum. 5: cj :=argmaxl(ć,d,a,g)c 6: end for 7: for each question i do 8: using c, a and g find dϵ[0,1] such that l is maximum. 9: di :=argmaxl(c,d,a,g)d ′ 10: end for 11: for each question i do 12: using c, d and g find aϵ[0,6] such that l is maximum. 13: ai :=argmaxl(c,d,á,g)a 14: end for 15: for each question i do 16: using c, d and a find gϵ[0,1] such that l is maximum. 17: gi :=argmaxl(c,d,a,ǵ)g 18: end for 19: go to step 3 20: end while 5. comparison metrics and variables we conducted a few experiments to verify the performance of the proposed maximum likelihood (ml) based method with the conventional raw marks (rm) based method. for this we compare the raw marks rank list (rm rank list) and the maximum likelihood rank list (ml rank list) with the actual capability rank list (ac rank list). the ac rank list is the ordered list of students arranged in the decreasing order of their actual capability (ac) levels. the ml rank list is formed at the end of the estimation process by arranging candidates in the descending order of the estimated ml capability values. similarly, candidates are arranged in descending order of total marks to form the rm rank list. for x% cut­off bound, the ml cut­off (rm cut­ off) is the capability of the (x/ns) × 100th candidate in the ml rank list (rm rank list). the experiments conducted are: (1) fixed number of students and varied number of questions, (2) fixed number of questions and varied number of students and (3) multiple session exam 107 moothedath, chaporkar & belur a maximum likelihood based offline estimation... where students take exams in batches answering different question papers but finally fall into a common rank list. the parameters used for comparing the rank lists and drawing conclusions are: (i) number of false­positives, (ii) number of desired students qualified and (iii) number of qualified students. false­positives are the non­deserving set of candidates that enter the rank list within the cut­off bound after the assessment. in the ml rank list (rm rank list), these students’ actual capability level is below the cut­off capability but they lie within the cut­off bound in the ml rank list (rm rank list). these candidates qualified for the exam but actually were not supposed to. thus, it is always advisable to have a lower number of false­positives in the exam so that truly deserving candidates qualify for the exam. deserving candidates qualified in the ml (rm) scheme are those students that are present within the cut­off bound in the ml rank list (rm rank list) and ac rank list. therefore, desired candidates are the population that corresponds to the set of students who are the actual deserving ones. it is advisable to have a greater number of deserving candidates in the rank list. the number of qualified students refers to the number of students who qualified for the exam. all students whose capabilities is greater than or equal to the cut­off capability in the respective rank lists is qualified in that particular rank list. that is, in the ml rank list (rm rank list) those students whose ml (rm) capability values are greater than or equal to the ml (rm) cut­off capability is qualified in the ml rank list (rm rank list). 6. simulation results in this section, we discuss the simulation results showing the comparison of the proposed method with the conventional marks based scheme. we used python as the programming platform for all the analyses. the exams were simulated using candidates of randomly generated known capability values answering questions of randomly generated known difficulties. then, we used the proposed algorithm for estimating their capability vector c, difficulty vector d, discrimination vector a and guessing vector g from the response matrix r. tables and figures in this section demonstrate the simulation results of the conducted experiments. ml here stands for the maximum likelihood based assessment result and rm stands for the raw marks based assessment result. table i and table ii corresponds to the experiment where we fixed the number of questions and varied the number of students for the 10% and 30% cut­off bound respectively. the simulation results affirms that the number of false­positives is less in the proposed scheme when compared to the conventional raw marks based scheme. in addition, the number of candidates qualified is greater in the rm scheme. this is because a greater number of students obtain the same score and thus the number of candidates qualified will be greater than the specified cut­off bound. this results tie in the rm scheme, which need to be resolved. however, the ml scheme does not result in many cases of a tie as this method not only takes into consideration the total score of the candidates but also considers which of the questions they got right. the third parameter, number of desired candidates qualified, is greater for the rm case over the ml case. this is because of the large number of qualified candidates here. we verified that if we allow the same number of candidates to qualify in both the schemes then ml gives the greater number of desired candidates as well. 108 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) table 1: comparison for nq = 30 and ns = 200, 500, 1000 and 2000 and cut­off bound = 10% metrics and parameters nq = 30 ns = 200 ns = 500 ns = 1000 ns = 2000 ns = 5000 ml rm ml rm ml rm ml rm ml rm no. of candidates qualified 21 24 51 63 101 157 201 228 501 791 no. of false­positives 13 16 31 40 57 100 124 143 295 522 no. of deserving candidates qualified 8 9 20 23 44 57 77 85 206 269 table 2: comparison for nq = 30 and ns = 200, 500, 1000 and 2000 and cut­off bound = 30% metrics and parameters nq = 30 ns = 200 ns = 500 ns = 1000 ns = 2000 ns = 5000 ml rm ml rm ml rm ml rm ml rm no. of candidates qualified 61 69 151 181 301 359 602 662 1501 1774 no. of false­positives 21 26 57 78 88 130 196 245 438 637 no. of deserving candidates qualified 40 43 94 103 213 229 406 417 1063 1137 figure 4 and figure 6 indicate the variation of the number of false­positives for the different values of the number of students for the proposed ml scheme and the conventional rm scheme for 10% and 30% cut­off bound respectively. the plot shows that the number of false­ positives is less in the proposed scheme when compared to rm scheme. 109 moothedath, chaporkar & belur a maximum likelihood based offline estimation... ml scheme number of students n um be r o f f al se ­p os iti ve s rm scheme 400 200 0 0 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 figure 4: number of false­positives for nq = 30 and different ns for 10% cut­off number of students n um be r o f f al se ­p os iti ve s 300 200 100 0 200 500 1,000 2,000 5,000 figure 5: demonstration of 90% band of false­positives for nq = 30 and different ns for 10% cut­off 110 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) 600 400 200 0 0 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 5,000 number of students n um be r o f f al se ­p os iti ve s ml scheme rm scheme figure 6: number of false­positives for nq = 30 and different ns for 30% cut­off n um be r o f f al se ­p os iti ve s number of students 200 500 1000 2000 5000 400 300 200 100 0 figure 7: demonstration of 90% band of gate­crashers for ns = 2000 and different nq for 30% cut­off 111 moothedath, chaporkar & belur a maximum likelihood based offline estimation... figure 5 and figure7 demonstrate the 90% band of false­positives for fixed nq and varied ns for the 10% and 30% cut­off respectively. all the experiments here are done for 50 different exams and all the values in the tables and all the data points in the figures correspond to their average. thus, this plot is drawn to see the variation of the number of false­positives in the ml scheme for 90% of the exams. this is to verify the spread of the number of false­positives for 90% of the exams conducted. the plot below shows a very narrow band indicating that for 90% of the exams over which this experiment is averaged, the number of false­positives vary in a narrow range. table iii and table iv show the results corresponding to the experiment where the number of students is fixed and the number of questions is varied. this experiment is conducted to check the performance of the proposed method for exams of different length, more clearly, exams with a different number of items. the results confirm that the proposed method out performs the conventional raw marks based scheme in filtering out the most deserving candidates as the number of false positives is much less in the ml scheme over rm scheme. in addition, the number of ties created is also less in ml method. table 3: comparison for ns = 2000 and nq = 20, 30, 50 and 70 and cut­off bound = 10% metrics and parameters ns = 2000 nq = 20 nq = 30 nq = 50 nq = 70 ml rm ml rm ml rm ml rm no. of candidates qualified 201 354 201 354 201 240 201 229 no. of false­positives 129 255 124 143 108 140 108 134 no. of deserving candidates qualified 72 97 77 85 93 100 93 96 table 4: comparison for ns = 2000 and nq = 20, 30, 50 and 70 and cut­off bound = 30% metrics and parameters ns = 2000 nq = 20 nq = 30 nq = 50 nq = 70 ml rm ml rm ml rm ml rm no. of candidates qualified 601 625 602 662 601 647 601 689 no. of false­positives 236 258 196 245 153 195 157 223 no. of deserving candidates qualified 365 367 406 417 448 452 444 466 112 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) ml scheme rm scheme number of questions 20 30 40 50 60 70 250 200 150 100 n um be r o f f al se ­p os iti ve s figure 8: number of gate­crashers for ns= 2000 and different nq for 10% cut­off figure 8 and figure 10 show the variation of the number of false­positives for different values of the number of questions for the proposed ml scheme and the conventional rm scheme for the 10% and 30% cut­off bound respectively. the plot shows that the number of false­ positives is less in the proposed scheme when compared to rm scheme. number of questions n um be r o f f al se ­p os iti ve s 140 130 120 110 100 20 30 50 70 figure 9: demonstration of 90% band of gate­crashers for ns= 2000 and different nq for 10% cut­off 113 moothedath, chaporkar & belur a maximum likelihood based offline estimation... ml scheme rm scheme number of questions 260 240 220 200 180 160 20 30 40 50 60 70 n um be r o f f al se ­p os iti ve s figure 10: number of gate­crashers for ns= 2000 and different nq for 30% cut­off figure 9 and figure 11 demonstrate the 90% band of false­positives for fixed ns and varied nq for the 10% and 30% cut­off respectively. all the experiments here are done for 50 different exams and all the values in the tables and all the data points in the figures correspond to their average. thus, this plot is drawn to see the variation of the number of false­positives in the ml scheme for 90% of the exams. this is to verify the spread of the number of false­positives for 90% of the exams conducted. the plot below shows a very narrow band indicating that for 90% of the exams over which this experiment is averaged, the number of false­positives vary in a narrow range. 240 220 200 180 160 140 20 30 50 70 number of questions n um be r o f f al se ­p os iti ve s figure 11: demonstration of 90% band of gate­crashers for ns = 2000 and different nq for 30% cut­off 114 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) table v and table vi show the experimental results corresponding to a multiple session exam for the 10% and 30% cut­off. here, students take exams in four different sessions answering different question papers and finally their scores are normalised so that they are ranked in a single rank list. the normalisation of scores of different sessions is done using the formula below. ḿij = mgt m g q) mti miq) (mij miq) + m g q, (8) where mij is the actual marks obtained by the j th candidate in the ith session, mgt is the average marks of the toppers in all sessions, mgq is the mean of marks of all students in all sessions, mti is the top marks of the i th session and miq is the average marks of all the students in the ith session. table 5: comparison for the multiple session exam for ns = 2000, nq = 30 done in four sessions with cut­off bound = 10% metrics and parameters ns = 2000 , nq = 30 session 1 session 2 session 3 session 4 ml rm ml rm ml rm ml rm no. of candidates qualified 201 259 201 239 201 352 201 324 no. of false­positives 124 174 126 160 131 254 126 224 no. of deserving candidates qualified 77 86 75 79 70 98 75 100 table 6: comparison for multiple session exam for ns = 2000, nq = 30 done in four sessions with cut­off bound = 30% metrics and parameters ns = 2000 , nq = 30 session 1 session 2 session 3 session 4 ml rm ml rm ml rm ml rm no. of candidates qualified 601 694 601 688 601 741 601 806 no. of false­positives 206 285 196 267 233 338 205 352 no. of deserving candidates qualified 395 409 405 421 368 403 396 454 7. conclusion we proposed a maximum likelihood based alternating maximisation algorithm for estimating student capabilities and question difficulties, discrimination and guessing of an offline exam. the model employed in this paper is the 3­parameter logistic ogive model, which is a well­ researched item response model. experimental tests confirm the improved performance of the proposed scheme over the conventional marks based scheme. student capabilities were estimated and maximum likelihood estimated capability based rank list (mlc rank list) is compared with the raw marks based rank list (rm rank list). the number of false­positives in the top 10% and 30% is compared for both the rank lists with the actual capability based rank list (ac rank list) and it was found that the number of false­positives in the ml based method 115 moothedath, chaporkar & belur a maximum likelihood based offline estimation... is less for all the experiments. the experiments include varying the number of students and questions and importantly, the multiple session exam with students taking tests in different test centres, answering different question papers for the same discipline. the proposed method is implementable at institutional level as well as for estimating the ability levels of the students instead of using marks as the sole criteria. references baker, f.b. 1985. the basics of item response theory, 2nd ed. wisconsin: heinemann. binet, a. & simon, t. 1916. the development of intelligence in children: the binet­simon scale (no. 11). new jersey: williams & wilkins company. https://doi.org/10.1037/11069­000 indian institute of science. 2016. graduate aptitude test in engineering 2016 information brochure. india. lord, f.m., novick, m.r. & birnbaum, a. 1968. statistical theories of mental test scores. boston: addison­wesley. moothedath, s. 2016. a maximum likelihood based offline estimation of student capabilities and question difficulties. paper presented at the meeting of international association for educational assessment, cape town. sands, w.a., waters, b.k. & mcbride, j.r. 1997. computerized adaptive testing: from inquiry to operation. washington, dc: american psychological association. https://doi. org/10.1037/10244­000 van der linden, wim, j. & glas, c.a. (eds.) 2000. computerized adaptive testing: theory and practice. dordrecht: kluwer academic. way, w.d., davis, l.l. & fitzpatrick, s. 2006. practical questions in introducing computerized adaptive testing for k­12 assessments. upper saddle river, nj: pearson educational measurement. wu, l.e.e.t. 1993. japanese university entrance examination problems in mathematics. american educator: the professional journal of the american federation of teachers, 17(1), 25­35. 30 doctoral discourses in south africa judy backhouse university of the witwatersrand in the south african context, three doctoral discourses are heard, each with their own assumptions about the purpose of doctoral education and the kinds of people who undertake doctoral study, and with their own implications for the practice of doctoral education. two of the three discourses are familiar and well documented in the local and international literature. the third is an emerging discourse identified in the course of a qualitative study of four doctoral programmes at three south african universities. this paper unpacks these discourses, examining tensions that arise between them. i argue that all three discourses contribute useful perspectives to our national understanding of doctoral education, and i discuss some implications for the practice and research of doctoral education. keywords: doctoral education, postgraduate education, graduate studies, doctoral studies introduction one doctoral supervisor, at a south african university, says: we don’t believe there are that many people in this country who can write doctorates. while another is of the opinion that: they need encouragement. you need to encourage them and say, ‘look, you have the potential, you can do it, go ahead.’ unfortunately, our education system in this country hasn’t been very accommodating, you know. it was a weeding out process, instead of a process that says, ‘look, go ahead and start developing.’ these very different views of phd students originate in different understandings of the phd and highlight the contestation that makes it difficult to improve doctoral education and increase the number of doctoral graduates in south africa. this paper presents an analysis of the discourses surrounding doctoral education that emerged from an empirical study of established doctoral programmes in south africa. three discourses were identified, two of which are familiar and well documented in the local and international literature, and the third an emerging discourse that appears more closely related to local conditions. each discourse makes assumptions about the purpose of doctoral education and the kinds of people who undertake doctoral study, and has implications for the practice of doctoral education. this paper (1) presents evidence of these three doctoral discourses in the south african context; (2) examines some tensions that arise between them; and (3) discusses some of the implications for the practice and research of doctoral education. i argue that all three discourses contribute useful perspectives to our national understanding of doctoral education. background to the study this paper results from a qualitative study of doctoral education in south africa which examined the practice of doctoral education in four academic units at three research universities (one each at the university of cape town and the university of kwazulu-natal and two at the university of the witwatersrand). the units were selected on the basis of having successful and well-established doctoral programmes. three of the units were traditional academic departments or schools and the fourth was a graduate school with a more interdisciplinary approach. several “innovative” doctoral programmes were considered for inclusion in the study, but rejected, as they could not be considered well established. in order to get a view across disciplines, theoretical replication was employed, based on becher and trowler’s (2001) classification of 31backhouse — doctoral discourses in south africa disciplinary knowledge as soft or hard (the degree to which there is an established paradigm) and pure or applied (the extent to which knowledge is applied). more than one hundred documents were examined, 26 supervisors and 38 students were interviewed, and seminars were observed. in the course of the study it became clear that there are three doctoral discourses that inform the ways in which doctoral education is practised in the four academic units and by the individual supervisors, including how to select students to participate, how to support them, how to improve throughput (ensuring they graduate, and in reasonable time), and how to ensure the quality of doctoral education. the notion of discourse has a complex history. in this paper i use the term in foucault’s (1970, 1972, 1980) sense of social knowledge, or in gee’s sense of a “big d” discourse which goes beyond “stretches of language” to include ways of thinking, using language, acting and interacting and using objects (gee, 1999:17-19). discourses include representations (including language), practices and institutions which reproduce and legitimize meaning. they are associated with specific ideas, attitudes, beliefs and practices, which define the limits of the thoughts and practices that are admissible, and hence construct worlds and subjects. as a result, my analysis is of texts, practices and the views that individuals express – all being manifestations of such discourses. three doctoral discourses the scholarly discourse the first doctoral discourse reflects the traditional understanding of the doctorate: that it involves doing research to produce knowledge and serves to establish one as a scholar. the purpose of the phd is to generate knowledge and, in the process, to confirm that the individual has attained a level of scholarship rather than learning to do research. this scholarly discourse is found in national and institutional policy, and was voiced by supervisors in my study. the new higher education qualifications framework (heqf) defines the phd as a research degree, the goal of which is “to demonstrate high-level research capability and make a significant and original academic contribution at the frontiers of a discipline or field” (doe, 2007:29), while the master’s degree is to “educate and train researchers” (doe, 2007:27). the postgraduate handbook for the faculty of engineering and the built environment at the university of the witwatersrand requires the following of the phd: at the close of the period for research and after consultation with the appointed supervisor, a candidate will be expected to submit, with the supervisor’s approval, a thesis for examination. the thesis must constitute a substantial contribution to the advancement of knowledge in the subject chosen ... (wits, 2008:5). there is a “period for research” rather than for training or development, and the result is a “substantial contribution to the advancement of knowledge”. at the master’s level one is trained to do research, while at the doctoral level one demonstrates the capacity to do research. this discourse was common among supervisors in my study who viewed the master’s degree as the appropriate place to learn research skills and to gain a solid grounding in the discipline. when asked about the need for research training at phd level, supervisors responded that “they have done that”. supervisors expect doctoral students to be “independent and self-directed”; they “should demonstrate the ability to do independent work” and “the ability to acquire knowledge on your own”. for these supervisors, a doctoral person should be “somebody who is clearly research material, as we put it”. this understanding of the phd, as research undertaken by an independent or autonomous scholar, is widely recognised in the literature (johnson, lee & green, 2000; lee & williams, 1999; tennant, 2004). the phd is about demonstrating one’s ability to do research and the person undertaking doctoral studies is assumed to already have research skills, to be familiar with key results or theories, relevant epistemologies and the research tools of the discipline. in their critique of traditional doctoral education, described as the “pedagogy of indifference”, johnson et al. (2000:138) explain how doctoral students at 32 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 oxford were required to “reveal themselves as ‘always-already’ having the capacities for which they were to be credentialed at the end of the phd process” and “to demonstrate that they could work on their own without supervision”. the scholarly view of the doctorate originates in the early nineteenth-century reforms of german universities which repositioned the university teacher from one who was learned in a particular field, to one who was an active scholar (mcclelland, 1980). such scholarly work was almost exclusively situated in the lower faculty of philosophy, which included what would today be recognised as subjects in the sciences and the humanities. as a result, the doctor of philosophy became distinguished from the doctorates in law, medicine and theology by being awarded for original work, rather than for having mastered an existing body of knowledge (jamieson & naidoo, 2007). as a result, the roots of this scholarly discourse are firmly embedded in modernist, rational discourses of science (craswell, 2007; mcclelland, 1980). the scholarly discourse supports the view that doctoral students are planning scholarly careers. supervisors who adopt this discourse say, “i’d probably have a bias towards thinking of them as future academics” and, if not, “why use three years of your life on a doctorate?” they struggle to conceive of other reasons for doctoral study: [name] is actually working, and he’s got a good job. there’s absolutely no reason for him to do this, except because he wants to. i’m not sure if it’s because he wants the title, but that would be rather strange, because he’s been going on for a number of years in great pain and suffering, so i think he’s possibly thinking of an academic career. (supervisor, mathematics and applied mathematics) concerns for doctoral education practice are how best to generate knowledge – how to identify an appropriate research question that is of interest to the individual and the discipline, and can be asked; what methods are available to answer that question and how to apply them; and how to report the results in a form acceptable to the discipline. addressing throughput in doctoral education becomes a matter of effectively identifying those individuals who have the necessary research skills and disciplinary knowledge and are able to work independently, and then ensuring that they have the resources, including time and appropriate connections to the discipline, to pursue their research. the quality of doctoral education is addressed through examination procedures that ensure the work meets the required disciplinary norms. the labour market discourse the second doctoral discourse is the labour market discourse in which doctoral education produces human resources for the labour market of a knowledge economy. the purpose of the phd is to develop highly skilled people who will find employment as academic staff, researchers and in other positions in industry and the public sector. the focus of doctoral education becomes training in research and other transferable skills, while the knowledge produced takes second place. this discourse is evident in south africa at the level of national policy, and is acknowledged by supervisors. about one third of the south african national research and development strategy (dst, 2002) is devoted to the question of developing human resources in a market model of supply and demand for skills. in the strategy the number of postgraduate degrees in science and technology is an indicator of future, but not of current, research and development capacity. this implies that doctoral students are being trained to do research, rather than being engaged in doing research – a view reinforced by doctoral theses not being included in measures of research output. the south african phd project seeks to increase the number of phd graduates in south africa in order to “address the local human capital requirements” because the current production of phds is “way below the number of doctoral graduates required to support a competitive knowledge-based economy” (nrf, 2008). from these and other documents it is clear that national policy makers are concerned with addressing a human resource problem and view the phd as developing high-level skills, particularly in research. supervisors recognise this discourse, particularly because it has resulted in the phd being a prerequisite for an academic career: “job advertisements used to say, ‘an ma is desirable’, now they say, ‘a doctorate is necessary.’” they also acknowledge that the phd is sought after in other labour markets where “people are looking for highly-trained minds” and a range of transferable skills. 33backhouse — doctoral discourses in south africa it’s not just the physics you learn, it’s the skills doing research and just thinking through quite a complicated problem …observing stuff and taking the data and producing some kind of model – which is really what a lot of financial analysts do. they take data that’s a continuous stream and turn it into ... a predictor of the future, i guess … so a lot of the skills are very similar, although there is some retraining that needs to be done. (supervisor, applied mathematics) however, they are quick to point out that additional skills training should be “add-on aspects of the doctorate, rather than taking away from something of what is done in the doctorate now”. the labour market view of the doctorate is supported by discourses of instrumentalism and efficiency (blume, 1986) and includes imperatives to increase the number and rate of production of doctoral graduates. in south africa financial incentives are provided for institutions to meet a target 20% graduation rate for doctoral programmes (doe, 2001). this discourse creates concerns for efficient supervision and promotes practices such as group supervision, cohort-based seminars and structured research timetables. this discourse also emphasises market responsiveness (ball, 1998) and is concerned with the employability of graduates (craswell, 2007). this is not new – the doctorate has always had something of a career focus, with the title “doctor” originally referring to one who was licensed to teach (noble, 1994; tanner, previtéorton & brooke, 1929). the labour market discourse of career preparation promotes the idea that the doctorate is undertaken towards the beginning of one’s career and terms like “junior scholars” (golde & dore, 2001) are used to describe doctoral students. the recent phd study by assaf (2010) calls for increased funding to facilitate full-time study. however, the majority of doctoral people in the cases i studied were older people, either established in university teaching positions or in careers in the public, private and ngo sectors, and many doctoral graduates have complex and changing patterns of employment and self-employment (backhouse, 2008). the focus on younger doctoral people leads to the provision of skills training that is inappropriate for those in established careers and continues to position older people as exceptions and outsiders (hewlett, 2006). the labour market discourse incorporates explicit research training in doctoral education. in addition, the notion of career preparation leads to concerns to develop the full range of skills required for identified careers. a supervisor in my study explained that those who pursue academic careers “have to be trained both in research and into the other aspects of academia”, such as teaching. research careers require skills in sourcing funding, working in teams, managing projects and interacting with stakeholders, while careers in industry or the public sector require that graduates learn how to sell themselves in a competitive labour market. this has led to reform agendas for doctoral education which are “inexorably additive” (bass, 2006:116), with ever-lengthening lists of training that ought to be included. the labour market discourse creates concerns for the efficient supervision of students and meeting the expectations of their future employers. the focus is on encouraging young people to undertake doctoral study so that they have longer active research lives, resulting in greater return on investment. quality is determined by market forces and other quality assurance mechanisms. the on-going personal development discourse somewhere between revealing an independent scholar and training a skilled human resource is another discourse, that of developing a critical intellectual. this on-going personal development discourse positions doctoral education as a process of personal and professional development during which one engages with knowledge and learns to apprehend the world in new ways, with deeper, more extensive or more intricate understandings. the larger goal is to develop critical intellectuals who will make the world a better place. this discourse is strongly voiced by students; less often expressed by supervisors. for many students in my study, the purpose of doctoral study is personal development. during the phd one learns “how to think about the world” and by the end, they expect to occupy “a different headspace” which will enable them to work on more complex problems. once you have a phd, you walk out at the end, you basically know how to do research. but i think it’s more than that. it’s how you apply your mind to issues, problems; how you learn from lessons of experience, best practices, apply, develop, you know. it’s very good [for] problem solving, it’s good 34 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 for writing skills, it’s good to address specific issues. because we have a problem in government as well, people can’t write, people don’t know how to put statements on the table, they don’t know how to engage. (doctoral student, public management) students appreciate that what they learn during doctoral studies will be used in their on-going careers, but they make it clear that what they learn goes beyond instrumentalist skills training, to a more holistic development of the person. they say, “i’m widening my conceptual view of the things that i already understood” and “you learn a lot about yourself”. this discourse also resonates with the many personal reasons that people cite for doing a phd, including that it fulfils early dreams and is a source of pride. supervisors say that the doctorate develops people into scholars and they try to facilitate that process. one, who explained that she “was a very poor student at school, but i developed very good meta-cognitive skills when i got to university … and i ended up being much more successful”, works with doctoral students to make explicit the requirements of the phd and to develop their meta-cognitive skills. ... that’s what i emphasize with students, i emphasize their meta-cognitive skills more than intelligence. it’s not to say that i don’t think you need to be intelligent, but i just think that there are some very bright people who actually don’t make it because of their poor meta-cognitive skills. (supervisor, public management) a woman who “considered bailing out” of her phd when she had children because she “didn’t really have a role model” is more supportive towards the women she supervises, sharing “some of my own experiences”. the doctorate as on-going personal development is supported by discourses of equity, social justice and “embodied subjectivity” which challenges the “fiction of the disembodied scholar … unlocated in the specific historical experience and social position of a sexed, classed and racially marked body” (waldby, 1995:17). the emphasis is on individual identities and choices as reflected in the decisions of doctoral students who select supervisors based on “growth, recognition, affirmation” and “someone who would allow us to have the kind of experience that we believed would contribute to our growth and development” (harrison, mckenna & searle, 2010:182,186). mcalpine and amundsen (2007:23) suggest that the “developmental perspective situates the doctorate as part of a life-long journey”, and metaphors of journeys abound in the student interviews in my study. students say, “it is a very personal journey” and “i find it like, this enlightening journey, and i’m very excited about it”. their frequent use of journey metaphors suggests that the idea of doctoral studies as part of a life journey resonates strongly with their experiences. this discourse is less prescriptive than the scholarly discourse about who might undertake doctoral studies. students are not expected to already have the characteristics of a scholar. supervisors expect some level of independence, but not in a “leave a person on their own and don’t give them any help and support, kind of way”. for these supervisors independence is an outcome of the phd, rather than a prerequisite: “i think it’s building them as a scholar, so that when they finish they are able to operate more independently” [my emphasis]. likewise, students are not expected to already have research skills or a thorough grounding in a particular discipline. many of the students in my study had crossed disciplines, for example, moving from undergraduate degrees in science or engineering into doctorates in public management, or worked across multiple disciplines, for example, a woman who researched language, translation and musicology. in south africa, people who enrol for phds are seldom starting out on their careers. in public management they come from established careers in medicine, agriculture, education and science, looking for a management qualification. some of them are “big people in their fields, they’ve got a lot of expertise … they are big, they’re top of their field”. a supervisor in civil engineering reported a discussion with “high profile members of industry” who said of their staff, “if they show a lot of potential, they will send them somewhere to do post-graduate research, but they’re not looking for people coming in with a postgraduate qualification”. in these applied disciplines, the phd is another step in a career, into more senior roles. however, even in the pure disciplines, many doctoral students were mid-career academics from local and other african universities, who had not had the opportunity to complete a doctorate earlier in their lives. these doctoral students “sometimes have ten years in between this and their previous degrees.” 35backhouse — doctoral discourses in south africa the on-going personal development discourse acknowledges and values the complex histories of different doctoral people and the challenges they face. a supervisor explains that: ... post-grads throughout the university, are predominantly non-first-language-english speakers of english, and yet are compelled to write a thesis in english … people always think that will be a matter of correcting their concords and their prepositions … but the most serious problem is that they are unable to do justice to their own meanings. (supervisor, english studies) another supervisor gives this example: “we have generals from the defence force, coming here to do phds and they’re coming from a completely different discourse, and we’re asking them to think in completely different ways, to write in different ways.” as a result, there is a focus on how to transition people into the doctoral programme. concerns are to construct a highly individual experience organised around the unique development needs of each person. this might include prescribed readings, attendance at seminars, attendance at conferences, skills training, and exposure to aspects of academic life. cohort-based programmes and seminars which address gaps in disciplinary and research knowledge, also have a place, when relevant to the student’s developmental needs. quality is ensured by providing appropriate support and allowing individuals to develop at their own pace, without pressure to adhere to an externally imposed timetable. comparing the three understandings i have described three doctoral discourses which are present in the south african context. table 1 summarises key features of the three. table 1: comparing doctoral discourses in south africa scholarly labour market personal development product or output of doctoral education new knowledge an independent, rational scholar a highly-trained human resource knowledge for the knowledge economy a critical intellectual new knowledge assumptions only a certain type of person is “research material” phd people already have research skills knowledge (of a certain kind) is valuable people have identifiable careers which need identifiable skills the phd comes near the beginning of a career knowledge must be useful or profitable all people have the potential to develop intellectually the phd occurs at various points in people’s careers personal development contributes to social development discourses modernist scientific rational man liberal market-driven knowledge economy critical social responsibility embodied subjectivity concerns identifying new knowledge identifying people who are “research material” ensuring originality and independence identifying likely careers identifying necessary skills accreditation and certification efficiency facilitating personal development allowing creative engagement with knowledge 36 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 there is some resonance between the three discourses. all agree that the phd results in knowledge (the product) and a particular kind of graduate (the person), and they agree that the graduate should possess a wide range of skills, both generic and specific to the kind of research being undertaken. however, the three different discourses also result in a range of tensions that become evident in the practice of doctoral education. tensions between the discourses as we have seen, the three discourses give rise to different understandings of the purpose of doctoral study and, as a result, of the people who do phds and the best ways to practice doctoral education. people the scholarly discourse assumes that only those who are “research material” can be successful in doctoral studies. such people are assumed to be already competent researchers who will be expected to do independent research and, in the process, reveal themselves as scholars. the centrality of independence and autonomy in doctoral education can be traced back to the notion of the “man of reason” and the line of western philosophical thought that led in the seventeenth century to reason becoming “not just a distinguishing characteristic of mankind but … a distinctive way of thinking … a precisely ordered mode of abstract thought” (johnson et al., 2000:139). feminist critiques of reason associate it with the independent masculine as opposed to the dependent feminine and this suggests that the identity of the autonomous scholar might be difficult for many people to aspire to and hence run counter to national goals for equity and redress. that the ideal of the autonomous self is unproblematic [in doctoral education] testifies to its centrality to the history of the phd, at the same time as it indicates how powerfully but silently its assumptions about who has the right to regard themselves as ready to take on the mantle of the subject of knowledge, the ‘one who knows’, continue to operate unscrutinised (johnson et al., 2000:143). by contrast, the on-going personal development discourse is inclusive; it acknowledges that people begin doctoral studies with different knowledge and abilities and emphasises that they will become scholars through the process; they do not need to already possess the qualities of a scholar. the on-going personal development discourse encourages people at varying ages and career stages to consider doctoral studies. this is appropriate in the south african context where most people undertake doctorates later in their careers. but such inclusiveness is at odds with the labour market discourse, with its focus on career preparation. the efficient supply of human resources to the labour market emphasises the need for young people to undertake doctoral education at the start of their careers. however, a focus on young people and their needs might be at odds with the needs of older doctoral students. practice the labour market discourse supports efficient practices such as cohorts learning in step and measures to control the duration of studies. it advocates increased funding of doctoral students to facilitate full-time doctoral study. the labour market efficiency imperatives can also be at odds with requirements for quality. there are reports of doctoral programmes that were: … characterised by structured recruitment, group supervision, structured regular contact sessions, specified research topics, pre-selected research methodologies and strict timelines. these resulted in commendable throughput rates but, at the end of the process, many students were unable to work independently and did not develop adequately as critical thinkers, researchers or scholars (botha, 2010:69). structured programmes might also be in conflict with the on-going personal development discourse. mccormack (2004) tells the story of someone who conceived of “research as a process of personal 37backhouse — doctoral discourses in south africa transformation” and ran into difficulties with the university’s timeline for her studies. rather than work to the imposed timeline she “reconstructed her postgraduate experience to realign with her conception of it” and completed after seven years. and yet such self-determination must be recognised, in the south african context, as a luxury that few can afford. in the scholarly discourse, representatives of the discipline act as gate-keepers, regulating what research questions can be asked, the allowed research methodologies and making judgements of the quality of the work. where doctoral programmes in south africa have been changed to make research more accessible and challenge notions of disadvantage and advantage, they have drawn criticism for doing formulaic research and “lowering standards” (samuel, 2000). thus, there are also tensions between conceptions of quality, as defined by a long tradition and accepted practice of scientific knowledge-making, and quality conceived of as market responsiveness or effective personal development. concluding remarks this paper has highlighted three doctoral discourses which are current in south africa. the scholarly discourse views the doctorate as doing research and, in the process, revealing a scholar. the labour market discourse is of the doctorate as developing highly skilled human resources for specialist careers in the knowledge economy. a third emerging discourse is of the doctorate as an engagement with knowledge generation in the interests of on-going professional and personal development. there are tensions between these discourses resulting from the assumptions they make about the purpose of doctoral education, and the ways in which they position doctoral people, as well as the resultant approaches to practice. the on-going personal development discourse is more supportive of national goals for equity and redress in south africa and better supports the kind of people who currently undertake doctoral studies. however, limited resources and the urgent need for more doctoral graduates force our attention to the labour market concerns for efficiency and effectiveness, and the scholarly concern with autonomous knowledge production is still a key part of how scientific knowledge-making is understood internationally. all three discourses thus contribute important understandings of doctoral education and the tensions between them ensure that doctoral education develops to meet the imperatives of access, efficiency and quality. research into doctoral education is generally framed within one or other of these discourses and the assumptions that underpin these framings inevitably affect the way in which research is carried out as well as the results. an explicit positioning of research projects within or between these discourses will result in greater clarity and will facilitate meaningful discussions about research results. this paper has presented what gee terms a “discourse grid”; a map of the discourses of doctoral education. characteristic of such a grid is that there are complex relationships between the discourses and that the boundaries between discourses are ill-defined and moveable (gee, 1999:22-23). intersections, overlaps and areas of fuzziness can be observed between the discourses which i described. a more explicit discussion of doctoral discourses will also help to develop common understandings, to track changes and to refine this map over time. references assaf 2010. the phd study: an evidence-based study on how to meet the demands for high-level skills in an emerging economy. pretoria: academy of science 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london: cambridge university press. tennant m 2004. doctoring the knowledge worker. studies in continuing education, 26(3):431-441. waldby c 1995. feminism and method. in: b caine & r pringle (eds). transitions: new australian feminisms. sydney: allen and unwin. 39backhouse — doctoral discourses in south africa wits 2008. postgraduate handbook faculty of engineering and the built environment. johannesburg: university of the witwatersrand. 86 the effects of translanguaging on the bi-literate inferencing strategies of fourth grade learners abstract previous research suggests that enhanced cognitive and meta­ cognitive skills are achieved when translanguaging techniques are applied in a multilingual classroom. this paper presents findings on the effects of translanguaging techniques on teaching grade 4 learners how to apply relevant background knowledge when drawing inferences during reading. it examines the efficacy of simultaneously using the learners’ home language and second language in reading development among bilingual xhosa­english readers in a rural school in the eastern cape, south africa. the study adopted a quasi-experimental design where the participants attempted pre-tests in the targeted languages and then after an intervention were provided interventions using translanguaging techniques, thereafter they attempted post-tests. the findings indicate improved performance in terms of learners’ use of background knowledge when drawing inferences, instead of heavily relying on the reading text. the researchers argue for a literacy model that integrates skills and practices drawn from all accessible linguistic repertoires of learners when dealing with reading development at elementary grades since this helps learners develop a sense of self, which in return allows them to be active participants in their learning. keywords: reading, inferencing, xhosa, reading comprehension, multilingualism, elementary education 1. introduction the ability to draw inferences is probably one of the essential requirements for reading comprehension. it may help a reader understand complex and subtle implicit messages conveyed through the choice of particular vocabulary by the writer. drawing inferences possibly requires a reader to draw from their background knowledge in order to understand the text better. however, researchers have observed that learners in lower grades cannot draw inferences from the texts they read (madiba, 2013; manyike, 2012). the learners often decode print information without any clear evidence of comprehension whatsoever, whereas reading involves a comprehensive amount of cognitive processing, which includes inferring, integrating and evaluating a text for any inconsistencies and loose ends (pretorius, 2000). even though a number of factors may contribute to learners’ mr vukile desmond mgijima department of communication, mangosuthu university of technology, umlazi, durban. email: mgijima@mut.ac.za prof leketi makalela wits school of education, university of the witwatersrand, park town, johannesburg. email: leketi. makalel@wits.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i3.7 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(3): 86-93 © uv/ufs 87 mgijima & makalela the effects of translanguaging on the bi-literate inferencing strategies ... inability to draw relevant inferences (modisaotsile, 2012), these may be exacerbated by using monolingual models, practices and teaching approaches that tend to perpetuate the belief that education should only be conducted in one language. on the one hand, current research questions the validity of language boundaries in literacy and applied language studies (baker, jones & lewis, 2012) while the orthodox practices on the other, are still virtually linear and monolingual in orientation. reading development is done sequentially – in one language at a time – and languages are treated as separate and unrelated entities in multilingual classrooms regardless of the common underlying proficiencies that aid reading ability across languages. it is against this backdrop that this study sought to investigate an alternative teaching approach in which reading development can be enhanced by using two languages in the same lesson in grade 4 classes. this approach is referred to as translanguaging (garcia, 2009; hornberger & link, 2012). translanguaging has been found to be one of the models that enhance learners’ higher cognitive skills in reading development (garcia, 2009; hornberger & link, 2012). this approach deliberately alternates the language of input and output during a lesson, thus allowing a learner to think and express their ideas in whichever language they are comfortable. so far, however, there is paucity of research that has investigated the effects of translanguaging when teaching learners how to apply appropriate background knowledge in order to draw inferences. research on teaching inferencing skills tends to embed this skill into teaching comprehension skills in general, which clouds the significance of teaching inferencing as a unique skill that aids comprehension. this paper, therefore, presents the effects of translanguaging as a pedagogy when teaching grade 4 learners how to apply relevant background knowledge when drawing inferences during reading. first, the paper presents a literature review, in which we highlight the need for learners to be taught inferencing skills at lower grades when reading since research shows that they are unable to draw relevant inferences. then, we present the theoretical framework around which the study was based. finally, we show the effects of translanguaging as a strategy that can be utilised to enhance multilingual learners’ ability to apply background knowledge when making inferences during reading. the study focused on grade 4 learners who learn english as an additional language (l2) and isixhosa as the home language (l1) in the eastern cape in south africa. 2. related literature inferencing, in simple terms, can be defined as reading between the lines. in other words, it occurs when a reader blends pieces of information from a text with the reader’s background knowledge in order to arrive at a conclusion (kispal, 2008). the ability to draw inferences helps a reader understand complex and subtle implicit messages conveyed through the choice of particular vocabulary by the writer. currently, there is no consensus regarding a suitable pedagogy that seeks to address how to teach inferencing skills. the teaching of inferencing skills tends to be embedded into the teaching of reading comprehension. this clouds the importance of teaching inferencing as a distinct skill that aids comprehension. nonetheless, three main components ought to be addressed when teaching inferencing skills. these are lexical training, which focuses on the function and meaning of certain individual words in a text; question generation, in which learners are asked questions that would require them to make inferences and obtain supporting evidence from the text and prediction, in which learners use contextual clues to provide pieces of information that are missing from a text. 88 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) texts that are conducive for teaching inferencing skills at elementary levels should elicit more interest, prompt more explanations and enable one to make predictions. research in south africa shows that learners in lower grades cannot draw inferences from the texts they read (dbe, 2014). while reading involves a comprehensive amount of cognitive processing, learners in these grades often recite print information without drawing inferences from the text or noticing any inconsistencies and loose ends. manyike (2012) investigated reading and writing performance among xitsonga grade 7 learners in township schools. the learners attempted a reading and writing performance test in their home language, xitsonga. the reading component of the test tested, inter alia, text reorganisation skills and making inferences. findings indicated that learners performed poorly in the reading and writing skills, which concurs with the observation made by the national department of basic education (dbe, 2014) regarding the learners’ poor reading abilities in lower grades. little research locally and abroad has attempted to find out more about teaching inferencing skills in elementary grades. the common trend many researchers follow is to focus more on how to teach comprehension in general rather than inferencing specifically. it is assumed that methods that have been developed for general comprehension work in the classroom have the hallmarks of strategies known to be useful for imparting inferencing skills (kispal, 2008), whereas it is one’s ability to make correct inferences that aid comprehension and not the other-way-round. in essence, the ability to draw inferences predetermines one’s reading skills. that is, poor inferencing skills cause poor comprehension. the above studies clearly indicate that there is a need for learners to be explicitly taught inferencing skills in lower grades since they are unable to draw correct inferences when reading. while the national curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) document mentions drawing inferences as one of the strategies learners can use to understand texts better (dbe, 2011), numerous annual national assessment reports on the other hand, acknowledge that teaching inferencing skills is not an easy task for teachers to perform (dbe, 2013; 2014). the caps document, nonetheless, is silent on how inferencing skills should be taught. 3. theoretical framework this study is premised on the translanguaging paradigm. translanguaging is a concept that came about in the 1920s because of, inter alia, the struggle against english hegemony in wales, in which welsh was threatened in addition to countering the fallacy that stated that bilingualism caused mental confusion (baker, et al., 2012). the concept is attributed to cen williams (garcía, bartlett, & kleifgen, 2007) and refers to a pedagogical practice in a multilingual classroom in which a learner receives input in one language and gives output in a different one. the practice deliberately switches the language mode of input and output in a well-planned and organised manner to mediate information processing (lewis, jones & baker, 2012). garcia has broadened the concept to include multiple discursive language practices a multilingual person engages in at school, the street and beyond to formulate and express thoughts to make sense of the world (garcia, 2009). in other words, translanguaging aids meaning making using two or more languages utilised in a dynamic and functionally integrated manner. translanguaging differs from other theories of language acquisition such as the linguistic and the threshold hypotheses in that it recognises the various linguistic varieties a learner has acquired as a single repertoire which a learner utilises to communicate (celic & seltzer, 2011). 89 mgijima & makalela the effects of translanguaging on the bi-literate inferencing strategies ... unlike the linguistic interdependency and the threshold hypotheses which claim that the successful development of a second language at school depends on l1-l2 transfer (cummins, 2005), translanguaging advocates for the simultaneous use of the learners’ tapestry of languages to acquire, construct and communicate knowledge. the linguistic and the threshold hypotheses give the impression that they assume a linear approach to language development – a skill has to be obtained in one language first and then transferred to another at a later stage. furthermore, these hypotheses seem to engage a monoglossic approach to language acquisition in that they treat the languages in a learner’s repertoire as separate and unrelated entities. in essence, these hypotheses do not appear to cater for common underlying proficiencies that aid abilities across languages, which might allow for simultaneous development in two or more languages. one may wonder how translanguaging differs from code switching. translanguaging posits that bilinguals have a single integrated linguistic repertoire from which they strategically draw appropriate features to communicate effectively. code switching differs from translanguaging in that the former assumes that the linguistic repertoire of a multilingual person comprises multiple separate language systems between which the speaker switches to express a thought. as a pedagogical approach, the teacher often code switches by switching from the prescribed official language of teaching to another language or the learners’ home language and back again (probyn, 2015). unlike code switching, translanguaging as a pedagogical approach is a result of deliberate alternating of languages of input and output between the teacher and the learners in order to optimise understanding. in essence, translanguaging may be regarded as a process through which a teacher affords learners the opportunity to formulate and share ideas using a tapestry of vocabulary in their entire linguistic repertoire. it allows a space for multilingual language learners to apply different dimensions of their experiences and linguistic knowledge into one coordinated and meaningful performance. previous research demonstrates that enhanced cognitive and metacognitive skills are achieved when translanguaging techniques are applied in a multilingual classroom (garcia et al., 2007). canagarajah (2011) observes that translanguaging empowers one to be confident in one’s identity and to draw from one’s background to communicate effectively with a clear voice. it may also afford one the opportunity to interact and negotiate meaning on an equal footing. creese and blackledge (2010) investigated bilingual interaction in two complementary schools to establish whether translingual strategies work in the classroom. they found that their participants simultaneously used two languages to convey clearer messages to each other. in order to increase the inclusion, participation and enhanced understanding during the learning process, the teachers employed flexible bilingualism as an instructional strategy to engage students. in some instance, a teacher introduced a concept in one language and explained it in another or asked a question in one language and expected the learners to respond in another. they conclude that one language needed another in order to make complete sense. a translanguaging model was adopted for this study to facilitate inference-making strategies using the learners’ home language and english in the same lesson in a grade four classroom. simultaneously using two languages would possibly reflect the learners’ identities in a positive light in the learning process, which could encourage them to consciously engage and take ownership, resulting in deeper understanding and desirable outcomes of the process. 90 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) 4. the study the study used quantitative and qualitative means of data collection. for the quantitative methodology, a battery of tests that included pre-tests and post-tests, comprising mostly open-ended questions was used. observations and field notes were used to collect data for the qualitative section of the data collection. research design this study adopted a preand post-test quasi-experimental design. according to dornyei (2007), quasi-experimental research seeks to find out whether the participants’ behaviour might be changed after they have been exposed to some intervention or planned learning experience. this design suited this study well because the researchers would be able to establish the cause-effect connection between the intervention and the learner performance. furthermore, this design would allow for the data obtained to be analysed within and between the groups of participants. the purpose of the preand post-tests was to establish the participants’ reading comprehension and their ability to draw inferences at the baseline and at the end. after the pre-test, a translanguaging intervention was introduced, after which the participants completed a post-test. one of the authors was actively involved in the translanguaging intervention; he co-taught the class with the subject teachers. the intervention was done during the scheduled class time, as provided for in the school timetable. it was also done in the regular classrooms used for teaching reading in the languages targeted for the research, which are english and isixhosa as subjects. the intervention of the study was conducted over two weeks, which comprised five class periods of 5 hours in total. furthermore, qualitative methods of data collection in the form of observation and field notes were also used. the researcher observed whether the participants seemed confused in any way by the exercise. field notes were recorded to capture occasions that might suggest possible confusion due to the process. population and sampling after all ethical issues had been cleared; one rural school in quintile 2 in the matatiele district in the eastern cape was selected to participate. schools classified as quintiles 1 to 3 are mostly rural and have the poorest learners, measured by the socio-economic conditions of the surrounding communities in which the schools are situated. some learners in these schools are exempt from paying school fees and the schools are eligible to benefit from the government’s national school nutrition programme. a rural school was considered for the study because schools located in rural areas perform badly in the annual national assessments and need more support to improve the quality of education (dbe, 2014). the matatiele district was chosen because it is one of the districts in the eastern cape that performs poorly in the annual national assessments. the research also used a purposive sampling method in that the school was chosen based on the languages used for teaching and learning from grade r to grade 3. the l1 for most of the learners at the school is supposed to be isixhosa and learners were transitioning into english as the language of teaching and learning in grade 4. english, as the first additional language and isixhosa, as mother tongue, were offered at the school in grade 4. 91 mgijima & makalela the effects of translanguaging on the bi-literate inferencing strategies ... initially, there were two groups of participants from two different rural schools in matatiele, eastern cape. one group, which was the control group, had to be excluded from the study due to an irregularity that occurred during data collection. this irregularity would negatively influence the results of the study. as a result, 61 grade 4 learners aged between 9 and 12 years from one rural school in matatiele participated in the study. they attempted a pre-test at baseline and a post-test at the end. data collection the research adopted quantitative means of data collection in which two tests, a preand a post-test, were used. the tests were designed to assess the learners’ ability to draw inferences from the texts. the texts on which the test questions were based were written in isixhosa, which was the learners’ l1 and english, their l2. each test was written during the class period according to the school class schedule. each test had a separate reading passage for each language followed by two sets of comprehension check and text-based open-ended questions. the questions sought to assess the learners’ higher cognitive and critical thinking skills. to this effect, the learners were required to respond in writing to questions in which they had to use relevant background knowledge to provide the correct inference that could be drawn from the reading text. each test had 11 questions, five of which were considered for this paper and deemed sufficient to enable the researcher to make deductions from the answers to determine whether learners could draw inferences. the reading passages were fictional narrative texts about animals and contained approximately 300 words. to ensure the quality and the appropriate level of the language, the reading texts were adopted from the learners’ language textbooks. during the tests, each reading passage was read aloud by the teacher while learners listened to and read along silently. the questions for the preand post-tests and for each language had been typed and printed out onto a4 size sheets. each participant had their copy to read from and answered the questions on the answer spaces provided for each question/ item. even though the content was different, similar text types (i.e. narratives of approximately the same length) for both languages were used for the pre-tests and post-tests. soon thereafter, the learners answered questions based on the passage using the language the text was written in. even though the purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of translanguaging as a teaching approach, in which two or more languages are juxtaposed in the same text or lesson, for test taking it was deemed appropriate to require learners to provide answers in the same language as the one the passage and assessment questions had been asked. this was done in accordance with the standard assessment practice in south africa. the learners’ responses were scored from 1 to 4 per item, with 4 being the correct answer in which the learner had applied appropriate background knowledge, 3 was an acceptable answer which the learner obtained from the reading text, 2 was used to indicate an incorrect answer and 1 indicated an incorrect answer obtained as is from the reading text. translanguaging treatment conditions during the translanguaging treatment, learners were explicitly taught how to draw inferences when reading. the reading passages that were used for the translanguaging treatment were obtained from the learners’ textbooks and an online source, nal’ibali (nal’ibali, 2016). each reading passage was written in two languages. english and isixhosa had been used in different paragraphs of the same text and in various sentences in the same paragraph. one of the authors actively taught and sometimes, co-taught the class with the subject teachers. 92 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) short passages of approximately 50 words were used to introduce the concept of reading a text in one language and answering questions in a different one. after two encounters, the length of the reading passages was increased to approximately 300 words. learners were provided with copies of printed reading passages in which isixhosa and english had been used in respective paragraphs. the following procedure, details of which were outlined in the lesson plan, was followed. • before reading – learners were encouraged to make predictions about the text that was going to be read, including what they thought the text would be about based on the keywords that were usually provided at the initial stages of the process. • during reading – the teacher/researcher often checked with the learners to verify or redirect their predictions. think-aloud strategies, as outlined in pannell (2014) were adopted, in which the teacher/researcher read the text aloud, paused at certain points and asked questions whose answers could only be provided by making logical inferences and then the teacher/researcher verbalised his thinking in order to help learners make the correct inferences. learners were guided on how to apply prior knowledge and the facts from the text to draw correct inferences. for questions whose answers could be located in the passage, even though not explicitly stated in one sentence, the learners were required to provide evidence on which they based their reasoning. in essence, each answer a learner provided was often followed by the question “how do you know? please, support your answer” which was asked in a different language from the one the text was written in. having learners explain their answers helped them to think deeper about what they were doing. the teacher/researcher modelled the inferencing procedure until the students could begin to take over the necessary steps, finally successfully reasoning on their own. • after reading – when the teacher/researcher had finished reading, learners read the passage and asked each other questions about what they had just read. they were asked to summarise in one or two sentences what the passage was about (the main idea/s). they were also encouraged to ask questions about vocabulary and/or a statement they did not understand. in essence, translanguaging methods were used to explicitly teach the participants how to draw inferences from a text by applying relevant background knowledge. the participants were asked questions in a different language from the one in which the answers (clues) were provided in the passage. they were allowed to use either language to provide their answers. during the pre-reading and the reading stages of each lesson, the participants were required to provide answers orally but for the post-reading activities, they were required to work in pairs and write their answers down. for questions whose answers could be located in the passage, even though not explicitly stated in one sentence, learners were required to provide evidence by referring to a sentence on which they based their reasoning. data analysis to establish whether translanguaging techniques enhanced the learners’ ability to apply background knowledge when drawing inferences, the results of the pre-test and the post-test were compared using the descriptive statistical package for social sciences (spss) to obtain measures of central tendencies (mean) and dispersion (standard deviations). a paired t-test was used to examine the results of the two tests in order to compare means and to establish whether the results were statistically significant. the calculations for the t-test were pitched at an alpha value of 0.05 to measure statistical significance. 93 mgijima & makalela the effects of translanguaging on the bi-literate inferencing strategies ... results sixty-six grade 4 learners in one school participated in the study. the results showed that at the baseline, the participants obtained a mean of 6.90 in isixhosa and 6.08 in english. the standard deviation was 1.89 in isixhosa and 1.88 in english. with regard to the post-tests, 61 participants attempted the test and obtained a mean score of 10.51, with a standard deviation of 1.94 in isixhosa, while the mean score was 9.28 with a standard deviation of 2.78 in english. table 1: a summary of the results showing the end-point gains between the two languages n. valid n. missing mean std. dev. end-point gains isixhosa pre-test 66 0 6.90 1.89 3.61 isixhosa post-test 61 5 10.51 1.94 english pre-test 66 0 6.08 1.88 3.20 english post-test 61 5 9.28 2.78 the results showed that the participants performed better in the post-tests than they did in the pre-tests. for instance, a comparison of the preand post-test results of isixhosa showed that the participants gained a mean score of 3.61, while they gained a mean score of 3.20 in english. these remarkable gains indicate that the translanguaging intervention had a positive contribution to the participants’ performance in the two languages. the results of a paired t-test showed a significant difference between the pre-test and the post-test for isixhosa (t=-9.831; df=60; p<0.005) and for english (t=-8.047; df=60; p<0.05). as it may be observed in table 1, five learners were absent from school on the day the post-tests were written and as such, their responses were excluded when a paired t-test was run. the group was found to be homogenous in terms of applying higher cognitive and critical thinking skills when reading in either language at baseline. in other words, the performance of most of the participants could be located around a central point. this was reflected by the standard deviation of 1.89 in isixhosa and 1.88 in english, each of which shows a stronger level of homogeneity since it is far-off from the mean. at the end, the level of homogeneity seemed to have marginally increased. the dispersion levels of the group increased to 1.94 in isixhosa and 2.78 in english. this means that participants who could apply background knowledge at the baseline became even better due to the intervention. in essence, the results show that translanguaging enhances learners’ ability to apply background knowledge when reading, thus improving reading comprehension. discussion previous studies have shown that translanguaging has the potential to enhance cognitive abilities of multilingual learners (baker, et al., 2012; garcía, et al., 2007; madiba, 2012). however, there has been paucity of research on the effects of translingual techniques in reading trajectories among isixhosa-english bilinguals in elementary grades. this study has demonstrated that translanguaging techniques improve learners’ ability to draw relevant inferences when reading in either isixhosa or english. presented below are the effects of translanguaging on teaching reading and inferencing skills on each language. 94 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) the effects of translanguaging techniques on isixhosa the results of the research reflected significant improvement on the participants’ ability to draw appropriate inferences when reading (t=-9.831; df=60; p<0.005). this rejects the belief that education should only be carried out in one language and corroborates previous research in this area (see for instance baker et al., 2012). the results reflected that the participants gained more in isixhosa than they did in english. they gained a mean of score of 3.61 in isixhosa, while the gain in english was 3.20. the reason for the gap between isixhosa and english gains may be due to the fact that learners had been taught in isixhosa, their mother tongue, in the previous grades and their english proficiency was still limited. . madiba (2012) observes that more benefits can be realised when learners’ different language repertoires are utilised in a manner that complements each other in the classroom instead of competes against each other. as learners in this grade are transitioning into english as the medium of instruction, translanguaging in this regard neutralises the potential cognitive deficit that might be caused by the early exit from mother tongue tuition to english and facilitates a smooth transition and crosspollination of cognitive competences across the languages. the effects of translanguaging techniques on english translanguaging substantially enhanced learners’ ability to apply background knowledge when answering questions based on the english reading text (t=-8.047; pf=60; p<0.05). these findings are consistent with previous research on the impact of translanguaging on higher cognitive abilities (see lewis, et al., 2012). it was observed that the gains in isixhosa were higher than english. the seemingly less gains in performance in additional language in the current study might be because it takes learners considerably longer to master a language learning skill in l2 than l1. this corroborates makalela’s (2012) findings on the effects of bi-literacy development on sepedi, which is an african language and english. he observed that sepedi showed significant gains while gains in english were statistically insignificant. furthermore, the findings in this study contradict assertions from bilingual research that claim that more exposure to l2 reading improves l1 reading abilities (see pretorius & mampuru, 2007). what can be deduced from these results is that the learners’ l1 and l2 need not be seen as competing against each other but as complementary to one another (madiba, 2013) in order to facilitate cognitive skills transferrable across languages. this contradicts the observation made by the linguistic interdependency hypotheses, which posit that language transfer is sequential and one-directional. in other words, successful l2 acquisition always comes after and depends on l1. incidental observations what has also been established in the study is that the participants have remained immune from the negative effects assumed could result from translanguaging – i.e. that translanguaging causes mental confusion. during the intervention, no indication of mental confusion or any behaviour that could be associated with confusion due to the process was observed. instead, the participants were interested and enthusiastic about the undertaking. when they noticed that the languages were being interchanged during the facilitation and had been switched on the reading text as well, they became more interested in the process and seemed freer to use either language in class. this defends translanguaging as a multilingual pedagogy even further from being viewed from the negative light and as baker (2012: 643) puts it, “from causing mental confusion to the benefits of dual language capability, [and] from solitudes to synergies”. 95 mgijima & makalela the effects of translanguaging on the bi-literate inferencing strategies ... limitations of the study one may have noted that during the test taking, the teachers read out the passages and the questions to the learners, while learners listened and read along silently. this deviates from the standard test/exam-taking procedure in which a learner reads on their own, silently and then answers the questions. moreover, the participants were assessed on the ability to draw inferences only whereas the annual national assessments cover a comprehensive amount of aspects, which, due to the limited scope of the paper, could not be considered. during a normal examination, for instance, learners are often required to produce a piece of writing or answer questions using correct language, grammar and punctuation. it can be argued that if the teachers had not read out to the learners and the scope of the research had not been limited to the participants’ ability to draw inferences only, it is not unlikely that the results of the study could have been different. furthermore, the study would have been strengthened by the data from the control group, the results of which had to be discarded since one of the teachers interfered with the data collection process and suggested correct answers to the participants. the results of this study cannot be generalised since the participants and the research context cannot be representative of all grade 4 learners in south africa. however, within the scope of this study it is possible to claim validity since the researchers had a recognisable number of participants from whom they collected data. furthermore, the data collected from the study was read several times to check for any possibility of factors that might require further analysis until a saturation point was reached. 5. conclusion this study sought to investigate the effects of translanguaging in teaching grade 4 learners how to apply relevant background knowledge when reading texts. the post-test results of the experimental group showed that learners’ application of background knowledge improved since the day they took the pre-tests and the extent of improvement is higher in isixhosa than in english. it can be presupposed that their seemingly less gains in performance in the additional language might be due to limited proficiency in the target language and the fact that they had not yet gained full control of flexible reading strategies due to limited reading instruction in both languages. this paper contributes to the current research on reading development at elementary levels and affirms translanguaging as an appropriate approach that should be considered when teaching. therefore, it can be concluded that translanguaging had a substantial impact on enhancing learners’ ability to apply background knowledge when answering questions based on a reading text. these findings are consistent with research on the impact of translanguaging on higher cognitive skills such as drawing inferences. the paper challenges the prevailing monolithic ideologies about language in education and argues for the engagement of an alternative multilingual approach, such as translanguaging, to enhance reading trajectories in multilingual elementary classrooms. there is a need for more studies to augment the view of translanguaging as an effective pedagogy to enhance higher order thinking skills. references baker, c. jones, b. & lewis, g. 2012. translanguaging: origins and development from school to street and beyond. educational research and evaluation, 18(7), 641–654. https://doi.org/1 0.1080/13803611.2012.718488 96 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) canagarajah, s. 2011. codemeshing in academic writing: identifying teachable 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africa. nal ‘ibali, 2016. nal ‘ibali. available at: http://nalibali.co.za/ [accessed 15 april 2016]. pretorius, e.j. 2000. “what they can’t read will hurt them:” reading and academic achievement. innovation, 21, 33-41. pretorius, e.j. & mampuru, d.m. 2007. playing football without a ball: language, reading and academic performance in a high-poverty school. journal of research in reading, 30(1), 38–58. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9817.2006.00333.x probyn, m. 2015. pedagogical translanguaging: bridging discourses in south african science classrooms. language and education, 29(3), 218-234. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500782.20 14.994525 215 research article 2022 40(4): 215-226 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6078 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) educators’ perspectives on the relevance of social and emotional learning skills in south africa abstract youth have difficulty making the transition from education to the workplace in the fourth industrial revolution. high levels of youth unemployment prevail in south africa, and it is necessary to find ways to assist youth to enter the workplace. the purpose of this grounded theory study is to explore how educators view the efficacy of social and emotional learning (sel) skills in the learning environment. there is evidence worldwide that implementation of sel skills is effective for improving academic achievement as well as success in the future life. findings indicate that 68 participating purposive selected educators, who wrote written responses to openended questionnaires, believe sel skills would have a positive impact on the learning environment; would be essential for learners to become future ready; and would be beneficial to themselves as educators both personally and professionally. educators referred frequently to the importance of building interpersonal relationships, self-management and social awareness skills. it would be prudent, as a next step of exploration, to collaborate with educators and learners to co-construct effective interventions and formal support structures with policymakers, for the benefit of all those in the learning environment. keywords: social and emotional learning, transition to work, educators’ perspectives 1. introduction the transition from education to the workplace has become complex with the advent of fourth industrial revolution (4th ir). the difficulty arises because youth are not always equipped with the necessary market related skills nor the personal “human” skills to navigate this change (organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd), 2020; schonert-reichl, 2019; schwab, 2016). “human skills” are personal social and emotional skills that help people achieve their potential. market-related technological skills are key skills for employability in the 4th ir. however, youth also need to be empowered with personal human skills to navigate their way successfully into the workplace. author: dr gloria marsay1 affiliation: 1university of the free state, south africa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v40i4.6078 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(4): 215-226 published: 23 december 2022 received: 25 february 2022 accepted: 19 november 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6078 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2946-2044 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6078 2162022 40(4): 216-226 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6078 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) the intention of this study is to generate relevant and useful knowledge, in close partnership with educators, that will help to inform theory and practice in the south african context. this study explores how educators, who work with the youth in south africa, perceive the relevance of sel skills, and how these skills could form a foundation for appropriate interventions. the south african study was part of a larger international study, in which 18 other countries participated. the results of the broader international study are published elsewhere. this paper is a “snapshot” in a video of a much longer research process which continues. building future-ready resilient youth with hope for success in their future requires an important shift in perspective and practice, especially when designing interventions among high-need, high-risk youth (solberg, park & marsay, 2020). as a psychologist working in the field of assisting young people make a successful transition, i endeavoured to explore where the gaps are, and what sort of skills would be appropriate and effective for youth in south africa. the question i am confronted with is what sort of intervention would assist youth struggling to make a successful transition from education to earning a sustainable livelihood. using an informed grounded theory (gt) approach, i took advantage of my experience in this field of work which has been informed by pre-existing theories and used findings in the substantive field in a sensitive, creative and flexible way (charmaz & thornberg, 2021). 2. background 2.1 the south african context youth in south africa face many adversities driven by poverty, inequality, and unemployment (department of higher education and training (dhet), 2016). during the fourth quarter of 2021, youth aged 15-24 years and 25-34 years recorded the highest unemployment rates of 66.5% and 43.8%, respectively (statistics south africa q4, 2021). the high youth unemployment rate, within the context where informal labour markets predominate, renders the expression ‘career guidance’ inappropriate. considering the adversities facing youth in south africa, the concept of career can be replaced with more appropriate language that speaks about finding appropriate ways to earn a sustainable livelihood (marsay, 2014; marsay, 2020; marsay et al., 2021). in the absence of adequate formal employment, which is characteristic of most economically developing countries, including south africa, it is appropriate to think within the framework of ‘livelihood’ as opposed to formal employment when trying to understand how people generate incomes to heave themselves out of poverty. young people do not have a positive sense of hope for their future (de lannoy et al., 2018; engelbrecht et al., 2015; ndlovu & walton, 2016). scholars criticise the relevance of universal theories of career guidance in economically developing countries (arulmani, 2014; ribiero, 2020; sultana, 2020). theories and practices developed in more developed countries are often based on freedom of choice, and a plethora of opportunities. the reality in south africa, is that young people are not always able to choose subjects at school, nor are they all provided with quality education (jansen, 2019; spaull & jansen, 2019). due to several limiting factors, young people are reliant on their specific communities for support and opportunities. thus, theories from more developed countries, which are often based on freedom of choice and ample opportunities, are not always appropriate for the vast majority of south africans. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6078 2172022 40(4): 217-226 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6078 marsay educators’ perspectives on the relevance of social and emotional learning skills i prefer a narrative way of working using an integrated approach to develop “hope for a sustainable livelihood” (marsay, scioli & omar, 2018: 709). the integrated approach combines the constructs of hope (scioli & biller, 2009, 2010) within a sustainable livelihoods’ framework (chambers & conway, 1992). this approach moves away from “guidance and counselling” (which is by its nature power based) to “empowering and enabling” (which encourages and develops personal agency). young people are empowered and enabled when they have adequate human capital and personal agency to navigate themselves through the challenges they face in a developing country. health, skills and motivation are key to earning a sustainable livelihood. livelihood strategies include what people do, with what they have, taking assets and vulnerability into account, while being supported by effective policies and processes. 2.2 policies and curricula to address the issue of unemployment a significant body of research suggests sel interventions linked to personal agency (motivation) and educational achievement (skills) are critical for preparing youth to be future ready (solberg et al., 2020; marsay et al., 2021). furthermore, jagers, rivas-drake and williams (2019) emphasise how transformative sel skills are for addressing equity among a culturally diverse youth. currently, south africa is implementing a national skills development plan 2030 (2019) which aims to mobilise and align education with demands of the workplace emphasising technical skills required for high demand occupations. it is expected that in time the focus will include future readiness skills, such as social and emotional learning skills. strides are being made to introduce technical skills into the curriculum from primary school. however, the grade 10,11 and 12 learners have not benefitted from this initiative. the life orientation curriculum drafted by department of basic education (dbe) is a compulsory subject that tries to address transition from education to the workplace (dbe 2011:5). despite this curriculum statement, there is evidence that the implementation of the curriculum has difficulties (seherrie & mawela, 2021; swarts, de sousa & rens, 2019; pillay 2012). the responsibility to impart future-ready skills to the youth within the south african context often lies with the educators, who may also be primary caregivers and role models of young people (marsay, 1996; theron & theron, 2010). the rapidity with which change is taking place in the workplace is profound and needs to be urgently addressed. 2.3 the task of conceptualising sel in south africa there is no clear theoretical or conceptual foundation that guides the development of interventions referred to as social and emotional learning (sel). rather, the approach to social and emotional learning is influenced by multiple theories, contexts and frameworks (haynes 2021). drawing from findings of several studies worldwide (durlak et al., 2011; schonert-reichl, 2019; zins, elias & greenberg, 2003) sel interventions improve academic achievement and success in future life. the collaborative for academic, social, and emotional learning (casel, n.d.) suggest that the fundamentals of sel can help all young people and adults: to thrive personally and academically; to develop and maintain positive relationships; to become lifelong learners; and to contribute to a more caring, just world. the casel framework describes five core competencies, namely self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making (https://casel.org/). this study used these core competencies as a backdrop to guide the exploration. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6078 https://casel.org/ 2182022 40(4): 218-226 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6078 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) in summary, despite world-class policies and curricula designed to equip learners with relevant skills for the workplace, it would appear that implementing these policies and curricula are fraught with challenges. some of these challenges are because of difficult learning environments and others because educators lack adequate training and are over-burden (matoti, 2010). developing sel skills could help address various forms of inequity, empower young people and adults to co-create thriving schools and contribute to safe, healthy, and equitable communities. 3. methodology grounded theory (gt) emerged as a method of discovery described by glaser and strauss in 1967 to explain “what is going on” in a particular area of human endeavour. grounded theory exploration is an appropriate process used to address the gap between theory and empirical research. the approach used in this study aligns with the work of charmaz and thornberg (2021) who describe informed grounded theory approach as a systematic method of conducting research that shapes collecting data and provides explicit strategies for analysing data. this method helps researchers to generate new concepts, which may have direct application for professional policies and practices in the field of education and psychology. ethical clearance was granted by the institutional review board at boston university, since this study was part of an international research network. educators received written information regarding the purpose and process of the study and were invited to ask questions for clarity and transparency before they committed to voluntary participation. 3.1 participants given the diversity of the population, research within the south african context requires a specific respectful community-focused approach. rural communities are structured differently from urban communities and the research approach must be contextually appropriate. recognition of, and sensitivity to local knowledge, culture, and lived experiences guide the way in which research among communities in africa unfolds (khupe & keane, 2017; kramer, fynn & laher, 2019). the community, and not the researcher, is at the centre of this study. hence, it is fitting that the person collecting data is known to and trusted by the community and speaks the vernacular of the community. data were collected over a period of time by a person known to the community from educators in different contexts. a purposive sample of educators were selected from a broad spectrum of geographical, socio-economic, environmental, and cultural contexts. invitations to participate were sent to several schools serving diverse communities. ultimately there were 14 participants from schools in gauteng. 17 participants from western cape (wc), and 14 participants from urban schools and 23 from rural schools in kwazulu natal (kzn). all participants were educators working with grades 10, 11, and 12 learners. responses from 68 educators were valid for analysis. the number of years’ experience as an educator was between 1 year and 45 years. the average number of teaching years was 15,2 years. 3.2 procedure informed grounded theory methods specify analytic strategies, not data collection methods (charmaz, 2000). initially a “spill question” (nathaniel, 2020) asked the educators about their knowledge and experience of sel skills, prompted a general discussion. the discussion was followed by an open-ended questionnaire, which was selected because of limited resources http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6078 2192022 40(4): 219-226 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6078 marsay educators’ perspectives on the relevance of social and emotional learning skills and language differences. english was the chosen language for the questionnaire that was handed out by the person collecting data, who was known and trusted by the community and was able to converse in the appropriate vernacular of the school environment. participants were encouraged to respond anonymously by writing down their own experiences and perspectives of sel skills. the people who collected the data explained their field observations and experiences to me. i was responsible for the processes of analysis. i used the approach described by charmaz and thornberg (2021). the first part of the questionnaire established the context of the school and some biographical details of the participating educators. significant details of biographical data were organised using an excel spreadsheet so that comparisons could be made to understand the educators’ perspectives in context. the second part used open-ended questions in english to explore the educators’ perspectives of sel skills within their context. the open-ended questions were: • does your school offer social emotional learning skills programmes or activities? if so, please describe the programmes and activities being implemented. • consider the impact of the educator’s use of sel skills on students’ learning and engagement in school. describe your thoughts. please describe a situation or incident in which using sel skills can help educators work more effectively with students in the classroom. • please describe how sel skills are relevant in helping educators support young people in making successful postsecondary transitions and/or preparing to enter the world of work. theoretical sampling and theoretical saturation which depend on pursuing an iterative analytical process, constantly moving back and forth between raw data and constructed categories contributing to the “trustworthiness” and quality of the study (charmaz & thornberg, 2021). an iterative process began by listening to the experiences of the people who collected the data (field notes and observations). then the researcher read through and transcribed each answer before labelling answers with key words. key words taken from the data were used to code. this line-by-line coding leads to refining and specifying extant concepts (charmaz, 2000). organisation and management of research data was assisted using analytical diagrams and memos, and codebooks which were all revisited in a reflexive process. separate codebooks were written for each province, as well as urban and rural schools. constant comparative analysis was used. these codebooks were compared, looking for similarities and differences. ultimately all the codes were clustered into categories and then themes. only once codes were identified by each country did comparative discussions take place to discuss differences and similarities between countries. ultimately nvivo was used to compare data collected from all participating countries. unique codes from each country were identified. the findings from these comparisons are discussed elsewhere. the gt analysis tells a story about people, social processes, and situations (charmaz, 2000). a final visit to findings in literature is useful to conceptualise the sel in sa context. the findings and discussion below illustrate how the perceptions of south african educators resonate with literature. the findings are presented as a set of interrelated constructs and explanatory statements are used to detail the relationship between categories and contexts. raw data in the form of direct verbatim quotes are used to support the storyline. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6078 2202022 40(4): 220-226 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6078 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) 4. findings and discussion participating educators’ perspective is that sel skills are indeed important in the learning environment. although educators were familiar with the constructs of sel skills, none of them were aware of the casel (n.d.) framework (https://casel.org/). 32 of the 68 educators (17 from urban and 15 from rural schools) stated sel skills were not taught in their schools. 31 of the educators (24 from urban and 7 from rural schools) answered that the constructs of sel skills were taught in their school, either in the compulsory life-orientation curriculum or in the religious studies curriculum. 5 educators did not answer the question, which was interpreted as unsure. all participating educators felt that sel skills would benefit the learning environment. however, it is noteworthy that 32 of the 68 responses stated that sel skills are not taught in their schools. the following response from an educator in a rural school illustrates the importance of sel skills generally. “young people need this kind of learning to prepare them for the challenges and adversities/diversities outside of school.” educators identified relationship-building, self-management and social awareness most frequently as important skills for both creating more positive learning environment as well as assisting youth make a successful transition. the variation and complexity of the responses from educators quoted in this discussion illustrate how interpersonal relationships, self-management and social awareness are interrelated and intersubjective. interpersonal relationships involve building relationships with diverse individuals and groups, as well as communicating clearly, resolving conflicts, helping others and seeking help. self-management includes self-control, emotion regulation, and self-discipline to do what is expected of key players (educators and learners) in the learning environment. the theme of social awareness clusters empathy, understanding, diversity, and recognising effective support systems. the following quote from an educator in western cape (wc) explains: “we are social beings. we need others to survive. therefore, relationship and communication skills help individuals form meaningful and fruitful bonds.” responses from educators illustrate the reality of the difficult learning environment, discussed earlier, and show the interrelatedness of these constructs. an educator from an urban school in kzn illustrates how pivotal educators’ social awareness is. this educator explains, “knowing more about social and economic background. if you are able to listen and know what learners are going through and where they come from it is much easier to interact with them. this will in turn create healthy relationships conducive to teaching and learning.” an educator from wc echoes this by saying, “social awareness reduces fear and discrimination. once you understand others and their background, you are less likely to fear them, instead you will feel empathy and show respect.” another educator from the wc says this about self-management: “this skill may help young people understand the importance that they may be alone in their endeavours and that they need to rely on positive coping mechanisms which can be developed in the classroom.” another educator from the wc said, “respecting others is a big part of growing up and this starts at home. sadly, teachers are now the ‘parents’ who need to teach learners to respect themselves first and then others.” an educator from gauteng said, “if a learner gives you attitude but the teacher knows that there is a history of abuse at home, then the way s/he reacts towards that learner’s behaviour will be different, simply because of that awareness.” http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6078 https://casel.org/ 2212022 40(4): 221-226 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6078 marsay educators’ perspectives on the relevance of social and emotional learning skills this quote from an educator in wc illustrates how interconnected the constructs of social awareness, self-management and self-awareness are, “learners will be aware of what is socially acceptable and unacceptable behavior they will be able to set goals for themselves because of a positive self-image which allows them to know their own strengths and weaknesses.” an educator from kzn illustrates how important these skills could be to reduce violence and inequality: “social awareness creates more respectful relationships with peers, bullying, xenophobia, racism, gender discrimination will all be reduced as mind states change.” self-awareness can be described as the ability to label feelings and relate feelings to thought and behaviour; be aware of strengths and challenges. this theme of self-awareness had fewer responses from educators and may illustrate a nuance of a more collectivist society. the following quotes highlight the relationship between self-awareness and personal agency. an educator from gauteng says, “recognising strengths and self-efficacy gives a learner the confidence to face future challenges.” an educator from a rural school in kzn explains, “selfawareness is a relevant sel skill in helping support young people, it creates the mindset of individuality and allows one to accept who they are, their goals and their personality.” educators believe that self-awareness is a more important skill in determining the choice of work learners can do rather than decision-making. this sentiment is explained by an educator in kzn, “to be able to face the outside world and survive, they need to know who they are and what drives them as individuals.” educators regard the well-being of self and others, evaluating consequences of actions, and making safe choices for self, others, and the environment as responsible decisionmaking. the following quotes from educator in rural kzn gives testimony to decision-making in terms of a safe school environment, “decision-making skills are important for everyday life, especially when it comes to safety concerns regarding our learners”. the educators’ perspectives regarding decision-making imply that interpersonal relations and the well-being of self and others are important, reflecting the interconnectedness of these constructs. an educator from gauteng says, “differentiating between right and wrong develops excellent self-management skills and will benefit learners later on in life”. an educator from wc says, “we must allow them to make decisions and to take responsibility for their actions. make them aware of what reactions can come from different actions.” the low frequency of responses regarding decision-making, as the least important skill for a successful transition into the world of work, may be attributed to the fact that young people in south africa have limited freedom of choice and are constrained by socio-economic conditions, religious values, and duties to the family (ribeiro, 2020). educators’ mental health and well-being are negatively impacted by their work, and they are at risk for compassion fatigue. schools are microcosms of diversity and can be places of violent multicultural dissonance, as discussed earlier. the perspective of participating educators reveals that positive classroom environment and improved educator efficacy and well-being were significant outcomes they would anticipate from developing sel skills. this finding is significant, as it highlights a possible way of ameliorating the problems in the learning environment. schools, where these interventions are implemented, may become places of safety and growth for young people. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6078 2222022 40(4): 222-226 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6078 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) furthermore, the voice of participating educators concurs with other studies worldwide, suggesting that educators benefit personally and professionally from being aware of, and implementing sel interventions. the following quote from an educator from kzn illustrate this: “educators will be effective in what they do; they will be more productive and fulfilled. they will also be able to look into areas of their own lives and make positive changes that will not only be beneficial to themselves, but also to the learners”. in summary, the response from the educators emphasises how a matrix of sel skills are critical for future readiness and life after school. learners are not only future workers; they are also future adults, parents, role models, citizens, and future decision-makers. this finding resonates with the findings of other studies worldwide. (jagers et al., 2019; jones, mcgarrah & kahn, 2019; nishina et al., 2019; schonert-reichl, 2019; yoder, 2015; oecd, 2020). casel (n.d.) asserts that sel skills could help address various forms of inequity, empower young people and adults to co-create thriving schools and contribute to safe, healthy, and equitable communities. 5. conclusion the perspectives of participating educators support a case for developing effective interventions to impart and develop sel skills, not only for learners, but also for educators. in south africa, where unemployment is rated as one of the highest in the world, youth need to become equipped with essential skills to do what they can, with the available resources to earn sustainable livelihoods in an environment where informal labour markets prevail. sel skills have been referred to as a key component of employability in the fourth industrial revolution of the 21st century. if educators in south africa perspective is that sel skills would ameliorate some of the problems in the learning environment, whilst providing learners with important skills to make a transition from education to the workplace, then it is essential to equip educators and learners with contextually relevant sel skills interventions. several studies within the south african context suggest that interventions would ameliorate problems encountered by both educators and learners in the learning environment (engelbrecht et al., 2015; matoti, 2010; theron, 2020; ungar & theron, 2020; zins et al., 2003). in south africa, we need to be mindful of developing future readiness programmes that are formulated from our needs, rather than using theories and practices, which may not be relevant for our context. a strong case can be made for implementing sel skills interventions to advance the south african learning environment (zins et al., 2003; solberg et al. 2020). grounded theory states a reality not the reality and remains open to refinement. thus, further research to understand the perspectives of learners is recommended before an appropriate contextual intervention can be created. theron (2020) advocates for practitioners in the community to better understand resources that matter most for specific groups of youth and educators themselves, and to tailor multisystemic interventions accordingly. hence, the voice of the youth and educators, within different contexts, needs to be heard and considered. it would be prudent to collaborate with educators, learners and policymakers, to co-construct effective interventions that develop sel skills within formal support structures, to benefit all those in the learning environment. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6078 2232022 40(4): 223-226 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6078 marsay educators’ perspectives on the relevance of social and emotional learning skills acknowledgments the author wishes to acknowledge and thank the members of the communities who participated and those who collected data for 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https://doi.org/10.1016/s2215-0366(19)30434-1 https://doi.org/10.1016/s2215-0366(19)30434-1 https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed558022.pdf https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ed558022.pdf _hlk100925400 _hlk103239818 pie32(3) book.indb perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 104 inclusion of disability issues in teaching and research in higher education chioma ohajunwa, judith mckenzie, anneli hardy & theresa lorenzo evidence suggests that the lack of inclusion of disability issues in the curricula of higher education institutions may result in the perpetuation of practices that discriminate against disabled people in the broader society. in light of this claim, this article investigates whether and how disability issues are included in the teaching and research of three faculties at the university of cape town (uct), namely the faculties of health sciences, humanities, and engineering and the built environment. a survey of disability inclusion was conducted across the faculties, followed by interviews with selected participants. the study revealed low levels of disability inclusion, and that disability is not viewed as an issue of social justice and transformation overall. however, there are pockets of inclusion, the nature of which differs for each faculty. in the faculty of engineering and the built environment, disability is included as an issue of legislation, space and environment, while the faculty of humanities focuses on the sociocultural and socio-economic impact of disability, and the faculty of health sciences introduces disability with an emphasis on individual impairment, environmental effects, community-based rehabilitation and inclusive development, as well as the prevention and management of disability. we propose the creation of an institutional system that will build the capacity of lecturers to include disability in teaching and research across faculties, in line with uct’s transformation agenda. keywords: disability inclusion, higher education institutions, teaching, research, curriculum theresa lorenzo disability studies programme, faculty of health sciences, university of cape town e-mail: theresa.lorenzo@uct.ac.za tel: 021 406 6326 anneli hardy department of statistics, university of cape town e-mail: ahardy.consulting@gmail.com judith mckenzie disability studies programme, faculty of health sciences, university of cape town e-mail: judith.mckenzie@uct.ac.za tel: 021 406 6318 chioma ohajunwa disability studies programme, faculty of health sciences, university of cape town e-mail: co.ohajunwa@uct.ac.za tel: 021 406 7704 inclusion of disability issues in teaching and research in higher education chioma ohajunwa, judith mckenzie, anneli hardy & theresa lorenzo 105 introduction the definition of ‘disability’ is a contested one, often framed in terms of the dichotomy between the medical model (focusing on individual impairment), on the one hand, and the social model (focusing on socially constructed barriers and human rights), on the other. for the purposes of this article, we adopt the definition of the united nations convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (uncrpd), where disability is viewed in a dynamic way, as “an evolving concept, and that disability results from the interaction between persons with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers that hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others” (un, 2006: 4). higher education institutions (heis) have a role to play in the mainstreaming of disability issues, as they are uniquely positioned “to stimulate progress and transform societies” (blumenthal & boelen, 2001: 10). thomas (2002: 39) notes that the “inability of people with impairments to undertake social activities is a consequence of the erection of barriers by a non-disabled majority”. the lack of disability inclusion in the curricula of heis can be viewed as one such restriction that serves to perpetuate stigmatisation of, and discrimination against disabled people. there is a need to create awareness regarding disability issues in curricula so that university graduates can challenge the barriers that exclude disabled people from mainstream activities. disability and curriculum traditionally, disability has been regarded as the domain of medical and charitable interventions. however, the task of developing and institutionalising equal opportunities for disabled people is an ongoing task that requires a two-pronged approach: first, addressing the individual’s needs related to the impairment and, secondly, removing societal and environmental barriers to participation (lorenzo, 2009). it is this second aspect that is best addressed through curriculum content that includes disability as an issue of diversity and as a human rights issue, in similar fashion to the way that gender and race issues have developed as critical components of the curriculum – both as objects of study in themselves, and as markers of inequality. in this study, we explore the extent to which disability issues are currently included in the curriculum. currently, post-school institutions address disability in a variable and ad hoc manner. however, recently, heis have begun to recognise their obligation to provide equitable access to tertiary education for a diverse range of students. the department of higher education and training (dhet) (2012) proposes commissioning a disability prevalence study in order to address the issue in a cohesive way, leading to the development of a national disability policy for post-school education. the green paper does not mention disability as a curriculum issue, except as an issue of diversity in the post-school context. perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 106 the literature on the integration of disability into the curriculum is scant. however, some heis are beginning to engage with it (peel & posas, 2009; duncan, alperstein, maters, lockers & gibbs, 2006; treby, hewitt & shah, 2006). indications are that training should be across disciplines, and focus on training independent and critical thinkers capable of policy-making, taking into account the different ways in which these policies impact on the lives of people with disabilities (bryen & shapiro, 1996). in this context, uct’s six strategic goals prioritise interventions for future development over the next five to 10 years. this study focuses on two strategic goals particularly relevant to disabled people, namely enhancing the quality and profile of uct’s graduates, and expanding and enhancing uct’s contribution to south africa’s development challenges (uct, 2009). research aim this study aims to investigate the extent and nature of disability inclusion in teaching and research in the faculties of health sciences (hs), engineering and the built environment (ebe), and humanities (hum) at uct, so as to provide a baseline and directions for furthering the disability inclusion. methodology a mixed-methods approach was used for the study. a concurrent nested strategy was done by collecting both quantitative and qualitative data. the quantitative method addresses the extent of inclusion, and is embedded in a predominantly qualitative study that addresses the nature of inclusion (cresswell, 2003). study population the study was conducted in three faculties: health sciences (hs), humanities (hum), and engineering and the built environment (ebe). there were 35 respondents (from across the three faculties) who participated in the study. hs has 11 main departments, and a full-time academic staff of 168. hum is the largest faculty at uct; there are 27 main departments in the faculty, with 202 fulltime academic staff. ebe has six departments, with 121 full-time academic staff (j. henny, pers. comm.). the participants in the survey were all academic staff from the three faculties who had indicated that they include disability in their teaching and/ or research. table 1: responses from departments in each of the three faculties faculty not including disability including disability no response total departments in each faculty health sciences 3 (28%) 8 (72%) 0 11 engineering and the built environment 1 (16%) 5 (84%) 0 6 humanities 5 (18%) 6 (22%) 16 (60%) 27 inclusion of disability issues in teaching and research in higher education chioma ohajunwa, judith mckenzie, anneli hardy & theresa lorenzo 107 data-collection methods the study was carried out from march 2010 to june 2011. data was gathered in three phases for the purpose of triangulation. phase 1: desktop review we reviewed the uct research reports, faculty handbooks, mission statement and strategic goals (uct, 2012) to determine the extent to which and how disability is included. the texts were reviewed and categorised according to whether they reflect an individual or a social model of disability, the use of disability-related policy contexts, and other understandings of disability. phase 2: survey a survey questionnaire was developed and sent out to all staff members in each of the three faculties, with the assistance of the heads of department. the questionnaire was purely for the purpose of identifying staff eligible for the in-depth interview, and simply asked whether disability was included in their teaching and research, and for how long it had been included. project information letters introduced the survey, and explained the project aims and what was expected of the participants. if the respondent did not include disability, s/he was asked to give reasons. if the respondent did include disability, s/he was invited to participate in an in-depth interview in phase 3. phase 3: in-depth interview an interview schedule was developed, based on the categories of disability used in the document review. the schedule included open-ended questions where participants could freely express their views on the topic. a digital recorder was used for the interviews (which lasted for approximately 45 minutes each), and there were 35 respondents in total. data analysis the data was analysed using different analytic processes, depending on which best identified the relevant data sources. desktop analysis research, curriculum and policy documents were coded, based on a medical or individualistic model, if the document was focused on either disease, trauma or health condition, or on individual treatment by professionals. on the other hand, documents were coded, based on a social model of disability if the research indicated loss or limitation of opportunities to participate in communal life on an equal level with others due to physical, attitudinal and social barriers that create disabling conditions and societal change at the political level. perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 108 texts were coded under the heading ‘policy’ if they referred to disability policies, and ‘other’ if they could impact on disability in any other way. the codes were entered into a microsoft excel spreadsheet, and descriptive statistics were derived. survey data the data from the survey were analysed using excel and spss to determine the number of departments and faculties that include disability, their focus, and their method of inclusion. interview data the recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim and an inductive analysis of the transcripts was done, focusing on manifest content analysis, guided by the research objectives (elo & kyngas, 2007). statements from the transcript that supported the identified themes were grouped together under the relevant categories. the results section below presents the results from the project. ethical considerations the interviews were conducted in venues and at times chosen by the participants. during each interview, a document defining the interview concepts was given to the participant, consent was obtained for the interview, and confidentiality was maintained. ethical approval was granted by the human research ethics committee of the faculty of health sciences at uct. limitations of the study where there was no response, no interviews were conducted. however, there may be various reasons for no response; this does not necessarily mean that there is no work being done on disability issues in that department. the data-recording method was changed in the course of the study. initially, the responses to the interviews in hs were written down. however, it became apparent that important data was being lost, so digital tape was used to record the interview sessions from the other two faculties – with the consent of the participants. results out of 35 respondents across the three faculties, 31 indicated that they include disability in their teaching. each of these gave multiple responses (table 2). inclusion of disability issues in teaching and research in higher education chioma ohajunwa, judith mckenzie, anneli hardy & theresa lorenzo 109 table 2: responses indicating disability inclusion in teaching using the different methods (31 respondents, with multiple responses) nature of disability inclusion humanities (n=21) health sciences (n=37) engineering and the built environment (n=11) as an impairment 6 (29%) 14 (38%) 2 (18%) as a participation and environmental issue 8 (38%) 11 (30%) 4 (36%) as part of practice/ service learning 7 (33%) 12 (32%) 5 (46%) staff members were asked to indicate whether they include disability-related policies in their teaching, and which policy they use the most (table 3). table 3: policies used by those practising disability inclusion policy humanities (n=15) health sciences (n=16) engineering and the built environment (n=4) united nations convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (un, 2006) 4 (27%) 6 (37.5%) 1 (25%) integrated national disability strategy (osdp, 1997) 2 (13%) 6 (37.5%) 1 (25%) the south african constitution (1996) 9 (60%) 4 (25%) 2 (50%) the qualitative data yielded the following themes: definition or understanding of disability; disability inclusion practices, and policy context of disability inclusion. each of these themes is discussed below, in terms of each faculty. understanding of disability in hum, disability is viewed as socially or culturally constructed, as an ‘otherness’, or ‘differentness’: … noticing a particular othering … those people who cannot walk like us, again, it’s always this point of reference, that we would be this normal somebody, and these other people will be constructed into various disabled groups (participant 3:1). some respondents also expressed a gendered view of disability, and positioned disability as an intersectional and human rights issue: so, i do look at the way in which men with impairments are constructed by society, but, i also look at how women are even more disadvantaged, because of their gender (participant 3:4). perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 110 in hs, there was little evidence of a purely medical view only focused on impairment; but there was a range of understandings of disability as a social issue, and of the extent to which social aspects should be the concern of a medical professional. some respondents adopted a biopsychosocial model focusing on the interaction of an individual with an impairment with their family and social environment. this perspective is further developed by respondents who view disability as an intersectional issue that interacts with race, class and gender in certain ways. barriers that construct disability were also noted, including language barriers for deaf people and for those who are expected to function in a second language without support. the impairment is considered in relation to the functioning of the person in his/her environment: well, for me it can be multi-faceted, anything that impacts on your activities of daily living, which could include at the work place, at home, job opportunities, teaching and learning, i think the most obvious one that comes to mind is always physical disability (participant 1:2). in ebe, some lecturers related to disability in terms of impairment type and the causes of disability. it is addressed as far as possible by means of technical interventions, which can help alleviate the impact. for architects, this relates to issues of universal design, where making provision for disability is integral to successful design. in this understanding, the complexity of disability lies in its dynamic nature and in its changing interaction with the environment. this was taken further by one respondent, to imply that the environment does create disability, even in the absence of individual impairment: in fact, the biggest disability in this country is the spatiality of the apartheid city; so in redressing disability, the way townships are constructed, i think a real challenge is to broaden the definitions of disability, and to critically assess how professionals are contributing to building disabled environments through the lack of attention to those areas (participant 2:1). disability in the curriculum this theme describes the various methods participants use to include disability in the curriculum. although all four methods – disability as an impairment, as an issue of participation and environmental restriction, as practice learning, and relating policies to disability – were used by staff members to introduce disability into their teaching, practice learning was the most significant method of inclusion for hum, and the second most significant for ebe. in hs, all four methods were used more or less equally. in hum, various methods are used to include disability in the curriculum. it is introduced as a module in coursework, and life histories are used in classrooms to teach students about disability. in the african gender institute, a life history – in the form of visual media – is used to engage with students and get them talking about disability issues. the students watch a movie that deals with issues of disability and discrimination, and the salient points that they raise afterwards are discussed inclusion of disability issues in teaching and research in higher education chioma ohajunwa, judith mckenzie, anneli hardy & theresa lorenzo 111 in class. this story shows strength and empowerment in disability, as opposed to disability being seen as ‘pitiful’: … and what the story does, it makes us see the other aspects of her, which are foregrounded at the expense of – and i put it in inverted commas – the ‘disability’ or the ‘impairment’. so we don’t see this disabled girl hobbling around on crutches, and see her only in terms of that. what we see, in fact, is this resourceful little girl, who goes and she earns money (participant 3:4). this perception of enablement is supported by the school of dance, where the body is viewed not from the position of ‘disabledness’, but from one of ability. the inclusion strategy employed in the school of dance is an ongoing, continuous interaction with disability issues, in both formal and informal spaces. so we do not look at what the body cannot do, but we look at what can the person do? what can the body do? and we move from that point (participant 3:1). in clinical psychology practice, disability is not taught as a course; it mostly comes up when it is part of a presenting case. the department of social development brings in teaching about disability as a spin-off of a crisis situation and its impact on family. in the education department, the main focus is on inclusive education. and, when it comes to inclusive education that i do with the school of education students, it’s about creating an awareness about disability, but not focusing on the condition (participant 3:6). in hs, the concern with disability is more apparent, as it can be regarded as their ‘core business’, and the traditional home of disability in heis for disability-inclusive services. a common strategy, especially in the health and rehabilitation sciences, is to adopt a graded approach over the years that moves from an individual impairment focus in first year towards examining the environmental effects of disability, and models of disability and primary health care; and then further, towards communitybased rehabilitation (cbr) and advocacy. psychiatry uses a case-study approach; students are required to follow up on an individual in the community, in terms of their families. disability is also considered as an issue in programmes such as nursing, where the follow-up of acute patients in the community highlights family and community issues. other strategies in hs are to focus on clinical skills; disability prevention; disability assessment for occupational health, and south african sign language courses. another approach to including disability in the curriculum is the ad hoc inclusion, expressed as ‘disability is addressed according to the need or demand for it’. this falls under the general domain of ‘creating an awareness of disability’, in which disability issues are highlighted when necessary. we are sensitive to race, and equity in access to services, and disability if it comes up. we do not do the work with disability as the major focus, but only look into it if it comes up (participant 1:13). perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 112 in ebe, the inclusion of disability issues in the curriculum is a new area; they view themselves as pioneers, in the sense of introducing and spreading disability-related issues in the curriculum: don’t forget we have just started this, although it (participant’s current disability-related project) is ten years old, what i’m doing, but it is still very much embryonic. (participant 2:2). another respondent expressed the novelty of the idea of disability inclusion thus: i haven’t as yet seen that we need to do anything more in our curriculum than simply developing tolerant, open-minded, compassionate individuals. but i’d be interested if someone were to challenge us, to say that (disability) must become more prominent. it’s the first time anyone has ever raised that issue, in fact, in your interview (participant 2:3). policy context of disability inclusion the study investigated what disability-specific and non-disability-specific policies were included in the teaching. this provides evidence for whether disability is understood as a rights issue, rather than as a predominantly medical issue. hum and ebe make the most use of the south african constitution, and hs makes use of all the policies mentioned more or less equally. some departments in hum engage more with policies than others do. while most departments teach on policies specific to their field of study, and only refer to certain disability policies, all the departments interviewed refer to the south african constitution, as it relates to what they teach. however, in certain departments, the students are allowed to identify policies of interest, which are then discussed in class; especially in the light of non-implementation of policy: other students will … students will bring up the constitution, and they’ll tell me that it’s the perfect document, and then i’ll ask them about the fact that … the lack of enforcement, which is the same kind of thing that i notice everywhere i am; that people can have the most perfect document, the most perfect policies, but they have to be enforced (participant 3:1). in hs, some respondents with a human-rights perspective drew heavily on the uncrpd and the integrated national disability strategy of south africa. there was also the approach that disability is integrated into other policies as far as possible: the policy we work with is the international covenant on social, economic and cultural rights. it is not specific to disability, but when it comes in, we address it (participant 1:13). there was at least one instance in which a level of frustration was shown at the use of different policies concerning disability, and the different conceptual underpinnings that they imply: my personal approach is inclusion, enablement, the social model. however, the department takes a medical approach, so disability issues do not come in as a formally integrated aspect of the teaching; but individuals bring that aspect in. the department uses the dsm (diagnostic & statistical manual of mental disorders), while i personally like to introduce the uncrpd (participant 1:8). some respondents in ebe were of the opinion that disability policy issues were not important, because what is required is technical expertise. others were guided by inclusion of disability issues in teaching and research in higher education chioma ohajunwa, judith mckenzie, anneli hardy & theresa lorenzo 113 professional considerations as to what skills members of the profession need to be able to demonstrate. in architecture, legal requirements were noted, with the strong proviso that legal requirements should not be the motivation for inclusion of disability issues, as this was regarded as a moral requirement: we have to comply with the universal access act, which really is about redress of the physical environment with respect to making all buildings accessible to people with various – particularly physical – disabilities, ‘cause buildings are physical manifestations. so that is embedded in all of our pedagogy (participant 2:1). table 4 presents a summary of the different ways in which staff members include disability in their teaching, per faculty, and indicates the different approaches by various disciplines. this reflects the interdisciplinary nature of disability in hei curricula. table 4: a summary of inclusion strategies and focus areas in all three faculties faculty focus method health sciences individual impairment environmental effects models of disability and primary health care community-based rehabilitation (cbr) and advocacy family context community issues disability prevention programme management disability assessment for occupational health south african sign language courses for making healthcare services accessible for deaf persons and families clinical practice case study approach engineering and the built environment legislation: accessibility and reasonable accommodation space and environment lectures discussion groups practical experiences humanities sociocultural aspects of disability socio-economic class, lack of resources mental health intellectual impairment family context development practice intersectionality participatory experiential learning discussion groups tutorials journal articles clinical practice seminars media life history masters by full dissertation [confirm grouped together: ‘discussion groups tutorials’, ‘journal articles clinical practice’?] perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 114 discussion in this section, the findings of the study are discussed under the three themes identified. understanding of disability there is a wide range of definitions or understandings ascribed to ‘disability’ in the three faculties. the role of impairment in creating a disability is accepted, but a broader sense of disability as a social construct permeates the discussion on disability. in hs, the curriculum is constrained by professional council requirements for clinical practice; this does not always accommodate a social understanding of disability. while ebe brings the unique understanding of observing spatiality and the creation of disabling environments, hum understands disability as primarily a societal construct that has implications for gender. in hum, there is also the notion of conceptualising disability from the viewpoint of ‘ableness’ rather than ‘disableness’. this focus on using more positive language is important, as language can influence both how one perceives disability, and one’s attitude towards disabled people (olkin, 2002). in hs, the primary focus is from an impairment perspective. although certain divisions such as occupational therapy and physiotherapy have begun to bring the social aspects of disability into teaching, the medical model is still significant in other divisions. campbell (2009) states that medical education is generally still very fragmented and influenced, to a large extent, by the medical model of disability. doctors still play a powerful role in disseminating information about disability to the public. to a large extent, this influence of doctors continually affects how society perceives disability. ebe also teaches on the alleviation of impairment, with more focus on both environmental issues and universal design. the concern is not only the physical environment, but also the social space in which the disabled person lives, and this should also be integrated into teaching. in hum, one finds diverse understandings of disability, and no particular understanding is dominant. every division interrogates and interprets disability differently; there is a wide range of definitions given to ‘disability’. the varied perspectives on disability in hum are understandable, since hum have historically engaged with the different representations of disabled people (james & wu, 2006), and have interpreted disability within cultural contexts (garlandthomson & stoddard-holmes, 2005). disability in the curriculum hs and ebe had a majority of departments including disability to some degree (72% and 84%, respectively). hum had a much lower rate, at 22%. the inclusion of disability in the curriculum arises more through the enthusiasm and specific interest inclusion of disability issues in teaching and research in higher education chioma ohajunwa, judith mckenzie, anneli hardy & theresa lorenzo 115 of certain members of staff, rather than through systematic departmental initiatives. disability issues are often included in optional courses, as they are regarded as a new area of study in ebe and hum with which academics are beginning to grapple. it appears that lecturers often find it difficult to know where to add disability issues into the curriculum, especially when they feel pressurised by having to cover a range of issues within limited time. some are unsure about how and where in the curriculum disability is relevant. despite this, the literature indicates that disability is multidimensional, and can be included in any discipline and any course offered by an hei (gabel, 2010). globally, disability has been included in many different disciplines in heis: psychology, education, social development, medicine, engineering, music, history and art, for example (ohajunwa, 2012). however, strategies that examine the disabled person in his/her own community are most popular. it appears that this approach works well with an interdisciplinary focus, and can be experiential by including community visits in the curriculum. policy context of disability inclusion the majority of the departments interviewed did not use any disability-specific policy in teaching. it was interesting to note that departments would often rather use mainstream policies in the classroom, and integrate disability only when it was discussed. however, teachers need to engage with at least one policy on disability in teaching, as this will help stimulate discussion about the meaning of the disability experience. conclusion in a study conducted in south african heis, which examined diversity and difference (pillay & mclellan, 2010), the heis identified diversity in terms of race, gender, culture, language, religion, ethnicity and even age; but disability is omitted. even when doing the desktop review for this study at uct, there was a great deal more focus on race and gender, and minimal discussion on disability. this study sought to address this gap of not including disability as an issue of transformation and diversity in our heis. as stated earlier, this study recommends that the curriculum is a good place to begin to interrogate the complexities involved in disability inclusion. recommendations an interdisciplinary approach to the teaching of disability is required. the need has been identified for a structure or forum to nurture cross-faculty collaboration, as there are pockets of rich experience within and across faculties that would create a niche area of teaching and research for uct that would have international appeal. equally, a vast number of academic staff members are already practising disability inclusion and could inform others. however, the necessity for providing systemic perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 116 or institutional support to staff on how to start including disability in teaching and research cannot be overstated. even in places where various rights are included in policy, the lack of systemic support, knowledge and skills has been identified as a challenge to policy implementation (probyn, murray, botha, botya, brooks & westphal, 2002). one participant suggested encouraging research and involvement by postgraduate students in disability seminars and workshops. there is also potential for developing on-line materials, to assist lecturers in preparing lectures and to provide material for lecturers to use in their own courses. the disability studies programme offers a dedicated focus on teaching, research and policy development regarding disability in africa. the programme aims to increase awareness of disability issues, and to inform the participation of disabled people in society through advocacy and interrogation of policy at different levels. this uct resource could potentially assist in addressing the issue of disability in terms of diversity and transformation at uct. in addition, the growing number of disabled students at uct could enrich the processes of curriculum reform by raising issues from their own experiences of disability in different contexts. furthermore, it is important to stimulate the inclusion of disability in social responsiveness, service learning, and the projects in which staff and students engage. this would also assist to monitor uct’s contribution to disability inclusion in terms of the university’s strategic goals related to development in south africa and to graduate profiles. references blumenthal, d.s. & boelen, c. 2001. universities and the health of the disadvantaged. geneva: world health organization. bryen, d.n. & shapiro, s.a. 1996. disability studies: what is it and why is it needed? temple university faculty herald united states of america, institute of disabilities. retrieved on 22 november 2010 from http://disabilities.temple. edu/programs/ds/. creswell, j.w. 2003. ed. research design, qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches. 2nd edn. sage. thousand oaks, ca. department of higher education and training (dhet) 2012. green paper for postschool education and training. pretoria: department of higher education and training. duncan, m., alperstein, m., maters, p., lockers, l. & gibbs, t. 2006. not just another multi-professional course! part 1. rationale for a transformative curriculum. medical teacher, 28(1): 59-63. elo, s. & kyngas, h. 2007. the qualitative content analysis process. journal of advanced nursing, 62(1): 107-115. gabel, s.l. 2010. a disability studies framework for policy activism in postsecondary education. journal of postsecondary education and disability, 23(1): 63-71 inclusion of disability issues in teaching and research in higher education chioma ohajunwa, judith mckenzie, anneli hardy & theresa lorenzo 117 garland-thomson, r. & stoddard-holmes, m. 2005. introduction. journal of medical humanities 26(2-3): 73-77. james, j.c. & wu, c. 2006. editors’ introduction: race, ethnicity, disability, and literature: intersections and interventions. melus, 31(3): 3-15 lorenzo, t. 2009. developing leadership for disability inclusion in social policy processes: enhancing teaching and research to promote graduate qualities of social justice and global citizenship. disability inclusion in research enhancing curriculum transformation (direct) project proposal. cape town: university of cape town. ohajunwa, c.o. 2012. extent and nature of disability inclusion in the faculty of humanities, university of cape town. m.phil. dissertation. cape town: university of cape town. olkin, r. 2002. could you hold the door for me? including disability in diversity. cultural diversity and ethnic minority psychology, 8(2): 130-137. peel, d. & posas, j.p. 2009. promoting disability equality and inclusive learning in planning education. innovations in education and teaching international, 46(2): 227-235. pillay, v. & mclellan, c.e. 2010. diverging on diversity and difference: the mask of inclusion. perspectives in education, 28(3): 13-22 probyn, m.s., murray, l., botha, p., botya, m., brooks, v. & westphal, l. 2002. minding the gaps – an investigation into language policy and practice in four eastern cape districts. perspectives in education, 20(1): 29-46 thomas, c. 2002. disability theory: key ideas, issues and thinkers. london: john wiley & sons. treby, e., hewitt, i. & shah, a. 2006. embedding ‘disability and access’ into the geography curriculum. teaching in higher education, 11(4): 413-425. united nations (un). 2006. the united nations convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. geneva: united nations. university of cape town (uct). 2009. strategic plan 2010-2014. retrieved on 20 october 2012 from http://www.uct.ac.za/about/intro/goals/. university of cape town (uct). 2012. faculty handbooks. retrieved on 20 october 2012 from http://www.staff.uct.ac.za/administration/handbooks/. examining some aspects of alternative basic education programmes in ethiopia1 gilbert o.m.onwu department of science mathematics & technology education, faculty of education, university of pretoria gilbert.onwu@up.ac.za augustine agu social policy unit, unicef, trinidad and tobago office, port of spain, trinidad aagu@unicef.org this study examines some aspects of the quality of alternative basic education (abe) provision in ethiopia. educational indicators of quality were formulated under two general topic areas of abe programme process and content, and pupil learning outcomes. a qualitative-interpretative research approach and survey design was used to collect data from primary and secondary sources and to provide separate case descriptions of the five regions and two city administrations studied. the study’s main findings give clear indication of a broad spread of abe conceptions and practices in abe centres in ethiopia. the approaches and experiences of the five participating regions reveal factors that have an impact on quality abe delivery, as well as measures that can improve quality if supported with an appropriate institutional environment. keywords:  alternative  basic  education,  access,  capacity,  quality  basic  education,  primary  education introduction there is recognition among national governments in the developing countries of africa that fundamental changes are needed in educational policies in order to meet key millennium development goals (mdgs). this recognition was first enshrined in the framework for action of the 1990 jomtein world conference (unesco, 1990) on education for all (efa), which placed emphasis on local capacity building and strengthening of partnerships in the planning and implementation of education. ten years later, following the 2000 dakar framework for action (unesco, 2000), gaining access to quality education has inevitably become the principal issue in education for almost all countries, developed and developing (unesco, 2007a, 2007b & 2007c). this paper examines some aspects of the quality of alternative basic education (abe) provision in ethiopia. alternative basic education (abe) is a non-formal alternate delivery mode of education in the country, and therefore, an integral part of the education system. the objective of the programme as stated inter alia is “to provide good quality basic education … through an alternative mode of delivery suited to the socio-economic and cultural realities of the regions” (moe, 2006:4). alternative approaches apply to both formal and non-formal learning situations and in time abe could represent an avenue to harmonise the two in an integrated system of education. to this end, abe plays a vital role in the government’s efforts to achieve universal primary education (upe) by 2015. 1 onwu gom & agu a. 2010. examining some aspects of alternative basic education programmes in ethiopia. perspectives in education, 28(2):75-86. perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201076 in ethiopia, the abe programme has been run by the regional education bureaus (rebs) in collaborative partnership with various international and local non-governmental organisations (ngos) and the community. the fact that the programme is being implemented by different organisations and by the regions at woreda (district) level, each with its own conception and implementation strategies, does suggest different approaches to quality assurance, in the absence of a national mechanism for doing so. the philosophy underpinning abe provision appears to be highly region-specific. in recent times there have been growing concerns about the quality of abe programme on offer in the various regions of the country (ethio-italian development cooperation, 2006). it is against this backdrop that a recommendation was made at the 2007 annual review meeting of key stakeholders in the education sector in ethiopia for a study to be undertaken to examine the quality of abe in the country. context ethiopia is a vast and ancient country, situated in the horn of africa, and is especially rich in the diversity of its people and cultures. the majority (85%) of the population estimated at over 77 million is rural and only 15% are urban dwellers. the country is divided into nine regional states and two city administration councils, constituted largely on the basis of language and are thus ethnically organised. ethiopia operates a decentralised education system that gives considerable measure of autonomy to the regions. primary education in ethiopia primary education, which is defined as basic education in grades 1-8, operates in two cycles, of first cycle (grades1-4) and second cycle (grades5-8). the primary education sector had a systematically increasing enrolment for five years averaging 12.5% since 2002/03 to 2006/07 (moe, 2007). the gains made in expanding access to basic primary education, however, have not been without cost. there is greater dependence now on untrained teachers, especially at the second cycle, and less favourable teacher to pupil ratios and pupil to section ratios (moe, 2006c & 2007). although achieving universal primary education by 2015 is a major priority for the government, the country’s primary education sector is still characterised by low enrolment levels, gender and regional disparities in enrolment rates, unsatisfactory achievement levels of students, low internal efficiency and high drop out rates in primary schools (moe, 2006a; negash, 2006; moe, 2006b; piper & shibeshi, 2007). in 2004, the alternative basic education (abe) programme was introduced as an educational strategy designed to improve access and promote quality education for over-aged out-of-school children (7-14 years). abe activities most abe activities are accomplished in abe centres (abecs) that enrol the same age group as formal primary education. the curriculum is a condensed version of the first cycle of the primary school curriculum consisting of mother tongue, english, mathematics and environmental science (yiman, 2005). with the recent growth of abe programmes throughout the country (moe, 2006c & 2008), a number of quality-related issues and questions for policy implementers have arisen. first, to what extent can the quality of the programme be seen to compensate for, or complement the low level of enrolment rate and performance in the primary school sector? secondly, does this equivalency programme that offers basic primary education and skills outside the formal sector point to ways that would dramatically open up to a wider population many of the underutilised administrative sectors and structures of the ministries of education, health and labour? these are some of the issues that we seek to address in this study. purpose of the study the purpose of this study was to seek information on the reality at abe centres and community level in terms of quality delivery. the study addressed in a holistic way the following questions: does this educational strategy lead to the achievement of its goals, i.e. increased enrolment and school level onwu & agu — examining some aspects of alternative basic education programmes in ethiopia 77 improvement and benefits to learners? what staffing capacities, funding, planning exist at the different administrative levels for quality abe delivery? conceptual framework the conceptions of quality of education are very diverse among different stakeholders (ndoye 2005; schubert, 2005). indeed there have been considerable debate and discussions about educational quality and how it should be measured for improving the quality of basic education in sub-saharan africa and elsewhere (sedel, 2005; schubert, 2005; ndoye, 2005; stephens, 2003). the various definitions, however, tend to highlight the different elements of the basic input-process-output model that commonly underpin educational research and policy analysis (unesco, 2002; sedel, 2005; schubert, 2005). from that perspective, educational quality may be construed in terms of numerous proxy indicators, among them measures of student learning outcomes as specified by a national curriculum and mediated by quality inputs and processes. in practice, however, it has been argued that because inputs into the teaching and learning process seem to be generally easier to measure than outputs, quality is often gauged by the inputs. although information so gained is useful, one has to be cautious about drawing conclusions about quality based on that information alone. because the improvement of the quality of education must be seen as the result of the strengthening of all components of the curriculum development and implementation process (cf. schubert, 2005; unesco, 2002; dimmock, 2000), a holistic and integrated approach (cf. dimmock, 2000; sebel, 2005; stephens, 2003) to examining aspects of the quality of abe provision in ethiopia was used in this study. this approach focuses on the relationships among the key components of the abe programme, namely, (i) the programme process and content and (ii) learner outcomes (iowa state department of education, 1993, unesco, 2000; sedel, 2005) and the identified functions (or performance indicators of programme quality) at particular levels of the two components as follows: programme process and content refer to components of the programme that define: 1. at abe system level, its planning process, its goals and target outcomes, its funding, monitoring and supervision that provide direction, and captures the quantitative and qualitative performance measures of abe provision. 2. at abe centre level, the teaching staff profile, staffing functions and professional development; delivery of relevant curriculum and instructional materials for the acquisition of basic skills; abe centre/school decision-making group and community support. 3. at classroom level, content and quality of curriculum experienced by beneficiaries; a learning environment of certain expectations that produce effective teaching and effective learning. 4. at community level, parents and community in support roles with regard to management of centres and decision-making at school/centre level. learner outcomes in the context of the study refer to the impact of the programme on learners, such as successful progression to grade 5, second cycle of the formal primary education, learning gains and attainment of basic education competency goals. it was, however, not possible in this study, to evaluate the learning outcomes of the abe beneficiaries, partly because in the regions sampled the three to four year programme had not been fully completed, and partly because time constraints did not allow for the development, validation and administration of standardised tests. methodology the study was based on planning visits together with a general and region-specific literature review, followed by a month-long field survey conducted in the five selected regions and two city administration councils: addis ababa city administration (capital city), dire-dawa transitional city administration, afar regional state, amhara regional state, oromia regional state, somali regional state, southern nations, nationalities and peoples regional state (snnpr). perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201078 a qualitative-interpretative research approach and survey design was used to collect data and to provide separate case descriptions of the five regions and two city administrations studied. research instruments were developed for the collection of qualitative and quantitative data from both primary and secondary sources at the federal, regional, woreda, abe centre and community levels. the main sources of data were key stakeholders and key informants in the education sector at various levels of government and at community level. they were visited, observed or interviewed individually and/or as focus groups. semi-structured interview guides ensured adequate consistency in coverage, but also allowed for the necessary flexibility required in in-depth interviews with individuals and groups. main findings in the following section, an attempt is made to draw together the main findings from the sampled case regions, of some quality-related issues on abe programme delivery in ethiopia. overview of issues on abe definition, access and capacity issues one clear finding which emerges is the lack of a coherent and clear educational philosophical basis for alternative basic education in the country. the question of what is best or what works best to help under-served, out-of-school children achieve basic education competencies has not been central in abe programme provision. rather, other considerations with political overtones such as increasing pupil enrolment at all costs seem to be uppermost in the minds of key stakeholders. the education sector, for instance, is yet to implement specific sectoral goals and objectives for abe programme quality assurance as spelt out in the abe implementation strategy document (moe, 2006a). the experience of the regions particularly the so-called “emerging regions” of afar and somali suggests that without this focus on the development of norms and standards for quality management and supervision, abe centre-level improvements will be long in coming, and the centres will remain much worse off. in the different woredas (district level education authority) of the emerging regions of afar, somali and in certain areas of oromia, there is basically no distinction made regarding the conceptions of alternative basic education, non-formal education (nfe), extension programme and adult functional literacy programme. as long as such definition problems exist, the education management information system (emis) database for those regions is unlikely to capture adequate, disaggregated and reliable abe data for targeted interventions and long term realistic planning. the current situation calls for a common or shared understanding of the meaning of abe among the regions. despite a considerable increase in primary enrolment in the past couple of years, the number of children and adults out of school continues to be high because of rural and urban poverty. the latest enrolment figures of 582,766 in 7498 abe centres (refer to tables 1 and 2) nationwide show that a sizeable portion of primary school age children are still experiencing difficulty with enrolling for formal and non-formal primary level basic education. table 1: abe student enrolment by gender per region (moe, 2006/2007) all ethiopia location all sector abe programs ownership all year 2006/07 program alternative b e onwu & agu — examining some aspects of alternative basic education programmes in ethiopia 79 region 1 2 3 undefined total total m f m f m f m f m f amhara 74313 63050 19559 18206 25754 25133 1196262 106389 226015 addis ababa 4011 10315 1019 2607 620 1269 230 571 5880 14762 20642 afar 3981 1839 1219 649 415 263 56 10 5671 2761 8432 benishangulgumuz 6683 4905 3819 2984 959 684 11461 8573 20034 gambella 3726 1408 240 150 174 95 4140 1653 5793 oromiya 80051 65589 13646 10681 3798 2791 358 225 97853 79286 177139 snnp 55124 48988 6028 4967 1448 1155 62600 55110 117710 tigray 2555 1627 320 225 364 279 957 674 4196 2805 7001 total 230444 197721 45850 40469 33532 31669 1601 1480 311427 271339 582766 table 2: abe centres by student enrolment and number of facilitators per region all ethiopia location all sector abe programs ownership all yeat 2006/07 region abe centres nb cent male enrol fem enrol m teacher f teacher pupil/ teacher ratio amhara 2263 120036 106700 3693 2523 1 : 37 addis ababa 243 15066 33405 494 903 1 : 38 afar 113 5671 2761 214 9 1 : 39 benishangul-gumuz 212 11862 8796 448 61 1 : 41 gambella 18 4505 1947 189 155 1 : 19 oromiya 3028 143822 101604 11358 3280 1: 17 snnp 1478 65199 58315 1767 344 1 : 46 tigray 143 5965 3672 174 108 1: 37 total 7498 372126 317200 18337 8383 1 : 26 as shown in table 2, abe centres have in recent years flourished especially in amhara, oromiya and snnp regions. communities have witnessed rapid increases in enrolment and acceptability of abe programme-particularly in nomadic areas where no other form of schooling is available. tables 1 and 2 also show that abe programmes are succeeding in bridging the gender gap and increasing the enrolment of girls, which could be viewed as an aspect of quality provision. community mobilisation and location of abe centres close to the surrounding homesteads have contributed to increased girls’ enrolment. also, a flexible timetable, the relatively short duration of classes of about 30-35 minutes and the introduction of shift system at each abe centre have helped to perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201080 accommodate and encourage more girls to enter the programme nationwide. the downside is that the time on task may be too short to ensure quality teaching and learning. despite the high degree of timetable flexibility, there are challenges regarding student retention and dropout rates at the abe centres. in the emerging regions of afar, somali and oromia continuous mobility of the pastoralist communities in search of drinking water and grazing land, lack of sanitary facilities at the abe centres and the demand for child labour make the regular attendance of children difficult. in addition, the location of abe centres in remote rural areas makes it virtually impossible to attract and retain trained primary teachers or abe facilitators. communities in many of the pastoral and remote areas visited now insist on a rapid conversion of their abe centres into formal primary schools for better funding. the significance of this community pressure is that there is often no clear policy of allocating teachers and indeed other resources according to real needs of abe centres. administrative efficiency is a stated goal in the national alternative basic education strategy document (moe, 2006a) for abe quality delivery. decentralization has introduced a system of intermediary bodies namely, the woredas (district level) and kebeles (zonal), but this middle layer is weak in the sense that it lacks discretionary powers and the resources to deliver quality abe. a clear finding to emerge from the regions is the extent to which the regional education bureaus (rebs) have failed the abe centres at woreda (district) level under their authority. in discussions with education officials and key informants especially at woreda level — the level closest to the abe centres — it was made clear that very limited attention has been paid to strengthening capacities at that level for resolving abe centre-level problems. in the “emerging” regions in particular the level of staffing at the education, finance, supervisory and monitoring units of the regional education bureaus (reb), is in most cases woefully inadequate. thus, in the face of limited human capacity and resource constraints, the current multi-layered administrative arrangement is putting a lot of pressure on quality provision (effective and efficient monitoring and supervision) of abe at the abe centres. partnerships for abe delivery  despite the many abe programmes supported and financed by different agencies, abe delivery among the different service providers is largely uncoordinated, with each organisation operating on its own on the basis of its educational philosophical conviction and preference. several regional education authorities interviewed are faced with equity issues because of the uneven distribution of resources and funds at the abe centres. this has led to highly differentiated abe centre-level schooling within and across regions at woreda level. finance and management issues at abecs the financing of education is an important component of quality. the abe-programme in ethiopia is severely under-funded. the programme has received scant attention in the planning and budgeting process at regional level. virtually all the woredas sampled reported that they do not have special budgets set aside for abe despite the fact that officials are regularly requested to draw up a budget for abe implementation. everywhere, abe programme is generally perceived as a cheap, stop gap alternative to formal primary level basic education and perhaps for this reason hardly receives any funds from the woreda budget. in most cases, this financial gap is filled by the ngos, but not in the pastoralist region of for example, afar and somali regions where the involvement of ngos and the coordination between them and the government is still rather minimal. in those regions, abe classes are few and are held either in makeshift huts of poor quality structures or under shades of trees in non-conducive learning environment. the teachers are usually volunteers with poor educational background, and who have recently completed a crash training programme. onwu & agu — examining some aspects of alternative basic education programmes in ethiopia 81 abe delivery at classroom level  overall, abe centre infrastructure in the regions visited is in a very poor state of disrepair, and in many cases in deplorable conditions. the abe centres located in rural areas exhibited a palpable climate of neglect. they lacked water supply and separate toilet facilities for boys and girls. the lack of personnel and inaccessibility of the abe centres is the root causes for the infrequent supervisory visits. the non-availability of sanitary facilities was definitely more disadvantageous to girls than boys, and contributed to girls’ increasingly low retention rate in the centres as they progress through the grade levels. in many of the abe classrooms visited, not all the essentials for teaching are in place. these include chalkboards that are in a state of disuse, lack of chalks and dusters, inadequate numbers of chairs and desks and the absence of wall charts and decorations in most of the classrooms. there were shortages of textbooks. overall the textbook-pupil ratio was estimated at about 1:4. the inadequate supply of textbooks and teachers’ guides was particularly evident in the more cognitively demanding subjects of english language, environmental science and mathematics than in mother tongue language textbooks. in some classrooms in the rural areas of afar, somali snnpr, there were no cement floors, just bare ground on which the students sit crowded in groups on small benches, most times covered in dust in rooms that are poorly lit and not well ventilated. retention and learning are indeed hampered when pupils attend schools in dilapidated or overcrowded classrooms that are inadequately supplied (watkins, 2000). children’s knowing and learning are not processes that can be divorced from the nature of the contexts within which learning takes place (bauman, 1973; lewin, 1946; vygotsky, 1934/86; greeno, 1998; barab & plucker, 2002; sadler, 2009). the contribution to quality education made by an attractive physical learning environment cannot be overestimated. abe curriculum: relevance and quality  there is some ambivalence with different stakeholders about the abe curriculum with regard to its relevance to beneficiaries for the world of work and progression in the educational ladder. for progression to the second cycle of formal primary schooling, woreda level government officials see abe as adequate. but for other key stakeholders such as parents, community members, it is seen as not sufficiently localised to be helpful in the world of work. others involved in abe programme provision such as the ngo supervisors were less inclined to express their opinion about the relevance of the curriculum. they preferred to talk about issues of implementation, namely that the content and appropriateness of the curriculum are in synch with the national primary education curriculum, so that beneficiaries can easily transit from the non-formal to the formal sector. beyond that, it was difficult to envision how the curriculum contributes to skills development necessary for daily life and in particular in the world of work in the various communities. the completion rate to grade 5 is usually associated with educational achievement in sub-saharan africa and even more strongly with learning outcomes in lower secondary school (unesco, 2003; efa global monitoring report, 2003/4). no recent abe-related data on student survival rate up to primary grade 5 was available. abe centres and community involvement we observed strong involvement of the community in the implementation of abe programmes. parents and community are contributing substantially to the cost of basic education, and in almost all the communities there is a sense of ownership of the abe centres. parents play vital roles in their children’s education by providing financial and non-financial support. these include paying of fees or levies, providing school uniform to their wards, maintaining discipline at the centres, ensuring the retention of learners in abe centres, and undertaking voluntary work in abecs/school. involvement of parents in community-based associations including parents’ teachers’ associations (ptas) at woreda level, offered them a limited form of participation in the running of the abecs. the involvement is more of community support for abe centres, through physical maintenance, than of perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201082 community participation in decision-making. despite the level of support given by parents to abecs, there does not appear to be a willingness yet to involve parents in more decision-making that have an impact on quality provision. abe facilitator/teacher issues the two indicators most frequently used to measure the overall quality of the teaching personnel in primary schools are (i) the percentage of primary school teachers who have the required academic qualifications and (ii) the percentage trained to teach according to established standards (schubert, 2005). the quantity, quality and distribution of abe facilitators are critical factors for reaching abe goals as regards completion of basic primary education for all children (moe, 2006a; unesco, 2004). the total number of abe facilitators available for the academic year 2006/2007 was 26,720 (18,737 male; 8383 female) in all the regions with the exception of somali, where no data was available. the minimum educational requirement to teach in the abe centres is completion of grade 8 in some regions, while grade 10 in others. in general, initial crash training is offered to recruited facilitators by the woreda office, which lasts for 5-10, or 15-21 days depending on the qualification or grade level attained. the abe teacher training programme covers the areas of teaching methodologies, lesson planning, and continuous assessment based on teacher-training colleges’ syllabuses. however, the regional education bureaus raised strong concern about the quality of the initial training of facilitators and the latter’s ability to effectively handle all the subjects offered for the abe programme. in regions like afar, somali, where the community is unable to meet the minimum requirement because of low literacy level, facilitators are selected from among people who have completed grade 4 or above. in other words the recruited facilitators are expected to teach to the level of their qualification. because of differential and low salary structures and unattractive working conditions, there is high staff turn over at the abe centres especially among the relatively better trained and/or qualified facilitators. learning outcomes student learning outcomes are one proxy indicator of education quality. at present no comprehensive national assessment framework for abe learning gains exists. the five sampled regions are at various stages of completing the first cycle of the 3-4 year abe programme. for this reason, quantitative performance measures of abe learning outcomes are unavailable. transition to formal system there was no reliable abe data available to provide information about, first, the survival rate of transition from abecs to formal schools, and secondly, the comparability in academic performance between abe programme beneficiaries and grade 5 primary school pupils. only two forms of transition between abecs and formal schools were reported: (i) the transfer of pupils from abe centres to nearby primary schools, and (ii) the upgrading of abecs to formal primary schools. conclusion and recommendations our conclusion is that the programme would probably be unsustainable with regard to quality in the medium and long-term delivery if there were no improvement in resource provision. unlike formal primary education, abe is not perceived as a regular concern of government. for this reason, abe may not necessarily command attention on a sustainable basis, but on an ad hoc basis for a particular campaign, namely that of achieving upe by 2015. the tendency has always been for such stopgap educational strategies to use mechanisms that have routinely been associated with the non-formal education sector, and are usually devoid of the financial resources necessary to ensure quality delivery. these include low salaries for the teachers, crash training programmes for recruited facilitators, classes scheduled after formal school hours and school buildings commandeered for evening use (world bank, 1998). such relatively low-cost budgets are very much evident at these early stages of the abe programme. onwu & agu — examining some aspects of alternative basic education programmes in ethiopia 83 the recommendations that are presented below are related to challenges of policy and implementation, which are, at least partially, within the scope of the ministry of education and regional education bureaus to be addressed. the first recommendation and the core issue for any planned abe intervention for quality improvement is finding what works best for abe centres and student learning. a comprehensive stakeholder analysis should be undertaken, identifying all parties who have a stake in education and determining as to what they stand to gain or lose from scaling up and improving the quality of abe for out-of-school children. given the different resources at the disposal of the regions, planning must be realistic and must take into account the need for capacity, and the building of capacity at each level. thus different types of contextualised guidelines for the management, supervision and monitoring of the abe programmes may need to be developed and introduced. some of these guidelines could be on monitoring and supervision of abecs, assessment of abe learning outcomes, recruitment and training of facilitators, financial management of abe programmes, budgeting skills for woreda officials, etc. the ultimate objective of this intervention is to strengthen the capacity of each level to support the abe centre. this should always be borne in mind. strengthening abe related database and information systems at various levels is crucial as a preliminary step to developing a plan for improving quality abe. the regional education bureaus should concentrate on producing user friendly disaggregated abe data and to unequivocally create a demand for this data. a basic minimum level of physical and material inputs is recommended to be in place for every abe centre. there are equity issues such as factors that influence the enrolment and retention of female learners and facilitators, particularly in the pastoral regions, which will require monitoring, co-ordination and special action. a “one-size-fits-all” approach will fail to adequately address the equity issue, which is related to quality. instead, different approaches by the federal government are required to ensure equity. the parent body and the community are an integral part of the abe centre’s success. the role that parents play in ensuring that the centre remains a viable institution should not be underestimated. building the capacity of people at grassroots level to participate in decision-making is equally as important as it is for the government officials of the different tiers (cf. gaynor, 1995). even though ethiopia has a highly decentralised education system, it seems to run a centralised educational administration model at regional level, and thus some uncertainty exists about the respective roles of different parties in the administrative structure in abe quality provision. what is now required is a much broader debate, and political will to discuss and address abe quality delivery with all relevant stakeholders. references barab sa & plucker ja 2002. smart people or smart contexts? cognition, ability and talent development in an age of situated approaches to knowing and knowing. educational psychologist, 37:165-182. bauman z 1973. culture as praxis. london: routledge & kegan paul. bonnet g 2007. what do recent evaluations tell us about the state of teachers in sub-saharan countries? background paper for efa global monitoring report 2008. 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of learners of auditing. literature shows that this mode of feedback is transformative as it relies heavily on the particular, specific and localised learning styles of the individual learner. it also decolonises learning because learners are required to capitalise on their own meaningful indigenous strategies of learning. in order to generate data, the study used critical accounting research as the theoretical framework, which emphasises the importance of delving deeper into socio-economic contexts to understand how good performance is created and sustained in the teaching and learning of auditing. focus was on a selected school in the free state where one grade 10 class, which used conventional feedback, was compared to another grade 10 class where descriptive feedback was used in the teaching of accounting. tape recording of lessons in the respective classes was done. these were transcribed verbatim and critical discourses analysis was used to make sense of the data. the findings reveal that learners in the latter class were empowered to be critical and creative in their knowledge of auditing while the former continued to use rote and memorising approaches. descriptive feedback created transformative spaces in the auditing classroom, made learners aware of multiple positions that can be assumed on any matter, ensured inclusivity of many forms of knowledges and showed that effective and continuous feedback was essential in discharging many misconceptions in auditing. the recommendation is that more classes of auditing should use descriptive feedback to transform and decolonise the learning of auditing. keywords: descriptive feedback; auditing; critical accounting research; participatory action research 1. introduction and background education policies in south africa promote a studentcentred approach that integrates assessment with learning (dbe, 2011:40). the teaching and learning of auditing should not be an exception. when assessment is integrated with learning, it mainly serves the purpose of learning, instead of being done solely for administrative and grading purposes. this “assessment for learning” approach can be described as one that encourages learners to engage in active and deep learning. this normally develops independence and self-evaluation skills (ellery, 2008:422; sorensen, 2008:85). when assessment is applied to promote learning, feedback dr makeresemese rosy qhosola school of higher education studies, university of the free state doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i2.3 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(2): 30-44 © uv/ufs http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.3 31 qhosola enhancing the teaching and learning of auditing plays a vital role. the learners and teachers endorse that feedback on assessment is important for identifying their strengths and weaknesses. it also enhances motivation and improves future grades. in other words, it seems to be effective in promoting improved learner performance (sorensen, 2008:85). recently, there has been growing interest in the area of learner performance in accounting (zainab et al., 2013:66). however, a great deal of research focuses on the whole of accounting as a subject and its improvement in general. this improvement involves the design of teaching and learning styles and approaches, as well as application in improving learners’ performance in accounting (ellery, 2008:422; zainab et al., 2013:66). research has not drilled down to explore the same issues with regard to the main component of accounting, namely auditing, adequately. the limited focus on the teaching and learning of auditing as an element of accounting has resulted in less improvements being recorded on learner performance in this sub-discipline. many reports, such as national diagnostic reports and provincial education reports, indicate that, in exams and tests, many learners leave the auditing sections blank, or give the wrong answers (dbe, 2016:9). this causes concern, because auditing-related topics permeate and integrate with all other components of accounting (kerdachi, kriel & viljoen, 2012:23). auditing is a significant part of accounting, many teachers and learners think that it is characterised merely by either right or wrong answers, and nothing in between (crawford, helliar & monk, 2011:118). they incorrectly expect the learners’ answers to corresponded directly with the memorandum for marking. since auditing is more theoretical than practical, many teachers and learners assume that it deserves limited attention in terms of study (johnson et al., 2003:241). they believe that the theoretical content can be easily read and understood in a short time, mainly by means of surface-learning approaches. if not, the answer is regarded as wrong irrespective of how logical it could be. however, the auditing component of accounting deserves an alternative approach when it comes to assessment. questions on ethical issues, for example, can request opinions, that is; there is not only one correct answer, as given in the textbook or by the teacher (kerdachi et al., 2012:10). a learner may find that an issue, which is unethical in one context, may be ethical in a different context (johnson et al., 2003:241). based on these examples, the conventional way of providing feedback on assessment for auditing misreads the role of feedback in the teaching and learning of auditing. literature argues that feedback should thus not only be related to incorrect answers. it should also provide learners with the skills needed to analyse questions and in particular words in questions (crawford et al., 2011:118). the point is that by giving learners the opportunity to engage with the question, by permitting them to explain their thinking and the reasons for their answers, could help the teacher and the learner to identify knowledge gaps (gould & taylor, 2017:3). it could become clear that learners did not understand the meaning of particular words correctly or that they misunderstood the meaning of a question as a whole. however, adair-hauck and troyan (2013:30) have demonstrated that descriptive feedback should not only be given when the assessment is formative. descriptive feedback should highlight gaps in understanding and, specifically, inform students how they can improve their learning, rather than listing what they got wrong, thus facilitating a reciprocal learning process between teachers and learners (cranmore & wilhelm, 2017: 18). when learners receive clear and descriptive feedback on their work, they have the opportunity to analyse what they have 32 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) done well and which part(s) need(s) improvement. therefore, feedback should be ongoing. it should be clear, specific, meaningful and timely, to support improved learning and achievement (rodgers, 2006: 218). literature (adair-hauck & troyan, 2013:28; wisker, 2006:107) shows that when feedback is descriptive and is given whenever an opportunity arises, many misconceptions about auditing in learners’ minds can be cleared up. hence, this paper explores the effect of the conventional versus the descriptive feedback approaches in the teaching and learning of auditing. 2. critical accounting research as the theoretical framework for this paper to respond adequately to the above question, i have framed it within the contexts of critical accounting research (car). car fosters engagement with the content of the subject matter as well as between the teacher and the learner to unearth distorted consciousness about issues of unequal power relations. this means that it is always undertaken to change (improve) the practice of accounting for the benefit of the people (brown & dillard, 2013:178; gaffikin, 2006:11). this framework connects the socio-political context of education with issues of power and powerlessness, colonisation and decolonisation as well as conventionality and transformation that are central in the development and enhancement of learner performance as the starting point (gorski, 2009:317). when the teaching and learning of auditing are not optimal, it implies that the relationships of domination and subjugation exist between the learners and the teachers (baker, 2011:211). this may also be intended or unintended. this dynamic is oppressive because it deprives the learners of the opportunity to learn auditing earnestly, in ways that will help them to see it as an important part of accounting that can improve and transform their lives and the lives of other people (brown & dillard, 2013:180). this is where and when the need for the transformation and the decolonisation of the minds become necessary and imperative, hence car. transformation and decolonisation are seen as mere different sides of the same coin because they are both about learners discovering the power they have in themselves to learn and advance knowledge in ways that are indigenous to their own understanding (cochransmith, 2010:450). transformation and decolonisation are about new and better ways of knowing and functionalising knowledge. car, as the theoretical framework of this study, promotes the above through its advocacy of descriptive feedback which engages all the parties in the classroom (baker, 2011:210). 3. research design and methodology the methodology section below shows how limiting and limited the conventional auditing classroom was and is without the use of descriptive feedback. this conventional teaching is contrasted against a transformed and decolonial auditing classroom where descriptive feedback is used to empower the learners and the teachers. data reported below comes from my phd study. they have been reinterpreted for the purposes of this paper to show how conventional ways of teaching auditing can be limiting to the empowerment, transformation and decolonisation of the teachers and learners’ minds. to generate data, i constituted a coordinating team made up of two classrooms of grade 10 learners at an identified school in the free state. other members included all grade 10 accounting teachers, 1 subject advisor, a principal of this school, all available parents of grade 10 learners, 14 in total, a south african insurance association (saia) representative, an 33 qhosola enhancing the teaching and learning of auditing accounting education lecturer from the local university and an entrepreneur to represent the business community in their neighbourhood. the aim of the coordinating team was to create spaces for engagements around the teaching of auditing among all stakeholders above. the coordinating team was also to pilot the new way of teaching using descriptive feedback as a tool for transformation and improvement of learning among grade 10 learners. all research ethical considerations were observed. for example, the proposal for this study obtained ethical clearance from the university of the free state’s research ethics committee. i made an undertaking that my research was going to be respectful and not harmful to any participant or co-researcher in any way. i also obtained permission from the authorities and all participants at the school. a letter of consent and assent were also duly signed after i had explained the study fully as well as the rights and privileges of the co-researchers and the participants that they could for example drop out of the study at any time when they feel uncomfortable without any negative consequences. the data were generated in the two accounting classrooms identified above. at the initial stages of the study – in each of the 8 lessons per classroom – the teachers were asked to use their conventional ways of teaching auditing. based on the above, during classwork, homework and tests written, it became clear that their teaching was not bringing any positive change in the learning of their learners. there was no improvement in as far as performance in auditing was concerned. in order to change the situation, the coordinating team decided that the teachers should use descriptive feedback as a new strategy. one classroom continued for the next 8 lessons with conventional teaching of auditing. the other classroom used descriptive feedback for the 8 lessons under investigation. three typical sessions were selected for presentation and discussion of results in this paper below. the data generated were transcribed and interpreted using critical discourse analysis (cda) (van dijk, 2015:67). the cda analysis was conducted at three levels, namely the textual, the discursive and the social structural (van dijk, 2015:68). all these levels were used to deepen the understanding of what was happening during the lessons under investigation. the actions and conversations during the lesson were used as text to evidence the findings made. however, these findings are further buttressed at the other deeper levels through interpretation that goes beyond text but considers discursive practices of teachers and learners in given classroom contexts, which are in fact a reflection of the social structural levels couching them and informing their meaning construction. through cda, the study was able to realise its aim of demonstrating the transformative role of descriptive feedback in auditing. 4. presentation and discussion of findings: 4.1 perpetuating misconceptions through untransformed auditing feedback the team of co-researchers observed a lesson by a teacher (ms mohanwe). when providing feedback on auditing homework, she said, let’s mark the homework... make sure that you write these correct answers down, so that you can see where you went wrong... and write remedial work. 34 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) in the context given above, the teacher seems to have copied content directly from her memorandum, straight onto the board, without affording learners the opportunity to engage with the answers, as a way of enabling them to identify where they went wrong or see if they have misinterpreted what was expected of them (adair-hauck & troyan, 2013:30). this approach has the potential to perpetuate misconceptions or misinterpretations (vaccarino et al., 2007:8). it is worth noting that learners come to school with considerable knowledge, not all of it factual, based on intuition, everyday experiences and what they learnt in other settings (sa’diyah, 2017:165). some of this knowledge is based on misunderstandings (andrade, 2008: 2). these misconceptions are a normal part of learning and cannot be avoided. the most teachers can do is hope that learners eventually adopt the correct ideas naturally once they are exposed to facts through copying a teacher’s “memo” as a truth serum (cranmore & wilhelm, 2017:18). by providing answers to questions without diagnosing the problem or assisting learners to understand the requirements of the question, learners’ misconceptions are not cleared up (andrade, 2008: 2). therefore, ms mohanwe should have given feedback in collaboration with learners. while writing the answers on the board, she should ask learners questions orally (lyster & saito, 2010:277). learners’ answers would alert her to misinterpretations and she could identify learners who need more attention. the above scenario of a current classroom practice for teaching auditing highlights the challenge posed by using teaching methods that are teacher-centred and, despite being aware that they should provide feedback, teachers failing to realise that feedback is not about wrong or right (sa’diyah, 2017,168). teaching and learning requires a different approach, one that provides space for feedback that goes beyond right or wrong, but which is, instead, descriptive, in such a way that it diagnoses the problem or identifies the knowledge gap, or misconceptions (adair-hauck & troyan, 2013:30). therefore, assessment for learning was not realised by ms mohanwe’s approach. 4.2 doing away with misconceptions in auditing using descriptive feedback another scenario involved the teaching of auditing where descriptive feedback in a classroom was used as a way of addressing barriers to learning. often, as depicted in the scenario below, teachers use a formative assessment platform to give feedback (vaccarino et al., 2007:8). they target the formative platform because they assume that, at that point, learners are more focused and prepared and can really benefit from the assessment. the scenario below involves mr molemo dedicating the whole lesson to marking a test with the students. [mr molemo surprised the coordinating team when they observed a change in strategy]. 35 qhosola enhancing the teaching and learning of auditing mr molemo: today we are going to mark the test we wrote and have already received the scripts for. i want you to see where you went wrong. i am dedicating the whole period for this test. [note: each learner had a differently coloured pen to jot down important information given by the teacher]. there is a difference between the way formative descriptive feedback for auditing is given, and the way everyday activities of assessment is done – as in informal assessments – that make up continuous assessment (dabbagh & kitsantas, 2012:5). had the teacher not waited for a formative assessment platform to become available, and if he had assisted learners by identifying knowledge gaps before the test, it would have benefited the learners greatly, and by extension, would have improved their grading in the test itself (bates et al., 2013:365). furthermore, it appeared that feedback, in this classroom, was not ongoing. the teacher decided what deserved priority, which is contrary to the theory of educational assessment, which emphasises assessment as a process with the primary purpose of supporting teaching and learning, simply referred to as assessment for learning (rodgers, 2006:677). therefore, ongoing descriptive feedback, linked to specific learning goals and success criteria, is a powerful tool for improving student learning, and is fundamental to building a culture of learning within the classroom (bates et al., 2013:364). feedback in the accounting classroom, where auditing is a component, should relate to what needs to be done and should encourage all learners to believe that they can improve (cranmore & wilhelm, 2017:18). it should build on their previous achievement rather than focus only on grading and performance (spiller, 2009:40). depending on the nature and delivery of the feedback, it can have powerful positive effects on student learning and engagement (hattie & timperley, 2007: 90). it may not always be possible for a teacher to give descriptive feedback while s/he is still employing teacher-centred methods of teaching (muijs & reynolds, 2017:14). however, once the teaching approach is more learner-centred, and encourages deep learning to take place, ongoing descriptive feedback may become the reality and the most important part of teaching and learning (lyster & saito, 2010:276). such feedback is an essential practice of assessment for learning, which is: a process of seeking and interpreting evidence for use by learners and their teachers to decide where the learners are in their learning, where they need to go, and how best to get there (bennett, 2011:8). however, in the scenario above, one might doubt that ongoing descriptive feedback is practiced, since it seems to be done mostly after tests (formative platforms). it could be that it is mostly for grading purposes, with limited attention given to promoting deep learning and the development of certain skills required for every grade, particularly when dealing with auditing issues. in auditing, the most basic, unique terminology is introduced in grade 10, and added to as the learner progresses with his/her studies (hall et al., 2007: 19). that is why it is important that deep learning, as well the development of critical and creative skills, are developed accordingly. the conclusion is that the assessment observed in the class of mr molemo was assessment on learning, rather than assessment for learning. 36 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) 4.3 ongoing descriptive feedback it is imperative that teachers align integrated assessment with learning. this approach assumes that knowledge is not a fixed, identifiable entity to be absorbed by the learner. instead, learners construct knowledge based on their own understanding, influenced by their backgrounds, perspectives and experiences (ellery, 2008:422; dabbagh & kitsantas, 2012:5; hall et al., 2007:18). once this approach is employed, assessment as part of learning tends to be more flexible, integrative, contextualised, process oriented and criterion referenced, and may, therefore, be referred to as the “assessment for learning” approach. this approach encourages student independence and self-evaluation, and can lead to active and deeper learning (dabbagh & kitsantas, 2012:5; sorensen, 2008:85). furthermore, feedback should not only come from the teacher, but can also be given by peers and occur through self-assessment (black & william, 2009:12). this type of feedback not only creates spaces for deeper learning and the development of critical skills in the accounting classroom, but also affords the teacher the opportunity to nurture in the learners the habit of engaging in dialogue and engaging with their learning, rather than looking only for the right and wrong answers (lyster & saito, 2010:270). it affords learners the opportunity to defend their arguments as they dialogue, in an effort to engage with the feedback among themselves, supplemented by the intervention of a teacher, when needed. in this way, the feedback takes the shape of oral feedback. when feedback is oral and led by peers, it has greater impact for the learners. oral feedback from peers encourages dialogue and enables space for mutual respect (lyster & saito, 2010:270). oral and peer feedback can be used to promote and provide evidence of the development of generic skills and attributes, such as working cooperatively with other learners (suskie, 2009:60). furthermore, learners develop interpersonal skills and develop an awareness of group dynamics (wisker, 2006:107). peer and oral feedback enables feedback to be descriptive in nature and, therefore, contributes to the teaching and learning, as it integrates assessment with learning. most of all, it is centred on learners. the scenario below depicts an accounting classroom in which car creates spaces for descriptive feedback as a way of enhancing the teaching and learning of auditing. of particular interest in this scenario was the way the teacher integrated assessment as part of learning. the team of co-researchers observed the lesson of mr saki, which emanated from the summary of a lesson plan that was distributed to the team at the beginning of the lesson, as illustrated in figure 2. 37 qhosola enhancing the teaching and learning of auditing figure 2: summary of a lesson when it was time for feedback on the assessment, mr saki led with question 1. he wrote answers on the board and posed questions relating to activity 11 (refer to figure 3). figure 3: activity 11 from the above extract, it is clear that mr saki chose activities that do not only cover the content, but are related to learners’ ordinary feelings and experiences. learners have a picture or vision of what men’s outfitters sell, in this case, is men’s clothing. therefore, the teacher uses the maxim of teaching that states build from the known to unknown and thereby blends what the learners already know with new knowledge, making it clearer and more definite in an effort to make it less abstract. 38 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) the use of probing, open-ended questions encourages analysis and synthesis. mr saki did not write the answers from his memo, instead, he asked learners to assist him with the revision. mr saki: mpuse, give us one designation needed in this business. mpuse (without wasting time): external auditors. mpuse’s answer shows that based on her existing knowledge, she assumes that designation should be related to auditing. it could also be that mpuse does not know the meaning of the word designation, which is, in fact, the keyword. mr saki: can you tell us how your choice will ensure the internal control in the business? at that moment mpuse looked frustrated and raised her hand to ask for clarification. mpuse: sir, may i ask what is the designation, because i thought they are the people who are to audit and do the verification of the books in the business? from the above engagement with the feedback, mpuse seemed confident about sharing her answer; however, the follow-up question by the teacher probed her response, asking her to explain how her choice will assist the business. her subsequent response reveals that she had not understood the question. the duties or roles of this staff are the key issue when trying to answer the question. therefore, she was not certain about that terminology. the other issue is that staff is needed for internal controls, such as bookkeepers and cashiers, especially when the business is a sole proprietorship. a small business would not really need an accountant or external auditors (els et al., 2011:12). mr saki reminded mpuse of the forms of ownership and the fact that this business does not require an external auditor. he cautioned her to read the question thoroughly, because it was clearly saying internal controls, so it had nothing to do with external people. he emphasised the meaning of internal controls and gave in-depth information in reference to internal controls. therefore, when remedial writing is done in collaboration with learners, it assists learners such as mpuse to clear up misconceptions. it may be possible for learners to misinterpret questions because of a lack of understanding resulting from the unique terminology of the subject. therefore, feedback should not only be related to incorrect answers, but should also provide learners with the skills to analyse questions and particular words in a question (sa’diyah, 2017:171). if the learners do not understand the meaning of particular words, they are likely to misunderstand the meaning of the whole question. it becomes evident from the above discussion that the focus of feedback should not be on error correction, but on assisting learners to identify the gaps in their knowledge, and understanding the logic behind the answers in an attempt to clear up misconceptions and improve learning. we could say mr saki met the requirements of descriptive feedback, because he assisted the learner to identify her knowledge gap and showed her how she could improve her learning for the subsequent task, thus facilitating a reciprocal learning process between teachers and learners (wisker, 2006:106). the process assists learners to reflect on the feedback, with not only answers, but with in-depth information and the skills necessary to analyse subsequent questions (brookfield, 2017:8). the teacher is able to reflect and decide whether to continue 39 qhosola enhancing the teaching and learning of auditing to the new topic or give more lessons on the current topic to assist those learners who still have knowledge gaps (lyster & saito, 2010:278). this, in turn, could develop the habit of providing ongoing feedback. the process of constructive feedback, reflection and descriptive feedback is an ongoing process. the importance of feedback was evident when mr saki took the back seat in giving feedback to question 2 (see figure 4), and asked one learner to lead the feedback, as mr saki would only be facilitating and clarifying, where necessary. figure 4: question 2 mr saki: as one of you leads this feedback session, please remember to come up with possible answers and be able to elaborate on it. thabo led the feedback discussion under the supervision of the team. as learners were engaging, a particularly heated debate developed with regard to question 2. the majority of the learners referred to business functions, such as planning, controlling, leading etc., because of the integration between accounting and business studies. they tried to convince others that they were right, until thabo asked mr saki to separate the business function from the accounting function. thabo had realised that the learners, himself included, were confused. mr saki: let me remind you about the definition. accounting functions involve the creation of financial records of business transactions, flows of finance, the process of creating wealth in an organisation, and the financial position of a business at the particular moment in time (els et al., 2011:10). thabo: now that the misconception and confusion is cleared, can we highlight those functions? the debate continued and dialogue within the different groups continued. some group members used references to support their arguments. thandi: bookkeeping. mpho asked her to explain what she meant by bookkeeping. thandi: recording daily financial activities of a business, that is money that comes in and that goes out of the business. 40 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) morena raised his hand and asked whether they were referring to cash receipts and cash payments. thandi noted the point, while adding that accounts receivable and accounts payable will also form part of this function. they delved deeper into the discussion and managed to touch few functions, showing that they have a sense of what makes a function of accounting. the designation part was the easiest, since the first question had already explored it. the dialogue was interesting and the observers could sense that lesson control was centred on the learners. mr saki: thank you, thabo, for leading the very interesting and engaging lesson that allowed them to even open their different resources just to make sure they defend their points. mr saki concluded the lesson in this way (see figure 5): accounting  functions summary    financial  accounting recording of daily activities cash receipts and accounts receivable cash payments and accounts payable management  accounting providing mangers with the  information for decision making. costs, forecasts of future costs and  revenues payroll keep a record of salaries and  wages payable and tax  including other deductions figure 5: basic accounting functions mr saki: designations you chose for all these functions has a lot to do with ethics, integrity and corporate governance and very strong internal control, where the segregation of duty plays a crucial role. emanating from the dialogue and engagements involving peers assessing each other, mr saki managed to provide a good wrap of the lesson. at this moment, learners were referring back to their previous activities about designation of a person dealing with cash receivable, payroll etc., and that reflection enabled them to make sense of new information (brookfield, 2017:8). they realised that previous activities had provided a foundation for subsequent topics. the dialogue, oral and peer assessment met the requirements of descriptive feedback. it gave learners the opportunity to reflect on their previous work as they were preparing for the subsequent task (brookfield, 2017:8). the other advantage of descriptive feedback is that through learners’ engagement with their unique answers, each learner was provided with the opportunity to identify the state of his/her actual performance (cranmore & wilhelm, 2017:18). therefore, the fact that a learner could reflect back and identify knowledge gaps was timely in terms of preparation for subsequent tasks, thus, providing learners with the opportunity to improve future performance (brown & dillard, 2013:177). descriptive feedback is an act of 41 qhosola enhancing the teaching and learning of auditing empowerment, in the sense that, when the teacher takes the back seat, s/he gives up power in order to empower learners (reynolds, 2017:16). not only were learners able to benefit from descriptive feedback in terms of the reflection, even mr saki identified some matters he wanted to revisit and discuss with the team. 4.4 transformative spaces for descriptive feedback mr saki: i think i have to give more activities on the, on the functions of accounting and why ethical behaviour of the people who will be working there are of crucial importance. that is why auditing permeates all the accounting sections. the above extract suggests that the teacher was starting to understand the process of assessment that involves assessing and providing descriptive feedback. the decolonisation principles of empowerment, mutual respect, collaboration and establishing equal power relations and allowing all the voices to be heard were promoted when the teacher took the back seat to allow learners to take over (cochran-smith, 2010:450). he only facilitated and ensured that there was order. that act reduced the power differential between the learners and the teacher. when descriptive feedback is given, it becomes a tool for empowerment (reynolds, 2017:16). it also provides the possibility of enhancing teaching and learning of auditing, since auditing requires creative and critical thinking skills, not merely a memorandum of answers that is readily available for grading purposes (sa’diyah, 2017:166). descriptive feedback is capable of bringing excellence to teaching and learning of auditing, while transforming auditing teaching so that it is in line with policies and the call for a type of education that values a learner as a knower (makoelle, 2014:510). 5. conclusion this paper demonstrated the integration of assessment with learning. in the area of the study, the focus was mainly on descriptive feedback as a crucial part of the assessment process. throughout the paper, the demonstrations provided opportunities to understand that providing descriptive feedback has particular requirements that need to be met by the teacher in order to alter the knowledge gap that has been identified. descriptive feedback should be clear, precise, timely and ongoing in order to assist learners to identify knowledge gaps and assist them to prepare for subsequent tasks. once feedback meets these requirements, it makes descriptive feedback a tool for empowerment and transformation, as it creates a space for change in the teaching and learning of auditing. once such a change has been realised, excellent academic performance in auditing is possible. the process could contribute directly to the demands and calls for decolonising the curriculum. the process of teaching and learning should integrate assessment as part of and be accessible and equitable to the orientation of the learner as a knower. the provision of descriptive feedback enables the teacher to take a back seat, thereby placing the learner at the forefront through oral and peer assessment. this, and other spaces created by descriptive feedback in auditing, has aligned auditing with the call for transformed quality education that allows dialogue between all the knowledge canons, so that all types of knowledge can coexist. learners’ voices and their creative and critical skills are nurtured by allowing them to exercise autonomy over their learning, while ensuring facilitation and order. 42 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) therefore, the paper aligns itself with the agenda for transformation and excellence in the teaching and learning of auditing as an aspect of accounting. references adair-hauck, b. & troyan, f.j. 2013. a descriptive and co-constructive approach to integrated performance assessment feedback. foreign language annals, 46(1), 23–44. https://doi. org/10.1111/flan.12017 andrade, h. 2008. self-assessment through rubrics. educational leadership, 65(4), 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https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-873x.2006.00353.x 44 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) van dijk, t.a. 2015. critical discourse studies: a socio-cognitive approach. methods of critical discourse studies, 63–74. wisker, g. 2006. innovative assessment: peer group and oral assessment. innovations in education & training international, 31(2), 104–114. zainab, a.n., sanni, s.a., edzan, n.n. & koh, a.p. 2013. auditing scholarly journals published in malaysia and assessing their visibility. malaysian journal of library & information science, 17(1), 65–92. 200 understanding learner attitudes towards the use of tablets in a blended learning classroom abstract in 2004, the south african department of education (doe) published the white paper on e-education. the aim of the e-education white paper was to ensure that south african learners could use education communication technologies (ect) skilfully by 2013. however, these goals have not been met and a significant digital divide exists between learners with and without access to et. the lack of consideration of intraand inter-personal factors such as attitudes in the rollout of et has often been cited as one of the reasons for the present lack of et integration and uptake in schools. hence, this study contributes to this gap in research by exploring attitudes towards the use of ipads in a sample of south african learners in a blended learning environment. a demographic questionnaire and the et attitudes scale were administered to a convenience sample of 285 learners from a private school in the johannesburg area. descriptive statistics, anovas and thematic analysis were used to analyse the results. from the findings, it was evident that overall learners were more positive than negative about the integration of ipads in school. however, this pattern differed across the grades with lower grades demonstrating better attitudes towards the use of ipads in terms of enjoyability, ease of use and usefulness. these results suggest that et attitudes do have a role to play in order to ensure the successful implementation and adoption of et by learners and should be considered in policy and practice. keywords: attitudes; educational technology; ipads; et attitudes scale 1. introduction in recent years, the demand for the inclusion of information and communications technology (ict) in education, that is, educational communications technology (et), has increased rapidly (hepp, hinostroza, laval & rehbein, 2004). at present, the findings regarding the ability of et to improve learning are mixed, with this field being continuously investigated. while it is logical that the first step in technology acceptance is access to technology, musa (2006) argues that the value that individuals attach to a technology is of utmost importance in determining how the technology will be received and used. studies have noted the significance of considering both teacher and learner attitudes toward et, in order to determine the success of sumaya laher* department of psychology, university of the witwatersrand *corresponding author: sumaya.laher@wits.ac.za emma boshoff department of psychology, university of the witwatersrand doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i1.15 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(1): 200-213 © uv/ufs mailto:sumaya.laher@wits.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.15 201 laher & boshoff understanding learner attitudes towards the use of tablets ... how it has been and should be implemented (aesaert & van braak, 2014; bovée, voogt, & meelissen, 2007). liaw, huang and chen (2007) argue that the use of et in and of itself is inconsequential, unless et users are positively disposed towards the use of et. therefore, it is crucial to explore learner and instructor attitudes toward et, in order to make the integration of this medium into the classroom as efficient and appealing as possible. courtois, montrieux, de grove, raes, de marez and schellens (2014) suggest that learners are in fact the primary stakeholders in the issue of user acceptance of et. if there is not bottom-up support for the continued use of et from learners, it is unlikely that learners will adopt et regardless of whether the school and teachers have adopted et. learner attitudes towards et have not been adequately explored in the south african context. thus this study explored learner attitudes towards the use of ipads in blended learning classrooms (classrooms that use a combination of face-to-face teaching and ipad-based learning). 1.1 understanding attitudes and ipad usage attitudes can be defined in various ways (fishbein & ajzen, 2010). however, across definitions, two aspects are common in that attitudes have direction and attitudes are associated with behaviour (daya & laher, in press). thus, an attitude can be either positive or negative and will influence the person’s behaviour in relation to the object, group, event or symbol that is being perceived (fishbein & ajzen, 2010). this understanding of attitudes concurs with that proposed by rogers’ diffusion of innovations theory (2003). according to the diffusion of innovations theory, there are five steps towards successful integration of technological innovations, namely: knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation and confirmation. the knowledge phase involves knowing what the innovation does, and how to use it. the persuasion phase follows the knowledge phase, and it is here that positive or negative perceptions or attitudes are formed. according to rogers (2003) attitudes in the persuasion phase could be affected by how useful an individual perceives the innovation to be in terms of how it compares to other previous innovations, how complex it is, its compatibility with existing practices and whether there are any tangible changes brought about by the innovation. the possibility for experimentation with the innovation and the need for the innovation to conform to social norms also lead to attitudes that are more positive and ultimately persuade one to use the innovation. thus once the knowledge and persuasion criteria are met, the decision phase will follow, which should lead to a positive choice resulting in implementation and ultimately confirmation for the innovation. using rogers diffusion of innovations theory as the theoretical framework for this study, attitudes towards the use of ipads are explored using the educational technology (et) attitudes scale. the et attitudes scale measured the learners’ overall attitude towards the ipad in the classroom, as well as their perceptions of the usefulness of the ipad, their enjoyment of et and perceived ease of use or competence in using the ipad. perceived ease of use is the extent to which the use of technology is regarded as free of effort (davis, 1989). it is suggested that the more the user perceives technology to be easy to use, the more positive his or her attitude towards technology will be (sun, tsai, finger, chen & yeh, 2008). research has demonstrated the substantial impact of perceived ease of use on computer attitudes (aesaert & van braak, 2014; liaw et al., 2007) but as technology becomes more prevalent in society, this aspect is becoming less important in determining attitudes towards technology. liaw et al. (2007) and bovée et al. (2007) found that students are adept at using computers and have a high degree of experience with technology suggesting 202 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) that competence is not as prevalent a factor in understanding learner attitudes towards et in schools. perceived usefulness is the cognitive component of attitudes toward computers (liaw et al., 2007). it refers to the degree to which the individual perceives the computer to be important for current and future work (davis, 1989). this influences how the individual will perceive using the computer to enhance work performance and achieve success (teo, 2008). yeha and teng (2012) suggest that perceived usefulness is the most influential predictor of the intention to use technology. bovee et al. (2007) supported this in a study on the computer attitudes of 240 south african learners from lowto high-resourced schools. perceived usefulness was a significant positive predictor of computer attitudes as learners agreed that it is important to learn how to use a computer and that a computer is useful and presents one with opportunities to learn new things. perceived enjoyment in the case of et is concerned with the individual’s inherent pleasure derived from working with et (lee, cheung & chen, 2005). therefore, if an individual perceives engaging in et-related activities as enjoyable, he or she will have a stronger intention to undertake them. it is a crucial determinant of a positive computer attitude because it affects the extent to which the individual will continue to use the computer (teo, 2008). many studies have supported the significant contribution of perceived enjoyment to positive computer attitudes (dündar & akçayır, 2014; lee et al., 2005; liaw et al., 2007; teo, 2008). in dündar and akçayır’s (2014) study on 206 high school learners’ attitudes toward tablets, perceived enjoyment was positively related to tablet attitudes, with the learners noting that tablets made learning fun and increased the learners’ interest in and enjoyment of their subjects. there is currently little research on the use of et in primary and secondary schools in south africa. it is clear that the implementation of et in south african schools has been a slow process and it is therefore essential to examine any factors that may be influencing the slow uptake of et. hence, this study explores learners’ attitudes to a single type of et – the ipad – in a blended learning environment. to do this, two research questions were explored: • what are learners’ attitudes toward ipads in school? • will learners want to continue using ipads in school? 2. methods 2.1 participants the sample for this study consisted of 285 learners from an all-girls private school in the northern johannesburg area – 42 learners from grade 7, 74 learners from grade 8, 59 learners from grade 9, 64 learners from grade 10, and 46 learners from grade 11. the ages of the learners ranged from 12 to 17 years, with a mean age of 14 years (sd = 1.34). the school was selected primarily for convenience and because it is one of the only schools in the area that makes use of a one-to-one ipad initiative in teaching (l. kaplan, personal communication, january 22, 2015). using this sample ensures that all learners have access to the same tablet device – often a confounding factor in this type of research. further, it is well established in the literature that access to et must be present before exploring attitudes towards et (aesaert & van braak, 2014; bovée et al., 2007; tsai & tsai, 2010). thus the sample for this study is a non-probability purposive sample (gravetter & forzano, 2011). 203 laher & boshoff understanding learner attitudes towards the use of tablets ... learners’ access to et was determined by 12 indicators of access both at home and school (see table 3.1). in terms of access to the internet at home, only 3.2% of the learners did not have access to internet at home, while 4.9% of the learners did not have a computer at home. on the other hand, by virtue of being included in this study, 100% of the learners had access to an ipad at home and all the participants owned mobile phones. with regard to the access to ipads at school, only 2.5% of the learners did not use their ipads for school-related assignments, while 11.2% of the learners did not use their ipads for homework. using the ipad to study was the least popular school-related function, with only 54.7% of the learners responding that they did use their ipads to study as evidenced in table 1. from table 1 it is also evident that the use of the ipad to contact classmates at school and socially was fairly evenly split. fifty-three per cent of learners used their ipad to contact classmates at school and 48.1% used the ipad for social engagement with peers, but this was not necessarily via social media, as only 33% of learners accessed social media from their ipads. conversely, 82.1% of the learners used their ipads to contact teachers. table 1: learners’ access to ect at home and at school access to ect frequency (n) percentage (%) internet at home 276 96.8 computer at home 271 95.1 ipad at home 284 99.6 mobile phone 281 98.6 uses ipad in class 285 100 uses ipad for assignments 277 97.2 uses ipad for homework 252 88.4 uses ipad to study 156 54.7 uses ipad to contact classmates at school 151 53 uses ipad to contact classmates socially 148 51.9 uses ipad for social media 190 66.7 uses ipad to contact teachers 234 82.1 2.2 research design this study was descriptive in nature and was therefore not concerned with a cause-and-effect relationship characteristic of an experimental design (rovai, baker, & ponton, 2013). neither the groups nor the variables in this study were manipulated or randomly assigned in any way. therefore, the design used was a non-experimental research design (rovai et al., 2013). the data were collected at one point in time only, therefore the design was cross-sectional (babbie, 2009). 204 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) 2.3 instruments a questionnaire including a demographics section and the et attitudes scale was used. the demographics section asked for information including age and grade. this was followed by 12 closed-ended (yes or no) questions to attain an indication of participants’ computer access and use at home and school. at the end of the questionnaire, participants were asked to provide reasons for whether or not they would like to continue to use the ipad at school 2.3.1 the et attitudes scale the et attitudes scale in this study consisted of three sub-scales: perceived enjoyment, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. the perceived enjoyment sub-scale was adapted from the computer attitude questionnaire (caq) (teo, 2008), and the perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness sub-scales from the computer attitude measure for young students (camys) (teo & noyes, 2008). given that the scale was adapted from many scales, it was piloted on a sample of 24 learners in the same grades as the sample in this study. the information reported here on the scale is for the scale as it was adjusted based on the results and feedback from the pilot study, for which the overall cronbach alpha coefficient was .82. thus, the final scale consisted of 23 items. items 1-5 measure perceived enjoyment; items 6-12 measure perceived ease of use; and items 13-23 measure perceived usefulness. the internal consistency reliability coefficients for the et attitudes scale and subscales ranged from .73 to .85 and were all similar to or higher than the values in the original samples. 2.4 research procedure ethical clearance was obtained from the human research ethics committee (hrec) at the university of the witwatersrand (protocol number: h15/05/16). permission for this study was obtained from all the relevant parties including the principal of the school and the director of et at the school. consent was also obtained from the parents of the participants via a consent form prior to the questionnaire being administered, and assent was obtained from the participants themselves. thereafter, the learners from grades 7 to 11 completed the questionnaire. questionnaires were administered to the learners during lessons at a time when it was convenient for their teachers. questionnaires took approximately 20 minutes to administer and were collected from learners at the end of the lessons. data were entered on ms excel and analysed using spss (version 23, 2015). 2.5 data analysis descriptive statistics were obtained by means of frequencies for the demographic variables’ age as well as the 12 questions considering ipad access and use. descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation, minimum and maximum values, and skewness coefficients) for each of the attitudinal variables in this study were calculated. at the end of the questionnaire, the learners were asked to give their opinions regarding whether they would like to continue to use ipads at school. frequencies were obtained for these responses and reasons and were analysed using content analysis as specified by braun and clarke (2006). 205 laher & boshoff understanding learner attitudes towards the use of tablets ... 3. results 3.1 what are learners’ attitudes toward et? learners’ overall attitudes towards et, their perceptions of the usefulness of et, enjoyability and ease of use were all generally neutral with mean scores ranging between 3.20 and 3.50 (see table 2). table 2: descriptive statistics for learners’ attitudes towards ect and related factors n minimum maximum mean std. deviation skewness learners’ attitudes 279 1.29 5 3.3580 .6018 -.269 perceived usefulness 285 1 5 3.4298 .7428 -.225 perceived ease of use 281 1 5 3.5069 .7718 -.287 perceived enjoyment 283 1 5 3.3498 .8503 -.159 3.2 will learners want to continue to use et? respondents’ desire to continue to use ipads at school was examined by their responses to an open-ended question at the end of the questionnaire. these responses were especially relevant considering that 100% of the learners indicated that they own an ipad and use it in class. ninety-seven percent (n=279) of learners answered the question. of these, 68.85% (n=252) were yes responses and 31.15% (n=114) were no responses. thus, the responses in favour of continuing to use the ipads in class were more than double the number of responses that were not in favour. of those who responded, 14.69% (n=41) were from grade 7, 26.16% (n=73) were from grade 8, 20.78% (n=58) were from grade 9, 21.86% (n=61) were from grade 10, and 16.49% (n=46) were from grade 11. tables 3 and 4 show the themes and sub-themes for the yes and no responses across grades. the frequencies and percentages in these tables do not reflect the number of learners who responded yes or no in each grade, but rather the number of types of yes or no responses per grade. for example, in a yes answer from a single learner, there may have been multiple themes or sub-themes. 3.2.1 themes in favour of using ipads from table 3, the perceived usefulness of ipads for the learners’ futures and the importance for the environment constituted 29.23% (n=107) of responses and was the most prevalent reason for continuing to use an ipad. 26.50% (n=97) of these responses concerned the ipad being a helpful tool for current and future work. respondent 180 from grade 10 commented, “if you don’t use an ipad or tablet, you will find yourself at a disadvantage because the times are changing and the ipad is very useful to find information.” 206 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) table 3: themes and sub-themes for yes responses for grades 7 to 11 grade 7 grade 8 grade 9 grade 10 grade 11 number of types of yes responses total 57 94 52 46 34 252 68.85 theme freq. % freq. % freq. % freq. % freq. % freq. % of responses perceived usefulness 19 5.19 35 9.56 16 4.37 15 4.01 22 6.01 107 29.23 for the future 19 5.19 32 8.74 11 3.00 14 3.83 21 5.74 97 26.50 environmentallyfriendly 3 0.82 5 1.37 1 0.27 1 0.27 10 2.73 practical ease of use 17 4.64 23 6.28 23 6.28 9 2.46 7 1.91 79 21.58 technical ease of use 7 1.91 22 6.01 21 5.74 15 4.1 10 2.73 75 20.50 easy to use 6 1.64 21 5.74 9 2.46 6 1.64 3 0.82 45 12.30 access 1 0.27 1 0.27 12 3.28 9 2.46 7 1.91 30 8.20 perceived enjoyment 14 3.83 9 2.46 5 1.37 7 1.91 2 0.55 37 10.11 innovative 14 3.83 7 1.91 3 0.82 3 0.82 1 0.27 28 7.65 interactive 2 0.55 2 0.55 4 1.09 1 0.27 9 2.46 practical ease of use was the second most cited reason for continuing to use an ipad, with 21.58% (n=79) of responses being from this theme. the majority of these responses came from grade 8 and 9 learners. the quick pace at which research and assignments can be completed on the ipad was the primary reason for it being convenient. for example, respondent 102 from grade 8 commented, “if you need to do research or work on the spot you can just pull out your ipad and do it, you don’t have to wait until you get home.” learners also commented on the practical convenience of using the ipad. respondent 100 from grade 8 commented, “it makes the weight of the school bag a lot less which prevents back problems.” technical ease of use followed, with 20.50% (n=75) of responses indicating that the ipad makes learning easier and provides easier access to the internet and information. respondent 119 from grade 9 summarised the reasons for the ipad being easy to use: “research is easier, it is easier to translate words, you can contact teachers when outside of school, and it is easier to receive work.” finally, perceived enjoyment was the least cited yes response for continuing to use ipads, with 10.11% (n=37) of responses constituting this theme and its sub-themes. learners commented that they enjoy using the ipad in class because it is “fun” and makes class “more exciting.” 207 laher & boshoff understanding learner attitudes towards the use of tablets ... 3.2.2 themes against the use of ipads table 4 shows the frequencies of no responses to the question of continuing to use the ipads in class. grade 7 has not been included in this table, as 100% of grade 7 respondents indicated that they would like to continue to use their ipads in class. this contrasted greatly with the grade 10 and 11 responses that constituted the majority of no responses. table 4: themes and sub-themes for no responses for grades 8 to 11 grade 8 grade 9 grade 10 grade 11 number of types of no responses total % of responses 18 15 40 41 114 31.15 theme freq. % freq. % freq. % freq. % freq. % prefer traditional methods of learning 9 2.46 6 1.64 12 3.28 17 4.64 44 12.02 textbooks/hard copies of notes 4 1.09 2 0.55 3 0.82 2 0.55 11 3.01 prefer learning from teacher 2 0.55 1 0.27 4 1.09 7 1.91 prefer writing notes 3 0.82 4 1.09 8 2.19 11 3.01 22 6.01 too distracting 3 0.82 3 0.82 11 3.01 4 1.09 21 5.74 technological issues 3 0.82 1 0.27 4 1.09 7 1.91 15 4.10 not used effectively 2 0.55 1 0.27 7 1.91 2 0.55 12 3.28 dislike using ipad (no further explanation) 1 0.27 3 0.82 1 0.27 4 1.09 9 2.46 prefer using laptop/ cell phone 3 (laptop) 0.82 4 (cell phone) 1.09 8 2.19 it is anti-social 1 0.36 1 0.27 2 0.55 4 1.09 target for theft 1 0.27 1 .027 2 0.54 the most frequent reason for discontinuing the use of ipads in the classroom related to a preference for more traditional methods of learning. 12.02% (n=44) of responses were categorised in this theme. a preference for traditional learning included a preference for textbooks instead of e-textbooks, handwritten notes and hard copies of notes to write on, as well as a focus on student-teacher interaction instead of the ipad as a teaching tool. for example, respondent 95 in grade 8 commented, “i learn more from books and learn better from writing notes.” respondent 192 in grade 10 agreed: “i prefer the traditional way of [using] paper and pen and find it easier.” respondent 259 in grade 11 commented, “i think ipads take away the traditional necessity of communication with peers and teachers.” learners further pointed to the distracting nature of the ipad. the majority of the responses that made up this 12.02% (n=44) came from grade 10 learners. respondent 186 from 208 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) grade 10 commented, “i hate ipads for school … they distract me and i do not focus …” respondent 238, also in grade 10, further reported, “it can be quite distracting, especially when learners don’t feel like doing work so they utilise social media.” the discontinuation of using ipads because of technological issues constituted 4.10% (n=15) of responses. these included issues such as wi-fi connection problems, technological malfunctions and the unreliability of the ipad. furthermore, 3.28% (n=12) of responses suggested that the ipad is not used effectively in class but no further explanations were provided. 2.19% (n=8) of responses indicated that it is preferable to use a cell phone or laptop instead of an ipad, with the suggestion that ipads are useful for social media and games but not for schoolwork and fast access to information. finally, 1.09% (n=4) of responses pointed to the ipads creating anti-social tendencies amongst peers. 0.54% (n=2) would not like to continue to use an ipad because its value increases the chance of it being stolen. 4. discussion this study investigated attitudes towards et among 285 learners from a private all-girls school in the johannesburg area. learners’ attitudes towards ipads were in the neutral range (see table 2). in the only longitudinal study on the acceptance of a tablet as a learning device at home and school, courtois et al. (2014) found that at the outset of tablet implementation, positive attitudes were the strongest explanation for tablet usage. six months later, results showed that the effects of attitude towards and perceived behavioural control of tablet usage were no longer significant. owing to the similar nature of the sample from courtois et al.’s (2014) study, perhaps the neutral attitudes in this study can also be explained by other factors that were not considered, such as the habit formation of using the ipad in class and, more importantly, subjective norms. whereas the learners’ attitudes may have been positive at the beginning of the ipad implementation, it is likely that, after three years of using the devices, their habitual use of them is more influential on their intention to use them than attitudes or perceived behavioural control alone. in fact, the authors suggest that subjective norms about the acceptance or rejection of technology may explain user acceptance of technology more than attitudes or perceived behavioural control because subjective norms become internalised over time (courtois et al., 2014). therefore, initial attitudes, whether positive or negative, are influenced by subjective norms at a later stage. additionally, obligatory use of technology does not foster positive attitudes, which could explain the neutral attitudes of the learners in this sample. thus, it may be the case that learners are still assessing the merits and drawbacks of using et in the classroom. the qualitative responses provided a more nuanced picture of the attitudes towards ipads. the qualitative results also pointed to potential differences across grades. hence, anovas were used to assess whether overall attitudes, perceived usefulness, enjoyment and ease of use would differ across grades. an analysis of et attitudes across grades revealed that the differences in attitudes across grades were significant for all aspects of et attitudes: perceived enjoyment (p=.000), perceived ease of use (p=.000), perceived usefulness (p=.002), and overall et attitudes (p=.000) as evidenced in table 5. table 6 provides the mean values for each grade for comparison purposes. 209 laher & boshoff understanding learner attitudes towards the use of tablets ... table 5: one-way anova for ect attitudes per grade sum of squares df mean square f sig. perceived enjoyment between groups 26.218 4 6.555 14.144 .000 within groups 128.834 278 .463 total 155.052 282 perceived ease of use between groups 18.574 4 4.643 8.648 .000 within groups 148.193 276 .537 total 166.767 280 perceived usefulness between groups 6.354 4 1.588 4.485 .002 within groups 97.759 276 .354 total 104.112 280 ect attitudes between groups 14.134 4 3.533 11.290 .000 within groups 85.129 272 .313 total 99.263 276 table 6: learners’ attitudes towards ect per grade n minimum maximum mean std. deviation skewness perceived enjoyment grade 7 42 2.25 5 4.149 .61143 -1.045 grade 8 73 2.20 5.00 3.6247 .72644 .225 grade 9 73 2.00 5.00 3.5808 .71815 -.155 grade 10 74 1.80 4.60 3.3243 .64507 -.278 grade 11 45 1.00 5.00 3.1600 .71044 -.111 perceived ease of use grade 7 41 2 5 3.930 .65708 -.733 grade 8 73 1.43 5.00 3.5577 .74883 -.191 grade 9 72 1.71 5.00 3.5972 .69752 .049 grade 10 74 1.71 4.86 3.3494 .71688 -.161 grade 11 46 1.00 4.71 3.0839 .77815 -.440 perceived usefulness grade 7 42 2.86 4.86 3.724 .43422 .405 grade 8 73 1.71 4.86 3.7006 .63895 -.578 grade 9 73 2.57 4.86 3.7593 .52644 -.451 grade 10 72 1.29 4.71 3.4405 .65212 -.461 grade 11 46 1.14 4.57 3.4317 .65879 -.788 210 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) n minimum maximum mean std. deviation skewness learners’ ect attitudes grade 7 41 2.49 4.55 3.582 .46916 -.325 grade 8 72 1.91 4.73 3.3507 .54106 -.184 grade 9 71 2.28 4.34 3.3817 .47828 -.108 grade 10 72 1.82 4.24 3.1255 .50403 -.073 grade 11 45 1.49 4.01 3.0350 .55951 -.418 in terms of perceived enjoyment, it was clear that lower grades had higher levels of enjoyment, which decreased as learners progressed from grade to grade. a similar pattern was observed for ease of use, usefulness and overall attitudes that mirrored these results where learners from lower grades perceived the ipad as easier to use, perceived the ipad as more useful and had more favourable attitudes toward et, which lessened as they progressed from grade to grade. the literature reviewed has demonstrated the considerable importance of perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness in the adoption of positive attitudes towards et (aesaert & van braak, 2014; davis, 1989; govender, 2012). however, these variables were significantly different between grades, which suggests that, at grade level, the attitudes toward perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness are perhaps more favourable in lower grades (7, 8, and 9), which may not be reflected in the overall neutral attitudes. in contrast to the emphasis placed on perceived enjoyment being a significant predictor of positive et attitudes in the literature (lee et al., 2005; mohammadi, 2015; teo, 2007), in this sample, perceived enjoyment was the least cited reason for continuing to use ipads. grade 7 produced the most responses for perceived enjoyment while only two responses from grade 11 respondents cited perceived enjoyment as a reason for continuing to use ipads. although a larger sample would be needed to test this hypothesis, it may be the case that, for learners who have now used the ipads in class for three years, the novelty of the experience has diminished and, as a result of this, so too has the learners’ enjoyment, perceived ease of use and usefulness of using ipads in class. courtois et al. (2014) have suggested that attitudes toward technology can undergo changes from the pre-adoption phase to post-adoption phases. it is therefore apposite to conduct future research on et attitudes longitudinally, as the results of cross-sectional studies can be misleading and it is not always clear in which phase of the technology implementation to situate a cross-sectional study. this could be achieved by conducting measures at different stages of technology adoption. for example, a pre-adoption measure, a post-adoption measure once et has been used for an appropriate amount of time, and a final measure after learners’ examinations which would give insight into the relationship between et attitudes and academic achievement (courtois et al., 2014). in terms of the reasons for not continuing to use the ipad in class, the most frequent reasons cited were that learners prefer traditional pen-and-paper resources and writing notes and that the ipad is too distracting. these results correlate with those from dündar and akçayir’s (2014) study, in which learners suggested that it is more difficult to take notes on ipads and that the ipads distract them from the lesson topic. furthermore, literature has also suggested 211 laher & boshoff understanding learner attitudes towards the use of tablets ... that learners prioritise face-to-face teaching over the use of ict in the classroom (chen, 2012; lópez-pérez, pérez-lópez and rodríguez-ariza, 2011) and this was echoed in the qualitative responses in this study. wuensch, aziz, ozan, kishore, and tabrizi (2006) compared student satisfaction with online learning and face-to-face learning. results showed that students found online learning to be more convenient and accommodating of students working at an individual pace. however, the students perceived online courses as disadvantageous in terms of providing less opportunity for communication with teachers and fellow students. these findings are interesting but a larger and more diverse sample size should be used in future research. the sample should include low and middle resourced schools in conjunction with high resourced schools. these samples should be drawn from schools across south africa in order to make meaningful comparisons about learners’ attitudes towards et. studies also need to focus on et more broadly, not just the use of ipads, 5. conclusion et is an important tool for enhancing learners’ performance and equipping them with the skills to function in an increasingly technologically driven society (teo, 2008). in south africa, et is important for providing learners with skills needed for their personal benefit, as well as to ensure that they are globally competent in terms of their ict skills (department of education, 2004). however, to date, the implementation of et in schools has not been successful because of infrastructural issues, connectivity costs, and the ‘digital divide’ amongst learners with and without access to ict at home and school (pasensie, 2010). although less frequently researched than teachers’ attitudes toward et, learners’ attitudes toward et have a substantial influence on the implementation of et and it is therefore important for them to have positive attitudes toward et if it is to be implemented and maintained effectively (dündar & akçayır, 2014; lee et al., 2005; rogers, 2003; teo & noyes, 2008). the results of this study have demonstrated the importance of attitudes in effective et uptake. therefore, in order for the integration of et to be effective over and above its physical implementation, it is essential to develop learners’ positive attitudes toward et in order to ensure that it is adopted. programmes to facilitate the successful implementation and adoption of et by learners should consider inerventions within the intrapersonal space, more specifically, as they pertain to learner attitudes. references aesaert, k. & van braak, j. 2014. exploring factors related to primary school pupils’ ict self-efficacy: a multilevel approach. computers in human behavior, 41, 327–341. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.10.006 fishbein, m. & ajzen, i. 2010. predicting and changing behavior: the reasoned action approach. new york, ny: psychology press. babbie, e. 2009. the practice of social research. belmont, ca: thomson wadsworth. bhuasiri, w., xaymoungkhoun, o., zo, h., rho, j.j. & ciganek, a.p. 2012. critical success factors for e-learning in developing countries: a comparative analysis between ict experts and faculty. computers & education, 58(2), 843–855. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. compedu.2011.10.010 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.10.006 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2014.10.006 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2011.10.010 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2011.10.010 212 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) bovée, c., voogt, j. & meelissen, m. 2007. computer attitudes of primary and secondary students in south africa. computers in human behavior, 23(4), 1762–1776. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.chb.2005.10.004 braun, v. & clarke, v. 2006. using thematic analysis in psychology. qualitative research in psychology, 3(2), 77–101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa chen, w.f. 2012. an investigation of varied types of blended learning environments on student achievement: an experimental study. 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south african catholic bishops’ conference, cape town, south africa. rogers, e.m. 2003. diffusion of innovations, 5th ed. new york: free press. rovai, a.p., baker, j.d. & ponton, m.k. 2013. social science research design and statistics: a practitioner’s guide to research methods and ibm spss. chesapeake, va: watertree press llc. sun, p.c., tsai, r. j., finger, g., chen, y.y. & yeh, d. 2008. what drives a successful e-learning? an empirical investigation of the critical factors influencing learner satisfaction. computers & education, 50, 1183–1202. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2006.11.007 teo, t. 2008. assessing the computer attitudes of students: an asian perspective. computers in human behavior, 24, 1634–1642. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2007.06.004 teo, t. & noyes, j. 2008. development and validation of a computer attitude measure for young students (camys). computers in human behavior, 24, 2659–2667. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.chb.2008.03.006 tsai, m.j. & tsai, c.c. 2010. junior high school students’ internet usage and self-efficacy: a re-examination of the gender gap. computers & education, 54, 1182–1192. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.compedu.2009.11.004 wuensch, k.l., aziz, s., ozan, e., kishore, m. & tabrizi, m. 2006. pedagogical characteristics of online and face-to-face classes. presented at the world conference on e-learning in corporate, government, healthcare, and higher education. yeha, r.k.-j. & teng, j.t.c. 2012. extended conceptualisation of perceived usefulness: empirical test in the context of information system use continuance. behaviour & information technology, 31, 525–540. https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929x.2010.517272 https://doi.org/10.1002/itdj.20043 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2006.11.007 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2007.06.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2008.03.006 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2008.03.006 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2009.11.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2009.11.004 https://doi.org/10.1080/0144929x.2010.517272 168 decolonising the future in the untransformed present in south african higher education abstract south africa as a nation became democratic in 1994 because of the end of apartheid. since 1994, higher education has geared towards transformation and redress of the inequalities created by the inhuman policies of apartheid. while few applaudable steps have been taken towards this direction, south african higher education remains largely untransformed. for the past two years, a wave of student protest swept across the nation, calling for decolonisation of higher education in general and the curriculum in particular. this move brings to mind several questions about decolonisation and transformation. what is the state of south african higher education? why has it remained untransformed since the advent of democracy? what should be decolonised to ensure transformation of the present and the future? this paper therefore ventures to answer these three questions using the theory of social transformation as a lens. the paper points out that funding structures, research politics, administrative structures and a lack of interest are amongst the reasons for the lack of transformation. the paper concludes that there will be no transformation until higher education institutions have been decolonised. social transformation is therefore argued as the pathway for decolonisation. the paper recommends that transformation in higher education should go beyond the shelves where they are stored as policy to the classroom and university environment for practice and universities need to revise their understandings of transformation under the guidance of the dhet. keywords: decolonisation, south african higher education, trans­ for mation, universities 1. introduction the advent of democracy in south africa brought with it a myriad of changes in the higher education sector. in 1997, the higher education act was passed which necessitated change and access within an education system, which discriminated against people based on race and skin colour. to eradicate the ills of apartheid, transformation became a principal goal of south african higher education and this was enshrined in the white paper of 1997 (doe, 1997). however, transformation has been understood and theorised differently by various scholars and higher education institutions (venter, 2013). venter continues that transformation is supposed to address the challenges of the “present political landscape” while at the same time, dr kehdinga george fomunyam durban university of technology, email: georgek@ dut.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i2.13 issn 0258­2236 e­issn 2519­593x perspectives in education 2017 35(2): 168­180 © uv/ufs mailto:georgek@dut.ac.za mailto:georgek@dut.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.13 169 fomunyam decolonising the future in the untransformed present in south african higher education engaging with the teaching and learning context for sustainable educational solutions. a truly transformed south african higher education therefore will produce scholars who think and compete globally but are able to act locally and vice versa. by doing this south african higher education will be competing with the best in the world not only on paper but in practice. transformation, especially within the context of south african higher education, has been greatly hampered by globalisation, internationalisation and the digital revolution especially in reference to technologies of education, which the world has seen in recent times. as a result, education is becoming more global in its appeal at the expense of social justice and community engagement. south african higher education according to venter (2013: 175) is, “intellectually, culturally and religiously, a hybrid mix in constant flux”. this hybrid mix is what the decolonisation movement aims at destroying, with the aim of establishing a unique contextual higher education system, which is grounded in african, believes experiences and values and anchored on indigenous knowledge systems. however, decolonisation is only possible in a transformed higher education environment. this paper therefore discusses the possibility of decolonising the future of south african higher education in a present, which remains largely untransformed. du preez, simmonds and verhoef (2016) argue that some have construed transformation as a complex, open-ended concept with several interpretations, while others have dismissed it as vague and indistinct making it theoretically and practically inapplicable in the south african higher education context or anywhere else. doe (2008: 38) argued that most higher education institutions created or developed different understandings of transformation, which they used in their mission statement. this diversity in the understanding and enactment of transformation in south african higher education is a principal reason for the lack of transformation all over the nation. decolonising south african higher education within an untransformed space is a complex process, which requires a complex theory to understand it. to theorise on this issue, the paper tackles three basic questions: what is the state of south african higher education? why has it remained untransformed since the advent of democracy? what should be decolonised to ensure transformation of the present and the future? however, to answer these questions, the paper engaged the theory of social transformation as a lens to understand the drive for transformation and the decolonisation movement in south africa higher education. 2. theory of social transformation developed by fomunyam (2015), the theory offers a pathway for transformation and decolonisation in the university environment and the society as a whole. the theory offers four main key constructs that all work together for the transformation of the society. these constructs are resistance to change, advocates of change, alternative vision and nation building. resistance to change in any society is the primary reason for change. without resistance to change, there would be no force to drive change. it is often said change is the only constant thing in life but the very nature of change makes it (change) the only thing that changes and any other thing constant. what we experience as change therefore is simple: the effects of the changing change on all other things that are constant in life. bellettini et al. (2014) define resistance to change as actions taken by people when they are contended with where they are or with what is happening around them. they add that such a threat might not even necessarily be real for resistance to occur. these individuals resist change by either praising the current situation in society or in the context where they find themselves or escape the call for change by focusing on something entirely different. 170 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) advocates of change as opposed to the resistance to change think that society in the context in which they find themselves is in dire need of change. those who advocate for change think the society is dilapidated and its structures should be changed. south african higher education was in dire need for change after apartheid because of the imbalances created by the discriminatory policies of apartheid. though there is great need for transformation, most universities are still failing to transform. change must therefore be championed by the individuals who want to see it in society regardless of what public opinion is at the time. watony (2012) avers that education is supposed to bring transformation in society, academics who are pillars of knowledge or facilitators of knowledge in the university are supposed to pioneer the cause of change in society. alternative vision as the third key construct looks at different pathways for the society. from resisting change, and advocating for change comes a desire to create something different, a new pathway that the society can follow. when those demanding change cannot agree on whether what is needed is change within the leadership or change of leadership, the end game is always the emergence of an alternative vision. this vision, which is undoubtedly political in nature, always becomes a cause of disagreement amongst the individuals involved in the process. this alternative vision becomes the platform for social and political action. nation building as the last key construct focuses on advancing the nation forward. nation building is a drive by a dysfunctional or unstable nation seeking to rebuild its broken walls by reconceptualising its strategies and approaches to make the nation a better place. nation building from this perspective involves conflict or dispute resolution, economic assistance and peaceful negotiations. nation building is the solution to racial diversity since the challenges or potential challenges associated to or with racial diversity have constantly been propounded as a contributing reason for the poor economic and political performance of some countries (ruming, 2014). theory of social transformation resistance to change escapism changes within leadership advocates of change change of leadership satirealternative visionseparation conscientisation nation building canonisation literary praise singers content and ideology source: fomunyam (2015). 171 fomunyam decolonising the future in the untransformed present in south african higher education 3. the state of south african higher education the state of south african higher education is a debatable one, characterised by discordant voices and a variety of opinions. karodia et al. (2015) argue that the quality of education in south african universities has been compromised for approximately two decades. they continue that since the advent of democracy, there has been no significant improvement because, of the over zealousness of the democratic government to engineer change for the sake of change or for symbolic purposes (jansen, 2002). karodia et al. (2015) further add most south african higher education institutions, especially traditional and historic apartheid white universities, claim that they are working towards the transformation of the racial demographics of their academic staff, though there is little or no evidence to support this claim. this suggests that there are several claims of transformative practice but with little or no accompanying proof to back up such claims. cloete (2016) argues that south africa has the best higher education system in africa in terms of numbers. for example, in the last (2008) country system ranking by the shanghai jiaotong academic ranking of world universities, south africa’s higher education system was ranked between the ranges of 27 and 33 and south africa consistently had at least four out of the five african universities in the shanghai top 500. to make this more impressive, the times higher education 2016 ranking of brics and emerging economies places three south african universities (university of cape town 4th, university of the witwatersrand 6th and stellenbosch university 11th) in the top 12 while brazil and russia has one each and india has none (bothwell, 2015). the icing on the cake was the emergence of south african universities at the top in africa in the 2016 webometrics world university rankings. this ranking saw eight south african universities place in the top 1200 universities in the world. in all of africa, thirteen universities appeared in the top 1200 with south africa having the first four positions (323, 473, 547, 561), the seventh (652), the ninth (985) and the last tying with an egyptian university at 1110 (aguillo, 2016). cloete (2016) further adds that in the higher education research and advocacy network in africa research programme, consisting of seven african flagship universities, university of cape town published 2 390 articles in the web of science in 2014 while the other six universities combined could only manage 1 476. furthermore, university of cape town graduated 205 doctorates in 2013/2014, while the remaining six produced a combined 207 doctorates. dhet (2015) agrees with cloete when they declare that south africa had experienced a “revolution”, especially because by 2013 74% of all higher education students were black. a substantial part of the revolution occurred at the doctoral level since african doctoral graduates increased from 58 in 1996 to 821 in 2012, while white graduate numbers between 1996 and 2012, only moved from 587 to 816. all over the world, there have not been any such changes in demographics in a nation’s higher education system over such a short period (16 years). however, this tower of excellence only exists at the postgraduate level, which constitutes only about 16 per cent in most universities in south africa except in certain universities such as uct where it is approximately 30 percent. cloete (2016: 3) argues that, “from assessments of the south african system by the harvard panel on accelerated and shared growth initiative – south africa, the world bank and the centre for higher education trust, south african higher education system could be characterised as low participation with high attrition rates, with insufficient capacity for adequate skills production”. this means access to higher education is still a major challenge and the few who gain access end up dropping out because of high tuition rates. cloete and gillwald (2014) add that in africa, economies with participation rates 172 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) lower than 10% fall within the category of “stage 1 factor-driven” economies and south africa has a 16 percent participation rate. meanwhile countries such as botswana and mauritius have 20 and 26 percent respectively and are in transition from stage 1 to stage 2, which are “efficiency-driven” economies. this is confirmed by che (2013) when it argues that the south african higher education participation rate has increased from 15 percent in 2000 to 18 percent in 2010, and hopefully the 20 percent target will be met by 2015/2016. although there has been growth, the participation rate is still quite low compared to the average for latin american countries (34%) or central asia (31%). the numerous transformation policies and initiatives have failed to achieve its desired effect. decolonisation is supposed to follow transformation especially because transformation creates the structure and architecture for decolonisation. nevertheless, before theorising on how to decolonise the future, thereby creating the architecture for transformation, it is important to understand why transformation has failed or why south african higher education remains largely untransformed since the advent of democracy. 4. why has there been little or no transformation? as articulated earlier, transformation is a fluid concept that has been interpreted differently by various individuals or institutions to mean numerous things. several reasons may account for the lack of transformation ranging from institutional understanding of transformation, resources required for transformation, willingness to transform and the political and social capital of stakeholders within these institutions to drive transformation. the doe (2008) argues that different universities understand transformation differently. the university of cape town for example sees transformation from four basic standpoints: making the university representative of all races and gender in terms of its student make up and academic and support staff, promoting rigorous intellectual diversity, transcending the idea of race and improving the institutional climate and an enhanced focus on african perspectives and its intellectual enterprise. while stellenbosch university sees transformation as the promotion of diversity in terms of demographics of the campus community, a welcoming campus culture, accessibility, a multilingual approach to education, systemic sustainability, improving learning and living spaces and promoting entrepreneurial thought, innovation and relevance to society (doe, 2008). the university of pretoria (up) on the other hand considers transformation to be “rectifying the demographic imbalances of the past and encompass[ing] relevant and meaningful change in the academic, social, economic, demographic, political and cultural domains of institutional life” (up, 2008:10). these three universities amongst other things see transformation in the light of numbers; uct’s four key indicators of transformation have three focuses: on numbers and diversity which in effect caters for the same thing because racial diversity can only be effectively expressed in numbers. ramrathan (2016) argues that higher education transformation in south africa has primarily focused on the domain of counting numbers and this stems from the transformation agenda for higher education, which set several goals that were mostly numerical changes. although universities have been taking steps to address these numerical imbalances (as seen from their understanding of transformation), problems of throughput, dropout and academic support remain. these issues have been destabilising the transformation agenda, making it difficult for these institutions to emerge as transformed entities. paphitis and kelland (2016: 202) conclude that one of the most significant barriers to transformation “is a reticence on the part of the academy to let go of its own privileged position”. the academia is therefore 173 fomunyam decolonising the future in the untransformed present in south african higher education resisting change, which explains why there has been little or no transformation. one of the key constructs of the theory of social transformation, discussed earlier, focussed on resistance to change. as such while universities propagate a culture of transformation by trying to shift demographics, little is being done to ensure the transformation of the individuals within such institutions. to this end, the site ends up being transformed while the people and the knowledge construction process remain untransformed. paphitis and kelland (2016: 202) add that academics who have embraced the call for transformation and are living it should “lead by example in order to dispel the misconception that the twenty-first century university can continue to operate as an ivory tower”. in the university of kwazulu-natal, transformation is understood as promoting the following: high quality research, excellent teaching and learning, responsible community engagement, african scholarship, socially and contextually relevant curricula, the wellbeing of everyone within the university, race and gender representation at all levels in the institution, collegiality, difference, diversity and african languages (ukzn, 2012b). ukzn (2012a) argues that there has been tremendous transformation in the university. contrary to this believe of vibrant transformation in ukzn, johnson (2012) writes that ukzn’s administration has lost its entire institutional memory and has become chaotic, barely existing on life support and is nearly r2 billion in debt. he continues, stating that the government has refused to see the hideous damage done to the university as well as how rapid africanisation has destroyed the university. beetar (2013) adds to this by arguing that the project of transformation at ukzn has been successful in the sense that it has transformed into a model for what not to do at a tertiary institution. the lack of transformation in south african universities is undebatable, as seen in the various examples. however, this situation is not only prevalent in universities but also in universities of technology. ngcamu (2016) argue that in the durban university of technology(dut), there are a variety of understandings of transformation amongst key personels in management. these include redressing past imbalances with mainstreamed operational activities, responding to students, employees, society, industry or business, government and global needs as the main cornerstones of transformation in higher education institutions. to one of the top management officials, transformation was all about “clear communication, roles and responsibilities to be clearly defined. recruitment and selection in hr was operating without policies with timeframes and the hr interview scoring system was poor” (ngcamu, 2016: 17). this peripherial understanding of transformation as well as equating it to demographic changes also helps to explain the lack of transformation. the dut experience is not a unique one since the tshwane university of technology (tut) shares the same experience. tyobeka and van-staden (2009) argue that although tut has made remarkable strides after the merger in addressing several issues facing the university and improving access, transformation still remains a problem. fomunyam (2015) argues that amongst the reasons for the lack of change or resistance to change is individuals feeling comfortable in their position or the direction the change is leading to is unclear. several stakeholders within the university are failing to align with the changes being made and resisting it because of uncertainty in the future. in addition, little or no attention has been given to the transformation of the curriculum, making the initiatives of transformation more about the architecture rather than about the transformation of the people with the university. from the above examples, it is clear that there has been little progress made in south african higher education concerning transformation. having discussed the 174 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) state of south african higher education and the reasons it remains untransformed, it is vital to forge a pathway to ensure the decolonisation of the higher education system and necessitate transformation. this last section of the article focuses on what should be decolonised to ensure transformation of the present and the future. 5. decolonisation for transformation in south african higher education ngugı (2004: 88) argues that decolonisation is a complicated process that focuses on “the rejecting of the centrality of the west in africa’s understanding of itself and its place in the world”. this means that decolonising is about shifting the balance of power in relation to knowledge hegemony and knowledge economy. it is about redefining african institutions from an african perspective in the bid to construct knowledge about africa for africans in particular and the rest of the world at large. prinsloo (2016: 165) adds to this by arguing that decolonisation “is about re-centering ourselves, intellectually and culturally, by redefining what the centre is: africa”. african institutions or universities have foregrounded european experiences, cultural and social capital at the expense of unique african epistemological nuances. by making africa the centre of teaching and learning in south african higher education, academics would be foregrounding the african experience and knowledge systems as well as empowering africans to make contextual knowledge relevant contextually and internationally. to decolonise in the university or decolonising the south african higher education system from the above definitions will focus on three different constructs: a partial or complete makeover of institutional architecture, curriculum divergence and convergence and democratising university hegemony. a change in university architecture – be it partial or complete – is required for the decolonisation of south african higher education. a university’s structure (both human and material), determine the direction the university goes. the mustfall movements (rhodesmustfall and feesmustfall) in south africa in the past two years have more than demonstrated that institutional structures need a makeover, be it partial or complete. mbembe (2015) argues that decolonising the university or the higher education system begins with the de-privatisation and rehabilitation of the public space, which is the university. this means the process begins with a definition of what pertains to the realm of the common and does not belong to anyone in particular, otherwise referred to as the public. to this effect, buildings and of public spaces within higher education institutions require a makeover. this is especially true because south africa had for many centuries defined, “itself as not of africa, but as an outpost of european imperialism in the dark continent; and in which 70% of the land is still firmly in the hands of 13% of the population” (mbembe, 2015: 13). furthermore, since institutional architecture goes beyond the material structures to human resources and structures; giving a university a make-up or makeover would go beyond buildings to creating conditions that will make black staff and students say of the university: “this is my home. i am not an outsider here. i do not have to beg or to apologize to be here. i belong here” (mbembe, 2015: 6). by making the university a safe space for all south africans or all students and staff wherever they come from is a giant step towards decolonisation, which would ensure improved access and the breaking down of hegemonic structures. disemelo (2015: 2) argues that decolonisation is not simply about one single issue, but “eradicating the painful exclusions and daily micro aggressions which go hand-in-hand with institutional racism within these spaces … and it is also about laying bare the failures of the heterosexual, patriarchal, neoliberal capitalist 175 fomunyam decolonising the future in the untransformed present in south african higher education values which have become so characteristic of the country’s universities”. a makeover of the university architecture would therefore, amongst other things, lead to the rebranding or change of those colonial names. such initiatives would not only rebrand the university and give it a new face, structure, culture and architecture, but would also provide the platform for quality education and excellence, which fomunyam (2016) argues is the basis for transformation. this would therefore ensure that the present and the future is decolonised, creating room for the transformation of the present and by extension the future for as askell-williams (2015) puts it to transform the present it is vital to take several steps that focuses on the future. curriculum divergence and convergence on the other hand would not only secure the transformation of south african higher education, but would also ensure freedom of the mind for students and staff. curriculum divergence would be the separation or breakaway from a eurocentric curriculum, which disempowers the african mind by foregrounding european or foreign experiences at the expense of local or contextual knowledge, which can easily be applied. however, a focus on local experiences would leave the student vulnerable and excluded especially in the current dispensation of globalisation and internationalisation. it is therefore about foregrounding local content and experiences, exporting it to the rest of the world and constructing knowledge on shared experiences. furthermore, to effectively expand on this notion of decolonising the curriculum by diverging to converge, it is vital to look at three key notions of the curriclum that reveal that curriculum matters are intertwined with the cultural, political, social and historical contexts of not only the education system but the world in which they operate. these notions are curriculum as reproduction, curriculum as consumption and curriculum as transformation. curriculum as reproduction according to barnett and coate (2005) centres on the hidden curriculum and its ability to reproduce a social structure through hidden artefacts within the curriculum recognisable only to the hegemonic few or custodians of such knowledge. it suggests that the curriculum is political in nature and something is happening beyond what can be seen in the teaching and learning situation and in textbooks. this hidden curriculum therefore acts as a gatekeeper by ensuring only the privilege few can gain epistemological access, while the rest keep wondering around the corridors. curriculum as reproduction aims at reproducing divisions in society, making sure that control remains with the few (higgs, 2016). as such, the development of future african intellectuals on the very hinges of european views and experiences is simply another way of handing over control back to europeans similar to what some african leaders did in the late 19th century. curriculum as consumption on the other hand is premised on the continuous marketisation of education. higher education institutions are constantly competing with one another for lucrative student populations, and this has forced curricula in higher education to be influenced more by external forces rather than internal forces (barnett & coate, 2005). the market currently dictates the direction of the curriculum based on what skills and knowledge is needed, and since every student wants to be employed upon completion of his or her studies, they see the curriculum as dictated. since europeans, americans or foreign individuals own most of the biggest companies in africa in general and south africa, the individuals shape the direction of the curriculum. the higher education sector rather than construct knowledge with students simply turn the students into consumers who must go outside and reproduce what they have consumed to the rest of the nation (higgs, 2016). the notion of curriculum as consumption reveals how social values have shifted towards the marketplace, leading to the development of students who are morally bankrupt, and this according to paphitis and kelland (2016), is a form of epistemic violence 176 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) which must be dealt away with if transformation must occur. decolonising the curriculum by diverging to converge will give south african higher education the opportunity of developing a curriculum, which instils the kind of values and ideals (such as social justice, democracy, tolerance and ubuntu) the nation desires in the students and the academics, so they can in turn transport this to the rest of the world. curriculum as transformation sees the curriculum as having the potential to transform the nation. a redundant eurocentric curriculum hinders the course of transformation because it keeps the students and the staff blinded about the socio-political realities facing the nation. however, if the curriculum is engaging, relevant and contextual, it has the potential to empower and transform the lives of students. in the dark days of apartheid, certain groups of people were excluded systematically from education and one of the ways of transforming this landscape and healing all stakeholders within the university of bitter knowledge is engaging a curriculum that is transformative. if south africa is therefore going to control its own fate, it must control its curriculum, ensuring that it is south africa’s “vision of legitimate knowledge” and not a eurocentric view imposed on her. mamdani (1998: 71) crowns the call for indigenous knowledge systems when he argues that, “the idea that natives can only be informants, and not intellectuals, is part of an old imperial tradition. it is part of the imperial conviction that natives cannot think for themselves; they need tutelage”. democratising university hegemony is the last step required to take for the decolonisation of south african higher education thereby ensuring transformation. mbembe (2015) argues that universities or organisations are socially constructed spaces where knowledge creation and knowledge creation stakeholders constantly change organisational reality. this process of knowledge creation takes place in an environment where knowledge or meaning has to be negotiated and renogotiated to ensure the complexity of transformation, particularly in universities. but this can only happen if university processes are democratised to ensure freedom of speech and participation. for knowledge construction to be meaningful and progressive, especially in south africa where the call for decolonisation has reached its peak, university hegemony needs to be broken down and power given to the people for local experiences to be grounded. with the current top-down hegemonic academic processes, transformation is impossible because the people feel alienated and therefore do not contribute to the transformation process. the famous mamdani affair at uct demonstrates this more clearly. barnes (2007) and mamdani (1998) recount that professor mahmood mamdani held the ac jordan chair in the centre for african studies in uct, at the time when the faculty of social science was developing a foundation course which was being prepared for the teaching of africa to first year students. a dispute began between other members of staff and himself over what should be taught on the course. the university and faculty management attempted to resolve the dispute by suspending mamdani from the curriculum planning committee, thereby effectively denying him the opportunity to contribute further to the course planning. mamdani responded by asking that the issue be resolved through a series of seminars where the different viewpoints could be debated by the university community. mamdani made an incredible presentation, which devastated his interlocutors. these debates brought to the lime light several issues; “that the use of administrative fiat to stifle intellectual debate has no place in a university setting and secondly, what it means to study africa is fiercely contested, and the academic project as a whole can only flourish if all viewpoints are enabled to contend freely” (mamdani, 1998). democratising university processes and dismantling the hegemony that has existed for years is vital. in south african higher education, several scandals that demonstrate the ills of academic hegemony and how it stifles the knowledge construction process as well 177 fomunyam decolonising the future in the untransformed present in south african higher education as university transformation have occurred. decolonising the university hegemony is a step towards taking african experiences and perspectives to the rest of the world. examples such as the desai affair, the university’s suspension of professor evan mantzaris for criticising management, the suspension of nithaya chetty and john van den berg for “not exercising due care in communicating with the media” demonstrates the destructive power of university hegemony (karodia et al., 2015; patel, 2006). these affairs indicate that the era of university hegemony has past and a new era that heralds democracy and negates the “prevailing culture of incivility and racial stereotyping that further impedes the free exchange of ideas” (patel, 2006: 231). democratising university processes is a way of giving a voice to the masses, foregrounding their experiences in the construction of knowledge. the elite few can no longer drive academic discussions and decide what happens or does not happen in the university milieu. democratising university hegemony is a step towards ensuring the decolonisation of the university, the curriculum and its architecture. 6. conclusion south african higher education is in dire need of decolonisation and transformation but the current institutional culture and architecture does not create room for this to happen at any level, beginning from the curriculum, student population, knowledge creation and university hegemony. the state of education is deplorable especially at the undergraduate level. several steps have been taken to improve the quality of education at the postgraduate level. there are several reasons for the poor quality of education and ranges from a lack of political will to transform, a lack of congruent vision for transformation or institutional understanding of transformation, a lack of social and political capital for transformation, escapism, racism, funding and focus on policies on transformation rather than enactment of these policies. several steps need to be taken to address these challenges. the university needs a partial or complete makeover of institutional architecture, curriculum divergence and convergence and democratising university hegemony to create the right atmosphere for decolonisation and transformation. this paper therefore makes the following recommendations for higher education institutions, the council on higher education, the department of higher education and training and academics for the decolonisation and transformation of south african higher education. the paper recommends that transformation in higher education needs to transcend the shelves where they are stored as policy to the classroom and university environment for practice. universities also need to revise their understandings of transformation under the guidance of the department of higher education and training so that all universities can have a single understanding of transformation, which they can link to their mission. once this is done, the department can develop a metrics, which can be used to measure transformation within universities. although the context for universities is different, requiring different approaches to measure transformation, a nationwide understanding of transformation is vital if it is seen as a national project. secondly, universities need a makeover in terms of their culture and architecture to create the right atmosphere and condition for the academic exchanges, demographic representation and eradication of sexual and racial discrimination. decolonising the curriculum is vital for transformation, especially because it is through the curriculum that the students and staff would understand why transformation is needed and how transformation should unfold within the university. diverging to converge is vital to put south africa on the map through knowledge construction that foregrounds african experiences 178 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) and worldviews and the exportation of this knowledge to the rest of the world. university hegemony needs to be destroyed for academic freedom to be at its best. stifling academic discussions through university hegemony is a way of making sure that indigenous knowledge is foregrounded. university structures need to be democratised to ensure that every stakeholder within the university has a voice and that their voice is heard. decolonising the future in the untransformed present is the only way to ensure the transformation of south african higher education in the present and the future. references aguillo, i. 2016. world university ranking. ranking web of universities. askell-williams, h. 2015. transforming the 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kwazulu-natal (ukzn). 2012a. there is nothing average about our trans­ formation averages. durban: university of kwazulu-natal. university of kwazulu-natal (ukzn). 2012b. university of kwazulu­natal transformation charter. durban: university of kwazulu-natal. venter, r. 2013. transforming theological knowledge: essays on theology and the university after apartheid. bloemfontein: sun press. https://doi.org/10.18820/9781920382261 watony, j. 2012. politics and schooling in cameroon: nursery through high school. victoria: trafford publishing. https://doi.org/10.18820/9781920382261 pie33(1).indb perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 42 the concrete-representationalabstract sequence of instruction in mathematics classrooms vimolan mudaly jayaluxmi naidoo the purpose of this paper is to explore how master mathematics teachers use the concrete-representational-abstract (cra) sequence of instruction in mathematics classrooms. data was collected from a convenience sample of six master teachers by observations, video recordings of their teaching, and semi-structured interviews. data collection also included focus-group interviews with learners. in south africa, master teachers are considered expert teachers in their discipline. the master teachers in this study were selected by the department of education based on their many years of teaching experience; in addition, these selected master teachers taught at six different dinaledi schools in kwazulu-natal (south africa). a key finding of this research demonstrated that the use of the cra instructional sequence was paramount for the effective teaching of mathematics. this instructional sequence was found to be predetermined as well as intuitive. the cra instruction may be used in classrooms where learners are not streamed into ability levels, as is the case with the majority of schools in south africa. these findings are important for shaping both teacher and curriculum development. keywords: visualisation, representations, activity theory, cra sequence introduction success in mathematics is becoming increasingly important for learners since it is essential for a variety of employment opportunities (witzel, riccomini & schneider, 2008). our many years of experience in the field of mathematics education have convinced us that the teaching of mathematics can be highly frustrating. for example, algebra often requires the manipulation of equations that have little to do with the external activity system vimolan mudaly school of education, university of kwazulu-natal e-mail: mudalyv@ukzn.ac.za telephone: 082 977 0577 jayaluxmi naidoo school of education, university of kwazulu-natal e-mail: naidooj2@ukzn.ac.za telephone: 074 475 2938 the concrete-representational-abstract sequence of instruction in mathematics classrooms vimolan mudaly vimolan mudaly & jayaluxmi naidoo 43 the concrete-representationalabstract sequence of instruction in mathematics classrooms vimolan mudaly jayaluxmi naidoo the purpose of this paper is to explore how master mathematics teachers use the concrete-representational-abstract (cra) sequence of instruction in mathematics classrooms. data was collected from a convenience sample of six master teachers by observations, video recordings of their teaching, and semi-structured interviews. data collection also included focus-group interviews with learners. in south africa, master teachers are considered expert teachers in their discipline. the master teachers in this study were selected by the department of education based on their many years of teaching experience; in addition, these selected master teachers taught at six different dinaledi schools in kwazulu-natal (south africa). a key finding of this research demonstrated that the use of the cra instructional sequence was paramount for the effective teaching of mathematics. this instructional sequence was found to be predetermined as well as intuitive. the cra instruction may be used in classrooms where learners are not streamed into ability levels, as is the case with the majority of schools in south africa. these findings are important for shaping both teacher and curriculum development. keywords: visualisation, representations, activity theory, cra sequence introduction success in mathematics is becoming increasingly important for learners since it is essential for a variety of employment opportunities (witzel, riccomini & schneider, 2008). our many years of experience in the field of mathematics education have convinced us that the teaching of mathematics can be highly frustrating. for example, algebra often requires the manipulation of equations that have little to do with the external activity system purpose of the equation; the arbitrary symbols may be manipulated with little regard to the numerals in the original equation (witzel, 2005). researchers have shown that the use of the cra sequence of instruction has been very effective and beneficial to learners who struggle with understanding mathematical concepts and procedures (flores, 2009; witzel et al., 2008). anecdotal evidence and research suggest that learners often claim that mathematics is difficult and abstract. some teachers claim that learners are no longer prepared to work hard. furthermore, these teachers maintain that either they do not have the proper resources to teach mathematics adequately or they find learners uncooperative and unprepared. despite these negative feelings, there are teachers who are able to assist their learners in making meaning of what may sometimes be considered abstract concepts in mathematics. this, inevitably, leads to learners finding the mathematics being taught interesting and being able, to some extent, to understand abstract mathematical concepts. it was with this in mind that we explored the approach used by master teachers in their mathematics classrooms. master teachers are generally knowledgeable, competent teachers who have a record of excellent achievement in the senior certificate examinations (hedcom secretariat, 2006). these teachers are highly performing successful teachers who have the skill and knowledge to teach mathematics and can share experience and expertise with other teachers (doe, 2006). in 2006, the department of education (kzn) announced that in terms of teacher development, 120 master teachers would be appointed and an additional 2.400 master teachers would be trained (makapela, 2007). this announcement was made due to the realisation that many schools in south africa lacked qualified mathematics and science teachers. in addition, all the master teachers in this study taught at dinaledi schools. these schools were selected by the national department of education with the intention of increasing the participation and performance of black learners and female learners in mathematics and science. the dinaledi project was intended as a short-term project providing teaching and learning resources to a limited number of schools. selected schools were regarded as ‘star’ schools in south africa. teaching of mathematics using cra instruction sequence teaching learners mathematics, using concrete objects, pictorial representations, followed by abstract symbols and numerals, is called the concrete to representational to abstract (cra) instructional strategy (witzel, 2005). this approach has been found to be useful in increasing the understanding of abstract mathematical concepts and ideas (witzel, mercer & miller, 2003). the cra instructional approach is a threestage process. the first stage requires that learners manipulate concrete objects, followed by the pictorial representation of whatever they have done at this stage. the concrete manipulative may be represented by a drawing, picture or diagram. thus, the teacher uses the same model and procedures to pictorially represent the mathematical process. thereafter, the problem may be solved using abstract perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 44 symbolic notation, which involves memorisation of mathematical procedures and continues until the learner learns the procedure or concept automatically (flores, 2009; witzel, 2005; witzel et al., 2008). when using the cra method, the sequencing of activities is important. teachers ought to start at the concrete level before moving to the representational level and, finally, the abstract level. the third part of the sequence, abstract thinking, will only be required if the information cannot be readily represented at a concrete or representational level. to achieve this outcome, teachers need to plan carefully and use innovative strategies in class. the concrete understanding ought to be attempted first by using appropriate concrete objects. secondly, representational understanding is achieved by using an appropriate drawing technique and, finally, appropriate strategies are used to assist learners in moving towards the abstract level of understanding of the concepts and symbols for a particular mathematical idea using explicit teaching. teachers should use appropriate concrete manipulatives first. it is also important to ensure that learners acquire, retain and master the mathematics skills at each stage of the instructional sequence (witzel et al., 2008). in this study, the master teachers used concrete visual tools when they introduced new topics in mathematics and explained known mathematics concepts. it appeared that these visuals serve as suitable scaffolding in their mathematics lessons. these tools acted as instruments necessary for bridging the space that existed between the ‘real world’ and the ‘abstract world’ of symbolism. in our opinion, visualisation can be précised to imply the ability to form and negotiate a mental image necessary for problem-solving in mathematics. whilst mathematics encompasses many abstract notions that are difficult to acquire and apply (kaminski, sloutsky & heckle, 2008), visualisation enables abstract notions to be made more accessible to the learner. moreover, interactions with concrete objects increase the likelihood that learners would remember stepwise procedures in mathematics, because this allows learners to retrieve information in a variety of ways including visual, auditory, tactile and kinesthetic (witzel, 2005; witzel et al., 2008). the idea of using visual skills in a classroom is also supported by gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences. despite the value of the multiple intelligences theory and even though visual education is important for learners to successfully interact with shapes (freudenthal, 1971), visual education is generally an area that is ignored in mathematics classrooms (hershkowitz, parzysz & van dor-molen, 1996). theoretical framework activity theory was used as a framework for this study. this theory is based on the assumption that all human actions are mediated by tools and cannot be separated from the social milieu in which action is carried out. in this study, activity theory provides the framework for describing the structure, development and context for the activities that were supported through the use of visuals as tools. these tools the concrete-representational-abstract sequence of instruction in mathematics classrooms vimolan mudaly vimolan mudaly & jayaluxmi naidoo 45 differed based on the context within which each school was located. for example, in teaching transformation geometry, one master teacher used the smart board; another master teacher used a stick with different coloured elastic bands, and another used paper-folding and gestures. these diverse tools were used to teach the concept of rotation and reflection in transformation geometry. in this study, the activity system under the microscope is the act of teaching in mathematics classrooms. the community with the activity system refers to a group of individuals who share a common objective. barab, schatz and scheckler (2004) proposed that activity theory emphasised the mutual nature of learning and doing, of tool use and community, and of content and context. to clarify, as the learning community within each activity system in the study works, plays, and solves problems together, they develop a new set of values and notions. i use engeström’s (1987, 1993, 1994, 2001) second-generation activity theory model in this study. to situate the activity theory model within the context of this study, i define the subject as the master teacher; the instruments are the visual tools that are used to teach mathematics, and the object is the development of the mathematics content. the communities in this study are the learners within the mathematics classroom, the master teachers, the staff at each school and the parents within the community. the subject belongs to a community that is governed and mediated by rules and division of labour. essentially, members of the community collaborate with each other to achieve the outcome of the activity system. the following model (figure 1) emerged from this study. this model graphically demonstrates how activity theory was used in the teaching and learning of mathematics. the smaller external activity system that is illustrated in the figure varies for each master teacher. figure 1: conceptual model of the human activity system within this study adapted from engeström (1987: 78) perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 46 methodology issues of ethics ethical clearance was obtained from the research office of the participating university. in addition, each participant was invited in writing to take part in the study and was provided with an informed consent form to peruse at their leisure. moreover, participants were informed of their right to withdraw from the study without prejudice. each participant was also informed that s/he would be invited to a dissemination-of-results discussion session at the end of the study. participants the master teachers in this study were generally knowledgeable, good, competent teachers who have a record of excellent achievement in the senior certificate examinations. these teachers are high-performing, successful teachers who have the skill and knowledge to teach mathematics and who can share experience and expertise with other teachers (doe, 2006). in south africa, master teachers serve the same purpose as a mentor or expert teacher. they are senior teachers with the potential to mentor new teachers (naidoo, 2012). data collection and analysis a qualitative interpretation of master teachers’ use of visuals as tools within mathematics classrooms was conducted. the qualitative data-collection phase involved five stages of research. stage 1: the pilot study prior to pilot-testing the questionnaire, items on the questionnaire were discussed with colleagues within similar research areas. after minor edits, the questionnaire was pilot-tested with ten schools. the pilot study assisted in conducting a mock data-collection process in order to ensure the validity and reliability of the research instruments and research methods. the research instruments were subsequently refined based on data collected in the pilot study. stage 2: master teacher questionnaire in stage 2, a questionnaire was hand-delivered to each of the remaining ten schools. this was a pen-and-paper questionnaire whereby the teachers were asked various questions relating to their teaching strategies and resources used. the questionnaire was analysed and coded in preparation for the next stage of data collection. the final sample was selected for stage 3 of the data-collection process. stage 3: observations and video recordings stage 3 involved the observation and video recording of at least three grade 11 mathematics lessons that were taught by each of the six master teachers. in addition, radius the concrete-representational-abstract sequence of instruction in mathematics classrooms vimolan mudaly vimolan mudaly & jayaluxmi naidoo 47 methodology issues of ethics ethical clearance was obtained from the research office of the participating university. in addition, each participant was invited in writing to take part in the study and was provided with an informed consent form to peruse at their leisure. moreover, participants were informed of their right to withdraw from the study without prejudice. each participant was also informed that s/he would be invited to a dissemination-of-results discussion session at the end of the study. participants the master teachers in this study were generally knowledgeable, good, competent teachers who have a record of excellent achievement in the senior certificate examinations. these teachers are high-performing, successful teachers who have the skill and knowledge to teach mathematics and who can share experience and expertise with other teachers (doe, 2006). in south africa, master teachers serve the same purpose as a mentor or expert teacher. they are senior teachers with the potential to mentor new teachers (naidoo, 2012). data collection and analysis a qualitative interpretation of master teachers’ use of visuals as tools within mathematics classrooms was conducted. the qualitative data-collection phase involved five stages of research. stage 1: the pilot study prior to pilot-testing the questionnaire, items on the questionnaire were discussed with colleagues within similar research areas. after minor edits, the questionnaire was pilot-tested with ten schools. the pilot study assisted in conducting a mock data-collection process in order to ensure the validity and reliability of the research instruments and research methods. the research instruments were subsequently refined based on data collected in the pilot study. stage 2: master teacher questionnaire in stage 2, a questionnaire was hand-delivered to each of the remaining ten schools. this was a pen-and-paper questionnaire whereby the teachers were asked various questions relating to their teaching strategies and resources used. the questionnaire was analysed and coded in preparation for the next stage of data collection. the final sample was selected for stage 3 of the data-collection process. stage 3: observations and video recordings stage 3 involved the observation and video recording of at least three grade 11 mathematics lessons that were taught by each of the six master teachers. in addition, radius an observation schedule and researcher field notes were used to record the data collected in this stage of the study. based on the observations and video recordings, it was evident that the master teachers resorted to using the cra approach to make the mathematics being taught easier to understand and to make their lessons more interesting and fun. after analysing and coding the observations, stage 4 commenced. stage 4: master teacher interviews each of the six master teachers selected were interviewed using a semi-structured interview schedule. each interview was recorded. selections of video clips were provided for the master teachers to view. these video clips focused on the teacher’s use of the cra approach in the classroom. the teachers were asked questions pertaining to the use of this approach in the classroom. their responses were probed where necessary to ensure that there were no misinterpretations or misunderstandings. after analysing the master teacher interviews, stage 5 was initiated. in this stage of data collection, focus-group interviews (fgi) were held with learners from each of the six schools. stage 5: focus-group interviews with learners a semi-structured focus-group interview schedule was used and each focus-group interview was recorded. selected learners were afforded the opportunity to view the same video clips that were shown to their teachers. these selected learners were asked questions about the use of the cra approach in their classrooms. whilst different visuals were used and each master teacher provided different reasons for using visuals, this article focuses on how the master teachers used visuals as tools in the mathematics classroom. based on lesson observations, the scrutiny of video recordings, the master teacher interviews and the focus-group interviews, it was found that, rather than using traditional strategies to teach mathematics, all the master teachers incorporated scaffolding techniques to support their learners’ development in mathematics. one of the scaffolding techniques was the master teachers using the cra approach in their classrooms. results in this study, it was evident that the master teachers deliberately used visuals as tools, while reflecting in action. they used gestures, graphs, geometric shapes, underlining for emphasis and diagrams instinctively while teaching. apart from the use of gestures, this study also captured the master teachers’ use of technology as a visual strategy. tools such as the smart board and the calculator enabled teachers and learners to display ideas visually and, in this way, facilitate multiple interpretations. to some extent, these visual strategies contributed to meaningful learning of mathematics. for example, if learners were deemed to be experiencing problems with understanding concepts during their teaching, they instinctively resorted to the cra perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 48 approach. they used concrete manipulatives, for example a piece of paper, a stick, rubber bands, chairs, bricks and a calculator, in order to enhance the understanding of the mathematical concepts being taught. the master teacher then switched to the representation level of teaching. in this instance, learners were exposed, where possible, to visual representations of the concept being taught in the form of pictures, diagrams, colour or gestures. by designing lessons based on the cra sequence of instruction, the teacher encouraged learners to take personal ownership of abstract concepts. learners made personalised, concrete, meaningful connections by using these appropriate objects (witzel et al., 2008). unwittingly, the teachers were engaging the learners in a process of constructing their own meanings in order to deepen understanding. the learners were afforded an opportunity to practise problem-solving by visually representing their solutions in the form of diagrams or sketches. this led to a continuous teacher-learner interaction until the teacher was satisfied that the learners were able to model the key mathematics concepts at the representational level. when this was achieved, the master teachers proceeded to the abstract level. in this instance, only numbers, mathematics rules and symbols were used. in each master teacher’s classroom, learners were afforded many opportunities to practise and demonstrate their mastery of the concepts being taught, before the master teachers moved to a new concept. the master teacher moved among the learners and spoke to them during the lesson. each learning space became a hive of discussion and activity, and it seemed that discussion between learners was encouraged. what was essential for effective teaching in each of these lessons was the teacher’s development of a concept that was structured and went from the concrete to the representational and, finally, to the abstract level. thus teachers using an algorithmic approach, devoid of visuals, may find it difficult to create an engaging learning environment. the concrete and representational visual tools that were used shaped the way in which the learners built mathematics relationships, in order to advance the comprehension of the abstract mathematical concepts. niess (2005) claims that a real challenge inhibiting good teaching is the ability to identify useful problem-solving tools that individual learners would require in the mathematics class. moreover, the practice of teaching mathematics requires teachers to be both knowledgeable in mathematics and proficient in problem-solving (kazima, pillay & adler, 2008). anecdotal evidence indicates that mathematics teachers often use visual tools with the intention of assisting learners to grasp a concept in order to improve mathematical conceptual knowledge. in this study, conceptual knowledge is defined as the ability to use previously learnt knowledge in order to solve different problems (witzel, 2005). teachers’ tacit knowledge and beliefs concerning the teaching and learning of mathematics influenced the teaching and learning of mathematics in their classrooms (naidoo, 2012). the concrete-representational-abstract sequence of instruction in mathematics classrooms vimolan mudaly vimolan mudaly & jayaluxmi naidoo 49 the master teachers in this study used visuals and concrete tools as a means of scaffolding mathematics thinking and learning. however, before using the concrete and pictorial representations, the teachers had to ensure that their learners were well scaffolded (given guidance and support) (witzel et al., 2008). scaffolding provided an alternative method to the traditional ‘chalk and talk’ approach to teaching. the master teachers used different levels of scaffolding to ensure success in the classroom. for example, at rose secondary while karyn was revisiting the idea about gradients of lines and the direction in which the lines faced, she used diagrams and gestures. since the drawing of straight lines using the gradient method is important within analytical geometry, karyn proceeded to write symbols on the board and drew lines through them as depicted in figure 1: figure 1: karyn’s use of symbols to represent the slope of a line in essence, she used this visual (figure 4) as a means of making the concept of gradients and lines easier to remember. her discussion revolved around how symbols denoting the greater than, less than or equal to signs facilitated the learners’ understanding or knowledge with respect to the slope of the line. when examining the first symbol, it is discernible that the direction of the bottom part of the ‘less than’ sign is similar to the downward slope of a line. in the second symbol, the bottom part of the ‘equal to’ sign is similar to a horizontal line. with the last symbol, the bottom part of the ‘greater than’ sign looks identical to the upward slope of a line. this may seem to be related to the instrumental way of understanding the idea, and is not dissimilar to learning using a pneumonic or even memorising. however, it can be argued that at the most basic level, the teacher was attempting to create an association between the symbolic (<, = or >) and the concrete (the actual line). when asked about her reasons for using this approach to teach the direction of the slope of lines, karyn stated that using this visual manner of teaching assisted in making gradients and directions of slopes easier to remember. karyn believed that the act of drawing a diagram contributed to her learners’ comprehension of the mathematical idea or concept. this notion is corroborated by mudaly (2010) who asserts that, by using diagrams when solving problems, learners can become actively engaged in meaning making. he further asserts that the interpreting of perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 50 mathematical symbols and words and the act of creating diagrams contribute towards understanding the problem and hence can lead to correct solution of problems. similarly, if immediate association is established between the sign ‘>’ and the slope of the line, the construction of the direction of the line becomes easier. the following statement by teacher karyn captures this notion. “… it makes it easier for them (the learners) to remember, can you see every time when i draw a line i use the bottom line and when it is like that i use the other side and when it is horizontal i use the straight line. it’s just a way for the learners to remember …” in this instance, remembering is not used in the context of rote memorisation. karyn supplemented her visuals by using iconic gestures, as shown in figure 2. iconic gestures are gestures that resemble their concrete representation (edwards, 2009). these gestures depict the direction of the slope of each line. figure 2: karyn’s hand gestures used to represent the slope of lines the use of visuals during teacher-learner communication effectively promotes knowledge gain (o’donnell & dansereau, 2000). when karyn used her symbols and her gestures, this seemed to have improved her learners’ level of understanding of the concept. learners who are high achievers usually use a more varied number of strategies to make meaning of mathematics than other students. this is similar to harries, barrington and hamilton’s (2006) argument. by using visuals and language, karyn supported the teaching and learning in her classroom. her visuals served as a scaffold in the classroom. master teachers also used their teaching experience (to some extent, their pedagogical content knowledge), relevant real-life contexts and situations to enable learners to access problems involving abstract concepts more easily. sam used his many years of experience as a teacher in order to conduct lessons in his under-resourced and former disadvantaged school, without the luxury of an interactive smart board, an overhead projector, white board or expensive manipulative materials. sam made effective use of the chalkboard, the classroom environment and his own body to deliver lessons that encouraged meaning making. the concrete-representational-abstract sequence of instruction in mathematics classrooms vimolan mudaly vimolan mudaly & jayaluxmi naidoo 51 based on the lesson observations and the interviews with sam as well as those with his learners (during the focus-group interview), it was evident that sam used visuals in his classroom as a scaffold for the teaching and learning of mathematics. sam realised that mathematics had to make sense to the learners in order for them to succeed. sam used visuals that were easily accessible. for example, he used bricks on the walls of the classroom as concrete scaffolding tools. sam acknowledged that algebra is the gateway to abstract thought and knew that his learners needed to attain success in algebra (witzel, mercer & miller, 2003). whilst he was teaching number patterns, in order to make the abstract concept of number patterns more concrete and accessible, he spoke about the bricks on the classroom walls. sam stated that “… i start from the concrete, something they can see … they can see the pattern in bricks right in front of them … i think it makes things easier if you are talking about something you can see ...”. once this concept of patterns was concretised, sam proceeded to the representational level of drawing patterns on the board. finally, he moved on to the abstract level by developing a rule to assist with solving the number pattern. sam also used diagrams as a scaffold for mathematical thinking. for example, when he taught an introductory lesson in trigonometry, he used diagrams. by the end of the lesson, learners were expected to calculate trigonometric ratios and identities. he drew different diagrams to serve as support mechanisms for the lesson. the first diagram was used to remind learners of prior knowledge, which would be required to solve problems in the current lesson. sam focused on using a diagram with which his learners were familiar. this diagram focused on all aspects of the circle. his reason for using the diagram (see figure 3) is revealed in his response: “… they (the learners) must know when you are talking about a circle … they don’t understand where we are coming with the radius … it’s easy now when i am drawing the radius, they can see now, they can compare …”. figure 3: sam’s diagram representing key features of a circle the diagram became an effective tool to eradicate misconceptions as opposed to an attempt to verbally explain to learners. furthermore, it was easier to point out on a diagram the differences between, for example, the chord, diameter and the radius, perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 52 than it is to simply speak about the differences. thus, the use of the diagram offered the learners a more integrated conceptual understanding of trigonometric ratios and identities. by creating this easy to see, relevant and meaningful diagram, the teacher may progress to level 3 scaffolding. level 3 scaffolding refers to the use of tools with the aim of developing conceptual understanding. each master teacher used concrete materials and mathematics manipulatives with the intention of making the abstract concepts in mathematics more accessible. scaffolds that were used became tools and strategies, which assisted learners in achieving a deeper level of conceptual understanding. scaffolding encouraged divergent and creative thinking in the mathematics classroom. the master teachers were able to assist more learners by using their visuals in this manner. for example, in maggie’s classroom, it was apparent that maggie used the smart board not only for demonstration, but also as a stimulus for discussion (ainley, 2001). maggie attempted to draw on her learners’ prior understanding of a particular mathematics concept. she was teaching her learners that different triangles having the same base and lying between the same two parallel lines would have equal areas. she believed that if she merely wrote the statement her learners would not understand, it would be at an abstract level of thinking. she was of the opinion that it was necessary to teach this at a representational level with diagrams for learners to grasp the concept. this representation was followed by an interactive discussion about the triangles and about the area of the shapes. this was evident when she stated that “… if i just write that on the board it could mean anything … i have got to show them what it is … so if they understand the method behind what we are doing … then they will be able to answer future questions …”. this is an example of how maggie used scaffolding to support her learners until they could work independently. after providing sufficient support, she gradually removed the scaffolding. once maggie could see that her learners could go on with the problem-solving independently, she stopped illustrating on the board. she also stopped rephrasing students’ comments and negotiating meanings. she allowed her learners to continue on their own. this led to their enhanced ability to transfer the acquired rules and knowledge to new activities. this indicated that the learners were now learning at a metacognitive level. on the other hand, penny used diverse methods to teach her learners. she believed that, if her learners felt respected and valued, they would participate enthusiastically in the lesson. penny used lessons focusing on human values as the foundation for her lessons. this was apparent in her statement: “… i am an education in human values facilitator … we facilitate the values aspect … we work with tools that will assist pupils … one of the main tools is breathing … we encourage them to do deep breathing in order to feed their the concrete-representational-abstract sequence of instruction in mathematics classrooms vimolan mudaly vimolan mudaly & jayaluxmi naidoo 53 brain with some oxygen during the lesson but it also calms them down … it focuses their attention …”. she preferred to direct her learners’ attention so that she could help them explore their understandings. ollerton (2006) claims that a learner’s achievement is linked to a teacher’s expectations. in this classroom, penny expected her learners to participate in her lessons; to engage with the mathematics being taught, and to collaborate with each other in her classroom. these positive notions manifested themselves in her teaching. her learners were actively encouraged by her attitude to engage with individuals within the learning community in this activity system. discussion many regard mathematics as a complicated subject. the extent of this complexity envelops both the learning and the teaching of mathematics. this complication presents an obstacle in society, since success in south africa is generally measured by the amount of mathematics one knows. thus, it is important to be well equipped with the knowledge of mathematics. to substantiate this point, in order to gain access to higher paying occupations, learners are required to attain a high pass rate in their grade 12 mathematics examination. while the effects of being educated during the apartheid era scars many teachers, in the midst of all the politics and bureaucracy some teachers are successful in making a difference in the mathematics classrooms. this success is, in some instances, difficult to explain and warrants exploration. while exploring these success stories, it was evident that learners and teachers interacted with each other in all the classrooms. there was constant meaningful engagement where the teachers used visual tools to scaffold the teaching and learning of mathematics. as discussed earlier, all the master teachers used the cra approach when teaching mathematics concepts in class. this study emerged as a result of these success stories, in which the use of visuals was prevalent.. visuals were used as tools within the mathematics classroom to allow all learners access to the mathematics being taught. the master teachers wanted to concretise the abstract mathematics being taught by using concrete manipulatives and representations before finally proceeding to the abstract level. in some instances, the master teacher in this study used visuals to assist in communicating mathematical ideas when the language of instruction was not the learners’ first. in many instances, it served the same purpose as code switching.1 however, instead of only using language to code-switch, the master teachers used visuals and language. in other instances, when language was not the issue, the master teacher used visuals to clarify concepts being taught. 1 code switching is the concurrent use of more than one language. it means switching back and forth between two or more languages in the course of a conversation. perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 54 each master teacher used his/her mathematics lessons to make a difference in his/her learners’ lives. they were motivated and determined to make a difference. visuals were used when textbooks, technology and other resources were not available. master teachers were more interested in the solution process than in focusing on attaining the correct answers. visuals were also used to remove the abstractness of mathematics. what was new, in this instance, was that each master teacher used the cra method to scaffold the teaching and learning of mathematics and his/her experience to sequence his/her lessons appropriately. they reflected in and on action while teaching. once they realised that the learners were not grasping key concepts in mathematics, they re-taught the concepts at a concrete level first, thus allowed learners to manipulate objects, mathematics tools and everyday objects in order to concretise mathematical concepts. this gradually led to the drawing of pictures or the use of colour to represent these concrete mathematical ideas. once the teacher was satisfied with the progression of the lesson, the mathematical concepts were taught at an abstract level where numbers, symbols and rules were introduced. each master teacher provided a wealth of thought-provoking strategies. each activity system encouraged and catered for meaningful teacher-learner interactions. the master teachers behaved as mediators of knowledge rather than as facilitators in the classroom. this study contributes to the knowledge that these techniques and strategies may be used in any classroom within any social milieu. apart from poorly resourced schools, these techniques may also be used in schools where the behaviour of learners proves to be the biggest obstacle to learning and where learners are not streamed into ability levels, as is the case in the majority of schools in south africa. the scaffolding techniques also proved to be highly effective in large classrooms. in addition, the master teachers demonstrated the usefulness of their visual strategies in large classrooms with limited resources. the master teachers in this study demonstrated that anything is possible if the teacher is determined and committed to making a difference in mathematics education. the master teachers’ ongoing professional development also proved to impact positively on how each one of them taught in the classroom. essentially, it was apparent in all the classrooms that the master teacher was not the distributor of knowledge, but rather acted as a guide for the educational experience of his/her learners. the role of the master teacher in these classrooms was to help learners identify associations between their unprompted, everyday concepts and the formal concepts of the mathematics discipline. in this way, learners played a more active role in their own learning, and this led to an intrinsic motivation. the learners’ enjoyment, fulfilment and interests were emphasised. it was through these observations that the classrooms in this study were regarded as progressive learning spaces rather than traditional teaching spaces. the concrete-representational-abstract sequence of instruction in mathematics classrooms vimolan mudaly vimolan mudaly & jayaluxmi naidoo 55 references ainley j 2001. adjusting to the newcomer: roles for the computer in mathematics classrooms. in: p gates (ed), issues in the teaching of mathematics (pp. 166179). london: routledge. barab s, schatz s & scheckler r 2004. using activity theory to conceptualize online community and using online community to conceptualize activity theory. mind, culture and activity, 11(1): 25-47. bellamy rke 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south african context illuminates the interconnectedness of dp to problem solving, critical thinking and creativity in learners for which the caps policy advocates. further, there is a need to explore the interconnectedness of teachers’ perceptions of the dp, their enactment of the dp and its impact on learner creativity. this paper reports on a study that explored that interconnectedness and addressed the following research questions: what are grade 9 technology teachers’ perceptions of the design process? how do these perceptions relate to teachers’ reported enactment of the dp and creativity in learners? the conceptual framework used to model the interconnectedness that exists between teachers’ perceptions and reported enactment of the design process is shulman’s pedagogical content knowledge model (pck). this interpretivist study was located in the umlazi district of kwazulunatal. a case study design was used to collect qualitative data via an open-ended questionnaire and a semi-structured interview from 30 purposively selected technology teachers. content analysis of data was undertaken in line with the conceptual framework. our findings reflect that teachers’ perception and reported enactment of dp and the flexibility of the learning environment have an impact on opportunities for problem solving, critical thinking and creativity in learners. our findings raise questions about the type of professional development teachers need to enact the envisaged goals of the caps document in respect of the dp in technology education. keywords: design process; enactment of the dp; learner creativity; pedagogical content knowledge; teachers’ perception of the dp 1. introduction it is well established by scholars such as gustafson and rowell (1998), hill (1998), lewis (2006), pudi (2007) and kangas, seitamaa-hakkarainen and hakkarainen, (2011) that problem-solving, critical thinking and creativity skills are key aspects of the design process in technology education. these skills are considered crucial for innovation and finding solutions to problems (vandeleur et al., 2001). the asheena singh-pillay* *corresponding author. school of education, university of kwazulu-natal, private bag x03, ashwood, 3605, south africa. email: pillaya5@ukzn.ac.za frank ohemeng-appiah school of education, university of kwazulu-natal, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i2.6 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(2): 70-82 © uv/ufs 71 singh-pillay & ohemeng-appiah interconnectedness of technology teachers’ perceptions... design process in technology education is construed as a vehicle through which dimensions of learners’ creative abilities can be stimulated and augmented (lewis, 2006; mapotse, 2014). from the foregoing points, it makes sense that the problem solving process in the dp is intertwined with critical thinking and creativity. stimulating creative impulses in learners through design and problem-solving activities is a central goal of the senior phase technology grades 7-9: curriculum assessment and policy statement (caps) document, (dbe, 2011). as such, the design process ought to be used to structure and drive the delivery of all learning aims of the technology subject in south african schools (mabaso, 2014). for learners of technology education to be able to develop the aforementioned capabilities and skills, they need to engage with the design process whereby they are provided with opportunities to create solutions to problems in new and innovative ways. development of the above-mentioned skills hinges on teachers of the technology subject. according to tholo, monobe and lumadi (2011), the successful implementation of the technology curriculum is dependent on teachers having the same set of skills and theoretical understanding that the curriculum requires from learners. with regard to the preceding point, it is worth noting that pudi (2007) asserts that the implementation of the design process in technology education within the school curriculum has been a hurdle for teachers. since the introduction of technology education into the south african school curriculum, teachers have experienced the following policies, curriculum 2005 (c2005), revised national curriculum statement (rncs) and now caps. teachers are still grappling with the pedagogy and didactics of caps (ohemeng-appiah, 2014). in addition to teachers’ dilemmas about their conceptualisation and enactment of the design process it must be noted that there has been a (re)-presentation of the design process from linear (in rncs) to a non-linear (re)presentation (in caps) (dbe, 2011). the (re)-presentation of the design process influences the flexibility of its enactment and opportunities for learner creativity. this article, therefore, addresses the following questions: what are grade 9 technology teachers’ perceptions of the design process? how do these perceptions relate to their reported enactment of the design process (dp) and learner creativity? 2. literature review a survey of literature shows that problem solving, critical thinking and creativity are intrinsically intertwined with the dp (friesen, taylor & britton, 2005). asunda (2007) perceives design as a structured process that transforms creative ideas into concrete products, services and systems and as such, links creativity to innovation. creative thinking produces novel outcomes and problem solving produces a new response to a situation, which is a novel outcome. therefore, problem solving has creative aspects. according to vandeleur et al. (2001), asunda (2007), davis (2011) and wakefield (1992), some of the key indicators of creativity during the dp are freedom to generate ideas, flexible use of space and time, availability of appropriate materials, room for experimentation, non-conformity, justification of choices and ability to see a solution. other indicators of creativity include the generation of new problems, the relationship between teacher and learner and opportunities for collaboration with peers. the flexibility of the dp enactment influences learner creativity, problem solving and critical thinking. literature on dp reveals there are two views in respect of how the design process should unfold. on the one hand, the design process is perceived as a systematic or linear productbased process aimed at meeting the requirements of assessment, whilst on the other hand, 72 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) it is considered as a creative, problem solving, iterative and cyclical process reliant on multidi sciplinary knowledge. williams (2000) and mawson (2003) assert that a common view amongst teachers is the understanding of the dp as a product-based or a linear process. this means, the dp is construed as a series of steps that are outlined by the teachers, namely, identify-design-make-appraise. learners are expected to follow these steps sequentially and diligently in their projects. in the linear approach, the emphasis is on the product and not the processes involved in producing the product. the foregoing approach of the dp is highly prescriptive, propagates conformity and does not provide enough room for novelty and imagination, does not stimulate learners to generate multiple original ideas for developing the problem solving, critical thinking or creative skills required of them (lewis, 2006) and does not allow for learner autonomy (rowel, 2004). the ideology behind this systematic process, williams (2000) argues, is that it can be taught. this rigid procedure is inviting to teachers because it provides a structure for the teaching of technology. flower (2010: 16) contends that one should not lose sight of the fact that “we are not there for learner or teacher comfort”. furthermore, a focus on “steps” in the teaching of design may be the crutch that teachers cling to because of the tension between their view of the dp and the pedagogy they use to facilitate the dp. the seemingly rigid nature of the identify-design-make-appraise model of the dp calls for an alternative pedagogy or approach. hill (1998) directs our attention to the disparity between the dp employed in problem solving in real life contexts by engineers and that which is found in the classroom. as she puts it, in problem solving for real-life contexts, design processes are seen as creative, dynamic and iterative processes that engage exploration; join conceptual and procedural knowledge-both thought and action; and can encourage considerations to technology, human and environmental interactions (hill, 1998: 203). this means the complexity of the dp stems from its cyclical and iterative nature and that possible solutions come from a complex interaction between parallel refinements of the design problem and ever-changing design ideas. the approach suggested by hill (1998) is antithetical to what is typically found in schools: design, make and appraise cycles based on closed design briefs that are teacher-assigned, which incidentally are unrelated to the learners’ worlds. research by bailey (2012) and atkinson (2011) have shown that teachers of design and technology do not have what it takes to help learners in this regard. in agreement, pool, reitsma and mentz (2013) argue that technology teachers in south africa lack the appropriate subject specific pedagogical content knowledge (pck; shulman, 1986) to teach technology and the dp, which happens to be the backbone of technology education. lewis (2006: 263) therefore highlights the need for pedagogic strategies that can stimulate the inventive urges of children to bring about “problem solving, divergent thinking, combination, metaphorical thinking, and analogical thinking when engaging in the design process”. 3. conceptual framework kuhn (1996) posits that professional practice is underpinned and shaped by a received set of beliefs, values, views and models. in agreement, wenglinsky (2002) suggests that what a teacher does in class depends on the teacher’s knowledge and the class context. with the above in mind, the constructivist epistemology and shulman’s pedagogical content knowledge model (pck) (1986) have been used to frame the research. according to shulman, 73 singh-pillay & ohemeng-appiah interconnectedness of technology teachers’ perceptions... pck refers to the transformation of content into a form that makes or promotes learning possibilities; it is the intersection of content knowledge (ck) and pedagogical knowledge (pk) specific to a subject and its content area. pk is a teacher’s orientation towards teaching. in this study, it refers to teachers’ beliefs about the nature, purposes and goals for teaching and learning technology at different grade levels. these particular beliefs serve as a concept map that guides instructional decisions, the use of particular curricular materials and instructional strategies and assessment of learners’ learning. this includes being flexible and adjusting instruction to account for various learning styles, creativity, learner autonomy, abilities and interests. knowing how best to teach a concept so that the learners will receive the best learning experience, speaks to the essence of pck. shulman’s pck model is generic and hence needed to be adapted in order to depict what pck looks like when applied to technology education, in particular to the design process. the authors have developed figure 1 below as a way to reflect the major aspects of pck as applied to the design process. pck context content knowledge (ck) pedagogical knowledge (pk)/ orientation to teaching • conception of design process (dp) and its (re)presentation: 1. link between dp and problem solving • designing of dp tasks – is it related to real world context, does it allow for learner autonomy and creativity • knowledge of technology curriculum and its goals • knowledge about the nature of technology education and dp • where content knowledge of dp/technology comes from • instructional strategies for teaching dp: 1. how to present dp 2. what decisions are made when teaching dp and why • knowledge of assessment of dp • knowledge of learners understanding/misconceptions of dp • knowledge of learners learning strategies • professional development received for curriculum reform/ curriculum implementation • knowledge of technology curriculum and its goals • teachers’ self-efficacy figure 1: singh-pillay and ohemeng-appiah proposed model of pck as applied to the design process we posit there is a relational interplay between ck, pk and context as context frames if it is possible for teachers to understand the problem solving, critical thinking and creativity associated with dp and successfully guide learners in the dp to generate creative output. ck foregrounds five components, namely knowledge of the technology curriculum and its goals, knowledge about the nature of technology education and the dp, conception of dp, design 74 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) of the dp tasks and understanding of where content knowledge of the dp/technology comes from. these five components are considered important as they promote deep conceptual understanding of the dp. pk consists of six components, namely, instructional strategies for teaching the dp, knowledge of assessment of the dp, knowledge of learners’ understanding, knowledge of learners’ learning strategies, professional development received, teacher selfefficacy and knowledge of the technology curriculum and its goals. in the above model, the component knowledge of the technology curriculum is significant to ck and pk, it bridges the divide between ck and pk and it facilitates the reciprocal interplay between ck and pk to promote learner problem solving, critical thinking and creativity during the dp. knowledge of the technology curriculum and its goals enables teachers to identify core concepts, modify activities/tasks, adjust teaching and assessment strategies, promote self-efficacy, become contextualised curriculum developers at their schools and eliminate aspects judged peripheral to the targeted conceptual understandings. knowledge of the curriculum is significant as it brings to the fore the tension between covering the curriculum for exam or assessment purposes and teaching for the promotion of critical thinking, creativity and problem solving. the rationale for the use of the above pck framework in data analysis is that it enables understanding of teachers’ perceptions of the dp, as their perceptions will touch on the content knowledge related to the dp (ck) or to their understanding of ways of teaching the dp (pk) or the interplay between the two. therefore, it is imperative to know the pck of the teacher as such knowledge shapes his/her perceptions regarding the design process and will subsequently impact his/her enactment of the dp and opportunities for learner critical thinking and creativity. 4. methodology this study is located in the umlazi district (ud) in kwazulu-natal and represents a qualitative case study of this district. there are 30 high schools in the district and each school has a minimum of one technology teacher. teachers were purposively selected, the criteria for their selection was that they had to be teaching grade 9 technology. according to maxwell (1998: 122), “this is a strategy in which particular settings, persons, or events are deliberately selected for the important information they can provide that cannot be gotten as well from other choices”. in instances where schools had two grade 9 teachers, the teacher with the highest grade 9 workload was selected. formal permission to conduct research was obtained from the university of kwazulu-natal’s research office and the kzn department of education to conduct this study at 30 schools (hss/0622/014m). data was collected in two phases. during phase one, 30 teachers answered an open-ended questionnaire, which was designed with the assistance of university researchers to foreground the components of the pck framework developed for the dp (see figure 1). the questionnaire was piloted with 20 grade 9 teachers of technology from ward 134 in the pinetown district, as they closely resemble the target population of technology teachers in terms of the grade they teach and the type of professional development they received for the implementation of the caps curriculum. in addition, these teachers would be able to identify questions that were ambiguous, had difficult wording or problems with the questionnaire that might lead to biased answers. the questionnaire comprised two sections. the first section targeted biographical data in terms of qualification, teaching experience, subjects taught, professional development received to teach technology and knowledge of the technology curriculum and its content. the second section gathered information on teachers’ perceptions and understanding of the design 75 singh-pillay & ohemeng-appiah interconnectedness of technology teachers’ perceptions... process, what does dp entail, the role of the dp in learner problem solving abilities, critical thinking, creativity and autonomy during the dp and the importance of the design process in teaching technology. this section also gathered information on the planning they undertook to teach the dp, aspects of the design process that are emphasised during teaching, how the dp is assessed, emphasis placed on learner creativity during the dp and training received for curricula reform in technology. the information obtained from the questionnaire was used to map the grade 9 technology education topography, within the umlazi district, in terms of teachers’ perceptions of the design process and how these perceptions impact their reported enactment of the dp and learner creativity. for phase two of data collection, video-recorded semi-structured interviews were conducted with the initial sample from stage one. the semi-structured interviews aimed to probe teachers’ responses from the questionnaire and establish what influence teachers’ perceptions of the dp have on the enactment of the dp and learner creativity. the video recordings were first transcribed verbatim and then subjected to denaturalised transcriptions. in denaturalised transcriptions, the written text is devoid of “ums and errs” and commas and full stops are added to aid readability and to adhere to issues of participant confidentiality and anonymity (duranti, 2007). to ensure the validity of data, the transcripts were sent to the teachers for member checking to verify if the text was an accurate (re)-presentation of what was stated during the interviews. data collated via the questionnaire and semi-structured interview was deductively content analysed. data was read and then coded using the elements of our pck framework (see figure 1 for component of ck and pk). the goal of content analysis is “to provide knowledge and understanding of the phenomenon under study” (downe-wamboldt, 1992: 314). codes were (re)examined to form four categories on the conceptions of dp, teaching and assessment strategies used, teacher qualification/training received and links between teaching strategy and learner creativity. the four categories were integrated to arrive at two themes: teachers’ perceptions of dp and their reported enactment of dp. in using this approach, all the relevant data from data sources (questionnaires and interviews) were collated to provide a collective answer to the research questions. this was in line with the explanation given by cohen et al. (2011) that qualitative data involves organising, accounting for and explaining the data in terms of the participant’s conception of the phenomenon being explored, noting patterns, themes, categories and regularities. 5. presentation of results and discussion in this section, we present our results and discussion under two themes: • perceptions of the dp • perceptions of enacting dp and promotion of learner creativity through the dp perceptions of the dp data from the questionnaire reveal that there are two perceptions of the dp, namely • dp is the backbone of technology education • dp entails problem solving 76 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) dp is the backbone of technology education all 30 teachers saw the dp as the core activity in technology education as is illustrated in the excerpts below: t13: design is to technology what the backbone is to humans it supports everything t7: it is the spine of technology and foundation for all tech lessons t18: it is the backbone of technology education t29: it is the central canal of technology education the above findings illuminate these teachers’ ck on the nature of technology education and their awareness of the goals of technology education as per the caps policy (dbe, 2011). based on their above perception on the importance of the dp during the structuring of teaching and learning activities, the expectation is their ck and awareness of the dp (the backbone of technology) will inform and guide their teaching and learning orientation (pk) towards problem solving, critical thinking and creativity (foundation for all tech lessons). dp entails problem solving additionally, all 30 teachers construed the dp as a problem-solving activity, as reflected in the excerpts below: t1: the design process entails problem solving t25: it is supposed to promote problem solving and critical thinking in learner t17: learners are to be creative in their solutions to the posed problem t29: dp = problem solving, deep thinking + creativity the above excerpts point to these teachers’ reported ck on the dp (entails problem solving). they all associated the dp with problem solving and construed the dp as an avenue to nurture problem solving, critical thinking and creativity in learners (dp = problem solving, deep thinking + creativity). they explicitly link dp to problem solving, critical thinking and creativity (promote problem solving… critical thinking… creative in their solutions). the logical anticipation is that their ck will be the conceptual map that they will use to align their instructional strategies (pk) and activities pertaining to the dp to promote learner creativity. the above finding warranted further probing during the semi-structured interviews to establish their reported perceptions of their enactment of the dp. reported perceptions of enacting the dp and promotion of learner creativity through the dp the data obtained via the semi-structured interviews illuminates that teachers hold two divergent views on the dp even though they all construe the dp as a backbone to technology education and a problem-solving activity, namely: • design process as cyclical/iterative • design as a step-by-step process that provides “comfort” to learners during problem-solving design process as cyclical nine of the 30 participants viewed the design process as being cyclical or iterative as reflected in the excerpts below: 77 singh-pillay & ohemeng-appiah interconnectedness of technology teachers’ perceptions... t5: technology is the only subject i teach. i devote a lot of energy in designing activities that allow learners to solve problems, my class is learner-centred…developing original ideas allow for creative designs and solutions from learner …they skip stage, work simultaneously , discuss with peers, on refining ideas, design and the product, the aim is to get learner to think outside a box, it is rewarding to see some of the original idea, there are features of creativity you can look for, novelty of idea, persistence, not giving up when the first solution fails, ability to justify your absurd solution, making adjustments, vision. t15: it’s a cyclic process, to solve problems, learners must be given the chance to think and come up with many novel ideas to solve problem in their context, their many ideas requires them to think deeply to work towards possible solutions, i prepare well to contextualise the design activities so learners can see the link to design and everyday life, fortunately resources are readily available for me to teach technology, creativity entail uniqueness of the idea, depth of think, determining dimensions, thinking and visualising 3d and 2d, communicating graphically. how are we going to produce engineers if we curb visual creativity? t8: dp is all about problem solving, i enjoy teaching technology, i believe less is more, i allow learner a lot of freedom to experiment, think about the solutions, i create a positive environment, sometimes a child may have one of the better solutions which i as a teacher would not have thought about. they are doing projects on their own, they are free to discuss with their friends, they take control of the process, some of them come up with really good examples. the above excerpts illustrate the rational interplay first between these teachers’ reported perception of the dp as problem solving and cyclical (their ck) and their teaching strategy when they engage in the dp (pk). secondly, the interplay between their teaching strategy (pk – including their knowledge of the nature of technology education, the technology curriculum, its goals, knowledge of assessment of dp and knowledge of learners’ learning strategies) and learner creativity comes to the fore. this means that their ck of the dp maps their pk and directs the opportunities created for learner critical thinking and creativity. in a subtle way, the aforementioned relational interplay allows us to see how, via their pk, these teachers create opportunities for nurturing learner creativity in their classrooms by allowing learners cognitive freedom, for problem solving and critical thinking (think deeply, think outside a box, think about solutions). for these teachers, the dp is not reduced to a “cookbook recipe” whereby learners follow the steps of the dp in a rigid sequential fashion (work simultaneously on refining ideas, design and the product). rather, it is an iterative process involving back and forth movement between stages (skip stages) to refine ideas (thinking) and the final product. the above excerpts highlight the complexity of the dp that arises from its cyclical and iterative nature. where possible, solutions come from a complex interaction between parallel refinements of the design problem and ever-changing design ideas (hill, 1998). furthermore, these findings clearly show that these respondents’ reported perception of dp (namely their ck) guides them to be flexible in their instructional strategies (namely their pk) pertaining to the dp as well as the design of the dp tasks (contextualise). these respondents’ learnercentred classroom creates the space for learners to practise and learn to be creative by engaging in problem solving and critical thinking. these teachers are aware of their learners and their learning strategies (must be given a chance, solve problem in their context, contextualise) consequently they provide opportunities for learners to apply their knowledge to solve everyday problems. hence, their learners are given a chance to take control of the “learning” during the design process (they are doing the project on their own; create your own design), be creative (novel) and engage in critical thinking (think deeply, discuss with friends) 78 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) and problem solving. these teachers’ reported enactment of dp enables and fosters problem solving, critical thinking and creativity in learners during the dp (generation of novel ideas, deep thinking, persistence, not giving up when the first solution fails, thinking and visualising 3d and 2d). for these teachers, there are multiple solutions to any problem and multiple ways to work towards solutions for the identified problem. the preceding finding raises our attention to the interwoven link between teachers’ ck, pk, the effective use of their pedagogical space and its impact on learner creativity during the dp. the above excerpts bring to the fore indicators for creativity that are embraced by these teachers in their engagement of dp (pk). these include freedom to generate ideas, availability of resources, room for experimentation, relationship between teacher and learner (freedom to experiment, learner-centred, they take control, contextualise the problem), opportunities to collaborate with peers (discuss with peers) and being well prepared (devote a lot of energy in designing activities, create a positive environment). the above findings elucidate the intricate link between teachers’ perception of the dp (ck), their reported enactment of the dp (pk) and how the dp can be used to foster learner creativity. design process is a systematic process that provides comfort to learners during problem solving an interesting finding that presented itself within the data collated from the interview was that the majority of teachers (21 of the 30), who earlier considered the design process as a problem solving activity (via the questionnaire), conceived the design process as a systematic process as represented in the excerpts below. t9: it is not easy to teach dp i can only teach design process if i follow the steps, how am i teach it if there are no stages to follow, that is so hard, how can i assess the end product if they are different, i will be assessing forever, what must i look for… i need help to learn to teach dp, hey the training we get at workshops is useless, i didn’t train to teach tech. t21: it is easier to teach the design process… in a step-by-step manner because all the products are the same, the solutions are the same, the assessment becomes easy and is completed faster. i also teach another learning area in the fet phase, so i don’t pay too much attention to technology as it is my filler subject. t12: i don’t like teaching dp, in fact i’m not a qualified technology teacher, technology is hard to teach compared to social studies and ems, i use the step by step way to have control in class so i can do something with the learners and then i assess the product, all i want is a product, i’m not interested in their thinking or creativity or who makes the product. t6: i teach dp in a step by step way, my teaching is very structured, all the learners need to follow the same steps at the same time, reach the same solution, i guide them all the way, there is no room for learners to be creative, or to discuss with peers, they can be creative in arts and culture, there is too much marking, i teach three learning areas, so i want the end product that are the same and easy to assess. they all pass no one fails technology. the incongruence between these teachers’ perceptions of the dp (ck) and reported enactment of the dp is illuminated via the above excerpts. the incongruence raises questions about these teachers’ knowledge of the dp, how they construe the link between the dp, problem solving, critical thinking and creativity, where their ck of the dp comes from (not a qualified technology teacher…filler subject) and how they teach the dp. the interplay between 79 singh-pillay & ohemeng-appiah interconnectedness of technology teachers’ perceptions... these respondents’ reported perceptions of the dp as a rigid step-by-step process (their ck), their reported teaching of the dp (their pk), their preoccupation with the assessment of an end product and the contextual factors that sculpt their pedagogical space and impact learner creativity all comes to the fore via the above excerpts. these teachers’ ck of the dp is congruent with their enactment (pk) of the dp. their perception of the dp (ck) as a rigid, foreseeable process that unfolds in a particular sequence (you identify, define….and solve the problem, reach the same solution), directs their classroom practice pertaining to the dp (have control, teach dp in a step by step way, my teaching is very structured) and impinges learners’ opportunities for problem solving, critical thinking and creativity (end products …solutions are the same). during their teaching of the dp, much emphasis is placed on the production of a product (all i want is a product), rather than the processes involved in the production of the product such as problem solving and creative thinking (not interested in their thinking or creativity). their linear perception of the dp undermines the individuality of learners (end products that are the same). furthermore, it deprives learners of the opportunity to engage in creativity as all learners are directed towards a particular solution (the solutions are the same). their inflexible enactment of dp stifles opportunities for learner critical thinking, as a result learner creativity is suppressed. the above excerpts highlight the unresolved tension between these teachers’ pk, their conception of dp, and knowledge of the technology curriculum and its goals. therefore, their formulaic “step-by-step” idea of “problem solving” does not afford learners the opportunity to be imaginative, think divergently or exercise their voices and ideas in a structured pedagogical space. their perception of the dp confirms the teacher-centeredness of their classrooms and the lack of learner autonomy. in addition, the linear view of the dp deprives learners of the opportunity to take control of their designs, engage in critical/creative thinking in order to generate novel ideas. scholars such as hill (1998), williams (2000), mawson (2003) and rowel (2004) argue that the seemingly rigid nature of the dp does not provide enough room for developing the creative skills of the learner and have suggested the need for an alternative pedagogy or approach. a closer examination of the above excerpts shows that teaching the dp as a systematic process is a coping mechanism and safety net for teachers rather than their learners as teachers’ pck is not grounded in technology education (filler subject, didn’t train to teach tech, teach three learning areas). the rigid structure provided by the systematic process offers teachers some sort of security framework or comfort within which to work when dealing with the uncertainty about ck and pk in technology education and coping with the contextual factors that influence their pedagogical space (teach other learning areas, training is useless, i need help). the lack of appropriate training for the enactment of the dp raises the following questions: how can teachers be flexible in their presentation and assessment of the dp if they lack the required ck and pk? how can teachers be “trained” to engage with and enact dp in a way that promotes learner creativity. our above finding concurs with the findings of pool et al. (2013) who argue that in spite of the many workshops conducted on the implementation of the various technology curricula, teachers still lack the appropriate subject-specific pck to teach technology and the dp. the above finding raises deep concerns about the quality of the training provided to teachers for curriculum implementation. with regard to the preceding point, lewis (2009: 36) highlights the need for pedagogic strategies that can stimulate the creative urges of children to bring about “problem solving, divergent thinking combination, metaphorical thinking, and analogical thinking when engaging in the design process”. 80 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) 6. conclusion our findings show that teachers’ enactment of the dp (their pk) and opportunities for learner creativity hinges on their perceptions of the dp (ck). in other words, teachers’ perception of dp influences their pk of dp and opportunities to foster learner creativity. the findings highlight that despite the majority of grade 9 technology teachers’ initial perception of the dp as problem solving, their reported enactment of the dp as a systematic process and their incessant preoccupation with the identify-design-make-appraise model of the dp hinder and impinge their pk. the opportunities available to learners for critical thinking, problem solving and creativity are also hindered and impinged by this preoccupation. it is evident from our findings that learner creativity was nurtured by teachers who construed their enactment of dp as problem solving and cyclical as it allowed for cognitive flexibility. this means, their enactment of dp allows learners to take control of their learning, have freedom to experiment, to find solutions and to collaborate with peers. thus, the pedagogical space created can enhance or inhibit opportunities for learner critical thinking and creativity. some common features that seem to promote learner creativity are teacher flexibility, teachers’ ck, teachers’ pk and teachers’ attitude to modelling a creative learning environment. put simply, this means that an enabling environment has to be fostered by the teacher in order to nurture learner creativity. therefore, ck, pk and the pedagogical space may serve as catalysts for learner creativity. if learners are to be creative problem solvers, then teachers must be creative facilitators during the dp. this means that, being creative in teaching is vital if we are serious about using dp to influence problem solving, critical thinking and learner creativity. there is a delicate intrinsically intertwined link between teachers’ ck of the dp, pk pertaining to the dp and the effective use of their pedagogical space to influence problem solving, critical thinking and learner creativity. our argument is that teachers’ perception of the dp has a direct bearing on their teaching of the dp and on opportunities for learner critical thinking, problem solving and creativity. howard-jones (2002) advances the preceding argument, postulating that problem solving, which entails critical thinking and creativity, depends on how the problem solver represents and perceives the problem. the confounding question is, “how do we provide support to technology teachers as well as pre-service teachers of technology to focus on the process of creative skills development rather than on a product during their enactment of dp?” 7. implications the findings of this case study direct our attention to the need for a professional development programme as an intervention that capacitates teachers of technology, pre-service teachers of technology and teacher educators of technology to model creative attitudes towards teaching the dp. the purpose of the programme should be two fold. first, the programme should provide support to improve participants’ pck in respect of the dp. second, the programme should initiate a community of practice amongst teachers of technology to share resources (human and physical), study 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tholo, j.a.t., monobe, r.j. & lumadi, m.w. 2011. what do boys and girls think about technology? us-china education review, usa, 8(12), 15-25. vandeleur, s., ankiewicz, p., swardt, a. & gross, e. 2001. indicators of creativity in the technology class: a case study. south african journal of education, 21(4), 268-272. wakefield, j.f. 1992. creative thinking: problem solving skills and the arts orientation. new jersey: ablex. wenglinsky, h. 2002. the link between teacher classroom practices and student academic performance. education policy analysis archives, 10(12), 12-28. http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/ epaa.v10n12.2002 williams, p.j. 2000. design: the only methodology? journal of technology education, 11(2), 48-60. http://dx.doi.org/10.21061/jte.v11i2.a.4 29 promoting student teachers’ adaptive capabilities through community engagement abstract the gap between student teachers and their ability to adapt to the school situation remains a challenge. the literature further indicates that there is an under-utilisation of students’ abilities in an ever-changing curriculum that should be responsive to the challenges with which communities are faced. this paper aims to report on the students’ adaptive capabilities through a schoolinitiated community engagement project. approximately nine students were placed at schools on saturdays while offering lessons to grade nine learners. a focus group interview was held with the students who offered natural sciences, mathematics and social sciences after the initiative. findings of this study included raising the students’ awareness for the need and ability to improvise in order to attend to the needs of the school and their ability to go out and seek information from other schools, the university and experienced teachers. the students were also able to leave the handouts they had designed for the school. the study provides insights into the adaptability of students in schools and recommends further empowerment spaces for student teachers and the school community. keywords: adaptive leadership, community engagement, exper­ tise, student teachers, rural ecologies 1. introduction a crucial element of community engagement is participation by individuals, community-based organisations and institutions that will be affected by the effort. studies suggest that when community participation is strong throughout a programme’s conceptualisation, development and implementation, long-term viability (sustainability) is more likely assured. the university of the free state, qwaqwa campus (ufs-qq) recently made a concerted effort to engage students in various projects and programmes that would remind them of the role that the university has to play in the social and economic development of the surrounding community. for our students, it becomes what paulo freire refers to as “pedagogy of hope” (freire, 1992: 9). hope, “as an ontological need, demands an anchoring in practice” (freire, 1992: 9) and this is more likely in our view, to afford students space to develop a critical awareness of society and their role in it, while simultaneously appreciating the dr dipane hlalele university of the free state email: hlaleledj@ufs.ac.za dr cias t. tsotetsi *corresponding author. university of the free state email: tsotetsict@ufs.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i3.3 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(3): 29-42 © uv/ufs 30 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) unique contributions that they can make. according to mokhele and jita (2010: 1764) as well as ono and ferreira (2010), through collaboration between universities and the community as a whole, both stand to benefit. we concur with laredo (2007) and stephenson (2011: 95) who assert that students at university need to think of their role in community engagement not simply as the provision of technical assistance that may be drawn from archives, knowledge or from research and development prowess, but as an opportunity for social leadership. 2. understanding community engagement community engagement (ce) is historically associated with the third mission of universities through various labels such as outreach, community service, service learning and community service learning (hlalele et al., 2015). in this section, the authors attempt to elucidate the concept of community engagement. according to brown and schafft (2011: 35), a community refers to a group of people organised around certain commonly held interests and attributes that help create a sense of shared identity. it implies a web of affective relationships that are qualitatively different from those constituting other kinds of human groups. being part of a community further implies long-term, continuous social interaction that contributes to the formation of personal, social and economic production and reproduction. as a result, members share a sense of belonging, of ‘we-ness’. mothowamodimo (2011: 23) draws from a few authors’ opinions and asserts that a sense of community is, …sets of people who may identify themselves with a place in terms of notions of commonality, shared values or solidarity in particular contexts. these values could be informed by the spirit of botho which is itself a community value. other values include among others service, charity, respect, togetherness, and hospitality. furthermore, the word ‘community’ is also a broad term used to define groups of people; whether they are stakeholders, interest groups or citizen groups. a community may be a geographic location (community of place), a community of similar interest (community of practice) or a community of affiliation or identity (such as industry or a sporting club). from the foregoing, we can deduce at least two points that bind a community together. these two points include reciprocity and mutual co-existence, the existence of oneself for self and others and sharing collective ownership. this blends well with the african philosophy of ubuntu/botho. the individual is seen in relation to the collective. in mcmillan and george (1986: 6), distinction is made between two major uses of the term community. firstly, there is the ‘territorial’ or geographical notion of the community-neighbourhood, town and/or city. the second is ‘relational’, concerned with the “quality of character of human relationships without reference to location”. the general discourse in community engagement presupposes the fact that universities have, through time, ostracised and exonerated themselves from communities. now that they are turning back to play their de jure role in communities, it seems as if it is a new trend. in our opinion, this is a reversal of a social travesty. students are in fact, members of the community before coming to university. thus, to reintroduce them to communities as if they are outsiders should not be taking place. community engagement brings the views of citizens to bear on the development of public services, as individuals who place their own needs within the broader context of the community of which they are a part (rogers & robinson, 2004). whenever a group of practitioners gather to discuss ‘what is engagement’, a discussion about the diversity of language usually emerges. depending on the situation in which one is working, ‘engagement’ 31 hlalele & tsotetsi promoting student teachers’ adaptive capabilities through community engagement can cover consultation, extension, communication, education, public participation, participative democracy or working in partnership. in many instances, ‘engagement’ is used as a generic, inclusive term to describe the broad range of interactions between people. it can include a variety of approaches, such as one-way communication or information delivery, consultation, involvement and collaboration in decision-making and empowered action in informal groups or formal partnerships. ‘community engagement’ is therefore a planned process with the specific purpose of working with identified groups of people, whether they are connected by geographic location, special interests or affiliation, to identify and address issues affecting their well-being. the linking of the term ‘community’ to ‘engagement’ serves to broaden the scope, shifting the focus from the individual to the collective, with the associated implications for inclusiveness to ensure that consideration is given to the diversity that exists within any community. 3. community engagement for student teachers community engagement for student teachers is received with some heightened level of scepticism and is sometimes perceived as an add-on because of the compulsory teaching practice sessions for student teachers. however, some universities including the australian catholic university (acu) and stellenbosch university argue that through ce, student teachers are able to engage in a variety of professional learning experiences that should increase their knowledge and skills and further their understanding of the potential for learning within the broader community. it encourages individualised learning as student teachers are able to work in environments that extend their personal strengths and intelligences, and challenge their pre­conceived notions about life and people (acu, 2016: 2). 4. adaptive leadership framework this study is framed using adaptive leadership. adaptive leadership is the practice of mobilising people to tackle tough challenges and overcome them by tapping into existing community capital. the study is couched within the adaptive leadership framework as espoused by heifetz (2009). heifetz, a harvard university professor of public leadership, maintains that our early ancestors’ process of adaptation to new possibilities and challenges has continued over the course of written history with the growth and variation in scope, structure, governance, strategy and coordination of political and commercial enterprise. according to heifetz, grashow and linky (2009: 18) adaptive leadership is, the practice of mobilizing people to tackle tough challenges and thrive. adaptive leadership is specifically about change that enables the capacity to thrive. new environments and new dreams demand new strategies and abilities, as well as the leadership to mobilize them. adaptation relies on diversity. heifetz’s (1994: 69-73) theory of adaptive leadership provides a valuable contribution to understanding how communities may be engaged. in this theory, different strategies are followed in different contexts or situations. three distinct situations leading to associate leadership responses/strategies/approaches were identified. the first and probably the most common one, is the ‘type i’ situation where leaders conclude that the challenge requires only their or their team’s technical expertise. according to burke (2007: 419), heifetz lamented this as an absence of leadership. many communities are predisposed to the easiest possible 32 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) solution and may not challenge the expert’s solution. in some cases, the expert may not have understood the situation to the same level as the members of the community would have. at this point, examples of many urban solutions that were used for rural ecologies bear testimony to this. a vivid example is the persistent rebuilding of schools in tornado-prone rural areas of the eastern cape (mniki, 2009). in ‘type ii’ situations, leaders see a problem as requiring some interaction with the community and in so doing, view it as a shared challenge that warrants the involvement of the community. this approach, according to burke (2007: 419), combines the leader’s expertise, persuasive powers and the input of the communities. however, this type is characterised by limited leadership. in many instances, leaders and experts do not have a ready, feasible solution available to a seemingly intractable situation. this is what heifetz (1994) calls a ‘type iii’ situation. while the communities may remain content with quick, tried and tested, easy solutions to the problems, burke (2007: 419), calls for “an honest and courageous leader who would demonstrate the need for redefining the problem, changing priorities, and possibly greater sacrifice from the members’’. type iii provides space for dialogue. this may further clarify competing roles and responsibilities. however, it also depowers the expert to being a participant, who similar to all other members of the community, learns from others. for individuals in the position of power, this may not be an easy shift. for the purpose of this study, adaptive leadership refers to type iii situations. we sought, through the study, to place students in situations that make them full members of communities with no better posture and credence than that of the communities with which they engage. heifetz’s theory further distinguishes between two types of problems communities face. drawing from his (heifetz) work titled leading boldly, kania and kramer (2011: 39) mention technical and adaptive problems. technical problems are those that are well defined; the solution is known in advance and one or a few organisations may be able to provide this. adaptive problems are by contrast, more intricate and complex; the solution is unknown and no single entity may be able to provide the appropriate service. educational transformation and health renewal may be classified as adaptive problems. in adaptive leadership, it becomes extremely important for the leader to be fully ‘present’ to comprehend what is happening as well as understanding key issues and questions from within the social group. a facilitative, inclusive approach is key to a lasting impact (heifetz et al., 2009; eubank et al., 2012: 243). kania and kramer’s work titled catalytic philanthrophy refers to the fact that mobilising multiple organisations and stakeholders may be messier and slower. examples have been noted in some rural ecologies where such communities resist the pace of modernisation and stick to their indigenous ways. for example, a rural community may decline a particular process because it does not augur well for or resonate with their ways of existence. the adaptive leadership initiatives have the capacity to challenge and inspire students and afford them the opportunity to lead and stimulate change. according to adaptive leadership intensive (2013: 3), students may further be exposed to: learning a powerful, pragmatic and transferable leadership model that can be used in personal, organisational and community settings; stepping out of their everyday environment, gaining insights into a range of social issues and ‘reframing’ their challenges through an experience of community engagement; reconnecting with their deepest sense of purpose and gaining new impetus to act on the toughest problems they face; developing greater understanding of group dynamics; increasing their awareness of your own behavioural patterns and how they impact others. 33 hlalele & tsotetsi promoting student teachers’ adaptive capabilities through community engagement from the literature, we can find a link between adaptive leadership and what hatano and inagaki (1986) call ‘adaptive expertise’. we are of the opinion that the continued practice of the former leads to the latter. adaptive expertise involves habits of mind, attitudes and ways of thinking and organising one’s knowledge that are different from routine expertise and which takes time to develop (bransford, 2004: 3; van den berg & schulze, 2014: 69). contrary to routine expertise, which may be limited by inflexibility, overconfidence, bias and the context of their particular domains (crawford & brophy, 2006), adaptive expertise is likely to afford university students and parents approaches imbued with flexibility which are likely to prepare them for lifelong learning (santrock, 2008; van den berg & shulze, 2014: 69). adaptive expertise also allows the transfer of knowledge and skills to novel problems or the use of current knowledge to invent new procedures (van den berg & shulze, 2014: 69). 5. research design and methodology one of the campuses of the university of the free state in south africa was approached by a rural, junior secondary school for assistance with the teaching of natural sciences and mathematics in grade nine. in response to the above request, six student teachers volunteered to offer lessons on saturdays. the school would transport student teachers to and from the school. the student teachers would also be offered a reasonable meal that the school could afford. by mid-year, the school requested three more student teachers to assist in the teaching of social sciences. at the end of the intervention, towards the end of the year, we organised separate interviews for the student teachers and teachers. to enable us to establish how the intervention affected the student teachers’ adaptive capabilities, we opted for a focus group interview. we used focus group interviews because they would allow participants to say more than they would do in a one-on-one interview (kleve, 2009: 2001). we had one focus group with the nine student teachers and one with the three teachers. in a focus group interview, people are able to question and argue. they are more open to agree, enhance or disagree. participants tend to self-disclose easily in such an interview (ho, 2006: 5.2; krueger & cassey, 2000: 8). it is through arguments that different and complementary perspectives can emerge. such an interview allows the interruption of a discussion at any stage to achieve clarity. of the nine student teachers, four of them were females. five were males. all of them were final year undergraduate students, whose ages ranged from 22 to 28 years old. questions were aimed at reflecting on how the project was experienced by teachers and student teachers. questions were around the successes of the project, challenges encountered by the teachers and student teachers while the project was in progress as well as recommendations for future interactions. participants were given consent forms, which explained that they could withdraw at any stage without any negative consequences. they were also assured of their anonymity and confidentiality. participants signed the consent forms. the interviews were tape recorded and transcribed. our duty as researchers was to make meaning of the spoken words. for member verification, the transcribed and interpreted spoken words were returned to the participants. we read the transcripts several times to make sense of them and then coded them according to similar themes (creswell et al., 2007). we then used critical discourse analysis with more emphasis on how things are done in society (van dijk, 1993). we concluded by infusing adaptive leadership in what has been said by the participants. 34 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) 6. results and findings we found that student teachers’ adaptive skills had improved through this community-initiated intervention. five key issues emerged, which are discussed below. civic participation civic participation refers to an individual’s engagement in the activities of his/her community (longford, 2005: 4). such an engagement could be through donating time to serve the community. through the participation of the students in the project, they were able to donate their time to serve the community where the university is. as one of the challenges experienced during the period of the project, one student teacher stated, you will find that sometimes you would be writing on monday, and sometimes you are given material on friday to prepare for saturday. after the lesson you will have to come back and continue with the university’s academic work. the participation of the students was for the betterment of the learners’ academic achievement. students learned how to plough back into the community. civic participation involves volunteering. students were volunteering to donate their time and knowledge without remuneration. such a donation of time was through preparation on fridays as well as on saturdays when they put into practice what they had prepared. the civic participation cultivated a sense of ubuntu/botho (humaneness) in the students. it was through selflessness and for the benefit of the learners that student teachers would sacrifice their time and energy to prepare lessons for saturdays. while the project initially targeted natural sciences and mathematics, social sciences was only included during the course of the year. according to one of the student teachers, mr x, a teacher from the same school was approached by the social sciences teacher and requested assistance from the student teachers. “mr x said that the social sciences teacher approached him saying that she needed help,” said one student teacher. mr a then requested the student teachers to teach the social sciences grade nine learners. by agreeing to teach those learners, the student teachers were demonstrating that they were willing to participate in activities that involved the community. the learners were not the only beneficiaries from the civic participation of student teachers as highlighted in the preceding paragraph. student teachers reported that the teachers also benefited. so too the teachers themselves; they benefited a lot because we left some of copies of the things we were using. by leaving the copies, student teachers were signifying growth and selflessness in their participation. student teachers were signifying growth in that they were thinking ahead. the social sciences teacher could then use those copies long after the student teachers had intervened. such a communal approach of that student teachers and teachers working together in the process of teaching and learning is in line with the african proverb that says, “it takes [a] whole village to bring up a child” (quan-baffour, 2012: 299; tsotetsi, 2013: 227). according to the sentiments above, the teachers used the power they had in order to request student teachers to present the lessons. the student teachers’ duty was to obey the requests by the teachers. there are unequal power relations between teachers and student teachers. 35 hlalele & tsotetsi promoting student teachers’ adaptive capabilities through community engagement using adaptive leadership, the teachers and student teachers worked collaboratively to tackle the challenge of teaching concepts with which the teachers were not familiar. the project resulted in a win-win situation. teachers benefitted in that student teachers taught certain concepts for teachers. student teachers also left copies at school. the school community gained in that the learners were from the same community. the success of the learners meant an intellectual benefit for the community. student teachers learned to give back to the community. improvisation student teachers reported that they had opportunities to improvise. they were provided with textbooks without sufficient information. we were provided with textbooks with no information on the topics to be presented. for example, we were to teach about the gradient. but only to find that there is no information about the gradient. i then went to mr vusi at s secondary school. i asked for information about the map work. he provided me with the topographical and ortho-photo maps. this made the map work possible, as some of the calculations were to be taken from the map. student teachers learned to improvise. moving from the school where they were requested to assist to s secondary school was a mirror that demonstrated that they were improving in their adaptive knowledge and skills to suit the context. it was a well thought out idea that student teachers could contact mr vusi. these thoughts and actions were implemented through improvisation. “we found that at the school there were no maps. we tried to download some maps from the internet, but we could not get the correct one,” one of the student teachers added. so i have learned that if i am given a topic to present, i need to search for information instead of folding my arms. as student teachers, one would expect them to accept that it was not their fault that the textbook did not have enough information about maps. in order to respond to the challenge, student teachers sourced the internet and then consulted mr vusi. the above student teacher’s text weight is carried by the following words, “…i need to search information instead of folding my arms”. implicitly, the student teacher had learned to adapt. it is in such spaces where hope anchors and manifests itself. the anchored hope urges the student teacher to actively own the problem as well as the process and therefore seek solutions. one of the student teachers added the following comment, in maths, some of the topics that are there in the syllabus are not there in the textbooks. we had to use the grade 10 textbooks to cover the grade nine work. although some topics were included in the grade nine syllabus, they were basically in the grade 10 textbooks. student teachers showed a measure of growth and the ability to improvise. although the school where the student teachers were placed did not have grade 10 classes, the student teachers could adapt and move to other schools that had grade 10. instead of blaming the mathematics teacher for not giving them sufficient information, they improvised and sought information. it was through improvisation and improved adaptive capabilities that the student teachers could compare the textbooks to the syllabus. 36 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) improvisation was not only about seeking information. student teachers reported that they had to sacrifice and postpone their study times. sometimes you have to submit assignments on monday. we spent most of our saturday time at school. when we returned we were generally tired but we managed to keep a balance. student teachers were aware of the fact that they needed to pass the courses for which they were registered. however, as highlighted above, they opted to assist learners first. they would tackle their university work only after spending the greater part of saturday teaching grade nine learners. the self-fulfilment of the student teachers was echoed by one student teacher’s comments “so it helps to improvise when there are no resources”. according to cda, the cultural practice in the society is that people will wait for somebody to take initiative in solving a problem. in the above civic participation, the schoolteachers took the initiative. they invited student teachers to come and be of assistance to the school. in this regard, teachers took a step to better the unsatisfactory condition of having to teach ss while they were unable to teach map-work. they acted instead of waiting for the government officials. student teachers on the other hand learned to give back to the community. adaptive leadership also relies on “two heads are better than one” (quan-baffour, 2012: 300). with teachers and student teachers tackling the challenge of teaching and learning, a workable solution was reached. the teachers and student teachers contributed in the teaching of certain concepts as alluded to above. 7. personal and professional growth our findings showed that student teachers and learners demonstrated growth. “for us as future teachers” said one student teacher “we gained experience”. the student teacher was aware that she had only the theory from the university. putting the theory into practice was another step in her growth. in line with the first student teacher, another student teacher reported, “i have learned to link what is being done at the university with what takes place in schools”. experiential learning was complementing the theory learned at university. teachers stated that the student teachers also showed some professional growth. “ooh yes…the student definitely gained practical exposure as we all know that at the institution they are taught more theory than practice,” commented one teacher “so this project gives them a platform to practise in class”. moreover, a practice of planning lessons together enabled student teachers to learn from one another. on my side, everything was well. i think like, i gained a lot from [other student teachers]. on the physical sciences part i was not good. so i gained a lot on some topics, like electricity was a very tricky part for me. working together as a group gave me that confidence. i got to understand it and felt confident. i think working together was very helpful to me. teachers disclosed that their learners were active after being taught by the student teachers “yes, the learners were interested in being taught by students” said the social sciences teacher “especially in ss map-work where there are calculations, as i am not familiar with calculations”. we assumed that the social sciences teachers were using the same methods of teaching as our student teachers. however, the above teacher’s words show that the student teachers’ 37 hlalele & tsotetsi promoting student teachers’ adaptive capabilities through community engagement presentations supplemented what the teacher had been doing, especially in map-work. the way the student teachers presented their social sciences lessons taught the learners to be active. consequently, the learners’ activity in class was evident. teachers felt that they had learned from the interaction with the student teachers. “teachers for sure benefited from this as they were exposed to different methodologies on how to treat other difficulties,” asserted another teacher. one would not expect teachers to learn from inexperienced student teachers but according to the teacher who had commented, the opposite happened. professional growth remains continual. additionally, student teachers confirmed that they experienced a sense of professional growth after the intervention as they managed to teach challenging concepts. we also taught concepts that some teachers were not comfortable to teach. as student teachers we were able to explain those concepts to learners so as to make the job of teachers easier. furthermore, student teachers were able to tackle the calculations in social sciences. “some of the things the teachers didn’t know at all, especially the calculations” commented one student-teacher “on the theory part, they were ok. but they did not know how to do things the proper way”. student teachers testified that the intervention had been an immense contribution towards their professional growth. adaptation relies on diversity. complementary teaching methodologies made it easier for learners to understand concepts further. in addition to how teachers had been presenting their lessons, student teachers’ method of planning together and teaching concepts that teachers were not familiar with were an advantage to the learners. teachers also benefitted in that student teachers taught concepts that teachers would have to teach in the forthcoming years. the project, using adaptive leadership as a theoretical framework, motivated the school and the university to work together. cooperation our findings revealed that students worked together as they were preparing to go to their classes. “we always prepared in groups” one lively student teacher announced “both in natural and social sciences we prepared together”. student teachers would first agree on what should be taught, then prepare together. “in terms of presenting, two teachers would go to a different class,” detailed another student teacher and “both of them would be presenting the same topic”. in addition, our findings demonstrated that learners from other schools in the area where the study took place also attended. “neighbouring schools also benefitted from this project as learners were combined to get knowledge,” reported a teacher from the school where the study took place. it was through the cooperation and unselfishness from student teachers, teachers and learners that allowed the intervention by the student teachers to reach a broader ambit. as highlighted in the discussion on adaptive leadership, an inclusive approach is fundamental when tackling a problem whose solution is unknown. a sense of appreciation through the intervention, student teachers had a feeling of self-worth. student teachers were awarded certificates by the school for the work they had done. parents, as well as the learners could even see the benefits from the intervention. a student teacher said the following, 38 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) the community benefited as the teachers and learners who benefited are from the same community, especially last week; they were there during the award ceremony. so, some of them were happy to see that the university was doing something especially in the natural sciences, social sciences and mathematics. teachers also reported that parents appreciated the work performed by student teachers. “this means the parents were happy to see that their children are given extra time to learn” remarked one teacher “and it showed that the school and university are working together”. another teacher also reported that teachers appreciated the work done by the student teachers. “it was a pleasant experience to see how our learners participated and how they related to the students”. implicitly, the student teachers’ work was admired. moreover, two teachers expressed their appreciation about the value of the intervention: we benefited significantly from this project as our learners became open­minded and they participated a lot during class hours. different methodologies were introduced in class that motivated learners to become interested a lot in maths. in addition, different methodologies were of much help and learners’ minds were now broadened so that they could now think for themselves. while unequal power relations exist between the teachers and student teachers, the project enabled both parties to tackle the challenge of learners understanding concepts and be energetic when participating. through type iii adaptive leadership, the challenge as experienced earlier by the school, was overcome. student teachers were given an opportunity to stimulate change. on the other hand, they also received certificates and experiences that prepared them for lifelong learning, thereby enhancing their adaptive expertise. 8. discussion our findings revealed that students’ adaptive capabilities had improved. five key issues emerged from the intervention. firstly, student teachers were able to plough back knowledge into the community through civic participation. accordingly, meaningful community participation extends beyond physical involvement to include generation of ideas, contributions to decision making and sharing of responsibility. they gave of their time for the benefit of the school and the learners. student teachers were not paid for their participation, teaching the learners on saturdays, where after they would attend to their university academic work. furthermore, they left the material that they had been using for the benefit of the learners and teachers. it was out of love and selflessness that they did so. beneficiaries included teachers, student teachers, learners and the community as a whole. it seems that the students were challenged to tap into adaptive expertise. according to lin, shwartz and hatano (2005) adaptive expertise is characterised by procedural fluency that is complemented by an explicit conceptual understanding that permits adaptation to variability. educational environments that support active exploration through three tiers foster the acquisition of adaptive expertise. the first tier highlights the variability inherent to the task environment. the second tier highlights the variability permitted in the individual’s procedural application. the final tier highlights the variability of explanation permitted by the culture, such that people can share and discuss their different understandings. the implications for the classroom culture are direct and we consider brief examples from our own work on each of these tiers. we focus on how to help students and notice important sources 39 hlalele & tsotetsi promoting student teachers’ adaptive capabilities through community engagement of variability. life always contains variability but people can overlook important differences by applying well-worn schemas. secondly, student teachers learned to improvise. their adaptive skills were displayed by their ability to seek information from other textbooks, besides the textbooks given to them by the subject teachers. student teachers downloaded information from the internet and compared it with what the syllabus expected. where the downloaded material could not address the syllabus requirements, student teachers went to other schools to obtain textbooks and maps. they therefore learned to explore ways to find a solution when confronted with a problem. thirdly, the participants experienced personal and professional growth. learners’ participation in class improved and their exposure to different methodologies resulted in their being more active in class. approaches by the teachers and the student teachers complemented each other. student teachers had the opportunity to link the theory taught at the university to what takes place in practice. thus, student teachers gained experience and exposure. teachers and student teachers thus benefitted from each other, as teachers could learn from the different methodologies used by the student teachers. fourthly, the intervention enabled participants to cooperate. student teachers learned from one another as they were preparing lessons together. for student teachers who were teaching natural sciences, planning lessons together became even more beneficial to them. natural sciences consisted of two sections: life sciences and physical sciences. for those student teachers who were specialists in teaching life sciences, planning together with the physical sciences student teachers helped them to become more confident about teaching physical sciences concepts. the same applied to the student teachers who were specialists in physical sciences. they benefitted from those student teachers who were life sciences specialists. fifthly, the intervention enabled the student teachers to experience a feeling of appreciation. they were awarded certificates for the work they had done. the school held a function at which, amongst other things, the university and the student teachers’ engagement in the betterment of the learners’ academic performance was recognised. the organised function enabled parents and the community to appreciate the student teachers’ contribution. teachers, furthermore, valued the work done by the student teachers. 9. conclusion our findings demonstrated that through cooperation, the university and the community could tackle challenges. such cooperation gives student teachers an opportunity to develop adaptive skills and expertise. the current study confirms that through cooperation, communities are able to communicate and share their ideas. through such interaction, student teachers are given an opportunity to plough back into the community their knowledge and develop a sense of self-worth for their contribution. students at universities need to think of their role in community engagement not simply as the provision of technical assistance, knowledge of research and development prowess but as an opportunity for social leadership and change. this is when freire’s hope is anchored in practice. 40 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) 10. implications for theory and practice adaptive leadership the initiative calls for policy designers of the faculties of education to give student teachers more time in schools 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staffing integration was minimal; institutional culture integration was not evident; social boundaries enacted maintained previous race based power relations; weaker boundaries between instrumental and non-instrumental forms of knowledge legitimised students’ experiences and interests but did not facilitate access to non-instrumental forms of knowledge and thinking; the dominant discursive frame of teachers was one of student deficit. these regularities point to a discursive formation (foucault, 1977) that undermine integration and would reproduce previous racialised inequalities. finally, an explanation of the discursive formation is touched on followed by recommendations. keywords: integration, code, boundaries, discourse, discursive formation, regularities introduction while south africa’s national approach to integration explicitly aims to use education to unify society, studies of the process of integration have overwhelmingly shown that school practices converge to subvert the goal of integration. the process of integration has been described as non-reconstructive and slow (carter, 2009), as assimilationist — either aggressive, benign or by stealth and not multiculturalist or anti-racist (soudien, 2004). the longer experience with racial integration in schools in the us is not encouraging. after more than 50 years, schools continue to face challenges with regard to integration, and recently white parents have sued schools to eliminate their racial equity plans. within schools, the strength of racial boundaries undermines the integration agenda (carter, 2009). although south africa’s apartheid past is still very much alive today, there is a compelling need to open the doors of learning to historically disadvantaged students in terms of access to academic resources, such as non-instrumental forms of knowledge and thinking, a rigorous curriculum, high quality teaching, computers and books, acquiring a questioning, critical and democratic attitude, and a teaching and learning environment that reflects diversity. to determine whether the doors of learning have been opened to historically disadvantaged students and whether all students are being afforded equal opportunities to access socially valued academic resources an understanding of what transpires daily in schools and classrooms is necessary. jansen (2004) holds that observations suggest that whereas the first level of integration — racial desegregation is easily achieved, schools and universities struggle with achieving higher levels of integration such as the staffing integration, curriculum integration and institutional culture integration. according to jansen the institutional culture is reflected by a range of practices and visual images evident at a school such as whose portraits and paintings appear in the corridors, who dominates the school governing bodies and who gets relegated to the status of observers, whose language dominates public 1 naidoo, d. 2010. a discursive formation that undermined integration at a historically advantaged school in south africa. perspectives in education, 28(2):19-30. perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201020 meetings and whose is excluded, what appears on the emblem of the institution, what the content of school songs are, and the metaphors for talking about others (jansen, 2004:122). with reference to curriculum integration, a pertinent point made by jansen is the need for empirical investigation of the extent to which curriculum content and practices of teachers have changed, the key issue being “what has counted as worthwhile knowledge” in racially desegregated classrooms since 1994. each level of integration has been the subject of analysis in recent studies. for example, weber (2009) analysed social relationships in desegregated gauteng schools; carter et al. (2009) analysed social boundaries that undermine integration; and hubbard (2009) analysed school structures that reproduce social inequalities. in this case study all the levels of integration are scrutinised in a school to analyse how they reinforce each other to produce discursive formations that run counter to the goals of integration. the questions posed in this study are: how far has integration progressed to in this school? what staffing, curriculum and institutional culture integration are evident? whose interests do the forms of integration practiced serve? are there regularities across the levels of integration, and, if so, what do the regularities reveal? theoretical perspectives the concept of discursive formation (foucault, 1977) enabled an analysis of the “big picture” that each level of integration contributed to. discursive formations arise when one can define a regularity across a number of discourses and practices and when the relationships and differences between them are regular and systematic, not random nor the same (hall, 1992). in foucault’s words: whenever one can describe, between a number of statements, … a regularity … we will say … that we are dealing with a discursive formation. (foucault, 1972:32) the notion of “a regime of truth” (foucault, 1977) was employed to analyse the relationship between teachers’ descriptions of students and their pedagogic practices. a “regime of truth” arises when a discourse is effective in regulating practice and relations of power within a context. discourses are not just linguistic descriptions and thoughts but include the practices that arise from it. also, discourses do not reflect meaning but constitute it. thus, “discourses are practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak” (foucault, 1977). when a discourse regulates practice those who are known or described in a particular way are subjected to it. the discourse regulates social practices and has real consequences and effects because those who produce the discourse also have the power to make it true, in other words, to enforce its validity. whether a discourse is true or not is of little significance as the “effect of truth” or the “regime of truth” created by the discourse is effective in regulating practice and in making it true. the levels of curriculum and staffing integration have been framed by bernstein’s code theory (bernstein, 1971; 1996). a code is a regulative principle, tacitly acquired that selects and integrates relevant meanings (elaborated or less elaborated) and forms of realization (texts). within a context the underlying code may be identified from the interactional practices, the orientation to meanings and textual productions. according to bernstein, the core principal of the integrated code, weaker boundary maintenance, is realised both in the structuring of educational knowledge and in the organisation of social relationships (bernstein, 1971). the concept classification describes the strength of the boundary: classification refers to the strength of the boundary between knowledge contents. where classification is strong, contents are well insulated from each other by strong boundaries. where classification is weak there is reduced insulation between contents for the boundaries between contents are weak or blurred. (bernstein, 1996:56) the boundaries between different categories of social groups and knowledge are a function of power relations as “power relations create boundaries, legitimise boundaries, reproduce boundaries between different categories of groups, gender, class, race, different categories of discourse, different categories of agents” (bernstein, 2000:5). with strong classification each category has its specialised discourse, identity and voice. with weaker classification – less specialized discourse, voice and identity arises. by describing naidoo — a discursive formation that undermined integration at a historically advantaged school 21 the classification strength between forms of knowledge and between social groups, one can infer the underlying power relation. bernstein’s conceptualisation of inter-disciplinary integration with weaker boundaries between the subjects is conditional: that “the relationships between subjects ought to be rigorous, robust and at a high conceptual level” and that “there must be some relational idea, a supra-content concept, which focuses upon general principles at a high level of abstraction” (bernstein, 1971:60). with reference to social relationships the integrated code presupposes weaker boundaries between teachers of different subjects as they need to co-operate with each other around the content to be taught; hence, “the integrated code will require teachers of different subjects to enter into social relationships with each other which will arise … out of a shared, co-operative, educational task” (bernstein, 1971). the levels of integration in this school are scrutinised in terms of racial, social, curriculum and institutional culture. the aim is to analyse how they reinforce each other to produce discursive formations that run counter to the goals of integration. the study a qualitative research design was employed as it allowed for an in-depth examination of the school. i spent six months in the school familiarising myself with the school’s institutional, educational and social practices. documents such as the historical records of the school and learners’ biographic records were analysed. the main source of data for the school’s origin and history were the school magazines stored in the school library. non-participant observations of the institutional culture of the school included noting the visual texts posted on the walls and notice boards, the seating of staff and social interactions between staff. i also did non-participant observation of grade 9 teachers’ classroom practices. i attended classes daily, writing detailed field notes on lessons taught and the social relations between teachers and students in the pedagogic context. for each lesson, detailed notes were made of what the teacher said and did. a total of 55 lessons of 22 teachers were observed. these observations and notes provided the background for the in-depth interviews that followed. post-observation interviews of 19 teachers focused on gathering information on teachers’ views of students. on average the interviews lasted 90 minutes. the interviews were audio-taped and transcribed. the grade 9 teachers also completed a questionnaire eliciting professional biographical information. informed consent to conduct the study was obtained from the school principal, staff and grade 9 teachers in the study. all grade 9 learners were asked to obtain their parents’ or guardians’ permission to be part of the study. the school, staff and students were assured anonymity and confidentiality. the findings apply specifically to the school studied. how general such discourses and discursive formations are across similar historically advantaged schools is a subject begging urgent large scale empirical investigation. data analysis the analytical criteria were derived from the concepts informing the study. for the first level of integration, namely racial desegregation, the situation is described in terms of the extent to which desegregation had or had not occurred. the four remaining criteria, social relationships, dominant discourses, knowledge relationships and institutional culture, were analysed deductively. the social relationships between teachers, between parents and teachers, between administrative staff and students and parents, and between teachers of different subjects were observed. the boundaries maintained were coded into whether the relationships were showing strong classification (c+) or weak classification (c-). the actual curriculum taught was analysed in terms of the boundaries maintained between forms of knowledge taught and whether the boundaries were strongly classified (c+) or weak classified (c-). the dominant discourses were mainly derived from teachers’ responses in the interviews. of particular significance was the language used to describe students. similar or repeated descriptions of students during the interviews were seen as representative of the views of the majority of teachers. the institutional culture was operationalised in terms of jansen’s indicators of institutional culture. perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201022 the research site this school was established for white boys during the apartheid era by the education department for white education. it is now a public school, for girls and boys of all races. by 2005 much racial desegregation of students had taken place. the language of instruction was english and the majority of african learners demonstrated the competencies and fluency of first language english speakers with a sizeable percentage not being able to speak their mother tongue. a few white students had become conversant in zulu and often used it to communicate with their black peers. there were a total of 210 students in grade 9 in 2005, of whom 84% were black, 11% white, 4% coloured and 1% indian. the first level of integration, racial desegregation, had been effected at student level. analysis of grade 9 school records showed that 53% of the students lived in townships about 15 km away from the school. these students travelled to school using public transport like buses and mini-bus taxis, often having to take one trip to the centre of town, and then either walking to the school from there or taking another taxi to the school, incurring substantial transport costs. thirty-three percent of the students came from surrounding lower middle class residential areas and 14 % lived in middle class areas. with reference to their parents’ occupations, 4% of the parents were senior professional and managerial, 51% were lower professional and junior managerial, 29% were clerical and skilled manual workers, 12% were semi-skilled manual workers and 6% were unskilled manual workers. the teachers in the school and the grade 9 teachers were all highly qualified. those involved in the study had an average of five years of tertiary education. all teachers were teaching subjects they were specialists in. two grade 9 teachers had a bsc. degree and majored in mathematics, microbiology, biochemistry and botany. five teachers held ba degrees and honours degrees in education, english and communication. major subjects studied at university level included history, english, political science, zulu and afrikaans. racial desegregation the racial profile of the staff is shown in table 1. at the first teacher level much racial de-segregation had been achieved. 51% of the level one teachers were non-white and 49% were white. table 1: racial profile of staff race white non-white total principal 1 0 1 senior management 3 0 3 level two hod 9 2 11 level one teachers 15 16 31 clerical 9 1 10 pro 1 0 1 total 38 19 57 the 16 non-white teachers were made up of seven indians, two coloureds and seven blacks. five black teachers had been hired to teach zulu, one taught physical education and another taught history. the indian teachers taught afrikaans, english, accounting and science. while significant progress had been made with regard to racial desegregation of level one teachers, the second level of integration, namely “staffing integration” was not proceeded to. this relationship has been coded as c+ as it was characterised by impermeable boundaries. although african teachers had been appointed they were visibly separate, marginalised and overlooked by the school. they sat in a circular group in one part of the staffroom during breaks and meetings. they made no contributions during meetings. they had been hired to teach zulu naidoo — a discursive formation that undermined integration at a historically advantaged school 23 in most cases, and history in the case of one teacher. the african teachers did not contribute to school leadership and management. one of the heads of department remarked that african teachers “are just sucked in”: d: do you think the african teachers feel comfortable here? p: the african teachers are just sucked in – they are very obedient – let’s put it that way. d: do they challenge or make contributions? p: no, they don’t challenge and make contributions. the seating arrangement of teachers illustrated racialised groups and strong social boundaries with strong rules of exclusion. while the african teachers were physically present they were not recognised as part of the academic staff; the physical and symbolic boundaries positioned them as outsiders and their social integration and participation was excluded. observations of indian and coloured teachers indicated weaker social boundaries with regard to everyday social relations. but, like their black colleagues, they deferred to their white colleagues when it came to educational matters. racial desegregation was minimal at the second educator level and not achieved at all at senior management level. the senior management, the principal and two deputy principals, were white. at middle management level nine of the eleven hods were white and the remaining two were indian. the nonwhite staff saw the racial demographics of the management as problematic, for example one of the black teachers at the school saw the hegemony of the english language as due to managerial short-sightedness: n: but to my surprise you will find zulu children doing zulu as a third language or not at all. when you ask them: ‘why don’t you do zulu because it is your home language?’, they just say, ‘i don’t know anything about zulu’ and they are just proud of that. … so this is bad and i think this is one of the things this school must try to work on – kids must know where they come from and must know their own language – that will only happen if you have people in management who can steer that. the frontline administrative and support staff were predominantly white. of ten clerical staff, nine were white. the dominantly white clerical staff would mediate any communication with management or teachers. the receptionist would go to great lengths to prevent meetings with the principal and deputy principals by attending to matters on her own. the principal’s personal assistant would also filter requests to meet the principal and attend to matters on her own. one could be forgiven for forming the impression that the principal was not to be bothered by parents and visitors. of all social relationships the strongest classification was that between the white administration staff and students and parents. unlike the friendly and warm academic staff, the administrative personnel were cold, brusque, impatient and observed to be unhelpful and dismissive of students, visitors and parents. for example, a parent had come to the school to return textbooks on loan and was very disrespectfully treated by the receptionist who demanded the official form that should accompany the books and refused to resolve the problem without the form. racial desegregation was minimal at management and administrative staff level. this is indicative that at key levels where decisions are taken for the whole school and that represent the school to the public, there was no desegregation. at this level white staff had insulated themselves from the presence of “others”, let alone their views. one of the indian hods said that he felt uncomfortable at the school and regarded the management as a problem: p: but that is one of the plusses of (name of school). these learners are independent, they know their rights, they are not a problem — it’s the management that is a problem … we can’t treat the children according to our mindsets and our thinking. the social relationships between black parents and staff were also characterised by strongly classified boundaries. although many opportunities existed for parents to participate in the life of the school and there generally was an excellent turnout of parents at academic functions, participation was minimal. according to an hod, the minimal participation was due to “parents being enormously grateful to the school” and to “trusting” the teachers and to feeling that “they (parents) didn’t need to do anything more”. perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201024 my observations indicated that parents did not feel part of the school community at all. a member of senior management described parents as “depraved” at a full staff meeting because they were “consuming such large amounts of food” at the prize-giving ceremony. what did the institutional culture of the school say about “just whose school was it?” the institutional culture of the school by 2005 still projected many anglo-centric or south african white symbols. a large life-size painting of queen victoria adorned the front wall of the library. the five sports houses that were named after key historical figures, all white, remained the same. the symbol of each house flag that was derived from symbols personally relevant to each of these individuals remained the same. the portraits and paintings of key historical figures that hung in the corridors were bold statements of the school’s history rather than a reflection of its present orientation. white parents dominated the school’s governing body. english dominated public meetings and events, although the majority of parents in attendance were african. all signage at the school was in english. apart from cultural evenings and the “hip” choir, the cultural diversity of learners was neither acknowledged nor affirmed. curriculum integration the school offered a range of subjects with 16 subjects being compulsory at grade 9 level. this included a mixture of conventional subjects such as english, mathematics, science and new subjects such as computer literacy, media studies, human and social sciences, technology and life orientation. firstly, inter-disciplinary integration characterised by “conceptual integration involving general principles at a high level of abstraction” was not practised. the type of integration most practiced was the weakening of boundaries between instrumental and non-instrumental forms of knowledge and thinking for the majority of students. the classes were streamed into high, middle, low and very low ability classes and this labelling of students conditioned what knowledge was taught. with reference to instrumental forms of knowledge and thinking, the science teachers taught science knowledge that was immediately useful such as “how to wire a plug”. activities that required experiments to be done, such as activity 1 below, were left out. activity 1: connect a short, thick copper wire between a and b. switch on for a short time and observe what changes take place. now answer these questions: how does the brightness of the bulb change when ab is connected? how does the temperature of the connecting wires change? where was the short circuit? what would have happened if you had left the switch on (with ab connected) for a long time? various activities involving comprehension of newspaper reports of accidents arising from electrical faults such as illustrated in activity 3 below were taught in detail: read this report from the ntisiki tribune (fictional newspaper title): factory burns down garment world, the large clothing factory was destroyed by fire on tuesday night. fortunately, the caretaker woke up in time to escape and no other people were in the building at the time. the factory had just finished an order for 10 000 dresses for the new season. all stock, machinery and dress material went up in smoke. the immediate effect of the fire is that 400 workers are now out of work for at least a season. the cause of the fire is thought to be an electrical fault. rodents caused the short circuit. detectives investigated the burnt-out building. some of the burnt electric cables showed signs of tooth marks. in the basement were remains of a large number of rats. on this evidence the police were able to report that it was likely that the fire was caused by a short circuit. naidoo — a discursive formation that undermined integration at a historically advantaged school 25 four questions were set on it: 1. in groups discuss the causes of the fire. 2. do you think the police are correct in saying the fire was caused by a short circuit? 3. what role do you think rats played in causing the fire? explain your reasoning. 4. how could this fire have been prevented? the 9a class, the highest “ability” class, was taught traditional mathematics. in the remaining classes mathematics lessons were characterised by more definitions being drilled, memorisation of the spelling of terms such as acute, obtuse, integer, more time spent on copying diagrams on parallel lines in their books and more time spent on writing notes. there was a concern with pronunciation and much simpler less challenging examples were being done, for example, 17–10 divided by 2 = ? . simple statistical techniques to handle data were taught such as working out mean, median and mode using single-digit numbers. more terms were being focused on such as bar graph, column graph, broken-line graph, distribution table, tally chart, and frequency (naidoo, 2009). the 9a english language teacher had struck a balance between subject knowledge and students’ interests. the poem ‘crack’ was related to “heart matters” that students readily identified with. in addition to teaching formal aspects of english such as vocabulary, appreciation of plays, novels and poems, parts of speech, the teacher allowed students during their oral assessments to present to the class their favourite music and super stars, sporting personalities, movie stars and similar popular topics. students debated the use of listening to music that was vulgar and repulsive to some and acceptable to others. there were many instances of relating the meaning of the poems and novels to topics such as “relationships” that were of immediate interest to students. however, in the remaining six grade 9 classes discussions of popular knowledge and interests dominated formal knowledge and writing activities. one of the english teachers explained that students “don’t care what they learn, which makes explaining poetry and the subtlety of language more difficult”. some specialist knowledge and skills were taught in art and students were expected to apply it to make sense of their unique contexts. subjective knowledge based on students’ own experiences was affirmed. however, the teacher indicated her concern about the number of sketches of “shebeens” and of “safe-sex and hiv/aids posters” that she had been getting. the history teacher taught european history and made connections with the situation in zimbabwe and south africa. the life orientation lessons were based on enabling moral and practical judgments based on integrated knowledge. the topics taught were ‘youth and premarital sex — the reasons’. a representative from the ‘pregnancy crisis centre’ addressed students and showed them a video and reviewed it around the question: “reasons for abstinence as the best and healthiest choice for teens” and “is abstinence realistic for teenagers today?” the second lesson revolved around three components of good character: moral knowing, moral feeling and moral action. the weakening of the boundary between history and geography in social science was illustrated in the text used by the teacher. of the nineteen-page resource pack given to students three pages were allocated to geography. amidst historical sections such as hitler’s road to war, the league of nations, the treaty of versailles, the rise of fascism, the popularity of fascism in europe, and hitler’s foreign policy, geographical sections such as ‘beneath the ground’ in which different types of rocks, mineral resources and mining were introduced. the topics did not relate to each other and served as impediments to systematic teaching of conceptual knowledge in both subjects. the boundaries between instrumental and non-instrumental forms of knowledge and thinking were weakened on the whole. while this approach enabled students’ own interests to be legitimised in the classroom, they became ends in themselves and not the means to non-instrumental forms of knowledge and thinking. walkerdine (1982) points out the differences between everyday and abstract knowledge. familiar, everyday contexts are essential starting points in the classroom for teaching children to reason abstractly. abstract knowledge that is based on the technical and specialised language of the subject was not proceeded to in the majority of classrooms. perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201026 dominant deficit discourses of students analysis of interview transcripts showed that teachers viewed students as deficient. a dominant discourse was that the students “were not academically orientated”. many teachers intimated this idea in different ways. the english hod who played a key role in deciding on directions for the school mentioned that the school “does not pitch for a high standard of academic work”. another mentioned the need “to lower standards a little bit, lower your expectations”. when asked about the educational aim of the school, teachers spoke about developing students’ social skills in tackling conflict situations. this view is encapsulated below: teacher v: i suppose we are trying to make them more confident in how to tackle new situations – conflict situations – how to develop their social skills. another generally held view was that there were very few children who were academically orientated in the school. one of the teacher’s views is quoted below: o: you know i have not taught at a school where there are not academically orientated children – in this school there will be 5 out of every 1000 who are academically orientated and one per grade. one of the maths teachers constructed the majority of students as of lower ability. maths teachers believed that “not everybody can do maths”: v: i have found with my 9as they cope much better than 9b because 9b has such a limited general knowledge and are so less capable academically whereas grade 9a use their imagination. we are exploiting a talent that mathematically the children have and then you can add a little bit and develop it. the frequent use of negations (can’t, don’t have, did not, is not, will never be, less, are not, not) indicates the pervasiveness of discourses that construct the students as deficient. yet another discourse was of the cognitive deficiency of students. this point is illustrated by citing ‘telling’ responses from teachers. one of the science teachers justified her teaching of instrumental science knowledge and not ‘abstract’ science knowledge for two reasons: firstly, the students cannot think on an abstract level and then, secondly, because it would not improve their lives: l: i thought that chemical bonding, although i liked teaching it, i really thought it was a bit unfair on the majority of the kids — although they coped well with it — but what you really need would be concrete little things because those kids can’t think on an abstract level like that and does your life really improve if you know how atoms join together — i mean what good does it do for the average — because i can think of a lot of things that do make a difference like how washing up liquid works or a detergent or in the field of nutrition — those have got very, very real applications. another science teacher could not see any reason to teach students the scientific mode of inquiry (the curriculum requirement at grade 9 level of students being able to design, carry out and report an investigation) because she cannot “see what these children are going to do with it”, “they are not capable of doing it” and they are “not interested in doing it”: c: you know these children need so much guidance — you need to spend so much time on each group — now i had a academically very slow group and they did not know what to do — even after going through the investigation — i spent so much time on it – still hardly anyone could do it — they totally missed the whole idea — you know i cannot see what these children are going to do with it – they are not capable of doing it – they are not interested in doing it. even when they actually physically did it you know i gave them choices in their portfolio and some of them would take one set of beans and put them in the fridge and one in the room and they would bring it to me and i would say lovely — what does it show you? they don’t know. naidoo — a discursive formation that undermined integration at a historically advantaged school 27 the maths teacher said quite conclusively that the students have neither the intellectual power nor the talent to do maths: teacher v: they just don’t have the intellectual power to carry on, they get frustrated and bored, it’s easier for them to identify the problem as the teacher than to say i actually don’t have the talent for maths. the art teacher doubted the creative abilities of her students: “they kind of can’t draw from themselves – there is no creative impetus in some of these children”. other teachers suggested that conceptual meaning “does not really matter” to the students: teacher r: to them it does not really matter if two and one is three — who cares if it is three or not. like they are so poor at maths they don’t know the difference between truth and fiction when they look at numbers. it is not real for them. another dominant deficit discourse was that of students as socially deficient. students were described as not knowing “how to handle books” and of “not growing up with books” and of losing books: teacher n: you buy 250 books this year — by next year 50 of them have been lost and those kids have no — they are not kids who have grown up with books — they don’t know how to handle books and they don’t know how to look after the books. the majority of students were described as having poor work ethic: s: depends on the group, for example, like 9a have a strong work ethic, you can do things with 9a but with the rest less capable learners you are not going to get much out of them, they have no work ethic. students were described as thieves: v: i can’t even put something pretty on my desk because the kids steal it — can’t put a nice pen on the desk — it will get stolen — in other words — there are a lot of thieves … there is a great deal more lying and covering up the dominant frame of reference was one of individual deficit – that the students themselves were the cause of the deficiency without any sense of the effect of social structures and processes. for example, a teacher believed that what a child is cannot be changed: c: i think that if you look at the critical outcomes and things like that — it’s fine to be optimistic — because nobody can make a child into something he is not and will never be. the significance of these deficit discourses is that they produced the “effect of truth” that impacted on curriculum practices. students were constructed as deficient in their cognitive ability, in their creative qualities, in academic disposition, in interest in particular fields of knowledge, in conceptual meaningmaking and socially. but, regardless of being false, the effect of truth created by the discourses of deficiency was sufficient to influence practice — the majority of students were schooled as if they really were deficient. being described as deficient and unable to cope with an academic curriculum legitimated a utilitarian, social and life skills curriculum. the dominant discourse of deficiency of the students was deeply implicated in the instrumental forms of knowledge taught. conclusion the regularities across the different levels of integration indicate a discursive formation that undermines integration. to its credit, the school had opened its doors to all race groups and genders. but the lack of change at management and administrative staff level hindered staffing, curriculum and institutional culture integration. the discursive, social and symbolic boundaries enacted in the school combined to undermine integration. on the one hand, the weaker boundaries between instrumental and non-instrumental forms of knowledge enabled students’ experiences and interests to be legitimised. on the other hand, teachers’ deficit views of learners lowered their expectations and consequently resulted in a watered-down curriculum that did not give students access to non-instrumental and powerful forms of knowledge, or what bernstein calls the elaborated code, thereby reproducing deficit. the regularities across the categories together produce perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201028 a racist ‘discursive formation’ reminiscent of previous race based power relations. it is concluded, on the basis of the levels of integration observed and teacher discourses analysed, that the dominant discursive formation in the school are racist and not in the interest of its majority black learners nor in the interest of the formation of a democratic society. having identified the existence of a discursive formation and a regime of truth that undermine the goal of integration, how could one explain its existence? foster (2009) argues that discourse is a product of social action, and agents utilise frames to produce discourse. frames are defined as “patterns of expectation that are socio-culturally determined” (van den berg, 2003:120). these frames are “so embedded within our minds that agents are often unaware of them as they make decisions in their everyday lives” (van den berg, 2003:689). frames are both social and cognitive structures (ensink, 2003). foster argues that, on the one hand, individuals have their own mental structures or habitus (bourdieu, 1977) that affect the way they interact with others; meanwhile there are also social structures that impose meanings on the actions of individual agents. frames reminiscent of apartheid racial ideology informed the dominant discourses and the resultant discursive formation at the school. the descriptions of students were similar to that used by proponents of bantu education (for this see horrell, 1968). as one of the black teachers said: “a change in mindset is needed” – a change that would arise from a deep understanding of the injustices of apartheid education that would enable racist social and cognitive frames to be interrogated. lederarch’s (2005) concept of “moral imagination” would be informative. it is proposed that some form of intervention is necessary to rupture such discursive formations because it cannot be expected that teachers, after years of living in a racist society and teaching within one’s own raced school, would suddenly think, talk and act as democratic agents. rex (1986) suggests re-educate social gatekeepers through courses in ‘racial awareness’. another intervention would be pre and in-service teacher education for anti-racist education. such education must enlighten teachers of the role of discourse in the perpetuation of racism and propose reverse discourses (foucault, 1981) that would contribute to the subversion of hegemonic discourses. references bernstein b 1971. on the classification and framing of knowledge. in: m young (1981). knowledge and control. london: collier-macmillan. bernstein b 1996. pedagogy, symbolic control and identity: theory, research, critique. london: taylor and francis. carter p, caruthers j & foster j 2009. knowing their lines: how social boundaries undermine equitybased integration. perspectives in education, 27:352-365. bourdieu p 1976. the school as a conservative force: scholastic and cultural inequalities. in: dale r., esland g. & macdonald m. (eds). schooling and capitalism. routledge: london bourdieu p 1977. outline of theory and practice. cambridge. cambridge university press. buttny r 2003. multiple voices in talking race: pakeha reported speech in the discursive construction of the racial other. in: h van den berg, m wetherell & h houtkoop-steenstra (eds). analyzing race talk, multidisciplinary approaches to the interview. cambridge: cambridge university press. ensink t 2003. the frame analysis of research interviews: social categorisation and footing in interview discourse. in: h van den berg, m wetherell & h houtkoop-steenstra (eds). analyzing race talk, multidisciplinary approaches to the interview. cambridge: cambridge university press. foster jd 2009. defending whiteness indirectly: a synthetic approach to race discourse analysis. discourse society, 20(6):685-703. foucault m 1977. discipline and punish. london: penguin books. foucault m 1981. the history of sexuality. harmondsworth: pelican. hall s 1992. the west and the rest: discourse and power. in: s hall & b gieben (eds). formations of modernity. blackwell publishers: oxford, uk horrell m 1968. bantu education to 1968. south african institute of race relations. cape town: cape and transvaal printers ltd. naidoo — a discursive formation that undermined integration at a historically advantaged school 29 hubbard l & spencer j 2009. achieving equity through charter schools: more than tinkering school structure. perspectives in education, 27:395-405. jansen j 2004. race and education after ten years. perspectives in education 22(4):117-128. lederarch jp 2005. the moral imagination: the art and soul of building peace. oxford: oxford university press. naidoo d 2009. case studies of the implementation of ‘progression and integration’ of knowledge in south african schools. education as change, 13(5-25). rex j 1986. race and ethnicity. open university press: milton keynes, england. van den berg h 1996. frame analysis of open interviews on interethnic relations. bulletin de méthodologie sociologique, 53:5-32. weber e, mokubung n & amsterdam c 2009. diversity, unity and national development: findings from desegregated gauteng schools. perspectives in education, 27:341-350. weber m 1968. economy and society. new york: bedminster press. wetherell m 2003. racism and the analysis of cultural resources in interviews. in: h van den berg, m wetherell & h houtkoop-steenstra (eds). analyzing race talk, multidisciplinary approaches to the interview. cambridge: cambridge university press. pie 33(4) book.indb perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 75 community-based participatory video: exploring and advocating for girls’ resilience tamlynn c jefferis linda c theron resilience studies typically privilege the views and assumptions of minority-world research. one way to circumvent this is through methodologies that give voice to the experiences of majority-world youth. our aim in this article is to reflect critically on the use of community-based participatory video (cbpv) to understand and promote resilience processes in 28 black south african adolescent girls. the girls, aged from13 to19 years, were recruited by social workers and teachers collaborating with the south african pathways to resilience project. the findings suggest that cbpv does champion participant-directed understandings of resilience. however, the findings also draw attention to the difficulties of realising the potential of the social change inherent in cbpv, and the complexity of stimulating deep reflection in the girl participants. keywords: black girls, participatory research, positive adjustment, school-going introduction the successful completion of high school by many south african young people is under threat because they are made vulnerable by various adversities including economic disadvantage; underperforming schools; high hiv prevalence; poor service delivery; and lived experiences of trauma and abuse (du preez, 2011; ramphele, 2012). although boys and girls in south africa are both vulnerable, girls in particular are considered to be at risk of negative developmental and educational outcomes (bottrell, 2009) because of sexand gender-based violence; unsafe school environments; higher risks of contracting hiv; and teenage pregnancy (mitchell, 2006; moletsane, 2007; phasha, 2010). but sometimes these girls do better than expected. instead of responding in ways ranging from developing mental illness tamlynn c jefferis northwest university faculty of humanities, vaal triangle campus optentia research focus area. 13153250@nwu.ac.za linda c theron northwest university faculty of humanities, vaal triangle campus optentia research focus area. linda.theron@nwu.ac.za 016 910 3076 perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 76 to failing at school or becoming teenage mothers, these girls cope well with riskfilled lives (jordan, 2013); they are resilient, a measure of which is regular school attendance and making progress at school (phasha, 2010). resilience is the capacity to do well in life, despite significant adversity (masten, 2011). according to ungar’s (2011) social ecology of resilience theory (sert— the theoretical framework of the study informing this article—doing well despite adversity is a process during which individuals steer themselves towards resources that will support their doing well. simultaneously, the individual’s social ecology (se) reciprocates and provides support in culturally and contextually relevant ways. the se consists of social structures that have an impact on human development such as immediate family, school, peers, community organisations, culture, and the broader political and educational systems, among others (bronfenbrenner, 1977). ungar (2013) suggests that ses have greater responsibility than individuals to promote resilience in at-risk youth. unhelpful explanations of resilience have focused on individual capacities (masten, 2014), or generalised western minority-world explanations of resilience about majority-world youth, i.e. those from non-western cultures (ungar, 2013). such studies either blame individuals for not being resilient, while overlooking how ses obstruct resilience, or they constrain majority-world communities’ support of their youth by privileging the explanations of minority-world youth, and allied interventions (ungar, 2013). community facilitation of resilience requires a contextually-sensitive understanding of resilience, and how processes of resilience manifest in specific youth, such as, for example, black girls. the insights of young people into what supports their resilience and what puts them at risk need to be respected. unless their insights are “substantially voiced” (mitchell, milne & de lange, 2012: 1128), advocated for, and respected in subsequent programmes and interventions, youth vulnerability is likely to prevail. black girls in rural areas, particularly, need to be given such substantial voice so that their ses will understand how to support their resilience meaningfully (mitchell, milne & de lange, 2012; moletsane, 2007). one methodological tool that offers to provide girl-centred accounts, by black girls, of their resilience is cbpv, an interactive research process in which participants construct visual narratives, using storyboards and a video documentary, of their insights into a given research phenomenon (de lange, olivier & wood, 2008). the principles of cbpv include respect for participants as expert informants; participant control of filming and editing; and researcher and participant use of the video products to advocate for social change (corneil, 2011). these principles are attractive when we are working with black adolescent girls because they potentiate the respectful foregrounding of black girls’ voices that have often been left out of traditional social research (waite & conn, 2011), and research on resilience in particular (liebenberg & ungar, 2009). community-based participatory video: exploring and advocating for girls’ resilience tamlynn c jefferis & linda c theron 77 to generate more meaningful accounts of resilience, researchers have included participatory visual methods, such as photo elicitation (liebenberg, didkowsky & ungar, 2012), a day-in-the-life video method (cameron, pinto & tapanya, 2014), the mmogo method (a visual projection technique) (roos, 2013), and draw-andtalk as well as draw-and-write (guillemin, 2004). notwithstanding the popularity of participatory visual approaches in research on resilience, there are no published accounts of the usefulness of cbpv to explain and promote resilience, particularly resilience in black adolescent girls. the only cbpv study we could locate was by haw (2010) but this study focused on uk youths’ experiences of risk with little attention paid to their positive adjustment. thus, given the potential of the method, and because, following schratz & walker (1995), we subscribe to research that prompts meaningful social change, we initiated a cbpv-facilitated study of black girls’ resilience. as already noted, the purpose of this article is to reflect critically on the value of using cbpv to explore, and advocate for, processes of resilience in school-going black south african girls faced with significant adversity. methodology critical psychology informed our choice of a visual participatory methodology. critical psychology interrogates stereotypical explanations of human behaviour because, historically, psychological knowledge (including theories of resilience) has been produced in western contexts and generalised universally (hook, 2004; mkhize, 2004). critical psychology challenges such so-called expert theories by questioning who is producing this knowledge and for whom it is being produced (hook, 2004: 16). accordingly, critical psychology interrogates methods of knowledge production and promotes the inclusion of non-western voices in research (mkhize, 2004). this aligns with sert’s critical response to the stereotypical understandings of resilience produced in minority-world contexts. sert questions explanations of majority-world youths’ resilience processes that are not produced by these youths (ungar, 2013), and urges using creative, participatory research methods to do so (liebenberg & ungar, 2009). as white women researchers and outsiders to the community to which we introduced cbpv, we needed to choose a method that would downplay our voices. using cbpv offered us the opportunity to amplify the voices of black south african girls in explanations of their own resilience. perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 78 background to the cbpv-facilitated study of black girls’ resilience our cbpv study forms part of the pathways to resilience project (p2rp). p2rp (see www.resilienceresearch.org) aims to explore formal services and informal pathways that support resilience among at-risk youth. the south african p2rp research site is in the thabo mofutsanyana district, free state province (see theron, liebenberg & malindi, 2014). recruitment of participants for the cbpv-facilitated study social workers and teachers who collaborated with the p2rp team recruited girls with whom they worked closely, and whom they believed were doing well in life, despite adversity. in keeping with dass-brailsford (2005) and phasha (2010), doing well, for us, primarily meant progressing at school and not presenting with symptoms of psychological problems. adversity included lived experiences of emotional, physical, and/or sexual abuse; being hiv positive and/or living in aids-affected communities; being exposed to harmful peers; and having suffered the death of loved ones as well as living with the prevalence of community-based violence and substance abuse. research process and data collection of the cbpv-facilitated study the cbpv method requires a group format as a tool for social change within communities (high, singh, petheram & nemes, 2011). we worked with four groups of girls on separate occasions. group 1 was comprised of six girls living in a children’s home. we met with them there on three occasions on saturdays for six hours at a time. the second group consisted of 18 girls living in an informal settlement. we split them into group 2 and group 3. we met with them twice on saturdays at the local child and family welfare offices for seven hours each time. group 4 was comprised of five girls from a township school. we engaged with them twice for five hours at a time after school hours, at their school. in total, the girls made nine participatory videos (see table 1). community-based participatory video: exploring and advocating for girls’ resilience tamlynn c jefferis & linda c theron 79 table 1: videos created during the cbpv-facilitated study group most threatening risk video title gist of resilience process 1 death/loss video 1: the bright side girls navigate towards supportive co-habiting friends and god. video 2: jesus is my hero girls emphasise god as their most reliable resource. video 3: 5 steps to feeling better girls repeat reference to co-habiting friends and god as resiliencepromoting, and add supportive social workers and music/writing. 2 bullying video 1: a depressed girl female family members (mother, sister) facilitate support from a social worker. video 2: a depressed girl 2 the girls’ application of the social workers advice, amidst supportive friends and family, encourages resilience. 3 peer pressure video 1: the girl next door a supportive friend encourages resistance to peer pressure. video 2: the good advice supportive se (friends, mother, teacher, pastor) promotes resilience. 4 abuse (emotional/ physical/ sexual). video 1: childheaded household girls identify potential resources (supportive sister and social worker). video 2: reality of life prayers for protection against an abusive mother animate improved maternal behaviour. this and supplementary meaning-making (facilitated by sister and social worker) support resilience. in each first session, guillemin’s (2004) draw-and-talk method was used to explore risks experienced by the girls. the girls depicted, in drawings, their lived experiences perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 80 of risk, and then explained their drawings to the group. the girls listed the collectively reported risks and each girl then voted for the risk she perceived to be most threatening. once the girls reached consensus regarding one overarching risk, they were again engaged in guillemin’s (2004) draw-and-talk method; each girl drew a picture showing why she was strong despite this risk. after the girls explained these drawings, they collaboratively drew storyboards to plan a video showing how the strengths and protective processes identified in their pictures supported them and enabled their strength despite adversity. the girls then acted out and filmed their stories of resilience as planned in their storyboards. the videos varied in length from 5 to 10 minutes. one month later, a second cbpv session was held in order to better understand the girls’ resilience. the girls were specifically asked to reflect on their resilience between cbpv sessions to stimulate deeper awareness of their processes of resilience in the hope that such awareness would deepen subsequent explanations of their resilience. during the second cbpv sessions the girls again drew pictures depicting why they were strong in life, explained their drawings, and created a storyboard showing how these strengths and protective processes facilitate their resilience. this was then acted out and video-recorded by the girls. all cbpv sessions included having the girls, and the teachers and/or social workers who recruited them and who were available watch the videos. we screened the videos immediately since we had followed the no-editing-required (ner) approach that results in videos being shot and completed in the same process (mitchell & de lange, 2011). following yang, (2011), reflective discussions about the meaning of the videos from the girls’ perspectives followed each screening. the teachers and social workers, out of respect for the girls’ authorship of the stories, did not contribute to these reflective discussions. the p2rp team later engaged social workers, teachers, and community stakeholders (including the p2rp advisory panel) in awareness-raising dissemination activities during which the girls’ videos were screened and the girls’ explanations of their resilience processes made public. the first dissemination was to social workers and caregivers at the children’s home where the group 1 girls lived. the second was to community stakeholders and teachers at a dinner hosted by the p2rp team. the remaining two disseminations occurred concurrently with the cbpv sessions when teachers and social workers were present. analysis informed by sert, we reflected on how cbpv facilitated the understanding and advocacy of resilience for this specific group of girls in their specific context. these reflections are based on qualitative data generated during the research process of the cbpv and p2rp project, comprised of the first author’s research journal; field notes of cbpv sessions; photographic records of cbpv sessions; telephonic follow-up community-based participatory video: exploring and advocating for girls’ resilience tamlynn c jefferis & linda c theron 81 interviews with recruiting teachers and social workers; interviews with advisory panel members (apms); minutes of p2rp team discussions; and transcribed participants’ reflections. the first author immersed herself in the data by reading and re-reading all journal entries, notes, and transcripts to reflect on clues related to the possible benefits and limitations of using cbpv to understand and advocate for black girls’ resilience. she grouped segments of data that addressed benefits and limitations. following creswell (2009) she then used inductive, thematic content analysis to identify themes explaining the value and limitations of using cbpv to explain and promote resilience in black adolescent girls. in this process, she was mindful of sert and therefore paid attention to how ses enabled or constrained resilience. in this sense, as creswell (2009) observed elsewhere, there were deductive elements in the analysis. both authors had lengthy discussions about the emerging themes, and revised initial themes, as saldana (2009) advises, before reaching consensus. members of the p2rp team scrutinised these tentative conclusions. they mostly concurred, thus substantiating the trustworthiness of the findings. ethical considerations the institution to which the authors are affiliated provided ethical approval. the p2rp advisory panel (see theron, 2013) sanctioned the cbpv method as appropriate for local youth. the girls and their parents/caregivers signed detailed consent letters that included details about risks to confidentiality and anonymity entailed in using cpbv. critical psychology and sert urge the generation of contextually and culturallyrelevant knowledge that foregrounds youth participant insights (ungar, 2013). however, using cbpv to meet this expectation created ethical tensions because dissemination of the videos could expose the girls’ identities and this could possibly prompt their victimisation. this risk was emphasised to the girls prior to the start of the research project, but they were proud to make their knowledge known and gave permission for their videos/video-stills to be made public. findings the findings suggest that cbpv champions participant-directed understandings of resilience, but that the method is not without challenges. the first section reports cbpv’s usefulness in this regard using three themes: cbpv (i) facilitates understandings of resilience as a context-specific, co-constructed process; (ii) it heightens participant awareness of potential resilience-supporting processes; and (iii) it offers a fun-filled way to engage girls in a research process. the second section acknowledges that there are limitations in using cbpv to explain and promote black girls’ resilience, using two themes: (i) the difficulty in realising the social change potential of cbpv; and (ii) the complexity of stimulating deep reflection in the girl participants. perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 82 the value of using cbpv to explain and promote black girls’ resilience cbpv facilitates understandings of resilience as a context-specific, coconstructed process as already discussed, sert calls for resilience research using non-traditional methods to uncover non-western understandings of how the socio-cultural context shapes resilience processes (masten, 2014). along with critical psychologists, leading resilience researchers, therefore, urge theorising that explains resilience as a contextually-specific, collaborative, youth-society process (masten, 2014; panterbrick, 2015; ungar, 2013). this is precisely what the cbpv-facilitated study of resilience foregrounded. the cbpv-facilitated study flagged co-constructed processes of resilience. all nine videos showed how others (e.g. female peers/social workers/teachers, sisters, mothers, male clergy, and god—see table 1) support girls’ resilience. not one video depicted a girl beating the odds by relying predominantly on her own strength, even though there was reference to girls’ personal strengths (e.g. diligence and determination). the girls in every group show that connections to supportive others are what help them to be strong in life. likewise, practitioners who attended the dissemination event commented on how the videos drew attention to the need for adults to collaborate with youth to promote resilience. comments from psychologists who attended a presentation of the cbpvfacilitated study at the 2013 psychological society of south africa conference drew similar conclusions. for example, the second author reported that a uwc-based psychologist commented: “the power lies in how the cbpv method allowed these girls to portray that resilience is in community”. thus, the cbpv method illustrates sert through its provision of visual evidence that positive adjustment is facilitated by partnered processes (i.e. girls are not resilient on their own). drawing attention to the co-constructed nature of resilience potentiates se awareness of the duty of the se to partner in girls’ processes of positive adjustment. dissemination activities revealed that cbpv made the importance of this partnership clear. the teacher who recruited group 4 stated that watching the videos inspired her to begin a girl-child life-skills programme at her school. the teachers at this same school also said that they became more aware of the girls’ struggles, felt more empathy towards the girls, and noted that they needed to support the girls more actively. in addition to cbpv’s usefulness in accentuating the co-constructed nature of resilience and in sensitising ses to their responsibility to facilitate resilience, cbpv provides a medium that illustrates how such co-facilitated processes manifest in specific ways for black girls in a specific socio-cultural context. in their videos, the girls portrayed a relationship with god as helpful to coping well with loss, or with community-based participatory video: exploring and advocating for girls’ resilience tamlynn c jefferis & linda c theron 83 having been removed from their family homes. social workers were portrayed as accessible sources of human comfort when loss overwhelms them. the social workers who watched group 1’s videos said they felt encouraged because the videos show their interactions with the girls as constructive, and demonstrate that the girls had internalised their teachings. the manager of the children’s home remarked: “it is exciting for us to hear their faith is important … it’s actually the bottom line of what we try to teach them”. group 2 participants, who were not in care, did not include spiritual resources in their depictions of resilience. likewise, group 3 included reference to support from only a pastor. however, in the video called “the reality of life”, girls prioritised god as a source of help. the strong christian ethos of the children’s home might explain group 1’s emphasis on faith, but we cannot assume this christian orientation to be true of the homes of the group 4 participants, even though the apms advised us that the local community prioritised faith as an enabling resource. this raises questions about whether resilience processes are simply informed by context-specific resources and/or community norms about which resources are valuable, as previously suggested (ungar, 2013). might the resources that inform resilience processes be animated, rather, by which resources are missing, or by lifeexperience of resources seen to be more reliable? for example, adults were reported to have let group 1 and 4 participants down (i.e., they died or were abusive). this left these girls with limited immediate tangible support and this might then explain their emphasis on faith in a god who could or would not die or abuse them. similarly, groups 2 and 3 experienced negative peer influences, resulting in their turning towards adults and family members who were immediately available and reliable. our use of cbpv facilitated the generation of persuasive visual evidence of how life-experience and/or resource constraints, along with the socio-cultural context, has an impact on supportive others who are available to collaborate in processes of resilience. this raises interesting questions about teachers. teachers were part of the daily context of all four groups. however, only two groups portrayed teachers as supportive, and they did so only briefly. in the video called “the good advice”, group 3 included a single instance of a teacher enquiring about a girl’s wellbeing but taking no action to nurture her. in “a depressed girl” group 2 fleetingly portrayed a teacher suggesting protective resources— a mother, a sister —towards whom the girl might consider navigating. in group 2’s follow-up video “a depressed girl 2”, the same teacher was included once: in the video she briefly encourages the girl’s sense of self-efficacy. despite these passing references to teacher support, the impression given by the collective videos is that teachers do not actively co-facilitate girls’ resilience processes. this is at odds with earlier studies of black south african youth that portray teachers as champions of youth resilience (dass-brailsford, 2005; ebersöhn, 2007; phasha, 2010). using cbpv, therefore, offers sensitive insight into who co-facilitates girls’ resilience in a specific context at a specific point in time. perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 84 girl-generated videos can be used as advocacy tools: screening the videos to teachers in this specific context should raise awareness of their absence in the girls’ accounts of their resilience. likewise, the videos could galvanise teacher and teacher-educator explorations of teacher actions that would facilitate their being key partners in girls’ resilience processes. cbpv heightens participant awareness of potential resilience-supporting resources critical psychology, in interrogating who benefits from knowledge production (hook, 2004), implies that research should hold direct benefits for research participants. one such benefit could be that participants themselves are enabled by the knowledge they produce. producing and watching their videos, and those of others, heightened the girls’ awareness of existing and potential protective resources. for example, after watching group 3’s video “the good advice”, a group 2 participant commented, “i like the church thing … i like when you mentioned that it’s good to involve god in your decisions”. group 2 reflected that, given an opportunity to re-story their video, they would have added faith-based resources, thus indicating their awareness of an additional source of support. similarly, in “the girl next door”, group 3 portrayed how pro-social school friends can support girls to do well in life and at school, whereas group 2’s “a depressed girl” portrayed difficulty with abusive school friends. group 3’s explanation emphasised how pro-social school friends support constructive ways of coping with negative peer influences. in their second video “a depressed girl 2”, group 2 continued their initial story, but progressed to portraying some school friends as being supportive and generously sharing knowledge to overcome emotional abuse. cross-learning also occurred within groups as girls swapped experiences and knowledge about resources while planning their videos. this, and watching and reflecting on their videos, heightened their awareness of potential support. in group 4’s second cbpv session, for example, they could better articulate how resources included in the first session (e.g. sister, counsellor) supported them. cbpv offers a fun-filled way to engage girls in a research process research into resilience must foreground youth experiences, but too often traditional methods fail to do so; these methods bore young people (liebenberg & ungar, 2009). moreover, vulnerable youth have little opportunity for fun because of the multiple demands and responsibilities that challenge them (chuong & operario, 2012). the cbpv process is an enjoyable method; it stimulates reflection on hidden experiences through play (bloustien, 2011; mitchell, milne & de lange, 2012). engaging the girls in cbpv, therefore, offered some respite from their demanding lives. when asked how they experienced the cbpv process, the girls remarked that “it was very fun” (participant 2 from group 1), they felt “excited” (participant 1, group 1), and they community-based participatory video: exploring and advocating for girls’ resilience tamlynn c jefferis & linda c theron 85 “enjoyed it a lot” (participant 1, group 4). the girls’ enjoyment of the cbpv process was also visually evident (see photographs 1 and 2 below, taken by the p2rp team). photograph 1: group 1 laughing while watching their first video photograph 2: group 2 members smiling while preparing for their second video the atmosphere was uncomfortable and tense during the exploration of the risks the girls faced. this was evident in the girls’ serious facial expressions and the sense of a shared sadness as each girl explained her drawing. when the focus shifted to their resilience, their mood lightened. the cbpv process facilitated this shift, particularly because the girls enjoyed creating storyboards and filming their videos. as the girls watched their videos they laughed at themselves and each other, patting one another perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 86 on the shoulders, and expressing pride in their videos. thus, rather than traditional positivist research methods, the cbpv process offered a fun-filled, encouraging way for the girls to discuss the adversities they face and to articulate why they are strong despite them. limitations of using cbpv to explain and promote the processes of black girls’ resilience difficulty in realising the social change potential of cbpv a p2rp team discussion highlighted the difficulty in realising social change that would support resilience processes, despite the potential of the cbpv method to do so. during this discussion, the p2rp team questioned whether there was any actual change in the lives of the girls after cbpv-related dissemination activities. after such activities social workers and teachers were excited about their role in promoting girls’ resilience, but there was limited tangible action in this regard. for example, the teachers who recruited group 4’s girls were excited about starting girl-child life skills programmes at school, but follow-up telephone interviews one year later revealed that no programmes had been instituted. preliminary findings from group 1’s videos were presented to social workers and caregivers working and residing in the children’s home where group 1 lived. although the social workers and caregivers seemed excited and proud of the girls’ videos, there was limited response when they were asked to comment on how they might support the girls. despite repeated attempts to prompt reflection in, and action from them, they offered no concrete ideas to further support the girls’ resilience. one month after the dissemination, the girls in group 1 said many of their caregivers were unsupportive despite having seen the videos. this inactivity suggests that galvanising, realising, and sustaining resiliencesupporting social change probably requires long-term research projects, or purposeful interventions that include assisting communities to facilitate girls’ resilience (high et al., 2011). it requires more than girl-community dialogue, or information-focused disseminations, even though it is important for communities to hear how girls need their support, and to become aware of their responsibility to promote girls’ resilience. once communities are aware, action is essential: the social ecology is expected to support youth (ungar, 2013). however, attention to se capacity to offer meaningful support is neglected. for example, burnout in teachers, social workers, and other helping professionals is a serious problem in south africa (newsome, waldo & gruszka, 2012), and this calls their capacity to actively and consistently support girls’ resilience into question. thus, although the cbpv method sensitises communities to their co-responsibility for girls’ resilience, realising this responsibility is more complicated. for supportive action to follow community awareness of their responsibility to girls’ resilience, communities probably need to be supported to facilitate girls’ resilience processes community-based participatory video: exploring and advocating for girls’ resilience tamlynn c jefferis & linda c theron 87 meaningfully, and to sustain such facilitation. in the context of this cbpv study, this requires that education departments, community members, professionals (social workers, counsellors), and researchers capacitate the se to partner with girls. the complexity of stimulating deep reflection in the girl participants in this study, reflections included girls’ thoughts on the protective processes included in their videos, and how these supported their doing well in life. such reflections are crucial to the dissemination of accurate understandings of these girls’ resilience, which, in turn, is pivotal to trustworthy knowledge production that privileges majority world insights. in our experience, it was challenging for the girls to explain the resilience-supporting mechanisms underpinning the concrete events portrayed in their videos. for example in “the good advice”, group 3 portrayed a priest who, while praying for the girls, violently shakes their heads. after the videos were screened, the girls struggled to explain how the priest supported their resilience. the p2rp team hypothesised that a schooling system that does not encourage critical and independent thinking and/or the developmental stage of the girls may have affected their ability to reflect on and explain their resilience processes. in adolescence, formal operational thinking that, as we know, involves the ability to think and reason abstractly is generally reached between the ages of 12 to 15 years. however, many adolescents are able to reason abstractly only in late adolescence or young adulthood (louw & louw, 2009). this may be the reason why the girls struggled to reflect on and explain abstract phenomena. skilful, patient questioning by the research team assisted the girls to explain the underlying processes of their resilience, but this became tiring for the girls. this protracted process led the p2rp team to wonder if older girls at university level, who are more sophisticated in their cognitive development, might have reflected deeply with more ease. another barrier to reflecting deeply could be the south african schooling system, which does not facilitate critical thinking and active learning sufficiently (adams, 2011). traditional teaching approaches characterise teachers as transmitters of knowledge and learners as passive recipients (botha & du preez, 2014). despite recent implementation of learner-centred curricula in schools, many learners still have difficulty thinking critically (lombard & grosser, 2008). the need to shift from being a passive learner to being creators of knowledge in the cbpv process was probably alien—something not understood and therefore unavailable to the girls. in summary, the potential of cbpv to investigate resilience was challenged by the girls’ difficulty in reflecting deeply, despite researcher support of such reflection. in future cbpv-facilitated explorations of resilience, researchers must consider youths’ developmental stage carefully and recognise how the schooling system to which they are exposed may limit their ability to reflect deeply on abstract phenomena. perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 88 concluding discussion the aim of this article was to consider critically the value of using cbpv to explain and promote resilience in school-going black south african girls’ faced with significant adversity in ways that privilege their insights and life-experiences, rather than hegemonic western theories of resilience (hook, 2004; ungar, 2013). the videos offered robust visual evidence that the resilience processes of these girls were co-constructed by their se in ways that reflect the risks and sociocultural realities of these ses. in doing so, they drew attention to the importance of explaining and promoting resilience in ways that are contextually sensitive rather than eurocentric, and confirmed the importance of what hook (2014) and ungar (2013) see to be a critical approach to knowledge production. however, there were definite challenges to our using cbpv to explore the abstract phenomenon of resilience and to realise resilience-supporting social change. these challenges were addressed partly by conducting follow-up cbpv sessions focused only on processes of resilience. between the two sessions, the girls were asked to reflect in diaries provided by the researchers on their resilience and what they had learnt about this process. in our experience, using cbpv to explore resilience in school-going youth is more useful when it incorporates many cbpv sessions and structured reflection activities between these sessions. the challenge of slow social change necessitates continued research and intervention-oriented dissemination activities. school communities, in particular, need to be engaged in these continued activities. the school environment is a crucial facet of girls’ ses, partly because it forms part of their daily context, and because schools have the potential to facilitate resilience (phasha, 2010). to advocate for the responsibility and potential of schools to facilitate resilience, girl-generated videos could be used in awareness-raising activities with teachers, principals, schoolbased support teams, school governing bodies, and the department of education. sensitising the school ecology to its co-responsibility for facilitating girls’ resilience is not enough in and of itself since this assumes that school ecologies are capable of responding in resilience-supporting ways without assistance. future research and dissemination, therefore, must focus on what teacher-education initiatives are needed for school ecologies, along with the necessary support, to better support girls in adjusting well to hardship. acknowledgements we thank all the girls who participated in the cbpv-facilitated study. the south african p2rp team is also acknowledged for their 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instructional alignment; datadriven decision making; qualitative methods 1. introduction and background alignment of instruction and assessment is fundamental for the accurate measurement of student learning. as such, the alignment or coherence among curriculum standards, instruction, and assessment is essential for standardsbased assessment and evidenced-based instructional programmes. assessment data are intended to inform instruction and broader school improvement efforts and guide administrative and instructional decisions in an effort to raise student achievement. according to turner and coburn (2012: 3), the use of data is “one of the most central reform ideas in contemporary school policy and practice”. in the united states, aligning content standards and assessments became federally required during the 1994 reauthorisation of the elementary and secondary education act, specifically within the improving america’s schools act (rabinowitz et al., 2006). in the us, alignment has been a core issue in test-based accountability programmes and is lisa abrams email: lmabrams@vcu.edu school of education, virginia commonwealth university, 1015 west main street, p.o. box 842020, richmond, virginia 23284, usa divya varier school of education, virginia commonwealth university, 1015 west main street, p.o. box 842020, richmond, virginia 23284, usa lisa jackson school of education, virginia commonwealth university, 1015 west main street, p.o. box 842020, richmond, virginia 23284, usa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i4.2 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(4): 15-28 © uv/ufs 16 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) considered an important source of validity evidence to warrant how test scores are used to make decisions about schools and students. the emphasis on accountability for improved test scores has contributed to the expansion of assessment programmes at the local levels. for example, school districts began to implement interim testing programmes in order to monitor student progress toward meeting the achievement goals associated with the annual state exam with the purpose of using test scores to identify student misunderstandings with sufficient time to make instructional adjustments. these tests are administered several times throughout the school year, typically every nine weeks, are aligned to state tests and are used widely across the us (burch, 2010; perie et al., 2007). the current emphasis in the us and internationally on evidenced-based instruction and reform strategies assumes strong alignment among content standards, instruction, school district and state assessment programmes. the implementation of interim assessments, coupled with classroom assessments, has created a “data use” mechanism that can facilitate stronger alignment between content standards, daily instruction and year-end assessments. empirical literature on teachers’ assessment data use is dominated by teachers’ use of interim assessment results (datnow & hubbard, 2015). these assessments evaluate students’ learning on a set of content standards. studies of teachers’ use of interim assessments to guide instruction have found that use of these assessment data was limited due to reported time constraints caused by tensions to remediate as well as pressure to keep pace with specified instructional content coverage (abrams, varier & mcmillan, 2013). other studies noted the influence of favourable data use cultures in the school and the district, viz., policies, resources, and collaboration with other teachers to foster data use (goertz, oláh & riggan, 2009). without extensive support, teachers’ use was characterised by perfunctory examination of trends, averages and class level analysis as opposed to in-depth discussions about individual results or actions based on data (abrams et al., 2013; hoover & abrams, 2013). many studies have also framed data use practice in terms of formative assessment (e.g., goertz et al., 2009) which emphasises instructional uses of assessment results. however, recent conceptualisations of data use are focused on a cyclical process of improvement situated within a larger context driven by federal and state accountability policies, district and school policies and resources. jennings (2012) has urged researchers to orient empirical research to examine interactional elements between the contexts of accountability systems and teacher characteristics that affect data use. while studies have shown that using data can help teachers, students and schools, an overly narrow use of data to improve test scores can undermine teaching and learning. in jennings’ 2012 review, she described that the features of accountability systems affect data use. for example, if teachers are urged to use data to improve the percentage of students who pass a test, teachers might use data narrowly to identify those children who are at the cusp of passing and direct remediation efforts toward them. on the contrary, if teachers are provided with time and resources to identify learning gaps and provide the appropriate remediation to help all students to master the necessary content and skills, they might use data to group students who have mastered content with those who are still learning the content. alternatively, they might reteach a lesson to the whole class if the majority of students performed poorly on a test. 17 abrams, varier & jackson unpacking instructional alignment 2. theoretical framework the current investigation is based on two theoretical frameworks established in the literature (christman et al., 2009; marsh, 2012) – a process and a structural framework. the theories informed the study design, instrument development and data analyses of the focus group transcripts. christman et al. (2009) provided a conceptual structural framework within the context of organisational learning where relational cultures and an organisation’s capacity to shape learning and action. with regard to data use, state and federal accountability policies and a school district’s management system created the context within which teachers engaged in the data use process in an effort to improve learning. a school’s human resources, material resources, social culture and policies influence the use of data. marsh (2012) provided a theory of action on the data use process where raw data are organised and filtered to become information; information is combined with teacher expertise to become actionable knowledge about students and this knowledge is applied in the form of instructional actions to achieve desired outcomes. finally, these outcomes are evaluated in relation to the effectiveness of the instructional actions that resulted from data use. related to the process and structure frameworks, is the theory of integrated assessment systems, intended to account for the multiple purposes assessments served in test-based accountability models. bennett (2015) describes a third generation of assessments that are designed for institutional and individual-learning purposes. the current emphasis on using assessment data to inform evidence-based instructional decisions in an effort to improve learning requires an “integrated system of assessment” (bennett & gitomer, 2009), one that includes formative and summative assessments and provides results on which to base instructional responses and student actions. the current us model of state-level assessments and aligned local interim assessments mixes summative and formative uses of assessment results and is similar in theory to the tightly integrated assessment system described by bennett (2015). in the cases of formative and summative assessment, how teachers use data to guide instruction is an essential component with the potential to bring greater coherence to the broader assessment system. researchers have examined teachers’ use of interim assessment data in order to inform teaching and learning. such studies focused on how teachers engaged with data, their assessment or data literacy, skills in analysing and interpreting data to draw conclusions about student learning and identifying the next steps for instruction (e.g., oláh, lawrence & riggan, 2010; hoover & abrams, 2013; blanc et al., 2010; shepard, davidson & bowman, 2011; abrams, mcmillan & wetzel, 2015; wohlstetter, datnow & park, 2008). collectively, these studies found that teachers interpret assessment data from a macro-classroom level rather than a micro-level focused on individual student learning and misconceptions. for example, teachers use data to identify student weaknesses and misconceptions as indicated by wrong test answers and the content of their instruction but were less likely to make connections between student misconceptions and the instructional method used for delivery. teachers used interim assessment data to identify and address areas of student weakness, inform remediation plans, re-teaching at the class level or modify the grouping of students in their classes – all broad-brush instructional decisions as opposed to deep and specific pedagogical connections between re-teaching and student misconceptions (oláh et al., 2010, shepard et al., 2011). these studies also indicated that having timely access to data, the format of the data reports, in addition to organisational factors such as leadership and policy support influenced teachers’ data use. 18 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) based on studies that have examined teachers’ skills to use data, other empirical investigations have focused (as a natural consequence) on developing professional development targeting data use capacity and skills. further, researchers called for examining the impact of teachers’ data use practice or related professional development on student achievement. this work has increasingly been the focus of recent studies of data use (mandinach & gummer, 2015; marsh & farrell, 2014). in these studies, data use was conceptualised as a practice based on formative assessment, the efficacy of which to improve student learning has been well-established (black & wiliam, 1998; kingston & nash, 2011). a third focus in this cluster of studies was to examine the organisational conditions that influenced teachers’ data use in an attempt to account for the collaborative and contextual factors that seemed to affect teachers’ data use (christman et al., 2009; copland, 2002; goertz et al., 2009; supovitz & klein, 2003). teachers’ data use practice poses an interesting challenge to the concept of the validity of inferences made from assessments. in essence, data use involves the use of assessments for making a variety of instructional decisions. the ways in which and the extent to which these decisions lead to effective learning is important but challenging for many teachers. however, research on the process of assessing the validity of instructional inferences is lacking. moss (2013) advocated for a better understanding of teachers’ data use and the conditions surrounding the use of assessments to inform the process of gathering validity evidence for assessments. although interim assessments were, in theory, designed specifically to monitor learning in relation to the annual state assessments, studies on the development or quality of the assessments that make them suitable for that intended purpose are limited (e.g., chen, 2014; martin, 2012). typically, interim assessments are locally developed for the instructional pacing guides, curriculum standards and the (time, technology, policy) constraints of the school district. several studies found that the information provided by early interim assessment programmes was often too global to provide teachers with sufficient information to make inferences about subsequent instructional steps aligned to misconceptions (oláh et al., 2010; shepard et al., 2011). as such, the literature on teachers’ data use was extended to include the use of informal and classroom assessments. according to christman et al. (2009), it is posited that the institutional expectations and available resources influence teachers’ data use. these factors are largely determined by accountability systems. examining teachers’ use of assessment data can provide insight into alignment issues that support or hinder data use for teaching and learning. understanding these alignment issues can encourage greater coherence among curriculum standards, instruction and assessment through the development of a framework for a programme of assessments that meet instructional needs and support achievement of learning standards. 3. methods study design the study reported in this paper is part of a larger mixed-methods research project aimed at examining teachers’ data use practice. it is intended that the results of the study will be used to inform the development and implementation of professional development programmes to enhance teachers’ assessment literacy and capacity for data use. the literature on teachers’ data use has primarily focused on issues of access to data, how teachers use data and different strategies to guide these practices. further exploration is needed to understand the links between data use, teachers’ instructional responses and the impact of these responses 19 abrams, varier & jackson unpacking instructional alignment on student outcomes (roderick, 2012). little (2012: 143) contends, “micro-process studies – investigations of what teachers and other[s] actually do under the broad banner of ‘data use’ … remain substantially underdeveloped” and argues that micro-process research is greatly needed if the field is going to develop more conceptually rigorous research on data use. as such, the present study was implemented to provide for an in-depth micro-process investigation of the connections between data use practice, instruction and student learning with the broader test-based accountability context. a qualitative design was implemented, as in-depth understanding of teachers’ uses of data was sought. the study was based on 14 focus group interviews. the aim of the focus group sessions was to gather information from teachers about how they used assessment data to inform their instruction, the types of support and barriers to data use they experience and the data elements and assessments most useful for guiding instruction. it also aimed to investigate how they collaborated or interacted to examine and interpret data in ways that shaped instructional decisions. participants the sample for the current study included 60 teacher participants from elementary and middle school levels. there were 14 focus groups conducted, eight sessions with elementary (grades 4 and 5) and six sessions with middle school (grades 6-8) teachers. in all, participants represented 28 elementary schools and 17 middle schools from four large school districts in the mid-atlantic united states. each session averaged between 4-6 participants, with the exception of one session, which was conducted as a structured one-on-one interview. of the 60 participants, approximately 82% were white, 13% were black while the remaining population was spread evenly amongst those who identified as asian, hispanic and native american. an overwhelming majority of the participants were female (93%). participants’ teaching experience ranged from 1-35 years, with an average of 11.7 years and a median of 10.5 years. instruments the theoretical frameworks were used to guide the development of a semi-structured focus group protocol and identify specific lines of questioning related to the process of data use and the structural context in which data use practice occurred. the protocol included 20 questions and several probes and prompts were used to gather teachers’ perspectives regarding the data use culture, use of data to support instruction and professional development needs for using assessment data. in addition to the protocol, we administered a short demographic form to collect data on years of teaching experience, race/ethnicity and the different types of data they used. the purpose of this last question was to orient teachers to a common definition of assessment data as well as to the key topics in the protocol. the main purpose of the form was to enable researchers to provide a description of the study sample and the variety of assessment data available. data analysis the focus group sessions were audio recorded and professionally transcribed. three members of the research team analysed the transcripts using atlas.ti version 7, a widely used qualitative data analysis software program. the approach to data analysis involved regular discussions among research team members regarding emergent themes and clarification 20 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) of codes, alternating with periods of individual analysis. prior to analysis, the researchers developed a codebook using the guidelines established by macqueen et al. (1998) for teambased coding and analysis. the codes were organised according to the structure and process theoretical frameworks to capture structural and process elements of data use (christman et al., 2009; marsh, 2012). the research team coded excerpts of randomly selected transcripts until researchers arrived at a shared understanding of all the codes. trustworthiness the study design, implementation, data analysis and interpretation were informed by widely accepted qualitative and mixed-methods research literature (creswell & plano clark, 2011; hsieh & shannon, 2005; macqueen et al., 1998; saldaña, 2016; shenton, 2004; yin, 2013). efforts to ensure trustworthiness were articulated prior to the implementation of the study and reviewed periodically during implementation using tools based on shenton’s (2004) strategies in an attempt to meet the four elements of trustworthiness (credibility, confirmability, dependability and transferability) recommended by guba (1981). these strategies included documentation of plans and procedures, writing reflective commentaries and memos during data analysis as well as making connections to the theoretical and empirical literature to inform the analysis. 4. findings this paper reports on two main themes that emerged from the coding and analysis. the first of these themes was that teachers’ data use practice was situated within their school’s data use culture. data use culture is defined for the purposes of this study as the structural policies and expectations about data use, leadership, language and collegial interactions surrounding data. the second emerging theme was that the nature or type of assessment data influenced teachers’ data use in a way that reflected a complex negotiation between expectations for using each source of data, the quality of evidence presented in each source and the time constraints for making instructional adjustments. there were four “strands” or “sub-themes” to this second theme. the different themes corresponded to teacher responses to questions in the protocol that addressed the school and school district cultures, sources of data and related instructional changes, as follows. theme 1: the influence of data use culture in the school on teachers’ data use the nature and extent of teachers’ data use varied according to several factors including school level (elementary, middle), subject area and to a smaller extent, their personal beliefs about data use. however, a school’s data use culture emerged as a primary factor in teachers’ data use and accounted for differences across subject areas and school level data use practices. in other words, while teachers who taught the same or similar subjects may have shown common data use practices, the same teachers were likely to describe data use differently if their school culture toward data use differed considerably. it was found that schools that performed poorly on the annual assessments typically responded by establishing a data-driven approach toward school improvement. this approach manifested in the schools and procedures, resource allocation and an overall data driven language embedded in the social fabric of the school. two variations were observed regarding how schools implemented this approach. for example, some teachers described policies that required grade level meetings about data among teachers, established data charts or 21 abrams, varier & jackson unpacking instructional alignment boards to display and track progress or defined specific remediation plans based on regular summative assessment data to improve the school’s results on annual assessments. these teachers were often systematic in their data use practice. an elementary school teacher from a low-performing school said, we have a data wall and the data is out there for everybody to see, the kids, parents, anyone…so [as a classroom teacher], if you want your data to look acceptable then you’ve got to do some things in your classroom…we also, every teacher has a data board and on that… it has students’ names and where they are in their tier group. alternatively, some teachers described their school’s data culture as being less directly tied to performance on annual assessments. in these cases, teachers described policies and procedures that were similar to those in other schools; however, they also described a high level of social support from the school principal and colleagues to use data. teachers were still focused on meeting the federal accountability requirements but they described data use as being more closely aligned with curriculum standards than with performance on the annual assessments. an instructional specialist described her experience of a school principal as follows: [the principal] has the teachers look at the data, find the strengths, find the weaknesses and lets them come up with the solution. – ‘what can we do to bring these children to the level they need to be?’ in schools that performed well on the state assessment and typically met accountability requirements, teachers’ recounted data use practices that were not as systematic as those practices seen in schools that performed less well. for example, a middle school teacher’s whole school did not have accountability related pressures and described her approach to data use this way: i don’t know how my school uses [data], but it doesn’t seem to be very stringent. at meetings we mostly talk more about lesson planning than looking at tests as a whole team… the process/cycle and structural components of data use were not explicit and well defined. rather, these teachers took on data use as an approach to track progress and implement evidence-based instruction without the obligation to comply with expectations from the leadership. in schools that were at the cusp of failing to meet federal requirements or had only recently met accountability requirements, teachers described increased or decreased expectations of using data respectively. theme 2: teachers relied on a variety of assessments, informal and formal data sources teacher responses were classified into four sub themes related to data sources and the value of these sources for making instructional adjustments. teachers’ descriptions of the use of specific sources indicated that they balanced expectations regarding their use with what inferences they are able to make from the sources. sub theme 1 teachers relied on informal, day-to-day activities to gather evidence of student understanding. most teachers used short cycle assessments embedded within instruction to inform subsequent teaching steps. popular strategies included the use of exit tickets, quick computer 22 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) based interactive quizzes and questioning during instruction. teachers described these as being the most useful in terms of their formative use. some teachers also described these tools as self-assessment activities that involved students in gaining an understanding of their own learning. the benefits were characterised by an ease of development and administration, time efficiency and close alignment to instruction and standards. these types of assessments provided the granular information needed to guide instruction. one teacher described what she sees her students doing. on a daily basis is more meaningful in terms of helping me with instruction than the information that i get from the benchmarks because it is not fair to assess a fish on whether it can climb a tree. sub-theme 2. in a second sub-theme identified, teachers described periodic summative assessments as being useful for making more collective instructional decisions at grade level meetings. for example, remediation decisions were made based on students’ performance on the interim or benchmark assessments. all participating school districts administered summative assessments every nine weeks called benchmark assessments. these assessments mimicked the annual state assessment and were designed to provide a progress report of students’ mastery of content and skills that would be measured on the state assessment. the usefulness of the results, however, depended on teachers completing the content of the benchmark assessments within the nine-week period, the extent to which tests were aligned to the state assessment and the technical quality of the test items. the test forms were prepared by the school division and were based on instructional pacing guides. these pacing guides were often incongruent with the actual instructional pace. as one teacher noted, “…the reason we would score poorly on the benchmarks is because we just didn’t get to that part before the benchmark test at the time [the school district] was asking us to take it”. the expectation to administer benchmark assessments every nine weeks was often incongruent with the actual pace of instruction. almost all teachers used a web based assessment system to administer benchmark assessments. although beneficial in terms of timeliness of receiving data reports, alignment with the state assessment and the considerable depth of analysis possible on this account, the use of data to inform instructional adjustments was diminished. some teachers also described how benchmark assessment results underestimated their students’ understanding of content in comparison with what emerged in their daily interactions with students and classroom assessment results. teachers attributed these discrepancies to the relative difficulty and complex test vocabulary of benchmark assessments that were aligned with the state curriculum standards and assessment. the following short excerpt below from a focus group discussion illustrates three teachers’ views of the complex disconnect between learning standards, benchmark assessments and classroom assessments. teacher a: the [learning] standards are very broad and not very deep teacher b: yet, the [benchmark assessment] questions are very deep teacher c: i find some of [my students] do pretty well on the end of unit assessments… but when you put all the skills together… [as in a benchmark assessment]…they get a 45 (indicative of a low score) … they have to able to do that (putting all skills together) for the [state assessment]. 23 abrams, varier & jackson unpacking instructional alignment in a related comment, an elementary school teacher described the need for assessments that cover more than one skill so that “our kids can discriminate what skill to use … so they are prepared for the [state assessment]”. sub-theme 3 in a third sub-theme, previous performance on the state assessments and longitudinal data were important sources that were useful to guide instruction early in the academic year. almost all teachers looked at the previous year’s state assessment performance, at the individual student level as well as at school level to identify strengths. the teachers were expected to use state test data, were provided with data reports and dedicated meeting times for this purpose. teachers discussed the data at formal grade level meetings to inform the grouping of students and to discuss the planning and pacing of instruction. previous performance on the state assessment was a major source of data at the school level and teachers described breaking down data based on the state curriculum standards and sub-group student populations to inform placing emphasis on certain areas where students showed weaknesses in the previous year. as one teacher noted, we are expected to use [state assessment or another standardised assessment] data from the previous year. once we receive our roster of students, we are expected to look at the data from the previous year. many teachers expressed the usefulness of having a longitudinal data system with information on previous test performance, portfolio grades, teacher comments on progress reports and demographic data as being potentially powerful tools to tailor instruction to meet the needs of individual students. some teachers mentioned that such data helped to fill in the blanks regarding a student’s learning. teachers had an intimate knowledge of how social factors influenced student performance, as one teacher noted: i think [a child’s cumulative file] explains a lot… there are a lot of things in a social history that don’t come out on the surface. all school districts subscribed to a web based data system that recorded student data cumulatively but only one school district used the feature and another was in the process of making longitudinal data accessible to teachers. sub-theme 4 in a fourth sub-theme, teachers described that test vocabulary in the state assessments was more complex than that used in schools. reasons given for this complexity included the recent modifications made to traditional multiple choice test items in order to incorporate technology enhancements and the inclusion of language relating to the application of knowledge and critical thinking skills. mathematics teachers reflected on how students could not decipher the language of the test items and as a result may have missed questions related to mathematics concepts that they knew. for example, teachers discussed the issue of including vocabulary terms while teaching a concept to ensure students became familiar with words that are likely to be used in the state assessment. one middle school math teacher commented, …one of the things the students have to do is order integers from least to greatest and greatest to least. so we get back data after two or three months after the [state assessment] our kids did so badly and this is so easy. so then we saw a question of a released [state assessment], and it said the words: ascending or descending. 24 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) she further noted the effect of these changes on their analyses of assessment results to include discussing test vocabulary. some teachers also felt compelled to set aside time to teach test-taking strategies in this regard. interestingly, teachers’ knowledge of students’ weaknesses in test vocabulary was an inference made from multiple data sources. while classroom and interim assessments showed that students had learned concepts, underperformance in sections of the annual tests led teachers to make connections between the differences in content related language used in the classroom versus that used in the state assessments as an explanation of students’ performance. 5. discussion the study findings indicate that teachers rely on a variety of data sources and types of assessments to guide instruction and support student learning. teachers described using a mixture of informal, formative and summative assessment data to answer different types of questions about student learning and reflected varying proximity of data analysis to instruction. in this regard, teachers described a comprehensive approach to the role of assessment data for teaching, similar in theory to the formalised and structured integrated assessment system described by bennett (2015). this finding suggests that further examination of instructional responses to formative and summative assessments may illuminate the ways in which instruction is most closely aligned with state content standards and assessments. consistent with literature on data use, teachers in this study relied on informal assessments to modify instruction during delivery and on benchmark assessments to monitor student progress and make decisions about remediation, re-teaching and future instruction of new content (goertz et al., 2009). the assessment literature references the formative and summative uses of classroom assessments and the multiple purposes that single classroom assessment can serve (bennett, 2011; brookhart, 2003; 2010; hoover & abrams, 2013). the study findings extend this idea to suggest that the different types of assessments are used in combination to meet teachers’ varied information needs as they prepare students for annual state assessments. the state assessment and curriculum standards were powerful levers on how teachers approached data use and on the emphasis placed by teachers on different sources of information. yet, there seems to be key differences in the characteristics of data use cultures and the manner in which social support, resources and infrastructure influence how teachers engage with assessment data. knowledge of these variations and how they can foster or hinder effective use of assessment data is critical for our understanding of the role of the culture established by school leadership (jennings, 2012) and how school leaders respond to accountability pressures (cho, jimerson & wayman, 2015). furthermore, such knowledge can help school districts and teachers develop clear and consistent expectations for using assessment data effectively. the findings have two main implications for the issues regarding the alignment between instruction, assessment and curriculum standards. firstly, assessments aligned with curriculum standards do not automatically render themselves suitable for instructional use. secondly, the realities of classroom instruction require that teachers navigate several intended uses of assessments that can impose barriers to using data effectively for instruction. for example, in the context of the study reported in this paper, benchmark assessments were aligned with the state’s curriculum standards and assessment but also with predetermined instructional 25 abrams, varier & jackson unpacking instructional alignment pacing guides. from the perspective of the school district, the main objective of benchmark assessments was to track progress toward meeting the associated curriculum standards every nine weeks of instruction. if the actual pace of instruction was slower than the expected pace, teachers had to choose between meeting the district’s expectation for administering the test at the end of nine weeks (which compromised the quality of the resulting data) versus waiting to administer the test until all of the prescribed content was adequately covered (at the risk of failing to meet administrative regulations). therefore, meaningful alignment may involve putting the instructional use of data at the centre of gathering validity evidence for assessments. at the very least, instructional use of data needs to be explicitly considered in gathering alignment and validity evidence for assessments (moss, 2013). 6. conclusion the study reported in this paper set out to examine how teachers were using data, under what conditions and the extent to which assessment data use informed instruction strengthened the coherence between their practice on one hand and the state curriculum standards and assessment on the other. the findings indicate that the accountability associated with the assessment system was a defining feature of many school cultures and shaped the environment in which data use practices were implemented. future student performance on the state assessments was a strong motivating influence on teachers’ long-term instructional goals. the use of informal, formative, classroom and benchmark assessments served as incremental indicators of performance toward successful performance on the state assessment. as such, teachers’ described use of multiple and varied types of assessments suggest the potential for a comprehensive and linear alignment among instruction, content standards and assessment that emphasises enabling teachers’ data use to improve student learning. 7. acknowledgments this research study is supported by a researcher-practitioner partnership grant from the institute of education sciences (ies), united states department of education award # r305h15008. the views and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not represent those of the funding agency. references abrams, l.m., mcmillan, j.h. & wetzel, a.p. 2015. 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krish govender grove end secondary school rubby dhunpath university of kwazulu-natal the collaborative cohort model (ccm) of higher degrees supervision is gaining increasing popularity internationally and, in some contexts, replacing the conventional apprentice master model (amm). among the motivations advanced for this shift is that the ccm improves completion rates and enhances the quality of research supervision. this exploratory paper interrogates these claims through the eyes of students, by documenting and analysing their experiences of the ccm currently used by the faculty of education, at the university of kwazulu-natal (ukzn), south africa. this form of supervision integrates the traditional master-apprentice supervision with cohort seminar sessions. the traditional supervision involves students working one-to-one with what is referred to, in this instance, as the appointed supervisor/s while the cohort seminars draw on the expertise of a team of experienced and novice supervisors referred to, in this instance, as the cohort supervisors. in addition, students benefit from contributions offered by peers within the cohort as they are guided through the various phases in the research process. this paper engages with the experiences of a small sample of students, appraising the key principles of collaboration and collegiality which are integral to the success of the cohort model. the study reveals abundant evidence of successful collaboration and collegiality among students and between the cohort and appointed supervisors. however, there are also instances of students in the cohort working in isolation and supervisors working counter to each other. through engaging with student experiences of the cohort model, this study offers critical new insights into the strengths, limitations and challenges of using the model to address the unsatisfactory phd productivity rate in south africa. keywords: master-apprentice supervision, cohort supervision model, collaboration, collegiality, doctoral cohort seminars . introduction completing a doctoral degree successfully is perhaps the most daunting of all endeavours undertaken by students pursuing higher education. the road to successful completion of the degree is often strewn with apparently insurmountable obstacles and can be circuitous. many who have travelled this road have not reached their destination and have given up the journey in anguish as the current literature reveals.1 given supervisor support (sometimes by more than one supervisor), why is it that doctoral students still find it difficult to complete their degrees in reasonable time or, in several instances, not at all? why is the abt (all but the thesis) phenomenon a perennial problem in doctoral studies internationally? the answers to these questions are elusive, but a common explanation is that it is the nature of support rendered by the supervisor/s working within the traditional apprentice master model. this is typically a closed, cloistered environment where students enjoy little engagement with student peers and other faculty members which act as disincentives to completion. concerns about unsatisfactory completion rates and quality of research supervision (burnett, 1999) have consequently motivated the move internationally from the traditional model of doctoral supervision to the cohort model, which promotes collaborative and interactive learning utilising a structured programme (tareilo, 2007). in addition, findings indicate that the cohort provides social and emotional support, interdependence and shared ideology (mandzuk, hasinoff & seifert, 2003). 89govender & dhunpath — student experiences of the phd cohort model in an attempt to maximise support for its doctoral students, the education faculty of ukzn has adopted both traditional one-to-one master-apprentice supervision with cohort seminar sessions, running concurrently. the cohort sessions, which supplement the support offered to students by one-to-one supervision, draw on the expertise of experienced and novice supervisors from within the faculty who also act as cohort supervisors. in addition, students within the cohort benefit from the guidance offered by cohort peers as they navigate the various phases in the research process. the seminar sessions also allow for “real-time” appraisal of students’ work in progress by both peers and cohort supervisors. bringing students within a particular cohort together six weekends a year (friday afternoon to sunday afternoon) over three years, the seminars augment the one-on-one supervision that continues alongside the seminars (vithal, 2009; samuel & vithal, 2011). the seminar sessions focus on proposal development in the first year, fieldwork and data production in the second year, and data analysis and thesis writing in the third year. the seminars are designed to give students opportunities to chair sessions, advance their ideas for debate and discussion and both give and receive criticism in a robust and critical but caring environment (vithal, 2009). according to vithal (2009), the cohort programme, in addition to supporting the doctoral students, also provides opportunities for novice supervisors to be mentored and inducted into supervision by working alongside their more experienced colleagues.2 critical to the support provided in the seminar sessions is the creation of communities of practice (lave & wenger, 1991; wenger, 1998; samuel, 2008). thus, it is not only collaboration between cohort supervisors and students and among students within a particular cohort but also collaboration and collegiality among cohort supervisors and between cohort supervisors and appointed supervisors that would unleash the potential that the cohort model of doctoral supervision holds for both students and academic staff. the success of the cohort model of doctoral supervision over the apprentice-master model, particularly as it addresses the problem of throughput at ukzn, is well documented (samuel, 2008; vithal, 2009), and will be borne out by relevant statistical data presented in this special issue of the journal. therefore, this paper will not explore the merits of the model in any significant depth. instead, the paper addresses the question of collaboration and the development of communities of practice as experienced by past and current students in the phd cohort programme run by the faculty of education at ukzn with a view to establishing potential blind spots in the model that undermine its value as a complementary approach. literature on the cohort model the cohort model, existing in various guises within higher education for the last fifty years, is being increasingly used in university faculties internationally to enhance teaching and learning in undergraduate coursework (young, bruce & stellern, 2002; mandzuk et al., 2003) as well as for supervision of doctoral degrees (norris & barnett, 1994; burnett, 1999; ali & kohun, 2006; the graduate institute, 2006). a comprehensive review of the literature relating to the cohort model (lewis, ascher, hayes & ieva, 2010) provides a lucid illustration of factors motivating the use of the model for doctoral programmes and discusses the strengths associated with the use of the cohort model as well as its limitations and challenges. among the motivations for appropriating the cohort model for doctoral programmes, lewis et al. (2010) identify poor completion rates of doctoral studies, lack of support for and feelings of isolation of doctoral students, and the pressure on students, faculty and administrators to meet academic expectations timeously. the strengths of the cohort model include academic, affective and interpersonal benefits (young et al., 2002). in the review by lewis et al. (2010), the benefits of the cohort model are identified as promoting greater solidarity within cohorts by generating mutual support and protection, improved graduation rates, reduced attrition and the creation of intellectually stimulating environments within which research learning is facilitated. in addition, unzuetta (2008) discovered that cohort members, as opposed to non-cohort students, enjoy opportunities to develop conference papers, co-author manuscripts for publication, serve as guest lecturers for university courses, and co-teach with professors. 90 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 among the challenges and limitations of the cohort model are the potential for discord among students and the pressures on instructors (mather & hanley, 1999). in addition, lewis et al. (2010) observe that without purposeful faculty nurturance, departmental collaboration and administrative guidance, the cohort model simply becomes a convenience tool. mandzuk et al. (2003) noted that the literature on the cohort model lacks the conceptual grounding that is essential for understanding how the use of the cohort model in teacher education affects the process of becoming a teacher. to fill this gap these authors explore the social capital of the cohort model used in teacher education which includes the fostering of independent thinking, collegiality and collaboration. collaboration and collegiality, the key features of communities of practice and professional learning communities (lave & wenger, 1991; wenger, 1998; mclaughlin & talbert, 2001), also underpin the cohort model of doctoral supervision in the education faculty (ukzn). this paper thus uses this as a point of departure to interrogate student experiences of this model of supervision. methodology conceived as an exploratory study of student experiences of the phd cohort model, a small group of students was selected to appraise student engagement and experiences with the model. eight doctoral students belonging to two phase cohorts (2nd and 3rd) but at varying stages of their research were selected for this study. an additional four respondents who had already completed their doctoral degrees through the cohort model and who are current members of staff at ukzn were also selected. written consent for participation in the study was obtained. the experiences of the twelve respondents were interrogated during the seminar sessions, and between seminar sessions when in contact with their cohort peers and with their appointed supervisors to ascertain the nature and degree of support extended to students and whether this support is undergirded by collaboration and collegiality. questionnaire responses to largely open-ended questions followed by interviews (telephonically or face-to-face) for clarity and elaboration provided the data from the eight current doctoral students. additional data was gathered from a focus group discussion involving the remaining four respondents. clarity and comment on certain issues raised in the student responses were sought from the 2010 overall co-ordinator of the cohort seminar sessions by means of telephonic interviews and e-mail correspondence. responses of research participants were coded and used to generate themes. seven enduring themes were identified and these were then compared with extant literature with a particular but not sole focus on collaborative work during and between cohort sessions. in addition, for purposes of authenticity (guba & lincoln, 1989; denzin & lincoln, 1998) and to capture the richness of student experiences (geertz, 1973); detailed descriptions from the data are documented in this paper. analysis developing research knowledge and regulating the pace of research the literature on the use of the cohort model for doctoral programmes cites academic success as a significant benefit of the model enabled by, among others, the creation of intellectually stimulating discussions and interaction with professors (potthoff, dinsmore & moore, 2001). in addition, tareilo (2007) speaks of doctoral cohorts gaining access to exemplary programmes and highly qualified instructors that expand and enrich the learning experiences of each member in the cohort. the high throughput and timeous completion of doctoral degrees within a cohort programme (burnett, 1999; potthoff et al., 2008) are also cited, together with reduced attrition as further benefits of the cohort model. the research participants also revealed that the high quality input on various aspects relating to research learning, from the cohort supervisors and invited speakers (during the friday night plenary sessions) are productive and stimulating. in particular, they spoke of the insightful discussions on locating research within particular paradigms and matching this with the appropriate research approach and 91govender & dhunpath — student experiences of the phd cohort model methodology. they also emphasised the benefits derived from listening to new graduates reflect on the challenges they had faced and how they had to overcome these. some students referred to how the cohort system forced them to pace themselves effectively by setting time frames for completion of tasks and ensuring that they adhered to the time frames. in addition, participants in the focus group discussion reflected on their access to current research knowledge focusing on new paradigms that the cohort sessions afforded to mature students who had completed their masters degree more than two decades before embarking on their phd as suggested by student j: i did my masters in 1974 and my phd 30 years later. i had to work in a different paradigm. now i think i wouldn’t have been able to do it without the cohort. there were others who were in the same position and this gave me confidence. participants also reflected on the benefits of the cohort sessions especially in the first year for students from faculties outside the education faculty. five of the twelve participants were in this position, with two from health sciences, one from pure sciences, one from management sciences and one from theatre and drama. they all reflected on how the seminar sessions helped to induct them into the discourse of educational research seamlessly, as indicated in the following responses: i had a pure science degree; i didn’t have an education degree. it was just a different type of study. i think i would not have been able to do it if i did not participate in the cohort sessions. (student j) i come from the health sciences so it [education phd] was a whole new ball game for me. the group was like a resource for me. (student l) it has been useful as i realize what standards i have to set for myself and how to pace myself. (student c) i needed those short-term goals. there’s a sense of structure so we can achieve these little steps along the way. the task which appeared so daunting to complete by the end of the first year became more manageable. (student i) affirming students’ voices the cohort model engenders flexibility in the programme structure. in addition to cultivating a supportive co-operative and interactive learning community, it simultaneously gives voice to each candidate (the graduate institute, 2006). membership in a cohort exposes one to a pool of professionals which enriches and expands the learning experiences of each candidate as s/he develops in the programme (haworth & conrad, 1997). the issue of individual development together with group development and giving students a voice is also deliberated by galvin (1991), who contends that an interactive learning community fosters both teachers’ and students’ willingness to freely exchange ideas, feelings, questions, and dispute with comfort, listen carefully to others and evaluate with freedom. respondents in the focus group raised the issue of students acquiring a voice in the cohort seminar sessions as they developed personally and grew in confidence through imbibing critical input from cohort supervisors and visiting scholars in the field of research. two of the respondents spoke of how insecure and silent they were when they first entered the programme. however, by the end of their third year they were able to talk confidently on research issues, engage in constructive debate with peers and cohort supervisors, and apply the knowledge they had acquired to critique their peers’ work. they added that, initially, cohort supervisors contributed greatly in the sessions but this acted as a stimulus to engender greater contribution from the students as they grew confident and as their own knowledge of research grew through the inputs from the cohort supervisors. the following response captures this position: i had a very hazy notion of different methods and methodologies. i was very quiet when i started. i listened more than i contributed but i think at the end of the three years i was able to make a meaningful contribution and i wasn’t afraid to speak out and i was able to speak about research 92 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 with more confidence. i think finding your voice is what happens in this kind of collaborative cohort model. (student i) decreasing relevance of post-proposal generation phase in appraising the value of their experiences across the years of support, students found the research proposal phase (generally the first year on the cohort programme) very useful because generic research issues cutting across different research areas were interrogated, providing critical insights for their proposal development. however, the post-proposal generation phase was considered less useful. five of the six students interviewed commented on the lack of relevance for their study of the second and subsequent year seminar sessions. in the second and third year, the students were of the opinion that they would have been better engaged working with students in similar research areas who were at the same stage of completion in their research. students suggested that there should be regrouping in the second and subsequent years based on similar research areas. this is reflected in the following comments: this year [data generation phase] i have not found the sessions to be as useful as they were last year [proposal development phase]. this may be because all of the sessions occur as plenary sessions. because of the diversity in terms of research areas and the stages that participants are at, the sessions are not always directly relevant to my particular needs. having only plenary sessions also means that little time can be devoted to each person. some breakaway sessions in smaller groups (based on research area, stage of research, or methodology), and/or more individual attention from time to time, might be useful. (student f) if i am listening to someone whose topic is totally different from mine, it is a total waste of time. [they should] put us into groups with common research areas and allocate cohort supervisors specialising in that research area. (student a) however, the issue of breakaway groups in terms of similar research areas was challenged in an interview with the 2010 (overall) co-ordinator of the phd seminar sessions. she was of the opinion that it would be counterproductive and limiting in terms of what the faculty intended to achieve with the cohort system. it was her view that grouping students narrowly into similar research areas or topics would prevent them from being exposed to diverse methodologies and different research approaches. respondents, some of whom are currently participating in the cohort programme as cohort supervisors, also raised the issue of the waning interest of students in the second and third year seminar sessions. they indicated that these students were far more advanced in their studies than their cohort peers and were of the opinion that attending seminar sessions that focus on stages of research that they have already surpassed was futile, and besides, they wanted to forge ahead in their own studies. some of the alternative strategies proposed by respondents included: students should be given the freedom to select which sessions they should attend.• advanced students should be allowed to attend some sessions to guide peers through those phases • of the research process that they have already covered through sharing their own experiences with their peers. students should be given time off during seminar sessions to work in computer lans on their own • study with other students at the same stage of research; this was trialled in the 2010 cohort seminar sessions. regardless of the diversity of research interests and varied foci of research studies within a cohort, the literature (potthoff et al., 2001) reveals that cohorts remained cohesive. they identify defining features of cohorts as being group cohesiveness, group support, solidarity and interpersonal bonding, which result in the forging of friendships that last beyond the completion of the doctoral degree. it might appear from the students’ responses that group cohesiveness has not really occurred in the case of some of the cohorts in question as opposed to other cohorts in the doctoral programme. however, before making judgements of 93govender & dhunpath — student experiences of the phd cohort model group behaviour, it is instructive to heed the cautioning of mccarthy, trenga & weiner (2005), who contend that the limited degree to which group behaviour is predictable makes positing generalisations difficult. diverse perspectives in seminar sessions – beneficial or problematic? pothoff et al. (2001) and tareilo (2007) allude to the creation of an intellectually stimulating environment within a cohort which allows not only for incisive inputs from professors and other senior scholars but also allows for lively debate and discussion as well as sharing of diverse views. responses from the majority of the students indicate that they were offered varying perspectives on their proposed study which they found enriching and empowering. it provided them opportunities to approach their study from new and refreshing angles or to clarify their research focus with benefit of multiple insights. however, one of the students found the differing, at times conflicting, perspectives offered by the cohort supervisors problematic rather than beneficial. the constant changes made to his proposed study made it difficult for him to clarify his focus. according to him, very often, he was left directionless at the seminar sessions. he believed that he was at the mercy of academics who were intent on showcasing what each knew rather than assisting him. this, he maintained, had delayed the finalisation of his research proposal. the following response captures that position: in the cohort classes i couldn’t get the focus of my study. although there were 6 supervisors present but every time i presented, they kept changing it. i had to rewrite several times as my topic changed – i wasn’t getting anywhere. i think they came with their own expertise based on the area in which they lecture and each person wanted me to look at it in a way which would push that person’s viewpoint and this did not address my issue. (student a) some of the participants in the focus group who are current cohort supervisors were of the opinion that there were too many supervisors allocated to each cohort and this, in addition to submerging student voices, pulled students in too many different directions, often leaving them confused. in addition, students were forced to submit to pressure from the cohort supervisors to change the focus of their studies against their own inclinations. it was suggested that cohort supervisors be trained to facilitate rather than dominate seminar sessions and that they allow students more room to engage in debate, contestation and adequate defence of their own research foci. the following response from one of the participants of her experience of being diverted from the initial focus of her study and the experience of another student who resisted submitting to the pressure to change her study reflect this position: somebody said to a student in a cohort session, ‘what i really think you should be doing is writing life histories about these teachers.” and then she just exploded and said, ‘i refuse to be pushed into writing life histories just because this faculty favours that.’ … it happened to me. there were various exciting possibilities presented to me that i had never considered and i said, ‘oh yes! i wanted to do that!’ but after a year i realised that this was not what i wanted to do. i eventually came back to what i wanted to do. it was a long way round but i think i was more enriched for that. (student i) the issue of forcing students into using particular research genres and working within pet paradigms and favoured methodologies of cohort supervisors was frowned upon by the focus group. in particular, they raised the matter of the anti-quantitative stance of the faculty and negative attitude shown by some supervisors to students using quantitative research methods. the issue of too many, sometimes disorienting perspectives of cohort supervisors was raised with the co-ordinator of the seminar sessions. according to the co-ordinator, the role of cohort supervisors is to expose students to multiple views and frameworks. students are expected to be selective in what they take from the sessions. she added that the cohort sessions are designed to develop independent scholars and critical thinkers. she laments that some students tend to take everything that is offered in the sessions indiscriminately. she also expressed the concern that some students may be overreliant on the sessions, believing that six weekends will provide all the solutions when the seminars should really be deep, reflective experiences. her views are borne out by the experience of student l who conceded that 94 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 while she was initially distracted from the chosen focus of her study, the different perspectives offered in the seminar sessions contributed to her development as a student, a lecturer and a supervisor. support from cohort peers the defining feature of cohorts is mutual support and protection (weise, 1992), with students feeling buoyed by and protected by this solidarity (lewis et al., 2010). in a study of student teachers working within a cohort, mandzuk et al. (2003) discovered that members of the cohort were of the opinion that they could count on each other during times of academic and personal stress, and they perceived this social and emotional support as a major advantage of the cohort. tareilo (2007), reflecting on her experiences of belonging to a doctoral cohort, speaks of an emotional safety net that develops within cohesive groups. the participants in the focus group reflected on the cohesiveness of their cohorts which resulted in the seminar sessions creating social and academic spaces outside the seminars, bringing together members of a cohort over weekends to socialise but which inevitably resulted in their engaging in academic discourses. apart from welding the cohort, this also enabled cohort members to take each other’s studies forward between seminar sessions. the seminar sessions, they indicated, provided the stimulus for this, as indicated in the following response: one of the unexpected gains from the cohort system is that it is not only a social space but it is a kind of academic discourse space where you find like-minded people who have common interests. we would meet over weekends; it gave us a chance to engage in some kind of academic chit-chat. we took the discourse from the cohort space into other spaces. (student i) reconciling support from cohort supervisors with support from appointed supervisors in interrogating practitioner narratives about experiences of being co-supervisors in higher degree research, spooner-lane, henderson, price & hill (2007) discovered that while co-supervision suggests collegiality, the relationship between principal and co-supervisors can and often results in conflict which is exacerbated if supervisors have different personalities and do not get on well. however, practitioner stories (spooner-lane et al., 2007: 47) also reveal positive co-supervision experiences, as captured by the following comment: i see the benefit of supervisors bringing different viewpoints when examining a student’s work. i have also valued the feedback from my co-supervisors who have been very collegial and supportive and expressed thanks for my contribution, as have my students. the role of cohort supervisors within the doctoral programme in the education faculty of ukzn is in some ways similar to the role of co-supervisors who are conceptualised as working in a spirit of collaboration and collegiality with the students’ appointed supervisors in guiding and supporting the students through their research studies. likewise, the appointed supervisors are expected to be part of the community of practice created (or ostensibly created) within the cohort programme, with appointed supervisors valuing feedback on their students’ work from cohort supervisors. while the experiences of two of the students reveal this collaboration and collegiality with one of the students stating, “my supervisor always asks me to look into the suggestions given and to try to incorporate them as far as possible” (student c), the other students spoke about conflicting guidance and support and tensions between appointed supervisors and cohort supervisors. five of the students indicated that the guidance provided by the cohort supervisors conflicted with that provided by their appointed supervisors. two of these students indicated that despite this, they were able to mediate between the support from the cohort supervisors with that from their appointed supervisors and they maintained that engaging with contradictory views helped them to strengthen their ideas. one of these students stressed the need to take a firm stance on one’s study despite the opposing and at times contradictory support. their comments are captured below: 95govender & dhunpath — student experiences of the phd cohort model during the proposal development phase, the comments from the cohort seminar group sometimes provided different insights into my study that my supervisor and i may not have considered, which helped strengthen my work. this year, as i progress into my study, i feel that the cohort facilitators may not be very familiar with my study and the advice is sometimes quite contradictory to that from my supervisor. however, reconciling different views is part of the research process. (student f) my study was going along well. i did some analyses and presented at a seminar session and was complimented and i very happily took that to my supervisor. he said, ‘this has been done before! why are you doing this? what made you do that?’ i was devastated. so i had to make that really difficult decision of which way i wanted to go. so i did decide. i did at times feel torn (between the cohort and my appointed supervisor). you get coerced into going into a direction you didn’t want to but that is not necessarily bad – it opens your study up to different interpretations. (student i) tensions between her appointed supervisor and the cohort supervisors were also reported by the fourth of these five students. in her case, tensions ran so high that her supervisor advised her to ignore the suggestions made in the seminar sessions and focus only on what was discussed in their one-on-one supervisory sessions. the student was of the opinion that she was being pulled in different directions and while she was keen to follow the guidance of her appointed supervisor, she maintained that the support she received from the cohort supervisors was useful in helping her shape her proposal. the following comment reflects this tension: the cohort supervisors helped to push me to prepare and complete my proposal. they felt i was ready to submit and defend this proposal but my supervisor threw it out. now that the proposal is ready for submission after changes were made by my supervisor, my supervisor does not want me to discuss this with the cohort. but the cohort lecturers felt they needed to give the nod of approval before my defence of the proposal … my supervisor told me i must not listen to dr x as (this cohort supervisor) was not in tune with my study. my supervisor was upset when i sent the final proposal to dr x i think she felt threatened. (student d) the last of these five students did not mention tensions between his supervisors and the cohort supervisors, but believed that the guidance provided in the seminar sessions seriously conflicted with the support given by the appointed supervisors which frustrated his progress. he perceived that he was forced to make unnecessary changes which delayed the finalisation of his proposal. he believed that the guidance given at the seminar sessions “goes off at a tangent” and “sessions with my supervisors are more directed. i can see where i am going – there is gradual development of my work” (student a). this student indicated that after six or seven fruitless revisions to his proposal, he was forced to go into a closed session with one of the cohort supervisors and his appointed supervisor where he was finally able to clarify his research focus. participants in the focus group discussion who are also staff members and exposed to an earlier version of the cohort model spoke about being allocated supervisors later in their first year of study rather than when they entered the programme. this, they believed, allowed students to derive full benefit from inputs from cohort supervisors and prevented possible tensions between cohort and appointed supervisors. they suggested reverting to this system. the following response captures this position: late allocation of supervisors allows you to build up confidence so that you aren’t going into possible conflicting situations between your group and your supervisor. we learnt so much in those first few months. it created a sense of you know where you are going and you can confront issues more confidently. (student l) the issue of tensions between cohort and appointed supervisors and conflicting guidance was raised in the interview with the co-ordinator who believed that students could not mediate between what was given at seminars and what happens with the supervisor and as a result tensions develop. she maintained that students needed to take a firm position on their own study and defend that position. she also conceded that when a supervisor has pet paradigms and methodologies, it could create tensions between the supervisor and student and the appointed supervisor/s and cohort supervisors. 96 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 reconciling support from principal supervisor with support from co-supervisor the study by spooner-lane et al. (2007) is relevant in understanding the relationship between principal and co-supervisors of three of the students interviewed. they contend that “power relations” between principal and co-supervisors can be proactive, enhancing both the research student’s achievement and the supervisor’s professional development. however, some of the practitioner narratives of co-supervisors recounting their experiences as doctoral students working with principal and co-supervisors reveal the tensions that existed between the supervisors which impacted negatively on the students. of the twelve students who participated in this study, three students (students a, d and l) had two appointed supervisors. one of the supervisors played the role of principal supervisor while the other was the co-supervisor. one of the students (student l) reported that “between (the principal and co-supervisor) there was a reasonable amount of coherence in terms of the advice that i was given”. she added that the two supervisors complemented each other, with the principal supervisor guiding her through the main body of her research and the co-supervisor assisting her to refine the thesis. however, the experiences of the other two students revealed a lack of collaboration and collegiality between the two supervisors which affected the students adversely. both students reported experiencing difficulty in reconciling supervisory support received from the principal supervisor with that given by the co-supervisor. student a reported that while he had joint meetings with his supervisors, at which common guidance and support were provided, there were other occasions when he received conflicting advice from one or other of his supervisors. in particular, he raised the issue of choice of a data-collection tool which he claimed that his principal supervisor did not reject at a joint meeting with the co-supervisor, but in a private conference with him expressed aversion for the tool. unlike student a, student d did not have joint meetings with her supervisors and this created greater conflict between the support she received in separate meetings from each of these supervisors. she claimed that her principal supervisor advised her to ignore the suggestions and advice given by the co-supervisor and focus only on what they (principal supervisor and student) discussed. the student’s difficulty with working with two supervisors is reflected in the following comment: when i discussed with (my principal supervisor) what (my co-supervisor) had discussed with me, she rejected it out of hand – when one has two supervisors, it is difficult when the supervisors do not have a common understanding of one’s research study. (student d) this student reported that she now has just one supervisor, her principal supervisor, as her co-supervisor was promoted to a senior position at another university in south africa. emerging insights – working within or outside communities of practice? an analysis of the data generates the following insights in terms of whether the doctoral cohort programme is underpinned by collaboration and collegiality and whether genuine learning communities were created within the cohort programme: academic input during seminar sessions from the cohort supervisors, in particular, provided an • intellectually stimulating environment within which students were able to benefit from collaboration and collegial support. this was particularly the case in the proposal generation phase of the cohort programme. while there is not much evidence of cohesiveness within some cohorts, cohort peers supported each • other academically and emotionally. collaboration and collegiality between cohort supervisors and appointed supervisors was not always • evident. possible tensions between cohort supervisors and appointed supervisors and between principal and co-supervisors threatened the creation of genuine learning communities within the cohort programme. 97govender & dhunpath — student experiences of the phd cohort model late allocation of appointed supervisors would alleviate possible tensions between cohort supervisors • and appointed supervisors. reducing the number of supervisors per cohort and training of cohort supervisors in effective • facilitation would obviate opposing and at times contradictory perspectives offered by cohort supervisors and minimise student confusion. the findings of this study confirm vithal’s (2009) comments on the challenges and difficulties facing the cohort programme. in particular she notes: both students and staff who come from diverse backgrounds must find common ground and create the kind of space in which diversity becomes a resource … not all students are able to mediate and manage conflicting advice and knowledge within seminars and between seminars and their individual supervisors. each team of supervisors is also not neutral and ideological preferences do get expressed, for example, a bias against some methodologies. (vithal, 2009: 7). vithal (2009) adds that not all academics and certainly not all senior academics agreed or chose to participate in the doctoral programme at ukzn. some actively undermined the programme. the low levels of doctoral productivity in south africa relative to its developing country counterparts compel academics and policymakers to explore alternatives to the traditional model of doctoral supervision, which is no longer in itself adequate in improving throughput. the authors endorse vithal’s contention that in seeking alternative models, “what is needed is a critical number of academics who are committed and dedicated to doctoral studies, find enjoyment in the intellectual challenges and engagement, and are willing to support students” (vithal, 2009: 8). conclusion this paper, based on a study of the cohort model of doctoral supervision at ukzn, documents and analyses students’ experiences against the frame of what lave and wenger (1991) and wenger (1998) term communities of practice. providing rich opportunities for collaborative research learning, the success of the cohort model is indeed contingent upon successful collaboration and collegiality, the absence of which generates potential for conflict and sometimes frustration. however, an equally significant dimension of the cohort model is that the potential for conflict generates simultaneously a productive space, where students negotiate the multiple and sometimes contradictory voices of cohort supervisors, appointed supervisors and peers as students find and affirm their own voices. while there is evidence of potential weaknesses in the model which undermine its potential value, such as supervisors and students working in isolation; some supervisors working counter to other supervisors, and power dynamics between supervisors, the evidence suggests that the cohort provided opportunities for deep research learning, superseding those provided by the traditional model alone. hence, while these limitations can and do threaten the creation of genuine communities of practice, they are often symptomatic of individual teaching and learning styles and preferences rather than with the robustness of the design of the cohort model. the solution lies in developing a larger critical mass of academics engaging critically and creatively with the model as an intellectual project to meaningfully address the low levels of phd productivity while simultaneously elevating quality. the small sample used to generate the analysis renders this an exploratory study. hence, the findings are tentative and subject to contestation as more evidence becomes available. consequently, there is a need for further research (using larger samples of both students and supervisors) across faculties which have appropriated the cohort model, to explore the strengths, limitations and challenges of the model. equally instructive would be tracer studies of different cohorts to document levels of success, productivity and intellectual fulfilment experienced by students and supervisors. 98 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 references ali a & kohun f 2006. dealing with isolation feelings in is doctoral programs. international journal of doctoral studies, 1:21-33. academy of science of south africa (assaf) 2010. the phd study consensus report. pretoria: the academy of science of south africa. burnett pc 1999. the supervision of doctoral dissertations using a collaborative cohort model. counselor education and supervision, 39(1):46-52. denzin n & lincoln y 1998. collecting and interpreting qualitative materials. thousand oaks: sage. galvin km 1991. building an interactive learning community: the challenge. in jd nyquist, rd abbot, h wulff & j sprague (eds), preparing the professoriate of tomorrow to teach. dubuque, ia: kendall/ hunt publishing company. geertz c 1973. thick description: toward an interpretive theory of culture. in the interpretation of cultures: selected essays. new 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tareilo j 2007. the road to successfully completing doctoral studies: a tale of a cohort model. in the ncpea handbook of doctoral programs in educational leadership: issues and challenges. retrieved on may 10, 2010 from http://cnx.org/content/m14600/latest. the graduate institute 2006. cohort as community, community as context. retrieved on september 16, 2010 from http://www.learn.edu/about/(3)cohort%20community/default.asp vithal r 2009. the case of an education faculty doctoral programme for building academic capacity. report for the hesa workshop on building the new generation of academics, 22-23 june 2009. weise k 1992. through the lens of human resource development: a fresh look at professional preparation programs. retrieved from eric database (ed355667). wenger e 1998. communities of practice. learning as a social system. systems thinker, june. 99govender & dhunpath — student experiences of the phd cohort model young s, bruce ma & stellern j 2002. disadvantages and advantages of the cohort model in a counselor education program. retrieved on july 11, 2010 from http://www.hiceducation.org/edu_proceedings/ suzanne%20young.pdf (endnotes) 1 see academy of science of south africa (assaf) study on doctoral productivity in south africa (2010). 2 for more detail of the seminar programme model, see samuel & vithal (2011). 99 sustaining good management practices in public schools: decolonising principals’ minds for effective schools abstract while there are perspectives on how to approach decolonisation and transformation of education in schools, the reality is that all rests with individuals and ways that they change their attitudes and mind-set. in the midst of mismatch in the minds of teachers and principals about these two concepts, another confusing term is “democracy” that comes with human rights. the connotation of democracy causes the mind to revert back and propagate the principles of colonisation where individual laxity overwhelms the duties or responsibilities, even accountability to society. in the battle of emancipating individuals’ mind, special reference can be drawn from the general assumption that imperialism aspects, including apartheid, profoundly affected the mind of the oppressed negatively in that during the post-apartheid era the oppressed still entangle themselves tightly. this article attempts to report on the qualitative findings from a pragmatic paradigm study conducted in one education district in the eastern cape of south africa, where face-to-face interviews were carried out with 10 participants (5 chairpersons of school governing bodies and 5 principals) from 5 public schools with document analysis. thematically analysed findings portray that some school principals enjoyed being ”big baas” (bosses) and displayed unprofessional conducts such as absenteeism or lack of punctuality where nepotism and corruption prevailed. keywords: afrocentric, corruption, eurocentric, learning and nepotism 1. introduction while there is a cry for basic service delivery, free equal and quality education for all, the education system in public schools seem to collapse into a crisis. this prominent crisis can be seen by low grades obtained by grade 12 students, despite a huge investment by both ministries of education in south africa (nytimes, 2016). the isixhosa saying “ukufa kusembizeni”,’literally translated as, “the cause of death is inside”, seems to be true when one considers the deterioration of the learning and teaching culture in public schools, especially in rural and township schools. according to chisholm and vally (2006), the features of a poor culture of learning and teaching in schools include the following: weak/poor school attendance and personnel who lack the desire to teach. generally, institutions today, andrea mqondiso buka* department of continuing professional teaching development, faculty of educational sciences, walter sisulu university, mthatha, south africa. nomzi florida matiwane-mcengwa education development officer, department of basic education, mthatha, eastern cape province, south africa. maisha molepo department of continuing professional teaching development, faculty of educational sciences, walter sisulu university, mthatha, south africa. *corresponding author: mbuka@wsu.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i2.8 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(2): 99-111 © uv/ufs mailto:mbuka@wsu.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.8 100 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) more than ever, need leaders whose qualities can be positively regarded by or impact on the lives of the communities and students. however, despite being the custodians of policies and rules, currently principals and most teachers are taken to court on various accounts or charges of contravening the same laws (maistry, 2014). tensions among school governing bodies (sgbs) and various elements of the school communities increase daily and escalate to violence. the governance of institutions is predominantly assumed to be based on principles of democracy. this concept of “democracy” emanates from eurocentric epistemology. in its various definitions or meanings, it also literally implies inclusion of larger members of society to governance with the purpose of best serving their concerns or interests by those leaders they have chosen. as authors, without attempting to charge eurocentric perspectives in this regard, we wish to bring to point the fact that democracy in most african states complicates to dictatorship, where the ruling elites often clings to power (mbembe, 2015). features such as nepotism and corruption cause the decline of governance and management on state organs including schools. in such instances, the purpose to serve people might be forgotten and leaders and managers are obsessed with power for personal enrichment (bacal, 2014; mccann, 2014). often masses would resort to protests and strikes, which are brutality suppressed by authorities. thus, democracy seems to adopt imperialistic features or colonial practices where only loyalists were appointed to leadership and management positions to safeguard the ruling elites while ignoring the complaining oppressed. since 2015, south african schools have been characterised by protests that intensified to violence involving students and communities in higher education institutions and schools (enca, 2016). while there are structures equipped with democratically instituted policies and rules, unaddressed issues from the complaining oppressed prevail. leaders and managers at all levels were challenged; with all fingers pointing towards the failure to fulfil promises in their precepts or mandates (maistry, 2014). in all circumstances, delivery of free quality education for all can be an arguably far-fetched concept than can be realised sooner, especially when learning and teaching is negatively affected during violent times in schools. authors, therefore, argue that there seems to be an impasse of democracy in state organs, particularly in schools that are reflected by poor leadership and management practices in one way or another. poor management and leadership practices are not only confined to south african education institutions but are also manifested in world organisations. world and international organisations such as the federation internationale de football association (fifa) for example, have been rocked by corruption and poor leadership practices (time live, 2017). macbeath (2006), eckman (2006) and loder and spillane (2005) are of the view that poor management and leadership practices are also prevalent in developed countries such as the united kingdom (uk) and united states of america (usa). there are different factors that contribute to poor management and leadership in schools that can be traced as far back as 2005. in a study conducted by macbeath (2006), findings show that most teachers in the uk were reluctant to take on a principal’s position even though they were well qualified. he further states that the all-consuming nature of the job, which is confirmed in head teachers’ comments, is a never-ending job, as one barely has time to switch off, eat, sleep or breathe. this is also in line with a study conducted by sang (2005), which revealed that there were difficulties faced by head teachers in school management, which they attribute to the board of governors (bog). most school principals complained of a lack of proper induction and support regarding managerial skills. they felt that in most cases they fall victims where they 101 buka, matiwane-mcengwa & molepo sustaining good management practices in public schools are not supported by teachers or the ministry of education. as schools and hospitals become battlefields for lawsuits (timeline, 2017), individuals with much needed skills seem to shun away from them. there are various challenges faced by teachers emanating from either internal or external forces, which all attribute to non-complacency of the educational system and consequently lead to teacher stress. the argument once posed by sayed and jansen (2001) seems relevant today; they opine that the government’s corruptive stance, complacency, arrogance and inability to deliver basic services to people can lead to an education crisis. in the same stance, buka and molepo (2015) maintain that the department of basic education (dbe) in south africa only acknowledged challenges faced by teachers and parents in schools but fails to provide enough resources and support in time. more pressure and high expectations are posed to teachers for better results with less effort to meet their demands and necessary school needs. there are factors that might lead to school dysfunctionality as a failure on the part of government, which teachers may emphasise without solution. the authors of this article concur with jansen and molly (2014). jansen and molly (2014) argue that poor learner performance in public schools, high rate of school violence, teenage pregnancy, everlow grade 12 results and the current state of basic and higher education, corruption, weak governance and leadership indicate that the south african education system has reached a point that reflects an education crisis. demotivating environmental conditions under which teachers work, especially in black schools, exacerbate, for example, as mentioned above, overcrowding and large classes, working in poverty-stricken communities, illiterate parents who provide minimal support to their schoolchildren, poor infrastructure and a lack of basic resources including human resources. despite the importance of leadership and management for effective or quality education delivery, most disadvantaged rural and township schools are regarded dysfunctional when analysing grade 12 results in south africa due to the principals’ poor management practices (heystek, 2006; hanley, 2011). when analysing school performance based on grade 12 results one cannot help but come to a conclusion that there are two types of education in south africa, one for the poor (public schools) and another for the rich (private schools, which often have better resources and portrayed good performance). uk research reveals that some schools were led by school managers below the age of 50 years of age who were unqualified and semi-professional (eckman, 2006). could under qualification of leaders or school managers in particular contribute to poor management practices? in south africa, minimum qualifications for a school manager are relative education qualification value (reqv) 13 coupled with 8 years’ experience in the teaching profession and management skills. in practice, a teacher with less qualifications or experience can be appointed as long there is high recommendation from the sgb (department of education [doe], 1996). jago (2008) argues that leadership in practice cannot be understood by studying the practices of individuals alone but rather by distributed leadership and a systematic process. the authors of this article concur with the latter in that leadership is a process by which a person influences others to accomplish objectives and directs the organisation in a way that makes it more cohesive and coherent. such perspective goes without defining leadership or even management. 102 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) however, there seems to be a paradigm or epistemological gap between the novice and experienced principal. in kenya, hallinger (2011) argues that there is a managerial gap in most rural public schools. the old school managers cannot cope with the rapid social, technological, economic and cultural changes. the authors of this article do not concur with the above author. while the old school principals might ascribe to high values regarding the professional standards held by the new generation of teachers, young principals find themselves trapped and hooked in social evils and crime busting (sex seduction or mismanagement of funds for example) despite their high qualifications or enthusiasm at the beginning of their career (wilson, 2009). furthermore, experience counts, as hanley (2011) contends, that in south african schools, those school managers who lack experience and support are likely to be inefficient. mclennan and thurlow (2003) refer to an emerging paradigm as “a growing emphasis on building relationships in education”. the development of smts in south african schools provides the potential for participative theory but there is little empirical evidence to suggest that it is supplanting or even supplementing the school manager’s singular management. according to bush and heystek (2006), karlsson (2002) and harber and trafford (2009), cooperation between principals and sgbs is required if governance is to be effective. 2. leadership and effective school good management and leadership can be assumed to result in effective schools and ultimate delivery of quality education for all. research indicates that there is a correlation between leadership style and school effectiveness (robinson, 2007; leithwood & jantzi, 2006). a study by nsubuga (2003) in uganda confirms that leadership and its style influence student academic performance in one way or another. it can be asserted that effective schools need visionary leaders to create and sustain school climate or culture. there are several ingredients that are needed to maintain effective schools, which include resources, a healthy environment and teacher and learner motivation (botha & makoelle, 2012). while democratic, instructional or participative qualities are highly esteemed, basic skills such as communication, interpersonal, teacher-learner relations and active parent participation or partnership can never be emphasised (potberg, 2014). infrastructure pertains to skilled human resources, functional laboratories or libraries (guloba, wokadala & bategeka, 2010; mudulia, 2012). recently in the last 3 years, there seemed to be a trend of violence in schools and higher education institutions (heis), which manifested from various sources such as civil protests escalating to schools or heis workers’ strikes and receiving students’ solidarity (timeline, 2017). in all circumstances, whether in schools or heis, teaching and learning processes were affected with teachers facing several challenges or becoming victims of stress in one way or another. with the burning of schools, teachers losing their properties or possessions and the loss of tuition time, the delivery of quality education is at stake. the continuous teacher resignation or early retirement can also be associated with unstable, unsafe environmental conditions under which teachers work in addition to other factors. in view of the above, and considering that the south africa education system might be losing skilled and experienced teachers, one can maintain that the education system is at the brink of crisis. buka and molepo (2016:2) advise that if the south african government does not take drastic action to change social evils in school communities, the education crisis cannot be escaped since schools alone were unable to deal with several challenges successfully. the challenges such “as school violence, teacher burn-out, drug abuse and teenage pregnancy” 103 buka, matiwane-mcengwa & molepo sustaining good management practices in public schools continue while civil protests for delivery of basic services escalate to public schools (jansen & molly, 2014). while teachers are expected to play many roles and carry more responsibilities in their schools than ever before, other than core business, there were no effective teacher support programmes in place. with several unfolding phenomena such as learner pregnancy, school violence, learner sex changes or rape and murder on school premises, it can be argued that teachers find themselves needing to be midwife nurses, detectives and psychologists. these responsibilities overlap with the roles of other professionals and can be perceived as superseding the stated educators’ roles such as assessor, planner, curriculum developer, information provider, role model, facilitator and resource developer (doe, 1996). in an attempt to sustain or foster a teaching and learning culture, teachers are exposed to certain unwanted internal or external environmental challenges, which hamper their abilities and result in the development of feelings of exhaustion and strain or even frustration. as mentioned above, there are several factors that intensify conditions of stress including ill-discipline of learners, teaching in overcrowded/large classes, unhealthy working conditions, low wages and a lack of resources, to mention a few (buka & molepo, 2016). traditionally the role of school principals was restricted only to accept and implement instructions from their immediate superiors (steyn, 2002). during the apartheid regime, they were expected to be loyalists assistant administrators who did not question policies or instructions. school principals’ roles as leaders were not catered. the new democratic dispensation since 1994, posed as a sudden significant challenge regarding innovative leadership space in their mind set. this led to most principals applying laissez-faire styles to avoid criticism against unionist or site stewards in their schools. some principals were confused of their roles in the introduction of school management teams (doe, 1996). this kind of passive leadership had negative implications in the creation of effective schools. the meaning of the concept of democracy became volatile, confusing and abusive for selfish gain for different stakeholders in schools. then schools became a battlefield and haven of turmoil as advent of democracy in the education system gave rise to education policies with extensive educational reforms. some confusing concepts were equality, social justice and human rights (republic of south africa, 1996). such educational reforms need principals to be leaders rather than ordinary school managers or dictators who are imaginative or creative to sustain a sound culture of teaching and learning in which effective quality education could take place (steyn, 2002). to meet the challenging school environment and play their expected roles fairly, principals needed leadership skills to substantially exert their influence on the success of their schools for effective schools. the calibre of principal leadership has ever been challenged as school violence is escalating despite the measures put in place to address the problem by the department of basic education (dbe) and schools themselves (dbe, 2015). under these circumstances, one can argue that quality education for all or effective teaching and learning cannot be realised unless there are intervention programmes that promote app in schools. equally important is the view of makgopa and mokhele (2013) who, in their study, state that teachers and parents need to work together to ensure that the child develops to the best of his or her ability. the department of education has invested a lot in schools through the south african schools act 84 (sasa) of 1996, which empowers parents to act actively in the governance of schools (doe, 1996). it goes without dispute that community leaders and parents can play a significant role in assisting schools to be effective in their goals for quality education. 104 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) involvement of app can strengthen learner performance and educational outcomes determined by the school values and culture. researchers have long considered the involvement of app in their children’s education as “a significant factor in positively impacting children’s school success” (parhar, 2006:1). there are various aspects that community leaders and parents can assists schools with using their unique expertise. with the rise of school violence, hiv/aids, drug abuse, teenage pregnancy and teacher burnout in schools (buka & molepo, 2016), there is an accommodation for community members and community-based organisations to contribute towards combating these phenomena in schools and in the community. the ministry of education recognises the reality, responsibility and influence of the education system within the community at large (doe, 1996). it seems that the important role the school community has to play in the education system is inevitable and imperative. despite the presents of various reforms, the primary tasks of schools are to act as institutions of teaching and learning and therefore they have to take into consideration and manage those elements that negatively affect their primary task. one of the factors that influence the success of a school system is the involvement of its stakeholders (doe, 1996). active parent participation on learner support (app-ls) is becoming more crucial than ever to sustain quality education and intensify effective learning at school and at home. such involvement is a combination of commitment and active participation on the part of the parent to the school and to the student. while there might be many challenges concerning involvement and commitment, such a parent feeling unwelcome at school or a lack of knowledge and education, app-ls, in almost any form, produces measurable gains in learners’ achievement (epstein, 2005). while there might be different ways of defining effective schools, literature indicates that it relates to learner performance (department of basic education, 2009; christie, butler & potterton, 2007; botha, 2010). accordingly, innovative principals who use a variety of leadership styles create effective schools. johannsen (2014) identifies leadership styles that include the following laissez-faire, autocratic, participative, transactional and transformational. a laissez-faire style, as already mentioned above, pertains to freewheeling without giving appropriate direction or supervision. autocratic or authoritarian links management of schools by principals to dictatorship where instructions and commands are posed to others. all the other leadership styles are a comprehensive mixture of qualities such as communication, interpersonal skills, coordination, delegation, team building, including batho pele and ubuntu principles, for example. good management practices include among other aspects, good leadership qualities (bush, 2007). it embraces consciousness, accountability, transformation, transparency, development and support. it harnesses various aspects including collaboration, collegiality and creating space to work with other experts. good leadership, as complimenting good management practices, values teachers, learners and parents while reaffirming democratic morals, social justice, equity, teamwork and commitment to the mandate or vision of the school (mbembe, 2015; buka & molepo, 2016). in short, the principles of ubuntu and batho pele are paramount for good management practices in school. 105 buka, matiwane-mcengwa & molepo sustaining good management practices in public schools 3. theoretical framework education is a societal phenomenon and part of social sciences. it is acknowledged that educational epistemological practices including school managers’ operational strategies in the process of social phenomenon is espoused from eurocentric perspectives (archer, 1995; mbembe, 2015). this article is aligned with a social realism perspective as advocated by archer with education ontology occurring in the context of a social phenomenon. archer (1995) contemplates a social phenomenon through a tri-dimensional lens that includes social structures, culture and agencies. as the ontology of education unfolds, race, class and gender, systems that all form a social sphere, institutionalise epistemological practices. the second lens informs the perspectives of social structures (spheres), which is culture. the south african culture, according to history, was disintegrated and reformed in the foundations of eurocentric imperialism (biko, 1978). culture includes ideas, discourse, theory, values, beliefs and ideology, elements that were clinically supervised by eurocentric hegemonic traditions. it becomes a great effort for the third lens, which is made of agencies, not to operate according to imperialistic ideology, beliefs and values in their epistemological practices. in the same vain, mbembe (2015) maintains that education institutions operate according to western perspectives that seek to sustain a eurocentric hegemonic culture. in the context of the main study from which the article emanates, it was imperative to investigate the conducts of principals as to what extent they have budged from a western point of view in their daily epistemological practices in their schools. how they would consciously strive to emancipate their minds from embedded imperialistic and cultural traditions of coloniality? principals and sgbs as part of crucial agencies for education transformation and decolonisation, their contribution might, in a given time and context complement or contradict each other and thus may constrain the process of problem solving (mbembe, 2015). the above dynamics maximise and deepen the process of transformation. it also leaves us with no authentic tools to stir decolonisation without manipulating from eurocentric epistemology. bush (2007) classifies theories of educational management as follows: formal, collegial, political, subjective, ambiguous, cultural, managerial, participative, transformational, interpersonal, transactional, post-modern, contingency, moral and instructional aspects. some of these are relevant to the south african education context. in this article, the implication of the participative leadership theory, which assumes that the focus of managers and leaders ought to be on functions, tasks and behaviours were considered. such perspectives, we believe, are crucial for principals to facilitate their organisational functions. caldwell (2002) argues that managers and leaders of self-managing schools must be able to develop and implement a cyclical process involving seven managerial functions including: goal setting, needs identification, priority-setting, planning, budgeting, implementing and evaluating. participative leadership theory is based on the assumption that “the decision-making processes of the group ought to be the central focus of the group” (leithwood et al., 2009: 167). this theory is underpinned by three assumptions such as: participation will increase school effectiveness, participation is justified by democratic principles and in the context of site-based management, leadership is potentially available to any legitimate stakeholder (leithwood et al., 2009). authors of this article maintain that a participative theory can contribute successfully in bonding staff together and in easing the pressures on school managers. the burdens of managers decrease if management functions and roles are shared while democratic values are sustained (sergiovanni, 2004; bush, 2007; leithwood et al., 2009). 106 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) the establishment of school management teams in south african schools provides the potential for participative theory but there is little empirical evidence to suggest that it is supplanting or even supplementing the school manager’s singular management (mclennan & thurlow, 2003). accordingly, such epistemological practices can promote and emphasise a paradigm of building relationships on democratic ethics and suppress autocracy in education. bush and heystek (2006) point to the need for cooperation between principals and sgbs if governance is to be effective. 4. the main research question in view of all the turmoil in the education systems, one wonders whether principals consider the afrocentric leadership perspectives in their pursuit for good school management practices, which can bring forth effective schools and delivery of equal quality education for all. the concept of good management practices in schools seems mystified by dysfunctional schools as portrayed by the burning of institutions, which was interrogated through this main research question: how can school principals sustain good management practices in public schools and decolonise their minds for effective schools? 5. aims and objectives in the context of leadership, governance and management, the concepts of ubuntu and batho pele among others, are highly esteemed as fundamental principles for those entering leadership positions in south african state organs including school principals (ngidi, 2013). this afrocentric epistemological perspective needs to be explored on how the african leaders themselves are committed to employ such principles in practice. both concepts (ubuntu and batho pele) incarnate principles of considering views and values of others in your leadership while preferring the needs of those you serve. with regard to democratic principles, what is the mind-set of principals pertaining societal values and their given mandate by virtue of being school leaders. for this article, two priori themes (out of five from the main study) were central in the presentation of data, namely, nepotism and corruption as well as principals’ absenteeism. 6. methodology one of the authors whose nature of her job relates to visiting schools and interacting with school principals, observed that management and leadership practices by school managers in public schools has been affected by school attendance, time management, nepotism and corruption. although the main study adopted a triangulated approach with a pragmatic paradigm, the article bases its context on the qualitative part of the data (maree, 2010). after analysing quantitative data and observing certain trends out of such data, 5 research sites were purposively selected and from each, one principal and one chairperson of the school governing body were also chosen to participate in face-to-face interviews. document analyses of staff attendance registers were also observed. collected data were thematically analysed. 7. findings and discussions data revealed that school managers were frequently absent from school without valid reasons, and consequently, management tools were not manned accordingly. document analysis revealed that the school managers exhausted their sick leave and family-responsibility leave. 107 buka, matiwane-mcengwa & molepo sustaining good management practices in public schools in many instances, they would claim they visited district offices. some sgb members would find a principal was often absent when they visited schools. one sgb chairperson reported in uttered frustration: “asihanjwa isikolo ziititshala nabafundi lonto iqhwalwlisa iziphumo”. (teachers and students poorly attend school and that impact on results). another sgb participant shouted: “xa iyintloko eyingxaki kuyiwaphi? … suka ath’ umntu lilungelo lam sikwi democracy”. (if the head is the problem, where are we heading to?… then the person says it is my human right we are in democracy). one principal felt caught unawares when confronted with the reality of his absenteeism recorded in the register and stammered, “i don’t think this register is marked genuinely”. another principal could not answer but felt upset when asked this question: how do you monitor teaching and learning or even support staff given your frequent absence record? the above phenomena were indicators of poor management and leadership practices. school managers’ absenteeism had a negative effect on their efficiency, on the educational achievement of learners as well as playing a negative role in the morale of the educators at school. literature confirms that apart from the financial cost, absenteeism in schools has a negative effect on the quality of education by reducing achievement levels and student attendance levels (bruno, 2013; woods & montagno, 2012). absenteeism creates a chaotic school environment, creates room for unnoticed poor discipline and ineffective teaching and learning, all of which lead to poor school performance. thus, absenteeism of school managers can render a school dysfunctional, unruly and out of control. absenteeism is voluntary nonattendance at work, without a valid reason. strugnell (2013) explains absenteeism as an employee’s intentional or habitual absence from work. punctuality maintains order and discipline. it is time saving and has a positive impact on learning progress. a lack of punctuality refers to late coming at work or departure before the scheduled time (shafritz, 2008). a lack of punctuality is a problem that contributes to a weak culture of teaching and learning and is likely to impact negatively on learner attitudes and discipline. it was revealed in this paper that a lack of punctuality in a school environment negates the proper running of school affairs. document analysis using the time books showed punctuality or lack of punctuality by school managers. the school managers of schools b, c, e and i showed a lack of punctuality. the lack of punctuality issues were also revealed in the smt minute books. when participants were asked, “what could be the reasons for late coming?” the principal from school c responded: “isenokubangelwa kukuhlala kude nendawo yokuphangela” (it could be caused by staying far from work place). the principal from school e remarked: “it is my democratic right, nobody bothers when i leave this school late[r] than normal”. the word “democratic” seems to be misused. however, managers’ absenteeism and lack of punctuality seemed to be caused by negligence and a lack of commitment by the school managers. according to covey (2009), punctuality is a valuable asset in all managers. time is one of the most valuable resources and without the proper management of time; we cannot see effective schools for quality and equal education for all. once school managers are not leading by example, the school climate and culture deteriorates, and society is robbed of their rights. teachers and members of the school community might feel oppressed as their rights are impinged. 108 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) nepotism by school managers meant favouring their own relatives and friends for jobs, rather than selecting employees based on merit. society suffers immensely due to this malaise and leads to conflicts in schools. data showed that nepotism and corruption were considered unethical against principles enshrined in the south african constitution. these aspects give rise to anti-social elements in society thus undermining the rule of law. data revealed that principals were in the centre of this evil. the sgb chairperson of school a reported “usuke ubone kusithiwa nantsi itishala eqashwe yi sgb. balungiselela izizalwane ngenxa yokungabikho kwengqesho.” (you only see when introduced to a teacher said to be employed by sgb. they only consider their families or acquaintances due to unemployment). another principal accepted that, “we consider our former students, or those parents we know they once support the school as meal servers, even if they may be seen as our acquaintances”. one sgb chairperson claimed, “bribery is suspected when it comes to school vacancies and principals are not innocent”. nepotism is an unprofessional phenomenon that benefits merely the family members or close friends. it is the practice among those with power or influence of favouring relatives or friends, especially by giving those jobs (kathryn, 2006). nepotism sets bad precedents and makes the new recruit a liability to the system rather than an asset. nepotism and corruption are unethical and impede good public delivery. data revealed that nepotism and corruption were synonymous and led to poor school management. nepotism covers favouritism to members of the family or acquaintances (huseyin, 2009). this selfishness leads to unstable and chaotic situations caused by these illegal practices in many schools where protests and stay-away have been reported (lewis & pettersson, 2009). in many instances, democratic processes are manipulated for corrupt motives and people are legally deprived of their rights. nepotism erodes the value of competition, which is actually the essence of good public service. the study revealed that the effects of nepotism and corruption breed indolence, inefficiency and social tensions. a lack of self-discipline on the part of individuals practising such evils escalates to depreciation of holistic school discipline and a loss of teaching and learning culture in schools. literature reveals that among causes of lack of discipline in schools is a lack of communication and favouritism by principals (dreikurs, grunwald & pepper, 2008). they further state that a lack of management (when the school manager does not fulfil his/her role as a manager) causes some teachers to lack motivation. conflicts prevail with loss of teaching time while drug abuse, vandalism, and school violence prevails in dysfunctional schools (buka & molepo, 2016) while supervision, implementation of policies and monitoring of school programmes for progress becomes a challenge (heystek, 2006). discipline is regarded as a code of conduct that school managers, teachers and learners agree upon and cooperate in its enforcement (bacal, 2014; mccann, 2014). most school discipline policies set out a series of consequences or warnings for poor behaviour. a lack of discipline among school managers created a culture of unacceptable behaviour that contagiously affects teachers and learners. 8. conclusion in conclusion, personnel in leadership and management positions seem to abuse their powers and suppress democratic values. their epistemological perspectives and expression of democracy undermines their envisaged mandate and detrimentally affect the education process. this is manifested by poor management practices, which risk and leave evidence of dysfunction schools. while corruption and nepotism are becoming a chronic blight in 109 buka, matiwane-mcengwa & molepo sustaining good management practices in public schools government and state organs, the concept of democracy is misused and abused at the expense of the beneficiaries. all people in places of trust or public offices should immediately consider the revival of ubuntu and batho pele principles. in schools, this can be achieved through the adoption of imbizo concepts. the imbizo, as parliament of the community, involves all conspicuous and respected or influential leaders in a community. in addition to its transparency and accountability, it possesses legal powers to execute resolutions. the imbizo principles go beyond parent general meetings held in schools. this kind of public parliament can be one of monitoring organs of the schools through collaboration with district offices as it can appoint some task teams or subcommittees for special tasks or projects. in this way, the sgb and the principal can be held accountable to this parliament of the community. references archer, m. 1995. realistic social theory. london: cambridge university press. https://doi. org/10.1017/cbo9780511557675 bacal, r. 2014. managing employees discipline. briefcase books series edition-illustrated. publisher-mcgraw hill professional. isbn 0071421734, 9780071421737. biko, s. 1978. i write what i like. available at www.takealot.com/books. 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[accessed 29 july 2017]. van deventer, i. & kruger, a.g. 2003. an educator’s guide to school management skills. pretoria: van schaik publishers. wilson, e. 2009. new teacher learning: substantive knowledge and contextual factors. the curriculum journal, 18, 213-229. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585170701589710 woods, r. c. & montagno, w. 2012. determining the negative effect of teacher attendance on student achievement. journal of personnel evaluation in education, 118(2), 307-317. www.google scholar.co.za www.google scholar.co.za www.google scholar.co.za http://www.za/handler/10321940 http://www.nytimes.com http://www.timelive.co.za www.fspbusiness.co.za www.fspbusiness.co.za https://doi.org/10.1080/09585170701589710 q3 _goback 1 a measurement scale for students’ usage of online networks abstract studies suggest that students are increasingly turning to information and communication technologies as learning tools in which they can present multiple identities quite explicitly tied to context, knowledge and understanding within online networks. hence it is imperative for educational institutions to understand how twenty-first-century learners use online networks for their identity formation and learning experiences. through a systematic review of existing instruments, constructs and elements were identified and used to develop a new conceptual research framework which was quantitatively tested on a convenience sample of students (n=300) at sunway university in malaysia. based on the results, a measurement scale was developed and analysed through structural equation modelling and confirmatory factor analysis. the responses of the students revealed they are more likely to use online networks for identity formation than for the learning experience and that there is a relationship between identity formation, the learning experience and the use of online networks. keywords: identity formation, learning experience, online net­ works, structural equation modelling, knowledge management 1. introduction cheung, chiu and lee (2011: 1337) define online networks as virtual communities where people connect and interact with each other on a specific topic or where they just ‘hang out’ together at a social level. in recent years, research on the use of online networks in learning virtual environments has become as powerful as the technological change in the history of the globalised world, yet there is a lack of theorydriven empirical research. for example, boyd and ellison (2007) emphasise that a lack of studies exist to explore the link between online networks and education. this is echoed by walker and gleaves (2014), who confirm that a lack of rich qualitative studies to better theorise the learning experience and students’ perception of learning value and the status of knowledge created by others is evident in the literature. it was again reiterated in the opening speech of will swann (president of eadtu) when he accentuated the tremendous experience possible in online networks for students’ learning activities in terms of practical knowledge and discovering skills. using these online networks, they are able to learn from the many virtual learning environments in prof rachel barker unisa dr derek ong sunway university; malaysia doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i2.1 issn 0258­2236 e­issn 2519­593x perspectives in education 2016 34(2): 1­18 © uv/ufs 2 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) which students and staff can interact through the application of online teaching and learning methods without physical presence (sancho & de vries, 2014). this paper set out to address the gaps outlined above by focusing on an interpretivistic communicative perspective based on the knowledge management theory with the main objective to propose and test a new theoretical measurement scale for students’ usage of online networks for their identity formation and learning experience. 2. literature review and theoretical framework in order to present a theoretical discussion of identity formation and the learning experience in online networks, a number of notional constructs are briefly presented. firstly, identity formation, which is usually studied from philosophical, social and psychological points of view thereby, makes it possible to study identities in social groups or online networks from different perspectives. according to rimsky (2011: 79-80), the interpretation of identity most appropriate for the analysis of identity formation in online networks is that it is, the state of the individual’s consciousness in which, on the basis of the aggregate set of personal characteristics, one knows oneself, one recognizes the stability of one’s own personality, one determines oneself from the surrounding reality, and one determines one’s membership in a particular social group and, conversely, acknowledges the impossibility of belonging to other social groups. secondly, online networks are webs of relationships that grow from computer-mediated discussions and conversations among people who share a common affinity and articulate a shared connection but differ and traverse in other ways (distance, time comprehension, embeddedness in single locations, etc.) (barker, 2011). in the context of this study, the definition of boyd and ellison (2007) has been adapted. according to this definition, online networks refer to web-based services which allow individuals to construct a profile (identity formation) within a bounded system articulated by other users (usage patterns) with whom they share the connection and how they perceive the connections and feedback (learning experience) that take place within this system. according to attrill and jalill (2010: 1635), trust, the social setting, social identity, intent, privacy and the type of information that individuals are willing to expose or present on their profiles are the factors that will impede or influence identity formation in online networks. thirdly, the learning experience which according to greenhow and robelia (2009: 119), refers to the contexts for learning which are becoming increasingly complex across a range of physical and cyberspaces – especially in terms of how students’ learning experiences in online networks are transforming education. if applied to online networks, the learning experience is dependent on information and knowledge obtained through interactions and transmitted ubiquitously through social interactions without considering real-world consequences. this is confirmed by kirkwood (2008), who found that students search for information or knowledge for their homework, assignments and studies; and hung and chung (2013), who argue that online networks serve as storehouses of knowledge in which information and knowledge creation and sharing are growing rapidly for problem-solving and learning purposes at universities. although some authors (brown, 2011; hara & kling, 2000) argue that drawbacks like feelings of isolation, loneliness, frustration, anxiety and confusion might reduce students’ learning experiences, a study conducted by chou and liu (2005) indicates that a relationship does exist between learner control and learning effectiveness. furthermore, extroverts are more likely to experience benefits from their internet usage than introverts and other authors 3 barker & ong a measurement scale for students’ usage of online networks like bargh and mckenna (2004) confirm that it positively influences psychological well-being. a recent study by young and strelitz (2014) concludes that facebook usage is socially patterned, is based on race and class variables but is weakly associated with loneliness and well-being. according to chan, walker and gleaves (2015: 97) a lack of consensus has exposed two distinct areas in the theorisation of online learning, namely a field of technological affordance distinct from e-learning and broadly defined in terms of educational relevance and how it is exemplified through the ubiquitous and personalised use of technology. this study hence draws from integrative theoretical models that document and stresses the need to consider usage patterns. furthermore, based on the argument earlier that successful online networks are characterised by the constant creation and sharing of new knowledge and the fast dissemination and representation thereof as well as commitment to and understanding of individuals in the online networks, the main thrusts of the research were critically viewed and analysed from a knowledge management perspective. based on the viewpoint of farquhar and rowley (2006: 162) that institutions with power over online networks as technological e-learning developments are in a better position to dominate and manage interactions on the internet, it is argued that this network society offers the opportunity to knowledge-based institutions to build, enhance and maintain sustainable communication relationships with individuals through knowledge creation and sharing. in the context of this study, knowledge management is defined “as the generation, storing, representation and sharing of knowledge to the benefit of the organisation and its individuals, it is arguably specifically relevant to study the use of online networks for identity formation and the learning experience through knowledge creation and sharing” (barker, 2011: 334-350). based on this approach, as well as an extensive literature search using these concepts and applying inclusion and exclusion criteria, six instruments were selected of which criteria have been used for the purpose of this study. the findings of this review indicated that the most appropriate elements to use in order to study these concepts from an integrated approach are the ones presented in the theoretical framework in figure 1. • which online networks • hours • purpose • activities • gender • ethnicity • level • age • time on internet • student learning • interactivity • intensity • profile • self-esteem • social presence • cognitive presence demographics learning experience identity formation usage figure 1: theoretical research framework 4 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) this framework has been developed and based on an integration of concepts from existing instruments and questionnaires, grounded in a comprehensive review of literature. these concepts are demographics (ellison, steinfeld & lampe, 2007: 1149), usage (ellison et al., 2007: 1150) and identity formation (identity profile of larose et al., 2005; self-esteem from rosenberg’s 1989 self-esteem scale, updated by ellison et al. 2007: 1152; social presence and cognitive presence of garrison, cleveland-innes & fung 2004: 67). it also includes the concept of learning experience (student learning from garrison et al., 2004: 72-73 and pempek, yermolayeva & calvert, 2008: 233; interactivity from garrison et al., 2004; pempek et al., 2008: 234 and intensity from ellison et al., 2007: 1150). 3. research design to address the research problem that a lack of existing instruments exist to measure the usage of online networks, this study set out to develop and empirically test a new measurement model based on the argument that a triadic relationship exists between online networks, identity formation and the learning experience. based on the preceding theoretical discussion, corroborated by bonboni and pinho (2013: 223), stating that existing approaches do not “fully capture the richness of the concept by not taking into account the social identity dimension, which reflects the main aspects of the individual’s identification”. therefore, a new conceptual framework integrating existing measurement tools and concepts as shown in figure 2 have been developed to address this gap and were used in this study. figure 2: conceptual framework to measure the impact of the usage of online networks 5 barker & ong a measurement scale for students’ usage of online networks 4. methodology 4.1 sample this study empirically tested the above conceptual framework, which links the usage of online networks, identity formation and the learning experience. the study population comprised students at a private university. a convenience sample of planned n=320 was therefore selected from students studying bsc (hons) business degree programmes at the sunway university in malaysia. this sample was chosen based on the representation of the university’s students as sunway university has one of the biggest student populations (for private higher education institutions in malaysia) and the students from the business school has the highest number of enrolment for the entire university. a combination of quantitative survey methods and a qualitative literature review formed the core of the data that were used for this study. 4.2 measures before administration of the survey, a preliminary survey was conducted with 43 students in october 2014. the results indicated that the wording of questions was clear but that 21 of the 87 items did not indicate any significance. to increase the reliability of the measure, these items were removed. after the pilot test, a 66-item instrument comprising seven sub-constructs was developed where the alpha values reported in brackets are cronbach’s reliability coefficients for each construct; profile (α = 0.614), self-esteem (α = 0.774), social presence (α = 0.894), cognitive presence (α = 0.786), student learning (α = 0.875), interactivity (α = 0.843) and intensity (α = 0.725). the cronbach alpha for each of these constructs was between 0.6 and 0.8, which implies that the reliability of these constructs was acceptable and it can be considered that there was substantial agreement between them. these constructs were identified based on the proposed conceptual framework for theoretical research developed for this study, obtained through a thorough literature review. theoretical statements, which are defined as summaries of central assumptions; suppositions; conjectures and assertions of declarations based on certain theories, models or the literature were used in the compilation of the questionnaires and were adapted based on the results of the pilot study – that is, those factors with no significant indicators were removed (taylor et al., 2011: 3). the measurement scale used for the closed-ended questions was the seven-point likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 7 = strongly agree). the survey data were then collected in november/december 2014 from a sample of students randomly selected in the classrooms. a short description of the study, information about confidentiality and an incentive for participation resulted in a realised sample of 301 (n = 301; several classes did not have full attendance at the time of data collection) from the 320 students initially selected and confirmed that there were no missing data. the proposed measurement model in figure 2 was measured using reliability and construct measurement measures in smartpls to determine the cohesiveness of the items used to measure each construct. 5. results 5.1 descriptive characteristics the descriptive characteristics of respondents’ demographic information indicated that from the realised sample (n = 301), 191 respondents were male (63%) and 110 were female (37%). most of the students were chinese (85%), indian (6%) and malaysian (5%), with the majority of students being between the ages of 18 to 20 years (81%), followed by 20 to 25 years 6 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) (18%); only 1% were younger than 18 years. interestingly, most of the students who used online networks were at first-year level (73%), followed by second-year level and honours level (both at 11%) and third-year level (only 5%). the reasons they gave for their usage of online networks were as follows: facebook (social interaction n = 267 and to stay on trend n = 226, but still a high result for using it for personal information n = 122). they also used facebook for learning purposes (n = 103), e-learn (for learning purposes n = 26) and twitter (social interaction n = 133 and to stay on trend n = 108). it is clear that e-learn is mostly used for learning purposes; it scored the lowest for social interaction. an interesting observation is that twitter scored fairly high on usage for learning purposes compared to the remaining online networks, while myspace was not used at all. it can be deduced that, in general, the online networks facebook, e-learn and twitter are indeed used for learning purposes and that students rely more on facebook, twitter and other online networks for their identity formation. most students had more than 50 online connections on facebook (n = 238), followed by twitter (n = 107). a substantial number of respondents (n = 151) had fewer than 20 connections on e-learn, which is quite interesting as this is the formal online networks of the university. 5.2 results of the measurement model the proposed measurement model was analysed and interpreted in two stages: an assessment of the construct validity of the measurement model through common method variance (cmv) factor analysis and an assessment of the structural model. all the subconstructs in the structural model were specified as latent variables. the following section explains these stages. 5.2.1 cmv factor analysis: smartpls data collected may be subject to self-reported biasness, which could mean that there may be a potential for cmv biasness. conway and lance (2010: 328) mention “that it is widely assumed that common method bias inflates relationships between variables measured by self-reports”. the harman one-factor test (cmv biasness) was conducted to determine the extent of biasness in various proportion distributions of the items (ramayah et al., 2011). according to podsakoff and organ (1986), common method bias is problematic if a single latent factor would account for the majority of the explained variance; in this case, it would be more than 50%. in this study, the un-rotated factor analysis showed that the one factor accounted for only 31.56% of the total variance and thus the common method bias was not a serious threat. the cmv, using factor analysis by forcing all the measurements into one single factor, appears to be less than 50%, indicating that no major common method problems were evident; hence, the researchers proceeded with the building of the measurement model. once all the data was finally ready to be fitted into a structural equation model (sem), the data was imported into smartpls software for analysis. the measurement model was deemed valid because the usage of an sem implied that it complied with the definition proposed by hair et al. (2010: 636), namely “the rules of correspondence between measure and latent variables (constructs) were accessed for their validity”. the results are indicated in figure 3. 7 barker & ong a measurement scale for students’ usage of online networks 0.703 social presence cognitive presence self esteem profile identity formation learning experience student learning interactivity intensity 0.789 0.838 0.849 0.888 0.488 0.648 0.151 0.023 online usage 0.874 0.889 0.782 0.238 0.764 0.790 0.612 0.425 0.023 0.692 aulp noc snu 0.936 0.817 0.0000.722 figure 3: measurement model 5.2.2 reliability and validity indicator reliability denotes the proportion of indicator variance that is explained by the latent variable, which is between 0 and 1. when the indicator and latent variables are standardised, the indicator reliability equals the squared indicator loading, which should normally be approximately 0.25 to 0.5. reflective indicators with loadings within the pls model that were less than 0.4 were removed (hulland, 1999: 198). because loadings of measurements < 0.5 suggest a negligible effect, these items were removed, as indicated in table 1. table 1: measurements removed constructs removed item definition online usage auwe average usage weekends auwd average usage weekdays profile iys 4, iys 6 iys13 self esteem none social presence pya 1, pya 2 cognitive presence none student learning ole 3 interactivity none intensity iwo 1, iwo 3,iwo4 to achieve convergent reliability, the average variance extracted (ave) was calculated. the ave is comparable to the proportion of variance explained in factor analysis, with values again ranging from 0 and 1. as explained by bagozzi and yi (1988) and fornell and larcker (1981), 8 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) a latent variable with an ave exceeding 0.5 suggests adequate convergent reliability (cr). the calculations of the ave and cr are presented in table 2. table 2: calculation of the average variance extracted and the convergent reliability ave cr online usage 0.673614 0.859164 cognitive presence 0.553029 0.896283 self esteem 0.542525 0.928344 social presence 0.561755 0.899171 profile 0.573781 0.843248 student learning 0.503428 0.901022 interactivity 0.611696 0.933949 intensity 0.604507 0.883533 identity formation 0.612 0.858 learning experience 0.722 0.886 tables 3 and 4 present the calculations for identity formation and learning experience respectively. table 3: calculation for identity formation calculation for identity formation std loading std loading squared error variance = 1loadings squared cognitive presence 0.849 0.720801 0.279199 social presence 0.838 0.702244 0.297756 self esteem 0.888 0.788544 0.211456 profile 0.488 0.238144 0.761856 total loadings 3.063 2.449733 1.550267 total loadings squared 9.381969 10.932236 ave 0.612 composite reliability 0.858 9 barker & ong a measurement scale for students’ usage of online networks table 4: calculation for learning experience calculation for learning experience std. loading std loading squared error variance = 1loadings squared student learning 0.874 0.763876 0.236124 interactivity 0.889 0.790321 0.209679 intensity 0.782 0.611524 0.388476 total loadings 2.545 2.165721 0.834279 total loadings squared 6.477025 7.311304 ave 0.722 composite reliability 0.886 based on the above, the full measurement model is presented in table 5. table 5: full measurement model 2nd order construct ave cr construct item loadings ave cr online usage aulp 0.692 0.674 0.859 noc 0.936 snu 0.817 identity formation 0.612 0.858 cognitive presence yp_1 0.690 0.553 0.896 yp_2 0.752 yp_3 0.775 yp_4 0.693 yp_5 0.786 yp_6 0.764 yp_7 0.739 self esteem sys_1 0.707 0.543 0.928 sys_10 0.709 sys_11 0.676 sys_2 0.830 sys_3 0.707 sys_4 0.810 10 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) 2nd order construct ave cr construct item loadings ave cr sys_5 0.747 sys_6 0.806 sys_7 0.661 sys_8 0.777 sys_9 0.645 social presence pya_3 0.623 0.562 0.899 pya_4 0.737 pya_5 0.774 pya_6 0.806 pya_7 0.802 pya_8 0.771 pya_9 0.717 profile iys_1 0.734 0.574 0.843 iys_2 0.796 iys_3 0.740 iys_5 0.679 learning experience 0.772 0.886 student learning ole_1 0.661 0.503 0.901 ole_10 0.710 ole_2 0.725 ole_4 0.693 ole_5 0.754 ole_6 0.740 ole_7 0.752 ole_8 0.669 ole_9 0.675 interactivity oci_1 0.750 0.612 0.934 oci_2 0.687 oci_3 0.823 oci_4 0.760 oci_5 0.809 oci_6 0.804 oci_7 0.799 11 barker & ong a measurement scale for students’ usage of online networks 2nd order construct ave cr construct item loadings ave cr oci_8 0.819 oci_9 0.777 intensity iwo_2 0.652 0.605 0.884 iwo_5 0.815 iwo_6 0.823 iwo_7 0.828 iwo_8 0.756 the measurement model achieved convergent validity with measurement loadings > 0.5, average variance extracted > 0.5 and convergent reliability > 0.7. the discriminant validity of every latent variable was assessed to ensure that each latent variable is subjectively independent of other indicators. two measures were used: the fornell and larcker (1981) criterion and the cross-loading criterion (chin, 1998a). according to them, a latent variable should explain the variance of its own indicators better than that of other latent variables. this is to ensure that no multi-collinearity exists amongst the latent variables. in this instance, the ave of a latent variable was higher than the squared correlations between the latent variable and all other variables (chin, 2010; chin, 1998b; fornell & larcker, 1981). table 6 presents the latent variable correlations. 12 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) ta bl e 6: la te nt v ar ia bl e co rr el at io ns (d is cr im in an t v al id ity ) c og ni tiv e p re se nc e id en tit y fo rm at io n in te ns ity in te ra ct iv ity le ar ni ng e xp er ie nc e o nl in e u sa ge p ro fil e s el f e st ee m s oc ia l p re se nc e s tu de nt le ar ni ng c og ni tiv e p re se nc e 0. 74 4 id en tit y fo rm at io n 0. 84 9 0. 78 2 in te ns ity 0. 42 6 0. 47 2 0. 78 2 in te rac tiv ity 0. 54 8 0. 57 5 0. 55 3 0. 88 9 le ar ni ng e xp er ie nc e 0. 59 2 0. 65 1 0. 77 2 0. 78 2 0. 85 0 o nl in e u sa ge 0. 11 3 0. 15 1 0. 14 4 0. 10 2 0. 12 1 0. 82 1 p ro fil e 0. 35 7 0. 48 8 0. 25 1 0. 18 2 0. 27 9 0. 02 3 0. 75 7 s el f e st ee m 0. 61 6 0. 88 8 0. 37 5 0. 45 8 0. 52 6 0. 09 8 0. 35 5 0. 73 7 s oc ia l p re se nc e 0. 66 2 0. 83 8 0. 43 0 0. 53 4 0. 59 8 0. 21 4 0. 31 4 0. 59 9 0. 75 0 s tu de nt l ea rn in g 0. 51 0 0. 59 2 0. 61 2 0. 61 5 0. 87 4 0. 08 0 0. 29 9 0. 48 8 0. 53 9 0. 71 0 n ot e: d ia go na ls ( ita lis ed ) re pr es en t t he s qu ar e ro ot o f t he a v e w hi le o ff di ag on al s re pr es en t t he c or re la tio ns 13 barker & ong a measurement scale for students’ usage of online networks according to the fornell and larcker criterion (1981), the values of the diagonals must be higher than those of the row and column. from this table it is clear that the respondents were able to understand and discriminate between the different variables, as the diagonal correlations are higher than the off-diagonal correlations. table 7 presents the cross loadings of the measurement and latent variables. table 7: cross loadings of measurement and latent variables online usage cognitive presence self esteem social presence profile student learning inter activity inten sity aulp 0.692 0.011 0.059 0.118 -0.017 0.021 0.026 0.003 noc 0.936 0.135 0.109 0.228 0.054 0.086 0.132 0.169 snu 0.817 0.072 0.052 0.137 -0.025 0.063 0.037 0.108 yp_1 0.064 0.690 0.409 0.364 0.279 0.312 0.327 0.254 yp_2 0.113 0.752 0.465 0.519 0.241 0.398 0.451 0.257 yp_3 0.121 0.775 0.500 0.570 0.221 0.378 0.451 0.298 yp_4 0.058 0.693 0.341 0.450 0.201 0.325 0.329 0.292 yp_5 0.044 0.786 0.449 0.544 0.309 0.476 0.463 0.426 yp_6 0.063 0.764 0.463 0.434 0.274 0.328 0.370 0.314 yp_7 0.114 0.739 0.550 0.538 0.325 0.418 0.436 0.364 sys_1 0.001 0.386 0.707 0.380 0.308 0.359 0.282 0.264 sys_10 0.092 0.474 0.709 0.497 0.238 0.398 0.341 0.251 sys_11 0.175 0.383 0.676 0.445 0.268 0.353 0.336 0.210 sys_2 0.058 0.514 0.830 0.515 0.312 0.477 0.398 0.345 sys_3 0.046 0.426 0.707 0.378 0.261 0.348 0.335 0.229 sys_4 0.068 0.529 0.810 0.451 0.306 0.383 0.363 0.329 sys_5 0.088 0.426 0.747 0.423 0.270 0.276 0.264 0.288 sys_6 0.042 0.471 0.806 0.453 0.274 0.420 0.367 0.297 sys_7 0.114 0.396 0.661 0.406 0.146 0.249 0.307 0.183 sys_8 0.079 0.545 0.777 0.527 0.246 0.414 0.433 0.326 sys_9 0.040 0.403 0.645 0.354 0.232 0.226 0.252 0.288 pya_3 0.173 0.323 0.312 0.623 0.248 0.327 0.236 0.256 pya_4 0.155 0.376 0.373 0.737 0.219 0.380 0.343 0.324 pya_5 0.205 0.520 0.528 0.774 0.228 0.460 0.400 0.408 pya_6 0.181 0.533 0.522 0.806 0.220 0.450 0.442 0.381 pya_7 0.179 0.571 0.518 0.802 0.252 0.396 0.437 0.262 pya_8 0.118 0.541 0.404 0.771 0.259 0.394 0.474 0.340 pya_9 0.114 0.558 0.442 0.717 0.231 0.408 0.429 0.276 14 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) online usage cognitive presence self esteem social presence profile student learning inter activity inten sity iys_1 0.057 0.344 0.326 0.336 0.734 0.270 0.171 0.248 iys_2 -0.051 0.234 0.203 0.140 0.796 0.148 0.081 0.168 iys_3 -0.013 0.209 0.218 0.226 0.740 0.214 0.140 0.178 iys_5 0.053 0.260 0.294 0.205 0.758 0.246 0.139 0.144 ole_1 0.012 0.481 0.426 0.442 0.329 0.661 0.424 0.389 ole_10 0.007 0.292 0.219 0.289 0.155 0.710 0.440 0.422 ole_2 0.086 0.409 0.456 0.399 0.292 0.725 0.429 0.443 ole_4 0.180 0.355 0.363 0.444 0.176 0.693 0.420 0.472 ole_5 0.120 0.331 0.366 0.353 0.182 0.754 0.436 0.455 ole_6 -0.048 0.295 0.280 0.297 0.157 0.740 0.472 0.417 ole_7 -0.020 0.337 0.243 0.393 0.214 0.752 0.481 0.514 ole_8 0.085 0.383 0.426 0.382 0.218 0.669 0.387 0.371 ole_9 0.099 0.390 0.363 0.458 0.197 0.675 0.433 0.414 oci_1 0.081 0.474 0.377 0.450 0.191 0.534 0.750 0.432 oci_2 -0.004 0.349 0.299 0.323 0.108 0.429 0.687 0.294 oci_3 0.141 0.500 0.402 0.472 0.171 0.479 0.823 0.456 oci_4 0.141 0.452 0.409 0.420 0.096 0.439 0.760 0.414 oci_5 0.087 0.458 0.424 0.473 0.183 0.459 0.809 0.400 oci_6 0.069 0.425 0.393 0.392 0.164 0.474 0.804 0.494 oci_7 0.074 0.386 0.270 0.398 0.060 0.451 0.799 0.403 oci_8 0.063 0.405 0.332 0.374 0.096 0.535 0.819 0.489 oci_9 0.053 0.401 0.315 0.451 0.203 0.520 0.777 0.483 iwo_2 0.189 0.311 0.270 0.310 0.149 0.365 0.396 0.652 iwo_5 0.143 0.368 0.317 0.392 0.195 0.495 0.461 0.815 iwo_6 0.012 0.356 0.344 0.329 0.208 0.558 0.462 0.823 iwo_7 0.096 0.331 0.254 0.322 0.190 0.467 0.450 0.828 iwo_8 0.147 0.286 0.267 0.317 0.230 0.477 0.373 0.756 according to chin (2010), the loadings of an indicator on its assigned latent variable should be higher than its loadings on all other latent variables. table 7 shows the discriminant validity and convergent validity of latent variables used in this study. to ensure discriminant validity, bold loadings should be higher than all other loadings within the same row, whereas convergent validity is achieved when bold loadings are higher than all other loadings within the same column. convergent reliability is also achieved when ave exceeds 0.5 (bagozzi & yi, 1988; fornell & larcker, 1981). from table 7 it is clear that the cross loadings of the measurement indicators are the highest on the prescribed latent variables and therefore validity and reliability have been achieved. 15 barker & ong a measurement scale for students’ usage of online networks 5.2.3 results of open­ended questions from the five open-ended questions, interesting results were obtained which not only supported existing results in the literature but also confirmed new facts. firstly, “what students like about the usage of online networks for learning purpose” included aspects like easy, fast and convenient; you can create and share information; you can obtain new information; expands thinking abilities/creative ideas; allows for instant replies/immediacy/instantaneous; encourages interactions; accessible; visual; can ask questions socially; obtain knowledge and flexibility. for example, a number of students said, “it is easier to upload and share information and it is efficient and convenient”. secondly, “what students dislike about the usage of online networks for learning purposes” included reasons such as delayed feedback; unreliable/ false information; lack of privacy; emotionless; fear of spam/strangers/stalkers; spreading of rumours; backstabbing; not conclusive; annoying information; distractions (videos, games, youtube); and information overload. one example is a student saying, “people tend to rely on one person to find and share information”. thirdly, the advantages of using online networks were pointed out to be up-to-date information; improved socialisation skills; choose and make friends; convenience; don’t feel lonely and bored; great for introverts; relationship building; bonding; anonymity; networking; expand knowledge and the reach and richness of the online networks. one example is a student saying, “you don’t have to meet in person, so it is great for introverts who can meet new people from around the world”, which is interestingly contradictory to the results of chou and liu (2005), which indicate that extroverts are more likely to experience benefits from their internet use than introverts. fourthly, the disadvantages mentioned were that it is time consuming; less privacy; disconnection between members; no trust in people because of miscommunication/fake news; bad comments about others/gossip; identity theft/crime/fraud; sometimes friends don’t show their true identity/have false identities; misuse of freedom of speech; deception through online information; addictiveness; people become anti-social and cyber bullying. for example, one student said, “you may not know the people you speak to and they may not be what they appear online because they don’t always show their true identity”. when asked whether they had any other comments, students in general responded that online networks are useful in promoting education to the masses; they help them tremendously in learning. one student said, “overall i love to use online networks for learning purposes”, while another stated, “i am going online for learning purposes because it is really informative and people have loads of ideas”. everyone should use online networks more; and it is a good thing. for example, one student said, “online networks encourage learning and increase the opportunity to enhance the learning experience”. 6. discussion based on the results of the measurement model, it can be deduced that that students and educators should pay attention to three main aspects when using online networks for learning purposes. firstly, take cognisance of students’ identity formation, including their profiles and usage patterns. do this to ensure that effective communication takes place between the student and lecturer in order to enhance the knowledge creation and the sharing process that takes place through the teaching or training of students, with the ultimate aim of ensuring that a comprehensive knowledge system of a specific domain or subject is established. secondly, students should pay attention to their online identity formation and usage patterns to ensure 16 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) that they behave ethically and in line with the required values of the institution. thirdly, although interactivity and intensity of usage might benefit students’ learning experience, the results of this study suggest that ‘being active online’ should not simply be measured by the number of messages posted on online networks or the frequency of online responses or feedback. rather, it should be measured by the learning experience that takes place through that interactivity and intensity of usage. 7. limitations and future research the main limitation of this study is that the sample population consisted of randomly selected graduate students from different domains at one university only; hence, the results cannot be generalised. access to the internet, the culture of the university and students’ creativity requirements might also differ at other universities. despite these limitations, it is argued that this paper does contribute at an academic level through the exploration of the key constructs and sub-constructs to present a theoretical conceptual framework and to propose a measurement and structural model, which proved to be reliable and valid. the next step is to refine the measurement instrument to focus more on concepts with strong correlations. future research will then be conducted at other universities. this research is seen as a good starting point for further research because it is posited that the findings of this study made an important contribution in that theoretical clarification is offered of the key constructs. 8. conclusions in an effort to expand on the knowledge of students’ usage of online networks for identity formation and the learning experience, this study investigated the triadic relationship among these constructs. the study revealed the critical role that online networks can play in shaping the identity formation and learning experience of students. in particular, students can benefit from online networks and students are more likely to use online networks if the online networks will enhance the students’ identity formation and learning experience. a review of existing literature on online networks, which became a new phenomenon in human communication, interaction and the learning experience, illustrated the need for a new and/or improved measuring scale. the results of the new measurement model confirmed a link between the usage of the internet for learning purposes (students were more open for information sharing in order to build a sense of belonging, gain group cohesion, encourage participation, obtain feedback, etc.) and identity formation (they tried to increase their self-confidence and selfesteem by establishing a social and cognitive presence through their online profiles and develop positive attitudes, etc.). the students realise the importance of interactivity and intensity in online networks, especially for learning purposes (many adapted their identity to be accepted by the in-groups, managed information to enhance student learning, took responsibility, networked, collaborated, etc.). to conclude, given the scarcity of research on this new and relatively under-explored area, this study can be seen as an important starting point for future research to clarify and consider the wider implications of identity formation and the learning experience in online networks in theory and in practice. the former may evoke enhancements of research in general and the latter may take place across different areas and sectors. while this article outlined some of the basic concepts and approaches, much remains to be done and several options exist to further extend this initial study. the importance of this is borne out by the following quote from tang and ding (2014: 464): 17 barker & ong a measurement scale for students’ usage of online networks the internet is becoming an important information or knowledge source and a widely used communication platform for college students. with the development of internet technology, virtual interactions among professional persons are being increased quickly, [...] [leading] to the emergence of a virtual networked knowledge society. acknowledgement this work was partially supported by the national research foundation of south africa. bibliography attrill, a. & jalil, r. 2011. revealing only the superficial me: exploring categorical selfdisclosure online. computers in human behavior, 27, 1634–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. chb.2011.02.001 bagozzi, r.p. & yi, y. 1988. on the evaluation of structural equation models. journal of the academy of marketing science, 16(1), 74–94. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf02723327 bargh, j.a. & mckenna, k.y. 2004. the internet and social life. annu. rev. psychol., 55, 573–90. http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.55.090902.141922 barker, r. 2011. managing online crisis 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& strelitz, l. 2014. exploring patterns of facebook usage, social capital, loneliness and well-being among a diverse south african student sample. communicare, 33(1), 57–72. perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 42 the need for place-based education in south african schools: the case of greenfields primary krystle ontong lesley le grange the discourses of accountability and global economic competitiveness have impacted negatively on the quality of education in schools worldwide. focused attention on the social and ecological places that people inhabit has been overshadowed by education’s support for individualistic and nationalistic competition in the global economy. south african schools are not exempt from this. despite these dominant realities, we argue that place-based education (pbe) is a transformative educational approach for counteracting this tendency. moreover, we contend that pbe is critical to the field of environmental education – not only to encourage environmental conservation ethic among learners, but also to make them aware of the deeper social, ecological and political forces that are embedded in places. such consciousness can only be achieved, however, if teachers are aware of their learners’ sense of place. in this article, we discuss the case of greenfields primary, a school situated in an eco-village outside stellenbosch, south africa. twelve learners’ sense of place was investigated. an attempt was also made to determine what two social sciences teachers’ understanding of the concept ‘place’ was, the extent to which they practised ‘a pedagogy of place’, and the influence that the eco-village had on their teaching approach. keywords: environmental education, place-based education, sense of place, striated space, smooth space, lines of flight introduction although place-based education (pbe) is not a new phenomenon and has been approached from the perspective of various disciplines such as, among others, geography, sociology and psychology, its development in the field of environmental krystle ontong department of curriculum studies, stellenbosch university e-mail: krystle@sun.ac.za tel: +27 833 524 289 (c) lesley le grange department of curriculum studies, stellenbosch university e-mail: llg@sun.ac.za tel: 021 808 2645 the need for place-based education in south african schools: the case of greenfields primary krystle ontong & lesley le grange 43 education (ee) has remained limited. knapp (2005) points out that the term appeared only recently in educational literature and is concerned with (re)connecting participants to the land and providing quality experiences in local settings. smith (2002) asserts that pbe is a developing field of practice that aims to ground learning in local phenomena and learners’ lived experiences. we argue that pbe (a pedagogy of place1) is particularly crucial in a south african context and can serve as a transformative educational tool to address the spatial and political inequalities that are legacies of apartheid – as will be shown in the case of greenfields primary. however, for pbe to be implemented meaningfully, it is essential for teachers to first be aware of their learners’ sense of place. in reflecting on the case of greenfields primary school, we divide the article into four sections. first, we will discuss the notions of pbe, place and sense of place. this will be followed by a discussion of the case study and a presentation of its findings. thirdly, we will discuss recent political and spatial challenges still faced in a democratic south africa. lastly, we conclude with the educational implications of this case study and discuss possibilities for overcoming some of the challenges highlighted by the case. place-based education, place and sense of place until recently, research on the feelings and connections that people develop toward the places where they are born and raised, and the function that these places fulfil in their lives, has been neglected in education. pbe could be considered an educational response to address this concern. according to ardoin (2006), pbe originated from an emotional plea by educators to reconnect to the land, to become rooted and to care for places. she further points out that the notion of place is very seldom approached as a multidimensional and holistic concept. in order for pbe to be practised meaningfully, it might be necessary for teachers first to expand their understanding of the concept of place and, secondly, to become aware of their learners’ sense of place. the former would imply the reconceptualisation of the notion of ‘place’ to create a broader understanding that moves beyond viewing place only in technical terms which reduce it to coordinates on a map (such as is mainly the case in school geography in south africa). recent studies in this emerging area are providing evidence of the cultivation of a broader understanding of place among learners. for example, athman and monroe (2004) report on the implementation of a pbe programme in 11 high schools across florida (usa), in which 400 students in grades 9 and 12 participated. the research focused on the effects of place-based learning on students’ motivation and critical thinking skills. in addition to conducting interviews with selected students, they examined student performance on three norm-referenced tests, including: • achievement motivation inventory; • cornell critical thinking test, and perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 44 • california measure of mental motivation. they found that scores were significantly raised in all three areas and that critical skills, student voice and empowerment, and connection to community improved. furthermore, students also reported that they were motivated by real-life issues and problems (athman & monroe, 2004). other empirical studies of a more qualitative nature regarding the implementation of pbe have also been reported in recent years (see henness, 2001; powers, 2004). nevertheless, our further exploration of pbe first requires some theoretical engagement with the concept of ‘place’. place gruenewald (2003a) suggests that the concept of ‘place’ needs to be understood in broader terms and provides a multidisciplinary analysis of the term. he introduces five dimensions of place that can shape the development of pbe: the perceptual; the sociological; the ideological; the political, and the ecological (gruenewald, 2003a: 619). these dimensions could assist in expanding teachers’ perception of place. for the purpose of this article, we shall not elaborate on each of these dimensions. however, we shall make specific reference to the political dimension (political space) in discussing events (such as the farmworkers’ strike in south africa) that are relevant to the places discussed in this case study. creswell (2004), however, cautions that, even though the concept of ‘place’ could be deemed a meaningful theoretical terrain, it remains a difficult term to conceptualise because of its multiple meanings in various contexts. in order to distinguish the technical meaning of ‘place’ from its daily usage, creswell (2004) provides three fundamental aspects that might be helpful: area, locality, and sense of place. we shall show that the latter (sense of place) is fundamental to practising pbe productively and shall elaborate on this notion later in the article. but let us now turn to a discussion on pbe by exploring its association with discourses of accountability. place-based education and the discourses of accountability knapp (2005: 278) defines pbe as follows: “it is a way to ‘re-member’ participants who feel dismembered from the physical context to their immediate worlds and for them to ‘remember’ earlier positive contacts with nature.” furthermore, woodhouse and knapp (2000) describe various characteristics of a pedagogy of place: it originates from the specific attributes of a place; it is inherently multidisciplinary; it is inherently experiential; it reflects an educational philosophy that exceeds “learning to earn”, and it connects place with the self and the community. according to gruenewald (2003a), place-based pedagogies are needed so that the education of citizens might have some direct influence on the wellbeing of the social and ecological places that people inhabit. gruenewald (2003b) further mentions that pbe serves as a response the need for place-based education in south african schools: the case of greenfields primary krystle ontong & lesley le grange 45 against prevailing educational policies of standards and testing. he adds that the discourse of accountability fails to recognise the mediating role that schools play in the production of space (social context) and in the education of place-makers (or citizens) (gruenewald, 2003a). the neglect of pbe and an over-emphasis on the discourses of accountability are also not unfamiliar in south african schools. for example, this over-emphasis on accountability discourses can be observed in the new version of the national curriculum statement (ncs) in south africa, namely the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps), which rigidly manages the time of the teacher by prescribing exactly how much time should be spent on certain content, how many assignments need to be assessed, and what exactly it is that should be assessed, among other things. in south africa, there is a growing emphasis on standards and testing, which not only leads to an increase in administrative work for the teacher, but is also in itself time-consuming. moreover, in the general education and training band (get), annual assessments take place in grades 1-9 in certain provinces. the state also mandates accountability in the form of the annual national assessments (also known as the anas), which were first implemented in 2010 to measure the progression of the literacy and mathematical skills of learners in grades 1-6 and 9, in order to determine on which level they are performing. grades 3, 6 and 9 are regarded as terminal points in each phase. grades 7 and 8 do not participate in the anas, but were included in 2014 as a pilot project (department of basic education, 2014). the anas serve as standardised tests to assess and determine whether learners require extra assistance and to ensure that each student in every school will develop the appropriate language and mathematics skills for the specific grade. teachers can then use these results to improve their lesson plans. the upshot of this is that the potential for implementing pbe is undermined by the discourse of both accountability and economic competitiveness (gruenewald, 2003b). the over-emphasis on these discourses highlights the need for change in order to counteract such dominant pedagogies. in this instance, pbe could serve as a possible avenue for schools to address the dominance of accountability regimes. as mentioned earlier, for pbe to be practised productively, it is crucial that teachers first expand their understanding of the concept of ‘place’ and, secondly, become more aware of their learners’ sense of place. if teachers were to understand the multidimensional nature of ‘place’ and become aware of the emotional connections that learners have with the places they inhabit, then teachers could incorporate conversations on these connections in their classrooms, and this could facilitate practising a pedagogy of place. sense of place a sense of place is critical in developing an emotional connection with the land and establishing an environmentally conscious and responsible citizenry. however, sense perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 46 of place is not something that we consider on a daily basis. orr (1992: 126) describes this omission as “the ease with which we miss the immediate and mundane”. resor (2010) argues that a sense of place is the most important and essential concept that needs to be understood when pbe and its place in social studies are being evaluated. however, this does not reduce the complexity of this phenomenon. a sense of place includes people’s psychological being, social community, cultural symbols and biophysical, political and economic systems. the act of acknowledging the interrelationship between these dimensions leads to the formation of an understanding of a sense of place as a multidimensional and integrated concept (resor, 2010). pbe, therefore, involves teachers being aware of the uniqueness of each student’s connections that they have to the places they inhabit. against this background, we discuss the case of greenfields primary. the case of greenfields primary school greenfields primary school2 is situated in the municipal district of stellenbosch. it is located approximately 50 km from cape town. stellenbosch is a university town bordered by large tracts of vineyards. it is surrounded by the helderberg, simonsig and stellenbosch mountains and is also the historical commercial centre point of rich white owners of agricultural land and businesses, dominated by the winemaking industry. black people (all formerly oppressed) not only suffered from the exclusion of economic ownership in this region since the 1600s, but also from poor housing, schooling, and higher education. relations between white farmers and farm labourers were, for many years, characterised by the so-called “dop system” (which entailed remuneration for labour in the form of alcohol), resulting in a range of social scars and related health problems such as alcoholism and foetal alcohol syndrome. the majority of children reported on in this study are those of farm labourers. the context of greenfields primary school greenfields primary school is a small public coeducational school offering classes from grades r to 8. the school had 281 learners and eleven staff members in 2012, when the study was conducted. the school is situated in an eco-village just outside stellenbosch.3 the lynedoch eco-village is the first ecologically designed socially mixed intentional community in south africa (swilling & annecke, 2006). the village operates on the following principles: it must be a mixed community organised around a child-centred learning precinct; it should strive to be a working example of a liveable ecologically designed urban system, and it will be a financially and economically viable community that will not require external funding to sustain itself (swilling & annecke, 2006: 315). based on these characteristics, one might view the eco-village as a smooth space.4 in their book a thousand plateaus, deleuze and guattari (1987) introduce the ideas the need for place-based education in south african schools: the case of greenfields primary krystle ontong & lesley le grange 47 of smooth and striated space to explain and analyse the different energy flows in society. a general feature of these two notions is their emphasis on the importance of the relationships we have with space and the earth as a whole. smooth space creates opportunities for all “becomings” to occur. we shall elaborate more on the notions of smooth and striated space at a later stage. returning to the school itself, according to the current principal, there is uncertainty regarding the age of the school, but he mentioned that it was approximately 60 or more years old. he further described the school as a rural, non-fee-paying school5 and clarified that greenfields is not a farm school. the school serves learners from 23 surrounding farms, and learners commute to school by public transport such as busses. the inhabitants of the eco-village range from professors and elite businessmen to working-class people – mostly farm labourers. the integration of poor and rich is conspicuous in this setting, although this is not evident in the school itself, as learners who attend it are the children of pre-dominantly black farm workers. some of these learners live in the eco-village itself, although the majority of the learners live on the nearby wine farms. many of the parents of the learners who live outside the ecovillage are impoverished farm workers. some of the learners live as far as 40 km from the school. despite the unfavourable conditions of growing up and living on a farm as children of farm labourers, they were exposed to environments (other than the monocultures produced on farms), in which they could experience nature first hand. background to the methodology used in the case study the empirical component of the study was framed within the interpretive paradigm and the key question that it focused on was an understanding of learners’ sense of place as well as the extent to which teachers practised a pedagogy of place. data-collection methods qualitative interviews were conducted with two teachers in the social sciences learning area for grades 6 and 8. focus groups as well as individual interviews were also conducted with learners. the sample the sample consisted of 12 learners (six of whom stayed in the eco-village and six of whom stayed on neighbouring farms) attending the school in order to understand their sense of place and to investigate the differences and similarities regarding the sense of place between these two groups. the assumption was made that the context of the school was more conducive for cultivating a pedagogy of place as perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 48 opposed to a school that is not located in an eco-village. two teachers also formed part of the sample. data-analysis methods data were analysed according to the constant comparative method, using coding as a means to group and re-group data into meaningful themes. findings of the study the findings of the study will highlight two aspects: learners’ sense of place, and the extent to which teachers practise a pedagogy of place. learners’ sense of place after interviewing the grade 6 and 8 learners, three similarities between these groups were evident in their responses to questions, namely an appreciation of the aesthetic environment; a strong attachment to the places where they live, and the nurturing of social relationships with neighbours. learners living in the eco-village described positive experiences about the place where they lived. for example, one learner mentioned the following: “we do swap shop where we try to keep the environment clean on a daily basis by picking up papers and then we get points. and depending on these points they [the owners] supply our needs in the form of toiletries and other school essentials”.6 however, some learners of the group living outside the eco-village experienced racism from the owners of the farms, which made them feel more negative about the places where they lived. three of the six learners complained that their parents had to work long hours for minimum wages and that the owners had a disrespectful manner of talking to them and did not even greet them. one student had the following to say when asked what she found special about the place where she lived: there is nothing special about my place, because the people have to work hard for little money and they come home late. my mum and dad constantly work and they work hard, but the farm owners pay them next to nothing. they don’t even greet… the farmer’s wife is so unfriendly and many people are afraid of them, because they are racist… this is why i just want to get out of that place. responses such as these indicate that the sense of place of some of the learners (staying outside the eco-village) evoked negative emotions about the place(s) where they lived. it is the negative experiences of learners and their families of the places they inhabit that are of particular interest for this article. issues such as racism can be regarded as striating forces, which deleuze and guattari (1987) refer to and which we shall return to later in the article. although learners recognised the aesthetic beauty of the environment, some did not experience an attachment to the places where they lived because of their the need for place-based education in south african schools: the case of greenfields primary krystle ontong & lesley le grange 49 experiences of racism. this is consistent with findings of research by jack (2010), who mentions that ideal places do not always produce positive place attachment, especially when these places are examples of the location of unhappy social relationships or life experiences. although these farms could be regarded as ideal in terms of the aesthetic environment, the ‘unhappy social relationship’ that existed between employer and employee impeded or weakened the attachment of these learners to their places. some of them even aspired to live in places such as johannesburg and england. when a student was asked where she would want to live one day, she mentioned: “i would like to live in somerset west [an affluent suburb of cape town] in a big house on the beachfront, because it is beautiful and nice there, just as long as there are no racist farmers compared to where i’m living now” (translated from afrikaans). although learners were aware of the racism which they experienced on the farms, they tended to be mostly unaware of the larger political and economic forces influencing their experiences, based on the interviews conducted with them. this served as an indication that social sciences teachers at the school might not be addressing issues such as how power and politics are embedded in places, even though this is a crucial dimension to touch on – especially in the context in which they were teaching and given the ideal setting to introduce pbe. with this in mind, we next discuss the extent to which teachers implemented a pedagogy of place. the extent to which teachers practice a pedagogy of place based on the interviews with the teachers, it was evident that their dominant understanding of the concept of place was technical and one-dimensional. this was noted in the way in which they defined the term ‘place’, which reduced the notion to coordinates on a grid/map. one teacher mentioned: “we should go back to old lesson plans in geography. it won’t help if i ask a learner to point out where america is on a map and he can’t show me where america is … it also won’t help if i do spatial orientation and the learner has no idea where the places are.” this limited view of place that the teachers held could be the result of various factors such as the technical understanding of place that is still dominant in school geography, a lack of exposure to pbe during teacher education sessions and workshops, national curriculum policy statements that do not adequately emphasise a broader understanding of place, and teachers’ resistance to change and to adopting new methodological approaches. the limited understanding of place among the two teachers might explain why they did not practise a pedagogy of place. in other words, insufficient knowledge of place as a multidimensional construct could also explain why learners were unaware of the political and power forces that were embedded in the places where they lived. but how might we understand this particular case in a broader context of south africa – its history and current challenges. we turn to such an interpretation next. perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 50 an interpretation a south african context: the division of land (space) in south africa during the apartheid era to frame our interpretation, we shall first draw on the work of the feminist theorist, bell hooks, who writes in her book, feminist theory: from margin to center (1984: 9) about the pain and possibility of marginalisation: to be in the margin is to be part of the whole but outside the main body. as black americans living in a small kentucky town, the railroad tracks were a daily reminder of our marginality. across those tracks were paved streets, stores we could not enter, restaurants we could not eat in, and people we could not look directly in the face. … we could enter that world, but we could not live there. we had always to return to the margin, to cross the tracks to shacks and abandoned houses on the edge of town. … there were laws to ensure our return. not to return was to risk being punished. the marginal space which hooks refers to can be linked to the notion of striated space. according to deleuze and guattari (1987: 474), we experience the world as a continuum of striated and smooth spaces: “[s]mooth space is constantly being translated, transversed into striated space; striated space is constantly being reversed, returned to smooth space”. striated spaces are “hierarchical, rule-intensive, strictly bounded and confining, whereas smooth spaces are open and dynamic, and allow for transformation to occur” (tamboukou, 2008: 360). deleuze and guattari (1987: 486) further claim that all progress occurs through and in striated space, but that all becoming occurs in smooth space. smooth and striated spaces are consequently in constant interchange with each other. therefore, it is more appropriate to refer to smoothing and striating forces (bonta & protevi, 2004: 144). in the case of greenfields, the school and the eco-village itself might be regarded as smooth spaces, although the challenges such as insufficient knowledge on pbe, the increased load in administrative work, the poverty of the learners in their class, and the unforeseen farm worker strikes (of the past few years) that teachers confront striates these spaces, hence closing opportunities for practising a pedagogy of place. other possible striating forces influencing these smooth spaces might be the rigid national curriculum statement policies such as caps, the school itself, and the increased emphasis on accountability. before we elaborate on these points, we shall discuss the striated spaces which black south-africans experienced during apartheid and point out the relevance of this to the greenfields study. the political space described by hooks (1990) is not unknown in south africa. the natives land act, no. 27 of 1913 prohibited africans from buying, hiring or selling land in 93% of south africa and confined them to ownership of only 7% (south african history online, 2013). despite being greater in number, africans were denied access to land, which they owned or had been leasing from white famers. the process of dispossession culminated during the apartheid years, accompanied by the the need for place-based education in south african schools: the case of greenfields primary krystle ontong & lesley le grange 51 forced removal of numerous black communities7 that uprooted millions of people from their ancestral lands, often with deliberate cruelty and without compensation. furthermore, the group areas act, no. 41 of 1950, the second key act to consolidate the apartheid regime, applied a crude template of race where the ultimate ownership of land was primarily determined by skin colour (morris, 2012). the main purpose of this act was to mark existing neighbourhoods in towns and cities as white – where many black and coloured communities had already been living for centuries. this act succeeded in fragmenting lives and in removing entire communities from their historical places of living and working as well as from the social values which supplemented their lives there (morris, 2007, 2012; ross, 1999; welsh, 2009). by doing this, black and white ideals could be kept separate and white survival would not be threatened by black political and economic aspirations. this led to the disintegration of many families, as well as an increase in poverty and hopelessness. however, after the advent of democratic rule in 1994, the newly elected anc-led government was faced with the task of dealing with a legacy of centuries of land dispossession. a ‘willing buyer willing seller’ policy was adopted as the preferred method of land reform. the government intended to redistribute 30% of land to black people by 2014 (south african history online, 2013). in the context of greenfields, the disparity of space and the legacy of the above acts are still evident 21 years after apartheid was officially abolished. the margin to which hooks (1984) refers can be related to, and is reflected by the neighbouring farms outside stellenbosch, where the learners described in this study live and their parents work. the majority of these parents were themselves deprived of basic quality education under apartheid and instead schooled to do hard labour or domestic chores. the frustration at the poor conditions under which farm labourers work reached a tipping point in 2012 and led to widespread strikes in the western cape province. briefly, in october/november 2012, the western cape province in south africa witnessed several protests among farmworkers close to de doorns in the boland region. these workers protested against a daily wage ranging between r69-r75 and demanded an increase to r150 per day. many of the protesters were seasonal workers on farms who were only employed for one season and remained unemployed for the remainder of the year.8 eventually, after several rounds of negotiation, an agreement of a minimum wage of r105 per day for farmworkers was reached in 2013. during these strikes, protesters took dramatic action by burning down vineyards, crops and farmlands, and in the process destroying the environment in extreme ways. some of the parents of the learners mentioned in this study were also involved in the strikes, protesting for a raise in wages. occurrences such as these are crucial and present opportunities for inclusion in classroom discussions within a pbe framework. even though pbe allows sufficient opportunity for addressing issues such as strikes, perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 52 teachers at the school did not integrate these events into their lessons or pedagogies, although they impacted directly on the lives of some of the learners in their classes. in the interviews conducted with the teachers, it became evident that they were mainly unaware of pbe and even where they were familiar with some aspects thereof, obstacles such as the discourse of accountability limited them from introducing it to their learners. they explained that national policies such as caps, which is prescriptive, rigidly manages their time and classroom practices, and restricted them in many ways. as a consequence, the location of the school (eco-village) did not have any significant impact on practising a pedagogy of place. one might thus conclude that the location of this school had little influence on whether pbe was practised. this indicates that the real problem might lie in the hierarchical/organisational structuring of schools and the national curriculum, which is too prescriptive (ontong, 2013). with this in mind, one could pose the following question: how can education respond in more critical and powerful ways to address these social, ecological and political challenges? we aver that pbe could serve as a useful tool in addressing and potentially ameliorating these challenges. educational implications of greenfields primary: exploring possibilities for overcoming some challenges for sobel (1996:10), the importance of pbe is “that children have an opportunity to bond with the natural world, to learn to love it, before being asked to heal its wounds”. leopold (1949: 223) reflects on the importance of education for this type of connection with the land when he writes: it is inconceivable to me that an ethical relationship to land can exist without love, respect, and admiration for the land, and a high regard for its value … the most serious obstacle impeding the evolution of a land ethic is the fact that our educational and economic system is headed away from, rather than toward, an intense consciousness of land. the question at hand is: how might teachers educate for the development of such an emotional (re)connection to, and love for the land? the first and necessary step would be to introduce pre-service teachers as well as in-service teachers to pbe through workshops and professional development programmes (pdps). this implies that curriculum content might need to be revised and adjusted with a broadened focus on place and pbe. even though geography as a discipline acknowledges and emphasises the multidimensionality of the notion of place, the intended curriculum for school geography in south africa still mainly focuses on the technical dimension of place. although developing a technical understanding of place is important in geography education, pbe also requires the development of learners’ sense of place. this implies that school geography might also need to be reconceptualised so that it focuses on all the dimensions of place, not only its technical dimension (coordinates on a map), as reflected in teachers’ understanding in the greenfields study. however, the need for place-based education in south african schools: the case of greenfields primary krystle ontong & lesley le grange 53 it is not always possible for national policies to be adjusted within short timeframes, hence interventions have to take place at a micro level. this implies a need for professional school-based development programmes for teachers so as to extend their notion of place. following this, teachers could seek possibilities within the curriculum itself on how to incorporate pbe. we know that curriculum reform does not necessarily lead to pedagogical change and modifications. this is why teachers are key role players in educational change and, in this instance, their sense of place and knowledge of pbe is essential for its implementation. an extended notion of place among teachers would enable them to peruse the same curriculum content, but now through the new lens of pbe. though much more elaboration and adjustments are needed, caps does provide some opportunities for pbe across different subjects. for example, in english home language for grades 7-9, learners are expected to write a poetry text based on observations and experiences of human beings, nature and social issues (dbe, 2011a: 47). in the social sciences, both history and geography also provide opportunities for pbe. in history, for example, grades 7-9 teachers are expected to cover content such as, among others, the colonisation of the cape in the 17th and 18th centuries; the industrial revolution in britain and southern africa from 1860, and world war ii (1939-1945) (dbe, 2011b: 17). in the same phase, in the geography section, the main themes include natural resources and conservation in south africa; settlements; resource use, and sustainability (dbe, 2011b: 18). these themes are all linked to the environment and are points along which pbe lines can be developed. furthermore, pbe might still not get the required recognition it deserves if the hierarchical organisation of schools and the effects it has on teachers are not revisited. a possibility of addressing these challenges is to scrutinise the ‘potential lines of flight’ (deleuze & guattari, 1987). in their work, deleuze and guattari introduce the central concepts of “deterritorialization” and “reterritorialization”. according to ringrose (2011), territorialisation refers to energy being captured and striated in specific space/time contexts. deterritorialization occurs when energy might escape or temporarily move outside normative strata. reterritorialisation describes the processes and recuperation of those ruptures. “lines of flight” can be regarded as deterritorialisations that never stop, but rather produce multiple “rhizomatic connections” (deleuze & guattari, 1987: 15). tamboukou (2008: 360) mentions that “we constantly move between deterritorialization – freeing ourselves from the restrictions and boundaries of controlled, striated spaces – and reterritorialization – repositioning ourselves within new regimes of striated spaces”. lines of flight are thus “becomings”, “tiny connections” and “movements” (beddoes, 1996). recognising the potential “lines of flight” requires teachers to observe that which is already there and to ask themselves how they can transform “the already existing” into lines of flight. in the case mentioned in this article, the school is located in an eco-village, which, in itself, is conducive not only to ecological education, but also to pbe. this can be considered a line of flight. if teachers become more aware of their perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 54 learners’ sense of place, such consciousness can itself serve as a line of flight. being aware of the appreciation of the aesthetic environment that these learners have for places they inhabit could be one way in which the teacher might develop this love for, and connection to the land to which leopold refers. another possibility in addressing these challenges could be to practise a critical pedagogy of place. gruenewald (2003b) suggests that a pedagogy of place should always be critical. he claims that a critical pedagogy of place is a response to educational reform policies and practices that disregard places. as in this case study, where some learners experienced racism on farms, and a curriculum that is restrictive in addressing such concerns, it would be necessary to practise a critical pedagogy of place. such a pedagogy would enable both teachers and learners to reflect on how power works through the places they inhabit and, by eventually acting on these powers, would change the relationship they have to the places. this could be applied, should teachers integrate actual events such as the farmworker protests (the political dimension of place) into their pedagogies. conclusion we conclude this article by suggesting that teachers could empower themselves in understanding the multidimensionality of the concept of ‘place’ and pbe, and that they should become more aware of their learners’ sense of place. this would open up space for the implementation of a pedagogy of place through recognising possible ‘lines of flight’ and adopting a critical pedagogy of place. however, practising a pedagogy of place might be challenging for teachers if the pressures of accountability, the hierarchical organisation of schools and the lack of emphasis on pbe in the formal curriculum remain unattended to. the case discussed in this article, together with the political and spatial challenges that south africa faces, demonstrates the need for, and importance of pbe as a potential tool for meeting these challenges through education. furthermore, regardless of what the potential of pbe in contemporary south africa might be, the exploration of the perceptual, cultural, ecological and political dimensions of places remains fertile ground for investigations into educational research, theory and practice. gruenewald (2003b: 464) neatly captures the point: “the question is worth asking: without focused attention to places, what will become of them – and us?” endnotes the terms ‘place-based education’ and ‘a pedagogy of place’ are used interchangeably. in order to protect the anonymity of the school, we have used the pseudonym greenfields primary. the notion of an eco-village is a fairly new one with promising ideals; however, its role in promoting environmental and social justice concerns has yet to be determined. in reality, spaces are never simply smooth or striated. the need for place-based education in south african schools: the case of greenfields primary krystle ontong & lesley le grange 55 in south africa, non-fee-paying schools refers to public schools where learners do not have to pay school fees. this is determined by the government based on factors such as the location of the school, the income of parents, total staff members and learners. these schools get financial support from the government. all quotes of teachers have been translated from afrikaans. black communities refers to those classified during apartheid as africans, coloureds and indians. www.boland.touchlab.co.za/2013 references ardoin nm 2006. toward an interdisciplinary understanding of place: lessons for environmental education. canadian journal of environmental education, 11: 112-126. athman j & monroe m 2004. the effects of environment-based education on students’ achievement motivation and the effect of environment-based education on students’ critical thinking skills and disposition toward critical thinking. journal of interpretation research, 9: 9-25. beddoes dj 1996. breeding demons: a critical enquiry into the relationship between kant and deleuze with specific reference to women. phd dissertation. retrieved on 10 january 2013 from http://www.cinestatic.com/ trans-mat/beddoes/bd6s4.htm. bonta m & protevi j 2004. deleuze and geophilosophy. a guide and glossary. edinburgh: 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perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 56 gruenewald da 2003a. foundations of place: a multidisciplinary framework for place-conscious education. american educational research journal, 40: 619654. gruenewald da 2003b. the best of both worlds: a critical pedagogy of place. american educational research association, 4: 3-12. henness s 2001. k~12 service-learning: a strategy for rural community renewal and revitalization. corporation for national service. retrieved on 4 august 2015 from http://www.nationalservlce.org/jobs/fellowships/pdfs/hennessbiblio. pdf. hooks b 1984. feminist theory: from the margin to the center. boston: southend press. hooks b 1990. yearning: race, gender, and cultural politics. boston: southend press. jack g 2010. place matters: the significance of place attachments for children’s well-being. british journal of social work, 40: 755-771. knapp ce 2005. the “i-thou” relationship, place-based education, and aldo leopold. journal of experiential education, 27(3): 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woodhouse j & knapp c 2000. place-based curriculum and instruction. (eric document reproduction service no. edo-rc-00-6). 1 moving beyond artificial linguistic binaries in the education of african language speaking children: a case for simultaneous biliteracy development abstract language policy debates in south africa concern only black african language speaking children rather than white english and afrikaans speaking children. these debates construct black african children as learners with deficits and fail to acknowledge their language resources. at the same time, policy makers fail to critique the unjust system to which they are subjected and of which they are victims. in this paper, i present a brief case study of children belonging to the stars of today literacy club to show the possibilities and ways in which these children are positioned as competent multilinguals and, in so doing, can resist the prevailing deficit view. the paper has three key aims: 1) to bring to light the racist ideology behind the current implementation of language policy, showing the specific ways in which, it constructs african language speaking children as inherently different from english and afrikaans speaking children, evidenced by the fact that english and afrikaans language speakers’ medium is not even debated: eventually, english becomes the preferred language of instruction from grade 4 onwards. 2) to describe how inequality is thus created and entrenched through undifferentiated language in education policies, curriculum, textbooks, and assessments, all of which are based on the unexamined idea of the child being a middle-class english-speaking child. 3) to demonstrate how bilingual children can be positioned as capable, rather than deficient, through hybrid language and literacy practices. 1. introduction post 1994, language debates in south africa have tended to concern only black african language speaking children rather than white english and afrikaans speaking children. these debates construct black african children as learners with deficits and fail to acknowledge their language resources. at the same time policy makers, academics, educators and parents fail to critique the unjust system to which they are subjected and of which they are victims. there have been no debates in the language in education policy (liep) about medium of instruction for english and afrikaans speaking children: it is assumed that they must be xolisa guzula doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v36i2.2 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 36(2): 1-14 © uv/ufs http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2 2 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) educated in english or afrikaans, ‘their languages’. these languages are not even referred to as mother tongues because english, and to some extent afrikaans as well as monolingualism, are an invisible norm. in this paper, i present a case study of children belonging to the stars of today literacy club to show the possibilities and ways in which these children are positioned as competent multilinguals and, in so doing, can resist the prevailing deficit view. the paper has three key aims: 1) to bring to light the racist ideology behind the current implementation of language policy, showing the specific ways in which, it constructs african language speaking children as inherently different from english and afrikaans speaking children, evidenced by the fact that english and afrikaans language speakers’ medium is not even debated: eventually, english becomes the preferred language of instruction from grade 4 onwards. 2) to describe how inequality is thus created and entrenched through undifferentiated language in education policies, curriculum, textbooks, and assessments, all of which are based on the unexamined idea of the child being a middle-class english-speaking child. 3) to demonstrate how bilingual children can be positioned as capable, rather than deficient, through hybrid language and literacy practices. first, i trace the history of language policy and medium of instruction in south african schooling from 1907-1994 in a fair amount of detail, considering it important to provide a comprehensive context for what is essentially an ideologically based policy and to clearly show the historical interconnectedness of language policy with apartheid ideology. secondly, i review the current position of language policy (1994 to date) in practice to show how it continues to discriminate against black african language speaking children by constructing them as emergent bilinguals with a deficit while continuing to advantage white english and afrikaans speakers, constructing them as competent monolinguals. i then proceed to analyse and discuss the ideologies behind the language policy implementation, relating this to the historical context. thereafter, i present a case study of the stars of today literacy club, to demonstrate how we used dynamic bilingualism to challenge the monolingual norm and the english bias in the language policy both on paper and in practice. 2. historical overview of language in education policy the social engineering of black african language speaking children to ensure their perpetual failure in education has its roots in the construction by colonial and apartheid governments of their childhoods. this dates from the colonisation of southern africa by the dutch and the english, and, more recently, the ushering in by the apartheid government of bantu education in 1953. the marginalisation, exclusion, and erasure of these children from south african citizenship, the denial of their basic right to education, and their positioning as inferior to whites and as servants of whites , was evident in the way discussions about education dating from the early 19th century focussed solely on dutch and english-speaking children (alexander, 1989; christie, 1991). from the mid to late 1800s, right through to 1948, education discussions included language of instruction and focussed on whether dutch, later afrikaans, and englishspeaking children were to be taught through dual or single medium (malherbe, 1943). in these debates, the existence of the african language speaking child was rendered invisible in the ongoing struggle for state power between english and afrikaner. the british victory in the anglo-boer war of 1899–1902 was a crucial moment in the history of language policy and debates in south africa. first, it ushered in the anglicisation policy of the british imperialists that discriminated against the dutch/afrikaans speaking people (malherbe, 1943; christie, 1991; heugh, 2001). secondly, it created opportunities for debates 3 guzula moving beyond artificial linguistic binaries... about education of african language speaking children and the languages through which they ought to be taught. at the start of these discussions, junod (1905), of the transvaal swiss mission presented a paper at a missionary conference, titled ‘the role of native language in native education’. he suggested two polarized methods for educating the ‘native’ child, one “through ‘english only”, and the other “through vernacular at the base and english at the top” (1905:3). however, such discussions were soon abandoned as the dutch citizens of the transvaal focussed on resisting milner’s anglicization policy through the dutch reformed church which established schools in the transvaal in 1907, and in the free state in 1908. these schools introduced education in two languages (malherbe, 1943; heugh, 2001). this opened a pathway to dual medium education as a practical way of showing cooperation between the afrikaners and the english after the union of 1910. during this period, a significant number of african language speaking children lived in the reserves where there was no compulsory education (christie, 1991). while english and afrikaans speaking children were constructed by the union of south africa government at this time as equals, with compulsory schooling, and their languages unquestioned as mediums of instruction in a dual medium education system, african language speaking children were seen as not needing to be educated or taught in their own language. this inequality was one of the key principles on which apartheid ideology was founded. by the 1940s, the rise of afrikaner nationalism saw the end of dual medium education and the adoption of parallel medium and single medium education. dual medium education was perceived to be against the principle of mother tongue education by the afrikaans nationalists at the time (malherbe, 1943). in 1951 pronouncements by unesco on the value of teaching children in the mother tongue served to intensify the push for single or parallel medium education (heugh, 2001). this became an opportune moment for the afrikaner nationalist government, which came into power in 1948, to combine the use of african languages with the formation of bantustans, and the ushering in of bantu education for african language speaking children to consolidate its racialised policy of separate development (maake, 1991; heugh, 2001). through bantu education, african language speaking children were to experience inferior education, and positioned as only able to serve their own communities, with no place in the european community except as a future poorly paid and exploited labour force (maake, 1991). the apartheid government’s policy on dual medium english-afrikaans education in high schools for african language speaking children, led to the soweto uprisings in 1976. the revolt against afrikaans came to include both the rejection of bantu education and african languages that had been used as vehicles for making bantu education possible and for entrenching apartheid. the result of this revolt was the passing of act 90, in 1979 which reduced the number of years during which african language speaking learners were to be exposed to mother tongue education from 8 to 4 with an abrupt transition to english medium taking place in grade 5, and later, in grade 4 (macdonald, 1991; heugh, 2000). since then, many african language speaking children have experienced a form of subtractive bilingual education, even after the passing of the national language in education policy in 1997 which promotes additive bilingualism, what alexander (2003a) called mother tongue based bilingual education (mtbbe). additive bilingualism, or mtbbe, according to alexander, means starting education with mother tongue as medium of instruction in the foundation phase and maintaining it in the intermediate phase while adding on english as a second medium. both during apartheid and the post-apartheid period, single medium, and in a few cases parallel medium, schooling became normalised for english and afrikaans speaking children, while the switch to english 4 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) medium education from grade 4, and the expectation of using the same curriculum, textbooks and assessment, became normalised for most african language speaking children. this situation has in fact reinforced apartheid’s idea that african language speaking children do not need to enjoy the same conditions for learning as do english and afrikaans speaking children. 3. current language in education policy in practice and the construction of the african language speaking child twenty-five years into democracy, african language speaking children continue to experience racism, as well as an inferior education. though the liep of 1997 looks good on paper, in practice, the official curriculum and assessment policies, and the pronouncements by the dbe, education researchers and policy makers about poor performance of african language speaking children in local and international assessments, in fact all continue to construct african language speaking children as deficient english monolinguals (mckinney, 2017). the subtractive bilingualism that replaces african languages of instruction with english instruction from grade 4 means that african language children experience significant discontinuities between the foundation phase and the intermediate phase, and between home and school. the combination of language medium switch, the increase in subjects, the fact that all books and learning materials are provided in english, low literacy in the mother tongue, and poor proficiency in english, sets the african language speaking child up for failure while englishspeaking children continue their education seamlessly, without any change to lolt from grade 34. the switch from monolingual african language instruction to monolingual english has led to the children being constructed with a deficit, as passive/agentless, as failures, as having low levels of comprehension, as unable to decode, as needing remedial assistance, as nonreaders, and as non-producers of meaning. they are referred to by educators as children with no language, signalling that these children are not proficient in any of the languages they speak, read or write. this view has resulted in the push for english from earlier on as set out in the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps, 2011). in fact, caps presents itself as policy which normalises and entrenches the abrupt switch to english medium immediately after foundation phase, thus rewriting the language in education policy through the back door (mckinney, 2017). caps neither supports home language education nor bilingual education. it is biased towards english from grade 4 and it has the support of many parents who are under the impression that learning through english is best. blommaert (2005) argues that inequality occurs whenever there’s “a difference between capacity to produce function and the expected or normative function” (2005:77). simply put, the gap between ability to make meaning and proficiency in english for african language speaking children, together with the lack of educational materials and literature to support and valorise the use of african languages as mediums of instruction, creates and perpetuates deep inequalities in our education system. it is therefore not uncommon for people to argue that there are no materials in african languages, or that african languages do not possess the capacity/vocabulary for teaching content subjects even though historically these languages were used to teach content subjects up to grade 8 (heugh, 2000). the continued absence of reading materials in children’s home languages, written by african language speaking writers, means that children continue to be exposed to a form of colonial and apartheid education. readers written by missionaries during colonial times and apartheid, and currently by english speaking writers, continue to be impoverished in terms of relevant content, and fail to reflect children’s lived experiences in 5 guzula moving beyond artificial linguistic binaries... township and rural settings (maake, 1991). these writers conceptualised/conceptualise the material through white, english speaking and middle-class lenses. as a result, translation of this material is based on english source texts as determinants even for how african languages should be written, and which ideas are normalised. mkhize (2016) argues that, in many cases where african language literature exists, “textual production (fiction and non-fiction) has historically been heavily bent towards conservative themes, in which cultural pride, propriety and identity take centre stage – that is, a literature that speaks to ‘good bantus’” (2016:147). thus, instead of supporting instruction in children’s home languages, together with bilingual education, with the materials for this purpose, caps elects to solve educational inequality by offering all children of south africa the same curriculum, materials, teacher training, and language of teaching and learning, regardless of the socio-cultural context within which children live and with which they engage daily. the switch to english medium continues despite the well-documented challenges that african language speaking children experienced during apartheid when switching in grade 5 (macdonald, 1991). i argue that the fact that african language speaking children from grade 4 are forced to use the same textbooks as english home language children clearly advantages english speakers and disadvantages emergent bilinguals. 4. language ideologies and the construction of deficient monolinguals it is important to make visible, and to analyse the history and the mechanisms that construct african emergent bilinguals as deficient monolinguals, and which construct their language resources as problematic. mckinney (2017:18) argues that who makes policies and the curriculum, as well as their language ideologies matters. monolingual middle class english speakers who continue to be entrusted with the responsibility of crafting the curriculum and education policies, and with writing textbooks, often with no consultation with teachers and learners “are often unable to see beyond their own limited language experiences” and tend to calibrate the curriculum based on their socio-cultural and linguistic experiences and practices (reed, 2006; bua-lit, 2018). the construction of african language speaking children as english monolinguals in language in education policies, in curriculum and assessment policies, in learning materials, and in pedagogy, is largely informed by policy makers’ beliefs about what counts as good language use, and what counts as best in terms of languages for teaching and learning (blackledge, 2000; makoe & mckinney, 2009; mckinney, 2017). since policy makers currently belong to the dominant classes in society, and thus to the classes which control the country’s economy, their beliefs and ideas about what is good language use tend to be imposed on the rest of society (nomlomo, 1991). alexander (1989) and makalela (2015) argue that the views of this dominant class about what languages should be used in education, and what counts as good language and literacy learning, are largely influenced by eurocentric and colonial ideologies that came with the formation of nation states in europe. according to this historical perspective, the diverse regional varieties of language were homogenised by missionary linguistics in favour of one ‘pure’ – and fixed single standard language. though single medium or parallel medium schools uphold the principle of mother tongue education, and can be described as bilingual schools because two languages are taught as subjects in the schools, they offer a weak form of bilingual education in comparison to dual medium education, exposes children to two mediums of education (malherbe, 1943; heugh, 2000). however, despite dual medium education being a stronger form of bilingual 6 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) education, historically it tended – and continues – to apply only in classrooms where there were equal numbers of learners speaking afrikaans and english, and this required teachers to code-switch from one language to another to expose each group of children to their own mother tongue as well as give them access to the other language (malherbe, 1943). the notion of dual medium education, however, evolved and informed ideas about an additive bilingualism approach in the language in education policy of 1997, or mother tongue based bilingual education (heugh, 2001; alexander, 2003a) for schools attended by many black african language speaking. though the principle of the mother tongue at the base is noble in both single medium, parallel medium, and dual medium education, it still fails to account for multilingualism and multilinguality (pluddemann, 2010) in primary schools, where children speak different languages, or varieties of the named languages, and where they are expected to develop bilingual competence in home languages and english in order at a later stage to learn through english. malherbe’s 1943 study accounted for many bilingual children in afrikaans and englishspeaking families and demonstrated that, with mother tongue at the base and dual medium at the top, the principle of mother tongue could still be honoured, while at the same time children could be exposed to two languages. the fact that african language speaking children continue to transition to english medium in grade 4, assumes the continued hegemony of the english language and anglonormativity “the expectation that everybody should speak english and if they don’t, they are deviant or even deficient” (mckinney, 2017:12). while bilingual education for african language speaking children means learning in their home language and in english, multilinguality usually involves children speaking in the varieties of the named languages in which they learn (pluddemann, 2010). for xhosa speaking children, for example, these varieties include dialects such as isibhaca, isihlubi and isimpondo, as well as urban varieties of isixhosa and english (nomlomo, 1993). schools, however, insist, for example, on standard isixhosa and standard english varieties and look less favourably on the non-standard varieties (nomlomo, 1993). in their efforts to give children access to standard languages, schools often undermine and devalue children’s non-standard varieties. this works to maintain dominant monoglossic language ideologies and the use of the principle of mother tongue or nonstandard varieties to get to the standard form of the language or to get to english proficiency. language practices of bilingual or multilingual learners in daily life are much more heteroglossic than would be expected in formal learning situations, or within the curriculum, and in assessment policies. as a result, many children engaging in heteroglossic language practices are viewed as linguistically deficient. thus, the question to be asked is, how do we then legitimise all languages and all varieties without giving more power to one language or variety? how do we align language policies, the curriculum, texts, and assessments with everyday practices and uses of language, and succeed in calibrating education to the needs of african multilinguals? how do we view children’s multilingualism and multilinguality as a resource rather than a problem? 5. third spaces and multiliteracies for african language speaking children’s literacy learning working within a sociocultural perspective, i draw on the concepts of third spaces and multiliteracies to demonstrate how i began to challenge the deficit positioning of african language children. third spaces are spaces ‘in between’ and beyond two binaries, conceptualisations and discourses that are often thought as separate and uncombinable (anzaldua, 1987; 7 guzula moving beyond artificial linguistic binaries... bhabha, 1990; gutierrez et al., 1999). these spaces are characterised by hybridity, and dynamic and shifting perspectives which also transcend traditional binaries of first spaces or second spaces (bhabha, 1990). because third spaces allow for multiple perspectives, inhabitants of these spaces often encounter ambivalence, assuming multiple identities, including being monolingual, bilingual, or multilingual, speaking a patois, and being in a state of perpetual transition (anzaldua, 1987). the purpose of hybridity is not about being able to trace two original moments from which third space emerges; rather hybridity is a third space which enables different positions to emerge (bhabha, 1990). the mixing of different perspectives and ideologies in one space should be viewed positively as it leads to a ‘third element’, ‘a new understanding or a new consciousness’ which transcends our differences (anzaldua, 1987; gutierrez, baquedano-lopez & tejeda, 1999). thus, bilingual or multilingual children do not operate as separate monolinguals but occupy a linguistic third space with one linguistic repertoire consisting of all the languages they speak (cummins, 2010; flores & garcia, 2013). the space they occupy is known as a translanguaging space (li wei, 2017). garcia (2009) defines translanguaging as “the act performed by bilinguals of accessing different linguistic features or various modes of what are described as autonomous languages’ (garcia, 2009:141). i also draw on the concept of multiliteracies which challenges written language as a sole means of communication, and which encourages plurality of languages in learning spaces (new london group, 2000). scholars in multiliteracies propose multimodality as a mode of communication, plurality of languages, and a multiliteracies framework for pedagogy. multimodality refers to the integration or orchestration of the many ways in which children make meaning. these include linguistic, audio-visual, and performative meaning making (stein, 2004; newfield, 2011; bock, 2016; kress, 2007). i draw on the four aspects of the multiliteracies framework for pedagogy, namely, situated practice, overt instruction, critical framing, and transformative practice. situated practice means that we teach children drawing on their lived experience, including language practices. overt instruction means that we recognise that, children’s existing knowledge, that knowledge needs to be extended and enhanced. overt instruction allows learners to gain explicit information, encourages collaborative efforts between teachers and learners, develops conscious awareness of what is being learnt and gives learners metalanguages to talk about their learning (new london group, 2000). it also enables me to transcend the binary in cummins’ earlier distinction between basic interpersonal communication skills (bics) and cognitive academic language proficiency (calp) cited in baker, 2006, by exposing children to both simultaneously. in addition to situated practice and overt instruction, the new london group (2000) proposes a pedagogy that values critical framing, arguing that it enables learners to develop their ability to be critical and to recognise injustice based on unequal power, and ideology. this then forms the basis of the fourth aspect of the multiliteracies framework: ‘transformative practice’, a reflective practice which develops from critical framing and results in learners producing new practices embedded in their own goals and values (new london group, 2000). below i present a case study of an established third space in the form of a literacy club called #stars of today literacy club. i draw on the data i collected as part of the club’s three-day special holiday programme to show how multilingual children made use of their semiotic resources to display capabilities that are often invisibilised. 8 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) 6. methodology i present a brief case study of a literacy club where i worked with emergent bilinguals to build a culture of literacy. using a sociocultural perspective on language and literacy, through which i seek to understand children’s uses of language and literacy in their daily lives and then calibrate their literacy learning to these, i established a literacy club which the children named the ‘stars of today literacy club# (stlc#)’. the club is conceptualised and set up as an established physical, social, linguistic and conceptual third space (gutierrez et al., 1999; flores & garcia, 2013; canagarajah, 2013) encouraging dynamic, shifting and hybrid language practices and activities. thus, the club normalised children’s multilingualism and multimodality as legitimate language and literacy practices. it comprises between 30-60 children from a primary school in khayelitsha, where i knew a teacher from training for the nal’ibali national reading for enjoyment initiative in 2012. children were recruited across from grades 3-6 (9-12-year olds) because i was interested in how age boundaries could be transcended, thus creating a third space for learning in recognition of the children’s sociocultural lives where young children learn from their older peers. i recruited fellow facilitators through facebook and word of mouth. these facilitators are also a hybrid of multilingual visual artists, storytellers, teacher trainers, teachers, and university students studying language and literacy or early childhood development and who contribute their skills and expertise, thus making the vision of multiliteracies possible by integrating song, stories, art, performance, and reading and writing, and heteroglossic language practices. the children and the facilitators have, on a voluntary basis, been attending the club every saturday since 2015 from 10h00am to 12h00pm. initially my role was that of the founder and lead facilitator of the literacy club, a role which included leading the planning for saturday bilingual and multimodal literacy sessions with fellow facilitators, guided by a third space concept and multiliteracies framework. i sought children’s literature and stationery donations and trained literacy club facilitators by modelling heteroglossic practices and multiliteracies practices to both the facilitators and the children. in researching children’s language and literacy practices at the stlc# i draw on methodological and interpretive tools of linguistic ethnography. copland and creese (2015) define linguistic ethnography “…as an interpretive approach which studies the local and immediate actions of actors from their point of view and considers how these interactions are embedded in wider social contexts and structures” (13). linguistic ethnography makes visible those mechanisms in which every day linguistic practices are connected with social life and shows how these reproduce each other through everyday activities (copland & creese, 2015). at the stlc# i collected data using ethnographic data collection tools which included participant observation methods, field notes, audio and video-recording, still photographs, and a collection of visual and textual artefacts made collaboratively by the children and facilitators. for the purposes of this paper, i elected to analyse data from an audio and video recording as it clearly illustrates the children’s capability using multilingual and multimodal practices. i analyse the discourses and practices produced at the stlc# by drawing on the theoretical concepts of linguistic third spaces (flores & garcia, 2013) third space (gutierrez et al., 1999) as well as multiliteracies (new london group, 2000). 9 guzula moving beyond artificial linguistic binaries... 7. changing deficit stereotypes of multilingual learners: a case study in this case study, i illustrate the ways in which children’s play and language are powerful pedagogical resources for learning language and literacy, and how these have been drawn on for meaning making, thus constructing and positioning the children as competent bilinguals. the case study demands of us to shift our theoretical and pedagogical lenses from viewing african language speaking children as monolinguals with a deficit to children who are critical thinkers, competent and creative language users, translators and interpreters, and creative bilingual composers amongst other roles and identities. the grade 3 to 6 children participating at stlc#, and the rest of the children in the school, experience subtractive bilingualism. they learn english as a first additional language from grade 1, and then transition to english medium in grade 4. the caps curriculum expects them to learn two languages separately from grade 1 and constructs them as multilinguals with separate monolingualisms in their heads. although their teachers codeswitch at least in oral language to explain concepts to them, children are not allowed to mix languages or speak in any of the varieties of those languages or write in two languages. teachers do not regard code switching as a legitimate practice and often reprimand children for drawing on their own linguistic resources (nomlomo, 1991). later, in grade 4, the children are exposed to, and experience, an anglonormative ideology as they are expected to become english monolinguals. the stlc# draws on hybridity as a resource, and facilitators model dynamic bilingualism (garcia, 2009), draw on the situated practice aspect of the multiliteracies framework to legitimize the children’s linguistic resources and to encourage languaging for learning (guzula, mckinney & tyler, 2016). they also draw on children’s translation and interpreting skills as forms of translanguaging that position the children as competent multilinguals. the data analysed demonstrates that african language speaking children are most often translingual and will draw on their full semiotic repertoire for meaning making when this is allowed. the data that shows stlc# members as embodied bilinguals, who are competent users of an expanded repertoire and competent and creative translators. children as competent bilinguals with embodied communicative competence as a way of drawing on children’s socio-cultural resources and their conceptualisation of language and literacy, facilitators organise activities based on the children’s expectations of the literacy club. at the beginning of the club, the children expressed that they wanted to sing, play, read and write, tell stories, dance, do art and make videos and audio recordings together. their expectations were in sync with the multiliteracies conceptualisation of literacy that combines plurality of language use and multimodality (new london group, 2000). a literacy club day usually begins with gamesongs or musical games (harrip-allin, 2011) played indoors or outdoors depending on the weather, followed by activities that include reading, writing, art, storytelling and drama. during play, facilitators play together with the children, and games are introduced either by children or by facilitators. drawing on the critical aspect of the multiliteracies framework, i introduced a game called ‘the lion hunt’1 as a text to work from to help children to develop a critical perspective of texts. though in this example i focus on one child, noni’s full linguistic repertoire, at the club we also raise an awareness about mechanisms in which educational inequality is produced (delpit, 1988, janks, 2010) by 1 ‘the lion hunt’ draws on the rhyming text of david axtell’s children’s book , “we’re going on a lion hunt” and helen oxenbury’s well-known children’s picture book “we’re going on a bear hunt”. 10 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) exposing children to an expanded repertoire that includes powerful standard language use in isixhosa and english. the game is a call and response game with action movements. the first part of the game goes like this: we’re going on a lion hunt i’m not scared got a gun by my side (touching hips) bullets, two (showing two fingers) we come to some grass some tall grass (bending and raising hand to high above the head) we can’t go over it, (showing with hands) we can’t go under it we can’t go around it we have to through it let’s go…swish, swish, swish (moving the grass to the side with hands) it is repeated in the second and third parts with grass being replaced with mud and a cave. after playing the game, i introduced critical framing to children by explaining to them that sometimes, different people interpret verbal and non-verbal communication differently. i explained that even the games we play, such as the ‘lion hunt’, can be heard positively or negatively by different people. i made two columns on the board and wrote ‘good’ on one side and ‘bad’ on the other. i wrote down all the things that the children thought were positive or negative about the game. in the session that followed this, the following saturday, i started by reviewing the work we did the previous week. i asked noni to summarise what we thought was good about the game. noni started off by talking about what was ‘good’, and in her talk, she drew on the semiotic resources afforded by the game to make her point. 11 guzula moving beyond artificial linguistic binaries... table 1: noni conceptualises the semiotic repertoire original translation xoli: …okay, ngubani okhumbulayo? siye sathi zintoni ezigood ngala game? sithe zintoni esizithandayo ngayo? zintoni ezilungileyo ngayo? hayi kaloku siyathetha tyhini abantu bandijongile nje, bandijongile nje abantu balibele ngoku. sithe la game igood ngoba kutheni? noni? noni: ngoba ukuba umntu akayazi ukuba ukuhamba over it mhlawumbi njengoba sithetha ngeenglish uyabona ngezandla ba we can’t go over, it, we can’t go under it, we can’t go around it uyabona okay uover nguntoni, u-under yintoni, uaround yintoni and then…. (inaudible) xoli: ukuba ngaba… umntu… akamazi …uover it nhe, uyabona ngezandla nhe… ngezandla, naxa usithi under…under it nhe? utshilo nhe? noni: e-e xoli: nobani omnye? noni: noaround it xoli: noaround it… noaround it, nhe? uyabona ngezandla naxa usithi… ngezandla. sathi igood loo nto nhe? iyasifundisa loo nto ukuba kuthethwa ukuthwani andithi? i think uyibeke kakuhle kakhulu unoni, ngendlela ecacileyo. wonke umntu ucacelwe nhe? (audio recording: 05 march 2016 04:00-05:33) xoli: …okay, who remembers? what things did we say are good about that game? what did we say we like about it? what are the good things about it? no, we have to speak hey, people are just looking at me, they have forgotten now. why did we say that game is good? noni?’ noni: ‘because if a person doesn’t know what walking over it means, maybe because we speak english s/he can see through the use of hands that ‘we can’t go over it’, ‘we can’t go under it’, ‘we can’t go around it’ and see what ‘over’ means, what ‘under’ means and what ‘around’ means and then…(inaudible)’ xoli: ‘that if…a person…doesn’t know…what ‘over it’ means, hey, s/he can see through the hands, hey…and when you say ‘under’…under it, hey? you said so, hey? noni: ‘ewe, yes’ xoli: ‘and what else?’ noni: ‘and around it’ xoli: ‘and around it’….’and around it, hey? you can see through the hands when and when you….through the hands .we said that is good, hey? that teaches us what is meant by spoken words, isn’t it? i think noni expressed it so well, so clearly hey? everybody is clear, hey?’ (audio recording: 05 march 2016 04:00-05:33) drawing on the overt instruction aspect of the multiliteracies framework, by writing down word for word noni’s response on newsprint, i recognized, acknowledged, and affirmed her linguistic repertoire. i also demonstrated to her what a bilingual text looks like and created a linguistic third space that affirmed her linguistic resources. i did this to disrupt monoglossia, to valorise her sociocultural resources and to encourage all the children to draw on their linguistic resources for meaning making. as noni and i discuss the ‘good’ aspect of the game, noni demonstrates that she can’t make the point without using both languages. she begins her response in isixhosa but draws on specific english vocabulary to make her point about the game’s semiotic affordances. noni’s response positions her competently, drawing on her linguistic repertoire for participation and for making a very important conceptual point about affordances that the game provides for languaging, participation, and inclusivity (guzula, mckinney& tyler, 2016). it has been argued by multiliteracies scholars that there are limitations implicit in the exclusive use of language as sole means of communication (new london group, 2000; stein, 2004; newfield, 2011; kress, 2007). noni’s competent argument about people’s ability to draw on 12 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) their full semiotic repertoire in meaning making positions her as intellectually and linguistically competent. through her argument, she defies the negative stereotypes associated with children who have a multilingual repertoire. though she is still a child in primary school, she makes similar arguments about communication as multimodal and multisensory to arguments made by theorists of communication. 8. conclusion noni’s case study above shows an instance of a multilingual child and children as being competent users of their full linguistic repertoire. it demonstrates how teachers can recognize, acknowledge, affirm, and build lessons from children’s sociocultural resources. through her use of her full linguistic repertoire, noni showed herself able to express a highly sophisticated conceptual point about the affordances of the game of the lion hunt: through translanguaging she explained how the actions and gestures mediated the english words. this example shows that, by moving beyond the false binary of mother tongue or english medium instruction, and by teaching bilingually, we can pay attention to issues of power and marginalization. this contributes to the view of an african child, not as a monolingual, but as a child having a multilingual identity. by allowing children to draw on their full semiotic repertoire, we begin to open pathways for meaningful learning, self-conception, identity, representation of what exists and what it means to be an african 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https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9781139524834.006 _gjdgxs _goback 97 research article 2022 40(2): 97-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) adapting to technology tools in a learning environment: a case study of first-year students at a traditional african university abstract the introduction of technology to teaching and learning has brought about modernisation of academic activities. the drastic paradigm shift faced by the education sector is inevitable, especially as the impact of the much-touted fourth industrial revolution is being felt in key sectors of the economy. this reality imposes the need for technology-enhanced learning for tertiary students as it represents the future of the workplace for which they are being prepared at university. for effective learning to take place, institutions need to incorporate technological tools in their teaching and learning. adapting to a myriad of technology tools can be challenging, especially for less privileged learners who might be adjusting to tertiary life and previously have not been exposed to the basics of computers and other technology tools. this challenge is further compounded by the fact that most of these learners are experiencing the independence of tertiary education for the first time and are still struggling to balance their academic workload with the anxieties of social blending. this paper investigated how first-year students at a traditional, previously disadvantaged university in the eastern cape province, south africa, adapted to blackboard learn (also referred to as wiseup), the learning management system (lms) adapted for blended learning at the university. the paper explored the challenges faced by the new students and thereafter employed a combination of the theory of planned behaviour and the technology acceptance model to build a new model, which reveals the critical factors that influence students to embrace technology. this model will assist lecturers, faculty and student support structures to understand the underpinning factors that influence first-year students to embrace the technology tool, namely, the university’s lms. quantitative data collection and analysis were used in the case study, which was conducted with two groups of first-year students in management and information technology courses. results show the significant factors that influence students’ attitudes positively towards the use of technology for learning. keywords: technology tools, learner adoption, blackboard, blended learning author: dr olutoyin olaitan1 ms nosipho mavuso1 affiliation: 1walter sisulu university doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i2.8 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(2): 97-112 published: 08 june 2022 received: 13 january 2022 accepted: 08 april 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5350-4136 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5602-8008 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 982022 40(2): 98-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) 1. introduction all spheres of society have experienced dependency on technology because of technological progression. hence the utilisation of technology in teaching and learning has become a major priority for public institutions in facilitating innovation and transformation in learning within the sector (coleman & mtshazi, 2017; groff, 2013). the covid-19 pandemic with the resultant safety measures such as social distancing, as well as hard and soft lockdowns, has further forced universities to fully embrace remote teaching and learning, which is enabled by technology tools. traditional teaching and learning practices are gradually becoming obsolete and inadequate in successfully preparing and equipping the current generation of learners with the creativity, collaborative problem-solving skills and academic capabilities required in the modern world (groff, 2013). additionally, technology-infused learning has greatly expanded in popularity due to its ability to provide flexibility among students (ouadoud, chkouri, & nejjari, 2018). it is imperative that technology tools are prioritised and more resources are made available for providing such tools so that dynamic learning environments are created and maintained (al-alak & alnawas, 2011). the integration of technology has been one of the key concerns in education; however, in this digital era, swift action needs to be taken to ensure that the education sector does not lag behind during the global digital transformation into the fourth industrial revolution (4ir) (murray & pérez, 2015). this technological integration is crucial in the context of traditional african universities as the majority of first time new entrants (ftens) are previously unable to access technology for learning. technology brings about new opportunities for re-imagining, reconsidering and reinventing the learning environment in preparation for a more innovative and effective learning experience for students (hassan, abiddin & yew, 2014; kumar, 2018). the potential gains of innovative technologies go beyond changing pedagogical processes to also transform the entire learning environment (de villiers & cronje, 2005; kumar, 2018). technology promises revolutionary results if leveraged with a precise and premediated strategic vision and compact change management plan (groff, 2013). various digital technologies can be utilised to facilitate better learning that removes some of the limitations and challenges of traditional teaching and learning (fatimah & santiana, 2017). educators must transform their teaching practices radically so that learners can become part of the 21st-century citizenship (mayisela, 2014). the commonly cited blended learning approach has been introduced in most institutions; however, authors are still investigating the effectiveness and perceptions of the approach (mayisela, 2014). teaching in the 21st century is not merely based on delivering content and assessing the learners’ ability; it involves encouraging creativity and active involvement of students in activities provided (fatimah & santiana, 2017). the technologies being employed for teaching and learning at the university encourages student engagement and participatory learning. there is a realisation that more has to be done in providing proper skills and knowledge on technology utilisation and that providing access to technology is not enough, regardless of students being deemed as technology savvy (eady & lockyer, 2013). eady and lockyer (2013) highlighted that evidence in literature has shown that, even though students were born in the digital era, they may not automatically be avid and highly skilled technology users, especially in the sphere of higher education teaching and learning tools. this is important, as generalisations may be made when it comes to young people and their access and utilisation of technology. this finding resonates with students at the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 992022 40(2): 99-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 olaitan & mavuso adapting to technology tools in a learning environment university, where they are able to engage on smart phones and social media, but have been found deficient with the use of educational technologies. the research problem addressed in this paper is motivated by societal generalisations on technology awareness, as well as the known digital divide, which is more pronounced in previously disadvantaged institutions of higher learning. the research question is thus “what are the challenges faced by first-year students in adapting to a learning technology tool adopted for blended learning in a traditional university?” the paper addressed the research problem through a quantitative data survey of 90 students, with a view to collecting data based on their first-year experience with blackboard learn (used interchangeably with wiseup and hereafter referred to as blackboard), the lms at the institution, and thereafter investigated factors that may encourage better use of the technology tool. 2. literature review the use of educational technologies for supporting teaching and learning has become common practice in higher institutions throughout south africa, in line with the rest of the world (heirdsfield et al., 2011). as the world finds itself amid radical change based on technological advances, it has become imperative for tertiary institutions to prepare their students for the workplace by equipping them with the requisite tools to be relevant in the knowledge economy. studies show compelling evidence that using technology tools to aid traditional teaching and learning can be effective in driving home pedagogical and technical knowledge (adedoja et al., 2013). the evolution and accessibility of technology devices, such as laptops, smartphones and on-campus lecture hall computers, has positively impacted the ability of higher education institutions to bring these technology tools closer to their students (mantri, 2015). some of the benefits of harnessing educational technologies include the promotion of collaboration among students, the ease of information sharing across a group of students on a common platform, the ability to conduct teaching and learning with students in various, diverse locations, discussion panels and interactive sessions, information retrieval that is not bound by time or space and flexible learning time (adedoja et al., 2013). to this end, most tertiary institutions have adapted, procured or adopted a technological tool for facilitating blended learning (nortvig, petersen & balle, 2018). the thrust of universities embracing digital learning goes beyond ensuring students achieve their course learning outcomes. students are encouraged to become creative thinkers who can assist with offering solutions to societal challenges with their thought processes and skills (mantri, 2015). the use of technology tools is, therefore, not just for the sake of passing on pedagogical instructions but also for equipping the students to become independent thinkers and innovators. 2.1 traditional universities and teaching methods the purpose of higher learning institutions is to ensure that their academic goals and objectives are responsive to societal needs, resources are utilised effectively and efficiently, responsibility is taken for spending funds acquired, and the quality of academic programmes, including teaching, learning and research, is maintained (mcdonald & van der horst, 2007). technology in education has afforded educators the opportunity to come up with meaningful and significant learning experiences for learners by embedding technology (de villiers & cronje, 2005). lecturers must not just use technology for the mere fact of using it, but rather, it must be appropriately embedded in their teaching and learning (mayisela, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 1002022 40(2): 100-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) 2014). the university’s learning management system (lms) serves to manage students’ asynchronous and synchronous learning. innovative communication tools and methods to keep learning happening, regardless of the location and time, must be promoted actively (rajasekaran & kalyani, 2018). higher education is mandated to develop self-reliance among learners by creating an environment that forges resourceful thinking (hassan et al., 2014). eady and lockyer (2013) emphasised the importance of learnt technological skills to combat a phenomenon known as second-level digital divide. this is described as the drastic differentiation of skills that will influence how people participate in society. research shows that the benefits of adopting technology include increased learner engagement, motivation, and critical and innovative thinking (coleman & mtshazi, 2017; eady & lockyer, 2013). preparation of students for the competitive, technological workforce helps institutions to keep pace with society (rajasekaran & kalyani, 2018). for learners to be actively involved in their own learning, it is important to generate a creative, flexible and innovative learning environment. this can be achieved through redefining the entire classroom approach. lecturers who use active teaching methods capture students’ attention and accommodate diverse learning styles (coleman & mtshazi, 2017). lalima and dangwal (2017) highlight the benefits of incorporating technology in learning. these include the broadening of collaborative, constructive and computer-aided learning scopes. technologies such as computers, the internet, smartboards, smartphones and simulations can reshape traditional learning (baytak, tarman & ayas, 2011). 2.2 challenges associated with adaptation when introducing technology, it is vital to know and understand the adaptation behaviours and challenges students are likely to experience. this awareness will help in driving the migration of processes and implementation of proper change management techniques needed to ensure maximal use of educational technology tools (tularam & machisella, 2018). people do not instantly change and adapt to new procedures, situations or environments, and this should be taken into consideration when dealing with technological changes (oztemel & ayhan, 2008). mcdonald and van der horst (2007) stated that traditional teaching is teacher controlled, teacher dominated and teacher directed. the teacher, who is deemed the expert, pours out absolute knowledge to passive students who simply wait to be filled up with knowledge. the learner is the recipient, and the teacher is the source of knowledge. the use of technology tools in teaching and learning, on the other hand, encourages blended and student-centred learning (alenezi, 2020). 2.3 technology tools for blended learning blended learning is defined as the deliberate integration of contact, face-to-face learning with online learning experiences (nortvig et al., 2018). there are varying degrees and models of blended learning, but the important factor is that it integrates the strength of synchronous (face-to-face) with asynchronous (internet, text-based) learning activities (mantri, 2015). in the current era of globalisation, students need new, significant and reliable learning practices so that they have a more enjoyable and effective learning experience (fatimah & santiana, 2017). twenty-first-century education needs to be enhanced to create refined learning immersion, skills development and produce high-quality graduates who will be assets to the international workforce. there are various types of technologies that enable this form of learning, such as moodle and blackboard (bagarukayo & kalema, 2015). blackboard is arguably the most deployed lms http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 1012022 40(2): 101-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 olaitan & mavuso adapting to technology tools in a learning environment in south african public universities. with blackboard technology, lecturers can post course content, including videos and audio. additionally, there is a collaborative tool on blackboard that enables online live classes. assessments can be done and graded in real-time on the tool, with the student having access to the rubric or criteria with which the assessments are graded. students also have access to numerous interactive tools on the platform. there are discussion forums, and students can work in groups and submit assignments. some of the features of blackboard are: the announcement feature, which enables the lecturer to communicate effectively but remotely with students; an email facility, which is an easy way to access the students and provide the students with a platform to communicate with the lecturer at a physical distance (heirdsfield et al., 2011); and asynchronous online discussions, which enable students to interact with each another, share ideas, insight and understand the course (adedoja et al., 2013). globally, institutions of higher learning have adopted the policy of blended learning and encourage the inculcation of interactive, online and technology-based learning for students (barajas, 2003). the rationale for this approach of student-centred learning is two-fold: (a) the 4ir is already impacting major industries such as the automobile, manufacturing and banking sectors in south africa, and graduates need to be prepared for careers in these fields; (b) higher education is under immense pressure to respond to the increasingly diverse and multicultural nature of enrolled students, placing a challenge on the traditional learning paradigm (mantri, 2015). online learning, which is the essential feature of blended learning, therefore emerges as an unavoidable complement to traditional ways of contact teaching at universities. the combination of the two approaches creates a rich learning experience for the student and better prepares the student for the world of work (cloete, 2017). although the blended learning system is intended to create a much richer learning experience for lecturers and students, many studies have showcased several difficulties with the practical use of the blackboard (heirdsfield et al., 2011). 2.4 the case study context although the advantages of technology tools are much touted, the reality is that the students and resources at tertiary institutions in south africa are as diverse as the nation itself (hall, 2015). the case study was situated in the eastern cape province of south africa. although the province has a rich history in the south african polity, it is one of the poorest provinces in the country. an estimated 60% of households in the province have at least one family member dependent on a social grant (fin24, 2019). the university offers various programmes on four campuses across the province. the enrolment statistics has evidenced a gross predominance of students from the historically disadvantaged group. this fact is attributed to many factors that do not fall under the scope of this paper. however, it is noteworthy to mention that a huge percentage of the 26 000 registered students of the institution are from underprivileged or disadvantaged households. the implication of this is that most of the first-year students have had no access to computers or any sort of technology learning tool before joining the university. this category of students finds it challenging to quickly adapt to technologies used in tertiary institutions. this deficit can be understood in the context of the digital divide in the larger communities the students come from (kponou, 2017). according to kponou (2017), the evidence presented by studies into the relationship between inequality and the diffusion of technology in most african countries clearly shows that rather than decreasing the inequality gap, technology actually widens the gap. this is because the complexities around what enables an individual from a disadvantaged community to successfully adopt a given technology are always oversimplified. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 1022022 40(2): 102-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) in light of the background of most first-year students at the university, the majority of them are unfamiliar with computers, technology and the associated functionalities. although most of the students possess smartphones, studies have shown that dexterity with cell phone applications does not make an individual a digital native (edcl, 2014). a survey of young people between the ages of 10 and 29 in australia, canada and parts of the united states revealed that exposure to technology cannot be equated with the ability to use it meaningfully. research shows that not all young people are tech-savvy or have the interest to learn more than the basic functionalities (almaiah, al-khasawneh, althunibat, 2020; thompson, 2013). an australian study found that only 15% of the student population are advanced users of ict, while 45% of all students could be described as rudimentary digital technology users. similarly, a survey carried out in austria indicates that only seven per cent of 15to 29-yearolds have very good computer skills (edcl, 2014). the assumption that new students at the university are familiar with technology simply because they use the applications on their phones is thus considered misleading. additionally, many of the students are from rural communities where there is virtually no internet connectivity. therefore, it becomes a significant challenge when these students are expected to align with the required skills for digital, blended learning tools (alenezi, 2020; oluyinka & endozo, 2019). research shows that students are versatile in the use of the devices for social media and other recreational purposes but are not as dexterous when it comes to technical know-how in accessing study materials and engaging in online activities provided by blackboard, such as blogs or discussion forums to aid their studies (thompson, 2013). this paper investigated the challenges faced by first-year students in adapting to blackboard, the technology tool adopted for blended learning at walter sisulu university (wsu), and the factors that are responsible for these challenges. identification of the causal factors will assist in taking steps to alleviate the problems. 3. theoretical framework the paper employed a combination of the theory of planned behaviour (tpb) (ajzen, 1991), and the technology acceptance model (tam) to investigate the research problem. the four combined core constructs found relevant to the research problem are: (a) perceived usefulness; (b) perceived ease of use; (c) subjective norms; and (d) perceived behavioural control. davis (1986) developed tam, which has been widely used to predict the use and acceptance of technology. tam establishes causal relationships between perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude towards use and current use of technology. the two constructs of perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use are variables that can be used to investigate the attitude to and acceptance of technology by first-year students. perceived usefulness is the subjective probability that a user has in believing that a particular application will enhance their desired outcome (davis, 1986). in the case of first-year students, it is believed that students will adopt technology tools as they perceive the relevance of such tools to their academic achievement. on the other hand, perceived ease of use is the degree to which the prospective user expects that using the tool will not involve great effort. this implies that firstyear students will be willing and eager to use technology tools to the degree to which the use is considered effortless. these two constructs are considered the most important determinants of actual use of technologies. the two constructs are influenced by external variables such as social and cultural factors. in the case of first-year students in the context of this research, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 1032022 40(2): 103-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 olaitan & mavuso adapting to technology tools in a learning environment issues around social factors, which include language and skills, are the prevalent relevant external variables. the third construct, which is attitude to use, was culled from the tpb. attitude refers to the user’s evaluation of how desirable a particular information system is. the fourth construct is behavioural intent, which is also a construct from the tpb theory. the construct measures the individual’s likelihood to employ technology tools. although the tpb is a general theory that seeks to explain almost any human behaviour, the tam’s focus is exclusively on the use of technological innovations and proposes constructs for analysing this type of behaviour (davis, 1989). constructs from the two theories were combined as a way of robustly investigating how students perceived the ease of use, and their own attitude towards these tolls that were previously unfamiliar but had now been “forced” upon them as a result of becoming university students. it was believed that a combination of the two theories would further enrich the findings of this study. while we note that many studies have been undertaken to understand the concept of online and other technology-based learning platforms with the aid of the tpb and tam, this study contributes to the body of knowledge in this field in two ways: we examine a group of students, which is peculiar in how it mirrors the inequalities and attendant challenges in the nation of south africa; and we propose a model, which educators and decision-makers can use to further understand, and possibly increase interest in online learning among students from a disadvantaged group in the context of a developing economy. the study lends its voice to the growing awareness of how traditional universities should be supported in a way that capacitates the peculiar needs of most of its student body. the paper also sought to argue for the critical role of understanding student perception and subsequent adaptation of suitable teaching models, which are based on a constructivist view of learning, where the flow of knowledge in the classroom is increasingly multidirectional (gomez-ramirez, valentia-arias & duque, 2019). the study proceeds by presenting four hypotheses based on the tam and tpb constructs. h1: students’ perceptions of the usefulness of blackboard will positively influence them towards using the technology. h2: students’ perceptions of ease of use will positively influence their attitude towards the technology. h3: students’ perceptions of the social factors will positively influence their subjective norms for using blackboard. h4: students’ perceived behavioural control toward blackboard positively influences their intention to adopt the technology. 4. methodology the paper employed a quantitative process of data collection and analysis. web-based questionnaires were sent to 90 first-year students. the survey was hosted online through google forms because of the social distance order as part of the preventive strategies to curtail the pandemic. the population size for this study was 700. ninety students consisting of male and female students were randomly selected from the total population of 700. the online survey creation software package by google was used to export data to a statistical software package (spss) for analysis. informed consent was obtained from the participants. the result of the analysis and the resultant model are presented below. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 1042022 40(2): 104-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) 4.1 proportional odds and logistic regression one of the assumptions underlying ordered logistic regression is that the relationship between each pair of outcome groups is the same. the ordered categories in all the variables were transformed to scale data to prepare them for the possible use of least square regression for data modelling. since the assumption of normality was violated and the method of least square could not be used, we resorted to transforming the variables by taking the logarithm of all the variables. the last alternative was to reduce the dimension of the factors. we used the principal component analysis. of the 30 factors considered, only nine scaled through by having a minimum eigenvalue of at least one. the correlation matrix and the scree plot reveal this using ibm® spss® statistics 25.0. the following formulae are used to predict probabilities for each level of the outcome: adapting to technology tools in a learning environment p(y=5) = � � ����(���������������������������) � p(y=4) = � � ����(���������������������������) � − p(y = 5) p(y=3) = � � ����(���������������������������) � − p(y = 4) − p(y = 5) p(y=2) =� � ����(���������������������������) � − 𝑃𝑃(𝑌𝑌 = 3) − p(y = 4) − p(y = 5) p(y=1) =� � ����(���������������������������) � – p(y = 2) − p(y = 3) − p(y = 4) − p(y = 5) p(y=0) = 1 − p(y = 1) − p(y = 2) − p(y = 3) − p(y = 4) − p(y = 5) 4. results table 1: kaiser-meyer-olkin and bartlett's test of sphericity kaiser-meyer-olkin measure of sampling adequacy 0.585 bartlett's test of sphericity approx. chi-square 1164.462 df 528 p-value 0.001 table 1 shows the output of measure of sampling adequacy of the method of factor reduction. the p-value of 0.001 indicates the acceptability of the method. 5. results table 1: kaiser-meyer-olkin and bartlett’s test of sphericity kaiser-meyer-olkin measure of sampling adequacy 0.585 bartlett’s test of sphericity approx. chi-square 1164.462 df 528 p-value 0.001 table 1 shows the output of measure of sampling adequacy of the method of factor reduction. the p-value of 0.001 indicates the acceptability of the method. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 1052022 40(2): 105-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 olaitan & mavuso adapting to technology tools in a learning environment figure 1: scree plot showing the eigenvalues against the components the scree plot in figure 1 reveals the components and the eigenvalues. it can be noticed that only nine components have eigenvalues greater than one. these are the components that were used in determining the predictors of the response variables. 5.1 results using multinomial ordinal logistic regression the ordinal logistic regression is a probability model used with an ordered response variable (agresti, 2000; lawal, 2003). table 2: categorical variable information n percent dependent variable tpb_tn 2.00 1 1.7% 2.67 2 3.4% 3.00 1 1.7% 3.33 9 15.5% 3.67 2 3.4% 4.00 18 31.0% 4.33 7 12.1% 4.67 7 12.1% 5.00 11 19.0% total 58 100.0% http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 1062022 40(2): 106-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) n percent factor gender male 24 41.4% female 34 58.6% total 58 100.0% mdevice smart phone 47 81.0% tablet 2 3.4% laptop 1 1.7% basic phone / non-smart phone 4 6.9% 2 or 3 devices 4 6.9% total 58 100.0% the rows in table 2 show the percentage of agreement in favour of intention to use technology for learning. more than 70% of students intended to start using technology to learn. table 3: continuous variable information n minimum maximum mean std. deviation covariate x1 58 2.17 5.00 4.1494 .59538 x2 58 1.00 5.00 1.7414 .94702 x3 58 1.00 5.00 2.0345 .91700 x4 58 1.00 5.00 3.8103 1.11539 x5 58 3.00 5.00 4.7069 .53010 x6 58 1.00 5.00 2.4310 1.48811 x7 58 1.00 5.00 4.2759 .83336 x8 58 1.00 5.00 2.6207 1.02303 x9 58 3.00 5.00 4.4483 .65353 where the covariates x1, x2, x9 are tam_cb3, tpb_at4, tpb_sn3, tpb_tpb5, tpb_ pbc6, tpb_pbc7, the means of these formulated x1. tam_cb2, tpb_sn2, tpb_pbc3, tam_oe2, tam_ma2, tam_ma1, tpb_pbc2 and tam_cb3 formed x2 to x9 respectively (table 3;). table 4: measures of goodness of fit value df p-value deviance 164.550 434 .379 scaled deviance 164.550 434 pearson chi-square 380.620 434 .877 scaled pearson chi-square 380.620 434 log-likelihood -82.275 akaike’s information criterion (aic) 208.550 finite sample corrected aic 237.465 bayesian information criterion (bic) 253.880 consistent aic 275.880 the non-significance shown by the p-values indicate a well-fitted model. the pearson chisquare test shows that 87.7% of the variation in the response variable tpb_tn is explained by the model (table 4). the information criteria (aic, bic) could be used to pick the best model, that is, if various models are employed. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 1072022 40(2): 107-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 olaitan & mavuso adapting to technology tools in a learning environment table 5: omnibus test likelihood ratio chi-square df p-value 50.073 14 0.001 the omnibus test compares the fitted model against the thresholds-only (intercept) model. the p-value shows that the fitted model is significant at a 5% level (table 5). table 6: tests of model effects likelihood ratio chi-square df p-value gender 2.470 1 .116 mdevice .383 4 .984 x1 19.050 1 .000 x2 .029 1 .864 x3 2.561 1 .110 x4 3.545 1 .060 x5 .001 1 1.000 x6 7.572 1 .006 x7 1.855 1 .173 x8 .433 1 .511 x9 1.554 1 .212 table 6 is the summary of the effects of each of the factors on the response variable, that is, respondents’ intention to learn using technology: x1 and x6 are the most significant factors determining the response variable. table 7: non-parametric correlation on categorical factors tpb_tn gender mdevice spearman’s rho tpb_tn correlation coefficient 1.000 .042 -.099 sig. (2-tailed) . .756 .458 n 58 58 58 gender correlation coefficient .042 1.000 -.385** sig. (2-tailed) .756 . .003 n 58 58 58 mdevice correlation coefficient -.099 -.385** 1.000 sig. (2-tailed) .458 .003 . n 58 58 58 gender and mdevice do not have a significant correlation with respondents’ intention to learn using technology (p-value = 0.756 and p-value = 0.458, respectively; table 7). but it is noticed that gender and mdevice have a significant relationship (p-value = 0.003), which means the use of mobile devices can be influenced by the gender of the respondents. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 1082022 40(2): 108-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) table 8: parameter estimates parameter b exp(b) 95% wald confidence interval for exp(b) p-value lower upper threshold [tpb_ tn=2.00] 9.446 0.038 12662.620 1.681 95359890.123 [tpb_ tn=2.67] 11.638 0.008 113325.688 20.243 634413557.335 [tpb_ tn=3.00] 12.149 0.006 188831.273 33.918 1051272819.520 [tpb_ tn=3.33] 14.099 0.001 1327912.717 232.161 7595393122.616 [tpb_ tn=3.67] 14.377 0.001 1752944.007 299.729 10251982871.616 [tpb_ tn=4.00] 16.497 0.000 14599536.880 1991.575 107024052494.921 [tpb_ tn=4.33] 17.401 0.000 36056101.653 4576.192 284088257173.162 [tpb_ tn=4.67] 18.629 0.000 123130638.464 13174.862 1150763806703.480 [gender=1.00] -0.962 0.120 0.382 0.114 1.285 [gender=2.00] 0 1 [mdevice=1.00] 0.492 0.653 1.635 0.191 13.967 [mdevice=2.00] 0.297 0.872 1.345 0.037 49.262 [mdevice=3.00] 1.306 0.557 3.690 0.047 287.972 [mdevice=5.00] 0.580 0.739 1.786 0.059 54.187 [mdevice=7.00] 0 1 x1 3.369 0.000 29.059 6.184 136.553 x2 0.056 0.864 1.057 0.560 1.997 x3 -0.582 0.110 0.559 0.274 1.140 x4 0.556 0.060 1.743 0.977 3.112 x5 0.000 1.000 1.000 0.316 3.166 x6 0.562 0.009 1.754 1.148 2.680 x7 0.540 0.167 1.716 0.798 3.690 x8 0.196 0.512 1.216 0.678 2.181 x9 -0.712 0.218 0.491 0.158 1.522 (scale) 1 table 8 presents detailed information about the individual level contributions of the factors in the model. the parameter estimates (b), standard error, and the p-values are represented in the table. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 1092022 40(2): 109-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 olaitan & mavuso adapting to technology tools in a learning environment 5.2 interpretation of the model and summary of results from table 8, x1, which contains tam_cb3, tpb_at4, tpb_sn3, tpb_tpb5, tpb_pbc6, tpb_pbc7, have a positive significant effect on tpb_tn, that is, students’ intention to use technology for learning. the positive coefficient value of 3.369 shows that for every one-unit increase in x1, there is a predicted increase of 3.369 in the log odds of being on a higher level on tpb_tn. further, x3 is a negative non-significant predictor of tpb_tn. the negative value of -0.582 indicates that for every one-unit increase in x3, there is a corresponding decrease of 0.582 in the log odds of being on the higher level on tpb_tn. additionally, x6 has a positive significant effect on tpb_tn; the positive coefficient value of 0.562 shows that for every one-unit increase in x6, there is a predicted increase of 0.562 in the log odds of being on a higher level on tpb_tn. using the odds ratios reflects the multiplicative change in the odds of being in a higher category on the dependent variable for every one-unit increase on the independent variable, holding the remaining independent variables constant. the odds ratios (exp(b)) indicates that the odds of being in a higher level on students’ intention to use technology for learning increases by a factor of 29.059 for every one-unit increase on x1. it decreases by a factor of 0.559 for every one-unit increase on x3 and increases by 1.743 for every unit increase on x4, increases by 1.754 for every unit increase on x6 and so on. according to the rule of thumb, since the odds ratios of most of the independent variables are greater than one, this suggests that there is an increasing probability of being on a higher level on the dependent variable as values on an independent variable increase. the categorical variables and covariates having b=0 indicate the redundancy of such variables; it means they do not contribute to the model. in summary, it can be concluded that the most obvious determining covariate for students’ intention to use technology for learning is x1, which comprises tam_cb3, tpb_at4, tpb_ sn3, tpb_pbc5, tpb_pbc6 and tpb_pbc7. the corresponding items of these variables in the questionnaire come under the categories of control belief, attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioural control, respectively. the least contributing covariate is x9 that is learning environment of the respondent, having an odds ratio of 0.491. 6. limitations and recommendations for future study our investigation was limited to two of the university’s four campuses. our sample size was also limited to students in technology-related courses. it is recommended that the investigation be conducted across all the campuses, with respondents chosen from other non-technology courses to test if the same outcome will be obtained. it is important for stakeholders in education to understand and modify the factors that modulate students’ affect concerning technology tools. further research is required to determine exactly how to motivate students towards the use of these tools. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 1102022 40(2): 110-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.8 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) 7. conclusion based on the model, we conclude that the variables above are critical to understanding students’ intention to use the technology tools available at the university. the model is confirmatory of three out of the four hypotheses drawn to investigate the research problem. these are h1, h3 and h4. the analysis shows no significant correlation between h2 and students’ intention to use available technology tools. the results confirm that a student’s perception of the importance of technology tools, acceptance or approval of peers and 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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2012.12.022 _gjdgxs 44 research methods for undergraduate delivery: evaluation of problem-based learning abstract research methods are considered a complex and difficult subject to teach and there is limited data on innovative ways to teach it to undergraduate public health professionals. although problembased learning (pbl) is a common approach in various disciplines, little is published on its use in developing research skills within the south african context. this paper outlines the delivery of an undergraduate research methods course with an evaluation of the problem based learning approach with respect to student experience and competence. a cross sectional descriptive case study was conducted among the students of environmental health within the faculty of health sciences at the durban university of technology. all students enrolled for 2015 were invited to participate. questionnaires were administered after each section and at the end of the research methods course. participants were required to recall how they experienced different sections of the course and to self-reflect on perceived competency post-delivery. participants reported that they benefitted from the pbl approach and indicated that independent learning helped to develop skills that they could transfer to their professional environment. they enjoyed group interactions and private consultations with the instructor, but expressed difficulty with the literature review, choosing and summarising relevant information and statistical concepts and terminology. the final proposal was a ‘light bulb’ moment and participants successfully converted their research problem into a proposal. problem-based learning may be used as a successful strategy for skills development in research methods courses. keywords: research methods, problem-based learning, research methods instruction, undergraduate research, self-directed learning 1. introduction many consider research methods courses a complex domain that confounds students and academics alike (lehti & lehtinen, 2005). instructors have the unenviable task of transferring the complexities of these concepts to students who are completely new to the research process (earley, 2014). however, in spite of significant interest in promoting research skills among postgraduate students, there is limited data for undergraduate students (lombard & kloppers, 2015). the national development plan (national poovendhree reddy department of community health studies, discipline of environmental health, durban university of technology, p.o. box 1334, durban, 4000, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v36i1.4 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2018 36(1): 44-62 © uv/ufs http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.4 45 reddy research methods for undergraduate delivery planning commission, 2013) is a policy imperative in south africa which stresses the need for substantial growth in postgraduate training in order to move south africa from a resourcebased economy to a knowledge-based economy (sonn, 2016). higher education is under pressure to produce more postgraduates, but research remains a daunting prospect for many, and motivating students to undertake postgraduate studies may be dependent on their confidence in research methods. it is thus imperative that research skills are effectively introduced and strengthened at the undergraduate level. wagner, garner and kawulich (2011) reported that only a few systematic studies related to curriculum design and the teaching of research methods exist. in addition, facilitators of research methods courses have to rely on their own research experience, substantive literature, and student feedback/performance to improve delivery. the research discourse is complex and students often struggle with conceptualisation and understanding of concepts and the way they fit together in the final product. students are required to integrate skills together with research and discipline-specific knowledge to answer a question in a scientifically rigorous manner. the approach of problem-based learning (pbl) is an instructional method in which students learn through facilitated problem solving. problem-based learning is a generally accepted approach to learning in health care curricula, particularly for clinical instruction. the instructor has a pivotal role to plan, guide and supervise learning in the pbl approach. the goals of pbl include helping students to develop knowledge, effective problem-solving skills, self-directed learning skills, effective collaboration and intrinsic motivation (hmelo-silver, 2004; carlisle & ibbotson, 2005). biggs (1999) asserts that “good teaching” is achieved when most of the class is thinking at the level of the more intelligent students, so the challenge is to enable the majority of the class to engage at a higher cognitive level. critical thinking and independent learning are phrases that have been linked to pbl particularly where students were asked to formulate problems and then equipped with skills to solve these problems (kemp, 2011). pbl involves interacting with learners, with focus on the starting knowledge that each student brings to the pbl process and allowing the student greater control in terms of the direction and content of learning (richardson, 2003). this strategy is linked to the constructivist theory of learning, which is based on the principle that learning is not passively transmitted by direct instruction; it is achieved by the students’ activities, experiences and ability. the constructivist method of pbl is particularly popular in health sciences instruction, where learning is fostered through discovery (kemp, 2011). the current format of research methods 4 in the environmental health programme actively engages students in participative exercises. the course journeys tentatively, outcome by outcome, into the research process by providing students with practice in each competency. the assessments are iterative and cumulative, leading to a research proposal at the end of the course that is prepared using a postgraduate template. my primary objective in teaching the research methods course has been to develop student’s critical thinking and practical skills in research. it is all about the “what, why, when, where, who, how and so what” questions. simplifying a complex research problem to a few questions facilitates learning; i.e. what is the problem, why is it important to investigate, when do you want to do the project, where is the proposed study site, who are your participants/sample, how will you do it (methods) and what is the proposed outcome/importance? however, what exactly are students learning? are the students going through the motions just to pass the course or do a few reach the ‘light bulb’ moment of understanding the concept of research? 46 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) although pbl is a common approach in various disciplines, there is little published on its use in developing research skills, particularly in the south african context. this paper outlines the overall delivery of a pbl undergraduate research methods course with an evaluation of student experience and competence. 2. method a cross sectional descriptive case study of the research methods 4 undergraduate course in the bachelor of technology: environmental health programme within the faculty of health sciences at the durban university of technology (dut) was carried out. all students enrolled in 2015 were invited to participate (n=40). participation was voluntary and all participants signed informed consent (n=37). the dut institutional research ethics committee approved the study. students were directed with respect to a topic selection by allocation of a sustainable development goal (sdg) (united nations development programme, 2017) at random. the student was tasked with finding an area of interest within the given sdg. a student, for example, allocated sdg3, chose a topic related to the use and availability of water and sanitation in relation to health outcomes within an informal settlement. sdg3 relates to ensuring healthy lives and promoting wellbeing for all at all ages. it was mandatory that all topics were related to the field of environmental health. with guidance from the instructor, all the proposed topics and aims were discussed and finalised in a one-on-one session. the topics were deconstructed throughout the course. the student was required to prepare a literature review, methodology, ethics documents and data collection instruments. the goal was that each assignment would lead up to the final proposal. the course outline, with the various learning activities and associated assessments, is presented in table 1. apart from five formal assessments, small learning activities (as denoted in table 1) were given after each section to facilitate understanding. in addition, the instructor was available for individual consultations and evaluation of drafts. additional resources related to each section were provided in an online classroom. 2.1 data collection questionnaires were piloted to ensure content validity and reliability. the instructor was not present during questionnaire administration and was blinded to student identifiers. an openended questionnaire was administered to all participants at the end of each section (table 1) to evaluate their perceptions and understanding of that section. a summative questionnaire was administered at the end of the course. participants were required to recall how they experienced different sections of the course. perceived competence with research skills was also evaluated. the summative questionnaire was developed with consideration of the learning outcomes and competencies as described in the course syllabus. questions included student reflections on learning and understanding of research concepts. this included the development of effective search strategies and skills in order to identify and locate appropriate sources for articulating research topics; preparing a literature review with annotated bibliography; engaging with quantitative and qualitative methodologies; ethics in research; statistics and data analysis; understanding of the research process; proposal development; and, overall experience and perception of the course. data from open-ended questions was content analysed for emerging themes. students were required to rate each assessment for difficulty from 1-5 (where 1=easy; 2=moderately easy, 3=average, 4=difficult 47 reddy research methods for undergraduate delivery and 5=most difficult) and a mean score was calculated from student ratings. summary statistics (mean, median, range) for student assessments were calculated. stata (version 12) was used for quantitative data analysis. table 1: *research methods course outline with associated activities and assessments session learning outcomes teaching and learning activities* assessment the research process the student should be able to define basic research concepts and explore various research designs; the student should be able to develop and frame ideas or questions into aims and objectives; the student acquire skills to search for scientifically valid literature using various databases; the student will be familiar with reading scientific literature and extracting information; the student should be able to write a literature review and reference appropriately. on first contact student was given a sustainable development goal (sdg) that was allocated at random. they were given time to read and formulate a topic of interest. for example, sdg 11: make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable was used to formulate a topic around the effects of the kwazulu-natal (kzn) drought and water conservation practices among the urban community. instructor discussed topics and aims individually with each student. students were given journal articles and instructed to prepare a summary in their own words. class work activity: use referencing guidelines to reference a given set of articles. students given an example of a literature review and referred to the institutional repository to access masters and doctoral theses and dissertations as examples. training on the use of online databases was provided by the library. each student submitted a 10-page literature review related to their topic. a list of references was included and prepared according to the harvard format as per institutional guidelines. assessed using a rubric. 48 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) session learning outcomes teaching and learning activities* assessment methodology the student should be able to evaluate ethical issues as pertaining to different research scenarios; the student is able to understand the challenges and advantages of qualitative and quantitative methodologies; the student learns the basic principles of qualitative data analysis; the student should be able to acquire basic skills to set up and conduct interviews and focus groups; and the student acquires skills to formulate questionnaires and focus group questions. instructor used a single study topic to teach the various topics on methodology. students were given a group activity to design a questionnaire on a given topic. this was peer reviewed and critically evaluated by other groups in the class. focus group held with students as participants. class discussion following focus group. ethics case study given. students were required to engage critically with the real-life case with respect to all ethical principles taught. students were required to provide a detailed plan for their proposed methodology according to the following: study area study population sampling strategy data collection ethics consideration they were required to prepare an informed consent and information sheet for their potential study group. based on their proposed methodology, a complete questionnaire and/ or a set of focus group questions were designed. rubrics used. data analysis the student understands how to deal with research data; the student understands basic statistics terminology; the student should be able to distinguish and apply descriptive and some inferential statistics; and the student is able to use excel to do graphs and basic statistical analysis. this was theory and practical session combined. students were required to complete exercises on ms excel after each section was delivered. a detailed classwork exercise was given to ensure that students had understood and learnt skills students were given data sets in excel format and a set of questions related to the data. classwork was evaluated. a research methods test that was heavily weighted in biostatistics was given. 49 reddy research methods for undergraduate delivery session learning outcomes teaching and learning activities* assessment proposal writing and dissemination the student can structure a complete research proposal. the student acquires the skills required to prepare research related budgets. the student is able to develop scientific writing skills for proposal and report writing. the student recognises the various routes of disseminating research results. the student is able to communicate research ideas effectively to a peer audience. group work and critical review. several examples of good and poor proposals were given to groups. the contact session was followed up with one-onone advisory meetings with students to evaluate progress with proposal. comment on drafts. students were required to submit a completed research proposal with all attachments (methodological instruments and ethics documents). the research proposal was assessed using a rubric. oral presentation of proposal using powerpoint. *contact sessions with the instructor was held for each session and online readings and resources were provided 3. results of the 40 students enrolled for the course, 37 completed both questionnaires. most participants were female (65%) with 81% african and 19% (7) indian. approximately 73% were part time students. themes were identified from the collective answers provided for openended questions (table 2). participants reported that the section on preparing a literature review helped them to understand how to access and deconstruct peer reviewed literature. they acknowledged that the classwork exercises facilitated learning. participants valued the personal development and the skills transfer such as independent learning scientific writing and reading during this section as the following student quotation suggests: …being able to work on my own and reading up on topics that were related to my study was challenging but helped me to grow. doing the final literature review was proof of how much knowledge i had gained pertaining to my study topic (participant 3). some participants reported that referencing and scientific writing was challenging and they found difficulty with selecting relevant information with respect to their topics. most participants enjoyed the section on methodology. a general methodology plan was provided with guiding subheadings that were structured and simple to follow. in addition, participants were handed a group-work task to formulate a questionnaire on a given topic, which was subsequently peer reviewed and discussed in class. participants enjoyed these teaching strategies. solving the problem or ‘puzzle’ through a well-developed methodology enhanced understanding and participant competence. participant 4 described her experience with this section: 50 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) the given questions or breakdown related to methodology gave me clarity about my topic…it was more practical and made me understand all the steps required to conduct a study (participant 4). although some participants enjoyed the opportunity to apply learning, others found it challenging to customise the theoretical concepts of methodology to their respective topics. participants requested additional learning time for methodology with both good and poor examples of methodology to review in class. many participants reported that the skills learnt during the section on data analysis and statistics was very useful in teaching them how to analyse data and use ms excel, but they had difficulty with the statistical discourse in terms of understanding and applying terminology. many participants could not cope with the pace and it was evident that additional time should be allocated to this section as illustrated by the excerpt below: need to allocate more time.. all the information at once was overwhelming and confusing. we need a theory class before the practical session as most of us aren’t familiar with terms and the use of excel (participant 29). the proposal writing and dissemination session was both challenging and rewarding for participants. competence in research was developed as they began to identify the links with topic, aims and methodology. as one student explained: ..now i am able to link my objectives with the methodology that i need for my study, it made me understand that in future, we will be able to write our very own proposal and budget going forward (participant 36). in addition, most of the work was already done in previous assessments and they could concentrate on building the final proposal. individual supervision in this phase was beneficial. participants enjoyed learning from dissemination of research by oral presentations. watching their peers present their own projects further enhanced their own understanding of multifaceted research. participants developed various skills during this session, including resource utilisation and self-awareness. additional student responses related to each session are included in table 2. the post-course survey required participants to evaluate aspects of the pbl approach, their perception of skills learned, and overall experience of the course using a 4-point likert scale (figure 1). while the majority of participants agreed that the teaching and learning strategies were successful, 30% of participants did not like being directed towards a research topic based on a sdg goal. participants’ perception of skills acquired during the course is presented in figure 2. most participants felt competent with aspects of methodology and ethics but 69% did not understand all the concepts of statistics. in addition, some reported a limited perceived competence in searching for relevant literature (47%), evaluating useful sources (25%), and writing a literature review (36%). it was interesting to note that even though 86% agreed that they were able to turn a problem into a research question, only 32% were confident with preparing aims for a particular topic. figure 3 shows overall evaluation of student experience of the course. most participants enjoyed the teaching style (66%) and instructor facilitated learning (97%). it was encouraging to note that all participants understood how the various pieces fit together to form a research proposal, and many indicated that they may consider enrolling for a master’s degree in the future. participants’ rating of assessment difficulty and actual mean scores are presented in table 3 (ranging from 1-5 in terms of difficulty). participants rated the assessments for the literature review and the statistics/test to be most difficult (3.8 and 3.6 respectively). this was reinforced by the actual mean scores from student assessments with the literature review (57.1) and statistics test (54.8) having the lowest means when compared with other assessments. 51 reddy research methods for undergraduate delivery table 2: participant responses to open-ended questions after each completed section section question theme student response literature review how was the session useful? accessing and deconstructing journal articles. “learning how to obtain journal articles from databases. it also gave us an understanding of how a lit. review should be structured correctly and taught me how to reference correctly.” link to student topics “reading of the variety of articles, made my topic easier to understand and increased my knowledge of my topic.” instructor controlled learning. “the explaining of the work or exercises by the instructor about how to do a review the correct way and giving us access to read other reviews done.” “examples made in class, marking other classmates work.” what did you enjoy most? personal development “reading other people’s thesis. it opened my mind.” “being able to work on my own.” “being part of the class because some of the things/ information that she taught us were useful when you go back to workplace.” “doing the task as it was challenging but it helped me grow.” skills development “looking up for journals that related to my topic and learning how to search for journals.” “reading different articles because it helped in enhancing my english grammar and also how to reference properly.” “doing the final write-up of my literature review, it was proof of how much knowledge i had gained pertaining to my study topic.” “conducting research to complete my literature review as it gave me insight on many other aspects that are linked.” what did you find challenging? issues with referencing “referencing. i found it hard to reference what has been referenced already. putting together other people’s ideas without adding my own was a bit challenging.” sifting through information “not knowing what to include or exclude in your assignment.” “grouping relevant information together when doing my writeup.” scientific writing “time is not enough to prepare. the language sometimes is too scientific.” “i found it a bit difficult to stick to writing in scientific language for the entire lit. review.” “making my literature flow. i couldn’t get it into the point where i wanted to be.” how may we improve the session? teaching strategies “getting more examples of other people’s lit. review.” “give more practice in class, in groups then individually for assessment.” “giving us a bad example of a lit. review in class. go through it with us. give correction for all the errors. give tips on how to improve it which will in turn help us to use those tips and corrects in our own lit. reviews. i find it helpful to learn from mistakes that others make so i know how to improve my own work.” 52 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) section question theme student response methodology how was the session useful? teaching strategies “how you can try and solve the puzzle through questionnaires.” “working in groups at first helped and made it easy to attack my own methodology.” “going over other students work and doing corrections.” “the methodology plan made it easier to understand.” development of student competence “one made me understand all the steps required in order to conduct a study.” “i now understand the different sections that must be included in the methodology. the detailed description of how the questionnaire should be structured was very useful.” applied learning “having to take what i learnt and apply it on my work. that was interesting.” “compiling questionnaire for my proposed methodology as it prepares me for masters.” what did you enjoy most? teaching strategies “the fact that sections were broken down and made easy to understand.” what did you find challenging? customising methodology “choosing the types of study designs to use and understanding the study designs.” “writing for my participants who are the elderly. it was challenging to use language so that they could understand.” “study population, as it was difficult for me to calculate my sample population.” how may we improve the session? teaching strategies “more time on methodology.” “getting more examples of other people’s methodology.” “if there could be more group work tasks.” “past year assignments or examples of the methodology assessment should be distributed in class and should be discussed on how it should be done in terms of what’s the right way of doing it and what’s the wrong way.” 53 reddy research methods for undergraduate delivery section question theme student response data analysis and statistics how was the session useful? skills development “i am able to use excel to analyse data. i am now able to calculate statistics with a better understanding.” “you can also use it elsewhere, not limited to class.” instructor controlled learning. “the practical work of literally doing the work on excel as prof. taught us was very useful in helping me to understand better.” critical reflection “it makes it able to summarise data. enables you to analyse information and opens your mind.” “challenging, make one think critically and diverse.” what did you enjoy most? practical skills development “working on excel as i learnt new things.” “yes, it gives me knowledge on how to present my findings after completing a study and the easy ways of verifying my studies.” what did you find challenging? difficulty with statistical discourse “some of the terminology and keeping up.” “first class where i had to juggle understanding words and use of excel.” how may we improve the session? pace and time constraints “keeping up to speed with the lesson as there was a lot to take in at once.” “grasping everything, understanding everything in a short space of time.” additional time “introducing the statistics early during the course of the year and have about 3-4 lectures for these sessions.” “stats can be very confusing so i feel the session should be extended to more than 2 days so that the pace of teaching and learning is slower allowing students to understand better instead of being lost.” teaching strategies “more questions to do, this will improve learning experience.” “familiarising myself with terminology… prior to the lecture, having key terms given to me to read.” “first having a theory class before the practical session as most of us aren’t familiar with terms and how to use excel.” 54 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) section question theme student response proposal writing and dissemination how was the session useful? development of student competence “i was able to see and understand the relationships between the methodology and the aims and objectives.” “the session was always useful because the information that we get was also contributing in my workplace.” “you get used to presenting in front of your classmates” instructor supervision and support “the private consultation with instructor was also useful in ensuring that one included everything required.” “the template given to us made it easy to understand what to focus on… gave us structure.” learning from dissemination “standing in front of my peers and rendering my proposal to them and also to critique other people’s proposals.” “others presentation makes one see the gaps one has.” what did you enjoy most? skills development “the researching and gathering information part of it. i really enjoyed exploring my topic and learning new things.” “learning on my own using the resources available online.” “reviewing and improving my past work.” what did you find challenging? methodology in proposal preparation “understanding the study design in terms of applying them to my study as well as statistics.” “compiling data analysis section, but the instructor noted my wrongs and i was able to elaborate on them to do better in future.” summarising previous literature review “summarising my literature review.” “deciding what to include and exclude.” presentation skills “being able to present data which is sufficient enough within a short space of time.” how may we improve the session? increased number of lectures “although there were consultation times allocated, i believe if possible to have more sessions/lectures to ensure that we understand.” 55 reddy research methods for undergraduate delivery exercises in class taught me to use excel. reading material and online resources for methodology section was adequate. the classwork on questionnaire development was helpful. i learnt from the class activity on focus groups. the one-on-one interaction with the instructor on the lit. review was beneficial. i found the exercise on summarising a journal article useful. i preferred being given an sdg to direct my research.     exercises in class taught me to use excel. reading material and online resources for methodology section was adequate. the classwork on questionnaire development was helpful. i learnt from the class activity on focus groups. the one-on-one interaction with the instructor on the lit. review was beneficial. i found the exercise on summarising a journal article useful. i preferred being given an sdg to direct my research.     figure 1: responses of research methods 4 participants regarding the teaching and learning   0% 50% 100% strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree figure 1: responses of research methods 4 participants regarding the teaching and learning practices used (n = 37) 56 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) i completed the classwork with ease. i understood the concepts in statistics. i know the difference between quantitative and qualitative methods. i am able to prepare informed consent for a research project. i understand the importance of ethical research. i know how to construct a reference list. i know how to reference in-text. i understand the concept of plagiarism. i am competent at writing scientifically for a literature review. i know how to use information from journal articles to write a literature review. i know how to evaluate if literature sources are useful or not. i had difficulty finding journal articles relevant to my topic. it was the first time i read a journal article. i can prepare aims for a particular topic. i know how to turn a problem into a research question.   i completed the classwork with ease. i understood the concepts in statistics. i know the difference between quantitative and qualitative methods. i am able to prepare informed consent for a research project. i understand the importance of ethical research. i know how to construct a reference list. i know how to reference in-text. i understand the concept of plagiarism. i am competent at writing scientifically for a literature review. i know how to use information from journal articles to write a literature review. i know how to evaluate if literature sources are useful or not. i had difficulty finding journal articles relevant to my topic. it was the first time i read a journal article. i can prepare aims for a particular topic. i know how to turn a problem into a research question.    0% 50% 100% strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree 57 reddy research methods for undergraduate delivery figure 2: participants’ perception of skills development during the research methods course (n = 37) i would have liked to actually do my proposed project. i enjoyed the teaching style used in this course where i was learning through doing. the assessments were relevant and contributed to my learning. i prefer the examination method rather than continuous assessment. i may enrol for a master’s degree in future. i understand how all the pieces i learnt throughout the year fit together for a research proposal. the instructor facilitated my learning. i am able to prepare a research proposal on a given topic.   i would have liked to actually do my proposed project. i enjoyed the teaching style used in this course where i was learning through doing. the assessments were relevant and contributed to my learning. i prefer the examination method rather than continuous assessment. i may enrol for a master’s degree in future. i understand how all the pieces i learnt throughout the year fit together for a research proposal. the instructor facilitated my learning. i am able to prepare a research proposal on a given topic.       figure 3: overall evaluation of research methods 4 (n = 37)   0% 50% 100% strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree figure 3: overall evaluation of research methods 4 (n = 37) table 3: participants’ ratings and achievement in research methods (n = 37) assessment mean rating* student achievement literature review methodology statistics/test presentation proposal preparation 3.8 2.5 3.6 2.6 3.2 mean (sd) median range 57.1 (11.9) 53.5 32-80 64.2 (15.1) 63.0 37-93 54.8 (13.9) 55.5 28-87 70.2 (7.1) 69.5 54-89 64.7 (10.8) 64.5 40-91 *ratings from 1–5 where 1 = easy and 5 = very difficult 58 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) 4. discussion research methods is a difficult course to teach at the undergraduate level and requires that the instructor reach into the teaching and learning toolkit to find innovative strategies to impart knowledge and skills related to a complex discourse. although pbl is a common approach in various disciplines, there has been little published on its use in developing undergraduate research skills. this study evaluated student experience and competence using pbl as a teaching paradigm for a research methods undergraduate course. participants generally benefitted from the pbl approach and felt that independent and critical learning helped develop skills that they could transfer to their professional environment. participants reported difficulty with statistical concepts and terminology although they enjoyed the practical component. the final proposal was a ‘light bulb’ moment and participants successfully converted their problems into proposals. the research methods 4 course is skills based to enable students to be intelligent users of research and to effectively design, implement and interpret projects in their professional lives. however, in my experience of teaching research methods 4 over 10 years, it would appear that most students dread the course and find it abstract and difficult. a facilitator needs to address these concerns while ensuring that the course is relevant, current and broadly focused enough to hold the interest of students specialising in the various fields of environmental health, while also stimulating independent learning and an interest in research. this is a daunting prospect for the instructor, particularly as it involves supervising the progress of over 40 completely different research project proposals from novice students. different methods of delivery for research methods have been explored within the context of the faculty of health sciences at dut. the first strategy was that all students across various disciplines were combined and academics with appropriate expertise were then assigned a particular topic e.g. qualitative research. unfortunately, this met with limited success as the students failed to connect research content with their discipline areas. in the subsequent model, each student was required to design, execute and report on a mini research project within a very short space of time (about 10 months). the format of delivery and assessment was then modified within our programme to ensure that students are equipped with the necessary tools and skills to identify a problem and locate practical solutions in a systematic way. the research proposal is the final outcome, so that students learn each new research related skill, and then test their abilities by fitting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle into one coherent proposal. as far back as 1975, research methods instructors have recognised that “being able to do research is a skill consisting of both knowledge and practical decision-making competence” (earley, 2014). a review of literature on various prescribed approaches to teaching research methods showed that international universities have significant emphasis on training students to conduct research (wagner et al., 2011). there are various methods employed by universities to transfer research method skills to students but there is no obvious ‘one size fits all’ strategy. while current research teachers have access to expansive literature explaining research methods, the jury is still out on the most effective teaching and learning styles of concepts (wagner et al., 2011). the pbl approach may be well suited for delivery of research methods. during pbl, the students themselves describe the context, develop and construct the problem given minimal direction. this strategy encourages the “how to learn” as well as decision-making about “what to choose” (carlisle & ibbotson, 2005). students are engaged 59 reddy research methods for undergraduate delivery with using their research question or problem to unpack each component of the proposal writing process. they journey tentatively, outcome by outcome, into the research process by formulating a research question; conducting a literature review; devising a methodology to address the research question; data analysis; dissemination; and, proposal writing. formative exercises are given after each section to evaluate understanding. the final product or ‘solution’ is a scientifically rigorous research proposal. such instructional strategies challenge students to solve ‘authentic’ problems and acquire complex knowledge in information-rich settings based on the assumption that having students construct their own solutions leads to the most effective learning experience. problem-based learning also develops ‘soft skills’ such as scheduling and planning of tasks, organising and summarising information, and reading and analysing literature (kirschner, sweller & clark, 2006). in this study, the initial contact session, where the participants were directed with respect to developing their topics and aims, was useful in fostering an early ‘supervisory’ relationship between instructor and student. this allowed for an ongoing collaboration where the student was comfortable with ‘exposing their flaws’ to the instructor. i reinforced the notion that the research question and design should only be as complicated as is necessary to answer the research question. participants were introduced to peer reviewed literature and database searching which proved useful in understanding their own topics. the realisation that every journal article was ‘someone’s actual research project’ was discussed in class. participants found that peer assessment of actual examples of literature reviews were very helpful. they wanted examples of ‘bad’ literature reviews so that they could learn from them. developing a critical balanced literature review was a difficult task for participants. this is an essential skill as tashakkori and teddlie (2003) reported that students develop an appreciation for the changing landscape of knowledge construction and are able to see how a hypothesis is supported in one study but may be refuted in another. competence was developed by guiding participants to develop the methodology in a stepwise method. students were encouraged to engage with other proposals and dissertations that showcase various research constructs which enabled them to connect theory with reality. it was interesting to note that participants once again applied this learning to their professional work environments. while undergraduate students should understand basic statistics for a given set of data, they should not be expected to derive statistical formulae. in general, students are more receptive to a discussion of concepts with relatable examples. authors agree that statistics may dazzle students with jargon and rhetoric and tend to emphasise data analysis rather than the process (denham, 1997; ryan et al., 2014). in this study, theory and practical was directly linked in the methodology section, and the participants enjoyed learning ms excel with the use of practical data analysis examples. apart from skills development, the participants also felt that the session challenged their ability to evaluate information or data critically. however, participants had difficulty with complex statistical discourse and jargon, finding it hard to keep up with the terminology, concepts, problems and practicals at the same time. participants suggested that we improve this section by including additional time and offering pre-stats lectures that introduce terminology in preparation for the statistics session. the section on proposal writing and dissemination was the ‘light bulb’ moment for participants, where they were able to link concepts together to form a rigorous research proposal. pbl was used to organise the curricular content around problem scenarios and the student was guided to adopt a systematic, student-centred enquiry process. this learning process may be described as a “construction of knowledge” through the use of disciplined inquiry and 60 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) the use of pbl in teaching research methods enables instructors to deliver the constructivist philosophy to successfully assist students to create and understand knowledge (kemp, 2011). an understanding of the constructivist underpinnings of pbl enables instructors to reflect on the goals of teaching and pedagogical strategies to promote learning within the context of courses such as research methods. one cannot expect that undergraduate research students will understand the entire research discourse after a year’s instruction, but we may guide them towards solving a single problem using a single strategy and provide the skills-set required to investigate other problems using similar resources. other studies have reported that a successful course in research methods at the undergraduate level may foster lifelong learning, professional development and personal growth and further develop selfconfidence and self-esteem. in addition, it may inspire them to pursue postgraduate studies with more confidence (dohm & cummings, 2002; waite & davis, 2006; crooks, castleden, and meerveld, 2010; lombard & kloppers, 2015). south african heis need to strategise around building a strong research base that is underpinned by developing critical thinking and problem solving skills. at the same time, there is a need to be responsive and relevant to the current problems faced by community. problem based learning provides the opportunity to combine these goals to facilitate learning in a subject that has been reported to be complex and difficult to both facilitate and understand. delivery of pbl may vary from the ‘pure’ pbl (presentation of the problem with no prior lectures or presentation of other materials) model where students work in small groups with a facilitator, to a ‘hybrid’ model where students are supported by lectures and greater facilitator intervention (read, 2010). the ‘hybrid’ model was adopted in this context and the learning outcomes were achieved successfully. flexibility and consideration of context, resources and prior learning is imperative in using the pbl approach to teach undergraduate research methods. 5. conclusion research methods are a pivotal course for undergraduate health science students, as they are required to address a myriad of community health issues in their professional lives. empowering students with skills to identify a problem and to look for plausible solutions in a systematic and scientific manner strengthen the students’ ability to work, think and practice independently. this evaluation showed that the pbl was generally successful as students felt that they used self-directed learning with instructor facilitation and supervision to reach their goal of developing independent research proposals. in addition, they recognised that they would be able to use these skills in the workplace and some were motivated to pursue postgraduate work. problem-based learning requires significant commitment from 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development, 25(4), 403–419. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360600947426 https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070903452594 https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360600947426 pie 33(2) june 2015.indb perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 90 sexual socialisation in life orientation manuals versus popular music: responsibilisation versus pleasure, tension and complexity catriona macleod dale moodley lisa saville young this paper compares two forms of sexual socialisation to which learners are exposed: the sexuality education components of the life orientation (lo) manuals and the lyrical content and videos of popular songs. we performed a textual analysis of the sexual subject positions made available in, first, the lo manuals used in grade 10 classes and, second, the two songs voted most popular by the grade 10 learners of two diverse schools in the eastern cape. of interest in this paper is whether and how these two forms of sexual socialisation – one representing state-sanctioned sexual socialisation and the other learners’ chosen cultural expression that represents informal sexual socialisation – dovetail or diverge. against a backdrop of heterosexuality and an assumption of the ‘adolescent-in-transition’ discourse, the main sexual subject positions featured in the lo manuals are the responsible sexual subject and the sexual victim. a number of sexualised subject positions are portrayed in the songs, with these subject positions depicting sex as a site of pleasure, tension and complexity. although these two modes of sexual socialisation use different genres of communication, we argue that learners’ choice of songs that depict fluid sexual subject positions can help to inform lo sexuality education in ways that takes learners’ preferred cultural expression seriously and that moves away from the imperative of responsibilisation. key words: sexuality education; popular music; sexual socialisation; life orientation catriona macleod critical studies in sexualities and reproduction research programme, rhodes university e-mail: c.macleod@ru.ac.za tel: +27(46)6037328 lisa saville young psychology department, rhodes university e-mail: l.young@ru.ac.za tel:+27(46) 603 8047 dale moodley critical studies in sexualities and reproduction research programme, rhodes university e-mail:dalemoodley@ hotmail.com sexual socialisation in life orientation manuals versus popular music: responsibilisation versus pleasure, tension and complexity catriona macleod, dale moodley & lisa saville young 91 1. introduction within the context of multiple sexual and reproductive health challenges in south africa, the sexual socialisation of young people has become a key area of intervention and investigation, including school-based sex education (francis, 2010), parental communication (wilbraham, 2008), youth-friendly services (ashton, dickson & pleaner, 2009), peer education (campbell & macphail, 2002), and the mass media (katz, 2006). in this paper, we conduct a comparative textual analysis of two forms of sexual socialisation to which grade 10 learners in two schools in the eastern cape are exposed: the life orientation (lo) manuals used by their teachers, and the songs voted most popular by the learners. we understand sexual socialisation as the multiple social processes through which norms, customs, understandings and practices surrounding sexuality are simultaneously enabled and constrained (vincent, 2008). these social processes take on a number of forms, including formal teaching, social rites of passage, informal interactions, public health messaging, parental communication, personal experiences, and peer interactions. the aspect of sexual socialisation on which we concentrate in this paper is the textual construction of sexual subject positions that young people might occupy. our comparison of these two forms of sexual socialisation (lo manuals and popular songs) serves the purpose of juxtaposing a medium of state-sanctioned sexual socialisation with examples of sexual socialisation in commercialised popular music. the former represents formal, approved curriculum, while the latter gives us insight into learners’ preferred cultural expression. the questions we pose are whether and how these two forms of sexual socialisation dovetail or diverge and what might be learnt from these similarities or divergences. drawing on discursive psychology, we understand sexual subject positions as recognisable identity spaces that are constructed, maintained and negotiated in a range of interactive spaces (davies & harré, 1990). these subject positions are never neutral, but speak to/draw on underpinning social power relations, discourses and social practices that define these sexual subject positions in particular ways. in this paper, we analyse the sexual subject positions made available to learners in two texts that they are exposed to: lo manuals and the lyrics and videos of their most popular songs. we concentrate on these two forms of media in recognition of the key role they play in sexual socialisation. life orientation sexuality education manuals follow a pre-defined curriculum and are authorised for use in schools by the department of basic education. as such, these manuals offer an official version of acceptable and non-acceptable sexual subject positions. popular music, on the other hand, speaks to commercialised forms of social, gendered and sexual enactments. the success of particular tracks has to do with the extent to which they articulate the psychological and social tensions experienced by young people (frith & mcrobbie, 2007). perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 92 life orientation sexuality education an increasing amount of research has focused on life orientation sexuality education in south african schools, much of it exploring how teachers approach the topic (beyers, 2011; francis, 2012; helleve, flisher, onya, mukoma & klepp, 2011). while teachers clearly form a key part of the sexual socialisation that occurs in sexuality education, the manuals used are fundamental in providing not only the learners, but also the teachers, with reference points concerning how the lessons should proceed. as such, they function as the approved department of basic education framework for how the sexual socialisation of learners within the classroom should proceed. to our knowledge, only one south african paper analyses the sexuality education content of lo manuals. macleod (2009) found that danger and disease featured as guiding metaphors in these texts, with a strong emphasis on the negative consequences of early reproduction and abortion, and on behaviours that lead to disease. this emphasis is probably not surprising given the department of education’s (2008: 9) framing of sexuality education as something that should engender ‘responsible behaviour’: lo1 [learning outcome 1]: personal well-being as 3: explain changes associated with growing towards adulthood and describe values and strategies to make responsible decisions regarding sexuality and lifestyle choices in order to optimise personal potential. responsible decision making, in this logic, requires knowing the dangers and disease to which sexual activity may expose one. an analysis of sexuality education texts in other contexts has highlighted their role in gendered sexual socialisation. for example, hayden (2001) analysed the texts of an abstinence only and a comprehensive sexuality education programme in the united states. despite the very different aims of these programmes and the ostensible difference in approach, hayden (2001) found that both programmes naturalised gender assumptions about sexuality and promoted a ‘pro-life’ agenda. such research points to the importance of critically engaging with existing sexuality education texts in south african education systems in order to interrogate what is taken for granted with regard to sexuality. youth, popular music, and sexuality although the role of popular music in racialised youth identity has received attention in south africa (dolby, 2001), we were unable to find literature that specifically focuses on popular music and sexuality. work outside of south africa shows how music genres such as pop, rock and hip-hop are a playground for reinforcing, re-working and subverting heteronormative, gendered and sexual identities (frith & mcrobbie, 2007). furthermore, christenson and roberts (2001) note that ‘music media’ contribute to emerging youth cultures’ making available personal identities that young people actively take up. music can, therefore, be seen to play a significant sexual socialisation in life orientation manuals versus popular music: responsibilisation versus pleasure, tension and complexity catriona macleod, dale moodley & lisa saville young 93 role in sexual socialisation: music communicates gendered and sexual identities, while also creating cultural practices that produce such identities. while state-sanctioned sexuality education programmes have specific aims laid out by the authorities who underpin their roll-out (see the aims specified above), the sexual socialisation that occurs through music is contested and fluid. for example, what has been termed ‘cock rock’ and ‘gangsta rap,’ which depicts women in misogynistic ways, have been countered by female musicians through genres such as the ‘riot grrrl’ movement and by ‘bitches’ in the hip-hop industry (gottlieb & wald, 2010). furthermore, while ‘teenybop’-oriented pop music relies on romantic heterosexual conventions, depicting male and female sexuality as innocent, vulnerable and wholesome (frith, 2001), these constructs have been challenged by female musicians such as madonna who has invoked traditional representations of men and women with a sense of irony and parody (paglia, 2007). our study: manuals and music the aim of this research was to compare and contrast the sexual subject positions made available to learners in two sources of sexual socialisation that use different genres of communication. drawing on discursive psychology, we conducted an in-depth comparative analysis of the sexual subject positions made available in (1) the lo manuals used in the grade 10 classes and (2) the two songs voted most popular by these grade 10 learners of two schools in the eastern cape. grade 10 was selected because sex and sexuality education is given the most coverage in this year. school a, from which the data are drawn, is situated in a small rural and farming community; the majority of learners are black african and come from impoverished homes. school b is situated in a working class area in an eastern cape town; formerly designated as a school for coloured learners under apartheid, there are now a range of black learners (coloured and black african) who come from working to middleclass homes. the life orientation educators at both schools were consulted about the resources they use to teach the sex and sexuality components of the curriculum. each educator relied on one primary source: attwell, clitheroe, dilley, falken, lundell and miehe (2011) (school a); and doubell, haddon, holgate and martinuzzi (2011) (school b). these two books formed the text for the one part of the comparative analysis. a short survey was administered to all the grade 10 learners from both schools to establish the most popular music tracks. learners were asked to list their top ten current favourite songs which they accessed through radio, television, cellphones or the internet. we selected the top two most cited songs for analysis: ‘climax’ by usher and ‘beez in the trap’ by nicki minaj. these songs formed the visual and aural text of the second part of the comparative analysis. perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 94 we coded the material using the notion of interactive sexual subject positions as a guide. we understand subject positions within the framework of discursive psychology, in which discourses, as coherent sets of meanings, allow space for a certain type of self. in the words of davies and harré (1990: 66): ‘[t]he constitutive force of each discursive practice lies in its provision of subject positions. a subject position incorporates both a conceptual repertoire and a location for persons within the structure of rights for those that use that repertoire.’ as taylor and littleton (2006) point out, subjects are ‘complex composites of, on the one hand, who they create themselves as and present to the world, as a way of “acting upon” it, and on the other, who that world makes them and constrains them to be’ (p. 23, emphasis added). these two facets have been termed reflexive and interactive subject positioning respectively by davies and harré (1990). in this study we concentrate on the interactive sexual subject positions invoked in the sexuality education components of lo manuals and popular music tracks. in other words, we analysed the kinds of sexual subjects that are constructed in these texts – the sexual identity spaces that the texts discursively make available for young people. we understand these sexual identity spaces as enabling and constraining particular norms, customs, understandings and practices surrounding sexuality that, in turn, constitute sexual socialisation. in order to code the visual components of the music data, we relied on machin (2010). machin (2010) suggests exploring the meanings connoted through music video by analysing poses, gaze, objects and setting. these four features, in addition to the written text of the lyrics, served as the foundation from which we explored the subject positions related to representations of sexuality that were made available. in order to enhance the trustworthiness of the research, we engaged in debriefing sessions and multiple readings between the three researchers. in addition, the credibility of the research is enhanced through the use of a well-established method of research (shenton 2004), viz. discursive psychology. sexual subject positions made available in the lo manuals on sexuality education the most prominent sexual subject positions in the sexuality education components of the lo manuals are the responsible sexual subject and the sexual victim. other positions that were evident, although not as prominent, are the rights-bearing agentic sexual subject, the coercive/violent sexual subject, the vigilant sexual subject and the desiring sexual subject. in the background, and as a taken-for-granted position implicit in all the above, are the heterosexual subject position and the developing sexual teenager. each of these is discussed below. sexual socialisation in life orientation manuals versus popular music: responsibilisation versus pleasure, tension and complexity catriona macleod, dale moodley & lisa saville young 95 the responsible sexual subject the responsible sexual subject is one of the two most prominent subject positions offered in the lo manuals. attwell et al. (2011) have an entire section devoted to ‘making responsible decisions about sexuality’. the responsible sexual subject is depicted as knowledgeable, as appreciating the gravity and consequences of sex, and as being self-reflective, as illustrated in the extracts below: 1. it is important that we all have a good understanding of the male and female reproductive systems. in this way, we can take responsibility for our behaviour and show understanding towards the opposite sex (doubell et al., 2011: 9). 2. people should only have sex when they are ready to deal with the consequences of having sex. a pregnancy could result from sex so you should only have sex when you are ready to be a parent. you need to be mature enough, educated enough and responsible enough to care for and financially support a child (doubell et al., 2011: 110). 3. how prepared are you for a sexual relationship? to how many questions did you answer ‘no’ or ‘maybe’? [to a long list of questions including: do i want to have sex because my friends are doing it? if i do have sex, will i regret it later?] if it is more than one of two, you should think twice before deciding to have sex (attwell et al., 2011: 106). we see in extract 1 how responsibility is paired with understanding and knowledge. the knowledge that is most emphasised is the ‘negative consequences’ of sex (as seen in extract 2). such things as unwanted pregnancy, hiv and sexually transmitted diseases are repeatedly referred to in the texts, as well as more subtle messages about regret, and feeling worthless or ashamed about having sex. the responsible sexual subject, it is suggested, understands the consequences of having sex and thinks deeply about whether s/he is ready for sex, as indicated in extract 3. the responsible sexual subject is further punted through depictions of the irresponsible sexual subject: 4. if a teenager has sex with a new partner every six months, how many people will she/he have had sex with by the time she/he is 30? the chances of contracting a sexually transmitted infection such as hiv would be quite high (doubell et al., 2011: 112). 5. some teens who have sex know that there are ways of preventing pregnancy, but they do not use them (attwell et al., 2011: 109). the rhetorical nature of the question in extract 4 does more than simply draw attention to potential health consequences: it does so in a way that highlights the irresponsibility of having sex with new partners (the question neglects to address whether safe sex is practised, but instead concentrates on the irresponsibility of serial perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 96 partners). in extract 5, the irresponsibility of not acting on knowledge is highlighted, thus enjoining the responsible sexual subject to behave in particular sanctioned ways. while the responsible sexual subject is repeatedly invoked, there is also a sense that s/he is in constant danger of slipping into irresponsible behaviour: 6. even if you have decided that you are not ready for sex, there are some behaviours that can put you in a situation where you might have sex, even though you do not want to (attwell et al., 2011: 107). it is the potential for this slippage that justifies the repeated emphasis in these manuals on the negative consequences of sex, and on sanctioned behaviour, in particular how to say ‘no’. the sexual victim substantial space is taken up in both manuals discussing rape and sexual abuse. given the rates of sexual violence in south africa, this is to be expected. what is interesting to note, however, is the absence of the survivor subject position. instead, the victim subject position is repeatedly emphasised. not only is the word victim used (‘victims of rape can be young or old, rich or poor’ (attwell et al., 2011: 113)), but the manner in which rape is discussed stresses the victim status of those who experience sexual violation. 7. usually, the victims of these crimes are girls and women. girls and women who are forced into sex may have to deal with the following: • emotional and physical trauma from the abuse or rape • pregnancy (and the difficult decision as to what to do about it) • stis (sexually transmitted infections) • hiv/aids (doubell et al., 2011: 11). 8. victims of sexual abuse have to overcome these threats [from the abuser that they should keep quiet], as well as deal with the feeling that they have been contaminated in some way (attwell et al., 2011: 116). while the seriousness of sexual violation must not be under-stressed, researchers have grappled with the difficulty of fixing the experience of women who have suffered abuse in the language of victimhood (mckenzie-mohr & lafrance, 2011). this fixing suggests passivity, helplessness and the inevitability of damage, all of which fail to capture the complexity and multiplicity of subject positions (including, but not limited to the ‘survivor’ subject position) that women who have experienced sexual violation take up or are ascribed. the rights-bearing agentic sexual subject in contrast to the sexual victim subject position, the rights-bearing agentic sexual subject is one who knows his/her rights, knows his/her own mind and is sexual socialisation in life orientation manuals versus popular music: responsibilisation versus pleasure, tension and complexity catriona macleod, dale moodley & lisa saville young 97 capable of taking action. this subject position did appear in the manuals, but not prominently: 9. be open and determined about your rights. make sure your boyfriend or girlfriend knows what you want. if you don’t want sex, say so. no one has the right to demand sex (doubell et al., 2011: 118). 10. you always have a right to say ‘no’ … you have a right to be respected … you have the right to set limits (attwell et al., 2011: 114). 11. policemen and women are required by law to help you if you are in situation of domestic violence. if you report domestic abuse to the police and they do not help you, you must report them to the station commissioner. you can also get a protection order against the abuser from the court nearest to your home (doubell et al., 2011: 13). 12. this information [about different contraceptive methods] will help you to make the right lifestyle choices … to make the right choice of contraceptive you need to know what options are available and the advantages and disadvantages of each method (attwell et al., 2011: 109). in these extracts we see how learners are positioned as being able to take action (with regard to sanctioned behaviour – in particular saying ‘no’, but also with regard to being assertive in reporting abuse and making the correct choices regarding contraception). while the manuals refer to power relations and coercive sex, the above (and other) injunctions to take action do little to situate the possibilities and limits of agency within context – what has been referred to as situated agency in the literature (bevir & richards, 2009). thus, for example, in extract 11, the difficulties of reporting domestic violence in cases where the person is dependent upon the abuser, the hierarchical and bureaucratic nature of the police service, the experience and knowledge of police brutality or secondary victimisation are all occluded from the discussion. instead the failure to continue reporting up the ladder is implicitly laid on the shoulders of the individual who failed to live up to the tenets of the rights-bearing agentic sexual subject. in extract 12, the multiple social, cultural and structural barriers to contraception use (wood & jewkes, 2006) are not referred to. instead, contraceptive usage is depicted as simply related to the individual choice of the rights-bearing agentic sexual subject. the coercive/violent sexual subject given the emphasis on saying ‘no’ and the coverage of sexual abuse and rape in the manuals, the coercive/violent sexual subject position inevitably emerges, as indicated in the extracts below. 13. listed below are some common excuses made by people trying to pressurise their partner into sex (doubell et al., 2011: 117). perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 98 14. a male teen may think he has to ‘score’ as much as possible with girls so that he can be popular with his peers (attwell et al., 2011: 113). 15. boys who believe these myths are at risk of becoming rapists because they will not listen when a girl says ‘no’. they may find themselves feeling guilty because they had sex just to say they had ‘scored’ (attwell et al., 2011: 114). the coercive/violent sexual subject is, at times, not explicitly gendered (as in extract 13), but at other times is associated with boys and men (as in extracts 14 and 15). coercion is depicted as easily sliding into rape, with bragging to peers being given as a primary motivation behind coercive sexual behaviour. once again the complexities of masculinities and the political economy of transactional sex (hunter, 2007) are occluded. the vigilant sexual subject the flip side of the coercive/violent sexual subject is the vigilant sexual subject who engages in steps to safeguard her/himself against sexual violation. s/he knows the ‘steps which a person can take to reduce the risk of rape’ (doubell et al., 2011: 117) and is aware that ‘victims of rape can be young or old, rich or poor’ (attwell et al., 2011: 113). a number of pages are devoted in the manuals to advising learners on the ways in which they can avoid being the victims of sexual violence (‘be aware of yourself and your surroundings to prepare yourself for any possibility of attack. imagine ways that an attack could happen and practise what you would do’ (attwell et al., 2011: 114)). the vigilant sexual subject thus becomes responsible for the prevention of such violence. the implicit message is that, should they experience abuse, they were deficient in implementing the guidelines provided. such positioning in no way allows for any storylines about coerced consensual sex and/or rape in dating relationships, which are both believed to be common (jewkes & abrahams, 2002). the desiring sexual subject the absence of what has been called a ‘discourse of desire’ has been commented on extensively in the literature, both internationally and in south africa (macleod & vincent, 2014). sexual desire is alluded to, but in passing, in the manuals. 16. sexual desire and curiosity can become very important in these [dating] relationships (attwell et al., 2011: 04). 17. it is normal to spend time thinking about sexual issues and your sexuality. it is an important part of your development into a healthy, sexually responsible adult (doubell et al., 2011: 10). 18. you have a right to enjoy sex when you feel ready for it. sex should be a natural, beautiful experience. you shouldn’t associate sex with fear and disgust (attwell et al., 2011: 114). sexual socialisation in life orientation manuals versus popular music: responsibilisation versus pleasure, tension and complexity catriona macleod, dale moodley & lisa saville young 99 these extracts serve to normalise sexual desire: it is seen as ‘important,’ ‘normal’ and part of ‘healthy’ development. however, caveats are attached: desire should lead to the sexually responsible adult, and timing (‘when you are ready’) is seen as crucial. the heterosexual subject position heterosexuality is implicit throughout the sections analysed. same-sex sexual relations are not explicitly mentioned, and while partners are often spoken of generically, the accompanying diagrams, illustrative examples and exercises implicitly or explicitly assume opposite-sex partnerships. 19. same-sex friends are a great source of comfort and security. but one of the most important social changes to happen in adolescence is dating (attwell et al., 2011: 104). 20. [b]rainstorm ideas about the things that you think: (a) attract the opposite sex to you … (c) the opposite sex finds attractive in you (attwell et al., 2011: 105). figure 1 [source: doubell, haddon, holgate & martinuzzi, 2011: 110; reproduced with permission] in extract 19 the implication is that dating will occur with the opposite sex, while extract 20 suggests that sexual attraction to the opposite sex is the only option. figure 1 represents a caricature of the attractive young woman for whom a young man has fallen hopelessly in love. the developing sexual teenager the ‘adolescence-in-transition’ discourse (cf. macleod, 2011) is a common cultural trope in which teen-aged people are viewed as moving from childhood to adulthood through the development of a range of physical, social, emotional characteristics. the transition to adulthood is located within the individual with the development of adult characteristics being persistently in flux and constantly in jeopardy. perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 100 the developing sexual teenager is presented in the lo manuals as in a stage of change: 21. the same hormones that cause the physical changes of puberty also cause emotional changes. these changes make us think and feel differently (attwell et al., 2011: 101). a key element of this change is the movement from an ignorant, ill-informed position to an enlightened one, which is accomplished with the assistance of an adult: 22. [some] sexually active teens do not know about the different methods to prevent pregnancy (attwell et al., 2011: 109). 23. it is very important to get advice from qualified counsellors (attwell et al., 2011: 111). it is expected, however, that this development will not be easy and that certain levels of vulnerability and confusion will emerge (the classic ‘storm and stress’ of adolescence): 24. wanting to have sex, not wanting to have sex, and being confused or scared about it are all normal (attwell et al., 2011: 106). 25. changing hormone levels can cause irritability, tearfulness and euphoria (doubell et al., 2011: 108). in these extracts confusion and mood swings are depicted as normal (extract 24) and natural (extract 25). sexual subject positions made available in the two music videos ‘climax’ by usher the video for ‘climax’ features usher, an african american singer, ruminating in his car about a young woman with whom he was previously in a relationship. visuals consist of repeated imaginings of his driving over to her house: he barges into the house and has intercourse with her; he drives over to find her and the new boyfriend together; he drives away with her as the current boyfriend returns; he is overwhelmed by jealousy and shoots the boyfriend. however, the video ends with no resolution as he is left sitting alone and continues to ruminate in his car. the key of the music (minor key), as well as usher’s performance of the song, is strongly suggestive of a sensitive man subject position. this is a man who yearns for love and intimacy (‘where are you now? when i need you around i’m on my knees’). he is comfortable expressing love, as well as feelings of hurt (‘i’ve fallen somehow, feet off the ground). he is reflective and is searching for answers about why the relationship ended (‘we made a mess of what used to be love’). sexual socialisation in life orientation manuals versus popular music: responsibilisation versus pleasure, tension and complexity catriona macleod, dale moodley & lisa saville young 101 this position is interwoven in complex ways, however, by other sexualised subject positions. there is the possessive sexual subject position, in which the male takes over possession of the female through claiming sexual space, fleeing with the woman or eliminating the rival. an aggressive/violent subject position is both performed through angry actions at a particular point of the song (coinciding with the lyrics, ‘i gave it my best, it wasn’t enough, you get upset, we argue too much’) and enacted in the various scenarios. a virile sexual subject position is performed in the sexual scenes played out in the video. the title, ‘climax’, and the lyrics, ‘we’ve reached the climax, climax,’ play on a double meaning of the word ‘climax,’ which is indicative of the tensions performed in the video. on the one hand, ‘climax’ is used to indicate a painful breaking point of a relationship: it peaks and ends thereafter. on the other hand, the association with the resolution of the sexual act is a reminder of the coexistence of sexual and intimate relations. this double meaning captures the conflicting and contradictory sexualised subject positions usher takes up in the video: simultaneously sensitive, aggressive/violent, possessive and virile. while the man is centre stage in the video, his positioning is obviously in relation to the woman. the images of her are, however, brief and partial (mostly with her wearing lacy lingerie). the lyrics suggest a certain heartlessness (‘you say it’s better if we love each other separately’). 6.2 ‘beez in the trap’ by nicki minaj the video for ‘beez in the trap’ depicts nicki minaj, an african american rapper, partying, dancing and drinking in a club, surrounded by men and women. she is garishly and skimpily clad in sexualised attire (sequentially a blonde wig in a pink turtleneck onesie; green wig and a bikini; leopard-print body suit). the video begins with nicki squatting, with barb wire as a foreground. she is then seen sitting in the club with exotic women dancers with whom she acts flirtatiously. 2 chainz, a male rapper, raps a verse, while nicki dances seductively next to him in a dark lit room. nicki raps again. she and two other women dance sensually in the same dark lit room. the video ends with nicki and 2 chainz standing back to back. wads of money are shown in several of the scenes. the lyrics are explicit in terms of language and sexualised imagery (‘a hundred muthafuckas can’t tell me nuthin’’; ‘hair weave killer, causing her arousal’), but the gangsta rap makes the meaning somewhat obscure. the performance and lyrics, however, point to a rivalry between nicki and 2 chainz in terms of success and wealth. nicki’s verses speak to her being turned down in the music industry and having to travel extensively to perform, while 2 chainz speaks merely of prowess. thus, even though nicki is a powerful and successful figure, she had to work hard to achieve it (‘i beez in the trap’). the video and lyrics explicitly interweave sexuality and power, particularly in the form of wealth and success. the rivalry with 2 chainz allows nicki to exercise perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 102 her sexual desire and pleasure in ways that are assertive and similar to a hoodlum while still retaining feminine sexiness, at times and in ways that are garish and over the top. the sexually desirable and sexually desiring subject is entwined with the assertive, self-assured subject position of a person who has made it to the top. this combination is seen as allowing a culture of raunchiness, which frees up the sexual inhibitions of women. this raunchy sexually desiring/desirable subject is displayed not only in relation to men, but also in a number of mini-scenes in relation to women. nicki is seen leaning intimately towards a woman sitting next to her; she momentarily places her hand on one of the woman’s behind. these scenes have the feel of ease and solidarity, while when she dances with 2 chainz, sensuality is intermixed with gestures of exasperation and anger. despite this, nicki’s dominance over other women is emphasised both in the lyrics (‘bitches ain’t shit, and they ain’t say nuthin’’) and in her taking centre stage in a powerful way. on the other hand, men in the video are positioned in relation to nicki as equals, fellow gangsters or comrades involved in everyday hustling, albeit as rivals. these men are not sexualised as the women are, but they also take back stage to the image of nicki being in charge and in control. the subject positions produced in both the video and lyrics fashion an image of nicki as an assertive, pleasure-seeking, threatening, yet feminine, woman. the clothes and performance in the video objectify nicki in a range of sexually explicit ways. they exaggerate feminine stereotypes and juxtapose them with contradictory and conflicting feminine roles in ways that potentially, but necessarily, make them ironic. in general, the video is complex and the various sexual subject positions speak to complex power relations that play out in slippery and tensionfilled ways. significantly, these sexual subject positions are located within complex and shifting interpersonal relationships (heterosexual and homosexual; sexual and collegial) and within broader social contexts, specifically the music industry that emphasises the complexity of gender relations, power and money. comparison of the two sources of data the life orientation sex education manuals and materials produce a confluence of subject positions that depict sexuality primarily as an individual responsibility that the rights-bearing agentic subject should take on in order to optimise health and wellbeing and to avoid the dangers of early reproduction, abortion, disease and a range of negative emotions. while desire is mentioned in passing, the only other major representation is of the sexual victim and the accompanying coercive/violent sexual subject and vigilant sexual subject. the explanations, exercises and stories are all told against the backdrop of assumed heterosexuality and the reality of adolescence as a time of transition and possible turmoil. the complexities inherent in any one of the particular sexual subject positions and contextual realities that might impinge sexual socialisation in life orientation manuals versus popular music: responsibilisation versus pleasure, tension and complexity catriona macleod, dale moodley & lisa saville young 103 upon agency are occluded, with clear messages being conveyed in the depiction of these subject positions. as such, responsibility for the assumption of various subject positions that the sexual subject positions invoked are located within the individual and dislocated from the complex and multitude of interpersonal and social contexts within which sexuality is negotiated. conversely, the lyrical content and videos of the popular music depict shifting, complex subject positions that are constantly in tension with each other. furthermore, sexuality is shown as a site of pleasure, but also as one of personal struggle and interpersonal conflict within a broader social system. constructions of gender are shown to be in tension, with women and men flouting traditional femininity and masculinity and shifting boundaries of heteronormativity (even if momentarily). these fluidities are, however, not performed without effort. slippages into stereotypical masculine (the man who wants to possess the woman – usher) and feminine (submissive sexual objects – minaj) positions are counterpoised with performances that fracture easy readings of the sexual subject. conclusion the analysis of these two sources of data highlights some of the sexual identity spaces made available for young people in south africa. while the sexual subject positions construed within each are, in themselves, instructive of the kinds of normative assumptions that remain untroubled within education and popular culture, we are chiefly interested in what is brought to light by juxtaposing the two. what our research shows is that the songs that learners choose to listen to are conveying very different sexualised messages to those conveyed in the sexuality education components of lo manuals. the lo manuals that we analysed, while acknowledging the possibility of sexual violence, engage in a process of ‘responsibilisation’, a key (neo)liberal project that uses the rhetoric of youth-at-risk to incite youth into individualised management of the self. the responsible sexual subject and the sexual victim emerged as the major subject positions offered to learners through these manuals (with the suggestion that women also have the responsibility to avoid becoming a sexual victim through the vigilant sexual subject position). as such, the lo manuals depicted a limited range of sexual subject positions that, while acknowledging some realities of young people’s lives (e.g. sexual violence), fail to take seriously questions around same sex attraction, sexual desire, resilience and survivorship, contextual power relations, complexities around masculinities and femininities, and shifting sexualities. heterosexuality is assumed, as is the adolescent as a potentially vulnerable developing subject. the songs, on the other hand, presented fluid, contested sexual subject positions in the context of interpersonal relationships and wider social systems, with the tensions in these positions and their meanings being visibly performed. easy readings perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 104 of the sexual subject positions are troubled in these performances in both subtle and overt ways. in part, of course, the stark contrast between the two has to do with the different genres of communication used in the two sources of text. while acknowledging this, we argue that the differences also show a disjuncture between state-sanctioned sexual socialisation and the cultural expressions young people turn to for informal sexual socialisation. what are the implications of the divergence of depictions of sexual subject positions in these two forms of sexual socialisation? at a basic level, the lack of overlap means that learners will encounter a dissonance between what they encounter in the lo manuals they read and the songs they listen to. this might feel indicative of a discord between adult-centric sexuality socialisation and peer-sanctioned sexual socialisation. the fact that the songs we analysed were voted most listened to by the learners in these two schools indicates that these commercialised popular songs form part of their preferred cultural expression. outside of the formal strictures of school, this is what they listen to (at least at the time of the research). if we are to move away from texts that emphasise danger and disease and that engage in a simple individualised process of ‘responsibilisation,’ it might be useful for both policy-makers and the writers of lo manuals to listen seriously to the kinds of music (and other genres) that young people are choosing. this could be achieved by introducing the kinds of fluid, contested sexual subject positions referred to in popular music into the lo textbooks as points of discussion, dialogue and debate for learners (either through revising the lo texts themselves or through listening and discussing music videos and other genres of peer-sanctioned sexual socialisation). this will steer lo sexuality education in the direction of taking learners’ preferred cultural expressions seriously and away from the imperative of ‘responsibilisation’. it will also ensure that sexual subject positions are contextualised within dynamic and complex interpersonal relationships and within broader social and cultural systems, a critique that has been levelled at lo sexuality education (francis, 2010). clearly, the manner in which the sexual subject positions constructed in both lo manuals and popular songs will be taken up by young people will vary considerably as they actively take up, re-work, adapt or resist the sexualised subject positions made available. this is a limitation of this study. in addition, as indicated earlier, we could locate no research conducted on sexuality in relation to popular music in south africa. research is needed to understand how popular music is taken up in young people’s lives and how they might (or might not) use the sexual subject positions depicted in these songs to undermine or bolster dominant cultural expressions of sexuality. sexual socialisation in life orientation manuals versus popular music: responsibilisation versus pleasure, tension and complexity catriona macleod, dale moodley & lisa saville young 105 acknowledgement the research was enabled by funding provided by south africa netherlands research programme on alternatives in development (sanpad). references ashton, j., dickson, k. & pleaner, 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citizenship: extending the ‘framework of thick desire’. in k quinlivan, m rasmussen & l allen (eds), interrogating the politics of pleasure in sexuality education: pleasure bound. london: routledge. machin, d. 2010. analysing popular music: image, sound, text. london: sage publications. mckenzie-mohr, s. & lafrance, m.n. 2011. telling stories without the words: “tightrope talk” in women’s accounts of coming to live well after rape or depression. feminism & psychology, 21:49-73. paglia, c. 2007. madonna – finally, a real feminist. in t cateforis (ed.), the rock history reader. new york: routledge. shenton, a.k. 2004. strategies for ensuring trustworthiness in qualitative research projects. education for information, 22:63-75. taylor, s. & littleton, k. 2006. biographies in talk: a narrative-discursive research approach. qualitative sociology review, ii:22-38. vincent, l. 2008. “boys will be boys”: traditional xhosa male circumcision, hiv and sexual socialisation in contemporary south 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desegregation and the institutionalisation of ‘race’ in university governance: the case of the university of cape town” and in the contents on the back cover was inadvertently misspelt. it should have read: th ierr y m . luesch er 150 making a case for exact language as an aspect of rigour in initial teacher education mathematics programmes abstract pre-service secondary mathematics teachers have a poor command of the exact language of mathematics as evidenced in assignments, micro-lessons and practicums. the unrelenting notorious annual south african national senior certificate outcomes in mathematics and the recognition by the department of basic education (dbe) that the correct use of mathematical language in classrooms is problematic is reported in the national senior certificate diagnostic reports on learner performance (dbe, 2008-2013). the reports further recognise that learners do not engage successfully with mathematical problems that require conceptual understanding. this paper therefore highlights a need for teachers to be taught and master an exact mathematical language that for example, calls an ‘expression’ an ‘expression’ and not an ‘equation’. it must support the call of the dbe to use correct mathematical language that will support and improve conceptual understanding rather than perpetuate rote procedural skills, which are often devoid of thought and reason. the authentic language of mathematics can initiate and promote meaningful mathematical dialogue. initial teacher education programmes, as in the subject methodologies, affords lecturers this opportunity. the language notions of vygotskian thought and language, freirian emancipatory critical consciousness and habermasian ethical and moral communicative action frame the paper theoretically. using a grounded approach, after examining examples of student language in a practice based research intervention, the design and development of a repertoire of language categories, literal, algebraic, graphical (cartesian) and procedural (algorithmic) emerged from three one-year cycles of an action research methodology. the development of these repertoires of language was to assist teachers in communicating about mathematical objects through providing a structured framework within which to think and teach. a course model encompassing small group discussions, an oral examination and a self-study action research project, that helped sustain the teaching of an exact mathematical language, is presented. this is supported by student reflections on the usefulness of implementing them. keywords: exact (authentic) mathematical language, initial teacher education, grounded theory, action research, vocabulary and thought pieter van jaarsveld wits school of education, university of the witwatersrand pieter.vanjaarsveld@wits.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i1.11 issn 0258-2236 eissn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(1): 150-166 © uv/ufs mailto:pieter.vanjaarsveld@wits.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.11 van jaarsveld making a case for exact language as an aspect of rigour ... 151 1. introduction persistent poor performance in the south african national senior certificate mathematics examination and trends show a declining number of candidates in grade 12 mathematics relative to total enrolment recorded in the annual national senior certificate diagnostic reports on learner performance (dbe, 2008-2013). this raises the question as to how to arrest an ongoing crisis in mathematics education in south africa. a currently under qualified mathematics teaching corps and candidates poorly schooled in mathematics who embark on mathematics education careers require preparation in mathematics content and language. it is the learning and appropriation of correct mathematical language that constitutes an aspect of rigour for mathematics education, quite apart from the rigour of mathematical procedural accuracy, for which a case is made in this paper. it is therefore imperative that tertiary institutions seek ways of developing teachers competent in mathematics content knowledge and mathematics pedagogy. i envisage exact mathematical language as an integral component of mathematics pedagogy and advocate exact mathematical language as an aspect of rigour in initial teacher education programmes. ball, thames and phelps (2008) disaggregate shulman’s (1986) subject matter knowledge to include common content knowledge, horizon content knowledge and specialised content knowledge. it is taken as understood that mathematics content knowledge, as a specific case of shulman’s subject matter knowledge needs to be in place before meaningful and effective pedagogical content knowledge can be applied. ball, bass and hill (2004), ball et al. (2008) and begle (1979) recognise that mathematics knowledge for teaching is different from the mathematics knowledge of mathematicians but that the mathematics knowledge of mathematics teachers must still be rigorous. the search to define what constitutes this rigour is an important one on which this paper seeks to shed some light. rigour from a mathematical content perspective would seem to imply procedural accuracy and fluency as used by kilpatrick, swafford and findell (2001) and schoenfeld (2007). however, from a pedagogical content knowledge perspective the exactitude of language with which teachers need to unpack, communicate and explain concepts, i suggest, is an equally important form of rigour. it is the latter definition of rigour that is attended to in this paper. in a practice based research project where mathematics methodology courses for undergraduate mathematics education students are offered, it emerges that the language, which teachers need to teach the subject is lacking in terms of its exactitude and is error riddled in terms of using words incorrectly to describe mathematical objects. the generic mathematical lexicon that characterises the universality of mathematical discourse is largely absent in the instructional episodes observed in lectures and in teaching practicums. in the annual national diagnostic reports of the department of basic education, language is frequently cited as a factor militating against performance (dbe, 2008-2014). language as referred to in these reports does not directly refer to the multilingualism of classrooms that has featured strongly in the mathematics education research field for the past two decades (adler, 2001; setati, 2005). instead it refers to the correct language of mathematics as in the quotes below (italics and parentheses mine) which may be a departure from what has become the traditional language emphasis on multilingualism, especially since the majority of south african learners are taught in english (uys et al., 2007: 69). therefore, an exact mathematical language within the context of multilingual classrooms must not be construed as exacerbating mathematical dialogue or comprehension for the majority of learners who are 152 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) taught mathematics in english. inexact mathematical language where english is the language of instruction whilst not being in the mother tongue of learners, serves only to compound the problem. teachers should use the correct mathematical language in the classroom… (dbe, 2014: 112) as language presents problems in the correct interpretation of (finance) questions, teachers must at all times focus on using the correct language while teaching and in the setting of assessment tasks. (dbe, 2014: 116) the quotes above acknowledge the need to use correct or exact mathematical language for mathematics teaching and learning but what constitutes the correct use of mathematical language, is not addressed. i hence propose the teaching of an exact use of mathematical language as an integral part of initial teacher education programmes for prospective teachers of mathematics. uys et al. (2007: 78) recommend, “subject content lecturers at teachertraining institutions should become involved in the teaching of language skills in the content classroom. the subject classroom at the teacher-training institution is the one place where subject lecturers can help teacher trainees deconstruct the language of their textbooks (schleppegrell, aghugar & oteiza 2004: 67), thereby also enabling them to develop the academic language required for teaching their subjects through the medium of english”. the added advantage of teaching the language of mathematics with english as the language of instruction is the anticipated improved understanding of mathematics. mercer and sams (2006) who investigated the impact of the correct use of mathematical language on collaborative problem solving amongst primary school children found that if teachers provide children with an explicit, practical introduction to the use of language for collective reasoning, then children learn better ways of thinking collectively and better ways of thinking alone. the focus of this paper however, is on the use of correct language at institutions of higher education and at secondary schools as opposed to the many studies that investigate primary school language use. thus, the implication of teaching mathematics with the correct vocabulary is that it will have an impact on understanding, more so at the secondary and tertiary levels where sophisticated vocabularies are needed to expound concepts that are more advanced. yackel and cobb (2006) speak about social norms and socio-mathematical norms in classrooms where the former constitutes learner exchanges in their (own) language whereas the latter constitutes their arguments with sound mathematical reasoning. this paper does not propose that the former is unacceptable. it suggests that social norms serve as scaffold learning episodes in the lower grades especially but suggests that these need to transmute developmentally into a mathematical language that supports and enables the explanation and understanding of more advanced mathematics at the secondary level. mathematical language in and of itself is difficult, but if english is the most prevalent language of instruction in south africa then using mathematical language correctly is of greater value than teaching mathematics with a poor mathematical vocabulary and with meaningless ‘metaphors’. for example, pimm (1987) points out that ‘cross multiply’ and ‘turn it upside down and multiply’ are examples of poor mathematical language devoid of meaning. in contrast to the recent specific references in the national senior certificate diagnostic reports to a call for the use of correct language by teachers the quote that follows this van jaarsveld making a case for exact language as an aspect of rigour ... 153 paragraph refers to ‘poor language ability’ which one presumes refers to the language of teaching and learning not being the learners’ mother tongue. english has become, irrespective of the merits or demerits of the matter, the dominant medium of instruction in southern africa and one needs to be cognisant of this (de klerk, 2002: 3; de wet, 2002: 119; kgosana, 2006: 17; rademeyer, 2006: 15; uys et al., 2007: 69). its implications for subject teaching therefore cannot be ignored. uys et al. (2007: 77) in a survey of the north west and eastern provinces of south africa and namibia found that teachers lacked the personal language proficiency required (both spoken and written) to assist their learners in the acquisition of academic literacy. furthermore, none of the surveyed teachers had received training that equipped them with skills for effectively teaching through the medium of english. this deficient attention to technical language also needs to be addressed. where procedural mathematics still dominates secondary and tertiary teaching and learning environments, a move toward the enhancement of the understanding of mathematics will continue to be ignored. this is one reason why this paper advocates the teaching of an exact language of mathematics in undergraduate teaching courses. many candidates struggled with concepts in the curriculum that required deeper conceptual understanding… this suggests that many learners are exposed to ‘stimulusresponse’ methods only… because of their poor language ability, the majority of learners did not provide good answers to contextual questions… thus they could not identify the mathematical skills involved (dbe, 2011: 99). it is interesting and ironic, to note in the quote above that the majority of learners being unable to provide good answers to contextual questions is attributed to their ‘poor language ability’. i concede that learners’ poor language ability must contribute negatively to the answering of contextual questions but there is a deeper language issue here. the injudicious use of mathematical language in classrooms makes explaining the content and elaborating its meaning for learners incomprehensible and inaccessible especially where english is already not the mother tongue of the majority of learners. ‘equations’ are often referred to as ‘expressions’ and vice versa, ‘positive’ is used as a synonym to describe a function that is ‘increasing’ even when such a function is both positive and negative and the instructional verb ‘solve’ is applied generically to mathematical objects even where the objects may need to be ‘simplified’ or ‘sketched’. there is then also the case where matriculants face exit level examination papers and are confronted with mathematical language unfamiliar to them resulting in the failure to interpret questions correctly. one wonders therefore if this inability to use the correct or exact language in classrooms or the indiscriminate use of mathematical vocabulary has a significant impact on poor national senior certificate results year after year. from a theoretical perspective, thought is dependent on the word formulation of concepts, vygotsky (1986), habermas (1990), freire (1970, 1974) without which conceptual thinking about mathematical objects must be impeded or arrested. also with reference to the last quote, it is claimed that learners struggled with concepts in the curriculum that required deeper conceptual understanding and this is attributed to learners being taught through stimulus-response methods only and with incorrect vocabularies. i attempt to show below in the section on ‘theoretical underpinnings’ how words and language have a great deal to do with acquiring an understanding of content and attempt to consolidate a proposal for exact mathematical language use in classrooms where conceptual understanding according to national reports of the department of basic education are purported to be absent. 154 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) 2. theoretical underpinnings 2.1 vygotskian thought and language vygotsky (1986: 107) states, “real concepts are impossible without words, and thinking in concepts does not exist beyond verbal thinking. that is why the central moment in concept formation, and its generative cause, is a specific use of words as functional tools.” schütz (2002) also records vygotsky as saying that thought is not merely expressed in words but that it comes into existence through them. schütz refers to vygotsky as saying that words play a central part not only in the development of thought but also in the historical growth of consciousness as a whole. from a mathematics education perspective, the need to have a mathematical vocabulary is fundamental to the ability to think about and articulate mathematical content for teachers and learners. the implication is that initial teacher education programmes should equip teachers with the language with which they and their learners can engage meaningfully in mathematical discourses. it would seem also that the reported absence of conceptual understanding amongst national senior certificate learners (dbe, 2011: 99) might have its root cause in an undeveloped or absent mathematical register. to illustrate this, if a teacher talks about an expression but actually means an equation it will not allow a learner to have a conceptual understanding and is likely to create cognitive dissonance for learners. similarly, if in literally reading the expression x(x+2), as has been my frequent experience in practicums and micro-lesson presentations, teachers say ‘x into x+2’ the implied operation between the monomial and binomial factors is ‘division’. this is clearly not the case since the operation between the factors is ‘multiplication’. one may argue from one’s own experience that a learner will not interpret ‘into’ as ‘division’ as in the case in question. however, is the reason for this not the repetition of historical uncorrected accounts of the forgiven inexact language of mathematics being perpetuated generation after generation? the issue here is actually not about whether learners in contemporary classrooms will interpret ‘into’ as division or multiplication but more importantly what the correct mathematical operation ‘into’ conveys. if one considers the isomorphic relatedness of algebra and arithmetic (livneh & linchevski, 2007) then the arithmetic understanding of ‘two into six’ is clearly ‘six divided by two’ and not ‘two multiplied by six’. the case of x(x+2) being ‘x into x+2 ’ is therefore fundamentally incorrect and a potential root of misconception. as episodes of indiscriminate language use build on one another the degree of cognitive dissonance must be compounded with the result that we have learners in the national senior certificate who are procedurally bound with respect to mathematical work rather than conceptually adept or able to appraise answers critically. 2.2 freirian critical consciousness freire in education for critical consciousness (1974) clearly expresses his view of democracy as one that would transform the brazilian political landscape. this perspective is applicable to mathematics classrooms where dialogical engagement that is also inclusive, is critical. in addition, if it is to be dialogical it must offer an honest classroom conversation where vocabularies authentically and accurately describe the mathematics at hand. freire’s philosophy and methodology of education expounded in pedagogy of the oppressed (1970) revolved around delivering the brazilian proletariat from its muteness. he regarded their inability to express themselves as robbing them of their critical consciousness. similarly, being able to critique van jaarsveld making a case for exact language as an aspect of rigour ... 155 and evaluate mathematical notions and objects involves a critical consciousness stemming from the vocabulary that gives birth to mathematical concepts and the concomitant skill of articulating the mathematical thought authentically. in this sense, learners of mathematics are also robbed of their critical consciousness. the case being made for an exact mathematical language is to bring about honest communicative exchanges in mathematics classrooms, based on words and language that enable our thinking. after all, mathematics is an exact science that does not have to be devoid of humane authenticity. freire (1974: 14) aptly states the critically transitive consciousness is characterized by depth in the interpretation of problems; by the substitution of causal principles for magical explanations; by the testing of one’s “findings” and by openness to revision; by the attempt to avoid distortion when perceiving problems and to avoid preconceived notions when analyzing them; by refusing to transfer responsibility; by rejecting passive positions; by soundness of argumentation; by the practice of dialogue rather than polemics; by receptivity to the new for reasons beyond mere novelty and by the good sense not to reject the old just because it is old – by accepting what is valid in both old and new. the interpretation of problems (mathematical objects) must reside with the vocabulary with which to think about them, understand them, reflect on them, evaluate and appraise them for what they are. if it is not so, the cognitive vacuum will render the teacher and learner cognitively and articulately mute. freire also recognises the importance of language in classrooms when he states that often, teachers and politicians speak and are not understood because their language is not attuned to the concrete situation of the people they address. accordingly, their talk is just alienated and alienating rhetoric. the language of the teacher…, like the language of the people, cannot exist without thought; and neither language nor thought can exist without a structure to which they refer. in order to communicate effectively, teacher and politician must understand the structural conditions in which the thought and language of the people are dialectically framed (freire, 1970: 77). 2.3 habermasian communicative action habermas’ seminal work moral consciousness and communicative action (1990) applies to discourse ethics, communication, argumentation and dialogue that promotes voluntary rational agreement for the sake of cooperation. as much as it is generically all of this, in my opinion, it also has far reaching implications for its application in the teaching and learning in mathematics classrooms. mathematics by virtue of its empiricist rootedness is characterised by impersonal propositional deliveries that often separate it from affective influences that could make it more accessible to those who aspire to learn and teach it. engagement with communicative action has emancipatory potential for the teaching and learning of mathematics. in habermas’ words, communicative action has this power since "as empirical research shows him, communicative action from the start of the learning process is in the inescapably social nature of human language" (habermas, 1990: 165). language is not the only essence here but the honesty of the discourse is as well. if as teachers we speak indiscriminately about mathematical content and constructs, even unintentionally, we deceive those we teach. it is therefore morally incumbent on teachers to create conversations about what concepts really are in order to give learners the real opportunity to acquire a meaningful understanding of the mathematics at hand. it is important to bear in mind that for whatever reason teachers of mathematics forgivingly listen to learner 156 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) offerings that are often inaccurate and allow a misrepresentation or incorrect vocabulary to pass, it is ethically and morally questionable. when an inexact or inappropriate lexicon develops, it can impede clear understanding, which, in turn, creates fear and uncertainty in learners. there are of course cases where teachers are not aware of their own misconceptions and erroneous vocabularies and therefore unknowingly perpetuate confusion. this is reason enough for teachers in initial teacher education programmes to acquire authentic vocabularies and language repertoires not only in mathematics but also in other subjects. as teachers and learners, we are in the business of communication. it is therefore paramount that the elements of reciprocity, empathy and fairness that constitute this perspective be embraced in classroom environments especially where mathematics is concerned. there is much scope here, i believe, for the application of these solid principles of communication, as alluded to in the quote above, to be practised in the mathematics classroom. this is done with the knowledge that ethical discourses do not denunciate or disregard mathematical offerings from learners that are not exact in their technical rationality since this would seek to entrench an epistemological hegemony that is oppressive. the listening process needs to be forgiving but reactive toward correction and refinement of terminology where this is necessary. the theoretical notions of words being at the core of concept development (vygotsky), critical consciousness being able to liberate a learner from muteness (freire) and the awareness that what we say needs to be authentic (habermas) are critical considerations for making a case for teachers to use meaningful, conventional and hence exact mathematical language in their teaching. the central theme running through these theories is communication. 3. a closer look at the mathematical language of initial teacher education students in this section, i provide examples of student language used in teaching practicums, microlessons and assignments to shed light on the concern about mathematical language that is inexact, incorrect and often incomprehensible and that probably presents a barrier to learner understanding. 3.1 a procedural description of how to solve for the quadratic equation x2-x-6=0. a student offered the following explanation. “… we now look at the signs. we have a – and a – . so we know our bracket will have a + and a – , because if the last – was a + we would have a – and a – because two negatives make a positive.” when teaching one should at all times make no assumptions about what is known by learners. in other words, teachers’ explanations should make sense to even the uninitiated. in analysing the explanation, the content is difficult to understand. in the very first instance, the student refers to the two negative signs without clearly indicating that they are associated with the last two terms of the quadratic expression on the left of the equal sign. the explanation of the brackets having a negative and positive sign because of the last negative is algorithmic, rote and procedural without any explanation of why this will be the case and so it is conceptually void. the claim that two negatives make a positive makes no sense because of the verb ‘make’. the addition of two negative values, for example, (-3)+(-2) will produce a negative result, -5 , but the product of two negative values will produce a positive result as in (-3)x(-2)=6 which is actually what the student intends to say. the explanation is also devoid of reasoning. the product and sum of the signs lies at the heart of obtaining the factors of x2-x-6. van jaarsveld making a case for exact language as an aspect of rigour ... 157 3.2 a student’s offering on why it is incorrect to speak about a positive graph. with respect to the graph alongside, a student states “it is incorrect to talk about a positive graph as in this graph there are parts that are positive and parts that are negative. the part that is positive has positive x and y values and the negative part has positive y values and negative x values.” the fluency of the explanation is deceptively convincing. however, the student clearly does not understand what is meant by a positive graph. the sketch shows a quadratic function that is positive for all real values of x because all its function values are positive or viewed differently, the entire function lies above the x axis. 3.3 a student describing the behaviour of a cubic function a student describes the behaviour of the function alongside as follows. “as x increases y begins by decreasing with a decreasing gradient. the graph then decreases with an increasing turning point until (-∞;∞).” this explanation erroneously uses ‘decreasing’ as synonymous with ‘negative’. the function certainly starts decreasing as x increases. for the initial decreasing interval, the gradient is negative but the (covert) tangents to the cubic function have variable gradients and their gradients actually increase in value as x increases. after the initial interval where the function is decreasing, the function is increasing and not decreasing. there is no such thing as an increasing turning point, and reference to the point (-∞;∞) is meaningless. therefore, in this short piece there are numerous uses of incorrect words in addition to serious mathematical inaccuracy. for learners the real mathematics will remain remote after such an explanation. 4. methodology 4.1 sample cohorts i first encountered disturbing descriptions of mathematical objects in early 2012 amongst a class of third year students who were studying to be secondary school mathematics teachers. it became apparent in subsequent third year cohorts in 2013, 2014 and 2015 that the same lack of command of the language of mathematics prevailed. the average size of the classes in the third year was about 70. the fourth year cohorts dropped by about 15 students to 55. the drop off was primarily students who had mathematics as a sub-major, that is, their second teaching subject. the composition of the classes was 75% students who had a respectable command of conversational second language english, and about 25% were mother tongue english speakers. however, the quality of the descriptions of mathematical objects was equally poor across the cohorts. 158 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) 4.2 action research koshy (2005: 2) defines action research as an enquiry, undertaken with rigour and understanding to refine practice constantly; the emerging evidence-based outcomes will then contribute to the researching practitioner’s continuing professional development. he further states that the main role of action research is to facilitate practitioners to study aspects of practice – whether it is in the context of introducing an innovative idea or in assessing and reflecting on the effectiveness of existing practice, with the view of improving practice. this process is often carried out within the researcher’s own setting (koshy, 2005: vii). so in alignment with this understanding of what action research entails and the problem of inexact mathematical vocabulary and language amongst prospective secondary school mathematics teachers, i embarked upon a process of determining how i could not only refine my own practice but how that refinement would impact positively on the mathematical language of students in initial teacher education programmes. my aim was to do exactly what bassey (1998: 93) describes action research to be “… an enquiry which is carried out in order to understand, to evaluate and then to change, in order to improve educational practice”. the action research process is a spiral of self-reflective cycles where each cycle comprises consecutive phases of reflect-plan-act-observe and so on. this particular model was devised by kemmis and mctaggart (2000) and is illustrated in koshy (2005: 4). table 1 below sets out the cycles according to the kemmis-mctaggart model over the three-year cycle of intervention. the table describes each phase using the kemmis-mctaggart model. the table describes iterative ‘reflect-plan-act-observe’ cycles. the column headed ‘phase description’ details how the reflections on student language lead to an intervention. the third column ‘findings on student task data’ describes the data forthcoming from that intervention, which lead to the following cycle. a grounded approach led to the development of four language repertoires (glaser & strauss, 1967). van jaarsveld making a case for exact language as an aspect of rigour ... 159 table 1: action research cycles – analytic detail of phases and commentary on phase findings cycle 1 phase description findings on student task data reflect students were not speaking mathematically to the point that in practicums their learners were barely able to understand them. language was often incomprehensible and vocabulary incorrect and inexact and the mathematical content poor. 1. talk to me about this object. x2-x-6=0 response generally, there was no ability to engage with the object verbally. 2. do and talk about the following object. x+2 x+2 (x+2) (x+2)=0 or x-1=0 x=-2 or x=1 x-1 x-1 x-1 (x-1) x-1 =1 =0 = student response “in this question i do not know if the use of cross multiplication is correct but it makes sense to me though. this question also had me confused at first but by turning 1 into a fraction it made sense.” plan i devised assignments where mathematical tasks needed to be done but also commentated on alongside the procedure through written explanations of what was being done to ascertain the vocabulary store of learners. act and observe students completed the assignment under test conditions and their work was assessed. in response to task 1 most students were able to say that the solution is x=-3 and x=2. many suggested it was a ‘sum’, which it is not. this type of equation is first encountered in grade 9 and it would have been expected that teachers would have a vocabulary with which to introduce the object, like recognising it as a quadratic equation, that the highest exponent value is 2, that the left hand side is a quadratic trinomial in descending order and the like. clearly, in the response to task 2 in the adjacent right hand column there is no conceptual understanding. the student speaks about ‘cross multiplication’ but does not employ this strategy at all. he simply incorrectly divides the denominator x-1 into the numerator x-1 (or cancels) across an equal sign, which if cross multiplied correctly, would give a right hand side equal to 1. 160 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) cycle 2 phase description student task data reflect upon reflection and collegial discussion, i felt that the instruction was not specific enough. the original intention was to see if students could identify the mathematical object with which they were presented and would associate with the object, the nature of the task associated with it, for example, solving equations, simplifying expressions, sketching relationships and so on. this expectation was a design weakness. 1. simplify the following expression and use good mathematical language that you would use in introducing and teaching the mathematical object to a class of grade 10 learners. 2x2+5x-3 (2x-1)(x+3) 3+x 3+x= = 2x-1 student response “in this mathematical object i noticed that it was an expression in the form of a fraction and to find the answers to it, one needs to consider the use of factorising and finding the common factor. x+3 and 3+x are the same and in that way you can divide/ cancel-out. there’s a relationship between the variables and its coefficient the understanding of using an lcd is essential in this case. however some learners may equate the fraction to 0 and then try to solve it by transposing the lcd on the other side of the equal sign.” revise plan lecture time was devoted to demonstrating exact language that would be advantageously used in classrooms and assignments were designed in such a way that written responses were to reflect the language teachers would use in classrooms in introducing and teaching the given object. this was deemed dense descriptions of the object that were intended to produce extensive descriptions. act and observe students completed assignments under test conditions. the sample response in the adjacent right hand column shows an improvement in the introductory language like the correct use of ‘expression’, ‘fraction’, ‘factorising’ and ‘common factor’. in the second paragraph however, by stating that there is a relationship between the variables makes no sense since there is only one variable in the expression. looking for a relationship between a variable and its coefficient is not within the scope of a discussion or discourse that this object should elicit. on a purely procedural level the student does not include the restriction that x≠3 since x=3 will make the original expression undefined. furthermore, the importance of the lcd is alluded to but without reason. van jaarsveld making a case for exact language as an aspect of rigour ... 161 cycle 3 phase description examples of language repertoires applied to a single object prompted by the findings above reflect it became apparent that students felt that the more they wrote the more acceptable their response would be. often under compulsion to cover as much as possible the responses became more unwieldy, cumbersome, meaningless and confusing. it therefore became necessary to rethink how the task of providing dense descriptions using exact mathematical language could be made easier and more focused. 1. give a literal description of 2x>8 2 raised to the power of x is greater than 8. 2. give an algebraic interpretation of 2x>8 x is the number of times 2 must be multiplied by itself to obtain a value greater than 8. 3. give a graphical interpretation of 2x>8 x represents the values on the x axis where the increasing exponential function y=2x lies above the constant linear function y=8 . 4. provide a procedural description for finding the solution of 2x>8 . reduce both terms in the inequality to a prime base of 2. since y=2x is strictly increasing, and the bases are equal, x is greater than 3. revise plan the curriculum and assessment policy statement for mathematics grades 10-12 (dbe, 2011: 12) states that learners should be able to work with relationships between variables in terms of numerical, graphical, verbal and symbolic representations of functions and convert flexibly between these representations (tables, graphs, words and formulae). with this in mind, it made sense that teachers would benefit from having a repertoire of language modes which would fit comfortably with each of these modes of representation since in moving flexibly between these modes of representation would imply having the language and vocabulary with which to expound what each representation meant. this lead to the development of four language repertoires that were designed for teachers to structure their thinking and to have a clear focus when in dialogue or teaching. 5. development of language repertoires as the third intervention cycle although there is not a strict one-to-one correspondence between the modes of representation as outlined in the continuous assessment policy statement (2011) and the language repertoires there is a close enough alignment for teachers to move flexibly between them using exact language with which to communicate about each. the development of the repertoires has the advantage that classroom speak breaks from the tired almost exclusive linguistic repertoire of procedural instructions on how to ‘do’ the mathematics. the procedural language is by no means of less significance than the other categories because explaining the procedure is still a vital component of mathematics teaching and learning. i introduce and define below the language repertoires that provide a structured system for assisting teachers in lesson preparation, lesson delivery and the development of exact mathematical language. the repertoires have their defining vocabularies that facilitate exact language use for speaking about mathematical objects literally, algebraically, graphically and procedurally. teachers can 162 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) furthermore flexibly move between these repertoires in an order that the mathematical object dictates. the sequence of repertoires can therefore be varied. 5.1 language repertoires literal: this entails simply being able to read the object using the correct language and in the correct sequence. the interval, 0<x≤5 should be read “all the real x values that are greater than zero and at the same time less than or equal to five”. students in many instances read this as “zero is less than x is less than or equal to 5”. the mental gymnastics of getting around the student version is indicative of its incorrectness, meaninglessness and complexity, especially for a class of uninitiated grade 9 learners. algebraic: this category lays emphasis on the operations that constitute the object. for example, x+y<8, x,yϵz+, from an algebraic perspective can be described as “the sum of two positive integers is less than eight”. graphical or cartesian: this category of description focuses on the object as it is depicted in the cartesian plane. for example, 2x ≥ x+2, seeks the real values of x on the x axis for which (where) the increasing exponential function y=2x lies on or above the increasing branch of the inverse parabola y= x+2 . procedural or algorithmic: as it suggests, this category is the language associated with the explanation of how to ‘do’ the mathematics. for example, the explanation for obtaining a solution to 4x=32 would be firstly to see that the equation seeks a value for x for which the left and right hand sides are equal in value. express each term in the equation as a power with a prime base of two. since we are working in an equation and the bases are equal, the exponents must be equal too, to maintain the equality. hence, 2x=5. since 2 is multiplied by x on the left hand side, to isolate x, we divide throughout by 2 because division is the reverse operation of multiplication. in this way we obtain x=2,5 which when substituted in the original equation will give a true statement. students’ reactions to using these language repertoires are given below. 6. student reflections on using mathematical language repertoires i produce below the reflections of three students on the course. each student highlights the value of the mathematical language repertoires that were the product of a three-year action research programme. student a: the course offered many different valuable methods to teach such as the different levels of describing a mathematical object namely, literal, algebraic, graphical and procedural description, which i will greatly use in my lessons. using all the different levels of description to teach a mathematical object ensures greater understanding among learners because they will develop a thorough knowledge of mathematical objects. for example, when teaching an equation, i can explain it through its literal meaning, by reading it from left to right, its algebraic meaning by emphasising the operations. in addition, i can draw its graphical representation on the cartesian plane. lastly, i can teach its procedural description, by stating how to solve the equation arithmetically. as a result, i can accommodate many learners in my class by speaking about one object in many ways. van jaarsveld making a case for exact language as an aspect of rigour ... 163 a confident voice here shows an empowered student who suggests the language repertoires will be useful in accommodating the different cognitive levels of her learners. student b: when i reflect back on the course as a whole, i realise that i am able to confidently describe a mathematical object in many different ways… this equipped me with enough skills that will develop a deep sustained understanding of the mathematical content. to prove this, when i taught mathematics in my recent teaching experience i did not focus on the procedure of getting the long division answer right but on why is the answer right or wrong. i took longer time to teach the topic fully, but i know that their understanding of long division will be deep and sustained for a long time. for this student the four repertoires were seen as being useful in developing a sustained understanding of long division. there is a move away from rote pedagogical procedures to accommodate a conceptual perspective of understanding. student c: the course emphasised on the integration and connection of these concepts. the most fundamental idea of this course was representing concepts graphically, literally, algebraically and procedurally as a way of understanding concepts relationally rather than instrumentally. this student recognises the value that the language repertoires will have for relational understanding as opposed to the mechanical “rules without reasons” style of teaching referred to as instrumental understanding by skemp (2006). from the above it appears that the introduction of language repertoires as part of the initial teacher education programme has benefits for prospective teachers of (secondary school) mathematics, largely in equipping them with a vocabulary and being able to engage in communication about mathematical content from a variety of perspectives. there is an indication that there is a shift from the instrumental understanding akin to procedural lesson delivery to one where different perspectives enabled by the language repertoires has contributed to students understanding the mathematical content relationally. in the initial stages of this research besides grappling with the theoretical aspect of what an exact mathematical language entailed i needed to find a way in which to implement it practically. this led to the incorporation of exact mathematical language as a core component of assessment. a variety of practical components as detailed below now characterises the initial teacher education mathematics methodology courses, an overview of which i provide below. 7. towards a model for sustaining the teaching of exact mathematical language to consolidate the emphasis on exact mathematical language as a suggested valid and rigorous component of the initial teacher education programme i have instituted weekly small group tutorials where groups of five student peers describe and discuss mathematical objects using the repertoires of language. assignments concentrate on students giving written descriptions of mathematical objects. it has become clear that the acquisition of a sound mathematical vocabulary has increased student confidence and equipped them with an ability to reason for example why an object which is not algorithmically solvable at school level such as, 2x x+1=0, has no solution. in the fourth year, students examine their own language by video recording themselves teaching to a small group. the small group members evaluate the student in terms of the four language categories. these self-studies as action research projects have revealed much about the students’ abilities to communicate effectively. also 164 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) in the fourth year, students need to prepare for an oral examination where one out of ten mathematical objects provided to students the day before, is randomly selected and described using the language repertoires before a panel of ten students and a lecturer. peer scores are used as part of the assessment process. 8. conclusion this position paper sets out to make a case for the teaching of exact mathematical language to pre-service mathematics teachers in initial teacher education programmes. it was motivated by observing particularly poor language usage by pre-service teachers in micro-lessons and practicums. the paper has reported on the progress of an intervention of teaching exact mathematical language over three years and describes tutorials, an oral examination and a self-study action research project that sustains and consolidates the teaching of exact mathematical language. rigour was defined in terms of pedagogical content knowledge and then operationalised through the design of four language repertoires. it was shown that language in mathematics can be viewed from a traditional sociomathematical perspective of multilingual classrooms and from a more technical vocabular perspective that contributes to a meaningful discursive classroom characterised by sociomathematical norms in a national educational setting where english as the language of teaching and learning dominates. the proposal regarding teaching exact mathematical language as an aspect of rigour is in accordance with ball et al. (2008), ball et al. (2004) and begle (1979) all of whom suggest that what rigorous mathematics is for mathematicians and for teachers of mathematics are quite different. from this paper, it should be evident that acquiring the language with which to teach and explain mathematics requires substantial attention to detail both within the spheres of specialised content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. from a theoretical perspective, it is shown that from a vygotskian thought and language viewpoint it is essential to acquire a subject specific vocabulary since words are the foundation of concept development, thought and its articulation. the absence of it also suggests an impaired ability to reason and these are cognitive qualities and skills that national senior certificate diagnostic reports declare are absent among south africa’s school leavers. habermasian communicative action supports exact language from an ethical and moral perspective in its need for honesty in dialogue. ‘speaking’ mathematics inaccurately deceives the listener and the listener’s inexperience denies the chance to contest that what is being heard is in fact not so. freirian critical consciousness is the reward for emancipating the mind and freeing it from muteness. if learners had the language of mathematics with which to reason, debate, contest and critique, national assessment averages may reflect improvement. from the evidence of student reflections provided, it is shown that an exact mathematical language as an aspect of rigour in initial teacher education curricula in mathematics is not unwarranted. its incorporation would seem essential for developing thought, reason, honing communication skills and for providing authentic teaching. references adler, j. 2001. teaching mathematics in multilingual classrooms. dordrecht: kluwer academic publishers. van jaarsveld making a case for exact language as an aspect of rigour ... 165 ball, d.l., bass, h. & hill, h.c. 2004. knowing and using mathematical knowledge in teaching: learning what matters. in a. buffler & r. laugksch (eds.). proceedings of the 12th annual conference of the south african association for research in mathematics, science and technology education. durban: saarmste. ball, d.l., thames, m.h. & phelps, g. 2008. content knowledge for teaching – what makes it special? journal of teacher education, 59(5), 389-407. http://dx.doi. org/10.1177/0022487108324554 bassey, m. 1998. action research for improving practice. in r. halsall (ed.) teacher research and school improvement: opening doors from the inside. buckingham: open university press. begle, e.g. 1979. critical variables in mathematics education: findings from a survey of the empirical literature. washington, dc: mathematical association of america and national council of teachers of mathematics. department of basic education (dbe) 2011. curriculum and assessment policy statement grades 10 – 12 mathematics. available at http://www.education.gov.za [accessed 23 january 2012]. department of basic education (dbe) 2013. national senior certificate examination national diagnostic report. 125-152. available at http://www.education.gov.za/linkclick.aspx?fileticke t=axcqstfost4%3d&tabid=36&mid=2514 [accessed 2 february 2014]. department of basic education 2014. . national senior certificate examination national diagnostic report. 12. available at http://www.education.gov.za [accessed 10 january 2015]. de klerk, v. 2002. language issues in our schools: whose voice counts? perspectives in education, 20, 1-28. de wet, c. 2002. factors influencing the choice of language of learning and teaching (lolt): a south african perspective. south african journal of education, 22, 119-124. freire, p. 1970. pedagogy of the oppressed. london: penguin books. freire, p. 1974. education for critical consciousness. london: continuum. glaser, b. & strauss, a. 1967. the discovery of grounded theory: strategies for qualitative research. chicago: aldine. habermas, j. 1990. moral consciousness and communicative action. cambridge: polity press. kemmis, k. & mctaggart, r. 2000. participatory action research. in n. denzin & y. lincoln (eds.). handbook of qualitative research. london: sage. kgosana, c. 2006. moedertaal eerste: liewer engels. die grootste weerstand kom van swart ouers. rapport, 19 february. kilpatrick, j., swafford, j. & findell, b. (eds.) 2001. adding it up: helping children learn mathematics. washington: national academy press. koshy, v. 2005. action research for improving practice – a practical guide. london, thousand oaks, new delhi: paul chapman publishing. livneh, d. & linchevski, l. 2007. algebrification of arithmetic: developing algebraic structure sense in the context of arithmetic. in j.h. woo, h.c. lew, k.s. park & d.y. seo http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022487108324554 http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022487108324554 http://www.education.gov.za http://www.education.gov.za/linkclick.aspx?fileticket=axcqstfost4%3d&tabid=36&mid=2514 http://www.education.gov.za/linkclick.aspx?fileticket=axcqstfost4%3d&tabid=36&mid=2514 http://www.education.gov.za 166 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) (eds.). proceedings of the 31st conference of the international group for the psychology of mathematics education, 3. seoul: pme. pp. 217-224. mercer, n. & sams, c. 2006. teaching children how to use language to solve maths 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http://www.sk.com.br/sk-vygot.html http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/749877 http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/749877 pie 33(2) june 2015.indb perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 30 ‘i could have done everything and why not?’: young women’s complex constructions of sexual agency in the context of sexualities education in life orientation in south african schools lou-marie kruger tamara shefer antoinette oakes progressive policies protecting women’s rights to make reproductive decisions and the recent increase in literature exploring female sexual agency do not appear to have impacted on more equitable sexual relations in all contexts. in south africa, gender power inequalities, intersecting with other forms of inequality in society, pose a challenge for young women’s control over their sexual and reproductive health. the article focuses on a group of young coloured south african women’s understandings of their sexual agency, in an attempt to explore how it is explicitly and implicitly shaped by school life orientation (lo) sexuality programmes. we found young women constructed their agency as simultaneously enabled and constrained in complex ways: on the one hand, the explicit communication was that they should have agency and take responsibility for themselves sexually, whereas the implicit communication seemed to convey that what they really thought and felt about sex and sexuality was not important. in addition, heteronormative gender roles, in which men are assumed to take the lead in sexual matters, appear to be reproduced in lo sexuality education messages and further complicate young women’s constructions of their sexual agency. the implications of these findings for lo sexuality programmes are discussed. keywords: female sexual agency, young women, sexuality education, life orientation lou-marie kruger stellenbosch university e-mail: lkrug@sun.ac.za tel: 021 808 3461 antoinette oakes stellenbosch university e-mail: msajoakes@gmail. com tel: 021 864 8073 tamara shefer university of the western cape e-mail: tshefer@uwc.ac.za tel: 021 959 2234 ‘i could have done everything and why not?’: young women’s complex constructions of sexual agency in the context of sexualities education in life orientation in south african schools lou-marie kruger, tamara shefer & antoinette oakes 31 introduction over the past 25 years, there has been an increase in literature exploring female sexual agency and its relation to various social issues (fine, 1988; lesch & kruger, 2004; madhok, phillips & wilson, 2013; tolman, 2000, 2006; tolman & szalacha, 1999). feminists have focused on the importance of granting women rights to make decisions regarding their reproductive lives. however, even in seemingly progressive countries whose policies protect such rights (e.g., south africa, united states and united kingdom included), women’s reproductive decisions are still compromised in many ways. within a social constructionist framework, agency can be defined as how people construct their “capacity to define their own life-choices and to pursue their own goals, even in the face of opposition from others” (kabeer, 1999: 438). sexual agency can then be understood to be a subjective construction of how a person is empowered (or not) in the sexual sphere, in other words his/her sense that s/he has the right to make choices, take action and meet his/her own sexual needs. while women’s agency includes “women’s own ideas of what’s possible for them to do”, these are closely intertwined with “societal norms for what women should and should not do” (strandberg, 2001: 4). how women construct their agency in the context of heterosexual relationships is thus powerfully located in and determined by multiple and intersecting material, social and cultural factors (e.g., holland, ramazanoglu, sharpe & thompson 1998; horne, 2005; madhok et al., 2013). in south africa, specifically, gender power inequalities and the low status of women in society are pervasive problems and pose a challenge to women’s sexual and reproductive health (bennett & reddy, 2009; bhana, 2012; bhana & anderson, 2013a, 2013b; bhana & pattman, 2009; harrison, 2008; jewkes & abrahams, 2002; jewkes & morrell, 2010, 2012; reddy & dunne, 2007; shefer & foster, 2009). for instance, while adolescence has been identified as an important time for the development of sexual agency (tolman, 2006), south african research suggests that women themselves regard the sexual activities of young women as inevitabilities and not as something they necessarily seek, desire or feel they have control over (jewkes, vundule, maforah & jordaan, 2001; lesch & kruger, 2004). the finding that young women experience limited sexual agency within intimate relationships is consistent with other research done in other contexts, both in south africa and globally (averett et al., 2008; burkett & hamilton, 2012; geary, baumgartner, wedderburn, montoya & catone, 2013). however, young men and women may also be attempting to exercise some form of agency by resisting normative practices in a context where gender and sexual norms linked to religion, and economic and cultural conditions are constraining (heslop & banda, 2013; outwater, abrahams & campbell, 2005). further, messages about agency are complicated by contradictory discourses framing young women’s sexuality. for example, macleod (2011) highlights the complex and contradictory expectations regarding reproductive issues with which young women are confronted, arguing that young women are expected to display ‘feminine’ perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 32 attributes, while also demonstrating the maturity of adolescence, attributes that often contradict each other. young women’s constructions of their agency in terms of choosing to become sexually active, to obtain and use contraception (or not to) and to become pregnant are situationally located and shaped by peer, community and family relations in all contexts (langille, 2007; raneri & wiemann, 2007). life orientation (lo) sexuality education programmes have been viewed as potential key locations for both the reproduction and the contestation of dominant gender discourses that impact on young women’s understanding of their own sexuality, including their sexual agency (bhana, brookes, makiwane & naidoo, 2005; prinsloo, 2007; van deventer, 2009). in south africa, the national curriculum statement for life orientation (2008) determines that sex education should be focused on in grade 10. key references to notions of agency include: explain changes associated with growing towards adulthood and describe values and strategies to make responsible decisions regarding sexuality and lifestyle choices in order to optimise personal potential … describe the concepts ‘power’ and ‘power relations’ and their effect on relationships between and among genders (national curriculum statement, 2008: 27). it seems clear then that, at least in theory, lo sexuality education in south africa is explicitly directed at addressing questions concerning sexual agency. yet, existing research in local and international contexts emphasises abstinence in sexuality education at school, with the message being conveyed that women are responsible for saying ‘no’ to sex and, consequently, avoiding the consequences of sex which are negatively framed within notions of disease and danger (epstein, morrell, moletsane & unterhalter, 2004; francis, 2013; francis & de palma, 2014; froyum, 2010; lesko, 2010; macleod, 2009; rooth, 2005). such messages implicitly assume that female adolescents have agency in the context of sexual relationships. despite a surge in literature on the sexuality and sexual practices of young south africans, relatively little research has been conducted on young women’s own constructions of their sexuality, specifically also in terms of how they perceive and understand their own sexual agency (furstenberg, 2003; lesch, 2000; lesch & kruger, 2004; shefer, in press). this article focuses on one group of young south african women’s understanding of their sexual agency, specifically in an attempt to explore how their constructions of agency are explicitly and implicitly shaped within the context of school lo sexuality programmes. methods situated within a social constructionist paradigm, the current study emphasizes the lived experience of young women and acknowledges that these young women actively construct the meaning of their own experiences, but that these constructions are shaped by larger societal discourses. following the principles of social ‘i could have done everything and why not?’: young women’s complex constructions of sexual agency in the context of sexualities education in life orientation in south african schools lou-marie kruger, tamara shefer & antoinette oakes 33 constructionism, the participants in this study were viewed as constantly negotiating the meaning of their sexual agency within their specific social settings. to understand how these participants make sense of their sexual agency, this articles explores the way in which they discuss and make sense of their sexuality, their accounts of their sexual behaviour and their sexual relationships. researchers were concerned to unpack how different discourses prevalent in this community, and in the lo classes specifically, play a role in the participants’ constructions of their sexual agency. the participants were twelve young coloured grade 10 female learners between the ages of 16 and 18. the secondary school they attended is situated in a semirural, low-income, coloured community in the western cape. data were collected by means of focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews. the interviews were conducted by a postgraduate student in psychology at stellenbosch university (the third author of this article), trained in qualitative research methodologies and able to speak the language of participants, afrikaans. the interview schedule explored a range of topics including gender norms, sexuality and lo sexuality programmes. interviews and focus group discussions were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and translated. a qualitative thematic analysis, drawing on discourse analytic guidelines (potter & wetherell, 1987; parker, 1992), was conducted on the transcripts. after extracting dominant emerging themes, a discourse analytic reading, located in a social constructionist framework, was applied. this analytic approach places particular emphasis on how meaning is constructed through the language used and how this offers insight into larger ideological constructions of gender. all standard and appropriate ethical measures were applied at all stages of the research process. ethical clearance was obtained from the western cape department of education and stellenbosch university. informed consent was obtained from all the participants, after ensuring that they understood the study and the terms of their participation. as the study involved interviewing young people under the age of 18, written informed consent was obtained from their parents/guardians. all participants were assured of confidentiality, anonymity and freedom to withdraw from the study at any point. research on sexuality is often considered a sensitive area of exploration. therefore, a clear referral system for participants who may have needed psychological support was put in place. findings in our analysis, we explored how participants come to understand sexual agency in the context of lo sexuality education programmes. while young women’s constructions of their sexuality seemed to be partly shaped by the lo programme, it was clear that their peers, other teachers and authority figures, as well as their families and communities had an impact on their constructions. on the one hand, we could discern more explicit discourses that demanded of young women to take responsibility for their sexual activities and stay ‘safe’ and ‘good’, thereby suggesting perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 34 that young women should claim sexual agency. on the other hand, implicit discourses suggested that what young women think and feel about sex is not important and that existing gender norms should determine how they behave sexually – thus suggesting that young women should not have agency. thus complex and often contradictory prescriptions about how young women should exercise agency over their sexuality were evident: while agency is promoted, abstinence is explicitly presented as the only option, with implicit messages that the desires and needs of men should determine what women do. while, in some contexts, women are hailed to be responsible for their own safety in an agentic way that implies control over their lives and sexualities, they are also presented with a set of discourses that speak of their vulnerability, lack of agency and the imperative to submit to male sexual desire and power. we unpack these apparently contradictory messages by analysing the talk of participants, focusing specifically on how dominant discourses shape the young women’s constructions of their own sexual agency. the explicit discourse: danger and responsibility participants first constructed sex as a dangerous activity that can have negative and damaging consequences for them, with emphasis on disease and unplanned pregnancy: kim2: a nurse came to speak to us about sex and everything, why you shouldn’t have sex … but i don’t want to have sex now … because i think about my life, my future will be gone. wilmien: … like the principal always tells us, we shouldn’t have sex at a young age … but it’s important to know what sex is about and that we are informed about sex, but we shouldn’t have sex because it can lead to a lot of damage to you. floretta: what i know about sex is that it’s between a man and a woman. there are diseases that can be transmitted if you have sex. you can fall pregnant. notably much of the language used in this instance is framed in a passive way – things are done or happen to young women – they ‘can fall pregnant’ and ‘diseases can be transmitted’ and this can ‘lead to a lot of damage’. this emphasis on the dangers of sex for young women has been widely documented in the literature and seems to be a pervasive way to deal with the sexual health issues young people are facing (holzner & oetomo, 2004; lesch & furphy, 2013; lesch & kruger, 2005). earlier work similarly foregrounds the construction of young women’s sexual agency within notions of vulnerability and victimhood. in one of the first international studies to draw attention to the sexual agency of women, fine (1988) showed how adolescent women’s sexuality is predominantly discussed in the context of victimization. fine argues that adolescent women are taught that they are vulnerable to male sexual advances and must take the necessary precautions to protect themselves from sex and its negative consequences. local and international literature shows how this gendered trope of sex as dangerous for young women is widespread in school’s ‘i could have done everything and why not?’: young women’s complex constructions of sexual agency in the context of sexualities education in life orientation in south african schools lou-marie kruger, tamara shefer & antoinette oakes 35 particular messages to young people in programmes of sexuality education and our local lo programmes (allen, 2005; fields, 2008; macleod, 2009; robinson, 2013). while sex is clearly constructed as dangerous and young women as inevitably vulnerable and at risk, the above quotes also suggest that the young women in our study understood from adults in the school context that they themselves were responsible for protecting themselves against the dangers of sex. the assumption seems to be that young women have the power to make reproductive decisions that will keep them safe and that are morally right. subsequently, the young women are constructed both as potential passive victims and as having agency: their knowing, thinking and doing can prevent them from becoming victims. this power seems, in some instances, to be owned: “… but i don’t want to have sex now”. participants also reported how such messages of danger and responsibility were reinforced by messages they received at home and in their communities about sex being dangerous for women: lynette: my mother tells me, in our house it is almost as if you may not have a relationship with a boy or so. so, my mother always tells me the dangers of what boys do, and the difference that boys do not get pregnant, but that girls can get pregnant. that is what she always tells us in the home, she tells me and my sister, and then she tells us that we must not get involved with boys because it can be dangerous and so. jo-anne: the girls’ life is messed up [as a result of pregnancy] … but the boy goes on with his life. linking such discourses to notions of responsibility is more than evident in the reported experiences of sexualities education, for warnings on the dangers of sex are made in the expectation of responsibility for ‘protecting’ themselves. when the danger of sex is invoked as a way to deal with the sexuality of young women, it is assumed that they have the power to choose not to engage in sexual activity or to practise safe sex. a key element of the explicit injunction for young women to be agents of selfregulation and self-protection is the application of a moralistic judgement on young women’s sexual practices: wilmien: like the principal always tells us, we shouldn’t have sex at a young age … because, for example, if you are standing in front of the altar with your partner, and behind you, then there’s lots of men standing behind you who you’ve had sex with before. paula: i think, like the bible says, sex before marriage is a sin, so i’m waiting for my turn. jo-anne: but like i understand it is like that woman told us, sex is a sin. some kids misuse sex, which is not nice. sometimes children use sex without condoms, perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 36 which is wrong and which lead[s] them down the wrong path. sex is, they tell us in the bible, is for people who are married, but the children of today misuse sex. recent local studies on lo have documented that teachers consider it their duty to prevent young people from engaging in sexual activity as part of a goal of moral restitution (francis, 2011, 2013; epstein et al., 2004; helleve, flisher, onya, mukoma & klepp, 2009). the moralistic project embedded in lo has also been reiterated by local findings related to schools’ responses to teenage pregnancy and parenting (e.g., bhana, morrell, shefer & ngabaza, 2010; ngabaza, 2011; shefer, bhana & morrell, 2013). as with the danger discourses, when moralistic discourses are evoked, the assumption that young women have the power to do “the right thing” is reinvoked: “… we shouldn’t have sex”. while some kind of agency in responding to these messages is evident in this instance: “… so i’m waiting for my turn”, the assumption prevails that women are able to and ‘should’ be the ones who ensure that ‘the right thing’ is done. the implicit messages: silencing of female desire and privileging of male power infusing fear and shame, by linking sexuality with danger and moral transgression, into discussions taking place in sexuality education, the message to young women seems to be that they have the power to abstain from sexual activity (irvine, 2000). the two implicit assumptions in such an imperative are that what young women feel and think and want sexually does not matter – abstinence is the only possible decision, and that young women do indeed have power in the context of a sexual or potential sexual encounter with a young man. in addition, another implicit message conveyed is that, while abstinence is the ideal, men ultimately should be in power. the young women themselves clearly articulate these assumptions and discuss vividly the confusing and contradictory messages that they have to navigate. participants explicitly stated that, in their experience, sex was either not spoken about, or when it was spoken about, their voices were not listened to or taken seriously. this was specifically true for lo classes, and even more so when the teacher was male: tessa: we don’t actually talk about it. the menere [male teachers] that give us lo, they are all shy… so they don’t want to speak to the girls about it [sex]. so we mostly do exercises, play outside and so. we never have classes about sex and so. amy: or if the children also later want to talk about sex and such, then the meneer [male teacher] will maybe tell us “no, we are not on that topic. we already talked about most of that stuff”. annelise: not really a lot, because meneer [male teacher] does not really talk with us about sex and so. for me it is almost as if he is holding back. like our teacher from last year that taught us lo and so, she was a woman and she ‘i could have done everything and why not?’: young women’s complex constructions of sexual agency in the context of sexualities education in life orientation in south african schools lou-marie kruger, tamara shefer & antoinette oakes 37 talked openly about sex and such, when it is time to have sex and so. so meneer that we have now does not talk openly with us about sex. participants further appear to be acutely aware of the gendered dynamics of classroom interactions, thus further constraining possibilities of talking more openly about their own experiences. they claimed that men (including male teachers) do not want to talk to them about sex and certainly not about their feelings about sex. while there clearly is an injuction to talk about sex in some contexts, there is also an injunction not to speak about sex, specifically in the company of men. the participants do not speculate about the reasons for the male teachers’ reticence to have these conversations, apart from suggesting that he is skaam, an afrikaans word meaning either ‘shy’ or ‘ashamed’. in addition, according to the participants, the voices of young men are rendered more important, both in the classroom and during sexual interactions where normative gender roles in heterosexual practices are legitimized: annelise: we also did an activity in lo, and like meneer [male teacher] said, the man is the head – if i can put it that way – in the home. he rules over everything. so for me it’s like the man is the one that asks for sex and things … like when we girls were speaking, it was always but i don’t want to have sex now like – how can i put this – a boy’s thing and a girl’s thing, then the teacher will always take the boys’ side. he will always agree with what they say, but he never heard the girls’ side of the story. so it was almost like – how can i put this – almost like we’re on different sides. however, the participant was clear that there is “the girls’ side of the story”, in this case “i don’t want to have sex now”. another participant articulated how being silenced in this way is hurtful, but also indicated that the young women do resist being silenced and do talk about sex when they are on their own: annelise: it actually hurt me a bit, but then i got over it … then we girls spoke about sex and things, because we don’t let it get us down. the participants expressed a pronounced interest in sex and a desire to have a space within which to talk about sex openly. jo-anne: … he [lo teacher] must talk about everything that comes in a woman or man’s path who is sexually active. susan: i want to learn more about teenage pregnancy, and about the sexuality stuff. i want to learn more about that, because we never actually spoke about that, in class, with the lo teacher. floretta: [our teacher must speak about] for example girls and boys that are in a relationship, how it really is, how they communicate with each other, what they speak about, and if they talk about sex, and do they want to have sex. perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 38 they may be silenced, but, at least in the context of the interview, they constructed themselves as active subjects, demanding to know and demanding to speak. while the young women indicated that they are interested not only in the mechanics of sex, but also in sexual and intimate relationships, there is reportedly no space in the classroom to talk about this. according to them, there is no space to talk about feelings and desire. lesch and furphy’s (2013) finding that the discourses to which south african adolescents are exposed are both limited and limiting is relevant in this instance. the messages received by the participants in their study were similar to the messages participants in our study received in the lo classroom: “… adolescents should not have sex, abstain from sex till marriage, men initiate sex, sex will lead to pregnancy and ruin chances for a better life” (lesch & furphy 2013: 18). young women are taught that, while they should take responsibility for their sexual activities, the responsibility is to abstain, but also, and rather paradoxically, to follow the men’s lead. the complex message that the young women reportedly receive is that, while they have the responsibility to abstain from sex, men have, in fact, the power in sexual relationships. when speaking about sex, the participants made constant reference to concepts such as force, power, control and their own lack of control and disempowerment – apparently acutely aware of the underlying power struggles inherent in heterosexual interactions. paula: what happens is you [men] do not respect that person’s choice. it is almost like you only want what you want, you want to have sex, and you place pressure on the other person, because that person is not ready yet. so you force that person to have sex. frieda: if the man wants to have sex, he will force his way. many participants described how women are manipulated by their partners to engage in sexual activity, highlighting the contradictory expectation of their responsibility to regulate their own and their male partner’s practices and to give in to male power. as has been documented in many local studies over the past two decades of research on heterosexual practices and young women’s sexual agency (e.g., bhana & anderson, 2013a, 2013b; macphail & campbell, 2001; shefer et al., 2013; varga, 1997; wood, maforah & jewkes, 1998), participants describe the different dynamics of coercion, including the use of a discourse of love, a threat of loss of the relationship, and physical violence: erin: or the boy manipulates the girl. tells her “i love you” and then “you will have sex with me”. annelise: … for boys it’s almost like “if you love me, prove it to me”, then the girl will always ask “how?”, and then the boy will say “with sex”. susan: the guy will maybe force her to do it [have sex], and if she doesn’t want to, he will maybe leave her just because she doesn’t want to have sex with him. that is what happens in relationships. ‘i could have done everything and why not?’: young women’s complex constructions of sexual agency in the context of sexualities education in life orientation in south african schools lou-marie kruger, tamara shefer & antoinette oakes 39 participants suggested that, in the context of coercive sex, young women may ask questions and may even refuse, but questions and refusals come with consequences: the women may be left, or, in the worst instances, beaten and/or raped: tessa: then let us say the man wants to have sex and the girl does not want to have sex, then let us say the man forces the girl to have sex, then he will hit her, or he just leaves her because he says he is a part of the relationship for a long time and his girl does not want to give him sex … annelise: sometimes the boy gets angry if he wants to have sex with the girl and the girl does not want to. sometimes they get out, juffrou [female teacher], and they hit the girl. tessa: like in our community i see the boys hit their girlfriends if they don’t want to do it. or they rape their girlfriends, without the girlfriends saying yes …. if the boy wants to have sex, then he will nag the girl and if she really does not want to, he will rape her … usually they remain silent. they don’t tell anyone. and then at a time, they can’t tolerate it, then it comes out. some girls immediately tell. they complain with someone, with his parents or so. but then the parents will say, “but no, the girl lies”. this is why girls don’t always want to tell. participants talked about young women who “don’t want to do it”, young women who “really” do not want to do it and “(s)ome girls [who] immediately tell”. they also, however, are aware of the fact that raped women “usually” remain silent and that those who do tell are typically not believed. this suggests that participants do not construct themselves as having no voice or no agency; they are simply acutely aware of how their voices are silenced in different ways and how their attempts at agency are undermined. while most participants denied that they were sexually active, two of those who spoke about their sexual activities described their first experience of sexual intercourse as something that “just happened” or “just started”. this may reflect the silencing and shaming of sexual activity and desire of young women. the narratives do indeed seem to be framed within a discourse of submission to pressure (‘i gave in’) and transgression (‘what we were doing was wrong’): interviewer: did you want to have sex? jo-anne: not really … because i knew what we were doing was wrong and that i would never be a virgin again, and it just happened. interviewer: were you pressured or was it your choice? jo-anne: he pressured me. he said we’ve been in a relationship for so long but we’ve never done it [have sex] … we were at a party and it was time for me to go home, and he went on and on, and so i gave in. interviewer: so how did you make the decision to begin a sexual relationship? roberta: it was just, because we were in a relationship with each other for so long, i’m not saying we should have started a sexual relationship, but it’s perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 40 probably because he, he asked if we couldn’t start having sex, and i didn’t say anything, and he just started. it is interesting to note that participants did not mention that they made a conscious decision to have sex: “i didn’t say anything, and he just started”. significantly, they did not mention that they protested. while rape, coercive sex and/or emotional pressure have been found to be common in young people’s accounts of their sexual experiences (jewkes et al., 2001; shefer & foster, 2009; varga & makubalo, 1996; wood et al., 1998), these participants told a more complex story. there was male pressure and they related their lack of agency in the sense of not having made conscious decisions. however, we are not clear as to what they really wanted or felt, because, even in telling these stories to the interviewer, the participants did not say what they really wanted or felt – even though they clearly thought “what we were doing was wrong”. when the interviewer asked “did you want to have sex?”, the participant’s vague response, “not really”, glossed over her own desire and feelings. ironically, not even the interviewer pursued the matter of what the participant really wanted. in this instance, the young women who were sexually active, were effectively silenced. while participants who were sexually active denied agency, those participants who said that they were not sexually active, claimed to be able to make decisions about sexual activities and to act upon those decisions: tessa: like in our community i see the guys hitting their girls if they don’t want to do it [have sex], or they just rape their girls, without their girls saying yes … so i think i’m going to wait for the right guy. interviewer: so did sex ever come up in that relationship? frieda: in that relationship it came up a lot, but i told him straight ‘no, and if you don’t accept it what am i doing in this relationship? if my no is no, and you want to make my no a yes, what is the use of this relationship?’. interviewer: so did he pressure you? frieda: i wouldn’t say he pressured me, but it came up a lot, and then i said no. interviewer: and did you have sex with him again? jo-anne: no. interviewer: so just that one time. so he did not pressure you again? jo-anne: he did, and then he said if we are not going to again, then he will leave me, and then i accepted it. i left him now because he said that night when he was with me that he is going to leave me, and then i left him. wilmien: girls, sometimes, like me, i have not had, but if a boy asks me for sex and such, then i will tell him directly “no” because my thing is i do not want to have a boyfriend at this age, and then he wants sex, and then in 15 years’ time, then i meet my right man. ‘i could have done everything and why not?’: young women’s complex constructions of sexual agency in the context of sexualities education in life orientation in south african schools lou-marie kruger, tamara shefer & antoinette oakes 41 it seems obvious, then, that those participants who said that they abstained from having sex, experienced themselves as being empowered to say “no”. those who were sexually active related that they had no agency in the context of first sexual encounters, but it is not clear whether they did not deny agency, because their unconscious or conscious decisions were not in line with expectations of adults. thus, they might not have felt that they can admit to an adult (the interviewer) that it was something they wanted. the complexity of the situation is articulated by one of the participants whose boyfriend tried to force her to have sex. she left him, but feels ambivalent about her decision: tessa: it was alright, but later in time, i just because why my boyfriend hit me so and he just all the time, he just all the time because he was older than me, he always went on for sex and so. so i thought enough is enough and i don’t need people like this in my life, so i broke up with him. but at the moment, he still stalks me. like this morning, i found him again. but i don’t worry about him, i am not scared of him. i am not scared of him anymore, i will stand up for myself. my friends tell me what they went through, then they tell me it was sore and so, and some people say you bleed, so then i am scared of it. interviewer: and the stories that you hear from friends, when they talk about sex, how did they decide to start having sex? tessa: they mostly decided because they were raped and so and then they decide, okay, i am not a virgin anymore, so i can just as well keep on doing it, because in a way it was a lekker [good] feeling. and then i sometimes feel out, because i am the only one who is still a virgin and i am actually scared, because in some conversations i can’t participate. interviewer: do you feel out when they talk about sex? tessa: sometimes yes, because sometimes i can’t participate, because i have not done it yet. so they will sommer [just] tell me, shut your trap, tessa, or so. and they will sommer kick me out. interviewer: and then, what do you think when they talk to you like this? tessa: sometimes i am not bothered by it. so i will just think it is allright, i am not dirty and so. but other times i think, i could have done everything and why not? i always have ‘why’ in my head. in this long narrative, many of the complexities of being a young woman in this community are highlighted. there is the imperative to abstain, to not abstain; to follow the boy’s lead, to resist; to be afraid, to have pleasure; to be included, to not be included. nothing is simple and stable. the participant is clearly conflicted: while the messages about abstinence that she receives in the lo class are already conflicting, she also gets other messages when she listens to the conversations between her female friends, conversations about aspects of sex that are not addressed in the lo class, conversations about pain and pleasure. perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 42 conclusions in this article, we explored how one group of young south african women speak of sexual agency in the context of their talk on lo sexuality education programmes. our most pertinent finding was that, with regard to constructions of their sexual agency, young women are receiving a double message: on the one hand, the explicit communication is that they should have agency and take responsibility for themselves sexually, but the implicit communication seemed to convey that what they really thought and felt about sex and sexuality was not important. heteronormative gender roles, in which men are assumed to take the lead in sexual matters, appear to be reproduced in lo sexuality education messages and more broadly in their experiences at school and in the community, thus further complicating the notion of sexual agency. in other words, while it was explicitly conveyed to participants that they have to take responsibility for their sexual activities, there was an implicit communication that these activities should be in line with existing gender norms, not with what they themselves necessarily seek, desire or feel. they were simultaneously told that they have agency and that they do not have agency. this may imply that, if they do make decisions (conscious or unconscious) or engage in sexual activities that are not in line with existing norms, they will be unlikely to admit that those decisions or activities were in line with their own desires or feelings. consequently, there is a further silencing of the voices of young women. they cannot talk about forced sex, nor about consensual sex. they cannot talk about bad sex or good sex, about not wanting sex or about wanting sex. these findings suggest that sexuality education programmes need to facilitate more focus on finding out from young women themselves what they are struggling with and providing a constructive and supportive space for them to speak about sexuality and sex. if young women are to have more agency with respect to their sexuality, they will have to come to believe that what they think and feel is important. this should be included in sexuality classes, not only through didactics, but also by giving young women opportunities to talk about their feelings and thoughts. in addition, lo teachers will have to acknowledge that women’s constructions of their sexuality seems to be shaped not only by programmes, but also by their peers, other teachers and authority figures as well as their families and communities. the contradictory messages that young women are likely to receive should be acknowledged (made explicit) and discussed in lo classes. although based on a small sample, this study also reinforced the findings of other local studies that foreground discomfort and lack of capacity among teachers who work with the sexualities component of lo (adonis & baxen, 2009; francis, 2013; macleod, 2009; rooth, 2005). in this study, it appeared that teachers mostly avoid direct discussions about sexuality, and when they do, it apparently is mostly through a more didactic, disciplinary and punitive framework that emphasises danger, disease and damage. also of concern is the lack of a critical gender consciousness among teachers who appear to respond to learners in gender stereotypic ways, for example, focusing on young men and valuing their ‘i could have done everything and why not?’: young women’s complex constructions of sexual agency in the context of sexualities education in life orientation in south african schools lou-marie kruger, tamara shefer & antoinette oakes 43 contributions higher, as well as actively reinforcing normative and unequal gender practices. working with teachers and the school on their overt and hidden curriculum as well as methodologies of working with young people on life skills remains an important priority in ensuring any value in the lo curriculum. while a handful of recent local studies reveal that young women in different contexts are beginning to challenge male dominance in social and sexual contexts (see, for example, anderson, 2013; bhana & anderson, 2013a, 2013b), this study highlighted continued practices of normative gender roles in heterosexual relationships among young people that are strongly associated with inequitable and coercive sexual practices. it was apparent in this study that sexualities education may not be assisting in challenging or at least raising questions concerning such gender performances and heterosexual practices, nor supporting young women’s positive sexual agency. of concern are the contradictory messages that are finding their way to young women through lo sexuality education and within the school more generally and reinforced in their families and communities. what young women are being told, both explicitly and implicitly, seems to not only fall short of supporting them in developing a strong and positive sense of themselves and their sexuality, but rather exacerbates the challenging location in which they find themselves, always already vulnerable, yet always already responsible. endnotes 1. in using these racial distinctions, we acknowledge them as social constructs that have, and continue to have, a profound impact on material lives and experiences and the meanings attributed to them by south african citizens. 2. pseudonyms are used for participants. all excerpts are from separate conversations. acknowledgement the research was enabled by funding provided by the south africa-netherlands research programme on alternatives in development (sanpad). references adonis b & baxen j 2009. school 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inclusive education (learning support 1) courses. through a collaborative relationship between the course presenter (rembach1) and the wsoe teaching and learning advisor (dison) over a four­year period, a number of rubrics based on the solo taxonomy were created, revised and refined for specific tasks in order to determine how students were responding to the set tasks at different levels of cognition. the paper demonstrates several learning benefits that emerged from the process of adapting the solo taxonomy for different task requirements, such as better scaffolding of tasks, enhanced student learning, collaborative professional development and better modelling. given the diverse student population in the school of education, there is a strong need to establish a deeper and more nuanced understanding of how course and assessment tasks influence student learning. as assessment plays a fundamental role in shaping student learning in a course (biggs, 2011), we need to understand how it can contribute meaningfully to promoting higher order thinking outcomes in education courses. the paper illustrates the central role of assessment criteria in strengthening the relationship between lecturer and student development in designing assessments for these two courses in the wits school of education. keywords: solo taxonomy, rubrics, assessment criteria, construc­ tive alignment, academic literacies, critical thinking, scaffolding 1. introduction students’ challenges as writers of academic discourse have been well documented in a south african context (boughey 2009; mckenna, 2009 & scott, yeld & henry, 2007) as have lecturers’ difficulties with creating coordinated and sequenced assignments to accelerate students’ growth 1 rembach is the course presenter of two undergraduate social sciences and two postgraduate honours courses lauren rembach studies in education and social sciences wits school of education lauren.rembach@wits.ac.za laura dison teaching and learning advisor wits school of education laura.dison@wits.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i1.6 issn 0258­2236 eissn 2519­593x perspectives in education 2016 34(1): 68­83 © uv/ufs mailto:lauren.rembach@wits.ac.za mailto:laura.dison@wits.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.6 rembach & dison transforming taxonomies into rubrics: using solo in social science ... 69 (fry, kettridge & marshall, 2009). discipline specialists often see writing as someone else’s domain (the language specialists or the ‘writing centre’) or as a basic competence that should have been developed at school or in previous years of study. lecturers may not feel sufficiently confident or pedagogically equipped to formulate suitable assessment tasks with accompanying criteria that specify differing levels of writing performance. the initial motivation for the course presenter to develop rubrics for assessment tasks in these courses, was to determine more accurately what students knew and believed about their own learning, how they developed knowledge within the discipline, and how they organised and structured that knowledge in response to an assessment task. she worked collaboratively with the teaching and learning advisor to develop contextualised rubrics based on the solo (structure of observed learning outcomes) taxonomy (biggs & collis, 1982) in order to analyse student responses to specific assignment questions. she wanted to measure the extent to which students had achieved the course outcomes as a result of participating in discussions about assessment criteria. after developing these rubrics for assessment tasks in a number of courses, the course presenter began incorporating them more explicitly into the teaching programme at under­ graduate and postgraduate levels. the creation of rubrics served a dual purpose in assisting the presenter to explicitly align the course outcomes, assessment tasks and learning outcomes and to address students’ academic literacy requirements more systematically. in response to this embedded approach, students appeared more confident and proficient in class when they engaged with the criteria of complex course concepts and assignments. in this paper, we propose a method for designing rubrics that foregrounds improved learning experiences by explicitly identifying the knowledge and skills needed to produce disciplinary discourse for a particular task. we analyse the design and implementation of two rubrics that we developed for two different cohorts of students: a first year cohort and an honours cohort in contrasting disciplinary contexts for these purposes. 2. literature review social constructivists argue that, “people are abundant in the resources of their experience which they bring to situations that are intentionally about creating learning in learners” (brockbank & mcgill, 1998: 4). identifying with this view of learners actively constructing knowledge, our purpose in creating contextualised rubrics was to integrate assessment practices into the social sciences methodology and inclusive education courses that would elicit the kinds of high-level critical engagement expected of successful university students. different ways of understanding learning are seen to underpin two basic approaches to learning: a ‘surface’ approach in which the student’s intention is to memorise the text, and a ‘deep’ approach in which the student’s intention is to understand the meaning of the text through high levels of cognitive processing (biggs & collis, 1982; entwistle,1987; marton & saljo, 1984). our contention is that assessment criteria in the form of rubrics have not made a significant contribution to literacy development in teaching programmes because of their perceived peripheral, add­on nature. we show that by consciously embedding them into courses, they become a unique opportunity to enhance students’ high­level conceptual engagement and academic literacy development. harrington (2011: 48) highlights the important role of assessment in the growth of students’ learning and writing in the disciplines “in the service of, rather than simply measurement of, 70 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) students’ learning… through writing”. we have located our study within the wider field of using assessment for the purposes of assessment for learning rather than assessment of learning (brown, collins & duguid, 1989: 50­51). we argue that explicit assessment practices have the potential to give students ‘epistemological access’ to disciplinary content (morrow, 2007) and shift them from surface to deeper approaches to learning by making our ‘target academic literacies explicit’ (mckenna, 2009). despite the recognition that “one of the most important aspects of supporting student learning is the feedback students receive on their work” (gosling, 2009: 121), many students only find out how well or badly they have performed when they receive their marks at the end of a semester. similarly, (norton, 2009: 132) highlights the findings of the uk national assessment survey (2006) that “assessment and feedback were areas that students were least satisfied with”. we intended to address these summative conceptions of assessment by consciously integrating formative feedback assessments in the form of rubrics into the courses under discussion. our conceptual approach to academic literacy development has been guided by the view that context-specific educational strategies embedded in course content have developed in students the meta-knowledge necessary for enhancing their ability to succeed. the move away from generalist views of academic literacy to integrated approaches have assisted course presenters to improve their teaching practices as they clarify and make explicit the conventions and requisite skills of the discipline. a situated approach does not involve mere teaching about learning, but is about students becoming effective learners in particular situations. students become ‘cognitive apprentices’ as they acquire expertise in a range of ‘skills’ valued by the community rather than being viewed as successful or inadequate based on their ability or preparation. for the tasks analysed below, assessment criteria were tailor-made for specific tasks and made explicit to students via various forms of oral and written feedback. this highlights the crucial role of subject specialists in facilitating student writing in the context of the academic subjects they are studying. in other words, well­conceptualised assessment practices in the disciplines can enhance the development of effective academic writing. we have drawn on biggs’ (2011) concept of constructive alignment to illustrate the inter­ relatedness of all aspects of course design – the intended learning outcomes, teaching and learning activities and assessment practices. constructive alignment (biggs & tang, 2011: 109) describe constructive alignment (ca) as a system in which “all components support each other, so the learner is enveloped within a supportive learning system”. it uses a constructivist approach to learning, as students are required to construct meaning through learning activities. in setting up a system of alignment, the course presenter identifies the desired outcomes in relation to the course themes and topics and designs teaching and learning activities to maximise the possibility of students achieving the specified outcomes. student performance on the assessment tasks informs the lecturer how well individual students have achieved the learning outcomes. these principles were adopted by the course presenter who recognised the need to create a learning context that supported student learning opportunities to achieve the specified outcomes. the key ingredient of setting up an aligned curriculum was to take cognisance of the consistency between the curriculum context and content of the courses in social sciences and inclusive education, their projected outcomes, pedagogical approaches and assessment tasks. according to biggs (2011) if there is poor alignment between the various key components of the ecosystem, the students’ learning may be disadvantaged and result in surface learning. this phenomenon will be analysed in our discussion of the examples below where we propose a substantial change in the way we assess students in rembach & dison transforming taxonomies into rubrics: using solo in social science ... 71 order to enhance their engagement with the course material, development of writing skills and assessment requirements. we argue that rubrics, which are well aligned to what we want students to learn, enable us to understand the way students are constructing understanding in these contexts and play a role in the on­going development of the curriculum. 3. methodology: applying the solo taxonomy for the purposes of our collaborative research study, we have used the solo taxonomy as an assessment and pedagogical tool for learning. we show how we adapted the taxonomy for different task requirements at the different grade levels in the two courses. participant observation, document and text analysis were the primary forms of research in this study. the authors used their understanding of constructivism, constructive alignment and academic literacies to gain insights into the implementation and implications of using these rubrics to classify levels of student performance. the solo taxonomies designed for the two courses constitute the data used in this paper. taxonomies such as the solo taxonomy describing levels of student performance (bloom, 1956; biggs & collis, 1982; perkins, 1992) have been used extensively for designing ‘outcomes­based’ courses and materials in higher education as they describe how student performance grows in complexity during the course of mastering tasks. it assumes that understanding develops gradually and becomes more structured and articulated during the course of mastering academic tasks. it also provides a hierarchical structure to guide and move students’ thinking from simple patterns to patterns that are more complex. biggs and tang (2011: 205, 230, 239-240) emphasise the importance of using a “standards model of assessment” at tertiary level compared to a measurement model as it is criterion­referenced and identifies “performances that tell us what has been learned, and how well… independent of other students”. the solo taxonomy is a five-tier hierarchical framework of structuring learning outcomes intended to describe the increasing structural complexity in the way students learn in particular disciplinary contexts. according to biggs and tang (2011: 87), there are two main changes in the outcomes of student learning: the amount of detail and the quality of learning. this is described as ‘quantitative’ as the amount of detail in the student’s response increases, and ‘qualitative’ as the ideas become organised and integrated into a ‘structural pattern’ that addresses the assessment task. other well-documented theories of learning and understanding in university students (marton & saljo 1984; entwistle, 1997) have found a similar contrast between the organisation of knowledge as “discrete, serial elements to be remembered and reproduced, and the integration and transformation of knowledge into a personally constructed and meaningful entity” (campbell, smith & brooker, 1998: 450). 72 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) misses point identify do simple procedure enumerate describe list combine do algorithms compare/contrast explain causes analyse relate apply theorize generalize hypothesize reflect prestructural unistructural multistructural quantitative phase quantitative phase relational extended abstract figure 1: solo taxonomy (biggs: 2003: 48) in referring to the diagram, a pre­structural response is described as one in which students miss the point of the question entirely. this differs form a unistructural response, which focuses on one or two isolated elements, related to the question. responses at this level for example, give simplistic definitions of conscription as an issue (in response to question b). in the students’ responses in both courses, it is difficult to determine how they have addressed the key issues or concepts. a multistructural level response is one in which several relevant independent ideas are described sequentially but do not address the question as a whole. both ‘uni­’ and ‘multistructural’ levels of understanding view understanding as a quantitative increase in what is understood rather than attempt to tackle the question in hand. there is an add­on, shopping list logic to student texts and they reveal an absence of student voice or critical engagement with texts or ideas. a shift in the quality of writing occurs when there is a move to a more integrated and relational level of writing. this answer is no longer a listing of ideas and facts but shows a deeper understanding of what is required to answer the question. a level analyses, synthesises and draws comparisons between ideas and theories in a meaningful way; for example, analysing the role of conscription in the film in relation to human rights and social justice. coherence, writing and critical argument characterise the high order ‘extended abstract’ level. examples at this level would be the questioning of the human cost of the war on the young soldiers depicted in the film. a critical response would challenge the notion of the call to be patriotic and the unfolding human rights issues. students go beyond the task and are able to work with additional course material to hypothesise and create new knowledge. in its general form, it is possible for the taxonomy to provide a limited, one­dimensional view of how students formulate their arguments or responses to assignment questions. norton rembach & dison transforming taxonomies into rubrics: using solo in social science ... 73 (2009: 135) points out that constructive alignment principles can be taken up in a formulaic way in which learning outcomes are ‘slavishly’ matched with assessment tasks. while there is a risk in using the taxonomy mechanistically, we support hattie and brown’s (2004: 28) contention that the key strength of the solo taxonomy is the way it reflects the complexity of human learning. “unlike the assumptions on which the bloom taxonomy has been predicated, there is no separation between content and context, and there is recognition of the role of both the student and the teacher in student learning.” (hattie & brown, 2004: 48). in our experiences with adapting and implementing the taxonomy into rubrics described below, we have sought creative ways of mapping course outcomes and tasks onto the taxonomy and adapting it for our curricular purposes. furthermore, we have used several feedback principles to ensure that students see how they are progressing along the assessment criteria. a key principle is to encourage students to reflect on their learning in relation to the feedback (moon, 2004) and to promote peer dialogue for students to engage actively with the assessment criteria. harrington (2011: 52) emphasises students’ central role in the feedback process by creating opportunities for them to receive information about their learning. she suggests that students need to connect meaningfully with “the substance of what they are studying in the disciplines” in order to participate in a disciplinary field of practice. the course presenter worked with the teaching and learning advisor to adapt and apply the solo taxonomy at multiple levels. it enabled her to structure learning outcomes she wanted the students to master or learn when completing a task or writing an essay. it allowed her to assess student progress in relation to particular assessment tasks and provide students with a structured, developmental tool with which to assess their own learning progress. the students, as future teachers, were expected to reflect on their own development, thus enhancing their meta-reflective thinking. the next section describes and provides examples of various solos used in the social sciences and honours inclusion courses. 4. descriptions of the contextualised solo taxonomies the solo taxonomy adapted into a rubric for the social sciences methodology course the first example provided is an assessment activity that was selected for a first year undergraduate social sciences methodology course. the topic was world war 12 that is generally taught to grade 8 classes3 and the learning outcome for this particular topic was to expose student teachers to the use of film as an effective means of teaching historical events. the students were provided with contrasting readings that critiqued film in history and which showed positive pedagogical findings for using this medium in lessons. 2 world war 1 from 1914-1918 was fought extensively in europe, with huge loss of civilian and soldier lives. military deaths were estimated around 10 million with another 20 million wounded (www.pbs. org.casdeath_pop) 3 the caps social sciences grades 7-9 curriculum (doe, 2011) states that 15 hours notional time should be allocated to world war 1 and suggests that one of the aspects that needs to be addressed is trench warfare on the western front (caps, doe, 2011: 39). www.pbs.org.casdeath_pop www.pbs.org.casdeath_pop 74 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) the film chosen for the task the film, all quiet on the western front (1930 black & white version) about the first world war as told from a german perspective, was shown to the students. this film is based on the novel by erich maria remarque, which describes conditions in the trenches on the western front. the film highlights the effects of the war on an individual soldier and illustrates its horrors with a specific focus on trench warfare. the underlying message of the film promotes anti-war sentiment rather than an unquestioning patriotism that many of these young soldiers aspired to when they volunteered or were conscripted into the army at the onset of world war 1. wineburg (2001) argues that using films in history classrooms play a role in how students learn and think about historical events, contributing to what he terms “collective memory”. he claims that teachers should not ignore film as a pedagogical tool but use them as a source “to advance students’ historical understanding” (wineburg, 2001: 250). the essay the task required students to respond to the following questions after viewing the film and a class discussion regarding the events depicted in the film. a. what view of war and world war 1 in particular, does the film convey? b. what issues in general do you think teaching war raises? c. is this a useful source through which to raise these issues? give reasons for your answer. questions/tasks what view of war, and ww1 in particular, does the film convey? – few ideas/thin description of how war is depicted in the film. – some irrelevant material. – answer lacks evidence. – poor structure. – ideas provided of how war is depicted in the film. – some use of evidence and examples but insufficient detail. – some irrelevant material/repetition. – not always logical. – comprehensive account of how war is depicted in the film. – appropriate and detailed uses of evidence and examples. – develops a logical argument. – clear and detailed account of issues about teaching war. – appropriate illustration of ideas with relevant evidence/examples. – coherent structure. – selects relevant evidence to analyse and engage critically with the source. – good use of examples and reasons to illustrate ideas. – logical argument. – same as level 3 with sophisticated insights into the issues teaching war raises. – ideas well integrated and critical. – same as level 3. – substantial and convincing amount of analysis and critical discussion. – has sophisticated grasp of how source raises complex issues. – clear insight and understanding of how war is depicted in the film. – excellent use of examples and evidence. – material relevant and substantial. – argument logical and convincing. – a few ideas listed about teaching war. – ideas not explained clearly. – some sweeping generalizations. – irrelevant material. – poor structure. – a few ideas listed but little analysis of critical discussion. – answer lacks evidence. – ideas jumbled and incoherent structure. – some evidence of analysis and critical discussion. – reasons a bit thin and not clearly integrated. – some relevant issues raised about teaching war. – insufficient detail/ evidence to support ideas. – not always logical. what issues in general do you think teaching war raises? is it a useful source through which to raise these issues? give reasons for your answer. level 1: uni-structural below 50% (below 12.5) level 2: multi-structural 50-65% (12.5-15.5) level 3: relational 65-74% (16-18.5) level 4: extended abstract 75%+(19+) figure 2: solo taxonomy social sciences methodology 2012 explanation of the task the students were expected to analyse whether the film all quiet on the western front is authentic in its representation of ww1. the task required students to draw on a variety of primary and secondary sources relating to the film. this comparison of sources is a more ‘cognitively demanding’ (cummins, 2000) task than students recalling facts as it required students to describe, analyse and synthesise the various sources on hand and reflect critically rembach & dison transforming taxonomies into rubrics: using solo in social science ... 75 on the view of war conveyed by the film. furthermore, it required students to develop their own ideas and arguments based on the evidence presented to them during class sessions. it encouraged students to think about teaching history using a constructivist approach as they actively engaged with the material. the task was devised to encounter the conventional perspective of war, which speaks to patriotism and heroism by presenting an alternative view of war that questioned this traditional interpretation. this approach would enable students to reflect critically on the devastation and futility of war rather than on its glorification. before doing this task, students had examined primary and secondary sources relating to various accounts of soldiers who had fought in the trenches. they had also been provided with examples of war poetry as sources to enable them to discuss the conditions in the trenches and, more importantly, critique the idea of patriotism, a notion that is central to the film all quiet on the western front. the course presenter wanted to promote and enhance students’ critical learning abilities through higher order cognitive tasks such as this critical analysis (biggs, 2011). furthermore, the task under discussion was more demanding than previous tasks as two critically opposing readings were juxtaposed. the first text provided a critique of using films in a history classroom, arguing that they are romanticised and not always authentic. the second reading suggested that if used correctly with careful planning and scaffolding by the teacher, films could develop students’ conceptual understanding of the event. the readings developed the students’ understanding of the claims made by the authors regarding the value, if any, of using film as a medium to teach about war. they further provided opportunities for critical engagement of how lessons could be planned using film. this task and the accompanying assessment criteria would elicit the extent to which students had made substantial, qualitative changes to their learning (biggs, 2003). the changes in students’ learning shifted to engaging with more cognitively demanding tasks requiring higher order thinking. in preparation for the task, students were provided with opportunities to address reading and writing tasks based on historical enquiry skills. they were expected to distinguish between facts and opinion in authentic historical events as compared to events in scripted films. this process allowed them to reflect on the different arguments made by various authors by suspending their own beliefs and ideas. the written task (essay) expected students to identify the different perspectives on war in the film and in the readings denoted above as well as the soldiers’ from their experiences in the trenches. through this scaffolding process of viewing the film and critically investigating sources, students would see connections between the different readings in order to construct meanings from the text (campbell et al., 1998). the assessment task gauged whether students were able to engage with the following: what (the content of) the different perspectives of war they analysed through the variety of sources they were given; the how: students compared and critically discussed the sources and integrated other perspectives with their own ideas. how the rubric was constructed and implemented the core principles of the solo taxonomy were adapted and contextualised in order to develop a rubric tailor-made for this task. first, the scaffolding of questions (see figure 2) allowed the course presenter to separate out the different aspects of the question and ‘to weight’ them accordingly. in this case, the questions were given equal weighting for students to evaluate the film methodically, theoretically and with an ability to reflect on their use in practice (biggs & tang, 2011). the task itself was designed to prepare students for the higher 76 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) order; rigorous demands of the application task and it required their engagement in their capacity as students and as future teachers. second, the levels depicted in the solo taxonomy were adjusted by the course presenter and the teaching and learning advisor with the view that prestructural engagement (missing the point), was not a possible response to this task, given the extensive scaffolding. careful attention was given at each level to relate specifically to the task requirements (see figure 2 for the criterion requirements at each level)4. in response to the question asking what view of war the film conveys, a unistructural response would merely mention the negative portrayal of war without providing evidence from the film. a multistructural response would describe some of the negative effects in more detail using categories while a relational and extended abstract answer would explain why the film does not romanticise war and would begin categorising the physical and emotional effects of war. such an answer would avoid sweeping generalisations about the horrors of war by referring directly to the film5. a multistructural response to the second part of the question (asking students to identify issues the teaching of war raises) would clarify and elaborate more than a unistructural response would on some of the concerns about handling controversy and bias in the classroom. it would also counter stereotypical and romanticised views of war. a nuanced and sophisticated relational or extended abstract response would grapple with the role teachers can play in challenging learners’ assumptions and helping them develop their own critical positions. it would also reflect critically on the validity and authenticity of the sources. the third part of the question, which required students to evaluate the usefulness of the source, would demonstrate students’ capacity to provide a well-reasoned and critical answer about the role of film in this context. in their actual responses, some students operating at the relational level, raised issues about how teachers use films, e.g. whether they consider how learners relate to one-sided film representations without being exposed to other perspectives on the western front and trench warfare. third, a crucial aspect of applying this taxonomy was to involve the students in the assessment criteria from the start. they were given the taxonomy alongside the task and the course presenter guided them through the criteria for each question using exemplars. this provided an opportunity for the students to realise the important role of assessment in the growth of their thinking through writing processes. it addresses carless’ plea (2015: 2) for assessment criteria that “clarify expectations and bring much needed transparency to assessment processes”. reflecting on the implementation of the rubric on reflection, despite increased awareness and engagement by students with the task criteria, a number of gaps in the implementation of the task were noted. the assessment task could have included more formative forms of feedback. this would have allowed students to reflect more actively on their strengths and weaknesses, especially as these students were transitioning from school to university. a major educational challenge in large first year courses is to create more time and space in the curriculum for students to discuss their reading and 4 it must be noted that the focus of this paper is not on an analysis of student responses to the essay questions but more on the relationship between the rubric assessment criteria and the levels of the solo taxonomy. 5 the course presenter provided varied exemplars of relational and extended abstract responses while guiding students through the rubrics. rembach & dison transforming taxonomies into rubrics: using solo in social science ... 77 writing practices6. there was also an issue of students not recognising the value of using film in a history classroom. many first year students have limited exposure to classroom contexts besides their own experiences of being learners at school. the application aspect of the task may therefore have been better suited to fourth year students who would have been better equipped to gauge the value of using a film as methodology, having perhaps observed this on teaching practice or in methodology lectures in third and fourth year. similarly, the findings of a research project on assessment in the school of education (shalem, dison & reed, 2013) critiques the predominance of first year tasks which require students to apply their knowledge to teaching contexts before they have grasped the core course concepts. notwithstanding the above, data from students’ responses to the assessment tasks, to be analysed in a subsequent paper, have shown several positive effects of engaging with students in class around the assessment tasks. the solo taxonomy adapted into a rubric for an honours course having shown how a rubric was contextualised for an undergraduate course, we now show how one was developed collaboratively for an essay for the honours students in a course entitled learning support 1 educ 4016. the course explores the contested meanings and definitions of an inclusive education system. it examines various perspectives globally and nationally that drive a radical shift in the way inclusive schooling is defined. students cover a vast body of literature underpinned by issues of human rights, social justice, equity, and inclusion for everyone rather than some. the course presenter wanted to gauge whether the students had grappled with the current literature on conceptualisations of inclusive education from a number of researchers who hold contested views in the field. the task was twofold; the first part of the essay required a critical engagement with the literature and the second involved discussing the contestations that arise from various perspectives on how inclusion is defined. this task made qualitatively different demands of the postgraduate students compared to the first year task which was more ‘applied’ and less ‘academic’ in orientation. 5. description of the solo task in the inclusive education course the task the students were required to write an essay based on the quotation below: our constitution (act 108 of 1996) founded our democratic state and common citizenship on the values of human dignity, the achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms (section 1a). these values summon all of us to take up the responsibility and challenge of building a humane and caring society, not for the few, but for all south africans. in establishing an education and training system for the 21st century, we carry a special responsibility to implement these values and to ensure that all learners, with and without disabilities, pursue their learning potential to the fullest. education white paper 6 special needs education: building an inclusive education and training system doe (2001: 11). critically discuss this excerpt in relation to the following: 6 some students make use of the wits school of education writing centre to assist them with structuring and planning their essays. 78 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) a) drawing on three of the more recent conceptualisations of inclusive education that you have studied on the course, show how authors ainscow, dyson, goldrick and west (2012); armstrong, armstrong and spandagou (2011); graham and slee (2008) and walton (2011) do acknowledge the values listed above. in your response discuss the various conceptions of inclusive education and critically engage with the many debates around the concept of inclusive education. (60) b) as a south african educator how important is it for schools to implement inclusive education practices? discuss the contribution that existing literature and policies have made to our understanding of inclusive schools. (40) questions/tasks show how the authors acklowledge the values listed above. in your response discuss the various conceptions of inclusive education and critically engage with the many debates around the concept of inclusive education. as a south african educator how important is it for schools to implement inclusive education practices? discuss the contribution that existing literature and policies have made to our understanding of inclusive schools. level 1: uni-structural below 50% level 2: multi-structural 50-65% level 3: relational 65-74% level 4: extended abstract 75% – some relevant points from the 3 authors about how they acknowledge the values listed above. – limited discussion of their conceptions on inclusive education and no evidence of critical engagement with the key debates in the field. – poor structure provided and unclear expression. patchy referencing. – detailed and mostly relevant points from the 3 authors about how they acknowledge the values. – conceptions of inclusive education are outlined but not integrated. – the beginnings of an argument around the concept of inclusive education but no clear claims or reasoning. – ideas organised into clear structure and adequetly expressed. referencing adequate. – interesting ideas listed about the importance of inclusive education in sa scools. – reference made to relevant literature and policies that have contributed but not clearly integrated or linked to an understanding on inclusive schools. – writing has logical structure but connections not explicit. – thorough account of how the 3 authors acknowledge inclusive education values. – an integrated discussion of their conceptions of inclusive education. – the key debates in the files are presented but argument not sufficiently critical as a whole. – coherent structure and logical flow. language used effectively to signal key ideas/claims and to link ideas. referencing good. – provides comprehensive set of reasons for justifying inclusive education in sa schools. – thorough and thoughtful discussion of the impace of existing literature and policies on an understaning of inclusive schools. – the writing has coherent structure. – same as level 3. – critical engagement and reflection and presents a strong position (clear voice). – sophisticated use of language with clear thread argument. – same as level 3. – also reveals an understanding of the complexity of the issues in inclusive education. – presents a strong line of reasoning throughout. – conclusion is convincing and forceful. – a few useful ideas about why it is important for sa schools to implement inclusive education practices but very thin discussion of the contribution of the literature and policies. – some isolated points made but poorly backed up from souces. writing jumbled at times. figure 3: solo taxonomy inclusive education (learning support 1) 2013 the rubric (figure 3) reflects the task requirements and principles students were required to engage with based on the selected literature. the central task was for students to synthesise the principles of various debates regarding inclusive education. these principles needed to be discussed in relation to the values underpinning the excerpt from the constitution of south africa. once students had compared the various conceptualisations and positions of the authors, they were required to examine these from a critical perspective. this approach addressed many of the concerns about students not meeting the cognitive requirements needed at a postgraduate level. there is an assumption that students can write academically at an honours level whereas in many instances, they find it a major challenge to synthesise selected literature and develop an argument. postgraduate students come from diverse educational backgrounds and bring a wide range of experiences and practices to the seminars. the decision to adapt the solo taxonomy would enhance our understanding of these writing challenges. this is similar to the previous task. the intention was for students to use the selected criteria from the rubric (figure 3) to develop their written essays based upon rembach & dison transforming taxonomies into rubrics: using solo in social science ... 79 the hierarchical levels of the solo taxonomy. the course presenter could use the rubric to mediate the task requirements and provide explicit feedback to students after the task. implementation of the task in preparation for the task, students were required to present seminar papers from selected readings, which provided the necessary content knowledge. the course presenter identified key threshold concepts (meyer & land, 2006) as distinct from more peripheral ones that were essential for completing the task. these are vital ideas or processes for understanding disciplinary knowledge that provide a “gateway” or “portal” to illuminate subsequent understanding (fry et al., 2009: 14). the students had on-going exposure to the critical debates within the inclusive education discourse from multiple sources: the literature, discussions of seminar papers and feedback from the course presenter and their peers. this enabled them to synthesise the debates and to move to the relational level by taking cognisance of others’ perspectives. at an early point in the course, students were taken through the rubric, which unpacked the task for them and enabled them to measure their performance via the assessment criteria. the elaborated criteria foregrounded what the students were required to do in order to complete the task. furthermore, the rubric provided students with an opportunity to access the academic discourse and to structure the essay appropriately. the task involved higher order thinking, as students were required to analyse the broad principles included in our constitution such as democratic state and common citizenship; the values of human dignity, the achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms and the creation of a humane society. students needed to understand the connection between the constitution of sa and the move towards an inclusive education and training system. this insight would help them analyse the use of language from the constitution when responding to the statement, “we carry a special responsibility to implement these values and to ensure that all learners, with and without disabilities, pursue their learning potential to the fullest” (white paper 6, 2011: 11). they needed to engage critically with the use of the term “we” and ask questions about the terminology. reflecting on the implementation of the rubric the use of the rubric enabled on­going dialogue with students in relation to the higher order cognitive demands of the essay. this was because it was given to students before they commenced the task and on completion of the task, when there was an opportunity to provide qualitative feedback. in particular, the course presenter used the rubric to assess the extent to which students had addressed both parts of the question and had understood the contested meanings in the selected literature. the course presenter observed that students, who were not able to compare and contrast the various debates in the readings or identify the main arguments, responded with a multi­ structural or “shopping list” answer. these students were able to list contestations from the literature with limited synthesis of the arguments. this was in contrast to the students who were able to integrate literature and policies to develop arguments about inclusive education. some students had trouble when they were required to examine their own educational contexts in relation to principles and policies of inclusion. others produced extended abstract responses in their explanations and justifications of inclusive practices in their schools. these students provided a more nuanced understanding of the definitions of inclusive education and 80 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) could analyse and critique the current arrangements in their schools. furthermore, they could access some of the exclusionary pressures placed on individual learners and deconstruct the ambiguity in some of the principles in the constitution. a few students critiqued the language used in the constitution around the issue of “special responsibility”. 6. conclusion 1. promoting higher order thinking preliminary findings from analysing early drafts of student writing7 suggest that the design and implementation of the assessment tool played a role in promoting higher order thinking and critical engagement in the disciplines of social science and inclusive education. the course presenter observed, after introducing assessment rubrics as a learning tool, that increasing numbers of students were becoming proficient at addressing all aspects of the task at hand and were gaining the confidence to make stronger claims and arguments. prior to this intervention, she had assumed that students would automatically apply higher order thinking and write with academic rigour in response to assessment tasks at university. it was evident that many students in the social sciences methodology course relied solely on discussions and explanations given in class to ‘get by’ rather than persevere with independent and critical reading. the students were more comfortable with a didactic method of instruction (presumably) familiar to them from previous learning experiences. the presenter recognised that for courses like the postgraduate course in inclusive education, which required a high level of critical engagement with a wide range of literature, students’ enquiry-based skills needed to be developed systematically. the purpose of the contextualised rubrics was to facilitate the ways students approached the topics or assessment tasks and enhance their understanding of core concepts and theories. using the rubric in both courses showed the potential of students from diverse schooling backgrounds to participate in complex disciplinary discourses. 2. integrating formative feedback using rubrics as a formative assessment tool in tutorials demonstrated their potential to familiarise students with the demands of writing for assessment tasks in different contexts. the rubrics served as a framework for facilitating feedback to students as they enabled students to reflect on their own reading and writing strategies. students participated in structured conversations about where they had improved in their writing and where there were still gaps. the quality of instruction, constructivist in design, allowed for participation of all (course presenter and students) and provided an authentic tool for task-specific feedback. in class discussions, it was evident that students had become familiar with the content and form of the rubrics and could recognise where their responses were located on the continuum for each criterion. they developed the meta­language necessary, derived from the rubrics, for articulating their strengths and weaknesses in relation to the ‘observable’ task outcomes. ashwin et al. (2015) draw on lillis (2003: 30) to point out that “rather than giving feedback as closed commentary on students’ finished texts, more discursive engagement with students texts in development would be a more inclusive approach”. 7 this will be explored in a subsequent paper drawing on empirical data to illustrate students’ engage­ ment with the rubrics. rembach & dison transforming taxonomies into rubrics: using solo in social science ... 81 3. assessing to improve teaching and learning a number of unexpected learning outcomes and benefits emerged from developing the rubrics despite the perception from colleagues that the process was overly labour intensive. the rubrics highlighted the relationship between the levels of the solo taxonomy and the discipline specific assessment criteria and provided the course presenter with a working framework with which to analyse students’ writing and thinking. moreover, in the process of designing the rubrics with the teaching and learning advisor, the course presenter could determine the extent to which the assessment task had succeeded in eliciting the specified course outcomes. the solo framework became a tool for distinguishing the more appropriate and effective assessment responses and alerted the designers to instances where instruction tasks might need to be revised. the rubrics facilitated reflective engagement with course topics as it provided students with a measure of how they were doing and which areas required improvement. as the context for this intervention took place within the school of education, these methods for integrating assessment criteria have the potential to be adapted by education students as future teachers of different subject areas. we suggest that if we want pre-service education students to design and use rubrics effectively for their teaching purposes, then we need to raise awareness of how to develop and implement them more explicitly in methodology courses. our conclusion is that we require a two­pronged strategy for contextualising the solo taxonomy. one which equips lecturers to adapt the taxonomy to refine their assessment tasks and make their assessment criteria more transparent for students and one which brings students closer to a deeper understanding of the context and content of their learning by participating in a detailed analysis of assessment rubrics. references ashwin, p., boud, d., coate, k., hallet, f., keane, e., krause, k., leibowitz, b., maclaren, i., mcarthur, j., mccune, v. & tooher, m. 2015. reflective teaching in higher education. london: bloomsbury. all quiet on the western front 1930, motion picture, universal pictures, usa. ainscow, m., dyson, a., goldrick, s. & west, m. 2012. developing equitable education systems. london: routledge. armstrong, d., armstrong, a.c. & spangedou, i. 2011. inclusion: by choice or by chance? international journal of inclusive education, 15(1), 29-39. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1360311 6.2010.496192 biggs, j. & collis, k. 1982. evaluating the quality of learning: the solo taxonomy. new york: academic press. biggs, j. 2003. teaching for quality learning at university. great britain: society for research into higher education & open university press. biggs, j. & tang, c. 2011, teaching for quality learning at university. great britain: society for research into higher education & open university press. bloom, b. 1956. the taxonomy of educational objectives: the classification of educational goals. new york: d. mckay. boughey, c 2009. understanding teaching and learning at foundation level: a ‘critical’ imperative. in c. hutchings & j. garraway. beyond the university gates: provision of extended http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2010.496192 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2010.496192 82 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) curriculum programmes in south africa. cape town: cape peninsula university of technology and department of education. pp. 4-7. brockbank, a. & mcgill, i. 1998. facilitating reflective learning in higher education. philadelphia: society for research into higher education & open university press. brown, j., collins, a. & duguid, p. 1989. situated cognition and the culture of learning. educational researcher, 18(1), 32-42. http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/0013189x018001032 campbell, c., smith, d. & brooker, r. 1998. from conception to performance: how undergraduate students conceptualise and construct essays. higher education, 36, 449–469. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1023/a:1003451627898 carless, d. 2015, excellence in university assessment. new york: routledge. cummins, j. 2000. language, power and pedagogy: bilingual children in the crossfire. clevedon: multilingual matters ltd. department of basic education (dbe). 2011. social sciences. curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps). available at www.thutong.doe.gov.za. [accessed 13 october 2015]. entwistle, n. 1997, contrasting perspectives on learning. in f. marton, d. hounsell & n. entwistle (eds.). the experience of learning, 2nd edition. edinburgh: scottish academic press. pp. 3-22. fry, h., ketteridge, s. & marshall, s. 2009. a handbook for teaching and learning in higher education: enhancing academic practice. new york: taylor and francis. gosling, d. 2009. supporting student learning. in h. fry, s. ketteridge & s. marshall. a handbook for teaching and learning in higher education: enhancing academic practice. new york: taylor and francis. pp. 113-131. graham, l.j. & slee, r. 2008. an illusory interiority: interrogating the discourse/s of inclusion. educational philosophy and theory, 40(2), 277-293. http://dx.doi. org/10.1111/j.1469-5812.2007.00331.x harrington, k. 2011. the role of assessment in writing in the disciplines. in m. dean & p. o’nealle, writing in the disciplines. great britain: palgrave macmillan. pp. 48-60. hattie, j.a.c & brown, g.t.l. 2004. cognitive processes in asttle: the solo taxonomy technical report 43, university of auckland/ministry of education. lillis, t. 2003. student writing as ‘academic literacies’: drawing on bakhtin to move from critique to design. language and education, 17(3), 192-207. http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/09500780308666848 marton, f. & saljo, r. 1984. approaches to learning. in f. marton, d. hounsell & n. entwistle. the experience of learning. edinburgh: scottish academic press. pp. 106-125. mckenna, s. 2009. cracking the code of academic literacy: an ideological task. in c. hutchings & j. garraway. beyond the university gates: provision of extended curriculum programmes in south africa. cape town: cape peninsula university of technology and department of education. pp. 8­15. meyer, j. & land, r. 2006. overcoming barriers to student understanding. london, routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/0013189x018001032 http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/a:1003451627898 http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/a:1003451627898 www.thutong.doe.gov.za http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-5812.2007.00331.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-5812.2007.00331.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500780308666848 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500780308666848 rembach & dison transforming taxonomies into rubrics: using solo in social science ... 83 moon, j. 2004. a handbook of reflective and experiential learning: theory and practice. new york: routledge farmer. morrow, w. 2007. learning to teach in south africa. cape town: hsrc press. norton, l. 2009. assessing student learning. in h. fry, s. ketteridge & s. marshall. a handbook for teaching and learning in higher education: enhancing academic practice. new york: taylor and francis. pp. 132-149. shalem, y., dison, l. & reed, y. 2013. towards successful participation in academic writing: what can we learn from assessment? south african journal of higher education, 27(5), 1071­1080. perkins, d. 1992. smart schools: better thinking and learning for every child. new york: the free press. scott, i., yeld, n. & henry, j. 2007. higher education monitor no 6: a case for improving teaching and learning in south african higher education. pretoria: the council on higher education. shalem, y., dison, l. & reed, y. 2013. towards successful participation in academic writing: what can we learn from assessment? south african journal of higher education, 27(5), 1071­1080. walton, e. 2011. getting inclusion right in south africa. intervention in school and clinic, 45(4), 240-245. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1053451210389033 wineburg, s. 2001. historical thinking and other unnatural acts. philadelphia: temple university press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1053451210389033 i editorial in this last 2011 issue of perspectives in education we look back and extend our appreciation for the collection of meritorious articles that have been published in volume 29this year. we are very grateful to all the referees who assisted us in selecting such a range of excellent articles interrogating key issues in the south african education arena. this thorough selection of articles once again contributed to the high quality of the journal as well as its high impact figure. this issue highlights three articles problematising literacy education. prinsloo examines the divergences between educational language policy calls and the realities of language and learning in south african schools. prinsloo engages in the current discourses on the appropriateness of the numerous policies to the south african context. he flags the notion that the assumptions in language policy ‘erase’ the linguistic complexities in the country by assuming a linguistic homogeneity and stability which is inappropriate. joining the discourse on language and reading, van staden brings the focus to the practical realities of the inability of many english second language (esl) learners to read at desirable levels. her investigation revealed that small-group direct instruction that explicitly targets skills such as phonological/ phonemic awareness, sight words and word identification, reading fluency, vocabulary knowledge, and syntactic awareness need to be scaffolded by reading comprehension, skills reading and reading-related skills. such a scaffolded approach can significantly improve the reading ability of esl learners. the complexities concerning reading and writing are extended to universities by mfanafuthi mgqwashu, who views the value of reflexive pedagogy for first-year students to enhance their skills in reading and writing in order to become effective learners at university academic level. the functionality of governance structures is the focus of the articles by mbokodi and singh as well as morojele and muthukrishna. although the two articles focus on two different education realities, south africa and lesotho, they share the concern about the meaningful participation of stakeholders. mbokodi found that many south african schools had legally constituted sgbs, but that those sgbs were not functional because the participating parents do not have the capacity to be partners in the governance of schools. morojele and muthukrishna engaged in theorising child participation in governance structures in lesotho schools, which seems to be limited because of hierarchical and authoritarian school management. although the children perceive themselves as active social agents, who deserve meaningful participation in school governance, teachers’ and school management teams’ authoritarian ideology and conceptions impede children’s meaningful participation. teacher agency needs constant interrogation, because of the potential influence teachers have on the lives of thousands of children who constitute the future of a country. two articles in this issue focus on the teacher: the one on how they need to reclaim their agency and the other on how their agency can become destroyed by the destructive behaviour of their principals. ebrahim, verbeek and mashiya conceptualise the value of a professional qualification for foundation phase teachers. the current concerns about teacher standards and accountability form the basis for the advanced certificate in teaching to become an opportunity for teachers to gain experience by being part of a community in dialogue, instead of merely being the performers of imposed curriculum demands. the contrary of the development of positive agency is sketched by de wet as she reflects on the professional life stories of teachers who have been exposed to bullying by their principals. these narratives describe how the bullying impacted on their professional lives. by using narrative analysis de wet strives towards giving victims of workplace violence a voice to reclaim their agency against these malpractices. the last three articles of this issue have the environment as core. mokhele takes on the inclusion of environmental learning; amory, molomo and blignaut analyse the usage of computer video games as contributing to the game object model for creating an environment for expansive learning, and naicker and mestry explore distributive leadership as a vehicle to foster democracy in the school environment. each of these articles views a global trend within the south african context. mkhele’s article shows how the new curriculum and assessment policy statement’s (caps) integration of environmental learning is in ii line with international recommendations of the 2002 world summit for sustainable development. amory and molomo propagate the development of the gom and associated models in south africa to drive expansive learning cycles and individual transformation, while naicker and mestry use the increasing globally accepted distributive approach to leadership as a relevant model for twenty-first century schools in south africa. i believe that the key issues that were dealt with this year will shape the education agenda and discourse in the year to come and that new perspectives in education will emerge. rita niemann 323 book review 2022 40(1): 323-325 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.19 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) teaching in and beyond pandemic times a book review by prof mariëtte koen with more than 230 million cases of covid-19 having been confirmed worldwide to date, the economic, social and mental disruption of the pandemic has left its mark on virtually every aspect of human development. the resulting school closures have likewise brought significant disruptions in education systems and in teaching programmes all over the world. south africa has certainly been no exception and the loss of access to formal education has plunged our schools into a major teaching and learning crisis. not only has this pandemic given rise to backlogs in terms of teaching and learning, but it has also exposed challenges in respect of inequality. renowned researcher, professor jonathan jansen, and the fulbright scholar, emily o’ryan, of stellenbosch university captured learners’ experiences regarding pandemic learning in their publication entitled learning under lockdown. the themes shared in this publication foregrounded that learners and teachers had been affected by covid-19. this finding prompted jansen and farmer-phillips to publish a second book entitled teaching in and beyond pandemic times in which these authors share with readers an awareness of teachers’ lives during covid-19. in the foreword, jansen points out that the purpose was not to publish a standard academic book referring to research elements, but rather to use a narrative form to capture teachers’ stories while simultaneously dealing with issues peculiar to distance learning: maintaining effective contact with learners; finding inventive ways of dealing with unequal learner access to reliable data and devices; the effects ‒ on the transition to online learning ‒ of varying and age-related levels of technological competence present among teachers; post-lockdown emotional consequences to teachers of re-entry into the system and teacher deployment in cases where colleagues with comorbidities are allowed to work from home. in aiming to address the above issues, the editors use five chapters to allow the reader to experience at first-hand what teaching during a lockdown entails. this book, however, does more than merely foreground online author: prof mariëtte koen1 affiliation: 1north-west university potchefstroom doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i1.19 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(4): 323-325 published: 04 march 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.19 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.19 3242022 40(1): 324-325 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.19 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) teaching as such. the strength of the book lies in the way it highlights the importance of the holistic learning and development of teachers amid a pandemic. it becomes clear that, while teachers have had to focus on developing learners’ cognitive skills, they have moreover had to be mindful of their own and the learners’ emotional, social and physical needs. little surprise that the editors arrived at the important conclusion that changes in the educational landscape brought about by the pandemic have guaranteed that “teachers cannot simply resume business as usual”. in the first of the five chapters, david j millar (former district superintendent/director of the western cape education department) pays a tribute to south african teachers by emphasising how the virus disrupted just about every facet of teachers’ lives. without any warning or training, and with little support, teachers were forced to transition from contactlearning environments to virtual-learning environments. millar describes this overwhelming transition process that required teachers to be innovative, to develop new technological skills and to assist the learners while fulfilling various roles such as spouse, partner, advisor and zoom controller. readers cannot but feel obligated to applaud the way teachers went to incredible lengths to function as human beings and teachers. in the second chapter, erin chothia-lakay (fairbairn college goodwood), dedicates a poem to teachers entitled behind closed doors. although this poem captures an individual experience during the lockdown situation, readers are taken on a personal journey designed to make them understand the emotional exhaustion brought on by a range of feelings such as uncertainty, anger, fear, despair, restlessness, guilt, sadness and hope. this poem will force readers to pause, reflect and gain insight into their own lockdown experiences. the poem ends by embracing the human condition. while the poem reveals the author’s emotions as she goes through episodes of upheaval while fulfilling the role of erin, daughter, sister, wife, mom, aunt, friend, teacher and colleague, in the end she assures readers that she found solace by accepting ‒ behind closed doors ‒ that she is, after all, only human. the poem may inspire readers to start anew with eagerness, hope, joy and care for others behind their closed doors. in chapter 3, co-editor theola farmer-phillips (yellowwood primary school, western cape), as a practising teacher, shares her perspectives on the lockdown. the reader experiences how prayers gave her strength to find comfort and hope while navigating her commitments through the covid-19 storm. it is described how the dual role of being a mother at home and a teacher in the cape flats made her feel unrecognised and caused feelings of apprehension. in addition, the equity challenges of social distancing in the community, the lack of a sanitising protocol and parents’ lack of either resources or education contributed to her feelings of fear and anxiety. however, despite these gruelling circumstances, the reader can celebrate with the author as she ends the chapter with the words: “i am grateful for the lessons brought along, but most of all, i remain grateful for the gift of life”. in chapter 4, the editors use a cluster of 11 topics as they share a structured collection of 65 teachers’ pandemic stories. these stories reveal how the pandemic made teachers feel simultaneously vulnerable and valued while they had to focus on the present and the future of teaching. like the word pandemic, each of the 11 topics start with the letter p, and the concepts pliability, procurement and persistence serve to tie all the stories together in the face of a deadly virus. the topics are pressure; pedagogy; preparation; pioneers; poverty; privilege; perspective; parents and parent teachers; peer teaching; perseverance and pastoral care. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.19 3252022 40(1): 325-325 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.19 koen teaching in and beyond pandemic times the final chapter concludes with a summary of ten key lessons learnt from the teachers’ stories in the book. it seems the editors want readers to be reminded of how south african teachers navigated the uncertain waters during a pandemic, but that they also mean to stimulate readers’ thoughts regarding what an equitable and resilient education system could look like. it is highlighted that learners should no longer be seen as empty vessels waiting to be filled with knowledge. the reader’s attention is focused on the fact that the time has come to revise and plan the curriculum-assessment policy statements so as not only to lessen the teachers’ workload, but also to make learning more meaningful to the learners. the idea of collaboration between teachers, parents, colleagues, peers and district offices with a view of improving quality teaching is promoted in these lessons. the important theme that runs throughout the book, namely that teachers are frontliners, is especially evident on the last page of the publication where the editors point out that the “sudden lockdown of the nation and its schools could have [had] more catastrophic social and educational consequences … [had] it not [been] for the teachers and their sacrifices”. this edition of teaching in and beyond pandemic times, dealing as it does with the lives of teachers during and immediately after the pandemic lockdown, will be of interest to everyone. the book succeeds not only in demonstrating to readers the nature of teaching and learning during a pandemic, but also how south african teachers emerged as champions and why we owe them a debt of gratitude. authors: jonathan d jansen & theola farmer-phillips isbn (paper): 978-1-928314-01-1 ebook edition: 978-1-928314-49-3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.19 _hlk85014639 _hlk85014594 book review towards gender equality: south african schools during the hiv and aids epidemic r morrell, d epstein, e unterhalter, d bhana and r moletsane reviewed by prof venitha pillay i have rarely been bombarded almost simultaneously by so many emotions as i was in reading this book. as a gender activist i felt deeply sad to once again face the realisation that violence against girls and women in south africa remains a daily experience for far too many. i felt my heart torn out as i read the story of the little girl who was raped in grade one and i was filled with frustration towards the her mother who was angry with her for becoming sexually active at so early an age. i could explain the mother’s feelings but as a mother myself i could find no fit in such explanation. i wished i could hold this little angel tightly in my arms and love her profusely and take away her hurt. but i could not and i felt helpless. the boys who conflate rape and the sexual act with the emotion of loving, young men who thought it was their right to appropriate sex angered me. i was heartened to hear the stories of some boys who showed respect for the girls in their school. i admired those teachers who worked against all odds to offer care and guidance to their learners. i was happy to know that there were teachers who put their hearts on the line, despite those who sought refuge in distancing. most of all i felt helpless and heartbroken that so many beautiful young women and men live in daily fear of being raped and violently assaulted by people they know and sometimes love. as the authors themselves suggest the book is about both “hope and despair” (p 168). that an academic book could evoke so much emotion bears testimony to its value. the book begins with a preamble that sets a poignant picture of the place, the people and the pandemic that the team of researchers was engaged with. as the authors claim, the story they present here gives a sense of the “drama, the pain and the difficulties” of the research project (p 3). the camaraderie of the six authors is evident at the outset. given the academic parameters of the research project it was a challenge to keep such camaraderie alive throughout the writing. but this was achieved through the obvious eloquence of each of the writers and the commitment of each, through their respective areas of expertise, to the project as a whole. perhaps the most difficult aspect of writing as a team is the development of a conceptual framework that is carried through the writings of all the authors. the authors are clear that the notion of gender equality is addressed here in the context of education. using amartya sen’s (1979 and 1992) work they show that equality cannot be simply a matter of measuring outcomes given that an entire gamut of events, contexts and personalities underpin outcomes. in other words measuring outcomes obscures what has gone on ‘behind the scenes’. instead they use sen’s notion that “gender equality is … an aspect of building the equality of capabilities” (p 12). in other words evaluations of equality are underpinned by the freedoms and opportunities individuals have to achieve meaningful objectives and the ways in which policy makes it possible for the achievement of such values. unterhalter’s development of the concept of gender equality in the context of social justice adds another valuable dimension to understandings of gender equality in education. here understandings of the term gender are thoroughly interrogated and the authors offer a plurality of meanings linked to and not exclusive of each other. these include gender as a noun where gender can be numerically measured, gender as a social construct shaped by social, political and economic relations of power and disempowerment, gender as an adverb where gender is exemplified in the ways in which things are done. in bringing together these conceptualisations of gender and sen’s explication of equality, the authors develop a comprehensive and plausible way in which to read the stories of the people in the schools they researched. they suggest that gender equality is “plural, but entails the establishment perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201088 of the conditions of justice in which constraints on capabilities can be removed and valued actions can be realised” (p 15). i really liked this as a way forward in thinking about gender equality in education. most importantly, the chapters integrated this comprehensive conceptual framework into the stories they told. for example, in chapter 6, ‘struggling with gender and sexuality in primary schools’, the author shows that despite a context that offers strongly essentialised understandings of gender identities, mr xaba sought other identities for himself and his pupils even though he avoided the intimacy of gender relations, sexuality and hiv/aids. put another way in developing different gender identities, mr xaba and his pupils were working towards “creating an equality of capabilities”. no doubt they still had a long and painful road to traverse. the methodology used in this project is inspiring. the actual research covered a period of approximately six years. all the authors spent time at the four research sites where most of the data was collected. in addition two postgraduate research students spent time as ethnographers in the two secondary schools involved in the study. the methodological shape of the project grew as the needs of the project grew. the challenges of developing and sustaining such a large project are included in the writing. what was impressive is the way in which the experience allowed both seasoned researchers and novices to grow along with the project. while the methodology is carefully detailed, not as chronological plan, but as a mosaic of thoughts, events and designs and decisions, i would have liked to have seen further detail on the dramaide project that was used as an hiv/aids intervention project in one of the schools. while there was discussion on the positive though limited effects of the project there was little detail about the project itself. given that the book assumes some level of a south african cultural and political capital evidenced in the references to historical places and events like for example, cato manor, i was left wondering what the purpose was of the details with respect to gender and apartheid education offered in chapter 3. but perhaps this was meant for international readers, especially our neighbours, who will no doubt find value in this research. that it tells the stories of south african teachers, learners and communities is only a fraction of its value. that it echoes the stories of teachers, learners and communities all over africa and possibly in many developing nations, makes it an invaluable read. everard weber vii dr eben swanepoel editorial the articles for this issue of perspectives in education create space within the interception between school-based research and higher education to form a pertinent point of departure for dialogues to emerge across educational platforms and disciplines. specifically, the dialogues ensemble surpasses the boundaries of disciplines and cover content of broader application and further research stimulation. in essence, a core theme that emerges within this issue pertains to questioning the “how” of teaching, assessing and research methodologies and encapsulates perspectives reminiscent of “how can things be done differently?” several articles in this issue capture new perspectives on often decontextualised or outdated ways of “doing”, focusing the reader on how inflexible methods of doing are not necessarily of optimal use within every context nor for every educator or researcher. these authors reflect on the need for modern-day adaptation to strengthen research practice and pedagogies dynamically. further articles see authors call for the need to re-conceptualise and revitalise core aspects of “doing”, spanning from institutional level through to the methods and concepts underlying disciplines and research itself. the bridge between school-level education and higher education spheres of research and teaching is furthermore of note, as this link reflects the inextricably connected nature and fusion between the two platforms and their respective stakeholders. this in turn continuously reminds us about the importance of collaboration and cooperation across not only disciplines, but also educational platforms. the first article reveals the link between schools and higher education institutions through pre-service teacher induction. moosa and rembach commence the discussion in their article “voices from the classroom: pre-service teachers’ interactions with supervising teachers” and explore an often overlooked yet critical part of the teacher induction processes. the study is grounded in the lens of how voice is conceptualised in terms of the practical, epistemological and ontological. the authors established that pre-service teachers found supervising teachers to focus on teaching as primarily rooted in administration and management duties. the manner in which the negative conceptualisation of teaching manifests in supervising teachers’ narratives carries hostile attitudes. this often deters pre-service teachers from the profession. the need to re-examine how teachers supervise pre-service teachers viii is of forefront focus and recommendations are made aligned with training supervising teachers to optimally fulfil supervision-based duties. the second article, titled “teaching assistants – a hit or a miss: the development of a teaching assistant programme to support academic staff at a university” sees cupido and norodien-fataar continue the conversation about support and guidance. by placing support and collaboration as imperative to lecturing and ultimately stronger student engagement, the authors focus on support structures that relate to overall student success with their study framed through bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory. through their participatory-based approach, the authors argue for the importance of teaching assistant programmes and the subsequent contribution teaching assistants make in relation to equity of access and success, specifically when collaboration is optimal between teaching assistants and academic staff. as the dialogue about support and collaboration continues, behari-leak and le roux, explore, through the article titled “between a rock and a hard place, third space practitioners exercise agency”, how new academic staff position themselves within spatial and institutional boundaries; framing a hybrid identity as a means to work in creative, responsive and relevant ways. using critical discourse analysis, the authors set out to explore the “third space”, a space within which educational and academic transformation are often underlined by ambiguity by accounting for how practitioners navigate between the different contexts, residing within a space between academic support work, roles of leadership and advocacy and other roles they embody. the authors find that while resistance and struggle are central to the third space, they are necessary components that legitimise identity construction through critiquing and contesting the traditional roles of the institution (universities). reddy enters the higher education conversation with the article “research methods for undergraduate delivery: evaluation of problem-based learning”. the author draws on a key aspect of research-led institutions; this being the link between undergraduate students and research integration and competencies. using a cross-sectional descriptive case study, the author investigates the often-complex nature of teaching research methods, specifically drawing on the teaching thereof within the realm of public health professions at undergraduate level. through the evaluation of a research methods course based on problem-based learning, the author discusses how participants found group interaction and consultations with the instructor enjoyable while in turn they found literature review writing difficult as well as how to go about successfully selecting and integrating relevant information. statistical concepts and terminology were further found to be problematic for participants. swarts, rens and de sousa begin the new discussion at school level with their article “(re) connect social and environmental responsibility to learners’ living environments: curriculum challenges and possible solutions for teaching-learning in life orientation”. this article speaks to the connected nature of learning not just between local and international contexts, but between local-centred realities and contexts of learners and teachers as well. the authors pose the question “do life orientation teachers (re)connect their teaching-learning on social and environmental responsibility with learners’ living environments to adhere to curriculum requirements of relevance and meaningfulness?” through the qualitative based classroom observations grounded in the topic of social and environmental responsibility, the authors draw on the difficulty teachers experience when connecting the topic with the divergent and contextually different backgrounds of learners. they conclude by discussing the need for place-based education to bridge the gap between the classroom teachings and learners’ living environments. as the discussion continues about collaboration across contexts and spaces, munje and mncube reflect in turn on the vital role that parents’ involvement, or lack thereof, play within schools. in their article titled “the lack of parent involvement as hindrance in selected public primary schools in south africa: the voices of educators” the authors engage with the ix role parental collaboration plays within learner experiences and performances, specifically focussing on a disadvantaged community within south africa. they found that teachers often do not consider contextual factors as mediating reasons as to why parents are not involved, causing further rupture and alienation for parents. the article concludes with the importance of empowering teachers regarding school-parent relationships as a core means to assist teachers to better understand and engage with contextual difficulties that may strain parental involvement in communities. from crossing contextual boundaries to spanning over the interdependent nature of institutions and stakeholders, dempster and kirby join the conversations through their analysis of inter-rater agreement and evaluators’ subsequent engagement with assessment in the article titled “inter-rater agreement in assigning cognitive demand to life sciences examination questions”. the authors speak to the viability of the traditional application of bloom’s taxonomy as a means to assess the standards of life sciences examination papers. specifically, the authors found that the reliability of such standardisation is questioned when individual differences and contexts are accounted for. lisene and jita expand on the discussion pertaining to modern time adaptations of traditional ways of “doing” with their article “exploring the integration of modern technologies in the teaching of physical science in lesotho”. the authors investigate the knowledge of high school level physical sciences teachers, specifically in lesotho, where the use of information and communication technologies (icts) has been incorporated as a required component within the curriculum. using the technological pedagogical content knowledge model (tpack) questionnaire they found that even though the sampled teachers lack the needed knowledge to use icts, this was not a deterring factor and they do use icts in their classroom. the question as to whether the teachers use icts for lesson delivery however brings to the fore whether teachers use icts correctly and aligned with curriculum prescriptions or whether icts are used to search for content and information on the part of the teachers themselves. the authors conclude with the call for more support to be made available to teachers to optimally use icts within the classroom context. gumbo, in the article “addressing the factors responsible for the confusion of technology education with other subject fields” reconceptualises the manner in which technology education is perceived and represented. specifically, the author critiques how technology education is often misunderstood and confused with other traditional subjects such as educational technology and science education. the article bridges the gap in literature (from south african perspectives) through the lens of meaningful learning in technology education and has the author enter the discussion as to how the subject and its proper conceptualisation will be beneficial not only to the field and discipline itself, but to teachers and learners as well. in the final article, “analysing historical enquiry in school history textbooks”, bharath and bertram explore the practical application and “doing” of the history curriculum through investigating how textbooks link to the aims of learning the process of historical enquiry and understanding the related concepts. the authors found that even while textbooks sampled saw the increase of sources used between grade 7 and grade 9, there is still a lack of contextualisation. this leads to the challenge of teaching the process to developing historical thinking. the authors further note that specialised procedural knowledge only becomes apparent at grade 9 level within textbooks; thus, leading to a deficit learning platform where the aims of the official learning curriculum in south africa are not realised at primary school level. the articles in this issue follow the theme of reconsidering and reconceptualising traditional ways of teaching and research that may have rigidly become inflexible to the needed contextual change and modern imperatives. at the core of teaching and research, there is furthermore the call to not become entangled within theory and thus the question as to “how can things be done differently?” moves toward innovative ways of also considering the “doing” thereof. for this reason, the articles collectively span across disciplines and educational platforms and reflect the manner in which a unified link across boundaries are critical in establishing a socially-just way of “doing”, reflecting different contexts and adding value to research expanding on the challenges characterising the cultural relativity of south africa and global education imperatives. this issue considers theory and practice, encompassing schooling level as well as the higher education sector, while accounting for a multiplicity of stakeholders who work in conjunction toward establishing a socially just and transformation-based culture of “doing”. x editorial the move of the journal to the faculty of education, ufs is an exciting one and i am confident that the journal will continue to flourish in its new home. professor kobus maree and ms moipone williams have been superb in the excellent manner in which they have served pie and in making the journal what it is today. i would like to thank professor maree for the gracious and responsive manner he has maintained in creating opportunities for scholars to have their work published. as much as i realise that there is no apparent reason for changing any aspect of pie at this moment, i want to invite you to let me know of ways we can improve. i would also like to welcome professor rita niemann, professor corene de wet, dr adré le roux and dr boitumelo moreeng who will join our editorial executive team. i look forward to working with you. this issue of the journal reflects a wide range of local and international contributions and highlights at least three key challenges to the education context: poor written english among many south african learners, the usefulness of national senior certificate marks as predictors of academic performance at university level and school integration. first, ayliff addresses the problem of poor written english among many south african learners who study english as their first additional language (fal) at secondary school level, and the effect this has on their tertiary education and future careers. secondly, schöer, hunt, ntuli, rankin and sebastiao, in their article question the signalling ability of mathematics marks as predictors of academic performance at university level. thirdly, naidoo analyses the extent of integration at a historically advantaged school. naidoo’s use of bernstein’s theory of code, classification, boundary and power is perhaps necessary, as it pulls her away from a narrowly south african reading of the racial desecration. within the higher education context, ezati, ocheng, ssentamu and sikoyo explore the role of journal writing in enhancing student teachers’ learning during school practice in uganda. they conclude by proposing strategies for improving journal writing so as to enhance the potential of students learning from reflection during school practice. using the survey data of postgraduate students in china, fengliang, yandong and yongpo investigate the relationship between the number of informational channels and over-education in the outcome of job search. based on their findings, they argue that helping graduates to get more job information and improving the quality of universities will lighten the problem of overeducation under the situation of great higher education expansion. hacifazlioglu’s comparative study examines the experiences of women leaders at public and private universities in turkey and the us. hacifazlioglu argues that balance in leadership is associated with balance in two areas: balancing private and professional life, and balancing research, teaching and leadership. still within higher education, müller, swanepoel and de beer explore the drive to improve the academic performance of students at an open and distance learning (odl) institution. their findings show that satellite class intervention is effective and significant, but that additional predictors such as population group and type of matriculation certificate obtained are more critical interacting co-predictors of student performance than satellite class intervention on its own. finally, onwu examines aspects of the quality of alternative basic education (abe) provision in ethiopia. these are the articles for this edition. readers of perspectives in education are invited to submit correspondence on the subjects raised in this edition. dennis francis editor-in-chief 99 distributive leadership in public schools: experiences and perceptions of teachers in the soweto region suraiya r naicker university of johannesburg raj mestry university of johannesburg in current times, the increasing demands of principalship and the complexities facing schools have led to the emergence of distributive forms of leadership in schools. the dissatisfaction with traditional models has resulted in a paradigm shift where leadership focus on the position of individuals in the hierarchy has been rejected in favour of collective leadership practices. in an era of democracy, distributive leadership continues to attract attention as a relevant model for the twenty-first century school. using a mixed methods approach, we investigated teacher experiences and perceptions of the practice of distributive leadership in south african public primary schools in the soweto region. soweto is a township in south africa steeped in political history associated with the struggle against apartheid (pre-1994) and which, to date, comprises predominantly black residents. findings from the qualitative phase of the research revealed that distributive leadership had not taken root in schools in soweto. however, the quantitative findings showed the early stages of a movement towards distributive leadership. keywords: distributive leadership, collective leadership, participative leadership styles, teacher leadership, teams, professional development, school climate introduction and background to the problem in the face of continuous change in the educational environment, such as the nature of work in a knowledge society, educational reforms and the accelerated pace of change, traditional leadership models appear to be inadequate. traditional command and control approaches to leadership have proved unsuccessful in sustaining school and learner improvements (harris, 2005a:160). this has resulted in the call by educational theorists, reformers and practitioners for a fundamental re-conceptualisation of leadership practice in the twenty-first century (harris & day, 2003:96; grant & singh, 2009:289; spillane, 2009:70). the accepted view of leadership as being located in a person or position is being challenged (gronn, 2003:18) while more participative, collaborative and distributed forms of leadership are being favoured. the distinction between leadership as a position and leadership as a function can be blurred if principalship is conceptualised as a “practice whose responsibilities, functions and actions are shared by principals and teachers” (sergiovanni, 2005:42). leadership in the post-heroic era is less about instructing or controlling people, but rather about working co-operatively with them to promote teamwork, involvement, empowerment and risk-taking (oduro, 2004:23). similarly, post-modernism advocates that leaders move away from the hierarchy, which is irrelevant in a fluid organisation, towards a democratic approach that is inclusive, participative and consultative (van der mescht & tyala, 2008:221-222). participative approaches are relevant in a democratic south africa where the voices of all stakeholders are important (sackney & mitchell, 2001 cited in bush, 2007:399-400). site-based management, which prevailed in post-apartheid south africa (1994), emphasized collective leadership by shifting the locus of control from the principal to all stakeholders in the school community (van der mescht & tyala, 2008:222). one of the changes in the educational landscape is the expansion and intensification of the work of principals worldwide (gronn, 2003:151). in south africa principals are encountering heavy workloads (steyn, 2002a:264) and are facing diverse expectations due to an expansion of their role from management 100 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 and control to educational leadership (mestry & singh, 2007:478). radical and continuous change has taken place in south african schools as the country shifted drastically from the segregated political system of apartheid to democracy. these changes include technological and demographic shifts, decentralization, issues of accountability, societal violence, economic changes and new legislation, which have contributed to the complexities in schools (mestry, 2009:4). therefore, in present times the role of the principal is based on the need to cope with change and cope with complexity (harris, 2003a:13). leadership and management can no longer be confined to those in formal leadership positions (harris & muijs, 2005:6). diverse expertise and flexible forms of leadership are required to address the multifaceted challenges in schools (harris & spillane, 2008:31). it is in this context, the expansion and intensification of the principal’s work, that the development of the concept of distributive leadership is emerging (gronn, 2003:151). distributive leadership is thus a pragmatic response to changing times (harris, 2007:323). the education leadership literature is dominated with research that is focused on the principal, entrenching the assumption that leadership is synonymous with the principal (hargreaves & fink, 2006:96), and overlooking other sources of school leadership. research into distributive leadership and teacher leadership are new fields of investigation in south africa, but some preliminary research has been undertaken by grant (2006), grant and singh (2009) and grant, gardner, kajee, moodley and somaroo (2010). the aim of our research was to investigate teachers’ experiences and perceptions of the practice of distributive leadership in south african public primary schools in the soweto region. this study did not seek to establish whether distributive leadership had an impact on school effectiveness. in order to fulfil the aim of this study the specific objectives were to: investigate how leadership is enacted at public primary schools from the point of view of teachers• ascertain the consequences of the leadership that is enacted at schools• investigate teachers’ views towards distributive leadership, and• examine how leadership is distributed among post level one teachers in schools.• towards distributive leadership leadership from the distributive perspective does not focus on the position of individuals in a hierarchical organisation but on leadership as a collective activity (harris, 2003b:75). this view has consistent empirical support from studies of effective leadership which have shown that the location of leadership authority does not necessarily emanate from the person of the leader but can be dispersed in between and among the staff within the school (harris & muijs, 2005:6). gold (2004:73) depicts the movement from the single, heroic leader to the ultimate distribution of leadership in teams (figure 1). educational leadership in south african schools has progressed along a similar path, with principals being the sole leader in schools at first and then leadership being extended to school management teams (smts) and school governing bodies (sgbs). conceptualising distributive leadership gronn (2000 cited in leithwood, day, sammons, harris & hopkins, 2006:46) views distributive leadership as an “emergent property of a group of interacting individuals” where leadership is the product of “conjoint agency”. as leaders and followers collaborate in order to accomplish group tasks the roles between leaders and followers begin to blur (harris & day, 2003:89). leadership is fluid and emergent rather than fixed, and is related to collective problem solving and working collaboratively (harris, 2003b:76). we therefore decided to underpin this study in the framework of activity theory (engestrom, 1999 cited in gronn, 2003:85), which emphasizes leadership as a collective phenomenon, the centrality of the division of labour, the interdependency of relationships and the notion of emergent activities. in activity theory “the potential for leadership is present in the flow of activities in which a set of organisation members find 101naicker & mestry — distributive leadership in public schools themselves enmeshed” (gronn, 2000 cited in harris, 2005a:163). activity theory, therefore, refutes the argument that leadership is the domain of one person such as the principal and provides a framework for the distribution of leadership. spillane (2004 cited in leithwood et al., 2006:47) refers to the “social distribution of leadership”. here, distributive leadership is viewed as “the enactment of leadership tasks as potentially stretched over the practice of two or more leaders, followers, and their situation” and also “generated in the interactions” between these (spillane & sherer, 2004:6). in this instance leadership is concerned with interdependency rather than dependency and embraces a variety of leaders in diverse roles who share leadership responsibility (harris, 2005b:11). there are many concepts that are aligned with distributive leadership. capacity building means “broad-based, skilful involvement in the work of leadership” (harris & lambert, 2003:13). leadership density implies that, when a greater number of people are involved in the work of the organisation, play a key role in decision making, have access to information and participate in knowledge creation and transfer, high leadership density occurs (sergiovanni, 2001 cited in harris, 2005a:164). the african philosophy of ubuntu espouses principles that resonate well with distributive leadership such as the collective and cooperative working of people (mbigi, 1994 cited in bush, 2007:403), fostering a culture of inclusiveness in the work environment and the interdependency of relationships (msila, 2008:68-70). distributive leadership gives rise to the concept of teacher leadership by expanding the boundaries of leadership. teacher leadership distributive leadership in practice means that teachers have the opportunity to lead as well as take responsibility for the most important areas of change needed in the school (harris & muijs, 2005:14). hence, teachers can be viewed as “co-producers of leadership” (harris, 2005b:11). no longer are teachers confined to the role of follower but are now teacher leaders irrespective of whether they hold formal leadership positions in the school or not (grant, 2006:513). however, if teachers were to take on greater leadership responsibility, what then is the role of the principal? the role of the principal as a facilitator of distributive leadership distributive leadership does not seek to remove formal leadership structures but assumes that a relationship exists “between vertical and lateral leadership processes” and that the focus of leadership is on interaction between these processes (leithwood et al., 2006:46). principals play a crucial role in fostering the necessary organisational conditions and climate for distributive leadership to flourish (mulford, 2003:27). this means that principals must be able to redistribute power and authority, distribute leadership and provide support to others (hopkins & jackson, 2003:100). distributive leadership requires principals who can establish and sustain a collaborative school culture (glanz, 2006:3) and who promote trust relationships (hopkins & jackson, 2003:101). principals can use the distributive approach to enhance and sustain leadership by institutionalising a leadershipcentred school culture. fullan (2001:10) highlights that good leaders develop leaders at other levels for the future of the system as a whole. in this context the principal is seen to be a “leader of leaders” (harris & muijs, 2002 cited in mulford, 2003:21). research design the research question was explored using a mixed methods approach which was executed through a sequential exploratory design strategy (creswell, 2009:211). this choice of design would enable the concepts of leadership and distributive leadership to be explored in the initial qualitative phase and enable the development of an instrument to be administered in the quantitative phase. the mixing of data in this study does not occur by integrating the data from each phase or connecting across phases but rather by 102 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 “embedding a secondary form of data within a larger study”, using the qualitative phase as a primary database (creswell, 2009:208). the study was underpinned by the pragmatic epistemological position which develops from “actions, situations and consequences rather than antecedent conditions…” (creswell, 2009:10). pragmatism is concerned with practical approaches to research problems and provides a philosophical framework for mixed methods studies which focuses on the research problem and employs methods from different traditions to answer the problem (denscombe, 2007:107-108). phase 1 entailed a generic qualitative study and data was collected by means of in-depth focus group interviews in three schools. using purposive sampling, three schools were selected according to evaluation criteria provided by the whole school evaluation unit of the gauteng department of education. school a was evaluated as being acceptable (category 3), school c was evaluated as needing support (category 2) and school b was evaluated as needing urgent attention (category 1). all participants were teachers who were not formally appointed as leaders and who possessed a minimum of five years’ teaching experience. informed consent was obtained from the interviewees in order for them to participate in the study. openended questions were used to explore the concept of leadership from the participants’ perspectives and thereafter semi-structured questions allowed for probing and extended responses on aspects pertaining to distributive leadership. document analysis was undertaken in order to complement the interview findings. a pilot study led to the modification of the interview schedule. validity was promoted by conducting peer reviews with colleagues regarding the study procedure, the congruency of the findings and the raw data (merriam, 2002:31). the qualitative data was analysed using tesch’s method (1990 cited in creswell, 2009:186), which involves the identification and coding of topics, the development of conceptual categories and the formulation of themes and sub-themes. in phase 2, the quantitative phase, a standardised questionnaire was designed that was grounded in the findings from the qualitative phase. utilizing random sampling, the questionnaire was administered across 27 schools to 300 teachers who did not hold formal leadership positions. the respondents were assured that confidentiality and anonymity of all the information supplied would be maintained. section a of the questionnaire captured the biographical data of the respondents while section b comprised 40 closed-ended questions pertaining to the practice of distributive leadership in schools. a six-point likert response rating scale was used ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (6). section c of the instrument comprised two open questions. content validity and construct validity were employed in this phase of the study. the quantitative data was subjected to statistical analysis and factor analysis procedures using the pasw statistics 18 computer software programme (norusis, 2010). findings and discussion the qualitative findings revealed that distributive leadership had not taken root in schools in soweto. however, the quantitative findings showed the early stages of a movement towards distributive leadership. these findings will be presented and interpreted under the following headings: leadership styles the qualitative data revealed that, in schools in soweto, traditional leadership practices with a strong hierarchy, and principals who use autocratic leadership styles present powerful barriers to distributive leadership. in the rigid, hierarchical structure of schools, power and decision-making remained in the domain of the principal and smt. one respondent elaborated: most of the times he’s [the principal] the one who dominate[s]. he use[d] to tell us that we need to do one, two, three, and then hierarchy yes it is still there, it is working because sometimes you find that maybe smt, they need to meet as smt and conclude about something and when they come they will just have to tell us that this is what we need to do which i think it mustn’t be like that because they need to even ask for our contribution. normally we are being told what we must do… (respondent 5, school a). 103naicker & mestry — distributive leadership in public schools chrispeels (2004:10) asserts that “the stronger the institutional norms of hierarchy and control, the less likely the leaders will sense agency and authority to act to distribute leadership”. in a firmly entrenched hierarchy, power remains in the confines of the upper echelons such as the principal or the smt. distributive leadership requires that formally appointed leaders relinquish power to others so that “the latent, creative powers of teachers can be released” (barth, 1988 cited in grant et al., 2010:403). there was evidence that collaborative and participative styles of leadership were not adequately practised. a participant in school a claimed: “all the efforts we have what we call collaborative where everyone must participate and then participative where everyone must participate but in here no, it is not” (respondent 6). another respondent in school c expressed that all the stakeholders were not adequately involved and stated: “everybody must take part but if there is a certain group of people who are doing things on their own then there won’t be smooth running of a school” (respondent 2). a participative approach is important in the current school context, since it reduces the workload of the principal through the distribution of leadership functions and roles (sergiovanni, 1984 cited in bush, 2007:397). in a true collaborative school culture, strong relationships develop between members, diversity is valued, problem solving becomes the responsibility of everyone and leadership is distributed, contextual and continuous (glanz, 2006:2). when the qualitative findings were tested quantitatively, it was found that principals are in the early stages of a movement towards the devolution of decision making to committees, power sharing and participative decision making. this was confirmed by the second factor of the factor analysis procedure named participative leadership style. table 1 indicates that mean scores of the items in this factor varied from 3.55 to 4.20. although the mean scores are not strong, they support the advancement from rigid hierarchical boundaries of leadership and autocratic leadership styles towards a more participative leadership style conducive to distributive leadership. the mean score for transparency in the school regarding decision making was the lowest (3.55). this concurs with the qualitative findings which indicated the need for principals to employ greater transparency in decision-making processes. activity theory views leadership as a collective phenomenon. in order for activities to become units of analysis, a decentring of the individual leader must occur (gronn, 2003:87). this will be facilitated by principals who adopt collaborative and participative leadership styles where power is shared with other key players in the school community and where participative decision making is a reality. school climate a theme that emerged in the qualitative phase of the study is school climate. the participants in all three schools offered many examples of a negative school climate. a respondent in school a commented thus: “at the same time the atmosphere creates hateracy amongst us staff… there will be conflict because of one, two, three” (respondent 1). prinsloo (2003:144) states that a negative effect of the autocratic leadership style in a school is poor human relations. in an activity system such as a school, poor human relations between the teachers will hinder the distribution of leadership. the demotivation and despondency of the participants came across clearly. respondent 2 in school c stated: “…we are old teachers and we think we have that experience and expertise. so now recently because of this situation we become so disillusioned”. another respondent in school b remarked: “when we think of those leaders and want to do something for those kids and you said, uh i don’t do it just because of so and so” (respondent 2). morale is concerned with people’s feelings, states of mind, mental attitudes and emotional attitudes (kruger & steinmann, 2003:16). if teachers perceive that their needs are not being met, this will have a negative effect on their morale (steyn, 2002b:86) as appeared to be the situation in all three schools. the participants expressed their job dissatisfaction. respondent 5 in school a had come to “hate this profession itself”. other respondents spoke about “staying at home” or “resigning” (respondent 2, school c) and feeling “stressed” (respondent 3, school a). 104 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 an autocratic leadership style leads to negative effects including a tense school atmosphere where job dissatisfaction exists and where staff experience stress (prinsloo, 2003:144). in an unhealthy school climate the goal of teaching and learning cannot be fully realized. respondent 6 in school a indicated: “well you can say partially we do achieve not eh not totally, because we are working under stressful situations”. a positive climate has positive effects on teaching and learning as well as learner achievement (kruger & steinmann, 2003:15). the principal can play a role as an instructional leader who increases student achievement by influencing the school climate in a positive manner (ibtesam, 2005:336). in the quantitative investigation the factor creating a distributive school climate resulted from the factor analysis and consisted of items that reflect upon a school climate conducive to distributive leadership. the mean scores of the items in this factor ranged from 4.06 to 4.65 (table 2). teachers showed partial agreement with all the items. lower mean scores for items relating to teacher morale (4.06), recognising teacher efforts (4.07) and the creation of a healthy work environment (4.12) indicate that greater improvement is needed in these areas. professional development the findings posit the professional development of teachers and principals to be important to the distribution of leadership. this is supported by insights from activity theory which regard professional development to be a critical tool to improve leadership practice. respondent 5 in school a suggested that teachers receive leadership training to avoid staff conflicts, while respondents in school c were of the view that professional development would enhance the leadership skills of principals. the professional development of teachers in leadership is widely supported in the literature (harris, 2003b:78; hopkins & jackson, 2003:97; grant, 2008:85). according to chrispeels (2004:14), principals often lack training in problem solving, group dynamics, participative decision making and approaches to distributing leadership. in the quantitative phase, data from the open questions of the questionnaire revealed that, according to teachers’ perceptions, hands-on leadership opportunities for teachers enabled their professional development. leithwood, jantzi and steinbach (2003:197) maintain that, when teachers reflect about their hands-on leadership experiences, a powerful strategy is created for dealing with the lack of training opportunities for teacher leaders. by providing teachers with leadership opportunities and by supporting, coaching and mentoring them, a view of the principal as a “leader of leaders” emerges. team structures the qualitative data showed that team structures were institutionalised in only one of the three schools, namely school a. when this was tested quantitatively it was found that 66.6% of the participants had the opportunity to execute leadership in teams or committees, either as members (36.3%) or leaders (30.3%). it, therefore, appears that in soweto primary schools there is a movement from traditional, hierarchical structures to flatter, team-based structures, which is a trend worldwide as indicated by harris (2007:327). activity theory supports the division of labour in a school and this can be facilitated through team structures which ease the expansion and intensification of work pressures in schools. the african philosophy of ubuntu supports forms of leadership that are participative and inclusive of people in the work environment, which is another explanation as to why the teachers in soweto support working in teams. prinsloo (1998 cited in msila, 2008:70-71) concurs that the ubuntu leadership style is a movement away from hierarchical structures towards a “cooperative and supportive form of leadership in which collective solidarity of the group is employed and respected”. the effects of distributive leadership the participants perceived that distributive leadership has positive effects for themselves and their schools. in the qualitative investigation the participants in all three schools were unanimous that such an approach 105naicker & mestry — distributive leadership in public schools would enable participative decision making. an activity system is characterised by “multi-voicedness” where the views, traditions and interests of teachers as well as all members of the school community are regarded as important (beatty & feldman, 2009:4-5). hargreaves and fink (2008:239) argue that the ultimate goal of distributive leadership is to create a truly democratic citizenship. the quantitative findings indicated that the respondents “agreed” to “strongly agreed” that involving teachers in leadership improves teacher relationships (77.9%), develops teacher confidence (69.1%), increases teacher morale (75.0%) and increases job satisfaction (69.1%). in addition, 79.8% of the respondents were of the view that their involvement in leadership roles would lead to an improvement in learner achievement. a study by silins and mulford (2002 cited in hargreaves & fink, 2006:101) supports the perception of the participants in the current study that there is a link between distributive leadership and learner achievement, and found a positive effect on learner outcomes when leadership was distributed throughout the school community and teachers were empowered in their areas of interest. conclusion and recommendations in order to facilitate a shift away from traditional models of leadership it is recommended that greater emphasis be placed on the practice of leadership styles that support the distribution of leadership by the department of education (doe) through training programmes, which should include follow-up measures at schools. leadership styles that foster collegiality, capacity building, collaboration, teamwork and human relationships are in line with the contextual challenges facing schools in the twenty-first century. more prominence can also be given to the philosophy of ubuntu leadership, especially in the context of township schools. while the south african doe supports participative leadership styles based on democratic principles, there seems to be a gap between policy and the practice of participative leadership styles in schools in soweto. jansen (2004:126) contends that “policy is not practice” and that, while the framework for democratic education is in place, south africa has a long journey ahead “to make ideals concrete and achievable within educational institutions”. in this regard, principals need to learn how to share power and devolve decision making to others. principals play a crucial role in facilitating the conditions and climate conducive to distributive leadership in schools. training programmes for principals can focus on the concept of distributive leadership, its role in school transformation and the skills needed to institutionalise a distributive culture in schools. principals need to be convinced that distributive leadership does not disregard their positional authority as the main leaders of the school. instead principals need to view themselves as “leaders of leaders” whose role is to groom future leaders and promote sustainable leadership. the hierarchical structure of schools need not be viewed as a barrier to the institutionalisation of distributive leadership. distributive leadership, viewed as concerted action through relationships, enables collaboration among members of staff who hold different positions in the hierarchy (bennett, harvey, wise & woods, 2003:9). it is, therefore, recommended that distributive forms of leadership be integrated into a complementary vertical leadership structure in schools. alternate structures such as networks or webs can be introduced to diminish the focus of leadership as a command and control function from the apex of the hierarchy to a view of collective leadership where principals are a part of a collaborative framework or community of practice. the principal’s role can then be more easily understood as facilitator, mediator and supporter; a more collegial school atmosphere can thus be created. in supporting the need for a re-conceptualisation of leadership practice in the twenty-first century and a search for alternate and relevant models of leadership, this research highlights that distributive leadership has much to offer schools. the findings of the qualitative investigation indicated that leadership in soweto is rooted in traditional leadership practices and that a shift is needed from autocratic styles of leadership, hierarchical structures and non-participative decision-making if distributive leadership is to thrive. the quantitative investigation, however, showed the early stages of a movement towards distributive leadership, which needs to be nurtured and developed. the optimistic attitudes of teachers towards the concept of distributive leadership were conveyed in the study. further research can be undertaken to explore the views of principals and other stakeholders regarding distributive leadership. practitioners 107naicker & mestry — distributive leadership in public schools bush t 2007. educational leadership and management: theory, policy, and practice. south african journal of education, 27(3):391-406. chrispeels jh 2004. learning to lead together: the promise and challenge of sharing leadership. thousand oaks: sage. 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passing the buck: this is not teacher leadership. perspectives in education, 27(3):289-301. gronn p 2003. the new work of educational leaders: changing leadership practice in an era of school reform. london: paul chapman publishing. hargreaves a & fink d 2008. distributed leadership: democracy or delivery? journal of educational administration, 46(2):229-240. hargreaves a & fink d 2006. sustainable leadership. san francisco: jossey-bass. harris a 2007. distributed leadership: conceptual confusion and empirical reticence. international journal of leadership in education, 10(3):315-325. harris a 2005a. distributed leadership. in b davies (ed). the essentials of school leadership. london: paul chapman publishing. harris a 2005b. reflections on distributed leadership. management in education, 19(2):10-12. harris a 2003a. the changing context of leadership. in a harris, c day, d hopkins, m hadfield, a hargreaves & c chapman (eds). effective leadership for school improvement. new york: 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professional learning for principals in south africa. keynote presentation at the conference on the professional development of principals. mafikeng, north-west province. mestry r & singh p 2007. continuing professional development for principals: a south african perspective. south african journal of education, 27(3):477-490. msila, v 2008. ubuntu and school leadership. journal of education, 44:67-84. mulford b 2003. school leaders: changing roles and impact on teacher and school effectiveness. retrieved 23 march 2009 from http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/61/61/2635399.pdf. norusis mj 2010. pasw statistics 18 guide to data analysis. chicago: prentice hall. oduro gkt 2004. distributed leadership in schools. education journal, 80:23-25. prinsloo ij 2003. leadership and motivational skills. in i van deventer & ag kruger (eds.) an educator’s guide to school management skills. pretoria: van schaik. sergiovanni tj 2005. strengthening the heartbeat: leading and learning together in schools. san 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embarking on a career in schooling on the other. the present paper describes the language and thinking skills student teachers bring to their ite programmes and the conditions faced by nqts when they enter schools on the other side of the chalk face. this is the context within which we ask the question: to what extent are the universities providing the teachers required by the school system? while a review of the literature, together with new evidence emerging from the initial teacher education research project (iterp) study, indicates that the answer to this question is by no means unequivocally positive, the department of higher education and training (dhet) has issued new regulations aimed at addressing the gap between current programmes and the demands of schooling. we conclude by arguing that the quality of ite will only be improved once teacher educators move their practices closer to those of practitioners in the strong professions, which are characterised by the development of a strong theoretical knowledge base, from which effective protocols of practice may be derived and which is continuously interrogated by the practitioners themselves. we suggest that the place to start on this quest is the instruction of prospective primary school teachers in early literacy and numeracy. keywords: pre-service teacher education, knowledge for teachers, inferencing skills, professional knowledge 1. ite: an integral part of the school system the south african school system currently serves to re­pro­duce­ apartheid’s­ grand­ plan­ five­ decades­ after­ the assassination of its principal architect (taylor & muller, 2014). it is noteworthy that in the collective mind of public debate, the initial teacher education (ite) sector is generally considered separate from schooling. in the quest­for­greater­efficiency­and­improved­quality­in­a­school­ system that is manifestly underperforming, ite hardly raises a mention outside the sector itself. inappropriate political leadership, low parental involvement, poor governance and management, misguided curriculum reform, poor quality materials­ and­ ineffective­ in-service­ training­ all­ get­ their­ share of the blame in the ongoing debate about the state nick taylor doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i1.2 issn 0258-2236 eissn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(1): 10-26 © uv/ufs http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.2 taylor thinking, language and learning in initial teacher education 11 of south african schooling. within the universities, there is great concern with the question of curriculum design – who should teach what to whom – and a feeling of frustration with the poorly prepared state of students entering ite. however, these discussions hardly intersect with the frequent and furious public exchanges on how to improve the quality of learning outcomes. this paper is an attempt to begin a discussion on connecting ite course design to the processes and outcomes of schooling. given a threshold of institutional leadership and management expertise – as currently exists­in­significant­parts­of­the­system­–­what­goes­on­behind­more­than­a­quarter­of­a­million­ closed classroom doors daily is fundamentally a function of teacher professional expertise. the demonstrably poor pedagogic facility exhibited by numerous teachers (see hoadley, 2012­for­example),­coupled­with­the­failure­to­advance­teacher­capacity­through­the­multibillion­rand­in-service­training­(inset)­industry­over­more­than­three­decades­(besharati­&­ tsotsotso,­2015;­needu,­in­press),­highlights­the­importance­of­ite­in­rescuing­schooling­ from its present predicament. ite serves as a bridge between prospective teachers exiting the school system to enrol in­teacher­education­faculties,­on­one­hand,­and­newly­qualified­teachers­(nqts)­who­are­ embarking on a career in schooling, on the other. the present paper describes the language and thinking skills student teachers bring to their ite programmes and the conditions faced by nqts­when­they­enter­schools­on­the­other­side­of­the­chalk­face.­the­assumption­behind­this­ approach is that it is through the analysis of these two sets of bracketing conditions that the following question can be adequately examined: to what extent are the universities providing the teachers required by the school system? ite under the spotlight in the early 2000s, the ite landscape in south africa was radically restructured when teacher education became a national competence, with a move into the higher education sector. shortly after the relocation, the council for higher education conducted a review of qualifications­in­education,­which­was­published­in­2010.­the­findings­of­the­review­were­ discouraging.­across­all­four­types­of­programmes­reviewed­–­m.ed.,­b.ed.,­pgce­and­ace­ – fewer than half (48%) received full accreditation with 22% either not accredited at all or ‘on notice of withdrawal’ and the remainder being conditionally accredited. according to the diagnosis­of­the­higher­education­quality­committee­(heqc),­the­greatest­difficulties­lay­in­ programme design, raising for the reviewers the critical question as to: … the extent to which academics responsible for these programmes understand the nature and purpose of each of them and how they are to respond to south africa’s specific needs in the area of teacher education (che, 2010: 147). the­review­described­a­ lack­of­consensus­within­ the­ite­field­ in­south­africa­around­ teaching practice: this was tightly regulated in some institutions and in others it was relatively unstructured. few institutions could articulate the attributes they sought to develop in their students­through­work-based­learning.­the­main­concerns­about­the­b.ed.­expressed­by­the­ review revolved around curriculum congestion and onerous regulatory requirements: “… the challenge of focusing simultaneously on a learning area, a phase and on pedagogy result in bloated­programmes­with­insufficient­depth­or­attention­paid­to­subject­or­disciplinary­depth”­ (che,­2010:­150-1). 12 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) south africa is not unique in expressing public concern about the appropriateness of ite­provision.­shortly­after­south­africa’s­heqc­review,­the­australian­federal­government­ established a teacher education ministerial advisory group to investigate the quality of ite, the­highly­critical­findings­of­which­are­contained­in­the­action now report released in 2014 (teacher education ministerial advisory group, 2014). the teacher prep review (2014), an­evaluation­of­ite­programmes­in­the­us­conducted­by­the­national­council­on­teacher­ quality,­was­equally­critical.­the­latter­report­was­particularly­scathing­about­the­preparation­ of primary school teachers in teaching literacy: we are disheartened that the teacher education field continues to disregard scientifically based methods of reading1 instruction: coursework in just 17 percent of programs equips their elementary and special education teachers to use all five fundamental components of reading instruction, helping to explain why such a large proportion of american school children (30 percent) never learn to read beyond a basic level (national council on teacher quality, 2014: 3). the­heqc­review­attributes­what­it­calls­the­‘disarray’­of­initial­teacher­education­in­the­us­ and sa to a lack of agreement about the curriculum and, while ‘disarray’ is possibly too emotive a word to describe the state of the field in south africa, a conclusion that is hard to avoid is that the field is riddled with difficulties. 2. professional knowledge before­we­address­the­evidence­bearing­on­our­main­research­question,­we­turn­to­theoretical­ considerations concerning the nature of professional expertise, the pivotal role of teachers inducting learners into a systematised body of knowledge and the critical roles that language and cognition play in this process. current debates concerning the knowledge and skills required for teaching were largely shaped by shulman’s legendary presidential address to the american educational research association in 1985, where he discussed three knowledge content­categories­(subject­matter,­pedagogic­and­curricular)­(shulman,­1986).­a­more­recent­ statement,­which­essentially­covers­the­same­ground,­is­given­by­darling-hammond­and­her­ colleagues,­who­summarise­‘the­real­variables’­pertaining­to­teacher­effectiveness­as­follows:­ … knowledge of the subject matter content to be taught and knowledge of how to teach that content to a wide range of learners, as well as the ability to manage a classroom, design and implement instruction, and work skilfully with students, parents, and other professionals (darling-hammond et al., 2005: 20). the­ present­ paper­ does­ not­ encroach­ on­ this­ teacher-specific­ terrain­ but­ is­ rather­ concerned with the fundamental cognitive architecture and linguistic abilities that underlie, or­enable­the­capacity­to­develop­subject­knowledge­and­the­ability­to­use­that­knowledge­ in­ addressing­ real-world­ concerns.­ the­ reasoning­ developed­ in­ subject­ knowledge­ and­ 1­ what­the­nctq­means­by­‘scientific­methods’­of­reading­instruction­are­those­advocated­by­the­ national­reading­panel­(nrp)­which,­following­a­survey­of­ ‘high­quality’­research­into­the­topic­ between­1997­and­2000,­concluded­that­the­teaching­of­reading­is­best­affected­through­a­combination­ of­five­techniques:­phonemic­awareness­(hearing­sounds­in­words),­phonics­(understanding­sound/ letter­relationships),­fluency­(oral­and­written­reading­proficiency),­vocabulary­(building­a­rich­store­of­ words and meanings) and comprehension (understanding the meaning of oral and written language) (national­reading­panel,­2000) taylor thinking, language and learning in initial teacher education 13 its­practical­application­forms­a­basis­for­the­kinds­of­judgement­practiced­by­adepts­in­all­ professional­fields.­ the­nature­of­professional­knowledge­has­long­been­the­subject­of­debate­and­a­number­ of reviews over many years. the classic work of abbott (1988) presents an example of outstanding scholarship. a recent contribution is a collection of essays edited by michael young and johan muller: knowledge, expertise and the professions (young & muller, 2014a). in his chapter entitled know-how, knowledge and professional education, christopher winch (2014) embarks on an extensive discussion of the topic, commencing with the notion of epistemic ascent, which­assumes­that­knowledge­can­be­categorised­into­different­types­and­ that the relations between these categories can be described with a view of supporting the progression of learners. this brings us to the idea of curricular progression or growing the subject­under­study.­ the term subject­here­refers­to­a­body­of­knowledge­organised­around­a­defined­field,­ which adopts characteristic methods for validating existing knowledge and acquiring new propositions.­ with­ specific­ respect­ to­ professional knowledge, winch (2014) poses three criteria for establishing the extent to which a learner knows­the­subject.­first,­s/he­will­have­ an­understanding­of­some­coherent­set­of­propositions­making­up­the­defined­knowledge­field­ in question. however, being able to recite a list of propositions does not constitute any sense of ‘knowing’ the discipline. elaborating on ryle’s (1949) classic distinction between ‘knowing that’ (propositional knowledge) and ‘knowing how’ (how to deploy propositional knowledge), winch describes two kinds of ‘know how’. this brings us to the second criterion for assessing how­well­a­learner­knows­the­subject:­s/he­will­understand­at­least­some­of­the­connections­ between­propositions.­ in­this­regard,­good­subject­knowledge­is­reflected­in­the­ learner’s­ ability­to­find­his/her­way­around­the­subject;­to­negotiate­what­david­guile­(2014)­calls­the­ space of reasons: giving and asking for reasons and being able to justify what one says. winch’s­ third­ test­ of­ subject­ expertise­ and­ second­ kind­ of­ ‘know-how’­ is­ indicated­ by­ an­understanding­of­how­knowledge­in­the­subject­is­tested,­validated­and­added­to.­while­ only­relatively­advanced­students­of­a­subject­may­be­expected­to­create­new­knowledge,­ understanding the test for validation of an inference or deduction within the discipline is a key expectation­of­knowing­a­subject.­ from this perspective, an occupation can be said to be a profession when competent practice­depends,­in­the­first­instance,­on­knowing­one’s­way­around­a­systematic­body­of­ knowledge.­however,­the­professional­also­needs­to­know­how­to­reason­within­the­subject’s­ propositional­net­and­how­to­apply­ the­knowledge­ to­practical­action.­there­are­different­ levels­at­which­learners­can­use­subject­knowledge­for­action:­from­the­most­basic­technique,­ through­ to­ more­ complex­ applications­ of­ subject­ knowledge­ for­ practical­ action­ such­ as­ occupational­capacity­and­project­management.­winch­emphasises­the­close­relationship­ between propositional knowledge and professional action: professional expertise depends crucially on the ability to use systematic knowledge to inform practical judgement and action (winch 2014: 52). in­the­same­vein,­david­guile­describes­the­exercise­of­professional­expertise­as­“…­ making­ conceptually-structured­ professional­ (i.e.­ practical)­ judgements­ in­ context-specific­ circumstances” (2014: 81). young and muller (2014b) add that, in the development and deployment of a body of professional knowledge, two kinds of knowledge specialisation 14 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) are distinguishable: knowledge specialised to conceptual generality (elaboration of theory) and knowledge specialised to purpose (practical application). the former is directed toward extending­the­generality­and­reach­of­the­conceptual­edifice­while­the­latter­is­aimed­at­deriving­ a­ more­ elegant­ or­ efficient­ solution­ to­ a­ technical­ problem.­ separated­ here­ for­ analytical­ purposes, these two strands of knowledge development generally work best in tandem. thus, galileo’s achievements in astronomy in the seventeenth century were enabled by advances in­the­lens-grinding­industry­(knowledge­specialised­to­practical­purpose),­which­in­turn­was­ based on the physics of optics and the laws governing the behaviour of light under conditions of­reflection­and­refraction­(knowledge­specialised­to­generality).­ the­final­point­concerning­winch’s­conceptual­map­of­professional­expertise,­and­a­crucial­ one for what follows in the remainder of the present paper, is to emphasise his conclusion that reaching a level of professional knowledge on the part of a learner involves the exercise of relatively complex forms of reasoning. these complex forms of reasoning include inductive inference­ (formal­ or­ material),­ hypothetico-deduction­ and­ where­ the­ knowledge­ base­ is­ founded on experimental methods or statistical techniques (such as physics or psychometrics), an­understanding­of­measures­of­significance­and­confidence.­ drawing­on­this­perspective,­we­may­say­that­the­ability­to­exercise­complex­forms­of­ reasoning is necessary for the acquisition, application and elaboration of professional expertise.­with­specific­respect­to­prospective­teachers,­this­does­not­ imply­that­students­ should come to their ite studies with these capacities fully formed but some threshold level may­be­required­before­significant­progress­can­be­made.­the­questions­then­arise­as­to­ how­these­reasoning­abilities­–­the­building­blocks­of­professional­judgement­–­are­nurtured­ among children and young adults in schools and what kinds of reasoning skills they bring to their ite courses. 3. language and cognition the assumptions underlying the argument that follows lie in the intersection of language and­cognition.­debates­in­this­field­are­concerned­with­the­degree­of­intersection­and­the­ precise nature of linkages between words and thought but no one seriously disputes their close­connection.­in­the­most­recent­review­of­this­field,­deák­(2014)­places­chomsky­at­one­ end of the spectrum with his notion that language development is independent of cognition. by­ contrast,­ constructivist­ and­ biologically­ based­ perspectives­ recognise­ that­ language­ processing is cognition, language use is distributed cognition and understanding children’s capacity for language means understanding the development and recruitment of general learning­and­cognitive­processes­(deák,­2014:­290).­following­this­line­of­thinking,­perlovsky­ (2009)­claims­empirical­evidence­for­the­joint­evolution­of­human­language­and­cognition.­ according to him, mental models of concepts such as ‘shoe’, may be grounded in direct sensory experience only at the very bottom of the mind hierarchy: at higher layers, … cognitive concepts are grounded in language concepts … and language models … are grounded in talking with other people and mutual understanding … (perlovsky, 2009: 253) in other words, higher order or concepts that are more abstract may be explained in terms of lower level, simpler concepts using spoken and written language. learning language hierarchy at all layers is grounded in communication with other people around; people talk to and understand each other. try to teach a dog to understand the word ‘rational’, or any taylor thinking, language and learning in initial teacher education 15 abstract concept, whose meaning is based on several hierarchical layers; this is not possible (ibid: 253). these views provide a theoretical perspective on the intuitively obvious proposition that high levels of cognitive processing are dependent on high levels of literacy – speaking, reading and writing – in the language of learning. it follows that in order to engage their learners productively in the development of conceptual understanding teachers should be highly literate in this language. it also seems obvious that literacy and cognitive development are complicated when the language of learning does not coincide with the language the learner speaks most frequently at home, a vast topic in its own right that cannot be entertained in the present­paper.­it­is­in­this­vein­that­balfour­(2012)­calls­for­a­revival­of­research­on­language­ pedagogy for second language acquisition and further research into better understanding of home-language­syntax­in­relation­to­target-language­syntax,­in­order­to­create­the­scaffolding­ to­enable­learners­to­make­the­transitions­necessary­for­effective­learning.­ the­concern­in­this­paper­is­that­prospective­teachers­are­entering­into­pre-service­teacher­ education programmes from a system that indicators suggest are not adequately preparing the­vast­majority­of­learners­to­develop­the­levels­of­literacy­or­complex­reasoning­skills­that­ enable­inductive­reasoning­and­hypothetico-deduction. 4. the roots of reasoning: literacy comprehension in schools primary schools around the world primary school curricula, including the south african curriculum and assessment­policy­statements­(caps),­specify­that­children­should­learn­to­read­and­write­ fluently­and­at­relatively­complex­levels­of­cognitive­skill­by­the­end­of­the­third­grade.­then,­ moving into the fourth grade, learners are assumed to progress, from learning to read to reading­ to­ learn,­ using­ their­ literacy­ skills­ to­ investigate­ a­ range­ of­ disciplinary­ fields,­ at­ increasing levels of complexity. it is clear from the results of numerous international and national tests that the south african system, as a whole, falls far short of these ideals. the roots of the reasoning abilities described by winch and others in our theory of professional expertise are explicitly mentioned in the taxonomy of reading comprehension skills­on­which­the­progress­in­reading­literacy­study­(pirls)2­is­based.­the­pirls­scheme­ defines­reading­skills­exhibited­at­four­benchmark­levels:­advanced,­high,­intermediate­and­ low (table 1). 2­ the­2006­administration­of­pirls­was­the­third­iteration­internationally­of­the­study­and­the­first­in­ which south africa participated, along with 39 other countries. grade 4 and 5 learners write the tests. in­south­africa,­learners­wrote­the­test­in­one­of­the­11­official­languages,­selected­by­the­school­as­ representing­the­home­language­of­the­majority­of­learners.­ 16 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) table 1: pirls­benchmark­descriptors­and­grade­4­scores pirls benchmark score reading skills int. median sa mean advanced 625+ advanced readers: learners are able to integrate information across relatively challenging­texts­and­can­provide­full­textbased support in their answers. learners are able to make interpretations and can demonstrate that they understand the function of organisational features in texts. 7% 1% high 550-625 competent readers: learners exhibit the­ability­to­retrieve­significant­details­ embedded across the text, to provide text-based­support­for­inferences,­and­to­ recognise main ideas, some textual features and elements and are able to begin to integrate ideas and information across texts. 41% 3% intermediate 475-549 some reading proficiency: with regard to reading stories, learners are able to understand the plot at a literal level and to make some inferences and connections across texts. 76% 7% low 400-474 basic reading skills: learners are able to recognise, locate and reproduce information that is explicitly stated in texts, and make straightforward inferences. 94% 13% source: constructed from howie et al., 2008, emphasis added the bottom row of table 1 shows that while the international median achievement for the low benchmark across 40 participating countries is 94% only 13% of south african grade 4 learners demonstrate this level of reading comprehension. thus, 87% of sa grade 4 learners struggle to reproduce information explicitly stated in the text and are able to make straightforward­inferences,­as­opposed­to­a­median­of­only­6%­internationally.­ high schools at high school level, we can continue to trace the development of the reasoning abilities that form such an integral part of winch’s theory of professional knowledge, through an examination of the assessed curriculum for english first additional language (efal), the language of learning and teaching (lolt) for 80% of south african learners. the report of the ministerial task­team­on­nsc­(dbe,­2014)­makes­its­strongest­recommendations­with­respect­to­the­ level of reasoning skills demanded by efal. the task team characterises many students in the­school­system­as­‘semi-lingual’­both­in­the­lolt­and­their­home­language,­exhibiting­small­ vocabularies and incorrect grammar, consciously thinking about their language production, being­stilted­and­uncreative­with­each­language­and­finding­it­difficult­to­think­and­express­ emotions­ in­either­ language.­these­features­ influence­ learners’­understanding­of­all­ their­ school­subjects.­the­introduction­of­english­into­the­foundation­phase­caps­curriculum­is­an­ attempt­to­improve­standards­of­lolt­for­the­majority­of­children­but­as­the­task­team­report­ notes,­the­success­of­this­policy­will­depend­on­the­language­proficiency­and­pedagogical­ skills of teachers. according­to­the­task­team,­reviews­of­the­quality­of­the­2010­efal­nsc­papers­by­three­ international benchmarking authorities – cambridge international examinations (cie), the taylor thinking, language and learning in initial teacher education 17 scottish­qualifications­authority­(sqa)­and­the­board­of­studies,­new­south­wales­(nsw)­–­ collectively found: • the cognitive levels assessed in the exam questions are heavily weighted towards lower-order­skills­such­as­literal­comprehension­and­grammar­translation­tasks­with­far­ fewer­ questions­ testing­ the­ higher-order­ cognitive­ processes­ of­ inference,­ evaluation­ and appreciation. • students­are­not­given­sufficient­opportunity­to­explain­and­analyse­the­content,­purpose­ and­audience­of­the­texts­and­this­reflects­an­insufficient­focus­on­critical­ literacy­and­ language analysis skills. • the­majority­of­questions­require­short-answers­and­students­can­avoid­writing­an­essay­ entirely in the literature paper (paper 2). • the­grammatical­activities­themselves­reflect­a­drill­and­practise­approach­to­language­ learning, which does not support the need to develop students’ language for work and participation in the broader community. the­ministerial­task­team­concludes,­“the­level­of­most­learners­and­teachers’­proficiency­ in­ english­ is­ too­ low­ to­ use­ english­ as­ lolt­ optimally,­ and­ so­ to­ realise­ their­ potential” (dbe,­2014:­76).­the­report­makes­a­number­of­recommendations­to­address­this­situation,­ including­intensive­training­of­teachers­in­efal­through­inset­and­ite.­furthermore,­the­ task­team­proposes­raising­the­pass­requirements­for­bachelor­(50%)­and­diploma­(40%)­ study. wedekind (2013) has calculated that the implementation of the latter recommendations would­ hardly­ change­ the­ numbers­ qualifying­ for­ bachelor­ study­ but­ would­ significantly­ decrease­ those­ reaching­ entrance­ to­ diploma-level­ courses.­ perhaps­ the­ most­ important­ recommendations­are­concerned­with­raising­the­cognitive­demands­of­nsc­exam­items­in­ efal: longer texts should be set as comprehension exercises while the kinds and level of comprehension­tasks­should­significantly­reduce­recall­and­retrieval­type­items­and­include­ more questions demanding application and inferential reasoning. 5. demands on nqts when they enter schools the previous section outlines the reasoning skills that students bring to their ite studies. however, what about the other side of the sandwich, the challenges they will face when entering­schools­as­newly­qualified­teachers­(nqts)?­at­least­four­important­conditions­are­ relevant to the present discussion. 1. english is the lolt in 90% of schools and for 80% of learners, including those from the poorest families living in rural villages, urban townships and squatter camps this is efal. this means that the most disadvantaged learners are required to engage cognitively with all disciplinary areas in a language that is not their mother tongue and which the ministerial task team has declared to be inadequate for the task. these conclusions, when read in the light of the above discussion on language and cognition, would go a long way to­explaining­the­continued­educational­disadvantage­of­the­majority­of­south­africans,­ including their low and slow success rates through higher education. although much has been achieved in expanding the middle class over the last two decades, the education system – schools, universities and colleges – is hampering progress in this direction, reproducing the disadvantage of the poorest citizens and language policy and practice are inextricably implicated in this vicious circle. 18 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) 2. poor subject competence among teachers the­sacmeq­tests­administered­to­grade­6­teachers­of­maths­and­english­in­a­national­ sample­of­primary­schools­ indicate­ low­levels­of­ the­sorts­of­reasoning­skills­ identified­ in­ winch’s­notion­of­subject­expertise.­the­sacmeq­tests­are­pitched­at­grades­6-8­levels,­ covering a relatively wide spectrum of cognitive demands (table 2). table 2: sacmeq­teacher­tests­–­results­in­english­for­grade­6­teachers,­by­cognitive­skill retrieve infer interpret evaluate 75.06 55.21 36.61 39.73 source taylor and taylor, 2013 while south african teachers did relatively well on questions requiring the simple retrieval of information explicitly stated in a passage of text (75.1%), scores dropped dramatically as­soon­as­the­higher­cognitive­functions­of­inference­(55.2%),­interpretation­(36.6%)­and­ evaluation­(39.7%)­were­invoked.­these­results­are­not­surprising­given­that­the­large­majority­ of teachers were schooled in efal and received their teacher training in largely dysfunctional colleges during the apartheid era. 3. inadequate reading pedagogies are practiced in the majority of primary schools a third factor to be addressed by new teachers entering schools, which is of great relevance to ite, concerns the pedagogical milieu that dominates schools serving the poor. inappropriate pedagogy­results­in­the­large­majority­of­learners­reaching­grade­5­essentially­illiterate,­as­ shown in table 1­with­regard­to­the­pirls­scores.­the­pedagogies­predominantly­seen­in­ observing two grade 2 reading lessons in 133 rural primary schools in 2013, consisted of much chanting­in­chorus­when­facing­a­big­book­and­very­little­independent­reading­by­individuals.­ few­ children­ are­ asked­ to­ decode­ and/or­ explain­ the­ meaning­ of­ words,­ phrases­ and­ sentences.­writing­over­the­year­reaches­levels­no­more­than­25%­of­curriculum­specifications­ (needu,­2013;­2014a).­this­inefficient­pedagogy­lies­behind­the­country’s­poor­performance­ on­comparative­tests.­supporting­the­pirls­findings­reflected­in­table 1, an analysis of an assessment­undertaken­by­needu,­tells­us­that­the­large­majority­of­african­grade­5­children­ located in rural schools decode simple words at such a slow rate that they cannot understand what­ it­ is­ that­ they­are­reading­(draper­&­spaull,­2015).­the­ implications­are­ that­newly­ qualified­teachers­in­the­intermediate­and­even­the­senior­phase­will­be­required­to­identify­ and­remediate­reading­difficulties­experienced­by­up­to­half­the­class­in­many­schools.­are­ they being adequately prepared for this? 4. schools tend not to recruit and deploy primary school teachers according to subject specialisation the­assumption­among­most­principals­is­that­a­qualified­primary­school­teacher­can­teach­ any­subject.­as­a­result,­most­teachers­at­primary­level­will­be­required­to­teach­most­subjects,­ including maths and english, at some or other stage during their careers. this feature poses serious questions for the ite sector: can we realistically expect schools to be more efficiently­managed­in­the­near­future­or­should­we­be­preparing­primary­school­teachers­to­ be­knowledgeable­about­subject­content­and­pedagogy­in­the­most­important­disciplines?­ taylor thinking, language and learning in initial teacher education 19 5. how is ite addressing these conditions? how is the sector bridging the gap between the abilities that student teachers bring to ite and the­demands­of­the­schools­their­nqts­will­enter­on­graduation?­moreover,­in­the­first­instance,­ how­is­ite­developing­the­language­and­thinking­abilities­required,­first­for­the­development­ of­subject­expertise­and­second,­for­the­exercise­of­professional­judgement?­we­illustrate­ the­point­with­analysis­of­recent­saqmec­findings­and­examples­from­the­specifications­ concerning­the­curricula­for­primary­school­teachers­specialising­in­the­b.ed.­(intermediate­ phase­teaching)­offered­in­2012.­ one­item­of­good­news­in­this­regard­is­that,­when­the­sacmeq­teacher­test­results­ that­ measure­ teacher­ subject­ knowledge­ are­ disaggregated­ by­ age,­ teachers­ in­ the­ category 19 to 29 outperform their older colleagues by some margin; furthermore, teachers in this age cohort are better able to increase the mean performance of students (figure­1) (armstrong, 2015). figure 1: sacmeq­iii­teacher­language­test­scores­by­age source: armstrong, 2015 these­findings­are­significant­and­could­be­explained­in­one­of­two­ways.­younger­teachers­ may relate better to their students because they are closer in age to them than their older counterparts.­another­possibility­is­that­changes­to­pre-service­teacher­education­may­have­ left­teachers­who­qualified­under­the­new­university-based­system­better­equipped­to­teach.­ armstrong (2015) supports the second option, which implies that since the reorganisation of the­initial­teacher­education­terrain­around­2002,­newly­qualified­teachers­have­received­an­ education­better­suited­to­teaching­than­their­older­peers­who­completed­their­qualifications­ in the training colleges. armstrong’s­findings­are­a­welcome­item­of­news­for­a­sector­that­is­still­in­the­process­of­ addressing­the­very­serious­indictment­delivered­by­the­heqc­in­its­review­of­ite­programmes,­ published in 2010 (che, 2010). 20 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) one­component­of­the­initial­teacher­education­research­project­(iterp)­consisted­of­ examining­the­b.ed.­(intermediate­phase­teaching)­at­five­universities­offering­ite;­institutions­ were selected to ensure a spread across the main institutional types, distinguished by history under apartheid, academic or technical and geographic location. collectively they produced close to half of all south african teachers in 2014. in her analysis of the english curricula offered­to­students­specialising­in­the­intermediate­phase,­reed­(2014;­see­also­reed­and­ bowie,­this­volume)­notes­that,­in­recognition­of­the­poor­language­and­reasoning­skills­that­ students­bring­to­the­university,­all­but­one­of­the­iterp­sample­institutions­offers­academic­ literacy­to­student­teachers.­to­what­extent­do­these­programmes­address­the­difficulties­ most learners face in the reading, writing and reasoning skills demanded by professional knowledge­development,­given­the­low­levels­of­english­proficiency­they­bring­from­school?­ a­great­deal­has­been­written­on­this­subject­and­on­the­question­of­academic­development­ in general but it seems that this question is far from resolved (see, for example, che, 2013; lewin and mawoyo, 2014). table­3­provides­a­comparison­of­the­english­curricula­offered­to­b.ed.­students­specialising­ in the intermediate phase but not specialising as teachers of english, across the 5 (a to e) institutions­(see­paper­by­bowie­and­reed­in­this­issue­for­further­detail).­ table 3: proportion­of­b.ed.­degree­made­up­by­english­course­credits­for­ip­teachers elective a b c d e ip­english­specialists 120 (25%) 162­(34%) 72 (15%) 120 (25%) hl: 72 (15%) al: 5 (1%) ip­english­generalists 30­(6%) 28­(6%) 36­(7.5%) 24 (5%) hl:­28­(6%) fal:­29­(6%) al: 5 (1%) source: reed, 2014 the­ most­ striking­ feature­ of­ the­ table­ is­ the­ paucity­ of­ english­ offered­ to­ those­ student­ teachers­who­had­not­selected­to­specialise­as­english­teachers.­based­on­the­theoretical­ arguments about the nature of professional knowledge outlined above and given the poor levels­of­english­proficiency­demanded­by­the­school­curriculum,­it­would­seem­obvious­that­ most­students­would­benefit­greatly­from­intensive­courses­in­english­language­and­literature.­ these courses should explicitly seek to develop the sophisticated reasoning skills required for the acquisition and exercise of professional expertise. indeed, our theory predicts that intensive courses in english for all primary school teachers, focusing explicitly on higher order reasoning­in­verbal­and­written­communication,­is­likely­to­have­a­profoundly­positive­influence­ on the development of professional expertise among student teachers. in­ terms­ of­ the­ content­ of­ english­ courses­ offered­ to­ students­ specialising­ in­ english­ teaching­in­the­ip,­reed­found­low­levels­of­attention­paid­to­teaching­english­as­fal­and­ to understanding and applying appropriate pedagogies for teaching reading and writing (reed, 2014). teaching literacy is complex and challenging. what is evident from the data is­that­each­of­the­universities­in­the­study­approaches­this­‘topic’­differently­but­may­not­be­ doing enough to equip beginner teachers with the knowledge and skills to support struggling taylor thinking, language and learning in initial teacher education 21 readers on the one hand or to extend excellent readers on the other. the omission of any input on literature for children and adolescents at some institutions and the limited attention given to this important area in some others is also a cause for concern. since­ the­ heqc­ evaluation,­ the­ sector­ has­ seen­ a­ national teacher education summit, the publication of the integrated strategic planning framework for teacher education and development in south africa (ispftesa)­(dbe/dhet,­2011),­and­the­promulgation­of­two­ iterations of the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications­ (mrteq)­ (dhet,­2011;­2015).­as­is­the­case­with­the­evolution­of­the­school­curriculum­since­1994,­ these­developments­collectively­exhibit­a­drive­towards­more­precise­content­specification.­ thus, while the norms and standards for educators­(doe,­2000a;­2000b)­specified­only­that­ programmes­meet­some­or­other­combination­of­the­broadly­defined­seven­educator­roles3, mrteq,­while­relegating­the­seven­roles­to­an­appendix,­begins­to­explicate­the­knowledge­ and skills needed to meet the classroom demands faced by new teachers, as described in the previous section. in­terms­of­the­different­demands­of­mrteq,­all­ip­student­teachers­must­specialise­in­the­ teaching­of­two­languages­(comprising­home­language­teaching­in­one­of­the­official­languages­ and first additional english language teaching). they must also specialise in at least two other­subjects,­in­addition­to­having­a­sufficient­broad­background­knowledge­to­understand­ the­ requirements­ of­ all­ subjects­ in­ the­ intermediate­ phase­ curriculum­ (dhet,­ 2015:­ 24).­ furthermore, those who do not select mathematics as one of their teaching specialisations must nevertheless develop a good understanding of the fundamental mathematical concepts that­underpin­the­intermediate­phase­mathematics­curriculum­up­to­at­ least­nqf­level­5­ (ibid: 25). these­specifications,­if­carried­through­to­curricula­and­effective­programmes­should­more­ adequately­equip­ip­teachers­to­address­three­of­the­four­contextual­factors­faced­by­nqts­ entering primary schools, as described in the previous section. the odd one out is the teaching of­reading­and­writing.­mrteq­makes­no­explicit­mention­of­literacy­instruction­for­prospective­ intermediate­phase­(ip)­teachers,­a­curious­omission,­given­that­the­pirls­results­(table 1) and­all­subsequent­comparative­tests­clearly­indicate­that­the­large­majority­of­south­african­ grade­4­and­5­children­are­unable­to­read­and­comprehend­age-appropriate­texts­at­the­most­ elementary level. 6. conclusion returning to our main research question: to what extent are the universities providing the teachers required by the school system?­the­iterp­findings­quoted­above­indicate­glaring­ gaps­in­the­curricula­of­at­least­a­significant­proportion­of­the­sector­(taylor,­2014a).­this­is­the­ situation castigated by the che report in 2010 and which government is attempting to address through­the­mrteq­regulations.­all­universities­have­recently­completed­or­are­in­the­process­ of­doing­a­‘recurriculation’­exercise­in­response­to­mrteq.­ the foregoing discussion indicates that initial teacher education (ite) has a long way to­travel­in­order­to­close­the­gap­between­pre-mrteq­curricula,­on­the­one­hand­and­the­ 3­ specialist­in­a­phase,­subject­or­practice;­learning­mediator;­interpreter­and­designer­of­learning­ programmes and materials, leader, administrator and manager, scholar, researcher and lifelong learner, assessor and a community, citizenship and pastoral role. 22 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) demands of the school system and government regulations, on the other. the argument presented­in­the­present­paper­is­that­the­first­step­toward­putting­the­occupation­of­educating­ onto­a­firmer­professional­footing­would­be­to­pay­attention­to­the­professional­knowledge­base.­ how would this be translated into practice, for example, with respect to literacy instruction in the primary school? the question must be answered epistemologically (through the content of the curriculum) and strategically (in terms of procedure). the professional curriculum as we have argued, professional expertise consists of a combination of conceptual understanding­and­fit-for-purpose­action.­in­this­milieu,­reasoning­ability­ is­the­medium­of­ knowledge exchange, and english is the vehicle. however, what about the content? taking the example of literacy instruction, the following questions must be asked of the current state of professional knowledge: • do­we­have­a­coherent­ theory­of­ literacy­ instruction,­or­ is­ the­field­still­characterised­ by­name-calling­across­ ideological­barriers,­with­no­way­of­adjudicating­ the­claims­of­ competing assertions? • do­ we­ have­ shared­ knowledge­ of­ well-defined­ reading­ pedagogies­ derived­ from­ and­ feeding­ into­ the­ theory­ that­ are­ effective­ in­ suburban,­ township­ and­ rural­ schools­ in­ south africa? • are­newly­qualified­teachers­able­to­operationalise­this­into­professional­knowledge­to­ teach­reading­effectively?­ becoming professional according­to­our­theory,­teaching­cannot­be­classified­as­a­profession,­in­the­first­instance­ because practice is not reliably guided by a formal knowledge base. there are those who think that this is a good thing, that teaching is more of an art than a science, based largely on tacitly acquired routines (taylor, 2014b). according to this view, attempts to formalise the knowledge base would undermine teachers and inhibit the autonomy required to respond to a myriad of contingent situations, which arise daily in classrooms. others envisage the emergence of a theory of literacy instruction, for example, and associated pedagogical routines, the combination­of­which,­in­the­hands­of­competent­teachers,­are­effective­in­teaching­reading­in­ south african classrooms. would this not be the most important step the ite sector could take to­improve­the­state­of­school­and­post-school­learning­dramatically?­ there are two views about how an occupational grouping like teaching could become more professional. there are those who adopt what might be called an exogenous approach, which­assumes­professional­status­is­conferred­from­outside;­that­if­the­occupational­field­ of­teaching­were­treated­with­more­respect­and­not­subjected­to­so­much­monitoring­and­ testing, they would have more space to exercise their full creative potential and behave more professionally. i would argue that causality in this case works the other way around, that once­the­occupational­field­can­demonstrate­that­its­theories­point­to­practices,­which­are­ effective,­which­reliably­do­the­job­then­it­will­generate­the­kind­of­respect­accorded­members­ of high status professions. this is the endogenous approach: social trust in an occupation derives­from­the­ability­of­the­field­to­demonstrate­that­its­theories­and­practices­are­more­ effective­in­providing­a­particular­service­than­those­of­competing­groups.­the­first­marker­of­a­ taylor thinking, language and learning in initial teacher education 23 professional­field­of­labour­is­that­it­is­able­to­demonstrate­that­its­practices­are­relatively­more­ effective­than­those­of­the­competition.­ now,­it­is­one­thing­to­achieve­this­first­marker­with­respect­to­one­or­more­parts­of­the­field­ and certainly, we have a wide range of practices in ite, as table 3 amply shows. however, it is quite another to achieve it as part of a collective endeavour, across the entire sector. this is the second mark of a profession: there is consensus on best practices. the requirement is not uniformity – otherwise, there would be no possibility of innovation, even revolt and progress – but at least there should be broad convergence on a limited number of minimum sets of practice protocols and understanding them theoretically. the third characteristic of a profession is that its knowledge and practice standards are­maintained­and­jealously­guarded­by­practitioners­within­the­occupational­field,­not­by­ government. this is professional quality assurance, as opposed to bureaucratic managerialism. it­could­not­be­any­different,­since­only­adepts­within­a­field­have­the­expertise­to­judge­the­ value of new professional knowledge claims and to certify novice entrants into the profession. this is one of the most important features of the strong professions and again it is practised in­the­breach­in­the­teaching­sector.­in­addition,­under­these­conditions,­as­darling-hammond­ and hyler (2013: 1) have warned: the extent to which an occupation is micromanaged by rules from without is directly related to the extent to which it fails to maintain high, common standards of competence and professional practice finally,­ in­the­face­of­the­enormous­task­of­professionalising­the­field­of­teaching­and­ teacher education, which will be decades in the making, how can we make a start that has a good chance of success within a reasonable time horizon? i want to suggest that we take the­case­of­literacy­and­numeracy­and­commit­ourselves,­as­a­field,­to­developing­effective­ literacy­and­numeracy­programmes­for­pre-service­teacher­education­within­10­years.­this­ would require the participation of government, statutory bodies and the unions but i hope i have­made­a­convincing­case­that­the­initiative­should­be­led­by­the­ite­field.­strengthening­ the professional knowledge base of teaching, looking both inwardly to the development of disciplinary­theory­and­outwardly­to­the­field­of­practice,­is­a­prerequisite­for­developing­the­ kinds of content and pedagogic knowledge and skills required by new teachers. references abbott, a. 1988. the system of professions: an essay on the division of expert labor. chicago: university­of­chicago­press.­ armstrong,­p.­2015.­teachers­in­the­south­african­education­system:­an­economic­perspective. unpublished­phd­thesis.­stellenbosch:­university­of­stellenbosch.­ balfour,­r.­2012..­the­return­to­reading:­acquisition,­reading,­research­on­narrative­and­the­ implications for a multilingual pedagogy for higher education in south africa. alternation, 19(2),­190-210.­ besharati,­ n.­ &­ tsotsotso,­ k.­ 2015.­ in­ search­ for­ the­ education­ panacea:­ a­ systematic­ review­and­comparative­meta-analysis­of­ interventions­to­ improve­learner­achievement­ in­ south­africa.­unpublished­research­report.­johannesburg:­university­of­the­witwatersrand.­ 24 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) council on higher education (che). 2010. report on the national review of academic and professional programmes in education.­pretoria:­council­on­higher­education.­ council on higher education (che). 2013. a proposal for undergraduate curriculum reform in south africa: the case for a flexible curriculum structure. report of the task team on undergraduate curriculum structure.­pretoria:­council­on­higher­education.­ darling-hammond,­l.,­holtzman,­d.j.,­gatlin,­s.j.­&­heilig,­j.v.­2005.­does­teacher­prepa­ration­ matter?­ evidence­ about­ teacher­ certification,­ teach­ for­ america,­ and­ teacher­ effectiveness.­ education policy analysis archives, 13(42),­1-51.­http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/ epaa.v13n42.2005 darling-hammond,­ l.­ &­ hyler,­ m.­ 2013.­ the­ role­ of­ performance­ assessment­ in­ develo ping teaching as a profession. available at http://www.rethinkingschools.org/ archive/27_04/27_04_darling-hammond_hyler.shtml­[accessed­11­november­2015]. deák,­g.o.­2014.­interrelations­of­language­and­cognitive­development.­in­p.­brooks­&­v.­ kampe,­(eds.). encyclopaedia of language development. 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perlovsky,­l.­2009.­language­and­cognition.­ neural networks,­22,­247-257.­http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/j.neunet.2009.03.007 reed, y. 2014. report on english courses for intermediate phase student teachers at five universities. johannesburg: jet education services. available at www.jet.org.za [accessed 20­january­2016]. ryle, g. 1949. the concept of mind. london: hutchinson. shulman,­ l.­ 1986.­ those­ who­ understand:­ knowledge­ growth­ in­ teaching.­ educational researcher,­15(2),­4-14.­http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/0013189x015002004 taylor,­n.­2014a. an examination of aspects of the b.ed. curricula for intermediate phase teachers at five higher education institutions: summary report. johannesburg: jet educational services. taylor,­n.­2014b. knowledge­and­teacher­professionalism:­the­case­of­mathematics­teaching.­ in m. young & j. muller (eds.). knowledge, expertise and the professions. london: routledge. pp.­171-184. taylor,­ n.­ &­ muller,­ j.­ 2014.­ equity­ deferred:­ south­african­ schooling­ two­ decades­ into­ democracy.­in­j.v.­clark­(ed.).­closing the achievement gap from an international perspective: transforming stem for effective education. dordrecht:­ springer.­ pp.­ 1-13.­ http://dx.doi. org/10.1007/978-94-007-4357-1_13 taylor,­n.­&­taylor,­s.­2013.­teacher­knowledge­and­professional­habitus.­in­n.­taylor,­s.­ van­der­berg­&­t.­mabogoane.­creating effective schools: report of south africa’s national schools effectiveness study. cape­town:­pearson.­pp.­204-233. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neunet.2009.03.007 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.neunet.2009.03.007 http://www.jet.org.za http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/0013189x015002004 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4357-1_13 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-4357-1_13 26 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) teacher education ministerial advisory group. 2014. action now: classroom ready teachers. available at http://www.studentsfirst.gov.au/teacher-education-ministerial-advisory-group [accessed­11­march­2015]. wedekind,­v.­2013.­nsc pass requirements: a discussion document for umalusi on the nsc pass mark.­pretoria:­umalusi. winch, c. 2014. know-how, knowledge and professional education. in m. young & j. muller (eds.). knowledge, expertise and the professions.­london:­routledge.­pp.­47-60. young, m. & muller, j. 2014a. (eds.). knowledge, expertise and the professions. london: routledge. young, m. & muller, j. 2014b. from the sociology of professions to the sociology of professional knowledge. in young and muller (eds.). knowledge, expertise and the professions. london: routledge.­pp.­3-17. http://www.studentsfirst.gov.au/teacher-education-ministerial-advisory-group _goback _ref402326591 _ref437457268 _enref_11 1perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 editorial: reflecting on 16 years of freedom in south african education — from hopeless to hopeful? k o b u s m a r ee faculty of education, university of pretoria, south a frica t he first issue of pie for 2010 is also the first general issue of the year. as usual, the interested reader will find a captivating collection of national, international, transdisciplinary and interdisci plinary contributions. careful scrutiny, however, will quickly reveal a golden thread running through all these contributions, namely, the education perspective. t o a greater or lesser extent, all the con tributions deal with matters pertaining to the field of education. w hereas, separately, these con tributions represent the fruits of hard work and dedication, together, they provide an imposing collection of perspectives on important issues in the science of education, including the pivotal issues of discovering a pedagogy of hope, mathematics education, inclusion in our classrooms, as pects of religion, as well as developing valid and reliable systems to monitor school and learner achievement. as has been customary for contributors to pie over the years, the authors have posi tioned their contributions in quantitative and (predominantly) qualitative research traditions in their efforts to shed light and proffer perspective on postmodern educational phenomena. having iden tified gaps or silences in the field and literature, they succeed in addressing these silences satis factorily. o ur contributors are attached to different institutions in south africa and abroad, and the authorship is therefore diverse in terms of gender, age, institution, and nationality. w e are particu larly pleased about the number of international contributions, as well as consistent evidence of the rising percentage of younger (and older!) black writers who have selected pie as their publication outlet of choice. w hat can the reader expect in this issue? in the leading contribution, searching for a “pedagogy of hope”: teacher education and the social sciences, m ichael samuel (2010) analyses module outlines within a particular school of social sciences in a faculty of education. unsurprisingly, he uncovers the evolving systems of teaching social sciences in a teacher education curriculum and reveals that a new language around social sciences is still in the early stages of development. samuel (2010) contends that the social sciences in teacher education tend to capitulate to external dominant forces and that little evidence exists of engaging with a critical discourse around the potential of teacher education. t his results in a perpetuation of an applied science notion of professional growth. in samuel’s (2010) own words: t he paper offers a way to develop a so called “creole” or language disco urse around the social sciences in general and for teacher education in particular. t his is compelling reading for all readers searching for a pedagogy of hope! in our second contribution, im plem enting a multi faith religious education curriculum in botswana junior secondary schools, b aamphatlha d inama (2010) draws from case studies of four religious education (re ) teachers and explores ways in which re teachers understand and implement a multi faith religious education curriculum in b otswana junior secondary schools. in attempting to gauge the teachers’ understanding and classroom practices, d inama adopts the concept of the teachers’ professional knowledge landscape as espoused by clandinin and connelley (1995). t he themes that emerge from the data (pedagogical and content knowledge, assessment, mentoring and collaboration) appear curiously familiar. readers who deal with multi faith religious education should find the article interesting. t he teaching and learning of mathematics remains high on the agenda of professionals working in the field, be they policy makers, education authorities or mathematics teachers. our third contri bution should therefore be of interest to all these colleagues. w hereas much research has been conducted on the role and importance of visualisation in many fields, little has been done to extend 2 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 its role to mathematics education in particular. likewise, whereas much research has been done on the importance of critical thinking, little has been done to investigate the hypothesis that visuali sation is a significant aspect of critical thinking. in the role of visualisation in developing critical thinking in m athem atics, antonia m akina (2010) investigates visualisation and examines its role in developing critical thinking for a better understanding of mathematics by grade 9 learners. quite expectedly, m akina identifies several visualisation roles and concludes that visualisation encourages critical thinking and, in turn, leads to a better understanding of data handling. t he early reading process can be viewed through a triad ic lens, encompassing the child, the parents and the environment, and our next study examines the impact of each of these three compo nents on children’s participation in home reading activities as perceived by their parents. ensa johnson, juan b ornman and e rna alant (2010), in their article entitled p arents’ perceptions of hom e reading activities: com paring children with and without learning disability, analyse data obtained from a questionnaire completed by parents of g rade 1 children with and without learning disability. concluding that children’s responses, during story book reading and their engagement in indepen dent reading, differ, the authors also show that children in their study without learning disability are more involved in the reading process and in independent reading than children with learning dis abilities. t he authors justifiably deduce that teachers need to encourage parents of grade 1 children to continue to engage actively in reading activities with their children, even when their children have become independent readers, and should also assist them in the selection of appropriate reading material. professionals working in the field of inclusive education, in particular, should benefit from reading the results of this study. in the fifth contribution, teacher ratings of academ ic achievement of children between six and twelve years old from intact and non intact fam ilies, lep ho disa m olepo, levison m aunganidze, pilot m udhovozi and t holene sodi (2010) investigate teacher rating of the impact of parental divorce on the academic achievement of children between 6 and 12 years old for up to 12 months after their p arents have divorced. results reveal that the academic performance of children from non intact families within the age range of 6 to 9 was inferior to that of their counterparts from intact families. t he findings seem to suggest that the experience of parental divorce has a negative impact on children’s academic achievement. in an age when divorce rates are ever increasing, and against the framework of an alarming rise in the number of single parent families, the findings in this article deserve careful scrutiny and consideration by educators at all levels. it is common knowledge that the successful implementation of inclusive education relies hea vily on educators’ dedication and efforts. it is little wonder because inclusive education is based on values such as human dignity, equality, human rights and freedom; values which lie at the very heart of our constitution. in the sixth contribution, educators’ experiences of inclusive learning contexts: an exploration of com petencies, ishmael m agare, ansie kitching and v era roos (2010), while acknowledging the complexity of the interactive relationships between different systems, such as learners, educators, families, schools and the learning context, apply an eco systemic perspective to an exploration of the experiences of educators in ‘ordinary’ schools regarding challenges expe rienced in inclusive learning contexts on the one hand, and identify the competencies they use to deal with some of these challenges, on the other. t he results reveal various educator assets, in cluding competencies that enable them to support learners and form collaborative relationships in an inclusive learning environment. t his study potentially has implications for departments of educa tion and school management teams and merits study by these professionals. contrary to what one might expect, despite the popularity of adventure based activities in a country such as south africa, few studies appear to have been conducted on the topic. in the seventh article, a dolescents’ perceptions of an adventure based program m e, ronel bosch and m arietjie o swald (2010) explore the perceptions of youth regarding their wilderness rites of passage expe rience and its value in their lives. o perating in an interpretive/constructivist paradigm and employ ing a qualitative research methodology and content analysis, the authors argue that participation in a wilderness rites of passage programme can contribute to the personal growth and development of youth at risk of experiencing or manifesting emotional or behavioural difficulties in schools and can contribute significantly towards school support for young people. 3perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 n umerous authors have argued consistently that reform and improvement are imperative in the current south african education system, and that the monitoring of school and learner achievement is essential for establishing praxis for such improvement. it is, however, a well known fact that our diversity of culture and the complexity of having 11 official languages make it difficult to develop valid monitoring systems. developing new monitoring systems for all official languages is being hampered by, among other things, limited resources, time constraints and the need to redress the neglect of large sections of the education infrastructure during the apartheid era. in the eighth article, finding the best fit: the adaptation and translation of the p erform ance indicators for prim ary schools for the south african context, elizabeth archer, v anessa scherman, robert coe and sarah h owie (2010) deal with the adaptation and translation of existing international monitoring instru ments as alternative solutions to developing new monitoring systems and investigate how to balance these different processes to create instruments which provide valid data for educational decisions. speaking from personal experience, i can confirm the crucial importance of the issues debated here. for various reasons, researchers in the social sciences frequently encounter problems in gleaning information when dealing with topics that are deemed ‘sensitive’ in and by school manage m ent. p rincipals, for instance, often regard certain issues, e.g. issues of race and religion, as sen sitive, and are reluctant to discuss them with researchers. in the last article, identifying sensitive issues in education in lim popo province, south africa, azwidohwi k utame and m uofhe m ulaudzi (2010) report on an investigation into such sensitive issues in limpopo province and discuss some of the reasons why principals regard them as sensitive. t he authors conclude that certain biogra phical characteristics are significant mediators in principals’ perceptions of sensitive issues in school management and suggest that researchers should consider methodological issues that may influence the investigation so that understanding and giving voice and visibility is not jeopardized when they wish to elicit information on ‘sensitive’ issues. as you know by now, after close consultation between the rector of the u niversity of the free state, professor jonathan jansen, and the d ean of the faculty of e ducation, u niversity of pretoria, professor irma eloff, a decision has been taken to relocate the pie offices to the faculty of edu cation, university of the free state, from 1 april 2010. t his development will facilitate an exciting opportunity for capacity building in the u niversity of the free state faculty of education (pie’s new home). t he new editor in chief will be d ennis francis (dean of e ducation, u fs, pie@ ufs.ac.za), and the new pie administrator jaco van der m erwe. w e thank you sincerely for your support over the past ten years and trust that you will continue to support pie. w e wish all of you the best in your continued efforts to ensure that pie remains a top flight scholarly journal in the field of education, not only in africa but, indeed, globally. as always, we call on researchers and academics to submit contributions to pie to stimulate debate and advance scholarship o n education in south africa, and to help us expand the existing network of scholars in south africa, the sad c region, and elsewhere in the world. w e conclude by thanking everybody involved in the editorial and publishing process for their contributions. o ur editorial board, our co editor, jonathan jansen, our copy editors, cecilia du t oit and c arol van der w esthuizen, our publishing editor, erna k insey, our statistics editor, suria ellis, our books editor, everard w eber, and our editorial secretary, m oipone w illiams (a special word of appreciation is extended to her predecessor, renette k eet, who contributed significantly to the journal’s growth between 2001 and 2008) deserve a special word of thanks for their help and dedi cation. w e also wish to request colleagues to make themselves available to review articles and to submit their reviews within the time allocated for this pivotal task. w e realise that reviewing manuscripts is a selfless task undertaken by those who have the interests of colleagues, the journal and the wider scholarly community at heart. w e accordingly extend a sincere word of thanks to everyone who has reviewed articles for pie over the past ten years. your support is indeed greatly appreciated. enjoy reading this issue of pie. k obus m aree 4 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 references archer e, scherman v, coe r & howie sj 2010. finding the best fit: the adaptation and translation of the performance indicators for primary schools for the south african context. perspectives in education, 28:77 88. bosch r & oswald m 2010. adolescents’ perceptions of an adventure based programme. perspectives in education, 28:64 76. clandinin dj & connelley fm 1995. teachers’ professional knowledge landscapes. new york: teachers college press. dinama b 2010. implementing a multi faith religious education curriculum in botswana junior secondary schools. perspectives in education, 28:16 23. johnson e, bornman j & alant e 2010. parents’ perceptions of home reading activities: comparing children with and without learning disability. perspectives in education, 28:34 43. kutame ap & mulaudzi mp 2010. identifying sensitive issues in education in limpopo province, south africa. perspectives in education, 28:89 97. magare i, kitching ae & roos v 2010. educators’ experiences of inclusive learning contexts: an exploration of competencies. perspectives in education, 28:52 63. makina a 2010. the role of visualisation in developing critical thinking in mathematics. perspectives in education, 28:24 33. molepo ls, maunganidze l, mudhovozi p & sodi t 2010. teacher ratings of academic achievement of children between six and twelve years old from intact and non intact families. perspectives in education, 28:44 51. samuel m 2010. searching for a “pedagogy of hope”: teacher education and the social sciences. perspectives in education, 28:5 15. 49 child participation in school governance: the case of prefects at a primary school in lesotho pholoho morojele university of kwazulu-natal nithi muthukrishna university of kwazulu-natal this paper draws on literature that has theorised child participation within the sociology of childhood framework to examine how children participate in governance within school spaces. four children aged between 13 and 17 (in grades six and seven) who serve as prefects at a primary school in lesotho were participants in this study. data was collected through a focus group interview and individual semi-structured interviews. the findings of the study indicate that authentic participation of children is limited in the school context. one of the key barriers to participation seems to be a hierarchical and authoritarian school management style. the ethos of control, discipline and authority stifles the process of child participation at the school. the main role of the prefects appears to be ‘policing’ and ‘reporting’ to the school hierarchy. children’s pursuit of authentic participation denotes that they construct themselves as active social agents, deserving meaningful participation in school governance. the conclusion points to the need to raise critical consciousness for teachers and school management to interrogate their own ideologies about children and childhood, and to challenge the authoritarian hierarchy of school management which impedes children’s meaningful participation. keywords: child participation, lesotho, children’s voice and agency, school governance introduction in recent years, three important trends converged to give impetus on the rights of the child in society. firstly, the united nations general assembly unanimously adopted the convention on the rights of the child (uncrc) on 20 november 1989 (unicef, 1989). it came into force on september 2nd in 1990 and has been ratified by all but two countries of the 193 un member states (those two being somalia and the usa) throughout the early 1990s. this new focus within the uncrc led to a paradigm shift within the sociology of childhood in thinking about children, young people and childhood. children are now seen as competent social actors and agents of their own lives, entitled to have a voice, and to take part in public forums and in decisions affecting their lives (mayall, 2002; wyness, 1999). davis & edwards (2004) explain that this shift challenges the dominant discourse that constructs children and young people as having inadequate knowledge or competence to be participants in decision-making in society. secondly, it has been widely acknowledged that the uncrc has served as a catalyst organisation for the focus on child participation in all matters affecting the child and in a range of social and cultural contexts and institutions (for example, mcneish & gill, 2006). pufall & unsworth (2004) explain that the uncrc represents children as full human beings with an identity of their own and as individuals who should be respected as independent citizens. article 12 of the convention states that in order for children to be able to express their views, it is necessary for adults to create the opportunities for them to do so. thirdly, as skelton (2007) explains, the uncrc introduced the right to ‘participation’ as the third p, alongside ‘provision’ and ‘protection’ as key rights of children. since then, child participation has been a subject of much debate among professionals and organisations working with children. a large body of theoretical and practice-based literature has emerged to support and develop children’s participation in organisations and institutions (for example, arnott, 2008; hart, 2008). many international and national 50 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 children’s organisations and initiatives have incorporated the concept of child participation in their objectives and policy documents (lesotho ngo coalition, 2000; unicef, 2006). since the adoption of the un convention on the rights of the child (uncrc) ‘child participation’ has been the subject of numerous development projects and academic research initiatives (lansdown, 2001). in the next section, we examine in some depth the concept ‘child participation’, drawing on recent literature. conceptualising child participation a review of literature on the aspect of ‘child participation’ suggests that theorising ‘participation’ has proved to be a complex task. rampal (2008) asserts that the concept ‘child participation’ has held diverse connotations. however, there is agreement that child participation is one of the fundamental rights of children embedded in the in the united nations convention on the rights of the child (unicef, 2006). brady (2007) explains that broadly child participation means engaging children in decisions that affect their lives, their community and the larger society. it involves supporting children to develop their own views, to think for themselves and to express their views effectively. voice and agency are two key concepts embedded in the new sociology of childhood framework (mayall, 2002). these two principles enhance children’s capability of contributing to society as active citizens. voice refers to “that cluster of intentions, hopes, grievances, and expectations that children guard as their own” (pufall & unsworth, 2004: 8), and agency suggests that children are capable of independent thinking and are self-determining actors who can contribute to enhancing their lives. to put it simply, agency is how children articulate their voice. smith (2007) explains that if one considers children to have participation rights, then the concept of children as agents and social actors has to be embraced. there have been diverse perspectives on the goals of children’s participation. sinclair (2004) has suggested the following: to protect children’s rights; to adhere to legal responsibilities; to improve services; to enhance decision-making; to promote the protection of children; to empower, which means building their self-esteem and skills to enable active citizenship. matthews (2003) provides three alternative arguments based on education for citizenship, on fitting young people into society, and on strengthening young people’s status in relation to adults. consequently, the goal to achieve transformation of children’s lives seems to be a critically important one. this relates to granting children experience of participation so that they can learn new skills, acquire confidence and build networks and relationships (o’kane, 2007). thomas (2007) also differentiates between participation in collective decision-making and participation in decisions about children’s individual lives. arnott (2008) contends that there is a need to consider participation in terms of individual rights and collective rights. she suggests that if the goal of participation is development then it should focus on the child’s individual rights. hinton (2008), however cautions that if participation is tokenistic, it can reduce collective action. arnott (2008) stresses that engagement between children and the public always involves power, and there is a need to examine the links between power and participation. she also argues that unequal relations between adults and children will impact on the quality of decision-making and involvement. in addition, arnott draws a distinction between ‘full participation’ where every individual has equal power to shape decisions, and ‘partial participation’ where individuals may have an influence but the decision rests with others. various factors have been cited as impacting the authentic participation of children, including adult conceptions of childhood, for example, views about children’s competence, concerns that children have to be protected from too much responsibility, institutional cultures and structures that are not child friendly, and a lack of skills on the part of adults for interacting with children (moses, 2008; wyness, 2005). such factors limit children’s meaningful participation in society’s structures especially schools. many scholars and researchers are now recognising that it is a child’s intrinsic right to participate and that this participation should not be regarded as tokenism. literature suggests that many organisations and initiatives face challenges in moving from principled policy-based support for children’s participation to embedding that commitment in everyday practice. there are not only structural barriers but also biases that emanate that result from dominant understandings of childhood (hinton, 2008). often ‘adult agendas’ prevail, in that children are not accorded power in 51morojele & muthukrishna — child participation in school governance decisionmaking, due to the tendency of a top-down and adult-orientated approach to children’s matters. sinclair (2004) notes that in practice participation is often used simply to mean being listened to or consulted, rather than being given the opportunity to engage in active participation. pavlovic (2001) has criticised the children’s parliaments in slovenia on the basis that they tend to be representative rather than participatory. in addition, children produce socially expected responses, adult messages are dominant, and there is a lack of effective feedback mechanisms. begg (2004) explains that children’s councils in norway are criticised for not operating on children’s terms. there is lack of recognition of children and young people as democratic agents, who have the potential to have an impact on governance structures. an interesting theme that emerges in literature may be referred to as the protection versus participation debate. the discourse of protection implies the construction of children as dependent on adults and in need of care. in this debate the argument is that children’s need for protection (by adults, from adults) would be compromised if they gain more access to social, economic and political resources (hinton, 2008). in response to this, scholars argue that protection and the promotion of participation are supposed to be interactive and interrelated concepts, not opposite and irreconcilable categories. the challenge is to balance protection and participation. furthermore, participation and autonomy are not the result of children’s individual, isolated actions but they are social processes in which both adults and children are engaged. a network of relationships may empower children to gain in decision-making skills and selfexpression (hinton, 2008). in light of the above discussion on child participation, we undertook a study on child participation in governance within school spaces. there is a paucity of empirical research emanating from the african context that examines ways in which children are participating in public forums and structures. it is hoped that this article will contribute to theoretical and practice-focused debates on children’s participation more generally. the aim of the study was to examine child participation as it played out in the ‘school prefects’ governance structure at a primary school in lesotho. specifically, we sought to explore the following research questions: what form has child participation taken at the primary school? what has it meant to children involved, and for the school as an institution? research method and design a qualitative research design was employed to examine the participation of school prefects in school governance at a primary school in lesotho. context of the study and participants the study was conducted in lesotho. lesotho is a country whose population stands at 2,130,819, 34% of whom are children between ages 0-14 years (index mundi, 2010). children’s rights are protected by law in lesotho. the government of lesotho has ratified a number of international instruments which protect the rights of children, including the un convention on the rights of the child, the african charter on the rights and welfare of the child, international labour organisation (ilo) convention 138 on the minimum age for employment, and ilo convention 182 on the worst forms of child labour. lesotho is also a signatory to the millennium declaration, which was adopted by all 189 un member states in september 2000. the lesotho child protection and welfare bill is highly commended in many countries as the legislation that covers all issues and challenges that pertain to children better than any other child legislation bill in africa (staff member, afrol, 2008). by definition lesotho recognises anyone below the age of 18 as a child. according to the lesotho council of non-governmental organisations (lcn, 2009) child participation in lesotho is limited. it has been argued that this may be because lesotho is a cultural state and that it upholds its cultural values. certain of these values prohibit the participation of children in important matters in the country (lesotho council of non-governmental organisations (lcn, 2009). 52 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 the research site was a primary school selected through convenience sampling. the authors (of this article) had over the years developed a good relationship with the school through previous interactions with the principal and one of the teachers. four children (grade six and seven) who serve as prefects at this primary school participated. internationally, it is evident that prefects work with and for the school community to ensure that the school is a well run organisation. school prefects play an important role in the day-to-day running of the school. they are role models for the school and are generally selected jointly by teachers and learners. their roles may include: monitoring learners’ behaviour during school breaks, assisting with school functions, ensuring that learners are adhering to school rules, and assisting in school safety programmes. a prefect is also expected to support and advise their peers, ensure that discipline codes are adhered to, and liaise with school staff on an ongoing basis (see oduro, 2007). data collection process data was collected through one focus group interview as well as individual semi-structured interviews with four school prefects. the interviews were conducted in sesotho. these interviews were designed to prompt the prefects to discuss aspects of their lives related to the nature of participation in the school governance, their experiences of participation, as well as possibilities for and barriers to participation within the school context. ethical considerations informed consent to conduct the study was obtained from the school principal, and the four prefects who participated. informed consent was also sought from the parents of the four participating prefects. the school and students were assured of anonymity and confidentiality. students were given a detailed explanation about the underlying intentions of the research. children were told that their participation was voluntary and that they had the power to end participation at any time during the research. data analysis data was transcribed and translated into english. coding involved identifying broad categories that described the nature of child participation. both emic and etic categories were defined. emic categories represented insider’s views such as terms, actions, and explanations that were distinctively related to child participation. the aim was to represent the situation from the participants’ perspective. etic categories represented the researchers’ interpretations, concepts, and explanations drawn from our review of the literature or our personal research experiences (ramsuran & lurwengu, 2008). the second phase of data analysis involved theorising the coded data in search of themes that would exemplify the situated nature of child participation in the context of the school. the findings of the study overall, the study revealed various limits and tensions within child participation processes related to the prefect structure at the school. three key themes that emerged are discussed below. child participation: on whose terms? the study revealed that the school has an authoritarian and hierarchical ethos and a culture of control and regulation which without doubt impacts on the day-to-day experiences of the school prefects. harber (2002) asserts that owing to the origins of mass schooling as a form of social control, the predominant form of schooling internationally tends to be authoritarian with learners having little control or power over the school curriculum or school organisation. the main characteristic of authoritarian relationships is the perceived right of teachers to punish, control and maintain order in the traditional school setting. comments by students in the study suggest that the hierarchical culture at the school shapes the attitudes 53morojele & muthukrishna — child participation in school governance held by teachers and school management towards children. the prefects are not accorded power in final decision-making as reflected in the responses of the prefects interviewed: we do not meet. we take directives about what they have to do from the office, and from the teachers. there is no time when we gather together to discuss. the work of the prefects is to see that they help teachers with school work such as see that sports is done – and inform the office about things that learners are not happy about, also to organise entertainment in the school… to see to it that learners do not complain about teachers. the complaints must go to the office through the prefects. prefects are nominated from all classes and the names appointed are given to the teachers who select those who have to be prefects. the rules for learners are set by us and we show the teachers what we wrote, the teacher takes them to the principal to edit them. child participation appears to be adult led with the prefects playing a limited part in decision-making. they have no idea what happens when information is passed on to the next authority figure in the hierarchy. there are no channels for feedback to prefects. this raises questions about the ideologies and conceptions of childhood held by school management and teachers. it does appear that the adults have normative conceptions of children. thus, children are not perceived to be social actors who have the competence to make a meaningful contribution to school governance. the prefects’ responses suggest there is an over-emphasis on the end products of participation, for example, on submitting documents and complaints to teachers or to the ‘office’. thomas (2007) points out that in child participation initiatives, there is often a tension related to whether the importance of ‘participation’ lies in the processes involved or in its outcomes. in this particular school context, findings suggest that examining the processes may help participants focus on the power relations involved. in pursuit of authentic participation, learners voiced their unhappiness with the quality of participation they experienced in the school as prefects. they understood that they are a part of school governance and yet are excluded from decision-making and their opinions are not valued. they clearly have views and opinions about issues that concern them. their responses also suggest that they do have agency and that they want to be acknowledged and have their voices heard: we would want teachers to not hold back learners in class during play time as a punishment. they should remember that as children we like to utilise that time. apart from that, we need autonomy to fully run the prefect organisation, meet and plan our work and what we need to do, deal with learners’ issues by ourselves. if we need help we will then ask from teachers and the principal. also the teachers must make follow up on our work because other prefects after being selected no longer do their duties. if there could be a suggestion box, the principal and teacher will understand what we want and what other learners would like to see change. the other thing is that we do not meet as prefects to discuss and decide on learners’ problems. always when they have problems we forward those to the teachers or principal without discussing them as prefects or even attempting to solve them. teachers decide for us, if we had power to conclude on matters that arise and give to the teachers what we had decided on; that will make our work easier. also we need some incentives for we compromise our studies for prefect duties. we think this will motivate us. things like certificates … so that wherever you go, you will be known to have the leadership skills. in the above excerpts it becomes evident that the children are actively claiming spaces for fuller participation. shier (2001) suggests the following levels of authentic participation: children’s voices are heard, they are given space to make their views known and they are a part of decision-making processes. children should also be allowed to share power and responsibility for decision-making. moses (2008) argues that children are competent and that they have always participated in the home, in families, in 54 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 school, and in communities. however, there is limited acknowledgement of such participation by the adults in this school context. one of the reasons for this may be related to how those in power construct children and childhood. pressures on children’s participation in the study, the data revealed tensions experienced by the children in their engagement with teachers and school management, and with their peers. children’s comments in both the focus group and individual interviews suggested that there were occasions when they felt pressured and constrained in their work. they at times also felt intimidated and manipulated. the critical incident related below illustrates this: there was a time when grade seven learners were not happy with their teachers claiming that they are behind and requesting teachers to teach them during winter holidays. the teachers wanted the children to pay them extra money for that work. the learners argued that teachers are the one who did not keep up the pace so they should teach them for free. this nearly caused a strike. as prefects we had to intervene. the learners wrote their concerns and we handed them to the principal. it was evident that children did not have the capacity to deal with the student-teacher crisis in question which in reality was an issue for school management to handle rather than the school prefects alone. the study also found that children experience tensions when carrying out certain roles assigned to them by teachers. the prefects face challenges especially when their collective interests as students at the school are at stake. certain children alluded to the fact that their safety was in jeopardy. at the school, prefects are expected to engage in acts of ‘policing’ for teachers. one of their roles is to write down the names of children who speak sesotho at school. this is in contravention of a school rule which states that english is the only language to be spoken on the school premises. if the rule is violated, students are punished. when we have to write down learners who speak sesotho, the older children beat us. o’toole (2008) points out that participation cannot be genuine if children do not understand the consequences of their involvement in institutional structures. he stresses that there are complex ethical issues that need to be considered in the participation process. the most important issue relates to the protection of the child – a key right in the uncrc. ackerman et al. (2003) explain that protection requires a focus on the issue of power relations between children and children, and adults and children. this suggests that child participation initiatives need to include careful monitoring and evaluation elements, and these have to be tested against the rights embedded in the uncrc. the question to ask is: is the children’s participation in their best interests and are their rights protected? children should not be pressured or made to feel manipulated within school structures. furthermore, in the critical incident recounted above, children were not involved in the resolution of the crisis. dhakal (2009) asserts that often child participation is adultcentric. children are manipulated and given roles to play while adults hold complete authority. a process of dialogue, transparency and accountability needs to be built into child participation initiatives so children can develop further knowledge and skills to be active participants. they need to learn various skills, for example, understanding why specific options are followed, or why particular decisions are made. conclusion the study highlights that involving children in school governance is a complex task. a key issue that emerges is the importance of raising awareness and a critical consciousness amongst teachers and school management around the dynamics of child participation. first and foremost, there is a critical need for adults to interrogate their own ideologies about children and childhood. clacherty and donald (2007) explain that it may be a challenge for adults to understand and support processes to empower children when they are not aware of what participation entails. they would need to understand that child participation often involves challenging children’s traditional ideologies about children and childhood, and examining the relationships of power between adults and children. 55morojele & muthukrishna — child participation in school governance many scholars have drawn attention to a greater need for micro-level, situated understandings of participation initiatives structures and spaces (hinton, 2008; bray & moses, 2011; sonn, santens & ravau, 2011). questions to ask are: what dominant discourses of children and childhood influence participation practices and processes? is children’s agency a central focus? is the participation of children active and visible? what are the barriers to child participation? what factors support child participation? are children’s voices truly heard and listened to? is there a need for organisational change to ensure authentic participation? are there effective feedback, monitoring and evaluation mechanisms in place? are children being empowered through their participation? these questions are crucial to transformation in the school context as researched in this study. acknowledgements the authors wish to express their gratitude to the following: the commonwealth scholarship commission (united kingdom), national manpower development 1. secretariat (lesotho) and the spencer fellowship grant (university of kwazulu-natal) for financially supporting the study on which this article is based. references ackermann l, feeny t, hart j & newman j 2003. understanding & evaluating children’s participation a review of contemporary literature. london: plan international. arnott m a 2008. a space for children? international journal of children’s rights, 16: 355–36. begg i 2004. participation rights in norway. in: d crimmens & a west (eds), having their say – young people and participation: european experiences. lyme regis: russell house. brady b 2007. developing children’s participation: lessons from a participatory it project. children & society, 21: 31–41. bray r & moses s 2011. children and participation in south africa: exploring the landscape. perspectives in education, 29 (1): 6-17. clacherty g & donald d 2007. child participation in research: reflections on ethical challenges in the southern african 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mitchell relebohile moletsane globally, the digital is encroaching, reformulating, and recreating spaces in contemporary society (kalantzis-cope & gherab-martin, 2010). this is so in south africa with the various applications of the digital having their roots in different places and spaces. historically, we can look back to the development of portable video technology in the late 1960s in canada. organised through the national film board of canada, a group of filmmakers initiated a new approach to documentary film production, engaging communities themselves in the process of filmmaking (rusted, 2010). the fogo method, as it came to be called (named after fogo island, newfoundland, where it was first used), was part of the challenge for change/ société nouvelle program. it brought together government, filmmakers, activists, and communities to address poverty through documentary film production and distribution (baker, waugh & winton, 2010). it is worth noting that the fogo method of participatory video was transported to south africa in the late 1970s (cain, 2009). this work became a significant part of anti-apartheid activism, especially in the eastern and western cape (pers. comm. lou haysom). as cain (2003) writes in her doctoral study of participatory video that focuses on housing, water, and sanitation in communities in eastern cape: challenge for change delegates came to south africa in the late 1970s and met with anti-apartheid community activists and leaders to promote their approach to filmmaking. as recounted by maingard, this visit “had a significant impact on the development of south african documentary filmmaking” (1998, p. 35) and resulted in canadian funds being given to initiate the community video resource association (cvra) at the university of cape town, which later naydene de lange nelson mandela metropolitan university faculty of education naydene.delange@nmmu. ac.za claudia mitchell mcgill university faculty of education department of integrated studies in education claudia.mitchell@mcgill.ca relebohile moletsaneuniversity kwazulu-natal school of education moletsaner@ukzn.ac.za perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 2 became independent and was re-named community video education trust (cvet), still in operation today. (103) four decades later, new media technology has become more accessible, more personal, and more connected through digital communication networks (graham, laurier, o’brien & rouncefield, 2011) and social media, with mobile technology playing a key role, particularly in sub-saharan africa. as buckingham and willett (2009) observe in their work which carefully traces the evolution of video culture taking into account the various iterations of the camcorder, these developments have important implications especially for those studying youth culture and working with young people, and in the context of a diy (do it yourself) media culture. but, as the various contributors to this issue of perspectives in education highlight, these developments have important implications for educational research such as bridging the digital divide, particularly in lower and middle income countries where access to digital resources and services, and human capacity to take advantage of them, are scarce (world bank, 2013). additionally, we need to consider the role that formal and informal education (with teachers, young people, and communities) needs to play in a digital age. such participatory visual methods and tools as photovoice, digital storytelling, participatory video and cellphilming, digital animation, and digital archiving have the potential to alter how we conduct research, with whom, for what purposes, and for which outcomes. this special issue focuses on the possibilities and challenges that this technology is bringing to researchers to engage teachers, learners, community members, departments of education, and governments in educational research. the fundamental question asked in the issue is this: “how can the digital spaces afforded by new media technology and social media be used to address issues in educational research?” the issue seeks to facilitate dialogue among researchers who explore digital spaces so as to gain deeper and more critical insight into the possibilities of taking up research in such spaces. it looks at how digital spaces afforded by new media technology and social media contribute to addressing issues in education. the exploration of ways in which researchers are using portable digital devices such as cellular phones, ipads, digital cameras and so on, in their work is carried out along a consideration of how these technologies, in turn, address issues of educational access and success in resource-poor settings in particular. it examines the possibilities and challenges of visual methodologies, including ethical challenges, in addressing issues in education in digital spaces and looks at the implications of exploring digital spaces in policy development in the context of education, and at the potential of digital spaces to reveal gender-, class-, place-, and race-based inequities and inequalities and how educational research focused on digital spaces might address these inequities. it considers how educational research in digital spaces might influence teacher education and how the latter might influence the former along with an exploration of the potential democratizing features of research in digital spaces for youth and community members. universities taking steps to become digital are discussed along with the implications involved in rural-based learners accessing higher education. critical perspectives on digital spaces in educational research naydene de lange, claudia mitchell & relebohile moletsane 3 this special issue offers ten articles from both local and international scholars. all the articles, except one, draw on fieldwork undertaken in south africa, in rural and urban areas, with primary school children, secondary school children, and with both pre-service and in-service teachers. the issue begins with an article that interrogates the very nature of power in working with the digital in participatory visual research. using visual participatory methods does not in itself address power imbalances in the research process, as casey burkholder, mona makramalla, ehaab abdou, nazeeha khoja, and fatima khan in their article, “why study power in digital spaces anyway? considering power and participatory visual methods” point out. building on the work of key theorists, henry giroux, bell hooks, michel foucault, and paulo friere, the authors explore how the operation of power dynamics in the use of drawing, photovoice, and participatory video using cellphones might be uncovered and interrogated. the next three articles deal with the issue of what the digital has to do with teacher education (both pre-service and in-service) and how teachers and teacher educators are implicated in the digital. in their article, “connecting with pre-service teachers’ perspectives on the use of digital technologies and social media to teach socially relevant science”, ronika mudaly, kathleen pithouse, linda van laren, shakila singh and claudia mitchell consider the effectiveness of using digital animation and a structured mindmap activity with pre-service science teachers. here the use of digital technology is described in terms of the 4 c’s—cheap, convenient, collaborative, and creative—in a variety of learning contexts. the article by katie macentee and april mandrona, “from discomfort to collaboration: teachers screening cellphilms in a rural south african school”, in which they use boler’s framework of a pedagogy of discomfort, draws on the use of cellphones by in-service teachers to create video responses to an hivand aidsrelated issue as a way of addressing barriers to teacher-implemented hiv education. carmel chetty’s article, “the sensecam as a research tool for exploring learner experiences in an urban classroom space”, uses photographic evidence obtained through the use of a sensecam that she and the class teachers, in turn, wore to capture images of the daily school life experiences of impoverished grade 6 learners in an urban school in durban. she reflects on the value of the sensecam in doing research that illustrates the ways in which the learners negotiated the numerous and complex social networks and relationships in their daily activities in and around schools. the next three articles highlight the ways in which young people are engaged in the use of digital media in school and institutional settings. in their article, “communitybased participatory video: exploring and advocating for girls’ resilience”, tamlynn jefferis and linda theron reflect critically on the value of using community-based participatory video to explore resilience in adolescent girls and to advocate for ways perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 4 to support and advance this process. the authors conclude by highlighting just how difficult it is to realise the social change potential of community-based participatory video. thoko mnisi, in “digital storytelling: creating participatory space, addressing stigma, and enabling agency”, focuses on the way in which she used digital storytelling to create a critical space of participation and, in so doing, enable her secondary school learner participants to identify and address issues related to hivand aidsrelated stigma as well as enabling them to take charge of effecting change in their community. she points out that her fieldwork led her to think more critically about the use of digital storytelling. in her article, “young people being literate in a digital space: what can textspeak tell us?”, lisa wiebesiek discusses a novel produced by the fundza literacy trust as one of the texts written for a young adult audience that are made available via mxit, a cellular telephone-based social networking platform, and some of the textspeak responses of anonymous users to this text. she argues that the interactive discussion platform is invaluable for developing critical literacy about important issues that affect young people’s lives, such as gender and sexuality, agency, and risk and vulnerability. laurel hart and claudia mitchell extend the work related to mobile culture beyond the school setting and into other social and geographic spaces of rural life. in so doing they look, in their article, “from spaces of sexual violence to sites of networked resistance: re-imagining mobile and social media technologies”, at how various apps might be used to deal with or resist violence (both offline and online). continuing a consideration of the digital in broader areas of community education, jenny doubt, in her article, “digitising and archiving hiv and aids in south africa: the museum of aids in africa as an archival intervention”, looks at the effectiveness of a digital archive set up to address different issued related to hiv and aids. she argues that this museum has the potential to function as an archival intervention through its accessibility to the often marginalised communities, as well as by enabling those affected by hiv and aids to contribute to the archival digital content. finally, we as guest editors, in our visual essay, “seeing how it works: a visual essay about critical and transformative research in education”, test out ways of using the visual to shift thinking about what it means to do educational research that is transformative in and of itself. we show the possibilities of using the visual, not only as a mode of inquiry, but also of representation and communication in education and social science scholarship. the articles in this special issue together point to the potential of digital tools and digital spaces to not only uncover, explore, interrogate or consider various issues addressed in educational research reported in the articles, but also to advance critical perspectives in the analyses of this work. it is our view as guest editors of this special issue that the articles demonstrate the value of the digital in facilitating the kinds of critical perspectives on digital spaces in educational research naydene de lange, claudia mitchell & relebohile moletsane 5 dialogues necessary for researchers to gain new insights into challenges in education, and into some of the possibilities for change in taking up research in digital spaces. from such insights, stakeholders such as teachers, learners, community members, ngos, government departments, including the departments of education and others, should be able to identify and develop strategies for addressing challenges at the various levels of education. references baker, m.b., waugh, t. & winton, e. 2010. introduction: forty years later . . . a space for challenge for change/société nouvelle. in t. waugh, m. baker & e. winton (eds.), challenge for change: activist documentary at the national film board of canada. montreal, qc: mcgill-queen’s university press. buckingham, d. & willett, r. 2009. video culture: media technology and amateur creativity. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. cain, j. 2009. understanding film and video as tools for change: applying participatory video and video advocacy in south africa: unpublished doctoral dissertation. stellenbosch: stellenbosch university. graham, c., laurier, e., o’brien, v. & rouncefield, m. 2011. new visual technologies: shifting boundaries, shared moments. visual studies 26(2), 87–91. kalantzis-cope, k. & gherab-martin, k. 2010. emerging digital spaces in contemporary society. retrieved 14 april 2015 from: http://www. palgraveconnect.com/pc/doifinder/10.1057/9780230299047 rusted, b. 2010. portapak as performance: vtr st-jacques and vtr rosedale. in t. waugh, m. baker, & e. winton (eds.), challenge for change: activist documentary at the national film board of canada. montreal, qc: mcgillqueen’s university press. world bank 2013. digital divide. retrieved 29 june 2013, from: http://go.worldbank.org/bm7xomlu50 pie33(1).indb perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 117 kayi ntinda university of swaziland e-mail: kntinda@uniswa.sz magdalene nakalowa ntinda university of bath, uk baobabo primary school, botswana e-mail: nakalowa@yahoo.com elias mpofu university of sydney e-mail: elias.mpofu@sydney. edu.au teacher-reported quality of schooling indicators in botswana primary schools: an exploratory study kayi ntinda, magdalene nakalowa ntinda & elias mpofu this study examined teacher self-reported views on quality indicators in botswana primary schools. a purposively selected sample of primary school teachers in the city of gaborone, botswana (n = 72, females = 56; males = 16; mean age = 39 years, sd = 7.17 years; mean years of service = 15.6; sd= 8 years; public schools = 65%; private schools = 35%), completed a survey on their perceptions of quality of education indicators relevant to their school setting. data were analyzed by type of school contrasting private and public schools. findings suggest teachers in public schools to associate the use of teacher-led student supports as important quality indicators whereas those in private school consider access to learning materials significantly more important than other learning context variables. type of school influenced perceptions of quality of schooling indicators in botswana primary schools. keywords: teaching and learning resources, quality of schooling, quality of education indicators, botswana primary schools, student supports introduction teachers are translators and enactors of education policy at the classroom floor level (guardino & fullerton, 2010), and their perception of the indicators of quality in their education practices influence learning outcomes for students or indeed school systems and economies (heck, 2007; rivkin, hanushek, & kain, 2005). the extent to which schools attain indicators of quality in their instructional practices relates to their effectiveness as education institutions (de vries, 2010;haines iii, saba, & choquette, 2008; korilaki, 2006). school effectiveness is in part defined by how well an education institution provides for learning (lupton, 2005), which also depends on their use of learning and teaching strategies to optimize learner success. perillo (2006) reported that teaching methods to support students to focus on their work perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 118 are a quality of schooling indicator. however, quality of schooling has both objective and subjective aspects. objective aspects of quality of schooling are those with verifiable indicators regardless of the persons reporting. the subjective indicators are more nuanced and school community members may have unique perspectives regarding the ways or extent to which these are present in an education setting. this study investigated both objective and subjective quality of education indicators that botswana school teachers identified to characterize their schools. objective quality of schooling indicators teaching is more effective when facilities and infrastructure such as attractive school buildings, electrification of buildings, furniture, libraries and books are available (ministry of education botswana, 2004). school infrastructure motivates and provides a comfortable learning and teaching environment (babitseng & buaduo, 2009; leung & fung, 2005; tibú’rcio & finch, 2005). in particular, the availability of learning and teaching resources is an important quality of schooling indicator because those resources are associated with superior learner attainment (ngware, oketch, & ezeh, 2010; odhiambo, 2008; riddell, 2003; world bank’s primary education policy paper on southern africa, 1990). riddell (2008) reported on the southern and eastern africa consortium for monitoring educational quality (sacmeq) data (2000 to 2005) that quality education was at variance between rural and urban schools, the latter having more resources and better qualified teachers. monyatsi and monyatsi (2007), in their study reported on imbalances in the distribution of facilities and infrastructure in botswana public primary schools in favor of the urban schools; which made for qualitatively different learning environments. student attainment is a widely regarded objective quality of schooling indicator. the indictor is highly valued by teachers, students and their parents/guardians alike. parents or guardians often pay high school fees for their children to attend selective and high performance schools (hofmeyr & lee, 2002). in some settings, private schools lead the pack in student scholastic attainment, although some parochial private school may value character development (a subjective quality of schooling indicator) more than they would scholastic attainment per se. subjective quality of schooling indicators. the subjective aspects of schooling quality consider primarily the learners’ experience of and sense of membership of the school community. factors such as learners’ attitudes, values, cleanliness of the school grounds, school morale, and school leavers’ attitudes may also be considered as quality of schooling indictors. they are about the overall quality of the learning experience for students, the school community and wider society (ngware, oketch, & ezeh, 2010). at the classroom floor level, subjective quality of schooling indicators involve the extent to which learner-centered teaching strategies are used or those which involve learners making teacher-reported quality of schooling indicators in botswana primary schools: an exploratory study kayi ntinda, magdalene nakalowa ntinda & elias mpofu 119 discoveries on their own while the teacher facilitates learning (rowe, 2006; tabulawa, 1998). teachers who use inquiry oriented approaches have motivated learners (haines iii, saba & choquette, 2008; jones & lloyd, 2005; marcoulides, gottfried, oliver, & guerrin, 2007; ryan & deci, 2000). the subjective qualities of schooling also encompass the students’ perception of the receptiveness of the school environment as communicated by concerns of the teachers for their welfare. it is also explained by how students perceived the general school climate inclusive of its infrastructure and cleanliness teacher perceptions of the objective and subjective quality of schooling indicators understanding the objective quality of school indicators from the point of view of the teachers would enhance school development initiatives aimed a creating better schools for all. at the school community level, quality of schooling is defined in part by the extent to which teachers work as teams to support each other in their professional development, growth and application (james, connolly, dunning, & elliot 2007). for instance, in wales (united kingdom) (uk), james, connolly and elliot (2007) reported that teachers who work together in sharing their knowledge and expertise are more successful educators. garg and rastogi (2006) and honing (2009) considered teachers’ organizational behavior, including their ability to carry out and manage classroom practices as an aspect of school climate that results in effective teaching. quality of schooling and teaching clearly relies on teaching abilities of teachers who ought to be supported by ongoing teacher professional development. teacher qualifications and experience may influence their perceptions of quality of school indicators (mpofu, 1993). for instance, teachers with higher professional qualifications and experience likely would weight pedagogy and quality of school climate more importantly to schooling than others less well prepared. this might be the case since teacher quality of professional preparation likely sensitizes them to praxis considerations than with less preparation (perez, 2014; tabulawa, 1998). the type of school in which a teacher serves might also influence the extent to which they regard particular quality of schooling indicators. for instance, teachers in well resourced private schools may value learner support services (subjective indicators) much more highly as they can presume the existence of basic teaching resources. those in less well resourced public schools may prioritize infrastructure (objective indicators) more to the extent that if affects their basic competencies to teach more directly than would the extent of learner support services. teachers as education practitioners are members of communities of practice distinguished by their professional preparation (e.g., graduate versus undergraduate) and type of schools they serve (e.g., rural versus urban; private versus public). this creates within profession social identities important for the ways teachers value specific objective and subjective indicators of quality of schooling. perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 120 these presuppositions are in need of study in a developing world education system where the differences in teaching resources are more acutely present than would be the case is the relatively advantaged developed world school settings. botswana is one developing world with a national education vision and mission to have child friendly schools with strong objective and subjective qualities of schooling performance (republic of botswana, 1994; 1997 ). the botswana education context botswana has universal primary education for all children in public schools (republic of botswana, 1994; cde, 2005; 2009). private primary schooling is optional. parents may elect private primary schools for various reasons and the perception that quality of schooling is higher in private schools could be one such reason. pheko (2008) reported of botswana public school classroom facilities to be insufficient generally in run-down and overcrowded so much that learners may not perceive themselves to be receiving quality of schooling. in the botswana setting, quality of schooling indicators include physical facilities, equipment and support staff, a skills-based curriculum, the use of english as the medium of instruction. (monyatsi & monyatsi, 2007). the extent to which teachers relate to this policy driven quality of schooling indicators is not known. there is need for studies on the objective and subjective quality of schooling indicators nominated by teachers who are primary education service providers in the schools. goals of the study the study examined the teacher self-reported objective (quantifiable) and subjective (perceptive) evidence on quality of schooling in botswana. we investigated the evidence on both school (learning) context and teaching delivery indicators as identified by the teachers. the study sought to answer the following questions: • which subjective quality of schooling indicators do teachers in botswana public and private primary? • what objective quality of schooling indicators do botswana primary school teachers’ perceive? • how do teacher ratings of the observability of the objective quality of schooling indicators vary by their community of practice membership (i.e., professional preparation and the type of school they are employed). method research design a mixed-methods design was used to examine teachers’ self-reported views on quality of schooling indicators. a qualitative + qualitative (concurrent) design teacher-reported quality of schooling indicators in botswana primary schools: an exploratory study kayi ntinda, magdalene nakalowa ntinda & elias mpofu 121 (creswell, 2003) was employed. whereas the quantitative design was implemented to determine relationships in observed patterns of teacher self-reported views on quality of schooling indicators such as differences by school type and teacher qualifications, a qualitative design was implemented to unravel the scope and nature of teacher-reported views on quality of schooling indicators in botswana schools. participants of the study respondents were a convenience sample of 72 primary school teachers from gaborone district (mean age = 39 years, sd = 7.17 years; mean years of service = 15.6, sd= 8 years; public school, n = 65%). they taught the full range of the primary school grades (grades 1 to 7). the average class size taught was 33 students (sd = 6.2 students). the sample comprised about 30 per cent of the total number of teachers at the schools. data collection procedures permission for the study was granted by the botswana ministry of education and skills development and the school boards of the participating private schools. participants granted individual written consent for the study. data surveys were collected from the teachers during normal school time. participants completed a semi-structured teacher-quality of schooling measure (tqs) specifically designed for this study. a few of the participants (n= 10) completed a member-check interview for elaborating on and triangulating the findings from the semi-structured survey. teacher-quality of schooling measure (tqs) participants completed a tqs instrument designed for this study by the second listed author. this instrument comprises a self-report questionnaire or survey on teachers perceptions about curriculum delivery-related qualities of schooling, inclusive of teaching-learning approaches, learner support, learning resources, teacher support and development, and scholastic attainment outcomes. in developing the instrument, a panel of teacher experts determined the appropriateness of the question on the survey. variables on learner support were scored on a scale anchored by 1 to 5 with 1 = not at all and 5 = very large extent. the reliability of scores from the tqs with the study sample was .79. member-check interviews semi-structured interviews were conducted with 10 of the teachers to check on the meanings ascribed to quality of school indicators that were highlighted to be important from the quantitative survey. specifically, the interviews sought qualitative responses on the objective and subjective quality of schooling indicators including aspects of curriculum delivery and teacher support important to quality of schooling. perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 122 data analysis approaches difference in scores on curriculum delivery variables contrasted by school type and teacher qualifications were computed and tested for significance using t-tests (statistical package for social sciences: spss version 2.1). group differences in proportions endorsing a quality of learning variable were tested for using the chisquare test. data from the qualitative interviews were thematically analyzed. emerging patterns, themes and sub-themes were identified. marginal notes were used to document interpretations, reactions, themes, and connections that emerged. axial coding was used to make connections between categories in a systematic manner. at the same time the conditions of the categories were also classified. the technique of constant comparative analysis (merriam, 2009) was used to identify relationships and variations in the data to conceptualize interactional processes. data triangulation was accomplished by the simultaneous use of surveys and key informant interviews allowing for cross-validation of data from different methodological approaches. results subjective quality of schooling indicators table 1 presents the evidence on what teachers perceived to be objective curriculum delivery indicators of quality education: use of learner oriented approaches, home work assignments, provision of remedial (learner support) education, as well as appropriate pacing of the instruction. table 1. proportion of teachers endorsing subjective curriculum delivery quality of schooling indicators school type teacher qualifications public (n = 47) private (n = 25) certificate (n = 20) diploma (n = 25) graduate (n = 26) quality instruction indicators learner-centred teaching 42 (89.4) 23 (92) 16 (80) 24 (96) 24 (92.3) use of homework 46 (97.9) 18 (72) 18 (90) 23 (92) 22 (84.6) learner support services 34 (72.3) 24 (96) 14 (70) 20 (80) 23 (88.5) student focused curriculum 35 (74.5) 17 (68) 16 (80) 17 (68) 18 (69.2) pace of instruction 39 (83) 20 (80 17 (85) 21 (84) 20 (76.9) note. numbers in brackets indicate percentages of teachers endorsing teacher-reported quality of schooling indicators in botswana primary schools: an exploratory study kayi ntinda, magdalene nakalowa ntinda & elias mpofu 123 the evidence is presented by type of school and teacher qualifications. curriculum delivery qualities as can be observed from table 1, use of learner-centered education approaches is perceived by teachers as a quality of schooling indicator and regardless of school type or teacher qualification. a significantly higher proportion of teachers in public schools (97.9%) perceived greater use of homework to be a quality of schooling indicator as compared to those in private schools (72%); c(df = 1) = 8.60, p < .01. more of teachers in private schools (96%) than in public schools (72.3%) perceived the provision of remedial education as a quality of schooling indicator; c(df = 1) = 14.2, p < .01). teachers with certificate courses were as likely to endorse the quality of instruction indicators in comparable proportion to those with diploma and college degrees. table 2 presents the qualitative evidence on curriculum support as quality of schooling indicators. table 2. illustrative findings from member-check interview on quality of schooling indicators quality indicators illustrative statements perceived quality of the learning experience learner-centred approaches use of teaching approaches that enable students to do work in school is an important quality of schooling indicator. children should be taught content that is appropriate for their ages for them to produce quality results. use of homework in private schools homework is very important and is given to learners at the infant level three times per week, while learners from middle and upper levels are given homework four times a week. homework is given to learners every day in public schools. perceived learner support addressing learners’ special needs is a number one priority for this private school and we have a special needs teacher for each level in primary schools so assist learners with special needs. special needs we have special needs teachers in public schools who attend to students with learning difficulties. counselling provision of counselling is very important even though most private schools do not provide counselling services to students. the government of botswana has institutionalized provision of counselling services in all public primary schools in botswana to help address students’ academic, social, personal and career needs. this is done to motivate students to excel in their academic achievement. regarding learner support as instructional delivery, teachers in private schools rated the provision of special needs education higher (mean = 3.63, sd =.85) than those in public schools (mean = 2.15, sd = 1.22); t(df = 70) = 5.40, p < .01. however, teachers in public schools endorsed learner attainment in coursework and national perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 124 examinations as quality of schooling indicators than peers in private schools. teachers in both private and public schools considered the provision of counseling services an important quality of schooling indicator. objective quality of schooling indicators table 3 shows the evidence for the availability of infrastructural resources as quality of schooling indicators. teachers in private schools rated the availability of multi-media teaching-learning resources higher as quality of schooling indicators as compared to peers in public schools (p < .01). contrasting availability of multimedia resources, a teacher from a private school observed: ‘there is a fully equipped computer laboratory in this private school and students from across all level in the school are scheduled for a computer lesson at least once a week’. table 3. teacher ratings of availability ratings of objective quality of schooling indicators school type teacher qualifications public ( n= 47) private (n = 25) certificate (n = 20) diploma (n = 25) graduate (n = 26) material resources library 1.92 (.99) 4.65 (.99) 3.1 (1.68) 2.37 (1.40) 3.5** (1.17) computers 2.17 (4.92) 4.84 (.55) 2.60 (1.87) 3.54 (6.47) 3.31 (1.86) tv 1.64 (.82) 3.48 (1.41) 2.10( 1.37) 2.08 (1.28) 2.86 (1.46) digital cameras 1.21 (.60) 4.20 (1.19) 2.55 (1.84) 1.67 (1.30) 2.90** (1.74) music equipment 1.30 (.68) 4.52 (.82) 2.50 (1.93) 2.08 (1.38) 3.05** (1.81) notes. numbers in brackets indicate standard deviations *p. < .05, * p < .01 a teacher from a public school noted: ‘even though computers are important for enhancing learners’ education this school does not have any computers for use of learners. there is only one computer in the school head’s office and this is used for school administration purposes’. teacher community of practice effects teacher-reported views on quality of schooling indicators varied by teacher qualification. teachers with graduate qualifications rated library facility an important quality indicator compared to those with diploma qualification; t(df = 49) = 3.13, p < .01. teachers with graduate qualifications also rated availability of digital cameras as an important quality of schooling indicator (mean = 2.90, sd = 1.74) compared to those with diploma qualifications (mean = 1.6, sd = 1.30); t(df = 49) = 2.85, p < .01. similarly, teachers with graduate qualifications perceived availability of music teacher-reported quality of schooling indicators in botswana primary schools: an exploratory study kayi ntinda, magdalene nakalowa ntinda & elias mpofu 125 equipment as an important quality of schooling indicator (mean, 3.05, sd1.81) unlike their counterparts with diploma qualifications (mean = 2.08, sd = 1.38;, t(df = 49) = 2.14, p < .01. however, availability of television and computers was rated as an important quality of schooling indicator across all teacher categories. teachers perceived subjective factors like teacher teamwork important indicators of quality of schooling. teachers in public schools rated performance appraisal as a quality of schooling indicator higher than counterparts in private schools; t(df = 70) = 2.63, p < .01. a participant observed: ‘performance appraisal is a critical component of quality of schooling indicators and senior teachers ought to ensure that teachers are delivering the appropriate content to the learners.‘ staff development opportunities were perceived an important quality of schooling indicator (mean > 2.50) by teachers in public and private schools and also across qualifications. teachers in public schools perceived the availability of teaching assistants a quality of schooling indicator more than peers in private schools, t(df = 70) = 3.64, p < .01. discussion the results revealed that regardless of community of practice as defined by school type or teacher qualifications, subjective quality of schooling indicators of learnercentred education were perceived as a priority quality of schooling indicator. closely aligned to learner oriented teaching as a quality indicator was the prioritization by the participants of curriculum delivery support as an important quality of schooling indicator. for instance, regarding curriculum delivery support using homework, davies-kean, (2005) and yu and thomas (2007) found that homework underpins the development and achievement of learners in mathematics and reading and comprehension. similarly, yu and thomas (2007) affirmed that learners who were assigned homework attainment more satisfactory in mathematics, reading, and comprehension than comparison peers. although the availability of counselling services was regarded as a quality of schooling indicator, the teachers in the private schools reported making less of this resource compared to those in the public schools. this result may be in line with the ministry of education and skills development (moesd) initiative of introducing comprehensive guidance and counselling in all public schools in botswana. it might also be explained by the fact that children attending private schools have access to out of school counseling services than peers in public schools (see also thompson & kleiner,2005). the teachers rated teamwork an important quality of schooling indicator. according to james, connolly, dunning, and elliot (2007), collaborative practices of teaching enable teachers to work together in sharing ideas, techniques and information needed by the teachers to enhance learners’ learning outcomes. content perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 126 analysis, too, revealed that team work was valued by teachers in private schools. one key informant reported that ”fortnightly [common] tests allowed... teachers to [work] as a team consulting one another”. performance appraisal was rated more highly as a quality of schooling indicator by teachers in the public than the private schools. performance appraisal is more ubiquitous in botswana public than private schools; which in part explains this finding (see pheko, 2010). the reasons for the greater use of performance appraisal in botswana public schools compared to public schools are not clear. it might be that performance appraisal in the public schools is tied to annual pay increases [merit raises] than may be the case in the private schools. however, a performance appraisal system is an objective quality of performance indicator only to the extent that it is implemented to purpose (rabiee, 2009). it is unclear from this study what performance appraisal system was utilized. teachers in private schools rated the availability of objective quality of schooling indicator of infrastructure supports highly more than those in public schools. for instance, availability of multi-media teaching-learning resources were rated higher as a quality of schooling indicator than their peers in public schools. this result is consistent with the finding of pansiri (2008), who reported availability of teaching resources a critical quality of schooling indicator in botswana. public primary schools in botswana lacked in basic teaching resources such as books, stationery, paper, and photocopiers (pansiri, 2008; ministry of education, 2000). botswana private schools are relatively more privileged in having access to information and communication technology (ict) resources for their teaching. private schools in botswana are likely to be better resourced than public schools due to the fact that private schools charge high school fees. implications of teacher self-reports for quality of schooling improvement efforts objective and subjective quality of education indicators identified by teachers are important to education quality improvement. knowledge of teacher endorsed indicators of quality of schooling would be important to efforts to engage them in providing quality education. as an example, teacher learning cycles in which groups of teachers share perceptions and experiences aimed at improving the quality of school learning would be feasible forum for teachers to translate their priority quality of schooling indicators into actual benefits for their learners and schools. school management support would be important for teacher learning cycles to flourish. on-going consultation, communication, and collaboration between teachers and other stakeholders in education such as parents, and social and health professional would make for inclusive quality of schooling experiences for the learners and more effective school systems. teacher-reported quality of schooling indicators in botswana primary schools: an exploratory study kayi ntinda, magdalene nakalowa ntinda & elias mpofu 127 limitations of the study and suggestions for further research only the views of the teachers are considered in this study. a more complete understanding of their perceptions of quality of education indicators relevant to their school setting is likely when the views of the learners and their parents are considered as well. future studies should survey all three of these groups, as well as other stakeholders who might be able to shed more light on the quality of education indicators relevant to botswana primary school settings. the current study relied on self-report by the teachers, which may be contradicted by observational data. future studies should include observational data to determine quality of education indicators relevant to their school setting. conclusion teachers in botswana perceived quality of schooling indicators consistent with those reported in the international literature, suggesting the feasibility of universal indicators of quality schooling to guide education policy makers in their institutionalization. as an instance of a likely universal quality indicator, learnercentered curriculum delivery approaches were endorsed as a quality of schooling indicator, regardless of school type or teacher qualification. school context or type influences the perceived importance of some indicators with those resource based aspirational for the relatively under-funded public schools. references babitseng sm, boaduo nap. the strengths and weaknesses of the curriculum used in the upper primary schools in botswana. the african symposium: an online journal of african educational research network 2009; 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(accessed 12 april, 2014). reis mjs, santos gmmc, ferreira pjsg. promoting the educative use of the internet in portuguese primary schools: a case study. aslib proceedings: new information perspectives. 2008; ,60: 111-129. republic of botswana. long term vision for botswana: towards prosperity for all. gaborone: government printers; 1997. republic of botswana (rnpe). revised national policy on education. gaborone: government printers; 1994. riddell a. the introduction of free primary education in sub-saharan africa. paper commissioned for the efa global monitoring report 2003/4, the leap to equality. new york, ny: unesco; 2003. perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 130 riddell a. factors influencing educational quality and effectiveness in developing countries: a review of research. eschborn, germany: deutsche gesellschaft fur technische; 2008. rivkin sg, hanushek aea, kain jf. teachers, schools and academic achievement. journal of the econometric society. 2005; 73: 417-458. rowe k. effective teaching practices for students with and without learning difficulties: constructivism as a legitimate theory of learning and of teaching? sydney, australia: acersearch; 2006. ryan rm, & deci el. intrinsic and extrinsic motivations: classic definitions and new directions. contemporary educational psychology. 2000; 25: 54-67. statistical package for the social sciences (spss) . statistical programs for social sciences (spss): version 18.0. new york, ny: routledge; 2010. tabulawa r. teachers’ perspectives on classroom practice in botswana: implications for pedagogical change. international journal of qualitative studies in education. 1998; 11: 249-268. thompson j, kleiner bh. effective human resource management of school districts. management research news. 2005; 28: 42-55. tibu’rcio t, finch ef. the impact of an intelligent classroom on learners’ interactive behaviour. facilities. 2005; 23: 262-278. yu g, thomas s. research project school effectiveness and education quality in southern and east africa. bristol, england: edqual; 2007. pie 33(2) june 2015.indb perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 109 books or and babies: pregnancy and young parents in schools robert morrell, deevia bhana & tamara shefer cape town: hsrc press, 2012 isbn 978-0-7969-2365-3 236pp reviewed by: tracey feltham-king from the outset, the title books or and babies: pregnancy and young parents in schools cleverly indicates the broad terms of reference for the investigation of the topic. the deliberate strikethrough of or being replaced by and frames the authors’ critical approach. in refusing to stay within the taken-for-granted binary where pregnancy and parenting are considered irreconcilable with schooling, the authors move the focus away from the individual young woman in order to pay long-overdue attention to the broader context in which pregnancy and parenting happens in south african schools. the book affords the reader an opportunity to try to understand the highly charged gendered environment in which school management, educators and learners endeavour to balance pregnancy and parenting with schooling. this has undoubtedly been a difficult undertaking not least of all because of the moral panic frequently generated in the media on this topic. the authors intend to show how these moralising discourses are utilised to exclude young women and deny them their right to education. they highlight the effects of these discourses so that the reader is left with the clear impression that at least some of the moral outrage usually reserved for young women would be more effectively used if aimed at the injustice associated with these acts of exclusion. the focus on this topic is pertinent, since the south african schools act (no. 84 of 1996) was formulated by the department of education (doe) with the intention tracey feltham-king university of fort hare, psychology department tel: 043 704 7214 e-mail: tking@ufh.ac.za perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 110 of implementing a human rights framework in order to minimise discriminatory acts such as expulsion of pregnant learners or denying young parents access to schools. the five-year (2005-2010) collaborative project funded by the south african-netherlands research programme on alternatives in development (sanpad), on which the book is based, seeks to establish whether the progressive policy space created by the legislation had, in fact, translated into responsive and supportive contexts for young pregnant women and parents in schools. the reader is afforded a rare opportunity to be privy to the varied perspectives of the major stakeholders in 14 urban secondary schools located in two south african cities, namely durban and cape town. these schools were selected to reflect not only geographical differences, but also a variety of types of schools (an enduring remnant of the apartheid education system). these schools were not intended to be representative in any statistical sense, but rather managed to capture the diversity of raced, classed and gendered constructions of pregnancy and parenting among approximately 11 principals and 79 educators. the six specific research questions, around which the research project was designed, provide the structure for the three sections of the book. the first section is concerned with examining the extent of the implementation of the south african schools act (sasa), which was formulated with the intention of promoting the educational performance of young women who attend school during pregnancy and after childbirth. we are given an insightful and rich, qualitative picture of the perceptions and reported practices of school management and educators towards pregnant and parenting learners. in these interviews and focus-group discussions conducted with teachers and principals, it became clear that the formal commitments to women’s and children’s rights, as expressed in sasa, are unevenly and erratically implemented in ways that are often detrimental to the learners. the results show that often the presence of young pregnant women or parenting learners is at odds with some principals’ and teachers’ notions of authority, power, developmental norms and responsibility for care. the varied responses from administrators and educators ranged from ostracising, discriminatory attitudes in some schools to high levels of tolerance and care in others. as pointed out by the authors, this is a small, but hopeful finding that could suggest that stigma in respect of early reproduction is easing and shifting in some south african schools. now that it has been identified, this small shift is, as the authors suggest, something that can be built upon. the middle (and most substantial) section of the book deals with a quantitative measure of the perceptions of over 1,400 learners. the authors acknowledge that, despite media-fuelled impressions that there is a large proportion of pregnant or parenting learners in south african schools, there is hardly any clear evidence to that effect. the sample of learners who were surveyed, however, indicate that, compared to the accepted figures, fewer learners than expected are pregnant or biological the politics of pleasure in sexuality education: pleasure bound pedro pinto 111 parents, even though a high proportion of them are involved in various kinds of substitute parenting. in measuring the attitudes of learners to pregnant or parenting peers, it was found that there is still some support for gender-inequitable stereotypes about women and men with regard to pregnancy and parenting. the heteronormative construction of manhood, which situates men in the public sphere and positions them as material providers, is fairly entrenched. by contrast, constructions of femininity situate young women in the private sphere and as such they are positioned as nurturers. these essentialist constructions collude to create the expectation that young women carry the bulk of the responsibility associated with teen-aged pregnancy. the third section of the book follows on from the quantitative measures by exploring the gendered constructions that influenced the experiences and practices of young parent learners. twenty-six in-depth interviews were conducted, mostly with young mothers. the researchers note how challenging it was to identify young fathers who were openly parenting in a school-based context. unsurprisingly, then, the main finding was that the experience of young parenthood in schools is profoundly gendered, with young women bearing the brunt of pregnancy, birth and parenthood. however, despite the traditionally stereotypically gendered power relations (further complicated by disadvantaged material conditions), there was evidence of some young men who took on care work and sought to be more involved with the nurturing of their children. a comprehensive final section complements the rigorous research, on which this book is based. it discusses the implications of these findings for policy and school practice. this research highlights that it does not suffice to simply endow young pregnant and parenting learners with rights to non-discriminatory education. the shared assumptions concerning gender, class and raced relations of power do not disappear when well-intentioned rights-based legislation is promulgated, since it is the school management teams, educators and learners who ultimately determine how pregnancy and parenting are handled in schools. endowing learners with the right to education within a non-discriminatory environment assumes not only a particular kind of relationship between management, educators and learners, but also an enabling context. the evidence presented in this section shows that despite the attention paid to gender inequalities (at the level of policy), there has been no revolutionary change with regard to gendered power relations that construct relationships and contexts within schools. the final chapter of the book creates a striking visual backdrop in the form of a photographic essay by renowned south african photographer, cedric nunn. he merges his professional experience of being a photographer with his lived experiences of having been a young father, reflecting a touching personal engagement with his photographic subjects. following on from these personal portraits, the authors conclude the book by offering their own biographic reflections of parenthood. perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 112 together, these reflexive narrative and photographic accounts show how, despite the diverse and stratified contexts in south africa, there are many shared commonalities evident in the daily challenges of parenting. it is fair to say that the thick description of teenage pregnancy and parenting in south african schools constructed by the authors in this book steers away from locating the problem within the individual young woman. this critical approach is in line with an increasing number of feminist researchers who question the automatic problematisation of early reproduction and parenting as inevitably an individual catastrophe or deleterious social problem. macleod (2014: 130) argues that this taken-for-granted assumption, which is sold by a great deal of social science research on the topic, should be tempered by feminist analyses of gendered power relations which are “vigilant about refusing an abstraction that pre-defines pregnant [and parenting] young women”. in this case, the refusal takes the form of focusing on the heteronormative gendered dynamics within schools that are oppressive to pregnant and parenting learners. public schools have an undisputed obligation to promote gender equality in pursuit of the creation of a fair and equal south african society. the research documented in this book is a useful resource for school managers and educators, because it is committed to that aim. it provides the starting point needed to engage critically with the multiple and contradictory discourses that reinforce gendered constructions of pregnancy and parenting in schools. ideally, it should also provide sufficient impetus for school management teams, educators and researchers to intensify the pursuit of reproductive justice for young south africans by insisting on the provision of nondiscriminatory educational experiences to pregnant and parenting learners. this book goes some way towards making an argument for bringing about systematic interventions aimed at making schools places where learners have a reasonable expectation of reproductive justice and the necessary support to balance books and babies in fulfilment of their rights. reference macleod c 2014. ‘adolescent pregnancy’: a feminist issue. in al cherry & me dillon (eds), international handbook of adolescent pregnancy: medical, psychosocial and public health responses (pp. 129-145). new york: springer. 45 transformation and decolonisation of mathematics education for sustainable development: a case study of its learning trend in nigeria abstract the quest to contextualise education in africa has been on-going for a while and many countries have been making efforts towards it. during this time of educational review, conscious efforts should be made to identify problematic levels of some subjects that are dreadful to the learners to pave the way for curriculum re-design for context appropriateness. mathematics learning in african countries has been a source of concern to all educational stakeholders despite several efforts towards its deconstruction. an examination of performance trend in the subject might reveal at what point the learning started declining and this will suggest intervention towards decolonisation of its content. this study measured the academic performance of pupils from preschool level up to the end of primary education (vi class). a descriptive survey research design was adopted and 720 primary vi pupils were selected through multistage sampling technique in a state in nigeria. primary school mathematics performance record sheet (psm_prs) was used to collect mathematics scores from preschool through primary vi class. data were analysed using descriptive statistics and graphs. pupils started experiencing major declines in mathematics from primary iii class. results also indicate no significant difference in the class where male and female pupils’ performances started declining. therefore, there is the need to review and contextualise mathematics content from third year in primary/elementary school for effective learning. activity-based and exploratory strategies using contextual experiences and resources to deliver mathematics lessons were recommended for third year in primary/elementary schools and beyond. keywords: basic mathematics; declining performance; decolonised content; mathematics learning; contextualised teaching 1. introduction the clarion call for decolonisation of education in africa has been ongoing for a while and it is getting louder by the day. while some are calling for decolonisation of entire education systems in africa (hogan, 2008), some are calling for decolonisation of certain levels of education (heleta, 2016; brodie, 2016) and some are calling for decolonisation or contextualisation of the content of certain school subjects. the content of mathematics is also affected by this call as ia salami postdoctoral fellow, faculty of education, university of fort hare, alice, south africa. email: snappy600@gmail.com cio okeke professor of education, department of educational foundations & management, faculty of education, university of swaziland, kwaluseni campus, swaziland m201. email: cokeke@uniswa.sz doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i2.4 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(2): 45-59 © uv/ufs mailto:snappy600@gmail.com mailto:cokeke@uniswa.sz http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.4 46 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) some mathematics educators are of the opinion that contextualisation of mathematics might bring about better learning and applicability (venkat, bomie & graven, 2009; brodie, 2016). this view about the content and learning of mathematics is not unconnected with the definition given to the subject. venkat, bomie and graven (2009:2) reported that mathematics is now defined as … mathematics literacy is a subject driven by life-related applications of mathematics. it enables learners to develop the ability and confidence to think numerically and spatially in order to interpret and critically analyse everyday situations and to solve problems. therefore, the efforts to make education in general and mathematics in particular relevant to the immediate society of the learners cannot be considered as being wasteful. but the questions that quickly run through the mind are: can this bring about significant improvement into the learning of mathematics? can a clear understanding of the trend of performance in mathematics across stages of basic education assist in the decolonisation processes? to start with, how well are learners performing in mathematics across the land of africa? literature from kenya (simba et al., 2016), nigeria (omenka & otor, 2015) and south africa (hagoramagara, 2015), based on children’s reports, reveals that learning of mathematics at preschool stage does not seem to be a problem and the children do not seem to have problems learning the important skills related to mathematics. it was observed that the children’s performances in number work at preschool level are as good as their performances in other subject areas. however, the story is not the same after preschool education, not only in these three countries but also across countries in the continent. 2. what we know about mathematics learning in some selected african countries studies in nigeria have shown that the performance of pupils in primary mathematics is below average and that the problem solving skills of the pupils is poor. the two most recent national assessments in primary mathematics in nigeria were conducted in 2004 and 2009. in the report prepared by the nigeria education sector analysis (esa 2004), the national percentage mean scores of primary four and six pupils in numeracy are put at 33.7 and 35.7 respectively. again, the national assessment of the universal basic education programme presented the performance of primary six pupils across the nation in 2009. the results show that only three states out of the thirty-six states and the federal capital territory have scores that are up to average – jigawa state (mean = 58.26%), bayelsa state (mean = 55.96%) and osun state (mean = 54%). fifteen states have mean scores that are not up to the pass mark (40%). their scores range from 23.35% for kano state to 29.23% for ondo state. the national mean score is 42.87%, which is below average (naubep 2009). sa’ad, adamu and sadiq (2014) reported that performance in mathematics is nothing to write home about as those that pass the subject at credit level in the year 2014 national examinations range between 26% and 32%. the poor performance in mathematics in south africa is also shocking (siyepu 2013). the annual national assessment for grade 9 in the year 2012 reveals that 0.2% of all the learners scored 80% and above; 0.3% scored between 70–79%; 0.6% scored between 60–69%; 1.1% scored between 50–59%; 2.1% scored between 40–49%; 3.8% scored between 30–39% and 91.9% scored less than 30% (mccarthy & oliphant, 2013). the department of education (doe, 2014) also reported that the average score for annual national assessment of mathematics in grade 4 in the year 2014 is 20%. 47 salami & okeke re-imagining higher education leadership in kenya, bosire, mondoh and barmao (2008) reported that performance in mathematics learning is so poor that only 15% of students who enrolled for mathematics examination scored a d+ grade (30–40%). a 10 year study of performance in mathematics in the kenya certificate of secondary education examination between 1999 and 2008 shows that the national mean scores range from 12.23 to 18.73 (mbugua et al., 2012). ngware et al.’s (2015) submission will be used to drive the argument in this section home. these scholars submit that african countries’ performance in mathematics appears much poorer than elsewhere in the world by citing the instance of those five countries that participated in the international mathematics and science competition and were ranked among the last seven of the 45 countries that took part. 3. mathematics and its benefits mathematics is made a core subject in the curriculum of preschool and primary education because of its content that encompasses knowledge, skills and procedures that can be used in a variety of ways such as descriptive, illustration, interpretation and logical reasoning. this is not limited to when the children are young but throughout their lifetime. the qualities and characteristics of mathematics allow it to be regarded as an essential tool for the child in understanding the world around him or her (omenka & otor, 2015). besides the child development role, mathematics knowledge not only plays pivotal roles in science and technological advancement but its several and varied applications are felt in all human endeavours (inyang, 2005). it is therefore not an overstatement to refer to mathematics as an indispensable element of development. the status of mathematics as the bedrock for the development of scientific reasoning and the many benefits associated with it must have informed it being made compulsory at all levels of basic education in nigeria (omenka & otor, 2015). preschool education shares in this where the subject is termed number work in the majority of the centres. at the preschool level, mathematics learning is fun and it has also been observed by these researchers that the performances of male and female children seem high and impressive. but the story changes at the end of primary education where research findings have shown that generally, performance of pupils in mathematics is below average and male pupils outperform their female counterparts (paulsen & dednam, 2016). one then wonders at what point, in terms of age level or class where the performance of pupils in mathematics starts declining. this can then pave the way for an effective pedagogical intervention to improve pupils’ performance in the subject, hence this study. mathematics education seeks to enable the child to think and communicate quantitatively and spatially, solve problems and recognise situations that require mathematical skills. otunu-ogbisi (2009) explains mathematics teaching and learning as the act of imparting and acquiring of skills, knowledge, aptitude, abilities and attitude capable of making the individual functional and productive towards the achievement of the nation’s developmental goals. mathematics as a school subject is taught primarily for the development of thinking skills and reflections on oneself, environmental and societal issues and organising one’s experiences for possible solution(s) to problems. on this basis, odumosu et al. (2012) describe mathematics as the carpenter’s hammer, tailor’s tape, artist’s pencil, barber’s clipper, hair dresser’s comb, journalist’s pen, broadcaster’s microphone, doctor’s stethoscope and lawyer’s wig. this is to say that mathematics stands as a tool for solving societal problems. however, for a given 48 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) society to make use of mathematics in this way, a good number of the citizenry should not only acquire the skills but also be able to apply the skills to solve day-to-day mathematics-related problems. because of this, the national science foundation (2002) asserts that for students to possess the conceptual understanding of mathematics in different ways, they should know how and when these different mathematical representations could be used for different purposes. such presentation could enable the students to experience, discover, discuss and reconstruct the socially negotiated nature of mathematics. many factors have been pointed to as being behind the poor performance of pupils in mathematics. galadima (2002) asserts that poor quality instructional technique employed by the teachers is one of the major causes of poor achievement in mathematics. adeyemo and adetona (2007) and amobi (2006) support this positing that non-provision of an activityoriented and pupil-centred lesson, which could demystify the teaching and learning of the subject, is the main reason for the poor performance. in their own submission, simeon and francis (2012) enumerated these other factors as being the problems facing effective mathematics learning: mathurlurgy (inability to deal with figures); mathematics aversion (mathematics students shying away from class) and the absence of mathematics resource materials. none of the research studies that brought about these findings examine at what point of the education pupils start experiencing a decline in their performance in mathematics and what will happen if the content and resources used in teaching mathematics at such a level is contextualised. the concern of this study is that all the factors pointed out by scholars, as determinant of poor performance of learners in mathematics, have not explained why children at early years do well in mathematics but later, their performance started declining. seemingly, there is a situation or a given point at which the teaching and learning of mathematics become unfamiliar and complex. for instance, studies by hagoramagara (2015) in south africa; omenka and otor in nigeria as well as that of simba et al. (2016) in kenya indicate not only that learners’ performance in mathematics appears to drop as they progress through the grades or various classes to below the acceptable standards in many instances. therefore, this calls for a research study on the trend of performance in mathematics in order to identify at what point the performance started declining. if the educational level where pupils experience decline in mathematics performance is known, this will not only call for curriculum review but also reveal what part of the content, resources used to teach and the strategies adopted that seems foreign and which if decolonised will demystify the problem of poor performance. it is against this background that this study examined the trend of academic performance of pupils in mathematics from preschool level to the end of primary education focusing on a state (oyo state) in nigeria as a case study. 4. theoretical background this study is anchored on maturational theory propounded by arnold gesell in the year 1925. maturational theory states that while the child’s social and cultural environments also play a role in their development, these socialising forces are most effective when they are harmonious with the inner maturational timetable (excell, linington & schaik, 2015). to gesell, the growth of the nervous system largely determines the total development of the child. the nervous system, which consists of the complicated web of nerve fibres, spinal cord and brain, grows 49 salami & okeke re-imagining higher education leadership as the chronological age of the child increases. as the age of the child increases, the nervous system grows, the mind develops and their behaviour changes accordingly. this explains why children learning at higher classes are expected to be more advance than that of the lower classes. it is expected that children’s capacity to learn should be growing as the age increases in a normal situation. in this respect, learning of mathematics is expected to be getting better as the child increases in age and class not the other way round. however, mathematics curriculum is spiral in nature in that what is plan for at a higher class is a bit more complex than the previous class even when the concept is the same. nevertheless, the complexity is placed in the context of age appropriateness, meaning that what the child can do at a given age is considered in planning the curriculum (kruger & wessels, 2015). not only this, the curriculum is planned such that what is learnt in the lower class forms the prerequisite for what is going to be learnt in the higher class in order to form the spiral nature. therefore, the child is expected to find the learning easy and able to handle. however, other factors might come into play for the expected behaviour not to happen. the learning generally and learning of mathematics in particular at higher classes might be affected by other factors at one point or the order (paulsen & dednam, 2016). now that several research studies have shown that learning of mathematics at higher classes of basic education is getting poorer, it is pertinent to identify at what point the performance in the subject started declining. this should help to focus the transformation and decolonisation activities towards the content of mathematics and resources used in delivering it, which might demystify the problem of mathematics learning. 5. aim and objectives of the study the aim of this study is to determine empirically at what class in primary school do pupils’ performance in mathematics start declining. specifically, the objectives of the study are: 1. to determine the trend of pupils’ performance in mathematics from preschool class to primary vi 2. to determine the class where pupils’ performance in mathematics starts declining 3. to determine if the demographic characteristics of the pupils contribute to the decline in mathematics performance, other than unfamiliar and complexity of the content and teaching. 6. research questions based on the stated problem, the study will be guided by the following questions: 1. how does pupils’ mathematics performance change/fluctuate from preschool through to primary school in oyo state, nigeria?? 2. in which class does pupils’ performance in mathematics start declining? 3. what is the average age of the pupils in the class where their performance in mathematics starts declining? 4. is the class where male pupils’ performance starts declining in mathematics different from female pupils? 50 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) 7. methodology the study adopted a descriptive survey research design. the data collected were the academic performance of pupils as measured from preschool level up to primary vi class. ary, jacobs and sorensen (2010) submits that when data already exist and all that was done was to collect it, analyse and describe it, as fit the study at hand, such a study is a survey of the descriptive type. the target population for this study comprised all pupils in primary vi classes in public, demonstration and private schools in oyo state. the reason for this choice is that they are in the best position where their performance could be studied from their preschool days. the study adopted a multi-stage sampling technique to select the sample used. the stages of sampling were the educational zones, local government, schools and class. oyo state is stratified along eight educational zones. total enumeration technique was adopted to involve all the educational zones in this study. disproportionate stratified random sampling technique was employed to select one local government areas (lgas) each from the eight educational zones. this resulted in eight lgas sampled for the study. purposive sampling technique was employed to select one each of public, private and demonstration primary school in each of the selected lgas, which amount to 24 primary schools selected across the state. the criteria for being selected are firstly, the school must have a preschool section that has been functioning for the past seven years; secondly, there must be a good system of record keeping wherein the academic performances of the pupils in current primary vi could be traced as far back as seven years ago when they were in preschool. simple random sampling technique was used to select an arm (with approximately 30 pupils) of primary vi classes. any pupil with incomplete performance data from preschool to primary vi is removed and replaced with another with complete data. with this, 720 primary vi pupils selected from 24 schools across oyo state form the sample of this study. the breakdown shows that 58.4% of the pupils were selected from privately owned schools; 33.3% were from public schools while 8.3% were from demonstration schools. again, 44.6% of them are female and 55.4% are male pupils. a performance record sheet titled primary mathematics performance record sheet (pmp_rs) was designed to collect data for the study. pmp_rs contains two sections – section a contains information about the school such as school name, class and number of male and female pupils in the class. section b contains the list of the pupils (admission numbers without names) and is divided into seven sub-sections each for preschool, primary i to primary vi. the admission numbers as well as the year the pupils were admitted were clearly written on each subsection. there are three empty columns for the mathematics score (in percentage) for first, second and third term against each child’s number. validation of data collected with this instrument was done by double check with the end of year records given to some selected pupils. six research assistants were trained on how to collect data for this study. in each of the sampled school, the research assistants (closely monitored and supervised by the researchers) collected the data on the performance of the pupils in mathematics. a digital camera was also used to snap the score sheet of some classes whenever the teachers had no time to write it out. data collected were analysed using descriptive statistics of frequency count, percentage, mean and standard deviation. a line graph was also employed to present the trend of performance where necessary. huck (2012) opines that descriptive statistics is capable enough to summarise data on a single dependent variable such as the pupils’ performance in this study. 51 salami & okeke re-imagining higher education leadership 8. ethical consideration ethical clearance was obtained from the oyo state universal basic education board. the approval was attached to consent forms made available to the school head teachers and the parents of the pupils involved in the study. the record sheets snapped with digital camera were blinded so as not to show the names of the pupils. 9. results research question 1: how does pupils’ mathematics performance change/fluctuate from preschool through to primary school in oyo state, nigeria? table 2: summary of overall mathematics score from preschool to primary six class n mean score std. d yearly mean diff % of year mean diff remark pre-sch. 720 74.655 19.836 pry_1 720 73.426 19.108 -1.229 -1.65 decrease pry_2 720 71.124 18.668 -2.302 -3.14 decrease pry_3 720 65.491 18.419 -5.633 -7.92 decrease pry_4 720 62.900 16.248 -2.591 -3.96 decrease pry_5 720 63.169 19.630 0.269 0.43 increase pry_6 720 63.319 16.921 0.15 0.24 increase table 1 reveals that preschool children had excellent performance in number work with a mean performance of 74.66% but by the end of primary one, the performance decrease by 1.65% to reduce the mean performance to 73.43%. the performance decreased further by 3.14% at primary two to have the mean performance be 71.12%. the performance experienced a drastic decrease at primary three with 7.92% to have the mean score of 65.49%. it decreased further at primary four by 3.96% to have the mean performance reduced to 62.90%. but at primary five, the performance increase by 0.43% to have the mean performance improved to 63.17% and increased again at primary six by 0.24% to have the mean performance score to 63.32%. therefore, performance of the pupils kept gradually decreasing up to primary four and experience small increases in primary five and six. figure 1 shows the trend of mathematics performance in a line graph. 52 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2)   56 58 60 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76 presch pryi pryii pryiii pryiv pryv pryvi av er ag e  m at he m at ic s s co re  (% ) class figure 1: line graph showing the trend in pupils’ performance in mathematics from preschool through primary school research question 2: in which class does pupils’ performance in mathematics start declining? table 2 as well as figure 1 clearly shows that the decline starts from primary i but at primary iii, a substantial decline happened in pupils’ performance in mathematics up to primary iv. however, at primary v and vi there was a slight increase in the performance of pupils in mathematics. research question 3: what is the average age of the pupils in the class where their performance in mathematics started declining? table 3: pupils’ ages and classes from preschool to primary six variable (class) n age cohort (years) ave. age pry_6 720 10 ± 11+ 10.57 pry_5 720 9 ± 10+ 9.89 pry_4 720 8 ± 9+ 8.91 pry_3 720 7 ± 8+ 7.86 pry_2 720 6 ± 7+ 6.79 pry_1 720 5 ± 6+ 5.83 pre-sch. 720 4 ± 5+ 5.25 53 salami & okeke re-imagining higher education leadership table 3 reveals that the pupils completed their preschool at an average age of 5 years old (average age = 5.25 [5years, 3 months]) and they were 11 years old as at the second term of primary vi (average age = 10.57 [10years, 7months]). during primary iii when there was a drastic decline in their performance in mathematics, the pupils were approximately 8 years old (average age = 7.86 [7years, 10months]). this data is presented in a line graph as shown in figure 2. note that inconsistency in the interval among the years could be explained by the closure of schools because of strike actions during some of the years.   0 2 4 6 8 10 12 preschl pri i pry ii pry iii pry iv pry v pry vi figure 2: age of pupils and classes from preschool through primary classes research question 4: is the class where male pupils’ performance started declining in mathematics different from that of female pupils? table 4a: mathematics score for female from preschool to primary six variable (class) n mean std. dev yearly mean diff % yearly mean diff remark pre-school. 321 76.629 17.70401 pry_1 321 73.042 19.97201 -3.587 -4.68 decline pry_2 321 71.484 18.14877 -1.558 -2.13 decline pry_3 321 66.491 18.62646 -4.993 -6.99 decline pry_4 321 62.983 15.93524 -3.508 -5.28 decline pry_5 321 61.680 23.91724 -1.303 -2.07 decline pry_6 321 62.406 17.14737 0.726 1.18 increase 54 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) table 4b: mathematics score for male from preschool to primary six variable (class) n mean std dev yearly mean diff % yearly mean diff remark pre-school 399 73.252 21.12354 pry_1 399 73.721 18.42209 0.469 0.64 increase pry_2 399 70.852 19.05572 -2.869 -3.89 decline pry_3 399 64.731 18.23302 -6.121 -8.64 decline pry_4 399 62.836 16.49237 -1.895 -2.93 decline pry_5 399 64.263 15.67699 1.427 2.27 increase pry_6 399 64.054 16.71685 -0.209 0.33 decline table 4a reveals that female pupils’ performance started declining from primary i with a 4.68% decrease and they experienced a drastic decline at primary iii with a 6.99% decrease. the decrease continued until primary vi where a slight increase of 1.18% was experienced. on the other hand, table 4b reveals that male pupils experienced a small increase in primary i with 0.64% increase but experienced a drastic decline at primary iii with an 8.64% decrease. the performances of male pupils started increasing at primary v with 2.27% and 0.33% at primary vi. it could therefore be inferred that male and female pupils experience a decline in their performance in mathematics at primary iii. figure 3 compares the information using a line graph. figure 3: line graph of classes and male and female pupils’ performance in mathematics 55 salami & okeke re-imagining higher education leadership discussion of findings the first finding of this study revealed that right from primary i, pupils started experiencing a decrease in their performance in mathematics but at primary iii, their performance declined drastically and this continued until primary iv when the decrease in the pupils’ performance in mathematics maintained a constant declining pattern until primary vi. this could be because of the fact that the methods of teaching mathematics adopted by the teachers at these levels make the content of the subject unfamiliar or abstract and hence complex. salami (2012) submits that the common method of instruction adopted by primary school mathematics teachers is direct instruction, which is teacher-centred method and that the teacher was not making using instructional resources. any mathematics concepts taught in such conditions will be too abstract and unfamiliar to the pupils. this is in line with paulsen and dednam (2016) who advocate for constructivist strategies for better and effective mathematics learning. at preschool level, a child-centred method of mathematics teaching is enforced with adequate use of familiar instructional resources, especially at private and demonstration schools. the finding is also in line with the finding of babatunde (2009), haury (2001) and the national teachers institute (2007) that primary school pupils’ learning achievement in mathematics and sciences is poor. kruger and wessels (2015) and paulsen and dednam (2016) explain that the poor achievement in mathematics can be attributed to some teacher’s factors such as teachers’ knowledge of instruction and classroom practices such as an inability to contextualise the teaching. the second finding of the study revealed that the decline starts from primary i but at primary iii, a substantial decline happened in pupils’ performance in mathematics up to primary iv. the major decline experience at primary iii could be because of the implementation of the language of instruction policy. the policy allows the primary school teachers to use the language of the immediate environment to teach the pupils up to primary ii but at primary iii, foreign a language should be introduced (frn, 2013). if the instructional methods are teacher-centred, no resource is used and at a point, foreign language is introduced, this might have a major influence on the academic performance of the learners. this view is in line with wessels and phatudi (2015) who observed that children are emotionally attached to the language and culture of his/her home, therefore any sharp diversity in the language of instruction will negatively affect the performances of the children. the third finding of this study is that during primary iii when there was a drastic decline in the performance of pupils in mathematics, the pupils were approximately 8 years old. this is also expected because the formal education in nigeria, according to the national policy on education (frn, 2013), starts at 6 years old, therefore the pupils are expected to be 8 years old at primary iii. although, there is a major factor that affects pupils’ age and what class they are in and that is frequent industrial actions by the teachers. what is certain from this finding is that the decline in pupils’ performance in mathematics is not because they are underage. the last finding of the study reveals that male and female pupils experience a drastic decline in their performance in mathematics in primary iii class. this might be because of the fact that male and female pupils were exposed to the same condition of instructional methods and language of instruction. since male and female pupils were taught using a teacher-centred method of instruction without the use of instructional resources and at primary iii, they were both taught more in a foreign language, it is then expected that the performance of males and females will have almost the same decline history. however, there is a small difference in the 56 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) decline of male pupils in that there was little increase in their performance at primary i, unlike that of female pupils, who declined in performance in the same class. this could be because of the fact that male children have been reported to have better performance in mathematics than their female counterparts (becker, 2003; gilbert & gilbert, 2003; james, 2007). it is noteworthy also that the decline was not influenced by gender of the pupils. 10. conclusion from the findings of the study, it was observed that there is a decline in the performance of pupils in mathematics from primary i but the decline is drastic at primary iii and this continues until primary iv when the decrease in the pupils’ performance in mathematics maintained a constant declining pattern until primary vi. it has also been shown that the decline was not influenced by the age and gender of the pupils. it is therefore concluded that the content of mathematics, methods used to teach it and the resources used are making the subject unfamiliar, unappealing and complex to the pupils as they move up to higher classes. this calls for the decolonisation of mathematics teaching and the resources used at primary school, which happens to be the foundation level, to experience improvement in the pupils’ performance. therefore, all african countries who are striving to decolonise or transform the educational system will need to replicate this study to see if the results are the same. with this, some interventions have to be put in place for mathematics learning at primary/elementary school to improve the pupils’ performance. this study is considered timely now when almost all the countries in africa are thinking about the contextualisation of mathematics learning for effectiveness and applicability. 11. recommendations based on the finding of this study, the following recommendations are proffered in order to bring about improvement in pupils’ performance in primary classes: there should be more research studies across african countries on the performance trend to discover the causes of poor performance of pupils in primary mathematics. the causes might be in the area of methodology, teachers’ subject matter knowledge (smk), complexity of content delivered, methods of evaluating primary school pupils’ mathematics skills and so on at a particular class or grade level. the use of exploratory methods of teaching as well as the utilisation of contextualised instructional resources should be encouraged at primary school classes. most importantly, all primary iii teachers and primary school teachers in general should be re-trained in this aspect. the mathematics curriculum, textbooks and workbooks should 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of doctoral students and phd programme leaders. the article is based on secondary data analysis of two large studies on doctoral education in south africa. the main point of the article is that the different understandings of the students and the phd programme leaders, as well as the gaps in the narratives of both groups, are an indication of a lack of in-depth understanding of the actual causes of doctoral attrition. using attribution theory, the article suggests that this lack of understanding may contribute to further attrition and calls for further research on the topic. keywords: doctoral student attrition, attribution theory, doctoral education, south africa introduction one of the burning issues in higher education in south africa is the rate of student attrition (letseka & maile, 2008). it is estimated that “a student drop-out rate of 20% implies that about 1.3 billion in government subsidies is spent each year on students who do not complete their study programme … moreover, the cost to those who drop out, in terms of the moral and psychological damage associated with ‘failure’ is incalculable” (department of education [doe], 2001, section 2.1.3). despite the scale of the problem, south african research knowledge on retention and attrition, especially at postgraduate level, is scarce (koen, 2007). doctoral students’ attrition is a complex issue, involving feelings of loss, waste, failure and guilt. the causes of doctoral attrition are multifaceted and not fully understood. while students tend to attribute them to the institution, faculty members tend to attribute them to the students (gardner, 2009b; lovitts, 2001). attribution theory (weiner, 2010) is concerned with how individuals interpret events and how this relates to their thinking, motivation and achievement. gardner (2009b), using attribution theory, proposes that erroneous attributions of the causes of attrition can increase the number of students who leave the programme. the aim of this article is therefore to explore the causes to which doctoral students and phd programme leaders attribute attrition in south africa, based on the supposition that the attributions they make for the students’ success or failures can significantly affect their attrition rate. the attributions are explored by analysing and comparing the views of doctoral students and phd programme leaders on the causes of doctoral student attrition and what they perceive to be the main obstacles to the completion of a degree. this is based on the argument that the factors which spur attrition in some students may also be viewed as obstacles for those who persist (golde, 2005). the article utilises attribution theory as a theoretical lens with which to examine these views. the article begins with an overview of the literature on doctoral students’ attrition, followed by a short outline of the theoretical framework, that is, attribution theory. it continues with a section on methodology, followed by the findings. the article concludes with a discussion on the implications of the findings for policy and practice. research on doctoral attrition in recent years, doctoral attrition has become a growing policy concern and research topic worldwide. research in the usa indicates that the attrition rate is more than 50% across disciplines, that women drop out at a higher rate than do men, that under-represented students have higher attrition rates across 41herman — obstacles to success – doctoral student attrition in south africa disciplines, and that students leave humanities and social-science programmes at a higher rate than those in the natural sciences (council of graduate schools 2008; golde 2005; nettles & millet, 2006). an australian study maintains that local students have lower completion rates than international students (neumann & rodwell, 2009). there are consequences and costs to doctoral attrition. governments, universities and faculties have invested time and resources in those students who left. there are costs to society in terms of the loss of the knowledge and talent of non-completers and there are costs to the non-completers themselves. these can be financial and professional, including a loss of opportunities elsewhere, but also personal, with a loss of self-esteem or a feeling of failure (allan & dory, 2001; gardner, 2009a; golde, 2005; lovitts, 2001). there are multiple reasons why students leave doctoral programme. there could be personal factors, such as time constraints, financial constraints, family responsibilities, lack of a support system, and the effects on relationships (or lack of) with significant others. physical and psychological stresses, which are the consequence of trying to balance the normal stresses of personal lives and relationships with the demands of a doctoral programme, are major causes for doctoral attrition (smith, maroney, nelson, able & able 2006). allan and dory (2001) identified a number of psychological factors as barriers to completion; these included a lack of self-efficacy and self-esteem, frustration, a lack of persistence and commitment, an inability to work independently and execute a significant research project, and a lack of capabilities, especially a lack of focus in choosing a dissertation topic, and poor time management. in a similar fashion, kearns, gardiner and marshall (2008) speak of self-sabotaging, or self-handicapping behaviours, such as over-commitment, procrastination, perfectionism, or choosing performance-debilitating circumstances. gardner (2008) adds that attrition is high among students who feel that they do not “fit the mould” of a graduate student. these are often under-represented students, or those who differ with regard to gender, race, age, enrolment (part-time), and familial status from the traditional mode of a graduate student who has persisted in many fields, that is, anyone who is not a young, white male. golde (2005) suggests that some students leave doctoral education because of a mismatch between their goals, expectations and strengths and the norms and practices of the discipline and the department. she maintains that some students are unaware of what it is like to be a doctoral student, while others leave because they do not fit in with the preferred ways of being a lifelong member of the discipline, as portrayed by those in the department. the scarcity of desirable academic jobs also contributes to attrition. a further frequently cited reason for attrition is a change in career goals, with students leaving their programmes to take jobs (allan & dory, 2001). in a groundbreaking study, lovitts (2001) argued that the emphasis on students’ failure diverts attention from organisational factors which may contribute to attrition, that is, factors related to the institution, department or the discipline. she highlighted the importance of the students’social and academic integration to completion. attrition is lower in highly structured disciplines, such as life sciences, which often require students and faculty members to work in teams. in contrast, the highest attrition rates are in the humanities, where study and research are often individualised and isolated. the role of the disciplinary context in the retention or attrition of graduate students is explained by the socialisation theory, the process by which a newcomer is integrated into a community (ehrenberg, jakubson, jeffrey, so & price, 2007; gardner, 2008; gardner, 2010; golde, 2005; lovitts, 2001; lovitts & nelson, 2000; nettles & millet, 2006; tinto, 1993). other studies also point to organisational factors that act as barriers to completion, including poor working relationships or personality conflicts with supervisors, limited availability of supervisory capacity at the department, supervisors who are too busy to take on doctoral students or are uninterested in student topics or problems, a lack of flexibility in the doctoral programme, and insufficient training (or, in some cases, a lack of any training at all) on how to conduct research or write a dissertation (allan & dory, 2001). a lack of financial support for doctoral students has always been cited as a major barrier to completion (allan & dory, 2001; haynes, 2008). there are no comprehensive studies exploring doctoral attrition in south africa. portnoi (2009a) explores the barriers to developing academics in south africa. drawing on a study of a small sample 42 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 of students, she suggests that the lack of a systematic induction into postgraduate studies, feelings of solitude, a lack of a supportive community, and the students’ experience of “flying solo” are among the reasons for attrition of doctoral students. these conditions, in particular, negatively affect students from under-represented groups. the latter are mostly first-generation students, who are unable to exercise their cultural and social capital in pursuing postgraduate studies, and often do not have role models or others with whom they feel comfortable speaking about their experiences. portnoi (2009b) further identified funding, feelings of inferiority among black south africans as a psychological legacy of apartheid, and covert institutional racism as demotivating factors which could cause them to abandon their doctoral studies or affect their decision to pursue an academic career. in portnoi studies (2009a, 2009b), students attribute attrition mostly to organisational factors or external causes. according to attribution theory, if other students believed that they had the same attributes, they would leave the programme as well. thus, the first step in combating doctoral student attrition is to explore how students and faculty members understand attrition. however, before we proceed, the next section will present attribution theory as the theoretical framework. attribution theory as a lens to explain doctoral attrition attributions are the causal explanations people give to events that happen to and around them. weiner (2010) identifies three conceptual dimensions along which particular attributions can be analysed. these are stability, locus of causality, and controllability. the stability dimension refers to whether causes change over time (stable – skills and abilities; unstable – efforts). locus of causality refers to whether the attributions are internal (skills, abilities and efforts) or external (task difficulty and luck). controllability refers to whether the cause or the event is perceived to be within the control of the person (efforts) or not (luck, other actions). therefore, according to this conceptual framework, skills or ability are stable, internal and uncontrollable, while effort is unstable, internal and controllable. lovitts (2001) and gardner (2009b) used attribution theory as the lens through which to examine student and faculty beliefs and understandings about doctoral student attrition. on the basis of the attribution theory, lovitts (2001) found that students often believe that they are the only ones experiencing problems; thus, they attribute their difficulties to their own inadequacies and not to the structure of the situation. most supervisors in lovitts’ study shared the view that the students themselves were responsible for their own attrition. gardner (2009b) adds that doctoral candidates often relate the causes of attrition to attributions made by others, particularly other students. if the candidates believe they are removed from such an attributed set of behaviours or conditions, they often believe that the outcome (i.e., attrition) will not happen to them, and vice versa. for example, many students in gardner’s study talked about marriage and children as a reason for doctoral attrition. if a student understands this attribution through the existing cultural narrative in their programme, it may encourage another student to leave when he or she gets married or has a baby. gardner (2009b) points to the discrepancy in the views of phd students and supervisors with regard to the reasons for attrition. in her study, academics were unaware of specific reasons for the departure of students from their programmes and most determinedly did not attribute any reasons for attrition to the department. on the other hand, students often attributed the causes of their attrition to the academics, the department and the institution. lovitts (2001) explains the discrepancy by referring to the actorobserver model of attribution theory. the observers (academics) tend to focus on the actors’ (students’) disposition, while the actors (students) tend to focus on the context. this leads to the fundamental attribution error (lovitts, 2001:24), whereby observers tend to overestimate the role of actors’ dispositions and underestimate the situational causes of their actions. research methodology the article is based on a secondary analysis of data from two national studies on doctoral education in south africa.1� one set of data comes from a qualitative study that explored the experiences of phd 43herman — obstacles to success – doctoral student attrition in south africa programme leaders in educating and preparing doctoral students (herman, 2009). the sample comprised 16 leaders of reputable phd programmes at nine south african universities, representing a range of disciplines – including engineering, agriculture, medicine, biological sciences, chemistry, physics, health, business, education and law – as well as interdisciplinary and professional fields. the sample was chosen from dst-nrf centres of excellence, recipients of national science and technology forum (nstf) awards specifically commended for graduating doctoral students, and research chairs with exemplary doctoral graduate track records. the interviews were conducted between february and june 2009. they were transcribed verbatim, and analysed using atlasti. data on students’ views come from a large survey that explored the experiences of phd students in higher education institutions in south africa. the web-based survey included 950 phd students, enrolled in the top 12 phd-producing universities in 2009 (herman & yu, 2009). this article mainly focuses on two items from the survey that dealt with students’ views of the obstacles to the completion of their phd. the first item (item 52 in the questionnaire – appendix 1), owing to technical error, was answered by only four top phd-awarding universities, and included 438 entries. in this item, students were asked to rate, on a four-point likert scale, 12 different possible obstacles to on-time completion. the responses were recorded in two categories (“not at all” or “not much”, and “a great deal” or “to a large extent”), and analysed using ibm spss statistics 19. chi-square tests were used to identify whether there were significant associations between the various variables. the second item was open to all participants in the survey. the students were allowed to add another obstacle if they chose to do so (item 53 – appendix 1). there were 336 entries for this item. the responses were analysed qualitatively. findings attributions by phd programme leaders the analysis of the interviews with the 16 phd programme leaders highlighted six main attributions for the attrition of doctoral students: (1) students’ personal reasons; (2) students’ lack of ability, skills or motivation to do a phd; (3) students’ lack of financial support; (4) poor supervision; (5) inflexible policy; and (6) faulty equipment. among the personal attributions were family issues, child-bearing, health and hiv/aids. it is understandable that some drop-out rate is unavoidable in any programme which spans three to five years, mostly because “life intrudes into the phd” (phd programme leader in the humanities). students may realise that a doctorate is not for them; some are not prepared for the intensity of the programme, while others lack the commitment to persist. i think life is the biggest obstacle actually. the one other thing is that we introduced the programme where we would induct students into an academic career, they all said that they wanted an academic career when they started. but one of the reasons why the others did not complete is that they decided at some point that academia was not for them (phd programme leader in math education). sometimes the decision to leave academia has to do with the negative image of an academic career: the main reason to get a phd in humanities is to become an academic, and academia looks less and less attractive. students see what is going in the university, they experience low levels of morale in the institution at large … they experience high levels of conflict and high workloads – a job that people are saying openly is less rewarding than it used to be (phd programme leader in the humanities). it is perceived that academia is especially unattractive for black south africans: there is a sense in many black south africans asking: ‘why a phd?’ ... many other african students come to do a ph.d, they really want it, but most of our students have to be convinced that a phd is something worth doing. it does not seem to have a value. people would point to you and say that you have a phd, but you are still poor. maybe this has got to do with our legacy for black people that education is to going to free us from poverty. if it doesn’t, what is the purpose? ... people are not 44 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 attracted to academia, so they think why should they do a phd? (phd programme leader in math education). racism and an institutional culture that alienated black students were also viewed as external attributions to attrition. furthermore, students’ lack of skills or abilities was considered to be a major attribution for attrition: not every student is capable of doing a phd, and that should be really emblazoned in red letters on the top of any letter. i have seen among our own students, once they have started on this process of university, that everything becomes inevitable. but that truly isn’t the case, i hope everybody understands that. a phd student is somebody with a special set of qualities, not just intellectual qualities, which is why there is a substantial drop-out rate (phd programme leader in chemistry). it is perceived that south african students, especially black south africans, lack the foundational skills necessary to pursue a phd. in particular, students are struggling with language and academic writing. while some phd programme leaders blame this on selection criteria, the blame was often laid on the external context, that is, the schooling system in south africa: i think it is our schooling system. compared with our own students, students from other african countries have a better background when they come here. we find that, right through, they have a better statistical training, they have a better understanding… somehow there is just something lacking; our students have more to catch up than students from elsewhere in africa ... and there is no excuse for it because some of our students from malawi, who have schools under trees, have a better understanding than students from some of our schools (phd programme leader in agriculture). related to the notion of “student lacking” is the perception among phd programme leaders that students are often not aware beforehand of the financial, emotional and intellectual commitment required to complete a doctorate. given the duration of phd studies, a change of lifestyle is required. the students need to negotiate a space in their family for their academic work. this is a major barrier, given the fact that doctoral students in south africa tend to be mature students, the majority of whom study part-time, while supporting themselves or their families (herman & yu, 2009). the phd programme leaders attribute funding as an external cause for attrition. they maintain that bursaries are too low, and that the national research foundation’s (nrf) typical three-year allowance is not enough for a phd. even when the nrf bursary is supplemented with more generous grants from industry or university funds, it provides limited income if the phd student has a family to support. the lack of financial support results in some students’ premature entry into the job market. companies and government departments that lure promising black students into jobs in order to fill their equity quotas encourage this type of attrition. at the same time, black families pressurise students to earn a decent salary: if you are the first person in your family to go to college, and then to tackle a phd, and you are in a family that is very poor, there is going to be enormous pressure on you to take a short-cut. and if you are lucky enough to finish college and get a job, some of the biggest obstacles are not just funding, but poverty and economic pressures (phd programme leader in customary law). another external attribution is the higher education system in south africa, which recognises only one type of doctorate, that is, a doctorate that serves the academic career with the research dissertation at the centre of each phd programme (doe, 2007). doctoral students, on the other hand, pursue the qualification for other purposes, such as to serve industry or to further their careers, and are not prepared for the academic rigour and theoretical requirements of the traditional phd programme (herman, forthcoming). these conflicting agendas, coupled with the inflexibility of some programmes and their failure to cater for the diversity of the students’ needs, are perceived as increasing attrition. a number of phd programme leaders attributed students’ attrition to supervisors’ overload, the quality of the supervisors, and the supervisory relationship. it is perceived that not enough is being done to ensure that inexperienced supervisors, such as recent phd graduates, or unsuitable supervisors, such as those without phds, are not supervising doctoral students. the following quotation sums it up: 45herman — obstacles to success – doctoral student attrition in south africa i’ve seen students drop out because of an irreversible breakdown of the relationship with a supervisor. not common, but it happens. sometimes it’s the student’s fault and sometimes it’s the supervisor’s fault. and there are still examples of bad supervisions around, everywhere, not just in this country. and i suppose a limited number drop out because of a semi-supervisor issue, not a personality issue, but the project is poorly designed or proved to be unworkable or something, and basically they give up (phd programme leader in biotechnology). other obstacles to completion are attributed to the lack of equipment for scientific experiment or to general poor facilities: those computers don’t work all the time. the whole question of networks, they are unpredictable. even the computers, we don’t use the university computers for our number crunching, we purchase our own computers that are dedicated towards that. but one little thing gets out of order, then the whole system is down (phd programme leader in physical and material science). attributions by doctoral students students considered personal, yet external obstacles, such as academic challenges, financial constraints and family or work commitments, as more limiting than institutional obstacles, such as supervision, access to facilities and interaction with academics or other phd students (table 1). no gender differences were observed, except in the association between causes for attrition and collegial atmosphere/communication with others (χ 2(1)=4.381, p=0.036). this association was mainly due to the fact that substantially more female students than males considered interaction with other academics as an obstacle to completion. table 1 main obstacles to on-time completion obstacles not at all or not much a great deal or to a very large extent academic challenges (n=426) 53% 47% financial problems (n=432) 57% 43% work commitments (n=401) 61% 39% family obligations (427) 62% 38% communication with academics (n=399) 78% 22% quality of supervision (n=401) 80% 20% limited access to facilities (n=438) 82% 18% administrative support (n=403) 82% 18% interaction with phd students (n=406) 83% 17% language difficulties (n=426) 89% 11% health challenge (n=405) 91% 9% the quantitative findings were supplemented by the students’ comments, reporting other obstacles that they had to on-time completion of their doctoral studies. in most cases, the responses repeated or amplified the students’ answers to the quantitative data, while some students suggested additional obstacles. the responses were categorised into six main groups: work commitments • academic challenges • problems with access to facilities and resources • 46 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 financial/funding problems • issues with supervision• the south african context • in the section that follows the quantitative data are triangulated with the qualitative data to provide a more holistic picture of students’ attributions of attrition. work commitment conflicts over time, as well as over energy, were the biggest attributes for late or non-completion. for those who worked full-time while studying part-time, it was easier when the phd topic was related to their work. students struggled to balance work, study and family. yet, when choices had to be made, the phd studies often took last place: my family is my first priority, then my job and only then my studies. the first two consume most of my time. another common problem was the constant interruption of studies and the difficulty of re-starting after being involved in other things. this often meant repeating work already done and moving backwards instead of progressing. one of south africa’s challenges has been to increase the supervisory capacity, that is, academic staff with doctoral degrees which, in 2007, averaged 30% (crest, 2009). to this end, many academics have been pressurised to upgrade their qualification. indeed, 44% of the participants in the survey were already working in academia when they embarked on their phd studies (herman & yu, 2009). however, the comments indicate that working in academia while studying was demanding: working in an academic environment with full-time teaching and learning responsibilities makes completing a phd in the expected time virtually impossible! (emphasis in original). the chi-square test suggests that work commitment has significant associations to students’ race (χ 2(4)=20.681, p<001); age (χ 2(6)=95.122, p<001); marital status (χ 2(2)=32.700, p<001); children (χ 2(1)=17.809, p<001); field of study (χ 2(13)=50.924, p<001); nationality (χ 2(3)=33.052, p<001); and the nature of studies, that is, part-time or full-time (χ 2(3)=175.452, p<001). a comparison of the observed counts with the expected frequencies revealed that more mature students or married students with children considered work commitments an obstacle to on-time completion, than did young or single students. more south african students, as well as more part-time students with full-time employment, considered work commitment an obstacle to completion than did international students or those with part-time employment. furthermore, more students in education, psychology, economic and management studies, religion and chemical sciences than those in other fields of study regarded work commitments as an obstacle to completion. indeed, students in these professional fields are usually mature students, often professionals, working full-time or part-time while pursuing their phd studies family responsibilities in their comments, very few students referred to their family responsibilities. they usually noted the pressure of balancing family life with work and study, especially when dealing with the unexpected, such as sickness, death, divorce or loss of income. the quantitative data showed that family obligation had significant associations with a student’s age (χ 2(6)=75.507, p<001); marital status (χ 2(3)=60.923, p<001); children (χ 2(1)=52.484, p<001); field of study (χ 2(13)=32.436, p=0.002); nationality (χ 2(3)=11.692, p=0.009); and the nature of his or her studies (χ 2(3)=70.273, p<001). a comparison of the observed counts with the expected frequencies revealed 47herman — obstacles to success – doctoral student attrition in south africa that more mature, married students or students with children than young, single students or those with no children viewed family obligation as an obstacle to completion. this also applied to students with full-time employment in comparison with those with part-time employment. furthermore, substantially more south african students than international students considered family obligation to be an obstacle to completion. it was also evident that more students in education, psychology, economic and management studies, religion and health sciences than students in other fields considered family obligation to be an obstacle to completion. again, this can be explained by the typical profile of the students, who tend to be working professionals, in these disciplines. financial/funding problems four main themes emerged from an analysis of the students’ attribution of funding as a cause for attrition: a lack of adequate funding. this increases students’ doubts as to whether they have made the right 1. choice in pursuing a phd, especially when they have families to support: it’s better to just go and work after masters. at least then there will be food on the table for our families, rather than doing a phd. another respondent echoes this: we are at a stage in our lives when many of our peers who chose to work are buying houses and cars, while those of us who chose to continue with our studies are constantly anxious about our funding and the fact that we continue to be a financial burden on our parents. this anxiety will continue for those who stay in academia, as post-doctoral funding is equally precarious … many people who have the potential cannot afford to pursue an academic career, aside from the difficulties of raising a family and saving for retirement. the perception that there is discrimination in the funding criteria. this is a particular concern for 2. mature students, white students and international students, as the following quotes demonstrate: i am 50 years old, with a career of 15 years ahead. chances are good that i will spend them in academia with productive research. yet there is no nrf funding for novice researchers of my age. i find it demoralising and inhibiting. only black students receive bursaries. not so many bursaries are available for postgraduate international students ... yet the research that we do is applicable to south africa and benefits the same country that denies funding to international students. a lack of transparency in the selection process and in the distribution of funds. sometimes the 3. requirement for a certain procedure does not seem logical, as one respondent observes: if a student starts the phd immediately after his master’s, there is very little time to write proposals for funding before completion of the master’s, let alone to have a full understanding of what their chosen phd study will encompass. there are also reported differences in the level of funding between universities. for example, one respondent wished that his university “will provide financial support that is more or less equivalent to what other universities … are offering”. the hidden costs of doing a phd, such as travelling and accommodation, are not covered. this is 4. particularly applicable to international students and those who register with universities outside their areas: [i am concerned about] the cost of travelling to the university, which is 700 km away, and paying for guesthouse accommodation within walking distance of university. 48 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 i stay and work in windhoek, namibia. financial resources are not always available to travel to pretoria for consultations and access to relevant materials. the chi-square test indicates that financial problems have significant associations with race (χ 2(4)=23.238, p<001); this is due to the fact that more african students and fewer white students than expected considered financial problems an obstacle to completion. financial problems are also associated with age (χ 2(6)=15.381, p=0.017) and parents’ education (χ 2(3)=9.038, p=0.029). financial problems impact the age group 30-40 more than the other age groups. it also appears as if more students from homes where at least one parent had a postgraduate qualification considered financial problems an obstacle to completion, than did students from homes where neither of the parents had schooling. this may be related to the level of subsidy available to students from disadvantaged backgrounds. however, this finding contradicts the association between race and financial problems, and needs to be investigated further. academic challenges for some students, pursuing a phd, especially after a hiatus of 10 years or more, was a great challenge. a repeated complaint was a lack of research skills or training and the difficulties of conducting the research due to a lack of access to equipment and expertise. for some students, personal motivation or psychological factors, such as procrastination and perfectionism, were perceived as obstacles to completion. the chi-square test indicates that academic challenges have a significant association with race (χ 2(4)=18.405, p=0.001). a comparison of the observed counts with the expected frequencies revealed that fewer african students than expected and more white students than expected regarded academic challenges to be an obstacle to completion. interestingly, the phd programme leaders spoke about academic challenges almost exclusively with regard to african students. it is possible that the phd programme leaders’ focus on black students emanates from the pressure on universities to increase racial equity at doctoral level. a significant association was also found between fields of study and academic challenges (χ 2(13)=24.654, p=0.026) as an obstacle for completion. this association is due to the fact that more students in the humanities, social sciences and health sciences considered academic challenges to be an obstacle to completion than students in other disciplines. this may be explained by the low level of integration of doctoral students into disciplines where the focus is on individual work, rather than on team collaboration, and needs to be investigated further. facilities and resources students’ attributions to attrition include inaccessible facilities and resources, such as faulty equipment and unavailability of library materials or publications, internet time, computer, working space and telephones. these obstacles were clearly of more concern to the students who did not live on campus. the problems often seemed to be compounded by a lack of funding. at the institutional level, a lack of funding for facilities seems to have prevented certain universities or departments from buying or repairing equipment, books and journals, or from employing technical support personnel. at the personal level, insufficient funding seems to have contributed to some students’ inability to afford laptops, to make use of libraries, purchase materials or access the internet. many problems in this category seem to be external and beyond the control of the individual students: constant renovations and the constant breaking down of instruments.• lack of equipment available in south africa for certain analyses. equipment may be totally unavailable • at some institutions. if available elsewhere in south africa, it is difficult to obtain funding to commute to other institutions. 49herman — obstacles to success – doctoral student attrition in south africa these problems were more applicable to certain fields, especially the natural sciences. supervision while only 20% of the participants in the survey attributed attrition to supervision, many comments referred to the topic. students argued that a lack of communication with and limited access to the supervisors attributed to their attrition. they observed that their supervisors seemed to be overloaded with teaching or with the number of students they supervised. quite a number of students claimed that the time it took to get feedback from supervisors had severely delayed their progress. it was perceived that the unavailability of the supervisors exacerbated the students’ feelings of loneliness, especially when there was little interaction with peers or other academics: i experienced a total lack of structured supervision, i.e. setting of definite targets and intervention when a given strategy did not work. this caused a situation where the alternatives were sinking or learning to swim on your own. in some cases, students related a lack of attention or interest to insensitivity to cultural differences: most supervisors are not african in their philosophical grounding and they know (or want to know) very little about the culture and languages of the majority of their charges. students attributed their obstacles to their supervisors’ lack of capacity. they commented on a mismatch between the expertise and interest of their supervisors and their research topics (an administrative issue), and that “supervisors have little idea about scope and completion of projects. and some even supervise work in areas in which they are not knowledgeable”. supervisors’ computer literacy was also mentioned by some students as having caused unnecessary delays. the apprenticeship supervisory model, based on an individualised and personal relationship between the supervisor and the phd student, is the dominant supervisory model in south africa (herman, 2009). some students attributed their obstacles to completion to the inflexibility of this model: halfway through my ph.d, my supervisor changed jobs and went to another university. i had to stay behind in a department with no support or expertise in my project. if your supervisor has a problem with others you cannot even consult them on any academic-related issues. i missed collaborative work in south africa. it appears i am the only one doing a phd under my supervisor and as such, i am often in suspense as to the way forward. things would be much easier if there were other students i could speak with. a number of students lamented the absence of a community when pursuing their doctoral studies: i had expected some sort of academic community and exchange of ideas among faculty and doctoral students. the majority of the faculty are completely uninterested in my research or who i am. i feel isolation (probably due to the nature of my topic and the lack of expertise in the field in south africa) which makes the research journey lonely, and the lack of interest in my work by the department. the south african context students attributed some of the barriers to the achievement of the award to practical problems, among them the high level of crime in south africa and their experience of traumatic events, such as murders, burglaries at home, or hijacks (“i left my data in the car”), theft of computers and other equipment, leading to a loss of research time: 50 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 security concerns in campus. several murders have occurred on campus during my stay, as well as muggings and other forms of physical attacks on students. this has led to a general fear of walking at night. because of security reasons, sometimes working late in our lab is not possible. lastly, international students spoke about being homesick, their difficulty in communicating with home, red tape in pursuing a visa or study permit, and xenophobic experiences: having had my first phd at columbia university, new york city, i can authoritatively say that south african society and government do not treat foreign students from poor african countries very well. some problems that happen, like xenophobia, are affecting non-south african nationals, making people in a position of permanent fear. this can lead to days of not much commitment to work: need more safety. summary and conclusion the doctoral students’ and the phd programme leaders’ attributions to doctoral attrition are partly consistent and partly differ from one another. comparing the responses brings forth some pertinent issues: first, the need to secure sufficient funding while pursuing doctoral studies is well documented in the research literature (nettles & millet, 2006). it has been experienced by doctoral students in south africa, and is acknowledged by the phd programme leaders in this study. it is also accepted that attrition is part and parcel of doctoral education, as students change directions, goals or personal circumstances. second, both students and phd programme leaders consider personal problems as a major obstacle to completion. however, there were various understandings of the nature of these problems. the phd programme leaders attributed attrition to the students’ disposition, their internal, stable and uncontrollable traits. the dominant narrative evolved around the students’ lack of capacity to do a phd, a lack of basic skills, a lack of fit between the students and academia, and a lack of recognition of the value of the phd. the strong emphasis on “student lacking” echoes gardner’s (2009a) findings in the us context. the students, on the other hand, perceived their academic shortcomings as deriving from insufficient training at postgraduate level. this is an external, controllable and transient attribute. third, it seems that the phd programme leaders were not fully aware of the practical obstacles, besides appropriate funding, that stood in the way of the students. the struggle to balance work, family life and study was extremely taxing for the typical south african student with family commitments. in addition, a lack of resources and access to facilities, distance from the universities, as well as crime and xenophobia in south africa, were considered by the students as important attributions of attrition. the fact that the phd programme leaders hardly discussed these issues indicates the distance between them and the students. fourth, both students and ph.d programme leaders attributed attrition to poor supervision. the programme leaders focused on novice supervisors’ lack of preparedness for the task and highlighted examples of poor supervision. the students added dissatisfaction with feedback, overdue feedback, supervisors who were neither interested nor supportive, a general lack of expertise in certain fields in south africa, a lack of access to and a lack of communication with supervisors. lastly, it is interesting to note the gaps and the silences in both narratives. it seems that the department, the discipline or the institution play a very small role in the students’ or the phd programme leaders’ attributions of attrition. this resonates with koen’s (2007) observation that the scarce south african literature on attrition overstresses external factors, such as the historical system of apartheid (students are perceived to be poorly prepared for university study by a dysfunctional school system), socio-economic conditions at home (financial constraints lead to poor student throughput and withdrawal), and insufficient financing of universities by government (resulting in high student-staff ratios, leading to withdrawal of master’s students because of a lack of contact with staff and poor thesis supervision). 51herman — obstacles to success – doctoral student attrition in south africa without underestimating these factors, koen argues that there is not enough understanding of the internal factors, those related to socialisation or the integration of the students into the academic milieu, and that this emphasis on external factors exonerates institutions from blame for student failure. the phd programme leaders’ narrative exhibits the fundamental attribution error (lovitts, 2001), according to which they, as the observers, highlight the nature of the actors, that is, the students, and undervalue the situational causes for attrition. the students, on the other hand, seem to point to the external attributions. these were, however, mostly in the personal realm. the role of the department or of the institution in promoting retention or increasing attrition was less important. according to attribution theory, if students feel that they have the attributions that cause attrition, they may feel that they have these problems and, consequently, will leave the phd programme. likewise, if phd programme leaders believe that students who have these attributions may fail or leave the programme, they may inadvertently pass along these understandings both among themselves and to their students; thus, contributing to a higher rate of attrition (gardner, 2009b). the discrepancy between the doctoral students’ and the phd programme leaders’ attributions of attrition in this study, as well as the gaps in the narratives, indicate a poor understanding of the reasons for attrition. consistent with attribution theory, these misunderstandings could spur further attrition. doctoral students are “silent leavers, departing without saying good-bye” (nettles & millet, 2006:125). research knowledge on the actual causes of attrition and the obstacles to completion in south africa is inadequate. in order to reduce doctoral attrition in south africa, a better understanding of the actual causes of doctoral attrition is necessary. research must be conducted in the different departments and institutions in order to inform the students and those working closely with them on the obstacles to completion in each specific programme or department. this study is limited, as it is based on secondary data and does not include in-depth interviews with students, especially the non-completers. further research is needed to demystify the “invisible problem”(lovitts, 2001:1) and to gain an in-depth knowledge of the actual causes of student attrition in south africa, how these relate to the context and the various disciplines, and which causes may be prevented. the findings from such research should be discussed in order to inform and change students’ and faculty members’ attribution of attrition. viewed through the lens of attribution theory, south african universities can begin to decrease attrition with a growing understanding of its causes. acknowledgement: i would like to thank dr fletcher, from the internal consultation services, department of statistics, university of pretoria, for the statistical analysis. references allan p & dory j 2001. understanding doctoral programme attrition: an empirical study. faculty working papers, lubin scool of business, pace university. council of graduate schools 2008. ph.d. completion and attrition: analysis of baseline demographic data from the ph.d. completion project, executive summary. retrieved on 22 january 2011 from http://www.phdcompletion.org/information/executive_ summary_demographics_book_ii.pdf crest 2009. doctoral students in south africa: a statistical profile based on hemis data. a report commissioned by the assaf panel on the phd, stellenbosch university: centre for research on science and technology (crest). department of education (doe) 2001. national plan for higher education. pretoria: doe. department of education (doe) 2007. higher education qualification framework (heqf). pretoria: doe. ehrenberg rr, jakubson gh, jeffrey g, so e & price j 2007. inside the black box of doctoral education: what programme characteristics influence doctoral students’ attrition and graduation probabilities. educational evaluation and policy analysis, 29(2):134-150. gardner sk 2008. fitting the mold of graduate school: a qualitative study of socialization in doctoral education. innovative higher education, 33(2):125-138. 52 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 gardner sk 2009a. the development of doctoral students: phases of challenge and support. ashe higher education report, 34(6):1-14. gardner sk 2009b. student and faculty attributions of attrition in highand low-completing doctoral programme in the united states. higher education, 58:97-112. gardner sk 2010. contrasting the socialization experiences of doctoral students in highand low completing departments: a qualitative analysis of disciplinary contexts at one institution. the journal of higher education, 81(1):61-81. golde cm 2005. the role of department and discipline in doctoral student attrition: lessons from four departments. the journal of higher education,76(6): 669-700. haynes kn 2008. reasons for doctoral attrition. technical report, the university of georgia, the graduate school. herman c 2009. exemplary ph.d programmes in south africa: a qualitative report of constraints and possibilities. unpublished report commissioned by the assaf panel on the phd. herman c (forthcoming). the purpose of the ph.d – a south african perspective. higher education policy. herman c & yu ke 2009. survey of doctoral students in south african universities. unpublished report commissioned by the assaf panel on the ph.d. kearns h, gardiner m & marshall k 2008. innovation in ph.d completion: the hardy shall succeed (and be happy!). higher education research & development, 27(1):77-89. koen c 2007. postgraduate student retention and success: a south african case study. cape town: human science resource council (hsrc) press. letseka m & maile s 2008. high university drop-out rates: a threat to south africa’s future. pretoria: human science research council policy brief. retrieved on 4 may 2011 from http://www hsrc. ac.za/document-2717.phtml. lovitts be 2001. leaving the ivory tower: the causes and consequences of departure from doctoral study. lanham, md: rowman and littlefield. lovitts be & nelson c 2000. the hidden crisis in graduate education: attrition from ph.d. programmes. academe, 86(6):44-49. nettles mt & millet cm 2006. three magic letters, getting the ph.d. baltimore, maryland: the johan hopkins uniersity press. neumann r & rodwell j 2009. the ‘invisible’ part-time research students: a case study of satisfaction and completion. studies in higher education, 34(1):55-68. portnoi l 2009a. cultivating the next generation of academics in south africa. africa education review, 6:182-207. portnoi l 2009b. to be or not to be an academic: south african graduate students’ vocational choices. international journal of educational development, 29:406-414. smith rl, maroney k, nelson k, able a & able h 2006. doctoral programmes: changing high rates of attrition. journal of humanistic counselling, education and development, 45:17-31. tinto v 1993. leaving college: rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition. 2nd ed. chicago, il: the university of chicago press. weiner b 2010. the development of an attribution-based theory of motivation: a history of ideas. educational psychologist, 45(1):28-36. (endnotes) 1. these studies were commissioned by the academy of science in south africa (assaf). vii sechaba mahlomaholo (wsu) mmahlomaholo@wsu.ac.za mzolisi payi (wsu) editorial education for sustainable development in the era of decolonisation and transformation the voices demanding the decolonisation and transformation of education have become louder, stronger and clearer. these happen when the whole of humanity has bound itself to the united nations’ 17 sustainable development goals (sdgs) of 2015–2030 building onto the 8 millennium development goals (mdgs) of 2000–2015. what is unclear to many is whether decolonisation and transformation of education on the one hand, and education for sustainable development on the other, refer to the same processes. it is also unclear whether the intents and purposes are the same, whether mechanisms and strategies to operationalise them are similar or whether we are being confronted by irreconcilable contradictions that will make the realisation of either and/or all impossible. to initiate this conversation, the higher education quality council (heqc) and the south african human rights commission (sahrc) seem to agree that transformation of education involves a movement from a culture of blame, confrontation, low morale, conflict and apathy among staff, students and management into a culture of respect, inclusion, responsibility, accountability, transparency and excellence. furthermore, the national development plan 2013 for 2030, in line with the sdgs, regards education, training and innovation as central to the country’s long-term development. these are seen as core elements in eliminating poverty, reducing inequality and laying the foundations of an equal society. the bottom line of sustainable development therefore is about responding to the challenges and creating more sustainable and resilient societies through quality education. in the context of the above, contributions in the form of articles to this special issue of perspectives in education (pie) attempt to unravel what the transformation and decolonisation of education means and implies, as well as what education for sustainable development includes within its explanatory scope. the ultimate intention of this viii exercise is to theoretically and sometimes with empirical data show how “transformation and decolonisation of education” relates to “education for sustainable development” and map out how they are performed jointly or separately. in order to systematise this discussion, articles in this volume are classified into six categories of expanding concentric circles. the first category looks at learners, that is; how they learn and perform academically as instances of transformation and decolonisation. still on the theme of transformation and decolonisation, the second category looks at the other component of the educational project, namely teachers and the manner in which they see and play their roles of intensifying self-awareness; hence, better academic performance among their charges. the third category focuses on the school as the context for couching the transformation and decolonisation of the learners’ academic performance, teachers’ scaffolding practices and curriculum relevance, among others. the fourth category interrogates transformation and decolonisation within communities and instances of civil society that have direct influence on schools, learners, teachers and the curriculum. the fifth category looks at the epicentre of transformation and decolonisation during the past five years, namely, the higher education sector. here the focus is on theorising these concepts and relating them to the praxis as well as processes of knowing and knowledge creation. the last category moves a step further in terms of higher education transformation and decolonisation by lifting out examples of what all these mean in the practice of the curriculum. with an article titled, “quality education for sustainable development: are we on the right track? evidence from the timss 2015 study in south africa”, alex and juan initiate the conversation in the first category. this article investigates the contextual factors that exist as well as critically assess the progress made by senior phase mathematics learners in timss 2015. it brings its investigation to a halt by making recommendations in order to accelerate this progress thereby positively contributing to learners’ performance in the eastern cape and, in the long term, to the achievement of sustainable development goals (sdgs) as laid out in the national development plan of 2030 for south africa. the argument above is taken further in malebese’s article titled “a socially inclusive teaching strategy for transforming the teaching of english first additional language”. herein she explores ways of including indigenous knowledge systems in the teaching of english first additional language (efal). the aim being to use a socially inclusive teaching strategy in such a manner that the imbalances that past oppressive regimes brought into the teaching and learning of a second language, efal in this case, is challenged and possibly reversed. qhosola, through her theorisation of what she calls “adequate descriptive feedback” demonstrates how learners’ performance can be enhanced in the learning of auditing as an aspect of accounting. her article titled “enhancing the teaching and learning of auditing: the case for descriptive feedback” shows how descriptive feedback can create transformative spaces in the auditing classroom, make learners aware of multiple positions that can be assumed on any matter and ensure inclusivity of many forms of knowledges. the recommendation coming out of this article is that more classes of auditing should use descriptive feedback to transform and decolonise the learning of auditing therein. salami and okeke in their article titled “transformation and decolonisation of mathematics education for sustainable development: a case study of its learning trend in nigeria” conclude their argument by noting that there is the need to review and contextualise mathematics content from third year in primary/elementary school for effective learning. activity-based and exploratory strategies using contextual experiences and resources to deliver mathematics lessons were recommended for third year in primary/elementary schools and beyond. this, according to them, was a way of decolonising and transforming education through its curriculum. ix ojo and adu deepen the above understanding of transformation and decoloniality as “excellence” through their article titled “transformation of teaching quality in secondary school education: teachers’ conception”. therein they argue that teaching is a versatile and valued exercise that is geared towards bringing about achievement in students’ learning. they thus recommend that policymakers should increase the budget on secondary school education as well as monitor the process of implementation to achieve the desired goal. through her article titled “teachers’ perspectives on transforming teacher education curriculum for relevance to basic education for sustainable development”, cishe investigates teachers’ perspectives on how the teacher education curriculum could be transformed to be relevant for basic schooling and contribute to sustainable development. findings revealed that the teacher education curriculum is not always relevant for basic schooling in that teacher trainees are not exposed to the curriculum offered in schools and that traditional teaching approaches are still used at the university, whereas schools use outcomes-based approaches. as a result, once they are qualified, teacher trainees find it difficult to navigate the system. the paper recommends that there is a need to transform the teacher education curriculum so that it becomes relevant and contributes to sustainable development. to conclude the discussions in the second category of the articles in this volume, tlali focuses on the teaching of physical sciences through his contribution titled “creating sustainable physical sciences learning environments: a case for decolonised and transformative learning”. he quips that there is an urgent need for transformation and decolonisation of teaching and learning of physical sciences as well. he argues that this need is evidenced by, among other factors, the alarming rate at which learner enrolment in physical sciences and science education, in general, is decreasing. he concludes his article by suggesting that using servicelearning projects to create sustainable (physical sciences) learning environments, contributes substantially to decolonising and transforming teaching and learning. buka, matiwane-mcengwa and molepo open the discussion in the third category by noting that while there are perspectives on how to approach decolonisation and transformation of education in schools, the reality is that all rests with individuals and ways that they change their attitudes and mind-set. their articled titled “sustaining good management practices in public schools: decolonising principals’ minds for effective schools” is instructive as it comes up with findings that show that some school principals enjoyed being ”big baas” (bosses) and displayed unprofessional conducts such as absenteeism or lack of punctuality where nepotism and corruption prevailed. this has thus necessitated the need for a radical transformation and decolonisation of how schools are managed. in the same category, duku and salami through their contribution titled “the relevance of the school governance body to the effective decolonisation of education in south africa” argue that the decolonisation of education is the means of formalising indigenous culture and knowledge within the formal school system. they point out that the involvement of people at the grassroots who are still endowed with vast knowledge on this cultural heritage should be considered as an option. based on the above, they conclude by recommending that the composition of the members of school governing bodies should statutorily include a recognised knowledgeable individual (rki) in the community to make the body a good source of indigenous knowledge to ensure decolonisation and transformation of education therein. moving further into the fourth category still pursuing the same line of argument, mampane describes the socio-educational after-school intervention programme run by a drop-in centre to fight poverty, strengthen and build resilience in families and school microsystems. through this programme, indigenous psychology is used as a theoretical lens to understand the school, family and community response to contextual challenges and how resilience is conceptualised. the community intervention programme uses a systems approach to achieve its objectives. findings of the study mampane reports on in the article titled “resilience of the socio-educational afterschool and community intervention drop-in centre” suggest that caregivers view the educational success and achievement of their children as an indication of their own success and accomplishment of their dreams, with the aim to uplift and dignify the family standing in society and to alleviate or eradicate poverty. socio-educational programmes for children and families serve to strengthen resilience in families as well as decolonise the social programmes and policies. the fifth category is opened by mutekwe’s article titled “unmasking the ramifications of the fees-mustfall-conundrum in higher education institutions in south africa: a critical perspective”. using a critical perspective the study argues that the shutting down of universities in the context of student protests was neither unique nor original to south africa. according to mutekwe, the fees-must-fall protests showed how challenging a colonised education system can lead to academic disruptions. the key conclusion drawn was that if tuition fees dry up as would be the case if a fee-free decolonised education policy were to be adopted prematurely, the country could suffer severe consequences such as inevitable budget cuts, compromised research standards, demoralised academics and curtailed university offerings. within the same fifth category, moodley and toni with their article titled “transformation within higher education leadership – in conversation within south african female deputy vicechancellors” argue that part of the decolonisation and transformation of higher education institutions is the re-construction of its leadership. this requires not only a review but also a dissolution of traditions, conventions and organisational forms which they have inherited, including a re-imagining thereof. these authors argue that decolonisation and transformation are not mutually exclusive processes in the south african context, but that transformational leadership is part thereof. the paper concludes with recommendations on the impact of psychological and cultural factors and the importance of the implementation of transformative policies, affirming male and female role models, institutional support structures and career planning which should form part of the decolonisation and transformation of conventions in capacity-building towards equity and sustainable leadership. fomunyam takes the discussion further in his article titled “decolonising the future in the untransformed present in south african higher education” when he concludes that funding structures, research politics, administrative structures and a lack of interest are among the reasons for the lack of transformation in the south african higher education sector. his point is that there will be no transformation until higher education institutions have been decolonised. social transformation is therefore argued as the pathway for decolonisation. the paper recommends that transformation in higher education should go beyond the shelves where they are stored as policy, to the classroom and university environment for practice where universities need to revise their understandings of transformation under the guidance of the department of higher education and training. in the same fifth category, maseko explores the issue of transformation and decoloniality further in her article titled “codification, meritocracy and performativity: debilitating factors for black pre-service teachers”. herein she presents an argument and commentary about the concomitant effects of codification, meritocracy and performativity in the academic performance of a cohort of black african foundation phase bachelor of education degree students at a previously predominantly white institution of higher learning. this paper posits the viewpoint that the sociocultural backgrounds of the cohort predispose them to the resultant negative effects of an untransformed and colonised education. in conclusion, she proposes strategies to counter the effect of such. fomunyam and teferra conclude the discussion in the fifth category through their article titled “curriculum responsiveness within the context of decolonisation in south african higher education”. the point made by maseko above is elaborated further in this paper. fomunyam and teferra point to the inability of the curriculum to respond to contextual issues, empower x students to come of age, while at the same time remaining committed to giving them a plurality of voices. in line with morrison, they argue that curriculum discourse should be marked by a multiplicity of voices, articulating a hundred thousand theories thereby creating avenues for a just and caring curriculum. this curriculum is only possible in spaces that are open to construction and reconstruction of responsive knowledge. the paper concludes that curriculum encounters are vital for the effectiveness of the decolonisation process and the enhancement of curriculum responsiveness. the last paper in this volume is by chaka, lephalala and ngesi and it is titled “english studies: decolonisation, deparochialising knowledge, and the null curriculum”. this is the only paper in the sixth and final category. it concludes that decolonisation as an aspect of the curriculum currently has very limited presence in higher education discourses and that efforts should not be spared to ensure that it constitutes the bases of all curriculum going forward. the contributions in this volume seem to agree that transformation and decoloniality relate to each other in many ways and that they both talk to the strife towards excellence; be it in education, the economy or socially and that this has to be inclusive for all. xi 181 codification, meritocracy and performativity: debilitating factors for black pre-service teachers abstract this article presents an argument and commentary about the concomitant effects of codification, meritocracy and performativity in the academic performance of a cohort of black african foundation phase bachelor of education degree students at a previously predominantly white institution of higher learning. the objective of this paper is to illustrate the point that the combination of codification, meritocracy and performativity has potentially debilitating ramifications for the performance of this cohort of pre-service teachers. in this instance, language is a codification mechanism and a means towards epistemological access. this paper posits the viewpoint that the sociocultural backgrounds of the cohort predispose them to the resultant negative effects of the combination of the three factors. the study that forms the basis of this article used the qualitative theoretical orientation of the transformative paradigm to pursue a critical emancipatory and transformative theoretical agenda. this agenda is embodied in the recommendations that are informed by an infusion of the literature, the participants’ observations, as accrued from the data, and the researcher’s reflections. the intention of this socialjustice-oriented support strategy is to make an implied decolonial contribution towards counteracting and diffusing the potentially debilitating effects of the combination of codification, meritocracy and performativity. keywords: pre-service teachers, codification, performativity, academic performance, language, epistemological access, transformative, emancipatory 1. introduction this paper is premised upon a study that was positioned to contribute to a transformative department of higher education and training (dhet) mandate to institutions of higher learning. the intention of the mandate was to strengthen and develop the b.ed. foundation phase programme. with this in mind, the focus of the study was on the concomitant effects of the convergence of language and identity on the black african cohort of this programme. this article thus draws from a dhet-mandated study, as mentioned earlier, to make inferences about the effects of the combination of codification, meritocracy and performativity on a cohort of black b.ed. foundation phase pre-service teachers. in this paper, language is highlighted, not only pbn maseko university of the free state doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i2.14 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(2): 181-195 © uv/ufs http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.14 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.14 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.14 182 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) as a means towards epistemological access, but with its association with the combination of codification (bernstein, 1990), meritocracy (lister, 2006; mcnamee & miller jr, 2004) and performativity (ball, 2003, 2012; mcfarlane, 2013). in this regard, this paper is thus a reconceptualisation of language as part of the codification system of the academia. the cohort under study is connoted as black first generation (g1) students, second language (l2) speakers of english and previously disadvantaged individuals (pdis). “black” is used to denote those who are of african descent and whose first language is a black south african language. additional distinguishing features of the cohort are that they attended schools situated in areas that are categorised as urban (township), peri-urban (part urban and part rural) and rural (villages and farms). these are areas that were designated for black africans under the apartheid rule (bozalek et al., 2010). in this discussion, meritocracy and performativity feature because of the performance practices that often do not consider the diverse preparation (or inadequacy thereof) for the culture, language and, thus, codification system of the academia. the insights gleaned through the study are thus used to inform the stance of this discussion with regard to the significance of class-regulated prior exposure in relation to academic performance. 2. context of the discussion bernstein (1990:13) observes that “class-regulated codes position subjects with respect to dominant and dominated forms of communication”, adding that “ideology is constituted…in such positioning [where] class-regulated codes position subjects with respect to dominant forms of communication”. the reference to codes, in connection with communication and with special reference to dominant forms of communication and positioning, is pertinent to this discussion. this is because language is a means of codification and communication, where english is the dominant form of communication within the context of the academia. the l2 pre-service teacher cohort is positioned as subjugated subjects with regard to the codification system. the word “class” in bernstein’s (1990) citation above relates to bourdieu’s (1991) conceptualisation of social standing or status, which also has implications for cultural capital and valued epistemic meaning-making systems. cultural capital refers to the type of educational skills and knowledge bases that provide an advantage in achieving a particular standing, which, in this instance, is an academic standing that is compatible with the cultural capital of the academia. the aforementioned implies a particular positioning of the l2 cohort, with ramifications for their performance as dominated subjects, based on their limited familiarity with the codification system of the academia. in this regard, bernstein (1990) is of the view that class relations privilege certain forms of communication, which transmit what he refers to as “dominant and dominated codes”. the concept of meritocracy (mcnamee & miller jr, 2004) comes into view because of the academic context where merit is regarded as part of the criteria for eligibility for academic success. meritocracy is simplistically described through the meritocratic formula, iq + effort = success, as envisioned by young (2006). the meritocratic view is that success is not determined by class, but by effort. in this discussion, this view is however critiqued based on the inequitable distribution of exposure founded on class privilege or non-privilege. lister’s (2006) observation that meritocracy legitimises and increases inequality is in consonance with the stance of this paper. the assumption that can be made here is that privileged backgrounds imply prior exposure to codification and meritocratic advantage over 183 maseko codification, meritocracy and performativity those who have had limited exposure. this means, therefore, that those from less privileged backgrounds are usually found wanting within a system of performativity, as it is conceived of in this paper. ball’s (2003, 2012) conceptualisation of performativity is usually associated with the performance measures that are used to evaluate teacher/educator performance in teaching and learning environments. mcfarlane (2013) correlates teacher performativity with student performativity by stating that they are mirror images of each other. of significance here is that the context of the research site carries connotations of inequity. within this context, prior exposure to the codification system has a bearing on performance, as it is conceived of in this study. within the context of this discussion, “performance” refers primarily to the ability to participate freely and actively in class activities and discussions, while deriving the full pedagogical benefit. “full benefit” also includes the ability to understand instructions adequately in order to respond appropriately to evaluative questions in a manner that will auger well for performance. the question of voice, voicelessness and power relations in reference to class participation (mayes, 2010), is brought into oblique view here. in this regard, the participants of the study confirmed their inability to express themselves freely for fear of exposing themselves to ridicule. some even explicitly pointed out that their trepidation resulted in failure to participate in class, even where there was a need to ask clarity-seeking questions. 3. theoretical and conceptual framework the appropriateness of the transformative paradigm (mertens, 2009) hinges on its action and agency agenda to transform the lives of the participants and the institutions that fall under its lens of enquiry (creswell, 2008; mezirow, 2003). mertens (2010:21) also presents the view that “no unified body of literature is representative of the transformative paradigms”. this theory is conventionally associated with mixed-methods research (mertens, 2005); however, its applicability to this study is viewed from a purely qualitative research paradigm (padgett, 1998; patton, 2002), with the view of contributing qualitatively towards transforming the lives of the participants, including that of the researcher (creswell, 2003). the relevance for this study is that the participants (both lecturers and students) were viewed as co-researchers, whose views were valued as potential contributions towards the transformational agenda. the critical emancipatory and transformative theoretical stance for this discussion is an appropriate vehicle for an agenda that aims at critiquing and giving commentary with the intention of transforming and empowering. in this regard, ayers’ (2004: 1) view that “teaching at its best is an enterprise that helps human beings to reach the full measure of their humanity”, is an implicit echo of the study’s critical and transformative thematic underpinnings. his view is closely connected to the critical emancipatory research theory (mahlomaholo, 2009) with its concern to empower people and ensure that they attain an elevated status in life. ayers’ (2004) conceptualisation of teaching and transformative social justice finds resonance in the critical theory and critical pedagogy (freire, 1970, 1995; kincheloe, 2008; kincheloe, mclaren & steinberg, 2007; ledwith, 2007). ledwith (2007) opines that critical pedagogy must engage with the politics of difference if it is to realise its transformative potential. she further points out the need for the situatedness of this ideology within a social justice agenda. the study’s transformative and decolonial orientation necessitated the transformative learning theory lens with its tenets of, inter alia, reflectivity, inclusivity and promoting the voice of the historically and circumstantially silenced (mezirow, 2000). this aligns with a decolonial agenda, which is based on criticality, that intends to draw attention to practices that perpetuate inequity, with the intention to counter them with contextually responsive practices. within 184 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) the context of the argument of this paper, it is worth noting that gatsheni-ndluvu (2015:23) conceives of the phenomenon of decoloniality as a “search for better ways of theorising and explaining the meaning of liberation and freedom as well as taking the struggles forward in contemporary conjecture”. in this discussion, decolonial theorising entails looking at language, as the currency of the academia and with specific reference to the l2 cohort through an emancipatory and transformative lens. here attention is drawn to mcfarlane’s (2013) conceptualisation of performativity as presenteeism, learnerism and soul craft. of significance to this discussion is that, according to him, presenteeism relates to the concern with class attendance, while learnerism measures performance in relation to the nature of class participation. soul craft emphasises the students’ dispositions and values. the conceptualisation of learnerism, as associated with class performance, bears specific relevance for this discussion. the conjecture made here, is that this practice results in severe discomfort, which ultimately has a bearing on academic performance. this paper argues that a transformative and emancipatory response is required in this regard. 4. research objective the main aim of this study was to contribute towards the improvement of the b.ed. foundation phase programme by exploring the extent to which the convergence of language and identity bears relevance for the academic performance and portraiture of the black l2 student teacher cohort. 5. problem statement the problem that prompted the study upon which this paper is premised, presented the convergence of language (as related to codification) and identity – in its association with ontological development – as problematic in relation to the academic performance of black african fp b.ed. pre-service teachers. 6. research question for the purposes of this discussion, attention is drawn only to the key research question: how does the convergence of language and identity affect the academic performance and influence the portraiture of black l2 b.ed. foundation phase students? this question was posed with the intention of looking at the interplay between the phenomena of language and identity in relation to performance, as they were conceived of in this study. 7. research design the choice of qualitative research as an overarching method of enquiry (creswell, 2008) was appropriate for the study because of the provision it made for the interpretation of the data in alignment with an emancipatory transformative orientation. the interviews and narratives emanating from them served the purpose of allowing the research to assume an epistemological and ontological stance (maseko, 2015). 8. methodology the data collection was conducted in compliance with ethical considerations and protocol within the qualitative research design (creswell, 2008). a further consideration in the choice of 185 maseko codification, meritocracy and performativity participants was that the researchers designing qualitative studies should have clear criteria and rationales for their decisions. within the paradigm of criticality, this also means that when sorting data, there should be reflectivity and cognisance of the underlying issues, such as the power relations (mayes, 2010) that are often at play in these contexts (bertram & christiansen, 2014). with the aforementioned in mind, one-on-one semi-structured open-ended interviews were used for their suitability with regard to the nature of the evidence that was sought, as well as the fact that they promoted a participatory approach (denzin & lincoln, 2000). some of the questions were adapted and modified to allow for this and to elicit data that would assist towards the generation of relevant data. the semi-structured and open-ended interviews facilitated easier interaction and further provided insight into the interviewees’ consciousness, while simultaneously providing access to non-verbal semiotic cues that can be gleaned only through observation during the interview (gilham, 2000). in this regard, there were instances during which trepidation, as a semiotic cue of uneasiness, was visibly etched on some participants’ faces to illustrate discomfiture. this methodology was further validated because, as holstein and gubrium (1995:76) note, “interviews are an appropriate instrument to engage the participant and designate the narrative terrain”. the narrative element of the interview was tapped into to elicit stories and to create a portrait of the interviewees (lawrence-lightfoot, 2002). while the language of communication was primarily english, provision was also made for code switching as dictated by the participants’ language preference and competence, as well as in consideration of the social justice agenda of the study. the interviews were recorded and transcribed through multiple “listening moments” and interpretations (creswell, 2003). the advantage of listening repeatedly to the recordings was that this facilitated familiarity with the voices of the participants, which was conducive to maintaining a real connection that extended beyond the interview sessions. the transcription process allowed for verbatim transcriptions. verbatim utterances were formulated as a direct and credible representation of the participants’ voices and experiences (maseko, 2015). the transcriptions entailed an iterative process of reading and thinking. in order to ensure trustworthiness and validity (creswell & miller, 2000), the transcriptions were read and reread. 9. analysis a textual analysis of the transcriptions was done, using the underpinnings of critical discourse analysis (fairclough, 1992, 2003). critical discourse analysis (cda) was regarded as an appropriate deconstructive tool because it does ideological work, which addresses critical emancipatory concerns at a textual, discursive and social level (fairclough & wodak, 1997; van dijk, 2008). the discursive semi-structured interviews yielded transcriptions that facilitated textual analysis that reflected social relations – in this case, the ramifications of communicative practices within the codified and meritocratic classroom contexts of the academia. three themes were deductively derived and then inductively linked to categories (bertram & christiansen, 2014). for the purposes of this discussion, however, the focus will primarily be on the two themes and associated categories that relate to language use and, thus, codification and, by extension, meritocracy and performativity. the extent to which the participants were able to engage in class activities was gleaned from their interview narratives as a reflection of their lived experiences (akinbode, 2013). the transformative paradigm and its associated approaches were used to interpret the 186 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) students’ ability to participate actively and meaningfully in classroom settings. this reflected a need for support that would facilitate appropriate counter-hegemonic deconstruction of the situational contexts. 10. ethical considerations ethical considerations were taken into account and complied with in consideration of the institution’s ethics clearance requirements. letters of invitation were sent to the participants of the study. the participants were assured of confidentiality and anonymity. consent was sought from the head of department and dean to conduct the research with students from the early childhood education (ece) department and the faculty of education of the institution. selection of participants the student participants were selected based on their availability and compatibility with the criteria (as listed below). there were two levels of participants, namely students and lecturers. the first and main participant group comprised nine participants, that is, n=9 (n=3 in the 1st year, n=3 in the 2nd year and n=3 in the 3rd year) students from the pre-service teacher cohort. pseudonyms were used to categorise the participants in a manner that would distinguish their level of study and position in the sequence of interviews. for example, the first student in that category was given the pseudonym “y1s1” (maseko, 2015). 11. criteria for participants student participants below are the criteria that informed the choice of student participants: • black african b.ed. foundation phase students • l2 speakers of english with one (or more) of the nine black south african languages as a home language/mother tongue • classified as pdi • from a pre-university school education, they should have been in a school specifically designated for pdis and situated in an urban, peri-urban or rural area • first-generation university students lecturers the second layer of participants, that is, the lecturers, was chosen based on the following criteria: • their availability to participate in their capacity as b.ed. foundation phase lecturers • they could provide both sides of the story of language and identity based on language and identity (as informed by their race) and the implications of these phenomena, taking into account the various factors that play a role in this. • their appropriateness (as lecturers of the cohort) and their willingness to make themselves available as participants 187 maseko codification, meritocracy and performativity interview questions there were two sets of interview schedules with ten items for the student participants and five for the lecturer participants (maseko, 2015:90-91). interview schedule: students 1 discuss the extent to which english was used as a medium of instruction at the schools you attended before you came to the university. 2 briefly discuss your experience with the english language and your exposure to it within the pre-university contexts. 3 describe your experience with regard to the use of english as a medium of instruction as a b.ed. foundation phase student. 4 how do you feel about expressing yourself verbally in english in a classroom/lecture hall setting? 5. are you able to clearly understand the lecturer and follow the proceedings during lecture sessions? 6 how do you feel about expressing yourself in writing in english during tests and assignments? 7 are the instructions during tests and assignments written in a manner that you can easily understand? 8 are you confident about your ability to respond appropriately to the requirement of given tasks? 9 discuss whether you think that it would be to your advantage to undertake your b.ed. foundation phase studies in your home language. 10 do you have any suggestions regarding how you can be assisted to cope with any languagerelated challenges you might be facing as a b.ed. foundation phase university student? 188 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) interview schedule: lecturers 1 comment on the performance (as it is conceived of in this study) of black l2 speakers of english in your classes. 2 from your observations, would you say that language has a bearing on their performance? 3 briefly share the extent to which you see the interplay between language and identity as they pertain specifically to this cohort. 4 can you cite a few instance where you saw this interplay and the concomitant implications? 5 from your experience, do you have any suggestions regarding how this situation can be addressed in the academia? the data below are tables with some of the data, as adapted from the study by maseko (2015). here, attention is specifically paid to the data pertaining to the argument made in this discussion. three themes were derived, with two sub-categories each. the analyses followed immediately after the presentation of the data. table 1: prior exposure in pre-university social contexts (theme 1 and category 1) theme 1 category 1 c1 data participants’ use of english in pre-university contexts prior exposure to english in the pre-university social context y1s1: well, i kinda used it everywhere. i don’t have a problem with english… i also used to read a lot… y2s2: i just used my home language everywhere … …the background was local so everything was local… it’s quite difficult now. y3s3: there’s no one who speaks english where i stay… y1s2: i only started speaking english when i came here [and] it was very difficult…it’s still difficult when i want to say some words i still struggle because this is where i started to speak english and to socialise with people who speak english only… 189 maseko codification, meritocracy and performativity table 2: prior exposure in pre-university school contexts (theme 1 and category 2) theme 1 category 2 c2 data participants’ use of english in preuniversity school contexts prior exposure to english in the preuniversity school context y1s1: we were taught in english but sometimes it was like…the teachers would use the languages we were used to. y2s3: …in some other classes we would be code switching… y3s3: we didn’t really get the chance to learn english because during class english was not used from the start of the lesson to the end…we were not really exposed to english in a way that would help us to understand it the way we’re supposed to. y2s1: home language was used a lot of times… it was mixed up y2s2: i would understand everything in my mother tongue…you can’t go anywhere without english analysis of tables 1 and 2 the above tables are a reflection of the responses for the themes and categories. the varied responses reflected in the two categories of theme 1 were largely indicative of limited exposure to english that would assist towards epistemological access – “…maybe i would use english once”, “i can’t say we learnt much english” in both social and pre-university school contexts. the data shows that prior exposure did not mitigate against the negative effects of the combination of codification, meritocracy and performativity, thus necessitating appropriate transformative mediation in this regard. the responses from a second-year student served to partially confirm the claims about the discomfiture accruing from learnerism, when she struggled to express herself and subsequently requested to express herself in her home language. other participants opined that a user-friendly tutor system would allow for the use of their home languages. one of the participants expressed the concern that a lack of proficiency in english and, by implication, limited familiarity with the codification system of the academia, would limit her chances of obtaining employment outside of the borders of south africa. 190 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) table 3: language in the university context (theme 2 & category 1) theme 2 category 1 c1 data language use in the university english as the language of learning and teaching in the university context y1s1: i wrote a test…found a word i could not understand …it was difficult… sometimes just because we are at university they seem to think that we know everything…they just put something and they expect us to be able to do it… y3s1: obviously the lecturers have to teach in english of which we are not used to listen to english each and every time… in my first year i found it so difficult… y1s1: we should like um ah…i don’t know what to say…ya something should done… well we’re not the same…some people are struggling… extremely… although there are tutors but it’s still not enough……they just call something out and they just move on so you are left with no idea of what they are saying. w1: the assumption is, and i refer to the university in its entirety, that because you speak english you can cope…we shout at you because your essay is bad… y3s3: um because the university uses english…um…as a medium of instruction we have to…have to…i don’t know how to say it…we have to… table 4: language in the university context (theme 2 & category 2) theme 2 category 2 c2 data language in the university context general language use and support in the university y2s1: i would understand everything in my home language…it would be an advantage, i’d clearly understand things better…there wouldn’t be any term where i would say, here i’m stuck. y2s2: i’ve thought of that before like if we’re allowed to use our language as a medium of instruction for our modules that it would have been better but again it’s a disadvantage because when you go further you have to know english because it’s the most used language that we use outside and inside our country. y3s3: i had to adapt b1: you know what, i think we just need to simplify everything…and even the instructions we need to make sure that they are simple and easy to be understood and followed. 191 maseko codification, meritocracy and performativity analysis of tables 3 and 4 the participants were requested to give an indication of the extent to which english, as the language of the academia, played a role in their academic performance. the responses by various participants confirmed the discomfort that is associated with mcfarlane’s (2013) notion of learnerism. the data further indicate that this uneasiness often resulted in a measure of reticence to participate, which had implications for their academic performance. one of the lecturers tacitly supported the views presented by the students by pointing out that, “the assumption is that, because you speak english you can cope… we shout at you… but we don’t put anything in place”. her colleague implicitly conceded with the views regarding the levels of difficulty and the resultant implications for performance – “you know what, i think we need to make language easier and simpler for them…” her further observation was that “language creates a barrier which impacts on participation”. this is a further confirmation of the need for an appropriate responsive strategy that would take into account these situational realities. the data for theme 2 reflected a slight ambivalence, which was simultaneously indicative of the paradox of language within this context. on the one hand, the participants indicated a preference for the use of the home language as an ideal situation. yet, on the other hand, they expressed the reality that the meritocratic performativity-oriented context of the academia required that they demonstrate proficiency in english and familiarity with the code of knowledge reception and transmission with implications for academic performance. table 5: identity factors in relation to participation and performance (theme 3 & category 1) theme 3 category 1 c2 data identity factors in relation to participation and performance participants’ negative affective experiences pertaining to participation y1s1: yoh! as a first year i don’t wanna lie, i’ve never expressed myself verbally because i’m scared, i have fear that maybe i won’t say the right words. um…it’s kinda like intimidating because you’ve got like whites and they so english and like…i can speak english but i don’t think that i’d be able to express myself in a lecture hall full of people who’ve been doing english like their whole lives… y2s2: …every time maybe the lecturer is asking a question in class first i have to think of like how should i construct my words before i raise hand to speak… b1: to be honest in terms of class participation they don’t participate at all. others can participate but it’s very limited. others don’t participate at all unless i call out their names and say [for example]: “you haven’t spoken to me in the last three months”... b1: participation in my class is mainly with white students… language creates a barrier which impacts on participation, particularly in group work. some would want to express their ideas in their home language and their frustration is evident since it ultimately results in visible lack of confidence... 192 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) table 6: identity factors in relation to participation and performance (theme 3 & category 2) theme 3 category 2 c2 data identity factors in relation to participation and performance category 2: participants’ positive affective experiences pertaining to participation y3s2: i think there’s a huge difference there because i’ve acquired a bit of english so it’s quite better than last year. y3s1: i do a lot of research …i read book to try and improve myself y2s2: as time goes on you meet friends with higher grades then you have to ask: how are you doing this…then that’s where they told me you have to understand the concepts so you can answer the question y3s2: ok now…she’ll explain something and i have to look at it in my own time so i can explain it to myself [to see] what was she trying to say. w1: i’ve certainly found the students far more willing to engage… analysis of tables 5 and 6 the data for themes 3 and their associated categories relate to the aspect of identity in reference to the students’ dispositions and values. mcfarlane’s (2013) view of soul craft bears reference here. in this theme, there is evidence of the interplay between language and identity, as they were conceptualised in the study. category 1 of this theme reflects the participants’ negative experiences with regard to class participation and the implicit power relations (cummins, 2000; mayes, 2010). words such as “fear”, “intimidation”, “frustration” and “lack of confidence” attest to this. on the other hand, category 2 of this theme provides glimpses of the students’ ability to self-regulate and adapt in an attempt to overcome the implicit negative implications of the combination of codification, meritocracy and performativity. this theme thus juxtaposes the positive and negative experiences pertaining to performance with the intention to foreground the role of metacognitive abilities in overcoming the potentially debilitating mix of dominant practices. in the study, this was related to critical consciousness and emergent transformative praxis. 12. concluding comments the data that were gleaned from the study, upon which this discussion is based, corroborated the inherent assumptions about the concomitant effects of language and identity-related factors (maseko, 2015; cummins, 1996). in relation to the key question of the research, the data confirmed the implications of the convergence of language and identity and its implications for the academic performance of the black l2 fp b.ed. pre-service teacher cohort. the intention of the aforementioned study was to make an emancipatory and transformative contribution towards the improvement of the quality of teacher education, as it pertains specifically to the black african b.ed. cohort. in this regard, the focus was on the convergence of language and identity in relation to the cohort’s academic performance. a reinterpretation of the data in relation to this discussion points towards the fact that class-regulated and subjugated prior exposure does not assist towards overcoming the 193 maseko codification, meritocracy and performativity challenges associated with the negative effects of the combination of codification, meritocracy and performativity. the participants’ responses were regarded as instructive in paving a responsive support strategy that would align with a decolonial transformative agenda. in general, their ideological orientation with regard to language was a reflection of the reality of the ramifications of the hegemony of english (alexander, 2010). this paper highlighted the negative effects of the combination of codification, meritocracy and performativity with the intention to contribute towards responsive transformative social justice support strategies. mcgregor (2003: 52) presents the apt view that “teaching for social justice has a common goal of preparing teachers to recognise, name and combat inequality through relevant pedagogy”. this brings to the fore the notion of critical consciousness, which in the study was associated with language, cognition and critical moral consciousness, as it is associated with ontological affective factors in this study. in view of this, it is recommended that students should be appropriately exposed to the culture and codification systems of the academia to equip them adequately to cope in align with a critical emancipatory and transformative 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rethinking the framework of critical discourse analysis. journalism studies, 9(2), 161-177. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616700701848162 https://doi.org/10.1111/hequ.12016 https://doi.org/10.1080/14681360300200179 https://doi.org/10.1080/14616700701848162 109 book review barbarism in higher education: once upon a time in a university nhlanhla maake ekaam books. 2011, 333 pages isbn 13: 978-0-620477-74-1 reviewed by: mokubung nkomo barbarism in education? sounds like a contradiction in terms. barbarism in politics, though odious, has arguably become more conventional than in education. if true, it is a serious indictment indeed. nhlanhla maake’s memoir seeks to take the reader through a thicket of institutional practices that seem to be contrary to the spirit and letter of transformation at a particular university: as he experienced it. it is a gripping memoir of maake’s ‘once upon a time in a university’ sojourn. it is indisputable that tangible historic changes have taken place in the tertiary sector in the last two decades or so. racial, gender, and other apartheid discriminatory practices that largely defined admissions and the demographic profiles at many universities have been abolished, at least in their de jure form, by the higher education act (1977) and the employment equity act (1998), for example. current black student enrolment in many historically advantaged universities exceeds the 50 per cent mark. female enrolment has also increased remarkably. although increases in the academic and staff complements are sturdily surging forward they, comparatively, lag far behind black and female student enrolment. if we measured progress solely on the basis of numbers we could conclude with great satisfaction that significant advances have been made. but behind the proud achievement record lurks a furtive world with utter disregard and contemptuous cynicism that goes against the grain of meaningful progress. it is a de facto reality that often escapes the public glare; it is a grim world in sharp contrast to the one protected by an iridescent façade. this is at least the story as told in barbarism in higher education, a gripping memoir of nhlanhla maake’s ‘once upon a time in a university’ sojourn. if one were to read the book in isolation, in other words without knowledge of numerous and varied accounts and anecdotes similar to those recorded by maake, you would be tempted to conclude that it is a fictive work written by a scorned dramatis persona. there is, however, a disturbingly sizeable body of accounts that corroborate maake’s narrative. there is, for instance, the report issued by the ministerial committee on transformation and social cohesion and the elimination of discrimination in public higher education institutions in 2008 that captured oral testimonies and written submissions from stakeholders, many of which sounded eerily similar to the account in barbarism in higher education. the report found that various forms of discrimination existed (and still exist) in many tertiary institutions and that these expressed themselves to a greater or lesser degree in various forms, embedded in institutional, governance, cultural, linguistic, gender, epistemological, pedagogical, and curricular practices. persistent discrimination was also found to be rife in student residences. it understandably portrayed a generic picture and therefore lacked the specificity offered by maake’s account of his experiences at the university of north west. it bears noting that in the planning phases of the ministerial committee’s investigation it was the intention to conduct further investigations focusing on individual institutions. unfortunately, time and resources did not permit. 110 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 jonathan jansen’s knowledge in the blood is another powerful account of the operant dynamics at play affecting the consciousness of white students, in particular, certainly not exclusively, as well as other factors complicit in the preservation of a particular identity at the university of pretoria. the power of history, society and family, the transmission of embedded knowledge and the sedimentation of all these serve as a counterpoint to desired norms in a constitutional democracy. it is another validating testimony. other well-known episodes that lend credence to maake’s tale are, though different in their emphases, the mahmood mamdani at uct (see 1998 special issue of social dynamics) and malegapuru makgoba at wits (see statman & ansell, 2000) experiences. reaching further back in time is the achie mafeje injustice in the 1950s at uct. there is also lewins’ (2006) and murray’s (1982, 1997) penetrating historical accounts of the sordid racial and gender discrimination at the purported bastions of liberalism uct and wits; and from another angle, nkondo’s (1976) turfloop testimony: the dilemma of a black university in south africa and the muscular campaign by the apartheid state to impose a narrow afrikaner epistemology and pedagogy at the ethnic universities established under the hegemony of apartheid. and then there is tabensky’s (2005) “my life at the university of pretoria”, an account of an alleged dubious appointment in the department of philosophy and the convergence of racialised and class interests inimical to fairness and high academic standards. other accounts of ‘unfinished business’, to borrow a phrase from ntsebeza (2008), are statman and ansell (2000), duncan (2005) and foure (2008). these, then, are the constituent parts of a spoilt quilt. this diversion is neither irrelevant nor insignificant. it is an attempt to determine the plausibility of the allegations recorded in maake’s narrative. these episodes serve as corroborative evidence from the past and hint at the possible existence of many untold stories. what gives the memoir credibility is extensive documentation of correspondence among the protagonists and antagonists, and references to contravened policies. there is a litany of incredible allegations from corruption, nepotism, patronage to outright paternalism that without evidentiary documentation would seem implausible. but it must be said, regrettably, that it is reasonable to suspect that the tale told in barbarism resonates with many untold stories in some of south africa’s post-1994 tertiary institutions. it seems that the stains of the past still remain stubbornly etched in institutional memories. and this is the achilles’ heel in the system that wittingly or unwittingly undermines the potential for growth and development in all sectors. denial of opportunities to even a single individual, not to mention large classes of individuals in society, is inversely a denial of peace and prosperity to all, including the gatekeepers and custodians of outdated traditions. universities in the 21st century can only thrive and prosper by unlocking themselves from the bondage of the past; boldly thrusting themselves into a vibrant future can only be accomplished by having transformative leadership in the management of the institutions equalled by a similar mindset in classroom practice. an enlightened academic community would divest itself from the prevailing compliance culture by embarking on a genuine, inclusive and substantive transformative project that will fulfil the aspirations of all. is this a naïve expectation? can a spoilt quilt be restored? that, i suggest, is the challenge that confronts south african universities if they wish to make a socially beneficial contribution. unlike many accounts of south african higher education, barbarism in higher education, although seemingly a tad excessive in a few instances, is highly readable and captivating. it has all the traits of a novella full of intrigue and suspense. each chapter opens with an aphorism foretelling the intricate innards of the university. to his credit maake admits his account represents his personal experience and perspective but invites a counter narrative. good editing is always good but in reading the memoir it becomes clear that not enough attention was given to this, thus blemishing what is otherwise a tremendously enlightening narrative. this should not be construed as detraction. barbarism is a must-read for those concerned with the welfare of the academy and society at large. reading it reflectively along with the other works cited above will increase the chances of achieving an elusive civilisation. 111book review — barbarism in higher education references department of education 2008. report of the ministerial committee on transformation and social cohesion and the elimination of discrimination in public higher education institutions. pretoria: government printers. duncan nc 2005. ‘race’, racism and the university: some personal observations and reflections”. inaugural address presented at the university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, on 18 october 2005. foure f 2008. getting beyond tolerance, accommodation and dominance: challenges in changing university institutional culture. conference on changing institutional culture, university of the free state. jansen jd 2009. knowledge in the blood: confronting race and the apartheid past. stanford, ca: stanford university press & cape town: university of cape town university press. lewins k 2006. how open are our doors? a comparison of academic staff transformation at the university of cape town and the university of the witwatersrand. unpublished masters research report, university of the witwatersrand. murray bk 1982. wits, the early years: a history of the university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg 1896-1939. johannesburg: witwatersrand university press murray bk 1997. wits, the “open” years: a history of the university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, 1939-1959. johannesburg: witwatersrand university press. nkondo g (ed.) 1976 turfloop testimony: the dilemma of a black university in south africa. johannesburg: ravan press. ntsebeza l 2008. the mafeje and uct saga: unfinished business? codesria bulletin, 3 & 4:36-43. social dynamics, 24(2) 1998. tabensky pa 2005. my life at the university of pretoria: a story of two evils. see the centre for civil society at the university of kwazulu natal. retrieved on 20 april 2011 from http://h-net msu.edu/ cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-sa-higher-education&month=0502&week=b&msg=1hjayaze qctvrwz0y5q/eq&user=&pw= statman jm & ansell ae 2000. the rise and fall of the makgoba affair: a case study of symbolic politics. politikon, 27(2):277-295. tabata ib 1959. education for barbarism: bantu education in south africa. london: umsa. 100 a networked pathway to the phd: the african-norwegian case of productive learning cultures annemarie hattingh university of cape town sølvi lillejord university of oslo how do phd students become socialised into the professional world of academic work? this article pays attention to a ‘networked’ support pathway towards a phd. the network constitutes an international research collaboration through a programme called productive learning cultures (plc) (2002-2011) between norway and seven countries, developing or in transition, in sub-saharan africa. the purpose of this article is to describe how researchers within plc have over the years developed a support structure for phd students. plc has had intended and unintended outcomes. while the education of phd students was an intended outcome, unintended outcomes include the establishment of a peer-reviewed journal, and the development of a networked doctoral school. special attention will also be paid to the programme design structures that assist female phd students from partner universities and promote sustainability once plc donor funding terminates. keywords: doctoral learning, international cooperation, network, community of practice, academic writing, female student support . introduction higher education systems in most countries call for innovative educational programmes in all discipline areas that can serve the knowledge society of the 21st century (symonds & miller, 2002). one of the many interpretations of ‘innovation’ revolves around the notion of increased international cooperation in research and development. while universities are fundamentally international institutions, educational policy tends to be national and inward looking (kruss & kraak, 2002). university collaboration across borders therefore may balance these two aspects of academic work. currently there are many arguments for international cooperation, especially at the postgraduate levels. according to ortiz (2003), ongoing processes of globalisation result in shifting political, social, legal, economic and technological conditions that pose various challenges to university systems worldwide. the globalisation process shapes the scope of activities undertaken by people and organisations across geographical divides, as well as existing power relationships. in this context, it is not surprising that international learning and research cooperation are priorities in many political agendas (ortiz, 2003). a second reason for increased international cooperation in higher education is the belief that learning with and about other countries and cultures increases tolerance and leads to further human and sociocultural appreciation and understanding among nations (woolf, 2002). a third reason, we would like to add, is that, increasingly, groups of expertise and resources for doctoral education are being distributed across multiple universities and geographical divides and seeds of innovation may well be found in the synergy between local and global communities of practice (hattingh & lillejord, 2005). a recent study by the academy of science of south africa (assaf) (2010:17), which investigated key actions to escalate the quantity and quality of phd students in the country, found a promising practice as “ensuring international exposure for doctoral students through national initiatives”. this is also reflected in a clear message sent by the department of science and technology (2002:59) relating to … the need for greater collaboration globally and across africa … apparently supporting the development of sandwich and exchange arrangements for postgraduate study. 101hattingh & lillejord — a networked pathway to the phd the purpose of this article is to respond to the third reason by reflectively describing a programme called productive learning cultures (plc) that, through multi-country cooperation over the years, developed into a pathway to the doctorate. plc is a higher education collaboration between norway and seven developing or emerging countries, in sub-saharan africa and has unfolded in two phases, namely from 2002 to 2006 and from 2007 to 2011. plc was funded by nufu (this is not an acronym) which is a programme emphasising sustainability through academic research and education cooperation based on equal partnerships between institutions in norway and the south. in the reflective description of plc we will foreground design features, participatory values, implementation challenges, future sustainability and some of the intended and unintended outcomes. special attention will be paid to the programme structure that was designed to assist female phd students from partner universities. an overview of the programme will be given in the following section, as well as a theoretical framework situating plc in the literature relating to communities of practice. the programme overview and its underpinning philosophy the overarching aim of the productive learning cultures programme was to develop an understanding of academic work and strengthen research capability as well as student supervision and mentoring competence at a doctoral level in the field of learning and instruction and teacher education. all the universities involved in the project are facing similar challenges when it comes to meeting international expectations on academic standards of excellence. sharing knowledge through collaborative networking across borders is one way of dealing with global changes in higher education (che, 2000; backhouse, 2009). the sub-saharan partners for phase i were the universities of pretoria, zululand (both in south africa), namibia, botswana, zimbabwe and universidad pedagógica in mozambique. the programme was led by two coordinators, the authors of this article, one from norway, and one from south africa. for the second phase, the african countries that became involved were malawi and zambia. relevant knowledge produced during phase i was transferred to the second phase’s activities, while supervisors and some phd students who graduated from the first phase remained as resource persons and constituted a supervision ‘team’ for the new phd-supervisor dyads. the programme coordinators, together with one senior academic who acted as a phd supervisor at each of the universities (six in phase i; three in phase ii), were responsible for the implementation of various planned scholarly activities, strategic reflections, detecting emerging innovative ideas, overseeing the budget and bi-annually reporting on activities, outcomes delivery and budget expenditure. the plc philosophy was grounded in trust which is the cornerstone of any cooperation between persons and institutions and honoured the fact that it takes time to build up mutual trust, in particular in perceived asymmetric relations (bundy, 2006). moreover, the plc philosophy was rooted in research indicating that changes must come from within, and that without ownership, no genuine engagement and long-term sustainability are feasible (önnerfors, 2007). therefore, in nufu projects, the responsibility for defining the educational challenges and how to respond to them ideally lies with the southern partners, as they are the ones who will be living with the results of their efforts (strand, 2002). with a philosophy based on values such as trust, equality and ownership, the donors allow for freedom and flexibility in conceptualising and implementing the programme. hence the initiative lies with south partners. a theoretical framework situating plc as a community of practice communities of practice (cop) was first introduced by lave and wenger (1991), originally described as a set of relations among acting and interacting persons. for the purposes of the present discussion, a cop is a group of people informally bound together, with a shared set of interests, passion and expertise who share their experiences and knowledge in ways that foster new approaches to problems (wenger, mcdermott & snyder, 2002; lillejord & dysthe 2008). lave and wenger (1991) and hord (1997), theorising about professional learning communities, view the acquisition of knowledge as a social process where individuals take part in communal learning at different levels, depending on their level of authority and/or 103hattingh & lillejord — a networked pathway to the phd strengthening south-south university networks through northern collaboration often substantial funding available from various sources for postgraduate studies are organised around scholarships for individual deserving students to study abroad full-time. this model offers many attractive intellectual, professional and personal benefits to prospective phd students, especially to individuals coming from resource-constrained universities (assaf, 2010). however, it often has a ‘downside’ in that many of these students never return to their home countries which need to benefit from the valuable knowledge of a highly qualified individual and much-needed national resource (backhouse, 2009; assaf, 2010). furthermore, all the phd students in plc had full-time day career commitments and had to undertake a phd part-time. in addition, female students who aspire to a doctorate degree are faced with domestic challenges. especially in africa, women are often the main caregivers and sole breadwinners of a family, and cannot pursue the attractive scholarships designated for ‘women only’. in the assaf (2010:76) study phd it was reported that … balancing work, study and family was often viewed as a priority issue. yet when choices had to be made, the phd studies often took last place. with this reality in the doctoral journey, it made sense to design a programme where full-time working phd students, especially mothers, could draw on international mindsets and expertise, while remaining at their own institutions, capacitating their own faculties, graduating from their local universities, and serving as inspirational role models to fellow students and staff. strategically planned plc activities allowed north-south and south-south exchanges of academics and phd students. students went on short study visits to one another’s institutions if they needed to. the exchange fluidity occurred in time spaces in between the bi-annual workshops. in the south, the university of pretoria enacted the role of a resource engine university where many phd students from the south benefited from the international postgraduate centre and its scholarly ethos, where state-of-the-art facilities and learning resources are hosted. the phd student-and-supervisor: a dyadic mentoring process in phase i of plc, doctorate programmes did not exist at all partner institutions. however, all partner universities aspired to develop or strengthen a doctoral programme where it already existed through building supervisory capacity. phd supervision is a complex scholarly practice requiring higher order thinking and deep approaches to learning, as well as skilful interpersonal relationships (nsibande 2007). in her study backhouse (2009) elaborates extensively on widely varying supervisory models and pedagogies that exist for doctoral education. the report by assaf (2010:40) found that “supervisory modes are often limited to a ‘master/apprentice’ relationship” which is the traditional model where it is the role of a supervisor to ensure quality and accountability to the local university” (huisman & bartelse, 2001). even for experienced supervisors, this is a responsibility that can be very stressful, because it is the pivotal point “at which scholarship gives birth to scholarship … (when) scholarship renews itself among the present generation of scholars” (andresen, 1999:30). responses to the concerns with individual supervision have been to make use of a ‘collaborativecohort model’ (burnett, 1999) which is organised around teams or committees of mentors and involves a substantial formal coursework component followed by a thesis. szanton and manyika (2002) published an overview of phd models in sub-saharan africa and found that they are based almost entirely on a master-apprentice model which was indeed the case with all the african partners in plc. through the plc community, the two types of models of doctoral research supervision were blended. although one supervisor was primarily responsible for a doctoral student’s progress in plc, a student also benefited from the research expertise of a team of supervisors from the various partner institutions. in other words, the doctoral research endeavour was viewed as a team effort consisting of the phd students, all the supervisors, the project coordinators, and other research experts 104 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 who were invited to the bi-annual workshops. these benefits were made available to doctoral students through strategic activities which will be discussed in the next section. implementing the design pillars through strategic activities in phase i in the first phase there were five male students and one female student of whom the female and one male dropped out halfway through plc i. they were replaced by two males by their local universities. except for one student, all of them were university staff members at lecturer level aiming at further qualifications through a phd. during phase i of plc one student from each of the universities previously mentioned was enrolled at his/her home institution and had local supervisors. research projects in phase i were mainly, but not exclusively, organised around two themes. the first was indigenous knowledge systems. the rationale for developing a research focus around indigenous knowledge systems was a reaction to the requests by southern partners’ faculties of education who had to prepare preand in-service teachers while the public school curricula in botswana, mozambique and south africa at the time included sections on ‘local’ or ‘indigenous’ knowledge (mosimege, 2003; gerdes, 1994; doe, 2002). one of the focus areas of the national research foundation (nrf) in south africa also included indigenous knowledge systems (2004), and potential funding could be sourced for initiatives in this focus area. a vision for a scholarly journal in this focus area emerged from one of the woman academics who currently is the editor-in-chief. the plc community cultivated the peer-reviewed journal called indilinga: african journal of indigenous knowledge systems to full accreditation. additional funding from the nrf facilitated the initial paper-based version and an e-version is also currently available. the other theme relates to the pedagogical implications of flexible learning through information communication technologies (ict). digital information presents each individual and institution with new challenges to survive and thrive. the rationale with the strong focus on ict in this programme aims at narrowing the digital divide that not only exists between the north and the south, but also in nation states in sub-saharan partners. the plc programme conceptualisation originated from the assumption that to give more south partners access to e-knowledge and to learn through and about icts in the knowledge society is extremely important in any academic environment as emerging technologies change instructional practices. apart from organising themes, activities were implemented that facilitated the plc community’s operations. first, bi-annual workshops were held at one of the partner institutions for a week of scholarly engagement and training in areas identified jointly by the students and supervisors. at the workshops, the students presented their research progress to the team of supervisors. through week-long deliberations, the doctoral students received advice and feedback from their peers and the rest of the team. the contact workshop sessions did not follow a structured curriculum, but would typically introduce the stages in the research process on a need-to-know, just-in-time basis, while demonstrating to the phds, through their own research complexities, that research is not necessarily a linear lock-step process. secondly, an electronic web-based platform was created through which the academic discourse and training that were given at the workshops could continue virtually. the supervisor team argued that such a platform could facilitate internalisation of learning that had taken place at the workshops and could contribute to ensuring sustainability after the project period (meerkotter, fataar, fuglestad & lillejord, 2001). in this way, the productive academic debates that were stimulated during workshops continued across the geographical and cultural divides of the partner universities. a research project by blignaut and lillejord (2006) was conducted with regards to pedagogical implications of flexible learning, especially as it pertains to e-learning of doctoral students across geographical and cultural boundaries. thirdly, an interactive web-based module on qualitative research methods was developed within the programme. all the phd projects in plc i utilised a qualitative research approach. this module was available to all the partner institutions for use in any postgraduate programme. to conclude the discussion on phase i activities, we need to foreground the non-academic support mechanisms. administrative support was crucial for effective functioning across many countries and universities. both the northern and southern coordinators were able to hire part-time administrative staff 105hattingh & lillejord — a networked pathway to the phd to manage the network. they facilitated student and staff exchanges between the different institutions, annual financial reporting, as well as the administration that was involved in attending and organising workshops and conferences. this ensured regular and open communication flow to the many participants in the network. the financial support given to the phd students was broad in scope and supported a student to engage in a range of scholarly activities such as registering for a phd at their respective universities, covering the running costs that are instrumental in conducting research, such as digital data recorders, transcribers’ fees, editors’ fees and appropriate books, and c) attendance and presentation of their work at workshops and at least at one national or international conference, as well as inter-university short stays. an overview of outcomes generated during phase i all six phd students completed their studies in a five to six-year period and graduated from their local universities. at one of the universities the phd students and supervisor established their university’s first doctoral programme, utilising the web-based module on qualitative research methods in their new doctoral programme. one unintended outcome was the establishment of the journal, indilinga: african journal of indigenous knowledge systems mentioned earlier. nineteen articles were published by the plc i community (students and supervisors), of which 12 were in south african accredited journals. twenty-two conference papers were presented. four of the supervisors and three of the phd students who graduated were promoted by their universities and one now holds an executive advisory position in the south african government. another supervisor is the director of the research unit at his university. plc i received awards for innovation in higher education by the universities of zululand and pretoria, foregrounding ‘networked collaboration’ and ‘multi-institutional team supervision’ as innovative elements (mogotlane, 2003). the norwegian minister of higher education and research commended the sub-saharan network of universities design of plc i that has the potential to make future sustainability of efforts with foreign funding more feasible. drawing on the plc i design, a new category for nufu funding was established entitled ‘networked-projects’. north-south collaboration: reflections on phase i of productive learning cultures despite the outcomes produced, some programme design elements and activities worked well and others did not and required change before applying for another round of nufu funding. experiences from the first five years of the plc i project were the following: in the beginning years, there was confusion and some frustration concerning north-south expectations, • especially in a type of project such as plc that allowed space for emerging ideas and initiatives. in the case when the north partner expects initiative and the south partner is not used to showing this kind of activity, but rather expects someone else to take the lead, problems may arise. since it was not prescribed to southern partners what to spend money on to ‘produce outcomes’, south partners underspent northern funding, which was perceived as a lack of activity and initiative on the part of the south. south partners often struggle with the colonial heritage and are afraid of being criticised or punished, especially when working with foreign funding. the scandinavian approach to north-south collaboration is (ideally) dialogic and participatory and not to move in with money and manpower “telling” local people what to do (önnerfors, 2007). even though phd students did oral presentations at the workshops, written texts (chapters) were not • forthcoming as expected by the project coordinators. hence, it was difficult for project coordinators to ascertain where in the process phd students were, what the level of their academic writing was and to estimate: would they finish or not? within time or not? in general, it was not easy to obtain information on student progress. student evaluations of plc i later indicated that students, who have to author a thesis in a language other than their mother tongue, were not sufficiently confident with the academic writing genre. 106 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 ict was from the outset planned to be a central asset in this network collaboration, but turned out • during phase i to be more of a hindrance than a help. first, students were reluctant to share texts (chapters) with one another – the norwegians came from a culture where the writing process and the sharing of texts was a central part of postgraduate learning and tried to introduce this as a productive way of working. this was not achieved in phase i. secondly, the problem of bandwidth, few computers and viruses at the south institutions also excluded the use of ict as integral to the doctoral studies. regular communication, project coordination and meeting external reporting deadlines across • academic, financial and administration departments of six universities in five different sub-saharan countries were logistically overwhelming despite the efficient functioning of the two part-time project administration offices. the bi-annual workshops and the multi-university team supervision during workshops proved • a productive factor in many ways. possibly the most important function of the workshops was to stimulate scholarly debate on the quality of the research questions, theoretical frameworks, research design and methodology. this process not only enhanced the academic rigour of a student’s research, but also supported the supervisor with the enormous responsibility of ensuring the intellectual quality of his/her student’s work. in brief, this approach allowed students and supervisors alike to learn from a diverse pool of expertise, and ultimately to take their insights back to build capacity in their own institutions, thereby strengthening the potential for future sustainability once the project terminated. the team’s exposure to a variety of educational backgrounds, schools of thought, methodological paradigms that scholars from different countries bring, was extremely enriching, and allowed critical thinking and knowledge production to emerge. the planning of phase ii was based on these experiences from the first cohort. implementing changes in phase ii we decided to make the following changes when we applied for further funding for a second round of plc (plcii). we reduced the number of institutions from 6 to 3 to address the logistical concerns. the universities • of malawi and zambia became southern partners while the university of pretoria remained the coordinating university. the university of malawi had an interest in teacher education, while the university of zambia focused on medical education. each of the three institutions was granted financial support for two phd students and we particularly • invited female students. four of the six students were females and all students were faculty members at their respective universities. we decided to make the university of pretoria the south “hub”. this university catered for all the six • doctoral students in terms of access to library, the postgraduate centre, accommodation, travel, etc. we kept most of the seniors from the first round (plc i) as they were familiar with the nufu • “idea” and expectations and realised that there is, within the nufu paradigm, substantial room to manoeuvre (previously referred to as a north expectation on initiative). in order for the students not to feel isolated and lonely (even if they were two at each institution), we • decided to transform the workshops from phase i into a more structured doctoral school in phase ii. this decision proved successful, and addressed several of the problems we were facing during the first phase of the programme. the doctoral school needed a headmaster, and one of the senior partners from phase i was ascribed the responsibility to maintain contact with the students and act as a “link”, but with his loyalty to the students 107hattingh & lillejord — a networked pathway to the phd and their supervisors. hence, the two coordinators received more and broader information on the progress of the students and their problems. a doctoral school needs a program, and we targeted the following themes: methods and research ethics; philosophy of science, and academic writing, research publishing and plagiarism these topics were addressed annually – from various angles. while reporting used to be annually in phase i, it was conducted bi-annually in phase ii by the student-supervisor dyad. with two annual doctoral schools, the students received more feedback and it was easier to oversee their progress. at the doctoral schools sessions we also experimented with various forms of presentations. poster presentation was, for instance, introduced at a stage when the students really needed to focus and benefited from being forced to present their thesis in the “one-page format”. this provided clearer goals to their projects. parallel with writing the thesis, they were persuaded to write an article. progress on the article was also reported regularly in the doctoral school, but in a smaller forum. an experienced journal editor supervised the students on how to (step-by-step) write an article. in this process, the students also used each other extensively for feedback and comments. the ict requirements were adapted in order to provide each student with a laptop and e-mail contact at his/her home. it was necessary for the doctoral mothers to work at home while attending to their parenting responsibilities. during the last stages of plc ii, the themes turned more towards socialising the students, all of whom were university faculty, into the world of academic work, with sessions entitled, for example ‘from phd student to phd supervisor’, ‘writing for research grants’, and ‘applying for rating at research foundations’. phd students and supervisors’ experiences from the plc collaboration after each workshop, plc participants completed reflective comments on open-ended questions, followed by an open session where each shared his/her learning, personal growth, challenges, ‘what worked well’ and ‘what did not work well’. we will foreground two recurring themes: the first has the highest occurrence, and the second resonates with an intentional design element of plc. the theme that emerged most frequently was ‘we are a family’. the notion of a prolonged engagement through network collaboration is aptly captured by the metaphor of ‘family’. the ‘family’ metaphor perhaps describes the nature of the relationships that were fostered between south-south and north-south institutions as well as between individuals. the doctoral school principal mentioned that plc members had entered into ‘relationships for life that we can count on in our personal and scholarly lives’. the value of ‘trust in all members of the family’ was highly valued by all, because often the perception exists that funders have their own research agendas which may negatively affect working relationships. one female student mentioned that the authenticity of the trust allowed her to ‘crawl out of her shell because no one looked down on one another’. the existence of a trusting, safe environment allowed for the rigour of the intellectual project to be pushed to a higher level among students themselves. one female student stated that she had never expected that her peers could ‘grill me so much and push me until they were satisfied with a clarified well-structured academic argument. some definitely did not have the discretion of the professors, but nevertheless, that was good for sharpening my own thinking’. the majority of the supervisors declared that the community of practice was revitalising their professional lives as much, if not more than, those of the students in plc. one male academic noted that the variety of research lenses and orientations brought together resulted in some heated debating and scrutinising of dispositions, which pushed forward his own professional growth. another remarked that the phd students had benefited greatly from observing supervisors arguing and validating their theoretical perspectives among each other, which is ‘knowledge production in action’. this could not be demonstrated in one-on-one master-apprentice supervisor models. two of the supervisors mentioned the fact that plc funding also allowed them to present at conferences, resulting in one article output for each of them which otherwise might not have realised. 108 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 another theme that emerged related to ‘being a woman phd in plc’. it is significant that this particular theme emerged, because plc was trying to attract and retain female phds. when phase ii was launched, nufu decided to financially reward projects with more than 40% female student participation which plc ii had. the coordinators decided to accommodate specific female needs on a very practical level through technical support, e.g. laptops and internet connectivity in their homes. the male phds also benefited from this arrangement. as one woman stated, ‘i could spend way more time-on-task. i could settle into long hours of writing on my laptop or searching for literature when all had quieted down in the evenings’. one mother mentioned that she could never have pursued a phd at the time she actually did, because she already had a young child before plc and during plc she fell pregnant with her second. owing to the nature and structure of plc, she could continue, although she found herself in a typical guilt consciousness of living a life she says ‘that became split between doing a phd, which i desperately wanted, being a lecturer, a wife and mother’. never in the public reflective sessions did the women talk about their academic mothering challenges. those comments were reserved for the written reflective journals. one female phd student stated: ‘at least i could talk about my challenges of being a studying mother, because there were enough females as students and coordinators who understood the feminist perspectives and opened up a safe emotional space to talk about these realities’. conclusion this article reflected on a ‘networked’ support pathway towards a phd. we have argued that plc brought together two dominant traditions of phd education, namely that of the master-apprentice model and that of a team doctoral committee approach, while drawing on the strengths of both. plc provided the safety, trust, connection and ‘family feel’ that students need in order to achieve their doctoral goals. through plc students participated in a community of practice which nurtured the conceptual and technical aspects of research while simultaneously attending to the emotional aspects of this rather demanding journey filled with obstacles, breakdowns, reversals and yet growth and progression. plc provided a doctoral education model to be critiqued, transferred or adapted at local participating universities, which, as described by one senior academic, ‘is now running at an institutional level in the faculty of education at my university’. now, after 10 years, the plc community of practice will dissolve (shown by the smallest oval in figure 2) as it comes to the end of its funding period, but the sustainability designed into plc could exist in other organisational formats, as shown in the adapted figure 2. both the supervisors and the phd students who have graduated in their home countries will continue to work at their local universities (as shown by the inside oval in figure 2) while also participating and contributing to the global academic community. figure 2: a sustainable academic community plc community local country & university community global academic community obtaining research grants• research and publ.• lecture• supervise• mentor• community service• peer-review and evaluate • research 109hattingh & lillejord — a networked pathway to the phd amongst the individuals new networks may be fostered and on existing ones can be built for the formation of new or different supporting communities of practice. when the phd students continue their academic careers, they have learned an academic practice that they will implement in their home institutions. based on the principle that we learn from each other and that the quality of academic work relies on peer criticism and feedback, plc has succeeded in enculturating its phd students and senior participants into this essential academic competence required by a global academic community (as shown by the largest oval in figure 2). this has, from our perspective, been one potential answer to the call for sustainability of donor projects in africa. references academy of science of south africa (assaf) 2010. the phd study: an evidence-based study on how to meet the demands for high-level skills in an emerging economy. pretoria: academy of science of south africa. andresen l 1999. supervision revisited: thought on scholarship, pedagogy and postgraduate research. in g wisker & n sutliffe (eds), good practice in postgraduate supervision. seda paper 106. january. backhouse jp 2009. doctoral education in south africa: models, pedagogies and student experiences. unpublished doctoral thesis (phd). johannesburg: university of the witwatersrand. blignaut a & lillejord s 2006. lessons from a cross-cultural learning community. south african journal 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[electronic version]. business week. 18 february 2002. retrieved on 18 may 2010 from http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/02-07/b3770001 htm. szanton dl & manyika s 2002. phd programs in african universities: current status and future prospects. the institute of international studies and center for african studies, university of california, berkeley. wenger e, mcdermott r & snyder wm 2002. cultivating communities of practice. boston: harvard business school press. woolf m 2002. harmony and dissonance in international education: the limits of globalisation. the journal of studies in international education, 16:5-15. 43 why do they want to become english teachers: a case study of taiwanese efl teachers abstract although it has been argued that knowledge on initial motivation for choosing teaching as a career is necessary for improving teacher education programmes and teacher education policies, there is a lack of research investigating this issue in the fields of english as a second language (esl) and english as a foreign language (efl). grounded in watt and richardson’s (2007) factors influencing teaching choice (fit choice) framework, which laid its foundation on expectancy-value theory, this study fills that research gap by examining why efl teachers chose teaching as a career. thirtyeight efl teachers with diverse backgrounds were interviewed. the results indicated that the participants became efl teachers mainly for complicated, multi-layered reasons. they were attracted to teaching because of its intrinsic career value and its salary. the former refers to the fact that they enjoyed english or that they wanted to become a teacher since childhood. the latter applied to those who were either pleased with the salary or who could strike a balance between work and life, work and study or work and health while earning a competitive salary. surprisingly, the participants rarely mentioned personal utility value (e.g., job security) as motivation. this study suggests that esl/efl teachers require intrinsic and extrinsic motivations to commit to teaching. keywords: efl teacher, initial motivation for teaching, taiwan, career, factors influencing teaching choice framework 1. introduction understanding initial motivation to become a teacher has been considered an important knowledge base for refining teacher education policies and developing teacher education programmes (lin et al., 2012). although numerous studies in general education have investigated this subject and the asia pacific journal of teacher education even published a special issue on it (watt & richardson, 2012), relevant research was scarce in english as a second language (esl) and english as a foreign language (efl). given that there is a lack of studies on this neglected but important subject, the present study intends to further the knowledge of this field, focusing on efl teachers in taiwan. applying watt and richardson’s (2007) factors influencing teaching choice framework (fitchoice framework), this study examined 38 efl teachers’ lives to understand their motivation in becoming english teachers. results indicated that the intrinsic career values and competitive salary were the primary factors that attracted these participants to become teachers. dr chih-min shih national sun yat-sen university, taiwan. email cauoft@gmail.com doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i3.4 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(3): 43-44 © uv/ufs 44 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) 2. literature review kyriacou and kobori (1998) analysed empirical studies on foreign language teacher motivation and enumerated altruistic, intrinsic and extrinsic factors that attracted university students to join the teaching workforce. this tripartite division of motivational factors has been broadly adopted in esl/efl research. the altruistic factors include considering teaching as a critical job that helps students succeed (kyriacou & kobori, 1998; zhao, 2008), improves the education system (hayes, 2008; zhao, 2008) and helps improve society (hettiarachchi, 2010). the most critical intrinsic factor in kindling efl teachers’ interest in teaching english has been that they are fond of the language (gao, 2010; gao & trent, 2009; hayes, 2008; hettiarachchi, 2010; kyriacou & kobori, 1998; zhao, 2008). other intrinsic motivations included wanting to become a teacher (hettiarachchi, 2010), positive experiences teaching other subjects (mullock, 2009) and enjoying working with children (hettiarachchi, 2010) or with young people (tziava, 2003). the most commonly mentioned extrinsic factor was job stability (gao & trent, 2009; zhao, 2008), which was especially common among women (gao & trent, 2009; hayes, 2008; hettiarachchi, 2010; zhao, 2008). in addition, long vacations (gao & trent, 2009) and overseas travel (mullock, 2009) were mentioned as incentives for esl/efl teachers to choose teaching as a career. however, this categorisation cannot fully expound why people become esl/efl teachers. for example, some participants entered teaching by accident (zhao, 2008) or were even forced to choose teaching because it was the only job available (hettiarachchi, 2010). mullock (2009: 8) referred to such situations as being governed by “circumstantial factors” and zhao (2008: 189) used the term “by default” to denote a scenario in which becoming a teacher was not the individual’s choice. another weakness of the tripartite classification is that it overlooks the impact of socio-cultural dimensions. for example, hayes (2008) pointed out that people from lower socio-economic classes and from small villages favoured english teaching. however, the tripartite classification system fails to explain this finding. watt and richardson (2007: 168) disapproved of dividing the motivational factors into altruistic, intrinsic and extrinsic categories because of its “lack of definitional precision and overlapping categorizations from one study to another”. to delineate the full reasons for choosing teaching as a career, they proposed the factors influencing teaching choice framework (fit-choice framework) and empirically validated it. in this framework, prior teaching and learning experiences, social influences and social dissuasion are acknowledged as social constructs, which affect the individual’s decision to become a teacher. the first construct acknowledges the influence of teaching and schooling experience and the remaining two recognise the positive and negative impact of broader social contexts and significant others. except for the social constructs, the task demand component and the task return component in this framework refer to the individual’s views of the teaching job. the former comprises the expert career and high demand constructs delineates whether individuals perceive that teaching requires highly specialised knowledge and whether teaching is a physically and emotionally demanding task. the latter, which includes social status, teacher morale and salary, investigates the individual’s views on whether teaching has a high social status, is valued by society and offers a decent paycheck. in addition, the other aspect of perceptions in this framework is the perceived teaching ability which refers to how teachers perceive their own teaching capabilities. 45 shih why do they want to become english teachers another core component of the framework deals with several values imbedded in the teaching profession. intrinsic career value includes motivations such as choosing a teaching career due to an intrinsic interest in teaching. personal utility value comprises job security, job transferability, time for family and ‘bludging’. job security suggests that teaching is considered a stable career with a steady income and job transferability indicates that teaching provides the opportunity to work or travel overseas. by “time for family”, watt and richardson (2007) meant that teaching allows practitioners to have more time to fulfil their family commitments. ‘bludging’ is a colloquial term in australia, which might have negative connotations. in this paper, it is considered neutral and acknowledges that certain teachers choose the profession for the short working days and long holidays. the last category of values in the framework is social utility value, which consists of four constructs, namely desires to shape the future of children and adolescents, enhance social equity, make a social contribution and work with children and adolescents. finally, the fallback career component denotes that individuals slip into teaching because they cannot secure their first choice of career or are unsure about what they want to be. all of the abovementioned factors in this framework may contribute to the choice of a teaching career. 3. the present study as watt and richardson (2007) indicated, researchers had not applied existing theoretical models to the systematic analysis of initial motivation to become teachers. i intended to fill this research gap, focusing on efl teachers in taiwan. 4. the taiwanese context teaching has a high social status in taiwan. according to fwu and wang (2002), the social status of secondary school teachers was ranked ninth and primary school teachers eleventh among 26 occupations. this is higher than dentists (12th), central government legislators (13th) and accountants (14th). in addition, schoolteachers enjoy a paid three-week winter vacation, a two-month summer vacation and a one and a half month salary bonus every year. for decades, primary school and junior high school teachers have been exempted from income tax and public schoolteachers are entitled to a monthly pension when they retire. an educational phenomenon peculiar to taiwan and some other asian countries is the popularity of cram schools, which are established for people to acquire various skills, including english. some english cram schools recruit students who intend to complement their english study at school or to prepare for the english test in the senior high school entrance examination or joint college entrance examination (jcee). adult learners may attend other english cram schools to enhance their english skills to meet the needs of their work. because numerous english teachers in taiwan work at cram schools, their initial motivation to become a teacher will also be considered in this study. 5. methods the study was grounded in watt and richardson’s (2007) fit-choice framework and formed part of a large research project that investigated the life stories of efl teachers in taiwan. when recruiting participants, i used the strategy of maximum variation sampling (dörnyei, 2007) so that they manifested the diverse backgrounds of efl teachers in taiwan. i identified seven categories of schools: cram schools, kindergartens, primary schools, junior 46 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) high schools, senior high schools, vocational high schools and universities. hereafter, i recruited 5-6 teachers from each of the categories. i also considered gender, age, nationality, race, teaching experience, type of schools (public school, private school) and the location of the school where the participant was teaching (i.e., northern taiwan, central taiwan, southern taiwan, eastern taiwan and outlying islands). recruitment remained iterative until it reached saturation, a stage when further interviews could not elicit more information (dörnyei, 2007). eventually, 38 teachers, including 22 male teachers and 16 female teachers, participated in the study. their ages ranged from their 20s to 60s. among the participants, 28 were local teachers whose first languages were mandarin chinese, taiwanese southern min or aboriginal languages in taiwan. ten were expatriate teachers whose first languages were english, ukrainian or southern min. before the interviews, i described to the participants what the purposes of the study were, how i would store and use the research data and what their rights as participants were. then, they chose a pseudonym to assure confidentiality and signed a written consent form to acknowledge that they were aware of the nature of the study. each participant was interviewed once. twenty-eight local teachers were interviewed in mandarin chinese and ten expatriate teachers in english. all interviews were audio-recorded and were fully transcribed for later analysis. the “two-part process” guided data collection and analysis (atkinson, 2007: 234). first, at the data collection stage, i used a semi-structured interview protocol with open-ended questions, which provided guidance and directions in the interviews. however, participants were encouraged to describe and discuss any interesting issues relevant to the research topic in an explanatory manner. as an interviewer, i helped them to elaborate on their lives, stories, anecdotes and experiences that they felt were crucial for them. depending on their abilities to elaborate on their life stories as a teacher and their motivation in becoming a teacher, the interviews lasted between 40 minutes to one hour. secondly, at the data-analysis stage, i read participants’ stories several times to understand their lives and experiences. hereafter, i highlighted and teased out the themes that emerged from the interview transcriptions and that could answer the research question. these themes were later categorised based on watt and richardson’s (2007) fit-choice framework. i also investigated how often these themes had been mentioned among interviewees and whether there were any patterns among individual themes. for example, i found that salary drove almost one third of my participants to select english teaching as their career. i also found that these participants were from diverse backgrounds. they were local and expatriate teachers, public school and private school teachers and cram school and formal schoolteachers. this pattern suggested that salary was a critical factor for english teachers in taiwan who chose teaching as a career. when i present results in this manuscript, interview excerpts in chinese are translated into english semantically and those in english remained unchanged despite grammatical errors. 6. results two caveats need to be mentioned. first, different factors that motivated participants to become english teachers should not be considered in isolation. more often than not, one became a teacher for several reasons. as mullock (2009: 8) indicated, “the reasons for entering tesol were complex, multi-layered, and varied”. second, some participants did not differentiate teaching in general from teaching english. that is, they were pleased that they had become teachers regardless of the subjects they taught. therefore, when asked why they became english teachers, many discursively talked about why they decided to become 47 shih why do they want to become english teachers teachers and then why they chose english out of the possible subjects. in the following paragraphs, i elaborate my findings and categorise the factors that attracted taiwanese efl teachers according to watt and richardson’s (2007) fit-choice framework. prior teaching and learning experiences four participants did not intend to be english teachers until they had a chance to teach english. a common pattern was that they embarked on their teaching part-time. before their first day of teaching, some even had negative perceptions of teaching; one of the four participants thought that teaching must have been quite a boring job and another was reluctant to become a teacher. yet, once they tried it, they found that they enjoyed teaching. for example, ken originally did business with his father in the philippines and visited his mother who worked in taipei at the time. he described his first day of english teaching, which was at the request of his mother’s friend who ran a cram school. after a few days, he decided to become an english teacher. he said: if i’m not exaggerating, i was on the floor, rolling and laughing... something happened in class was so funny... and the kids were laughing with me, you know? and, and after that... i found... some kind of happiness i never had before. somehow i connected... i was actually happy doing this, you know? i was playing with the kids. i didn’t feel that i was teaching at all. i was playing, you know... after three more days of happy teaching, if that’s what you want to call it, teaching, i remember i called my mom, and i told her i wanted to call my dad. and i don’t want to go back to the philippines and do the business anymore. these teachers embraced teaching because of their prior teaching experiences. another three participants said that they wanted to become teachers/english teachers because they had previously encountered very good teachers/english teachers. for example, pearl, a cram school teacher, said that her academic performance in english was not outstanding. it was not until she met an excellent english teacher that her interest in english was awakened and her english was improved. given that being a teacher could help other people and that she was interested in english, pearl decided to become an english teacher. she said, originally my english was not good. later i had a very good english teacher who changed my attitude toward english learning... because the teacher changed my life, i thought that being a teacher was a meaningful job which could really help other people. so when i took the jcee, i thought about being a teacher. but originally my target area of study was not english, but chinese because my mom was a chinese teacher. so my chinese was very, very good. then i met the very good english teacher, and my english improved. so i became more interested in english. so i applied for admission only to english departments. i wanted to learn english well. social influences and social dissuasion being a teacher could be a family heritage. two interviewees said that they were influenced by the fact that their parents were teachers. for example, when asked why she wanted to become a teacher, pearl replied, “because my parents are teachers... i always admire my parents’ devotion to their students, and then students also respect them.” it seems as if her parents’ dedication to education and the positive feedback from her parents’ students influenced her, prompting her interest in teaching. pearl’s parents did not coerce her into teaching and their impact seemed to have been relatively mild. on the contrary, four other participants mentioned that their parents either coaxed them into english teaching or decided for them. for example, when asked why she 48 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) wanted to become an english teacher, kikilala replied, “the most significant factor was my family, my father. when i took my jcee, the first four departments on my wish list were filled out by my father.” this is similar to other studies conducted in other east asian countries (gao & trent, 2009; hayes, 2008). kikilala concurred with the decision because she was interested in english and teaching was one of her dream jobs. in addition to the influence of parents, richard, a primary school english teacher, said that his younger brother and wife always disseminated information on english teaching vacancies to him and proactively assisted him with job applications. his case demonstrated that family members could be critical factors in involving a person in the teaching profession. social influences were not confined to family impact on the participants but could be extended to society. people with certain ethnic backgrounds might not be fortunate enough to select their jobs from the full repertoire of professions due to their ethnicity. they might have limited choices of professions from which they could choose. for example, dipuo said: when i was growing up in south africa, the only professions which were deemed, you know, fit for black people were maybe teaching, nursing, and being a policeman. so i didn’t have much of a choice really. yeah, you know during that time in south africa, there was a separate development, like black education and white education. so for us, it was designed in such a way that the best job would be teaching. as a black south african who grew up during the apartheid era, dipuo had to choose her career from a limited number of professions, among which teaching was perceived as the best option. similarly, teaching was perceived as being advantageous to aboriginal people in taiwan. tali hayung, a local aboriginal english teacher, considered teaching a favourable job. he had the following to say, at that time we were poor, so many people studied at teachers’ colleges or normal universities. the environment was the most influential factor. also, many senior people in my tribe were teachers. i thought that they had a stable job which was helpful for aboriginal people. so i chose this job. according to tali hayung, poverty was the primary problem among aboriginal people, so many chose teaching because it was a stable career. tali hayung witnessed their stable careers and perceived this profession as conducive to aboriginal people. he therefore decided to devote himself to it. not only participants with certain ethnic backgrounds but also those from certain geographic regions preferred teaching jobs. kikilala, who resided on an outlying island, said that being a teacher or a public servant was considered an ideal job for islanders. she said, “my father thought that being a public servant or a teacher is a very good option here in penghu [an outlying island]”. the cases of kikilala and tali hayung were consistent with hayes’ (2008) findings that people from the lower socio-economic classes or small villages favoured teaching. another dimension of social influence for the participants was compulsory military service. some participants who were proficient in english and opted for substitute military service were assigned to remote areas or outlying islands to teach english. sam was a case in point. his initial motivation to join the education service as his substitute military service was not because he was interested in english teaching. he joined the teaching force simply because the nature of the job was less complicated and there were more vacancies. he had this to say, 49 shih why do they want to become english teachers i heard from upperclassmen and relatives who were discharged from the substitute military service that the education service had more vacancies, and that the nature of these jobs was relatively not so complicated. this is why i chose the education service. the last factor in this category was the social atmosphere. in the 1990s, english learning gained momentum in taiwan, an atmosphere that affected toby, who earned his master’s degree in tesol from a university in the united states. he had been a journalist and flight attendant for several years in north america after his master’s degree was conferred. when asked why he returned to taiwan and switched his career to english teaching, he said, in fact, being a flight attendant is very tiring. also, all my family and friends are there [in taiwan], so i decided to come back to contribute to the society. i studied english teaching, which happened to be popular at that time, so i thought i could come back to give it a try. luckily i got a full-time job at a school in northern taiwan. in his testimony, family reunion was his motivation to move back to taiwan. when it came to jobs, he did not resume either of his previous careers but instead sought an english teaching position because english learning gained its popularity, which seemed to have an impact on his decision to capitalise on his expertise in tesol. salary the most significant finding of the study is that salary was the most critical factor that attracted the participants into becoming efl teachers. unlike their counterparts in china and greece, who said that salary was a demotivating factor (gao & trent, 2009; tziava, 2003), 12 out of the 38 participants in this study said explicitly that remuneration was the primary or critical incentive for them in joining this profession. although teaching english was not as lucrative as other professions such as medicine, it was a job with a relatively good salary in taiwan. this discourse emerged not only in a specific group of teachers but among expatriate and local teachers, cram school and formal school teachers and public school and private school teachers. the pattern suggested that a wide spectrum of english teaching posts offered competitive salaries. for example, when i inquired why he wanted to become an english teacher, graf, an african american teaching at a local cram school and kindergarten, replied bluntly, “think of the pay. it’s actually pretty good”. the other phenomenon connected to salary was that teaching english allowed participants to strike a balance between work and life, work and study or work and health. the participants suggested that even if teaching english did not offer a very high salary, it involved fewer working hours or was more flexible in its nature. for example, sandy had worked for an international trade company in the daytime while studying english at a university at night. because her boss was reluctant to let her knock off early to attend her courses, she quit and became a kindergarten english teacher. she said, when i studied at my university, i always had conflicts with my boss and could not go to school. then, one of my classmates taught at a kindergarten in the daytime, so i asked her for relevant information... and i thought this was more flexible and the salary was not bad. i actually got paid similarly when i worked at the trade company... after i tried to look for a job, i got it. so i quit my job at the trade company. from then, i started to teach english. sandy switched to english teaching to strike a balance between her work and study. eunice, a certified junior high school english teacher, did not join the teaching force after 50 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) graduation but sought employment in a high-tech electronics company as an assistant. after one year, she compared her job with english teaching and decided that she would like to become an english teacher. she recounted, the reason why i wanted to quit was because of salary and health... now in the private sector, everybody’s salary is not good. even if you have a master’s degree from chiaotung or tsing-hua [prestigious universities in taiwan], your salary is not outstanding. to put it bluntly, your salary is more or less like high school teachers’... but the workload might be so heavy that your body can’t afford it. the other monetary factor mentioned by the participants was that retired schoolteachers enjoy pensions. in fact, teaching at public schools is one of the few careers in taiwan that entitles employees to a monthly pension. angela, a vocational high school teacher, recalled why she had wanted to become an english teacher as follows, when i was a student at a two-year college, my mom knew a retired teacher. she thought retired teachers had a stable salary, and had quite a good vocation. and my school had a teacher education programme, so she asked me to give it a try. self-perceptions three teachers claimed that english was their best performing subject at school. this did not necessarily mean that english was their favourite subject. for example, a junior high school teacher, charlie, said: in fact, english was not the subject i was most interested in, but my english was quite good. i should say that i did the best in english among all of the subjects in terms of academic performance. in fact, charlie’s perception of teaching was unique. he attended the most prestigious senior high school in taiwan, which only the top one per cent of junior high school students were admitted to. coming from a family with several patriotic military officers, he thought that he should use his talents to become a teacher. he said, at that time i was a senior high school student, so i wasn’t knowledgeable. i thought i was a talent. then i was full of enthusiasm, and thought that talents should become teachers. intrinsic career value in addition to salary, intrinsic career values played an equally pivotal role in motivating the participants to become efl teachers. nine out of the 38 participants reported that they became english teachers because they liked english. this finding echoed results from previous studies conducted in china, thailand, slovenia and sri lanka (gao, 2010; gao & trent, 2009; hayes, 2008; hettiarachchi, 2010; kyriacou & kobori, 1998). for example, kikilala said, english has been my best subject since junior high school. in fact, i didn’t like to study, but i was very interested in english, and had a sense of achievement. in addition, being a teacher was a dream job since childhood for three participants. toby said: since i was young, i wanted to be a teacher. at that time i thought about being a teacher. after i completed my compulsory military service, i thought about looking for relevant positions. luckily i got it. 51 shih why do they want to become english teachers personal utility value surprisingly, personal utility value was rarely mentioned in the interviews. only one junior high school teacher mentioned job security as his motivation. moreover, this discourse emerged from a male teacher’s interview, not from a female teacher’s interview. he said that his family was in debt, so he needed a steady flow of income. were it not for his family’s economic condition, he would not have become an english teacher. he said that he would have still majored in english but would have become a translator or would have sought employment in business. he said, basically my father hasn’t been working since he was young... yeah, he hasn’t been working, so [the household] depends on my mom who does some cleaning jobs. this was why i chose teaching, because it is more stable. in addition to job security, one teacher mentioned time for family as an important factor. dipuo said, “i hope, well, maybe it’s a good job. when i one day get married, i have a lot of time with my children and with my family”. similarly, only one teacher referred to job transferability. this british teacher said that he had become fed up with the british weather and had sought a sun-drenched place to work. a critical motivating factor for him was that teaching english allowed him to travel. he said, i love traveling... i’ve done quite a lot in my life but it’s very expensive. and i was fed up with english weather, you know. i enjoy hot weather and sunshine... i thought teaching english is a good way to experience different countries and cultures and well you know, working at the same time. make a social contribution one of the interviewees, richard bachman, was a young american missionary. he viewed service as a significant component of his faith and observed that taiwanese people were interested in learning english. therefore, he taught english to taiwanese people to link his service and faith with local people’s interests. he said, it seems like a lot of people in taiwan are interested in learning english, and being the service is one of our top priorities. service is really a very large part of our faith, and it seems like in places like taiwan, english is a very appropriate type of service, so and sometimes it’s difficult to find opportunities to help people with their personal affairs whatever they may be, so english is a good way to see that we can serve people but it’s also something they’re still interested in. other than the expatriate missionary, local participants rarely mentioned this type of factor in their interviews. pearl and toby vaguely talked about it and, interestingly, the other two who raised this motivation were tali hayung and kikilala. the former was an aboriginal teacher and the latter lived on an outlying island. their common characteristic was that they were considered on the periphery in certain respects. they both mentioned that they were motivated to become teachers partly because they wanted to contribute to education in their hometowns. for example, tali hayung said, i thought if i would come back to serve my fellow villagers, i could help students improve their studies and inculcate their characters. this idea further affirmed my decision to choose this job. 52 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) fallback career five participants said that they became english teachers by accident. for example, miles, a senior high school english teacher, said that his favourite subject was history. however, because his score on the jcee fell in the range of the english department at a normal university, he became an english teacher. phyllis, a university english teacher, said that she became an english teacher simply because she was offered a teaching position. if she had had another career option, she might have taken it. she said, there was no specific reason at that time. there were several <possibilities>1 for a graduate from an english department. this is just one of the <options>… if there had been other offers like working at a translation company, i might have taken it. but it happened that there was an opportunity in teaching english. then i have never doubted about it. i thought i was <okay> to teach english. i have never doubted about myself. i have never doubted about the career path of english teaching. so i chose this job, and then i walked along the road. i like teaching. 7. discussion applying the fit-choice framework, this study investigated taiwanese efl teachers’ motivation to choose this career. as shown in table 1, it is surprising that salary seems to be the most critical factor, which attracted them to the english teaching profession. the second most important factor, which swayed taiwanese efl teachers to choose this career, was that they are fond of english. on the contrary, participants rarely mentioned factors under personal utility value, such as job security, job transferability, and time for family. in comparison with previous research, this study generates similar and different findings. as other researchers found (e.g., gao, 2010; gao & trent, 2009; hayes, 2008; hettiarachchi, 2010; kyriacou & kobori, 1998), the most critical intrinsic career value for the participants in this study was that they were interested in english. in addition, fallback factors emerged in the present study as in other research (hettiarachchi, 2010; mullock, 2009; zhao, 2008). on the contrary, this study presents certain findings that differ from previous ones. the most strikingly different finding is that salary was the most often-mentioned motivation for teaching english. unlike their counterparts in previous studies who said that salary was a demotivating factor (gao & trent, 2009; tziava, 2003), the participants in this study perceived that english teaching was a well-paid job or that it allowed them to strike a balance between their work and lives, work and studies and work and health. the other finding that differed from previous studies in other parts of asia (gao & trent, 2009; hayes, 2008; hettiarachchi, 2010) is that none of the participants in this study suggested that teaching was an appropriate job for women, indicating that teaching is no longer considered a women’s job in the taiwanese society. this extrapolation is further corroborated by the fact that none of the male teachers were dissuaded by their friends or families from becoming teachers. richard, a primary school teacher, was even urged to take the teacher recruitment test by his wife and brother. the other aspect of motivation that has been neglected by previous research is the social dimension of initial motivation in becoming english teachers. this study shows that the mania for learning english in taiwan has attracted people to efl teaching. in addition, people from aboriginal tribes or outlying islands are inclined to teach english. this seems to resonate with hayes’ (2008) study, which showed that people from small villages and lower socio-economic 1 < > means code-switching from mandarin chinese to english 53 shih why do they want to become english teachers backgrounds preferred english teaching. being a teacher was conceived as a way to move into a better social class. the present study suggests that esl/efl teachers need to be intrinsically and extrinsically motivated to commit to and enjoy teaching as a career. to date, research has shown that esl/ efl teachers in many countries suffer from low morale and a high rate of attrition (johnston, 1997; mcknight, 1992). studies on initial motivation to become english teachers could partially explain this educational issue; most of them have revealed that esl/efl teachers are more intrinsically than extrinsically motivated (hettiarachchi, 2010; yau, 2010). for example, efl teachers in china had very complicated sentiments toward teaching (gao, 2010; gao & trent, 2009). although attracted by english, they were reluctant to become english teachers because they perceived teaching as a profession with low pay and social status (gao & trent, 2009). similarly, tziava (2003) indicated that efl teachers in greece enjoyed working with young people but were demotivated by the low remuneration. in contrast, efl teaching in taiwan has a completely different landscape; most efl teachers are intrinsically and extrinsically motivated. as a result, seeking a full-time teaching position at a public school in taiwan has become very competitive. my study is considered case study research, which has been criticised for its lack of generalisability (dörnyei, 2007). findings of the present study cannot be generalised to all efl teachers in taiwan and their counterparts in other countries. since research has shown that initial motivation to become an english teacher differs from country to country, more research is needed to understand why esl/efl teachers in each country join the teaching force. in addition, given that esl/efl teachers in most countries are intrinsically motivated but extrinsically demotivated, further studies should be conducted to investigate how to attract prospective teachers to commit to esl/efl education under a limited educational budget. table 1 summary of results no. of participants prior teaching and learning experiences prior teaching experiences 4 prior learning experiences 3 social influences and dissuasions parents were teachers 2 social persuasions 4 good/limited choice for some ethnic groups or remote areas 3 military service 1 social atmosphere 1 salary 12 self perceptions 3 intrinsic career value 54 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) summary of results no. of participants like english 9 dream job 3 personal utility value job security 1 job transferability 1 time for family 1 social utility value make a social contribution 5 fallback career 5 8. acknowledgements i would like to thank my participants, the anonymous peer reviewers and the generous research funding from the taiwanese ministry of science of technology (nsc96-2411-h-167-002). references atkinson, r. 2007. the life story interview as a bridge in narrative inquiry. in d.j. clandinin (ed.). handbook of narrative inquiry. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. pp. 224-245. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781452226552.n9 dörnyei, z. 2007. research methods in applied linguistics. oxford: oxford university press. fwu, b.j. & wang, h.h. 2002. the social status of teachers in taiwan. comparative education, 38(2), 211-224. https://doi.org/10.1080/03050060220140584 gao, x. 2010. to be or not to be: shifting motivations in chinese secondary school english teachers’ career narratives. teacher development, 14, 321-334. https://doi.org/10.1080/136 64530.2010.504013 gao, x. & trent, j. 2009. understanding mainland chinese students’ motivations for choosing teacher education programs in hong kong. journal of education for teaching, 35, 145-159. https://doi.org/10.1080/02607470902771037 hayes, d. 2008. becoming a teacher of english in thailand. language teaching research, 12, 471-494. https://doi.org/10.1177/1362168808097160 hettiarachchi, s. 2010. esl teacher motivation in sri lankan public schools. npublished m.ed. dissertation. ypsilanti: eastern michigan university. johnston, b. 1997. do efl teachers have careers? tesol quarterly, 31, 681-712. https:// doi.org/10.2307/3587756 kyriacou, c. & korori, m. 1998. motivation to learn and teach english in slovenia. educational studies, 24, 345-351. https://doi.org/10.1080/0305569980240307 55 shih why do they want to become english teachers lin, e., shi, q., wang, j., zhang, s. & hui, l. 2012. initial motivations for teaching: comparison between preservice teachers in the united states and china. asia pacific journal of teacher education, 40, 227-248. https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866x.2012.700047 mcknight, a. 1992. ‘i loved the course, but…’ career aspirations and realities in adult tesol. prospect, 7(3), 20-31. mullock, b. 2009. motivations and rewards in teaching english overseas: a portrait of expatriate tefl teachers in south-east asia. prospect, 24(2), 4-19. tziava, k. 2003. factors that motivate and de-motivate greek efl teachers. unpublished m.ed. dissertation. edinburgh: university of edinburgh. watt, h.m.g. & richardson, p.w. 2007. motivational factors influencing teaching as a career choice: development and validation of the fit-choice scale. the journal of experimental education, 75(3), 167-202. https://doi.org/10.3200/jexe.75.3.167-202 watt, h.m.g. & richardson, p.w. (eds.). 2012. teaching motivations in different countries: comparisons using the fit-choice scale. asia pacific journal of teacher education, 40(3). yau, h.y. 2010. language teacher motivation: a study of teachers of english as a second language in new zealand language school. unpublished m.ed. dissertation. auckland: auckland university of technology. zhao, h. 2008. why did people become secondary-school english as a foreign language teachers in china? an examination of the pathways, motivations, and policy through a lifehistory narrative approach. educational research for policy and practice, 7, 183-195. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s10671-008-9051-4 perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 58 youth perspectives of achievement: is money everything? jasmine matope azeem badroodien this article draws from a qualitative research project completed at victoria high school (pseudonym) in cape town in 2012 which explored 13 learners’ perspectives of achievement and its influence on their lives and thinking. the piece problematises and analyses taken-for-granted connections between money, achievement, youth aspirations and views of employment (opsahl & dunnette, 1966). the article builds on mcclelland’s (1967: 10) view that “money isn’t everything,” that money is a motivator for some, yet often inconsequential for others, and that its meaning mostly lies “in the eye of the beholder”. in light of this view, the articles discusses the perspectives of four learners at victoria high to illustrate how they approached achievement, aspiration and materiality according to the different social standings and worlds that they inhabited. it was found that the expressed views of achievement by learners went beyond stereotypical and measurable attitudes and connected in quite complex ways with how they imagined their futures. the learners approached the notion of achievement in developmental, cumulative, and progressive ways. an interpretive qualitative paradigm using the work of pierre bourdieu and arjun appadurai was employed to highlight how the youth’s various capitals and aspirations respectively influenced their notions of achievement. keywords: achievement, aspiration, money, youth, social class, materiality introduction most literature highlights achievement as a construct that drives the education system. achievement is tied to either exceling at school or doing well financially. achievement and success are thus often correlated. the article contends that achievement is constructed in particular ways in the neoliberal environment. a study carried out with 13 learners at victoria high school (pseudonym) in cape azeem badroodien associate professor and deputy director, centre for international teacher education, cput e-mail: badroodiena@cput.ac.za telephone: 074 143 2440 jasmine matope research associate, centre for international teacher education, cput, and doctoral student, stellenbosch university e-mail: 15932710@sun.ac.za telephone: 071 906 9723 youth perspectives of achievement: is money everything? jasmine matope & azeem badroodien 59 town in 2010 and 2011 revealed that not all learners concede to the perspectives of achievement espoused in schools. some learners thought of achievement in qualitative ways contrary to the instrumental way flagged in the literature. the learners’ viewpoints of achievement challenged the positions that assume that achievement at school is mainly a quantitative measure characterised in accordance with what learners achieve or do not achieve academically in their formal schooling. their views highlight that achievement is often understood as more than money and student academic results. the article proposes that the concept “achievement” is a far more complex phenomenon than that captured by formal schooling performance. it suggests that notions of achievement are located in what learners aspire to, and accomplish in their lives. that which learners regard as achievable is complexly defined by their individual yearnings and the particular social worlds that they inhabit. the article points to a paradoxical relationship between achievement and aspiration. it illustrates how, on the one hand, individual aspiration serves to guide learners about what they seek to achieve and provides inspiration to many learners to push themselves and to exert the necessary effort to succeed and achieve. conversely, the incapacity to achieve or succeed at something or the realisation that the resources or finances needed to pursue them is lacking, often leads some learners to re-assess and re-align their choices, goals and expectations. to better understand how the youth differently think about achievement the article employs the theories of appadurai and bourdieu. appadurai’s notion of the “capacity to aspire” is particularly helpful in suggesting that people already “achieve” something through imagining, since by dreaming they are able to conjure up different worlds and the kinds of capabilities needed to exist in those worlds. as the youth “engage with” their imagined worlds they develop some capacities to engage with their real worlds. thus, the article points to the need for a more complex understanding of learner aspiration, one that accounts for elements of dreaming, imagination, and fabrication. bourdieu’s theories of capital, habitus and field further assist to understand how humans as “interchangeable particles” connect daily, and how they think about their lives. this article hopes to add value to debates on achievement, observing that persistent consideration of achievement as a one-size-fits-all concept (academic) obstructs important channels of learning about what the youth regard as significant in their different lives. before delving into the youth’s notions of achievement, the next section provides a synopsis of the motivation of the study. motivation the idea to engage with the youth’s notions of achievement was stimulated by a radio broadcast in late 2009 discussing the release of the matriculation results in perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 60 south africa. reflecting on the debate, the broadcaster characterised the moment as “a time when academic achievers would rejoice as they set their minds on prospective university careers” while, for non-achievers, “it was going to be the genesis of a life of would-be suffering, where they would swim in poverty”. what was particularly striking about the remark was that it presumed that non-academic achievers did not fundamentally think about achievement and its meaning. the deeper underlying questions that were not being asked were whether all students shared the same understanding of what was referred to as achievement and whether a varied understanding of the term possibly influenced the ways in which learners individually “performed” or engaged with their schooling lives. thus, research to establish the learners’ views was set up. the next sections turns to the method used to elicit the learners’ views of achievement. method of data gathering initially, permission to undertake the project was sought from victoria high school and the western cape education department. this enabled the researcher to apply for institutional ethical clearance. the researcher received an ethical clearance certificate approving the commencement of the research fieldwork. the researcher liaised with two teachers at the school to help her identify students willing to participate in the project. to protect the students’ confidentiality and privacy the researcher met with them individually and explained what the study was about and gave them consent and introductory letters to take to their parents. students who returned their signed consent forms were then admitted as participants to the study. each student was also asked to sign an individual assent form. thirteen students: eight girls and five boys aged between 15 and 17 were then interviewed about their notions of achievement and aspirations. they were asked many questions about their home lives, the major influences on their thinking, their role models, how they travelled to school, and their experiences at school relating to achieving, and what they thought about expectations of achievement within the school environment. all interviews were roughly one-hour sessions. two interviews were conducted with each student. to triangulate the student interviews five staff members of the school were interviewed on how they constructed ideas of achievement into the school’s daily undertakings, what they generally expected from a variety of students in the school, and how they worked with often conflicting and inconsistent interpretations of student achievement. the interviews were taped and then transcribed. the transcriptions were coded to determine the key emerging characteristics, as a way of “discovering the whole rather than the sum of parts” (scott & morrison, 2006: 33). the key themes were then expanded and analysed in relation to the paper’s focus on achievement and youth perspectives of achievement: is money everything? jasmine matope & azeem badroodien 61 aspiration. pseudonyms were allocated to each participant to ensure confidentiality, privacy and anonymity of both the subjects and the relevant school. for this article, the views of four learners, namely numazulu, patina, peter and abdullah, were mainly utilised. these views are included in later sections. the next sections outline how the theories of bourdieu and appadurai assisted in the exploration and analysis of what can be learnt from learners’ observations of their different life worlds, and what they thought they could become in the future. as moore (2008: 108) suggests, it is in the dissimilar attitudes, dispositions, and value systems of learners in relation to their individual capitals from which varied perceptions of achievement, as well as different familiarities on how to “navigate” their social spaces, are generated. the theoretical spine bourdieu’s concepts of field, habitus and capital offer a theoretical framework and way of thinking about the relationship between economic and cultural issues in the lives of learners, as well as about the ways they think about achievement. bourdieu’s theory of habitus further illustrates how internalised social structures and dispositions are unconsciously developed from an early age and are given particular form in the lives of individuals by being reproduced through their everyday experiences, (bourdieu & passeron 1990; bourdieu, 2004). learners develop different attitudes, dispositions, and value systems based on their various upbringings and social interactions, and the social networks that they can call upon. this often shapes what is possible for them in their lives. it also produces diverse understandings of concepts like achievement as well as unequal familiarities of how to navigate the different social spaces in which they are experienced (moore, 2008: 108). similarly, appadurai (2004) explores how social context structures learner engagement with schooling, by focusing in more detail on the individual’s “capacity to aspire”. he emphasises the need to see learners as all having particular and different desires for their futures; desires that are not restricted by social, cultural, economic, or intellectual capitals. appadurai (1996: 45) asserts that people have certain agencies, choices, and capacities associated with their imaginations and their capacity to aspire that they utilise in creative ways to rethink their pathways through life. he claims that individuals in the contemporary world seem able to move forward in life in the most dreary of situations only because they can continuously dream about better lives (notwithstanding these dreams rarely materialising for impoverished communities). appadurai (2004: 69) points out that the capacity to aspire is shaped both by social, cultural, and economic experiences and the availability of navigational information in their everyday life, as well as by what learners’ desire and want in their future lives. he suggests that treating aspiration as a cultural category (where learners focus on practice, repetition, exploration, conjecture and refutation) rather than an individual attribute is an important device with which to view and engage the kinds of differences in everyday life and understanding that inform what learners achieve. perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 62 by focusing on what learners imagine and dream about for themselves, often beyond their capability and social reality, appadurai’s (2004) work implies that, as learners’ aspirations differ, so do their notions and experiences of achievement. “it is only in imagining beyond a tangible, experienced and engaged reality that individuals demonstrate a ‘capacity to aspire;’ these aspirations are never simply individual but rather are always formed in the thickness of everyday life” (appadurai, 2004). these two theoretical frameworks assisted the paper not only in making sense of what learners said about achievement, but in better understanding how the learners individually positioned achievement during the interviews and in making sense of how they understood their own lives. learners described achievement as measurable (school results, economic status) and immeasurable (knowledge, taste, power), and tangible (occupations, material possessions) and intangible (beliefs, attitudes, expectations). equipped with the discussion on the analytical tools used to analyse the learners’ responses, the following section first looks at the literature that provides definition of achievement, highlights what the learners at the school say about achievement and then problematise the notion of achievement and its utility for the students in the current world. how achievement has been mainly understood it is important to highlight that, while this paper locates itself within the current achievement debates, very few studies consider the views of achievement. most current studies (wilder, 2014; goldhaber, walch & gabele, 2014; hampdenthompson, 2013) make comparisons of academic achievement at grade, school, national and international level. the research accessed literature of the 1990s which provided perceptions of achievement, which could be regarded as quite out-dated. however, the purpose of looking at the literature is mainly to highlight key debates that serve as a background from which to view current youth notions of achievement. as observed from most of this older literature, achievement is considered to be mainly academic. in this regard, johnson (1992: 99) defines achievement as: … the traditional indices of the degree to which a student has encountered success in school. this may include school grade, grade point average, rank in class, scores on standardized achievement and aptitude tests and other scaled indicators used within the school setting to document and report level of academic progression. for johnson, achievement is exclusively attributable to academic performance. such a view of achievement is expanded by gardner (1993) who asserts that achievement is also about attaining excellence in all academic disciplines, both in class and in extracurricular activities. achievement is perceived to embrace all forms of activities in which individuals excel, including sportsmanship, behaviour, confidence, communication, skills, punctuality, assertiveness, and creativity and novelty. both youth perspectives of achievement: is money everything? jasmine matope & azeem badroodien 63 johnson (1992) and gardner (1993) depict achievement as academic and externally determined using benchmarks where individuals are considered to be achieving when they conform and measure up to a set of pre-determined standards. however, samdal, wold and bronis (1999: 296) challenge this approach and assert that achievement needs to be benchmarked according to individual ability. they argue that because all learners cannot attain top marks or grades, “achievement needs to be defined as when learners perform optimally according to their own capability”. they thus argue that understandings of achievement need to take into consideration the particular capabilities of individual learners. the key problem with this approach, however, is that it continues to use external evaluation criteria to measure achievement, namely that achievement is about the extent of effort exerted. it does not accommodate individual perspectives of achievement nor does it concede, as singhal and misra (1994) do, that it is invariably society that crafts notions of achievement for its people. in that respect, this article challenges approaches that present achievement in education strictly in relation to success and wealth; asserting that many learners have quite different views of the utility-value of achieving. it observes that current debates and comparisons on academic achievement generally neglect to recognize achievement as individual choice, and that different learners have different views and approaches towards achievement. it contends that while for many learners monetary success is regarded as important for survival, the pursuit of monetary gain is not as overwhelming as is often suggested. the article suggests that learners often adopt a much broader outlook towards achievement that speaks more closely to their personal talents and aspirations that are also tied to their views on happiness and the pursuit of a more serene lifestyle. the following sections engage with four learners’ views of achievement. their views are included to provide fresh and new insights of how achievement can be considered, and to challenge the predominant inclination to emphasise achievement as academic. the following sections engage with four learners’ views of achievement. their views are included to provide fresh and new insights of how achievement can be considered, and to challenge the predominant inclination to emphasise achievement as academic. how youth view and experience achievement the youth’s different perspectives of achievement reflected their “actual possibilities of their lives as they see live and embody them” (willis, 2005: 461). this paper suggests that, instead of viewing learners as “passive and manipulated young consumers” (willis, 2005: 462), they should be seen deriving meaningful importance and identity from the “plethora of electronic signals and cultural commodities” perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 64 available to them in their everyday lives, as these help them make meaning of what they seek to achieve. achievement as material wealth numazulu thought of achievement as material acquisition. she noted that: for me achievement is about getting things done that lead to me being popular and influential. achievement is when i become rich and manage to lead an easy life. numazulu’s understanding of achievement is crucially informed by her social background. she pointed out that, in a large part of her life, she had lacked parental love and guidance due to her mother and father never marrying and her being left to live with her unemployed grandmother at a very young age. she struggled with the fact that she rarely saw her father who lived close by and was married to another woman. her mother lived in another township and worked as a supervisor at pick n pay supermarket. she did not earn enough to offer her some of the things that other adolescents take for granted. accordingly, numazulu did not have access to familial attention, both in terms of love and stability, and support with doing her homework and learning about life. moreover, numazulu did not have a desk to work at, as well as the other kinds of cultural capital such as books and access to the internet to help with her studies in the absence of her parents and familial support. in a number of ways numazulu lacked key forms of capitals that could assist her in reaching her goals. she had little access to the various capitals that could “put her ahead of the game”. she recalled for instance that i don’t read at home. if i read, i only read an interesting book. the inadequate time with her immediate family implicitly impelled numazulu to frame her notion of achievement in relation to a very bright future with a big house and a mini cooper and lots of money. she pointed out: do you watch generations? because if you did, you’d know about karabo, she’s a businesswoman who has money, her own car, and is famous. like her, everyone will know me. i like the way she is and i will be like her – in charge, very rich and successful. i see her as my role model, but first i have to go to uct, get a scholarship and study business and marketing management for three or four years. then i will follow in her footsteps and become very rich and successful. numazulu’s background, aspirations and understanding of achievement highlight how many learners often aspire to become particular kinds of successful professionals and entrepreneurs to avoid the kinds of lives that their parents had to endure. bourdieu refers to this as a form of embodied cultural capital where the learners and their parents developed dispositions and made meaning in given contexts which shaped the attitudes, preferences, perceptions, and values that they attached to their school and work decisions. numazulu further indicated that she was living in the age when people are not particular about how but what. it is what you have that counts and not how you obtain youth perspectives of achievement: is money everything? jasmine matope & azeem badroodien 65 it. the societal lenses that numazulu used to determine achievement is incongruent with that of singhal and misra (1994: 240) who regarded achievement as: … a function of more or less ephemeral social expectations that are embodied in what we call norms and argue that, in a very real sense, a social group often tells a person what to strive for as well as how to attain this end. in such a view achievement is understood as a social expectation and obligation, and social norms make up an important variable in how achievement takes shape. conversely, the society that influences numazulu’s perception of achievement is what kasser (2003: ix-x) states: if we hold our eyes open we will see that the world is filled with opulence, luxury and material excess. most of the world’s population is growing up in winner-takes-all economies where the main goal of the individual is to get whatever they can for themselves, to each according to his or her own greed. within this economic landscape selfishness and materialism are no longer seen as moral problems but as cardinal goals of life. vast numbers of us have been seduced into believing that having more wealth and material possessions is essential good life. we have swallowed the idea that to be well, one has to be well-off first. and many of us consciously and unconsciously, have learnt to evaluate our own being and accomplishment not by looking inward at our spirit or integrity, but by looking outward at what we have and what we can buy. it is manifested that not only did numazulu’s lack of capitals shape her habitus and her engagement with her schoolwork, but also wrought her aspirations and the kind of life she imagined. she freely spoke about her need to get as much money as she could to make life easy, without having a clear idea of what she needed to do or have to achieve this. ankomah (2003: 2) denotes the above as: … people tending to resort to materialistic values and desires when their needs for security, safety, and sustenance are not fully satisfied … where people experience situations that threaten their security and they then adopt materialistic values as coping mechanisms. hence, the strong urge to accumulate material assets and wealth is not uncommon amongst learners who come from poor socio-economic environments, notes kasser (2003: x), notwithstanding it creating a particular, limiting and often inaccessible lifeworld imaginary for them. this immense craving for material accumulation could be because only certain types of work are often open to contemporary youth when they enter the labour market, thus contemporary youth tend to become preoccupied with accumulation. perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 66 another possibility might not be the lack of work in the contemporary world that bother youth, but rather the type of work and available wages that they are not willing to accept. it appears generally to be the pervading trend in cape town when one reads magazines and watch television programmes – they all seem to say the same: achievement is measured by what you own, not by what you know or do. conversely, the next paragraph depicts another learner with a different perspective of achievement. popularity and recognition as achievement peter pointed out that: achievement makes you different from others in the ways you dress, talk, what you eat, places you visit and where you stay. i think also achievement is getting a good title, when people talk about you and like to be associated with you. peter’s aspirations and notions of achievement highlighted his overwhelming notion of recognition and popularity. his notions are not intrinsically driven because he is concerned about his outside image and approval – more about what people think and say about him – than what he is able to set up for himself. when prodded to elucidate how he hoped to accomplish this, peter noted: it can be through a strike, starting a church or something that draws the attention of people. to become great these days you don’t need to have fancy qualifications. but you do need to identify what people want. my uncle started his church – he is great. you know he is respected and he is doing well. realising that his path to pursue educational qualification is unfeasible peter identified individuals who had failed academically but were daring in life to pursue other avenues to earn a living. to peter earning a title is achievement. furthermore, peter’s understanding of achievement in connection to the style of dress and frequenting places of interests point to the youth’s permeating view of “being cool”. the youth are not concerned about a sustainable future – they are satisfied with ephemeral “pleasures” to evade derision and exclusion. fascinatingly, the youth’s notions of achievement are not inert. peter later noted: i think achievement is when one successfully overcomes one’s challenges; just because people have different challenges, socially, economically, academically and so on. i think achievement means different things to different people and happens at different times for each person. peter does not only think of achievement as enhancing individuals to possess benefits and status that precipitate superior forms of livelihood or knowledge, but also as overcoming the difficulties. his concept of achievement is very individualistic. it depends on how successful an individual overcomes the odds. he seems to be aware of the peer pressure that ensnares the youth. youth perspectives of achievement: is money everything? jasmine matope & azeem badroodien 67 bourdieu’s theory of habitus further illustrates how internalised social structures and dispositions are unconsciously developed from an early age and given particular form in the lives of individuals by being reproduced through their everyday experiences (bourdieu, 2004). various upbringings and social interactions entail that learners develop different attitudes, dispositions, and value systems which depend on the various social networks that individual learners can call upon and also what is possible for them in their lives. this produces diverse understandings of achievement, as well as unequal familiarities on how to navigate social spaces (moore, 2008: 108). in endeavouring to unravel peter’s aspirations and understanding of achievement, it emerged that he received no support from any sibling or parent and struggled with his schooling. he explained: i don’t really look into the future. i take life as it comes, either bad or good. with my family background it is almost impossible to achieve anything. nobody cares and nobody helps me. what can one do? the next paragraph highlights another learner with a different perspective of achievement. individual capabilities as achievement patina had an individualistic notion of achievement. she regarded individual dexterity in any field as achievement. she noted that achievement needs to be defined as when learners perform optimally according to their own capability. for her achievement needs to be benchmarked according to individual ability because all learners cannot attain top marks. patina criticised today’s society for putting too much pressure into achieving. she noted: most of the time, it’s not what people can achieve or want to achieve, but what they are meant to achieve. this puts a negative spin on achieving and causes learners not to achieve and to be very negative about who they are. in today’s society we set standards for people who are unable to meet those standards and then they get lost along the line. we need to change our mind on what achievement is all about. to me achievement is not determined by the amount of money you have, or the type of car you drive, or how well you do at school. to me, that is not achievement. achievement rather is doing something that you enjoy, that brings you happiness, and that makes you proud. achieving is when you feel joy in your heart, like when you’re helping others. patina challenged and ridiculed the external benchmarking of achievement which she regards as ineffective for it fails to capture various individuals’ needs, capabilities and interest. she is divergent to the other youth and does not take a materialistic view of achievement; rather she introduces intangible aspects of achievement which are not addressed in achievement debates. elucidating her individualistic notion of achievement, patina explained: perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 68 i know of a boy that was in my class at primary school that did very badly in class but he could work on a car and could do things with a car that none of us could. he could put pieces of a car together without any fuss. for me, he achieved because he could do what other people could not. patina did not regard schooling as the sole gateway to achievement. she had her own understanding of achievement – realising an individual’s talent and effectively utilising it for personal growth and survival. she also explicitly pointed out that achievement is personal and should not be necessarily determined by the school. she noted that the school could not recognise and develop the boy’s talent and potential achievements. furthermore, she emphasised the additive and cumulative aspects of achievement, pointing out that treating achievement as both a goal and a means to a goal captures the interconnectedness of skill mastery, competition, social recognition, group identity, personal ambition, individual interest, and learner subjectivity that learners often struggled with in school. patina’s significant capacity to aspire was based on her family background, her schooling experience, and the kinds of educational and learning experiences that she had thus far been exposed to. both her parents were successful professionals, affording her the cultural, social and economic capitals that neatly fitted with her high academic grades. patina thus did not only own strong capitals at school level, but also had easy access to different familial capitals. she was operating at the highest academic levels in the school and was easily one of the best academic learners. her access to the various capitals enabled her to have a more developed aptitude to imagine a different future life. appadurai (2004: 69) notes that learners from more affluent, powerful, or knowledgeable groups often have more experience reading “navigational maps” and are in a position to “share this knowledge with one another more routinely”. patina further highlighted how her belief in focusing on strengths and developing skills had made her progress and regards her schooling differently. she explained that goals and achievements were the fundamental bricks for the building of my aspirations and that, through achieving, she had discovered the techniques needed to accomplish things and to attain her aspirational goals. achieving was thus her “map” and her vehicle to get where she needed to be. the following sections further demonstrate how access to certain levels of capitals influence the way the learner aspired and thought about achievement in relation to his habitus. contentment and innovation as achievement abdullah thought of achievement as doing the best to your individual ability but must be something that brings you joy so that when you look at the thing you never regret getting there. i also think achievement is something that youth perspectives of achievement: is money everything? jasmine matope & azeem badroodien 69 must be shared. it must be something that you are confident and proud of, and that others are also proud of. most importantly, achievement is making a contribution to the world. interestingly, abdullah takes both a realistic and unrealistic conceptualisation of achievement. initially, he is aware that people have different capabilities; thus he seems to bring to light that achievement should not be standardised and measured using grades or certificates. achievement should remain a relative term. furthermore, he introduces the aspect of happiness – feeling it pointless or meaningless to be recognised as an achiever if one does not experience happiness, contentment, pride and confidence. he feels achievement should come from within and not outside. what is important is the “self”. the joy flowing from within will then drive the individual. to abdullah achievement is incomplete when it is not shared. to him invention or knowledge creation is achievement. abdullah later indicated that: when i study i will come up with better drugs that cure asthma. actually, my brother and i have asthma and the inhalers they give us do not really help people. yes i will do this because i’m determined to. i have always told myself that i have to and i foresee myself doing it, actually i know i will do it. in life there is always a beginning. i will make history as being the first to find the cure for asthma. abdullah’s optimistic bravado and enthusiasm is described by abrams (2010: 158) as “unexpected self-belief”. she notes in her study of learners in working class schools in the uk that “what was surprising about some people i met was not that they failed but that some of them didn’t: it seemed the key for the learners to not failing was their enormous self-belief,” noting that the learners had this “in spades” and that it is this that carried them through their everyday challenges. abdullah’s aspirations “provided him insight into what he thought and felt about himself, his school and the roles he was meant to fulfil within the school community” (ley, nelson & beltyukova, 1996: 134). in this regard, appadurai suggests that it is through the capacity to aspire that individual learners are able to bring their prospective imaginings, inspired and fuelled by feelings of hope and self-assurance, into the present. to a larger extent, abdullah’s background informed his aspirations and notions of achievement. both his parents and his sister are teachers, and both his brothers are engineers. he performed well in his academic studies and had access to the capitals, which suggested that he would attain his aspirational goals. because all his family members also did very well in their own social lives, they were able to easily assist him and encourage him to work hard. conclusion this article underlined achievement as a multi-layered concept that is neither linear nor one-dimensional. it showed that for many learners the concept of perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 70 achievement had direct pertinence to their individual lives, and the ways in which they thought about themselves and their lives in emerging global and local spaces such as wanting to be happy, having an interesting career, and being passionate about what they took on. achievement thus was closely tied to personal and often intangible aspirations. the article further challenged the view that youth notions of achievement in the current environment are mostly materialistic and consumeristic, and instead illustrated how some learners had a fairly good understanding of the kinds of challenges and dilemmas that confronted them in the modern era, and the kinds of decisions that they needed to make to best overcome this. what the article mainly highlighted was that many learners called upon both tangible and intangible views of achievementdepending on their individual and contextual arrangementsto inform ‘their aspirations’ and the ways they thought about their lives and what they sought to accomplish. for them ‘money was not everything’ but rather one part of a wider arrangement of negotiations that they needed to navigate to achieve their personal goals and aspirations. references abrams. f. 2010. learning to fail: how society lets young people down. london: routledge. agarwal, r. & misra, g. 1986. a factor analytic study of achievement goals and means: an indian view. international journal of psychology, 21:.717-731. ankomah, k. 2003. review of the high price of materialism by tim kasser. human nature review, 3: 108-110. appadurai, a. 1996. modernity at large: cultural dimensions of globalization. university of minnesota press, minneapolis. appadurai, a. (2004). the capacity to aspire: culture and the terms of recognition. in: v. rao &m. walton (eds.), culture and public action: a cross disciplinary dialogue in development policy: stanford university. bourdieu, p. 2004. science of science and reflexivity. cambridge: polity press. gardner, h. 1993. multiple intelligences: the theory in practice. new york: basic books. johnson, s.t. 1992. extra school factors in achievement, attainment and aspiration among junior and senior high schoolage african american youth. journal of negro education, 61:99-119. kasser, t. 2003. the high price of materialism. amazon: mit press. ley, j., nelson, s. & beltyukova, s. 1996. congruence of aspirations of rural youth with expectations held by parents and school staff. journal of research in rural education, 12:133-141. mcclelland, d.c. 1967. the achieving society. macmillan publishing co., new york. moore, r. 2008. capital. in grenfell, m. (ed.) pierre bourdieu: key concepts. stocksfield: acumen. youth perspectives of achievement: is money everything? jasmine matope & azeem badroodien 71 opsahl, r. l., & dunnette, m. d. 1966. the role of financial incentives in industriamotivation, psychological bulletin, 66:95–116. samdal, o., wold, b. & bronis, m. 1999. relationship between learners’ perceptions of school environment, their satisfaction with school and perceived academic achievement: an international study. school effectiveness and school improvement, 10:296-320. scott, d., & morrison, m. (2006). key ideas in educational research. london: continuumsinghal, r. & misra, g. 1994. achievement goals: a situational contextual analysis. international journal of intercultural relations, 18:23925. willis, p. 2005. ‘foot soldiers of modernity: the dialectics of cultural consumption and the cultural consumption and the 21st-century school. in mccarthy, c., crichlow, w., dimitriadis, g. & dolby, n. (eds). race, identity and representation in education. london: routledge. 1 the odd couple: diverging paths in language policy and educational practices mastin prinsloo university of cape town this paper examines the divergences between what educational policy calls for in south african schools with regard to language and learning and what takes place in schools. it argues that south african constitutional and education policy statements employ an idea of languages as bound entities and systems, and combine this understanding of languages with discourses on language rights and of language endangerment. an alternative view studied language as practice rather than system. from this perspective the idea of ‘a language’ is a misleading shorthand for a diverse range of language varieties, genres, registers and practices. such resources are not equally distributed among users of these resources and they carry different social weightings or valuations. this paper argues that the language assumptions in language policy ‘erase’ linguistic complexities and assume a linguistic homogeneity and stability which is inappropriate. a view of language is developed where language operates as a ‘non-neutral medium’ in stratified social contexts of all kinds. these inequalities operate just as much within designated ‘languages’, in terms of the varieties and their uses within that language, as across them. the observed differences between policy prescription and language practice provide support for this alternative perspective on language. keywords: language policy, ethnography, multilingualism, bilingualism, literacy. introduction something is amiss when policy statements from national government and the education ministry set out one direction for language in education, and practice takes a different direction. but do we know what it is? this paper examines the divergences between what educational policy calls for in south african schools with regard to language and learning and what takes place in schools. drawing on an examination of language policy statements in south africa and on school-based ethnographic data, i develop an analysis that starts to account for the difference between language policy imperatives and schooling practices. the data reported on in this paper is taken from a series of linked qualitative, ethnographicstyled studies on post-foundation phase classroom literacy and language practices.1 the data comprises recorded instances of classroom interaction and detailed field notes. the methodological orientation has been that of interpretative linguistic and literacy ethnography. i suggest that the south african education policy is a good example of how constructs concerning language in the south african constitution and in education policy rely on familiar but problematic ideas about language, development and nation-building. the constitution and policy statements from the education ministry view languages as autonomous, bound entities, and combine this understanding of languages with discourses on language rights and of language endangerment. however, evidence of language practices in schools and in society at large suggests a widespread, but not universal irreverence and disregard for these views about autonomous languages and language endangerment/protection. i draw on interactional sociolinguistic and ethnographic research (heller, 2007; makoni & pennycook, 1997; blommaert, 2005) that has raised questions about current policy formulations of language and argue that the south african policy for schooling provides a good example of the kinds of problems that follow the use of popularised but essential and reified constructs of language. that research variously suggests that these constructs of language have social origins, and specifically european origins, from 19th-century nationalist movements that linked ‘a language’ to ‘a nation’ and then defended that ‘language’ by political means. the contrasting perspective developed in interactional sociolinguistics is that users draw on 2 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 linguistic resources that are organised in ways that make sense under specific conditions (heller, 2007:1). this approach studies language as situated social practice. from this perspective the term ‘english’, or any other named language, is a misleading shorthand for a diverse range of language varieties, genres, registers and practices. such resources are not equally distributed among users of these resources and they carry different social weightings or valuations. a social practices perspective starts from the assumption that what counts about language is how it is ‘done’, what one ‘does’ ‘with’ it (gumperz & hymes, 1972; austin, 1975; duranti, 2010) and that there are different ways of ‘doing language’ and of linking (sometimes new) language forms to culturally meaningful and socially significant practices, in stratified social conditions where language resources carry social value for reasons that are not simply to do with their functionality. in the policy statements that i first examine in this paper there are numerous examples of a conception of language as an autonomous object in its own right, monolithic and homogeneous, where languages are conceived as systems rather than practices. i start with a typical example from policy statements of how an idea of language is summoned and then endorsed. the introduction to the ‘language policy for higher education’ statement produced by the south african ministry of education in 2002 describes south africa as “a country of many languages and tongues” but notes that these have not always been “working together”: in the past, the richness of our linguistic diversity was used as an instrument of control, oppression and exploitation. the existence of different languages was recognised and perversely celebrated to legitimise the policy of ‘separate development’ that formed the cornerstone of apartheid. however, in practice, all our languages were not accorded equal status. the policy of ‘separate development’ resulted in the privileging of english and afrikaans as the official languages of the apartheid state and the marginalisation and under-development of african and other languages (ministry of education 2002:1). the policy statement goes on to identify a “role for all our languages working together to build a common sense of nationhood” that is consistent with the values of “democracy, social justice and fundamental rights”, which are enshrined in the constitution. the statement therefore endorses the recognition by apartheid ideologues of the distinct character of separate languages, tongues and groups but accuses them of perversely entrenching those distinctions under laws of separation, rather than celebrating diversity. the view of language is similar, then, for both apartheid and post-apartheid policies – in both cases languages are frozen in time, and the discourse foregrounds the ‘languages’ themselves and sidelines the actual users of these language resources. in reality, of course, it is the language users who interact, struggle, compete, dominate and cooperate with each other, rather than the ‘languages’. it would not be such a problem to present social struggle in this way if the languages did effectively ‘stand for’ distinct groups of people whose group identities and languages emerged straightforwardly from the past and proceed unproblematically into the future, but this is, of course, not the case. this approach also avoids the difficult issue of what the contrasting contemporary reach, scope and scale of operations of these several ‘languages’ are, perhaps because, like elsewhere in africa, these questions of scale follow historical (colonial) tracks, where the ‘supra-language’ of status is an ex-colonial ‘language’. insisting on ‘language parity’ among eleven rather arbitrarily drawn sets of linguistic resources does not change the fact that there are linguistic hierarchies operating here and everywhere. the ideological assumptions regarding ‘boundedness’, authenticity and ‘language equality’ ‘erase’ linguistic complexities and assume linguistic homogeneity where there is diversity. the strategy for equalising the designated ‘languages’ works on the assumption that language operates ‘normally’ as a neutral social medium, and that directed social planning can ‘level the playing fields’, whereas sociolinguistic research shows that language always operates as a ‘non-neutral medium’ in stratified social contexts of all kinds (duranti, 2010; bourdieu, 1991). these inequalities operate just as much within designated ‘languages’, in terms of the varieties and their uses within that language, as across them. the problem with these language policy statements starts with the constitution. the constitution of the republic of south africa sets out the case for the “equal status of the languages of south africa”. in its 3prinsloo — the odd couple: diverging paths in language policy and educational practices opening chapter, under the heading ‘founding provisions’ the constitution first names the eleven “official languages of the republic”2 (rsa 1996:clause 6.1). secondly, noting the “historically diminished use and status of the indigenous languages of our people”, the constitution stipulates that “the state must take practical and positive measures to elevate the status and advance the use of these languages” (rsa 1996:clause 6.2). the same section of the constitution goes on to set out areas of flexibility that government has regarding local use of selected “official languages” but insists that “languages must enjoy parity of esteem and must be treated equitably”, while it is quite clear that even among the ‘african’ languages of the eleven official ones, there is not ‘parity’, because some are smaller regional resources and others are more varied in their spread and usefulness. and ‘within’ these resources called official (‘african’) languages, there are some ways of use that are considered authentic and some that are considered corruptions, despite the inherent fluidity and dynamism of all social resources and practices, language included. such categories of ‘good’ and ‘bad’ are really ones of social value, not of linguistic merit, per se. patrick (2007) and mufwene (2006) spelt out some of the problems with “language endangerment” and “language rights” discourses, summarised as follows: such discourses tend to romanticise and reify language and cultures; language issues get cut off from the historical, political and economic context in which speakers find themselves; the mobility and social complexity of speakers gets sidelined, and such unifying and homogenising processes risk excluding and marginalising minorities or mobile people whose identity is not defined through older categories of ethnicity or speech community. if we drop the notion that languages are separate, living, bound beings, species or objects, they suggest, we make the study of language speakers and bilingualism a more complex but richer one, where they are situated by local and global forces, in particular sociocultural, historical and economic environments. patrick (2007:124) points out that linking language to a people and a tradition is often not in the interests of all speakers. mufwene (2006:137) asks whether there are “language rights” independent of human rights. he points out that, as practice, languages are constantly being reshaped by their speakers and are not static. where ‘language shift’ takes place, people have exercised the right to use the language resources of their choice. why would people give up a resource that serves their communicative needs the best, he asks (mufwene 2006:131). the rights of individuals and groups to pursue their interests under specific social conditions prevail over those of languages. governments cannot, in the end, control the day-to-day language practices of their populations. education, however, is a ‘border’ or in-between zone, as far as language use is concerned, because it absorbs both official policies on languages but is also subject to civil society influences regarding the different status of available linguistic resources. for example, that bundle of linguistic resources commonly referred to as ‘standard english’ usually has higher status than others in schooling and other formal settings but often not in other, less formal settings. language in education policy chapter two of the south african constitution is a bill of rights, stipulating that “(e)veryone has the right to receive education in the official language or languages of their choice in public educational institutions where that education is reasonably practicable” (section 29). the operationalisation of these values took place, first through the 1997 policy statement produced by the ministry of education that set out the direction for post-apartheid educational policy and curriculum development. this statement describes the “main aims” regarding language policy as being: to promote full participation in society and the economy through equitable and meaningful access to education; to pursue the language policy most supportive of general conceptual growth amongst learners, and hence to establish additive multilingualism as an approach to language in education; to promote and develop all the official languages; to support the teaching and learning of all other languages required by learners or used by communities in south africa, including languages used for religious purposes, languages which are important for international trade and communication, and south african sign language, as well as alternative and augmentative communication; to counter disadvantages resulting from different kinds of mismatches between home languages and languages 4 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 of learning and teaching; and to develop programmes for the redress of previously disadvantaged languages. the last five words of the quote pinpoint the ‘language rights’ claim, as well as its fragility – the idea of a language as a ‘previously disadvantaged’ persona is a very odd claim indeed, in the light of my earlier point that it is people, not languages, who compete and cooperate with each other, claim rights and experience advantage or disadvantage. the policy statement briefly reviews arguments for ‘single medium’, ‘home language’ education and ‘dual medium’ (or ‘two-way immersion’) programmes: whichever route is followed, the underlying principle is to maintain home language(s) while providing access to and the effective acquisition of additional language(s). hence, the department’s position that an additive approach to bilingualism is to be seen as the normal orientation of our languagein-education policy. the policy statement confirms the constitutional right of individuals to choose the language of learning but cautions that this right has to “be exercised within the overall framework of the obligation on the education system to promote multilingualism” (doe 1997:1, clause 2.6). the working group on values in education that contributed closely to the formulation of the policy on language in the 1997 document, in their report to the minister of education entitled ‘values, education and democracy’, identified two main values we wish to promote in the area of language, which are, firstly, the importance of studying through the language one knows best, or as it is popularly referred to, mother-tongue education, and secondly, the fostering of multilingualism. we do believe that an initial grounding in mother-tongue learning is a pedagogically sound approach to learning. we also believe that multicultural communication requires clear governmental support and direction. the 1997 statement presents its language in education policy as being “an integral and necessary aspect of the new government’s strategy of building a non-racial nation in south africa”. it is intended to facilitate “communication across the barriers of colour, language and region, while at the same time creating an environment in which respect for languages other than one’s own would be encouraged” (rsa 1996:1, clause 3). ‘mother tongue’ education as a ‘values’-based strategy is thus presented as a reactive strategy to the segregated and discriminatory history of south africa leading into the 1990s. these statements of policy and principle rely on a set of linked constructs such as ‘home language’; ‘mother tongue’; ‘additional language’; ‘an additive approach to bilingualism’, and ‘additive multilingualism’. to these are added the terms that become ubiquitous in later policy statements and discussions, namely ‘language of learning and teaching’ (lolt); ‘dual’ and ‘single’ language mediums of education. they all draw on what heller called a ‘common-sense’ but in fact highly ideologised view of bilingualism, where the conception is that of the co-existence of two (or more) linguistic systems. heller and others (martin-jones, 2007; michael-luna & canagarajah, 2007; lin, 1997) question the monodiscursive-monolingual norms implicit in such concepts. in a review of debates about bilingual education martin-jones (2007:167) points out that a good deal of the policy-driven research has shown a strong preference for the construction of parallel monolingual spaces for learning, with strict monitoring of those spaces for their monolingualism. a major research direction in bilingual education has been about what kinds of programmes using language separation approaches or concurrent language approaches produced what kinds of successes for student learning and achievement. she points to what she calls a “container metaphor of competence” manifest in terms such as ‘full bilingual competence’, ’balanced bilingualism’, ‘additive bilingualism’, and ‘subtractive bilingualism’. in fact, all these conceive of languages and linguistic competencies as separate containers, side by side, that are more or less full or empty. these influences surface strongly in the commitment to an ‘additive bilingual’ approach in the 1997 education policy statement for south africa which, in turn, drew from the national education policy investigation (nepi) group working on language. the nepi researcher who summarised the proposal for an additive bilingual education model for south africa drew closely on the canadian work of cummins 5prinsloo — the odd couple: diverging paths in language policy and educational practices (e.g. 1981) who defined additive bilingualism as “a form of bilingualism in which the person’s first language is maintained while adding competence in another language” (luckett, 1992:4-5, quoted in heugh, 1995:334). she went on to advocate a ‘transitional bilingualism model’ “in which, though the aim is to produce competence in a foreign language, the indigenous languages are used for initial education and are to some extent maintained”. as heugh (1995:334) pointed out, this model, despite luckett’s intentions, is very close to the ‘subtractive model’ where ‘home language’ is dropped altogether after a while in favour of the dominant language. this is the interpretation given to her recommendations in the final nepi report and implemented most commonly in educational practice since then. it is ironic that policies which start from the position of celebrating diversity produce policies that institutionalise separation. these policies are helpless in the face of widespread social consensus that ‘english’ is a dominant set of linguistic resources in south african society, as it is in many other parts of the world, in ‘english-speaking’ societies, as well as many ‘non-english-speaking’ societies. english language dominance and ‘the english they can get’ english is indeed the elephant in the room, only obliquely referred to in these policy stipulations. ‘english’ is predominantly the preferred language of learning across schools and universities in south africa, notwithstanding small but innovative african-language educational initiatives developed in limpopo province, the western cape and elsewhere. the stipulation for ‘learner choice’ (or parental choice) in identifying their chosen language of learning and teaching (lolt) allows for english to be selected ubiquitously as the lolt and for regional education departments to proceed with the wide use of english language resources (with afrikaans-medium instruction fighting for survival in tertiary education and with small pockets of experimentation providing instruction in other regional languages at school level). there is a second problem, namely what is the relationship between so-called ‘home languages’ or ‘mothertongue’ as language that is actually spoken in homes and local neighbourhoods, on the one hand, and what counts as ‘mother tongue’ in schools and classrooms, on the other. research in progress in primary schools in the western cape shows students and teachers communicating with language forms that diverge from the standard isixhosa in which the students will be tested. my focus in this instance, though, for the remaining discussion, is on the question of the dominance of ‘english’ as the language of choice in schooling and higher education. having argued that there are mistaken assumptions in policy outputs about languages and their use, when observed from a social practices perspective, i turn to an examination of classroom language. my focus is on an ‘english’ as a form of bounded monolingual practice, endorsed and sustained in schools, but my aim is not to show english as dominant but to examine how what counts as english is both diverse and specific. the following presents a typical scenario from a school where teacher and students find it difficult to work with resources that are barely available to them. the teacher had copied a maths exercise from a book onto the blackboard and was now trying to help students with the problems they are experiencing with the task. neither the teacher nor the students had english language resources that were appropriate for the task but nonetheless, persevered by way of a particular, localised, mono-lingual english. the background information for the exercise, taken from the textbook, copied on the blackboard, reads as follows: a farmer wishes to build a rectangular enclosure pqrs to house his chickens. he wants the area to be 200 square metres. one of the sides, namely, ps is along the wall of an existing building. the remaining three sides must be fenced. fencing material costs r100 per square metre. he wants to calculate the dimensions of the rectangle so that he spends as little money as possible on fencing. this is clearly not ‘simply a maths problem’ for students with limited resources in the designated language but also a problem of grasping what the practices are that are being signalled here and what the rules of engagement are. this is how the teacher’s explanation went: 6 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 teacher talk remember i gave you an example that if i (.) eh (.) my home, there’s a fence that side and there’s a fence this side, so if my neighbour wants to (.) eh (.) put a fence around his house, nê, he won’t have money, (.) he won’t have money, (.) he doesn’t won’t have money to spend for my side because i already have existing wall. so he will spend less money than i do, nê? understand now? [(.) indicates a pause or a hesitancy] boardwork p s rq x x y existing wall the teacher struggled to find the words in monolingual english to explain the point clearly to his grade 10 maths class. for example, he did not make it clear to them what the phrase ‘existing wall’ indicated, even though this was not an everyday term which the students might have picked up elsewhere, and he struggled to find the language resources to explain that the farmer would not need to spend money on fencing the side where there was already a wall (“he won’t have money, he won’t have money, he doesn’t won’t have money to spend for my side” – his attempts in this instance to find an appropriate verb phrase to explain the point falter and fail, ending with the incoherent and ungrammatical ‘doesn’t won’t’ conclusion). despite their struggles to explain and understand, the students observe the rules of engagement and respond by way of attempts at english themselves. in their discussion of a case study of language in a similar township high school in the same locality, blommaert et al (2005:392) reported that almost without exception “the students expressed a great desire to learn english”. in support, they cite one piece of student writing: the language that i like at school to learn english because that everybody they learn english because is a very nice language to everyone that they want to speak english. blommaert (2007:14) claims that the situation is tragically clear: the township pupils – overwhelmingly black or ‘colored’ and poor – pin their hopes for upward social mobility on english; but this particular english (the one they have and the one they can get) is not going to allow them to achieve that goal. it is indeed the english they can get: their teachers also had no mastery of the elite varieties of english. blommaert’s argument is that ‘english’ exists in such post-colonial contexts on “different scales”. the elite and their children have access to prestige varieties of spoken and written language while the mass of students have access only to ‘sub-standard’ varieties that are only valid locally. he concludes that “the ‘world’ language, in other words, exists in at least two – scaled – forms: one, a genuinely ‘globalised’ english that connects elites worldwide, and another, a very local variety that offers very little translocal mobility” (blommaert 2007:14-15). english and social mobilty i would suggest, however, that while blommaert accurately identifies the extent of the desire for english language education, the distinction he draws between local ‘sub-standard’ and ‘translocal mobile’ oversimplifies the diversity of schools and contexts in this setting. the ‘local’ is itself layered into more complex scales of access and influence than is suggested by a simple juxtaposition between two scales. fataar’s (2009) research identifies the high levels of mobility that characterise students’ movements across the city and surroundings in search of affordable and quality education. he examines the complex ways in which township students access both suburban and township schools from beyond the confines of their immediate neighbourhoods. he suggests that the community school, ‘the one nearby’ has come to be considered inferior and to be shunned, in favour of schools elsewhere, suggesting a gap between official planning and the ‘popular energies’ which evade them. he describes a complex dispersal of students every morning on diverse paths from township to suburban 7prinsloo — the odd couple: diverging paths in language policy and educational practices schools and across township schools, in search of better schools. he talks of “an affective disconnection between their places of living and their spaces of schooling” (fataar 2009:3). his discussion points us to the observation that as far as language is concerned, ‘the one nearby’ is similarly considered inferior as students and parents view quality education as happening in the prestige language varieties which they do not ‘have’. ‘english’ in-between in-between the scales of english language middle-class schools and failing township schools are a whole range of differently positioned schools, responding to the new demands and mobility that characterise the schooling terrain in the city. the excerpt below from one of these repositioned ex-elite, suburban schools shows a different kind of ‘english’-medium instruction to the struggling township school referred to earlier, but also very different from the neighbouring middle-class schools. like many others like it, this suburban school was formerly an all-white, middle-class ‘model c’ school. it has become a relatively lowfee paying school that attracts working class black and coloured students who are dropped off/bussed in by their parents from the townships. there are also a small number of immigrant/refugee students from the congo, zimbabwe and other countries in africa. the language of learning and teaching is monolingual english, but is not the relaxed, at-home kind of english spoken in the neighbouring more expensive, middle-class schools. the children are bussed in early in the morning from the townships and from the cape flats. most of the teaching happened at this school on the assumption that the children bring almost nothing with them to the school by way of linguistic resources and background knowledge. the following lesson extract is from a grade 6 class. the teacher focused on surface features of language and literacy coding and decoding and on surface features of language meanings. she carefully took students through a reading-aloud exercise and then makes students look up the meanings of words. there is no sense, in this instance, that there is anything from the students’ own worlds that might have relevance and the sole focus is on surface levels of comprehension. teacher: here’s a picture of the turtle. and we know – we see – can you see the tortoise in our 1. mind’s eye? what will they have in common? student: the shell.2. teacher: the hard shell. what will be the difference between the turtle and the tortoise? the 3. main difference? student: the turtle (…)4. teacher: the marine turtle is a sea animal and the tortoise is a land animal.5. teacher: right. ehm, we going to read this story. what can be so interesting about it? ok, i’m 6. gonna, eh – sipho starts, eh, then marita, then mishali, then lorato. ok? just three lines. ok i’ll tell you when to stop. student: [starts reading] a turtle is a member of the reptile family. it is covered by scales and 7. flakes. it is cold-blooded and breathes air. the outstanding feature of the turtle is its hard shell. this shell can be up to a metre long and is made from ribbed bones, covered with flakes or scales. (…) indicates a phrase that is inaudible on the recording. students take turns reading aloud in this class and the teacher does all the ‘filling in’ – clarifying the content matter and providing background information. there is almost no evidence of any engagement with the material on the part of the students, and the teacher clearly sees her role, in this instance, as gently inducing children to get familiar with the language resources which they do not have. the activity is what williams (1999) called a ‘reading-like’ activity rather than a reading activity, because of the focus on surface features of language and text rather than on meaning. language and literacy approximate, in this instance, to the high status resources that are on display in the elite classrooms but they do not set an effective basis for the making and taking of meanings and understandings in other contexts, because they are cut off from the requisite that meanings get made in contexts of relevance and exchange, if they are to 8 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 link up or provide bridges for related activities in other contexts. they are, however, of a different order of indexicality to the township classroom interactions – they provide limited access to the high status resources sought, whereas the township classroom examined provided almost no access at all. thus, while the learning and teaching do not provide a direct version of the high status resources associated with the privileged versions of the elite schools, they promise at least access to greater mobility at both local and regional level. conclusion language policy documents set out the intentions and hopes of the policy writers that language will serve as an instrument that will help to bring about more equal access to greater resources and a ‘levelling of the playing fields’. from the classroom exchanges examined in this article, tthe vulnerable underbelly of these policies is evident. as mufwene (2006) pointed out, governments cannot, ultimately, control the day-to-day language practices of their populations. nor do languages go extinct the way plant or animal species die out. instead, they change and shift in relation to the social context – the economic, cultural and political milieu in which language users find themselves. rather than existing as policy instrument that can be employed to bring about social objectives, languages are barometers, in their relative statuses, scales of uses and productivity, of the character and ranges of inequalities and contests that characterise the wider social setting. effective policy-making should, therefore, be based on a closer understanding of how language is practised, rather than relying on projections onto particular ‘languages’ of romanticised and essential notions of language-culture and indigeneity. references austin jl 1975. how to do things with words. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. bakhtin mm 1984. problems of dostoevsky’s poetics. ed. and trans. by c emerson. minneapolis: university of minnesota press. bernstein b 1996. pedagogy, symbolic control and identity. london: taylor & francis. blommaert j 2007. sociolinguistic scales. intercultural pragmatics, 4(1):1-19. blommaert j 2005. situating language rights: english and swahili in tanzania revisited. journal of sociolinguistics, 9(3):390-417. blommaert j, muyllaert n, huysmans m & dyers c 2005. peripheral normativity: literacy and the production of locality in a south african township school. linguistics and education, 16(4):378-403. bourdieu p 1991. language and symbolic power. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. cummins j 1981. empirical and theoretical underpinnings of bilingual education. journal of education, 163:16-127. department of arts and culture 2003. national language policy framework. retrieved on 6 january 2010 from www.dac.gov.za/.../language%20policy%20framework_english.doc. department of education 1997. language in education policy. retrieved on 3 january 2010 from http:// us-cdn.creamermedia.co.za/assets/articles/attachments/04391_language_in_education.pdf. and http://cyberserv.co.za/users/~jako/lang/education htm. duranti a 2010. linguistic anthropology: language as a non-neutral medium. [to appear in mesthrie r (ed). the cambridge handbook of sociolinguistics. cambridge: cambridge univesity press]. retrieved on 3 january 2010 from http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/anthro/faculty/duranti/non-neutral%20 medium.pdf. fataar a 2009. schooling subjectivities across the post-apartheid city. africa education review, 6(1):1-18. gumperz j & hymes d 1972. directions in sociolinguistics: the ethnography of communication. new york: holt, rinehart and winston. heller m 2007. bilingualism: a social approach. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. 9prinsloo — the odd couple: diverging paths in language policy and educational practices lin a 1997. hong kong children’s rights to a culturally compatible english education. hong kong journal of applied linguistics, 2(2):23-48. retrieved on 3 january 2010 from http://sunzi.lib hku.hk/hkjo/ view/5/500026.pdf. luckett k 1992. additive bilingualism: new models of language education for south african schools. working paper. language policy research group of the national education policy investigation. ministry of education 2002. language policy for higher education. retrieved on 3 january 2010 from http://www.education.gov.za/content/documents/67.pdf. makoni s & pennycook a 2007. disinventing and reconstituting languages. clevedon: multilingual matters. martin-jones, m. 2007. bilingualism, education and the regulation of access to language resources. in m heller (ed), bilingualism: a social approach. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan, 161-182. michael-luna s & canagarajah s 2007. multilingual academic literacies: pedagogical foundations for code meshing in primary and higher education. journal of applied linguistics, 4(1):55-77. mufwene s 2006. language endangerment: an embarrassment for linguistics. proceedings from the annual meeting of the chicago linguistic society, 42(2):111-140. retrieved on 3 january 2010 from http://cls.metapress.com/content/j706830l02558n5k/. patrick d 2007. language endangerment, language rights and indigeneity. in m heller (ed), bilingualism: a social approach. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan, 111-134. republic of south africa (rsa) 1996. constitution of south africa, sa govt. act 108 of 1996. retrieved on 2 january 2010 from http://www.info.gov.za/documents/constitution/1996/a108-96.pdf. endnotes 1 a grant by the national research foundation supported the fieldwork aspect of this study. i gratefully acknowledge the contribution of nicola pietersen as a grant-supported student researcher in the data-collection phase of this ethnographic-style research project. the following question was pursued in this research by way of case studies in selected schools in the western cape: what happens at the level of language and literacy interactions and activities in particular cases which impacts on learning and attainment? 2 they are, of course, sepedi, sesotho, setswana, siswati, tshivenda, xitsonga, afrikaans, english, isindebele, isixhoza and isizulu. enhancing quality of student teachers’ practices through reflective journal writing during school practice1 betty akullu ezati department of educational foundations and management at the school of education, makerere university, uganda bezati@educ.mak.ac.ug mary k ocheng, proscovia n ssentamu and leah n sikoyo department of curriculum, teaching and media at the school of education, makerere university, uganda mocheng@educ mak.ac.ug, pros07@yahoo.com and lsikoyo@educ mak.ac.ug this paper explores the role of journal writing in enhancing student teachers’ learning during school practice. it analyses data from 22 student teachers’ journals and 23 questionnaires. the study focuses on the areas that student teachers reflected on most, the nature of their reflection and the extent to which previous experiences informed their subsequent reflection and learning. findings showed that student teachers frequently reflected on handling indiscipline issues, procedures and outcomes of supervision, but less on their own learning. inadequate reflection on their learning suggests that journal writing has not yet sufficiently promoted student teachers’ professional growth. generally, the examination and cultural orientation in the ugandan society influence student teachers’ journal writing. finally, the paper proposes strategies for improving journal writing in order to enhance the potential of students learning from reflection during school practice. keywords: reflective practice, professional growth, journal writing, school practice, uganda introduction reflective practice has gained recognition internationally as a crucial aspect of teacher education and continuing professional development of serving teachers (birmingham, 2004; dinkelman, 2003; loughran, 2002; mueller & skamp, 2003; schön, 1983; wise, spiegel & bruning, 1999). reflection fosters student teachers’ learning about teaching and their roles as teachers (collier, 1999; loughran, 2002). it also enables teachers to develop professional knowledge in practice, and in this way develop capacity to question their taken-for-granted assumptions about practice (dinkelman, 2003; mueller & skamp, 2003; schön, 1983). further, reflective practice enables teachers to plan their activities with foresight and with outcomes in view (collier, 1999), and to assume responsibility for their professional growth and learning (ellsworth, 2002). when teachers become reflective practitioners, they progress from possessing knowledge of discrete teaching skills to integrating and modifying these skills to suit particular contexts (larrivee, 2000). therefore, reflective practice has the potential to offer student teachers selfinduction into academic and professional discourse, and the ability to fuse the two. reflection is considered effective when it enables teachers to generate meaning from the situation in ways that enhance understanding, so as to begin to perceive their practice setting from several perspectives (loughran, 2002). consequently, schools offer student teachers a wide range of opportunities on which to reflect, thereby actualising the theories they are exposed to at university (dalrymple & smith, 2008; 1 ezati, ba, et al. 2010. enhancing quality of student teachers’ practices through reflective journal writing during school practice. perspectives in education, 28(2):31-40. perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201032 pennefather, 2008). reflective journals, reflective interviews, peer observation, conferences and group seminars are some of the strategies for developing reflective practice among novice teachers (collier, 1999; mueller & skamp, 2003; pennefather, 2008). reflective journals particularly extend and clarify student teachers’ thoughts and concerns, allowing supervisors to support them in their development as learners and teachers (collier, 1999). larrivee (2000) observes that journal writing is a reflective process that allows teachers to chart their development and become more aware of their contribution to the experiences they encounter. she further observes that academic knowledge and technical skills are the “bricks”, while reflection is the “mortar”. keeping a reflective journal ensures that student teachers set aside time for daily reflection, which fosters professional discipline. mueller and skamp (2003) argue that whereas teacher educators commonly include some form of journal writing in pre-service programmes to promote reflection, the extent to which such written forms of reflection impact student teachers’ learning during school practice as well as in future teaching is as yet unknown. working in an environment characterised by uncertainty and constant change, a teacher needs to be reflective, a critical problem solver, a researcher and change agent. however, judging whether student teachers have learned and how well they have learned from reflection during school practice is one of the challenging aspects of teacher education. although novice teachers can be helped to appreciate the value of reflection in teaching and learning, collier (1999) argues that they do not value reflection, making it difficult for teacher educators to develop this practice. moreover, as collier observes, student teachers are often so engrossed in the process of teaching with the aim of passing well that they do not focus sufficiently on their own learning processes during school practice. as part of the university-wide quality reforms, the school of education at makerere university in uganda in 2005 introduced journal writing with the aim of encouraging reflection and subsequent improvement in student teachers’ practices both in and outside the classroom. additionally, it was anticipated to enhance creativity, innovation, problem solving, critical enquiry skills and lifelong learning. as reflective practitioners, student teachers would be managers of change with the right attitudes and motivation to act skilfully and ethically (hager & butler, 1996). journal writing would therefore enable the documentation of experiences and thoughts, and the questioning of ideas and conclusions that signpost student teachers’ learning (boud, keogh & walker, 1995; toohey, ryan & hughes, 1996). reflective journal writing is covered in one of the core courses taught to the final year ba and bsc education students. it covers the concept of reflective practice and its importance in professional development, as well as the processes of reflective practice, including journal writing. at the time of data collection journal writing was not assessed, rather it was a free writing activity which enabled student teachers to reflect on, learn from, and improve their practice. this paper examines journal writing during school practice as one of the strategies that the school of education adopted to improve the quality of teacher education. the school of education offers a three-year bachelor of arts (ba) and bachelor of science (bsc) degree with education in addition to a postgraduate diploma in education (pgde). these programmes expose student teachers to professional courses and teaching subjects related to the secondary school curriculum. an academic year comprises two semesters of 17 weeks each with fifteen weeks of teaching, and two weeks of examinations at the end of the semester. in addition, student teachers undertake six weeks of school practice in their second and third years. school practice is examined and accounts for 10 credit units (5 credits in year 2 and 5 in year 3). conceptual framework school practice offers student teachers an opportunity to apply knowledge, test theory and consequently modify their understanding (christiansen, 2008; schön, 1983; toohey et al., 1996). further, school practice includes attitudinal changes, and not mere acquisition of knowledge and technical skills (toohey et al., 1996). in addition to classroom practice, participation in co-curricular activities and other administrative responsibilities provide numerous learning opportunities to student teachers during school practice. however, the nature and extent to which student teachers actually learn during school practice ezati, et al. — enhancing quality of student teachers’ practices 33 is not yet clear. given its evaluation stance, many student teachers do not attach much importance to the benefits of school practice in terms of improving professional growth. this perception could be a result of the emphasis placed on classroom observation as a means of judging student teachers’ performance. consequently, student teachers’ views about school practice are limited to the aspects assessed, regardless of the overall learning experience. journal writing involves appreciation of the teaching and learning process and the ability to intervene purposefully and positively in teaching and learning experiences. it provides an opportunity for student teachers to think critically about what is done around them, what they are doing about it and why. it also enables supervisors to gain insight into student teachers’ professional growth. further, journal writing enables student teachers to evaluate their practices. toohey et al. (1996) and moon (1999a, 1999b) call for student teachers’ assessment of their own work, arguing that self-assessment deserves a more prominent role in the overall assessment of student teachers during school practice. student teachers learn from journal writing when they collect information, think about it, make sense of it and incorporate it into what they learned in theory. this is similar to the do-review-learn-apply cycle suggested by watkins et al. (1998) include all authors’ names in the first reference. this reference is not in the reference list. this kind of learning enhances the “translation of learning theory into cycles of professional development” (dietz, 1998:129). dietz identifies four levels of learning, namely exploration, organization, connection and reflection. he describes the first level as “learning the territory”, which involves inquiring about a specific focus in the learner’s teaching, assessing information, observing students and listening to others. in the second level (organization), the learner starts to make sense of things in the workplace, such as practising routines, putting procedures in place, recognizing pedagogy and learning theories in their day-to-day practice of teaching. in the third level, (connection), learners begin to link one teaching situation to another. it is at this level of learning that the learner begins to modify and alter a plan in order to accommodate their students’ needs. in the fourth level of professional learning, the learner makes informed decisions based on the ability to reflect on their practice and respond to issues emerging from this reflection. similarly, boud et al. (1995) propose a three-stage model of learning: preparation for the experience, the experience, and then reflection on the experience. boud et al. (1995) and dietz (1998) identify reflection as a significant part of the learning cycle. while these models augment conceptualization of the nature of student teachers’ reflection, this paper does not focus on the phases of student teachers’ reflections per se, rather it focuses on whether such reflection demonstrates learning and improvement in their practice. in line with larrivee (2000), the route to becoming a reflective practitioner is plagued by incremental fluctuations of irregular progress, often marked by two steps forward and one step backward. this implies that the process of reflection is not always linear or rule-governed, even for the most seasoned reflective practitioner. she adds that such inner struggles are a necessary and important stage in the reflective process. this study was pre-empted by an observation that despite many opportunities to learn during school practice, feedback from practising schools indicated poor overall performance of student teachers, implying that the quality of learning from school practice had not improved (school of education, 2005). although very significant in integrating theory and practice, school practice remains one of the problematic teacher education components in terms of judging whether student teachers learn from it. it is against this background that the authors explored student teachers’ journals with the intention of analysing their professional growth during school practice. the following three questions guided the analysis: 1. what areas do student teachers reflect on most? 2. what is the nature of their reflection? 3. to what extent does student teachers’ journal writing reflect learning? perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201034 methodology the study employed a mixed methods research design, involving qualitative and quantitative approaches and was conducted among student teachers whose school practice schools were located in northern and central uganda. only undergraduate student teachers were found in these areas, therefore pgde student teachers did not participate in this study. the study utilised document analysis of reflective journals and questionnaires. a total of 22 journals from two cohorts of third-year student teachers (17 from 2005 and five from 2008) were analysed because only these two cohorts had undertaken journal writing since its inception in 2005. further, the submission of journals by student teachers for this study was voluntary; therefore only 22 journals were collected. from each journal, descriptive categories related to the study questions were developed in response to the content and nature of reflection. due to the relatively few journals from the 2008 cohort, data for this category of student teachers was supplemented by a questionnaire. through convenience sampling, 40 student teachers were given questionnaires and of these 23 were returned. the questionnaire sought information regarding the student teachers’ conceptualization of reflective practice; the content of their journal entries; their rationale for reflecting on particular content; the importance of journal writing to beginning teachers, as well as challenges encountered during the writing of the reflective journals. in addition, the questionnaire sought their suggestions on ways in which their journal writing skills could be improved. from the questionnaire, data was obtained on the content of student teachers’ journal entries and why they write on the content identified. data from both sets of instruments was analysed using content analysis. specifically, the researchers used open coding of student teachers’ journal entries data from questionnaires to identify key themes and patterns (coffey & atkinson, 1996; miles & huberman, 1994) relating to the content student teachers reflected on most, the nature of their reflection, and the extent to which student teachers’ journal writing reflected learning. findings this section discusses the findings according to the key themes in the study, namely the content of reflection, nature of reflection and the extent to which student teachers learned from the journal writing process. data on the content of reflection and the extent to which student teachers learned from journal writing was obtained from the journal entries and questionnaires, whereas that on the nature of reflection was derived from the journal entries only. this is because the nature of reflection required insight into the processes of learning, which was not captured in the questionnaires. the content of student teachers’ reflective journals findings from questionnaires and journal entries show that student teachers’ reflection centred on their in and out-of-class experiences. the majority of the student teachers’ reflection on classroom practice focused on handling pupil indiscipline, strategies for enhancing class participation and subject content, as well as use of the chalkboard. the student teachers’ reflection on out-of-class issues centred on their experiences while on weekly duty and on their social interactions. generally, student teachers’ journal entries focused on challenges they encountered during school practice. student teachers’ emphasis on challenges faced relative to their success during school practice could be attributed to their uncertainty regarding the course of action in such situations. furthermore, because school practice is an examination, it creates tension in student teachers and anything that impedes their ability to excel is treated with concern. however, further insight into why these student teachers focused more on the negative aspects of their practice would have been best captured using interviews and focus group discussions, which this study did not undertake. table 1 summarises these findings. ezati, et al. — enhancing quality of student teachers’ practices 35 table 1: content of student teachers’ journal entries content 2005 journals 2008 journals 2008 questionnaires students’ indiscipline 17 5 15 the teaching and learning process 11 3 13 supervisor-student teachers’ relations 3 new ideas and strategies learned 9 3 11 daily school activities/weekly duties 9 4 8 happy moments 12 (number of journals: 17 in 2005; 5 in 2008) as shown in table 1, students’ indiscipline featured in all the journal entries whereas ‘happy moments’ did not, reflecting student teachers’ emphasis on the problems encountered during school practice. the three major content areas of students’ reflection are discussed below. student indiscipline responses from the questionnaires and journals indicated that students’ indiscipline in and out of class is a major area of concern to student teachers. the following extracts from student teachers’ journals illustrate this concern: i was on duty and i noticed that indiscipline and time management was challenging to students. students understood what was expected of them but went against the rules and regulations, e.g. coming late, refusing to sweep, shouting in class and fighting. i punished some by making them sweep the compound and some i took to the head teacher. however, not much action was taken and this gave me hard time. (student teacher 10, journal entry, 2005) the lesson in s. 2 really made me lose my temper … i was writing the spelling ‘mirambo’ on the board then one student angrily said, ‘we know’ yet the rest had asked for the spelling. (student teacher 3, journal entry, 2008) emphasis on students’ indiscipline may be attributed to the student teachers’ anxiety about classroom management and control, given its spontaneous and highly contextual nature (samuel, 2008). this is consistent with the observation made by cohen, manion and morrison (2004) that beginning teachers tend to be anxious about handling indiscipline problems. this is further complicated by the inconsistency among schools in the approaches employed in handling indiscipline. korthagen, kessels, koster, lagerwerf and wubbels (2001) in agreement with samuel (2008), observe that beginning teachers often complain that when in schools they meet many problematic situations for which they are not sufficiently prepared. similarly, stronach, cope, inglis and mcnally (1996) comment that reality is often felt to conflict with the version of teacher identity promoted in initial teacher training, and many of the teachers come to dismiss training as ‘idealised’. they argue that training is a ‘vacuum’, unconnected to the reality of survival in sometimes difficult schools (stronach et al., 1996:80). consequently, cohen et al. (2004) suggest that student teachers need to find out from schools the behaviour policies and required procedures to follow when handling indiscipline. relationship between student teachers and supervisors another dominant theme in the student teachers’ journals was their relationship with the supervisors during school practice, as illustrated by the following extracts from the student teachers’ journals: the supervisor caught us unawares (sic). indeed she arrived at the school before any of us and requested us to organize lessons. after the lesson, the supervisor was talking to me … i was arguing perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201036 and the supervisor told me to keep quiet. i kept quiet but it was mistaken to be annoyance. the supervisor told me that she could no longer talk to an annoyed person. she gave me my form to sign and left. i learned to always keep quiet, take time and listen to others before speaking. (student teacher 3, journal entry, 2008). school practice was a very stressful exercise to me especially in class. this made me think that maybe it is the reason why some lessons are boring. it made me think that supervisors if possible could hide somewhere and see how interesting our lessons are when they are not seated at the back of the class (student teacher 2, journal entry, 2008). i discovered that supervised lessons are prepared for supervisors and when they do not come to our classroom, most of us tend to teach according to our own style (student teacher 5, journal entry, 2008). these extracts suggest that the relationship between student teachers and their supervisors was characterised by anxiety. this may be attributed to their perception of the supervision process as assessment rather than as a learning opportunity. according to role theory, actors within a social system behave with reference to sets of expectations that they perceive are held for them by significant others (parsons & shils, 1968). similarly, cowan and westwood (2006) observe that in assessed courses in which the learning journal features, there is risk that journal writers will write what their teachers hope to read. although journal writing at the school of education is a free writing activity, it is possible that student teachers are hesitant to reflect on their relationships with supervisors, given the broader cultural influences in uganda that discourage people from commenting openly on their seniors. the teaching and learning process table 1 shows that in more than half of the journals, the teaching and learning process was another major area student teachers reflected on. this was corroborated by the findings from the questionnaires. specifically, student teachers commented on the following areas: teaching methods, students’ participation in the lesson, achievement of lesson objectives, time management and handling difficult topics. the following extracts from student teachers’ journals and questionnaires are illustrative: i write about unusual experiences that i go through as i teach – the good and bad – mainly in the classroom. i think they directly affect my teaching. (questionnaire data) i write about time management because it is always a problem. secondly, i always find it hard to link up the previous lesson to the day’s lesson especially if the topic is totally different. (student teacher 14, journal entry, 2005) my first lesson was interesting but i failed to make the class lively. this is because it was towards lunchtime and the students were hungry. next time i will try to make the class lively by narrating some interesting stories and integrating teaching with note giving such that i keep students alert and lively. (student teacher 4, journal entry, 2008) i went to s.2 d for a geography lesson. my topic was the tennessee valley authority with a focus on the problems faced by the seven states. good as they were before, the students started answering (sic) and the lesson was moving in the right direction and smoothly. however, one student asked me a serious question that: ‘sir, can you please explain to us the relationship between the conditions that were existing in those states in reference to any one area in uganda and how best they can integrate to overcome the problems identified’. i had no immediate on-spot answer. after a moment of brain refreshment, i sensed out (sic) some areas like katanga, kalerwe, kawempe, bwaise and kazo [these are low lying slums on the outskirts of kampala city in uganda] coming together to form a similar entity. now the task was to explain the relationship between these areas and the tennessee valley authority. (student teacher 1, journal entry, 2008) ezati, et al. — enhancing quality of student teachers’ practices 37 these extracts demonstrate these student teachers’ ability to identify problems in the teaching and learning process and alternative ways of addressing them. in line with watkins et al. (1998), student teachers 1 and 4 related new meaning to existing meaning, reflected on their current experiences and proposed to modify their subsequent practice. the study further explored the student teachers’ justification for reflecting on the particular areas identified. findings from the questionnaires showed that the areas they identified for reflection were perceived to contribute towards the success of their lessons. in addition, the content they reflected on was considered crucial, as it enabled them to share with colleagues so as to improve their practice. it is evident that student teachers appreciated the role of journal writing in improving their teaching and their relationships with students and staff. valli (1997) identifies student learning, the instructional process and subject matter as possible areas of reflection. on the other hand, zeichner and liston (1996) categorise aspects teachers reflect on into five traditions, namely the academic, social efficiency, development, social reconstruction and generic traditions. whereas valli (1997) limits reflection to classroom practice, zeichner and liston (1996) suggest a variety of encounters beyond the classroom. student teachers’ reflection in this study is consistent with zeichner and liston’s (1996) categories. on the whole, student teachers’ journal entries focused primarily on challenges that they experienced during school practice. this is consistent with the observation by larrivee (2000) that learning experiences emanate from seemingly negative events, and that such events call for productive repositioning in which the teacher seizes the opportunity to discover the potential in a situation by looking for openings to learn. larrivee (2000) further observes that conflict presents an opportunity to be uncovered, confrontation energy to be re-channelled, defiance a request for communication, aggression a cry for help and attentionseeking a plea for recognition. nature of student teachers’ reflection the nature of student teachers’ reflection as portrayed in the journals varied greatly. for instance, while reflecting on students’ indiscipline, some student teachers commented on their action and what they had learned, while others mentioned the problem and action, but did not document what they had learned. this is illustrated in the following extracts: when the bell for ending the lesson had just rung, one student shouted that ‘we go’. i became embarrassed and could not understand why this student all of a sudden had to say this. i turned back and asked who had said so. the ‘backbenchers’ pointed at the girl but she denied. i told her to move out but she refused. i did this three times but she continued to sit. i told the class that i would not teach again when she is still in class. despite this, she remained seated. i then told the class that when i move out i would not come back. at this time the students were shouting at her to move out but she continued sitting. the last measure i took was to sit at the desk and keep quiet. when she saw this she moved out. this gave me a lesson (sic) … i think it [class control strategy] does not work for higher classes. (student teacher 1, journal entry, 2008) i have been able to learn more skills on composure when a student acts out of step in the classroom. for instance, i had to control an undisciplined student in s. 5 whose objective was to disrupt and prevent others from learning as well as put a halt to the lesson that was going on. the fact that i controlled him; i gained firmness in handling indiscipline cases. (student teacher 14, journal entry, 2005) these two extracts depict different approaches to the reflection process. whereas student teacher 1 mentioned the problem, her feelings, action taken and the effects, student teacher 14 mentioned the problem indirectly but did not write about the steps taken to handle it and why that control measure was adopted. further, whereas student teacher 1 provided details about what and how learning took place, student teacher 14 did not. although both student teachers were able to take action and reflect on it, they did not document the alternative strategies considered in addressing the problems identified. this was perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201038 common in most journal entries. this is consistent with valli’s (1997) observation that during reflection, common processes that take place include describing the situation, surfacing and questioning initial understanding and assumptions, persisting with an attitude of open-mindedness, as well as responsibility and whole-heartedness. however, analysis of the student teachers’ journal entries in this study shows a discontinuity in the reflection process in terms of the do-review-learn-apply cycle as conceptualised by watkins et al. (1998). generally, journal entries were primarily descriptive rather than analytical. in the majority of the journals, students merely described their daily experiences and activities but did not analyse these to show the lessons inferred. this is contrary to zeichner and liston’s (1996) and schön’s (1983) argument that reflection moves beyond simply questioning whether or not the action taken is working, to understanding how it is working, and for whom. despite these shortcomings, some student teachers were able to examine the inherent values in their practice critically. there is evidence that they gained confidence in handling particular issues. furthermore, some student teachers were able to use knowledge learned from lectures in their reflections. student teachers’ learning from journal writing  the study explored the extent to which student teachers’ journal writing reflected learning. student teachers’ learning was inferred from the extent to which they drew from their previous experiences to inform their subsequent action. the findings in this study show that there was generally minimal learning from the journal writing process. the student teachers’ journal entries did not reflect continuity, as there was hardly any linkage of issues discussed the previous days or weeks, which hindered learning from previous experiences. in all the journals, recommended action denoted the end of further reflection on a particular issue, and yet systematic reflection requires that the conclusion of one reflection experience is the inauguration of another one (larrivee, 2000). further, student teachers’ minimal learning from journal writing was corroborated by the questionnaire findings regarding their challenges in writing reflective journals. for instance, student teachers reported limited time to make journal writing a regular practice, fear of constant reminders of distasteful experiences in their practice, and fear of disclosing their perceived weaknesses. this is illustrated in the following extracts from the questionnaires: sometimes i feel too much pain especially when the incident deeply hurt me and i feel i should never reflect on it in future. i always had fear of sharing my journal with other people because others might take it as a great weakness that is in me (sic). such challenges suggest that the potential of journal writing in facilitating the student teachers’ learning was not fully exploited. findings from the questionnaires show that student teachers lacked clarity about the role and process of journal writing in professional development. this was evident from their request for more clarification on these issues. although there was minimal learning by student teachers from the journal writing process, there was evidence in all the journals that the student teachers had learned from the school practice experience in general. student teachers indicated that they had learned classroom control and management, the handling of students’ questions, creating a participatory learning environment and relating to other teachers in the school. this is illustrated in the extracts below: the first time i entered class, i feared but in the fourth week of school practice life changed. i was almost like a permanent (sic) teacher. i knew my class and teaching was easy. i mixed freely with the teaching and non-teaching staff. (student teacher 2, journal entry 2005) at midday, all reports were completed apart from s. 5… so every teacher was given at least 10 reports and mark sheets to finish up … poor me, i had never made any report in my life but had to do it for the first time. because of this, i ended up writing reports with a red pen, and by the time the ezati, et al. — enhancing quality of student teachers’ practices 39 teacher saw me doing this i was remaining with two reports to finish. (student teacher 1, journal entry, 2008) whereas these extracts describe the student teachers’ experiences during school practice, they lack the continuity in reflection, which would foster learning. systematic reflection enables one to reflect on what happened, why it happened, how one went about it, the feelings generated and how it can be done differently, rendering reflection a continuous learning process. assigning new meanings to classroom situations confronted promotes the transition from surface to deep learning, thereby translating learning into cycles of professional development (dietz, 1998; larrivee, 2000). this leads to emancipation, which in turn enables student teachers to gradually develop a personal conception of their pedagogic role. conclusion on the whole, this study shows that journal writing has the potential to promote student teachers’ learning during school practice. however, this study has shown that student teachers’ reflective journal writing process lacks continuity, raising questions about the quality of learning from reflection during school practice. in addition, the study has shown that the aim of using journal writing to improve creativity, innovativeness and problem-solving skills among student teachers has not yet been fully achieved. tapping this potential would require the school of education to further strengthen the teaching and assessment of journal writing. for example, student teachers could be encouraged to keep journals throughout their teacher education programme rather than only during school practice. the teacher educators could also use these journal entries to establish the extent to which students have benefited from the reflection and how these findings can inform improvement of the teacher education programmes more generally. further, the school of education could re-introduce micro-teaching during the methods courses so as to provide student teachers with more opportunities to develop their reflective practice skills and to appreciate the realities of school settings prior to their actual school practice. references birmingham c 2004. phronesis: a model for pedagogical reflection. journal of teacher education, 55(4):313-324. boud dj, keogh r & walker d 1995. reflection: turning experience into learning. london: kogan page. christiansen i 2008. reflections on an action research project in teacher education: the emancipatory project under scrutiny. perspectives in education, 26(2):17-27. coffey a & atkinson p 1996. making sense of qualitative data. london: sage publications. cohen l, manion l & morrison k 2004. a guide to teaching practice. london: routledge falmer. collier s 1999. characteristics of student thought during the student teaching experience. journal of teacher education, 50(3):171-181. cowan j & westwood j 2006. collaborative and reflective professional development: a pilot. active learning in higher education , 7(1): 63 71. sage publications. london: thousand oak ca. dalrymple r & smith p 2008. the patchwork text: enabling discursive writing and reflective practice on a foundation model in work-based learning. innovation in education and teaching international, 45(1):47-54. dietz me 1998. responses as frameworks for change. victoria, australia: hawker brownlow education. dinkelman t 2003. self-study in teacher education: a means and ends tool for promoting reflective teaching. journal of teacher education, 54(1):6-18. ellsworth jz 2002. using student portfolio’s to increase reflective practice among elementary teachers. journal of teacher education, 54(4):342-355. government of uganda 1992. the government white paper on the report of the education policy review commission titled education for national integration and development. entebbe: government of uganda. perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201040 hager p & butler j 1996. two models of education assessment. assessment and evaluation in higher education, 21(4):367-378. harvey l & green d 1993. defining quality. assessment and evaluation in higher education, 18(1):9-34. korthagen faj, kessels j, koster b, lagerwerf b & wubbles t 2001. linking theory to practice. the pedagogy of realistic teacher education. new jersey: lawrence erlbaum associates. larrivee b 2000. transforming teaching practice: becoming the critically reflective teacher. reflective practice, 1(3):293-307. loughran jj 2002. effective reflective practice: in search of meaning in learning about teaching. journal of teacher education, 53(1):33-53. miles mb & huberman am 1994. qualitative data analysis: an expanded sourcebook, 2nd edn. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. moon j 1999a. reflection in learning and professional development. london: kogan page. moon j 1999b. learning journals. london: kogan page. mueller a & skamp k 2003. teacher candidates talk: listen to the unsteady beat of learning to teach. journal of teacher education, 54(5):428-440. pennefather j 2008. rural schools and universities: the use of partnerships as a teaching strategy in enhancing a positive attitude to rurality. perspectives in education, 26(2):81-94. perreault g & isaacson n 1995. searching for second wave pedagogy: student perceptions of classroom practices. education, 115:623-7. samuel m 2008. accountability to whom? for what? teacher identity and the force field model of teacher development. perspectives in education, 26(2):3-16. schon d 1983. the reflective practitioner: how professionals think in action. new york: basic books. school of education 2005. unpublished report on school practice. stronach i, cope p, inglis b & mcnally j 1996. competence guidelines in scotland for initial teacher training: ‘supercontrol’ or ‘superformance’? in: d hustler & d mcintyre. developing competent teachers. london: david fulton. toohey s, ryan g & hughes c 1996. assessing the practicum. assessment & evaluation in higher education, 21(3):215-227. vallance e 1994. relearning art-museum education: a review essay. american journal of education 102(2): 235-243. valli l 1997. listening to other voices: a description of teacher reflection in the united states. peabody journal of education, 72:67-88. wise vl, spiegel an & bruning rh 1999. using teacher reflective practice to evaluate professional development in mathematics and science. journal of teacher education, 50(10):42-49. zeichner km & liston dp 1996. reflective teaching: an introduction. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. 167 thinking together through pictures: the community of philosophical enquiry and visual analysis as a transformative pedagogy abstract this qualitative study explores how a community of enquiry pedagogy in combination with a social semiotic approach to visual analysis influenced the changing knowledge and concepts of knowledge experienced by students in an undergraduate teacher education course. the art of the constitutional court of south africa was the focus of our study and students developed structured and logical frameworks for analysing artworks as well as playing with laterally extending concepts such as art, justice, equality and humanity. the findings suggest that the dialogical and embodied practice of a community of enquiry pedagogy and the meaning-making strategies offered by a social semiotic approach to visual analysis strongly influenced my students’ and my own awareness of knowledge as a creative and experiential opening up and as a companion to the equally valuable experience of not knowing. visual and embodied forms of knowledge explored through artworks forged a link between ‘self’ and ‘learning self’. these findings have implications for the selection of appropriate teacher education pedagogies. keywords: visual art, enquiry-based learning, community of enquiry, teacher education, embodied knowledge 1. introduction easy access to a range of meaning-making strategies in the early learning phases of schooling can enhance learning and create an inclusive environment for learners with different learning styles (bruce, 2004: 107). this suggests that art education should provide rich and generative possibilities for children in our primary schools. due to a history of purposeful exclusion of creative activities for the majority of children, south african school authorities have an immense challenge in transforming schools into welcoming, productive and creatively shared spaces incor­ po rating the arts into the curriculum in a meaningful way. tertiary institutions of education have, as one of their many impossible tasks1, that of transforming students into art teachers for the general education and training band. what has emerged through working in the arts with student teachers, however, is that the learning goes beyond the giorza doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i1.12 issn 0258-2236 eissn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(1): 167-181 © uv/ufs http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.12 168 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) narrow confines of art as a subject to be taught in school. learning through visual means has significantly influenced their own learning and development as academic readers, writers and thinkers. this paper gives an account of learning gained on a ‘responding to art’ course for student teachers at a tertiary institution. the pedagogy combined the community of philosophical enquiry with a visual analysis process incorporating a social semiotic approach. the author claims that enquiry­based learning connects the ‘home self’ with the ‘school self’ and generates an exploratory engagement with “knowledge-in-the-making” rather than a compliant reworking of “knowledge as a thing made” (ellsworth, 2005: 1) and when mediated through visual language this learning acquires added depth and personal significance. as eisner (2002) notes: “many of the most complex and subtle forms of thinking take place when students have the opportunity to either work meaningfully on the creation of images… or to scrutinize them appreciatively”. i consider some of the implications this has for the development of primary level art teachers but also the development of generalist primary educators. 2. motivations for the course design freire (1972), kallantzis (2006), brubaker (2012) and others have critiqued the practice common in formal education since its inception which can best be described as a ‘banking’ style of education. most of the students who attend the institution in which this study was done come with experiences that comfortably fit this description. wanting to stimulate thinking and creativity in students rather than receiving back repackaged versions of my own lectures, i also intended to model enquiry-based teaching that my students would hopefully be inspired to emulate. my own apprenticeship into art history teaching was through the manufacture of a seductive narrative presented as if it was the only one (the western canon and a selected few outside of it), speaking in the dark to a silent audience. i had subsequently been influenced by scholars deconstructing the discipline (lippard, 1990; minor, 1994; preziosi, 1989) who named its partialities and selections and by the emerging and widening field of study called visual culture (mirzoeff, 2002). visual culture studies (freedman, 2003) and multicultural education (cahan & kocur, 1996) explore the pedagogical implications of these critiques and pose a challenge to the more strictly discipline based forms of art education2 in schools. the second reason behind the course design had to do with a persistent and serious problem experienced in undergraduate courses. there is a high degree of plagiarism emerging from written assignments in the courses run at the institution and both local and international research into academic access and english second language learning suggest that this is a common and controversial issue in tertiary education (lea & street, 2000; archer, 2006). some compelling research done on this phenomenon suggests the need for more verbal and discursive activities prior to the writing of assignments (morita, 2000; thesen, 2001; sowden, 2005). the course represented a high stakes enterprise. the time available in the b.ed. degree timetable to introduce the many aspects of art education to the students means that the selection of content is crucial. the students are mostly first time art learners. our challenge is to give as rich an art experience as possible so that students are able to experience their own creativity and have the opportunity to recognise what the subject ‘art’ might look like in a classroom setting. apart from feeling under pressure to fast track the art learning of these students new to the field, another reason the stakes are high is the current and urgent need giorza thinking together through pictures 169 for transformation in schools. this transformation would include a conception of teaching that relates to democracy and the values of the constitution not only in content but which is experiential in practice (ndofirepi & mathebula, 2011). 3. south african schools and their teachers drawing data from a wide range of research undertaken in primary schools in south africa, fleisch (2007) identifies the low expectation that teachers have of their learners as a key contributor to poor performance among children in south africa. another common feature of classroom life is one of reading and reciting text without understanding its meaning (fleisch, 2007: 120­139). i set about documenting one of the art methodology courses i taught to undergraduate education students in which an enquiry-based methodology was employed. an enquiry depends on full participation and original thought: individual histories and experience is central to the negotiation of meaning and understanding. 4. the study the art of the constitutional court of south africa was the focus of the study and students developed structured and logical frameworks for analysing artworks but also explored laterally extending concepts such as art, justice, equality and humanity. the selection of works in the collection is not implicit nor part of an already existing and inaccessible narrative or inherited canon. the works were seen in their original state, not only as reproductions or as uniformly sized digital slides. the works had been donated or chosen with the intention of creating a visually meaningful environment for the court whose mandate was to uphold the new constitution. the site chosen for the court building was that of the old fort prison where prominent opponents of apartheid had been held as well as thousands of pass-law defaulters and other ordinary citizens turned criminal by an unjust system. the project linked a study of contemporary art with an exploration of the concept of justice. the aim was to give students an experience of generating an argument about a discipline­ specific problem drawing on relevant theory, while positioning themselves and drawing on their own opinions, insights and interpretations. these thinking moves are to be expected in any academic writing exercise. i intended to offer students the opportunity for embodied learning and meaning­making through direct encounters with works by contemporary south african artists grappling with current issues around our constitutional values. by inviting the real­world life experience of students into the study of justice, the abstract concept was pulled and stretched in all directions. this is what kennedy and kennedy (2001: 272) refer to as “cracking concepts” through enquiry and it also represents what ellsworth (2005: 1) refers to as “knowledge­in­ the­making”, rather than encounters with “knowledge made”. both social semiotics and the community of enquiry acknowledge the role of our multiple resources that include body, mind, experience and history in our meaning­making practices. this process of meaning making will be expanded on further in the paper. 5. how the study was done the class was a diverse group of twenty students including in­service foundation phase teachers from limpopo, post­matric students, some older students, ranging in age, gender, class, language and nationality with two students from other southern african countries. 170 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) thirteen of these students were interviewed at the end of the course and the sample reflected the diversity of the group as a whole. it was an entry­level course for undergraduate teaching students lasting approximately ten weeks. 6. sequence the students were invited to generate questions in response to art postcards. in groups, the students shared their questions and engaged with each other’s postcards. engaging in an ordering process, students then examined the questions they had produced to see if they could be categorised into groups or types of questions. categories emerging were consistent with those proposed by charman, rose and wilson (2006): those of subject matter and meaning (what?), object or the material (how was it made/displayed?), context (the back­story) and finally one’s personal reaction (which often has implications for the other three). the students each developed a tool (a pack of cards, a dice or a similar instrument) to be used in a gallery setting, to guide questioning around an image. the tools scaffolded a process of breaking down the message of the text into smaller elements and slowing down the interpretation process, allowing a detailed reading. students took this tool with them to the constitutional court where they were given a guided tour of the art collection, learnt about its origins, the selection/acquisition processes and were given information about each work. using their tool, the students generated a detailed descriptive analysis of their selected work and recorded personal feelings, associations and unanswered questions. the approach to visual analysis that i acknowledged was the contested nature of the field (gaztambide­fernadez, 2013). while i paid some attention to a formalist art­based visual analysis (seeing art as a language with grammar made up of elements like line, shape, form, contrast, balance etc.) i focussed more on the meaning-making practices of visual culture studies and social semiotics where intertextuality, fluid and changing interpretations are valued. charman et al. (2006: 57) take a similar position to my own: in­between these two approaches. they use an analytical approach as a “way in” but then problematise the categories by introducing the “personal” as a connector to wider processes3. as a class, we participated in an hour­long enquiry around the topic of art and justice after the tour. in preparation the class read and discussed texts on human rights, its history and its contended and changing meaning (carrim, 2000). the group generated a number of questions and chose to explore the following one: ‘how can art be used to bring about justice?’ the enquiry allowed students to discuss the works they had seen in the court but they also referred to other iconic south african images, notably sam nzima’s photograph of hector pietersen.4 issues of nationhood and citizenship were contrasted with ideas about common humanity and empathy. the most important course assignment was a research and writing activity in which each student selected one work from the collection on which to conduct a detailed study. students then wrote an essay about the artwork, discussing the relationship between the concepts of art and justice. giorza thinking together through pictures 171 7. what is philosophy for children and the community of enquiry? key characteristics of the pedagogy philosophy for children was originally developed as a school curriculum for north american children by philosopher/educator mathew lipman and his colleague ann margaret sharp. it draws on the socratic tradition and the work of pragmatist philosophers c.s. peirce and john dewey and soviet psychologist lev vygotsky (lipman & sharp, 1978). philosophy for children, or p4c, has developed in different directions in different contexts and continues to grow and be extensively developed, practised and theorised by writers such as splitter and sharp (1995), fisher (2008), green (1999), cam (2000), kennedy and kennedy (2001), haynes (2002), ndofirepi and mathebula (2011), haynes and murris (2012). a comparison between the enquiry­based learning pedagogy and that of commonly practised formal education clarifies the dramatic impact this approach can have on practice. table 1 below provides a summary of the shared practice of the community of enquiry and while some of the points in the left column may seem anecdotal, they have resonance in my own practice and in the accounts that students give of their learning in other courses. the points made here have been simplified into a dualistic opposition but in reality occur in a range of combinations. table 1: conventional versus enquiry­based teaching and learning (drawn from kennedy and kennedy, 2001; haynes, 2002 and fisher, 2008) conventional teaching enquiry-based teaching and learning outcomes planned outcomes not planned focus on content and skills focus on dispositions and practices assumption of unequal ownership of knowledge assumption of equality of intelligence rows or groups of desks circle students listen to teacher participants listen to and respond to each other teacher­centred or learner­centred the enquiry or the question is at the centre teacher uses questioning to identify misunderstandings questioning is at the centre of the pedagogy and opens up enquiry the teacher plans and directs the lesson the group agrees on basic procedures and then drives the process conflict, confusion, disagreement seen as disruptive or undesirable conflict, confusion, disagreement seen as opportunities for deepening the enquiry children/learners seen as ‘future’ citizens children/learners practise democratic citizenship in the group better explanation is better teaching better facilitation is being able to be an equal member of an enquiry (co­enquirer) metacognition rare focus on learning to know ourselves as thinkers 8. democratic teaching and learning in enquiry­based teaching and learning, students take responsibility for their own learning, constructing knowledge through dialogue with their peers and teacher and through internal dialogue. they “make sense” of new ideas in terms of their own experience, contexts and prior 172 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) understandings (murris, 2000; 2013). this constructivist approach is supported in the various versions of the post­1994 south african curriculum that insists on contextual relevance and integration of knowledge, moving away from strictly bounded academic knowledge and the reception and reproduction of knowledge made. more broadly the south african curriculum, as pointed out by green, has at its core all the p4c values listed by splitter and sharp (green, 1999: 13). these include critical and creative thinking, working effectively in a group and communicating using a range of modes or literacies. the crisis in south african education is expressed in the reported poor performance of south african children who score significantly below the expected level of achievement expected for their age groups. a deficit view can also be held about undergraduate students who have poor matric results and relatively low levels of language proficiency. to what extent does this imply that they cannot be invited to think? i argue that the big questions of art and justice and their expression in material form are appropriate subjects for a responding to art course for education students. given a meaningful entry point (students’ experience of democracy or the lack of it, issues of race, the causes of poverty) to a vast and complex subject (art history and theory), participants are more able to engage critically with the artworks and are able to view the material from their own acknowledged situated vantage point (greene, 1977). 9. learning about art and justice – students’ writing not only did the students make convincing claims for a relationship between art and the values of justice and human rights but they explored the cracks in the edifice of the idea of democracy and constitutionalism. they allowed the artworks to speak to them as active viewers. whole, embodied, gendered, social actors with lives and experiences that carry truths that are not immediately visible or directly representable. in her essay on art and justice, student a notes: “art is the other form of language that brings to the people what is unnoticed” (giorza, 2012: 41). the realities of poverty, gender violence and unequal education were as equally present in the discourse as the possibilities of equality and freedom. it seemed as though the students were accessing through the works and the environment of the court, some of the key debates that had gone into the formation of the constitution and bill of rights. sachs (2009) in his book the strange alchemy of life and law explains just how controversial the inclusion of socio­economic rights into the bill of rights was. on the day of our visit to the court, a demonstration against inner city housing evictions was happening outside. giorza thinking together through pictures 173 figures 1 and 2: a luta continua by thomas mulcaire (above) and a luta continua in situ behind through the barrier – 1956 treason trial frieze and ladder by georgie papageorge in the foyer of the constitutional court (constitutional court art collection). student b observes: “there is another frieze which is mounted behind the ladder and is written, ‘a luta continua’ meaning ‘the struggle continues’. i think it means that even if we have found the freedom, the struggle continues. people still have to work hard for better lives and for the better economic future of our country” (giorza, 2012: 39­40). 174 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) figure 3: albert adams tethered monkey (undated) acrylic on canvas (constitutional court art collection) student c: the artwork also raises some questions regarding equality and freedom, questions like: “do we carry the past with us?” i mean if one individual (adams) has had it difficult to let go of the past what about the others (society as a whole?). the government has striven to equalise and democratise the country. not wishing to take anything from our present government one may still question whether education for all has been provided as it is claimed by the government officials? (giorza, 2012: 40). figures 4 and 5: judith mason the man who sang and the woman who kept silent 1, 2 and 3. oil on board/mixed media (constitutional court art collection) giorza thinking together through pictures 175 ten of the twenty students elected to study judith mason’s “blue dress” (see figure 4 and 5 above). the work pays tribute to the courage of two african nationalist congress operatives whose deaths during the fight against apartheid were described to the truth and reconciliation commission by the perpetrators of their deaths in security police custody. judith mason writes: phila ndwandwe was shot by the security police after being kept naked for weeks in an attempt to make her inform on her comrades. she preserved her dignity by making panties out of a blue plastic bag. this garment was found wrapped around her pelvis when she was exhumed. ‘she simply would not talk’, one of the policemen involved in her death testified. ‘god… she was brave.’ harald sefola was electrocuted with two comrades in a field outside witbank. while waiting to die, he requested to sing nkosi sikelel’ iafrika. his killer recalled, ‘he was a very brave man who believed strongly in what he was doing’. i wept when i heard phila’s story, saying to myself, ‘i wish i could make you a dress’. acting on this childlike response, i collected discarded blue plastic bags that i sewed into a dress. on its skirt i painted this letter: sister, a plastic bag may not be the whole armour of god, but you were wrestling with flesh and blood, and against powers, against the rulers of darkness, against spiritual wickedness in sordid places. your weapons were your silence and a piece of rubbish. finding that bag and wearing it until you were disinterred is such a frugal, commonsensical, housewifely thing to do, an ordinary act… at some level you shamed your captors, and they did not compound their abuse of you by stripping you a second time. yet they killed you. we only know your story because a sniggering man remembered how brave you were. memorials to your courage are everywhere; they blow about in the streets and drift on the tide and cling to thorn-bushes. this dress is made from some of them. hamba kahle, umkhonto (farewell, freedom fighter)” (judith mason, in sachs, 2009: vi-vii). the responses to this work included the following from student d, i chose this piece of artwork because when it was explained i felt emotional about how the poor phila ndwandwe was treated and killed because she represents all the women figures in our republic of south africa who kept silent when raped, abused and hurt. i chose the “blue dress” because it reminded me of two incidents which i experienced when i was a teacher before coming to university. i was teaching both grade one and two. i discovered that two girls in my class were repeatedly raped by their fathers. the mothers of these girls were working in the city and come home once at the end of the month. these girls have been left with their fathers whom i thought they will take the responsibilities of the caring as the parent, to look after their children and maintain the trust, love and relationship between a father and his daughters but they turn into monsters and predators such as hyenas as judith mason painted it on her artwork. instead of taking care of their children they turn into nightmares (giorza, 2012: 40-41). student b also responded as follows: the philosopher arthur danto, cited in the tate gallery handbook (charman et al., 2006: 53), talks about art as embodied meaning. when i looked at the blue colour of the dress i interpreted it as a symbol of the sky. the sky is where religiously we believe that is where heaven is. according to christianity, there is justice in heaven and all humanity will be judged. so the dress is a constant reminder that if we are not doing justice to humanity, humanity will one day get justice from above. the dress is also reminding us 176 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) that if we are not doing justice to fellow human beings, history will judge us. the blue dress reminds us that not all victims of the past regime have been found through the truth and reconciliation commission. people like mbuyezi makhubu who was carrying hector pietersen in the famous photo of june 16th vanished without a trace. his family is still waiting to hear what actually happened to him. the blue dress reminds us that some people are still waiting for justice. carrim (2000: 7) argues that “human beings are fundamentally relational”. by this it is meant that human beings always, throughout all time and space, exist in relation to and with other human beings, other living creatures and their environment. what i think carrim is saying in relation to “the man who sang and the woman who kept silent” is the following: are we treating women as equal partners? do we value their social and economic contribution to society? if the response is negative then the blue dress is reminding us that justice is just a dream in our society (giorza, 2012: 41). questions arose and confronted this student when his own life experience encountered the stories being told by the artist. these questions allowed him to relook his own assumptions and understandings of the concept of justice. kennedy and kennedy (2001: 272) describe this process “concepts… emerge and develop as a result of both experience and reflection, and both transform and are transformed by experience”. 10. student experiences/reflections interviews with students at the end of the course confirmed what i had expected in terms of changed views about the nature of knowledge and about pedagogies that they would now choose to match their ideas about teaching and learning. this included not wanting to “be a stumbling block” for children (student interview, giorza, 2012: 43). this was significant and students remarked on how big a change it was for them to see children as competent and likely to have valuable ideas themselves. however, many of their responses went beyond what had been anticipated. this new conception of knowledge affected students profoundly. one student described her experience of reading text in a new way, of actively ‘dialoguing’ with the text while reading – thinking and reading. this seemed strangely obvious to me but also deeply significant as the motivation of making meaning is what is so obviously lacking in the lives of so many teachers that have participated in the studies referred to by fleisch (2007). she described being newly alive to experience in general, particularly visual stimuli. some students felt compelled to relate the learning in this course to significant experiences in the past that in some way formed them and their attitudes (for example, experiences of police brutality, of betrayal or side­lining by political allies, of witch­hunting and suspicion during apartheid, also of art forms remembered from earlier experiences previously excluded from conceptions of ‘art’). their learning in the course somehow affirmed their prior life learning and connected their learning self with this other ‘home’ self that was previously left out of learning (ellsworth, 2005: 167). somewhat less expected were clear descriptions of changes in attitude in relation to diversity in the group. students shared in the interviews that they had noticed their own ability to value contributions from people they previously had not paid any attention to due to their accents or background. these students were still framed as ‘other’ but were now nuanced and complex rather than stereotyped (benhabib, 1992: 159). students had been energised by their newfound ability to express strongly felt responses that challenged other participants’ positions. rather than shying away from any dissention, they appreciated the importance of difference. students described a sense of their own intelligence and the sense of pleasure in learning. giorza thinking together through pictures 177 11. findings the visual is a way in to ‘looking deeper’ visual texts resist the coding and analysis that traditional semiotics would apply in an attempt to unravel them (machin, 2009: 181­190) but instead, the unfixed quality of the visual invites personal, narrative, sense, memory­based and embodied forms of knowledge production (stein, 2008; newfield, 2011). multimodal learning allows learners to recruit a range of resources that incorporate own embodied and experiential knowledge ‘in the making’ rather than depending on received, text­based ‘knowledge already made’. by recruiting their oral resources, students were better able to think through their ideas before developing them into written material. this suggests that the resorting to plagiarism by many students could be due not only to a lack of access to academic language but more importantly to the lack of an authentic voice with which to express experience and embodied ideas about their own learning. this critical aspect of the research has implications for initial teacher education as well as for the general education and training (get) band. in these contexts student life­ worlds and knowledge systems may well clash with the dominant one and learners need to articulate this knowledge and be heard. multiple voices add value thinking together means thinking better and being listened to enables one to listen to others. a culture of listening facilitates learning and is something we cannot achieve alone. benhabib (1992: 38) makes a similar point when she states, “we are not moral on our own”. agreement about systems and environment are crucial to the working of democratic, respectful learning spaces. the biggest value of multiplicity is that it is a diverse multiplicity, not a multiple of sameness. both biesta (2006) and kallantzis (2006), writing from very different positions, one from philosophy of education and the other from the multi­literacies discourse, emphasise the positive and generative nature of difference and diversity to a learning community. the community of enquiry turns the pattern of teacher talk on its head and challenges the centrality of explication. participant dialogue becomes the mode of learning. the assumption is one of equality of intelligence (ranciére, 1991, 2003; ross, 1991). the short­lived laboratory school promoted by dewey (1934) at the turn of the last century placed high value on the creation of this kind of deliberative community of learners (eisner, 2002: 94). the philosophy for children movement and enquiry­based teaching and learning more broadly, builds upon this philosophical heritage. enquiry-based learning invites the world in the findings in this study illustrate how both enquiry­based learning and a social semiotic approach to visual analysis do not thrive in closed classrooms free of distraction but rather value the unpredictability the outside world brings. it does not attempt to shut it out. the existence of an inside and an outside, when made explicit, changes the classroom. the constitutional court, two blocks away from the classroom, offered its own pedagogy of place and opened the cracks for conceptual enquiry. 178 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) deep learning is about change and uncertainty deep learning requires our being open to our changing selves. as a teacher, i needed to relinquish the role of knower and become co­enquirer. learners needed to become knowers in the sense of making their own meaning and knowledge. in an enquiry­centred school or classroom, the official curriculum and subject content becomes the vehicle for a deep and authentic learning rather than an end in itself. 12. conclusion in this paper, i have argued that an enquiry­based approach to the study of contemporary artworks has the potential to generate deep and personally relevant learning. the students on the course were introduced to the practice of art enquiry – a methodology appropriate at all levels of schooling. besides gaining experience in a participatory pedagogy and a social semiotic approach to visual analysis, students experienced a change in their own learning behaviour. the community of enquiry in combination with contemporary visual art analysis offered a way of learning together through dialogue and reflection and the outcomes of the project suggest that the approach provided better access to the practice of academic argumentation than the more commonly used text­based approaches. the value placed on personal experience, opinions and ideas and the use of oral communication allowed students to connect their own sense­making processes with their new academic practices. students became aware of how the same processes might work for children in primary school. the practice of enquiry, as described above, instils in regular participants the capacity to allow uncomfortable and dissenting voices to be heard and included and be probed more deeply for their rich offerings. diversity and difference are always present as resources and are essential to a democratic community. teachers need skill and practise in recognising and harnessing these resources. teachers do need a better understanding of mathematics concepts and a better grasp of english grammar but concern about content knowledge misses the point about what is going wrong in the teaching and learning relationships in our schools. knowledge and certainty have been shown to be part of the problem, not the solution, in that they shut down thinking and interfere with democratic, dialogic practice (freire, 1972: 56; kennedy, 2014: 5). most importantly, our teachers need a large dose of uncertainty and an openness to the fluid and changing nature of knowledge and a sense of wonder about the process in which they are involved. this openness and wonder has a direct bearing on the patterns of interaction and dialogue that will emerge in their own learning and in their interactions with their learners when they work in south african classrooms. further research needs to be done on ways to incorporate the community of enquiry pedagogy and the study of contemporary artworks into generalist teacher education, possibly as elements of a generic tutorial structure. the inclusion of these two complementary practices in undergraduate teacher education programmes could enhance students’ current learning and their future teaching. references archer, a. 2006. a multimodal approach to academic ‘literacies’: problematising the visual/ verbal divide. language and education, 20(6), 449­462. http://dx.doi.org/10.2167/le677.0 http://dx.doi.org/10.2167/le677.0 giorza thinking together through pictures 179 benhabib, s. 1992. situating the self: gender, community and postmodernism in contemporary ethics. cambridge: polity press. biesta, g. 2006. beyond learning: democratic education for a human future. boulder, co: paradigm publishers. brubaker, n. d. 2012. negotiating authority through cultivating a classroom community 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(translated by kristin ross). stanford, ca: stanford university press. ranciére, j. 2003. the thinking of dissensus: politics and aesthetics. transcription of paper presented at conference entitled: fidelity to the disagreement: jacques ranciére and the political. london, september. http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15544818ped0101_2 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9752.2011.00793.x http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/3587953 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.00172 giorza thinking together through pictures 181 ross, k. 1991. ranciére and the practice of equality. social text, 29, 57­71. http://dx.doi. org/10.2307/466299 sachs, a. 2009. the strange alchemy of life and law. new york: oxford university press. sowden, c. 2005. plagiarism and the culture of multilingual students in higher education abroad. elt journal, 59(3), 226­233. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/elt/cci042 splitter, l.j. & sharp, a.m. 1995. teaching for better thinking: the classroom community of enquiry. melbourne: acer. stein, p. 2008. multimodal pedagogies in diverse classrooms: representations, rights and resources. london: routledge. thesen, l. 2001. modes, literacies and power: a university case study. language and education, 15(2 & 3), 132­145. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500780108666806 (endnotes) 1 darling­hammond (2006) outlines the complex and rigorous demands that face higher education institutions that seek to offer effective teacher education programmes, one of which is the assumption on the part of the public and many policy makers that the task is a simple one. 2 a dominant form of art education in the 20th century was one based on the disciplines of studio art practice, art history, art criticism and aesthetics (eisner, 2002: 28). this model continues to exert influence. visual culture studies have attempted to extend the focus of learning beyond what dewey termed “a museum conception of art” (dewey, 1934: 4) but also acknowledge the “social conditions and visual technologies of the twenty­first century” (duncum, 2006: 100). 3 the focus on art elements has its origins in the formalism of roger fry and clive bell and on american curriculum developments in the early 20th century aimed at developing a reliably scientific basis for art education and assessment (freedman, 2003: 27­28). visual culture studies pay attention to a wide range of visual texts and, using a social semiotic lens, how they constitute knowledge and how they work in our lives (freedman, 2003: 86­105). 4 sam nzima’s photograph from the soweto riots of june 1976 shows the dying hector pietersen being carried by mbuyisa makhubo with pietersen’s sister at his side. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/466299 http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/466299 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/elt/cci042 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09500780108666806 _goback pie32(3) book.indb perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 159 carina america department of curriculum studies, stellenbosch university e-mail: camerica@sun.ac.za telephone: 021 808 3793 understanding economic and management sciences teachers’ conceptions of sustainable development carina america sustainable development has become a key part of the global educational discourse. education for sustainable development (esd) specifically is pronounced as an imperative for different curricula and regarded as being critical for teacher education. this article is based on research that was conducted on economic and management sciences (ems) teachers within a south african school context and their conceptualisation of sustainable development. a case study design was applied within an interpretivist paradigm. the purpose of the study was not to generalise the findings, but rather to acquire in-depth understanding and insight. the findings revealed that the ems teachers’ dominant conception is likened to notions of unrivalled economic growth with limited reference to the interrelatedness of the economy, society and the biophysical world or to the incorporation of “green” issues. this article concludes that it is crucial to incorporate esd into business curricula at school level since sustainable development has become progressively important to nation states, the business sector, the higher education sector and diverse discourses and curricula. the need for a more integrated approach to esd in the ems discourse is recommended. keywords: economic and management sciences education, business education, sustainable development, education for sustainable development, environmental education introduction sustainable development forms part of the discursive terrains of several subjects within the south african school context. this is the case in geography and science perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 160 education, but it is relatively new to the economic and management sciences (ems) school education domain. south africa’s position as a “modern” economy leading the continent technologically provided the justification for the inclusion of ems in the general education and training (get) band (chisholm, 2005:198). ems deals with the efficient and effective use of different types of private, public or collective resources in satisfying people’s needs and wants, while reflecting critically on the impact of resource exploitation on the environment and on people (doe, 2002b). the content foci for ems in the senior phase (grades 7 to 9)1 are divided into four learning outcomes, namely the economic cycle and the perspective of the economic problem, sustainable growth and development, financial skills, and entrepreneurship principles. the ultimate aim of ems education is for learners to acquire the knowledge and skills to understand various roles: as citizens within an economic system, as consumers who are confronted with ever-changing consumption and production patterns, and as entrepreneurs and managers dealing with operations, capital and other resources. embedded in this aim is learning outcome 2: sustainable growth and development, which emanated from the south african historical context of apartheid and inequality; increased global competitiveness; and the need for sustainable growth, reconstruction and development in south africa (doe, 2002a). the business sector places a high premium on the imperatives of profit maximisation and increased competitiveness, resulting in wide-ranging impacts. business stakeholders increasingly recognise the need for corporate social responsibility (csr) and for integrating sustainability in their value chain. however, current research suggests that such integration is not widely reflected in business education curricula (albinsson, perera & sautter, 2011). it seems, therefore, that educators have much work to do with regard to sensitising students to the importance of csr and integrating education for sustainable development (esd) or education for sustainability (efs) in undergraduate business courses. ongoing research is being undertaken with the aim of expanding the learning outcomes for sustainable development in higher education (shephard, 2007; stubbs & cocklin, 2008; stubbs & schapper, 2011; svanström, lozano-gracia & rowe, 2008). my contention is that ems education at both school and university level can be used as a vehicle to create an awareness of sustainable development and how it relates to society, the economy and the environment. reasons for knowing what teachers think and how they come to understand the world are pertinent. jonsson (2004) asks whether there are qualitatively different ways of understanding sustainable development – if so, it is important to identify how these different ways can be described. the notion of teacher understanding, teacher conceptions or teachers’ “sense-making” of curriculum content, curriculum policy and/or teaching practice has had wide-ranging responses in the literature (cf. blignaut, 2008; bolden, harris & newton, 2010; morrow, 2007; summers & childs, 2007; shulman, 1986; walshe, 2008). in the same vein, firth and winter understanding economic and management sciences teachers’ conceptions of sustainable development carina america 161 (2007) argue that student teachers’ understanding of sustainable development is potentially of great significance for developing teachers’ capabilities and confidence in mainstreaming esd or efs in schools. research problem there appears to be a scarcity of research in ems education and specifically with regard to sustainable development within the south african school context. as discussed, the importance of sustainable development in ems education needs exploration. the overarching issue relates to the way ems teachers “make sense” of the role of business and their responsibility towards the sustained development of the country in the long term. furthermore, we need to ascertain the understanding of ems teachers regarding the scope, meaning and importance of sustainable development in ems education; in other words, how critical ems teachers are about advancing alternative interpretations of how business and government respond to issues of sustainability. the research questions can, therefore, be formulated as follows: how do ems teachers “make sense” of sustainable development? also, how do these understandings relate to their teaching practices and to esd? research aim and objectives in this study, the main objective was to establish the teachers’ conceptions of sustainable growth, sustainable development and what specifically needs to be sustained. a further aim was to ascertain the teachers’ understanding of the ems curriculum with regard to its learning outcome: sustainable growth and development. this article intends to provide some insight into ems education with the aim of broadening conceptions of sustainable development within the school context. it is my contention that, with the required insight and integrated approach, ems education can be used as a vehicle to create awareness of sustainable development and the symbiotic relationship between society, the economy and the environment. theoretical framework the literature suggests a growing consensus that sustainable development involves the interconnectedness of environmental, economic and social factors in meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the sustainability of future generations (cf. higgs, 2002; marshall & harry, 2005; walshe, 2008; wced, 1987). in recent years, there has been a growing recognition that natural resource depletion and climate change are accelerated by the imperatives of increased consumption, global competition and profit maximisation. concerns have been raised about the impact that escalating production, promotion and distribution of commodities have on society (employment, health risks) and on the environment (carbon emissions, severe droughts, disruptive flooding and other environmental impacts). south africa’s vision for sustainable development encompasses the interdependence between perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 162 people, planet and prosperity, stated in the framework for sustainable development as “... an economically prosperous and self-reliant nation state that safeguards its democracy by meeting the fundamental human needs of its people, by managing its limited ecological resources responsibly for current and future generations ...” (rsa, 2008:3). there has also been growing awareness of our environmental conditions and a re-evaluation of our actions and orientation towards our natural world (cf. bonnett, 2007; higgs, 2002). this does not mean that ems teachers should teach environmental education (ee). bonnett (2007) advises against infusing ee into all subject areas, while mokhele (2011) argues that ee is not supposed to be taught as a subject on its own, but rather be integrated into all learning areas. such integration could expand the opportunity for ems teachers to focus on incorporating economic and business principles and on how these principles influence society in the long term. inevitably, communities bear the brunt of many environmental problems, some of which are created by the business sector in the first place. bolden et al. (2010) are of the opinion that teachers’ conceptions are valuable and that knowledge of their perspectives can be useful to teacher educators and educational practitioners. knowledge of teacher conceptions could raise consciousness about a particular phenomenon which, in turn, could elicit further research. teachers’ epistemologies account, to a great extent, for how they mediate their teaching practice, and understanding thereof could be of great significance for developing teachers’ capabilities and confidence in mainstreaming esd in schools. esd underpins learning or gaining knowledge, which is necessary for developing new approaches to a sustainable quality of life for future generations. these new approaches involve various learning skills such as learning to ask critical questions, to clarify one’s own values, to envision more positive and sustainable futures, to think systematically, to respond by means of applied learning, and to explore the dialectic between tradition and innovation (unesco, 2011:8). mckeown (2002:11) proposes that changes in the curriculum are necessary “to address the need for more sustainable production and consumption patterns”. the challenge lies in identifying the kind of pedagogical tools needed for such integration as well as recognising its practical value for ems education practice in south african schools. the brundtland commission’s seminal definition of sustainable development as “development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (wced, 1987:43) formed the conceptual framework of this study. this broad definition has elicited numerous interpretations (bonnett, 2007; higgs, 2002; marshall & harry, 2005; walshe, 2008) of the meaning and scope of sustainable development, for example, why sustainable development is necessary; for whom the development is intended; the emergence of any interconnections; and the challenges with regard to teachers’ understanding of sustainable development. while this definition is generally understood as “development that will last” (atkinson et al., cited in briassoulis, 2001:411), the understanding economic and management sciences teachers’ conceptions of sustainable development carina america 163 meaning of “development” is vague and has become associated with sustainable growth, economic growth and/or market policy (daly, 1991:6). according to daly (1992:1), the term “sustainable growth” should be rejected. this view is contrary to those held by many economists who use “growth” as an indicator of economic prosperity. daly (1992:6) argues that: when something grows, it gets bigger. when something develops, it gets different. the earth’s ecosystem develops (evolves), but it does not grow. its subsystem, the economy, must eventually stop growing, but it can continue to develop and change indefinitely. schumacher (cited in stubbs & cocklin, 2008:208) purports that it is impossible to have infinite growth in a finite environment. in contrast, holliday (2001) contends that growth is necessary for further development and to prevent environmental ruin. bonnett’s (2007:710) critique of the wced’s well-known and highly influential definition is that this definition is one of extreme ambiguity. he questions, for example, “precisely what is to be sustained, at what level, and over what time span? precisely whose needs are to be met, how are they to be prioritised, and according to what criteria?” this kind of questioning is central to this article to provide insights into ems teachers’ understanding of sustainable development and to explore whether an integrated approach to esd in the ems discourse is warranted. marshall and harry (2005:186) suggest that the wced’s definition introduced the cornerstone concept of sustainability – the linkages between social, environmental, and economic conditions, as well as a future-focused lens signifying a long-term objective that requires concerted efforts. research methodology the research that informed this article was based on the interpretive research paradigm to explore teachers’ thinking with regard to the meaning and scope of sustainable development. the study was conducted within the public school system and was a sub-study of a larger research project that investigated the relevance of sustainable development in ems education. a purposive sample was selected of seven ems teachers located at different schools within a specific geographical area. the teachers were located at different schools within the western cape and were purposefully selected because of their varying levels of teaching experience in ems education, the different contexts and background of the school, the level of resources at the school, and their student profile. patton (2002:244) argues that there are no rules for sample size in a qualitative inquiry. the purpose of the research, therefore, was not to generalise the findings to the entire population of ems teachers, but rather to gain in-depth understanding and insight. all the ems teachers in this study are qualified commerce teachers and also teach accounting, business studies and/or economics in the fet band (grades 10, 11 and 12). the data analysis was couched within a case study as a design strategy; the “case” being the sample of ems teachers. stake (1994:236-247) purports that the perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 164 purpose of a case study is not to represent the world, but to represent the case. i had an intrinsic interest in the case, its uniqueness, particular context, issues and story. i decided to conduct in-depth interviews to collect the data and to apply content analysis to the interviews. the guidelines for qualitative content analysis provided by henning, van rensburg and smit (2010:104) were followed. the ems curriculum formed an integral part of the study and was carefully perused. the responses during the interviews were categorised according to a coding matrix which was based on the literature reviewed (cf. bonnett, 2007; jonsson, 2004; scott & gough, 2004; summers & childs, 2007; walshe, 2008). the teachers were requested to respond from their own frame of reference, that is not merely reflecting the stance of the ems head of department (hod), school, or the department of education. this was important since my own observation and communication with ems teachers at some schools confirmed that the hod structured the content and recourse material and did the planning of what would be taught, as well as how the lessons would be taught. i decided to ask the following questions: “what is your conception of sustainable growth?” and “what is your conception of sustainable development?” to establish whether parallels could be drawn between the interpretation of growth and development in general and in relation to the curriculum. the next question was “what is it that needs to be sustained?” even though the “what” questions might appear to be superficial, they are not as overt, and underlie what jonsson (2004) refers to as the complexity of understanding that could be either vertical or horizontal complexity. vertical complex understanding refers to profound, detailed and insightful understanding of one or several aspects, for example, a nuanced understanding of the impact on the economy caused by increased production and profit maximisation at the expense of resource exploitation. horizontal complexity refers to the many shifts of perspective and different aspects that are frequently being connected and related to one another, for example, the ability to express the connections between society, economy, pollution and resource needs. jonsson (2004) further suggests that any surface agreement on sustainable development soon breaks down when one asks what it is that needs to be sustained. teachers were also asked to state their views regarding the ems curriculum and specifically the learning outcome that deals with sustainable growth and development. teachers were given leeway to express their views of how they came to understand these constructs and their impact on their teaching practice. the latter question was similar to the one that catling (2001:365) posed when students were asked to explain to a stranger what geography was about. the interview process and open-ended nature of the questions allowed for deeper introspection and broader critical reflection about the conceptualisation of sustainable development in general and with regard to the ems discourse. understanding economic and management sciences teachers’ conceptions of sustainable development carina america 165 findings and discussion findings related to perceptions of sustainable growth and development, the ems curriculum, challenges and the economy–society–environment triad are presented below. sustainable growth and development teachers’ responses to the questions regarding sustainable growth and development revealed conceptions that are contradictory to what might be expected. the idea of the “future” has been identified as an important aspect in the sustainability literature (cf. walshe, 2008:538; wced, 1987:43), but it elicited an immaterial response in this study. sustainable development is essentially seen as a long-term endeavour, and one where the pursuance of short-term gains at the expense of a long-term strategy should be avoided. however, in this study, the participants did not make much reference to a time span of sustainable development. with regard to a geographical scale, they mostly expressed the view that sustainable development is something that affects the country or the community. the teachers’ direct focus for sustainable growth and development was on south africa as a country, thereby illustrating that sustainable development is a national issue. “sustainable growth” and “sustainable development” were often used interchangeably, as shown by the following excerpts from two teachers’ responses: development is basically the same as growth. (teacher a) it is very closely related; in fact sometimes those two are very much interchanged very easily. it depends on which textbook you consult. (teacher e) the responses of the teachers regarding what needs to be sustained were organised around the themes of increasing entrepreneurs, infrastructure, and human and natural resources. an example of comments about what needs to be sustained is presented below: a healthy climate for foreign investment and increased productivity. (teacher b) in the south african context, the manufacturing sector … (teacher e) economic and management sciences curriculum when asked about the ems curriculum, all the teachers regarded redress as an important focus of sustainable development, which might signal that teachers from a post-apartheid society have a different emphasis on how they make sense of sustainable development. in general, the teachers felt that the learners should be made aware of the inequalities of the past, and that they (the teachers) were pleased that the reconstruction and development programme (rdp) and the national budget are included in the curriculum. one of the teachers responded as follows: they (the learners) are also being told that there is the rdp, which means that the government really tried to fix what was wrong in the past. it is something that should get more time and attention. (teacher d) perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 166 even though the teachers regarded the rdp as being important, none of them referred to any successful rdp projects that had made a difference to the quality of life of individuals or specific communities, or even on a national scale. reconstruction or redistribution of wealth is one of the themes represented in the economic sustainability sphere (cf. connelly, 2007) and regarded as a balanced approach to infrastructure provision (bond, 2002) but, in the south african context, “redress” is firmly rooted in apartheid history and, in many instances, it implies personal restitution. there could be several reasons why the teachers considered redress as an important aspect of sustainable development (america, 2012). firstly, it formed part of the prescribed content in the ems curriculum at the time of the study; secondly, the south african apartheid past is still firmly embedded in the psyche of many south africans; thirdly, redress continues to be a central focus in economic development frameworks proposed by the government, for example, rdp, growth, employment and redistribution (gear), and now the new growth path; fourthly, its implementation by the government is perceived as lacking and, therefore, seems to be a recurrent objective; and lastly, redress is perceived to be the solution to development problems such as poverty, joblessness and inequality. the teachers hold the view that social and economic development is the responsibility of government, and for government to achieve this it needs to increase its competitiveness in the global arena. this explains the teachers’ emphasis on the economic imperatives to sustainable development: illustrating how teachers themselves buy into the neoliberal agenda. challenges the most common challenge reported in this study was that teaching sustainable growth and sustainable development is a complex matter and not easy to understand or to teach. the vagueness of concepts was evident in the manner in which some teachers articulated their responses, as shown below: it is a very difficult and challenging outcome to explain to the learners. even as a teacher it is a challenging concept. (teacher b) the literature on sustainable development reaffirms its complexity and ambiguity (cf. bonnett, 2007; connelly, 2007; scott & gough, 2004; wced, 1987). economy–society–environment triad it is important to note that the depiction of the “interconnectedness” or “symbiotic relationship” of the economy–society–environment triad emerged from the data; in other words, teachers were not informed beforehand of the three subsystems or how and whether they are connected. the importance that the teachers attached to the triad is summarised in the next paragraphs. the economy was the most dominant focus of the teachers in the interviews. the sustainability debate has been criticised for its strong orientation towards economic advancement (rauch, 2002). however, not all teachers could make the connection to the interdependence of economy–society–environment within the limits of understanding economic and management sciences teachers’ conceptions of sustainable development carina america 167 the ecosystem and how business operations influence a sustainable future. the economic factors related to sustainable growth and sustainable development were mostly expressed in terms of profit maximisation, foreign investment, increased productivity and job creation, amongst other factors. some of the comments were: the first thing is to get money in the country through investments, where foreign companies want to open new businesses or they want to invest. the second thing is creating jobs and maybe through foreign investment this could happen. i would say sustainable development is all about developing resources. (teacher g) sustainable growth [is] where new opportunities and avenues and expansion are explored and the business grows in terms of its profits. i think it is closely related, sustainable growth and sustainable development, very much interchanged. (teacher e) references to society were also evident. in identifying the various features of sustainable growth, there was no reference to the influence of sustained economic growth on the environment or its direct impact on society. this is important in the light of socio-economic factors such as poverty, unemployment, quality of life and inequality which are impeding south africa’s sustained growth. the teachers had strong views on socio-political aspects and they emphasised the role of government, which was not surprising, since south africa is a highly politicised country, and economic growth and development issues inevitably filter down to socio-political issues. for example: the gap between rich and poor is still too big. i would have liked to tell you that growth is taking place, but we are not reaching our goals. (teacher g) how can you expect people to develop when they are living in these conditions? the focus is more on infrastructure and development, what the government sets in place. and this will be programmes or projects focusing on the people itself, development that’s how i see it. that is how i teach it. (teacher f) there were no references to the impact on the environment with regard to sustainable growth; when asked to explain sustainable development, only two respondents’ comments were related to the environment. one of these is provided below: if we cut off trees, we need to put it back in nature; there must be something for our descendants. (teacher f) it is interesting that teacher g, an experienced commerce teacher, knew that the environment is being compromised, as shown by the comment: “we are running out of natural resources”, although the teacher, even after i probed, was not able to say exactly why: “i wouldn’t be able to tell you why we are running out.” the triple-bottom-line orientation, that is the 3-ps (people, planet, profit), could easily be integrated in the ems classroom when teaching financial, human-social, and environmental resources and its symbiotic relationship over the long term. furthermore, albeit in an introductory manner at school level, these linkages could be prioritised in the ems classroom, focusing on the role of the business sector and perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 168 the economic system to function for the greater good of society, now and in the future. conclusion while the connection that teachers made between economic issues and social issues was evident, the environmental impacts generally remained elusive. the relevance of environmental issues for ems education specifically is that the business sector might be directly or indirectly related to issues such as climate change, increasing carbon emissions, environmental ruin, and health risks in the workplace. the outcome of this study reveals that ems teachers’ dominant conception is equivalent to notions of unrivalled economic growth coupled with an impaired understanding of the interrelatedness of economy, society and the biophysical world, or to the incorporation of “green” issues. unesco advocates the training of teachers as a key strategy in achieving a sustainable society. this does not only refer to the training of new teachers, but should also be directed to the updating of knowledge and skills of in-service teachers. similarly, the undesd (united nations decade of education for sustainable development: 2005–2014) has directed attention to the integration of sustainable development in all educational settings. creating an awareness of esd is, therefore, vital, specifically when the value-creation processes of business operations are dealt with in the ems classroom. the teachers’ understandings reflect the view that south africa’s increased global competitiveness and ultimate profit-driven motives are central to the realisation of economic prosperity and sustainability. the emphasis should be on development that can be sustained over the long term, while ensuring that a balance between the economy, society and the environment is promoted. what value could teachers’ conceptions bring to learners? teacher understandings could open possibilities to re-evaluate how the ems curriculum promotes or inhibits contemporary issues. in other words, how can teachers encourage learners to be critical of the world around them? teachers could, through esd, convey a set of values that could be reflected in their teaching. while contextual challenges, for example, school ethos, timetable overload, learner profiles, and support from curriculum advisors, have an impact on teaching practice, a step towards an enhanced awareness of sustainable development could be to encourage teachers to reflect on curriculum content and their teaching practice. for example, the focus could shift towards education for transformation, and not merely education for the reproduction of knowledge. ems education provides the ideal platform to integrate sustainability issues into topics of business principles and economic developments, for example, the current global economic crisis and how south africa, as a global player, responds to national issues that affect sustainable economic development. furthermore, south understanding economic and management sciences teachers’ conceptions of sustainable development carina america 169 africa has been involved in the international arena in sustainable development summits such as the johannesburg summit in 2002 and hosting the global climate change conference (cop17), as well as locally, with the adoption of sustainable development imperatives in various organs of the state. or, critical reflection of the millennium development goals or integrating certain aspects of the un’s call for a decade of education for sustainable development in the curriculum. these issues could be applied in the ems classroom and highlighted when learners are taught how businesses work and how they (businesses) should conduct themselves. while they are taught about the input and output of production processes, learners are also made conscious of the impact thereof, and the reasons why they should be attentive consumers and responsible citizens. in this way, knowledge is constructed actively by the teachers and will, therefore, shape their conception of sustainable development. the constructivist notion of how the teacher “comes to know” is a process of adaptation based on and constantly modified by the experiences of the teachers. this could present opportunities for teachers to further interrogate the curriculum and decide for themselves how they could integrate the imperatives for sustainable development in the ems classroom. the objective is to advance learning about the effects of human activity on the quality of people’s lives and the future of life on the planet. deliberate efforts and initiatives are needed to foster sustainable development through learning. teacher experiences, as well as new understandings of the world, could guide their actions in new directions in the classroom. references albinsson pa, perera by & sautter p 2011. integrating sustainability into the business curriculum through e-learning. merlot journal of online learning and teaching, 7(1): 117-127. america cg 2012. rethinking sustainable development as a learning outcome in the economic and management sciences curriculum: some insights from south africa. in k darwis & k yukio (eds), towards a sustainable ecology. indonesia: ub press. blignaut s 2008. 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(endnotes) 1. this study was done based on the national curriculum statement (ncs) which will be replaced by the new curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) for the senior phase beginning 2014. 19 insights from traditional initiation teachers (basuwe) on the influence of male traditional initiation (lebollo) on the behaviour of schoolboys abstract this article aims to describe the outcomes of traditional initiation schools (lebollo), identify reasons for initiates’ deviant behaviour at school after returning from lebollo and offer some suggestions on how to reduce deviant behaviour that may be linked to lebollo. the literature review has shown that lebollo aims to equip initiates with competencies that are necessary for adulthood. a content analysis of data emanating from interviews with two traditional initiation teachers (basuwe) identify initiates youthfulness, inadequate time spent at the initiation school, the erroneous view of initiates that they are adults, initiates’ unwillingness to embrace the teaching of their elders, alcohol abuse and the inappropriate conduct of parents as reasons for initiates’ misbehaviour. the study emphasises the need for close cooperation between formal schools’ disciplinary committees and basuwe, as well as between the parents of initiates and basuwe to reduce initiates’ misbehaviour. keywords: basotho; culture; education; discipline; male tradi tional initiation 1. introduction one of the key problems in schools is that teachers find it difficult to effectively manage learner behaviour towards creating a disciplined teaching and learning environment (rossouw, 2003; wolhuter & meyer, 2007). black south african school communities are especially plagued by many challenges related to learner behaviour (masitsa, 2011). researchers (du plooy, 2006; mohlaloka, 2014) argue that potentially, cultural beliefs and values can cause tension within the school setting. one such a perceived tension is the view that exists among some black school teachers in the formal schooling sector that male learners who have been to initiation schools (makoloane) contribute to discipline problems at formal schools. mohlaloka, jacobs and de wet (2016) found that while teachers in formal schools struggle with “generic discipline problems”, they face additional challenges with the deviant behaviour of male learners who return from traditional initiation schools. mr sello martin blase mohlaloka university of the free state dr lynette jacobs university of the free state prof nita corene de wet university of the free state doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i2.2 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(2): 19-32 © uv/ufs 20 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) traditional initiation schools are conducted over a period of time, away from settlements, in secluded areas. supporters of this practice often refer to it with reverence as “the bush” or “the mountain” (venter, 2013; vincent, 2013). a particularly important group of role-players is the traditional initiation teachers or initiators (basuwe), elderly men of substantial political, economic and social standing, who teach initiates about cultural and health issues and perform certain rituals. (meissner & buso, 2007; venter, 2013). 2. problem statement researchers (van rooyen et al., 2006; ntombana, 2011; mohlaloka et al., 2016) argue that traditional initiation can make either a positive or a negative contribution to the behaviour of initiated boys. proponents of traditional initiation (lebollo) believe that lebollo inculcates good moral values in boys and builds society by producing responsible, law-abiding citizens (ntombana, 2011). opponents of initiations schools (ntombana, 2011: 636) however, believe that the behaviour and actions of the initiated boys “does not conform to the expectations that are carried by the ritual; even though they have undergone the ritual, their lives are the same as when they were boys”. little research has been done on the possible influence of initiation schools on learner behaviour (mohapi, 2007; mohlaloka, 2014; van rooyen, potgieter & mtezuka, 2006) and even less on how to address behavioural problems seemingly stemming from initiation schools (mohlaloka, 2014). mohlaloka et al. (2016) found that many formal school teachers struggle to deal with the deviant behaviour of boys returning from initiation schools. examples of such behaviour that were shared by participants in the above mentioned study are boys refusing to take part in class discussions or to answer questions, acting with disdain towards female teachers and uninitiated teachers, refusing to do certain tasks and engaging in gangster activities. despite criticism directed against lebollo (cf. mohlaloka et al., 2016; ntombana, 2011), there is an upsurge in young boys attending initiation schools in post-apartheid south africa. it is argued that this is due to the resurgence of young people’s respect for traditional authority (malisha et al., 2008). in light of the conflicting views of the influence of lebollo on the behaviour of initiates, it is important that teachers and other role-players in the formal education system gain insight into traditional initiation. mohlaloka et al. (2016: 11) recommend that schools should join hands with the traditional initiation teachers, as the formal school system and the traditional initiation school system have the same common goal, namely to “educate learners for their adult life”. in order to provide readers with some understanding of this practice and to assist in understanding this specific group of learners, we pose the following research question: what insights can be gained from traditional initiation teachers (basuwe) on the behaviour of secondary school boys and how to address such behaviour where necessary? 3. theoretical stance in this paper, we look at the insights from traditional initiation teachers on the behaviour of secondary school boys from a comparative education perspective. societal factors such as culture and philosophy, shape education systems and issues within education systems (kubrow & fossum, 2007; wolhuter, 2013). negative learner behaviour is a pressing issue in the contemporary education sphere and we need to take note of arnove (2003: 13) who encourages comparative educationists to portray the “complex interplay of different social 21 mohlaloka, jacobs & de wet insights from traditional initiation teachers... forces and how individual and local units of analysis are embedded in multiple layered contexts”. in this paper, we argue that it is imperative for the formal schooling sector to understand the importance and value of the traditional schooling sector within its cultural context and acknowledge the interplay between formal schooling and traditional initiation schooling towards a common goal. 4. aim of the study the aim of this study is to provide some insight into traditional initiation, its intended outcome, some of the reasons for initiates’ deviant behaviour and ways to address such behaviour, through a literature study and interviews with traditional initiation teachers. 5. literature review traditional cultural practices, such as initiation and circumcision mirror beliefs and values held by community members for periods “often spanning generations” (twala, 2007: 22; venter, 2013: 140). this means that traditional initiation is a generational ritual that is passed from one generation to the next to ensure that the legacy of that community or family is kept alive for a long time. lebollo is a traditional cultural practice involving the process that indicates the transition from boyhood to manhood (maharasoa & maharaswa, 2004; venter, 2013). young men within the community are initiated when they reach a certain age in order to prepare them for their future roles in their respective communities. mgqolozana (2009: 29) states in this regard: according to the elders, if a boy reaches a stage where he was problematic in society, there was only one way to curb this, and that was ‘the obvious’. the boy’s mischief was considered to be an indication of wanting a rite of passage into manhood. the things that were done at the mountain were held to be so powerful that they could root out any foolish notion from a boy’s stubborn head, sending him back with a clear sense of right and wrong. male circumcision forms an important part of the initiation process and is symbolic of the above-mentioned transition (malisha, maharaj & rogan, 2008; matobo, makatsa & obioha, 2009; van rooyen et al., 2006; venter, 2013). this happens between an initiate and a traditional surgeon in a secluded area while other initiates wait for their turn. in the venda culture, it is believed that the removal of the foreskin results in a metaphorical “sharpening of the warrior’s spear”. the spear denotes the penis, which is supposed to be used to “strike the elephant”. the elephant here symbolises the woman (malisha et al., 2008: 587). traditional initiation should, however, not be perceived as the mere act of circumcision. matšela (1990) identified several changes and outcomes that are expected to occur. during the 21st century, several researchers expanded on and made reference to these changes and outcomes highlighted in matšela’s (1990) seminal work. while these changes and outcomes are briefly discussed here, it must be stated that there are differences in the traditions of the different cultural groups (e.g. basotho, batswana, tshivenda, amaxhosa, etc.) that have not been captured here. bohlweki (purity): initiates are taught about cleanliness in its literal form as it relates to a hygienic way of living; that is why they must wash before they eat. it also relates to metaphorical purity as it relates to the purging of mind and soul. purification of the inner self happens through the inculcation of principles, such as honesty and trustworthiness. for this to happen, folktales are told with the hope of discouraging unacceptable behaviour and to illustrate the consequences of negative conduct (matšela, 1990). 22 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) thuto-kellelo (cognitive engagement) is done through praise poems and learning about the history of a group. the initiates are taught to think strategically because thinking strategically and at a high level means that they are being prepared to serve on the chief’s cabinet (lekhotla) (letseka, 2013). critical thinkers, who are members of the chief’s cabinet, may help solve issues concerning community members (maharasoa & maharaswa, 2004). matšela (1990) asserts that it is important to remember that in the olden days, there was no formal schooling and lebollo was used as the main source of education for young males. makhavane (virtues): the development of personal and communal traits is one of the objectives of lebollo. hard work, respect for all, humility, perseverance, service to one’s nation and patriotism are some of the traits that are nurtured at initiation schools (letseka, 2013; maharasoa & maharaswa, 2004; mgqolozana, 2009; venter, 2013). matobo et al. (2009) moreover assert that initiates are expected to acquire leadership skills, allegiance and dedication to their country, self-respect and self-discipline. letseka (2013) likewise believes that indigenous education teaches good ethics, morals and values such as humanness, neighbourliness, responsibility and respect for self and others. venter (2013) notes that physical suffering is used to cultivate endurance: through suffering, the initiate provides evidence of his capacity to endure difficult circumstances. complications and death during male initiation is consequently seen as the normal course of life. lenyora la tsebo (appreciation for knowledge): to facilitate the discovery of individual talents inter alia referred to under makhavane above, each initiate is designated an instructor/ mentor so that at the end of the schooling, the initiate and the instructor clearly understand where the individual’s strengths and weaknesses lie (maharasoa & maharaswa, 2004). this means that at the end of the training, each initiate must have an instructor who will ensure the initiate’s talents are cultivated. leruo (economic development): the initiates are taught and trained to be economically independent and self-sufficient, while at the same time leave room for uplifting community members who are in need (maharasoa & maharaswa, 2004; matobo et al., 2009). makunutu (national secrecy/confidentiality): according to twala (2007) and van rooyen et al. (2006), initiation rites are characterised by some degree of secrecy, which varies according to the degree to which the groups of initiates are differentiated from the rest of the community. the ability of initiates to sustain confidentiality is seen as a powerful lever for the preservation of what counts as unique to a tribe. war strategies were previously seen as some of the national secrets that males had to keep. traditional initiates furthermore associate with one another; they share their secrets and do not allow uninitiated people to interfere (maharasoa & maharaswa, 2004). bonatla (warriorship): malisha et al. (2008) write that brave warriors are bred at initiation schools where they learn to live as ‘real men’ are supposed to. this can be seen in games, such as mock fighting for boys, which are used to prepare future adults for survival at war. boys who come from initiation schools of some cultures engage for example in stick fighting, especially when new initiates are being incorporated into the community. boqapi le bokheleke (the ability to compose/eloquence): artistic abilities are held in high regard among africans. during the period of initiation, initiates spend time at night practising and showing their artistic competencies, such as the ability to dance and compose 23 mohlaloka, jacobs & de wet insights from traditional initiation teachers... songs and poems. the songs that were sung and the poems that were recited by their forefathers are taught to the initiates (maharasoa & maharaswa, 2004; mohapi, 2007). borapedi (spiritualty): spirituality is the cornerstone of lebollo and in the lives of the initiates. spiritual education serves as the initiate’s introduction into the world of the ‘unseen and supernatural’. it involves the teaching of, amongst other things, important rites, dances and ceremonies to please the gods, the significance of the careful observation of norms, customs and traditions in an attempt to give pleasure to and worship the ancestors and the adult’s role in religious practices (van rooyen et al., 2006). through prayers and praises, initiates can invite their ancestors and god to be among them during the initiation process (maharasoa & maharaswa, 2004). maharasoa and maharaswa (2004) emphasise that there is no tension between lebollo beliefs and other beliefs such as christianity. to explain the harmony between lebollo and christian beliefs, maharasoa and maharaswa (2004: 112) note that basotho prayers call for an ancestral presence, which in turn, asks a blessing from god almighty on their behalf. the basotho prayer starts as follows: ‘modimo o motjha rapela wa kgale’ (‘young god praise/pray to the old god’). the young god refers to the ancestors and the old god refers to the almighty. kgokahayo ya sechaba le tlhompho ya maemo (national unity and respect for social structures): initiates have seen one another’s best and worst aspects. initiates can therefore assist one another to become their ‘ultimate self’. it is however, according to maharasoa and maharaswa (2004: 112), also humbling to know that there are people who have seen one’s weakest self. in essence, this suggests that lifelong friendships are created at the initiation schools and they are based on trust and respect. traditionally, each initiation class had to have a prince among the initiates. the initiates were taught to respect the royal lineage, despite the weaknesses that the prince might show during initiation. the initiates’ exposure to the strengths and weaknesses of the royal person “introduced a great sense of respect for social structures and an appreciation of the diversity of humankind”. the initiates also take collective responsibility for whatever goes wrong at the initiation school because it is thought that the continued existence of society cannot be the responsibility of one person (maharasoa & maharaswa, 2004). initiates thus learn to honour the chief and the tribal customs; to have a high regard for those older than themselves; to appreciate the things that are important in the society and to respect and comply with tribal taboos (van rooyen et al., 2006). based on the forgoing, it is clear that traditional initiation programmes aim at producing men who will be responsible citizens within their families, communities, societies and country. it may therefore be assumed that when an initiate returns to the formal schooling system, he would be an asset to the school and would strengthen the discipline structures at a school. however, according to ntombana (2011: 632) there has been a ‘general degeneration’ in initiation practices. ntombana (2011: 632) writes, the initiation school has become a place where criminal activities are committed and the practice of initiation no longer contributes to the building of society, but instead contributes to the moral decline of the communities concerned. it is thus important to get some insight into the processes and realities from the traditional initiation teachers themselves. 24 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) 6. research methodology data gathering the first author, who did the interviews, is an african male, who did not grow up in the region where the study took place and was never part of the cultural practice under investigation. he thus engaged with the interviewees as an ‘outsider’. towards understanding the current practices of lebollo, the first author conducted unstructured interviews with two traditional initiation teachers (basuwe) who were willing to talk to him. he gained access to the participants through gatekeepers who are in a position of trust with the participants. as the topic is not only sensitive but also very secretive, we had to take special care in terms of protecting the identities of the two participants. we undertook to refrain from putting any information in this work that could lead to the identification of the two men. both participants are based in the free state province (south africa) but one conducts initiations in the kingdom of lesotho, while the other runs an initiation school in the free state. both the traditional initiation teachers are between 50 and 60 years old. one has completed grade 5 while the other has completed grade 6. in terms of experience, one participant has initiated for 10 years, while the other has been practising for 12 years. the first author interviewed each of them at a site where they felt comfortable and safe. each of them allowed the first author to record the interview after guaranteeing that their identities would be protected and any identifying information would be deleted from the data. the interviews were informal discussions. the first author was able to build a relationship of trust with the two initiates. when he interviewed them, he took the stance of the uninitiated and uninformed. he mainly listened to whatever information the initiators were willing to share. he respected their choice to refrain from responding to certain questions. the first author transcribed the interviews, and translated the sections, where sesotho was used, into english. data analysis content analysis was used to identify and summarise the content of the interviews. we were guided by nieuwenhuis’s (2007) systematic approach for qualitative content analysis in order to condense and group the content of the interviews. a coding frame was drawn up, also providing for verbatim reporting where applicable. we worked though the transcriptions independently and coded all the data. thereafter, related codes were organised into categories. after we had completed our categorisation, we re-read the transcriptions to check whether we had captured all the important insights that had emerged from the data. from the categories, patterns and themes that could be linked to the research questions were identified and described. thereafter, the three researchers entered into in-depth discussions. the first author led these discussions. he is fluent in english and in the other indigenous language used during the interview. where we differed, his insights were paramount. the uncovering of emergent themes allowed us to analyse the information and juxtapose it with the literature. the following strategies were used to enhance trustworthiness and accuracy: the transcriptions and our preliminary findings were given to the interviewees for verification and accuracy. we gathered rich data. interpretations are often substantiated by direct quotations from the data (creswell, 2008). ethical considerations owing to the sensitive nature of the study, ethical issues were important. the protection of participants and their names were a priority in this study. before the actual interviews took 25 mohlaloka, jacobs & de wet insights from traditional initiation teachers... place, the first author visited the participants and informed them about the intended research project and the importance thereof. the participants were given a letter asking for permission to conduct a study with them. they verbally agreed to take part but did not feel safe enough to sign the letters, in spite of our assurance that their identities would be protected. we thus had to be satisfied with their verbal permission in this regard. ethical clearance for this study was obtained from the faculty of education at the university of the free state’s ethics office (ufs-edu-2011-0034). limitations of the study it must be acknowledged at the outset that the insights gained in the study are partial. firstly, literature on the topic is limited (van rooyen et al., 2006). secondly, the cultural practice of initiation is secret, with the result that it was difficult to find basuwe who were willing to be interviewed and thus the sample is very small. we also had to accept that the participants would offer only a selection of reality and would decide what to share and the manner in which to share it; in light of having to protect the secrecy of their practice (van rooyen et al., 2006; venter, 2013). fourthly, this article is based on the views of basotho traditional initiation teachers and thus does not represent the views of peers from other cultural groups such as batswana, tshivenda and amaxhosa. lastly, all three authors of this document can be seen as a limiting factor in this study. we are educationists and not anthropologists and none of us are members of this particular cultural group. thus, our ability to interpret the data is restricted. nevertheless, we believe that even the incomplete understanding that was gained in this study can shed light on basuwe’s insights on the influence of lebollo on schoolboys’ deviant behaviour in schools and thus be valuable to the education fraternity. 7. findings expected outcomes of initiation the basuwe seem to agree that lebollo is the basotho way of life, which has lasted for generations (e.g. “lebollo is the basotho culture, that is, the basotho way of life”). they also felt that lebollo is more than merely a tradition but also a place where the basotho are taught the values of life. one of the basuwe said: “lebollo is where the basotho are taught value in the mountain. it is the initial laws of our forefathers which are still being practised today”. these utterances encapsulate the essence of the outcomes for initiation schools as identified by matšela (1990) and are discussed in our literature review. a number of issues were raised when the participants were asked about how the mokoloane could be identified in the community. the basuwe agreed that an initiate should be identified through the dignity and respect he displays towards elders and his parents: “the child has respect; he does not only see his biological parents as parent but he sees all the elders as his parents and he respect them, he respect them [emphasis by the participant] within the community”. according to one of the basuwe “lebollo educate children of values such as botho [humanity], hlompho [respect], that is botho [humanity] as well as bokamoso [future]”. it was suggested by one of the participants that lebollo may have a profoundly positive influence on boys by instilling in them respect towards their parents: “at times a child leave his home already with no respect towards his parents; consequently, when the child comes back home we expect him to be a changed person knowing what a parent is”. 26 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) findings from the literature study that the inculcation of moral values is an important outcome of lebollo, is supported by the interviewed basuwe. the insights by the basuwe that lebollo brings about a change in the behaviour of initiates, resonates well with ntombana’s (2011: 635) argument that unacceptable, anti-social behaviour is a “characteristic of boys and not men”. reasons for initiates’ deviant behaviour during the interviews, the basuwe suggested several reasons why traditional initiation practice is failing to produce virtuous and disciplined youths (cf. matšela, 1990 and the literature review for the outcomes of lebollo, as well as ntombana, 2011 for arguments supporting the disbandment of initiation schools). the youthfulness of some initiates opposing views were put forward by the two basuwe in terms of the age boys should attend initiation school. however, both interviewees agreed that a person should at least be mature. one participant said that, “they should be at the least 18 years old” while the other said they “should be at the least 20 years old and above”. the last quoted participant added that, “according to the old tradition, a boy must attend initiation when he is 30 year because this age reflects maturity”. he added that at this age “then it could be said you are going to take manhood, you are not a man yet” [emphasis by the participant]. the literature also reveals a lack of uniformity regarding the age of initiation. it differs from culture to culture (peltzer & kanta, 2009; van rooyen et al., 2006). van rooyen et al. (2006) write that initiation of the southern ndebele usually takes place between the ages of ten to twenty years. ntombana’s (2011) and vincent’s (2008) studies among xhosas found that ritual circumcisions are most commonly performed on men ranging between the ages of 15 and 25. venda, pedi and tsonga initiates can be as young as 9 years old (crl rights commission, 2010). provincial legislation regarding the age of admission also differs. for example, limpopo’s provincial legislature has set the age of admission at 10 years, while the free state and western cape note that the maturity age for admission to initiation schools is 18 (crl rights commission, 2010). during the two interviews, it emerged that some boys younger than 18 often attend initiation schools. the participants mention that some of the younger boys attend initiation schools without the consent of their parents. this causes problems, as explained by one of the basuwe, because once they are there, in accordance with the rules of the initiation schools, they cannot be allowed to leave. both basuwe stressed that the lack of physical strength and the emotional immaturity of these youngsters may result in physical and/or emotional harm because dropping out of initiation school is not an option and is seen as deplorable. maharasoa and maharaswa (2004: 110) write that indigenous communities ostracise boys who run away from initiation schools. mongala, as the dropouts are referred to, are shunned and punished for “abandoning a worthy cause”. it furthermore seems as if too young learners do not reap any benefits from attending initiation schools. these initiates seem to return to their old, unacceptable and irresponsible way of life (“you can see them in the street in gangs ... some drunk and other committing house breakings”). whilst not linking youthfulness with initiates’ deviant behaviour, ntombana’s (2011) study exposes inappropriate behaviour. 27 mohlaloka, jacobs & de wet insights from traditional initiation teachers... duration of the lebollo the duration of the time initiates spend away at the initiation school may differ. even though the interviewees are both from the free state, they initiate at different places (one in the free state and the other in lesotho). it seems as if there is a difference relating to the duration of the process in the two areas. the participant practising in the free state said that he and his initiates spend at least three months away while the lesotho basuwe said he and his initiates spend at least seven months in the initiation school. the latter explain that the “first two months is spent going to and fro [from the home to the mountain], then four months at the mountain not coming home – the last month we come home”. the basuwe practising in lesotho believes that the period initiates attend initiation schools in the free state is too short: “the period is too short because at this time you have not been given all the values and laws”. both mentioned that in the past, the lebollo took seven months. according to the literature (maharasoa & maharaswa, 2004; malisha, maharaj & rogan, 2008) lebollo traditionally takes a period of six months in the basotho culture and three months for xhosa and venda males. van rooyen et al. (2006: 28) argue that the duration of the isolation usually depends on the healing process after the ‘cutting’ (circumcision). the circumcision usually takes place on the second day at the initiation school while the heeling takes place satisfactorily after two or three months. initiates claim that they are men and not boys researchers (malisha et al., 2008; mohapi, 2007; mohlaloka, 2014) found that some initiates returning from the ‘bush’ are arrogant individuals who set themselves apart from uninitiated fellow-learners and formal schoolteachers. these initiates also believe that some school rules are not applicable to them because they are ‘men’. the two basuwe who took part in this study agreed that initiates are still children even after initiation (“children who have attended traditional initiation school are children and they come back as children, there is no such thing as they are men”). the participants however explained that while the community does not regard initiates as men, they are seen as men among their peers: “children who come back from a mountain come back as man, where, from his peers because he has peers who were initiated with him. they [were] initiated at the same time.” both participants are adamant that a boy only becomes a man when he has a family. it is only then, according to the participants, that he can be regarded as a man, not when he is still under the care of his parents. according to the participants young initiates who call themselves adults cross the line. one of the participants declared that “the cultural tradition does not say this children are men after initiation, they [children] cross the traditional law.” according to this, participant initiates are taught that they should know that upon arrival from the initiation schools, they will still be sent on errands by their parents and that they are still children: lebollo is a basotho cultural tradition, because here you are taught sesotho of our forefathers. we are taught games and things like respect, etc. so that when i arrive home i should know that i’m still a child, i’m sent on errands like any other child. both participants indicated that the practice of initiates mocking uninitiated fellow-learners is unacceptable. one of them said: “that is not supposed to happen because when a child has gone to the mountain is there for himself; they cannot mock others because they cannot make them to go to initiation.” 28 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) whereas the interviewees emphasise that young initiates are still children in the eyes of adults, the literature accentuates the elevated status of initiates after attending initiation school. venter (2013: 142) opines, for example, that xhosa boys will do almost anything in order to attend initiation school because, “if he participates and survives the initiation, he receives the sought-after state of manhood and is defined as a moral being with dignity and self-respect”. venter (2013: 145) finds that xhosa boys who decide not to take part in traditional male initiation are at risk of “being sentenced to a perpetual state of boyhood”. barker and ricardo (2005:9) emphasise that initiation schools reinforce the divide between men and boys, initiated and uninitiated and men and women. the initiates’ unwillingness to embrace the teaching of their elders the participants blame initiates’ misbehaviour squarely on the shoulders of the initiates themselves because they do not follow what they were taught at the initiation school (“the problem is our children who bring this tradition into disrepute when they come back home; they do things that they are not supposed to do other than what we teach them”). the availability of alcohol both participants mentioned that initiates who come back from initiation are guilty of alcohol abuse. they seemingly flock into taverns and compromise traditional values (“now these children go to the taverns and these things – we do not agree with at the mountain. this kind of behaviour we strongly disagree with”). ntombana (2011) also alludes to initiates’ alcohol abuse in his critique of initiation practices. the inappropriate conduct of parents one of the participants blames parents for the growing criticism against lebollo. according to this participant, parents buy alcohol for their children and drink with them upon their return home: “we as parent we are at fault because when these children come from the mountain we give them money or buy liquor for them and drink with them”. ultimately, these children disrespect their parents and parents blame initiation in return: “tomorrow this child becomes troublesome then the parents start blaming lebollo for his child bad behaviour. this is the reason why lebollo is given a bad name”. suggestions on how to address initiates’ deviant behaviour when the two participants were asked for suggestions on how to address negative learner behaviour that may be linked to lebollo (cf. mohlaloka, 2014), both said that it should be easy to discipline initiates because they come from ‘a place with order’. they both suggested close cooperation between schools’ disciplinary committees and basuwe. it was mentioned by one of the participants that the basuwe might be able to give uninitiated formal schoolteachers insight into the underlying reasons for specific – often unacceptable – behaviour; for example, initiates’ unwillingness to speak or claims that they are men and not boys. the participants furthermore stressed that the main role-players in a child’s discipline should be the parents. it was pointed out by one of the participants that the relationship between basuwe and parents is very important. this participant accordingly suggested that parents should liaise with traditional leaders in pursuing the initiate’s holistic and balanced upbringing. 29 mohlaloka, jacobs & de wet insights from traditional initiation teachers... 8. conclusion and recommendations according to matobo et al. (2009: 111) “among the africans in south africa a man who is not initiated and circumcised remain for the rest of his life a boy (nkwenkwe – xhosa; moshemane – sotho and tswana)”. a boy cannot attain any form of status within his family and community without undergoing initiation. therefore, traditional initiation schools still remain an important part of the transition to adulthood in indigenous cultures. this article emphasises that lebollo is more than traditional male circumcision. the literature review has shown that lebollo aims to equip initiates with competencies that are necessary for adulthood. these competencies resonate with the formal south african curriculum that aims to equip learners “with the knowledge, skills and values necessary for self-fulfilment, and meaningful participation in society as citizens of a free country” (department of basic education, 2011: section 1.3(b). the formal south african curriculum also states that it values indigenous knowledge systems (department of basic education, 2011: section 1.3 [c]). while some of the competencies addressed by the traditional initiation schools are unique to these schools (e.g. the ability to uphold secrecy and warriorship) most are also explicitly or implicitly included in, for instance, the grade 10 life orientation curriculum (department of basic education, 2011: section 3.1). the traditional initiation schools’ endeavour for physical and inner purity can, for example, be linked with the topic recreation and emotional health as well as self-awareness, self-esteem and self-development in life orientation while the personal and communal virtues of the traditional initiation school complements social skills and responsibilities to participate in civic life in life orientation. traditional initiation schools address the boys’ spirituality, which can be juxtaposed to different belief systems in life orientation. a last example of the commonalities in formal and traditional initiations schools is the traditional initiation topic of respect for social structures and patriotism that aligns with social skills and responsibilities to participate in civic life in life orientation. these examples indicate that the formal school system and the traditional initiation schools intend to prepare boys to become mature and responsible adults. however, the behaviour by many learners in general and specifically the boys who return from traditional initiation schools are often in contrast with the above. at present, it thus appears that lebollo has limited positive influence on learners’ behaviour. mohlaloka et al. (2016: 715-718) found, inter alia that many of them act defiantly particularly towards female teachers and uninitiated male teachers in the formal schools and they engage in gangsterism. the views of the traditional initiation schoolteachers voiced in this paper provide insights in terms of possible reasons for the deviant behaviour of initiates. these reasons include the initiates youthfulness, inadequate time spent at the initiation school, the erroneous view of initiates that they are adults and should be treated as such, initiates’ unwillingness to embrace the teaching of their elders, substance abuse upon return and the inappropriate conduct of parents. comparative education works from the understanding that formal education systems are not isolated from the societal structures and influences and acknowledges the tension that the local-global dichotomy brings. kubrow and fossum (2007: 286) however applaud south africa: the indigenous knowledge movement in postcolonial south africa is but one example of how a democratic nation has sought to include local knowledge bases while simultaneously taking its place on the world stage. 30 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) while schools should prepare learners to become global citizens, they should at the same time negotiate “community values at more local levels” and respect “diversities reflected in cultures and belief systems” (kubrow & fossum, 2007: 287). in the context of this study, it is thus important for formal schools to draw form the “local knowledge bases” that kubrow and fossum is mentioning above by forming partnerships with traditional schools and build harmony between the two. we caution role-players to take heed of the warning by fox (2003: 142) that communication between different cultures is significantly influenced by the “relative positions of perceived powers of the speakers” and thus in order to find solutions, the formal school sector should not position themselves as the powerful during such communication. close cooperation between formal schools’ disciplinary committees and basuwe, as well as between basuwe and parents is paramount in addressing initiates’ deviant behaviour. by identifying the parents of learners who attended traditional initiation and by providing them with the necessary understanding of what the formal and traditional schools expect, the situation can possibly improve to minimise the number of learners who attend initiation schools at too young an age and initiates’ alcohol abuse, among other things. consequently, this will also reduce deviant behaviour in formal schools among initiates. in the broader context of other countries and communities, the formal school sector should take note of the various cultures of the learners in their schools as part of the societal factors that influence education and involve parents and cultural leaders in dealing with learner behaviour. references arnove, r.f. 2003. introduction: reframing comparative education: the 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traditional initiation schools in the context of hiv/aids in the limpopo province, south africa. journal on health, risk & society, 10(6), 585-598. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13698570802533713. masitsa, m.g. 2011. exploring safety in township secondary schools in the free state province. south african journal of education, 31, 163-174. matšela, z.a. 1990. bochaba ba basotho [the basotho culture]. mazenod: mazenod printers. matobo, t.a., makatsa, m. & obioha, e.e. 2009. continuity in the traditional initiation practice of boys and girls in contemporary southern africa society. study of tribes and tribals, 7(2), 105-113. meissner, o. & buso, d.l. 2007. traditional male circumcision in the eastern cape, scourge or blessing. south african medical journal, 97(5), 371-373. mgqolozana, t. 2009. a man who is not a man. pietermaritzburg: university of kwazulu-natal press. mohapi, s.j. 2007. the influence of educators’ life experiences on classroom discipline practices. unpublished phd thesis. pretoria: university of pretoria. mohlaloka, s.m.b. 2014. towards policy implementation: exploring behaviour of male learners who underwent traditional initiation schooling. unpublished masters of education dissertation. bloemfontein: university of the free state. mohlaloka, s.b., jacobs, l. & de wet, n.c. 2016. the influence of traditional male initiation (lebollo) on school discipline: educators’ perspectives. deviant behavior, 37, 1-13. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2015.1071132. nieuwenhuis, j. 2007. analysing qualitative data. in k. maree (ed.). first step in research. pretoria: van schaik. ntombana, l. 2011. should xhosa male initiation be abolished? international journal of cultural studies, 14(6), 631-640. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1367877911405755 peltzer, k. & kanta, x. 2009. medical circumcision and manhood initiation rituals in the eastern cape, south africa: a post intervention evaluation. culture, health & sexuality, 11(1), 83-97. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13691050802389777. rossouw, j.p. 2003. learner discipline in south african public schools – a qualitative study. koers [directions], 68(4), 413-435. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/koers.v68i4.350. torres, c.a. 2003. comparative education: the dialectics of globalization and its discontents. in r.f. arnove & c.a. torres (eds.). comparative education. the dialect of the global and the local. lanham: rowman & littlefield. twala, c. 2007. the african tradition of initiation and circumcision: a curse or cure in south africa. suid-afrikaanse tydskrif vir kultuurgeskiedenis [south african journal of cultural history], 2(1), 22-33. http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/sajch.v21i1.6346. van rooyen, l., potgieter, f. & mtezuka, l. 2006. initiation school amongst the southern ndebele people of south africa: depreciating tradition or appreciating treasure? international journal of adolescence and youth, 13, 13-41. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02673843.2006.974 7964 venter, r. 2013. xhosa male initiation: freedom of choice versus the need to belong. journal of child & adolescent mental health, 25(2), 139-147. http://dx.doi.org/10.2989/17280583.20 13.767263 32 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) vincent, l. 2008. ‘boys will be boys’: traditional xhosa male circumcision, hiv and sexual socialisation in contemporary south africa. culture, health & sexuality: an international journal for research, intervention and care, 10(5), 431-446. http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/13691050701861447 wolhuter, c. 2013. the education system of south africa: catapulting the country into the twenty-first century. in k. hortshemke, p. siyakwazi, e. walton & c. wolhuter. education studies. history, sociology, philosophy. cape town: oxford press. wolhuter, c. & meyer, l. 2007. ʼn leerderperspektief op dissipline in histories swart sekondêre skole: ʼn kwalitatiewe ontleding [a learner perspective on discipline at historically black secondary schools: a qualitative analysis]. tydskrif vir geesteswetenskappe [journal of humanities], 47(3), 349-358. 112 the relevance of the school governance body to the effective decolonisation of education in south africa abstract decolonisation of education is understood in this paper as a means of formalising indigenous culture and knowledge within the formal school system. the focus of this paper is to see how the school governance body (sgb) can bring about decolonised education for sustainable development. the african societal culture and traditions seem to be misunderstood and side-lined today because of the privilege enjoyed by western values in formal education used to develop african children. the involvement of people at the grass roots who are still endowed with vast knowledge on this cultural heritage should be considered as an option. the south african school system gave room for community participation in the administration and management of schools under the system of school governing bodies (sgbs). these bodies have the potential of being a good source of indigenous knowledge and culture to the school system that will make the education more relevant and functional; hence, leading to sustainable development, if it is properly planned and tapped into. for this to happen, there is the need to examine the relevance of the body through close analysis of its composition and strength to assist in the decolonisation of education. this study adopted an ethnography approach of qualitative research. three rural-based eastern cape communities were used where 18 parents participated in the study. data were gathered through key informant interviews (kii) and focus group discussions (fgd). one of the results is that traditional leaders are part of the sgb, which makes it a good source of indigenous knowledge and traditions. it was recommended that the composition of the members of sgbs should statutorily include a recognised knowledgeable individual (rki) in the community to make the body a good source of indigenous knowledge. keywords: school governance, tradition, culture, indigenous knowledge, africanisation, education decolonisation 1. introduction the concept of “decolonisation of education” in africa has different meanings to different people that are calling for it. some authors look at the meaning from the dictionary point of view by describing it as the process by which a nation becomes independent with regard to the acquisition of knowledge skills, values, beliefs and habits (wingfield, 2017). wingfield also presents the meaning of decolonised education as given by activist students in n. duku professor of education, sgce, faculty of education, university of fort hare, east london campus, phone:, email: nduku@ufh.ac.za i.a. salami postdoc fellow, sgce, faculty of education, university of fort hare, east london campus, phone: +27836861651, email: snappy600@gmail.com corresponding author, dr i.a. salami, phone: +27836861651, email: snappy600@gmail.com doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i2.9 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(2): 112-125 © uv/ufs mailto:nduku@ufh.ac.za mailto:snappy600@gmail.com mailto:snappy600@gmail.com http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.9 113 duku & salami the relevance of the school governance body to the effective decolonisation ... south africa, that is, as a process of overthrowing the existing system of education so that the people it is supposed to serve can redefine it for themselves. evans (2016:1) also presents what student activists have described as decolonised education. these include the following: we study all these dead white men who presided over our oppression and we are made to use their thinking as a standard and as a point of departure. our own thinking as africans has been undermined. we must have our own education from our own continent. decolonisation advances the interest of africans instead of advancing eurocentric interest. the decolonisation of education has also been used to mean the process of rethinking about the whole structure of higher institutions of learning. according to this view, decolonisation refers to the process of tackling and dismantling the epistemic violence and hegemony of eurocentrism, completely rethink, reframe and reconstruct the curriculum and place south africa, southern africa and africa at the centre of teaching, learning and research in african universities (heleta, 2016). others looked at decolonisation of education in africa from the angle of what to teach and with what to teach. this is best exemplified in brodie (2016) who sees decolonisation of education as the process of transforming the content of a school subject, that is, what is being taught to the learners. vandenbosch (n.d.) also submits that another dimension to decolonise or contextualise education is by using environmental experiences as media through which the content of education is delivered to the learners. for vandenbosch, this process will enable the learners to see the knowledge and skills acquired from western education as being relevant and appropriate to the immediate community and environment. in the context of this study, decolonisation of education is understood as a means of formalising indigenous culture and knowledge by incorporating it into the formal school system. the meaning given to decolonisation in this paper, and the urgent call for it in all educational systems in africa, is informed by the status of african culture, language, values, beliefs, norms, traditions and indigenous knowledge in african societies and around the world in general. the acceptance of western education, which came with its language and culture, has relegated or consigned cultural practices and languages in africa to the background (chinweizu, 2016; wiles, 2016). it has gotten to a state whereby the mark of a well-educated african person is the ability to exhibit westernised culture in all aspects of his/her life and an inability to speak his mother tongue or exhibit any of the african cultural practices or beliefs (salami, 2016). the argument of this paper is not about whether western education is appropriate or otherwise for african children or whether or not to accept the knowledge from western or any part of the world. the thesis of this paper is that african cultural practices and indigenous knowledge should be injected into the education provided to african children. this is important if the meaning of education, as given by the sociologists, will be applicable to african society. for instance, crossman (2017), quoting the view of emile durkheim on education, argues that education is the teaching, in an educational institution, of society’s culture, including moral values, ethics, politics, religious beliefs, habits and norms. this seems the only antidote for the sustainable development of african societies and continuity of all the tribes and races therein. 114 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) 2. effects of educating african children with western culture there is no doubt about the level of development and modernisation western education has brought to the shores of africa. this paper considers the contribution of western education to the african continent to be huge and significant. however, after many years of independence of many african countries, there is a tendency in these decolonised african societies to cling tenaciously to the western culture at the expense of indigenous culture. this is contrary to what happened in china and india, countries that were also colonised by european countries. the saying: “chinese and indians accepted the knowledge and skills in european education and dumped their language and culture; africans accepted the european language and culture and dumped the knowledge and skills in the western education” would thus seem to be a fact. salami (2016) highlights the negative consequences of an overemphasis of western culture in the education of african children as denying children the knowledge of indigenous moral and social values; resulting in the cultural hybridisation of the children; extinction of indigenous dialects/languages, cultural practices and values and the reduction of children’s pride and patriotism for their individual countries. arowolo (2010), while discussing the social effects of exposing african children to western education, points to the fact that too much exposure of african children to western culture has destroyed the family structure and social relations in our society; developed individualism in the children; promoted urbanisation, corruption and the abuse of sexuality; destroyed indigenous languages and brought about cultural alterations. 3. school governing bodies in south africa: are the objectives enough to assist in decolonisation? school governance is a feature of school leadership in schools worldwide. while there is considerable variation in the way school governance is defined, one could argue that within the south african context, school governance relates to, inter alia, part of the processes and systems by which a school operates. it also relates to the use of structures of authority and collaboration to allocate resources and coordinate or control activities linked to the management of the school. in this kind of school management, parents, educators and learners are drawn into partnership for the common purpose of the education of the learners. when we place the school in its global context, we quickly realise that there is nothing inherently new about school governance; it has been a hallmark of school systems in other parts of the world for many years (lemmer & badenhorst, 1997). involving the wider community in the school, including its decision-making processes, has been a central theme of social scientists for decades (sadovnik, cookson & semel, 2001). however, within the south african school context, school governance is a relatively new practice. as naidoo (2004) points out, the enactment of sasa in 1996 created the space for school governance in school leadership. the south african schools act (sasa), no 84 of 1996, describes ideals for stakeholder participation in school governance, whereas school governance before 1994 used to be characterised by authoritarian and exclusive practices, in which black parents in school governance structures lacked a consultative and advisory role. the new policy requires broader and democratic participation by parents, teachers and learners in the life of the school through the medium of school governing bodies (sgbs). these are composed of teachers, non-teaching staff and parents, and in the case of secondary schools, learners (mabasa & themane, 2002). 115 duku & salami the relevance of the school governance body to the effective decolonisation ... amongst others, sasa provides for the establishment of sgbs with considerable powers at all public schools. a basic set of functions is stipulated for all sgbs and these are summarised in the school governing body induction/training manual by the province of the eastern cape education (2012:40) as: the sgb should create an environment in which the learner can function optimally, in other words, the environment conducive to learning: • a healthy environment with an adequate water supply which is safe for drinking purposes and sufficient toilets which meet hygiene standards; • an environment where discipline is valued – this refers to a disciplinary code of behaviour, a code that has been developed by the sgb; • an environment where sound teaching is the order of the day – this refers to the appointment of competent educators, which is an important function of the sgb among others. this governance model was designed to give schools greater autonomy to manage resources; determine the delivery of educational resources; democratise local control of education decision-making and respond to community needs. amongst the benefits of community participation is teacher effectiveness, improvement of learner performance and the general sense of school ownership by the community (boaduo, milondzo & adjei, 2009). significant studies have been conducted on school governance in south africa (see sayed & soudien, 2005; naidoo, 2004; mncube, 2008; heystek, 2010; duma, 2013; mavuso & duku, 2014; dibete, 2015). these, in general, address the challenges associated with school governance, as well as the micro-politics of the implementation of sasa in schools. there is a dearth of research studies on the relevance of sgbs towards, and involvement in the decolonisation of education in south africa. the composition of sgb, which includes parents and community leaders, make it viable as a source of indigenous knowledge that can influence curriculum review to accommodate community knowledge, skills, culture and philosophies into the school system. the panaceas towards relevant and functional education that can bring about sustainable development of african societies are scarce in literature, if it is available at all. the study that is close to the approach of this paper is mabovula’s (2008), which explores learner participation in schools in the eastern cape. mabovula calls for the inclusion of african principles in the deliberations of democratic school governance and the participation of learners in particular. however, mabovula does not explore deep cultural issues in participation. yet, there is evidence that african culture, specifically traditional leadership and its principles influence rural local education, albeit in different and contested ways (nelson mandela foundation, 2005). for instance, in the eastern cape rural education survey, the chief was ranked as having the most influence in schools (ibid). this is despite sasa’s silence on the role of traditional leaders, african culture and tradition. the studies that address culture, tradition and traditional leadership include ntsebeza (2006). ntsebeza notes that, despite the role of the traditional leaders during apartheid, the traditional leaders not only survived but also seem to have won unprecedented powers in rural south africa. both studies note the importance of african culture and traditional leadership in democratic south africa and acknowledge the contradictions it brings. 116 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) besides research studies, a closer examination of the functions of sgbs, as referred to earlier, also shows that the initial intention about this school stakeholders’ forum excludes being a source of knowledge, wisdom, cultural values and traditions to the school. if the current school system is still colonised, as claimed by some authors, therefore, the functions of the sgbs can be summarised as being just to create an enabling environment on the african soil for hybridising african children. therefore, now that the call for decolonisation is loud and all hands are on deck to make this a success, it will not be out of point for a study to rethink and re-present an sgb as an organ that can not only make the decolonisation a reality. it should also make such decolonised education functional and context appropriate to the recipients. the idea of harnessing and utilising indigenous knowledge to fortify formal educational systems is not new in the educational system of a nation. barnhardt and kawagley (2005) report how this was done to enrich the school curriculum and enliven the learning experiences of students in alaska. 4. theoretical framework several educational theories and principles explain the relationship between socio-cultural milieu and the development of learners in school. two such theories are the ecological system theory and the principle of developmentally appropriate practices and these two will form the bedrock of this study. ecological system theory was propounded by urie bronfenbrenner in the year 1979 and states that as a child develops, the interaction within the environments becomes more complex and that this complexity can arise as the child’s physical and cognitive structures grow and mature (bronfenbrenner, 1986). this theory outlines how child development is explained by various socio-cultural milieu of the child, which are grouped into five systems namely microsystem, mesosytem, exosystem, macrosystem and chronosystem. this particular study leans on the fourth system as presented in this theory – the macrosystem. there have been several interpretations of this particular system by several other authors. for instance, excell, linington and schaik (2015) submit that the macrosystem comprises those factors that are more distant from the child’s specific world. this is described with such terms as cultural values, political philosophy and socio-economic status. sincero (2017) submits that a macrosystem is the actual culture of an individual. that is, the cultural contexts involving the economic status, norms, the beliefs, the values and total way of life of the family that is dictated by family ethnicity, race or tribe. while presenting this system, bronfenbrenner (1994:40) submits that macrosystem consists of the overarching pattern of micro-, meso-, and exosystems characteristics of a given culture or subculture, with particular reference to the belief systems, bodies of knowledge, material resources, customs, life-styles, opportunity structures, hazards, and life course options that are embedded in each of these broader systems. the macrosystem may be thought of as a societal blueprint for a particular culture or subculture. it is clear from this submission that macrosystem is all about the culture and total way of life of people wherein the child is born and living. the argument of ecological system theory is that cultural practices, indigenous knowledge and beliefs of a given society influence the development of the children in such a society. this paper, therefore, posits that there will 117 duku & salami the relevance of the school governance body to the effective decolonisation ... be problems with the development of those children who are being exposed to alien culture through education in the formative years. whenever the discussion on the influence of culture on holistic development is staged, one cannot but mention the principle of developmentally appropriate practices (dap) developed by the national association of education of young children (national association for the education of young children, 2009:10). this association presents one of the three sides to dap called “context appropriate” as referring to: the values, expectations, and behavioural and linguistic conventions that shape children’s lives at home and in their communities that practitioners must strive to understand in order to ensure that learning experiences in the program or school are meaningful, relevant, and respectful for each child and family. in other words, it is developmentally inappropriate to expose children to learning experiences and cultural practices that are not found within the people in the community where they live or are foreign to their society. this again points to the justification of the process of injecting african cultural practices into the educational systems in all african societies as being germane. 5. objectives of the study the main objective of this paper is to determine the potentiality of sgbs as a major way by which decolonisation of school systems could be achieved which could bring about relevant and functional education that will ensure sustainable development in africa. specifically, the study aims to achieve the following objectives: i. examine the composition of sgbs as a source of indigenous knowledge needed for decolonising the south african education system and at the same time ensuring sustainable development. ii. determine the extent to which the sgbs possess and maintain indigenous cultural practices in their operations. iii. examine the authority of sgbs in providing indigenous knowledge and maintaining discipline in the school system. 6. research questions in order to guide the focus of this study, some themes that guided the data collected and the analysis of the data were generated (ratcliff n.d.). the themes are: i. what is the composition of sgbs and its potential as sources of indigenous knowledge meant for decolonisation of education for sustainable development in the south african school system? ii. how can sgb members be a group that possess and maintain indigenous cultural practices in the process of governing schools? iii. to what extent do sgb members possess authority when it comes to the provision of indigenous knowledge in the school system for decolonisation? iv. how will discipline be maintained with the introduction of indigenous knowledge into the school system through sgbs? 118 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) 7. methodology this study adopted one of the qualitative approaches known as the ethnographic approach. this approach was necessary as the study aimed to describe respondents’ life experiences in school governance and manners in which they gave meaning to the influence of culture to their school governance participation (fouche & schurink, 2011). furthermore, the approach was relevant as the study aimed to give meanings to a human phenomenon, from a multiple social and historical meanings of individual. creswell (2007:18) asserts that in qualitative research, knowledge is based upon constructed perspectives from multiple social and historical meanings of individual experiences. ethnography, on the other hand, is a strategy of investigation in which the researcher studies an intact cultural group in a natural setting over a prolonged period of time by gathering data through observation and interviews (creswell, 2009). three rural-based eastern cape communities participated in the study. a total number of 18 parents were involved, with 12 females and 6 male parents. the majority of the participants –12 – were members of the school governing bodies (sgbs) in their respective schools, while the remaining six members were concerned stakeholders of education in the communities. relevant ethical clearances were obtained from appropriate authorities, the consents of the participants were sought using consent forms and rules and regulations of research ethics, as applicable to the province, were strictly adhered to (sotuku & duku, 2015). in line with the research approach adopted, an interview schedule was used as the main instrument to collect rich data on participants’ lived experiences about school governance participation and observations. this is done through key informant interviews (kii) and focus group discussions (fgd). kii was done by meeting the selected participants, booking a date with them and carrying out the interview on the scheduled data. however, fgd was done when the sgbs were meeting in their respective schools. the researchers seized the opportunity of the meeting to carry out the interview with the parent members of sgbs only. data collected were analysed through content analysis. ratcliff (n.d.) submits that in content analysis, the document, text or speech is examined to see what themes emerge or to determine what the participants talk about the most. therefore, the analysis is done based on the identified themes. 8. presenting and discussing results composition of sgbs: potential sources of indigenous knowledge meant for decolonisation of education for sustainable development in the south african school system in all the sites, more women than men served as sgb members, as “the economically active men were migrant labourers in cities such as johannesburg and cape town,” this accounted for more women among the sgb participants to this study (8 out of 12). women in such contexts were reportedly left behind to “keep the fires burning,” being a “home maker” is regarded as a woman’s traditional identity. such women are custodians of knowledge, most importantly, indigenous knowledge for them to represent their community in the school system, where all the children are to be educated. several literatures have presented african women as custodians of indigenous knowledge in all ramifications of life (akpabio & akankpo, 2003; food and agriculture organisation of the united nations, 2005; seleti & tihompho, 2014). 119 duku & salami the relevance of the school governance body to the effective decolonisation ... in traditional african culture, women are assigned the role of child upbringing while the men are to maintain discipline. this must have accounted for women’s knowledge of type of education, the nature of content to be exposed to children, the kind of relationship children are expected to keep with peers and adults and what determines an intelligent child. another aspect of the sgb composition that is worth examining here is the marital status of the members. marital status seemed to be one of the main determining criteria for sgb membership. their unmarried counterparts seem isolated and ostracised. the majority of men were also married (80%). a typical experience of a single female was captured in the following comment: “i do not consider myself qualified to attend parent meetings… i am not married…my parents are the active ones in these things…this is what is socially expected.” all the respondents reported that it was unanimously decided in the meetings that only married women be elected and that married women were generally regarded as “trustworthy, respectful and respected” community members. again, being married gives the members of the sgbs an added experience in childrearing practices and home management in the family, which is seen as the social unit of the society (seleti & tihompho, 2014). again, traditional leadership seemed to be a dominant feature of school governance membership and participation in all three sites, particularly in one site. three elderly men, who had links with traditional leadership, viewed their participation in school governance as a “birth right”. showing how this identity could be mixed with that of modernity, one man also defined his participation in terms of his educational qualifications. a key factor for him was according to section 21 status by the government to all the eastern cape secondary schools, which he believed, for his village, would not have been possible, without his participation and guidance. in the latter village, the traditional leadership institution was used to promote and enforce community participation in school governance. in the assignment of school governance, the presence of traditional leaders is a symbol of maintenance of culture, traditions, norms and beliefs of the people. khunou (2009) submits that the institution of traditional leadership embodies the preservation of culture, traditions, customs and values of a given society. this component of the sgbs makes it strong as the source of indigenous knowledge that can be injected into the school system in order to decolonise the system. sustaining women, married individuals and traditional leaders as membership in sgbs cannot be a problem in an african society. this in other words means that sustainability of indigenous knowledge in the school system if decolonisation and the consequential development are achieved can be sustained. 9. sgb members as a group that possesses and maintains indigenous cultural practices in the process of governing schools it is evident in the findings of this study that sgb members show much regard for african cultural practices in their interactions and undertakings. for instance, in debates in meetings, women used proxy agency to win, that is, men who had power to act on their behalf to get the outcomes they (women) desired. this is because of the african tradition that sees an intelligent and cultured woman as the one who is submissive and shows respect for men. the in-betweenness of the space seemed to be more traditional than modern. women also reportedly kept quiet in meetings because that was socially expected; however, they made sure that they “could not be silenced” by using any available opportunity to air their views. 120 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) to some men, female single parenthood was a “…reflection of unruliness…they [single women] are disobedient as they do not have husbands to respect and therefore cannot participate.” these accounts reflect the powerful influence of african traditions that are still upheld even in this democratic world. it also reveals the changing conception of tradition, which produces and reproduces itself in the midst of an ever-changing historical context. tshivhase’s popularity, to emphasise the point, does not depend solely on his traditional leadership stature, but more so on his innovative policy with respect to land and development. africans believe in the power of child upbringing because of the fact that children are considered as the “staff in the hand of blind man” to the parents at old age. the sgb members demonstrated this in their level of seriousness to ensure that all the children in the communities go to school every day. in the reported “red village”, the sgb chairperson reportedly “forced” children to go to school, and sometimes “fined” mothers who gave their daughters domestic chores that prevented them from attending school. this is another example of how the sgb members have been ensuring that tradition harmoniously exists side by side with modernity. 10. authority of sgb members regarding the provision of indigenous knowledge in the school system for decolonisation in an african society, most of the power and authority to control the society is accorded to the traditional leaders and the subjects hold them in high esteem and hardly challenge their authority, especially specially when such a leader is seen to be a lover of justice (khunou, 2009). in the context of this research, traditional leadership seemed to be a dominant feature of school governance membership and participation in all three sites, particularly in one site. in village 1, the traditional leadership institution was used to promote and enforce community participation in school governance. here the village councillor was co-opted to the sgb specifically to represent the great place. an sgb educator viewed this as “a strategic move in exercising authority in the broader communities, as the villagers recognised and respected traditional institutions more”. in village 2, the chief was unhappy that the department of basic education did not accord traditional leadership the respect it deserves. he reported that the government only uses them as mediators. he, however, believes that traditional leaders have so much to offer. he reported: we could mainstream school agenda in our community meetings, so that education is truly a community affair. i hear them talk about school violence. if i was involved we could mobilise the same strategies used in the community to fight violence and crime. what is strange is that the learners and the teachers belong to the community, when they break the law at home or in the village, the parents send them to me to warn and advise them. the mainstreaming of school issues was observed during a community meeting in village 3, where the great place has a representation in the sgb. this would assist to mainstream school issues within the community agenda; in that way, school is not divorced from the community it serves. this almost concurs with fokwang’s (2003) study, which demonstrates how post-1994 south african venda subjects honoured their traditional leader, chief tshivhase, despite the rejection of traditional leaders by many south african subjects elsewhere. his subjects felt that he epitomised their hopes and aspirations, and provided a shield for them 121 duku & salami the relevance of the school governance body to the effective decolonisation ... against the market-driven policies of the local authorities. he decided, for example, to back his subjects in their refusal to pay for services not received. this links with lopes (1996) who identifies tradition as a major dimension of defence against the most aggressive aspects of the imported models. in chief tshivhase context, he also successfully stood up to the demarcation board’s attempt to take control of accessible land in rural areas. this study begins to respond to oomen’s question on the support given to traditional leadership (oomen, 2002:3). significantly, the cited characteristics of tshivhase did not only bring him popularity as a political leader who was sensitive to his followers’ needs, but also respect fit for a traditional leader. the experiences from this study have demonstrated that the sgb members, as now constituted, has power and authority to make things happen in their communities. but there used to be a set of individuals in the african society that has not been recognised in the sgb membership, that is, the most recognised knowledgeable individual (rki) who, most of the time, might not be membered by some of the leaders and might not be so wealthy, but is the custodian of the indigenous knowledge. if rkis in the community are made the members of the sgb, the authority to knowledge, which can be used to decolonise education, is certain. 11. maintenance of discipline with the introduction of indigenous knowledge into the school system through sgbs africans have a strong belief in discipline, more especially on the younger ones. this can be found in one of the african witty sayings that “omo taa ko, tao ko, l’oma gb’ele taa ko ta” (a child we refused to train will sell the house we built). this philosophy is also evident in the practices of sgb members studied. for instance, the uncooperative parents (those who did not attend school meetings, pay building funds, and other offences) “were fined by the great place, which included tribute of an ox or being prevented from ploughing for a season”. the threat of a “fine” may be equated with mamdani’s (1996) analogy of “a clenched fist”, which he used to describe the authority of the traditional leaders. the case in “red village” earlier reported about the sgb chairperson ensuring that children go to school even when force has to be applied and making those parents who engage their children during school hours pay for such acts. these are examples of how the sgb exercises authority to discipline parents as well as the younger ones in the community in order to make them fit as members of that community. there are cases of maintaining discipline among members of the sgb. for example, a younger female member reflects how she used to maintain discipline while in the meeting. she sometimes exercised agency: “i tell what i want to say to an old woman next to me and ask her to say it on my behalf”. in another instance, women reportedly kept quiet in meetings because that was socially expected; however, they made sure that they “could not be silenced” by using any available opportunity to air their views. proxy agency, even in the case of age, gender and marital status, seemed to be a strategy that is widely used. sgb members can also exercise their level of discipline extending even to the homes of the learners in some instance. in the case on village 1, one of the traditional leaders claims, “if i was involved we could mobilise the same strategies used in the community to fight violence and crime. what is strange is that the learners and the teachers belong to the community, when they break the law at home or in the village, the parents send them to me to warn and 122 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) advise them…” therefore, maintenance of discipline is already built-in with the composition of the sgb and this will assure the sustainability of the indigenous knowledge and practices, if the decolonisation is achieved. 12. conclusion in the quest to decolonise education in africa and south africa in particular, the question of “how” and “by whom” is still unanswered. this article attempted to shed light on a plausible way through which this can be achieved, which is through using the strength already built into the school system – the sgbs. in the study, four important features of sgbs emerged that make it a body that cannot be ignored when it comes to a successful decolonisation of the educational system. the first is that the body is a potential source of indigenous knowledge and culture (ikc), secondly, members of sgbs possess and maintain ikc, thirdly, this body has authority built in it, which the entire community respects and lastly, the body has strategies to maintain discipline. therefore, this paper has presented sgbs as a viable source of indigenous knowledge (as part of what to teach), as a management strategy and as being capable of ensuring the sustainability of decolonised education. 13. recommendations based on the findings of this study, the following recommendations are proffered to enhance the maximum utilisation of sgbs to achieve the decolonisation of education in south africa: • the composition of the members of sgbs should statutorily include a recognised knowledgeable individual (rki) in the community. this individual could be more than one person, of any gender, marital or socio-economic status but unanimously identified as having knowledge of indigenous knowledge and culture (ikc) more than any other person has. this will strengthen the body as a source of ikc. • the department of education needs to establish a provincial committee, comprising education scholars in the province, which will work closely with sgbs to harvest those ikc that must be incorporated into the formal education system as part of the content of the curriculum. • the mode of operation of sgbs must statutorily be 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[accessed 11 june 2017]. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0038038501035004006 http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0038038501035004006 https://upjournals.co.za/index.php/ijeda/article/view/46 https://projectrise.news24.com/decolonised-education-shouldnt-mean/ _goback 15 a transformative exploration of epistemic individual(istic) identity formation within a synergistic decolonial student support system abstract the possibility of individual (istic) identity formation is explored within a context of a synergistic and communal support system. within this context, the intrinsic complexities of the african child who enters the academia with a multiplicity of epistemic identity contestations are simultaneously explored. the ensuing alienation resulting from the cultural displacement from the known and familiar to the unknown and unfamiliar is brought into view as a factor for further interrogation. attention is thus drawn to the implications for identity formation in this cultural and epistemic displacement. in this discussion the ubuntu philosophical orientation is presented as part of a transformative pathway of transition into the multiple contextual nuances of identity formation. this is coupled with participatory praxis within the paradigm of community-based action for transformation. the empirical data of this discussion accrues from a study in which the existential realities and complexities of being a black african in a previously white institution of higher learning were brought into view. this study paid specific attention to the convergence of language and identity in relation to a contextualized understanding of the performance (as it was conceived of in this study) of this cohort. the findings of this study pointed towards the need for a synergistic student support system that would provide individualized or individualistic and customized support. i argue here that the african child is often kept in a cyclical position of pathologizing, insubordination and multilayered subjugation, within a system that does not adequately provide support for this positionality. this paper thus interrogates the possibility and potential of the collective in harnessing the benefit to be derived from communal interaction and engagement in the direction of interpersonal and intrapersonal transformation. in this regard i present the tenets of the ubuntu way of life within a decolonial synergistic support system that takes into consideration the value of communal interactions but not at the expense of individual transformation. key words: african child, ubuntu, individualistic, synergistic, transformative, ubuntu decolonial, communal spaces, pre-service teacher, praxis, identity formation 1. introduction this paper purposes to position individual(istic) transformation and identity formation within a communal and decolonial student support system. the focus of this dr patricia bn maseko university of the free state doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v36i2.3 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 36(2): 15-27 © uv/ufs http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2 16 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) discussion is, therefore, the merits of individualism as associated with professional identity formation within a communal space that allows for both the individual and collective good. the upshot of this orientation is the creation of a synergistic communal ethos that makes provision for individual identity formation. within this context the african child, the problem is presented as the multi-layered contestations of the pre-service teacher who enters the multi-cultural space of the academia (stewart, 2008). these contestations further have to do with identity formation in the pursuit of what ndlovu-gatsheni and others, (for example, ngugi, 2009 and quijano, 2007) refer to as the attainment of ontological density. in addition to the above-stated, this discussion is framed to bring into view the idea of mis recognition as it plays itself out within the institution. attention is paid to the issue of transitioning and its associated complexities. the theoretical orientation of ubuntu is foregrounded as an appropriate philosophy for facilitating the ideal of epistemic individual identity formation within the context of a synergistic student support system. furthermore, the methodological considerations pertaining to the study that forms the basis of this paper are taken into account followed by a discussion of the findings and concluding remarks. 2. institutional misrecognition postma (2016) and others like apple (2016); alexander (2014) and boughey (2007), by implication, bemoan the demerits of the corporatisation, commercialisation and capitalisation of higher education. the contention here is that this reasoning perpetuates apartheid’s mission of misrecognition (bourdieu, 2000; fraser, 2009; james, 2015 & fataar, 2017). bourdieu (2000) also refers to this phenomenon as symbolic violence that has implications for the academic performance of black first generation (g1) students’ – who, within the context of this discussion, represent the african child. misrecognition is conceptualised by fraser (2007:20) as injustice that, on the one hand, manifests itself as a denial of “… parity of participation…and interaction… through institutionalised obstacles…” on the other hand, the frasian view of misrecognition is that it is attributable to “distributive injustice or maldistribution… of economic structures” that deny them the resources they need for their academic success. this denial to factored into the journey of epistemic and ontological becoming with implications for identity-formation (barnett, 2009; maseko, 2015). the disadvantaged social and pre-university schooling backgrounds of the individuals that form the fulcrum of this discussion predispose them to both aspects of misrecognition. additionally, this phenomenon of misrecognition poses as a miscreant, in the form of subtle inequities such as institutional cultures (tabesnky & matthews, 2015) and non-responsive curricula (ndlovu-gatsheni & zondo, 2016). in the light of this discussion, these factors ultimately detract from professional identity formation. of specific relevance to this discussion is the concern with the individual(istic), that is personalised and customized identity formation, within a decolonial tutor setting. this discussion is, therefore, a contribution towards the corpus of consciousness-raising in the direction of a systemically engineered modus operandi that takes cognizance of and consciously seeks to eradicate misrecognition practices. i argue here that appropriate responsiveness to the challenges associated with misrecognition (and its attendant complexities) requires paying attention to the full bouquet of individual cultural, cognitive and affective complexities pertaining to these students’ displacement from their pre-university contexts of disadvantage. 17 maseko a transformative exploration of epistemic individual(istic) identity formation... fataar’s (2017:3) comments are instructive in this regard: what has therefore been missing from universities’ existence over the last 20 years has been a systemic and concerted focus on understanding what the shifting composition of the student body signified a concomitant academic platform whose fundamental orientation would be fuller recognition of the specificities associated with student’s epistemic becoming . this has connotations of cultural displacement (bammer, 1994) with implications for cultural epistemic and identity alienation. the transition from the known and familiar, that is, the preuniversity context to the unknown and unfamiliar, namely, the university context, is brought into view as part of the journey of professional teacher identity formation. attention is thus drawn to the implications for the identity development of preservice teachers within the process of cultural and epistemic transitioning. within this context, collegial support (which is attainable through communal student support systems) is an important factor in building a sense of belonging, with specific reference to professional teacher identity formation (izadinia, 2014; goodwin et al., 2014; wenger, 1998; 2000). the said transition carries connotations of an alienation that is exacerbated by several variables, as discussed below. 3. complexities of transitioning the transmigration from the familiar to the unfamiliar is problematized by highlighting the variables that are associated with and attributable to reductionist and technocratic views about student preparation and success and or (non) success. in this regard mbembe (2012:8) expresses disgruntlement with the national development plan (ndp). in his view, this body represents the reduction of colonially created social and material conditions to technical “mathematical modelling” that perpetuates the purposes of colonialism. in consonance with this view, fataar (2017) and others (lalu, 2007; soudien, 2012) lament the apartheid-inspired discursive practices. they suggest that these have been replaced by the current and future dispensation’s state-fuelled technocist ideological orientations. in other words, their view is that there has been a negative ideological shift. according to the views that relate to the afore-mentioned ideological orientations, the focus has shifted from the eradication of the structural remnants of apartheid to a modus operandi that is influenced and governed by, what fataar (2017:3) refers to as, “techno-instrumental reason”. this, he asserts, is partly attributable to the often-lamented disjuncture between policy formulation and responsive policy-implementation within the various structures of the academia. my contention in this regard is that the technocratic reductionist focus deflects attention from the systemic structures that are at the heart of the perpetuation of inequity. they thus call for a decolonial synergistic redressal strategy as suggested in this paper. elsewhere, albeit in an american context, and with specific reference to racism, verschelden (2017:34) observes that subtle racism, as opposed to “old style, in-your-faceracism”, requires more cognitive energy. she adds that it is easier to deal with blatant racism in the sense that this type of racism is quite clear and easy to detect. however, with subtle racism and its associated complexities such as misrecognition, an added affective and cognitive burden detracts from the ability to perform at optimal level. the burden is increased with the addition of alienation, exclusion and marginalisation (chetty & merret, 2014; giroux, 2014; higgins, 2013; storm & martin, 2013). when you add the concomitant effects of the potentially toxic mix of codification, meritocracy and performativity (maseko, 2018), you have the kind of post-colonial discontent and alienation that gave rise to protest movements 18 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) such as #feesmustfall and #rhodesmustfall (nyamnjoh, 2016). with regard to the above assertions, verschelden (2017:8) refers to what mullaithan and shafir (2013) conceive of as band-with tax when she states that: racism and poverty rob people of mental band-with, leaving them with limited cognitive resources to learn and perform to their potential and resulting in the national tragedy of blighted hope and squandered human capacity for creativity and problem-solving she adds other factors that have a bearing on band-with such as, for example, ill-health, which is associated with lack of access to appropriate medical attention owing to financial constraints. the afore-mentioned point towards the underlying factors that contribute towards the concomitant intricacies of the african child’s cultural and epistemic transitioning from the familiar (context of disadvantage) to the unfamiliar context (of the culture of the academia). i posit the view, therefore, that in the interests of the individual good, as well as the common collective good to the benefit of social stability, there is a need to make systemic (within the academia’s student support system) provision for the epistemic implications and cultural ramifications of transition. the aforementioned resonates with the contention pertaining to the cultural complexities of transitioning, with implications for alienation and misrecognition. i make the submission here, that this carries an implicit message of redressal, in the interests of individual identity re-cognition. in this sense, re-cognition is associated with mental band-with recovery. my contention in this regard is that tutorials can be used as an avenue for facilitating this recovery. this is in recognition of the assertion that, as a counter to alienation, the self is formed within social relations which is in consonance with the opinion presented by jaeggi (2014:82) that alienation is “…problematic because it undermines self-realization”. therefore, the afore-mentioned view supports the contention about individual (istic) professional identity formation within a communal context that is in consonance with an ubuntu-framed decolonial ethos and cultural modus operandi. 4. theoretical orientation the predominant orientation for the anti-alienation decolonial strategy is an ubuntu theoretical orientation towards a transformative pathway of transition into the multiple contextual nuances of identity formation. this is with specific reference to the african child – as conceived of in this discussion. the pertinence of this specific ubuntu orientation lies in the fact that community is the cornerstone of african thought and life. ubuntu is seen as a philosophy that, inter alia, foregrounds caring and compassion as well as reciprocity and dignity (mangaliso, 2011; bekker, 2008). more often than not, ubuntu is at the heart of many african rural and disadvantaged communities. this sense of community is often borne out of a sense of co-dependence and need for communal support (chachine 2008; adonis, 2008). however, contrary to commonly held beliefs about community, it is important to note that the communal character of african cultures does not mean that the good of the individual person is subordinated to that of the group. in a true community, the individual does not pursue the common good instead of his or her own but rather pursues his or her own good in order to promote the good of others. thus, an invitation is extended for members of a community to recognize that they can attain their own true good only by promoting the good of others. this is aptly exemplified through the igbo social structure in which “…even though there existed a strong social consciousness, the individual’s rights and existence as an entity were not 19 maseko a transformative exploration of epistemic individual(istic) identity formation... neglected” (ike & edozien, 2001:155). the notion of communalism, as espoused in the ubuntu ethos, is best illustrated through an akan proverb: the clan is like a cluster of trees which when seen from afar appear huddled together, but which would be seen to stand together individually when closely approached the proverb stresses the social reality of the individual, it expresses the idea that the individual’s identity is not subsumed within the collective identity. rather, the individual has a separate identity and that, “like the tree, some of whose branches may touch other trees, the individual is separately rooted and is not completely absorbed by the cluster. that is, communality does not obliterate or squeeze out individuality” (gyeye, 1996:32). the view i present here is that the backgrounds of disadvantage (with specific reference to black african students) carry implications for cultural capital in the form of collective survival strategies that emanate from the principles of ubuntu. in a sense, cultural capital is often associated with advantage and privilege (bourdieu, 1973). that is, it is regarded as part of the accrual system that derives from class privilege. in this sense, however, cultural capital is conceived of in positive and asset-based terms to draw attention to the benefits that are to be derived from a system (that is, ubuntu) that survives through co-existence and co-accrual. in view of this, my assertion here is that the cultural survival capital that individuals enter the academic space with can be harnessed to mitigate against the potentially incapacitating operational standards of the academia. thus, despite the negative existential realities associated with transitioning, students can draw from the tools derived from familiar cultural contexts to cope with the unfamiliar context of the academic terrain. in implicit consonance, godsell and chikane (2016:6) present the view that: university is to some extent a foreign language for all new students; academic language, concepts, work demands…for many black south african students the country of academia is not only foreign but hostile. they find little that is familiar in the structures and content that they are presented with. the above confirms the notion of transmigration from the familiar to the unfamiliar as well as the attendant alienation. subsequently, this points towards the need for a strategy that will circumvent the alienation that arises out of this. i argue, elsewhere (maseko, 2018) that the ramifications of coloniality call for a counter strategy in the form of a decolonial approach towards the attainment of ontological density and identity formation. albeit in a different context, bourdieu’s (1998a in mills and gale, 2010:27) views are worth noting. here he expresses the need for: increasing awareness of the mechanisms at work in the reproduction of disadvantage in education [so as to] offer a measure freedom for those manipulated by these mechanisms [with the intention] to improve access, participation and educational outcomes for marginalised and disenfranchised groups. in this conceptualisation of transformative decoloniality a high premium is placed on the inculcation a culture of critical consciousness and transformative praxis. this fusion has ramifications for both individual and collective transformation as is envisioned in this context. in a sense, this paper endeavours to contribute towards the discourses pertaining to the removal of the remnants and various manifestations of colonialism and its aftermath of coloniality. in this instance, particular emphasis is placed on transitioning decoloniality discourses from arenas of theoretical and ideological contestations into spaces (at both literal and figurative 20 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) levels) of pragmatic responses, with specific regard to institutions of higher learning. tutor spaces are, in this case, regarded as decolonial communal spaces that, in the ethos of ubuntu, provide opportunities for professional individual growth and collective development. 5. methodological approaches this paper uses as the premise and basis for some of the arguments presented here, a qualitative doctoral study that looked at language and identity as convergent factors (maseko, 2015). my specific interest in the study emanated firstly from my personal language and identity struggles -which would warrant a separate the ambit and context. secondly, in my professional capacity, as a lecturer, i often encountered the reality of seeing the potentially debilitating effects of the two phenomena on the performance of individuals from contexts of disadvantage. for purposes of this study, permission was sought from the relevant authorities in compliance with the requisite ethical clearance considerations. the participants were selected based on an invitation and their availability and voluntary willingness to participate in the study. they comprised of two layers, namely, on the one hand, that of the two lecturers (one black and one white) and, on the other hand, nine students (three for each level of study, that is first, second and third year) who availed themselves for the study. the students were second language speakers of english (l2), preservice teachers who transitioned from rural, urban and peri-urban contexts of disadvantage to a previously white institution of higher learning. the context of this institution was that english and afrikaans were the two official languages of instruction. even though the issue of their g1 (1st generation) status was not foregrounded in the study it was a given existential reality accruing from their backgrounds. the potential value of the participants’ responses was highlighted and data was generated through semi-structured interviews, in view of their utility and functionality in facilitating data generation. the dialogical design of the interviews allowed for open-ended responses (irvine, drew & sainsbury; 2013) which further allowed for a deeper insight into the complexities associated with the existential realities of their transmigration. a rapport was built with the participants through a modus operandi that created an environment of participatory camaraderie in which could freely converse about their challenges/experiences with the view to positively contribute towards my position in the hierarchical structure of the institution was such that i had no direct contact with them. in this regard, the interviews yielded utterances that were instructive in relation to their existential realities and contextual challenges. “ yoh…it was intimidating to express myself in a class full of people who spoke english; i never had the opportunity to speak english; i started speaking english when i came here, i must be honest with you i was scared that i might say the wrong thing…. one participant, (who was initially visibly ill at ease) asked. “can i please express myself in setswana?” after i acceded to her request she was able to open up to air her frustrations, with specific regard to her languagerelated challenges. the questions of the interviews were designed to be responsive to the main research question that revolved around the convergence of language and identity in relation to the performance and portraiture of the cohort of black bed foundation phase students that formed the focus of the study. the overarching objective of the study was thus the extent to which the phenomena of language and identity affected students’ ability to participate freely in teaching and learning environments, with specific reference to formal lecture hall or classroom settings. this backdrop, therefore, provides the contextual basis for the focus 21 maseko a transformative exploration of epistemic individual(istic) identity formation... of this discussion in relation to the claims pertaining to transmigration from the known to the known and professional identity formation within a decolonial communal context. in the study, the phenomena of language and identity were linked to participants’ experiences in relation to their participation and performance. in this regard, participation and performance were associated with the extent to which they were able to freely engage in class discussions as well as their ability to express themselves (as l2 speakers of english) without any fear of bias or discrimination (burke, 2014). 6. discussion of findings an analysis of the data yielded three themes and their concomitant categories. two of the three themes were largely related to language while the third theme was primarily associated with identity. the first theme and its related categories focused on, firstly, participants’ exposure to english in the pre-university school context and secondly, on their exposure in the pre-university social context. the second theme and its two categories centre on language, with specific reference to english, as the medium of instruction in the university context and language use; in relation to contextual support. even though the data from theme 2 relates mostly to language issues there are aspects that bear relevance for this discussion in relation to transmigration, misrecognition and alienation. for example, with regard to language use and contextual support, participants pointed out that they were overcome by feelings of inferiority whenever they had to participate and express themselves in classroom contexts. the following are examples of this occurrence: “i just keep quiet even when i need clarity…i’m too scared to say the wrong thing because in school we were taught in our mother tongue… here they say something and they just expect you to know” another student (y3s3) who, by virtue of her seniority, was expected to be in a better position, responded by stating: “i don’t think i understand fully like sometimes i think i’m not sure about what they want so i have to get someone to verify something for me.” a second year student (y2s1), however, confirmed that, for her, the passage of time played a significant role in her journey. nevertheless, her experiences, like that of her peers, aptly illustrate the fact that the convergence of language and identity-related factors has a significant bearing on performance: i think there’s a huge difference there because i’ve acquired a bit of english so it’s quite better than last year…in the beginning i wasn’t good in english so i wasn’t very comfortable but since now i can construct proper english sentences…in the beginning i would not even answer a question, so i would just keep quiet because i didn’t have that confidence… the above is an implicit reference of the convergence of language and identity as they were envisioned in the study. that is, the negative effects of the two phenomena on their academic performance as it was conceived of in this study. on the other hand, it draws attention to the positive regard for the acquisition of english language proficiency. this was attested to by the assertion by student identified through the pseudonym y2s2 below. however, at the same time, they felt that it would be in their best interests to face discomfort; and run the risk of ridicule and censure in order for them to, hopefully, gain confidence in expressing themselves. their assumption was that this would position them to be better teachers, in view of the value accorded to english as a medium of instruction and a universal language of communication. the second year student (y2s2) pointed out… 22 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) …when you go further you have to know english because it’s the most used language inside and outside our country … the data obtained through semi-structured interviews attests to the fact that the language and identity-related experiences of the nine selected students had a bearing on their cognitive band-with (vershcelden, 2017) with epistemic and ontological ramifications (maseko, 2015). of special significance was the fact that the participants were presented with the opportunity to air their views regarding ways in which they could contribute towards the amelioration of their circumstances. for example, they expressed the opinion that appropriate support, in the form of regular, consistent and user-friendly tutor sessions, would assist greatly in relation to some of the challenges they were experiencing. y1s1: i think it’s gonna help…coz right now they’ll tell us, ‘here’s a tutor’ but then there are no classes. so now coping with that thing is not easy… ya, something should be done …some people are struggling extremely although there are tutors …it’s still not enough because tutors…like [sometimes] they won’t be patient with you and they just call something out and you have no idea of what they are saying y2s2: i think programs like tutoring if they can form a group that can help us y3s2: …they’ll tell you that there is a tutor and the contacts and everything but then you have to book and when you go there then the person is not available so you just give up… the above comments substantiate the claims about the need for fit-for-purpose multilayered support system that will be cognisant of the complexities associated with transitioning from the familiar contexts of disadvantage into the unfamiliar situation of advantage. in the study, theme 3 and the two categories that were derived from it drew attention to both positive and negative identity related experiences. in view of the focus of the study these were limited to those that pertained specifically to participants’ participation and performance in formal class contexts. the positive experiences have to do with the extent to which they were able to exercise agency in circumventing the potentially debilitating circumstances of misrecognition with positive ramifications for emergent transformative praxis. for example, two students (y2s1 and y2s3, respectively) commented on how they would navigate their way around complex concepts: i do a lot of research…i have to understand the concept of the question, define them on how i am going to answer the question...that’s where i have confidence about what do they really want in that question. “on the other hand, the associated negative experiences served as confirmation of the assumptions about the effects of the convergence of language and identity on performance”. the remark by student (y1s1) are instructive in this regard: um it’s kinda like intimidating because you’ve got like whites and they so english and like…i can speak english, but i don’t think that i’d be able to express myself in a lecture hall full of people who’ve been doing english like their whole lives. the above concerns are confirmed by lecture w1 who observed that she had to caution l1 speakers against what she terms as “linguistic arrogance’ that accounted for the l2 speakers feelings of intimidation. this supported the view expressed by l2 speakers that their discomfiture would be considerably alleviated if they could be allowed to express themselves 23 maseko a transformative exploration of epistemic individual(istic) identity formation... in their home language: (y3s3) “i’m scared… i have fear that maybe i won’t say the right words…” in this regard, this third year student showed that there was a correlation between prior exposure and proficiency when she said: “there’s no one who speaks english where i say…i still struggle because this is where i started to speak english and to socialize with people who speak english a lecturer (b1) corroborated the fact that the black students in her class were reticent in relation to class participation: in terms of class participation they don’t participate much. others can participate but it’s very limited. most do not participate at all until i call out their names and say: “you haven’t spoken to me for the past 3 months… lecturer, (w1), remarked that over the years she noticed the need for support: if you ask a [black student] …it’s almost as if instinctively the black student would turn to someone to consult with a friend…um confer with someone…it’s more a collective response… and i hesitate to say that coz i could be stereotyping but that is a real experience of mine the possibility of stereotyping aside, the above assertion could be attributable to the culture of communalism that forms part of the backgrounds of these students. it could be assumed that the communalistic backgrounds accounted for the need to consult or confer. this is an implicit confirmation of the assumptions about the validity for a communal support system that is based on the principles of ubuntu. in that regard the claim about the need for customized and contextualized support is supported. this also validates the role of a culturally appropriate collective support strategy such as the one envisioned through a decolonial ubuntu approach. within the context of this discussion tutor sessions are envisioned, as bias-free zones where students’ identity as black africans from disadvantaged backgrounds will not act as a barrier to participation. on the contrary they will be afforded the opportunity to experience the benefits of contextually appropriate multi-dimensional participation in a ‘safe space’. this, i argue, will provide them with the communal support that will facilitate recovery of a band-with that has been compromise through misrecognition (fraser, fataar, in print; mullaithan & shafir, 2013 in verschelden, 2017:8). 7. concluding remarks this paper focused on individual(istic) identity formation that is situated within a synergistic student support system in the interests of both the individual and collective good. the argument presented here is that the contestations of identity formation would be resolved through a decolonial ubuntu-framed communal support system. i argue in this paper that tutor spaces have the potential to provide students, with specific reference to those who fall within the category of “the african child”, as conceived of in this discussion, with the opportunity to draw from their ubuntu cultural capital in two ways. firstly, to engage with one another in a manner that allows them to develop within the ubuntu principles of “umuntu umuntu ngabantu”, that is, “i am because you are.” an added translation would be “whatever happens to the whole group happens to the individual” (briggs, 1996:27). this means that within that space there is a collective and systemic agency that provides traction for their individual epistemic and ontological becoming. secondly, as part of the collective support system, there is also a simultaneous sense of individual agency in which there is a mutualistic benefit towards the 24 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) common good, but not at the expense of their individual transformation, rather, this is in the interests of the personal development. the intention of this discussion is to contribute towards the re-imagining of the decoloniality discourses from theoretical and ideological contestations into the arena of pragmatic responses to the remnants of colonialism and coloniality such as misrecognition. simultaneously, in cognizance of the akan proverb about the cluster of trees, they are envisioned as appropriate spaces for allowing individual growth, development and band-with recovery with positive ramifications for academic performance i take the liberty here to reiterate the three-pillar support approach that was presented in the original study for application in this discussion. i referred to the first pillar as “epistology” [own coinage]. this coinage was conceptualised as a combination of the constructs of epistemology and ontology, as they pertain to teaching and learning environments. attention was drawn to the convergence of language -as associated with epistemological access and identity as part of the cohort’s ontological development and professional identity formation. the second was intended to highlight the fact that the ideal, such as, for example, the use of the home language, should also take into account the practical realities that might hamper the actualisation of the ideal. the recommendation in this regard is to work with the reality while working towards the ideal. that is, the reality that systems are not yet fully in place to facilitate the full actualisation of the ideal call for practical interim measures such as, for example, alternatives to monolithic english context (blommaert, 2010) such as, for instance, heteroglossia, codeswitching and trans-languaging (wiliams, 1996, cook, 1991; makalela, 2015). additionally, i recommended the critical theory synergised student support system that is comprised of a collaborative network of tutors, mentors and si facilitators. the envisaged advantages of the recommended synergised support were presented as: • participatory collaboration and collegial engagement • responsibility and concern for social justice • personal and professional development • scholarly critique • reflectivity and reflexivity (maseko, 2015:161). with specific regard for the argument presented in this discussion about communal professional identity formation the envisioned decolonial tutor spaces should provide “epistologically” individualised support. at first glance, this might seem to be a contradiction of terms because the terms individualism and communalism seem to be at opposite ends of a binary. upon closer inspection, however, it becomes evident that tutor spaces are an apt vehicle for conveying the decolonial synergistic clustering and huddling of ubuntu and recognition, that is, identity-formation. references adonis, c.k. 2008. trans-generational trauma and humiliation, its potential implications for political forgiveness in post-apartheid south africa, paper presented at the international peace research association global conference, 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_hlk522642497 _hlk522938744 _goback 83 one teacher’s experiences of teaching reading in an urban multi-grade foundation phase class abstract many teachers have been confronted by the demanding situation of teaching two or more year groups in the same classroom although data on this multi-grade phenomenon is scarce. the purpose of this study attempts to answer the research question: what are the experiences of one foundation phase teacher when teaching reading in an urban multi-grade foundation phase class? the theoretical framework central to answering the research question was based on lave and wenger’s (1991) community of practice. the literature review highlights the physical setting of urban multi-grade classrooms, debates the limitations and benefits of urban multi-grade teaching and finally briefly outlines the old and the new south african curriculum policies with regard to reading. a qualitative interpretive case study research design was formulated to explore the complex phenomenon of reading practices in the foundation phase. data were collected using interviews and observations, which were video recorded. in conclusion, this unique study reveals that despite evidence from provincial tests indicating poor reading results in multi-grade teaching of reading, this teacher proved that reading in urban multi-grade classes does work. in her classroom, she showed that multi-grade teaching of reading fosters the emotional, intellectual, social and academic well-being of learners. keywords: foundation phase, interpretive, multi-grade, qualitative, reading, urban 1. introduction the phenomenon of urban multi-grade teaching is not as common as in rural areas (bouysee, 2002). this unique study explores the reading practices of a teacher in an urban multi-grade class in the foundation phase (fp). this study evolved out of the researcher’s concern for the status of reading in south african urban multigrade schools. the researcher was motivated by her own context as an fp teacher and agrees with the statement that the most important task of fp teachers is to ensure that all learners learn to read (ndoe, 2003). for the past twenty-three years, her aim has been to help learners acquire the cognitive and perceptual skills necessary for their scholastic and literacy development. the researcher believes that the early stage of a child’s school life is crucial ms colleen sampson cape peninsula university of technology professor janet condy cape peninsula university of technology doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i2.7 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(2): 83-96 © uv/ufs 84 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) for the development of literacy skills. reading, in particular, is a fundamental competency and the core of our curriculum. every learning area depends on fluent reading and the ability to comprehend text. failure in reading strongly predicts failure in all other academic subjects (whitehurst & lonigan, 2008). therefore the significance of this project is that the researcher supports the idea that education structures should equip rural and urban learners with advanced literacy skills in order to cope with the demands in the latter stages and make the transition from ‘learning to read’ to ‘reading to learn’ (heugh, 2006: 9). after examining the 2015 western cape education department (wced) systemic test results for grade 3 language, it was alarming to note that the provincial pass percentage was 42.2%. the area, ‘reading and viewing’, on which this research focuses, was 42.6%, and the pass percentage for quintile 4 schools, where data for this research project were collected, was only 37.5%. with these poor pass rates and a dearth of research on urban multi-grade schooling, the researcher felt compelled to explore the teaching of reading in this area. 2. community of practice (cop) since this study was conducted in an urban multi-grade environment, where there are typically three grades in one class, it was appropriate to use the perspectives of socio-constructivist theorists, lave and wenger (1991). they contend that communities of practice are everywhere and that we are generally involved in a number of them; whether at work, school, home or in our civic and leisure interests. communities of practice are formed by people who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of human endeavour (wenger, 2007). in this research project, the learners sat in their grade groups and assisted each other where they could across grades. sometimes a stronger grade 2 learner helped a weaker grade 3 learner. over time, this collective learning results in practices that reflect the pursuit of our enterprises and the social relations. wenger (1998: 45) states that these practices are thus the property of a kind of community created over time by the sustained pursuit of a shared enterprise. the term, ‘communities of practice’ is therefore fitting. he further depicted a community of practice as the interplay between the physical setting of the institution of learning, its curriculum and accreditation and the practice of teaching and learning within the community (1998: 63). lave and wenger (1991) contend that learning occurs through active engagement within contextual experiences. in other words, learning is embedded within activity, context and culture. more recently, there has been a shift of focus from acquisition to participation. hager (2005: 23) argues that the two approaches of learning, as acquisition and learning as participation are not mutually exclusive. while participation itself is a process, the learner belongs more to the community by acquiring the right characteristics or products of learning. brown, collins and duguid (1989) support lave and wenger’s propositions by stating that the conventional schooling systems are inherently inauthentic domains where knowing is separated from doing. knowledge is therefore uprooted from its proper context in a community of practice and presented as “abstract, decontextualised and formal concepts”. they believe that activities are integral to cognition and learning and that cognitive apprenticeship can provide the authentic practice through activity and social interaction. lave (1988) agrees with the above researchers and affirms that “knowledge is not separable from, or supplementary to, learning and cognition; it should be an integral part of what is learned”. 85 sampson & condy one teacher’s experiences of teaching reading in an urban ... 3. literature review the literature review focuses on the teaching of reading in an urban multi-grade fp class. the uniqueness of this urban setting is highlighted with regard to reading skills and multi-grade classroom management. reading in the caps document, the languages programme is integrated across the curriculum in oral work, reading and writing (caps, 2011: 6). time allocation for home language in the fp is 6 hours and the first additional language is 4 hours for grade r-2 and 5 hours for grade 3. in grades 1-3, reading takes place in the reading and writing focus time. it is here, through clear, focused lessons that learners are taught to be effective readers and writers. daily time is set-aside for lessons covering different strategies for reading: shared reading, group-guided reading, paired reading, independent reading and phonics (caps, 2011: 8). a gap exits in this document as no indication is provided for teaching multi-grade classes. teachers in these classrooms need to be flexible in how they manage their time and the skills taught. in order to teach reading effectively, readers “need to be engaged in appropriate-level, high-quality texts that foster enthusiasm and critical thinking” (dreher, 2003: 25). learners need opportunities to read and re-read developmentally appropriate books. these books should “capture their interests, address curriculum content, be based on cultural diversity and provide sufficient instructional opportunities” (compton-lilly, 2008: 668). by allowing learners to read on their own, offering feedback and assistance as they demonstrate the need for it, teachers will be able to determine what their learners need and at what stage they are. narratives surround children from their earliest language experiences. young children experience narrative stories through shared book reading at home or at school. as children listen to stories, a number of cognitive processes are at work at the word, sentence and text levels (oakhill & cain, 2007: 4). these skills are important precursors to reading comprehension (kendeou et al., 2009; mckeown, beck & blake, 2009). thus, narrative listening comprehension skills are developing well before a child is able to read and comprehend texts independently. the development of narrative listening comprehension may lead to strategies that are more effective in fostering this ability in young learners and promoting later reading comprehension (lepola et al., 2012: 260). sadik (2008) found that storytelling enhanced the integration of language skills, developed language abilities (houston, 1997) and improved learners’ listening comprehension (neugebauer & currie-rubin, 2009). children have the ability to connect to other people by imagining the thoughts and feelings of characters in picture books as part of making sense of and responding to stories. this ability to imagine the thoughts, feelings and intentions is known as social imagination (johnson, johnson & holubec, 1993: 428). carpendale and lewis (2002: 79) call it social understanding. if one accepts that comprehension is the goal of reading, then vocabulary is the foundation of reading comprehension – referring to the body of words one needs to communicate effectively. this includes knowing the meaning of words and the manner in which to pronounce them correctly. if a learner has a limited understanding of vocabulary, they will have a limited understanding of the concepts. this in turn will limit the understanding of the content. it is well established that learners who comprehend well tend to have good vocabulary (anderson & freebody, 1981). this correlation, however, does not mean that teaching vocabulary will increase readers’ comprehension. 86 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) as beginners in reading, children have to make sense out of words they see in print. literacy researchers, raphael, pardo and highfield (2002: 107) believe that there is a strong correlation between reading and vocabulary knowledge; meaning learners who have a large vocabulary are usually good readers. vocabulary can also be learned incidentally during storybook reading or when listening to others. it is true that if one reads extensively, one is likely to be a good reader. children make sense of words they see in print. they therefore learn to recognise the letters and syllables that make up the words (stahl, 2004: 63). phonics teaches children the systematic and predictable relationship between sounds of a language and their spelling (rose, 2006: 27). comprehension forms the core of reading. wilkinson and son (2011: 364) found that comprehension instruction is most effective when learners flexibly use reading and thinking strategies in more collaborative contexts. in order to improve memory and comprehension of text, teachers use various approaches. they generate questions about ideas while reading; encourage learners to construct mental images representing ideas in text; read into story characters or problems encountered by characters and attempt solutions (pearson & fielding,1991). urban multi-grade teaching a dearth exists in current literature into the research of urban multi-grade teaching; hence many of the references seen in this section may be fairly dated. multi-grade teaching refers to the teaching of learners of different ages, grades and abilities in the same classroom by one teacher (joubert, 2010). literature uses many different terms to describe this kind of teaching; namely, ‘multi-level’, ‘multiple class’, ‘composite class’, ‘vertical group’ and ‘family classes’ (katz, 1995: 11). in south africa, there is no policy standardising which grades are combined (brown, 2008). brunswic and valerien (2004: 45) maintain that multi-grade teaching is often established out of necessity. the reasons may be based on economic, social, political or demographic circumstances (low population density, resulting from rural-urban migration). while south africa has one of the largest and more advanced economies in africa, it remains a highly unequal society. it has a vibrant first world economy on the one hand, and a larger, informal, rural and urban economy on the other, in which poverty remains rife (makoro, 2007: 54). in this study, the district in which the multi-grade school was located reflected typical characteristics of urbanisation: poverty was ubiquitous. demographics such as unemployment and poverty are regular features of this community. beineke, foldesy and maness, (2004: 2) highlight the fact that “urban parents are often less able to contribute to their children’s schoolwork due to economic demands”. the crime rate for semi-urban areas is believed to be higher than for rural areas and there appears to be a “strong association between failing in school and delinquent behaviour” (fullwood et al., 2001: 5). managing a multi-grade classroom is difficult because there is more than one grade level in the classroom (juvane, 2005). according to kyne (2005), teachers must be aware of different ways of grouping children, the importance of independent study areas where learners can go when they have finished their work and approaches to record keeping which are more flexible than those prevalent in the mono-grade classroom. contrary to rural areas, multi-grade teaching in urban areas has advantages for teachers and learners. the benefits of teaching in a multi-grade classroom are primarily related to 87 sampson & condy one teacher’s experiences of teaching reading in an urban ... the way that instruction is organised. stone (1998: 234) maintains that vertical cross-grade groupings of learners can provide cognitive and emotional benefits. irrespective of how teachers divide their classrooms, effective multi-grade teaching should be based on the recognition that children learning in one classroom differ in terms of development. in view of this more flexible approach, learners of mixed abilities and age groups in multi-grade classrooms can be allowed to move through the system at a pace appropriate to them (loeto, 2010). research has shown that the cooperative approaches to instruction in many classroom settings have a positive impact on learners. these learners tend to have higher self-esteem and are confident socially (johnson et al., 1993; stahl & van sickle, 1992). in cooperative learning, the teacher designs the social interaction structures as well as learning activities (kagan, 1989: 12). learners work together to ensure that all members in their groups have learnt and assimilated the same content. they therefore maximise their own and each other’s learning when they work together (johnson et al., 1993). goto and schneider (2010) suggest that being in a class with younger learners encourages older learners to work harder to stay ahead of younger classmates. learners gain confidence when they are occasionally given responsibilities for helping younger or less able learners in their class. children are expected to work independently for longer periods than they would in a mono-grade classroom. teachers may increase their motivation by applying multi-age philosophies to classrooms by adapting their curriculum to meet all their learners’ needs. teachers are able to focus on the progress of individual learners rather than their own progress in moving through the adopted textbooks and sticking to rigid course calendars. this is in contrast to a common curriculum, which does not focus on individual abilities (aina, 2001). although many teachers agree with the philosophies of the multi-age classrooms, some are sceptical of multi-age programmes because of difficulties implementing and operating the programmes. the first barrier is usually dissatisfaction and rejection by parents. mixing their children with children of other ages raises concerns about the quality of instruction. schools should influence families, families ought to influence schools and both affect and are affected by the communities in which they are located (christenson & sheridon, 2001: 39). 4. methodology this study used a qualitative interpretive case study design in order to answer the research question: what are the experiences of one foundation phase teacher when teaching reading in an urban multi-grade class? this afrikaans medium school had an enrolment of 790 learners and was located in the northern district of parow in the western cape. the majority of learners came from low socioeconomic backgrounds. this school accommodated a diverse population of learners, from the democratic republic of congo and zimbabwe. since it was classified as a quintile 4 school, grant (2013) considered it a fee-paying school yet they did not receive food from the nutrition programme. there was only one multi-grade class in the entire school. mrs t was purposively selected, as she was the only teacher in the school who taught in an urban multi-grade setting (cohen, manion & morrison, 2007). she taught thirty-four learners in one grade 1, 2 and 3 multi-grade class. she had twenty-four years of general teaching experience with an additional five years of urban multi-grade teaching. 88 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) learners attending this school experienced few of the challenges that face equivalent learners in rural situations. one third of the learners were within walking distance from their school, the majority had to travel to school using public transport such as taxis. although most learners came from low-income households, parents were prepared to pay travelling costs in order to provide their children with a better education. these elements are in stark contrast to equivalent rural schools where transport is a substantial obstacle. few of the parents of learners in this urban multi-grade school were highly educated yet most were literate. they were in a better position to assist their children than their rural counterparts. in order to gain a deeper insight into this urban multi-grade classroom, interviews and observations were video recorded and used as data. the interviews were conducted in afrikaans after school hours on the school premises, so that the teaching process was not disrupted. mrs t was interviewed twice since part of the first recording was inaudible. five classroom observations were conducted during school time, over a period of nine weeks, every second monday. since the researcher was a bilingual class teacher herself, permission was granted from her own principal and the principal of the school to visit on monday mornings from 8.00am-9.30am. the first visit to the school was an introductory visit to meet the teacher and learners. in order for the researcher to gain an understanding of all reading practices during the observation sessions, mrs t agreed to amend her timetable so she would do reading early in the morning while the researcher was there. bloor and wood (2006: 71) outline the importance of accessing what participants actually do, rather than what they say they do. the multiple sources of evidence collected in this research project provided triangulation (yin, 2008). this qualitative inquiry was inductively analysed for meaning. before the analysis began, data from all the interviews and observational notes were translated from afrikaans to english, then transcribed and back transcribed. mrs t was asked to comment on the clarity and correctness. the process of analyses involved “examining words, sentences and paragraphs in order to organise, decode, interpret and theorise data on an ongoing, emerging basis” (henning, van rensburg & smit, 2007: 127). this was done repeatedly in an attempt to understand the nuances of the data in an attempt to link the units of meaning to the research question. three categories including: stories, vocabulary and phonics as well as comprehension emerged. by identifying the relationship among the codes in the cluster, four superordinate themes became evident (henning et al., 2007: 104). ethical clearance was obtained from the western cape education department (wced) and the university granting the researchers permission to conduct their research. consent letters addressed to the principal and the class teacher were collected. mrs t was informed about the research process and could withdraw at any time. her confidentiality was protected by referring to her as mrs t. 5. findings the three main literacy themes will be discussed with particular emphasis on the four further superordinate themes relating to multi-grade teaching, which included classroom management, curriculum adaptation, the value of peer tutoring and parental support. 89 sampson & condy one teacher’s experiences of teaching reading in an urban ... stories mrs t structured the classroom management of reading lessons by starting with whole-class instruction followed by grade-groups. working within communities of practice, their gradegroups, made teaching reading easier for mrs t rather than using ability groups. mrs t was observed using a traditional fable, ‘the little red hen’. few of the learners would have understood this story from their urban environment. she had the entire class (grades 1, 2 and 3) sitting on the carpet repeating the verbal patterns and actions. to engage the learners, mrs t showed the learners pictures – to engage the grade 1 learners, as she read the story and encouraged an exchange of ideas. the manner in which mrs t asked higher order questions compelled the learners to offer opinions and to delve into the feelings of the main character. from the observations, these are examples, of how mrs t asked questions to engage the learners in the story: mrs t: why do you think the other animals said ‘no’ to the little red hen when she asked for help? mrs t: how do you think the little red hen felt when she had to do all the work herself? mrs t: how do you think the little red hen felt when all the animals wanted to eat the bread she had made? both grade 2 and grade 3 learners were able to answer the questions, as the response required them to relate to their own experiences. she felt strongly that children should be encouraged to think critically and consider their own actions in similar situations. she stated, most of the time i tell simple stories and then we have a time of discussion so that my children can talk about their own experiences. mrs t was asked how she adapted the curriculum for all three classes. she stated that she not only had to plan for all her subjects and three different reading lessons but she had to adapt the curriculum to suit the needs of her learners, mrs t: it is impossible to get through the entire curriculum for each grade, so i teach what i think is important. when mrs t was asked how she used peer tutoring. she referred to an instance where she had a grade 2 learner who struggled with sounds. she placed this learner with the grade 1 learners “to give her the foundations of sounds”. according to mrs t, this was the reason she did not have “ability groups”. she emphasised that, while having older learners helping junior learners was a benefit of a multi-grade class, “the tough part is monitoring all the different reading levels”. mrs t expressed her discontent with the lack of parental support. many of the learners in mrs t’s class lived with their grandparents during the week and went home to their parents for weekends. she disclosed, it is a struggle with parents even to do the little homework that i send. they do not understand what is expected even though i give them guidelines. in answer to a probing question about communicating with parents, mrs t revealed that she “sent home message books but some parents are literate only in french or xhosa, they 90 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) do not respond”. she added that many of these parents are unemployed. “they get involved when it is too late”, when their child has to repeat a grade. vocabulary and phonics mrs t managed her classroom by teaching vocabulary and phonics in grade group communities. in the interview, she explained, the grade 1s start with single consonant sounds and vowels and at this stage they are able to build simple words. the grade 2s are adding prefixes and suffixes to words and the grade 3’s are writing sentences to illustrate the meanings of words. she engaged her learners in games such as matching pictures to words, while assessing their phonic knowledge and learners participated enthusiastically. in the interview, she mentioned that she tried to vary her lessons so that learners could remember and apply the words in the reading activities. she stated, i sometimes play games using the new vocabulary, just to make it more interesting. when teaching vocabulary and phonics, mrs t adapted the curriculum according to the needs of her learners and the grade groups. mrs t was observed working with the grade 1 learners who were tasked with having to identify initial or final sounds of words. by contrast, the progression in the lesson with the grade 2 learners was evident: they were expected to identify digraphs in words. playing games where they had to choose the odd word from a series of related words developed their auditory skills, for example: mrs t: grey, saw, mat, late. which word does not belong? grade 2: mat, teacher mrs t: you are correct but why does the word mat not belong? the grade 3 learners were required to write sentences on whiteboards from the teacher’s dictation. they decoded the more difficult words as they wrote them, emphasising the sounds. an example from the observation indicates, mrs t: we are going to the hall on friday grade 3: we are go-ing to the h-all on friday in the interview, mrs t referred to how she used peer tutoring. she remembered an instance where she had a grade 2 learner who struggled with sounds. she placed this learner with the grade 1 learners “to give her the foundations of sounds”. she emphasised that, having older learners helping junior learners was a benefit of a multi-grade class. the lack of parental support of homework was difficult for mrs t. the grade 1 and grade 2 classes had high frequency sight words, which they needed to learn at home. the grade 3 learners had spelling lists for their weekly spelling tests. mrs t complained about the lack of adult supervision as the homework was seldom completed satisfactorily. in the interview, mrs t made reference to the fact that her learners did not always recall the words. researcher: how are the parents encouraged to help their children read? mrs t: there is very little parental support at home so children don’t always learn. 91 sampson & condy one teacher’s experiences of teaching reading in an urban ... comprehension this area focused on the four higher order-thinking skills as described in the pirls document (howie et al., 2012: 45) and she managed the classroom within communities of practice, grade groups. mrs t stated that she compiled her own reading resources because this enabled her to ‘pitch’ them at the level of her own learners. the researcher observed: the grade 1 learners were expected to apply their basic knowledge of comprehension in the form of a sequence story. they showed the development of a story by arranging pictures in the correct order. the grade 2 learners were expected to respond to the meaning of words in context. mrs t presented sentences with three options. the learners selected the appropriate answer from these possibilities. the grade 3 learners worked independently at their desks. they were given a prepared comprehension passage from a book called “doen en leer” and were told to answer the questions in full sentences. in the interview, the researcher asked, researcher: how do you manage the teaching of comprehension? mrs t: the thing about teaching comprehension strategies is that much of it is taught incidentally. the nice part about teaching a multi-grade class is that they pick up from one another, so you don’t have to re-teach the same concepts. as a multi-grade teacher, mrs t was responsible for teaching other learning areas in addition to reading. in the interview she stated that she not only had to plan for all her subjects and three different comprehension lessons but she had to adapt the curriculum to suit the needs of her learners: it is impossible to get through the entire curriculum for each grade, so i teach what i think is important. further adaptations were made as mrs t used peer tutoring. peer tutoring (lave & wenger, 1991) was corroborated in the video recording where one grade 3 boy was observed assisting four grade 2 learners with sequencing sentences. this could be seen as best practice in a multi-grade setting because learning is enhanced through co-participation (lave & wenger, 1991). mrs t revealed that the parental support is lacking. she stated, i send home message books but some parents are literate only in french or xhosa, they do not respond. many of these parents were unemployed. they get involved when it is too late as when their child has to repeat a grade. kohen et al., (2008) link low income and unemployment to parenting that is less consistent and less stimulating. yet parental involvement in learners’ literacy practices is seen as being more influential than the family’s social class or the level of education of parents (clark & rumbold, 2006: 24). 6. discussion despite the dearth of research published on effective multi-grade teaching, this urban fp multigrade teacher, mrs t, not only used the multi-grade setting to her and her learners’ advantage but she enjoyed her teaching. this is one exemplary study, which advocates and supports urban multi-grade teaching. mrs t was able to teach reading successfully to all her learners. 92 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) she skilfully managed her classroom as a community of practice (lave & wenger, 1991) where she cared for the individual needs of her learners and attempted to make the learning environment as stimulating and as safe as possible. she attempted to contextualise the fictional characters in the story and make the learning personal to the lived authentic lives of her learners. she experienced that cops existed in the sense of peer tutoring. learners assisted each other, even if it was the older learners who benefited from the younger learners (lave & wenger, 1991). she knew how to adapt her curriculum to the needs of her learners; she incorporated emergent reading skills using a more kinaesthetic approach with the grade 1 learners while the grade 2 and 3 learners were working on grade appropriate comprehension passages. she realised that she would never have sufficient time to teach all the literacy skills stated in the caps document, so she risked selecting certain skills, which she thought were more important and which her learners needed in order to move from “learning to read” to “reading to learn” (heugh, 2006: 9). she purposefully taught reading in whole groups and in grade groups using peer tutoring. she enjoyed teaching in a multi-grade classroom where the more abled learners helped the challenged learners. although the lack of parental support was challenging for mrs t she acknowledged and understood the situation, consequently worked sensitively and mindfully with her learners, never berating them for not completing homework tasks. many of the learners lived with their grandparents who had neither been exposed to books nor read. 7. conclusion education officials often dismiss multi-grade teaching. the challenges are too great to give particular attention to these settings. there is a lack of pedagogical material to support this teaching. classrooms are often characterised by a lack of organisation, inefficient use of time and a failure to present knowledge in a logical sequence. peer tutoring is not practised and teachers seem to miss opportunities to utilise the range of abilities present in the classroom. with this in mind, the researcher was not convinced that urban multi-grade teaching of reading could be successful. there was limited international and national research, on the pedagogy of urban multi-grade teaching in developing countries to draw from. however, after completing this unique research, against the background of the poor wced results of reading for quintile 4 schools (37.5%), being guided by lave and wenger’s (1991) theoretical framework of cops, acknowledging the ills of this particular urban environment and grappling to make sense of the findings; it became clear that in mrs t’s class, she fostered the emotional, intellectual, social and academic well-being of her learners. this is one rare research project that promotes urban multi-grade teaching of reading. this research project has documented how multi-grade classes can benefit some learners socially, emotionally and academically. it is recommended that teacher-trainers, provincial and national education officials read this paper and become advocates for using lave and wagner’s cop for teaching reading in multi-grade and multi-group environments, with specific attention to teaching in diverse communities and using peer tutoring. 93 sampson & condy one teacher’s experiences of teaching reading in an urban ... references aina, o.e. 2001. maximizing learning in early childhood multi-age classrooms: child, teacher, and parent 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jabulani sibanda education department, rhodes university email:jabusbnd@gmail.com telephone: 084 528 2087 towards a reconceptualisation of “word” for high frequency word generation in word knowledge studies jabulani sibanda jean baxen the present paper derives from a phd study investigating the nexus between grade 4 textbook vocabulary demands and grade 3 isixhosa-speaking learners’ knowledge of that vocabulary to enable them to read to learn in grade 4. the paper challenges the efficacy of the four current definitions of “word” for generating high frequency words (hfw) for such a study. the paper submits that the token and type conceptualisations are unrealistic in their disregard of the learning burden principle, and that the lemma and word family notions are too accommodative and untenable in their overextension of the learning burden principle. it critiques the arbitrary generation of word levels from a language corpus which is not cognisant of the natural order in which second language learners at different levels and from different first language backgrounds acquire english vocabulary. based on research findings, the paper proposes, for the larger study, a unit-of-word quantification broader than the token but less accommodative than the lemma. the paper advocates further research into children’s psychological processing of english word forms to constitute a taxonomy of word forms which merit treatment as single words at different levels of learners’ competence. keywords: vocabulary, high frequency words, type, token, lemma, word family introduction this paper interrogates the suitability of current “word” conceptualisations for a larger study determining the vocabulary knowledge of grade 3 isixhosa speaking learners in relation to the vocabulary needs of grade 4 content area textbooks. a jean baxen school of education, wits university e-mail: jean.baxen@wits.ac.za telephone: 011 717 3014 towards a reconceptualisation of “word” for high frequency word generation in word knowledge studies jabulani sibanda & jean baxen 93 determination of grade 4 textbook vocabulary needs necessitates the generation of high frequency words (hfw) in the textbooks, without whose knowledge learners would not be able to read to learn. even for english first language users, hfw have been perceived as a notorious obstacle (morimoto & loewen, 2007). because these words are high coverage words in texts (gardner, 2007) representing a high percentage of the total number of words met receptively and used productively (hunt & beglar, 2005), learners need to master them to register success in reading. crossing that hfw threshold, positions children for better textual comprehension (nation, 2001) and eases mastery of the less common words from context (llach & gallego, 2009). the study the present paper straddles grade 3 and 4, a transitional stage from learning to read (mastery of the mechanical aspects of reading) to reading to learn (using the reading skill to access information in texts). in the study, the hfw in grade 4 textbooks form the baseline against which third graders’ vocabulary knowledge is measured. the generation of the hfw list is itself dependent on the conceptualisation of the construct “word” since different conceptualisations yield different word lists. this paper interrogates these perspectives, and proffers not only an alternative conceptualisation of “word” for the study, but also a way forward that takes account of variables and considerations which current perspectives seem to be overlooking. conceptualisation of the construct “word” the question “what is a word?” has plagued the field of vocabulary testing for years and has defied singularity or uniformity of definition. discrepancies in vocabulary size estimates stem from a lack of consensus on what constitutes “word” as word frequency counts are contingent upon the word conceptualisation used as the unit of analysis. knowing all the words in the singer sang a song different from the songs the other singers had sung can be regarded as knowing 14, 12, 9 or 7 words if “word” is defined as token, type, lemma or word family, namely the four current word conceptualisations, respectively. d’anna, zechmeister and hall’s (1991: 111) question, “[w]hen we say that a child learns 3,000 or 5,000 words per year, what exactly are we talking about?” is as valid now as it was then. whether the four conceptualisations emerged consecutively or concurrently is not clear from literature and no researchers or authors are credited with particular perspectives. this paper questions the efficacy of each of the four word conceptualisations and discusses their implications for the generation of english hfw in grade 4 textbooks to be tested on second language grade 3 users of english. an exposition of the limitations of the four perspectives on “word”, which is the next subject of discussion, explains the need for an alternative perspective which this paper submits, as well as a way forward. perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 94 the perspective of “word” as token in the perspective of “word” as token, “… each occurrence of a form is counted separately” (luitel, 2011: 59). the token yields the total quantity of textual input in raw terms (mármol, 2011). according to nation (2001), tokens are the unit we refer to when we talk about a summary, a telegram, or a research paper being so many words long. tokens identify words “… simply by the space between the strings of letters in written language” (luitel, 2011: 59). carter (1998: 4) in catalán and francisco (2008: 151) defines a token as “… any sequence of letters (and a limited number of other characteristics such as hyphen and apostrophe) bounded on either side by a space or punctuation mark”. any expression devoid of spaces within it and separated by spaces from other expressions is consistent with the view of word as token. there are, however, permutations and nuances to consider before adopting this concept of word for hfw computation purposes. such a definition fails to account for some compound constructions. closed-form compounds are coalesced together as in “childlike”, hyphenated compounds are separated by a hyphen as in “four-yearold”, and open compounds are separated as in “post office”. should hyphens then be considered as spaces or not? the inconsistency in the division of compounds such as “injustice” and “in-laws” is problematic when one considers hyphens as spaces. one could also ask: “does the fact that an ice cream is one item make it one word or does the presence of two forms make it two words?” mármol (2011) sees such as single words by virtue of their representing a single concept causing children to understand them as one concept. a conceptualisation of word as token makes computation of word frequencies impossible, because every stand-alone form is regarded as diverse from the others. for vocabulary knowledge measurement, it is not plausible to consider the same word with the same orthographic make-up, meaning and pronunciation as a separate word every time it recurs in text. therefore, an alternative way of conceptualising word-for-word frequency counts is needed, and word as type, which represents a moderate and less radical shift from the token conception than lemma and word family, has been put forward, and is considered next. the perspective of “word” as type in word as type “… only the word form that is ‘different’ from all the remaining ones is counted” (read, 2000 in luitel, 2011: 59). a recurring word form is counted only once and so, although there are ten tokens in the statement, your mother was talking to my mother in your garden, there are only eight types, because the words “your” and “mother” appear twice but are counted once each. type as a unit of quantification assumes that a word’s identity rests on its orthographic make-up where all words that are identically spelt are considered one word, an assumption which is not accommodative of homonyms such as the overused but apt example towards a reconceptualisation of “word” for high frequency word generation in word knowledge studies jabulani sibanda & jean baxen 95 of “bank”. words which function as both nouns and verbs depending on their use such as “pin” in the statement get the pin and pin the papers on the board are not considered in word as type. knowledge of “pin” as a noun does not guarantee that of “pin” as a verb. being spelt the same does not translate to a word being the same word wherever it is encountered. the perspective of word as type also disregards the fact that the meanings of some words can be extrapolated from knowledge of related others. knowing the word “boys” logically presupposes knowledge of the word “boy” and the two would well be considered as one word even for grade 3 isixhosa-speaking children. this is what nation (2001) refers to as the learning burden principle which posits that one’s knowledge of some words reduces or eliminates the burden that is required to learn or know other words. both the token and the type formulations ignore this significant principle which is at the core of word acquisition and learning. the remaining conceptualisations, lemma and word family, whose limitations are discussed later, apply this principle, the lemma in not as broad a way as does the word family, which merits its discussion next. the perspective of “word” as lemma the lemma is preferred for lexical quantification on account of overcoming the limitation of having to consider each word form as a unique form unrelated to the other forms, as does the type and token conceptualisations. gardner (2007: 243,244) quotes francis and kucera’s (1982: 1) definition of a lemma as “… a set of lexical forms having the same stem and belonging to the same major word class, differing only in inflection and/or spelling”. the verbs “write”, “writes”, “writing”, “written” and “wrote” emanate from the base form “write” and so are all considered as one word. the inflections “-s”, “-ing”, “-en” do not create new words but merely modify the form in which the word “write” occurs to indicate grammatical functioning. the lemma is, therefore, premised on the assumption that, once the base form is known, the knowledge of the inflected forms is eased and expedited; the learning burden principle. browne, cihi and culligan (2007: 2) rationalise the confinement of members of a lemma to a single word class by positing that the “… statistical item difficulty factors for ‘accept’, ‘accepts’ and ‘accepting’ are very close, whereas the statistical difficulties for ‘acceptable’, ‘acceptance’ and ‘unacceptable’, are all quite different. one hypothesis is that the brain treats these six items as four different base words.” while the above example fits the argument, one might argue that knowledge of the base form “write” could make the form “writer” easier to one learner than the form “wrote” or “written” which belongs to the same word class as “write”. the accommodation of irregular words such as “mice”, “beaten”, “brought” and “best” within a lemma makes the assumption that belonging to the same word class as the base reduces the learning burden of a word highly suspect. as gardner (2007: 244) observes: the case of the irregulars poses serious quandaries relating to the psychological validity of such family relationships – namely, that the opaque spelling and perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 96 phonological connections between the lemma headword and the family members will surely cause more and different learning problems than their more transparent counterparts. this defeats the learning burden principle which the lemma should uphold and hence nation’s (2001: 8) question: “should the irregular forms be counted as a part of the same lemma as their base word or should they be put into separate lemmas?” the orthographic constitution of the word “best”, for instance, is not in any way indicative of stemming from the base form “good”. the lemma should be a grouping of words whose understanding is made almost obvious whenever the base form is known and not words brought together by virtue of being inflected from the same base form. the criteria of lemma membership are not tight enough to ensure only those words whose meanings are easily recoverable from the meaning of the base gain entrance into the lemma. broadening the scope of a lemma to include the contracted forms as nation (2001) does, introduces at least two challenges. first, knowledge of the contracted form requires knowledge of not only the base form, but also that of “not” since the contracted form is both a fusion and reduction of two words; a base form and “not”, for example “can + not = can’t”. second, what one would consider opaque contractions cannot easily be inferred from the base form + “not”. transparent contractions would be forms such as “have + not = haven’t”, “do + not = don’t”, and the opaque forms would be “will + not = won’t”, am + not = ain’t”, “shall + not = shan’t”. the opaque contractions have a higher learning burden than the transparent forms and assuming that l2 beginners can associate such irregular forms with their headwords is fundamentally unrealistic. in milton’s (2009:10) definition a lemma “... includes a headword and its most frequent inflections and this process must not involve changing the part of speech from that of the headword”. in formulaic terms this translates to: lemma = headword + most frequent inflections + their contracted forms (belonging to same class). the phrase “most frequent” leaves the determination of most frequent to the researcher’s discretion in the absence of frequency lists of inflected forms. the word “frequency” also needs qualification, whether it is the frequency with which the inflected form is used in a text or the frequency which stems from the number of english words that an inflection inflects. the former would be relative to text, because frequent forms in one text might be less frequent in another which renders it not tight enough to allow easy and objective application. the latter does not guarantee that inflections with a lower spread in their use are more difficult than those that have an impact on many word forms in the language. the lemma also assumes that inflections are easier than other forms of affixation (prefixation and suffixation) which is controversial. some suffixes such as “-able” and “-less” and prefixes like “-un” have meaning in and of themselves which can be used towards a reconceptualisation of “word” for high frequency word generation in word knowledge studies jabulani sibanda & jean baxen 97 to recover the meaning of a suffixed and prefixed form like “suitable”, “careless” and “unfair”, yet inflections are devoid of such independent meaning. such systematic use of affixes can significantly reduce the learning burden of the words derived from a known base form. that the inflections “-s” and “-es” can be used for both verb and plural forms, could be a confounding factor on its own. there is also a challenge of determining what really counts as a headword. the base form might not be the most common form or the one that the learners are likely to acquire first, which justifies sinclair’s (1991) supposed complication of which to consider as the headword, namely the base form or the most common form. nation (2001) notes that, although the comparative and superlative forms have always been considered english inflections in the computerised lemmatised list of the brown corpus (francis & kucera, 1982), they are excluded in these definitions of lemma. this, however, speaks to the difficulty of constituting a lemma with precision. a proposal by stubbs (2002) to have all members of a lemma share the same meaning fails to distinguish a lemma from a lexeme as the latter also denotes a group of words sharing the same meaning and the same word class. acknowledging the difficulty of constituting a lemma and “… generalizations about whole lemma …”, knowles and mohd don’s (2004: 71) advise for researchers, namely “… to consider individual words” as basis for word count and analyses, is almost a call to revert to word as type. insights from brain research support the learning burden principle but not the constitution of lemmas. browne et al. (2007: 2) assert that “… the brain stores and processes lemmas having similar difficulty factors as forms of the same word, and … stores and processes lemmas having different difficulty factors as different words.” impressive formulaic definitions of lemma divorced from the psychological realities of learners’ word learning do not advance the cause of vocabulary measurement. browne et al.’s (2007) observation that some lemmas are registered by the brain as separate words rather than one casts doubt on the cogency of lemmas as units of frequency counts. that the brain does not always store and process lemmas as we constitute them, points to the need for a more tenable unit of word quantification. the inability of the three perspectives to define “word” with precision necessitates a consideration of the last unit word as word family. the perspective of “word” as word family the word family construct comprises a headword, its inflected forms and closely derived forms (nation, 2001) and can be represented thus: word family=base form +basic inflected forms+ transparent derivatives. whereas inflection does not produce separate words, derivation creates separate but morphologically related words which usually involve some change in form. how to determine, with objective certainty, the basic inflected forms and the closely derived forms or transparent derivatives, is questionable. word family unit assumes the application of morphological rules through affixation (prefixation and suffixation) perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 98 to word learning which ensures “… little or no extra learning when one or more of the members is already known to the learner” (chung, 2009: 162). by including a “… wider range of inflections and derivations …” (milton, 2009: 11) than the lemma and having members traverse word class boundaries, the word family unit extends the application of the learning burden principle further than the lemma does. from the base form “long”, the forms “longer”, “longest”, “longish”, “length”, “lengthen” and “lengthy” could be considered as one word despite the apparent diversity in the learning burdens of these forms. even derived forms differ in their complexity (browne et al., 2007). the efficacy of the word family unit is challenged by mármol (2011: 12) who says: … we cast doubt on the idea that a child acquiring bed has also acquired bedroom. there is the possibility that an adult could guess the meaning of the latter, but a young language learner in his first stages of acquisition may not be able to make those inferences. word family unit assumes an intricate knowledge of morphological inflections of the english language in order. evidently, isixhosa-speaking grade 3s would not possess the native-like intricate knowledge of morphological relations between words needed to make intelligent guesses about the meaning of some words on the basis of knowledge of their base form. in a study which required non-native postgraduate and undergraduate participants to identify the derivational forms of stimulus stem words, schmitt and zimmerman (2002) found that participants could only rarely provide all the different derivations of the stimulus words. this indicated partial knowledge of derivational forms on the part of the participants. the complexity of morphological knowledge that learners should possess to be able to process words as word families is illustrative in their need to know that “mean” does not derive from “me” despite the orthographic string for “me” occurring in “mean” (bauer & nation, 1993). implicit knowledge of the role of affixes in word formation and meaning, which is requisite for the use of word family unit, should not be assumed especially for l2 users of english. from studying 1 000 000 token lancaster-oslo-bergen corpus, bauer and nation (1993) came up with a seven-level scheme for defining word families “… at various defensible levels for analysis and comparative analysis purposes – at least in terms of learners’ abilities to associate morphologically related words” (gardner, 2007: 247). the scheme is based on an analysis of inflections and affixations of english words based on their productivity, frequency, regularity and predictability. their taxonomy, which represents a scaling of word families from the most elementary and transparent members to those of less obvious possibilities (nation, 2001), is an acknowledgement that word families are not a one-size-fits-all phenomenon. table 1 adapted from bauer and nation (1993: 254) shows the seven levels of inflections and affixations. towards a reconceptualisation of “word” for high frequency word generation in word knowledge studies jabulani sibanda & jean baxen 99 table 1: bauer and nation’s (1993) word family levels level affixation and inflection 1 no affixes 2 -s, -ing, -ed, -er, -est (all inflections) 3 -able, -er, -ish, -less, -ly, -ness, -th, -y, non-, un(most frequent and regular derivational affixes) 4 -al, -ation, -ess, -ful, -ism, -ist, -ity, -ise, -ment, -ous, in(frequent, orthographically regular affixes) 5 -age, -al, -ally, -an, -ance, -ant, -ary, -atory, -dom, -eer, -en, -ence, -ent, -ery, -ese, -esque, -ette, -hood, -i, -ian, -ite, -let, -ling, -ly, -most, -ory, -ship, -ward, -ways, -wise, ante-, anti-, arch-, bi-, circum-, counter-, en-, ex-, fore-, hyper-, inter-, mid-, mis-, neo-, post-, pro-, semi-, sub-, un(regular but infrequent affixes) 6 -able, -ee, -ic, -ify, -ion, -ist, -ition, -ive, -th, -y, pre-, re(frequent but irregular affixes) 7 ab-, ad-, com-, de-, dis-, ex-, sub(classical roots and affixes) for a learner operating at level 5, for instance, words in levels 1 to 5 emanating from the same base would be considered as one word, but those in levels 6 and 7 would be regarded as different words from the base form. although rigorous criteria (productivity, frequency, regularity and predictability) were applied to a large corpus (a million words), the levels generated could be questioned. first, is the repetition of many affixed forms at the different levels. the suffix “-able” belongs to both level 3 and 6 which presents uncertainty about membership level of forms such as “suitable” on the scale. second, is the failure to acknowledge the different learning dilemmas that derivational affixes might pose to developing readers. third, is the assumption that both exposure to and acquisition of morphologically related words follow a linear pattern where base forms are acquired prior to their inflected and derived forms. the assumption is refuted by biemiller and slonim (2001) who note that young children might actually acquire many derived forms before they acquire their root-form counterparts. it is suspicious for a form such as “disadvantage” (level 7) according to the taxonomy to have a lower learning burden than “advantageous” (level 4) when the opposite seems more likely. it is problematic to base word family levels solely on a corpus without empirical evidence of the ease with which learners acquire the different affixed forms. seen in this light, bauer and nation’s (1993) work perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 100 requires further large-scale research to corroborate the match between the levels of the corpus analysis and the psychological realities of learners’ word learning and acquisition. this critique shows that the learning burden principle is not judiciously considered by all four word constructs. the token and type disregard their application on the one hand by assuming that each form is acquired and known independently from the other forms, which necessitates their being considered as a separate word. the lemma and word family on the other hand over-extend their application by considering as one word, several words whose relationship to the base might not even transparent or apparent. the result, then, are four word constructs which scarcely respond to the challenge the large study confronts, namely a unit of word quantification consonant with grade 3 isixhosa-speaking learners on the verge of a transition to learning through the medium of english in grade 4. this paper argues for a conceptualisation of the construct “word” which is accommodative of diverse learner competencies and linguistic backgrounds among other variables. “taxonomy of word for word counts”: a potential way forward among the disadvantages that l2 english learners face are: no tacit knowledge of english which l1 learners possess, limited initial linguistic resource base, pressure to learn to read english simultaneously with the acquisition of the language’s oral language which the l1 learners already possess, and fundamental differences between their l1 and english particularly at the lexical level. none of the current word notions conceptualise “word” in a plausible way for the generation of hfw for l2 english grade 3s. this paper proposes two ways of dealing with the challenge: 1. an alternative conceptualisation of word as a unit of counting for the larger study. words sharing the same base and the following inflections: the present progressive (-ing) as in “eating”, plural (-s) as in “books”, possessive (-’s) as in “boy’s”, past regular (-ed) as in “talked”, third person singular (-s) as in “walks”, and the long plural (-es) as in “mangoes” are considered as one word and all other forms as separate words. krashen (1987) reports on extensive morpheme studies by dulay and burt (1974), fathman (1975) and makino which showed that these inflections are the ones that learners naturally acquire first, and in the order in which they are listed independently of instruction, learners’ age, l1 background, or conditions of exposure. this would recognise the learning burden principle unlike the token and type perspectives, but not over-extend the principle by being overly accommodative like the lemma and type perspectives. towards a reconceptualisation of “word” for high frequency word generation in word knowledge studies jabulani sibanda & jean baxen 101 2. while the alternative above is accommodative of the context of the larger study on which this paper is based, there is need for a taxonomy where the above conceptualisation of word would be but one level out of several others. the taxonomy that this paper proposes should have word levels corresponding to the natural order in which particular word forms are acquired once the most common form is known and not on the basis of the structure of a language corpus. such a hierarchy would be at the intersection between bauer and nation’s (1993) word family levels which give a hierarchy of the relative ease of acquisition of particular words, and morpheme studies which generated a list of the natural order of the acquisition of english grammatical structures. the one is based on a study of the language and the other has its basis on a study of the learners’ “natural order” of acquiring words. these two would determine the extent of the match between the language corpus ideals and the psychological realities of the learners’ acquisition of words. the paper also argues for large-scale testing and documentation of the order of acquisition of english affixed forms (suffixed and prefixed for both inflections an derivations) on learners from particular language backgrounds, including that of l1 english users. such testing needs to be done at varying levels of learner competence and with all the affixed forms of words. brown’s (1973) longitudinal study, reported in kwon (2005: 4), produced the order of l1 acquisition of english morphemes which was unfortunately confined to morphemes and based exclusively on english native users. a tenable word construct should ensure that only word forms deriving from the base which are regarded as the same word with the base, pose negligible or no learning burden in the event that the base form is known. if research determines that in the natural order of vocabulary acquisition the form “writing” comes way earlier than “wrote” then, at an early level of the taxonomy, “write” and “writing” could be regarded as one word with “wrote” being considered one word with “write” at a later level. there would then be just a taxonomy with several levels at which word is defined and from which researchers can conceptualise word depending on their purposes and contexts. the token would form level 1 of the taxonomy, as every form is considered a separate word. studies not generating hfw lists would use this level. the second level would be what we presently have as the type. again, this level would not be any use in word frequency counts, because it ignores the learning burden principle. level 3 could be the alternative notion of word proposed in 1 above, straddling token and lemma. several levels would egress in what could possibly be called “taxonomy of word conceptualisation”. base forms which are acquired earliest and the words emanating from the base which children demonstrate proclivity to acquire first no matter their word classes would be considered. specific rules would then be worked for word membership at each level and exceptions noted. lexicographers would make dictionary entries of the word conceptualisation level for each form. after defining “boys”, an addition can be made plural form of “boy” [l.2] for level 2. if perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 102 in doubt one would reference a word’s level from the base form. in their studies, researchers would specify levels at which they based their definition of word as a unit of measurement. the proposed taxonomy would allow the replication of studies, as one can tell with certainty which words in the study were used as one word. teachers would select vocabulary for instructional purposes in a way that facilitates and expedites the natural order of the acquisition of particular words. the taxonomy would also ensure that the affixed, inflected and derived forms learners demonstrate proclivity to acquire with ease at their different levels as l1 and l2 speakers of english are used to assess their word knowledge. it would also further our knowledge of the psychological realities of children’s acquisition of english words, which brain research can take forward. a challenge, though, would be coming up with rules governing forms to consider as one word at each level as well as identifying all the possible exceptions to the rules. the absence of particular rules might make the taxonomy a little messy but might not be a bad thing considering that some of the limitations of the lemma and word family can be traced to a desire to have objective rules governing membership into those “families”. further debate on these proposals would potentially lead to a refinement of these ideas and, ultimately, the creation of more useful word construct for word frequency counts. references bauer l & nation isp 1993. word families. international journal of lexicography, 6: 253-279. biemiller a & slonim n 2001. estimating root word vocabulary growth in normative and advantaged populations: evidence for a common sequence of vocabulary acquisition. journal of educational psychology, 93(3): 498-520. browne c cihi g & culligan, b 2007. measuring vocabulary size via online technology. lexxica. retrieved from http://www.wordengine. jp/research/main. catalán rj & francisco rm 2008.vocabulary input in efl textbooks. resla, 21: 147-165. chung tm 2009. the newspaper word list: a specialised vocabulary for reading newspapers. jalt journal, 31(2): 159-182. d’anna ca, zechmeister eb & hall jw 1991. toward a meaningful definition of vocabulary size. journal of literacy research, 23(xxiii): 109-122. francis w & kučera h 1982. frequency analysis of english usage: lexicon and grammar. boston: houghton mifflin. gardner d 2007. validating the construct of word in applied corpus-based vocabulary research: a critical survey. applied linguistics, 28(2): 241-265. hunt a & beglar d 2005. a framework for developing efl reading vocabulary. reading in a foreign language, 17: 23-59. knowles g & mohd don z 2004. the notion of a “lemma”: headwords, roots and lexical sets. international journal of corpus linguistics, 9(1): 69-81. towards a reconceptualisation of “word” for high frequency word generation in word knowledge studies jabulani sibanda & jean baxen 103 krashen sd 1982. principles and practice in second language acquisition. oxford: pergamon. kwon ey 2005. the “natural order” of morpheme acquisition: a historical survey and discussion of three putative determinants. teachers college, columbia university working papers in tesol & applied linguistics, 5(1): 1-21. llach mpa & gallego mt 2009. examining the relationship between receptive vocabulary size and written skills of primary school learners. journal of thespanish association of anglo-american studies, 31(1): 129–147. luitel b 2011. vocabulary in the new b.ed. general english under tribhuvan university. nepal english language teachers’ association journal of nelta, 16(1-2): 59-69. mármol a 2011. vocabulary input in classroom materials: two efl course books used in spanish schools by gema. resla, 24: 9-28. milton j 2009. measuring second language vocabulary acquisition. bristol: multilingual matters. morimoto s & loewen s 2007. a comparison of the effects of image-schemabased instruction and translation-based instruction on the acquisition of l2 polysemous words. language teaching research, 11(3):347-372. nation isp 2001. learning vocabulary in another language. cambridge: cambridge university. schmitt n & zimmerman cb 2002. derivative word forms: what do learners know? tesol quarterly, 36(2): 145-171. sinclair j mch 1991. corpus, concordance, collocation. in stubbs m. (1996). text and corpus analysis. oxford, uk: blackwell. stubbs m 2002. words and phrases: corpus studies of lexical semantics. oxford: blackwell publishing. “why can’t johnny write? he sounds okay!” attending to form in english second language teaching1 diana ayliff department of applied language studies, nelson mandela metropolitan university, port elizabeth diana.ayliff@nmmu.ac.za this article addresses the problem of poor written english amongst many south african learners who study english as their first additional language (fal) at secondary school level, and the effect this has on their tertiary education and their future careers. the reasons for this poor mastery of written discourse are explored and, in particular, it is argued that the problems that have arisen are because of the communicative meaning-focused approach that has been the raison d’être of the second language syllabi for many years. this approach has also underpinned the obe curriculum for english as fal. an alternative method, in which the form of the language is focused upon, is explored and it is argued that this methodology would be a more successful one for south african learners and go a long way to solving the problem of the poor standard of english of matriculants. keywords:  english  second  language, communicative  language  teaching,  form-focused  instruction introduction in south africa there are many learners and tertiary students who are in a similar position to our metaphorical “johnny”. while johnny “sounds okay”, the apparently fluent spoken variety of his discourse is not matched by his written variety. this perception that his speech is competent is probably due to the fact that during linguistic interaction in his second language (l2), he is using short utterances (shorter than a sentence) and behavioural gestures and facial expressions — or those aspects of his communication that fall into the pragmatic and paralinguistic domains — to compensate for his ill-formed utterances. his interlocutor, especially if she is an educator and johnny a learner, often becomes a conspirator in this deception and colludes with him in the interests of social equanimity. the educator-participant might compensate for his deviant utterances by filling in the omissions of information in his discourse because of shared knowledge and the wish to maintain mutual communication. johnny’s perception that his second language is good is thus reinforced and he is surprised when his written discourse is rejected because it lacks well-formed sentences. to use cummins’s terms (1980), johnny has acquired basic interpersonal communicative skills (bics), but not cognitive/academic language proficiency (calp). thus johnny “sounds okay”, but his written discourse is so poor that it has unleashed a plethora of criticism. this criticism ranges from letters to the editors of the popular press to official international reports that south african learners rank near the bottom on various tests. the southern and eastern african consortium for monitoring educational quality (sacmeq, 2008) showed that about half of our grade-6 learners could not comprehend a standard, age-appropriate text, while south africa is one of the twenty countries considered below standard by the education for all (efa, 2008) global report commissioned by unesco. the dismal situation is acknowledged in speeches by ministers of education (motshekga, 2009; pandor, 2005) while a draft report by the national benchmark tests project (2009) produced for the vice-chancellors’ association of higher education south africa (hesa) revealed that 1 ayliff, d. 2010. “why can’t johnny write? he sounds okay!” attending to form in english second language teaching. perspectives in education, 28(2):1-8. perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 20102 the majority of first year students do not have the required academic literacy skills to cope at university without support. many of these students are what cross has called “new students” who are unable to “express their own system of values and express themselves in the mother tongue” (cross, 2009:15). tertiary institutions respond to this lack of literacy and written skills in the language of learning and teaching (lolt) by pouring more and more money into development programmes, and academics research the phenomenon and write up their findings in papers exploring “academic literacy” and “language of academic purposes” such as those by ferreira and mendelowitz (2009), uys et al. (2007) and van rooyen and jordaan (2009). in short, johnny has been taught to express himself, albeit inaccurately, in spoken, but not written discourse. why has johnny not been taught to write? the reasons johnny has not been taught to write with accuracy are complex and involve multiple challenges found in our schools and communities; however, three crucial reasons explored in this article are obe, the way english as fal is taught and the teaching corps which is expected to teach it. outcomes-based education  the outcomes-based education policy (obe), introduced by professor bengu in 1998, has probably had unintended consequences. it has become the whipping-boy for many of the woes of the education system, (bloch, 2009; olivier, 2009), but is probably not the problem in itself. it is an imported system that might work well in first-world countries like the united states of america, canada and the united kingdom. according to the department of education national curriculum statement (ncs) for grades 10-12, first additional language (fal) is characterised by a “learner-centred and activity-based approach” (2) that encourages both independence and group work where learners use resources such as the internet, databases, libraries and laboratories to self-discover and learn. while this is sound educational policy, it is very difficult to implement in rural and township schools because many function without libraries, the internet or even electricity. to compound these problems the ncss that are founded on obe are couched in language that is relatively difficult to penetrate as obe-specific jargon is used: integration and applied competence: integration is achieved within and across subjects and fields of learning. the integration of knowledge and skills across subjects and terrains of practice is crucial for achieving applied competence as defined in the national qualifications framework. applied competence aims at integrating three discrete competences. (doe, 2003a:3) as blignaut (2007:49) points out, it is “difficult to translate policy into practice”, and to implement a curriculum that is so alien to the average south african teacher’s epistemological understanding and pedagogical practice is to court disaster. i concur with blignaut that policymakers must begin “where the teachers are” (blignaut, 2007:55) and i suggest that they be offered a methodical syllabus reflecting the linguistic forms of english that will lead to their learners mastering accurate written discourse in that language. while obe might work successfully in first-world countries where the numbers in the classes are relative small, schools are well resourced and teachers well qualified, it is less likely to be successful in south africa where the opposite is often the case. the way english-fal is taught for many years now second-language learners of english have been taught through a communicative meaning-based approach. this communicative approach is not unique to south africa, but has been a trend across the world since the 1960s. the assumption, however, that a communicative meaning-based approach to teaching an l2 leads to levels of grammatical accuracy and fluent written competence has not materialised. some thirty years of using this kind of methodology in south africa has exploded this myth. ayliff — “why can’t johnny write? he sounds okay!” 3 the ncs for english-fal is based on a communicative or meaning-focused approach to language teaching. this method involves language teachers having to direct their learners to the meaning of the discourse in the belief that the form, including the grammar, vocabulary, spelling, and pronunciation will be acquired almost unconsciously. this method of instruction is modelled on the idea that the acquisition of an l2 is much the same process as that of an l1 where a child simply picks up the language in a seemingly effortless way while exploring and concentrating on the world around him or her. it was argued during the 1970s and 1980s (widdowson, 1978; brumfit, 1984) that if children acquired their l1 by interacting with others, then by reproducing those natural conditions in the classroom, learners of l2s would acquire that language too, notwithstanding the difference in age between l1 acquisition and l2 learning. learning, it was believed, should take place in a meaning-focused environment in which learners negotiate meaning when a gap in understanding occurs. genuine message-focused language use should lead to language acquisition when learners participate in role-play and simulation exercises, where the message is paramount and some learners, who have the knowledge, are able to fill the information gaps of others, who lack the knowledge, by exchanging genuine messages. it was hoped that the real world of communication would thus be transplanted into the classroom. the role of the teacher in this kind of classroom is that of a supporter of the learner, who takes control of her learning and, in theory, progresses steadily along the natural route of language development (krashen, 1985) unaffected by intrusive instruction. it is now accepted by many researchers (e.g. day and shapton, 1991; harley, 1989; lyster, 1994; schmidt, 1983; spada, 1997) that while meaning-focused instruction leads to confident and apparently fluent speakers of an l2, it does not result in accuracy. ellis, loewen and basturkmen (2003:151), for instance, comment that meaning-focused instruction “is not successful in enabling learners to achieve high levels of linguistic and sociolinguistic accuracy” while laufer (2005:223) writes that the “realization by applied linguists that second language learners cannot achieve high levels of grammatical competence from entirely meaning centred instruction has led them to propose that learners need to focus on form”. the whole thrust of the section content and contexts for the attainment of assessment standards found in the ncs for fal on page 47 is towards a hands-on, active approach to language learning that is “embedded in situations which are meaningful to learners and so assist learning and teaching”. in addition, while teachers are encouraged to use a wide range of texts that include visual, oral and written forms, they are also expected to encourage their learners to learn their fal in a “natural, informal process carried over into the classroom where literacy skills of reading/viewing and writing/presenting are learned in a ‘natural’ way — learners read by doing a great deal of reading and learn to write by doing much writing”. these goals are there to promote high standards that are spelled out in the section on language levels (doe, 2003b:11). there it is stated that the fal should be of such a standard that it may be used as the language of learning: learning outcomes for the first additional languages provide for levels of language proficiency that meet the threshold levels necessary for effective learning across the curriculum, as learners may learn through the medium of their first additional language in the south african context. (doe, 2003b:11) so, while teachers are encouraged to use a communicative meaning-focused approach, they are also expected to raise the level their learners achieve in their fal to one that is acceptable at a formal academic level. certainly, the way the communicative meaning-focused approach has been applied in south africa has generally not produced high levels of grammatical competence, nor has it produced learners who are able to operate in a cognitively demanding academic domain in their fal. this is a serious situation since english is the de facto lingua franca of south africa and the language of learning in most tertiary institutions and schools. despite the movement amongst some academics (webb, 2004; prinsloo, 2007) to convince the language policy makers and parents of school-going learners that the mother-tongue should be the language of learning for as long as possible, english remains dominant. perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 20104 the teaching corps south african teachers, especially those in rural areas and townships, are faced with multiple challenges. these have been explored by many, for example, chrisholm (2005), knowles, nieuwenhuis and smit (2009), and nel and theron (2008) and are well documented. they include problems within schools, such as large numbers of learners in classes, ill-discipline, lack of resources, and administration overload for teachers. these problems are partly caused and certainly exacerbated by conditions external to the schools, such as poor socio-economic conditions, unsupportive and illiterate parents or caregivers, dysfunctional home environments, and historical and political challenges. given these overwhelming odds it is hardly surprising that some teachers are apathetic and unenthusiastic about their profession. these challenges have resulted in stressed teachers who lack accountability. steyn and kamper (2006) give an overview of stress amongst south african teachers and cite various studies that show the high number of teachers (up to 20% in some regions of south africa) who suffer from severe stress. the cumulative effect of these challenges has resulted in teacher and learner absenteeism, a lack in the culture of teaching and learning and a dearth of professional pride on the part of the teachers in some areas. quo vadis? given this scenario it is hardly surprising that “johnny can’t write”. the problems are multiple; however, part of the solution involves changing the meaning-focused communicative curriculum in english fal to one that focuses on the form of the language. this will help to support our overworked and stressed teachers by giving them a curriculum that is easier to implement, in that it is more methodical than the free-for-all environment in which the teacher is encouraged to collude with the learner in a conspiracy that accurate communication has been achieved. what is form-focused instruction? form-focused instruction refers to any deliberate concentration on syntactic or morphological aspects of language by learners or by the teacher. attention is drawn to the form of the language, rather than the meaning alone. this distinction is a matter of degree rather than an absolute, as linguistic forms are used to convey meaning. while at one end of the continuum linguistic forms may be taught as discrete linguistic structures in separate lessons, at the other end of the continuum there is a focus on form approach in which structures are dealt with incidentally, during the course of a lesson that is primarily directed to communicating the lesson content. form-focused instruction has its roots going back to a paper (unpublished in its original form) presented by long at the 1988 european-north-american symposium on needed research in foreign language education, rockefeller centre, bellaggio, italy. a decade later he, in collaboration with robinson, wrote: focus on form refers to how focal attentional resources are allocated. although there are degrees of attention, and although attention and attention to meaning are not always mutually exclusive, during an otherwise meaning-focused classroom lesson, focus on form often consists of an occasional shift of attention to linguistic code features — by the teacher and/or one or more students — triggered by perceived problems with comprehension or production. (long & robinson, 1998:23) long and robinson, then, see the focus on form to be a temporary side-stepping from the important business of the lesson, which is the meaning and the communication of that meaning. although they do say in the above extract that “attention and attention to meaning are not always mutually exclusive”, there seems to be the perception that the linguistic form can be separated from the meaning. while the learner’s attention is taken up by the lesson content there might be an occasional, and fairly fleeting, detour to focus on a feature such as the plural -s that the teacher notices is missing from a learner’s interlanguage while the class is concentrating on a lesson on south african geography. ayliff — “why can’t johnny write? he sounds okay!” 5 these incidental foci on form occurrences are the implied approach laid down in the ncs for fal: thus, in a text-based approach, language is always explored in texts, and texts are explored in relation to their contexts. the approach involves attention to formal aspects of language (grammar and vocabulary) but as choices in texts and in terms of their effects, not in an isolated way. (doe, 2003b:47) this approach can include a range of teaching techniques such as recasts by the teacher, a simple indication that something is incorrect, to more explicit techniques such as rule explanations and examples. the problem with this incidental focus on form occurrence is that the learners’ concentration is redirected from the lesson content to an aspect of linguistic form and he might not have the capacity to process both simultaneously. he will therefore probably choose to concentrate only on the one which he perceives as the most pressing at the time, and this will probably be the meaning whether it is the meaning of a line of poetry or how to set out at formal letter. in the lower grades, where the same teacher takes the class for most learning areas, it might be a mathematical problem or how plant species cross-pollinate. the learner, who is trying to cope with the lesson content in his additional language, is now also asked to process new information about linguistic form. the teacher will also need to make a quick decision as to whether to divert from the meaning-focused content of the lesson to deal with a question of linguistic form. she must weigh up whether she has sufficient examples for the form, a succinct and clear enough explanation to hold the class’s concentration, the time to discuss the form and whether there are sufficient numbers in the class who need the tuition on this point of grammar. it would seem that in the average south african classroom, where the language of learning is not the home language of the majority of the learners, the lesson content will take priority every time. the ncs for fal (grades 10-12) lays down that learners are expected to understand how “texts are constructed” and “need to be able to interpret and respond to produce a range of different genres” (doe, 2003b:47). they are also expected to have a “meta-language” to “describe different aspects of grammar, vocabulary and style, [so that they may] talk about different genres”. so while teachers are exhorted to teach in a manner that is close to the focus on form end of the continuum, they are also expected to produce learners, who are able to employ the terms used to describe grammatical concepts, types of style and literary conventions. these high ideals are laudable, but they are far from the reality attained by the majority of those who have passed the matriculation examination. if learners are to succeed in mastering these abstract concepts in their fal, it is important that the teachers are given a curriculum that encourages attention to the form of the language. south africa needs a curriculum that promotes a more structured and logically paced method of instruction in english as fal to ensure that as many of the major linguistic structures (tenses, sentence types, prefixes, punctuation marks) are covered in an age-appropriate way. this would provide the more balanced curriculum that de clercq discusses in her article in perspectives in education (2008). it would be a support intervention targeted at giving teachers a curriculum that provides a framework of which linguistic forms to teach. these language activities must be complemented by plenty of practice in listening, speaking, reading, and writing in a variety of domains. such a curriculum would provide for a mix of form-focused and meaning-focused methods of instruction that promote both accuracy and creativity. has the focus on form approach been tried and tested? the body of research that began in the late 1980s interrogating this approach is now considerable and the debate has moved from whether to use a form-focused approach in l2 teaching, to how it should be implemented. theoretical issues such as the importance of “noticing” and the “teachability hypothesis” underpin whether a reactive versus a proactive focus on form approach should be used, and how explicit the instruction should be. noticing is important because the learners should recognise when their output is non-target-like. schmidt (1995) hypothesises that there is no learning without understanding and he claims that there is no understanding without noticing. he defines noticing as implying a “recognition of a general principle, rule perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 20106 or pattern”, while “understanding refers to a deeper level of abstraction related to (semantic, syntactic, or communicative) meaning” (schmidt, 1995:29). pienemann’s teachability hypothesis (1985) claims that learners can be speeded up if they are taught at the stage just beyond their current stage. the difficulty with this hypothesis is that the research is at too early a stage to predict exactly which of the multitude of structures in all the human languages follows which. there is an intuitive, common sense reasoning, however, that militates against attempting to teach forms that are way beyond the learner’s stage of interlanguage development. while most researchers have recommended that form-focused instruction should take place within meaning-focused instruction, some, such as laufer, have explored ways of complementing this kind of instruction by planned “pure” form-focused lessons unrelated to any other task and concentrated on one particular form. it is this kind of form-focused instruction that needs to be incorporated into the english curriculum for fal, particularly in the higher grades where learners have the cognitive and conceptual abilities to absorb the theory. as a rule of thumb, in the lower grades there should be an emphasis on communicative meaning-focused activities that build confidence and relative fluency, while in the higher grades the emphasis should be on form-focused activities that build accuracy and sound standard syntactic knowledge. conclusion there should be no apology called for in studying language as an object in itself, but it should not be studied as an end in itself at school level. there is nothing wrong with learners coming to grips with the internal workings of a particular language system in its standard form and coming to understand that form encapsulates meaning. ideally, by focusing on the form of the fal, the learner will come to master that language more completely and by doing so convey his or her message precisely. when learners have mastered the linguistic structures of their fal, and they are both fluent and accurate, they should come to the realization that how they say something impacts on what they say. it is, thus, difficult to draw dividing lines between such concepts as thought, intention, language and style. the relationship between language and thought, and how meaning is made, has been explored by many and goes back to plato and aristotle in western thought. if our learners are not able to master the correct standard forms their meaning will become blurred and muddled. this is particularly the case with the written form of the language as without the help of paralinguistic aids such as gestures, voice tone, and other pragmatic and deictic markers the written words stand alone, unadorned, and usually in unrelenting black and white. in our english fal classrooms there should be far greater emphasis on form to promote accuracy. this may be achieved by adapting the present ncs so that it itemises the forms that should be covered in each learning phase as it has been shown that the meaning-focused methodology has not promoted accurate grammatical competence. intervention is required to tighten and order the curricula for english as fal at all learning phases as they are currently too vague and woolly. teachers would probably welcome more supportive curricula that would help them to achieve the outcomes in a more guided, ordered and predictable way. only by mastering the form accurately will our grade 12s cope with abstract, symbolic levels of thought needed in english in higher education and professional circles. references blignaut s 2007. the policy-practice dichotomy: 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prinsloo d 2007. the right to mother tongue education: a multidisciplinary, normative perspective. southern african linguistics and applied language studies, 25(1):27-43. schmidt rw 1983. interaction, acculturation, and the acquisition of communicative competence: a case study of an adult. in: n wolfson & e judd (eds). sociolinguistics and language acquisition. rowley, ma: newbury house. perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 20108 schmidt rw 1995. consciousness and foreign language learning: a tutorial on the role of attention and awareness in learning. in: rw schmidt (ed). attention and awareness in foreign language learning. honolulu: university of hawai’i press. southern and eastern african consortium for monitoring educational quality (sacmeq). retrieved from http:// www.sacmeq.org/about htm/ on 14 october 2009. spada n 1997. form-focussed instruction and second language acquisition: a review of classroom and laboratory research. language teaching, 30:73-87. steyn gm & kamper gd 2006. understanding occupational stress among educators: an overview. africa education review, 3(1&2):113-133. uys m, van der walt j, van den berg r & botha s 2007. english medium of instruction: a situation analysis. south african linguistics and applied linguistics studies, 27(1):69-82. van rooyen d & jordaan h 2009. an aspect of language for academic purposes in secondary education: complex sentence comprehension by learners in an integrated gauteng school. south african journal of education, 29:271-287. webb v 2004. using the african languages as media of instruction in south africa: stating the case. language problems and language planning, 28(2):147-174. widdowson hg 1978. teaching language as communication. oxford: oxford university press. pie33(1).indb perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 57 roelf p reyneke university of the free state, department of social work e-mail: reynrp@ufs.ac.za telephone: 051 4012356 restoring our children: why a restorative approach is needed to discipline south african children roelf p reyneke behavioural problems are commonly experienced in schools. this contributes to poor academic results and general disciplinary problems, among other things. it is argued that punitive disciplinary methods are aggravating unacceptable behaviours. this paper presents information about the use of punishment, how children react to these measures, and reasons why they react in the way they do. the circle of courage philosophy is linked to restorative practices as a response to disciplinary problems. by presenting this, the author contributes to the debate on approaches to discipline and aims to show that, since so many children are troubled, they need to be disciplined in a psychologically healthier way. high levels of caring and control could significantly reduce disciplinary problems in schools. keywords: restorative practices; discipline, punishment, school violence, shaming, school disengagement, circle of courage. introduction children’s social environment, diversity, the human rights culture, poorly qualified teachers, unprofessional conduct by teachers and the climate of the school and the classroom are some of the most common factors that contribute to school-based violence and other forms of misconduct (van der walt & oosthuizen, 2008: 379-380; barnes, brynard & de wet, 2012: 69). some disciplinary practices that are used to manage these behaviours are exacerbating poor behaviour, further increasing the spiralling social and economic problems in communities. socio-economic problems at home and in the school environment are also contributing to the fact that millions of south african children are performing poorly perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 58 in school, presenting with behavioural problems, and even dropping out of the school system. children from all walks of life are living in broken families where, in 2011, only 34.8% of children lived with both their parents and 23% lived with neither parents. orphans – children without a living biological father, mother or both parents (3.85 million) – and child-headed households (82 000) are on the increase (statistics south africa [ssa], 2013: ii, ssa, 2012; berry, biersteker, dawes, lake & smith, 2013: 88). high levels of absent fathers lead to problems such as emotional disturbances and depression in children (holborn & eddy, 2011: 4-5). furthermore, poverty levels are high in many communities. in 2011 approximately 64.5% of children lived in households that had a per capita income of less than r765 per month. it is estimated that 32.4% of children lived in households were there were no employed members (ssa, 2013: ii–iii). this shows that many children in south africa experience high levels of poverty. some of the foremost consequences of poverty include inferior education, malnourishment, criminal activities and a lack of psychological well-being (bezuidenhout, 2004: 186-188). disciplinary problems could be experienced because many children have the perception that education is useless; they do not perform at school and experience exam failure. generally speaking, they lack hope and a vision for their future. adding to this are in-school factors such as a lack of care and support by teachers and poor stimulation which lead to the youth’s disengaging from the school. bullying, and the way that learners are treated in the disciplinary process, as well as school violence are also contributing factors (burton & leoschut, 2013: xii, berry et al., 2013: 101; masitsa, 2006: 177-178; mngambi, 2012: 8). difficulties with general discipline are experienced in most if not all schools (wolhuter & van staden, 2008: 393). currently, there are not any national surveys available that can provide the full extent of disciplinary problems in schools. however, the studies that have been completed do indicate certain trends showing that the main problems experienced include school-based violence in the form of violent crimes such as murder, attempted murder and assault, corporal punishment, rape, statutory rape and sexual assault and robbery. other forms of school-based violence include bullying, gang activities, verbal aggression, crimes related to property and drug and alcohol abuse. other types of misconduct that are reported are learners arriving or becoming intoxicated at school, ordinary class disruptions, rudeness, teasing of other children, a lack of commitment to school work, late coming and teenage pregnancies (de wet, 2003: 113-121; prinsloo, 2008: 27; reyneke, 2013: 52-66). this shows that schools are not always safe environments where children can learn and prosper. the most prominent disciplinary methods being used to discipline learners are the retributive approach that includes methods such as additional school work, withdrawal of privileges, menial tasks, detention, humiliation, behavioural management contracts and, although illegal, sometimes corporal punishment (oosthuizen, wolhuter & du toit, 2003: 469-475; wolhuter & van staden, 2008: restoring our children: why a restorative approach is needed to discipline south african children roelf p reyneke 59 395-396; reyneke, 2013: 427, 430-431). since problems in schools seem to increase, it can be said that this approach is not that effective. wolhuter and van staden (2008: 390) hold the opinion that reactive methods to discipline dominate and that more preventative methods should be utilised to address discipline problems. in this article the need for an approach to discipline which takes the personal circumstances and needs of children into account will be discussed. the paper will explain how troubled children could be managed through the application of a restorative disciplinary approach. i will argue that, contrary to common belief, a punitive approach to discipline is not what is needed in the present day. punishing children for misbehaviour is not the best way to teach them to be responsible. it will be explained that a punitive approach is actually aggravating disciplinary problems. i will further reason that a restorative approach to discipline is a more educational and psychologically healthier way to discipline youth and that it could significantly reduce disciplinary problems in schools. i will start the discussion by explaining the concept of discipline, followed by the use of punishment in educational settings. then a discussion on how children respond to punishment will follow. it will be indicated that the use of punishment is counterproductive and i will explain how misbehaviour could be deconstructed by using the circle of courage philosophy. subsequently, i will explain how the restorative approach could change the climate and the culture of a school. the concept ‘discipline’ the original concept of discipline, whereby the adult provides guidance through teaching the child social responsibility and self-control and the child as the “young disciple” follows, became distorted over time to the point where many dictionaries include punishment as a synonym for discipline (brendtro, brokenleg & van bockern, 2002: 109; wehmeier, 2002: 330). according to oosthuizen, roux and van der walt (2003: 374), some dictionaries describe the discipline concept as: order, orderliness, ordered behaviour, control, self-control, to restrain, punishment, chastisement, to train oneself in obedience, obedience to rules, set rules of conduct, teaching, training resulting in ordered behaviour, improved behaviour due to training, training in obedience, a subject of instruction, and a branch of learning or instruction. just by examining these concepts, it is clear that discipline is a broad term used for different notions. from this it seems that there are broadly five categories, namely order and control, obedience, teaching, behaviour modification, and punishment. what is interesting to note is that punishment seems to be only a small part of what is generally understood by this term. reyneke (2013: 47) argues that the discipline concept has the dimensions of control and order at its essence while aiming to create an environment that is conducive to teaching and learning, but that it should also focus on the holistic development perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 60 of the child. it should develop the child’s self-discipline and contribute to making him/her a responsible citizen. punishment is seen as an acceptable part of discipline, but it should be the last resort and used in a trusting relationship. it is necessary to emphasise the fact that, to discipline a child, is not per se to punish the child as so many adults would like to think. when ‘punishment’ does take place, it should be a natural consequence of the bad behaviour. this means that the consequences of bad behaviour should be logical (brendtro et al., 2002: 110). to give detention for a child who damaged property, is not necessarily going to teach him to respect the property of others. if the child has to fix what was damaged and experience working to get the necessary money to pay for the repairs, it is much more logical and it also teaches that bad behaviour has consequences. illogical punishment will only fuel the anger of troubled youth and make them more uncontrollable (brendtro et al., 2002: 110). discipline techniques should thus contribute to the personal development of children. they need to be supported into becoming socially responsible citizens of their schools and their communities. punishment in educational settings at-risk children will bring all the social ills they are exposed to in their communities into the classroom. since punishment is toxic to children who have experienced rejection and abuse, this could lead to disciplinary problems, causing teachers to feel helpless and, in many instances, overwhelmed (brendtro, ness & mitchell, 2005: 32 & 49). the school’s response to these problems is mostly punitive in nature. this creates a climate of fear and, according to kohn (2000:97), leads to anger and resentment. teachers are thus unknowingly contributing to the anger that they experience from learners. redekop (2008: par. 61) poses that the practice of punishment could not be justified on moral, religious or utilitarian grounds. in analysing this practice he also concludes that punishment does more harm than good. many teachers who experienced punishment as children are more likely to justify the use of corporal punishment (shaukat, 2013). they will use what redekop (2008: par. 76) argues as the ‘moral’ argument in that punishment should be used for poor behaviour since it is deserved and it will restore the imbalance that was caused by the offence. unfortunately, when it comes to troubled youth, punishment only suppresses negative behaviour temporarily, but does not necessarily change it in the long run (redekop, 2008: par. 1799). punishment also has a compounding effect in children who are dealing with high stress levels and trauma (thorsborne & blood, 2013: par. 366). punishment will add to their stress and will contribute to their feelings of anger and rage. brendtro et al. (2005: 32) are of the opinion that it can also contaminate relationships. if there is a break in the relationship with the adult it can elicit avoidance and escape behaviour. this could lead to learners’ not making contact with adults who could teach them appropriate behaviours (brendtro et al., 2005: 80). besides that, a punitive response creates fear and mistrust of certain adults, it does not teach restoring our children: why a restorative approach is needed to discipline south african children roelf p reyneke 61 appropriate life skills such as assertiveness, negotiation and problem solving, and the inner locus of control is not developed (nelsen, escobar, ortolano, duffy & owensohocki, 2001: par. 304). furthermore, it does not eliminate the negative attention that children receive when being punished, the child still receives a ‘payoff,’ even though it could be negative. lastly, punishment teaches aggression, not just is the act of some forms of punishment physically and emotionally violent, but also the reaction of the child could be to attack the punisher or someone else as retribution for being punished (maag, 1996: 8-12). children who experience difficult personal circumstances often experience emotional disturbance and outward social maladjustment. they display problems such as depression, defiance, delinquency, school failure, substance abuse, premature sexual activity, rule breaking and risk-taking behaviour, to name but a few (brendtro & larsen, 2006: 23). it can be concluded that they are in pain (because of their circumstances at home or at school) and they react to these circumstances with painbased behaviour. when they are then punished with harsh discipline techniques, it is all about returning hostility with hostility (brendtro & larson, 2006: 12). their reactions could be highly unpredictable since one does not know how troubled youth might react. it could lead to their becoming even more rebellious and aggressive, sneaky, and experiencing impeded cognitive development, antisocial behaviour or self-blame (redekop, 2008: par. 103, brendtro & larsen, 2006: 26-27). looking at punishment from a resilience perspective, it is also not the best way of dealing with troubled children because it does not create a caring climate (bernard, 2004: 70). brendtro et al., (2005: 86-87) refer to a need for a positive approach to youth development which ensures an environment that provides connections, continuity, dignity and opportunity. it is submitted by these authors that teachers who punish children will experience difficulty in connecting with them. punishment could further accentuate patterns of failure and broken relationships, continuing negative pathways that disrupt positive youth development (redekop, 2008: par. 1637). there is no dignity in being punished, especially in front of the peer group – it is humiliating (redekop, 2008: par. 1240). this further diminishes the self-worth of the wrongdoer and proliferate a climate of disrespect. dignity is nurtured only in environments that teach respect. even though adults try to teach children to be respectful when punishing them, it only communicates disrespect to them. teaching self-discipline will require time, patience and, above all, respect (armstutz & mullet, 2005: 10), something a punitive approach is lacking. children’s response to punitive disciplinary practices for generations we have been using punishment to manage behaviour. the main focus of this approach is to determine what rule was broken, who is to blame, and what the punishment is going to be (jansen & matla, 2011: 85). this is a tough perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 62 adversarial process that could create a great deal of negative emotions and feelings with all the parties involved. the practices used to punish are known to teachers. what is probably unknown and needs to be considered is that punishment leads to shaming, and that shaming leads to negative behaviour. a person does not need to do something wrong to experience shame, the individual just needs to experience something that interrupts his/her positive affects (nathanson, 2003: 42; wachtel, 2013: 5). when this connection is being interrupted by hurtful or disrespectful behaviour, it leads to a sequence of negative thoughts, feelings and behaviour such as violence and poor academic performance (brendtro et al., 2005: 14; costello, wachtel & wachtel, 2009: par. 158). this means that a child who did not do anything wrong could potentially experience feelings of shame since the experience of another’s shame could trigger own feelings of inadequacy or shame. behaviour that disrupts a relationship with another person is also a common trigger to the shame affect (hansberry, 2009: 35). other experiences that triggers the shame affect include (nathanson, 2003: 5): • matters of personal size, strength, ability, and skill. this can relate to feelings of incompetency, weakness and cognitive inability, e.g. not being able to perform well in school. • dependence and independence, e.g. feeling helplessness because of socio-economic circumstances. • competition, e.g. feeling good when you are a winner but shameful when a loser. • sense of self, e.g. a negative self-concept could lead to bully behaviour. • personal attractiveness, e.g. feeling ugly or deformed, bullies tend to use this type of shaming. • sexuality, e.g. feeling that there is sexually something wrong with him/her. • issues of seeing and being seen, e.g. poverty could lead to the urge to escape from the eyes before which we were exposed. • wishes and fears about closeness, e.g. feeling unlovable and the wish to be left alone. when a person experiences any of the above-mentioned, it will trigger shame; conversely, success will lead to experiences of pride. these matters are significant for the teacher seeing that traditional punitive approaches tend to trigger some of these shaming experiences. the compass of shame helps us to understand how a person experiencing shame will react (nathanson, 2003: 5-7; hansberry, 2009: 35; wachtel, 2013: 5). the four poles of the compass refer to negative behaviours such as withdrawal, self-attack, avoidance and attacking others, which the shamed person will use to manage his/her shame. these behaviours are discussed briefly. withdrawal refers to behaviour where the individual will isolate him/herself or hide from others. this behaviour could range from being shy to experiencing restoring our children: why a restorative approach is needed to discipline south african children roelf p reyneke 63 depression. the person also avoids social contact (hansberry, 2009: 37; wachtel, 2013: 5). self-attack refers to behaviour where the person will use self-put-downs, maintaining an attitude of being a lesser human being. it could include self-harming or masochistic behaviour. these individuals could also demean themselves by placing themselves in a dependent relationship with someone else in order to ensure that they are not alone (hansberry, 2009: 37; wachtel, 2013: 5). avoidance behaviour is linked to denial, drug and alcohol abuse to escape shameful feelings (rejection), distraction through thrill-seeking behaviour, sexual activity to protect themselves against feelings of inadequacy, or purchasing goods to make themselves look good in the eyes of others. they could also behave in an unauthentic manner by trying to highlight attributes that they might not possess. they will then be seen as fake or insincere (hansberry, 2009: 37; wachtel, 2013: 5). attacking others pertains to behaviour that is deliberately causing harm to other people. it includes lashing out verbally or physically, attempting to make others feel shame, or blaming the victim for what happened. bully behaviour is seen as conduct on this pole. feelings of inferiority lead to behaviour that will break down others in order to feel bigger and better. in doing this, limitations are placed on the ability to negotiate, moderate, love and nurture others (hansberry, 2009: 37; wachtel, 2013: 5). according to nathanson (2003: 7), we can start to understand youth violence and other behavioural problems when we understand the compass of shame. when young people lash out at others, it could be because of feelings of shame, or that they feel helpless or incompetent. drug and alcohol abuse could be a defence against acute shame which might be related to issues of not being recognised. a positive self-esteem and stable and affirming relationships with significant others could assist a person in managing feelings of shame (hansberry, 2009: 35). in order to help them to manage their shame and reduce the intensity of feelings of shame, people need to express their shame and other emotions (wachtel, 2013: 5). it is submitted that schools where negative behaviour is common need to consider where the shaming comes from and ensure that processes are in place to manage this. it is also crucial to create a caring and safe environment (thorsborne & blood, 2013: par. 2114) where shaming will be decreased and where children can express their pain in order to heal. unfortunately, where a punitive approach to discipline is used, such an environment cannot be created. teachers tend to react to children’s pain-based behaviour with punitive disciplinary measures which only further contribute to school disengagement, learners’ leaving school or even more behavioural problems (flannery, fenning, kato & mcintosh, 2013: 2). thus, a punitive approach to discipline is actually exacerbating the problem, not reducing it. this is echoed by numerous studies that have found perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 64 that punishment is not an appropriate way to discipline children and that it, in fact, contributes to problem behaviour and children’s disconnecting from the school (mckee, roland, coffelt, olson, forehand, massari, jones, gaffney & zens, 2007: 187; parent, forehand, merchant, edwards, conners-burrow, long & jones, 2011: 531). this loss of connectedness to the school not only increases dropout rates, but also contributes to higher levels of truancy, substance abuse (gregory & weinstein, 2004: 408), increased disciplinary problems and violence (ward, 2007: 21; barnes et al., 2012: 69). this is in sharp contrast to restorative practices that have shown the ability to improve connectedness in that they can strengthen relationships, and develop social an emotional literacy in the classroom and the staff room (thorsborne & blood, 2013: par. 666). in the next part the circle of courage will be discussed. this philosophy provides us with an understanding of what learners potentially need to develop connectedness and self-discipline. the circle of courage the circle of courage philosophy helps us to understand the basic developmental needs of children. it also provides some insight into the dangers of a punitive approach. this philosophy emerged through research on how native american cultures reared their children to be respectful and courageous without using coercive discipline. this could also be linked directly to the development of resilience in youth. according to this philosophy, belonging, mastery, independence and generosity are seen as the fundamental and central values to help create a positive educational culture in educational settings (brendtro et al., 2002: 45; brokenleg, 2010: 9). this links to the basic psychological needs of people (bernard, 2004: 68). the question could be asked as to how this is relevant to south african youth. brokenleg (2010: 9) answers by stating that, during presentations of this philosophy in south africa, zulu-, xhosa and sotho-speaking people said that it represented some of their cultural traditions in child rearing. brokenleg also explains that he experienced the same feedback from people with european roots. it could thus be concluded that the circle of courage exemplifies a model that is useful to all population groups in south africa. the circle of courage covers four basic human needs, namely belonging, mastery, independence and generosity (brendtro et al., 2005: 102). belonging refers to a strong need to belong to something or someone. when children are connected to the school, they will be more receptive to learning and being guided by authority figures. mastery refers to mastering one’s environment. when a caring adult guides them, children could feel more competent and motivated to achieve. however, when achievement is not experienced, troubled behaviour could surface through signs of helplessness and inferiority. children experiences independence when they have power over their own behaviour and their environment and are able to influence others. they demonstrate an internal locus of control and intrinsic motivation. the restoring our children: why a restorative approach is needed to discipline south african children roelf p reyneke 65 last element of the circle is generosity. this refers to being generous, unselfish and empathetic. not only could troubled youth improve their self-worth when they help others, they could also experience that they have a purpose in life (brendtro et al., 2002: 45; brendtro et al., 2005: 102). so, before we punish youth for misbehaviour we need to determine where their circle is broken. if it is broken in belonging we might see signs of rejection, loneliness and distrust. a lack of mastery might reflect in arrogance, low motivation, a craving for affection and acceptance or a giving-up attitude. the child who is irresponsible, consistently in a power struggle, manipulative or ill-disciplined might need help with independence. lastly, the affectionless, disloyal, antisocial and selfish child’s circle might be broken in the generosity part of the circle (brendtro et al., 2002:62-65). when we have determined where the circle is broken, we could start to mend it, without punishment, but through support and warm, caring relationships. restorative practices as a response to disciplinary problems restorative practices are not a specific programme, but are built on the philosophy of restorative justice (amstutz & mullet, 2005: 4). however, the international institute for restorative practices sees restorative justice as a subset of restorative practices (wachtel, 2013: 1). restorative justice is a reactive strategy that is used after wrongdoing has taken place, while restorative practices follow formal and informal processes that precede the wrongdoing as well as reactive strategies after wrongdoing has taken place (thorsborne & blood, 2013: par. 646). restorative practices are, consequently, seen as a social science that studies how to build social capital and achieve social discipline through participatory learning and decision making. the use of restorative practices helps to reduce crime, violence and bullying, improve human behaviour, strengthen civil society, provide effective leadership, restore relationships and, lastly, but very importantly, repair the harm that was created during misconduct (wachtel, 2013: 1). the same cannot be said of punitive practices. some of the restorative strategies used to repair the harm, include affective statements and questions, small impromptu conferences, circles (community and peace making), and formal conferences (family group conferencing and community conferencing) (chmelynski, 2005: 17; hansberry, 2009: 22). restorative practice can be defined as all the strategies, approaches, programmes, models, methods and techniques used on a preventative level to prevent misconduct, as well as on an intervention level to address the harm caused by misconduct (thorsborne & vinegrad, 2009: par. 12; reyneke, 2013: 467). it is thus a whole-school approach that is used to discipline children (thorsborne & blood, 2013: par. 646) and not just an approach that focuses all the energy of teachers on the small group of children with behavioural problems – children without behavioural problems also benefit from this approach. during these interventions, people in authority will consider that ‘people are happier, more cooperative and productive, and more likely to make positive changes in behavior when those in authority do things with perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 66 them, rather than to them or for them’ (wachtel, 2013: 06). this is central to working restoratively. it is submitted that, when a school decides to use the restorative approach, children do not learn to act socially responsible only in the school environment, but also in the broader community. this happens since the preventative work empowers children with skills and knowledge that a punitive approach does not necessarily do. this makes discipline much more of an educational learning process, linking it to the original aim of discipline (sugai, 2009: 39). the outcomes of restorative practices in schools are identifiable in the key goals of restorative discipline (amstutz & mullet, 2005: 10) namely: • creating a healthy culture of caring and support • changing systems when they contribute to the harm • understanding the harm that was done and developing empathy for both the harmed and the harmer • really listening and responding appropriately to the needs of the harmed and the harmer • encouraging accountability and responsibility through personal reflection within a collaborative planning process • reintegrating the harmer and, if necessary, the harmed, back into the community so that they still feel valued and contributing members of the community. although most of these goals focus on when harm was done, the opinion is held that the first two goals are essentially the most important starting point for schools. if the culture of the school is not healthy, it would lead to an array of behavioural and other problems in the school community (ross, grenier & kros, 2005: 6). restoring our children: why a restorative approach is needed to discipline south african children roelf p reyneke 67 figure 1: circle of courage integrated with the social discipline window (brendtro et al., 2005: 97 & wachtel, 2013: 3) the social discipline window (wachtel, 2013: 3) provides another perspective of the difference between the punitive and restorative approaches. figure 1 shows that, when control is high and support low, a punitive disciplinary approach is used. in this approach, we do things to children. this could lead to rebellion and further negative behaviour. high levels of support, but low levels of control, will mean that a permissive style is used and everything is done for these children. the third discipline style is where one finds low levels of support and control, the neglectful style. teachers using this style will do nothing and children can do as they wish. the last discipline style is where there are high levels of control as well as high levels of support. this is where the restorative approach comes in. it is important to notice that, with this style, things are not done to children, but with them. it is a collaborative approach that aims to empower children with skills which will set them up to be successful adults. it is submitted that this style highly supports the circle of courage philosophy because all four elements of the circle are covered in a restorative approach. depending on individual circumstances, the same cannot be said for the other styles. a comparison between the punitive and restorative approaches to discipline (table 1) shows that there are differences in the methods used to achieve justice (jansen & matla, 2011: 85). the restorative approach is a far less adversarial approach than the punitive approach. it is much more people centred with a greater focus on who was affected by the misconduct, what their needs are (victim plus wrongdoer) and, perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 68 lastly, how the wrongdoer is going to make things right. a main difference between the two paradigms is that in the restorative approach the focus is on trying to identify why the child needs to misbehave. this is done through dialogue and healing. when healing has taken place, acceptance back into the community becomes much easier. the circle of courage and the compass of shame are conceptual frameworks that could inform interventions during the implementation of a restorative approach to discipline. table 1: comparison of punitive and restorative approaches to disciplinary problems (jansen & matla, 2011:85) traditional punitive response to disciplinary problems (focus on punishment) restorative response to disciplinary problems (focus on responsibility, healing and needs) questions asked: 1. what rule has been broken? 2. who is to blame? 3. what is the punishment going to be? questions asked: 1 who has been affected? 2 what does he/she need? 3. what has to happen in order to make things right and who is responsible for that need? (zehr, 2002: 21) response focuses on establishing blame (whose fault is it?) and delivering punishment, pain. response focuses on identifying the needs created by harm and making things right. justice is sought through making people prove who is right and who is wrong. justice is sought through understanding, dialogue and reparation. justice is achieved when someone is proven to be guilty and punished. justice is achieved when people take responsibility for their actions, people’s needs are met, healing of individuals and relationships is encouraged. limited possibility for full acceptance back into school/family/community. maximises possibility for full acceptance back into school/family/community. one of the main challenges faced when implementing this approach is that some administrators, policy makers and school communities are unwilling to accept the positive outcomes of this approach and still believe that, to have order, discipline practices can only be pain based. punishment is such an inherent part of most school cultures that it is very difficult for school communities to move away from this (mccluskey, kane, lloyd, stead, riddell & weedon, 2011: 112-113). furthermore, this is a time-consuming exercise, especially in the beginning when the school has to start to change its culture (ashworth, van bockeren, ailts, donnelly, erikson & woltemann, 2008: 23). experience has shown that support might not always be restoring our children: why a restorative approach is needed to discipline south african children roelf p reyneke 69 available to teachers to facilitate conferences and community circles as well as some of the outcomes thereof. community involvement and a multi-disciplinary approach will be important for long-term success. this implies that the involvement of parents and other role players such as ngos and corporations will have to increase, which is costly and time consuming. conclusion when teachers discipline children they need to remember that it is about teaching the child social responsibility and self-control. the methods used to do this should be psychologically friendly and add to child development. many children come from broken homes and experience socio-economic difficulties which contribute to their experiencing high levels of stress. it was explained above that the traditional punitive response to disciplinary problems in schools is exacerbating problems and adding to the stress children experience. harsh punishment techniques could lead to feelings of shame. children manage shame by withdrawing, self-attack, attacking others or showing avoidance behaviour. this usually leads to disruptive behaviour in the classroom. the circle of courage philosophy contributes to this discussion since it provides a developmental approach to understanding the basic needs of children. when children experience that they belong in the school, it is easier to master the tasks expected of them and they have sufficient control over what is happening to them. they could then start to show generosity in their relationships with others. unfortunately, when schools do not provide a caring climate that is linked to the developmental needs of children, behavioural problems could escalate. the restorative approach to discipline could change the face and climate of a school. this approach focuses on responsibility, healing and identifying the needs created by harm and addressing these needs. restorative practices could lead to a reduction in school violence and bullying, improve human behaviour, restore relationships and, lastly, but very importantly, repair the harm that was inflicted during misconduct. the need to punish negative behaviour comes naturally to adults and many of them believe that it is the best way to teach children appropriate behaviour. however, evidence suggests that punishment is not as effective as we would like to believe. this article argues that, if we want to ensure that our classrooms are environments where troubled children can learn and thrive, the restorative approach could prove to be what is needed for future generations. references amstutz, l.s. & mullet, j.h. 2005. the little book of restorative discipline for schools. intercourse: good books. perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 70 ashworth, j., van bockeren, s., ailts, j., donnelly, j., erikson, k. & woltemann, j. 2008. an alternative to school detention. reclaiming children and youth, 17(3): 22-26. barnes, k., brynard, s. & de wet, c. 2012. the influence of school culture and school climate on violence in schools of the eastern cape province. south african journal of education, 32: 69-82. bernard, b. 2004. resiliency: what we have learned. san francisco: wested. berry, l., biersteker, l., dawes, a., lake, l. & smith, c. 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h. 2002. the little book of restorative justice. intercourse, pa: good books. 29 a standards-based approach for reporting assessment results in south africa abstract this article proposes the use of a standards-based approach to reporting results from large-scale assessment surveys in south africa. the use of this approach is intended to address the key shortcomings observed in the current reporting framework prescribed in the national curriculum documents. using the angoff method and data from the annual national assessments, the article highlights how standard setting procedures should be conducted to develop meaningful reports that provide users with relevant information that can be effectively used to identify and develop appropriate interventions to address learning gaps. the findings of the study produced policy definitions and performance level descriptors that are proposed for use in enhancing the reporting of results for grade six english and mathematics. moreover, the findings also indicate that the reporting of the annual national assessments using the national curriculum reporting categories overestimates the percentage of learners classified at the lowest performance levels and underestimates those in the next category. this finding has serious implications for the implementation of targeted interventions aimed at improving learning for all. the paper concludes by noting areas of further research for enhancing the use of results of large-scale assessment surveys and for supporting schools and teachers in addressing specific learning needs of all learners, especially the poor and marginalised. keywords: standard setting, angoff method, performance levels, annual national assessments 1. introduction large-scale assessment surveys (lsas) have been implemented in south africa since the abolishment of the apartheid system and have evolved over time, changing in name, purpose, design, scope and frequency along the way (doe, 1998, 2003, 2005, dbe, 2011b, 2013; kanjee, 2007). the initial lsas were administered on a sample basis in grades 3, 6 and 9, with the first survey administered in 2000. in 2011, the format was revised with lsas being administered annually in all schools to determine the mathematics and language performance of all learners in grades 1 to 6 and later in grade 9. the primary purpose of this assessment, referred to as the annual national assessments or anas were to provide an objective picture of learners’ competency levels, provide an analysis of difficulties experienced by learners and assist schools anil kanjee tshwane university of technology. email: kanjeea@ tut.ac.za qetelo moloi tshwane university of technology doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i4.3 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(4): 29-51 © uv/ufs 30 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) to design teaching programmes that are targeted at improving learning in classrooms. the policy document further notes that the anas should also assist in setting realistic improvement targets and help parents understand how their children are performing in nationally set tests (dbe, 2012). the anas were administered in all schools from 2011 to 2014, with national learner performance and diagnostic reports produced by the dbe. the results of the anas are reported in rankings of learners based on the percentage correct responses in the administered test, as specified in the national curriculum statements (doe, 2002) and the curriculum and assessment policy statement – caps (dbe, 2011a). issues of whether ana results are recorded, reported and disseminated in ways that make their meaning understandable so that they can be utilised optimally by targeted users have aroused growing interest into the role that lsas in general and anas in particular, can play in improving the quality of teaching and learning in schools (hoadley & muller, 2014; kanjee & moloi, 2014). reporting assessment results in raw scores such as percentage correct responses has received sharp criticism regarding its utility value as well as its lack of measurement accuracy and consistency (braun & kanjee, 2007; bond & fox, 2007; dunne et al., 2012). continued use of a reporting format that suffers from the aforementioned flaws of raw scores, viewed against the arguably rising stakes around the assessments, does not only compromise the usefulness of the results but it also sets serious limits to the possible impact that the assessment could make towards data-driven decision-making at national, provincial, district and school levels. this will affect the possible improvement of learning and teaching in south africa. meanwhile the results of national and international surveys continued to show that the performance levels of south african children were unacceptably low and, in the grades that participated in international studies, were lower than performance in neighbouring countries that invest significantly lower levels of resources in their education system (van der berg, 2008). in their analysis on the use of standards in south africa, snow (2014) and young (2014) noted that a key challenge facing educators pertains to the development of a culture of effective use of evidence from assessment data for identifying and addressing learning gaps it is within this context that we explored the option of developing and using performance standards as a basis for reporting assessment results to improve their use for enhancing learning and teaching in schools. specifically, this article reports on a study conducted to determine the similarities and differences of reporting assessment results using a standardsbased approach versus the caps reporting specifications. it also investigates whether a standards-based approach can address the identified limitations that influence the caps reporting specifications. 2. curriculum specifications for reporting results in the national curriculum statements (doe, 2002) the specifications for reporting learner performance provide for a four-level scale numbered from 1 to 4, a description for each level and a score range associated with each level, as indicated in table 1 (dbe, 2011b). as noted in figure 1, the results of the 2011 anas for english first additional language (fal) were reported using the four level rating scale. 31 kanjee & moloi a standards-based approach for reporting assessment results in south africa table 1: levels and score-ranges in the doe reporting framework level level description score range (%) 4 outstanding 70-100 3 achieved 50-69 2 partly achieved 35-49 1 not achieved 0-34 (source: dbe, 2011b: 30) 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% ec fs gp kn lp mp nc nw wc sa not achieved partially achieved achieved outstanding 67 80 54 68 85 85 70 83 41 70 19 12 17 14 9 9 15 11 24 15 12 7 22 14 5 5 12 5 27 12 2 2 7 4 1 1 3 1 8 3 figure 1: percentage of grade 6 learners in achievement levels for english fal by province for the 2011 anas (dbe, 2011: 31). following the curriculum review of 2009 (doe, 2009), the dbe continued to report assessment results in raw scores using a revised reporting format that is specified in the latest caps documents (dbe, 2012). the revised reporting format specifies a seven-level rating scale numbered from 1 to 7, a description for each level and a score range associated with each level, as indicated in table 2. 32 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) table 2: dbe performance levels rating codes description of competence percentage 7 outstanding achievement 80-100 6 meritorious achievement 70-79 5 substantial achievement 60-69 4 adequate achievement 50-59 3 moderate achievement 40-49 2 elementary achievement 30-39 1 not achieved 0-29 (source: dbe, 2013: 57) the results of the anas from 2012 onwards have been reported according to this framework prescribed in the caps document as indicated in figure 2. 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% lp ec nc nw kz n m p w c fs gp na tio na l outstanding meritorious substantial adequate moderate elementary not achieved figure 2: percentage of grade 6 learners in achievement levels for english fal by province for the 2013 anas (dbe, 2013: 79). however, the curriculum reporting framework has a number of limitations that influence how assessment results are understood and used in practice. first, the rating codes as prescribed are not associated with any descriptions regarding what learners should know and be able to do. in the absence of such descriptions, the information from any assessment is limited for use in understanding and addressing learning gaps. for example, a score of 56% does not inform parents on what their child knows or can do nor does this score assist teachers in identifying and addressing the strengths and weaknesses of their learners. second, the fixed raw scores that define the different levels do not account for variations in the difficulty of tests. bond and fox (2007) note that percentage correct raw scores depend on the difficulty of the test and the abilities of the test takers. for an easy test, percentage correct raw scores tend to be higher than on a difficult test while in the same test, it is expected that learners of higher ability score 33 kanjee & moloi a standards-based approach for reporting assessment results in south africa higher than their counterparts of lower ability. therefore, a meritorious achievement in an easy test may not necessarily be so in a difficult test. in standards-based reporting, test difficulty is taken into consideration during the rating of test items and the setting of cut-scores. third, the use of raw scores is predicated on the assumption that the effort of improving one’s score on the lower end of the ability continuum is the same on the upper end. yet, studies based on the latent-theory model show that it is more difficult to improve from a score of, say, 80% to 85% than from 20% to 25% even though the interval (5%) is the same in both cases (bond & fox, 2007; dunne et al., 2012). fourth, reporting performance against seven levels (dbe, 2012) could compromise the accuracy of information and meaningfulness of associated reports. an increase in the number of reporting levels will invariably always be accompanied by a decrease in the accuracy with which skills required for adjacent levels can be distinguished. for instance, distinguishing between skills and knowledge that characterise the “adequate achievement” and “moderate achievement” levels (levels 2 and 3 respectively), could be less convincing than distinguishing between “not achieved” and “adequate achievement” levels. similarly, a distinction between levels 4 and 5, “adequate achievement” and “substantial achievement”, respectively, could be equally less clear. fifth, notwithstanding the information limitations of percentage scores, a higher workload burden is placed on teachers and school leaders by expecting them to be able to record, report, categorise and address learner needs across seven levels of performance. our view is that it is unrealistic to expect a teacher to keep track of and provide differentiated support across seven categories of learners in a class especially in the context marked by large class sizes, limited resources and high administrative workloads of teachers. 3. practical implications of the caps reporting framework in his review of studies related to the effective use of assessment data in decision-making by educational districts, marsh (2012) concluded that one factor that influenced the success or failure of interventions to improve data use was the quality and usability of the focal data. data that was organised into usable information, easy-to-understand and enabled users to make comparisons was reported to facilitate deep conversations and learning, which in turn led to comprehensive and valid understanding of problems and potential solutions (marsh, 2012: 30-31). in a survey (n=39) conducted to understand the perceptions of curriculum and assessment specialists at national and provincial levels on the value of reports that are based on the assessment policy reporting structure, moloi (2016) notes that 82% of the respondents were of the view that the percentage-based reporting format was not useful. the typical motivation from this group was that the percentage-based reporting format “… does not in any way assist the process and cannot help anyone come up with intervention strategies to improve the system” (moloi, 2016: 139). in his study on the use of the ana results, govender (2016) reported wide variations on how officials at provincial and district levels utilise and reported data in the two provinces that he sampled. although the officials that govender (2016) interviewed were aware of the utility value of the data, the majority reported that they lacked the technical capacity to analyse and interpret the data in meaningful ways. if officials, whose responsibility is to support teachers in the use of assessment data, are not entirely convinced about the value of the reporting format that they must promote, it is highly unlikely that they will be able to support teachers in making effective use of the data to improve the quality of teaching and learning. 34 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) 4. exploring a standards based approach a common feature among education systems characterised by their enhanced use of assessment data pertains to the use of a standard setting process for reporting assessment results (hambleton & rogers, 1991; goodman & hambleton, 2004; ravela, 2005). the purpose of setting performance standards is to provide a frame of reference in which policymakers, educators and the public can understand test results and provide more interpretive information regarding the meaning of learner scores (hambleton, 2001). cizek and bunch (2007: 13) define the process of standard setting (ss) as “establishing one or more cut-score(s) on a test for [the] purposes of categorising test-takers according to the degree to which they demonstrate the expected knowledge and/or skills that are being tested”. by using a standards-based approach, learners are placed into ordered performance categories since performance standards make targeted and differentiated interventions possible as each learner or group of learners can be placed into specific performance categories that provide detailed information on what these learners know and can do. in educational circles, a distinction is made between “content standards” and “performance standards” (cizek & bunch, 2007; hambleton, 2001). content standards are defined as that which learners need to learn. in the south african context, “content standards” are spelt out in the curriculum documents, i.e. caps by grade and by subject (dbe, 2011a), which specifies the nature and scope of content knowledge that a learner must acquire in a given grade. on the other hand, hambleton (2001: 2) defines performance standards as, well-defined domains of content and skills and performance categories for test score interpretation (that) are fundamental concepts in educational assessment systems aimed at describing what examinees know and can do. 4.1 process of setting standards the process of setting performance standards proceeds in two phases. phase one comprises the specification of performance level descriptors (plds) that provide detailed information regarding the specific tasks, knowledge and skills as well as the degree to which these are expected to be mastered by learners at a given grade level (hambleton, 2000; cizek, bunch & koons, 2004). the plds describe in concrete terms what performance at a given level imply and help interpret what the learners at each level can do and potentially cannot do. according to cizek, et al. (2004) it is highly desirable for plds to be developed in advance of standard setting by a separate committee for approval by the appropriate policymaking body. a separate panel of standard-setting participants then use these plds as a critical referent for their judgements in developing cut-scores. separating the teams that develop plds from those that determine cut-scores serves as a validation measure because the panel that determines cut-scores independently also scrutinises the plds. when developing plds, perie (2008) notes that panellist should start with the policy definitions and expand these definitions in terms of specific knowledge, skills and abilities required at each level for each subject for each grade. specifically, perie (2008) proposes the following guidelines when developing plds. first, specify the number and name of the level, second, draft the policy definitions and then develop a written description for each level. phase 2 comprises the calculation of cut-scores to determine the minimum score required for learners to be categorised within each performance level. cizek and bunch (2007) note that the use of experts to rate the degrees of competency required for responding correctly 35 kanjee & moloi a standards-based approach for reporting assessment results in south africa to a specific set of items is an accepted approach for determining cut-scores. in this process, experts will be judging the percentage of items in a particular test that must be correct in order for performance to be classified as having reached a certain predefined standard. alternatively, the experts may be required to indicate the percentage of learners at a certain performance level who are likely to get a particular item right. the two ways of judging items are expected to lead to the same result. the angoff standard setting procedure, which takes the latter approach, was applied in this project. the angoff standard setting procedure is a research-based procedure used since the early 1970s and is the most commonly used standard setting method (hambleton, 2001). it has undergone many modifications over the years and is often referred to as the modified angoff or extended angoff procedure. in the angoff procedure, each question has to be evaluated by each panellist. for each question, the method is to request the panellist to make a judgement about the probability that a minimally qualified examinee at each performance level will answer the item correctly. a common modification is to ask, “if we had 100 barely proficient students in the room, how many of them would answer this question correctly?” the judgement made in this way by each panellist is referred to as the item rating and the ratings of panellists will then eventually be combined to arrive at a final item rating. item ratings can then be summed up to arrive at a cut-score, which is the lowest mark required to be classified into a certain performance category in terms of a raw score. although standard setting is a judgemental process, the standards set are not arbitrary as they represent the best estimate by informed experts. the main advantages of the angoff method of standard setting are that it is widely used in a number of fields such as education and medicine and is well supported by research evidence (cizek & bunch, 2007; george, haque & oyebode, 2006; näsström & nyström, 2008). the method involves discussions among panellists who are knowledgeable about the subject field and therefore, can generate performance standards that are rich in the content knowledge and expected skills at each performance level (cizek & bunch, 2007). however, the angoff method can be quite labour intensive and time consuming (george et al., 2006; de lisle, 2015). hambleton (2001) and cizek et al. (2004) propose the following guidelines for setting cut-scores. first, choose a standard-setting method, prepare training materials and a meeting agenda, second, select and train a large and representative panel, third develop descriptions of the minimally proficient learner, fourth allow panel members to implement rating procedures, fifth, review the process and final results and finally, report on the standardsetting process applied. 5. methodology the standard setting process was conducted over two separate workshops for the development of the plds and to determine the cut-scores. for both workshops, the focus was on grade 3 literacy and numeracy as well as grades 6 and 9 english home language, english fal and mathematics. for this paper, only results for grades 3 literacy and numeracy and 6 english fal and mathematics are reported as these are the subjects that are taken by the majority of the learners in schools, while the grade 9 results were based on pilot data that were still to be reviewed. 36 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) 5.1. selection of panel members all panellists that participated in the standard setting process were drawn from qualified and experienced teachers who had been working for the dbe on developing items for the anas and thus had the requisite subject area expertise as well as experience in item writing and test development. they were from a diverse background and were broadly representative of the population of south african teachers. for the workshop on the development of performance levels, three panellists for each subject area and grade were selected. however, on the day of the workshop, one panel member was absent and thus only 14 panellists were involved in the process (see table 3). table 3: number of panellist by grade and subject that participated in the pld workshop grade and subject speciality number grade 3 home language 3 grade 3 numeracy 3 grade 6 home language 3 grade 6 first additional language 2 grade 6 mathematics 3 for the workshop on setting cut-scores, the plan was to select 32 panellists to create two groups of four raters for each grade level and subject area. however, only 24 panel members turned up to participate in the workshop. for each grade 6 subject, raters comprised of two groups while for each grade 3 subject, the raters comprised of one group (see table 4). table 4: number of panellist by grade and subject that participated in the workshop on setting cut-scores instrument group 1 group 2 grade 3 literacy 4 grade 3 numeracy 4 grade 6 english fal 4 4 grade 6 mathematics 4 4 5.2. development of plds the process of developing plds comprised five stages. first, panellists were informed of the purpose and intended objectives of the workshop. during this phase, views of panel members were solicited pertaining to the reporting of learner scores. there was unanimous agreement that the current forms of reporting, as specified in the curriculum documents were inadequate and did not provide any useful information to parents or teachers for addressing learner challenges in improving learning. second, panel members were introduced to the stages in developing plds and trained on how to write and edit plds. this process comprises reviewing the purpose and process of developing plds as well as performance and plds from other countries. third, panel members participated in determining the number of levels and policy definitions required to produce useful reports for teachers and education department officials. 37 kanjee & moloi a standards-based approach for reporting assessment results in south africa fourth, panel members were divided into groups to begin with the writing and initial editing of the draft plds. participants were allocated to working groups according to phase and subject area speciality to ensure that their expertise and experience could be used in a more effective and efficient manner. in addition, it also allowed the teachers to more closely examine the horizontal alignment (within each grade level) and vertical alignment (between and among grade levels) of the plds. four groups were established: foundation phase, english home language, english fal and mathematics. in each group, panellists first worked to develop the plds for their grade and subject areas and second, to review the plds of their colleagues. for example, the grade 6 mathematics group first developed their plds and then reviewed the plds developed by the grade 3 group. fifth, panellists within each group reviewed, revised and edited the plds. thereafter, the plds were sent to a team of researchers and district officials with relevant expertise in the subject area for review and comment. these comments and suggestions were noted and relevant revisions were incorporated into the final version of the plds. 5.3. determining cut-scores the first stage in the process of determining cut-scores required the selection of a standard setting method. for this study, the angoff method was identified as the most appropriate as noted above. 5.3.1. training of panellists training was aimed at familiarising the panellists with the theory of standard setting, the test that they were going to work with and the actual rating of test items. three researchers, one of whom was a standard setting (ss) expert, conducted the panellists’ training. key activities in the training of panellists included a review of the plds that had been previously developed, a powerpoint presentation by the ss expert, questions from participants and explanatory answers by the ss expert. it also included test taking by panellists, leading panellists on how to use the rating forms, a practical exercise to give panellists experience on how to use the rating forms and an outline of the procedure to be followed in the rating process. the participants endorsed the performance levels (pls) and plds for each subject and grade and confirmed that they were still relevant, mainly because there had been no changes in the national curriculum between the two events. they also adopted the number of pls, the policy definitions and the labels of the pls. panel members were introduced to key concepts such as cut-scores and how they are used to differentiate learners according to their competencies, performance level descriptors and how they help to identify learners who are able to demonstrate expected knowledge and skills from those who cannot and the possible influences that categorising learners may have for the education system. particular attention and proportionally more time were spent on defining a “minimally competent” or “borderline” learner. a question-and-answer method, bolstered with different examples, was used to help participants internalise this definition, which was to guide the entire rating process. to simplify the conceptualisation of “minimally competent”, participants were asked to make required estimations by answering the question “how many of ten ‘minimally competent’ learners in your class will get the right answer?” for each of the items that carried one mark. for items that carried more than one mark, the variation of the same question was “what will be the average mark of ten ‘minimally competent’ learners on this item?” 38 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) to enable participants to familiarise themselves with the test, they were asked to individually respond to each item in the test that they were going to work with. upon completion of test taking, panellists were each given a rating sheet and asked to rate items from a different test with the same item structure as the target test, which was deliberately used for practise purposes. to limit variations in responses that required estimating average scores of “minimally competent” learners during the practise session, panellists were restrained to select from given values, which were limited to multiples of five (5). 5.3.2. rating of test items different groups of panellists working with a specific grade and subject area separately conducted the rating of the test items. the angoff method centres on estimating the likely achievement of learners who function just across the borderline into a specified pl. such learners may be referred to as “just achieving” learners. ratings had to be done for each item at each performance level, i.e. one for each of the partly achieved, achieved and advanced levels. no such rating was required for the lowest category (not achieved) as this level was automatically defined as any score below the “partly achieved” level. for each item counting one mark, each rater had to answer the following question. “how many of 10 just proficient learners will get this item right?” for each item counting more than one mark, s/he had to estimate the mean score of 10 just proficient learners at each level. for each group, the average rating for each level was calculated and then averaged across items and panellists to arrive at the cut-scores for the test. the process of rating items followed three (3) rounds. the next section presents an account of the purpose, the activities and the outcomes of each round. round 1: panellists were given specially designed forms for rating items and were guided on the information that they were expected to record on the forms. they then worked individually to rate items at each performance level from partly achieved, achieved through to advanced and recorded their ratings on the specially designed form. individual ratings were captured, the research team did the necessary calculations and feedback was presented on a printed excel spreadsheet, which showed the mean rating of each item by the group and the range in individual ratings per item. in groups, panellists then discussed the feedback, particularly focusing on items where score ranges were in excess of 2 points. round 2: panellists worked individually to rate items again, this time taking into consideration the arguments and counter-arguments from the group discussions. individuals were given the options of either changing their scores, if they were convinced by motivating arguments or leaving their scores unchanged. individual ratings were captured and feedback was again presented in printed excel spreadsheets as described in round 1. learner scores, with calculated difficulty levels approximated by p-values were given as additional input for consideration. the definition of the p-value of an item as used in this context refers to the proportion of a well-defined population or sub-population of examinees that get the item correct in a test (stage, 2003: 2). round 3: panellists worked individually to rate items again, this time taking into consideration the learner responses and p-values of individual items as additional input to inform their ratings. for example, if the ratings so far indicated that a particular item was estimated to be more difficult than the learner scores or p-values showed, panellists were free to either re-consider their ratings or leave the ratings as is if they were not convinced otherwise. 39 kanjee & moloi a standards-based approach for reporting assessment results in south africa 5.3.3. capturing of data on completion of each round of ratings, a team of appointed data capturers collected and captured the rating sheets on an excel spreadsheet. each dataset was double-captured by two people. a senior researcher monitored the data capturing process and, when errors were identified, the affected data capturer was stopped and asked to check the entire sheet before proceeding. cut-scores were then calculated from the summarised ratings. 5.3.4. calculation of final cut-scores the cut-scores for each grade and subject area were calculated by averaging ratings over items and panellists after the third round of iterations. the cut-scores were presented to the participants for comments and, when everybody was satisfied that the cut-scores were acceptable, the cut-scores were adopted and recommended to form part of the performance standards. 6. analysis the analysis conducted for this study was based on the 2011 grade 3 and 6 english fal and mathematics ana data (i.e. four datasets). the 2011 ana data was used as this was deemed the most appropriate for highlighting the implications of using a standards-based approach in south africa given that the 2011 results were reported using four levels and thus allowed for direct comparisons without any additional adjustments. thus, the results of the dbe performance levels were obtained from the 2011 ana report, which were calculated using the cut-scores noted in table 1 (dbe, 2011b). the results of the ss process were calculated by determining the percentage of learners that fell within the cut-scores calculated for each subject and grade (see table 8). 7. results and discussion this section presents the results emanating from each phase of the standard setting process, i.e. phase 1 in which the policy definitions and plds were developed and phase 2 in which the cut-scores were determined. in addition, this section also reports on the practical implications of using the standards-based approach at the national and provincial levels by comparing results obtained from the ss process to that reported by the dbe (dbe, 2011b). 7.1. policy definitions the final number of performance levels, names of each level as well as the level definitions that the panellist developed during the first workshop is listed in table 5. the policy definition should apply to all subjects and grade levels and should answer the question: how good is good enough? perie (2008) notes that policy definitions facilitate the articulation of performance levels across grades by ensuring the same level of rigour at each level across each grade and allows a reader to interpret any specified level in a similar manner regardless of the subject assessed. to add more meaning to the policy definitions and to provide a basis for its use in practice, the authors added the two columns titled “progression implications” and “intervention implications”. 40 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) table 5: policy definitions and intervention implications developed by panellists level level definition progression implications intervention implications advanced performance at this level indicates that a learner demonstrates a comprehensive understanding of the knowledge and skills required to function at this grade level learner has a high likelihood of success in the next grade learner requires little or no academic intervention but needs to be provided with more challenging tasks to maximise their full potential achieved performance at this level indicates that a learner demonstrates sufficient understanding of the knowledge and skills required to function at this grade level learner has a reasonable likelihood of success in the next grade learner may require some assistance with complex concepts to progress to the advanced level partly achieved performance at this level indicates that a learner demonstrates partial understanding of the knowledge and skills required to function at this grade level learner is unlikely to succeed in the next grade without support learner requires specific intervention to address knowledge gaps and additional support to progress to the required grade (achieved) level not achieved performance at this level indicates that a learner demonstrates very limited understanding of the knowledge and skills required to function at this grade level learner is unlikely to succeed in the next grade without significant support learner requires specific intervention to address knowledge gaps, with extensive and continued support to progress to the required achieved level 7.2. performance level descriptors as an exemplar, tables 6 and 7 list the final plds developed by the panel members for grade 6 mathematics and english fal (the grade 3 plds were not included due to space constraints). cizek and bunch (2007) note that plds describe in concrete terms what performance at a certain level implies and provides a basis for interpreting what the learners at each level can do and potentially cannot do. in practice, learners are categorised as functioning in one of the four levels, thus providing teachers and district officials specific information regarding the key knowledge and skills that have been learnt or which still need to be learnt. however, in order to categorise learners into any one of the levels, cut-scores need to be determined for each test. 41 kanjee & moloi a standards-based approach for reporting assessment results in south africa table 6: grade 6 mathematics plds developed by panellists not achieved partly achieved achieved advanced level a learner at this level can recognise basic number systems and can: • count forward only with whole numbers • count objects not exceeding 10 • add whole numbers up to 10 • draw simple pictures of objects • measure length of lines • name few si units • measure area & perimeter of objects • draw simple bar graphs a learner at this level can, in addition to skills and knowledge in the lower pl can: • count forward and backwards in decimals • recognise place value up to 9 digits • round off number up to 1000 • add and subtract up to 9 digits • do simple calculations using ordinary fractions and decimals • read digital and analogue time • measure using basic si units • draw pictographs a learner at this level can, in addition to skills and knowledge in the lower pls: • count, recognise and do calculations using fractions & decimals • represent multiples, factors & prime numbers • find percentages of whole numbers • solve problems involving finances and measurement • compare rate and ratio • identify & describe numeric and geometric patterns • use and describe transformations • locate and describe movement on a grid • differentiate between sample & population • draw & interpret bar and pictographs a learner at this level can, in addition to skills and knowledge in the lower pls: • critically read, interpret and analyse with awareness of sources of error and manipulation draw conclusions and make predictions • list possible outcomes for simple experiments including tossing a coin, rolling die and spinning a spinner • distinguish between volume, surface area & dimensions of rectangular prisms. • solve problems involving different time zones • estimate, record, compare & convert between si units (including mass, temperature, distance and capacity) • organise & record data • calculate the median & mode of data • list possible outcomes & predict “likelihood” of events. 42 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) table 7: grade 6 english fal plds developed by panellists not achieved partially achieved achieved advanced level reading a learner at this level can read and can: • recognise words that were previously learnt • read forward and answer short questions based on the text • identify the key character in a text a learner at this level can, in addition to skills and knowledge in the lower pl: • skim & scan some poetical elements • skim, scan and summarise texts • use a vocabulary of 1500 words. • write friendly letters • extract information directly from a short text • read short stanzas and answer literal questions a learner at this level can: • identify characters and plot setting • identify ethical issues such as cultural/social diversity • highlight the moral lesson behind a story • infer information from a complex text • identify key elements of poetry • use dictionaries in building vocabulary of at least 3000 words • understand factual information from non-fictional documents a learner at this level, in addition to skills and knowledge in the lower pls, can: • read poetry effectively • evaluate texts • identify formal and informal texts • easily utilise vocabulary of at least 5000 words • critique texts through book reviews and reports. • analyse formal & informal documents • synthesise information from different parts of a text • demonstrate comprehension of inferred information from a text writing a learner at this level can: • write single words and short sentences • represent ideas with drawings • spell few commonly used words correctly • write brief diaries a learner at this level can, in addition to skills and knowledge in the lower pl: • write personal letters, diaries, news reports • create a book cover • identify similar & different texts • express cause and effect relationships • write simple sentences. a learner at this level can, in addition to skills and knowledge in the lower pls: • write for social purposes, e.g. frames, personal letters, diaries, dialogues & simple news reports • design a book cover • develop & edit key language structures. a learner at this level can, in addition to skills and knowledge in the lower pls: • write extensively for social purposes • develop news reports • design questionnaires and adverts. • integrate ideas by classifying information • solve problems • use relevant questioning styles to obtain information. 43 kanjee & moloi a standards-based approach for reporting assessment results in south africa 7.3. recommended cut-scores this section presents the cut-scores recommended from the standard setting exercise undertaken by panel members for grade 3 literacy and numeracy as well as grade 6 english fal and mathematics. the final cut-scores recommended were calculated from the last set of ratings and appear in table 8 below. according to this table, the cut-score for partially achieved for grade 3 literacy is 22%. learners getting less than 22% will fall in the not achieved category while those scoring 22% or between 22% and 46% will fall in the partially achieved category. similar results can be generated for grade 3 numeracy as well as grade 6 english fal and mathematics. table 8: cut-scores derived from the standard setting process grade subject cut-scores in % 1 2 3 grade 3 literacy 22 46 72 numeracy 27 47 64 grade 6 english fal 18 50 67 mathematics 31 58 74 8. practical implications of using the dbe vs ss cut-scores in this section, the practical implications of using the cut-scores for reporting on the percentage of learners categorised into each of the four achievement levels are analysed by comparing the national and provincial results obtained from using the standard setting (ss) process to those results reported by the dbe (2011b). 8.1. implications at national level the dbe criteria and the standards setting exercise indicated that the majority of learners did not achieve the required learning outcomes. this general pattern held in grade 3 and grade 6 for both subjects. specifically, for grade 3 literacy, only a third of the learners were functioning at the required grade level while the corresponding proportion for numeracy was one sixth. however, there were large variations between the two approaches regarding the percentages of learners classified at the lower performance levels. specifically, the use of the dbe criteria resulted in a substantial over-estimation at the not achieved (na) level and an under estimation at the partly achieved (pa) level across both subject areas and grade levels. as noted in figures 3 and 4, for grade 3 literacy, 18% more learners were classified as na and 14% less learners were classified as pa using the dbe criteria. similarly, for grade 3 numeracy, 12% more learners were classified as na and 10% less learners were classified as pa using the dbe criteria. no differences were noted for the achieved (ach) level while for the advanced (adv.) level, the difference was 2%. 44 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) figure 3: grade 3 literacy performance using ss v dbe criteria figure 4: grade 3 numeracy performance using ss v dbe criteria the results for grade 6 english fal and mathematics reveal similar trends. as noted in figure 5 and 6, for grade 6 english fal 10% more learners were classified as na and 17% fewer learners were classified as pa using the dbe criteria. similarly, for grade 6 mathematics, 33% more learners were classified as na and 19% less learners were classified as pa using the dbe criteria. for the ach and adv. levels, the differences for english fal and mathematics were 3% and 1% respectively. 45 kanjee & moloi a standards-based approach for reporting assessment results in south africa figure 5: grade 6 mathematics performance using ss v dbe criteria figure 6: grade 6 english fal performance using ss v dbe criteria 8.2. implications at the provincial level while the overall performance of province x learners was higher compared to the rest of the country, similar trends were found compared to the national results. that is only a third of the grade 3 literacy and grade 6 english fal learners while a fifth of the grade 3 numeracy and grade 6 mathematics learners were functioning at or above the required grade level. moreover, as noted in figures 7 and 8, there were large discrepancies at the na level and at the pa level between the ss and dbe cut-scores. for grade 3 literacy, 16% more learners were classified as na and 12% fewer learners were classified as pa using the dbe criteria (figure 7). similarly, for grade 3 numeracy, 13% more learners were classified as na and 10% fewer learners were classified as pa using the dbe criteria. the differences for the ach and adv. levels were all less than 5%. 46 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) figure 7: grade 3 literacy performance using ss v dbe criteria for province x figure 8: grade 3 numeracy performance using ss v dbe criteria for province x the results for grade 6 english fal and mathematics reveal similar trends. as noted in figure 9, for grade 6 english fal, 28% more learners were classified as na and 28% fewer learners were classified as pa using the dbe criteria. similarly, for grade 6 mathematics, 8% more learners were classified as na, 16% fewer learners were classified as pa and 9% fewer learners were classified as ‘achieved’ using the dbe criteria. for the other levels, only minor differences were noted. 47 kanjee & moloi a standards-based approach for reporting assessment results in south africa figure 9: grade 6 english fal performance using ss v dbe criteria for province x figure 10: grade 6 mathematics performance using ss v dbe criteria for province x 9. conclusion and way forward the standard setting approach followed here produced relevant policy definitions and plds that could be used to improve the reporting of results from large-scale assessment surveys. in addition, the ss procedure also has the potential to produce well-founded cut-scores for the (ana) tests, provided the test is appropriate, the standard setting panel is of the right mix and quality and the procedure is conducted meticulously with adequate time devoted to important aspects. the angoff method used here to provide cut-scores generally yielded plausible cutscores, with acceptable levels of agreement between raters and the agreement of ratings with p-values. moreover, the use of this procedure can also be extended to results of common examinations that are administered at provincial and national level. a key finding of the project is that the ana results reported by the dbe do not accurately identify learners functioning at the lower performance levels. specifically, the results indicate that the dbe results overestimate the percentage of learners classified at not achieved and underestimate those classified as partly achieved. this could be due to the manner in which 48 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) the dbe cut-scores were calculated. however, no evidence was found on how the dbe cutscores were determined. the standard setting cut-scores, on the other hand, were determined applying well known and internationally recognised procedures that account for the difficulty of each test item as well as the ability of learners to respond to that specific item. of greater concern, however, is that the inflation of learners in the lowest performance level (na) and deflation of learners in the next lowest category (pa) can have a critical impact on implementing relevant intervention for improving learning. that is, addressing the needs of learners classified as pa and thus by definition, learners who have acquired some knowledge and skills pertaining to the subject area under concern, require less effort, time and resources as compared to developing interventions for learners who have acquired considerably less skills and knowledge. given that the current teaching and learning context is marked by a high number of unand under-qualified teachers as well as limited resources and facilities in the majority of schools in south africa, the incorrect identification of learner needs can have significant consequences on the challenge of improving learning for all. while the findings from this study clearly demonstrate the value of the standards-based approach to reporting results, additional information is required on how best to report these results to different audiences within the south african education sector to enhance the use of data for use in addressing the challenge of improving learning for all (kanjee & sayed, 2013). in this context, we highlight three areas for additional research. first, there is a need for the development of relevant guidelines, reporting tools and practical templates for supporting teachers and school leaders to enhance the use of results from common examination as well as large-scale assessment studies. disaggregating data to the level of districts, schools and classrooms has the potential to provide valuable information that can be used to identify and address learning needs of learners in the subject areas assessed. what is still unclear, however, is the form and format for reporting these results and the manner in which teachers, school leaders and district officials will respond to the results based on the standard setting procedures. moreover, it is unknown whether this information will be effectively used to identify learners in need of assistance and to develop relevant interventions for addressing their learning needs, especially those from poor and marginalised backgrounds. a second area of research pertains to the use of appropriate standard setting methods for determining the cut-scores. in this study, we applied the angoff method. however, research indicates that this method might not be the most appropriate nor cost effective (moloi, 2016). other approaches that should be explored include the objective standard setting method (stone, 2001) and the objective borderline method (shulruf et al., 2015). third, there is a need for reports to focus on the issues of equity. the use of a standards-based approach highlights the specific learning needs of learners at the lowest performance levels and provides teachers, 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outcomes in south africa. studies in educational evaluation, 34(3), 145-154. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. stueduc.2008.07.005 young, m. 2014. standards and standard setting and the post school curriculum. perspectives in education 32(1), 17-29. 63 (re)connect social and environmental responsibility to learners’ living environments: curriculum challenges and possible solutions for teaching-learning in life orientation abstract an analysis of the national curriculum statement indicates a strong focus on the promotion of knowledge in local context, whilst being sensitive to global imperatives. this implies that learning experiences must reflect local realities first; a call which compels teachers to adapt their teaching with the purpose to make learning relevant and meaningful for the learner. it is therefore an appropriate time to ask the key question: do life orientation teachers (re)connect their teaching-learning on social and environmental responsibility with learners’ living environments to adhere to curriculum requirements of relevance and meaningfulness? the qualitative data obtained from 13 structured classroom observations, with specific reference to the topic social and environmental responsibility, revealed that life orientation teachers experienced challenges. based on these qualitative findings the researchers propose place-based education as an appropriate teaching-learning strategy to (re) connect social and environmental responsibility with the learner’s living environment. keywords: life orientation, social and environmental responsibility, place-based education 1. introduction and background substantial evidence from recent and past research findings in south africa indicated that life orientation (lo) teachinglearning are not meeting the expectations of learners (adewumi, 2012: 97; chabilall, 2012: 122; ferguson, 2015; ferreira & schulze, 2014: 8; jacobs, 2011: 222; magano, 2011: 120; matshoba & rooth, 2014: 43; mosia, 2011: 92; mthatyana & vincent, 2015: 53-54; prinsloo, 2007: 163; swarts, 2016). what learners prefer to happen in lo classrooms is a stronger focus on practical driven approaches (griessel-roux, ebersöhn, smit & eloff, 2005: 254; theron & danzell, 2006: 410). for example, learners want to learn skills that will equip them to deal with real life issues outside the lo classroom, which affect their lives in their living environments (magano, 2011: 124; dr p. swarts faculty of education, school of psycho-social education, north-west university (potchefstroom campus), e-mail: 13233068@nwu.ac.za, office: 018 299 4895 prof j.a. rens faculty of education, school of psycho-social education, north-west university (potchefstroom campus), email: julialet.rens@nwu. ac.za, office: 018 299 1893 dr l.o. de sousa faculty of education, school of mathematics, science and technology education, north-west university (potchefstroom campus), email: luiza.desousa@nwu. ac.za, office: 018 299 4727 *corresponding author doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v36i1.5 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2018 36(1): 63-79 © uv/ufs mailto:13233068@nwu.ac.za mailto:julialet.rens@nwu.ac.za mailto:julialet.rens@nwu.ac.za mailto:luiza.desousa@nwu.ac.za mailto:luiza.desousa@nwu.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.5 64 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) mahmoudi & moshayedi, 2012: 1156). although the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) makes reference to active, critical and creative learning (dbe, 2011: 4), lo teachers appear to struggle to adapt their teaching-learning to reflect the diverse realities of south african life. as mthatyana and vincent (2015: 50) put it: a curriculum aimed at ‘life orientation’ cannot make sense unless it takes seriously the diverse orientations to life, priorities, meanings and desires that circulate in learners’ lived, everyday experiences. against this background, we next discuss the place of lo in the national curriculum statement (ncs), with specific reference to the further education and training phase (fet). 1.1 lo in the national curriculum statement caps (dbe, 2011), which was implemented from 2012, requires lo teachers to integrate relevant environmental and sustainability concerns into the south african school curriculum. this implies that lo should not be reduced to the cognitive development of learners but the development of values and skills into action competencies becomes equally important. this emphasise the development of a balanced and confident learner on the personal-, social-, intellectual-, emotional-, spiritual-, and physical level as highlighted within lo (hay, 2015:64; dbe, 2011:8). such an approach encapsulates the holistic development of the learner. the value of such an approach to learner development lies in the application of acquired knowledge, values and skills that can contribute to a just and democratic society (dbe, 2011: 8). therefore, the emphasis within the nsc is that learners need to acquire knowledge, values and skills that are meaningful to their own lives (dbe, 2011: 4). this helps us to understand that life skills education through lo should be viewed as a process, and not a product-driven approach. to enable learners, in the process to attain relevant knowledge, values and skills, teachinglearning should be based on local realities (dbe, 2011: 4). the emphasis on “local realities” (own emphasis) is a positive step and provides opportunities for a critical and a productive debate on the interaction between the classroom and the learners living environment. equally important is that lo also focuses on educating learners that they are connected to other human beings (dbe, 2011: 8). it can therefore be argued that the role of the lo teacher should be to connect knowledge, values and skills to what learners’ are familiar with. this principle links with learners’ prior knowledge from what they know or have experienced in their local environment (graham, berman & bellert, 2015: 80; donald, lazarus & lolwana, 2006: 91; marshall, 2016: 21). although caps requires of lo teachers to contextualise social and environmental issues with the learners’ living environments, not much support has been given to them to systematically engage with such curriculum issues (swarts, 2016: 239). therefore, our focus in the next section will attempt to clarify the phenomenon social and environmental responsibility in lo. 1.2 the phenomenon social and environmental responsibility in lo lo put a strong focus on local environmental and sustainable issues which are informed by the south african constitution (dbe, 2011:1; le grange & reddy, 2017:126). this suggests that lesson experiences should not only be organized around contemporary indigenous socio-environmental issues which many south african communities are vulnerable to but also deepens learners consciousness thereof. interrogating learners about daily problems that 65 swarts, rens & de sousa (re)connect social and environmental responsibility ... are facing their communities may lead to them suggesting solutions that can transform their situation. this type of educational approach is hopeful and corresponds with dei’s (2012:115) suggestion that the education site is just not the ‘school’ but within and throughout communities. prominent among the daily challenges which policymakers deemed important for the south african learner to be informed on, are issues such as discrimination, human rights, crime, poverty, food security, food production, violence, hiv/aids, safety, security, unequal access to basic resources and the lack of basic services (water and health services) (dbe, 2011: 10). we want to argue that the inclusion of these issues are necessary and an important step, and should therefore not be viewed as mere topics to be covered by the teacher because they are in the lo national curriculum. they are real and affect people’s lives. in fact, buthelezi (2017: 312), le grange, reddy and beets (2011: 312) as well as magano (2013:25 – 29), argued that the impact of these socio-environmental issues, for example hiv and aids, are felt by local communities. the emphasis should therefore be to equip learners with knowledge, values and skills to make informed decisions and choices and to take appropriate actions to live meaningfully and successfully (dbe, 2011: 8). it can therefore be argued that knowledge, values and skills, as in the case for social and environmental responsibility, should be geared towards life skills and responsible citizenship practices. for the lo teacher to be able to recognise if individual learner growth occur with regard to social and environmental responsibility, thorough planning and preparation is necessary. this calls for lo teachers to be sensitive to contextual (local) and risky socio-environmental issues within the learners’ living environments (dreyer & loubser, 2005: 134; lotz-sisitka, 2012/2013: 30; msila, 2016: 207), not mere coverage of textbook knowledge of what is prescribed in the lo national curriculum. place-based education (pbe) could serve here as a potential reference whereby lo teachers can sensitise their learners to the risks of prevailing socio-environmental issues in their living environment and promote an environment and sustainable citizenry. ontong and le grange (2014: 28) explained the significance of such an approach to education as follows: using place as a starting point will enable students to understand the localness of environmental problems, even those that transcend national boundaries and that solutions to environmental problems often require local action. key to the above explanation of pbe is the connection on policy level with lo. this provides an opportunity for teachers to guide learners not only to think about local socio-environmental issues (le grange, 2007: 11), but also to prepare them for change through participation and help address these issues to transform society (november, 2015: 326). 2. placed-based education: an active force for developing a socio-environmental responsible citizenry at local level through significant teaching-learning experiences literature on pbe (goralnik, millenbah, nelson, & thorp, 2012: 412; koul & zandvliet, 2009: 177; le grange, 2011: 89; ontong & le grange, 2014: 28-30; van wyk, 2014: 56) emphasise, among others, significant features such as constructivism, contextualised learning, experiential learning, active learning and environmental education. pbe, according to noddings (2016: 17), also provides for connection and meaning making to studies that sometimes deteriorate to the reproduction of facts. on a more practical level, these features of pbe provide lo teachers with a lens through which they can transform teaching-learning 66 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) around local socio-environmental issues to encourage learners to become responsible and caring citizens. considering the above, it can be argued that pbe holds potential for lo and the practical manifestation of social and environmental responsible behaviour. the reason for this is that pbe grounds the curriculum and teaching in social issues and problems of learners’ immediate communities (meichtry & smith, 2007: 15; winograd, 2016). this connectedness to the local environment can add value to the development of responsible citizenship, as stipulated by the dbe (2011: 8). this should be considered as a positive step because the connection between pbe and lo creates the space for teachers to (re)connect learners with their living environment in its totality (natural and social). (re)connecting learners with their living environment can, according to ontong and le grange (2014: 29), enhance learners’ consciousness about their environment which may contribute to discovery of the self, as much as the discovery of (their) place. few would dispute that pbe also affords learners with an opportunity to experience their living environment holistically (mind, body and soul). le grange (2004: 388-389) referred to such experience as ‘embodiment’, which typifies a sense of belonging to place. gough (2006: 49) argued that incorporating the mind, body and soul to place-referenced socioenvironmental issues, raises learner awareness on and the questioning of unsustainable practices with the aim to strive for change. this aim is supported by lo where the focus is on addressing skills, knowledge and values about the self, the environment, responsible citizenship and a healthy and productive life (dbe, 2011: 8). the remainder of this paper will concentrate on the conceptual-theoretical framework, research approach and methodology, research findings, together with a proposed strategy to indigenize and enhance the status of social and environmental responsibility in culture-rich lo classrooms. 3. conceptual-theoretical framework the conceptual framework of this paper is underpinned by a constructive approach to teaching-learning. biggs’s (2003:26) notion of constructive alignment between what is being taught, how it is being taught and assessment, is in our opinion a guarantee for successful lo teaching-learning. biggs’s theory, which is rooted in the following three essential questions, guides us as researchers in our argument for successful teaching-learning around socioenvironmental issues within the lo curriculum: • what should learners be able to demonstrate at the end of learning experience? • which teaching-learning activities will enable learner engagement to attain the learning outcomes? • how will the successful attainment learning outcomes be determined? the aforementioned three questions are essential for improving the quality and relevance of lo teaching-learning (dbe, 2011:5) because research is showing that the ultimate goal of critical and creative learning is geared towards the application and the construction of new knowledge (niemi, 2002:764). this is particularly important for lo because the emphasis moves towards the how and why instead of what is taught in classrooms (nel, 2014:7). this feeds into lo because learners must be encouraged to apply knowledge to real-life problems 67 swarts, rens & de sousa (re)connect social and environmental responsibility ... through a process of gathering information, considering possibilities, making choices and putting them into effect (dbe, 2011:5; vakalisa, van niekerk & gawe, 2004:28). the aforementioned also creates the basis for adopting constructivism as the theoretical framework for this study. constructivism hinges on aspects that: learners construct their own meaning, new learning builds on prior knowledge, learning is advanced by social interaction, meaningful learning develops through what is referred to as ‘authentic tasks’, and the roles of teachers and learners are flexible (grӧsser, 2014; khalid & azeem, 2016; van den berg & schulze, 2014). these aspects relate to the pedagogical principles which guide lo teaching-learning (nel, 2014: 7-10), as well as pbe. from the above it is clear that teaching-learning strategies such as problem solving and decision making through critical and creative thinking envisages a classroom as a place of community and enquiry where learners can explore and construct their own knowledge. this offers learners the possibility of democratic participation in socio-environmental issues in their living environments, which links with what freire (2000:11) referred to as a “dialogic form of education”. from an lo teaching-learning perspective, such a form of education should assist learners with relevant and meaningful knowledge, values and skills to become socially and environmentally responsible citizens. thus, the research question that motivated this study, is: do lo teachers (re)connect their teaching-learning on social and environmental responsibility with learners’ living environments to adhere to curriculum requirements of relevance and meaningfulness? 4. research approach and methodology this study was based on a small-scale qualitative research project. a purposive sampling strategy, based on a conveniently study-sampled population group, was employed. the research participants, of whom four were from former model c schools and three from so-called township schools in the potchefstroom area, volunteered to participate in this study. these participants were identified based on the following two criteria: they must teach lo in grade 10 and use either english or afrikaans as medium of instruction. participants were informed about the purpose of their participation and the aim of this study. their identities were concealed. the data construction phase consisted of structured classroom observations. merriam and tisdell’s (2016:18) suggestion that observation is a systematic process, encouraged researchers to use a classroom observation schedule, which was adapted and validated specifically for participants of this study (swarts, 2016: 147), was utilised. this observation schedule focused on three sections: teaching strategy, teaching-learning support material, and assessment. the advantage of classroom observations, according to vandeyar (2010: 348), is that it provides a lens into the “lived experiences” of classroom life. we therefore share the sentiment of o’sullivan (2006: 252) that classroom observations as a research strategy prevents generalisations about teaching-learning. mertler and charles (2011: 194) further stated that, “observation, as a means of collecting qualitative data, involves carefully watching and systematically recording what you see and hear in a particular setting”. our interest in classroom observations as a data generation method was to gain an in-depth understanding of participants’ competences on the integration of lo 68 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) requirements of indigenising local related realities to foster social and environmental responsibility. because the in situ environment – the real world of participants – was studied, observations were analysed inductively (newsome, 2016: 17). although schumacher and mcmillan (1993: 257) indicated that reliability and validity are difficult to establish and maintain through observations, researchers were mindful of babbie and mouton’s (2002:276) suggestion that, “the key criterion or principle for good qualitative research is found in the notion of trustworthiness”. we therefore did not interfere with research participants’ provision of knowledge since this would interfere with the trustworthiness of the empirical data. for us member checking, which guba and lincoln (1989:196) regarded as the “single most critical technique for establishing credibility”, served as a key mechanism to maintain reflexivity by encouraging self-awareness and self-correction regarding the interpretation of classroom observations. these processes ensure internal as well as external validity (johnson & christensen, 2012: 394; mcmillan & schumacher, 2010: 300; struwig & stead, 2013: 15; zuber-skerritt, 2012: 8). transcripts of classroom observations were regularly shared with research participants after each session. this gave research participants the opportunity not only to review findings, but also to give their inputs (curtin & fossey, 2007: 92). easy access to schools made it possible to listen to and observe 13 lessons, two lessons at each school, except for one participant who became ill during the course of this study. lesson observations commenced in the second semester and at the beginning of week 4 in 2015 (dbe, 2011: 14). each lesson observation was recorded on a specially constructed data sheet (swarts, 2016: 147). as researchers, we integrated tenets of ubuntu, which include respect for others, an agreement on certain criteria and a dialogue or “mutual exposure” of beliefs (van wyk, 2015: 11). our trust relationship between researcher and research subjects (bogdan & biklen, 2003: 35; nieuwenhuis, 2007: 84) were therefore cemented in a non-participatory strategy. our aim was not to alter or manipulate the natural environment in which our research participants worked (gay, mills & airasian, 2006: 413). the ethics committee of the north-west university (potchefstroom campus) approved this study. written permission to conduct this study was also obtained from the north west department of basic education and school principals from the potchefstroom area. the following findings are applicable to the selected group of research participants of this study. 5. discussions and findings since understanding is the goal of research (merriam, 2002: 37), it seems appropriate to include a table which provides contextual information about our research participants because it has the potential to influence teaching-learning (van den berg & schulze, 2016: 71). 69 swarts, rens & de sousa (re)connect social and environmental responsibility ... table 1: overview of research participants’ gender, qualifications and pedagogical strategies for lessons 1 and 2table 1: overview of research participants’ gender, qualifications and pedagogical strategies for lessons 1 and 2 te ac hi ng -s tr at eg y te ac hi ng -le ar ni ng s up po rt m at er ia l a ss es sm en t s tr at eg y te ac hi ng s tr at eg y te ac hi ng -le ar ni ng s up po rt m at er ia l a ss es sm en t s tr at eg y p ar tic ip an t fe m al e m al e p g c e ( w ith l o a s sp ec ia lis at io n) a c e ( w ith l o a s sp ec ia lis at io n) b .e d. h on s (w ith l o a s sp ec ia lis at io n) o th er ( no t r el at ed to l o ) fo rm er m od el c s ch oo l t ow ns hi p sc ho ol te ac he rce nt re d le ar ne rce nt re d te xt bo ok w or ks he et s, e tc . in di vi du al g ro up te ac he r ce nt re d le ar ne rce nt re d te xt bo ok w or ks he et s, e tc . in di vi du al g ro up a √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ b √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ c √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ d √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ e √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ f √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ g √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √ √   lesson 1 lesson 2 the underpinning assumption from the above is that participants a, b, e and g, who do have formal training in lo, would consider the importance of a holistic approach towards their lesson themes. however, the data obtained from lessons 1 and 2, which focused on poverty and hiv/aids for the topic “social and environmental responsibility” as presented at the beginning of week 4 in term 2 (dbe, 2011: 10), indicated several shortcomings. 5.1 teaching-learning strategy on lesson topics: relevance to lo participants a and b took advantage of the internet service which their schools provided as an instructional media for poverty and hiv/aids during the introduction phases. such a method, according to ferreira (2006: 140), is an excellent way to get learners involved in the educational experience. the point that needs to be made is that there was insufficient support given to learners to link such issues to their living environment. our personal experience, as non-participant observers, was that participants a and b put a damper on active learner involvement through close-ended questions regarding hiv/aids that were based on statistics from the internet. such an approach not only perpetuate the seriousness of hiv/aids but supported a reductionist approach in which learners were not afforded the opportunity to discover the underlying systemic connections between social and environmental issues 70 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) (du preez, 2016: 129). for this reason, wood (2008: 59; 2014: 661) stated that knowledge on hiv/aids is not sufficient; the use of knowledge and the translation of it into positive behaviour is important for her. nobody was encouraged or given the opportunity to respond to each other’s answers and opinions. learner preferences, such as discussions and conversations on real life issues in lo classrooms (magano, 2011: 125), were ignored. schreuder (2004: 16) referred to such education on real life issues, where teachers control learners, as poor education. their second lesson was in total contrast with their first. both participants resorted to using textbooks. participants c and d obtained their teaching qualifications prior to the introduction of lo as a school subject in 1997. with qualifications such as religion studies and technical drawings, they lacked the foundational disciplinary background to teach lo (hay, 2015: 73). the hierarchical position of these lo teachers towards the topics “poverty” and “hiv/aids” silenced learners during both lessons. unfortunately, overcrowded classrooms created enormous challenges for participants e, f and g. for example, a shortage of textbooks in township schools contributed to a teachercentred approach. according to adewumi (2012: 79) and rooth (2005: 157), this approach to life skills education through lo is widely practised in south african schools. the shortage of textbooks for lo, as pointed out in the latest umalusi report (matshoba & rooth, 2014: 54), indicated that learners are withheld from the opportunity to discover useful information around real life issues on their own. 5.2 teaching-learning support material on lesson topics: relevance to lo all participants used learner workbooks / textbooks extensively during the teaching-learning phase for both lessons. it became clear from both classroom observations that all participants displayed a great deal of competence in working with textbook knowledge on poverty and hiv and aids, which kalmus (2004: 471) branded as a “sole, and trusted, source of information” for teachers. relying on a textbook seems to offer a “one-size fits all” life skills solution to socioenvironmental issues that are multi-faceted (boler & aggleton, 2007: 7). it can be argued that what textbook authors deemed important, might not be seen as relevant by learners, which may result in a lack of engagement. we, therefore, agree with gravett and de beer (2015: 4), as well as with beets and le grange (2008: 74), that planning for effective teaching-learning, especially with regard to socio-environmental issues, goes beyond mere coverage of facts (knowledge). since townships schools were included in this study, we would also agree with magano (2011: 121) that teachers should not isolate the learner from his or her context, which textbooks unfortunately do. through classroom observations, it also became clear that participants from former model c schools, which accommodated learners from township schools, are not adequately empowered on socio-environment realities of such learners. learners should also be equipped with values and skills, not only knowledge, beyond the lo classroom with regard to real life aspects. if effectively integrated with knowledge, learners might be encouraged (if not enabled) to exercise social and responsible behaviour towards real life issues in their environment. 5.3 assessment on lesson topics: relevance to lo what we have learnt, is that participants of this study are not adequately equipped with the necessary pedagogical skills to assist their learners to engage critically with local realities in their living environment when dealing with the themes poverty and hiv/aids. we would 71 swarts, rens & de sousa (re)connect social and environmental responsibility ... also add that the strong focus on textbook activities to ascertain whether learning has occurred on poverty and hiv/aids at an individual level, where the teacher acted as a soldier to see that learners were busy, added no value to active, critical and creative learning (gravett & de beer, 2015: 3). the focus was rather on the reproduction of content on poverty and hiv/aids, which is already in the textbook (van den berg & schulze, 2016: 61). such an approach, according to fataar and feldman (2016: 100), can be attributed to the fact that caps expects teachers to teach towards the test. it became clear that assessment activities on the lesson topics presented by all participants, led to surface learning. such learning, according to the latest umalusi lo report (2014), should not be entertained. learners must acquire skills and knowledge, and apply, analyse and contextualise their skills and knowledge gained in lo classes (matshoba & rooth, 2014: 60). this is in accordance with what wood (2008: 59; 2014: 661) referred to as the practical manifestation of knowledge for responsible behaviour. although this small-scale qualitative study was mainly exploratory, the above research findings on participants’ teaching-learning strategies for lesson themes, which are supposed to encourage social and environmental responsibility, revealed noticeable shortcomings, such as: • a lack of commitment to implement policy requirements on active and critical learning; • the absence of using alternative sources to enact a constructivist pedagogy; and • the absence of integrating social and environmental issues with learners’ live environments to enable the development of ‘responsible citizenry’ as described in education policy. in the next section, we suggest a framework that can (re)connect social and environmental responsibility to learners’ live environments. we will argue that this proposed framework complies with lo policy requirements and can be adapted by grade 10 lo teachers to suite their specific context. 6. integrating place-based education with lo: a response to enhance social and environmental responsibility in learners’ live environments through significant teaching-learning interventions as researchers, we are aware of boler and aggleton’s (2005: 5) remark that “expecting teachers to adapt to a different type of teaching, within the confines of a classroom, is often unrealistic especially given the ever present pressures on teachers and the curriculum”. however, we are in agreement with green and condy (2016: 1), who claimed that, in the south african context, caps allows teachers the space to teach in a way that encourages critical and creative thinking. these constructivist approaches to learning, calls for teachers to use the space which is provided by lo to connect active, critical and creative learning to reallife socio-environmental issues. it is time that lo teachers capitalise on these opportunities to raise the status of lo as a fundamental subject (matshoba & rooth, 2014: 58) to foster social and environmental responsibility among learners. a textbook-driven methodology towards lesson topics, which should enhance social and environmental responsibility as an outcome among learners, cannot be considered the only feasible way. the reason for such an argument is that the general aims of caps (dbe, 2014: 4) clearly state that “the curriculum promotes knowledge in local context, while being sensitive to global imperatives”. this implies that lo teachers should harness the local environment to make teaching-learning meaningful for learners. 72 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) for participants to act in accordance with the lo policy requirements, it is recommended that teaching-learning should be organised through pbe to ensure active, critical and creative learning on socio-environmental issues. applying pbe to such lesson topics, which need to enable responsible citizenship, can strengthen the idea that education may become a dynamic social force (reddy, 2011: 24), where learner input on socio-environmental issues is highly valued (see figure 1).social force (reddy, 2011: 24), where learner input on socio-environmental issues is highly valued (see figure 1).   integrate local socioenvironmental issues with caps incorporate pedagogies such as in / through education for personal and social transformation infusing content: value learner voices about identifying real-life socio-environmental issues informed by their live environment concentisation to strengthen knowledge, values and skills on real-life socio-environmental issues through: o group discussions / dialogue / collaboration / critical reasoning apply learning through voluntary community projects to move learners beyond cognitive awareness to engaged learning and social action baseline assessment informal / formal assessment assessment for learning figure 1: policy compliant suggestions to (re)connect social and environmental responsibility to learners’ live environments through pbe an integral part of this framework is to empower learners in a holistic way and to ensure the emerging humanness of the individual. therefore, the incorporation of learners’ live environments has the capacity to enhance the meaning of social and environmental responsibility. furthermore, this suggested framework makes provision for different ways of assessment, learning pathways (about, in/through and for), critical reflection and the local reality (see, for example, lotz-sisitka, 2011: 69). the following steps offer a useful constructive approach towards (re)connecting social and environmental responsibility with learners’ live environments. learner engagement in identifying risky socio-environmental issues, which they deem important in their live environments, can be considered the first step to accommodate lo requirements on active, critical and creative learning as well as local relevance. in this way, learners become social critics of socio-environmental issues in their live environments (aliakbari & faraji, 2011: 79) which affect their lives. linking teaching-learning to learners’ live environment is a constructive alignment with what plevin (2016: 18–19) refers to as “curriculum-in-use”. through this act, the lo teacher becomes what freire (2000: 11) referred 73 swarts, rens & de sousa (re)connect social and environmental responsibility ... to as an agent for social change and not a mere conveyer of textbook knowledge as an outside source. during the second phase, learners critically examine identified risky socio-environmental issues in their live environments through group discussions, dialogue, collaboration and reasoning. inquiring, expression, reflecting, critical thinking, and organising ideas become important. this may ultimately lead to the unlocking of learner’s creativity regarding the identification of risky socio-environmental issues. these processes are important because a textbook-driven method on socio-environmental issues can lead to the “fragmentation of skills and knowledge” (macedo, 1994: 17). the shift is, therefore, from teaching to learning, which is in line with a constructivist method. through this it is envisaged that the specific aims of lo namely ‘to develop learners’, ‘to prepare learners’, ‘to equipped learners’, and ‘to expose learners’ (dbe, 2011:8) will ensure individual growth and holistic development (dbe, 2011:8) around the challenges of real life socio-environmental issues, as identified by them. for this to happen, it is important that the lo teacher creates a classroom atmosphere in which respect and reasoning can flourish (nel, 2014: 10). the aim should be to nurture thinking skills, express ideas and encourage learners to use their constructed knowledge to become responsible citizens (noddings, 2005: xiii) in their live environments. although more effort will go into planning to ensure that teaching-learning is effectively based on a constructivist idea, lo teachers can develop a sense of ownership (boler & aggleton, 2005: 6) in the way they approach real life socio-environmental issues identified by their learners. dreyer’s (2014: 126) statement that assessment should be based on learning intentions and competencies to be acquired, suggests that assessment activities with social and environmental responsibility as the outcome, should be conducted with care. bloom’s taxonomy may serve as a guideline for lo teachers to design quality assessment activities on different cognitive levels for their learners. during the third stage, the application of assessment for learning, which focuses on learner growth and development (lombard & nel, 2014: 91), becomes important. learners can be encouraged to participate in a small scale, voluntary local community project. through this service-learning component, learners are granted the opportunity to apply and contextualise their knowledge, values and skills through social action (matshoba & rooth, 2014: 60). lotzsisitka (2012/2013: 30) called this meaning-making process “learning as connection” which seeks to ignite responsible citizenship. a positive add-on to this framework is that teachers are encouraged not to stick to the minimum lo curriculum requirements for lesson experiences that are linked to social and environmental responsibility. lo teachers are encouraged to familiarise themselves with socio-environmental issues in the local community in which they find themselves. to realise the valuable contribution of this suggested framework towards enhancing social and environmental responsibility among learners in their living environments, is to expose participants in training for effective implementation. 7. conclusion, limitation and future directions we are in agreement with fullan (2007: 37) that the implementation of any new programme or policy is linked to three fundamental principles: new or revised material, possible new teaching approaches, and the alteration of beliefs. however, to put emphasis on local realities in the lo curriculum will not just happen because there is a policy desire to do so. we, therefore, 74 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) suggested a practical and useful strategy to enhance social and environmental responsibility on risky socio-environmental issues in the learner’s living 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© 2015 university of the free state 92 digital storytelling: creating participatory space, addressing stigma, and enabling agency thoko mnisi this article explores using digital storytelling as community-based participatory research methodology with twelve secondary school learners in a rural community in south africa who had experienced, witnessed, or heard about hivand aids-related stigma. it explores the question of how digital storytelling can enable secondary school learners in a rural community to identify, describe and address hivand aids-related stigma. the learners produced digital stories and written reflections, and also engaged in focus group discussions. my focus is on the way in which digital storytelling created a critical space of participation and, in so doing, enabled the learner participants to identify and address issues related to hivand aids-related stigma as well as enabling them to take charge of effecting change in their community. my fieldwork experience encouraged me to think more critically about using digital storytelling in community-based research. keywords: community-based participatory research, hivand aids-related stigma, rural secondary school learners introduction despite the significant developments in hiv prevention and access to antiretrovirals (arvs), the epidemic remains a cause for concern worldwide and, perhaps more particularly, in south africa. the estimated prevalence of hiv increased from 10.6 percent in 2008 to 12.3 percent in 2012. kwazulu-natal (kzn), the province in which the research was conducted, still has the highest prevalence of all the provinces, with 27.6 percent of 15 to 49 year-olds living with hiv (shisana, 2013). hivand aids-related stigma is a challenge; it discourages people from being tested, and from disclosing their status, and it makes accessing care and support difficult if not impossible for many. since information about how secondary school learners experience stigma and how they deal with is difficult to access, i used digital storytelling to find out. thoko mnisi university of kwa-zulu natal school of education mnisi@ukzn.ac.za 031 260 7476 digital storytelling: creating participatory space, addressing stigma, and enabling agency thoko mnisi 93 in this article1 i argue that using digital storytelling as a method to elicit narratives about hivand aids-related stigma—experienced, witnessed or heard about—can enable young people to take action in relation to such stigma. i also argue that the stories from a community can be used in the same community to bring about change. to do this, i begin by contextualising stigma in relation to hiv and aids in the context of a rural community in south africa. using symbolic interactionism as my theoretical framework i discuss the methodology and method i used and discuss the relevant findings. hivand aids-related stigma in the rural community hivand aids-related stigma is a complex and multi-dimensional psychological and sociological phenomenon evolving over time and taking on new forms (onyebuchiiwudibia & brown, 2014) as infection levels and awareness of the virus increase, and as the availability of arvs improves. in south africa, however, hiv-and aids-related stigma remains a challenge (republic of south africa global aids response progress report, 2013). my colleagues and i identified this challenge in one of our earlier projects2 in the community of rural vulindlela in kzn where educators identified stigma as a persistent issue that needed to be addressed. the local educators indicated that while our earlier project had been helpful in the school in terms of addressing hiv and aids, the effects of stigma remained an impediment to the success of intervention programmes. this was a cue for us, following moletsane, de lange, mitchell, stuart, buthelezi & taylor (2007) to explore how to address hivand aids-related stigma with the learners in the school. symbolic interactionism as a framework i used symbolic interactionism to frame my original study so as to try to understand how secondary school learners make meaning of hivand aids-related stigma. symbolic interactionism is a theory that aims to explain “human life and human conduct” (blumer, 1986:1) through the interactions that people engage in as they try to make sense of their world (hier, 2005). blumer, drawing on cooley & mead’s work focused on three constructs—meaning, language, and thought (blumer, 1969). put very briefly, this theory explains “how meaning is created, assembled, negotiated and modified by members of a society” (brickell, 2006:417). the theory posits that people construct meaning of their own social world through interaction with other people, and that they also negotiate meaning through interaction in social life. furthermore, meaning is not intrinsic to an individual or a situation; it is not fixed, and it evolves from interactions within an environment and with people. the second construct is language and, as blumer (1969) explains, its significance lies in its giving people a means by which meaning can be negotiated through symbols so that meanings and interpretations of significant symbols can be shared. language is significant, therefore, in both thought and social action. symbolic interactionists describe thought, the third construct, as an inner conversation that happens when people are internalising their next actions. human action is seen not only as interaction among perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 94 individuals but also as interaction within the individual. what makes meaning for an individual does not randomly happen; “it results from on-going social interaction and thinking” (charon, 2009:31). i use the basic ideas of symbolic interactionism to explain stigmatisation, and the narratives about it, as a product of social processes and socialisation. participants the participants from the rural community consisted of 12 isizulu-speaking grade 8 and 9 learners (6 girls and 6 boys) aged from 15 to 18 years, purposively selected from 2 secondary schools in the rural district in which we had been working for several years because they had experienced, witnessed or heard about hivand aids-related stigma. methodology community-based participatory research (cbpr) cbpr is a collaborative approach, positioned within a critical paradigm, which is based on recognising the unique strengths that each participant from the community brings to it (schulz, israel & lantz, 2003). cbpr begins with the community’s identification of a topic of need and importance to itself. this then leads to combining knowledge from within the community to take action to improve the situation. a useful example of this can be seen in the work of griffith et al. (2010) who established what it was that was needed to ensure the well-being of a community and then worked with the community to eliminate health disparities in it. bearing in mind moletsane et al.’s (2007) observation that educators have pointed to the need for researchers to do work on stigma, i used cbpr to enable such collaborative work with secondary school learners in two rural schools. my aim was to have the learners identify and address hivand aids-related stigma—identified earlier by the community as a problem— and to take action to effect change. telling stories in a rural community context is important in that social reality is “historically created” and “reproduced by people” within a community (nieuwenhuis, 2007: 62), and, if understood, these stories could, in this particular context, be a step in the process of addressing stigma. as griffith et al. (2010) observe, this becomes possible because the participatory nature of such exploration makes the findings immediately available to the participants, who can then disseminate the stories in their community, and, at least potentially, effect change. digital storytelling technology has moved storytelling “into the digital age, to give a voice to the myriad tales of everyday life as experienced by ordinary people, in their own terms” using a technology platform (hartley & mcwilliam, 2009:3). digital storytelling, as does traditional storytelling, focuses on a topic and makes a specific point. in a workshopsituation participants are taught how to identify a topic, develop a storyline, and use digital storytelling: creating participatory space, addressing stigma, and enabling agency thoko mnisi 95 digital media to create short (2 to 3 minute-long) audio-video stories, usually about their own lives or experiences (hartley & mcwilliam, 2009). digital storytelling, used as a data generation method in participatory research, has the potential to democratise research (lambert, 2013); the participants control what they want to share, how they want to present it, and how they want to make their stories heard. using digital storytelling with learners has been shown to enable more reserved participants to express their ideas, as well as make possible the development of multiple literacies (ohler, 2006). the process in the first phase of the fieldwork, the 12 participants were invited to a retreat3 at the university where i had access to the internet in a computer laboratory, and where we could work together, over three days, without interruption. we had several sessions which unfolded through an introductory contextualising briefing of hiv-and aidsrelated stigma. this was done in an interactive way; the participants first presented their views on what they thought hivand aids-related stigma was and then offered examples of what happens, in the light of this, in their community. thereafter, i offered a presentation, based on existing literature, on hiv-related stigma. the participants were then asked to each write a story about hivand aids-related stigma. they were given the prompt: “write a script (narrative) of an experience of hiv-related stigma”, and asked to draft their individual stories in the language of their choice—isizulu or english. they then shared their stories with each other in a story circle. a questionsandanswers session followed to help the learners establish the clarity of each story. once this had been done, they edited their stories. the next day, the participants, using digital voice recorders, recorded their stories with first-person voice-over narration. thereafter, they worked individually to take photos and make drawings with which to illustrate their stories. they also downloaded visuals (photos and drawings) as needed from the internet. the digital stories were then assembled by the participants themselves, using moviemaker, to combine the images with the voice-over narration. the process enabled them to reflect on, discuss, and question their knowledge of hivand aids-related stigma in their community (see mnisi, 2014). after the digital stories were completed, all 12 were saved on 1 dvd, and a copy of this was made for each participant. the second phase took place at one of the schools. we all viewed the 12 digital stories, and followed this screening with a focus group discussion on questions to stimulate further engagement. these included: “what do these stories mean to you?”; “what are the common themes?”; and “how can the stories be used to respond to hiv-related stigma in your community?” part of this discussion was based on thinking about how to get the stories to the community. at the end of each session the participants were asked to write a reflection on it. perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 96 visual ethics in the process of producing the digital stories the participants and i also navigated the challenges of visual ethics. while the participants were keen to tell and illustrate their stories i wanted them to represent these stories in a way that would do “least harm” and “most good” (mitchell, 2011: 191). the issue of anonymity when one is working with the visual was considered and i had devised an ice-breaker activity to provide a solution. i asked the participants to draw an animal they liked and to offer reasons for their choices, saying how the chosen animals mirrored themselves and their own qualities. the participants, in a later discussion on naming and anonymity, opted to use their animal names as pseudonyms throughout the research process. their drawings became their visual representations of themselves so no participant would be recognised. among their choices were insects, rodents, reptiles, birds, and domestic animals which they then used to name their stories, e.g. black cat’s story. this approach was particularly relevant since in zulu culture, as in many other african ones, the use of animals as characters in traditional stories and folk tales has long been a way of passing on values. data analysis the analysis of the digital stories was first done by the participants who explained their digital stories in an on-the-spot analysis. along with these explanations, i transcribed the content of the digital stories and the focus group discussions, and analysed them, along with the participants’ written reflections, in response to the question of how digital storytelling can enable secondary school learners in a school in a rural community to take action to address stigma. i used tesch’s (1990) descriptive analysis technique to identify units of meaning and to look for emerging categories and themes. the digital stories the 12 digital stories offered interesting insider knowledge of hivand aids-related stigma. for example, living with hiv and aids and the related stigma is a “hardship” and, as shown in the stories of mosquito, snail, cat, lion, and giraffe, it is experienced in the family and at school; friends and members of the community stigmatise others. the stories of bird, giraffe, and black cat also indicated that young people are caught up in a vicious cycle of silent suffering since there are no trustworthy people with whom they can talk. the stories also raised the concern that what is thought of as culture is fuelling hivand aids-related stigma. snail’s story pointed to how the use of derogatory terms fuels this stigma as does the severe community criticism of early sexual debut as revealed in the stories of ant, bird, and tortoise. gossip, in which stigmatising statements are spread, features in snail’s story and in that of parrot; these narrators talk about how this exacerbates the hardship experienced by young people. digital storytelling: creating participatory space, addressing stigma, and enabling agency thoko mnisi 97 digital storytelling: enabling learners to take charge of addressing stigma the process involved in digital storytelling gave the participants insight into the phenomenon of hivand aids-related stigma through discussions on, and reflections about familiar stories from their own community. these discussions also enabled participants to raise other issues related to stigma that may not have been crystallised in their stories. participants indicated in post-screening reflective writing pieces that hivand aids-related stigma is the main problem but that it is also linked to other stigmas that severely affect people. stigma that is related to hiv to my community is main problem and it leads to many things which could affect many individuals…. (giraffe) an extract from a participant in a focus group discussion indicates that in spite of rape being condemned by society, it results in the stigmatisation of rape-survivors who, therefore, prefer to remain silent. like they don’t choose to be raped but they are still stigmatised. that will lead to them being silent and contract hiv when they could have used treatment. (ant) the learners are clearly aware of the interconnectedness of hiv and aids and genderbased violence and how these work together to exacerbate stigma. i live in a community where the gays and lesbians are part of the community. there is something that some of the members of the community are against …. (cat) the digital storytelling data shows that these learners do not consider themselves as powerless but as resilient: they de-stigmatise and re-define the realities of hiv and aids in a rural context with all its complexities. this is illustrated in the way the different participants, in a focus group discussion held after a session in which the stories were screened, alluded to being proud of who they are; of not being ashamed of their poverty; and of being able to ignore the gossiping about them. in so doing they point to the multi-faceted reality of the continuum of stigmatisation. you… have to be proud of yourself even if you are poor…. take care of yourself and forget about what other people are saying…. whatever name they give to you as label, just ignore…. (rat) as has been pointed out by gubrium (2009), digital storytelling has the potential to influence resilience through the sense of ownership that story tellers have in being able to tell their own stories and in being able to reflect on the story with others. in this study, the resilience in the learners was striking as was the fact that they took pride in themselves and were hopeful and optimistic in living with the given realities of hivand aids-related stigma. the relationship of this to the process of addressing stigma is obvious. in a post-screen focus group discussion, snail said: ...futhi uma ngabe usutholile ukuthi une hiv/aids ungazibulali, futhi ungaphuzi uphuzo oludakayo, yiba nesibindi, ubhekanenenkinga yakho. [...a person living perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 98 with hiv does not have to commit suicide, or abuse drugs. have courage and face the problem that is facing you.] according to giraffe’s digital story, [m]ina ngiyakholelwa ekutheni uma ngabe bekukhuluma kabi bekuthuka bekusho nokuthi ngeke ube nempumelelo empilweni, ngiyakholwelwa ukuthi uma bekuthuka bakunika amandla okuthi uqhubekele phambili. [even though people may wish that you do not succeed in life, i think that you should take it as a positive reinforcement.] participants knew, as can be seen in the extracts below from the focus group discussion that followed a screening of the digital stories, that they could change hivand aids-related stigma in their school and community through education and, more specifically, through education on hiv. …what i have learnt is that there are still some people who lack information on hiv, i mean people who don’t understand hiv… we have to educate those who don’t understand hiv. (snail) hiv and stigma is a problem in our community, they stigmatise others and we must involve the community to stop stigma. (mosquito) through the digital storytelling process we can see how the agency of participants featured in ways that, as gubrium (2009), points out, could not have taken place in the context of a rigid research agenda. a pre-structured interview schedule or questionnaire structured by the researcher would not have enabled participants to “produce something concrete and tangible out of their experiences” which could be used as “a ‘forum’ for advocacy on issues of concern” (gubrium, 2009:189). my participants advocated for their use of their digital stories and the process of such storytelling to educate people to stop stigmatising others. we can see here how cpbr, in its creation of participatory space, along with its conveying of ownership, enabled their agency. the participants felt that disclosure was a starting point for them, and that digital storytelling enabled them to talk about the challenge of disclosing. this is clear in the observations that were made in a focus group discussion after the digital stories had been screened. …because things like this we find them mostly in our community, in our families because us black people we are so scared to come out and tell the truth…. (bird) we have to know that hiv is like every disease that is out there…. (parrot) it is debatable whether disclosure can normalise hiv as a disease since people still fear the negative consequences of disclosure (kehler, 2013). in my study, the issue of disclosure uncovered a point of tension: the participants saw that there is a need for disclosure while at the same time there is fear of the response of the community to such public disclosure. their foray into the issue of disclosure also opened up thinking about why disclosure is necessary, and whether it is to benefit the hiv positive person or to protect the community, as kehler (2013) asks. the issue of disclosure remains a complex issue, and, even though the participants did not resolve it, the digital storytelling: creating participatory space, addressing stigma, and enabling agency thoko mnisi 99 digital storytelling enabled them to think about and discuss it. here again we see how the creation of a cpbr participation space enabled the participating learners to address matters as intimately associated with stigma as disclosure. during the discussions the participants showed that even though they were a small group it was within them to choose to be caring and supportive of people living with hiv and aids, and set an example by being non-judgmental. this, of course, is essential to any endeavour to eradicate stigmatisation, or, at least, to mitigate its effects given that the very process of stigmatisation is based on judging others. in a post-screening focus group discussion, a participant observed that [t]he only thing we are supposed to do is to support them and give them hope about their lives…. (giraffe) it is easy to suggest that people must be empathetic to those who are affected and infected by hiv, but it is clearly a process that needs to be worked on. the learners saw agency as residing in themselves if they were to work towards making the school, where children spend most of their time, a humane and supportive environment. they presented themselves as activists in initiating and sustaining such support. the digital storytelling made the participants realise the importance of involving the community in getting insight into the different cultural and contextual meanings of hivand aids-related stigma and of its effects. these stories could be used to provide essential information, community-based and contextual, that could serve as the focus of an intervention into the practice of stigmatisation. this was crystallised in these participants’ statements made in their written reflections after they had viewed the digital stories: i think that south africa, africa or the whole continent must sit down and try to look at if all the people really understand what hiv is, especially to the people that are living in the rural areas because in rural areas they lack information about this virus. (snail) when i listened to the stories i felt the need of the availability of information through people of rural areas…. (mosquito) these stories we can use to educate people… they have messages good for our people. (lion) i think the cellphone idea can work faster because we can do that any time. the other youth can add more and say more like we also doing in this project…. (bird) we know about these technologies and a cellphone is used to set time to take arvs and it can still be used even now for spreading the information…. (parrot) …amongst us as young people, we could chat and send each other message with our phones on facebook…. (tortoise) participants, in their reflections and discussions during the production of their stories, and after viewing each of the 12 stories, stood by the importance of community involvement in local responses to hivand aids-related stigma. they suggested that perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 100 this could be made possible through the use of digital storytelling, which brings the specific stories of the community to the fore. although social environments cannot be changed to maximally support community involvement, researchers, along with participants, could work towards the possibility of involving the community (campbell, skovdal, mupambireyi & gregson, 2010), using digital spaces, as pointed out by the participants. digital storytelling: creating a critical space for participation digital storytelling opened up a space in which participants could discuss local community issues that affect their lives; could learn from each other, and could reflect on their own future action, as these extracts from their reflective writing, following their viewing of the digital stories, show. what was good was that we even used our own language for discussion and we spoke about things we all knew…. (mosquito) hiv brought a lot of issues in our communities…a lot of things i have experienced in my life but did not take notice of and did not take action, but now i understand and i will try and do take notice of them in future. (black cat) when i listened to these stories i felt amazed because i never thought our minds would come with up with such a thing…. (butterfly) we can see that the participants were interested in, and motivated by, their engagement with digital storytelling. enabling participants to have maximum participation in a project shifts a “researcher-centric construction of the social world to that of the participants” (clark, prosser & wiles, 2010: 14). these participating learners felt that the digital storytelling provided a social space in which they felt safe to discuss what campbell et al. (2010) refer to as the often unspeakable topic of hiv and aids in their community. they affirm that digital storytelling engaged them not only in such a space but also in what we might call the “language of their generation” (lowenthal, 2009: 298). digital storytelling: enabling agency through the acquisition of multiple literacies the young people, even though they are from a rural area, understood that technology and digital media could provide them with an appropriate means of communication with the members of their community. they were adamant that they could use their digital stories as a tool for stimulating discussion about hivand aids-related stigma, and that their community’s cellphones could be seen as a significant mode of communication. this was confirmed by extracts from their post-screening reflective writings. we can go visiting schools making young people aware, showing them these stories on hiv and aids…. what we can do is publishing it in newspapers, in the media, on radio and on tv…. (snail) digital storytelling: creating participatory space, addressing stigma, and enabling agency thoko mnisi 101 i am saying although not everyone has these [sophisticated] phones here we can use social networks like twitter, mix it, face books and send the stories and also discuss more….(tortoise) i think we can go to our community and target older people, schools and other young people through cellular phones…. (rat) while the suggestion of showing the stories in the public domain and sharing them via new media was not an integral part of the research, disseminating the stories is a valuable aspect of community-based participatory research. in spite of the perceived digital divide—the gap between those who have and those who do not have access to computers and the internet, and end-user skills (warschauer, 2004)—the participants were eager to show their digital stories and thus engage with their peers, family members, schools, and policy makers in addressing hivand aids-related stigma. the participants’ agency in seeking to share their knowledge and their self-made artefacts with the community is consistent with cbpr’s characteristic fostering of community owned and managed research (schulz et al., 2003). the discussion that the participants had on how they could take action to communicate the knowledge produced in their digital stories demonstrates a keen sense of the possibilities of present-day technology and mass media. as alluded to by babalola, fatusi & anyanti (2009), media-based strategies to combat hivand aidsrelated stigma are useful and there is a need to intensify the use of such methods. the participants recognised the importance of communication through digital technologies as a way of engaging with and effectively addressing, for example, the unnecessary fears that people have about hiv. in this way, they stated, they could foster the acceptance of people affected by and infected with hiv. this would, in turn, help address the prevalence of stigmatisation and help to alleviate its results. central to enabling agency regarding the use of information technologies is the acquisition of multiple literacies, especially what lowenthal (2009) refers to as digital literacies. in addition to the ability to write and read different kinds of texts, being able to communicate through information and communication technology (ict) is essential. these extracts from participants’ reflective writing after they had viewed the digital stories confirm that creating digital stories enabled their acquisition of different kinds of literacy. in this session we learnt so many things that we did not know.... (bird) i learnt so much in the process, i can use it in future, the recording of the voices, taking photographs and the computer, although i was using it for the first time. (ant) the technology used in the storytelling process is fairly complicated, yet the learners, who had not had prior access to this particular technology, fared very well in using it to create their stories. digital storytelling, as we can see, provided them with a new set of skills such as using a computer, using specific software, and using the internet to help them think critically about the issue of hivand aids-related stigma so as to perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 102 craft their own digital stories, and gave them some idea of how these stories could be disseminated digitally. through the process of digital storytelling new stories were evoked. the participants referred to their digital stories as real accounts of what happens in their communities and said that they triggered memories of other stories that intersected with hivand aids-related stigma. after viewing the stories one participant noted in a piece of reflective writing that [s]ome of the stories would remind you of other experiences you have but did not write a story about, but during reflection we were able to discuss at length… (black cat) discussion the use of digital storytelling in my study created a critical space for these secondary school learners’ participation but also enabled them to consider how they might take charge of addressing stigma in their school and community. in other words, they were enabled to take action. digital storytelling enabled participants to recognise the “embeddedness of stigma in collectively negotiated social representations and practices which are constructed, reconstructed, reproduced or challenged in the ongoing interactions of communities … on a day-to-day basis” (campbell, nair, maimane & nicholson, 2007: 413). this leads us to see that efforts to challenge and disrupt hiv-and aids-related stigma should build on how the secondary school learners and members of their communities talk about stigma, and on solutions they come up with since they are on the frontline, either perpetuating the stigma or suffering under its burden. it seems to me that there are three critical points to be made about doing research on hiv-and aids-related stigma: the importance of research as intervention that aims to deepen an understanding of hivand aids-related stigma yet simultaneously enables the participants to address stigma; hivand aids-related stigma interventions must be more participatory in nature, ensuring that the voices of the participants inform the interventions; and the interventions must be culture sensitive. i used symbolic interactionism to frame this work because i believe that communities would benefit from tapping into traditional methods such as storytelling to address issues of hiv-and aids-related stigma. the stories that were told around the fire in days long ago were used to educate and keep the community informed so the community might once again draw on the power of storytelling and use the digital stories from within the community itself to educate, inform, and promote change. these locally relevant digital stories told by the secondary school learners in the community can become a powerful way of addressing stigma in a real and relevant way within the same community (see bi-directional arrows, figure 1). the stories could be used to disrupt the way in which the participants and the community think about hiv and aids in particular, change the kind of language used to refer to digital storytelling: creating participatory space, addressing stigma, and enabling agency thoko mnisi 103 infected and affected people, and, in turn, change the meaning of hivand aidsrelated stigma. by way of replacement they could begin to construct new nonjudgmental stories of affected and infected people, and, in this way, take action to eradicate the stigmatising practices that blight the lives of individuals as well as that of the community. figure 1. symbolic interactionism framing digital storytelling in addressing hiv-and aids-related stigma in the community in south africa where the use of mobile media is central to the way information is communicated in both urban and rural areas, digital stories, as digital data, can be easily transferred through popular social networks, uploaded on youtube and facebook, twitter, hangouts, instagram, bbm, and whatsapp. the digital format of the stories allows for users to upload and share clips online via social media. the youtube platform, for example, has more than 1 billion users, with people generating ‘views’ in 61 languages (kohli & gupta, 2014). since half the youtube views are on mobile technology devices like cellphones and tablets the potential sharing of participants’ digital stories is increased regardless of the rural context of these learners. conclusion in my account of how digital storytelling can give learners a participatory way into identifying and addressing hivand aids-related stigma as well as enabling them to take action against it. i have tried to give my research participants a voice on a perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 104 serious issue that affects them individually and also affects their community as a whole. the digital stories these learners offered came out of their real lives and they saw the possibilities of using these stories in digital spaces to encourage dialogue and reflection in their community with a view to taking action against stigmatisation. perhaps, in their digital channelling of the richness of their experiences these learners, exploiting their newly acquired agency, will begin to replace these stories, in time, with new ones, in new language, with new meaning and new thought. acknowledgement this work is based on the research supported wholly by the national research foundation of south africa (grant uid number: 72277). the author acknowledge that opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in any publication generated by the nrf supported research are that of the author, and that the nrf accepts no liability whatsoever in this regard. i acknowledge the input from prof naydene de lange at nmmu. references babalola, s. fatusi, a. & anyanti, j. 2009. media saturation, communication exposure and hiv stigma in nigeria. social science & medicine, 68(8): 1513– 1520. blumer, h. 1969. symbolic interactionism: perspective and method. englewood cliffs, nj: prentice hall. brickell, c. 2006. the sociological construction of gender and sexuality. the sociological review, 54(1): 87–113. campbell, c., nair, y., maimane, s. & nicholson, j. 2007. ‘dying twice’: a multi-level model of the roots of aids stigma in two south african communities. journal of health psychology, 12: 403–416. campbell, c., skovdal, m. mupambireyi, z. & gregson, s. 2010. exploring children’s stigmatisation of aids-affected children in zimbabwe through drawings and stories. social science & medicine, 71(5): 975–985. charon, j.m. 2009. symbolic interactionism, an introduction, an interpretation, an integration. boston: pearson. clark, a., prosser, j. & wiles, r. 2010. ethical issues in image-based research. arts & health, 2(1): 8–93. de lange, n. & mitchell, c. 2012. building sustainability into work with participatory video. in e-j. milne, c. mitchell & n. de lange (eds.), handbook of participatory video. lanham, md: alta mira press. de lange, n., mitchell, c., moletsane, r., stuart, j., buthelezi, t., taylor, m. & mazibuko f. 2003. learning together: towards an integrated participatory approach to youth, gender and hiv/aids interventions in rural kwazulu-natal schools. focus area proposal. national research foundation. digital storytelling: creating participatory space, addressing stigma, and enabling agency thoko mnisi 105 griffith, d. m., allen, j. o., deloney, e. h., robinson, k., lewis, e. y., campbell, b., morrel-samuels, s., sparks, a., zimmerman, m. a. & reischl, t. 2010. community-based organizational capacity building as a strategy to reduce racial 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capturing lives, creating community. london: routledge. lowenthal, p. 2009. digital storytelling in education. in j. hartley & k. mcwilliam (eds.), story circle: digital stories around the world. oxford: willey blackwell. mitchell, c. 2011. doing visual research. london: sage. mnisi, t.e. 2014 digital storytelling to explore hivand aids-related stigma with secondary school learners in a rural community in kwazulu-natal. phd thesis. port elizabeth: nelson mandela metropolitan university. moletsane, r., de lange, n., mitchell, c., stuart, j., buthelezi, t. & taylor, m. 2007. photo voice as an analytical and activist tool in the fight against hiv and aids stigma in a rural kwazulu-natal school. south african journal of child and adolescent mental health, 19(1):19–28. nieuwenhuis, j. 2007. qualitative research designs and data generation techniques. in k. maree (eds.), first steps in research. pretoria: van schaik publishers. ohler, j. 2006. the world of digital storytelling. educational leadership, 63(4): 44–47. onyebuchi-iwudibia, o. & brown, a. 2014. hiv and depression in eastern nigeria: the role of hiv-related stigma. aids care, 26(5): 653–657. republic of south africa global aids response progress report 2013. target 8: eliminate stigma and discrimination. retrieved on 11 october 2013 from: http://dutblogs.dut.ac.za/hivaids/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/southafrica-global-aids-response-2013.pdf schulz, a.j., israel, b.a. & lantz, p. 2003. instrument for evaluating dimensions of group dynamics within community-based participatory research partnerships. evaluation and program planning, 26(3): 249–262. perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 106 shisana, o. 2013. hiv/aids in south africa: at last the glass is half full. paper presented at the 6th aids conference, durban. retrieved on 20 september 2013 from: http://www.hsrc.ac.za/en/media-briefs/hiv-aids-stis-and-tb/ plenary-session-3-20-june-2013-hiv-aids-in-south-africa-at-last-the-glass-ishalf-full tesch, r. (1990). qualitative research: analysis types and software tools. new york: falmer press. warschauer, m. 2004. technology and social inclusion: rethinking the digital divide. cambridge, ma: mit press. endnotes 1. this study draws on my unpublished phd thesis (2014): digital storytelling to explore hivand aids-related stigma with secondary school learners in a rural community in kwazulu-natal. 2 “learning together: towards an integrated participatory approach to youth, gender and hiv/aids interventions in rural kwazulu-natal schools” (de lange n et al., 2003). 3 ethical clearance was sought from the university, and permission was obtained from all gatekeepers (kwazulu-natal department of education, school principals and parents) and assent was obtained from the learners. 1522022 40(4): 152-164 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 professional learning by mathematics teachers through video-stimulated recall abstract this article reports on mathematics teachers’ professional learning prospects through video-stimulated recall (vsr), a tool for in-house professional development. providing timeous feedback to teachers on aspects of their teaching that they should improve are greatly beneficial. two mathematics teachers at a rural high school in a province of south africa, implemented vsr. the research question was: what is the effect of incorporating vsr on the professional learning of these two mathematics teachers? this qualitative study used the conscious competence learning model as its conceptual lens. vsr-related interviews served as data collection instrument. the findings revealed that the teachers reflected differently and on different aspects of their lessons. their professional learning varied were they adapted their teaching on some of the aspects noticed and one some not/ to a limited extend. vsr put them in the driving seat of their own learning, allowing them to develop professional as noticed through reflection. key words: reflection; videos; professional learning; mathematics teacher education; in-service education 1. introduction most professional development initiatives in south africa are off-site and not customised to the specific needs of the participants (luneta, 2012). in addition, interventions have been largely detached from the hands-on classroom analysis. this might be because the biggest teacher union in south africa did not allow anyone to access classrooms for any visit perceived as linked to evaluation. supporting teachers in the classroom arose suspicion and was not encouraged. however, teachers needed to direct the professional development (pd) initiatives so that they could be relevant to their specific classroom context. the challenge, therefore, is how to balance the unique context of an individual teacher and their real-time reflection on how to improve teaching and learning. the research question explored in this regard was: what is the effect of the incorporation of video-stimulated recall (vsr) on the professional development of mathematics author: dr benita p nel1 affiliation: 1university of the western cape, south africa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v40i4.6133 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(4): 152-164 published: 23 december 2022 received: 24 march 2022 accepted: 21 july 2022 research article http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4992-3776 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 1532022 40(4): 153-164 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 nel professional learning by mathematics teachers through video-stimulated recall teachers? vsr is a professional development tool that enables teachers to watch recordings of their own lessons and reflect on their own teaching. creating opportunities for teachers to watch live recordings of their own lessons placed them on the other side of the video lens. this engendered the possibility of gaining a new perspective on their practice. this new perspective can enable teachers to notice aspects of their teaching that they were unaware of or those that need adaption. the new lens that teachers use to observe their lessons puts them in control of their own pd by fostering their eagerness to be lifelong learners. revisiting their lessons create learning opportunities that enable teachers to rethink how they apply their skills and expertise. the aim thereof should always be to enhance teaching and learning in their classrooms. therefore, a shift to a teacher’s own classroom, in pd initiatives, is explored. the question is whether pd initiatives translate into professional growth that might improve the quality of mathematics teaching and learners’ related performance. by providing insight into the effects of vsr-based teacher professional development interventions, this study attempts to contributes to the establishment of more effective in-house pd initiatives. 2. literature review research indicates that self-reflection, where “deliberate and consistent examination of (one’s) teaching practice” (pellegrino & gerber, 2012: 1) occurs, is a critical component in developing teachers’ instructional practice and decisions on “what to teach and how to teach it” (ibid). the emphasis should be on a view of teachers’ learning and self-reflection on their classroom practice as a means of fostering pd (muir & beswick, 2007). reflection as “a self-critical, investigative process wherein teachers consider the effect of their pedagogical decisions on their situated practice with the aim of improving those practices” (rich & tripp, 2012: 678). nel (2015 14) also accentuates that “the lessons learnt by teachers from their exposure to reflective practice in their teaching should result in their engagement in new practices”. therefore reflective practice is a continues professional development (cpd) tool that might enhance teaching and ultimately learning. the vsr technique “is an introspection procedure in which videotaped passages of behaviour are replayed to individuals to stimulate recall of their concurrent cognitive activity” (lyle, 2003: 861). this reflection occurs in the natural setting of the teachers’ classrooms and is thus attached to their workplace and customised for specific individuals and their development needs. this technique steers away from the one-size-fits-all style frequently used in pd initiatives. it also counteracts the top-down model of staff development where the impoverished notion that wisdom is only derived from the experience of others is questioned (zeichner, 1994). vsr entails observing teachers’ current practices, while striving to develop the best pedagogical practices (muir, 2010). vsr creates an opportunity for immediate and specific feedback on what transpired in a teacher’s own practice in his/her classroom. the feedback is provided by the teachers themselves and serves to improve what they observe about themselves. no judgements or evaluations are at play. becoming an effective teacher requires a reflection that involves a consistent and deliberate introspection of teaching practices. this is necessary in improving instructional practice and promoting active learner participation (pellegrino & gerber, 2012). the incorporation of videos in cpd is done more widely to enable teachers to notice and analyse their teaching practices more systematically (sherin, russ & colestock, 2011). this http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 1542022 40(4): 154-164 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) is because videos can capture teaching in its authenticity and complexity. videos also help to zoom into the interactions occurring in the classroom (van es, 2011). rich and hannafin (2009: 53) observe that “video annotation tools offer the potential to support both reflection and analysis of one’s own teaching and to link captured video with related evidence”. videos offer a ‘new view’ on what was taught and how it was taught and thus enable the reflection that helps to envisage how teaching can be done differently. such a ‘new view’ was not necessarily envisaged by the teacher at the time of the video-recorded teaching (lyle, 2003). thus, through the vsr, reflection opportunities are provided to the teacher to rethink some of the decisions made during the lesson, and the teacher is also able to reconsider the selection of certain activities or examples, to mention a few. the use of videos in conjunction with teacher professional learning and reflection is also on the increase globally (gaudin & chalies, 2015). lawson et al. (2010) characterise the emergence of video-capable technologies as a ‘tipping point’ that helps to see the world differently. therefore, the use of videos is a viable tool in pd initiatives. however, much more research is needed to understand the specific effects of this tool on teacher learning (geiger, muir & lamb, 2016). videos have a number of advantages that are absent from the live viewing of a lesson (reid et al., 2015), as they enable teachers to “see” their practices more effectively (tripp & rich, 2012). this is because they encapsulate the complexities of teaching as well as its richness that enhances the analysis of classroom practice (borko, whitcomb & liston, 2009). more so, the video-recording occurs in teachers’ own familiar classroom environment and captures their everyday practices (hennessy, 2014). video recordings, unlike live observations, have the advantage of enabling teachers to relive their completed lessons (reid et al., 2015). in the context of the use of vsr as a pd tool, episodes of the video-recorded lesson can be played back to the teacher, during the video-stimulated interview. thus, the researcher can elicit reflection by the teacher on different aspects of the chosen sections. videos also display authentic images of teaching and thus enable an interactive interpretation of what is observed (reid et al., 2015). muir (2010: 439) conceives the video-stimulated interview as a collaborative inquiry involving a teacher and a researcher, or as a dialogue aimed at providing the teacher with the opportunity of “thinking about aspects of (his/her) practice”. professional dialogue, or what might also be denoted as ‘learning conversation’, ‘professional or collegial discussion’, ‘inquiry conversation’ or ‘reflective conversation’ (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999; le cornu, 2009), can be perceived as “a discussion between peers that allows the other to explicitly articulate, appreciate and extend their understanding of practice” (nsibande, 2007: 4). corrigan and loughran (2008) claim that this dialogue can strengthen mathematics teams by ensuring that colleagues support each other in their own classrooms – an in-house pd initiative. they state that professional dialogue allows teachers to develop professionally. indeed, bereiter and scardamalia (1993) observe that learning is slower in the absence of professional dialogue. another advantage of inquiry within a community “involves both learning new knowledge, questions, and practices, and, at the same time, unlearning some long-held ideas, beliefs, and practices, which are often difficult to uproot” (cochran-smith, 2003: 9). therefore, numerous advantages present themselves when teachers come together and adopt an inquiring stance. professional dialogue combats the egg-shell classroom approach characterised by teachers who function in isolation, without any “outside” interaction. this isolation deprives teachers of valuable input from their peers. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 1552022 40(4): 155-164 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 nel professional learning by mathematics teachers through video-stimulated recall the intent of reflective practice and professional dialogue have some commonalities. indeed, the essence of professional dialogue is peer exchange, an aspect which can also enhance the worth of reflection (rocco, 2010). importantly, “dialogue coupled with reflection and moved to action creates the conditions for transformative learning” (donovan, meyer & fitzgerald, 2007: 11). however, professional dialogue constraints include insufficient structural and social supports, the demands of immediate and multiple tasks, difficulties in making tacit knowledge explicit, and issues engendered by difference and disagreement (horn & little, 2010). follow-up observation can be used to establish if a teacher acted on what he/she noticed and could spearhead more learning (amador et al., 2021). although not all the teachers would choose to adapt or adjust their teaching methods, after noticing areas in which they can improve, the noticing in itself could be viewed as professional growth (amador et al., 2021). thus, this study incorporated vsr as a tool that allows teachers to relive their classroom conduct, reflect on what they observe, and consider how they might adapt their classroom conduct accordingly. the reason for this incorporation was to investigate teachers’ possible development prospects through vsr, and the probable value of vsr as an in-house pd initiative. 3. conscious competence learning model as lens to measure learning the conscious competence learning (ccl) model can be used as means to gauge learning along two dimensions, namely knowing and competence. this model was coined by abraham maslow (harianto, 2021). later researchers such as noel burch as well as williams howell (1982) and schratz (2006) further worked with this model. in this study this model was adapted. this adapted model consists of four stages: 1) unknowingly incompetence, 2) knowingly incompetence, 3) knowingly competence, and 4) mastery. stage 1 in the model, which is characterised by ignorance, is where the individual is unknowing of his or her lack of skill or knowledge about something. the individuals “do not realize that there is something that needs to be known and learned” (harianto, 2021: 48). in stage 2, marked by the realisation that he or she does not pose certain knowledge or skills, an individual therefore is becoming known of an existing gap. for the individual thus to close the gap, learning needs to take place. in stage 3, an individual knowingly endeavours to improve whatever s/he chooses, to enhance teaching and learning. stage 4, characterised by mastery, is where the individual correctly applies a new skill effortlessly, efficiently, and competently. these four stages can be illustrated by the figure below. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 1562022 40(4): 156-164 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) figure 1: adapted conscious competence learning model this study investigates self-reflection through video-stimulated recall as a continuous development strategy which teachers can use on an ongoing basis to enhance their professional learning with various skills and knowledge identified my themselves, sometimes with the assistance of others. when a teacher watches a video recording of his or her own teaching, he or she can then reflect on his or her practice and learning can then take place when he or she move through the different stages of the ccl model. the ccl model can then be used to describe this learning process where teachers can pass through the different stages in order to master a certain competence (harianto, 2021). since reflection is a personal act, teachers can notice different aspects of their teaching and to varied degrees, depending on their awareness thereof. investigating how teachers react to what they might notice is significant for teacher educators and teacher professional development. 4. methodological approach a qualitative research approach was used in this study. it enabled for the gathering of thick descriptive data from the two mathematics teachers’ self-reflection through vsr. both taught at a rural high school in the western cape. two cycles of video-recorded lessons per teacher took place which was followed by a video-stimulated interview after a time lapse of a week in the first cycle and three weeks in the second cycle. this was to ensure that the school programme was not disrupted significantly, considering learners’ rotational attendance as well as the availability of the teachers as they had little administrative periods in which the interviews could be done. these recorded lessons were all about thirty minutes long. after each lesson, the researcher identified the sections of a lesson that excluded individual penand-paper tasks where classwork was done for the teacher watched. this was to ensure that sufficient time is allowed for the teacher to reflect on the lesson after watching the video as the teachers only had single free periods to conduct the interview. it therefore meant that the teacher watched the entire recorded lesson, but the section where the learners worked on their classwork where excluded. these video-stimulated-recall interviews were audiorecorded. during this interview, the researcher prompted each teacher to reflect on what they figure 1: adapted conscious competence learning model this study investigates self-reflection through video-stimulated recall as a continuous development strategy which teachers can use on an ongoing basis to enhance their professional learning with various skills and knowledge identified my themselves, sometimes with the assistance of others. when a teacher watches a video recording of his or her own teaching, he or she can then reflect on his or her practice and learning can then take place when he or she move through the different stages of the ccl model. the ccl model can then be used to describe this learning process where teachers can pass through the different stages in order to master a certain competence (harianto, 2021). since reflection is a personal act, teachers can notice different aspects of their teaching and to varied degrees, depending on their awareness thereof. investigating how teachers react to what they might notice is significant for teacher educators and teacher professional development. 4. methodological approach a qualitative research approach was used in this study. it enabled for the gathering of thick descriptive data from the two mathematics teachers’ self-reflection through vsr. both taught at a rural high school in the western cape. two cycles of video-recorded lessons per teacher took place which was followed by a video-stimulated interview after a time lapse of a week in the first cycle and three weeks in the second cycle. this was to ensure that the school programme was not disrupted significantly, considering learners’ rotational attendance as well as the availability of the teachers as they had little administrative periods in which the interviews could be done. these recorded lessons were all about thirty minutes long. after each lesson, the researcher identified the sections of a lesson that excluded individual pen-and-paper tasks where classwork was done for the teacher watched. this was to ensure that sufficient time is allowed for the teacher to reflect on the lesson after watching the video as the teachers only had single free periods to conduct the interview. it therefore meant that the teacher watched the entire recorded lesson, but the section where the learners worked on their classwork where excluded. these video-stimulated-recall interviews were audio-recorded. during this interview, the researcher prompted each teacher to reflect on what they noticed in the lesson, while and after watching the video episodes. no checklist was used during the interview, because the researcher wanted the teacher to identify noticeable aspects of the lesson her or himself. this process was repeated, resulting in two vsr interviews per teacher. ethical http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 1572022 40(4): 157-164 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 nel professional learning by mathematics teachers through video-stimulated recall approval was obtained from the relevant institution, with the reference number hs20/4/55. the school, teachers as well as learners and their parents signed informed consent forms. the context of study was an averagely-resourced rural high school. the latter is a quintile 2 school, which means that it serves a low-income community. hence, the government covers most of its running costs. the mathematics team consisted of five teachers, two of whom volunteered to partake in the study. the rotational system was in place at the time of the data collection, due to the covid-19 pandemic. the classes included in the study were conveniently selected. this was to ensure that the researcher could video-record both classes in the same visit. hence, the timetable was a determining factor in the selection of the grades that were included in the study. due to the constraints mentioned above, the lessons were on different topics. the experienced teacher (teacher f) had been teaching mathematics and science for the last ten years. he is a qualified mathematics teacher. the video recordings of his grade 10 class consisting of 22 learners were produced. the novice teacher (teacher l) had a contract position. she had been teaching mathematics for about three years. her grade 9 classes comprising about twenty learners were recorded. a thematic approach based on deductive reasoning was used to analyse the data. the ccl model’s four different stages were used as analytical themes. 5. findings and discussion the main goal of this study was to investigate the effect of incorporating vsr on the professional development of mathematics teachers. the teachers responded spontaneously to the video-recorded lessons while and after watching. teacher l mostly perceived what she saw in the videos as a confirmation of what she already knew. surprise was evident in experienced teacher f’s voice. this was evident when he talked about what he saw in the videos, displaying his unawareness. compared to teacher l, teacher f observed more issues. however, more probes were needed to facilitate teacher l’s reflection. this is not surprising as during a professional dialogue the difficulty can be to make tacit knowledge explicit (horn & little, 2010). in presenting the findings, the conscious competence model guided the discussion related to the teacher being and staying unaware of their lack of skill or knowledge, the teacher being aware but deciding not to adapt their teaching, and the teacher acquiring new skills and competencies. finally, teachers’ views on vsr as a pd tool are presented below. 5.1 teacher being and staying unaware of their lack of skill or knowledge the first observed lesson of the novice teacher was on algebraic equations. it was conducted with a grade 9 class and learners had to solve the unknowns. the lesson included all four mathematical operations as well as squared numbers in the equation, in a lesson that lasted for 30 minutes. it was a continuation of the topic introduced in the previous lesson. for a significant portion of the lesson, the individual learners worked on class activities, while the teacher moved around to support them. teacher l’s first response after watching the first video was that she believed that the lesson went well, because she had learners’ full attention. her view was that most of the learners listened to her, although one or two were fidgety. this is not exactly what the researcher observed: some learners were busy with their own things during the lesson. teacher l had difficulty in going deeper into the complexities of teaching mentioned by borko et al. (2009). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 1582022 40(4): 158-164 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) her second remark related to learners’ answers to her questions. she believed that when she asked questions, some of the learners could answer her, “which means that they more or less have an idea how to do it” (teacher l, first interview, 2021). these observations indicate that her focus was on the learners and not on herself. later in the interview, she mentioned that she had to individually assist the learners who did not understand. this comment contradicted her previous claim that the lesson went well. this is an indication that she was in stage 1, in a comfort zone, being unaware that certain learners did not understand the work and that others were busy with their own things while she was explaining on the board. teacher l’s reflection tended to focus more on the learners than on herself, when she reflected. however, this teacher could have been in the stage of ignorance, as she could not see that some of the learners did not understand the work. the second lesson of teacher l was on multiplying a monomial with a polynomial, where the exponents of variables were included. the teacher was asked how she perceived the learners’ contributions to the lesson. her response was: “… they are a strong group who always gives answers” (teacher l, first interview, 2021). however, in the video, it is evident that the questions asked by the teacher were answered by herself, signifying that she is still in stage 1 of unknowingly incompetent. she was encouraging learners to answer questions in class; but she was unaware that the learners were not answering her questions. indeed, in my observation, the learners were more passive than active during the lesson. it therefore seemed as if she was also unknowingly incompetent about transcending her class to be learner-centred. she needs to deepen her introspection into her teaching practice in order to promote active learner participation (pellegrino & gerber, 2012). 5.2 teacher being/becoming aware but limited/no adaptation of teaching teacher l was unaware that she did not use mathematical terminology at times, or even used incorrect terminology. yet, it is important for learners to be exposed to, understand, and use appropriate terminology to ensure that they build sufficient vocabulary to be able to communicate in mathematical language. in the first observed-lesson, coefficients were prominent; but the teacher never used the term ‘coefficient’ during the lesson. she would say, when referring to : “ is not standing alone. there is a number against . to get rid of the number against the letter, …” (teacher l, first interview, 2021) consequently, the learners did not hear the terms ‘coefficient’ and ‘variable’ from the teacher. this incorrect or non-use of terminology happened frequently in the lesson. the teacher seemed unaware that she was not using mathematical terminology correctly or was not using it at all. the researcher made her aware of this at the end of the first interview. in the subsequent lesson, she incorporated the use of some mathematical terminology, to a limited extent. regarding the use of mathematical terminology, she progressed from stage 1 to stage 2 of ccl model. this is because initially she was unaware of her not using appropriate mathematical terminology when dealing with that topic. she started to incorporate terminology in the subsequent lesson which allude to her becoming aware but not yet competent in doing so. the ‘reflective conversation’ she had with me created a learning opportunity which extended her understanding (nsibande, 2007) of the importance of incorporating mathematical terminology. 3𝑥𝑥 = 12 𝑥𝑥 2𝑦𝑦(𝑥𝑥 + 2𝑦𝑦 − 3𝑥𝑥 + 4𝑦𝑦�) − 3 1. 2𝑦𝑦 × 𝑥𝑥 = 2𝑥𝑥𝑦𝑦 2. 2𝑦𝑦 × 2𝑦𝑦 = 4𝑦𝑦� 3. 2𝑦𝑦 × (−3𝑥𝑥) = −6𝑥𝑥𝑦𝑦 … (teacher l, second interview, 2021) 3𝑥𝑥 = 12 𝑥𝑥 2𝑦𝑦(𝑥𝑥 + 2𝑦𝑦 − 3𝑥𝑥 + 4𝑦𝑦�) − 3 1. 2𝑦𝑦 × 𝑥𝑥 = 2𝑥𝑥𝑦𝑦 2. 2𝑦𝑦 × 2𝑦𝑦 = 4𝑦𝑦� 3. 2𝑦𝑦 × (−3𝑥𝑥) = −6𝑥𝑥𝑦𝑦 … (teacher l, second interview, 2021) 3𝑥𝑥 = 12 𝑥𝑥 2𝑦𝑦(𝑥𝑥 + 2𝑦𝑦 − 3𝑥𝑥 + 4𝑦𝑦�) − 3 1. 2𝑦𝑦 × 𝑥𝑥 = 2𝑥𝑥𝑦𝑦 2. 2𝑦𝑦 × 2𝑦𝑦 = 4𝑦𝑦� 3. 2𝑦𝑦 × (−3𝑥𝑥) = −6𝑥𝑥𝑦𝑦 … (teacher l, second interview, 2021) http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 1592022 40(4): 159-164 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 nel professional learning by mathematics teachers through video-stimulated recall when the learners did individual activities in class, teacher l tended to check what individuals were doing. when she spotted errors, she explained the work on the board. whenever she noticed that a learner had made a mistake, she explained the sum to the entire class. she expected the class to stop what they were doing and pay attention to what she was explaining. during the interview, she mentioned that her colleagues advised her not to overdo it (stop the entire class), but she insisted that it worked for her. however, she also observed that “later on then the time moves on”, meaning that she spent excessive time explaining individual errors on the board. hence, she could not finish what she prepared for that period. in response to my question on whether that was the most effective way of using the time, she was adamant that following this approach in class worked for her, because “for me, personally i understand them [the learners]”. teacher l was aware that her approach resulted in her not finishing the prepared lesson. nevertheless, she decided to not change her practice. amador et al (2021) alluded that all teachers would not necessarily choose to adapt or adjust their teaching methods after noticing areas that they can improve on. it can be categorised as being on the knowingly incompetent level, as she was aware of her time-consuming conduct but did not adjust her practice. however, learning is not a linear process and this teacher might need more time to develop this aspect of her teaching. in teacher l’s second lesson on multiplying a monomial with a polynomial, she covered some examples with the class. she would multiply two factors separately and, thereafter, present the final answer. she referred to it as the spreading method. an example of this was: 3𝑥𝑥 = 12 𝑥𝑥 2𝑦𝑦(𝑥𝑥 + 2𝑦𝑦 − 3𝑥𝑥 + 4𝑦𝑦�) − 3 1. 2𝑦𝑦 × 𝑥𝑥 = 2𝑥𝑥𝑦𝑦 2. 2𝑦𝑦 × 2𝑦𝑦 = 4𝑦𝑦� 3. 2𝑦𝑦 × (−3𝑥𝑥) = −6𝑥𝑥𝑦𝑦 … (teacher l, second interview, 2021) at the end, she concluded with the final answer. however, in-between the question and the final answer were the steps, as indicated above. clearly, there was a disjunction in the way the answer was structured. this can be confusing to the learners as they do not see multiplied by the polynomial as one step. they might focus on the “loose” steps and fail to realise that the final answer is the culmination of the individual multiplication of the monomials. this approach was discussed in the second interview. the teacher became aware of the challenge engendered by doing the sum in a fragmented way. again, the collaborative inquiry provide opportunity to rethink her practice (muir, 2010). i could not ascertain whether the recommendations were implemented in subsequent lessons, as i did not schedule any subsequent visits. therefore, i characterise this fragmented way of multiplying a monomial by a binomial as becoming aware of the procedure, but not being competent in undertaking it. an ability that teacher f displayed in the first reflection was the identification of the incorrect answers given by learners, when he marked their homework. it seemed that he was unaware that some of the learners gave incorrect answers during the lesson. nonetheless, he only noticed it when he was reflecting while watching the video recording and could thus “see” his practice more effectively (tripp & rich, 2012). teacher f subsequently proposed a way forward in addressing this matter: (teacher l,second interview, 2021) http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 1602022 40(4): 160-164 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) … and i see too many mistakes because i’ve heard too many things that were not correct. say (to the learners) go and look at that sum on your own – each one look at the sum … quickly look at your (trigonometric) relations … quickly see if you can work it out with what was given and what you are looking for … (teacher f, first interview, 2021). thus, he moved from unknowingly incompetence to knowingly incompetence. however, this proposed way of addressing the incorrect answers was not implemented in the second lesson. hence, i would argue that he did not move to the knowingly competence level although he might have implemented the proposed strategy in subsequent lessons that i did not observe. reliving his lessons allowed teacher f the advantage of enabling him to improve his practice (read et al., 2015). 5.3 teacher acquiring a new skill/competency teacher f’s first recorded session was a grade 10 trigonometry lesson on angle of elevation and depth, in which the homework was marked first. thereafter, the new concept was introduced, followed by related exercises. teacher f arranged his class during the covid-19 pandemic period such that the learners faced the screen while his desk and laptop were behind the learners. this allowed him to use the data projector exclusively. he did not move between the learners’ desks, to minimise physical close-contact with the learners, due to the covid-19 pandemic. however, this arrangement resulted in him not having a good view of the learners’ conduct and actions. this is one of the first things he noticed in the video. he was surprised to realise that one learner did not even take out her books even after he had already covered the third or fourth homework problem. he commented that “that child missed half of that exercise’s questions – i can see it now”. later, teacher f wondered that “maybe there are also others who also missed [out on the work]”. it can be perceived that he was first at a stage of unawareness as he started the lesson while some of the learners were still settling down. thereafter, he offered possible alternative ways of improving this practice. this is evident when he notes that: with the marking of homework … the thing now told me that i will have to wait for … i will have to wait till all the children 100% are in their seats and their books are in front of them … (teacher f, first interview, 2021). through self-reflection, he became aware of this practice, thus moving from stage 1 to stage 2 of the ccl model. he acted on this awareness and worked on improving his practice in the second observed-lesson. he moved around the rows that were closest to his desk, to check if books were out and learners had settled down. this change in practice showed that he had moved to stage 3 (knowingly competent), because he was learning and acting on refining his practice. vsr assisted him in advancing his professionally learning. another observation was that teacher f realised that he had progressed with the exercise without asking the learners if they had any questions. again, he advanced from a stage of ignorance to a stage of awareness. it was evident that he knowingly made efforts and worked towards improving his practice in the second lesson. this became evident when he asked the class if there were any questions. although questioning was not done frequently, he was learning to apply this new skill and thus moved to stage 2 of the ccl model. through self-reflection on the first lesson, using vsr, teacher f became aware that he guided the learners excessively. this rendered them passive, since the teacher was talking the most. when a learner gave an incorrect response, after an episode was observed, he said: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 1612022 40(4): 161-164 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 nel professional learning by mathematics teachers through video-stimulated recall he (a learner) could not even tell me why (reason). he said to me that he would use cos. then i had to lead him: see what you have – do you have … maybe i lead too much here and i should maybe give them more experience to see for themselves … see here, why do you use this thing? (teacher f, first interview, 2021). teacher f became aware that he was leading the learners beyond a reasonable limit and had to step back. this was so that the learners could figure things out more by themselves and, in doing so, teaching and learning would be enhanced. he later added that: i basically lead them the whole time to that answer and with the next one, i see now i also lead them (too much)… so maybe that is the problem here. so maybe should i look at a sum and say … because i’ve heard too many things here … say go and look at that sum on your own – each one of you – quickly do that – see what you have – look at the relationships – see if you can work it out (teacher f, first interview, 2021). the second lesson was on the linear graph, particularly on the effect of the gradient and the y-intercept on the shape of the graph. here, the teacher was visibly less prominent. he showed a few examples of how to change the equation into its standard form, and how to identify the gradient and y-intercept in order to draw the graph. thereafter, he stepped back, letting the learners change the equation into the standard form and draw the graph. he identified individual learners who had to display their answers that had to be verified by the class. this approach clearly showed that the teacher led the class to a lesser extent and allowed the learners to step forward and do more. the teacher walked around to aid those who requested it. on observing this, in the first lesson, this teacher noticed that he led the class excessively. this confirms what van es (2011) claims that videos assist in zooming into interactions (or lack thereof) in the classroom. in the second lesson, he moved to the knowingly competence stage at which he managed to step back from the centre stage of the lesson, allowing the learners to do more on their own. hence the lesson became more learner centred, an important skill for an effective teacher to have. 6. guidelines for establishing more effective in-house pd initiatives the use of vsr as an in-house cpd tool has a significant potential in developing mathematics teachers. below are some implementation guidelines that put teachers in the driving seat of their own development. a safe environment must be created for the interaction between the teacher and the other person(s) in the class, when implementing vsr. this can assist in ensuring that the teacher is more honest and comfortable to do self-reflection in an unpretentious manner. professional dialogue should allow for robust probing, to assist with deeper reflection. in follow-up interviews, the researcher must probe why the teacher did not act on what was noticed in previous lessons. if the teacher is not going deeper into reflecting on mathematics, a probe becomes necessary. vsr should be implemented on a continuous basis, to support teachers in reaching a stage where they master skills and competences that they would have identified as requiring attention (stage 4). 7. conclusion both participating teachers showed deeper awareness of their teaching practice, although not to the same extent. having the opportunity to view their lessons from a different angle was received positively, because it allowed them to critically analyse their unique contexts. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 1622022 40(4): 162-164 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) the data for teacher l provides evidence of not developing in terms of identifying if learners understand the concepts after it was covered. with that aspect she stayed on stage 1 of knowingly incompetence. she also did not transcend from the knowingly incompetence stage in terms of practicing a learner-centred approach. in terms of including mathematical terminology in her lessons, teacher l progressed from stage 1 to 2 as her unknowingness developed to knowingness although still incompetent in incorporating relevant mathematical terminology. she was made aware of this practice that can be changed so that she is able to complete the prepared sections. however, she chose not to act on the suggested practice that can increase her effectiveness in completing the syllabus. appearing to find herself in a comfort zone, she did not reach stage 3 of the ccl model, most probably due to her limited teaching experience or her inability to critically reflect on her practice. data for teacher f revealed that he noticed a number of aspects that could be changed. he also went further and acted on certain aspects that he noticed. he realised that he started the lessons without ensuring that the learners were seated (stage 2) and acted on it in the next lesson (stage 3). he also noticed that he did not invite the learners to ask questions (stage 2), which he also acted upon in the subsequent lesson (stage 3). another aspect that he identified and changed was his excessive leading/guiding of the learners (stage 2) and in the subsequent lesson, he allocated more time for learners to work on their own (stage 3). hence his lesson was more learner centred. these two teachers thus reflected differently. it can be argued that their years of teaching experience influenced what they reflected on. none of the teachers reached stage 4, where they could implement new ways of doing things comfortably. it is possible that this stage would have been reached if observations had continued over a longer period. in conclusion, the exposure to reflection using vsr makes the teacher aware of aspects that s/he can work on to improve his/her classroom practice. some of these aspects were changed by the participating teachers, to enhance teaching and learning. reliving the episodes of the lessons put the teachers in the driving seat of their own development. they identify the gaps in their teaching and can, as professionals, act on them independently. this does enhance teaching and learning in a context where teachers’ own needs and unique circumstances interact. vsr can be a possible in-house pd initiative that schools can implement to enhance teaching and learning. 8. limitation of the study due to time constraints, only two lessons per teacher were observed and video-recorded. the teachers did not reach mastery stage in the ccl model, due to this limited observation period. future studies could observe more lessons, to allow for more reflections by the teachers and possibly more opportunities to establish whether the teachers implement improvements based on what they notice. future studies can also consider to allow for more topic specific reflection. 9. acknowledgements this study was supported by a grant from the national research foundation of south africa (nrf). the authors have no conflict of interest to divulge. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 1632022 40(4): 163-164 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 nel professional learning by mathematics teachers through video-stimulated recall references 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(eds.). 2011. mathematics teacher noticing: seeing through teachers’ eyes (1st ed.). new york: routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203832714 sherin, mg, russ, r.s. & colestock, a.a. 2011. accessing mathematics teachers’ in-themoment noticing in mathematics teacher noticing: seeing through teachers’ eyes (1st ed.). new york: routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203832714 tan, s.k.s. 1996. differences between experienced and inexperienced physical education teachers’ augmented feedback and interactive decisions. journal of teaching in physical education, 15: 151-170. http://dx.doi.org/10.1123/jtpe.15.2.151 tripp, t., & rich, p. 2012. using video to analyse one’s own teaching. british journal of educational technology, 43: 678-704. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2011.01234.x zeichner, k.m. 1994. research on teacher thinking and different views of reflective practice in teaching and teacher education. in i. carlgren, g. handal, & s. vaage (eds.). teachers’ minds and actions: research on teachers’ thinking and practice (pp. 9-27). london: the falmer press. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6133 https://doi.org/10.1080/18146627.2012.722395 https://doi.org/10.1080/18146627.2012.722395 https://doi.org/10.1080/0141192032000137349 https://doi.org/10.20429/ger.2012.090101 https://doi.org/10.1177/1745499915580425 https://doi.org/10.1007/s12528-009-9018-3 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203832714 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203832714 http://dx.doi.org/10.1123/jtpe.15.2.151 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8535.2011.01234.x _hlk100848793 1 voices from the classroom: pre-service teachers’ interactions with supervising teachers abstract teaching practice is an important requirement to acquire a teaching qualification from south african universities. during teaching practice, it is customary for supervising teachers to guide and evaluate the students’ performance. however, very little is known about how the interaction with supervising teachers influences the students’ views about the teaching profession. forty finalyear bachelor of education students at the university of the witwatersrand gave their consent to participate in a qualitative study using open-ended questionnaires. this research aimed to explore pre-service teachers’ voices, using denise batchelor’s (2008; 2006) research pertaining to conceptualisations of voice, namely, practical, epistemological and ontological, which were used to analyse the data. the findings suggested that pre-service teachers’ pedagogical choices were linked to the supervising teachers’ guidance. many of the supervising teachers framed teaching as a profession that foregrounded administrative tasks and classroom management. some of the supervising teachers’ negative perceptions of the profession caused pre-service teachers to question their choice to become teachers. another issue was that pre-service teachers wish to feel welcomed and supported at schools, but most experienced a lack of mentorship from their supervising teachers. we recommend that supervising teachers attend workshops and courses on how to mentor pre service teachers. keywords: teaching practice, pre-service teachers, voices, professional practice, mentorship, supervising teachers 1. introduction research on initial teacher education (ite) internationally (feinman-nemser, 2001; hagger & mcintyre, 2006) and in south africa (bertram, 2011; reeves & robinson, 2014), has grown considerably in the past decade, particularly with regard to the mentoring of students on teaching practice. there are debates within the literature concerning the effectiveness of teaching practice at schools and the impact of mentoring relationships between supervising teachers and pre-service teachers1 (du plessis, 2013; kiggundu & nayimuli, 2009; quick & siebörger, 2005; shalem, 2003; väisänen, pietarinen, pyhältö, toom & soini, 2017; yuan, 2016). with the increasing attrition rate of teachers (fleisch, 2007) and school leavers’ reluctance to enrol in dr moeniera moosa university of the witwatersrand, school of education ms lauren rembach university of the witwatersrand, school of education doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v36i1.1 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2018 36(1): 1-13 © uv/ufs http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.1 2 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) ite courses, it is imperative to understand what pre-service teachers’ experiences are on teaching practice and how this influences their understanding of teaching as a profession. this paper focuses on the voices of pre-service teachers with regard to their mentoring experiences on teaching practice. during the four years of study, the participants completed twenty-four weeks of teaching practice in different school contexts, which included public, private, religious as well as non-denominational schools in south africa. many researchers, such as seale (2010), batchelor (2006, 2008), fielding (2004, 2007) and kidd (2012), have argued that there is a dearth and undervaluing of students’ voices in higher education research. seale (2010:4) claims that the conceptualisations of students’ voice is weak and calls for more debate at a higher education level regarding how students’ voice is “understood and enacted”. there has been a call for more participatory research (fielding, 2004), and this is why we have included pre-service teachers’ voices in our investigation. acknowledging the voices of the pre-service teachers’ experiences about mentoring on teaching practice is important for ite institutes and supervising teachers at schools. however, there is limited research regarding pre-service teachers’ views about their interactions with supervising teachers on teaching practice (svojanovsky, 2017). by acknowledging these preservice teachers’ voices, we hoped to gain some insights that would help to revise supervising teachers’ guidelines on how to mentor pre-service teachers. thus, the main aim of this research was to understand the experiences of pre-service teachers’ interactions with their supervising teachers on teaching practice. listening to the voices of pre-service teachers, we gained critical insights into their experiences. this showed how important the supervising teachers’ role is in the mentoring process in terms of supporting and empowering the pre-service teachers. we acknowledge that teaching practice positions pre-service teachers in a difficult role, because they need to take ownership of a class that is not their own. by acknowledging their voices in terms of classroom experiences, it allows for greater insight into the type of mentorship the supervising teachers offered, and how the pre-service teachers mediated this complexity. we begin by briefly reviewing selected literature on teacher education, mentorship and voice. this is followed by a discussion of the theoretical framework that underpins this research. thereafter, the research methods and methodology, ethical considerations and the presentation and discussion of the data will be presented. 2. literature review 2.1 teaching practice in south africa, the minimum requirements for teacher education qualification (mrteq) (department of higher education and training [dhet], 2015) policy stipulates the principles for the development of ite programmes in higher education institutions (hei) throughout south africa. an important proviso in the mrteq (dhet, 2015:10) is practical learning in the form of work-integrated learning (wil). wil is a compulsory component of teacher training and entails learning from practice and in practice (reeves & robinson, 2014:237). hagger and mcintyre (2006) argue that the workplace is where a pre-service teacher learns to teach. further, they suggest, “that in schools people have to confront and deal with all the complex, messy difficulties which make education a demanding real world task” (hagger & mcintyre, 2006:560). in the same manner, academic programmes ought to be aligned with the practical 3 moosa & rembach voices from the classroom application in the actual, complex and messy classroom (wilson & demetriou, 2007:215). teaching practice provides students with the opportunity to gain practical experience in an authentic school context under the mentorship of an experienced, supervising teacher. 2.2 supervising teachers as mentors the issue of mentorship and its complexities has been discussed extensively in international research (augustiniene & ciuciulkiene, 2013; hagger, mcintyre & wilkin, 2013; shanks & shanks, 2017). in addition, the authors recognise the importance of critically examining the mentor-mentee relationship with specific focus on who this relationship best serves. the supervising teachers’ mentorship of pre-service teachers helps to develop their identity and to make sense of their expectations as future teachers. supervising teachers can be regarded as models of practice, as they provide important information for pre-service teachers to gauge their level of self-efficacy (schunk, 2012). in addition, the supervising teachers help to develop the pre-teachers’ instructional efficacy. supervising teachers with higher self-efficacy show stronger commitment to their work, which includes mentoring and supporting pre-service teachers. pre-service teachers are also strongly influenced by the views of their supervising teachers (ure, gogh & newton, 2010; kaldi & xafakos, 2017). the relationship between supervising teachers and pre-service teachers influences four areas: “the type of feedback, the summative evaluation, the degree of mentoring the supervising teacher provides, and the degree of autonomy given to the preservice teacher” (shantz & brown, 1999:693). furthermore, du plessis (2013:22) indicates that supervising teachers tend to share “experiences and practices with pre-service teachers during teaching practice”. moreover, the mentoring process should contribute towards constructive teaching and learning during the teaching practice period at schools. therefore, for mentoring to be effective, the quality of dialogue between the supervising teacher and pre-service teacher needs to ensure that preservice teachers gain optimally from the experience (talvitie, peltokallio & mannisto, 2000). du plessis (2013:1) also argued that, “supervising teachers should provide pre-service teachers with emotional support and opportunities to develop their own identities as teachers and to create challenging and complex environments in which to learn”. by listening to the pre-service teachers’ voices, it plays a vital role in helping to understand their experiences of mentorship. 2.3 theoretical framework teaching practice offers powerful opportunities to explore students’ voices and their experiences of the profession. in this article, we refer to denise batchelor’s (2006; 2008) work on voices to argue that the acknowledgment of pre-service teacher’ voices is crucial to understand their experiences during teaching practice. batchelor (2006; 2008) is mostly interested in the question, “have students got a voice?” the notion of students’ voice or the lack thereof is relevant to our research. broadly defined, there are three types of voice that emerge from batchelor’s research: namely practical, which she refers to as the “voice for acting and doing”; epistemological, which is “a voice for knowing”; and, ontological, which is “a voice for being and becoming” (batchelor, 2006:597). we used these three descriptions of voice as a framework to analyse this research. 2.3.1 practical voice – “voice for acting and doing” bachelor’s concept of a practical voice, which is the “voice for acting and doing”, aligns with kagan’s (1992) view that pre-service teachers should be exclusively involved in acquiring 4 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) knowledge of learners, establishing a teacher identity and developing a repertoire of classroom routines. these activities are all akin to “acting and doing”. 2.3.2 epistemological voice – “a voice for knowing” according to the mrteq (dhet, 2015:64) document, beginner teachers should have the following competencies: “a sound subject knowledge; pedagogical knowledge of their subject; an understanding of the needs of the learners they will be teaching; be able to communicate their subject knowledge effectively; and, be knowledgeable about the school curriculum”. in addition, they are required to understand diversity in the south african context, manage a classroom, have the ability to assess learners work and have a positive work ethic. in this article, we use batchelor’s (2006; 2008) notion of epistemological voice to represent the knowledge, as described in the mrteq (dhet, 2015) document, and have analysed the data accordingly. 2.3.3 ontological voice – “a voice for being and becoming” what it means to be and become a teacher is an aspect that has received much deliberation in current literature (luft & roehrig, 2007; grossman, hammerness & mcdonald, 2009; friesen & besley, 2013; chong, 2011). these debates emphasise that pre-service teachers might have developed a perception of what teaching is by simply observing their own teachers while at school. pre-service teachers have used this observational learning to make a judgement regarding what teaching entails. however, these perceptions can be regarded as incomplete, because they are not based on the realities of the experiences of being a teacher (chong, 2011). the reality of being in a classroom during teaching practice allows students to confront their previous perceptions of teaching. 3. research methods and methodology a qualitative research design methodology was used to understand and interpret students’ experiences of their interaction with their respective supervising teachers during teaching practice. the research design aimed to “explore common experiences of individuals and was concerned with open-exploration and understanding to explain relationships and experiences” (creswell, 2012:20). we were interested in gathering a rich description of students’ experiences, which made qualitative research the most suitable methodology, because it does not privilege one method or discipline over another (denzin & lincoln, 2011:6). furthermore, this method allowed for a deeper understanding of underlying reasons, opinions and issues as expressed by the participants’ voices. a qualitative design required the researchers to “make sense of data in terms of the participants” (cohen, manion & morrison, 2007:461). richer explanations were generated (shank & villela, 2004:50) by using a phenomenological approach (fraenkel & wallen, 2009:428), where students were requested to articulate their lived experiences of their encounters with supervising teachers during teaching practice. the students completed open-ended questionnaires, which were a useful tool to collect data on students’ voices, because they were not restricted to multiple-choice or one-word answers. questionnaires were the preferred tool to collect the data, as it was impossible to do one-on-one interviews with such a large cohort of participants in a short space of time. in addition, it would have been challenging to conduct focus group interviews, because the data was collected in october from the final-year students. this was shortly before they started their final examinations. the weakness of only using a qualitative design to collect data meant that 5 moosa & rembach voices from the classroom it restricted the ability to generalise the findings. however, this weakness was compensated for by using a diverse sample of participants, as they were placed in different school contexts over a four-year period. the main question that this research aimed to address is: how are pre-service teachers’ experiences about the teaching profession influenced by their interactions with supervising teachers at schools? this will be considered by addressing the following sub-questions: 1. what are students’ voices telling us about their mentoring experiences? 2. how do these experiences influence their perceptions of teaching? 3. what are pre-service teachers’ expectations from their mentors? data was collected by means of open-ended questions that were emailed to participants to complete. the questions participants responded to were the following: 1. what do you expect from schools and supervising teachers during teaching practice? 2. what has been the least beneficial information you have received from a supervising teacher or the school during teaching practice? 3. what have you learnt at school during teaching practice? all the responses from the participants were collated. the data was analysed using thematic analysis, which helped to identify and reported patterns within the data (braun & clarke, 2006). making analytical sense of the data involved the researchers thinking about the data in new ways. this was done by asking questions of the data, such as, “what are students’ voices telling us about their mentoring experiences?” the patterns that emerged were derived via inductive analysis, which is a process of coding the data without trying to fit it into the researchers’ preexisting notions. this open and flexible process was important to allow the students’ voices to emerge. by reading through the raw data several times, this helped us to identify similar key concepts and ideas which were then grouped into different categories and sub-categories (henning, 2010:107). we were aware that by using an inductive approach to analyse the data that it would allow for unexpected and unpredictable categories and sub-categories to emerge. in keeping with this research approach, there is a deliberate maintenance of neutrality in the presentation of the data. this allowed for the capture of rich data, which was categorised into main categories and sub-categories in relation to the participants’ perceptions, which have been substantiated by using quotations from the participants. thus, the participants’ responses allowed for patterns to develop and for meaning to emerge from the data. while we may have approached the study with certain research interests, the data collected provided a deeper understanding of the participants’ beliefs and experiences of mentorship at schools. the researchers have been cognisant of their own biases in the analysis and write up of the data in order to ensure the reliability and validity of their findings. to ensure trustworthiness, the two researchers analysed the data independently and then discussed and compared categories to reach “intercoder agreement” (nunan & bailey, 2009:428).the validity of the data was ensured because of the multiple views expressed by a heterogeneous group of participants from various school contexts. this meant that the information presented was not from a one-sided viewpoint. participants, from diverse backgrounds, attended at least six different schools for the purpose of teaching practice over their four years at university, which meant that the information they shared could be viewed as reliable. however, we note that 6 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) the data was collected from students who attended one tertiary institute and that it might not necessarily be possible to generalise this information to all students and institutions. out of the forty final-year b.ed. students who completed the questionnaire, thirty-two were females and eight were males. participants were purposively selected (teddlie & yu, 2007; palys, 2008). furthermore, they were also selected for convenience (merriam, 2009:79) as they were all registered as fourth-year education students at the same hei. participants were a heterogeneous group, as they were from diverse racial, cultural, social, gender, age and religious backgrounds. 4. ethical considerations the ethics committee of the university gave permission for this research to be conducted. permission from schools has not been sort in this particular project as the focus is only students’ voices and no mention of particular schools was made. confidentiality has been ensured by not naming any participants or using pseudonyms. participants were made aware that their involvement in this project was voluntary and that they were allowed to withdraw from it at any given point. 5. presentation and discussion of data the following categories and sub-categories were derived after analysing the data. aspects that were indicated by less than forty percent of participants were not regarded as significant and have not been included. 5.1 pre-service teachers’ experiences of mentoring inform them that teaching is about “acting and doing” a significant category that emerged was that during teaching practice the participants were confronted with the ‘practical’ tasks of teaching. participants indicated these as practical pedagogical choices that they needed to make, based on the guidance by the supervising teachers, which focused on administrative tasks as well as being able to manage classroom discipline effectively. we have categorised them in the following way: 5.2 pedagogical choices are linked to supervising teacher’s guidance forty-three per cent of participants revealed the following: despite what they had learnt about lesson planning, selection, development of resources and learner engagement at university, during teaching practice they made choices that were influenced by the supervising teachers. how students were guided largely depended on the context of the school and the willingness of the supervising teacher to act as a mentor. some participants were encouraged to use a “purely textbook based, teacher-centred” approach by supervising teachers. others were encouraged to make use of as many resources as possible. some participants were “expected to be able to teach using their [supervising teachers] methods” and felt that if not done then these teachers would not give them positive feedback. from the data, it seems that students were forced to adapt to the teaching style and requirements of supervising teachers. another reason for complying was the need to ‘please’ supervising teachers. thus, it was clear that students were not given an opportunity to develop their own identities (du plessis, 2013; väisänen, pietarinen, pyhältö, toom & soini, 2017). this meant that the school context did not always provide powerful spaces for 7 moosa & rembach voices from the classroom learning as intended (feiman-nemser, 2001), and restricted the participants’ freedom to make judgements about their practice (biesta, 2005). mentorship from supervising teachers was mainly linked to practical craft knowledge. 5.3 teachers must focus on administrative tasks forty five percent of the participants defined teaching as a practical activity as a result of their supervising teachers. the reason for this definition was the number of administrative tasks that needed to be completed daily: “the filling in of registers; the marking of learners’ work; and, the collecting of various forms and information from learners”. practical aspects and decisions were therefore foregrounded as central to the work of a teacher, rather than the focus on becoming teachers who used their professional knowledge to promote teaching and learning for all. responses from a number of participants indicated that, “teaching is not all about teaching” with many foregrounding the practical, akin to batchelor’s (2006, 2008) notion of the practical voice. in our view, this showed that teaching has been minimised to an administrative task. this view resonates with kagan’s (1992) argument that most student teachers are interested in developing a set of classroom routines. however, grossman (1992) argues that student’s professional development is constrained if procedural routines become the early focus of their training. it was clear from an analysis of the data that many supervising teachers focused mainly on the mastering of administrative tasks during the mentoring process, which could lead students to believe that teaching is simply an administrative job. 5.4 the secret to becoming a great teacher is effective classroom management pre-service teachers expressed the view that there were clear messages sent by the supervising teachers about classroom management. in particular, they were told how to discipline the learners, thus the practical voice was foregrounded. fifty five percent of the participants highlighted the information they received from teachers on how to discipline the learners in the form of ‘tips for teachers’. one participant stated that he was told “you need to be strict from the first day, because if you don’t put your foot down, you will never have control in terms of classroom management”. this opinion led him to deduce that the “theory about classroom management is not always practical”. another participant claimed that the theories about classroom management techniques from the university and the schools were prescriptive and differed in reality. whereas a third participant acknowledged the disjuncture between theory and practice as she stated: “during teaching practice we learn the actual ways in which we would deal with certain situations, because at university we are taught things by the book”. her experience of the reality of the school context allowed her to note the following: “in a class things become unpredictable and the teacher is expected to have to be able to deal with each situation as it arises”. this is akin to hagger and mcintyre (2005) who argued that people have to confront and deal with all the complex, messy difficulties, which make education a demanding real world task. on the one hand, the participants indicated that supervising teachers were not modelling suitable strategies to discipline the learners, but on the other hand, the participants revealed that what they have been taught at university with regard to discipline was abstracted from practice. tenured teachers might regard the set of skills they have acquired via experience as a fullproof mechanism to promote successful teaching and learning. reliance on craft knowledge 8 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) only, may be traditional, deterministic and not pedagogically sound. it might lead pre-service teachers to believe that what they learnt at university was of no value when faced with the realities of the classroom context. thus, the pre-service teachers might start to question their voices of “acting and doing”. these views showed that the participants experienced an internal conflict with regard to classroom management issues. 5.5 interacting with supervising teachers affects pre-service teachers’ perceptions of teaching at an ontological level as most pre-service teacher education takes place in hei, there are often tensions between what pre-service teachers feel the focus of their learning should be and what happens in practice: they argue that they require practical knowledge and skills, which is not covered in enough detail during their courses. many pre-service teachers think that they do not need much theory, and do not see how theory underpins their own practice. this view was perpetuated by their interactions with supervising teachers who mostly focused on aspects of craft knowledge. these tensions were expressed by fifty three percent of participants with regard to the professional judgements that they were required to make during teaching practice. 5.6 pre-service teachers are confronted with supervising teachers’ negativity about the profession participants indicated that they questioned their choice to become teachers, because of their supervising teachers’ personal perceptions during teaching practice. one participant stated: “some teachers are very negative about the teaching profession, as they often moan about the pay and the workload, which creates a negative environment and makes me doubt my decision to become a teacher”. another participant said: “most teachers tell us what a terrible career we are in”. pre-service teachers’ experiences with supervising teachers have made them question their views about the profession and their choice to become a teacher. one of the participants felt that the supervising teachers’ views had made him question if the “teaching profession is calling (for him) or not”. from these voices, it is evident that some of the participants found that supervising teachers’ comments about the teaching profession were discouraging. participants expressed a concern that the supervising teachers’ negative perceptions about teaching affected their own attitudes towards teaching. this finding resonates with a similar study where the participants did not find themselves in emotionally supportive environments (du plessis, 2013). despite biesta’s (2005) call to inculcate the pre-service teachers’ “educational professionality” at schools, we argue that this aspect does not often develop due to the negative assumptions from supervising teachers about teaching as shown in this study. instead, pre-service teachers experience a decline in their teaching efficacy after teaching practice (matoti, odora, & junqueira, 2011; lindqvist, weurlander, wernerson, & thornberg, 2017). this decline in teacher efficacy affects pre-service teachers’ ontological voice in that they start questioning their decision to become teachers. 5.7 pre-service student’s expectations of a supervising teacher firstly, seventy-three per cent of participants expected their supervising teachers to induct them into the school by explaining school policies and procedures to them, and giving them relevant documents. secondly, fifty-five per cent felt that they needed to feel welcome in their supervising teacher’s classroom, and this was vital for their success during teaching 9 moosa & rembach voices from the classroom practice. lastly, eighty percent viewed the supervising teachers as mentors and role models who should encourage and empower pre-service teachers, but this did not always happen. 5.8 to be inducted into school policies and procedures participants stated they expected their supervising teachers to spend time discussing the school’s policies and general procedures with them. in the absence of this happening, a preservice teacher felt “lost and as if i had to work harder to fit in to the school’s procedures and expectations by asking questions”. one participant was more specific about what was needed, because she indicated that supervising teachers “should provide us with relevant documents and general information about the school”. for another participant these documents should include, “the school’s code of conduct, a time table and a class list/s of the class i will be allocated to”. a third participant felt that if the supervising teacher was clear about the school’s expectations, then it would allow her to “make a good impression”. from the voices of participants, it is evident that there is a lack of support and guidance from supervising teachers with regard to the pre-service teachers’ induction into a school. this led the preservice teachers to feel unsure and anxious about the correct protocol to follow at a school or how to conduct themselves in a professional manner. supervising teachers need to be made aware of the unnecessary strain they place on pre-service teachers if there are no induction policies and procedures in place at their schools. 5.9 to feel welcome at the schools participants indicated that they wished to feel welcome at the schools. for one participant, this meant being “treated like the staff members, with due respect”. another participant stated that she “expects teachers to be kind, helpful and welcoming instead of feeling threatened by me and behave[ing] in a hostile manner”. a third participant said: “[i] expect[s] the school to be more helpful in helping me do what i have to do for those three weeks. if you [schools] volunteer to have us as students, then you should be willing to help us”. she further stated that the “majority of the teachers just ignore you like you’re not there until they need you to staple the exam papers and i find that quite rude… then they belittle you in front of the learners which i have experienced”. it is during teaching practice that pre-service teachers form a perception about various schools in particular and the teaching profession in general. participants felt unwelcomed and belittled in some school contexts, as they were not treated as junior colleagues, but as learners. 5.10 to act as mentors and role models who empower and encourage them participants stated that they expected supervising teachers to acts as mentors and role models who were able to empower and encourage them during teaching practice and about the teaching profession as a whole. one participant felt discouraged by a “supervising teacher who does not give any feedback at all and one who leaves me alone with learners throughout the whole teaching practice experience, but wants to comment when my university tutor comes”. participants felt let down and angry at the unwillingness of some supervising teachers to support them (talvitie, peltokallio & mannisto, 2000). barnett (2007:167) notes that it is not knowledge that will carry pre-service teachers forward, but their capacity to embrace multiple and conflicting frameworks and to offer their own positive interventions in that milieu. one of the participants felt that pre-service teachers “come into a classroom to make a difference, not [to] imitate the educator you have been observing”. a second participant reported 10 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) that she needed “some amount of motivation (from her supervising teacher) when it gets challenging”. after receiving feedback from the supervising teacher, a third participant stated that, “then she would leave me alone for the rest of the day to implement that feedback before observing my final lesson of the day to see whether i had improved using her suggestions. participants indicated that they expected and needed feedback, motivation and input from their supervising teachers with regard to their teaching in general and their lesson planning (shantz & brown, 1999). as this did not happen often, the pre-service teachers frequently felt unsupported and unwelcome at the schools. supervising teachers’ lack of feedback, support and mentorship of pre-service teachers has a negative impact on their sense of ‘being and becoming a teacher’. 6. conclusion mentorship by supervising teachers plays a key role in pre-service teachers’ growth and development during teaching practice. a powerful way of understanding the importance and complexities of this interaction is by giving pre-service teachers the opportunity to articulate their experiences of this relationship. this means that it is imperative to include their voices in ite research, which this paper has done by focusing on batchelor’s (2006; 2008) concepts of practical, epistemological and ontological voice. one of the main findings was that most of the pre-service teachers’ pedagogical choices were linked to the guidance that they received from their respective supervising teachers. the data revealed that many supervising teachers framed teaching as a profession of acting and doing, where the administrative tasks required in teaching were foregrounded, as were issues surrounding classroom management. an additional finding was that interacting with supervising teachers affected pre-service teachers at an ontological level, because they were confronted by some of the supervising teachers’ negativity about the teaching profession. this caused the pre-service teachers to question their choice to become teachers. furthermore, the pre-service teachers would like to be made welcome at schools during teaching practice: they needed the supervising teachers to act as mentors and role models, who encouraged and empowered them. a third finding was that pre-service teachers indicated that their epistemological needs were not met on teaching practice, as they wished that supervising teachers would spend more time inducting them into the school, by explaining the school’s policies and procedures. this article has highlighted how pre-service teachers’ experiences of teaching and learning could be improved in practice by focusing more closely on the relationship that they have had with their supervising teachers. in order for this to be achieved, there needs to be more focus placed on the mentoring pre-service teachers receive from their supervising teachers during teaching practice. by acknowledging pre-service teachers’ voices, we gained some insights which would help to revise supervising 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(aphiwe, focus group 1) sexuality education in south africa is taught as a component of the life orientation (lo) subject area which is compulsory for all learners and is described by the andisiwe mthatyana affiliation: rhodes university tel: 071 105 1708 e-mail: andisiwemthatyana@gmail.com louise vincent department of political and international studies, rhodes university e-mail: l.vincent@ru.ac.za perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 50 department of education as a ‘holistic approach to the personal, social, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, motor and physical growth and development of learners,’ aimed at promoting learners who are equipped to participate fully and fruitfully in a democratic society (department of basic education, 2011: 8). sexuality education in south africa takes place in a context in which both sexuality and schooling are frequently cited as being beset by a range of crises including gender-based violence, disease and teenage pregnancy (for critiques, see for instance macleod, 2011; shefer, bhana & morrell, 2013). however, for all the sense of public crisis concerning sexuality and schooling, the voices of young people themselves regarding their own sexual subjectivities are seldom foregrounded in the public conversation surrounding youth, schooling and sexuality. mary jane kehily (2005: 1) defines ‘student sexual cultures’ as the ‘informal groups of school students who actively ascribe meanings to events within specific social contexts’. student sexual cultures are an important place for identity construction, because in these micro cultures learners negotiate acceptable ways of defining and talking about themselves as gendered and sexual beings. when students negotiate meanings in relation to gender and sexuality they draw on repertoires that are developed and maintained within these informal friendship circles. these informal student cultures are constructed by learners at all schools, but are seldom acknowledged in the formal curriculum as a resource to draw from in the practice of learner-centred pedagogies. the emphasis on student sexual cultures in this study is a way of ‘giving voice,’ as kehily (2005) puts it, to those who receive a curriculum which is meant to speak to their most intimate concerns, but which could be constructed and diffused with little attention to the detail and texture of their lifeworlds. redman (1994) suggested two decades ago that research into pupil sexual cultures can provide insight into pupils’ active engagement from an early age with sexual identity construction and the production of pupil sexual meanings. based on three months of ethnographic work at one particular school, this study tries to do just that. our sense is that, if we are to do more than pay lip service to the idea of ‘learner-centred’ education, having a deeper appreciation for, and knowledge of, these informal student cultures could be an important starting point for constructing curricula and pedagogies that are meaningful to learners. rather than seeing learners as homogenous, we attempt here to provide an insight into diverse lifeworlds – cultures and practices that are meaningful to the participants in ways not immediately legible to the casual onlooker. we describe three exemplars of informal groups or communities of practice which we discovered at the research site but which, by no means, exhaust the multiplicity of such groupings at the school. we argue that these informal learner cultures are significant sites in which learning about sexuality and the construction of gendered identities takes place. a curriculum aimed at ‘life orientation’ cannot make sense unless it takes seriously the diverse orientations to life, priorities, meanings and desires that circulate in learners’ lived, everyday experience. multiple femininities in a ‘single sex’ school: re-orienting life orientation to learner lifeworlds andisiwe mthatyana & louise vincent 51 the study this study was carried out at an all-girls government high school situated in a relatively privileged, predominantly white, suburban area in south africa. the learners at the school are between the ages of 12 and 18. ‘green girls’ high school is a historically white school which began to admit black learners for the first time in 1991. a large influx of black learners into the school followed, mostly originating from the nearby african and coloured townships. when data collection began in early may 2012, 429 learners were enrolled at the school. the majority of learners at the school are black day scholars (60 per cent). there are 29 teachers at the school, the majority of whom (22) are white. the medium of instruction is english. the study employed ethnographic techniques in order to gain deeper insight into how learners at the school interact with one another in the diverse student cultures at the school. our interest was in providing an interpretation of processes of meaning making within these interlocking learner communities of practice through detailed and extended engagement with, and direct observation of, participants within the physical and social context of the school. we were interested in the talk that takes place both in the formal setting of the lo sexuality education classroom, and outside the classroom, during break times and other moments of informal interaction. in some cases this ‘talk’ took place in the form of conversations on social media such as on bbm and facebook to which we, as researchers, were privy. participants were mainly grade 10 learners, as it is in this grade that the bulk of sexuality education is taught in south african schools. the school has three grade 10 classes, amounting to a total of 89 learners at the time of the study. participants included the learners themselves, lo teachers and the headmaster. observations were conducted both during formal lo lessons and other formal occasions such as school assemblies, and in more informal spaces such as during learner break times, meal times and in the staff tea room. observations were complemented with document analysis of learning materials and policy statements, three focus groups involving a total of 30 participants, 12 in-depth interviews (nine learners and three staff members including the headmaster, ‘mr walker,’, the lo subject head, ‘mr jones,’ and the school counsellor/lo teacher, ‘ms dibakoane,’) and solicited narratives from the learners. findings we were interested in this study, first, in the ways in which issues of sexuality taught in the formal lo classroom are taken up, if at all, in student (micro) cultures and, secondly, the implications that the practices and forms of subject formation taking place in these micro cultures might have for approaches to the teaching of sexuality education. our finding is that a sharp disjuncture seems to exist between the assumptions that inform formal classroom sexuality education and the priorities and concerns that animate the informal student cultures that exist at the school. we perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 52 suggest that a better understanding of the latter could usefully be seen as a resource to enrich and make more meaningful the idea of a ‘learner-centred’ approach to sexuality education. we argue against treating learners as a homogenous bloc, even in the context of a ‘single sex’ school, which is in reality a site in which a variety of femininities co-exist, and are reproduced, contested and struggled over. we begin by describing the official school culture which aims at producing particular learner identities that are in line with the school’s dominant understanding of its own identity. the data suggest that, for all its good intentions, this content is not perceived as directly relevant to learners’ most intimate struggles and concerns about sexuality. we go on to describe three exemplars of student micro cultures to which we were able to gain access in the course of our fieldwork. the formal sexuality education curriculum is taken up in these informal cultures in a variety of different ways, including varying levels of refusal, resistance, accommodation and acceptance. the official school culture the official ‘culture’ of a school has to do with what is promoted and also prohibited by the school. the ideal green girl is, as the current headmaster put it, ‘a multifaceted young woman who is willing to go out and conquer the world’ (interview, mr jones). one of the learners, linda, echoed his description: …..if you are clever … it is like okay, you are one point for gg [green girls], because the school focuses more on academics. i think the most perfect girl is like the all-rounder, the one who plays a competitive sport like hockey and then netball and then they are also very clever, they are in the top 10 and they also involved in school events, like with service and stuff like helping people and all of that. so if you like have all those different qualities then you are like perfect basically for gg (interview, linda). ‘excellence’ is central to the formal institutional culture of ggh and to how the school functions. learners are hailed to conform to this culture, while staff is tasked with the surveillance of excellence, in part through monitoring and supervising activities and in part through the public acknowledgement of learners who do excel and therefore embody the official school culture’s expectations. conformity to these expectations is rewarded while deviation from them is sanctioned. therefore, while it is possible to eschew the dominant school culture’s expectations and normative constructions of idealised femininity, there are social costs associated with doing so. a second dominant strand in the official culture of the school has to do with tolerance for diversity in the context of democratic citizenship which is influenced by pre-eminent discourses, circulating in the wider culture, concerning gender equality, democratic rights, human rights and the recognition of sexual diversity. the official school culture thus positions its learners not only as subjects of the new constitutional democracy, striving for personal success, but also as being in the process of becoming sexually responsible citizens who are astute, aware, enlightened and who evince respect for sexual minorities. multiple femininities in a ‘single sex’ school: re-orienting life orientation to learner lifeworlds andisiwe mthatyana & louise vincent 53 in this context, the approach which the school takes to sexuality is characterised by a determined commitment to being seen to be open-minded and forward thinking. this commitment is nowhere more evident than in the approach which the school has chosen to take to the lo sexuality curriculum. current thinking among the school’s leadership is that traditional approaches to sexuality education are counterproductive, failing to achieve valued aims which include keeping ‘safe’ through making ‘good’ decisions (interview, mr walker). there is an awareness that some teachers experience discomfort when teaching the subject – which is also viewed as unproductive (interview, mr walker). there is an understanding that traditional norms which view learners as children in need of protection and sex as a potential contaminant of youthful innocence make it difficult for the teacher/adult to speak to young people about sex. the school has tried actively to move away from ways of thinking that construct young people, and in particular girls, as passive, sexually innocent and in need of protection, and to replace this way of thinking with content that is ‘relevant to the girls’ (interview, mr walker). the curriculum requirement for teachers to address matters of sex and gender in a full and frank manner is thus taken seriously by lo teachers at the school. however, what is ‘relevant’ to learners is often informed by assumptions concerning youth culture which tend to homogenise learners instead of by pedagogical practices taking the learners themselves, and the particularity and diversity of their lifeworlds, as a starting point. as luyolo describes, lo, even in its more enlightened form, is an imposed solution to what adults believe learners’ problems to be: life orientation is nothing to me, first of all the subject tries to ‘know’ your situation and gives you ‘solutions’ that for me are really unrealistic. life orientation to me is just an easy ‘a’, just a bore of a subject and waste of time (luyolo’s narrative, may 2012). even when the experience of lo is reportedly positive, it is clear that the underlying goal of the curriculum is to foster the particular values that are central to the official school culture rather than necessarily interacting with the lived experiences of the learners themselves. ziyanda, for example, reports that lo has taught her: … the importance of individualism and like just being yourself with that open mind … and how you can succeed more on your school career or if you like grounded and know who you are (focus group 2). liyanda aptly summed up the sense that the learners have of the distance between their lives and what they have come to expect of the formal curriculum: ms andisiwe i am sure we are going to watch one of those american movies that say ‘do not do drugs’ (field notes july 16, 2012). the content is experienced as repetitive and out of touch with what learners really need to know, as the focus group participants explained: perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 54 ziyanda: i think, the thing is in grade 8 all the things were new to us, they were exciting to us and as years went by, it’s been continuing and it’s the same and that’s why we are losing interest. sibu: we know everything! and it’s like we don’t see the point that everyone: ja ja ja ja! sibu: some of things that are going on now in our lo class, like … we don’t need that in our lives but like hey we have to go to it! it’s kinda boring you know! yes like we are too over this! (focus group 2) in contrast, talk about sex in friendship groups is experienced as important and interesting, as linda describes: it’s totally different! it’s totally different! when we talk about it, oh! this is the time we make it juicy! … they really really spice it up. they talk about the personal side and it makes you want to listen! you just sitting and listening to what they are saying and then you hear and you like ‘oh my gosh!’ …. when you talking to your friends it’s very more chilled and there is nothing you can’t ask. you ask everything you want to ask and you are not scared and you don’t hesitate to like to ask when you with your friends. and then it’s like different when you with your teacher or parents cos then it’s like ‘this is not appropriate right now’ and so then you like ‘i’m not gonna ask that at all’. so ja! so with friends it’s more relaxed! (focus group 2) anele commented: so i think like an lo syllabus should be different depending on the environment that you are in … because we are all surrounded by different people. and same sex schools will not have the same challenge, like the people won’t face the same challenges as the co-ed schools. like co-ed schools face maybe crime and drugs and teenage pregnancy, whereas we face homosexuality …. it is not about the lo syllabus exactly but then it is the challenges that, like different schools face at different times. and a child from seymour girls won’t have the same challenges as a child from gg, because maybe of the financial position (interview, anele). we now turn to a closer examination of three exemplars of these informal communities of practice in which learners are immersed, and which more fully reflect the diversity of their life experiences. hostel bratz okay, i am a hostel girl and … we are dedicated students, yes we are … (viwe’s narrative, june 2012). the majority of the boarders at the school come from the eastern cape province, which is one of the poorest in the country. the remainder are from other parts of south africa with a small fraction originating from abroad. feminine sexual identity construction at the school occurs in the context of a class mobility project that is perhaps the pre-eminent ‘story’ of the school. formerly a whites-only school, now 80 per cent of the learners are black, isixhosa speakers, 10 per cent are coloured, nine per cent are white, and the remaining one per cent are from countries such multiple femininities in a ‘single sex’ school: re-orienting life orientation to learner lifeworlds andisiwe mthatyana & louise vincent 55 as pakistan, china and india. almost the entirety (95 per cent) of the boarders are black african girls whose families have been typically denied the privileges and opportunities for class mobility that the school represents. in this overall context of class aspiration, regardless of their actual family background, the ‘hostel girls’ are seen as a comparatively privileged upper stratum in the school who style themselves as academic achievers epitomising both the excellent all-rounder and the democratic rational individual rights-bearing citizen prized in the official school culture. a variety of authors have discussed the preoccupation with academic success in the production of middle-class femininities (see for example reay, 2001; walkerdine, lucey & melody, 2000). as this work shows, girls who are in pursuit of confirming, establishing or maintaining middle-classness are under enormous constant pressure to display their class attributes. the hostel girl as a middle-class girl is a cultural construction that takes place at school rather than being a simple reflection of family economic circumstances. in the hothouse environment of the hostel it is necessary to work to maintain this veneer of middle-classness ‘24/7’: what makes us different is the fact that we are more ‘posh’ so to say. we aren’t as ‘common’ as the day girls. we are more behaved and well kind of have more money ... there are really no traditions except for making a noise. [but] we are people of double standards ... the reason of us being ‘posh’ is cos we live together so we have to put on these acts 24/7 ... (bbm chat 06/06/2013). in the context of ggh, the hostel girls enact their aspirations to middle-class femininity in part through superior academic achievement, which confirms their belonging not only in the school, but also to the privileged strata of society, and in part through consumption of a particular form of urban, urbane, sexually liberated femininity – a performance for which the day scholars provide the audience which serves, in turn, to underline their exclusion from this particular community of practice. we all are a majority of girls from the mthatha area – we sort of all want to impress everyone. it’s constant competition ... so we tend to keep our lies going, faking people and trying to fit in ... as day girls they know the situations since they are from here they can sort of let themselves go (bbm chat 06/06/2013). the ‘hostel girl’ identity is meant to exude an air of worldly sophistication in contrast to the small town, ostensibly less affluent, day girls, as viwe explains: … other girls whom they are not cool, they talk about the typical teenage topic, boys, clothes, lame stuff, other girls’ clothes and more boys. well, the topics are not so specific like that i mean we talk about politics, the future, the past and evolution and a lot more (viwe’s narrative, 2012). one of the ways in which the hostel girls confirm their distinctive, aspirant, urban black middle-class femininity is through their consumption of all things ‘bratz’. bratz is a highly successful international brand which includes dolls, clothing, accessories and a wide variety of other merchandise, even a line of mystery novels. in sharp contrast to the quintessential whiteness of barbie, bratz dolls are much more ethnically eclectic making them more suitable conveyors of aspiration for the black perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 56 ggh hostel girls to consume. ‘yasmin,’ for example, has brown skin, braided hair and full lips (guerrero, 2009: 188); ‘sasha’ is african american, while ‘jade’ is asian american. guerrero (2009: 188) describes bratz dolls as embodying a ‘hip alterity’ to barbie, which accounts for their successful incursion into the fashion doll market – now controlling as much as 40 per cent of that market (talbot, 2006). the key to the dolls’ identity lies in their frivolous insistence on consumption and ‘having fun’. like the hostel girls, and unlike barbie, the bratz dolls have no domestic encumbrances – theirs is a world of fashion, dancing, sushi bars and motorcycles. above all, it is a world of wealth where the means to consume pleasure is the ultimate class marker – a lifestyle that mcallister (2007: 251) has referred to as ‘spectacular consumption’: the ‘spectacular display of appearance as “being” not just ‘having’”. much more than a toy, the dolls act as models for the look that their fans adopt through the purchase of bratz-branded clothing, accessories and electronics – not for their dolls, but for themselves as they seek to emulate the bratz lifestyle transposed onto their own person rather than merely lived vicariously through play with a doll. the hostel girls display their consumption of the bratz lifestyle in their long weaves and braids, clothing and accessories such as pencil cases and school bags. like the dolls upon which they model themselves, they also insert themselves into an online media world by photographing one another and posting their pictures on facebook, twitter, blackberry instant messaging and whatsapp. in these pictures the girls depict themselves wearing different fashion styles and dressing up in the way that one might previously have dressed a doll in play, suggesting fluidity between the world of the doll and the world of the fan. for mcallister (2007: 255), there is an element here not just of commodity fetishism but commodity feminism, as shopping in groups and elaborate forms of feminine display are largely restricted to a girls-only universe in which the participants are literally ‘doing it for themselves’: performing their youthful beauty and desirability for one another. in the formal setting of the sexuality education classroom these classed (and raced) underpinnings of prevailing beauty norms are never explicitly discussed or used as a reference point. the liberal individualism of the school’s enlightened democratic citizenship model in some ways precludes this possibility. the equal, individual, rights-bearing subject that lies at the centre of this discourse allows little room for the development of a critical awareness of the ways in which race and class are structuring experience, including structuring the limits and possibilities of feminine empowerment through consumption. in the absence of this critical awareness, the markers of wealth are easily conflated with the markers of worth. green fever girls for some green learners the closeness of girls-only dormitories, friendships and sexual display shades into homosexual practice. the term ‘green fever’ is used by the participants to describe someone who is a lesbian – but only at the school. in the constructions which they employ, these girls are described as not born with the multiple femininities in a ‘single sex’ school: re-orienting life orientation to learner lifeworlds andisiwe mthatyana & louise vincent 57 ‘fever’; they get the fever when they arrive at ggh. it is not uncommon for girls in their final year at the primary school to be asked by green girls and to ask one another, ‘are you going to be a lesbian?’ [when you go to high school] (interview, lukhona). as the term ‘fever’ suggests, lesbianism at the school is assumed to be an experimental phase rather than a permanent identity. homosexual practice is constructed as a curable virus that does not completely displace the assumed ‘normal’ state of heterosexuality. for those who enter the green fever community of practice, adopting a lesbian identity is both mutable and temporary, depending on both time and context rather than being a permanent sexual identity. after matriculating from high school green fever is expected to subside and the individual is expected to return, at some future point, to being ‘fine again’ – that is to say, to return to the normality of heterosexual practice. as one participant put it: here at green girls we are like whatever, it’s just a stage, next year she will date a man and she will be fine you know! so that’s how we view it, well most of us sometimes (interview, mbali). lesbianism in the form of ‘green fever’ is thus normalised at green girls. as akhona put it, ‘it isn’t something that people get surprised about’ (interview, akhona). drawing on the official school culture’s dominant discourses of rights, choice and tolerance for diversity, the girls construct lesbianism as a ‘choice’ that is available to them in a milieu in which choice is emphasised as one of the entitlements that comes with being a citizen in a democracy. engaging in lesbian practice is understood as a stage that involves decision making – another important precept of the official school culture, and is therefore seen as more appropriate in the senior grades. you know except in grade 8 they are like wow okay she is still new, she is so young; you know how did she come about making such a decision and stuff (interview, busi). here seniority is associated with the maturity to engage in sexual decision making while being a junior in the school is associated with innocence and diminished capacity for sexual decision making, thus making the choice to get the ‘fever’ less legitimate in younger girls. some of the girls see green fever as specific not just to a particular age group, but also to the (‘single sex’) environment in which the girls find themselves (interview, tina), once again affirming the construction of heterosexuality as the default position, while lesbianism is a kind of fall-back sexual choice when boys are unavailable. the expectation as a result is that when green fever girls matriculate from the school and find themselves in environments in which men are present, they will revert to ‘natural relationships’ with men. as siviwe astutely points out, though, lesbian girls at the school do not disrupt the normative gender order and its associated binaries, but are instead involved with maintaining existing gender hierarchies through the performance of masculinised identities that can be interpreted as confirming rather than disrupting heteronormativity. perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 58 to be honest i feel there is probably only three out of the whole school who are actually lesbians [exclusively and genuinely desire women]. i say this because you find out that these girls are only lesbians here at school but when they are out and about in the real world they are suddenly straight. when they are here at school, they act lesbian and act manly. i personally don’t think in a lesbian relationship there should be a manly girl and a girly girl – that is defeating the whole being lesbian thing, because you are technically showing that in a relationship there should be a man and a woman. if they truly believed otherwise, then both the women would not change their appearance into a more masculine one (siviwe’s narrative, may 30, 2012). heterosexuality is confirmed as the ‘normal’ sexual identity and green fever is a sickness that temporarily acts as a stand-in for more socially accepted forms of sexual desire rather than being a permanent or sought-after long-term identity. however, for all its ubiquity in the everyday experience of learners at the school, ‘green fever’ is never discussed in the lo classroom or acknowledged or interacted with as a possible resource for the opening up and deepening of conversations about sexual diversity, sexual identity and tolerance. instead, an invisible partition exists between the way in which homosexuality is treated in the official lo classroom (as something that ‘other people’ might do and which ‘we’ must be tolerant of) and the informal discourses and practices that circulate in student micro cultures. day girls for the hostel ‘bratz,’ passing as more middle class than they really are involves constant labour. but even for the most aspirant day girls, as their home lives are more transparently visible at school, ‘faking it’ is less of a viable option. most day scholars come from working-class backgrounds and the majority of them come from the nearby black townships. the visibility and proximity of their home circumstances makes it much more difficult for day girls to be able to pass as middle class than the hostel girls unless their background is genuinely and securely middle class. their economic realities are highly visible, for example, in the clothing they wear on school casual days, the content of their lunch boxes, their access to money and other resources, the location of their homes and the appearance of their parents who are inevitably seen at the school from time to time. unlike the hostel girls whose school lives are spent predominantly in the company of other girls, the day girls are in daily contact with boys when they go home and at the weekends. most display conventional heterosexual femininity. in sharp contrast to the official culture of the school, they share a common home and family experience in which it is completely taboo to talk to adults about sex and homosexuality is regarded as unthinkable. while many of these girls are (hetero) sexually active it would be inconceivable for this to be acknowledged by their families. for most day girls their (very visible) economic circumstances make it impossible for them to consume anything approaching the appearance of the bratz lifestyle emulated by the hostel girls. the day girls mostly separate into racialised groupings multiple femininities in a ‘single sex’ school: re-orienting life orientation to learner lifeworlds andisiwe mthatyana & louise vincent 59 with the black african group forming a close-knit alliance, spending most of their time together both in and outside of the classroom. unlike the white girls who mostly make their way to and from school in private vehicles or on foot since they live in the (mostly white) surrounding suburbs, the black girls must all walk together to the taxi rank to go to homes that are much further removed, both physically and culturally, from the privileged milieu of the school. at home in the township they are surrounded by learners from township schools with whom they feel they have less in common and so end up spending weekends together, thus cementing their connection to one another and their distance from the hostel girls, from white peers and from peers who attend township schools. black day girls experience themselves as under surveillance from multiple vantage points. their attendance of a formerly white school in a predominantly white residential area marks them as highly privileged in comparison with everyone else in the communities in which they live and to which they must return each day. the daughters of working-class parents, who often struggle to make it possible for them to attend green girls, are under extreme pressure to make a success of their schooling. this injunction is inevitably closely tied up with tight policing of their sexuality which is viewed as a potential threat to their successful negotiation of entry into the world of middle-class financial and career success, as tina describes: it is always like, ‘tina do us proud,’ you know. ‘we pay all of this money just for you … to get a good education and come out there. it is not about the boys, it is not about everyone else. it is about you at the end of the day you know. so remember whatever you do it is also going to affect you, it is just going to affect you. so it is all about you, you are there to study’ (interview, tina). enormous hopes ride on the township child who makes it into a school environment like green girls – still perceived as a world apart by parents who grew up in a milieu in which these schools were reserved for the white minority and which represented impossible, unattainable privilege. parents constantly emphasise the opportunity that the girls have to make a future for themselves and to come good on the sacrifices that are being made for them. for girls from this context to be revealed as sexually active is a disaster threatening to undo the precarious possibility of a future that is better than the lives of their parents, thus rendering them particularly susceptible to the idea that sex represents a very real threat to their chances of a life free of poverty, however, pleasurable it might feel. at the same time as representing, in the milieu of their families and township communities, impossible privilege, at school they are a shunned class, looked down upon by the hostel bratz who are themselves determinedly fashioning themselves as a cut above the rest. they are a highly visible community both in the public spaces of the township and in the context of the school. they are the audience for whom the hostel bratz perform their fragile middle-classness. for these learners, who must return each day to a milieu in which they are both vulnerable and highly visible, the playful sexual display implied by conspicuous consumption of the bratz lifestyle perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 60 represents a much riskier prospect. these girls’ day-to-day experience is far removed also from what the overwhelmingly white teaching staff has ever experienced. they often commented on how little of their own lived experience they found echoed in the generic lo education lessons drawn from a social imaginary of rights and choices, of tolerance for sexual diversity and the celebration of individual achievement and self-expression, but in which abstinence remains the unwritten expectation. and when they tell you about sex it’s always in black and white and it’s like this happens and this happens like you don’t get to hear the emotional part of it which is why when most teenagers have sex go into it emotionally and that’s when things, problems and implications and we don’t get that from our parents or school and also like no one tells us anything if you have to be emotionally ready or not. like no-one tells us anything ... we don’t know (focus group 2). the day girls’ primary challenge is to manage the deep dissonances between these two worlds and, since that dissonance is seldom directly acknowledged or confronted, there are scant tools on offer that are meaningfully ‘oriented’ towards the realities of their lives and the forms of sexual decision making, choices and pressures that they face. conclusion for some learners, life orientation, even the open-minded, tolerant version offered at this particular school, is irrelevant to their lives, because they feel it adopts an approach that informs them of their problems and provides solutions to their problems rather than soliciting their views on what those problems might be and inviting them to find solutions that make sense to them in the light of their own experiences and desires. in contrast to the diverse challenges, values and experiences that we encountered in the informal communities of practice observed at the school, the content of sexuality education assumes that learners are all the same and does not take into account their most intimate concerns. at present, the fact that the curriculum does not take the diverse raced, classed and sexual identities of learners as its starting point, means that it does not meet their needs and invites a variety of responses from the learners. sleeping, laughing, ‘zoning out’ and protesting ignorance of sex can all be seen as forms of resistance to the formal curriculum. this resistance, boredom and dissatisfaction is in sharp contrast to the many animated discussions about sexuality and gender witnessed in informal student sexual cultures in the course of observation at the research site. this points to the need to take the latter seriously in order for the formal curriculum to be able to succeed in its aim of being meaningful to learners. while learners seem to desire to know so many things and to be eager to participate in discussions that are relevant to their lives and experiences, they find in lo sexuality education repetition and little that challenges them to think in new ways or provides them with genuinely new insights. the content of the formal sexuality education curriculum is often ignorant of, or blind to, the detail of student sexual cultures. and even the enlightened form of multiple femininities in a ‘single sex’ school: re-orienting life orientation to learner lifeworlds andisiwe mthatyana & louise vincent 61 sexuality education practised in the school’s interpretation of the curriculum does not take these lived realities as its starting point. yet, it is these student sexual cultures that offer an entry point into understanding young peoples’ sexuality – a starting point from which lo sexuality education can be approached in a more meaningful way. rather than being restricted to the classroom, learning about sexuality takes place in unrecognised peripheral spaces, and as wenger (1998: 11) notes, it is this unofficial learning that ought to be accessed and acknowledged in order to inform the educational systems that we design. the recognition of these informal dimensions of sexuality education can help us understand that what young people need from the curriculum is learning that speaks to the specificities of their experiences and challenges. alongside the dominant culture of the school, with its particular precepts and expectations, there exists a variety of student micro cultures and diverse communities of feminine practice. the particular groups which learners form part of both define their members and are defined by their members. as we have shown, however, membership in these communities of practice is not entirely a matter of individual ‘choice’ but is, rather, socially circumscribed. at the same time, participants in these communities of practice develop shared identities – shared assumptions and ways of being, shared interpretations of what they see and experience both at school and in wider social interactions. the values of the official school culture which the formal sexuality education curriculum seeks to transmit to learners are refracted through group membership. some learners take part in more than one group, which lends further fluidity and complexity to their forms of identity construction – a complexity which is seldom acknowledged or referenced in the formal setting of the sexuality education classroom. an approach which is attentive to such cultures gives us insight into how young people understand themselves as sexual subjects in a given local context and how they construct themselves as gendered subjects. in this article we have shown how the ‘single sex’ school is, in reality, a site for the production of multiple contested femininities. moreover, school cultures are shown not to be isolated from home environments which are constantly interacting with how students construct their school identities. the recognition of student sexual cultures by the formal curriculum would be a starting point for the construction of a more relevant learner-centred sexuality education which realises that discourses of enlightened choice and rational individualism take little notice of the classed and raced realities that structure choice. references department of basic education 2011. national curriculum statement (ncs): further education and training document grade 10-12. pretoria: department of basic education. perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 62 guerrero, l. 2009. can the subaltern shop? cultural studies critical methodologies, 9(2): 186-196. kehily, m.j. 2005. gender, sexuality and schooling: shifting agendas in social learning. london and new york: routledge falmer. macleod, c. 2011. ‘adolescence’, pregnancy and abortion: constructing a threat of degeneration. london: routledge. mcallister, m. 2007. girls with a passion for fashion. journal of children and media, 1(3): 244-258. reay, d. 2001. ‘spice girls’, ‘nice girls’, ‘girlies’, and ‘tomboys’: gender discourses, girls’ cultures and femininities in the primary classroom. gender and education, 13(2): 153-166. redman, p. 1994. shifting ground: rethinking sexuality education. in d epstein (ed.), challenging lesbian and gay inequalities in education. buckingham: open university press. shefer, t., bhana, d. & morrell, r. 2013. teenage pregnancy and parenting at school in contemporary south african contexts. perspectives in education, 31 (1): 1-10. talbot, m. 2006. ‘little hotties’: barbie’s new rivals. the new yorker. 4 december: 74-83. walkerdine, v., lucey, h. & melody, j. 2000. class attainment and sexuality in late twentieth century britain. in c zmroczek & p mahony (eds.), women and social class: interracial feminist perspectives. london: ucl press. wenger, e. 1998. communities of practice: learning, meaning and identity. cambridge: cambridge university press. 84 approaches to assessing preservice teachers’ learning in authentic and rigorous ways: the case of an inclusive education module abstract initial teacher education programmes offer inclusive education modules that seek to prepare teachers for teaching diverse learners. while there is growing research on the content and pedagogy of inclusive education modules, relatively less attention has been given to the assessment of these modules. this paper focuses on the challenges of promoting authenticity, academic depth and rigour in inclusive education through assessment tasks. drawing on cochran-smith and lytle’s (1999) concepts of knowledge for-, inand ofpractice in education, we critically reflect on three approaches used to assess an inclusive education course over a number of years. the first approach required pre-service teachers to articulate their understanding of important concepts associated with inclusive education, the second required them to provide evidence of their ability to use inclusive strategies, while the third approach provided opportunities for them to participate in a research project about inclusionary and exclusionary practices in schools. we find that these approaches represent inclusive education knowledge with different degrees of conceptual integrity and provide opportunities for pre-service teachers to participate in authentic academic and professional practices to different extents. we conclude by suggesting how the assessment of inclusive education can be approached so that neither academic rigour nor authenticity is compromised. keywords: pre-service teacher education, assessment, inclusive education, teacher knowledge, teacher practices 1. introduction teacher educators are tasked with ensuring that newly qualified teachers develop conceptually informed and contextually responsive teaching practices through the curricula they teach, through the pedagogies they use and through the assessment tasks they design. similar to other courses in initial teacher education (ite) programmes, there are challenges in offering university-based education coursework in inclusive education that is academically rigorous and practically relevant. in this paper, we use cochran-smith and lytle’s (1999) schema of knowledge for-, inand of-practice to consider the implication for the assessment of inclusive education modules in ite elizabeth walton (corresponding author) elizabeth.walton@wits.ac.za university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, south africa 27 st andrews road, parktown, johannesburg, 2193, south africa university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, south africa ++27 00 717 3768 lee rusznyak lee.rusznyak@wits.ac.za university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, south africa 27 st andrews road, parktown, johannesburg, 2193, south africa ++27 11717 3004 doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i1.7 issn 0258-2236 eissn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(1): 84-101 © uv/ufs mailto:elizabeth.walton@wits.ac.za mailto:lee.rusznyak@wits.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.7 walton & rusznyak approaches to assessing pre-service teachers’ learning in authentic ... 85 programmes. we present and analyse three assessment tasks given to pre-service teachersi in an inclusive education module over the past five years. we demonstrate how each task is representative of one of the ways in which cochran-smith and lytle (1999) position knowledge and practice in relation to one another. we compare the extent to which these tasks (i) engage pre-service teachers with the knowledge practices of the academy in theoretical bases of inclusive education, (ii) provide authentic assessment for pre-service teachers in the practicebased work within inclusive education and (iii) position inclusive education differently. 2. teacher education for inclusive education there is a burgeoning research interest in teacher education for inclusive education, with many teacher educators researching their practice and disseminating their findings. content and pedagogy are a primary focus, as teacher educators account for content selection and innovative curriculum delivery methods (e.g. forlin, 2010; loreman, 2010; walton & rusznyak, forthcoming). there is also a surfeit of studies drawn from course evaluations as researchers try to show the effects of courses on pre-service teachers’ attitudes to inclusive classrooms and dispositions towards teaching learners with disabilities (ahsan, deppeler & sharma, 2013; lambe & bones, 2008). our previous research considers the potential of undertaking practicum sessions in special school contexts for supporting the pedagogic learning of pre-service teachers (walton & rusznyak, 2013). notably absent in this body of literature is a critical engagement with conceptions of what constitutes appropriate approaches to assessment in inclusive education courses. our paper seeks to address this gap in the literature. since the advent of democracy, south african classrooms have become increasingly diverse and representative of learners with different educational needs. as more ordinary schools become ‘full service schools’ the number of learners with disabilities in schools should continue to increase (department of education [doe], 2001). courses in inclusive education are now commonly found in ite programmes both internationally and in south africa (florian, 2012; stofile & green, 2007). policy requires that all graduates of south african ite programmes should be “knowledgeable about inclusive education and skilled in identifying and addressing barriers to learning” (republic of south africa [rsa], 2015: 23, 29). furthermore, beginner teachers “must understand [learners’] … individual needs and tailor their teaching accordingly” and “must understand diversity in the south african context in order to teach in a manner that includes all learners” (rsa, 2015: 62). within the context of south african policy, inclusive education is variously positioned as a practical kind of knowledge (as a component of general pedagogical knowledge). it is also positioned as a professional knowledge (as a component of pedagogical content knowledge), as a practical competence (ability to teach in a manner that includes all learners) and there is oblique reference to contextual knowledge (“understand diversity in the south african context”). furthermore, varying disciplinary backgrounds and ideological commitments of teacher educators will affect the way they understand inclusive education. this will influence the ways in which courses are conceptualised and what knowledge will be selected for pre-service teachers (walton & rusznyak, forthcoming). in turn, this would have implications for how the intended learning is best assessed. 86 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) 3. knowledge and practice: approaches to teacher learning in pre-service teacher education since ite was relocated to higher education in 2000, the sector has grappled with apparent tensions arising from the conceptual rigour demanded by a university-based qualification and an expectation that beginner teachers are competently skilled practitioners from the very start of their careers (council on higher education, 2010). recent policy developments have attempted to resolve this tension by advocating a knowledge-based approach to ite that seeks to enable pre-service teachers to develop theoretically informed practices (rsa, 2015). in conceptualising teaching as a professional practice, the academic study of education and professional practices of teaching are not regarded as opposing forces but as internally related to each other, in that “neither can be adequately pursued, understood, learned or appreciated independently of the other” (morrow, 2007: 79). it is for this reason that during their ite programmes, pre-service teachers are often required to complete assessment tasks that require them to make links between a conceptual object of study and practice-based contexts (shalem & rusznyak, 2013). we will show that courses in inclusive education are no exception. cochran-smith and lytle (1999) provide an influential account of three approaches in how knowledge and practice can be positioned in relation to one another in pre-service teacher learning. their typology of knowledge-for-practice, knowledge-in-practice and knowledge-ofpractice is useful in examining how professional learning is constructed in ite programmes in relation to theoretical knowledge and its relationship with teaching practices (reeves & robinson, 2014). these three conceptions compete and yet co-exist, and they are “invoked by differently positioned people in order to explain quite different ideas and approaches” (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999: 251). it may be that different approaches are foregrounded at different times as pre-service teachers enter and move through ite programmes. we briefly review each of the three approaches proposed by cochran-smith and lytle (1999) and then move on to literature about assessment in higher education to explore implications for how inclusive education could be assessed within the traditions of each approach. 3.1 knowledge-for-practice this approach positions teaching as a theoretically informed, knowledge-based practice. disciplinary knowledge that informs education is produced outside of classroom contexts by researchers and scholars in universities (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999) who are not necessarily teachers themselves. the disciplines of psychology, philosophy and sociology are particularly important in offering prospective generalisable insights that enable teachers to make conceptually informed choices across diverse contexts. propositional knowledge is therefore considered crucial in informing what happens within classrooms. theorists in this tradition (e.g. hirst, 1965; morrow, 2007; winch, 2014; young & muller, 2014) emphasise the importance of understanding the precise meanings of conceptual objects (like a theory, a model, an idea) that has been found worthy of study. through systematic study, students come to understand the complex relationships that exist between these conceptual objects of study and the networked bodies of educational knowledge from which they emerge. this, they argue is a prerequisite for developing the capacity for rational judgement in practice over diverse contexts. experiential knowledge alone cannot be the basis of a rational and principled judgement because without a theoretical base, professional judgement remains individualistic, context-bound and therefore unreliable (shalem, 2014). knowledge-for-practice is essential walton & rusznyak approaches to assessing pre-service teachers’ learning in authentic ... 87 in ite programmes, because subject knowledge with educational propositional knowledge (and not merely accumulated experience) enables rational professional judgement in practice (shalem & slonimsky, 2013; winch, 2014). inducting students into ways of “being, knowing and seeing” within particular disciplines provides opportunities for students to work systematically with a body of knowledge (sambell, mcdowell & montgommery, 2013: 12). coursework that has academic depth and rigour provides opportunities for students to formulate rational arguments, use evidence or reason to justify claims, engage with established knowledge, prove or defend a position and to undertake systematic analysis or investigations (slonimsky & shalem, 2006). the assessment of university-based coursework thus commonly requires pre-service teachers to complete assessment tasks that work simultaneously with conceptual objects of study and the prevailing contextual realities in which the practices of teaching exist (shalem & rusznyak, 2013). their ability to develop theoretically informed practices is logically dependent on a prior understanding of a conceptual object of study in its own right. in doing coursework to establish a foundation for conceptual clarity of thought, the pre-service teachers must first become a student of educational theory. where theory has been recruited to enable pre-service teachers to build inclusive education knowledge for practice, it has mainly come from the discipline of psychology and from the fields of special education and medicine (slee, 2011). with respect to the marginalising and exclusionary practices that operate within schooling and society, a reminder has been given of “the importance of the sociology of education to the emergence of inclusive education as an explanatory framework” (slee, 2010: 99). while we are cognisant of the contestations of the disciplinary base/s of inclusive education, in the tradition of knowledge-for-practice, inclusive education could be considered as a body of applied theoretical knowledge that has the potential to inform the pedagogic responsiveness of teachers to learner diversities in the classes they teach. 3.2 knowledge-in-practice knowledge-in-practice is most often associated with a conception of teaching as a craft best learnt through apprenticeship (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999). practitioners’ experiences and their rigorous reflections on classroom action give rise to this type of knowledge. the “exemplary practice of experienced teachers” (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999: 263) is considered where the knowledge of good teaching practices reside. this approach to ite emerges from those who advocate for teachers to become reflective practitioners, who are able to harness and articulate the wisdom inherent in their craft knowledge (carr, 2006; schön, 1987). the complexity of each classroom moment and interaction is assumed so idiosyncratic that teaching is initially a spontaneous response to uncertainty. therefore, while knowledge-for-practice is context independent, a knowledge-in-practice approach to teacher learning makes the context highly significant. learning to teach involves learning what might constitute “wise action in the midst of uncertain and unchanging situations” (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999: 256). this second approach to teacher learning therefore takes a more inductive approach to the relationship between theory and practice. pre-service teachers learn from emulating the most effective teaching practices of experts and are prompted to construct their own personal theories from their observations and teaching experiences. there is thus an emphasis on developing personal and shared practical knowledge through experience, reflection and apprenticeship. the preparation of pre-service teachers requires that they turn 88 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) to practice-based contexts and explore problems of practice or cases that arise in situ (see for example gravett, merseth and de beer, 2013). cochran-smith and lytle (1999: 272) say that the point of engaging with cases ...is to provide the social and intellectual contexts in which prospective … teachers can probe the knowledge embedded in the wise teaching decisions of others and/or can deepen their own knowledge and their own abilities to make wise decisions in the classroom. a knowledge-in-practice approach to inclusive education has implications for what constitutes authentic teacher learning in this field and how this learning should be assessed. texts abound with the provision of a variety of strategies that could be implemented in inclusive classrooms to support learners with various needs (see for example loreman, deppeler & harvey, 2011). university-based coursework in inclusive education in this tradition would seek to introduce pre-service teachers to the craft knowledge of expert teachers who have shown a sustained commitment to inclusive education and who use inclusive pedagogy to teach learners with diverse learning needs (black-hawkins & florian, 2012). in the tradition of knowledge-inpractice, there has also been a significant body of literature produced to support inclusive education as a ‘practical’ knowledge derived from the experiences of teachers (walton, 2016). in order to develop their knowledge-in-practice, university-based coursework should provide pre-service teachers with opportunities to act as prospective practitioners in training. for assessment tasks, it would be regarded as particularly important that pre-service teachers demonstrate their knowledge and skills in actual or simulated classroom-based contexts. 3.3 knowledge-of-practice a conception of teacher learning as knowledge-of-practice involves teachers “actively initiating and carrying out research in their own schools and classrooms” to “make teacher learning more critical, including strategies that prompt prospective teachers to investigate their own autobiographies” (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999: 283). classrooms and schools become sites of intentional investigation, where interrogation (not just reflection) and systematic inquiry prompts teachers to confront and challenge their perceptions and assumptions about teaching and learning. the conception of teacher learning as ‘knowledge-of-practice’, places the teacher researcher as an agent of change whose aim is to bring about increased educational justice, not only within the classroom and school but also within the wider social and political context. in order for pre-service teachers to interrogate the nature of current practices, they should adopt the role as novice researchers whose classrooms and schools become the site for practice-based inquiry. waitoller and kozleski (2010) have described learning about inclusive education in a knowledge-for-practice approach in their account of inclusive professional learning schools. these authors lament the absence of ‘critical lenses’ in many teacher education programmes and argue for the development of “critical sensibilities that question what is being done, for the benefit of whom” (waitoller & kozleski, 2010: 66). in the professional learning schools described by these authors, pre-service teachers are encouraged to take an “inquiry stance” (ibid: 68) in a school community. this enables them to make informed instructional decisions and to challenge their traditional assumptions about learner difference and about teaching. of interest to the work reported in this paper, waitoller and kozleski (2010: 72) comment on the assessment of pre-service teachers in professional learning schools, noting, “it is almost impossible to work with students without assessing”. while they report on various school-based assessment tasks, we now focus on university coursework assessment tasks in inclusive education courses. walton & rusznyak approaches to assessing pre-service teachers’ learning in authentic ... 89 4. assessment in university-based teacher education programmes it is widely accepted that assessment tasks in higher education should present students with intellectually demanding activities that have intrinsic meaning beyond obtaining a quantifiable measure for promotion purposes (frey, schmitt, & allen, 2012). the work of biggs (1999) on the constructive alignment between instruction, learning and assessment has been most influential in understanding the role of assessment in directing student learning. using the “backwash effect of assessment” (biggs, 1999: 141), he explains how student learning is largely directed by assessment tasks and less so by the intended curriculum. assessment tasks indicate to students what is important in a course and therefore assessment tasks lie at the heart of students’ learning experiences (gibbs, 1999). in order to interrogate the trade-offs inherent in various assessment tasks, we first need to consider carefully what is entailed in assessing knowledge practices of the academy and practice-based tasks of the classroom. 4.1 inducting pre-service teachers into the knowledge-based practices of the academy teachers are ultimately responsible for introducing learners to systematised bodies of networked knowledge in the form of the school subjects they teach (macintyre, 1981; morrow, 2007; winch, 2014). the practice of teaching requires that content knowledge, created by disciplinary experts is organised systematically into school curricula and then recontextualised into teaching and learning materials and sequences of lessons (bernstein, 2000). winch (2013, 2014) elaborates what it takes to claim to ‘know’ a subject. to know a subject entails knowing the central concepts in that body of knowledge and the relationship between propositions, the ability to make inferences from that knowledge, an ability to understand how knowledge is created and verified and an ability to navigate the field. if we are convinced that teachers should have a deep understanding of education and the subjects they teach, then the work of winch suggests that academic depth is not merely important to the preparation of teachers as university students, it is crucial for the knowledge work they do as leaders in the education system and in their classroom-based work with learners. enabling pre-service teachers to understand how knowledge is created, disseminated and contested in the academy is an extension of the knowledge-based work they will do when they induct learners into the subjects they teach. academic practices create possibilities for constructing of principled knowledge, undertaking systematic inquiry and developing new insights or ways of being. slonimsky and shalem (2006) identify four strands of activities that combine to constitute the knowledge-based practices upon which formal learning is based. the conceptual tools used in the pursuit of knowledge-based practices include rational argument (or at least some partitioning of the form and the content of assertions), the justification of claims, engagement with established knowledge (i.e. to refute it, extend it etc.), proof or defence of a position, principled and systematic analysis or investigation, validity and/or reliability claims, peer review and specialised forms of communications which can transcend temporal and spatial boundaries (slonimsky & shalem, 2006: 39). the first strand, which slonimsky and shalem (2006) call distantiation, involves separating students from a common sense understanding of a concept or actual object that has some 90 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) distinct properties of “otherness” that makes it worthy of study (bernstein, 2000)1. this is important for prospective teachers in learning the subjects they will teach and questioning their taken-for-granted assumptions about schooling and teaching more generally. with respect to inclusive education, particularly pre-service teachers have attended schools during a time where learners (especially those with disabilities) have been excluded from the ordinary public schooling system. pre-service teachers would need to distantiate themselves from their lived experiences of schooling in order to understand inclusion as a principle that informs pedagogical practices. as they become familiar with the existing state of inclusive knowledge, pre-service teachers should be better able to see the unintended consequences of exclusionary practices that they had previously taken for granted (slee, 2011). theoretical gazes thus enable ways of understanding that are more sophisticated. the second strand of knowledge-based practices, appropriation involves integrating the existing knowledge into one’s existing ways of seeing, thinking, doing and being. this involves “ordering and integrating conceptual resources derived from a broader body of work into one’s own areas of concern, of understanding them in relation to what one already knows and making them one’s own” (slonimsky & shalem, 2006). in appropriating new knowledge about inclusive education, pre-service teachers might think about specific existing contextual problems (such as marginalising practices at schools) in ways that enable new insights, perspectives or solutions. the third strand, research, involves undertaking an intentional and systematic study into an object of study. in order to participate in research, the object of inquiry needs to be clearly demarcated and appropriate concepts for collecting and analysing data need to be selected. research then requires the development of instruments for collecting data and formulating principled propositions based on the analysis of the data. by justifying the methods of inquiry in terms of the purpose of the research, the findings increase their validity. engaging in research reveals to students the on-going ways in which existing knowledge is contested and new knowledge is created and validated. understanding how knowledge is created and verified is, according to winch (2013), essential if one is to claim any degree of subject expertise. the fourth strand, articulation, involves communicating research findings so that new knowledge can be disseminated and opened up to scrutiny by others in the field. it is the process of scrutiny that verifies the extent to which knowledge is considered reliable by others in the field and contributes to the state of the best-known knowledge thus far. 4.2 engaging pre-service teachers in practice-based activities of the classroom since 1990, numerous attempts have been made to develop criteria for what characterises an ‘authentic assessment’ (ashford-rowe, herrington & brown, 2014; frey et al., 2012; gulikers, bastiaens & kirschner, 2004). there is broad consensus that ‘authentic assessment’ tasks should provide opportunities for students to rehearse the intellectually challenging tasks that they will need to perform as professionals. students are expected to engage in activities that help them construct personal meaning, reflect on their action (or the action of practitioners), justify and defend the decisions they make and in so doing address real-world problems that arise in practice-based contexts (ashford-rowe et al., 2014). it would therefore be expected that an ‘authentic’ assessment task for pre-service teachers be recognised by practising teachers as typical of the work they do in enabling the learning of diverse 1 following shalem and rusznyak (2013), we refer to the concept, model or theory interest as a conce ptual object of study. walton & rusznyak approaches to assessing pre-service teachers’ learning in authentic ... 91 learners. in authentic assessments, artefacts from practice or case studies describing critical incidents can be used to provide pre-service teachers with a simulated context (with reduced complexity) for developing and integrating the knowledge, skills and attitudes that they would normally encounter in practice (darling-hammond & snyder, 2000; grossman et al., 2009). the performance of the task under similar conditions to which practitioners work increases the fidelity of the assessment and so students should ideally be provided with similar kinds of resources, collaboration demands and time constraints to what would normally be available to practitioners undertaking that task (gulikers et al., 2004). 5. methodology this study is based on an analysis of assignment tasks given to groups of pre-service teachers in an inclusive education module, at different points in time over the past five years. having obtained ethical clearance, institutional consent and the explicit consent of the lecturers involved in setting these assessment tasks, we analysed how the three assessment tasks potentially develop the academic and classroom-based practices of pre-service teachers. each of the three tasks we analyse (reproduced in the appendix) represents a different approach to an inclusive education module in terms of the cochran-smith and lytle (1999) typology. for each assessment task, we identify the existence of conceptual object/s of study and practice-based context/s. we consider how clearly demarcated each one is (if present) and how they are positioned in relation to one another. we then analyse the extent to which the three assessment tasks position pre-service teachers as students of inclusive education (in the tradition of knowledge-for-practice), as prospective teachers (in the tradition of knowledgein-practice) or as novice researchers (in the tradition of knowledge-of-practice). our approach is conceptual and reflective as we then analyse how the three assessment tasks required pre-service teachers to engage to different extents with the strands of knowledge practices in the academy (distantiation, appropriation, research and dissemination) and the teaching practices of inclusive classrooms (based on criteria for authentic assessment). 6. findings and discussion we begin the presentation of our findings with a brief discussion of each task (actual tasks are included in the appendix). we identify the conceptual object/s of study and practicebased contexts (where these exist). we give a brief account of why we regard them as representative exemplars of assessment tasks that emerge from knowledge-for, -in and -of-practice approaches to inclusive education in ite. task a is comprised of two stand-alone parts. the demands of the task require that preservice teachers articulate their understanding of a conceptual object of study: disability in education in the first part and cooperative learning in the second. neither question introduces a practice-based context at all. in the tradition of knowledge-for-practice, a clear understanding of concepts then enable pre-service teachers to see distinctions that they would not have been aware of from their common-sense understanding of these concepts. in the first question, pre-service teachers’ attention is drawn to the contestations about the way that disability in education is constructed from competing frameworks. in the second, pre-service teachers become familiar with a notion that pedagogies that are more inclusive of learner difference (like cooperative learning) have their origins in disciplinary knowledge and not merely in an accumulation of the personal craft knowledge of practitioners. in both questions in task a, 92 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) aspects of inclusive education are portrayed as belonging to a theoretical body of knowledge that needs to be understood outside a classroom setting. theoretical ideas are portrayed as having a deductive relationship with practice and pre-service teachers need to have clarity on the theoretical foundations of inclusive education in its own right before they become effective practitioners. task b is also structured in two parts. neither has a visible conceptual object of study, although the examples provided are implicitly based on the ideas of differentiated instruction and learner support. a conceptually informed response would require that pre-service teachers are able to select and apply these concepts in their response. the practice-based context is highly visible. in the first part, pre-service teachers are required to revise their own previous practice-based work in light of theoretical learning. in the second part, a visible practice-based context is provided. in the tradition of knowledge-in-practice, task b simulates practice-based problems that prospective teachers are likely to encounter. the simulated context is somewhat simplified but the question requires that assumes the role of a practitioner who firstly justifies the necessary revisions to their lesson plans and in the second instance, devises appropriate support for staff in implementing inclusive education. the third task, task c, inducts pre-service teachers into a community of practice-based inquirers who interrogate the taken-for-granted assumptions that underpin prevailing practices. an assignment set within this conception required pre-service teachers to interrogate “their own assumptions, their own teaching and curriculum development, and the policies and practices of their own schools and communities” (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999: 279). the task has explicitly demarcated conceptual objects of study to be included in the literature review (e.g. formal and epistemological access and exclusionary, marginalising and inclusive practices) and a practice-based contextual reality. the questionnaire for data collection provided preservice teachers with a list of strongly demarcated contextually embedded practices regarding the provision of learner support and recognition of achievement. in the tradition of knowledgeof-practice, pre-service teachers undertake the role as novice researchers. they are required to undertake a review of specified literature, use a provided questionnaire to investigate a teacher’s perceptions of the various learner support practices used in that school context and then use their literature review as a framework to draw conclusions about the inclusionary and exclusionary nature of the prevalent practices. 6.1 engaging pre-service teachers with the knowledge practices of the academy in relation to inclusive education in order to distantiate pre-service teachers from their everyday understanding of inclusive education, it is necessary for them to engage with texts and become acquainted with theories and concepts relevant to the field. tasks a and c set up possibilities for distantiation as they require pre-service teachers to engage with existing literature and articulate their understanding of important concepts in the field of inclusive education, as objects of study in their own right. task b, however, does not. although pre-service teachers may have turned to the literature in order to inform their judgements in practice, this was not an explicit requirement. it was possible for pre-service teachers to complete the assessment task based on their understandings gleaned from lectures or their tacit sense of what feels intuitive based on a common sense understanding. walton & rusznyak approaches to assessing pre-service teachers’ learning in authentic ... 93 in the first question in task a, pre-service teachers are asked to articulate how the concept of disability in education is understood from three competing theoretical perspectives. in doing so, pre-service teachers must bring gazes beyond their common-sense understanding to bear on understanding disability in education. their discussion of the relative merits of each conception facilitates their development of a specialist perspective. in task c, through undertaking a literature review of exclusion, marginalisation and inclusive pedagogies, preservice teachers are required to move beyond their common sense understanding of concepts and engage with the text-based ideas of others. models such as lewin’s (2009) zones of educational exclusion enable them to see previously unnoticed distinctions. similar to task a, task c requires pre-service teachers to articulate a precise understanding of concepts. both task a and task c assists pre-service teachers to navigate the theoretical field in task a by defining the competing paradigms that conceptualise disability in education and in task c through a literature review, which requires pre-service teachers to synthesise scholarly positions in the field. task b, on the other hand does not enable pre-service teachers to distantiate from their common sense understanding. so while task b has a visible contextual object of study, it limits the extent to which pre-service teachers come to understand inclusive education as a theoretically informed practice, as the conceptual lens is largely invisible (shalem & rusznyak, 2013). in order to appropriate specialised conceptual knowledge, assessment tasks would need to require that pre-service teachers use a new concept to address an existing concern. in task a, there is some potential for appropriation, as pre-service teachers are not merely asked to describe disability in education from three perspectives but in each case, consider the merits associated with that view. however, the appropriation is minimal, as the questions do not require pre-service teachers to consider these concepts in the light of given or their own contextual concerns. there was some potential for appropriation in the knowledge-in-practice approach of task b, as pre-service teachers were asked to address real-life problems that could arise in the everyday classroom practices of teachers. however, without a strongly demarcated conceptual lens, this potential is not realised and the depth and rigour, which may have been part of the inclusive education module is not carried through in the assessment task. in task c, however, the research project opens up possibilities for appropriation. in the literature review, pre-service teachers will have had to articulate a distantiated view of concepts including exclusion, marginalisation and inclusive pedagogies. the literature review provides a basis against which teachers’ views on existing school practices can be gauged. pre-service teachers are therefore required to bring a non-intuitive conceptual perspective to evaluate the extent to which existing practices offer possibilities for inclusion. tasks a and b did not require pre-service teachers to undertake a systematic research project, although they may have been introduced to reading/s of empirical research in preparation for task a. by way of contrast, task c positions pre-service teachers as novice researchers. although as novices, they were not required to conceptualise the whole study, they were required to complete parts of it. the requirement for them to submit their parts and sections that were provided to them (introduction, the methodology and the ethical requirements) alerted them to relationships between the whole and the various parts. using a questionnaire as a data collection instrument encouraged pre-service teachers to engage in practice-based conversations with their supervising teacher/s. the nature of this assessment task conveys to pre-service teachers that inclusive education draws on the conceptual tools (provided by philosophy and sociology of education) by which existing education practices 94 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) can be interrogated, with the view of constructing a more socially just educational system. the questionnaire explicitly asks for the perceived potential benefits and drawbacks of various practices, thereby opening up the possibility that practices that are generally assumed as being inclusive may in fact not be inclusive at all. prevalent practices that claim to support diverse learners are therefore positioned as valid objects of study and the questionnaire prompted pre-service teachers and supervising teachers to articulate (and potentially reconsider) some of their taken-for-granted assumptions about the benefits and drawbacks of common practices such as streaming, learner retention, extra lessons and academic awards. pre-service teachers’ understanding of key concepts is assessed through their explanations in the literature review. furthermore, the directive to analyse existing school-based practices through conceptual lenses provided by the literature alerts pre-service teachers to ways in which concepts allow critical engagement with existing schooling practices. all three tasks required pre-service teachers to articulate their understandings of the knowledge that was assessed: theories, models or concepts in the first, the reasons underpinning a professional judgement in the second and conceptual understandings, research findings and discussions in the third. while pre-service teachers were required to write up their findings for task c as a mini-research report, they were not required to present their findings or defend their conclusions. as a coursework project, the results were not disseminated beyond the assessor. in the case of this assessment task, however, the lecturer obtained institutional ethical clearance and invited all pre-service teachers and their supervising teachers to participate in a wider research project. where informed consent was obtained, the data will be collated, analysed and disseminated. pre-service teachers therefore were introduced to the notion of collating and disseminating findings beyond small individual projects. 6.2 providing authentic assessment for pre-service teachers in the practicebased work within inclusive education despite the opportunities task a gives pre-service teachers to distantiate themselves from their common sense notions of disability, the questions in task a fall short of providing authentic assessment with respect to direct practice-based applicability, fidelity based authenticity and personal meaning. it may even be that practising teachers who are concerned solely with the action not the cognitive processes and reasoning underlying conceptually informed action may even dismiss task a as being “too theoretical” and “not relevant to the realities of classroom life”. while it is true that task a does not offer opportunities for students to rehearse authentic tasks that practitioners do, the distantiation might very well establish a conceptual foundation that enables teachers to make conceptually informed judgements in practice possible over time. in task b, inclusive education is represented as a schoolor classroom-based practice and pre-service teachers act as prospective practitioners who are required to articulate and justify the reasons for their actions. the classroom (not the academy) is portrayed as the site where inclusive education is enacted, both materially (in the case of lesson plans and worksheets/ resources in the first part) and relationally (in the case of the second part). inclusive education is considered valuable to pre-service teachers because it provides pre-service teachers with the ‘practical skills’ needed for working with diverse learners and learning needs (carroll, forlin & jobling, 2003; forlin, 2006). this accretion of the wisdom of experience is made available to pre-service teachers and forms the grounds on which they would imagine a solution to the practical problems presented in these assessment tasks. the assessment walton & rusznyak approaches to assessing pre-service teachers’ learning in authentic ... 95 tasks therefore offer the potential for authenticity in relation to applicability to real-life contexts. although task b situates inclusive education as supplying the techniques that are directly relevant to inclusive practices, it may unintentionally encourage student teachers to provide common sense responses without the academic depth that a systematised body of theoretical knowledge is able to provide. task c has some features of an authentic assessment but does not meet all the criteria. the assessment is intellectually challenging and familiarises pre-service teachers with actual practices of learner support and recognition in particular school contexts. however, despite its contextual embeddedness, surveying and analysing data from a completed questionnaire is not likely to be regarded by teachers as representative of the day-to-day work they do. it therefore lacks fidelity and does not simulate a rehearsal for practice-based problem solving. 6.3 how the assessment tasks position inclusive education having considered the affordances of each of the three tasks for developing pre-service teachers’ knowledge and classroom-based practices, we now turn to the extent to which assessment in knowledge-for, -in and -of practices supports learning about inclusive education. situating inclusive education as knowledge-for-practice indicates to pre-service teachers that inclusive education can be examined as a disembodied idea. while task a provides an opportunity for distantiation, it misses an opportunity to invite a personal engagement with the responsibility of teachers for promoting inclusivity in their classrooms. inclusive education, says allan (2005: 293), is not something to be done to a discrete population of learners but “something we must do to ourselves”. in other words, task a does not point pre-service teachers to the attitudes and dispositions that have been shown to be necessary for the promotion of more inclusive classrooms (savolainen et al., 2012; avramidis & norwich, 2002; parasuram, 2006). not only does this task eliminate the need for any personal commitment, it potentially precludes the development of the “critical sensibilities” that waitoller and kozleski (2010: 66) describe. the conceptual focus may offer pre-service teachers the means to avert their gaze from the recognition that “exclusion and inclusion are about real people who ought not to be abstracted” (slee, 2011: 2). while we are convinced that assessing students’ understanding of the theoretical foundations of inclusive education is crucial in promoting academic depth and rigour in inclusive education modules. without an explicit application of concepts to practice, it could be too easy for students to dismiss inclusive education as a theoretical idea that has little practical relevance to them as prospective teachers, to existing practices in schools and to their developing classroom practices. there are those who have argued that inclusive education should focus on practice, rather than rhetoric or policy (booth & ainscow, 1998). however, we suggest that positioning inclusive education as knowledge-in-practice for pre-service teachers can be problematic. while task b offers authenticity regarding a complex task that simulates practice, alone, it is not simultaneously able to provide opportunities for pre-service teachers to develop knowledgebased academic practices. without a focus on knowledge-based academic practices, this assessment task may suggest to pre-service teachers that inclusive education is contextually contingent, subject to each teacher’s individual interpretation and without any basis in theory or research. despite the logistical challenges in setting up the project, the knowledge-of-practice approach in task c conveys to pre-service teachers that inclusive education has theoretical and 96 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) conceptual foundations, which enable understanding of practice in non-intuitive ways. the task used all four of the strands of academic practices defined by slonimsky and shalem (2006) and the conceptual and contextual objects (shalem & rusznyak, 2013) in the assessment task were highly visible. notwithstanding the promise of assessing inclusive education learning as knowledge-of-practice, we note that if pre-service teachers demonstrate a weak conceptual understanding and superficial engagement with the provided texts, their ability to reflect critically on their findings would be compromised. despite this limitation, this approach to assessing students’ knowledge-of-practice in inclusive education offers the possibilities of retaining disciplinary integrity, inducting students into academic practices of the university, applicability to context-based realities and offers a potentially meaningful task to students. as such, it offers conditions of possibility for academic depth and contextual authenticity. 7. conclusion in designing, presenting and assessing courses in inclusive education, teacher educators shape pre-service teachers’ understanding of what inclusivity in education may mean. however, beyond the immediate concerns of the field of inclusive education, teacher educators in ite programmes need to ensure that the courses they design contribute to building the academic practices that university students require. in this paper, we have argued that the knowledge-for, -in and -of-practice approaches to ite have implications for the way in which university-based coursework is assessed. using illustrative examples taken from an inclusive education module, we have shown how these approaches potentially open and close down opportunities for authentic and academically rigorous assessment of pre-service teacher learning. assessing inclusive education coursework from a knowledge-for-practice tradition might ensure that pre-service teachers have a nuanced understanding of important concepts but they may not necessarily grapple with how these concepts might be useful to them as prospective practitioners. conversely, we have shown how an assessment task emerging from a knowledge-in-practice tradition can potentially undermine useful teacher learning by obscuring a conceptual object of study. inclusive education has a mandated place in ite programmes and is expected to facilitate the preparation of teachers for inclusive teaching and pedagogical responsiveness to learner diversity. in order to use courses such as inclusive education in a way that simultaneously introduces prospective teachers to the knowledge-based practices of the academy and the practice-based activities of the classroom, we conclude that there are two recommended approaches to assessing learning. the first is a combination of knowledge-forand -in practice approaches, in which pre-service teachers examine a conceptual object of study in its own right before considering how it might provide non-intuitive insights to practitioners within a practice-based context. the combination of the two approaches capitalises on the strengths of each approach but mitigates against the limitations. the second approach we recommend is assessment tasks that emerge from the knowledge-of-practice approach to ite. while not without its limitations, this approach potentially provides opportunities for pre-service teachers to develop knowledge practices of the academy 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shalem, y. 2014. what binds professional judgement? the case of teaching. in m. young & j. muller (eds.). knowledge, expertise and the professions. london: routledge. pp. 93-105. shalem, y. & rusznyak, l. 2013. ‘theory’ for teacher practice: a typology of application tasks in teacher education. south african journal of higher education, 27, 1118-1134. shalem, y. & slonimsky, l. 2013. practical knowledge of teaching practicewhat counts? journal of education, 58, 67-86. slee, r. 2010. a cheese-slicer by any other name? shredding the sociology of inclusion. in m. apple, s. ball & l. gandin (eds.). the routledge international handbook of the sociology of education. abingdon: routledge. pp. 99-108. slee, r. 2011. the irregular school. london: routledge. slonimsky, l. & shalem, y. 2006. pedagogic responsiveness for academic depth. journal of education, 40, 35-58. stofile, s. & green, l. 2007. inclusive education in south africa. in p. engelbrecht & l. green (eds.). responding to the 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in the professional curriculum. in m. young & j. muller (eds.). knowledge, expertise and the professions. london and new york: routledge. pp.47–60. young, m. & muller, j. 2014. from the sociology of professions to the sociology of professional knowledge. in j. muller & m. young (eds.). knowledge, expertise and the professions. london: routledge. pp.3-17. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08856257.2011.613603 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08856257.2011.613603 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2013.07.011 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2013.07.011 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12006 100 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) appendix: three assignment tasks task a 1. explain the relative merits of an individual/medical model, a social model and a (bio) ecosystemic model in understanding disability in education. 2. account for the theoretical foundations of cooperative learning. task b 1. select a lesson that you taught during your previous practicum. redesign one aspect of the lesson (for example, the learner activity, or the content instruction) in a way that it meets the learning needs of three learning ability groups. provide a rationale for the way you have divided learners into these three learning ability groups and submit all revised worksheets and resource materials. 2. refiloe’s teachers approach you as a member of the school based support team. they are seeking assistance in dealing with refiloe who has learning and other difficulties. the teachers say that that they are not in a position to teach disabled learners like refiloe, and they advocate that she be placed at a special school where she can benefit better. describe how you could assist the teachers while ensuring the provision of support for refiloe. make your suggestions and examples practical and relevant, and written in a supportive tone. task c2 students participated as co-researchers in a mini-research project. the introduction, research questions, methodology and a data collection instrument were provided to student teachers, as were the documentation for ethical research (including letters of invitation to participate in a research project, and declarations of informed consent for supervising teachers to sign). the research project required students to analyse a practicum supervising teachers’ views about the potential benefits and drawbacks of various prevalent practices in schools with respect to supporting (i) learners who experience academic and learning difficulties, (ii) learners who are academically successful and (iii) learners who are not yet proficient in the language of learning and teaching. pre-service teachers were required to submit for three components of the research project for assessment, namely a literature review, a discussion of their findings and conclusion. for the literature review, pre-service teachers were asked to use a selection of provided readings to discuss exclusion from, and marginalisation within schools and the use of inclusive pedagogical practices in enabling epistemological access to all learners. they were asked specifically to draw on concepts they had been introduced to during lectures, such as the distinction between formal and epistemological access (morrow, 2007); zones of educational exclusion (lewin, 2009), and pedagogical practices that are known to be more inclusive of learner diversity, including collaboration with other teachers or support professionals and differentiated instruction (black-hawkins & florian, 2012). to collect data, pre-service teachers were required to invite their supervising teacher to participate in the research project, and collect data using a provided questionnaire. in their discussion of their findings, pre-service teachers were asked to interrogate the various practices that their teacher had encountered and account for whether these strategies were as inclusionary or 2 considering the length of the instructions to pre-service teachers, we summarise the expectations of them rather than provide the assessment instructions verbatim. walton & rusznyak approaches to assessing pre-service teachers’ learning in authentic ... 101 exclusionary both in the perception of the teachers, and in relation to their literature review. it was on this basis of their discussion that pre-service teachers were expected to answer the following research questions in their conclusion: • to what extent have teachers encountered selected school practices that respond to learner diversity? • what do teachers regard as the benefits and drawbacks of the practices that they have encountered? • how are the practices encountered by teachers seen as either inclusionary or exclusionary? (endnotes) i we use the term ‘pre-service teacher’ to refer to university students in initial teacher education programmes in higher education institutions. the term ‘student’ refers to university students in general, and ‘learner’ refers to children and young people in schooling. _goback 58 enabling roles to reclaim teacher agency: insights from the advanced certificate in teaching (foundation phase) hb ebrahim university of the free state dc verbeek university of kwazulu-natal jn mashiya university of kwazulu-natal in developing the advanced certificate in teaching (act) as a professional qualification for continuing teacher education for early schooling at the university of kwazulu-natal we asked the following: “what are the enabling roles foundation phase teachers need to play in order to reclaim their space as agents who significantly influence their professional practice and how can they be assisted to become fully engaged in these roles?” we believe that this focus is timely and critical given the current effect of the discourse of standards and accountability on teacher agency. in this article we present a framework of enabling roles which create opportunities for teacher-students to experience critical reflection, transformatory learning and the development towards stronger agency. a significant implication of the framework is that teachers gain the experience of being part of a community in dialogue instead of a blunt tool for externally imposed curriculum demands. space is created for both personal direction and the development of practice from within the foundation phase. we are mindful of the fact that, once the course has been completed and the qualification obtained, the lack of personal commitment and institutional pressure to teach in government-sanctioned ways may create slippage and constrain liberating roles. nonetheless, we feel that, in introducing the roles in the act, developmental opportunities for teacher autonomy and transformative professionalism will be created. keywords: teachers, foundation phase, continuing teacher education, agency, performativity, transformation. introduction currently, ‘quality education for all’ is the buzz phrase in schooling in south africa. this emerged from the crisis that was experienced in primary school education and especially in the foundation phase (fleisch, 2008). consecutive results from the systemic evaluation scores, which examined how grade 3 learners performed at the end of the implementation of the national curriculum statement (ncs) in the foundation phase, have been disappointing. equally concerning are the results from international scores in literacy and numeracy. many south african learners in the foundation phase lack the age-appropriate basic skills and knowledge in literacy and numeracy (bloch, 2010). this could be partly attributed to the demands made on foundation phase teachers in the context of access to quality training, a lack of resources, teacher stress and change paralysis. the foundations for learning project, launched in march 2008, responded to the crisis in performance in the foundation phase. as a strategy for reform, this project proposed that teachers be provided with scripted lessons and assessment frameworks to guide teaching and learning. although helpful, this response was deemed inadequate to raise the quality of education in early schooling. in 2009 the ministerial committee released a review on the implementation of the ncs (dada, diphololo, hoadley, khembo, muller & volmink, 2009). this report highlighted the difficulties and overload that teachers still experienced in implementing the ncs. in july 2010 the minister of education released a statement 59ebrahim, verbeek & mashiya — enabling roles to reclaim teacher agency on curriculum implementation (motshekga, 2010), indicating that the design features of outcomes and assessment standards would be repackaged in subject-specific ways to provide greater details on topics and assessment to be covered each term. the curriculum assessment policy statement (caps), which details what teachers must teach and assess for each grade and for each subject, will augment the ncs in the foundation phase in 2012. it is envisaged that the aims, content and assessment requirements will be made more accessible to teachers. the curriculum reform discussed thus far is located in a performance discourse. this discourse makes provision for salient standards, accountability and marketisation. it is shaped and driven by government and its facilitative agents. in this context both the status and agency of teachers are limited, as teachers would have to perform according to very specific guidelines which, in the view of some critics, will constrain them. jones and moore (1993) argue that the tightness, and we would add “high prescription”, from external sources has profound consequences for teachers. together with institutional pressure it has the capacity to shape their practices and their identities in one-dimensional ways. this could mean more dispassionate and technical teachers. teachers could also unproblematically use dominant discourses, which narrow possibilities for understanding children and practice with and for them (ebrahim, 2010). ideally, teachers need to be enabled to act as agents who pay attention to their sense of self, their identity, their knowledge and contextual influences that have an impact on their teaching. the present context informed conversations during the development of an act for the foundation phase. taking into account the need for critical reflection, transformatory learning and stronger agency, we framed a question in two parts, namely, “what are the enabling roles foundation phase teachers need to play in order to reclaim their space as agents who significantly influence their professional practice and how can they be assisted to become fully engaged in these roles?” in this article we present insights which emerged from conversations about module design. the act in the foundation phase the act is proposed as a new, professionally focused qualification designed to strengthen and enhance existing specialisation skills in teachers who are already professionally qualified. it is intended to provide a deep and systematic understanding of current thinking, practice, theory and methodology in the foundation phase. at the university of kwazulu-natal, the act is being conceptualised as a mixed-mode offering, using written interactive materials for self-study combined with a limited number of face-to-face tutorials that are offered at various satellite learning centres in the province. this mode of delivery makes possible the continuing education of practising teachers, particularly those who do not live close to the metropolitan areas. the act curriculum aims to increase teachers’ understanding of teaching and learning and their ability to teach creatively and effectively in this phase. the module which is discussed in this article is the final module out of a series of eight semester-long modules. its focus is the development of teachers’ professional practice through critical reflection on teaching. conceptual framework in examining the concept of teacher identity we found explanations of identity to be fixed and unitary; therefore, unhelpful for our purpose. studies grounded in the biographical perspectives on teachers’ careers provided helpful insights. these perspectives recognise the self as a complex, mutidimensional and dynamic entity of representations and meanings which develop over time and in tandem with interactions between people and the environment (kelchtermans & vandenberghe, 1994; samuel, 1998). we agree with maclure (1993:312) who suggests that “identity should not be seen as a stable entity – something people have – but as something people use, to justify, explain and make sense of themselves in relation to other people and to the context in which they operate.” teachers of young children construct their identities in ways that are responsive to the developmental stage of children and the phase in which they teach. the classic work of king (1978) in british infant classrooms showed how teachers held specific ideologies about their work. in keeping with their gendered roles teachers saw themselves as substitute mothers, therefore, replicating the mother-child relationship. 60 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 king further noted that the identities of infant teachers were characterised by qualities of professional pleasantness and affection. reconceptualist early childhood scholars, however, argue that we should not uncritically accept the mother substitute role (benhabib, 1992). miller (1992) argues that a critical examination of educational roles of teachers through a critical lens foregrounds how teacher identities are influenced by the social, historical and political forces which shape their personal assumptions about teaching. this view is supported by samuel (2008) in his interrogation of the complexity of forces influencing teacher identities in the south african context. moyles, adams and musgrove (2002:4) believe that pedagogy in the early years “connects a relatively self contained act of teaching and being an early years educator with the personal, cultural and community values, curriculum structures and external influences”. the critical perspective is important to consider in identity work of foundation phase teachers. teacher identity affects teacher agency. we use the concept of agency from a socio-cultural perspective, enabling the examination of individual action in a way where priority is given to the social contexts and cultural tools that shape the development of human beliefs, and ways of acting (wertsch, 1991). how teachers think and act is always shaped by cultural, historical and social structures that are reflected in mediational tools such as the curriculum guidelines and standards set by government. the tools are not static; they continue to evolve as people use them (vygotsky, 1962) in their professional practice (tharp & gillmore, 1988). teacher agency influences and is influenced by the features of curriculum reform. in this context, teachers will adopt, adapt or ignore the official curriculum and pedogogic mandates. samuel (2008) argues that the decisions teachers make and the actions they take are simultaneously the consequence of past action and present context. this serves as a condition to further action. teachers’ actions are related to how they perceive their duties. therefore, for teachers to function as agents of change they need to be subjected to transformative learning. the latter is associated with mezirow’s views (1977, 1981) and is consistent with the idea of effecting change. mezirow (1977:157) argues that people’s perspectives on reality are transformed as a result of reflection upon disjunctive or “disorienting” experiences; when a “meaning perspective can no longer comfortably deal with anomalies in the next situation, a transformation can occur”. such transformation amounts to a paradigm shift. according to transformative learning theory, several conditions and processes result in a paradigm shift or perspective transformation (mezirow, 1977, 1981, 1991). firstly, a disorienting dilemma or activating event is needed to expose the limitations of a current approach. although mezirow defines such dilemmas as life-changing events, we propose that the experience of critical reflection can have the same effect. mezirow’s (1990:13) conception of critical reflection is “reassessing the way we have posed problems and reassessing our own orientation to perceiving, knowing, believing, feeling and acting”. our thinking is also shaped by experiential learning theory, which is central to current thinking about educating adults. experience is “the subjective awareness of a present situation” (jarvis, 1995:66), but is influenced by biography, past learning and socio-economic contexts. this module thus begins with an exploration of the wide range of experiences, beliefs, emotions and memories that the teacher-student brings to the learning situation. teacher identity is a central theme and a tool for analysis throughout the module. structure of the learning cycles the curriculum is organised in a spiral fashion on the basis of the experiential learning cycle originally proposed by kolb and fry (1975). this cycle essentially involves learning through critical thinking about a primary or possibly a secondary experience. thus, each of the four tutorials is structured around an experience of teaching, which is carefully analysed, after which generalisations are made and new action is planned (see diagram). the logic of the curriculum is to move through learning cycles which sees the teacher-student playing three roles that reflect different degrees of teacher agency: the roles of the deliverer, the adaptor and the creator. the teacher-student plays these roles within the overarching role of the searcher for the self and is able to move from one role to another through disruption and reflection. the transformative learning process could result in increased teacher agency as the teacher-student critically reflects on the 61ebrahim, verbeek & mashiya — enabling roles to reclaim teacher agency inappropriateness of one-size-fits-all lessons, together with other teachers, and plans and implements new and increasingly creative strategies. it is our intention to encourage staged movement through the deliverer, adaptor and creator roles in the belief that, where curriculum change is concerned, quantum leaps in teachers’ perspectives are often unsustainable. discussion of roles self in context in south africa teachers come from a variety of contexts that have an impact on their experiences of being a teacher. in order to help teacher-students locate themselves as professionals, it is important for them to explore the self in context. we propose that the first learning cycle begins with opportunities for teacherstudents to think about and share different dimensions of their biographies. in order to explore social biographies teacher-students will be invited to reflect on the impact of the family, geographical location, race, ethinicity and gender on their access to educational and social opportunities. in their personal biographies they will create narratives of their own schooling experience and they will trace the critical events that have shaped their socialisation as foundation phase teachers. we envisage the above to be a catalyst for discussions on belief systems about teaching and learning and the manner in which practice in the foundation phase is constructed. this exercise has the potential to illuminate teachers’ conceptions of practice, how they shape their actions and the kind of teacher identity they construct. for example, brownlee (2001, 2003) notes that teachers with the belief that knowledge is actively and personally constructed, conceive teaching as facilitating rather than the transmission of knowledge. olsen and bruner (cited in daniels & shumow, 2003) examined how teachers understood children’s learning and how this knowledge impacted their teaching practices. they found that teachers who believed that the focus of teaching should be on children’s behaviour instead of on their thinking regarded learning as a reproduction of knowledge and teaching as transmission. on the other hand, teachers who saw children as competent thinkers, regarded children’s learning as a meaning-making process and teaching as a co-construction of meaning. although the studies cited related to novice teachers, these findings do have a bearing on practicising teachers in the foundation phase, especially those who are nonspecialists and those who are unand underqualified. in the first learning cycle teacher-students will be encouraged to write narratives of their experience and to trace critical events through timelines. for these purposes, the reflective journal will be used, as this tool has been noted as valuable to help teacher-students keep in touch with the self-development process, foster creative interaction between peers, and provide a record of significant learning experiences (bailey, 1990). we envisage that the exploration of the self in context would provide teacher-students with sufficient data to make agentic moves to define themselves, their beliefs and practices to themselves and for sharing with others. the inductive approach would serve as a tool for generalisations and critical reflection on teacher identity, beliefs and practice. deliverer when teachers play the role of deliverers of the curriculum they do not participate in its development. according to kavanoz (2006), the teacher as deliverer is viewed as the executor and implementer of innovations that were devised by others. teachers are expected to teach scripted lessons and implement standardised assessment in accordance with the intentions and prescriptions of the developers as much as possible. as a result, what counts as teacher knowledge is linked to the power of external constituencies. studies have shown that a prescriptive approach is doomed to fail if teachers’ cognition including their beliefs, intentions and attitudes are not taken into account. nonetheless, this role is important in the present curriculum reform context. weaver and resnick (1979) contend that, for teachers to be good 62 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 deliverers of the curriculum, they must become familiar with basic concepts in the subjects they offer and be able to perform in a structured and relatively non-dynamic environment. in the newly designed act, teacher-students will not only be afforded the opportunity to experience their role as deliverers of a prescribed curriculum, but they will also subject it to critical analysis. this is crucial for all teacher-students even though they may not be positioned as deliverers of curriculum in their current practice. the experience of playing this role will assist them in creating critical awareness of the strengths, the gaps and the innovations that are possible from the vantage point of being a deliverer of the curriculum. at the outset teacher-students will be required to study the official scripted lesson plans and select one that is sequentially relevant. they will then teach a scripted lesson to their learners and record their experiences. during tutorial sessions teacher-students will discuss and reflect on the value and limitations of delivering scripted lessons in their context. group discussions will be structured to provide opportunities to explain and reflect on methodologies, practice and teacher identities. plenary sessions will be directed towards developing generalisations on these aspects. this experience will assist in identifying aspects that need modification for the next learning cycle. adaptor the next step is to support the teacher-student to move into the role of a conscious adaptor as a result of critical reflection on the delivery of scripted lessons. research suggests that effective teachers are knowledgeable, flexible, responsive and adaptive (gambrell, malloy & mazzoni, 2007; hoffman & pearson, 2000; international reading association, 2003) and are able to think metacognitively about the adaptations they make (lin, schwartz & hatano, 2005). cole, horvath, chapman, deschenes, ebeling and sprague (2000) identify nine types of adapting and modifying of curriculum and instruction: input (the way instruction is delivered) • output (the way the learner is expected to respond) • size (the number of items expected to be completed) • time (the time allotted to learning, task completion or assessing) • difficulty (the skill level, problem type or rules for completing/approaching the work) • level of support (the amount of assistance) • degree of participation (the extent to which the learner is actively involved) • alternate/modified goals (the goals or outcome expectations while using the same material)• most teachers adapt their lesson plans in the process of delivery in some or all of these ways in response to their particular teaching contexts, although this is not always done in a well-considered manner (parsons, davis, scales, williams & kear, 2010). in this module, we hope to facilitate both conscious reflection on the reasons for “heat-of-the-moment” adaptations of lesson plans, as well as pre-delivery adaptation of scripted lesson plans to better suit the learning styles and needs of particular teacher-students and learners in the classroom. consciousness of the reasons for making such adaptations is crucial in enabling teachers in the foundation phase to anticipate adaptations which should be made to scripted lessons. informed by our model of experiential learning, teacher-students continue to use reflective journals as a tool for thinking about the adaptations they make to their planned lessons. we view the facilitated discussion of these changes in tutorial groups as the key to professional development. it is through these discussions that teacher-students are provided with opportunities to generalise the effect of delivering adapted lessons on teacher identity, practice and learning. 63ebrahim, verbeek & mashiya — enabling roles to reclaim teacher agency creator this role enables teacher-students to enter a creative space where they exercise their professional judgments. we view creativity as synonymous with innovation and invention. in this context there should be a strong element of curiosity and imaginative thinking. this requires teacher-students to go beyond their comfort zones, taking risks and working outside what is safe. in order to foster creativity teachers must experience pedagogic autonomy and professional agency; only then will they come to believe that the power and control to shape the curriculum lie with them. in order to let the creative juices flow teacher-students continue to work collaboratively. white and watson (2006) state that collaborative work to enhance creativity brings about high levels of trust and greater collegiality, allowing for increased risktaking and experimentation. having reflected on the effects of delivering adapted lessons, we believe that the teacher-student will be ready to reflect on the experience of creating and delivering new lesson plans. within these minicommunities of practice (possibly grade-wise) teacher-students will be required to interrogate their lesson plans and explain the rationale for their choices. this interrogation has the potential to allow them to closely relate practice to the needs of the context in which they work. they plan and deliver a lesson from scratch and reflect on this process in their journals. in the tutorial, guided group reflection focuses attention on process in relation to power and control, identity, agency, effect, difficulties and plans for further action. conclusion in this article we attempted to construct an account of the roles that foundation phase teachers can play in order to reclaim their space as agents who influence their professional practice and alter their identities. the framework presents opportunities for teacher-students to explore their own learning and teaching through critical reflection which, in our view, will serve as a valuable tool to create awareness of what they do, why they do it, the effect of what they do and the links with their identity. through generalisations we hope to invite an exposition of traditions and practices in the foundation phase. we believe that a significant implication of our framework is that practising teachers in the foundation phase will gain the experience of being part of a community in dialogue instead of merely being blunt tools for the ncs, caps and whatever may follow these. in the context of externally imposed demands and prescription, we view our framework as an important stimulus for both personal direction and development from within the foundation phase. through opportunities to work with and debate with peers, watching and learning from each other and asking questions about practice, meaning, voice and style could gain precedence. we are mindful, however, that once a teacher-student has completed the course and obtained the qualification, a lack of personal commitment, teaching large numbers, measuring and testing learners, meeting standards, lengthy reporting procedures and institutional pressure to teach in prescribed ways may limit liberating roles. nonetheless, we feel that the introduction of the roles as proposed in the act will create exciting possibilities for greater teacher agency and a fertile ground for transformative professionalism. references bailey km 1990.the use of diaries studies in teacher education. in jc 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for what? teacher identity and the force field model of teacher development. perspectives in education, 26(2):3-16. motshekga a 2010. statement by the minister of basic education, mrs angie motshekga, mp, on the progress of the review of the national curriculum statement, tuesday 06 july 2010. retrieved 30 july 2010 from http://www.info,gov.za/speech/dynamicaction. tharp r & gillmore r 1988. rousing minds to life. cambridge: cambridge university press. vygotsky ls 1962. thought and language. cambridge: mit press. weaver pa & resnick lb 1979. the theory and practice of early reading: an introduction. london: routledge. wertsch j 1991. voices of mind. a sociocultural approach to mediated action. cambridge, mass.: harvard university press. white j & watson c 2006. articulating pedagogy: a whole school action research project and the place of performance. australian association of research in education, engaging pedagogies. university of adelaide, 27-31 december. 98 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 primary school teacher deployment: a comparative study fa tim a h kelleh er (ed.), 2008 london: commonwealth secretariat isb n : 978 0 85092 833 9 (paperback) isb n : 978 1 84859 014 4 (downloadable e book) 82 pages r ev iew ed b y na zir c a r rim commissioned by the commonwealth secretariat, this book is a report on a comparative study of primary school teacher deployment policies and practices in four countries: nigeria, pakistan, papua n ew guinea and t anzania. it provides an overview of the different country contexts, a situational analysis of each country and the policies and practices regarding primary school deployment in the selected countries. kelleher points out that the criteria for selecting the countries used in this study were informed by the m illennium development goals (m d g s) and the education for all (efa) campaign of the united nations. she states: w ith teachers playing a central role in the achievement of both the education m d g s and efa, the impact of teacher numbers, their supply and pupil teacher ratios both on educational outcomes and quality is a crucial area of concern (2008: 3). k elleher also says: t wo of the countries nigeria and pakistan account for a significant number of children who are out of school in the commonwealth. o ne of the countries in particular t anzania has had its teaching population quite severely affected by the prevalence of h iv/aids. in contrast to the other cases, papua n ew g uinea was actually displaying regressive indicators in terms of enrolment at the time of the study (2008:71). in this sense this book is an important and timely contribution to the attempts to broaden and deepen the understanding of the experiences, challenges and requirements of the education m d g s and efa and to go beyond mere access to schooling, as has been the primary emphasis of efa. kelleher looks at the factors that constrain the achievement of efa and the education m d g s and those that compel a focus on issues beyond only ensuring that children have access to schooling. t he centrality of teachers to schools is a moot point, but the importance of focusing on them in terms of the m d g s and the efa cannot be stressed enough, because the responsibility for making the education goals of the m d g s and efa work falls squarely on the shoulders of teachers. t eacher availability, numbers, adequate training with requisite levels of competency, where and how teachers are de ployed or posted and who they are, are all significant contributing factors to ensuring the success of the education m d g s and efa. as such, this book is a welcome and valuable contribution to debates about efa and the factors that are at work in, and which at times constrain, the achievement of efa and the education m d g s. kelleher brings into focus a significant and central factor in the overall challenges facing the education m d g s and efa , viz. the deployment of teachers in primary schools. t he book is admirable, particularly in the way in which it renders rather complex statistical data in an accessible and comprehensible form, which makes the book ‘user friendly’, even for those who may not be involved with schooling or the efa. it is concisely written and very informative. a definite ‘must read’ for those immersed in the field of education and efa and m d g s. m ethodologically, the study used: four in country document perusals, using both primary and secondary sources and interviews with officials and stakeholders (k elleher, 2008:8). t he major findings of the comparative study on which this book reports are briefly described below. 99perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 1. t eacher deployment policies and practices privilege urban areas and provide inadequately for the schooling needs o f those in rural areas. t eachers do not want to go to the rural areas as there are very few incentives to attract them to teach in rural areas. t here are insufficient, if any, facilities, infrastructure and support for schools and people in rural areas. 2. t eacher deployment policies and practices favour men more than women. w omen are not ‘allowed’ to go to places that will take them away from their spouses, children or homes. t hey cannot be sent to rural areas if they are not accompanied by ‘their men’ and they are therefore generally not deployed to rural areas. t his seems to be the case both in terms of existing policies and in terms of actual practice. 3. processes of decentralization regarding teacher deployment are fraught with many problems including varying levels of competency to be able to deploy teachers effectively on decentra lized levels; serious problems with regard to nepotistic practices which k elleher identifies as ‘wantokism’ in the case of papua new guinea, which refers to ‘preference along family, clan or tribal lines’; lack of clear policies and/or lack of understanding of what is contained in existing policies; and complex differences across different locales, including levels of re sources available and cultural beliefs and practices in the different areas. 4. lack of a sufficiently qualified base of teachers across the system. 5. inadequate or lacking school infrastructure which impacts directly on teacher: pupil ratios and the necessity for teaching in multi grade classes, particularly in rural areas. t he recommendations kelleher proposes in the last chapter of the book are: 1. clear, well informed and inclusive policies. 2. a focused approach to the education and recruitment of female teachers. 3. addressing major country specific deployment barriers. 4. effective decentralization. 5. implementing transparent and objective deployment criteria/quota and reservation systems. 6. raising standard in pre service and in service teacher training. 7. t argeted training and recruitment. 8. t eacher incentives. 9. t eacher utilization. t his book raises two crucial issues. t he first is linked to specificity, and the second is the inextri cable link between schools and the societies in which they are located. in regard to specificity, k elleher points out the need for policies and practices (linked to points 1, 2, 3, and 7 above) to be more explicit and specific in relation to what they are meant to be tar geting. t he need to be more specific is one of the constraints that has been noted repeatedly in various and varying ways regarding the problems of an uncritical assumption that matters can be generalized and universalized in the same way in differing country contexts, different regions and in regard to different types of people. in this regard, k elleher emphatically points out the need for policies and by implication the m d g s and efa as well, to be more explicit and specific about the positionality, experiences and conditions facing women qua women. k elleher also notes, equally emphatically, the need to be more specific in dealing with the experiences and struggles of people in rural areas. an uncritical assumption that the same intervention can lead to the same results in different conditions and contexts is shown in this study to be limited. t his leads to the second point, the inextricable link between schools and the societies in which they are located. education, more precisely schooling, does not happen in a vacuum. schools are located in com munities, in particular regions with conditions and practices that are germane and specific to them. t he success of implementation of policies, whatever they may be, is influenced significantly by what is possible in specific geo political, cultural and economic situations. one cannot ignore the fact that for schools in rural areas to be able to perform as expected, depends on the overall development of conditions in such rural areas. one cannot ignore the patriarchal system, values and practices in the subo rdination of women if one needs to empower and develop women as active and participant 100 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 citizens. m ore topographically, one cannot expect developing countries in particular, to achieve the m d g s and e fa if the material conditions of underdevelopment and legacies of colonialism are not addressed. schools do not exist in a vacuum. t hey are inextricably linked to the societies in which they are situated. developments in schooling have to be accompanied by the development of societies. t o ignore the social location of schools would render efforts such as the m d g s and efa largely titular and symbolic. t his, in fact, defeats the very aims for which the m d g s and efa were set up in the first instance. t hus, whilst k elleher is able to show the commonalities across different country contexts and is able to provide a comparative analysis of these contexts, the importance of recognizing the very distinct ways in which these are experienced in the different countries is what stands out and needs to be engaged with specifically if e fa is to become a reality for all in their actual lives in specific contexts. t he need for being and becoming more specific should not be con fused with lapsing into relativism. t he efa and m d g s remain globally important and laudable ‘for all’, but what they mean and what is required for them to succeed needs to be ‘in touch’ with what pertains on the ‘ground’ in the lives of people. k elleher’s book is an important empirically based document about the need to recognize people’s actual experiences and what needs to be done in order to ensure quality education and a quality life for all as a reality. kelleher’s contribution to this endeavour is an important one and the significance of teacher deployment and its impact on the achievement of the m d g s and efa is clearly and strongly argued for in this book. n azir carrim w its school of education, university of the w itwatersrand nazir.carrim@ wits.ac.za 27 ensuring academic depth and rigour in teacher education through benchmarking, with special attention to context abstract benchmarking is one way of ensuring academic depth and rigour in teacher education. after making a case for setting benchmarks in teacher education based on the widely recognised intra-education system contextual factors, the importance of also taking into account the external (e.g. the national-social) context in which teacher education occurs is highlighted. a five-step plan is offered for ensuring academic depth and rigour in teacher education through benchmarking. the process is illustrated with examples from the south african situation. the article concludes with an outline of the contextual conditions with which teacher educators in south africa have to cope. keywords: benchmarking, education system, best practice, national education context, social education context, teacher education, south african education 1. introduction and purpose of the article teaching-learning communities are essential parts of education systems. an education system can be defined as a logistical structure for meeting the education needs of a particular target group, where the structure may consist of various elements such as education institutions, education levels, education programmes, curricula, knowledge, teachers, learners, teaching methods, language of learning and teaching and physical facilities (steyn, 2014a: 55-58). each education system is located in a political policy, social and economic national context that helps shape it and codetermines the success of its various elements. in view of this, education system planners should take into account the directives flowing from general education system theory, the educational needs of the target group, the external national-social conditions and effective practices in other education systems (steyn & wolhuter, 2010: 461-462). such information should be kept in mind when framing or developing a benchmark for assessing a particular education system and its constituent elements. a discourse concerning academic depth and rigour in teacher education implies benchmarks and measuring such hj steyn* hennie.steyn@nwu.ac.za faculty of education sciences north-west university (potchefstroom campus) jl van der walt hannesv290@gmail.com faculty of education sciences north-west university (potchefstroom campus) cc wolhuter charl.wolhuter@nwu.ac.za faculty of education sciences north-west university (potchefstroom campus) *to whom correspondence should be directed doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i1.3 issn 0258-2236 eissn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(1): 27-39 © uv/ufs mailto:hennie.steyn@nwu.ac.za mailto:hannesv290@gmail.com mailto:charl.wolhuter@nwu.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.3 28 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) academic depth and rigour in teacher education. teacher education of excellent quality will supply appropriately equipped teachers (townsend & bates, 2007: 3), thereby contributing to an efficient national education system and a flourishing national community. the line of argumentation so far raises the following question: what steps could be followed to ensure that a benchmark for teacher education guides towards depth and rigour in that it conforms to all the relevant academic and international norms but also remains locally context-sensitive? in order to find an answer to this question, we first examine the essential features of teacher education, its ‘formal elements’. morrow (2007) identifies the formal elements of a practice as those elements without which the practice ceases to be. in the area of teacher education, we propose that the formal elements of teacher education may be the knowledge for practice that prospective teachers learn in university-based coursework, the craft knowledge they learn from their apprenticeships in schools, the prospective teachers themselves and the teacher educators who teach them. the ‘material elements’ on the other hand, refer to the contextual conditions under which the practices of learning to teach takes place. these material conditions can vary enormously between contexts (with respect to resources and languages of learning and teaching). this examination, as we will show, reveals that among others, an effective teacher education programme should be benchmarked against the formal elements of its practices but needs to consider the material elements in which it operates in order to be context-sensitive. we conclude the article by offering a schema to ensure the academic rigour and the context-sensitivity of teacher education programmes within the south african context. 2. academic depth and rigour in teacher education according to slonimsky and shalem (2006), a curriculum for teacher education programmes in a developing country such as south africa should be dually responsive. on the one hand, it should provide for the needs of the large numbers of underprepared students, students who as a result of a historically developed poor quality school education system are not appropriately prepared for the exigencies of university study. on the other hand, it should also be epistemologically responsive in that it offers access to the systematic inquiry that is typical of academic practice, i.e. inquiry characterised by knowledge depth and independent thinking. the curriculum for a teacher education programme should nevertheless be internally coherent; it should attest to the fact that knowledge from a myriad of material for such programmes has been selected and packaged in a systematic manner that can convey meaning to student teachers, particularly meaning relevant to equipping them for their future profession (rusznyak, 2015). planners of teacher education programmes in countries such as south africa have to formulate benchmarks that could guide them in assessing how well the teacher education curriculum and programme in general measures up to these demands. put differently, teacher education programmes should demonstrate rigour and depth in two dimensions: theoretical (among others, by being plugged into the global/universal knowledge system) and contextual (among others by serving local education needs). teacher education systems that fail to comply with these two requirements are doomed to resort to interim ‘fire-fighting’ initiatives such as special courses, radio and television programmes, collaborations with universities and other short-term (crisis management-type) interventions (rusznyak, 2014). steyn, van der walt & wolhuter ensuring academic depth and rigour ... 29 3. literature survey 3.1. what should qualifying teachers know and be able to do? ever since the publication of the two much cited papers of shulman (1986, 1987), the role of knowledge in teacher education programmes has been a focus of research. shulman (1987: 8) identified seven categories of knowledge as a base for teaching. these categories are content knowledge (the amount and organisation of knowledge per se in the mind of the teacher) (shulman, 1986: 9), general educational knowledge, knowledge of the curriculum, pedagogical content knowledge (how to teach particular topics), knowledge of learners and their characteristics, knowledge of educational ends and purposes and knowledge of contexts. according to him, this last category ranges from working with a group or class, governance and financing of school districts, to the character of communities and cultures. he does not explicate the category of knowledge of contexts but goes on to develop his concept of reasoned pedagogical judgement. knowledge or ideas should be transmitted; the teacher should use her knowledge base to provide grounds for choices and actions regarding how best to represent knowledge in ways that learners will find understandable (shulman, 1987: 13). other researchers have also concluded that teacher knowledge is a significant determinant in the overall quality of a (national) education project particularly because of its bearing on the achievement levels of learners (cf. wolhuter, 2014). the professional competence of teachers, cognitively activating instruction for the development of students’ mathematical literacy (coactiv) project, based on the 2003/04 pisa study results, concluded after having investigated the correlation between various forms of knowledge of teachers and the outcomes of mathematics teaching, that a strong positive correlation existed between teacher knowledge and learner achievement. in fact, it discovered that the teacher’s knowledge is a much better predictor of learners’ achievements than the former’s teaching experience (kunter et al., 2011). hammerness et al. (2005: 359) provide another perspective on teacher education, namely that that there are three widely documented challenges that students face when they learn to teach. the first is that ‘learning to teach’ requires that new teachers come to think about (and understand) teaching in ways quite different from what they have learned from their own experience as students (the so-called apprenticeship of observation, eye blinkers problem; the efficiency versus innovation problem) (cf. lortie, 1975). the second is the problem of enactment: putting their knowledge into practice. related to this is the third problem, namely complexity: the complex task of having to juggle a multitude of academic and social goals on the one hand and on the other, trading these (goals) off from day-to-day and from momentto-moment against changing student needs and unexpected classroom events. helping student teachers think systematically about this complexity is important. students need to develop metacognitive habits of mind that can guide decisions and reflection on practice (hammerness et al., 2005). darling-hammond et al. (2005) link up with these three problems when they identify five issues salient in the design of teacher education programmes. the first is that of connection and coherence (which resonates with the needs for students to think systematically about education and the need to develop metacognitive habits of mind). the second is what content to include in teacher education programmes (i.e. which of shulman’s categories and in which relative proportions) and the third is the organisation (including the sequence) of that content 30 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) i.e. the systematic process of learning. there is, fourthly, also the issue of the learning process: how to introduce and teach key concepts in ways that teachers can enact them. finally, there is the problem of situating learning in productive contexts: situating the content in a context where it could be developed and transferred to other situations. 3.2. learning to teach in the south african context the problem of what exactly the knowledge should be that a prospective teacher should be exposed to and master and how it should be packaged in teacher education programmes, particularly in the south african situation, has been the focus of much research in south africa. rusznyak (2015: 140), for instance, distinguishes between two main principles for ensuring curricular coherence in teacher education programmes, namely contextually driven coherence and conceptually driven coherence. according to the first principle, the curriculum will provide prospective teachers the opportunities to acquire a set of contingent knowledge, skills and attitudes directly relevant to meeting the local demands of classroom life and the realities of the contexts in which they will practice. conceptually driven coherence in initial teacher education programmes, on the other hand, will enable prospective teachers to acquire a systematised body of knowledge from which they can draw principles for informing rational judgement in their teaching practice. however, both are needed for the development of conceptually informed practice, as rusznyak (2015: 15) correctly concludes; the professional teacher needs to draw on a pool of theoretical knowledge for comprehension of the practical or contextual situation on the ground. a number of south african researchers have underscored the relevance of context over the years in drafting teacher education programmes and hence highlighted various contextual aspects. morrow (2007: 6), for instance, claimed that the aims of education are relative to particular socio-historical conditions. because of widespread poverty, the disruption of family life and of community safety nets, the caring function of schools need to be dramatically expanded in south africa, compared to the situation in a typical developed country where the brief of the school mainly revolves around the transfer of knowledge and the development of the cognitive faculties of the educand (ibid.: 4). similarly, the content and method of education, which are basically a scaffold for taking the educand from where s/he is (situated in a particular context) to gain access to the modern world, will be co-determined by context (ibid. 51-68). morrow levels two criticisms against the department of education of south africa’s (2000) policy on teacher education. first, the policy ignores the context in which south african teachers work and second, it posits as criteria for teacher education programmes the training of students to fulfil the seven roles (discussed below). according to morrow (2007), these defined roles of the educator amount to a teacher’s job description; they have little to do with the quintessential work of a teacher (what morrow refers to as the ‘formal elements’ of teaching). because of the complexity of the knowledge that prospective teachers have to master, the development of their teaching practices cannot be reduced to verifying that they are able to comply with a simple checklist of competences or tasks. teacher education should instead be couched in an appropriate philosophical approach such as that provided by alasdair macintyre (1981) which emphasises the importance of the moral goods typical of a community engaged in a particular ‘practice’ (in this case, that of the professional teacher). he refers to these goods as “internal goods” or “goods of excellence” associated with the profession and which can be achieved by participating in the practices. the focus in the education of future professionals should be on these internal goods of the practice, on the steyn, van der walt & wolhuter ensuring academic depth and rigour ... 31 obligations of the moral agent or on the consequences of a particular act (utilitarianism). the focus should not be on the roles and competences of the teacher, but rather on the telos (‘end’, or completion) of a social practice and of a human life, within the context of which the morality of acts may be evaluated. samuel (2002), in a case study of the 1994-2002 history of drafting curricula for teacher education programmes at the former university of durban-westville, contended that ‘context’ should not only refer to the (national and educational) context in the educational and social field outside of the university. teacher education programmes should also be aligned to the new (post-1994) context within a teacher education institution or university. the new intra-university context embodies a generation of academics schooled in paradigms of critical pedagogy (of which many pre-1994 academics were ignorant) and a new student body (more diverse, many from previously dysfunctional schools, many being first generation university students). the relationship between theory and practice remains another perennial problem. reeves and robinson (2014) distinguish between three approaches in teacher education programmes with respect to the primacy of theory versus practice: programmes privileging theory over practice, programmes based on the premise that student teachers should acquire theory from practical experience and programmes based on the premise that student teachers should master theory and practice simultaneously. with respect to the second, they distinguish between a number of sub-approaches. one of these is the social-critical-reflective practice model based on the assumption that student teachers need to become more critical of the role of education in the larger socio-political context (particularly the reproduction of socioeconomic inequalities) (reeves & robinson, 2014: 241). to summarise, teacher knowledge is a key factor in terms of its impact on the quality and outcome of a teacher education project. this knowledge has a widely recognised theoretical base (from which international benchmarks may well be derived) and a contextual base. while south african scholars have identified the need for a contextual base for teacher education and have highlighted aspects of the previously overlooked context, there is a need for a more detailed exposition of this context and for a strategy for considering that context in teacher education. put differently, there is a need to give a positive shape or form to universal, constant principles in contingent historical circumstances (strauss, 2009: 94). accordingly, benchmarking for teacher education cannot be based on the outcome of a straightforward comparison of teacher education theory and practices in different countries or systems for the sake of identifying the best programmes or qualifications on the different levels that reflect optimal outputs in terms of high pass rates and/or competences acquired by students (singmaster, 2015: 38-41). while programmes, qualifications and student achievements may be regarded as the core of benchmarking exercises, the focus of teacher education planners should attest to greater theoretical and philosophical depth. teacher education programmes should be anchored in the global knowledge base of education as an academic discipline and in the internal goods (macintyre, 1981) or the formal elements (morrow, 2007) of the teaching profession. in addition to this, however, it should also attest to having taken account of context, that it has been operationalised for a particular situation on the ground, in schools and classes. after now having argued for depth and rigour with regard to its knowledge base, praxis and context, we have, as it were, formulated a three-pronged benchmark for teacher education. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/consequentialism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/utilitarianism 32 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) a teacher education programme should provide evidence that (1) it is rooted in a widely (universally) recognised theory and knowledge base, (2) that it is responsive to the exigencies of the praxis of the teaching profession and (3) that it shows an awareness of the context in which the prospective teachers will be plying their future profession. in view of the purpose of this article, attention will now be devoted to the third prong, namely how to promote contextawareness in teacher education. this will be done by outlining a possible procedure, illustrated with the situation in south africa. 4. planning for context-sensitive teacher education in south africa step 1: evaluate the existing benchmarks for teacher education the 2000 policy framework (department of education, 2000) is the first extensive post1994 teacher education policy document. it is a document that describes the seven roles that a teacher who is “appropriately equipped” for the task of teaching has to master and then describes how it can be ensured that teachers master these seven roles. the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications that replaced the 2000 document in 2015 no longer spells out the seven roles but enumerates eleven basic teacher competences expected of beginner teachers. the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications document (south african department of higher education and training, 2015: 62-63) confirms the contextual picture by acknowledging the complexity of teaching, the different kinds of knowledge, the concomitant competences to be mastered and the recognition of prior learning. the 2015 document further states, also related to context, that teacher education programmes should address the critical challenges facing education in south africa today. challenges singled out include the poor content and conceptual knowledge found among teachers. teacher education programmes should incorporate the legacies of apartheid and the situational and contextual elements that assist teachers in developing competences that enable them to deal with diversity and transformation. then teacher education programmes should recognise the importance of inter-connections between different types of knowledge and practices and the ability of teachers to draw reflexively from integrated and applied knowledge in order to work flexibly and effectively in a variety of contexts (south african department of higher education and training, 2015: 8-10). this latest policy document represents a considerable shift in policy. a 2007 policy correctly states that the notion of having seven roles of teachers as key criteria, contained in the 2000 norms and standards policy (which in turn was cast in the mould of the doctrine of outcomes-based education in use at the time) is no longer tenable. the 2015 policy states that teaching is a complex activity and not a “purely skills-based approach” which relies almost exclusively on “evidence of demonstrable outcomes as measures of success, without paying attention to how knowledge should underpin these skills for them to impact effectively on learning” (department of higher education and training, 2015: 9). emphasis on skills will produce technicians who “may be able to replicate performance in similar situations, but will be severely challenged” should a new situation arise (ibid.). the 2015 policy is also articulated in terms of competences (see appendices b and c to the policy, pp. 60-63) and though these competences are nearly all knowledge (rather than skills) based, they still seem to echo steyn, van der walt & wolhuter ensuring academic depth and rigour ... 33 the defunct doctrine of outcomes-based education. in other words it focuses (in alasdair macintyre’s words) on the competencies of teachers and overlooks the internal goods or formal elements of teaching and hence of teacher education. although the competences mentioned in the 2015 policy in some ways reflect the south african context and society (implicitly or assumed, as the case might be), the policy never indicates what the south african context actually entails. furthermore, it does not offer a benchmark or a yardstick for assessing whether a teacher education programme is indeed aligned to this context or whether teacher educators succeed in sensitising student teachers about the south african context of teaching and learning. if education policy can be defined as a statement of intent of the way in which the education needs of a target group are to be met (steyn, 2014b: 74), it could reasonably be expected that it should spell out the contextual parameters for which it is designed. step 2: show awareness of the internal conditions of the system and hence of the teacher education project during the benchmarking process knowledge of and insight into the internal conditions or forces and factors of the teacher education system, that is those aspects within the system that co-determine the nature, structure and functioning of the system from the inside, should be developed, amongst others by means of comparisons amongst education systems. three types of internal forces and factors can be identified. the first of these factors are of an educational nature, such as the theory of education that drives the teacher education programme in question and which determines the guidelines for what is regarded as quality in that particular teacher education project (townsend & bates, 2007: 5; newby, 2007: 116-119; angus, 2007: 141; greenberg, 2010: 20). generally, it can be said that such theory embraces the following notions with regard to teacher education: the use of the best research findings in putting the project together, the establishment of a strong philosophical and educational foundation for teacher education and the implications of globalisation and the need to be able to cater for ever-increasing diverse education populations. it also embraces the appointment of quality assurance bodies and measures that reflect what the notion “good teacher” entails, the formulation of a conceptual and theoretical base for teacher education that is consistent with the notion “good teacher” and an outline of the academic studies required for mastery of the selected school subjects. furthermore, an outline of the professional studies to give the students a proper grounding in the principles and practices of teaching and learning, including (if relevant in the particular system) the shift from teaching to learning is also embraced. this step should also attest to an understanding on the part of the teacher education system planner of the formal elements of teacher education (according to morrow’s [2007] scheme) to ensure a supply of well-equipped and successful teachers for the future (regardless of context). that is to say, teachers should be delivered who, according to shulman, not only possess the relevant knowledge base but can practice the profession by using the knowledge base to make reasoned pedagogic judgements to guide and inform practice. the mrteq 2015 policy demonstrates an understanding of this requirement by enumerating five types of knowledge associated with the acquisition, integration and application of knowledge for teaching purposes. these types of knowledge are disciplinary learning (foundations of education disciplines), pedagogical learning (study of the principles, practices and methods of teaching), practical learning (work-integrated learning), fundamental learning (competence in communicating in english, ability to use information and communication technologies and 34 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) acquisition of academic literacy) and situational learning (in education environments such as classrooms) (department of higher education and training, 2015: 10-11). this second step should also reflect an understanding of internal factors of a historical nature. planners should acquire knowledge and insight into the past, present and hoped-for future of the system under scrutiny. new developments should be planned in terms of the existing capacity of the system to implement them and by determining whether they are being introduced based on a generally agreed upon future for the system. the same applies for internal factors of an interactive nature. a change or innovation with respect to one aspect of the teacher education project will necessarily affect more than one other aspect of the system. it is therefore important for teacher education planners not to concentrate myopically on only one aspect of the project. the benchmarking process has to reflect the interaction among the various aspects of the teacher education project. step 3: show awareness of the external conditions of the education system and hence of the teacher education project the planning of the teacher education project should also be informed by contextual factors of an external nature, i.e. the forces that (co-)determine the nature, structure or functioning of the teacher education project in a particular country or education system. among these co-determining factors and forces count the demography of the country in question and its student population. the demography will supply the rationale for the numbers of students to be educated to become teachers and where they will be employed after training (urban or rural areas, as the case may be). the demography will also explain migration trends among teachers (mclaughling & burnaford, 2007: 331). a second external factor that for example determines the nature of a teacher education programme and hence of the benchmarks to be set, is the state of science and technology in the country and at the disposal of teachers and teacher educators. the science and technological status quo will tend to be reflected in the school and teacher education curriculums and in the use of technology as a teaching aid. in technologically more advanced countries, there will most likely be a trend to employ modern information and communication technologies in schools and in teacher education. in systems where (open) distance learning has become part and parcel of teacher education programmes, information and communication technologies tend to be widely used (townsend & bates, 2007: 21; jansen, 2007: 25). another external factor is the language of learning and teaching. comparisons of different teacher education projects have to reflect the differing levels of use and sophistication regarding languages of learning and teaching. during the benchmarking process, one should avoid recommending something from a system having at its disposal the use of a rather scientifically sophisticated language to be transferred to a system that does not have a similarly sophisticated language to work with or in. similar results cannot be achieved in the target system if the same benchmark has to be achieved using a second or third language by the teacher educators and the students concerned. benchmarking in the target system should reflect the difference in language sophistication. for example, using a second or third language as the language of learning and teaching but accepting that the same or similar standards will be reached over a longer period with smaller groups of teacher education students, with the aid of certain support services and technologies and with compensatory programmes, if necessary. steyn, van der walt & wolhuter ensuring academic depth and rigour ... 35 teacher education planners/bench markers should furthermore be aware of the political and institutional conditions in which teacher education takes place in the education system. while it can be assumed that all teacher education programmes will strive at forming students that will as future teachers support learners to become competent and worthy citizens of their respective countries, it must also be accepted as a reality that all countries and education systems are not able to do this effectively. this is because of conditions such as political instability or budgetary shortfalls (jansen, 2007: 27-29; reid, brain & boyes, 2007: 79). although the international expectations might be the same for all countries (for instance as member states of the united nations, unesco or the brics grouping), contingent local conditions might prevent member states from performing as expected. budgetary constraints and political instability (wars, xenophobia, budgetary constraints, tension among neighbour states, disrespect for basic human rights and so forth) might prevent them from performing optimally. step 4: learn from the best the fourth step to develop a sound benchmark for teacher education is to learn lessons from the content and content-structure of other education systems. in fact, this is not a fourth step that has to follow the others in sequence; it should take place coterminous with all the other steps. a study is made of the theory and practices with regard to teacher education in different education systems. the description is not a mere report of the particular issues; it also reflects and takes into account all the contextual conditions (sometimes referred to as “determinants”) of a system in question. in this process, certain lessons, both positive and negative, can be learned and the results of this process used for refining the benchmarks (yardstick). best practices in and for particular settings are identified, analysed, motivated and described. best practices represent the best solutions or applications that can be discovered among the various education systems. such practices are linked to particular settings and hence are not necessarily generalisable to all education systems. in some cases, a best practice derived from a particular situation in a particular education system has received general acceptance in the field of teacher education or in an international evaluation exercise such as an iea study. regarding teacher education, the term “best practices” refers to practices in the teacher education programmes of other systems of education that have been found effective and efficient in accordance with norms and standards applied by the authorities in those systems and programmes (stenström & laine, 2006: 12-13). when comparing different practices, teacher education planners, meaning academics who inform policy makers and who draft teacher education programmes, have to ensure that programmes on the same or similar categories of teachers are compared. cognisance also has to be taken of the nature and structure of the education system that offers a comparable teacher education programme. the same applies for qualifications of the teacher educators in the various teacher education programmes. the nature of support provided to students at the various levels at which they conduct their studies, the linguistic challenges that come into play, particularly where students have to study in their second and third languages and also the affordability and appropriateness of the facilities and infrastructure available to the teacher educators. it is also important to ensure that the comparison is accurate in terms of fulland part-time students, contact and (open) distance learning, i.e. the mode of delivery. 36 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) step 5: operationalise the benchmarking process is completed with the phase of planning operationalisation. care has to be taken that the benchmark formulated for a specific situation does not merely reflect universally acceptable norms and best practices or is construed as “a generally acceptable point of departure”. ideally, a benchmark that emerges from this process should reflect the widely accepted norms and practices as well as the particular context and situation for which its application is intended. put differently, it should also reflect the internal and external conditions of the system or the project in which it will apply. exactly the same benchmark might therefore slightly differ in terms of formulation depending on whether it is intended for application in south africa, finland or china. mention has been made throughout this article of the importance of showing awareness of the socio-political context of teacher education in a particular system or country. this raises the question: what is the nature of such a context in a particular, concrete situation? the question can be answered in terms of the following brief outline of the context of teacher education in south africa. the current (2015) size of the teacher corps in south africa is in the region of 426 000. sixty-six per cent of these teachers possess a matric and three years of post-matric education and only 15 per cent have matric plus four years (centre for development and enterprise, 2015: 8). the teaching profession is also an aged and ageing profession with most teachers falling in the 40-49 years of age category. these two contextual factors imply that teacher education has to be geared to supply the required numbers of well-qualified teachers and replacements when a significant number of teachers retire between 16 to 26 years from now or leave the profession for medical or other reasons. teacher education takes place at universities in the form of either a four-year b.ed. degree or a three-year bachelor’s degree and a postgraduate certificate in education. there were 94 237 student teachers at south african universities and 13 708 graduates in 2012 (centre for development and enterprise, 2015: 4). teacher education programmes are currently characterised by a high attrition rate and the profession itself by a high turnover rate (centre for development and enterprise, 2015: 6). supply-demand projections are difficult because of a plethora of factors involved, of which many are unknown right now. the centre for development and enterprise (2015: 3) states that while there will most probably be a shortage of teachers in particular phases (such as the foundation phase) and subjects (mathematics and languages), it is unlikely that south africa will experience an overall shortage of teachers in the next ten years. the lack of quality is another contextual factor. the national government’s own investigations have revealed a lack of quality in teacher education. this is a condition that could be attributed to low admission criteria of teacher education programmes, a lack of rigour in selection processes, deficiencies in programme coherence, content and cognitive demand and a failure to take into account the needs and realities of the education system (centre for development and enterprise, 2015: 5). the problems associated with the teaching profession and with teacher education as such are exacerbated by the general administrative inefficiency in the south african education system and the absence of a culture of teaching and learning. the persistent inequalities in the education system (not only in the shape of the de facto existence of several education systems in south africa, with widely divergent levels of quality) also exacerbate the problem. this is a legacy of historical developments and inequalities along gender lines, the rural-urban divide steyn, van der walt & wolhuter ensuring academic depth and rigour ... 37 and the affluence of provinces. the context is furthermore characterised by large proportions of learners entering educational institutions wholly unprepared and unequipped for the demands of being trained there. this is because a large percentage of learners’ first languages is not the same as the language of learning and teaching in schools and universities, the low outcomes (achievement levels) relative to the amount of public and private funds invested in education and the fact that the education system has been undergoing a process of radical restructuring for the past few decades. many of these reform initiatives have proven to be complete failures (cf. wolhuter, 2014). other external contextual factors include the youthful age profile of the population, huge socio-economic disparities (to a large extent running coterminous with the racial divide), the lack of social capital, widespread poverty, high levels of unemployment and the fact that the country is still in the throes of an ambitious political and societal restructuring project (cf. wolhuter, 2011). this brief overview of the contextual factors surrounding teacher education in south africa illustrates the difficulties of benchmarking in teacher education. there are many imponderables in the context and even what is fairly well understood in the current and future context of teacher education renders benchmarking a daunting task. 5. conclusion the above clarifies that benchmarking for teacher education is no simple exercise of merely comparing different teacher education projects and adopting standards and views that seem to have general or universal coinage. while such an exercise is not without merit, a case can be made that taking account of contextual-particular forces constitutes an indispensable component of benchmarking for teacher education programmes. this is especially true in a globalised world in which the competitiveness of states and the well-being of their people increasingly depend on their 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http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4773-8 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4773-8 http://dx.doi.org/10.15700/201412071120 http://dx.doi.org/10.15700/201412071120 _goback 2622022 40(4): 262-275 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 discourse in curriculum policy enactment: a focus on leadership practices abstract this article focuses on the prevailing discourse in the enactment of governmental curriculum policy via the leadership practices of school management teams (smts). based on qualitative research in three selected working class schools, the article explores how the working class context positions schools in distinct ways to enact curriculum policy. stephen ball and colleagues’ policy enactment theory is employed as a lens to investigate the enactment of curriculum policy via the four core leadership practices of setting direction, developing people, redesigning the organisation and managing teaching and learning. it is argued that these working class schools are regulated by the incoming discourse of the curriculum policy and they respond to this incoming discourse in an almost robotic way. the article highlights the two-folded nature of discourse, i.e. the incoming discourse of the curriculum policy, and the schools’ discursive responses. the results indicate that the smt’s leadership practices are fundamentally impacted and determined by the schools’ materiality and discursive constructions. keywords: curriculum policy, discourse, discursive strategies, leadership practices, policy enactment, working class context 1. introduction the article focuses on how selected working class schools’ leadership practices receive and enact governmental curriculum policy as part of their endeavours to build a teaching and learning (curriculum) platform at their schools. i posit that their working class contexts provide the framing and operational texts for their leadership practices in response to the curriculum requirements. in this article i argue that how the selected schools’ school management teams (smts), which are responsible for implementing leadership practices, ‘live’ south africa’s current version of curriculum change via the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) (dbe, 2011), is fundamentally impacted by the schools’ context. the research question that i explore is: how is the curriculum policy enacted within the working class context via the leadership practices of the smt? i locate this study within the gap between policy intention and policy implementation as i explore the material and discursive contexts of the schools in this study. author: dr rené terhoven1 affiliation: 1university of cape town, south africa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v40i4.6003 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(4): 262-275 published: 23 december 2022 received: 25 january 2022 accepted: 18 may 2022 research article http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9126-9694 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 2632022 40(4): 263-275 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 terhoven discourse in curriculum policy enactment: a focus on leadership practices over the last twenty-eight years, governmental curriculum policy has had disparate effects on south africa’s schools, as there are still deep inequalities which were carved by apartheid (pillay, 2021). caps, the latest manifestation of governmental curriculum initiatives, has been described by maddock and maroun (2018) as a “one-size-fits-all’’ curriculum which implies that it is expected that caps should be implemented in a relatively uniform manner in all south african schools. the working class context, associated with poverty, crime, lack of parental involvement, overcrowded classes and poor infrastructure (christie, butler & potterton, 2007; moloi, 2010; fataar, 2015), position working class schools in distinct ways with regards to implementing the curriculum. caps is associated with an expectation of a type of behavioural performativity among schools and teachers as a result of a culture of constant monitoring by the department of basic education (dbe). schools are therefore positioned for compliance with caps expectations, meaning that they have to attain learner performance scores in order to avoid being negatively labelled as underperforming or dysfunctional schools. in exploring the discourses associated with curriculum policy enactment in the working class context, this article uses the four core leadership practices, namely setting direction, developing people, redesigning the organisation and managing teaching and learning (leithwood et al., 2006). these core leadership practices entail the following: setting direction involves activities such as the setting of vision and framing of goals, whereas the leadership practice of developing people relates to the motivation, support and intellectual stimulation of people. the leadership practice of redesigning the organisation focuses on building a collaborative culture within the school and with the wider community, while the leadership practice of managing teaching and learning deals mainly with staffing, planning and monitoring performance. i start by discussing the theoretical and methodological orientations of the study. i then discuss how the expectations of the incoming caps position the leadership practices of the smt within their context, i.e. how they receive caps and how they view and experience caps. this is followed by a discussion of the four core leadership practices and how the smts, via their leadership practices, respond to the implementation of caps in order to establish a viable curriculum policy platform. i focus on how the smts’ leadership practices pursue the requirements of caps within the context of their schools by showing how the leadership practices are enacted within the working class school environment. in so doing, the article contributes to the literature on leadership practices in working class school contexts. 2. theoretical considerations the policy enactment framework of ball et al. (2012) is employed to inform and guide the analysis in this article. they describe policy enactment as “creative processes of interpretation and recontextualisation that is, the translation of texts into action and the abstractions of policy ideas into contextualized practices” (ball et al., 2012). they base their framework on three constituent dimensions of the messy reality of school life, which are: the material, the discursive and the interpretive dimensions of policy implementations in schools (ball et al., 2012). firstly, the material dimension relates to the contextual factors such as the school buildings, resources, and infrastructure. ball et al.’s policy enactment theory is concerned with the interplay between a school’s practices and their contextual variables and not only on context as a background (ball et al., 2012). in their theorising about policy, ball et al. (2012: 21) group the dynamics of context as follows: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 2642022 40(4): 264-275 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) • situated context which refers to the location of the school, its history and students. • professional cultures, in reference to values, teacher commitments, experiences and policy management in schools. • material contexts which are the staff establishment, school budget, buildings, technology and infrastructure. • and the schools’ external context which covers the degree and quality of learning area support, pressures and expectations from broader policy context, such as school ratings and responsibilities. these four components of context serve as a vehicle to illuminate different aspects of policy enactment, which are applied in this article to the working class school context. the material dimension provides the tools to explore the working class school’s specific contextual circumstances such as the interplay between people, their emotions, their values and their physical surroundings (such as resources and overcrowded classes) associated with the enactment of curriculum policy. the second dimension of ball et al.’s policy enactment theory is the discursive domain (ball et al., 2012). in a school, discursive practices involve different activities and artefacts which represent policy and which contribute to the process of policy enactment. examples of these discursive practices include textbooks, websites, newsletters, policy symbols, prize giving ceremonies, meetings and similar events (ball et al., 2012). these artefacts exercise power through a production of ‘truth’ and ‘knowledge’ as discourse (ball, 1993: 49), which means that these activities and artefacts are used to portray policy. maguire et al. (2011) explain that discourses are social processes, formed within and by wider events, beliefs and ‘epistemes’ to produce common sense notions and normative ideas. discourse thus ‘directs’ the school toward desirable behaviour. foucault describes discourses as “the sets of conditions in accordance with which a practice is exercised, in accordance with which that practice gives rise to partially or totally new statements, and in accordance with which it can be modified” (ball et al., 2012: 123). what this means is that in school settings specific situations give rise to specific practices, which are then lived as the ‘truth’ in that setting, and which are adapted based on the prevailing expectations by those in power, as ‘’discourses are both an instrument and an effect of power’’ (ball, 2006). relating to the curriculum, maguire et al. (2011), in their article policy discourses in school texts, turn the attention to certain discursive productions of the ‘good’ learner, the ‘good’ teacher and the ‘good’ school. discursive productions of the ‘good’ learner refer to high academic expectations. this involves celebrating achievements of learners through activities such as prize giving ceremonies and displaying the names of the top achievers for the school and broader community (maguire et al., 2011). on the other hand, discursive productions of the ‘good’ teacher focus the attention on the qualities of teachers, such as commitment and professionalism of teachers (ball et al., 2012). these qualities of the ‘good’ teacher are discursively portrayed throughout the school by means of posters, meetings, teacher awards and teacher development days that focus on the desired teacher qualities and values. furthermore, discursive productions of the ‘good’ school focus on how the school selects, interprets and translates specific aspects of policy initiatives and mandates (maguire et al., 2011) into actions. hence, the focus of the ‘good school’ is on raising the standards and raising the achievements of the learners. this is done by using discursive strategies such as the visualisation of policy by means of comparing school results and encouraging teachers to work hard (ball et al., 2012). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 2652022 40(4): 265-275 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 terhoven discourse in curriculum policy enactment: a focus on leadership practices a discursive lens enables the analysis of the types of events and activities that the school depicts as desirable in enhancing teaching and learning. the discursive lens highlights what is regarded as valuable knowledge in the school, emanating from policy, and how this valuable knowledge is lived as the truth in the school, through discursive strategies, implemented via leadership practices. furthermore, it provides insight into what is regarded as desirable behaviour in the school. thus a ‘visualisation’ of the requirements for the implementation of curriculum policy, allowing people to ‘see’ what is commended in the enactment of governmental curriculum policy. these discursive strategies are regarded as the ‘tools’ in the policy work of the school (ball et al., 2012). third is, the interpretive dimension of policy enactment which refers to the sense making of policy by policy implementation actors (ball et al., 2012). the focus of the interpretive dimension is on the policy text and how the policy text is made meaning of, interpreted, conveyed and re-interpreted. here ball et al. (2012) distinguishes between interpretation and translation, where interpretation refers to an engagement with the languages of policy and translation refers to the languages of practice, meaning that interpretation and translation relate to how the text is translated into action. ball et al. (2012: 45) state that interpretation is “a strategy, an institutional political process, a process of elucidation and explanation”. translation on the other hand refers to putting the policy text into action. this translation can take place through meetings, plans and events. both interpretation and translation here refer to the meaning-making process of the policy document. in relating the aspects of the interpretive dimension to leadership practices, the article discussion explores how the school’s leadership in working class school contexts make meaning of the policy text, especially in this era of performativity where schools are expected to attain results. in other words, how the policy is received, read and understood in practice and how it is translated into actions during implementation at the schools (singh, thomas & harris, 2013). 3. methodology the research on which this article is based, is a qualitative study with the smt members of three working class schools in a peri-urban area outside cape town. this study focused on the prevailing discourse in the enactment of curriculum policy via the leadership practices of the smt. the research was conducted according to the interpretive paradigm and enabled me to capture the lived experiences of the smt members of the participating schools. the interpretive paradigm allowed me to gain a deeper understanding of the leadership practices of the smt (bhengu & myende, 2016). in this research purposive sampling (punch, 2005) was done by selecting smt members from three working class secondary schools, as a working class school is the contextual focus of this study. according to fataar (2009) and mampane and bouwer (2011) working class schools in south africa have their origins in racially segregated, low-cost housing areas for people of colour and these contexts are characterised by distinct features such as poverty, child-headed households and gangsterism, among others (christie, 2008). the sample size for this study depended on the size of the smts of the three schools. at the time of this study school a had an smt of 11 members, school b an smt of 9 members, and school c a rotating smt of 4 members (still considered a growing school). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 2662022 40(4): 266-275 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) the data were collected via semi-structured individual interviews with the principals of these schools and focus groups with the rest of the smt members (excluding the principal). although principals are part of the smt of a school, their interviews were done separately as a means of triangulation. the individual semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions consisted of two phases, where phase 1 probed the material aspect of ball’s policy enactment theory and phase 2 probed for actions associated with the four core leadership practices. the focus groups and semi-structured interviews lasted 45-60 minutes. based on an inductive data analysis approach, i attempted to gain an understanding of how the smts (including principals) experienced their school context and how they engaged with the curriculum policy, via their leadership practices. to maintain anonymity, pseudonyms were used, i.e. school a, school b and school c. the pseudonyms used for the principals are as follows: for school a principal 1, for school b – principal 2 and for school c – principal 3. the deputy principals and departmental heads (dhs) are linked with their respective school. the same set of questions was used in the semistructured interviews with the principals and the smt focus groups and it was thus possible to ascertain the similarities and differences in how each school’s stakeholders perceive their context, leadership practices and curriculum policy enactment. as the quality of research may be questioned, a discussion regarding trustworthiness, reliability and validity of the research is necessary. in order to adhere to trustworthiness i formulated the semi-structured interview and focus group questions based on the relevant literature and theoretical framework that i employed, as well as through the technique of triangulation. reliability was ensured by recording each interview (with permission) and personally transcribing them ad verbatim. to promote reliability and validity (merriam, 2009), the data and provisional interpretations were discussed with the participants to determine whether these interpretations were a correct representation of their responses. also, an attempt was made to remain unbiased. furthermore, i kept a detailed account of the methods, procedures and decision points in conducting this study. rich, thick descriptions are provided to contextualise the study. as this research involved collecting data from people, and about people, i adhered to the requirements of ethical research, i.e. foreseeing no harm for the participants, maintaining their privacy and anonymity, protecting their confidentiality, obtaining informed consent from the participants, as well as from the western cape education department, and not intruding on their class teaching time (denzin & lincoln, 2011). 4. results and discussion the purpose of this study was to explore the prevailing discourse in the enactment of governmental curriculum policy via the leadership practices of school management teams (smts). this section presents the findings of the qualitative research and analyses these by means of ball et al.’s (2012) policy enactment theory. i focus on how the curriculum policy is represented through visual materials, which includes textbooks, trophies and recording sheets of learners, and activities (such as meetings and in-service training) within the schools. these types of visual materials are called artefacts which inform and form the ‘’ways of being and becoming’’ (ball et al., 2012: 122) in a school in the process of enacting a curriculum policy platform. ball et al. (2012) explain that discourse is twofold, in that institutions such as schools are both productive of and constituted by discursive practices, events and texts in the process of http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 2672022 40(4): 267-275 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 terhoven discourse in curriculum policy enactment: a focus on leadership practices policy enactment. in the current south african dispensation and performative regime within which schools find themselves and within which they have to enact a curriculum policy platform, schools are positioned to attain specified results to avoid being negatively labelled. schools are thus positioned by the incoming discourse (caps) which they respond to through their own discursive strategies, i.e. what they do and think about the in-coming curriculum policy. caps provides the framework within which the school’s practices take place which then give rise to new statements and new ways of doing things in the process of curriculum enactment. these discourses (the ways of doing and thinking) then become part of the everyday life of schools. curriculum policy in south africa carries within it notions of achievement such as being labelled as a ‘good’ or ‘dysfunctional’ or underperforming school. according to maguire et al. (2011) discursive productions of the ‘good’ school focus on how the school selects, interprets and translates specific aspects of policy initiatives and mandates. the ‘good’ school in the south african education system is portrayed as the school which achieves the required results as mandated by the doe, i.e. schools that obtain less than 60% in the national senior certificate (nsc) examination, are labelled as underperforming schools (republic of south africa, 2013). this discursive formation of the ‘good’ school implies that there is a discourse of the ‘good’ teacher and the ‘good’ learner who compose the ‘good’ school (see ball et al., 2012). the ‘good’ learner is thus depicted as the learner who achieves the required results and the ‘good’ teacher is depicted as the teacher who has a high level of attainment in his/ her subject. 4.1 incoming discourse of caps from the data gathered, it was found that all three schools in this study experience caps as a quest for results within a limited time frame, and with a prescribed content. on a question of how they perceive caps, the participants had the following comments: it’s all about results really. results, results and meeting the target that’s from the department. it’s all about pleasing the master [referring to the head of education] (principal 1). the document restricts us (departmental head (dh) – school a). the responses point to some of the frustrations the smts experience with the results expectations of caps. implicitly, the ‘good’ school is portrayed as a school which adheres to these results expectations. due to pressure to perform at a certain level, the smts of all three schools highlight the manner in which their leadership practices are geared towards the attainment of results. the responses further indicate that the incoming caps is accompanied by activities such as surveillance of schools by district officials which, in turn is followed by training sessions aimed at developing teachers to comply with caps requirements. it is evident that the smt members of the three schools are positioned to adhere to the requirements associated with the incoming caps in terms of attaining specified results, completing the curriculum content as specified and adhering to mandated due dates as specified, although their contextual factors may impede this. the prescriptive nature of caps coincides with fataar’s (2015: 161) description of the south african curriculum policy orientation as ‘teacher-proof’, ‘tight’ and ‘constrictive’. it seems that caps does not take into account the contextual constraints http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 2682022 40(4): 268-275 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) of township schools. in these working class school contexts, as evident from the comments, teachers devote a lot of time to the pastoral care of learners before actual teaching and learning can take place. the expectations from the dbe in terms of caps point to the ‘onesize-fits-all’ nature of caps, as what is possible in one school, is not necessarily possible in another school due to the impact of context. this links with fataar’s (2015) suggestion that the curriculum policy fails to productively leverage the working class context of schools to engender productive teaching practices, thus indicating the prevailing discourse. 4.2 discursive responses of the schools via their leadership practices the data reveals that the schools respond to the incoming caps discourse by compliance through their leadership practices. the smts are therefore not powerless as they develop their own discursive strategies. however, the smts’ leadership practices are shaped by the incoming discourse, i.e. pressure to comply with the directives of caps by district officials through their surveillance regimes, and the schools’ discursive response is an almost robotic reaction to this incoming discourse. the devices that the schools use to comply with this incoming discourse is their production of the ‘good’ learner and the ‘good’ teacher as a way of pursuing the ‘good’ school, which is advocated by the dbe. their working class context positions them in a deficit way and this positioning informs their response, via their leadership practices, to the incoming discourse. 4.3 setting direction according to leithwood et al. (2006) the leadership practice of setting direction involves the building of a shared vision, fostering the acceptance of group goals, creating high-performance expectations and communicating the direction of the school. the data indicate that all three schools placed a focus on high achievement for all learners due to the academic expectations of the dbe. our goal is 60%. what the wced wants. so our focus is on pass rate as a school (dh – school a). as a school we want to produce better results. the hods have subject meetings and set the targets in those meetings (dh – school c). the curriculum policy expectations are interpreted as a request to achieve results. some of the interviewees mentioned that the poor socio-economic background of their learners prompts them to set goals of high achievement as a means to capacitate learners to escape their harsh township environment. in the words of principal 2 “just to take them out of this environment”. the interviewees of schools a and b are convinced that providing their learners an educational basis that would take them out of their negative township environment will propel these learners to succeed in life. however, taking these learners out of the township environment for their grade 12 year, is only a short term goal as they need money for this, and learners will have to return to the township. the discourse of performativity drives the schools’ direction setting and it becomes a major constituent of their curriculum policy platform, but their materiality constrains them in many ways. in pursuing the production of the ‘good’ school (the expected results), the focus of the construction of the ‘good’ teacher is on high results expectations of the teacher in the enactment of a curriculum policy platform. the ‘good’ teacher is produced out of high levels http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 2692022 40(4): 269-275 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 terhoven discourse in curriculum policy enactment: a focus on leadership practices of (subject) attainment (ball et al., 2012). in the case of the enactment of a curriculum policy platform in south african schools, the ‘good’ teacher is perceived as the teacher who produces good results for their subject in line with dbe expectations. the dbe holds the smt members responsible and accountable if there is a drop in results, while at the same time acknowledging those teachers whose learners perform well by means of public award ceremonies. in a similar vein, the smt holds teachers responsible for the attainment of the expected results. as indicated by the smt members, their goals and vision are translated via meetings, one-on-one discussions with learners and morning staff briefings with a main focus on results. as the goals are already predetermined by the dbe, it leaves no space for innovation and creativity of the smt. discourse structures the way they think and do things. in line with this, using foucault, ball (2006: 48) explains that “we do not speak discourse, discourse speaks us”. 4.4 developing people this leadership practice centres around providing individualised support, intellectual stimulation and the modelling of appropriate values and practice (klar & brewer, 2013). the responses from the interviews indicate that the three schools in this study attempt to incorporate these aspects of development into their enactment of a curriculum policy platform at the school, although it does not materialise as outlined by this leadership practice, due to their context. development in the schools is mainly focused on increasing the teachers’ subject teaching capacity to achieve the results expectations of the dbe. you see, but they [wced] are looking at the subject. it’s content of the subject. how the subject can be dealt with in order for the learners to understand very quickly (principal 2). school a’s principal persuades his teachers to attend development programmes, by luring them with the possibility of upgrading their classrooms with smart boards. having smart boards is expected to assist teachers with their teaching as the school currently has to cope with a lack of resources which hampers their curriculum delivery. peer teaching, seminars focusing on specific subject content and advice from subject advisers are some of the strategies that are used to assist and enforce the expected teaching capacity of teachers, with the aim of improving student results. based on the comments and following ball et al. (2012) the curriculum policy document is read and interpreted as specific subject content knowledge which has to be conveyed in a specific manner within a specified time frame. there is no indication of intellectual stimulation for teachers. the principals and smt members also indicated that they provide individualised moral and social support as part of their development initiatives due to the challenging nature of their context: school a: my support to the teachers, number one, is a word of encouragement. i’ve always made it a point, every morning. i’m a very spiritual person. every morning i ensure that, you know, there’s a positive verse that i read for people, you know, from the bible (principal 1). this type of support is expected to motivate teachers to cope with their contextual challenges and to still produce results, despite adverse circumstances. it is evident that the schools do not have a fixed program for development, but that the principals and smt members http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 2702022 40(4): 270-275 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) are aware of the development that is needed within their schools, especially regarding the managing of large classes and disciplining of often unruly learners which is characteristic of their working class school contexts. from the responses it appears that development is done on an ad hoc basis or provided by the dbe. the dh of school a’s comment refers to the intertextuality (ball et al., 2012) of policy when she mentions that the iqms process influences the development aspect related to the curriculum policy. she raises the point that if development in specific aspects is not requested on the teacher’s personal growth plan (pgp) of the iqms, it will not be endeavoured by the school. development at school level is seen to be iqms driven and not automatically incited by the smt. on the other hand, the principal of school b’s comment points to the association of caps with time. according to him, the content of caps for the different subjects takes too much time already and they need to focus on finishing the curriculum. therefore, they do not have enough time to accommodate certain development programmes. the principal of school a also extends the construction of the ‘good’ teacher to their dress code: i’m very strict when it comes to dress code. you don’t come here wearing tekkies and a beanie as teachers (principal 1). this principal is of the opinion that ‘’students become what they see’’. in other words, if teachers are dressed appropriately, it may motivate learners to have high expectations of themselves. the ‘good’ teacher is thus dressed in a manner that is expected to motivate learners to excel in their school work. apart from teacher development, the smts indicated that they focus on the development of their learners as well. the development of their learners focuses mainly on support activities aimed at improving the knowledge of learners in order to promote achievement. all three schools indicate that the development of the learners centres around the provision of extra classes as a means to improve the learners’ content knowledge for specific subjects, to attain results. the ‘good’ learner is thus expected to attend these classes. furthermore, school a provides the necessary space for learners to study at school after hours and some teachers take learners into their homes to support and develop them. at school a, they also direct learners into selecting specific subjects which they believe learners will be better at. learners are thus lured into certain subjects which may produce ‘better’ results for the school. 4.5 redesigning the organisation the third core leadership practice involves the building of collaborative cultures, modifying organisational structures to nurture collaboration, building productive relations with families and communities and connecting the school to the wider community (klar & brewer, 2013). in exploring this leadership practice, all three schools in this study indicated that they endeavour to build collaborative cultures as a means to improve results, albeit in differing ways and not always successful. the smt members believe that collaboration will enhance the teaching and learning experience as this may lead to a uniform interpretation and effective implementation of the curriculum policy in pursuit of results as township schools are usually characterised by fragmented relationships. the ‘good’ teacher is thus depicted as the teacher who has good interpersonal relationships and who can work in a team. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 2712022 40(4): 271-275 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 terhoven discourse in curriculum policy enactment: a focus on leadership practices the schools’ attempts at building collaborative cultures translate into the following activities: our departments sit together and plan together. they work together (school b dh). we have our morning briefing and then state our challenges which we have as a school in general, curriculum wise, discipline wise and all these things (school c dh). according to the interviewees, collaboration in these schools is promoted through the expectations of the principals and smts for the different subject departments to work together. according to smt members, collaboration among the subject departments is expected to raise the level of teaching and learning with the aim of improving results. however, school a’s dh indicated that collaboration does not always happen as expected as relationships between teachers may be volatile. this comment on fragmented relationships within their schools is supported by the comments of the three principals. in the case of school a, the principal commented that the harshness of their working class context restricts collaboration as many teachers do not have the passion to teach at the school anymore. school b’s principal commented on the negative attitude that some teachers may have when they are reprimanded if they did not follow instructions correctly. school c’s principal highlights their professional challenge of a temporary rotating smt as having a negative influence on teachers who may aim for promotion posts. he added that this may result in teachers who sabotage each other’s work, particularly with regard to the completion of administrative duties which has specific due dates. the responses indicate that although the smts attempt to redesign the schools through meetings and expectations of collaborative planning, it is hampered by poor human relations. the principals of schools b and c indicated that they place a high focus on adhering to dbe due dates for the completion of school-based assessment tasks. they believe that they can ensure this adherence by following dbe protocol, such as the hierarchy of responsibilities, as it allows them to hold the dhs and deputy principals accountable. the constant surveillance by the dbe regarding the completion of assessments coerces them to follow protocol. 4.6 managing teaching and learning this leadership practice entails staffing the instructional programme, monitoring the progress of learners, teachers and the school, providing instructional support, aligning resources and buffering staff from distractions to their work (klar & brewer, 2013). the previous three leadership practices that were presented culminate into this leadership practice. the strategies associated with the management of teaching and learning is an attempt to ensure that the direction that is set, is adhered to, that the development of teachers and learners are focused on meeting the set goals, and that the redesign of the organisation is pursued. recruiting teachers and allocating subjects to teachers, pose some challenges. at school c, the principal indicated that they had the challenge of implementing the wced policy whereby teachers had to be appointed if they were in service of the school for more than six months. school c’s principal commented as follows: we don’t really have teachers who are qualified for lo [life orientation] and the challenge emanates from a circular last year which said that educators who had been in the system for 6 months should be automatically converted to permanency. there was no way of looking at the school’s needs. it was an instruction. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 2722022 40(4): 272-275 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) this resulted in the school not being able to appoint teachers with the necessary qualification, for specific subjects. some teachers are thus teaching in a subject field for which they are not qualified. this adds pressure on how teaching and learning are managed. one of the major aspects of the management of teaching and learning that was emphasised by the schools is the monitoring and moderation process. according to the smt members they are directed by the subject advisers in terms of what and how they should interpret the curriculum policy and this informs the actions of their management of the teaching and learning process. again, this points to the directive role of the dbe in this leadership practice. school c indicated the following: the hod [dh] reports to the deputy curriculum who also monitors that the curriculum standard is acceptable. we also check our standards against other high schools through external moderation, having another school moderate (dh). there is a strong emphasis on monitoring and moderation to ensure compliance. the smt is positioned by the incoming discourse of surveillance and they respond to this with their own surveillance. the monitoring of the curriculum, according to the smt members, encompasses class visits to make sure that teachers are teaching, monitoring student workbooks to ensure that they are up to date and monitoring whether the assessment tasks have been completed. specific tools such as a check-up tool, a catch-up programme and the monitoring of learners’ books are instituted by the smt members to assist with the monitoring of the curriculum. teachers and learners are thus under constant surveillance. in buffering staff from distractions to their work, i.e. ensuring that the teachers are able to remain focused on their work, all three principals referred to the discourse of the progressive discipline of teachers as a way of buffering them from distractions to their work. the principals view progressive discipline as a means of supporting teachers and securing the teaching and learning process at their respective schools. in other words, progressive discipline is being used as a means of constructing the ‘good’ teacher by disciplining teachers to act in a specific way. school a’s principal indicated the following: you want to put them on the wellness program. for the june reports to be issued this year, i had to lock the gate, keep the key with me, i say nobody leaves the school. nobody leaves the school until i get all the marks. the responses indicate that the principals mainly rely on progressive disciplinary measures to ensure that teachers stay focused on what they have to complete and by when. they believe that doing it in this way ensures that dbe expectations such as an improvement of results and adhering to due dates are achieved. they view the process of progressive discipline as a tool in the production of the ‘good’ teacher. they monitor and evaluate their teachers’ compliance with the caps requirements and if teachers do not comply, they are charged with progressive disciplinary measures, which indicate the way the smt wants policy to be ‘’thought of, talked about and written about’’ (ball, 1993: 14). 5. conclusion this paper explored and analysed how various aspects of the incoming discourse of caps affect the schools and how the schools respond, and continue to produce their own discourse through the implementation of certain artefacts and activities which becomes part of how they live the policy. in this article i focused on how the incoming discourse (caps) positions http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 2732022 40(4): 273-275 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 terhoven discourse in curriculum policy enactment: a focus on leadership practices working class schools and how this incoming discourse crystallises into the schools’ own discursive responses to construct a curriculum policy platform. through the schools’ own discourses i explored how discourse fabricates and sets up the terrain of operability of the smt members. relating to the incoming discourse of caps, there is an entangled relationship between the discourse and the real and this is visible in the way the dbe entices teachers with rewards (artefacts) such as certificates of acknowledgement if their subject performs well in the nsc examination. as teachers seek acknowledgement, they follow the incoming discourse. there is a notion of power which is evident in the control exercised by both the incoming discourse as well as the smts’ discursive responses. implicit in the expectations and prescriptions of caps are the notion of the ‘good’ learner and the notion of the ‘good’ teacher which is expected to produce the ‘good’ school, as envisaged by the dbe. based on the smts’ responses it is derived that the ‘good’ learner is portrayed as the learner who has a textbook and who performs well in the assessment. further analysis of the responses reveal that the ‘good’ teacher is systematically shaped as the teacher who obtains the expected results in their subject, who goes to great lengths to source textbook information, who teaches extra classes and who adheres to due dates from the dbe. it is expected that the production of the ‘good’ learner and the ‘good’ teacher will lead to the production of a ‘good’ school as envisaged by the dbe. the discussion indicates that the 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recontextualising policy discourses: a bernsteinian perspective on policy interpretation, translation, enactment. journal of education policy, 28(4): 465-480. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2013.770554 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6003 https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v30n4a392 https://doi.org/10.4102/ajcd.v3i1.36 https://bit.ly/3f0mdyl https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2013.770554 pie 33(2) june 2015.indb perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 113 the politics of pleasure in sexuality education: pleasure bound louisa allen, mary lou rasmussen & mary quinlivan (eds) routledge/routledge research in education, 2014 204 pages isbn: 978-0-415-81226reviewed by: pedro pinto in introducing the politics of pleasure in sexuality education: pleasure bound, louisa allen, mary lou rasmussen and kathleen quinlivan (2014: 4) talk to the notion of “meeting at the crossroads” in order to make sense of their editorial endeavour. they present the book as a site where diverse critical views of pleasure’s possibilities and challenges, in and outside school, encounter and converse. in offering a collection of chaptered contributions from diverse geographies, disciplines and concerns about pleasure’s inclusion in comprehensive sexuality pedagogies, they work to “putting pleasure under pressure”, by bringing together perspectives that both illuminate and question, in various ways, the politics for its inclusion. instead of “ruminating about how far a discourse of pleasure and desire has progressed in sexuality education” (2014: 10), they invite us into the crossroads as a place made to “provoke a reconfiguration of thought” and allow for “new beginnings” (2014: 4). indeed, as the editors hope for in their after-word(s), the collection stimulates “an intra-activity that produces new possibilities for thinking about pleasure in sexuality education” (2014: 186), as opposed to an inter-active set of ideas kept apart from each other. not only can “the chapter boundaries … be seen as porous and unfolding into each other” (2014: 186), but the book also premises that pleasures’ uses (and absences) in sexuality education are, from the outset, political and intra-actively shaped. this is an important framing, since it acknowledges not only the complexities intrinsic to understandings of pleasure, but also their “necessary exclusions”. pedro pinto (university and department/school): post-doctoral fellow of the critical studies in sexualities and reproduction (cssr), rhodes university e-mail: pierrelepoint@hotmail.com / p.pinto@ru.ac.za perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 114 it is at this place of intra-activity and new beginnings that this book review is voiced. standing at the crossroads, i shall highlight (in addition to the authors’ discussion of pleasure in the curriculum) three themes that circulate in and within the chapters: the discourse of pornography as an (im)possible pedagogic subject and material; the tensions between religion and secularism within the liberal state, and the politics of morality as a possible new beginning to thinking about sexualities education. opening the collection, sara mcclelland and michel fine revisit and extend their work on school-based sexuality education. the chapter provides readers with “the tapestry” (2014: 17) of theoretical and methodological propositions, from fine’s seminal 1988 piece on “the missing discourse of desire” to the subsequent development of their framework from 2006 onwards, “thick desire”. by understanding sexual desire outside “hearts, minds, and genitals” (2014:, 16), they could view the interweaving implications of neoliberal ideology and evangelical christian morality in the us public policy aimed at adolescents, and in abstinence-only-until-marriage federal-funded programmes, in particular. they observed how, in this environment where desire is “no longer missing but vilified” (2014: 14), young bodies, especially female, same-sex desiring and of colour, are hastily considered “at risk” and “excessive”, under increased surveillance thereof. the standpoint of thickness also led them to problematising the privileged role of young participants’ voices in feminist research, in which they found expressions of pleasure and desire being too easily translated as evidence of freedom. the next four chapters engage with the idea of missing discourses in sexuality education and, more particularly, in the classroom. drawing from her own teaching experience in the uk, julia hirst offers practical ideas to effectively engage students in open discussions on sexual pleasure, and to strategically use a health and human rights agenda to support this in educational settings surrounded by anxieties with sexual initiation and risk-taking behaviour. this is a relevant contribution for comprehensive sexuality educators dealing with school environments where pleasure’s curricular inclusion is expected to incite young people to precocious and deviant experiences of sexuality. similarly, roger ingham notes the silence in which masturbation is kept in sex and relationships education programmes in the uk, especially concerning young women. he attempts to make way toward its curricular inclusion by drawing on health discourses that correlate masturbation with the sexual well-being and safety of the young. although recognising the heightened contestation that such a call would encounter within current institutional and political arrangements, ingham envisions a pedagogical reconfiguration and suggests that “parents and carers can do more to normalise activities that their children experiment with to achieve pleasurable feelings” (2014: 74). families are also to play an important role in warranting children’s right to pleasure. the politics of pleasure in sexuality education: pleasure bound pedro pinto 115 quinlivan addresses the question posed by a student, aroha, in a year 9 health classroom – “what’s wrong with looking at porn?” (her teacher never answered this question.) this question, she argues, “acknowledges that the global commodification of sexuality produces complex and paradoxical dilemmas for young people (and adults alike)” (2014: 81). with this in mind, quinlivan engages in a conversation with artist linda james about the possibilities of using her paintings in sexuality education classrooms to make sense of, and engage students in discussions about mainstream representations of bodies and sexualities, “the ways in which sexualities are commodified in an era of consumption” (2014: 79). despite the insightfulness of their talk, i believe quinlivan’s chapter reflects on aroha’s question without really answering it. like aroha, one is left thinking that there might be something wrong with looking at pornography, although it is never clear as to what the problem may be. it is also not clear to what extent porn has room in comprehensive sexuality education – simply as subject and/or as representation, if taken up only as an issue and a matter of negotiation, or also as a possibility for pleasure, humour and criticality. certainly, none of the contributions mentioning porn express any discontent about introducing the subject into schools. indeed, hirst’s strategies to initiate discussions in the classroom include brainstorms that “inevitably list” the topic of pornography (2014: 44), and allen registers mainstream porn as “a legitimate source of information” about bodies and pleasures (2014: 174). however, i am of the opinion that allen too quickly abandons the thickness of her argument to conclude that mainstream porn “is unlikely to be helpful in enabling young people to experience sexual activity in mutually negotiated and pleasurable ways” (2014: 174). at the crossroads of these arguments, i see the looming of familiar oppositions between art and low culture, the erotic and the explicit, soft and harmful representations of sexuality; i see an opportunity for a set of moralising ideas to take root, all of which have been challenged in the critical debates on ‘sexualisation’ and ‘pornification’ referred to in the editors’ introduction and after-word(s). if aroha’s question invites “an (admittedly contentious) exploration of the politics of pleasure that recognise the mutually intertwined affordances and limitations of ways in which understandings of pleasure are currently being shaped” (quilivan, 2014: 81), it would be useful, for the sake of this project, if educators and researchers could explain what, in their opinion, is wrong with porn, and attempt to signal the pleasures and modes of sexual representation that their views (and possible lack of knowledge about the plethora of existing pornographies) necessarily exclude. one is obviously aware of how unbearably contested it would be, even within the most progressive school settings and communities, to promote discussions with students about pornographic cultures and aesthetics, various mainstream trends, alternative, gender-subversive forms of pornographic representation, or even – god forbid – to watch, read, and listen to these in the classroom. nevertheless, as i believe most critical theorists of ‘sexualisation’ would agree, the fact that comprehensive sexuality education researchers do not acknowledge pornography as pleasurable, and as a possible space of resistance against normative discourses and oppression leaves a field of silences perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 116 available to be re-colonised with old anxieties and moralistic rhetoric about porn’s effects (not to mention sex work). fida sanjakdar focuses on the missing discourse of pleasure in australian islamic sexuality education, which she finds to merely replicate the (secularist) pedagogical mode adopted in many other schools. working “to reposition the place and value of religious interpretation in discourses of sexuality” (2014: 97), she offers a thoughtprovoking chapter that advocates the inclusion of the qur’an and other religious texts in islamic schools’ sexuality curricula. sanjakdar explains that “lovemaking in islam is viewed as an art form”, and that islamic scriptures underline “the importance of artful lovemaking and refining pleasure, and people should be encouraged to venerate the flesh, to attend to the preliminaries of lovemaking, to sexual play, and to fantasy” (2014: 104). while this may be a useful frame to engage students with positive understandings of pleasure and sexual exploration, it is important to bear in mind that the art of pleasure, islamic or otherwise, also works as a technology of power over bodies and relationships. this is not an alien argument in this chapter, as we are told that “islam regulates appropriate sexual pleasure keeping it in certain boundaries and clearly demarcates specific gender roles” (2014: 103). sanjakdar performs a thoughtful attempt to reconcile islamic sexual scripts with feminist perspectives on gender asymmetries in heterosexual relationships. my immediate concern, in this instance, is with young people who may find it difficult to recognise and make sense of their sexual subjectivities within (any) religious texts where anal, oral and sadomasochist sex, and non-marital and homosexual experiences of sexuality are explicitly forbidden or condemned. what does it mean for the muslim queer pupil to be “a responsible agent of one’s own sexuality” (2014: 108) when navigating within scriptural discourses about “the harmony of sexes, the union of the sexes, and their mutual connections” (2014: 110)? considering that, “when perceived as sinful or aberrant, sexual pleasure could be experienced with guilt and turmoil” (2014: 109), what might then be the role of religious texts in promoting queer pleasures and visibility in, and outside the classroom? if “focusing muslim students’ attention on the life experiences of persons whose sexual orientation differs from those of the majority is important” (2014: 109), then these questions must be considered. the following two contributions engage with ‘thick desire’ more critically. mary lou rasmussen argues that fine and mcclelland’s work “is characterised by the frame of sexularism” (2014: 156), meaning it assumes sexual liberation as “the fruit of secularism” (joan scott, cited by rasmussen, 2014: 166). drawing on a critique that meets sanjakdar’s claims for cultural diversity in comprehensive sexuality education, rasmussen illuminates the divide between secularism and religion embedded in progressive politics, which forcefully opposes preoccupations with public health and young people’s human rights (on the secular side) to morality and the realm of the private (on the religious side). she cautions that this frame pushes researchers and educators to disregard “the legitimate and profound differences within communities and relationships about how pleasure might be ethically constituted” (2014: 166). the politics of pleasure in sexuality education: pleasure bound pedro pinto 117 catriona macleod and louise vincent critique the human rights rhetoric underpinning ‘thick desire’, arguing that this framework, while resisting a neo-liberal discourse of individual responsibility, ultimately relies on one’s responsibility to access state support and struggle against injustices. engaged with feminist, queer, and disability-focused re-workings of citizenship theory, they introduce a critical pedagogy that positions sexual and reproductive citizenship in the interstice of status and practice, and of the public and private. using examples from south africa, they make a case for the adoption of this framework as a way for “educators-as-learners and learners-as-educators” (2014: 131) to engage more reflexively with the moral dilemmas and political paradoxes currently grappled with in comprehensive sexuality education. finally, the contributions of sharon lamb and louisa allen challenge the pleasure imperative widely reproduced in feminist discourse. both chapters address the implications of a pleasure-positive paradigm in feminist understandings of sexuality education, although by means of different repertoires. lamb draws on feminist constructions of pleasure whose expectation she considers too high and hard to manage, as these “can be manipulated to serve a number of emancipatory or repressive themes” (2014: 148). allen lists a number of feminist hopes for including a discourse of pleasure in sexuality education and illustrates how these may be unexpectedly undermined, concluding that “it is impossible to put pleasure to work for particular ends” (2014: 182). these two chapters do offer a fertile soil to rethinking feminist moral agendas. overall, i consider that the book’s chapters point towards critical pedagogies of sexuality and reproduction that understand agency, not as an attribute of knowing subjects, but rather as “the parts that we continuously play” (editors, 2014: 187) in the moulding of pleasures and desires; pedagogies that use frameworks of citizenship that in advance interrogate the meanings of a “responsible, healthy, and productive citizenship” (sanjakdar, 2014: 104). i long for philosophies of pleasure that remind us about a simple yet crucial matter: “pleasure does not necessarily feel good” (annamarie jagose, cited by allen, 2014: 180). and, in all this, i see a landscape emerging that could be regarded as the politics of morality in sexuality education. that, however, is the beginning of a new conversation. i editorial rural education and rural realities: the politics and possibilities of rural research in southern africa “we consider land as our strength. we have life because of our fields” (emerging voices report, 2005:26) rurality studies and research emerged from established disciplines such as agricultural sciences (maat, 2001), agricultural education (phipps, osborne, dyer & ball, 2007) and human geography (cloke, crang & goodwin, 2004). with regards to the latter, human geography and urbanisation studies (reader, 2004) developed almost bifocally with the realisation that the sustainability of conurbations and cities needed to be premised on an understanding of sustainable rural livelihoods, beyond the mass agricultural production associated with intensive industrialised agricultural planning, clearing, and planting. agricultural sciences do not conventionally focus on rural life as a social activity in which the fabric of human relations and community enable (and sometimes disable) sustainable economic agricultural development. in more recent times, food and nutrition security have also shifted in focus from the phenomenon of the urban poor to a realisation that, without richly textured and empowered rural communities, the connection between small and large-scale agricultural production and food security becomes more attenuated and dispersed. in all of this, education, as a means for developing environmental awareness, addressing societal challenges, and enabling individual and communal aspirations to social mobility and transformation, remains a critical and yet underexplored dimension of rural life, whether based on agricultural or other social activity. as with most issues, there is a history to this. in south africa successive mass migrations, for example, the mfecane (circa 1779-1840), and colonial wars (not least of which was the first south african war 1880-1881 and the second south african war 1899-1902) resulted in what might be termed the progressive destabilisation of rural livelihoods in south africa. features of this destabilisation included the collapse of subsistence farming, the dispossession of indigenous black groups of their land, the economic marginalisation and near-genocide of white and black settler groups (achieving notoriety in the concentration camps established by the colonial british, and not excluding the many wars of colonial ‘pacification’ practised by both dutch and british settler populations on colonised peoples, let alone those internecine wars practised by various black groups on each other) (thompson, 2001). briefly, by 1932 the consolidation of colonial control in south africa had had the effect of causing mass starvation and the near collapse of rural life, for both the black and white population. framed within our colonial history, it is thus not surprising that the first considered perspective on rural livelihoods, the carnegie commission of 1932, considered the problem of dispossessed peoples as a ‘white’ and, in particular, a ‘white afrikaner’ problem in relation to the challenges associated with unplanned urbanisation. that the majority of the population was similarly dispossessed, even less enfranchised, and almost invisible in colonial accounts of this period, was hardly noted. the shift of black people into townships was a necessary part of sustaining the mining economies of the witwatersrand. and, if rural community life continued to exist, then the labour required for sugar and cash crops in the former colonies of natal and the (eastern) cape necessitated the development of what came to be termed ‘bantustans’. history appears to have occluded the rural poor. rural education, as part of any consideration, remained accessible to the few who could access missionary stations. it is only after 2000 that the second considered perspective on rurality and rural livelihoods is to be found in the form of the emerging voices report (2005). in this report, when compared to the carnegie report (1932), the shifts are multiple. rather than focus on one ethnic group, the report focuses on rural communities and schools, and the role of community ii and education in the development of rural livelihoods that are sustainable. furthermore, while both reports were occasioned by social crises (unemployment, on the one hand, and rural deprivation in the age of hiv and aids, on the other), the emerging voices report (2005) is the first to address education as a focus, thus raising the awareness of the role education should play in both poverty alleviation and the development of sustainable rural livelihoods. the collection of articles in this special issue of perspectives in education seeks to further deepen the scholarship and quality of reflection in relation to education and rural communities. rural education and rurality research has also shifted as scholarship developed in relation to areas such as environmental education where the emphasis has shifted from conservation to sustainable development. the need for citizens to conserve and indeed develop the environment is well known and popularly accessible through films such as al gore’s an inconvenient truth and at policy level well described in the kyoto protocol (2005) in which carbon emission level targets have been set and areas of the world identified as priorities for further conservation efforts. but, almost in contrary terms, discourses of the late 20th century, while acknowledging the critical role the environment (the rural) must play in our collective survival, tend still to characterise rural communities as socially backward and reactionary. this double-face constitutes a fantasy whereby the innocence of the rural exists in binaries as a foil to the corruption of the urban; the naivety of the rural contrasts to the sophistication of the urban; the ignorance of the rural and the knowing of the urban. it is certain that these binaries have long histories dating back to the enlightenment and beyond. the fantasy also has consequences, not least of which are consequences for rural schools and communities. for example, in south africa it was possible in the 1960s to conceive of the bantustans as rural ‘homelands’ that could sustain forced relocation. however, in reality such areas were often semi-desert unable to sustain even subsistence farming. the fantasy had consequences in 1996 when the curriculum statements for language, for example, presuppose multilingual and urban classrooms, adequately trained teachers and well-resourced schools. one continuity between the complexities of then and now can be simplified: almost all policy generated by the middle class in south africa has served a mainly urban elite; the emerging voices report (2005:139) terms policy frameworks as “insufficiently sensitive”. no intervention has succeeded in shifting an outrage such as the fact that in rural areas, domestic and other labour is undertaken by children in south africa (emerging voices report, 2005:26). paradoxically while unemployment is high in rural areas, such areas are both aged and juvenile. in considering the notion of rurality, marsden (2006) construes rurality as a signifier which is transformative, capable of changing behaviour and affecting the motivation of teachers, community workers, and learners. research from projects located in rural areas and from projects focusing on the challenges associated with rurality demonstrates that the very generative and transformative nature of rurality serves both to inform and to delimit the effectiveness of intervention programmes designed, often with the best of intentions in mind, for education, health care, job creation, and poverty alleviation. however, it remains a startling and disturbing fact that seventeen years after south africa’s first democratic elections, very little has changed in rural areas. as has been noted in the emerging voices report (2005:141): “[…] there is a nagging feeling that unless the real differences between urban and rural areas are appreciated and given special attention, inequalities will persist and come to haunt future generations”. this suggests that initiatives in teacher education remain mostly ineffective since they do not address systemic challenges. the fact is that ‘ruralities’ are core to the identity of many rural community-based professionals. it is perhaps not surprising, given the urban-focused, middle-class teacher education curricula of the past two decades (in which obe and other participatory pedagogies are endorsed), that education in south africa’s rural areas remains beset with problems and challenges simply not considered within policy, theoretical, and pragmatic initiatives. this special issue, rural education and rural realities: the politics and possibilities of rural research in southern africa, originates from an international symposium, every voice counts: critical partnerships for teacher education and rural communities, held in durban, at the killie campbell collections, on 26-27 february 2009. the symposium was envisaged around the work done in the nrf-funded every vii voice counts: teacher development in rural communities in the age of aids,1 a research niche area in the university of kwazulu-natal faculty of education, bringing together both national and international academics to share their work and to debate issues on rural education in the context of hiv and aids. in order to contextualise the work at the symposium, a video documentary, our photos, our videos, our stories (mak, mitchell & stuart, 2005) provided a glimpse of the rural community where the work of the project is undertaken, but also clearly allowing the community voices to be heard on the challenges they face in the context of hiv and aids. this provided the backdrop for the delivery and robust discussion of more than 20 papers – by experienced researchers, emerging researchers and postgraduate students – to an audience of over 45 delegates. the presenters were invited to submit their papers for publication in an edited book or a special issue. the edited book school-university partnerships for educational change in rural south africa: particular challenges and practical cases has been published, and this special issue contains some of the papers presented at the international symposium as well as other solicited papers we as editors thought useful in furthering debates on rural education and rurality. this special issue therefore seeks to interrogate, disrupt, and recast assumptions and perceptions concerning rurality and rural education, in particular. we believe that rurality studies is an area of research deserving and in need of its own focus, given the paucity of research which describes sustainable and successful interventions located in rural areas. we argue that rurality is not a static-passive, the ‘background’ for teaching, community work, and research. we suggest that rurality is an active agent and central, both as lived experience and as a social and transformative agent in which teachers and community workers are changed. what emerges further from such reflections is that education as received by learners and educators is a “placed resource” (blommaert, 2002:20) where “resources that are functional in one particular place […] become dysfunctional as soon as they are moved into other places”. understanding how such resources are received and made effective by student-teachers across a variety of education contexts (urban, rural, middle class, working class) is the key issue affecting the quality of teaching and learning in 21st century-south africa. the first article by moletsane is a position paper, repositioning educational research on rurality and rural education in south africa: beyond deficit paradigms. she offers critical reflections on the nature of rurality and rural realities, goes on to highlight some limitations of dominant research paradigms in relation to social change, and puts forward an argument for using participatory visual methods for conducting research and simultaneously making a difference in the lives of participants and those around them. the collection of three articles, by balfour, islam, and ebersöhn and ferreira respectively, speak to both pre-service and in-service teacher development in a rural context. balfour’s article, rurality research and rural education: exploratory and explanatory power, illustrates how data generated through focus group discussions, individual interviews, as well as drawings in a rural teacher education project could be used to develop theory, in this instance, a generative theory of rurality, and how it might be used to understand, interrogate and advance the quality of both teacher development and education in rural communities. ebersöhn and ferreira in their article, rurality and resilience in education: placebased partnerships and agency to moderate time and space constraints, draw on the generative theory developed by balfour, mitchell and moletsane (2008) to make sense of observation and visual data on how forces, agencies and resources act, move, pull and push when adversity and resilience are present in a rural school context. their explication of place-based partnerships provides a lead in for islam’s article, understanding pre-service teacher education discourses in communities of practice: a reflection from an intervention in rural south africa, which draws on an evaluation experience of a teacher education professional development project, and concludes that the concept of a community of practice is powerful in providing spaces for self-reflection to pre-service teachers and challenging the dominant urban-based teacher education discourses in relation to rural schools. the next collection of four articles addresses the experiences of teachers within rural classrooms across a variety of disciplines. the first two articles examine teachers’ identity construction in rural schools and how such constructions shape their teaching practice. the other two articles address teachers’ experiences of teaching specific subjects within rural classrooms and how they handle the challenges viii faced. in revisiting rurality and schooling: a teacher’s story, pillay and saloojee use life history and collage to offer some insight into what it means to be a teacher in a rural school and the mechanisms a teacher may employ to survive the challenges of working in a rural context. d’amant’s article, within and between the old and the new: teachers becoming inclusive practitioners, continues the debate by using narratives of teachers’ experiences of inclusive education within rural classrooms in post-apartheid south africa in order to provide an understanding of the influence of the historic principle of exclusion on how teachers construct their teaching identities. the third article in this collection, khau’s “our culture does not allow that”: exploring the challenges of sexuality education in rural communities, speaks to the lack of fit between traditional ways of teaching about sexuality and modern sexuality education. the article uses focus group discussions to explore teachers’ experiences of sexuality education in rural classrooms and how they negotiate the slippery ground between a rural lifestyle steeped in traditional cultures, and formal education. lastly, the article by mentz et al., the diverse educational needs and challenges of information technology teachers in two black rural schools, investigates the unique challenges and needs of information technology teachers within black rural schools. their paper highlights some of the contextual issues that inhibit effective teaching of it and provides some suggestions on how these can be met in order to empower the teachers. the fourth collection of articles draws attention to the children living in rural areas. de lange, olivier, geldenhuys and mitchell, in their article rural school children picturing family life, offer some views on the everyday lives of the children who live and grow up on a farm, positioning rurality as an active agent and central to the lived experiences of these children attending a farm school. through the use of drawings the children provide an insider local perspective on growing up on a farm in a rural environment. morojele and muthukrishna, in their article the journey to school: space, geography and experiences of rural children, use participatory methodologies to focus on how children express their agency in their negotiation of the school journey, and represent rural children as heterogeneous with the capacity to navigate their localities in complex and autonomous ways. mahlomaholo’s article, early school leavers and sustainable learning environments in rural contexts, draws attention to the similarities and differences between rural and urban contexts, and argues that curriculum practices be customised to the needs and conditions in the rural settings. the purpose of this is to create sustainable learning environments in order to stem the high rates of learner attrition. the final article in the special issue, hlalele’s social justice and rural education in south africa, rounds off the special issue with another theoretical paper. hlalele works from a distributive social justice paradigm pointing to a proper distribution of social benefits and burdens among members of society. accordingly, rural education needs to embrace difference, shape demands and model social benefits in accordance with the realities of a particular rural setting, and in this way contribute to social justice as a humanising process. as the scholarship concerning rural education grows in south africa, we anticipate an ever more critical engagement with place as a facet of professional identity, and the extent to which professional development needs to account for place as part of the teacher education curriculum. we know that teacher burn-out, learner disaffection and underperformance have been noted as problems especially evident in rural schools. without a strong professional identity, characterised by professional competence, high levels of academic specialisation, and sustained by communities of practice and support, the role of the teacher is compromised in contexts already compromised. appiah (2005) suggests that in a globalised world (of which rural areas are part) there exists the danger that education and social mobility enable a kind of ‘disconnect’ between people and the “special obligations” (appiah, 2005:225) to place and community. in rural education, as opposed to education in rural areas, there is an opportunity to affirm community, to attend with special focus to the challenges that place poses to rural education, and thus also to the quality and sustainability of rural (and ultimately also urban) life. references appiah ka 2005. the ethics of identity. princeton: princeton university press. ix balfour rj, mitchell c & moletsane r 2008. troubling contexts: toward a generative theory of rurality as education research. journal of rural and community development, 3(3):95-107. blommaert j 2002, april. writing in the margins: notes on a sociolinguistics of globalisation. working papers on language, power and identity no. 13. african languages and culures, university of ghent. retrieved on 12 june 2008 from 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foundation & hsrc 2005. emerging voices: a report on education in south african rural communities. researched for the nelson mandela foundation by the human sciences research council, with the education policy consortium. phipps lj, osborne ew, dyer je & ball al 2007. handbook on agricultural education in public schools. 6th edition. new york: delmar cengage learning. reader j 2004. cities. new york: atlantic monthly press. thompson l 2001. a history of south africa. 3rd edition. cambridge, mass: yale university press. robert j. balfour naydene de lange ‘mathabo khau (guest editors) 60 transformation of teaching quality in secondary school education: teachers’ conception abstract teaching is a versatile and valued exercise that is geared towards bringing about achievement in students’ learning. in view of the importance of teaching, there is need for it to be effective and of good quality. education in secondary school within south africa is seen as an imperative sub-sector in the educational system that aids the growth of the economic system through transformation. although, there are various transformational systems to improve teaching quality in education, it is generally believed that there is no common agreement on what transformation systems entail in secondary school education in developing nations. this study investigates the perceptions of teachers in the transformation of teaching quality education in secondary schools. eight teachers were selected from four secondary schools in the east london education district in south africa. the respondents varied in gender, age, years of teaching experience, academic qualifications and professional qualifications. the study used semi-structured interviews to gather data. a thematic approach was used for data analysis while trustworthiness was adopted for the validity of the instrument. the findings revealed that some of the teachers were aware of the need for transformation to improve the secondary school education system in south africa. however, it was noticed that there was no adequate training and monitoring on the use of infrastructure. in addition, the findings further indicated that some teachers have a negative perception toward any additional role in transforming and improving the quality of teaching. furthermore, the findings also indicated that transformation in teaching should be the responsibility of the government and head of schools. in light of this, the study recommended that policy makers should increase the budget on secondary school education as well as monitor the process of implementation to achieve the desired goal. moreover, there should be regular effective training and workshops for teachers in secondary schools to remind them of their roles and responsibilities in teaching. keywords: education, conception, interview, quality, secondary education, teachers, teaching, transformation 1. introduction teaching connotes the activities that the teachers do to impact ideas and knowledge into the learners. to this effect, the teacher has the onerous task of arousing the interest of the pupil to participate actively in the teaching-learning process. in another vein, olaitan and agusiobo (2001) hold ojo, o.a faculty of education, university of fort hare, east london campus, south africa. email: oojo@ufh.ac.za adu, e.o faculty of education, university of fort hare, east london campus, south africa. email: eadu@ufh.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i2.5 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(2): 60-72 © uv/ufs mailto:oojo@ufh.ac.za mailto:eadu@ufh.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.5 61 ojo & adu re-imagining higher education leadership that teaching is a means to inculcate desirable changes in human abilities and behaviours. this indicates that the term teaching is meant to cause the learners to make certain desirable changes in their behavioural patterns, which involves classroom chatting between teacher and pupils within certain defined activities. teaching then implies and involves not only a change in behaviours but also a means of sharing and communicating that usually result in the growth and development of a pupil in terms of knowledge, skills and attitude. odor (2001) throws further light on the concept of teaching by submitting that teaching is the process of guiding, stimulating, motivating and evaluating the learner in an organised educational institution through a well-planned and selected educational programme of instruction towards the achievement of desired goals, including the all-round development of the learner. here, the teacher is seen as a person of many parts: a guide, stimulator or motivator and evaluator, among others. therefore, it is imperative to have effective and quality teaching in secondary school. education in secondary schools within south africa and in other african countries is paramount to development. moreover, it facilitates the growth of economic situation of any country. vavrus (2009) states that the improvement on the quality of secondary school education is seen to be paramount in overall education. in this regard, it is required of an individual to perform excellently in any given task at any time. despite this notable growth, research has shown that there is little or no agreement on the major characteristics of quality education, especially in the area of teaching and learning in secondary schools globally (shahzad, 2007; bedi & sharma, 2006) and across nations (mosha, 2000; hakielimu, 2007). most studies have focused mainly on higher education but not secondary schools (mosha, 2000; bedi & sharma, 2006; shahzad, 2007). secondary school education can be seen as a plan for an efficient and effective way of transformation in all sectors in all african state’s development. the formal secondary education is the most crucial of all national investments because of its roles in the production of knowledge. moreover, the secondary school system of education is regarded as a formal institution responsible for knowledge, skills and attitude development that helps individuals to fit into a society and have an ability to contribute meaningfully and productively to its development (boaduo, 2005). effectiveness in teaching is a dimensional way that depends on various resources working together in achieving the set goals. fundamentally, it requires a look at results of the outcomes and an institution’s accomplishments. it means questions about whether school graduates are well prepared, whether they have the knowledge and skills that they and society expect as a result of their studies (chapman & austin, 2002: 209–210). south african secondary schools have used traditional teaching methods for the past few decades to transfer knowledge to learners. schools in south africa, most importantly, the ones that are disadvantaged in terms of infrastructures, face numerous constraints ranging from the inability of parents to pay students’ school fees to the neglect of schools on the part of the government. many secondary schools in south africa do not use ict in teaching and learning and this has led to south africa’s ineffectiveness in the recent development and advancement in the educational sector. the development of education in south africa has experienced various stages of transformation in the last two decades (isaacs, 2007). the national qualification framework for schools that was based on outcomes-based education (obe) happens to be central to this transformation (isaacs, 2007). obe considered the 21st century as a period of dramatic 62 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) change and development. in addition,, it highlights the other roles of teachers to be learning mediators, curriculum interpreters, leaders, managers and administrators, masters of his/her subject areas, scholars, facilitators of learning, subject experts, lifelong learners, learning designers, programme innovators and teaching material developers (national curriculum statement [ncs], 2003). furthermore, those who designed the ncs consider the process of learning as important as the content; hence, one of its critical outcomes envisages learners “who will be able to use science and technology effectively and critically, showing responsibility towards the environment and the health of others” (doe, 2013:8). however, consistent studies of secondary school education in most african countries such as south africa are highly needed due to the importance and the challenges facing the education system. in light of this, sumra and rajani (2006) reveal that most secondary school students finish their education without the necessary required skills for sustainability in life. this indicates that the main objective of having quality education in secondary school is neglected because of expansion (hakielimu, 2007; makombe et al., 2010). in another study, it was gathered that the process of teaching in schools is bad due to a lack of motivation and inadequate training for the teachers to face the day-to-day challenges in the profession (wedgwood, 2007; komba & nkumbi, 2008; ngimbudzi, 2009). moreover, education in secondary schools has become ineffective due to the lack of fundamental skills and facilities required by teachers to function well (benell & mukyanuzi, 2005). the act of teaching in secondary education in most cases is ineffective for the proper preparation of competent individuals (bedi & sharma, 2006; davidson, 2006). the students that graduate from secondary schools are seen as unprepared individuals that failed in demonstrating competencies required in work and life (benson, 2005). based on this, they become a burden in the society at large (shahzad, 2007). moreover, secondary school teachers are usually accused of giving limited attention to teaching conceptual knowledge instead of procedural; this indicates that most students engage in memorisation rather than understanding the formation or concept (wedgwood, 2007). 2. the quality of teaching as an agent of transformation in secondary school education the aims of african secondary education, according to boaduo (2005:14), include: 1. “the major relevance of education is to ensure adequate provision for growth and to avoid any hampering influences 2. also, adequate education is meant to provide cultural heritage necessary for an individual and for the development of his/her capacities maximally. 3. furthermore, the role of education is to be broad and focus more on the relevance to the community rather than in relation to an individual will focus on training useful citizens”. a good teacher, according to ololube (2005:17–31), can be best described through his/her knowledge of subject matter during the process of teaching. this in a way creates awareness and excitement in the form of the wake of a passing train. he explained further that a good teacher always endeavours to pull students along and not tie students down. the most attractive part of teaching according to his ideology is all about how teachers create a platform to love their students. moreover, it is required of a teacher to have passion for one’s field of study and for one’s students rather than remaining as a scholar. bigg (2003: 23) reveals that, 63 ojo & adu re-imagining higher education leadership “good teaching is making [the] majority of the students to make use of the higher cognitive level processes that is meant for more academic students”. according to mosha (2000), quality is a high degree of goodness or excellence. in the same light, lomas (2002) refers to quality as a degree of fitness to the customer’s desire to ascertain the maximum level of satisfaction with effectiveness in the service offered (manyanga, 2007). in view of this, quality means the extent to which the customers’ satisfaction is met over the product or service received at any given time. quality can be seen as a propelling force that drives the transformation of secondary school education to be about necessary terms of change (lomas, 2002). in human perspectives, to change means a variation in structure or event in order to look more different, with some element of modification or adjustment. nevertheless, in the case of education, the learning of a child is not easily adjustable or modified since it is not an absolute or solid object. rather, it takes a gradual developmental process that takes a qualitative change. for example, the increase in learning becomes a process of transformative change that enables a learner to move from one level of understanding to another. with this in mind, transformation is therefore a form of social change that includes behavioural, emotional, psychological and moral change (eckel, hill & green, 2002). the rate at which scholars are researching into the area of quality in education is becoming more interesting. there are several studies conducted on different areas relating to the definition of quality in education (lomas, 2007; parri, 2006; manyanga, 2007). according to lomas (2002), the quality in higher education is understood from four perspectives namely: fitness for purpose, value for money, transformation and excellence. internationally, research has shown that the teaching quality in education is imperative for the national development of any country, which advances the economic growth of the nation and at the same time increases the output of the affected teacher. it is clearly shown that attainment goes beyond merely the amount of schooling but the efficiency of teaching (hanushek & woessman, 2007; murnane et al., 2001). in african countries, it was noted that there was a great expansion to schooling in recent years. nevertheless, there is record of low quality considering the international assessments and this has generated plenty of debate about whether these expansions of schooling have led to deteriorations in quality of education. the south african case requires relevant attention particularly because we have made great strides in providing access to schooling, but the quality in terms of teaching and general school performance cannot be overemphasised. therefore, this study investigated the teachers’ conception on the transformation of teaching quality in secondary school education. 3. research questions 1. what conceptions do teachers have on the strategies of transformation in improving the teaching quality of secondary school education in south africa? 2. what conceptions do teachers have on their role in transforming and improving teaching quality of secondary school education in south africa? 4. research methodology research methodology encompasses the study of procedures (methods) used in research to create new knowledge (terre blanche, durrheim & panther, 2006). this section is an in depth report on the research design, sample and sampling techniques, research instruments and data analysis. 64 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) 5. research design according to gelo, braakmann and benetka (2008: 272), “a research design is a plan of action or structure which links the philosophical foundations and the methodology assumptions of a research approach to its research methods, in order to provide credible, accountable and legitimate answers to the research questions”. according to johnson and christensen (2008), research design is the outline, plan or strategy that is going to be used to seek an answer to the research questions. it is a detailed plan aimed at explaining how a research study is to be conducted. therefore, the research design adopted in this study is case study because it is qualitative research. 6. sample and sampling techniques punch (2006:94) claims that sampling “is the process of selecting a few respondents from the population under study”. probability sampling techniques are defined as the methods that include random sampling, systematic sampling and improbability sampling selected for this study from the population of incarcerated prisoners enrolled in art education as an andragogy narrative for the purpose of rehabilitation (mccoll, 2017). this study employed random sampling to select four secondary schools and purposive sampling to select two teachers from each school with a total of eight respondents that participated in this study. creswell (2014) defines purposive sampling as a means through which participants are selected based on the given characteristics. 7. research instruments in the study, semi-structured interviews were used as the main data collection tool. according to nieuwenhuis (2008), semi-structured interviews allow for in depth probing and extended responses; hence, the researchers have a set of predetermined questions on an interview schedule that guided the interview. an audiotape was used to record the interviews with permission from the participants. the utilisation of semi-structured interviews helped in refocusing the discussion so that accurate information gained from participants through rephrasing questions and observing non-verbal cues such as facial expressions. 8. data analysis a thematic analysis of data was used. bricki and green (2007) state that a thematic analysis is the record that looks across all the data in identifying the common issues that happen and identify the main themes that summarise all the views gathered. the teachers were interviewed and responded in english. the interviews were audio-recorded and concise field notes were additionally taken to ensure that the data was registered to authenticate the audio recording. the field notes also provided opportunities to record non-verbal communication, such as body language. the audio-recordings and field notes were reviewed several times in order to discover any deviances across the interviews. thematic content analysis thematic content analysis is a descriptive presentation of qualitative data. this analytic strategy is used to analyse classifications and present themes (patterns) that relate to the data. thus, it is a process involving cutting across data in search of patterns and themes by giving all units of data a particular code (ibrahim, 2012; vaismoradi, turunen & bondas, 2013). thematic content analysis illustrates the data in detail and deals with diverse subjects 65 ojo & adu re-imagining higher education leadership via interpretations. it can be flexibly applied to enable surface (descriptive) and in-depth (interpretive) analysis as required (vaismoradi et al., 2013). by so doing, this strategy gives the researcher an opportunity to understand the potential of any issue more widely; thus, allowing the researchers to determine precisely the relationships between concepts and compare them with the replicated data. in recognition of its strengths, this data analysis technique was employed to cater for the qualitative data component in the current study. it was also employed in the analysis of documents. in this study, data from the interviews were transcribed within the shortest possible time after the interview sessions. categories or themes established were assessed on how they converged or diverged on issues relating to the conception of teachers in transforming and improving teaching quality in secondary school education in south africa. 9. results and findings table 1: distribution of selected teachers by gender, age, teaching experiences, academic and professional qualifications respondents gender age in years teaching experience highest academic qualification highest professional qualification cl1 male 48 12 bed bachelor of education cl2 male 51 20 bed bachelor of education cl3 female 47 10 med master of education cl4 male 44 17 honours honours in education cl5 female 53 21 med master of education cl6 male 44 11 honours honours in education cl7 male 49 19 bed bachelor of education cl8 female 58 23 honours honours in education from table 1, it is evident that all the teachers interviewed were holders of a degree at first degree, honours or master’s level. the age of the teachers and years of teaching experience varied accordingly. their academic qualifications made the participants confident in their teaching skills as they were at ease responding to questions that probed their conception on transforming and improving the teaching quality of education in secondary schools. all the selected teachers were professionally qualified. this assured the researcher of professional responses to the interview questions. three out of the eight respondents were female. the results are presented thematically under the two themes of “transformation strategies” and “teacher’s role on transformation”. theme 1: teachers’ familiarity with transformation strategies most school interviewees expressed their awareness to some teaching infrastructure such as ict put in place by the government but some disclosed very limited familiarity with 66 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) those infrastructures. this negatively affects teachers’ conception, as there is still so much expectation on the teaching quality of education in secondary schools. i am aware of some transformation infrastructure, for examples we have many computer in my school but the teacher are not given enough skills on how to use the infrastructure effectively for teaching. (cl2). three of the respondents were of the same opinion as highlighted in cl2’s conversation; they all claimed that some of the infrastructures were very good in transforming and improving the teaching quality of education at all levels but required routine and consistent training that was not really put in place or appropriately planned to give the expected outcomes as required. the other respondent added that: i have very little knowledge of the use some of the infrastructure and i am always looking forward for the opportunity to be trained on how to use it in teaching and learning but the stakeholders are only interested in its availability and not equipping us on how to use it successfully (cl5). the third respondent in her own view was so funny and so serious about her disposition with regard the strategies and the teachers involved. she claimed that: i have attended one or two workshop but sincerely my mind was not on what they were teaching us, i am interested in the allowance to be paid and other packages embedded, i also see the gathering as a place of meeting new friends for further social engagement (cl3). it was indicative from the responses above that the teacher’s conception about the transformation in quality of teaching is negative and it is not in any way transforming or improving the teaching quality of south african secondary school education as expected. nevertheless, two other respondents’ conception differed from the view of others concerning the contributions of infrastructure towards transformation of teaching quality in education: transformation when it comes to teaching and learning, as i observed i noticed that students rate of understanding increased when they enjoy being exposed to making use of some of these infrastructure in teaching (cl4). in another view, similar to cl4’s opinion, cl7 had the following to say: some of these transformation in teaching make students to be active and friendly during teaching and learning and improve the quality of teaching (cl7). the opinion of the last two teachers was an indication of the awareness of government’s effort in transforming and improving teaching quality in secondary school education in south africa. they both see it in a positive direction and its importance on students’ rate of learning and achievement as a whole. theme 2: teachers’ familiarity with their roles in transformation in response to the question on the roles of the teacher on transforming and improving the teaching quality in secondary school education, the teachers narrated all their efforts in ensuring students’ learning. it was observed that all the teachers were performing their normal obligations and duties but the response from the two indicated that they were not willing to have additional responsibilities of any form. in their opinion, they stated: 67 ojo & adu re-imagining higher education leadership i come to school regularly and ensure i perform my normal duties, i am not interested in any addition[al] responsibility that will not give me enough time to rest. my health is more important to me (cl6). the other one was quoted as: transforming and improving the teaching quality in the school should be the responsibility of the government or school heads, once i go to class to teach as at when due, the rest is history (cl4). these kind of responses indicate that some teachers are not willing or ready to have additional responsibilities in any form. this category of teachers has limited their responsibilities to a one-way method of teaching from time to time. such a view assured the researchers of a lack of exposure to the relevant transformational ideas necessary to improve the teaching quality of education in secondary schools. furthermore, the remaining six teachers had a positive conception towards their roles in transforming and improving the teaching quality of secondary education. the majority of the teachers believed that it was important that the students’ learning must be effective to bring improvement on the quality of teaching and education at all levels. they all had a similar opinion and submission towards their roles. here is some of the information gathered by the researchers from the teachers: teaching is about transfer of knowledge, i am always willing to give my best towards transforming and improving the teaching quality of secondary school education system (cl8). world is changing on daily basis, there is need for innovation for me as teacher in order to be relevant and impactful (cl1). i am aware of my roles as teacher and always looking forward for additional role that will make my teaching effective (cl3). 10. conclusion the results generated from all the eight teachers used as respondents in this study show that their conceptions were mostly influenced by their beliefs (eren, 2010). they see transformation as a task intended for improvement of teaching and learning and for accountability in schools. based on this, scholars confirm that teachers possess strong beliefs that influence their conceptions (calderhead, 2002). furthermore, it is generally accepted in education that teachers’ beliefs relate to their ways and manners of teaching (gonzales & fuggan 2012; good & brophy 2003; dixon & haigh, 2008). gipps and brown (2005) assert that a better understanding of teachers’ belief system or conceptual base significantly enhances educational effectiveness. based on the evidence gleaned from the study, the researchers conclude that to understand transformation in teaching quality in secondary schools, the teachers need regular incentives, training and workshops because susuwele-banda (2005) argues that teachers’ beliefs automatically influence their perceptions and judgements, which in turn affect their behaviours in the classroom. the understanding of teachers’ roles and practices have strong implications on teaching and learning (verdar, 2010) 68 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) 11. recommendations the aim of the study is to investigate conceptions of secondary schools teachers on understanding and improving the teaching quality. in the results, teachers have stated different opinions that can enhance transformation and improvement of teaching quality in secondary schools. therefore, the following recommendation should be considered: • the policy maker should increase the budget on secondary school education and monitor the process of implementation to achieve the desired goal. • the government can also create a platform to encourage partnership for the funding of secondary school education. • the government should motivate the teachers in secondary schools by providing special allowances, necessary incentives and other amenities that may enhance their teaching qualities. • there should be regular effective training and workshops for the teachers in secondary schools to remind the teachers of their roles and responsibilities in teaching. • the school authority should provide a conducive environment for teaching and learning in order to improve the morale of the teachers. • the number of the students in the classroom should be adequate in order to avoid overcrowding. 12. implications for the study the study investigated the south african secondary school teachers’ conceptions on transforming and improving teaching quality of education. the rate at which specific educational systems, especially in secondary schools, are no longer yielding the intended goals and objectives is the major concern of the researchers. the opinion of the researchers alone cannot form the data for the conclusion on this study. hence, selected teachers were consulted to contribute their own insights into a subject matter from four different secondary schools in the eastern cape province of south africa. the research questions raised on the conception of teachers on transformation of teaching qualities was to find out whether the innovation influences teaching and learning and in one way or the other can improve teaching quality of education in secondary school. the results revealed that some of the teachers are already aware of the efforts of the government to improve the quality of secondary school education but the majority of them are not interested in understanding and implementing the new development. this implies that the effort that the government is putting in place may be futile if a proper check or monitoring is not put in place. nevertheless, the conception of the teachers as perceived by many of them is influenced by their interest on their personal gain and additional allowances that can serve as motivating factor for them to perform wonderfully well. the secondary school education is the bedrock that gives students an opportunity for better performance in a higher institution of learning. therefore, the result of the study may serve as a knowledge base in the field of education of secondary school teachers’ conception on the teaching quality of education. this would go a long way to find possible solutions to various problems militating against the quality of secondary school education in south africa and beyond. the understanding of the knowledge on this study may increase the commitment of the stakeholders involved in the planning and implementation of secondary school education in south africa. it was revealed by some of the teachers that they were 69 ojo & adu re-imagining higher education leadership not interested in some of the training because they expect some incentives that may serve as encouragement on their part. this can enable the teacher to have an idea on how to use some of the newly innovative skills that can assist in developing the teaching and learning process. professional development must be put in place for the teachers from time to time. school-based programmes may be appropriate because it might gear toward teachers and school development and the outcome of the students’ performance would likely be positive in most cases. this study may also have implications on transforming and improving the teaching quality of south africa secondary school education. the study shows the opinion of teachers and possible suggestions that can aid the quality of education ranging from introduction of incentives and allowances to a conducive teaching environment. other researchers can also look at other factors generated by the teachers in this study. 13. ethical consideration welman, kruger and mitchell (2005: 182) explain that ethical considerations and ethical behaviour are as important in research as they are in any other fields of human activity. as such, ethical considerations were included in the cover letter to inform the participants that participation was voluntary. secondly, they had the right to withdraw at any time. thirdly, they were also informed that there was no harm or risk in participating in the study, as it would not result in any physical or mental discomfort or any form of injury. they were 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(3rd ed. cape town: oxford university press. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2006.10.005 _bookmark215 _bookmark216 _goback job search and over-education: evidence from china’s labour market for postgraduates1 li fengliang institute of education, tsinghua university, beijing, china dagger@tsinghua.edu.cn. zhao yandong institute of science, technology and society, chinese academy of science and technology for development, beijing, china zhaoyd@casted.org.cn. tian yongpo chinese academy of personnel science, beijing, china yongpotian@yahoo.com.cn. this article investigates the relationship between the number of informational channels and overeducation in the outcome of job search, using the survey data of postgraduates in china. the empirical results show: (1) the more the informational channels of job search are used, the lower the probability and the less the intensity of over-education will be; (2) graduates from prestigious “985” universities have lower probability and less intensity of over-education than those of their counterparts from “none-985” universities. based on the findings above, we argue that helping graduates to get more job information and improving the quality of universities will lighten the problem of the over-education under the situation of great higher education expansion. keywords: job search, over-education, informational channel, information asymmetry, jel: i20,  j21, d82 introduction after world war ii, especially in the 1950s and 60s, with the emerging of human capital theory (schultz, 1961; becker, 1964), many countries in the world started to make great efforts to develop education, expecting to promote economic growth and reduce poverty through increasing the overall human capital. as the scale of education (higher education especially) was expanding in developed countries and some developing countries, however, more and more higher education graduates entered the labour market. although the labour market in a number of countries and areas has an increasing demand for such labour force, the growth in supply seems to be faster than that in demand (bishop, 1995). therefore, many higher education graduates had to choose those jobs which used to be open to senior or even junior high school graduates. the pervasive and persistent appearance of this phenomenon (groot & brink, 2000) has drawn widespread concerns in international academic circles. many scholars have generally defined it as over-education and have done far-ranging studies in terms of its cause, incidence, mechanism, measuring methods, influential factors, as well as both its merits and negative effects (duncan & hoffman, 1981; rumberger, 1981; tsang & levin, 1985; hartog, 2000). 1 fengliang, l, et al. 2010 job search and over-education: evidence from china’s labour market for postgraduates. perspectives in education, 28(2):41-50. perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201042 it is commonly believed to be the result of the imbalance between the supply of labour and the demand for skills in the labour market (rumberger, 1981 & 1987). moreover, many empirical studies have found that over-education could even decrease the profit of education. based on the research in the uk graduate labour market, dolton and vignoles (2000) found that the economic return to over-education was less than the return to required education. after summarizing previous studies, hartog (2000), groot and brink (2000) concluded that the rate of return to over-education was about half to two-thirds that to required education. why would over-education then have a negative impact on the income of the individual? tsang (1987) found that it was because over-education could decrease the productivity of individuals. conducted in bell company, tang’s research showed that over-education has a significant negative impact on job satisfaction and that there was a positive relation between productivity and job satisfaction. it could thus be seen that over-education had a significant negative impact on the productivity of individuals, which decreased the productivity of the entire company. statistics from bell company showed that if there was a deduction of one year in over-education, there would be an 8.35% increase in productivity. furthermore, tsang (1987) argued that over-education was a problem involving every worker, every company and also the government, which required attention from the public. it was thus necessary for workers, companies and the government to think reconsider how to reduce the probability and intensity of over-education, with a view to increasing the return of education investment and reduce dissipation due to over-education. the question arises as to how reduce the probability and intensity of over-education. job search theory has provided a solution for this. job search theory states that because of the information asymmetry in the job market, if job seekers can obtain more job information through investment in the job search, they are is more likely to find a better and more satisfactory job (stigler, 1961). therefore, if one does not do a proper job search, the job seeker might have to accept a job demanding a lower educational level. in this way, over-education occurs (johnson, 1978). also, if one can get more comprehensive job information in job search and lessen the information asymmetry between oneself and the employer, then the job seeker is more likely to find a job with a corresponding/well-matched educational level, that is to say, the education the employee has received matches what is demanded by the job. according to our knowledge, it seems that there are few empirical studies that investigate the relationship between the process of job search and over-education. therefore, this article aims to fill this gap and empirically test whether a job search will help to decrease the probability and the intensity of over-education or not. over-education in chinese higher education labour market since the end of 1990s, higher education in china has experienced a remarkable expansion. whether this phenomenon could lead to serious over-education has become a hot issue with the public. li, morgan and ding (2008) investigated the relationship between the expansion of higher education and over-education in china. they found that although the incidence of over-education has had an apparent upward trend since the middle of the 1990s in china, the incidence of over-education in 1998 was not only lower than that of europe, the usa and other developed countries in the 1990s, but also was apparently lower than that of china in the 1980s. in addition, the incidence was related negatively to the competitiveness of the sector or industry in china. throughout the chinese regions, the percentage of highly educated workers was lower than the corresponding international averages. based on the facts above, li et al. (2008) were optimistic about the over-education of china’s higher education graduates. this article endorses their point of view and believes that the over-education phenomenon of recent years will prove to be only temporary. however, this does not mean that no measures need to be taken to reduce the probability and intensity of over-education as it does have a negative impact on the productivity and income of individuals. empirical studies thus need to be conducted against the background of the massive expansion of china’s higher education. currently the employment problem of chinese higher education graduates has attracted many researchers’ attention. however, most studies have only focused on the group of university or college graduates instead of postgraduates. in fact, employment of postgraduates also calls for public attention due fengliang, et al. — job search and over-education 43 to the reason that postgraduates’ education, an important constitution of higher education, is expanding rapidly. figure 1 shows the changes of postgraduate graduates in mainland china, from which it can be seen that the number increased from 55,000 in 2001 to 301,000 in 2008. in less than ten years, the number of postgraduates has increased six times. at the same time, the number of university and college graduates is also increasing remarkably, which makes it even more difficult for postgraduates to obtain employment. one study shows that from 2003 to 2007, the incidence of over-education of postgraduates in mainland china has been rising steadily (tsu ioe, 2009). the article will focus on the over-education of postgraduates and empirically test whether postgraduates can reduce the incidence and intensity of over-education through job search. 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 350 000 300 000 250 000 200 000 150 000 100 000 50 000 0 54 900 66 200 92 300 127 300 162 000 219 700 270 400 301 100 figure 1: number of postgraduate graduates from 2001-2008 in china according to job search theory, job seekers do not know much about job distribution before starting job search, which means there is information asymmetry between job seekers and the job market (mckenna, 1990; ehrenberg & smith, 2000). if job seekers cannot solve this potential problem through job search, the jobs they find will somehow mismatch with their education,. if job seekers can gather as much job information as possible by every means and channel, then they will finally find jobs which match their ability, interest and educational level. with regard to the issue of over-education, those who can gather more job information in their job search are less likely to be over-educated; even if they are over-educated, the extent of being over-educated is less intense. in current empirical studies on job search theory, the number of informational channels is commonly used to measure the degree of information asymmetry that job seekers can eliminate or reduce in job search (holzer, 1987 & 1988; addison & portugal, 2002). therefore, the key question in this study is: can postgraduates reduce over-education by gathering as much job information as possible from more possible informational channels through job search? since the data used include information about the educational levels required for postgraduates’ first jobs, we can not only examine the impact job search has on the probability of graduates’ over-education, but we can also further investigate the impact job search has on the intensity of graduates’ over-education. based on the data used, the hypothesis in this study can be stated as follows: ■ the more the postgraduates use informational channels in the process of job search, the smaller the probability of over-education in the outcome of job search. perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201044 ■ the more the postgraduates use informational channels in the process of job search, the smaller the intensity of over-education would be. data and method all of the data used in this study is from research on fresh postgraduates’ employment conducted in 2007 by national research center for science and technology for development (now renamed chinese academy of science and technology for development). the research adopted a combined method of representative sampling and random sampling. firstly, fourteen higher education institutions in four cities (beijing, shanghai, wuhan, lanzhou) were selected. after that, the sample was distributed according to their respective numbers of postgraduates in each institution and the respondents were randomly selected in each institution. lastly, 4,200 cases were selected in total. the questionnaire survey was conducted from may to july in 2007, and a total of 3,104 valid questionnaires were collected (73.9%). in the whole sample, 55% are male. their major distribution is as follows: science 10%, engineering 38%, agriculture 3%, medicine 5%, economics 8%, management 11%, philosophy and social sciences 20%, others and the unclassified 5%. in the whole sample, some cases did not plan to seek for a job immediately; they would instead continue to obtain a doctor’s degree or study abroad or establish their own business. some were parttime students who intended to return to their current or previous jobs. some were job-directed students (chinese term is ding xiang sheng) who had signed a job contract with certain national enterprises before they began the postgraduate study. since this study is primarily investigating the relationship between the number of informational channels that graduates use in job search and over-education in the outcome of job search, those who did not plan to apply for a job right away will not be taken into consideration. with such a sample excluded, 2,629 cases who had done job searches were left. 2,047 of them had already found a job when the survey was undertaken, and they constructed the data set used in the study. it means the rate (the successful job seekers/ all the job seekers) is about 78% (2047/2629). in another similar survey of higher education graduates implemented by peking university in 2007, the rate for post-graduate level is about 81% (pku gse, 2007). the difference is small. the following three points require clarification. firstly, the sample of graduates who have found a job include not only those who have signed up, but also those who have not yet but will do soon. secondly, because the time of conducting the survey is earlier than the students’ actual graduation, the employment rate in the survey cannot reflect the real employment rate, and the former should be lower than the latter. thirdly, since the time of conducting the survey precedes the time the graduates actually began to work, the students estimated their working condition reflected in the study, for instance, the educational level demanded by the job. dependent variable the study mainly examines two variables: the informational channel of job search and over-education. over-education is a dependent variable. information about that comes from graduates’ answers to “the demand for employees’ educational level by the job”. instead of distinguishing master’s graduate students and doctoral graduate students, the highest educational level provided in the options is “postgraduates and upward” and all of the survey sample are therefore master graduate students. consequently there are only two situations possible: 1) the educational level demanded by the job is lower than master’s degree, which implies overeducation; 2) the educational level demanded by the job is equal to master’s degree, which implies adequate education. fengliang, et al. — job search and over-education 45 based on the information about educational levels demanded by jobs, we can set up three different dependent variables of over-education.2 ■ a binary dummy variable of the probability of over-education. if one subjectively considers that the necessary educational level for his/her first job after graduation is lower than his/her own, it is overeducation, and over-education=1; if one considers that they are in equilibrium, then over-education=0. ■ a continuous variable of the year(s) that employees are over-educated. if the educational level is matched, the year(s) over-educated is 0; otherwise, it is the year difference between obtaining a master’s degree and getting the educational level demanded by the job. ■ an ordered categorical variable of the level(s) over-educated. it is defined as 0 if educational level matched. if there is one-level difference between the educational level demanded by the job and what the graduate has got, it is 1; if there is two-level difference in between, it is 2; and so on. the maximum level of over-education for the sample in this study is 4. independent variable and model the informational channel of job search is an independent variable, the definition of which comes from graduates’ answers to the question: “in the process of job search, which channel(s) have you used to get job information? (please select all that you have used)”. ten options are provided: newspaper, magazine; tv, radio; internet; campus recruitment; off-campus recruitment; intelligence intermediary institutions; relatives; familiar friends/teachers/people from your hometown; people you know but are not acquainted with; career instruction center at school. if the respondent selected one option, then the informational channel of job search is defined as 1; if the respondent selected two, then the informational channel is 2; and so on. in this way, we get a discrete variable with its value ranging from 0 to 10. this study attempts to examine the influence on the probability and intensity of over-education (including year and level) exerted by the number of informational channels. the probit model, the ols (ordinary least squares) model and the oprobit (ordered probit) model are adopted respectively to investigate the influence on the probability, year and level of over-education exerted by informational channel that graduates use in job search, in other words, to investigate the coefficients and the levels of significance of the variable of informational channel in the three models. therefore, other factors that may affect the probability and intensity of over-education should also be controlled. based on the literature review on influential factors of over-education as well as data analysis in the early stage, we finally determined control variables to be graduates’ gender, reputation of their institutions, place to live before 14 years old, occupation, and working place. why occupation should be controlled is because studies have found that different occupations have different degrees of educational screening, which will definitely influence individuals’ situation regarding over-education (chatterji, seaman & singell, 2003). control variables above are defined as follows: ■ male, dummy variable, female as reference group. ■ “985” university,3 dummy variable, “non-985”4 universities as reference group. this variable is used to control the quality and reputation of the higher education institutions and “985” university means higher quality and better reputation. 2 apart from using self-evaluating approach, researchers also use standard deviation in measuring over-education. cohn and khan (1995) found that the probability of over-education was higher using the self-evaluating approach. this may imply the subjective estimation seems to exaggerate over-education. since there is no relevant information available in the sample data, we are unable to execute other methods. 3 in may 1998, jiang zeming, the former chinese chairman, stated that china should develop several world-class universities. it was the start of “985 project”. it means those universities included in the “985 project” are the best universities in china. 4 the sample used in this study includes postgraduates from chinese academy of sciences. here chinese academy of sciences is classified as “985” university. perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201046 ■ place to live, dummy variable. if one was living in a big city before 14 years old, then place to live=1; otherwise, place to live=0. ■ working place, dummy variable. if one works in a big city, then working place=1; otherwise, working place=0. ■ occupation, a set of 13 dummy variables, professional jobs (i.e. engineer, doctor, and so on) as reference group. table 1: simple statistical description of the variables all graduates over-education=0 over-education=1 mean standard deviation mean standard deviation mean standard deviation male 0.554 0.497 0.561 0.496 0.542 0.499 “985” university 0.57 0.496 0.57 0.495 0.56 0.496 place to live 0.135 0.342 0.116 0.320 0.170 0.376 working place 0.813 0.390 0.809 0.393 0.820 0.384 informational channel 3.666 1.562 3.714 1.613 3.577 1.460 over-education 0.356 0.479 0 0 1 0 year(s) 1.131 1.614 0 0 3.174 0.908 level(s) 0.391 0.586 0 0 1.097 0.435 n 2,047 1,329 718 from table 1, we can find that the probability of over-education is 35% (718/2047). in order to make certain that it is reliable, we calculate the same index from the similar survey data by pku (pku gse, 2007), and the incidence of over-education in that survey is 38%. empirical results we first come to test the first hypothesis. table 1 shows that the average number of informational channel of job search for the sample with over-education equalling to 0 is 3.714, and that for the sample with over-education equalling to 1 is 3.577. while the former is slightly larger than the latter, it indicates that graduates having more informational channels in job search are less likely to be over-educated. we further find that the difference is statistical significant. so the first hypothesis is preliminarily validated by the empirical results. table 2 shows the regression results of the probit model, the oprobit model and the ols model. from the regression results of the probit model, the coefficient of informational channel is negative and significant, which reveals that with factors as gender, family background, working place, occupation and so on under control, the probability of over-education is significantly smaller when graduates use more informational channels in job search. moreover, the marginal value of informational channel indicates that every time one more informational channel is used, the probability of over-education is reduced by 3.3%. the first hypothesis 1 has been supported and confirmed by empirical results, that is to say, with other factors under control, the more the postgraduates use informational channels in the process of job search, the smaller the probability of over-education in the outcome of job search. next we will test hypothesis 2. from the regression results of the oprobit and ols model in table 2, we can see that the coefficient of the informational channel is also significantly negative, showing that graduates able to obtain and make use of more informational channels in job search have much fewer levels and years of over-education. in addition, the coefficient given by the ols model indicates that every time one more informational channel is used, this will reduce the years that graduates are overfengliang, et al. — job search and over-education 47 educated by 0.05. this decrement is small, but significant. we also calculated the marginal value of the regression result of the oprobit model, and found that every time one more informational channel is used, the probability that levels over-educated will change from 0 to 1 reduced by 1.5%, from 0 to 2 reduced by 0.7%, from 0 to 3 reduced by 0.2%, and from 0 to 4 reduced by 0.2%.5 both of the hypotheses have been confirmed by the empirical results; thus in graduates’ job search, the more they use informational channels, the smaller the probability and intensity of over-education in the outcome of job search will be. table 2: results of the three regression models on over-education probit oprobit ols coefficient marginal value a std. error coefficient std. error coefficient std. error constant 0.061 0.123 1.626*** 0.139 male b -0.164*** -0.059 0.062 -0.130** 0.059 -0.134* 0.069 “985” university b -0.116* -0.042 0.062 -0.126** 0.061 -0.123* 0.070 place to live b 0.223*** 0.083 0.085 0.210*** 0.081 0.257*** 0.099 working place b -0.119* -0.044 0.051 -0.140* 0.078 -0.151* 0.090 information channel b -0.033* -0.012 0.019 -0.045** 0.019 -0.053** 0.022 adjusted r2 0.11 chi square 246.78 256.38 log likelihood -1202.89 -1384.6281 n 2,047 2,047 2,047 note: ■ the coefficients of the dummy variables of graduates’ occupations, the coefficients of the four ancillary parameters in the oprobit model, and the marginal values of the variables at different levels of over-education are left out. ■ a means the marginal effect at x . ■ b means that the marginal effect is for discrete change of dummy variable from 0 to 1. ■ standard errors are presented in parentheses. “***”: significant at the 1% level; “**”: significant at the 5% level; “*”: significant at the 10% level. we have another interesting finding in table 2. compared with postgraduates from “non-985” universities, those from “985” universities are much less likely to become over-educated and also have much less intensity of over-education. this finding coincides with what has been revealed before, namely, that the quality of schools plays an important role in over-education, since the better the schools, the smaller the probability of graduates being over-educated (robst, 1995). suggestions either from the simple statistical description or results of the three regression models, we find that when the postgraduates use more informational channels in job search, the probability and intensity of overeducation in the outcome of job search will be significantly smaller. these empirical findings clearly support the application of the job search theory on over-education, which is that the better the job 5 the level(s) of over-education in this study is an ordered variable with its value ranging from 0 to 4, thus every independent variable in the oprobit model accordingly has four marginal values. in table 2, we did not list them. whoever interested might get it by contacting the authors. perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201048 seekers solve the problem of information asymmetry between themselves and the job market, the more possibility will they have to find jobs that match to their educational level. this means that information-gathering in the process of job search has significant impact on its outcome. so when graduates are seeking employment, they, and higher education institutions and even employers should broaden the informational channel in order to enhance the students’ understanding of jobs and the job market. it will help to decrease the probability and intensity of over-education, and also serve as an important measure to guarantee the income of human capital (becker, 1964). in this course, the function of higher education institutions especially needs to be strengthened. for example, they can give career guidance (norm, 2008), collect job information actively, invite specific enterprises and employers to promote and recruit on campus, and also arrange visit to some enterprises or internship for students. these activities will improve the interaction and mutual understanding between higher education students and the job market, and either side will gain a more sufficient amount of information as the basis for later making decisions about which job to take or which graduate to employ. it also brings benefits for both higher education institutions and employers (glenda, 2006). in addition, the empirical results show that postgraduates from prestigious “985” universities have significantly smaller probability and less intensity of over-education. we consider the great expansion of higher education in recent years6 to be a big cause. because throughout the world, rapid expansion of higher education is mostly going with a decrease in the average expenditure per student as well as in the quality of higher education institutions (ballantine, 2001) and quality assurance of higher education has been a globalizing issue (mala & lis, 2007). a great deal of empirical studies have given evidence that graduates, who do not achieve well in their study, or study in schools of low quality or with a bad reputation, are more likely to be over-educated (bishop, 1995; robst, 1995; chevalier, 2003). it means that both the government and the higher education institutions should make sure that the quality of education would not go down rapidly as the higher education expands. only in this way could the problem of graduate employment be solved at its root — the supply of labour force, hence the probability and intensity of graduates being over-educated would be lessened. as discussed above, to solve a series of challenging problems of graduate employment including over-education, the quality of higher education institutions should first of all be improved to supply highly qualified labour. secondly, graduates, higher education institutions and employers should actively interact with one another and advance comprehension between graduates and the job market through various means. once the information asymmetry between graduates and the potential employers gets less serious, the probability and intensity of over-education will decrease tremendously. conclusion against the background of massive and continuous expansion of higher education in china, this article aims to investigate the phenomenon of over-education from the perspective of job search and to help make policy suggestions which may reduce over-education of chinese post-graduates from a microcosmic point of view. our empirical results show that the probability and intensity of over-education decrease significantly as the number of informational channels used in job search increases, which therefore support the explanation for over-education given by job search theory (stigler, 1961; ehrenberg & smith, 2000). based on our empirical results, we suggest that graduates and higher education institutions reduce over-education through at least two ways: 1) under the rapid expansion of higher education, higher education institutions should ensure educational quality, so that graduates can meet the demand for talents in the job market; 2) the stake-holders (students, higher education institutions, employers, government) should broaden the informational channel of job search, and reduce the information asymmetry between graduates and the job market to the furthest. 6 from 1999, the chinese higher education started to expand greatly. within six years, china achieved transition from elite education to mass education (moe, 2006). fengliang, et al. — job search and over-education 49 acknowledgement research for this article gets supports from the “job search and employment in the labour market during the transformation” project (project no. 70903074). we are grateful to two anonymous referees for helpful comments. any omissions and errors remain the responsibility of the authors. references addison jt & portugal p 2002. job search methods and outcomes, oxford economic papers, 54(3):505-533. alba-ramirez a 1993. mismatch in the spanish labor market overeducation? journal of human resources, 28(2):259-278. ballantine jh 2001. sociology of education: a systematic analysis, 5th edn. new jersey: prentice hall. becker gs 1964. human capital: a theoretical and empirical analysis, with special reference to education. new york: columbia university press. bishop j 1995. overeducation. in: m carnoy (eds). international encyclopedia of economics of education, 2nd ed. oxford: pergamon press and elsevier science. burris v 1983. the social and political consequences of overeducation. american sociological review, 48(4):454-467. chatterji m, seaman pt & singell ld 2003. a test of the signalling hypothesis. oxford economic papers, 55(2):191-216. chevalier a 2003. measure over-education. economica, 70(3):509-531. cohn e & khan sp 1995. the earnings effects of overschooling revisited. labour economics, 2(1):67-76. dolton p & vignoles a 2000. the incidence and effects of overeducation in the u.k. graduate labour market. economics of education review, 19(2):179-198. duncan g & hoffman sd 1981. the incidence and wage effects of overeducation. economics of education review, 1(1):75-86. ehrenberg rg & smith rc 2000. modern labor economics: theory and public policy, 7th edn. new york: addison wesley. glenda k 2006. working partnerships: the challenge of creating mutual benefit for academics and industry. perspectives in education, 24(3):1-13. groot w & brink m 2000. skill mismatches in the dutch labor market. international journal of manpower, 21(7):584-95. hartog j 2000. overeducation and earnings: where we are and where we should go. economics of education review, 19(2):131-147. holzer h 1987. job search by employed and unemployed youth. industrial and labor relations review, 40(4):601-611. holzer h 1988. search method use of unemployed youth. journal of labor economics, 6(1):1-20. johnson wr 1978. a theory of job shopping. quarterly journal of economics, 92(2):261-277. li f morgan j & ding x 2008. the expansion of higher education, employment and over-education in china. international journal of educational development, 28(6):687-697. mala s & lis l 2007. exploring the surfaces and depths of quality assurance. perspectives in education, 25(3):vii-xv. mckenna cj 1990. the theory of search in labour markets. in: d sapsford & z tzannatos (eds). current issues in labour economics. london: macmillan. moe 2002-2009. statistical communiqué on national educational development in 2001-2008. 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(in chinese). robst j 1995. college quality and overeducation. economics of education review, 14:221-228. perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201050 rumberger r 1981. the rising incidence of overeducation in the u.s. labor market. economics of education review, 1(3):293-314. rumberger rw 1987. the impact of surplus schooling on productivity and earnings. journal of human resources, 22(1):24-50. sicherman n 1991. overeducation in the labor market. journal of labor economics, 9(2):101-122. schultz tw 1961. investment in human capital. american economic review, 51(1):1-17. stigler gj 1961. the economics of information. journal of political economy, 69(3):213-225. tsang m & levin h 1985. the economics of overeducation. economics of education review, 4(2):93-104. tsang mc 1987. the impact of underutilization of education on productivity: a case study of the us bell companies. economics of education review, 6:239-254. tsu ioe 2009. “the research of chinese academic degrees and graduate education development program and the implementation of the strategy”(project no.: office of degree [2007]70) project report. (in chinese). 53 student mobility and doctoral education in south africa chika trevor sehoole university of pretoria this article analyses doctoral education programmes in south africa with a particular focus on student mobility. it investigates pull and push factors as a conceptual framework, arguing that the patterns of student mobility in doctoral education programmes in south africa follow the patterns of international student mobility elsewhere, which are driven mainly by the quest for better opportunities. contrary to previous studies, which do not focus on the role of the state, this article sees the state as playing a key role in facilitating such mobility. this article uses comparative education methods to compare the patterns of enrolment of doctoral education students in south africa during 2005 and 2009. statistical data from the department of higher education and training were used to analyse the enrolment patterns of doctoral students in south african universities. secondary sources in the form of government documents, a literature review and internet sources were employed in contextualising the study. introduction this article analyses doctoral education in south africa with a particular focus on student mobility. this focus is located within the phenomenon of globalisation, finding expression through the movement of people and ideas across the globe, particularly in the domain of higher education. as the demand for greater access to higher education grows, it prompts outward mobility when local demand cannot be met. in this regard, altbach and mcgill-peterson (2008) argue that students, whether supported by government, scholarships, their families’ or their own resources, will constantly move in the direction of educational opportunities. this article demonstrates the role that the state is playing in facilitating the mobility of scholars and students. globally, this responsibility finds expression through, inter alia, a state issuing study permits, recruiting students from abroad to meet local needs, sending students abroad to undergo training in response to a lack of capacity at home, and facilitating access for students to local or overseas institutions for study purposes. these issues are described in this article as pull and push factors. the focus of this article is on inward-bound international student mobility, which constitutes 30% of doctoral student enrolment in south africa. this substantial number of international doctoral students in south africa provides the rationale for the focus of this article. the pull and push factors are used as a conceptual framework to analyse international student mobility in doctoral education programmes in south africa. this article argues that the patterns of inward-bound student mobility in doctoral programmes in south africa follow the patterns of international student mobility elsewhere, which are driven mainly by the quest for better opportunities. globally, many nation states and higher education institutions are active participants in determining the flow of students in response to various pull and push factors. however, in south africa, the state created policy frameworks for the inward flow of students into the country, but does not actively recruit international students or send students overseas for training. in developing the argument, this article explores the following issues: (i) the definition of student mobility; (ii) a conceptual framework to inform the study (pull and push factors); (iii) a review of current literature; (iv) the phenomenon of south african and global student mobility globally and in south africa; (v) enrolments according to field of study; and (vi) south africa as a regional hub for attracting international students. methodology this article uses statistical data from the databases of the department of higher education and training (dhet) to analyse the enrolment patterns of students in doctoral education programmes in south african universities. it also uses secondary sources in the form of official policy documents of the south african government, and written documents and internet sources to contextualise the study. the study employed 54 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 comparative education methods in comparing the 2005 and 2009 enrolments in doctoral education programmes in order to highlight their changes and patterns of growth. defining student mobility: challenges and limitations de wit, agarwal, said, sehoole & sirozi (2008) argue that, despite much work on international education and student mobility in the past decade, the issues of what constitutes student mobility, and who is a mobile student remain unresolved. according to unesco (2006:30), internationally mobile students can be defined by citizenship, permanent residence, or prior education, and they observe that “countries differ in the criteria used to actually report data concerning mobile students, and that such data may not be entirely comparable”. richters and teichler (2006:83) define an internationally mobile student as a “student having crossed a national border in order to study … for at least ... a certain period of time in the country they have moved to”, which is the definition adopted in this article. bhandari and blumenthal (2011:4) point to the challenges in defining and comparing mobile student data, including: (i) a time-lag between data collection and data releases; (ii) because the data are primarily collected through ministries of education, they do not always capture enrolments at private institutions, thus resulting in an underestimate of international students, (iii) only students enrolled for the duration of a year or more are counted in the data, thus resulting in an undercount of these students. conceptual framework: pull and push factors the movement of students around the world has been characterised by de wit et al. (2008) as being influenced by pull and push factors. pull factors refer to aspects which make a country and institutions within it attractive to students and inform their decision to move to study in that country, while push factors refer to aspects which make a country or its institutions less attractive and, as such, cause students to seek opportunities elsewhere. in the context of this paper push factors are analysed from the point of view of government priorities as result of lack of capacity and or lack of potential students to take up higher education opportunities , whereas pull factors are “magnets” of opportunities that attract international students (from the student point of view). according to bhandari and blumenthal (2011:7-8), many factors, real or perceived, can affect a student’s choice of destination, including: the cost and quality of higher education programmes, the value of the degree or professional credentials for future careers, the availability of certain areas of specialisation, access to the education system and a country, and important historical, linguistic and geographic ties between the home and destination countries. there are also a number of push factors which cause people to search for better opportunities elsewhere, such as a lack of adequate funding, significant overcrowding, low quality of academic programmes, and poor working conditions for academic staff and administrators. doctoral education, mobility and the role of the state doctoral education is seen as lying at the core of university research capacity and as the primary source of research productivity and innovation in the global knowledge economy (nerad, tryzna & heggelund, 2008). by its very nature, doctoral education is expected to produce new, cutting-edge and original ideas and knowledge, through research and exchange of ideas, knowledge and information between professors, researchers and students. this exchange of ideas can take place locally, at institutional level, or across national borders, through transactions that occur within networks of researchers located in various parts of the globe. cross-border transactions may take various forms: by means of correspondence via the 55sehoole — student mobility and doctoral education in south africa web, e-mail, skype or video conferencing; or through the physical movement of scholars or researchers across national borders as a manifestation of research collaboration. these transactions, be they virtual or physical, suggest the notion of mobility, which is one of the currencies that anchors and sustains the phenomenon of globalisation. cross-border transactions and the exchange of information are what constitute the nature and form of the knowledge economy. according to carnoy (2001), in the globalised information technology environment, knowledge formation and power over knowledge are moving out of the control of the nation state. dominant values and norms are increasingly being organised around knowledge and information that circulate globally and serve a globalised innovation and profit-making structure. the most highly valued forms of information and knowledge now have their locus in the global economy, not in any single national site. the centrality of the notions of the exchange of ideas and the mobility of students and scholars globally in their quest to generate and utilise knowledge, suggests a relationship between globalisation and higher education, in general, and doctoral education, in particular. de wit et al. (2008) see higher education as becoming increasingly influenced by globalisation and the latter becoming a more vigorous actor in higher education. on the other hand, nerad and trzyna (2008) question whether globalisation is contributing to the creation of inequalities in doctoral education globally, or whether doctoral programmes are simultaneously influencing the process and nature of globalisation by producing a new generation of researchers and leaders. these issues remain a debate for further exploration. given that doctoral education programmes are concerned with the generation of knowledge and skills, which are the lifeblood of globalisation, the relationship between globalisation and higher education cannot be refuted. however, the role of the state needs to be added to the dynamic of this relationship. this article adopts the view that the state is playing an active role in the process of globalisation of higher education and of doctoral education programmes, especially with regard to facilitating the mobility of students and scholars. this takes the form of active recruitment of foreign students; sending local students abroad for the purposes of studying; granting visas for inward-bound students; arranging intergovernmental agreements to facilitate the exchange of students; or making scholarships available for international students or study abroad programmes. globalisation can be viewed as creating inequalities around the world in the form of unequal access to knowledge and information (carnoy, 2001). in particular, it can be considered as contributing to the uneven distribution of doctoral education and research agendas around the world. according to nerad & trzyna, (2008) the shanghai jiao tong university annual rating system of research productivity by world universities, as measured by international awards, publications in major journals and citations listed in major indexes, shows that of the top twenty world research universities seventeen are in the united states, two in britain and one in japan no universities from the developing world, namely africa, latin america or australasia (other than japan) fall in this league. despite global inequalities in the distribution of quality institutions as reflected in the results of the rating system, developing countries continue to engage with the phenomenon of globalisation by investing in promoting research productivity and producing highly skilled doctoral graduates. as carnoy (2001) points out, national and regional governments, which have historically monopolised knowledge and shaped its distribution, are still the major sites for organising knowledge production and transmission, but now for the benefit of the global economy. in the context of this article, this production and distribution of knowledge find expression in the state’s facilitation of access to opportunities for knowledge exchange, production and distribution in the form of international student mobility. globalisation, which “has collapsed historical barriers to mobility and increased differentials between countries in terms of salaries, employment opportunities and living conditions”, is also contributing to movements of people around the world in search of life and educational opportunities (altbach & mcgillpeterson, 2008:viii). with the pressures of globalisation exerting themselves on national economies and nation states, doctoral education programmes are expected to produce multi-skilled graduates who are competent writers, speakers, managers and team members. such graduates will be able to effectively communicate research goals and results, and participate effectively in corporate, national and university 56 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 research and development projects (nerad & trzyna, 2008). where capacities to produce this kind of graduate are lacking at home, governments should intervene and send their nationals to acquire those skills across the borders; thus, prompting the phenomenon of international student mobility. for example, china’s open door policy, which was adopted in 1978, was followed by an increase in outward-bound student mobility sponsored by the government in search of quality education overseas. as yang (2011:26) asserts, since then “over 100 000 fellows have studied overseas under the chinese government scholarship programme and approximately 1.3 million chinese students sponsored by other sources have pursued their studies in over 100 countries and regions”. the push factors at home for this development were a lack of quality control in universities, increasing unemployment among school leavers, and a shortage of high-quality faculty members in universities; while the availability of study opportunities in other countries served as a pull factor for students keen to study abroad. over the same period of time, “390 000 chinese returnees brought back not only knowledge, but also new ideas and innovations that have contributed significantly to china’s rapid development” (yang, 2011:26). a 2002 survey conducted in 100 chinese universities on the impact of study-abroad programmes showed that 58% of phd supervisors were returned fellows. in peking university, one of the leading universities in china, 80% of phd supervisors and 79% of academic staff in the chinese academy of sciences and chinese academy of engineering had overseas study experience (yang, 2011). on the other hand, push factors, such as a shortage of nationals to train in areas of critical or scare skills, can force a country to recruit international students to meet local needs. for example, kehm (2007) shows that the united states has a serious problem in generating a sufficient number of highly trained engineers and natural scientists from their own national student body because too few young people choose these subjects. as a result, it actively recruits international students into master’s and doctoral programmes in these subjects, which again leads to the phenomenon of student mobility. in such a scenario, the lack of national students to take up training opportunities in areas of critical need serves as a push factor for the government to recruit international students, whereas the availability of training opportunities serves as a pull factor for international students. this balance demonstrates the interplay of push and pull factors in facilitating student mobility. bhandari and blumenthal (2011) point out that, since 2006, foreign-born students in the us have earned over 50% of us doctoral degrees in mathematics, computer science, physics and engineering, with most students coming from china, india and korea. in engineering alone, foreign students earned 68% of all doctorates in 2007. these developments show that nation states need not be passive spectators in the globalisation of higher education, but can become active actors and agents in promoting and shaping this phenomenon. this section has demonstrated the relationship between globalisation and higher education, and the role of the state in facilitating this relationship, which includes facilitating access to and distribution of opportunities for knowledge production through the mobility of scholars in doctoral education programmes. this mobility is driven by various pull and push factors as nation states and students respond to the demand for opportunities and capacities available in national contexts. in addressing national development goals in the face of a lack of internal capacity, nation states can seek external assistance by sending scholars abroad for training, while those with capacity but lacking human resources to take up opportunities, should recruit international students to meet their need. in this regard, the interplay of push and pull factors results in student mobility, as the above examples have demonstrated. doctoral education in south africa: a brief overview studies on doctoral education in south africa are rare and the few that exist have been conducted in recent years (bawa, 2008; crest, 2009; herman, 2009; 2011a). in order to understand the state of doctoral education in south africa and the issues flowing from it, it is necessary to briefly describe the higher education system in south africa. the post-apartheid government that came into power in 1994 inherited a highly fragmented and racialised higher education system riddled with inequalities. the system consisted of 21 universities and 11 technikons (polytechnics). the university sector distinguished between historically black universities 57sehoole — student mobility and doctoral education in south africa (hbus), which were meant to populate the civil service for the apartheid government’s bantustan system and had no research mandate, and historically white universities (hwus), which were endowed with resources and produced the majority of research outputs and doctorates in south africa. this resulted in a situation described by bawa (2008) in which 80% of south africa’s scientific human resource base is white, and about 80% of students in academic training are white. bawa (2008) further points out that approximately 90% of the scientific output of the country is produced by white scientists. as part of the transformation agenda of the new (1994) government, these imbalances had to be redressed. starting in 2002, south africa went through a restructuring process in the form of mergers of higher education institutions. the 21 universities and 11 technikons were restructured and merged into 23 universities. these were further differentiated into 11 traditional universities focusing on research and a mix of discipline-based and professional degree qualifications; six universities of technology offering a combination of technological, vocational and professional programmes leading to a certificate, diploma or degree; and six comprehensive universities that combine both types of institutions (doe, 2001. all these institutions play differential roles in doctoral education, based on their approved programme and qualification mix as well as their existing capacity and expertise. inequities in the doctoral education programmes in south africa despite the restructuring process aimed at redressing some of the imbalances of the past, hwus continued to be the major producers of doctoral graduates and research (herman, 2011a). herman (2011a) further shows how the early higher education policies of the post-apartheid government initially overlooked doctoral education, with priority being placed on the undergraduate level and first entrants into higher education. it was only since 2006/2007 that national policies have begun to view the doctorate as being distinct from other postgraduate degrees. the delay in addressing the doctoral education situation implied a corresponding delay in responding to the gross inequalities in skills and knowledge production highlighted by bawa (2008). the challenges of the global economy put pressure on nation states to respond with relevant policies and human resources in order to maintain their levels of competitiveness. in its quest for global competitiveness, the south african government has decided to make resources available for innovation, research and capacity building, particularly at postgraduate level. the department of science and technology (dst) and the national research foundation (nrf) have assigned a specific role to the phd as a key driver for economic development and the transformation of the economy towards a knowledgebased economy (dst, 2007). however, this plan faces challenges because of the current low output of phd graduates. in order to overcome such low outputs and meet its development goals, the dst proposed the production of 6000 phd graduates per year in science, engineering and technology (set) disciplines by 2018. whether or not this target will be met falls outside the scope of this paper, but has been addressed in the study by herman (2011b). the uneven distribution of doctoral education and research agendas around the world as described previously is mirrored at national levels and confirmed by south african doctoral education data as this article will demonstrate. herman (2011a) argues that, despite policy intentions to abolish the knowledge divide between hwus and hbus through mergers, the institutional distribution of doctoral production remains skewed. only one hbu is among the top 10 universities responsible for 87% of all doctoral graduates produced in 2007. table 1 shows that these top institutions were also responsible for the enrolment of 83% and 84% of all doctoral students in 2005 and 2009 respectively. 58 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 table 1: doctoral enrolments in the top 10 public higher education institutions university enrolments 2005 enrolments 2009 no of phds % of the total no of phds % of the total university of pretoria 1535 20% 1434 17% university of kwazulu-natal 1078 14% 1606 19% university of cape town 967 12% 1055 12% university of stellenbosch 800 10% 985 12% university of the witwatersrand 694 9% 1038 12% university of south africa 975 12% 741 9% north-west university 373 5% 470 6% university of the free state 575 7% 587 7% university of johannesburg 552 7% 551 7% university of the western cape 312 4% 419 5% total 7861 100 8886 100 overall enrolment 9435 83%* 10530 84%* *percentage contribution of these 10 institutions to the overall doctoral education enrolments source: hemis data; dhet (2010) with the burden of producing doctoral graduates resting on a small number of institutions, the question remains as to how the targets set by the dst will be met. herman (2011a) argues that it is unlikely that universities will have the capacity to meet the expanded doctoral production targets on their own. part of the solution may be the consideration of external examples such as the chinese model of sending large numbers of students to pursue their studies outside the country. thus, the lack of internal capacity to produce the required number of doctoral graduates will act as a push factor to seek external support in doctoral training. an added problem is the challenge of having a small pool of potential doctoral students from which to recruit. in response to this push factor, institutions are beginning to look outside the borders of the country to recruit students from the rest of the african continent (herman, 2011a) in order to meet their equity targets for the enrolment of black students. these targets serve as a pull factor for potential candidates. the problems identified and the solutions sought point to the pull and push factors which act as catalysts for mobility in doctoral education programmes. data on international student mobility are presented in the following sections. international student mobility regarding doctoral education in south africa: pull and push factors despite the inherent inequalities of the system as mentioned earlier, south african higher education institutions and doctoral education programmes, in particular, continue to attract international students. 59sehoole — student mobility and doctoral education in south africa table 2 international student enrolments in doctoral programmes in south africa region of origin 2005 % 2009 % sadc 1156 12 1260 12 rest of africa 727 8 1076 10 europe 252 3 282 3 asia 176 2 220 2 n america 223 2 189 2 s america 17 0 23 0 australia oceania 13 0 25 0 international total 2564 27 3075 29 national total 6870 73 7454 71 total 9434 100 10529 100 source: hemis data; dhet (2010) table 2 indicates that south african doctoral education programmes drew students from all the regions of the world. of the total 9434 doctoral students enrolled in 2005 in south africa, 2564 (27%) were international students, suggesting a significant element of mobility. the 2009 data shows that there was a 2% increase in student numbers from 9434 in 2005 to 10529 in 2009. a proportion of that increase was taken up by international students from africa whose proportion increased from 8% to 10%. as pointed out earlier, the increase in the number of african students can be attributed to the push factor on the part of universities that recruit these students in the quest to meet their equity targets in order to balance out the predominance of white students in doctoral programmes. the patterns of doctoral education enrolments in south africa reveal the north-south (with the presence of students from europe and north america) and south-south movement (with students from africa, south america and asia, which is contrary to findings of earlier studies that suggest the predominant north-north and south-north mobility of students (de wit et al., 2008). the pull factors for students from europe and north america can be attributed to the quality in some programmes offered by some universities in south africa, as well as the historical ties south africa has with some european countries such as england, the netherlands and germany (sehoole, 2008). language is another pull factor as south african universities offer french, german, dutch, italian and portuguese, subjects which are attractive to european speakers of these languages. the use of english as the predominant language of learning in south african universities could also be a pull factor in the second trend observed, namely the south-south movement of students from africa, asia and south america. as english has become the language of the global economy, many students are seeking opportunities to further their studies in systems that teach through the medium of english. in his comparison of the indian and chinese higher education systems, agarwal (2011) argues that the indian system has a better reputation than that of china, citing the use of english as a language of instruction as one of the pull factors towards the indian higher education system. similarly, lasanowski (2011) points to the growth in the amount of english-language provision in non-english countries as a factor in attracting an increasing number of “eager-for-english” students from beyond traditional recruitment “pools” or “source” countries. she attributes germany’s growing english-medium curricula as one of the factors explaining why it is gradually becoming a more popular destination among students from brazil and vietnam. the south african higher education system has traditionally been english, with afrikaans added in the middle of the 20th century, and the country is home to reputable and quality english-medium universities. costs also play a role as a pull factor to south african universities. globally, institutions are competing for a market share in attracting international fee-paying students. as a result of decreased public funding of higher education and increased operational costs, some institutions are increasingly 60 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 looking to internationalisation activities as a way of generating alternative sources of funding (nerad & trzyna, 2008). the purpose or use of the income thus generated is often questioned with regard to whether it is profit oriented, or can be viewed as cost recovery. due to the fact that the south african government pays subsidies to universities for all students (both national and international), thus absorbing some of the costs, studying in south africa tends to be relatively cheap. furthermore, for foreigners, the favourable rand-us dollar and euro exchange rates contribute towards making studying in south africa more affordable compared with studying in the us or europe. enrolments according to field of study data on global student mobility suggest that students cross borders in search of qualifications in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (stem) (bhandari & blumenthal, 2011), and south african data show similar patterns. table 3 shows an increase in enrolments of doctoral students in the natural sciences, from 4037 to 5092. international students accounted for the majority of that increase, with their number increasing from 1117 (27%) to 1732 (34%). this increase was at the expense of enrolment of national students, whose proportion dropped from 72% to 66%. table 3: enrolment of doctoral students according to field and nationality 2005 2009 total national international total national international humanities 5398 4178 (77%) 1220 (23%) 5438 3845 (71%) 1592 (29%) natural sciences 4037 2920 (72%) 1117 (27%) 5092 3369 (66%) 1723 (34%) total 9435 7092 (75%) 2337 (25%) 10530 7214 (69%) 3315 (31%) in addition to the quality dimension highlighted earlier, the growing interest of international students in doctoral education in set could be attributed to the fact that south africa is a signatory to various accords governing practice in the field of engineering. for example, south africa is a signatory to the washington (1989), sydney (2001) and dublin (2002) accords (international engineering alliance, n.d.) which advance bench-marking in the engineering profession. a benefit of being a signatory to these accords is that international students who complete engineering programmes in south africa are certified to practise anywhere in the world. south africa’s role as a regional hub for doctoral education training south africa is emerging as a regional hub in southern africa with students from this region showing their preference for studying at south african universities. this trend is enhanced by south africa’s policy of accepting students from the sadc region and the rest of africa as a way of contributing to the continent’s human resources development and helping to stem the crippling “brain drain” (south african year book, 2004/5). the movement of students in the sadc regional is facilitated by the sadc protocol on education and training1, of which south africa is a signatory, which was ratified in 1997 (sadc, 1997). 61sehoole — student mobility and doctoral education in south africa table 4: phd students from sadc and other african countries studying in south africa country 2005 2009 zimbabwe 254 538 lesotho 55 104 namibia 68 97 botswana 95 95 zambia 77 87 malawi 53 85 mozambique 54 64 tanzania 41 73 other african countries 727 1076 source: hemis data; dhet (2010) table 4 reveals that south africa is enrolling a significant number of doctoral students from the sadc region and other african countries. the table further shows that zimbabwe, lesotho, namibia and botswana were the main regional providers of doctoral students to south africa, with zimbabwe and lesotho doubling their numbers during the period from 2005 to 2009. there are a number of pull factors to explain why south africa is attractive to students from the region. first, south africa has the most developed higher education system in the region with some internationally renowned institutions. second, all four major sending countries are south african neighbours and share national borders so that geographic proximity makes south africa easily accessible. third, each of the sending countries shares some common language with south africa, with some of the communities on each side of the border having been divided only by colonial borders. as a result, being in south africa is like “being at home”, except for occasional reported incidents of xenophobia. there are also some push factors which drive students from their own countries to study in south africa. the political instability in zimbabwe, which has continued since 2000, has led to a near collapse of higher education in that country. the combination of economic hardships and persecution of government opponents contributes to the exodus of students, some of whom choose to study in south africa. the limited higher education opportunities in lesotho, botswana and namibia, with each country having only one public university, could be a contributory factor in the increase in numbers of students from those countries. the number of inbound students to south africa portrays the country as an emerging hub for higher education in the sadc region. unlike hong kong and singapore, which are deliberately investing in becoming regional hubs driven by economic rationales (knight, 2011), the south africa government views education as a public good and not as a commodity. conclusion this article has highlighted the centrality of doctoral education in producing knowledge and human resources for the global economy. with globalisation depending on and being sustained by the movement of people and ideas, this article has demonstrated how student mobility is an integral part of the global doctoral education phenomenon. international student mobility is driven and sustained by pull and push factors as countries and individuals compete for access to the best available minds and opportunities around the world. the tussle of pull and push factors in the quest for best opportunities, skills and resources, in turn, sustain the global competitiveness of countries. given the inequalities in the global economy with regard to the quality and types of universities and programmes available, countries also have differential capabilities in competing for the best available minds, skills and opportunities. in this regard countries with more financial resources but less institutional capacity are able to buy the best available opportunities around the world for their students, as the case of china demonstrates. similarly, 62 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 countries with institutional capacity but fewer students available to take up these opportunities are able to attract bright minds from around the world, as the case of the united states demonstrates. south africa’s doctoral education programmes tend to mirror developments in global doctoral education, except that the state is not active in the recruitment of either international students or sending local students overseas for capacity building. the south african government does create enabling conditions for the inflow of international students by issuing visas, providing subsidies, and creating enabling policy frameworks for them to study in south africa. higher education institutions have differential capacities and offer varying quality in their doctoral education programmes. this is part of the legacy of apartheid education which continues to reproduce inequalities in knowledge production, with knowledge and skills still being predominantly produced in hwus and by ageing white academics. despite these inherent inequalities, doctoral education programmes in south africa remain the most developed in the southern african region and on the african continent. these programmes are able to attract students from the rest of the world as demonstrated by enrolment data by regions of the world. this development may be attributed to pockets of excellence and quality that are found in some of the doctoral programmes offered by south african universities. in order to meet the challenges of global competitiveness and the government’s set target of numbers of doctoral graduates by 2018 south africa needs to expand its institutional capacity and recruitment pool for doctoral education programmes. in this regard china offers instructive lessons with regard to addressing its goals in the context of resource constraints, whereas the united states offers lessons in responding to a small recruitment pool for doctoral education programmes. both these strategies are based on the phenomenon of student mobility as driven by various pull and push factors. contrary to studies, which suggest that these global developments are taking place in spite of the state, this article has argued that the state is central to and shapes developments in doctoral education programmes around the globe. there is a need for further and in-depth study on the phenomenon of internal (national) student mobility which finds expression in students studying outside their home provinces and which appears to mirror that of international student mobility. references agarwal p 2011. india’s growing influence in international student mobility. in: bhandari r & blumenthal p (eds). international students and global mobility in higher education. new york: palgrave macmillan. altbach p & mcgill-peterson p 2008. preface. in: de wit h agarwal p said m sehoole m & sirozi m (eds). the dynamics of international student circulation in a global context. rotterdam: sense publishers. bawa a 2008. south africa. in: nerad m & heggelund m (eds). towards a global phd?: forces and forms in doctoral education worldwide. seattle and london: uw press. bhandari r & blumenthal p (eds). 2011. international students and global mobility in higher education. new york: palgrave macmillan. carnoy m 2001. the role of the state in the new global economy. in: muller j cloete j & badat s (eds). challenges of globalisation: south african debates with manuel castells. sunnyside: center for higher education transformation. centre for research in science and technology (crest). 2009. doctoral students in south africa: a statistical profile based on hemis data. a report commissioned by the assaf panel on the phd, stellenbosch university, centre for the research on science and technology. department of education (doe) 2001. national plan for higher education. pretoria. doe. department of higher education and training (dhet) 2011. statisitics obtained from the higher education management information system database. pretoria, dhet. department of science and technology (dst) 2007. ten year plan for innovation. pretoria: dst. de wit h, agarwal p, said m, sehoole m & sirozi m (eds.) 2008. the dynamics of international student circulation in a global context. rotterdam: sense publishers. 63sehoole — student mobility and doctoral education in south africa herman c 2009. exemplary phd programmes in south africa: a qualitative report of constraints and possibilities. a report commissioned by the assaf panel on the phd, stellenbosch university, centre for the research on science and technology. herman c 2011a. elusive equity in doctoral education in south africa. journal of education and work, 24(1-2):163-184. herman c 2011b. expanding doctoral education in south africa – pipedream or pipedream? higher education research & development, 30(4):505-518. international engineering alliance (n.d.). dublin. washington and sidney accords. retrieved from http:// www. washingtonaccord.org. on 3 march 2011. kehm bm 2007. quo vadis doctoral education? new european approaches in the context of global changes. european journal of education, 42(3):307-319. knight j 2011. regional hubs: mobility for the knowledge economy. in: bhandari r & blumenthal p (eds). international students and global mobility in higher education. new york: palgrave macmillan. lasanowski v 2011. can speak, will travel: the influence of language on global student mobility. in: bhandari r & blumenthal p (eds). international students and global mobility in higher education. new york: palgrave macmillan. nerad m & trzyna t 2008. conclusion. in: nerad n & heggelund m (eds). 2008. towards a global phd?: forces and forms in doctoral education worldwide. seattle and london: uw press. nerad m, trzyna t & heggelund m 2008. introduction. in: nerad n & heggelund m (eds). 2008. towards a global phd?: forces and forms in doctoral education worldwide. seattle and london: uw press. richters e & teichler u 2006. student mobility data: current methodological issues and future prospects. in: kelo m teichler u & waecher b (eds). eurodata: student mobility in european higher education. academic cooperation association report. bonn: lemmens verlag. sehoole m 2008. south africa and the dynamics of international student circulation in: de wit h agarwal p said m sehoole m & sirozi m (eds.) 2008. the dynamics of international student circulation in a global context. rotterdam: sense publishers. the south african year book 2004/5. government communication and information systems. pretoria: government printers. south african government communication and information system 2005. south african yearbook, pretoria: gcis. southern african development community (sadc) 1997. protocol on education. blantyre, malawi: sadc. unesco 2006. global education digest: comparing education statistics around the world. paris: unesco institute for statistics. yanng x 2011. mobility strategies and trends: the case of china. in: bhandari r & blumenthal p (eds). 2011. international students and global mobility in higher education. new york: palgrave macmillan. (endnotes) 1 the protocol has been signed by all 15 sadc member states, namely angola, botswana, democratic republic of congo, lesotho, malawi, mozambique, mauritius, madagascar, namibia, south africa, swaziland, seychelles, tanzania, zambia, and zimbabwe. 196 curriculum responsiveness within the context of decolonisation in south african higher education abstract south african higher education in the past year has seen violent calls for decolonisation of the curriculum, as a way of addressing the passive nature of education. the inability of the curriculum to respond to contextual issues, empower students to come of age, while at the same time remain committed to giving them a plurality of voices has been a cause for concern. morrison (2007) argues that curriculum discourse should be marked by a multiplicity of voices, articulating a hundred thousand theories thereby creating avenues for a just and caring curriculum. this curriculum is only possible in spaces that are open to construction and reconstruction of responsive knowledge. to enhance the responsiveness of the curriculum, this paper experimented on voices that matter in the decolonisation project in the bid to create sustainable and socially just spaces wherein caring and just curriculum encounters can take place. designed as a qualitative case study of six universities, the study used open-ended questionnaires and semi-structured interviews to generate data. the data generated was analysed using morrison’s (2007) notion of a hundred thousand theories. the paper reveals three key findings: curriculum encounters are shaped by power dynamics in educational spaces, plurality of voices provokes the creation of disciplinary and interdisciplinary spaces for curriculum engagement and sustainable education experience is powered by plurality, which in itself is shaped by curricular charges. the paper concludes that curriculum encounters is vital for the effectiveness of the decolonisation process and the enhancement of curriculum responsiveness. keywords: curriculum encounters, responsiveness, decolonisation, plurality 1. introduction the context of south african higher education is rather a complex one, rife with inequalities, lack of resources and personnel. owing to the inequalities and the lack of transformation in south african universities twenty-three years after the end of apartheid, students and staff are demanding the decolonisation of the curriculum. however, the meaning of decolonisation within this context is yet to be agreed upon, especially because there are several discordant voices advocating different pathways for the decolonisation project. decolonising the curriculum in south african higher education according to mgqwashu dr kehdinga george fomunyam prof damtew teferra higher education training and development, university of kwazulu-natal, email: kehdingag@ukzn.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i2.15 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(2): 196-207 © uv/ufs mailto:kehdingag@ukzn.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.15 197 fomunyam & teferra curriculum responsiveness within the context of decolonisation ... (2016) and fomunyam (2017a) is the foregrounding of local or indigenous knowledge and experiences in curricula content, thereby downplaying or eradicating eurocentric or global north experiences which has dominated curriculum content for centuries. which voice should matter in the decolonisation process is a question for another research study, but the responsiveness of the curriculum within the context of decolonisation is the issue for discussion. fomunyam (2014) argues that curriculum is a series of potential experiences organised in a school for disciplining students in ways of thinking and acting. this means that the curriculum centres on what students are supposed to take away from teaching and learning as well as what they can or should do with what they take from the curriculum. pinar et al. (2008) add that the curriculum can be seen as a description of what, why, how and how well students should learn in a systematic and intentional way. to this effect, the curriculum is not an end point, but a means to foster a more congruent and impactful educational experience. for these learning experiences to be effective, they need to be responsive to the needs of students and the society in which these students find themselves. the inability of the curriculum to respond to local challenges is a vital reason behind the call for the decolonisation of the curriculum. moll (2004) argues that curriculum responsiveness is the ability of curricula taught in schools or universities to address student needs as well as societal circumstances. this means that the curriculum not only focuses on what happens in the classroom but also on what students do with what they learnt. to this end, curriculum responsiveness would address issues of employability or economic responsiveness, diverse student make up in the classroom or cultural responsiveness, the nature of underlying knowledge within the discipline or disciplinary responsiveness and pedagogical or learning responsiveness (moll, 2004). these four dimensions of responsiveness speak to the very context of decolonisation in south african higher education and how responsive the curriculum is tailored to be is determined by the forces or voices that matter, which is in turn determined by the kind of curriculum encounters students and teachers or lecturers have within the context of higher education. however, the recent waves of protest in south africa demanding the decolonisation of south african higher education attest to the need for a more responsive curriculum in higher education programmes. this is especially necessary in a nation such as south africa with a past that has been discriminatory and segregative. this paper therefore theorises curriculum responsiveness as a tool for decolonisation and the effectiveness of this tool is determined by the voices that shape it. to understand this better, this article proceeds with a discussion of curriculum responsiveness and decolonisation, followed by the research methodology, the findings and a discussion of the findings. 2. curriculum responsiveness and decolonisation ensor (2004) argues that in some universities in south africa, curriculum responsiveness have been geared towards developing degree programmes with names that suggest relevance to the workplace, but questions the extent to which the suggested responsiveness of these names have been enacted in the classroom. to understand this better, this article looks at the four dimensions of responsiveness mentioned above. economic responsiveness deals with the ability of the curriculum to train skilled professionals in the different sectors in the economy. it moves beyond offering a degree in a particular field of study such as management or computer programming to how skilled and ready for the job market these professionals are. if they can move beyond dabbling with the problems in the field to developing solutions, then the curriculum can be said to be economically responsive. to this 198 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) effect, revolutionary individuals need to be trained who would not only be fit to take on the job market but will be able to respond to the economic challenges of the time through job creation, inventions and innovative approaches to better manage resources and avoid waste. economic responsiveness in the curriculum therefore goes beyond satisfying the job market at the present, but creating sustainable solutions to future challenges as well as the growth of the economy. what you learn therefore and how you learn it contributes to the decolonisation process of the mind and the institutional architectures within the nature which embodies the economy in its entire or partially. decolonising the curriculum in the south african context would be one way of causing the curriculum to be responsive to local economic challenges and by extension developing measures to address it. cultural responsiveness on the other hand is the curriculum’s ability to access and respond to the cultural dissonance in the classroom (moll, 2004). this dissonance can be in terms of ethnically diverse students, racial profiles of the students and teachers and to a lesser extent, gender. gamble (2003) argues that in a nation such as south africa with a corrosively discriminating past, it requires a curriculum that would not only respond to cultural challenges but also recognises the diversity within the classroom. the recognition of this empowers the teacher to tap into the diverse social and cultural capital within the classroom to enhance the learning experience. gay (2010) adds that cultural responsiveness is the teacher’s ability to demonstrate knowledge of the cultural characteristics of different groups within the classroom, and how these cultural differences affect the teaching and learning process. knowledge is built on experiences, which itself is culturally shaped; as such recognising the cultural differences in the classroom from a curriculum standpoint is way of decolonising the educational space and giving everyone a voice. traditionally, a cultural responsive curriculum has been a problem in most parts of the world especially in recent times where globalisation and internationalisation are increasingly determining the direction of higher education. the competitiveness within the knowledge economy has provided little space for a curriculum that addresses cultural issues in a local context. ogude et al. (2005) add that for the curriculum to be culturally responsive, it needs to have knowledge of diverse cultural encounters and transformations. it also requires knowledge of human projects to dominate other human beings and how the people being dominated respond to subjugation, knowledge of democratic ideas and constitutional principles that pertain to the people, knowledge of the teachers’ cultural roots and complexities. the weaving together of these different aspects would make for a more culturally responsive curriculum especially in a context that requires decolonising. the foregrounding of culture and local experiences is a principal tool for decolonisation since it shuns foreign concepts and ideas. disciplinary responsiveness is the third type of responsiveness which curriculum in higher education, especially south african higher education, is supposed to engage. disciplinary responsiveness is the ability of a curriculum document to be up to date with the research in the field as well as promote new discoveries within the discipline (ferdinand, 2009). a higher education curriculum is intricately bound up with a community of scholars or scholarship who produce new knowledge according to the dictates of the discipline. however, most academic disciplines or curricula are often highly systematised forms of inquiry which evade everyday life practices which education is supposed to prepare people for, inform and challenge (moll, 2004). for the curriculum to be disciplinary responsive within the context of decolonisation in south africa, it should not only be up to date in relation to research in the field, but should be structured in ways that are applicable to everyday life especially since knowledge is largely for 199 fomunyam & teferra curriculum responsiveness within the context of decolonisation ... application. moll (2004: 8) adds that, “disciplinary responsiveness can be taken to mean that the curriculum is responsive to the nature of its underlying knowledge discipline by ensuring a close coupling between the way in which knowledge is produced and the way students are educated and trained in the discipline area”. disciplinary knowledge is at the centre of the decolonisation project since decolonising south african higher education is primarily about knowledge ownership and production. disciplinary responsiveness will ensure that what is happening locally and internationally as far as the discipline is concerned is covered, as well as encourage students to think globally and act locally to develop the discipline (moja, 2004). lastly, pedagogical or learning responsiveness is the curriculum’s ability to respond to the needs of the student. in every classroom, there are students with different needs and abilities as far as teaching and learning is concerned. without the curriculum responding to the needs of these individual learners, no meaningful learning can take place. the one size fits all approach has failed and continues to fail in addressing student needs (ferdinand, 2009). responding to student needs through the curriculum entails “approaches to the design of curricula, instructional strategies, methods of assessment, and approaches to student support that take the characteristics and context of target student groups seriously” (ogude et al., 2005: 13). to moll (2004) all students entering the university is disadvantaged one way or another especially since they have to adapt to an institutional and epistemic context that is unfamiliar to them. making the curriculum responsive to their needs fosters the course for decolonisation especially since decolonising the mind is the first step to ensure freedom and critical engagement to whatever material it receives. these four aspects of responsiveness work for the improvement of higher education especially in a context where decolonising is of great priority. however, to what degree these different aspects of responsiveness will apply in higher education is determined by who shapes the discourse or curriculum and what direction they want it to take. to explore this further, it is vital to employ a theoretical lens that informs curriculum voices as well as a methodology that informs how the voices were selected. 3. research design and methodology this research was framed as a qualitative case study to enable the researcher to generate in-depth data about the phenomenon. qualitative research according to vanderstoep and johnston (2009) refers to research that probes into an individual’s understanding and interpretation of certain experiences, while according to neuman (2006: 40) a case study is “an in-depth study of one particular case in which the case may be a person, a university, or group of universities etc.”. this paper is therefore justified as a qualitative case study and the case being explored is six universities. to generate qualitative data for this paper, semi-structured interviews and open-ended questionnaires were used. both semi-structured interviews and open-ended questionnaires used the same questions though targeting different people. the interviews targeted university lecturers while the questionnaires targeted students. the participants for the study were chosen purposively and twelve lecturers from the six universities were interviewed. the interviews lasted for forty minutes each. one hundred and twenty students from the six universities responded to the questionnaires. the interviews and questionnaires were anchored on two basic questions what aspects of the curriculum require decolonisation and how can these aspects be decolonised? the data generated from the interviews and the questionnaires were coded and developed into themes. these themes are presented and discussed in the findings and discussion sections of the article. however, to 200 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) make sense of this, it is vital to explore a theoretical lens that can give meaning to the findings. to this effect, this paper considers the hundred thousand theories theory by morrison (2004). the hundred thousand theories theory advanced by morrison (2004) and enhanced by doh (2013) and fomunyam (2014) focuses on engaging curricula issues from different perspectives. it advocates the creation and celebration of a hundred thousand theories in solving curricular problems as opposed to the use of curriculum theory by curriculum developers and educational experts. fomunyam (2014) argues that curriculum theorist have failed to generate a single unified theory which can accommodate or solve all curricula or educational challenges. this is because challenges in higher education are often caused by diverse factors ranging from curriculum, resources, institutional architecture and culture and funding amongst others. the varied nature of higher education goals especially in south africa makes the task of dealing with educational challenges a herculean one. a variety of voices is therefore needed in ensuring curriculum responsiveness in south african higher education. doh (2013) opined that curriculum developers and theorist are becoming increasingly frustrated in their quest of finding a universal theory that will serve as a guide for all teachers, learners and curriculum theorisers. this failure makes a hundred thousand theories the more apt way to go since theorisers as well as educational stakeholders acknowledge the sensitivity of the emerging patterns and complications found in the lives of students inand outside the university. fomunyam (2014), adding to this, states that the curriculum’s ability to respond to contextual issues within the context of higher education is through theorising or curriculum theorising, which involves individuals in three specific activities; being sensitive to new trends in education, identifying similar trends and issues and finally relating these trends to the individual’s context. curriculum theorising therefore resonates with a hundred thousand theories and through this; the higher education curriculum in south africa can be responsive in the context of decolonisation. since a thousand context is the basis for morrison’s argument in this theory, depth, diversity, conflicting voices, responsiveness, productiveness, diverse philosophies and theories should be the basis for curriculum encounters, be it with students or teachers. this way outdated but convenient explanations or solutions to educational problems are eliminated and budding theories developed as researchers attempt to reshape the higher education landscape in general and in south african higher education in particular. 4. findings the data generated was coded and categorised into different units echoing different encounters. these units were further merged to form three themes: power dynamics in educational spaces, plurality of voices and curricula charges. these three themes are particularly significant in south african higher education because they inform the basis for responsiveness and decolonisation. the plurality of voices is the context for encounters that can ensure responsiveness and decolonisation. since responsiveness in higher education is a function of the process and not the product, a hundred thousand theories articulating the essence of curriculum encounters, be it students with students, students with lecturers or lecturers with lecturers is vital especially in south african higher education if the decolonisation project must succeed. 4.1 power dynamics in educational spaces how responsive a curriculum is, is a function of who shapes the discussion and what their vision for such a curriculum is. whether the curriculum is more responsive economically, 201 fomunyam & teferra curriculum responsiveness within the context of decolonisation ... culturally pedagogically or disciplinary is principally determined by the power dynamics. the findings of the study revealed that the curriculum has remained colonised in south african higher education for over two decades after the advent of democracy because of the power dynamics in educational spaces. those who shape curriculum discourses determine what direction education would take, thereby influencing the future of the nation and the lives of the people. higher education is still dominated by scholars who were trained during apartheid, who see or valued eurocentric epistemological stands as the ultimate. african indigenous knowledge systems have been neglected while ideas and experiences from the global north have been foregrounded in south african higher education. attesting to this, one of the participants who completed a questionnaire stated that, “power relations need to be normalised. we as students need to have a say in what we study so that we can ensure the value for our money”. the power dynamics in higher education spaces have been maintained over the years by a few who value their position and for one reason or another have chosen to maintain the statuesque. curriculum discourses must be decolonised to make sure that every stakeholder within the higher education sector has a say. another participant alluded that, our education curriculum is still championed by neo-colonialist and this needs to change. higher education curriculum needs to be student-, learningand context-centred so that it can be responsive to local situations. this lack of responsiveness is the reason why economic power remains in the hands of a few and unemployment keeps increasing. furthermore, power dynamics does not only resonate at institutional levels but also at the national level. curriculum development processes and policy development initiatives for basic and higher education always see scholars from the global north dominating the process. whatever the reasons for this might be, it has made education largely unresponsive especially pedagogically, economically and culturally. these dynamics require a shift to ensure a balance of power. students, culture, discipline and economy need to all have their say to ensure that the curriculum used in training students is relevant and productive to the society. responsiveness is influenced by power and until those who will this power have thorough knowledge of local circumstances and experiences and foreground such circumstances and experiences, responsiveness and decolonisation will remain a myth. to validate this further, one of the participants argued that, everybody needs to be involved in curriculum development process especially at the higher education level because this is where the future of the nation is shaped. it produces our teachers, entrepreneurs, doctors, astronauts, archaeologist, and philosophers amongst others. another participant added that, indigenous knowledge is side-lined because those who are researching it and advocating for it don’t have decision making power. and those who do, prefer the ivory towers they are seating [sitting] in until this power dynamic is dismantled, our curriculum would remain unresponsive and decolonisation would remain another buzz word. 4.2 plurality of voices this was the second theme that emerged from the data as a way of addressing the hegemonic nature of power in higher education curriculum discussions. plurality of voices would ensure that every facet of the society is represented, as stakeholders would be given the 202 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) opportunity to voice their concerns. with community engagement as one of the core missions of higher education in south africa, plurality of voices becomes vital in understanding local circumstances and how these circumstances can be addressed. promoting plurality would empower education stakeholders to know where and what exactly education needs to be responding to and how effective it has been in addressing these issues. emphasising this, one of the participants stated that, “multiplicity of voices is vital if the decolonisation process is to be successful. those in the academia have already failed in decolonising it. so, voices are needed from all facets of life to power the process”. another added that, “lecturers need to stop seeing students as passive acquirers of knowledge and see them as active participants in the knowledge construction process. together, both students and lecturers can debate what they want or don’t want to be part of the curriculum thereby making it more responsive.” discussions about curriculum in recent times have been skewed, especially in the face of marketisation, knowledge economy and curriculum internationalisation where universities are competing to make global impact while neglecting the local context. plurality of voices will help keep in check the hegemonic nature of power in higher education discussions and ensure that the context is taken into consideration and the decolonisation agenda is foregrounded. another participant further added that, educational processes or discussions are hegemonic in most universities and this requires decolonisation. a few people have dominated these discussions for the past twenty years and now it’s time to change. thousands of voices should be promoted to contribute in these discussions, so a variety of perspectives can be understood and applied. plurality ensures representation of diverse contexts and viewpoints in the curriculum debate thereby creating room for the curriculum to be more responsive to the people and the society wherein these institutions are based. in addition, disciplines develop better with a variety of viewpoints or different focal approaches to articulating reality. however, this is only possible if curriculum discussions are not stifled by hegemonic practices and academic freedom is promoted in all areas of higher education. 4.3 curricular charges curricular charges determine whether the curriculum is responsive and how the decolonisation project can unfold. these charges, depending on what kind of charges they are, determine who does what within the higher education landscape, what kind of research projects are undertaken to develop the discipline, the spaces for which curriculum discussions take place and the pedagogical approaches embedded within such a landscape. curricula charges such as responsibilities, consciousness, commitments, responsiveness and projects therefore determine what happens in higher education curriculum discourses. the responsibilities or roles that lecturers, managers, students and support staff perform, would determine whether decolonisation takes place. these charges inform the conversation and the direction higher education would eventually take. however, the power dynamics within the institution as a whole or within the discipline shapes what kind of charge comes into play, as well as the nature of voices that matter, be it a multitude of voices or a privileged few. these voices also shape what kind of charges institutional stakeholders will be involved with and what they can use these charges to do in the development of the discipline or disciplines as the case might be. owing to the power dynamics, these charges have moved from being disciplinary to interdisciplinary making the charges general rather than specific. this has a resulting effect 203 fomunyam & teferra curriculum responsiveness within the context of decolonisation ... on the responsiveness of the curriculum and the decolonisation of the system as a whole in the case of south african higher education system. expatiating further on this, one of the participants stated that, some of the so-called professors who became professors in 1980/90s are very backward in their thinking. they sit as discipline heads and issue commands on what should or should not be done without consulting lecturers who do most of the work. they fail in taking responsibility to implement their own directives. when responsibility is not shared, or initiated by example, defaulting would be a general norm. another participant, a postgraduate student, stated that, the kind of research some supervisors want you to do is baffling. they simply want to remain in their comfort zone as such force students to do research that have no sociopolitical relevance. communication is stifled, responsibilities are not defined and those at the end of the foot chain [food chain] end up suffering. most academics are not conscious of the impact of their actions on others such as students or support staff and this influences the way the higher education system functions. their overly lack of commitment, whether due to low pay or archaic institutional architecture, further weakens the ability of the curriculum to be responsive. by engaging with projects with little or no socio-political relevance, avoiding the rigor and vigorousness of disciplinarity to dabble in the shallow waters of interdisciplinarity, championing role confusion and hegemonic practices within the higher education sector, the curriculum is made of no effect. this is because the processes that are supposed to power it to produce have been reduced to mere formalities. curricular charges therefore influence and are influenced by how responsive a curriculum is powered to be. 5. discussion power dynamics in the higher education curriculum is the focal point of responsiveness and decolonisation in the case of south african higher education. brennan (2011) and apple (2004) argue that the curriculum is a political document in which lies the power for building and destruction. those who influence the curriculum determine how responsive it will be in the higher education system. apple (2004) further argued that schools or universities and by extension, education do not only control people, but meaning and this is done through the curriculum. therefore, those who control the curriculum discourse control the power and determine what is perceived to be “legitimate knowledge”. to apple, power is the only way through which legitimacy can be establish and whether this knowledge makes for or mars curriculum responsiveness and decolonisation is dependent on who controls it (apple, 2004). fenster and kulka (2016) emphasise that since power is the ability of certain actors to control and influence decisions in planning, development and evaluation of processes that affect an individual and a community’s everyday life such as education, these voices of power determine the direction of the society. the curriculum in higher education becomes a playground where voices that matter or that should matter are silenced or promoted. to fenster and kulka (2016), knowledge is a product of power, especially pertaining access to higher education, funding or other resources. this is so because knowledge production is directly connected to power as a resource and this power influences what gets to be regarded as knowledge worthy of the curriculum. academics who control curriculum discussions within the educational landscape 204 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) therefore determine what would be transmitted or constructed as knowledge as the case might be and who emerges as custodians of such knowledge. fenster and kulka (2016: 224) arguing further on what they refer to as a “crisis of knowledge”, indicate the “limitations of expert knowledge and the power relations inherent in it. this has followed the emergence of a new interest in local or lay knowledge”. this is confirmed by jones (2009) who argues that modernists have reached a consensus concerning knowledge’s ability to bridge the gap between nature (education) and society; however, this is impossible without a mutual approach to learning in which every day experiences of the common man (often eliminated through power) is used to balance or challenge “powerful professional knowledge”. power dynamics in most south african higher education institutions stifle education conversations, causing the common man’s experience to be neglected. this is the reason why the higher education sector and the curriculum have remained colonised. the famous mamdani affair in the university of cape town (mamdani, 1998) and the desai affair in the university of kwazulu-natal (beetar, 2013) best illustrate this. foucault’s discussion on knowledge and power in which he focuses on the relationship between knowledge and power, with power operating within institutional apparatus is quite relevant here. the institutional apparatus, which includes educational discourse, curriculum encounters, language philosophical propositions and morality amongst others, is always enshrined in a play of power (foucault, 1980). knowledge, which is a product of this apparatus, is enmeshed in dynamics of power because of its constant application to social conduct and relation in practice. this power is what is sued to silence the plurality of voices, which characterised the higher education environment. daldal (2014) and fomunyam and rahming (2017) argue that power is everywhere and man cannot escape from the complex relations of power. the effects of this power are determined by how it is distributed or used to empower the people. if a plurality of voices is empowered, it would cater for responsiveness at all levels because all areas of concern will be covered. however, forced relations of power where certain individuals remain custodians of authority ensures continuous colonisation of the higher education sector as a whole and fetishism of power in particular. higher education can only be overly productive in the face of discourse, which is free of hegemonic products and is characterised by a hundred thousand voices. foucault (1980) argues that power comes from below and there is no binary opposition between the rulers (higher education barons) and the ruled (common placed lecturers, students and other stakeholders). plurality of voices therefore is the real source of power that is often usurped by a few to foster certain agendas. gramsci (1980) further expounds on this by seeing power as the ideological predominance of bourgeois values and norms over the subordinate classes, which accept them as normal. this dominance is aimed at controlling the consciousness and belief systems of the people through knowledge and education. this control of consciousness, daldal (2014) argues, is more of an arena of political struggle than the strive for control of the forces of production. he add that “three words can be said to summarize gramsci’s notion of power; power is ideology” (daldal, 2014: 156). this ideology is inherent or transmitted through the curriculum to ensure that the education system remains colonised and unresponsive. morrison (2004) argues that the complex nature of the education landscape brought about by hegemonic power dynamics, complicated human experience, social or cultural capital and the socio-political landscape in which such education is taking place requires a plurality of voices if education is to be fruitful. morrison articulates the poverty of curriculum theory and advocates theorising from a hundred thousand contexts to generate a hundred 205 fomunyam & teferra curriculum responsiveness within the context of decolonisation ... thousand theories that can be used to solve educational problems. curriculum decolonisation and responsiveness are two of such challenges requiring a plurality of voices to ensure that the problem is understood from every context. a hundred thousand theories would cater for economic, cultural, disciplinary and pedagogical responsiveness. the constant call for decolonisation in the south african higher education system is a clear indicator of the failure of the curriculum to produce against the backdrop of hegemonic power structures. to this effect, responsiveness within the context of decolonisation is only possible if curricula charges such as responsibilities, consciousness, commitments and projects are rid of ideological nuances that make them unhealthy for academic discussion (fomunyam, 2014; fomunyam, 2017b). higher education in south africa has amongst other things three intrinsic objectives; value for money, fitness for purpose and transformation (fomunyam, 2016). for students to enjoy value for their money, they must be made part of the conversations around curriculum and made to engage with diverse charges alongside lecturers and other university stakeholders. through commitments, consciousness and responsibilities, the students and staff can grow within the higher education sector, engage in projects that foster the process of decolonisation and articulate the challenges they are facing to ensure pedagogical and disciplinary responsiveness. they can also bring to bear the strengths and weaknesses of their social and cultural capital to ensure that the curriculum is made to respond to their strengths and weaknesses culturally. this curriculum cannot be responsive especially in the context of decolonisation according to veyne (2013: 32) who argues that “knowledge is a justification for power, power sets knowledge in action and, along with knowledge, a whole set-up of laws, rights, regulations and practices, ….representations, doctrines and even philosophies with institutions and so on. all this is impregnated by the ‘discourse’ of the day.” a hundred thousand theories articulated by a plurality of voices, powered by curriculum encounters that are void of hegemonic power dynamics would ensure decolonisation in south african higher education as well as the responsiveness of the curriculum. 6. conclusion curriculum responsiveness in south african higher education has been and still is being stifled by several factors. in this era of decolonisation, the need for curriculum responsiveness cannot be over emphasised, especially because it is by responding culturally, disciplinary pedagogically and economically from a contextual perspective that the decolonisation project can succeed. economic responsiveness is vital in addressing the growing concerns of unemployment, which is caused to a greater extend by contextual factors than global ones, and disciplinary responsiveness is the key to promoting african indigenous knowledge systems from a contextual standpoint. the curriculum must be aligned to culture, which is the basis of local experiences and thought to ensure that issues of patriarchy, respect of human dignity and social justice is at the core of education. pedagogy is useless if it cannot enhance student learning, as such making the curriculum responsive to student needs is essential to giving them a voice and making them better candidates for the job market in particular and society in general. a hundred thousand theories is therefore needed to articulate local experiences for decolonisation and responsiveness within the curriculum. to this end, this paper therefore makes several recommendations for the enhancement of curriculum responsiveness in the current context of decolonisation in south african higher education. the paper recommends that institutional architecture must be rid of hegemonic power dynamics that shape curriculum encounters in ways that disempower it to respond to society 206 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) challenges. furthermore, these power dynamics and hegemony have stifled curriculum discussions and encounters making it counter-productive and until a plurality of voices are able to articulate what should or should not be part of the curriculum from a contextual perspective, decolonisation is impossible. thirdly, curricular charges that have been neglected or dumped on a selected few while others remain in ivory towers need to be revisited to ensure that every stakeholder engages several charges, as the need might be to develop the discipline and themselves as voices within the discipline. in addition, the curriculum in particular and higher education curriculum in general is a political tool that can either be used to ensure decolonisation or continuous colonisation. as such, there is need for interdisciplinarity and a greater need for disciplinarity as south african higher education redefines itself in the context of decolonisation. lastly, for the curriculum to respond systematically to contextual societal needs and the changing demands of globalisation and internationalisation, it must be unsettling and provoking to ensure that every stakeholder takes responsibility to make it responsive. by designing the curriculum to be provocative, the higher education system would be opened up for encounters that in effect empower scholars to think local (decolonising the curriculum) and act or respond globally. references apple, m.w. 2004. ideology and curriculum. london: routledge. beetar, m. 2013. ukzn is failing its students. available at http://thoughtleader.co.za/ mandelarhodesscholars/2013/03/22/ukzn-is-failing-its-students/ [accessed 17 decemeber 2016]. brennan, m. 2011. national curriculum: a political-educational tangle. australian journal of education, 55, 259–280. https://doi.org/10.1177/000494411105500307 daldal, a. 2014. power and ideology in michel foucault and antonio gramsci: a comparative analysis. review of history and political science, 2, 149–167. doh, n. 2013. an exploration of pedagogic practices in multi-grade primary schools within the province of kwazulu-natal. durban: university of kwazulu-natal. ensor, p. 2004. contesting discourses in higher education curriculum restructuring in south africa. higher education, 48, 339–359. https://doi.org/10.1023/b:high.0000035544.96309.f1 fenster, t. & kulka, t. 2016. whose knowledge, whose power? ethics in urban regeneration projects with communities. geografiska annaler: series b, human geography, 98, 221–238. ferdinand, d.s. 2009. workforce education and development curriculum responsiveness to culturally and internationally diverse graduate students: a mixed methods study. carbondale: carbondale southern illinois university. fomunyam, k. & rahming, m. 2017. knowledge as power for social transformation. zoe international journal of social transformation, 1, 1–6. fomunyam, k.g. 2014. curriculum theorizing and individualism: an exploration of the curriculum’s relation to the social, personal and political dimensions of schooling. mevlana international journal of education (mije), 4, 122–131. fomunyam, k.g. 2016. theorising student constructions of quality education in a south african university. southern african review of education (sare), 22, 46–63. http://thoughtleader.co.za/mandelarhodesscholars/2013/03/22/ukzn-is-failing-its-students/ http://thoughtleader.co.za/mandelarhodesscholars/2013/03/22/ukzn-is-failing-its-students/ https://doi.org/10.1177/000494411105500307 https://doi.org/10.1023/b:high.0000035544.96309.f1 207 fomunyam & teferra curriculum responsiveness within the context of decolonisation ... fomunyam, k.g. 2017a. decolonising the engineering curriculum in a south african university of technology. international journal of applied engineering research, 12, 6797–6805. fomunyam, k.g. 2017b. student protest and the culture of violence at african universities: an inherited ideological trait. yesterday and today, 38–63. foucault, m. 1980. power/knowledge. new york: pantheon books. gamble, j. 2003. curriculum responsiveness in fet colleges. pretoria: hsrc press. gay, g. 2010. culturally responsive teaching: theory, research, and practice. new york: teachers college press. gramsci, a. 1980. selections from the prison notebooks. london: wishart publications. jones, o. 2009. nature – culture. international encyclopedia for human geography. london: elsevier. mamdani, m. 1998. is african studies to be turned into a new home for bantu education at uct? social dynamics, 24, 63–75. https://doi.org/10.1080/02533959808458649 mgqwashu, e. 2016. universities can’t decolonise the curriculum without defining it first. available at https://theconversation.com/universities-cant-decolonise-the-curriculum-withoutdefining-it-first-63948. moja, t. 2004. glocalisation: a challenge for curriculum responsiveness. in h. griesel (ed.). curriculum responsiveness: case studies in higher education (pp. 21–38). pretoria: south african universities vice-chancellors association. moll, i. 2004. curriculum responsiveness: the anatomy of a concept. in h. griesel (ed.). curriculum responsiveness: case studies in higher education (pp. 1–19). pretoria: south african universities vice-chancellors association. morrison, k.r.b. 2004. the poverty of curriculum theory: a critique of wraga and hlebowitsh. journal of curriculum studies, 36, 487–494. https://doi.org/10.1080/0022027042000211458 neuman, w.l. 2006. social research methods: qualitative and qualitative approaches. new york: pearson. ogude, n., nel, h. & oosthuizen, m. 2005. the challenge of curriculum responsiveness in south african higher education. pretoria: council on higher education. pinar, w., reynolds, w., slattery, p. & taubman, p.m. 2008. understanding curriculum: an introduction to the study of historical and contemporary curriculum discourses. new york: peter lang. vanderstoep, w. & johnston, d. 2009. research methods for everyday life: blending qualitative and quantitative approaches. san francisco: jossey-bass. veyne, p. 2013. foucault: his thought, his character. cambridge: polity press. https://doi.org/10.1080/02533959808458649 https://theconversation.com/universities-cant-decolonise-the-curriculum-without-defining-it-first-63948 https://theconversation.com/universities-cant-decolonise-the-curriculum-without-defining-it-first-63948 https://doi.org/10.1080/0022027042000211458 _goback 33 shifting from disorientation to orientation: reading student discourses of success abstract academic success in higher education is generally evaluated by means of concrete and measurable criteria that function as an institutional discourse of success. however, a parallel discourse of success that is far less evident is the languaging and identification of success or failure that students hold and circulate. this paper investigates what counts as success from students’ perspectives using a critical lens informed by stuart hall’s discursive analysis and james gee’s inclusive articulation of discourse. we argue that students tend to describe and evaluate their success in a consistent way, making it more than a highly individualised set of statements. being well versed in terms of “what counts” for the institution, we consider “what counts” for the students: what do they endorse, contest or negotiate as markers of success? we subsequently tease out the similarities and distinctions in these two discourses that function in parallel and read the recurring themes and nuances of (dis)orientation that come through in the interviews as markers for an alternative discourse of success or failure that stands alongside of (and occasionally in opposition to) the institutional discourse. keywords: student-centred, discourses of success, legitimation, higher education, orientation, disorientation. 1. introduction academic success in higher education is generally evalu­ ated by means of concrete and measurable criteria. as lecturers, much of our work is bound up in regulating and assessing students against the requirements of the institution. the markers of the discipline, the level of study and the institutional standards operate as an explicit set of criteria and are manifest as a student passing or failing and eventually, graduating or not. as we explain, these criteria function as an institutional discourse of success. however, a parallel discourse of success that is far less evident is the languaging and identification of success or failure that students hold and circulate. in this paper, we investigate what counts as success from students’ perspectives. this is read against the backdrop of current tensions and fractures within south african higher education and in particular, the need for transformation of campuses to feel inclusive and allow nicola cloete university of the witwatersrand catherine duncan university of the witwatersrand doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i2.3 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(2): 33-42 © uv/ufs 34 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) for an experience of belonging. to this end we use a critical lens informed by stuart hall’s discursive analysis and james gee’s inclusive articulation of discourse that sees it as “ways of being, interacting, valuing, thinking, believing, speaking, and often reading and writing that are accepted as instantiations of particular roles” (gee, 1996: viii) to read students’ perspectives of success. discourses of success are acts of legitimation that regulate what is said, done and what counts in a given system. university success and failure exist within a system bounded by rules of hierarchy and distinction, which have implicit and explicit power relations. these rules set up what is an allowable activity for any given actor as well as who determines what constitutes legitimate performances. in the case of our research, the institutional discourse functions with the full weight of legitimation whereas the students’ discourse is less well understood, explicit or the object of study. nevertheless, we argue that students tend to describe and evaluate their success in a consistent way, making it more than a highly individualised set of statements. being well versed in terms of “what counts” for the institution, we wanted to discover “what counts” for the students, what do they endorse, contest or negotiate as markers of success? in addition, we wanted, to tease out the similarities and distinctions in these two discourses that function in parallel. our enquiry is based on a series of interviews with students just before graduating from their four­year professional arts degree. we framed the interviews as an opportunity for the participants to reflect on their successes and struggles. we found that their descriptions and characterisations of success revealed a shift from initial disorientation towards a growing sense of orientation within the institution. at first glance it seems unremarkable that students would become increasingly knowledgeable about and familiar with the institution after four years of study, however, what we find significant is that this quality of becoming orientated registers as equally or more significant than the institutional ways of measuring success. we read the recurring themes and nuances of (dis)orientation that came through in the interviews as markers for an alternative discourse of success or failure that stands alongside of (and occasionally in opposition to) the institutional discourses. 2. orientation and legitimation traditionally, success and orientation are strongly associated in the institution’s own logic. a student’s introduction to higher education is usually through a formal orientation process. a useful orientation programme facilitates efficient adoption of and adaption to the institutional practices and processes. orientation programmes recognise that the codes of the institution are not self­evident and essential, although they may be normalised and naturalised to the point of invisibility. furthermore, orientation is tied to legitimation. the intent and practices of an orientation programme make visible those practices and conventions of social and academic behaviour that the institution considers legitimate. generally, orientation programmes last for approximately a week before the start of term. the focus is on survival skills such as finding venues, accessing resources, troubleshooting administrative problems and plenty of socialising. the institutional frame of reference for orientation is functional, instrumentalised and geared towards efficiency. despite the overlap in terminology, this is not how we use the concept of orientation. for our participants, the project of finding orientation took considerably longer than a week, was imbricated in their sense of identity and was often a painful one. its opposite state, 35 cloete & duncan shifting from disorientation to orientation disorientation, is personally and socially distressing. given how critical the idea of orientation is from a student’s perspective, we will argue that finding orientation is in many ways analogous with success and we find this productive for understanding student success in ways more broadly imagined than from the institutional point of reference. we found that the example of successful practices and identities expressed by the participants as “finding their way” or “finding their feet” aligned closely with leibowitz, van der merwe and van schalkwyk’s (2009: 4­5) idea of the successful student as one who “whilst responsive to others and society, takes responsibility for his or her own development. success is characterised by a combination of disposition, attitude and strength, in order to learn how to learn”. we must caution however, that as consistent and plausible as we have found the links between orientation and success to be in student discourse, this initial study was conducted with a small sample group from a narrowly scoped cohort of performing arts students. for our conclusions to be valid more generally, they would need to be tested with a more carefully constituted sample. 3. a pilot for in-depth orientation in 2009, we piloted a first-year orientation programme. in this project, we invited all incoming first year students in the department to participate in a programme that ran across the 14 weeks of the first and second semesters. this programme was structured as an orientation for the students towards each other (by means of sharing biographies and backgrounds and group discussions of values and anxieties) and an orientation towards the university and its resources (library, writing support centre, student health and counselling services). the sessions also focused on the soft skills for coping with university life (time management, goal setting) as well as the basics of academic skills such as referencing, essay topic analysis, basic planning and writing techniques to help with their first assignments. as part of the monitoring and evaluation requirements of the funding, we conducted various evaluations, including a feedback and reflection debriefing session conducted via a focus group.1 on the one hand, the anonymous data from the focus groups reported that participants regarded the programme as valuable, as having given them an advantage in their studies and as something they would recommend as having contributed to their success. however, analysis from the evaluations at the middle and end of the year found no significant differences in pass rates or submission rates for this group in comparison to the rest of the first-year student cohort from which they were drawn. we took students at their word and accepted their constructions of self as successful, whilst reading this in juxtaposition with the academic records, which showed a rather different picture of success. with this as a starting point, it became clear that we had two discourses in operation, not incompatible or incommensurate, but nevertheless operating under different terms and values of legitimation. we remained curious as to what this tension between discourses was premised on and, as a follow up, at the end of 2012 we invited students who had been involved in the pilot research project to participate in one­on­one semi­structured interviews. with some students on the verge of completing their degrees, we asked them to reflect on their degree journey thus far in light of their perceptions of success, identity and relations to knowledge and the discipline. 1 the focus group was facilitated by members of the humanities faculty teaching and learning unit who were unknown to the participants and had no involvement in the project. their responses were de-identified before being passed along to us as the coordinators of the programme. 36 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) in the end, we had six usable interviews. not all of the participants who responded posi­ tively to the request for an interview were completing their studies in the minimum time of four years. however, we did note that of the students asked to participate, positive responses came from those who had been, by the institutional quantitative measure, more successful in their studies. we used discourse analysis to explore the students’ own constructions and discourses of legitimacy. we traced how these differed from and adhered to the institutional logic of success that is manifest in the discourses of “passing”, “failing”, “mark scores”, “time to graduation”, “top of the class” and so on. 4. hall and discourse hall’s (1996) use of discourse within the broader cultural studies context refers to ways of representing and constructing knowledge about topics as well as ways of producing knowledge that have the potential to prescribe or limit how knowledge is produced. in our study, we used hall’s ideas on discourse to examine the ways in which students identified and used language to produce meaning and knowledge about what it means to be successful within the academic institution. as such, the statements students utter, the resultant positions they take up and the ongoing ways in which they offer reflections on their experience in the institution are all reviewed from the interviews conducted with students. it is our contention that in identifying the various thematic locations students occupy in terms of the overall ideas of orientation and disorientation, we are able to infer that the various markers of success identified by students are not always those identified by the university but they certainly are parallel and in certain instances, complementary. hall (1996: 201) suggests that discourse does not merely consist of one statement but rather several working together implying a relation to each other and as such, discourse is about the “production of knowledge through language”. what students say reflects how they are situating themselves as students who have passed through and met the criteria of the institution and, as a result see themselves as successful and having achieved orientation. for foucault, as hall describes, discourses can be produced by many individuals in different institutional settings (1996: 202) and these discourses construct positions from which they alone make sense (ibid). in our analysis, we consider the discursive formations constructed by students regarding disorientation and orientation and the manner in which they contribute to or differ from the parallel markers of success within the academic institution. hall (1996: 202) also recognises that discourses are not closed systems – they operate as networks of meaning in which traces of past discourses remain embedded in ones that are more recent. for our study, it became clear that even though students are developing parallel markers of success within the institution, there is often an overlap with the institutional criteria for success. the discourses are therefore associated and appear to be in the process of developing. statements within discursive formations need not all be the same, although the relation­ ships and differences between them “must all be regular and systematic, not random” (hall 1996: 202). in our reading of the interview transcripts, it was not unusual to have students express seemingly contradictory statements about their own perceptions of how successful they had been. these “contradictions”, however, appeared to be in keeping with the self­ reflexivity students engaged in when considering their experiences. 37 cloete & duncan shifting from disorientation to orientation 5. surfacing legitimation through discourse our coding of the interview transcripts revealed three thematic areas related to our interest in legitimation and discourses of success. broadly, we were able to identify a number of discourses related to types of orientation, types of disorientation and the shifts that occurred for students between these two states. we also identified a number of metaphors that students used to articulate some of their perceptions of the shifts that they had undergone. these uses of language guided our thematic analysis of the transcriptions with our overall thematic interest being on aspects of success, legitimacy and perception in relation to traditional markers of academic success. 6. discourses of (dis)orientation spatial disorientation and metaphors in each of the interviews, students described what we term ‘initial discourses of disorientation’ – whether in terms of resources, shared experiences, diverse people or environments. this was largely evidenced in the use of marked language where students were explicitly recalling uncertainty and anxiety as first years. their disorientation occurred in terms of the spatial, temporal, academic and social experiences students underwent. students articulated their disorientation in terms of the difficulties they experienced in getting around campus, finding their classes and fitting into new social groups. however, beyond the prosaic questions of where and when classes were held and whether students were able to navigate these spaces, our participants employed metaphoric language to express their sense of disorientation. many of these metaphors were based on ideas of spatiality and place, as though the experience of being at university was demarcated as another country for which they did not have maps and which they did not know how to traverse. for example, phrases such as “i shouldn’t be here”, “i remember being lost”, “you needed to find your feet”, “it was such a big leap”, “there were so many gaps” speak of a treacherous landscape. what is more, phrases such as “being left behind” and “everyone had already started” suggest participants perceived that others in their cohort were not disorientated and that in this new landscape the rest of the group was managing the journey. some of the participants recalled their experience of disorientation as profoundly distressing and used the language of survival and dissociation, “it was just like an out of the body experience for me”, “you needed to survive”. when probed for more information about what underpinned this disorientation, students again used metaphors related to missing “foundations” and “grounding”, with the allied feelings of being untethered and precarious. in particular, this disorientation stemmed from not knowing what counts, what was central and what was required, in first year the leap was just … it was such a big leap because obviously … it just felt like this big gap i just felt like my grounding was not enough, i didn’t feel like there was support enough for that transition from high school to here and now studying so i did feel a huge gap but then my marks were good but like in terms of my perception of it i didn’t feel like the courses were going well. thus despite obtaining good marks (the institutional marker of success), this student’s own experience was one of disorientation and uncertainty. this recurred a number of times, with participants itemising a cacophony of disorientation in relation to systematic requirements of the institution, administration processes and systems, how the institutional system measures 38 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) and assesses course work, what the expectations and assumptions of professional degrees and training are and overall what higher education contexts were like and required, as the statements below attest. … you learn through the marks but you don’t understand where the marks come from… i really didn’t understand the context was different, and the content i didn’t understand and a lot of the films i didn’t understand… i was so scared, i didn’t want to speak to anybody, i had no idea what was going on… participants characterised a major contributing factor to this disorientation as the affective experiences of having to modify the perception of oneself radically and sometimes abruptly, as evidenced in this quote: when you come from high school you think “i am the cream of where i am” and then you come here and the competition is crazy and you, … you just feel “oh my goodness i feel so worthless! i shouldn’t be here…” some students experienced further shifts from naivety and overconfidence to being overwhelmed, especially by a sense of being overtaken by a new environment such as the city. it feels like you came here as this naive girl in the big city and ok i am big where i come from and you come here and everybody is just rolling on with life … a number of the participants identified plagiarism as a specific manifestation of this academic disorientation. often formulated as remembered anxiety and bewilderment, students seemed to feel that their failures to be academically literate or to understand academic expectations resulted in plagiarism and its consequences: “oh! i had anxieties because we didn’t know much especially because we were used to essays without referencing …” another student noted, “[i] didn’t understand, didn’t understand, didn’t understand – i was just like googling …” in her attempt to find [academic] orientation. here we see how the student tries to solve the problem of understanding the required material by finding online sources and in so doing creates another problem. her particular use of language is also noteworthy – google becomes the antidote to her disorientation. using a similar metaphor of place or home that recurs in a number of our participants’ comments, angélil­carter (2014) describes the student’s first frustrated and overwhelmed encounter with the expectations and practices of academia as squatting. students are forced “to live in the discourses of academia without owning them” (angélil­carter, 2014: 29) and the tension of working in an academic language that is marked by “its very embeddedness in a context, and the lack of embeddedness of the novice writer” (ibid: 26). we interpret these ideas of a precarious sense of place, a lack of embeddedness in the practices and language of the institution and the perception that one’s foundations are as insecure as characteristics of disorientation. 7. finding orientation in the second part of the interview, participants were asked how they would describe themselves in terms of what they did well and what they were still struggling with at the end of their four years of study. some explicitly described themselves as successful, in terms of meeting university expectations and by their own standards. statements such as these indicate some of the ways in which students said they had been able to achieve what we term 39 cloete & duncan shifting from disorientation to orientation “successful orientation” where this is marked by expressions of self-confidence in knowing “what counts” and being able to rationalise their own performance in relation to these personal criteria and values. there were also instances where students employed metaphors and analogies to explain their experience of success and legitimation. we were able to identify numerous types of orientation that pertained to the spatial and temporal orientation students were able to achieve. some students also expressed orientation in terms of being able to identify and understand how to be strategic and negotiate different demands of academic life. students identified themselves as being successful when they were able to be strategic about their work and were able to prioritise, plan and manage their workloads. this we note intersects with the institutional markers of success. students further identified orientation as taking place parallel to, and not just via, the formal curriculum as seen in this example, below: [a]t the time it looks like there is no support but actually there is a lot of support. there is a lot of consultations that we never really use and the more you get back marks the more you think: “you robbed me of my marks”. then you realise more and more through consultations and just talking and just making friends. i think having the right people who are doing the course has really been helpful, you find people who are really passionate about what they are doing… here the participant reflects on how success emerged through engagement with the formal channels of feedback and legitimation but perhaps more significantly by modelling, observing and participating in a group with which she shares associations and aspirations. also significant is the participant’s insight that part of the disorientation of being new to a system means failing to recognise the support resources that exist. part of the daze the participants describe included the struggle to distinguish between requirements of their various courses (tutorials and lectures for example) and support systems (voluntary reading groups or writing support services). this particular observation went some way into explaining how, as lecturers and to our ongoing frustration, we have watched the very students most in need of support and additional resources fail to access or derive benefit from them. our participants describe a scenario where it is precisely the level of disorientation they experienced that inhibits finding and using resources to assist with gaining the traction necessary to “find one’s feet” or “leap the gap” in this new terrain. while the institutional response is often to provide more resources and more information about accessing these resources across more platforms, our findings would tend to suggest that disorientated students quickly reach information saturation and these interventions are often invisible to the student who is encountering the university as an “out of body experience”. on the other hand, the participants were quick to recall individual interactions and responses from this period, especially those that had been helpful. this would suggest that when it comes to learning to navigate the university, sustained engagement with staff and administrators is far more crucial than the circulation of information and provision of supplementary resources. students reported making the link between agency and learning but reported this realisation as coming late in the degree process. orientation, for this one student, was the eventual result of taking responsibility for utilising existing support structures in order to successfully navigate her learning experience, i don’t think anybody can teach you how to be at varsity – it is something that you learn. so i think that is what i learned; you do it yourself and you go out and you need to be 40 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) proactive from going to the writing centre and the library, going to [the student counselling and support unit] and saying i am not crazy i just have no idea of what is happening. i think those structures that the university has put in place – you never see them until you go “i am really going to get out of this place and i won’t understand a single thing and then you reach out and i think that is what happens”. finally, one of the ways students deal with the move from disorientation to orientation can be framed as the realisation that finding orientation sometimes entails a reorientation or shift in your own identity in terms of who you thought you were going to be and who you end up being, you actually come here wanting to be a performer but when you leave you are more of an academic and you really interested in academia. i am doing gender and performance and i feel like there is so much, so much to explore because the subject is so broad and you think maybe i don’t want to be a performer maybe i actually want to write papers maybe i want to write a thesis. 8. negotiating different discourses of success in conjunction with a more fundamental aspect of successful orientation, participants referred to a higher order of finding their bearings that they read as a marker of success. this was explicitly framed in terms of the ability to think critically, express their own ideas and find their own voice. what was noteworthy was how the participants framed this induction into a scholarly identity in contrast with the earlier expressions of disorientation and anxieties with attribution and plagiarism. the following participant’s discourse of her success made specific reference to knowing where ideas came from and how they differed from or intersected with her own, now i can say i know i am actively taking material from this person and i am paraphrasing and i know i am paraphrasing … i should be sure this is what they are actually saying. in first year like you quote three lines, then in second year it is two lines and in third year it is one and in fourth year you are like two words are enough to say your point… here finding one’s own voice is a marker of the student’s version of success, which as teachers and academics in the arts and humanities we likewise read as one of the most important qualitative measures of success. again, we are reminded of angélil­carter’s (2014) argument that what is often read as plagiarism in higher education is a manifestation of a profound disorientation in relation to the institutional discourses of what is legitimate participation. the shift described by the participant above is the same shift angélil­carter (2014: 92) describes as a move towards an understanding of the construction of knowledge [that] can move the learner from a position of seeing knowledge as an indeterminate mass of information, to a position where he or she is able to locate authors within debates, and throw one perspective up against another in a critical manner. in so doing, students also experienced orientation towards a political positionality in terms of a scholarly identity and language. students were able to identify theorists and scholars and cite them as significant to their own work. those names came to stand as an important part of a successful scholarly identity and allowed students to position themselves as part of a larger conversation of ideas. 41 cloete & duncan shifting from disorientation to orientation one participant expressed a variation on this view, …it becomes more about you [than about the marks] and it becomes “follow your instinct”, that is the only thing – that is what university helps you do – it helps you develop your own ideas. now i look back and i see that is what this university makes you do. more than anything i heard from teachers i can think for myself, i can create ideas for myself, i can argue for myself. this next participant also expresses sentiments that again bring institutional discourses of success into their own personal discourses of success. however, unlike in the comment above, the legitimation of meeting the explicit institutional terms of success was the point at which she found orientation. achieving a particular marker of excellence was critical in this participant’s representation of success. i started getting a’s. i started really understanding and believing in myself. i think that it is also important to have confidence and believe in yourself and never look down on yourself because if someone else can do it you can do it as well. in the next comment, we see a third variation on how students respond to and negotiate the institutional discourses of success with their own. so now you are not just a performing student, you are a fine arts student, you are a marketing student, you are this researcher. so you are constantly having to remind yourself that you know a lot and that “i might not be an engineering student but you know i am good at a lot of things”. so that is what i am trying to do. just accept that i am learning and i am constantly growing and not to measure myself in quantity … things that actually don’t matter, well they matter but not so much because at the end of the day i can stand up and have a proper conversation. for me that is very important … the participant provides a description of multiple identities that she experiences and the need to “remind herself” that there is value and legitimation in them as they represent a particular set of knowledge and skill sets. the metaphor around learning, growth and quantity of knowledge illustrates a different set of values for success, not ones usually explicitly acknowledged by the academic institution. the student’s acknowledgement of the importance she confers on being “able to stand up and have a proper conversation” is a further indication of a different set of criteria for identifying as a successful and legitimate student in the academic institution. tellingly, the participant notices the value placed on certain kinds of disciplines and in particular, what she reads as the valorising of engineering over any of the other skills and achievements she cites. the implied denigration of her achievements and her own heartfelt attempt to be defiant in the face of this discourse is neatly summed up in her statement, “i might not be an engineering student but you know i am good at a lot of things”. perhaps this is the moment to consider how some of the implicit discourses of what counts in the university are conveyed and construed. 9. telling absences in discourses of success it is difficult to know whether particular silences or gaps in the students’ discourses of success or orientation are significant. we are mindful that the fact that students did not raise or refer to particular aspects of their experience or definitions of success does not necessarily point to findings worth noting. these may be the result of our relatively small sample group but we raise them as potentially productive avenues for future research. 42 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) there were a number of absences in the interviews in terms of how the participants recounted their finding of orientation or in their discussions of success, that we found telling. for instance, there were no mentions of family support or long­term intimate or important relationships. likewise, there was no mention of strategies of solidarity, mentorship or networking amongst the students that success could be attributed to. this is despite our observations that students group together, support each other and do this in particular in a professional programme such as the performing arts, where the success of the individual frequently and directly relates to the success of the group. we noted that the students’ discourses were highly individualised and atomised; for students, discourses and narratives of orientation and disorientation were entirely individualised. likewise, we noted that despite representing themselves as successful, this discourse of success did not include a sense of how these graduating students were starting to orient themselves towards a future profession. it may well be that in this instance the institutional discourse of success and that of the students are quite similar. unlike other professional programmes, the creative and performing arts do not have the equivalent focus on professional life after graduation and consequently there appears to be a gap that does not provide a way to translate a successful student identity into a “future orientated” sense of self for students, whereby they can consider their future professional identities. conclusion in this paper, we have worked from the premise that students produce their own definition of success and that in certain circumstances, there is also evidence that students’ discourse is not entirely separate, different or removed from the institutional discourse of success and legitimacy. ultimately many students enforced the discipline of the institution’s regulative discourse in terms of their own constructions of success – references to being a “good student” and “successful scholar” all tended to a greater or lesser extent to reinforce traditional markers of the perception of academic success and legitimation. for the students we spoke to, the markers of a successful identity versus an unsuccessful identity could productively be understood as orientated versus disorientated. in other words, the better orientated one is as a student, the more successful one is. we found this in students’ discourses even when the institutional markers of excellent grades or minimum degree completion times were absent, which suggests that helping students make the move from disorientated to orientated within the institution would be beneficial. however, this concept of orientation is a complex and multifaceted one and goes quite far beyond how “orientation” is construed in institutional practices. references angélil­carter, s. 2014. stolen language? plagiarism in writing. new york: routledge. gee, j. 1996. social linguistics and literacies: ideology in discourses. london: falmer press. hall, s. 1996. the west and the rest: discourse and power. in s. hall, d. held, d. hubert & k. thompson (eds.). modernity: an introduction to modern societies. cambridge, ma: blackwell. pp. 184­227. leibowitz, b., van der merwe, a. & van schalkwyk, s. 2009. focus on first year success. stellenbosch: sun press. 1 quality education for sustainable development: are we on the right track? evidence from the timss 2015 study in south africa abstract obtaining quality education provides the foundation for improving people’s lives and contributes to sustainable development. the world has come a long way in achieving the goal of equality in primary education for girls and boys, but few countries have achieved that target at all levels of education, as reported by unicef (2016). the human sciences research council of south africa, in 2016, warned that social ills such as south africa’s high levels of poverty, inequality and unemployment have an effect on the quality of education offered, taking into account different levels of education at various schools. south africa now participates in many national and international benchmarking studies to assess its progress in the quality of schooling and in specific areas of the curriculum against international standards. the trends in international mathematics and science study (timss) is one of the studies in which south africa has participated since 1995. subsequent to 1995, the country has made considerable progress in mathematics and science achievement – key subjects for much-needed national development. approximately 12 500 grade 9 learners participated in the 2015 timss from south africa. the purpose of this paper is therefore to investigate the contextual factors that exist and to critically assess the progress made by senior phase mathematics learners in timss 2015. this is to make recommendations in order to accelerate this progress thereby positively contributing to learners’ performance in the eastern cape and, in the long term, to the achievement of sustainable development goals (sdgs) as laid out in the national development plan of 2030 for south africa. keywords: quality education; sustainable development; timss 2015; mathematics achievement 1. introduction as proposed in the 4th goal, which is about transforming our world (unicef, 2016), obtaining quality education is the foundation for improving people’s lives and for sustainable development. the report also says that although education at all levels is available, enrolment rates in schools, particularly for women and girls and for basic literacy has improved. however, audacious efforts are needed to make even greater strides towards achieving universal education goals. for example, the world has achieved equality in alex, j.k faculty of educational sciences, walter sisulu university, private bag x1, mthatha 5117, eastern cape province, south africa. corresponding author: email: jalex@wsu.ac.za cell: (0027)724456364 juan, a human sciences research council, private bag x41, pretoria 0001, gauteng province, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i2.1 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(4): 1-15 © uv/ufs mailto:jalex@wsu.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.1 2 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) access to primary education for girls and boys, but few countries have achieved that target at all levels of education (unicef, 2016). the unicef (2016) report also notes that although education plays a unique role in levelling the playing field for children, the number of children who do not attend school has increased since 2011 and a significant proportion of those who do go to school are not learning. the report, quality education: why it matters, on sustainable development goals by unicef (2016) points out that education is the key that allows many other sustainable development goals (sdgs) to be achieved as the cycle of poverty can be broken through quality education. this helps to reduce inequalities and to reach gender equality. education also empowers people everywhere to live healthy and sustainable lives. education is also crucial in fostering tolerance between people and contributes to societies that are more peaceful. according to the unesco institute for statistics (uis data centre), between 2000 and 2012, the percentage of out-of-school children among primary-school-age children has declined from 40% to 22% in sub-saharan africa and from 20% to 6% in south asia (unicef, 2016). the national development plan 2030, published by the south african government, aims to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality by 2030. it concedes that south africa has made remarkable progress in the transition from apartheid to democracy and that south africa has been able to build the institutions necessary for a democratic and transformative state. however, it also reports that even after 23 years into democracy, south africa still remains a highly unequal society where too many people live in poverty, too few work and the quality of school education for most black learners is poor (national planning commission, 2012). it is also pointed out that while the achievement of the objectives of the national development plan 2030 requires progress on a broad front, three priorities stand out: raising employment through faster economic growth; improving the quality of education together with skills development and innovation (national planning commission, 2012:17). a sustainable increase in employment is only achievable through high quality education. to accelerate development and to reduce the acute effects of poverty on millions of south africans over the short term, the plan proposes to improve the quality of education in underperforming schools and further education and training (fet) colleges (national planning commission, 2012:18). the planning commission of south africa reports that south africa has an urbanised youthful population that presents an opportunity to boost economic growth, increase employment and reduce poverty. in recognising that young people bear the brunt of unemployment, the commission in its proposals included universal access to two years of early childhood development; improving the school system (including increasing the number of students achieving above 50 per cent in literacy and mathematics); increasing learner retention rates to 90 per cent; bolstering teacher training and providing full funding assistance. this funding assistance includes covering tuition, books, accommodation and living allowance for students from poor families (national planning commission, 2012:20). the planning commission also proposes that by 2030, south africa needs an education system reflecting the attributes of high quality; universal early childhood education; quality school education with globally competitive literacy and numeracy standards and further and higher education and training that enables people to fulfil their potential. it also needs an expanding highereducation sector that can contribute to rising incomes; higher productivity and a shift to a more knowledge-intensive economy as well as a wider system of innovation that links universities, science councils and other research and development role players with priority areas of the economy (national planning commission, 2012:38) 3 alex & juan quality education for sustainable development the planning commission calls for urgent action on the management of the education system. it is believed that more resources should be available to support schools and teachers as well as interventions to be put in place that are supportive and corrective and that need to be inversely proportional to school performance. better-performing schools can be given the freedom to get on with the job, as long as there is measurable improvement. the commission proposes a campaign to improve infrastructure in poor schools, especially in rural areas and calls for professional development of teachers, peer review, school infrastructure, the provision of learner support materials and support systems to strengthen teachers. it states that teachers, both individually and at school level, should be held accountable for learner performance, with due recognition of the learning environment (national planning commission, 2012:40). it was also noted by the human sciences research council (hsrc) in 2016 that south africa has high levels of poverty, inequality and unemployment and these social characteristics have an effect on education quality taking into account high levels of variation between schools (reddy et al., 2016b). they also argue that as a low-income country we need to respond to what happens inside classrooms and schools to improve teachers and learners’ mathematical knowledge and the need to identify the effects of the learning and teaching contexts on learner educational achievement. the severe inequalities in educational outcomes in south africa can be seen alongside a number of correlated dimensions, most notably: wealth; school location; language and province and in each case, the huge differential between the top and bottom performance categories within and across grades. sometimes this differential is as large as four grades (spaull, 2013). mccarthy and oliphant (2013) argue that fundamental reforms are needed in the public sector in that business leaders need to have an understanding of private education and other market experiments and schooling innovations in their overall perspective and priorities for intervention and reform in south african schools. 2. mathematics learning and teaching in the south african context mathematics is considered a key requirement for not only entry into higher education, but also for most modern, knowledge-intensive jobs. research on school performance and teaching reveal largely unacknowledged poor teaching of mathematics in the majority of schools. feza and webb (2005) point out that the bantustan system was introduced in south africa in 1948 in which blacks were offered a different and inferior curriculum, usually with no maths or science. however, the adoption of the constitution of the republic of south africa (act 108 of 1996) and the amendments that followed provided a basis for curriculum transformation and development in south africa (doe, 2003). “in the post-apartheid society, social transformation in education is aimed at ensuring that the educational imbalances of the past are redressed and that equal educational opportunities are provided for all sections of our population” (doe, 2003:2). the department of basic education introduced the present curriculum, known as the national curriculum statement into grade 10 in 2006, which is modern and internationally benchmarked. it requires learners to do seven subjects from grades 10 to 12 of which either mathematics or mathematical literacy is a compulsory subject. this is to ensure that all learners are prepared for life and for the real world in an increasingly technological, numerical and data-driven world (pandor, 2006). since, either mathematics or mathematical literacy was not a compulsory subject in the previously-disadvantaged (formerly black and coloured) south african schools during the apartheid era, and considering that many of its mathematics or mathematical literacy teachers are the products of bantu education, the impact of the bantu education system can be seen even today (feza & webb, 2005). mji and 4 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) makgato (2006), however state that even the schools that offer mathematics and science do not all have facilities and equipment to promote effective teaching and learning. south africa therefore faces the challenge of providing quality mathematics education for its multi-cultural society of 43 million people (howie, 2003). lack of appropriate learner support materials and the general poor quality of teachers and teaching are some of the factors that have contributed the lack of formal mathematical knowledge among disadvantaged learners from impoverished learning environments (maree et al., 2006). this has resulted in the apparent lack of exposure to mathematics in these under-resourced schools. south africa’s development as a knowledge economy depends partly on improving the teaching of mathematics and numeracy. furthermore, south africa’s extremely high youth unemployment, which is currently at 50 per cent, is closely linked to the quality of schooling – the quality of numeracy and mathematics competency in particular (mccarthy & oliphant, 2013). it is anticipated that better educational outcomes will lead to higher employment and incomes, whereas more rapid economic growth will broaden opportunities for all and generate the resources required to improve education (visser, juan & feza, 2015). given the persistent pattern of low achievement scores at schools for learners from low-income households, the research and policy challenge is how to improve the schooling system to break the cycle of poor achievement in mathematics (reddy et al., 2012). 3. south african mathematics performance ranking in an international context: timss it is noted that south africa’s development is affected by what happens in the region and in the world. success will depend on the country’s understanding and response to such developments (national development plan 2030:18). the trends in international mathematics and science study (timss) is one of the international benchmarking studies in which south africa has been participating to check its progress in the quality of schooling and in specific areas of the curriculum against international standards. the south african component of timss has been assessing mathematics and science achievement among grade 8 and 9 learners since 1995 (reddy et al., 2016a). in south africa, timss was conducted in 1995, 1999, 2003, 2011 and 2015. the timss 2015 south african sample consisted of 292 schools. twelve thousand five hundred learners and 330 mathematics and science teachers participated from three different categories of schools, namely, no-fee paying and fee-paying public and independent schools (reddy et al., 2016a). at the grade 9 level, the timss 2015 results showed that there were noteworthy improvements at the lower and top end of achievement scores (reddy et al., 2016a). however, even though south africa continues to improve its performance in mathematics scores since 2003, it is still a concern to see that it is at the lower end of the rank order of the countries that participated, and that the eastern cape is at the lower end of the rank order of south africa’s nine provinces. the purpose of this paper is therefore to investigate further the underlying problems and to critically assess the progress made in 2015 to accelerate progress and to implement positive steps to improve performance in underperforming provinces such as the eastern cape. this is in line with the national development plan 2030 and the recommendations by reddy et al. (2016b) in that the provinces should identify the different problem areas and devise strategies to support both the lowand high-performing schools. clearly, “good” conditions in the home and school result in the higher achievement scores. 5 alex & juan quality education for sustainable development south africa was a performing african participant among 59 countries in timss 2015 (reddy et al., 2016a). yet the national score for mathematics remained the same for timss 1995, 1999 and 2003 (reddy et al., 2016a). on the contrary, the 2003 mathematics score of 285 improved by 67 points to 352 in 2011. this trend continued into 2015 with the mathematics score increasing by a further 20 points to 372. at the grade 9 level, the timss 2015 results showed that there were noteworthy improvements at the lower and top end of the achievement scores (reddy et al., 2016a). timss and other benchmarking studies such as the programme for international student assessment (pisa), southern africa consortium for monitoring education quality (sacmeq), the annual national assessments (ana) and the national senior certificate (nsc) exams, however, show that despite many years of mathematics development programmes aimed at redressing the devastating effects of the past, there is little evidence to prove we have made enough progress at the level of the learner (pournara et al., 2015). these studies should prompt us to look at the direction in which our education system is heading (reddy et al., 2016b). the report by reddy et al. (2016c), based on timss (2011), also points out that vast differences have been noted in the type of schools the learners attend as learners with access to private educational resources have been found to be achieving better results. it was also noted in the review done by the human sciences research council (hsrc review, 2013) that the greatest improvement was among learners who can be described as “the most disadvantaged”, coinciding with learners and schools that received the highest number of interventions, which aimed at improving the quality of education, from the public and private sector providers. these results reflect the value of continued investment in low-income households and in less-resourced schools. it also gives hope that the greatest improvements in scores is observed at the lowest end, from the lowest performing schools and provinces, and in schools formerly designated for africans (prinsloo, 2013). it was also noted that the publication of the 1999 timss results in south africa sparked a great deal of debate in different circles and was one of the events that catalysed an increased allocation of resources to science and mathematics at school level, thus acting as a lever of change for these two subjects (reddy, 2013). in this context, it is proper to investigate these factors further and critically assess the progress made in 2015. measures are to be put in place to accelerate the positive change that we have seen and promote the achievements in previously disadvantaged provinces and schools to attain the sustainable development goals (sdgs) as laid out in the national development plan of 2030. 4. research questions using the data from timss 2015 and previous timss 2011 studies, this paper investigates the following research questions in terms of the provinces, types of schools and resources: 1. what differences were noted in grade 9 learners’ mathematics performance in south africa in timss 2015 provincially? 2. what factors are associated with grade 9 learners’ mathematics performance in terms of the provinces in south africa and what contextual factors are linked to performance in the eastern cape? it is hoped that the answers to the above questions will lead to recommendations that can be made to under-performing provinces so that they can make a significant progress in the future to ensure sustainable development. 6 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) 5. methodology the data for this paper were sourced from the timss 2015 conducted by the international association for the evaluation of educational achievement (iea). timss was first conducted in 1995 and the study has been repeated every fourth year since then. south africa took part in the 1995, 1999, 2003, 2011 and 2015 cycles. from the population of south african schools, which offered grade 9 classes in 2015, the iea data processing and research centre selected a stratified random sample of 292 schools. the authors conducted the meta-analysis under the guidance of a senior research analysist from the iea data processing and research centre on the sample that was stratified by province, language of instruction and type of school (independent and public). a further random selection process of classes was applied for each sampled school after which intact classes participated in the study. approximately 12 500 grade 9 learners participated in the 2015 timss for south africa. 6. measurement of mathematics and science achievement one of the consequences of ambitious reporting goals regarding timss is that more questions are set for the assessment than can be answered by any individual learner. to summarise the achievement results on a common scale with a mean of 500 and a standard deviation of 100, timss 2011 used item response theory (irt) methods. the timss irt scaling approach used “plausible values” methodology to obtain achievement scores in mathematics and science for all learners. achievement scores were reported on a scale that ranged between 0 and 1000. the data analysis for this paper was carried out using ibm spss version 24 and the iea international database (idb) analyser, which is a plug-in for spss developed by the iea to analyse data from iea surveys that use a complex sample design and make use of plausible values. the data were subjected to exploratory data analysis as a basis for this descriptive analytic paper. 7. south africa’s achievement in mathematics in timss from 2003-2015 the following table, which was taken from the meta-analysis of reddy et al. (2016b), shows south africa’s achievement in mathematics in timss from 2003 to 2015. table 1: south african achievement in mathematics from 2003-2015 (grade 9) mathematics ave scale score (se) mathematics average scale score (se) 358 (5.6) 332 (3.7) 268 (5.5) 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 550 600 timss 2015 timss 2011 timss 2003 timss 2015 372 (4.5) timss 2011 352 (2.5) timss 2003 285 (4.2) (source: reddy et al, 2016b) 7 alex & juan quality education for sustainable development table 1 shows that south african learners have achieved positive score increases ranging from a score of 285 to 372 in their performance in mathematics. this shows that south africa’s performance is steadily improving even though it is at a slow pace. 8. performance by province in mathematics: timss 2015 although the government is working to rectify the imbalances in education, the greatest challenges lie in the poorer, rural provinces such as the eastern cape. schools are generally better resourced in the more affluent provinces such as gauteng and the western cape. the achievement in mathematics performance was analysed per province and figure 1 shows the achievements in mathematics as taken from reddy et al. (2016b). 420 410 400 390 380 370 360 350 340 330 320 310 408 391 370 ga ute ng w es ter n c ap e mp um ala ng a kw azu lu na tal fr ee s tat e no rth er n c ap e lim po po no rth w es t ea ste rn c ap e 369 367 364 361 354 346 figure 1: performance in mathematics by province: timss 2015 (source reddy et al, 2016b) figure 1 shows that the eastern cape was the lowest performing province in south africa with an achievement score of 346, which was far below gauteng, the highest performing province with a score of 408. the western cape was the second best province in mathematics with a score of 391. these two provinces scored higher than the national south african average score of 372. reddy’s team (2016b) also noted that south africa had a wide score distribution, reflecting high educational inequalities, which echo societal inequalities. this highlights the fact that less affluent provinces have many less-resourced schools and consequently their performance is poorer. 9. performance by school type in mathematics: timss 2011 & 2015 the south african schooling system consists of 7% independent schools and 93% public schools. a wide variation in the physical conditions of schools and the contexts in which schools are located are noticed in the highly unequal south african society. public schools are 8 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) discerned into fee-paying schools and no-fee schools. in timss 2015, 65% of the participated learners attended public no-fee schools, 31% attended public fee-paying schools and 4% independent schools. (reddy et al., 2016b:6). 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 mathematics 2011 public (no-fee paying) 324 397 474 341 423 477 public (fee paying) independent a ch ie ve m en t s co re 2015 figure 2: performance by school type in mathematics: timss 2011 & 2015 (source reddy et al, 2016b) it is noted in figure 2 that no-fee schools were the worst performing schools in 2011 and 2015 timss with scores of 324 and 341, respectively. the independent schools performed the best in both years with scores of 474 and 477 respectively. it is noteworthy to see that the achievement score difference was highest in the no-fee schools in 2011 and 2015. this gives hope that the achievement can be attained if contextual factors are addressed and nurtured. 10. contextual factors that were assessed against the performance in mathematics in timss 2015 home, school and community environments and the interactions within (reddy et al., 2016b) mould education and learning. in addition to achievement data, timss collects contextual information about the participating learners, teachers and schools. this helps researchers understand what factors predict learners’ academic success (topçu, 2016). in the sub-sample of south africa in the timss 2015, the schools were analysed according to the three categories as no-fee paying, fee-paying and independent schools with regard to schools and home contexts. the analysis was conducted on the variables that could possibly be attributed to sustainable development such as parents with tertiary education, access to running tap water, access to flush toilets, high emphasis on academic success, almost always speaks the test language and bullied on a weekly basis. these aspects are in this paper and figure 3 was sourced from reddy et al. (2016b). 9 alex & juan quality education for sustainable development no-fee paying household with post gr 12 education 0 20 40 60 80 100% access to running tap water access to flush toilet high emphasis on academic success almost always speak the test language bullied on weekly basis fee paying independent figure 3: school and home contexts by school type in south africa: 2015 (source: reddy et al, 2016b) it can be noted from figure 3 that households with post matric education, access to running tap water, access to a flush toilet, high emphasis on academic success and almost always speaks the test language are the highest for independent schools. bullying on a weekly basis is happening in most of the no-fee paying schools. the conclusion is that eastern cape’s very low performance can be attributed to its contextual factors. the above situation in the eastern cape is further analysed by the authors in terms of percentages of the contextual factors against the south african averages. tables 2-6 show the analysed data of these contextual factors. 11. household with post-matric education higher average mathematics achievement is associated with higher parental education across almost all of the participating countries in timss as noted by thomson, hillman and wernert (2012). the following table analyses the eastern cape’s percentages against gauteng, the best performing province and the south african averages. table 2: house hold with post-matric education and mathematics achievement eastern cape gauteng south africa % average maths score % average maths score % average maths score university or higher 19.0 388.04 28.86 452.63 22.00 412.51 10 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) eastern cape gauteng south africa % average maths score % average maths score % average maths score post-secondary but not university 16.0 357.45 21.78 396.90 18.63 375.40 upper secondary 24.7 336.79 20.54 378.62 25.44 358.68 lower secondary 12.4 323.04 5.34 362.00 8.36 348.48 some primary, lower secondary or no school 11.2 311.93 3.75 356.30 8.76 338.27 don’t know 16.7 361.92 19.73 423.35 16.81 383.37 it is noted from table 2 that the households with family members with university or higher qualifications (19% for the eastern cape) performed better with a score of 388.04, which is a better score than 311.93 where the household education indicates household members had some primary, lower secondary or no schooling. gauteng also reflects the same pattern but with a much higher score. it is noted from the table that the higher the percentage on higher household education, the higher the mathematics achievement score. 12. almost always speaks the test language and mathematics achievement how often english is spoken at home is a factor that is associated with achievement, both in past cycles of timss and in other similar studies (thomson et al., 2012). table 3: almost always speak the test language and mathematics achievement eastern cape gauteng south africa % average score % average score % average score always 16.11 368.24 17.36 478.08 16.44 408.62 almost always 13.31 398.48 21.25 445.10 14.42 424.30 sometimes 65.64 333.79 56.65 377.38 63.42 356.16 never 4.94 312.28 4.74 362.97 5.72 325.10 it is noted from table 3 that the students who never speak the test language (english, which is not the home language) scored the lowest average score of 312.28, far below the national score of 325.10. the 13.31% of learners in the eastern cape who almost always speak the test language performed the best with the score of 398.48 against the national score of 424.30 where 14.42% of learners almost always speak english. this proves that if the learners are exposed to more of the test language both at home and at school, they can achieve better. surprisingly, the scores were better than for the learners who always speak the test language. gauteng also shows the same pattern with a much higher score. 11 alex & juan quality education for sustainable development 13. quality of schooling and school discipline quality of schooling is measured in terms of the facilities provided in the school and in terms of the discipline observed by the school learners. the two variables that were considered for this paper were access to flush toilets as a measure of facilities provided and the bullying in schools as a measure of school discipline to check against mathematics achievement. 14. access to flush toilets and running tap water and mathematics achievement access to a flush toilet and running tap water can be taken as better school conditions that enhance student learning and achievement. the following table shows the average scores in the eastern cape in relation to access to flush toilets. table 4: access to flush toilet and mathematics achievement eastern cape gauteng south africa % average score % average score % average score yes 46.8 385.18 89.4 416.51 61.20 397.90 no 53.2 327.04 10.6 355.89 38.80 341.83 it is evident from table 4 that the majority of the learners (53.2%) in the study have no access to flush toilets and their performance is lower with 327.04 against that of 385.18 who said they have flush toilets. in both cases, the condition and scores are below the national percentages and scores reflect the vast differences in the best performing province. in gauteng, the majority of the schools (89.4%) have access to flush toilets and their performance is much better than that of the eastern cape and the national averages. 15. access to running tap water and mathematics achievement table 5: access to running water and mathematics achievement eastern cape gauteng south africa % average score % average score % average score yes 59.03 368.61 91.02 415.42 73.9 388.2 no 40.97 320.07 8.98 345.17 26.1 333.7 it is evident from table 5 that the majority of the learners (91.02%) in gauteng have access to running water and their performance is higher with 415.42 against that of 368.1 who said they have running water in the eastern cape. in both cases, the condition and scores are below the national percentages and scores reflect the vast differences in the best performing province. in gauteng, the majority of the schools have access to flush toilets and running tap water and their performance is much better than that of the eastern cape learners and the national averages. 12 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) 16. bullied on a weekly basis and mathematics achievement timss students and their teachers were asked about their perceptions of safety in their schools since a supportive school environment for learning is one in which teachers and students feel safe and secure, which is an important aspect of school life. it was measured by asking the students about being bullied at schools (thomson et al., 2012:114). table 6: bullied on weekly basis and mathematics achievement eastern cape gauteng south africa % ave score % average score % ave score almost never 38.1 374.70 44.2 431.80 36.39 396.50 about monthly 44.7 350.82 43.0 399.84 46.52 373.67 about weekly 17.2 304.08 12.8 360.76 17.09 328.35 it can be noted from table 6 that the learners who are almost never bullied (38.82%) in the eastern cape performed much better with a score of 374.70 than those who were bullied on a weekly basis (17.2%) with a score of 304.08. it can also be noted that in gauteng, the percentages show a similar pattern reflecting a high score of 431.80 where the students who were never bullied totalled 44.2%. the safety in a school can be taken as a measure for achievement as learners in safer schools achieve better. 17. discussion south africa’s future socio-economic prospects for learners and the development of the country as a whole need enormous improvements in the teaching of mathematics in the public schooling system (mccarthy & oliphant, 2013:3). this analysis is consistent with the report by spaull (2013), which was commissioned by the centre for development and enterprise (cde). this report points out that every south african educational achievement dataset analysis shows that two different public school systems are in effect in south africa in which the smaller, better performing system accommodates the wealthiest 20-25 per cent of learners who achieve much higher scores than the larger system which caters for the poorest 75-80 per cent of learners. these two education systems can be seen when splitting pupils by wealth, socio-economic status, geographic location and language (spaull, 2013). this is consistent with the analysis of timss 2011 on australian students by thomson et al. (2012). they observed a decline in the performance of students from metropolitan schools to provincial schools and students from remote schools perform worse compared to the students in provincial schools. the drift of families into provincial and metropolitan areas contribute to the decline in the quality of schools in remote areas which further worsens the problems of remote schools (thomson et al., 2012:31). in the analysis of timss 2011, thomson et al. (2012:28) noticed that in australia, parental education was found to be strongly related to student achievement. the mean score increases as the level of parental education increases indicating a high correlation between parental education and student achievement. a similar situation has also been observed in studies on south african learners. 13 alex & juan quality education for sustainable development thomson et al. (2012:30) also noticed that less exposure to the language of instruction and the test disadvantaging the australian learners coming from homes where english is not frequently spoken. the language of teaching and learning, when it is different from the home language, is a factor that has a significant role in mathematics performance among south african learners (howie, 2003). it is noted from the study that the students who never speak the test language (english, which is not the home language) scored the lowest average score. surprisingly the scores were better than the learners who always speak the test language. access to flush toilets and other basic facilities can be taken as a better school condition that enhances student learning and achievement. it is sad to see that nearly 20 years after the end of apartheid, many schools remain without basic facilities (simkins, 2013). school discipline and a conducive atmosphere for teaching and learning are considered as contributing factors in learner achievement. this is consistent with the australian learners as reported by thomson et al. (2012:115) that feeling secure at school showed a positive relationship with learners’ timss mathematics achievement scores. 18. conclusion south africa emphasises the significance of mathematics and science as part of the human development strategy for south africa. the improvement is visible in the international benchmarking as the scores in mathematics performance have steadily improved and the achievement score difference is highest in the no-fee schools over the years of timss 20112015. the change in achievement scores can be attributed to the change in the conditions. investigating the factors associated with learner achievement may help stakeholders to understand the reasons for low achievement and effective measures can therefore be put in place to bring about higher achievements. it is noted from the analysis that the contexts and conditions in the home and in the school that a learner experiences affects learner achievement. schools are generally better resourced in the more affluent provinces and their achievements are better, compared to those in poorer areas. the higher the parental education and the more often the test language is used, the better the achievement of the learners. the safer the school atmosphere and better facilities at school also support high academic achievement. the analysis of timss 2015 highlights the view that quality education for sustainable development can be achievable through an increase in parental education, infrastructure development at public schools, learners’ exposure to the language of teaching and learning and improvement in school safety measures in poorer provinces such as the eastern cape. 19. recommendations to attain the sustainable development goals (sdgs) as laid out in the national development plan of 2030, the contexts and conditions in the home and in the school that a learner experiences, and which support academic achievement, should be improved. this can be achieved through differentiated interventions that suit each school type and conditions at home. 14 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) references department of education. 2003. national curriculum statement grade 10-12. south africa: seriti printing. feza, n. & webb, p. 2005. assessment standards, van hiele levels and grade 7. https://doi. org/10.4102/pythagoras.v0i62.113 learners’ understanding of geometry. pythagoras, 62, 36-47. howie, s.j. 2003. language and other background factors affecting secondary pupils’ performance in mathematics in south africa. african journal of research in smt education, 7, 1-20. https://doi.org/10.1080/10288457.2003.10740545 hsrc review. 2013. timms 2011 in a nutshell: mathematics and science levels improve, but still low. review, 11(1). maree, k., aldous, c., hattingh, a., swanepoel, a. & van der linde, m. 2006. predictors of learner performance in mathematics and science according to a large -scale study in mpumalanga. south african journal of education, 26(2), 229-252. mccarthy, j. & oliphant, r. 2013. mathematics outcomes in south african schools: what are the facts? what should be done? available at https://www.cde.org.za/wp-content/ uploads/2013/10/mathematics outcomes in south african schools.pdf. 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[accessed on 12 march 2017]. pandor, n. 2006. into higher educationa guide for schools. pretoria, government printers. pournara, c., hodgen, j., adler, j. & pillay, v. 2015. can improving teachers’ knowledge of mathematics lead to gains in learners’ attainment in mathematics? south african journal of education, 35(3). https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v35n3a1083 prinsloo, c. 2013. changing lives of ordinary people through human and social sciences: highlights from 2011. available at www.timss-sa.org.za [accessed 10 january 2017]. reddy, v. 2013. the good, the bad and the potential: unpacking timss 2011, hsrc review. reddy, v, van der berg, s, janse van rensburg, d. & taylor, s. 2012 educational outcomes: pathways and performance in south african high schools. south african journal of sciences, 108(3/4), art. #620, 8 pages. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/sajs.v108i3/4.620 reddy, v., visser, m., winnaar, l., arends, f., juan, a., prinsloo, c. & isadale, k. 2016a. timss 2015 highlights of 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hillman, k. & wernert, n. 2012. monitoring australian year 8 student achievement internationally: timss 2011. australia: australian council for educational research. topçu, m.s. 2016. factors predicting turkish and korean students’ science and mathematics achievement in timss 2011. eurasia journal of mathematics, science & technology education, 2016, 12(7), 1711-1737 doi: 10.12973/eurasia.2016.1530a. https://doi. org/10.12973/eurasia.2016.1530a unicef. 2016. quality education: why it matters. available at http://www.un.org/ sustainabledevelopment/education [accessed 25 march 2017]. visser, m., juan, a. & feza, n. 2015. home and school resources as predictors of mathematics performance in south africa. south african journal of education, 35(1). https:// doi.org/10.15700/201503062354 http://www.timss-sa.org.za http://www.cde.org.za http://www.cde.org.za 10.12973/eurasia.2016.1530a. https://doi.org/10.12973/eurasia.2016.1530a 10.12973/eurasia.2016.1530a. https://doi.org/10.12973/eurasia.2016.1530a http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment https://doi.org/10.15700/201503062354 https://doi.org/10.15700/201503062354 56 work integrated learning competencies: industrial supervisors’ perspectives abstract research on student-learning outcomes indicates that university graduates do not possess relevant skills required by the industry such as leadership, emotional intelligence, problem solving, communication, decision-making skills and the ability to function in a multicultural environment. currently, engineering graduates are expected to perform within a diverse working environment, hence the need to possess appropriate professional competencies and attributes. this paper seeks to identify strengths and potential shortfalls of work integrated learning (wil) for students placed in the engineering sector. it presents findings from a study of workplace supervisors of chemical engineering students at one university of technology on the coastal seaboard. supervisors from a variety of chemical industries completed a wil students’ competency assessment, which measures 23 work-related competencies using a 4-point likert scale. the competencies were organised under two broad themes of cognitive and behavioural skills. the two themes were further broken down into five sub-themes, namely ability, performance, judgement, attitude and suitability. this defines the common characteristics of superior performers within the workplace. the results show that most students meet the standard expectation on the cognitive or ‘hard’ skills but seem to lack the behavioural or ‘soft’ skills. there were statistically significant differences between cognitive and behavioural skills. the findings from this study suggest that cooperative education programmes need to do more in developing the students’ soft skills before they go out for wil placement to ensure effectiveness and broad-based technical competence. keywords: competency; industrial supervisor; workplace; work integrated learning; chemical engineering; higher education; cooperative education; vocational education 1. introduction across the world, higher education has been moving towards outcome-based approach where universities are required to identify the knowledge, skills and attributes that they expect their graduate to have achieved (grant & dickson, 2006). engineering education in south africa is emerging and continually changing. course structures, teaching methods and learning environments are developing. a number of universities of technology (uot’s) in the country will be replacing the three-year national diploma, which includes a 12 months wil programme with a two-year certificate, which excludes a wil programme. some uots are replacing the thobeka pearl makhathini mangosuthu university of technology, department of chemical engineering, p.o. box 12363, jacobs, durban – umlazi south africa, email: thobeka@mut.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i3.5 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(3): 56-71 © uv/ufs 57 makhathini work integrated learning competencies three-year national diploma with a three-year engineering degree, which does not have a wil component either. problem-based learning, teamwork and peer assessment are set to become increasingly popular in the engineering discipline. as a requirement for all engineering programme accreditation, it is anticipated that non-technical competencies, including ethics and teamwork will be part of the engineering curricula. this study is motivated by the view that workplace supervisors’ perceptions of the recent graduates should be considered when all of the curriculum changes in engineering education are made. the study seeks to find out whether the current engineering curriculum is consistent with the industry expectations with regard to the students’ competencies and to identify competency deficiencies. competency deficiencies in graduates have also been referred to as “skills gaps”, referring to the difference between the level of competence required for employment and the level of competence of graduates (male, bush & chapman, 2010). a report by bodmer et al. (2002) for a study in europe where 1372 engineers with bachelor, master or diploma degree rated engineering competencies on graduate performance, indicated that the large gaps were in communication, leadership and social skills. it is important to note that the skills that were identified in this study are ‘soft skills’ or behavioural skills. spinks, silburn and birchall (2006) conducted a similar study among 256 employers of engineering graduates in the uk. the study found that there was small, yet statistically significant, dissatisfaction with practical application and business skills and to a lesser extent, technical breadth. in an international survey of chemical engineers from 63 countries, participants ranked competencies and abilities with respect to the quality of their education and relevance to their work (wcec, 2004). on average across all 1091 engineers with diplomas and bachelor degrees, the competence rated as having the highest deficit was the business approach. the report further showed ratings for quality management methods, project management methods, effective communication and leadership as a high deficit. as demonstrated by the various research results from other countries, rather than assuming that these findings are applicable to south african students, it may be important to obtain local data as well. communication is the competency that features most frequently as a deficiency in education surveys (male, bush & chapman, 2010). for instance, in a study by bons and mclay (2003), the graduates’ responses indicated the largest gaps for accountability, teamwork, communication, interpersonal skills and skills to advocate influence. furthermore, in a survey by ashman et al. (2008), 40 undergraduate chemical engineering students and six engineering managers rated graduate attributes on importance and competence. manager’s and undergraduate students’ ratings indicated deficiency in communication and manager’s ratings indicated a slight deficiency in graduates’ business skills. nair, patil and mertova (2009) investigated gaps between education and workplace needs of engineers among 109 engineering related employers. the largest identified competency gaps were in the areas of communication, problem-solving, time-management, teamwork, application of knowledge in the workplace, ability to cope with work related stress and the capacity to learn. according to masoka and selesho (2014), not much has been done in south africa in terms of developing employability skills. this may be viewed as a concern, considering that employability skills are important since jobs today require graduates who can undertake different tasks. today’s jobs are not as narrowly prescribed and defined as in the past and generally they are more service-oriented, including on information and social skills (kruss, 2007). in addition, the positions which employers are offering today require graduates 58 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) to have a broader range of competencies than before, competencies which are job-specific but which include organisational and social skills (miller, biggart & newtown, 2013). in agreement with other researchers, there is an increasing demand from employers that graduates should have a range of competencies (behavioural and cognitive) in addition to their subject-specific knowledge. if chemical engineering is to continue to prosper as a discipline then our graduates may need to demonstrate behavioural skills at a level comparable to graduates in general and preferably to a higher level. this matter is likely to become just as important to chemical engineering education as the matter around course content. this study attempts to provide a south african perspective on competency deficiencies of engineering students. this paper, therefore presents the background of the study that consists of a competency definition adopted for this study and the qualification programme. the paper then presents the literature review; in which it highlights the need for skills and competencies and the graduate employability trends internationally and in south africa. in the same section, the workplace supervisors’ responses from previous studies are explicitly stated. the study focused on students who undertook and completed a wil practical component in various companies around the country. 1.1 background cooperative education programmes aim to prepare students for the workplace by developing generic and specific competencies useful to the student career development and to the employer. the engineering council of south africa (ecsa) defines competence as the possession of the knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary to perform the activities within the professional category to the standards expected in independent employment and practice (ecsa, 2012 : 2). ecsa (2012) further prescribes the knowledge component of competency as consisting of knowledge from the engineering education process and knowledge subsequently acquired, which is likely to be specialised and related to the engineering work context. the purpose of work integrated learning (wil) in the chemical engineering diploma is to ensure that the student can function as an active and competent member of an engineering team in the workplace. the diploma is a 3-year qualification, the first 2 years of which constitute the theoretical component offered at the university of technology (uot). the wil practice 1 and 2 is the third and final year of this qualification. the time spent by the student in the workplace should ideally be two blocks but cannot be less than 22 weeks for each block. wil seeks to promote the integration of theoretical concepts learned in the academic space with the industrial practices. it also allows students to develop other skills, which might not be fully developed in the academic setting. the emphasis during the wil period is therefore placed on the application of knowledge, the development of skills and the formation of a professional attitude towards work. the roles of the technicians which are a product of a uot are changing and a shift in the paradigm of engineering is becoming more appropriate in today’s environment (nair, patil & mertova, 2009). in the past, engineering technicians were mainly concerned with the technical aspects of engineering, which is known as hard engineering. even though the shift involves movement towards soft engineering, the technical aspect of engineering remains the core function of the engineering discipline. however, duggins (1998) emphasises that it is only the dimension of the core that has changed. assuming that every university endeavours to produce graduates with the skills that the industry values, it may be useful to know the industry’s response to our students. 59 makhathini work integrated learning competencies 2. literature review wil researchers contend that the context of the work-integrated learning situation has not been given adequate consideration in terms of the learning environment affordances (billet, 2009), potential of graduate skill transfer (jackson, 2013), multiple stakeholders’ perceptions of placement quality and in particular concerning the impact of the direct work supervisor and the quality of work supervision (henschke & poppins, 2009). smith and smith (2010) emphasise the need to understand industry stakeholders as important co-contributors to a work-as-learning culture. work integrated learning placement can be considered as learning endeavours that have important outcomes for three stakeholders – the student, the university and the employer (bilsland & nagy, 2015). barrie (2006) argues that the connection between education and economic growth has resulted in a worldwide growth of higher education. as a result of this connection, the institutions of higher education are increasingly feeling the pressure to develop programmes that meet new requirements that are characterised beyond up-to-date factual knowledge and technology-driven skills (zehrer & mossenlechner, 2009). the fulfilment of the new requirements is expected to be featured in the curriculum design where industry practitioners from the engineering field participate for development purposes. one way of featuring the industry view regarding the university’s students is by understanding their views on student competence. it is generally accepted that engineering graduates need to be prepared for the increasing use of advanced and appropriate technology in their prospective workplaces (patil, 2005). a report prepared by the institute of science and technology at the university of manchester highlighted the fact that the careers of most engineering graduates include managerial tasks, despite the fact that many remained in predominantly technological jobs. according to dudman and wearne (2003), most engineering careers demand a variety of managerial skills and expertise, particularly in the leadership and management of projects. nair, patil and mertova (2009) emphasise the point that the workplace performances of engineering graduates have been a constant subject of criticism. for example, a report published in 2009 by the business council of australia (bca) cautioned universities about falling behind in the ability to meet the industry needs. the report identified simulation techniques as one of the essential engineering skills that was lacking in graduates (maiden & kerr, 2006). 2.1 skills and competencies most employers look for a more flexible, adaptable workforce as they themselves strive to transform their companies into being flexible and are more adaptable in responding to everchanging market demands (clarke, 1997; berrie, 2006). some researchers have looked at the employability of graduates and job requirements in the engineering field and different qualifications – technical knowledge and skills, attitude, proficiency in language/communicative skills, decision-making abilities, planning abilities and standards of engineering practice – have been identified (pudlowski & darvall, 1996; nguyen, pudlowski & kerr, 1997). knight and yorke (2003) highlight that there has been many attempts to ‘pin down’ employability skills and competencies of engineering graduates and the discussion has also been shaped by the limitations these functional lists might have since they always gravitate to the element of choice. employers seem to approach the issue of employability from yet another perspective, which can be explained through the variety of business fields and focuses 60 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) (zehrer & mossenlechner, 2009). many examples of such employers lists can be found in literature (knight & yorke, 2003), varying in their degree of differentiations, sometimes overgeneralising or idealising skills. hence, the problem of variation and notation seems to emanate from distinct interpretations of particular skills and competencies and the extent to which they are rated is important as well as to which they should be developed (drummond, nixon & wilthsire, 1998). most taxonomies on competencies can be broken down into knowledge, abilities and skills which suggests that a set of skills or abilities can be part of an overall competency (zehrer & mossenlechner, 2009). 2.2 graduate employability students commence their studies with the expectation that a higher education qualification will improve their chances of finding a job (brauns, 2012). this is a reasonable expectation given that labour demands are shifting to higher skilled workers and professionals. it is therefore important to highlight that the ultimate goal of higher education is to ensure that they produce graduates that are employable after receiving qualifications. bridgstock (2009) gives a narrow definition of employability, emphasising skills and dispositions that might make an individual attractive to potential employers, often (not necessarily) focusing on short-term employment outcomes. employability can also be defined as a graduate’s achievements and his/her potential to obtain a ‘graduate job’, which should not be confused with the actual acquisition of a ‘graduate job’. employability derives from complex learning and is a concept of wider range than those of ‘core’ and ‘key’ skills (yorke, 1998). futage, kinicki and ashforth (2004) refer to employability as one’s ability to identify and realise job opportunities while (hillage & pollard, 1998: 85) maintain that employability is “the ability to gain initial employment, maintain employment and obtain employment if required”. interestingly, (brown, hesketh & williams, 2003) challenge the definition of (hillage & pollard, 1998). they maintain that it is ideologically loaded because it ignores the fact that employability is predominantly determined by the labour market rather than the capabilities of the individuals suggesting that their definition of employability signifies a classic example of blaming the victim. in summary, these definitions assume a connection between employment and employability, implying that if one has the right combination of skills, attitude and behaviours, then one is supposedly employable. this is what every university seeks to achieve. they aim to identify the right combination of skills that will ultimately increase the likelihood of success in the employment of its graduates. it makes sense for employers to employ graduates with desirable skills and competencies relevant to the job market. therefore, it becomes crucial to identify any competency deficiencies in students in order to try to bridge the gap through curriculum design, with an intention to increase students’ employability. rainsbury et al. (2002) suggest that students and new graduates perceive hard skills as more important than soft skills. it seems likely that this may influence students’ study habits and attempts at skills development. if this is the case, such a practice may lead to students focusing on one side of their expected skills (technical) or content related to their studies, rather than developing their soft skills such as their interpersonal skills and process-type competencies (burchell, hodges & rainsbury, 1999). the key issue is whether the workplace supervisors are satisfied with the competencies that our students possess and whether it 61 makhathini work integrated learning competencies is cognitive or behavioural competencies. identification of any differences would enable the engineering academics to identify the competencies requiring greater emphasis in the curriculum. perhaps, the extent to which the cooperative education programmes might assist in the development of specific competencies should also be highlighted. 3. research methodology participants in the study comprised 106 students that were placed for wil practical 1 in 2015. the workplace supervisors were asked to complete an assessment feedback sheet, which is a summary of their views regarding the students’ performance after completion of the first six months training. they are expected to rate the students’ performance focusing on five main competencies. the students collected these assessment feedback sheets as they form part of their report at the end of the training period. hence, the response rate was 100%. it is well understood that there might be supervisors who assess more than one student per period, however this is not a problem since the assessment is for each student placed. the permission to use this data was obtained from the head of department. the competencies listed on the feedback sheet were adopted from spencer and spencer (1993) namely attitude, ability, judgement and teamwork. these competencies were deemed necessary in order to gain a more complete perspective concerning chemical engineering students/graduates from industry personnel. the competencies were listed under two themes (soft skills and hard skills) and the participants were given a space to write additional comments that they felt relevant after each assessment. workplace supervisors were asked to rate each student’s performance using a 4-point likert scale, where 1 indicated that the student needs to improve in this particular performance area and 4 indicated that the student exceeded the minimum requirement in the particular performance area. the ranking given to each competency by the workplace supervisor (based on comparisons of mean values) is provided in table 1. these means also ranked from highest to lowest performance. two sets of ranking are provided, one each for hard and soft skills, along with an overall ranking. the competencies were categorised into hard and soft skills by the author. the mean importance for each category was determined by summing the mean ranking of the competency within that category and dividing this by the number of competencies for each category. 62 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) table 1: a full list of students’ attributes used in the feedback report item no. attribute 1 development of technical skill 2 adapt to changing work assignment 3 cope with several assignments concurrently 4 self-starter and shows initiative 5 cooperate and work with other people 6 listens and carries out instructions 7 works efficiently without close supervision 8 meets deadlines and keeps superiors informed 9 produces quality work and displays professionalism 10 produces an acceptable quantity of work 11 makes sound decisions based on available information 12 seeks the appropriate help and advice when needed 13 shows ability to solve problems 14 accepts responsibility 15 exhibits an interest in the job 16 maintains acceptable dress and grooming habits 17 good attendance and time keeping 18 adheres to company regulations and standards 19 willingness to work beyond standard working time 20 dependable and conscientious 21 adapted to working environment 22 adapted to the social environment 23 appears suited to this career 3.1 research findings 3.1.1 response rate and participant profile of the 106 complete supervisor feedback reports, only two feedback reports were not completed properly. all of the supervisors’ feedback reports were returned with each student’s p1 report forming part of the appendix. 63 makhathini work integrated learning competencies 6.00 5.00 4.00 3.00 2.00 1.00 0.00 4.50 4.00 3.50 3.00 2.50 2.00 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 competencies (a) (b)hard skills soft skills competencies m ea n r an ki ng m ea n r an ki ng figure 1: ranking of students by workplace supervisor on (a) hard skills and (b) soft skills figure 1 shows the ranking based on a 4-point likert scale as per the feedback report. of the 23 attributes measured in the report, workplace supervisors rated five attributes as the least that all students possessed. these were independence, adapting to social working environment, teamwork and adhering to company standards and procedures. on the other hand, the workplace supervisors rated four attributes in which all students were acceptably satisfactory. these were meeting deadlines, ability to solve technical problems, decision making and producing an acceptable amount of work. it is noticeable that the least competencies that the students possessed are the soft skills and the strong competencies that they demonstrated in the workplace are hard skills. 4. results the (engineering) workplace supervisors’ opinions collected and presented in this research provide insight for engineering educators. the conceptual themes were developed iteratively, to group units of data that indicated similar competency deficiencies. the themes evolved from repeated concepts in the collected data. however, the purpose of the study influenced the dimensions used to identify the themes and awareness of current and past changes in engineering education in south africa provided insight. the purpose of identifying competency deficiencies is to assist continuous improvement of engineering education. therefore, themes were selected to group competency deficiencies that might be addressed simultaneously by similar improvements in engineering education. the results were presented in two broad themes, the hard skills and soft skills. 64 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) 40% 20% 0% 40% 20% 0% 80% 60% 40% 20% 0% poor poor poor % s tu de nt s % s tu de nt s % s tu de nt s need some improvement need some improvement need some improvement meet expectations meet expectations meet expectations ability performance judgement exceed expectations exceed expectations exceed expectations (a) (c) (b) figure 2: assessment feedback on students’ hard skills (a) ability to do work, (b) performance on the actual job and (c) judgement on technical matters figure 2(a) demonstrates the ability of the students in doing the actual job in the engineering discipline. this result indicates that the workplace supervisors rated 2% of the students poorly on their ability to perform the technical duties. the students that meet expectations of the supervisors and the students that need improvement in their ability were almost equal at 38% and 36% respectively. the rest of the students were rated as having exceeded expectations of their workplace supervisors. in relation to the ability of doing the job, is the performance standard of doing the job hence, figure 2(b) also shows similar results where 34% of the students demonstrated a higher strength in performance in their given technical projects and in delivering results. approximately 3% of the students displayed poor performance in this area of competency. figure 2(c) shows that the students are stronger in decision-making where 64% of them met their supervisor’s expectations and 6% of the students exceeded the expectations. it may be expected that the students who lack the technical skills that prevent them from performing in their jobs, will also be poor decision makers. surprisingly, none of the students was rated as poor decision makers, which is in contrast with the results in figure 2(a) and (b). 65 makhathini work integrated learning competencies 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% % s tu de nt s poor ability performance judgement need some improvement meet expectations exceed expectations hard skills figure 3: the overall view of students’ hard skills combined the statistical analysis was performed using friedman’s test to investigate the students’ performance on hard skills. this is a non-parametric statistical test developed by miltonfriedman and is used to detect differences in treatments across multiple test attempts (friedman, 1937). this tool was used because the study has categorical and repeatable sample data. the statistical test showed that judgement, performance and ability were significantly different (p < 0.05). it is shown in figure 3 that judgement is the only competence where students did extremely well. this means that most of the students are able to make sound technical decisions based on available information and they seek appropriate help and advice when needed. the students’ performance is the second strongest attribute that they possess, which is a great result as well. over 70% of students met and exceeded the workplace supervisors’ expectations because they are able to listen and carry out instructions. these students are able to work efficiently without close supervision and they produce an acceptable quantity of work. it is important to note that not many students were rated high on ability to cope with several assignments concurrently. this result is unexpected since the students are exposed to such situations during the course of their theoretical study at the university. most students need to improve in developing the necessary technical skills and knowledge needed in the industry. 66 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) 40% 20% 0% 60% 40% 20% 0% poor poorneed some improvement need some improvement meet expectations meet expectations exceeds expectations exceeds expectations attitute suitability (a) (b) figure 4: assessment feedback on students’ soft skills (a) attitude towards work in the industry and (b) suitability in the discipline figure 4(a) shows that almost 40% of the students need to improve their attitude at work. the students do not exhibit an interest in the job and they show less enthusiasm about the tasks that they are given. only 5% of the students were rated as having an excellent attitude towards work; even so 25% of the students met their workplace supervisors’ expectations on attitude. the main areas of concern are the adherence to company rules, time keeping and absenteeism, being dependable and willingness to work beyond the standard working hours. the soft skills results were dissimilar to the hard skills results where students exhibited high performance and high decision-making abilities. one could have expected that the students would have good soft skills for them to be rated high on performance. the result is not that far from what the study hypothesised, in that the students lack soft skills. it is no surprise that figure 4(b) shows a similar trend as figure 4(a) because these competencies are intertwined in a manner that it is predictable that if a person has a bad attitude towards his/her work then a conclusion can be made that s/he is not suitable for it. there are only 5% of students that were found suitable for the engineering career. above 40% of the students were found to have not adapted well to the working environment. it may be noted that 26% of the students met workplace supervisors’ expectations on social adaptation in the workplace. again, this result contradicts the rating that the students achieved on hard skills, it was expected that they would be more suitable in the career because their technical skills exceeded expectations. these results may be attributed to the low motivation and low self-confidence from some of the students. the workplace supervisors may view this as if the students are less suitable for the job. 67 makhathini work integrated learning competencies 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% % s tu de nt s poor attitude suitability need some improvement meet expectations exceed expectations soft skills figure 5: the overall view of students’ soft skills the statistical analysis was performed using wilcoxon signed-rank test to investigate the students’ soft skills. this is a nonparametric test procedure for the analysis of matchedpair data, based on differences or for a single sample (woolson, 2008). the statistical test showed that the competency of students on attitude and suitability was not significant (p >0.05). figure 5 shows that approximately 30% of the students seem to be rather poor in attitude which is a challenge for the students. this result depends on the self-efficacy of each student, which will consequently determine his/her success in the industry. it is unfortunate that the students are struggling in this regard, which may jeopardise their chances of securing permanent employment in their respective places of work. more than 70% of the students were found unsuitable for the engineering career by their workplace supervisors. 5. discussion the introduction to this paper discussed the status of engineering education in south africa, which is emerging. on the other hand, qualification offerings, course structure and the learning environment are changing. are these changes aligned with competency deficiencies identified by the industry supervisors in this study? the results of this study suggest that engineering education has some improvements to make in at least two areas of competency. those areas are problem solving and communication. the results correlated with the findings of previous research indicating that engineering university students and graduates lacked skills required by the industry (jones, 2007). the results showed consistencies in findings from previous research in that the shortfalls related primarily to communication, problem solving and social ethics skills (see figure 5). these results further imply that workplace supervisors require higher levels of knowledge and skills application from engineering students. workplace supervisors found that there is a shortfall in soft skills, mainly in adherence to company rules, attitude towards work and social ethics. a possible reason for workplace supervisors to find this short fall could be that these attributes are not easily measureable and they are perceived as hard to be embedded in the course curricula in higher education. this finding is supported by the work of coates (2007) and shuman, besterfied-scare and mcgourty (2005), which reported that there are very few examples of a successful tool for development of professional skills, such as students’ ability 68 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) to solve conflict, resolve ethical dilemmas and assessment of team skills development and project effectiveness. this paper agrees with the findings by nair, patil and mertova (2009) where it discusses that the aspect of global employment of graduates has created a requirement for a new attribute essential for engineering graduates. this is an ability to work in a multicultural work environment. rojter (2005) reported that cultural awareness and diversity were attributes required for effective engineering practice. however, the results of this study showed that the students are actually lacking this attribute, which is a gap for the students at this point. furthermore, the results of the workplace supervisors concerning the students were consistent with the study which showed that engineering graduates are lacking soft skills because they perceive these skills as unimportant when compared to hard skills. the competency gap that was observed by bons and mclay (2003) which highlighted accountability, teamwork, communication and interpersonal skills is similar to what this study established as well. furthermore, the report from (wcec, 2004) showed ratings for quality management methods, project management methods, effective communication and leadership as a high deficit. the same trend was observed in this study, which reaffirms the lack of soft skills in students. this study contributes a new dimension of competency deficiencies to engineering education in a south african context. nguyen (1998) posed a challenge to higher education by stating that in order for the engineering technicians to function effectively in a multi-disciplinary environment, engineering education must have the capacity to equip its graduates with skills and attributes from social science, computer/technology, mathematics and management. some of these skills include communication skills, presentation skills and computer skills, programming skills, problem solving skills, leadership skills and team building skills. most of these attributes were found to be below the expectations of the workplace supervisors, which leave engineering education with the challenge of correcting this in future graduates. 6. conclusions this study established that more than 70% of the students seem to be unsuitable for an engineering career, mainly because of their behavioural skills that include attitude, teamwork, social ethics and communication. the study is in accord with the international studies on graduate/students’ attributes. this result may be related in that there is no formal education behind the development of soft skills, unlike the hard skills where you develop them over time in years of schooling. the argument that the soft skills should be embedded in the curriculum in order to ensure its development is a valid argument. the university needs to take responsibility of ensuring that its product is completely specified in terms of hard and soft skills. one approach could be utilising these findings to address the shortfall in soft skills (i.e. teamwork, communication skills, adherence to regulations and standards) in engineering by integrating annual project-based learning with more traditional instructions. references ashman, p.j., scrutton, s., stringer, d., mullinger, p.j. & willison, j. 2008. stakeholder perceptions of chemical engineering graduate attributes at the university of adelaide. proceedings of chemeca, newcastle city hall, new south wales, australia. 69 makhathini work integrated learning competencies barrie, s. 2006. understanding what we mean by generic attributes of graduates. higher education, 51(2), 215-241. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-004-6384-7 berrie, s. 2006. employer’s demands for personal transferable skills in graduates: a content analysis of 1000 job advertisements 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influencing parental involvement in homework at the foundation phase in eight johannesburg public primary schools. the research was conducted among over 600 parents from schools in different geographical and socio-economic areas such as the inner city, suburban and township. two primary schools were chosen from each of these settings. this research offers a form of classification of parents, with the view to analyse the relationship between the types of parental involvement in homework and different categories of parents. in this study, i argue that the socio-economic status of parents has a major influence on participation in their children’s homework. findings suggest that the higher the income and socio-economic status, the more parents are likely to become involved, whereas parents from a poorer socio-economic background are less likely to be involved in their children’s homework. keywords: homework, parents, literacy, numeracy, socio-economic status, classification of parents, suburban, township, inner city introduction and background to the study the level of numeracy and literacy in south africa has been an issue of concern and debate in the educational domain. annual national assessment (ana) for grades 3 and 6 learners have found low levels of literacy and numeracy for south african learners, with only 35% of learners able to read (department of basic education, 2011). apart from numerous government-initiated intervention strategies, such as the gplms intervention, which included coaching for teachers and scripted lessons, schools’ communities of practice, clusters and workshops, parental participation in misheck ndebele university of the witwatersrand, school of education, studies in education division telephone: 011-7173098 or 0726699500 e-mail: misheck.ndebele@wits.ac.za socio-economic factors affecting parents’ involvement in homework: practices and perceptions from eight johannesburg public primary schools misheck ndebele 73 education has been recognised as a necessary strategy in addressing the numeracy and literacy challenges in south african schools. for the purposes of this study, it is necessary to clarify who the ‘parents’ are in the south african context. in their synopsis of the south african family structures, amoateng, richter, makiwane & rama (2004) identify nuclear families, extended families, child-headed households, single-parent families and multigenerational families, as constituting the main family classifications in the south african context. the concept of ‘parents’ in south africa is, therefore, increasingly complex as the south african society becomes more multicultural, multiracial and modernized (amoateng & richter, 2007). it has been established that parental involvement in primary school education contributes to children’s development of literacy and numeracy. it is argued that, when parents are involved in reading-related activities outside of school, children’s reading performance is likely to improve, along with literacy and language skills, and a general love for reading (nye, turner & schwartz, 2006; dearing, kreider, simpkins & weiss, 2004). in the south african context, parental involvement has been guided by the south african schools act (sasa) of 1996, which focuses mainly on parents’ participation in school governance and representation. as such, south african researchers have been encouraging parents to participate in activities generally associated with active participation in school governance (mncube, 2009; mestry & grobler, 2007; grantlewis & naidoo, 2004; heystek, 2003). recent research suggests that the majority of the parents in south african schools do not participate meaningfully in their children’s education (mestry, 2004; mmotlane, winnaar & kivilu, 2009). mestry (2004) further provides evidence of parental non-involvement by citing, among other things, poor attendance of parents’ meetings, limited involvement in fundraising projects, low attendance at parent-teacher meetings, and lack of interest in learners’ schoolwork and homework. the finding that the majority of the parents do not participate in their children’s education needs more explanation as to what factors influence parental participation or lack thereof. socio-economic status: a leading factor earlier research by dwyer & hecht (1992) identified lack of experience in involvement, negativity towards involvement, lack of time to be involved, as well as a belief that only schools are responsible for the education of their children, as the main reasons for poor parental involvement. however, a different group of researchers argue that the socio-economic status of families is a leading factor in explaining parental involvement and that it has more perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 74 influence on parental participation than other variables such as age, gender, and marital status (fehrmann, keith & reimers, 1987; epstein, 1986; heystek, 2003; georgiou, 2007; mmotlane et al., 2009; schmitt & kleine, 2010; lareau 2011). despite the benefits of parental involvement, low-income parents participate less in schools than high-income parents (machen, wilson & notar, 2005; hoover-dempsey, walker & sandler, 2005; van velsor & orozco, 2007; ratcliff & hunt, 2009; turney & kao, 2009; lareau, 2011). the researcher is aware that people of different socio-economic levels may be found in any locality in south africa. however, the general trend in johannesburg and other big cities of south africa is that more people of a lower socio-economic status are found in townships, the inner city and the peri-urban areas. people of a higher socio-economic status are generally found in the upmarket suburbs of the city. with that assumption, this study classifies parents of foundation phase learners in johannesburg public primary schools into two socio-economic groupings: parents from the low socio-economic and those from the high socio-economic backgrounds. parents from the former are those from the inner-city schools, the peri-urban areas, as well as the townships. parents from the high socio-economic backgrounds are those from the suburban schools. this study compares and contrasts the levels of parental involvement in these socio-economic groupings. theoretical framework this study identifies some of the theorists associated with different aspects of parental involvement in their children’s education, namely bourdieu (1977), bandura (1977), bronfenbrenner (1979), and epstein (1995). bourdieu’s (1977) concept of ‘cultural capital’ highlights the importance of class and class cultures, implying that class-related factors shape parents’ compliance with teachers’ requests for participating in schooling (lareau, 1987). teachers must consider what cultural norms and values influence the responses of parents when it comes to involvement in their children’s education, such as homework activities. bandura’s theory of social learning demonstrates parents’ important role of modelling positive attitudes and behaviours towards school. according to this theory, people tend to display behaviours that are learned either intentionally or advertently, through the influence of example. therefore, parents have the potential to model positive attitudes and behaviours towards school. in the context of this study, when parents show an interest in their children’s schoolwork, and are willing to assist them with homework, and hold them accountable for the completion of homework assignments, children are more likely to apply themselves and perform better in school. socio-economic factors affecting parents’ involvement in homework: practices and perceptions from eight johannesburg public primary schools misheck ndebele 75 the school and the family are the most important settings in a child’s life, which must partner for the development of the child. bronfenbrenner (1979) espouses that child development occurs in different, overlapping contexts that affect each other, giving an ecological nature to his theory. according to bronfenbrenner, communication between the different settings could benefit the child, making the parent-teacher relationship most significant in child development. bronfenbrenner’s theory is of much relevance in this study, as it justifies parental involvement in the schooling of children, thus strengthening school-family ties. among the theories chosen as a framework for this study, epstein’s theory seems to be the most direct and articulate on parental involvement in their children’s education. this theory emphasises that schools, families and communities must collaborate to ensure the academic success and socio-emotional well-being of all learners (epstein, 1992). the theory sums up the role of parents in six categories of the typology of parental involvement as follows: basic parenting; facilitating learning at home; volunteering at school; communicating with the school; participating in school decision-making, and collaborating with the community. of particular relevance and importance to this study in the above typology is the role played by parents in facilitating learning at home (altschul, 2012; sui-chu & willms, 1996). methodology this qualitative study investigated the involvement of foundation phase parents in eight public primary schools in johannesburg, gauteng province. description of participating schools participating primary schools were drawn from different geographical and socioeconomic settings of johannesburg – inner city, peri-urban, suburban and township. in this study, two public primary schools were chosen from each of these settings. for ethical reasons, pseudonyms were used to identify the schools (schools 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8). for the purposes of this study, schools have been paired as follows: schools 1 and 5; 2 and 7; 3 and 8, and 4 and 6. in terms of the categorization used by the gauteng department of education (gde), these schools belong to the johannesburg east district. table 1 summarises the socio-economic profiles of the participating schools. table 1: schools and socio-economic profiles schools description 1 and 5 low socio-economic status schools in suburbs adjacent to the city centre in johannesburg. parents are part of communities that include, to a large extent, foreign nationals from zimbabwe, zambia, malawi, the democratic republic of congo (drc), and other african countries. perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 76 2 and 7 low socio-economic status schools in the eastern suburbs of johannesburg. parents are mainly from johannesburg inner city and townships. 3 and 8 low socio-economic schools located in alexandra township. 4 and 6 high socio-economic status schools in the affluent suburbs north-east of johannesburg city centre. participants the main participants in this study were parents of learners in the foundation phase in each school. participants in this study were chosen using purposive sampling, where sampling is done with a purpose in mind and subjects are selected because of some characteristic, with human rather than random choice (trochim, 2002). in this study, they were chosen as parents of grade one learners. research instrument: the questionnaire for parents participating parents of learners in the foundation phase completed a questionnaire (see appendix a). the questionnaire contained items for which parents stated whether they had time to assist their children when doing homework, specific ways in which they assisted their children, such as reading aloud to them, listening to them read, assisting them with numeracy, as well as supervising, checking and signing their children’s homework. the questionnaire established whether their homes provided adequate resources as well as appropriate home learning environments for homework activities. procedure having been cleared by both the department of education and the university, the researcher visited the eight participating schools to explain the nature and purpose of the project, as well as request their support for the project. with the help of foundation phase teachers, information sheets and informed consent forms, as well as parents’ questionnaires (see appendix a) were sent to parents through their children. after reading the information sheets, all prospective participants signed informed consent forms to indicate their willingness to participate. completed questionnaires from teachers and parents, as well as signed informed consent forms were returned to the researcher, who sent them for coding. after the coding, data was sent to the statistician for analysis. for data analysis, responses to questionnaires were converted from categorical data to numerical data for statistical analysis. data were analysed using the spss 18 (spss, inc. chicago. ill). descriptive statistics were used to examine the overall views of parents from eight primary schools in johannesburg regarding homework. to illustrate the distribution of responses, respective percentages of the observed perceptions were calculated and represented as tables and bar graphs. socio-economic factors affecting parents’ involvement in homework: practices and perceptions from eight johannesburg public primary schools misheck ndebele 77 results findings from the survey on parents of foundation phase learners at the eight participating schools reveal that the majority of the parents across the socio-economic spectrum perceived homework as important to their children’s learning. in their view, homework was to be given priority over all other activities of the child, and was not regarded as interfering with the child’s free time. parents from all participating schools believed that homework was a useful learning instrument for their children, and that the amount of homework that the children were given by their teachers was adequate and not excessive. furthermore, parents believed that they were able to help their children even when the homework was challenging. findings also show that the majority of the parents in all participating schools believed their children completed homework on time. influence of the socio-economic status results in this study also indicate a marked influence of the socio-economic environment on parental involvement in children’s homework. this section describes findings on tables 1 to 4 and figures 2a to 2c, which illustrate the influence of socio-economic factors in parents’ involvement in their children’s homework at the foundation phase in public primary schools in johannesburg. table 2: number of times parents read aloud to their children per week q1 total 1 2 3 4 5 school 1 count 30 23 16 10 6 85 % within schools 35.3 27.1 18.8 11.8 7.1 100.0 school 2 count 19 18 14 15 5 71 % within schools 26.8 25.4 19.7 21.1 7.0 100.0 school 3 count 17 26 24 13 10 90 % within schools 18.9 28.9 26.7 14.4 11.1 100.0 school 4 count 35 19 22 14 5 95 % within schools 36.8 20.0 23.2 14.7 5.3 100.0 school 5 count 38 27 18 12 11 106 % within schools 35.8 25.5 17.0 11.3 10.4 100.0 school 6 count 48 20 14 6 10 98 % within schools 49.0 20.4 14.3 6.1 10.2 100.0 school 7 count 47 18 17 12 15 109 % within schools 43.1 16.5 15.6 11.0 13.8 100.0 school 8 count 5 6 5 5 1 22 perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 78 % within schools 22.7 27.3 22.7 22.7 4.5 100.0 total count 239 157 130 87 63 676 % within schools 35.4 23.2 19.2 12.9 9.3 100.0 key: 4/5 times a week 3 times a week 2 times a week once a week table 2 indicates the number of times parents of foundation phase learners read aloud to their children in a week, for their literacy homework. the table shows that, of the 676 parents who responded, 35.4% read aloud to their children 4 to 5 times a week. the highest percentage of parents who read aloud to their children was in the upmarket suburban school 6 (49%). township schools 3 and 8 had the lowest percentages, with 18.9% and 22.7%, respectively. these results indicate a variation in literacy practices experienced by foundation phase learners from different socio-economic backgrounds. parents from lower socio-economic environments (such as townships) tend to be less active in promoting literacy and reading skills among their children, compared to parents in higher socioeconomic settings in upmarket suburban environments. table 3: number of times parents listen to their children read per week q2 total 1 2 3 4 5 school 1 count 36 19 15 9 6 85 % within schools 42.4 22.4 17.6 10.6 7.1 100.0 school 2 count 29 21 11 8 5 74 % within schools 39.2 28.4 14.9 10.8 6.8 100.0 school 3 count 29 27 16 11 9 92 % within schools 31.5 29.3 17.4 12.0 9.8 100.0 school 4 count 44 20 18 10 5 97 % within schools 45.4 20.6 18.6 10.3 5.2 100.0 school 5 count 44 24 10 18 10 106 % within schools 41.5 22.6 9.4 17.0 9.4 100.0 school 6 count 75 13 5 3 2 98 % within schools 76.5 13.3 5.1 3.1 2.0 100.0 school 7 count 57 18 17 7 14 113 socio-economic factors affecting parents’ involvement in homework: practices and perceptions from eight johannesburg public primary schools misheck ndebele 79 % within schools 50.4 15.9 15.0 6.2 12.4 100.0 school 8 count 6 6 6 3 0 21 % within schools 28.6 28.6 28.6 14.3 0 100.0 total count 320 148 98 69 51 686 % within schools 46.6 21.6 14.3 10.1 7.4 100.0 key:4/5 times a week 3 times a week 2 times a week once a week table 3 indicates the number of times parents of foundation phase learners listen to their children read for their literacy homework in a week. the table shows that, out of 686 parents who responded, 46.6% listened to their children read 4 to 5 times a week. the highest percentage of parents who listened to their children read was at school 6, with 76.5%. township schools 3 and 8 had the lowest percentages, with 31.5% and 28.6%, respectively. other peri-urban schools with growing numbers of township learners also had low percentages of parents who listened to their children read 4 to 5 times a week. these results show that the socio-economic environment has an influence on the level of reading support given by parents of foundation phase learners from different socio-economic backgrounds in johannesburg. in other words, foundation phase learners from high-income families are likely to receive more parental support for their reading than their counterparts from low-income homes. key: 4/5 times a week 3 times a week 2 times a week once a week table 4: number of times parents assist their children with maths problems per week q3 total 1 2 3 4 5 8 school 1 count 34 23 14 7 8 0 86 % within schools 39.5 26.7 16.3 8.1 9.3 .0 100.0 school 2 count 35 17 10 5 6 1 74 % within schools 47.3 23.0 13.5 6.8 8.1 1.4 100.0 perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 80 school 3 count 17 20 26 17 9 0 89 % within schools 19.1 22.5 29.2 19.1 10.1 .0 100.0 school 4 count 39 21 9 17 10 0 96 % within schools 40.6 21.9 9.4 17.7 10.4 .0 100.0 school 5 count 55 25 8 8 10 0 106 % within schools 51.9 23.6 7.5 7.5 9.4 .0 100.0 school 6 count 37 22 10 11 17 0 97 % within schools 38.1 22.7 10.3 11.3 17.5 .0 100.0 school 7 count 57 22 15 6 13 0 113 % within schools 50.4 19.5 13.3 5.3 11.5 .0 100.0 school 8 count 6 5 6 3 1 0 21 % within schools 28.6 23.8 28.6 14.3 4.8 .0 100.0 total count 280 155 98 74 74 1 682 % within schools 41.1 22.7 14.4 10.9 10.9 .1 100.0 table 4 shows the number of times parents of foundation phase learners in johannesburg assist their children with maths problems in a week. out of 682 parents who participated, 41.1% assisted their children with maths problems 4 to 5 times a week. however, it is worth noting that the two township schools, schools 3 and 8, had the highest number of parents assisting their children in maths only twice a week, with school 3 having 29.2% and school 8 having 28.6%. these results reveal that lack of assistance in maths was more pronounced among parents in the two township schools (schools 3 and 8), compared to those in peri-urban and upmarket areas of johannesburg. in other words, the socio-economic environment in the townships has a negative influence on how often parents assist their children with maths problems on a weekly basis. q4 total 1 2 3 4 5 school 1 count 55 27 3 1 86 86 % within schools 64.0 31.4 3.5 1.2 100.0 100.0 school 2 count 47 23 1 0 71 74 % within schools 66.2 32.4 1.4 .0 100.0 100.0 school 3 count 49 34 5 1 89 89 % within schools 55.1 38.2 5.6 1.1 100.0 100.0 school 4 count 78 14 0 0 92 96 % within schools 84.8 15.2 .0 .0 100.0 100.0 school 5 count 85 19 1 0 105 106 % within schools 81.0 18.1 1.0 .0 100.0 100.0 socio-economic factors affecting parents’ involvement in homework: practices and perceptions from eight johannesburg public primary schools misheck ndebele 81 school 6 count 79 18 0 0 97 97 % within schools 81.4 18.6 .0 .0 100.0 100.0 school 7 count 87 19 1 0 107 113 % within schools 81.3 17.8 .9 .0 100.0 100.0 school 8 count 18 5 0 0 23 21 % within schools 78.3 21.7 .0 .0 100.0 100.0 total count 498 159 11 2 670 682 % within schools 74.3 23.7 1.6 .3 100.0 100.0 key: always sometimes never not sure table 5 shows whether parents of foundation phase learners in johannesburg have time to supervise, check and sign their children’s homework. of the 670 parents who responded, 74.3% always supervised, checked and signed their children’s homework. school 4 had the highest percentage of 84.8%, followed by schools 5, 6 and 7, whose percentages were in the 80s. some township, city-centre and peri-urban schools reflect the highest number of parents who did not always supervise, check and sign their children’s homework, as demonstrated in school 3 (38.2%), school 2 (32.4%), school 1 (31.4%) and school 8 (21.7%). it is also disturbing that there were parents at schools 1 (3.5%) and 3 (5.6%) who never supervised, checked and signed their children’s homework. while these results show that the majority of the parents of foundation phase learners in johannesburg have time to supervise, check and sign their children’s homework, there are still some parents, mostly in the city-centre, peri-urban and township areas, who do not always supervise, check and sign their children’s homework. the results also reveal that some parents in the lower socio-economic environments never supervise, check and sign their children’s homework. perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 82 socio-economic factors affecting parents’ involvement in homework: practices and perceptions from eight johannesburg public primary schools misheck ndebele 83 figure 2: how parents help children do their homework (a) providing adequate resources (b) and providing a good home learning environment (c) figure 2 (a) indicates responses of parents of foundation phase learners in johannesburg on how they help their children do their homework. of the 666 parents who responded, 73.7% reported that they supervise, check and sign their children’s homework. the majority of the participating schools reported percentages ranging between 43% and 95%. schools 4 and 6 reported that over 90% of the participating parents supervise, check and sign their children’s homework. however, the lowest percentages were recorded for parents at township schools 3 and 8, with 47.2% and 43.5%, respectively. the majority of the parents who said that they only supervise their children’s homework came from poorer communities around johannesburg. these results show that, while the majority of the parents of foundation phase learners in johannesburg involve themselves in their children’s education by supervising, checking and signing their children’s homework, fewer parents from poorer socio-economic settings than in upmarket environments, actually supervise, check and sign their children’s homework. figure 2 (b) shows the responses of parents of foundation phase learners in public primary schools in johannesburg to whether their children had adequate resources to help them do homework on their own. of the 660 parents who responded, 73.2% claimed that they have adequate resources to help their children do homework on their own. while percentages of parents with adequate resources at all participating perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 84 schools were generally high, parents from the upmarket schools 4 and 6 reported the highest percentages, with 84.4% and 93.8%, respectively. the lowest percentages of parents with adequate resources were in the low-income communities, with school 1 (62.7%), school 2 (60.9%), school 3 (69.4%), school 5 (64.8%), and school 8 (63.6%). these results reveal that, while the majority of the parents of foundation phase learners in johannesburg have adequate resources to help their children do their homework on their own, parents in low-income environmental settings tend to have less homework resources for their children than those in higher income environments. figure 2 (c) shows whether the homes of parents of foundation phase learners in public primary schools in johannesburg provide good environments for their children to do homework. of a total of 670 parents who reported that their homes provided a good homework environment, upmarket schools 4 and 6 reported the highest percentages of 97.9% and 99%, respectively, while the two township schools 3 and 8 had the highest percentages of parents whose homes did not provide good environments for their children to do homework, with 17% and 17.4%, respectively. the figure shows that percentages in six of the eight schools were all in their 90s, with the two township schools 3 and 8 just lagging behind with 77.3% and 73.9%, respectively. these results indicate that good home environments for their children to do homework are provided in higher socio-economic conditions found in upmarket suburbs, compared to those in poorer settings such as townships. discussion this paper investigated the influence of the socio-economic environment of parents of foundation phase learners in selected public primary schools in johannesburg on their involvement in children’s homework. socio-economic differences among participating parents findings in this study also suggest that the socio-economic environment had an influence on parental involvement in foundation phase learners’ homework. emerging from these findings are issues regarding homework environment, homework supervision and support for learner literacy, in different socio-economic settings. home environments according to this study, parents in poorer socio-economic conditions such as townships provided less supportive home environments for homework than those in richer, upmarket suburbs (sewell & hauser, 1980; strauss & burger, 2000). parental involvement in early learning has a greater impact on children’s well-being and socio-economic factors affecting parents’ involvement in homework: practices and perceptions from eight johannesburg public primary schools misheck ndebele 85 achievement than any other factor (gutman & feinstein, 2007; sylva, melhuish, sammons, siraj-blatchford & taggart, 2004). based on this assertion, hunt, virgo, klett-davies, page & apps (2011) argue that supporting parents to help them provide a positive home learning environment is, therefore, a vital part of improving outcomes for children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. homework supervision this study indicates another important finding regarding the influence of the socioeconomic environment on parental involvement in children’s homework. the majority of those who did not supervise their children’s homework were in the city-centre, peri-urban and township areas. the study also shows that, while fewer parents attended to their children’s homework in the evening, more parents in poorer socio-economic environments opted to do so in the evening, compared to parents in higher socio-economic settings. this finding confirms the view that families from low socio-economic backgrounds are least likely to be involved in their children’s education (turney & kao, 2009; ratcliff & hunt, 2009; van velsor & orozco, 2007; abdul-adil & farmer, 2006; machen et al., 2005). studies confirm that such lack of involvement may be because families in low socio-economic settings are often working all the time, travelling for long hours, getting home late, and having no time to participate in the child’s homework (ratcliff & hunt, 2009). in addition, even if some parents may be present at their homes, they opt to do other things in the home instead of helping children with homework (dwyer & hecht, 1992). reading and literacy the study shows that parents from lower socio-economic environments such as townships and the inner city tend to be less active in promoting reading and literacy skills among their children, compared to parents in higher socio-economic settings in upmarket suburbs. researchers argue that parents in low-income families do not provide adequate printed materials, which may impair their children’s early language and literacy development (payne, whitehurst & angell, 1994). parental involvement in their children’s literacy practices is more powerful than any other family background variables such as social class, family size and level of parental education (dearing, kreider, simpkins & weiss, 2006; desforges & abouchaar, 2003; flouri & buchanan, 2004). recommendations while the majority of the participating parents from across socio-economic boundaries perceived homework as important to their children’s learning, it is recommended that current parental interest in homework be sustained as well as given more impetus, especially among parents from disadvantaged communities. perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 86 because of the disparities in the socio-economic conditions in which parents live, it is important for schools and educators to reflect more carefully when giving homework tasks to learners in the foundation phase. for instance, there is the need to consider that some parents only arrive home late at night after travelling long distances from work, hence being unavailable to assist their children with homework. it is recommended that such schools should make special provisions for learners doing homework under such conditions, such as afternoon homework sessions, supervised homework assistants. at the same time, parents must accept responsibility for their children by making alternative homework arrangements when they know they will not be available to assist. parents from poorer home environments need to play a more active role in getting their children to read and write, especially at an early age. they must help their children value reading by reading to their children and listening to them read. they must provide their children with interesting reading material. it is also recommended that schools should ensure that libraries are available and stocked with material that will inspire learners to love reading. learners should take a book with them for reading at home. all parents must be encouraged to involve themselves in their children’s home-learning by supervising, checking and signing their children’s homework. schools must conduct workshops to promote parental involvement in homework by helping them realize the importance of homework as well as how to be involved in it. it is also recommended that, at such workshops, parents from poorer communities share their experiences and challenges with their children’s homework. other parents may, perhaps, suggest ways of dealing with difficult homework situations. there is a need for the department of education to make it mandatory for every primary school to have a homework policy. it is recommended that the department should assist schools in designing such a policy. more importantly, department officials should also check the implementation of the homework policy during their visits to schools. references abdul-adil jk & farmer ad jr 2006. inner-city african american parental involvement in elementary schools: getting 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turner hm & schwartz jb 2006. approaches to parental involvement for improving the academic performance of elementary school children in grades k-6. newark, nj: center for parent information and resources. payne ac, whitehurst gj & angell al 1994. the role of literacy environment in the language development of children from low-income families. early childhood research quarterly, 9: 427-440. ratcliff n & hunt g 2009. building teacher-family partnerships: the role of teacher preparation. education, 129: 495-505. schmitt m & kleine l 2010. the influence of family school relations on academic success. journal for educational research online, 2(1): 145–167. sewell wh & hauser 1980. the wisconsin longitudinal study of social and psychological factors in aspirations and achievements. in: ac kerckhoff (ed), research in sociology and education, vol. 1. greenwich, cn: jai press, 59-99. strauss j & burger m 2000. monitoring learning achievement project. pretoria: department of education. sui-chu eh & willms jd 1996. effects of parent involvement on eighth-grade achievement. sociology of education, 69(2): 126-141. socio-economic factors affecting parents’ involvement in homework: practices and perceptions from eight johannesburg public primary schools misheck ndebele 89 sylva k, melhuish e, sammons p, siraj-blatchford i & taggart b 2004. the effective provision of pre-school education (eppe) project: final report – a longitudinal study funded by the dfes 1997-2004. london: institute of education, university of london. turney k & kao g (writer) 2009. barriers to school involvement: are immigrant parents disadvantaged? journal of educational research, 102(4): 257-271. van velsor p & orozco gl 2007. involving low-income parents in the schools: community centric strategies for school counselors. professional school counseling: american school counselor association, 11(1): 17-24. perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 90 appendix a: questionnaire for parents please tick the box that you most agree with after each question. 1. for your child’s literacy homework, how often do you read aloud to your child? 4/5 times a week 3 times a week 2 times a week once a week 2. for your child’s literacy homework, how often do you listen to your child read? 4/5 times a week 3 times a week 2 times a week once a week 3. for your child’s numeracy/maths homework, how often do you assist him/her with maths problems? 4/5 times a week 3 times a week 2 times a week once a week 4. do you have time to supervise, check and sign your child’s homework? always sometimes never 5. at what time of the day do you help your child with homework? in the morning in the afternoon in the evening socio-economic factors affecting parents’ involvement in homework: practices and perceptions from eight johannesburg public primary schools misheck ndebele 91 6. does your child have enough resources to do his/her schoolwork at home? please explain. ___________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________ a blurred signal? the usefulness of national senior certificate (nsc) mathematics marks as predictors of academic performance at university level1 volker schöer, miracle ntuli, neil rankin and claire sebastiao school of economic and business science, african micro-economic research unit, university of the witwatersrand volker.schoer@wits.ac.za, miracle.ntuli@wits.ac.za, neil.rankin@wits.ac.za and claire.sebastiao@gmail.com karin hunt school of computational and applied mathematics, university of the witwatersrand karin.hunt@wits.ac.za internationally, performance in school mathematics has been found to be a reliable predictor of performance in commerce courses at university level. based on the predictive power of school-leaving marks, universities use results from school-leaving mathematics examinations to rank student applicants according to their predicted abilities. however, in 2008 the structure and scope of school-leaving examinations changed in south africa from the former senior certificate (sc) to the new national senior certificate (nsc). this structural break seems to create fluctuations in the signalling ability of the schoolleaving marks. south african universities are unsure about how well the current nsc mathematics marks reflect the underlying numerical competence of students, given that a high number of the 2009 student intake failed their first-year core courses across faculties. this paper estimates a deflator for the new nsc mathematics marks relative to the former higher grade (hg) mathematics marks, by comparing performance in similar first tests of two commerce subjects, economics 1 and computational mathematics, between the 2008 and 2009 first-year cohorts. the results indicate that the signalling ability of the nsc mathematics marks is reduced significantly. instead of differentiating students according to their abilities, the new nsc mathematics marks compress students with a wide range of abilities and disabilities into a very narrow range of percentage marks. keywords: university admission, first-year commerce courses, matric mathematics, national  senior certificate, academic ability, ability signalling introduction in 2009 the number of first-year students accepted to study at the university of the witwatersrand (wits) was significantly higher than in previous years. the majority of the students applying to wits for entry in 2009 were also the first matriculants to obtain the new school-leaving national senior certificate (nsc) instead of the former senior certificate (sc). along with the expansion of the student body, there has been an observable decrease in the average test marks from 2008 to 2009 for first-year commerce courses at wits. considering that the nsc mathematics marks of the 2009 student intake were on average 6% higher than the previous year’s, we argue that the signalling ability of the nsc mathematics marks had dwindled. thus, due to the fluctuations in mathematics marks as a reliable ability signal, admission standards were set too low, which led to the inappropriate admission of students to commerce degrees. the aim of this 1 schöer, v, et al. 2010. a blurred signal? the usefulness of national senior certificate (nsc) mathematics marks as predictors of academic performance at university level. perspectives in education, 28(2):9-18. perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201010 paper is to create a deflator of the nsc mathematics marks by comparing the school-leaving mathematics marks of the first-year commerce students in 2008 with the school-leaving mathematics marks of the first-year commerce students in 2009. the comparison will then be used to establish a more accurate conversion key between the higher grade matric mathematics marks of the former sc and the new nsc mathematics marks. school marks as signals of academic ability at university level in the admission process, south african (sa) universities rely heavily on marks obtained from standardised school-leaving examinations, namely, the former sc examinations (prior to 2008) and the new nsc examinations (awarded from 2008 onwards). universities treat these certificate marks as indicators not only of the applicants’ current knowledge, but also of their ability to progress successfully in their studies in the future. this is possible only if school-leaving examination marks are a consistently reliable signal of this knowledge and ability. due to the fact that school-leaving examinations are quality controlled and standardised nationally, the marks are seen as reliable signals of ability for universities countrywide when comparing students against one another across time. this allows universities, based on observed correlations between previous students’ marks in school subjects and their academic performance at university, to rank new applicants according to their academic ability at university level. if these marks are no longer reliable signals for ability, universities will have to find other ways to determine ability and potential – possibly by administering their own entrance tests. school mathematics marks are considered to be good predictors of academic performance for commerce-related subjects like economics, accounting and actuarial sciences (parker, 2006; smith & edwards, 2007; van walbeek, 2004; varua & mallik, 2008). therefore, when comparing the admission requirements for most commerce faculties in south africa (sa), they require a relatively high mathematics mark and put significant emphasis on the mathematics mark as a requirement for admission. across all universities, commerce degrees require at least a pass for mathematics (nsc level 4) or more, and do not admit students who have studied mathematical literacy. understandably, sa universities cannot limit admission to only those students who have done well in the school-leaving examination, as this would neglect the universities’ responsibility to promote access and equity in favour of their responsibility to maintain quality (herman, 1995:271). the practice of using school marks as a signal of ability and the primary criterion for university admission is therefore not without its critics. in particular, critics argue that such a limitation would discriminate against students who may have the potential to do well at university, but have not been given the opportunity to achieve at high-school level. this is usually because of social conditions such as poverty, coupled with poor teaching and lack of basic resources, which result in low school-leaving certificate marks (herman, 1995:268). cross and carpentier (2009) argue that sa universities are in the process of democratisation, and that the majority of students are increasingly “non-traditional students” from disadvantaged households, that “are more and more distant from the cultural and intellectual norms required by educational institutions, usually dominated by the elite” (cross & carpentier, 2009:7). in that respect, admitting only top-performing learners into tertiary institutions simply perpetuates existing levels of inequality in sa and creates a “form of educational apartheid” (cross & carpentier, 2009:7). one way of addressing this problem is through the implementation of gateway or bridging courses, which allow students from disadvantaged backgrounds to access universities while receiving adequate support for the first two years of study (essack & quayle, 2007). examples of such gateway courses are the four-year academic development programme in the faculty of commerce at the university of cape town and the five-year study programme (5ysp) in the school of engineering at the university of pretoria. these programmes are generally one year longer than mainstream programmes to allow students to develop the necessary study skills. “the purpose of the 5ysp [at the university of pretoria] is to create opportunities for students who have the potential to become engineers, but who do not meet the entrance requirements for a four-year study programme and/or are academically at risk because of their educational background” (steyn & maree, 2003:47). placement in gateway courses is always based on the applicants’ school-leaving marks combined with the results of schöer, et al. — the usefulness of nsc mathematics marks as predictors of academic performance 11 admissions tests (du preez, steyn & owen, 2008). thus, the school marks are once again used to evaluate admission and placement into such development programmes. this requires school marks to be reliable signals of the students’ academic ability or disability. another criticism is that high-school marks are measures of cognitive ability, whereas there are other non-cognitive abilities that are equally important for doing well at university, including persistence, motivation to succeed and self-discipline (fraser & killen, 2005; heckman & rubinstein, 2001). however, while these qualities have some predictive powers, high-school marks are still better signals of ability and future performance at university (latif al-nasir & sachs robertson, 2001:284). this is mainly because school marks do not reflect only what students know, but also what non-cognitive abilities they have (mohammad & almahmeed, 1988:214). research focused on investigating which variables are the best predictors of academic performance at university also usually finds academic performance at school to be the best predictor (anderson, benjamin & fuss, 1994; betts & morell, 1999; touron, 1987). therefore, for universities which rely so heavily on school-leaving examination marks as signals of ability, any structural break or significant fluctuation in the signal creates uncertainty, which could lead to inefficient decision making with respect to student admissions. this structural break occurred in sa in 2008. the 2008 matriculants were no longer awarded the former sc on passing their examinations — instead they were awarded the new nsc. these students were taught using the outcomes-based education (obe) system instead of the old skillsor content-based learning system that was organised into higher and standard grade courses (le grange, 2007). from the outset, the obe system was inundated with criticism and many were convinced that students would learn less than before (cross, ratshi, & rouhani, 2002:180-183; rogan, 2007:98). in addition to the curriculum changes of the new system, there was also a change in the approach to the assessment and marking system. students are no longer assigned symbols based on a numerical mark for examinations, but are instead assigned coded numbers that aim to indicate the level of proficiency obtained. based on information provided by the department of education (doe), higher education institutions like wits developed a conversion key that allowed the admissions office to match the relationship between the former sc higher grade symbols and the new nsc levels. table 1: higher grade sc to nsc conversion percentage 80-100 70-79 60-69 50-59 40-49 30-39 20-29 10-19 0-9 higher grade a b c d e f g h i nsc 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 1 1 source: wits admissions office, 2008 according to this key (replicated in table 1) students who passed mathematics on higher grade and obtained a “d” would now obtain a “4” under the nsc. both of these marks were expected to reflect the same ability, which would result in students with more or less the same abilities as those in the previous year being admitted. when university registration numbers across south africa increased noticeably, the doe hailed it as evidence of the new curriculum’s success2. while this might be true, the increase may also indicate that the comparative ranking of the old and the new marking systems was incorrect. already in early 2009, parliament raised questions about the accuracy of the nsc matric marks and the potential inflation of marks, especially regarding subjects like mathematics (parliamentary monitoring group, 2009). many in the university community considered the standard of the 2008 nsc mathematics paper to be too low, and proposed that it did not allow for an appropriate differentiation of ability among the 2 naledi pandor, then minister of education, stated that, “we are convinced that the quality standard we have set for these examinations, the evidence of improvement and the continuing commitment to achieve quality for all learners will deliver the promise of the freedom charter that the doors of learning and culture are indeed open and accessible for all the learners in our system” (pandor, 2009). perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201012 top students3. however, the doe claims that, except for at the top end, the mathematics paper was of an acceptable standard and comparable to the former sc higher grade level4. however, there is very little quantitative evidence that attempts to compare the nsc examination marks with the former sc examination marks. commerce tests comparisons at wits as part of the commerce curriculum at wits, all commerce students have to register for economics 1, accounting and computational mathematics. while accounting and computational mathematics are offered only to commerce students, economics 1 is offered across faculties and draws students from the humanities, science, engineering and commerce. in 2009, the number of commerce students at wits increased unexpectedly by 25% from 2008. the first-year commerce students in 2009 scored on average 6% higher in their nsc mathematics relative to the first-year commerce students in 2008. if the conversion key is correct, this should indicate that the 2009 cohort would perform much better than the 2008 cohort. however, in response to the overall scepticism about the true ability of the 2009 student intake, the computational mathematics and the economics 1 course lecturers deliberately set tests in the first block of 2009 that were very similar to the tests written in the first block of 2008 in order to compare these two cohorts. the tests are the introductory test (test 0) for the first-year computational mathematics course and the first test (test 1) of the first-year economics course. 0 50 100 150 200 250 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 com putational maths test 0 m arks (%) n u m b er o f st u d en ts 2008 2009 figure 1: computational mathematics test mark comparison 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 econom ics 1 test 1 m arks (%) n u m b er o f st u d en ts 2008 2009 figure 2: economics 1 test mark comparison 3 nan yeld from the university of cape town (uct) argues that the nsc mathematics paper was too easy, and penny vinjevold, deputy director general of education, states that “there wasn’t enough differentiation at the top end, so that as and bs were not a good predictor [of university success]” (paton, 2009). 4 vinjevold states that “if you got 50% for the [2008 nsc mathematics] paper, then you were at [the former] higher grade level” (paton, 2009). schöer, et al. — the usefulness of nsc mathematics marks as predictors of academic performance 13 the test results indicated the opposite situation. as can be seen from figures 1 and 2, while the actual number of students in the upper mark categories is similar for both years, the number of students in the lower mark categories (<50%) diverges markedly. the increase in the number of failures in 2009 accounted for almost exactly the increase in the total number of students registered for both courses in 2009. the test comparisons of the two commerce courses suggest that the nsc mathematics marks of the 2009 cohort are not reliable signals of the students’ academic ability and that the university has admitted students who do not have the necessary set of skills to pass commerce courses. however, a simple comparison of the two tests across different years might be misleading. both test-mark distributions for the computational mathematics course and the economics 1 course show the entire sample of students who are registered for the courses in 2008 and 2009, respectively. this includes repeat, foreign and older students, who matriculated long before 2007. in order to compare the signalling ability of the mathematics mark from the former sc to the new nsc mathematics, we need to account for any other factor that might affect academic performance. thus, we need to compare first-year students who entered the university in 2008 after completing matric in 2007 with first-year students who have similar individual characteristics as the 2008 students, but entered the university in 2009 after completing nsc in 2008. this will allow us to isolate the impact of the difference between the students’ mathematics abilities on their academic performance. the individual student data for the 2008 and 2009 first-year student cohorts is drawn from the wits student records. students were removed from the sample if they: 1) had written their school-leaving examinations prior to 2007 or in a different country; 2) had repeated their school-leaving examinations in 2007 and 2008, i.e., had written the sc as well as the nsc examinations; 3) did not report their personal and/or school-specific information on their student files; and 4) did not write both the first economics test and the computational mathematics test. this delimitation created a sample of 1445 first-year students of which 546 and 896 were enrolled in 2008 and 2009, respectively. methodology for the analysis, we exploit the established relationship between a student’s school mathematics mark and their performance at university, in order to estimate the predicted higher grade mathematics mark for students that wrote nsc mathematics. to create the comparison between the two cohorts, we start by estimating a regression of the following form on the 2008 first-year students’ sample: iiiii testenglishxy εδχβα +++′+= where: yi is the result that an individual obtained for the school-leaving mathematics examination; α is the constant term; xi is a vector of individual specific characteristics including gender, race, home province, whether the individual lives in university residence and whether the individual has financial aid; english is the result that an individual obtained for school-leaving english examination; test is the test mark that an individual achieved in either the computational mathematics test 0 or the economics 1 test 1. in order to allow for a non-linear relationship we also introduce a squared-term. εi is an error term. the relationship between the higher grade mathematics mark and the students’ performance in the computational mathematics test 0 and the economics 1 test 1 is estimated using ordinary least squares (ols). a number of different specifications are used in order to check the robustness of these results. the results from these regressions are then used to predict what the nsc students would have scored if they had written the 2007 higher grade mathematics based on their individual characteristics and what they scored for computational mathematics test 0 or economics 1 test 1. perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201014 converting nsc mathematics marks to hg mathematics mark equivalents in figure 3 the kernel density function of the predictions based on the various regression specifications is presented. the actual mathematics mark of the average nsc matriculant (dashed line) exceeds the actual mathematics mark of the average higher grade matriculant (solid line), suggesting that the 2009 cohort should have a higher mathematical ability than the previous year’s intake. however, the predicted higher grade results for the nsc matriculants (dotted — using computational mathematics, dotted/dashed — using economics 1) suggest that this is not the case. instead, the faculty accepted a higher proportion of students with relatively low predicted higher grade mathematics marks. in fact, many of those accepted would have scored less than 50% for higher grade mathematics. 04 03 02 01 0 20 40 60 80 100 actual higher grade mathematics marks (2008) predicted higher grade marks (computational mathematics) actual nsc mathematics marks (2009) predicted higher grade marks (economics) matric mathematics marks % figure 3: actual and predicted matric mathematics mark distribution the average actual nsc mark obtained for categories of predicted higher grade marks is reported in table 2. students of the 2009 cohort with a predicted higher grade mathematics mark in the range of 40-49% (higher grade symbol “e”) actually achieved an observed average nsc mathematics mark in the range of 64-66%. this increased to 68-69% for those predicted to score a “d” (50-59%) in higher grade mathematics. the mathematics marks converge only towards the upper end of the spectrum. table 2: actual nsc marks for predicted higher grade categories predicted hg percentage 80-100 70-79 60-69 50-59 40-49 30-39 matric hg symbol a b c d e f actual nsc percentage computational mathematics mean 92.4 85.7 77.4 69.1 63.6 56.4 std dev (3.88) (7.37) (9.77) (9.42) (8.03) (4.96) economics 1 mean 90.4 85.2 77.1 68.3 65.2 std dev (5.16) (8.38) (10.17) (9.99) (8.99) schöer, et al. — the usefulness of nsc mathematics marks as predictors of academic performance 15 to test the robustness of the above results and to eliminate the potential impact of the differences in the composition of the two cohorts, we use propensity score matching as an alternative approach. the advantage of propensity score matching is that we first match individuals from the 2008 cohort with individuals from the 2009 cohort that are “similar” in their observed individual characteristics. thus, we construct a sample of the 2009 cohort that is as similar as possible to the 2008 cohort with respect to their observed characteristics. we then compare the higher grade mathematics mark of the 2008 first-year student with the nsc mathematics mark of the 2009 first-year student with similar observable characteristics and similar performances in the computational mathematics test 0 and the economics 1 test 1. the propensity score matching process identified 260 matches for the computational mathematics test and 230 matches for the economics 1 test. the nsc mathematics mark of the matched 2009 first-year student is on average 12-13% higher than the higher grade partner’s mathematics mark. this difference is statistically significant. however, this is the average and across all matches, not along the distribution. the mean nsc mathematics mark of 2009 first-year students compared to their matched higher grade partners grouped in the actual higher grade bands they scored is reported in table 3. the results suggest that the former higher grade e (40-49%) is equivalent to, on average, between 70-72% in the new nsc mathematics when comparing similar firstyear students across the two years. this is significantly higher than the previously predicted 64-66%. table 3: comparison of nsc mathematics marks with higher grade matched partners (propensity score matching) percentage category 80-100 70-79 60-69 50-59 40-49 30-39 matric hg symbol a b c d e f nsc student (comp. mathematics test 0) mean 82.20 79.11 76.96 72.86 72.33 58 std dev (11.68) (11.58) (10.92) (11.43) (11.91) hg matched partner (comp. mathematics test 0) mean 85.92 72.95 64.63 53.9 45.2 39 std dev (5.27) (2.58) (2.89) (2.66) (3.19) n 39 44 85 61 30 1 nsc student (economics 1 test 1) mean 81.15 75.59 76.05 76.19 70.4 67 std dev (9.06) (11.34) (13.09) (10.62) (11.39) hg matched partner (economics 1 test 1) mean 85.12 73.29 65.01 54.5 45.3 39 std dev (4.86) (2.54) (3.15) (2.87) (3.16) n 32 44 70 63 20 1 furthermore, the results suggest that the nsc mark does not discriminate sufficiently for the student’s ability, but rather compresses students with substantial differences in ability indicated by their matched higher grade partners (40-100%) into a limited range of only 30% (70-100% in nsc marks). thus, while an nsc matriculant who obtained a mathematics mark of 70-80% could exhibit the same academic ability as a former sc matriculant who obtained 80% in higher grade mathematics, another nsc matriculant who also achieved a mathematics mark in the range between 70-80% could exhibit the same academic ability as a former sc matriculant who obtained only 40% in higher grade mathematics. this compression is illustrated in figure 4 by the distance between the solid line (direct conversion of nsc marks to higher schöer, et al. — the usefulness of nsc mathematics marks as predictors of academic performance 17 applicants it is crucial that the new nsc school mathematics marks function equally well as appropriate signals. however, the introduction of the nsc has left a structural break in this signal. this has created uncertainty in admissions offices, and a significant number of students have been admitted into programmes without being suitably equipped to handle the academic material. our results show that the nsc mathematics marks of the 2008 matriculants do not signal the differences in numerical abilities (or disabilities) of the students sufficiently. rather, the nsc mathematics marks group students with substantially different abilities into a very narrow range of marks. thus, nsc matriculants who achieved a mark of 70-100% have an academic ability similar to that of former sc matriculants who achieved 40% and more in higher grade mathematics. this confirms that the signal of ability of the new nsc school-leaving mathematics has weakened significantly. the implications for students are even worse. they leave the school system with the expectation that their school-leaving marks signal their true ability. however, not only have universities accepted applicants who do not have the required mathematical preparedness, but these universities could not use the school marks as reliable signals to place applicants into programmes more appropriate to their true ability level. thus, for a large number of students, studying in 2009 has been a waste of financial resources and time. furthermore, to adjust to the signalling problem, universities and education authorities could potentially overreact. while universities might raise their entrance requirements dramatically, education authorities might set much more difficult final examination. while both sides try to adjust to the new signal of the nsc, it is the school-leaving learner who will be affected negatively. acknowledgements this work was carried out with the financial aid of sparc funding of the university of the witwatersrand. we would like to thank professor katherine munro and professor anthony b lumby for their support in this project. furthermore, we would like to thank the anonymous referees, as well as participants of the staff seminar at the school of economics and business sciences, and participants at the economics society south africa conference, for comments and suggestions. the views in this paper do not necessarily reflect the position of the university of the witwatersrand. any errors in this paper remain the responsibility of the authors. this article is dedicated to the memory of professor anthony b lumby. references anderson g, benjamin d & fuss m 1994. the determinants of success in university introductory economics courses. the journal of economic education, 25(2):99-119. betts j & morell d 1999. the determinants of undergraduate grade point average: the relative importance of family background, high school resources, and peer group effects. the journal of human 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education sector on the implementation of teaching schools as sites for teacher education and whether they think teaching schools could enhance the education of student-teachers. the inquiry showed that the participants were positive that teaching schools will enhance teacher education through serving as a bridge between the academic, university-based preparation of student-teachers and the practice demands of the teaching profession. however, they had no clear notion of how such schools could add value to teacher preparation differentiated to schools in which student-teachers are placed for work-integrated learning. we contend that, prior to establishing teaching schools, much deliberation between all stakeholders is required about the purpose and means of integrating teaching schools in teacher education. if not, teaching schools that serve to bridge the gap between the education of student-teachers at universities and the demands that novice teachers face once they enter the teaching profession might remain an elusive ideal. keywords: teacher education, training school, teaching school, finnish education, work-integrated learning, school practicum, theory-practice divide background and focus of the inquiry the study on which this article is reporting stems from a document developed by the national departments in south africa. the integrated strategic planning framework for teacher education and development in south africa (hereafter referred to as sarah gravett university of johannesburg e-mail: sgravett@uj.ac.za telephone: 011 559 5234 sarita ramsaroop university of johannesburg e-mail: saritaram@uj.ac.za telephone: 011 559 2745 perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 132 the framework) endeavours to strengthen ‘the teaching practice/school experience component of teacher education programmes through the development of teaching schools and professional practice schools’ (department of basic education & higher education and training, 2011: 17). this framework describes teaching schools as ‘teaching laboratories,’ where students engage in learning-from-practice, for example, by observing best practice and participating in micro-teaching activities. teaching schools can also serve as centres for research into strengthening teacher education. the framework proposes that teaching schools are intended to be in close proximity to teacher education institutions to enable student-teachers to regularly gain access to authentic classroom sites. furthermore, the framework proposes that teachers at teaching schools be developed as mentors for student-teachers and be able to teach methodology courses within the formal teacher education curriculum. professional practice schools, on the other hand, are viewed as schools where students go for work integrated learning (wil). the framework also proposes that teaching schools and professional practice schools play differentiated, complementary roles in the education of teachers. students will engage with a specific school community over time at the former, and will learn to practise their craft in different schools in the latter. before the dissemination of the framework document in 2011, the faculty of education at the university of johannesburg (uj), in partnership with the gauteng department of education, founded a public school on its soweto campus in 2010. one of the objectives for establishing the school was to develop an integrated practice site for the pre-service education of teachers. it was also established as a site for longitudinal child development studies and research on children’s performance in the school curriculum. based on the work uj had already done at its school, the department of higher education and training, supported by european union funding, commissioned researchers from the education faculty to conduct research on establishing teaching schools in south africa. the unit of analysis (mouton, 1996) was specific role players in teacher education (described in the ‘methods’ section of this article). the inquiry was guided by this research question: ‘what are the views of school teachers, school management teams and the teacher education sector on the proposed establishment of teaching schools at south african teacher education institutions?’ this article reports on one component of this research: the views of certain stakeholders on the introduction of these schools in south africa and whether they think that teaching schools could enhance the education of student-teachers for the teaching profession. in the remainder of the article, we will discuss some of the literature on the role of schools in other teacher education systems. we then briefly present the inquiry and discuss the findings in depth, drawing the conclusion that participants, while generally supportive of the endeavour, had no clear notion of how such schools bridging theory and practice in teacher education: teaching schools – a bridge too far? sarah gravett & sarita ramsaroop 133 could add value to teacher preparation, probably because they had not encountered them in practice as yet. collaboration between schools and universities in teacher education collaboration between schools and teacher education institutions in the preparation of teachers is prevalent in education systems. the model that is widely used is to place student-teachers at selected schools for the practicum component of the teacher education programme. however, the extent to which schools become partners differs from country to country and also within countries. we discuss the systems of three countries where schools play a prominent role in the education of teachers. in the us, many teacher education institutions have partnered with school districts to create professional development schools, aimed at providing quality education for pre-service teachers (mule, 2006). the delivery of teacher education programmes is the function of both university lecturers and senior teachers in these schools. the focus is on producing professional teachers who ‘learn from teaching rather than who has finished learning how to teach’ (darling-hammond, 2008: 94). recently, england has pursued a school-based model of initial teacher education, seemingly to minimise university involvement, driven by the political conviction that the school is the most effective place for learning how to teach (mcnamara, murray & jones, 2014). in 2010 the secretary of state for education in england announced the intention to shift teacher education and continuing professional development of teachers from universities to schools, led by the newly established teaching schools (whitehead, 2011). the vision was to establish 500 teaching school alliances by 2014-15. a teaching school alliance comprises 25 or more schools, strategic partners, such as higher education institutions, and other interested organisations (matthews & berwick, 2013). teaching schools are tasked with identifying, demonstrating and sharing best practice within each alliance. the shift to school-led teacher education is even more pronounced in the school direct initiative (mcnamara et al., 2014). this is a market-driven model where schools recruit and train pre-service teachers with a view of providing them with employment. schools in this model are expected to train pre-service teachers in areas of professional development and subject knowledge. training is conducted in collaboration with a service provider of choice, which could be a university. finland’s teacher education model is based on a full partnership between universities and teacher training schools, also referred to as normal schools or practice schools. sahlberg (2012: 12) describes finnish teacher education as a ‘spiral sequence of theoretical knowledge, practical training and research-oriented enquiry for teaching’. the bulk of student-teachers’ practice teaching takes place in training schools (kansanen, 2014). even though these schools are governed by universities, they follow the same curriculum as other public schools. research-based thinking integrates theoretical and practice-based aspects during teacher education studies perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 134 (kansanen, 2014). this is achieved by aligning teaching practice sessions in training schools with theoretical studies that directly relate to the focus of that practice period (kansanen, 2014). in so doing, pre-service teachers practice teaching and practitioner research simultaneously (kansanen, 2014). in addition to being placed in training schools, student-teachers are placed in a network of selected field schools for practice teaching (sahlberg, 2012). with student-teachers’ first practice experience occurring at training schools, observation of and involvement in best practice is ensured. this is made possible by appointing staff at these schools that meet higher professional requirements than ordinary municipal schools, with proven competence in teaching skills, supervision, teacher professional development and assessment strategies (sahlberg, 2012). teaching school teachers not only guide and mentor student-teachers (kansanen, 2014), they also conduct research in collaboration with the university to contribute to the development of teacher education (sahlberg, 2012). these roles require mentor teachers to continuously improve their expertise in their field. mentor teachers are required to complete courses in pedagogics and to undergo continuous supervisor training (jussila & saari, 2000). research methods merriam (2009: 22) terms a qualitative study that does not fit any specific design genre as a ‘generic qualitative inquiry’. the research we conducted falls into this combination of qualitative methods, which were used for the purpose of inquiring into the views of a variety of role players pertaining to teaching schools and whether such schools could enhance teacher education. these role players included schoolbased personnel and the teacher education sector. in so doing, rich descriptions of the ‘perceptions, assumptions, prejudgments, presuppositions’ (van manen, 1977, in miles & huberman, 1994: 10) regarding the establishment of teaching schools could be elicited, allowing the researchers to build a ‘complex, holistic picture’ (creswell, 1998: 15) of the participants’ views. a combination of purposive and convenient sampling was used to select ‘desirable participants’ (henning, van rensburg & smit, 2004: 71). six teacher education institutions (universities and universities of technology) were selected to participate in the research. the main criterion for selecting the sample was to aim for maximum variation. therefore, rural and urban teacher education institutions were included. another criterion for inclusion was that the institutions had to offer both primary and secondary school initial teacher education. at these institutions, heads of teacher education (in some cases deans) were requested to participate. they invited teacher educators (n=59). the teacher education institutions also identified one or two schools (n=10) in close proximity to the institution. principals (n=10) of the selected schools invited teachers (n=168) in their schools and school management teams (n=32) to form part of the inquiry. bridging theory and practice in teacher education: teaching schools – a bridge too far? sarah gravett & sarita ramsaroop 135 prior to data collection an information session was held on teaching schools as presented in the framework. the information as stated in the framework was presented. three methods of data collection were used. semi-structured (open-ended) questionnaires, requiring written responses, were used in the case of school teachers, school management teams and teacher educators. on completion of the questionnaires, these participants reconvened and were asked to raise issues that emanated from completing the questionnaire. the purpose of this was to ascertain what the most pertinent issues were from the perspective of participants. this was video recorded. this also served as a reliability measure of the inquiry and was a form of ‘member checking’ (merriam, 2009). semi-structured interviews, using an interview schedule, were conducted with principals and heads of teacher education. questions that were asked were similar to the questions used in the questionnaires, but allowed for more detailed responses and also for more in-depth probing. the interviews were audio recorded and transcribed. the data were analysed using qualitative content analysis, as described by henning et al. (2004: chapter 6). we firstly read through the whole data set to familiarise ourselves with it. in this process ‘big’ ideas from the data were noted. thereafter we divided the data into five sets to reflect the participant groupings. each data set was analysed by using open coding, that is, through identifying units of meaning and labelling these. this was followed by categorising, which implied that related codes were grouped and named. the categories from the different sets of data were combined conceptually into: (1) across data-set categories and (2) themes (with sub-themes), resulting in final ‘thematic patterns’ (henning et al., 2004: 106). findings: participants are positive, yet uninformed the overarching theme derived from the data is: ‘teaching schools will enhance teacher education through serving as a bridge between the academic universitybased preparation of student-teachers and the practice demands of the teaching profession.’ the belief that there is a gap between the education of student-teachers at universities and the realities that novice teachers face once they enter the teaching profession is inherent to this finding. sub-themes relate to teaching schools bridging the gap. 4.1 bridging the gap through student-teachers observing a good practice example of school life university and school-based participant groups viewed teaching schools as sites for student-teachers to observe best teaching practice, assuming that this would be what they would encounter. teachers mentioned that schools would perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 136 ‘familiarize students with teaching and good teaching practice’ by giving ‘studentteachers longer time in teaching schools to be exposed to different challenges that are practically happening’. deans and school principals concurred that teaching schools can contribute to improving student-teachers’ pedagogical craft and their curriculum content knowledge. by observing different grades they would develop their pedagogical content knowledge. school-based participants, including school managers and teachers, agreed that novice teachers who enter the profession lack work-based knowledge and skills derived from apprenticeship experiences. they said that through regular observation and on-site experience, in a school they have come to know well, student-teachers would/could develop an understanding of the way a school functions. this could contribute to developing student-teachers holistically as they ‘get more exposed to reality when you are a teacher with an administrative load and who has the pressure to get the best possible results from learners who also come from houses where there are numerous problems’. according to teacher educators and teachers, student-teachers will be ‘groomed as professionals’ by observing teachers who are good role models and who embody the different roles and expectations of a teacher: student-teachers ‘develop a teacher identity’. 4.2 bridging the gap through student-teachers experiencing the ‘real practice of what is happening in schools’ school-based participants were of the view that there is a ‘gap between what universities offer to students and the real practice of what is happening in schools’. teachers ‘accused’ universities of imparting ‘inligting wat nie van toepassing is op wat werklik in die onderwys gebeur nie’ (information that is not relevant to what is really happening in schools), resulting in students who ‘stap met baie boekekennis en weinig praktiese ondervinding’ (walk with lots of book knowledge, but little practical experience). the school management teams also mentioned that university lecturers are often not in touch with school practice and do not always know what is relevant: ‘dosente is te lank uit die praktyk en weet nie aldag wat relevant is nie’ (lecturers have been out of practice for too long and don’t always not what is relevant). the notion that teacher education is often too theoretical was mentioned by all participant groups. a dean admitted: ‘we focus very much on the theory, and we don’t really focus on what is actually changing and happening in the classroom … schools have changed; the dynamics of the school population have changed and that requires a complete different way … to approach things’. generally, the participants said that the disjuncture between school and university expectations results in concerns about the quality of teachers emerging from universities. the concerns from teachers include ‘students who start their teaching careers struggling with curriculum content’. school principals added that student-teachers ‘do not know how to do preparation that is valuable to teaching’. bridging theory and practice in teacher education: teaching schools – a bridge too far? sarah gravett & sarita ramsaroop 137 all role players were confident that teaching schools could serve to ‘bridge the gap between theory and practice’. teachers indicated that teaching schools could provide opportunities to ‘implement theory in practice’ by ‘establishing a link between the theory done at university to practice done at schools thereby making learning ‘real and relevant’. teachers added that teaching schools can ‘fill up the gap between university curriculum and school curriculum’. teachers mentioned that student-teachers who are placed in teaching schools would be exposed to ‘realistic and relevant practical classroom experiences’ and would ‘observe different approaches to resolving authentic issues,’ which may ‘allay their fears in the teaching profession’. such experiences might allow student-teachers to ‘identify the authenticity of the theoretical material that the student-teachers are using given the current system which leaves a gap between the provision of solutions in terms of practical issues like discipline, poor parental involvement as a result of illiteracy, [and] poor background’. a dean expressed a similar notion: if ‘they have just been trained in the university they are trained in the academic sense, but by joining forces with schools as teaching schools i think they would get a more professional flavour of teacher training, as medical doctors are getting’. some teachers also proposed that the time student-teachers spend on practical experience be increased with more time spent at school, resulting in ‘more practical than theory’ and that ‘practice should be direct and not after theory’ as ‘this does away with forgetting what has been taught’. such an approach will fill the ‘gap between what the universities offer students and the real practice of what is happening in schools’ and ‘form a link between university and schools’. 4.3 bridging the gap through a collaborative relationship for teaching schools to be used optimally a collaborative relationship between the different role players has to be fostered. all parties agreed that university teacher educators and mentor teachers have to be equally committed and need to view the role of the other as equal. a dean claimed that ‘teachers have knowledge and practical experience far more than anyone else can wish for … i think it will be an equal relationship’. teachers said that ‘teaching school staff come with practical experience while university teaching education staff come up with methodology and the two will help the student-teacher in totality. it will be a collaboration of experience and methodology’ and ‘we should be seen as equals’. towards achieving an equal partnership, continuous communication about course content and the student-teachers’ progress and development is needed. regular consultations between teaching school teachers and teacher educators can result in a ‘marriage between theory and practice’. perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 138 bridging the gap: a bridge too far? it is important to note that most of the research participants do not have any experience of teaching schools. they do not know such schools empirically. thus, their responses are based on their conceptions of a construct. we expected that participants’ responses would be speculative, which was generally not the case. we found this surprising, but realised that participants’ responses reflected their views on current practices related to school practicum and how these could benefit from placing students in a controlled school environment, which they assume a teaching school would be. even though the research aimed to elicit the participants’ views on a new type of school that will work in tandem with universities in the education of student teachers, their responses reflected their views of the current practice of placing students in schools for wil. participants did not talk about teaching schools playing a fundamentally different role in the education of student teachers than schools currently do. undoubtedly, before establishing teaching schools in south africa, much deliberation is required in the teacher education sector about the purpose of integrating teaching schools in teacher education. how will the role of the teaching school differ from the role of the professional practice school? how will the experiences of student-teachers in these schools be planned to contribute differently but complementarily to the education of student-teachers? how should teacher education be planned with teaching schools in mind? these are important considerations which the participants were not able to fully grasp yet because of the novelty of the construct. participants were silent on whether the integration of teaching schools into teacher education would have an impact on teacher education curricula and models. this implies that teaching schools run the risk of becoming add-ons. we argue that none of the proposed benefits of the teaching school, as a ‘bridge,’ would be realised unless teacher education programmes are developed with the teaching school as integral to the programme design. the notion that there is a gap between the education of student-teachers at universities and the demands of teaching is prominent in the data. teachers and teacher educators said that they contribute different kinds of knowledge to the education of student-teachers. these are typified as theoretical knowledge versus practical knowledge, suggesting that the knowledge types remain largely distinct. binary ways of thinking about knowledge and about the theory–practice dichotomy is a perennial issue in teacher education (mcnarama, jones & murray, 2014). in addition, possible approaches to bridging the dichotomy abound in the teacher education literature (korthagen, 2011). participants in this research propose that teaching schools could bridge the gap. for some the potential lies in teaching schools enabling student-teachers to spend time in a model school environment, which will result in teachers who are better prepared for the complexities of teaching. this view informs teacher education bridging theory and practice in teacher education: teaching schools – a bridge too far? sarah gravett & sarita ramsaroop 139 reforms in some countries where school-based teacher education is introduced to overcome the fierce criticism that teacher education is not sufficiently relevant to practice. an example of this is the push in england to moving teacher education away from higher education into schools. the secretary of state for education announced in 2010 that initial teacher education should be mainly school based. he views teaching as ‘a craft which is best learnt as an apprentice observing a master craftsman or woman’ (mcnarama et al., 2014). but, will more observation time in a school, even a model school, equate with enhanced preparation for the teaching profession? we think not. we concur that observing exemplary practice is powerful. student-teachers observing expert teachers at work can learn much about pedagogical skills related to teaching strategies and classroom management. but, as the study of orland-barak and leshem (2009) shows, student-teachers often attribute little learning value to the observation in schools. their observations remain on a concrete, perceptual level, which prevents them from making connections at a conceptual level. without scaffolding, student-teachers struggle ‘to see beyond’. observation tasks must be designed purposefully for student-teachers so that they will elicit dialogue that will help student-teachers to ‘distinguish the learning potential intrinsic in the multidimensional, simultaneous, immediate and unpredictable teaching reality’ (orland-barak & leshem, 2009: 33). we agree with derry that, placing individuals in a rich environment, does not ensure learning. derry (2008: 60-61) points out that the ‘learning environment must be designed and [learning] cannot rely on the spontaneous response to an environment which is not constructed according to, or involves, some clearly worked out conceptual framework’. we argue that teaching schools and universities should intentionally co-design the teaching school as a ‘learning place’ (conway, murphy & rutherford, 2014) for student-teachers. furthermore, we agree with shulman (2004) that experience does not necessarily lead to ‘wisdom of practice’. learning through experience requires reflection on experience. the ultimate goal of educating teachers is to teach them to act with understanding (feiman-nemser & buchman, 1985). student-teachers who encounter ‘doing’ in the teaching school need help in seeing how understanding clarifies and shapes ways of doing. in teaching schools this means that studentteachers should be guided by knowledgeable mentors ‘to structure or restructure an experience, a problem, or existing knowledge or insights’ (korthagen, 2001: 58) to enhance understanding. another reason why the involvement of student-teachers in the teaching school will not necessarily address the gap is that the incorporation of a teaching school results in the education of student-teachers occurring simultaneously at two sites. a disjuncture between coursework learning and teaching school learning, if not perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 140 mediated, could actually serve to broaden the gap that the teaching school is supposed to bridge. a way to counteract this is to plan for the conceptual connectedness of university learning and teaching school learning with regard to, inter alia, a shared understanding of learners and learning, the role of the teacher, and the mission of schooling. a shared vision is key between the university and teaching school (as complementary teacher education sites) about the kind of teacher the programme envisages (feiman-nemser, 2001). zeichner and conklin (2008: 272), who studied exemplary teacher education programmes in the united states, highlight the centrality of a uniting vision in such programmes: the case studies suggest that it is the guiding ideas of a program that are likely to have the most influence on what prospective teachers learn and suggest that the more coherent a program is with regard to the ideas about teaching and learning and schooling that underlie it, the more powerful the influence is likely to be. the cases as a group suggest that program impact is strengthened by a clear and common vision of teaching and learning that permeates all coursework and field experiences. this implies that a close working relationship between university teachers and teaching school mentors is vital. the research conducted by gravett, petersen and petker (2014) in the teaching school linked to the uj also attests to this. they argue that student-teachers’ coursework and teaching school learning should work in tandem. a discursive understanding is needed between school teachers and university teachers of the issues and questions that student-teachers will examine in the school, ‘when they are to be studied, what activities are to be engaged in, what kinds of questions are to be asked, and what kinds of criteria are to be applied’ (mcintyre, 1995: 371). a discursive understanding implies dialogue, but does not assume full convergence of views between what student-teachers encounter at the teaching school and in their coursework. some research participants view teaching schools as sites for implementing theory in practice, thereby bridging the gap. for others, the teaching school provides an authentic environment to ‘test’ theoretical material student-teachers encounter at the university. for the latter, the teaching school serves as a site of ‘applying received knowledge’ (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999: 257) to practical situations through implementing, translating, using, adapting and/or putting into practice what they learn in coursework. this ‘theory-into-practice’ view is well-entrenched in teacher education (korthagen, 2011). the problem with this view is that theoretical knowledge and practice knowledge remain separate, the theory-practice binary is reaffirmed. thus, we doubt whether a teaching school could bridge the gap if this view were to be implicit to the approach of a teacher education programme. so, what are alternative conceptualisations and what would the role of a teaching school be in them? kessels and korthagen (2001) contend that a phronesis, or practical wisdom approach to teacher education, resolves the theory-practice disjuncture. phronesis bridging theory and practice in teacher education: teaching schools – a bridge too far? sarah gravett & sarita ramsaroop 141 focuses on the development of practical reasoning or perception-based knowledge. we are of the view that teacher education incorporating a teaching school sits comfortably with our conceptualisation of the phronesis approach (gravett, 2012). in essence, phronesis that incorporates a teaching school would imply that studentteachers mainly engage in a form of experiential learning stimulated by ‘concerns’ encountered at the teaching school. reflection, guided by teaching school and university teachers, serve to structure the teaching school experience. this is done through clarifying, classifying, extracting core ideas and principles, making tentative generalisations through extrapolation and incorporating conceptual knowledge. personal theorising forms the foundation for moving to ‘formal’ conceptual knowledge. cochran-smith and lytle (1999) also dispute the theory-into-practice relationship. they do this through their ‘knowledge of practice’ conception of teacher learning and the concomitant ‘inquiry as stance’ construct for understanding teacher learning. they note that the term ‘practice’ is often equated with that which is practical – ‘to refer to doing, acting, carrying out, and/or performing the work of the profession’ (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999: 290). from the perspective of inquiry as stance, however, ‘neither the activity of teaching nor inquiry about teaching are captured by the notion that practice is practical. rather, teaching and thus teacher learning are centrally about forming and re-forming frameworks for understanding practice’ (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999: 290). we argue that teacher education programmes should be designed so that both the university and teaching school serve as sites for the ‘intentional investigation of practice’ (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999: 250). at these sites questions that function as ‘lenses for seeing and making sense of practice’ (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999: 292) should be considered, at the university more broadly and at the teaching school within the context of school life. questions such as the following could be used to guide student-teachers to challenge their own assumptions and to identify and question salient issues of practice: who am i as a developing teacher? what are my assumptions about learners? what sense are learners making of what is going on in the classroom? how do the views, frameworks and research of others inform or challenge my own understandings? what are the underlying assumptions of the materials, texts, tests and curriculum frameworks with which i engage? what am i trying to accomplish here and why? how do my thinking and actions connect to larger education issues and agendas? how do my experiences in the programme contribute to my own developing educational theory? we also find the concept of ‘third space’ (mcnamara, jones & murray, 2014) enlightening when thinking about the role that teaching schools could play as a bridge to resolve the theory-practice dilemma. according to zeichner (2010), third spaces: perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 142 involve a rejection of binaries such as practitioner and academic knowledge and theory and practice and involve the integration of what are often seen as competing discourses in new ways—an either/or perspective is transformed into a both/also point of view. kozleski (2011: 257) describes the power of being together in third space as meaning ‘that we suspend assumptions about being right and take the time to consider and explore the unfamiliar, question, and above all, listen to one another and possibly, silence the shrill critic within us all’. even though some research participants suggest that theoretical knowledge belongs to the realm of the university, third space thinking does not locate theoretical knowledge with the university and practice knowledge with the teaching school. to us, third space thinking means that staff from both the teaching school and university ‘journey out of their own organizational and professional territories and … combine their respective skills, knowledge and expertise in new ways’ (gravett et al., 2014: s115). teaching school teachers must be able to move comfortably between the world of school practice and of educational ideas so as to introduce applicable conceptual knowledge when mentoring student-teachers. this is done at training schools in finland. teachers at these schools underwent teacher education that is researchbased, implying ‘systematic integration of scientific educational knowledge, didactics (or pedagogical content knowledge), and practice in a manner that enables teachers to enhance their pedagogical thinking, evidence-based decision making, and engagement in the scientific community of educators’ (sahlberg, 2012: 7). in finland all teachers are educated in this way. this is not the case in south africa. however, we argue that teaching school teachers would have to be involved in this type of development to prepare them for their role as mentors. conversely, it is crucial that university teachers incorporate student-teachers’ experiences at the teaching school in coursework. we concur with korthagen (2011) that, if student-teachers have not encountered concrete problems or concerns about teaching, it is highly unlikely that they will perceive the usefulness of the conceptual knowledge of education as field. dialogue about what student-teachers observe and experience in the teaching school could serve as powerful springboards for introducing related conceptual knowledge in the coursework component of the programme. third space thinking brings binary discourses together. this does not mean that there is no difference between the role of the university and the teaching school in teacher education. the university and teaching school contribute in different but complementary ways to the education of student-teachers. hirst (1990, in mcintyre, 1995) contends that mentor teachers possess authoritative situational knowledge specific to the school context. mcintyre (1995: 372) adds that experienced teachers have accumulated over the years ‘a vast body of professional knowledge highly relevant bridging theory and practice in teacher education: teaching schools – a bridge too far? sarah gravett & sarita ramsaroop 143 to initial teacher education’. furlong, mcnamara, campbell, howson and lewis (2008: 41) argue that a key function of the university is ‘theorising the epistemological and pedagogical underpinnings’ of the teaching profession. in the absence of such theorising the ‘complexity and contestability of professional knowledge is no longer seen to be at the heart of what partnership is about. professional knowledge becomes simplified, flattened, it is essentially about contemporary practice in schools’. synchronising the complementary roles of teaching schools and universities requires the equal valuing of theory-based and experience-based knowledge (koppich, 2000). researchers at universities working closely with schools in initial teacher education indicate that breaking the hierarchical chain between teacher educators and school mentors is possible through university lecturers’ respecting the professional commitment, research ability and the capacity of teachers to create knowledge (whitehead, 2011). conclusion this inquiry showed that the participants were positive that teaching schools as envisaged in the framework will enhance teacher education through serving as a bridge between the academic university-based preparation of student-teachers and the practice demands of the teaching profession. however, they had no clear notion of how such schools could add value to teacher preparation, complementary to schools in which student-teachers are placed for work integrated learning. we contend that, prior to establishing teaching schools in south africa, much deliberation involving all stakeholders is required about the purpose of integrating teaching schools in teacher education. if not, teaching schools serving to bridge the gap between the education of student-teachers at universities and the demands that novice teachers face once they enter the teaching profession might remain an elusive ideal – a bridge too far. acknowledgements: the research was supported by the department of higher education and training with a european union grant. data for the broader project was collected by a team consisting of sarita ramsaroop, nadine petersen, gerda bender, kakoma luneta, 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(2009: 304) who explain that, [b]y ‘method-logic’, we thus do not mean research methods or even methodology, but rather the logic of an approach for chasing social justice change through research [and dialogue], including guiding principles that underpin decisions and activities in all points and dimensions of the project. following this ‘methodo-logic’, we discuss how the plc encountered and engaged with the ‘hardness’ of pedagogical change and its struggle to deliberate productively about pedagogical adaptation. in conceptualising the setting up of the plc (feldman & fataar, 2014) we acknowledge that teachers’ pedagogical practices are exceptionally difficult to shift or change. in response to the difficulties that the plc conversation encountered we adopted an approach that viewed the dialogical interaction in the plc conversations as a form of ‘habitus engagement’ (discussed below). habitus engagement, we suggest, acknowledges the durability of the teachers’ pedagogical habitus and provides a basis for actively engaging their pedagogical dispositions to understand how change may be mediated within their pedagogical habitus. the dialogical approach of the plc was envisaged as a platform to support deliberative conversations that engage with this durability, challenging the pedagogical processes that the teachers have internalised and structured through their professional socialisation in their school contexts. the article offers a consideration of the plc’s engagement with the durability or ‘hardness’ of the teachers’ pedagogical habitus, what it entails and how to understand it. it also explains how, through the insertion of a pedagogical tool in the plc deliberations, the teachers were able to shift and adapt their teaching practices. this tool, which we discuss in more depth below, was used to develop a pedagogical language among the teachers that would allow them to experiment and dialogue about ways to actively generate engagement and participation in their students’ learning. our role as facilitators within the plc was to support and assist the conversations to progress productively by situating the teachers’ adaptation in a dialogue that centred on the perplexity of the teachers’ pedagogical change. this periodically necessitated us to raise tough issues, at times by inserting complex conceptions of pedagogical practice into the discussion to bring the multi-dimensionality of teaching to light. at other times, we reduced the complexity to enable the emergence of workable and manageable pedagogical strategies that could assist the teachers to find practical ways of making pedagogical adaptations and changes towards a socially just approach in their pedagogy. our role included assisting the participants 100 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) to remain on track regarding the focus of the plc, working through the conceptual challenges that the plc conversations faced and introducing external knowledge and resources into the plc when we deemed necessary (brodie & shalem, 2011; brodie, 2013). the exemplifying basis of this article is our deliberations with the five teachers from different school contexts who formed the plc. the article is based on the twists and turns that the plc dialogue took to actively search for a platform that supported the teachers’ pedagogical adaptations. our data for this article is mainly drawn from the audiotaped plc conversations that took place over a twelve-month period that explored the teachers’ adaptations mediated by the plc conversations. the plc-based data is supported by individual interviews that we (the authors) conducted with the teachers, which explored their educational biographies and professional socialisation as teachers. these placed us in a position to come to grips with some key aspects of their pedagogical habitus formation, which we argue is key to the plc’s work in effecting a shift in their pedagogical repertoires. various observational visits at different stages of the plc discussions to the teachers’ school-based classrooms provided further background on the teachers’ actual classroom practices that assisted our understanding of the plc participants’ teaching contexts and the way in which their pedagogy played out within this context. a final dimension that we present in the article is a discussion of how the dialogically reflexive approach of the plc supported a shift in the teachers’ pedagogical habitus to begin considering new possibilities in their pedagogy. we argue that the ongoing dialogical process of the plc was able to generate a positive pedagogical disposition among the teachers for experimenting with engaging, open-ended pedagogies. this gradual shift in the teachers’ pedagogical disposition as noted in the plc conversations and observed during the visits to the schools provided the plc participants with the traction to move to a more multi-dimensional approach in their teaching practices over time. 2. setting up the plc as dialogue about pedagogical engagement and adaptation since 1994, south african schooling has witnessed a number of curriculum reforms intended to redress the inequalities and injustices caused by apartheid education. following a number of curriculum policy reforms during the post-apartheid period, the new curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) (department of basic education, 2014) was finalised and implemented from march 2011. according to fataar (2012), caps authorises a tightly scripted curriculum that can be considered ‘teacher-proof’ in its approach to implementation. this curriculum is framed on “the assumptions that the country’s poorly prepared teachers require a strict regulatory regime to govern curriculum implementation” (fataar, 2012: 58). broadly in line with this, we suggest that the caps curriculum has tended to reduce teaching to a scripted pedagogy that expects teachers to teach to the test in a climate of standardised systemic testing intended to improve the quality of education in schools. system-wide tests written in grades 3, 6 and 9 (department of basic education, 2013) and the national school certificate written in grade 12 are an attempt to infuse regimes of performance accountability into the operations of schools across the country. many schools have become focused on producing measurable outputs and performances with constant pressure on teachers to improve on these outputs, which discourage authentic and purposeful pedagogical processes in schools (feldman & fataar, 2014). the current curriculum reform approach thus leaves 101 fataar & feldman dialogical habitus engagement teachers with little conceptual space to stimulate and meaningfully engage students in their learning (fataar, 2012). the plc activity, on which this article is based, is informed by a focus on a broader, more engaging pedagogy that is intended to augment the narrow curriculum orientations implicit in the caps curriculum. to this end, we adopted the view that teachers and their pedagogies are the one factor that can contribute the most significantly to improving student achievement, as they are key to “changing the practices and relations that directly shape learning” (zipin & hattam, 2007: 5). three of the participants completed a four-year b.ed. programme in senior primary school teaching and two participants completed a post graduate certificate in education (pgce) for high school, i.e. grade 10 to 12. all except one of the teachers began their teaching careers during the last six years, with one teacher beginning her career in january 2014. the participants are enthusiastic about their teaching and in our interviews with them indicated that their intentions were to remain in teaching and pursue further studies in education. their commitment to the plc was based on their desire to continue the conversations initiated during the b.ed. hons class that challenged the teachers to find ways to consider a more socially just orientation in their teaching practices. we base our plc work on the idea that authentic and sustained changes and teachers’ pedagogic adaptation require collaborative, ongoing professional dialogue among teachers within a safe and trusted environment. this form of collaborative enquiry and adaptation, has the potential to create deep conceptual change and dramatic changes in practice. it includes […] ongoing and challenging engagement with new ideas, rethinking existing beliefs, unlearning past habits and practices, and going through the process of learning how to do things in (sometimes dramatic) new ways (katz & earl, 2010: 46). the initial stages of the plc thus laid the foundation for creating a collegial environment where the teachers could talk about and explore their teaching practices through sharing and reflecting on ideas within a safe dialogical space. the plc conversations invited the teachers to inquire critically into their pedagogical practices, to find ways to leverage change and adaptation and implement a pedagogy that engaged and connected with the lifeworld knowledges of their students. it is our contention that this form of collaboration and dialogical engagement, founded on a basis of trust, mutuality and respect, holds the potential to adapt or shift the teaching practices of teachers. our point of departure in our plc work is the view that what is required to enhance the professional agency of teachers is a far richer notion of pedagogical practice aimed at engaging all students in their learning. we suggest this type of approach is required in a context such as south africa where the space for professional dialogue about ways to enrich the teaching and learning at schools has been eroded. our socially just plc focus is motivated by the view that schools should be spaces where “knowledge and talk about pedagogy [are] … at the core of the professional culture of schools” as it is a focus on pedagogies that “can make a difference to students’ academic and social outcomes from schooling” (lingard, hayes & mills, 2003: 399). in support of a richer notion of classroom teaching and learning, the plc discussions were founded on an approach to teaching that draws on fraser’s (1997) notion of social justice. this approach emphasises the need to consider the tension between the redistribution of 102 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) school knowledge, as, for example, currently encoded in caps, on the one hand and on the other hand, the need to recognise and work with the lifeworld knowledges and social-identity formations of students (lingard, 2007). this latter element is founded on the view that making curricular connections with and actively engaging the students’ home socialisations, interests and knowledge is one key way of securing students’ intellectual interest in their schooling (fataar, 2012). a social justice approach brings the redistribution dimension of school knowledge into an interactive relationship with the re-cognitive dimension, i.e. the curricular connection to the students’ life knowledges and identifications. the conceptual underpinning of the plc was therefore an attempt to bring these two dimensions into a productive relationship with each other to inform the teaching practices of the plc teachers and provide them with a productive set of conceptual resources that informs their teaching in terms of which they are able to engage their students intellectually in their schooling. our approach to the plc conversations was framed by an understanding that a teachers’ pedagogical habitus is durable and resistant to change and requires a form of vigorous ‘habitus engagement’ and reflexive dialogue to achieve a meaningful change or shifts in pedagogical practices. this includes an ongoing commitment, effort and time as well as a willingness to question beliefs and educational practices that do not have much teaching and learning merit and might have ossified within school contexts. 3. the ‘hardness’ of pedagogical change the plc placed the teachers’ conversations about teaching and learning at the centre of its deliberations, allowing the participants to take ownership of the conversations. initially however, the teachers’ conversation in the plc seemed to focus primarily on their classroom control and management concerns. although they willingly participated in dialogue concerning the need for socially just pedagogies, talk about their teaching practices mostly remained rooted in maintaining order and discipline in their classrooms. the plc teachers described their pedagogy in terms of strictly regulated classroom control and we found that they seemed unable to discuss in a critical manner what was not working within their actual pedagogies. invitations to talk about their teaching and the implementation of the curriculum, assessment or reflective practice, were diverted to talk about classroom management and control, which, it became apparent, they positioned as central to their teaching. although they verbalised a desire to engage their students in a participatory learning environment, their substantive dialogue in the plc displayed a closed and tightly regulated content transfer approach to their pedagogy. one of the teachers described her inability to engage the students by saying that, they [referring to the students] just take over and you are just trying to control the class in order to do your job, to give them the subject content. all my classes are over 40, 42, 43 students. i do my best but i just can’t engage them so i put up the work and they copy it down. accepting the need to discuss these classroom organisational issues, as many of them taught large classes, the plc dialogue initially allowed the conversations to address these issues. as facilitators we continued however to pose critical questions to direct the conversations towards a pedagogical discourse with a socially just focus. yet despite a willingness to discuss the elements of an engaging and participatory approach to teaching, our plc interaction was constantly diverted back to issues of management and control by the teachers and conversations about pedagogy became elusive. 103 fataar & feldman dialogical habitus engagement refusing to allow the plc conversations to be trapped in the one-dimensional space we moved the conversation towards finding ways to open the teachers’ pedagogy to a different, more open-ended, approach to knowledge transfer. it was within this debate that we discovered that the teachers seemed unable to provide clear descriptions of their actual pedagogical practices. instead, they displayed a limited vocabulary to problematise and discuss the central aspects of their teaching. the teachers’ pedagogy appeared to have been formed around what they believed was necessary for the management and control of their circumstances, rather than a reflexivity concerning the efficacy of particular pedagogical techniques in their teaching practices. four of the five schools where the participants teach are located in working class environments, which brought various social issues into the plc discussions. the teachers discussed their tightly regulated classroom control as a response to the demands of their working class school contexts and the impact of the social issues in their classes. discussions revolved around broken and abusive home situations, a lack of parental support and related homework issues as well as dealing with recalcitrant students that the teachers expressed as undermining their teaching and students’ learning. these issues remained prominent throughout our discussions. one of the teachers explained that this tight control was the only way he survived large and difficult classes. i see my geography class once a week … i just don’t know, they are just going to chaos. so if i get them quiet and i start teaching, obviously i want the interaction, i see now … there must be interaction between us. then i ask them things, but then it is chaos. so at a stage i just used to say, you keep quiet, you write the notes, do your activity and then we are done, the bell rings and you go. just to survive. it would appear, based on interviews with the plc teachers that discussion surrounding teaching practices in their schools has all but disappeared. in other words, dialoguing about pedagogy was almost non-existent. school pedagogical practices seem to have been replaced by a survival mode that ensures that the curriculum content is delivered, assessed and recorded as required by the school and the department. discussions about pedagogy centres around discipline methods, time constraints, lack of resources and external factors that impact on the school. within the plc dialogue, the teachers showed a willingness to discuss the possibilities of a socially just approach that actively involved the students in the knowledge transfer, however, beyond verbalising the positive impact this could have on their students, the teachers were unable to allow this approach traction in their actual classroom practices. each week the conversations continued to return to the teachers’ focus on the maintenance of order and discipline routines as an articulation of their pedagogy. 4. teachers’ professional and pedagogical identity as facilitators, we found the teachers’ one-dimensional emphasis on classroom discipline and control confounding, which led to us opting to delve deeper into the reasons why their teaching prevented teaching approaches that are more engaging to emerge. understanding how teachers go about their work is contingent on understanding their professional biographies and the manner in which they were socialised into their teaching careers. teachers’ professional socialisation includes their own schooling experience, teacher training and induction into their teaching careers. these along with critical incidences in their lives and teaching contexts 104 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) (amin & ramrathan, 2009), define their sense of professional self as a teacher in a particular way and informs their pedagogical repertoires and skills, the ‘how’ and ‘why’ they do certain things or act in certain ways as a teacher. the way in which teachers have been socialised into the teaching profession informs and shapes their professional and pedagogical teacher identity. this identity includes their sense of self, their knowledge and beliefs, dispositions, interests and orientation towards their work (drake, spillane & hufferd-ackles, 2001: 2) and changes and shifts over time as they interact within the various fields of education. during our interviews with the teachers in the plc, they revealed a range of ways in which they were socialised into the teaching profession and thus the manner in which their professional and pedagogical identities had been formed. one of the teachers did not initially train to become a teacher. she first completed a b.com in management accounting and worked in the business field for three years before deciding to complete her pgce after which she took a job as a teacher. she feels that her time spent in the business world has been instrumental in acquiring an in-depth understanding of the business and accounting concepts that she teaches her students. she describes her teaching by saying that “i love what i am doing, every single aspect of it”. however, she is frustrated by an inability to share her business world experiences with her classes due to the behaviour of the students who make it difficult to engage with them in this manner. she explains by saying, i would love to have a conversation with my class … but if you try that it gets out of control. with my class of 41 kids … it doesn’t work so how i survive is i give them the notes to copy down and if i can keep them busy writing they are quiet and they work. as soon as i try to engage or discuss things with them to find out what they know and understand … it doesn’t work, i can’t do that with a class of 41. another teacher refers to how he initially completed a diploma in pastoral psychology while involved in a church. it was here that he discovered his enjoyment in teaching as he worked with youth in the church and enrolled to study a b.ed. degree via correspondence. during his first year of studying, he was invited to teach at a high school where he taught for the next three years while completing his degree. starting his teaching career with very little understanding of teaching was a challenging experience. he describes how this experience socialised him into the teaching profession: i had only studied for six months and now i am a teacher … that was quite a shock. and there my learning curve started … i had to survive, my main goal was to survive, to control this 47, 49, sometimes 50 kids in a class. i struggled with so many things. i had a mentor who helped me. at the beginning i had discipline issues and every now and then i had to call him to talk to the kids … he taught me how to show love and care in my class … he was shaping me as a teacher. he would talk and advise me on things … over time i slowly picked up things and found out things that worked for me and i realised that i was doing things wrong. every year i got better. i became more experienced but it was hard work. these descriptions of the teachers’ socialisation into teaching show how the amalgam of professional socialisation and interactions between themselves and their contexts operates as a structuring and internalising set of rules that influences their teaching repertoires and the formation of their pedagogical habitus. 5. pedagogical habitus formation in order to understand the impact of these socialised experiences on the teachers’ professional and pedagogical identities and formation of their pedagogical habitus, we draw on bourdieu’s 105 fataar & feldman dialogical habitus engagement concepts of habitus, field and the logic of practice. bourdieu describes one’s habitus as a set of dispositions that incorporates social structures and affects our view of the social world and its practices (webb, schirato & danaher, 2002: 21). operating largely below the level of consciousness our habitus is durable and transposable and allows us to respond to cultural rules and contexts in a variety of ways. teachers’ professional identities are shaped by their habitus; they make decisions about their pedagogy based on their experiences, present circumstances and dispositions embodied in their individual habitus (webb et al., 2002). the plc participants’ socialisation into their teaching careers as well as their life histories is instrumental in the formation of their pedagogical habitus, which informs their teaching practices and their pedagogical repertoires. although one’s habitus allows for improvisation, one’s responses are largely determined by one’s context and those directly involved with us within the context. bourdieu calls this one’s ‘fields of play’, which he refers to as a structured social space or force field within which interactions, transactions and events occur at a specific time and location (thomson, 2008). these contexts or ‘fields of play’ include the “discourses, institutions, values, rules and regulations” (webb et al., 2002: 21) that have produced and adapted the teachers’ pedagogical habitus. teachers, therefore, within their specific school fields, will incorporate into their pedagogical habitus the values and imperatives of the field within which they operate (webb et al., 2002). the teachers’ pedagogical habitus, which incorporates their identities, practices and dispositions, are therefore shaped, reinforced and changed by the nature of each school ‘field’ or context within which they work and the teachers will incorporate a complex array of strategies and tactics that they will use within a teaching situation given the circumstances they face. it was their different school contexts and the teachers’ socialisation into teaching that had inscribed a certain way of doing things for these teachers and consequently had informed their pedagogical repertoires. the teachers found it difficult to challenge the dominant practices at their schools. one of the teachers describes herself as follows, i feel like i am already becoming one of those teachers … i feel like i have to conform to doing things and disciplining children in ways that i don’t want to. what happens if the children are so used to being disciplined in a certain way … the other teachers discipline them in ways i don’t agree with. what happens if that is what the children come to expect? because that is what i am finding … i won’t do it, i won’t become that teacher … but they are so used to that way of doing things that they don’t respond to you or listen to you when you try to do it differently. the plc teachers’ pedagogical habitus formation therefore includes a conscious and unconscious incorporation of pedagogical orientations and dispositions that form over time. these include their complex and multidimensional personal and social biographies, their professional socialisation and their professional and pedagogical identities that shape their attitudes and responses to their circumstances within their school contexts. 6. engaging the educational doxa of the plc teachers dialogue in the plc was facilitated to bring elements of the conscious and unconscious inculcation of the teachers’ habitus formation to the surface and this included an awareness of the options or restrictions available to them as they considered their own educational trajectory in their professional habitus. plc discussions were intended to provoke the teachers’ takenfor-granted ways of teaching that were inherent in their pedagogical habitus through their socialisation into teaching and thus informed their teaching practices. 106 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) bourdieu describes conforming to a dominant view of a field as ‘doxa’, i.e. we conform not because we agree or because it is in our best interests but because there does not seem to be an alternative. we may not even be aware that we are complying with the dominant discourses or agree with them but we accept the status quo because it is the way things are, or always have been. ‘doxa’ is the taken-for-granted assumptions found in one’s ‘field of play’ and is reproduced through expectations and behaviour in social institutions, structures and relations (webb et al., 2002). as the teachers engaged with the reflexive plc conversations, they came to recognise that their tightly regulated knowledge transmission was a form of ‘doxa’ that did not engage their students. they were however unsure how to change. bourdieu points out that even common-sense reflection on established rules is mediated and restricted by day-to-day experience and taken-for-granted practices which stifle the possibility to question or change what is implicitly accepted (webb et al., 2002). this form of ‘doxa’ could be found within the school structures where the teachers taught. in defending the way the teachers conducted their classroom practices, they regularly compared themselves to other teachers at their schools and their way of doing things as well as stating that the school management had certain expectations with which they had to comply. this form of ‘doxa’ for the teachers therefore found its traction in the mutual reinforcement between the acceptable discourses, i.e. the ‘doxa’, in their educational field and their own professional and pedagogical habitus, which positioned them to enact what they have come to regard as allowable and expected teacher practices in their classrooms. recognising that the teachers were in effect ‘stuck’ in a teaching ‘doxa’ into which they had been socialised and lacked a reflexive pedagogical language that prevented productive conversation about their pedagogy, we developed a ‘pedagogical tool’ to leverage dialogue about the modalities of pedagogical transfer. at this stage, we (the authors) adopted an intervention facilitation style. in other words, unlike our predominant facilitation based on valorising the voice and opinions of the teachers, at this point we chose actively to insert concepts and ideas aimed at getting the teachers to dialogue about pedagogical change. in this light, the pedagogical tool was based on three elements. these included a set of pedagogic transfer modalities using bernstein’s (1975) concepts of sequencing, pacing and scaffolding, the element of student engagement via active participation and an experimentation with adopting teaching styles on a continuum of a closed or firmly held pedagogical approach on the one end and an open-ended or relaxed approach on the other. this tool enabled the plc to discuss the teachers’ actual teaching practices, the ‘internals’ of pedagogy and shift the plc’s dialogical focus to the ‘how to’ of teaching. we also employed an analytical device that we adapted from hugo (2013) which invites the teachers to analyse their educational practices by considering which pedagogical practices should be separated or held apart from one another (closed) or allowed to flow together or integrate (open). hugo uses this device to analyse and deliberate about pedagogy in differing educational situations, asking teachers to consider carefully the ‘what’ (selection of knowledge) and ‘how’ (transmission of knowledge) of our classroom pedagogy. hugo states that there is no right or wrong answer when using this device to analyse our educational practices, “it depends on the educational situation at hand” (hugo, 2013: 5). we adapted hugo’s analytical device to provide a tool which the teachers, within their teaching contexts, could use to consider when to either open (allow for students participation and discussion) or close (teacher directed learning and note taking by their students) the pedagogic transfer of knowledge in lessons. 107 fataar & feldman dialogical habitus engagement the plc used this tool to develop pedagogical capacity among the teachers in terms of which they would be able to employ an approach to generate active and participative student learning while retaining an orderly and disciplined learning environment. enabling a pedagogical stance based on deciding when to relax (open) or close the frame was decisive in the plc’s dialogue. by inserting this tool into the plc conversation we enabled the teachers to dialogue about their approaches to lesson framing, i.e. whether, when and why they would use strict didactic control or open participation. this enabled the plc to challenge the teachers to deliberate on finding ways to open the instructional dimension of their pedagogy i.e. the pedagogical transfer of knowledge in lessons, to incorporate a more participatory and engaging approach. engaging with this tool also allowed us to introduce a pedagogic language to begin to discuss, question and critically analyse the teachers’ transmission of knowledge and enabled the plc conversations to move in a new direction. the plc’s dialogue, centring on the teachers’ pedagogical repertoires as a form of ‘habitus engagement’, began to shift the teachers’ pedagogical language, which, in turn, began to shift the focus of the plc towards dialoguing about ways to incorporate a more participatory approach in their teaching practices. this process challenged their taken-for-granted ways of teaching, i.e. their ‘doxa’, which informed their teaching practices, opening space for more nuanced dialogues about their pedagogical approaches. 7. eliciting a shift towards a socially just pedagogical orientation opening up the plc discussion by using bernstein’s concepts to provide a shared language and hugo’s analytical device that challenged the way in which the teachers were engaging with their pedagogy, provided the necessary impetus to draw the teachers into critical pedagogical discussions about their teaching practices. by engaging with an emerging pedagogical language, the teachers were able to shift towards conceptualising pedagogical possibilities that moved beyond the limitations that the teachers initially felt had been imposed on them by their large classes. conversations moved towards finding ways to include student participation for sections of the lesson (opening the frame) or becoming teacher-controlled (closing or tightening the frame) when required. once the teachers realised the possibilities that this open/closed approach held, they began to experiment with this in their school lessons. one of the teachers described how she experimented with this approach: after our plc discussions … i thought let me just talk for the first 15 minutes. so i just sat on my table and i had a conversation with them about inflation and money and interest rates. and they were all looking and listening and interacting. i tried to use examples out of their own life world to help them understand what i was explaining … then it got a bit rowdy and so i put the slides on for them to copy down the information so that they would settle down and work … but it worked and i really enjoyed it … because i felt that what we were talking about things and they actually learnt something, it wasn’t just a transferring of knowledge, but we were talking together as a class … so i am excited to do that again. a second teacher noted, i also started doing that [here this teacher is referring to including more engaging dialogue with her students as opposed to the learners writing notes off the board with no class discussion], and talking more to the children about the work. it is so much better than just going to the class, opening a page … saying let’s read. i started instead with talking to them. i found that they have a lot of questions actually. 108 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) another teacher who had worked hard to establish control and order in his class describes how he struggled to come to terms with allowing the students to talk during his lessons, my challenge was to loosen the tight content transfer that i used … so i sat and i taught by talking to them about the content and they interacted and responded to me. then i gave them work to do and it seemed like chaos because there was a lot of noise, but … the noise was them talking about work … about what we had discussed. in the past i have been angry when they are so noisy because … if i walk past the other teachers’ classes they are dead quiet … but i realised now … that the children like my class when we talk together, they are learning something … but when it is so noisy, it looks like chaos and maybe people think that i cannot control my class. the teacher above refers to the ‘doxa’ of schooling practices that equates to a quiet and well-controlled class environment with productive teaching and learning. this view repeatedly emerged as the teachers struggled to consider allowing students to talk during a lesson. one of the teachers stated, “but people think that if your class is noisy then you are not teaching”. the teachers felt that the school expected their classes to be quiet and orderly and that noisy classes implied that poor or no teaching was taking place. 8. conclusion the success that the teachers experienced as well as the positive responses from their students encouraged and motivated them. they experimented with spending more time opening their lessons to include interactive student engagement and closing the interaction down when needed. sharing their successes and positive student responses provided the impetus for different plc conversations to begin to dominate. while issues around student discipline, behaviour issues and the social issues of their students remained a concern, they no longer dominated the plc conversations. the teachers themselves moved the conversations into a new pedagogical discourse. using a pedagogical language to dialogue about an open or closed pedagogy enjoyed prominence in the discussions and the plc conversations now included a pedagogical reflexivity initiated by the teachers. changes and success were not instantaneous, neither was the process linear but rather messy and staccato. however, the plc participants became more reflexive and critical about their own pedagogy and the ongoing plc conversations were central in providing a supportive environment for the teachers to reflect on ways to re-appropriate their pedagogies towards a socially just teaching orientation within their specific school contexts. the successes and positive feedback the teachers received from their students provided the momentum for them to continue. however, the changes that we describe the teachers beginning to make in their pedagogy, facilitated by the ongoing plc conversations, were only the beginning of their adaptation towards a socially just orientation. we envisage an ongoing reflexive dialogical engagement in the plc in order to facilitate socially just shifts in the teachers’ pedagogical habitus that influences and sustains changes in their pedagogical practices. building on these successes, the focus of the plc has now entered the crucial phase of deliberating and building pedagogical capacity to design and teach lessons that engage the students in generative knowledge processes. as discussed in this article, we believe that it is the ongoing dialogical plc environment that includes a form of ‘habitus engagement’ based on critical pedagogical reflexivity that has the potential to adapt and change the plc teachers’ pedagogical habitus and teaching repertoires towards a transformative socially just platform that will actively engage their students in the learning process. 109 fataar & feldman dialogical habitus engagement references amin, n. & ramrathan, p. 2009. preparing students to teach in and for diverse contexts: a learning to teach approach. perspectives in education, 27(1), 69-77. bernstein, 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first: positive effects of direct instruction and scaffolding for esl learners struggling with reading annalene van staden university of the free state the inability of many english second-language (esl) learners to read at desirable levels is universal, but reasons for this and solutions have not yet been addressed. within the south african teaching context especially there is a paucity of evidence-based research findings available on the literacy challenges faced by esl learners and the application of effective intervention strategies. this paper investigates whether the reading and reading-related skills of esl learners in post-apartheid south africa can improve significantly following evidence-based direct instruction and reading scaffolding techniques to enhance reading comprehension. the paper is based on an experimental/control study of 288 esl learners from 24 primary schools in the free state province. learners received small-group instruction, which included evidencebased direct instruction reading that explicitly targeted skills such as phonological/phonemic awareness, sight words and word identification, reading fluency, vocabulary knowledge, syntactic awareness, and the application of reading comprehension skills. esl learners in the control group followed the prescribed reading instruction programme in the specific school, which entailed esl classroom intervention using balanced literacy instruction with a focus on word study, group and individual story reading, and writing activities, without explicit instruction or reading scaffolding. results showed statistically significant differences, with medium effect sizes, favouring esl learners in the experimental group, thus increasing confidence that direct instructional procedures in combination with reading scaffolding techniques can boost important literacy and functional academic skills of esl learners. results from this study have already made a significant contribution to the hitherto scarce empirically validated research into the literacy challenges facing esl learners in south africa, and so are intended to open up for debate a topic of critical importance to the country’s education system. keywords: esl learners, direct instruction, reading scaffolding techniques, sight words, reading fluency, vocabulary knowledge, syntactic awareness, reading comprehension. introduction against the backdrop of the south african constitution and bill of rights that accentuate the notion of a rights culture and embrace the democratic values of liberty, equality and human rights, the country’s education system must be inherently capable of meeting the diverse needs of every learner and preventing learner breakdown and exclusion. in reality, the south african education system is failing many secondlanguage learners who are still experiencing “exclusion”. as a result of current language policies, the majority of the country’s learners face the challenge of mastering academic and literacy skills (for example, reading and spelling) in a language they have yet to fully acquire, placing them in a high-risk category of developing literacy problems (nel, 2005). the present standard of reading in south africa is cause for considerable concern (see bloch, 2009; lecordeur, 2010; de witt, lessing & lenayi, 2008). results from both national and international surveys conducted in the past decade paint a gloomy picture of the country’s levels of literacy and reading proficiency among learners in the foundation, intermediate and senior phases of school (le cordeur, 2010; kruizinga & nathanson, 2010). for example, the department of education’s systemic evaluation (doe, 2007) revealed that the average achievement score for grade 3 literacy development was only 36%, while in 2002 the score for grade 3 learners’ reading comprehension skills was 54%. the results of several surveys conducted among intermediate phase learners in south africa are even more alarming. for instance, the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls, 2006) showed an average reading score of 302 points for grades 4 and 5 learners, well below the international 11van staden — put reading first mean of 500. the southern and eastern africa consortium for monitoring educational quality (sacmeq ii, 2000) found that the overall reading level of grade 6 learners was at level 3 (basic reading). official results from the doe in 2008 corroborated these findings, demonstrating a literacy average of 48%, with 39% for reading and writing with comprehension. reflecting on these disturbing statistics (le cordeur, 2010; kruizinga & nathanson, 2010; perils, 2006; sacmeq ii, 2000), it is imperative that the barriers to learning for esl learners be addressed as early as possible. the social and psychological consequences of not providing effective support are severe (lipka & siegel, 2010) and include reading and related problems such as academic failure, grade retention, developing social problems, poor peer relations, and emotional problems. in the past decade esl research has significantly increased internationally (mccardle, scarborough & catts, 2001; lipka & siegel, 2007). in south africa, research on the accommodation and support of esl learners is limited (soares de sousa, greenop & fry, 2009). despite the fundamental relevance of this topic to the country’s multilingual education demographic, only a limited number of south african empirical studies have examined the underlying extrinsic and intrinsic factors that contribute to esl learners’ literacy barriers and/or possible ways of addressing their readingand literacy-related challenges through effective support and early intervention programmes (soares de soussa et al., 2009; nel & theron, 2008; soares de sousa & broom, 2011). policies and strategies as well as research are urgently needed to improve the low reading levels of learners. the main purpose of this pilot research was thus to ascertain whether the reading and readingrelated skills of intermediate phase esl learners can be significantly improved by using effective reading scaffolding techniques and direct/explicit instruction in specific reading skills, while simultaneously empowering esl educators in applying specific reading strategies and techniques to address reading challenges in their classrooms. rationale and motivation language has played a significant role in shaping the socio-political history of the country (schlebusch & thobedi, 2005). prior to the 1994 elections, english and afrikaans were the only two languages with an officially recognised nationwide status, despite the wide variety of other african languages that were (and are) learnt, spoken and used by the vast majority of south africans (manyike, 2007). language soon became a very sensitive issue, “shaping up and maintaining a continuous struggle for and against inequality” (schlebusch & thobedi, 2005:307). the 1996 constitution recognises eleven official languages in south africa. recent statistics released by the department of basic education (2011) (from 1998-2010) revealed that currently the vast majority of learners still attend schools in which the language of teaching and learning (lolt) differs from their native language. although only one in ten south african children speaks english as his/her first language, the majority are taught and assessed in english (fleisch, 2008). the 2011 statistics show that approximately 64% of learners are instructed through english, followed by afrikaans (approximately 11%), isizulu (approximately 8%), and isixhosa (approximately 6%). research evidence (fleisch, 2008) demonstrates the following benefits of home-language instruction, especially in the foundation years: improved academic performance, increased access to education, reduced repetition rates, and lower drop-out rates. from the low literacy and numeracy standards and grade 12 pass rates (nel, 2005) it is evident that the majority of learners currently at risk of developing literacy problems are esl learners. to better understand why esl learners are more at risk of developing reading problems one has to reflect on the interrelatedness of both extrinsic and intrinsic factors that contribute to their literacy barriers. the researcher draws on two related theories, namely bronfenbrenner’s ecosystemic model (1979) and cummins’s (1991) linguistic interdependence hypothesis. bronfenbrenner’s systems theory helps in understanding the complex interaction between individual learners and their contexts (family, school, peer group, community), and his developmental model can be used to understand their change and growth over time (donald, lazarus & lolwana, 2006). with regard to esl learners’ construction of knowledge, this means that any of these contexts may contribute to potential language and learning problems, and create 12 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 barriers to lolt acquisition. these include poor socio-economic circumstances which influence prior knowledge and skills; impoverished language experiences both at home and at school; lack of resources such as libraries, reading material and newspapers; lack of essential support of parents/caregivers at home; parents’ low english literacy levels, including limited opportunities to socialise and communicate through home language; insufficient exposure to an additional language; overcrowded classrooms; esl teachers with limited english proficiency; ineffective training of esl educators, and insufficient esl support material or programmes (nel, 2005; nel & theron, 2008). since bronfenbrenner’s (1979) model also highlights the child development aspects of esl learners, i argue that their level of cognitive-linguistic functioning in their first and second languages also contributes to esl proficiency. similarly, cummins argues that success, for example in l2 reading, depends on previous competence in l1 literacy skills (sparks, patton, ganschow, humbach & javorsky, 2008), and in the course of learning one language a child acquires a set of skills and implicit metalinguistic knowledge that can be drawn upon when working in another. this common underlying proficiency (cup) provides the basis for development of both the first (l1) and the second language (l2). reflecting on the weak literacy skills of many esl learners, the key problem is that many learners have not yet fully mastered cup in their home language when they start formal schooling, resulting in language delays, weak emergent literacy skills, and lower levels of reading and spelling attainment in l1. as a result, poor l1 and literacy-related skills do not provide the basis for development of l2 or readingand spelling-related skills. the majority of learners are expected to become proficient l2 readers, despite many not yet having become accomplished l1 readers by grades 2 and 3, when the transition to english takes place. for example, the majority of learners in grade 4 have barely mastered reading comprehension skills in l1, but are still expected to be proficient in l2 reading comprehension (pretorius, 2002). many esl learners are also at risk of being misdiagnosed as “learners with learning impairments”, because educators in esl learning settings find it difficult to determine whether literacy problems stem from low linguistic proficiency or from general learning impairment, probably due to underlying cognitive factors such as word decoding or languageprocessing problems typical of a learning impairment (durgunoglu, 2002; limbos & geva, 2001). reading and esl learners the specific reading skills learners need in order to become proficient include phonemic awareness; phonics; vocabulary; comprehension, and fluency (nrp 2000). although much is known about the prereading skills necessary for early reading acquisition in english as a first language (efl), the question remains as to whether the same patterns exist for children learning esl. with the establishment of a robust relationship between phonological skills, rapid naming and reading in first language, researchers over the past decade started to examine whether similar predictors apply to l2 learners (lesaux & siegel, 2003; limbos & geva, 2001). if we are to reduce the number of underand over-referrals of esl learners for special education, and accurately identify those who require more intensive support, we must build upon the knowledge base of how english first-language learners (efls) develop and are assessed. we ought to combine this information with new methodologies to determine the best ways of distinguishing between learning problems due to learning impairments (lis) and those due to language differences. it is beyond the scope of this article to comprehensively discuss all basic reading-related skills, social-emotional factors (for example, readers’ motivation) and/or effective methods and approaches to the teaching of reading. however, given its focus, the researcher is especially interested in discussing and reporting on research findings involving the relevant skills discussed below. pre-reading skills and reading proficiency recently, more empirically validated research findings investigating the role of emergent literacy in reading and spelling development have been published (chiappe, siegel & wade-woolley, 2002). these studies specifically focus on the involvement by emergent literacy development of both cognitive processes and psycho-linguistic activities that are highly influenced by the social and cultural contexts in which children are raised (de witt et al., 2008). examples are parent-child interactions and discussions during shared 13van staden — put reading first storybook reading; literacy-enriched play settings, and phonological awareness games and activities. it is clear that quality of early language and literacy exposure is imperative for the development of emergent literacy skills of all learners (pre-reading skills). researchers agree that phonological awareness is one of the emergent literacy skills most significant in learning to read and fluency of reading from early preschool to university (chiappe et al., 2002). phonological awareness refers to the ability to understand the sound structure of a language and includes the ability to segment speech into phonemes and to detect and manipulate phonemes (jongejan, verhoeven & siegel, 2007). recent research focused on phonological processing in working memory and phonological access to lexical memory, and the way these skills relate to reading performance in l1 and l2 learners (lafrance & gottardo, 2005). phonological awareness tests have been reported as good predictors of reading abilities in l1 (lipka & siegel, 2007), and are essential for adequate reading for esl learners from different language backgrounds (see, study on phunjabi and l1 learners, chiappe & siegel, 1999). in addition to phonological processing, the following cognitive skills are important for reading and spelling acquisition: verbal working memory, syntactic awareness, and phonological recoding in lexical access (word retrieval) (chiappe et al., 2002). since reading requires the simultaneous processing, retention and retrieval of information, thus placing a considerable demand on working memory (jongejan et al., 2007), problems with verbal short-term memory may result from difficulties in encoding adequate phonological representations. research shows that both esl learners and those with reading impairments experience countless problems with the completion of working memory tasks. a deficit in working memory is thus a generalised problem, regardless of language background (lesaux & siegel, 2003). the ability efficiently to access lexical information is related to reading proficiency and reading comprehension (jongejan et al., 2007). lexical access is often measured in rapid naming tests, which involve the retrieval of phonological labels in response to visual stimuli (for example, in colours, pictures, letters or numbers). furthermore, rapid naming has also been shown to be a predictor of concurrent reading and spelling ability (verhoeven, 2000). as with phonological awareness, syntactic awareness is a skill related to beginning reading achievement. syntactic awareness, or the level of sensitivity to the grammatical structure of a language, has also been found to be related to reading and spelling ability in l1 learners (chiappe et al., 2002). even though syntactic awareness is of more importance to reading comprehension and writing skills, evidence has been found of its significance during “isolated” word reading and spelling tasks (chiappe et al., 2002). furthermore, syntactic awareness is also essential for fluent and efficient reading of texts and requires prediction of the next sequence of words (lipka & siegel, 2007). since syntactic awareness requires a certain degree of language proficiency, it is evident that l2 learners who experience esl barriers, as well as l1 learners with reading impairments, will experience more challenges. research studies have shown a deficit in syntactic awareness skills among esl-speaking and disabled readers compared to their english efl peers (lesaux & siegel, 2003). word identification (including sight word learning) to achieve reading comprehension, miller (2005) maintains that the novice reader first has to learn to recognise the “building blocks” of a sentence in order to be familiar with the words and their functions. research highlights three underlying constituent processes in word identification across writing systems, with three lexical constituents being orthography (o), phonology (p) and semantics (s) (wang & geva, 2003). many researchers agree that in reading for meaning, both the direct route from orthography to semantics (o→s) and the route from orthography to semantics via phonology (o→p→s) help to identify a word (wang & geva, 2003). recent research summaries show that esl learners develop word-reading skills like their efl counterparts (verhoeven, 2007). however, the process of acquiring a sight word vocabulary may be more challenging for the former since many are less familiar with the vocabulary, syntax, and phonology of english (lipka & siegel, 2007). if learners do not have a word in their oral vocabulary it takes away an anchor for their word-reading development, as they must learn the oral and written version of words in english at the same time. esl learners may have less experience of print materials in english, thereby reducing exposure to specific words that could become part of a sight word 14 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 vocabulary. instructional practices tailored to build on what students know and to support their oral and written language skills in english may be more effective than ignoring their background experiences (helman & burns, 2008). some of the verbs that form the foundation of the lists (and of english texts) take on irregular forms, and because they do not follow standard rules of spelling (for instance, phonological regular words), the only way to learn conjugations is through frequent exposure to a variety of reading contexts and memorisation (automaticity). this can include using multiple instructional techniques, fluency exercises and fast recognition word games, possibly by following the direct route from orthography to semantics (o→s). esl readers and the development of reading comprehension skills according to the national reading panel (nrp, 2000) good readers activate prior knowledge; constantly evaluate whether their reading goals are being met; frequently formulate predictions and make inferences, and read selectively. though much is known with regard to emergent literacy skills and their development in second-language learners, less is known about the development of reading comprehension in esl learners. research confirms that phonological awareness predicts reading comprehension in both l1 and l2 beginning readers (lafrance & gottardo, 2005). whether or not phonological awareness remains an important predictor of reading ability in older esl learners, or whether other factors contribute more to the differences in l2 reading ability in this age group, is still unknown. although researchers embracing the “simple view of reading” suggest that reading comprehension in younger children is more closely related to phonological processing/decoding than in older esl learners, who are assumed to have mastered basic decoding skills, vocabulary knowledge seems to be a better predictor of reading comprehension skills in older esl learners (hoover & gough, 1990). as this pilot study focuses on intermediate phase esl learners, the interrelatedness of prior knowledge, vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension, as well as specific reading comprehension strategies that might be useful for esl learners will be discussed next. vocabulary knowledge learning vocabulary is an essential part of mastering any language, more so a second language (sénéchal, ouelette & rodney, 2006). research has found that language skills and vocabulary knowledge correlate strongly with reading ability in esl learners (grant, gottardo & geva, 2011), and that vocabulary as a measure of background knowledge can be considered another crucial component in reading, saturating the central processes of global interpretation, inference tracking and comprehension monitoring. many studies have found that esl learners develop their vocabulary more slowly than they develop their word reading skills, and that vocabulary knowledge remains lower than that of their efl peers (chiappe et al., 2002; lipka & siegel, 2007, 2010). the depth (richness of the presentation) and breadth (number of words known) influence l2 vocabulary acquisition (nel & theron, 2008; verhoeven, 2000; grant et al., 2011). the acquisition of vocabulary knowledge is important due to its relationship with other components of reading development (sénéchal et al., 2006), while it mediates the performance on other linguistic skills, such as grammatical and morphonological knowledge, and insufficient vocabulary knowledge impedes growth in reading comprehension outcomes (grant et al., 2011). reading comprehension levels are affected by the types of opportunities available for building an extensive lexicon which, in turn, depends on exposure to a language-rich environment. as such, learners with extensive vocabularies are likely to achieve reading success (verhoeven, 2007). many esl learners from impoverished backgrounds are often not exposed to quality interactive language input/experiences at home, and thus do not acquire sound vocabulary knowledge in english. it is important to incorporate both direct and indirect strategies for learning vocabulary, with exposure to the latter pertaining to learning words primarily through conversation, and being read to or reading on one’s own. context is thus key (sénéchal et al., 2006). on the other hand, examples of direct vocabulary instruction include the pre-instruction of word meanings, keyword exercises, repeated multiple readings, interactive word-wall activities, computer-based exercises, teaching multiple meanings of words, synonyms and antonyms, as well as semantic mapping exercises (nrp, 2000). overall, findings for 15van staden — put reading first learners, irrespective of their language, show that explicit instruction approaches (including multimedia) improve vocabulary and reading comprehension (nrp, 2000). prior knowledge prior knowledge refers to the background knowledge readers bring to the text. although the nrp report (2000) found insufficient empirically validated evidence that prior knowledge improves readers’ comprehension, according to oakhill & cain (2007), while some readers are able to integrate information at a local level, many find it difficult to produce a coherent integrated model of the text as a whole. it has been suggested that the comprehension of a text, in particular the ability to make inferences, depends on the quality and application of prior knowledge. discussions on reading comprehension and background knowledge form part of “schema theory“ according to which one’s background knowledge is packaged in abstract units known as schemata. gunning (2003) points out that people bring their reasoning processes and background knowledge to their construction of meaning. the more they know about a topic, the deeper and more complete will be their comprehension. this illustrates the importance of educators acquiring adequate passageand topic-specific knowledge, and explicitly engaging esl readers in elaborative, meaningful and creative discussions and discourses about reading topics before assigning reading tasks to them (sénéchal et al., 2006). this implies creating practical in-class experiences (for example, introducing real-life objects and hands-on exploration), using a variety of visual aids, explicitly guiding them to make use of mental imagery, exposing them to conceptually related books (for example, different ‘theme books’), and introducing opportunities for “free recalling”, “webbing”, dramatisation and anticipation, while simultaneously expanding their vocabulary knowledge. cognitive and metacognitive reading comprehension strategies skilled readers apply a number of comprehension strategies (pressley, 2000). they make predictions, read selectively and associate ideas in the text with existing knowledge. by revising their prior knowledge in the process they work out the meanings of unfamiliar vocabulary based on contextual clues and adopt various methods such as underlining and notes as an aide-memoire. interpretation, evaluation and review of important points conclude their reading and inspire thinking (pressley, 2000). it is thus important to scaffold reading comprehension skills by means of techniques such as mental imagery, teacher-directed and reciprocal questioning. research among cross-linguistic samples (for example, hearing-impaired learners) shows that such techniques enhance reading comprehension and stimulate thinking skills, including prediction, recollection, repetition, analysis, inference, integration and evaluation (schirmer & mcgough, 2005). teacher-directed questioning activates prior or background knowledge which, in turn, enhances l2 readers’ abilities to use the thinking skills, while metacognitive strategies, such as selfquestioning, summarising and predicting, can be taught and applied independently to monitor and enhance reading comprehension (schirmer & mcgough, 2005). methodology the pilot study followed a quasi-experimental pre-test post-test design that draws on data obtained from an intervention study among intermediate phase (grades 4-6) esls in 24 randomly selected schools in the free state province. a total of 24 postgraduates (22 female and 2 male) in support teaching who had enrolled for a module in reading skills were recruited to participate in a community-based research project. based on interviews with the support teacher and/or head of department, 12 esl learners in the intermediate phase with typical below grade-level performance in reading were identified as the target population. the children were drawn from grade 4 (n = 96), grade 5 (n = 96) and grade 6 (n = 96) classes, making a total of 288 esls (156 boys and 132 girls) aged between 10 years and one month and 13 years and eight months. both the parents’/guardians’ written consent and the free state department of education’s permission were sought before involving the esl learners in this research. the department, 16 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 principal, and teachers of the school, and all the participants’ parents were advised of the study’s purpose and when the intervention programme would be conducted. it was explained that privacy and anonymity would be strictly protected, and that non-participation would entail no disadvantage. permission was obtained to implement the intervention programme for six months and to publish the findings in an academic journal. since the sample did not conform to normal distribution, a non-parametric test (the mann-whitney u-test) was used to demonstrate that the two groups were similar at the start of the intervention. the results revealed no significant differences between the groups before the experimental intervention: chronological age (u=10739.5; p=0.59), sight words (u=10538.0; p= 0.80), word identification (u=9769.5; p=0.39), syntactic awareness (u= 10270.5; p=0.88), reading comprehension scores (u=10458.5; p=0.89) and spelling (u=9894.5; p=0.50). the control group was formed in such a way that the dependent variables resembled as closely as possible those of the experimental group before the experimental investigation. measuring instruments the following standardised and diagnostic tests were used as preand post-test measures to esls’ reading over five months. uct reading tests (standardised instrument to assess sight words, one-minute speed reading, word identification and spelling) as well as diagnostic tests evaluating children’s level of syntactic awareness and reading comprehension were performed. the standardised measures have been standardised for the south african population, and administered by the different district support teams to be suitable for this investigation. the diagnostic tests for syntactic awareness and reading comprehension were based on the diagnostic reading passages from manzo, manzo and mckenna (1995), with an increase in the level of difficulty (separate diagnostic tests for each grade). the maximum possible marks for syntactic awareness and reading comprehension were 15. after administration, the tests were marked and the results verified by an independent marker. procedures prior to the intervention and instruction of the esl learners, the 24 postgraduate students were thoroughly trained in two three-hour training workshops, supported by additional practical teaching workshops throughout the duration of the intervention. one saturday each month students attended a four-hour session on the practical application of support teaching strategies and procedures. support teaching honours students who were full-time educators were recruited, which simplified many practicalities in the research because educator participants could enrol esl readers from their own schools. further benefits were that a more diverse leaner population could be reached, since these students represented different geographical regions of the province and included both rural and urban schools. each student identified and assessed twelve low-performing readers from her/his school. all the assessments and class workbooks of the learners were brought to the first workshop and the researcher assisted the students in randomly assigning the esl learners to an experimental and control group. the postgraduate student-educators provided small-group instruction, with 2-6 learners in a group, for esl learners in the experimental group twice a week for 45-minute sessions for six months, while the learners in the control group continued with the specific schools’s reading curriculum. the learners in the experimental group received direct instruction based on mastering a sequence of essential reading skills, and using a variety of instructional materials and methods, while esl learners in the control group continued with their school reading curriculum that followed a balanced literacy approach and consisted of several common features, including word study, group reading of stories, and writing activities, without explicit instruction. intervention strategies the postgraduate students incorporated a variety of multi-sensory instructional strategies based on the following reading techniques/strategies, namely interactive word-wall exercises and the fernald approach (vakt approach). this also included the implementation of reciprocal questioning (for instance, request 17van staden — put reading first reading method) and the cloze procedure to enhance reading comprehension. these exercises alternated on a weekly basis as follows: first, students selected five to ten target/vocabulary words (on a weekly basis) from the class readers • of the specific school. these words were introduced through interactive “word-wall” activities. after the children had pasted a word on the “word-wall”, its meaning was reinforced by matching the printed form with an object or picture and it was used in sentences. other reinforcement activities (alternated weekly) included word tracing; playing word games involving antonyms and synonyms, and sorting vocabulary cards of word meanings into different categories or themes. second, sight words were introduced via flashcards following the guidelines of the “sight word • association procedure” (swap) (vaugh, bos & schumm, 2007). words were reinforced by print/ picture mapping exercises and by playing fast word-recognition games such as bingo or snap. third, in the present study the cloze procedure was used as an assessment tool to determine esl • learners’ reading levels, while during the intervention it was used as a reading instruction technique for learners in the use of contextual clues, and as such to improve their syntactic awareness skills. fourth, the reciprocal questioning reading procedure (for instance, request was introduced daily • throughout the week. through interactive discussions (for instance, sociolinguistic opportunities for reading development) learners were introduced to the title, pictures and “new” vocabulary words prior to reading. during these reciprocal reading experiences, the teacher actively involved the children by guiding them in the use of reading comprehension strategies such as predicting, questioning, making inferences, and summarising or retelling stories in english. results a quasi-experimental design with matched samples was used in this study. the children in the treatment group were exposed to the reading intervention which concentrated on sight word recognition, vocabulary knowledge, word-decoding strategies, syntactic awareness and reading comprehension. table 1 reflects the scores obtained for each group in the five dependent measures. table 1: paired (two-sided) t-test comparisons between reading-related skills (scores) of the experimental and control groups (n=288) groups sight words word identification reading comprehension syntactic awareness spelling pre post pre post pre post pre post pre post m (sd) m (sd) m (sd) m (sd) m (sd) m (sd) m (sd) m (sd) m (sd) m (sd) experimental (n=144) 20.4 (6.5) 39.8* (11.6) 13.2 (5.2) 29.2* (11.5) 4.3 (2.4) 9.2* (2.7) 3.6 (2.2) 8.0* (2.1) 9.7 (4.3) 21.1* (6.6) control (n = 144) 20.2 (7.5) 21.0 (7.8) 12.9 (5.1) 14.8 (7.9) 4.8 (3.1) 4.9 (3.7) 3.8 (2.8) 3.0 (2.0) 9.5 (4.8) 11.6 (5.4) * p<0.05 the pre-test scores indicate that the children in both groups experienced great difficulty with sight words, word identification, syntactic awareness, reading comprehension and spelling. reflecting on the posttest scores, the mean scores for the experimental group show a remarkable improvement. to determine whether these results were significant, t-tests were conducted to determine whether the improvement was significant. the results for sight word recognition (t = 16.28; df =286; p <.000; d = 0.69); word identification (t = 11.44; df =286; p <.000; d = 0.56); syntactic awareness (t = 16.36; df = 286; p <.000; d = 0.69); reading comprehension (t = 11.24; df =286; p <.000; d= 0.55) and spelling (t = 13.31; df =286; 18 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 p <.000; d = 0.61) all indicated that the children in the experimental group had improved significantly in these five dependent measures. those in the control group improved marginally in these five dependent measures, most likely as a consequence of the reading curriculum followed at the sample schools and/ or due to natural progression. the significant improvement of esls in the experimental group clearly demonstrates the benefits of receiving direct/explicit instruction in multi-sensory activities that address important aspects of reading, such as fluency, word decoding, syntactic awareness, activation of prior knowledge and expansion of vocabulary knowledge, together with reading scaffolding (guiding esl readers) in the application of cognitive and meta-cognitive reading comprehension strategies. the apa requires the calculation of effect sizes for all significant results to determine whether the results are of practical significance. according to gay and airasian (2003), practical significance refers to the educational value of the results obtained in a study, and an effect size is the measure of the practical significance. cohen’s d (cohen, 1988) was calculated to determine the effect size for two independent samples. from the results above (cohen’s d) it is evident that the effect sizes for the different reading skills ranged from 0.55 to 0.69. this indicates moderate practical significance for this study. discussion the present study set out to investigate whether esl learners’ reading and reading-related skills can be improved significantly following intervention strategies that are evidenced-based, explicitly taught and involve both lower and higher order reading skills to improve sight word automaticity, vocabulary knowledge, syntactic awareness, as well as guiding esl readers’ through various scaffolding techniques to apply reading comprehension strategies. the application of these techniques has proven to be beneficial in creating sociolinguistic opportunities for reading development, such as introducing and discussing “new” vocabulary words (prior to reading) and reinforcing “new” vocabulary words (after reading). this was done through interactive “word-wall” activities and specific strategies to develop reading skills, such as explicit training in sounds, phonological awareness, word identification and the development of syntactic awareness through cloze-procedure exercises. to further promote the storage of english words in esl learners’ mental lexicons, these techniques were complemented by exposing them to multiple visual, tactile and kinaesthetic activities, either concretely or semi-concretely. secondly, the present study also attempted to increase esls’ ability to recognise sight words automatically. sight words included in the intervention programme comprised words from the adapted dolch sight word list and the sight word lists of vaugh et al. (2007). between five and ten words were taught each week. when ten sight words had been mastered, their speedy recall was practised in order to improve the learners’ sight word automaticity by using flashcards, sliding word cards and by playing fast word recognition games such as bingo or snap. compared to the esl readers in the control group (who did not show significant improvement in sight word vocabulary), esl learners in the experimental group improved significantly. limited, available findings suggest that many esl readers struggle with reading comprehension as a consequence of weaker vocabulary knowledge and oral language proficiency (verhoeven, 2007). vocabulary predicts reading comprehension ability both concurrently and over time. conclusion results from the present study demonstrated that esl learners, prior to the intervention, had significant delays in reading-related skills and in reading comprehension. post-test results show that they benefited through explicit guidance and scaffolding to apply “higher order” comprehension strategies such as questioning, predicting, making inferences and summarising. in general (although not reported in this article), the educators’ reflections on strategies such as the request method and the application of reading comprehension strategies were very positive and learners especially enjoyed the interactions during the interactive reading sessions. post-test results revealed significant gains in reading comprehension scores for esl readers in the experimental group. thus, these findings confirm the recommendations of the nrp (2000), namely that reading comprehension strategies are more effective when used in combination. in summary, the results of the current study indicate that within six months of the introduction of direct/ 19van staden — put reading first explicit instructional techniques, esl learners in the experimental group demonstrated a significant improvement in reading when compared to the control group. to conclude, the present study was part of a larger project investigating both esl educators’ and esl learners’ experiences in the esl reading classroom, with the present article reporting only the results of the intervention study. the positive experiences of both educators and learners are best demonstrated by the personal reflections of the following educator who was involved in this pilot project: as an educator i feel the application of these methods has been extremely successful. i have also learned a lot as an educator, for teaching is a lifelong learning process. i have also discovered that as educators we deny the learners chances to become better readers in class. i think the techniques which i applied were crucial because i have inculcated the reading culture in my students. further, they have learned to read critically and reflectively so that they have a clear understanding of their books. they now find english easier to learn than before. i also enjoyed helping them through the intervention and i will definitely use these techniques with my other learners who are struggling. (female, grade 6 educator in the clocolan district in the eastern free state) limitations the author acknowledges that this is only a pilot study, hence the results cannot be generalised to all esl learners. however, it paves the way for more longitudinal and specific studies that will investigate the underlying cognitive-linguistic and pre-reading skills that are the most important precursors for esl learners’ development. although the present study did not report whether certain reading strategies were more effective than others, the results demonstrated that the application of a combination of direct/explicit coding strategies and reading scaffolding comprehension strategies were beneficial for the reading and spelling development of esls. pedagogical implications education is vital to consolidating the advances made in political and social reform, and all available resources should be used to research and develop programmes that have as wide an impact as possible, including all learners, irrespective of their linguistic backgrounds. given the unacceptably low reading levels attained by south african learners, together with the paucity of research results available to support the use of evidence-based reading practices in south african readers in general, and more specifically in addressing the literacy and reading-related challenges of the majority of the esl population, the present study attempted to shed more light on some of the areas in which research has limited or non-existent (nel, 2005; nel & theron, 2008; soares de sousa et al., 2009). positive outcomes from this community-based research project were threefold. first, it made a significant contribution to addressing an under-researched topic in south africa, while concurrently making a significant contribution to the body of scholarly knowledge within this often neglected field of special education both in south africa and internationally. second, within a “response to intervention model” these findings can assist educators to reflect critically on their teaching strategies and methods and create classroom environments responsive to addressing diverse learners’ needs. in doing so, preventative teaching measures and strategies can be put in place, rather than trying to “remedy” the literacy delays that result from incorrect teaching strategies and/or many other related intrinsic and extrinsic barriers to learning. third, the knowledge generated through this project is available for relevant policymakers, and should strengthen their capacities to give guidance and support to educators responsible for addressing the needs of esl learners who experience language and literacy barriers to learning. references bloch g 2009. the toxic mix: what’s wrong with south africa’s schools and how to fix it. cape town: tafelberg. 20 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 bronfenbrenner u 1979. the ecology of human development: experiments by design and nature. cambridge, ma: 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and spelling. scientific studies of reading, 4(4):313-330. verhoeven l 2007. early bilingualism, language transfer and phonological awareness. applied psycholinguistics, 28:425-439. wang m & geva e 2003. spelling performance of chinese children using english as a second language: lexical and visual orthographic processes. applied psycholinguistics, 24:1-25. 182 deepening visual literacy through the use of metacognitive reading instruction strategies abstract: art education develops literacy through the ‘reading’ of visual texts. this entails the exploration of images, how they were produced and the experience of those who view and interpret them. multi-literacies such as the skills, knowledge and the ability to interpret varying texts and artefacts and the negotiating of meaning generated by texts develops in the process. social semiotics explores the potential of art to develop literacy practices in which thinking through sign systems is necessary to read and produce a semiotic system or text. learning through sign systems enables students to perceive their world in new ways, solve problems, read and write, and create interesting texts. visual literacy studies prove to be a problem for many students. undergraduates often find it difficult to read and interpret visual information and produce an art appreciation and analysis assignment on that information. many education students find it difficult to analyse the art elements and visual symbols. the use of metacognitive reading strategies deepens the experience and improves the visual literacy of b.ed. students, enabling them to present assignments of a higher quality. this achievement can positively affect their entire academic performance due to the intensification of the learning process and acuity of perception. keywords: visual literacy, art elements, visual information, symbols, appreciation, meaning, multi-literacies, bilingual, art appre ciation, metacognitive strategies 1. introduction the images portrayed in art can be an endless source of knowledge. visual literacy is an integral part of art education in the curriculum for grades r-9. unfortunately, very poor results for their visual literacy assignments have proved that most pre-service teachers in the bachelor of education programme have a lack of knowledge regarding the art and artists of their own country and the rest of the world. coupled with this shortcoming is an incapability to read and interpret the visual language in images and artwork. this leads to deficiencies in visual literacy and as such missed opportunities to deepen literacy and broaden knowledge acquisition. one way of enriching the courses for pre-service georina westraadt doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i1.13 issn 0258-2236 eissn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(1): 182-198 © uv/ufs http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.13 westraadt deepening visual literacy through the use of metacognitive reading instruction strategies 183 teachers is to introduce visual literacy as a ‘language’ and a vehicle for the attainment of academic depth. the curriculum that pre-service teachers are trained to teach in schools is called the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps). creative arts, as set out in caps, is a compulsory subject from grades r-9. creative arts comprise the creation of two-dimensional work, the creation of three-dimensional work and visual literacy. the caps document proposes the following standard for creative arts: the main purpose of creative arts is to develop learners as creative, imaginative individuals, with an appreciation of the arts. it also provides basic knowledge and skills to be able to participate in arts activities (caps, 2009: 6). students currently enrolled are the product of a so-called ‘failed’ school curriculum. the literacy level in the country challenges the quality of our education as it affects students’ ability to learn independently by reading (zimmerman & smit, 2014: 1). the poor literacy levels of many students when it comes to reading and writing in their mother tongue, let alone any of the other languages that are spoken in the country, is evident at many universities. the reading of visual language follows the same alarming pattern. based on this problem, this article argues that the visual literacy levels of students in a generalist training programme can be increased by means of the implementation of a model based on the theory of social semiotics combined with adapted metacognitive strategies for reading. a model was designed to determine if second year bachelor of education students who registered for the module art education were able to appreciate and interpret work by a contemporary south african artist, then analyse it and describe their observations in text. this study aimed to determine whether the application of this model enhanced education students’ visual literacy by assisting them in analysing the visual symbols and comprehending the conceptual meaning and metaphors in the work of penny siopis. penny siopis, a well-known contemporary artist, was chosen for the experimental group because of the strong narratives of south african history symbolised in her work, the evident feminist concepts and her large oeuvre spanning several decades. with permission to use her artwork, i report on the study. 2. visual literacy according to eisner (2002: 8), literacy is associated with high-level forms of cognition. there are diverse ways in which people can be literate, making meaning in different cultural or social contexts. the skill is termed multi-literacy. visual literacy is the ability to find meaning in imagery. it involves a set of skills ranging from simply naming what one sees, to complex interpretations on contextual, metaphoric and philosophical levels (eisner, 2009: 8). many aspects of cognition are called upon such as personal association, questioning, speculating, analysing, fact-finding and categorising. according to yenawine (1997: 1), “visual literacy usually begins to develop as a viewer finds his/her own relative understanding of what s/he confronts, usually based on concrete and circumstantial evidence. it eventually involves considering the intentions of the maker, applying systems for thinking and rethinking one’s opinions, and acquiring a body of information to support conclusions and judgements”. 184 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) visual literacy learning can lead to the development of a critical eye and independent thinking. it includes analytical and verbal-based skills to describe the formal elements of art and the knowledge to interpret artworks. mastering the vocabulary and awareness to evaluate, interpret, describe, enter into discourse and communicate aesthetic observations about artwork, can lead to complete artistic literacy (wright, 2003: 145). visual literacy is a learned skill, not an intuitive one. one becomes visually literate by studying the techniques used to create images, learning the vocabulary of the elements of art such as shapes and colours, identifying the characteristics of an image that give it meaning and developing the cognitive skills necessary to interpret the ideas that inspired imagery. this skill relates to a person’s ability to interpret and create visual information. “it is the first step in acquiring visual intelligence essential for critical thinking in the 21st century. it is an important skill to have in the professional world where digital images are more often used as a means of communication”, states burmark (2002: v). knowledge is becoming increasingly dependent on the visual. there is an emergence of new visual technologies and new multimodal forms of the visual. this leads to expression and communication in a wide variety of visual forms and materials – including multimedia, web, video, photography and film, along with expressions and communications through design objects and the more traditional forms of art and crafts. many of these forms of visual expression and presentation are encountered in everyday work and life. the omnipresence of visual information and communication in contemporary society means that artistic and visual literacy are increasingly as important to succeed in work and life as numeracy and language skills (dinham et al., 2007: 2-4). eisner (2002: 30) writes about the importance of visual education to teach students to decode values and ideas embedded in popular culture. critical analysis of popular media helps students learn how people are influenced by mass media. they learn how to read the messages of a visual text. the focus of art education on the visual world within its frame of reference assists students to become astute readers of visual images and sensitive, informed interpreters of their meaning (eisner, 2002: 30). duncum (2004: 253) employs the terms multi-literacy and multimodality in an attempt to unpack contemporary visual culture. there is a new status given to the visual as a source of knowledge. today people derive meaning from all kinds of imagery as part of their everyday experience. for art education, the study of visual imagery is concerned with the whole context of images, their production and the lived experience of those who view and interpret them. duncum (2004: 258) reasons that there is no avoiding the multimodal nature of dominant and emerging cultural sites. whether it is television, the internet, magazines, video games or simulation rides, each is clearly a hybrid of communicative modes. moreover, one does not read the language, then the pictures and then listen to the sounds; rather, one takes them in as a gestalt, a whole, all at once. this then is the challenge of multimodality in education. 3. looking as learning art education provides holistic and multi-symbolic learning opportunities by which students can gain enhanced cognitive performance and become visually literate (deans & brown, 2008: 342). art education is the training ground for visual thinking. visual thinking is the ability of the mind to unite observation and reasoning in every field of learning (pressman & dublin, 1995: 73). westraadt deepening visual literacy through the use of metacognitive reading instruction strategies 185 according to eckhoff (2008: 462) visual art can be an important and rich domain of learning. research reports highlight support for integrating rich, meaningful art viewing as a regular part of the art experience. as teachers and children communicate with each other through an artfocused dialogue, they negotiate the meanings of the artwork and of art itself. deasy (2008: 4) states that there are links between art and literacy in what he calls symbolic understanding. according to him, reading, writing and doing mathematics are processes of grasping and using symbols. if visual literacy is regarded as a language, then there is a need to know how to communicate using this language, which includes being alert to visual messages and reading or viewing images critically as the language of the messages. visual literacy, like language literacy, is culturally specific although there are universal symbols or visual images that are globally understood (stokes, 2001: 1). cowan and albers (2006: 125), discuss the potential of visual arts to develop complex literacy practices. according to them semiotics is a study of sign systems in art, music, drama, written and oral language that are located in the sign maker’s environment and experiences. the more experience and understanding students have of the tools, techniques and language of a sign system, the better they are able to utilise them to make meaning. literacy is attained when learners can interpret semiotic systems with ease (cowan & albers, 2006: 125). two major approaches have been suggested for developing visual literacy skills. the first is to help learners read or decode visual images by practising techniques for the analysis of the visual. decoding involves interpreting and creating meaning from visual stimuli. the second approach is to help learners write or encode visuals as a tool for communication (heinich et al., 1999: 64). when students consider art elements such as composition, shape and form, line, colour, texture and perspective and describe it orally or in writing, words are combined with images, which can lead to literacy and language development and the mastery of oral and written communication (sroufe, 2004: 10). in the following section, the literature on metacognitive strategies for reading will be examined. 4. metacognitive reading strategies the emergence of the metacognitive theory in the 1970s led to the belief of reading as an interactive process (pressley, 2006: 60). pressley did an overview of different studies on comprehension and concluded that if the thinking strategies used by proficient readers are taught to struggling readers, the struggling reader would be able to learn to think in the same way the proficient reader does and therefore learn to read with sufficient comprehension (pressley 2006: 303). snow (2002: xiii) defines reading comprehension as the process of simultaneously extracting and constructing meaning through interaction and involvement with written language. traditional definitions of reading comprehension often focus on successful decoding and the ability to answer questions after reading (zimmermann & hutchins, 2003: 7). however, research has proved over time that although successful decoding is essential for a good reader, reading comprehension is much more than just that (pressley 2006: 321; zimmermann & hutchins, 2003: 5). these researchers claim that the thinking processes of the reader, the learning that takes place, the mastering of new information, the expansion of knowledge and the subtle connection with the thoughts of the unknown all play an important role. 186 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) 5. metacognitive reading strategies of visual symbols and images it is useful to refer to reading to help illuminate what is required in visual arts instruction that would help build visual literacy. for example, we still need to understand the long period comparable to ‘reading readiness’ that predates skilful construction of meaning from images. reading levels, according to yenawine (1997: 3) are understood as “gradual and slowly evolving, allowing for large and small developmental changes in skills, understanding, and involvement. visual literacy should be seen as a similarly slow-developing set of skills and understandings that progress unevenly, each step building on earlier ones, each dependent on certain kinds of exposure and instruction”. the metacognitive strategies that were suggested by block, gambrell and pressley (2002: 22) combined with those of duke and pearson (2002: 1) for reading comprehension were considered as useful for the study. the transferable strategies were adjusted for the reading of visual images as it emerges in visual literacy lessons. adaptations are indicated in brackets in table 1. table 1: metacognitive strategies regarded as applicable to art analysis strategy description activating prior knowledge think of prior knowledge regarding the subject, author, and genre and text structure (portrayed images). monitor comprehension awareness of comprehension. conscious activation strategies empowering the reader (observer) to infer meaning from the context, words or phrases (images and art elements). questioning ask questions about the text (artwork) and the author’s (artist’s) intent. drawing inferences connect ideas in the text (artwork) with personal experiences, knowledge of other text (artworks) and/or general knowledge and drawing inferences to construct meaning. connecting connect ideas in the text (artwork) with personal experiences, and prior knowledge to construct meaning. summarising and drawing inferences identify the main ideas in a text (artwork). synthesising look at the features, unique information, and order of detail as well as conclusions in informative texts (images) to be able to construct a complete picture and combine it as a whole to enhance comprehension. 6. explanatory scaffolding introduction pressley (2006: 513) states that there are a number of well-researched methods to enhance reading comprehension. explanatory scaffolding introduction as a method was used in westraadt deepening visual literacy through the use of metacognitive reading instruction strategies 187 conjunction with the adapted metacognitive strategies in table 1. the following components are essential for this form of instruction: • a comprehensive explanation of the focus strategy and an explanation of how to use it • modelling of the focus strategy by the teacher • instructional scaffolding where students practise the use of the strategy with help and guidance from the teacher • gradual withdrawal of the teacher as the student becomes more and more confident in the use of the strategy • independent strategy use where students use the focus strategy on their own in a variety of contexts this instruction model supports the development of self-regulated readers who can actively use strategies to construct meaning from a text (artwork) in a variety of contexts with the goal of teaching students to take over their own reading and thinking (pressley, 2006: 320). 7. theoretical framework the theory that forms the framework for this article is based on what cowan and albers (2006: 130) formulate as social semiotics. social semiotics is employed to produce shared meaning or a common theme from resources such as visual images, forms, symbols and texts. visual art poses the potential to develop complex literacy practices in which thinking through multiple sign systems is necessary to read and produce a complex semiotic system or text (cowan & albers, 2006: 130). the premise of our argument is that students can be instructed to ‘read’ the sign systems and images that are portrayed in artwork and decipher how the art elements shape and form, line, colour, texture and perspective are employed in the composition. looking at and identifying the art elements is the recognised departure for analysis of art (sroufe, 2004: 10). the implementation of metacognitive reading strategies as developed by block, gambrell and pressley (2002: 22) combined with explanatory scaffolding introduction by duke and pearson (2002: 1) can be adapted to enable analysis and comprehension of contemporary art. such ‘reading’ of visual imagery can enhance visual literacy levels of students who were not previously faced with the challenge of art appreciation and analysis. students can then experience learning through multiple sign systems (cowan & albers 2006: 130). by verbalising and writing about their observations of art, students can read, write and create interesting texts because they have perceived their world in new ways. this exercise will lead to academic depth in their learning, observation, interpreting and writing skills. the model developed for this study combined traditional analysis of art, thinking through sign systems and the implementation of metacognitive comprehension strategies while analysing the imagery portrayed in the art of penny siopis. it provided an enriching experience, which led to critical thinking and deep engagement with the learning material. 8. research design in order to develop their visual literacy, a model was designed to determine if second year bachelor of education students, who enrolled for the art education elective, were able to appreciate and interpret work by contemporary artists using the metacognitive reading 188 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) strategies that are set out in table 1. an explanatory scaffolding introduction such as is set out by pressley (2006: 320) supplemented these. following this exercise, they were required to analyse and describe their observations of the work in text. this study aimed to determine if the adaptation of metacognitive reading strategies to the ‘reading’ of visual images and symbols could contribute to the improvement of the visual literacy of undergraduate students. 8.1 sampling for the study participants were bachelor of education students enrolled for art in education 2. all of the eighty-three registered bachelor of education 2 students had the option of participating in the research. fourteen students came forward as willing participants once the research project was explained to them. these students were given the name of contemporary south african artist penny siopis but each received a different work of the artist, randomly drawn from the list of possible works. they were asked at the beginning if they were prepared to attend three sessions where the application of metacognitive reading strategies in the reading of visual imagery would be explained and modelled. a reading specialist presented the sessions dealing with the metacognitive reading comprehension strategies and the meeting time was arranged to fit in with the students’ study programme. two sessions followed this, during which time the metacognitive reading strategies as set out in table 1 above, were followed and applied to an example work by penny siopis. the experimental group were willing participants in the research and it was clarified that non-participants would not be put at a disadvantage. during the first session, each student signed a form giving consent for their results to be used in the research and they stated that they were willing participants and understood that their anonymity would be preserved throughout the study and that they could withdraw from the study at any point in time. permission to conduct the study was obtained from the ethics committee of the university. the artist, professor penny siopis, gave written consent for photographs of her work to be used as part of the research and in research publications. after the metacognitive reading strategy sessions ended, the students were required to apply the strategies in their analysis of the work of penny siopis as set out in the section on effective comprehension strategy instruction. all the assignments had to be submitted via the learner management system, myclassroom and were assessed by the art lecturer using a rubric. the home language of the students in this study is afrikaans and most of the literature is only available in english, therefore, it is important for them to be able to read the visual images and symbols with clarifications in text as only supplementary. many students have had no background in art education until their first year of their bachelor of education. in the past, their results for the visual literacy assignment on contemporary south african art proved that there is a shortfall in their knowledge about the art and artists of their own country and the rest of the world. coupled with this lack is an incapability to read and interpret the visual language in images and artwork. this leads to deficiencies in visual literacy and as such missed opportunities to deepen literacy and broaden knowledge acquisition. to address this, a visual literacy assignment on contemporary south african art is set in the second year. the purpose of the assignment is to improve their visual literacy skills by increasing their ability to analyse and describe contemporary art and hopefully inspire them to improve their westraadt deepening visual literacy through the use of metacognitive reading instruction strategies 189 knowledge and insight into the appreciation of art. the assignment forms part of the students’ assessments for their semester mark. the instrument that was initially used was a compulsory visual literacy research assignment on contemporary south african art. for this assignment, each student received the name of an artist and a specific work by that particular artist, dating from the resistance era in the 1980s to recent work. they received clear and comprehensive written notes on the analysis of artwork, which summed up the recognised method of art analysis, namely: • all information gained from the data about the work, such as title, date, media and format. • a thorough and detailed objective description of what can be observed in the work. • step-by-step discussion of the elements of art applied in the work. • information available in the literature about the work. the purpose and strategy of the research was explained to the entire group. a thorough, step-by-step explanatory scaffolding introduction of the assignment was done in class by the art lecturer (see image 1). image 1: ex africa semper aliquid novi by penny siopis (1990) 190 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) 9. explanatory scaffolding introduction the first step in the introductory analysis was to try to get students to connect anything in the title of the work with their existing knowledge by means of guided questioning in order to link with the first section in table 1, namely activation of prior knowledge. a couple of students suggested that the language could be latin as they made the link with the mottos on their school badges. after a discussion about the latin title of the work, they realised that the artist was influenced by the colonial history of the country as a point of departure for this work. an analysis of the latin title followed (see image 2). image 2: ex (out of) africa semper (always –music term for always is sempre) aliquid (derive – liquid that flows from) novi (novice, new). once the title was understood and the students noticed that the artist executed this twodimensional work in two sections (diptych), they were guided in analysing the work in parts, starting from the bottom where the title, as part of the work, is inscribed. it became clear upon close observation that the shading in the bottom part is darker, deeper and more detailed (see image 3). the resemblance to michelangelo’s last judgement was pointed out to them. none of the students were aware of this resemblance; therefore michelangelo’s altarpiece was shown to them to indicate this and deepen their knowledge. the strong correlation with the marble friezes in the voortrekker monument, depicting the great trek and the wars along the way, was noticed and commented on only by some students, therefore their background knowledge about these friezes and the history of that time had to be refreshed. guided questions were posed to make them aware of the links the artist had made with biblical and historical events. this was done to encourage them to read signs and symbols rooted in the history of their own country. image 3: sections from the left and right flanking of the title westraadt deepening visual literacy through the use of metacognitive reading instruction strategies 191 gradually, moving upwards and carefully looking at the hundreds of images that the artist had drawn and collaged, using drawings from school history textbooks (see image 4), the colonial history of south africa unfolded in stages. the second strategy in table 1 led to the drawing of inferences to construct meaning, connecting the images with existing knowledge. once guided to look carefully, students started to notice semiotic symbols such as the mother suckling her child and the large, dominant black female figure hiding behind drapery, typical characteristics of siopis’s work of the time, which is the only feature in the work done in colour, in contrast to the grey tones of the background. image 4: top left part of the work with drawings from school history textbooks this panel from the top left part of the work is like a narrative told in visual images. the students identified images and symbols that portrayed recognisable historical scenes and events, employing the fifth metacognitive strategy, namely connecting ideas with prior knowledge. the scaffolding exercise was given as a framework from which to work. it was set out in the assignment brief that students would be expected to conduct the analysis of the particular work that they received in much more depth and as comprehensive and detailed as possible, using rich and interesting descriptive text. 192 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) 10. data to ensure the validity of the results by using various sources of data and to enable comparison with future experiments of this kind, both quantitative and qualitative data was collected. 10.1 quantitative data for the purpose of the study, the marks attained by the students of the previous year group for the same assignment were considered in order to determine whether there had been any change in the marks from one year to the next. in 2012 there were seventy-eight students enrolled for the art education course. the aggregate for the assignment in 2012 was 4.4/10. several students did not attempt the assignment that year. in 2013 there were eighty-four students enrolled for the course. seventy were in the control group and fourteen in the experimental group who attended the three extra sessions where metacognitive strategies for reading were applied for the ‘encoding’ of visual information. the average mark for the assignment of the control group was 6.14/10 and the average of the experimental group was 6.68/10. from this data, it is clear that the average mark of the experimental group was higher but not remarkably so. the average mark for the entire group of 2013 improved with 2.2 points compared to the marks of the 2012 group for the same assignment as is clarified in the diagram below (diagram: 1). possible explanations for this improvement in their marks will be discussed when all the data is considered. assignment b ed 2 fp visual literacy assignment: south african art 10/10 4.4/10 2012 control group 2013 experimental group 6.14/10 6.68/10 diagram 1: marks visual literacy assignment westraadt deepening visual literacy through the use of metacognitive reading instruction strategies 193 10.2 qualitative data the assessment of the assignments was done in alphabetical order, with the work of the experimental and control groups mixed. the quality of the work of the entire group was remarkably better than that of the previous year with regard to the research aspect. students used a greater variety of resources such as books, magazines and websites and were able to extract the necessary information for their assignment and not just rewrite the text from the books. referencing techniques also showed an improvement from 2012 to 2013. with regard to the analysis and appreciation of the artwork, most students described and discussed the elements they observed in each work carefully and with much more attention to finer detail than the 2012 group. however, the 2013 experimental group did not excel to a remarkable extent in this. the researcher expected a greater improvement in the reading of visual information following the sessions on metacognitive strategies that were done with the experimental group. an explanation for this is referred to in 10.2 where the qualitative data is discussed. 11. examples of the analysis of the work of penny siopis by bachelor of education students the student who discussed the work by siopis done in 1989, piling wreckage upon wreckage, (see image 5) prior to the introduction of metacognitive reading strategies, described the person in the painting as ‘a man wearing roman drapery’. a student, after the introduction of the reading strategies, discussed the person in the work as ‘a woman of colour holding a draped sheet in front of her body’. the latter is a far more accurate description of the actual depiction of this work by siopis (1989). the student evidently developed the skill and understanding to ‘read’ visual imagery and symbols through close observation of the depicted images and the art elements whilst creating interesting texts such as: “the woman is holding a large draped piece of fabric which spreads out at the bottom to reveal a host of discards such as a painting, sculptures, rope, candleholders, books, watches…” (translated). image 5: siopis, p. 1989. piling wreckage upon wreckage 194 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) likewise, a student who discussed terra incognita (see image 6) without instructional scaffolding, gave a stark, deprived description of the bare essentials that could be observed in this highly intricate work portraying a very large amount of objects. whereas a student, after the introduction of the reading strategies, gave a detailed description of the woman, her stance, the colours used, the depiction of the landscape in which she was portrayed in this work – evidently keenly observed and described in a rich, elaborate language, clearly taking note of far more detail. this student also researched the literature for the meaning of the title and attempted to bring terra incognita, which translates as ‘unknown land’, in connection with the images portrayed in the work. she wrote that the work explores “urbanisation, urban citizenry, mining activities, political violence, exploitation and social change” (translated). image 6: siopis, 1991.terra incognita the student in the 2012 group who analysed dora and the other woman, (see image 7) a complex and laden work, made no effort to pay attention to the small photographs that are pinned to the drapery. this is a recurring symbol in the work of siopis at that time, whilst the student from the 2013 group, who was encouraged to employ the metacognitive strategies for reading comprehension to the ‘reading’ of the visual imagery, noticed that they were small drawings of saartjie baartman. although she initially did not know who this person was, completely unaware of the role this woman played in south african history, the literature she consulted informed her and contributed to her comment that an artist’s work can influence the spectator’s viewpoint and change thinking patterns through the understanding of the imagery and symbols used. westraadt deepening visual literacy through the use of metacognitive reading instruction strategies 195 image 7: siopis, 1998. dora and the other woman none of the all-female 2012 group of students were able to articulate the strong feminist statements made by siopis’s work, whilst some comments made by students from the 2013 experimental group, especially those who have analysed work from the shame series, (see image 8) hinted at the fact that the work touched the heart and stirred emotions. the impact of vulnerability, pain and trauma on females as victims of abuse were noticed and described by the student who observed selected images presented as small but very discomforting works that form part of this series. these unmentionable topics were quoted from the literature consulted, not as coming from their own observation. it can be assumed that the calvinist upbringing and conservative outlook of most of these students prohibited open discussion of topics so uncomfortable, so emotive. image 8: siopis, 2004. from the shame series 196 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) 12. findings 12.1 quantitative data the marks students attained for the assignment showed an improvement from 2012 to 2013. in 2013, all the students posted an attempt, compared to 2012 when eight students did not attempt the assignment. this could be attributed to the fact that the students who were then in their second year (2013) had been doing metacognitive strategies for reading since their first year and the 2012 group had not. the marks of the 2013 experimental group who attended the application of reading strategies sessions were 2.2 marks higher than the control group. this evidence suggests that the strategies used in the experiment could directly influence visual literacy levels. a study with a larger sample or with a longer duration would be useful in testing this initial finding. 12.2 qualitative data with regard to the qualitative data, various reasons for the improvement of the results can be deduced. the improvement in the marks could be ascribed to a general improvement in the research culture at the faculty, as more attention is given by lecturers to research methodology and a raise in the level of academic standard had been aimed for and gradually achieved. the fact that the researcher/art lecturer paid much more attention to the presentation and explanation of the assignment, did an example of art appreciation and used all the available strategies to assist students to manage this assignment, also contributed to the general improvement in the marks of the entire group. this clarification of the assignment as set out in 8.1, namely the explanatory scaffolding introduction could be a contributing factor to the improvement in the marks of the 2013 group. furthermore, the fact that all the students were aware that the assignment and their results might be used for research purposes could have motivated them to perform better and put in more effort into their work for this assignment. although the implementation of metacognitive strategies for reading could not improve their poor command of english, it proved to be effective for their literature reviews and citations as most students managed to supplement their own analysis of the work with what was written in the literature about the works they discussed. the students in the experimental group used a richer, more elaborate and eloquent vocabulary when discussing the elements and symbols that they noticed in the art. most enlightening about this study is the evidence from the data that in their analysis, when they implemented metacognitive comprehension of the work, students were far more capable of paying attention to the images portrayed and really noticed the art elements and symbols in a composition. it was like an adventure of discovery and detection. the ‘reading’ of visual imagery enhanced the visual literacy levels of students with no former knowledge of art appreciation and analysis. a learning experience through multiple sign systems enables students to perceive their world in new ways, solve problems, read and write about the work and create interesting texts (cowan, 2006: 130).this confirms that the implementation of metacognitive strategies can be an advantage and is valuable in the analysis and appreciation of art. westraadt deepening visual literacy through the use of metacognitive reading instruction strategies 197 13. conclusion the implementation of metacognitive strategies for reading comprehension can be adapted to assist students in the appreciation and analysis of art. this experiment provided what yenawine (1997: 3) refers to as instruction in visual literacy akin to reading processes in stages, securing the ability in students to come to grips with complex images. the use of metacognitive strategies in art appreciation created an equivalent for reading comprehension. in this study, the improved reading comprehension also enhanced their literature study and vice versa, which contributed to an improvement in the marks the students attained for the assignment. visual literacy instruction in combination with metacognitive strategies for reading seems to have enabled students to ‘read’ or view images as the language of the visual and to communicate visual messages verbally. guided instruction to ‘read’ the sign systems and images, the art elements in a composition, shape and form, line, colour, texture and perspective with the implementation of metacognitive comprehension strategies, led to an increase in the visual literacy levels of students who previously had not encountered art appreciation and analysis. the process of analysis of the visual elements, combined with what is written about the works, broadened their vision and opened up artwork as a source to deepen knowledge. by means of this project, bachelor of education students developed visual literacy skills by ‘reading’, interpreting and decoding visual images. students explored the potential of visual art in developing literacy practices by encoding the metaphorical imagery depicted in contemporary art and describing it in text. furthermore, guided by the theory of social semiotics, students were assisted to encode visual images as a tool for communication. the visual literacy levels of students in a generalist training programme can be increased by means of the implementation of a model based on the theory of social semiotics combined with adapted metacognitive strategies for reading. continued exploration of projects of this kind will contribute to academic depth and rigour due to the heightened perception and improved visual reading skills of generalist trained students. references block, c., gambrell, l. & pressley, m. (eds.). 2002. improving comprehension instruction: rethinking research, theory and classroom practice. san fracisco, ca:jossey-bass publishers. burmark, l. 2002. visual literacy. available at http://www.tcpd.org/burmark and schort media inc. [accessed 21 february 2012]. department of education (doe) 2011. curriculum and assessment policy statement. available at www.education.gov.za [accessed 28 november 2011]. cowan, k. & albers, p. 2006. semiotic representations: building complex literacy practices through the arts. the reading teacher, 60(2), 124-137. http://dx.doi.org/10.1598/rt.60.2.3 deans, j. & brown, r. 2008. reflection, renewal and relationship building: an ongoing journey in early childhood arts education. contemporary issues in early childhood, 9(4), 339-353. http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2008.9.4.339 deasy, r.j. 2008. why the arts deserve center stage. the school administrator, 1-6. http://www.tcpd.org/burmark www.education.gov.za http://dx.doi.org/10.1598/rt.60.2.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.2304/ciec.2008.9.4.339 198 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) dinham, j., wright, p., pascoe, r., maccallum, j. & grushka, j. 2007. proving or improving visual education: implications for teacher education. paper presented at the aare conference. duncum, p. 2004. the theories and practices of visual culture in art education. arts education policy review, 105(2), 19-24. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10632910309603458 duke, n.k. & pearson, p.d. 2002. effective practices for developing reading comprehension. what research has to say about reading. scholastic red, 1-27. eckhoff, a. 2008. the importance of art viewing experiences in early childhood visual arts: the exploration of a master art teacher’s strategies for meaningful early arts experiences. early childhood education, 35, 463-472. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10643-007-0216-1 eisner, e.w. 2002. the arts and the creation of mind. usa: yale university press. heinich, r., molenda, m., russell, j.d. & smaldino, s.e. 1999. instructional media and technologies for learning, 6th edition. upper saddle river, nj: prentice-hall. pressman, h. & dublin, p. (ed.). 1995. accommodating learning style differences in elementary classrooms. usa: harcourt. pressley, m. 2006. reading instruction that works. the case for balanced teaching. new york, ny: guilford. sroufe, g.e. (chair) 2004. the arts and education: new opportunities for research. arts education partnership, 1-38. snow, c. 2002. reading for understanding. santa monica, ca: rand education. stokes, s. 2001. visual literacy in teaching and learning: a literature perspective. electronic journal for the integration of technology into education, 1(1), 10-19. wright, s.k. 2003. the arts young children and learning. boston: allyn and bacon. yenawine, p. 1997. thoughts on visual literacy. visual understanding in education, 1-2. zimmerman, l. & smit, b. 2014. profiling classroom reading comprehension development practices from the pirls 2006 in south africa. south african journal of education, 34(3), 1-9. http://dx.doi.org/10.15700/201409161101 zimmermann, s. & hutchins, c. 2003. seven keys to comprehension. usa: harmony. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10632910309603458 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10643-007-0216-1 http://dx.doi.org/10.15700/201409161101 _goback 52 whatever happened to school-based assessment in england’s gcses and a levels? abstract for the past 30 years, school-based assessment (sba) has been a major feature of gcses and a levels, the main school examinations in england. sba has allowed teachers to allocate marks to their students for the level of skills that they show in their work. such skills include for example, experimental techniques in science, performance in drama and enquiry skills in history. these skills can be difficult to assess validly in written examinations. of course, sba can also provide an alternative form of assessment for the same knowledge and skills from timed, written examinations taken at the end of the course of study. at the start of the millennium, concerns grew that plagiarism, excessive input from teachers and parental support were distorting sba marks and adversely affecting learning. attempts were made to tighten the arrangements around sba but in the context of england’s school accountability arrangements; these did not prove wholly successful. the current, substantial reforms have considerably reduced the use of sba, entirely removing it in some subjects, relying much more on exams. this paper describes the influence of school accountability arrangements on the design of new gcses and a levels and includes evidence from a teacher survey of assessment practices in schools. it explores the principles by which decisions have been made regarding the assessment arrangements determined for different subjects. it considers how the reduction in sba might have a positive influence on the taught curriculum. keywords: school based assessment, reliability, controlled assessment, accountability 1. background the origins of england’s general certificate of education (gce) a level exams can be traced back to 1838 when the university of london set a matriculation exam to use as an objective selection method for entry to university. during the nineteenth century, other universities responded to the demands of schools by providing syllabi and exams for students to take locally. the higher school certificate overtook these exams in 1917 and that led to a levels, which were first examined in 1951. since its introduction in 1951, the a level system has always served two main functions: assessing and certificating dennis opposs standards chair, office of qualifications and examinations regulation (ofqual), spring place, herald avenue, coventry cv5 6ub, uk. email: dennis. opposs@ofqual.gov.uk doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i4.4 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(4): 52-61 © uv/ufs 53 opposs whatever happened to school-based assessment in england’s gcses and a levels? achievement against a curriculum defined in a published syllabus and permitting universities to identify students for their courses. upon its introduction, the a level was targeted only at the highest achievers. however, it has been studied by an increasing number of students and is now taken by over a third of the national cohort. whilst there are other pre-university exams available such as the international baccalaureate, a levels remain the principal tool of university selection for students from england. a levels are usually taken by 16 to 18-year-olds in schools and colleges across the country but they are available to anyone who wishes to gain a qualification in a subject in which they are interested. a levels are intended to be studied over a two-year period. in the summer of 2016, there were 770,000 subject entries taken by approximately 250,000 students in england. a levels are provided by four independent exam boards which compete with each other for entries from schools and colleges. they are available in over 45 subjects. there are no compulsory subjects. a levels can be taken in any combination desired to reflect the interests (or intended progression) of the student. it is accepted that a typical a level student will take three or four a levels at the upper secondary phase. that makes each student’s curriculum much narrower than in many countries. on the other hand, the lack of a compulsory element or any rules concerning the combination gives the student the freedom to choose a programme suited to themselves and their planned progression route. in addition, england has had some form of national exam for 16 year olds for almost 100 years. in 1918, there were the first awards of the school certificate. you needed to pass in mathematics, english and three other subjects to gain the certificate. in 1951, at the same time as the gce, a level was introduced and the school certificate was replaced by the gce o level examination. this was a subject-based certificate – one certificate per subject. the certificate of secondary education (cse) was a school-leaving exam awarded from 1965 alongside o levels. o levels were aimed at the highest achievers, mostly those who would progress at age 18 to university. cse was aimed at those more in the middle of the attainment range. before the introduction of the cse, the majority of schoolchildren left school without any qualifications at all. in 1988, the general certificate of secondary education (gcse) replaced o levels and cses in england as the principal school-leaving qualification. gcses were designed to cater for the same group of schoolchildren who had previously taken o levels and cses. examinations became much more inclusive and many more young people were urged to study and enter qualifications at the age of 16. gcses are provided by the same four exam boards that provide a levels and are available in more than 70 subjects. each year approximately five million gcses are awarded. 2. coursework cses mostly used school-based assessments (sba) of various sorts. prior to the introduction of cse in the 1960s, teachers played little part in the assessment of a and o levels. by the 1970s, typical a and o level courses were still assessed through written exams at the end of 54 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) the course but sba had begun to appear in certain aspects of particular syllabi. the launch of gcses in the 1980s changed the position markedly. the assessment in most gcses comprised a combination of exams taken at the end of the course and some sba called “coursework”. coursework was introduced mainly as a means of assessing elements that are difficult to evaluate accurately through written exam papers, for example, practical skills in subjects such as design and technology, drama and art, extended writing in english, experiments in science and research skills in history, geography and psychology. the inclusion of such aspects of the curriculum sometimes influenced the way that subjects were taught and learned, for example, encouraging the teaching of science through practical work. coursework aimed to give students the capacity to demonstrate their ability to work at their own pace and to take responsibility for their own learning. it also gave them an opportunity to study a topic in-depth, often transferring skills from one subject to another. teachers were able to set tasks to suit the level and interest of individual students. coursework was defined as any type of assessment of student performance made by the school, in accordance with the syllabus of the course of study and that contributes to the final grade awarded for a gcse (sec, 1986). some coursework was done out of school hours while some was done under supervision in school. the exam boards introduced moderation processes to check that teachers in different schools were applying the mark scheme for each coursework task appropriately and consistently. almost all gcses included an element of coursework. following the introduction of gcses, a level assessment schemes began to change, with around two-thirds also including coursework. as with some gcses, this often involved assessing elements that are difficult to assess validly through written exam papers. it also opened opportunities for different approaches to structuring a level subjects. for example, the cambridge history project a level, introduced in 1995, was arranged around the themes ‘people, power & politics’ and had a significant sba component; the wessex project comprised modular a levels with students able to take some assessments during the course. in some a level subjects, coursework was common but a written or practical examined option could often be taken as an alternative to coursework. the use of coursework was not supported in all quarters. early concerns focused on manageability. there was wariness about its use, particularly when one english gcse that used 100% coursework and no exams became so popular that the great majority of 16 year olds were taking it. just three years after the first gcse certificates were awarded, john major, the then prime minister, said in a wide-ranging speech on education on 3 july 1991 (http://www.johnmajor. co.uk/page867.html): this means addressing those criticisms of gcse that give rise to a suspicion that standards are at risk. it is clear that there is now far too much coursework, project work and teacher assessment in gcse. the remedy surely lies in getting gcse back to being an externally assessed exam, which is predominantly written. i am attracted to the idea that for most subjects a maximum of 20 per cent of the marks should be obtainable from coursework. this, of course, is the sound principle we have recently proposed for a-levels. 55 opposs whatever happened to school-based assessment in england’s gcses and a levels? although following the speech lower limits were placed on gcse coursework weightings, they were mostly not as low as 20%. for example, the limits were 20% in mathematics and religious studies, 25% in french and geography, 40% in english and 60% in design and technology and art and design. by the early 2000s, coursework had often become less “the work of the course” and more set piece assessments. increasing concerns surfaced about marking reliability, the authenticity of the work, teaching practices, the impact of coursework on available teaching time and learning, and if coursework was contributing to grade inflation. in 2005, the qualifications and curriculum authority (qca) carried out a review of gcse coursework to determine whether coursework was operating effectively as an assessment instrument, to identify any changes that might need to be made and to put those changes into effect (qca, 2005). qca concluded that the benefits of coursework (such as the motivational aspects) outweighed the drawbacks but, nonetheless, it identified ways in which coursework could be improved, including: • improved guidance for teachers on setting coursework tasks; • clearer guidelines explaining the limits of permitted help and advice from teachers and parents; • more checks by exam boards on schools’ internal standardisation of marks and better guidance on standardisation; • a subject-by-subject evaluation of the weighting and value of coursework assessment to inform better-designed coursework in future syllabi. 3. controlled assessment an independent report in 2007 investigated the findings of this review further and made a number of recommendations related to how “the current controls relating to internal assessment in gcse… should be developed and supplemented to promote greater public confidence across all subjects that internal controlled assessment is valid, reliable and manageable” (colwill, 2007: 35). there were fewer concerns at this time regarding coursework in a levels. qca used the report’s recommendations to develop new gcses for first time teaching in 2009, including the replacement of coursework by “controlled assessment”. controlled assessment is a form of sba that aims to encourage a more integrated approach to teaching, learning and assessment as well as to enable teachers to confirm that students have carried out the work themselves. the rules for controlled assessment (qca, 2008) required each gcse subject to have: • one of the three specified weightings for controlled assessment: 0 per cent, 25 per cent or 60 per cent; and • predetermined levels of control or supervision in controlled assessment (limited, medium and high) applied at three stages in the assessment: task setting, task taking and task marking. for example, a high level of control in task setting could in some subjects, mean that teachers must select controlled assessment tasks from several comparable tasks provided by the exam board. alternatively, in a subject with limited control in task taking, the work of individual 56 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) students might be informed by working with other students but for assessment purposes, each student would provide their own response to the task. at each stage of the assessment, qca aimed to set the level of control as high as possible to ensure the authenticity of students’ work, while also attempting to make the assessments manageable in practical terms for students, teachers and exam boards. in 2010, qca’s regulatory functions were transferred to the newly established ofqual. at that same time, controlled assessments were being introduced and concerns surfaced from schools, particularly about their manageability. ofqual’s research gathered evidence on the nature and scale of the problems (ipsos mori, 2011). there was a mixed picture, controlled assessment being seen as more of a problem in some subjects than in others. there were also manageability issues but while some schools reported struggling with the practical issues of operating controlled assessment, others reported that they had put in place systems to manage it. although some suggested replacing controlled assessment by written exams, others did not see that as a viable option as many gcses included practical elements that really could not be assessed in a written exam. ofqual decided to investigate more thoroughly, in each subject, whether the controlled assessments being used really provided valid assessment of elements that could not be assessed in a written exam and whether they did discriminate between students. ofqual found that many gcses included content that could not be assessed in a written exam (ofqual, 2013). however, in some cases, what was assessed by controlled assessment was not what was intended. for example, students taking gcses in foreign languages are supposed to be tested on their writing in those foreign languages. however, the way in which the writing controlled assessment in foreign languages operates encourages students to prepare a piece of writing, memorise it and then to repeat it under controlled conditions. the writing task then becomes predominantly a test of memory skills rather than an assessment of genuine communication skills through writing. the review also found that the more specific controls that were intended to provide greater consistency for students and teachers had not always been effective. guidance from an exam board can never be so precise that it deals with every eventuality so it is always open to interpretation. for example, where students under controlled conditions are allowed to use their notes but not an essay plan to produce the final piece of work, it is difficult in practice to agree on the difference between notes and an essay plan. this places a considerable responsibility on teachers to interpret the guidance. that led to concerns that one teacher may be interpreting guidance more severely or more leniently than those in other schools. additionally, there were concerns about the way that the assessments functioned. often the marks were compressed near the top of the range. thus, controlled assessment proved to be problematic. some of those problems may be intractable: it does not always assess those aspects of a subject it was designed to assess, it can divert time from teaching and learning and be arduous to organise and deliver and too often, it is delivered inconsistently. nevertheless, there is, of course, a critical place for sba as there are important aspects of many subjects that written exams really cannot assess. the design of the next generation of gcses and a levels was influenced by the review of controlled assessment described above and particularly by troubles with gcse english results 57 opposs whatever happened to school-based assessment in england’s gcses and a levels? in the summer of 2012. new modular english syllabi included a higher weighting for controlled assessments – 60 per cent – and allowed schools to adopt different entry strategies. some schools entered their students for exams early so they could re-sit; others left all the entries until the end of the course. over one third of the schools decided to enter students for the written exam early, mainly in january 2012. when the schools received the exam results, they calculated how many more marks each student would need to achieve their overall target grade in summer 2012. these marks were to come from the controlled assessments and schools had greater control over the administration and marking of those. their calculations, though, assumed that the grade boundaries (cut scores) for the controlled assessments would remain unchanged from previous exam series. it is likely that schools’ calculations influenced their marking of the controlled assessments and the examination boards subsequently found evidence of over-marking in them. it also became clear that boards could not achieve appropriate overall results for gcse english without setting controlled assessment grade boundaries at marks that were much higher than in earlier series. gcse english results issued in august 2012 were comparable with previous years but there were widespread complaints from schools that their students had been disadvantaged and there was considerable media attention. ofqual considered and rejected the suggestion that exam boards should change their grade boundaries. a consortium of schools and local authorities pursued a claim for judicial review. there was a high court hearing in london in december 2012 and the application was subsequently rejected (royal courts of justice, 2013). by this time, ofqual had developed considerable concerns about sba. at the core of this was evidence, mainly but not wholly anecdotal, that practices in schools aimed at improving exam results, particularly in gcse subjects most crucial to school accountability measures, were threats to the validity of sba and undermined exam standards. in 2014, ofqual commissioned research to gain a better understanding of school practices in this area. the evidence from the research formed part of a symposium on teacher ethics in assessment in oxford in march 2015.1 evidence was gathered from an anonymous online survey that was open to all who wished to comment. there was no framework for sampling respondents and all teachers with an interest in the work were able to respond so respondents were not necessarily representative of the wider teaching population. because of these limitations, the findings have been treated with caution. in total, 40% of the respondents to the survey (220 of 548) described at least one example of activities they had experienced relating to gcse controlled assessment. the most commonly mentioned activities were that teachers provided marks, corrections, feedback and guidance to students to enable them to draft and re-draft their controlled assessment work. in these cases, students were reportedly given several attempts to make changes and improvements. as teachers are required to document feedback provided to students, some teachers mentioned that they only gave feedback that cannot be traced, such as verbal feedback or through the use of post-it notes that can then be removed from the file. 1 see http://oucea.education.ox.ac.uk/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/meadows-teacher-ethics-mar15. pdf 58 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) comments provided in the survey included: i can get a very weak student an a grade by breaking the rules, as i do, yet the poor head of department down the road doing controlled assessments in near exam conditions is lucky to get any work out of the student for an e grade. the current system works very well for us as long as we ignore any rules for limited, medium and high control in controlled assessments. we ensure that every student always meets their target grade, whatever it takes. 4. non-exam assessment ofqual is now engaged in a major reform of all gcses and a levels. it took full account of the findings from the controlled assessment review and the other evidence described above. it made clear that the assessments in the new gcses and a levels must be able to withstand the range of pressures to which they are subject. ofqual decided that assessment should mainly use exams, with other types of assessment used only where they are really needed. the successor to coursework and controlled assessment is called “non-exam assessment” (nea). exams are defined as assessments set by the exam board, designed to be taken simultaneously by all relevant students at a specified time and taken under specified conditions (including conditions relating to supervision during the assessment and the duration of the assessment). nea is therefore a form of assessment that does not match that definition (ofqual, 2016). as described below, though, that does not mean that any design will be acceptable. using its experience from the first two phases of the development programme, ofqual has developed a set of requirements it has applied, or could have applied, in different aspects of gcse and a level assessment. in terms of the balance between exams and sba, the main principle used has been to select the mode of assessment required in each aspect of a subject that optimises validity and thus, is the most defensible one. in making that selection, a balance is determined that provides the most valid assessment against threats to that validity and wider concerns. threats to the validity of nea may come from external pressures such as the use of the exam results in accountability or selection systems. this may make it harder for teachers to mark accurately. threats may also come from challenges with authenticity depending on the nature of the nonexam assessment and how it is carried out, from the manageability of the assessment and the amount of course time it requires or from other sources. in practice, these principles have led to a reduction in the use of sba: it is present in fewer subjects and where it is used, the weighting is usually less than it was. the following table shows some examples in gcse subjects. sba current weighting sba new weighting english literature 25% 0% physics 25% 0% geography 25% 0% history 25% 0% business 25% 0% 59 opposs whatever happened to school-based assessment in england’s gcses and a levels? sba current weighting sba new weighting french 60% 25% design & technology 60% 50% drama 60% 60% the effects have been most significant in gcse subjects that form part of the english baccalaureate, one of the accountability measures by which schools are judged. it is made up of english, mathematics, history or geography, the sciences and a language. some of the “current” figures in the table above have been largely unchanged for many years. therefore, in some subjects, these decisions do represent a significant transition in the assessment arrangements. for example, in gcse science subjects, the threats to validity shown by some current practices in controlled assessment have led to assessment in reformed courses being wholly through written examinations. however, there are requirements for a minimum percentage of exam marks to be assigned to questions that draw on prescribed practical skills. in cases where the nature of the subject may present challenges to the validity of external marking, such as art and design, assessment can be by the school, by the exam board or a combination of those. where valid marking can be achieved through assessment by the exam board, such as the speaking test in gcse french, assessment by the exam board is required. in some cases, with certain pressures and a fine balance exists between the pros and cons, such as in computer science, exam boards can select their approach. however, they are required to show that they have taken all reasonable steps to address the potential adverse effects of this chosen approach. ofqual also has two supplementary “rules” to the overall principle regarding nea. first, where ofqual determines that nea should be used in a subject, it specifies the weighting, the assessment objectives to be included and focus of that assessment, consistent with the specified content for that subject. not to do so would permit a variety in approaches that could threaten inter-syllabus comparability of standards. therefore, for example, in gcse music there is a 60% weighting for nea that must be equally split between composition and performance. second, where the most valid and sufficiently defensible way to assess a discrete part of a subject is through nea but the accuracy of that assessment would be a major threat to the exam result, the outcome of that assessment may be separated from the exam. one of the most contentious decisions taken was in the assessment of practical work in a level biology, chemistry and physics. ofqual carefully looked at the current arrangements for sba of practical skills and found that highly predictable assessments were leading to narrow teaching of these skills. most students were getting similar results bunched around the top of the mark scale and the assessments were open to malpractice. in response to this situation, ofqual decided that in the new science a levels, students will carry out practical work and they will get a ‘pass’ or ‘fail’ grade for this practical work but it will be separate from their grade for the written exam. exam boards will set out the requirements 60 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) for practical skills with each student carrying out at least 12 practical activities. the written exams will include questions in the context of these and other practical activities. similarly, in gcse english language, it was decided that marks from the spoken language aspect of the subject would not contribute towards the subject grade but be reported separately from the written exam on a three-point scale. in both of these examples, most particularly in the sciences, there were serious concerns raised that removing these aspects of the assessment from the main exam grade would lead schools to de-emphasise this aspect of the subject in their teaching. early indications in the sciences are encouraging. in most schools, being freed from the need to carry out set piece practicals with the aim of maximising marks has allowed teachers to provide students with much better opportunities to develop their skills and for the exercise and development of these skills to be better integrated into teaching and learning over the full course of study. 5. conclusions england is, of course, not alone in using sba. for example, it has been adopted in australian states such as new south wales, victoria and queensland, in some parts of the united states, including nebraska, new york and vermont and in hong kong (qian, 2014). in each jurisdiction, the success of sba depends on the context within which it operates. in the last 30 years, the context within which schools in england operate has changed considerably. secondary school leaders are now acutely aware of the serious consequences for them if accountability measures based on exam results are interpreted to mean that their performance is not acceptable. teachers are put in a difficult position when their assessments are used to judge their performance and that of their school and students. it can also create unfairness between schools because of different interpretations of the amount of assistance teachers can provide to students, different degrees to which teaching focuses on specific assessments and different marking expectations being applied to students’ work. sba practices in schools that 30 years ago may not have been considered at all may now be common. consequently, many forms of sba, particularly when used in the highest profile gcse subjects, can no longer be relied upon to produce valid and reliable outcomes. so despite the benefits that sba can bring to learning and motivation, its use in england’s gcses and a levels is now being restricted considerably to ensure that there is suitable confidence that students are being awarded appropriate grades in their exams. references colwill, i. 2007. improving gcse: internal and controlled assessment. london: qualifications and curriculum authority. ipsos mori. 2011. evaluation of the introduction of controlled assessment. available at http:// webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20141031163546/http://www.ofqual.gov.uk/files/201110-07-evaluation-of-the-introduction-of-controlled-assessment.pdf [accessed 4 july 2016]. major, j. 1991. education – all our futures. speech presented to the centre for policy studies, cafe royal in london, 3 july. available at http://www.johnmajor.co.uk/page867.html [accessed 4 july 2016]. 61 opposs whatever happened to school-based assessment in england’s gcses and a levels? office of qualifications and examinations regulation (ofqual). 2013. review of controlled assessment in gcses. coventry: office of qualifications and examinations regulation. office of qualifications and examinations regulation (ofqual). 2016. gcse (9 to 1) qualification level conditions and requirements. coventry: the office of qualifications and examinations regulation. qian, d. 2014. school-based english language assessment as a high-stakes examination component in hong kong: insights of frontline assessors. assessment in education: principles, policy & practice, 21(3), 251-270. https://doi.org/10.1080/0969594x.2014.915207 qualifications and curriculum authority (qca). 2005. a review of gce and gcse coursework arrangements. london: qualifications and curriculum authority. qualifications and curriculum authority (qca). 2008. gcse controlled assessment regulations. london: qualifications and curriculum authority. royal courts of justice. 2013. lb lewisham & ors v aqa, edexcel, ofqual & ors. available at https://www.judiciary.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/jco/documents/judgments/londonborough-lewisham-aqa-judgment-13022013.pdf [accessed 4 july 2016]. secondary examinations council (sec). 1986. working paper 3: policy and practice in school-based assessment, london: secondary examinations council. pie 33(4) book.indb perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 6 why study power in digital spaces anyway? considering power and participatory visual methods casey burkholder, mona makramalla, ehaab abdou, nazeeha khoja, and fatima khan in this article, we interrogate notions of power in relation to three participatory visual methods: drawing, photovoice, and making cellphilms (videos made on cell phones). in particular, we address power from the perspectives of foucault, freire, giroux, and hooks in a consideration of the power structures operating in and around participatory visual research. we seek to understand the power dynamics that operate in participatory visual research—particularly in relation to digital media. in so doing, we foreground the notion of power in a discussion of a workshop on participatory visual methodologies that we conducted as part of a graduate student conference. since participatory visual research artifacts can be both created and disseminated through digital spaces, this work offers implications for researchers working in this field. we conclude that more theoretical work needs to be done to enable us to articulate more fully the power dynamics at play in participatory visual research. keywords: educational research, participatory arts-based methodologies introduction participatory visual researchers put both participation and the visual at the centre of their inquiry. while participatory visual methods are often promoted as being democratic, particularly in relation to foregrounding marginalised voices in the casey burkholder mcgill university faculty of education department of integrated studies in education casey.burkholder@mail.mcgill.ca mona makramalla mcgill university faculty of education department of integrated studies in education mona.makramalla@mail.mcgill.ca ehaab abdou mcgill university faculty of education department of integrated studies in education ehaab.abdou@mail.mcgill.ca nazeeha khoja mcgill university faculty of education department of integrated studies in education nazeeha.khoja@mail.mcgill.ca fatima khan mcgill university faculty of education department of integrated studies in education fatima.khan2@mail.mcgill.ca why study power in digital spaces anyway? considering power and participatory visual methods casey burkholder, mona makramalla, ehaab abdou, nazeeha khoja, and fatima khan 7 research, there is a critical need to investigate the ways in which power operates in research practice. important issues such as researcher-reflexivity in the context of such participatory visual methodologies as drawing, photovoice, and cellphilms have been extensively discussed (see colombo, 2003; mitchell, 2011; milne, mitchell & de lange, 2012). other important topics such as visual ethics have evolved into sub-fields within participatory visual research (mitchell, 2011). while these subfields bring power into practice explicitly, we are interested in the ways in which the theorising of power could provide a more comprehensive approach in relation to what might be termed digital spaces. what could be gained by making the workings of power more explicit? how might interrogating theories of power contribute to critical and reflexive research practice? we explore some of the challenges in dissemination across digital spaces by using the perspectives of theorists michel foucault, paulo freire, henry giroux, and bell hooks who address power and who themselves have considered the significance of the visual to frame the article. in order to promote praxis in this work, we reflect on our own experiences as a research team of phd students who organised a workshop on participatory visual methodologies as part of a graduate student conference. in so doing, we interrogate power in relation to three methods associated with the visual and working with digital data: drawing and talking (literat, 2013), photovoice (wang & redwood-jones, 2001), and cellphilms (mitchell & de lange, 2013). drawings— as weber (2008) has articulated—can be used to account for, and illustrate elusive meanings that empower participants. photovoice is based on freirean notions of critical education, as well as feminist theory, and brings the previously unheard issues and images of communities to public audiences (wang & redwood-jones, 2001). cellphilms—as their name implies—use cellphone technology to engage participants in participatory video research (dockney & tomaselli, 2009). by grounding our workshop experiences in the work of influential theorists, we argue that for participatory visual research to be effective in advancing social change, researchers need to account for power dynamics within the research process itself. in this article, we inquire about the power dynamics at play in participatory visual research, particularly as we think about research creation and dissemination in digital spaces. mapping out power we start with foucault’s question, “do we need a theory of power?” while theory does not need to be the underlying basis of an analytical study, a study “cannot proceed without an ongoing conceptualization [of power]. and this conceptualization implies critical thought—a constant checking” (1982: 778). power, therefore, must be theorised so that participatory visual methods can undergo such a “constant checking.” we suggest that power dynamics are at play on at least four specific levels of participatory visual research. we argue that the first level of power refers to the participants and society. the second level is that of the power relations between perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 8 the researcher and the researched; the third is related to the power dynamics that are at play among the research participants themselves; and the fourth level, power and dissemination, refers to the ethics of dissemination of the various participatory visual products such as photos and videos, most notably in digital spaces. we ask how participatory visual methodologies can navigate these power dynamics, and how we can use visual methodologies to address unequal notions of power. the theorists mentioned above have recognised the influential role that the visual plays in constructing and deconstructing narratives. foucault brought the visual to his work on power through drawings. rajchman suggests that “a frequent device in foucault’s writing is before-and-after pictures. one is shown a picture from one period and then one from another. thus the question of how one passed from one system of thought to another is visualized” (1988: 90). freire believed in the power of codifications—visual and/or audible representations of situations that would be familiar to people. this codification, which could take the form of an image, video, or audio recording, allows participants to examine closely a seemingly normal situation without being submerged in it. freire describes codification as being both powerful and cathartic, enabling people to “externalize a series of sentiments and opinions about themselves, the world and others that they perhaps would not express under different circumstances” (2010:118). moreover, freire also believes that “the people must be challenged to discover their historical existence through the critical analysis of their cultural production: their art and their music” (cited in hall, 2005: 7). giroux suggests that narratives are often visual. modern culture, he says, is largely “photocentric” (1992: 219) since people are constantly exposed to different media including photography, television, and the digital realm, all of which contribute to shaping their understandings and identities (1994). additionally, hooks (1995) recognizes the power of visual artifacts since they are produced and consumed through the political lenses of gender, race and class (amongst other intersectional categories). inspired by freire, hooks (1995), in writing about the ways in which marginalised people experience art, argues that only when the marginalised are empowered to question the meanings of aesthetic norms, can art come to play a transformative role in liberating themselves and others. participants and society in participatory visual research criticality in research that uses participatory visual methods, participants are encouraged to examine their own reality in relation to their surroundings, communities, and societies. they are encouraged to problematise the status quo. freire (2010) states that the oppressors—those in power—subjugate marginalised populations by treating them as sub-human, and by teaching them hegemonic myths so as to further their marginalisation. freire suggests that the oppressed can liberate themselves by reflecting critically on their reality, engaging in dialogue, discovering the sources of why study power in digital spaces anyway? considering power and participatory visual methods casey burkholder, mona makramalla, ehaab abdou, nazeeha khoja, and fatima khan 9 their problems, and acting to transform their worlds. thus, for him, the oppressed must actively produce the counter knowledge that only they can produce. along the same lines, giroux encourages an interrogation of the “omissions and tensions that exist between the master narratives and hegemonic discourses” (1992: 33). further, he argues that a border pedagogy is needed to enable “border crossers” on both sides of the power dynamic to understand and question their power positions in relation to each other, and to the larger society. this starts with defining the borders, and in recognising where “existing borders forged in domination can be challenged and redefined” (28). in discussing african american marginalisation, hooks argues that education has been used to colonise marginalised masses by distorting history and literature to instill an “internalized self-hatred” (2010: 30). she recognises the importance of resistance that takes place when one self-consciously engages with dominant discourses in order to reconstruct them. in some cases, the very simple act of acknowledging a personal experience is an important step in and of itself. rendering an individual’s narrative invisible, in the classroom or beyond, and, we would add, in the research arena, could be more damaging to their self-esteem than a “full-frontal attack” (123) on it. connecting with participatory research in an effort to connect the views of these theorists to those of activist-researchers, we point to walsh’s (2012) argument that participatory visual methodologies need to be situated in an understanding of power, and in the political realities in which the research is undertaken in order to advocate for, and perhaps instigate, real social change outside of the research conditions. power relations between the researcher and the researched researcher’s role to address properly the dynamics of the second level of power between the researched and the researchers, it is important for participatory visual researchers to understand their role. freire tells educators that “it is not our role to speak to the people about our own view of the world, nor to attempt to impose that view on them, but rather to dialogue with the people about their view and ours” (2010: 96). bartlett (2005) reminds us that freire recommended that educators team up with individuals from the local community to investigate the themes that were most relevant to adult students so that they could be incorporated into a particular community’s literacy program. we believe that it is clear from this that freire believed that educators should also be participatory researchers or, as bartlett puts it, ethnographic researchers. foucault (1980) also advises those working towards social action in a community not to get overly attached to pre-existing assumptions and the belief that there is one true or best way. instead, as jardine explains, he suggests attempting perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 10 to understand, contextualise and pay attention to those who are the “object of… undesirable practice…and support how and why they are resisting the practice” (2005: 34). in addition, hooks calls for the practice of “radical openness” (2010:10) in which educators, and, we suggest, researchers, too, are open to new ideas and invested in challenging their own ways of knowing. providing a practical way to operationalise such “radical openness”, giroux proposes “emancipatory authority” that allows those with emancipatory visions to be aware of their own authority and open to situating it within a discourse in which it is made visible, recognised, and questioned as an “ethical, political, and social construction” (1994:163). the empowerment directive participatory researchers supposedly seek to empower participants while working in partnership with them, but we are critical of the notion that participatory researchers necessarily empower participants. as freire argues, it is the role of the educator— and, we argue, of the researcher too—to encourage marginalised participants to “objectify” their world and its realities in order to then “understand it and transform it” (2010: 125). thus, a researcher needs to embrace a “permanently critical attitude” (hooks, 2010: 187) through which she or he recognises that people are “co-investigators” (freire, 2010: 106), not objects. for this ideal relationship between researcher and researched to be realised, all those involved in such research need to recognise the subtle ways in which power dynamics operate and permeate different facets of interaction. as hooks asserts, the dominant groups exhibit attitudes that are empowered by, and work to enforce the “controlling apparatus in structures of domination” (1994: 81). these coercive power dynamics at play are what giroux insists should be resisted and challenged. if the ideological practices of the dominant culture were to be made visible—rather than normalised and invisible—the dominant group might indeed come to realise that their “own identities are beyond neither ethnicity, history, privilege, nor struggle” (1994: 91). only through full disclosure of power relations about the process of research, and a radically different interaction between researcher and participants, can participatory visual research achieve its emancipatory objectives. participants as co-researchers participatory visual researchers typically seek to transform the binary researcherresearched power dynamic into one in which both actors see themselves as co-researchers. after all, it is the participants who best know their realities and their worlds. freire (2010) insists on recruiting local community members to be part of the investigative teams that determine the issues that are crucial to social transformation. he reiterates the objective of transformative research as being about “the people themselves and not the advancement of science” (1982: 34). freire would commend participatory researchers for believing that “people have the universal right to participate in the production of knowledge,” seeing in this process “an authentic power for liberation that ultimately destroys a passive waiting of fate” (1997: xi). why study power in digital spaces anyway? considering power and participatory visual methods casey burkholder, mona makramalla, ehaab abdou, nazeeha khoja, and fatima khan 11 in subscribing to praxis and the need for a dialogic relationship between theory, research and action, and in calling for theories that connect to participants’ lived experiences, hooks argues that “personal testimony, personal experience, is … fertile ground for the production of liberatory feminist theory” (1994: 70). theory, in this case, is an attempt to make sense of the world by critically reflecting on it and envisioning different solutions. thus, for her, the act of solving problems in our daily lives could lead to engaging in a “critical process of theorizing” (1994:71) that empowers people by building resistance to unquestioned dominant narratives. within the scope of “engaged pedagogy”, hooks (2010) argues that all learners bring valuable contributions to their learning processes that can be addressed only through the full participation of both learners’ and teachers’ lived experiences. we argue that the same point applies to researchers and participants. turning hooks’s point to our advantage we believe that social change is encouraged when researchers are willing to share power with their participants. this begins to be possible only when the researcher problematises the existing researcher-researched power discrepancies that so often echo those between teacher and learner. connecting with participatory action research in looking at the power dynamics between the researcher and researched, hall problematises the role of academics in participatory research in the global south, and challenges the “positivist research paradigms [that are] carried out largely by university-based researchers” (2005:14), arguing that academics should not monopolise the doing of research. he also highlights the failure of participatory research to adequately address race. choudry (2012) points to the significance of the knowledge produced by activists working on the ground, a knowledge that often leads to action. prins (2010) also stresses the importance of researchers’ awareness of the context-specific sociocultural norms with regard to the use of visual technologies in their participatory research projects. we look to these practitioners who bring power to participatory action research, and keep their critiques in mind as we theorise three participatory visual methodologies: drawing, photovoice, and cellphilms. power dynamics between participants resisting the oppressor within the shifting power relations between research participants must also be theorised. we argue that existing social conditions, dominant social attitudes, and values must be recognised for individuals to be able to begin to address oppression, resist it, and transform the situation. freire (2010) cautions against the tendency of marginalised actors and groups to internalise and exhibit the traits of their oppressors. in similar vein, hooks discusses the need to decolonise minds, a challenging task since most individuals are fully immersed in the “dominator culture” (2010: 27). freire warns that marginalised groups often “feel an irresistible attraction to oppressors and their way of life” (2010: 62) and may try to emulate these unequal relations. he points perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 12 out that transforming social conditions is possible only through the recognition of existing power. jordan (2003) complicates the notion of participation in participatory research. he calls attention to power issues, and questions the possibility of participatory methodologies to be co-opted by those invested in upholding the status quo. rooted in freirean philosophy, robert chambers—a key figure in the field of participatory rural appraisal techniques—reminds us that at the heart of the whole research process are the marginalised who should have a say in how the data they generate is being analysed and interpreted. chambers argues that the “poor and exploited people can and should be enabled to analyse their own reality” (1997:106). the collective effort there is also an important collective element to participatory visual research. as freire notes, actors need to be united and fully engaged in the pursuit of their own emancipation. for him, “we cannot say that in the process of revolution someone liberates someone else, but rather that human beings in communion, liberate each other” (2010: 133). as hooks (1994) argues, any change requires a collective effort and cannot be achieved by a single individual. in effecting social change collective effort may well serve to help lessen or even do away with unequal power relations. power and dissemination the theorists on whom we draw have helped us articulate questions for consideration with regard to the ethics of dissemination. assuming that the researcher and participants have been able to question their positions of power successfully, what is the status of the participant-generated data? who owns the research data produced in visual participatory projects? do the researchers have the right to speak on behalf of the participants whether in academic settings or in those of international development or policy-making? who should have the right to access, use, and disseminate visual products? as mitchell (2011) asks, should there be digital community archives, and if so, how should they be maintained? we believe, of course, that ethics should govern all aspects of participatory visual research but the ethics involved in deciding how to disseminate its findings, in particular, are worth further consideration. scholars have analysed the different visual research products, as well as their means of dissemination, including mass media and culture (giroux, 1994). the ethics of disseminating visual products has also been examined in publications aimed at international donors and policy-makers (nguyen & mitchell, 2012). in these contexts, an aspect of power relates to what is being communicated, and for what purposes. nguyen and mitchell (2012) warn that researchers and policy-makers need to be aware of the messages they hope to convey, and to consider carefully which images they choose to convey those messages, especially in influential texts such as reports for policy-makers and international agencies. in analysing some images selected by international agencies why study power in digital spaces anyway? considering power and participatory visual methods casey burkholder, mona makramalla, ehaab abdou, nazeeha khoja, and fatima khan 13 that depict childhood in developing countries, they argue that these published and disseminated images serve, for example, to reinforce stigma which, in turn, works to maintain unequal power structures and cement ill-informed worldviews. it is imperative that participants be included in the selection process of material to be disseminated, and be enabled to give their informed consent. this would necessitate the return of the researcher(s) to the communities from which the visual data has been generated so as to share opinions and establish the appropriateness of the material for dissemination. only in this way can the (perhaps unavoidable) inequities of power between the researcher and the researched begin to be addressed ethically in relation to the dissemination process. seeing for ourselves: studying power in the use of participatory visual methods in practice to address the way that power operates across participatory visual methodologies, we organised a 60-minute workshop at mcgill university’s 2014 education graduate students’ society’s conference in order to study the participatory nature of visual methodologies, particularly the digital, and the way in which these methods promote reflection, transformation, and social action. we provided a space for researchers to practise drawing, photovoice, and making cellphilms for themselves; to view the products that we co-created; and to engage in a reflexive discussion about the place of power in this process. recent research in the area of participatory visual methodologies has highlighted the potential for these methods to “provoke reflexivity amongst participants by prompting them to look back at their experiences in relation to others and in a broader social context” (yang, 2013: 113). framing the workshop in a larger discussion of power, we asked the eight workshop participants to examine ethical issues in relation to drawing, photovoice, and cellphilms. following the workshop, we worked as a team to engage in reflexive inquiry about our workshop facilitation, and to consider what it might be like to have foucault, freire, giroux or hooks looking over our shoulders as we asked questions about how each one of us understood the power operating in the workshop. workshop structure we began the workshop by introducing the implications of using participatory visual methods in research, and provided three practical examples of our engagement with drawing, photovoice, and cellphilms. we examined these methods along with some points relating to the theories of power of freire, foucault, hooks, and giroux. in the workshop, we briefly described how these theorists’ notions of power applied to our practice in using participatory visual research.1 after situating the ways in which power operates within our distinct research contexts, we provided specific prompts to enable the participants to examine power in the three methodologies. perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 14 drawing we first invited participants to draw a response to a particular prompt to examine the personal experiences that graduate students encounter during their first year at graduate school. we asked participants to draw-and-talk or draw-and-write about a positive experience that they had had during their first year in graduate school. we used the drawing exercise to facilitate a discussion (draw-and-talk) in a safe space to discuss their thoughts, feelings and experiences. participants explored the method, and shared their drawings and stories with the group in a larger discussion. figure 1: drawing on collaboration each workshop participant took ten minutes to draw his or her response to the prompt. the participants then shared their drawings with the group, and explored the notion of power through the positive experience each had drawn. a goal of this method is to use the process of drawing and talking to facilitate thoughtful explanations and discussions. we offer in image 1, jenny’s2 drawing, which depicted herself and four other women with whom she worked to present a panel discussion on arts-based methodologies in educational research at the comparative and international education society’s annual conference. as she explained, rather than feeling overwhelmed about her first experience at this society’s conference, presenting in a group made her feel comfortable. as a new researcher, she felt that being on a panel made her feel part of a community of graduate students and also of arts-based researchers. photovoice in the photovoice activity, participants worked in two groups of four. both groups were given approximately ten minutes to respond to the prompt to depict educational symbols of power and strength and/or weakness. each of the groups represented its why study power in digital spaces anyway? considering power and participatory visual methods casey burkholder, mona makramalla, ehaab abdou, nazeeha khoja, and fatima khan 15 response by taking a photograph which they then shared with the other participants. one group decided that spectacles (see image 2) symbolise both power and weakness. although participants agreed that glasses are traditionally viewed as symbols of intelligence and authority, they may also evoke the aging process. they may also suggest how people who need to wear glasses might feel in thinking themselves inferior to those who have better eyesight. as a result of their discussion, three group members chose to exhibit their glasses along with an open case. the surrounding items are relevant educational symbols—objects from the previous drawing activity as well as pictures of the theorists whose notions of power we discussed as a prelude to the activities. the red backpack holds significance in that it was considered an educational symbol of power, weakness, and vulnerability because of the sheer weight of what has to be loaded into it to carry out one’s academic life. once the photo was printed, the group’s reflections on power and weakness were shared with other workshop participants. figure 2: on educational symbols of power, strength and/or weakness cellphilms in the cellphilm activity, we again had two groups of four whose members discussed ideas related to the prompt to show personal experiences of education and power. all participants were encouraged to present their ideas. each group chose a concept that could be filmed, and worked together after brainstorming ideas and perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 16 then developing one of them into a cellphilm. one group filmed a scene between a healthcare provider, two employees, and their manager. the group used a storyboard to plan the scene before shooting it by dividing it into two shots so that they could film without editing. the group also practised making the cellphilm before filming the final version since the no editing required (ner) (mitchell & de lange, 2011) approach was used. in the first shot, the healthcare provider distributes brochures and speaks to two employees about the importance of getting the flu shot. the first employee agrees to get the flu vaccine since it had been recommended by her employer. the second employee questions the method and explains that she prefers to use a natural alternative. in the second shot, the manager contacts the second employee, who has stayed home because she has the flu, and criticises her refusal to get vaccinated. figure 3: cellphilm storyboard focusing on power and participatory visual research engaging in the study of power through participatory visual methods with participants proved to be challenging both in relation to the theme of power and the actual doing of the workshop. this was particularly the case in the drawing activity since many participants noted that they were “not good at drawing.” talking through this reticence can encourage participants to dialogue about the ways in which they can engage with a specific question or prompt despite the feeling that they believe themselves why study power in digital spaces anyway? considering power and participatory visual methods casey burkholder, mona makramalla, ehaab abdou, nazeeha khoja, and fatima khan 17 to lack drawing skills because, after all, drawing as a methodology is about engaging with a visual text, rather than necessarily being proficient at drawing. rather, the goal of the draw-and-talk method is to use the drawing to initiate a discussion while the draw-and-write method begins with drawing and includes the creation a piece of reflexive writing. another challenge was that some participants felt uncomfortable about sharing their drawings. in our reflections on the power of the drawing prompt, it was clear that the prompt itself directed the participants to experience power positively. had we chosen a prompt that asked participants to examine any experience of power in their graduate school careers, we most probably would have been provided with different data. we need to ask if this clear direction towards depicting a positive experience of power could be perceived as a limitation of our workshop. should we have left the choice of a positive or negative experience to the participants? however, noting the role that the slant, as it were, of the prompt played in influencing participant output provides useful insights into ways that a researcher can unintentionally shape the participants’ experiences as well as the representation of such experiences in visual participatory research. in choosing a specific prompt that directed participants’ experiences, we asked for specific kinds of knowledge to be represented. this is worth delving more deeply into in an examination of the role of the power the researcher has in formulating a prompt in relation to the participants, and the role it has in determining the artifacts that participants produce. unlike that used in the drawing activity, the prompt used in the cellphilm activity was broad, and this encouraged participants to share a variety of ideas and understandings. also, because filming with cellphones was a familiar practice for most participants, there appeared to be a relative sense of ease amongst them in contrast to the hesitance they showed when asked to draw. nevertheless, manifestations of power became apparent when participants worked as a group to discuss ideas, and plan the cellphilms. we attempted to minimise the power imbalance between participants by giving each participant adequate time and space to share ideas. brainstorming gave all the participants opportunities to share their thoughts and this had the potential to reduce the power imbalance between and amongst participants. further, the joint planning of a storyboard and its creation played a role in making a cellphilm that reflected each group members’ perspective. yet, power still played a part in this cellphilm process. for example, the participant who was chosen to film the scene had control over what was filmed, included, and excluded. further, since this activity was part of a workshop, participants had limited time to build a trusting relationship with each other and this might have influenced the distribution of power. we wonder, too, if the power of the facilitator can ever be mitigated, or even more explicitly addressed in participatory visual work. how might this be accomplished? what might this look like? what effect might this have on the data produced? perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 18 what would the theorists say? through the use of drawings, photovoice, and the making of cellphilms, our workshop invited participants to reflect on different kinds of power in different contexts of participatory visual research. from a critical and reflexive standpoint, we observed how power was at play throughout the workshop. the challenges and limitations we faced reinforced our awareness of how power operates in participatory visual research and our recognition of the value of being able to theorise it. what implications does this have for other researchers working in the field? because of the rapidly evolving nature and complexities of digital spaces, we, as researchers using participatory visual methodologies, need awareness of, and tools to enable us to address, the power dynamics that influence our collaboration with participants. thus we look to bridge the gap between theory and practice, critically reflect on these power dynamics in visual research, and work collectively with participants to challenge and eliminate, or at least minimise, the workings of unequal power. it seems to us as we reflect on the experience of this workshop that there were some critical points that are worth noting in relation to the work of the theorists with which we began this article, and their ideas about power. for example, we encouraged the participants to engage in dialogue, and we provided space for them to explore their own notions of power, and in this way we might be described as freirean. however, as facilitators, we still took up most of the space in the workshop. we provided participants with opportunities to share and to speak, but we most often mediated these conversations. what might freire have thought about this? we were aware of our power, and we were interrogating notions of voice and representation, but at the same time we did most of the talking. instead of encouraging the groups to come up with their own prompts about power and participatory visual methodologies, we brought these prompts to the workshop. while we did this in the interests of time management, we have to acknowledge that the prompts directed the types of responses the participants generated. thus, the prompts directed what participants explored, and how they explored these issues. did we encourage unequal power relations in the very structuring of the workshop? upon reflection, we realise that not only did we explore power primarily from the perspective of three male scholars (foucault, freire, giroux) and only one female, who is also the only person of colour amongst these thinkers (hooks), we might even ask if we were maintaining and enforcing unequal power relations through our examination of primarily privileged male discussions of power. did this affect our participants’ experiences? in the workshop, the majority of participants were females who represented experiences with power through a discussion of age, lack of confidence, and feelings of marginalisation. however, we did not address racialised or gendered experiences of power. if we had made these discussions more apparent (or explicit) in our brief presentations on the notions of power of foucault, freire, giroux and hooks, might the participants have explored power differently? did we maintain oppressive structures even within a workshop on power? why study power in digital spaces anyway? considering power and participatory visual methods casey burkholder, mona makramalla, ehaab abdou, nazeeha khoja, and fatima khan 19 another power structure that we neglected to think about in our workshop is related to the politics of dissemination even though, as we note earlier, we identify this as a fourth level of power in relation to participatory visual research. our participants created visual products or artifacts, but we limited the sharing to a few moments toward the end of the workshop and there was no dissemination beyond the workshop. we had not planned sufficient time for participants to create, view, and critically discuss their productions, and, perhaps, even exchange them with each other. how did our limiting the ways in which we could have disseminated the artifacts or the ideas behind them maintain unequal power relations? overall then, although informed by theories of power, in practice, our participatory visual workshop did not necessarily subvert unequal power structures. were we doing it badly or incorrectly? should we have asked participants to create products that could be disseminated digitally beyond the workshop? could it have made a difference in terms of the products that were produced? in writing and seeking to disseminate this reflexive piece about our workshop experience, are we assuming sole ownership of the data that emerged when in reality these productions are co-owned with the participants in the workshop? what might the theorists foucault, freire, giroux, and hooks have to say about this? conclusion as digital spaces in educational research have become more accessible and immediate, theories of power and its intricacies within participatory visual methodologies remain inadequately discussed and dismantled. power dynamics can intentionally or unintentionally influence, alter, and/or transform the voices of marginalised people in researchers’ attempts to effect social change—especially in the digital realm. participatory visual research is often touted as being more democratic than traditional qualitative and quantitative methodologies, and the digital realm makes similar democratic claims about accessibility and freedom of expression. how might new publics take up the products of participatory visual research in the digital realm? how might the anonymity granted by the internet maintain and undermine unequal power relations? how might we think about democracy, participation, the digital realm, and power? from our own reflections, and in thinking about the ways in which we maintained unequal power relations despite wanting to do the opposite, we suggest that participatory visual research—particularly in the digital realm—must be understood as having instances of power that need to be challenged. we continue to ask how our research can subvert unequal power relations. acknowledgements we gratefully acknowledge the support and participation from the participants in our power and visual methodologies workshop at mcgill. we are also thankful for the support, careful edit, and thoughtful feedback of dr. ann smith, and we are grateful to dr. claudia mitchell who inspired and mentored us throughout the writing of this article. perspectives in education 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young people’s sense of self, belonging, and citizenship through cellphilms in hong kong. 2. this is a pseudonym. 126 resilience of the socioeducational afterschool and community intervention dropin centre abstract this study seeks to describe the socio-educational afterschool intervention programme run by a drop-in centre to fight poverty, strengthen and build resilience in families and school microsystems. indigenous psychology is used as a theoretical lens to understand the school, family and community response to contextual challenges and how resilience is conceptualised. the study took place at a drop-in centre, working with families, schools and community organisations in the pretoria township of mamelodi, south africa. methods used to collect data included a focus group with community care workers (ccws) (n = 10) employed by the drop-in centre and a participatory reflection and action (pra) method with caregivers (n = 18) of schoolchildren attending the drop-in centre. the focus group and pra workshop were audiorecorded and transcribed. the community intervention programme uses a systems approach to fight poverty, build capacity and sustainability in families and school systems. findings suggest that caregivers view the educational success and achievement of their children as an indication of their own success and accomplishment of their dreams, with the aim to uplift and dignify the family standing in society and to alleviate or eradicate poverty. socio-educational programmes for children and families serve to strengthen resilience in families and to decolonise the social programmes and policies. furthermore, ccws confirmed that to ensure sustainability, three systems of child development are considered, namely the family (home visits), the school (satellite centres within the school) and the individual system (life-skills programme). keywords: child development, community care workers, drop-in centre, indigenous psychology, resilient, sustainable 1. introduction the south african government inherited poorly resourced black townships and residential areas from the apartheid government. policies and programmes on redress were introduced. these included the constitution of the republic of south africa, the social grant programme administered by the south african social security agency (sassa), no fee-paying schools (quintile 4), agriculture support programmes, the municipality rebate to indigent households and the reconstruction and development programme (rdp) (aliber, 2003; the presidency, republic of south africa, 2014). the post-apartheid report by the dr mr mampane university of pretoria, department of educational psychology, email: ruth. mampane@up.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i2.10 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(2): 126-141 © uv/ufs mailto:ruth.mampane@up.ac.za mailto:ruth.mampane@up.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.10 127 mampane resilience of the socio-educational afterschool and community intervention drop-in centre presidency confirms that much progress has been made towards equity and the dismantling of apartheid policies (the presidency, republic of south africa, 2014). it is important to note that the policies on redress focuses on dismantling colonial and apartheid policies (decolonising) and liberating the south african population. many south africans continue to experience social and economic adversity. the most recent poverty trends report by statistics south africa indicates poverty levels of approximately 24% of the population. a poverty trends report conducted in 2015 by statistics south africa shows that 13.8 million south africans live below the food poverty line (fpl), which amounts to r441 income per person per month (stats sa, 2017a: 14). the statistical survey conducted in 2015 showed that, 30.4 (55.5%) million south africans live below the upper-bound poverty line (ubpl, equalling to r992 per person per month); while 21.9 (40%) million living below the lower bound poverty line (lbpl equalling to r647) (stats sa, 2017a: 14). south africa has a population of 56.52 million people (stats sa, 2017a). across racial lines, statistics show that between 2011 and 2015, the proportions of black africans and coloureds living below the lbpl in south africa increased from 43.4% to 47.1% for blacks and from 20.2% to 23.3% for the coloured population. the government of south africa instituted “social wage” programmes to alleviate poverty in homes of vulnerable population groups. the social wage programme include provision of “free primary health care; no-fee paying schools; social protection (most notably old-age grants and child support grants); rdp housing; and the provision of free basic services (namely water, electricity and sanitation) to poor households” (stats sa, 2017a: 8). the impact of the social wage over poverty reduction is seen with the reduction of poverty levels from 17.9% in 2001 to 8.0% in 2011, which then fell further to 7.0% by 2016 (stats sa, 2017a: 9). the social grants (old age and child support grant) counted among the “social wage” programmes (stats sa, 2017a) instituted by the government of south africa meant to alleviate poverty, has instead turned into the only source of income for most families. considering the above statistics, most families experience adverse poverty and require government poverty alleviation programmes to bring dignity into their lives. owing to the entrenched inequalities of apartheid, even with continuous investment in infrastructure, the upgrading of community resources and quality municipal service delivery, much is required to actualise equity, equality and redress. many households still experience the impact of poverty that emanates from the apartheid years. research about pre-apartheid south africa attests to inequality and poverty (aliber, 2003; armstrong, lekezwa & siebrits, 2008; leibbrandt et al., 2010) and human rights violations (kaminer et al., 2001; kagee, 2004) experienced by south african black, coloured and indian people. social support programmes serve to intervene on existing risk and adversity, and build resilience in the community. such programmes provide an impetus to address particular needs within the community, as well as to prevent risk or the escalation of risk. the department of social development (dsd) uses such programmes to implement policy. accordingly, heaney and israel (2008) state that social support represents the behavioural and functional aspects of a relationship, characterised by four main aspects: emotional, instrumental, informational and appraisal support. ozbay et al. (2007: 37) contend that social support programmes have to develop resources and enable access for individuals, groups and larger communities. lakey and cohen (2000) confirm that social support is relational and amounts to the provision of actual assistance during stressful times. in accordance with the above definitions, social support hinges on interaction, the promotion of access, ensuring availability, communication, promoting a sense of control and resilience in recipients. it is fitting to view social support 128 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) programmes in correlation with intervention programmes, due to their value of being community-based, relational and interactive in assisting communities to manage adversity in their environment. dsd oversees the social grant programme, which aims to fulfil the mandate of the government in poverty alleviation through the south african social security agency. a study commissioned by south african social security agency (sassa) and the united nations children’s fund (unicef) south africa (2013) found that 76 per cent (7.56 million) of eligible children (0-17 years) were receiving the child social grants (csg). at the same time, another 23.7 per cent (2.35 million) of eligible children were not receiving the csg due to a lack of access in 2011. one other way of making social support accessible to destitute and vulnerable families is through the institution of social support programmes such as drop-in centres. the statisticiangeneral, dr pali lehohla, confirmed that vulnerable population groups (children aged 17 years and younger; female population and 60 years and older persons) require resource allocation to improve their lives (stats sa, 2017b). vulnerable groups are defined as “part of the south african population that experience a higher risk of poverty and social exclusion than the general population” (stats sa, 2017b: 1). 1.1 theoretical lens of indigenous psychology for the purpose of this study, the lens of indigenous psychology (ip) is used. ip proves relevant to present contextual adversities that threaten the survival of families and children in the 24% of the south african population living below the food poverty line. the role of policy (policy and culture) is core in influencing the survival of the family as a microsystem. this study does not focus on the culture of the participants, but rather predominantly on the effects of policy and its implementation to ensure the survival of the participants mostly at the family and individual system. ip is a field of psychology that developed as a contestation against universal adoption of the western cultural foundations of mainstream psychology. the argument forwarded in the field is that mainstream psychology is based on specific cultures of the society it investigated (allwood, 2011). thus, ip acknowledges that existing psychological theories are based on decontextualised aspects of human behaviour, rather than being universal, where elements of parochialism have been discounted or overlooked. core to the field of ip is, firstly, the critique of existing psychological theories for assuming universality and secondly, the continued focus on the research towards discovering psychological universals in cultural, social and ecological contexts (kim, yang & hwang, 2006). the authors concur that ip investigates the beliefs, skills and knowledge of how people function in their social, cultural, ecological and familial context. ip researchers use theoretical, conceptual and empirical descriptions to develop, test and explain ideas and observed regularities. thus, it is conceptualised as “an evolving system of psychological knowledge based on scientific research that is sufficiently compatible with the studied phenomena and their ecological, economic, social, cultural, and historical context” (kim et al., 2006: 4). dsd uses the drop-in centre to implement government policies on redress of inequalities in society, providing access to social development programmes, while empowering families and individuals to develop entrepreneurial and social skills to overcome unemployment and poverty in their lives. furthermore, the drop-in centre aims to provide employment to 129 mampane resilience of the socio-educational afterschool and community intervention drop-in centre community care-workers who implement the policy and are instrumental in enacting the core responsibilities of the drop-in centre. 2. context of the study: drop-in day-care centre intervention programme research shows that drop-in centres are top-down community empowerment programmes (laverack & labonte, 2000) run by professionals with the purpose of creating equity and promoting social relations. in the case of this study, the dsd was responsible for the administration of the drop-in centre. because of their core focus, it is important for the organisation to build sustainability into the programme, to avoid service interruption and to empower and promote employment in the community it serves. shediac-rizkallah and bone (1998) confirm that community support programmes are often designed to enhance policy implementation focusing on the demonstration of social support programmes using the seed funding provided by the government. what children do as well as where and how they spend their time after the formal school programme is significant for their development. research has shown that afterschool programmes “provide youth with a safe and supportive environment that is supervised by adults and offers various growth-enhancing opportunities, including activities and experiences that promote young people’s academic, personal, social, recreational and cultural development”, offering more value and interest (durlak & weissberg, 2007: 10). community intervention programmes, such as the afterschool drop-in centre, functions as a buffer to families that struggle to provide academic support to their children such as homework assistance; adequate food and nutrition provision and educational programmes with social and personal skill development. most afterschool programmes assist families through organised and structured activities with child supervision, academic assistance and teaching of personal and social skills (durlak & weissberg, 2007; durlak, weissberg & pachan, 2010). the drop-in centres in this study play an important role in the community. however, sustainability is core to their survival. figure 1 indicates the organisational structure, as depicted through observations and conversations with the centre social worker ms petunia. the centre was not able to provide an existing organogram on record. however, different forms of partnerships emerged from the organisational structure. inter-sectoral partnerships between schools (the department of basic education), the dsd and businesses (corporate citizenship) are essential to sustain service delivery. the matimba sinqobile integrated social development facility was officially opened in june 2012 (south african government, 2012), and it might be too early to know if the programme can sustain itself over an extended period. it was opened by government in 1991 to alleviate poverty and is coordinated by the dsd (lavela consulting & investment cc, 2010). according to ms petunia, the organisation assists 95 families and 180 orphaned and vulnerable children (on daily basis, 180 children are provided one meal on weekdays after school). 130 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2)   department of social development policy implementation stanza community centre ovc drop-in centre 1. family focused support 2. academic and lifeskill programmes for children – afterschool and holiday programmes 3. personal development programmes – employability and entrepreneurship partnership with business networking with other government organisations e.g. saps; clinics; home-affairs; schools (drop-in centre) ngos npos matimba sinqobile integrated community based support programme (three programmes) 1. early childhood centre 2. ovc drop-in centre 3. older persons centre figure 1: the operational and organisational structure of the drop-in centre the drop-in centre has collaborates with three nearby quintile 4 primary schools, where it has satellite stations. the schools have an open classroom and office space, where community care-workers from the drop-in centre manage the social support programmes. children from these primary schools do not travel to matimba sinqobile, but receive social and academic support from community care-workers stationed at the schools. according to the social worker, ms petunia, (who is stationed at matimba sinqobile drop-in centre, but also visits the satellite centres), the core activities receiving focus include what is capture below in figure 2. 131 mampane resilience of the socio-educational afterschool and community intervention drop-in centre psychosocial support to families and children nutrition support to children and families academic support to children family/communityoriented programmes entrepreneurial programme • profiling of the organisation beneficiaries for social services referral • assisting clients to identity and access community resources • providing crisis intervention, emergency shelter services • implementing life skills workshops • substance abuse treatment programmes • behaviour management programmes • youth services programmes • rendering of emotional, social and psychological support services to orphaned and vulnerable children • running support and counselling groups • parental support • networking with stakeholders, e.g. home affairs, saps, sassa, clinics, schools • daily meals to orphaned and vulnerable children after school (to most children it is the last meal of the day) • provision of food parcels to the families (monthly) • providing daily life skills programmes e.g. behaviour modifications relationship building; mathematics assistance; personal development programmes such as self-esteem; hygiene advice • educational support (homework supervisions) • social programmes (socialisation with peers after school; peer assistance and grouping for homework assistance and support) • opportunity to play with friends when homework is completed • supervision and support from careworkers during homework • life skills development programmes for adults • entrepreneur skills • computer skills • job-seeking skills figure 2: synopsis of the programmes offered by the drop-in centre to orphaned and vulnerable children 132 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) 3. methodology the research adopted a qualitative phenomenological research approach. according to lester (1999:1), phenomenology purports to accomplish common experiences of the group by illuminating the specific, identifying phenomena of research as well as understanding and recording how participants perceive the situation. finally, the focus is on the participants’ subjective experiences, personal knowledge and interpretation of their experiences (lester, 1999; palmer et al., 2010). accordingly, phenomenological research relies on “participants’ specific statements and experiences rather than abstracting from their statements to construct a model from the researcher’s interpretation” (creswell et al., 2007: 252). ethical approval was granted by the university and permission was granted by the organisation to conduct research. participation was voluntary and all participants signed consent forms. figure 3 includes the participants and the research questions guiding the research: participants questions data collection method community care-workers n = 10 which afterschool programmes are offered by matimba sinqobile drop-in centre? what are the benefits of the programmes to the children and their families? focus group caregivers n =18 which programmes does the matimba sinqobile drop-in centre offer? how do/did you benefit from the programmes? workshop discussions using semi-structured questions figure 3: participants and the research questions of the study 3.1 data analysis two sets of data were analysed inductively using qualitative techniques of content and thematic analysis. inductive analysis is essential in qualitative research because it helps to eliminate researcher bias. since it is not theory driven, but data-driven, it eliminates the researcher’s preconceptions and bias during the data analysis process (nieuwenhuis, 2007; shaw, 2010). data generated through workshop discussions with caregivers was conventionally analysed through content analysis (see table 1). according to stemler (2001: 137), content analysis is a technique that uses explicit rules of coding to systematically replicate and compress many words into fewer content categories. conventional content analysis is inductive and focuses more on content and the contextual meaning of text. data generated through focus groups with drop-in centre staff members (care-workers) was analysed through inductive thematic analysis. 4. community caregivers’ focus group findings community care-workers of matimba sinqobile drop-in centre reported that the drop-in centre’s core focus is to provide service to the neighbouring community through social support programmes. the drop-in centre’s core purpose is to maintain and establish relationships, provide service and assistance, communicate information, give advice to the community it 133 mampane resilience of the socio-educational afterschool and community intervention drop-in centre serves and to use socio-educational programmes to fight past injustices. following a thematic analysis, three themes were identified. 4.1 theme 1: our job is about bringing hope to children and families participants indicated that their job is important, because they influence change and bring hope to the lives of the community they serve. hope is a protective factor. there is the expectation of good outcomes and that things will be better. hope has a future focus and brings about a positive outlook: without us, there won’t be hope … changing the lives of young people, or families, not that you’re changing them permanently, but you are bringing hope to them. i wish you could see when we are giving them something, like when we were giving them blankets, the happy face – you understand? or when they come and eat, that hope that one day things are going to be alright. this tells you, as an individual, that at least what i am doing gives hope to someone. the services provided motivate children at the drop-in centre to be hopeful of their future, to have dreams and future goals, transform their social-educational status and to focus on role models. one surprising thing about this is also that, a lot of the times when you ask the children from the drop-in centre what they would like to do when they grow up, they say they want to be a social worker … some of those that are already older they are even able to say, “you know mamma, i want to help younger kids like the way you guys are helping us here”. 4.2 theme 2: core afterschool programme the afterschool programme for children focuses on adult supervision of children especially after school, creating a routine and rituals through repetitive daily activities such as meal taking rituals, planning of weekday nutrition programme (meals), teaching life skills, assistance with classwork and homework, and engaging in fun activities with the children: on monday i would be checking the books and on tuesday we do bible studies with the kids, and on wednesday life-skills and on thursday we do the games and friday we check the books again. […] if a child comes from school after two they spend the rest of the day here then you’re not going to worry about buying bread for that particular time […] after school programme at the drop-in centre focuses around supporting children with a meal. children’s programmes include psychosocial supports. and also, with the children is a support group or educational group […] ja, even that life skill talk with them. 4.3 theme 3: family integrated afterschool programme it is not sufficient for the caregivers to focus on children only, they also visit families to find out how they cope and the form of support they might receive. the day is structured into mornings with families and community members and afternoons are normally dedicated to children coming to the drop-in centre. the demand for home visits differs for every month, because if the family has no immediate concerns, then there is no need to visit regularly. there would be constant visits until we can do something about the issue the family has, so as to make the situation bearable. the main thing that you do when you go visit families is to ask them what their concerns are. so, if you’ve already been to that family and you go again, you still ask the same questions. 134 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) 5. findings from caregivers of the children’s workshop the demographic information of caregivers is captured in table 1. the table shows that all participants are female. none has a grade 12 certificate (the exit-level qualification for basic education). the highest qualification of the majority of the participants (44.44%) is grade 7 (primary education level). the participants with no formal education represent 27.78% of the sample. the highest qualification is grade 11, which is 16.67% of the participants. only 11.11% of the participants have grade 9, which is the exit-level for compulsory education. based on the age of the participants, all were born during the apartheid era (before 1994), which was characterised by a poor education system for black south africans. the age group ≤ 80 years makes up 33.3% (the most represented age group). a total of 16% of the participants aged ≤ 70 years have a grade 7 education and 11% of this age group reported that the matimba sinqobile programme had helped them socially (relational aspects of the programme). the participants aged ≤ 60 (16.6%) showed no trend in terms of schooling, as their answers were broadly distributed. illiteracy (no formal education) is represented by 27.7% of the sample, whereas the majority of the sample (44.4%) represents functional illiteracy (primary school education). unesco (2006: 153) defines literacy as “the ability of an individual to read and write with understanding a simple short statement related to his or her everyday life”. statistics south africa (2015) confirms that national literacy rates have improved from 91.9% in 2010 to 93.7% in 2015 in the population group ≤ 20 years. however, for the adult population, it is high in some provinces; the highest is kwazulu-natal (92.8%) (statistics south africa, 2015). 5.1 marital status and poverty more than sixty-one per cent (61.1%) of the sample (11 participants) are divorced, widowed or single (living in female-headed households). six participants (33.3% of the sample) are married. research shows that female-headed households have fewer income-earners and are consequently predisposed to higher levels of poverty (horrell & krishnan, 2007) when compared to other types of households (snyder, mclaughlin & findeis, 2006), including male-headed households (woolard, 2002). similarly, social grant beneficiaries in the study are reported by 61.1% of the participants, where six participants (33.33%) indicated that they have informal jobs, support from family member/s, or a formal job (viz. they do not rely on social grants for financial support). thus, 50% of the sample participants who are divorced, widowed and single rely on social grants for their family income. table 1 shows that all but one participant (94.4% of the sample) (missing data) care for other family members (grandchildren, own children and relatives). grandparents (77.7%) tend to share their homes with grandchildren and their older children. the role of grandparents as primary caregivers is highly represented in this sample of which 55.5% rely on a pension grant for their monthly income. intergenerational households can cause disciplinary problems between adolescents and grandparents. literature attests to the complexity of emotional relationships (mostly conflicting ones) in intergenerational families (silverstein & giarrusso, 2010). government pensions and/ or grants are the primary sources of income for 62.5% of the participants, but no overall trend can be established in terms of monthly income. research has shown that grandparents are 135 mampane resilience of the socio-educational afterschool and community intervention drop-in centre responsible for supporting families with their pension grants (lunga, 2009) and have little money left for their own personal use. similarly, stats sa (2015) found that 46.2% of the south african population relies on government grants for their monthly income. 5.2 programme participation ten participants (55.5%) identified life skills development as their chosen programme and 27.7% selected individual or group workshops and meetings as their chosen programme. only one (5.5%) participant reports about learning about job skills and entrepreneurial skills, whilst three (16.6%) participants reported that their children benefit from attending the drop-in centre and were not able to report on their own individual benefits. table 1: demographic distribution of caregivers using the drop-in centre participant age gender highest level of education marital status family member living with caregiver years of benefiting from the drop-in centre matimba/ stanza programme family participate in? source of income for the family p1 ≤ 70 f grade 8 to 9 divorced grandchildren six months or less workshops government social grant p2 ≤ 60 f grade 10 to 11 widowed own children six months or less life-skills informal job p3 ≤ 90 f grade 7 and below divorced grandchildren and son stanza / matimba ≥ 5 years life-skills government social grants p4 ≤ 80 f grade 7 and below single son and grandchildren 18 months 2 years life-skills government social grants p5 ≤ 80 f grade 7 and below divorced grandchildren six months or less life-skills government social grants p6 ≤ 80 f no formal schooling other grandchildren; son six months or less life-skills government social grant p7 ≤ 70 f grade 7 and below married grandchildren 2-3 years life-skills helped in getting assistance to attend school (child) government social grants p8 ≤ 90 f no formal schooling married grandchildren 12-18 months life-skills government social grants 136 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) participant age gender highest level of education marital status family member living with caregiver years of benefiting from the drop-in centre matimba/ stanza programme family participate in? source of income for the family p9 ≤ 60 f no formal schooling divorced grandchildren 2-3 years provision of food security, job skills/ gardening job creation formal salary contributions by adult family members’ government social grants p10 ≤ 70 f grade 7 and below single grandchildren and own children stanza and not matimba ≥ 5 years helped to get social grant previously received no income just received social grant p11 don’t know f no formal schooling married grand-child 12-18 months helped in getting assistance to attend school (child) government social grants p12 ≤ 80 f grade 7 and below widowed grandchildren 2-3 years individual or group workshops/ meeting government social grant p13 ≤ 60 f grade 8 to 9 married grandchildren 18 months to two years individual or group workshops/ meeting no income/ informal jobs p14 ≤ 70 f grade 7 and below widowed other stanza and not matimba ≥ 5 years individual or group workshops/ meeting government social grant p15 ≤ 80 f grade 7and below widowed grandchildren 12-18 months life-skills government social grants p16 ≤ 80 f no formal schooling married grandchildren 2-3 years life-skills workshop meetings contribution by adult family members and grant p17 ≤ 40 f grade 10 to 11 single daughter/ sister’s child six months or less homework supervision (child) informal jobs p18 ≤ 50 f grade 10 to 11 married sister’s son/ own child 2-3 years life-skills informal jobs 137 mampane resilience of the socio-educational afterschool and community intervention drop-in centre 6. discussion and conclusion social support programmes offered by the drop-in centre are beneficial to fight poverty and promote the socio-educational needs of children, families and other community beneficiaries. all participants in this research demonstrated a need for social support to varying degrees. the triangulation of the findings of the focus groups and workshop facilitation sessions indicate that the social support programmes are aligned with the policy of the dsd, which aims to intervene and alleviate distress in families. the department of social development (2006: 3) introduced the social relief of distress grant to alleviate the needs of “persons by means of the temporary and immediate rendering of material assistance”. programmes aligned to social relief at matimba sinqobile include provision of food parcels, clothes and blankets, assistance with initiating applications for social grants and frequent home visits. the social support programmes facilitated focus on children and their families. these programmes address a need within the family, assuming a non-individualistic/non-individualised approach. most caregivers in the research indicated that they and their children receive support from the drop-in centre and the family benefits from the following programmes: assistance with homework, life skills, help with school attendance and receiving social grants, job development skills (training) and group support meetings. dunst (2002: 139) confirms that family-focused intervention practices are flexible and responsive information-sharing practices that treat families with dignity and respect and empower families to make informed decisions. caregivers in this research confirmed that children are the central link to the family and that the healthy functioning of a family is promoted by frequent home visits to assess needs and find strategies to alleviate risks in the family. this can be done through instrumental support (food parcels, winter blankets, children’s clothes and feeding children at the drop-in centre), emotional support (listening to caregivers’ concerns, referral to the centre manager for inclusion in other programmes), information support (providing information to caregivers using life skills, for example, cancer information) and appraisal support. research indicates that the departments of health and social development frequently use home visits to intervene, prevent and address psychosocial and health-related risks in society. home visits, as used in this research, aim to provide support to families in their own homes. a study by smith (1995) found that home visits positively influence children’s health, family functioning and school-readiness. they are crucial in building resilience in families. holbrook (1983: 112) mentions that home visits are key to social work practice and aim to “collect social evidence to be used for social reform”. two types of home visits are identified, viz. friendly and relief giving visits (holbrook, 1983). friendly visits are done to combat suffering, in a spirit of trust and friendliness, to influence the life of the beneficiary (psychosocial support). relief-giving visits relate to material giving (holbrook, 1983). research attests to the significance of home visits as an intervention to families in their own homes for multiple purposes, such as providing support services to disadvantaged families (leung, tsang & heung, 2013), ensuring the improvement of child and home safety (king et al., 2001) and providing an opportunity for the holistic evaluation of the family situation (smith, 1995). poverty is a concern in this study. caregivers and staff in this research experienced financial distress. support with accessing social grants (one of the support programmes) is highly beneficial in alleviating poverty in the home. all caregivers in the programme were female, 138 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) most of them were grandparents or of pensionable age (83%), and were on government grants or unemployed (66%). research has shown that poverty is highest in femaleand single-headed households (dubihlela & dubihlela, 2014; klasen, lechtenfeld & povel, 2015), which can be compounded by the fact that none of the participants have grade 12 (the exit qualification for high school). caregivers of children agree that support programmes for children are utilised effectively and are well supported by their children. however, staff members in this programme were not supported in the effective delivery of their services (they received no training for the services they were expected to provide to families). ultimately, staff members have needs that are not met, such as appropriate developmental training and living wages (the stipend is insufficient). lakey and cohen (2000) confirm that support is realised when the supportive action meets the demand for support. even though their core responsibility is to provide support to beneficiaries, they do not receive support from the dsd. what can be deduced from one staff member is that even clients can see that their lives are better than those of their caregivers are (they have empathy for their living conditions). the programmes are structured to cater for the emotional, instrumental, informational and appraisal needs of all beneficiaries. 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student geography teachers in south africa abstract south african geography student teachers should master map skills to teach mapwork effectively in their future classrooms. spatial cognition, prior learning of map skills and map interpretation at secondary school-level are highlighted as being important in furthering map literacy, which is required by geography student teachers. a mixed-method research framework investigated the causes of map literacy difficulties experienced by first year geography student teachers. lecturers who train prospective teachers should be aware of the conceptual and/or skillsbased difficulties associated with poor map literacy amongst their own students in order to address these problems. this paper outlines problems experienced by first year geography student teachers associated with their own acquisition and understanding of mapwork. furthermore, it argues that without deeper comprehensive development of their own mapwork content knowledge, the geography student teachers’ ability to teach map skills effectively will be adversely affected. keywords: curriculum assessment policy statement (caps); geography student teachers; map literacy; prior learning; secondary education; spatial cognition. 1. introduction understanding maps and interpreting the vast amount of information contained in maps is considered an essential part of geography (bonnet, 2008). moreover, spatial literacy is becoming more important to daily work and life at a time when so much digital data is mapped visually on hand-held devices. map literacy and spatial cognition is no longer confined to printed atlases. most geographers support bednarz’s (2011) claim that maps are an indispensable part of geography, an informative core around which geographical data can be understood. map literacy is an essential communication tool necessary to interpret complex information displayed visually through maps, a competence that cannot be ignored in the development of geographers (burton & pitt, 1993). not surprisingly then, map literacy is an important aspect within the geography curriculum in south africa (wilmot, 1999; 2004; wilmot & dube, 2015). according to liben and downs (2003: 677), “there is a way of thinking – spatial thinking – that is rhoda larangeira department of geography, university of south africa school of education, department of geography, university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg clinton david van der merwe school of education, department of geography, university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, 27 st andrews road, parktown, 2193 email: clinton.vandermerwe@ wits.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i2.9 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(2): 120-138 © uv/ufs 121 larangeira & van der merwe map literacy and spatial cognition challenges for student geography ... pervasive, significant, and powerful, and yet it is under-recognised, underappreciated, and therefore under-instructed”. if learning to think geographically implies learning to think spatially and being able to decode the complexity of information found on maps (bednarz, 2011; burton & pitt, 1993), then it is fundamentally important that future geography teachers have a sound ability to read and interpret maps in multiple renderings. it is also important that they are equipped with the correct and effective teaching methodologies to ensure the development of sound map literacy of themselves and their learners. as geography teachers, and a skilled tutor and another a skilled lecturer, whilst lecturing a mapwork module in 2012 to first year geography student teachers at the wits school of education (wsoe) in johannesburg, we noted a lack of map literacy amongst many students. some students struggled to grasp basic map concepts and calculation skills including direction, bearing, co-ordinates, scale and altitude. this inability among student teachers to read maps was simultaneously intriguing and frustrating, as these very students would be responsible for the future teaching of sound map literacy in schools. why do some students find spatial literacy so challenging whilst others have a seemingly well-developed spatial aptitude? are mapwork skills adequately taught at secondary school-level thereby ensuring that students’ mapwork skills are sound at first year university level? are struggling first year students unable to access the learning because their own spatial cognition is underdeveloped? have these students not yet mastered the ability to recognise and interpret spatial patterns found on maps? the mapwork module, taught by a single tutor/lecturer over a 6-week period, is offered to first year geography students. the only exposure they have to develop map skills in the academic component of the bachelor of education (b.ed.), a 4-year professional degree. this paper reviews central aspects pertaining to the importance of map literacy acquisition. the mixed method research framework utilised for data collection is then outlined. presentation, analysis and discussion of data, follows. finally, recommendations are given about how to remedy poor map literacy in initial teacher education (ite) institutions. 2. literature review map literacy and geographic thinking “there are some specific practises associated with geography. the best known is mapping.” (bonnet, 2008: 81) geographers rely on maps in order to study “the world, both near and far” (bonnet, 2008: 1). for many seasoned geographers this study of “the far” is facilitated and enhanced using visuals and maps. furthermore, jackson (2006) refers to four geographical concepts namely space and place, scale and connection, proximity and distance and rational thinking that lend themselves to map-support. this facilitates and visually enriches the complexity of relationships that exist between places and processes. the innate need for humans to understand and represent their surroundings (bonnet, 2008) shows a historic link between geography and cartography. the rediscovering geography committee (1997: 4) states that the “traditional tool in geography for the display of spatially referenced information is the map” and bergman and renwick (2003: 30) claim that, “one of geographers’ most characteristic tools is a map”. more recently, masden and rump (2012) include maps as one of the artefacts 122 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) used by geographers as a tool for spatial thinking. the ability to think spatially is intertwined with map reading and interpretation and is found in every sphere of geographical analysis. lloyd and bunch (2010) identify many variables that affect map learning including biological factors, the learning environment and individual spatial cognition. bonnet (2003) stresses the importance of sound geographical skills being taught at secondary level schooling in order to facilitate understanding and the application of prior knowledge at tertiary level and throughout life. the ability to identify, interpret, analyse and manipulate information found on maps involves visual perception and skills in logic and language usage, requiring the use of both hemispheres of one’s brain (burton & pitt, 1993). spatial literacy is one component of geography that can be acquired through the development of mapwork skills and plays a vital part in developing graphicacy (wilmot, 2002). wilmot (1999; 2002) argues that graphicacy, together with oracy, literacy and numeracy is recognised as one of the four vital components of effective communication. bonnet’s (2008: 91) claim that a map “is the distinctive visual expression of the geographical imagination” reiterates the importance of map literacy in developing graphicacy. if organising and plotting one’s world in graphic form allows one to communicate information to a variety of people, then interpreting this information using map skills is a vital element in education. bednarz (2011) draws attention to spatial thinking when she claims, “[o]ne of the key differences between expert and novice geographers is the ability to think spatially”. geographers use maps to organise and analyse information about space and place, as they are a powerful means of displaying and communicating geographic information (innes, 1999). it follows then that learning how to read and interpret maps is an essential skill for any geographer to acquire. accordingly, it is also essential for geography teachers, if they are to empower their learners to become geographically literate. if spatial information found on maps is conveyed in a graphical way then “communicating in graphic form requires an ability to encode and decode spatial information using symbols which require the utilisation and application of spatial perception skills and concepts” (wilmot, 1999: 91). as spatial information is expressed in various ways on maps, a map is a communication system (figure 1) that requires taught and practised map encoding and decoding of the map language in order for understanding and interpretation to take place (weeden, 1997). gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences (shaffer & kipp, 2010) draws attention to the importance of spatial intelligence and logical-mathematical intelligence, which are both necessary for the perception of visual-spatial relationships and the interpretation of symbolic representations of reality that are found on maps. tkacz (1998: 238) supports this view, stating that the ability to read a map “is facilitated by some spatial aptitudes (e.g. visualisation), strategic processes (e.g. execution of appropriate encoding and integrating processes) and an adequate cognitive map (e.g. knowledge organised by routes or landmarks, procedures for processing environmental knowledge)”. in short, map literacy and spatial cognition facilitates the ability to logically interpret one’s physical, human and abstract surroundings and create a medium for effective geographical communication (uttal, 2000). 123 larangeira & van der merwe map literacy and spatial cognition challenges for student geography ... map language map-maker encodes information information decoded map map-user figure 1: a simple map communication system (weeden, 1997: 169) spatial cognition “different types of spatial thinking involve different parts of the brain” (manning, 2014: 110) liben and downs (2003: 668) argue that many cognitive challenges are faced when attempting to understand graphic and symbolic representations found on maps and claim that, “children who have not yet developed advanced projective concepts might have difficulty understanding maps that use viewing angles different(ly) from daily perceptual experience”. this lack of advanced projective concepts can also be found in adults who have not been exposed to spatial processing skills through their education and as a result cannot draw on metacognition to facilitate further understanding of what maps represent (weeden, 1997). this idea relates to cognitive development theories that focus on the correlation between a child’s spatial concept ability and the various stages of intellectual development (weeden, 1997; wiegand, 2006). piaget (1964) proposed that cognition is a form of environmental adaptation (equilibrium). through assimilating new information and accommodating it, a child will develop knowledge that can be constructed and organised into logical systems. in terms of spatial cognition, through encoding map symbols and their representations, a child will learn to understand the world around him/her (wiegand, 2006). vygotsky (1967) argues that learning is a socially mediated activity in which a more knowledgeable ‘other’ (such as a teacher) organises activities to help children acquire knowledge they would not have learnt if left to their own devices. hence, cognitive development occurs in sequences and is linked to a child’s age, stage of development and prior learning at school level. it follows then that if a first year geography student was not taught sound mapwork skills during schooling – encouraging thorough spatial cognitive development – then the ability of that student to think spatially would be considerably reduced (lane, 2015). broader cognitive development theories appear to underpin map literacy progression through the south african schools geography curriculum, as outlined in the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps), implemented in 2012 (beets & le grange, 2005; beets & le grange, 2008; le grange & beets, 2005; dbe, 2011; wilmot & dube, 2015; wilmot & dube, 2016a). learners are introduced to basic map skills and concepts in grades 4 to 9 (10 to 15 year olds) and are then taught progressively higherorder map skills and concepts as they advance to grades 10, 11 and 12 (16 to 18 year olds) in the further education and training (fet) phase (dbe, 2011). the attention to the importance of mastering mapwork skills and techniques and the integration of these skills with geography theory is encouraging. this supports lee and bednarz’s (2009: 183) assertion “that spatial thinking can and should be taught at all levels in the educational system” as it facilitates spatial cognition by reinforcing spatial thinking in the three important areas namely, understanding space, the manner in which spatial information 124 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) is represented and how to develop spatial reasoning. maps are an integral part of geography as they facilitate the study of space, place, processes and human interaction within the environment. map skills reinforce graphicacy and develop spatial cognition. map skills and digital technologies have also become a major focus of geographical education in the last decade (wilmot, 1999). 3. methodology a mixed method approach combining the strengths of quantitative and qualitative approaches, methodologies and appropriate paradigms was utilised for this study. participants in the case study were first year student teachers of mixed gender, varied ethnicity, aged between 18 and 30, originating from diverse socio-economic backgrounds. the 6-week module encompasses all mapwork necessary for these b.ed. students to teach geography from grade 8 to 12. a double lecture (2 hours), twice a week was used to teach the content and concepts of mapwork and one practical session (3 hours long) per week – to consolidate skills and knowledge in a hands-on session. no tutors were available for this course; a single tutor/lecturer does all the teaching and marking. all the students in this course were issued with informed consent forms and could withdraw from the study at any time; university ethical clearance was obtained to pursue this study. to identify the map skills most difficult to attain, we conducted a quantitative analysis of the students’ june 2012 examination answers to questions addressing different spatial and map skills. we used the marks awarded to the students’ answers to indicate which map skills they understood and had mastered and those map skills that they understood poorly and had not mastered. the patterns of performance for this study aimed to highlight the overall performance (total percentage) obtained per student in the examination and the performance (percentage) obtained per examination question focused on a particular map skill. • question 1: map projections – the ability to visualise a representation of the 3d earth in various 2d formats (categorical spatial information). • question 2: south african provincial map – manipulation of spatial data using symbols and scales (coordinate spatial information, spatial intelligence). • question 3: general map skills – manipulation of visual data using direction, time calculation, gradient, cross-section and vertical exaggeration (categorical and coordinate spatial information, logical-mathematical intelligence and spatial intelligence). • question 4: interpretation of spatial data – sketch map and interrelationships, geographic information systems (gis) (coordinate spatial information and spatial intelligence). • question 5: statistics – calculations and graphing skills (categorical spatial information and logical-mathematical intelligence). ninety-nine first year geography student teachers wrote the examination as part of their b.ed. at the university of the witwatersrand, school of education, in johannesburg. sub-topics relating to the main concepts taught in the module were assessed within each examination question in order to test the levels of mastery per map skill. the examination was internally moderated (in the department by moderators who had previously taught the module themselves) and externally moderated by an expert in mapwork at another university. errors made by the students reflect an overall difficulty in mastering the manipulation and interpretation of spatial data, which is elaborated on later in the paper. qualitative 125 larangeira & van der merwe map literacy and spatial cognition challenges for student geography ... semi-structured focus-group interviews with 64 of the 99 students were conducted after the examination. this was utilised to uncover students’ exposure to mapwork at secondary school level and to evaluate their attitude and perceptions towards map literacy. the interviews attempted to discover differences in teacher methodology, the amount of time spent on map skills in the secondary school classroom and the degree of mapwork exposure, as not all registered first years elected to study geography to grade 12. responses and findings from these interviews were collated using a combination of verbatim quotations and summaries of the responses. statistical data and focus-group responses were compared and analysed for general trends. from these trends, recommendations on how to improve competency in problematic areas for teaching and learning of mapwork at ites emerged. the participants involved in this study were university students lectured by one of the author-researchers. this made the study a potentially sensitive one as it was based on students’ examination results and their perceptions of the problems associated with their lack of map skills. ethical considerations would eliminate any risk involved and would ensure anonymity of the participants. the study commenced after results were published and ethical clearance was approved. as a result, correlating individual student results to individual voluntary focus-group participants was considered a breach of ethics and did not form part of the focus of the study. 4. data analysis and findings an analysis of the june 2012 examination results revealed that 60% of the students were unable to achieve 50% (the minimum mark required to pass) in the map skills examination – see table 1 for comparison purposes. table 1: class averages of the mapwork module, june exams, 2008 to 2014 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 52% 46% 45% 48% 54% 41% 45% overall performance of the 99 students who wrote the examination, 40 passed and 59 failed. the average score for the examination was 43%, 7% below the required pass mark of 50%. total percentage range was 70% (7%-77%), with a modal mark of 51%. a wide range in student performance in map skills was evident, supporting the need for this research. it was noted that students performed worst in questions 3 (general map skills) and 4 (application) and best in question 5 (statistics) as shown in figure 2. students who had done geography to grade 12 did well in all three of these questions, whereas students without a background in mapwork fared worse. interpretation and analysis (decoding visual information from the map) proved difficult for many students. further analysis and discussion on questions in which students underachieved was important to gain an understanding of the relationship between performance and spatial cognition. 126 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) average marks per examination question 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 m ar ks question q1 q2 q3 q4 q5 figure 2: graph showing average marks per examination question question 3 examined four sub-categories, namely direction, bearing, distance-time and altitude (gradient, cross-profiles/cross-sections and vertical exaggeration). the average for question 3 was 36%, 7% lower than the total examination average. marks ranged from 0% to 98%. sixty-eight students failed this question while only 31 passed. common errors made by students revealed difficulties with regard to understanding, interpreting and manipulating map data representing altitude. students were unable to imagine height visually and misinterpreted contour lines on maps. average failure scores ranged from 0% to 48%; six of the 68 students who failed question 3 scored 0%. of particular concern was the difficulty students experienced in drawing cross-profiles (cross-sections). this relates to an inability to decode two-dimensional information and encode it as three-dimensional reality, as noted by wilmot (1999). for the examination, the correct cross-profile of the landscape between two points is shown in figure 3. students seemed to go through the motions of this exercise without making real world associations to the landscape but simply seeing a map rather than the visual representation of the real world on paper. 127 larangeira & van der merwe map literacy and spatial cognition challenges for student geography ... figure 3: example of correctly drawn cross-profile two examples of incorrectly drawn cross-profiles (figures 4a & b) show that many students struggle to associate the 2-dimensions of height (vertical scale) and distance (horizontal scale) to linked and logical concepts. students did not spot the impossibility in their own work: a dam located on high-lying land – which defies that water flows under the influence of gravity and accumulates on the low-lying ground in reality – represented on the cross-profile below. 128 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) figures 4a and 4b: examples of incorrectly drawn cross-profiles students had trouble with the procedure and logic of drawing a cross-profile, being unable to visualise the landscape from the side, after seeing it in map view, as represented on the topographical map. the student who drew figure 4a was unable to access the concept of a vertical scale correctly, unlike the student who drew figure 4b, which did this rather well. figure 4b shows that this student was able to identify a firebreak, a trig beacon and a dam, moving left to right across the landscape profile, whereas figure 4a shows how this student confused the concept of relief (shape or topography of the land). question 4 examined the ability to interpret spatial data through focusing on the students’ skills to draw a sketch map showing two main topographic features and identifying interrelationships shown on their sketch map. question 4 was the worst performing question in 129 larangeira & van der merwe map literacy and spatial cognition challenges for student geography ... the examination. the average for question 4 was 27%, 16% lower than the total examination average. marks ranged from 0% to 84%. eighty-four students failed this question whilst 15 passed. the average failure scores ranged from 0% to 47% and it was noted that 4 of the 84 students who failed question 4 scored 0%. a correct sketch map (figure 5) can be compared to the two examples of incorrect sketch maps (figures 6a and 6b). common errors made by students included an inability to manipulate scale and to identify conventional symbols on a topographical map correctly. the ability to encode and decode information (wilmot, 1999) is again highlighted by this, as was the ability to utilise both hemispheres of the brain to facilitate spatial thinking (lloyd & bunch, 2010). abstract as they are, perspective and scale remain difficult concepts to master for students in their first year of tertiary education. figure 5 is a good example of a sketch map showing a student who has a sound grasp of scale and perspective as well as the relationship between physical and human features on the landscape. in figure 6a, the student has a poor conception of scale, a misunderstanding of conventional signs and a general sense of spatial distortion. in figure 6b, the student was unable to understand the concept of a map being an aerial perspective of the landscape, although the dam is represented as a 2d shape, the mountains were drawn in an oblique view. in addition, a great deal of detail is neglected, which shows that this student is unable to decode the conventional symbols correctly, which depicts real-life features on the actual landscape. figure 5: example of correctly drawn sketch map 130 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) figures 6a and 6b: examples of incorrectly drawn sketch maps semi-structured focus group interviews the focus-group interviews afforded the first year students who volunteered an opportunity to clarify the difficulties or challenges presented by map skills and to suggest solutions to the problems. sixty-four of the 99 assessed students participated in the process and 10 groups were formed to make data analysis more manageable. no direct correlation between participants and examination results or their qualitative responses in the focus groups were made to ensure students’ anonymity. thematic analysis was used to analyse the responses to the main questions. these are presented below. the results obtained from the analysis of the june examination paper and the semistructured focus-group interviews showed many difficulties faced by students with regard to map literacy and skills. the results highlight the interpretation of spatial data and general map skills as being the main difficulty. the semi-structured focus-group interviews reinforced this finding, as students identified cross-profiles, irregular area calculations and co-ordinates as being the most difficult skills to master. table 2 relates the most problematic map skills to deficiencies in schooling and/or spatial cognition. mastering these specific map skills requires further attention to the role spatial cognition plays in developing spatial literacy, effective teaching at secondary school level and additional support at university level. 131 larangeira & van der merwe map literacy and spatial cognition challenges for student geography ... table 2: problematic map skills with possible reasons for underachievement category specific map skill schooling concerns spatial cognition concerns general map skills cross-sections drawing of cross-sections is taught incorrectly in some schools. difficulty in visualising a profile from contour lines on a 2d map. inability to understand how contour lines represent altitude. irregular area insufficient time in class to practise skill. most students able to calculate regular area, yet nonstandardisation of formulas/ techniques used in schools. students struggle to convert an irregular shape into a grid showing regular area. co-ordinates non-standardisation of teaching methodology of skills in various schools. no maps in classrooms. difficulty in visualising earth divided into hemispheres. spatial data interpretation co-ordinate spatial information rote-taught map skills, hence right brain hemisphere thinking neglected. difficulty to understand what maps represent if right brain hemisphere not utilised to comprehend or encode map data. spatial intelligence limited practical reinforcement of what is taught. no application and comparison of skills to different or real situations. 2d and 3d views are not shown as being linked to each other. inability to visualise what a map represents as it is in 2d and is scaled. which map skill do you find the most difficult and why? a variety of responses was recorded and multiple map skills were identified as being difficult to master. cross-profiles appear most frequently as an area of concern for many of the groups. co-ordinates and irregular area calculations were also highlighted as skills difficult to master. table 3 summarises the recorded responses, correlating them to the marks achieved in the june examination for each concept that was tested. reasons for the difficulties faced are varied. one student drew attention to the pedagogical differences at secondary schools and university: teaching methods and formulas that were taught at school were very different from the way we are taught at varsity. another student was concerned with the mental challenge of viewing representations of reality and referred to the lack of “ability to view symbols on a map in 2d/3d form”. a different student was particularly bewildered by her inability to recall and apply the numerous formulas required in map calculations being “unable to remember the formulas and steps of solving the formula”. 132 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) table 3: identification of the map skills students found the most difficult group most difficult skill other skills causing difficulties f1 co-ordinates gis distance calculations f2 co-ordinates map interpretation cross-sections f3 irregular distance magnetic bearing vertical exaggeration f4 irregular area map interpretation cross-sections f5 irregular area gis magnetic declination f6 cross-sections map interpretation standard deviation f7 cross-sections co-ordinates gradient f8 cross-sections irregular area standard deviation f9 cross-sections none none f10 magnetic declination sketch maps cross-sections table 4 reflects the frequency of varied focus group responses to question 1. a lack of background knowledge in geography in secondary school is problematic and an important issue to be addressed in future reviews of admission requirements to geography in the b.ed degree at the wsoe. table 4: frequency of focus-group responses for question 1 type of response frequency of focus group responses no geography background f1, f2, f4 3 different teaching methodology of skills f1, f2, f4 3 spatial cognition (2d/3d interaction) (visualisation and scale) f1, f2, f3, f4, f5, f6, f8, f9, f10 9 practical activities not taking place in schools f2 1 lack of passion for geography f3 1 unable to remember and apply formulas f3, f5, f10 3 different content at university vs. school f5 1 actual drawing/construction of cross-sections f5, f6, f7 3 from table 4 it becomes apparent that students in nine of the ten focus groups had trouble visualising reality as represented on a map. this difficulty with spatial cognition presents a challenge for many students who struggle to apply prior knowledge and skills taught in different contexts. which map skills are the least challenging and why? students in the focus groups identified statistics, distance calculations and bearing as being the least challenging map skills. the responses indicated that mathematical literacy and skills were an advantage when mastering map skills. table 5 summarises the focus groups’ responses. 133 larangeira & van der merwe map literacy and spatial cognition challenges for student geography ... table 5: summary of focus-groups responses for question 2 group least challenging skill reason f1 statistics good mathematics skills f2 bearing “no practical thinking is necessary” f3 statistics “mathematics is easy” f4 distance calculations basic mathematics skills acquired in school f5 statistics “the rules are easy to follow and formulas are simple” f6 statistics “it is logical and formulas are easy to follow” f7 bearing mathematically literate f8 distance calculations skills were well taught and familiar f9 distance calculations “maths is easy” f10 statistics “it’s common sense” did you study geography in the fet phase and how often and well integrated was it with theory? the question’s purpose was to ascertain the degree of exposure students had to map literacy at secondary school level. the responses highlighted teacher methodology, amount of time spent on map skills in the classroom and the degree of map skill exposure. not all first-year students in the focus groups studied geography in the fet phase. of the 64 participants, 20 students (31%) had not elected to study geography in grades 10 to 12. interestingly, in the recorded responses, no standardisation of map skills methodology was implemented in the schools of participants in this study. “only in grade 11” “only for two weeks in matric” “only towards an exam” “in the first term” “at the beginning of the year” “once a term” “was included in lessons on a weekly basis” “linked to theory because the teacher thought it made more sense using mapwork terms in theory for suitable physical structure evident in mapwork”. this inconsistency in the teaching of map skills, identified by the participants in this case study is a possible facet in their inability to achieve good results in the mapwork course offered at university. discussion identification of the most problematic map skill findings from this study revealed that drawing cross-profiles was the most problematic. this skill required students to encode and decode visual information at a high cognitive level. it relied on their ability to identify, interpret, analyse and manipulate map information and 134 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) thus required the utilisation of the leftand right-brain hemispheres as referred to by lloyd and bunch (2010). the map skills required by students to construct a cross-profile included identifying and understanding map symbols, applying map scale and understanding and interpreting altitude on a map. thereafter students needed to manipulate the 2-dimensional map information into a profile view – a skill that utilised coordinate spatial information and processing and relied heavily on spatial cognitive ability. this task required the culmination of spatial aptitudes, strategic processes and adequate cognitive maps (tkacz, 1998). in order to construct a cross-profile successfully, students needed to apply an amalgamation of simpler, scaffolded map literacy skills that could not be mastered if taught poorly and not practised often. map skills and prior learning this study reinforced the premise that acquiring sound map skills at secondary school level is an advantage. students who had trouble with map literacy were not taught map skills on a regular basis at school level and the methodology was different to that of lectures at university level. furthermore, some students did not elect to study geography in the fet phase at secondary school level, which proved to be disadvantageous. until very recently, with the implementation of the caps document, not much standardisation in terms of the teaching and content of map skills has occurred in south african schools. one of the implications of this is that many first year student teachers struggle with map skills. not enough sound teaching is in place to ensure the much-needed mastering of map skills through carefully scaffolded map literacy lessons, repetitive exposure to maps and guided map skill practise (innes, 2012). spatial cognition and map literacy many students struggled to understand and interpret maps, as they are a 2-dimensional representation of reality, supporting the findings that some students are “unaware of their own abilities in this area or of the fact that spatial abilities can be improved through study and practice” (hesphanha, goodchild & janelle, 2009: s21). the ability to understand or encode map information relies heavily on coordinating spatial information and the utilisation of the right-brain hemisphere (masden & rump, 2012). if students are rote-taught and not encouraged to apply map skills, then their spatial cognition with regard to map literacy is impeded (tkacz, 1998; uttal, 2000). in many instances, students have never been taught in a manner that facilitates the comparison of maps and reality using photographs and practical fieldwork tasks. if learning to think geographically means learning to think spatially as implied by bednarz (2011) and burton and pitt (1993), then it is apparent that many first year student teachers are not yet geographical thinkers and the methodologies that lecturers utilise need to be re-thought. 5. recommendations geography relies on educators to teach map skills to facilitate spatial thinking in future generations (jackson, 2006; bednardz, 2011; innes, 1999, 2012; wilmot, 2016b). consequently, lecturers offering a mapwork course to first year students need to take cognisance of the difficulties faced by their students and implement an effective variety of approaches to teach map skills. the pedagogy of teaching map skills is an important area that requires further research (lane, 2015). in addition, future research endeavours within this field can consider the effect that variables such as age, socio-economic background and gender have on map skills and spatial cognition acquisition. the following recommendations regarding the findings from this study for ite are suggested: 135 larangeira & van der merwe map literacy and spatial cognition challenges for student geography ... • a bridging course at the onset of the academic year, aimed at students enrolled for geography who have not studied geography at secondary school level; • re-structuring of mapwork lectures to reflect continuity and progression of map skills from the simple to the complex, allowing students to build on prior knowledge; • mapwork concept development and the teaching of map skills as a series of procedures (focussing on why and what you are doing, sequentially); • weekly lecturer-supervised tutorial classes (in smaller groups) enabling the practise of skills acquired during academic lectures (see mckay, 2016); • weekly practical lessons focussed on fieldwork and modelling tasks to reinforce map skills, especially with regard to altitude and problems associated with 2-dimensional representations of reality on maps; • integration of photography and local environmental examples with topographic maps to facilitate the known to the unknown; • continued integration of map skills with theory courses in the academic component of the b.ed. social sciences and geography degree; • inclusion of map skills methodology modules in all social sciences and geography courses across the four years of the b.ed. degree; and • further research into why students coming from non-geography backgrounds struggle with mapwork and spatial cognition. 6. conclusion our study shows that geography student teachers’ struggle to understand mapwork is procedural and conceptual. the identified causes of map literacy difficulties experienced by first year geography student teachers, although a small case study, suggests that further research is necessary to investigate the challenges that these south african students experience in the development of their spatial literacy. it is important therefore that lecturers undertake error analysis from a statistical point of view but they should also delve into the logic or misunderstandings underpinning student teacher errors in spatial cognition (brodie, n.d.). prior learning is important in the development of any geographical skill (dolan et al., 2014). we suggest that admission requirements to geography in higher education needs to take cognisance of prior learning or institutions of higher education need to put academic support programmes in place (for students who have not studied geography to grade 12). the major findings of this case study suggest that some students who studied geography in high school still struggled to manipulate and decode the 2-dimensional map information from topographic maps as their spatial literacy was inadequately developed through the practise and teaching of map skills in a structured and standardised manner at secondary school level (weeden, 1997; wilmot, 1999; wiegand, 2006; lloyd & bunch, 2010). lecturers involved in ite programmes need to ensure that sufficient support is offered to students enrolled in first year mapwork courses and that lectures, tutorials and practical lessons are structured in a manner that builds on prior knowledge and facilitates practical, relevant methods to improve students’ map abilities and skills (jo & bednarz, 2014; mckay, 2016). it is also important to identify gaps in student teachers’ prior knowledge (such as the ability to conceptualise landscapes in 2d), which has the potential to undermine more complex conceptual and procedural learning that follows. more time and energy, invested in carefully 136 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) revising admission requirements for geography in the b.ed. degree in south africa, based on the poor prior learning in mapwork education students receive is necessary – to improve the teaching and learning of geography in higher education. re-establishing academic support programmes for students who have not studied geography to grade 12 also needs to be revisited. otherwise, higher education institutions need to make a tough decision and only admit those who have completed geography to grade 12 into the fet geography teaching specialisation programmes. acknowledgements profs melanie nicolau and gordon pirie’s support and mentorship. drs paul goldschagg and lee rusznyak’s helpful suggestions towards this paper. this research was presented at the international geographical union regional conference, krakow, poland (2014). the faculty of humanities, university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg provided financial support. this paper is partially based on research done towards rhoda’s honours degree in 2012. references bednarz, s.w. 2011. maps and spatial thinking skills in the ap human geography classroom. available at: http://apcentral.collegeboard.com/apc/public/courses/teachers_corner/151317. html [accessed 10 may 2011]. beets, p. & le grange, l. 2005. continuity and 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curriculum change. geography, 100(2), 94-101. wilmot, p.d. & dube, c. 2016a. opening a window onto school geography in selected public secondary schools in the eastern cape province. south african geographical journal, 98(2), 337-350. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03736245.2015.1028989 wilmot, d. 2016b. advancing geography in southern africa: the role of the southern african geography teachers’ association and the journal of geography education for southern africa. journal of geography education for southern africa, 1(1), 9-23. editorial introduction roger deacon, ruksana osman and michelle buchler open this edition with a comprehensive overview of educational research texts in south africa from 1995 to 2006. their paper, somewhat disquieting in its implications, reviews 600 texts produced in this period. it identifies the rapid growth in research over this period, but also a strong tendency to small-scale research with little international reach. the strong emphasis on qualitative approaches is consistent with international trends. they identify the key themes within the publications as these: the re-conceptualisation of teachers as facilitators, the problems and possibilities of cooperative learning or group work, the use of educational support materials and resources, the idea of ‘teaching for learning’, the importance of context, the nature of continuous assessment, and debates on teacher evaluation. given the poor state of education nationally, there is a need for some reevaluation of how research can contribute more effectively to national policy and implementation. this paper gives a critical edge to the reading of the other papers in this issue. ce mclellan and venitha pillay, in diverging on diversity and difference: the mask of inclusion address diversity within a south african university which uses both english and afrikaans as languages of instruction. drawing on the conflicting perspectives on transformation revealed through interviews with academic and student leaders, and the different ways in which respondents framed diversity, they demonstrate the ways in which ambivalence is often used to conceal exclusion and resistance to transformation. instead, they argue for the use of ambivalence as a way opening up interaction and engagement to enable transformation of a kind that would lead to fresh avenues of development for the university. a similar openness to uncertainty and to its educational possibilities is interrogated in sofie geschier’s paper, vulnerability and belonging in the history classroom: a teacher’s positioning in “volatile conversations” on racism and xenophobia. in two specific teaching moments a history teacher in a wellresourced school takes on issues of central importance. geschier demonstrates how in the first moment the teacher opens up challenging questions related to racism without presenting the possibility that she may herself be racist. in the second, the teacher uses the vulnerability of exposing her own xenophobia, leading to greater openness and engagement from the learners. this opens an enquiry into how teachers can work with vulnerability instead of assuming a high moral ground, and thus initiate dialogues that may otherwise remain unexplored. in youth self-formation and the ‘capacity to aspire’: the itinerant ‘schooled’ career of fuzile ali across post-apartheid space, aslam fataar considers how a young south african negotiates the complexities of space in meeting his aspirations, moving between urban and rural areas, sometimes welcomed, sometimes excluded. his ‘schooled career’ extends beyond the schools; it requires a disciplined commitment and the engagement with sets of meanings that speak to both individual and societal processes. throughout his journey in highly diverse contexts the youth maintains self-representations that enable him to draw on whatever knowledges he can access. the study speaks to the need for greater understanding of the complex ways in which youth may succeed or fail in their educational endeavours. using cultural capital as a resource for negotiating participation in a teacher community of practice: a case study, also addresses how a young man, in this case a teacher of insecure status in his school, pursues his aspirations by drawing on a range of what may be referred to as ‘community cultural wealth’. suriamurthee maistry describes how the teacher, though constrained in terms of economic and his limited qualifications, uses these capacities as a way of engaging fully in a group of teachers who are together learning to meet the challenges presented by new curriculum development in their subject area. as with the previous paper, we see how young people may develop innovative and determined strategies for overcoming the adversity they face. the challenges of addressing violence within schools are the focus of a paper by gerda bender and annemarie emslie, an analysis of family-school collaboration in preventing adolescent violence in urban secondary schools. a study of two urban secondary schools reveals different dynamics, in particular in relation to the effectiveness school security measures and in the closeness of school and family links. both schools have some success in preventing overt violence, though have different organisational climates. it is found that learners – even those who feel responsible for violence – are willing to have greater support from parents and teachers in preventing violence. they also want to influence though the terms of parental involvement. the authors argue for ways of developing greater connections between schools and families, and for addressing the organisational climate so as to enable a culture that is positive for peaceful engagement in school. two papers argue for the advantages presented by specific approaches to the development of professional abilities in higher education, within the social sciences and education. josep gallifa and jordi garriga, in their paper generic competences in higher education: studying their development in undergraduate social science studies by means of a specific methodology, present evidence that students identify their experiences outside university as more effective at enabling the learning of generic competences than regular courses. however, they rate cross-course seminars are more effective than both regular courses and outside experience. in addition, the competences produced through these seminars are those that are most highly valued by the professions. one implication is that specific attention needs to be given to the development of these generic competences in higher education. a similar problem is addressed through the paper by liesel ebersöhn, gerda bender and wendy carvalho-malekane, informing educational psychhology training with students’ community engagement experiences. while professional training at universities has been shown to be limited in its ability to address the prevailing needs of the society, could such training be strengthened through combining formal education with community engagement? the evidence is that it can be, not least by exposing students to both the challenges and resources presented within such contexts. students learn through this to consider a wider range of problems and a more diverse repertoire of responses. such engagement provides the possibility of assisting students to make a necessary shift towards a model of professional activity that that the form of collective rather than individual practice. locating the doctoral study in the ‘paradigm skirmishes’: challenges and prospects for adopting a paradigm cradle investigates the challenges facing both supervisor and student in the doctoral process as both confront the issue of locating the work within a particular paradigm. rose ruto-korir and carien lubbe reflect on their own experience of the supervisory relationship; the paper quotes alternately one voice, then the other, and finally both together. their focus is on how each deals with the issues of paradigm proliferation in relation to the development of the student’s scholarly identity – and the implications also for the supervisor. they use the metaphor of a ‘cradle’ to describe paradigm location, which they see as part of an unfolding and incomplete process in developing scholarly identity. to enable this identity to develop, both argue for ‘guided autonomy’ in the relationship. dennis francis editor-in-chief 28 pseudo-scientific intellectual theories of the african child during the 20th century abstract with the ascent of the national party to power in south africa in 1948, education reflected apartheid thinking and practices and implemented the ideology of separate development in educational institutions. pronouncements of the african child’s inferiority were reflected in government policy and legislation. the origins of this thinking and practice however can be traced to prevalent and pervasive existing racist pseudo-scientific theories where the african child was categorised and seen as intellectually inferior. pseudo-scientific theories on the human intellect had become part of the thinking and practice of racial superiority thinking and practices propagated especially during the first part of the 20th century. these assertions rationalised social, political and ideological arrangements of segregation at the time and formed part of the contextual mind-set in south africa. yet even today where a democratic and inclusive society, in which the development and recognition of the whole child is advocated, racist thinking and practices still emerge, especially in education. the aim of this paper is to examine some of these pseudo-scientific theories on the intellect of the african child from a historical-educational perspective, their reflection in educational policy documents and practices and diverse perceptions thereof. some thoughts on the way forward for education practice, based on this discussion are also presented. keywords: intellectual theories, mental testing, pseudo-science, racism, african child 1. introduction the 1994 transition to democracy for south africa was most welcome, but in no way easy and not without its own set of challenges (christie, 2008:2-3). government responded to these challenges in several ways, notably that of inclusive education which included disadvantaged learners, most notably the african child, who, during apartheid, received a racially-infused and inferior type of education which neglected their needs. lesufi (2017:21) highlights the importance of an inclusive education system: after all, education is a catalyst for change in any society and a non-racial society cannot be realised without an integrated classroom…inclusive education is one of the most effective ways in which we can promote a unified, incorporated, consolidated and tolerant society. andrew lewis department of educational psychology university of the western cape email: alewis@uwc.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v36i2.4 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 36(2): 28-43 © uv/ufs mailto:alewis@uwc.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2 29 lewis pseudo-scientific intellectual theories of the african child several education policy documents emerged post the democratic dispensation, calling for inclusion. with the introduction in 2001 of white paper 6: special needs education, building an inclusive education and training system, equality, social justice and inclusivity, amongst others, were advocated to accommodate the holistic needs of all south african children (doe, 2001). to address learners’ educational needs, it is advocated, they have to be assessed fairly, systemically and holistically (doe, 2001:7), a situation certainly not experienced previously (foxcroft & roodt, 2009:21) where mental testing, for example, as a form of educational assessment, was used as an exclusionary measure to justify a separate and different form of education, especially for the african child. yet even today, “[t]he value of psychological testing remains a contested one in south africa” (laher & cockcroft, 2013:4) with arguments put forward that it is not valid and reliable and still maintains an exclusionary position albeit couched in notions of cultural fairness. with the accession to power of the national party in 1948 and their propagation of the policy of apartheid, the very nature of education reflected the idea of separation, both ideologically and institutionally. with this separation came assertions of the inferiority of the african child which were reflected in government documents on education, the most notable was the eiselen report of 1951, which later formed the foundation of ‘bantu education’ (christie, 2008:62-63). these notions of the inferiority of the african child however, were evident even prior to apartheid education and were infused into south african society’s thinking and behaviour through several prevalent theories on race prior to and even during the 20th century and continuing into the next century. according to soudien (2007:115): race, predictably, remains the dominant factor in south african social policy and analysis. its centrality arises out of the country’s more than 350-year experience of contact between a white settler and a black indigenous population and an accompanying conflict in which racism played an important part. in the course of the unfolding history of these relationships, a particular language of racial description developed which, in the last hundred years, has come to settle around the identification of groups described as african, coloured, white and indian. racism therefore did not end with the democratic dispensation and, in some form, is still infused in society, overtly or covertly. according to nel (2014:248): “our country is still in the grip of bias, stereotyping, and discrimination against people who look, behave, believe, feel and think differently from others”. for three-and-a-half centuries south african society has reflected, in varied degrees and forms, racial thinking and practices. as such pseudo-scientific theories of the inferior intellect of the african child were prevalent, especially during the first half of the 20th century and were designed to justify why the african child was seen as inferior and should not receive an education similar to that of european children (lewis, 1999). these pseudo-scientific theories represent one interpretation of racism (manne, 2002:x) and will be used in this paper as a means of elucidating how african children were seen as inferior and thereby received a different education to europeans. the aim of this paper is therefore to examine some prevalent pseudo-scientific theories on the intellect of the african child from a historical-educational perspective especially evident in the first half of the 20th century; their reflection in society and in educational policy documents and practices; and perceptions thereof. to le roux (2011:17–35), this method of enquiry focuses on the historical and the educational and “[b]ecause the past no longer exists, it needs to be reconstituted from studying relics, documents and traces left by past societies” (le roux, 2011:17). this process will be done by a scrutiny of primary and secondary 30 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) document sources, considering time and space (le roux, 2011:17–35) taking the present into consideration and going back to the past with an eye on the future (lewis & seroto, 2011). a thematic approach (potgieter, 1978:3) will be taken where two main strands of intellectual pseudo-scientific racial theorising on the intellect of the african child – qualitative and quantitative – will be discussed in depth. this gives rise to information not always being presented chronologically. firstly, a short synopsis is given of the evolution of racial theories prior to the 20th century, their penetration of south african society’s thinking and behaviour and their infusion in educational policies, thought and practice. the second part of this paper will look at the development of pseudo-scientific intellectual theories especially during the first half of the 20th century and their impact on educational thinking and practice. the paper will conclude by looking at the way forward, given this discussion of approaches to intellectual assessment, especially pertaining to its place within education. 2. pseudo-scientific theories on intellect during the 20th century to grasp 20th century pseudo-scientific theories on the intellect of the african child it is essential to view the genesis thereof. concurrent with the practice of slavery and european colonialisation was early scientific thought about human variations or types (milner 1975:14) which was established particularly during the modern or enlightenment period, a period characterised by the endeavour to explain phenomena (e.g., colonised africans) in rational terms. “the european classes involved in this process (re)constructed representations of these (colonised-a.l.) populations, both to legitimise their actions and in response to their experience of those populations” (miles, 1989:25) for the legitimisation of slavery, economic and political exploitation and an explanation of racial differences. rationalism “demanded new universal definitions of man’s place in nature as well as his position in god’s universe” (dubow, 1995:25), which were often in direct conflict with widespread theological thought of monogenesis (a common descent for all humankind). to many europeans at the time, the monogenistic approach was an inflexible interpretation of the universe (davies, 1988:11) and was challenged by the development of natural history (miles, 1989:32; dubow, 1995:25), especially in the light of the justification of colonial economic and political control. natural historians started organising phenomena to include not only plants and animals, but also humans (banton, 1987[a]:45). the notion of difference in race was starting to change, now denoting human biological type (miles, 1989:32; cf. banton, 1987[a]:45; banton, 1987[b]:168) as opposed to singular lineage. science was not only required to establish the number and characteristics of each so-called race, but also the hierarchical relationship and difference between them, including their mental abilities, with europeans being placed at the top of the ladder, a position which justified colonisation (barzun, 1965:45; poliakov, 1974:45,161; miles, 1989:32). during the second half of the nineteenth century, the concept of race as type was strengthened by the institutionalisation of physical anthropology. to ashley (1982:52) the 1850’s and 1860’s “produced a number of writings on racial differences, and there was renewed interest in brain sizes, facial angles and brain convolutions” (cf. gibbes, 1851:597; barzun, 1965:51,68; poliakov, 1974:206; banton, 1987[b]:54,74; dubow, 1995:28–30) to demonstrate the superiority of europeans. further research by the anthropologist, franz boas, in the early 20th century aided the collapse of the “scientific appeal” of craniometric arguments and of racial 31 lewis pseudo-scientific intellectual theories of the african child determinism (dubow, 1995:30). importance was then placed on intelligence assessment, since this offered “a more `direct’ path to the same invalid goal of ranking groups by mental worth” (gould in dubow, 1995:31), taking place especially in the 20th century (foxcroft, roodt & abrahams, 2009:12). the nineteenth century did not only represent the pinnacle theories of racism, but also of imperialism and nationalism (milner, 1975:15–16). nationalistic movements and groupings found the concept of race an opportune means in establishing national unity by appealing to nationalistic movements and groupings’ sense of patriotism and perceived racial superiority (barzun, 1965:133-138). in south africa, these racial theories were to manifest and sustain themselves within ideological thought and behaviour in a range of ways continuing through to the 20th century and well into the latter part of the 20th century, especially in the national party’s thinking about the african child’s perceived inferior intelligence. 3. 20th century discourse the union of south africa was formed in 1910 (sa[u], 1911) and parliament became an allwhite establishment (shepherd, 1971:81–82; liebenberg, 1975[a]:383) giving expression to the idea of segregation, and highlighting the political and economic supremacy of whites in south africa, being bolstered by the racial theorising evident and prevalent during the previous century (crijns, 1959:54). western pseudo-scientific theories on the intellect of african children were apparent within the widespread racial discourse, permeating education policy lexicon, thinking and practice. qualitative and quantitative attempts using western knowledge to conceptualise the intellect of the african child seemingly contributed to this discourse and created a narrative of intellectual inferiority. to ramoupi (2010:4): “since at least the formation of the union of south africa in 1910, south african society has been – and continues to be – dominated by western culture.” theories postulated during the early twentieth century attempting to understand and conceptualise the mind of the african child involved investigating the physiological structure and intellectual capacity of the brain in order to ascertain if there was a difference between african people and white people. although the examination of physiological differences in the brain structures of africans and whites was a popular way in showing racial superiority even up until the 1950s, it was seen as an “elusive” means of comparison. an alternate means was “sought to evaluate qualitative differences in the cognitive and perceptual processes of africans and whites” (dubow 1995:202-203). here the stimulus of the sorbonne anthropologist and philosopher, lucien lévy-bruhl, permeated south african discourse of the day. lévy-bruhl’s theories underlined qualitative information in order to arrive at conclusions on the intelligence of africans, as opposed to the quantitative “hard numbers” of intelligence testing. lévy-bruhl maintained that the difference in culture between europeans vis-à-vis as opposed to african people, was that of being rational, and causal vis-à-vis unscientific, mystical, emotional and prelogical. these theories were to influence those who were involved in the education of the african child, such as the writings of the swiss missionary anthropologist, the reverend henry junod, who in an article written in 1920 entitled “the magic conception of nature amongst the bantu” notes that “[w]e europeans of the twentieth century possess what i may call the scientific spirit, whilst bantus are still plunged in the magic conception of nature” (junod, 1920:79). he acknowledged from the beginning that these perceptions of his were “simply consulted [by] 32 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) my experiences of thirty years with south african natives”, reflecting an anecdotal observation as opposed to any scientific research. junod (1920:77) refers to the racial superiority of white people and implied inferiority of the african as is clear from the following referral to education: “the white man has to rule and to educate the native population; he must consequently exert a considerable amount of authority over it.” in a further account to the 1908 select committee on native education (cape of good hope 1908, appendix [n]:xxix) referring to: “practical hints about the reform of native education”, he notes: the shape of the mind of the natives, their mental, social, linguistic conditions are and likely will remain for a long time very different from those of white people…it is therefore imperative that they should be trained according to a special code of instruction suiting them better than the ordinary programme of the european schools. ironically, together with this belief of perceived qualitative differences went the notion that “the treatment of natives, politically speaking, must be fair and as liberal as possible if we want to preserve the peace of the land” (junod, 1920:77). this inconsistency is noted in equating fair treatment with white authority and is to be seen against the background that many missionary teachers who saw it as their god-given task to “protect” africans (cf. cotton, 1926; smith, 1926) which was in agreement with prevailing notions of “benevolent colonialism” (lewis & steyn, 2003). the introduction of segregated “native education” for african pupils after union witnessed a racialised system implemented in african education in contrast to education provision for white children based on the former’s perceived intellectual differences. missionaries mainly taught african pupils in primary schools and these schools were largely aided by provincial subsidies (hartshorne, 1992:25). in this way, the government still had influence over educational policies and practices. this is reflected in several documents, aimed specifically at teachers of african pupils. one such document was published by the cape of good hope’s department of public education in 1924 (cape of good hope 1924: foreword) and later revised in 1929 (cape of good hope, 1929: foreword), the native primary school: suggestions for the consideration of teachers. in the foreword (cape of good hope 1929: foreword) of both documents, the then superintendent-general of education, wj viljoen, notes that these documents would “give the education of the native child the basis of reality, and of adaptation to his environment and needs, that will render his education of real benefit to the individual and a potent influence in the advancement of the race”. to dube (1985:93) the main aim of this type of education was: to handicap african children with the introduction of an inferior syllabus, coupled with inadequate learning conditions and poorly educated teachers. these combined factors were intended to reinforce the existing belief of white superiority while simultaneously making african children believe that they, by nature, have different destinies. whereas segregated education was intended to impose mutual ignorance of each other’s customs, values, and lifestyles upon white and african children, the curriculum for native education was designed to retard the intellectual development of africans (italics mine–al). furthermore, the 1930s observation of the report of the interdepartmental committee on native education, 1935-1936 (ug29/1936) (sa[u], 1936)–commonly referred to as the welsh commission–which inquired into the education of the african child in south africa at the time highlights a prevalent perception that african children required an intellectually inferior and separate type education that channelled them into certain career positions and to assume inferior positions in society: 33 lewis pseudo-scientific intellectual theories of the african child [i]t seems clear that there still exists opposition to the education of the native on the grounds that (a) it makes him lazy and unfit for manual work; (b) it makes him “cheeky” and less docile as a servant; and (c) it estranges him from his own people and often leads him to despise his own culture...the aim that most...critics have at the back of their minds is that we must give the native an education that will keep him in his place.... (rose & tunmer, 1975:231–232). education is influenced by several societal forces: politics, culture and religion (lewis, 1992:43) and in this case african education was provided mainly by missionaries up until apartheid education, within a racially segregated, hegemonic, capitalistic society. jones (1970:40) has this to say about the relationship: “as in the case with all forms of social institutions, a reasonably clear perspective of bantu education is contingent upon an understanding of the cultural developments, political, economic, and religious, which have shaped the country and the attitudes of its people.” seen in context, the 1920s and 1930s were an important breeding ground for nationalistic feelings, spurred on by political, economic and social factors. poverty and unemployment were rife, both nationally and internationally, due to a worldwide economic crisis and subsequent depression creating the ‘poor white’ problem. large-scale urbanisation of both africans and whites occurred and ensuing poverty and unemployment prevailed (kinghorn, 1986[a]:52), which created a resistance to the education and development of africans. psychologically these developments impacted strongly on whites since they now competed with africans for careers, as well as being on an equal footing with africans whom they had previously perceived as inferior (kinghorn, 1986[a]:52-53). a nationalistic world-view was introduced into, amongst others, the dutch reformed church (drc) (which invariably included their mission stations where african children were educated). an understated variation in emphasis emerged from a justification on biblical grounds of white people as the “custodian” of “inferior races” to the “theology of humanity as equal because of separation” (kinghorn, 1990:63–69). this paved the way for the introduction of intellectually inferior education during the 1950’s which reflected principles of separate development strengthened by further pronouncements of the intellectual inferiority of the african child and reinforced by quantitative psychological assessment data. qualitative pronouncements of the african child as intellectually inferior to the european child were striking during the apartheid period when cultural differences were equated to intellectual differences and, in the instance of the african child, their perceived intellectual inferiority to the white child. khuzwayo (2005:316) notes a study done by groenewald in 1976 who drew the following main finding: [t]he problems which blacks experience should be attributed especially to their being rooted in a traditional outlook on and way of life which dictated the pattern of their lives for centuries and which differ fundamentally from the western way of life. the world of culture in which the black child finds himself has restrictive implications for the actualisation of his intelligence. stemming from a colonial heritage (foxcroft & roodt, 2009:18), psychological testing became popular in the early 20th century as it was seen as a means of “provid[ing] immediate and reliable assessments of intellectual abilities and aptitudes on a comparative basis” between africans and europeans since the tests were perceived as “scientific and objective” (dubow, 1995:209). internationally at the time, psychological assessment was becoming widespread (foxcroft & roodt, 2009:12) and its use and development as a political tool in south africa proved vital to those looking for a scientific endorsement of segregation and proof of racial superiority, especially by theorists seeking to justify white dominance over africans. 34 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) these assessment measures were standardised for whites and were therefore not valid and reliable when applied to other cultures and races, a practice that is ethically, morally and legally wanting. to foxcroft and roodt (2009:5): “the appropriateness of an assessment measure for an individual, group, or organization from another context, culture, or society cannot be assumed without an investigation into possible test bias…and without strong consideration being given to adapting and re-norming the measure.” foxcroft and roodt (2009:18) further see that “what is different and important to note is the context in which this development took place. psychological assessment in south africa developed in an environment characterised by the unequal distribution of resources based on racial categories (african, coloured, indian and white).” the cape times (1946:6) newspaper gives insight into the prevalent context or ‘spirit of the time’ in that “the race problem to-day in this country is worse than it has ever been throughout our history”, sentiments shared by liebenberg (1975[b]:424-426). events during this period included political division between the political parties and the white population regarding discriminatory non-white legislation and the upsurge among many white people of an uncertainty of political and economic control by africans. all this took place in the larger world that was moving towards non-discrimination. white people in south africa started to press for segregation and afrikaner nationalism reached a climax just after world war ii. with the national party coming to power in 1948, the emergence and advancement of this party’s doctrine of apartheid was given impetus by intellectual pseudo-scientific theorising and conclusions that reinforced these declarations of racial separation. psychological assessments, as a means of measuring white superiority, began to make their appearance in the education system’s policy lexicon especially after 1910, and led to prejudicial attitudes and discriminatory behaviour, especially in provision to the african child. the liberal educationist, charles loram (1917:162-193), in his book, the education of the south african native, published the outcomes of intellectual assessments performed on african, indian and white school children, and maintained that african children were mentally not as capable as whites and indians, emphasising the “continued dominance of the european” (loram, 1917:192). this necessitated, according to loram (1917:192-193), an education for the african child which matched the perceived inferior intellect. loram, however, was careful in assigning the cause to permanent or inherent inferiority (cf. kutoane & krüger, 1990:9; louwpotgieter & foster, 1991:62). in essence, to laher and cockcroft (2014:304): “the lower scores obtained by black children were used as ‘evidence’ for the inferiority of the native intellect.” furthermore, the nationalist scholar, m.l. fick, published the book, the educatability of the south african native, in 1939 in which he used “available objective data” and inferred a contrasting view to loran’s earlier argument (kutoane & krüger 1990:9): african people had an intrinsic inferior intelligence compared to that of white people (fick 1939:1–2). this assumption, however, differed from his own conclusion drawn in his earlier 1929 publication, which attributed the inferiority of the african child’s intellect to sub-standard schools and teaching methods and the african child’s unfamiliarity with the nature of the tasks of the test (foxcroft & roodt, 2009:18) and not definitively to innate reasons. to fick (1929:910): whether this inability is due to the innate or racial make-up of the groups concerned, whether it is merely an indication of a lower level of intelligence or whether it is due to that type of training or teaching that the child receives, it is impossible to state definitively. 35 lewis pseudo-scientific intellectual theories of the african child of note is the foreword of fick’s 1939 book, which was written by another resolute nationalist, dr werner eiselen, the then chief inspector of native education, and future chairperson of the national party’s investigation into bantu education. here eiselen (1939:iii–iv) ratified the intellectual superiority of white people, as well as the need for an education system that was different for the african child to that of the white child since “we may be leading them into a cul-de-sac and thus retard their development.” a conclusion similar to that of fick was reached by another nationalist scholar, j.a. jansen van rensburg (jansen van rensburg 1938:17–43) in his book, the learning ability of the south african native which endorsed the dominant “scientifically proven” perception, that african people were only suited to carry out manual, repetitive jobs (louw-potgieter & foster, 1991:63), thus necessitating a separate education system that would suit such a perception pertaining to their intellectual abilities. psychological measures were questioned in the period between the two world wars (foxcroft & roodt, 2009:14) and the aforementioned psychological tests and conclusions drawn were interrogated by the 1936 welsh commission (sa[u] 1936:105), and countered by the liberal scholars, i.d. maccrone (1936:92–107), s. biesheuwel (1943:196–224) and even from within missionary circles. missionary criticism was expressed by the editorial of the lovedale missionary journal, south african outlook (1 may, 1939:100) as well as by letters directed by readers to the editorial (south african outlook 1 july, 1939:167–168). a critique of this mental testing articulated by the editorial of south african outlook (1 may 1939:100–105) was that the investigators who made these “objective” observations were in fact white and not of the culture of those being tested. specific criticism directed at van rensburg’s works included questioning the validity of the selection process, pointing out that the white testers were not linguistically experienced in the language of those tested and that those assessors who were linguistically skilled, were not trained in psychology. other critiques involved the nature of the tests, the type of test material used as it was standardised for europeans and that environmental factors (e.g., test setting) were not taken into consideration during testing which would have negatively affected the result. given this, although jansen van rensburg’s (1938:1–43) study referred to these points of criticism, he still concluded white intellectual superiority. criticism was also directed at psychological testing by the african academic, d.d.t. jabavu (1929:934–935), who described the accomplishments of many african professionals as on par with their european peers. in the 1920s, molema (1920:328–329), whom chanaiwa (1980:16) considers a “great and...historically oriented intellectual”, commented that: [h]as science proved any intellectual or moral inefficiency of the african races? no no more than it has proved their intellectual and moral efficiency. neither capacity nor incapacity have been shown conclusively to be characteristic of the backward races, or, more plainly of the african race. lovedale missionary school principals, drs james stewart and rhw shepherd, also criticised allegations of mental inferiority of african people; they noted the exceptional achievements of both african and white students during examinations (cf. horrel, 1963:13). dube (1985:92) argues that the reason for advancing white superiority was that: [t]he effect of equal ability in school performance was seen by the colonialists as undermining the social perception of africans as “inferior.” children who see first-hand the contradiction between social stereotypes and reality are not likely to embrace those stereotypes. the aim of segregation, then, was to prevent white children from learning the true african ability directly through social intercourse at school. 36 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) in 1948, the nationalist government executed its policy of separate development in all earnest and in january 1949 a commission on ‘native education’, under the chairmanship of werner eiselen, was established (behr & macmillan, 1971:396; lewis, 1992:51-53). after the eiselen report was presented to the house of assembly on monday, 11 february 1952 (south african outlook, 1 march 1952:36; lewis, 1992:51), a new era of racial segregation was introduced, regarding the african child’s education which would move strictly along separate and racial lines. the commission was tasked with formulating plans to provide an “education for natives as an independent race, in which their past and present, their inherent racial qualities, their distinctive characteristics and aptitude, and their needs under ever changing social conditions are taken into consideration” (italics mine – al) (sa[u], 1951:7). years of pseudo-scientific intellectual theorising and practice were reflected in the lexicon and culminated in the starting point of the commission. to behr (1988:33): “[t]he commission... began with the premise that a distinction should be drawn between white and black education.” racial intellectual theorising – qualitative and quantitative – over the years had once again found its way into the policy justification of a different, intellectually inferior education provided to the african child. opposition to the eiselen report was substantial; the education league in johannesburg saw the “proposed” new system as flouting “the growing needs of a vast detribalized and urbanized native population” (cape times, 18 september 1953:4) while the editorial of the missionary publication, south african outlook, perceived the document as “a politician’s and not an educationalist’s document. it smacks of apartheid, of the nationalist brand, from beginning to end” (south african outlook, 1 march 1952:36). the general tone and content of the eiselen report was seen by the editorial of the south african outlook (1 march 1952:36) as in support of the racial policies of the national party government. marambana (1987:23), on speaking of the education crisis at the time, declared that “segregation is the root cause of crisis in african education”, with the intention of not merely keeping different groups apart, but to produce conditions for inequality, thus “giving the white section superiority and hegemony, and others inferiority and subordination.” the minister of native affairs, dr hendrik verwoerd, introduced the bantu education act in 1953, based largely on the recommendations of the eiselen commission (behr 1988:35–36) which removed african education from the jurisdiction of the provincial education departments and run by the department of bantu education (shepherd 1971:153; behr 1988:61), which “was based on the realistic and separatist principles of the nationalist government’s ideology” (mncwabe 1990:21). pointing to mathematics education and the intellectual inferiority of the african child within policy lexicon and formulation, during the second reading of the bantu education bill on 17 september 1953 verwoerd (1953 in khuzwayo, 2005:310) noted: when i have control over native education i will reform it so that the natives will be taught from childhood to realise that equality with europeans is not for them. people who believe in equality are not desirable teachers for natives…what is the use of teaching the bantu child mathematics when it cannot use it in practice? that is quite absurd. african children were discouraged from taking mathematics, which featured minimally within the education of the african child and, if so, was presented as “an abstract, meaningless subject” (khuzwayo, 2005:310). these policy insertions, thinking and behaviour resulted from pseudo-scientific racial theorising of africans that permeated south african society at the time (lewis, 1999:165). 37 lewis pseudo-scientific intellectual theories of the african child the educationalist, behr (1988:61), argued that this was “a system of centralization within each racial group and decentralization between groups.” criticism to this type of segregated education was prevalent (cook, 1990:172) in political (cape times, 18 september 1953:4) educational (cape times, 22 september 1953:5) and theological circles (south african outlook, 1 october 1954:145; cape times, 22 november 1954:4; sebakwane, 1994:12). khuzwayo (2005:310) sums up the impact that several years of social, political and economic deprivation had on the education of the african child: the apartheid policies of the nationalist government were explicitly engineered to create minority group control and to provide inferior education for the majority in order to sustain its position of social, political and economic subjugation. educational resources were not only limited, but also differentially distributed. education of the african child continued to be inferior, separate and unequal throughout the apartheid years. psychological measures continued to reflect similar characteristics (foxcroft et al., 2009:19) until a change in the political dispensation came about in the 1990s which started to question these theories and practices. 4. concluding remarks and the way forward this paper has examined selected pseudo-scientific racial theories on the mental abilities of the african child from a historical-educational perspective and how they were reflected within numerous educational policy documents, perceptions, thinking and practices at the time. these were apparent prior to and during the apartheid era (lewis, 1999:279). yet, given this, they still prevail. ntshoe (2017:84) notes that “while strides have been made to reverse the explicit de jure racism, racialism, segregation, inequalities and inequities in schools in the democratic society, more hidden and subtle forms of racism and resegregation are emerging as the country enters its third decade of democratic rule post-1994.” what then, given this discussion, creates a solid awareness and action in addressing and preventing racist thinking and behaviour in education in general, and intellectual assessment in particular? pseudo-scientific racial theorising justified separate and unequal education and conceptualised the african child’s intellect as inferior to that of the white child over several years of education, in particular, in south africa. this was also evident in apartheid education where the african child’s enrolment in subjects such as mathematics, was discouraged due to their perceived inferior intellectual abilities and to keep them subjugated. nongxa (2018), avers to apartheid’s bantu education stance of discouraging african children from taking mathematics, subsequently denying a whole generation the opportunity of pursuing this vital school subject for the benefit of the economy then and now (mouton, louw & strydom, 2012). this should be seen in the light of current concerns around the lack of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (stem) graduates in south africa (grayson, 2009:9) and the lack of exposure to these subjects by the african child due to apartheid education which did not train sufficient stem teachers (parker, 2009:47) due to racist pseudo-scientific theories permeating thinking, practices and behavior that have left the african child’s education lacking in relevant opportunities. to nongxa (2018) this highlights the current importance of the provision of opportunities, especially for the african child, with talent in mathematics, to realise potential in this subject and of the necessary exposure to and support of role models for the next generation of youth pursuing mathematics in order to contribute to the development of the wellbeing of the african child and the economy. 38 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) it is the fiduciary and ethical duty of statutory bodies, such as, the health professions council of south africa (hpcsa) as the statutory body (sa[r], 1974) of mental health practitioners (e.g., psychologists) in this country, to ensure that psychological assessment instruments in general, and intellectual instruments in particular are valid and reliable. linked to this is the responsibility of practitioners to administer psychological tests appropriately and ethically to redress the past when “psychologists provided pseudo-scientific legitimization for the segregation of races in south africa which continued through the 1920s and 1930s” and well into the 1970s as a predominantly culturally insensitive, unreliable and invalid means of psychological understanding with western models typically being used with little development and ethical practice taking place. although the 1980s and 1990s saw gradual changes in making assessment instruments more applicable to all south africans (laher & cockroft, 2014:304–309), even today in the democratic era, psychological assessment instruments are viewed with caution (foxcroft et al., 2009:19–21). some instruments still in use (e.g., the senior south african individual scales-revised [ssais-r]) (van eeden, 1991), did not make use of african children in the standardisation sample; made use of dated theoretical models and norms; and have not kept up with demographics and curriculum changes. the rationale for continued use is the result of a lack of locally normed alternatives (cockcroft, 2013:48–57) and the cost of international instruments which are often not standardised for the south african population. however, present developments have led to a definite progression in legitimising psychological assessments with several policy documents addressing this issue. the white paper 6 (department of education, 2001) and the employment equity act, 55 of 1998 (rsa, 1998, section 8), for example, both advocate fair psychological assessment devoid of discrimination. yet, assessment remains an area that needs constant debate, monitoring and development to avoid exclusion and discrimination. as lesufi (2017:21) advises: “[a] nonracial education must be constantly reinforced in word and deed”. as part of psychological assessment, demands for non-discriminatory assessment of learners is called. laher and cockroft (2014:309) note the move to include a more holistic, contextual and relevant dynamic assessment and the incorporation of qualitative approaches into psychological assessment to ensure a fair means of assessment as opposed to a rigid, predominantly western approach. theron (2013:71–72) calls for a comprehensive assessment of a child’s abilities that includes not only an intellectual assessment, but also qualitative information and observations to ensure “ a meaningful, comprehensive assessment.” given this article’s exposition of the past misuse of the singular use of qualitative and qualitative information in arriving at faulty conclusions of the african child’s mental abilities, practitioners’ good training and ethical practice are essential to ensure holistic, contextual, reliable and valid assessments as opposed to one-sided, biased assessments to suit a specific malevolent agenda. furthermore, this article also relates to the importance of south africans in general and learners in particular being made aware of historical developments to ensure that discriminatory, one-sided eurocentric, malevolent thinking and practices are red-flagged and halted. history teaching, as horn (2018:22), points out has the potential to be a positive influence or a “destructive power” with pseudo-science being part of the latter. horn (2018:22) points out: if the younger generation looks at the present without knowledge of the past, or, to put it another way, without knowledge of how we arrived at the present, it is very likely that most of them will accept the status quo without question. many may even no longer seek to create a better present. in short, if we fail to realise what it took to get where we are today, we will be doomed to a future that holds no promise of progress. 39 lewis pseudo-scientific intellectual theories of the african child education policy makers are currently proposing to make history a compulsory school subject from grades 10-12 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https://www.hpcsa.co.za/uploads/editor/userfiles/downloads/legislations/acts/health_professions_ct_56_1974.pdf https://www.hpcsa.co.za/uploads/editor/userfiles/downloads/legislations/acts/health_professions_ct_56_1974.pdf https://www.hpcsa.co.za/uploads/editor/userfiles/downloads/legislations/acts/health_professions_ct_56_1974.pdf http://bee.b1sa.co.za/docs/the%2520employment%2520equity%2520act%25201998.pdf http://bee.b1sa.co.za/docs/the%2520employment%2520equity%2520act%25201998.pdf https://doi.org/10.18772/22013015782.10 bm_1_ _hlk521830396 _goback vii prof loyiso jita sanral chair in mathematics, natural sciences and technology education faculty of education university of the free state jitalc@ufs.ac.za editorial many of the articles published in our 2016 edition have focused on the issue of quality education from a number of different perspectives. the current issue continues this journey and exploration but focuses more closely on three important aspects of the quality education debate: first, the focus is on higher education. zeroing in on two professional programmes, one for teachers and another for engineers, several of the articles probe pertinent questions about the graduates’ knowledge, competences and attributes. taking the position that universities are critical to the development of knowledgeable, competent and well-disposed graduate professionals, the studies raise important concerns that challenge the entire higher education community to reflect more deeply on the relevance, designs and outcomes of the current programmes on offer, especially the professional programmes in teacher education and chemical engineering, in particular. second, the focus is on exploring the possibilities and likely impact of more innovative designs and strategies, including new technologies and workor school-based learning for teaching and learning of various subjects in the schools and universities. third, the focus is on the broader question of quality education for what? several of the articles begin to answer this question by pointing towards the overall objective of promoting quality education in pursuit of a broader social agenda on social justice. petro du preez and anne becker begin the conversations with a critique of a human rights literacy project for teacher education students in the south african university context. in their article, entitled “ontologies and possibilities of human rights: exploring dissensus to facilitate reconciliation in post-conflict education contexts”, the authors puzzle over the participants’ confessed lack of competence on human rights issues and their struggles and disillusionment with the human rights (in south africa). this is in addition to the participants’ perceptions of a conflict between what the human rights are (actual) and what they could or should be (ideal). the paper proposes an interesting approach for resolving this dilemma, one where the design and approach of the human rights education within the teacher education programme shifts away from engaging with human rights along fixed barriers to one where the education is a continual dissonant process, enabling moments of dissensus within intersecting spaces of (non)existing rights. thuthukile jita pursues the theme on the efficacy of the teacher education programmes by measuring the perceived viii competences of science pre-service teachers to use information and communication technologies (icts) for teaching specific subjects such as life sciences, physical sciences and natural sciences. in her article entitled “pre-service teachers’ competence to teach science through information and communication technologies in south africa”, she argues that student teachers are more competent in the use of non-technology tools as opposed to the newer technology tools and gadgets for facilitating teaching and learning. thuthukile argues that the major sources of the observed lack of competence by pre-service teachers on the use of icts have to do with the faulty design in the university programmes that neither provide adequate opportunities for student teachers to learn about the actual use of such tools during their training at university nor assesses their use by the students as part of the teaching practice requirements. the paper recommends the need to develop ict standards or competence criteria and policies to guide the assessment of competence in and support for the use of ict tools by student teachers. dipane hlalele and cias tsotetsi continue the discussion on the design and implementation of innovative practices in the teacher education programmes at university. their paper entitled, “promoting student teachers’ adaptive capabilities through community engagement” examines how one teacher education programme was deliberately designed to provide students with opportunities to assess and develop their capabilities to adapt to changing conditions of curriculum implementation in different schools. through the infusion of a community engagement component in the teacher education programme, the students were offered the space to develop an awareness and demonstrate their capabilities to bridge the various challenges they experience with curriculum implementation in a number of rural schools in the eastern free state province of south africa. in her article entitled “why do they want to become english teachers: a case study of taiwanese efl teachers”, chih-min shih provides some research guidance to teacher educators and policymakers on the design of appropriate teacher education programmes for english as a second language (esl) and english as a foreign language (efl). she unpacks the reasons given by a sample of a diverse group of taiwanese efl teachers for wanting to become english teachers. using the watt and richardson (2007) framework on factors influencing teaching choice (fit), she examines the expectancy value propositions of the sample teachers and concludes that their choice to become english teachers is influenced by multiple intrinsic and extrinsic factors. pre-service teacher education has a much greater role in nurturing the intrinsic motivation required of teachers. thobeka makhathini introduces the discussion on professional competence and the role of higher education programmes rather differently by examining the training of engineers within the context of universities of technology in south africa. in her paper, entitled, “work integrated learning competencies: industrial supervisors’ perspectives”, she identifies the strengths and shortfalls of the work integrated learning (wil) experiences for students placed in the various chemical engineering companies in the eastern coastal seaboard of south africa. using a 4-point likert-scale assessment tool that measures 23 work-related competencies, her data from the workplace supervisors shows that the engineering students performed well on the cognitive and/or “hard skills” while they did poorly on the behavioural and/or “soft skills”. makhathini thus argues for the need to redesign the engineering programmes to focus creatively on the hard and the soft skills that are required in the engineering industries. the last three papers in this issue shift our focus back to the challenge of quality education in primary and secondary schools. dovetailing on the discussion by thuthukile jita on the use of icts for teaching and learning, the authors mavhunga, kibirige, ramaboka and chigonga present descriptive statistical data on the use of smart phones by high school students for learning. their paper on “smartphones in public secondary schools: views of matric graduates”, suggests that data searching and processing is the most prevalent activities for which the ix smartphones are used by the grade 12 learners. interestingly for teachers and policymakers, the study notes that most schools do not allow learners to use their smart phones in class and thereby limit the range of possibilities for using these ict tools for teaching and learning purposes. vukile mgijima and leketi makalela then present findings on the effects of translanguaging techniques on teaching grade 4 learners how to apply relevant background knowledge when drawing inferences during reading. their paper entitled “the effects of translanguaging on the bi-literate inferencing strategies of fourth grade learners” examines the efficacy of simultaneously using the learners’ home language and a second language in reading development among bilingual xhosa-english readers in a rural school in the eastern cape, south africa. in the final article of this issue, aslam fataar and jennifer feldman explore the potential of professional learning communities (plcs) as vehicles for promoting deep reflection and pedagogical change among teachers in pursuit of a social justice agenda in schools. the paper provides tangible suggestions on how to overcome the two major challenges identified in the plc: viz. the lack of a “didactic language” and “pedagogical reflexivity” among the participants. all the papers contain an interesting thread in their attempt to answer the question: quality education for what? whether it is about trying to bridge the digital divide, providing innovative solutions on issues of pedagogical change, to the local problems in rural schools or providing the means for accessing the dominant and/or trans-national languages to taiwanese students or the primary school learners in the eastern cape in south africa, concerns about social justice are not far off. collectively, therefore the papers make a timely contribution and add insights to the debates on policy and practice for the provision of quality education in higher education generally but in professional education in particular. pie32(3) book.indb perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 78 jabulani nyoni department of educational leadership and management, university of south africa e-mail: nyonij@unisa.ac.za telephone: +27 12 429 4474 e-readiness of open and distance learning (odl) facilitators: implications for effective mediation jabulani nyoni this article is a narrative report of the findings from the analysis of multicultural facilitators’ discourses on their e-readiness in the use of information and communication technologies (icts) affordances in open and distance learning (odl) mediation experiences. first, the findings revealed by qualitative deconstructive discourse analysis indicated that the majority of odl facilitators lack those e-readiness skills that are critical in the effective manipulation of ict affordances tools in odl mediation environments. secondly, some facilitators did not fully understand what undergirds odl andragogy, principles and practices. institutions’ academic lecturers are periodically given e-training, but this seems to be inadequate. i, therefore, recommend that a comprehensive orientation tutorial package, covering e-readiness, e-training and odl principles and practices, be organised for all inexperienced, as well as newly employed lecturers, to appropriately prepare them for the rigours of odl pedagogies and methodologies. key words: ict affordances; ict adaptances; learning mediation; e-readiness; odl facilitator/instructor introduction open and distance education or open and distance learning (odl) is an established approach to education in the world today. distance learning has a history of over a century involving different teaching approaches and following the technological evolution concerning the delivery of educational materials and the communication between learners and instructors/lecturers. as information communication technologies (icts) take on a more visible role in people’s lives, moving from research institutions into communities, schools, and homes, people become more aware of how icts are both mediators of and, in themselves, learning settings in odl. e-readiness of open and distance learning (odl) facilitators: implications for effective mediation jabulani nyoni 79 a significant body of literature (heinrich, 1995; fullan, 1994; wang, 2002) supports the view that the way lecturers teach is a product of their own education, training and experiences. it is unreasonable to expect lecturers to change their existing pedagogical approaches when they have not been provided with sufficient and appropriate training in how to work with icts and incorporating new teaching technologies into their mediation methodologies. borotis and poulymenakou (2004: 669) view e-readiness as “the mental or physical preparedness of an individual for some e-learning experience or action”. e-learning readiness helps a lecturer to design e-learning strategies comprehensively and to effectively deliver learning experiences to an odl student (kaur & abas, 2004). students must also be “e-ready” so that a coherent achievable strategy, tailored to meet their needs, may be implemented (infodev, 2001). invariably, e-learning readiness assessment provides key information to organisations to supply solutions which can cater for the specific needs of each learning group (mcconnell international, 2000). despite a number of south african institutions embracing odl as delivery mode, studies have shown that, while the higher education system functions relatively well, higher education still faces major challenges, including low participation rates; high attrition rates; a curriculum that does not speak to society and its needs; the absence of an enabling environment that allows every individual to express and reach full potential; and poor knowledge production that often does not translate into innovation (rsa national planning commission, 2011). while knowledge production is the rationale of higher education, high-quality knowledge production cannot be fully realised with a low student participation rate and a curriculum or environment that is alienating, and does not articulate the vision of the nation, nor with an academic staff that is insufficiently qualified (rsa national planning commission, 2011). the challenge to institutions of higher education is to accommodate as many students as possible, while offering each one of them a reasonable chance of success, and odl remains the best vehicle to meet that demand cost effectively. open and distance learning historical perspectives in line with age old odl trends in education provisioning, the british open university was established in 1969 to widen access to education in britain and has served as a model to many others. it introduced a programme for a certificate in education for graduates who wanted to enter teaching but had no professional qualification. students used computer conferencing as an integral part of the course to interact with tutors and with one another. in comparison, the university of the south pacific teaches education and other disciplines by combining correspondence lessons with broadcasts and with regular computer conference sessions at regional centres. the university was one of the earliest users of communication satellites and is able to run two-way seminars with its students by means of satellite links (runfang, 2008). perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 80 as early as the 1970s, a radio-based school in colombia was reaching over 100 000 rural students every year. currently the national technological university in the united states is using satellite and broadcasting technology to meet the needs of engineers for postgraduate study without their having to leave their jobs to attend campus lectures. in china, the combined use of television, classroom sessions and printed materials is providing university education to about a third of all the students in higher education. uganda set up a number of programmes designed to equip untrained and unqualified teachers with professional skills. in the 1970s, for example, tanzania succeeded in recruiting 45 000 potential teachers of whom 38 000 obtained their qualifications (chale, 1983: 31). other countries such as kenya, nigeria, lesotho, botswana and zimbabwe have exploited odl methodology in one way or another in the mediation of learning. odl institutions make use of several different media and do not rely on online mode of delivery only, as it is often misconstrued. students may learn through print, broadcasts, the internet and through occasional meetings with tutors and with other students. the question of odl legitimacy is no longer an issue, because most of the traditional institutions have gradually incorporated the different media and technologies available to mediate learning and teaching. the following question was used to frame the study: how “e-ready” are open and distance learning (odl) academic facilitators to use the e-education portal for e-information dissemination and e-learning in mediating learning experiences with students? theoretical framework in the adult working world, networking, collaboration and adaptation are some of the preferred principles of practice in information sharing, growth and development, as well as benchmarking, particularly when it comes to odl. so much has been said about odl adult learning (andragogy) (knowles, 1990), but very little on academics (lecturers) becoming continuous adapters to affordances that are designed to enhance teaching and learning. odl andragogy remains relevant to adult learning more so when ict affordances are the main modes of information dissemination and mediation of teaching and learning. i identified three theories as espoused by mason (2006) to serve as my theoretical lens. i used these to explore and examine how e-ready academic lecturers were to work with ict adaptances in order to select the most appropriately blended odl affordances in their teaching and learning. these included self-directed learning as the preferred model, adults’ experience as a rich course resource, a problem-based rather than subject-centred approach, and the importance of a social context for learning (knowles, 1990). i view facilitators as adults who can embark on self-directed learning while executing their primary function of facilitation. through practice and exposure, lecturers are capable of change and can translate those changes in the e-readiness of open and distance learning (odl) facilitators: implications for effective mediation jabulani nyoni 81 way they design their curricular and learning development programmes given the multiplicity of ict affordances. another influential adult learning theory is referred to as “experiential learning” (kolb, 1984). this theory describes the adult learning process as a cyclical pattern wherein the student moves from experience, through reflection, to conceptualising and then action. this process forms the basis for many training and learning events and, more recently, for continuous professional development in the odl workplace. however, brookfield (2005: 4-5) added a cautionary note to the wholesale acceptance of experiential learning as the defining feature of adult learning: because of the habitual ways we draw meaning from our experiences, these experiences can become evidence for the self-fulfilling prophecies that stand in the way of critical insight. uncritically affirming people’s histories, stories and experiences risks idealizing and romanticising them. experiences are neither innocent nor free from the cultural contradictions that inform them. a third focus of research is particularly relevant to online ict education of adults: the social context of learning. the various strands of this theory have been brought together by wenger (1998: 6) in his account of learning as social participation. while social interaction is not a prerequisite for all types of learning, many tasks in an odl workplace rely on teams or are conducted through interaction with clients, suppliers or fellow employees. wenger (1998) sees these communities of practice as pervasive not only in the workplace, but in all aspects of society: we all belong to communities of practice. at home, at work, at school, in our hobbies – we belong to several communities of practice at any given time. and the communities of practice to which we belong change over the course of our lives. in fact, communities of practice are everywhere (mason, 2006). (see figure 1.) figure 1: odl student and facilitator/instructor process of interactivity perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 82 the flow chart indicates the mediation process that occurs between an odl student and the facilitator/instructor. the instructor uses his/her adaptances (ability to use operational competency skills to select and manipulate the most appropriate ict affordances that can be used effectively in mediation of learning processes). the student works with interactive ict affordances in engaging with learning processes and submits tasks using the same mode of delivery (nyoni, 2012). the value of communities for learning is that they create, hold and distribute knowledge in ways that exceed individual capabilities (mason, 2006). the designated portal for odl e-information dissemination and e-learning mediation was used as a case to gather the views of chairs of department and academic instructors/facilitators on its use. wenger (1998) opines that communities of practice change over time and these changes are brought about by a number of factors. some of the factors could be attributed to technological advancements that might influence learning mediation methodologies, retirements, political, innovation and many others. e-readiness to work with ict affordances new developments are emerging continually in the realm of odl education. these developments have an impact on different aspects of distance learning such as teaching-learning, student support services, evaluation and assessment, and odl management system which are undergoing revolutionary changes. i have witnessed some distance education institutions such as unisa adopting odl andragogy as the vanguard for leadership, management, instruction and learning. the paradigm shift necessitates adopting a mind-set that allows making adaptive adjustments in the way academics deliver their instructional modular programmes and curriculum design. to succeed and survive in an odl institution, given the multiplicity of icts, digital affordances need instructors endowed with appropriate adaptances. adaptances in this context refer to knowledge and competency (which encompasses skills, knowledge and attitudes) that are acquired through practice, allowing one to identify student-centred ict instructional tools that can be manipulated in the process of mediating learning. adaptances allow the odl facilitator/instructor to break with orthodox distance education methods by incorporating new and student-centred, blended methodologies in an endeavour to bridge the gap between campus and student. a lack of odl-oriented ict adaptances, at times, dissuades odl facilitators from blending their traditional instruction and learning methods with the most appropriate ones that appeal to the newer generation of students. as the readiness of academic facilitators to use the new technology is critical to the success of implementing e-learning in odl institutions, it is worthwhile to investigate whether and how prepared they are to embrace the new technologies in mediation of learning experiences. the purpose of this research was, thus, intended to analyse the e-readiness of facilitators with regard to the use of the new technologies in odl environment. e-readiness of open and distance learning (odl) facilitators: implications for effective mediation jabulani nyoni 83 it was hoped that the experience gained from this research would be beneficial to other odl institutions exploring the use of e-learning technology in new teaching and learning activities. methodology deconstructive discourse analysis and internal criticism were employed and guided by a developmental qualitative critical case study methodology. the methods were used to analyse the data which consisted of a compilation of a developmental critical case study. chiefly, deconstructive discourse analysis employs internal criticisms, which are guided by a developmental qualitative critical case study methodology (maclure, 2003). the study involved four academic department chairpersons and five facilitators/instructors from odl institution who participated on a voluntary basis. the purposive sampling method was preferred, since i specifically wanted to involve odl practitioners. the following data collection methods were used: password secure blogging (hewson, yule, laurent & vogel, 2003: mann & stewart 2000); semi-structured interviews (fowler, 2002); and electronic ledger repository (waldo, 1998). a blog is the short form for “weblog” (jacobs, 2003), and is written by individuals or groups of people on the world wide web. the data collection processes continued until data saturation was reached. the methodology required me to maintain a critical attitude towards chairs of department’s and facilitators’ adaptances needed in selecting the most appropriate ict affordances in odl in teaching and learning mediation processes (crotty, 1998: 78, 80-81; cohen & omery, 1994: 138-139). table 1: facilitators’ prior knowledge and skills in odl blended methodology sample of the study: (n = 15) number attribute qualifications 11 full-time professional lectures skilled in diverse range of programmes (college of education) phd/ded 4 part-time facilitators med had prior knowledge of odl blended methodology had prior knowledge on the effective use of icts for mediation 9 males 6 females deconstructive discourse analysis incorporated a similar critical attitude towards the meanings permeating in the data and towards my own beliefs. the essence of deconstructive discourse analysis is captured in maclure’s (2003: 3) argument that our commonsensical beliefs of educational realities (maclure, 2003: 9, 171-173) perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 84 should be deconstructed and torn apart to enable proper engagement with the discursive educational realities (maclure, 2003: 4). the next step involved critically scrutinising internal criticisms that helped in systematically and comprehensively analysing the textual materials. bell (1999: 113-116) suggests that internal criticism could be used in critically analysing the contents of a document with regard to its genre; the language it employs; the author’s background and experiences; the purpose, background, reliability of the document; etc. having examined the methodology and methods for analysing the primary textual and discursive data used in this article, i explored the views of the facilitators on how they went about identifying icts affordances which could be used for mediating learning and what implications the use of these affordances would have for odl andragogy.table 2: coding scheme for identification of an interaction type in odl blended mediation technical mediation type category indicator enumeration environment effectiveness ease of use engagement definition counting of occurrences institutional environmental factors perceived educational effectiveness personal ease of use sense of personal engagement with the icts criteria the frequency of contribution of each participant vision about icts in college; actual level of e-readiness in college; e-readiness to change within college; incentives available icts can: solve personally relevant educational problems; provide new forms of learning experiences; provide support for the existing curriculum hardware, software self-confidence with icts: icts fit with current experience key words postings threads repeats attachments vision reality change incentives personally relevant; new experiences; supporting curriculum userfriendliness accessibility availability confidence self-efficacy connectedness the table indicates the form of typological criteria i used to identify the following themes: odl epistemologies and ontologies; critical conceptions of odl principles and practices; facilitators’ icts e-readiness in odl mediation; mentorship and orientation. these themes emerged from asynchronous blogs managed by odl e-readiness of open and distance learning (odl) facilitators: implications for effective mediation jabulani nyoni 85 academic facilitators. deconstructive discourse analysis was applied to deconstruct the common interests, beliefs and experiences of the facilitators and explored their e-readiness to use the e-education portal for e-information dissemination and e-learning in order to mediate learning experiences of students. findings, thematic discussion and conclusions the aim of this study was to analyse the views, as conveyed in text form, of odl facilitators, including chairs of department, on the issue of e-readiness in using ict affordances for e-information dissemination and e-learning mediation in odl. the study allowed me to draw conclusions from the deconstruction of blogs posted by participants on how they viewed the use of ict as one mode of learning mediation. results from the deconstructive discourse analysis were categorised into five themes (miles & huberman, 1994) (see table 2). the themes were then ranked in order of frequency. the reason for ranking the themes in this way was to measure the relative importance of each theme within the catalogue of users’ responses. results of ict-related student portal (site) below are some of the examples of extracts from facilitator/instructor blogs. gender issues were not taken into cognisance in this study. prof xxxx (age 51, male, nationality: south african) said: figure 2: sample comments on ability to use the student portal, myunisa, for learning mediation (nyoni, 2012) perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 86 dr xxxx (age 40, female, nationality: kenyan) said: figure 3: sample comments on ability to use the student portal, myunisa, for learning mediation (nyoni, 2012) as figures 2 and 3 illustrate, qualitative discursive texts were obtained in relation to bloggers’ views on the use of an internet designated portal (site) for e-information dissemination and e-learning mediation. in the examples shown, two contrasting views of instructors/facilitators are indicated. however, a large number of bloggers posted negative texts, questioning the viability of the portal (site). they did, however, agree that it was an appropriate interactive tool for learning mediation. overall, four general conceptual themes characterised participants’ views of the utilisation of the web page for odl learning mediation, as revealed by examining the prevailing conceptions and discourses that are manifested in the textual data of this article. odl epistemologies and ontologies the lack of clear-cut and coherent odl theoretical foundations does not help to allay the confusion and uncertainty among facilitators in education. some of the primary discursive texts by some of the bloggers read: for me the differences between de and odl are blurred you know! some of us believe odl is online teaching and learning that the majority of our students do not have access after all. traditional forms of distance education involve passive media such as correspondence texts, audio and video broadcasts, and often entail the learner communicating with only the facilitator. that lecturers and facilitators still prefer traditional methods of learning and teaching, could partly be attributed to the fact the majority of the academics worked in or were associated with distance education institutions, hence the resistance to adapt. however, internet technologies have improved the traditional forms of distance education through increased communication (schrum, 1998; mcissac & gunawardena, 2001). the distinction between newer forms of e-readiness of open and distance learning (odl) facilitators: implications for effective mediation jabulani nyoni 87 distance education utilising icts and traditional face-to-face education is being blurred in the facilitation of individualised and collaborative learning (mcissac & gunawardena, 2001). mcissac and gunawardena (2001: 403) state that the explosion of information technologies has brought learners together (social presence) by erasing the boundaries of time and place for both site-based and distance learners. critical conceptions of odl principles and practices advocacy for the promotion of odl and scepticism about odl institutions, programmes and products, exist and persist in equal measure. underpinning this challenge is the growing and urgent need to train and retrain, and continuously update the knowledge and skills of each institutional workforce to ensure that it remains relevant in an increasingly globalised knowledge economy (mason, 2006). odl institutions are flexible about mediation processes and are student centred; open to a number of permutations that are designed to help the student. therefore, it uses ict affordances that are designed to close the gap between the student and the institute. one common thread by one the facilitators in this study read as follows: the communication between my students and i is done through tutorial letters. everything they need is contained in that document. i have been doing this for the past 23 years and worked like a charm! the statement by one of the facilitators emphasises the need for them to keep pace with ict affordances because, in the majority of cases, students are adept in the manipulations of the electronic gadgets such as iphones and tablets. facilitators’ icts e-readiness in odl facilitation there is still a group of facilitators who lack even basic ict skills, which could be due to levels of motivation and interest (korte & hüsing, 2007). findings seem to indicate that there are a large number of facilitators who feel demotivated and, thus, reluctant to engage in some form self-directed learning (knowles, 1990). one common thread read as follows: presently, the university provides a one day training opportunity for unisa staff so as to be able to use the facility of myunisa effectively. not all lecturers have been trained thus far. furthermore, the myunisa that is currently in place requires significant improvements in learner-lecturer interaction. some participants admitted in their blogs that they were unable to use the site to mediate learning. they insist that they were comfortable with paper-based instruction. mentorship and orientation buddies in this study, orientation refers to the induction process in which new employees are steered in the right direction with regard to their expectations about and impressions perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 88 of their workplace. mentorship, on the other hand, occurs when an experienced employee works with a newer employee, one on one, to teach the new employee advanced concepts from experience. some workplaces have mentoring programmes in place, while others assign a “buddy” to assist with orientation. ragins and mcfarlin (1990) define a mentor as an individual with advanced experience and knowledge who is committed to providing support and upward mobility to an inexperienced employee. this study found that the majority of facilitators are also adapting to ict affordances, which makes it difficult to assign buddies: it is all about training, training, and training!!! very few among us can simply upload modules in myunisa portal! it is as good as the blind leading the blind! honestly we all claim that we know how to use computers! but the same claimants run around looking for help all the time! odl institutions need versatile buddy facilitators who are able to work with inexperienced colleagues in their comfort zones. discussions the study revealed that facilitators failed to acknowledge that ict affordances can be used (1) as tools for delivering material or for practising a specific learning content, which is a traditional way of using ict; (2) as tools for supporting collaboration or knowledge creation, which is a change from the previous teaching practices; (3) as tools for structuring teaching-learning processes, which is a change from the teacher’s management practices; and (4) as content for studies. the online world is a medium unto itself (carr-chellman & duchastel, 2000; ellis & hafner, 2003); it is not just another learning environment. there are vastly different dynamics in online versus old distance education courses. because of the different dynamics, material that works well in a traditional distance education setting does not necessarily work in the online environment (ellis & hafner, 2003) and often needs to be re-engineered, modified or redesigned for online mediation (koszalka & ganesan, 2004; zirkle & guan, 2000). simply taking material that was developed for distance education delivery and directly porting it into course management programmes such as webct or blackboard tends neither to be effective nor recommended (ellis & hafner, 2003). it is, therefore, important to emphasise that an increase in technology does not necessarily translate into an increase in learning and could, in fact, lead to an increase in problems (mandernach, 2006), technology blues and wailing students (sieber, 2005). the current status in odl pedagogy requires facilitators who have the appropriate prerequisite ict adaptances in order to be effective in their facilitation processes. e-readiness of open and distance learning (odl) facilitators: implications for effective mediation jabulani nyoni 89 recommendations according to reeves (2008), “(t)here is a need to make changes in the way technology is used in education to better take into account the digital competence students have”. this is, indeed, strongly dependent on the ict-related pedagogical competence of the facilitator. facilitators, as indicated in the study, bemoan the scarcity of development programmes that are few and far between. it is advisable, therefore, that such e-ready programmes be increased to include not only new employees, but other experienced odl personnel as well to bring them on board with odl principles and practices. no newly employed odl lecturers or facilitators should be allowed to teach until they have undergone the proper e-ready orientation inductions to increase their ict adaptances. conclusion appropriate e-ready ict affordances enhance e-learning mediation opportunities to allow for students’ participation in progressive inquiry, collaborative learning and the students’ active engagement in the knowledge creation process. however, as lin (2001) says, the relationship between facilitators’ conceptions and practice is complex. odl facilitators, empowered with appropriate e-ready ict adaptances, use ict affordances appropriately to accommodate students’ needs (moseley, higgins, bramald, hardman, miller & mroz, 1999) and they appear to have adequate andragogical means to pursue new andragogical practices (hakkarainen, palonen, paavola & lehtinen, 2001). however, odl institutions, invariably, need to introduce well-grounded, employee-centred, e-ready orientation programmes to newly employed, novice and inexperienced odl facilitators in order 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in a south african dental research institute 1954-2006 elly s grossman university of the witwatersrand peter e cleaton-jones university of the witwatersrand this retrospective study documents the masters and phd training of 131 dental research institute (dri) postgraduates (1954-2006) to establish demographics, throughput and research outcomes for future phd pipeline strategies using the dri database. descriptive statistics show four degree-based groups of postgraduates: 18 phds; 55 mscs; 42 mdents and 16 dropouts. postgraduate activity peaked in1981. pipeline conversion from masters to phd was below 20% with mscs more likely to embark on a phd than mdents. nearly half of all postgraduates had prior published research experience before embarking on the degree. acquired skills were predominantly thesis publication, teaching and conference presentation. higher degrees were done for personal betterment (40%), specialist training (34%) or academic betterment (20%). the dri intellectual climate and 50-hour research techniques course contributed to the 87% postgraduate completion rate. there is no incentive for dri clinical researchers to complete a phd unless on an academic career path. keywords: graduate study, academic persistence, research training, masters study, doctoral study, dentistry, dropout, health education, health sciences, completion rate . introduction the academy of science of south africa (assaf) has highlighted the dismal production of phd graduates in a study drawing on doctoral data from all 23 south african universities (assaf, 2010). alarmingly, clinical and public health produce less than 10% of the country’s phds, a disturbing statistic since the health sciences, anecdotally, attract the brightest and best of students. the department of health (doh) has long been aware of the consequences of under-capacitation in this area: it stated in 1997 “a culture of research and technology is essential for the future development of the country” (doh, 1997). ten years later it called on “universities [to] produce enough researchers, scientists and specialists to contribute significantly to health science education and training” (doh, 2006). the low numbers of phds in the health sciences has its origins in the late 1970s when the doh rationalised all health care facilities to its control and prioritised health care and service delivery to the detriment of research activity. a further contributing factor has been the disconnect between colleges of medicine of south africa (cmsa) and university qualification requirements for clinical specialist training, which came into effect in 1974. the university route requires completion of an appropriate masters degree whereas the cmsa route permits registrable qualification as a clinical specialist on conclusion of the identical university course and examination requirements, but without the time-consuming research module. consequently, the vast majority of registrars take the simpler cmsa route and abandon the research component of the masters degree. this is evidenced by wit’s current mmed completion rate which is below 10% (a rothberg, personal communication). these two factors: an un-conducive research environment exacerbated by high mmed/mdent dropout (assaf, 2009:150), have caused a 30-year “haemorrhage” in the phd pipeline at the masters level in clinical sciences. it appears that this haemorrhage is about to be staunched. as from 2011 the health professions council of south africa (hpcsa) requires the completion of a research component for registration as a clinical specialist in south africa. furthermore, the hpcsa has called for protected study time (20% or 112 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 eight hours per week) for registrars from their clinical duties (hpcsa, 2010). this call has been heeded by the gauteng department of health (gdh) in a recent memorandum of agreement (gpg, 2008). such initiatives have opened the floodgates of prospective masters candidates, potentially restoring the phd pipeline. meanwhile, the question remains: how do the health sciences jumpstart academic phd study to rear the next generation of scholars when it has lost research culture and accumulated a 30-year capacitation backlog at masters level? first, historical data is required to provide past postgraduate research performance and a yardstick for future scenario modelling. unfortunately, such data is lacking: available figures are devoted to recent phd completion rates, which at best are vague and non-specific. mouton (2007) has indicated that they are generally low, while assaf (2010) points out little information exists on phd attrition rates. inappropriately, national health sciences data lumps clinical, basic and social scientists together, all of whom are completely different research individuals. secondly, there is no data on publication outputs or conference presentations from research completed for health sciences higher degrees, either at masters or doctoral level. this, by extrapolation, could give an indication of the skills acquired during the course of the research study, provide insights into workplace readiness and, importantly, suggest motivations towards further study beyond the masters phase. indeed, assaf (2010:69) advocate that the masters is pivotal in the pursuit of a doctoral degree. thirdly, a better understanding is needed of exactly what “health science research training” (doh) encompasses. pres shows that “research environment”, “intellectual climate” and research skills development are core elements for british and australian postgraduate students (park, 2009), and are heavily shaped by what happens locally at the level of the individual university school or department. yet, we have little idea of how to optimise these scales, given the sprawling nature of higher degree programmes. finally, without detracting from the value of such studies, survey data representing headcounts of graduates does not provide “direct evidence on the fundamentally important but mostly ineffable essentials of graduate education [such as] quality and breadth of curricula, exposure to and level of scholarship demanded of them [and] teaching by first-rate faculty members” (ehrenberg, zuckerman, groen & brucker, 2010:246, 250). ehrenburg et al. propose that intensive case studies of departments and their completion rates should be the “first order of business” towards a better understanding of doctoral education. the dental research institute (dri) is in a position to provide such understanding. the extensive dri database has sufficient records available to permit an intensive case study of its doctoral education through factual, postgraduate-centred data (grossman, mogotsi & cleaton-jones, 2006). the aim of this article was to extract pertinent detail from the database to: provide a historical record of dental research postgraduate output which can be 1. applied as a proxy to other branches of health sciences; present realistic benchmarks for current south african health sciences postgraduate research 2. activities; give insights into the research environment in which the dri postgraduates obtained their degree;3. indicate motivations towards further study or reveal areas of pipeline stagnation;4. illustrate pipeline progress from masters to doctoral study in a clinical setting;5. reveal the skills acquired during the course of the higher degree research study;6. provide insights into workplace readiness, and finally7. make some recommendations with regard to doctoral production in the changing face of south african 8. academic health care and phd education. all the above may contribute towards a better understanding of health sciences research training, suggest a meaningful way forward for doctoral development programmes and thereby the implementation of sound, future phd strategies. 113grossman & cleaton-jones — pipelines or pipe dreams? background to the study the dri was established in 1954 and has had four directors over its 53 years’ existence, each promoting an “intellectual climate” and “research environment”. background to each director, their cross-faculty qualifications and research activity has been documented (grossman et al., 2006). all showed direct evidence of being “first-rate faculty members” and exposing students to the “level of scholarship demanded of them” deemed desirable by ehrenberg et al. (2010) for educating scholars. in addition, the complete record of dri research outputs (cleaton-jones & grossman, 2004; grossman et al., 2006; grossman, 2007) has placed the dri in a unique position to monitor its postgraduate throughput and research-related activities. pertinent detail was added to the individuals (age, total publications, etc.) to fully exploit the information to hand, thereby providing a 53-year continuum of postgraduate and related outputs from which to gather substantive data. the 50-hour dri research techniques course, to support postgraduates, was started in 1978 and continued until 2010. the course is university-accredited and is a compulsory requirement for some masters qualifications and all dri postgraduates. course material has changed to suit circumstance and each course topic is assessed anonymously by the participants on a lickert scale of 1-5 for topic usefulness. secondly, an accredited wits course evaluation, monitored by the centre for learning and teaching development (cltd), is undertaken for each course. in this way, both topic content and course quality are monitored and adjusted. methods and materials the study permission for the study was granted by the wits human research ethics committee (medical), (clearance number m02-11-14). the dri has supervised 132 candidates for a number of qualifications, all of which require an original research component.1 dri database specifics can be found elsewhere (grossman et al., 2006) and will not be elaborated on. eleven of the 132 postgraduates registered for two qualifications, thus there were 121 individuals. for the purposes of this article, this report deals with postgraduates rather than individuals and the term “degree” will cover both degrees and fellowships. finally, one postgraduate obtained a senior doctoral degree (dsc) which cannot be considered in the same light as a masters or phd and is excluded from this report. simple descriptive statistics have been used throughout the study for factual highlighting and the illustration of trends. results table 1 shows the numbers of, and background to, the higher degrees achieved by the 1954-2006 cohort either registered in the dri or officially supervised by dri staff. to make the results more meaningful, the sample was split into degree types with the eight “non-wits” or discontinued qualifications grouped according to current wits requirements for size and research scope of thesis: i.e. phd, msc and mdent. the 16 dropouts formed one group, giving the dri an 87% graduation throughput. attrition of the dropouts was never related to research problems: 11 candidates left for personal and/or family reasons, with five registrars departing having completed the course work and examination requirements permitting a registrable qualification from the colleges of medicine of south africa (cmsa). dropout date was difficult to pinpoint, in most cases progress stagnated and the candidate just faded away. figure 1 shows that postgraduate activity was low until 1980, peaking in 1981 and since then has fluctuated between 0-8 per year. postgraduates (table 2) were mainly south african (120), male (102) and white (107). one hundred and eight had a dental qualification; the other 23 were variously qualified. the 1 the research component can be submitted in the form of a research report for a masters by coursework and research; dissertation for a masters by research only; or thesis for a doctorate. to simplify matters the term “thesis” will cover all three research component types. 114 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 non-dentists either worked at the dri or registered for the higher qualification with the dri to benefit from its extensive research experience and supervisory skills. all but one (the first phd) did the degree part-time. all were self-funded, although registrars get a substantial fee remission and staff members obtain various fee reductions of between 30% and 100%. twenty-six of the mdents were registrars; the others were diploma holders who wished to convert their diplomas to degrees when specialities were established with the introduction of the mdent degree in 1974. reasons for doing the qualification were largely degree specific (table 2): phds sought academic betterment; mscs did the degree out of interest or personal marketability; mdents focused on specialist training. the reasons for dropouts embarking on the degree were largely unknown except for the five obtaining specialist qualifications. overall, 40% of postgraduates did the degree for personal benefit, 34% for specialist training and a mere 20% for academic betterment. unknowns made up the remainder of the total. pipeline dri conversions from masters to phds can be estimated in one of two ways (figure 3). number of phds (18) per completed masters (55+42) would give a dri conversion rate of 19%. alternatively phd conversion can be calculated on all individuals who completed a masters with the dri (97) and then went on to complete a phd either with the dri (four individuals) or elsewhere (seven individuals). this gives a pipeline conversion rate of 11%. there is a difference between the propensity of the two masters groups to embark on a phd, with dri mdent specialist practitioners (5%) falling behind those doing the more general masters (15%). it is important to note that only two of the eight dri msc group going on to do a phd had a dental qualification. table 3 details publication, presentation and teaching activities of the 131 postgraduates. of note is the number of prior publishers within the subsets, indicating that nearly half of all postgraduates had some research know-how before embarking on the degree. phds were the most experienced researchers having published an average of 15.1 (range 0-49) papers as a group prior to obtaining the degree; mscs had published 2.3 papers (range 0-20) before qualifying; mdents 1.2 (0-6), and dropouts 2.1 (0-12). mean prior papers for dropouts is relatively high due to one phd candidate (a head of department), who had not completed the degree by 2006, despite being registered for 17 years. the figures for dropouts should be viewed with caution because the year of dropout was an estimate and this data is given for completeness. the relationship between first publication and graduation has changed with time. dri phds are dedicated researchers as evidenced by the distance between cumulated years of first publication and graduation (figure 2a). a similar, but less marked trend is shown by the mscs (figure 2b). prior publication was a feature with mdents until 1981, those who converted diplomas to specialist degrees being the main publishers (figure 2c). more recent mdents publish their first journal paper post-qualification, and in contrast to the msc and phds, the papers are exclusively from their theses. the graph for dropouts is given for comparative purposes (figure 2d). the percentage of qualifying postgraduates publishing their research results and the mean number of publications arising from the thesis increased stepwise with the size of the thesis: 57% of mdents published with 0.6 publications generated per thesis. equivalent figures for mscs are 74% (1.3) and 94% (5.4) phds. despite not obtaining the qualification, five dropouts (31%) published the results of research done toward their registered degree. in total 164 publications arose from the research of the 131 postgraduates: 98 (60%) were published in journals outside south africa and 66 (40%) in local south african journals. numbers of postgraduates doing oral presentations are similar to those who publish their research, with the exception of dropouts who are more prolific conference presenters (50%) than research publishers (31%). phd oral presentation output is low (3.7 presentations per thesis) because phd candidates often attend conferences other than the sa iadr, both locally and overseas, to gain exposure in the wider scientific forum. overall 49% of postgraduates both published and presented their degree research. figure 4 illustrates that oral presentations are a pre-graduation activity, with most candidates presenting at conferences in the year prior to qualifying. publication is a post-graduation activity with the highest number of publications appearing two years after thesis acceptance. 115grossman & cleaton-jones — pipelines or pipe dreams? teaching during postgraduate student years can vary from formal academic courses taught by dri phds who were senior faculty at the time, to a weekly two-hour session by a msc candidate who is a clinician in private practice, assisting undergraduate students in the clinic (table 3). teaching is lowest among mscs (36%) which is probably linked to their private clinical practice commitments. mdents have the highest teaching load (98%) because they are required to teach as part of their clinical specialist training. dri phds are mainly within the academic setting, where teaching is fundamental to research and education (67%). table 4 compares the research and academic output of the first (1957-1981) and final (1997-2006) postgraduate cohort. although postgraduate numbers per year are higher in the final cohort, there are fewer phds and reduced research publication outputs. data on the reduction of oral presentations is not given as this has been published elsewhere (grossman & cleaton-jones, 2005; grossman, 2007, 2008). discussion this unique 53-year record is the first to show demographics, research and teaching activities associated with postgraduate students whilst registered at a small, academically based south african dental research entity. we have been unable to find any other similar study with which to compare our findings; however, the graduate education initiative (gei) on doctoral education in the humanities has some interesting parallels (ehrenberg et al., 2010). what lessons can be learnt from our study to assist faculties of health science struggling to up their doctoral student numbers and meet the demands for high level skills in an emerging economy? in order to answer this, we need to reflect on the demographics of our postgraduates, the research environment they encountered during their studies, and the skills they have demonstrated, and then draw qualified conclusions. who were our postgraduates? dri postgraduates were largely from a dental background with demographics as to gender, race and nationality reflecting south africa’s past history. part-time, self-funded study was the mode in this cohort: elsewhere the majority of medical/veterinary and allied medical phd students are reportedly in full-time, funded study (hefce, 2005). qualified dri phds are mainly dentists, who undertook their study for academic betterment. more recently, dri “pipeline” phds are drawn from the general masters group and were predominantly non-clinicians. this should not detract from the achievements of the dri: heterogeneity of scientific disciplines is regarded as a strength in european doctoral dental training (kersten, bearn, gundersen, holbrook, kotsanos, radnai & virtan, 2010). however, clinician scientists are desperately required to meet the health needs of the country and the prospects of the dental profession, specifically, and health sciences as a whole appear bleak if more clinicians do not come to the fore to take up doctoral studies. a rapid turnaround of the status quo seems unlikely, given that only 10% of the dri masters cohort obtained the higher degree for academic motives. this is further borne out by the dri conversion rate of masters students to doctoral study, which is well below the national norm of 37% (assaf, 2010:70). allied to this is the absence of experienced or trained clinical health sciences supervisors who are eligible to supervise at the doctoral level. the environment in which the postgraduates studied long before the term came into vogue, the dri mission statement has been to create “life-long learners” of postgraduates by making their initial encounter with research as positive as possible. key in this regard is good supervision: students are significantly more likely to complete their higher degrees where positive student-supervisor relationships exist (bair & haworth, 1999). the 87% success rate of dri postgraduates, acceptable by international standards, denotes good supervision. future planners have identified the provision of good supervision as a major constraint on the country producing increased numbers of doctorates it badly needs. 116 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 equally important is a nurturing environment and intellectual stimulation highlighted in pres (park, 2009). the impressive research output and publication record of the dri (grossman et al., 2006) confirms its rightly held place at the centre of south african dental research (grossman, 2007). postgraduates were further integrated into the dri community and wider dental research community, by being encouraged, coached and sponsored to present their research at the sa iadr. finally, the research techniques course has undoubtedly helped us achieve our high postgraduate completion percentage, although such courses are not regarded as a universal panacea to individual research self-efficacy. faghighi, rakow & ethington (1999) maintain that formal, course-based research training relies on three issues for success: what knowledge is acquired, how it is acquired and finally how the knowledge is used in an achievement setting. this latter point we have used to our advantage being both supervisors of, and course presenters to, dri postgraduates. first, this enabled us to develop effective research practice upon the learned theory presented in the research techniques course. secondly, we encounter first-hand problems experienced by postgraduates and are able to tailor the content of subsequent research techniques courses accordingly. finally, we ensure quality and relevance by evaluating and monitoring every course and each presentation. skills gained during the postgraduate experience skills gained by postgraduates went beyond simply obtaining the degree. two thirds of the cohort achieved conference presentation skills and publishing skills, the majority of which was in international journals. in doing so, students learned to translate research produced in thesis format to oral presentations and journal publications. elsewhere it is reported that few theses ever make it to the public domain (heyman & cronin, 2005), with publication being higher among candidates with a phd and/or those with prior research experience (gordon & dionne, 2007). ehrenberg et al. (2010:218) are more specific: on average 0.8 publication occurred during graduate school and 1.7 publications within three years post graduation. the dri postgraduate outputs equal or better these figures. teaching skills were developed in 63% of dri postgraduates. whether this teaching occurred in a clinical or research setting is fairly immaterial as we feel strongly that effective teaching cannot take place in a research vacuum and vice versa. whatever the case, elements of research ethos and evidence-based principles are passed to the next generation through subsequent dri teacher interactions, thereby passing on research skills and knowledge. finally, although 13% of the cohort dropped out and did not complete their degree, many of them obtained and utilised the same skills their graduating classmates acquired. the evidence presented in this study shows that dri phds are largely within an academic environment, research ready when they embark on their degrees by virtue of wide publication and enthusiastically embrace conference presentation and teaching. measurable outcomes indicate that our phds are well above achievement thresholds cited within the literature. equally, dri msc postgraduates have attained research outcomes on a par with phds elsewhere. admittedly, measurable research outcomes have dropped dramatically within the final cohort 1997-2006, but even then the parameters still fall well within gei ranges (ehrenberg et al., 2010:206). only time will tell whether our final cohort’s lack of research experience will cut their future research activity compared to that demonstrated by earlier registrants (grossman & cleaton-jones, 2008). where do the results of this study leave the perplexed planners of future scenarios for phd education in the health sciences and how can it guide them? is a phd necessary for a career in clinical research? to seek an answer to the question we need to examine the advantages and disadvantages confronting the prospective clinician phd when contemplating the doctoral pipeline. phds for clinicians, pro et contra? it has become a national imperative to escalate the production of doctoral graduates, but the reason for this ambition is not entirely clear: is it about creating new knowledge or is it a numbers game? when taking into account the former case for creating new knowledge and using the dri study specifically, a quality argument comes to the fore. our study shows that dri msc postgraduates appear to have learned all the skills required to produce new knowledge without the benefit of doctoral education. the good grounding 117grossman & cleaton-jones — pipelines or pipe dreams? in research techniques, a stimulating intellectual climate and discipline heterogeneity permit our students to achieve research targets on a par with phds elsewhere. the high percentage of postgraduates who embarked on the degree for personal betterment, high completion rate and high research outputs confirm the passion with which they embraced research. on the other hand, if the national imperative to escalate the production of doctoral graduates is to increase numbers of phds per million population, the quantity argument predominates. in this case, dri (and health sciences) phd conversion rates are well below average. it then becomes necessary to examine incentives, recognition and career paths available to clinician phds in south africa. assaf (2010:87) results show that outside academia and to a very minor extent government, there is no employment market for the clinician phd. this is confirmed by our cohort where most dri phds were confined to an academic track where the defined career path makes such a qualification essential (grossman & cleaton-jones, 2008). there is little incentive for clinicians outside academia to train in a taxing doctoral programme when their research curiosity can be satisfied with skills gained at masters level. in addition, assaf (2009:230) lists five barriers hindering clinical research in south africa and highlights the minimal credit given to clinical doctoral graduates in other sectors of the public health system, industry and professional bodies (assaf, 2009:146). accordingly, it is understandable why the majority of our postgraduates find a phd superfluous for their careers and only “life-long learners” and academics will consider doctoral study. the answer to the question “is a phd necessary for a career in clinical research?” is currently “no, unless on an academic track”. in this the clinical health sciences is unique as it does not follow other “professional” disciplines such as engineering where there is a demand for phds in industry and the private sector. equally, in science and the humanities, a phd is regarded as only the starting point for diverse career paths, rich in opportunity, in private, public and not-for-profit sectors, industry and selfemployment in addition to university life (assaf, 2010:87). it may be that the health sciences phd numbers south africa so sorely desires will be achieved once a market is created for clinician phds, tangible credit for the degree is acknowledged and barriers to doctoral studies are removed. references assaf 2009. consensus report on revitalising clinical research in south africa. pretoria: academy of science of south africa. assaf 2010. the phd study. pretoria: academy of science of south africa. bair cr & haworth jg 1999. doctoral student attrition and persistence: a meta-synthesis of research. paper presented at the annual meeting of the association for the study of higher education. (24th, san antonio, texas, 18-21 november 1999). eric document reproduction service no. ed 437008. retrieved on 23 november 2010 from http://eric.ed.gov/ cleaton-jones p & grossman e 2004. dental research institute: silent contribution of fifty years: 19542004. south african journal of science, 100:316-318. department of health (doh) 1997. white paper for the transformation of the health system in south africa. department of health. retrieved on 3 december 2010 from http://www.info.gov.za/ whitepapers/1997/health.htm#chapter%204 department of health (doh) 2006. a national human resources plan for health. department of health. retrieved on 30 january 2009 from http://www.doh.gov.za/docs/factsheets/guidelines/hrplan/index. html. ehrenberg rg, zuckerman h, groen ja & brucker sm 2010. educating scholars: doctoral education in the humanities. princeton: princeton university press. faghihi f, rakow es & ethington c 1999. a study of factors related to dissertation progress among doctoral candidates: focus on students’ research self-efficacy as a result of their research training and experiences. eric document reproduction service no. ed 430491. retrieved on 29 november 2010 from http://eric.ed.gov/ 118 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 gauteng provincial government (gpg) 2008. memorandum of agreement between the gauteng department of health and the universities of limpopo medunsa campus, pretoria and the witwatersrand. gauteng provincial government adopted november 2008. gordon sm & dionne ra 2007. development and interim results of a clinical research training fellowship. journal of dental education, 71:1040-1047. grossman es 2007. dri productivity and participation at the sa iadr (1967-2004). south african dental journal 62:398-404. grossman es 2008. participation of dental researchers at annual sa iadr conferences (1967-2004): drivers and passengers. south african dental journal, 63:10-14. grossman es & cleaton-jones pe 2005. research transformation and productivity. south african journal of science 101:104. grossman es & cleaton-jones pe 2008. what becomes of dental research trainees once they leave the dental research institute – an analysis over 53 years. european journal of dental education, 12:69-74. grossman es, mogotsi m & cleaton-jones pe 2006. the mrc/wits dental research institute: its publication record 1954-2004. south african journal of science, 102:371-374. health professionals council of south africa (hpcsa) 2010 guideline on the minimum conditions of service, education and training of registrars and subspecialist trainees in south africa. subcommittee for postgraduate education and training (medical). 20th january 2010. health professionals council of south africa. heyman b & cronin p 2005. writing for publication: adapting academic work into articles. british journal of nursing, 14:400-404. higher education funding council for england (hefce) 2005. phd research degrees: entry and completion. higher education funding council for england, january 2005/02. retrieved on 6 december 2010 from http://www hefce.ac.uk/pubs/hefce/2005/05_02/. kersten h, bearn d, gundersen s, holbrook p, kotsanos n, radnai m & virtan j 2010. proposed requirements for a european doctorate in dentistry: a discussion document prepared by a special interest group under the auspices of the association for dental education in europe. european journal of dental education, 14:35-42. mouton j 2007. postgraduate student throughput. the nrf postgraduate research indaba, 20-22 february 2007, unisa, pretoria. park c 2009. the research student experience: lessons from pres. york: higher education academy. retrieved on 15 november 2010 from http://www heacademy.ac.uk/assets/york/documents/ourwork/ postgraduate/pres2009.pdf. 119grossman & cleaton-jones — pipelines or pipe dreams? table 1: registered qualification, awarded or dropout, and description of qualification for the dental research institute postgraduates. the symbols indicate qualifications which were merged into the different groups: * phd; ■ msc; ◊ mdent qualification awarded dropout total description (all awarded by wits except where stated) dsc 1 1 qualification awarded on the basis of past research publications. mds (master of dental surgery) 4* 4 degree discontinued in the early 1960s thesis equivalent to a phd. phd 14* 2 16 standard degree. msc 54■ 8 62 generally by research dissertation only, the size of which will yield about two publications in reasonable quality journals. mtech 1■ 1 thesis equivalent to msc awarded by university of johannesburg. mdent 39◊ 5 44 for specialist training, includes course work and a research report which should yield at least one publication in a reasonable quality journal. mmed 1◊ 1 medical equivalent of mdent. mchd 1◊ 1 mdent equivalent awarded by the university of the western cape. fsmlt (fellow of the society of the south african medical laboratory technologists) 1◊ 1 2 research fellowship equivalent in size to mdent awarded by the samlt. totals 116 16 132 120 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 table 2: demographic profile of the four dental research institute postgraduate groups category phd n=18 msc n=55 mdent n=42 dropout n=16 gender 14 male (78%) 4 female (22%) 36 male (65%) 19 female (35%) 40 male (95%) 2 female (5%) 12 male (75%); 4 female (25%) race 16 white (89%) 2 asian (11%) 41 white (74%) 13 asian (24%) 1 mixed descent (2%) 38 white (90%) 3 asian (7%) 1 black (3%) 12 white (75%); 3 asian (19%); 1 black (6%); nationality 15 rsa (83%) 51 rsa (93%) 41 rsa (98%) 13 rsa (81%) academic background 13 dentist (72%) 2 scientist (10%) 1 engineer (6%) 1 dietician (6%) 1 technical (6%) 42 dentist (76%) 5 technical (9%) 3 scientist (5%) 1 physiotherapist (2%) 1 dietician (2%) 1 engineer (2%) 1 veterinary surgeon (2%) 1 medical (2%) 40 dentist (96%) 1 technical (2%) 1 medical (2%) 13 dentist (81%); 2 technical (13%); 1 veterinary surgeon (6%); status during registration 7 dri staff (39%) 3 wits sohs (17%) 3 practitioner/academic (17%) 2 private practitioner (11%) 2 academic (11%) 1 full time student (5%) 28 private practitioner (51%) 10 practitioner/academic (18%) 7 dri staff (13%) 3 other (5%) 3 wits sohs (5%) 2 mrc scholarship (4%) 2 academic (4%) 26 registrar (62%) 10 practitioner/academic (24%) 2 private practitioner (5%) 2 wits sohs (5%) 1 academic (2%) 1 dri staff (2%) 5 registrar (31%); 3 mrc scholarship (19%); 3 dri staff (19%); 2 practitioner/academic (13%); 2 private practitioner (13%); 1 wits sohs (5%) reasons for doing the degree 14 academic betterment (79%) 4 personal betterment (21%) 43 personal betterment (78%) 9 academic betterment (16%) 2 specialist training (4%) 1 unknown (2%) 37 specialist training (88%) 3 personal betterment (7%) 2 academic betterment (5%) 7 unknown (44%); 5 specialist training (31%); 3 personal betterment (19%); 1 academic betterment (6%) 121grossman & cleaton-jones — pipelines or pipe dreams? table 3: publication, oral presentation and teaching activities of the four dental research institute postgraduate groups activity phdn=18 msc n=55 mdent n=42 dropout n=16 year of first and last registrant 1957-2005 1965-2006 1974-2006 1973-2006 publication publications prior to thesis acceptance. n=no. of registrants with prior publications. mean =15.1 range 0-49 median = 7 mode = 0 n=15/18(83%) mean = 2.3 range 0-20 median = 0 mode = 0 n= 22/52(42%) mean = 1.2 range 0-6 median = 1 mode = 0 n=23/42(54%) mean = 2.1 range 0-12 median = 0 mode = 1 n=8/16(50%) research for thesis published. 17 (94%) 41 (74%) 24 (57%) 5 (31%) number of publications arising from thesis. mean = 5.4 range 0-18 median = 4 mode = 4 mean = 1.3 range 0-9 median = 1 mode = 1 mean = 0.6 range 0-2 median = 1 mode = 1 mean = 0.3 range 0-1 median = 0 mode = 0 research for thesis never published. 1 14 18 11 oral presentation research for thesis presented at sa iadr (1967). 11 (92%) *n= 12 40 (74%) *n= 54 22 (52%) n=42 8 (50%) n=16 number of sa iadr presentations arising from thesis. mean = 3.7 range 0-9 median = 5 mode = 3 n= 12 mean = 1.3 range 0-6 median = 1 mode = 1 n= 54 mean = 0.7 range 0-4 median = 0 mode = 0 n=42 mean = 0.9 range 0-4 median = 0 mode = 0 n=16 research for thesis never presented at sa iadr. 1/12 14/54 20/42 8/16 teaching teaching during registered time. 12 (67%) 19 (36%) 41 (98%) 10 (63%) * some registrants graduated prior to the establishment of sa iadr in 1967 122 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 table 4: degree type and publication output of the first and final cohorts of dental research institute postgraduates category first cohort n=35 final cohort n=30 year of first-last postgraduate 1957-1981 1997-2006 number of postgraduates/year 1.4 3.0 degree breakdown 10 phd 7 msc 15 mdent 3 dropout 3 phd 11msc 11 mdent 5 dropout number of publications prior to thesis acceptance/dropout. n=no. of registrants with prior publications mean =5.2 range 0-42 median = 2 mode = 0.5 n=28/35 (80%) mean =2.8 range 0-18 median = 0 mode = 0 n=10/30 (33%) research for thesis published 27/35 (77%) 10/30 (33%) number of publications arising from thesis mean =2.5 range 0-10 median = 1 mode = 1 mean =0.6 range 0-4 median = 0 mode = 0 prior and/or thesis publication 32/35 (91%) 17/30 (57%) figure 1: postgraduate research activity at the dri over time. the solid bars indicate qualifiers, the clear bars are dropouts dropouts qualified number of registrants 1954 2008 year 60 65 70 75 80 85 90 95 100 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 382023 41(1): 38-55 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 connection, desperation and disillusionment: exploring student wellbeing at a university in south africa during the covid-19 pandemic abstract university students’ mental health and wellbeing has been a global public health issue of increasing concern in recent years, with a growing body of empirical evidence suggesting university students are a ‘very high-risk population’ for mental disorders and psychological distress. pre-existing mental health challenges among university students have consequently been compounded by the global covid-19 pandemic. a sample of 20 students registered in the education faculty at a large urban university in south africa participated in a photovoice study. the research required them to capture three photos or images of their experiences of wellbeing during the pandemic. the findings showed that students experienced mental health concerns and disillusionment with higher education. their wellbeing was associated with a sense of connection with themselves, their peers and the campus space, and the cultivation of resilience. keywords: wellbeing; covid-19; photovoice; perma model; higher education 1. introduction in recent years, the mental health of university students has become a pressing public health concern. empirical evidence indicates that this population is at a heightened risk for experiencing mental disorders and psychological distress, warranting urgent attention (baik, larcombe & brooker, 2019; lister, seale & douce, 2021). pre-existing mental health and wellbeing challenges among university students have subsequently been exacerbated by the global covid-19 pandemic; data from the united kingdom suggest that the number of students stating a mental health disorder upon entering university has increased significantly within the last three years (morgan & simmons, 2021; hawkins, 2019). the covid-19 pandemic has had a profound impact on the mental health of students worldwide. research conducted by the centers for disease author: dr sarina de jager1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i1.6140 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(1): 38-55 published: 31 march 2023 received: 5 september 2022 accepted: 18 january 2023 research article https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5946-2566 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 392023 41(1): 39-55 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 de jager connection, desperation and disillusionment control and prevention (cdc) in the united states found that during the pandemic, individuals experienced high levels of stress, anxiety, and depression (cdc, 2020). a study conducted by the american psychological association (apa) also revealed that the pandemic had caused a national mental health crisis (apa, 2021). the world health organization (who) has also highlighted the negative impact of the pandemic on mental health and wellbeing (who, 2021). research from developing countries seems to paint a concerning picture, estimating that “12 to 46 percent of students at university experience mental health problems” (auerbach et al., 2018; harrer et al., 2019). a study conducted in brazil found that students experienced high levels of stress, anxiety, and depression during the pandemic (bezerra et al., 2021). another study conducted in south africa found that the prevalence of depression and anxiety symptoms among university students increased significantly during the pandemic (naidoo et al., 2021). financial stress has also been a significant issue for students in the global south and southern africa during the pandemic. a study conducted in nigeria found that financial stress was a significant predictor of poor mental health outcomes among students (ojediran & emeke, 2021). furthermore, in the global south and southern africa, mental health services are frequently constrained or unavailable, and the pandemic has further amplified this issue. a study conducted in ghana found that students had limited access to mental health services and that those who did have access to services reported low satisfaction with the quality of care (tagoe et al., 2020). the pandemic has disrupted academic schedules and shifted learning to online platforms, which has had a significant impact on students’ academic performance. a study conducted in uganda found that students reported lower academic performance during the pandemic, which was associated with increased stress and anxiety (kabagenyi et al., 2020). in south africa, the covid-19 pandemic may have exacerbated existing inequities and increased learning losses for vulnerable students (eloff, 2021). findings from a large student mental health survey involving 26 publicly funded universities in south africa and 29 000 students – which was initiated by universities south africa (usaf) in 2022, suggest that 20% of students in higher education institutions in south africa need mental health support, and of those students, more than 70% are not receiving the support they need (walker, 2022). along with mental health challenges, students also appeared to struggle with disillusionment with higher education institutions during the pandemic. a study conducted by the higher education policy institute (hepi) and youthsight in the united kingdom found that the pandemic had led to a significant decline in student wellbeing and motivation, with many students feeling disillusioned and disengaged (bullivant, 2021). a survey conducted by the national union of students (nus) in the united kingdom, found that many students felt disillusioned with their university experience during the pandemic, with some feeling that their education had been devalued and their mental health neglected (paton, 2021). a survey conducted by the international student barometer (isb) found that many international students studying in the united kingdom during the pandemic felt disillusioned and dissatisfied with their experience, with some questioning the value of their education (morgan, 2021). a study conducted by researchers at the university of johannesburg found that many students were disillusioned with online learning during the pandemic, with some feeling that their education had been compromised and that they were not receiving value for money (phatudi-mphahlele & mashele, 2021). this research aimed at exploring and understanding students’ experiences of wellbeing in the education faculty of a large urban university in south africa during the covid-19 pandemic. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 402023 41(1): 40-55 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) this study followed a qualitative, arts-informed approach. photovoice, which emerges from community-based participatory research, is a flexible method that has been employed with culturally diverse groups to understand and address community needs. a sample of 20 students (n=20) was recruited from an education faculty at a large urban university in south africa. data were collected over two phases. a sample of students (n=20) was invited to submit three photos that answer the question: “what is your experience of wellbeing during the covid-19 pandemic?” this article explores the data which foregrounds the nature of student experiences when it comes to their wellbeing. a more nuanced understanding of student wellbeing can predict how support is structured and facilitated in higher education spaces. 2. theoretical background the study’s understanding of wellbeing is rooted in positive psychology, which situates wellbeing in the hedonic tradition. this tradition highlights constructs such as happiness, satisfaction with life, positive affect, and low negative affect (ryan & deci, 2001). other approaches emphasize that wellbeing requires both hedonic and eudaimonic components, which encompass feeling good and functioning well (waterman, 2008). despite divergent perspectives, most approaches acknowledge that wellbeing is multidimensional (huppert & so, 2013). within the hedonic tradition, wellbeing is closely related to terms such as happiness and flourishing. the latter is characterized by high levels of mental wellbeing and exemplifies mental health (seligman, 2011). seligman’s perma theory identifies five components of wellbeing, namely positive emotions, engagement, meaning, accomplishment, and positive relationships, which are separately defined and measured but correlated. seligman distinguishes between wellbeing and flourishing by listing his criteria for flourishing as being in the upper range of positive emotion, engagement, positive relationships, meaning, and positive accomplishment (seligman, 2011). keyes and simoes (2012) place wellbeing and flourishing on a spectrum of experiences through the mental health continuum, differentiating between flourishing, languishing, and moderate mental health. within this study, the term ‘wellbeing’ is regarded through the perma model framework as proposed by seligman (2018). this model suggests five unique dimensions of wellbeing that are pursued for their own sake: positive emotions (characterised by hedonic feelings of happiness); engagement (including feeling absorbed and engaged in life and positive psychological connections); positive relationships (feeling loved, supported and valued by others); meaning (feeling connected to something greater than oneself and having a sense of purpose); and accomplishment (having mastery in one’s life and making progress towards a goal). all these factors form the acronym perma. within the context of education, both the perma model and the concept of flourishing are relevant as they relate to the spectrum of students’ experiences. 3. methodology a qualitative, arts-informed framework was applied to explore and gain insight into how students at the education faculty of a large urban university experienced wellbeing. what distinguishes arts-informed research are the varied, creative ways of representing individual’s experiences and the different depictive mediums of expression that can “effectively enhance the understanding of the human condition and experience” (capousdesyllas & bromfield, 2018). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 412023 41(1): 41-55 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 de jager connection, desperation and disillusionment the study utilised photovoice as a data collection strategy; it is a flexible method employed with culturally diverse groups to explore and address community needs (hergenrather et al., 2009; moletsane et al., 2007). arts-informed data collection has increased in popularity as it allows qualitative researchers to explore individuals’ sensory, visual, embodied and reflexive experiences from a creative point of view (brown & collins, 2018). photovoice, as a research methodology, provides participants with an opportunity to take various photographs that capture their experiences and present them in group discussions that empower them to reflect on their own strengths and that of the community. they also create critical dialogue, share knowledge about personal issues, and develop and host a platform to present their lived experiences and priorities through photo images, language, and context. in the context of this study, photovoice was chosen for its potential not only to engage students in analysing issues that affect their lives, but also for its unique and significant element of ‘having fun’ and using a familiar online platform (moletsane et al., 2007). within the context of this study, youth are considered to be the experts of their own lives, and it is therefore important to find a method that effectively engage them in understanding their experiences. considering the fact that we live in a digital era, utilising cellphones, and more specifically, their camera capabilities, made sense in collecting data effectively, and using images to capture experiences allowed the participants to reflect deeply on these experiences and to explore their own self-awareness (maunder & lamothe, 2020). the subject matter of this study was sensitive in nature and the engagement with image provided a space for students to freely associate with the ideas of wellbeing without feeling pressured. photos and images allowed the participants to capture experiences that were beyond language and words (brown & collins, 2021). this method further promoted collaboration in the research process and provided participants with the agency to “voice” their experiences while presenting deep, meaningful data (butler-kisber & poldma, 2010). the project required students to take photos or upload images that represent their experiences of wellbeing. students were encouraged to explore their personal and campus space with this project over the course of two months, the extended time allowed students opportunity for deep reflection and consideration of the images and the meaning they make of them. the images and photos with a brief reflection or description of each photo were submitted via an electronic link and were entirely anonymous. students were asked to generate a pseudonym for themselves in order for the researcher to recognise which photos belonged to which participant. the researcher approached students via email and social media platforms. the invitation to the study informed students that the included link would open a questionnaire that would take approximately ten minutes to complete. once students completed the questionnaire they were invited to further engage in the second phase of the research, where students were asked to upload three images or photos that captured their experiences of wellbeing. due to the nature of this study, both phases were anonymous. this paper explores only the second phase of the research. students who participated all confirmed that they were in possession of a smartphone that had camera capabilities. they had to sort through their photos and identify three that they then shared with the researcher, along with a short narrative description of each photo; responses were captured via qualtrics. the photos and reflections on each photo were analysed by the researcher. the data set was categorised and coded to be integrated https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 422023 41(1): 42-55 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) and thematically organised. connotation and denotation were applied as methods of interpretation when analysing the photos, followed by open coding. the researcher used atlas.ti to ensure systematic data management and analysis. the study was conducted at a large urban university in south africa during the second semester of the year. twenty students (n=20) proceeded with taking photos and reflecting in their own time over a period of two months. a limitation of the methodology was that due to the anonymous nature of the data collection, there weren’t further engagement with the participants for clarification and deeper meaning making. 3.1 participants all participants were students registered in the education faculty of a large urban university at the time of data collection (n=20). participation in this study was voluntary. as described earlier, students were provided with an overview of the project and invited to participate by taking photos of their experiences using their phones. students could withdraw from the study at any point during the data collection process. due to the nature of the research, participation was anonymous, and no identifiable details were captured during data collection. 3.2 data analysis data sets were categorised and coded to be integrated and thematically organised. connotation and denotation were applied as methods of interpretation when analysing the photos, followed by open coding. to ensure systematic data management and analysis, the researcher used computer-based tools. a systematic visuo-textual analysis framework (brown & collins, 2021; spies, 2022) was used to analyse images and text and to weave together the themes that emerged. this process takes place on two levels. the first level of analysis involves noticing and describing, which entails a focus on details of the object present in the image, the real or literal meaning conveyed by the image. the second level of analysis involved conceptualisation of the images and text. barthes (1977) describe this process of connotation as the social or valueladen implications of the denotation. at this level, semiotic analysis was employed, which in qualitative research is concerned with conceptual meaning derived from the images and how the meaning is produced (buhigiro & wassermann, 2017; manning, 2004). the method of denotation and connotation intends to interpret a phenomenon being studied that cannot be entirely understood in its intricacy through textual interpretation alone. this study applied an inductive category procedure (morgan & hoffman, 2018) that avoided the use of preconceived categories and allowed codes to form categories. names for categories also flowed from the data. the data sets are presented here in a semi-narrative format to create an in-depth understanding of students’ experiences of wellbeing. the study foregrounds individual students’ interpretations of wellbeing. 4. findings the visual data collection methods resulted in an emotive journey for the researcher and the participants. the researcher and participants were also familiarised with novel ways of relating to the qualitative inquiry in reverential and meaningful ways (lenette & boddy, 2013). by employing visual methods, greater reflexivity and nuanced meanings of the students’ https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 432023 41(1): 43-55 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 de jager connection, desperation and disillusionment concepts of wellbeing were attained. the following four identified themes emerged from the data applying photovoice methodology to explore wellbeing. the pressures of academia and mental health challenges a prominent theme in the findings was the clear link students made between their mental health challenges and their wellbeing. participant f’s image titled “screaming at the screen” depicts a young person grabbing his head with his hands and screaming with what appears to be frustration or anger. this image displays a heightened state of emotional dysregulation and a feeling of not being in control. the image could also allude to anxiety, hopelessness and sadness. participant f: image a: “screaming at the screen” another image submitted by participant f titled “the silent sickness” depicts a blank face with a grotesque protrusion of another face sprouting from the head. the second head is crying black tears and seems in agony. around this image are hands clawing in a menacing way towards these two heads. the disturbing image is surrounded by a black oval frame. the image appears to depict sadness, dissociation, a “dark” side or an “ugly” side, feelings of depression and a sense of not being recognised; of being faceless and not seen. the distressed face seems to be plucked from the faceless head by one of these demanding hands, which could suggest a feeling of being torn apart. however, it could also point toward feeling divided by all the demands the student faces. the pandemic, emergency remote teaching, their own developmental phase, loss and grief, and various other factors could be forcing the worst in them to emerge, or a part of them to scream for help signalling a desperate attempt at connection. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 442023 41(1): 44-55 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) participant f: image b: “the silent sickness” https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 452023 41(1): 45-55 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 de jager connection, desperation and disillusionment a powerful image is also provided by participant a’s photo titled “fading away”. this photo shows three statues of a head, depicting a process of fading away. the statues’ facial expression seems neutral and tranquil, yet the head is disappearing. images from various participants confirmed this sense of not feeling heard or seen. participants highlighted the “dehumanising” effect of emergency remote learning, and the feeling of disappearing into a sea of black screens. they reported subsequently suffering from feelings of loneliness, depression and anxiety. participant e reflects: “it feels like i am walking down a long, dark tunnel. there is no light at the end. i am drowning. the pandemic is a nightmare i wish i could wake up from” particpant n reflects: “see me. hear me. i am not just a blank screen. i am here” participant a: photo a – “fading away” participants’ photos and images indicated a clear connection between various feelings associated with mental health challenges such as depression, anxiety and overwhelming feelings of disconnect and loneliness. the images of wellbeing pointed overwhelmingly to psychological safety and connectedness, loneliness, disconnection, and feelings of depression and anxiety. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 462023 41(1): 46-55 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) disillusionment with higher education participant j provided an image of her graduation programme with the caption “welcome to my virtual graduation”. this image is titled “ode to the disillusioned”. the image appears to come to terms with the disillusionment and disruption caused by the pandemic; an entire academic career culminating in one brief moment on a screen. the image speaks of disappointment and weariness at the opportunities and moments that were lost and will never be regained. participant m reflects: “i was robbed by covid. my photo with cap and gown will not hang on my wall, next to my older sister’s graduation photo. it will always feel fake. it’s unfair” another image by participant f titled “hook, line and stinker” depicts a graduation hat adorned with sparkles and a fishhook. participant f: image b – “hook, line and stinker” https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 472023 41(1): 47-55 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 de jager connection, desperation and disillusionment as the title of the image suggests, there is a tainted quality to the image. although the promise of graduation and a tertiary qualification’s impact on their future seem to be dangled in front of students, the same promise and pressure is what drives them to engage with academic dishonesty in order to obtain it. other images by participants seem to agree with this sense of disillusionment with the system, and with the impossible position they seem to find themselves in where they have everything to lose. participant k reflects: “i feel cheated. why would i care about cheating if i feel so angry and cheated by the pandemic. i had no graduation. i had no nights out with friends and being a student and getting in trouble. everything was online, work, stress and worry. it was unfair, and i feel cheated in a way” the images depicting a sense of disillusionment may go even deeper, suggesting that students seem to be unsubscribing from the “prestige” and “integrity” of higher education qualifications, especially since it stands in such stark contrast to the real-life hardships, loss and grief they went through during the pandemic. participant o reflects: “my whole world was turned upside down. i stared at a screen day in and day out. i just feel like there are worse things than what i did to survive my studies that time. my life was complicated” connection as central to wellbeing the overwhelming theme from images and photos submitted by participants to capture their experiences of wellbeing pointed to connection with others and feeling connected to the world around them. participant m’s image titled “shooting pool with friends” depicts three students casually posing for a selfie while engaged in a game of pool. they seem to be in a communal space, possibly a space where students often gather to socialise. this image is powerful in that it encapsulates a return to the “new normal” after the lockdown period that was enforced due to the covid-19 pandemic. it is a stark reminder of students’ need to experience “student life”. another photo submitted by participant l titled “soccer is life” depicts a varsity soccer game between two rival teams. the stadium is packed with spectators, and the spray lights light up the sports field at night. spectators’ faces portray various expressions, pointing to them being emersed in the game. the picture captures a sense of camaraderie among the spectators; they are all gathered with the common goal of supporting their team. this connection between students and the act of participating in social events may be a powerful determinant of student wellbeing. similar photos were submitted by participant c, participant g and participant q, depicting students posing for “selfies”; some are wearing university sports regalia, while others are socialising in campus spaces. the persistent themes across these images are togetherness, friendship and connection in campus spaces. in all these images, individuals are smiling and posing in ways that indicate they feel safe and contained with those with them in the photos. participant b reflects: “i wish for the together times. when we were more than just faces on screens. when we were present in our bodies and alive. when lots of people together felt safe, not scary” https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 482023 41(1): 48-55 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) participant d: photo a: “prickly perseverance” other images that were submitted pointed to the family’s role in students’ wellbeing, as well as resilience, despite difficult circumstances. one participant captured his image of resilience in the form of a photo of his pet hedgehog. in the image titled “prickly perseverance”, participant d captures an adult hedgehog being held in someone’s hand. the animal’s back is covered https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 492023 41(1): 49-55 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 de jager connection, desperation and disillusionment in its signature quills, yet the front of the hedgehog reveals a soft belly, alluding to a certain sense of vulnerability. participant c reflects: “i think i realized that i am tougher than i think. sometimes i feel fragile and weak, which tempts me to take the easy road with my studies, but then there are times when i want to be strong, and where my mind is made up. i know i can do this” the adversity caused by the pandemic and emergency remote learning seem to have significantly impacted university students’ wellbeing. connection to their peers, family, and campus spaces appears to play a role in their general wellbeing. the cultivation of resilience also seems to contribute to their overall sense of wellbeing during the pandemic. 5. discussion the study aimed to explore and understand students’ experiences of wellbeing in the education faculty of a higher education institution in south africa. the findings are contextualised within the broader study that looked at student wellbeing. the findings showed that experience mental health concerns and disillusionment with higher education. their wellbeing was associated with a sense of connection with themselves, their peers and the campus space, and the cultivation of resilience. the present study found that students experience feelings of loneliness, disconnection, depression and anxiety. a prominent link exists between academic performance and mental health (evans, borriello & field, 2018; hughes & spanner, 2019; bruffaerts et al., 2018). depression has been found to be a significant predictor of poor academic performance and results in a higher probability of dropping out in the university student population group. depression also appears to relate with anxiety, and the association between depression and academic outcomes is particularly significant among university students who also have screened positively for an anxiety disorder (auerbach et al., 2018; eisenberg, golberstein & hunt, 2009). recent research points to increased psychological distress and mental health concerns among university students during the covid-19 pandemic, potentially caused by increased social isolation in response to the pandemic (hamza et al., 2021). a further consideration when looking at university students’ mental health is their developmental phase. adolescence and emerging adulthood are periods of life during which one is more vulnerable for the development of mental health disorders such as depression and anxiety, which are quite common during this time (wiens et al., 2017). emerging adulthood, considered to occur between 18 and 25 years of age, can be a stressful period of life, characterised by transitions, instability and many changes in, among other things, students’ education, living arrangements, and relationships. it is also marked by biological and developmental changes, specifically a continued development of the pre-frontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for regulation and cognitive flexibility (patterson et al., 2021). the study further identified that students experienced disillusionment with higher education, especially after the pandemic. this feeling of disillusionment seems to be connected to the disruption caused by the pandemic as well as the pressure students experience to complete their academic qualifications. according to korn and davidovitch (2016), this reflects a growing conception that the grade you receive is less important, as long as you pass the course and graduate. thus, universities are increasingly becoming institutions that students consider to https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 502023 41(1): 50-55 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) be “degree brokers” rather than “education imparters”. modern universities are unfortunately plagued by the expectations and ills of neoliberalism and capitalism. university curricula and pedagogical practices are also gradually used to a “market-based view of the world” that conceptualises the “good life” mainly as a pursuit of wealth and materialism within a highly competitive market-based system (mayaba, ralarala & angu, 2018). jordan (2021) states that there appears to be an ever-increasing disillusionment within universities at the moment. much of the present literature on universities “bears a dystopian tone” (watson, 2014), with some researchers (bengsten & barnett, 2017) pointing toward the mass university’s failure to accommodate pluralism and engagement with the “messiness” of students and their experiences. the modern university’s propensity towards a business model seems to threaten the undertaking of humanistic scholarship (kidd, 2021). mahon (2021) agrees with this view by stating that higher educational cultures are progressively characterised by structures and imperatives that are damaging to individual character. moreover, the fast-paced world, including emergency online teaching and the online approach, is favouring “accelerative vices” (lavishness, self-destruction, superficiality and aggressiveness). these inevitably crowd out their companion virtues (patience, sensitivity, discernment, attentiveness and restraint), and “hinder the formation of meaningful interpersonal relationships” (mahon, 2021). further findings of this study indicate that students experienced connection as a key aspect of their wellbeing. this sense of connection extended to themselves, their family, friends, and campus spaces. recent research by sapiro and ward (2020) highlights the importance of connection to others, especially in youth. connection to others, also referred to as social support or belonging, includes aspects such as the providing or receiving of resources to help people cope with stress. “belonging is a fundamental human motivation” (baumeister & leary, 2017), and our wellbeing relies on the fulfilment of our basic psychological needs which includes relatedness to others (soldevila-domenech et al., 2021). soldevila et al. (2021) confirm that connection is an important predictor of wellbeing; the opposite also seems true, that disconnection from those around us often results in poorer health and wellbeing outcomes. levula, wilson and harré (2016) support this finding by asserting that social isolation is the biggest predictor of mental health outcomes across a person’s lifespan. the findings seem to confirm the theoretical framework of this study that suggests within the perma model of wellbeing that engagement and relationships are key factors. the study’s findings suggest that students experienced disillusionment toward the system they found themselves in, and significant struggles with psychological distress and mental health challenges, which were exacerbated by the recent covid-19 pandemic. their wellbeing seems to be grounded in their sense of connection with themselves, their families, their peers, and the campus space. the data reflects an increased awareness at higher education institutions of students’ mental health and wellbeing. their unique developmental phase, psychological stress, and high rates of mental health challenges require a more urgent and systemic intervention. furthermore, a troubling of the dominant discourses prevalent in the higher education context is required, which leans heavily on a biomedical worldview that is mechanistic in nature and should be abandoned in favour of, as farrell (2021) suggests, a more contextualising worldview. by acknowledging student adversities as complex and social rather than intelligible and individual, and fostering a culture of acceptance before efficiency, higher education institutions could mitigate the eroding effects of student disillusionment and the mental health crisis. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 512023 41(1): 51-55 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6140 de jager connection, desperation and disillusionment 6. limitations of the study the study’s limitations include that data were collected at only one higher education institution. furthermore, participants’ recruitment and the information given to participants regarding the research were all in english, which is the second language of most participants in the study. although multiple photos were analysed for each participant, and the data collected were rich, the sample size was small, and certain demographic groups were underrepresented. 7. conclusion this study provides a unique perspective on how students in a higher education institution experience wellbeing. this phenomenon was uniquely explored through a visual participatory method using photos to capture their distinctive experiences. the data foregrounds the unique difficulties posed by students’ mental health challenges and their disillusionment with higher education. furthermore, their wellbeing seems to be reliant on their sense of connection to themselves, their friends, family, and campus spaces. the findings invite a more contextualising and humanistic approach in a rapidly changing higher education landscape. references american psychological association. 2021. stress in america: one year later, pandemic effects on mental health continue. https://bit.ly/41yw0zc auerbach, r. p., alonso, j., axinn, w. g., cuijpers, p., ebert, d. d., green, j. g., ... & zaslavsky, a. m. 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https://www.usaf.ac.za/towards-improving-the-mental-health-of-students-at-south-african-universities/ https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760802303002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2016.11.018 https://www.who.int/teams/mental-health-and-substance-use/covid-19 https://www.who.int/teams/mental-health-and-substance-use/covid-19 40 humanising pedagogy: an alternative approach to curriculum design that enhances rigour in a b.ed. programme abstract the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications (mrteq) draws attention to the complexity of teaching as an activity that is premised upon the acquisition, integration and application of different types of knowledge practices or learning. as such, all initial teacher education programmes in south africa should be designed such that they include disciplinary knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, practical knowledge, fundamental know­ ledge and situational knowledge. these types of knowledge underpin a teacher’s ability to facilitate meaningful learning in the classroom, which in turn facilitates higher education’s respon­ siveness to societal needs. in this article, we reflect on the faculty’s recent curriculum renewal journey towards designing a coherent and rigorous b.ed. programme. we locate our curriculum renewal journey in critical theory and our new curriculum itself is grounded in humanising pedagogies, critical reflection and inquiry. we also describe the consultation and collaborative processes we engaged in to ensure that our new b.ed. programme would be responsive to the needs of our students and society. keywords: curriculum renewal, education theory, humanising curriculum framework, academic rigour, curriculum responsiveness 1. introduction and background this paper is premised on the understanding that teaching is a compound activity. thus, teacher education programmes need to be designed in such a manner that students are able to acquire, integrate and apply a range of knowledge types, such as disciplinary knowledge, pedagogical know­ ledge, practical knowledge, fundamental knowledge and situational knowledge (department of higher education and training, 2015). these various types of knowledge’s of learning underpin teachers’ ability to make meaningful connections with the practice of education to facilitate meaningful learning. teacher education programmes should be designed to enable the student to acquire and apply these knowledge’s in an integrated, fused manner. deidre geduld (deidre.geduld2@nmmu.ac.za) heloise sathorar (heloise.sathorar@nmmu. ac.za) doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i1.4 issn 0258­2236 eissn 2519­593x perspectives in education 2016 34(1): 40­52 © uv/ufs mailto:deidre.geduld2@nmmu.ac.za mailto:heloise.sathorar@nmmu.ac.za mailto:heloise.sathorar@nmmu.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.4 geduld & sathorar humanising pedagogy: an alternative approach to... 41 this article describes our recent curriculum renewal journey towards designing a coherent and rigorous b.ed. programme. in order to understand the complexities of our journey, it is firstly important to share our faculty’s evolving identity, coloured by diverse ideologies and biographies that shape current ways of being as teacher educators at a transforming post­ apartheid, post­merger higher education institution in south africa. the current nmmu faculty of education came into being in 2005 as a result of the amalgamation of three former higher education institutions in the nelson mandela metropole: the university of port elizabeth (upe), the port elizabeth technikon, and the pe campus of vista university. upe, a former white institution, was established during the apartheid years and operated as an afrikaner broederbond stronghold. the university promoted the political ideology of the national party, upheld the principles of christian national education (cne) and rooted its education in the philosophy of fundamental pedagogics. pe technikon focussed predominantly on technically oriented undergraduate diplomas and to a lesser extent, postgraduate qualifications. the primary focus was on preparing students for industry. countrywide, vista university’s multi­campuses were established to accommodate black students who could not, due to policy, access so­called white universities. as such, the vista pe campus was located at missionvale, a black township on the outskirts of port elizabeth. although all three institutions offered teacher education programmes, there was little overlap in terms of the content and structure of modules. hence, during the merger process programmes were, in most cases, retained. a large component of our current staff attended school and university during the apartheid era when the vast majority of state­funded heis and teacher training colleges were merely complying with the status quo. furthermore, for many colleagues, the conception of ‘curriculum’ during the time of the merger was still rooted in a modernist paradigm, understood according to tyler’s cause-and-effect, prediction-and-control model (cullen & hill, 2013). in addition, the vast majority of staff, black and white, went “through the mill of fundamental pedagogics” (morrow, 2007: 135), our educational philosophies grounded in positivist certainty and rationality, with reality assumed to be stable and predictable (cullen & hill, 2013). fundamental pedagogics propagated inter alia the idea that the child is a non­adult en route to adulthood. in order to ensure a meaningful being en route to, and a gradual conquest of adulthood, the assistance and support of a “proper adult”, was seen as indispensable (landman et al., 1982: 3). since fundamental pedagogics adopted christianity as the ‘only’ philosophy of life, forms of ‘­isms’, such as pragmatism, liberalism, marxism, existentialism and humanism were seen as undermining christianity and as such were rejected. paulo freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed (1970) and other progressive educational texts were banned for promoting ‘liberal, communist’ ideology. in general, educational discourse at most state­ controlled education institutions during these years disregarded the impact of poverty, racism, and cultural struggles on the education of the majority of south african children, producing an “epistemological veil” (apple, 2011: 223). in order to transform the faculty, renew its curricula and facilitate much­needed educational change, thoughtful engagement with profound transformation was necessary. this would imply reconfiguring our inner personal landscapes as teacher educators. we had to revisit and interrogate our individual ideologies, philosophies, epistemologies, pedagogies and ontologies in a post-colonial, post-apartheid, post-merger faculty. ultimately, we had to redefine who we are, not only as individuals but also as a collective. 42 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) 2. a curriculum underpinned by critical theory critical theory encapsulates multiple strands of scholarship united by a deep commitment to human emancipation. it was initiated by a group of prominent interdisciplinary thinkers whose ‘members’ include max horkheimer, theodor adorno, herbert marcuse, eric fromm and jurgen habermas. the interests of these intellectuals soon broadened into an attempt to build a theory of critical action dedicated to guiding a political, economic and intellectual revolution. according to these theorists, a “critical” theory may be set apart from a “traditional” theory according to a specific practical purpose: a theory is critical to the extent that it seeks human “emancipation from slavery”, acts as a “liberating … influence” and works “to create a world which satisfies the needs and powers” of human beings (horkheimer, 1972: 246). since such theories aim to explain and transform all the circumstances that enslave human beings, many “critical theories” in the broader sense have been developed. the result is to be an eventual democratic and free society founded on concepts such as social justice, interpersonal respect, universal rights and global citizenship. higher education within south africa needs to prepare teachers and scholars to confront the current political climate within the country. we need to change our theoretical orientation to one that is adaptable, critical and radical in the current south africa. however, arum and roksa (2011) are of the opinion that the curriculum structures at universities do not indicate measurable improvement in critical thinking ability within students. one of the purposes of teacher education is to assist in improving the quality of teaching in schools and thus, student teachers need to learn more than the technicalities of teaching as well as something beyond classroom management techniques. as an alternative, beyer (2001) suggests that teacher preparation courses include experiences that incorporate theoretical understandings, conceptual analyses, a range of inquiry orientations and activities, an array of literatures and research studies and an openness to novel ways of seeing and thinking about teaching, schooling and society. teacher educators need to prepare student teachers for life after the classroom but also to help them to be able to change the world (de leon & ross, 2010). a curriculum located within critical pedagogy focuses on student experience and social action, thus focusing on social dimensions and consequences of educational practices, the ideological meaning of texts and experiencing the power relations in schools and the need to interrogate theory and practice in new ways. cohen’s (1999) strategies for dealing with controversial issues include inquiry, dialogue and multiple perspectives as the focus as well as community­based learning and bringing the world into the classroom. through a critical interrogation of relationships and emerging identities in pedagogical contexts, we argue that three dominant patterns of interaction and experience shape our teacher education pedagogies: • cultural dimensions of self – ways of being; • intellectual dimensions of self – ways of knowing; • social dimensions of self – ways of interacting with others. surrounded by these dominant patterns, the emerging humanness becomes realised through and in relation to historical, cultural and social dynamics at play in the experiences of individuals, groups and institutions. we envisage the growth of the whole person (not a facet of a person) in relations with others. viewing our curriculum through a lens of humanising geduld & sathorar humanising pedagogy: an alternative approach to... 43 pedagogy helps us to understand that teacher education is a process and a vision for life in schools, institutions, society and beyond. 3. our journey towards a humanising curriculum framework underpinned by critical theory after an intense revisioning journey, the faculty embarked on a comprehensive and intensive process of curriculum renewal, firstly defining its ‘groundation1’. this part of the renewal process was characterised by critical reflective inquiry and inclusive and participatory conversations, drawing on voices across a wide spectrum of stakeholders including students, alumni, teachers, principals and community leaders. these engagements enabled us to develop a shared understanding of our humanising philosophy of teacher education. in order for student teachers to be humanised, the teacher educators too must be humanised. in freire‘s (1970) view, dehumanisation is reciprocal and existential. if a teacher dehumanises students, then the teacher too is dehumanised. the ‘groundation epoch’ was a critical episode in our journey as it forced us to revisit individual teaching philosophies, pedagogies and identities, shaped by diverse histories and biographies and redefine these. more engagements followed in the form of critical reflective inquiries and conversations. inputs from these sources as well as more intensive discussions, debates, creative workshops and consultations, enabled us to develop a curriculum framework cradled in our vision, mission and pedagogy. pedagogy can be understood to constitute a set of social and political relations that “connects the apparently self­contained act of teaching with culture, structure and the mechanisms of social control” (alexander, 2008: 3). as bernstein (1999: 148) further observes, “pedagogy is a sustained process whereby somebody acquires a new form or develops existing forms of conduct, knowledge, practice and criteria from somebody or something deemed to be an appropriate provider and evaluator”. we employed tintiangco-cubales, kiang and museus’s (2010) definition of pedagogy to guide our curriculum framework (see diagram below): pedagogy is seen as a philosophy of education informed by positionalities, ideologies and standpoints (of teacher and learner). it takes into account the critical relationships between the purpose of education, the context of education, the content of what is being taught and the methods of how it is taught. it also includes (the identity of) who is being taught, who is teaching, their relationship to each other and their relationship to structure and power (tintiangco­cubales et al., 2010). power relations also mark the scope and content of higher education curricula. this is best reflected in the contested field of education policy making. take, for example, the combined efforts of south african senior government officials, media experts, policy makers and academics to classify and legitimatise what types of knowledge and scientific practices and discourses should be taught and in some circumstances made compulsory through institutions. it is an ideological battlefield. far from being neutral, random or even unbiased, the content and design of he curricula is shaped by the cultural and political sensibilities of a given society (korthagen, 2002). more importantly, national prescriptions for education policy 1 with recognition to the late andrew sauls, in life a renowned poet from (the northern areas of port elizabeth) and sgb member of one of the local schools. 44 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) implementation and development are governed and sometimes impeded by transnational trends including the needs of labour markets and the global economy. this point of departure that often divorces context from the discussion around training teachers manages to do a few things. it attempts to separate education from politics, it positions the institution (and by association the content and pedagogy within it) as ‘neutral’ thus shifting any critique and ‘blame’ to the context (the teachers, the communities and the students) and this in turn removes any responsibility in creating alternative solutions from the academy. simultaneously, we are dealing with the ramifications of the current global debate around educational reform that align educational goals to those of the labour market. schooling in post­apartheid south africa is increasingly linked to employability, economic growth; the needs of business and ensuring our children have the ‘correct’ skills (for the market). this narrow view of the purpose of education redefines essential elements of learning and teaching in ways that standardise, quantify and limit our understandings of competence and performance. our ‘old’ curriculum had minimal input from teachers, was developed by ‘experts’ and publishers and was pre-packaged and “designed to be applied to any classroom context regardless of the historical, cultural, and socioeconomic differences that characterise various schools and students” (giroux, 2009: 442). giroux (2009) points out that the de­skilling of teachers appears to accompany the adoption of management­type pedagogies. this management type paradigm seeks to ‘improve’ education by “teacher-proofing” it and teachers are then relegated to semi­skilled, low­paid workers in the mass production of education (giroux, 2009: 442). despite insistence from all corners for the need to develop critical thinkers, solid literacy and numeracy skills and students that are able to contribute meaningfully to the development of the country, the current structure and culture of our education system is still highly prescriptive, standardised and driven towards narrow and specific assessment that favours rote learning, memorisation, standardisation and a culture of conformity. as part of our faculty’s agenda for the institution to take an active role in preparing teachers for schools, our humanising curriculum framework offers the reconnection of education to social justice — equity in the social, cultural, racial and economic realms — and disconnecting education from the reproduction of social and societal inequities (furumoto, 2003). freire (2005) offers a humanising pedagogy as an approach where the teacher is a revolutionary leader in establishing a permanent relationship of dialogue with her/his students in an effort to build confidence in students who may be alienated or feel alienated from teaching and learning. our perspective of a humanising approach in education is grounded in critical theory, which is about coming to a critical understanding of oneself and understanding the self in relation to society (christensen, 2000). we sought to create a curriculum framework where student learning was validated and where the shared experience and equality of student teachers was more in evidence. we propose a humanising pedagogy, which allows student teachers to co­create opportunities and situations from which they may organise and develop solid theoretical and practical approaches. these considerations have led us towards a set of fundamental questions guiding the curriculum choices we need to make, namely, what do we choose to teach, how will we do so, where will this learning and teaching take place, and how do we know that learning has taken place? geduld & sathorar humanising pedagogy: an alternative approach to... 45 the following diagram captures our ‘humanising curriculum framework’ that guided our renewal work: “enabling a way of becoming for work and life” null who?who? learning itthou embodiedintegrated hidden why? bigger purpose incidental i “knowledges” what? methods & pedagogies how? assessment how do we know? conductive environment where? e nabling ideologies v alues beliefs historiessoci ety c on te xt s c ul tu re s ph ilo so ph ies figure 1: nmmu faculty of education’s humanising curriculum framework there are several layers of meaning encapsulated in this diagram. the outer layer of the circle acknowledges that our work is informed by and seeks to contribute to a range of historical, philosophical, political and cultural dimensions of our lives within a society (zinn et al., 2014). at the centre of this diagram, is a heart representing the so­called who question, who are we as teacher-educators? who are our students and who are their prospective learners? at the centre of the heart is the hawkin’s (1974) learning triangle symbolising the learning act. linked to the learning triangle are the critical questions of what will be taught, how it will be taught, where it will be taught and how we know learning has taken place. all these questions are intrinsically linked to the i (teacher) – thou (student) – it (content) interaction on the 46 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) learning triangle. for the purpose of this paper, the it will specifically refer to the disciplinary knowledge of the education theory modules and the work integrated learning modules in the b.ed. programme. informing these reciprocal relationships are also the understandings and philosophical orientations of our ‘golden threads’ of humanising pedagogies and a culture of critical reflection and inquiry (rodgers, 2002; dewey, 1938). thus, there is a commitment to pedagogy that: • is student­focused; • is embedded in processes of dialogue and meaning making; • focuses on the praxis that combines new knowledge with meaning making through cycles of learning, action and reflection; • recognises the diversity of knowledge and experience of students as they enter the institution; • seeks to build bridges and scaffolds between this knowledge and the history of ideas, discourses and literacies of academic life; • consciously engages with the tension between the production of local and the global knowledge. hence, freire (2005) argues that it is essential to realise that when we accept the struggle for humanisation we also accept, from that moment, our total responsibility for the struggle. we must realise that we are fighting not merely for freedom from hunger but for freedom to create and construct, to wonder and to venture. the next section deals with humanising pedagogy within our curriculum frameworks as a way to set the backdrop for pedagogical transaction in a post­apartheid society. 4. how our humanising curriculum framework contributes to academic rigour in the b.ed. programme academic rigour is determined not just by what is taught but how it is taught and how it is assessed (the hechinger report, 2008). thus, to determine the rigour of a curriculum, questions should be asked about all three components of rigour – content, pedagogy and assessment (the hechinger report, 2008). schmidt (2008) describes a rigorous curriculum as being focused, coherent and appropriately challenging. similarly slonimsky and shalem (2006: 36) refer to the appropriateness of the curriculum by investigating higher educations ‘responsiveness’ to the difficulties experienced by ‘under prepared’ students. moll (2004) developed the notion of ‘curriculum responsiveness’ which he argues includes economic, cultural/institutional, disciplinary and learning responsiveness. moll (2004 as cited by slonimsky and shalem, 2006: 36) briefly describes economic responsiveness of the curriculum as the extent to which the teaching and learning in a university meet the changing needs of employers of graduates. jacobs, snider and willen (the hechinger report, 2008) support the notion of economic responsiveness in that they highlight the importance of consulting employers to establish what their expectations of graduates are and then enhance the rigour of the curriculum by ensuring that these aspects are covered by the said curriculum within context. furthermore, moll (2004) refers to the cultural responsiveness of the curriculum as accommodating the diversity of socio­cultural realities of students by developing a wider variety geduld & sathorar humanising pedagogy: an alternative approach to... 47 of instructional strategies and learning pathways. jacobs, snider and willen (the hechinger report, 2008) also highlight the importance of talking to students to establish their interest and context and to incorporate this into the curriculum. the disciplinary responsiveness of the curriculum refers to a curriculum’s responsiveness to the nature of its underlying knowledge discipline that essentially refers to the link between the way knowledge is produced and the way students are educated and trained in the discipline area. from a teaching perspective, this requires socialisation into academic inquiry of specialised knowledge’s (moll, 2004). jacobs, snider and willen (the hechinger report, 2008) who highlight the importance of a curriculum developing higher order critical thinking skills in students also support this notion. finally, moll (2004) suggests that learning responsiveness entails teaching and assessing students in ways that are accessible to them. this means not only including students in determining what is valued about the underlying discipline in terms of assessment but also adjusting the teaching to the rhythms, tensions and emotions of learning (slonimsky & shalem, 2006: 37). to attain rigour in our b.ed. curriculum we conceptualised our humanising curriculum framework to be responsive to the needs in higher education. paramount in our humanising curriculum framework is “who” our students are. for this purpose, we consulted students and alumni to establish a profile of our student. this assisted us in understanding context and allowed us to accommodate students’ diverse socio­cultural realities in the range of instructional strategies and learning pathways (moll, 2004). oliva (2009) emphasises the importance of a curriculum specifying student, societal and school needs. this is in line with the “what” element in our humanising curriculum framework where what the student needs to know is the main focus. moll (2004) refers to this as the economic responsiveness of the curriculum. however, we acknowledge that within south africa’s two­tier education system – one for the middle class and rich, predominantly english and afrikaans speaking elite and one for the poor, african language speaking majority; we should strive to achieve transformation and equality. we consulted with a variety of other stakeholders including school principals, mentor teachers and department of education officials to establish what skills are required of teacher education graduates. a range of aspects was highlighted including resilience, ability to interact with society, classroom management and administration, handling disciplinary issues and a strong content knowledge. these aspects were addressed in the module design to ensure that students are adequately prepared to address the needs described earlier. it could be argued that the economic responsiveness of a curriculum contradicts the principles of critical theory that underpinned our renewal process; however, for us it highlighted the nuances between the reality and the ideal. we thus, had to ensure a balanced approach whereby students would be encouraged to think critically and to engage in meaningful dialogue in responding to societal needs while at the same time ensuring that they are aware of the requirements of the school, the department of education and society. the “how” in our humanising curriculum framework refers to the pedagogies and methods of teaching. this echoes moll’s (2004) notion of disciplinary responsiveness in the curriculum. the “where” element of our curriculum framework refers to a conducive learning environment while the “how do we know” refers to appropriate assessment that will establish whether learning took place. all three of these elements can be associated with moll’s (2004) notion of learning responsiveness. jacobs, snider and willen (the hechinger report, 2008) also support 48 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) the notion of the learning responsiveness of a curriculum and they encourage curriculum makers to learn the most from students and to ask why they learn more in some classes than others. furthermore, they encouraged curriculum makers to analyse assessment activities to establish whether it meets the requirement of developing high­order critical thinking skills. as a faculty, we engaged in a review and analysis of our current curriculum. this called for deep reflection on our own practice. in addition to this, we consulted widely with students across the three different b.ed. programmes and over the four year span to establish in which modules they learn the most and why. we also tapped into the voice of alumni to establish which modules that they completed during their study assisted them the most during practice. the information gathered during these sessions informed the programme framework and module design conceptualisation. 5. how our humanising curriculum framework translated into rigorous and coherent modules the b.ed. foundation phase (fp), intermediate phase (ip), senior phase and further education and training phase (sp and fet) programmes at nmmu are bound by common education theory and school based learning (sbl) (or wil) modules. in the process of curriculum renewal, it was important to ensure that the humanising curriculum framework translates into responsive modules that address the needs of students, the employers (schools/department of education) and society. the best place to manifest the responsiveness of the curriculum would be in the common education theory modules and the sbl modules in order to achieve coherence across programmes and integration between education theory and the sbl modules. teacher education thus becomes a theoretically informed field where student teachers first acquire the theoretical and conceptual knowledge to put this into practice (reeves & robinson, 2014: 238). first year student teachers are required to do the education i module – self and human development. korthagen (2002), states that development takes existing knowledge and experience as a useful platform on which to build. this module aims at allowing students to reflect on their context and histories. furthermore, it allows the student to expose “who” they are to us the teacher educators so that we, through the cultural responsiveness of the curriculum, can accommodate their socio­cultural diversity (moll, 2004). furthermore, the sbl i module is closely linked to the education i module to achieve that integration of reflection and knowledge. a diversity of school contexts through four, daylong observation visits in which the general day­to­day operations of schools could be contrasted from the perspectives of students and teachers is also incorporated. these dimensions draw on a major purpose of social justice education in which the unsettling of cherished beliefs or assumptions about the world become not only unavoidable but also necessary (berlak, 2004). in the sbl and other modules, students discuss their school experience visits in small­ group discussions. here emphasis is placed on the social construction of groups and societies and on the deconstruction, or elimination of political, economic and social oppression. the groups ought to be constructed in such a way that they promote structured dialogue. through a dialectical process, student teachers become aware of who they are and where they come from and are able then to know reality on a higher level. the goal of critical theory, according to popkewitz (1984: 45), is to “change the world not describe it”. to engage in the dialectical geduld & sathorar humanising pedagogy: an alternative approach to... 49 process causes an increased awareness of reality and change occurs. such change is not seen as serendipitous but as a dialectical process that leads to the emancipation of humankind. the education ii module is called – the self, society and education and focuses on the “what” a teacher needs to know, “how” learning takes place and “where” learning takes place. the module provides the student with an understanding of how “the self” (a teacher) interacts with society in the paradigm of education. the teacher gains an understanding of what is required of a teacher to work in a diverse society – aligning to the economic responsiveness of the curriculum. furthermore, the student will be introduced to the cultural responsiveness of the curriculum (moll, 2004) by studying a variety of instructional strategies to accommodate the diversity of their own learners. this knowledge enables student teachers to respond (act to address the needs) to their environment. kaufman (1984) summarised marx’s concepts on the relation between action and knowledge: marx’s doctrine maintains that the knowing of reality was also the changing of it. that said, knowledge could not be understood independently of its relation to action. action, within a mundane perspective, changes the objects in the environment acted upon and it changes the subject (kaufman, 1984: 81). marx viewed this interrelationship between knowledge and action as intrinsic to peoples’ natures. knowledge produced change in people and change impelled action. in the third year, the education theory module focuses on the foundations of education and the theories of education. here students engage with a variety of education theories and focus on curriculum theories. the students are exposed to the south african curriculum when they visit the schools during the sbl module where they are required to present lessons for the first time to classes under the supervision of their mentor teachers. the third year modules align themselves well with moll’s (2004) disciplinary responsiveness of the curriculum. these modules address the “what”, the “how” and the “how do we know” elements of our humanising curriculum framework. the theories that students are exposed to in these modules highlight the difference between appearance and reality and motivate action rather than directions for action. habermas (as cited in held, 1980: 349) explains as follows: they cannot dictate and justify action. theory can only be used to create agents capable of full participation in decisions concerning action and it can be used to support arguments in favor of certain courses of action. but it cannot be used, in any automatic or mechanistic way, to generate strategy or to ensure the success of strategic action the fourth year is a culmination of the previous three years of study, as students are required to reflect on what they have learnt and experienced during their previous three years in order to develop their own teaching philosophy. the fourth year sbl module requires students to be at a school for a whole year and to form part of a community of practice where they can implement their teaching philosophy and all that they have learnt over the past three years. it allows the student to engage with diverse learners, to learn from teachers in practice, to implement the curriculum and to focus on the assessment thereof. most of all it will allow the student to adjust their teaching to the rhythms, tensions and emotions of the learning environment. the fourth year modules support moll’s (2004) notion of learning responsiveness of the curriculum. it attempts to help students question and challenge domination and the beliefs and practices that dominate. in other words, it is a theory and practice of helping students achieve 50 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) critical consciousness. however, as darling­hammond and ducommun (2012) note: a high­ quality teacher may not be able to offer high-quality instruction in a context where there is a mismatch between the demands of the situation and his or her knowledge and skills. thus, this serves as motivation for the following suggestions to form part of a teacher education curriculum that will enable student teachers to be effective in their teaching: • well-supervised student teaching experiences that were also well-matched to the subjects, grade levels and students they would later teach; • more course work in teaching subject specialisations and teaching methods; • focused courses helping student teachers acquire specific practices and tools that they can apply in their student teaching or practicum experiences; • a capstone project that would usually require a performance assessment or portfolio of their work done in classrooms with learners in evaluating our humanising curriculum framework, it is clear for us that education is humanising when it is critical, dialogical and praxical. 6. conclusion we have reflected on our recent b.ed. curriculum renewal journey towards a coherent, rigorous programme, enabling the beginner teacher to confront the numerous challenges synonymous with south african schools. we believe that the specific nature of this journey, underpinned by a critical theory, emancipated us from previously held assumptions, thereby enabling us to design an authentic, collectively owned, rigorous new b.ed. programme. we suggest that with the thoughtful implementation of this programme we may be able to respond to the needs of society (slonimsky & shalem, 2006) by cultivating student teachers who, through on-going critical reflective inquiry, will indeed become the much needed ‘transformative intellectuals’, as proposed by giroux (1988). as these programmes are to be implemented, we acknowledge that much reflective work still needs to be done towards on-going refinement. this we will aim to do, through collaborative, collegial dialogue that reflects on problems and work towards solutions that provide the catalyst for our own and our students’ learning (henderson & gornik, 2007: 68). references alexander, r. 2008. pedagogy, culture and curriculum. in p. murphy, j. soler, & k. hall (eds.). pedagogy and practice: culture and identities. northallerton: the open university: milton keynes. pp. 3-27. apple, m.w. 2011. global crises, social justice, and teacher education. journal of teacher education, 62(2), 222-234. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0022487110385428 arum, r. & roska, j. 2012. academically adrift. 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childhood education, 3(4), 103-121. http://dx.doi.org/10.17763/haer.72.2.5631743606m15751 http://drum.lib.umd.edu/bitstream/1903/8176/1/umi-umd-5358.pdf _goback pie33(1).indb perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 73 voices of divergence: resistance, contestation and the shaping of namibia’s teacher education, 19902010 john nyambe di wilmot this paper reports on an aspect of a broader study that investigated teacher educators’ uptake of learner-centred pedagogy in post-apartheid namibia. the paper shares part of the study that illuminated the path traversed by namibian teacher education policy from 1990 to 2010, two decades into the country’s post-apartheid self-rule. it argues that, far from being smooth sailing, teacher education reform in post-apartheid namibia has been characterised by severe turbulence with divergent forces wrestling over the philosophical and epistemological orientations of the new teacher education. the paper concludes that these forces, voices of divergence, criticisms, resistance or contestations were a significant feature that helped define and shape post-1990 teacher education for basic education to its present-day state. keywords: teacher education reform, official pedagogic discourse, recontextualisation, resistance, contestation. background with the cessation of the liberation struggle in late 1989, and the subsequent transition to self-rule on 21 march 1990, teacher education became a high priority on the agenda of the newly elected political leadership in post-apartheid namibia. colonial teacher education was not only seen to be antithetical to the new political ethos of social justice and democracy, but its programmes also tended to privilege john nyambe continuing professional development unit, university of namibia e-mail: jnyambe@unam.na di wilmot education department, faculty of education, rhodes university email: d.wilmot@ru.ac.za telephone: 046 6038385 or 083 654 6662 perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 74 academic content learning at the expense of teacher professionalisation (swarts, 1999). swarts (1999:31) contends that colonial teacher education programmes had a tendency to concentrate too much on academic knowledge while devoting insufficient time to professional issues related to teaching as students were prepared superficially for the day-to-day management of classrooms and the running of schools. a major teacher education reform was thus declared, resulting in teacher education becoming a site of struggle, contestation and conflict in which oppositional discourses wrestled over the ideological and epistemological orientations of the new teacher education programmes. this paper forms part of a broader study that investigated teacher educators’ uptake of learner-centred pedagogy in post-apartheid namibia (nyambe, 2008). in particular, the paper shares part of the study that illuminated the path traversed by namibian teacher education policy from 1990 to 2010, two decades of namibia’s post-apartheid self-rule. the paper maps out the reform landscape, illuminating the major forces that were at play, as well as the tensions, conflicts, struggles and oppositions that shaped the whole reform process. following the broader study, the paper draws on bernstein’s theory of pedagogic discourse (1990, 1996, 2000) to provide a theoretical lens for generating the insights necessary to understand the tensions, struggles and ideological contestations associated with teacher education in namibia from 1990 to 2010. theoretical framework the premise of our argument is that bernstein’s theory of pedagogic discourse, in particular his model of the pedagogic field and ideas about the process associated with the movement of pedagogic discourse through the field, affords us a theoretical vantage point from which to analyse and make sense of the contestations and struggles that characterised the first two decades of teacher education in namibia post-1990 (nyambe & wilmot, 2012). by using the external lens provided by bernstein and by writing from a position of hindsight, we provide evidence of how we have been able to gain insights into a teacher education reform process in a specific context. according to bernstein, the movement of pedagogic discourse through the pedagogic field (which consists of three fields: the field of production, the field of recontextualisation and the field of reproduction), is a social and dynamic process which is not neutral. he asserts that ‘the primary discourse undergoes ideological transformation according to the specialized interests of the various positions in the recontextualising field’ (bernstein, 1996:116). the original discourse is appropriated, delocated and transformed in the field of recontextualisation before being relocated for further transformation in the field of reproduction. bernstein’s (1990) explanation of how official discourse such as policy is received, selectively appropriated, transformed and interpreted for use in a new context, is pertinent to understanding the movement of teacher education policy in namibia. of significance to the research reported in this paper, is bernstein’s distinction between two subfields within the voices of divergence: resistance, contestation and the shaping of namibia’s teacher education, 1990-2010 john nyambe & di wilmot 75 recontextualisation field, namely the official recontextualising field (orf) and the pedagogic recontextualising field (prf). according to bernstein (1996:118), ‘the orf is created and controlled by the state for the construction and surveillance of state pedagogic discourse’. the orf consists of officials from various state pedagogic agencies, consultants from the education system, specialised departments and local education authorities (tan, 2010). wilmot (2005:247) observes that ‘working alongside the agents and agencies in the orf, and performing similar functions, often in unproductive tension due to different ideological positions, are the “non-state” agents and agencies who share membership of the prf’. the prf is a field in which different discourses (with their associated texts), all of which stand as a reservoir for potential recontextualisation, circulate to form pedagogic discourse. these texts include textbooks, research articles and education advocacy documents produced by non-governmental organisations (ngos). the prf consists of agents and agencies drawn from various non-state subfields, for example, university education departments, teacher training colleges, polytechnic departments of education, and publishing houses (tan, 2010). bernstein (1990:61) argues that ‘it is the recontextualizing field which generates the positions and oppositions of pedagogic theory, research and practice’. the existence of different agents and agencies in both the orf and the prf means that different micro-processes of appropriation and transformation are taking place at the same time and in parallel. bernstein (1996:118) explains that ‘both fields may well have a range of ideological pedagogical positions which struggle for control of the field. and these positions in the orf and prf may well be opposed to each other’. bernstein (1990) illuminates the tensions further by using the concept of classification (c). classification refers to power relations and is concerned with the degree of insulation or boundary maintenance or demarcation between agents and agencies. depending on the degree of insulation, classification can either be weak (c-) or strong (c+). nyambe and wilmot (2012:57) observed that strong classification (c+) leads to strong insulation between the various agents, discourses and practices and highly specialised identities and voices coupled with little interchange between the various categories, agents or discourses. weak classification (c-), on the other hand, signifies weak insulation between the various categories, agents and discourses, with less specialised identities and a high level of interaction between the various categories. the tensions and conflicts are more severe when there is strong insulation between the orf and the prf, particularly when the prf has a certain degree of autonomy over the construction of pedagogic discourses and practices. bernstein’s ideas and concepts, when considered in relation to the teacher education reform process in namibia, provided us with a theoretical framework and perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 76 descriptive language with which to discuss the specific happenings in namibia in a more abstract and generalised way. the following section maps out the post-1990 teacher education reform landscape in namibia. it illuminates the major forces and ideological interests that were at play, and the contestations and tensions that these gave rise to as the official pedagogic discourse of teacher education reform was being received and interpreted for use by agents and agencies located both within the orf and between the orf and the prf. the national institute for educational development created in 1990, and charged with the responsibility to spearhead the post-apartheid educational reforms, the national institute for educational development (nied) was the most powerful epistemological force shaping the post-1990 reform process. in particular, the division: professional development and research was charged with executing nied’s mandate of innovating, guiding, coordinating and directing teacher education reform for basic education (teachers of grades 1 to 10). serving as a state agency operating in the orf, nied was the overseer of preservice and in-service teacher education for basic education. it supervised and coordinated the design, development and implementation of teacher education reform at the former colleges of education in namibia. in the same vein, it also exercised oversight over the 34 teacher resource centres (trcs) country-wide that served as delivery centres for in-service teacher education. cohen (1994), swarts (1999) and angula (1999) emphasise yet another dimension to nied’s role in the reform process: to ensure the translation and enactment of the ideological values embedded in various exile education programmes. according to angula (1999:15), education activities that were offered in exile by the south west africa people’s organisation (swapo) ‘provided the model or basis’ upon which post-apartheid education reform would be based. inclusive of formal and non-formal education programmes, and ranging from primary education to teacher education and other forms of tertiary education, the exile education programmes were thoroughly imbued with the swapo liberation ideology of solidarity, freedom and social justice. in terms of policies and practice, both in relation to teacher education and classroom teaching, the liberation ideology gave rise to specific ontological, epistemological and pedagogical orientations that were generally communicated through discourses such as ‘social constructivism, student-centredness or learner-centred education, critical and transformative pedagogy, democratic education, conceptual learning, integration of knowledge, meaning making and reflective practice’ (dahlstrom, 1999:7). thus, championed by nied, the basic education teachers diploma (betd) programme was, by and large, a translation of the philosophical and ideological values of exile programmes. as the agency responsible for the ‘construction and surveillance’ of state pedagogic discourse, nied successfully established itself as the heart-centre, the focal point voices of divergence: resistance, contestation and the shaping of namibia’s teacher education, 1990-2010 john nyambe & di wilmot 77 and the ‘epistemological guardian’ to which teacher educators at the former colleges turned for new ideas, initiatives and professional guidance. though initially nied was to make recommendations to the task force for pre-service teacher education, with whom the powers and authority for policy decision-making under the chair of the minister of education were vested, the task force slowly died away with its role and functions gradually being taken over by nied through its curriculum coordinating group (ccg). this power shift from the task force to the ccg further consolidated nied’s authority as a significant force in the post-1990 teacher education reform. with the task force disappearing from the scene, the ccg, chaired by the nied director, became the only professional body at the national level dealing with issues related to teacher education and the sole official body for policy interpretation in teacher education (dahlstrom, 2002). this meant that nied had the leverage to make decisions over the reform process without necessarily referring them to another level higher up in the hierarchy. further to this was the restoration of the political dimension to the curriculum policy decision-making process with the crafting of the teachers’ education colleges act in 2003 (namibia, 2003) under the education and training sector improvement programme (etsip). the new act brought in new structures and new relationships in the teacher education reform process. under this act, an advisory council on teacher education and training (actet) was established to advise the minister on policy issues pertaining to teacher education. with the actet taking over its roles and responsibilities, the ccg disappeared from the national teacher education reform landscape. with the disappearance of the ccg, nied’s decision-making powers waned seeing that it now had to participate in the actet on an equal basis alongside the other agencies. however, due to subsequent reforms in teacher education, the lifespan of the actet was short with it disappearing, without any ceremony, from the scene in approximately 2010. the death of the political influence (as seen in the dying away of the task force), its resurrection through the actet, and the subsequent removal of nied’s ccg from the scene, signified a subtle but ongoing contestation between the political force (represented by the ministry of education) and nied over the control of the epistemological domain. nevertheless, it can be concluded that, while the ministry of education had political clout in terms of policy formulation, qualification structures, administration and management, epistemological power was vested with nied as it exerted the most influence on pedagogy and curriculum orientation, i.e. it was the most powerful epistemological force shaping the context of the reform. foreign agencies and donor projects in the post-1990 teacher education reforms despite a body of literature (altbach, 1977; berman, 1979; ngugi, 1981; hancock, 1989; sikwibele, 1996; tabulwa, 2003) demonstrating the negative impact of donor agencies in educational reform in developing countries, the post-1990 teacher perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 78 education reform in namibia was dominated by donor projects, particularly in its early stages. generally treated as ‘experts’ by their namibian counterparts, despite their official title as volunteers (dahlstrom, 2002:146), foreign project staff members commanded significant control over the intellectual and professional lives of namibian educators. until it was officially phased out in december 2000, the teacher education reform project (terp) from umea university, funded by the swedish international development agency (sida), was the main foreign actor exercising significant influence over the conception and implementation of the post-1990 teacher education reform for basic education. not only was it the terp project that produced the first steering documents (such as the concept paper for the reform, the draft broad curriculum, and the draft syllabus documents for the reform programme), but it was also the terp project that established ‘special’ libraries (commonly known as education development units – edus) in addition to existing libraries at the colleges to render professional development for teacher educators. in this way, the terp project was a significant force in shaping teacher educators’ intellectual and professional lives, and the teacher education reform in general. the terp project worked closely with nied within the orf to shape teacher educators’ understanding and practice of learnercentred education that underpinned the post-1990 teacher education reform. the terp influence stretched even further in the reform facilitators who were hired by terp from umea university in sweden and from other universities in europe. though the terp headquarter was at nied, reform facilitators were stationed at the colleges to provide guidance and mentorship to teacher educators and to ensure that the betd programme, and the entire reform, was being implemented as intended. while these reform facilitators were easily accessible to teacher educators, their placement at the colleges signified the extent of penetration of the terp influence into the intellectual and professional life of the post-1990 teacher education for basic education. on the ground at the colleges, reform facilitators mentored and supervised teacher educators on the terp professional development programmes such as the b-level course, higher diploma in teacher education and the master’s programme in teacher education – all issued under umea university. in addition, reform facilitators provided general guidance on organisational and college management issues, making the terp influence college-wide. reform facilitators also served on college management teams. also worth noting is that the terp project was a continuation of the swedish technical and professional support that was being rendered to the swapo teacher education activities in exile. thus, while in exile, the swedish technical staff assisted with the setting up of a teachers’ magazine, the frontline teacher, a quarterly magazine that was published by the integrated teacher training (ittp) programme. terp, in post-1990 namibia, supported the establishment of a mirror-version, namely the reform forum, which has been published by nied since the early 1990s. voices of divergence: resistance, contestation and the shaping of namibia’s teacher education, 1990-2010 john nyambe & di wilmot 79 in addition to terp, other donor projects that shaped the post-1990 reform of teacher education included the english language teacher development project (eltdp), the canadian international development agency (cida), the international foundation for education and self-help (ifes), usaid and the namibia association of norway (namas). while some of these projects kept a low profile, others – notably the eltdp and the namas projects – tended to be as prominent as the terp project. though focused on the development of the teaching of the english language, the eltdp mirrored many aspects of the terp activities ranging from the placement of reform facilitators at the colleges, the setting up of an english language library, and providing professional development at diploma and postgraduate level (master’s) to teacher educators in the teaching of english. the namas project also placed a reform advisor at nied, who was instrumental in driving the activities of nied during the project term. the reform advisor shadowed the nied director and worked with the director daily, rendering guidance, support and mentorship. by virtue of this positioning, the reform advisor had a powerful voice in the affairs and direction not only of teacher education reform, but also of nied. the activities of the reform advisor ranged from organisational development issues at nied, to teacher education curriculum development and implementation. while no explicit tension was observed in nied’s relation with these donor projects, the projects were, however, one of the key sources to the resistance that was being received by the reform from participating institutions outside of nied and the public in general. although there was general consensus among the public to reform teacher education for basic education after independence, there was equally a feeling that the substance and direction of the reform was being externally imposed by some of the foreign donor projects. these tensions are elaborated in the subsequent paragraphs. the university of namibia and the post-1990 teacher education reform for basic education though serving on reform structures established under nied such as the ccg and subject panels, the university (unam) was perceived by nied, as will be demonstrated below, as a hostile force in general. this perception was based on the belief that the university was ever engaged in an epistemological and ideological war over the underpinning tenets of the new teacher education reform, encapsulated as social constructivism, learner-centredness, critical and transformative pedagogy. in particular, the betd was being criticised for being ‘less academic’ – that is, for teaching less subject content and placing too much emphasis on acquisition of pedagogical skills (nyambe, 2001:74). the tensions, conflicts and contestations were particularly evident in october 1998 when the university advertised its admission requirements for betd diplomates intending to enroll in the bed programme: perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 80 candidates must have 1. an igcse certificate [international general certificate for secondary education] with a pass in at least 5 subjects or equivalent qualification; 2. a minimum of an upper credit betd diploma certificate with subject passes at the level of a ‘b’ grade or better; 3. a minimum of three (3) years teaching experience after successfully completing the betd. (nied, 1998) the advertisement was not well received by nied who interpreted it to mean that the university would recognise no prior learning associated with the betd to enable betd holders to enter the bed at a point other than right from the beginning of the study programme. according to nied, the advertisement meant that the knowledge, skills and experiences acquired through the betd would not be recognised by the university for granting credit transfer or exemption from a given number of years of study. this was further aggravated by the fact that the university appeared to be equating the betd to a mere high school leaving certificate. consequently, nied charged: we would like to express our shock and dismay at the advertisement which appeared in today’s die republikein and the namibian. since the notice does not link the requirements to the point at which betd graduates enter, it creates the unfortunate and unjustified impression that the betd is equivalent with a school leaving certificate and that it is in fact put on par with a school leaving certificate (igcse). it also seems to convey the impression that those betd graduates who have obtained credit or complete would not qualify for the degree programme. this is very disappointing since it seems to negate the notion that through their experience as teachers over the three years their knowledge base, skills and attitudes have not remained static, but have further developed. (nied, 1998) while these protest letters managed to yield some form of public apology from the university – ‘we apologize for the inconvenience caused by our previous notice’ (unam, 1998) – the second set of advertisements after the apology did not differ significantly from the first ones. though the it dropped the igcse requirement, the second advertisement still reflected the initial stance of denying credit transfer to betd diplomates. it still equated the betd to a high school leaving certificate seeing that it continued to ignore the possibility that, during their three years of study in the betd, students’ knowledge, skills and attitudes could have developed. the requirement of a ‘b’ grade or higher meant that only exceptionally good students from the betd would be accepted to the bed programme. this was despite the fact that the admission requirement to the betd was a grade 12 or high school leaving certificate. however, it should be noted that, despite the claims made by nied for the non-recognition of the betd by the university, the two programmes (betd and bed) were significantly different in terms of focus, content and methodology. the bed placed more emphasis on academic content, while the betd tended to emphasise voices of divergence: resistance, contestation and the shaping of namibia’s teacher education, 1990-2010 john nyambe & di wilmot 81 the professional aspects of teaching. furthermore, while the bed prepared teachers for the secondary phase, the betd prepared teachers for the basic education phase. in spite of the antagonism and the alleged non-recognition, betd diplomates intending to register for the bed programme were given exemptions by the faculty of education for the professional courses taken at the former colleges of education. however, exemptions were not given for content areas offered by other faculties in the university. the foregoing discussion has illuminated the ongoing ideological screening and contestation over the epistemological orientations of official discourse (the betd) as it was being received in the prf by the university. the tensions and conflicts were being exacerbated by the strong insulation between the orf and the prf, particularly in this case, as the university had a certain degree of autonomy over the construction of pedagogic discourses and practices in 2004, however, the university softened its stance towards the betd and introduced a special bachelor of education degree for basic education to provide opportunities for betd graduates who wished to pursue further studies. colleges of education operating within the prf, colleges of education constituted yet another significant force in the shaping of the post-1990 teacher education reform. despite their official role as implementers of the teacher education reform, some college teacher educators harbored misgivings towards the programme they were made to implement as they resented and resisted it. nied took note of this resistance: it was during the appraisal exercise that some college staff demonstrated their resistance to the betd through overt and covert actions. the appraisal took a long time to complete, longer than it should have. the appraisal period was characterized by tension and conflict, in an attempt to regain what was deemed ‘lost territory’ in having compromised ‘standards’. the issue of more content and the real or perceived lack of examinations came up as major issues (nied, 2000:47). the tension and resistance was even more evident at the 2001 betd forum where most teacher educators advocated philosophical and epistemological orientations that radically opposed those of the betd broad curriculum. in particular, the demands for an ‘increase’ in content knowledge, expressed by the participants at the forum, were at odds with the constructivist perspective embedded in the betd which emphasised knowledge construction and the process of learning. the demands for ‘more content knowledge’ expressed at the forum assumed that ‘knowledge’ was an already existing object or entity which could be collected in determinant quantities. while not suggesting that there is anything wrong in demanding for more content knowledge, it is equally important that such demands be consistent, for instance, with the view of educators as ‘transformative intellectuals’ (hill, 2003:45) who, apart from merely demanding more content knowledge, are capable of critically interrogating perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 82 the ideological and hegemonic interests underpinning school knowledge. the demands for more content knowledge aside, teacher educators’ misgivings towards the programme were also evident in the forum’s insistence on ‘strengthening formal examinations in the betd’ and the demand for ‘common examinations across colleges to be introduced’ (ministry of basic education, sport and culture and the ministry of higher education, science and technology, 2001:24). this was contrary to the programme’s alternative approaches to assessment which put less emphasis on formal examinations as the sole mechanism of assessing students. in sum, it can be concluded that teacher educators at colleges of education constituted another significant force in the shaping of teacher education reform, not only through their teaching activities and participation in curriculum panels, but also through their reservations about, criticism of, and overt resistance towards some of the underlying tenets of the programme. being implementers at the same time, teacher educators were a potentially dangerous force because they could sabotage the reform through their reservations about the programme. the resistance meant that some teacher educators were implementing what they did not believe in. as a result, they could not be that enthusiastic about the reform. the general public the general public in the prf added another layer of resentment to the university and college teacher educators. ‘general public,’ as used here, included the ordinary public, teachers employed by the state and students at colleges. for instance, towards the end of the first decade of the post-apartheid teacher education reform in 1999, the head of state convened a presidential commission to investigate the state of education and training in the country amid the complaints that kept coming from the public regarding the poor quality of the new education system. regarding teacher education, and the betd in particular, the commission noted: we received many criticisms of the betd program. these came from members of the public at large, from serving teachers, and from tutors and students of the colleges of education (government of the republic of namibia [grn], 1999:135). the general public also criticised the reform programme for focusing too much on methodology and teaching little content, and that teacher graduates from the programme might have mastered the skills of teaching, but might not be that competent to teach as they lacked content knowledge. this was highlighted in the report as follows: the betd broad curriculum focuses on the methodology while neglecting the content of subjects which students are going to teach. the question arose if newly qualified teachers are then competent to teach. there is much criticism of betd graduates by schools and the wider community that they may have mastered the skills but have poor command of subject knowledge (grn, 2000:11). voices of divergence: resistance, contestation and the shaping of namibia’s teacher education, 1990-2010 john nyambe & di wilmot 83 apart from what was shared with the presidential commission, newspapers also carried articles where the betd was being blamed by the public for poor examination results: in the namibian (march 24, 1998) poor examination results among grade ten learners in ondangwa west education region were blamed on betd graduates. the newspaper article, teachers blamed on results, charged that although some teachers were in possession of the betd diploma certificates they did not understand english, which is the medium of instruction. this article made specific reference to ongwediva college alleging that even during their study period at the college prospective teachers speak only oshiwambo [a local language]. their training is not in-depth and they struggle to teach things which they themselves do not understand properly (nyambe, 2001:78). it is therefore evident that the general public played an important role in the shaping of the post-1990 teacher education through their criticism, resentment and dislike of the new system. the teacher education reform plan (terp) the ongoing struggles and contestations, and the attendant misgivings over the quality of the teacher education reform for basic education as outlined above, culminated in the commissioning of a consultancy ‘to provide recommendations on how to improve the quality of teacher education [emphasis, mine] and to provide an implementable teacher education reform plan’ [terp] (actet, nd:ii). this was commissioned in 2008 by the ministry of education through the actet. the university, which had been one of the key players in the contestations over the teacher education reform, dominated the consulting team, claiming three members out of a team of five consultants. thus, consistent with the university’s position over the reform as outlined in the foregoing presentation, the recommendations of the consultancy were almost obvious: the four colleges of education be merged with the faculty of education in the university of namibia; the new primary programme (preferably a degree) be designed to be registered at level 7 on the nqf [national qualifications framework]; admission standards are increased….; that the regulations in teacher education programmes relating to assessment and promotion be reviewed to bring them in-line with general education and tertiary education practices; that in 2009 the first intake of trainees for both phases of secondary school into the b.ed. occur…. (actet, nd:171-184). the recommendations of the consultancy brought about major changes on the namibian teacher education landscape. the drive towards university level content teaching was realised which, as seen in the earlier criticism of the betd by the university and the general public, was the most celebrated indicator of ‘good’ quality teacher education. the recommendations led to the following changes: the abolition of colleges of education and their subsequent absorption into the faculty perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 84 of education; the upgrading of the level of content teaching; and the phasing out of the betd (which was seen to be teaching less academic content) which was replaced with a university bachelor of education degree. in addition, common examinations written across the education campuses were introduced. regrettably, however, this move towards university-based teacher education yielded its own problems. these included fewer students being admitted to specialisations such as lower primary education due to high university admission requirements; gaps in graduating teacher cohorts due to the phasing out of the betd under rushed circumstances that were not properly thought through; and gaps in the supply of new teachers to the field resulting in the ministry of education resorting to recalling retired teachers and the hiring of unqualified teachers. these and other problems initiated discussions on whether or not to re-introduce a diploma programme for teacher education and more extreme considerations including whether or not to de-merge the colleges. the absorption of colleges of education into the university gave rise to other developments including nied’s losing its role as overseer of teacher education for basic education, because the merger meant that all teacher education was now falling under the ambit of the university. with all teacher education shifting to the university, the actet was no longer relevant and died off quietly despite its being the body that commissioned the consultancy which crafted the teacher education reform plan (terp). this was due to the fact that being an autonomous institution, the university had its own governance structures. it is therefore concluded that the terp constituted an important force in shaping the post-1990 teacher education in namibia. this plan did not only mark the culmination of the tensions and conflicts that had been going on since the inception of the reform in approximately 1990, but it also gave rise to a major turn of events in the namibian teacher education. though voices of discontent towards the plan were expressed at its inception, these have, however, remained insignificant and insufficiently organised to amount to any meaningful opposition. conclusion the objective of this paper was not to analyse why certain positions or oppositions or voices of divergence were taken, or to judge which ones were appropriate. instead, we have mapped the route taken by teacher education in the first two decades after namibian independence, and we have described the major forces that were at play, as well as the tensions, conflicts and struggles associated with the reform process. the paper has argued that these forces and voices of resistance and contestations were significant features that helped to define and shape the post-1990 teacher education for basic education to its present-day state. by drawing on bernstein’s ideas and concepts, we have been able to take up a theoretical vantage point from which to identify and explain how different state agents and agencies worked – often in tension and opposition – within the orf, and between the orf and prf, to exert voices of divergence: resistance, contestation and the shaping of namibia’s teacher education, 1990-2010 john nyambe & di wilmot 85 their influence and control over teacher education. importantly, we have shown how teacher education policy formulation, interpretation and implementation form 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bernstein’s pedagogic device and madrasah education in singapore. journal of curriculum studies, 42(2): 165-182. university of namibia [unam]. 1998. a follow-through programme committee report on the articulation of the betd with the university of namibia four year degree programme. windhoek: university of namibia. wilmot, d. 2005. teachers as recontextualisers: a case study analysis of outcomesbased assessment policy implementation in two south african schools. unpublished phd dissertation, rhodes university, grahamstown. 1 repositioning educational research on rurality and rural education in south africa: beyond deficit paradigms relebohile moletsane university kwazulu-natal almost two decades after the demise of apartheid, rural communities in south africa are still plagued by seemingly insurmountable challenges, with no change in sight for those who need it most. in spite of the many interventions that have been implemented, real transformation remains elusive. this position paper is premised on the notion that this lack of social change is due, in large part, to the dominance of research paradigms that ignore the voices of those most affected and those who are the intended beneficiaries of the interventions informed by the scholarship. thus, the paper aims to critically reflect on the nature of rurality and to map the issues that face rural communities as well as the limitations of dominant research paradigms and their impact on social change (or lack thereof). it concludes with an exploration of the possibilities for using participatory visual methods for conducting research that makes a difference in the lives of participants and those around them. keywords: rurality, rural education, deficit paradigms, participatory visual methods. introduction critical theory, if nothing else, is a moral construct designed to reduce human suffering in the world. in the critical theoretical context, every individual is granted dignity regardless of his or her location in the web of reality. thus, the continuation of human suffering by conscious human decision is a morally unacceptable behaviour that must be analysed, interpreted and changed (steinberg & kincheloe, 2010:140). why is it that, 17 years after the demise of apartheid, south africa and its education system in particular are still plagued by seemingly insurmountable challenges, with no change in sight for those who need it most, especially those who live, work and learn in rural, informal and other marginalised communities? why and how is it that “initiatives meant to bring about social change in these areas, including those concerned with teacher education and curriculum implementation, have not addressed the systemic challenges” (balfour, mitchell & moletsane, 2008:99), making real transformation difficult? this position paper is premised on the notion that the lack of (desirable) social and educational change is due, in large part, to the dominance of deficit paradigms in south african scholarship, in general, and in education research and development, in particular. unless we change the paradigms we use and adopt more strength-based epistemologies, such change will remain elusive. new paradigms must, while acknowledging the challenges these communities face, also recognise that individuals and groups also have strengths, skills, knowledge and resources that can be used to develop and implement interventions for social change (kretzmann & mcknight, 1993). thus, in re-imagining the research (and development) endeavour, the purpose of the paper is two-fold. first, it aims to critically reflect on the dominance of deficit paradigms in south african scholarship, in general, and in rural education research and development, in particular; and its impact on social change (or lack thereof). second, it explores possibilities for repositioning educational research and interventions focusing on rural contexts in strength-based paradigms. 2 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 mapping the issues people living in marginalised contexts, especially in rural and peri-urban contexts and, to a lesser extent, in township contexts, continue to be denied access to basic human right, including the right to basic education, health and nutrition. this is in spite of south africa’s signatory status to the millennium development goals and a plethora of interventions being implemented to move the country towards achieving these by 2015, as well as having a constitution that is informed by the bill of rights. reasons for this include the research (and development) paradigms that scholars adopt in doing research on/about/for them as well as in the teaching and learning situation in basic and tertiary institutions. several examples illustrate this point: first, current processes of globalisation, regionalisation and transnationalisation have seen a plethora of scholars and institutions from the academic ‘north’ (particularly europe and north america) honing in on africa as a research focus and site (e.g. adams, king & hook, 2010). on the one hand, the globalisation of research in and of itself is not necessarily problematic, and the studies are undoubtedly important and useful in knowledge generation and for informing interventions. on the other hand, the analyses of issues and the underpinning debates are often, and understandably so, informed by the scholars’ western epistemologies and ontologies. furthermore, even though such publications might be presenting legitimate and even useful arguments, african voices (while growing, albeit slowly) tend to be muted within the global arena with its power imbalances regarding access to funding and knowledge generation (publishing). noting this inequality in access to knowledge generation and dissemination, research conducted by ese:o (a chilean research ngo) has concluded that researchers from the ‘south’ face at least three main barriers to publication in leading international journals. these include the pre-eminence of academic english, and isolation from discursive communities (conceptualised and dominated by scholars from the ‘north’) and the marginalisation of locally produced knowledge as non-academic (luco, missana, marilef & maurizi, 2009:1). the ese:o study also found an underrepresentation of scholars from the academic south in editorial boards of the various international journals which were sampled. this not only skews the debates and the knowledge produced on these issues, it also frames african people and contexts as problematic, deficient and in need of external assistance. on the one hand, development scholars are beginning to understand and respond to the need for the advancement of authentic knowledge and, in particular, of context-specific and place-based understandings of issues and interventions (see gruenewald, 2003; budge, 2005; hsrc-epc, 2005). on the other hand, with a few exceptions, such scholarship seems to be based on fleeting explorations of local knowledge and resources, and the discourses and assets that could be harnessed to develop interventions for creating social change in these contexts are often ignored or marginalised. second, whose voices are often heard in our analysis of issues that have an impact on communities and schools? a response to this question is best illustrated by jan egeland (2005:1) who, in the foreword to broken bodies, broken dreams: violence against women exposed writes: when images of the world’s disasters flash across television screens, more often than not, we are presented with a rough sketch of the humanitarian crisis. rarely do the cameras venture beneath the surface to look at the hidden impact of a humanitarian crisis on affected communities. if they did they would find that virtually without exception, it is women and children who are the most vulnerable. even more rarely would the cameras, which do venture beneath the surface, be controlled by the people who are most affected such as rural people, the poor, women and girls, and other marginalised groups (moletsane, mitchell, stuart, walsh & taylor, 2008). for example, in education, the negative impacts of poverty in rural communities, including poor educational outcomes, in general (hsrc-epc, 2005), and poor achievement in grade 12 examinations, in particular (reddy, 2006; perry & fleisch, 2006), are often spoken and written about by outsiders (journalists, education officials, researchers, members of the public), and interventions are developed for rather than with or by the affected communities. wrigley (2006:277) critiques the “strong centralised determination of valued outcomes, particularly test results” that are pre-determined at national government level, where those who fall short are appropriately sanctioned, punished and/or identified as underperforming and needing special intervention. 3moletsane — repositioning educational research on rurality and rural education in line with this, a plethora of studies which measure some aspect of educational attainment of schools and learners have been implemented and published (e.g. hallman & grant, 2004; perry & fleisch, 2006; mthiyane, 2007). while these studies are undoubtedly essential, they fail to ask the following questions: what is the role of schools as defined by particular communities and what do the communities themselves expect of educational institutions in their midst? beyond test results, what other indicators of success do communities and learners value most? this paper calls for more research that privileges these questions and the voices of those most impacted, namely the community members themselves. particularly pertinent to the focus of this paper are studies that examine rurality and rural contexts. as some scholars have observed, with a few exceptions, research on rurality is mostly concerned with “… space, isolation, community, poverty, disease, neglect, backwardness, marginalization, depopulation, conservatism, tribalism, racism, resettlement, corruption, entropy, and exclusion” (balfour et al., 2008:101). however, such research tends to utilise these only as contexts for measuring under-performance in some aspect of development, for example, poverty, education, food security and other social ills (see baro & deubel, 2006; schroeder & nichola, 2006). research seldom focuses on the dynamic interactions of the people who live, learn and work in these communities, nor on the ways in which they engage with and shape their lives in their environments. in this regard, odora-hoppers (2004) writes that the theoretical constructs we use to study rurality tend to focus on the space rather than the people, and tend to treat the space as homogenous, ignoring and simplifying the variations and complexities in identity, behaviour and nuance. rurality is also understood in its relation to and in comparison with urbanity and urban contexts, ignoring the fact that rurality is dynamic, and that it has value and strength independent of urbanity and urban influences (balfour et al., 2008). in other words, studies on rurality and the interventions intended to address the many ‘deficiencies’ identified tend to disregard the peculiarities of the local (see budge, 2005) and fail to develop place-conscious and context-specific strategies (gallagher, 1993; gruenewald, 2003) for addressing the educational (and social) needs of these communities. these studies also ignore the agency of rural communities and people, as well as the assets that are available therein and that can be harnessed in developing and implementing relevant and effective interventions. what are deficit and strength paradigms in education research? the above examples illustrate and critique a disturbingly common trend in international academic research, including south african educational scholarship. informed by deficit paradigms, the discourses running through research reports and publications, especially those focusing on the ‘other’ (including rural schools and communities) too often tend to betray or suggest some deep-seated unequal power relations between ‘us’ and ‘them’. such needs-based scholarship often focuses on what the target community is lacking and/or what its problems are (turner & pinkett, n.d.; beeson, 2001; kallaway, 2001; balfour et al., 2008). it positions researchers (often outsiders to the community) as always the more knowledgeable, the more skilled, the more resourced and the more powerful benefactors, and the researched as deficient beneficiaries of ‘development’ or ‘empowerment’ efforts and, as such, the objects of our research gaze. to illustrate, using the deficit paradigms, scholars and practitioners have come up with various explanations for the poor performance of learners in schools (and other education institutions). weiner (2006:46) aptly summarises these into two contradictory forms. one variation “casts student and family deficits as the cause of poor achievement. teachers often find this version seductive because it locates responsibility outside their classrooms”. often, these explanations are informed by human capital theory, which posits that deficiencies in the skills and aptitudes required for success in education and the knowledge economy, in particular, have a major impact on the educational attainment of individuals and groups (see ponting & voyageur, 2001). the learner’s home background, particularly if it is rural and characterised by poverty, unemployment, substance abuse and other social ills, is used to explain poor performance in assessment in these schools. seldom do analyses informed by this variation investigate the role of the school in the learner’s failure. in contrast, the second variation puts the blame solely on the school and the teachers, presenting: 4 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 teacher characteristics and deficits as the only factor that really counts in undermining student learning. legislators and parents often find this explanation persuasive because it implies an uncomplicated solution: fix the teachers we have or hire new and better individuals (weiner, 2006:46). reasons for poor learner performance are complex and can be found in the home, the community, the school, and the society and its various institutions. thus, interventions must address those systemic challenges that complicate real transformation (balfour et al., 2008:99). the challenges faced by many learners and their teachers in most rural contexts cannot and should not be denied and, indeed, need to be studied and understood. however, in order to address these challenges, studies should identify existing resources and assets in these communities and schools and indicate how we might harness them to effect the desired social change (see khanare, 2009). more importantly, such analyses need to be informed by the perspectives of the people most impacted by these conditions: rural people themselves (learners, parents and other community members and stakeholders). borrowing from ponting and voyageur (2001:283), who were writing on the conditions of first nations in canada: let us remember that even among those persons subjected to the trauma and hardships of [among others, apartheid oppression, gender-based violence, poverty, inferior education and hiv and aids, and others]… many have derived strength and not [only] vulnerability from the experiences. it is these strengths (or assets) that need to be harnessed in understanding the human condition and in developing interventions to effect social change in these communities. with a few exceptions, this is largely lacking. instead, explanations for the poor performance of rural (and other) schools view these as autonomous from the communities in which they are located. such explanations tend to ignore the context (family background, social class, etc.), regarding it as “‘noise’ which must be controlled for and then stripped away so that the researcher can concentrate on the important domain of school factors” (angus, 1993:361, in wrigley, 2006:277). furthermore, within this context: parents are viewed as consumers rather than partners; they are seen instrumentally, as a vehicle for ensuring that pupils arrive at the school gate homework in hand, without much sense that they also have significant lives, opportunities (and strengths) and troubles (wrigley, 2006:277). thus, this paper calls for the utilisation of strength paradigms and the harnessing of the social, physical, educational and cultural resources and assets residing in both the home (and community) and the school in addressing the social and educational needs of learners in rural contexts. this is based on the understanding that the disregard of the socio-political context of schooling is detrimental to social change, in general, and to widening educational access and success, in particular. in order to address this issue, initiatives who are meant to bring about social change, including those concerned with teacher education and curriculum implementation, need to attend to these systemic challenges as they stand in the way of true transformation (balfour et al., 2008). towards repositioning educational research in rural contexts in 1975 stenhouse maintained that it is not adequate for researchers, who are often outsiders, to study teachers and their work. instead, teachers themselves should study their own practice. similarly, writing about research on children, sociologist ann oakley (1994:25) asked: what would it really mean to study the world from the standpoint of children both as knowers and as actors? as identified in the previous sections, following in the footsteps of these scholars, this position paper adds: what would it mean to study the often marginalised rural contexts, particularly schools, from the perspectives of those who live, work and learn in them? from this perspective, the question can be raised as to how our research can take a different view of the issues and the spaces and people (learners, teachers and others)? the participation of those directly affected (e.g. women, teachers and learners) in mapping out issues of importance to them, is critical, and their positioning “as protagonists in taking action in their everyday lives cannot be underestimated” (moletsane, mitchell, de lange, stuart, buthelezi & taylor, 2009:5). 5moletsane — repositioning educational research on rurality and rural education arriving at this understanding requires what has now almost become a cliché, namely a paradigm shift, from deficit perspectives of these people, their schools and communities, to strength-based paradigms and asset-based epistemologies. the latter originated in the field of positive psychology, which “focuses on intrinsic strengths, assets and resources … and plays a decisive role in mental health and wellbeing” (ryan, 2008:4). their use tends to cut across areas such as disability studies, poverty eradication, care (in the context of hiv/aids), rurality and social change, and social justice, in general. these paradigms view research (and development) as social change (schratz & walker, 1995), and participants (e.g. learners and teachers in the classrooms) as protagonists in their own development, capable of understanding their lives and of identifying, developing (or informing), implementing and (partially) resourcing interventions that address the challenges they face. as maclure (1990:2) observes: for marginal groups to improve their positions in society, the struggle is not restricted to economic and political spheres, but encompasses as well the realm of ideas. this ideational dimension has produced a novel responsibility for social scientists: that is, if their research is to contribute to the social and economic advancement of marginal people, they must attempt to develop new paradigms of inquiry and explanation. but they cannot do so within the circumscribed parameters of professional positivist science. instead, the insights and aptitudes of local people must be enlisted and brought to bear on the research process itself. steinberg and kinchoele (2010:149) refer to the above as a reconceptualised critical theory, which “demands an engagement with the suffering of the people of the lived world, with the moral dilemmas that face us in the complexity of everyday life … [but] aims to disrupt, challenge and to promote moral action”. strength paradigms offer the opportunity to engage in this kind of intervention in rural contexts. in order to achieve this, approaches to research and development should privilege the voices of those most affected and view them as capable of understanding their own situations and contributing to interventions aimed at addressing them. two examples illustrate this point. first, resilience theory offers a lens through which the strengths and assets of rural communities, including rural schools, can be harnessed in developing responses that address the challenges they face. kaplan, turner, norman and stillson (1996, in van breda, 2001:2) define resilience as the capacity to remain competent in the midst of major adversity, while garmezy (1994, in van breda, 2001:2) views it as “the skills, abilities, knowledge, and insight that accumulate over time as people struggle to surmount adversity and meet challenges”. these scholars distinguish between individual and community resilience. in this regard, theron and theron (2010:6) conclude in their review of research on youth resilience in south africa that resilience, or the ability to ‘bounce back’ from adversity “is nurtured by everyday resources, common to individuals, families, communities and culture”. the authors argue for a stronger focus on the cultural and contextual sources of resilience that are common to all communities, including rural contexts. therefore, research in rural schools might ask: how do resilient rural schools identify and utilise the strengths and resources available in their communities to triumph over the challenges they face? for example, why and how are some rural schools able to succeed while others in the same situation continue to fail? addressing this question, pam christie and others illustrate how schools in difficult circumstances, among them rural schools, are able to harness available resources and succeed against the odds (see christie, potterton & butler, 2007). in her 2009 dissertation, khanare worked with members of the school management teams (smts) to identify rural school assets and strengths for supporting orphaned and vulnerable children. it is from these stories of success and the reasons behind them that we might develop strategies that are able to work for social and educational change in these contexts. the second example is participatory visual methodologies (e.g. writing, drawing, visual mapping, participatory video and photography). these methodologies with their built-in orientation of research as a social change (schratz & walker, 1995) and their intention to engage participants as active agents of change in their own lives also provide opportunities for research and interventions informed by strength paradigms. these methods help to engage and mobilise people at grassroots level during the research process itself (de lange, mitchell, moletsane, balfour, wedekind, pillay & buthelezi, 2010). they tend to 6 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 democratise the research process, particularly for participants who often find themselves on the margins of society and research (mitchell, 2008). furthermore, such methods have the potential to be transformative due to their built-in orientation of research as social change (schratz & walker, 1995) and can assist participants not only to understand their own situation, but also to develop strategies for addressing community challenges. one example of such a method is photovoice. the use of photovoice as a research and development methodology is informed by the feminist visual project pioneered by caroline wang with chinese peasant women (see wang, burris & xiang, 1996). wang involved the women in taking pictures of areas and issues that had a negative impact on their lives and in selecting the photographs that best represented their issues. these photos were then shared with those who could address these problems in their communities (e.g. policy-makers). a south african example is the work of, among others, sonke gender justice in investigating and intervening in the context of gender-based violence and the aids pandemic. a second example involves the use of video-making as participatory (and collaborative) research and intervention, where participants construct their own video texts, from storyboarding to the production of the video with only minimal assistance from the research team, mainly for technical assistance (see moletsane et al., 2009). ramazanoglu and holland (2002:15) assert that the “politically sensitive research [style] and fieldwork relationships” used in participatory video-making enable the researchers to qualitatively document the voices and experiences of the participants from their own perspectives and to identify, together with the participants, potential interventions in order to address the issues that they have pointed out. conclusion studies that aim to understand problems and the required solutions are significant. however, if we are to make a difference in the lives of those who live, work and learn in rural contexts, we urgently need studies with a focus on identifying existing resources and assets in communities and schools, and among individuals and groups, as well as on how we might harness them to effect the desired social change. the paradigms for these studies require the acknowledgement and utilisation of authentic knowledge and context-based assets and resources in creating interventions. in order to develop this authentic knowledge, we are required to ask questions with a focus shifting from the deficits in the participants and their communities, to the possibilities for social change even in the midst of adversity. when the most marginalised participants in rural contexts, for example, act as protagonists in their own lives and are engaged in identifying the issues that affect them as well as possible solutions, the resulting interventions stand a better chance of succeeding than when outside ‘experts’ are at the forefront of community and school development (mitchell, stuart, moletsane & nkwanyana, 2006). as moletsane et al. (2009:34) purport: since it is these [rural teachers, parents and learners] who tend to bear the brunt of marginalization and the negative impact of social crises, turning their gaze on the challenges affecting them and working with them to address these is likely to yield more positive fruit than ... doing research [about and] on them. references adams j, king c & hook d 2010. global research report: africa. leeds: thomson reuters. balfour r, mitchell c & moletsane r 2008. troubling contexts: toward a generative theory of rurality as education research. journal of rural and community development, 3(3): 100-111. baro m & deubel f 2006. persistent hunger: perspectives on vulnerability, famine, and food security in sub-saharan africa. annual review of anthropology, 35:521-538. beeson e 2001. rural schools: facing unique challenges. principal, 81(1):22-24. 7moletsane — repositioning educational research on rurality and rural education budge km 2005. place as problem or possibility: the influence of rurality and a sense of place on leaders in one rural school district. retrieved on 18 december 2008 from http://depts.washington. edu/kl2admin/141/capstone/docs/kathybudge%20exec%20summ.doc. christie p, potterton m & butler d 2007. improving school quality in south africa: a study of schools that have succeeded against the odds. journal of education, 26:40-65. de lange n, mitchell c, moletsane r, balfour r, wedekind v, pillay g & buthelezi t 2010. every voice counts: towards a new agenda for teachers and schools in rural communities in addressing children’s vulnerabilities in the age of aids. education as change, 14(3):s45-s55. egeland j 2005. foreword. in: un office for the coordination of humanitarian affairs and integrated regional information network. broken bodies, broken dreams: violence against women exposed. new york: united nations publications. gallagher w 1993. the power of place. new york: harper collins. gruenewald da 2003. foundations of place: a 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mpi/r/104/12/1/4, dd october 2001). pretoria: south african military health service, military psychological institute, social work research & development. wang c, burris m & xiang y 1996. chinese women as visual anthropologists: a participatory approach to reaching policy makers. social science and medicine, 42(10):1391-1400. weiner l 2006. teaching to student strengths: challenging deficit thinking. educational leadership, 64(1):42-45. wrigley t 2006. schools and poverty: questioning the effectiveness and improvement paradigms. improving schools, 9(3):273-290. 14 teaching assistants – a hit or a miss: the development of a teaching assistant programme to support academic staff at a university abstract access and equity have long been fundamental concepts under­ pinning transformation in higher education. increased student enrolments necessitated the implementation of support structures to bolster student success. however, support provision for academic staff is often overlooked when prioritising student success. in this article, we examine the need for academic support structures in relation to student success from the perspective of bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory. we argue the merits of a teaching assistant (ta) programme to address issues related to equity of access and success by highlighting the experiences of tas and academic staff in what can be considered constraining university structures. based on qualitative participatory principles we collected data by means of a world café. the paper concludes with the significant contribution made by tas to academic staff support in addressing the challenge of equity of access and success when working collaboratively. universities are encouraged to strengthen academic staff development through initiatives that support lecturers in creating spaces for closer student staff engagement, enhancing teaching and learning in the process. keywords: teaching assistant, discipline-specific tutorial, world café, collaboration 1. introduction south african universities, despite providing access to a broader base of students with varying levels of prepared­ ness, continue to face numerous critical transformation challenges. these challenges include addressing institutional cultures that have remained relatively unchanged and dealing with academic staff development needs through the provision of academic support (department of higher education and training, 2015). aligned to the transformational principles contained in the education white paper 3 (department of education, 1997), universities have implemented staff and student academic development programmes to address issues of equity and redress in higher education. despite these developments, the recent student protests of 2015­2017 in higher education renewed the call for more meaningful dr xena michelle cupido cape peninsula university of technology dr najwa norodien-fataar cape peninsula university of technology doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v36i1.2 issn 0258­2236 e­issn 2519­593x perspectives in education 2018 36(1): 14­29 © uv/ufs http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.2 15 cupido & norodien­fataar teaching assistants – a hit or a miss engagements between academic staff and students with regard to curriculum development and academic support programmes at universities. a review of the literature on the evolution of staff and student development programmes in higher education focus on the need to improve the quality and effectiveness of teaching and learning in higher education (scott, yeld & hendry, 2007). however, with widened access and an increase in student numbers, the pressure on academic staff to be involved in research and publication in the face of reduced funding has led to a need for additional academic support (knott, crane, heslop, glass, 2015). this was recognised by boughey (2007: 3) who suggested that institutional development focus on “systemic and institutional efficiency” to support teaching and learning. however, badat (2010) contends that inadequate state funding could be a barrier to such development placing staff academic support programmes at risk. this issue was raised in a recent report by the council of higher education (che, 2016: 67) which emphasised the need to understand how academic staff can be supported to effect systemic change. quinn (2012) highlights the need for more appropriate structures and material resources in higher education institutions (heis) to support academic staff. a crucial part of academic support structures is the development of tutorial programmes. faroa (2017) points out that tutoring programmes are a central part of a university’s teaching­ learning process. underhill, clarence­fincham and petersen (2014) notes that an increase in engagement between academic staff and tutors most times result in what can be referred to as a reciprocal collaborative mentorship. while extensive research has been conducted on tutorial programmes (clarence, 2016, topping, 1996; layton & mckenna, 2016), very little research has been conducted on the development of teaching assistant (ta) programmes as a form of academic support structure in the teaching and learning process. in this paper, we explore the multiple benefits of a teaching assistant programme and the impact it had on teaching and learning. we build on the work of d’andrea and gosling (2005) and duthie and freeman (2016) who refer to the role and role relationship and the benefits of tas as a form of academic support for academic staff. these authors argue that ta programmes creates the space for academic staff to be more responsive to the academic development needs of students. they further add that ta programmes facilitate the development of academic discourses among students. this paper broadens the debate on the role of tas by discussing the experiences of tas and academic staff in their attempt to provide quality access and effective teaching and learning environments for students. we argue that collaboration between tas and academic staff and the consequent rethinking of academic arrangements, to adapt teaching and learning practices, is central to the development of a ta programme. we further argue that ta programmes opens up the possibility of addressing the systemic and institutional change within teaching and learning programmes at universities. we relied on the ecological theory of bronfenbrenner (1995, 2000) to unpack the multidimensions that academic staff and tas have to navigate. this ecological theory allowed us to focus on the bidirectional interactions that take place at a micro level within the context of the discipline as well as the broader university structure. within these dimensions, identifying the conditions needed for such a collaboration to thrive became important to understand. we examine these conditions and the crucial role it played in the experience of academic staff and tas in the teaching assistant (ta) programme and the impact it had on teaching and learning to address issues related to equity of access and success. 16 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) 2. the context of the study the ta programme emerged from the fundani centre for higher education development (ched) at cput in south africa. the centre provides academic support to staff and students. within this centre, we provide tutorial training to undergraduate students. in 2012, an evaluation of the tutorial training programme (hassan, 2015) was conducted to address the lack of information regarding the impact of tutorials on the performance of students across the institution. the report suggested two aspects to be addressed to assess the impact of the tutorials. (1) there was an over­emphasis on generic training at the expense of discipline­ specific tutor training. (2) there was a lack of training for academic staff in the management of tutors and tutorials. a further two recommendations emerged from the evaluation: firstly, a need for post-tutorial training for tutors within disciplines, and secondly, academic staff required additional support to develop their tutorials. the ta programme emerged from this evaluation as an academic support mechanism to assist academic staff in departments with their teaching and learning programmes. the programme was conceptualised through an extension dialogic process with departments and faculties that allowed us to think differently about the development and implementation of the programme. southwood (2012) refers to this dialogical orientation as a means to reconsider the traditional approaches to teaching and learning and to open the possibility to new ways of thinking. the broad consultation provided insight into the academic support staff needs. we developed the discipline-specific tutorial training (dstp) programme for tas and academic staff to address the needs identified. the dstp was conceptualised as a joint training of tas and academic staff to encourage open dialogue and engagement through sharing of ideas and experiences. the programme was arranged in this manner to disrupt the long held traditional spaces held by staff and students with clear power differentials and instead to reconsider the roles and relationships between the two. through the joint training a dialogic space (southwood, 2012) created an opportunity to reimagine a new pathway to teaching and learning characterised by participation, reflection, interrogation, construction and negotiation (southwood, 2012). 3. theoretical framework bronfenbrenner’s (1993, 2005) ecological theory provides a useful analytical framework to examine the development of the ta programme and the possibilities that this type of support offers to academic staff and postgraduate students. his theory allows us to see the broader institutional and external factors that impact of the ta programme. bronfenbrenner (1993, 2005) focuses on the bidirectional interaction between person, environment, people, objects and symbols over an extended period of time. he (2005: 97) suggests that the development of educational programmes is a “sustained, progressively more complex interaction with, and activity in, the immediate environment”. this is referred to as the process, person, context and time model (ppct). ppct includes four interacting concepts that form the basis for the theory. he regards ‘process’ as one of the key bidirectional concepts in explaining the ‘interactions of the person in the immediate environment, which bronfenbrenner refers to as proximal processes. these proximal processes occur within the tas’ and academic staffs’ ecological contexts, which comprise micro, meso, exo and macrosystems. by examining the experiences of tas and academic staff within the framework of bronfenbrenner’s ecological system we are able to highlight the constraints and enabling factors within the teaching and 17 cupido & norodien­fataar teaching assistants – a hit or a miss learning institutional infrastructure in which academic staff and tas engage in. we focus on these various contexts in the next section. 4. reconsidering traditional lecturer and student roles the student movement (2015­2017) heightened the need for the relational dimension(micro­ level) between academic staff and students to be reconsidered. included in the student protest, was the call for deeper engagement between staff and students in academic support structures and curriculum development. at this micro level the individual is the most important part of the ecosystem (bronfenbrenner, 2005: 148). microsystems in higher education have mostly been characterised by long held traditional patterns of activities, roles, and interpersonal relations experienced by the developing person(student) in a given face­to­ face setting(classroom) with particular material and physical features and containing other persons with distinctive characteristics, personalities, and systems of belief (bronfenbrenner, 2005: 148). these patterns of activities, personalities and systems of belief were the central focus of student protest, reflecting the deep inequalities that continue to exist in post-apartheid higher education. despite the significant strides made by the transformational agenda for equity of access, the achievement of success remains evasive, with the high dropout and low throughput rates (ramrathan & pillay, 2015). to address this challenge, cook-sather (2014) urges higher education institutions to move away from these traditional roles of lecturer and student, toward recognising students as partners in the teaching and learning process, as well as being involved in ‘pedagogical practice’ (p. 187). for this to be realised, advancing democratic values in teaching and learning would be necessary (bergmark & westman, 2016). this shift requires an academic culture, in which diverse perspectives are valued and multiple voices included. in this study, the personal characteristics were regarded as significant in terms of social interactions between academic staff, tas in an environment underpinned by the intention to advance democratic values in teaching and learning (bronfenbrenner, 2000). for staff and students to engage authentically, an openness towards diverse perspectives, moving between knowledge, knowers and the unknown (gustavsson, 2009) was essential. the tas, as senior postgraduate students who have discipline-specific knowledge, bring to the programme their own experiences of the course and department. academic staff are traditionally considered as part of the university structure and interact with tas regularly on this premise. bronfenbrenner suggests that recognition of personal characteristics have the ability to change environments. central to this model is the person or people whose actions and choices are influenced by their educational background and experience, emphasising that learning takes place in a social and physical context where personal experiences and the whole human being are considered. similarly, deleuze (2004) noted that this view of education is depicted by “mutual and intertwined relationships, whether social, discursive, or material, such a view places high expectations on the students” abilities and willingness to contribute, collaborate, and take action in their education. bronfenbrenner’s (2004) ecosystem in which academic staff and ta develop connections and linkages consists of a network of interpersonal relationships that overlap across the various settings in the dstp. within this ecosystem, lewthwaite (2011) suggests are the beliefs and practices of the mesosystem that influences the development processes in the microsystems. 18 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) the exosystem does not directly affect individuals; rather, it consists of connections with a setting “which does not contain the developing person but in which events occur that indirectly influence processes within the immediate setting” (bronfenbrenner, 1994: 40). the exosystem constitutes the more distal influences, including the structure of the university where the person is located and settings where the person is not directly involved (bronfenbrenner & morris, 2006). this would include the influences of the university administration and strategic units such as fundani ched, student affairs and research units at the university. the macrosystem consists of the “overarching pattern of the micro, meso and exosystem characteristic of a given subculture or culture” (bronfenbrenner, 1994: 40). the macrosystem is a combination of ideological, institutional systems and external influences that shape a culture (killian 2004). this indicates that higher education policies and broader university structures and systems influence individuals in an environment. time has a prominent place in this developmental model, constituted across the three levels: micro, meso, and macro. the time element suggests the time spent across the various environments: micro, meso and macro. this refers to face­to­face consultations between academic staff and tas, meetings and interactions with students over a period of time, as well as shifting expectations at the university. bronfenbrenner’s (1993, 2005) model is helpful to explain the experiences of tas and academic staff working collaboratively as it will assist in elucidating the systems and structures they confront to be able to work collaboratively with academic staff. lewthwaite (2011: 10) suggests that bronfenbrenner’s framework of analysis enables us to consider the “way in which individuals and external forces interplay to influence development” (bronfenbrenner (1993, 2005). bronfenbrenner’s theory thus provides a suitable lens to understand the experiences of academic staff and tas within the teaching and learning system at the university. by using his theoretical framework, we are able to examine some of the underlying factors within the teaching and learning ecological system that constrain and enable the development of teaching and learning support programmes. 5. methodology and design a qualitative participatory research method was adopted for this study to determine the experiences of academic staff and tas working collaboratively in the dstp. a fundamental principle of this approach required a democratic social and political context (berghold & thomas, 2012). the nature of participatory research relies on openness from participants to share and disclose personal views of their experience. traditionally, within a higher education context, academic staff and students often do not interact on this level, because of the power differential that exists. however, participatory research specifically seeks to highlight different opinions and view to create new understanding and knowledge through the process of discovery. the world café approach was decided on to explore the experiences of tas and academic staff on the ta programme. according to jorgenson and steier (2013), the world café fulfilled the purpose of constructing an alternative space or dialogic ‘container’ in which the usual routines and authority structures are suspended. it further provided the opportunity to develop collaborative ways of exploring key questions related to the support tas provided academic staff at the university. the world cafe approach was thus suitable in addressing the power relations between academic staff and postgraduate students. the world café method is grounded in the process of (1) clarifying the purpose of the conversation, which was to establish the collaborative experiences of tas, (2) exploring critical issues and questions which focused on the challenges and successes of tas, (3) engaging 19 cupido & norodien­fataar teaching assistants – a hit or a miss key stakeholders such as academic staff and tas, directors, and teaching and learning coordinators, (4) using collaborative social approach such as the world café method that focuses on the physical and social space to encourage collaborative learning (hurley & brown, 2009), (5) guiding collective intelligence towards effective action which results in improving collaborative relationships between academic staff and tas, and (6) fostering innovation capacity development that harnesses the skills, knowledge and personal qualities of tas and academic staff. academic staff and tas who attended the dstp training were invited to participate in the in the twc. structured collective conversations took place as a focused group discussion which aimed to equalise the power relationships between participants in order to understand and learn from multiple points of view (slocum, 2003). figure 1 depicts the world café process that was adopted as our research design (hurley & brown, 2009).     clarify purpose of  the conversation      explore critical  issues and  questions      engage stakeholders      use of  collaborative  approach      guide  collective  intelligence      capacity development   figure 1: world café process the world café has been described by koen, du plessis and koen (2015) as an effective, qualitative data­collection technique that combines interviewing, drawings and narratives, making time available to reflect on what group members have shared, which creates a form of member checking. based on this process, a café ambience was created in which participants discussed a central question or issue in small groups around the café tables. at regular intervals participants moved to a new table to address a different question. one table host remained and summarised the previous conversation which was captured on a flipchart to share with new table guests. the summaries recorded on the flipchart paper were included as research data. the conversations thus were cross­fertilised with the ideas generated in former conversations with other participants. to address the overall research question, the participants were asked to reflect on the following questions at the world café: question 1: what collaborative examples can you share of roaring successes or catastrophic failures? what conditions supported or impeded you in your doing great work? question 2: what are tensions, dilemmas, and challenges you face as you work collaboratively? question 3: what are the required values and leadership practices that would help build a stronger culture of collaboration? question 4: how would you describe the impact of the ta initiative in the subject/ department/ faculty? 20 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) at the end of the process, the main ideas were summarised in a plenary session and follow-up possibilities were discussed as a group to elicit the “collective intelligence” from the participants (hurley & brown, 2009). figure 2 depicts the world café data process adapted from koen et al., 2015. figure 2: world café data process the research design enabled a joint dialogue between academic staff and tas about their own personal collaborative experiences. the intention was not only to draw on a rich diversity of opinion, but that ideas are cross­pollinated through exposure to a broad range of perspectives and to engage constructively in meaningful conversations (brown, 2002). a second central assumption of the world café is that wisdom and creativity to confront even the most difficult challenges resides within the individuals who are actively engaged in the programme (brown & isaacs, 2005). the objective of the world café is to create the appropriate context to assist participants in accessing this deeper knowledge, providing the opportunity to contribute their wisdom and creativity to the collective (brown, 2002). to enhance the rigour and trustworthiness of the data, member checks were included as part of the harvesting process. this process allowed for participants to verify the information shared at the individual discussion tables in comparison with the notes captured by the host. through this triangulation process, we were able to validate the data during the harvesting process. 6. ethical considerations prior to the commencement of the research project, an application for ethical clearance was submitted to cput. full informed consent was obtained from participants prior to the study, thereby ensuring their protection and privacy. participatory research relies on the openness of participants to share their opinions and in some cases dissenting views. to ensure that a 21 cupido & norodien­fataar teaching assistants – a hit or a miss credible, trustworthy and safe space was created, we included “rules of engagement” where participants were encouraged to, focus on what matters, contribute to thinking, speak mind and heart, listen to understand, link and connect ideas and listen together for deeper insights and questions. adherence to the principles is fundamental to the world café and extends the ethical considerations in order to maintain a respectful space to enhance conversation (fouché & light, 2011). being aware of the power differentials between academic staff and students, participants were encouraged to find collective solutions to the challenges that emerged from the dialogue. throughout the research process, including the reporting of data, confidentiality was maintained. the compliance requirements as stipulated by the institution were met and the necessary ethical clearance received. 7. recruitment of participants a convenience sampling was selected for the world cafe and invitations to attend were sent to academic staff and tas who participated in the discipline-specific tutorial training programme. the relevant stakeholders included one director, nine academic staff, one teaching and learning coordinator and eight other administrative staff and student assistants. in total 19 tas participated in the world café. a distribution of the faculties represented is presented below with 38 participants attending the world café. as the discipline-specific programme was fairly new, not all faculties were equally represented as the programme had not been implemented to the same extent. the faculty of business and management sciences and the faculty of engineering are the largest two faculties at the university of technology, which could account for the representation in table 1. table 1: faculty representation faculties/units number applied sciences 1 2.6% business and management sciences 7 18.0% education 1 2.6% engineering 22 58.0% health and wellness sciences 1 2.6% strategic units 6 16.0% total 38 100% 8. data analysis the world café is a type of storytelling that takes place through facilitated meaningful conversations, capturing of thoughts through pictures, drawings, doodles, summaries, keywords and phrases. a qualitative thematic analysis was used to organise the data. before analysis could begin, all data generated from the facilitated discussions, texts captured notes and summaries were transcribed. once completed the transcripts were then collated and thematically analysed following the steps proposed by clarke and braun (2018). a fully qualitative, thematic analysis was most suited, this meant that researcher subjectivity was considered as a resource in the analysis of data, reflexivity and the situated and contextual 22 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) meaning are fundamental to the analysis (clarke & braun, 2018; vaismoradi, turunen & bondas, 2013; koen et al., 2015). by reviewing the raw data, such as flipchart papers, pictures and summaries, keywords and phrases, we identified patterns that led to themes that explained the collaborative experiences of tas (bloor & wood, 2006). thirty­four sheets of data were collected and recorded using atlas.ti. the themes that emerged from the data analysis were the 1) relational aspects developed through the experiences of successful collaborative mentoring in the ta programme and 2) experiences of ‘tensions’ and collaborative challenges in the ta programme. in the next section, we focus on these two themes that emerged from the data analysis. 9. roles and relationships: experiences of successful collaborative mentoring in the ta programme the first theme we identified was the successful collaborative interactions between academic staff and tas. finch and fernández (2014) and keith and moore (1995: 201) suggest that academic staff have a significant role to play in preparing teaching assistants as future academics and scholars, by “[enhancing] teaching assistants’ experience of the programme, [increasing] their professional confidence and [encouraging] levels of engagement in the discipline”. we defined collaborative relations with academic staff as supportive interactions between academic staff members and teaching assistants towards a common goal. similarly, bronfenbrenner (2005) and lewis, ross and holden (2012: 695) suggest that collaboration “relies on interpersonal networks—sets of interactions between individuals—which can take many forms”. our research shows that the values the participants expressed in relation to their academic responsibilities were core to the collaborative interactions in the academic environment. academic staff and tas in the faculties identified values such as enthusiasm, work ethic, open-mindedness, confidence, accountability, trust, creativity and being supportive as crucial to their collaborative interactions in departments and faculties. this advances a very different notion of student engagement one in which academic staff and tas are open to each other and intra­act (barad, 2007) within the discipline to improve teaching and learning. in a sense, a collaboration of this type can be described as a form of student engagement, where partnership is forged between the academic staff member and the ta with traditional roles and relationships rearranged (bergmark & westman, 2016). an example of this rearrangement could be seen in a form of reverse mentoring; lecturers were able to learn new skills to improve their own technological skills and in doing so enhanced the delivery of their teaching and learning in the programme. this is congruent with the reverse mentoring proposed by murphy (2012) occurs when a younger, junior employee as the mentor shares knowledge with an older, senior colleague as the mentee. meister and willyerd (2010) suggests that the skills acquired by academic staff are technical knowledge, current trends, cross­cultural perspectives and insight into the student generation. this is the opposite relationship structure to traditional mentoring relationships. here, the process of mentoring becomes a reciprocal relationship that benefits the mentor, who otherwise may be disadvantaged in terms of time and opportunity costs. reverse mentoring resulted in tas and academic staff working in a supportive capacity to develop creative teaching strategies. one of the striking aspects of the collaborative engagement was the positive contribution that tas made to education technologies, advanced computer skills, social media tools, and 23 cupido & norodien­fataar teaching assistants – a hit or a miss online platforms. as indicated by a lecturer: tas introduced education technologies to the teaching and learning environment. evidence of this was found in the establishment of online platforms such as whatsapp for students to engage with academic staff and tas in a chat room environment. through these platforms the tas were able to identify that students struggled with the learner management system, blackboard, and needed support in navigating the system. the tas thus assisted students in using blackboard more effectively. online channels of communication such as this improved communication between the tas, academic staff and student body. the chat rooms extended the availability and access of academic staff beyond class time and were deemed a useful additional resource by students. considering a rethinking of the traditional roles of academic staff and tas (cooke-sather, 2014) journaling was central as a collaborative exercise. in one of the departments tas were required to submit a weekly journal reflecting on their experiences in the ta programme. academic staff, in turn, gave regular feedback to tas. journaling was not only seen as an effective communication tool, but also as a form of reflective practice for academic staff and tas in the process of collaboration. the reflections allowed academic staff and tas to breakdown traditionally held hierarchical structures through co­creating new teaching practices to support student learning within the programme (bergmark & westman, 2016). furthermore, reflective journaling as a practice provided opportunities for self­awareness and evaluation of teaching practice. a further benefit of the ta programme was improved student feedback with regard to teaching and the course. the tas highlighted that students felt more comfortable engaging with them and that the feedback received from students was in some cases referred back to the lecturer. the tas therefore felt that they played an essential role in the feedback and communication loop between academic staff and students leading to improvements in the programme. our data evidenced complex interactions and activity between tas and academic staff and particularly complex forms of mentoring activities in the ta programme. the regular interactions over a period of time between academic staff and tas resulted in reciprocal interactions and reverse mentoring between tas and academic staff that benefited the teaching and learning environment. the tas’ knowledge of icts showed that they were able to introduce news ways of communication to enhance the teaching and learning environment. tas and academic staff were able to develop a sustained, progressively more complex interaction in the teaching and learning environment (bronfenbrenner, 2005: 97). the data thus illustrates the key role of collaborative mentoring between tas and academic staff in the ta programme. the next section of this paper focuses on the tensions and collaborative challenges as identified by the academic staff and tas. 10. experiences of ‘tensions’ in the ta programme this section focuses on the collaboration challenges experienced by tas and academic staff. at a meso systemic level (bronfenbrenner, 2005) it was evident that numerous challenges were experienced by academic staff and tas which impacted on the collaborative process, resulting in what was referred to as tensions by the participants. these challenges could be categorised into academic and non­academic aspects of their collaboration. our analysis shows that at a microsystem level of the university, a lack of infrastructural resources has the ability to impact on the collaborative process. this was evident in the lack of physical space for tas, a constraining element of the programme that often led 24 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) to frustration and isolation in faculties. our research suggests the need to strengthen the resources availability for tas, aligned to park and ramos (2002) who suggested that tas be incorporated into the department and provided with the necessary resources to support academic staff successfully. these results are supported by the idea of gardner and jones (2011) who agree that departments create a culture of teaching through the commitment of tangible resources to support the tas in this role, engendering a sense of community and belonging for the ta. tas raised important concerns about the lack of distinction between the role of the ta and that of the tutor; at times, the ta role was conflated with that of a tutor. some tas felt that lecturers were abusing tas and they were asked to do little jobs for other lecturers. they raised concerns about drawing boundaries between academic staff and tas and having no one to talk to. this reveals that the tas were not sufficiently inducted into departments and felt isolated among the academic staff. the greatest challenges identified by underhill et al. (2014) are the lack of uniformity within university systems in providing support to junior staff and the management of student academic support structures such as tutor programmes. similarly, our research shows inadequate systemic support and infrastructure, as well as resource allocation, in the implementation of the ta programme to support academic staff. gardner and jones (2011) found that there is a real need to reflect on the pedagogic preparation of tas, which would include role modelling to adequately prepare students to take on this new role and responsibility. an example of this was evident in the lack of academic support from academic staff with regard to curriculum issues. the tas expressed concerns about their limited content knowledge and experience when dealing with academic matters and felt that they needed to be inducted into the academic culture. they experienced challenges in the academic environment, such as poor class attendance by students during scheduled sessions. they also expressed the need to meet with tutors regularly to have contact that is more meaningful with students. dotger (2011) and nicklow et al. (2007) recommend that tas receive additional discipline specific support/training from academic staff who act as mentors. providing the necessary discipline pedagogic tools would assist in the professional development of tas as future academics. 11. enhancing equity of access and success through engagement despite the many challenges and tensions experienced, tas have made a positive contri­ bution to teaching and learning through the support provided. this was reflected in the responses from academic staff who reported a strong culture of engagement that developed, making academic staff more accessible and approachable to students by having tas on­ board. zepke (2014) argues that student engagement be reconsidered critically, to explore other means of engagement which focuses on the effort of students, academic staff and the institution to support and enhance learning outcomes for students. through the ta programme, a student-staff partnership emerged allowing for multiple voices to be included in teaching and learning to achieve this outcome. bergmark and westman (2016:30) identified that learning takes place in a “social and physical context where personal experiences and the whole human being are considered”. this interaction was sustained through tas and their engagement with students, where student needs were identified and articulated. opportunities of this nature are rarely available for academic staff and students however, the levels of support provided to students improved as tas were seen as filling in the gap between lecturer and students and 25 cupido & norodien­fataar teaching assistants – a hit or a miss conversations about teaching and learning issues to support the needs to students became a part of what was referred to as a cycle of improvement creating opportunity for academic staff reflect on their own practices. a further opportunity created was suggested by cupido (2017) that developing the potential of future academics through exposure to academic practices, reflective journaling helped in raising awareness and enhanced the practice of experienced teachers, as well as the professional development of the tas’ academic potential. we argue that new forms of engagement be included which creates opportunities for epistemological access, in which students authentically engaged in the teaching and learning process. the ta programme has created such an opportunity courses in this research. 12. conclusion in this paper, we discussed the experiences of academic staff and tas in the teaching assistant programme at cput. we argued that the nature of the interaction and engagement with the structures of the university is core to understanding the experiences of tas and academic staff in a ta programme. we argue that collaboration between tas and academic staff leads to a rethinking of teaching and learning practices in order to provide students with quality access to learning in hei. our discussion showed that the participants experienced successful collaborative mentoring relationships. reverse mentoring was a key part of the successful mentoring collaborations in the ta programme as tas introduced icts and social media tools to the teaching and learning courses. the paper also highlighted tensions in the ta programme and the lack of physical space and infrastructure for tas in departments. the findings show that more training and support for tas and academic staff is needed. tas and academic staff experiences demonstrated the possibilities for effective teaching and learning practices at the university through practices such as journaling, mentoring and utilising icts for improved communication between tas, academic staff and students. the findings also indicate that a lack of structure and organisation of tas in departments led to feelings of isolation and a diminishing of the value of the ta programme. the findings further underscore the importance of the broader university structures and policies to support academic staff at the university. we further argue that ta programmes allow lecturers to engage in dialogue with tas and to find creative and innovative ways to approach their teaching and learning. the article provides insight into the experiences of tas and academic staff in a ta programme. it highlights the ta programme as an academic support programme designed to support academic staff in their teaching and learning courses and showed new forms of student engagement resulting in epistemological access and improved opportunities for success. the paper recommends placing ta programmes at the centre of faculties and providing effective infrastructural support to strengthen the ta programme at the university. it suggests that the university provide more resources, structures and accountability mechanisms to support the ta programme. we conclude that further research is required to understand the contributions made by the ta programme to the development of the curriculum. 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clarence-fincham, j. & petersen, n. 2014. developing a mentorship programme for junior lecturers working with student tutors at a south african university: emerging shifts in pedagogy and identify. education as change, 18(2), 357–371. https://doi.org/10.1080/168 23206.2014.926828 vaismoradi, m. turunen, h. & bondas, t. 2013. content analysis and thematic analysis: implications for conducting a qualitative descriptive study. nursing & health sciences, 15(3), 398–405. https://doi.org/10.1111/nhs.12048 zepke, n. 2014. student engagement research in higher education: questioning an academic orthodoxy. teaching in higher education, 19(6), 697–708. https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517 .2014.901956 https://doi.org/10.1080/16823206.2014.926828 https://doi.org/10.1080/16823206.2014.926828 https://doi.org/10.1111/nhs.12048 https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2014.901956 https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2014.901956 _xk70d36uhnz _t6xd5xw20nsw vii biki lepota biki.lepota@umalusi.org.za umalusi (council for quality assurance in general and further education and training) & department of basic education stephen taylor umalusi (council for quality assurance in general and further education and training) & department of basic education editorial this special issue, framed by the theme assessing the achievement of curriculum standards: an ongoing dialogue, is dedicated to peer-reviewed articles which were originally presented as papers at the 42nd international association for educational assessment (iaea) conference hosted by umalusi, the council for quality assurance in general and further education and training, in cape town on 21-26 august 2016. the conference attracted more than 300 delegates from various educational institutions and organisations representing over 40 different countries spanning all the continents of the world. approximately 120 papers, including four keynotes, were presented. the papers dealt with different aspects of the theme, particularly focusing on the alignment between curriculum standards, teaching and assessment on the one hand and standardised testing and innovative ways of reporting on learner performance on the other. the object of interest in administering examinations is so that obtained marks can be used to make inferences regarding skills and knowledge acquired by examinees during the teaching and learning processes. what remains an issue of interest, however, is the lack of common operational approach to link assessment to curriculum standards. this is what informs the theme of this publication. in an attempt to draw a link between curriculum and assessment, lolwana (2005: 69) put forward an argument that curriculum articulates the standard to be attained in the examination. stated differently, a good quality assessment draws on a good quality curriculum. especially in the south african education system, low or high education standards are interpreted in relation to pass rates. when the system produces high pass rates, suggestions surface that examinations might not have been set at a sufficiently high standard. more specifically, the most frequently asked questions are “are standards dropping? are the results real or have they been manipulated? how is our education system doing?” (reddy, 2006: xii) since these arguments revolve around pass rates but not on the content of examination and whether that which is examined is in alignment with curriculum content, we find that line of argument questionable. the key question should be what the pass rates mean in terms of what learners know and can do. for example, kanjee (2006: 80) argues against the use of marks or averages as predictors of education standards because “average pass rates provide a distorted picture viii pertaining to learner performance in key subjects areas, such as mathematics, languages or science”. taylor and taylor (2014) turn the debate around by arguing for the placement of teacher disciplinary knowledge, subject knowledge for teaching and classroom competence at the heart of the discourse. this is a different but important perspective in that it establishes a clear link between the quality of teaching, which can serve as an enabler or a barrier to learning and the achievement of curriculum standards. the seven articles that appear in this special issue of perspectives in education collectively make the same argument that if the gap between curriculum content and assessment standards is too great, this can have a negative effect on teaching and learning. the articles consider the matter of aligning assessment standards with curriculum standards from different perspectives. the article by prinsloo and harvey discusses the utility of the early grade reading assessment (egra) instrument to determine improvements in learner language and literacy development in the lower levels of the schooling system. this is informed by a growing realisation of the importance of development of foundational literacy skills in the early grades of formal education. their choice of the egra instrument was based on two reasons: the efficiency with which it can be administered and the adaptability of the instrument to suit complex linguistic situations. the discussion on the instrument centres around two recent impact evaluations of teacher interventions in two provinces of south africa. the first intervention, targeted at literacy development in english as the second language was tested on two cohorts of grades 1, 4 and 7 learners in a selection of schools in limpopo. the second intervention focussed on literacy development in setswana and was administered in the north west. considering its reliability index of 0.90, the instrument proves to have high reliability. the benefits of the evaluation tool, which include usefulness, suitability, reliability, validity, reduction in learner anxiety levels and how it assists teachers, are discussed at length. based on the insights gained from the two interventions, the article makes specific recommendations in terms of how the instrument can be amended and enhanced for use in the future. abrams, varier and jackson discuss assessment data as a lever to measure the degree to which curriculum, instruction and assessment are accurately aligned. more specifically, the article reports on the results of a qualitative study conducted to establish how teachers in the united states of america (usa) use assessment data and under what conditions in order to strengthen subsequent teaching and learning. the study was based on multiple tape-recorded and transcribed interviews of 14 focus groups with 60 teachers from elementary and middle schools in the usa. two key findings emerged from the study. firstly, the study established a clear link between the culture of data use with a school and the actual utilisation of data by teachers. such a culture can be established through communities of practice. secondly, it emerged that teachers’ use of assessment data is influenced by the type of data and sources thereof and the quality of evidence gathered. the article by kanjee and moloi critiques the methods currently used in south africa and other similar education systems to report on learner performance. it goes on to highlight the limitations of the existing practices, key amongst which is the lack of descriptions of what learners know and are able to do. consequently, they put forward an argument for considering the angoff method in reporting learner performance due to its usefulness in providing information regarding what a learner knows and can do and the method’s ability to show what learning gaps exist. drawing on data from the annual national assessments administered to grades 3 and 6 in english first additional language and mathematics, kanjee and moloi explore how subject matter experts can generate learner performance standards to provide information in terms of what learning gaps exist and how to address them. one of the key findings is that the proposed angoff method improves the reporting of large-scale assessment ix results by providing plausible cut-scores with a high degree of inter-rater reliability, which in turn, can support teachers to address specific learning needs of their learners. dennis opposs’ article shifts the dialogue slightly to focus on the challenges facing the validity and reliability of school-based assessment (sba) in the context of the general certificate of secondary education (gcse) and a levels in england. the article begins by providing a historical account of the changes regarding the reduction in the weighting of sba in the determination of final grades in some subjects over the past 30 years. a key argument for the reduction in the use of sba is the abundantly available evidence of learners submitting work that lacks originality, learners receiving assistance from parents and teachers in completing their sba tasks, all of which reduces the power of sba marks to signal the true ability of the learners. concluding the article, opposs considers how the decreased use of sba has positively influenced the taught curriculum. the final three articles add a statistical flavour to the dialogue. they illustrate how examination data could be used to align curriculum and assessment standards. in their article, combrink, scherman and maree argue in the context of high stakes examination that it is essential that examinees be given standards-referenced feedback in terms of what skills and knowledge they have gained. they maintain that this type of feedback enables learners to know how they can improve while at the same time assisting teachers to fine-tune their teaching strategies in order to target curriculum standards that have not been achieved. they employ a rasch analysis to determine the competency levels of learners in english, mathematics and natural sciences assessments administered to grades 8 to 11 learners. based on the content and item difficulties, the authors are able to generate descriptions for the proficiency levels in the particular subject area. the analysis confirms that the rasch item map method is a useful way of aligning assessments and curriculum-standards, which in turn, facilitates the identification of areas for improving teaching and learning in the subject areas concerned. given that the current study is based on a smaller sample of 1113 learners, the article concludes by suggesting further studies with larger samples while at the same time conducting cross-validation studies. ojerinde, popoola, onyeneho and egberongbe investigate the degree to which score tables obtained prior to and after the process of equating assessments are comparable. they used data from a subject called use of english, which forms part of the unified tertiary matriculation examination (utme), conducted by nigeria’s joint admissions and matriculation board (jamb) to select qualifying students for entry into tertiary institutions. specifically, data were drawn from 2012 pre-test and 2013 post-test. the rationale is to allow the marks to be subjected to the same interpretation and use. considering the comparable results between the pre-equated and the post-equated models, they conclude by arguing for the continued use of the pre-equated model. in their work, moothedath, chaporkar and belur question the rationale for using marks obtained from norm-referenced feedback to reach conclusions about students’ capabilities. given the huge administrative costs involved with fully implementing computer adaptive testing (cat), they propose an evaluation method that mimics cat’s evaluation process. using uncalibrated questions, they apply a 3-parameter logistic ogive model to simulate examinee ability relative to question difficulty, considering a guessing factor. the findings indicate that compared to the conventional marks-based approach, their method produces better results. it is our hope that much theoretical, methodological and pedagogical value will be gained from this scholarly work with regard to how best to achieve a greater degree of alignment between the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. acknowledgements our sincere thanks are due to all reviewers of articles for working hard under very tight deadlines to make the publication of this special issue possible. we would like to express appreciation and thanks on behalf of the authors and readers of perspectives in education for your assistance. references kanjee, a. 2006. comparing and standardizing performance trends in the matric examinations using a matrix sampling design. in v. reddy (ed.). marking matric. colloquium proceedings. pretoria: human sciences research council press. lolwana, a. 2006. comparing and standardizing performance trends in the matric examinations using a matrix sampling design. in v. reddy (ed.). marking matric. colloquium proceedings. pretoria: human sciences research council press. reddy, v. (ed.). 2006. marking matric. colloquium proceedings. pretoria: human sciences research council press. pp. xii – xix. taylor, n. & taylor, s. 2014. in n. taylor, s. van der berg & t. mabogoane (eds.). creating effective schools. cape town: pearson. 102 how much of what? an analysis of the espoused and enacted mathematics and english curricula for intermediate phase student teachers at five south african universities abstract regulatory bodies such as the department of higher education and training (dhet) provide a framework of formal criteria to be addressed by providers of initial teacher education (ite) but these criteria can be interpreted in many different ways. the initial teacher education research project (iterp) has investigated the preparation of intermediate phase (grades 4 to 6) teachers of mathematics and english at five south african universities, selected as representative of the major ‘types’ of institutions offering ite. in this article we draw on our analysis of data from this research to describe and discuss the courses in mathematics and english offered by each of the five universities to student teachers specialising in mathematics or english and to ‘non-specialists’. we suggest that while there are examples of excellent curriculum design and implementation, none of the universities in the study is fully addressing the challenges of teaching and learning in diverse intermediate phase classrooms. while acknowledging that answering the question “how much of what?” is particularly complex in teacher education contexts in which some students enter university with an inadequate knowledge base from which to develop content and pedagogic knowledge in a number of disciplines and inter-disciplinary fields, we offer some curriculum suggestions for teacher educators to consider. keywords: initial teacher education, curriculum, mathematics for teaching, english for teaching, intermediate phase; diverse classrooms 1. introduction regulatory bodies such as the department of higher edu­ cation and training (dhet) provide a framework of formal criteria to be addressed by providers of initial teacher education (ite) but these criteria can be interpreted in many different ways. one phase of the initial teacher education research project (iterp) has investigated the preparation of intermediate phase (grades 4 to 6) teachers of mathematics and english at five south african universities and this research is the focus of our paper. grades 4 to 6 lynn bowie olico foundation, lynn@olico.org yvonne reed school of education, university of the witwatersrand, yvonne.reed@wits.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i1.8 issn 0258-2236 eissn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(1): 102-119 © uv/ufs mailto:lynn@olico.org mailto:yvonne.reed@wits.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.8 bowie & reed how much of what? 103 form a critically important schooling phase in which the majority of learners in south africa move from learning in their primary language to using english as the main language of learning and teaching (lolt). in these grades, they are also expected to move from proficiency in arithmetic, based on counting, to proficiency in using more sophisticated mathematical tools. we begin with an outline of the overall design of the iterp and of the methodologies adopted for collecting and analysing data in the various phases of the project. this outline is followed by a presentation and discussion of data in response to the questions in the paper’s title: how much of what is offered to intermediate phase student teachers who have chosen to specialise in english or in mathematics or who have chosen other subject specialisations at one of the five universities in the study. the paper concludes with responses to issues raised in the previous sections. we have chosen to refer to relevant literature within each section rather than to offer a separate literature review. 2. the initial teacher education research project this five-year study (2012-2016) was initiated by jet education services and is being undertaken in collaboration with the education deans’ forum, the dhet and the department of basic education. the study began with a review of the conceptions of teaching underpinning the b.ed. and pgce curricula at five universities broadly representative of the major ‘types’ of south african universities offering ite and of the overall coherence of curriculum design in each teacher preparation programme. in 2012, when the study was designed, these five universities produced 49% of all bachelor of education (b.ed.) and 61% of all postgraduate certificate in education (pgce) graduates in the country (dhet, 2013). as is the case for other papers and reports on the project to date, the universities are referred to as universities a to e. field researchers visited each university where they collected a range of artefacts such as course outlines, reading packs and assessment outlines to obtain data for the review. they interviewed members of the academic staff and subsequently transcribed the interviews and checked the accuracy of the transcripts with the interviewees. all of the field researchers, data analysts and members of the iterp reference group have extensive experience in teacher education and teacher professional development in the university and ngo sectors. the initial review was followed by a detailed analysis of the espoused and enacted curricula for mathematics and english for students intending to teach in the intermediate phase (grades 4 to 6) (the focus of this paper). a survey across all 23 higher education institutions (heis) of ite students in their final year of study (b.ed. iv and pgce) and in their first two years of work or further study after graduation was also done. linked to this survey research are case studies of a small number of graduates with an ip specialisation as they begin their careers in teaching. the data collected for the initial review and for the in­depth analysis of mathematics and english curricula related to the b.ed. curriculum were in use in 2013. since then universities have been redesigning curricula to align with the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications (mrteq) to which we refer in the concluding section of the paper, as our findings have implications for this curriculum redesign. it should be noted that despite the best efforts of the field researchers, there are some gaps in the data sets and that because of the differences across universities in the design and teaching of b.ed. curricula, analysis of the data has been a considerable challenge. for 104 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) example, some institutions integrate aspects of pedagogic content with subject content in the same course while others do not. also, in the same institution this integration is evident in some courses but not in others. a further challenge is that some institutions offer year long courses, while others offer semester-length modules, with the length of a semester varying from one institution to another. the relationship between course content and course credits also appears to vary within and across institutions. all of these variations add to the complexity of any comparative analysis and to the tentativeness of findings from the study. while acknowledging that our findings are not definitive, we hope that what is presented and discussed below will stimulate curriculum conversations among teacher educators engaged in initial teacher education. 3. the weighting of mathematics and english courses in the b.ed. degree while students at each of the five universities could choose the school subjects in which they wished to specialise, some courses in subjects in which they did not specialise were also a compulsory part of their degree programme. for ease of reference, we have labelled the students in the study as either specialists or non-specialists in mathematics or english. table 1 summarises the total number of credits for all english courses offered to english specialists and non-specialists and all mathematics courses offered to mathematics specialists and nonspecialists. these include courses where the focus is on disciplinary knowledge and courses with a focus on the teaching and learning of the related subject at school and for english, courses in academic literacy. table 1: number of english and mathematics credits and proportion of credits (%) in the b.ed. degree for the intermediate phase university a b c d e english courses for ip english specialists 120 (25%) 162 (31%) 72 (15%) 120 (24%) home language: 72 (15%) first additional language: 34 (7%­11%) academic literacy: credits not specified english courses for ip english non­specialists 30 (6%) 28 (5%) 36 (7.5%) 24 (5%) home language: 28 (6%) first additional language: 29 (6%) academic literacy: credits not specified mathematics courses for ip mathematics specialists 100 (21%) 128 (25%) 108 (23%) 120 (24%) 64 (13%) bowie & reed how much of what? 105 university a b c d e mathematics courses for ip mathematics non­specialists 40 (8%) 16 (3%) 12 (2.5%) 68 (13%) 19 (4%) with reference to the curricular question ‘how much?’, the variation across universities is striking, with english courses for specialist english teachers constituting only 15% of the overall degree at university c, while the comparable figure for university b is 31%. similarly, mathematics courses for specialists vary from 13% of the degree programme at university e to 25% at university b. the very limited formal exposure of non-specialists to courses in english and mathematics is a cause for concern given that many ip teachers are likely to teach one or both of these subjects during their teaching careers. furthermore, it is concerning given that the majority of them will be expected to use english as the language of learning and teaching (lolt) and will have to use mathematical tools in the teaching of various subjects. having responded briefly to the question ‘how much?’, we now address the second question ‘of what’, in more detail. as the disciplines differ in nature (for example, mathematics is vertically structured and english is not) and because the ways in which they are recontextualised in teacher education differ, we provide separate and, in some respects, quite different kinds of analyses of the curricula for mathematics and english. 4. mathematics courses for intermediate phase student teachers mathematics for teachers the question of what mathematics courses are most appropriate for prospective primary school teachers is the subject of on-going debate. ball, hill and bass (2005) point out that mathematics courses for teachers range from those involving advanced mathematics to those aiming at teachers’ mastery of the mathematics of the grades they will teach to those with a specific focus on the types of mathematical thinking a teacher needs to do. research does not support the notion of “the more higher mathematics courses the better” for teachers (see for example, monk, 1994 and begle, 1972) and there is no agreement among mathematics teacher educators on exactly which types of courses are likely to best meet teachers’ needs. however, there is increasing acceptance of the idea that mathematics teachers need to possess a special kind of mathematical understanding. ma (1999), in her comparison of chinese and american primary school teachers, argues for the importance of what she terms a “profound understanding of fundamental mathematics (pufm)” and proposes that teachers need a deep, connected and flexible understanding of the mathematical content that they are expected to teach. hill, rowan and ball (2005) argue that what they refer to as content knowledge for teaching mathematics (ckt-m) is a particular kind of mathematical knowledge that needs to inform the work that teachers do in classrooms. this includes the ability to use a range of representations to illustrate a mathematical concept, the ability to analyse the appropriateness of alternative methods of approaching a mathematical problem and the ability to analyse the origin of misconceptions. the research of hill and 106 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) her colleagues has indicated a link between teachers’ scores on a test for ckt-m and the quality of their teaching. although more work needs to be done to understand what kinds of pre-service mathematics courses best deliver good ckt-m or pufm it is certainly possible to analyse courses in relation to the elements of ckt-m or pufm evident in them. thus in looking at “how much of what kind of mathematics” is offered to prospective ip teachers, to understand the “of what” we looked at the nature of the mathematics offered to the student teachers in the mathematics courses. in doing this, we drew on the literature referred to above and considered the following: i) the level of the mathematics i.e. is it advanced mathematics or school mathematics? in doing this, we mapped the mathematical content against where it would typically occur in a south african primary, secondary or tertiary level curriculum as follows: table 2: levels of mathematics ip sp fet university the intermediate phase (grades 4-6). this would include the basic operations covered in the foundation phase (grades 1­3) the senior phase (grades 7­9) the further education and training phase (grades 10­12) mathematics typically taught in mathematics departments at university. it should be noted that the level of mathematical content does not indicate depth but simply the stage in the curriculum where that content is typically encountered. for example, it is possible to pose questions on university level mathematics that require only the application of well-rehearsed procedures (e.g. find the derivative of) or to pose questions on ip or sp level mathematics that are more demanding (e.g. use a contextual situation to explain why when dividing a number by, we multiply it by). ii) because we were aware that the content could be addressed at varying levels of depth, we considered the level of cognitive demand of the mathematical tasks student teachers encountered in the course. the taxonomy used, shown in table 3 below, draws on the work of stein et al. (2000) and the learning mathematics for teaching project (2011) on the mathematical quality of instruction (mqi). table 3: levels of cognitive demand category description knowledge (k) recall of facts, rules, formulae perform routine procedures (rp) perform procedures that have been seen previously make connections (c) between different representations between mathematics and context with other mathematical topics between the procedure and the underlying concept bowie & reed how much of what? 107 category description engage in mathematical practices (mp) investigate and generalise provide explanations justify and prove solve non-routine problems for example, a question such as calculate would be categorised as rp, whereas the question shown below, taken from a worksheet from institution a, would be categorised as mp as it is a non-routine problem. to celebrate world maths day a school asks each of the learners from the senior grades to partner with a learner from the junior grades so they can work together as a team on a maths quiz on world maths day. so far 2/3 of the learners from the senior grades have partnered with 3/5 of the learners from the junior grades. what proportion of learners at the school have got partners for world maths day? iii) finally, because we were interested in whether the mathematics encountered by the teachers was specifically related to the work of teaching, we drew on ball, thames and phelps (2008), who distinguish between common content knowledge (cck) and specialised content knowledge (sck). cck refers to mathematical knowledge and skills used by ‘nonteachers’, for example, knowing how to add two numbers. sck, on the other hand, refers to the mathematical knowledge and skills that are unique to teaching e.g. being able to analyse whether an atypical long multiplication algorithm is mathematically correct. the results of the analysis of the courses at the five universities are summarised below. information regarding the number of contact periods is provided for the mathematics courses and the mathematics methodology courses in order to indicate the amount of time spent on mathematics-related courses. however, the analysis of the level of mathematics, cognitive demand of the tasks and nature of the mathematics (cck or sck) is provided only for the mathematics courses. courses for mathematics specialists graph 1 and table 4 below summarise the amount of time spent on mathematics-related courses and the nature of the mathematics courses provided to mathematics specialists at the five institutions (labelled a-e). 108 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) 400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 n um be r of c on ta ct p er io ds inst. a b c d einst. inst. inst. inst. method maths uni maths fet maths ip,sp graph 1: number of contact periods in mathematics­related courses for mathematics specialists during the four-year b.ed. degree table 4: nature of mathematics in the mathematics courses for mathematics specialists university a b c d e cck or sck combine cck and sck combine cck and sck combine cck and sck only cck combine cck and sck with focus on cck cognitive demand all levels all levels all levels mostly k and rp very little mp across the five universities, the total number of contact periods allocated to mathematicsrelated courses during the four-year b.ed. degree varied from 366 to 499 contact periods.1 at each university, except b, considerably more time was allocated to mathematics courses than to methodology courses. at universities a, b and c most of the time was devoted to mathematics content drawn from the intermediate or senior phase levels and thus the curriculum was closely aligned to the content that student teachers are likely to teach. although this might appear to be low-level mathematical content for tertiary students, the manner in which it was approached meant that it included some challenging mathematics. all levels of cognitive demand were represented in the type of tasks the student teachers were expected to tackle. the tasks included the need to 1 there was some variation in the stated length of the contact periods (they ranged between 45 minutes and 50 minutes). at two universities, it was impossible to discern the number of contact periods directly. information was given in notional hours. we used the relationship between notional hours and the number of contact periods at the other three universities where information was provided to estimate the number of contact periods at these two universities. bowie & reed how much of what? 109 make connections between mathematical topics and different representations of mathematical ideas, problem-solving and mathematical investigations. attention was paid to cck and to sck. thus, the student teachers were not only expected to master the intermediate or senior phase content but also have the depth and flexibility of knowledge of this content necessary to design appropriate tasks to facilitate the learning of these concepts, understand alternate approaches to the content or identify and understand misconceptions. at university d, emphasis was placed on mathematical content that is typically encountered in the fet phase or in university level courses. although the level of mathematics offered at this institution initially seemed higher, the nature of the mathematical tasks presented to the students meant that the content was dealt with at low levels of cognitive demand. in addition, the mathematics was dealt with as cck and the student teachers did not specifically engage with mathematics from the perspective of a teacher. at university e, student teachers were exposed to mathematical content from the ip, sp and fet levels and thus the courses included some higher-level school mathematics. however, this higher-level content was dealt with largely as cck and included very few tasks that required learners to engage in mathematical practices like problem solving, investigating or proving. courses for mathematics non-specialists graph 2 and table 5 below summarise the amount of time spent on mathematics related courses and the nature of the mathematics courses provided to mathematics non­specialists at the five universities. 400 350 300 250 200 150 100 50 0 n um be r of c on ta ct p er io ds inst. a b c d einst. inst. inst. inst. maths ip,sp method graph 2: number of contact periods in mathematics­related courses for mathematics non­ specialists during the four-year b.ed. degree 110 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) table 5: nature of mathematics in the mathematics courses for mathematics non­specialists university a b c d e cck or sck combine cck and sck only cck no maths content courses cck of maths literacy mostly cck cognitive demand all levels, but assessed more at lower levels mostly k and rp k and rp mathematics non-specialists are clearly allocated significantly less time for mathematics studies than those specialising in mathematics. of particular concern is the fact that mathematics non-specialist students at university c study only one methodology course and are not required to further their own mathematical knowledge at all. at university b the mathematics non-specialists’ only exposure to mathematics is through courses on “mathematics for everyday life” taken by all b.ed. students and thus they are not required to look with a teacher’s gaze at the mathematics they may well be required to teach. although at university d, student teachers are offered mathematics and methodology courses. these courses are closely linked to the subject mathematical literacy, which is taken at school in grades 10 to 12 by learners who do not study mathematics. as ip teachers will not teach mathematical literacy, we suggest that preparing them to do so may not be the best use of curriculum time and in fact have been informed by the institution that the courses are being amended. at universities a and e, mathematics non-specialists study mathematics and methodology courses. the lecturers at both institutions reported experiencing considerable difficulties in working with student teachers with widely varying mathematical backgrounds and indicated that many of these students struggled with the mathematical content even though it was largely at primary school level. for this reason, the curriculum tended to focus on cck and tasks at lower levels of cognitive demand. the lecturers at these universities were well aware of the problems associated with this, but felt constrained by the limited time available to them. for example, a lecturer at university e commented: the limited time to learn maths prevents all students from attaining the required level of proficiency. it is likely at the end of the two years the mathematics education student teachers will have sufficient procedural knowledge but not conceptual knowledge to teach beyond grade 4 or 5. what is offered in mathematics courses across the five universities can be summarised as follows: (i) for mathematics specialists, there are either courses dealing with mathematical content at or just above the level of mathematics that the students will teach, in which the content is dealt with in depth and in a specialised form for teachers. alternatively, there are courses dealing with content typically taught at higher levels (fet or university) in which the content is at low levels of cognitive demand. bowie & reed how much of what? 111 (ii) for the mathematics non-specialists, the mathematics dealt with is largely at or just above the level of the learners the students will teach and this mathematics tends to be at low levels of cognitive demand. lecturers’ choices of content and cognitive level were motivated by concern regarding the inadequate knowledge of the students or by the imperative to have a course that provided prospective teachers with the quantitative knowledge and skills required in everyday life. 5. english as subject for intermediate phase student teachers in comparison to mathematics, subject english in a ba or b.ed. curriculum or in a curriculum for primary or secondary school learners, has a less defined disciplinary core, is less hierarchically organised and is thus less dependent on sequenced segmental connections. for the iterp study, banks, leach and moon’s (1999) conceptualisation of what teachers of english need to know was used to frame the analysis of the data collected (see figure 1). subject knowledge ‘english’school knowledge school english personal subject construct pedagogic knowledge related to the way subject knowledge is specific to schools, e.g.: for example, might include some, or all of the following including associated concepts, frameworks, theories, discourse: for example, knowledge at: • ‘knowledge about language’ (kal) • study of english language • literary theory • literary criticism • focus on literary periods, e.g. victorian literature, postcolonial literature • literary genres, e.g. tragedy, woman writers • media/cultural studies • creative writing • view of ‘english’, e.g. adult needs/ personal growth/cultural heritage/ critical literacy • personal biography including gender/race • darts techniques for approaching texts • pupil as author, playwright, journalist, film director • drama techniques such as hot seating, freeze framing • knowledge of popular published ‘english’ material, e.g. nate texts • experience of own education/past employment • linguistics • the writing ‘repertoire’ (argumentative/narrative/ personal information/writing) • the status/nature of the english ‘coursework folder’ • the reading process • the school ‘canon of literature’ including children’s teenage literature figure 1: a model for conceptualising teachers’ professional knowledge, with examples from a group of english teachers (banks, leach & moon, 1999: 96) we argue that the distinction these authors make between ‘school knowledge english’ and ‘pedagogic knowledge’ is helpful because student teachers need to know, for example, what constitutes ‘appropriate’ literature for children and adolescents as well as how to engage children and adolescents in reading such texts, although in the b.ed. courses analysed, the two 112 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) are often intertwined. with reference to ‘subject knowledge english’, banks, leach and moon’s statement that the curriculum “might include some, or all of the following, including associated concepts, frameworks, theories, discourse” (1999: 96) is illustrative of the lack of agreement among teacher educators on a core curriculum for english. the range of possibilities spans language, literature, linguistics, psycholinguistics, sociolinguistics, film, media and cultural studies. both internationally and locally, more recent teacher education curriculum frameworks for subject english are likely to include ‘new literacies’ (cope & kalantzis, 2000; janks, 2010) in which literacy practices are considered “cross culturally, in different domains, in different discourses and as they vary in relation to different sign systems and different technologies” (janks, 2010: 117). locally, b.ed. curricula are also likely to include one or more courses in academic literacy in english and, as is the case for what is selected for literary or linguistic study, the content of these courses varies greatly across institutions. given that english is the home language (hl) of a minority of teachers and learners in south africa, some universities include courses with a specific focus on teaching and learning english as what the school curriculum terms first additional language (fal) while others do not. the presentation and analysis of data in this section begins with table 6, which summarises the courses offered by the five universities to students specialising as english teachers. table 6: english courses for ip b.ed. english specialists university a b c d e academic literacy 1 year­long course: new literacies for teachers 2 semesters: academic and computer literacy no academic literacy but some focus on it in level 2 eng. modules 2 semesters: academic literacy 2 year­long courses: academic literacy subject knowledge 4 year­long courses: eng. lang. and lit. 6 semesters: eng. lang. and lit. 1-3 5 semesters: eng. lang. and lit. 6 semesters: eng. lang. and lit. 4 year­long courses: eng. lang. and lit. school and pedagogic knowledge 2 year­long courses: language method 1 and 2 2 semesters: eng. as medium of instruction. 4 semesters: eng. method 2 semesters: language method (one semester each for hl and fal) 2 semesters: english method (fal) hl: 4 year­long courses: english method table 6 illustrates the differences across universities in the number of courses offered and in the weighting of subject knowledge in relation to school and pedagogic knowledge. universities a and e both offer subject knowledge for four years (eight semesters), while institution c offers only five semesters. regarding school and pedagogic knowledge, university e provides specialist english teachers with four year-long courses (eight semesters), while the other four offer only between two and four semesters. table 7 summarises the english courses for b.ed. ip teachers who do not specialise in english. bowie & reed how much of what? 113 table 7: english courses for ip teachers not specialising in english university a b c d e academic literacy 1 year course: new literacies for teachers 2 semesters: academic & comp lit: 1 for all students + 1 for weak readers no academic literacy courses 2 semesters: academic literacy 2 year courses: academic literacy subject knowledge none none 2 semesters: one for eng. lang; one for eng. lit none home language 2 year courses: eng. lang & lit. first additional language 2 year courses: eng. lang & lit. school and pedagogic knowledge 1 year course: language method 2 semesters: english as lolt (fal) 2 semesters: english method hl and fal none home language 2 year courses: eng. method. first additional language 2 year courses: eng. method. we note with concern that despite the frequent complaint that many students enter university with a weak proficiency in english and the fact that the overwhelming majority of ip teachers will teach through the medium of english, three of the universities (a, b and d) provide no subject knowledge english for students not specialising in this subject. university d also offers no school or pedagogic knowledge in english to non-specialists. english for academic purposes the academic literacy courses, offered to all ip student teachers at each university, contribute to very different constructions of literate teachers, as a result of the different learning focus of each one. courses at two of the five aim primarily to fill gaps in student teachers’ syntactic and lexical knowledge of english; courses at two others aim to support development of the ability to read and write academic texts and to undertake research and one institution does not offer academic literacy modules. while the need for ‘gap filling’ for some students is acknowledged, if this is the sole or main focus of academic literacy programmes, as is the case at universities d and e, student teachers are unlikely to gain sufficient epistemic access to the socially powerful theoretical knowledge needed to meet the requirements specified in the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications (2011) of developing ‘intellectual independence’ and ‘some level of research competence’. new literacies for teachers internationally (e.g. heath, 1983; street, 1984; new london group, 1996; cope & kalantzis, 2000) and locally (e.g. newfield & stein 2000; janks, 2010) the term ‘new literacies’ acknowledges (i) that people use language in different ways, for different purposes in different contexts. therefore, literacies is a more appropriate term than literacy and (ii) that in the digital 114 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) age learners need to understand the affordances of various new forms of technology and use these new sources of information and meaning making productively. only two of the five universities in the iterp study offer courses (subject and pedagogic in one institution and pedagogic in the other) that enable students to engage substantively with new literacies. given that literacies are produced and used in diverse ways within and across communities in south africa and globally, we suggest that this lack of engagement with new literacies in several universities may leave student teachers and the learners whom they will teach underprepared to be “active, successful participants in 21st century global society” (ncte, 2013). with reference to an observation made by one of the reviewers of this paper, we agree that some student teachers may need to extend their knowledge of ‘literacy fundamentals’ but we disagree that this needs to be done before they can engage with new literacies. in fact, given that they are learners at the time of the closing of the gutenberg parenthesis (pettit, 2012), students are likely to find support for their learning of the ‘fundamentals’ in their engagement with the new technologies of representation. 6. english as subject specialisation/english as subject for the ‘non-specialist’ the subject courses offered to ip english specialists at each institution contribute to very different constructions of teachers of english. this is as a result of the breadth and depth of study (more courses at more levels offered in some institutions compared to others), differences in content foci (at two extremes, mainly canonical literature on the one hand and mainly descriptive grammar on the other) and the texts (including film texts) and genres chosen by lecturers. from the analysis of course outlines, assignments and interview data, the following emerged as concerns: (i) literature for children and adolescents, as part of the subject knowledge of an ip english teacher, is placed in the background or ignored at several universities and only given a central place in the curriculum at one (university e). given the important role of reading in the development of ip learners’ lexical and syntactic knowledge and knowledge of the world, we suggest that ip student teachers should be familiar with a wide range of stimulating texts and with ways of using such texts optimally in the classroom in both print and digital forms. for the latter the resources of the african storybook website (www.africanstorybook.org) and of nal’ibali (www.nalibali.org) for example, can be used. (ii) opportunities for ip student teachers to become critically and visually literate and to learn how to teach learners to become critically and visually literate appear to be limited or non-existent in the courses offered at three of the five universities. (iii) only two universities (a and e) offer courses in creative writing/writing in a range of genres. we raise this as a concern because opportunities to develop as writers are important for teachers as literate subjects and as a starting point for their understanding of how to teach learners to write in a range of genres – including understanding the contribution of text structures and language functions. (iv) with reference to literary study, while courses at three of the five institutions could be described as ‘reading rich’ and courses at a fourth as adequate, at university d it appears that student teachers ‘read about’ plays, novels, etc. but do not engage with the texts. www.africanstorybook.org www.nalibali.org bowie & reed how much of what? 115 the opportunities for ip ‘non-specialists’ to study english as subject courses, which could contribute to their development as literate teachers, vary from non-existent (at universities a, b and d) to limited (university c) to more adequate (university e). this situation (at most of the universities in the study) is worrying given that ip teachers are likely to be using english as lolt (see below) and, as noted above with reference to mathematics, many are also likely to teach english as a subject at some stage in their teaching career. 7. learning to teach english as home or additional language; learning to use english as lolt even in the two universities which offer more school and pedagogic knowledge courses to english specialists than the other three, the allocation of time and course credits is significantly less than for english as a subject. while depth of subject knowledge is centrally important in teacher education (shulman, 1987; morrow, 2007) it appears that in all five b.ed. programmes, there may be insufficient focus on equipping student teachers to guide ip learners to become speakers of english and proficient readers and writers/producers of texts in a range of genres and modes. for example, with reference to reading, the data suggest that university c is the only university that explicitly links what is involved in learning to read in the foundation phase with what is required of learners in the intermediate phase. this is another cause for concern because there is evidence (e.g. from the research of howie et al., 2008) that not all learners have become successful readers when they enter grade 4. the language and literacy challenges likely to be experienced by many learners in the transition from learning in their home languages(s) to learning in english and in developing their knowledge of english as subject, together with the challenges associated with the linguistic complexity of classrooms in many urban areas, appear to be insufficiently addressed across all institutions, although some institutions pay more attention to addressing these issues compared to others. across the five universities the opportunities for ip ‘non-specialists’ to study courses with a focus on school and pedagogic knowledge vary from non-existent (at university d) to limited (at universities a, b and c) to adequate (university e). 8. discussion challenges of the intermediate phase in our view, the following are three of the main challenges of learning and teaching in the intermediate phase: • once learners enter the fourth grade they are expected to use either english or afrikaans as the language of learning and teaching, languages in which the majority of children in south africa may have limited proficiency given that they have learned one or the other only as a subject in the foundation phase. • learners are expected to make the transition from ‘learning to read’/learning to write to ‘reading to learn’/writing to learn – a transition that involves reading textbooks and reading and writing texts in a range of genres. all of this requires knowledge of much more extensive and specialised vocabulary and more complex grammatical structures than they encountered in the foundation phase. 116 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) • in the mathematics class not only do learners encounter more specialised mathematical language but they are expected to work with more abstract concepts, an increasing number range and different types of number and they are expected to engage with algebraic ideas. with these challenges in mind, we now return to the question of “how much of what?”, in order to make our suggestions for possible changes to the current b.ed. curricula for prospective ip teachers. minding the gap lecturers at all five universities noted that on entering a b.ed. programme some student teachers are no more proficient in mathematics and english than the grade 4 to 6 learners they are preparing to teach. we suggest that such students require specialised support courses to enable them to master the knowledge and skills they will be expected to teach but also to develop the foundational knowledge and skills needed for accessing courses that focus on the knowledge and skills appropriate to a programme of tertiary study. we recognise that there is likely to be a negative response to a suggestion that an already lengthy degree programme be extended and to labelling some students as in need of extra help but we nevertheless suggest that such courses are currently necessary. as an alternative to extending the curriculum beyond four years, it may be possible to re-examine the overall b.ed. curriculum and make additional foundational courses in mathematics and english alternatives to some of the elective courses in the degree. we acknowledge that this is a controversial proposal but argue that given the evidence that many students begin tertiary studies with weak basic knowledge in mathematics and limited proficiency in english, such courses are necessary for some student teachers so that they may acquire epistemic access (morrow, 2007) to the knowledge that will enable them to enjoy and succeed in their studies and become competent teachers. one of the reasons for the weak knowledge base with which some students enter university is unfavourable teacher­ learner ratios in schools. in two of the universities in the study, such ratios are perpetuated to the great concern of lecturers, one of whom said, “i’d like to have groups of 50. i’d prefer to teach the same lecture five times than to teach one class of 250”. designing compulsory content (subject) and pedagogy courses for student teachers not specialising in mathematics and english many ip teachers will teach subjects in which they have not specialised at some point in their career. additionally, as proficiency in english and in aspects of mathematics is important for learning and teaching across the curriculum, we suggest that all prospective ip teachers be required to take subject and pedagogy courses in mathematics and english in order to understand and be equipped to respond to the challenges outlined above (among others). this is in line with the specification in the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications (2011) that all ip teachers must have a sufficiently broad background knowledge to understand the requirements of all subjects in the ip curriculum. as already indicated, mathematics in the intermediate phase requires learners to make a shift towards greater abstraction. in the foundation phase learners work largely with whole numbers which are easily represented in concrete forms. in the intermediate phase learners work with fractions which requires a greater degree of sophistication in thinking about numbers. a fraction can be made up of two different numbers (e.g. 2 and 3 in the fraction but represent a single quantity. it can be given “different” meanings (e.g. 2 divided by 3, it is 2 cakes shared equally between 3 people and it is a single cake cut into 3 equal pieces where bowie & reed how much of what? 117 you take 2 of the pieces, etc.). there is a shift in number work from being able to rely largely on additive reasoning, to having to incorporate multiplicative reasoning. this shift is known to be a particularly difficult one and there are indications that many teachers themselves struggle with tasks that require multiplicative reasoning (see for example thompson and saldanha, 2003; venkat and spaull, 2015). we thus argue that the focus of the mathematical content for prospective intermediate phase teachers should enable them to understand the complexities of the mathematics of this phase and the implications of these for teaching. in a similar vein, and in line with the requirement of mrteq (2011) that all ip teachers must specialise to teach languages, we suggest that all ip teachers need knowledge of what supports or hinders acquisition of additional languages. they should also be knowledgeable regarding what will assist learners to first develop what cummins (1991) has termed basic interpersonal communication skills (bics) and subsequently to acquire the cognitive academic language proficiency (calp) in an additional language that contributes to success in complex academic and cognitive tasks. for the on-going development of their own literate identities, we suggest that all student teachers should have opportunities to study a range of literary and popular culture texts and to experiment with writing in a range of genres. for their work in intermediate phase classrooms, they should also be knowledgeable about literature for children and about how to stimulate children’s interest in reading and in creating their own texts. designing compulsory content (subject) and pedagogy courses for student teachers specialising in mathematics and english in addition to the subject and pedagogy courses that we believe should be compulsory for all ip teachers, we suggest that students who have chosen to specialise in mathematics and english should be offered courses that enable them to do the following: (i) develop deeper and broader disciplinary knowledge (e.g. in mathematics using number theory to deepen their understanding of the behaviour of whole numbers and e.g. in english, understanding the theories underpinning critical literacy and/or engaging in film study); (ii) to gain further insights into the ways that disciplinary knowledge plays out in schools. (e.g. in mathematics learning how to use what they have learnt about proof to help learners develop age-appropriate mathematical justifications and in english, learning how to use what has been learned from studying novels and short stories to assist ip learners to engage with characters, settings, plots, themes, etc. in a story); (iii) to engage with a more extensive range of pedagogic strategies than it is feasible to offer the non-specialist. (e.g. in mathematics understanding the development of learners’ geometric thinking in order to create mathematical tasks that foster progress in geometric reasoning and in english, learning how to design assignments that enable learners to use the affordances of a range of modes of meaning-making to demonstrate their understanding of a text). 9. concluding comments in reviewing literature that addresses the question of what constitutes specialised knowledge for teachers, bertram, christiansen and mukuredzi (2015) note the proliferation of knowledge frameworks and the lack of a definitive answer to this question. they quote reutzel et al.’s 118 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) observation that the differing frameworks constitute clear evidence of the elusiveness and complexity of specifying adequately the nature of the knowledge teachers need to teach effectively (reutzel et al., 2011). we recognise this complexity and are not advocating a ‘one size fits all’ curriculum for ite across south african universities, for reasons which include respecting the diverse knowledge bases and interests with which students enter a particular university and we acknowledge the key contributions to a mathematics or english curriculum of lecturers’ specific research and teaching interests. we also acknowledge the importance of other key components of a b.ed. curriculum such as education theory courses and the teaching practicum, all of which need to be incorporated into a student teacher’s timetable. we suggest that what is necessary is that teacher educators critically review the four­year programme of study for the b.ed. degree in order to eliminate areas of overlap or unnecessary repetition. furthermore, courses should be added that would enable all ip teachers to graduate with a competence and confidence in mathematics and english that has been enhanced by their studies and that will assist them to teach these subjects effectively and enable them to use english as lolt across the ip curriculum. acknowledgements: this paper draws on research conducted as part of the initial teacher education research project (iterp) coordinated by jet education services. references ball, d., hill, h. & bass, h. 2005. knowing mathematics for teaching: who knows mathematics well enough to teach third grade, and how can we decide. american educator, 29(1), 14-17, 20-22, 43-46. ball, d.l., thames, m.h. & phelps, g. 2008. content knowledge for teaching: what makes it special? 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teachers’ perspectives on transforming teacher education curriculum for relevance to basic education for sustainable development abstract the study sought to investigate teachers’ perspectives on how the teacher education curriculum could be transformed to be relevant for basic schooling and contribute to sustainable development. the objective was to understand the views of the university lecturers, teachers in schools and teacher trainees on the relevance of the curriculum offered at a university to the school curriculum. the school curriculum reform from the national curriculum statement (ncs) to the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) in south africa (sa) brought about changes in the pedagogical content knowledge (pck) and teaching approaches and teachers are obliged to keep up with these changes, understand the pck and change their teaching approaches to fit the new curriculum. in addition, teacher trainees (university graduates) are expected to teach the same curriculum when allocated to schools for teaching practice. based on this expectation, i argue that there seems to be an assumption that changes in the school curriculum find their way to the universities and influence the content of teacher education curriculum whereas this may not be the case. the teacher education curriculum does not focus on the content offered in schools but academic content and engages students in theories that would enable them to see the world differently. a qualitative interpretive approach to generate data through semistructured interviews from teacher trainees, schoolteachers and university lecturers who were purposively selected was used. the approach was used in order to understand the views of the participants on how the teacher education curriculum could be transformed in order to be relevant to basic schooling. findings revealed that the teacher education curriculum is not relevant for basic schooling in that teacher trainees are not exposed to the curriculum offered in schools; traditional teaching approaches are still used at the university whereas schools use outcomesbased approaches. as a result, teacher trainees find it difficult to navigate the system. the paper recommends that there is a need to transform the teacher education curriculum so that it becomes relevant and contributes to sustainable development. keywords: curriculum, transformation, relevance, schooling, sustainable development dr e.n. cishe walter sisulu university, division of academic affairs and research, directorate of research development, mthatha, phone: (047) 502 2647, email: ecishe@wsu. ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i2.6 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(2): 73-84 © uv/ufs mailto:ecishe@wsu.ac.za mailto:ecishe@wsu.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.6 74 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) 1. introduction and background the study field of curriculum is an overall concept that has different meanings. there are different views and definitions of the curriculum, and these are presented below to illustrate the different meanings and at the end, i have put the curriculum in the context of this study. in its simplest form, a curriculum refers to a syllabus that usually guides a teacher on what to do in class while vorster (2016) elaborates that it is a list of topics to be taught and how they should be taught and assessed. in addition, bagudela (2012) argues that a curriculum focuses on the planned activities translated by the teacher into syllabuses, schemes of work and lessons to be delivered while hassan (2013) refers to the curriculum as a body of knowledge, content and/or subjects to be taught or both. it is all the learning that is planned, unplanned, guided or unguided, organised and experiences that the school, including the university, offers as part of its educational responsibility. generally, a curriculum includes a consideration of the purposes of education, the content of teaching, teaching approaches with the focus on product as well as the process and a programme of evaluation of the outcomes (koo hok-chun, 2002:56). in sum, curriculum entails assumptions and expressions of knowledge and skills, learning and the learning environment, as well as different work practices. it determines the aims and assessment criteria of learning, which form the bases of the teaching process (vitikka, krokfors & hurmerinta, 2012). therefore, based on these definitions of the curriculum, for this study, i argue that a curriculum is an officially designed course of study that consists of all planned activities. in this vain, curriculum offered in universities should thus be relevant and responsive to the needs of students and those of learners. this calls for a curriculum that will, in turn, transform learning and engage in critical reflection that will develop learners and contribute to sustainable development for relevance to society. ogude, nel and oosthuizen (2005) argue that curriculum responsiveness has been central to the south african context and higher education is grappling as it rethinks the curriculum. the department of education (2000) in the norms and standards for educators in south africa laid the foundation for defining competent teachers and appropriate teacher education programmes. it emphasises demonstration of competences across a wide range of teacher roles and further requires higher education institutions to design and implement outcomes-based teacher education programmes to enable novice teachers to demonstrate their competences across a range of teacher roles (fraser, kilen & nieman, 2005). of the three competences (foundation, practical and reflexive) specified in the norms and standards for educators, the practical competence could be seriously considered by higher education institutions involved in teacher training in that it involves observation on the job. the south africa qualifications authority supports the notion of applied competence in higher education as the ability to put into practice in the relevant context the learning outcomes acquired in obtaining the qualification. in the case of teacher training, this is done even before the qualification is completed. this is the period when teacher trainees go for teaching practice. in doing so, i argue that transformation of learning should be considered as this will develop teacher trainees who will in turn develop learners in schools. according to the former minister of higher education and training, dr blade nzimande, transformation concerns changing society in all areas of life, to serve the interests of all south africans in a democratic, equitable and prosperous society. transforming the curriculum, argued garuba (2015), involves critical thinking that considers knowledge of the marginalised group (in this case, the students) in teaching at all levels. curriculum transformation in the context of this paper refers to interweaving multiple perspectives and integrates different 75 cishe teachers’ perspectives on transforming teacher education curriculum ... (student, teachers and lecturers’) voices and knowledge into the learning process. in support of this, scott (2009) quoted by vorster (2016) argues that this requires engaging students in learning so that they do not feel alienated from what they are taught. this, according to akoojee and nkomo (2007), requires that the ethos that prevailed at higher education institutions (heis) in the past needs to be replaced with a new democratic culture directed at actively undoing race-based separation. transforming the curriculum became evident during the #feesmustfall movement in south africa in 2015, which called for a decolonised curriculum. garuba (2015) was concerned about conversations and debates on how a decolonised curriculum will look like in africa and this is still a feature of the current debate. garuba (ibid) further argued that decolonising and transforming the curriculum does not necessarily mean adding new items to the existing curriculum but rethinking the approach to adopt. although the #feesmustfall movement laid more emphasis on decolonising the curriculum, the focus of the current study is on higher education transformation as an aspect of decolonisation. i argue that in order to transform the teacher education curriculum for relevance to basic education, curriculum offered in teacher education should be relevant to the one offered in schools as doing so would contribute to the development of teacher trainees who, in turn, will develop learners in schools, thus contributing to sustainable development. the former minister of higher education and training, dr blade nzimande also observed in lekgotla on curriculum transformation in 2011 that universities still grapple with the issue of curricula that are relevant to the south african context; hence, curriculum transformation is a necessity. carl (2005) added that universities find themselves in this situation because of the ever-changing curriculum that has become a major feature of teaching in south africa. the every changing curriculum, argues coetzee (2012), gives rise to recent teacher education graduates struggling to apply their skills acquired during their teacher education in schools. this is because of the differences in the two systems. there is merit in coetzee’s view because i assessed some teacher trainees and found them struggling to impart the pedagogical content knowledge and they were unable to use the outcomes-based approaches used in schools. this implies that universities offer their graduates a curriculum that is not relevant to the one offered in schools and exposes them to methodology that these students cannot use in schools. bertram (2012) cautions that while the national concern of having a curriculum that is relevant to the context is important, it should not be over-emphasised as it may have unintended outcomes/consequences. he advocates for teaching students to engage with theories that will enable them to see the world differently. in support of bertram’s view, i argue that changes in basic education may not be adopted in higher education, and the faculties of education may not necessarily equip their graduates to teach school subjects; rather, they might equip them with the subject content and methodology. in schools, there is emphasis on learner-centred teaching approaches. bernstein (2001) refers to the limitation of the learner-centred approach as privileging students from good schools and undermining the prospects of those from poor social backgrounds. it is noteworthy that higher education institutions, including universities, were involved in the process of curriculum development in different ways: as curriculum developers, as members of the committee to review the curriculum and as critics of different curricula before they were introduced. furthermore, academics who understood the field of education also 76 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) played a role as leading members of the working groups established to revise the curriculum. overall, higher education institutions played an important role in bringing their weight to bear on the shaping of the curriculum. despite the involvement of academics from higher education institutions, there is little, if any, evidence of aligning the teacher education curriculum to the curriculum offered in schools; hence, the subject of transforming the higher education curriculum was found relevant to investigate. in addition, although the higher education act of 1997 (no. 101 of 1997) alludes to the establishment of a system of education that responds to human resource, economic and development needs of south africa (department of education, 1997), motala and pampalis (2002: 22) assert that little is being done to align the higher education curriculum to that of schools. jansen and christie (1999) argue that while outcomes-based education requires a different approach to teaching than the traditional content approach, higher education institutions are still using the traditional approach more than any other approaches. this comment does not mean that higher education institutions do not use other approaches, but the traditional approach may be dominating for varying reasons. from the above, it is clear that the teacher education curriculum is not relevant to schools and there are gaps between these two systems whereas the curriculum should be responsive to the learning needs of students (moll, 2004). the objective of this study was to look into the teachers’ perspectives on how the teacher education curriculum could be transformed for relevance to basic education for sustainable development. there are different understandings of sustainable development but in the context of this paper, it refers to ways of responding to curriculum issues in schools and how the university curriculum could be transformed to be relevant to that offered in schools. 2. theoretical framework the current study was underpinned by a democratic theory of education. emphasising the need for the practice of democracy in schools, carter, harber and serf (2003) suggest that some values, such as democracy, tolerance and responsibility, grow only with experience of them. therefore, the schools (i argue, universities) need to practise what they seek to promote. bastian et al. (1986) and wood (1992) maintain that democratic schools (universities) and democracy itself in the american case do not develop by chance, but they result from explicit attempts by educators, and thus schools (universities), to put in place arrangements and opportunities that will bring democracy to life. therefore, a democratic school (university) is one that allows all stakeholders in a school to participate in deliberations to do with institutional governance, in which stakeholders are prepared to abide by democratic principles through the acquisition of suitable knowledge, skills, attitudes and behaviours. beane and apple (1999) contend that at a democratic school (university), all of those who are directly involved in the school (university) have the right to participate in the process of decision-making. in the context of this paper, democratic participation refers to the engagement of all stakeholders in transforming the curriculum. doing so would make the curriculum responsive and contribute to sustainable development; hence, the democratic theory of education is appropriate for this study. this, in turn, requires critical thinking. kymlicka (2002: 304) contends that, “schools” (universities) must teach children how to engage in the kind of critical reasoning and moral perspective that defines public reasonableness… 77 cishe teachers’ perspectives on transforming teacher education curriculum ... (and) promoting these sorts of virtues is one of the fundamental justifications for mandatory education. in this way, there is potential for quality education to be achieved. in order to achieve quality education, everyone involved should participate in decision making democratically. having everybody’s voice in the curriculum offered in the school system and the universities will lead to learning in a transformative way and thus contribute to sustainable development in the system of education. 3. research methodology to achieve the objective of the study, a qualitative interpretive research method was used in order to build a holistic understanding of the complex problem concerning the alignment of the curriculum offered for teacher education and its relevance to that offered in schools in order to narrow the gap by transforming the teacher education curriculum. the interpretivist approach was chosen, as it would provide the participants an opportunity to attach meaning to their real life, in this case being the relevance of the curriculum. a semi-structured interview schedule, based on the aim of research, was used for generating data because of the flexibility it gives the interviewer as well as the interviewee (de vos et al., 2005; ary, jacobs & razavieh, 1985). this method is advantageous in the sense that questions can be repeated and their meanings, where unclear, explained until they are understood by the interviewees. although the interviews were semi-structured, there was some degree of structure as the interview schedule, which guided the process of interviewing, was prepared in advance. according to de vos et al. (2005), the schedule provides a set of predetermined questions that might be used. the interview contained open-ended questions, directed and focused, with the aim of allowing participants to express themselves freely. the target population consisted of students registered for postgraduate certificate in education (pgce), lecturers teaching content and methodology from a comprehensive university in the eastern cape, south africa and teacher mentors from schools where pgce students were allocated for school-based experience (sbe). participants were purposively selected, ten pgce students, four lecturers (2 offering content and the other 2 curriculum studies) and 8 school mentors from four schools. this gave a total of 22 participants as i believed that they could offer insights into teachers’ perspectives on transforming teacher education curriculum for relevance to basic education for sustainable development and suggest how the existing gaps between the basic and teacher education curriculum could be closed. before the interviews, the purpose of the interview was clearly explained and all participants were assured that all information would be treated confidentially and used only for the research. permission was sought from the interviewees to record the conversation, the advantage being that the responses were recorded verbatim along with the added advantage of freeing the interviewer to participate in the dialogue rather than concentrating on taking notes. participants were interviewed in their places of work as this helped to keep the interviewees relaxed and comfortable. the use of quality criteria of credibility, transferability and conformability were applicable to this study (koul, 2008). according to bryman (2004: 275), the credibility of the findings entails ensuring that the research is carried out according to the canons of good practice. the transferability criterion refers to the orientation of the results to the contextual uniqueness and 78 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) significance of the aspect of the social world being studied. conformability refers to the degree to which others could confirm the results. it is a measure of how well the inquiry’s findings are supported by the data collected (lincoln & guba, 1985). data (interview transcripts) were given to a colleague (another researcher) who served as a peer reviewer to confirm whether the findings were supported by the data. in analysing the data, interviews were transcribed verbatim, data organised into manageable units, patterns searched in order to discover what was important to be learnt. words or phrases that appeared to be similar were grouped into the same categories and themes that emerged were grouped together. the following are the themes that emerged: • relevance of university curriculum to the school curriculum • use of teaching approaches/methodology • transforming the university curriculum 4. presentation and discussion of findings in this section, i present findings on the teachers’ perspectives on the extent to which there are gaps between basic and teacher education curriculum and how the teacher education curriculum could be transformed in order to be relevant to the basic education curriculum. in presenting the findings, i have extracted some verbatim statements to illustrate the views of the participants. when referring to verbatim statements, school mentors are referred to as m interviewee, university lecturers as l interviewee while teacher trainees are simply labelled as interviewee. the findings are presented in the themes that are listed in the methodology section. 5. relevance of university curriculum to the school curriculum the majority of participants agreed that there are noticeable gaps between the curriculum content offered in schools and the one offered in universities. six out of eight school mentors claimed that when teacher trainees visit their schools for sbe, they lacked the understanding of the content offered in schools. they further stated that the lack of content knowledge was worse with teacher trainees who were full time pgce students while those doing pgce parttime were better off because of their exposure to the school curriculum as they were already teachers in schools. arguable, the forgoing statement may be true because the part-time teacher trainees were already teaching the caps curriculum in schools. five of the eight school mentors expressed concern that there was no link between a school and university curriculum. the four lecturers who argued that keeping up with the basic school curriculum would create problems for higher education because a change in ministry comes with new changes, which would mean that the faculties of education would keep changing whenever there is a new development, did not support this view. we were still struggling with convincing everybody to understand ncs and make all possible attempts to align with it but now we are faced with new developments of caps. this creates problems for us and widens the gap in the curricula (l interviewee 4). although teacher trainees acknowledged the gap between basic education and the university curriculum, they also felt that the university should not delve deep into the school curriculum in neglect of the university curriculum. lecturers further argued that it could not be 79 cishe teachers’ perspectives on transforming teacher education curriculum ... easy for the university to keep pace with the school curriculum changes as they might not be budgeted for by the university, and therefore, such changes should not affect the university. carl (2005), who refers to the ever-changing curriculum in south africa, corroborates this view. interviews with all ten teacher trainees registered for pgce revealed that they understood that there were differences in the curriculum offered in schools and that offered in the university. in the light of that, they saw themselves as victims of the situation when they got to schools as they were caught between what is offered in the university and what they had to teach in schools during their sbe. in schools, teachers follow caps whereas here at the university we do something different. as i attend in two faculties, in education, some lecturers discuss with us the curriculum change but in the other faculty there is no mention of the curriculum changes at all (interviewee 9). when asked about the relevance of the content taught in the university to that offered in schools, eight out of ten teacher trainees did not see any relevance and that when in schools they had to adjust to the level of the learners since, according to moll (2004), the curriculum should be responsive to the learning needs of students. for me, what we are taught at the university is not relevant and does not help us. i do not understand why we are taught what does not develop us as future teachers so that we can develop learners in schools (interviewee 6) teacher trainees also highlighted some areas in which they saw a gap between basic education and university curriculum. they referred to the work schedule that was used in schools whereas they were not exposed to that at the university while teachers in schools expected them to prepare according to the work schedule and they struggled in doing that. reference was also made to the difference in literature, especially in isixhosa. when participants were asked to suggest what they would like to see happen, the majority suggested that there should be a link between the basic school and university curriculum. lecturers should communicate with schools and get work schedules to prepare teacher trainees accordingly. they should also get material used in schools and know what is being done in schools in order to spend some time exposing teacher trainees to what is offered in schools as illustrated in the material received from schools. the findings confirm that all participants were faced with a serious challenge of the everchanging curriculum, which widens the gap between the school and university curriculum. this shows that there is no link between the school and the university curriculum, which is evident through the noticeable gaps between the school curriculum and that offered in the university. this confirms the study by nyaumwe and mtetwa (2011) who stated that some student teachers used in their study attested to the fact that theory covered at university is not applicable to their practices in schools. although the challenges were evident, i want to believe that teacher trainees could not struggle with the content knowledge as it is of a lower level than the one offered at the university. i argue that they might have been lazy to read what was offered in schools in order to understand the curriculum content and prepare accordingly. 80 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) 6. use of teaching approaches/methodology the findings pertaining to the use of teaching approaches used by lecturers at the university and teachers in schools revealed different views of the participants. the approaches used by lecturers influenced the way teacher trainees taught in schools. all four lecturers alluded to the difficulty they experienced in equipping teacher trainees for using an outcomes-based approach (obe) in schools. they themselves could not use obe because the university context was not the same as that of schools; lecture halls have fixed furniture arrangement and as a result they could not move around and use group work because of the infrastructural arrangement whereas when teacher trainees got to schools they were expected to use obe. the view of the difficulty in using outcomes-based approaches to teaching confirms the statement by motala and pampalis (2002: 22) that little is done to align higher education curriculum to that of schools. in addition, jansen and christie (1999) assert that while an outcomes-based approach requires a different approach to teaching from a traditional content approach, the higher education institutions are still in favour of a traditional approach. based on this, i argue that lecturers did not equip students with methods relevant for their development. the two curriculum studies lecturers further alluded to the problems experienced in applying competences. according to them, although the applied competence of teachers’ subject and teaching knowledge is important, it became difficult to evaluate the effectiveness of this competence during sbe. they claimed that it became difficult and at times impossible for them to see each student more than three times during the entire sbe session because the schools were scattered and that they had other lectures to conduct on campus. based on this, they could not confirm if the teacher trainees’ applied competences were developed. this, according to my view, is one of the areas that need to be transformed. in addition, the level of supervision of teacher trainees on sbe was questionable. subject teachers who should act as mentors in schools were accused of rarely going to class with student teachers and that the university curriculum studies lecturers did not visit them more often. whether or not sbe contributes to the development of a particular student’s competence is usually uncertain and unknown (fraser et al., 2005). all ten teacher trainees stated that at the university they were taught different methods of teaching but most of the methods used in the university were not applicable to the school classroom. they also alluded to the fact that each lecturer used their own methods as they saw fit while the lecturers added that the methods they used related to the type of classroom arrangement and the lesson of the day. at the university, lecturers argued that the teacher trainees still used the telling method more than other methods. the telling method is teachercentred and yet when teacher trainees went out to schools for sbe, teachers in schools used the learner-centred strategies and expected them to use outcomes-based methods of teaching that were learner-centred. bernstein (2001) cautions of the limitations of the learnercentred approach as privileging students from good schools while at the same time undermines the development prospects of those from poor social backgrounds. it also transpired that although full-time pgce teacher trainees were exposed to different methods at the university, these were not necessarily outcomes-based. i argue that all they needed was to adapt these methods to be relevant in schools for their development and that of the learners in schools. failure to adapt the methods to be relevant confirms coetzee’s (2012) view that the graduates struggle to apply skills acquired from universities during their training. 81 cishe teachers’ perspectives on transforming teacher education curriculum ... on the contrary, school mentors stated that teacher trainees understood the methods of teaching although they found it difficult to use obe. one teacher had the following to say: there is no problem with methodology because we both discuss what needs to be done and how although they struggle in doing that. what worries me most is the content. these teacher trainees are not equipped to teach caps (t interviewee 4). the above does not only pertain to south africa. adeosun et al. (2009: 123) argued that for nigeria, while the lecturers agreed that adequate preparation is always given to teacher trainees before and during teaching practice, the teacher trainees showed that there is the need for improvement in lesson preparation, use of instructional materials, selection of instructional strategies, classroom organisation and management as well as the various disciplines. the findings showed that although the content and coverage of the curriculum is adequate, the teaching strategies needed plenty of improvements. 7. transforming the university curriculum all the lecturers (content and curriculum studies) acknowledged the curriculum transformation that is taking place but confessed that they were not clear about it. they argued that the content they offered did not only cater for schools as their main concern was to see teacher trainees attaining postgraduate qualifications in their relevant fields and as a result might be seen as not transforming the curriculum. they further argued that as long as teacher trainees registered for pgce and did subject disciplines in other faculties, it could not be possible to focus only on the school curriculum. the statement below shows that the lecturers could not keep pace with the school curriculum developments: don’t you think offering school curriculum only would disadvantage those teacher trainees who want to pursue their studies? i am saying this because if we focus on school curriculum only there is no way that the school content can be offered for three years, and these teacher trainees would not qualify to register for an honours degree. to me, this is a limitation because one cannot do anything else either than being a teacher. what if one wants to change a career in future? (l interviewee 1). the two lecturers involved with curriculum studies argued that they found themselves in a difficult situation as they saw their role as two-fold, first to consider the gaps they identified in the content offered in other faculties and secondly, to prepare teacher trainees to teach in schools while at the same time focussing on the applied competences. these lecturers also understood that teacher trainees taught in other faculties might not be exposed to the school curriculum at all, and although they accept this, they saw it as a serious challenge in the university’s faculty of education. until such time that our faculty offers content in-house, we will always experience problems because we do not have control of what is happening in other faculties. it is high time that teacher trainees registered in the education understand that they have to stay with their decision of having chosen to be a teacher (l interviewee 3). despite the lecturers’ view of offering a relevant curriculum, bertram (2012) was against this as he argued that a relevant curriculum might have unintended outcomes. the fact that the university does not offer the school curriculum to teacher trainees is problematic because it makes it difficult to keep up with the developments in the various curricula. despite the department’s envisaged improvement, the faculties of education do not 82 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) seem to be making strides in this regard. although the former minister of higher education and training, dr blade nzimande, in his keynote address to the stakeholder summit on higher education transformation in 2011 called on all universities to adapt the curriculum and teaching strategies that suit the student population, universities do not seem to have headed to the call by the former minister. doing this would need a change of the mind-set of academics in universities towards including the school curriculum in the training of teachers. 8. conclusion the study looked at teachers’ perspectives on transforming the teacher education curriculum so that it becomes relevant to basic education for sustainable development. it became evident from all the participants that there are noticeable gaps between the curriculum offered in schools and the one offered in universities and as a result, the teacher education curriculum should be transformed. this study has also revealed that faculties of education cannot keep up with all the curriculum changes taking place in the department of education as doing so would lead to some instability in the universities because the changes by the department take place without informing or involving the universities in advance. it is for this reason that universities should not jump into changing their curriculum whenever the department does. it was also clear that teacher education graduates struggle to apply the skills acquired in their teacher training in schools as they find that the pedagogical content knowledge and teaching methodologies exposed to in teacher training were not relevant for basic schooling. however, it is noteworthy that the curriculum has to be transformed for sustainable development. in conclusion, if south africa is to improve the quality of its education gradually through teacher education, then there is a need for curriculum realignment in the schools and universities as this would contribute to sustainable development. 9. recommendations based on the findings, i wish to suggest the following recommendations for the transformation of the teacher education curriculum so that it becomes relevant to basic education for sustainable development. • mounting the post-grade 12 academic year in order to bridge the ever-widening gap between the school and university curriculum. this would prepare learners for university learning while at the same assist school teachers and lecturers understand how they could ensure relevance at both levels. • while teacher trainees are prepared for sbe, university lecturers should expose them to the relevant caps documents so that they understand the pedagogical content knowledge offered in schools. • microteaching sessions in which teacher trainees are exposed to a classroom situation should be conducted before teacher trainees go out for sbe. this will be an opportunity for constructive feedback from lecturers and their classmates. • everyone should be involved in curriculum transformation as scott (2009) quoted by vorster (2016) suggests that transforming the curriculum requires engaging students so that they do not feel alienated. 83 cishe teachers’ perspectives on transforming teacher education curriculum ... references adeosun, o., oni, a., oladipo, a., onuoha, s. & yakassai, m. 2009. teacher training quality and effectiveness in the context of basic education: an examination of primary education studies (pes) programme in two colleges of education in nigeria. journal of international cooperation in education, 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responsiveness: the anatomy of a concept. in h. griesel (ed.). curriculum responsiveness case studies in higher education. pretoria: south african universities’ vice-chancellors’ association (sauvca). motala, e. & pampallis, j. 2002. the state, education and equity in post-apartheid southafrica: the impact of state policies. england: ashgate publishing limited. nyaumwe, l.j. & mtetwa, d.k. 2011. developing a cognitive theory from student teachers’ post-lesson reflective dialogues on secondary school mathematics. south african journal of education, 31(1), 145-159. https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v31n1a406 ogude, n., nel, h. & oosthuizen, m. 2005. the challenge of curriculum responsiveness. pretoria: council on higher education, media and publications. vitikka, e. krokfors, l. & hurmerinta, e. 2012. the finnish national core curriculum structure and development. miracle of education, 83–96. vorster, j. 2016. curriculum in the context of transformation: reframing traditional understanding and practices. grahamstown: chertl, rhodes university. wood, g. 1992. schools that work: america’s most innovative public education programs. new york, new york: dutton. https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v31n1a406 ole_link1 _goback perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 121 helping learners think more hopefully about life after school: the usefulness of participatory visual strategies to make career education more contextually relevant suegnet smit lesley wood marinda neethling learners living in challenging socio-economic circumstances face limited opportunities for further education and employment. in this context, formal career guidance which merely provides information about specific jobs and how to access them may be of little use. this article explores the usefulness of participatory visual strategies as a pedagogical tool for teachers to help learners think more critically, realistically and hopefully about their future life opportunities. analysed through a resilience lens, findings indicated that the strategies inspired hope in learners; helped them identify assets and barriers in their social ecologies; develop a sense of agency and responsibility for deciding on their futures; and care more for other people, all of which will help them make more constructive choices for life after school. the findings might help teachers make their career education more relevant for children who live in contexts of adversity. keywords: career guidance; life orientation; mind maps; photo voice; resilience theory; socio-economic challenges introduction learners in under-resourced rural and township schools in south africa often receive inferior schooling. the racially based inequities that existed during apartheid marinda neethling faculty of education sciences, north-west university e-mail: marinda.neethling@ nwu.ac.za suegnet smit faculty of education sciences, north-west university e-mail: suegnet.smit@nwu. ac.za lesley wood faculty of education sciences, north-west university e-mail: lesley.wood@nwu. ac.za perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 122 (kallaway, 2002) have not been eradicated in post-apartheid south africa (ndimande, 2012) due to a complex interplay of structural, financial, social, cultural and political reasons. according to the minister of education (motshekga, 2010:1), the education of the “african child ... is in crisis.” even if learners in contexts of poverty do manage to finish school and matriculate, high unemployment rates lessen their chances of procuring a job, while the prohibitive costs of further education preclude them from pursuing further studies (van aardt, 2012). this can lead to school leavers’ losing hope and motivation for their future (yu, 2013), which heightens the risk of turning to negative life choices and coping strategies (duke, borowsky, pettingell & mcmorris, 2011). although education should do more than just prepare learners to become economically productive (vally & motala, 2013), it is clear that children in less-resourced schools are at a disadvantage with regard to being prepared for study or work after school. the life context of youth shapes their future aspirations, degree of optimism and hopefulness concerning education and occupation possibilities. consequently, disadvantaged youth tend to be less optimistic about their future than their more economically advantaged counterparts (purtell & mcloyd, 2013). this might lead to a lack of hope and purpose in their lives (burrow, o’dell & hill, 2010), perpetuating despair, reinforcing the negative cycle of poverty, and ultimately leading to more barriers to effective life choices (donald, lazarus & lolwana, 2012). however, in the subject life orientation, life skills education can help learners become more resilient in the face of adverse socio-economic contexts. life orientation teachers can, in the learning area careers and career choices, help learners imagine a different future and see their lives through different eyes (polanyni, 1958) rather than focus on the barriers and problems related to their contexts of poverty. as life orientation teacher educators we wondered how we could achieve the above in the career and career choices section of life orientation, as outlined in the national curriculum assessment policy statement (caps) (department of basic education [dbe], 2011). we wanted to explore how specific participatory, visual strategies could enable learners to think more hopefully about their future through the identification of personal and environmental assets and barriers. we reasoned that the creation of concrete visual artefacts would facilitate critical discussion about how they could respond in a resilient way to structural adversities that limit their life opportunities. this article reports on a study that we conducted as a community engagement project with learners from rural high schools to explore how we could use such strategies to help learners recognise and maximise personal, family and community assets to stimulate hope for the future, enthusiasm to plan and to take action (ebersöhn & eloff, 2006). by adopting an asset-based approach rather than focusing on the problems that are a part of their daily lives, we hoped to raise awareness of how they might buffer the multiple adversities in their social ecologies through using both personal and environmental assets. we explain in depth the theoretical underpinnings of our practice, before outlining our methodological helping learners think more hopefully about life after school: the usefulness of participatory visual strategies to make career education more contextually relevant suegnet smit, lesley wood & marinda neethling 123 approach. we then discuss the themes that emerged in relation to current literature on resilience and coping. we claim that engaging in these pedagogical exercises helped the participants to identify protective and risk factors, both in themselves and in the environment, to help them think more critically and realistically about how they could use contextually relevant resources to assist them in making constructive choices for life after school. we conclude by highlighting the significance of our findings for making the teaching of career-related objectives of life orientation more contextually relevant for learners from under-resourced schools and communities. the problems and potential of life orientation to prepare learners for life after school life orientation as a subject proposes a holistic approach to promoting personal, social, intellectual, emotional, spiritual, motor and physical growth and development to create learners who are well-adjusted, self-confident, hopeful and can contribute to “a democratic society, productive economy and improved quality of life” (dbe, 2011:8). the six topics covered in life orientation are: the development of the self in society; social and environmental responsibility; democracy and human rights; careers and career choices; study skills and physical education (dbe, 2011). given that life orientation is only allocated two hours per week on the school timetable, one of which should be dedicated to physical education, it is a tall order for teachers to cover all the topics in a meaningful way. the challenge is even greater for schools that are struggling to provide quality education owing to historical and material disadvantage (mahlangu, 2011), where youth are likely to be faced with socio-economic challenges which tend to limit their life chances. teachers tend to stick strictly to curriculum content and might not always recognise and consider the barriers that arise from the context in which teaching and learning take place (mahlangu, 2011). while the content and outcomes of the careers and career choices section of the curriculum stress the need to contextualise the learning, the problem lies in the fact that many teachers are struggling to do this due to time limitations and/or a lack of understanding of how a more interactive pedagogical process could help achieve this. although there are many arguments as to why life orientation is not effectively taught in schools (see, for example, rooth, 2005; christiaans, 2006; van deventer & van niekerk, 2008), it remains the only opportunity at the moment for learners to specifically receive career education. most schools follow a one-size-fits-all approach where career guidance consists of merely providing information on the many careers available. in under-resourced schools, in particular, the learner receives little opportunity to explore critical and creative thinking about overcoming the financial and social barriers that might limit their career choices (maree, ebersöhn & molepo, 2006). it is not enough for teachers to merely provide information about different careers and/or how to apply for access to higher education when learners do not have the finances or social capital (krishna, perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 124 2013) to follow up on these career choices (stead, els & fouad, 2004). in such contexts, there is a need to focus less on knowledge about specific courses and how to apply for them and more on developing resilient attitudes and problem-solving capacities of learners to help them find creative solutions to reaching their goals. we thus argue that there is a need for teachers to think of alternative ways of presenting career guidance to help learners who live in socio-economic challenging circumstances to flourish in spite of adversity (mampane & bouwer, 2011). a different career guidance approach is needed to supplement general information and to serve as a strategy to incite critical thinking and hope for the future, because “hope, purpose, and a meaningful life” enhance well-being, positive goal orientation and good life choices (duke et al., 2011: 87). developing resilient coping through an asset-based approach to life planning given the socio-economic adversity that is a daily part of the lives of youth living in contexts of poverty, it is important to increase their positive coping strategies through the development of resilient coping skills (mampane & bouwer, 2011) with regard to planning for a successful future. the asset-based approach acknowledges the social context from which problems arise (eloff & ebersöhn, 2001) and focuses on abilities and strengths, thus opening up opportunity for different and empowering interventions by teachers. assets are intrapersonal resources (eloff & ebersöhn, 2001) which learners have at their disposal, yet they mostly do not use them “purposefully or mindfully” (glasgow centre for population health, 2011: 1) or realise the positive and strengthening effect they could have on their choices if used effectively (king & madsen, 2007). identification of barriers remains an essential part of the asset-based process (eloff & ebersöhn, 2001), but if problems are the main focus, it can lead to despair and hopelessness, rather than enabling learners to find ways to overcome barriers (king & madsen, 2007). because the asset-based approach contrasts the deficiency-based approach and highlights the importance of considering the influences of the social context (eloff & ebersöhn, 2001) on both the barriers and assets, this approach enables the learner to identify protective factors which can be used as resources that strengthen their coping abilities. this, in turn, fosters resilience (jackson, firtko & edenborough, 2007) as learners are able to better access and use existing assets within environmental systems (ungar, liebenberg, dudding, armstrong & van de vijver, 2013). ungar et al.’s (2013: 151) socio-ecological view of resilience is culturally and contextually based and views it as a product of the interactions among external risk factors, protective factors, a person’s internal resources and their capacity to “navigate their way to the resources they need during crises, and their ability to negotiate for these resources to be provided in meaningful ways”. although we helping learners think more hopefully about life after school: the usefulness of participatory visual strategies to make career education more contextually relevant suegnet smit, lesley wood & marinda neethling 125 acknowledge that being aware of assets and risk factors is not enough to ensure resilience, it is a first step in helping learners think critically about how they could develop personal resilience and negotiate access to and use of helping ecologies. we also agree with ungar (2008) that resilience develops from a partnership between the individual and their social ecologies, and that the latter should take the major responsibility for provision of resources. in this case, the teacher should provide an enabling environment for learners to think critically about their life after school in the context of their social ecologies. teachers are perfectly able to influence resilient coping in learners, given professional guidance (wood, theron & mayaba, 2012a, 2012b). consequently, we wanted to explore how we could use participatory visual strategies to help learners understand the influence of their personal and structural risk and protective factors (king & madsen, 2007) on making constructive life choices, both now and in the future. we also wanted to incite hope, as an important indicator of personal resilience (larson, 2013; ungar & liebenburg, 2011). when learners realise there is hope, life becomes more meaningful, which increases wellness and buffers against negative coping strategies (duke et al., 2011). the following section describes the methodology and process we employed in this endeavour. methodology we were guided by a constructivist paradigm, because we wanted participants to construct and represent their own knowledge, following a qualitative approach (clark, vicki & creswell 2010). we used availability sampling (leedy & ormrod, 2010) due to logistical factors. participants were four male and nine female grade 12 learners aged 18 to 22 who were attending additional classes in a course on life skills presented by us as part of a community engagement process. data generation involved qualitative data from: participatory visual methods (clark, 2010); mind mapping (butler-kisber & poldma, 2010); photo voice (wang, 1999); and a group discussion which we recorded (niewenhuis, 2010). the process of visual representation of assets and barriers enhances the potential for critical reflection and the possibility of change (cleland & wyborn, 2010). visual methods are helpful in promoting the construction of culturally and contextually relevant knowledge (wang & burris, 1997). having something concrete to discuss also encourages collaborative learning among participants (eison, 2010). the group discussion created a space where participants could talk about their respective visual representations in order to enhance deeper understanding of their life circumstances and the discussion of complex, personal issues (mkandawire-valhmu & stevens, 2009). see table 1 for the data generation strategies and process. perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 126 data generation strategies process purpose mind mapping learners plotted their perceived barriers and assets concerning their future career on a mind map (wheeldon, 2011). to help learners to visualize barriers and assets to increase their self-knowledge about influences on their future careers and life chances. to produce a visual representation to facilitate discussion and deeper learning photo voice concept of photo-voice (wang, 1999) explained to learners. disposable cameras were issued to 13 participants. instructions for use and ethics of taking photographs were explained (wang, 1999). a prompt was given to each participant to take at least 12 photographs representing their barriers and/or assets with regard to their future career (palibroda, krieg, murdoch & havelock, 2009; wang, 1999). photographs printed and handed back to learners. each participant had to choose at least 2 photographs to discuss in group. each photograph was numbered and they had to write a narrative to explain it according to the showed method (see wang, 1999): what do you see? what is really happening? how does this relate to our life? why does this problem/issue or strength exist? how can we be empowered by our understanding? what can we do to address this problem/ issue? (adapted from wang, 1999). learners had to write a short narrative on their experience of taking the photographs. group discussion an unstructured group discussion (nieuwenhuis, 2010) where participants were facilitated to discuss their mind maps, and photographs and narratives with each other. for learners to share ideas, elaborate on own experiences and engage in dialogue to promote deep learning (palibroda, krieg, murdoch & havelock, 2009). to deepen their understanding of their own choices in terms of career and life planning to raise awareness of positive coping strategies to serve as a buffer against the barriers they envisaged. helping learners think more hopefully about life after school: the usefulness of participatory visual strategies to make career education more contextually relevant suegnet smit, lesley wood & marinda neethling 127 table 1: interventions as data generation strategies we conducted a thematic analysis of the qualitative data (mouton, 2001) to identify emergent themes, guided by our knowledge of indices, which indicate resilienceenhancing factors (lee, kwong, cheung, ungar & cheung, 2010). trustworthiness of the data was ensured by verification and triangulation (leedy & ormrod, 2010) of verbatim quotations of participants from the mind maps, narratives and discussion (mcmillan & schumacher, 2010). the three researchers independently coded the data and then compared these to reach consensus in order to ensure that themes were consistent and reliable (nieuwenhuis, 2010). findings were also compared against relevant literature (cohen, manion & morrison, 2011). the research was granted ethical clearance by the ethics committee of the university where we work (nwu-00022-13-s2), indicating that it adhered to the strict ethical requirements of the institution. participants gave permission for their photographs to be used for research purposes. each participant signed a consent form which contained full information about the study. participants were made aware of the ethics of taking photographs, namely to not intrude on other people’s privacy and to obtain written consent if they photographed others (leedy & ormrod, 2010). discussion of findings four main themes emerged from the data analysis: hope for the future; relationships as assets and barriers to effective life planning; sense of responsibility and agency to plan own future; and increase in empathic awareness and willingness to help others. the findings will be discussed by elaborating on each theme supported by relevant literature, verbatim quotations from the mind maps (mm), photo narratives (pn) and verbatim quotations from the group discussion (gd), as well as visual evidence. theme 1: hope for the future hope is paramount in the development of resilience (masten & wright, 1998). we understand hope in similar terms to havel (1990:181): “hope … is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out”. our aim was not to instil in learners a false sense of hope that they could easily achieve their career aspirations, but to assist them in understanding that, in spite of facing many barriers, they also have many assets they can draw on to help them make useful future life choices and explore alternative choices. hope was expressed in feelings of optimism, expectation and determination, specifically in the data pertaining to the photo voice exercise and the group discussion. although some photographs portrayed an image of a barrier, and narratives often started with explaining the barrier, the showed method (see table 1) (wang, 1999) enabled participants to create positive meaning about that barrier. figure 1 illustrates this point: perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 128 figure 1: creating positive meaning about barriers the taking of the photographs seemed to help the participants think more critically and hopefully about their future choices as indicated by the following extracts from the photo voice narratives: i did not only imagine my future, i pictured it, and this helped me to think more (pn6). taking this photographs [sic] helped me to think about what i want and how it will be possible for me to achieve my dreams ... my future is waiting for me (pn11). the mind map exercise enabled participants to identify the barriers inherent in their career choices: my future is dim considering financing my studies (mm8). worried if i’ll get a bursary (mm2). but, at the same time, the visualising of their assets helped them develop a more resilient attitude: i am able to overcome all my challenges and always have a little more hope for the future (mm8) (fig. 2). helping learners think more hopefully about life after school: the usefulness of participatory visual strategies to make career education more contextually relevant suegnet smit, lesley wood & marinda neethling 129 figure 2: example of a mind map (p8) these activities seemed to help learners become more hopeful about their futures and thus able to see possibilities for success. hope is not only reflected in people’s personal agency to reach their goals, but also in the way they invent to seek alternative possibilities and plan to reach these goals and dreams in the face of often severe adversity (herbert, 2011). the youth who participated in these exercises identified many barriers to their proposed career choices, but were able to remain hopeful, and indicated a belief in their agency to minimise those barriers through mobilising assets: i see it as a barrier because alcohol is mostly sold in local bars over the counter to teenagers. it is a very difficult scene in life to get out of because we are exposed to alcohol and other substances, but in my mind map i chose to specifically concentrate on alcohol because it can be a barrier in my progression in achieving my dream because it distracts me and it makes me become ill disciplined. but i believe that highlighting this can also help other people, because it’s a lot of us actually who are really affected by this. so i believe that if we can strive to becoming very disciplined and avoiding this, this barrier can actually help us in other factors, which can be our assets to attain our dreams (gd:9). a good example of showing resilience through expressing hope is portrayed in figure 3. coins were used as a symbol to express the barrier of a lack of tuition fees. the participant took a photograph of coins, bronze coins, symbolising the barrier, with silver coins on the top which symbolises hope in the face of adversity: perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 130 figure 3: resilience expressed through hope these are simple coins to represent lack of tuition fee. they act as barrier, because my parents do not have a lot of money. this image best presents my life as a whole, even though i have dark elements that hamper my dream to the best of my ability i will shine as bright as i am to make something out of myself. it is your choice to sit and mope around or take action (pn1). hope is goal-oriented thinking, it incites a sense of purpose that guides human life and drives an individual to accomplish and achieve, which positively contributes to all the dimensions of development and well-being (burrow et al., 2010). purpose serves as a stimulator for realising hope in times of difficulties (burrow et al., 2010; snyder, 2002). our knowledge about the importance of hope in building resilience in the face of adversity guided us in the design of these pedagogical interventions. we argue that, through this process, not only personal, but also environmental protective factors could be explored. if learners are made aware of internal and external protective resources, they can be empowered to strengthen them and so build resilience (henderson, 2013). theme 2: relationships as assets and barriers to effective life planning participant relationships with immediate and extended family, friends, teachers and their religion indicated a strong sense of kinship, affinity, connection and bonding. helping learners think more hopefully about life after school: the usefulness of participatory visual strategies to make career education more contextually relevant suegnet smit, lesley wood & marinda neethling 131 figure 4: extracts from participants’ mind maps perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 132 healthy relationships are a key factor in the successful transitions to adulthood and careers (the youth development institute, 2002) and is an important protective factor in resilience (ungar, 2011). the mind map and photo voice exercises helped participants to visualise this important source of support. although families provided emotional support, their economic status was perceived as a barrier, since the issue of poverty is interlinked with the family. participants indicated a lack of finances and limited access to material resources as barriers, factors that negatively influence resilience (lee et al., 2010). yet, the narratives indicate that this very poverty was able to be reframed as a motivation and did not stop their dreaming about their future opportunities. they seem to accept poverty as part and parcel of their lives, yet also realise that they can sidestep it and find their own pathways to solve the problem: ... we will get past it (pn3). i have a picture of a, of an empty wallet, which also signifies or represents lack of tuition funds. well in my case, i took it as a broad … problem, not only for myself, but for other people as well. so i believe that lack of funds also discourages people to actually take their school work seriously, or to actually dream out of the box. so this can greatly become a problem, but i am actually working hard … to attaining a bursary. so this is … a barrier and quite an asset as well, because it helps me attain better academy performances (gd9). access to material resources is an important factor in enhancing resilience in youth (lee et al., 2010; ungar, 2008). poverty has far-reaching effects on youth in south africa because, despite living in a democratic country, inadequate and unequal access to education is a reality (donald et al., 2012). it was therefore important for us to stimulate thinking about how such barriers can be reduced. supportive relationships with friends were also identified by participants: they, they always give me positive advices (gd4). i have an asset of a best friend who always supports me no matter what is happening (gd1). even the visualisation of negative friendships as barriers had a positive effect, as it helped participants to realise how undesirable relationships can influence them to adopt unconstructive coping responses. having to identify and represent these negative influences as barriers allowed them to reframe these relationships in a more resilience-enhancing way, using individual assets to offset the negatives: most of my friends have a negative mind set and always want to play and not study. they do not enjoy books and always want to party and have fun where i am more interested in learning more. i am a hard worker and i perform to the best of my abilities (mm8). helping learners think more hopefully about life after school: the usefulness of participatory visual strategies to make career education more contextually relevant suegnet smit, lesley wood & marinda neethling 133 it is important that youth establish positive peer relations, because these increase hope about future life opportunities (nguyen, cohen & hines, 2012). adolescent friendships are particularly important, because the learners begin to rely on friendships for social support and as a resource for self-exploration (cunningham, hurley, foney & hayes, 2002). this helps them develop a sense of self or personal identity and social cohesion, an important factor in the development of resilient coping (ungar, 2008). in line with findings that stress the significance of cultural assets in the development of resilience in south african youth (ferrari, 2011; theron & theron, 2010), spiritual relationships were identified as a strong asset. faith provided many of the youth with the strength and motivation to hope for a future: i believe in god. he helps me achieve in life. i stay grounded and discipline (pn7). my church encourages me to do my best and stay away from fraudulent activities (pn14). everything happens for a reason and we should not question god’s ways (gd2). figure 5: the importance of religion as protective factor perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 134 spiritual well-being and resilience are interrelated and favourably influence positive youth development (smith, webber & defrain, 2013). taking the photographs and writing about them helped the learners clarify the significance of this important cultural asset. theme 3: sense of responsibility and agency to plan their future the sense of agency to affect change positively is a factor that contributes to resilience (ungar, 2008). the data revealed a strong sense of ambition and purpose in the participants. creating the mind maps and photo narratives allowed the participants to think about their role in shaping their own future. they became aware that their attitudes and actions determine their life chances. they articulated a sense of willpower and determination that accentuate a strong sense of purpose, prominent in the photo narratives and discussion. our understanding can empower us by showing us the real world, what happens in the real world. our understanding can empower us by making us face reality and find ways in which we can change them (pn11). in figure 6 the participants show personal agency and acceptance of own responsibility: figure 6: example of acceptance of personal responsibility (pn11) helping learners think more hopefully about life after school: the usefulness of participatory visual strategies to make career education more contextually relevant suegnet smit, lesley wood & marinda neethling 135 the visual pedagogical exercises allowed participants to identify and explicitly voice their agency, thus reinforcing an internal locus of control, an important factor in the development of resilience (ungar, 2008). hope reflects a sense of personal agency needed to reach goals. agency leads to goal-oriented thinking which, in turn, stimulates a sense of purpose and self-awareness (burrow et al., 2010). goal directedness enhances self-efficacy and motivation (schunk, pintrich & meece, 2010); hope is motivational thinking, goal-oriented thinking is linked to hope, and hope, in turn, strengthens personal agency (burrow et al., 2010). the resilience-enhancing factors are therefore interlinked (duke et al., 2011) and can only really be discussed separately, as we have done here, for theoretical purposes. theme 4: increase in empathic awareness and willingness to help others empathy is an indication of strength and, as such, a necessary asset for surviving and thriving in any environment (anghel, amas & hicks, 2010). for many of the participants, these exercises enabled them to develop insight into the lives of others, resulting in feelings of compassion and warmth towards them, as well as inciting a feeling of belonging. participants voiced understanding of others with the same problems and situations as themselves: so this is really an emotional session for me, but it is also encouraging. and i think i’ll have to find space on my mind map to put that as an asset also (gd9). this extract makes it clear that the participant was starting to realise that the mind map is a useful and dynamic tool that he could use to continually remind himself of his assets. the following comments indicate how the exercises made participants aware of their desire to help and support: so, uhm, we are here for you and we are all here to share this with you (gd3). this photo made me remember how much i love to help people (pn5). youth have such a strong urge to satisfy the need for unity and acceptance that it can outweigh ties to church, school, family or the community (cunningham et al., 2002). it is important that they understand the self and the consequences their actions might have on others (burrow et al., 2010). empathy also promotes emotional resilience, which strengthens supportive relationships and cohesion, both resilience-enhancing factors (ungar, 2008). the implications of using visual strategies to orient learners for life despite the adversities that participants faced, using visual mapping and photo voice helped them unlock latent resilience. guided by an asset-based approach and resilience theory, we designed our interventions to facilitate learners to identify the risk and protective factors that could have a positive or negative impact on their perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 136 choices for life after school. we presented evidence to support our claim that the visualisation of these assets and barriers would encourage learners to think how they could not only maximise internal and external protective factors, but also use these to minimise risk factors. on an individual level, the findings suggest that the strategies did indeed help to make learners more aware of their own agency and to think more hopefully about their future. visualising assets helped them realise that they can exercise agency to build on these to improve their life opportunities, despite the adversities they face (ungar, 2008). furthermore, visualising assets helped them to articulate their strengths and thus build a more positive self-concept, which is fundamental for being able to respond resiliently (ungar, 2008) to life’s challenges. the sharing of their visual artefacts with other learners also enabled them to develop a sense of empathy and cohesion with others. the visual artefacts and narratives can provide teachers with valuable information to help them make their teaching more relevant to circumstances within the lives of the learners. the mind map and photo voice exercises revealed rich information about the lives of the participants, and presented an opportunity for educators to gain knowledge and insight into learners’ lives, their problems and their contextual circumstances. if done at the beginning of the academic year, the teacher could plan the career guidance lessons to “ensure that children acquire and apply knowledge and skills in ways that are meaningful to their own lives” (dbe, 2011: 4). the participants enjoyed doing the exercises and sharing their artefacts with others, which could deepen their engagement in a subject which they currently perceive to have little value for their lives (jacobs, 2011). conclusion we argue that the use of mind maps and photo voice, followed by a discussion of the artefacts, allowed us to attain our aim of exploring how we could influence learners to not only think more critically, realistically and hopefully about their future life opportunities, but also incite enthusiasm to take responsibility to maximise personal, family and community assets. while we are cognisant of the fact that the life success of youth depends to a large extent on having adequate social structures in place (ungar, 2008), in cases where such support is lacking, the development of personal resilience (jackson et al., 2007) becomes increasingly important. we suggest that the inclusion of such participatory visual strategies in life orientation methodology tuition at both preand in-service teacher education programmes will help make instruction in career guidance, and life orientation in general, more applicable to the lives of learners. this will, in turn, promote active engagement in thinking critically and realistically about their future. these findings are not only relevant for the south african context, but are equally applicable on a global scale wherever youth have to overcome significant adversity with regard to 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witwatersrand e-mail: anthony.essien@wits.ac.za tel: 011 717 3408 examining opportunities for the development of interacting identities within pre-service teacher education mathematics classrooms anthony a essien in any pre-service mathematics teacher education classroom, multiple identities are co-constructed simultaneously through the practices in which such classrooms engage. these multiple identities, which are interrelated and in constant interaction, include becoming a teacher of mathematics, becoming learners of mathematics, becoming learners of mathematical practices and becoming proficient english users for the purpose of teaching/learning mathematics and, finally, in multilingual contexts, becoming teachers of mathematics in multilingual classrooms. in this paper, i explore how classroom engagement supports the development of these interacting identities within pre-service teacher education classrooms. i use a developing framework, which i describe in this paper, to delineate each of these identities in four pre-service teacher education classrooms in two universities in south africa. a notable finding was that, even though the teacher educators in the study were aware of their context of teaching, the identities that were projected through their classroom practices were mostly those that inducted the pre-service teachers (psts) into becoming learners of mathematics content. there were very limited practices aimed at inducting pre-service teachers into becoming teachers of mathematics and even more limited opportunities for the development of the identity of becoming teachers of mathematics in multilingual classrooms. recommendations are made for the design of pre-service teacher education programmes. keywords: pre-service teachers, identity in practice, teacher education, mathematics classrooms examining opportunities for the development of interacting identities within pre-service teacher education mathematics classrooms anthony a essien 63 introduction in recent years, researchers and educationists have paid increased attention to multilingualism as a phenomenon which relates positively to cognitive development, flexibility and the promotion of academic achievement in learners (adler, 2001; agnihotri, 1995; conteh, 2000; cummins, 1979; gorgorio & planas, 2001; halai, 2004; moschkovich, 1999; setati, 2002, 2005; setati & adler, 2000). in south africa, where most of the classes are multilingual, one of the greatest challenges facing teacher education institutions and teacher educators is how to prepare pre-service teachers to deal with the complexity of teaching effectively in multilingual mathematics classrooms (young, 1995). in this regard, research in multilingual mathematics classrooms in general, and in south africa in particular, has focused mainly on the language practices, the dilemmas and the complexity which in-service teachers deal with while teaching in mathematics multilingual classrooms (see adler, 2001; du plessis & elsie, 2003; setati, 2002, 2005; setati & adler, 2000). there is a dearth of research into how pre-service teachers are prepared at universities to deal with the complexity of teaching multilingual mathematics learners (especially at secondary level) whose first language is not the language of learning and teaching (lolt). in general, teacher education research on mathematics education, thus far, has rarely focused on multilingual mathematics education, and research on multilingual mathematics education has hardly focused on teacher education. most teachers teach in multilingual classrooms in south africa, and research in south africa (adler, 2001; setati, 2002, 2005; setati & adler, 2000) has shown that learning and teaching mathematics to multilingual learners is complex and that teachers grapple with dealing with this complexity. adler (1995:265) expresses this complexity in these words: … the dynamics of teaching and learning mathematics in multilingual classrooms is not simply about proficiency in the language of learning; nor is it only about access to the (english) mathematics register; nor should it be reduced to social diversity and social relations in the classrooms. these three, while analytically separable, are in constant interplay in the cultural processes that constitute school mathematics learning. hence, teaching mathematics in multilingual classrooms involves the teacher’s being confronted by situations constituted by the above triple interplay. chekaraou (2009), who investigated teachers’ appropriation of a bilingual educational reform policy in two schools in niger, found that pre-service teachers who were enculturated into the intricacies of using different languages to teach during their pre-service training found it easier to accommodate different languages in multilingual classrooms. on the other hand, pre-service teachers who were not trained for bilingual classrooms and were not exposed to ways in which to accommodate the different languages in a multilingual classroom found it difficult to accommodate different languages when they began to teach in schools. therefore, it is not given that pre-service teachers would develop competence in teaching in multilingual contexts by the mere fact that they sit in multilingual classes during their training programme. this evokes a need to perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 64 explore how teacher training institutions attend to the needs of pre-service teachers who are being trained for teaching in multilingual classrooms. this paper uses data from a wider study (essien, 2013) to explore one of such needs (in four pst education classrooms at two universities in south africa), namely the opportunities which pre-service teachers are afforded for the development of identities pertinent to the teaching of mathematics in multilingual contexts. hence, the research questions that this paper seeks to explore is: what facets of mathematics teacher training do teacher educators pay attention to or are developed in preservice teacher education mathematics classrooms and how can these facets inform pre-service teacher education in south africa? the study is grounded in wenger’s (1998) notion of identity in practice. a thread that runs through this paper, based on this notion, is the assumption that the pattern of language used by teachers and students within and about a particular content area (mathematics in this case) would determine the nature of enculturation into the discipline and would, invariably, lead to the internalisation of the ability to engage in discursive mathematical practices in particular kinds of ways (brilliant-mills, 1994). wenger’s notion of identity in practice wenger (1998:5) defines the notion of identity as a way of talking about how learning changes who we are and of creating personal histories of becoming in the context of our communities. wenger describes identity as a “constant becoming”, as trajectories which are not necessarily linear and which have no fixed destination. for wenger (1998:215), identity is acquired and shaped in the engagement in practices of the community, and learning transforms “who we are and what we can do … it is not just an accumulation of skills and information, but a process of becoming a certain person”. this line of thinking resonates with the later work of mayer (1999:5) on the importance of teacher identity development: learning to teach for the preservice teachers involve[s] [the] interplay of teaching role and teaching identity ... learning to teach can be learning the skills and knowledge to perform the functions of a teacher or it can be developing a sense of self as teacher. in the former, one is “being the teacher”, whereas in the latter, one is “becoming a teacher”. wenger (1998) notes that identity is in part a trajectory of where members of a community (as a collective and as individuals) have been, where they currently are, and where they are going. examining this three-tiered trajectory of identity would entail following pre-service teachers as students, as student teachers and then as novice teachers. it was not the aim of this study to do all these and so the methodological approach does not focus directly on this three-tiered trajectory. and given that data were collected only during the time interval in which a mathematics topic/concept was addressed in class, the study focused only on the second part of examining opportunities for the development of interacting identities within pre-service teacher education mathematics classrooms anthony a essien 65 wenger’s identity trajectory – where members are currently, while bearing in mind where they are going. an approach for characterising identities within pre-service teacher education classrooms in exploring identity within wenger’s framework, several aspects of identity could become a focal point. in the present paper, i restrict my investigation of identity to how classroom engagement in practices provides a window for what the pre-service mathematics teacher pays attention to and reifies as importance indices in preservice teacher preparation. since it is not the aim of this study to explore how the label “mathematics teacher” is given form in classroom setting in schools (by the pre-service teacher), the study does not investigate whether pre-service teachers have formed an identity, but explores the opportunities that exist for the formation of what i have referred to here as interacting identities. unlike teaching mathematics to mathematics majors students, teaching mathematics to pre-service teachers is much more complex because of the different facets involved in teacher education. in addition to being knowledgeable about the content they will teach, they also need to know how to teach it in context, and have knowledge about instructional practices. a number of authors have argued for the integration of mathematics and language development in multilingual classrooms (adler, 1995; barwell, barton & setati, 2007; smit & van eerde, 2011). these authors have argued against avoiding linguistic aspects of teaching and learning mathematics and for paying attention to the language needs of learners/students in multilingual classrooms. this is why, as part of the identities involved in teaching and learning mathematics in multilingual pre-service classrooms, it was critical for this study to also examine how each teacher education classroom community pays attention to the language needed for mathematical learning. to this effect, the present methodological approach allows for the analysis of evidence present in the different classrooms in support of the interacting identities of becoming teachers of mathematics (btm), becoming teachers of mathematics in multilingual classrooms (btmmc), becoming learners of mathematics content (blmc), becoming learners of mathematical practices (blmp) and becoming proficient english users (bpeu) for the purpose of teaching/learning mathematics. this notion of interacting identities was the pivot upon which the construction of identities was analysed in this study. the table below provides more detail about the codes that were used and examples from teacher education classroom observation transcripts. the codes were developed both a priori (from wenger’s theory and from literature) and a posteriori (from data). the emphasis on “becoming” rather than “being” must be noted. this is in line with wenger’s notion of identity as a constant becoming as discussed earlier. perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 66 table 1: descriptors of interacting identities in pre-service teacher education classrooms guiding question identification questions code and descriptors example from transcript (indicators) how does classroom engagement support interacting identities? what evidence exists in support of interacting identities of: becoming teachers of mathematics? [btm] [allusion is made to the teaching of mathematics] te: and this word “probable” [writes: “probable”] you know if a child had to hear this word for the first time, how could you as a teacher explain what probable [in relation to probability] means? becoming teachers of mathematics in multilingual classrooms? btmmc [when attention is paid to teaching and learning in multilingual contexts] te: i want you to discuss this concept [probability] in your home languages in your group. after that, one member of the group will tell us what it means in a language of your choice and the direct translation. becoming learners of mathematics content? blmc [when the mathematics concept is the main focus of attention] te: an activity that is taking place or will take place is called an event. becoming learners of mathematical practices? blmp [when preservice teachers are taught, for example, the formal definition of a maths concept, this is blmc, but when they are “taught” the importance of defining in the teaching and learning of math, this is blmp] te: i am telling you now, you need to know how to define fractions correctly. definitions are important in mathematics. i repeat, correct definitions are an important part of mathematics. becoming proficient english users? bpeu [general english usage] te: and when we speak in english instead of we say … instead of using the word “probability” what can i say? s: chance te: what are the chances of getting a … there are subtle differences between these interacting identities. in what follows, i describe these differences which were evident in the study with the hope that it would help anyone desirous of using this framework to analyse classroom data from pre-service (multilingual) classrooms. examining opportunities for the development of interacting identities within pre-service teacher education mathematics classrooms anthony a essien 67 elaborating on the coding schedule becoming teachers of mathematics (btm) is about teaching, and the teacher educator sees herself as developing this identity in the pre-service teachers, while the pre-service teachers see themselves as imbibing this identity. by the same token, in becoming learners of mathematics content (blmc), the teacher educator sees herself as responsible for teaching the pre-service teachers the mathematics content, and the pre-service teachers see themselves as learners of this content. hence, while the one is about teaching, for the other, the attention is more towards learning. instances in which the teacher educator asked pre-service teachers to think about what other students were thinking when they solved a problem on the board were also coded as btm. becoming learners of mathematical practices (blmp) relates to becoming knowledgeable about mathematical processes such as the processes of coming to define/exemplify. for example, if pre-service teachers were taught the formal definition of a mathematics concept, this was coded as blmc. a situation where the teacher educators entrenched the importance of defining in the teaching and learning of mathematics was coded as blmp. hence, while blmc pertains more to becoming knowledgeable about content, blmp pertains to becoming knowledgeable about mathematical processes. in the former, the content is the object of attention; in the latter, the practice becomes the object of attention. in becoming teachers of mathematics in multilingual classrooms (btmmc), there is something specific about teaching in multilingual contexts, so attention is not only paid to the fact that the pre-service teachers would become teachers, but that they would become teachers in multilingual contexts. becoming proficient english users (bpeu) was used to code instances where attention was paid to how ordinary english was used – where there was teaching for developing proficiency in the lolt. the study research design in order to address the questions which this research sought to explore, a qualitative study approach was adopted. my choice of a qualitative study was motivated by its ability as a research method to bring new variables or understanding to the fore. sample the wider study for this research consisted of a sample of four universities in a province in south africa. all four universities have well-established pre-service teacher education programmes. for the study reported in this paper, four teacher educators teaching in four different classrooms were selected from two of these universities. two of the teachers were from university a (teia) and the other two perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 68 were from university b (teib). the two universities were chosen because they present contrasting contexts of pre-service teacher education. teia is frequented by pre-service teachers and teacher educators for whom english (lolt) is an additional language. teib is frequented by pre-service teachers of different linguistic backgrounds, taught by a good number of teacher educators whose first language is the lolt. i have called the two teachers educators from university a teia-m and teia-s respectively, and those from university b teib-e and teib-l respectively. the teacher educators were video-recorded while teaching a mathematics concept from start to finish. the voices of both the teacher educators and pre-service teachers were part of the classroom observation because both teaching and learning were in focus in the study. ethical considerations access to the universities was negotiated with the heads of the school (faculty) of education of each university and the teacher educators were asked for written consent to participate in the research. the researcher informed the teacher educators (and the universities) that their anonymity would be protected. it is my contention that the community of teacher educators is different from the community of teachers. the former is much smaller, more academically and research inclined, and more conversant with one another’s institutional and historical contexts. this makes research in teacher education an ethical mine-field. in this light, in all the publications resulting from this study, i have refrained from describing both the teacher educators involved in the study and the context of the institutions. doing either or both of these would put the anonymity of the teacher educators or the universities in jeopardy. furthermore, the pronoun, “she” is used for all the teacher educators in this study to protect their anonymity. acronyms are also used for the institutions involved in the study. key findings and discussions in discussing the findings, i first start with the individual universities before doing a cross-case analysis of both universities. university a in university a, the two teacher educators used a great deal of defining, exemplifying and explanatory practices in their classrooms. using these practices as points of departure and how these practices shaped and were shaped by interaction in the class, the findings from the study indicate that, within the multiply layers of teacher education, the acquisition of mathematical content receives an overarching emphasis. in the excerpt below, i provide an example from teia-m’s classroom: examining opportunities for the development of interacting identities within pre-service teacher education mathematics classrooms anthony a essien 69 excerpt 1 te: the next organisation of scores is by looking at the concept of expressing the scores in terms of a single score, the concept of central tendency (writes “central tendency” on the board). what do we mean by this central tendency? if you have a distribution, and then you want to identify a single score that would be representative of the whole population, then we would be speaking of a central tendency. let me give you an overview: (writes on the board: “central tendency is the statistical measure that singles out or identifies a single score as a representative of the entire distribution”; then repeats the definition verbally to students and continues) te: now, there are three main measures of central tendencies (writes while reading: “the main measures of central tendency are the mean, the median, and the mode”). we use the same distribution to look at the three measures of central tendencies. let’s start with the mean. how do we calculate the mean from the definition? you add all the scores and then divide by the number of the scores. clearly, in both episodes of defining, teia-m gives the pre-service teachers the conventional or formal definition of the concepts without their input. the students are usually not given the opportunity to attempt or question a definition given by the teacher educator. the pre-service teachers seemed to be familiar with this particular practice and do not offer definitions or suggestions when the teacher educator asks for definitions (e.g., “what do we mean by this central tendency?”) because they view it as a rhetorical question, knowing the teacher educator would provide the answer herself. even though defining as a mathematical practice was important for teia-m, the importance of defining as a mathematical process that is important for teaching and learning in mathematics classrooms was in the background. the practice of defining as used by teia-m was anchored in the development of the identity of blmc. in other words, as far as defining was concerned for teia-m’s classroom, the content was the overriding object of attention (and not the process of coming to define). it could be argued that, for teia-m, defining as a practice was focused on how the preservice teachers could use the definition to solve mathematical problems rather than on how the classroom community could construct definitions of concepts through interanimation of ideas that the pre-service teachers bring to class. defining as a practice, thus, served a utilitarian purpose of being the window towards mathematical calculations. this was also the case with exemplifying as a practice. bills, dreyfus, mason, tsamir, watson and zaslavsky (2006) argue that, in mathematics, it is not so much the examples in themselves that are important, but what is done with those examples and how they are probed, generalised and perceived. teia-m used one or two examples for each statistical concept that she taught. in excerpt 2, i discuss how teia-m used exemplifying practices to achieve the perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 70 purpose of her lesson. these examples used by the teacher educator offer insight into what she perceives as mathematical knowledge and how it is learned: excerpt 2 1 te there are three ways of determining the median. [talks while she writes: “three ways of determining the median. right. if you have … the number of the scores is odd you just choose the middle one, number. right. if n is odd, the middle number is the median. the simple example will be if you take the numbers 1 2 3 4 and 5, the median is just 3.”] 2 [next to (1) writes: “if n is odd, the middle number is the median. e.g. 1 2 3 4 5 the median is 3.”] 3 te so you could arrange the numbers either in descending order or in ascending order to identify the median. right. what about if the number of the scores is even? if n is even, right, you take the two middle numbers, you add them and then you divide it by 2. so you take the average of the middle numbers. the average of the two middle numbers is the median. 4 [writes: “(2) if n is even. the average of the two middle numbers is the median.”] 5 te right, let’s say we take this as the score [writes: “e.g. 1 2 3 4 5 6”] the number of the scores is even. n is even, right? how many scores do they have? 6 psts 6 7 te 6. is 6 an even number? 8 psts class: yes. 9 te t: alright. what are the middle numbers that we have there? 10 psts class: 3 and 4 11 te t: huh? 12 psts class: 3 and 4 13 te t: so if we add 3 and 4 and divide by 2 … 14 psts [some students] 3.5 15 te t: we’ll get 3 plus 4, divide by 2. this is the average of this, middle numbers, right? so that is 7 divided by 2, that is 3,5. 16 [writes: ] 17 te you see the median may not necessarily be the number that is part of the distribution. so from this, this indicates that the median may not necessarily be part of the distribution. several arguments could be advanced with regard to the examples provided by the teacher educator in excerpt 2, which are typical of those that teia-m solved in the class, first, in general, in teia-m’s class, there was a mix of what bills et al. (2006:2) call “work(-out) examples” (the examples that the teacher educator performs in class) and “exercise examples” (where tasks are set for pre-service teachers to engage with on their own). the “work(-out) examples” were aimed at both concept development and the application of a mathematical procedure. bills et al. (2006:2) identify three descriptive labels of examples based on the forms and functions of examples and based on how the teacher/learner perceives the mathematical object in question – generic examples, counter-examples and non-examples. a second examining opportunities for the development of interacting identities within pre-service teacher education mathematics classrooms anthony a essien 71 feature of exemplifying as a mathematical practice in teia-m’s classroom community was that all the examples were generic examples aimed at serving as a template for pre-service teachers to have tools for solving similar problems involving the concept at hand. as bills et al. (2006:3) note: unfortunately their [generic examples] use in lessons is often reduced to the mere practice of sequences of actions, in contrast to a more investigative approach ... in which learners experience the mathematisation of situations as a practice, and with guidance abstract and re-construct general principles themselves. exemplifying was used by teia-m to explain procedures for solving mathematical problems in the same way that definitions were used to explain procedures. the application of the definition or example given was foregrounded. since the pre-service teachers’ attention was not drawn to the importance of the choices of examples when working with their future learners, it could be argued that exemplifying as a practice in teia-m’s class was anchored solely in making the pre-service teachers more knowledgeable in the content of statistics. in other words, the identities of blmp of exemplifying and btm were backgrounded in the exemplifying practices of the teacher educator. university b perhaps one of the most significant findings from university b is that attention is paid to the development of the identities of btm and bpeu alongside the identity of blmc (see table 2). but, even though the teacher educators in university b were aware of their context of teaching, attention was not paid to enculturating the preservice teachers into blmp of, for example, exemplifying or justifying. and the teacher educators did not attend to the development of the identity of btmmc. excerpts 3 and 4 from classroom observations in teib-e class at university b indicate those aspects that received attention in her classroom. in the extracts in which there was a protracted discussion on finding the trend line, teib-e kept using the mathematics that they were doing in class to talk about the teaching of statistics: excerpt 3 teib-e: no statisticians do it but teachers do it today … i want you to do it, get the valuable skill of a teacher, background the knowledge that you have and pretend that you know only what the learners in your class know … how will you predict what the fuel consumption is for 2 000 kg and for 2 500 kg? pst1: our strategy was to join the point that is just before 2 000 with the next … and then draw a straight line [voice fades]. teib-e: so, what are they saying? we don’t have a point there where 2 is [writing on the chart] and there is a point that we could use, so let’s work with the 2 points on either side of it. okay, what’s the meaning of this line you drew? pst1: it’s almost like the difference between the two borders, like the difference in the way fuel consumption grows [voice fades out, not clear]. perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 72 teib-e: i am rephrasing what she’s saying, i know they’re saying slope, i know they’re saying difference between 2 consumption rates, okay? as a teacher i am listening for those words because i know the background knowledge is functions and lines … okay, so now how do you go about estimating? pst2: there we make 2 000, and drew a perfectly vertical line up to where it touches the green one, so that we know, and then we drew the horizontal across. mathematical thinking involves, as stein, grover and henningsen (1996:456) put, “doing what makers and users of mathematics do”. throughout the lesson, teib-e kept indicating to the pre-service teachers what statisticians do and what they do not do and, more importantly, what they as mathematics pre-service teachers need to do to become enculturated into the teaching of mathematics. first, they must be able think like learners who have never been introduced to the concept of a trend line and think of how they would be able to interpolate from a given data; secondly, they must be able to draw the trend line accurately. here we see explicit attention being paid to btm through practices such as predicting mathematically, conjecturing, and providing justification. teib-e is conscious of the fact that she is not teaching mathematics solely for the purpose of content knowledge, but that she is teaching would-be teachers. nonetheless, the development of content knowledge is also vital in her classroom. excerpt 4 focuses mainly on developing the content knowledge of the pre-service teachers by means of explanatory and justificatory practices in which the shared language “does it mean that” was used to get them back on track or to enable them to understand the concept at hand: excerpt 4 teib-e: have i lost you? chorus answer: yes. teib-e: okay then you have to tell me; if i have lost you then help me to find out where i have lost you. you have to tell me does it mean that, please can i have a few questions of ‘does it mean that’. pst1: does it mean that we are ignoring these points [points that show fuel decreases as load increases]? teib-e: does it mean that we are ignoring these points? yes it is. we ignore those points because we say they’re unusual. we say it is unusual to get situations in which your fuel will decrease if your load increases … so it does mean that. another ‘does it mean that’ question? pst2: yes ma’am, i don’t wanna say does it mean we ignore other points but say, does it mean that we ignore other factors. in excerpt 4, the teacher educator attempted to explain to the pre-service teacher that, in drawing a trend line, it makes sense to be guided by where the points are clustered than by points which appear to be outliers. a shared language does it mean that was a shared reference that participants used as they negotiated the mathematical knowledge around the concept of trend lines in statistics. the expression positions examining opportunities for the development of interacting identities within pre-service teacher education mathematics classrooms anthony a essien 73 the teacher educator as having more access to the mathematics knowledge than the pre-service teachers. it also positions the pre-service teachers as attempting to access this knowledge. in using the expression does it mean that as a specialised discourse in her class, it could be argued that the role of the teacher educator was clearly to enculturate the pre-service teachers into becoming knowledgeable about the content at hand (in this case, the concept of line of best fit). cross-case synthesis the table below provides a general indication as to whether the practices were anchored in btm, btmmc, blmc, btmmc or bpeu. what is important about this table is not the number of times each identity occurred, but the pattern and what could be perceived as the privileged aspect(s) of teacher education in each of the teacher education classrooms: table 2: cross-sectional view of interacting identities in the four teacher educator classrooms evidence in support of: number of occurrence –teia-m number of occurrence– teib-s university a number of occurrence – teib-l number of occurrence – teib-e university b total be co m in g te ac he rs o f m at he m ati cs 1 2 3 16 27 43 46 be co m in g te ac he rs of m at he m ati cs in m ul til in gu al cl as sr oo m s 0 0 0 3 0 3 3 be co m in g le ar ne rs o f m at he m ati cs co nt en t 80 75 155 111 108 219 374 be co m in g le ar ne rs o f m at he m ati ca l pr ac tic es 0 0 0 1 7 8 8 be co m in g pr ofi ci en t en gl is h us er s 0 1 1 23 5 28 29 perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 74 a remarkable finding from table 2 is that, even though the teacher educators in the study were aware of their context of teaching – that they were teaching multilingual pre-service teachers who themselves would teach in multilingual contexts at the end of their qualification (see essien, 2010) – this awareness was not reflected unequivocally in their practice. the practices-in-use in their classrooms were mostly those that inducted the pre-service teachers into becoming learners of mathematics content. there were very limited practices aimed at inducting pre-service teachers into btm especially in university a and even more limited ones that inducted them into btmmc. with regard to the multidimensional aspects of teacher education that are reflected in the interacting identities in both university a and university b, as discussed earlier, the development of the pre-service teachers as btmmc and as proficient learners of mathematical process (of say, exemplifying, defining,) were less valued in the teacher education classrooms. this research, therefore, shows that mathematics pre-service teachers were, in fact, not being prepared adequately to understand and subsequently deal with the challenges involved in teaching mathematics in multilingual contexts, which is the context of teaching and learning in south africa. this has significant implications for teacher training in south africa where most of the classes are multilingual and where most learners, despite their low english language proficiency, choose to do mathematics in english (setati, 2008). but, although an overarching emphasis is placed on developing the identity of blmc, the four teacher education communities of practice in this study experienced this enterprise differently. interestingly in this study, these four classrooms opened up different possibilities for the pre-service teachers as far as preparing for teaching mathematics (in multilingual classrooms) is concerned. in order to disaggregate these differences, i take another look at excerpts 2, 3 and 4, and argue that the way in which the teacher educators organised participation shaped the practices that were to be valued, and enculturated the pre-service teachers in particular kinds of ways. for university a, both teia-m and teia-s privileged practices such as defining, exemplifying, explaining and proceduralising. the approach to the teaching and learning of mathematical concepts with limited interanimation of ideas around the mathematical concepts meant that the pre-service teachers had limited opportunity to develop how to make use of contributions in class in furthering the mathematical development of concepts. it also meant that the psts had limited opportunity in engaging in extended discussions regarding mathematical concepts. since the practices of the teacher educators in university a focused largely on procedures for arriving at the correct answer, the acquisition of knowledge of concepts taught by teia-m and teia-s (during whole-class discussions) was mainly algorithmic knowledge; thus, there were limited opportunities for developing relational understanding and relational reasoning for the pre-service teachers. in requesting for clarifications or further elaboration, in extending invitations to other students for evaluation, and in reiterating the pre-service teachers’ contributions, the teacher educators in university b developed mathematical knowledge in pre-service teachers examining opportunities for the development of interacting identities within pre-service teacher education mathematics classrooms anthony a essien 75 while, at the same time, providing them with opportunities for developing their (preservice teachers) mathematics discourse. what does this mean for pre-service teachers who would teach in multilingual mathematics classrooms at the end of their qualification? in a sense, it could be argued that the pre-service teachers in university b have had some experience of dialogic and interactive processes even though multilingualism was not foregrounded. in teib-e’s classroom, because there was a high level of interanimation of ideas and extended dialogue regarding the concepts at hand, pre-service teachers had the opportunity of developing both spoken language and mathematical language while simultaneously developing mathematical meanings. the short procedural questions that required short procedural answers, which were used especially in teia-m’s classroom, limited the pre-service teachers’ opportunity to engage in extended interactions using both the lolt and the mathematical language. it could, therefore, be argued that, unlike those in university a, the pre-service teachers in university b were more exposed to ways of dealing with the triple challenge of paying attention to mathematics, to the lolt and to mathematical language discussed earlier. concluding thoughts the foregoing discussions are an indication of which facets of teacher training are privileged in pre-service mathematics classrooms. in the early nineties, and based on a questionnaire sent out to teacher training institutions, the report by the national education policy investigation (nepi, 1993:181) observed that all teachers needed to understand the role of language in the education of their pupils. it was revealed that there is no component in the training of primary and secondary school teachers that prepares them for the challenges of teaching through the medium of a language other than the pupils’ home language. the nepi (1993) recommended that, notwithstanding whether the lolt is the home language or a second language, these gaps in teacher training seriously affect the ability of teachers to use the lolt in the best interests of their pupils when they go to teach in schools at the end of their qualifications. two decades after this finding, this recommendation remains valid for teacher training institutions in south africa. increased attention (in teacher training) to teaching for teaching of mathematics, teaching for teaching of mathematics in multilingual contexts, teaching for learning of mathematical practices, and teaching for the development of proficiency in the lolt would go a long way in bridging this gap and in producing teachers who are more prepared to deal with the challenges involved in teaching mathematics in a context such as that of south africa. at the teacher training level, a course that attends to the complexities of teaching and learning in multilingual classrooms is essential. but a single course is not enough to enculturate pre-service teachers into the intricacies involved 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period of time, are retold. the narratives describe how and why they were bullied and the impact of the bullying on their professional lives. by using narrative analysis this article gives a voice to victims of workplace bullying and creates an awareness of this scourge in an ever-changing south african education dispensation. keywords: workplace bullying, mobbing, teachers, principals, narrative analysis, south africa. introduction during the past two decades bullying in the workplace has received growing attention in research. the most developed research comes from scandinavia, where there is strong public awareness, governmentfunded research and established anti-bullying legislation (beale & hoel, 2010:103; quine, 1999:228). more than 90% of adults experience workplace bullying at some time during the span of their working careers (lutgen-sandvik, 2003:472). surveys carried out within the last two decades in the united kingdom suggest that between 10 and 20% of british workers consider themselves to have been bullied at work and a large-scale nationwide survey has reported that one in ten had been bullied within the six months prior to the study (beale & hoel, 2010:103). a study by quine (1999:231) found that 38% of the respondents reported being subjected to bullying behaviour in the previous year and 42% witnessed the bullying of others. furthermore, the supervisors who inflict psychological abuse on subordinates represent one of the most frequent and serious problems confronting employees in the workplace (lutgen-sandvik, 2003:472). although workers are at times abusive towards their co-workers, researchers (beale & hoel, 2010:103; einarsen, 1999:18; hauge, skogstad & einarsen, 2007:224; lutgen-sandvik, 2003:474; quine, 1999:229) have found that the overwhelming majority of abuse is carried out by superiors on their subordinates. while there is a plethora of international publications on workplace bullying and violence (cf. bowman, bhanjee, eagle & crafford, 2009:301), de wet (2010a) found that studies on the topic in south africa are limited. thus far, only a few researchers (cf. de wet, 2010a, 2010b; khalil, 2009; kirsten, viljoen & rossouw, 2005; pietersen, 2007; steinman, 2003) have studied bullying in the south african work context. steinman (2003) and khalil (2009) researched workplace bullying in the health sector; de wet (2010a & 2010b) and kirsten et al. (2005) investigated the plight of teachers, and pietersen (2007) studied the bullying of members of the academe. bowman et al. (2009:310) believe that the dearth of research within the south african context is due to the phenomenon “often [being] regarded as an insignificant part of the greater violent problem in south africa”. yet, workplace bullying remains a serious problem in south africa. steinman (cited in de lange, 2007:11) told the national assembly’s labour committee in 2007 that 60% of public sector workers experienced verbal abuse, while 24% were bullied and 17% physically abused. the vast majority of studies on workplace bullying were conducted as survey studies measuring the respondents’ exposure to pre-defined negative behaviour (hauge et al., 2007:221; hoel & beale, 2006:243; quine, 1999:228; salin, 2003:1226; vartia, 2001:67). salin (2003:1226) argues that the emphasis on surveys based on positivist assumptions limits our understanding of workplace bullying. according to her, surveys make it difficult to capture patterns and escalation processes, and they seldom provide enough data to identify the subjective meaning and experiences of the victims. an important finding of 67de wet — the professional lives of teacher victims of workplace bullying tracy, lutgen-sandvik and alberts’ (2006:177) grounded metaphor analysis on workplace bullying is that victims struggle to translate their experiences into words. these authors therefore suggest that researchers conduct “a close narrative analysis of various target stories” as such an analysis could examine “the way targeted persons frame themselves, their bullies, and witnessing co-workers, and the way they define personal identities through the employment of their experience.” framed by a narrative lens, the aim of this article is to report on the lived experience of two teachers who have been bullied by their principal for more than 15 years. the research was guided by the following question: how do teachers who have been bullied over an extended period of time make meaning of their professional lives and what are the implications thereof for their identities, relationships and future? by using narrative analysis of the experiences of these two teachers, this article will attempt to fill the gap in workplace bullying research by increasing the body of knowledge on this topic in the south african context and will allow me to synthesise and contextualise fragmented experiences of two victims of workplace bullying. i therefore argue that narrative analysis can be used as a research methodology to answer the abovementioned question. margaret and charles’s stories, which form the core of this article, will be retold against the background of a short concept clarification of workplace bullying, as well as an exposition of narrative as a research methodology. thereafter, findings emanating from the narratives will be discussed and juxtaposed with national and international research findings on workplace bullying. definition there is no clear consensus on what constitutes workplace bullying. definitions on workplace bullying usually share the following elements: the negative effect of the bullying on the victim; the persistency of the bullying behaviour and the power disparity between the victim and the bully/bullies. salin (2003:1214) defines workplace bullying as follows: ...the repeated and persistent negative acts towards one or more individual(s), which involve a perceived power imbalance and create a hostile work environment. einarsen (1999:17) sees workplace bullying as: ... the systematic persecution of a colleague, a subordinate or a superior, which, if continued, may cause severe social, psychological and psychosomatic problems to the victim. many terms, such as “mobbing”, “emotional abuse”, “work harassment”, “workplace incivility” and “employee abuse”, have been used to describe interpersonal aggression and hostile workplace behaviour (einarsen, 1999:17; salin, 2003:1215; tracy et al., 2006:151). to varying extents they overlap with the term “bullying”, although some differences have been identified by researchers (cf. salin, 2003:12151216). mobbing is, for example, seen as the “ganging up” against an isolated and vulnerable individual by a group of workers (beale & hoel, 2010:103; duffy & sperry, 2007:401). hall (2005:46) distinguishes between harassment, which can be manifested by a single event, and bullying, which involves a pattern of behaviour. hadikin and o’driscoll (2002:16) find the commonest forms of workplace bullying behaviour to be intimidation, undervaluing of skills and humiliation. other forms include belittling of work, undervaluing effort, questioning of professional competence, threats, blocking development/promotion, overruling decisions, moving goal posts, refusing reasonable requests, social isolation or silent treatment, rumours, attacking the victim’s private life or attitudes, excessive criticisms or monitoring of work, withholding information or depriving of responsibility, and verbal aggression (hadikin & o’driscoll, 2002:17; hall, 2005:46; hoel & beale, 2006:243; pietersen, 2007:60; salin, 2003:1215; tracy et al., 2006:152). acts of physical violence, such as hitting, slapping and shoving, tend to be rare in workplace bullying (einarsen, 1999:18; pietersen, 2007:60; salin, 2003:1215). gestures, tones, facial expressions and other non-verbal messages are often used to humiliate and intimidate victims (van fleet & van fleet, 2010:88). most bullying is designed to undermine the victim’s self-confidence and cause him/her to perform poorly (hall, 2005:46). according to tracy et al. (2006:152), workplace bullying is a combination of tactics in which 68 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 several types of hostile communication and behaviour are used. the intensity of hostility may increase when bullying is left unchecked (einarsen, 1999:19; pietersen, 2007:60). research methodology this study began in 2008 as a qualitative exploration into teachers’ exposure to bullying. during the first phase of this study attention was paid to teachers as victims of bullying by their principals, fellow teachers and learners. since then i have kept in close contact with two of the original 10 participants – both have been relentlessly bullied by their school principal for more than 15 years. several informal conversations with them formed the core of the second phase of the study. the findings from the first phase of the study (cf. de wet, 2010a & 2010b) formed an important backdrop throughout my conversations with them and provided a context to understand their experiences. first phase of the study a snowball sampling technique, consisting of teachers and colleagues referring teachers whom they believe have experienced workplace bullying, was employed during the first phase of the study. data were collected by means of in-depth personal interviews, based on the following questions: what is your experience of workplace bullying?• what do you think are the reasons for workplace bullying?• what have been the consequences of workplace bullying for your professional and/or private life?• what have you done, if anything, to prevent the bullying? give details.• have you reported these incidents of bullying? motivate your answer.• interviews were conducted until saturation was reached. in total, ten educators participated in the first phase of the study over a six-month period during the course of 2008. the sample consisted of male (n=3) and female (n=7) educators from rural (n=3) and urban (n=7) schools. both primary (n=4) and secondary (n=6) school educators participated. the average age of the educators was 48 years, and the average number of years of teaching experience was 23. four of the educators interviewed were heads of department. the interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim. reflective field notes were taken for the sake of triangulation. henning, van rensburg and smit’s (2004) guidelines for qualitative content analysis were followed to reduce, condense and group the content of the interviews into codes, categories and themes. the following forms of bullying behaviour by school principals emerged from data analysis: principals ignore teachers’ thoughts, needs, feelings and accomplishments; there is non-support of teachers; teachers are verbally abused and publicly ridiculed; unwarranted and unfair criticism is levelled at teachers; teachers are set up to fail; teachers are subjected to social and professional isolation; there is a lack of empathy; unwarranted written reprimands may be issued; favouritism is displayed; teachers are forced to resign or are reassigned and are even threatened with dismissal (de wet, 2010b). findings from the first phase of the study further highlighted the lack of an effective regime of monitoring the regulations which govern principals’ behaviour and the characteristics of the bullies and victims as reasons for workplace bullying (de wet, 2010a). second phase of the study using the data collected during the first phase, i asked charles and margaret, who were both teaching at edumela secondary school, if they were willing to take part in the second phase of the study. my decision to ask these two individuals was influenced by their frankness during the first phase, my respect for them as teachers and human beings, and the fact that they have being victimised by the same principal for nearly half their professional careers. over a period of two years i had several informal conversations with them and two of their colleagues. our conversations focused on the continuing victimisation of the 69de wet — the professional lives of teacher victims of workplace bullying two participants by their principal, and their efforts to continue their teaching and survive emotionally. i did not record our conversations, but noted them in detail afterwards. i created a collaborative, nonhierarchical relationship with them (eagle, hayes & sibanda, 2007:504). ethical considerations my research on workplace bullying involves asking participants to talk about deeply felt personal concerns and trauma, raising difficult ethical issues. this problem is exacerbated by the fact that i invested considerable effort in obtaining the trust of the two participants whose narratives form the core of this study. i went to great lengths to inform them, as i also did during the first phase of the study, of the goals of the research and to ensure that their participation was willing and voluntary (eagle et al., 2007:504). disseminating findings can also raise ethical issues. the narratives were therefore given to the two participants. their insights were incorporated into the final narratives. both were satisfied with the way i retold their stories (merriam, 2009:233). names used throughout this article are pseudonyms, and several identifying details of the participants have been modified. narrative analysis andrews, sclater, squire and tamboukou (2004:115) see narrative analysis as: ... not only a way of finding out about how people frame, remember and report their experiences, but also a way of generating knowledge that disrupts old certainties and allows us to glimpse something of the complexities of human lives, selves and endeavours. it is important to distinguish between qualitative analysis applied to narratives and narrative analysis as a method. in the former, general methods of qualitative analysis such as thematic, discourse and conversation analysis may be applied to the interpretation of narratives as well as other sources of data while, in the latter, specific techniques are devoted to narratives alone (bingley, thomas, brown, reeve & payne, 2008:654-655). whereas in the “analysis of narratives” the narratives are the source of knowledge, the narrative in “narrative analysis” is the result of the research (samuel & van wyk, 2008:144; smeyers, 2008:698). according to polkinghorne (1995:15), the “outcome of a narrative analysis is a story ... in this type of analysis, the researcher’s task is to configure the data elements into a story that unites and give meaning to the data”. a narrative analysis seeks to synthesise rather than separate the data. by adding context through the use of plots, timelines, contextual descriptions and character development, researchers pull data together into a coherent story (macmath, 2009:143). according to macmath (2009:143), this story “becomes a new primary data set unto itself, constructed by the researcher for the purpose of providing a retrospective look at the original data”. narrative analysis is intersubjective, because the stories retold in the analysis reflect the voices of the participants woven together with the interpretive voice of the researcher (bryant, 2009:554). in the development of my story on the professional lives of two teacher victims of workplace bullying, i followed macmath (2009:143) and polkinghorne’s (1995:18) sequence of steps: (1) identify a context for the story including characters and setting; (2) identify the final outcome of the story; (3) arrange data chronologically, identifying those data which are relevant to the story; and (4) write the story by drawing connections between the identified data. after having read and re-read charles and margaret’s responses during the first phase of the study, as well as my notes on our conversations, i decided to write two rather than one story. even though they were teaching at the same school and had the same bully (principal), the underlying reasons for their victimisation, as well as their responses to the victimisation, differed. both stories commence with the portrayal of young, talented teachers who were recognised as leaders in their respective fields. the turning point in both their careers came about with the appointment of mr foster as the school’s principal. i arranged the data chronologically and identified data (events) that shed light on the principal’s relentless and continuous victimisation, as well as their responses to his victimisation. 70 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 while i was writing the stories i moved back and forth between the two stories and the data. i re-read my stories several times for flow. the stories that emerged from this process will be told in the next section. i followed creswell’s (2007:207) guidelines to enhance the validity of this study: i formed a prolonged engagement, build on trust and mutual respect. detailed written reports, as well as articles resulting from the first part of the study, together with my retelling of their stories were provided to the two participants. they were invited to offer their interpretation and assessment of their narratives. their insights were incorporated into the final narratives. i used journaling and interview memoranda to create self-awareness of my personal biases, conflicts and emotional responses to the participants’ narratives. in an effort to triangulate my data through the use of multiple sources, i had, with the consent of my participants, enlightening conversations with two of their colleagues – people they have known for more than 20 years and trust implicitly. to tap the insights of the bullying principal and/or his friends would have been unethical. within the tradition of narrative research the aim is not to determine whether the participants’ stories did in fact take place as reported, but to understand how and why individuals report their experiences the way they do. in the narrative tradition, distinction is made between “lives as lived” (what actually happened), “lives as told” (what is remembered and reported selectively) and “lives as experienced” (what is remembered and valued) (samuel & van wyk, 2008:144). while the narratives of researchers such as macmath (2000) and samuel and van wyk (2009) constitute a synthesis of data gathered from various participants’ interviews into generic central stories, bryant (2009) wrote four different narratives to illustrate the diverse ways in which different women negotiated an evangelical student organisation on a university campus in the usa. in this study i followed bryant’s example. i present two different narratives to illustrate, as noted earlier, not only the similarities but also the differences in the lived experiences of the two victims of workplace bullying. the following two narratives are “a chosen qualitative representational strategy (narrative analysis)”, inviting readers to interpret the narratives before i offer an analysis of the two narratives (cf. samuel & van wyk, 2009:145). the two narratives constitute a “factionalised” synthesis (samuel & van wyk, 2009:145) of the data gathered from the two interviews conducted with charles and margaret during the first phase of the study, as well as the informal conversations with them and their colleagues during the second phase of the study. margaret’s story for margaret teaching is not simply a job; it is her life calling. edumela secondary school is also not simply another school – it is the school where she started her teaching career with enthusiasm, and is still teaching after 30 years. at this school, her hard work and the successes achieved by her learners were initially recognised by her principal, colleagues and learners. however, this all changed in 1993. currently, every day is a struggle for emotional survival for margaret: i have reached saturation point … i am tired of begin downed every time; i am tired of it, i am tired of always being belittled; i simply never get a ‘thank you’. when i leave here in the mornings i wonder what i have done wrong again, for what am i now going to be disparaged at school. when he mentions my name, i cringe – what has margaret done wrong this time? in margaret’s reflection on her professional life, she speaks with nostalgia about her first years as a teacher. her principal, mr james, mentored her. he gradually started to increase her responsibilities. before long, she became a subject head and “i had to take decisions by myself in my subject; i had to plan and do things for all the grades”. she thrived under his leadership. her learners participated in provincial and national subject-related competitions – and won. she was also the chief examiner for her subject for many years. however, margaret’s life as a teacher changed after the appointment of a new principal, mr foster. according to her, relations between them were tense right from the start: “i was always blamed for everything that went wrong. he never liked me”. she said that the reason for his negative attitude towards her was jealousy. the situation became worse when she returned from a year’s study leave. since then, 71de wet — the professional lives of teacher victims of workplace bullying he has done everything in his power to humiliate her, to bring her into discredit with the parents and colleagues and to break her spirit. with margaret’s return to the school after her study leave she was shocked to learn that lydia, whom she had taken pains to mentor in order to take over her classes while she was on study leave, suddenly was her subject head. in spite of better qualifications and many years’ experience, her status as subject head had been taken away from her. nevertheless, she had to endure the principal’s wrath when parents came and complained about lydia’s examination papers, which were riddled with grammatical mistakes. after lydia’s resignation he once again appointed a less qualified, less experienced teacher as her subject head. after this, the already tense relations between margaret and foster reached a new low. according to margaret, foster had found an ally in irma, the young teacher: “she went to him about everything i did and gave a twist to the tale”. margaret called to mind an incident when she had pointed out a myriad of spelling and factual mistakes on irma’s examination papers for grades which they taught jointly: i was called in and told that i was not allowed to do anything anymore; i did not show respect towards my subject head. i told him: “do i have to respect someone who cannot even spell and cannot even do her work?” “yes,” he replied, “i shall lay a disciplinary charge against you if you do not show respect towards her.” i now refuse to have my name appear on the papers. margaret is convinced of the fact that foster wants her to fail as a teacher: prior to 1993, my pupils had never performed below the provincial average. they received national and provincial awards. then he came up with the issue that my subject had to be discontinued, because then nobody would be able to praise my work. she recalls how he phased out her subject, because “he had thought that i would resign. he had thought that i would leave the school. but then i did not leave”. during the same period, outcomes-based education (obe) was introduced in south africa. according to margaret, foster grabbed the opportunity to assign learning areas to her of which she had little or no knowledge, in the hope that she would fail. as part of her survival strategy and her perseverance, margaret thoroughly familiarised herself with the new educational approach. she attended every possible course and holiday workshop, read widely and sought advice from experts. however, this did not put an end to his criticism. on the contrary, she was criticised for her assessment methods. he “criticised my way of marking” and “i had to appear on the carpet in order to explain why i had re-assessed my pupils. but this is part of the obe assessment policy. he kicked up a lot of fuss about my work”. she concedes that he gave recognition to her once: one day he said in the staffroom that he had to confess and apologise that day, because “margaret was right about obe and i was wrong”. that was the first and the last time. she recalls that she often went to him unsuccessfully with the request that he should use her in learning areas in which she was trained. “he tried to move me in everywhere, probably thinking that i would not make a success of it”. margaret not only had to familiarise herself with a new learning area every few years, but also move from classroom to classroom. she had hardly painted her new classroom at her own cost, when she had to learn that she had to move once again. the prestige that margaret enjoyed among her colleagues was a thorn in foster’s side. for example, she learned that he had tampered with the results of the school governing body’s (sgb) election. one of her colleagues who had assisted in the voting was dumbfounded when he heard that she was not a member of the sgb. he also endeavoured to damage her image among the parents and children. for instance, the extramural programme timetables were regularly changed to the detriment of the activities in which she was involved: he did not give a damn for certain people’s extramural timetables. and then you ended up with a red face with the parents, seemingly being unable to organise something. he takes nobody into consideration. 72 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 margaret spent a lot of energy on her professional development. she makes no secret of the fact that she strives towards promotion. foster created false expectations with her a lot of the time. she recounted one specific incident in detail: then he called me in and told me that it had been decided at the managerial team meeting that i had to act as a head of department, and once the position was advertised, he and i would talk about how the post should be advertised so that only i qualified for it. that remained talk – nothing happened. even before the applications closed, margaret had realised that she would not be appointed to the post. not only did it came to her ears that he asked one of her colleagues to apply for the post at the last minute, but she also experienced her interview as a staged farce. “the members of the sgb whom he knew he could manipulate formed part of the panel of interviewers”. margaret based the latter conclusion on her experiences of sgb interviews of which she had previously been part. during one of these interviews, for example, he declared before the start of an interview: “this man is my candidate”. margaret’s colleague got the post. while other humiliating experiences made margaret only more determined to achieve success, it appears as if this last experience destroyed her fighting spirit to some extent: “at this stage, i would have left my post for any other post, even equal in status to my current post”. over time, margaret realised that it would be a waste of time to take a stand against her principal: “i cannot confront him. he tells you to your face that you are lying, while he is the one who is lying. he has that type of personality”. regardless of this realisation, at times she still attempted to discuss with him situations that made her unhappy. consequently, she has repeatedly been threatened with disciplinary action. even though her work conditions might drain her emotionally, she still has the greatest respect for the teaching profession. she attends workshops, reads widely in order to keep up to date with her constantly changing learning areas, and she is regarded as a true teacher by her colleagues and learners. charles’s story charles taught at edumela secondary school for 35 years. his career thrived. within a few years, he was promoted to a head of department and also appointed as examiner for provincial grade 12 examinations. he was an exceptionally successful athletics coach; his athletes received medals at provincial and national meetings. the learners had immense respect for him as a teacher and a person. charles nostalgically recalls his particular relationship with his learners: “it was a privilege to teach them. i walked the road with them, both on the sports field and in the classroom”. according to him, he was part of “a slowly dying generation of teachers”. the new political dispensation in south africa, and the subsequent changes in the education system, had a major impact on charles’s professional life. the once self-assured teacher now had to teach learning areas in which he was not academically an expert, after his subject had been phased out. he had to master new teaching and assessment approaches and create a milieu in which teaching and learning for postmodern, culturally diverse young people could flourish. when mr foster was appointed as the deputy principal at the school at the beginning of the nineties, charles and some of his colleagues, according to the words of one of charles’s colleagues, “did not really take any notice of him”. according to this colleague, foster “always held it against us and treated us unnecessarily badly”. relations between charles and foster went into a downward spiral after foster’s appointment as principal. according to charles, his principal is a “hard man”, who is known for his poor human relations. charles acknowledged that the new educational dispensation makes huge demands on him and that sometimes he has to “study as hard as his grade 12 pupils”. his questioning of an extremely complicated assessment rubric, compiled by a young colleague, for example, brought the wrath of the principal down on him. he was summoned to foster’s office and presented with an ultimatum. he had to assess according to the rubric, or “i had to go”. charles was very upset: i found it unacceptable that a man who had been at the school for more than 30 years, and had contributed to the school in many areas, was insulted in this way. 73de wet — the professional lives of teacher victims of workplace bullying charles regarded the more humane approach to maintaining discipline, in particular the abolition of corporal punishment, as problematic. according to him, he and other teachers did not get adequate support from the principal in addressing disciplinary problems in their classrooms. in order to illustrate how disciplinary problems gave rise to conflict with his principal, charles recounts: i was in trouble, because i chased two boys out of the class. i told them they had to sit outside the classroom, but then they went to the toilet and smoked cannabis. now i am the villain in the story. i was taken to task. charles’s health gradually deteriorated and he was diagnosed with depression. the principal’s unsympathetic attitude during his illness remains with him: my doctor was furious. i presume i could have taken him [foster] to the labour court, but i am not that kind of person. he told me that if i were not yet ready at the beginning of the term and if i could not yet teach fulltime i, as he had stated it, would not be the first person to resign on account of depression, but i had to start thinking of leaving teaching. he said that if i could not cope, i had to go. it was a sword over my head. i had been teaching for 33 years; he could have given me a fair chance to get onto my feet again. the next term, charles resumed his duties at the school, despite the fact that he was still officially on sick leave, and “fortunately, i am now fine again, but i am dependent on medication”. after this incident, the relations between charles and his principal deteriorated further and he was regularly “on the carpet” for apparent trivialities. all career satisfaction was gone. charles taught because he had to, not because he wanted to. two years after my initial interview with charles, he retired at the age of 60. the once beloved, dedicated teacher concedes that he is entirely apathetic towards the school where he had worked his entire professional career: when i pass the school, i feel nothing. i shall go and teach again; but never again at the secondary school edumela. currently, charles is creating a new life for himself away from the school. there is no longer an unsympathetic principal peering over his shoulder, intimidating him into early retirement, or insinuating that he was an incompetent teacher. charles is taking control of his life again and in this new life, he does not want to break ties with that which he found good at the school: colleagues with whom he came a long way (“the dying generation”) and former learners. discussion narrative analysis provides valuable insight into the way these two teachers made meaning of their professional lives, their identities and their relationships and future. the narratives give insight into how the dreams, accomplishments and enthusiasm of two successful teachers were trampled on by the relentless emotional abuse by their principal. although both victims gave up on their dreams and original career plans, they are still loyal towards the teaching profession. charles’s narration suggests feelings of frustration, alienation and disappointment. changes in disciplinary practices and teaching approaches made charles the target of an unsympathetic principal. after his retirement he broke almost all contact with the school as such. yet, he still professes loyalty toward the alumni and some of his colleagues. being an excellent teacher was important to margaret. whereas her professional dreams should have been applauded by her principal, he tried to crush them. although he killed her dreams for promotion, he could not kill her love for her profession. despite her public humiliation she still seizes every opportunity to better herself professionally. charles and margaret’s narratives are mirror images of salin (2003:1214) and einarsen’s (1999:17) definitions of workplace bullying. they have been repeatedly and relentlessly humiliated and disempowered by their principal for more than 15 years. because of the bureaucratic and rule-oriented character of educational institutions (cf. duffy & sperry, 2007:400), as well as the autocratic, patriarchal management style of the principal, neither charles nor margaret were able to stand up against their abusive boss, 74 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 which inevitably placed them in a subservient position. while both narratives highlighted the persistency and duration of the bullying, charles’s narrative also focused on the escalation and intensification of his victimisation; the perpetrator was merciless in his efforts to humiliate a person who was suffering from depression and could not cope with the changes in the south african education dispensation. this trend is in line with findings by hoel and beale (2006:240), namely that there is often an escalation of emotional abuse of victims who are unable to defend themselves. charles and margaret were exposed to virtually all the types of bulling that were identified in the literature (blase & blase, 2002:680; duffy & sperry, 2007:401; hadikin & o’driscoll, 2002:17; hall, 2005:46; hoel & beale, 2006:243; pietersen, 2007:60; salin, 2003:1215; tracy et al., 2006:152). the bullying principal used, for example, official structures (official warnings) to intimidate both participants. foster’s intimidation strategies included the setting of an unrealistic, inhumane demand by telling charles that he should resign if he could not cope with the changes, or resume his teaching responsibilities, even when he was still on sick leave. both participants’ professional competencies were questioned and their work was excessively monitored and criticised by the principal, as well as by younger, inexperienced and less qualified colleagues, which may be seen as public humiliation. whereas margaret’s hard work to adapt to the changing education dispensation were undervalued, charles’s efforts were often scorned and ridiculed. both participants were repeatedly set up to fail by a principal who negated their expertise and redeployed them to new learning areas. the bullying principal went out of his way to foil margaret’s dreams for promotion; her hard work and studies to improve herself professionally were not acknowledged. on the contrary, it instigated more criticism, moved the goal posts and deprived her of responsibilities. reasonable requests, such as margaret’s appeal to teach in her area of specialisation, were often refused. the foregoing discussion illustrates that a combination of tactics were used to create a hostile working environment for charles and margaret. because the victims’ inability to stand up to their principal caused the intensity of hostility to escalate, charles was forced to capitulate and margaret to seek new dreams to keep afloat emotionally. intertwined with charles and margaret’s stories are their perceived reasons as to why they were targeted by foster for more than 15 years, namely the tension between their success and foster’s jealousy thereof, as well as their tormentor’s personality. einarsen’s (1999:17) finding of jealously being the main reason for bullying is confirmed by the two stories. both participants’ careers soared while they were relatively young (in their thirties). they may therefore be seen as overachievers who were proud of what they had accomplished. einarsen (1999:21) rightly argues that overachievers may be experienced by others as patronising and may consequently provoke aggressive behaviour in others. einarsen’s (1999:17) assertion that the strong expression of self-confidence may be a factor in workplace bullying is in line with hall’s (2005:47) view, namely that “adult bullies victimize the most self-confident, conscientious, skilled-at-their-job and helpful employees”. this is echoed by the current study. margaret talked at length how she improved her qualifications, attended workshops and studied obe, and both participants recalled the fact that their learners received provincial and national recognition. both participants are held in high esteem by the school’s alumni and colleagues. very few studies have been conducted on how perpetrators of workplace bullying perceive their workplace and justify their actions. therefore, researchers’ characterisations of perpetrators and the underlying reasons for their negative actions are based on the responses, descriptions and/or narratives of victims (cf. einarsen, 1999:20). this view resonates well with the current study. charles and margaret’s stories tell of a tormentor who was dishonest (rigged sgb results), lacked management skills and was devoid of empathy (cf. einarsen, 1999:20; hall, 2005:46). kirsten et al. (2005:1) is of the opinion that bullying principals may suffer from narcissistic personality disorder. while i acknowledge that it is not possible to do a complex psychological diagnosis based only on the victims’ stories, the data suggests that their bullying principal has a grandiose sense of self-importance and acts as if he has unlimited power. if the participants dared to disagree with him or those he put in a position of power, they were severely reprimanded. members of the sgb were further seen as pawns in a chess game he controlled. 75de wet — the professional lives of teacher victims of workplace bullying the fact that the bullying of charles and margaret commenced after the promotion of mr foster to principal, is in line with research findings by o’moore et al. (1998, in salin, 2003:1225), stating that almost two-thirds of the victims claimed that the bullying started after the promotion of the perpetrator or the arrival of the new manager. charles’s story illustrate that changes, for example, the introduction of obe, new disciplinary strategies and the rise of a generation of post-modern, culturally diverse young people, often expose vulnerable people’s inability to adapt. this makes them easy targets for abuse. both participants intentionally talked about the different phases in their working lives. before the appointment of the bullying principal, they were what may be perceived to be near or at the pinnacles of their careers. after 1993 they were pulled into a vortex, subsequently becoming the targets of a bully who negated all their accomplishments. as a result of the relentless bullying both victims lost self-confidence: charles questioned his own ability to understand a rubric and margaret went to school every day with trepidation of what she may have unknowingly done “wrong”. this loss of self-confidence impacted on both victims’ professional lives. charles retired at an earlier age than he had originally envisaged. the once brilliant, beloved teacher changed into a mediocre teacher struggling to adapt to changes. after his retirement he indicated that, if he were to ever return to teaching, it would not be at edumela secondary school, while margaret said farewell to her dreams of career advancement. the participants are still loyal to their profession, not the school. this is in line with cemaloğlu’s (2007:21) and hall’s (2005:46) view, namely that the majority of those exposed to bullying may leave the organisation, but not their chosen professions. duffy and sperry’s (2007:401) warning that victims become preoccupied with what has happened to them holds true for the current study. margaret told, for example, that while driving to school in the mornings she is worried about what the day might bring. findings by hall (2005:48), hauge et al. (2007:237), quine (1999:231) and vartia (2001:67) that workers who experienced bullying reported lower levels of job satisfaction and higher levels of job-induced stress than non-victims is confirmed by the narratives. both participants acknowledged that they felt extremely stressed. findings by the aforementioned researchers, namely that victims of workplace bullying were more likely to be clinically anxious and depressed, is confirmed by charles’s narrative. he was diagnosed with depression. quine (1999:231) notes that a person who is depressed, stressed or anxious may be bullied by ... unscrupulous workers who choose weaker people as their victims. anxiety and depression may also weaken a person’s ability to cope with stressors such as bullying or make them more likely to perceive other people’s behaviour as hostile and critical. both margaret and charles’s stories resonate well with what the literature defines as the core elements of workplace bullying. the narratives described how and why they were bullied, as well as the impact of the bullying on their professional lives. the juxtaposition of their stories with the literature shows multiple similarities between their lived experiences and those of other victims of workplace bullying. the retelling charles and margaret’s stories create understanding and respect for exceptional teachers who try to survive emotionally and professionally in an autocratic working environment. conclusion framed by a narrative lens, the core of this article was the lived experiences of two teachers who were exposed to relentless bullying by their principal for more than 15 years. their stories synthesised the innumerable humiliating experiences they had to endure, and how they tried to make sense of their victimisation in order to survive emotionally and professionally. even though there are numerous similarities between the findings from this study and other research findings on the topic, the different way of presenting the data give a coherent, holistic voice rather than fragmented, categorised snapshots or statistical results to capture the plight of victims of workplace bullying. the stories of the two victims of workplace bullying provide important examples to researchers regarding the value of moving beyond an analysis of narratives or reducing human beings to numbers. 76 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 the two coherent stories will hopefully contribute to the limited research literature on workplace bullying in the south african context. the narrative analysis further sheds light on the impact of the ever-changing south african socio-political and education dispensation, as well as the hierarchal school management structure and the autocratic, patriarchal management style of school principals. the narrative analysis reveals the different types of bullying the victims were exposed to, the reasons why they were targeted, and the ways in which they responded to the bullying. these findings are supported by the literature, and have implications for practice and theory. the bullying of teachers (and other workers) by their superiors is a reality in south africa despite the country’s liberal constitution entrenching human rights (cf. rutherford 2009:41). fear, intimidation and the seemingly unlimited power of principals often result in a culture of silence surrounding workplace bullying. narrative analysis is but one way of giving a voice to the victims. education management at national, provincial and local level, trade unions, victims as well as perpetrators should know what workplace bullying entails, and the implications thereof for the profession, as well as the phenomenon of the bullying principal as a “quasi-employer” and representative of the department of education (cf. rutherford 2009:41). while i grant that the aim of this study, as is typical of all qualitative research, is not to generalise, future researchers should explore the possible impact of gender, age and victims’ adaptability to the everchanging socio-political and educational landscape on the tenacity or lack thereof, in the way victims of workplace bullying try to make sense and survive in an aggressive working milieu. the connectedness between individual, organisational and societal factors, which emerged in the narrative analysis, stresses the significance of contextualising research on workplace bullying. references andrews m, sclater sd, squire c & tamboukou m 2004. narrative research. in c seale, g gobo, jf gubrium & d silverman (eds). qualitative research practice. london: sage publications. beale d & hoel h 2010. workplace bullying, industrial relations and the challenge for management in britain and sweden. european journal of industrial relations, 16(2):101-118. bingley af, thomas c, brown j, reeve j & payne s 2008. developing narrative research in supportive and palliative care: the focus on illness narratives. palliative medicine, 22:653-658. blase j & blase j 2002. the dark side of leadership: teacher perspectives of principal mistreatment. educational administration quarterly, 38(5):671-727. bowman b, bhanjee f, eagle g & crafford a 2009. a qualitative study of the multiple impacts of external workplace violence in two western cape communities. south african journal of psychology, 39(3):300-313. bryant an 2009. negotiating the complementation gender ideology of an evangelical student subculture: further evidence from women’s narratives. gender and education, 21(5):459-565. cemaloğlu n 2007. the relationship between organizational health and bullying that teachers experience in primary schools in turkey. educational research quarterly, 31(2):3-29. creswell jw 2007. qualitative inquiry & research design. choosing among five approaches. 2nd edn. london: sage publications. de lange d 2007. violence at work on rise in sa, mps are told. cape argus, 5 september: 11. de wet nc 2010a. the reasons for and the impact of principal-on-educator bullying on the victims’ private and professional lives. teaching and teacher education, 26(7):1450-1459. de wet nc 2010b. school principals bullying behaviour. acta criminologica, 23(1):96-117. duffy m & sperry l 2007. workplace mobbing: individual and family health consequences. the family journal, 15(4):398-404. eagle g, hayes g & sibanda t 2007. standpoint methodologies: marxist, feminist and black scholarship perspectives. in m terre blanche, k durrheim & d painter (eds). research in practice. applied methods for the social sciences. cape town: uct press. 77de wet — the professional lives of teacher victims of workplace bullying einarsen s 1999. the nature and causes of bullying at work. international journal of manpower, 20(1/2):16-27. hadikin r & o’driscoll m 2002. the bullying culture. oxford: butterworth-heinemann. hall ps 2005. bullying and the teacher. the delta kappa gamma bulletin, 27:45-49. hauge lj, skogstad a & einarsen s 2007. relationships between stressful work environments and bullying: results of a large representative study. work & stress, 21(3):220-242. henning e, van rensburg w & smit b 2004. finding your way in qualitative research. pretoria: van schaik. hoel h & beale d 2006. workplace bullying, psychological perspectives and industrial relations: towards a contextualized and interdisciplinary approach. british journal of industrial relations, 44(2): 239-262. khalil d 2009. level of violence among nurses in cape town public hospitals. nursing forum, 44(3): 207-217. kirsten gjc, viljoen ct & rossouw jp 2005. bullying by educational managers with narcissistic personality disorder: health protection and psycho-legal issue? paper presented at saelpa conference, bloemfontein, 4-6 september 2005. lutgen-sandvik p 2003. the communicative cycle of employee emotional abuse: generation and regeneration of workplace mistreatment. management communication quarterly, 16(4):471-501. macmath s 2009. interrogating paradigmatic and narrative analysis against a backdrop of teacher professionalism. international journal of research & method in education, 32(2):137-150. merriam sb 2009. qualitative research. a guide to design and implementation. san francisco: jossey-bass. pietersen c 2007. interpersonal bullying behaviour in the workplace. south african journal of industrial psychology, 33(1):59-66. polkinghorne de 1995. narrative configuration in qualitative analysis. in ja hatch & r wisnieski (eds). life history and narratives. london: falmer press. quine l 1999. workplace bullying in nhs community trust: staff questionnaire survey. british medical journal, 318:228-232. rutherford rm 2009. a creativity development model to enhance educator security – a labour law perspective. phd thesis. potchefstroom: northwest-university. salin d 2003. ways of explaining workplace bullying: a review of enabling, motivating and precipitation structures and processes in the work environment. human relations, 56(10):1213-1232. samuel m & van wyk m 2008. narratives of professional development: forces in the field. education as change, 12(2):137-153. smeyers p 2008. qualitative and quantitative research methods: old wine in new bottles? on understanding and interpreting educational research. pedagogica historia, 44(6):691-705. steinman s 2003. workplace violence in the health sector. country case study: south africa. geneva: international labour office. tracy sj, lutgen-sandvik p & alberts jk 2006. nightmares, demons, and slaves: exploring the painful metaphors of workplace bullying. management communication quarterly, 20(2):148-185. van fleet dd &van fleet ew 2010. the violence volcano: reducing the threat of workplace violence. charlotte, nc: information age publications. vartia ma 2001. consequences of workplace bullying with respect to the well-being of its targets and the observers of bullying. scandinavian journal of environmental health, 27(1):63-69. pie 33(4) book.indb perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 107 young people being literate in a digital space: what can textspeak tell us? lisa wiebesiek recognising the challenge facing many young south africans in accessing affordable, appropriate reading material and content, the fundza literacy trust produces texts, including novels, short stories, poetry, and non-fiction written for a young adult audience. the focus in this article is on the short stories which are made available via a cellular telephone-based social networking platform called mxit. users of the fundza mxit platform are able to read short stories and can also comment on what they have read on interactive discussion boards. in their comments on these discussion boards, users make extensive use of a form of written english to which i will refer as textspeak. the discussion boards create a digital space in which users can engage in literate activities that encompass both the traditional aspects of literacy (the mechanics of reading and writing), and the social aspects of literacy (the ideologies and power relations present and represented in a text). using critical literacy as a framework, and a qualitative textual analysis approach, i analyse one short story and the user comments from the interactive discussion board on that story. my analysis of the user comments suggests three themes: 1) using textspeak, young people are engaging in literate activities; 2) this engagement demonstrates a promising level of literacy among the users; and 3) the users are engaging critically with texts and their social messaging and functions, and, therefore, are displaying a level of critical literacy. from this analysis, i conclude that there is potential in using digital platforms like the fundza mxit platform, and forms of language like textspeak, to encourage young people in south africa to develop critical literacy about important issues that affect their lives, such as gender and sexuality, agency, and risk and vulnerability. keywords: agency, critical literacy, fundza literacy trust, literate activities, mxit lisa wiebesiek human sciences research council education & skills development wiebesiek@hsrc.ac.za | lwiebesiek@hsrc.ac.za 031 242 5618 | 071 679 3069 perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 108 introduction for many learners in under-resourced contexts, access to written material in school libraries, and the opportunity to regularly read, write, and engage in discussions of texts, particularly in english, is challenging. to address this, the fundza literacy trust1 produces texts for young adults. fundza content is made available in three formats: in hard copy, on the internet, and via a cellular telephone-based social networking platform called mxit.2 in this article, i focus on a fundza short story available on the fundza mxit platform. according to its website, mxit is a “south africancreated mobile social network”3 that is free to download, and inexpensive to use. in recent years, mxit has lost some of its popularity as a social networking platform in certain sectors, having been replaced for many users by platforms designed for smartphones, such as whatsapp.4 however, smart phone technology is still relatively expensive in south africa and is, as a result, beyond the reach of many south africans, particularly young people. fundza does not charge for their content so users of the digital platforms pay only for the airtime or data that they use to access content. via fundza’s mxit platform young people for whom it is difficult to access hard copies of reading material, and/or the internet are able to access fundza content on cellular telephones affordably. in 2014, fundza recorded 249 641 users of their mxit platform in contrast to just 56 670 users of their mobisite (accessed via the internet) (fundza annual report, 2014). fundza short stories on the mxit platform are accessed chapter by chapter. at the end of each chapter of the short story, a question or prompt is presented to the user to stimulate critical engagement with the story. users can respond anonymously to these prompts, comment on the story or chapter, and engage with other users via the interactive discussion board function of the platform. in this way the discussion boards become digital spaces in which users can engage in more traditional literate activities5 as well as with literacy as social practice. a striking feature of the user comments on the discussion boards is the use of textspeak, a non-standard form of written language that makes use of a number of linguistic processes including acronyms, abbreviations, and non-standard orthography. using critical literacy as a framework, i focus in this article on the short story, the good girl, by lauri kubuitsile, and on the user comments on the story on the interactive discussion board as the main units of a directed analysis. i chose this short story for two reasons. first, in the bigger study from which this article draws, i used the good girl as a prompt to stimulate discussion about gender roles, femininities, and masculinities, with adolescent girls in a high school in rural kwazulu-natal. among other things, the story offers the opportunity to engage critically with and problematise the idea of a ‘good’ girl—what it means to do femininity in socially sanctioned ways. second, the story generated a large number of user comments on the fundza mxit discussion board, suggesting that the content was popular and interesting to users, and that it stimulated them to engage with the material. digital storytelling: creating participatory space, addressing stigma, and enabling agency lisa wiebesiek 109 textspeak crystal defines textspeak as “[a]n informal name for the kind of abbreviated language used in text messaging and sometimes for any kind of text message, whether abbreviated or not” (2008: 187). he argues that textspeak is a variety of language that evolved in response to a particular technology, specifically short message service (sms) and instant messaging (im). according to crystal, textspeak shares linguistic properties with a number of other varieties of language that have arisen in similar circumstances. textspeak, as mentioned above, includes abbreviations, and non-standard orthography, spelling, and grammar. it also includes ellipsis, acronyms, contractions, shortenings, and initialisms, among other linguistic processes. common examples of textspeak include: lol [laugh out loud] 2 c u [to see you] b4 [before] textspeak, and the implications of textspeak for literacy, has raised no small amount of alarm from various sectors who see it as evidence of a lamentable decline in literacy, and as demonstrating a poor grasp of the standard rules of grammar, spelling, and punctuation. vosloo observes that “[f]or a number of years teachers and parents have blamed texting for two ills: the corruption of language and the degradation of spelling in youth writing” (2009: 2). however, with regard to textspeak, crystal makes the compelling argument that [c]hildren could not be good at texting if they had not already developed considerable literacy awareness. before you can write abbreviated forms effectively and play with them, you need to have a sense of how the sounds of your language relate to the letters. you need to know that there are such things as alternative spellings. you need to have good visual memory and good motor skills. if you are aware that your texting behaviour is different, you must have already intuited that there is such a thing as a standard. (2008: 187) while crystal’s analysis of textspeak is based on data largely from the united kingdom, this argument holds in a south african context even for second or third language speakers of english. the argument is valid at the level of human language rather than at the level of a specific language or variety thereof. it is clear from the examples provided of users’ textspeak below that they spontaneously, frequently, and predictably use specific forms of textspeak that conform to a pattern of systematic manipulation of the rules of written english. further evidence in support of this argument is the fact that certain critical linguistic features of a language will remain unchanged in order to preserve intelligibility. word order, for example, is not affected in textspeak or in other linguistic processes such as code-switching. this demonstration of the systematic manipulation of linguistic rules, structures, and systems illustrates that in terms of text-based literacy, these users have a grasp of the rules and structures of written english that allows them to perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 110 engage in the manipulation of this form of language. that they have achieved a level of text-based literacy that allows them to manipulate written english is a promising indicator of levels of literacy. in response to the outcry over the negative effect that textspeak is thought to have on literacy among youth, crystal remarks that “[c]omplaints are made about children’s poor literacy, and then, when a technology arrives that provides fresh and motivating opportunities to read and write, such as email, chat, blogging and texting, complaints are made about that” (2008: 157). mxit is just such a technology, with the fundza content providing ample opportunity for young people, particularly second language (l2) learners, with access to a digital space in which they can improve their literacy. given concerns about levels of literacy in south africa, this evidence that young people are familiar enough with written english to engage in new varieties of its use, is promising. i selected user comments for their use of textspeak and for their content. i excluded comments expressing appreciation of the story or the desire to know what would happen next. user comments are an exercise in comprehension and the production of written english although users often write in textspeak. many of the user comments are written in english, with a few written in african languages, or in two or more languages. users can remain anonymous on the discussion board by using a username. as a result, the impossibility of identifying the sex of a user prevents any sex-based analysis of the users’ use of textspeak or the content of their comments. to protect users’ anonymity, i avoid using any user names and refer to all commenters as user. critical literacy critical literacy encompasses both the more traditional approach to literacy that focuses on the mechanics of reading and writing (i.e. textor language-based literacy), and an approach to literacy that is mindful of the social nature of literacy. the narrow focus in the traditional approach to literacy fails to acknowledge literacy as a social practice, and the many different types and modes of texts through which meaning is made and with which individuals and groups interact in their daily lives. sheridanrabideau argues that there has been a call in recent years to understand literacy as more than just something acquired in and for the classroom, but also as something that people use in their everyday lives. this shift, according to sheridan-rabideau, has led to a definition of literacy that “diminishes individual, decontextualized skills and foregrounds literacy as a social activity embedded in situated, cultural-historical contexts”. this expanded definition of literacy has given rise to the need for new methods to analyse literacy which “attend to local practices and to broader socioeconomic dynamics that both make texts meaningful and authorise particular individuals to be creators of texts” (2008: 3–4). digital storytelling: creating participatory space, addressing stigma, and enabling agency lisa wiebesiek 111 citing the work of mission, south african scholars, prinsloo and janks, define critical literacy as “an approach to textuality that acknowledges all language practices as socially grounded and so inherently ideological, and thus concerned with issues of power and social justice” (1996: 3). for them, as they point out elsewhere, critical literacy refers to a social-cultural critique of the production, reception and circulation of language and image in text that is concerned with the cultural and ideological assumptions that underwrite texts with the politics of representation. it proposes a particular lens through which to receive and produce texts that necessitates shifts in both theory and practice away from established ways of teaching literacy. (2002: 30–31) this broader definition of literacy creates a space in which literate activities, such as the use of textspeak, which do not conform to the traditional standards of written language, can be analysed as legitimate forms of literacy which, rather than displaying a deficit of comprehension or knowledge, instead illustrate the ways in which literacy in both its narrow and broad sense are both understood and used as social activities. to be critically literate enables consumers of texts to recognise, understand, and question the cultural and ideological assumptions related to issues of power, inequality, and injustice that are embedded in a text. for the users contributing to the interactive discussion boards being critically literate in the use of textspeak means that they are able to read, understand, analyse, and question the messages and assumptions in this short story relating to unequal gendered power relations. the text below, i summarise the good girl, by lauri kubuitsile,6 to provide a context for the discussion of user comments offered in response to a particular event in the story, and to a particular reader question/discussion prompt. kagiso, for whom school is a refuge from a difficult home life, discovers that her classmate, pearl, is having transactional sex with mr phaladi, a teacher. so, when mr phaladi makes kagiso an offer of extra help after school to improve her marks, she is extremely uncomfortable. however, with exams looming kagiso is troubled by the loss of her calculator, and the fact that she has no money to replace it. kagiso is torn. she “knew what he [mr phaladi] wanted.” but, the fact that she “was the one he chose from all the other girls” made her feel special. considering the choice she has to make, kagiso reasons thus: … if i could get a bit of money i could sort out a lot of things. i could replace my lost calculator. without it i had no way of passing maths. i had to do something. and this was easier than asking my parents or reena. what could be wrong with giving mr phaladi a chance? (chapter 3) confident that, unlike pearl, she can handle herself with mr phaladi, kagiso arranges to meet with him after school. it soon becomes clear that his intentions are entirely perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 112 unrelated to assisting kagiso with her school work. trying to coerce kagiso into a relationship, mr phaladi tells her “i don’t want to hurt you. i want to help you. i know about your family. i know you’re struggling. we can help … we can help … each other.” (chapter 4) mr phaladi gives kagiso r200, and lets her leave after telling her to consider his offer. kagiso learns that pearl has been taken out of school because she is pregnant. this news prompts her friend, fiona, to confront kagiso who explains that “i was just trying to find some way. and he made me feel … different … special … and it was nice, okay?” kagiso subsequently refuses mr phaladi and remains steadfast in her decision although he says, “you’ll regret this” (chapter 6). after mr phaladi fails kagiso and attempts to humiliate her in front of the entire class, she gets in touch with pearl so that they can report mr phaladi to the principal of the school. the story ends with mr phaladi being fired, and the principal assisting pearl to get maintenance from him for her baby. using textspeak users of the fundza mxit discussion boards make fairly extensive use of a number of linguistic strategies in manipulating written english that are characteristic of textspeak as described by crystal (2008). for example, non-standard orthography might include: u [you], dat [that], lyf [life]. a second form, contraction, includes examples like: bt its nt her flt [but it’s not her fault], evn nw [even now], mst jst [must just], n m k [and am ok]. a third example, phonetic spelling, is also a fairly common strategy employed by users. examples include skul [school], hil [he’ll], neva sed [never said]. bcz [because] and sumthng [something] are also examples of a combination of the process of contraction and phonetic spelling. examples of rebus which involves words being spelled as a combination of letters, numbers and/or pictures are no 1 [no one], 4 [for], and 2 [to]. below i provide examples of user comments using textspeak from the interactive discussion board on the good girl on the fundza mxit platform along with versions of the textspeak comments in a more standard form of written english below each original comment. literacy as social practice user comments not only reveal a promising level of knowledge about written english, they are also revealing of the ways in which users engage with what we might call the social in the story—in this case power relations specifically relating to gender, age, and money. user comments reflect attitudes towards, and beliefs about, gender roles, agency, vulnerability and risk, and socially acceptable ways of doing femininity. the user comments quoted below are in response to the prompt question for chapter 1: what do you think pearl is doing? pearl is situated in the centre of a contradictory discourse around masculinity and femininity wherein, on the one digital storytelling: creating participatory space, addressing stigma, and enabling agency lisa wiebesiek 113 hand, as part of their dominance over women, boys and men are considered to be legitimate sexual aggressors. on the other hand, women who are expected to be passive and to acquiesce to male dominance must simultaneously fiercely guard their physical and sexual integrity by resisting the sexual advances of men for fear of losing their virtue and reputation, often symbolised by virginity, and thereby their worth and value. consider the user comments below. shz a prostitude in the making tryna pass by slpn wth a teacher [she’s a prostitute in the making trying to pass by sleeping with a teacher] user 1: 9 november 2012 so wrong she is more like a hore nxaaa8o [so wrong, she is more like a whore *phonetic spelling of a sound] user 2: 4 july 2014 pearl sound so dirty nd its not gud to sleep with a teacher [pearl sounds so dirty and it’s not good to sleep with a teacher] user 3: 1 july 2014 wat she’s dng is wrng al th pupil wl knw nd embaras hr infrnt of th hle skul [what she’s doing is wrong all the pupils will know and embarrass her in front of the whole school] user 4: 9 november 2012 girls are expected to obey the dominant male and also to be virginal. pearl is acquiescent to the demands of the powerful male but this necessarily means that she cannot protect her virtue and reputation; she is caught up in the contradictory requirements of what it is to be an obedient girl and a good girl. these contradictory requirements of women and girls clearly create uncertainty about pearl’s positioning, but users appear to resolve this uncertainty by condemning her acquiescence to the sexual advances of an older, more powerful man, and remaining largely silent about mr phaladi’s role in the situation. the idea of women’s bodies and their sexuality being shameful is a powerful tool often used to police the expression of female sexuality. the virgin/whore discourse about women’s bodies and their sexuality suggests that there is no middle road—girls and women are either sexually active and bad, or sexually inactive and good. when a girl or a woman does not conform to the virgin ideal in the eyes of the observers, she is considered immoral, unclean, and of little or no worth regardless of the circumstances of this failure or inability to conform. the user comments in the examples above demonstrate that for users, the virgin/whore binary is salient and therefore one that they make use of. this discourse is one that can exist only in highly unequal contexts in which male dominance over women, often expressed through the policing of their sexuality, is the norm. as perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 114 gbalojobi (2010) reminds us, sexuality is informed by gender and operates within its broader framework so the silence around mr phaladi’s behaviour allows users to avoid challenging established gender norms in which the sexual advances of men as an expression of male power are condoned. there were a few users who acknowledged and commented on mr phaladi’s role and responsibility in his relationship with pearl. these users appear to be aware that not only is mr phaladi more powerful than pearl, but that he is abusing this power by taking advantage of her. the comment below is an example of this awareness of the unequal power relations between pearl and mr phaladi. wht peari is wrng…bt its nt her flt, bcz da tcher tok advntge of her….we all knw dt no1 cn rsist gd thngs in lyf [what pearl is wrong…but it’s not her fault, because the teacher took advantage of her…. we all know that no one can resist good things in life] user 6: 3 december 2012 note, however, that rather than attributing her vulnerability to unequal power relations, another user attributes pearl’s acquiescence to material motives. pearl is paper loving (materialistic) by so doing that,her ignorance is gonna ruin her life either pregnancy or hiv [pearl is paper loving (materialistic) by so doing that, her ignorance is going to ruin her life either pregnancy or hiv] user 8: 12 december 2012 the story appears to invite this kind of response by implying that pearl’s motivation for her involvement with mr phaladi is purely materialistic so that she can be seen in opposition to kagiso who is clearly positioned as the good girl. it is important to note, however, that there are a number of ways in which pearl, and girls in a similar position, are vulnerable. more than just materialism, economic vulnerability can be a strong motive for girls and women to engage in a transactional sexual relationship. pearl and girls like her may also be vulnerable socially. for example, the desire to obtain good results at school in an effort to create better opportunities for upward social mobility in the future can be a powerful motive for becoming involved in a transactional relationship with a teacher. a noteworthy exception to the general trend is user 9’s comment below, which speaks to vulnerability as a potential motivator of pearl’s behaviour. i thnk she wants to be loved by ppl bt she’s nt realising da effects of wt she’s doin [i think she wants to be loved by people but she’s not realising the effects of what she’s doing] user 9: 3 december 2012 in sharp contrast to the sentiments of many of the comments quoted above, user 10 appears to be celebrating pearl’s relationship with someone who can provide for her, digital storytelling: creating participatory space, addressing stigma, and enabling agency lisa wiebesiek 115 despite the risk involved. this user expresses reassurance that the outcome of such relationships is not always negative. go pearl u daddy is prvidng whch meanz u rock gal ws lyk da at skul n m k evn nw [go pearl your daddy is providing which means you rock girl was like that at school and i’m okay even now] user 10: 9 november 2012 this comment can be seen as an example of an expression of the modern femininity described by jewkes and morrell (2012). it is a clear rejection of the conservatism and acquiescence expected of girls and women by other users. however, the inherent risk involved in this kind of approach is minimised by user 10. it is noteworthy that, as indicated in the preceding discussion of user comments, the behaviours associated with the performance of this kind of femininity are rejected by the majority of users, indicating that among them such modern femininity is not sanctioned. importantly, users have not recognised that the sexual relationship between pearl and mr phaladi constitutes statutory rape and, given that all forms of rape are an expression of male power rather than sexual desire, it is interesting that in the story the principal’s support of pearl and kagiso, after they have reported mr phaladi, does not extend to pursuing criminal charges against mr phaladi for this statutory rape. it seems to me that the failure of users to recognise the behaviour as rape is part of the continuum of behaviour that ranges from victim-blaming to silence about what has happened to refusing to challenge the underlying power imbalances that allow this to happen in the first place. there appears to be some recognition among users of the risks involved in engaging in a sexual relationship, particularly with a teacher. user 8, for example, mentions pregnancy and hiv, and user 9 alludes to the effects or consequences of pearl’s situation. in their evaluation of pearl’s agency, vulnerability, and risk, many of the users do not seem to be cognisant of the fact that, as abdool karim, et al, observe “[m]any young girls are often unable to remain abstinent, or negotiate mutually monogamous relationships, or rely on consistent condom use….” (2012: 1871). indeed, user comments in response to pearl appear to point towards a particular misunderstanding of the kind of agency that girls like pearl have, and the extent to which they can exercise that agency within the broader context of gender inequality. women and girls, it seems, are thought to have more agency, and the ability to exercise that agency more freely than they actually do; in reality agency is often highly constrained. for example, it may seem that in performing a more modern femininity, pearl is exercising agency in deciding to have a transactional relationship with mr phaladi. however, the extreme power disparities between the two in terms of gender, age, financial standing, and social position constrain pearl’s agency in relation to mr phaladi. this understanding of girls’ agency in coercive situations is reinforced by kagiso’s actions at the end of the story and the positive response perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 116 of the principal to this. the understanding of agency that user comments seem to reveal puts undue responsibility on pearl, the individual with less power, for failing to exercise the agency that she is assumed to have, rather than on mr phaladi for abusing his power. there was a lack of consensus among users in response to the prompt for chapter 4 of this story: since kagiso took the r200, does she now owe mr phaladi something? a number of users felt that kagiso, despite having taken the r200 from mr phaladi and using it to buy a calculator she did not, in fact, owe him anything. she doesn’t owe him any thng. bt 2 hm thts not how hil take it [she doesn’t owe him anything. but to him that’s not how he’ll take it] user 11: 12 nov 2012 no mr phaladi is abusing kagiso ag [no. mr phaladi is abusing kagiso. *phonetic spelling of a non-lexical utterance*] user 12: 7 december 2012 no she doesnt owe him anythng. its acutually mr philadi who owes her sumthng. an apology fr his unethical behavior [no she doesn’t owe him anything. it’s actually mr phaladi who owes her something – an apology for his unethical behaviour] user 13: 28 december 2012 what is striking about these comments is the strong reaction to mr phaladi’s behaviour. in stark contrast to user responses to his behaviour in relation to pearl which is largely ignored or minimised, users condemn his behaviour towards kagiso as unethical and abusive. this raises the question: why do users react so differently to the same behaviour directed towards two different girls? since the behaviour and the perpetrator are the same it is plausible that the different reactions are to the girl towards whom this behaviour is directed. despite the fact that kagiso is aware of mr phaladi’s intentions, and considers acquiescing to his advances, she is not judged by the majority of users to be materialistic and dirty in the same way that pearl is. there are a number of possible reasons for this. first, kagiso has been set up from the beginning of the story as the good girl, displaying favourable feminine characteristics such as a lack of interest in boys, a focus on school work, and a quiet, discreet disposition. second, users may find kagiso’s motivations for considering a relationship with mr phaladi more acceptable and legitimate because she needs a calculator in order to pass her mathematics exam. in contrast, pearl, it appears, was interested only in material gain in itself. for users, a transactional relationship based on material consumption is judged more harshly than transactional relationships motivated by need. further, at this point in the story, users are unaware of kagiso’s decision regarding accepting or rejecting mr phaladi’s offer; she cannot yet be judged as virgin or whore. digital storytelling: creating participatory space, addressing stigma, and enabling agency lisa wiebesiek 117 i turn now to the comments of users who felt that given that kagiso took the money and did not intend to return it, she did owe mr phaladi something— specifically, sex. consider the comments below. ai this gal!!if you take someone’s money,it means you agree with his terms and conditions.she owes mr phaladi big time indeed.he’ll blackmail her about this. hhmmm…naive gals! [*phonetic spelling of a non-lexical utterance* this girl! if you take someone’s money, it means you agree with his terms and conditions. she owes mr phaladi big time indeed. he’ll blackmail her about this. *phonetic spelling of a nonlexical utterance*…naïve girls!] user 14: 12 november 2012 ja nw she owes him smthng. she mst jst play it safe n smart [ja now she owes him something. she must just play it safe and smart.] user 15: 12 november 2012 she(kg) now has to sleep with mr phaladi since she took that 200rand and the new book so yeap she owes him bigtime,but there is still time to backdown the only thing she needs to do is to return the money…..lv cant be bought,it something that happens naturally and u have to feel it. [she (kagiso) now has to sleep with mr phaladi since she took that r 200 and the new book, so yeap she owes him bigtime. but, there is still time to back down the only thing she needs to do is return the money…..love can’t be bought; it’s something that happens naturally and you have to feel it.] user 16: 12 november 2012 for users 14 to 16, the exchange is an obvious one—r200 and a book for access to her body. user 15 considers kagiso to be naïve, as though at her age she should know better. recognising the risk involved, user 16 feels that kagiso should play it safe and smart, not by refusing to have sex with mr phaladi, but presumably by using condoms. however, as noted above, in such unequal relationships, negotiating condom use is often not possible for girls. for user 17, the return of the money is a seemingly simple solution to a seemingly simple situation. it is in the context of poverty that this dynamic can play out; both men and women can view girls’ and women’s bodies as commodities to be used in fair exchange. kagiso and pearl’s economic vulnerability exacerbate their lack of power because of their age and the rampant gender inequality of a patriarchal society. the immediacy of a need or a want in a context of poverty can lead to a decision-making process in which finding a solution to the problem of the moment is prioritised over the long term, potentially harmful, consequences of that short-term solution. user 17, mindful of kagiso’s social and financial vulnerabilities, does not blame her for considering becoming involved with mr phaladi. it is noteworthy how different this response is to many of the responses to pearl. for user 17, the exchange appears to be fair and s/he is casual about encouraging kagiso to ‘give the guy some loving’ perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 118 because he ‘will be there for her’. also of note in this comment is the fact that whether or not kagiso is a virgin is pertinent to user 17. i dont blame kagiso 4 wat she,s doin her lyf iz dificult financialy n socialy and mr phaladi wl b there 4him she mst gv d guy sm lovng an move on,besides d story neva sed she was stl a virgin [i don’t blame kagiso for what she’s doing her life is difficult financially and socially and mr phaladi will be there for her she must give the guy some loving and move on. besides the story never said she was still a virgin] user 16: 12 november 2012 in an illustration of foucault’s argument that sexuality is not an entity that is being repressed by power, but rather an “especially dense transfer point for relations of power” (1979: 103), user 17’s comment shows how a girl or woman’s value can be reduced to little more than her body and that the value of a woman or girl’s body drops when she is no longer a virgin. in a patriarchal context, a woman or girl’s worth is determined exclusively in terms of the contradictory requirements of being both subject to male power and the protectors of their virtue against male sexual desire. conclusion so, what can textspeak tell us? in this article i have argued, following crystal (2008), that the use of textspeak, or the spontaneous, frequent, and predictable manipulation of the rules and structures of written english, is evidence of a promising level of knowledge of those rules and structures, and of literacy among the users. further, using textspeak in the way that the users discussed in this article have, is another way in which young people can engage in literate activities. in resourcepoor settings, fundza’s innovative use of the mxit platform provides young people with access to written materials and the opportunity to engage in literate activities. the large number of users of the fundza mxit platform in 2014 alone suggests that young people are making use of available resources to improve their literacy. finally, the analysis of user comments presented in this article demonstrates that the users engage in literate activities beyond just textor language-based literacy, but also as a social practice using their knowledge and context to mediate their understanding of, and response to, texts. user comments made in the anonymous digital space of the discussion boards reveal much about the gendered social relations that shape the users’ readings of the text. the discussion boards provide users with the opportunity to reveal and discuss their knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours related to unequal gendered power relations. janks argues that critical literacy in education is “concerned with teaching learners to understand and manage the relationship between language and power” (2000: 175). it is here, particularly given the interactive nature of the discussion boards, that the potential lies for teachers and others who work with young people to use literate activities to develop critical literacy among young south africans that, for example, challenges established gender norms that contribute to gender inequality, vulnerability, and risk. one way to harness this digital storytelling: creating participatory space, addressing stigma, and enabling agency lisa wiebesiek 119 potential would be for teachers and/or academics to become users of the fundza mxit platform, enabling them to engage with other users in this anonymous digital space in order to prompt more critical debate about the issues raised in the short stories and on the discussion board so that users are offered alternative analyses of the stories, and can, perhaps, begin to identify and question the power relations represented in the story. while the discussion in this article draws attention to textspeak as an indicator of a certain level of literacy and the potential of critical literacy to encourage young people to challenge and question the gender norms that underpin gender inequality, more research is required in this area in south africa. there are a number of areas that such research should investigate, including how digital spaces can most effectively be used to engage young people in literate activities such that both their traditional literacy and their critical literacy are developed further. questions about if and how critical literacy in relation to gender and sexuality, agency, and vulnerability and risk might enable young people to both recognise and challenge harmful gender norms could be asked and explored. the relationship between textspeak and literacy in south africa could be investigated. acknowledgements i would like to thank ann smith for her invaluable comments on earlier drafts of this article. references crystal, d. 2008. txting: the gr8 db8. oxford: oxford university press. foucault, m. 1979. history of sexuality: volume one. translated by robert hurley. london: lane. fundza literacy trust 2014. fundza annual report 2014. retrieved on 05 february 2015 from: http://live.fundza.mobi/. gbalajobi, t. 2010. constructing sexual identities within ‘sugar daddy’ relationships: a case study of sexuality constructs among students at the university of the witwatersrand. unpublished master’s thesis: university of the witwatersrand. janks, h. 2000. domination, access, diversity and design: a synthesis for critical literacy education. educational review, 52 (2): 175–186. jewkes, r. & morrell, r. 2012. sexuality and the limits of agency among south african teenage women: theorising femininities and their connections to hiv risk practises. social science and medicine, 74: 1279–1737. karim, q. a., kharsany, a. b., frolich, j. a., werner, l., mlotshwa, m., madlala, b. t. & abdool karim, s. s. a. 2012. hiv incidence in young girls in kwazulu-natal, south africa-public health imperative for their inclusion in hiv biomedical intervention trials. aids and behaviour, 16 (7): 1870–1876. prinsloo, j. & janks, h. 2002. critical literacy in south africa: possibilities and constraints in 2002. english teaching: practice and critique, 1 (1): 20–38. perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 120 sheridan-rabideau, m. p. 2008. girls, feminism and grassroots literacies: activism in the girlzone. albany, ny: state university of new york press. vosloo, s. 2009. the effects of texting on literacy: modern scourge or opportunity? an issue paper from the shuttleworth foundation, april 2009. endnotes 1. http://www.fundza.co.za/ 2. http://get.mxit.com/ 3. http://get.mxit.com/ 4. https://www.whatsapp.com/ 5. following sheridan-rabideau (2008), i use the term “literate activities” in this article instead of “literacy activities” to describe what literate people are able to do in terms of reading and writing, understanding and responding to texts in particular social contexts. for sheridan-rabideau (2008), the term reflects an important shift in the definition of literacy from just the ability to read and write, and incorporates “literacy as a social activity embedded in situated, culturalhistorical contexts. this shift emerges, in part, from literacy research informed by anthropological/ethnographic traditions that focus on the diverse and interrelated activities surrounding the ways people use textual practices in particular settings.” like sheridan-rabideau, i, too, “use ‘literate activities’ instead of ‘writing’ or ‘literacy’ to emphasize literacy’s complexity” (3). 6. http://live.fundza.mobi/home/library/fiction-short-stories/the-good-girl/ perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 1 guided group reflections of first-year pre-service teachers: moving beyond the rhetoric of “go and reflect” adri beylefeld adré le roux in south africa, pre-service teachers enter education programmes with diverse preunderstandings of the teaching profession. for some, their experiences are often naively divorced from a genuine understanding of how present-day education perpetuates patterns of poverty and privilege. responding to the pedagogical challenge of framing problems of social injustice in relation to the profession, we designed a school visit project to expose first-year pre-service teachers to school environments that represent the exciting inequities in educational experiences and opportunities. in this article we comment on the written group assignments that followed from the small-group discussions which were held after the school visit. located within a lifelong learning framework, we proceed from the assumption that discussion in a group with support will afford students the opportunity to position themselves in relation to the grave inequalities embedded in south african education. data obtained were analysed by means of open and axial coding to comment on the salient issues the students discussed, the issues they wanted further clarification on, and the opportunities they envisaged to engage with and act on. we found that, although the small-group discussions succeeded in setting a critical reflective process into motion, a space was not created for students to uncover and challenge their deep-seated assumptions that stem from a specific historical and cultural context. keywords: teacher education; pre-service teachers; lifelong-learning; critical reflections; social justice adré le roux (corresponding author) school of education studies university of the free state e-mail: lerouxad@ufs.ac.za tel: +27 51 401 2292 adri beylefeld university of the free state e-mail: beylefeldaa@ufs.ac.za tel: +27 51 401 3125 perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 2 introduction as one of the most unequal countries in the world, south africa’s current struggle towards democratic transformation includes an on-going battle for a more equitable education system (tikly, 2011; sahrc, 2012). the context of a society in which the majority of south africans remain disadvantaged not only foregrounds the role of higher education in transforming systems of inequity, but necessitates the imperative of teacher education to enable pre-service teachers to reduce injustices and increase the well-being of all learners in their future classrooms. while the transformative agenda of south african higher education institutions is captured in the recognition of higher education and training “as an agent of socio-economic change and development” (che, 2004: 14), the department of higher education and training (dhet, 2011: 6) requires all teacher education programmes to, inter alia, “assist teachers in developing competencies that enable them to deal with diversity and transformation”. it can thus be agreed with walker (2013) that the curriculum and pedagogies that pre-service teachers encounter in institutions of higher education should feed into the acquisition of specific knowledge and skills that will enable them to think critically and compassionately, and to frame problems of social injustice in relation to the profession. as teacher educators employed by the university of the free state (ufs), our interest lies with the role of teacher education in enabling pre-service teachers to develop an awareness of, to critically think about, and to position themselves in relation to the grave inequalities embedded in south african education. in south africa, all pre-service teachers grew up in a society deeply marked by a racialised past and they are, due to the stratified nature of a socio-economic unequal present, positioned on different sides of historical and social divides. as a consequence, preservice teachers carry with them diverse schooling experiences that could range from prestigious private school environments, to middle-class public school contexts, to poorly resourced and under-performing school backgrounds. working within the context of teacher education, we often find that, while these diverse experiences constitute most pre-services teachers’ perceptions and expectations of the profession, they frequently request to do their teaching practice in school contexts that are similar to their own schooling experience. thus, unless teacher education creates the opportunity for pre-service teachers to pause and contemplate existing inequalities in our education system, many of them will remain buttressed in a naive understanding of what it means to teach in the south african school context. informed by our contention that the extent to which curriculum and pedagogies challenge students’ perceptions and expectations will ultimately have an impact on their willingness to effect social change in their future classrooms (robinson & mcmillan, 2006: 328), this article comments on small-group discussions held by firstyear pre-service teachers. these discussions followed after the students were exposed to school environments that reflect the socio-economic and racial inequalities of 75% of south african schools being regarded as dysfunctional and only 25% of schools guided group reflections of first-year pre-service teachers: moving beyond the rhetoric of “go and reflect” adri beylefeld & adré le roux 3 being regarded as functional (spaull, 2012). while the school visit served as a critical incident to reflect on the current situation in south african education, we designed this study to help us explore the extent to which the small-group discussions supported the students to delve deeper into their own understanding of current schooling contexts, and to think critically about their own learning. study context inspired by the commitment of the south african higher education sector to be involved in and assume responsibility for the transformation of south african society (doe, 1997; che, 2004; dhet, 2013), the ufs faculty of education adopted the vision to position itself as a faculty that “visibly contributes to the social transformation of the broader society” by enabling “access in ways that overcome the barriers posed by social inequality” (ufs, 2011). this line of thinking, coupled with our concern as to whether our students really grasp the extent to which schooling in our country remains constituted by socio-economic inequalities, provided us with the rationale to design a school visit programme with social justice as the underpinning value in 2011. as part of the practical component of the bed teacher education programme, we wanted the school visit project to afford all first-year pre-service teachers the opportunity to develop learning competency through a reflective approach. the programme, which stretched over two days, consisted of a diversity workshop that was aimed at challenging first-year students to question their beliefs and attitudes towards cultural difference, and to consider the implications of discrimination for classroom practice. the diversity workshop was followed by orientation to a rigorous reflection framework. during this session, the purpose and procedure of reflection were explained. the fieldwork, in the form of a one-day long school visit, was aimed at creating an awareness of how historical, social and political circumstances have shaped the reality of schooling in south africa. students were randomly grouped together in small groups and transported by bus to spend the day at a school. each group was accompanied by an academic staff member who teaches in the bed programme. it was anticipated that exposing students to a school environment experience that does not fit into their existing frames of reference would create some dissonance that would lead to the questioning of the self and society. an intentional opportunity to compose a piece of individual reflective writing was created by providing a set of scaffolding questions and guidance on how to approach the assignment and deepen individual learning. in addition to the individual reflective writing assignment, a space was created on the day following the school visit for interpersonal interaction during small-group discussions which held the promise of eliciting more information and ideas to inform the learning experience (box 1). six academic staff members, chosen from among the cohort of staff that accompanied the students to the schools, facilitated the smallgroup discussions. this article is specifically focused on the written assignment by perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 4 the groups that followed from their small-group discussions. whereas the written assignments by the groups were summatively assessed, students were informed that the purpose of the small-group discussions was not to earn marks, but merely to make them stop and think about the school-based learning experience. box 1: guidelines for structuring small-group discussions guidelines for structuring small-group discussions 1. in your files there is a coloured card with a number on it. 2. all number 1s, all number 2s, all number 3s, etc., get together to form a small discussion group – there will be 8 students in each mini-group. 3. appoint a group leader. 4. appoint a spokesperson. 5. appoint a scribe. 6. in round-robin style, give everyone in the group a chance to contribute to the discussion: • what were most important learning gains from the school visit? • why does this learning matter or would you see it as significant? • what questions do you have? • what goals have you set for the future, in accordance with what you have learned, in order to improve your teaching? 7. after 20 minutes the groups report on the essence of their deliberations. theoretical framework while we remained sensitive to a pedagogy of teacher education rooted in a transformative approach, we located this study within a lifelong learning framework which embodies our faculty of education’s philosophical belief that newly qualified teachers must, inter alia, “understand the diversity in the south african context in order to teach in a manner that includes all learners [and] … be able to manage classrooms effectively across diverse contexts in order to ensure a conducive learning environment” (ufs, 2012). although the concept of “lifelong learning” has given rise to different definitions and a variety of conflicting interpretations (barnett, 2010; elli, 2008; walters & watters, 2001), we regarded it as a comprehensive concept that challenges the very culture and notions of conventional teaching and learning. underpinned by the values of inclusive education and sustainable development, lifelong learning is often described as the “guiding light,” the “tool box” or the “life blood” of human development and empowerment (ouane, 2011). central to the idea of lifelong learning is the belief that learning and living should be integrated – both horizontally guided group reflections of first-year pre-service teachers: moving beyond the rhetoric of “go and reflect” adri beylefeld & adré le roux 5 in life-wide contexts across family, cultural and community settings, study, work and leisure; and vertically over the span of an individual’s life. the key objective of such learning is subsequently to connect individuals and groups to structures of social, political and economic activity, and to prepare them for democratic citizenship (aitcheson, 2003). in the light of the foregoing and for the purpose of this article, we accepted lifelong learning as a transformative approach to learning that: focuses on equipping individuals with the competencies they need to face everyday tasks and challenges, and to be not only good and productive workers and employees, but above all critical, creative and responsible citizens – or simply caring and committed individuals who respect their fellow humans and the environment (ouane, 2011: 35, 38). as such, we worked with the assumption that lifelong learning has the potential to assist in shaping the future classroom practices of our pre-service teachers by helping them to live together as mutually respectful social beings who do not merely tolerate, but embrace diversity and are always open to new perspectives to bring about social change. in searching the literature to build a suitable theoretical context for our study, the four-pillar framework for lifelong learning (elli, 2008) served as our point of departure. this framework depicts learning as a transformative process resting on four pillars, namely “learning to know” (reacting to the multiplicity of sources of information, including multimedia and indigenous knowledge), “learning to do” (connecting knowledge and skills), “learning to live together” (identity building in a context of multiple belongings) and “learning to be” (spiritual development) (carneiro, 2011; delors et al., 1996). however, as pointed out by ouane (2011), social and economic realities in a fast-changing society demand wider and even more complex competences, including abilities such as thinking critically; interacting with, and learning from others; coping with rapid change; solving problems creatively; acting responsibly; behaving ethically; and reflecting. such competencies are of particular importance to our pre-service students who have to grapple with and make sense of our society’s on-going struggle against grave socio and economic inequalities. the expansion of the four-pillar framework with this fifth meta-pillar, namely “learning to learn,” has the potential to enhance the transformative process of learning as it aims to, inter alia, unlock the ability to un-learn (e.g., stereotypical and uninformed beliefs about south african teaching contexts) and to re-learn (e.g., new perspectives on what it means to teach in diverse south african school contexts). the fifth pillar draws strongly on torres’s (2003: 34) argument that “to proactively direct or re-direct change for human well-being and development, remains a critical challenge and the mission of education and learning systems, especially in today’s highly inequitable world”. perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 6 purpose of the study turning the vision of learning as a lifelong endeavour into reality has profound implications for the content and delivery of teacher education. it involves, first of all, that the status quo in existing teacher education programmes be viewed critically with the aim of moving from the traditional, mostly lecture-based learning, to a blend of taught learning and community engagement (yang & valdes-cotera, 2011: xvii). secondly, opportunities for constructing useful knowledge need to be created. this can be done by harnessing the power of critical reflection to identify previously unquestioned beliefs about what is acceptable behaviour within a particular cultural group, and to unearth deep-seated assumptions about the social world and students’ connection with that world (fook & askeland, 2007). as a consequence, we wanted to create a space for our pre-service teachers to critically reflect on how their own learning is becoming connected with the social, political and economic realities of the south african school contexts; with their own un-learning of misconceptions about such realities; and with their re-learning of skills and competencies to work in authentic south african school environments. thus, by using our theory and selected focus on the small-group discussions, the purpose of this article is to reflect, in general, on how we can improve the school visit project and, in particular, to comment on the extent to which the students were pushed beyond dissonance and a superficial interpretation of complex, socio-political issues, allowing them to reach the level of critical reflection on and engagement with those issues. research design as reflective educators, we ground our work in research, trying to find out what we should know and do in order to enhance our practice. for this reason, the qualitative interpretive methodology that was used for this study was positioned within an action research approach. in this article we align ourselves with ebbutt’s (1985; costello, 2003; mcniff, 2002) explanation of action research as the systematic study of attempts to improve educational practice. of particular importance for us as researchers and teacher educators is the understanding that the improvement of education practice can take place by means of practical actions, coupled by the researchers’ own reflection upon the effects of such actions. it is the latter, thus our own reflections, that provided us with the reinforcement we need to show if and how we had improved a social situation. “social situation” in the context of this study refers to our efforts to cultivate the skill of critical reflection in our first-year pre-service teachers. following johns (1995), who maintains that reflecting in a group with support is more beneficial than individual reflection, small-group discussions were arranged to afford students an opportunity to use reasoning to make sense of their real-life learning experience. in the spirit of critical reflection, which values multiple perspectives and appreciates different viewpoints, the assignment to reflect thus went beyond the rhetoric of “go guided group reflections of first-year pre-service teachers: moving beyond the rhetoric of “go and reflect” adri beylefeld & adré le roux 7 and reflect”. while the students were invited to first use and express their individual standpoints in writing, they had to discuss the following day, in the company of fellow students, the learning they had gained from the visit. the inclusion of a “why” question (why does this learning matter or is it significant?) allowed us to assume that the discussions would elicit reflection, not only on what they had learned, but also on what had made them feel perplexed, anxious, disillusioned or enthusiastic. the question that remained with us as the project leaders was whether the sharing of observations, ideas, feelings and reactions regarding the school visit did indeed help our students to delve deeper into their own understanding of current schooling contexts. if, on the contrary, the climate in these discussions created a feeling of blame or made students feel restricted by their past histories, we had to know in order to maximise opportunities for our students to be open to new and different perspectives. participants and data collection a total of 528 students participated in the 2011 school visit project. the student composition included 315 white, 154 african, 57 coloured and 2 indian students1 who were randomly allocated to schools in the motheo district of the mangaung metropolitan area. these schools included 23 all-african townships schools; 10 multiracial urban schools; four schools comprising coloured and african learners; one all-african farm school; and two special needs schools comprising predominantly african learners. to ensure the integrity of the research, we sought permission from students, in writing, to analyse their work for research purposes, thus modelling how a reflective educator goes about refinement of practice to avoid repeating mistakes (sagor, 2000). for the purpose of the small-group discussions, groups comprising five to eight students were formed so as to maximize participation. compilation of the written accounts and summarised feedback received from the group leaders resulted in 102 sets of data, representing (a) the most important issues that were discussed, and (b) the questions the students felt warranted feedback. data analysis content analysis, a method commonly used for analysing visual, verbal or written messages, was used to search for patterns in the data. the aim of content analysis is to give a condensed, but broad description of a phenomenon. according to patton (2002: 453), content analysis is “a qualitative data reduction and sense-making effort that takes a volume of qualitative material and attempts to identify core consistencies and meanings”. translated into action research terms, the aim of content analysis can be framed as finding answers to the following questions: “what story does the data tell us?” and “how can we explain the story that we hear?” (mcniff & whitehead, 2009). perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 8 a three-phase inductive approach consisting of preparing, organising and reporting was followed to analyse the data (elo & kyngäs, 2007). preparation consisted of a decision to use words and sentences as the unit of analysis. the next step of the analytic process was to make sense of the data by reading through the material several times. the organising phase started with open coding, which means that conceptual categories were generated freely by making marginal notes to reflect all the nuances in the data. thereafter, the lists of subcategories were grouped under higher-order headings to form generic categories. a process of abstraction, also referred to as axial coding, allowed general themes to emerge for the purpose of reporting findings intelligibly (elo & kyngäs, 2007). tables 1 to 4 in the next section depict the categorisation and abstraction process. as can be seen in these tables, categories are not mutually exclusive or exhaustive and the analytic process was an iterative one. content validation consisted of seeking agreement on the categories and themes by means of a dialogue between the researchers. results and discussion throughout life, human beings have to accommodate change and learn to solve problems. in recent times of rapid change where this universal truth is of particular relevance for the south african context, the work of dewey (1944) and mezirow (2000) on critical reflection is increasingly relied upon for assisting students to reflect on the content and processes of their learning so as to help solve problems. however, although critical reflection can be regarded as an activity that could generate hope, it is almost always distorted by the social context and personal history of the reflector (brookfield, 1995). our students consequently needed guidance to learn how to distinguish between past and present rationalities, to challenge their beliefs, values and behaviour, and to discover views contrary to their own that might be justified (mezirow, 2000). in searching the data that emanated from the small-group discussions, we engaged the four lenses proposed by brookfield (1988; 1995) to uncover the assumptions entertained by the students. according to brookfield (1988; 1995), critical reflection entails being open about and explicitly challenge the basic assumptions that one, as well as the community within which one works, entertains. this process commonly proceeds through four stages, namely an assumption analysis, contextual awareness, imaginative speculation and reflective scepticism. assumptions, as the taken-forgranted beliefs about the world and our place within it, harbours the danger of trapping people into false reasoning if they are unaware of the existence of such assumptions. contextual awareness embodies the realisation that assumptions are socially and personally created in a specific historical and cultural context. imaginative speculation, in turn, occurs when a person starts thinking about new ways of interpreting phenomena in order to improve the way in which things are being done. ultimately, reflective scepticism is the ability to temporarily reject or even suspend assumptions that have been taken for granted in order to establish the truth or viability of a given situation. guided group reflections of first-year pre-service teachers: moving beyond the rhetoric of “go and reflect” adri beylefeld & adré le roux 9 the ten generic categories listed in table 1 represent what one could term a fairly predictable discursive agenda after having been exposed to a real-world teaching context. the sub-categories provide perspective on the level of the conversation in that they point towards obligations that different parties owe one another, but mostly to shortcomings and stumbling blocks that were observed. this outcome was interpreted as evidence that students had entered the first stage of transformative learning, namely contextual “border crossing”, as described by kiely (2005). while contextual border crossing involves the stepping out of one’s comfort zone, it simultaneously introduces a first step towards contextual awareness; thus an initial awareness of a reality which is different from one’s own frame of reference. the prominence given to issues such as a lack of commitment, laziness, ill health, poverty, racism, vandalism and language barriers indicates that many of the students had encountered a reality which, in many instances, is different from their pre-existing cognitive structures and expectations. the themes portrayed in table 1 provide a summary of prescriptive assumptions that surfaced. prescriptive assumptions, according to brookfield (1988), are conceptions of what we think ought to be occurring in a particular situation. albeit rudimentary and in some instances even naive, the themes demonstrate how the students think teachers, learners, parents, the community, the government and the individual should behave in order to establish a good education system. thus, in addition to moving beyond the known – out of their comfort zones – many students entered the next stage of transformative learning, namely dissonance. themes such as role-modelling, inclusivity, community engagement and poverty eradication carry the seeds of a drive towards making sense of the situation through adjustment of expectations and restoring of balance. table 1: most important issues discussed: categories and themes condensed from the written feedback sub-categories generic category theme/prescriptive assumption commitment/lack of commitment laziness manage despite obstacles not trained for subjects poor discipline/self-discipline relationship with learners have to play dual roles: teacher and parent teachers the qualifications and attitude of teachers should affect the quality of education perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 10 passion love determination selflessness adapt to any circumstances prepared to go the extra mile teachers make a difference, regardless of circumstances must meet the seven roles of a teacher teacher behaviour/ professionalism teachers should be role-models poverty ill-health hygiene variety of backgrounds different capabilities disability sexuality need for special attention lack of support learners education should be inclusive disinterested/show interest not involved do not give enough love and support parents community engagement should benefit education poor infrastructure setup is unorganised no transport too little equipment lack of learning materials not enough sport facilities no feeding schemes too many learners per class too few teachers resources and infra-structure sufficient government support should create a physical environment conducive to education starvation lack of funds/poverty use of drugs no care for orphans after school school is used as a shelter socio-economic circumstances the eradication of poverty should be imperative for quality education guided group reflections of first-year pre-service teachers: moving beyond the rhetoric of “go and reflect” adri beylefeld & adré le roux 11 apartheid racism stereotypes equal treatment for all mutual respect acceptance of different backgrounds socio-political context diversity should be a strength if handled correctly theft vandalism gates are left open children leave premises during break risks safety should be a priority different language groups in one class teacher and learners speak different languages language breaching language barriers should limit the communication breakdown between teachers and learners not the way “we” were raised lack of discipline and respect having plenty of resources not a guarantee for good teaching corporal punishment does not solve problems schools must use what they have optimally classes not decorated creatively most schools are very religious children are eager to learn, despite circumstances should appreciate what you have – others are less fortunate we take things for granted poverty is not an excuse for poor circumstances personal bias, guilt and blame education should benefit from mutual tolerance, the understanding of differences and the taking of responsibility although the school visit experience might have created perplexity and perhaps anxiety for some – as is evident from the topics of discussion – dissonance in itself is a constructive force for instigating learning, which should be considered as a positive outcome that feeds into initial contextual awareness. table 2 gives more examples of dissonance that harbour the potential for critical questioning of the self and society, as well as opportunities to engage critically with issues of power, privilege, quality of life in general and human rights. aligned to the view that data are mediated through the researcher as a “human instrument” (denzin & lincoln, 2003), the assumptions perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 12 listed below are examples of the researchers’ nuanced interpretation of students’ feedback. they derive from our personal experiences and assumptions in congruence with the philosophical underpinnings of the research. table 2: most important issues discussed: examples of dissonance condensed from the written feedback observation assumption not all children wear school clothes/shoes distinctive school apparel is the hallmark of “belonging” to a school parents are not involved sufficiently; do not give enough love and support all children have parents some schools are very religious religion is a prerequisite for good schooling / religion has no place in the school the next level of analysis focused on extracting examples of students’ imaginative speculation related, in particular, to issues of disadvantage and their initial thinking about new ways to improve challenging school circumstances (table 3). although border crossing presents an opportunity to critically examine issues of power, privilege and marginalisation, and while dissonance has the potential to unshackle intense emotions because of socio-economic inequalities, the small-group discussions did not cater for the naming of structural and institutional oppression, the confronting of power differentials and the framing of privileged positionality. thus, as the students were not guided to a level where they could start to challenge and reject deepseated assumed truths about entrenched inequities and historical injustices within the south african school context, i.e. critical reflection, no instances of reflective scepticism could be traced in the data. table 3: most important issues discussed: examples of imaginative speculation and underpinning values condensed from the written feedback verbatim quote element of imaginative speculation underpinning value “colour is not an issue – all of us can work together and love each other” intercultural harmony tolerance “learners can do sport at other schools” “mobile classrooms” improvement of circumstances sharing “we must start with community projects, e.g. plant trees, sponsor books for a library” community engagement initiative/agency “just work hard and you will overcome problems” industriousness hope guided group reflections of first-year pre-service teachers: moving beyond the rhetoric of “go and reflect” adri beylefeld & adré le roux 13 in addition to the prescriptive assumptions discussed above, brookfield (1988; silverman & casazza, 2000) also highlights two other types of assumptions that should be made explicit and challenged in order to deconstruct long-held habits of behaviour, i.e. causal and paradigmatic assumptions. the questions that students wanted feedback on (table 4) bear testimony of the causal and paradigmatic assumptions prevailing in their minds. causal assumptions are assumptions about how things work and under which conditions they could be changed. paradigmatic assumptions, on the other hand, are the deeply embedded assumptions that people use to order the world into fundamental categories (brookfield, 1988; 1995). table 4: questions the students wanted feedback on: assumption analysis question causal assumption paradigmatic assumption why are some schools treated differently? all schools should be treated equally all people are entitled to equal treatment in a democracy why does the government not reduce poverty? it is in government’s power to eradicate poverty decent living is a basic need how can learners be disciplined without physical punishment? physical punishment will help to address ill-discipline discipline creates order why is there not security? better security will bring order schools are supposed to be safe, orderly places why can’t children be educated in their mother tongue? why do some have the privilege to learn in their own language? mother-tongue instruction will yield better results mother-tongue language is a prerequisite to function optimally is it fair that schools be judged by their surroundings whether they deserve feeding schemes? schools should not be judged by their surroundings a poor physical environment is indicative of need why are there so many learners and so few teachers? the teacher : learner ratio should be improved too many learners in one class are not conducive to good education how can we collect money for a feeding scheme? better nutrition will improve performance hunger obstructs learning do the unions protect the rights of teachers? teachers’ should not be treated unfairly fair treatment is a basic right perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 14 why do some schools receive more money than others? equal financing of all schools will eradicate differences in standards sufficient finances are equivalent to high standards why do they not appoint qualified teachers? only qualified teachers should be appointed suitable qualifications imply teacher competence is the money that the government is supplying being put to the correct use? government funds should be spent wisely corruption is a present-day, common phenomenon why do doctors get paid more than teachers? better remuneration will enhance motivational levels the teaching profession is not held in high regard why do we have to do practical teaching in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd year, each and every year? practical experience in all three years is excessive/ unnecessary qualified teachers know instinctively how to teach what is the purpose of the diversity workshop? is it necessary that we always discuss the issue of inequality? a workshop on diversity is unnecessary inequality is not important enough for on-going discussions in teacher education as paradigmatic assumptions are often not recognised as assumptions, but regarded as objectively valid interpretations of reality; they are fairly difficult to uncover (brookfield, 1995). given the diverse schooling experiences of our pre-service teachers and bearing in mind a society that positions them on different sides of historical and social divides, we accept that our students’ paradigmatic assumptions stem from, inter alia, intergenerational social advantage and disadvantage. to assume that inequality is not important enough to be included in on-going discussions on teacher education, or to work with the assumption that qualified teachers know instinctively how to teach, clearly stems from privilege positionality, i.e., a position whereby the right to education was not limited by socio-economic realities operating at grassroots level (nieuwenhuis, 2010). by uncovering the prescriptive assumptions that inform the way in which students talk about, characterise and understand school realities (table 1 and 2), we were able to indicate that, while the school visit offered a critical moment for contemplation about such realities, the small-group discussions created the space for the communication and sharing of dissonance with the current situation in schools. in addition, the data analysis helped to detect some of the causal assumptions the students use to make sense of how schools work and to indicate under which conditions such perceived inequalities can be changed (table 4). however, both causal and predictive assumptions are deeply embedded in paradigmatic assumptions (brookfield, 1995). thus, in order for our students to really move beyond dissonance – beyond a mere and initial contextual awareness – they have to uncover how their own understanding of educational inequalities is informed by their taken-for-granted guided group reflections of first-year pre-service teachers: moving beyond the rhetoric of “go and reflect” adri beylefeld & adré le roux 15 assumptions that stem from a specific historical and cultural context. while the data revealed that the school project succeeded in setting a critical reflective process into motion, the small-group discussions did not create a space for students to uncover and challenge their deep-seated paradigmatic assumptions. evidence of students’ moving out of their comfort zones, experiences of dissonance and elements of imaginative speculation consequently served as initial, imperative steps of transformative learning. in a few instances, some students did enter the processing stage of transformative learning (kiely, 2005) when they expressed deeper meaning in the experience and started searching for solutions by making personal commitments: “will the ufs be prepared to transport willing students on a weekly basis to disadvantaged schools to give extra classes?” and “where and how can we as students become involved in the education system?” however, although we can conclude that the small-group discussions did provide support for the students to reflect on their own learning, they were, on average, only able to initiate a fairly artificial or perhaps a shallow positioning of themselves in relation to the complex, socio-political issues that constitute our inequitable education system. we attribute the absence of reflective scepticism to the nature, organisation and short duration of the small-group discussions. the small-group discussions provided a safe space for the sharing of ideas, but were not sufficiently supportive to permit critical self-awareness to the point where students could unpack and challenge the basic structuring axioms they use to make sense of their own learning experience about the socio-economic inequalities of the south african school reality. thus, within the context of the school visit programme, the smallgroup discussions mainly rested on the one pillar of the transformative process of lifelong learning, namely an initial “learning to know”. taking informed action urging us to think carefully and systematically about educative experiences, dewey (1944: 119) wrote: “it is the aim of progressive education to take part in correcting unfair privilege and unfair deprivation, not to perpetuate them”. opportunities to raise awareness about issues that concern our pre-service teachers, such as small-group discussions, provide an ideal opportunity for supporting students to move towards individual and social transformation. by encouraging our firstyear pre-service teachers to reflect on what, in many instances, could have been a disorienting experience, we have made a deliberate attempt to shape the educational environment into a democratic space of knowledge exchange (brookfield, 1995). by getting students to confront their own pre-understanding of south african school realities, even though on the level of causal assumptions, and by allowing them to articulately express the essence of their learning by means of group reflections, we might have assisted in opening the door to potentially powerful new perspectives. perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 16 our own understanding of how to promote students’ understanding of the relationship between contemporary cultures in schools and the social, economic and political circumstances in the country has evolved as a result of this study. by carefully analysing the students’ feedback, we learned that, if we want our students to ultimately contribute toward the overcoming of injustices in their future classrooms, we have to raise the reflective exercise to a level where they can grapple with the realisation of how their own assumptions are personally and socially created in a specific historical and cultural context. this goal amounts to affording students an opportunity of not only becoming connected to south african school realities, but of starting to challenge and unlearn their own misconceptions; of re-learning what is required to work as an agent of change in authentic south african school environments. given the inequitable nature of our education system, we simply cannot run the risk of our pre-service teachers entering the profession with a naive and unchallenged understanding of how the education system reinforces patterns of poverty and privilege. in addition, we have learned to distinguish which of our students’ concerns we can address, and which ones are beyond our influence. the latter, for example, included matters that are decided on and implemented at provincial and national level of government. furthermore, we do acknowledge that, whenever a single source of data is used, the potential for bias is always present. the findings of this study thus need to be supplemented by feedback from the lecturers who accompanied the students on the school visit, the ones who facilitated the small-group discussions, principals and teachers of the schools that were visited, and also from the support staff who were responsible for the logistics of the project. as reflecting educators ourselves, we now realise, more than ever, the value of teaching our students reflection and not simply assigning them to “go and reflect”. it is, however, the last step in an action research process, namely the taking of action, that liberates action researchers from repeating past mistakes. the educational concerns articulated by our pre-service teachers not only point towards the need for more enhanced community engagement, but foreground the importance of creating such opportunities throughout our four-year teacher education programme. facilitywide involvement in, and commitment to the project must be encouraged at both programmatic and institutional levels: academic staff’s unconditional involvement is needed to provide students with answers, options and perspectives; the institution’s faculty of education, in turn, needs to provide the funding and infrastructure that will bring sustainability to the project. if we fail to build and capitalise on the critical reflectiveness achieved as a result of the school visit project, we might find ourselves lulled to sleep by romantic rhetoric that we are educating teachers who will actively contribute to the social well-being of all. most importantly, if we want to remain true to 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(endnotes) racial categorisation originating from the apartheid era, but currently still used by the south african government to fulfil goals of redress and equity in terms of the employment equity act of 1998. 9 rurality research and rural education: exploratory and explanatory power robert j. balfour north-west university this article presents analysed data from the first year of the rural teacher education project (rtep 2007–2009) with a view to illustrating how a generative theory of rurality as education research was developed, and for which ends it might be utilised. the article suggests that data from projects in rural communities, which take the rural as context, need to interrogate the role and purpose of education in such contexts in relation to notions of social and professional identity. i argue for the application of a social theory in which the rural is linked to the possibilities of identity and interaction in terms of the quality of teacher education and the quality of education in rural communities. the theory accounts for the ability of people (in this case teachers) to sustain themselves in space and time – both as subjects and agents able to resist or transform the environment, depending on resources available. it also illuminates the reality, or otherwise, of subjectivities and perceptions in our collective imaginary concerning education and the transformation project in south africa. keywords: rurality, generative theory, agency, forces, resources, identity, community development. introduction in 2007, balfour, moletsane and mitchell launched a project entitled the rural teacher education project (rtep) in the faculty of education at the university of kwazulu-natal. the project, funded by nedbank, toyota and the national research foundation, was part of the nrf niche area (every voice counts: rural teacher development in the age of aids (de lange, mitchell, moletsane, balfour, wedekind, pillay & buthelezi, 2010) and was completed in 2009. the rtep focused on issues such as numeracy, literacy, gender and violence in schools. findings pertaining to these issues are discussed in a range of publications (islam, 2007; islam, mitchell, de lange, balfour & combrinck, 2011; de lange et al., 2010). in 2008, an article published in the journal of rural and community development (balfour, moletsane & mitchell, 2008) conceptualised a generative theory of rurality as education research, drawing from rtep. this social theory was aimed at analysing assumptions about rurality and education in rural contexts, and its premise was that people make use of time, space and resources differently to transform an environment, rather than be subject to it. while the article written in 2008 explained how this might occur, it was not with reference to the data that inspired the theory. in this article, i illustrate the uses of the theory and draw from the rtep data to argue that significant insights may be elicited in this regard. the article is structured in four sections. the first introduces rurality studies and suggests its applicability to education in rural contexts. the second section describes the rtep research methodology, with a focus on the development of a teacher education cohort, as well as research methods to be applied by participants in the cohort. the third section summarises the features of the generative theory of rurality as education research as a means by which data emanating from rtep (and by implication from other education research located in rural areas) may be analysed . the final section analyses data by means of the theory, and uses the theory to provide an explanation for perception, identity and activity in relation to issues concerning rurality and education in rural schools. 10 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 rurality, development and theory internationally, rurality studies are not without theoretical precedent or development. goodwin (2006: 309) in relation to regulation theory and rurality studies, argues that “the political, cultural and social constitution of particular nodes or regulation” influenced rurality studies and focused on the role of the state in exploiting, developing and then conserving rural areas. other theorists such as murdoch (2006: 177) focused on the changing relationship between urbanisation and rural communities, arguing that “evidence of counter-urbanisation” shows that networks developed between urban and rural communities disrupted assumptions regarding conventional kinship networks and “spatial proximity”. for murdoch, the importance of such networks arises from a need to explore how “rural assets and resources are mobilised within networks” (murdoch, 2006: 182). cloke (2006) surveys rurality studies and suggests that “the changing relationship between space and society has rendered traditional divisions between rural and urban increasingly distinct” (cloke, 2006: 19). because education is a field implicit in rural livelihoods, and yet has not been explored (as seen, for example, in cloke, marsden & mooney, 2006), there remains a critical need to theorise the education project within a differentiated and dynamic understanding of ruralities. african social philosophies such as ubuntu (seepe, 2004) focus on the self in the environment, and the self in the community from an african perspective, but the extent to which these develop an ecological awareness, or self-as-part-of-environment, is not clear. a south african survey of some rural education research (nkambule, balfour, pillay & moletsane, forthcoming) between 1995 and 2004 (74/3774 or 2.1% of the corpus of postgraduate education research for that period) demonstrates that the area is underresearched and underdeveloped in south african universities. the department of education in 2007 established the rural education directorate, aimed at ensuring that the challenges peculiar to rural schools, were addressed. at the outset, a distinction was made between focusing on rural education and the stated focus on “the particular challenges of rural and farm schools and [to] identify gaps in service delivery” (ndebele, 2009: 1). the emphasis made by the directorate on gaps and service delivery does not suggest a sufficiently comprehensive focus on rural education. the rural teacher education project: design and methods in order to focus on rural education through a combination of research and intervention strategies , one objective of rtep was to develop a cohort model for partnerships between higher education institutions and rural schools that would equip student teachers, teacher mentors and managers to act as agents for development and social change in relation to issues affecting rural communities. from a methodological perspective, the intended outcome was to understand how schools (can) become resources for, and are positioned to stimulate and even lead, broader processes of community development and rural transformation. the rtep aimed to yield a careful reorientation of teacher education within the faculty of education at the university of kwazulu-natal .... so that rural schools were recognised as primary community learning sites for pre-service teachers. at the end of the first year, the rtep team realised the need for a theoretical engagement with the project data and the extent to which data not only illuminated the role of education in rural communities, but could also be conceptualised to illuminate particular perceptions of teacher identity and effectiveness in rural schools. the participatory methodologies nudged the rtep research team towards a deeper consideration of the need to disrupt and interrogate negative stereotyping concerning rural areas. far from the passive and negative stereotypes associated with rurality, the team began to consider the very context as transformative, capable of positively influencing and affecting the motivation of teachers, community workers and learners. the analysis of the data derived shows the need for a conceptual and analytical framework for rural education. the next three sections describe the cohort model and methodology, and a range of instruments developed to generate data. the research methods generated data which when we considered how it might be organised and read, lent itself also to the formulation of the generative theory of rurality as education research. 11balfour — rurality research and rural education the cohort as a community of professional and research practice the rtep’s design was influenced by lave and wenger’s (1991) notion of the development of a community of practice. the project interpreted this work as a focus on the development of professional practice with a view to influencing teacher identity amongst south african teachers and education students in relation to rural education. elsewhere (wake & staniforth, 2007; islam, mitchell & balfour, 2011), the rtep team have shown that this is an innovative addition to the professional requirements of teacher education, since, rather than assuming generic and already articulated notions of teacher identity, the cohort design articulated an understanding of the context (influenced in this case by culture, space, gender and identity) as critical. within the rtep cohort, conventional notions of academics-as-experts and teachers-as-mentors, were renegotiated as student teachers became experts, academics become learners, and community workers (teachers, health care workers, parents) become co-generators of knowledge in partnership with the university. for example, a key feature of the design of rtep was that at least half of the students who participated in year one of rtep moved into years two and three of rtep (2008, 2009) to assist the new student teacher cohort in terms of integrating, understanding and working within teacher education in rural vulindlela (kwazulu-natal). the rtep team anticipated that the ‘core’ group with previous experience of rtep would become familiar with the issues, questions and challenges associated with rural education, and would engage not only with the new student teacher cohort, but also with research concerning rural education. this was achieved, and with every successive year, the experienced cohort expressed interest in further participation in the initiative, adopting the roles of both mentors to newer student teachers and as more experienced researchers (not conventionally part of an undergraduate curriculum in south african universities). whilst in the field, teachers and principals in the project schools also acted as mentors to the student teachers and, in so doing, assisted the project in developing a new community-based model for in-field supervision of pre-service teachers. this community-based model made use of technologies (camera, video, digital voicerecording) and arts-based approaches (photovoice, collage, drawing) not ordinarily available or used in communities on the basis that access and empowerment occur through practice and development. the cohort as a purposive sample: selection and preparation processes in the first year the project team selected a group of thirdand fourth-year students in the bachelor of education at ukzn (south africa) and mcgill university (canada). the initial cohort of twenty-two student teachers received a number of orientation and training workshops before setting off to vulindlela for the annual practicum (a four week period of practical teaching for professional development purposes, which features in every year of the four-year b ed curriculum at ukzn). the rtep student teachers were selected with diversity of race and gender in mind, and consideration was given to their expressed commitment to the education of children located in communities characterised by poverty and isolation. the preparatory phase, lasting a week, provided student teachers with workshops on research and servicelearning in communities. if the focus was the development of a community of professional practice within rural education, then a number of arrangements had to be effected in which students were to be accommodated not only as a community, but also within close proximity to the communities and schools. in order to effect a high level of complex in-field coordination, the project required on-site leadership and thus appointed field coordinators each year of the project, who facilitated the programme with the student teachers and ensured that the group focused on the research as well as the professional dimensions of the work.1 participation by student teachers in the project was voluntary. the rtep was widely publicised in the faculty of education, and students applied formally in writing and were interviewed for selection purposes. given that the project was heavily subsidised (students’ accommodation and travel were paid for) and led by prominent academics in the faculty, it attracted considerable interest and competition amongst applicants. 12 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 participating students were accommodated in bulwer (kwazulu-natal) for a period of six weeks. during this time they observed the effects of a teachers’ strike, assisted with the teaching of the school curriculum, and participated in the daily school life including administrative and extracurricular activities associated with teaching. the coordinators facilitated the activities of the students, paying particular attention to research and data-collection activities. each day was accompanied by briefing and debriefing reflection sessions (all recorded) in which ideas concerning the students’ and teachers’ perspectives of rural area schooling were contrasted and interrogated to make for a rigorous process of self-reflection and triangulation of data. over the three years in which the project was active (2007-2009), sixty student teachers participated, with a core group of fifteen student teachers drawn from the previous year into the subsequent years. what emerged from the process of reflection described above is that education as received by students and teachers is a “placed resource” (blommaert, 2002: 20), where “resources that are functional in one particular place … become dysfunctional as soon as they are moved into other places”. understanding how such resources can be made effective across a variety of education contexts (urban, rural and class, as argued by balfour et al., 2008) is one of the key issues affecting the quality of teaching and learning in twenty-first-century south africa. research methods and instruments for rtep while the full evaluation report on rtep (islam, 2007) provides a thorough exposition of all instruments and data, i discuss data here in relation to features of the theory described in the next section. thus, selected material is utilised to explain how we arrived at the theory illustrated in part in balfour et al. (2008). when designing the instruments that would enable student teachers within the cohort to develop critical reflexive practice in rural vulindlela, the project considered that a specially designed needs analysis, developed by students and academics, was necessary. figure 1 provides an indication of the range of the instruments. figure 1: the rtep dataset (2007) data type number needs analysis 1x22 students interviews with student teachers 5 interviews with teachers 2 interviews with parents 2 interviews with rtep academics 3 focus groups with parents 2 focusing not only on the material facilities in which education takes place, the needs analysis contained within it questions that referred to the five data collection foci of rtep (numeracy and literacy education, gender and violence in schools, teacher identity and practice) as shown in figure 2. figure 2: selected questions from the needs analysis (2007) 2.6 are there security guards at the entrance? is there a security guard at school? 2.7 is there a fence around the school? 2.10 are teachers on the field during the break? 2.26 are the buildings scattered or close? 2.27 is the school equipped for emergency situations? 2.31 are there good sanitary facilities? 2.32 does the school operate on a five-day timetable or a cycle system? 13balfour — rurality research and rural education 2.33 does the school have a computer room? 2.34 does the school have a library? such questions were then further explored by student teachers with their mentor teachers in the project schools in the form of focus group discussions (of between five to ten people). the focus groups were thus a secondary data source and data emerging from the needs analysis was triangulated with data in the focus groups. figure 3 provides a selection of focus group questions dealing with gender in the project schools. figure 3: selected questions from the focus group on gender in rural education (2007) d) who cleans the chalkboard? why? f) who sweeps the floors? why? g) if one of the school members disclosed his/her gay/lesbian status, what would you do? j) do female teachers get the same respect as male teachers from the learners in the classroom? since rtep sought also to explore the professional development of teachers in rural schools, interviews were held with individual teachers in which themes picked up elsewhere were extended further as shown in figure 4. the rtep design took into account a range of learner opinions and perceptions, not only in relation to the process and experience of education, but also in relation to the networks developed by learners to support each other in and beyond the school. figure 4: selected questions from the interview with learners (2007) 5.1 is school fun/interesting? why? 5.2 do you come to school to learn? 5.3 do you come to school to make friends? in addition to more conventional research instruments, rtep also employed tools associated with participatory research, in particular photovoice, drawing and video recording, undertaken by student teachers, teachers, and learners alike. figure 5 refers to guidelines for generating data on the ‘drawing of education’. figure 5: selected guidelines from the drawing of education with the student teachers (2007) a) sketch the school in which you are placed. b) consider in your drawing the role of education/teaching in the school. c) place yourself and depict your role in this picture. having described the features associated with the rtep design and methodology, the next part of the article explores in summary the features associated with theory generation so as to provide an introduction to a generative theory of rurality as education research (balfour et al., 2008), and its application to rtep data. requirements for theorisation: models and theories kerlinger (1970) defines ‘theory’ as a set of interrelated constructs and propositions that present a systematic view of phenomena by specifying relations amongst variables, with the purpose of explaining and predicting the phenomena. theory itself is a source of new knowledge, insight and discovery, and is thus regarded as an explicit platform for the development and advancement of knowledge. in this case, the generative theory of rurality draws from rurality studies, as well as the wide scholarship available 15balfour — rurality research and rural education there is a building but the library does not work, the books were stolen, and some of the teachers are working to get more books. but they don’t have enough time for the learners to go to the library. they used to have one class a week that learners spent in the library (focus group on literacy: july 2007). and, in response to the question, ‘what initiative is being taken to gain literary resources for the school?’, teachers responded that: the teachers are working to bring in books, sometimes the department helps by donating a few books. sometimes the publishers donate books, but schools need to speak up to get these books and it isn’t speaking up (focus group on literacy: july 2007). these are two examples of questions posed and the resulting discussion which took place. forces in the above context include the time available to access a resource. agency(ies) may be considered the teachers acting to supplement libraries, and schools not taking action to secure books through other agencies such as the department of education or non-governmental organisations. resources may be identified as books and facilities (library being accessible to learners). the analysis is straight forward, but consider that any data (interview, needs analysis, focus group, video, drawings made by learners and student teachers) may be thus mapped and utilised within such a conceptual analytical framework (or what we have termed a generative theory of rurality as education research). further examples for analysis are provided in relation to data arising from the arts-based approach of depicting teachers’ roles and place in the rural community. drawings made by participants have been grouped in terms of what aspects are typically foregrounded and then such images are further analysed in terms of the three variables described earlier. the following narrative emerges with respect to the data generated in the first year of the project. of a total image bank of thirty-six pictures for 2007, the two drawings presented below describe the role of education as a force for change, care, community, upliftment and a means of control simultaneously, an arid learning space, fenced and marshalled. both drawings portray the stresses affecting resources such as time, materials, qualifications and agencies (in terms of agency as ‘will to action’ and agency as an enabling ‘structure for action’ – as described in the previous section). in one drawing (figure 6), the focus is on the role of agency (the teacher, the education structure, and the possibilities of hope and of change). in another (figure 7), the delimitation of these possibilities in terms of control, confinement and regulation (the fencing is particularly evident) is described – these aspects similarly involve the deployment of resources in a particular context, and a will to action (even if negatively constructed in terms of keeping people inside, or outside, the school). figure 7: education as change figure 8: school as space and frame 16 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 within the analysis of resources and agencies, two additional drawings are considered here, since they exemplify a complexity not always captured when considering written data: the conflicting potential of resources and the role that perception plays in determining whether these are possibilities or limitations. for example, in the drawing (figure 9) titled ‘animals in the classroom’, dozens of children crowd around desks, learning as is surely symbolised by the comet, the airplane and the sun, occurs outside the classroom walls, whilst a hapless teacher is distracted by animals which stray in and out of the room. this was triangulated (see islam, 2007: 12) with data arising from photos, student teacher journals and interviews. what is on the desks, in terms of learning, remains a question evidently devoid of meaning. figure 9: animals in my classroom figure 10: inside and outside the community finally, and in recognition of the role teachers and community might play, the drawing (figure 10) titled, “inside and outside the community”, depicts reality of rural education against what is considered to be ideal. within what appears to be a water-drop shape is a teacher holding children and surrounded by people. on the outside of this ‘containment’ are sad faces, without bodies and legs. the arrows suggest a need for communities to work together with schools to support learners. if one picture is located within frames of time and space, then another works on a more symbolic level, and outside time, addressing aspects of the visionary role rurally placed education might best serve. budge (2005: 3) confirms the notion of a context in which the “peculiarities of the local … must be understood”. seldom is rurality conceptualised as “dynamic, or as a set of preferences that have value that is independent of urban influences” (odorahoppers, 2004: 111). conclusions: signs by which to read conventionally, the exposition of research begins with the theoretical and methodological frames that provide conceptual tools for the selection, organisation and analysis of data. this article began with a description of the features of rtep, which i have argued, through reference to the design of the cohort model and selected research instruments, allowed for the emergence of a series of insights regarding rurality, education and education research in rural contexts. these insights in the article led to two points presented in the argument: firstly, that a generative theory of rurality as education research, consisting of three mutually affecting and dynamic variables, can be used successfully to account for the extent to which the context in (rural) education can be effective, transformative or dysfunctional depending on how teachers regulate the relationship between space, place and time; and, secondly, that data emerging from rtep, and indeed other rural education research projects, might be read in terms of the provisions made in such a theory. a generative theory of rurality as education research had not existed when rtep began, but it emerged through data collected over a period of three years. in some ways, this article has been about reading data back to a theory of rurality, as much as demonstrating the way in which a ‘reading out of the data’ might also occur. what emerges through this analysis is that rurality offers a multilayering of positioning and self-awareness, filled with possibilities, despite the legacy of stereotypes which is generally experienced as damaging and disempowering in rural communities. 17balfour — rurality research and rural education acknowledgement this article is based on work supported by the national research foundation (nrf). the author gratefully acknowledges the funding and support of the nrf. opinions, findings and conclusions herein are those of the author. endnote the field coordinators were sponsored canadian student researchers from mcgill: caitlin wake, kaya 1. jorgensen and patricia staniforth. references balfour rj, mitchell c & moletsane r 2008. troubling contexts: toward a generative theory of rurality as education research. journal of rural and community development, 3(3), 95–107. balfour rj, mitchell c & moletsane r 2011. understanding rurality in the troubling context: prospects and challenges. in islam f, mitchell c, de lange n, balfour rj & combrinck m, (eds), partnerships for hope: a school–university collaboration for educational change in rural south africa. new york: edwin mellen. blommaert j 2002, april. writing in the margins: notes on a sociolinguistics of globalisation. lecture given during a workshop of the leverhulme trust project on language and global communication, cardiff university, cardiff, wales. retrieved from http://bank.ugent.be/lpi/lpi13.doc. budge km 2005. place as problem or possibility: the influence of rurality and a sense of place on leaders in one rural school district. ded thesis. seattle: university of washington. cloke p 2006. conceptualising rurality. in cloke p, marsden t & mooney p (eds), handbook of rural studies. london: sage. cloke p, marsden t & mooney p (eds) 2006. handbook of rural studies. london: sage. cohen l, manion l & morrison k 2007. research methods in education. 6th ed. new york: routledge. de lange n, mitchell c, moletsane r, balfour rj, wedekind v, pillay g & buthelezi, t 2010. every voice counts: towards a new agenda for schools in rural communities in the age of aids. education as change, 14(s1), s45–s55. ellis r 1994. the study of second language acquisition. oxford: oxford university press. goodwin m 2006. regulating rurality? rural studies and the regulation approach. in cloke p, marsden t & mooney p (eds), handbook of rural studies. london: sage, 304–316. islam f 2007. dispelling illusions: a participatory evaluation of rural teacher education project in 3 schools in vulindlela district in the province of kwazulu-natal, south africa. unpublished project report. durban: university of kwazulu-natal. islam f, mitchell c, de lange n, balfour rj & combrinck m (eds) 2011. partnerships for hope: a school–university collaboration for educational change in rural south africa. new york: edwin mellen. islam f, mitchell c & balfour rj 2011. transforming teacher education: an rtep experience. in islam f, mitchell c, de lange n, balfour rj, combrinck m, (eds), partnerships for hope: a school– university collaboration for educational change in rural south africa. new york: edwin mellen. kerlinger fn 1970. foundation of behavioural research. new york: holt, rinehart & winston. lave j & wenger e 1991. situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. cambridge: cambridge university press. murdoch j 2006. networking rurality: emergent complexity in the countryside. in cloke p, marsden t & mooney p (eds), handbook of rural studies. london: sage, 171–184. ndebele g 2009. statement by the ddg. rural education newsletter, 1, 1, may. retrieved from http:// www.education.gov.za/linkclick.aspx?fileticket=vdl3psl%2bz7k%3d&tabid=134&mid=430 on 12 july 2011. 18 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 nkambule t, balfour rj, pillay g & moletsane r (forthcoming). rurality and rural education: discourses underpinning rurality and rural education research in south african postgraduate education research 1994–2004. south african journal of higher education. odora-hoppers ca 2004. the cause, the object, the citizen: rural school learners in the void of intersecting policies and traditions of thought. quarterly of education and training in south africa, 11(3), 17– 22. seepe s 2004. towards an african identity of higher education. johannesburg: vista university press. wake c & staniforth p 2007, october. things come together: possibilities in a rural practicum. exhibition presented at the annual kenton conference, kwazulu-natal, south africa. vi thabo msibi crispin hemson shakila singh editorial education for the “african child”: distant illusion? one of the key features of post-apartheid south africa has been an ongoing debate around access to quality education. educational policy experts have decried what they have often termed a “dysfunctional” schooling system that fails to prepare students adequately for independent thinking and future life prospects. prominent amongst the circulating debates have been important, yet peripheral issues such as resources, curriculum change and general inequality, forgetting the very real and systematic ways in which racial ideological thinking came to drive education in south africa during apartheid. this call sought to interrogate the construct of the “african child” and the educational provisions for african learners in south africa 24 years after the collapse of apartheid. understanding the very violent and embedded ways in which racial ideological thought and practice came to inform present day schooling practices and experiences, we were interested in an exploration of what it means to offer basic education to south african learners. in essence, we sought interrogate the very notion of what it means to offer an education in an african context. a context rife with a history of colonialism and apartheid that sought to erase indigenous cultural and knowledge systems in ways that affected the ways of being, the ways of thinking, the ways of knowing and the ways of practice (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2015). fully cognisant of the very ways in which the eurocentric gaze continues to marginalise such work, or even view it as inconsequential and a rehashing of old ideas, we sought to prioritise identity, in particular racial identity, as a critical avenue for the study of schooling. we thus intentionally left the definition of what we meant by the “african child” open to contributor interpretation. we also opened the issue to submissions beyond the south african border as a way of acknowledging the ambiguous and unintelligible ways in which these borders were constructed in the first instance. our view was also informed by the systemic manner in which imperialism, colonialism and apartheid shared their canon across the african continent. while of course we vii acknowledge the marked differences in relation to postcolonial practice and experience, we also sought to foreground these differences with a view of informing our experiences and understanding. one of the dangers we faced was that the very term “african child” triggered associations and evoked reactions relating to images that have been forged and perpetuated over time. it is not enough that eiselen (1953), himself a child of missionaries and the architect of bantu education, wrote this: …education practice must recognise that it has to deal with a bantu child, i.e. a child trained and conditioned in bantu culture, endowed with a knowledge of a bantu language and imbued with values, interests and behaviour patterns learnt at the knee of a bantu mother. these facts must dictate to a very large extent the content and methods of his or her early education. there were indeed submissions to this issue that repeated similar motifs, with similar content, differing only in that this complacent eurocentric perspective was replaced by a complacent afrocentric perspective. in one case, an image of just such a scene was submitted with the text. such racial and cultural essentialism in south african education remains pervasive and sometimes barely troubled even by those who profess to decolonise, capturing and limiting our sense of imaginative possibility. it is thus no surprise that some in the education community baulked at the idea of engaging with the notion. after all, we run the danger of rehearsing old debates in which heated disagreements on issues of language, on issues of access to knowledge, on the balance between arts and technology, are on closer inspection revealed to resemble the all too neat divisions of yesteryear (chisholm, 2018). academics may easily find that their provocative and radical stance taken today uncomfortably echoes the stance of some reactionary from the past. our intention though was not to rehearse these debates, but to consider how in particular history and context have shaped basic education and the young people in it, and how young people are developing their own paths through education. we are also unapologetic about bringing these debates to the fore, as essentially this is, in part, what a project on decoloniality requires. it is for this reason that mignolo (2011) argues that the central feature of decoloniality involves “epistemic disobedience and delink from the colonial matrix to open up decolonial options” (p. 9). the intent of this special issue was thus not to revisit these debates, but rather to disrupt what has come to be accepted as normal within education, thus opening new options. the first set of articles interrogate the historical construction of the “african child” in education policy and provision in south africa. they examine the extent to which this identity has been problematised and/or pathologised in past and current policy and practice. guluza’s article, “moving beyond artificial linguistic binaries in the education of african language speaking children: a case for simultaneous biliteracy development”, argues that the current implementation of language policy has not been sufficiently problematised and that african language speaking children continue to experience racism, as well as an inferior education. she highlights the racist ideology behind the policy, showing how it constructs african language speaking children as inherently different from english and afrikaans speaking children. her article challenges the deficit positioning of the african child and shows that by moving beyond the false binary of mother tongue or english medium instruction, and by teaching bilingually, issues of power and marginalisation, may be addressed. she asserts that allowing children to draw on their full semiotic repertoire opens pathways for meaningful learning, self-conception and positive identity constructions. viii in the article, “a transformative exploration of epistemic individual(istic) identity formation within a synergistic decolonial student support system”, maseko explores the merits of individualism as associated with professional identity formation within a communal space that allows for the individual and collective good. by focusing on the intrinsic complexities of the african child who enters the academia with multiple epistemic identity contestations, maseko interrogates the ensuing alienation from cultural displacement. it is argued that the african child is kept in a cyclical position of pathologising, subordination and subjugation within an unsupportive system. this article presents the ubuntu philosophical orientation as a transformative pathway of transition into the multiple contextual nuances of identity formation. in “pseudo-scientific intellectual theories of the african child during the 20th century”, lewis asserts that even within the current democratic dispensation, in which the development and recognition of the whole child is advocated, racist thinking and practices in education persist. he examines selected pseudo-scientific racial theories on the mental abilities of the african child from a historical-educational perspective and how they were reflected within numerous educational policy documents, perceptions, thinking and practices at the time. a number of articles deal with how the curriculum perpetuates rigid and limiting views of the african child but also how young people themselves demonstrate agency in negotiating their education. in “continuing in the shadows of colonialism: the educational experiences of the african child in ghana”, adzahlie-mensah and dunne draw on detailed observation, analysis of texts and interviews to demonstrate how in a ghanaian primary school a colonial model of an african child is reproduced. using a critical anti-colonial discursive framework, they explore how a systematic set of practices, from timetables to physical regimentation, language and cultural controls, devalue youngsters in a primary school. their analysis portrays the curriculum as perpetuating epistemic violence. hierarchies of age, gender and language serve to convey the subordination of the child and the subordination of their indigenous language and culture. this battery of practices serves to produce the inferiorisation and silencing of the african child. their proposed remedy is to start with the voices of these children about their actual experience of schooling, an articulation that serves to portray them instead as critically minded and agentic. two case studies address a particular research gap: soudien (2012:230) refers to the “insufficient empirical work on what strategies successful learners develop for themselves in a south african schooling system that is more notable on for its well-reported failings. hemson, in “agency, resilience and innovation in overcoming educational failure”, starts with a description of educational dysfunction. in contrast to the highly ordered regimentation and repression described in the previous paper, the school in this case study seems caught in conflict and incapable of enabling much learning. however, the study is an account of triumph, as a group of boys turns their failure and that of the institution into the opportunity for a remarkably confident demonstration of their own curricular prowess. teaching themselves, each other and finally other classes in the school, through whatever resources they could muster, they achieved remarkable success in the matriculation exam and in their university studies. this is indeed a case of resilience, but the achievement is more than coping – they demonstrate how this marshalling of resources from township culture and formal learning leads to deep disciplinary learning and pleasure in intellect. pillay and ngubane use a study of a single case, a young prison inmate, to break the static “single story” (adichie, 2016) of an african child, in “an african child inmate’s stories of schooling and the possibilities for self-change and self-care”. as in the ghanaian study, their focus is in part on the ways in which the lives of children are controlled and regulated, in this case through broader economic, social and legal structures. this is however also an account of educational agency and triumph in overcoming dislocation and obstacles. through a realisation that his intention was “to help my brothers to live a decent life”, bakhona focuses on learning and then on tutoring as a way of asserting that commitment, echoing the strategy of self-development in the previous account of educational success. through creative strategies of narrative enquiry, the authors reveal how his awareness of self and his own resourcefulness grew. the implication of these two articles is that schools need to consider how learner agency and initiative can best be mobilised. reygan challenges the “single story” from a different perspective, in “sexual and gender diversity in schools: belonging, in/exclusion and the african child”. he provides an account of how south african educational thought excluded questions of sexual and gender diversity in its framing of childhood, implicitly or explicitly, denying that an african child has any right but to be heterosexual. in part, the argument is how, in southern africa, “schools function as sites for the policing and control of gender and sexuality”. policies that silence or exclude, uncritical textbooks, ill-prepared and uncomfortable teachers and hostile or violent school spaces serve to ensure exclusion. the acceptance of sexual and gender diversity requires addressing policies, teaching materials, teacher education and the context of the school. for a school to be fully inclusive of african children – to make ubuntu real – requires attending to and addressing the multiple forms in which regulation and policing are still informed by damaging and oppressive beliefs and structures. the article by nxumalo and mncube, “using indigenous games and knowledge to decolonise the school curriculum: ubuntu perspectives”, takes an interesting approach in exploring how indigenous games can be drawn into the school curriculum in ways that promote ubuntu. here we shift to the teacher’s perspective, in terms of the resources available to bring about change. the readers’ interest may in particular be on the ways in which the cultural expressions surrounding such games communicate specific values and meanings. the authors write that these games promote ubuntu philosophy in the school curriculum, which “has been shown to stimulate critical thinking, creativity and promote collective values in learners”. a different perspective is taken in an article that asks what needs to be done in teacher education to bring about decolonisation in schooling. pillay and swanepoel, in “an exploration of higher education teachers’ experience of decolonising the bachelor of education honours curriculum at a south african university”, take the stance that decolonisation in schools requires decolonisation in teacher education. they provide an account of lecturers at honours level who speak of their struggles in an attempt to decolonise and how this leads to a rethinking of what “curriculum” means. this struggle with meanings parallels some of the tensions and possibilities that teachers in schools need to engage with if they are to pursue decolonisation. they write, “it is only through critical examination and questioning that teachers will embody the skills to speak to the needs of the african child without the distorted lenses of western influence; and in turn critically engage with the need to develop multicultural skills and competencies to cater to the african context.” the last two articles can broadly be defined as having a policy focus. in the first article, de wet and osman, through an article entitled “ecological approach to childhood in south africa: an analysis of the contextual determinants”, focus on the educational attainments of african learners. arguing that post-apartheid education reform and research has largely centred on individual and policy-level determinants of child development and educational outcomes in south africa, the authors seek to foreground the role played by community and household composition on the attainment of learners. in particular, they focus on understanding the influence of socio-economic and demographic composition of communities and households on the repetition of grades by south african learners. their data illustrates the intersecting ways in which race, gender, age and class come to influence grade repetition. the study concludes finds household and community poverty as negatively affecting learner progress in south african schools. ix the special issue aptly concludes with soudien’s article entitled, “making a new south african learner: an analysis of the south african schools act”, which essentially seeks to unpack the relationship between the south african schools act (sasa) (republic of south africa, 1996b), and learner identity. understanding the centrality of history, memory, social and cultural institutions and power apparatuses in shaping identity, and indeed policy reform, soudien critically unpacks the various ways in which sasa conceptualises a learner in the new south africa. in particular, soudien seeks to reflect on what the policy says about the south african learner, as well as its expectations of what a learner ought to be. the article seeks to develop an “understanding of the symbols and signifiers which are privileged in the formal and legal prescripts which surround the process of [identity] mediation. importantly, soudien asks us to reflect: “what significance this holds for the achievement of equality and justice in south africa”. 1. conclusion reading this special issue from the concluding article backwards, and taking into consideration the accounts in which various authors have sought to highlight the colonial “wound” present in the daily experiences of african children, and of south african children in particular, it is important for a moment to ponder on the net effect of these wounds on the range of social crises that characterise our present day experiences. the papers presented here raise some ghosts from the past, debates that may have felt settled, but were not, with ongoing implications for the identity and experiences of learners in basic education. essentially, we have to ask ourselves whether the disruptions that were sought via the sasa have been accompanied by the correct epistemic and socio-historical understandings to enable a disruption of old ways of thinking, thus opening up the possibility of a new order that humanises all our learners in the education system. references chisholm, l. 2017. beyond worlds: german missionaries and the transition from mission to bantu education in south africa. johannesburg: university of witwatersrand press. https:// doi.org/10.18772/12017111746 eiselen, w. 1953. report of the commission on native education. 1949–1951. pretoria: government printer. mignolo, w. 2011. epistemic disobedience and the decolonial option: a manifesto. transmodernity: journal of peripheral cultural production of the luso-hispanic world, 1(2), 44–66. ndlovu-gatsheni, s.j. 2015. decoloniality as the future of africa. history compass, 13(10), 485–496. https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12264 soudien, c. 2012. realising the dream: unlearning the logic of race in the south african school. cape town: hsrc press. x https://doi.org/10.18772/12017111746 https://doi.org/10.18772/12017111746 https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12264 balance in academic leadership: voices of women from turkey and the united states of america (us)1 özge hacifazlioğlu faculty of arts and sciences, bahcesehir university ohacifazlioglu@bahcesehir.edu.tr this comparative study examines the experiences of women leaders in turkey and the us. it argues that the theme of ‘balance in leadership’ appeared to be the most influential driving force in women leaders’ stories. it further shows that balance in leadership is associated with balance in two areas: balancing private and professional life, and balance in research, teaching and leadership. the analysis is based on qualitative interviews with nineteen women leaders working at four-year public and private (foundation) universities in turkey and the us. it is hoped that aspiring leaders can learn from these women’s experiences. keywords: women leaders, higher education, balance, academic leadership, turkey, us introduction during the 2008-09 academic year, i served as a visiting assistant professor at arizona state university, college of teacher education and leadership. as a woman and a department chair in my home country, turkey, i became interested in stories of women in higher administrative posts in the us, which could provide others and me with a set of rich experiences and narratives. this article accordingly, aims to present stories and insights from women leaders in which they share the ways they balance their leadership positions with their academic and private lives. the study is groundbreaking in that no one has captured the stories of women leaders in turkey, nor compared their experiences with counterparts in the us. this unique research thus examines “balance in leadership” through international and cultural comparison. it argues that as women leaders become more experienced they develop a range of strategies to create instrumental balance, i.e. create synergies between activities in different fields, to maintain balance in their private, professional and academic lives. the literature includes painful accounts of women in leadership positions in the us, europe, south africa and australia (alison & de la rey 2003; brown & chliwniak, 1997; cotterill, hughes & letherby, 2006; nidiffer, 2000; schwartz, 1997; turner, 2007; twombly, 1998; ummersen & sturnick, 2001; wolverton, gmelch, wolverton & sarros, 1996). i am one of those leaders, as i took on administrative posts in higher education at a very young age. the challenge of combining administrative responsibilities with academic research became apparent immediately, though my experiences as an administrator would later serve as a foundation for practice and scholarship. i have had times of delight and sorrow in the journey towards becoming a successful academic, leader, wife and mother. i continue to seek balance between professional and private life, and it is my hope that by focusing on the stories of women from turkey and the us, i can bring into focus insights for women leaders everywhere. this article presents the findings of a qualitative study conducted with nineteen women academic leaders in higher education. it begins with the core literature on balance in leadership. i then interpret the stories of women leaders through the prism of four types of balance: segmentational, compensational, instrumental and conflictual. i focus on four women who represent good examples in terms of their constant search for balance, which, as i will show, they achieve through a combination of conflictual, 1 hacifazlioğlu, o. 2010. balance in academic leadership: voices of women from turkey and the united states of america (us). perspectives in education, 28(2):51-62. perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201052 compensatory and, above all, instrumental balance. in the remainder of the article, two emergent themes will be developed through synthesising findings with evidence from other women leaders’ experiences. the notion of balance  balance is a relative term, since the way it is defined and experienced varies from one individual to another. studies have shown that maintaining harmonious integrity in a person’s life is a subjective, complicated and continuous process (ashforth, 2000; keene & quadagno, 2004). bailyn, fletcher & kolb (1997) assert that balance is a synergistic relationship in which different components of life complement others. clark’s (2000:750) work on family border theory similarly explores “how people manage and negotiate the work and family spheres and the borders between them in order to attain balance”. this study draws on guest’s (2002) work-life approach to the notion of balance, which entails four models of balance: segmentational, compensational, instrumental and conflictual. a segmentational approach means that an individual strives to ensure that there is no relation between work and other areas of his/her life. a compensational model refers to an ethos in which an individual uses one sphere to make up for what is lacking in other spheres. the third model is associated with the notion of instrumentality; that is, one sphere facilitates success in another. finally, in the conflict model, personal and professional spheres clash in an antagonistic fashion. in the scholarship on higher education, middlehurst (1992) refers to balance within the context of administration and finds that many observers have no understanding of how harmony is obtained. handy (1984) similarly underscores the importance of balance through a comparison of organisational management and individual management, contending that leaders must achieve both. in their study of leadership in academic development, blackmore and blackwell (2006:376) likewise asserted: “heads may find themselves mediating between the realities of institutional life on the one hand and, the beliefs and values of the faculty on the other”. a further strategy leaders employ is to take “a holistic academic development approach”, which establishes balance between research, teaching, knowledge transfer and management (blackmore & blackwell, 2006:375). this article examines the perspectives of turkish and american women leaders in academe by asking questions which reveal which of these models, if any, are relevant to their experiences. women leaders and balance  administrative posts offered to academics activate an array of interrelated complications, prejudices, challenges and tensions which affect their private lives and professional roles. the degree to which these constraints cause problems may differ in different cultures and settings (çelik, 2007; ercetin & baskan, 2000; korkut, 2002; louw & zuber, 2009; ndebele, 2007; razik & swanson, 2010; schein,1978). loeffler, gretchen & chris (2010) indicate that work-family balance plays an important role in the lives of both male and females academics. according to balcı (2000) male and female academics experience similar stress levels, regardless of their gender and age. bakioglu and hacifazlioğlu (2001) found that female academics experience additional constraints in their careers during pregnancy. work-life balance becomes a more serious concern in executive positions. being a woman leader in higher education poses many challenges (ward, 2007). a limited number of studies have also analysed the private lives of women leaders. behind closed doors, they tell stories of resistance and/or support from parents, spouses and children (emslie & hunt, 2009; weigt & solomon 2008). özkanlı and white (2009) analysed the factors to explain the under-representation of women in senior management positions in turkish and australian universities, and came to the conclusion that “women in both countries were more likely than men to experience difficulty in being appointed senior managers” (özkanlı & white, 2009:326). this was also confirmed by some of the women administrators in vatansever’s (2008) study. hensel (1991) notes that as caretakers in the family, women are disadvantaged in their professional lives, and it appears, moreover, that challenges mount after marriage and motherhood. walton (1997:77) describes the constraints experienced in the professional lives of women due to “prejudice with regard to gender” (other studies have commented on the common challenges faced by male and female leaders hacifazlioğlu — balance in academic leadership 53 in academia). thus, whilst children and partners appear to be somewhat neglected in the lives of leaders, regardless of their gender, the societal onus of such “neglect” may be harder for women to bear. this may be a reason why, as other studies suggest, women appear to prefer being exclusively academicians rather than combining scholarly and administrative roles. regardless of whether women take on administrative responsibilities, they face additional pressures to perform as mothers and wives, whilst continuing to produce intellectually. this burden may be compounded by high profile administrative roles. in kerr and gade’s (1986) study of presidents, for example, female presidents believe their situations are different from those of male counterparts. women presidents report that “they are placed under more scrutiny when they first take their jobs, and in particular that they must show that they can administer, that they can be tough without becoming an iron lady” (kerr & gade, 1986:118). turner and myers (2000) show how faculty women of colour feel divided psychologically between home and faculty. their experiences exemplify the ways women have to sacrifice family and community commitments for a certain period in their lives in order to pursue academic careers and leadership positions in particular. in light of such assessments, being a woman academic leader appears to entail swimming “against the tide” (walton, 1996:4). in this research i also demonstrate that women nevertheless manage — through a combination of conflictual, compensational and instrumental balancing — to reconcile their private and family lives with their professional trajectories, albeit at no small cost. method this research employed a qualitative research design, and female leaders’ voices are heard throughout. my work seeks to draw out such voices because, as seidman (1998) notes, when we encourage participants to tell their stories we hear about their experiences in an illuminating and memorable way. participants participants in the study were women leaders at universities from large cities in turkey and the us. istanbul, turkey, like phoenix, arizona, is a large metropolitan area encompassing different cultures and nationalities. this means that regardless of the fact that the pursuit of balance is a cross-cutting theme in their stories, women leaders in higher education are likely to be exposed to different family dynamics and institutional cultures. volunteers for this study included nine participants from istanbul and ten from phoenix. although nineteen narrative summaries were developed for this study, in this article, i focus on the stories of four of the women leaders — two from turkey, and two from the united states — because each demonstrated use of conflictual, compensational and instrumental balance. pseudonyms appropriate to names in the relevant cultures were used to keep respondents’ identities confidential. like mcmillan and schumacher (2001), i used a combination of case type sampling strategies, to categorise women leaders according to their marital status, whether they were mothers or not, and with regard to other care-giving responsibilities they may bear. this methodological framework enabled me to examine sub-themes under the heading of ‘balance’, the topic to which we now turn. academic leadership positions all the women leaders surveyed held academic leadership positions — dean, vice dean, director and provost — although the responsibilities associated with the titles varied across the institutions.2 no specific information regarding the individuals and their institutional profiles is provided to ensure the privacy of the participants (arizona state university, institutional review board policy). 2 for example, bilge’s title and responsibilities are equivalent to those of the dean of a graduate school in the u.s. but bilge’s university uses the title director instead of dean for the graduate school. perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201054 data collection  i launched the interview process by sending women in leadership positions a letter soliciting their voluntary participation, informing them of participation requirements and safeguards, and asking that they certify their informed consent. interviews were conducted at leaders’ own offices, where they appeared to feel comfortable and confident. all the interviews were recorded. bias and validity in qualitative studies, there is always a possibility that the researcher could misunderstand what s/he has heard. in order to minimise this, i allowed participants to review their own interview transcripts. during the analysis phase, i solicited input from my colleagues (see maree & van der westhuizen, 2009; maxwell, 1996; yıldırım & şimşek, 2008), inviting them to challenge both my thinking and my interpretation of the data. during transcription, i was very careful to transcribe word-for-word, and paid close attention to the subjects’ unsolicited comments and observations. in addition, my questions were open-ended, so that the leaders could tell their stories better, free from the influence of my own story. analysis analysis was divided into the five phases suggested by marshall and rossman (1999). these include: 1) organising the data; 2) identifying themes, patterns and categories; 3) testing the emergent hypothesis against the data; 4) searching for alternative explanations of the data; and 5) writing the report. i selected excerpts from transcripts and placed them into broad categories in search of thematic connections within and across the transcripts (seidman, 1998). throughout the analytical process, i used women leaders’ own voices and words to describe their experiences. maintaining balance: voices of women leaders all participants strove to create balance in their lives, though they were very different in other respects and their family dynamics and institutional cultures varied. stories of four women academic leaders follow. turkish  dean  müge  (managing  conflictual,  compensational  and  instrumental balance) müge, an academic leader for several years, earned a doctorate in the social sciences. she is single and in her 40s. müge’s experiences when she first received her appointment reflect the challenge of balancing elements from her life before becoming an academic leader and the demands of the new position. she found, for example, that upon hearing the news, her friends’ perceptions appeared to change, becoming inflected with their views on leaders in higher education in turkey. müge thinks that this was also related to gender: my social circle of friends called me ‘mrs. dean’ at the very beginning! they said: ‘we won’t be able to see you again because you are a dean’. one of them said jokingly: ‘we have to button up our jackets’.3 this behavior could be interpreted as an indication of our society’s resistance to associate a woman with the rank of a dean. (interview with müge, march 28, 2008) müge’s words echoed a tension many turkish women leaders encounter in the early months of their appointments. but they may also reveal something true across cultures and, indeed, genders, namely, when a person is promoted to a position of authority the nature of their interactions may change, especially if they are interacting with the same people. thus, the joking tone of müge’s friends could be read as a signal to all involved that there is a new ‘ball game’. this can come as a shock to young leaders who do not anticipate that their relationships could be transformed. yet, like müge, they soon realise that it is no longer possible to spend as much time with friends, not least due to the administrative load. 3 a buttoned up jacket flags respect in turkish culture. hacifazlioğlu — balance in academic leadership 55 müge chose not to marry. she did not argue that being single would be advantageous, as she believes success and luck are relative concepts. müge said she could not determine whether her career would have been as successful had she married. recalling an ex-fiancée, she observed: one of the major reasons why i broke up with one of my exes was his discouraging attitude towards my career plans. based on our [discussions], i had the impression he might do something to block my advancement in this long, tough career journey … alternatively, the scenario could have been positive if i married someone who was supportive and sensible. who knows? (interview with müge, march 28, 2008) müge’s experience while engaged could be interpreted in terms of the conflictual model of balance, since two aspects of her life, her fiancée and her academic aspirations, were in an antagonistic relationship. müge believes that she made the right decision. though her choice could be interpreted as a compensatory act, she appears to have widened her career options through the sacrifice, and this approach, in turn, helped her to achieve instrumental balance in her career later on. therefore we could say that conflictual, compensational and instrumental balance are embedded in müge’s story. turkish dean bilge (managing segmentational, conflictual, compensational  and instrumental balance) bilge, the director of a graduate school, is in her 50s. she has worked in various high-level administrative posts in higher education and holds a doctorate in management. she was divorced when her son, who is now in his 30s and married, was young. bilge’s experience underscores the role of a supportive family in career success. she felt empowered by her phd in administration, but also by the support of her father, an academic, and her family. these factors appear to have allowed her to maintain instrumental balance as she climbed the leadership ladder. for example, though she married early, her father assured her that he would support her financially as she launched her academic career, “… and when i had a son”, she said “he was practically raised by my mother” (interview with bilge, january 12, 2008). bilge’s relationship with her husband, however, appears to have oscillated between the segmentational and conflictual models of balancing. he offered no support during the phd process, and since he worked in the private sector their working and leisure hours differed. she believes they divorced not because she worked “too hard” but because neither their professional nor private lives intersected. ever since, bilge has sought to balance professional and private life. she works hard, but the purpose is to establish a family-like culture within her division. indeed, bilge’s colleagues describe her as a “maternal leader”4 who cares for staff through active collaboration. she works around 12 hours a day and has no time for social life besides academically related social activities. thus, her private and professional lives appear to be complementary, with her team serving as her family. this, in turn, implies a compensational balancing strategy in which professional life is actually at the fore. u .s . dean gina (managing conflictual, compensational and instrumental  balance) gina, in her early 60s, is a dean in the us, an appointment she received after fourteen years as an associate dean. she has a doctorate in education, is married and has two children who today are young, independent adults. gina’s career did not come easily. she received no support from her parents or extended family in her pursuit of education, though she was able to complete high school at the age of sixteen because she skipped twice. she believes it was she who created the opportunities for advancement in her career. 4 maternal (anaç), comes from ana which means mother, and is used to describe women who are eager to take care of people with whom they are close. bilge uses the term to indicate her sense of nurture and integrity towards those under her leadership. perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201056 gina’s working class family disapproved of college or career for women. as her aunt put it, “you know there is a woman out there somewhere who will wanna prepare a hamburger for your husband”. reflecting on this attitude, gina notes that they [her parents] did not understand education and they certainly did not understand college and graduate school. they don’t even ask me questions about [my leadership role]. (interview with gina, december 11, 2008) gina struggled to deliver as a spouse, mother and professor, and in so doing, she appears to have been engaged in conflictual, compensational and instrumental balancing. whilst gina indicated that she received support from her spouse and children, she believes she gave more than she received. her words highlight an attempt to be an ideal mother figure for her family: i think my husband supported [me]; and my children supported me too. but they also want what they want. no matter what! you’re still ... the mother … you still want your wife not to be tired at the end of the day! you owe them … it is more like a passive acceptance. i think it is kind of a long process that i need to understand what kind of support i need ... there is a lot of guilt that comes after missing a kid’s concert. (interview with gina, december 11, 2008) this remark reveals the ways gina also moves between compensational and instrumental balance. like most respondents with grown children, gina believes her administrative as well as academic career was especially challenging until her children attended college. even now she thinks they do not fully understand the kind of support she needs. she believes her children thought she should do all the tasks required of her job, and still be able to listen to their problems as a full-time mother. it is evident that gina has made sacrifices in order to serve as a dean. she nevertheless appears pleased with her success. she notes, moreover, that being a young mother of young children as a dean, would present a whole different set of challenges. like müge, her life is a blend of compensational and instrumental balance. u .s .  director  victoria  (managing  conflictual,  compensational  and  instrumental balance) victoria, in her early 60s, is a director. she earned her doctorate in sociology and has held various academic leadership positions for over 20 years. she is divorced and has a 40-year old son, refers to herself as a feminist, and has been in a relationship with her partner for 20 years. most of the respondents with children recalled the period when their children were young as one of the most challenging of their career, especially in terms of balancing child-rearing and academic leadership. victoria indicated that after divorce she found more time to conduct research in her field. this was somewhat striking as her husband was also an academic, a professor of afro-american studies, and they had not in any case, sought a conventional marriage, as they were both activists. she divorced her husband in the 1980s, not least because they experienced conflict regarding matters like the sharing of domestic responsibilities. victoria received joint custody of their son and found more time to work on her studies. victoria was grateful to have a partner from the field of leadership, from whom she could receive support and to whom she could provide support. this is an example of how she maintains instrumental balance, evident in her assertion that activities in administrative posts inevitably percolate into leaders’ lives. victoria’s experience also underlines the difficulties faced by women in performing as both faculty members and leaders. all the women in this research echoed her words: … you have to be a researcher; you have to have success to get tenure; … you know it is like a lot of things going on. i can remember at the time when my kid was little. oh my gosh! it would be forever before i had free time. then i think oh my gosh, it went so fast ... (interview with victoria, october 30, 2008) hacifazlioğlu — balance in academic leadership 57 emerging themes in this study, women leaders in academe appeared to deal with many challenges, and at times they paid for career advancement through sacrifices. each leader’s analysis of her situation affirms guests’ (2002) view of balance as subjective. balance takes different and nuanced forms at different times in each person’s life. relevant factors include age, energy level, family situation, attitude towards work, and gender (mangels, 2009). each leader accordingly defined and interpreted “balance” in his/her own way, but the following sub-themes were discernible across responses, viz. the pursuit of balance in private and professional life, and research, teaching and leadership. this research has shown that in response to challenges, leaders seek balance in a variety of ways (e.g. conflictual, compensational or instrumental). although they state that they became more competent in maintaining balance as they gained experience and grew older, they are still seeking ways to improve balance. in some cases, readers might wonder whether this actually constitutes balance. yet, in both turkey and the us, we hear leaders relating success stories; it is as if they are the “hero” of their own autobiography. there are also stories of disappointment. some, for example, might question the modern template for success in which one is expected to assert that “i work hard, i am competitive and i am responsible for my successes”. this dilemma is audible in the voices of most of the leaders in this study; still, their narratives are ultimately ones of success. in this context, we see snapshots of women who are responsible for many issues. though they have indicated that they have learned how to maintain instrumental balance, it is evident that it is not always possible to achieve a stable condition, and compensational behaviour is also unavoidable. balancing private and professional life private and family lives appear to have crucial importance in women leaders’ lives. the positive pictures presented by the women leaders of their family and private lives were impressive. most participants directly or indirectly mentioned their responsibilities as women. a need to play many roles in both the workplace and within their families was perceived as a real but manageable constraint. participants with children remarked on how administrative problems and burdens were reflected in their homes. they stated that the intensity of the burden lessened once children were grown. this corroborates davies’ (2006) finding in his study of women and transgression in the halls of academe. interviewing women and men in australia, the us, sweden and new zealand, he found that “both men and women pushed themselves to extremes to fulfil the greedy demands of their positions” (davies, 2006, 502). twombly (1998, 389) likewise notes that “women described families as the most significant limiting factor in their careers and yet, when asked directly, they did not label family responsibilities as an obstacle or problem”. indeed, one of the most significant cultural differences between turkish and american respondents was the citation by the former of “cooking and housekeeping” as a part of their responsibilities within the family. some turkish leaders said they sought balance by hiring housemaids and/or through support from figures like mothers, mothers-in-law, relatives or housemates. significantly then, this study suggests that american respondents feel somewhat less obliged to maintain traditional gender roles in the household when compared to turkish respondents. yet it is impossible to generalise, since each experience is unique. other research has revealed that better conditions could minimise work-family conflict (emslie & hunt, 2009; weigt & solomon, 2008). as noted, scholarship on academic leadership addresses the difficulties women experience in balancing work and family responsibilities, given the expectations and demands of an academic career (ledwith & manfredi, 2000; ward & wolf-wendel, 2004; young & wright, 2001). partners who do not understand the demands of leadership positions may increase women’s levels of stress. these factors are among the many reasons why women leaders could be sceptical about taking on leadership responsibilities early times in their careers. us dean mariana found that leadership entailed a trade-off in her personal life. mariana describes herself as a hard worker who devotes nights and weekends to her job. she asserts that she has good relations with others who are committed to their jobs, because they too have only limited time for social perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201058 life. she accordingly tends to have relationships with other hardworking academics, and at least one relationship ended due to the demands of her position. like müge, however, she appeared happy to hold a leadership position, regardless of the personal sacrifices it necessitated: i was in a relationship a couple of years ago and he needed a lot of time. i just said: ‘you get x amount of my time. i had a life before you got into it’ … it was the one relationship that ended … i gave a lot of time. i cut back a lot of things and it was not enough. i made a lot of compromises. (interview with mariana, november 12, 2008) in short, there were many similarities between the experiences of women leaders in the two cultures, perhaps a function of the common academic setting, as well as considerable nuance and difference, which might be related to broader cultural differences. further studies could be conducted in europe, africa and asia to compare how women leaders balance their academic, professional and private lives. the notion, for example, that partners and children should support the woman in her career was seen more often in the stories of american respondents. in turkey, however, women leaders appeared to receive support from their families in delivering as both the “perfect” mother and wife as envisaged by traditional gender roles, and as successful leaders in the professional sphere. it is nevertheless clear that in both contexts women leaders rely on a support network outside academia, constituted by parents, spouse or friends. in this context, “outside” support appears to be a critical component for the successful maintenance of instrumental balance. balance in research, teaching and leadership leadership careers in higher education are primarily cultivated in the professoriate (kerr, 1984; twombly, 1986). academic leadership thus necessitates fusing leadership and scholarship. as such, for the women in this study, balance in leadership appears to be aligned with “research and teaching”. almost all the leaders in both countries asserted that they had worked in lower administrative posts before being appointed to their current positions. this appears to translate into a quest to become an academic leader who can also deliver on the research and teaching requirements of their posts. for as much as leaders emphasised the issue of balance in leadership with regard to family, social and professional life, almost all also underlined the importance of continuity in research. thus, whilst most are concerned about time management, they seem to have a genuine interest in conducting research and working collaboratively with their graduate students. they accordingly emphasised the importance of maintaining balance in “research, teaching and leadership”. almost all also advised aspiring leaders not to become involved in administrative activities at an early age. us dean stephanie’s recommendation to aspiring leaders to constantly pursue balance in research, teaching and administration and never to forfeit the first two elements, is meaningful in this context (interview with stephanie, december 22, 2008). it reveals that at the heart of an academic career is commitment to being a faculty member, even though one can also pursue higher administrative roles. this research has further revealed that balance is a necessary ingredient in the lives of women leaders, despite their different institutional settings and the diverse problems they encounter. academic leadership is also challenging because of the expectation that leaders will foster a stimulating environment for faculty. as bryman (2007) asserts, leadership entails creating conditions for academics to pursue their research interests and objectives in a relatively unfettered way. other authors have noted that academic leaders should never neglect their identities as researchers (creswell, wheeler & seagren, egly & beyer 1990), an imperative which requires that academics work harder and longer to manage time constraints (acker & armenti, 2004). this research has revealed how such imperatives are salient in the lives of women leaders who appear to rely on the compensation model. being a full time professor appears to be an advantage in this context, yet almost all participants asserted that they are eager to continue research and that they miss the times when they could write with a fresh mind. almost all accepted that they are not as productive intellectually as they were before taking leadership positions. this situation could again be interpreted as a form of compensatory balancing between administrative and research commitments. hacifazlioğlu — balance in academic leadership 59 in sum, achieving and sustaining balance between career and private life on one hand, and between administrative and scholarly responsibilities on the other represent challenges with which women leaders deal throughout their careers. private and academic lives were in none of the four cases segmented, and women constantly sought to create complementarity between the personal, academic and leadership spheres. they learned to cope through a combination of conflictual, compensatory, and instrumental balancing. it should also be noted that each woman tailored a work-life balance appropriate to her own circumstances based on her values, potential and aspirations. in line with this finding, mangels (2009) contends that there is no one right path to success, but rather stumbling blocks to avoid. the key appears to be to avoid dissonance in work and life (gregorian & martin, 2004; mangels, 2009; trebon & trebon, 2004). all of this suggests that discussion of balance and ways it may be pursued could be an important component of leadership training and seminars. action research oriented training will also help leaders to learn from others’ experiences. as louw and zuber-skerritt (2009:237) have revealed: the evaluation process [during a seminar] encouraged participants to reflect on their own learning, research growth and leadership capabilities, and on how they may further develop their practice and career. meanwhile, according to cross (2009), gümüşeli & hacıfazlıoğlu (2009), kotecha (2009) and tembile (2003), universities are being greatly transformed in an era of globalisation. this poses additional challenges to and opportunities for university administrators across the world who increasingly have to manage the demands of a wide range of stakeholders. a promising avenue of future research would be to explore how leaders create and maintain balance in such situations. a broader cross-cultural perspective on this as a phenomenon would be a welcome addition to the literature, and should include african and asian case studies. in this article, however, i focused on the accounts of women in turkey and the us from the perspective of how they balance the private/personal and the research/teaching/administration spheres. further research along these lines could compare a range of cultural and institutional settings. a comparison of men’s and women’s experiences would also be enlightening. in sum, this study revealed that whilst there are four ideal-typical forms of balancing, women leaders will mix and match balancing styles depending on the specifics of their situation. there is thus no explicit prescription for success. in this context, ndebele’s (2007:2) reading of leadership is compelling: … leadership is the ability of leaders to read a situation whose most observable logic points to a most likely (and expected) outcome, but then to detect in that very likely outcome not a solution, but a compounding of the problem. this assessment then calls for the prescription of an unexpected outcome, which initially, may look strikingly improbable. rising to such challenges is the stuff of leadership and, as this study reveals, at the heart of successful leadership is the pursuit of balance. references acker a & armenti c 2004. sleepless in academia. gender and education, 16(1):273-324. alison m & de la rey c 2003. south african women leaders in higher education: professional development needs in a changing context. mcgill journal of education, 38 (3): 407-420. ashforth be 2000. all in a day’s work. academy of management review, 2:472-493. balcı a 2000. academics’ work stress. ankara: nobel. bailyn l, fletcher jk & kolb d 1997. unexpected connections: considering employees’ personal lives can revitalize your business. sloan management review, summer:11-19. bakioglu a & hacifazlioğlu o 2001. 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sarros jc 1999. stress in academic leadership: us and australian department chairs/heads. review of higher education, 22:165-185. yıldırım a & şimşek h (2008). qualitative research method in social sciences. ankara: seckin. young d & wright e 2001. mothers making tenure. journal of social work education, 37:555-568. acknowledgements the author would like to thank chris clark for his post-doctorate supervision and mentorship in this project at arizona state university (asu). the author also thanks to leaders who gave their valuable time to participate in this study, my colleagues in writers group at asu, college of teacher education and leadership; caroline sv turner and perspectives in education editors, who read and commented on drafts of this manuscript. 382022 40(4): 38-54 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 applying systems principles to achieve greater integration of student support at a decentralised institution abstract the role of student support in enabling successful student outcomes is widely acknowledged. however, student support functions and the structures within which they reside often emerge independently at universities, and are seldom designed with integration in mind, leading to systemic inefficiencies. this paper draws on systems thinking to develop a framework to guide the assessment and improvement of student support. following an exploratory case study design, we collected data on staff and student perceptions of student support by conducting semi-structured interviews and a focus group in a single faculty within a south african university. these data are analyzed alongside several documents produced by the faculty that refer to, and are part of, student support. we map four student support functions used by students within the faculty. these are: orientation, student advising, peer mentoring, and career advising. the analyses reveal that student support in the faculty does not constitute an integrated system and that this creates challenges in communication, continuity and efficiency of student support within the faculty. this paper argues that by adapting existing support structures to closer approximate an integrated system we can increase the efficiency of student support without the need for complete redesign or a significant increase in resources or staff capacity. keywords: student support, decentralised, integration, systems thinking 1. introduction south africa has made significant strides in improving access to higher education, yet it still faces a number of challenges as reflected in low completion rates for the sector (59%) and prolonged times to graduation (council on higher education (che), 2018). black students are disproportionately affected by these success challenges (che, 2018) and loss to the system dampens transformation, not only in higher education, but throughout the country. it is clear that student success is not simply a function of providing access, indeed, providing access without appropriate support is, for many, not a meaningful author: dr riashna sithaldeen1 prof ermien van pletzen1 affiliation: 1university of cape town, south africa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v40i4.6005 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(4): 38-54 published: 23 december 2022 received: 27 january 2022 accepted: 11 november 2022 research article http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3921-7373 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0350-6739 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 392022 40(4): 39-54 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 sithaldeen & van pletzen applying systems principles to achieve greater integration of student support opportunity to succeed in the university (engstrom & tinto, 2008). in a study of south african universities, students report difficulties in navigating student support, becoming overwhelmed by the experience (swartz et al., 2018) and student retention data confirm that this is a factor for some students dropping out (letseka et al., 2010). the often-alienating culture of higher education can be a significant barrier to success (grayson, 1997; strydom et al., 2016), and the quality of student support provided can therefore make the difference between retention and withdrawal (kantanis, 2000; lawrence, 2003; croxon & maginnis, 2006). it stands then, that if we are to take equity in student success seriously, we need to take student support seriously (tinto, 2014). while institutions may offer many support services to students, if this support does not work efficiently for students, then the support is not enabling success and we need to seriously re-assess these structures. but there is often little appetite or capacity for full-scale redesign of student support. this has been attributed to multiple factors, including reluctance on the part of institutional support structures to collaborate, a lack of regular assessment of the impact of support systems, and too few resources or too little capacity in overburdened systems (zhang et al., 2017). additionally, there are also few guiding frameworks to help institutions assess and align their existing structures to become more efficient and effective (tinto &pusser, 2006). in general, institutions lack coherent frameworks for the management of multiple projects that work toward a particular goal (tinto & pusser, 2006; ogude, kilfoil & du plessis, 2012) . in this paper we draw on systems thinking to develop a conceptual framework for assessing student support structures and then make recommendations for greater integration and increased efficiency without the need for complete redesign, centralized control or significant investment in resources or human capacity. 1.1 literature review student support it is well known that student support services contribute to academic success (hill et al., 2003) by helping to decrease the university dropout rate and improve the student experience (tinto, 1993). a recent blackboard (2021) study indicates that well designed student support can also have a disproportionately larger effect on the experience of at-risk students. while the details differ, the provision of student support in higher education is ubiquitous and most institutions offer services that contribute to personal wellbeing, financial health, careers planning and academic performance. among these, the most important are those which help students meet their academic, personal development and emotional needs (mcinnis, 2004). however, student support services do not necessarily have the intended outcomes, especially when there is a mismatch between provision and accessibility (dhillon, mcgowan & wang, 2006). student support includes both academic and non-academic functions, such as curriculum advising, career advising, peer mentoring, student wellness, and financial services. these tend to evolve independently, and are usually decentralised into different institutional structures that are often not intentionally integrated (zhang et al., 2017) to approximate an efficient system. decentralisation itself is not a problem, however, a lack of integration is, because without mechanisms in place that allow for quick feedback between structures (barki & pinsonneault, 2005), there is limited communication and collaboration (klempin et al., 2019) between them, which can lead to confusion and fatigue for student users of these structures. the inefficiencies that emerge due to a lack of integration in student support are well known (mann, 2020) and can be seen to create similar difficulties as poorly integrated health care systems that http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 402022 40(4): 40-54 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) limit workers’ ability to identify diagnostic errors and monitor patients, create communication errors, and increase inefficiency, all of which contribute to poor patient outcomes as well as worker stress and burnout (mathews & pronovost, 2011). this is analogous to challenges in higher education where poorly integrated structures make it difficult to identify students at risk, maintain effective communication with students and ensure that students get appropriate help when they need it. to achieve integration in student support would require the coordination of many independent structures and functions (tinto, 2014). this is where taking a systems approach to thinking about student support structures is of considerable value. systems theory systems are defined in different ways, depending on the context in which they are being applied (checkland, 1984; banathy, 1995; musser, 2006; benham-hutchins & clancy,2010; bridgen, 2017). here, we define an integrated system as a set of components, i.e. structures working together as a complex whole to form an interconnecting network (colchester, 2016). according to this definition, a system is further characterised as: (i) having a defined overarching purpose/ goal that is commonly understood across structures; (ii) that work together to efficiently meet this purpose/goal; and (iii), that have effective feedback/communication channels between them (colchester, 2016). the value in achieving integration through a systems approach is that as a whole, the support we provide to students could produce greater impact (be more effective) than the sum of stand-alone structures (colchester, 2016). this is due to complexity, in that at each level of organisation within a system there are emergent properties that cannot be explained as merely an interaction of the parts at the lower level (gershenson, 2011). accordingly, an integrated student support system could be more effective and achieve greater impact than individual support structures working independently. another advantage of adopting a systems approach in a decentralised institution is that it does not require central control of structures, but, instead, the development of connections and interdependencies (such as communication and feedback mechanisms) between them will enable them to work together in an integrated way. conceptual framework a general challenge is that few guiding frameworks exist to help institutions assess and improve student support to become more efficient and effective (tinto & pusser, 2006) and in general institutions lack coherent frameworks for the management of multiple projects that work toward a particular goal (tinto & pusser, 2006; ogude, kilfoil & du plessis, 2012). in this paper the authors address this challenge by developing a conceptual framework (kivunja, 2018, ravitch & riggan, 2017) to assess and improve student support without the need for complete redesign or significant resource investment. this is particularly useful for institutions that cannot afford the time or resources for complete redesign (applegate, 2012). drawing on systems thinking, this paper provides a practical approach to achieving greater integration and efficiency in an existing support structure. we regard system integration as the process of linking together different components to functionally cooperate, allowing for flow of data and functionality between them, optimal communication and increased efficiency through improved decision-making (intergration, 2022) which will ultimately create opportunities for monitoring and evaluation (bourdreau & couillard, 1999). the framework requires that the student support structure to be assessed must first be defined. the components of support can then be intensively investigated to understand the function of each support structure and how they relate to each other. the data generated are http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 412022 40(4): 41-54 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 sithaldeen & van pletzen applying systems principles to achieve greater integration of student support then evaluated against systems criteria to establish how well the structure approximates a system. recommendations can then be made as to how the structure could achieve greater integration and therefore systems efficiencies. the case study in the south african university (sau), academic units such as faculties and support services operate with a high degree of autonomy, and the functions of student support are devolved to multiple, structures within the institution (van pletzen et al., 2021) most closely resembling kuhn’s so-called ‘decentralised model’ (kuhn, 2008). our study site, faculty x, is an academic faculty within the sau. despite having highly competitive admissions requirements, sau also reports high attrition rates (22% of the 2013 cohort that enrolled in three-year non-professional degrees left without a qualification after five years) (sau, 2018). the performance patterns are not random, but, following the national pattern, are largely defined by factors defining historic oppression, evidenced in the broader structural conflagration between race and socio-economic status (sau, 2018). our study site, faculty-x, offers a three-year non-professional bachelor’s degree. faculty-x is researchintensive, and is a major contributor to sau’s international research rankings (faculty webpage, 2021). however, when we compare undergraduate completion rates for faculty-x in 2017 against the institutional average of 80%, they are 10% lower, with significant discrepancies between performance of historically disadvantaged (black) students, and others (sau, 2018). this racially defined pattern is referred to as the achievement gap, or the opportunity gap, as described by engstrom and tinto (2008). along with completion rates lower than the institutional average, faculty-x also reports that “student academic engagement and academic success are on the decline” (sau, 2018: 127). this is not surprising, as when students are struggling with their discipline, they also tend to struggle to connect with staff and even each other (baik, larcombe & brooker, 2019). in this paper, we map four student support functions used by students within faculty-x. these are: orientation, student advising, peer mentoring, and career advising. orientation and student advising are situated within the central structure of the faculty, while peer mentoring is based in departmental structures. career advising sits within a career services unit, which is a structure external to the faculty. to understand whether these support structures approximate a system, we used systems criteria to ask the following questions: • to what extent are the existing student structures working? • is there a defined overarching purpose/goal for student support? if there is, how is that interpreted across structures? • are there feedback/communication mechanisms between structures and are they effective? • what is the level of integration between existing structures? the paper will answer these questions by analyzing existing student support within a single faculty and comparing the findings to systems criteria. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 422022 40(4): 42-54 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) 2. methodology 2.1 ethical considerations participants in this study volunteered to be interviewed and provided informed consent for their views to be included in the study with the understanding that all individuals will be anonymized. ethical clearance for this work was provided by an sau research ethics committee (ched rec 2018_25_van pletzen) who provides oversight for responsible conduct of research. 2.2 research design this study seeks to understand in detail how the student support structures of a single faculty work together before comparing these findings to an idealized framework. this is therefore best defined as an intensive, exploratory case study (de massis & kotlar, 2014, yin 2014; gerring, 2016). 2.3 sampling and data collection for the interviews, we identified informants with a rich knowledge of student support functions and practices in faculty-x. the following informants were identified and interviewed using semi-structured instruments: the faculty’s student support coordinator (ssc), who oversees advising in faculty-x and has long experience as a student advisor; three departmental representatives, who coordinate peer mentoring programmes in three different departments in faculty-x; and a careers service (cs) advisor, who represents an institutional student support service (that is, a service located outside faculty-x). one focus group of five firstyear students registered in faculty-x provided information of the students’ experience of the faculty’s support structures. first year students were targeted as having most recently been through orientation, and having the most naïve experience of student support, making them information-rich informants (senior students may have acquired further knowledge through experience and may not be able to focus as clearly on the workings of the support systems itself). interviews and the focus group were audio recorded and transcribed by a professional company. 2.4 data analysis the total sample therefore consists of four staff and five students. to analyse the data, we read and verified the transcripts, and discussed initial observations. next, we coded the data, highlighting text of interest. we then generated and compared categories of findings, dividing them into themes until saturation was reached. documents produced by faculty-x for the purposes of student information and advice were a further data source, along with other relevant documents. as a method of triangulation (gerring, 2016), we used content analysis of these documents and materials to identify patterns that supplement and align with themes described as findings emerging from the interview and focus group transcriptions. a complete list of data sources can be found in table 1 below. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 432022 40(4): 43-54 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 sithaldeen & van pletzen applying systems principles to achieve greater integration of student support table 1: list of data sources referenced in this paper in text reference description ssc_interview transcript of interview with student support coordinator (ssc) mentor_interview1 mentor_interview2 mentor_interview3 transcripts of interviews with coordinators of the peer mentoring initiatives in three different departments of faculty-x cs_interview transcript of interview with advisor in the careers service (cs) focus_group transcript of focus group with first year students in faculty-x handbook this is a legal document, detailing the rules and regulations of the degree including what is offered in the faculty, class schedules, and important faculty contacts. this faculty book is given to students on registration at orientation. available@url ssc_job description an internal document detailing the job description of the ssc for student support in faculty-x. info_booklet a student guide for students of faculty-x that includes information about orientation, student support services, important dates and contacts. it was produced in 2020, and also outlines registration procedures and other general information, including where to go to for help if needed. available@ url orientation_guide the schedule of events for the orientation period. orientation is a once off, eight-day event designed to allow first year students to register and transition into higher education. available@url survival_guide a document produced by a student run postgraduate council. it includes a welcome message, council member details, contact details for support services, and a calendar of events for postgraduate students. available@url 3. findings the student information booklet or ‘info_booklet’ describes student support functions and structures within the faculty and provides key contact details. we summarise this information as a schematic in figure 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 442022 40(4): 44-54 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) for support services, and a calendar of events for postgraduate students. available@url 3. findings the student information booklet or ‘info_booklet’ describes student support functions and structures within the faculty and provides key contact details. we summarise this information as a schematic in figure 1. figure 1: indicates that support functions are located centrally (within the faculty office), in academic departments, or in institutional structures external to the faculty. 3.1 existing student support within faculty-x we undertook a detailed analysis of three support functions within faculty-x, orientation, student advising, and peer mentoring and we identified several issues within all three functions formatted: font color: text 1 figure 1: indicates that support functions are located centrally (within the faculty office), in academic departments, or in institutional structures external to the faculty. 3.1 existing student support within faculty-x we undertook a detailed analysis of three support functions within faculty-x, orientation, student advising, and peer mentoring and we identified several issues within all three functions that impact on their effectiveness (fig 1). orientation is a set of activities scheduled over eight days. these activities aim at introducing incoming first year students to the institution. data collected from students indicate that they experience the orientation programme in faculty-x as somewhat misleading, rushed and overloaded, and that they find it difficult to make important decisions about their curriculum choices based on the information provided in one day (focus_group). students (all participants are cited verbatim in what follows) are reportedly confused by the messaging of the programme: “i think that the orientation we did is misleading. it’s happy, you’re all bubbly and i was like, ‘this is going to be fun’… because like, it’s not going to be fun after that.” another student noted: “like i think we’re supposed to be told … not in a scary way, but like just to inform us that like, it’s not going to be easy so don’t expect like you know, fun stuff and all those like, yeah” (focus_group). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 452022 40(4): 45-54 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 sithaldeen & van pletzen applying systems principles to achieve greater integration of student support the function of student advising is the responsibility of student advisors and the student support coordinator (ssc) within faculty-x, but both are overburdened. the student advisors who are responsible for curriculum advising are full-time academics and according to the ssc, advising is sometimes seen as a thankless task: “most student advisors still carry a regular academic load” and “there’s no formal recognition that they should be given a lower teaching job … it takes its toll” (ssc_interview). the role is seen as so burdensome that the dean will ask staff to serve for only a year at a time (ssc_interview). additionally, the main resource of information used by advisors is the handbook, which is a legal and technical document that contains all the rules and requirements of the degree: “it is absolutely concise and accurate and technically sets out everything that governs the academic curriculum” (ssc_interview) but is “… an impenetrable document” (ssc_interview). it is also one of the first resources that students are directed to (info-booklet) even though it proves “extremely difficult for students to come to grips with it. and even students … in advanced years, clearly still have not dipped into it, in the very basic way” (ssc_interview). the ssc, whose role is to advise at-risk students, as well as those with non-academic queries, is challenged by the fact that the faculty does not have in place a way to systematically identify at-risk students or specific processes to reach them. instead, students are expected to approach the ssc voluntarily. pro-active advising is offered by the ssc in the form of workshops, but these are neither mandated (not even for at-risk students) nor formally curriculated, and “it ends up actually being a smallish group who really stay the course” (ssc). the ssc also has limited capacity to deal with more senior students: “so the reality is i have concentrated my efforts mostly on first and second year… i mean it’s a matter of capacity as well, one can only do so much.” the peer mentoring programme in the faculty has poor uptake, and a high attrition rate. mentoring is a relationship in which a more experienced student shares advice and/ or experiences with peers, in areas such as personal goals, problems, and interests (nel, 2014). while attempts have been made to add structure to this function (mentor_interview 1), there is a struggle for continuity as the work is voluntary, unpaid and takes up a lot of time. first-year students are assigned a mentor and “mentors would then have to email them and set up meetings, and then at some undefined place and some undefined time and mentoring would happen” (mentor_interview 3). mentor coordinators also describe attrition challenges “i sent an email out to the, to all the mentors to say come along, you know, this is the time, it’s going to be in this lecture room. um, i got five people saying they couldn’t make it, and then, in the end, one person turned up. and that’s kind of indicative of, of how it’s been” (mentor_interview 2). together these data show that despite considerable effort these three existing student support functions within faculty-x are not working optimally. 3.2 purpose of student support in the info_booklet, orientation is described as having three objectives: (i) to provide students with information to make the right choices about their studies; (ii) to prepare students for the academic challenges of higher education; (iii) to give students an overview of the support available in the faculty and institution at large. this is expressed independently of other information within the book, and orientation is not explicitly linked to any greater purpose for student support. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 462022 40(4): 46-54 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) faculty-x places high value, and therefore focus, on the function of student advising, which has, as its primary goal, the provision of curriculum advising (ssc_interview, info_booklet). this is clearly explained in the student information book, and each student is assigned to a student advisor at the start of their first year (orientation_guide). when the ssc was asked about the goal of advising within the faculty, answers included: “to help students understand technical requirements of the degree”; “to advise on curriculum choice”; and “to give guidance on credits”. when students were asked the same question, they also focused on their need for various kinds of academic information, for instance, as captured in this student’s comment: “i think, academic advising should be, i don’t know, sort of, information on what to do with your studies. or like, advice on whether, i don’t know, on which subjects to, which electives to choose for your major… another thing, the resources available to you... where to go when you need anything.” (focus_group). the student here picks up on the need for advice on nonacademic issues, which according to documentation is the purview of the student support coordinator, who is “available to assist you to cope with these new challenges, or to refer you to the right place to get the help you need.” (info_booklet:18). the ssc role includes being “available to intercept, if you like, a whole host of things”, including academic support, referral, running a developmental curriculum and providing one-on-one student engagement (ssc). again, there does not seem to be an explicit articulation of how student advising contributes to an overarching purpose for student support. according to the sau report (2018), peer mentoring is aimed at improving student engagement and a mentor is described as “a senior student who has been through what you are going through and can help you to make sense of life at sau” (info-booklet:19). the three coordinators running departmental peer mentoring programmes who were interviewed for the study were asked what they thought the goals of peer mentoring were. their responses included: “to make students feel a bit more comfortable and at home” (mentor_interview1); “to help with the psychosocial issues related to adjustment and transition” (mentor_interview1); to “create a little community, connections between junior and senior students” (mentor_ interview2); and “to be a mechanism for creating a sense of belonging and well-being” (mentor_interview2). nowhere is it articulated how and why this programme promotes student engagement, or how this is part of a larger student support strategy for the faculty. the primary document that describes student support in the faculty is the info-booklet, which is a student resource. the book places significant emphasis on support for academic issues, and while it describes many types of support, it does not communicate an overall purpose or strategy for student support within the faculty, or how the various functions might contribute to this purpose. while support functions analysed in this paper do articulate their own goals, there does not appear to be a commonly held, well communicated, overarching purpose for student support for faculty-x students. 3.3 feedback and communication the faculty sends a strong message that, while support is provided for students, success is entirely dependent on the student’s willingness to engage with this support. this sentiment is communicated in the dean’s message: “while we undertake to provide you with a high-quality, internationally competitive education, your success in your studies depends largely on you… there are many services available to assist you, and i encourage you to make use of these throughout the year” (info_booklet: 3). however, it is unclear how students are to make sense of and navigate the support that is on offer. neither the documentation nor the interviews http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 472022 40(4): 47-54 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 sithaldeen & van pletzen applying systems principles to achieve greater integration of student support clarify how these structures relate to one another, or how students should know where to start when they need help. the student information booklet itself is not laid out according to any explicit organising principles, and it seems that the structures (fig 1) operate relatively independently of one another. for the student user, this means that they will need to need to unpack their own query, decide for themselves which function is best suited to helping them, and start there. if they make a mistake in this assessment, they will likely end up repeating their query many times. further to this, communication channels with students are challenging. all staff interviewees report difficulties, one saying that “they [students] simply don’t read emails”. students also express frustration of not having the information they need. this is described by one mentor coordinator as follows: “i get comments from students at the very beginning of the year going, you know, this or this person hasn’t sent any announcements, and ‘i don’t know what’s going on’, and ‘i don’t even know where i’m supposed to be going to lectures’. and my first reaction was, ‘wow, you know, this is terrible, you know, they’re, they’re not giving them any information, the students are really lost’” (mentor_interview 3). there also does not appear to be a strong community of practice for support providers within the faculty. student advisors only meet occasionally around high-volume advising periods to discuss logistics and other technical issues (ssc), and there is no official training for mentors or student advisors within faculty-x. the mentoring coordinators find this frustrating, noting that “it’s not easy to know what the right structure is” or “what works”. even communication with the peer mentors is difficult: “training is largely ad hoc and informal, we would appoint students; we would give them a training session in the week prior to term and then we would appoint them” (mentor_interview1-3). the faculty also does not have a good communication strategy for collaborating with important external functions, such as career advising. the careers service at sau is an external support structure, which provides the important function of career advising, i.e., providing information, advice, and opportunities to students to support their career planning. in faculty-x, which offers a formative rather than a professional degree, there is acknowledgement that many students are unclear about how the degree relates to their future careers, for instance: “there are a large proportion of students who don’t know why they are here and what they are doing.” (ssc). despite this acknowledgment there is only a limited, ad hoc relationship with the careers service, in that student advisors and the ssc only “occasionally refer students to the careers services” (ssc). in the info-booklet the careers service is listed under “general information” section between security and disability services, and not in the section on student support. the lay-out of the info-booklet therefore does not recognize the importance of careers advising. this is confirmed by the careers service advisor interview, where it is stated that even very experienced academic staff within faculty-x have no idea that the careers service exists, or what they do and collaboration between career services and faculty-x is dependent on personal relationships between staff members, rather than systematic use of the service (cs_interview). despite offering a number of support functions there is a clear lack of effective feedback or communication between structures or with student users of support in faculty-x. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 482022 40(4): 48-54 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) 3.4 integration integration requires that there be mechanisms in place that allow for quick feedback between support structures (barki & pinsonneault, 2005), such as communication channels. but the data shows that there is limited communication and hence collaboration between the support structures of faculty-x. for example, the three mentoring programmes are run in three different departments within the faculty. the ssc is meant to have “responsibility for management and coordination of academic and general student support as well as the planning and implementation of key strategic interventions in the faculty” (cf. ssc_jobdescription). the sscs however admit that they do not “really know what happens in the departments”. all three mentoring coordinators report that there is no consultation with the central faculty office regarding the setup of their mentoring programmes (mentor_interview 1-3). this lack of coordination leads to overlap and high attrition rates because “there is too much on offer, students can’t meaningfully engage with all of it” (mentor_interview 2). the result is that students appear to be overwhelmed and either disengage, or ignore communications (ssc). support structures do not work as an integrated system therefore a lot of effort, time and goodwill invested that often has very little return in terms of student engagement (ssc, mentor_interview 1). 4. discussion and recommendations well-integrated and efficient student support in higher education is known to promote better student outcomes (klempin et al., 2019). here, we assess support structures in faculty-x at sau against systems criteria and make recommendations on how to achieve greater efficiency through better integration of student support, without the need for redesign. in our assessment of four support functions used by students of faculty-x, we found that the existing student structures within the faculty are not working optimally, that there is no clearly articulated overarching purpose/goal for student support that is commonly understood and shared across structures and that the existing feedback and communication mechanisms are inefficient. alongside this sits the case of potentially high turnover of student advisors and mentors, without a systematic approach to training of these support providers to ensure continuity of service. conspicuously missing from the data is any mention of a process, protocol, or system for sharing of student case files, notes, or history of their engagement with support services, i.e. a feedback mechanism. based on the evidence, we can conclude that the existing student support structures do not constitute a coherent and integrated system. the case of faculty-x is not unique. the functions of support in higher education are often decentralised into various student support structures that are not always integrated towards a defined and agreed upon goal (bridgen, 2017; achieving the dream, 2018). this is often more pronounced in institutions using decentralised, faculty-only and/or shared organisational models of student support (tyton planning, 2017), which is the case at sau. in such an environment, student support is often more reflective of the characteristics of the siloed structures than it is of a coherent alignment of practices aimed at providing a more seamless student experience (education advisory board, 2018a, 2018b). however, a lack of cohesion across the structures leads to student fatigue, wastefulness and inefficiency (achieving the dream, 2018), making it important to think carefully how we might be able to facilitate better integration. by applying systems thinking, it may be possible to create a more integrated way of working, without redesigning an entire support infrastructure or even increasing capacity. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 492022 40(4): 49-54 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 sithaldeen & van pletzen applying systems principles to achieve greater integration of student support our first recommendation is to set clear goals for student support. developing a conceptual framework of an overarching goal, sub-sets of goals, outcomes for student support and identifying areas of responsibility, management, and accountability, would contribute to monitoring and improvement of the system (melander, 2005). these goals should speak directly to student success challenges that have been identified. all systems in a higher education institution should ideally be designed to contribute to the goal and educational mission of that institution (melander, 2005). in the case of faculty-x, high attrition rates have been identified, as well as a significant racial achievement gap and low-level of student engagement (sau, 2018). we recommend that an overarching goal for student support be defined in terms of mitigating these challenges and identifying how existing support structures and the functions contained within them could each contribute to the sub-goals. to do this will require consensus from distinct and interdependent organisational structures to work towards a common goal. the benefit to this process is that it creates a shared ownership of the goal (achieving the dream, 2018) and makes it much more likely that staff will be willing to make the necessary changes to achieve this goal (barki & pinsonneault, 2005) our second recommendation is structural in nature. for integration to be realised, it is not enough to engage support providers; there is also a need for high-level leadership in designing, reviewing, and implementing the student support strategies. in this respect, a centrally based student support coordinator could take responsibility for implementing the overall student support goal by facilitating coordination of various student support functions, such as peer mentoring and student advising. research shows that students who meet with advisors more frequently tend to report higher levels of persistence (klepfer & hull, 2012), and in one study, the likelihood of first-generation students persisting increased by 13% with every advisor meeting (swecker, fifolt & searby, 2013). however, if advisors are overloaded and engagement with students is cursory, the student may leave unsatisfied and not return. coordinating across functions could reduce some of the overlap in the system, allowing overloaded structures to devolve some activities to other structures, for example, in this case study, student advisors in faculty-x might make more referrals to the careers service or peer mentoring programmes. central co-ordination of structures will also create a more efficient flow of information between support structures and with students themselves, which is particularly important if higher education were to shift further online and students were to spend less time on campus (betts, 2009). thirdly, we recommend a well thought out training programme for all support providers. a training programme facilitated at central level for all incoming staff would ensure that the central goals, ethos, and protocols for support are communicated to all support providers. this is particularly important to ensuring a consistent quality of advising and referral across the system (bloom et al., 2007). the quality of staff engagement with students can play a role in retention (tinto & pusser, 2006), as knowing that staff do care can positively impact a student’s level of commitment and engagement (chickering & gamson, 1987). proper training of support providers that includes a coherent understanding of existing structures will also create more points of contact for students and lead to greater accuracy in referrals (achieving the dream, 2018). very few students enter higher education with the capacity to make a multitude of choices and looking for support is often an overwhelming and confusing experience (lowenstein, 2005). this can impact on future help-seeking behaviour, which has been shown to be positively associated with academic success (karabenick, 1998; lee, 2007). in a survey of student services in an australian university, the authors describe how http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 502022 40(4): 50-54 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) students dislike having to “hunt” for help (buultjens & robinson, 2011). having more points of contact with well-informed support staff makes it easier for students to find the help they need quickly, which can contribute to persistence, which is in turn correlates with better student outcomes (klepfer & hull, 2012; swecker, fifolt & searby, 2013). finally, we recommend the introduction of feedback mechanisms, which allow for the flow of information between the structures/components (colchester, 2016), providing a kind of control over the system as a whole. a platform for data sharing such as a case management system (cms) for student queries that is shared between structures is a type of feedback mechanism. this tool is increasingly used in higher education to assist students who are struggling with navigating the services and resources on campus (wilson et al., n.d.), including academic advising (pierce, 2016). a cms enables student information to be “tracked and managed in a way that allows information to be captured, understood and shared to best support the student” (texas, 2021). having such a system in place will allow for a flexible, coherent, transparent and systematic approach to student support. 4.1 implications of the study in this paper the authors develop a conceptual framework to assess student and provides practical recommendations for improvements. this approach has allowed us to review student support within a university site and make recommendations towards greater integration without additional staffing or resources, but through setting an overarching goal for student support, alignment of practice between support structures, increased training, and the introduction of better communication and data management strategies. 5. conclusion many students do not know what they need, especially at the start of their academic journeys. support provided should enable them and not add complexity to their journey. south african higher education faces significant challenges related to student success. the university in our case study reflects some of these issues, particularly in relation to equity of outcomes. if we are to take student success seriously, we must design student support intentionally with 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[accessed: 10 december 2021]. yin, r k. 2014. case study research design and methods (5th ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. zhang, x., gosset, c., simpson, j. & davis, r. 2017. advising students for success in higher education: an all-out effort’. journal of college student retention: research, theory and practice, 21(1): 53-77. https://doi.org/10.1177/1521025116689097 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6005 https://nces.ed.gov/npec/pdf/tinto_pusser_report.pdf https://nces.ed.gov/npec/pdf/tinto_pusser_report.pdf https://bit.ly/3fryo1a https://doi.org/10.24085/jsaa.v9i2.3688 https://www.beinformed.com/blog/what-is-system-integration/ https://www.beinformed.com/blog/what-is-system-integration/ https://silo.tips/download/the-history-of-case-management-in-higher-education https://silo.tips/download/the-history-of-case-management-in-higher-education https://doi.org/10.1177/1521025116689097 _hlk100666448 _hlk100666468 _hlk100666481 _hlk100666494 _hlk100666509 _hlk100666527 _hlk100666624 _hlk100666616 _hlk100666645 _hlk100666654 _hlk100666675 _hlk100666690 _hlk100666710 _hlk100666749 _hlk100666764 _hlk100666883 _hlk100666892 _hlk100666904 _hlk93061320 _hlk100666945 _hlk100666955 _hlk100666971 _hlk100667130 _hlk100667153 _hlk100667168 _hlk100667208 _hlk100667191 _hlk100667225 _hlk100667263 _hlk100136281 _hlk100474196 _hlk100668152 _hlk100667387 _hlk100130970 _hlk100130987 _hlk100130999 _hlk100131012 _hlk100667567 _hlk100667586 _hlk100667604 _hlk100667647 _hlk100667693 _hlk100667726 _hlk100667827 _hlk100667837 perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 92 doctoral writing for publication at a leading african university: publication patterns and pedagogies mathilde van der merwe writing-for-publication is a practice that doctoral students should acquire for integration into international research culture. publication rates and forms of pedagogy supporting the development of publication skills for doctoral students, however, remain inadequate worldwide. limited data of doctoral student publication from african universities is available in terms of publication patterns and pedagogies. to gain insight into publication pedagogies, a top-publishing science department at a leading african university was studied. a literature search was performed to find journal articles linked to dissertations and the numbers and timing of publication were documented. supervisors and graduates from the sample were interviewed to uncover educational strategies employed to support doctoral student publication. results indicate that the majority of the students published. departmental culture and a pedagogy of collaboration were highlighted as aspects encouraging students to publish. these results indicate that, with appropriate educational strategies, phd students can be prolific publishers and thereby become integrated into research cultures. keywords: doctoral publication, publication pedagogy, collaborative practice introduction peer-reviewed journal publication is synonymous with academic success and is, to date, the most trusted and unbiased way of disseminating new knowledge to the research community. tertiary institutions value the publication of papers in quality journals, because it constitutes a measure of their international ranking and a source of income in the form of government subsidies (mcgrail, rickard, & jones, 2006). hence, institutions encourage their academic staff to publish, by offering merit mathilde van der merwe university of cape town, centre for higher education development e-mail: mathilde.vandermerwe@uct.ac.za tel: +27 21 6502079 doctoral writing for publication at a leading african university: publication patterns and pedagogies mathilde van der merwe 93 awards and promotion. moreover, a sound publication record frequently translates directly into research funding and career progression (mcgrail et al., 2006). publishing is important not only for academic staff, however, but also for postgraduate students. the skills that students acquire and practise when publishing their work in peer-reviewed journals include organising text effectively, command of sophisticated scholarly register and discipline-specific language (hyland, 1999), argumentation, coherence, abstracting, choosing the correct target audience (i.e., journal), and managing the publication process (kwan, 2010). having a publication record and the skills acquired in the process of building such a record will benefit a postgraduate student when applying for a scholarship, a phd, a post-doctoral position or a job in academia in a highly competitive environment. if the traditional phd-bydissertation route is followed, publication before graduation can also be beneficial, as students can use the feedback obtained through the publication review process to inform their final dissertation write-up (gottlieb, 1994). despite these obvious advantages of publishing, publication outputs (and forms of pedagogy supporting the development of publication skills) are still inadequate for postgraduate students. lee and kamler (2008: 512) describe the “lack of widespread and systematic publishing of doctoral research [as] a significant problem in the effectiveness of doctoral education”. several studies have confirmed this problem of inadequate preparation for publication among postgraduate students (for example, frković, skender, doćjinović & bilić-zulle, 2003; younes, deheinzelin & birolini, 2005). aitchison and lee (2006: 266) focus the problem on the “absence of a systematic pedagogy for writing”. fortunately, ways have been suggested to address the problem outlined above. reports on pedagogies supporting research writing include co-authorship under supervisor guidance (dinham & scott, 2001; kamler, 2008), writing groups (cuthbert & spark, 2008; lee & kamler, 2008; aitchison, 2009) and writing courses (mcgrail et al., 2006). much of the work done in the area of publication pedagogy is situated in the humanities and social sciences. in the sciences, at least one of these pedagogies, co-authorship under supervisor guidance, is regarded as a “taken-for-granted practice” (kamler, 2008: 292); besides that, hardly anything is reported for science disciplines. given the importance of publication in establishing an academic career and the relative scarcity of research in the area of publication pedagogy, there is a pressing need for studies investigating the actual publication rates of doctoral students and identifying publication pedagogies employed in different disciplines and research settings. this type of investigation is particularly important in a country such as south africa where the need for developing a new cadre of academics to sustain and increase current levels of knowledge production is frequently expressed (see, for instance, department of higher education and training, 2012). at this point, there are no reports of doctoral student publication rates in african universities. this study sets out to investigate doctoral publishing at one african perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 94 university that is renowned for its research productivity. it particularly describes the publication profile of doctoral graduates at a top-publishing science department and attempts to highlight some of the educational strategies that can be positively correlated with successful doctoral student publication. this paper aims to report the numbers and timing of publications by a group of doctoral graduates, and to establish a set of best practices that seem to encourage writing-for-publication in this group. methodology sample selection in order to start exploring the publication profiles of doctoral students, purposive nonprobability sampling was employed in that observations were selected based on certain characteristics (sugimoto & cronin, 2012). zoology is among the ten most published subject areas countrywide in south africa (kahn, 2011). a department dedicated to this discipline, at a research-led south african university, was selected as representative of an outstanding department in terms of publications. the institution is the top-publishing institution in south africa and, within the science faculty, this particular department has remained the one responsible for the most publications per year over the past decade. demographics to gain demographic information on the sample, the list of graduate names was submitted to the institutional planning department, which keeps records of all students at the institution, past and present. information on age, gender, first language and year of graduation was collected. to account for possible name changes of women who get married and change their last name, a list of the women in the sample was checked against the institution’s alumni database, which keeps an updated record of past graduates. bibliometric analysis a bibliometric analysis was performed on a sample of doctoral dissertations. as all completed dissertations are kept in the institution’s library, a complete list of dissertations from the department in the ‘isi researchsoft tagged output format’ was copied from the library’s online aleph catalogue into microsoft excel. from these, a subset of dissertations submitted between 1990 and 2010 was created. the lower boundary of the subset was selected to coincide with the arrival of electronic journals worldwide when a different publishing environment emerged with the advent of the internet (okerson, 2000). the upper boundary was set to allow the inclusion of post-phd publications of authors who graduated in 2010. the period of publication for each graduate was limited to 11 years: six years prior to graduation (research-in-progress period) and five years after graduation (postdoctoral period). since doctoral students in the science faculty at this institution take, doctoral writing for publication at a leading african university: publication patterns and pedagogies mathilde van der merwe 95 on average, slightly longer than five years to complete a doctoral degree (from data spanning 2007-2012), the six years prior to graduation should allow for publications that may appear in the first year of registration. the five-year post-doctoral period of publication is based on the assumption that this is a productive time for producing publications based on dissertation research (anwar, 2004). to find journal articles related to each doctoral dissertation topic and by the same author, the thomson reuters web of science academic citation indexing and search service was used. this database is a reliable one for bibliometric analysis and allows for straightforward queries (kahn, 2011). to ensure that no articles were missed, the online databases sciencedirect and googlescholar were also searched. in each of these databases, a comprehensive search was performed using the surname and initials of the author as search terms in the ‘author’ field. in the event where it was not immediately evident that the titles returned were related to the concerned dissertation, author affiliation was taken into account, by entering ‘south africa’ into the ‘address’ (for web of science) ‘affiliation’ (for sciencedirect) or ‘with the exact phrase’ (for googlescholar) fields. if it was still not evident if a publication was related to the same topic as the dissertation, the paper’s abstract was read. only articles published in journals were counted. each article’s title, authors, year of publication and journal name, volume and page numbers were recorded. where a name change could be identified (this was the case for six female students), publications under the new surname were added to publications under the maiden surname. statistics descriptive statistics were generated on both graduation data (numbers and demographics) and publication data. for the latter, the participation rate (defined by lee (2000) as the percentage of the sample with at least one publication), the number of publications per graduate, the timing of publication relative to graduation, and the relationships between the number of publications, gender and age of the most prolific publishers were described. all data were collected and descriptive statistics done using microsoft excel 2010. interviews the bibliometric analysis was followed by semi-structured interviews with phd graduates included in the bibliometric analysis as well as experienced supervisors from the department, in order to gain insight into some of the educational strategies that could contribute to publication productivity. results and discussion demographics over the two decades 1990 to 2010, a total of 119 phd students graduated from the department, of whom 43.7% were female and 56.3% were male (1:1.3). this perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 96 ratio is closer to 1:1 than the ratio reported nationally for graduates in the natural sciences across south africa (1:1.8; female:male) (academy of science of south africa, 2010). the average age at graduation for the sample was 34.8 years. this is on par with the nationwide mean age-at-graduation for doctoral students in the natural and agricultural sciences, which is 34.7 (academy of science of south africa, 2010). age-at-graduation distribution indicated that the largest proportion (43%) of female students were in the age range 26-30, whereas the largest proportion (33%) of male students were in the higher age range of 31-35 upon graduation. number and timing of publications of all the graduates in the sample, 111 (93.3%) produced at least one publication related to their dissertations. this participation rate compares favourably with that reported in other studies. roughly half of the doctoral graduates from medical faculties in brazil (younes et al., 2005) and croatia (frković et al., 2003) have not published anything after completing their dissertations. a study reporting on molecular biology phd graduates states that only 32% of the sample, which have been busy with their phd for three years on average, published (brown, 2005). however, it is important to remember that the purposive sampling used in this study probably skews the results towards phd graduate publication trends that are more productive than the norm. of those who published, only slightly more papers (57.3%) were published during the postdoctoral period than during the research-in-progress period (42.7%), indicating that the majority of the doctoral graduates started publishing well before completing their phds. this is not in line with the observations of younes et al., (2005) and figueredo, sánchez perales, villalonga & castillo (2002), namely that doctoral graduates only start publishing after graduation. the average number of publications per student was 11.88. even within such a productive sample of graduates, there are still trends indicating more or less publication productivity related to timing of publication and the demographics of the group. forty-seven students (39.5% of the sample) published more than the average of 11.88 papers (figure 1). together, these 47 graduates accounted for 75.3% of all publications in the sample. for this study, these students are regarded as prolific publishers. doctoral writing for publication at a leading african university: publication patterns and pedagogies mathilde van der merwe 97 figure 1: number of publications by 119 phd graduates with prolific publishers in the boxed area the gender division of these prolific publishers shows that the minority (23.4%) were female, with 76.6% male. male students thus outnumber female students by more than three to one (exactly 3.3:1). in order to establish whether there were differences in publication trends between the top-publishing male and female graduates and whether gender can be used as a predictor of publication success, the top five publishing graduates from each gender group were selected. consistent with the trend observed in all graduates together, nine of these top ten had already started publishing five years before graduating. male graduates had a higher total number of publications (271) across the 11 years than female graduates (158 publications). the top five male publishers have in common that slightly more of their publications appeared in the five years preceding graduation than for the postdoctoral period. for most of them (four out of five), there was not one year in the period recorded that they ceased producing papers (figure 2). perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 98 figure 2: top five male publishers and timing of their publications relative to graduation. one individual graduated in 2010; thus, a complete publication record of 5 years post-graduation is not yet available. the top five female publishers, on the other hand, all had a number of years (ranging between one and six) during which they produced no publications (figure 3). in addition, they all published more during the postdoctoral period than during the research-in-progress period. figure 3: top five female publishers and timing of their publications relative to graduation doctoral writing for publication at a leading african university: publication patterns and pedagogies mathilde van der merwe 99 while it is difficult to tie these observations to specific causes, it can be deduced that gender had an influence on publication productivity for these top-publishing graduates, with male graduates publishing more in total and more in the researchin-progress period than female graduates. this observation extends to the prolific publishers cohort, where 15 graduates published more during the research-inprogress period. fourteen of the 15 are male graduates. a possible explanation for this that transpired from the interviews is that a significant intake of phds in this department are employed by industry, government or research centres and that these employees often register for a phd after they have worked and published on a project, as part of their job, for several years. a larger proportion of these ‘professional phds’ are men. interview data the interviews provided more insight into factors contributing to publication productivity. i shall focus on two aspects, which i believe are specific of the department studied: departmental culture and the discipline, and a pedagogy of collaboration. sv depicts a supervisor and st a phd graduate interviewee. three supervisors and three graduates were interviewed. all three graduates were from the ‘prolific publishers’ cohort, and two of the three, one male and one female, were from the top five male and female cohorts. departmental culture and discipline the department seems to have a particularly pro-publishing culture, which is reflected in it being the top-publishing department at the institution’s science faculty for the past ten years. in 2003, a former head of department published a personal memoir of the centennial history of the department. according to his records, a focus on publication already started in the early 1900s which, through the years, led to the department becoming one “noted for its research excellence and productivity” (brown, 2003: 31). he mentions the collegiality and increasing frequency of co-authorship between students and academics in the department. from the three supervisors and one of the students interviewed, it was evident that this departmental culture contributes to the publication success of its phd students. the supervisors described the department as having “an ethic of productivity” (sv1), and “maintaining a culture of publication” (sv3). there is an “expectation that you’re able to present your work in some way to a broader audience” (sv2), so students are encouraged to attend conferences, from which a publication might ensue. there is an understanding in the department that “if a msc or phd project … isn’t published [it is considered] as basically a failure” (sv1). the student experienced it as follows: i found … this knowledge almost walking through the passageways, you almost like sucked it in, you could almost feel it. and there was such an attitude amongst students and staff about striving for the best. everyone around me was aiming perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 100 to publish; there’s no such thing as doing work without publishing it, that is the aim and that just became the most natural thing (st1). another reason for the productivity in this department is that the discipline lends itself to numerous publications because of local relevance. while more generic science disciplines such as physics or statistics require novelty at a global scale for a paper to be accepted for publication, others such as the biological and environmental sciences can draw on local biodiversity to produce novel research (sv2). “you just have to observe something for long enough and it turns out to be papers that you can write” (sv3). the university is situated in one of 18 biodiversity hotspots in the world, the cape floristic region. it has even been called the “world’s hottest hotspot” (international union for conservation of nature, 2012). the department is thus perfectly positioned to conduct novel research on local species, interactions and ecosystems. in that sense, it would not be fair to compare this department’s publication output with that of other disciplines. it does, however, afford ample opportunity for students to practise writing for publication, as there is no shortage of new knowledge to disseminate. pedagogy of collaboration the interviews brought to the fore that collaboration is central to publication productivity in this department. collaborative learning theory states that learning is a socially constructed activity that takes place through communication with peers. it has long been acknowledged as a pedagogical tool for teaching writing, as writing can be deemed as essentially the ability to participate in a conversation. when students work collaboratively on writing, they are practising the discourse of the academic community they are entering (bruffee, 1984). the pedagogy of collaboration is active on three levels in this department: between student and supervisor, in writing groups, and in larger departmental seminar spaces. student and supervisor the one supervisor made a strong case that “the key thing in productivity is actually the personal relationship between student and supervisor” (sv3), and that this relationship is forged in a framework of encouragement. “for me there’s only one orientation towards students and that’s to be encouraging” (sv3). another supervisor described this relationship as “a collegial partnership in which you are both responsible for the product” (sv1) and that it is critically important for him that students publish and that his name appears on those papers. the third supervisor confirmed this by saying that publication productivity “is very much the motivation of the supervisors. [the students] are doing projects that are really close to the supervisor’s heart and the supervisor wants to see those published” (sv2). in order to see papers published, the structure of the dissertation would be planned around the papers that will come from it from the outset (sv1 and sv3). doctoral writing for publication at a leading african university: publication patterns and pedagogies mathilde van der merwe 101 this resonates with the phd-by-publication approach, which has been suggested to prepare doctoral students more effectively for an academic career (larivière, zuccala & archambault, 2008). one student appreciated the role her supervisors played in enculturating her into writing for publication. she acknowledges that her supervisors built her confidence and taught her specific skills about writing papers. among these skills were the “idea of writing as you go” and that she should not “expect it to be perfect first time around” (st1). another student also remarked that her supervisors “… encouraged [her] to publish a lot, because they all published a lot and so it was just kind of automatic” (st2). the practice of co-authorship in science has been described as “a crucial part of learning the ropes of academic publishing” (kamler, 2008: 288). the degree to which a supervisor purposefully inducts a student into the process of writing for publication varies. for getting students to write papers, one supervisor tells her students to “… go ahead and publish!” (sv2), whereafter they are practically left on their own to come up with a first draft. other supervisors follow an apprenticeship model, where the student is supported throughout the process. for example, sv 1 “[tries] and give [his] students a whole lot of help”. in terms of writing, he often does “a tremendous amount of re-writing of the project” and considers it good training. he finds it satisfying to edit the work, talk to students about the changes made and then “by the time the last chapter comes it’s actually really good” (sv1). the framework of encouragement mentioned earlier is demonstrated by how sv3 guides his students in developing their writing: i’m happy to see papers that are really really desperately incomplete. i’d rather be given the opportunity to look at each section as you write it and i promise you i’ll not think worse of you because it’s sort of scrappy incomplete work. the important thing is to know that you’re going in the right direction (sv3). unlike sv2, he does not rewrite sections of the manuscript. “it’s the student’s work, and as far as possible it’s the student’s words” (sv3). he rather focuses on building the students’ confidence such that they become better writers. he provides them with a handout of guidelines on how to write well and keeps an open-door policy for providing encouraging feedback on writing. he also encourages his students to communicate their research to wider audiences by engaging in public science communication, opportunities which he describes as “a huge confidence builder” (sv3). the strategies followed by these two supervisors are similar to what gee (1989) calls the apprenticeship model. newcomers (students) become members of a disciplinary community through apprenticeship into social practices (writing for publication), through scaffolded and supported interaction with people who have perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 102 already mastered the discourse (supervisors). discourse refers to “saying (writing)doing-being-valuing-believing combinations” (gee, 1989: 6). writing groups acquiring a discourse is not only a product of the relationship between two individuals (in this instance, the supervisor and the student), but extends to being a member of a socializing group (gee, 1989). as aitchison (2010) indeed stresses, groupwriting is a pedagogy that realises writing as a social practice. in this section, i shall highlight instances from the interviews where writing groups supported students’ enculturation into writing for publication. one supervisor promoted group-writing as follows: “i tell my phd students that you don’t have to do this [writing a paper] alone. we’re a team doing it” (sv3). he referred to the postdoctoral fellows and other students in his laboratory as part of this team and would always encourage students to engage in peer-reviewing each other’s writing. one student remarked that some of his research projects were collective efforts, “from fieldwork to write-up” and that his publications reflect that, in terms of co-authorship (st3). another student elaborated on how a collaborative laboratory environment enhanced her writing and publishing experience: the students around me were happy to read … each other’s work … we had enough of knowledge and an interest in each other’s work to understand what was happening in the paper. … we would sometimes work it through each other first and then it would go to the supervisor. and sometimes it would just be on sections. ja, we learned nicely from each other (st1). this is an example of how writing groups often emerge organically in the sciences, where students work together in laboratories and research groups and co-authorship is common. this is in contrast to the humanities and social sciences, where an individualistic writing and publication culture prevails (cuthbert & spark, 2008). some of the same benefits, as highlighted by cuthbert and spark (2008), that come with structured writing groups in an arts faculty, probably also feature in these ‘organic’ writing groups in the sciences, as demonstrated earlier: a sense of support and community, writing for an audience beyond the closed supervisorstudent relationship, and improving your own writing through critiquing others. peer interaction in such groups affords participants the opportunity to “test and extend their conceptual knowledge as well as their capacity to communicate this knowledge through writing” (aitchison, 2010: 87) and, with supervisor guidance, it helps students “learn to write in ways associated with academic expertise” (leverenz, 2001: 58). departmental seminars during the interviews, another collaborative practice, reaching beyond the research group or laboratory, was illuminated. doctoral writing for publication at a leading african university: publication patterns and pedagogies mathilde van der merwe 103 for at least a decade, the department has hosted weekly seminars, called ‘chatties’, for postgraduate students to exchange ideas related to their research projects with staff and fellow students. besides the advice the student gets, this is a learning opportunity for all students present. “they’ve gotten very good at dissecting the other students’ projects, and of course then they don’t make those mistakes themselves. so it’s a tremendous training” (sv1). one student confirmed this: [the chatties] were really useful for experimental designs … you would get input from people who are not necessarily directly in your line but they have a different approach or a different background and then they would really strengthen the design which would come through in the thesis and then into the papers (st1). these are valuable pedagogical spaces where students are inducted into communicating and interrogating their research and into the central scientific practice of peer-review. peer review can greatly enhance content and rhetoric and give students a feeling of group cohesion (hansen & liu, 2005). as emphasised by lundstrom and baker (2009), it is not only the one who receives comments, but also the act of giving peer review that impacts greatly on students’ writing ability. ‘chatties’ is thus a learning opportunity for the presenter and the participants and offers a further example of “social engagement in intellectual pursuits” (bruffee, 1984: 652) employed by this department. conclusion the combination of quantitative and qualitative data used here allowed for an in-depth look at patterns of doctoral student publication and educational strategies supporting students to publish productively. genderand age-wise, the cohort examined in this instance is on par with the nationwide profile of a doctoral student. the results in terms of publication output for this sample are, however, above average, as the institution and department were specifically selected to reflect research and publication excellence. the department can be described as one that is successful in preparing its students to participate in research cultures, and in equipping them with the necessary publication skills for a career in academia. the key factors contributing to this success include a pro-publication culture and a pedagogy of collaboration which extends beyond the supervisor-student relationship to writing groups, within laboratories and at the departmental level. there are thus numerous opportunities for students to engage in critical discussion of their research and writing. writing for publication is an essential skill that should be learned and practised en route to a successful academic career. in south africa, the necessity of preparing postgraduate students to write for publication is fortunately acknowledged. the south african young academy of science recommends that offering writing-forpublication courses to postgraduate students and postdoctoral fellows should be a priority (south african young academy of science, 2013). perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 104 lee and kamler (2008), however, argue that there is a need to move beyond ad hoc and unsustainable approaches such as workshops and courses, to support doctoral writing for publication. they highlight the importance of a systematic publication pedagogy, for instance, through building expert-mediated peer review processes and extensive supervision guidance into writing for publication. aitchison, kamler and lee (2010) also highlight the importance of pedagogical practices based on ‘writing together’, for example in writing groups, to support doctoral writing for publication. the findings of this study are in agreement with this and show how pedagogies that have proved themselves effective in humanities, social science and multidisciplinary communities are also effective in the biological sciences. in fact, the laboratory culture lends itself excellently to this kind of collaborative activity. the pedagogy of collaboration described here can serve as example to other science (and wider) departments in providing adequate support for their postgraduate students when learning to write for publication. references academy of science of south africa 2010. the phd study: an evidence-based study on how to meet the demands for high-level skills in an emerging economy. retrieved on 29 july 2014 from http://www.assaf.co.za/evidence-basedreports/. aitchison c 2009. writing groups for doctoral education. studies in higher education, 34(8): 905-916. aitchison c 2010. learning together 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portsmouth, nh: heinemann/boynton-cook, 50-61. perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 106 lundstrom k & baker w 2009. to give is better than to receive: the benefits of peer review to the reviewer’s own writing. journal of second language writing, 18: 30-43. mcgrail mr, rickard cm & jones r 2006. publish or perish: a systematic review of interventions to increase academic publication rates. higher education research and development, 25(1): 19-35. okerson a 2000. are we there yet? online e-resources ten years after. library trends, 48(4): 671-693. south african young academy of science working group 2013. the research experience of young scientists in south africa. retrieved on 25 july 2015 from http://www.sayas.org.za/index.php?id=6 sugimoto cr & cronin b 2012. biobibliometric profiling: an examination of multifaceted approaches to scholarship. journal of the american society for information science and technology, 63(3): 450-468. younes rn, deheinzelin d & birolini d 2005. graduate education at the faculty of medicine of the university of são paulo: quo vadis? clinics, 60(1): 6-8. 43 teaching and learning of mandarin as a foreign language in south african schools abstract globalisation has influenced the demand for the acquisition of mandarin. as a proactive response, the south african department of education included mandarin as a second additional language in the national curriculum statement grades r–12 in march 2015. the research reported on in this article was context specific. it entailed a case study of a school in gauteng that had introduced mandarin as a foreign language. chomsky’s language theory, the interactionist theory and vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory are acknowledged. a qualitative inquiry strategy was employed; individual and focus group interviews, questionnaires and observations were used as data gathering tools. content analysis was done manually. themes, categories and subcategories were identified. the research culminated in a case study narrative elaborating on the main themes, namely motivation and beliefs, teaching mandarin, and learners’ learning experiences. keywords: mandarin; foreign language; teaching; learning 1. introduction “the nation [china] has a booming economy and one of the biggest consumer markets in the world; it’s clear that now is a good time to know chinese” (grasso, 2007: xi-xii). it is apparent that chinese is becoming the second most demanded language globally and will ultimately become almost indispensable to business professionals in the next 20 years (grasso, 2007: xi). as a result of the increasing frequency of “international exchanges with china in economics, trade, science, technology, culture, education, art and tourism” nowadays (wang & lemmer, 2015: 35) the world’s demand for chinese learning has increased sharply (hanban, 2014). importantly, ping (2009: 85) emphasises the role parents play in the increasing demand for mandarin chinese as they think it will be useful in the future careers of their children. it is thus important that we realise globalisation has an influence on foreign language teaching such as communi­ cative pedagogies, which allow for participatory electronic chatrooms and videos, internet, tele-collaboration and social networks and that offer learners increased access to native speakers in their cultural environments (kramsch, 2014: 296). prof norma nel university of south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i2.4 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(2): 43-56 © uv/ufs 44 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) south africa has recognised the importance of introducing mandarin in schools. the department of education made amendments “to the regulations pertaining to the national curriculum statement grades r–12 to provide for the listing of mandarin as a second additional language” (government gazette, 2015: 3). in january 2016, an incremental implementation of the roll­out of mandarin as a non­official, second additional language in south african schools (grades 4–10) will take place and in 2017, grade 11 and in 2018, grade 12 (allafrica global media, 2015). to date ten schools in gauteng have introduced mandarin as a second additional language. the teaching of mandarin in south african schools started with one school in 2014 and nine more schools in 2015 (as part of a pilot project) with the assistance of the chinese culture and international education exchange centre. south africa currently has six confucius institutions and together with the chinese government, a curriculum will be developed to teach chinese in schools (south asia media network, 2016) and to use “flexible teaching patterns”, which have been adapted to cater for local primary and secondary schools (hanban, 2014). despite the surge for learning chinese as a foreign or second language (cfl/csl), little research has been conducted in this area, particularly on the learning styles and strategies used by these learners (chu et al., 2015: 2). there is thus a need for immediate (and ongoing) proactive research into the teaching and learning of chinese in south african schools to ensure that challenges are overcome before they become insurmountable. we need to be vigilant of context­specific gaps that may emerge. with this background in mind, the aim of this research is to explore and describe the emergence of mandarin teaching and learning in south african schools1. 2. the teaching and learning of mandarin as a foreign language the traditional way of teaching a foreign language was grounded in behaviourist theories of learning. foreign language learning was a “mimetic” activity where learners had to repeat or imitate new information. the major determinants of language learning success were the quality and the quantity of the language feedback. in 1959, chomsky reviewed this approach and claimed that children are biologically programmed for language, that they have an innate ability to find out for themselves what the underlying rules of a language system are (moeller & catalano, 2015: 327). chomsky (2003: 70-71) also adds that language development is determined by the nature of the environment, as an appropriate environment that is “a stimulating environment is required to enable our natural curiosity, intelligence and creativity to develop, and to enable our biological capacities to unfold”. an emerging theoretical position, namely interactionist, emphasised the role of the “linguistic environment” which needs to be combined with the learners’ innate abilities to learn a language. language development thus results from a “complex interplay” between the innate language abilities of the learners and their environment and the language needs to be modified to suit the ability of the learners. the learner must be “active co-constructive participants instead of just listening to input, and rather interact and negotiate that input which they receive” (moeller & catalano, 2015: 328). muñoz (2014: 24) resonates with the above as she found in her study that learners “showed early awareness of foreign language learning and learning conditions as well as the influence of the learning environment and experience on the changes that reshaped their views” during their primary education. further to this, vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory “views 1 different references in the text use chinese, mandarin chinese or mandarin as the language under discussion. for the purpose of this article, mandarin will be used as it is used in the government gazette, (2015:3). 45 nel teaching and learning of mandarin as a foreign language in south african schools cognition as a social faculty”, which means that it is essential that the learner participates in culturally organised activities where social dialogue takes place. ortega (2009: 218-219) explains that vygotsky reconceptualised cognition and consciousness to be fundamentally social and is the only social approach to second language (l2) learning which is fully accepted as a second language acquisition (sla) theory by sla researchers. it is therefore imperative for foreign language (fl) teachers to employ second language orientated learning strategies, which focus on understanding the overall meaning in communication, to use chinese in a natural and authentic context and to monitor learners’ progress (chu et al., 2015: 1). the chinese written form is not directly related to its pronunciation. a scheme for the chinese phonetic alphabet, known as the pinyin system which means “arranged sounds” uses the alphabet to transcribe chinese sounds “and four diacritical tone marks to indicate the different tones of the chinese characters (schmidt, 2002: 35). 3. pronunciation tones 1st high tone 2nd high rising tone 3rd low falling rising tone 4th high falling tone zhilong, f. 2000. essential chinese for travelllers. hong kong: regent when different tones are indicated on a syllable then each will have a different meaning (hau-yoon, 1999: 3). for example, “医doctor” is marked as “yī” in high level tone, “移move” is marked as “yí” in high rising tone, “蚁ant” is marked as “yǐ” in low rising tone and “亿a hundred million” is marked as “yì” in high falling tone. chinese characters take the place of an imaginary square space and are “made up of multiple reusable components that fit into the square space” (tse et al., (2007: 377). pinyin (a phonic system) is used for learners to know the sound and their pronunciation of the characters. this makes it easier for them to attach sounds to ideographs and to the meaning. pinyin cannot stand on its own in place of the characters but supplements the characters by being written next to the characters and thereby supports children in learning the characters (tse et al., 2007: 376, 381) for example: speaker: nǐ hǎo (你好) (english pronunciation: nee how) you fine (honorific form) hello! respondent: nǐ hǎo (你好) (english pronunciation: nee how) you fine. hello! speaker: nǐ hǎo ma?(你好吗？) (english pronunciation: nee how ma) how are you? respondent: wǒ hěn hǎo , nǐ ne ?(我很好，你呢？) (english pronunciation: wo hen how nee ne) fine. and you? speaker: wǒ hěn hǎo , xiè xiè (我很好，谢谢) (english pronunciation: wo hen how shieh shieh) i am fine thank you. 46 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) it is thus important that phonic symbols should not be learnt before the characters. chinese characters are usually learnt by copying them repeatedly until the learner can reproduce the form and the pronunciation by memory (tse et al., 2007: 375, 376, 381). explicit teaching of radicals helps chinese foreign learners (cfl) to learn characters (tong & yip, 2015: 173–177). maluch et al., (2015: 76–77) found that the strongest predictors for learning a foreign language are the teacher’s proficiency in the instructional language and background characteristics of learners. furthermore, li (2013: 294–305) established that learners’ enjoyment of chinese lessons is closely related to teachers’ knowledge and background. these include knowing the learners, their routines and the activities and classroom practices they enjoy and the teachers’ enthusiasm and their knowledge of china and the chinese culture. 4. research questions the main research question is “how is mandarin taught and learnt in a primary school in relation to a learner’s innate ability and social learning environment?” the sub-questions are: 1. why do learners want to learn mandarin? 2. how can a learner’s innate ability be unfolded when teaching mandarin? 3. how does the learning environment influence the teaching and learning of mandarin? 3. what are the learners’ experiences of learning mandarin? 4. how can the teaching and learning of mandarin experiences (opportunities and challenges) inform future mandarin teaching and learning in south african schools? 5. method in order to answer the research questions and explore the relationships between the teaching and learning of mandarin in primary schools and a learner’s innate ability and learning environment, a qualitative inquiry strategy, namely a case study was employed in this study. purposive sampling was used to identify the participating school that offers mandarin as an extramural activity. the school is situated in tshwane south. seventeen learners enrolled for extramural mandarin classes. all these learners as well as the principal, a teacher facilitator and one mandarin teacher participated in the study. ethical clearance was obtained from unisa’s ethics committee. 6. data collection three focus group interviews were conducted. groups 1 and 2 consisted of six learners each and group 3 consisted of five learners. each focus group interview lasted approximately 30 minutes. seeing that so many learners in the school volunteered but only one chinese teacher did, the teachers selected only top academic achievers from grades 4-7. the principal and teachers decided that only the top achievers in each grade could participate in the mandarin classes. semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with the principal, the teacher facilitator and the mandarin teacher. these interviews lasted approximately 45 minutes each. 47 nel teaching and learning of mandarin as a foreign language in south african schools the interviews were recorded with the permission of the participants. the researchers also observed two mandarin lessons. the researchers wrote field notes and took photographs of learners’ workbooks. the parents of learners participating in the study completed a questionnaire containing open-ended questions. 7. data analysis the contents of transcripts of the interviews with learners and educators were analysed manually and core meanings, patterns or themes (patton, 2002: 442, 453), together with refined categories and subcategories relating to the research topic, were identified. the researchers’ observation field notes were combined and added detail to the themes, categories and subcategories. parents’ responses to open-ended questionnaires were reflected on a template. the template made provision for a parent’s biographical information, the 11 questions included in the questionnaire and the parent’s response to each question. the parents were numbered from (a) to (p). their responses contained their perspectives and added further detail to the identified themes, categories and subcategories. the data from the focus group interviews with learners formed the core of the discussion. a case record “pull(ed) together and organise(d) the voluminous case data into a comprehensive, primary resource package” (patton, 2002: 449). a final case study narrative reflects the findings for public reading (patton, 2002: 450). separate feedback sessions with the principal and learners were held and a post-research meeting with parents was planned. 8. case record three themes (together with their categories and sub-categories) emerged during the manual data analysis namely: theme 1: motivation and beliefs, theme 2: teaching mandarin and theme 3: learners’ learning experiences. these themes, with their categories incorporated are discussed below. key: p1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 – learners in focus groups fg (1, 2 & 3) – focus group principal tf – teacher facilitator theme 1: motivation and beliefs why would primary school learners want to learn mandarin? “for fl learners, developing their own voice increasingly means developing an ear for the voices of others – no doubt a crucial, if lifelong, educational goal” (kramsch, 2014: 309). the general feeling of the learners in the mandarin class was that they had been given an opportunity to learn another language and that it would benefit them to learn mandarin. they felt that knowledge of mandarin might lead to interesting job opportunities and would stand them in good stead should they visit china. they enjoyed learning the language because it was interesting and different. the learners in the study expressed their views, with particular reference to job opportunities, for example: 48 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) fg3-p5: [i want to learn mandarin] because i want to be an international accountant, so if i travel places, if i go to china, [i] want to speak the language. gardner (1985) in (ping, 2009) believes that learners are motivated to learn a language as they may have an instrumental or integrative orientation towards another language and as chomsky states that children are biologically programmed and have innate abilities to learn a language. the tf was asked whether she believed the primary school is where mandarin should first be taught and her answer was: tf: well, yes i do believe that primary school is actually the first place where you need to go because that is where they learn language best, they are much more open to language when they are smaller than when they are grown up. so when they are small they pick it up like a sponge. i see them in the class and i see me. the chinese teacher was asked whether young children would be able to learn mandarin and she answered: yes. i think so because the young kids [are] learning the foreign language easier for them. i think so. very smart. oh. i also enjoy the class, the children. furthermore, during our classroom observations, the grade 4 learners were equally active and participated in the lesson activities. they were able to converse in mandarin, with the teacher and their classmates and spontaneously volunteered to write pinyin and the chinese characters on the board and their workbooks were evidence of their ability to write pinyin and chinese characters. the principal added that … what they are teaching them is basic for everybody in the class, whether you are grade 3 or grade 4, doesn’t matter, everybody learns the chinese figures and everything so, it is a step by step, it worked out well. many of the learners we interviewed in the focus groups indicated that their parents wanted them to learn mandarin, for example parents said: my neighbour [advised] me to [place] my son [in the] chinese school because china is a member of brics and is rapidly becoming one of the world’s first countries”. the chinese teacher also attested to the parents’ eagerness that their children should learn mandarin: “no parents (none of the parents) have a problem with mandarin classes” the interviews with the principal and the teacher facilitator made it clear that the teachers, learners and parents had been enthusiastic about the teaching of mandarin since the introduction of the project by the department of education and that they recognised the advantages of learning mandarin. the principal explained: “[mandarin] is their fourth language and they love it. i think because it is a challenge … and because our attitude is we are like visionaries … we think ahead, we plan ahead”. the following drivers of learning for primary school learners (grades 4–7) were identified during the interviews: intrinsic motivation, their parents’ enthusiasm and approval, opportunities to travel to china and job opportunities, the ability to communicate with chinese people and the head start that knowledge of mandarin would give. the principal confirmed these findings: “[l]ike i said earlier, it comes from the inside motivation as well, not only leaving it to the children or parents and worked for the child, when the child understands why he is doing this”. 49 nel teaching and learning of mandarin as a foreign language in south african schools theme 2: teaching mandarin during two mandarin lessons, the researchers observed that the learners participated enthusiastically in dialogues, role-plays and activities that required them to write in pinyin on the blackboard. learners were given opportunities to express themselves without interruption and to engage in short conversations in mandarin. the learners were also able to respond in unison to greetings and express everyday courtesies. there was good interaction between the teacher and the learners. the teacher asked many questions and explained grammar rules where the need arose and the learners had already discovered grammar rules for themselves, as they were able to use the language correctly both orally and in writing. she used chorus responses from learners, individual questions for individual learners and the pairing of learners to practise conversations and to demonstrate language usage in front of the class. the learners enjoyed the activities and were alert at all times. the teacher had a friendly yet firm disposition and often praised the learners. she corrected learners in a diplomatic way and she seemed to know most of the learners’ strengths and weaknesses because she sometimes allowed learners to assist and correct their peers. the teacher had a sound knowledge, understanding and use of the mandarin language. she was also able to speak, read and write english and although limited, the learners understood what she was saying. the interaction between the teacher and learners was very good, as most learners were able to respond to the teacher’s questions and some even volunteered to write chinese characters on the board during an activity. learners had workbooks, which showed that plenty of progress had been made, especially with the writing and drawing of chinese characters. figure 1: example of a learner’s written work in pinyin and corresponding chinese characters the classroom environment was relaxed, the teacher was friendly and patient and the classroom was spacious and equipped with technology. 9. the chinese teacher zhang and li (2010: 94) explain that teachers are a decisive and guiding factor in the teaching and learning of mandarin as a foreign language. the limited availability of qualified and 50 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) experienced teachers was a constraining factor in the teaching of mandarin in the school in this study. rhodes (2014: 118) explains that highly qualified language teachers are a priority in foreign language teaching because good instruction leads to higher success rates. rhodes emphasises clear programme goals and states that a well-articulated programme is of the utmost importance. halliday (2014: 1) found that the best teachers to teach chinese are those who speak the same language as the learners, in this case english. the chinese teacher’s home language (in this study) is chinese. she completed a two­year certificate training course to qualify as a chinese foreign language teacher in wisconsin, usa, where she lived for three years. ja, during i stay in the america, united states i teaching the young kids. i also have a teaching, i am for the middle school teacher experience teaching mathematics for ten years [in china]. ja, workshops also in teaching in some school. in a local school and i also been teaching chinese as a second language in university, in china. yes, i have take the tests for mandarin. the teacher came to south africa at the beginning of 2015 on a two-year contract and says: “first i enjoy the teaching mandarin for the kids, i love it and also is i was chose by the chinese government to teaching mandarin for south africa public school”. the focus groups had the following to say about the chinese teacher: fg2-p4: although she can’t speak english properly, we kind of understand what she is saying. she is always to the point and makes you understand. fg3-p3: well, our teacher, xxx, she teaches us in a very exciting and fun way, you actually want to learn more mandarin. so that is why for me mandarin is fun to learn. fg3-p4: i like watching the videos and songs that she teaches us. fg1-p1: what i enjoy the most is that the teacher is kind. when the chinese teacher was asked how she went about preparing her lessons, she responded as follows: everybody can learn, i think anybody can learn. if they are interested. ah, yes, so that is why before why i make the lesson plan, i also think how can i do for the students easy to memorise, easy for learning the mandarin. good memory is important. because mandarin is a language and also the write the character is hard for them. yes, it is very difficult for memorise a lot, and also for pronunciation is the tone, the tone is hard for the students. ja, we also have other teachers. sometimes we discuss with her lesson plan. plan before the class. every day. or may last week. i also think about to teach. for the week. we have a theme, to talk about their family… taught about relation about your house. to do like some activity, more funny, motivate the students for more interesting. if they hear they memorise. ja, if they pay attention for a classroom, if they do the homework, more practise attending the class activities, they will be better. 10. chinese lessons in the words of the teacher facilitator: 51 nel teaching and learning of mandarin as a foreign language in south african schools she had everything on the laptop, but she always printed it out and then the children just had the powerpoint handouts [and] notes … once she started working with that, it was really great. she uses a lot of tools to help her. i think she is a very creative person. she presents the english, the phonetic, the words as well as the symbol, all at once. last week we learned about family and all of that. for me it was easier to learn the characters at that stage because i could make links to what the character means by looking at the character. so i think, ja, the way she is doing it at the moment it works for our children. when the chinese teacher was asked how she went about teaching mandarin she responded as follows: i first pay attention, it is the listen and then speak. and then they write. the first they listen, i also teach them for if they can’t understand language the meaning and then speak. there is some basically their textbook, listen, read and the write all together. i do this during the whole class i do like, but if i no more time, may be the write for next class. first the listen and speak. if they not school in the primary school, if they can write, i will teach them how to teach. the most important i think is listening and speak. halliday (2014: 5) emphasises that teachers who teach chinese should be well versed in the phonemic script of the language; they should read and write pinyin accurately and fluently. zhou and li (2015: 18, 25–26) suggest that cfl teachers need to design activities to cater for different learning styles. the learners in this study indicated their preferences regarding certain aspects of the mandarin lessons, which was an indication of how their various learning styles influenced their preferences: fg2-p5: i love learning new words and learning how to write the different characters. the learners agreed that the lessons were fun as they played games, learned new words, were taught how to write characters for example, fg3-p3 said: “i like the different obstacles in learning how to write the chinese characters and how to pronounce the words and the tone the different pinyin and the characters…” they also learnt about the chinese culture and about homework, fg3-p no 3: said: “… i was researching about china, i actually like the culture and learned a lot of things while writing it and it was just a great experience. i felt like i was in china myself”. figure 2: examples of learner’s work on the culture of china rhodes (2014: 127) states that a significant impact is made on proficiency by instructional methodologies such as content-based and thematic instruction, using the target language when teaching, having set benchmarks and assessing learners’ proficiency. in this study, however, the tf explained: “i have my doubts that we will still … have a formal assessment [this year], but i do see that she really takes her list and she asks the children different things and she does make notes”. 52 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) the principal was convinced that the project (the mandarin lessons) was a great success: i think it is successful. i sat there twice, they were already writing little figures and they were singing the songs. the day i went there, they were reading, singing, talking, everything … from april to now it is unbelievable. it is either the technology or the lecturer, or we are working with the guys with the right minds. the chinese teacher added: hopefully they can speak some basic chinese language and they make the greeting and conversation? yes, i want them to write characters and the pinyin also. today i made time for teaching the pinyin. they learn to speak the standard mandarin, the pronunciation be good. figure 3: learner example of writing in pinyin it was evident that leaners enjoyed their mandarin classes, although some learners felt that they needed more and longer classes. theme 3: learners’ learning experiences learners’ enjoyment of mandarin lessons was regarded as very important. the following responses from fg1­p3 were significant and encompassed all the responses recorded during the focus group interviews, in parents’ questionnaires, during interviews with the principal, the teacher facilitator and during our own observations: fg1-p 3: i honestly love mandarin, there is nothing i don’t like about the lessons. mceown, noels and saumure (2014: 227) explain that teachers should know the reasons why learners want to learn a language (e.g. mandarin) and address these reasons in their lessons. by doing so, teachers can foster learners’ “motivation by supporting their sense of competence, relatedness and cultural understanding”. the learners in this study expressed their experiences of the mandarin classes in terms of the teacher’s pedagogy and what they have learned so far (from april 2015 to august 2015). the learners’ impression of the teacher was very positive. they experienced her as being kind, caring, supportive, patient and willing to help them and she allowed for mistakes. responses to this effect were: fg1-p1 said: she prepares something on her laptop just to show us and to give examples of what we are going to do and we are going to learn, so that helps a lot. 53 nel teaching and learning of mandarin as a foreign language in south african schools fg3 -p 5 said: we are taught mandarin. she usually shows us, like on the board. first she would show us a video from the tv on how the basics are and then she will rephrase it … and if … you want [her to repeat something] … she may write it down then and we take notes on that and then she teaches us how pronounce the words and the tone. the learners had different opinions about learning the language itself: fg1-p4: i wouldn’t say i don’t like it, but … it is a bit of a challenge to write the chinese characters… because there is a specific stroke order that you make to follow so if you forget that…! fg2-p3: it was relaxing, it was like talking to a friend. fg2-p5: i have already spoken about groups. it was nice discussing this in groups, because i also learn something new from other people. it was great because we shared our feelings in my group. fg3p2: i think i am good at mandarin because we write down nouns and we get to learn while we are at home and they give us websites to go through to watch some videos while we are at home and learn like the number counting and the other things. fg3-p6: yes. she even provides extra information, not only just telling us about, she makes us to play, she gives us voice notes and videos and she uses it as well as tv. parents were also very supportive of their children learning mandarin: fg2-p5: “yes, because my mother already downloaded apps on her phone – four apps actually, two on her phone and two on her tablet, so i sometimes learn it when she is here”. the parents felt that they would like their children to speak, read and write the language fluently because it would open up opportunities for them. the tf had the following to say: they love learning mandarin and the reason why i say so, is because you can see how committed they are and they are very excited and i can see that they put in extra effort and they do extra. i think what they like is that they can speak to each other and other children don’t understand them. they love flaunting the language ... so they do like it and i can see them working with her all the time. you know, sometimes i think maybe i should quiet them down, but then i see, they are just talking about the language and they are talking to her. this is in keeping with chomsky, the interactionist and vygotsky’s socio-cultural theories, that the learning environment should be appropriate and conducive for the learner to learn the language and where social dialogue takes place spontaneously. 11. case study narrative and conclusion this research explored the teaching and learning of mandarin as a foreign language in a school in pretoria, gauteng, south africa. the research questions were adequately answered as learners’ motivations were captured, how mandarin was taught within the learning environment was recorded, how learners’ learning experiences of mandarin were reported and what implications the findings have for the future. furthermore, chomsky, the interactionist and vygotsky’s theories underpinned the study as it brought into fruition their unified beliefs that the child has an innate propensity towards learning a language within a 54 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) conducive learning environment, which includes chinese cultural activities such as folksongs, videos and visuals of the country and stimulating interactive social dialogue. the positive experiences and achievements of the learners serve as evidence of the learners’ motivation, the schools’ enthusiasm, organisational skills, support and involvement, the parents’ support and the chinese teacher’s excellent pedagogy and efforts. in addition, the learners’ expectations were exceeded as they expressed their excitement about the opportunity to learn mandarin and to realise the benefits it afforded, including job opportunities and the ability to communicate with chinese people locally and in china. learners felt that learning mandarin was challenging and required hard work and concentration. they also realised that their study of mandarin helped them with their studies in general and one learner said he felt like a “hero”. from the interviews and interaction with the principal and tf the researchers were able to identify factors that contributed to the success of mandarin teaching and learning in the participating school. the principal described the school as “visionary”; the management team planned ahead and realised the benefits of offering mandarin to their learners in this era of globalisation. the mandarin project was regarded as a long-term investment. rhodes (2014: 129) explains that in a global society, children need to become proficient in a language other than english, as well as the cultural knowledge and skills embodied by the language. this would enable them to function in a “multilingual, multicultural world”. moeller and catalano (2015: 327) refer to current developments in foreign language teaching and learning, which lean towards “public pedagogy, social media, and action research as additional ways to foster intercultural competence and language learning”. in an effort to ensure continued learning of mandarin, the school has collaborated with the high school closest to it, which also offers mandarin, to ensure that learners can continue their study of the language. the principal, teachers, learners, parents and governing body were immediately enthusiastic when the district office of the gauteng education department approached the school to offer mandarin. the tf volunteered to facilitate and coordinate the mandarin classes, as she was also eager to learn mandarin. the chinese culture and international education exchange centre (ccieec) became involved, provided and paid for the chinese teacher. the centre also provided workbooks for the learners. there were no expenses involved for the school or the learners. parents were also eager to learn mandarin and the ccieec might consider offering classes on saturdays. other stakeholders such as a nearby hotel offered free accommodation for the chinese teachers and breakfast vouchers to award learners who make progress. the cooperation of the parents, board members and community members and their understanding of the benefits of fl learning, were crucial for the project. the district foreign language supervisor played an important role by advocating for the programme in the district and the community at large and by collaborating with other stakeholders. according to the principal, factors that contributed to the success of mandarin classes included the way the project was presented to the school community (its purpose), a suitable venue, the way the chinese teacher conducted the lessons, the why, the how and the what that matters to learners. other factors include support and praise from the principal, the availability of progress reports to teachers and other stakeholders, buy-in and ownership by the school and partnering schools. academics from universities all over the world have also visited the school because they are interested in the way mandarin is taught there. 55 nel teaching and learning of mandarin as a foreign language in south african schools the chinese teacher’s background, subject knowledge, training, experience and pedagogy played an important role in the learners’ acquisition of mandarin. the learners particularly appreciated the teacher’s personal attributes, such as her friendliness, patience, support, her willingness to repeat things and to make the classes fun. she was able to use the school’s facilities (technology, tablets, laptops, big screen tvs and e-learning processes), which were already in place. wong et al., (2011: 232) postulate that collaboratively 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doctoral students of education in a public sector university of pakistan nelofer halai aga khan university this paper presents a part of the findings from a larger study undertaken to explore the experience of graduate students in education in pakistan. analysis of a smaller slice of data collected from students who were enrolled in the phd and mphil programmes of the department of education in a large public sector university in northern pakistan was undertaken. the purpose was to develop understanding of their experience of the programme, with a specific focus on induction and coursework. the findings illustrate that students perceive and experience the phd as a professional degree rather than a research degree. it also appears that the doctoral programme and policies are both in evolution and will require time and effort to mature. sustained and continuous effort is required to develop among the students the identity of a doctoral student as someone who “creates” new knowledge. keywords: doctoral education; graduate studies; higher education; pakistan . introduction in the past ten years there has been a great upsurge of interest in undertaking doctoral education in pakistan. concurrently, enormous effort has been made to reform higher education in the country. this forms part of worldwide initiatives to develop and reform doctoral education whether in countries with a long history of higher education such as germany or shorter traditions such as malaysia (nerad, 2010). the world bank report higher education in developing countries: peril and promise published in 2000 clearly spelled out the importance of tertiary education for developing countries and stated that society’s ability to use knowledge is critical for economic development (tfhes, 2000). pakistan has a relatively young system of higher education and an economy that needs development. hence, the government is making every effort to embrace the concept of knowledge economy in order to pursue national goals of prosperity similar to the initiative launched by malaysia in 2007 to enhance the production of its phd holders (mybrain15nhep, 2007-2010). in a number of significant ways this situation matches with conditions in south africa where university education for the previously marginalised black population is being encouraged. this research project is a part of the effort to enhance and improve doctoral education in pakistan with the aim to obtain better understanding of the experience of graduate studies from the perspective of students in education in two large public sector university departments of education. for this paper, findings are presented from the analysis of mphil and phd data from one public university, which i shall call pakistan national university (pnu), in northern pakistan. the research question that has guided this inquiry is: what are the experiences of doctoral students of education enrolled in a public sector university of pakistan? the focus was on induction, coursework and, wherever possible, supervision. though the focus of the study was on graduate studies in education, the issues raised are of concern to all doctoral programmes in pakistan and other developing countries. golde and dore (2001:5) in their ground-breaking study on doctoral and master’s programmes (leading to a phd) in the usa found that “the training doctoral students receive is not what they want, nor does it prepare them for the jobs they take and many student do not clearly understand what doctoral study entails, how the process works and how to navigate it effectively”. this is a remarkable finding, given that graduate education in the usa is considered to be the best in the world. thousands of students from countries such as pakistan, india and china, and to a lesser extent from south africa, go to the usa 65halai — evolution of doctoral education in pakistan for their graduate studies. there is a need to understand students’ experience of their doctoral studies in the pakistani context as well, particularly at this stage in which the higher education commission (hec) has encouraged the emulation of the american model of doctoral education with at least one year of coursework (hec, 2006). since its inception in 2002, the hec has spent large sums to reinvigorate doctoral programmes in public sector universities across pakistan, yet little is known about students’ experience of these programmes. the present study hopes to fill a small part of this gap. knowledge of students’ experiences will provide understanding of the opportunities and obstacles they are facing in their doctoral studies. this will not only benefit pakistan, but also countries such as sri lanka and nepal, which are hoping to develop their own models of higher education, as well as countries such as south africa where a large section of the previously marginalised black population is first-generation university entrants. background and context in pakistan efforts to establish viable and rigorous doctoral programmes in universities are a recent development. a country task force supported by the world bank was established in 2001 to review higher education in order to transform it. this task force recommended the formation of a higher education commission, which was then established as an autonomous body to replace the university grants commission (ugc) (hec, 2002). while the ugc was an advisory body with a facilitative role, the hec is a decision-making body with the responsible for overseeing the education imparted in universities in pakistan. its budget has increased by 344% over the next three years – a record for any institution in pakistan – though it is still only half of 1% of the gdp and has come after decades of underfunding (world bank, 2006). to ensure reform in higher education, a mid-term development framework (mtdf) (20052010) was developed (hec, 2005) with a focus on three main areas of higher education: (a) access; (b) quality; and (c) relevance to national needs. hence, for the first time in over fifty years the government provided all four essential components required for reform in higher education which were previously missing, i.e. the political will, a reforming framework, the financial resources and the implementation capacity (world bank, 2006). due to the negligence of this sector over decades, the hec was faced with multiple problems (khan, 1997), however, the commission prioritised its tasks by first tackling quality issues (shah, 2010). not a single university in the country ranked in the top 500 universities of the world. according to the mtdf (hec, 2005:iv), each public sector university required 300-400 phd qualified faculty, meaning that the public sector alone required 25 000 phd trained faculty members, not to mention the needs of the fastburgeoning private sector universities. therefore, in 2005, pakistan took the first steps to develop its higher education and encourage the production of doctoral-prepared human resources as a key component of its policy. one significant feature of this change was the difference in the conception of the doctorate. the phd was no longer seen as the highest academic degree essential only for a university career, but as a degree that encouraged the generation of new knowledge and seen as the engine for growth in the new knowledge economy of the world. the hec (2005:iii) aims at “creating the necessary foundation in which excellence can flourish and pakistan can embark on the road to develop a knowledge economy”. during independence from britain in 1947, pakistan inherited only one university within the geographical boundary of what was then known as west pakistan. successive governments invested heavily in establishing public universities and within the first 30 years 21 public universities were set up. almost all of these universities offered small doctoral programmes, which typically followed the british apprentice model where a senior academic mentored a student through the process of conducting a research study under his/her supervision. however, doctoral education with its focus on original and substantive research was never able to take strong root in the university due to insufficient funds and resources. but, more importantly, a national policy that would develop a need for doctoral-prepared human resources either in industry or academia was never developed (aleem, 2004). the ugc had not been able to persuade university management to make phd a minimum qualification for a university teaching position (jehangir, 2008) and only about 25% of the faculty members in universities had doctoral qualification (hec, 2005). 66 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 furthermore, there is little demand for research degrees in industry as it was not and still is not based on local research and development and depends on “assembling” materials imported from outside pakistan. that is why the production of doctoral-prepared human resources was extremely anaemic – in the first 50 years of independence pakistan produced not more than 50 doctoral graduates per year as compared to neighbouring india which produced 14 000 phds per annum (jain, 2009). in a policy note the world bank (2006: iii) characterised pakistan’s higher education sector as an unfortunate combination of both small in size and low in performance . with strong support from the government the hec developed ways to increase the number of doctoralprepared human resources through local and foreign scholarships and put into place quality assurance measures to streamline the quality of teaching and supervision in the doctoral programmes already in place. a model of doctoral education, which is a composite of both the american and the british model, has been espoused by the hec. doctoral students can no longer enrol directly into the phd programme but have to first be admitted into an mphil programme where the admission is contingent upon completion of 16 years of schooling. since most bachelor’s and master’s programmes in pakistan are each two-year programmes, most of the applicants need a master’s degree to enter the mphil programme. a minimum score of 50% on the general assessment test (gat) conducted by the national testing service is also mandatory for admission (hec, 2006). students require a grade point average (cgpa) of 3.0 or more and pass the gre subject test (international) for transition to the phd programme. after this transition the students have to take additional 18 credit hours of coursework followed by a comprehensive examination. only then can the students initiate work on the dissertation study under the guidance of their supervisors. on completion the phd dissertation must be evaluated by at least two phd-qualified experts from “technologically/academically advanced foreign countries in addition to local committee members” (hec, 2006). on positive evaluation of the thesis an oral defence is mandatory. in addition, the award of the phd degree is contingent on acceptance/publication of at least one research paper in an hec-approved journal. the focus of this article is the pnu, which is a large urban university in northern pakistan established soon after independence. it has six academic faculties and over 40 departments, and enrols more than 14 000 students who are taught by 600 faculty members. at the time of the study slightly more than a quarter, i.e. 170 of the faculty members had doctoral qualifications, 215 had the mphil degree and the rest had master’s qualification. during the same time 162 and 416 students were enrolled in phd and mphil programmes respectively. the pnu department of education (pnu-doe) had 17 faculty members to teach in their undergraduate (bed) and graduate programmes (med, mphil and phd). six (35%) had phd qualifications, 3 had mphil and 8 faculty members had an med/ma degree. the phd programme in education was started at pnu-doe in 1984 with the main purpose, at least initially, to develop its own faculty. six faculty members at that time were enrolled in the programme. however, pnu-doe faced severe difficulties in conducting the doctoral programme as it did not have trained faculty to supervise and conduct coursework for those enrolled in the programme; hence, students took a very long time to graduate. however, in 2007 the mphil and phd programmes were revived with support from the hec and now admit over two dozen mphil students. at the time of the study two students had made the transition to the phd programme; the expectation is that their ranks will swell as more students complete their mphil and register in the doctoral programme. literature review there is a paucity of research in the social sciences in pakistan and research on doctoral education has only very recently gained attention of academics. this is because doctoral education, both in the public and private sector, has received an impetus through the efforts of the hec since 2002 only (isani & virk, 2003). clark (2005:5) reports that the number of students studying for their phd in education has noticeably increased from only a handful five years ago to more than 200 enrolled for their phd in only one university. this has resulted in a growth of interest in this area, although research is still lagging behind. 67halai — evolution of doctoral education in pakistan this section of the article restricts itself to a literature review of students’ views of induction and coursework in the doctoral programme and has not tapped into the substantially larger body of work on students’ experience of supervision. the timing of this study was such that only two students had made the transition to the phd programme from their mphil studies and only one had been allocated a supervisor. hence, students’ experiences of induction and coursework remained in the foreground and issues related to and arising from supervision were relegated to the background, which is reflected in the literature review. halai (2008), studying the experiences of the first cohort of doctoral students enrolled in the phd programme in education in a private university in pakistan, found that students expressed a keen desire to have a community of students who could act as role models in order to shape their own identities as scholars. being the first cohort of students to be admitted to the new programme, they were frustrated at the absence of students before them in the programme to act as guides and a source of information through the grapevine (gardner, 2007). in addition, these students found faculty efforts to develop them as independent scholars somewhat daunting. reflecting on the role played by the above-mentioned doctoral programme in the development researchers in education, halai (2011:513) found that students expressed a need in at least some courses for lectures rather than interactive classroom discussions. furthermore, students requested very detailed guidelines for assignments and saw attempts by faculty to let them interpret at least a part of the assignment themselves as confusing. this was at least partially due to the previous experience of students in learning which was mediated and imparted either through tradition or authority. upvall, karmaliani, pirani, gul and khalid (2004:5) substantiate these claims as they strove to develop nursing leaders in pakistan through the master’s in nursing programme in the same university. these authors write that they faced major challenges in the management of student learning, “students were not always ready for rigorous course work and scholarly writing … requirements to read current journal articles, reflect, and write thoughtful analyses contrasted with students’ prior experience with lectures and memorization.” the students’ views illustrate a tension between their desire for support and the faculty’s desire to make them more independent as scholars, and have been reiterated in a number of studies (see gardner, 2008a; mountford, 2005; wilson, 2006). pakistan is a very patriarchal society where gender influences all life experiences. therefore, it is not surprising that khan (2008), on studying the views of 600 students, 180 faculty members and 60 administrators on the quality of higher education in 54 private universities of pakistan, found them to be a gendered experience where the male respondents across the board were generally more satisfied with the quality of the teaching and learning as compared to females. khan (2008:23) conjectured that this could be a result of the fact that “male students feel themselves to be more adjusted to the system due to the nature of pakistani society that tends to be male dominated”. that females have a less positive experience of doctoral studies is a common finding even in societies that are more egalitarian (harman, 2000; kurtzcostes, helmke & ulku-steiner, 2006; mansfield, welton, lee & young, 2010; place & wood, 1999). not many studies have been undertaken outside pakistan on this issue, however, they are sufficiently rich to generate a fairly good understanding of student experience of the doctoral journey which includes induction and coursework. appel and dahlgren (2003) provide a picture of how doctoral students experience their working environment. as part of the study the six students who were interviewed were largely dissatisfied with their induction experience and stated that it was left up to them to obtain required information and that their departments had not taken on this responsibility. other doctoral students played a key role in introducing them to their departments. similar findings are seen in other studies (gardner, 2008a; johnson, lee & green, 2000; morton & thornley, 2000; pilbeam & denver, 2009). appel and dahlgren (2003:108) identify three kinds of insecurity that doctoral students face: financial insecurity, insecurity about their own capacity to undertake doctoral studies and insecurity about unwritten rules in the form of norms and values of academia, in general, and their department, in particular, according to which the doctoral students learn to conduct themselves. sometimes they felt that “there were unexpressed conflicts and unwritten rules with which they were unacquainted, and which had originated from old conflicts that were still present”. therefore, the students put a great deal of stress on the socialisation into the department in which they were based (gardner, 2007, 2008b; jazvac-martek, 2009). 68 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 morton and thornley (2000) share the experiences of doctoral students in mathematics in new zealand in which students indicated satisfaction with their doctoral experience, but also reiterated that this could be improved by simple measures such as providing comprehensive information on departmental procedures and the research process, and enhancing networking between students. paulson, hopwood, mcalpine and mills (2010) have also tried to categorise students’ experiences but in a different way. these categories include emotional (stress, isolation, feelings of inadequacy), situational (personal, family and professional challenges) and structural/cultural (norms, tacit rules, lifestyles) experiences. they recommend that better support be offered to doctoral students through pastoral care within the department and with financial planning. the authors suggest that, as a last resort, a non-stigmatised leave option should be made available to students. thus, the literature from pakistan and from abroad both identify some of the obstacles and some of the ways in which students are supported as they enter the programme and undertake their coursework. method this study is part of a larger study that attempted to capture the experience of graduate students (med/ ma, mphil and phd) in education in two large public sector universities in pakistan. two modes of data collection were utilised: a graduate studies survey questionnaire (gssq) was administered to all graduate students who volunteered, and in-depth interviews of a smaller sub-set of those who had participated in the survey. however, this paper has analysed a smaller slice of data that deal with mphil and phd students of education enrolled in pnu. this was done to highlight some of the issues specific to pnu where the doctoral programme had almost come to a halt until it was revived in 2007 with support from the hec. the survey questionnaire has three sections: (i) general information; (ii) experiences as a graduate student; and (iii) description of graduate programme/policies. from among the participants of the survey, two students each from the phd and mphil programmes were selected for in-depth interviews in order to explore their experiences of graduate studies. this paper is based on analysis of data from the survey of phd (100%, n=2) and mphil (54%, n=13) students and in-depth interviews of two students each from the mphil and phd programmes enrolled in pnu-doe in 2009. in the mphil programme seven (54%) out of the 13 students were females but no female students were enrolled at the phd level. the four students interviewed constitute slightly more than a quarter of the students who completed the survey and included three males and one female (see halai & ali, in press). a semi-structured interview guide was used to conduct a 45-60 minute interview with the students on their induction into the programme, their coursework and process of selection of supervisors. the students for the interview were selected from those who had indicated that they would be willing to be interviewed and had provided contact details for that purpose. an effort was made to include both males and females and students at different stages of completion of their degrees. the study had hoped to capture the issues arising during supervision and the completion of the programme, but none of the students in the doctoral programme were at that stage. the interview was conducted in english and was audio-recorded and transcribed. open coding was used for analysis of interview data, which involved reading through the data several times, making notes in the margin with regard to various emerging themes, coding transcripts, and clustering emerging themes into categories for thematic analysis (corbin & strauss, 2008). through this rigorous process broad themes have emerged as presented in the findings section. the culture of research is at an embryonic stage in pakistan and the author with her team of researchers ensured that all ethical guidelines were followed stringently during access and entry negotiations. realising that access is an ongoing process, permission were sought and obtained throughout the data collection process and the fieldwork. building professional rapport and relationship with the research participants and the university department was seen as an important aspect of this study. the findings of the study have not only been shared with the relevant department heads but have also been shared more widely with the university community. 69halai — evolution of doctoral education in pakistan findings from the analysis of student interviews and questionnaires issues emerged that related to both the implementation of hec reform policies and the students’ own experience of doctoral education. key findings are shared below. phd as professional degree for developing university teachers/administrators the students who were enrolled in mphil and phd programmes considered professional development rather than developing their skills as researchers to be their main aim for undertaking doctoral studies. the conception of doctoral studies for the professional development of future university teachers is reinforced by the opportunities available to students while enrolled in the programme. almost all of the mphil and phd students have had the opportunities to teach some classes at the med or bed level. the students are also provided opportunities of academic service by representing the student body in important university committees, but there were few, if any, opportunities for students to engage in research projects with their professors. for more than five decades pakistani universities have been seen to have teaching as their foremost responsibility and, despite a national change in agenda implemented through the hec, this reconceptualisation will take time to take root in programmes at public universities. at pnu the design of the graduate programmes privileges experiences that help students in their profession of teaching rather than in researching teaching. at least two of the students were offered part-time teaching positions in small private universities in the city because pnu doctoral students are seen to have a great deal of experience of teaching at the master’s level obtained in the programme. they also spoke candidly of opportunities for promotion after completing their doctoral studies as most administration and management positions require the phd degree. on the other hand, the students had very little exposure to research or researchrelated activities, with the exception of their own small-scale research studies at the mphil level, and their conversations reflected this gap. evolving nature of quality assurance policies the students were enrolled in the mphil/phd programmes either in march 2008 or february 2009. the policies regarding the quality assurance measures were first shared with universities in 2006 (hec, 2006) and at least some of the policies are undergoing a continuous process of change. for instance, there was a fair degree of confusion regarding the gre test. the students were unsure as to whether their transfer from mphil to phd programme required taking the gre before the end of the mphil programme or anytime during the phd programme. it then transpired that the hec had reassessed its policy and now required that candidates pass the test any time before completion of the phd. these policies were often implemented retrospectively, as unaeza (a pseudonym) said in her interview: gre was not the criteria at that time [time of admission], but now they have made it compulsory. we can’t get the degree without having gre score (interview february 2009). events happening in other universities conspired to enhance this confusion. hoodbhoy (2009:9) writes about the quaid-e-azam university, islamabad, where he teaches: the [academic] council voted 25–12 that the phd candidates did not have to conform to international standards. it decided to overturn its earlier acceptance of the higher education commission’s requirement that the international gre subject tests must be passed by a candidate prior to the award of a phd degree. the decision of quaid-e-azam university to “eliminate” international testing reverberated throughout other universities in pakistan. it created, at least in the minds of pnu students, a perception that a similar stand might be taken by the faculty of their university. they were often very confused about evolving policies emanating from the hec as even the faculty members were not very sure about them. as mentioned 70 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 above, the greatest challenge was the understanding of policies: the hec, in considering feedback from faculty and students, retracted its original policies, modified them and posted them on the internet with the assumption that everyone would see and accept them as the “new” policy. to be fair, hec made every attempt to communicate changes through proper channels as well; nonetheless, a lack of clarity prevailed about some policies. evolving understanding of academic requirements plagiarism has never been a simple phenomenon and is shaped by the variegated understanding of what it means to “cheat” (biggs, 1994). particularly in the case of non-native english writers and their practice of academic writing (hayes & introna, 2005), such as the students of pnu who have english as their third or fourth language, the issue of plagiarism is difficult. however, the hec had made a monumental effort to reduce the burden of plagiarism which has sapped the rigour and vigour of graduate programmes in pakistani universities. in this case the free media has also played a strong role in highlighting issues related to intellectual property rights and plagiarism (qadir, 2007). this has affected both faculty members and students and has raised awareness of the students. aslam said: i have read some of the books written by faculty members at pnu-doe and i did not find them good as compared to the books which are written by the outside authors. the caliber of our teachers and professors should be the same as the professors outside. while reading the book, at some places, i have also seen full articles and large sections of text that authors have integrated in the book by their own name. we know that there is proper criteria and requirement for authorship (interview february 2009). this statement coming from a student of a public university underscores the change in the academic climate that has come about in the last five years. the students are also well aware of the differing programmatic expectations at the master’s level and mphil/phd level. all of them agree that doctoral studies require a level of independent learning that may not be possible or required for a master’s degree. when asked to advise future students in the department, unaeza replied: do not wait for others [students] and do not wait for your teachers, whether they are highly qualified or phd, but it is you who will work and not your teachers. so i would suggest to others to take admission in the mphil or phd only if they have this thing in mind that they have to work and they don’t have to wait for their teachers (interview february 2009). another phd student echoed similar thoughts in the interview: [in the phd program] the teacher is just a facilitator, a guide and it is up to the student how much and how tactfully the student extracts the knowledge or gets access to his teacher’s knowledge. so this is very difficult to get the knowledge from your teacher, some teachers are very generous and it is sad to say that some teachers are misers, so we have faced both kinds of teachers (interview february, 2009). however, as the above conversation illustrates the students’ conception of independent learning revolved around their teachers and how much they could gain from them. they did not see their own role in knowledge creation. furthermore, the students’ understanding of issues such as plagiarism and becoming independent learners increased, but that is not sufficient. concomitantly, the faculty members’ ability to understand plagiarism and role-model how to become independent scholars are vital for the development of a rigorous programme. 71halai — evolution of doctoral education in pakistan availability of supervisors while the students were generally satisfied with the supervisory arrangements made for them, one phd student had a “bad experience” in the selection of a supervisor. according to the student, even institutional leaders and faculty members were not fully aware of all policies. the student’s story is summarised below: mahmud was awarded an hec scholarship for his doctoral studies at pnu-doe. that made it mandatory for him to be supervised by an hec approved supervisor. unfortunately, pnu-doe did not have a single hec approved supervisor. so he discussed the matter with the director who gave him permission to select an hec approved supervisor from any university in the district, which he did. however, when his supervision papers were submitted to the relevant authorities of pnu, they raised objections about the possibility of a faculty member from outside pnu supervising a doctoral student. he was advised to select any hec approved supervisor from the social sciences faculty of pnu. this delayed the process considerably (interview march 2009). mahmud has strongly recommended that the six faculty members in his department who meet hec criteria register as supervisors so that others may not face a similar difficulty. when rabia was asked about what she knew about the selection process for the thesis supervisor, she responded as follows: well, our courses are close to completion, but i have not yet selected the supervisor. this process has to be completed in the coming month. i don’t know about the policies and procedures for the selection of the supervisor but i do know that the faculty member must be phd qualified and should be an expert in my area of interest (interview may 2009). good supervision is a key to a productive doctoral experience and it appeared that the students were not fully aware of the processes to be followed in selecting a supervisor. more surprising, however, was that the faculty or management were often also not fully aware of the policies governing the selection of the supervisor. access or a lack of access to tools necessary for research though a large part of the student conversations were full of coursework-related issues, they did mention the presence or absence of support mechanisms for their research work. the students had access to computers and unlimited use of the internet in a computer laboratory. however, the laboratory remained open for only a limited period of time, usually from 9 am to 1 pm. this greatly limited the access that students had to these facilities, particularly for the mphil students, as they were usually in class during these times. the students also complained that they could not fully benefit from the ready access to computers/internet due to limited support in peripheral areas. for instance, the students had only sporadic access to printers, which depended on the discretion of the management. for some time during the programme they had no access to printers in the department. the students had to save all materials on their flash drives and go to printing facilities outside the campus to print materials. this was problematic for all students but particularly so for women who could not go outside the campus easily both due to a lack of access to transport and the general restrictive access to public space for women in that region of the country. the students also realised the great importance of a good library for doctoral studies. they all agreed that, despite the funds spent on providing them resources such as spacious classrooms with access to multimedia and overhead projectors, computers or internet access, but the most important aspect of graduate study – the library had not received the attention it deserved. in particular, access to current books and journals was extremely limited. the majority of books were outdated and subscription to relevant journals non-existent. though they had access to the hec national digital library with 45 000 e-books and 23 000 full-text journals through the main library of pnu, its access was difficult. they brought up the topic of the absence of literature a number of times and mentioned that they had great difficulty in writing the 72 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 literature review section of their research reports. it seemed as if the students were continuously hunting for resources, particularly print resources. discussion and implications a report in the prestigious science weekly journal nature has termed the changes taking place in the higher education sector in pakistan a “silent revolution” (osama, najam, kassim-lakha, gilani & king, 2009). however, in the years 2009-2010, due to continuing political and economic crises the government has reduced funds for the hec by at least 20%. hayward (2009) comments that funding cuts during the growth phase of hec projects can be potentially crippling to the transformative process of higher education in pakistan. the study has illustrated that the hec played a role in shaping pnu students’ experiences and that some of these experiences are unique to their context, while some overlap with the experiences of doctoral students all over the world. conception of research it takes time to change things as fundamental as conception of research and its relevance to societal progress, particularly in a conservative muslim society where knowledge is seen to accrue from authority. however, doctoral students continue to see knowledge as something “provided” by teachers to be “imbibed” by learners who will then repeat the cycle when it is their time to teach. this way of thinking defeats the whole purpose of research degrees, and this cycle has to be broken. doctoral students need to see themselves as knowledge creators for their own needs and context so as to solve national problems. but this can be achieved only when the faculty itself are well-versed in research, which is generally not the case in pakistan. this is a paradoxical situation and innovative methods need to be generated to overcome these initial impediments. one way would be to follow the path taken by the pnu; it has encouraged a partnership with another private university in pakistan that is prominent because of the high quality of its teaching programmes and the vigour of its research agenda. this inter-university partnership supported by external donors has yielded promising results and may encourage other such partnerships. this study itself is a result of this partnership. till now the hec has, to a large degree, propagated a technical model for capacity building in order to improve the technical competencies of researchers, especially with respect to research methodologies and the techniques of data collection and analysis associated with them. thousands of hours of workshops have been conducted under the aegis of the hec. while these are important and essential, they are more useful for building awareness and developing basic skills. however, the complexities of education research are such that some aspects can be understood best in the field; hence, the social practice model propagated by wenger, mcdermott and snyder (2002) is suited to the professional development needs of many faculty members in public universities. here, senior faculty members can gain experience of doing research with people with expert knowledge. this is where partnerships with more experienced local or foreign institutions might be very fruitful and productive. the findings of this study support this suggestion, because it was seen from the students’ interviews that they were more engaged with the logistical problems of research than with intellectual puzzles. it may be that, as novice researchers, the lack of logistics affected them much more than more seasoned researchers who would find alternate means to achieve their goals. working with experienced researchers in teams may provide them with the intellectual stimulus required for research at the doctoral level. changing goalposts it is clear from the outset that the doctoral programmes in pakistan are in the process of development and evolution. a reform agenda has been put into place by the hec in 2005 and the discussion of graduate studies by the doctoral students at pnu make evident an invisible demarcation line in time while discussing the policies and processes in their programmes – before the hec and after the hec. before the hec, there was no condition of gre examination, no requirement of 24 credits of coursework, no condition of an hec-approved supervisors, etc. some of the criteria that have been put into place make good sense 73halai — evolution of doctoral education in pakistan and have been met by the hundreds of pakistanis who have undertaken their doctoral studies from abroad. but from the students’ discussion it appears that there are two problems with these reformed policies. firstly, they are being implemented retrospectively even on those students who were admitted to their programmes before these policies were put into place. secondly, it seems that some policies, particularly on testing for admission and graduation, are too ambitious. it is not uncommon for a large number of universities outside pakistan to require students from this country to undertake a gre-type examination at the beginning of doctoral studies. however, the standard of education in the universities in pakistan have fallen to the level that few students can pass these examinations. hence, the hec has demonstrated flexibility in its approach to some of the quality assurance measures initially proposed. it seems that the hec has developed stringent policies to assure and enhance quality without taking into consideration the realities on the ground; hence, it has to continually back track and dilute some of these policies to accommodate the needs of the students. while these may seem to be pragmatic decisions, an alternate viewpoint is that the standard of higher education is so low that strong and rigid measures need to be in place before even a slight improvement in standards can be seen (hoodbhoy, 2009). the continual evolution of policies encourages a wait-and-see policy among the students who are not sure how committed the hec will be to the quality assurance policies in place. for instance, the pnu students appeared not to be committed to the gre because they realised that the hec might give in to pressure and give concessions on this policy. the pressure to perform is required but so are the support structures to enable the students and faculty to deliver what is required. hence, it might be better to maintain the bar at a reasonable standard but remain consistent and persistent in implementing this policy. imposing impossibly high standards from the top down is not going to enhance the standard of doctoral education. conclusion to bring about change in the conceptualisation of knowledge and the education that will provide it is a very difficult task in the best of circumstances. pakistan has had to face many and multi-faceted challenges in the past few years: recession, terrorism, insurgency and natural calamities such as the floods. during the time of the study, data collection at pnu campus almost came to a halt as the city and its citizens were providing support to the many thousands of internally displaced persons from swat and other regions of the pakistan where the army was fighting an armed insurgency. at a later date flood waters covered 20% of pakistan’s land mass and 1 out of every 5 persons were directly affected. in face of such dire need the first funds to be cut were for higher education, which were later released when all 71 vice-chancellors of public universities came together to denounce these massive cuts and threatened to resign (rizvi, 2010). the boom or bust cycle of funding for higher education is not beneficial for pakistan. even if funding for the hec and higher education cannot rise to the high levels that were attained between 2002 and 2007, much can be achieved with the funds available. the focus on faculty development, encouragement of research and publication will itself go a long way in improving the quality of experience of graduate students in the social sciences. an equal measure of pressure and support is needed in this regard. acknowledgement: the research in this paper was supported by the centre for international education, oslo university, norway and aga khan university, institute for educational development, karachi, pakistan. the author would also like to acknowledge the support of team members: mr arshad ali, ms naheed anwar and mr muhammad rauf. however, this write-up has been undertaken by the author alone and is fully responsible for any omissions or oversight. references aleem i 2004. problem and prospects of higher education in pakistan. unpublished doctoral 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wilson s 2006. finding a canon and core. journal of teacher education, 57(3):315-325. world bank 2006. higher education policy note, pakistan: an assessment of the medium-term development framework. the world bank, june 28, 2006. retrieved 15 january 2011 from http://siteresources. worldbank.org/pakistanextn/resources/ pakhighereducationpolicynote.pdf. 16 a socially inclusive teaching strategy for transforming the teaching of english first additional language abstract this paper explores ways of including indigenous knowledge systems in the teaching of english first additional language (efal). the aim is to use a socially inclusive teaching strategy in such a manner that the imbalances that past oppressive regimes brought into the teaching and learning of a second language, efal in this case, is challenged and possibly reversed. a desperate need for basic educational resources understandably warrants the promotion of a culture that is conducive to learning. lacking resources are not limited to teacher knowledge, as can be gleaned from schools situated in rural settings. undesirable cultures and conditions not conducive to learning prevail at the expense of hope and socially just educational practices. indigenous knowledge systems and community cultural wealth, embedded in rural settings, are often underplayed and ignored. however, if incorporated in the teaching and learning process, they can create a familiar learning environment. in this paper, a socially inclusive teaching strategy was found to be helpful in ensuring the sustenance of transformation of learning while simultaneously contributing to the transformation of teaching english first additional language. this transformative charter of the paper warrants the framing of critical emancipatory research (cer) while adapting participatory action research principles to engage those affected by the problem and to determine solutions captured through meetings, workshops, document analysis, focus groups discussions and observations. the conversations were audioand videotaped for the purpose of data analysis at the later stage. the reflections that permeate the analytic, interpretive and educative phases of cer, discourses that were subjected to van dijk’s socio-cognitive critical discourse analysis, were found to be very helpful. research findings confirm the two-way relationship between the availability of educational resources and learner attainment. keywords: basic educational resources, decolonisation, rural settings, socially inclusive teaching strategy, transformation 1. introduction worldwide, schools situated in poor and isolated areas tend to be under-supplied with relevant and useful educational resources. as a result, these schools experience tremendous pressure as they attempt to offer learners a quality education through the provision of quality teaching and learning. schools do this despite a lack of resources, which has been proven to influence the quality of teaching and ml malebese faculty of education, university of the free state, email: malebeseml@ufs.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i2.2 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(2): 16-29 © uv/ufs mailto:malebeseml@ufs.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.2 17 malebese a socially inclusive teaching strategy ... learning (equal education, 2010:3; giordano, 2008:6). the pressure arising from this problem results in the development of a culture characterised by key stakeholders blaming each other for the learners’ poor performance, and a focus by textbooks on content that is not relevant to the lives of rural learners, which, in turn, compromises the teaching and learning process (wassermann, 2017:19). if teachers focus on the lack of resources, their energy and efforts are diverted from their core responsibilities. this diversion leads to the loss of another critical resource, that of the teaching capabilities of the teachers themselves, including leadership, pastoral care, administration and pedagogical content knowledge (novak, 2010). this paper argues that teachers should apply their pedagogical content knowledge of home language (l1) and english first additional language (efal) (l2) to make up for the lack of the resources as doing so would make a real contribution in transforming the teaching and learning process. most of the resources a school needs, such as indigenous knowledge and equipment for games and cultural activities, are enhanced by the quality of teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge (kersten & rohde, 2013). if teachers apply their pedagogical content knowledge, they enable learners to access, deconstruct and reconstruct indigenous knowledge and cultural activities into useful academic knowledge and apply it accordingly. indigenous games have educational value and can be used in the classroom to encourage learners to use language instead of merely thinking about the difficult concepts they must learn (kersten & rohde, 2013; novak, 2010). these games encourage learners to cooperate and interact actively with peers and with their own learning. moreover, cultural activities encourage learners to be creative, spontaneous and interested in their work (mahlomaholo, 2013:2; phillipson, 2009) by requiring them to use things that matter to them and language in a meaningful way. as a result, teachers can use indigenous knowledge and games to teach and transform the learning of l1 and l2 effectively, which is, in this case, efal (dbe, 2014:20; kirby, griffiths & smith, 2014:108; scharer, 2012:2). the successful integration of indigenous knowledge into the teaching and learning of l1 and subsequently l2 is reliant on participatory and communicative action of participants from diverse backgrounds, which, in turn, depends on the active engagement of people whose community cultural wealth may be underplayed and ignored (barnhardt, 2005:9; battiste, 2005). this inclusion of community members in the processes of integrating indigenous knowledge and culture in the teaching and learning of l1 and l2 necessitates the adoption of a pertinent socially inclusive teaching strategy (sits). sits includes not only knowledge and skills acquisition, but also critical engagements that are crucial for moving beyond the traditional teaching space (mahlomaholo, 2013). the main purpose of this paper is to devise means to discourage role players from blaming others for failures while doing nothing about the problems, and instead devise mechanisms to integrate the subjugated indigenous knowledge that is available to teach l2 to transform language learning (wassermann, 2017). pursuant to the challenges set out in the introduction, the paper responds to the question: how best can indigenous knowledge systems be incorporated into the teaching and learning of english first additional language (l2) to (re)-construct concrete and meaningful learning content for the transformation of learning? this question prompts a demonstration of how efal (l2) learning environments in rural settings can be transformed by incorporating pertinent indigenous knowledge as part of efal content and/or teaching and learning processes. in this regard, the paper identifies subtle but impactful elements of colonialism that may still linger in efal learning environments, such as 18 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) textbooks that are western-oriented, with learning activities that do not cater for learners in rural settings. the paper discusses socially inclusive teaching approaches and/or strategies to ensure easy access to relevant sources to explore what learners know and/or with what they are familiar. this paper aims to facilitate mechanisms to incorporate such knowledge in the teaching and learning process. as such, a sits supports deep learning and is responsive to learners’ needs, which are ever changing and contextual (biesta, 2011:26; freire, 1985:8–11). 2. the lens the sits is couched in a critical emancipatory research (cer) approach, which is the lens through which the problem above is investigated. a sits is a type of teaching method that attends to learners’ learning requirements socially, considers their various backgrounds, learning styles and abilities and ensures that the stakeholders involved feel valued and emancipated (mahlomaholo, 2013:3). sits is an approach that inculcates richness of culture and knowledge to individual learners, thus enhancing equity, equality, social justice, freedom, hope and fairness in terms of learning opportunities for all, regardless of learners’ diversity (malebese, 2016). such a strategy aims to bring together learners’ indigenous knowledge and expertise into a classroom environment in order to enhance efal (l2) competency. this means that a sits shares the same ontological and epistemological stances as cer. with that in mind, a sits views reality or truth as contextual and ever changing (lee & smagorinsky, 2000:9). the crux of this paper is the interconnected relationships between the teachers, parents, learners, society and other stakeholders involved. they all have diverse expertise as agents, and they employ various teaching approaches. sits also considers knowledge development and creation as being a collective endeavour (hoppers, 2002:2), which gives rise to its inclusive nature. banks and banks (2009:1) and gay (2010:157) believe a socially inclusive pedagogy requires a practical intervention that harnesses people’s indigenous ways of knowing, that encourages hands-on participation and that is sensitive to diverse teaching and learning activities and procedures. these ideas provide an excellent foundation for teachers to determine the types of activities and consortiums required for quality teaching and learning (gale, mills & cross, 2017:347; smyth, 2012:9) and to achieve goals of social justice, equity, equality, freedom and fairness. a sits is sensitive to issues of power as they relate to an accommodation of diversity and respect for subjugated teaching and learning practices (akena, 2012:600). the participation of the stakeholders involved is influenced by their indigenous knowledge, and as such, the way stakeholders mediate ongoing activities in the teaching and learning process are facets of cer. cer comprises the interpretive, the analytical and the educative phases (tracey & morrow, 2012:112). through these phases, cer critiques, challenges and transforms the status quo by empowering the marginalised (nkoane, 2012:99). sits applies these principles in an integrated and inclusive manner to the teaching and learning situations. it focusses on teaching strategies and learning styles with an added aim of fostering the use of as many strategies and learning styles as possible to maximise the possibilities of successful and sustainable learning. during the interpretive phase, the sits involved teaching in small segments, incorporating and through much practise and repetition, reinforcing abstract concepts with concrete examples (watson & watson, 2011:64). the critical analytical phase of cer encourages critical examination of social issues, given that its focus is on the essence 19 malebese a socially inclusive teaching strategy ... of the problem (nkoane, 2012:99; watson & watson, 2011:64) as learners’ voices carry indigenous meanings and experiences. the aim of this phase is to help all the stakeholders involved, especially learners, to understand how to interact with their personal, effective investment in textual reception. the aim of sits is to bring together different skills, knowledge and expertise in a classroom environment to enhance learners’ subject competency. thus, we can conclude that the cer and sits approaches fit within the critical theory and are focused on empowering individuals and transforming the teaching and learning process, as well as practices that influence oppression and inequality (denzin & lincoln, 2011:37). lastly, in the educative phase, the researcher and the stakeholders involved took up a clear position about intervening in hegemonic practices, served as advocates to expose the material effects of marginalised locations and offered alternatives (boud, 2013:32; denzin & lincoln, 2011:ix-xvi). drawing on freire’s (1970:66) concept of education and literacy, i frame the creation of a sits context for marginalised learners. doing so involves raising their awareness of the power they possess if they work collectively as a team to overcome their learning barriers. avelar (2011:2) asserts that freire’s perception of humankind and oppression leads us to understand his method of raising consciousness. hence, the choice of the cer lens in support of sits serves to improve the effort to address equity, social justice, freedom, peace and hope (denzin & lincoln, 2011:37). cer principles encourage all participating members to promote creative and constructive actions that address the social realities discussed in or outside classrooms through a variety of transformative literacy practices and modalities (lee & smagorinsky, 2000:9–10). the most salient and consistent concept interwoven throughout this scholarly work is the idea of social inclusivity and a transformed learning community, which are necessary conditions for the equal treatment of all people in society. 3. the role of home language in the acquisition of additional language cook (2013:234) and de keyser (1997:197) assert that the impact of l2 learning is a profoundly unsettling psychological proposition and that limited l1 proficiency is a serious barrier to learning l2. this situation is worsened by the prevalence of external factors such as the lack of appropriate support and mentoring, and the shortage of or neglect of resources, as is common in rural settings. cook (2013:8) maintains that anxiety is a major obstacle to be overcome in teaching and learning when using another language. also, perceptions that l2 is a barrier, or blaming l2 for presenting a barrier, may arguably contradict research findings that mastery of l1 leads to mastery of l2 (garcía & kleifgen, 2010:7). these perceptions come from the fact that where l2 presents a challenge, l1 was not taught and learnt appropriately. where l1 is perceived as being well taught and learnt, i.e. where performance in l2 is good, indigenous knowledge is prevalent as a content of learning l1. at an elementary level, this knowledge is sourced from learners’ immediate backgrounds. that means local knowledge is preferred to aid the comprehension of more abstract and distant content, as represented in semantic memory (akena, 2012:603; gay, 2010:157). this is important because, instead of contesting the contexts due to learners’ disbelief and inquisitive minds, learners focus their efforts and energy on the language and association of concepts. these statements are related to the principle of social inclusivity, and hence support an urgent call for the implementation of a sits. the curriculum should be sensitive 20 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) to ideas and values that correspond with local conditions, especially indigeneity, while at the same time responding to shared, but global issues of human concern (freire, 1970:67). the aforementioned clearly shows that the most important characteristic of the delivery of the curriculum is how knowledge is conveyed and constructed. instruction is given in english as the language of teaching and learning. in this case, it is a foreign language, and this has a negative impact on learners in a grade 4 class. grade 4 is the beginning of the intermediate phase where efal becomes the only language of teaching and learning. owing to this language barrier, most school leavers have an inadequate command of reading and writing and they are therefore, relegated to the peripheries of their societies. sandhu and higgins (2016:179) have the same opinion as fanon (2008:9), postulating that colonialists imparted on those african individuals who were fluent in the colonisers’ languages a superiority complex and afforded them higher social status than those who were less fluent. the paper, therefore, seeks to advance the recognition of indigenous knowledge and to bring it into the classroom, particularly with reference to using various teaching strategies to teach efal (l2), such as indigenous games. the role of language in the successful delivery of the curriculum is critical. akena (2012:560) and banks and banks (2009:1) confirm that indigenous education and knowledge have a transformative power. thus, before learners can master a subject, they first have to overcome the barrier of the language of instruction and/or have mastered their home language. this statement acknowledges that decolonisation cannot be achieved without knowledge of the psychology of colonisation and its impact on education (denoon, 2013:87; phasha, mahlo & sefa dei, 2017:2-6). however, the right to education focusses mainly on educational resources, rather than on the restoration and recognition of indigenous knowledge for transforming the teaching of efal. 4. transformation in this context, transformation refers to the inclusion and equitable consideration of l1 and l2 (cuervo, 2012:84; soudien, 2010:4). learners who are fluent in l2 stand a better chance of understanding other subjects that are taught in l2, such as mathematics, science, life orientation, geography, history and technology than learners who are less fluent and who are encountering l2 for the first time, as in this case in the grade 4 class. this difficulty is made complex by the exclusion of l1 from teaching and learning practices. this excludes learners’ indigenous background in the rural settings from the classroom and replaces it by l2 as the language of teaching and learning. in rural settings, the challenges faced are usually isolation, substandard infrastructure, school attendance problems and diverse learner backgrounds. inadequate language proficiency also influences the delivery of quality education (hlalele, 2012:113–116). soudien (2010:4) maintains that, for rural education to be transformed, teachers’ responsibility is to ensure an effective implementation of curriculum specifications and teaching of learners. in this case, the teaching and learning process is not left to teachers only. instead, a collaborative effort was implemented, of which the aim was to address the needs of teachers from diverse backgrounds and their teaching capacities in order for them to achieve their full potential. documents that focus on transformation have developed into policies and practices to stimulate the facilitation of quality education. in this regard, the transformation of education systems and surrounding communities, teachers and the stakeholders involved can create a 21 malebese a socially inclusive teaching strategy ... socially inclusive learning environment that encourages learners to take ownership of their own learning (lybeck, 2010:91). 5. method a qualitative research method was employed for this investigation and participatory action research (par) was adopted for data generation. par is an interpretive and qualitative method that combines social investigation, educational work and action (kemmis & mctaggart, 2008:279). sits emphasises a strong link between theory and practice to create conditions that foster space for transformation and empowerment, thus requiring a practical intervention through par. within a par process, communities of inquiry and action evolve and address problems of inequity, assisting people to resolve issues and initiating change (lybeck, 2010:91), studying the influence of those particular changes. with this in mind, par addresses wider issues relating to social justice, inclusion and empowerment of marginalised communities (mahlomaholo, 2013), while promoting collaboration among the team members. the research was conducted with the involvement of a group of grade 4 efal learners and their teacher, parents and non-government organisations such as the owner of a local polo club and a community-based development organisation (cbdo). the teacher involved in the research was the only teacher at the school, which has 36 learners from grades 1 to 6. the teacher is obliged to apply a multi-grade teaching approach and to teach all subjects to all six grades. thus, the teacher’s contribution was central to the success of the research. empowerment was clearly considered a benefiting factor in this research, as grade 4 learners’ learning capacity could potentially improve and be transformed by an intervention using sits. learners being involved in the system of change and treatment plans, guiding social development towards effective practices for promoting learners’ learning enhanced the project (gosin, et al., 2003:364). grade 4 is often a rubicon of sorts as learners are ill prepared for a transition to english as a language of teaching and learning in the intermediary phase. the role of the cbdo and parents was to support and to contribute ideas, knowledge and experience on collaborative work during the teaching and learning process. the cbdo itself was involved in a collaborative community-based project that seeks to provide the community with lifelong skills for sustaining livelihoods. the team adapted the par spiral model (jasper, 2003:16), which comprised iterative processes of planning, acting, observing, reflecting and re-planning in accordance with the principles of sits. the act of repeating a process when teaching and learning are not passive, but an active part of the pursuit of information and ideas to guide future actions. the team, therefore, set aside time to reflect and go back to their initial plan after the day’s session to see how the lesson went, whether to improve and/or revise the initial plan, especially team members who were closely involved in the teaching and learning process. during this process, team members with various areas of expertise provided rich information and enhanced the investigation with their powerful and valued participation at various points, as they were able to study the existing problem, to analyse it and to design ways to address it by applying various teaching strategies. progress was monitored continuously during meetings to get feedback from the team members. insights were used in the re-planning and strengthening of the intervention. data for this paper was generated through meetings, workshops, document analysis, focus groups discussions and observations. the conversations were audioand videotaped as well as 22 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) documented for the purpose of data analysis at a later stage. critical discourse analysis (cda) was used to analyse data to get in-depth insight into the meaning of the gathered data (van dijk, 2003:256). burns, harvey and aragon (2012:1) maintain that action research serves as a tool for collaborative learning to achieve an empowered and emancipatory community of learning. par instils a democratic way of living that is equitable, liberating and life enhancing by breaking away from traditional teaching methods and incorporating learners’ indigenous knowledge in the classroom. par involves forming coalitions with individuals who have the least social, cultural and economic power (macdonald, 2012:37). ethical considerations were central to the establishment of the team (henning, van rensburg & smit 2004:213) in that the participants were informed about permissions sought and given by the university on behalf of the researcher, the department of education and the school. parents and learners were also informed of their right to withdraw from the study, and anonymity was assured. prospective participants’ rights to confidentiality and withdrawal from the project were also disclosed so that they could make informed decisions, and the generated data results were not revealed to people outside the research group. the use of audioand videotape was clearly explained and agreed upon, as was who should get to see the captured information. after every meeting, we summarised key points and actions and circulated it to everyone to verify that all points had been captured. most importantly, the research did not hold any physical risks that could have impeded the progression of the research. 6. findings and discussion this paper aimed to transform the teaching of english first additional language using sits, allowing the integration of various teaching strategies that make learning meaningful to learners with diverse learning styles. through peer learning, learners who do not excel during individual learning tasks are able to comprehend new skills. the integration of various teaching and learning strategies created a conducive learning space for learners to express their thoughts and to challenge one another by competing in assessing knowledge gained. sits builds transferable skills based on teamwork and collaboration (whatley, 2012:79) rather than memorisation of facts. it encourages offering a thorough understanding through presentations (hmelo-silver & barrows, 2006:22). hmelo-silver and barrows (2006:22) further maintain that sits stands out for transforming conceptual learning, for creative problem solving and for developing academic language proficiency. in the following case scenario, the teacher facilitated a learning activity with a preintended lesson plan. the teachers’ instruction appeared to assume that learners have the prerequisite knowledge and skills to complete the task presented. the teacher’s instruction, therefore, contradicts best practice as captured in the literature, which states that learning is cumulative (fox, 2013:4). the teacher did not consider activating learners’ prior knowledge. the following is the classroom scenario as a learning activity: teacher mary started her lesson by asking learners, “take out your learning activity book and turn to page 42, provide answers to the problem” the identified learner responded correctly to the question, and the teacher further elaborated on the learners’ correct response. the learners’ positive responses proceeded according to the teacher’s plan, but immediately when other learners’ responses deviated from the teacher’s plan of action, the teacher’s limited plan of action became a barrier 23 malebese a socially inclusive teaching strategy ... from adapting to an evolving plan (plan b). after a lesson, the researcher approached the teacher about the mediating factors to improve the situation. the above excerpt shows that the teacher’s passivity towards the teaching and learning process hindered the learners’ learning capability. however, at the end of the lesson during the feedback session, the teacher realised her weaknesses and she was willing to be assisted and welcomed any help to improve her teaching skills. after a brief summary of what transpired during the lesson, the stakeholders then strategised and prepared various lessons in collaboration with the teacher. rich information was gathered with the help of other skilled colleagues who serve the same age learners and who shared what has worked well for them. teaching in silos refutes the principles of sits, which are couched in cer and which centres on stimulating a learner-centredness and sustained learning environment. sustainable learning needs, the cognition of the learner and the environment to be utilised equitably for continued distribution of sound rapport, resources and opportunities (schweisfurth, 2013:9). therefore, a reflection is that the teacher did not understand how incorrect learner responses could be a window into their understanding and how these understandings could be used to focus discussions. the teacher employed a teacher-centred teaching approach. since she did not explain the concept and provide facts to activate learners’ prior knowledge, it became problematic for learners to grasp what was expected of them. when the teacher realised that the learners were battling to understand the task, it was extremely difficult to generate an alternative example to back up the lesson. if the teacher shifted the focus of instruction and allowed learners to express their understanding of the subject matter, learning could have been meaningful and/or she could have easily detected learners’ learning barriers. how else could learners have learnt the concept? could they have understood it better through a teacher’s explanation? by reading about it? by completing some paper-and-pencil exercises on the subject? based on the provided facts, it was unlikely that learners would grasp the idea in such a way that they could easily transfer gained knowledge to new settings. as such, the information uncovered through the investigation described in this paper confirms that the use of sits that are couched in cer can address learners’ learning challenges. as such, learning is constructed through integrating learners’ prior learning with newly gained information (jorgensen & lowrie, 2013:130). 7. integrative learning integrated learning is difficult to define as it combines two different concepts, namely integration and learning. palmer and zajonc (2010:10) believe integrated learning weaves together the domains of the human capacity to find a mood of knowing that connects knowledge to humanity. however, in the context of this paper, i can state from my own practical experience that integrated learning can be described as the combination of different domains of learning, including the knowledge gathered from prior experiences in the context of the personal, societal and cultural environment (conrad & donaldson, 2011:121). as such, integrated learning encourages learners to connect and infuse what they learn in the classroom, whether theory and/or technique, with their prior knowledge. the learning activity should then incorporate local knowledge. learners will begin to ask questions for clarity until they are clear on what must be done. 24 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) the teaching and learning context was a multi-graded setting in the foundation phase, with the focus on a grade 1 class. the grade 2’s and 3’s were invited as they were all in the same classroom. some learners in grades 2 and 3 had difficulties with the same task at hand, especially spelling. the modlin software was then introduced, which contributed to an integrative learning activity as part of a sits. the modlin software includes interactive digital lessons across various subjects and grades, e-books, a test and examination generator, a question bank and hard copy as well as digital subject-based dictionaries across all grades and subjects. modlin is an integrated tool aimed at creating a socially inclusive learning environment with an unprecedented utility developed to assess learners’ problem-solving methodology and to diagnose deficiencies. palmer and zajonc (2010:8) are of the opinion that such integrative learning comes in many varieties: connecting skills and knowledge from multiple sources and experiences. moreover, the benefits of interactive learning involved “applying theory to practice in various settings; utilising diverse and even contradictory points of view; and, understanding issues and positions contextually” (palmer & zajonc, 2010:8). learners get to manoeuvre the principles of a given task at hand through sharing ideas and working together as a team, although each learner also gets to work individually. however, without the assistance of classmates and/or other involvement of participating stakeholders, the task would have probably not been successful. conrad and donaldson (2011:121) postulate that a sits approach socially improves learners and/or classroom relations by increasing trust and friendliness and in keeping learners involved with their work and supporting peers. 8. peer learning through peer learning, learners are taught how to be engaged learners, to gradually build their community and take more responsibility for their own and their peers’ learning. peer learning was used as a strategy to implement sits to realise the aim of this paper. as the modlin software was foreign to the teacher, a young expert of the same age was invited to teach fellow classmates with the teacher as the overseer. modlin offers guidance for the practice of deep speaking and listening since good conversation depends on these skills. it also offers a conversational trajectory that starts with stories, moves into theory and emerges in action. the animated pictures provided by the modlin software with the help of a learning facilitator made it easy and managed to carry learners along. the data were generated in an extremely disadvantaged community where most learners depended on food offered at the school. the learning activity, which was about pancake making, was problematic, as learners did not know what a pancake was. in this learning activity, learners were expected to list the ingredients of a pancake, write the pancake recipe, the method and list, as well as draw the utensils and equipment required to make a pancake. eliminate the teacher realised that most learners managed to retrieve that information from the modlin software, but some still failed to complete the exercise. through the assistance of sits, the learning interaction was divided into six groups (from grade 1 to grade 6 as a multi-graded school). though this was a grade 4 learning activity, the team did not want to exclude grades, as the team believed that an injury to one, is an injury to all (forrest & kearns, 2001). one of the stakeholders took learners along by physical teaching and showing learners everything 25 malebese a socially inclusive teaching strategy ... about a pancake. learners were able to sequentially prepare all the necessary steps, bake the pancake, see what the pancake looks like and got to taste it. therefore, the exercise led to increased self-awareness and self-control, as well as the realisation of the impact of sits. learners felt the thrill of success, as this change affected and improved learners’ behaviour and attitude towards their work. akena (2012:560) postulates that knowledge is socially determined by a given purpose of the marginalised group constituting the project of knowledge creation through sits. once learners understood a concept enough to apply it in a new setting, they had a true grasp of the abstract idea. the following utterances were retrieved from a learner and the teacher as a feedback of what transpired during their after school (extra) classes: learner: mistress, i was not aware i can find pancake making so easy. teacher: how so? learner: the first time when we were to create our pancakes recipe during the class, i did not know what a pancake was, even after vido helped us with the computer learning activity (through a modlin software learning activity). but in mme monica’s class, she taught and showed us how to make a pancake by first showing us the utensil and ingredients of the pancake, and allowing us to make and taste the pancake. now that i have seen and tasted the pancake, when it appears in the test, to write the recipe, ingredients and method as well as to draw the entire procedure and equipment used became easy because we went through that process with mme monica. the above extract was reported after the monthly tests and shows that it was easier for learners to attempt this question once they had learnt it by doing. the excerpt, “i did not know a pancake, but in mme monica’s class, we made and tasted the pancake” means the process was initialised and constructed, using all the senses, to enhance knowledge gained. this also confirms that goals were set in accordance with learners’ potentialities and, thus, learners displayed signs of empowerment, hope and love for learning. the value of knowledge gained for emancipating the marginalised was boundless and promoted a sits approach, creating a socially inclusive learning environment. just being able to watch others working on the same task gave learners some important information and being able to talk things over seemed to help even more. moreover, evaluation was done in accordance with learners’ capabilities. heightened achieve ment encouraged learners to enjoy going to school, and to enjoy any learning activity they performed in relation to their learning and that resembled positive learning attainment. this illustration from the empirical data agrees with the literature, namely that learners could move beyond the teaching and learning in the classroom and examine tangible results of learning experiences and develop the ability to disentangle concepts to suit their situation through reflection and then inserting prior knowledge into new practices. hence, the potential of a sits encapsulates the strengthened prior and/or newly gained knowledge, thereby creating a conducive space that gives freedom, hope and love for learning to thrive. mostly, it encouraged learners to reach higher levels of learning. the argument confirms the literature that a learning environment that is open, trusting and fun encourages new ideas, initiatives and creativity (wilson, 2012:4). vygotsky (1986:175) and mcleod (2013:27) imply that sits does not consider language to be an instrument that serves to enable learners to organise their thoughts, but teaching approaches increases and 26 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) deepens opportunities to learn content and develop language and thus has the potential to build equitable classrooms. 9. conclusion the most significant contribution of this paper is that it demonstrates the links between a socially inclusive way of teaching and learning to achieve quality education. the paper investigated the importance of exposing learners to learning opportunities that link efal content, mainly concepts and principles, with applications encountered in everyday experiences. for learners and teachers based in rural settings, a socially inclusive way of teaching and learning enhances learners’ learning effectiveness. the researchers used various teaching approaches that adhere to integral indigenous perceptions of individuals’ way of living, experiences, language and customs. doing so made it easier for learners to transition into the sphere of improved teaching and learning environments. for transformation to take place, emphasis on a sits was an essential aspect of creating a conducive learning environment that supports learners’ learning, thereby promoting positive, indigenous classroom behaviour. collaboration and good communication with others fostered acceptance of individual differences and friendships, harnessed cooperative learning made possible by a sits and guided people to recognise themselves in the work of others through shared knowledge. 10. recommendations by engaging learners by using their own linguistic resources not only legitimised english as the language of teaching and learning but also provided an opportunity for a linguistically diverse learner to be competent and more knowledgeable within an english lesson. such acts of inclusion seemed to have a cumulative effect on learning if they are regarded as part of an ongoing pattern of classroom life, especially when using learners as resources for their own learning. note: the names of the co-researchers in the examples are pseudonyms. references akena, f.a. 2012. critical analysis of the production of western knowledge and its implications for indigenous knowledge and decolonization. journal of black studies, 43(6), 599–619. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021934712440448 avelar, n. 2011. the theory of education and literacy of paulo freire. available at http:// 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(mgqwashu, 2000:63) as far as assessment is concerned, students are expected to manipulate language academically, a skill which presupposes a constellation of acquired abilities. as i hope to illustrate later, these abilities, it may be argued, can be learned only if interaction between students and lecturers is underpinned by principles of reflexive pedagogy, that is, an explicit teaching practice driven by a view that pedagogic communication needs to signal the discourse’s constructedness. this is fundamental for epistemological access in higher education for it involves developing students’ awareness of the fact that, as montgomery, martin and stuart, 1992:7) put it: “meaning [within different disciplines] is a function, not of particular words or wordings, but rather of the discursive formation in which... expressions occur”. when language is in use (whether in writing or in speaking), discursive formations function as sets of regulative principles that underlie actual disciplinary discourses. within this context, what constitutes meaning in disciplinary content becomes an effect upon the human subject, but not a stable property. 23mgqwashu — reflexive pedagogy for reading across the curriculum pedagogic practice in most universities, however, does not lend itself to principles underpinning reflexive pedagogy, a practice designed to facilitate epistemological access. the latter is seen by most academics as too elementary, and is therefore rejected because it clashes with their pedagogical philosophy that students are already favoured by the expertise lecturers bring into the teaching context. what this philosophy ignores, regrettably, is the fact that learning implies acquiring both knowledge itself, and the code of transmission used to convey a particular body of knowledge. assuming that students will understand academic discourse without explicitly reflecting on its constructedness through the explicit teaching of reading, is to ignore the fact that language is not just a collection of words, but provides us with a system of what bourdieu (1994:8) calls “transposable mental dispositions”. given the demographic changes experienced by south african universities in the past thirty five years, it would be suicidal (or academically/educationally irresponsible) to maintain a teaching practice that is essentially contentcentred and oblivious to the urgency to facilitate epistemological access. reflexive pedagogy, the key to facilitating such access, should not be seen as a practice with the potential to “water down” the “noble” aims of university educationwhich according to zembinskie (1997), is producing knowledge in its highest forms, but as a practice that allows practitioners of pedagogical communication methodically and continuously to reduce to a minimum the misunderstanding arising from the use of an unfamiliar code. failure to acknowledge this fundamental democratic right has the potential to lead to a situation where, even though higher education institutions (heis) have an open door policy and all students across racial and socio-economic lines can study anywhere they like, very few will stand a chance of achieving their goals of further education and professional careers. drawing on my research (mgqwashu, 2007), literature (cross, 2009; sternberg, 2007; fraser and killen, 2005; rose, 2005), and personal experiences as an educator, i intend in this article to offer a qualitative evaluation of reflexive pedagogy as used to facilitate epistemological access in my own teaching within the university of kwazulu-natal, faculty of education. i do this within the context of a first year, academic literacy compulsory module for all first year bachelor of education (b. ed) students offered by the school of language, literacies, media and drama education. this module is called academic learning in english (ale). as i hope to show in this article, it seems to me that as educationists, and for the realisation of the post-apartheid ideals, we are faced with a challenge to undo school classroom practices that evolved in western education systems to reward the elite and marginalise the majority. such practices manifest in progressive approaches that emphasise learner-centeredness and discovery learning or, even worse, traditional approaches that favour teacher-centeredness and rote learning. research (rose, 2005) shows that both approaches have failed to change outcomes. the reason for this is that they are premised on an incremental learning model, which is theoretically legitimated by piaget (1928), with the notion that learning occurs from the ‘inside out’. as a result, students within formal education systems are continually evaluated to assess readiness for advancement. while traditional approaches legitimate streaming into different ability classes, progressive approaches inform individuated learning activities, thereby constructing students as autonomous learners with inherent skills and talents akin to the demands of formal education. the commonality between these approaches, however, is that both focus on the completion of a series of tasks and end with summative assessment. in the process, they ignore various ability levels among students. given the fact that students come from different economic and educational backgrounds, the rate of development is unequal, and so both approaches ensure that ability gap never closes. the majority of students brings this ability gap into higher education, and my contention in this article is that the basis of this inequality in most lecture halls and tutorials, and hence in the society, lies in students’ differing capacities to learn independently by reading. the difference between the students who qualify for university education and those who do not, but gain access through other means, for example, admissions and/or placement tests, hinges on their ability to engage with reading independently. for sternberg (2007: 8), the “essence of the problem in using merit-based approaches has been that certain groups consistently perform more poorly in traditional admission tests than do other groups…”. it is for this reason that the central thrust of my argument in this article is that, in addition to the limitations in 24 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 secondary education, this difference in ability is a consequence of the kind of primary socialisation in the home in terms of the extent to which each child experiences parent-child reading from an early age. research (bergin, 1999) shows that “children in literate middle-class families experience an average of 1000 hours before starting school, whereas those from oral cultural backgrounds may experience little or none” (in rose, 2005, 3). to emphasise my point, i refer to hood and wood (2004:103) who assert that ... literacy development does not begin when a child first enters school and conventional literacy instruction is initiated. instead… [it] begins from birth and seems to represent a continuum of development. the literacy experiences that occur before children enter school should involve social interactions where children learn about print in a meaningful way. the majority of students enrolled for the compulsory module discussed in this article come from cultural backgrounds that value speaking more than reading, and are from the bottom of the economic scale. most of them come from ex-department of education and training (det)� schools that are based either in rural areas or black townships, where the culture of reading in most families is virtually non-existent. as hart’s (1995) study indicates, the majority of such students lack the necessary pre-junior primary, primary, and secondary levels reading skills prior to entering the higher education sector. in addition, and to exacerbate the problem further, this lack of explicit attention to the teaching of reading across the curriculum in formal education means that, throughout primary and secondary education, these students never have the opportunity to develop skills to independently learn from reading, a skill necessary to access knowledge in higher education. this form of disadvantage is compounded by the fact that english, the medium of instruction in most south african institutions of learning, is rarely spoken in rural and black township communities. it is for this reason that this article emphasises the centrality of the ability to learn from reading in formal education and presents a qualitative evaluation of reflexive pedagogy’s role in developing such ability. in the process of theorising module content, designing lectures and tutorial worksheets, and teaching, as i hope to demonstrate, reflexive pedagogy informs my considerations with regard to the explicit teaching of reading across the curriculum. cross’s (2009: 15) research findings reveal that the lack of explicitness in the teaching of reading is problematic, for it denies epistemological access for the majority of students in heis: another obstacle to affiliation is identified by certain students as being the blurred or implicit character of the norms. the studies conducted by coulon revealed that this implicit character of working norms of the academic institution makes the university’s community particularly opaque for non-initiated students coming from ordinary circles. ignoring implicit codes and “good manners” which enhance success, these “culturally displaced” students maintain social and intellectual resources maladjusted to the situations. since the majority of the assessment tasks in formal education, especially at secondary and tertiary levels, are actually designed to evaluate whether or not students have learnt from reading (rose: 2005), failure to pay attention to the explicit teaching of reading across the curriculum from primary to higher education means that our classrooms perpetuate inequalities. sternberg (2007: 9) puts it more succinctly: “indeed, it is important to realise that the so-called ability tests are achievement tests for skills that were supposed to have been learned a few years earlier”. it is within the context of these concerns that this article offers a qualitative evaluation of the role reflexive pedagogy, a pedagogic practice adopted in ale, plays in ensuring epistemological access for first year students. the focus of this qualitative evaluation is more specifically on the role this pedagogic practice plays in facilitating access to knowledge crucial for educational success within heis. the potential benefits of reflexive pedagogy to students in terms of learning to read and write academically, and whether or not it can ensure access to knowledge to close the ability gap amongst first year students, are the main thrusts of the qualitative evaluation discussed in this article. against the background presented above, it can be seen that it is crucial to qualitatively evaluate the role played by a teaching practice that draws students’ attention to ways in which authors’ purposes influence text structure in creating conditions for epistemological access. data in this article suggests 25mgqwashu — reflexive pedagogy for reading across the curriculum that this needs to be the primary concern in higher education in order to achieve the kinds of educational outcomes needed to build a democratic south africa. such a qualitative evaluation is timely, for as sternberg (2007:10) affirms, any “institution can admit students from underrepresented minority groups, but unless it teaches in a way that fits the way they learn, the admission decision may actually thwart rather than abet the intended goals” strategies to investigate the phenomenon fink (1995 2) defines evaluation as: ...a diligent investigation of a program’s characteristics and merits. its purpose is to provide information on the effectiveness of projects so as to optimise the outcomes, efficiency, and quality. evaluations achieve this purpose by enabling you to analyse a program’s structure, activities, and organisation and to examine its political and social environment. evaluations can be used also to appraise the achievement of a project’s goals and objectives and the extent of its impact and costs. in the context of this article, my primary aim is to provide data on the role of reflexive pedagogy in ale’s declared objective: to assist students in the process of enhancing their skills in reading and writing so that they become effective learners in the university environment. this pedagogic approach attempts to achieve this objective by introducing students, in an explicit way, to the process of academic reading and writing, and by developing their capacity to produce coherent, cohesive and logical texts (orally and in writing) within the context of an intellectually challenging examination of themes which are of contemporary academic interest in education. nevo (1986:18) rightly points out that: ...(a) almost everything can be an object of evaluation, and evaluation should not be limited to the evaluation of students or school personnel; and (b) the clear identification of the evaluation object is an important part of the development of any evaluation design. in planning an evaluation it seems to be important to determine what is ‘the thing’ (or ‘the evaluand’, to use scriven’s (1980) term) that has to be evaluated. as pointed out earlier, ‘the evaluand’ in this article is the pedagogic approach adopted in ale, the reflexive pedagogy. to keep the evaluation focused, the evaluation questions (adapted from fink, 1995: 6-7) used to investigate the characteristics, to appraise the achievement, and the impact of the goals and objectives of the reflexive pedagogy adopted in ale are: what role does the pedagogic approach adopted in ale achieve its goals and objectives?• how do the students who participate in ale experience the pedagogic approach adopted?• for which individuals or a group is the pedagogic approach adopted in ale most helpful?• in the context of evaluation design, it is important to identify a set of standards “needed to provide convincing evidence of a program’s effectiveness, an important component of an evaluator’s appraisal of merit” (fink, 1995: 7). the most appropriate, possible to measure and credible standards for the purposes of this article are: testimony from students in the form of verbal responses to interview questions and their written • work; students’ informed, precise and critical response to prescribed academic readings and lecturers’ • comments on their written work and; students’ improved attitudes towards reading in general, and reading complex academic texts in • particular. implicit in the above standards is a very specific philosophy of epistemology (that is, knowing or establishing ‘truth’), the subjectivist epistemology. given the fact that this article is an evaluation of a pedagogic approach that i, as its evaluator, use to teach ale, the philosophy of subjectivist epistemology seemed appropriate. in defining this philosophy, worthen and sanders (1987, 46) assert that: 26 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 subjectivism bases its validity claims on “an appeal to experience rather than to scientific method. knowledge is conceived as being largely tacit rather than explicit” (house, 1980, p. 252). the validity of a subjectivist evaluation depends on the relevance of the evaluator’s background and qualifications and the keenness of [their] perceptions. in this sense, the evaluation procedures are “internalised”, existing largely within the evaluator in ways that are not explicitly understood or reproducible by others. in his crisis and challenge: black education 1910 – 1990, hartshorne (1992: 1) insists that: “i do think that anyone writing on south african issues at present should give some idea of the influences and experiences that have shaped his views and beliefs about humankind and society.” my educational experiences of learning english and in english during and after apartheid in south africa (mgqwashu, 2009) and my studies (mgqwashu, 1999: 2007), largely influence my contributions to debates and scholarship about, and pedagogic approach to meet, the linguistic and academic literacy needs of students within higher education. hartshorne (1992:1) rightly argues that: “each of us is shaped by all the influences exerted upon us, by the way in which we have responded to them, and by what we as individuals decided to do as a result” (1). it is against this background that i have chosen the qualitative evaluation of the pedagogic approach used in ale. according to fink (1995: 14), qualitative evaluations collect data from in-person interviews, direct observations, and written documents (e.g. private diaries). these evaluations aim to provide personalised information on the dynamics of a program and on participants’ perceptions of their outcomes and impact...because they are “personalised”, qualitative methods may add emotions and tone to purely statistical findings and provide a means of gauging outcomes when reliable and valid measures of those outcomes are unlikely to become available in time for the evaluation report. in the context of this article, semi-structured interview questions, written assignments, one lecturer’s comments on students’ written work and the worksheets used in ale, are the sources of data used to carry out the qualitative evaluation of reflexive pedagogy. as indicated, interviewing students’ and using their written work required that i adhere to the university’s ethical clearance policies. i accordingly applied for ethical clearance through the university’s research office (see attached appendices). research findings and discussion given the fact that most of our students enter university education with limited reading skills, and that assessment tasks at tertiary level fundamentally evaluate students’ abilities to learn from reading (rose: 2005), the pedagogic practice in ale is designed to enable students to read independently and be able to learn from the reading activity. to achieve this, my lectures and tutorials begin with strategies to orientate students to the genre (structural conventions) and field (what is the language about) in relation to prescribed readings. in other words, my first point of departure is ensuring that students recognise genre and field, and that they have enough experience to interpret the latter as it unfolds through the text. this is the teaching strategy i use to initiate first year students into reading independently and learning by reading. to achieve this, ale focuses on different ways in which written texts are patterned and structured according to the communicative purpose they serve. more specifically, the main aim of this module is to teach students the patterns and structures and communicative purpose of the genre of the academic argument. what purpose introductions, the body and conclusion in academic writing serve, and how their structure reflects this purpose, for instance, are some of the questions the module explores. it achieves this aim by examining the process of developing an academic argument, discussion, explanation, and critical evaluation, and how grammatical choices, paragraph structure, and the organisation of information in each of these text-types, reflect the purposes they serve. below are examples of worksheets in the ale book designed to achieve these goals: one of the ways you can use a mind map to understand hyland’s article is to try to complete a statement such as “hyland believes that the genre-based approach to teaching reading and writing 27mgqwashu — reflexive pedagogy for reading across the curriculum is a good one because…”. then write down as many good reasons as you can think of. use hyland’s article as your source, as demonstrated below: 28 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 all the claims you see on this spider diagram are paraphrases from hyland’s article. the questions attached to them assist you as the reader to go back to the original text to gain a better understanding of hyland’s arguments. in your groups, identify two claims from the mind map and go back to the original text. • share with the whole class how the question under each claim improved your understanding of the • article. give two reasons why it is important to convert your paraphrases into questions when you read.• list two processes crucial in enhancing one’s understanding of an academic text. explain how they • work. in the entire article, hyland uses at least three paragraphs to talk about ‘schemata’ and the importance of this concept for genre teaching. which three paragraphs do you think indicate that more aspects of this concept will be discussed?• which words gave you the clues you needed to make a decision?• in which paragraph would you expect to find a definition of genre analysis?• which words gave you the clues you needed to make a decision? • in two places, hyland uses the word ‘most’, as in ‘most teachers will agree that…’ and ‘most of the genre descriptions sketched above…’. why does he not just say ‘teachers will agree that…’ or ‘the genre descriptions sketched above…’?• identify a paragraph and at least two topic sentences that you think offer something very practical that • you could apply in your own classroom. the worksheets for the ale book, as seen above, are constructed in ways that reflect an intention to make explicit academic discourse’s constructedness. this pedagogic approach, as will be illustrated further through the discussion of assessment feedback, exposes limitations to pedagogic practices that construct, maintain and evaluate inequalities in students’ abilities to participate and perform successfully in higher education. this is because it is informed by the teaching philosophy that encourages support through explicit guidance on rhetorical features valued in different types of texts, and involves making explicit to all students exactly how to read and write certain types of texts. as discussed earlier, this pedagogic approach, the reflexive pedagogy, affords novice readers and writers of academic texts access into how academic writing relies on other texts, and the extent to which grammatical choices are a result of the purpose for their construction. given the fact that ale is compulsory to all first year students, regardless of specialisation and phase, and that economic imperatives affect much of what goes on in our schools and classrooms, the next section presents how i used a text that focuses on the impact of global economic imperatives on advertising within third world contexts to teach about the relationship between purpose and grammatical choices. i chose this reading in order to broaden first year student teachers’ understanding of the extent to which economic factors that appear to be irrelevant to our classrooms actually affect much of what goes on in their learners’ homes, communities, and even third world societies where learners outside south africa come from. the purpose of discussing ways in which i taught this reading to first year students in this article is to illustrate the potential that reflexive pedagogy has to facilitate epistemological access; more specifically, access to knowledge geared towards developing competence in academic reading and writing to succeed in higher education. the title of the article: the new language of emerging markets by niraj dawar and amitava chattopadhyay enabled me (at the initial stages of my lesson) to discuss at length with students the genre (discussion) and field (exploration of both sides of the argument). in order to orientate students to the genre and field of the text, i designed the pre-reading activities. this stage of my lesson involved the 29mgqwashu — reflexive pedagogy for reading across the curriculum process of identifying key words and concepts in the topic and the brief theme thereafter: ‘new language, emerging markets, and key words from the journalists note: china, and india, multinationals, reaching them can (as opposed to is) be difficult’. pre-reading exercises the “new” language: why new? what does the use of this  word imply – a particular way of thinking, talking, about emerging markets to be replaced? “emerging” markets: why ‘emerging’? what does this word  imply? does it have any historical significance in terms of china and india? “multinationals”? any examples?  why does the journalist choose  can be instead of is difficult when writing about the multinationals’ attempts to reach china and india (emerging markets)? niraj dawar and amitava chattopadhyay  discuss: what does this mean to you? does it mean the same thing as argue? explain. extra textual issues: china; india – what do you know about the  socio-economic and political dynamics of these countries? as dictated by reflexive pedagogy, engagement with words, concepts, and phrases by means of questions is designed to raise students’ awareness of the relationship between the purpose of the text and the author’s choice of words in the process of constructing the title and, by implication, the entire text. this facilitates the process of making explicit the discourse’s constructedness. after working with the title of the article and the thesis implied by this title, the conventions of the genre (discussion) in general, and how the sequence of this text’s field (exploration of both sides of the argument) unfolds through its generic phases in terms that students can readily understand, are summarised. to further decomplexify the reading activity, i read the text aloud to the class in order to work out what is going on in the text. the next stage of my lesson is what i refer to as detailed reading. this stage involves identifying the main phases in different paragraphs of the article: topic sentence, point, issue, argument, development of argument, defence, concession, and disagreement. to identify all these phases, i selected a short segment for detailed reading during class time (paragraphs 1-9). as illustrated below, during the reading process, we jointly highlight key information in each phase and paragraph, and focus on how grammatical choices assist the two authors to achieve their purpose: to explore opposing arguments concerning multinationals’ ability to reach consumers in emerging markets. together with students we label each phase in the margins and discuss in detail ways in which a topic sentence, point, argument, and other phases, achieve the broader purpose of the text by means of very specific linguistic choices. 30 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 31mgqwashu — reflexive pedagogy for reading across the curriculum 32 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 in terms of reflexive pedagogy, once phases in a prescribed reading are identified, the next stage is the note-making stage. in this stage, i work with students to figure out the background knowledge to each phase. this involves writing a brief synopsis of what each phase is about, using common sense language with some of the terms from the text. after this, i write a brief synopsis of what the whole text is about, as exemplified below: note-making stage synopsis of each phase point: “advertising positions common in the west, such as the convenience of breakfast cereals, did not resonate with the mass market in india”. background to the phase: multinationals (big global businesses), kellogg in the case of this article, sometimes get driven by prospects of making much profits and begin to invest large sums of money in countries with emerging markets such as india. but because of the use of specific advertising strategies that brought about massive profit gains in first world contexts, which are however not appealing to potential consumers in emerging markets, these multinationals are not succeeding. claim: “most multinationals have resisted targeting the local consumers”. background to the phase: the authors point out that the local managers of global companies have woken up to the fact that even though there are consumers in emerging markets who in fact have a purchasing power and enjoy products from such companies, these are not sufficient to bring about expected and reasonable profits. there is a need to put more efforts to attract more consumers from local communities to achieve desired results. synopsis of the article niraj dawar and amitava chattopadhyay discuss, that is, they explore both sides of an argument. this means they are exploring strengths in an idea that reaching emerging markets by multinationals can be difficult, and strengths in the idea that it is not difficult for multinationals to reach emerging markets such as china and india. the authors achieve this by examining ways in which kellogg, the us cereals giant, ventured into india in the mid-1990s. to support the point they are making 33mgqwashu — reflexive pedagogy for reading across the curriculum by means of the choice of the title for their article, they point out that after three years, kellogg sales stood at an unimpressive $10m. the indication is, indeed, reaching emerging markets can be difficult. the authors begin to identify reasons for such a possible difficulty: advertising strategies, segmentation, product, price, distribution, and communication. the article discusses each of these factors in detail and, in the process, however, shows how possible challenges can, and in fact have been, dealt with successfully in other contexts. this degree of explicitness as a result of using reflexive pedagogy benefited the majority of students. when i asked them to identify aspects of the pedagogic approach used in ale that they found to be most useful, the responses were: 1) the introduction of the assignment in lectures, 2) how to relate the claim and other points; 3) the relationships between introduction and conclusions; 4) how to construct a paragraph, 5) how to read academic texts; 6) the step by step explanation on how to write an academic essay. the advantage with reflexive pedagogy, and perhaps something that accounts for these responses from students, is that the first three stages create opportunities for me as the lecturer to identify a small number of ideas and plan one or two questions for the tasks during reading. students’ responses to such questions during class time often lead to the joint rewriting of the notes constructed in the previous stage. after the joint rewriting stage, individual students are normally ready for the individual rewriting about opposing ideas presented in the article, and how specific sets of ideas are defended by the authors. feedback and proper guidance concerning attempts by students to present these in writing prepare them for the final stage, the independent writing stage. this is the pedagogic approach used in ale to work with groups of students from first year to postgraduate levels. in commenting directly about this approach and its impact on their development as students, one of the students pointed out that: lectures were not only engaging but they were also challenging. each session allowed students to develop cognitively and also intellectually. we were moved from one level of understanding to the next through the very carefully prepared questions and lecture notes. there is careful planning that get students to think beyond presented literature into interrogating ways in which it is constructed. what goes on in lectures and tutorials become the bases for supervision of students during consultation times where i address individual students’ needs. some students are not familiar with specific grammatical terminology we deploy when analysing the relationship between authors’ purposes and grammatical choices, or rhetorical features and ways in which these are informed by the purpose of a text. below is an attempt to illustrate ways in which i guide a student who attempts to write an academic essay based on a prescribed reading. 34 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 35mgqwashu — reflexive pedagogy for reading across the curriculum 36 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 the feedback on the student’s script, as illustrated above, usually inform the one-on-one supervision i provide to the student during consultation times. it is designed to make explicit to students ways in which purpose (such as to argue, to explain, or to discuss) influence the choice of grammatical structures. in response to an interview question regarding this assessment strategy, two of my former undergraduate students pointed out that: “i think that dr mgqwashu’s marking is fair. at first i did not understand, but after he has marked my essays and giving me suggestions on improving, i can see what he means and now i agree with him.” another student said: i found dr mgqwashu’s assessment to be most accurate. he was strict yet very fair. dr mgqwashu provided detailed feedback from assignments, which allowed students to understand where and how to improve their work. he also encouraged students to visit his office if they had problems with their marks or had questions regarding the tasks given. this made him very popular amongst students who saw him as someone open and also supportive towards them. this manner of assessing students’ written work ensures that my comments are self explanatory and offer useful guidance concerning which grammatical structures suit what they are attempting to argue, explain, or discuss, as dictated by the topic. given the fact that most of such students speak isizulu as the home language, i often find it fascinating to discover that some of the most complex academic discourse conventions become accessible the moment i code-switch into isizulu, as one of the students points out during the interview: dr mgqwashu with the methods he is using in his module ale is supposed to be the one co-ordinating and make other lecturers to use zulu and to teach the way he is teaching. he is not leaving any students in the dark, but he tried by all means that each and everyone understands, like me who sometimes struggles to understand difficult readings written in english. i am very happy to sometimes have someone explaining difficult ideas and concepts in zulu. my open-door policy, both in terms of flexibility when it comes to using students’ first languages and availability for individual appointments, accommodates all my students in an equitable way. as demonstrated in this article, success in higher education depends entirely on ways in which module design and pedagogic practices acknowledge and extend the differential capabilities of students as they learn. drawing from the pedagogic approach, assessment of students’ written work, and locating this article within the philosophy of subjectivist epistemology and qualitative methodology, a number of inter-related hypotheses can be generated. these concern enabling students’ epistemological access to the discourse and the rhetorical structures of diverse text-types. if students are afforded one-to-one tuition (or very small group tuition) in which the rhetorical • structures peculiar to specific text-types are discussed as one of the formal aspects in lectures and tutorials, then students from disadvantaged educational backgrounds will better access the rhetorical features relevant to their individual disciplines; if the theory that informs pedagogic approach in academic literacy modules discussed in this article • is used in other knowledge areas, then students will acquire the metalanguage necessary to write effectively and engage with issues related to their chosen disciplines and extend their boundaries and; if academics in higher education raise students’ awareness of the relationship between grammatical • choices and the purpose for constructing a text, and make efforts to learn and use languages other than english, then the ukzn’s vision to be the premier university of african scholarship is likely to be realised a conventional practice and principle of research in the sciences is that hypotheses need to be tested before they become theory. it is not my intention in this article, however, to test the three hypotheses presented. they instead provide a basis for researchers to pursue further investigation in this specific field. this article, however, provides directions for further development of a pedagogic practice model for academic literacy and for teaching reading across the curriculum in which epistemological access is foregrounded. 37mgqwashu — reflexive pedagogy for reading across the curriculum references bergin c 1999. the parent-child relationship during beginning reading. in rose d 2005. democratising the classroom: a literacy pedagogy for the new 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(eds.). the idea of the university: 21-26. rodopi: amsterdam – atlanta 62 the use of rasch competency bands for reporting criterionreferenced feedback and curriculum-standards attainment abstract this study describes how criterion-referenced feedback was produced from english language, mathematics and natural sciences monitoring assessments. the assessments were designed for grades 8 to 11 to give an overall indication of curri culum-standards attained in a given subject over the course of a year (n=1113). the rasch item map method was used to set cut-scores for the rasch competency bands, after which subject specialists examined the items in each band. based on the content and difficulty of the items, descriptions for the proficiency levels were generated. learner reports described each individual’s current proficiency level in a subject area as well as the subsequent level to be attained. this article shows how the rasch item map method can be used to align assessments and curriculum-standards, which facilitates reporting learner performance in terms of criterion-referenced feedback and empowers learners, teachers and parents to focus on subject content and competencies. keywords: rasch competency bands, proficiency levels, criterionreferenced feedback, rasch item map method, curriculumstandards, reporting learner performance 1. context there is a growing realisation worldwide of the importance of learner content-focused feedback as opposed to only providing norm-referenced feedback (bennett, tognolini & pickering, 2012). norm-referenced feedback is based on numbers, means achieved as well as a comparison of a learner or groups of learners to others in the cohort(s). but with standards-referenced feedback, also known as criterion-referenced feedback, the spotlight is on informing learners about what they know and how they can increase their knowledge and skills (bennet et al., 2012, long, dunne & mokoena, 2014). standards-referenced feedback is crucial for meeting curriculum requirements as the criteria are based on learning standards set in curriculum documents (great schools partnership, 2014). the alignment of assessments to curriculum-standards is linked to this type of feedback. therefore, assessments would be designed to provide diagnostic information and feedback ms celeste combrinck centre for evaluation and assessment, faculty of education at the university of pretoria. email: celeste. combrinck@up.ac.za 012 420 5680 prof vanessa scherman department of psychology of education at the university of south africa 012 429 4900 email: scherv@unisa.ac.za prof david maree department of psychology at the university of pretoria 012 420 2329 david.maree@up.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i4.5 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(4): 62-78 © uv/ufs 63 combrinck, scherman & maree the use of rasch competency bands... in order to inform teaching and learning. this article specifically investigates methods using external and internal monitoring assessments for deriving standards-referenced feedback, which serves the purpose of developing accountability and a measure for comparability as well as presenting a method for deriving criterion-referenced feedback. the argument is made that by offering feedback that is content specific and linked to curriculum-standards, monitoring assessments, which comprise systemic evaluations, large scale studies and standardised tests in the schooling system, can serve the additional purpose of enhancing teaching and learning. content-specific feedback is empowering to teachers and learners and when monitoring assessments are utilised, all stakeholders, including the participants, should benefit from the testing system (long et al., 2014). large scale assessments for norm and criterion-referenced feedback systemic and standardised tests are generally not utilised for diagnostic purposes, though such applications could contribute to an impact on the system they evaluate (khosa, 2013). the main goal of most systemic testing systems is to serve as indicators of performance levels, mainly for norm-referenced comparison and for quality assurance in education (jiao et al., 2011; osman et al., 2008). designing criterion-referenced tests can be timeand resource-intensive but has advantages that benefit those being tested and the systems in the long-term (stone, beltyukova & fox, 2008). such advantages include monitoring a system but also improving its functioning by identifying attained curriculum standards and pinpointing the next achievable levels. this approach taps into the notion of competency as moving along a continuum (griffin, gillis & calvitto, 2007). criterion-referenced results give feedback in terms of what skills and knowledge a person has gained, whereas norm-referenced feedback focuses on comparing a person to others in terms of achievement. the study described in this article has utilised criterion-referenced and norm-referenced feedback approaches, using the monitoring assessments to provide learners, teachers, parents, principals and funders with criterion-referenced and norm-referenced feedback. norm-referenced feedback gave schools learner-level insight into where their school’s achievement was located in relation to other schools. criterion-referenced feedback gave insights into school-level proficiency levels and curriculum standards achieved by learners, in addition to offering subsequent target levels for teachers. during interactive workshops, teachers and subject specialists discussed ways in which the results could be used in developing/initiating interventions and thus enhancing classroom practice. learner-level feedback as an ethical application of large scale assessment large-scale assessments, such as standardised testing and systemic evaluations, are time consuming and expensive (khosa, 2013; popham, 1987). time is taken from teaching and learning while results are generally used to broadly inform policy and not necessarily to give feedback to learners, teachers and parents. providing learner-level feedback by using methods such as the rasch item mapping method, is one way of assessing in a more ethical manner as participants can benefit more directly by receiving feedback which is explicit and useful due to its content-based nature (long et al., 2014). by providing criterion-referenced feedback, teachers can also benefit from the assessments as they become aware of specifically attained curriculum standards and how to structure their teaching to target standards which have not been fully achieved. giving criterion-referenced feedback could also contribute to learner motivation (boone, staver & yale, 2014). if learners realise that the testing does not influence their academic performance, they could be less motivated to write such assessments. in 64 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) contrast, if learners understand that they will receive usable feedback, which will also be disseminated to their parents and teachers, they could be more motivated to participate fully. identifying competency levels the idea of using the rasch measurement theory (rmt) to align assessments to curriculum standards is not a new idea. ingebo (1989) discussed the use of rmt for alignment to curriculum-standards because the rasch model creates an equal interval scale of curriculum tasks (items in tests) which can be used for a comparison to curriculum-standards. as dichotomous items that are actually curriculum tasks are lined up and given values with respect to each other, these calibrations (values) are on an equal interval scale generated by the confluence of knowledge and position in the curriculum (ingebo, 1989: 43). the use of the rasch model to set standards and identify proficiency levels has been demonstrated by several studies (boone et al., 2014; grosse & wright, 1986; long et al., 2014; shen, 2001; stone, 2000). in fact, aligning item banks to curricula with equal intervals for every item was one of the main achievements of benjamin wright (ingebo, 1987). over the course of the last 30 years, much research on the use of rmt has been conducted in the united states, great britain, european countries and southern africa (bond & fox, 2015; boone et al., 2014; wright & grosse, 1993; stelmack et al., 2004; wissing, 2013). some of the recent literature on the use of rmt for setting standards and proficiency levels are discussed next. holster and lake (2015) showed how items could be scaled with the use of the wright map for diagnostic vocabulary tests and these results can be used to identify learners needing remedial intervention. their study also demonstrated how identifying competency levels with the rasch model are applicable for classroom use, curriculum planning and the refinement of vocabulary tests for placement purposes (holster & lake, 2015). in addition, jiao et al. (2011) used the mixed rasch model (multi-dimensional) to classify student performance in a simulation into proficiency levels by analysing item response patterns and the achievement represented on the latent trait by achievement. this resulted in high student classification accuracy and had the added advantage of assisting with the classification of borderline case or minimally competent students. this accurate classification was achieved by fitting the data to the rasch model and using the intersecting points between adjacent distributions to distinguish varying proficiency levels. similar studies, such as that of jiao et al. (2011), are needed as the findings can be strengthened by using real data as opposed to simulated data. the study presented in this article is based on empirical data and addresses the limitation of using only simulated data to illustrate the usefulness of certain approaches. studies utilising the rasch model to create competency bands are based on the theory that the item difficulty and person ability alignment reflects the complexity of the content and levels of proficiency in the content areas (shen, 2001). shen’s study (2001) on medical licensing data compared the angoff method, the hofstee and the rasch item map method. this study found that the angoff method identified test subjects with expertise, whereas the rasch item map method was more likely to identify those with fundamental knowledge. the rasch and hostee methods gave equivalent results. in the case of shen’s study, using the rasch item map method made more sense, as fundamental knowledge was required to practise medicine and was more significant than specialist knowledge for those entering the field of medicine. the rasch method also provided more criterion-referenced results whereas the other methods were more likely to yield norm-referenced results. the rasch item map method 65 combrinck, scherman & maree the use of rasch competency bands... was also more time efficient, as reviewing maps versus reviewing individual items takes less time. other methods may also lack content explanations of what a standard means, a crucial aspect of reporting learner and student performance levels (shen, 2001). other studies of a similar nature have been conducted with equivalent results, showing the potential advantages of using the rasch item map method over that of traditional methods (wang, 2003). stone et al. (2008) demonstrated how the multifaceted rasch model could be used to firstly identify minimal competence and then incorporate it into the model of standard setting, especially for criterion-referenced standards when assessments are scored with rubrics. they note that the rating scale used, the unique context of their study and their sample size all influenced the outcome, suggesting that more studies of this nature are required to evaluate the applicability of modelling minimal competence in other settings. herrmann-abell and deboer (2015) used rmt to map science items onto curriculum materials to compare, with precision, how ideas are taught and how learner understanding of these ideas progress. by aligning items to curriculum standards and progression of understanding, they were able to identify areas for improving teaching and learning in the subject areas. it should be noted that rasch methods could be combined with other methods, as bennett et al. (2012) did; the multi-stage angoff procedure was used in conjunction with the rasch theory to establish performance standards in curriculum-based exams. the research and findings discussed in this article contribute to the body of knowledge by demonstrating how monitoring assessments can also be used for standards-referenced feedback. this article explains how to establish and define progression levels, how to structure feedback and why this is advantageous to learners and other stakeholders. the purpose of the study described here was to find ways to give teachers and learners useful feedback, more than just comparative information derived from external monitoring assessments. the aims included locating each learner on the subject area developmental continuum, defining what has been gained at each level as well as making explicit the subsequent level of development and curriculum-standard required. 2. methods the study seven independent high schools form part of an association that strives to give disadvantaged learners the opportunity to grow academically and socially. these seven schools have longer school days, smaller classes and saturday classes to offer learners additional support. the schools have outside funding to maintain their intervention model of schooling. in order to monitor the progress of learners across schools, set an accountability system in place and to give feedback into the development of the schools academically, an educational research agency was approached to design and develop monitoring assessments. the findings discussed in this article are a component of that monitoring process. study group one thousand one hundred and thirteen learners participated in the assessment study and the cohort for each grade differed in size (see table 1). there were 250 grade 8 learners, 251 grade 9 learners, 319 grade 10 learners and 293 grade 11 learners. more girls (77%) than boys (23%) participated in the study due to a girls-only school being included in the sample, in addition to the other schools having more female than male learners (a 60% girl: 40% boy composition). the sample sizes, overall and per grade, were judged to provide 66 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) adequate power, based on the fact that the whole group participated, with the independent schools being considered a population on their own due to their unique intervention model of schooling. table 1: descriptive statistics of sample (percentage by column for grades) grade gender male female total grade 8 52 20.4% 198 23.1% 250 22.5% grade 9 50 19.6% 201 23.4% 251 22.6% grade 10 87 34.1% 232 27.0% 319 28.7% grade 11 66 25.9% 227 26.5% 293 26.3% total 255 100.0% 858 100.0% 1113 100.0% assessment instruments the curriculum standards for school subjects are contained in the national curriculum and assessment policy statement grades r-12, also known as caps (department of basic education, 2011, 2012). the caps documents aim to set “minimum standards of knowledge and skills to be achieved at each grade” and this includes high, achievable curriculum standards (department of basic education, 2016: 1). the documents also endeavour to show progression in content and context of each subject with development from the basic to the more complex skills and knowledge. in line with the curriculum standards as set by caps, subject specialists designed the assessment instruments for english language, mathematics and natural sciences for grades 8 to 11. the assessments were designed to cover the national curriculum topics that would be taught within a school year. the results provided an indication of knowledge and skills gained for a subject within a year and per curriculum area. multiplechoice items (approximately 60% of a test) and constructed-response items were included in all the assessments. the average scores per school, per class and per learner were fed back into the system via school reports, workshops and data sets containing learner achievement. to give criterion-referenced feedback, a more qualitative approach was also sought to communicate the results, which led to the creation of content descriptive reports discussed in this article. to determine the overall functioning of the monitoring assessments, the rasch partial credit model was applied. rasch measurement theory (rmt) holds up the ideal of measurement and aims to compare real item and person responses to this ideal. where reality diverges from the ideal is where there is an indication for potential improvement (herrmann-abell & deboer, 2015; linacre, 2011). the winsteps 3.75.0 programme provides in-fit and outfit mean-square statistics (mnsq) which reveal where items and persons fit and where there is misfit (linacre, 2012). all statistics are reported in terms of log odds units and have a range of -5.00 to +5.00 with a mean set at 0.00 and a standard deviation of 1.00 (bond & fox, 2015; boone et al., 2014). table 2 shows the ranges for the rasch item fit statistics for the three school subjects and for all four grades. rasch mean square statistics have been found to remain relatively stable for 67 combrinck, scherman & maree the use of rasch competency bands... polytomous item type data and such statistics are relatively independent of sample size (smith et al., 2008). in-fit and outfit mean square statistics (mnsq) should have an expected value of 1.0 and values which are above 2.0 are considered potentially problematic and noisy, while values above 3.0 degrade the measurement (three standard deviations above the mean). the mean ranges per subject were well within acceptable limits for the in-fit and outfit mnsq statistics, with ranges between 0.98 and 1.01 across the three subjects. maximum values of mnsq values show that the mathematics grade 8 and grade 9 tests have outlying items with values above 2.00. the standard deviations are small and within expected limits. the standard error of the item mean lies well within the expected range of ± 0.33 logits, ranging from 0.11 to 0.20. the person separation index ranges were above 2.00, with the exception of one science test, which may require more items to separate low and high performers. for all other instruments, the values above 2.00 indicate that there was an appropriate spread of item difficulties. the item separation index ranges were above 3.00, demonstrating that there were enough learners answering the items to confirm the item difficulty hierarchy (fisher, 2007; linacre, 2011). item reliability was also high, with most tests having reliabilities of .98. overall, the assessment instruments functioned well and were deemed appropriate. it is also important to note that the assessments contained anchor items and cohorts were measured from 2012-2014 providing three points of measurement. the use of anchor items means that extrapolations across cohorts, with regard to progression, could be made. table 2: range of rasch item fit statistics for instruments from grade 8-11 english language mathematics natural science in-fit mnsq outfit mnsq in-fit mnsq outfit mnsq in-fit mnsq outfit mnsq mean 1.01 1.00 1.01 0.99 1.00 1.01 0.98 1.04 1.00 1.01 1.00 1.01 standard deviation 0.08 0.22 0.13 0.15 0.09 0.14 0.23 0.35 0.06 0.09 0.18 0.22 maximum 1.16 1.27 1.25 1.67 1.26 1.47 1.69 -2.76 1.15 1.46 1.53 1.92 minimum 0.80 0.86 0.59 0.73 0.77 0.84 0.45 0.68 0.53 0.72 0.04 0.64 item separation index (reliability) 6.08 (.97) 7.49 (.98) 7.19 (.98) -8.04 (.98) 5.36 (.97) 8.01 (.98) item s.e. of mean 0.12 – 0.14 0.16 – 0.20 0.11 – 0.13 person separation index (reliability) 2.03 (.81) 2.41 (.85) 2.33 (.85) 2.81 (.89) 1.88 (.78) 2.63 (.87) person s.e. of mean 0.03 – 0.05 0.04 – 0.05 0.03 – 0.04 the instruments were designed to gauge curriculum knowledge as specified in the caps documents in a given academic year for a subject. as per good assessment design, a balance of items was designed for each topic area with easier and more difficult items for each topic. however, some topic areas consisted of items that are more difficult whereas other topics may have consisted of easier items. this is not only because of the nature of the topic but also considers that a balanced assessment includes easy, medium difficulty and difficult items. as 68 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) the assessment information is expansive, the grade 9 assessments are used for illustrative purposes and are shown in table 3. table 3: number of items, mean %, comments for grade 9 assessments grade 9 assessment topics number of items mean % comments mathematics data handling & measurement 17 22.21 the data handling and measurement section contained the most difficult items, with the other sections being relatively easier. overall the assessment was challenging for the learners, but item difficulty was set to curriculum standards and workshops were held with teachers to address gaps in learning. number, operations and relationships 11 35.65 patterns, functions and relationships 33 45.15 space and shape (geometry) 14 31.36 grand total 75 english reading for meaning (a) 24 61.42 poetry was the most challenging section for learners with these items being considerably more difficult than items in other sections. the other sections had an even spread of difficulty from easier to more difficult items. teachers said in workshops that poetry is more difficult for second language speakers due to the subtle nature of meaning in poetry. poetry 15 37.16 non-fiction text 16 54.23 visual literacy 8 57.27 reading for meaning (b) 16 64.17 grand total 79 natural science earth and beyond 12 54.90 the topics were spread evenly in terms of difficulty. the life and living section had more difficult items than the other sections, followed by matter and materials. teachers confirmed that these were sections which learners found more challenging in general and strategies for dealing with this was discussed in workshops. energy and change 14 54.43 life and living 30 33.72 matter and materials 31 44.41 grand total 87 procedure the assessments were administered in november 2014, using standardised procedures and examination conditions. the educational research centre trained assessment administrators who implemented the testing process. informed consent was obtained from parents for 69 combrinck, scherman & maree the use of rasch competency bands... learners in all grades and in addition, assent was obtained from learners older than 16 years. after administration of the assessments, specifically recruited and trained teachers conducted the scoring and moderation. thereafter, the assessments were captured on item level and data cleaning, processing and analysis was conducted. the competency bands were set using procedures described in the next sections and thereafter subject specialists crafted the descriptions. once descriptions were available, a report structure was created and reports generated using mail merge. the reports and data files were then sent to the schools to utilise. 3. data analysis proficiency levels the assessments used in this study included items based on a variety of rating scales, from dichotomous items, which had only right or wrong answers to items of five scores, with each increasing score denoting higher ability. considering this, the rasch partial credit model was used to analyse the results so that each item could be treated as an individual rating scale. rasch-thurstone thresholds set the 50% probability level (linacre, 1998). these thresholds identify rating scaling positions on the latent variable at the precise point where observing each category is at the 50% probability level (linacre, 2003, 2009). this dichotomises rating scales of items, so that that an item with, for example three scores (0, 1, 2), are dichotomised at the 0 and 1 as well as the 1 and 2 intersections (linacre, 2003, 2009). this process simplifies the analysis and gives more precise locations as movement from one category to the next is compared per pair of ratings per item. based on the 50% probability levels, the medians were calculated and used to create the number of levels that were decided upon a priori. for example, if five levels were hypothesised to exist in the assessment, the 50% probability levels were divided into five sections after sorting ascendingly and the median of each grouping was calculated which gave the logit points at which to group the person measures, from lower levels of proficiency to higher levels. thereafter item maps, with the bands indicated, were generated and subject specialists were able to utilise the maps and align them with items to create descriptions per band or level. figure 1 illustrates the rasch item map method applied to the english language grade 8 results. subject specialists agreed on three proficiency levels and cut-scores were set using the rasch-thurstone thresholds. 70 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) figure 1: item map – example of generating descriptions for grade 8 english language descriptions of different levels subject specialists for each subject were required to define the content areas of each band as indicated on the item maps after determining the points at which to cut the scores (see figure 1 as example). while it was decided beforehand to set five proficiency levels, examining the item maps showed that this was neither practical nor suitable for each subject. for english language specifically, the specialists determined that there were three proficiency levels when classifying the types of items and abilities associated with the items. based on their recommendations, the levels were recalculated and item maps regenerated. the subject specialist re-examined the items and content in each level and after reviewing the items in each band, a description was generated per level. other specialists reviewed and discussed the descriptions and once consensus was reached among the subject specialists, the descriptions were accepted and used for feedback. table 4 shows the total number of levels per subject as well as examples of descriptions. note that sections of the descriptions are shown as an example to illustrate the method used. 71 combrinck, scherman & maree the use of rasch competency bands... table 4: levels per subject and examples of level descriptions subject levels example english language three levels: • foundational • intermediate • advanced taken from the grade 8 intermediate description*: the learner combines and interprets information from various parts of longer texts using his/her recalled factual knowledge that completes and contextualises meaning within a familiar context. mathematics five levels: • elementary • intermediate • adequate • proficient • advanced taken from the grade 9 proficient description*: learners are able to write numbers in scientific notation and work with large numbers. a learner at this level can reason about decimal numbers and about rational and irrational numbers. the learner can use the operations on fractions in a context and work with the simple and compound interest formulae. natural science four levels: • intermediate • adequate • proficient • advanced taken from the grade 10 adequate description*: learners at the adequate level are able to describe the mole as the si unit for amount of substance. they can do basic stoichiometry calculations. they have some knowledge of ionisation energy. the learners are able to draw lewis dot diagrams of elements. these learners can plot a heating curve for water. *a section of the description for illustration purposes, descriptions per level were more extensive than illustrated here. report design this project served as an external monitoring system but in addition, results were also used to improve the teaching and learning within the schools. teachers and principals attended interactive workshops in which the results were discussed. to give learners criterionreferenced feedback, a learner report format was devised in which the proficiency level with its description was shown as well as the subsequent level for which the learner should aim. each learner received the criterion-referenced report to share with his/her parents. teachers were provided with the learner reports, school reports as well as data sets containing the performance and proficiency levels of each learner per subject and per curriculum area. these results were used by schools to facilitate their intervention plan and to inform extra classes and saturday classes so that learners could be assisted in content areas where developing proficiency was required. table 5 below shows an excerpt from a learner report for grade 8 science. the table in the report first shows the level, in this case adequate and then offers a description of the curriculum-standard attained in the proficiency band. in the last column, the subsequent areas to attain are shown. 72 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) table 5: section of the learner report as an example from a grade 8 natural sciences section level what you have learned what comes next 3 adequate you have gained knowledge about matter, mixtures of elements and compounds. you can recognise the forces between particles and discuss the contraction of materials. you should focus on learning to analyse chemical reactions and bonds as well as identifying which chemical test to use in experiments. learn how to apply your understanding of density in an investigation. 4. results and discussion proficiency levels across different cohorts figure 2 displays the three english language proficiency levels that could have been attained per grade based on the results. in grade 8, 41% of the learners were at the foundational level, 43% at the intermediate level and 16% had reached the advanced level. considering the disadvantaged background of the learners and that they had only been attending school for a year, these results were to be expected. however, with each advancing year, fewer learners should fall in the foundational category with more learners moving to either the intermediate or advanced level. by grade 11, 36% of the learners could be classified as advanced, an improvement on the 16% at grade 8 level. even though these are different cohorts, the selection criteria means that homogenous samples are selected yearly and some indication of improvement can be glimpsed from these results. the results indicate that english language proficiency increases with each advancing grade, possibly due to the increased exposure to english and the intervention model followed by the schools. furthermore, as anchor items are included it is possible to make extrapolations across cohorts. 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% grade 8 41% 43% 16% 38% 44% 18% 25% 56% 19% 11% 53% foundational intermediate advanced 36% grade 9 grade 10 grade 11 figure 2: english language proficiency – percentage of learners in levels per grade in figure 3, the results for the mathematics levels are presented. the results across the different grades remained mostly stable for grade 8, 9 and 10 with the majority of learners 73 combrinck, scherman & maree the use of rasch competency bands... falling into the adequate level. in grade 11, a movement towards the higher levels can be seen and more learners, 45% in total, are at the proficient level. it may take more years for the intervention school model to improve the mathematics ability of learners. improved english language proficiency may also assist in improving performance in mathematics and science by improving the ability to read, comprehend and problem solve. 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% grade 8 2% 22% 45% 27% 3% 4% 31% 40% 23% 2% 3% 25% 43% 27% 2% 0% 7% 33% 45% 15% advanced elementary intermediate adequate proficient grade 9 grade 10 grade 11 figure 3: mathematics proficiency – percentage of learners in levels per grade figure 4 illustrates the proficiency percentage levels of learners attained in the natural sciences assessments. here a reversal of the pattern is observed, with more learners falling into the intermediate level (the least proficient level) with each advancing grade. fewer learners seem to reach the more proficient levels in the higher grades, which may reflect the increasingly complex nature of the content and the challenges of attaining proficiency as difficulty in these content areas increases. 74 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) 100% 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% 10% 0% grade 8 10% 53% 32% 6% 33% 33% 47% 19% 56% 34% 9% 0%1% 53% 13% 1% advanced intermediate adequate proficient grade 9 grade 10 grade 11 figure 4: science proficiency – percentage of learners in levels per grade teachers (n = 25) were asked how useful they found the reports to be. eight per cent commented that they were somewhat useful, 56% reported that they were very useful and 36% verified that they were entirely useful. comments sent by two of the schools are quoted below for illustration purposes. school 1: i love these, and will make sure that we communicate to teachers how to train parents how to read them. we are actively looking at how teachers can get a more accurate picture of every student for intervention. school 2: thank you for these comprehensive reports. they will be very helpful in driving our teaching. figure 5 below illustrates the processes followed to design the learner feedback reports. the first step was to determine the cut-scores using the rasch-thurstone thresholds to calculate where the bands are located. next, the subject specialists examined the items in each band and determined the skills and knowledge represented by each level. subject specialists also influenced the setting of cut-scores when they found that the assessment bands were too broad or did not accurately reflect the proficiency levels. in such cases, subject specialist feedback facilitated recalculation of the bands. in the last stage, other subject specialists examined the descriptions and items and discussions assisted in reaching consensus on the descriptions, which resulted in the report format. 75 combrinck, scherman & maree the use of rasch competency bands... • rasch measures used to calculate cut scores 1. proficiency bands 2. description of levels 3. consensus & report design • examine items in bands • confirm number of bands • devise descriptions • other specialists examine descriptions & consensus reached • format for report devised and give feedback figure 5: process of creating criterion-referenced feedback implications for practice the reporting of learner results should be moving past the “numbers only” era (de vos & belluigi, 2011; green, 2002; ottevanger, van den akker & de feiter; 2007; popham, 1978). increasingly there is a realisation that criterion-referenced results, based on curriculumstandards, are more aligned to the goals of educational assessment, which aims at mapping progression and outlining the subsequent developmental path. in addition, the equal interval measures provided by rmt also provide the opportunity to compare growth and development in subject areas (ingebo, 1989). this study has demonstrated the combination of using rasch-thurstone thresholds to set cut-scores for the proficiency levels and the value of subject specialists examining the items in the bands to create descriptions of the curriculum-standards represented by each band. the fact that not all subjects lend themselves to the same number of proficiency levels points to the fact that the quantitative numbers, the rasch logits and the qualitative interpretations, by subject specialists, need to interact to inform the most appropriate definitions and explanations of what proficiency in a subject area means. giving learners criterion-referenced feedback removes the focus from only aiming to attain a symbol and refocuses it on becoming more proficient in a learning area. this type of feedback is valuable in assisting teachers focus on specific subject areas in the curriculum, particularly where there are gaps in understanding so that learners can move more smoothly along the continuum of developing proficiency in a subject area. when teachers refocus their teaching, they are also likely to align their classroom assessments to the changes. there are of course, limitations of implementation. not all assessments have been designed to give criterion-referenced feedback. the process of setting cut-scores, creating descriptions for proficiency levels and validating the process requires expertise and resources to which teachers may not always have access. it should also be noted that in contexts where there are a greater number of learners in a class, it might also be more challenging to give each child 76 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) such detailed feedback. where external assessments such as systemic and standardised tests are concerned, the focus may be on norm-referenced results for comparative purposes. this article suggests that even when benchmarking and comparing learners, schools or systems is the aim of the assessment, criterion-referenced reporting should be included as it can positively influence the learners and teachers and is specifically linked to curriculumstandards attainment. large-scale assessments and systemic testing can be costly to implement and time-consuming for learners while disrupting teaching and school functioning. as a matter of social responsibility, the findings from such studies and assessments should be used to directly benefit the learners and criterion-referenced reporting is one way this can be accomplished. while there are still challenges for reporting criterion-referenced results, the findings in this article suggests that progressively more emphasis should be placed on this type of feedback and less on norm-referenced feedback. the rasch theory can effectively be used to set cutscores to create proficiency bands and subject specialists should provide descriptions of each level and curriculum-standards represented in levels. the rasch item map method can be used to align assessments and curriculum-standards by linking content to results. this results in diagnostic type feedback, which can be used by learners, parents and teachers to enhance teaching and learning. future research it is suggested that continued research could expand the findings by having larger samples and conducting cross-validation studies using subsets of learners or test items (jiao et al., 2011). this would allow for examining the reproducibility of the competency levels in various sample sizes of learners and items across time. more stable parameters for classifying learners into competency bands could be identified, increasing the correct classification of persons. ways in which to introduce criterion-referenced reporting in the school system should also be explored. possibilities include assessments or items on a platform for 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need to understand the enmeshment of gender, class, age and other forms of social inequality, and how these are played out in ‘normal’ heterosexual relationships. life orientation (lo) sexuality education programmes have been viewed as key locations for incorporating education to challenge negative assumptions in respect of hiv/aids, gender-based violence and unwanted pregnancy and to promote safer, equitable and non-violent sexual practices. there is a paucity of work that interrogates the lo sexuality education programme in terms of gender norms, gender justice and gender transformation. in the handful of studies conducted on school-based sexuality education in south africa, researchers have foregrounded a number of challenges, including the dominance of a guiding metaphor of danger and disease in the sexuality education component of lo manuals (macleod, 2009); educators using a transmission mode of teaching to the exclusion of participation and experiential modes of learning (rooth, 2005); educators understanding sexuality education as chiefly addressing the provision of information concerning, and prevention of, hiv/aids (francis, 2011); teachers’ preference for abstinence-only education taught by means of a series of moral injunctions (francis, 2011); and the avoidance of discussions of sexual diversity, and the endorsement of compulsory heterosexuality when same-sex relationships are mentioned (francis, 2012). recent research tamara shefer women’s and gender studies university of the western cape e-mail: tshefer@uwc.ac.za tel: 0219592234 catriona macleod critical studies in sexualities and reproduction rhodes university e-mail: c.macleod@ru.ac.za tel: 0466037328 perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 2 has also highlighted the variation in how teachers approach sexuality education. francis and depalma (2014) indicate that, while teachers may promote abstinence as the only appropriate choice for young people, they also recognise the value of teaching relationships and safe sex (aspects associated with comprehensive sexuality education). in their study, helleve et al. (2009) report that grades 8 and 9 lo teachers felt confident in teaching hiv and sexuality. this special issue of perspectives in education builds on this research by drawing together several papers that examine how lo or life skills sexuality programmes challenge and/or reproduce normative constructions of gender and gendered power relations. all the papers use qualitative research to locate these programmes within the complex contexts of their enactment, drawing attention to the multiple possibilities and limitations of such programmes. in the next section, we summarise the key problematics addressed in each of the papers. what curiosities drove the studies conducted by these researchers interested in gender dynamics in schools and lo or life skills sexuality education? why are these curiosities important? we then highlight the key findings that emerged from these curiosities and the nuanced data collected. finally, and most importantly in terms of the aims of this special issue, we address the ways in which a critical gender lens that facilitates gender transformation and gender justice could possibly be incorporated into lo or life skills sexuality programmes. problematics addressed in the papers the six papers in this special issue all draw on rich qualitative research to investigate sexualities in the context of school-based sexuality education. the importance of in-depth qualitative work in the field of sexualities is increasingly being recognised. while quantitative research can measure sexual effects and attitudes, good qualitative work allows an examination of the complex social, cultural, and political constructions of sexuality (attwood, 2005). tolman, hirschman and impett (2005) argue that, through its methodological rigour, qualitative research allows the power of stories to come into their own, thereby providing policymakers with important information on the complexity of problems regarding sexualities and suggesting possible solutions. four of the papers featured in this special issue, namely those by nicola jeareygraham and catriona macleod; lou-marie kruger, tamara shefer and antoinette oakes; andisiwe mthatyana and louise vincent, and tamara shefer and sisa ngabaza, use interviews, focus-group discussions and/or ethnographic work with high school learners or with further education and training students to collect in-depth data on how young people talk about sexualities. amidst public controversies over hiv, teenage pregnancy, and violent sexualities, the public-health imperative to reduce sexual and reproductive health problems, as well as the invocation of the responsible sexual citizen in sexuality education programmes, the voices of young life orientation sexuality education in south africa: gendered norms, justice and transformation tamara shefer & catriona macleod 3 people regarding their sexual subjectivities are easily drowned out, as pointed out by the authors of these papers. these four papers partially fill a gap in providing careful listening to what young people are saying. jearey-graham and macleod (in this issue) report on focus-group discussions, held with further education and training students in a small town in the eastern cape, about their understandings of high school sexualities and their memories of school-based sexuality education lessons. kruger et al. (in this issue), mthatyana and vincent (in this issue), as well as shefer and ngabaza (in this issue) draw on research conducted as part of a large research project based in eastern cape and western cape schools. this project, funded by the south africa-netherlands research programme on alternatives in development (sanpad), sought to understand how sexuality education challenges or reproduces normative gender constructions and power relations. kruger et al. (in this issue) present data from interviews and focus-group discussions with young coloured grade 10 female learners from a school in a semi-rural, low-income, coloured community in the western cape. mthatyana and vincent (in this issue) conducted ethnographic research that included three months of classroom observations, interviews, focus-group discussions and solicited narratives from grades 10 and 11 learners at a former model c single-sex girls’ school in the eastern cape. shefer and ngabaza’s (in this issue) paper draws on in-depth interviews and focus-group discussions with grade 10 learners in a former model c school, three former coloured schools and a former african ‘township’ school in the western cape. in order to foreground fine-grained readings of young people’s talk about sexualities, these four papers draw on several conceptual and methodological tools. jearey-graham and macleod (in this issue) use discursive psychology, in which discursive resources are viewed as enabling and constraining meaning and allowing young people to take up various sexual subject positions. kruger, shefer and oakes’ (in this issue) interest is in sexual agency. using a social constructionist conceptualisation of sexual agency that situates agency, as the capacity to define life choices, within material, social, and cultural context, they seek to understand young women’s constructions of their sexualities. mthatyana and vincent (in this issue) deploy the theoretical concepts of ‘student sexual cultures’ and feminine ‘community of practice’ to analyse the complex and variable learnings about sexuality and gendered identities in the particular school in which they conducted their ethnography. shefer and ngabaza use a critical gender lens to assess how the dominant punitive response to young women’s sexuality is reproduced and/or destabilised. each of the papers carefully unpacks, through these particular theoretical lenses, the complexities of young people’s sexualities. the final two papers, namely by catriona macleod, dale moodley and lisa savilleyoung, and deevia bhana, introduce new and innovative ways of viewing sexuality education. macleod et al. (in this issue) contrast the lo manuals used in the grade 10 classes in two eastern cape schools with the songs voted most popular by these perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 4 students. as two diverse forms of sexual socialisation to which young people are exposed, the comparison between the two texts provides a juxtaposition between what young people are required to learn in class and what they prefer to listen to in their free time. drawing on discursive psychology, macleod et al. (in this issue) seek to understand the interactive sexual subject positions invoked in the sexuality education components of lo manuals and popular music tracks. bhana’s paper (in this issue) draws attention to a neglected aspect of research in sexuality education, namely the foundation phase life skills programme. noting the dominance of a framework of childhood innocence that understands children as asexual and degendered, bhana interviews a teacher, mrs z, about her teaching of life skills in grade 2 in an impoverished african ‘township’ school in durban. bhana seeks to understand, through the eyes of this teacher, how it may be possible to teach a positive sexuality amid sexual danger and gender inequalities in the foundation phase. results and conclusions of the papers the findings of the papers in this special edition resonate with, and serve to deepen, much of what we already know about educational responses to young people’s sexual practices internationally and locally. many of the contributions triangulate each others’ findings and elaborate on key themes that have been increasingly documented in south african scholarship on young people at school, including research on gender, sexuality and hiv/aids, lo sexuality education, and pregnancy and parenting while at school. overall, the papers presented in this issue reiterate an already-identified gap between policy intentions and lived experience and practices with respect to gender and sexuality at schools (for example, morrell et al., 2002; morrell et al., 2012; ngabaza & shefer, 2013). thus, while sexuality education is directed towards gender equality and challenging inequalities that manifest in unsafe, coercive and violent practices, these articles illustrate not only a lack of impact, but also ways in which what is taught and what is heard by young people may even rationalize and reinforce the discourses that make such practices possible. while some teachers clearly view lo sexuality education as a tool for gender change, as shown by deevia bhana’s (in this issue) case study of one teacher, this project is undermined by multiple factors, many of which are illuminated in these papers. one of the strongest threads resonating across these studies is that of the discourse of danger, disease and damage identified in local contexts as a dominant discourse in lo educational materials (macleod, 2009). the current studies reiterate larger concerns, both local and international, that sexuality education is primarily framed in a negative construction of young sexualities, with emphasis on a regulatory, disciplinary and punitive response to young people’s sexual desires and practices. studies unpack and provide qualitative evidence that young people are receiving messages in which the negative consequences of sexuality are foregrounded and in life orientation sexuality education in south africa: gendered norms, justice and transformation tamara shefer & catriona macleod 5 which their sexual agency is conflated with an inevitable negative result – unwanted pregnancy, disease and violence. thus, young people appear to be primarily told ‘what not to do’ within a framework that does not seem to reflect or represent their own experiences or desires. such a construction of young sexualities is further bolstered by a prevailing adult-child binarism that assumes adults as authorities on sexuality that has been documented in other work on sexuality and gender at school (allen, 2007a; francis, 2011). in this issue, lo curriculum for all its intentions emerges as shaped by a moralistic response, which continues to deny young sexual desires and practices, constructing children and youth as asexual and gender-neutral. bhana (in this issue), for example, shows how the terms ‘sex’ and ‘sexuality’ are avoided in the foundation phase lo curriculum and offers a critique of the lack of a more explicit location of sexuality education within the broader context of gender inequitable relations at schools. notably, this framing narrative of consequence and responsibility in sexuality education, evident through both the voices of teachers and young people themselves, is shown in this set of work to be powerfully gendered at multiple levels. thus, the consequences of young sexualities are feminized such that young women are primarily the subjects of danger, disease and damage. within this gendered scrutiny of young people’s sexualities, with young women set up as the victims, and men as the perpetrators, consequences are to young women’s account. such a narrative then reproduces a discourse of responsibility, or responsibilisation, which macleod et al. (in this issue: 90) define as “a key (neo)liberal project that uses the rhetoric of youth-at-risk to incite youth into individualised management of the self”. kruger et al. (in this issue) unpack in some depth the complex and often contradicatory messages about how young women should exercise agency over their sexuality” that emerge in their study. they show how young women are taught that abstaining from sex is the only option and that they should take responsibility for this, while at the same time implicitly being told to follow prescribed gender practices in which the desires and needs of men should be dominant. linked to the notion of responsibilisation developed by macleod et al. as well as the complexities of messages provided for young women in particular, as shown by kruger et al. (in this issue), is another key thread in these articles, namely the decontextualised and atheoretical way in which sexuality education is taught, both in the classroom and in the materials used. a neo-liberal discourse, in which young people are offered individual solutions, hinging around self-discipline and being “responsible” social agents, emerges in many of the papers. macleod et al. (in this issue) specifically flag how the project of lo, as articulated in lo manuals, hinges around such narratives. mthathyana and vincent (in this issue: 49) illustrate how young women specifically locate their learnings in lo as a call to “individualism” in response to a curriculum underpinned by “discourses of enlightened choice and rational individualism”. a lack of appreciation in the lo curriculum of the perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 6 contexts within which young people are located, including their localised subjective experiences, thoughts and challenges, is further highlighted through young people’s response to lo and sexuality education, in particular. several articles specifically document a disinterest in these lessons and a sense of lo sexuality education as irrelevant to their lives (for example, mthatyana & vincent [in this issue], jearygraham & macleod [in this issue]). jearey-graham and macleod (in this issue: 11) call this a “discourse of disconnect” which refers to “a disconnection between what young people see as habitable and performable sexual subject positions and the responsible sexual subject position that many sexuality classes and parents attempt to create” and specifically call attention to challenges in respect of communication and the inability of both teachers and parents to engage in more appropriate, less authoritative ways with young people in talking about sexuality. a further linked and central issue explored in several papers is that of the complexity of pedagogical challenges in the teaching of lo sexuality education. these are shown to be related both to inadequacies within the normative information-based methodologies used in teaching lo and to the capacity and context of lo teachers themselves. some local research has already called attention to such challenges, foregrounding, in particular, the failings of a didactic model of education for sexuality education and teachers’ discomfort in teaching (francis, 2011, 2013; rooth, 2005). the discourse of disconnect identified by jeary-graham and macleod (in this issue) speaks to the dominance of authoritative, adult-centred, non-relational mode of communication in sexualities education that is reinforced in home and community contexts. participants in this study and in others represented in this issue continue to reiterate the lack of effectivity of such modes of communication and are arguing to be heard. several papers call for young people’s voices to be a more central part of lo sexuality education lessons and “a more critical and reflexive approach to working with young people” (shefer & ngabaza, in this issue: 63). this also suggests more reflexivity on the part of educators and those who write the materials for these classes, in order to avoid the range of normative discourses being reproduced in such classes, as deconstructed in these studies. implications and recommendations for lo sexuality education in schools the group of papers that make up this special edition highlight the importance of a critical feminist gaze in assessing young schoolgoing men’s and women’s experiences of sexuality education, both in the materials used and in the response and engagement of teachers, schools, families and the community. it is evident from the data collected in these studies that the implementation of sexuality education, in this group of south african schools at least, is falling short of its goals – it appears to be failing, for the most part, to ‘speak’ to young people in helpful ways and to impact positively on their practices and experiences. participants in these studies appear life orientation sexuality education in south africa: gendered norms, justice and transformation tamara shefer & catriona macleod 7 to disregard and judge these lessons as irrelevant, and in some schools such classes are not valued or taken seriously by either learners or teachers. moreover, in many instances, the lessons are experienced as disciplinary, as foregrounding regulation and punishment in a negative construction of young sexualities. importantly, there is a great deal of evidence in the analyses presented in this issue that not only are such classes failing to impact positively on young people’s practices and experiences of gender and sexuality, but they appear to be reproducing the very discourses that shape unequal gendered sexual practices, including coercive, unsafe and inequitable sexual intimacies. it is of great concern that some teachers and some materials appear to reinforce gender stereotypes and male power as well as heteronormativity and heterosexism either blatantly or in more nuanced ways. it is of further concern that educators and the material they use continue to function in a pedagogical system where adult authority and expertise is assumed and young sexualities are denied or assumed non-existent, while young people are viewed as inherently irresponsible, requiring adult control and policing. the papers also raise some important areas for re-thinking sexuality education for schoolgoing young people in different, more reflexive ways. at a fundamental level, the goals of the lo sexuality education curriculum need inspection. if, as suggested in the papers in this special issue, the responsibilisation of young people rests in the core learning outcomes envisaged for lo sexuality education, then these outcomes, together with the underpinning pedagogical assumptions, need careful inspection. there is a growing call for a critical pedagogy of sexuality education in the context of the multiple sexual and reproductive challenges faced by youth in this country (campbell & macphail, 2002; francis, 2010; macleod & vincent, 2014). the implications of such an approach, in terms of how lo sexuality education is envisaged, need careful analysis and need to be threaded through curriculum statements and the underpinning documentation of lo sexuality education. the papers in this special issue emphasize the need for more work with educators and schools, as well as the materials used. these studies reinforce other work in the field that shows the way in which teachers and schools themselves are invested in particular moralities, normative expectations of gender, culture, family and sexuality (baxen & breidlid, 2004; beyers, 2011; de palma & francis, 2014; francis, 2012; shefer, bhana & morrell, 2013). this raises the importance of facilitating self-reflexivity among educators in conjunction with a stronger gendered and intersectional, contextual and critical knowledge that would allow for more sensitivity to power relations, including that of adult-child relationships and gender and other social inequalities. being able to reflect on one’s own values and moralities and how these may shape engagement with young people in the sexuality education class, and more broadly in the school environment, emerges in this instance, as it does in literature on pregnancy and parenting at school, as an important imperative for educators who work with young people. in considering the kinds of lessons currently being ‘prescribed’ or at least ‘heard’ by young people, more reflexivity and critical analysis may assist in reshaping perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 8 the dominance of the negative construction of young sexualities (through the ‘danger, disease, damage’ discourse and the negation of young sexuality) as well as destabilizing the reproduction of normative gender discourses and rationalization of gender inequality. finally, a key implication emerging from these studies is the significance of appreciating young people as agents in sexuality education and more broadly in the school, the home and the community – to put it simply, of taking young people, their thoughts, feelings, experiences and desires, seriously. as mthathyana and vincent (in this issue: 61) put it: a curriculum aimed at ‘life orientation’ cannot make sense unless it takes seriously the diverse orientations to life, priorities, meanings and desires that circulate in pupils’ lived, everyday experience. authors in this special edition are similarly in agreement with the value of “greater engagement with young people’s own constructions of desired sexualities” and how lo programmes should allow for “dialogue in which students’ own stories and experiences of sex are heard” (jeary-graham & macleod, in this issue: *). the centering of young people and their subjective and dialogical meanings and experiences in sexuality education echoes a larger national and global focus on alternative, innovative, student-centred pedagogies. in this way, pedagogical practices in sexuality education would resist ‘teaching’ and ‘telling’ and focus more on active dialogue, with young people themselves leading their ‘lessons’. it is important, however, that these engagements with learner-centred stories and dialogue be framed within social justice goals. as louisa allen (2007b) points out in the new zealand context, in making suggestions for sexuality education, young people may deploy dominant discourses that serve to perpetuate social inequities. she argues that the youth-centred and social justice aims may be reconciled by employing methods that allow for a diversity of voices, that encourage minority views, and that highlight contradictions and complexities. in conclusion, lo remains a potentially valuable resource for working with young people in ways that are constructive and agentic, rather than punitive and prohibitory, that encourage critical thinking rather than prescribe and constrain, and that challenge normative discourses that result in exclusionary, violent and unequal practices. sexualities education is similarly a potential space for young people to talk about their own desires and experiences, not only for generating awareness of how sexual practices may be shaped by inequalities and result in negative outcomes, but also for facilitating the appreciation of diverse sexualities and sexuality as positive and pleasurable. life orientation sexuality education in south africa: gendered norms, justice and transformation tamara shefer & catriona macleod 9 acknowledgements we are indebted to jean baxen who liaised with perspectives in education concerning our proposal for this special issue and who provided valuable review and in-put during the editing of the journal. four of the papers featured in this special issue, as well as the special issue itself, were enabled by funding provided by the south africa-netherlands research programme on alternatives in development (sanpad). thank you to our dutch partners, annemiek richters and anke van der kwaak, for support and guidance. thank you to megan reuvers, for her assistance with the administration underpinning the review process. references allen l 2007a. denying the sexual subject: schools’ regulation of student sexuality. british educational research journal, 33(2): 221-234. allen l 2007b. examining dominant discourses of sexuality in sexuality education research. international studies in sociology of education, 17(1-2): 163-180. attwood f 2005. what do people do with porn? qualitative research into the comsumption, use, and experience of pornography and other sexually explicit media. sexuality and culture, 9(2): 65-86. baxen j & breidlid a 2004. researching hiv/aids and education in sub-saharan africa: examining the gaps and challenges. journal of education, 34: 9-30. beyers c 2011. sexuality education in south africa: a sociocultural perspective. acta academica, 43(3): 192-209. campbell c & macphail c 2002. peer education, gender and the development of critical consciousness: participatory hiv prevention by south african youth. social science and medicine, 55(2): 331-345. francis da 2010. sexuality education in south africa : three essential questions. international journal of educational development, 30: 314-319. francis da 2011. sexuality education in south africa: wedged within a triad of contradictory values. journal of psychology in africa, 21(2): 317-322. francis da 2012. teacher positioning on the teaching of sexual diversity in south african schools. culture, health and sexuality, 14(6): 597-611. francis da 2013. sexuality, society and pedagogy. bloemfontein: african sun media. francis da, depalma r 2014. teacher perspectives on abstenance and safe sex education in south africa. sex education, 14(1): 81-94. helleve a, flisher aj, onya h 2009. teachers’ confidence in teaching hiv/aids and sexuality in south african and tanzanian schools. scandinavian journal of public health, 37 suppl 2: 55-64. macleod c 2009. danger and disease in sex education: the saturation of ‘adolescence’ with colonialist assumptions. journal of health management, 11(2): 375-389. perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 10 macleod c & vincent l 2014. introducing a critical pedagogy of sexual and reproductive citizenship: extending the ‘framework of thick desire’. in k quinlivan, m rasmussen & l allen (eds), interrogating the politics of pleasure in sexuality education: pleasure bound (pp. 199-236). london: routledge. morrell r, bhana d & shefer t. (eds) 2012 books and/or babies: pregnancy and young parents in school. cape town: hsrc press. morrell r, moletsane r, karim q, epstein d & unterhalter e 2002. the school setting: opportunities for integrating gender equality and hiv risk reduction interventions. agenda, 17(53): 11-21. rooth e 2005. an investigation of the status and practice of life orientation in south african schools in two provinces. unpublished doctoral dissertation, university of the western cape, cape town. shefer t, bhana d & morrell r 2013. teenage pregnancy and parenting at school in contemporary south african contexts: deconstructing school narratives and understanding policy implementation. perspectives in education, 31(1): 1-10. tolman dl, hirschman c & impett ea 2005. there is more to the story: the place of qualitative research on female adolescent sexuality in policy making. sexuality research and social policy, 2(4): 4-17. 1 ontologies and possibilities of human rights: exploring dissensus to facilitate reconciliation in post-conflict education contexts abstract in light of growing critique of human rights and human rights education, this article explores ontologies of human rights, the possibilities they present for dissensus and how this could influence human rights education in post-conflict education contexts towards reconciliation. we draw on dembour’s (2010) categorisation of the different schools of human rights and ranciere’s (2004) two forms of rights to explore possible constructing points of dissensus. the data obtained in a nrf funded project human rights literacy: a quest for meaning (roux, 2012), indicate that student-teachers are disillusioned by human rights and perceive a conflict between what human rights are (contextual) and could (idealistic) be. while we concur with keet (2015) that there is a need for “critical human rights education” (keet, 2015) we focus on human action and the structuring of dissensus within political, social and educational spaces as crucial to the continual formulation, claims, rejection, amendments and recognition of human rights. in conclusion, we pose that human rights education should be a continual dissonant process, enabling moments of dissensus within intersecting spaces of (non)existing rights. keywords: action, dissensus, human rights, human rights edu­ cation, ontology, post-conflict education contexts, reconciliation 1. introduction during the last two decades, human rights education (hereafter hre) has become an integral part of international discourses on education policy (baja, 2011). the member states of the council of europe define hre as educational programmes and activities promoting equality in dignity in conjunction with intercultural learning and empowering minorities. mihr (2015: 535) describes hre as a “concept based on acknowledgement, awareness, empathy, em­ power ment, and the actions of people to change a current situation in accordance with human rights values, norms and standards”. the link between human rights and education is stipulated in the preamble of the universal declaration of human rights (1948; hereafter udhr). the udhr (1948) also serves as the blueprint for hre curricula and pedagogical texts (keet, 2015). in recent years, however it prof petro du preez *corresponding author. north west university (potchefstroom). email: jabecker@mweb.co.za dr anne becker stellenbosch university doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i3.1 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(3): 1-14 © uv/ufs 2 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) has become clear that the field of hre is conceptually imprisoned, unproductive, conforms to declarationism and is uncritical (keet, 2012; keet, 2015; zembylas, 2016). human rights and hre have lost their dissident and rebellious spirit (kapur, 2006) in line with the global and local focus on hre and human rights in education, south africa has based its post­apartheid curricula on the premise of the constitution of south africa and the bill of rights (1996). the manifesto on values, education and democracy and the bill of responsibilities for the youth of south africa, which were published in 2011, emphasise the rights and responsibilities relating to equality, human dignity, education, social justice and equity as well as non­racism and non­sexism, respect and reconciliation (verster, 2014). data from the nrf funded project human rights literacy: a quest for meaning (roux, 2012) indicate that despite the availability of multiple policy documents on hre and human rights in education, student­teachers lack knowledge of human rights and many seemed to be disillusioned to the possibilities of human rights and hre to bring about reconciliation and social change. although reconciliation carries assumptions of restoration, harmonisation, coexistence and of going back to pre­existing relations (krog, 1998), within south african contexts, this is impossible. south africans need a­new conciliation within a constitutional democracy premised on human rights values. if, however, as keet (2015: 47) argues, hre accepts that “things are what they are” and through this acceptance normalises inequalities and other human rights violations, it has lost any emancipatory and transformative capabilities to renew the south african society. in light of recent critique of human rights, hre and student­teachers’ responses to the questions in the survey used to collect data for the project referred to above, this article explores ontologies of human rights, the possibilities they present for dissensus (ranciere, 2004) and how this could influence hre in post-conflict education contexts. the responses cited below imply that the student teachers concerned perceive two conflicting sides to the nature of human rights: an idealistic expectation and a contextual reality. they see these as fixed and static and in direct opposition to each other: are you questioning the reality/contextual [emphasis original text] nature of human rights or the idealistic nature hereof? (surveyq74) in an idealist world, human rights would be great value. (surveyq74) there are multiple ontological stances to human rights. donnelly (2007), in advocating for the relative universality of human rights, argues that although universality in terms of the functionality and overlapping legal consensus on human rights can be defended, ontological and anthropological universality remains an empirical, philosophical and political impossibility. for ranciere (2004) there are two forms of rights. firstly, written rights describing all humans as free and equal in for example, documents such as the udhr (1948). written rights express the abstract ideal that all members of the human family have the inalienable right to freedom, dignity, equality, justice and peace. these written rights assume the possibilities of the existence and non-existence of human rights (ranciere, 2004). while the first form of rights includes the (non)existence of human rights, the second form of rights is concerned with human action and creativity within the intersection of (non)existing human rights. it alludes to those (humans) who decide to “use” their rights by constructing dissensus (ibid). 3 du preez & becker ontologies and possibilities of human rights scholars such as stenner (2011), parekh (2007) and dembour (2010) attempted to explore the ways people make sense of human rights. stenner (2011) explored subjective understandings of human rights and concluded that ‘ordinary people’ understand human rights as grounded universals, radical political action, socio­political constructions and agreements balanced against responsibilities. parekh (2007) and dembour (2010) used human rights academic literature to explore ontological stances on human rights. parekh (2007) explores arendt’s notion of human rights (that human rights are the conditions making human life possible [parekh, 2007]) in relation to essentialist and anti­essentialist groundings of human rights. essentialist groundings concern the notion that human rights are related to essential features of human beings or morality. anti­essentialist groundings have a refusal to employ metaphysical principles to human rights in common – human rights are based on affective, pragmatist and/or communal interests (parekh, 2007). in exploring the question: what are human rights? dembour (2010: 2) works on the assumption that “different people hold different concepts of human rights”. she groups academic writings on human rights into four schools of thought: the natural school, the deliberative school, the protest school and the discourse school (dembour, 2010). the typology of the four schools of thought on human rights should not be regarded as fixed categories but rather as identifications of connections and intersections among broad orientations to human rights. scholars such as simmonds (2014), verster (2014), becker (2013) and baja (2011) have explored the possible implications for hre and human rights in education because of dembour’s (2010) typology. baja (2011) for example, uses dembour’s typology to position three ideological approaches to hre. although dembour (2010) has human rights critiques in mind, baja (2011) orientates her three ideological orientations (hre for global citizenship, hre for co-existence and hre for transformative action) as fluctuating around fixed human rights universals as reference point (keet, 2015, becker, de wet & van vollenhoven, 2015). in this article, dembour’s categories and its possibilities are used as a point of departure in the search for intersecting spaces of human rights critique in which humans can act and dissensus can be constructed (ranciere, 2004; parekh, 2007). we pose the following research questions: what possibilities do various ontological stances on human rights hold for the construction of dissensus? how do these influence hre in south africa? our aim is to show how contending ontologies see (non)existing human rights and what they could contribute to constructing points of dissensus in order to facilitate reconciliation within post-conflict education contexts. we argue that the possibilities of human rights lie within intersecting ontological spaces where dissensus could be constructed (ranciere, 2004; žiźek, 2005). within such spaces, human rights and hre can be an object of discussion among ‘everyone, everywhere’. human rights and hre can be renewed within political, social and educational spaces by continually formulating, claiming, rejecting, amending and recognising human rights anew (azoulay, 2014). 2. theoretical underpinnings central to ontological explorations of human rights and the identification of possibilities for structuring dissensus, is the possession paradox of human rights. the universal and abstract nature of human rights described in the udhr (1948), (which acts as a blueprint for hre [keet, 2015]) is based on the premise that all humans have human rights by virtue of being human and that all humans are equally and unalterably human (donnelly, 2007). this however, only indicates that if human rights exist or are accepted within certain contexts then 4 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) those humans share human rights equally (donnelly, 2007). however, the statement that all members of the human race are free and equal is paradoxical (donnelly, 2013; dembour, 2010). donnelly (2013) argues that having a right is of greatest value when one does not have it. the paradox is that one can ‘have’; and ‘not have’ (enjoy) a right at the same time. ranciere (2004: 302) explains this paradox when posing that human rights are held by all humans (the subjects of rights) “who have not the rights that they have and have the rights that they have not”. although, for example, all human beings might be included in abstract rights, the subjects of human rights are continually being constituted and separated by means of in(ex)clusions in the global sphere of capitalism, imperialism and neo­colonialism (becker & du preez, 2016; žiźek, 2014; zizek, 2005; ranciere, 2004). the possession paradox of human rights exposes the intersecting spaces of (non)existing rights in which possibilities for human action and dissensus present itself. in the aftermath of world war ii, there was strong interest in identifying principles that would protect individual human rights. one result was the drafting of the udhr (1948) based on the natural rights theory. a natural law approach to human rights contends that a legal system can only be effective if it meets the demands of values that have eternal and universal aspects: “[it] can be viewed as an attempt to work out the principles that might reconcile the ‘is’ and the ‘ought’ in law” (shestack, 2006: 5). scholars from the natural and deliberative schools rely on principles of law to define human rights and to address the possession paradox; the natural school looks to positive law and the deliberative school to constitutional law (dembour, 2010). in discussing ontological questions, scholars of the natural school argue that human rights are ‘obvious’ and exist as law (donnelly, 2013). scholars from the deliberative school, on the other hand, argue that human rights are the consensually agreed upon political principles expressed in constitutions (dembour, 2010). although the deliberative school like the natural school grounds human rights in law, it regards human rights as agreed upon, providing a political, global and local ‘code of conduct’ (ibid). the natural school argues that natural rights influence conventional human rights norms and documents and affirm the core principles of human rights. the notion of natural rights does however not clarify what constitutes human rights and how many rights there are/ could be. the inability of abstract, universal and natural rights to translate into substantive rights highlights the possession paradox of human rights. the illusion that abstract rights translate into changed social realities furthermore aids the distrust in human rights and hre (keet, 2015; becker & du preez, 2016). an alternative would be to define human rights as ‘invented’ – as political decisions, customs and conventions (law, 2007). those in the deliberative school argue that global justice requires a system of international human rights law. they draw on the principles of the social contract as conceptualised by rawls (shestack, 2006). these are that equally positioned humans with respect for power and freedom come together and through dialogue reach consensus on matters of justice and human rights (ibid). consensus remains relevant and beneficial to many contexts but in postconflict contexts, such as south africa, the possibilities of equally positioned humans are limited. ranciere (2004: 306) cautions that consensus (especially in unequal power relations) means “closing the spaces of dissensus” and that in reaching consensus, the abstract rights of all who “do not have rights while they have rights” are tentatively and temporarily turned into real rights (ibid). dissensus is relegated to being a consensual process in which rights are distributed and each part of the social body obtains the best that it can hope for (ibid). 5 du preez & becker ontologies and possibilities of human rights dissensus is constructed when humans act, as the subjects of human rights, on the given. a dissensus is not a conflict of interest, values or opinions; it is a reaction on what is given (ranciere, 2004). it is the decisions and actions of humans related to an inherent (non) existence of human rights within the framework of written human rights. within the intersecting spaces of the ideals of abstract rights and the non­existence thereof in social reality, humans choose to use their rights. they take what is assumed to be given or assumed to be “what they are” (keet, 2015) and continually create and re­create human rights. those who fall into the protest school view ontological questions from a socio­historic and a struggle perspective in which human rights are defined as the aspirations of the oppressed (dembour, 2010). heyns (2006) argues that human rights and legitimate resistance such as acting and reacting in intersecting spaces of (non)existing human rights can be seen as the flipsides of a coin. he refers to this as the ‘struggle approach’ to human rights, captured in the expression human rights/legitimate resistance (ibid). for scholars in the protest school, a struggle approach to human rights is intimately tied to the historical development of the ideals of human rights. they argue that human rights should exist and that they should be embodied in the continual and historical fight for the rights of the oppressed (dembour, 2010). the political affirmation of human rights in the udhr (1948) did not result in a peaceful post­historic world characterised by global democracy, as was the hope. as ranciere (2004: 297) argues, “the territory of ‘posthistorical’ and peaceful humanity proved to be the territory of new figures of the inhuman”. history cannot provide a full account of the validation and ontologies of human rights. a single authoritative account or interpretation is not possible. the historical perspectives that we have, merely capture what human rights were/are at a specific time and in a specific place and space. we argue that although the continual critique of human rights and hre (keet, 2012; 2015; zymbalis, 2016) is of the utmost importance, the actions of humans on the given is crucial to the continual renewal of human rights and hre. acting on the given and structuring dissensus, arendt (1958), keet (2015) and ranciere (2004) argue that this is only possible in political spaces. political spaces form the intersections of “the abstract literalness of the rights and the polemic about their verification” (ranciere, 2004: 308). it is important to note that ranciere does not refer to ngos or political groups who claim or use rights for others. the subjects of human rights act on the given and use their rights within political spaces. closing social and political spaces by consensus or by interventions, for example, disable possibilities for dissensus and render human rights of no value. they become the rights of victims and the rights of those who are unable to enact their rights (ranciere, 2004). when human rights are of no value they are passed on as acts of charity, “along with medicine and clothes”, to those who are subjected to the “inhuman” (ranciere, 2004: 308). human rights become humanitarian rights, opening up possibilities for humanitarian intervention and invasion (ranciere, 2004). in a reaction to what they perceive as the imperialist and neo­colonial nature of humani­ tarian rights, scholars in the discourse school argue that human rights do not exist and are only talked about (dembour, 2010). discourse scholars argue that a replacement for human rights, as a possible emancipation project, should be searched for (dembour, 2010). neocosmos (2006) argues that humans are imprisoned by essentialist notions of human rights as judicial subjects/objects and passive victims. scholars from the discourse school focus their critique of human rights on exclusions (within the frame of abstract rights), the failure to acknowledge the other, identity politics, the moral and political core of universal 6 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) rights and the capitalist premise of such rights (becker & du preez, 2016; zembylas & bozalek, 2014; cistelecan, 2011; žižek, 2005; rancière, 2004). kapur (2006) argues that normative claims, such as that human rights enable processes of progress, the assumption that human rights are universal and the structuring of the subject of human rights as an atomised, insular and liberal being, illustrate the dark side of human rights. we have thus far explored the typology of the four schools of thought devised by dembour (2010) in relation to ranciere’s (2004) two forms of human rights. we argue that the ontological stances of the natural school and the deliberative school point to the (non)existence of human rights: the intersection of the ideals of human rights and the non­existence thereof. scholars from the natural school rely on the law to address this while those in the deliberative school put their faith in consensus on internationally accepted principles of human rights. scholars from the protest school view human rights from a socio­historic perspective. they argue that human action and reaction within intersecting spaces of what human rights are (given) and what human rights could be, make it possible to recreate human rights continuously. discourse scholars claim that when human rights become humanitarian rights within imperialist, capitalist and neo­colonialist frames of reference, spaces of dissensus are closed so no acting on the given is possible. what possibilities do these intersecting ontologies pose for reconciliation and hre in south africa? simmonds (2014) and verster (2014) contend that in order to think laterally about human rights, hre should embrace contending conceptual frameworks, ontological and epistemological stances and explore the many possibilities they present. simmonds (2014) relates dembour’s (2010) typology of the four schools of thought on human rights to the three dimensions of hre proposed by the world programme for human rights (2010­2014). these three dimensions are knowledge and skills (which simmonds [2014: 136] relates to the natural school), values, beliefs and attitudes (which simmonds [2014: 136] relates to the deliberative school) and action (which simmonds [2014: 136] relates to the protest school). keet (2015) however argues that human rights educators should acknowledge that the conceptual and pedagogical tools of dominant hre programmes (including the world programme for human rights [2010­2014]) cannot respond to the challenges human rights face globally. keet (2015: 49) pleads for “critical human rights education” (chre). chre is premised on the task of education to critique the categories (the given) in which it is structured (keet, 2015). he argues that chre should be regarded as a political activity, should be anti­ declarationist, should strive towards a new pedagogical language rooted in human wrongs and that it should have as a purpose the constitution of human agency illuminating the possibilities of action (keet, 2015). although we agree with keet (2015) on the need for chre, we focus our attention on the importance of human action to renew human rights and hre. linking the essence of education as continual renewal (arendt, 2006; becker 2015) to the renewal of hre, we argue that the essence and purpose of education and hre are possible through human speech and action in moments of dissensus. in this regard, hre specifically, should assume responsibility for the world and for every new generation, who as the future of humanity, are to renew the world by acting on the given (arendt, 2006; becker, 2015). if the essence of education (and therefore hre) is the renewal of the world, it requires hre to create a niche as “counter­hegemonic practices” in order to recreate human rights and hre continuously (keet, 2012: 22). jansen (2009) proposes nine key elements of a post­ conflict pedagogy of which a pedagogy of dissonance seems particularly appropriate for this 7 du preez & becker ontologies and possibilities of human rights context. acting on the given by means of a pedagogy of dissonance requires a “commitment to locate, interrogate and engage” (jansen, 2009: 267) knowledge about and experiences of (non)existing human rights. within spaces of dissonance, dissensus can be constructed through speech and action. human rights and hre can be renewed by continually formulating, claiming, rejecting, amending and recognising human rights anew (azoulay, 2014). a brief explanation of the project and data collection processes follows before selected data are presented and discussed. 3. human rights literacy: a quest for meaning this article forms part of the dissemination process of a nrf funded project human rights literacy: a quest for meaning (roux, 2012). the project aimed to determine the knowledge field of hre in teacher education at south african faculties of education (roux & du preez, 2013). the project group collected qualitative and quantitative data using three different collection processes: a walk­about, a survey and small focus­group discussions (roux & du preez, 2013; becker, de wet & parker, 2014). the purpose of the ‘walk­about’ was to probe the understandings that under­ and postgraduate students (from various faculties) have of human rights. the ‘walk­about’ was conducted on three university campuses in two provinces. convenience sampling was used to explore the domain and inform the questions developed for the survey (gillham, 2008; flick, 2009). eighty students participated in the ‘walk­about’ (becker et al., 2014). purposive sampling (cresswell, 2013; pidgeon & henwood, 2004) was used for the survey phase of the data collection process. three levels of sampling were employed during this phase. first, three institutions were selected. six different campuses were then chosen from them. these were situated in four provinces. the team referred to these as sites. this was done by means of stratified purposive sampling in order to illustrate subgroups and facilitate comparisons (ritchie, lewis & elam, 2009). finally, the team focused on first and final year pre­service teachers in teacher education programmes at the institutions in question. a total of n1192/4953 student teachers accessed the survey (becker et al., 2014). following the survey, small focus­group discussions were conducted on the six sites to validate data collected by means of the previous two collection strategies and to re­evaluate the literature, ontologies and epistemologies (roux & du preez, 2013). the sizes of the focus groups varied from three to nine participants. a total of n68/1192 students were selected by means of snowball sampling (cresswell, 2013; gillham, 2008) this article aims to explore different ontologies and the possibilities (political and social) they offer for structuring dissensus and facilitating reconciliation. we have therefore decided on a critical phenomenological approach so that we can draw on existential phenomenology (the nature of human rights) and critical marxism (the possibilities for political and social action towards reconciliation) (jehanson, 1984). for the purpose of this article, the qualitative data from the three collection processes were analysed by means of discourse analyses (potter, 2004). the data include written (comments in survey) and spoken text (walk­about and focus group interview data which were digitally­recorded and transcribed verbatim). we have referenced the data in terms of the data source: walk-about for responses from the ‘walk­ about’, survey q24 (the number indicates the question number) for qualitative data that 8 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) emanates from the survey and s1y4m2 for data emanating from focus­group discussions. for example, s1y4m2 refers to data from a focus group at site 1(s1), fourth years (y4) second meeting (m2). 4. lived experiences and idealistic expectations firstly, all qualitative data were read holistically. the next step was to select and analyse data excerpts pertaining to various ontological stances, the possession paradox and the possibilities of structuring dissensus. a student teacher from site 5 described various ontological stances to human rights as follows, it’s like people tend to use the word human rights but without knowing what is/are human rights. you say i’ve got a right and i’m a human being but what is human rights? let’s start from there how would you define human rights? if you were to ask me what is human rights and then someone else we will all have different views on what are human rights (s5y1m1). during the first focus group discussions 34 of the 68 student teachers (50%) at all six sites qualified their yes answer to the question whether human rights exist, indicating that they were aware of the possession paradox of human rights: it is [human rights] we don’t know, not a reality to us, it is like a book that is on a shelf but we have never opened the book and seen the book and touched the book (s5y1m1). it does exist but i feel at a certain level. some children do not have the right to go to school. at some schools like in rural areas children do not have the right to go to school or they do not have money to help them to go to school or like shelter. there is no funding. sometimes the houses are not properly built – people get sick easily and stuff. so i feel it is existing but it’s not… (s1y1m1). …in the rural areas – those people – there are certain rights that must be obtained, actually, that they are having, but those people that are in power they do not respect their rights… (s6y1m1). these student teachers agree that human rights exist but then qualify their answers by pointing to their experiences of human rights as, “like a book on a shelf; so i feel it is existing but it’s not”. in the second excerpt, the word but is used to express the conflict related to the (non)existence of human rights. in trying to make sense of the possession paradox, some student teachers took a nihilistic stance to human rights similar to that of scholars from the discourse school (dembour, 2010). the following excerpts illustrate this. my problem is, it is all sweet words like human rights and those things, like human rights and democracy, it is a lot of sweet words, but many times it is only words (s3y4m2). it is a way of the government to control people as people but they put it in a way as if they are helping us. most of the times they use human rights against us (walk-about). the second comment expressed the view that human rights mask and structure relations of power in which humans remain objects, passive and powerless. the student teacher used phrases such as to “control people as people” to describe relations in which humans remain victims. the masking of such relations within human rights discourse is reflected in “they put 9 du preez & becker ontologies and possibilities of human rights it in a way as if they are helping us. most of the times they use human rights against us.” the first comment relates to the discourse school’s perception of human rights as only ‘spoken about’ (dembour 2010: 11): “all sweet words; but many times it is only sweet words”. in trying to understand and/or solve the possession paradox, some student teachers look to the law, the constitution and/or the government. they [human rights] do exist – like in the constitution it states that as long as you are a human being you have rights (s1y4m1). because people have rights – human rights are in our constitution… (s6y4m1). laws or aspects that protect each and every individual in a country to make that particular person a free and responsible person (surveyq12). these comments allude to the understandings of human rights embodied in the constitution and the law. these student teachers seem to align themselves with the natural and deliberative schools (dembour, 2010). they regard human rights as given, “because people have rights; as long as you are a human being you have rights”. it seems that they see the constitution, “like in the constitution it states…” and the law, “laws or aspects that protect each and every individual in a country” as holding the solution to the possession paradox. other participants regarded the government as the source of human rights and the protector of human rights. and also politicians what are they doing to enforce these rights because yes in schools, as she said life orientation teachers you a little bit, it’s a little bit, an inch, you know of the rights and how they are listed and labelled. but what is our government doing because rights came from them. we feel that is the source of it, what are they doing because at election time, yes they are all about the rights…if you lack education there is no way you are going to do something about that… (s5y1m1). i think it does exist however the rights of people are violated like women their rights to life, are violated, especially in abusive relations and if they report it nothing is done. so it does exist but it’s violated. and the government is not doing much about it (s1y1m1). …the government must make sure that everyone has proper education, proper medical care, proper housing (s1y1m1). comments such as “but what is our government doing because rights came from them” and “the government must make sure” might stem from understandings gained from a socio­ historic perspective of human rights. student teachers link the existence and validity of human rights to the birth of democracy in 1994. i think of the struggle, the tragic things that nelson mandela and the rest of the underprivileged nation in the apartheid era had to go through to get equal rights and to be free in a democratic land (survey q12). i have experienced human rights because like referring to what we have been told about the earlier years before 1994 and seeing that time and comparing it with this time it is very different… (s1y1m1). these two excerpts move from phrases depicting oppression (struggle, tragic things, underprivileged nation, had to go through) to a utopian notion (get equal rights and to be free 10 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) in a democratic land). defining human rights in terms of socio-historic perceptions that seem to be aligned with the protest school is reflected in phrases such as “seeing that time; comparing it with this time; the struggle; the things that nelson mandela and the under­privileged nation in the apartheid era had to go through”. the reference to “get equal rights and to be free in a democratic land” refers to written rights inscribed in the constitution of south africa and the bill of rights (1996) post­1994. it seems that student teachers are not optimistic about the possibilities of structuring dissensus or about people in south africa using their rights. student teachers argue that “people don’t know their rights, they are powerless” and that people “are not aware of the fact” that they have rights that they should use: because i feel it is limited in the sense that as human beings we don’t know that we have these rights. we don’t know what rights are in order for us to express our rights or love our rights (s5y1m1). …but people are sometimes not aware of the fact, i mean, the kind of rights they have (s2y1m1). it’s governed by a monetary basis because people with power and money they stand up quickly and say i know this right but people that don’t have money they are like scared to say i have this right to education, i have you know, they don’t take the power because they are actually powerless (s5y1m1). student teachers argue that there is a lack of knowledge on human rights: “not aware of the fact; we don’t know that we have these rights; we don’t know what rights are”. they also argue that a divide exists between those who have money and those who do not. the former readily lay claim to their rights, while the latter are “like scared to say i have this right; it’s governed by a monetary basis”. these factors add to the (im)possibilities for structuring dissensus within intersecting spaces of (non)existing rights. 5. discussion the preamble of the udhr (1948) which speaks of “the recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family” is echoed in the comments of student teachers who take the view that human rights are given and grounded in law (s1y4m1; s6y4m1; surveyq12). from the data, however, it seems that student teachers are trying to make sense of what human rights are and could be and whether human rights exist (s5y1m1). during the first focus group discussion, fifty per cent of student teachers from all six sites indicated that they were aware of the possession paradox of human rights. student teachers stressed a lack of knowledge about human rights (s5y1m1; s2y1m1). knowledge of what human rights are/could be is a pre­condition for structuring dissensus. a critical and dialogical approach in the classroom is necessary when teaching­learning human rights. du preez (2012) argues that research conducted between 2005 and 2011 indicates that the teaching of human rights was monological and uncritical, thus disregarding the spirit of a participatory democracy and the possibilities for structuring dissensus. such teaching methods bring one question to the fore: how much learning actually takes place regarding human rights (du preez, 2012). the student teachers are of the opinion that not much learning regarding human rights occurs (s5y1m1). 11 du preez & becker ontologies and possibilities of human rights in our view, understandings based on a socio­historic and struggle perspectives of human rights in the south african context inhibit possibilities for structuring dissensus. the snapshot images of history (survey q12; s1y1m1) may lead to assumptions that human rights post­ 1994 are given, fixed and static – as the comments that prompted this exploration indicate. the perception that the government are the givers and protectors of human rights (s5y1m1; s1y1m1) presents barriers to structuring dissensus. student teachers argue that the struggle (pre­1994) resulted in human rights and as the government is the source of human rights, the government is responsible for enabling citizens to use their rights (s5y1m1; s1y1m1). such perceptions disable the constitution of agency and the possibilities of political action relating to human rights (keet, 2015). waiting for government to bestow substantive rights on its citizens often leads to the structuring of power relations masked by universal and declarational human rights discourse (walk­about; keet, 2012). when the subjects of human rights do not use their rights, human rights become humanitarian rights in the form of charity dispensed to the poor, women, children and the elderly in rural areas by government and/or ngos (s1y1m1) (ranciere, 2004). the closing of spaces in which dissensus can be structured by means of consensus or humanitarian rights can only be detrimental to a sustainable democracy and reconciliation. in order to enable speech, action and dissensus in political spaces, educators should acknowledge that declarationist pedagogies have very limited disruptive capacities (keet, 2015). the possibilities of human rights and hre lie within the intersecting spaces of (non)existing human rights. in post-conflict societies such as south africa, dissensus present possibilities for new ways of co­existing and (re)conciliation when the subjects of human rights choose to use their rights. the first step would be to restructure the south african curriculum by introducing a participatory and critical approach to teaching­learning human rights, which student teachers confessed to know little about (s1y1m1; s5y1m1). dissonance, jansen (2009) argues, becomes possible when the curriculum includes multiple knowledges (in this instance multiple ontologies of human rights) within a social justice framework. this would facilitate dialogue, discussion and critique of the given and encourage teaching­learning towards developing possibilities of structuring dissensus so that critical citizens use their rights towards reconciliation. 6. conclusion the comments from the student teachers that prompted this exploration point to the possession paradox of human rights, or, as ranciere (2004) argues, the first form of rights. what human rights are and could be, the realistic and idealistic nature of human rights, are inherent to the nature of human rights. this implies that hre should be a continual dissonant process, enabling moments of dissensus within intersecting spaces of (non)existing rights. it is a process in which humans act, interact and react on the given in recreating human rights and hre when they choose to use their rights. the implications and possibilities for reconciliation in post-conflict educational contexts thereof are multiple. acting on the given and structuring dissensus requires a participatory and critical approach to teaching-learning human rights. in post-conflict educational contexts, it also requires a pedagogy of dissonance made possible by the inclusion of multiple ontologies of human rights within a social justice framework (jansen, 2009). this would facilitate dialogue, discussion and critique on the given and actively teach­learn towards possibilities of structuring dissensus so that critical citizens use their rights and move towards reconciliation. 12 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) 7. acknowledgement this work is based on a 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kanjee, sayed & rodriguez, 2010). two major changes in higher education were the integration of vuyokazi nomlomo university of western cape, faculty of education, modderdam road, bellville, 7535. email: vnomlomo@uwc. ac.za; cellphone: 0827981797 zilungile sosibo cape peninsula university of technology, faculty of education, mowbray, 7770. email: sosibol@cput.ac.za; cellphone: 0710701266 doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i1.14 issn 0258-2236 eissn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(1): 199-215 © uv/ufs mailto:vnomlomo@uwc.ac.za mailto:vnomlomo@uwc.ac.za mailto:sosibol@cput.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.14 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.14 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.14 200 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) teacher training colleges into universities (pournara, 2009) and the upgrading of teachers’ certificate, diploma and higher diploma courses into two qualifications: the bachelor of education (b.ed.) and postgraduate certificate in education (pgce) (department of higher education and training [dhet], 2011: 15). whereas the b.ed. is a four-year degree, the pgce is offered full-time over one year or part-time over two years after a bachelor’s degree or equivalent diploma. both qualifications are pegged at level 7 on the higher education qualifications sub-framework (dhet, 2015). they focus on the application of different kinds of teacher knowledge which student teachers are expected to demonstrate by the time they obtain their teaching qualifications (dhet, 2011:15; 2015:19). the b.ed. degree carries a minimum of 480 credits while the pgce carries 120 credits. this is because a three-year undergraduate degree of 360 credits or an approved diploma is a prerequisite for students’ entry into the pgce programme (dhet, 2011). students with these qualifications should have acquired sufficient content knowledge in a teaching subject to be admitted into the pgce programme. however, they still need to develop their pedagogical and practical knowledge to apply in real classroom contexts (dhet, 2011, 2015). consequently, pgce students are required to spend between eight and twelve weeks in schools for supervised and assessed teaching practice. concerns have been raised regarding low teacher quality and low quality of teaching and learning in schools usually associated with poor teacher education (sosibo & nomlomo, 2014; madisaotsile, 2012). given the short duration and lower minimum credit value of the pgce programme compared to its b.ed. counterpart, the authors of this paper suspected that the pgce might not provide students with optimum rigour to prepare them adequately to acquire, integrate and confidently apply the different kinds of teacher knowledge required in the workplace. our understanding of the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications (mrteq) and its focus on integrated te knowledge guided our conceptualisation of rigour (dhet, 2011, 2015). furthermore, current academic literature on how beginner teachers navigate their academic and professional identities as they learn to teach also guided our conceptualisation of rigour (kemmis, 2011; fitzmaurice, 2010; rusznyak, 2009; ashby, et al., 2008; darling-hammond & bransford, 2005). we therefore adopted the meaning of rigour as in-depth pedagogical and practical knowledge that student teachers should acquire during their pre-service teacher education programmes and that practising teachers can apply in a variety of teaching and learning contexts. such knowledge includes being innovative, critical and reflective practitioners (kemmis, 2011; reyes & fagan, 2010). in light of the above, we investigated newly graduated teachers’ conceptions of rigour in the pgce programme. we focused our attention on pgce graduates (referred to as beginner teachers) who had completed their qualification in 2014. our assumption was that as newly qualified teachers, they would provide us with fresh perspectives on the rigour of this programme, as influenced by their recent entry into the field of teaching. we wondered whether their voices would be invaluable in strengthening the pgce programme and in influencing policy on the rigour of these programmes. our research question was: “how do beginner teachers perceive the rigour of the pgce programmes?” the next section comprises literature related to the complexity of learning to teach. this literature supports the view that learning to teach is not a simple, mechanistic and one-way process but is fraught with complexities. nomlomo & sosibo from theory to practice 201 the complexity of learning to teach there is abundant literature that shows that learning to teach is a complex process. emphasising the complexity related to learning to teach, hammerness et al. (2005: 368) state that, “even when observing good teaching or experiencing it for oneself, one cannot easily glean a deep understanding of the complexity of the work”. this is because student teachers enter teacher education with deeply entrenched and sometimes limited conceptions of teaching and learning which they acquire during their own experiences of schooling (lawrence & butler, 2010; hammerness et al. 2005; britzman, 2003; feiman-nemser, 2001a). in hammerness et al., (2005: 359) it is argued that these conceptions are based on student teachers’ “apprenticeship of observation” when they observe teaching without an insider’s knowledge of the practices of teaching. these notions are difficult to eliminate and they tend to block students from acquiring new knowledge (hammerness et al., 2005). they range from perceiving teaching as easy or as standing in front of students and imparting knowledge (britzman, 2003; feiman-nemser, 2001a) to learning as a simple, mechanistic and one-way transfer of information from teacher to learner (lawrence & butler, 2010). contrary to these notions, student teachers need to understand that learning to teach is incredibly complex and demanding and includes a wide variety of teacher knowledge for them to master before they graduate (lawrence & butler, 2010; hammerness et al., 2005; cochran-smith, 2001; feiman-nemser, 2001a, b; shulman, 1987; morrow, 2007). kerry and mayes (1995) contend that learning to teach involves the development of different theoretical and practical knowledge, cognitive changes and interpersonal and affective skills. this development helps student teachers to grow intellectually, aesthetically, affectively and socially. hammerness et al. (2005: 358) also add understanding of subject matter, learning, development, culture, language, pedagogy, assessment, attitudes and addressing individual needs of diverse learners to the requirements of learning to teach. thus, learning to teach is a complex and cognitively demanding practice that requires more than mere observation and emulating what students’ teachers did in the classroom. over and above the problem of complexity is the problem of enactment. hammerness et al., (2005: 359) allude to “the problem of enactment” which involves learning to multitask or to do various things simultaneously and to integrate the different types of knowledge into coherent practice. feiman-nemser (2001a: 1016) focuses on developmental skills of students which portray the problems of complexity and enactment in teaching. according to her, the different types of teacher knowledge that student teachers have to integrate and enact include (i) analysing preconceived notions of teaching and learning, (ii) developing subject matter and pedagogical knowledge, and (iii) developing an understanding of learners’ developmental stages and socio-cultural contexts. it also includes (iv) developing a beginning repertoire or acquisition of different pedagogical skills and (v) developing tools to study teaching requiring skills of observation, interpretation, analysis and research. this classification demonstrates that learning to teach is a developmental process that happens through various stages. several stage models have described students’ progression from novice to expert (lawrence & butler, 2010; feiman-nemser, 2001a; hammerness et al., 2005; berliner, 2004; kerry & mayes, 1995). feiman-nemser (2001a) argues that they derive from students’ personal and situational factors. kerry and mayes (1995) categorise these stages into early idealism, survival, recognising difficulties, hitting the plateau and moving on. in feiman-nemser (2001a), it is perceived as progressing in a continuum from concerns about self, teaching and learning. 202 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) berliner’s (2004) description includes a range of characteristics: from being a novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient and expert, which illuminates fluidity of performance in teaching. students are also defined as preoccupied with themselves and their actions as teachers rather than focusing on learners’ actions and learning (lawrence & butler, 2010). granted, grouping student teachers or beginner teachers into these categories may undermine their diversity and the fact that while some may need assistance, others may bring rich experiences accumulated from diverse contexts. unlike the developmental stages of learning to teach mentioned above, shulman (1987) and morrow (2007) emphasise knowledge for practice, which is acquired mainly in university classrooms. shulman (1987) classifies teacher knowledge into seven domains. the content knowledge domain or subject matter knowledge, (shulman (1987: xiii) requires that teachers must “be well educated, especially in the subject matter content they teach…” shulman identifies general pedagogical knowledge as a combination of classroom management, organisational principles and strategies. curriculum knowledge involves an understanding of materials and programmes that serve as tools of the trade for teachers. pedagogical content knowledge (pck) combines content and pedagogical domains. shulman proposes knowledge of learners and their cultures, characteristics and needs. such knowledge is crucial because learners’ backgrounds are so heterogeneous. according to shulman, knowledge of educational ends, purposes, values and their philosophical and historical grounds is equally crucial. knowledge of varying educational contexts is equally significant, since learners’ schooling backgrounds differ so considerably. like shulman, morrow (2007: 82) argues that “content knowledge is a precondition for any teaching” but on its own, it is never enough. he believes that over and above content knowledge, students should also work with the formal elements of teaching to prepare them for the professional functions of organising learning systematically within the possibilities and constraints of the context. his concern is that the conception of teaching transcends the context-specific (or ‘material’) elements of teaching. both shulman and morrow believe that university classrooms should provide student teachers with the kinds of teacher knowledge and skills that enable new teachers to enable learning. with the short period of time in which the pgce programme is offered, for students to be provided with the rigour needed in both knowledge types might be a tall order. this is what this study purported to investigate, whether the pgce programme provided newly graduated students with rigour and what their conceptions are of this concept. over and above knowledge-for-practice presented earlier, cochran-smith and lytle (1999) classify teacher knowledge into knowledge-in-practice and knowledge-of-practice. they claim that knowledge-in-practice is grounded in the profession. newly graduated teachers, including the participants in this study, acquire this knowledge in the workplace. the role of knowledge-of-practice (teaching practice) cannot be overlooked in a discussion of rigour in teacher education. darling-hammond and bransford (2005) maintain that student teachers need to be exposed to expert knowledge and reflective practice as they develop their professional identity. for this to occur, student teachers need constant supervision, coaching and constructive feedback from experienced teachers and mentors to assist them to understand and apply the different kinds of knowledge in the classroom and to reflect on their practice (darling-hammond & bransford, 2005). in this way they make a deeper sense of the nomlomo & sosibo from theory to practice 203 concepts they have learnt in their university-based courses and adapt their knowledge and practice to different situations (grosser & de waal, 2008). a debate continues to rage over the role of apprenticeship in the process of adding rigour to the teacher education curriculum. some arguments point to the fact that teaching practice alone is not enough to make a competent teacher. lortie’s (1975) work, for example, supports the view that the numerous observation hours spent by student teachers in the field contributes to the configuration of their system of belief in education and also helps them to interpret their own experiences in teacher education. with the limited hours that pgce students spend in schooling contexts, there are questions regarding whether the programme provides them with rigour to reflect and configure their attitudinal and belief systems. for students to acquire sufficient skills in knowledge-of-practice, ‘good’ teaching practice placements need to occur. laboskey and richert (2002: 8) define a ‘good’ teaching practice placement as one that provides students with a “generally positive and productive learning experience” and in which students have multiple opportunities to: • recognise the principles in action, that is, teachers modelling teaching behaviours and practices and reflect (in and on action, i.e. during and after action) • enact teaching principles • embrace teaching principles to guide future teaching. laboskey and richert (2002: 27) found that ‘better’ placements in which most student learning occurred were in contexts where “a composite (or blending) of the principles (i-iv) above was present”. nevertheless, there is literature that alludes to the fact that teaching practice may bring negative experiences to the student teachers, depending on the context of the schools in which they are placed. for example, buehler et al. (2009) report that placements of students in schools with a diverse student body can present challenges for student teachers to learn to teach. in this section, we have presented literature that shows that learning to teach is a complex process that requires student teachers to have a sound knowledge base in theoretical and practical knowledge. the following discussion provides a summary of how rigour in an ite curriculum is understood in current academic discourses. the discussion in this section foregrounds how beginner teachers conceive rigour and it forms the basis for analysis of beginner teachers’ understandings of this concept in relation to the pgce ite programme. understanding academic rigour in ite programmes as shown earlier, learning to teach is a dynamic and complex process that integrates different kinds of knowledge domains (dhet, 2011, 2015; kemmis, 2011). how teacher knowledge is defined is based on an institution’s philosophy of what constitutes rigour in teacher education (blömeke & kaiser, 2014). an understanding of these bases is crucial, as they constitute what policy makers and experts refer to as depth and rigour in teacher education. verloop, van driel and meijer (2001: 443) provide an all-encompassing definition of a teacher knowledge base as “all profession-related insights that are potentially relevant to the teacher’s activities”. ben-peretz (2011: 8) break this base down to “knowledge of general pedagogical principles and skills and knowledge of the subject matter to be taught”. in other definitions, teacher knowledge is classified into elaborate categories that include subject 204 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) matter/content, curriculum, pedagogy, contexts, learners, formal and material elements of teaching (see, for instance, cochran-smith & lytle, 1999; feiman-nemser, 2001a). while teacher knowledge domains provide a theoretical framework of what constitutes rigour in teacher education, there is no single definition of the concept of rigour. reyes and fagan (2010) define academic rigour as a complex entity associated with an integrated body of knowledge that stimulates students’ higher order thinking and active engagement in learning. academic rigour requires multiple perspectives of teaching and learning strategies that enhance students’ epistemological access to knowledge (jacobs & colvin, 2010; slonimsky & shalem, 2006). these strategies include discovery, problem-solving, investigation, openended learning processes and an authentic application of knowledge in relevant settings (reyes & fagan, 2010). academic rigour requires students to apply and analyse knowledge in a way that reinforces “deep learning” through critical inquiry, and self-reflection which in turn instils life-long learning skills (jacobs & colvin, 2010). curriculum design is one of the key elements of academic rigour (slonimsky & shalem, 2006; jacobs & colvin, 2010). its goals, courses and activities, including pedagogy, assessment and feedback, should provide students with access to meaningful learning by focusing more on the depth than the breadth of learning (reyes & fagan, 2010). this implies that the curriculum should be designed in a manner that fosters student-centred approaches, which challenge students to take risks and confront their personal beliefs and assumptions about learning (reyes & fagan, 2010; fitzmaurice, 2010). the curriculum must prepare students for their academic success in the world of work (jacobs & colvin, 2010). it has to be responsive to society’s sociocultural, political and economic contexts by producing skilful and innovative employees who are able to compete in the global marketplace (slonimsky & shalem, 2006). these competencies are embedded in slonimsky and shalem’s (2006) notion of curriculum responsiveness that takes into account the needs of the students with respect to their socio-historical environment and the nature of knowledge or practices to be learnt or mastered. slonimsky and shalem (ibid) refer to cultural, curriculum and learning responsiveness to emphasise that instructional strategies should cater for a diversity of students while deepening their knowledge and learning in specialised areas (slonimsky & shalem, 2006) and ensuring collaboration, flexibility and high quality of learning (jacobs & colvin, 2010). in ite, rigour should be understood in relation to theory and practice because what and how student teachers learn to teach determines their actual practice in the classroom (darling-hammond & bransford, 2005). morrow (2007) adds acquisition of the formal elements of teaching to the discourse of rigour as another factor contributing to academic rigour in ite. by this, morrow means knowledge and skills of organising learning experiences systematically. in support of morrow, marcelo (2009: 12) argues, “organisation of knowledge helps experts to understand when, why and how the vast knowledge they possess should be used in a given situation”. morrow (2007: 100) further contends that in our teacher education programmes “we repeatedly define the work of teachers in terms of its material elements”. this means that teacher education programmes are context-bound: they mostly prepare teachers to teach specific learning areas in a specific phase using certain approaches, thus limiting teachers to specific contexts. consequently, they (teachers) cannot be able to function in contexts that do not comply with what they were taught. during training, students need to be provided with rigour in formal and material elements to allow them to be competent teachers. nomlomo & sosibo from theory to practice 205 in the next section, the national policy on the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications (mrteq) (dhet, 2015) framework is presented. since it undergirds ite programmes (including pgce) in south africa, the mrteq framework sets out standards for the depth and rigour required in the design and development of these programmes. a brief synopsis of this framework is essential. the national policy on the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications (mrteq) framework there are diverse views on what constitutes quality in ite programmes. decisions on what counts as quality are made on the basis of the duration of the programme, time spent in schools for teaching practice (tp) by students and competences demonstrated by student teachers is often determined by authorities (e.g. policies) and providers of the qualifications, that is, universities, colleges or private institutions (hoban, 2004). the common global concerns about ite programmes include the nature of the curriculum and whether it produces the kind of intended teacher (graduate attributes). other concerns include the university culture, quality of tp supervision by teacher educators, as well as teacher educators and students’ identity, beliefs and conceptions of teaching (darling-hammond & bransford, 2005; hoban, 2004). as a guiding principle to te programmes, it is important to refer to the national policy on the mrteq framework (dhet, 2011, 2015) in this paper. the mrteq framework provides guidelines on the scope, depth and rigour that inform the design and development of ite programmes in south africa. this framework constitutes the fundamental principles outlining admission requirements, exit outcomes or competences to be demonstrated by student teachers when they enter the teaching profession as beginner teachers, the design of the ite programmes and the different kinds of teacher knowledge domains that should be included in the curriculum of teacher education programmes, including the pgce programme. these domains include disciplinary, pedagogical, practical, fundamental and situational knowledge (dhet, 2011, 2015). the mrteq framework was instituted because there was no national curriculum for te in south africa. consequently, this policy guides higher education institutions (heis) offering teacher education in the design of their own curricula (kwenda & robinson, 2010). attainment of exit outcomes or graduate attributes in teacher education programmes is prioritised (fitzmaurice, 2010: 45). these outcomes include sound subject knowledge, ability to teach, an understanding of individual learner needs, understanding diversity and an ability to reflect on own practice (dhet, 2011, 2015). the mrteq framework, which is research driven, seeks to improve graduate attributes of student teachers so that they are thoroughly prepared by the time they become credentialed teachers. regarding the pgce programme, the mrteq policy requires students to have an in-depth and focused or specialised knowledge and practical skills that should enable them to apply it in schools in varying contexts (dhet, 2015). 2. research methodology this article is based on a qualitative case study conducted in the faculties of education offering the pgce qualification at two higher education institutions (heis a and b) in the western cape. the sample comprised 19 beginner teachers purposely selected from the 2014 graduation lists of these heis. by the time of data collection, all of them were already employed in different schools in the western cape. although 50 names were initially drawn from the heis’ lists of 206 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) qualifying students, only 19 beginner teachers accepted the invitation to participate in this study. the advantages of having a small sample were that the group could easily be managed and in-depth interactions with participants could be conducted. this assisted us in determining how beginner teachers understood and described the rigour of the pgce programmes in relation to their teaching experiences in the schools where they were employed. of the 19 participants, ten had obtained their pgce qualifications from institution a and nine from institution b. the sample was mixed racially; comprising four white, nine coloured (mixed race) and six black beginner teachers. of the ten participants from institution a, six were females, with two of each being white, coloured (mixed race) and black and four males consisting of one white and three coloureds as illustrated in the table below. table 1: pgce students’ biographical information institution a institution b race male female race male female white 1 andre 2 stacy caroline white 1 charl 0 coloured 3 marvin herman dill 2 delcia nirri coloured 0 4 shakira maria fadillah rosette black 0 2 bhekisile thobeka black 1 tsakane 3 bongeka nomvuyo ncediwe total 4 6 2 7 the breakdown of the nine participants from institution b revealed seven females consisting of four coloureds and three blacks as well as two males one being white and the other black. their ages ranged between 23 and 36 years. ethical considerations with regard to voluntary participation, anonymity and confidentiality were adhered to during the data collection process. in this article, pseudonyms were used to conceal and protect the identity of participants. data were collected through semi-structured, open-ended interviews, with each interview lasting approximately 45 minutes. the interviews elicited information regarding how beginner teachers understood the notion of rigour in the pgce programme in relation to the knowledge acquired and their professional experiences and practices. the researchers made a concerted effort to include the voices of diverse participants. where common views were expressed, the researchers selected them in a manner that would represent the diversity of participants according to race, gender and age. document analysis entailed examining the mrteq (dhet, 2011, 2015) and syllabus entries for pgce programmes in the two heis. the purpose was to understand the kinds of teacher knowledge and competences that were emphasised in the pgce programmes in nomlomo & sosibo from theory to practice 207 the two heis. this exercise provided a deeper insight into the type of knowledge students were expected to acquire with reference to the knowledge they were exposed to and their experiences in relation to the curriculum content and its delivery in the programme. interviews and document analysis were used for triangulation and to increase the chances of credibility of the research findings (babbie & mouton, 2001: 20). recordings of the interviews were transcribed and coded before analysis. data analysis took a thematic form. data were categorised according to the aims and questions that guided the study. two themes emerged from the data analysis: (i) beginner teachers’ understanding of the rigour of pgce programmes and (ii) gaps in the rigour of pgce programmes, as perceived by beginner teachers in relation to how they experienced the university curriculum compared to their real classroom experiences. 3. research findings and discussion beginner teachers’ understanding of the rigour of the pgce programme as pointed out earlier, heis have autonomy to design their curriculum which is often underpinned by research in pre-service teacher education and shaped by policy directives (kwenda & robinson, 2010) such as mrteq. given the differences in the institutional priorities and contestations about the relative importance of knowledge-for-practice and knowledge-in-practice, it is therefore not surprising that participants from the two institutions identified different modules that they believed had helped to shape their professsional development. of importance is the fact that even though the modules were not similar, they encompassed the required types of teacher knowledge as informed by the two institutions’ graduate attributes. based on their utterances, ten beginner teachers who had graduated from institution a perceived to have benefitted from the knowledge and skills they had gained from their core curriculum that included language communication, ict, research, education and life orientation. bhekisile, one of the graduates from institution a expressed her view of these courses thus: the combination of the major subjects in our pgce programme gave me the depth i needed as a future teacher and researcher. my thorough understanding of these subjects made it easy for me to develop a research topic. doing research and finding a research topic helped me to see the link between these different subjects. marvin, one of the three beginner teachers who had graduated from institution a, explained that the skills they had acquired from these modules helped them to solve problems related to teaching in 21st century environments. thus, one can assume that for marvin, problemsolving skills constituted rigour in pgce. marvin’s statement seems to reflect the curriculum responsiveness as suggested by slonimsky and shalem (2005). beginner teachers who had graduated from institution b highlighted language communication, psychology of teaching and learning, authority and discipline identities, learner achievement levels, education practice and teaching methods. these courses were identified as being indispensable for them as beginner teachers. the participants believed that the pgce programme had provided them with intense rigour in these knowledge domains. in both cases, the depth and breadth of the programme offerings appeared to be key factors that students interpreted as the rigour they needed to enter the workplace. clearly, as practising teachers, their basis of analysis of the rigour of the pgce programme must have been 208 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) informed by their university classroom and field experiences (as student teachers and as certified teachers), as well as the amount of time spent on these modules while at university. these teachers’ conceptions of rigour align with slonimsky’s and shalem’s (2006) notion of disciplinary responsiveness, which entails students’ immersion in specialised knowledge. all the participants (100%) commended the pgce programme for the richness of the knowledge they claimed to have gained in particular from the pedagogical knowledge domain. to express his view, herman, a graduate from institution a stated that: our subject didactics lecturers were really good and able to cover the teaching methods that span over wide teaching areas. i really can’t complain even though i wish the [teaching] periods were longer. at least i can always refer to the knowledge i gained from those classes. in the discussion of rigour in ite presented earlier, theory is as important as practice in the process of learning to teach. students acquire cognitive or theoretical knowledge of teaching in university classrooms and transfer it to the real classrooms. the challenge is for teacher educators to provide students with deep learning on how to link theory and practice. one of the ways to enhance rigour is through modeling. students observe and imitate more skilled members of the community of teaching practice – cotp (lave & wenger, 1999). videos are an effective method of assisting students to acquire rigourous skills to become effective members of the cotp. twelve of the 19 participants, with seven from institution a and five from institution b constituting of a mixture of race and gender categories agreed that the pgce programme had introduced them to new educational concepts and skills, including critical thinking, creativity, problem-solving and decision-making. these skills were embedded in the different types of knowledge they were exposed to in the classroom, e.g. pedagogical and practical knowledge. they mentioned that these skills had not been highly emphasised in the high schools which they had attended. these skills are congruent with reyes and fagan’s (2010) definition of academic rigour. they provide beginner teachers with a cognitive map, which supports their learning and enables them to see a relationship between different domains of knowledge (darling-hammond & bransford, 2005). in this way, beginner teachers acquire new skills and strategies to help them become independent thinkers, thus drawing them closer to the centre of the cotp where they can apply these skills in real classroom contexts. a combination of these skills (reyes & fagan, 2010) provide students with the rigour they need to facilitate their entry into the cotp. perceived gaps in the depth and rigour of pgce programmes the majority of the beginner teachers commended the pgce programme for its rigour. however, 13 of the 19 participants (approximately 68%) representing all race and gender groups highlighted the hollowness of the situational domain of the pgce. eight of these participants were from institution a and five were from institution b. tsakane (from institution b), described how this situation affected her efficacy as a teacher by referring to “normal children” and “normal schools” that reflect the socio-economic factors that influence teaching and learning in many south african schools. when i studied pgce, the programme did not prepare me at all for teaching in a druginfected and impoverished school like xxx where i teach. the programme prepared us for teaching normal children in normal schools but not what i have to deal with everyday. nomlomo & sosibo from theory to practice 209 participants intepreted their limited exposure to situational knowledge as a lack of rigour needed in ite. in other words, the pgce programme did not provide them sufficient opportunities to explore teaching in varying contexts. academic rigour in the situational knowledge domain is essential to enable the students to integrate and apply the theoretical knowledge they acquired in university in real classroom contexts. as stipulated in mrteq, situational knowledge or knowledge about contexts, situations, settings or environments equips students with such skills (dhet, 2011; 2015). students need exposure to situational knowledge in order to acquire the rigour, which is much needed in ite and develops the students into self-reflective practitioners (schön, 1987). tsakane and other participants’ concern about limited situational knowledge raises issues about what (should) constitute teacher education knowledge. nonetheless, while the mrteq policy includes knowledge about contexts and learners, morrow (2007) warns about overemphasis of specific teaching contexts over other knowledge domains. as shown earlier, student teachers need a balance between conceptual and contextual knowledge. both groups referred to the richness of the programme with regard to the diverse teacher knowledge they had acquired from the pgce programmes from which they had graduated. however, five participants, two from institution a and three from institution b associated the short span of the pgce programme with a lack of rigour. their common concern seemed to be that the short duration of the programme put them under pressure and created a knowledge overload for them. consequently, they agreed that they could not adequately assimilate and process the high volume of information and knowledge in what one of them referred to as a ‘rushed programme’. for example, maria’s response from institution b can be understood in relation to the problem of enactment as she struggled to integrate the different kinds of knowledge. she stated that: the [pgce] programme is too overloaded. all the lecturers gives (sic) you lots of work and it is overwhelming … there is no space to breathe. there was a time when i was just submitting the tasks although i could not make sense of anything, but i just wanted to hand in the work, even if i did not understand what i had to do. it can be argued that rigour is not to be equated with a demanding curriculum. rather, a rigorous curriculum is “focused, coherent and appropriately challenging” (colvin & jacobs, 2010: 8). granted, this situation might have obstructed beginner teachers’ acquisition of deep learning through critical inquiry, self-reflection, creativity and critical thinking that are advocated by jacobs and colvin (2010) as constituting rigour. it might also have deprived them of opportunities to acquire other requisite knowledge and skills, thus consigning them to the periphery of practice and impeding their progression to the centre of the cotp. if teacher knowledge domains were presented in a coherent and integrated manner, this would enable the teachers to develop a holistic rather than compartmentalised and fragmented view of teacher knowledge. rusznyak (2015) warns about the danger that may occur if knowledge selection for compulsory courses is not informed by an overarching framework that makes it coherent. citing hoban (2006), rusznyak (2015: 8) argues that when no framework exists, “they [students] find it difficult to make sense of the relationship between the different courses they do”. the situation highlighted by maria may imply that in the pgce programme from which she graduated, quantity is emphasised over quality or connectivity. yet, without doubt, rigour implies quality as opposed to quantity. the fact that maria states that she was just submitting work without making sense of it is disconcerting, as it might suggest that the pgce programme did not prepare her and other participants to apply and evaluate knowledge and 210 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) to reflect and translate it into practice in the classrooms. yet, reflection is important for growth and development (lave & wenger, 1999; schön, 1987), as it provides beginner teachers with opportunities to identify problem areas and alternative strategies for improvement (darlinghammond & bransford, 2005). self-reflection contributes significantly to the rigour of any te programme, including pgce. some of the participants expressed contentment with the amount of knowledge gained in the pedagogical domain and other curriculum areas. for example, of the 19 beginner teachers, 12 of them (approximately 63%), six from institution a and six from institution b, expressed dissatisfaction with the superficial nature of the practical knowledge domain. they highlighted a disjuncture between the vast amount of time spent on the theory and the short span of time spent in schools during tp in the pgce programme. one of the beginner teachers from institution a, andre, made a statement that was echoed by all 12 participants: while the pgce had depth in most of the areas, teaching practice was a challenge to me, especially during the first semester. although we did microteaching in other subject didactics, it was different from the real classroom where you have to deal with children. the worse (sic) thing was that because we spent very little time in schools practising teaching, we were assessed very early while we [were] still trying to understand how to apply new concepts in the classroom, which caused a lot of anxiety especially during the first term. andre’s comment seems to imply that they (students) had insufficient opportunities to explore and apply the theoretical aspects and principles that guide teaching practice to provide positive learning experiences for novice teachers (laboskey & richert, 2002). it indicates the complexity of teaching, which requires simultaneous management of knowledge and children. it also reflects contextual and programmatic tensions in learning to teach as alluded to by samuel (2008). specifically, there seems to be a conflict between the institutional and programmatic forces on the one hand and the context in which the student teachers were expected to teach. hence, students seemed to struggle to make meaningful connection between knowledge-of-practice and knowledge-for-practice (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999). when the duration of tp in b.ed. and pgce tp is compared, the short span of tp in pgce provides a valid reason for the basis of beginner teachers’ dissatisfaction with the lack of rigour of the practical knowledge domain. exposure to practical knowledge provides students with authentic contexts in which to apply theoretical knowledge gained in university classrooms and interact with other cotp members (lave & wenger, 1999). students acquire the skills and attitudes needed to become fully-fledged members of a cotp, able to solve problems associated with teaching and learning contexts (reyes & fagan, 2010). according to darling-hammond and bransford (2005), supervision and feedback from mentor teachers constitute rigour which is essential for beginner teachers to become effective teachers. teaching experience does not automatically translate into good practice (darling-hammond & bransford, 2005). students need optimal opportunities to practise teaching, receive feedback which helps them make sense of their practice and reflect on their work in order to develop a solid understanding, interpretation and application of teaching and learning concepts in new situations (kemmis, 2011; grosser & de waal, 2008; korthagen & kessels, 1999). in this way, they learn to connect theoretical knowledge and pratice, especially if teaching practice runs concurrently with coursework (darling-hammnond & bransford, 2005). with only eight or nine weeks of tp expressed earlier, providing students with adequate opportunities for making meaningful connections between nomlomo & sosibo from theory to practice 211 theory and practice may not be possible unless the current pgce model is revisited to balance knowledge-of-practice and knowledge-in-practice. it should focus on a deep understanding of content knowledge; possession of general pedagogical knowledge or knowledge about teaching and a good understanding of learners and contexts (shulman, 1987). the programme should include curriculum knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge (pck), which combines content and pedagogical domains and knowledge of educational ends, purposes and values. 4. discussion in this paper, we have shown that beginner teachers have their own ideas, definitions and assumptions about rigour of the pgce programme, as experienced by them in their practical engagements in the classrooms. unlike the theoretical views expressed by experts on what counts as rigour of ite, participants’ perspectives were informed by their disciplinary/ theoretical knowledge and pragmatic classroom knowledge during tp and by the school contexts in which they taught. in this study, experts’ conceptions of rigour formed the basis upon which beginner teachers’ perspectives on this topic were analysed. participants’ perceptions of depth and rigour varied, as did perceptions of experts in te. for example, some participants mentioned that the pgce programme had equipped them with rigorous knowledge and skills in various learning areas. from these accounts, one can deduce that they understood rigour in relation to the scope of the programme offerings. the wider the scope of the offerings, the more rigourous the programme was and vice versa. this perception is logical, considering that slonimsky and shalem (2006) emphasise deepening students’ knowledge and learning. data obtained from beginner teachers suggests that for them, rigour constitutes horizontal and vertical dimensions, that is, how deep they wanted teacher educators to delve into the knowledge domains and how broad the scope of that knowledge was. the knowledge domains that they wanted prioritised in the pgce programme constituted rigour for them. similarly, they appeared to have associated their access to new education concepts and skills (critical thinking, creativity, problem solving and decision making) with the rigour of the pgce programme. reyes and fagan (2010) and jacobs and colvin (2010) agree that a combination of these skills amounts to rigour which they believe increases beginner teachers’ epistemological access to knowledge. participants appeared to view the short span of the pgce as a limitation of the ite programme. it appears that if the programme had been spread over a longer period of time, participants may have been able to have a deeper engagement with teacher education concepts over time. it could be possible that beginner teachers understood rigour not only in terms of the scope of the programme offerings mentioned earlier but its duration as well. the fact that participants recognised the richness of the knowledge they gained in the pedagogical knowledge domain may suggest that the richer the programme is, the more rigourous it is and vice versa. participants defined rigour in relation to the inclusion of situational knowledge and exposure to practical knowledge. indeed, literature on rigour confirms that learning to teach is a cognitive and social process involving theory and practice (lave & wenger, 1999; darlinghammond & bransford, 2005). participants obtained pgce qualifications from different institutions, yet their views on what constitutes rigour were quite similar. this could be an indication that there are some 212 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) commonalities between curriculum practices in the pgce programmes. this may suggest that the knowledge and skills they gained prior to becoming credentialed teachers might have influenced their classroom practices in more or less the same way, leading them to reach similar opinions about what constitutes rigour of the pgce ite programme. 5. conclusion we acknowledge that teaching is a complex activity and that theories provided by te policymakers and experts about what constitutes rigour in ite are significant. because these theories and conceptions about what constitutes rigour in teacher education are based on and confirmed by empirical research, they possess legitimacy. nonetheless, the voices of beginner teachers and other stakeholders at grassroots’ level should be heard in ite curriculum design. we recommend that beginner teachers and other stakeholders in ite (teacher educators, mentor teachers, school principals and communities) be afforded opportunities to voice their perceptions of what rigour in ite means to them. having said this, it should be borne in mind that students and other stakeholders’ conceptions of rigour may not be informed by theoretical underpinnings and can therefore not supersede those of the experts. therefore, experts on ite should lead the process of teacher education policy formulation and implementation, as they have deeper theoretical understandings of rigour in teacher education but be aware of the way that students are experiencing the demands, conceptual progression and contextual limitations of the designed curriculum. the findings of this paper are not generalisable to other contexts due to the small sample that was used. nonetheless, they are significant in understanding the strengths and limitations of the pgce programme from the beginner teachers’ perspectives with regard to the rigour of these programmes. in a way, they illustrate that although ite programmes prepare teachers for teaching, they nevertheless do not fully prepare them for the 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http://dx.doi.org/10.17763/haer.57.1.j463w79r56455411 slonimsky, l. & shalem, y. 2006. pedagogic responsiveness for academic depth. journal of education, 40, 35-58. sosibo, z. & nomlomo, v. 2014. teachers’ conceptions of standards in south african basic education and training: a case study. perspectives in education, 32(1), 77-91. verloop, n., van driel, j. & meijer, p. 2001. teacher knowledge and the knowledge base of teaching. international journal of educational research, 35, 441-461. http://dx.doi. org/10.1016/s0883-0355(02)00003-4 http://dx.doi.org/10.17763/haer.57.1.j463w79r56455411 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0883-0355(02)00003-4 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0883-0355(02)00003-4 _goback 72 smartphones in public secondary schools: views of matric graduates abstract many schools in south africa ban smartphones. the decision does not take into account the views of the learners. the purpose of this paper was to elicit learners’ views regarding smartphones in schools. a survey design was used and data were collected from 93 learners using a questionnaire consisting of closedand openended items. data were analysed using descriptive statistics for the closed-ended items and taxonomical analysis was used for the open-ended items. the results indicate that 55.9% of learners are of the view that smartphones should be allowed in schools. the results from the open-ended items show that information searching and processing were the most prevalent views among learners. while the learners acknowledged possible distractions using smartphones in classrooms, their views included setting rules to limit any misuse of smartphones in schools. this study recommends further study on learners’ views regarding smartphones in schools. keywords: information communication technology (ict), digital divide, smartphones, policy, academic benefit 1. introduction smartphones are a recent technological development that pervades communication at many levels of society. smartphones, tablets and ipads are all computers that are specialised for different purposes (vermaat et al., 2014) and their use has recently increased in many african countries (calandro, stork & gilwald, 2012) including south africa (dalvit & gunzo, 2014). in most cases, learners have smartphones that they use for social purposes. these smartphones have generated high social impetus among learners, which leads to the view that such gadgets could assist them in learning. thus, there is a need to explore the learners’ views on smartphones in schools. 2. literature review cell phones appeared on the global market in the mid-1980s for communication by the middle and upper class (lacohee, wakeford & pearson, 2003), a gadget too expensive for the low-income class. however, cell phones have since become cheaper, more sophisticated and widespread in all countries. cell phones now based on operating systems that allow internet, video, touch screen and several other applications dr francis z. mavhunga university of limpopo. department of mathematics, science and technology education. private bag x1106. sovenga 0727. tel: +27152683882. cell: +27603905456. email: francis. mavhunga@ul.ac.za prof israel kibirige dr benard chigonga ms. manthiba ramaboka doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i3.6 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(3): 72-85 © uv/ufs 73 mavhunga, kibirige, chigonga & ramaboka smartphones in public secondary schools are called smartphones (ballagas et al., 2006). today, smartphones are used in a variety of assistive contexts including teaching and learning and knowledge sharing (yu, 2012). many institutions worldwide have now realised the importance of smartphones in learning (dewah & mutula, 2013). however, the emergent technology presents a natural conflict where learners quickly adopt the new assistive technology while teachers resist it because it challenges their established way of doing things. thus, many school leaders will not consider learners’ views about smartphones and instead seek to prohibit them encroaching into the educational space. while many learning programmes appear online (dringus, 2000), many learners in south africa access the internet through smartphones (statistics south africa, 2014) because schools lack adequate computers. however, they can only use the smartphones outside school or risk having them confiscated if they take them to school. we believe there is practical utility in several smartphone functions: cameras, sound recording, internet access, gps and a wide variety of applications. research acknowledges that smartphones are now part of the education space (tustin et al., 2012; kreutzer, 2008). hence, there is a need to consider learners’ views regarding smartphones use for schoolwork. 3. theoretical framework the technological pedagogic content knowledge (tpack) (mishra & koehler, 2006; koehler & mishra, 2008, 2009) and the stakeholder theory (st) (mitchell, agle & wood 1997) were used as the theoretical frameworks. tpack was chosen because it includes using technology in teaching and st was relevant as it deals with relationships in school. since teachers ban smartphone technology, it may imply that they do not fully understand its role in teaching yet learners understand it as a necessary tool in learning. this dilemma can be explained by using tpack, built on shulman’s process content knowledge concept (1986). tpack is the intersection among technology, content and pedagogical knowledge (koehler, 2012; koehler mishra et al., 2014). the tpack framework links technology, pedagogy and content knowledge so that technology may be integrated in teaching. thus, tpack involves teachers knowing when, where and how to use information and communication technology (ict) in the classroom. ict in education includes the internet, smartphones and other hand-held devices (yusuf, 2005; olapiriyakul & scher, 2006). research has found that icts enhance learning (burkholder et al., 2015). despite this benefit, africa and the western world have not developed at the same pace regarding internet access and computer usage resulting in the “digital divide” (fuchs & horak, 2006). this divide suggests much more widespread use of ict in developed than in developing countries. south africa needs to improve internet penetration, which currently stands at 52.6% compared to north america at 89.0% (internet world statistics, 2016). considering this low penetration rate of internet using computers, smartphones provide the cheapest and quickest access to the internet for the majority of people in south africa. statistics also indicate that most south african citizens do not have desktop computers or laptops in their homes (statistics south africa, 2015). this implies that more citizens access the internet though smartphones and yet many schools ban them, which may widen the “digital divide”. the st regards that the shared sense of values from all stakeholders of a social group constitutes the policies that govern it. in our case, the views of learners in a school articulate such values and they should be considered in making decisions concerning smartphones. st states that stakeholders possess power to influence decisions, legitimise relationships 74 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) and provide urgency for action (mitchell et al., 1997). therefore, it is a lens through which to understand the learners’ views to incorporate them in policy decisions. in a school setting, learners are definitive stakeholders whose views should be considered when making policies such as banning smartphones. therefore, this study explored learners’ views regarding smartphones. it also poses the following question: what are the learners’ views about smartphones in schools? this question is necessary because the voice of the learner is silent in the unilateral policies that ban smartphones. some researchers consider learners as key stakeholders in the school (dlamini, 2004; van der berg et al., 2011). thus, this study extends the current literature on the use of technology in the classroom to include the views of learners. we believe smartphones are necessary for access to information, its storage, processing and communication. unlike other studies, this study explores learners’ views regarding smartphones and it advances the debate on learners as definitive stakeholders in the schools. 4. methodology a survey design was used to determine the views of learners regarding smartphones in schools. this design was used because of its breadth in collecting people’s views and therefore can be generalised to a larger population (kelly, clark & vivienne, 2003; okibo & makanga, 2014). the questionnaire consisted of two parts: a likert type section and five openended items. the researchers constructed a 4-point likert scale (likert, 1932) questionnaire consisting of 146 items with responses coded as never = 1, low-never = 2, low-often = 3 and often = 4. for construct validity, five experts were used to examine items of the likert and the open-ended questions. their recommendations were effected before a pilot study was done to determine the reliability. the reliability of the likert items in the questionnaire was found to have a cronbach alpha, which equalled 0.88. the cronbach alpha is a measure of internal consistency that ranges between 0 and 1, where 0 signifies minimum (none) and 1 signifies maximum (perfect). the acceptable alpha value ranges from 0.70 to 0.95 (nunnaly, 1978; tavakol & dennick, 2011). this implies that our cronbach alpha of 0.88 is good and the instrument is reliable. in addition, five open-ended items elicited clarity on the participants’ choices from the closed-ended part of the questionnaire (gay, mills & airasian 2011; best & kahn, 2003). the inter-rater reliability of the open-ended items from five raters was kappa = 0.605 (p <.0.05), suggesting substantial agreement (mchugh, 2012). the population was 280 new learners from different secondary schools in the province admitted to the department of mathematics, science and technology education at the university of limpopo. the sample consisted of 93 learners randomly selected (31 from mathematics, 31 from science and 31 from the technology sections) to take part in the study. this sample had an 8.32% margin of error at confidence level of 95%, suggesting that the sample was a fair representation of the population for the study. the study was conducted during the registration week because learners were able to reflect on their high school experiences better than those who had already experienced university life. the researchers administered the questionnaire to 93 learners and collected them after half an hour in order to solicit their views. this was necessary because these learners were part of the social school set up. the likert type items sought the learners’ views on how smartphones must be used in and out of school and how they can be integrated in classroom activities. in addition, participants answered open-ended items to express their views on rules to control the use of smartphones (best & kahn, 2003). the questionnaire also included a sincerity check 75 mavhunga, kibirige, chigonga & ramaboka smartphones in public secondary schools (hewson & laurent, 2008) on the respondents. for example, items on cyberbullying were strewn around the questionnaire to check if respondents would answer the item consistently or thoughtlessly. descriptive statistics (frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviation – sd) were used to analyse the close-ended items (ary, jacobs & sorensen, 2010). for qualitative open-ended items, 5 steps from the taxonomic analysis (spradley, 1979) were used namely, 1) selecting domains for taxonomic analysis, 2) substitution frame searching for subsets, 3) formation of tentative taxonomy, 4) asking questions to verify taxonomic relationships, 5) construction of completed taxonomy and finally categories (cohen, manion & morrison 2007) were developed from completed taxonomies. 5. results learners felt that smartphones must be allowed in school because they use them out of school for information searching, processing and communication. they viewed smartphones as convenient, provided there are conditions to prevent distraction of other users. in order to optimise utility in school, learners suggested design changes to make large screens and to lower the cost of smartphones. the open-ended items the results show that the most popular learners’ view was to allow smartphones in school for academic purposes. learners’ views were categorised into advantages of allowing phones, disadvantages and noncommittal (table 1). table 1: learner’s views and their reasons to have smartphones in school learners’ view learners’ reason number of learners who chose a reason allow smartphones information searching communication 37 55.9% 15 ban smartphones cheating 12 38.7% distraction 24 views not stated no reason 5 5.4% total 93 100% the results in table1 show that 55.9% of the learners considered smartphones in schools as an advantage in searching for information and for communication. however, 38.7% opted for banning smartphones, citing cheating and distractions, which are disadvantageous, while 5.4% were non-committal. frequencies of learners’ views on five smartphone applications in school are shown in table 2. 76 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) table 2: learners’ views on five smartphone applications in school application number of supportive learners purpose for usage internet dictionary calculator 89 11 6 information processing social platforms calls and sms 19 7 communication according to learners’ views in table 2, information processing has the highest frequency being the internet (89) while the least used application was the calculator with a frequency of (6). rules for smartphone use in class any activity that is not controlled in any organisation can cause chaos. learners realised this and therefore in their views included ways of controlling smartphones in school (table 3). table 3: learners’ views on how smartphones may be controlled in school. learner’s view number of supportive learners smartphone should be on silent 31 no smartphone in any examinations and tests 24 no music in class 19 no texting in class 12 no pornographic material 12 no pictures taken in class 9 keep smartphone off in class 8 no games 2 expel learner if found cheating 4 confiscate smartphones if misused 13 from the results in table 3, learners’ views on how smartphones may be controlled in school ranged from smartphone on silent (31) to no games (2). likert type items internet access results from the likert items show that most participants use smartphones to access the internet (mean = 3.80, sd = 0. 46). this trend was also evident for the views on banning smartphones in examinations and tests (means 3.90; sd = 0. 41). the experiences of using social networks such as whatsapp (means 3.53; sd = 1.001) and a wide range of views on pedagogy (means 3.53; sd = 0.90). 77 mavhunga, kibirige, chigonga & ramaboka smartphones in public secondary schools in addition, there are practical considerations in the use of phones for schoolwork: screen size, cost of purchasing, using phones, optimising phones and utilities of smartphones in schoolwork (figure 1). likert scale fr eq ue nc y (f) fr eq ue nc y (f) fr eq ue nc y (f) fr eq ue nc y (f) item b08. i need a large screen to access the internet easily b19. smartphone makers must design student friendly sets b21. ipads are student friendly but expensive 1 2 3 41 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 1 2 3 4 d11. parents need to buy smartphones and air time for their children 50 40 30 20 10 0 50 40 30 20 10 0 50 40 30 20 10 0 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0 likert scale likert scale likert scale figure 1: learners’ views about enhancing access to the internet (d11, b08, b19 and b21) all histograms in figure 1, b08 (mean = 3.15, sd = 1.14), d11 (mean = 3.20, sd = 1.06) and b19 (mean = 3.14, sd = 1.10), b21 (mean = 3.81, sd = 0. 75) indicate a general leaning of choices in favour of agree. 6. discussion the study set out to establish learners’ views regarding smartphones in secondary schools. the social constructivism is the paradigm that underlies learners’ views about smartphones in learning. if learners’ views were incorporated in school policy, it would be interpreted as a 78 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) gesture of accepting learners as stakeholders. this would be in line with what the stakeholder theory shows, that all members in the school should be consulted in making decisions, which was when smartphones were banned. results from open-ended items are discussed first, followed by the likert (closed) items. open-ended item responses more than half (55.9%) of the learners were of the view that smartphones are useful in schools. when the stakeholder theory is used to view this result, it means that the views of learners as stakeholders must be taken into consideration in policymaking. this gives a voice to the learners as key stakeholders to influence the decisions taken on smartphones in schools. hamzah, ismail and embi (2010) emphasise learners’ strong affinity for smartphones and the importance of learners’ views. this study shows conflicting views between learners and school management concerning smartphones. this may create discord (yüksel & yüksel, 2001; westbrook & reilly, 1983) between learners and the school management because learners’ views about smartphones in school are not sought or considered. a 5.4% item non-response introduces marginal bias into the data because the overall response rate is higher than 70% (standards and guidelines for statistical surveys, 2014). the reasons for non-response may include time limitations, indecision and language difficulty. while 55.9% of the learners viewed smartphones as useful for information searching and communication, various reasons for opposing smartphones in schools were also given. these included the possibility of cheating in examinations, distractions by different ringtones and using sites that are not relevant to academic work. these may be valid arguments but they do not diminish the cogency of information searching and processing, which can be harnessed to improve teaching and learning in the classroom. distractions may arise from human misuse and not from the smartphone itself. therefore, it is not surprising that smartphones are banned from examination rooms. the majority of learners view smartphones as what peters and bell (2013: 52) called a “the hand held library” because people use their hand held phones to access different subject content. smartphones enhance the use of ict (sun et al., 2016) and pervade all spheres of life, including schools (peters & bell, 2013). therefore, banning smartphones in school hinders the flow of ict in general. this may create a generational conflict where adults ban technology that younger people view as profitable. in fact, the action to ban smartphones increases the “digital divide” in the country (burkholder et al., 2015) and one wonders when the country will start narrowing this divide? teachers and principals advanced three arguments for banning smartphones namely distraction, time wasting (hawi & samaha, 2016) and cyberbullying (popovac & leoschut, 2012). this is in sharp contrast with research that acknowledges the use of mobile devices in education (tustin et al., 2012; kreutzer, 2008). it also disagrees with the learners’ views because information-processing (table 2) had the highest frequency in terms of smartphone use in general. similarly, values of learners’ views on how smartphones may be controlled in school ranging from smartphones on silent (31) to no games (2) suggest positive learners’ views to incorporate technology in the teaching and learning in schools. in addition, it implies that learners are willing to be part of setting the rules on smartphones since they regard themselves as stakeholders in the schools. smartphone technology is evolving rapidly yet the integration of technology into the curriculum is at a slower pace (hawi & samaha, 2016). it is understandable that teachers and principals are opposed to smartphones because learners may engage in distractions 79 mavhunga, kibirige, chigonga & ramaboka smartphones in public secondary schools such as social media and fail to concentrate on their studies. this may be one view for banning smartphones in the classrooms. it agrees with studies from the usa, which reported a negative effect of using whatsapp on academic performance (junco & cotton, 2012). moreover, learners also copy answers from the internet (corrigan-gibbs et al., 2015; billiczulle et al., 2008). jantjies and joy (2015) also found that older teachers are less competent in smartphone use than younger teachers are. this may explain, in part, why teachers resist smartphones. most smartphones’ features are not optimised for educational purposes. these include the internet, short message service, cameras, calculators and social media. learners expressed the view that the internet, calling, dictionary and calculators are necessary features on smartphones. however, smartphones on the market do not support programmable calculators, high-resolution cameras and high-speed processors (o’connell, 2013). currently, many features on phones are not useful in school, such as games, music, movies and others. such functions could be dropped in the optimisation of phones for school. smartphone manufacturers do not generally produce ‘student-friendly’ phones. student friendly phones would need high processing speed, good connectivity and a long battery life. it should also cost less. the concept of personalising and customising phones for a particular client is already underway with motorola (the telegraph, 2015) and other smartphone manufacturers may follow suit. this implies that phones that are optimised for educational purposes will require the education authorities to design policies to guide the use of smartphones in school in order to minimise distractions. smartphones can be quite distracting to other people; therefore, learners are of the view that clear policies are needed to regulate their use. in this regard, learners are of the view that smartphones should be used in silent mode. at the same time, they also agreed to ban smartphones from examinations and tests. for use in classrooms, they suggested that there should be no texting, games or music, pornography or taking pictures and videos. learners indicated that they wished to avoid distracting each other when using their smartphones. however, most schools cannot control how learners use these devices outside of school. this leads one to ask, what is the purpose of banning smartphones in schools? how effective is the ban? since learners in secondary schools use smartphones outside of school, banning them at school means the school system resists evolving along with technology whereas this could otherwise offer a useful opportunity for learners to learn to use their phones effectively and productively. the learners’ views regarding the regulation of smartphone use in the classroom seems practical and workable. their views imply a positive attitude towards ict, unlike the views of the older generations who perpetuate negative attitudes in this respect (kibirige, 2011). research has shown that when learners are involved in making rules to govern themselves, they feel that they are obliged to obey such rules (mncube & harber, 2013). therefore, it makes sense for them to enforce such rules in order to inculcate acceptable behaviour in every student (schoeman, 2006). it is also an opportunity for learners to suggest corrective actions if rules are not obeyed. nilson (2016: 111) supports this observation, reporting that if they are involved in making the rules “learners pretty much police themselves, keeping even minor violations to a minimum”. this implies that if learners are involved in designing a policy on smartphones, they can regulate themselves on how to select functions necessary for schoolwork. for information processing, internet access was viewed as an important feature on smartphones (table 2). this suggests that learners consider an information processing 80 perspectives in education 2016: 34(3) application important for their social and educational life. this finding agrees with asher’s (2015) finding that social media can enhance learning by connecting the classrooms with the world in real time and that social media goes beyond mere discussion groups and sharing thoughts. thus, a smartphone is in effect a library and a communication platform. it is also important to consider that smartphones have evolved on a platform of telephony and many of the desired functions are additional. therefore, for smartphones to run functions needed in schools, such as programmable calculators, they need to be redesigned to supply more power and processing speed. the closed-ended items the views of learners regarding internet use is skewed towards agree (mean = 3.8; sd = 0. 46) (figure 1) suggesting that this technology is popular. there are many smartphones among learners; unlike computers which are quite limited (kibirige, 2011). this observation concurs with the findings of burkholder et al. (2015) who contend that smartphones can be useful in schools. smartphones have been banned in schools despite their availability to learners. it is no wonder that the “digital divide” (fuchs & horak, 2006) is still as big as it was a decade ago when these devices were not as popular among learners as they are in 2016. several reasons underlie the popularity of smartphones namely chat messages are instant, cheap and can consist of voice, text, picture or video (cio, 2014). other functions such as gps, clock, music store, dictionary, calculator and social platforms make the smartphone highly useful. learners also view smartphones as able to compromise examinations and tests because of the possibility of examination leaks and learners sharing answers. for instance, whatsapp was used to leak the life sciences examination paper to other learners in limpopo in 2015 (themba, 2015). many learners share the view that smartphones enable information searching because they are more accessible than desktop computers or laptops. this view may be driven by the general lack of books, libraries and reading material that is common in developing countries (jantjies & joy, 2015; muwanga-zake, 2007). computer illiteracy and limited access to computers compromises teachers and learners’ abilities to handle information in south african schools (jantjies & joy, 2015). in the tpack framework, educators may have limited technological knowledge due to this lack of familiarity with computers. this realisation led the gauteng department of education to train teachers to teach through internet-ready tablets (msila, 2015). the success of the innovation to digital education depended on teacher competence in using information technology. therefore, for rural and small town schools, learners view that the transformation to full use of digital devices will grow at the pace that teachers become more competent and confident in using smartphones. this requires educators to be knowledgeable with computer hardware and software, pedagogical knowledge and subject content. in order to accomplish this, there is a need to integrate technology into preand in-service teacher training to make them adept with graphic calculators, ipads, tablets, blackboard, the internet and other educational applications (bell, 2001; camera, 2015). many pedagogical opportunities are made possible by smartphones, for instance a life sciences class can use their cameras to photograph the germination of a bean seed and watch epigeal and hypogeal germination; they can also measure rates of growth. in this case, a large screen would be preferred (figure 1). learners can make short films using smartphones for learning, entertainment or reporting crime (savides, 2016; rodrigues, 2016). 81 mavhunga, kibirige, chigonga & ramaboka smartphones in public secondary schools often, learners are regarded as non-stakeholders and are excluded from the decisionmaking processes such as in the banning of smartphones. this ban means teachers may not be ready to integrate smartphone technology into teaching and learning in schools. several reasons may explain this decision. these include teachers not being confident with smartphones, it may be for fear of biasing learning opportunities in favour of learners who can afford smartphones and it could be that teachers are unwilling to engage in a new tool without guidance on how to use it. this implies that technology integration necessitates changes in the teacher training programmes to include ict into pedagogics and content knowledge. the banning of smartphones also means that integration of technology into teaching and learning and consultation of learners in the decision making process are inadequate. if they were involved, there would be no smartphones banned in schools. besides improving access to information and all other benefits, learners would have learnt how change could be democratically achieved. therefore, the decision to lift the ban on smartphones will enable teachers to integrate technology in teaching and learning in consultation with the learners. this is likely to improve learners’ attitudes since they expressed their views that smartphones could help them in school. 7. recommendations the debate of smartphones in schools reveals a major gap in the conceptualisation of policy and practice in south african schools. the rapid expansion of knowledge, technology and globalisation underscores the need for changes in the education enterprise; 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repression by dictators all over the world. several postindependence african governments invoke this weapon many times to silence dissenting voices. the data to embellish arguments in this study were gathered through focus group discussion interview sessions (fgdis) from 40 participants purposefully sampled from 26 south african universities. the analysis of data followed a thematic approach with themes emerging from the fgdis forming the basis of the discussion of the findings. chief among the findings was that despite the salutary role of student protests as a force for social change well-established and never being gainsaid, higher education fees needs to fall, albeit cautiously. the fees-must-fall protests raised an important consciousness of how challenging a colonised education system can lead to academic disruptions. the key conclusion drawn was that if tuition fees dry up as would be the case if a fee-free decolonised education policy were to be adopted prematurely, the country could suffer severe consequences such as inevitable budget cuts, compromised research standards, demoralised academics and curtailed university offerings. the recommendations made included a need for governmental commitment to calm the students’ temper tantrums before they spiral out of control and for curriculum decolonisation advocates to denounce the government’s repressive tendencies if a truly decolonised education system is to be realised. keywords: curriculum, conundrum, decolonisation, fees-must-fall-protests 1. introduction in the last couple of months of 2016, academia was rocked by student protests despite negotiations, concessions and attempts to return to normalcy. the situation certainly saw a repeat of the university disruptions of 2015. despite warnings of the dire consequences of their anti-academic actions, students protested on university campuses around edmore mutekwe north-west university, faculty of education, school of professional studies in education, south africa. email: edmore.mutekwe@nwu.ac.za/ emutekwe@yahoo.com doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i2.11 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(2): 142-154 © uv/ufs mailto:edmore.mutekwe@nwu.ac.za/emutekwe@yahoo.com mailto:edmore.mutekwe@nwu.ac.za/emutekwe@yahoo.com http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.11 143 mutekwe unmasking the ramifications of the fees-must-fall-conundrum in higher education the country for a fee-free decolonised education system (gaunt, 2016). duncan (2016) notes that the chilling statement, “burn to be heard” was doing the rounds on social media platforms among students weeks before the violent protests started. the message was then seriously taken heed of by rioting university students given that buildings and vehicles at several universities were burnt in the wave of protests that kicked off in the middle of september 2016. the arsonists were not clearly identified although government and university management’s fingers pointed to student protesters (duncan, 2016). some students adopted disruptive tactics to shut their campuses down until their demands for a decolonised fee-free education system were addressed (le grange, 2016). many universities responded by increasing security on their campuses, seeking wide-ranging court interdicts against students as well as deploying private security guards on campuses in a manner that is akin to what althusser (1972) describes as evoking the repressive state apparatus to silence dissenting voices. 2. background to the study the question of a fee-free decolonised education system has been a priority for the south african government for a very long time and for the student community any further excuses were something they could no longer stomach (somo, 2016). nonetheless, le grange (2016) maintains that students need not shy away from the view that our country has, in many areas, made remarkable progress since the dawn of democracy and therefore they must remember we came from a repressive education system as a country. notwithstanding this view, they still need to acknowledge that more still needs to be done to emancipate and change not only the lives of many poor people but also the education they consume through higher education institutions and this should not blind them to the successes the country has so far achieved (le grange, 2016). drawing from the national development plan (ndp), which makes it categorically clear that education, training and innovation are central to south africa’s longterm development, one needs to underscore the importance of these aspects as the core elements in eliminating poverty and reducing inequality by bringing in the foundations of an equal society (somo, 2016). statistics south africa (2016) asserts that more than three million are disengaged from school. further to this, the organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd) reports that approximately one third of those aged between 15 and 24 or 3.4 million are not formally employed or in education and training. at the same time, two million of these young people have not finished grade 12 due to the strings attached to the current higher education curriculum, which calls for a real decolonisation agenda (oecd, 2017). 3. the need for a decolonised higher education system in south africa given the aforementioned, it follows therefore that the need for a decolonised higher education curriculum needs to be given serious thought if students are to be fully empowered to take charge of their own destinies. this view takes the discussion to an assertion by de carvalho and florez-florez (2014) that universities cannot decolonise the curriculum without defining decolonisation first. in their views, a decolonised curriculum – though the concept remains a grey area – typically entails academics and students ridding higher education institutions of the procedures, values, norms, practices, thinking, beliefs and choices that mark anything non-european and not white as inferior (de carvalho & florez-florez, 2014). commenting on the above, american social theorist william pinar (2010) views the need 144 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) for a decolonised education as a curriculum theory, an interdisciplinary study of educational experiences that seek to replace eurocentric and american-centric views with afrocentric ones. for pinar (2010) the issue of a decolonised curriculum is complex in that a change in educational experiences involves more than just topics covered in a course to encompass the attitudes, values, dispositions and world views that are learnt, un-learnt, re-learnt, re-formed, deconstructed and reconstructed while studying towards a course. pinar’s (2010) argument takes the issue of a decolonised education system to four approaches to curriculum theory and practices: curriculum as a product, process, context and praxis. curriculum as a product implies that there are certain skills to master and facts to know, while curriculum as a process describes interaction of instructors, students and knowledge (pinar, 2010). curriculum as context entails a contextually shaped education system and curriculum as praxis refers to the view that practice should not focus exclusively on individuals alone or the group alone but must also explore how both create understandings and practices (le grange, 2016). perhaps as noted by gough (2011), focusing particularly on curriculum as context and as praxis would resonate with the need for decolonising university education given that these approaches seem to align well with the aforementioned conceptualisation of decolonising the curriculum. a contextual approach to the curriculum does open doors for universities to critique how the curriculum and therefore the education system reproduces unequal social relations after graduation (gough, 2011). praxis creates conditions for democratising learning spaces making room for individual and group identities within the teaching and learning context. this creates shared and negotiated understandings and practices while knowledge is being generated and disseminated (le grange, 2014). therefore for universities that wish to decolonise their curricula, the above approaches offer some insights and help people to stop conflating transformation (yet another imperative in universities and in south africa more broadly) with decolonisation (gough, 2011). 4. problem statement the south african higher education (he) student community has constantly accused its government of not giving education the priority it deserves, preferring to compare it with that of other developing countries such as cuba. cuba’s population of approximately 11047251 people as of 2015 is one hundred per cent subsidized by the government (somo, 2016) and yet remains the best education system in latin america and the caribbean, and is the only country on the continent to have a high-level teaching faculty. proponents of a decolonised fee-free higher education policy in south africa, for example, members of the economic freedom fighters (eff), an opposition political party in south africa, build their argument around the view that cuba allocates its highest budget share of 13 per cent to education and they want the south african government to do the same (somo, 2016). they are thus blatantly oblivious of the fact that economic growth in south africa has been respectable, although recent statistics south africa (2016) reports that it has become weaker than many emerging economies. further to the above, statistics south africa (hereafter, stats sa, 2016) reports that south africa’s gross domestic product (gdp) grew by 3.3 per cent quarter to quarter in the second quarter of 2016 in contrast to the 1.2 per cent in the previous quarter. this certainly indicates the economy has been growing very slowly and stats sa further notes that this year’s growth rate tells the same story as the past three or four years in terms of gdp growth. given that the south african government has always claimed to be aware of these higher education (he) problems and a preparedness to tackle them and yet not much 145 mutekwe unmasking the ramifications of the fees-must-fall-conundrum in higher education has been happening on the ground, the south african he student community regards this as ideological, drawing from the althusserian neo-marxist terminology (althusser, 1972). they therefore came to a realisation that empty promises are mere political rhetoric to lull them into docility (bourdieu, 2008). thus, lehola (2015) cautions parents and students not to deceive themselves about the existence of a fee-free decolonised education system in south africa for there can never be one. 5. research questions the following research questions guided this study: • what effects do the fees-must-fall-protests have on the smooth flow of university life? • how did the fees-must-fall-protest conundrum lead to disruptive and violent protests in south africa’s universities? • how can university education be genuinely decolonised? 6. aim and objectives the study’s aim was to explore and unmask the ramifications of the fees-must-fall-protests on student life. pursuant to this aim, the following objectives were designed: • to establish how the chains of the fees-must-fall-protests conundrum led to violent disruptions in south africa’s universities • to examine the ways through which university education can be decolonised • to unmask the strategies university authorities need to adopt to ameliorate destructive tendencies from students during protests. 7. theoretical framework by adopting a critical conflict perspective, the argument in this study is that conflict is not always dysfunctional as assumed by functionalist social theorists such as durkheim and parsons (ritzer, 2015). more often than not, it is a source of harmony in society given that the tensions between members of the dominant and subject classes or class struggles between the capitalists and their exploited victims sometimes lead to the need for harmony. similar to what happened in the era of apartheid south africa, where a protracted racial and class struggle between the dominant and subjugated social groups over the means of production culminated in a conflict resolution that brought a peace settlement and democracy to south africa in 1994 (jansen, 2017). further to the above, critical social movement theorists such as tilly, porta and diani (2012) have written extensively on why protests turn violent. porta (2012) for example, argues that protest movements tend to become radicalised by two factors, namely escalating policing and, according to porta (2012:117) “competitive escalations”, which imply protestors competing for space with political adversaries and other protesting groups. a clear illustration of this view was evident in the fees-must-fall protests on many university campuses, especially where members of the south african police services (saps) and the private security guards on campuses were too quick to use force to thwart the protesters’ temper tantrums (mapheta, 2016). consequently, these interactions psyched and predisposed the protesting students towards violence with their actions creating what sociologist gamson (2012:37) calls “injustice flames” around the state, when the state itself tended to be viewed as fundamentally unjust. according to the above view, state repression 146 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) tends to create and fuel solidarity among movement participants, who thus find some justification in their violence as a form of self-defence. in porta’s (2012) discourse, violence always emerges from violence. unfortunately, in the public debates, disruptive and violent protests have often been conflated. the sad reality in the south african legal system was that the saps and university management authorities were interdicted from interfering with peaceful, non-disruptive protests yet they were the ones that then degenerated into violent protests at a later stage (somo, 2016). outside of the university context, civic organisations such as abahlali base mjondolo had also set up roadblocks because their more conventional protests were ignored. what protesting university students had come to realise was that unless the normal functioning of an unequal and decolonised educational system is disrupted, the situation was unlikely to change (apple, 2010). given that the fees-must-fall-protests needed to be given constitutional protection and that such protection was supported by legislation in view of the fact that the regulation of gatherings act allows protests to be prohibited only if they cause serious disruption (duncan, 2016). even then, the act states that municipalities and the police force must consult protesters before dispersing them (somo, 2016). what this implies in the context of student sit-ins and their effort to get others to join in can be considered protected conduct, provided they seek to persuade as opposed to coercing those around them (disemelo, 2015). unfortunately, that is not how protesters were being treated on university campuses because ill-trained private security guards had been deployed on many of the university campuses (mapheta, 2016). several universities thus had limited protection rights through wide ranging interdicts that prohibited all disruptions. since interdicts are blunt instruments that prohibit particular actions on a blanket basis, they became problematic in simply serving as a form of prior restraint to expressive acts (duncan, 2016). the protests indicated that sections of the protesting student movements were competing with one another to claim the victories associated with the fees-must-fall-struggles (duncan, 2016). sociologists from the critical social perspective such as ogburn (1998) argue that political violence by protesters is rarely adopted over night or consciously. rather in the early stages of the protest cycle, such violence is generally unplanned, small in scale and limited in scope but often occurring as a spontaneous reaction to an escalation of force by members of the police force or the closure of democratic space (ogburn, 1998). most significantly, this shifts the struggle onto a terrain that is overwhelmingly dominated by the state and its repressive state apparatus (althusser, 1972). in the fees-mustfall-protests in south africa, this cycle began to manifest itself on many campuses during the student riots and its emergence made the official narrative in that in 2015, the movement was noble but in 2016, it lost its legitimacy and degenerated into full-scale violence. 8. research methodology the study adopted an interpretive paradigmatic perspective utilising a qualitative methodology, which nieuwenhuis (2016) views as having a subjective ontology, allowing the researcher and the researched an opportunity to generate multiple subjective realities as both parties have the chance to co-construct the knowledge. given the focus of this study, which was to explore the ramifications of the fees-must-fall protests in universities, this approach (qualitative) was ideal on account of its ability to elicit multiple perspectives, a feature that is not possible in the quantitative tradition owing to its thrust on a single objective reality (hesse-biber, 2012). by adopting open-ended questions and posing them to the participants, the study managed to 147 mutekwe unmasking the ramifications of the fees-must-fall-conundrum in higher education generate detailed and comprehensive explanations that culminated in the thick descriptions discussed and presented in the findings section of the study (hesse-biber, 2012). 9. participant selection the population for this study comprised students from south africa’s 26 universities and it was from this population that a total sample size of 40 participants was purposefully sampled. this process guided the sampling procedure, which was as a result, non-random. the rationale for such a sample size was to ensure that the views expressed reflected the diverse perceptions of virtually all higher education students on the subject. 10. data collection data were gathered through fgdis with a purposive sample size of 40 student participants from the 26 south african universities categorised into 5 separate focus groups in line with the caution by dzvimbo et al. (2010) that to be effective, a focus group discussion session (fgds) needs to have not more than 12 members. this view was further guided by insights from fayisetani (2010) who advises that focus group discussions need to adopt a funnel technique while utilising a focus group discussion guide (fgdg). the process thus began with a semi-structured set of questions that allowed the participants easy access into the deep discussions through an encouraging rapport between the researcher and the participants, allaying the latter’s fears in expressing their views on the ramifications of the fees-must-fall protests in their respective universities. this became evidently clear in the level of confidence exhibited by the participants as the fgdis gained momentum. they became so absorbed in the debates that they ended up more enthusiastic than before, leading to the generation of more in-depths views on their perceptions of how the fees-must-fall-protests needed to be handled by members of saps and the university communities. 11. data analysis the data analysis process followed a thematic approach where superordinate themes arising from the fgdis were used as the basis for the discussion of the research findings. guided by hesse-biber’s (2012) assertion that data analysis in qualitative researches ought to be done in terms of meanings mediated through language and action tied to particular contexts, a descriptive and interpretive mode of data analysis was adopted involving the use of themes emerging from the fgdis. 12. ethical considerations the instrument for data collection was first pilot tested with a group of students in one university to guarantee their transferability to different university students (nieuwenhuis, 2016). as a result, the reliability of the focus group discussion guide (fgdg) could not be doubted (dzvimbo et al., 2010) as the differences amongst the student population within the different universities proved insignificant in the main study. the patterns of interactions and attitudes within the university communities were generally characteristic of prevalent cultures during the feesmust-fall-protests. in the main study, the data collection process was initiated by clarifying the purpose of the research and to reassure participants of their rights during the study especially in terms of issues to do with anonymity and confidentiality as well as their liberty to withdraw from the study at any moment. fortunately, none of them withdrew prematurely. other ethical principles taken into account in the study included informed consent, which had to be sought 148 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) from the department of higher education and training through the existing ethical clearance protocols of the universities, the right to self-determination, privacy and dignity, fair treatment and protection from harm (non-maleficence) during the course of the study. 13. results and discussion the findings of this study are discussed under the six themes as they emerged from the fgds. the effects of the fees-must-fall disruptions on student learning; how student demands turned political; students on the frontline in a battle waged against themselves; the illusion of conflating transformation with decolonisation of education; ways through which university authorities dealt with the fees-must-fall-protests and how hope could have calmed students’ temper tantrums. findings under each of these themes are discussed in the subsequent sections. 14. the effects of the fees-must-fall disruptions on student learning from the fgdis, it was apparent that there were some macabre politics of university shutdowns with multiple duels of risk-taking at the time the student protesters were in action. the voices lamenting the dire consequences of shutting down universities were based on the need to help students not to lengthen their study durations. consequently, where some university management teams took the initiative, however, tentative and called for constructive engagement, the more vociferous sections of student protesters would problematise and filibuster the motives and terms as well as the rules of engagement proposed (hughes, 2017). the participants alleged they could even be some unspoken risk-taking between the various universities because it was taking long for university students to join forces in confronting the government that had since thrown the curved ball at the universities while watching developments at a distance. following from this view one participant remarked as follows: student 2: apart from his cameo appearance at the largely disastrous fees imbizo, the president has been nowhere to be seen as if our educational demands are a non-event. participants also observed that the trigger for the current wave of student protests was not anything done or said by the universities but by the higher education minister’s announcement of the fee increases for the 2017 academic year coupled with government’s lack of urgency in handling matters put before it early enough for action. 15. how student demands turned political asked why their demands turned political, many participants echoed maluleke’s (2016) assertion that the shutting down of universities in the context of student protests was never unique or original to south africa with some students in the fgdis arguing that several postindependent african government dictators do that when cornered by students over their political rhetoric during election campaigns. the above views resonate well with those of randi bolsvik (2010) following his research on the relationship between governments and university protests in several african countries such as cote d’ivoire, ethiopia, nigeria, kenya, cameroon, tanzania, uganda and zambia where he concluded that students have been a major driving force in the second liberation of the continent (democratisation). as evidence that they had read their political history well, particularly in terms of the relationships between dictatorial governments and he students, many fgdis participants had the audacity to dwell on the highlights of the patterns followed in the confrontations 149 mutekwe unmasking the ramifications of the fees-must-fall-conundrum in higher education between state and students in many african countries. they argued that it is as predictable as it is banal and, as bolsvik (2010) notes, it would generally proceed in that students would announce a demand, followed by a protest march. next comes a confrontation with riot police officers often with tragic consequences. examples cited include events in the then zaire on the eleventh and twelfth of may 1990 when at least 12 students were killed during a university campus student protest in lubumbashi. other cited examples are the 1986 ahmadu bello university where up to 15 students lost their lives when the army moved in to quell a student protest in nigeria, as well as the violent exploits, including rape and murder of idi amin’s army at uganda’s makerere university in the 1970s (jansen, 2017). one participant even stated that it is for this reason that virtually all standard texts of decolonisation still in vogue today were written during times of great national upheavals. in his own words: student 12: examples of such texts include the famous influential works of dambudzo maretyera, frantz fanon, walter rodney, steve biko, cheikh anta diop, paulo freira and okot p’ bitek among others. in my view, the protests were, of course, never over struggle theory. rather the theory produced by such thinkers was born out of the crucible of struggles in which students and universities were central. some remarkable differences notwithstanding, citizens of our fellow african countries would also be pardoned for viewing the current #fees-must-fall wave of student protests sweeping over the south african university sector with a sense of both deja vu and deja fait. of course, #fees-must-fall, #rhodes-must-fall and # afrikaans-must-fall come with their own south african particularities. the above views revealed the need to learn from rather than merely repeat history and the view that unlike in many other african states, in south africa, it has been the protesters rather than the state that has been demanding the shutdown of universities and this made a remarkable difference. 16. students on the frontline in a battle waged against themselves the fgdis results showed that in light of the power dynamics in south africa, the fees-mustfall protests have pitted, in the main, black police officers against black university student leaders. had the demonstrations continued to spread with the rage spilling from campuses into the streets, the results would have been a deepening animosity and resentment among the role players. one thing for sure was that black police officers would have gone into a crisis mode, if they were not already in it. on the one hand, they were saddled with an obligation to carry out instructions from the state, their employer; while on the other hand, they had to face inevitable confrontations with the students barely out of their teens, young enough to be their children. many participants argued that history offers lessons that often, when public confidence in the government, ebbs to its lowest levels, state power becomes synonymous with brute force as exercised through the police and military forces as the repressive state apparatus (althusser, 1972). put differently, when things fall apart because the centre cannot hold mere anarchy is lost upon the world, as the irish poet william butler yeats observed almost over a century ago in the second coming. it is not because they do not identify with the call for fee-free decolonised education that black police officers did not bat an eyelid in beating the protesting students. it was in spite of their identification with the protests that they meted out violence on their fellow blacks repeating what they did at marikana in 2012 where 34 miners were killed following work protests. police officers were aware of the exploitation suffered by the black underground mineworkers and they were receptive to the indignities of black life (jansen, 2017). 150 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) participating students noted however that given that whiteness is condescending and all powerful, black police officers could not help but be numbed into meek obeisance. however, a collective expression of black anger, as seen in the fees-must-fall-protest, provoked a black police officer’s latent emotions of self-hate. they know that they are in no better a position than any black worker in the anti-black world that south africa is and yet they earn a living from defending the system (althusser, 1972). despite having children who cannot afford the prohibitively high university fees, they still went in a war with themselves, an internal war that induced a psychosis of collective fear and alienation, uncannily similar to what usa psychologist joy de gruy (2005) labels a post-traumatic slave syndrome. the war was externalised through the outlet of violence against themselves and more often than not, against others. it was yet another form of black-on-black violence; this time presided over by a black government unlike how it happened prior to the advent of democracy, where blacks upheld the philosophy of black consciousness as an antidote for collective black victimhood (somo, 2016). 17. the illusion of conflating transformation with the decolonisation of education it was apparent in the results of the fgdis that many participants were under the impression that transforming and decolonising the curriculum are the same. asked to debate the distinction between the two concepts, they echoed the following sentiments: student 13: when it comes to university curricula, the decolonisation seems to involve replacing works from europe or the global north with local theorists and african authors to prevent african universities from becoming more extensions of their former colonisers. student 17: what i feel is that black and white south african academics should be in the decolonisation of higher education agenda together implying that white south african academics are as vital in driving genuine curriculum decolonisation as are their black counterparts. substantiating on how curriculum decolonisation should be unveiled, many fgdis participants argued that this should involve a conscious, deliberate, non-hypocritical and diligent interest by black and white academics in indigenous knowledge systems, cultures, peoples and languages (de carvalho & florez-florez, 2014). the aforementioned lends credence to the words of charles eliot (2005), a former harvard university president, who maintained that the characteristics of a university need to grow from seed, as it could not be transplanted from england or germany in full leaf and bearing. the fgdis also showed that many students in south africa use the terms transformation and decolonisation interchangeably. in curriculum debates after apartheid, transformation has come to mean replacing texts by scholars and writers who are white, european or american with works done by those who are neither (chetty & knaus, 2016). it was also apparent in the fgdis that these debates invoked strong emotions and responses from students. no wonder an overwhelming impression emerged that decolonisation equals an attack on white academics by black students and black academics – a perception that certainly requires a resolution (odora-hoppers & richards, 2011). a few students seemed to be aware that decolonisation is therefore not a project over which one racial group can claim sole custodianship and for them south africans, as a people, need to agree that colonisation and apartheid robbed the country of ideas, skills, 151 mutekwe unmasking the ramifications of the fees-must-fall-conundrum in higher education creativity, originality, talent and knowledge. many of these attributes got lost through legislated discrimination of the black people, most of whom could have enriched the country even further (kamanzi, 2017). by reasoning from the previously mentioned, it is clear that decolonised education is not the same as a transformed education because for the former to be introduced, the existing system must be overthrown and the people it is supposed to serve must define it for themselves. 18. how university authorities dealt with student protests the fgdis participants asserted that no student should be excluded from university on financial grounds because there is a way to fund that. in their views, vice chancellors of south african universities needed to take steps to ensure that campus libraries, study areas, online platforms and computer laboratories remain open and critical across campuses to sustain the students as they work to complete their studies. some of the participants, who felt that political malcontents were hijacking their genuine causes, lauded the measures adopted by other universities to enforce strict access control on campus. they agreed that the missing middle would thus qualify for government-backed loans whose repayment would be contingent upon graduating and earning above a certain threshold (income contingent loans) while the wealthy students would pay fees as they are currently doing. as a way forward, those students who receive government-backed loans would carry little financial risks, receive subsidised interest rates and capped loan repayments that would revert only in the event that they earn above a certain threshold. the fgdis participants were also unanimous that the above view was not glamorous, as it did not have a catchy hashtag though it did grapple with the budgetary realities south africa faces as a nation. 19. how hope could have calmed student tantrums many fgdis participants argued that their frustrations were not unwarranted and therefore a government commitment was required. that universities continued to witness ongoing student protests despite negotiations, concessions and attempts to return to normalcy implies that students’ tantrums needed to be calmed by giving them some hope for the better. one thing that participants wished was that some higher education officials needed to understand what one participant noted that: student 14: a decolonised education system needs to exist in dialogue and contestation with the greek, arab and european worlds for it cannot be seen to be everything about all things. they also needed to convey a sense that the student frustrations were to be addressed as this was certainly going to give them hope and a justification to allow a return to functional university education. this would be unlike unleashing private security, the police force and the army as was the case at other universities to harass, smack and bludgeon a frustrated student community. further to the above, some fgdis participants argued that since the student demands and frustrations could not be resolved in weeks and months, there was a real need for positive efforts towards alleviating the crisis as opposed to worsening it by promoting a long-term disruption to education. 152 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) 20. conclusion drawing from the years 2015 and 2016 student protests, it was clear that an impetus was given to a renewed interest in the decolonisation of the higher education curriculum in general and universities in particular. the following conclusions were made from the study: it is not all clear why the different student movements were insisting on free education for everyone (including the rich) in spite of all the evidence that this would be fiscally irresponsible and socially regressive. subsidising the rich certainly wastes the precious tax income that could have otherwise supported more of the poor working class students. further to this was the view that there is a need for a decolonised fee free education. this is especially in view of the fact that looking at the present role of higher education institutions, considering the physical locations, layouts and dispositions of the existing institutions, particularly the historically white ones, a vision of benchmarking and leadership cohorts, which remain unapologetically and uncritically aspirant to emulate the likes of harvard and oxford universities through form and function. the debates raised herein also highlight and raise questions as old as the formation of universities themselves and raises such questions as what is knowledge? how is it produced? and who is allowed to produce it? 21. recommendations chief among the recommendations of this study are that higher education students need to shift their conversational demands from an unworkable ideological free decolonised education for all to a more pragmatic funding for all. they also need to understand, accept, concentrate on their academic work and desist from deceiving themselves about free education for there can never be a truly genuine one. further to this, it is crucial for students to note that while there are several approaches to adopt in decolonising the higher education curriculum, central to any approach must be a rethink of the subject. thoughts should also be liberated from the fetters of cartesian duality – from descartes cogito, “i think therefore i am” and to argue that ubuntu (i am because we are) and the active force of currere, celebrate the oneness of mind and body and the oneness of humans and the more-than-human-world. a decolonised curriculum should thus be epitomised by a shift in subjectivity from the arrogant “i” typical of western individualism to a humble “i” to the “i” that is embedded, embodied, extended and enacted. references apple, m. 2010. ideology and the curriculum. new york: routledge falmer althusser, l. 1972. ideology and ideological state apparatuses. in b. cosin (ed.). education, structure and society, (pp.131–133). harmondsworth: penguin. bolsvik, p. 2010. the three world revolutions and implications for the third world. postcolonial studies, 12(1), 38–41. chetty, r. & knaus, c. 2016. why south africa’s universities are in the grip of a class struggle. sunday times, 13 january 2016. de carvalho, j. & florez-florez, j. 2014. the meeting of knowledges: a project for the decolonisation of the university in latin america. postcolonial studies, 17(2), 122–139. https:// doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2014.966411 https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2014.966411 https://doi.org/10.1080/13688790.2014.966411 153 mutekwe unmasking the ramifications of the fees-must-fall-conundrum in higher education de gruy, j. 2005. racial respect and racial socialization as protective factors for african american male youth. journal of black psychology, 38(4), 395–412. https://doi. org/10.1177/0095798411429744 dei, g. 2000. rethinking the role of indigenous knowledges in the academy. international journal of inclusive education, 4(2), 111–132. https://doi.org/10.1080/136031100284849 disemelo, k. 2015. student protests are about much more than just #fees-must-fall. mail & guardian, 28 april. dzvimbo, kp. moloi, c., potgieter, f.j., wolhuter, c.c. & van der walt, j.l. 2010. learners’ perceptions as to what contributes to their school success: a case study. south african journal of educational research, 30(3), 475–490. duncan, j. 2016. universities’ securities path ups the ante. mail & guardian, 27 october 2016. fayisetani, k. 2010. focus groups: their merits and demerits in research. paper presented at a qualitative methods workshop, tanzania: ifakara, 23 april 2010. eliot, c. 2005. the characteristics of an american university. harvard education review, 7(2), 1. gamson, aw. 2002. commitment and agency in social movements. new york: methuen gough, n. 2011. a complexivist view of higher education: implications for curriculum design and research on teaching and learning: conference proceedings of the 5th annual university teaching and learning conference. durban: university of kwazulu natal, 26–28 september. hughes, g. 2017. education, a political football: opinion and analysis. the star, 19 january. gaunt, a.w. 2016. aesthetic adventure. london: allen and unwin. hesse-biber, s.n. 2012. mixed method research: merging theory with practice. london: sage. jansen, j. 2017. it’s time for a new government to tackle inequality. education management and policy studies, 21(2), 1–8. kamanzi, b. 2017. decolonising the curriculum: the silent war of tomorrow. unpublished masters dissertation. cape town: university of cape town. le grange, l. 2016. decolonising the curriculum. south african journal of higher education, 30(2), 1–12. lehola, p. 2015. parliamentary briefing on the financial statistics on higher education institutions. pretoria: council for higher education. maluleke, t. 2016. fees-must-fall: it’s time to move to an inclusive approach. mail & guardian, 20 may 2016. mapheta, t. 2016. on the frontline in a battle waged against themselves. sunday times, 16 october 2016. mbele, j. 2017. crossing the boundary to engage in difficulty dialogues. journal of african studies, 4(2), 32–41. nieuwenhuis, j. 2016. analysing qualitative research. in k. maree (ed.). first steps in research, (pp.78–84). pretoria: van schaik. https://doi.org/10.1177/0095798411429744 https://doi.org/10.1177/0095798411429744 https://doi.org/10.1080/136031100284849 154 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) odora-hoppers, c. & richards, h. 2011. rethinking thinking: modernity’s other and the transformation of the university. pretoria: unisa press ogburn, wf. 1998. social change on culture and original nature. new york: huebsch. organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd) 2017. secretary-general’s report to ministers pretoria: government printers. peters, m.2007. knowledge economy, development and the future of higher education. rotterdam: sense publishers. pinar, w. 2010. the character of curriculum studies: building, currere and the recurring question of the subject. new york: palgrave macmillan. porta, d. 2012. global environmental politics. boulder: westview press. republic of south africa, minister jeff radebe’s 2015 public lecture on national development plan, vision 2030 its impact on the development of good governance. pretoria: national planning commission, 30 september 2015 ritzer, g. 2015. sociological theory. new york: sage. spaull, t. 2016. free for the poor – not free for all. sunday times, 16 october, 2016. somo, w. 2016. misconceptions and illusions about a fee-free higher education for south africa. mail & guardian, 9 december 2016. statistics south africa, 2016. the south africa i know, the home i understand. pretoria: government printers tilly, c., porta, d. & diani, m. 2012. social movements: an introduction. london: blackwell https://books.google.com/books?id=ttlfaaaaiaaj https://www.gov.za/speeches/minister-jeff-radebe-public-lecture-%e2%80%9cnational-development-plan-vision-2030-its-impact https://www.gov.za/speeches/minister-jeff-radebe-public-lecture-%e2%80%9cnational-development-plan-vision-2030-its-impact https://www.gov.za/speeches/minister-jeff-radebe-public-lecture-%e2%80%9cnational-development-plan-vision-2030-its-impact _goback 171 towards a conceptual understanding of community engagement in higher education in south africa abstract as attention to community engagement grows, it is critical that academics, students and community collaborators understand how it is conceptualised. this paper presents findings from a qualitative inquiry with academics and community engagement administrators nationally with regard to how they conceptualise community engagement. six universities were included in the sample that was selected purposefully from the south african higher education community engagement forum (sahecef) list. four major themes emerged from the data and focussed on context, process, mutual beneficial relationship and knowledge production. the data reflected a diverse array of conceptualisations on a continuum that ranged from the university-community dyad to that of the coproduction of knowledge. keywords: conceptual, community, engagement, university 1. introduction the south african higher education landscape is beset by a coalescence of academic, socio-political and economic challenges that has resulted in much turbulence. engagement with local communities holds the potential to dispel some of these challenges, by shifting the discipline based boundaries of higher education to a deeper concern with societal issues. moreover, community engagement has posited that its diverse partnerships with communities can exploit and nurture discovery, learning and innovation so that higher education can become further entrenched within society and seen as a partner with concern for societal wellbeing. the birth of community engagement in south africa created the opportunity to transform pedagogy, to usher in a more democratic and socially just higher education system that would refocus higher education towards public good. in response to this higher education, leaders initiated efforts to reclaim their civic mission (hollander and hartley, 2000) and as attention grew towards this, scholars began framing the civic responsibilities of communities in nuanced ways. this paper begins by offering a historical context for the growth of community engagement in south africa and ways in professor raisuyah bhagwan faculty of health sciences, dept. of community health studies, child and youth care program, durban university of technology, email: bhagwanr@ dut.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i1.13 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(1): 171-185 © uv/ufs mailto:bhagwanr@dut.ac.za mailto:bhagwanr@dut.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.13 172 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) which the discovery and learning missions grew abroad. this is followed by a literature review that explores the conceptualisations of community engagement and the engaged university. an overview of the methodology used and a discussion of the findings are undertaken. 2. historical context community engagement in south africa evolved through the community higher education service partnerships (perold, 1998). one of its key operational functions was to nurture the engagement mandate within the white paper on the transformation of higher education (department of education, 1997), which argued that universities restructure their teaching, learning and research practices to be more socially responsive to broader society and to democratise knowledge production. this was followed by the launch in 2009, of the south african higher education community engagement forum (sahecef), which was mandated to • advocate, promote and strengthen community engagement at south african universities; • further community engagement at universities in partnership with all stakeholders • foster an understanding of community engagement as integral to the core business of higher education (watson, hollister, stroud & babcock, 2011). the white paper (department of education, 1997) reconceptualised community engagement not as a discreet entity, but integral to and embedded within teaching and research. this prompted a shift in the terminology used for community engagement from “community service,” (department of education, 1997) to “knowledge based community service,” (higher education quality committee, 2001), to “community engagement,” (higher education quality committee, 2004) and then to a “scholarship of engagement” (heqc/chesp, 2006). cooper (2011) supported the notion that engagement be conceptualised as engaged scholarship. one of the key recommendations emanating from a conference on community engage­ ment was the need for a rigorous conceptual framework for community engagement, which articulates the key concepts/issues related to community engagement that can guide its engagement practices in higher education (heqc/jet, 2007a; 2007b). the heqc however provided a very basic definition of community engagement, as the initiatives and processes through which the expertise of the institution in the areas of teaching and research are applied to address relevant community issues. despite these initiatives, community engagement was still perceived as a nice-to-have philanthropic activity, whilst some institutions still resisted it as a core function in higher education (bender 2008). in the united states, benson, harkavy and puckett (2000) argued the need for universities to devote themselves towards transforming into socially responsible civic institutions, by radically changing their institutional cultures. this argument coalesced into a range of activities that academics began engaging in. through their teaching (e.g. service-learning), research (e.g. community-based participatory research), community-responsive clinical care (e.g. community-oriented primary care) and service (e.g. community service, outreach, advocacy) (calleson, jordan & seifer, 2005). scholars also began documenting their contributions towards improving student learning, innovative teaching practices and scholarship that had positive benefits for communities (peters, jordan, adamek & alter, 2005). community engagement was therefore conceived to benefit and enhance the place of higher education, 173 bhagwan towards a conceptual understanding of community engagement in higher education ... by bringing forth new knowledge (hudson, craig & hudson, 2007), through research and to improve teaching and learning (wynsberghe & andruske, 2007; persell & wenglinsky, 2004). whilst forms of community engagement have become embedded in south africa, discourse and empirical research related to engagement has only begun emerging. muller (2010) made a case for engagement saying that universities should contribute to social development, whilst (2010) focussed on the forms community engagement does and should take. kruss, visser, aphane and haupt (2012) deconstructed the complexity and diversity of current practices of engagement among south african academics. the current study, funded by the nrf, sought to understand how community engagement was conceptualised amongst academics and community engagement administrators at selected universities across south africa. its aim was to define and characterise the concept of community engagement through the lens of this national inquiry and from the scholarly literature. the rationale for the paper stems from the fact that the agenda and goals of community engagement in higher education have been somewhat ambiguous as the terms and concepts related to engagement are used interchangeably and are interpreted in diverse ways by different institutions. institutionalising community engagement will continue to be challenging until the constructs and scholars and institutions understand concepts used to guide its implementation. this paper presents the key terms used to define community engagement at several universities and attempts to deconstruct its meaning through the activities and relationships that underpin contemporary community engagement in south africa. 3. literature review in order for academics to engage in a critical way with the emerging philosophies and practices of community engagement, they should undertake their activities with conceptual, theoretical and lived understandings of and reflections on the socio­political and ethical aspects of community engagement (bender 2008). hall (2010) highlighted that the term community was challenging and could have multiple meanings depending on the context. pienaar­steyn (2012) points out those conceptual frameworks were lacking in south africa, with little universally accepted standards to measure the impact of community engagement. scholars also noted the lack of a clear and precise definition of community engagement in south africa, (pienaar­steyn, 2012; nongxa, 2010) with a few attempting to define community engagement (hall, 2010; muller, 2010). favish (2005:4) endeavoured to develop a conceptual framework and acknowledged the “interconnectedness between social engagement and the other core activities of the university”. more recently, paphitis and kelland (2015) argued for the south african philosophical community to embrace an epistemic shift that will enable higher education to enhance philosophical knowledge generation and to use community engagement to advance which would allow a unique south african philosophical identity to emerge. the literature reflects two primary challenges facing community engagement viz. the lack of a consensual definition of community engagement (perry, farmer, onder, tanner & burton, 2015; starke, shenouda & smith­howell, 2017) and difficulties in capturing its multidimensional nature (stanton­nicholas, hatcher & cecil, 2015; kolek, 2016). it also reflects an array of terms related to engagement and the engaged university. most terms related to community engagement are linked to “engaged scholarship” or the “scholarship of engagement” (boyer, 1996); civic engagement (campus engage, 2010); academic citizenship 174 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) (macfarlane, 2007); community engagement (carnegie foundation, 2011 cited in kliewer, 2013) and the engaged university (watson et al., 2011). one possible reason for the lack of a consensual definition is that university­community engagement assumes many forms, is implemented within different models and has multiple benefits for the community, the university and its external collaborators. the term community engagement has been used interchangeably, with civic or public engagement, with the unifying feature being interaction and engagement with the world outside the academy (sachs & clark, 2017). furthermore definitions of community engagement scholarship, embraces the realm of teaching/ research and is expressed across a spectrum of disciplines at most contemporary research universities. before exploring the definitions of community engagement, some attention is devoted to how the engaged university is conceptualised. the notion of an “engaged” university has started to receive considerable attention in literature over the past two decades. a review undertaken by cuthill (2012) indicated that there are fifty­eight terms, used to describe the civic university. holland (2001: 7) asserted that the engaged institution is “committed to direct interaction with external constituencies and communities through the mutually beneficial exchange, exploration and application of knowledge, expertise and information”. in a similar vein, goddard (2009: 5) described the engaged civic university as “one which provides opportunities for the society of which it forms, it engages as a whole with its surroundings, not piecemeal”. one reason for a lack of conceptual clarity relates to the breadth of activities that fall under the realm of engagement. the literature reflects the benefits of engaged research and teaching, particularly community-based research and teaching which are grounded in engagement scholarship to enrich student’s educational experience, deepen the authenticity of faculty research, create sustainable research opportunities through partnerships, spur innovations in trans-disciplinary research, and strengthen institutional stewardship (fitzgerald, van egeren, bargerstock & zientek, 2017). the association of commonwealth universities defined engagement as both a core value, and as a thoughtful interaction, with the non­university world in four spheres viz. steering the aims, purposes and priorities of the university, connecting teaching and learning to the wider world; continual dialogue between researchers and practitioners and assuming wider responsibilities towards neighbours and citizens (gibbons 2001: 22). civic engagement has also been used synonymously with community engagement. (lyons & mcilrath, 2011: 6) defined civic engagement as a “mutually beneficial knowledge based collaboration between the higher education institutions, its staff and students, with the wider community, through community­campus partnerships and including the activities of service learning/community based learning, community engaged research, volunteering, community/economic regeneration, capacity building and access/ widening participation”. simmons (2010: 644) described community engagement as “everything from involvement in public issues, concerns, and debates to more activist praxis that dissolves the theorypractice divide, to participatory­action research (par), built on co­operative co­citizenship, co-activism, and co-understandings of co-operative projects rooted in local contexts”. the carnegie foundation conceived the most comprehensive definition available for the advancement of teaching (kliewer, 2013: 72). it stated that community engagement was “the collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and 175 bhagwan towards a conceptual understanding of community engagement in higher education ... resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity. the purpose of community engagement is the partnership of college and university knowledge and resources with those of the public and private sectors to enrich scholarship, research, creative, activity; enhance curriculum, teaching and learning; prepare educated engaged citizens; strengthen democratic values and civic responsibility; address critical societal issues and contribute to the public good”. it was boyer (1996:32) who coined the term the “scholarship of engagement” as “connecting the rich resources of the university to our most pressing social, civic, and ethical problems”. he proposed four inter­related functions of scholarship viz. discovery, integration, and engagement teaching and suggested that the ethos and practice of engagement transcend all dimensions of academic life. o’meara and rice (2005) extended this notion stating that engagement necessitates moving beyond “the expert model that often gets in the way of constructive university community collaboration (and)…calls on faculty to move beyond “outreach”,” ….asks scholars to go beyond “service”. similarly, writers have argued about the importance of both academic and local knowledge and ways to shift the lens from traditional knowledge creation and dissemination from the expert academy (strier, 2010; kruss, haupt & visser, 2016). a related form of scholarship has also emerged viz. scholarship of engagement. mcnall, sturdevant-reed, brown and allen (2009:318), asserted that whilst engaged scholarship is related to scholarly engagement, activities that “reflect a knowledge­based approach to teaching, research, and service for the direct benefit of external audiences”, the scholarship of engagement is when faculty “study, write about, and disseminate scholarship about their activities”. 4. methodology this paper is based on analysis of data drawn from a national inquiry that focussed on how community engagement is conceptualised across selected universities in south africa. the study employed a multi-case study design (yin, 2001). two criteria were used to select the case study sites for this inquiry. sahecef’s list of best practice institutions was used and those universities with best practice community engagement activities were noted. the second criteria focussed on institutions with different missions and stakeholder partnerships to improve how community engagement is conceptualised in different contexts. hence, urban and rural based universities were included to ascertain if there was diversity in community engagement practices between these institutions. the six universities examined through this inquiry were located in the western cape, eastern cape, limpopo province and gauteng. in total 33 academics involved in community engagement and administrative members who were part of community engagement offices were interviewed. in addition, five focus group discussions were held. all data collection occurred at the university sites. the process of data coding was guided by bogdan and bicklen (1992) and enabled a search through the voluminous transcripts to be reduced to regularities, patterns and similar themes. words and phrases to represent these topics and themes were generated and were further guided by those that emerged during data collection. • what are the conceptual frameworks that guide community engagement in sa? • what are the values and principles that guide community engagement? • how has community engagement become embedded within the institution? although the interviews and focus group discussions were the primary source of data for analysis, the researcher also examined the university’s mission statement. collectively 176 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) these responses provided a rich text for qualitative analysis. themes were identified based on words and phrases found within the text of each interview or focus group discussion. themes were textbased on the frequency of use and relationship to other texts. multiple sources of data were used to ensure trustworthiness and the triangulation technique of “using different methods as a check on one another” (maxwell, 2013: 102), viz. multiple interviews and document analysis mitigated the limitations. 5. discussion data reflected that different institutions conceptualise community engagement differently. the analysis that follows provides a typology of the major themes and sub-themes presented in the conceptualisation of community engagement. the typology included 4 themes and 8 frequently occurring sub themes. the themes were emphasised by participants when they were asked how they conceptualise community engagement. the sub­themes are not mutually exclusive and hence some participants used several of them to describe community engagement. slamat (2010) acknowledged that there was a diverse array of definitions at different institutions locally and asserted the need for an inquiry into the changing role and meaning underpinning community engagement in the practice of scholarship, as opposed to defining community engagement from scratch. it is herein that the current paper has positioned itself. 6. themes four major themes emerged from the analysis. under each sub-theme, the participants’ excerpts are presented followed by a discussion. the first major theme derived from the data was context. 7. context the two sub­themes that flowed from context pertained to the community context and the university context. 7.1 community context how do we interact with the communities, however we define the communities. and for us, it’s mainly rural communities, mainly disadvantaged groups, mainly poor communities. our engagement is very much place related. aslin and brown (2004) stated that a community does not only refer to a specific geographic area, but may also be a community of interest. some participants also emphasised “place” within their definition. scholars similarly defined community engagement as “a responsive relationship bringing the university into mutually beneficial partnerships with place­based or area-of-interest based communities” (furco & miller, 2009:51). moore (2014:13) argued that community­university relationships are place­based, because they occur in a specific geographic location and reflect the history, culture, and socio­economics of a particular location. she asserted that understanding the way “places are conceptualised by those who inhabit them, acknowledges that how people think about or conceptualise communities, influences the objectives that will be pursued through those relationships”. 177 bhagwan towards a conceptual understanding of community engagement in higher education ... 7.2 university context definitions linked to the university context were as follows: i think conceptualisation differs from institution to institution because of the history of the institution, the type of institution”. we all have a common understanding about what we mean by engagement, which is a big plus for the institution… what i can pick up with other institutions, all academics have different interpretations. there’s a common interpretation but each discipline can still have its own interpretation. muller (2010: 69) posited that community engagement was a contextual activity that depended on the mission and strengths of the university, the state of regional development in the area and the surrounding local communities. furco and muller (2009:51) added that most universities define community engagement within the context of the institutional plan, saying that it was a core priority. priority was defined as being “fully engaged in the economic, cultural, and civic life of communities the institution serves” and more importantly the importance of its context in terms of “serving as a setting for public discourse, a venue for artistic expressions and a partner in community endeavours” (furco & miller, 2009: 51). however, holland (2005) noted however that institutional approaches to engagement vary according to their unique missions and regional settings such as rural or urban campuses. moreover, such factors are crucial to understanding how engagement is understood and expressed within a state’s larger cultural, demographic, political, economic and historical context (weerts, 2014). hence, those institutions aspiring to develop definitions or enrich their conceptual lens should consider these multiple contextual factors. several participants also offered definitions that focussed on institutional activities as follows: community engagement is to try and fit into kind of teaching and learning and research in the university. we see engagement in four categories. we talk about engagement through community interaction, service and outreach, engagement through teaching and learning or other forms of engaged teaching, education, service learning and all those things. these definitions reflect the core functions of teaching, research and service. winter, wiseman and muirhead (2008) reinforced this viewpoint that engagement comprised of engagement through teaching and learning, curriculum design, policies, research, external relations, social and cultural engagement, partnerships with school and educational providers, economic engagement and organization and participation of students. community engagement is characterised by its twin operational contexts i.e. the community and the university. the central premise of these contextual differences rests in that they are “varying worlds with different realities which are often in contrast with one another”. whilst universities exist in a physical environment with structures and ethos, communities are often characterised by a lack of structure, order, resources and direction, the challenge being to bind both these worlds to facilitate transformation (bernardo, butcher and howard, 2014: 111). communities perceive academics as part of the elite who produce and transmit knowledge, whilst communities are identified by conditions of disadvantage and social isolation. bernardo et al., (2014:117) concluded that there was a need for “the convergence of two unique milieus is the nucleus of community engagement”. 178 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) 8. process the second major theme emerging from the data was process. the two sub-themes emerging from this are as follows: 8.1 connecting with communities so my understanding of community engagement is basically getting in touch with the community, in the academic environment we are very isolated from communities. it’s about universities looking for needs in communities and linking/developing solutions to those challenges/problems that link into different faculties. my understanding of community engagement is it’s about connecting the university with community, not just in a superficial way, but quite profoundly. community engagement is therefore the “interactions between faculty, students, administrators … and the geographically-delineated communities primarily located external to the university” (moore and ward, 2010: 39). this definition together with the data, suggests that not all higher education institutions have evolved towards the mutuality and reciprocity, emphasized within other definitions. moore (2014) cautioned academics to be aware of the power they wield and the way they use this power to influence change. hence, merely identifying needs and addressing same, is not the same as a relationship which is framed by mutuality of outcomes, goals, trust and respect (bernardo, butcher and howard, 2011). 8.2 engaging for change it is really about breaking down the boundaries between the academy and the wider context in which the academy is situated. so it’s about reframing knowledge, construction project and ….it’s about promoting social justice through doing this. community engagement ...has a very strong transformative emancipatory element. it must generate opportunities for lifelong learning for all partners. it culminates in citizenship and citizenry. the definitions offered here illuminates several important terms that need to be embedded within definitions of community engagement. these include social justice, transformation and citizenship. bender (2008) supported this view by maintaining that not only does the engaged university place greater emphasis on co-operative, collaborative development and mutual benefit, but it prepares students to be socially responsible citizens through civic engagement and social responsibility. therefore, fostering social responsibility is important amongst students and should form part of engagement. hartley, saltmarsh and clayton (2010: 401) asserted that, “community engagement focuses on social change and social justice and the building of social, economic and cultural capital within and between communities and the academy”. social justice is another important concept in the conceptualization of engagement. it is an individual rights issue, categorised by basic human needs, diversity, non-discrimination, equality, and a group or community issue characterised by discrimination, oppression or , marginalization. community engagement enables the pursuit of social justice through its interaction and concern with societal issues, social justice and empowerment, and students should be taught what social justice and social responsibility are (pelton, 2001). 179 bhagwan towards a conceptual understanding of community engagement in higher education ... 9. mutually beneficial relationship 9.1 partnerships and reciprocity the first sub­theme is reflected as follows: community engagement … is understood as mutually beneficial partnerships between communities and the university. we promote partnerships … and evolve to have other components of development and empowerment, emancipation. these definitions emphasise notions of mutuality and reciprocity. there are also calls from the higher education community to uphold the principle of reciprocity and a commitment to mutually beneficial learning and engagement (hammersley, 2017: 115). whilst traditional models of community service and development have focussed on single-directional intervention as reflected in the data, community engagement posits to be cognizant of the two­way reciprocal relationship (weerts & sandmann, 2010). the concepts of service and mutually beneficial are also seen as being interchangeable with reciprocity (hammersley, 2017: 23). two way mutually beneficial relationships which are underpinned by strength, resilience and existing knowledge of community partners and participants, differs from a service model which is based on deficits, needs and dysfunction (kiely, 2004). this is important to consider given that some institutions locally still premise their work on the latter model. 9.2 co-designing solutions it’s, understanding the community needs, discussing, co-designing, coming to the solution which is no longer like you are imposing a solution. to arrive at a solution which at the end, is not like you have given them a solution, you’ve actually developed it together, that solution. several participants emphasised the importance of co-designing solutions with the community. wright, suchet-pearson and lloyd (2007) recognised however the complex web of power relations that exist within these partnerships and argued that only through recognizing and reconfiguring power relationships can academics together with community as co­learners, reconsider academic processes and outputs. hence shifting the power is critical to ensuring that the voice of the community is heard within the process of finding solutions to their problems. very often two –way partnership with communities is thwarted because university research activities are narrowly designed with community partners, who are viewed as passive participants, not partners in discovery (corrigan, 2000). 10. knowledge production 10.1 co-creation of knowledge to work with co­researchers to produce knowledge that’s applicable to community. community engagement through the trans-disciplinary lens has to be how we bring ordinary people into the research process. how do we bring their practical, tacit and experiential knowledge of a particular situation into the research process? 180 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) whilst the previous sub­theme emphasized coming up with joint solutions, this sub theme focused on the co­production of knowledge. successful university­community partnerships involve all participants (including community), as learners and teachers to seek solutions to societal problems. collaborative scholarship however, requires a counterbalancing of traditional academic knowledge which is pure, disciplinary, homogenous, expert­ led hierarchical and primarily university­ based, with engaged knowledge generation which is problem­centred, trans­disciplinary, heterogeneous, entrepreneurial and network embedded (gibbons, limoges, nowotny, schwartzman, scott & trow, 1994). this re­conceptualization of knowledge that moves across porous boundaries is linked to university­community partnerships that are underpinned by “participatory, collaborative, and democratic processes” (bringle, hatcher & clayton, 2006: 258). saltmarsh et al. (2009) expressed that whilst in the dominant civic, each party in the relationship benefits from its involvement, the democratic civic framework views engagement as an epistemological position that intentionally seeks to address unequal power relations by recognising diverse expertise and multiple knowledge in collaboration with, rather than for communities as co­educators, co­learners and co­creators of knowledge. this heralds a paradigmatic shift from knowledge transfer to communities to knowledge creation with communities (scull & cuthill, 2010). trans­disciplinary work as articulated in the data reinforces the process of knowledge transcending the disciplines and the university by a merging of intellect from the university, together with that of community voices as part of engagement (stokols, 2006). 10.2 indigenous knowledge the community has indigenous knowledge which… in partnerships are not being recognised. instilling indigenous knowledge and involving the community, and also, using the local thing. distilling indigenous knowledge through community engagement also emerged in the data. these deeper conceptualisations of community engagement will compel academics to recognise that not all forms of knowledge and expertise reside in academic institutions and that knowledge produced within the confines of higher education will fail to address contemporary social issues. a deeper level of engagement that moves from the superficiality of connecting with communities to address their needs to a more deeper respect for community as coproducers of relevant knowledge is critical to shaping the face of community engagement in south africa. 11. conclusions and implications for practice the study has contributed to a clearer understanding of how community engagement is conceptualised in south africa and points to how engagement activities are enacted through these definitions. practically speaking, this knowledge may assist other institutions to re­ consider how they conceptualise and operationalise community engagement. the study revealed that academics define and conceptualise community engagement in diverse ways across different higher education institutions. a holistic analysis of the data reflects a continuum that embraces the four broad themes from the community-university nexus at one end, to how it progresses towards knowledge production at the end. most definitions referred to activities that are embedded within sahecef’s mandate. although there is great value to the diverse range of activities that coalesce to form engagement, not all participants have recognised the 181 bhagwan towards a conceptual understanding of community engagement in higher education ... importance of knowledge production and a deeper form of engaged scholarship. what was important to find was that some engaged academics had likened their conceptualisations of community engagement to that of fear, rosaen, bawden and foster-fishman’s (2006:xiii) definition of 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https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-5871.2007.00444.x https://doi.org/10.2307/20466638 https://doi.org/10.2307/20466638 126 research on doctoral education in south africa against the silhouette of its meteoric rise in international higher education research charl wolhuter north-west university the aim of this article is to survey the international literature on doctoral education from a south african perspective. a colossal amount of published research on doctoral education abroad has accumulated in recent years, dwarfing the minuscule number of publications on doctoral education in south africa. three major deficiencies in the corpus of literature internationally on doctoral education are the lack of any empirical validation of the claimed social rates of return to doctoral education, an absence of empirical research on the scholarly contribution/impact of doctoral education, and the inadequacies of the paradigms employed to research doctoral education. this means that the body of literature on doctoral education does not take into account power relations in society and embedded knowledge, as well as the demonstrated stranglehold of these on scholarship. the first two imply that there is a lack of empirical substantiation for claims regarding the indispensable role of doctoral education in accomplishing a knowledge society and the role of doctoral studies in pushing back the frontiers of knowledge. in conclusion recommendations are made as to how south africa could, given its infancy in this field, seek to build a literature base that consciously addresses the perceived gaps in the international literature in this field. keywords: doctoral education; higher education research; south africa . introduction the pivotal role assigned to the university in contemporary society (derrida, 2004; waghid, 2011) renders doctoral education as the pinnacle of university education a topic of immeasurable importance. this applies to south africa as much as to any other country in the world, and it would, therefore, be a valuable exercise to determine what could be learned from the international experience with doctoral education. the aim of this article is to survey international literature on doctoral education in order to guide doctoral education locally. the article commences with the role and state of doctoral education internationally and in south africa. this is followed by a survey of published research on doctoral education in south africa. the international literature on doctoral education is then surveyed, and synthesised from a south african perspective. higher education and doctoral education internationally the present age is described as the age of the knowledge society (world bank, 2002). the term “knowledge society” refers to a society where the creation and production of new knowledge has become the axial principle of economic and social organisation. in this context doctoral education assumes an incomparably high assigned value. understandably, doctoral education has risen to prominence in the higher education research agenda internationally. since the 1990s, nations worldwide have been increasing doctoral degree production and introducing initiatives to reform doctoral programmes (nerad, 2010:69). 127wolhuter — research on doctoral education in south africa south africa the same imperative that exists globally for doctoral education, namely the need to build the human resource base for a knowledge society, is also present in south africa. yet doctoral production in south africa is low, despite a steady growth in recent years. south africa produced 1 274 doctoral graduates in 2007 (assaf, 2010:16). this translates to 26 doctoral graduates per million of total country population, which is low compared not only to advanced countries (united kingdom: 288, usa: 201), but also to other upper-middle income countries (brazil: 52; mexico: 28) (assaf, 2010:46). although a comparison of these figures indicates a clear need to increase doctoral production in south africa, doctoral education does not constitute a strong focus in higher education research in south africa (deacon, osman & buchler, 2009:1073). given the discrepancy between the apparent need to increase doctoral education in south africa and the paucity of research guiding the exercise to increase doctoral education, a survey of international scholarly literature on the topic assumes particular significance. scholarly publications on doctoral education in south africa: a survey a survey of scholarly literature on doctoral education in south africa was conducted by studying all the south african education journals (south african journal of higher education, south african journal of education, perspectives of education, journal of education, southern african journal of education, journal of education studies and education as change) as well as a subject search of the catalogues (entering the keywords phd and doctoral) of the libraries of all south african universities. the literature search yielded information regarding the volume and frequency of publications on research on doctoral education in south africa, as well as the themes pertaining to doctoral education upon which these publications focus. the report on these (contained in this section) will then be compared with the international corpus of literature on doctoral education (the report of which appears in the next section of this article). a striking observation is the dearth of published research on how to increase and equalise access to doctoral education. this is inexplicable in view of the need to increase access (as explained earlier) and to equalise access. the distribution of doctoral graduates of south africa is unequal along the dimensions of race and gender (crest, 2009; assaf, 2010:129; herman, 2011a:173-175). for example, 56% of all doctoral graduates in 2006 were whites, although whites make up only 9.2% of the total population (herman, 2011a:172). the academy of sciences of south africa’s (assaf) report on doctoral education suggests a tenfold strategy to escalate the production of high-quality doctoral graduates in south africa while simultaneously equalising access to and participation in doctoral education: increasing the enrolment of south africans in phd programmes at universities abroad; significantly expanding levels of funding for doctoral studies in south africa, with a particular focus on shifting the balance of students towards fulltime study; creating an overarching national planning strategy for dealing with high-level skills production; strengthening the high school system as the supply base of university students; eliminating bureaucratic, administrative, political, legal and structural barriers to doctoral education; applying strong quality assurance measures in order to prevent irresponsible massification (resulting in compromising quality) of doctoral education; advocating public support for the phd and doctoral education; targeting specific institutions with capacity; recognising diversity in doctoral programmes and practice, and strengthening relationships between universities and industry (assaf, 2010). not only do issues of access to doctoral education and the need to increase doctoral education receive attention, but the last number of points also clearly emphasise the issues of quality and relevance. herman (2011b) assesses the feasibility of expanding doctoral education in education in south africa, and identifies the following barriers: insufficient funding; existing policies recognising only one kind of doctorate (the traditional discipline-based model, preparing for an academic career); the small pool of potential doctoral students; limited supervisory capacity; the lack of due recognition of the value of the doctorate by industry, and limited and inadequate partnerships and collaborations with industry. as far as could be established, no published research on equalising access to doctoral education in south africa exists. 128 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 similarly, no published research exists on the objectives and desired and official (national qualifications framework) outcomes of doctoral education. much has been published from a national perspective on the process, administration and management of doctoral education. these focus on enrolment numbers and growth, throughput rates and phd graduates production as per gender, population group, age group, institution and discipline (watson, 2008; karlsson, balfour, moletsane & pillay, 2009; assaf, 2010). findings pertaining to enrolment numbers, growth and inequality have been discussed earlier. no research has been published on the administration and management of doctoral education at institutional level. the largest single set of publications deal with supervision and supervising – deservedly so, as assaf (2010:77-79) singles out poor student-supervisor relations as one of the causes of phd student attrition. nsimande (2007) urges supervisors to engage in constant self-reflection on their roles as supervisors, in order to distil best practice and thus improve themselves. this challenge is taken up by olivier (2007), van aswegen (2007) and rochford (2003). by contrast to the handful of publications representing the experiences of supervisors, the experiences of students have not yet been subjected to much research. backhouse (2009) has done a qualitative study on doctoral education in four academic units at three historically advantaged universities, exploring how different stakeholders — national and institutional policymakers, academic staff and doctoral people — understand the phd study; how these understandings influence the practice of doctoral education, and how different practices affect the phd experience as well as the learning and knowledge produced. jansen et al. (2004) interviewed 24 students during the first phase (guiding students to write a research proposal) of a doctoral programme at the faculty of education, university of pretoria. the interview guided the students to reconstruct and to reflect on their developmental journey: their first ideas about their research idea; the nature of their first research questions; how these changed during the course of the journey, and how these were influenced by their interaction with peers and supervisors. the only research in the quality of doctoral education is the national research foundation (nrf) education study, which concludes from a survey of dissertations that the quality of many is not above suspicion, and much evidence of mediocrity exists (balfour, moletsane, karlsson, pillay, rule, nkambule, bengesaai, davey, lekena, molefe, madiya & goba, 2008:32). after supervision, the method of doctoral education has drawn most publications. karlsson et al. (2009) did a content analysis of 3 260 postgraduate education dissertations produced in south africa during the period 1995-2004, and categorised these according to methodologies employed. de lange, pillay & chikoko (2011) report on an interesting cohort model of supervision and support developed at the university of kwazulu-natal and its predecessors. on the content and structure of doctoral education, the nrf education dissertations’ study has done a content analysis of themes focused upon by masters and doctoral education dissertations (balfour et al., 2008:23-31). the assaf report (2010:64-67) contends that the traditional apprenticeship model that persists in south african universities might serve for training for an academic career, but in so far as doctoral education also provides training for industry and for a profession, programmes should be diversified, and three other models should be considered besides the apprenticeship model: cohort based (by contrast to the apprenticeship model, a one-supervisor-to-one-student relationship; • the cohort-based model is characterised by a critical mass of supervisors and students working on a project with a fixed time-span); coursework based;• doctorate by publication.• apart from the assaf report and the nrf education study, no research on the content and structure of doctoral programmes has been published in south africa. the only publication on doctoral evaluation is albertyn et al.’s (2007) article reporting on a dissertation evaluation instrument (consisting of a set of criteria, together with rating scales for each criterion) which they developed and tested. no research has been published on quality and quality assurance in doctoral 129wolhuter — research on doctoral education in south africa education. research on the output of doctoral research is limited to the assaf report which found that employers note a lack of exposure to international expertise, theories and debates; methodological competence, and “real world” relevance as the salient weaknesses in the skills and abilities of doctoral graduates (assaf, 2010:82-86). the above amounts to a rather thin base of scholarly publications on doctoral education in south africa.many critical aspects, such as strategies to increase and equalise enrolments, quality assurance or management at institutional level have not been touched upon at all. only a single digit number of publications have appeared on other aspects. this constitutes an insufficient corpus of knowledge to inform the urgently needed expansion and reform of doctoral education in south africa. this begs the next question. does the international fund of literature on doctoral education offer a resource base to tap in order to benefit from the international experience with doctoral education? after surveying the international literature in the next section, this question will be answered in the conclusion. international literature survey an international literature survey of doctoral education was done, using eric and google scholar, and the keywords “doctoral education”, “doctorate” and “phd”. as explained earlier, doctoral education ranks highly on the international higher education research agenda, and there exists a voluminous corpus of publications on the topic. these publications could be divided into four major subthemes: contextual shaping forces of doctoral education.• access to doctoral education.• process of doctoral education which, in turn, could be subdivided into the objectives and outcomes • of doctoral education; administration and management of doctoral education; financing of doctoral education; supervision; student issues; methods, content and programme structure; assessment, and quality control. outcomes of doctoral education from the perspective of both graduates and society.• the literature on each of these subthemes will now be surveyed. contextual shaping forces of doctoral education any (national or other) education system is the outcome of contextual societal forces. this also applies to doctoral education. the conventional mode of doctoral education, the one-to-one apprenticeship model, was established by the humboldt university in germany in the early nineteenth century, out of the contextual exigencies of the time. in as far as it fitted into a system of elitist education and ivorytower academia, it appears increasingly to be an anachronism in the contemporary university that has fallen behind the demands and challenges of the time. recently a surfeit of publications has appeared on the theme of the influence of and imperatives set by globalisation to doctoral education (e.g. nerad & heggelund (eds), 2008; martinez, nerad & rudd, 2010; williams, 2005). in the new context, and within the context of the knowledge society taking shape, not only is there the compelling demand to increase doctoral production steeply (nerad, 2010) and to equalise access to doctoral education (martinez et al., 2010), but doctoral students educated by means of the conventional method are also found to be wanting in the following respects: they are too narrowly educated and trained; they lack key professional, organisational and managerial skills; they are ill-prepared to teach; they take too long to complete their doctoral studies or do not complete them at all, and they are ill-informed about employment opportunities outside academia (kehm, 2007:308). in reforming doctoral education (the nature of these reforms will be discussed later), there is once again an international convergence in that the american model (to be explained below) is becoming the international model, as the humboldt was in the previous two centuries (nerad, 2010). knowledge society’s and knowledge economy’s need for knowledge workers have created a contextual complex shaping doctoral education which is totally different from the context that existed 130 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 a few decades ago, when the sole purpose of doctoral education was to prepare for an academic career (mowbray & halse, 2010; marginson, 2010). it spurred new objectives, methods and content of doctoral education, which will be discussed later in this article. access it is clear from enrolment figures cited earlier that there is a worldwide increase in doctoral education and doctoral production. yet literature on strategies to increase access to doctoral education is sparse. universal dimensions of educational inequality, namely gender, race, ethnicity, socio-economic status and geography, also pertain to doctoral education. in the usa, for example, while commendably 46% of recipients of doctorates in 2008 were women (for the thirteenth consecutive year this figure was higher than 40%), only 22% of recipients of doctorates in engineering are women (national science foundation, 2009:6). despite these irregularities, and the drive for equality in educational opportunities being a dominant motive for educational reform worldwide, there is no published research on strategies to equalise access to doctoral education, although such strategies may exist in institution-based policy documents. process of doctoral education: objectives and outcomes of doctoral education it could be stated that the objective of doctoral education is, as sprenkle (2010) puts it, to equip students to do original research that pushes back the frontiers of scientific knowledge. thus, the outcomes of a phd study then would be, as walker, golde, jones, bueschel & hutchingswalker et al. (2008:12) put it well: the phd is, at its heart, a research degree. it signifies that the recipient is able to ask interesting and important questions, formulate appropriate strategies for investigating these questions, conduct investigations with a high degree of competence, analyze and evaluate the results of the investigations, and communicate the results to others to advance the [scientific] field! if the above are the intrinsic objectives of doctoral education, which have remained unchanged since the inception of the modem doctorate in the early nineteenth century (humboldt university, germany), the external goals have recently changed markedly. in the nascent knowledge society, doctoral education no longer prepares students for academia only, but doctoral education is also increasingly considered for preparing students for leadership positions in government, non-profit organisations, business and industry (kim & otts, 2010:1). the one crucial factor that differentiates doctoral level qualifications from the rest is simply that, whereas the lower degrees are essentially about demonstrating the ability to master a body of existing knowledge, the doctoral degree is about the ability to create new knowledge (jamieson & naidoo, 2007:364; leonard, becker & coate, 2005). administration and management reacting to global imperatives (outlined earlier), national, government-driven initiatives include capacitybuilding (increasing investment) in research and creating hubs of global excellence (hirasawa, 2009:19). national reports on doctoral production (such as that of the natural science foundation, usa, 2009) devote a large percentage of space to enrolment numbers, student demographics and throughput rates. attrition rates in doctoral programmes are high. in the usa half of the doctoral students are lost to attrition (walker et al., 2008). several publications (stock, finegan & siegfried, 2009; lott, gardner & powen, 2009-2010) have identified risk factors. on the institutional level initiatives aimed at reforming doctoral education include inter-university partnerships; international collaboration and consortia; transnational universities, and global e-universities (chen, 2009:54-55). research by the council of graduate schools in the usa has identified six sets of institutional and programme characteristics as key factors in determining whether a particular student is 131wolhuter — research on doctoral education in south africa likely to complete a phd programme. these include particular student selection and admission practices; mentoring and advising practices; financial support practices; programme environment practices; research experience practices, and curricular and administrative processes and procedures (council of graduate schools, 2010). financing doctoral education with the retraction of state funding and the introduction of student fees in many parts of europe, funding for doctoral students is currently a topic of considerable debate in europe (kehm, 2007:310) and has also been discussed in publications on doctoral education (e.g. green & powell, 2005:121-133). outside northamerica-western europe, likewise, the funding of doctoral education is not a research topic. comparative studies focusing on and comparing levels of funding from state side and from industry/business could not be found. supervision leggat and martinez (2010), in their survey of scholarly literature related to phd supervision in australasia, identified the following salient themes: elements of supervision; use of information and communication technologies; supervision; warning signs for non-completion of phd candidates, and evaluation of phd supervision. mainhard, van der rijst, van tartwijk & wubbels (2009) developed an instrument for measuring a doctoral student’s experience of his supervisor. davidson (2007) makes a case for the development of a pedagogy of supervision, facilitating supervisors to move away from a static or supervisor-determined style of supervision to a repertoire of supervision styles, appropriate for various kinds of students with a diversity of needs. students the largest body of publications is on student-related issues, with the autobiography being a common method. publications such as martinez et al. (2009), kiley and austin (2008) and anastas and kuerbs (2009) deal with student a-academic characteristics. several studies report students’ experiences of doctoral education, many of these focusing on the experience of students from marginalised or disadvantaged social categories such as women (cole & gunter (eds), 2010), latino students in the usa (renaud & suarezrenaud, 2008) or international students (robinson-pant, 2009). similarly, several publications deal with students’ academic issues (e.g. kwan, 2009; wellington, 2010), attrition and retention of doctoral students (stock et al., 2009), as well as socialisation and identity acquisition (jazvak-martek, 2009) method the method of doctoral education in many doctoral education programmes has undergone major changes in recent years. boud and lee (eds) (2009) give an overview of some of these changes, including the salience of practice (be it the student’s professional practice, or practice in industry) and the rise of interdisciplinary doctorates. the employment of new technology, in particular e-learning, for doctoral education has been subjected to research (beem, 2010; patti, 2007). aspects of the method of doctoral education which have received attention include the need for faculty to bring to their students the habits of inquiry and of evidence-based research; turning their students into responsible, active, intentional agents of their learning (walker et al., 2008); teaching students to review scholarly work (sullivan, baruch & schepmyer, 2010), and the use of reflection in doctoral education (klenowski & lunt, 2008). other publications deal with reforms and innovations in the method of doctoral education, such as using doctoral students as editors of student-run journals as part of their learning experience as doctoral students (hopwood, 2010) and cooperative or peer learning as method employed in doctoral education (stracke, 2010). on the supervisor side this trend is complemented by the rise of shared supervision (kehm, 2007:308). a conspicuous trend, no doubt being given impetus by the ict revolution and the bologna-declaration-lisbon goals process of the integration of higher education within the european union, is the formation of intellectual 132 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 communities of doctoral students (walker et al., 2008) of which eurodocs (khem, 2007:312-313) is probably the most salient example. content and programme structure three interrelated conspicuous trends regarding content and programme structure of doctoral education are the professional doctorate, the american model and the switch to mode ii knowledge. the american model, with its components of coursework followed by a dissertation, housed in a single graduate school (nerad, 2010:80) has spread to europe and beyond (nerad, 2010:80; jamieson & naidoo, 2007:364; probst & lepori, 2008), even as far as china (chen, 2009:52). central to doctoral reforms is the growth of the professional doctorate, which is proposed as an alternative to conventional phds that better prepares graduates for non-academic careers (servage, 2009). these programmes attempt to integrate theory and practice; students research a problem in their employment practice in commerce, industry, business, government or non-profit organisations. the debates on these programmes and the critics to the emphasis of practice versus research training in doctoral programmes are also reflected in literature (orr, 2007). the rise of mode ii knowledge has also affected doctoral education programmes, in a shift of dissertation research from basic (“blue sky”) research mission-oriented or developmental-research – i.e. research aimed at surmounting an obstacle or effecting development in industry, business or public service (probst & lepori, 2008; hirasawa, 2010:21); and the rise of interdisciplinary research within doctoral education (gnares, 2010). the value of communities of practice in doctoral education, i.e. a group of doctoral students forming a working team or group, interacting with one another, has also received attention in scholarly literature on doctoral education (schacham & od-cohen, 2009). assessment based upon two empirical studies on what examiners are seeking, one done in the usa and one in australia, hollbrook (2007) drafted an inventory of what constitutes an acceptable level of doctoral scholarship. yet kiley (2009) demonstrates that in australia there is far from consensus on this; in fact it varies considerably from examiner to examiner, between universities and across disciplinary fields. kiley (2009) also makes a case that the conventional method of doctoral examination – developed in a context different from the current one – has become outdated. one of the main suggestions of kiley, to supplement summative assessment with substantive formative assessment, is the topic of a case study of a model where such reform was effected by crossouard (2008). in order to improve doctoral students’ capacity to do research those students in research-centred universities in china are required to publish a number of articles (usually 2) in leading journals in their fields before thesis defence (chen, 2009:53). wasley (2008) reports favourably on the trend at some usa universities of portfolios replacing the qualifying examination as admission to thesis writing. quality literature on the quality of doctoral education is sparse (taylor, 2008:1). yet recently concern has been raised on the quality of doctorate education (chen, 2009:48; hoyle & torres, 2008; ghezi, 2008; kehm, 2007:315, 316). although bourke (2007), examining 2121 examiners’ reports on 804 dissertations in australia, could compile a set of 10 practical measures of dissertation quality, and although qualification frameworks, such as the qualifications framework for the european higher education area have facilitated the setting of benchmarks for doctoral programmes, defining (let alone realising) quality in doctoral programmes remains an elusive concept – orzoff, peinovich & riedel (2008) call doctoral programmes the “wild west of outcomes assessment”. despite large projects in the european union (such as the league of european research universities’ “statement on doctoral training” and the bologna process) (kehm, 2007; taylor, 2008) standards of quality in doctoral education remain unspecified. 133wolhuter — research on doctoral education in south africa output economic contribution the argument is that the production of phds generates benefits for wider society: the production process helps generate knowledge from which all can benefit, and the skills developed in doctoral education could be put to the benefit of society (casey, 2009:226). although this argument is appealing, attempts to find empirical validation for the economic or societal return of doctoral education are an exercise ending in frustration (casey, 2009:226). careers of doctorates: what do phd graduates do after graduation? individual rates of return of the doctorate have been calculated, although figures are by no means impressive. in the united kingdom (uk), for example, it has been calculated that having a phd raises men’s earnings by 31% and that of women by 60%, over a person who had the basic qualification to attend university (two a levels) but chose not to (for a masters degree the earnings premia are 29% for men and 55% for women, i.e. a doctorate makes a further 2% difference in the earnings of men, and 5% in that of women) (casey, 2009:220). despite the whole movement of rethinking the objectives and structuring of doctoral education to prepare for careers outside academe, higher education remains the main destination of phd graduates. in the uk, four in ten phds are employed in education (primary through tertiary) (casey, 2009:221) and in the usa, 51% of doctorate graduates are employed in higher education (national science foundation, 2009:19). in the absence of empirical evidence on the social return of doctoral education, it is difficult to take issue with jamieson and nardwa’s (2007:363) statement that the doctoral degree is a “positional goal”, i.e. its value is determined by how many people possess the qualification, or with servage’s (2009) contention that the surge in the number of professional doctorates could be explained better by credentialism than by human capital theory. publishing and research development after completion of the doctorate low publication rates from doctoral degrees have been noted as a problem in the quality of doctoral education for preparing students to participate in research cultures (lee & kamler, 2008). lee & kamler (2008) contend that issues of writing and publication need to be systematically addressed within doctoral pedagogy. one pedagogy is the use of writing groups for and beyond the period of the doctorate (atchinson, 2009; sacham & od-cohen, 2009). discussion at first sight, in terms of the number and the rate of production, the international corpus of literature cuts an impressive figure. a closer look, however, reveals that it does not live up to this promise. while the recent surge in doctoral enrolments and the societal and educational contextual factors at the basis of this growth are well covered, as are changes in the content and method of doctoral education, the absence of any data concerning social rates of return means that the contention of the role of the doctorate in sustaining the knowledge society – which forms the basis of the contemporary unprecedented expansion of doctoral education worldwide – cannot at this stage be empirically validated, as the value added to society by the doctorate has not been measured. the total output of research in doctoral education in south africa is small. both the colossal international fund and the minuscule south african body of published research suffer from major inadequacies. the first is the lacunas of research on the social return of doctoral education. secondly, all research on doctoral education, in south africa and internationally, takes place in what paulston (1977) terms equilibrium paradigms, i.e. system theory, human capitalism, modernisation theory and structural functionalism. equilibrium paradigms all consider society to consist of a number of subsystems (such as the economic system, the social system, the political system, the education system, etc.). each of these systems and each institution in society performs a function, and fulfils its role in 134 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 keeping society functioning. society is a harmonious, well-functioning entity. hence there is no critical questioning of society and its structures, features and power relations. this notwithstanding a whole set of rival paradigms in the social-scientific literature of education which have shown, since the early 1970s, how inadequate the equilibrium paradigms are in explaining education and education-society interrelationships; let alone in fulfilling an ameliorative function with regard to education and society. these paradigms not in the equilibrium camp include theories of socio-economic reproduction (bowles & gintis, 1976); cultural reproduction (bourdieu & passeron, 1977), cultural history (popkewitz, franklin & pereyra (eds), 2001) and critical theory (giroux, 1983; weiler, 1984). to be sure, some of the scholars on doctoral education, such as servage (2009), lee, brennan & green (2009), drake and heath (2008) and archbald (2008) criticise the tradition of investigating doctoral education from equilibrium paradigms, and ask for an employment of, for example, critical theory, and for a factoring-in of power relations in society, of the hierarchy of values in society and for the role of the neo-liberal economic order in shaping doctoral education; but none goes over into an actual investigation and analysis of these. socio-political contexts and embedded knowledge have a powerful influence on education systems curricula and knowledge regimes right up to university level (jansen, 2009:175-186). yet the investigation and revelation of these relationships do not form part of the research agenda of research on doctoral education. besides the claim of its indispensable role in realising a knowledge society, the other related premise upon which the contemporary expansion of and investment in doctoral education is based, is the actual war machine on the front, pushing back the frontier of knowledge. yet this literature survey could not find empirical support to back this claim – despite the fact that it could easily be done by an impact study of doctoral theses using google-scholar. as explained earlier, concern has been expressed about the low rates at which doctoral research is converted into publications in scholarly journals. what is also disturbing from the survey presented in this article is the dominance (at least in the english literature) of north america, western europe and australia in research on doctoral education. this is part of a general pattern in the educational sciences of the extra-western experience not being reflected in scholarly literature and theory construction. as this can easily give rise to parochial theory (pretending to be universally valid) and to a neglect of the interest and needs of the global south, this feature of the corpus of social science literature has been rightfully regularly criticised, for example by biraimah (2011) or by unesco’s seminal report on the global higher education revolution (altbach, reisberg & rumbley, 2009: 32). in this regard the unesco report even cautions that such a lopsided production of scholarly knowledge lays the global scientific project open to the criticism that it functions to entrench northern hemispheric hegemony (altbach et al., 2009: 32). the above survey presented a wide-angled lens view of the state of publications on doctoral education. there is a need 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(juvenile, satire, 6, 346-348). south african journal of higher education 21(8):11421154. waghid y 2011. the decline of the university in south africa: reconstituting the place of reason in the university. in r barnett (ed), the future university: ideas and possibilities. london: routledge. walker g, golde cm, jones l, bueschel ac & hutchings p 2008. the formation of scholars: rethinking doctoral education for the twenty-first century. san francisco: jossey-bass. wasley p 2008. portfolios are replacing qualifying exams as a step on the road to dissertations. chronicle of higher education 54(44):a8. watson p 2008. measuring postgraduate cohort throughput: a case study. south african journal of higher education 22(3):725-739. weiler h 1984. the political economy of education and development. prospects 14:467-477. wellington j 2010. more than a matter of cognition: an explanation of affective writing problems of postgraduate students and their possible solutions. teaching in higher education 15(2):135-150. williams g 2005. doctoral education in canada, 1900-2005. a report from the canadian association for graduate studies. retrieved on 13 august 2011 from http://ogpr.educ.ubc.ca/doctoral%20ed/ alpha%20bibliography htm 138 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 world bank 2002. constructing knowledge societies: new challenges for tertiary education. washington dc: the world bank. pie 33(4) book.indb perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 23 connecting with pre-service teachers’ perspectives on the use of digital technologies and social media to teach socially relevant science ronicka mudaly, kathleen pithouse-morgan, linda van laren, shakila singh, and claudia mitchell as an interdisciplinary team of educational researchers we explored pre-service science teachers’ perspectives on using digital technologies and social media to address socially relevant issues in science teaching. the rationale for teaching socially relevant science was embedded in the concept of renaiscience, thus underscoring the need for science to be perceived as a human activity. we drew on generational theory to consider the educational significance of digital technologies and social media. two different activities were used to elicit the pre-service science teachers’ perspectives. first, we invited them to reflect on a digital animation that we had produced, and they highlighted the advantages of digital animation as a medium to communicate a socially relevant message more appealingly to the millennial generation. we then engaged these pre-service teachers in a structured concept-mapping activity to consider how digital technologies and social media might be used to address social challenges in south africa. they drew our attention to the affordances of digital technologies and social media as a means to facilitate critical thinking, cater for diverse learning styles, and make high-quality scientific knowledge more accessible. they highlighted that teaching socially relevant science using digital resources can be cheap, convenient, collaborative, and creative. keywords: digital resources, generational theory, science teacher education, socioscientific approach, technologies for change linda van laren university kwazulu-natal mathematics and computer science cluster vanlarenl@ukzn.ac.za 031 762 2466 kathleen pithouse-morgan, university kwazulu-natal education studies pithousemorgan@ukzn.ac.za 031 260 3460 claudia mitchell mcgill university, canada department of integrated studies claudia.mitchell@mcgill.ca 514 398 4527 ext. 09990 shakila singh university kwazulu-natal social science cluster singhs7@ukzn.ac.za 031 260 7326 ronicka mudaly university kwazulu-natal social science cluster mudalyr@ukzn.ac.za 031 260 3643 perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 24 introduction and research background the recent framework for institutional quality enhancement from the south african council on higher education (che) identifies key imperatives for change in south african higher education. one of these is the imperative to address national needs, such as social justice and economic development, through higher education. another is to equip students for the 21st century by facilitating critical and creative engagement with increasingly ubiquitous social media and digital technologies (che, 2014). our research team consists of five teacher educators from diverse disciplinary backgrounds in the school of education at a south african university. although we teach in the separate specialisations of gender and education, languages and arts, mathematics education, science education, and teacher development studies, we share an interest in addressing pressing social issues and engaging with new technologies in higher education curricula. in this article we consider how the two national imperatives for change mentioned above might interconnect in the teaching of science education. this article builds on our previous research exploring the use of digital technologies, in particular, digital animation, as an innovative and responsive method for integrating social issues in higher education curricula. we created and screened a digital animation entitled take a risk: it’s as easy as abc, with the aim of provoking discussion and interaction among university educators on integration of social issues in higher education teaching and learning (pithouse-morgan et al., 2015). for the research reported on here we extended the opportunity for response to the same digital animation to a group of pre-service science teachers and sought to answer the following question: what are pre-service science teachers’ perspectives on the use of digital technologies and social media to teach socially relevant science? we did this in two stages: first, we invited the pre-service teachers to use a temporary internet link to find, view, and critique the animation, and second, we engaged the pre-service teachers in a concept-mapping task to elicit their perspectives on the use of digital technologies and social media to teach socially relevant issues in science. this article begins with a brief explanation of our research focus on socially relevant issues in science education. next we draw on generational theory (codrington & grant-marshall, 2004) to consider the educational significance of digital technologies and social media. thereafter, we describe the process of working with the pre-service science teachers to elicit their perspectives on how addressing pressing social issues and engaging with new technologies might interconnect in the teaching of science. we go on to examine the pre-service teachers’ responses to the digital animation as well as their viewpoints as expressed through the concept-mapping activity. to conclude, we consider what we as teacher educators and educational researchers can learn from the pre-service teachers’ insights into the potential value of using digital technologies in teaching socially relevant science. connecting with pre-service teachers’ perspectives on the use of digital technologies and social media to teach socially relevant science ronicka mudaly, kathleen pithouse-morgan, linda van laren, shakila singh and claudia mitchell 25 teaching socially relevant science unprecedented and pervasive global environmental challenges (for example, climate change) have resulted in a reconsideration of the role of education in general and of science education in particular (onwu & kyle, 2011). the rationale for a re-thinking of science education, which mudaly refers to as a renaiscience, calls for science teachers to perceive science as a human activity, and requires the adoption of a “sociocultural approach to science education” (mudaly, 2011: 29) instead of seeing science as “something that exists in human minds as concepts, skills and representations” (roth & lee, 2003: 264). from this perspective the imperative of science education is to provide young people with a greater sense of environmental consciousness and to foster a “moral obligation to the planet” (hart, 2007: 689). lemke (2001) contends that in re-envisioning a science education which is socially relevant, the focus of science education should be embedded in the ubiquitous political and cultural issues that influence people at that point in time. a re-thinking of the focus of science education is inextricably linked to re-thinking teacher education in relation to science. a focus on the teaching and learning of pre-service teachers in general and in science in particular, is essential if universities are to respond to national and global challenges, and thus deliver a socially relevant education. in order for pre-service teachers to engage with the notion of a socially relevant science education, they need to think deeply and reflect critically on the relationship between the teaching of science on the one hand, and society on the other. using generational theory to consider the educational significance of digital technologies and social media codrington underscores two conceptual pillars of generational theory. the first pillar is the “socialization hypothesis”, that proposes that values inculcated during childhood are carried into adulthood and remain relatively stable throughout one’s life. the second is the “social constructivist theory” (2011: 2), which suggests that an individual’s world view develops through social interactions. generational theory “does not claim to be able to either explain the individual actions of individuals, or to be able to predict an individual’s behaviour” (codrington, 2011: 20) and there are “no hard and fast rules about, if, and where people fit into the generations” (codrington & grant-marshall, 2004: 69). however, as codrington points out, generational theory states that people born at a similar time in history, experiencing similar political, social and economic realities, educated in similar systems with similar curricula, and influenced by similar popular culture will develop similar worldviews. (2011: 2) most generations, according to codrington (2011), do not have specific start and end dates, but there are generational categories and years of birth that are generally perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 26 accepted. these categories and birth years are: gi (born 1900s-1920s); silent/ traditionalist (1920s-1945); baby boomer (bb) (1946-early 1960s); generation x (xers) (late 1960s-1980s); and generation y/millennial (1990s-2000s). codrington and grant-marshall (2004) adapted these years of birth for the south african context; because of particular historical and political events in south africa, the dates are delayed by approximately seven years. in our study the generations that are of interest are the bbs, xers and millennials, because we (teacher educator-researchers) may be classified as bbs or xers. we identify ourselves as educators who were “not born into the digital world but have, at some later point in our lives, become fascinated by and adopted many or most aspects of new technology” (prensky, 2001a: 2) and we see it as a vital part of our work to develop curricular activities that can assist critical and creative interaction with new technologies. the pre-service teachers who participated in this study fall within the millennial category. according to codrington one of the defining characteristics that makes generations different is “new technology” (2011: 4) developed during the particular generational category. in south africa, for example, the sharing of cultures from other countries was made possible through the introduction of television in 1976. television influenced the lives of bbs because prior to the 1970s and this technological development south africans were relatively isolated from cultural experiences in other countries. similarly, the development of technology during the xer generation has made “techno-literacy” (codrington, 2011: 4) one of the defining and guiding values of xers. in contrast to the technological context in which the bbs and xers grew up, the millennials are accustomed to a social environment in which there has been an explosion of “new forms of communication, greater connectedness, personalised and portable media” (codrington, 2011: 7). for the millennials, television as well as other forms of digital technologies and social media are no longer considered new technologies. defining and guiding values of the millennial generational category are being techno-savvy and having social and cultural experiences amid media and entertainment overload. according to maürtin-cairncross, the following are some traits of millennials. … they are globally aware and globally connected; they value diversity, collaboration and achievement; technology seems to be a natural part of their lives; they have a strong sense of civic duty; they have a highly developed ability to multi-task; and they are energetic … (2014: 565). furthermore, codrington (2011) suggests that the millennial generation includes young people raised in an era marked by the heightened fragility of the social, economic, and natural environment, and who consequently might have a greater awareness of ethical responsibilities. connecting with pre-service teachers’ perspectives on the use of digital technologies and social media to teach socially relevant science ronicka mudaly, kathleen pithouse-morgan, linda van laren, shakila singh and claudia mitchell 27 researchers such as klopfer, osterweil, groff and haas (2009) contend that millennials spend a great deal of time engaging with popular digital technologies and social media, including facebook, my space, world of warcraft, and sim city. green and hannon (2007) and klopfer et al. conclude that digital technologies and social media are completely integrated into the lives of millennials. similarly, dawley (2006) maintains that millennials are highly familiar with digital interfaces, as well as the rules and language that enable interaction with digital technologies. scholars such as klopfer et al. (2009) and cowie and khoo (2014) observe that millennials use social media and digital technologies to create, learn, and communicate new things in novel ways. they argue that the relationship that these young people have with knowledge generation and communication has been transformed through their use of digital technologies and social media, and that it is therefore essential for teachers to understand the pervasive influences of digital technologies. however, scholars also raise concerns about possible assumptions underpinning motivations for the use of digital technologies in teaching and learning. for example, otrell-cass, cowie and khoo (2011) caution researchers about the notion that young people are necessarily “digital natives” (prensky, 2001b: 1), arguing that learning spaces for young people need to be created to enable them to understand the affordances of digital technologies in education. koseoglu (2013) adds that it is unwise to position teachers as “digital immigrants” (prensky, 2001b: 1) in the land of students, and that careful consideration needs to be given to student preferences and skills related to the use of digital technologies in order to learn. koseoglu (2013) advises that although many studies reveal that students have access to digital technologies and networks, context-specific research into student resources and preferences is required. likewise, focusing on the south african higher education context, maürtin-cairncross cautions, “it is also important to note that although some students have embraced these technologies and tools of the net gen, this is by no means a universal experience, as there will be students who do not present with these characteristics” (2014: 578). maürtin-cairncross therefore recommends that south african higher education institutions conduct research into students’ experiences of, and perspectives on, engaging with new technologies in learning and teaching. these insights made us mindful of two disparate considerations related to the pluralistic south african context. the first is that some of our students are probably not only digital media and technology experts, but also possess other traits and knowledge that we as bbs or xers may lack. the second, which is based on our experiences of working with south african students from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds, is that we should not assume that all our students are necessarily “native speakers of the digital language of computers, cellular phones and videogames” (makoe, 2012: 92). we were aware that while rapid advancements in network technologies and digital devices have resulted in these becoming increasingly accessible (koseoglu, 2013; schuck, aubusson, kearney & burden, 2012; perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 28 songer, 2007) and schools in the global north tend to be equipped with computers, wired and wireless communication, software applications and programs and internet for teaching and learning (songer, 2007), undergraduate students in south africa often come to university from schools in which digital resources are severely limited or non-existent (ndlovu & lawrence, 2012). methods: working with the pre-service science teachers to elicit their perspectives the pre-service teacher [student] participants a mixed-sex group of 79 third-year pre-service teachers between the ages of 20 and 24 years volunteered to participate in the study. these participants were registered for a natural science method module that forms part of the bachelor of education programme. they were given information about this study a week prior to engaging in discussions about digital technologies and social media during a 90-minute science education lecture. small group discussions on the digital animation prior to the lecture we asked the pre-service teachers to view our digital animation, take a risk: it’s as easy as abc, on youtube. this animation is based on the issue of curriculum integration of hiv and aids as a critically socially relevant issue. as we explain in pithouse-morgan et al. (2015), we had previously screened this short video at three different locations to elicit responses from diverse groups of our peers (university educators). we then extended the opportunity to pre-service teachers to respond to the same digital animation. at the start of the lecture we asked the pre-service teachers to form 17 groups of 4 or 5. we expected that their working in small groups would allow for more in-depth deliberations. to begin with, we asked each group to share and write down their reflections on the digital animation. the prompt for discussion was: reflect on the use of digital animation to integrate hiv and aids in teaching. in this way we aimed to stimulate the participants’ thinking about using digital means to initiate discussions about a socially relevant issue, such as hiv and aids integration, in a teaching context. this was a point of entry into a broader discussion about the use of digital technologies and social media to teach socially relevant science. these small group discussions on the digital animation were audio-recorded and transcribed, and used as the first data set for this study. concept-mapping on teaching of socially relevant science using digital technologies and social media in preparation for the concept-mapping activity with the pre-service teachers we highlighted the potential value of critical pedagogy in science. we formulated the connecting with pre-service teachers’ perspectives on the use of digital technologies and social media to teach socially relevant science ronicka mudaly, kathleen pithouse-morgan, linda van laren, shakila singh and claudia mitchell 29 following statement as part of the introductory information for the concept-mapping task. paulo freire provided insights into critical pedagogy. teaching to improve society is one of the aims of science education. in order to teach for social change, we need to think critically and understand social challenges. this task provides a platform to extend the work on critical pedagogy, by enabling you to reflect collaboratively on how digital technologies can be used to teach socially relevant science. next, we asked the groups to discuss their ideas about the teaching of socially relevant science using digital technologies and social media, and to record their ideas on a structured concept map (see figure 1). we used the groups’ concept maps as the second data set for this study. as butler-kisber and poldma explain, “concept mapping is a diagrammatic and visual means of expressing ideas held in the mind” (2010: 4). we anticipated that by creating concept maps through brainstorming and organising key words and phrases in a diagrammatic form, the groups of participants would be able to communicate their evolving ideas in an informal and non-linear way. we provided the following guidelines for the concept-mapping activity. brainstorm/hold a discussion about the following topic: how can digital spaces, made possible by digital technology (cell phones, computers, software, tablets, digital video and audio recorders, etcetera) and social media (twitter, facebook, youtube, whatsapp, blogs), be used to address social issues, such as hiv and aids, malnutrition, or other, in science education? • decide on the social issue • decide on the digital technology • decide on the social medium • complete the concept map the structured concept map template we developed used the image of three intersecting sets with a common intersection at the centre (see figure 1). the common intersection represents the particular group’s integrated curriculum space, in which thinking about the teaching of science takes place when they are using a selected medium and digital technology for their chosen socially relevant scientific issue. perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 30 figure 1: an example of one group’s responses represented in the structured concept map. presentation and analysis of findings the presentation and analysis of findings are presented in two parts. first, we present our findings and analysis of pre-service teachers’ reflections on the digital animation that we produced. the second part is based on the concept-mapping activity that provides insight into participants’ perspectives on digital technologies and social media for the teaching of socially relevant science. pre-service teachers’ reflections on the digital animation we discuss the pre-service teachers’ reflections on the digital animation under two broad themes: the medium used to present the information in the digital animation; and the message conveyed by the digital animation (pithouse-morgan et al., forthcoming). the medium several reflections related to the use of digital animation as a means of communicating about a social issue (in this case, hiv and aids), and these indicated that participants considered animation to be an effective medium for this. several positive aspects connecting with pre-service teachers’ perspectives on the use of digital technologies and social media to teach socially relevant science ronicka mudaly, kathleen pithouse-morgan, linda van laren, shakila singh and claudia mitchell 31 were highlighted by the participants, as well as several suggestions made for improvement. positive comments positive comments from the pre-service teachers’ audio-recorded discussions about the animation included: “animation is fun”; “appropriate”; “appealing and attractive”; “creative and innovative”; “interesting”; “intrigues the viewer”; “conveys information to learners [that is] more learner centred” and “allows students to pay attention”. more specific responses about the medium, such as “the characters were friendly and funny” and the “cartoon style made it suitable for any age group” suggest that some participants enjoyed the informal manner in which a serious social issue was presented in the animation that was “not too clustered [cluttered]” (see, for example, figure 2). figure 2: screen shot from digital animation: take a risk: it’s as easy as abc! suggestions for improvement some responses pinpointed particular aspects of the animation where improvements were considered necessary. this is evident in the following: … the animation could have been better in terms of its drawing. voices could have been used for the [characters]. a better background song could have been chosen and more colour should have been used. it is too quick, i could not read the information. it is confusing because of the format of the video in terms of questions and answers. perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 32 there are a lot of things to remember including the scenes and the characters. the speech bubbles, the words are too long and they made me lose concentration …. audio could have been added to say what was written on the video in order to assist blind learners …. these comments provided us with insights into how we might work with digital animation in a way that is more appealing to millennials. some of our participants found the animation to be text heavy (see, for example, figure 3), and would have preferred shorter messages or audio messages rather than written text. participants, in stating these should cater for people with visual impairments, also alerted us to the need for digital animations to be more inclusive. this suggestion is in keeping with the view that millennials tend to have a heightened awareness of social issues (codrington, 2011). the suggestion to use more colours and improve on the background song draws attention to the need for us as bbs or xers to be more familiar with the interests of millennials when we are using digital animation as a teaching or research tool. figure 3: screen shot from digital animation: take a risk: it’s as easy as abc! the message while the pre-service teachers’ reflections focused mostly on the medium of the digital animation, there were also some responses relating to the message. most reflections from participants’ audio-recorded discussions indicated that they felt that the message was suitably conveyed in the animation. for example, they pointed out that it was: “packed with useful information”; “focused and informative”; and connecting with pre-service teachers’ perspectives on the use of digital technologies and social media to teach socially relevant science ronicka mudaly, kathleen pithouse-morgan, linda van laren, shakila singh and claudia mitchell 33 “relevant to us as future teachers”. in addition, they noted that the animation provided “different teaching strategies for effective learning”. only one participant argued that the message lacked substance, by noting that the animation “[d]idn’t provide much information”. from these responses we conclude that the message conveyed in the short digital animation not only provided relevant information but presented content in a dense, compact form. in addition, the animation successfully served as a prompt for further discussion. the responses indicate that the participants also considered a message presented in the form of a digital animation to be appropriate for use in pre-service teacher development. findings and discussion: concept mapping in this second part of the findings and analysis we consider the content of the concept maps produced by the groups of pre-service teachers. in their concept maps the 17 groups identified a range of issues and concerns. we tabulated each group’s responses according to the headings in the structured concept map and then examined responses to identify key notions. we highlight the key notions under each of the three main headings: (1) socially relevant scientific issues; (2) technologies for change; and (3) advantages in using social media as a learning medium. socially relevant scientific issues the groups of pre-service teachers identified a range of socially relevant scientific issues that could be addressed using digital technologies and social media: • health issues (tuberculosis (tb), hiv and aids, cancer, obesity, weight, and malnutrition); • social issues (abuse of women and children, and rape, substance abuse, poverty); • environmental issues (pollution, global warming, climate change). the participants’ choices related to pressing social issues in contemporary south africa. according to statistics south africa (2013) approximately 5.26 million south african people were living with hiv and aids by mid-2013. also, from 2002 to 2009 the prevalence of tb among south africans increased, and it is unlikely that the millennium development goals for decreasing the spread of tb will be achieved (republic of south africa, n.d.). the continued high prevalence of hiv and aids and tb in particular in south africa makes health a socially relevant issue and, through the concept-mapping activity, the pre-service teachers were encouraged to think about how they could use digital technologies and social media to teach about these topics. similarly, statistics south africa (2000) reported that the rape of women and children is often accompanied by physical violence such as the use of knives and guns, or by the threat of violence. mathews et al. (2004), jewkes (2002), baldwinragavan (2010) and wood and jewkes (2001) report on extremely high incidences of perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 34 violence against south african women and children. social ills such as poverty and substance abuse are often linked to the abuse of women and children (jewkes, 2002). the participants were mindful of these social ills and viewed them as relevant topics to be included in science education using the affordances of digital technologies and social media. according to the national climate change response white paper (government of the republic of south africa, 2011), south africa is highly vulnerable to environmental challenges, especially the effects of climate change. this has resulted in vigorous debates about using education as a vehicle to make our society more resilient to climate change and other environmental challenges. the pre-service teachers viewed environmental issues that could be addressed using social media and digital technologies as socially relevant within the context of science education. technologies for change the three digital technologies that the pre-service teachers recommended for addressing pressing social issues were cell phones, digital video cameras/recorders and laptops/computers. the social media spaces that they preferred were facebook, youtube, and whatsapp. the most commonly selected digital technology was cell phones (9 groups) and the most favoured social media space was facebook (13 groups). according to sainfo (2012), there are approximately 29 million cell phone users and approximately 6 million personal computers in south africa. while this would suggest that approximately 60% of south africans use cell phones, in reality cell phones are often shared, which extends access. in addition, in 2012 at least 7 million south africans (approximately 14% of the south african population) had internet access on their cell phones (rao, 2012). this means that cell phones may be used to provide immediate, continuous access to social media spaces such as facebook, youtube, and whatsapp. social media spaces are becoming more popular with south african internet users. meier’s (2013) research indicates that there are approximately 9.6 million facebook users and 4.7 million youtube users in south africa. (no statistics related to whatsapp south african users are made available by whatsapp.) advantages in using social media as a learning medium through their concept maps the pre-service teachers expressed a variety of perspectives on the use of digital technologies and social media to teach socially relevant science. in making sense of these ideas through inductive analysis, we identified four key notions that we tagged using four terms that appeared frequently in the concept maps: “cheap”, “convenient”, “collaborative” and “creative”, which we labelled ‘the 4 cs’. connecting with pre-service teachers’ perspectives on the use of digital technologies and social media to teach socially relevant science ronicka mudaly, kathleen pithouse-morgan, linda van laren, shakila singh and claudia mitchell 35 cheap participants perceived the use of digital technologies and social media to teach socially relevant science as an inexpensive form of communication. it [social media] is easier to access, cheaper and it can also be accessed worldwide therefore it can reach a lot of people whatsapp is cheap, affordable and convenient. the pre-service teachers’ responses resonate with makoe’s observation that one of the reasons mobile technologies are appropriate in south african contexts is because cell phones are so “available, affordable and accessible” (2012: 92). makoe’s research at a south african university revealed that many students own cell phones that have internet functions, so these students can readily make use of this form of digital technology for learning. convenient the participants emphasised the ease of being able to access and interact with social issues in science through digital technologies and social media. it is accessible and can be watched at our convenience which makes the process less tedious. not time consuming …. students’ daily lives revolve around social media & therefore it is an advantage in gaining knowledge about social issues. from these responses we can see that if a digital medium is convenient, accessible, and available, it might encourage an inductive approach to learning that could begin with a complex real-world problem in relation to which the students themselves generate facts, procedures, and guiding principles (prince & felder, 2006). from the participants’ perspective it might be convenient and appropriate to use digital technologies to research real-world issues. if these facts could be gleaned during lectures using convenient, hands-on digital technologies to explore socially relevant issues, then fact-finding processes for learning could be promoted in science education and other disciplines. furthermore, if the use of digital technologies is considered by pre-service science teachers themselves to be time-efficient, then fact-finding processes for learning about social issues may be adopted more readily in science education. collaborative pre-service teachers highlighted the potential for increased interaction and the participatory construction of knowledge. it also allows for educators to connect and interact with learners. learners who are timid in class can ask questions they need to ask or clarify content. perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 36 encourages social constructivism because you can create group chats and post pictures informing people about proper diet, facts about obesity and how to live a healthy lifestyle. knowledge is constructed collaboratively and freely. connect and collaborate with people from other countries to share ideas, experiences and knowledge. hence, the participants drew attention to how technology can open up many new and exciting possibilities for collaboration among learners, pre-service teachers and others. for a millennial generation of more techno-savvy students, opportunities for working together collaboratively as well as creatively are offered by the everincreasing new ways of using media and communication (prensky, 2005). in other words, through using technology and social media millennials are able to integrate various functions of digital technologies as a natural part of their lives (maürtincairncross, 2014). creative pre-service teachers also pointed to the potential for innovation and enhanced enjoyment in teaching and learning. one group’s response is illustrative. instead of rote-learning techniques, we as future teachers can use creative and innovative teaching methods to educate learners. in particular, participants emphasised the power of visual modes for facilitating creative and participatory teaching and learning, offering comments such as the following: it reinforces active participation of learners in class and also makes the lessons alive and enjoyable. some learners may learn effectively by visualising instead of reading. it makes it easier for the learners to understand what you talking about since they can listen and visualise at the same time. the participants’ responses align with findings by otrell-cass et al., who conducted an investigation to determine how digital technologies can be used to enhance the teaching of science, and found that student learning was supported specifically through “visual meaning making” (2011: 3). they found that by augmenting science lessons through the use of visual technologies such as digital animation, students were enabled to develop key scientific process skills, including representing results and justifying conclusions. in addition, they observed that students were stimulated to think independently and participate more actively in science lessons through the use of digital technologies. conclusion and implications to conclude, we return to generational theory and to the strength of what we term the 4 cs in digital research: they are cheap, convenient, collaborative, and creative. from a generational theory perspective, providing opportunities for pre-service connecting with pre-service teachers’ perspectives on the use of digital technologies and social media to teach socially relevant science ronicka mudaly, kathleen pithouse-morgan, linda van laren, shakila singh and claudia mitchell 37 science teachers to reflect on, discuss and actively seek connections between digital technologies, social media and socially relevant issues made it possible for us as bbs or xers to connect with and learn from our millennial students. we noticed that the pre-service teachers were interested and keen to contribute to the reflections and discussions. this could mean that the pre-service teachers felt that they were able to provide worthwhile contributions to the group debates using their own perspectives on the use of digital technologies and social media in relation to socially relevant issues. the participants thus displayed social traits that are deemed characteristic of millennials (codrington, 2011; maürtin-cairncross, 2014). furthermore, from the participants’ responses it was clear that they chose significant considerations to highlight during the renaiscience mapping activity, focusing on specific topics that they deemed socially relevant in the south african science classroom. this suggests a possible shift in the way pre-service teachers are thinking about school science, and disrupts the conventional disciplinary rules about what science is, what topics are embraced in science education, the recipients for whom science education is intended, and the purpose of science education. our participants moved in new directions, away from the hypothetico-deductive model of science, to a science embedded in social issues. more specifically, the fact that they stressed that using technology is cheap, convenient, collaborative, and creative appears to indicate that millennials take cognisance of the social and economic environment in which they have been raised. generational theory has been valuable in making sense of the data from the participants’ responses, and to understand and plan our ongoing research into curriculum innovation at higher education institutions. in particular, generational theory drew our attention to the significance of responsiveness to the interests and characteristics of the millennial generation by exploring and fashioning innovative teaching and learning. as argued elsewhere (mitchell & de lange, 2013; mitchell, de lange, & moletsane, in press), the ubiquity of cell phones in south africa (increasingly cheap and convenient) suggests the potential for a pedagogical shift in knowledge production. we consider the 4 cs to be of significance for classrooms in schools and universities in south africa, with the potential for pedagogical transformation through increasingly easy access to digital technologies. we might re-think the challenges of the various divides that are sometimes framed as digital but are simultaneously urban-rural, haves and have-nots, along with generational and racial divides. the participants clearly saw the affordances of digital technologies and social media as a way to reduce barriers to accessing information, and underscored the advantage of this technology as a means to facilitate socially relevant thinking in the science classroom. they provided insight into the potential of using technology in the science classroom to cater for diverse learning styles, and eradicate the notion that high-quality scientific knowledge is meant for, and can only be accessed by, the rich, educated, and elite. perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 38 the competence of these pre-service teachers with the digital, along with their optimism and enthusiasm, calls for a rethinking of what it means to teach and what it means to do research in south africa. note the concept renaiscience is a term coined by mudaly (2011). it is theoretically embedded within a socio-cultural perspective. it brings to the centre the need for science education to be viewed as a human activity, and advances the argument that the epistemology and methodology which govern science 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dangerous love: reflections of violence among xhosa township youth. in r. morell (ed.), changing men in southern africa. pietermaritzburg: university of natal press. 44 continuing in the shadows of colonialism: the educational experiences of the african child in ghana abstract in this paper, we draw on a recent ethnographic study in a rural primary school to illustrate the ways that vestiges of colonialism remain deeply imbricated in contemporary schooling in ghana. in reference to the history of education, we use evidence from this study to argue that colonial constructions of the african child are reproduced within schooling. we highlight the significance of schooling for the production of learner subjectivities and point to the ways that the institution of schooling and its everyday life continue to echo and re-instantiate colonial constructions of the african child. drawing on the voices and experiences of students and teachers we illustrate the ways that formal schooling continues to work to devalue indigenous knowledge, to regulate and discipline african children and produce their inferiorisation through their education. we specifically highlight the gender inflections in the institutional routines of schooling. following a brief introduction to the historical context of education in ghana, we outline the research study and then the theoretical position upon which our analysis is based. we develop the analysis along three major discursive themes starting with the formal institutional structures of the school, highlighting the ways its disciplinary boundaries structure age and gender relations. we then turn to the curriculum and pedagogic practices that shape student understandings of what constitutes legitimate knowledge and the processes of learning. in the final theme, we examine the language of instruction and the ways that this produces exclusions and vilifies indigenous languages and the cultures that are expressed through it. in the conclusion, we draw the key points together to reflect on the extent to which contemporary schooling in ghana sustains the production of the african child framed in the colonial era. finally, we suggest that the educational experience of students offers an important starting point for efforts in decolonizing the school and curriculum. 1. introduction the modern school system across africa has its origins in colonialism. the dominant features – educational institutions, curriculum knowledge practices and language of instruction in schools – all may be directly traced to the colonial institutional structure. the discourses of the colonial education system and the vilified representations of the african child within it construct a politics of educational exclusion. the promotion of western knowledge (including language and value systems) and the production of vincent adzahlie-mensah university of education winneba, ghana máiréad dunne centre for international education university of sussex, uk doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v36i2.5 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 36(2): 44-60 © uv/ufs http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2 45 adzahlie-mensah & dunne continuing in the shadows of colonialism... colonised citizenship work to degrade and exclude indigenous knowledges and identities with untold consequences on black populations that are still felt in the 21st century. many scholars have described the modern institution of schooling in africa as a significant channel for the violating, racialised colonial ideologies of distinction and superiority (macedo, 1999; dei & asgharzadeh, 2001; london, 2002; harber, 2004). specifically, the colonial school structures and practices are seen as perpetrating western dominance, alienating people from their cultural knowledge, producing strong gender hierarchies and creating a desire for very limited or non-existent modern sector jobs and western goods (mazrui, 1978; kuepie, et al., 2006; adjei, 2007; lugones, 2007; leach, 2012). fundamental to justifications of the inequalities perpetrated through the colonial school system were representations of the african child. for example, luggard (1922:217) depicted the african child as a “nude savage” acting with “inaccessible fastness of a cannibal” and in need of the “formation of character”. within that colonial logic, violent practices including racial segregation, exemplified explicitly in apartheid south africa, passed as a way of moulding behaviour and producing “character”. indeed, the historical explorations of several researchers show that schools were constructed as extremely coercive and violent places (shipman, 1971; green, 1990; adams, 1991; harber, 2004) further, shute (1992:7) specifically argues that, from its colonial roots, “schools have not necessarily much to do with education… they were mainly institutions of control” that promoted the colonial agenda. an abundant literature confirms the way that in colonial interests, schools were initially structured to produce citizen workers for european merchant houses and later transformed to provide education that was aimed at creating a consumer taste for european goods, and to instantiate colonial practices as the gold standard (graham, 1971; macedo, 1999; london, 2002; dei, 2004). formal schooling in ghana is an “intellectual borrowing from europe” (sanjinés, 2007:300). it started with a portuguese castle school at elmina castle around 1529 (amedahe & chandramohan, 2009; salifu & agbenyega, 2012) that operated racial exclusion by admitting mullatoes: children born to ghanaian mothers by european fathers (graham, 1971). the british colonial administration passed the first education ordinance in 1852 (bening, 1990; ges, 2001) and christian missionaries expanded schooling mainly to “serve the primary needs of evangelism” (amedahe & chandramohan, 2009:8). at independence, only 6.6% of the population of ghanaian school-aged children were in school. the nationalist government of nkrumah implemented an accelerated development plan (adp) for education in 1951 as “an aggressive programme of rapid expansion of education” (ges, 2001:7). the first education act (act 87, 1961) prescribed 10 years of free compulsory elementary education for all children of school going age. the result was a rapid expansion of education between 1951 and 1966 with primary school numbers increasing from just over one thousand to over eight thousand and pupil numbers increasing from just over one hundred and fifty thousand to more than a million. the increases in access over time are indicated by national reports which most recently state a gross enrolment rate of 108% and net enrolment rate of 87.4% (moe, 2017). in the national context of mass access to schooling, in this paper we draw on an ethnographic case study to explore the ways that the colonial canon remains instantiated in school and integral to the production of the african children in the contemporary post-colonial context of ghana. our interests are in working at the micro-level to explore the daily life of schools as the crucible in which young ghanaians are positioned and position themselves as they frame their identities. more specifically, we explore the operation of power within the 46 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) structures and practices of schooling, the techniques of control and the responses of african children to the social relations of their schooling. in the next section, we outline the research study with a brief description of the case study school, our methodological approach and methods. we then turn to an outline of our theoretical position in advance of an analysis presented in three sections. these include the formal institutional structures of the school; curriculum and pedagogic practice and, lastly, the language of instruction. in each of these sections we trace the contours of coloniality and its sustained work in the framing the african child in schools. we conclude with a brief consideration of the implications for decolonizing the school and curriculum. 2. the research methodology and methods the research drawn upon in this paper was institutional ethnographic case study of a ghanaian primary school. we used a largely qualitative approach to generate detailed descriptions of the case and its context (flick, 2006:230). our interests were in exploring the institutionalisation of daily practices in school structures, rules and social relations and the ways these framed student subjectivities. to enable a holistic analysis of institutional rituals, repertoires and relationships we reviewed policy texts and then employed a combination of immersion and observation ‘from within’ and in-depth interviewing. the main data collection methods used were interviews, document analysis and observations. the main school policy texts analysed were the head teachers handbook and the unified code of discipline for basic education schools produced by the ghana education service. we interacted with students and teachers in the case study school, observing activities as they unfolded and interviewing the school members. we used non-participant observation and conducted both episodic and in-depth interviews as we explored school practices and the ways these were embedded in institutional rules; how knowledge was socially organized and the wider social and relational complexities (smith, 2005). these methods ensured the documents, events and experiences were brought under ethnographic scrutiny. in the wider study, our interests were in locating the local context of the school in broader questions about the reach of national policy, and policy interpretations at local authority and school level. using critical discourse analysis our analysis included a consideration of where the policy came from as well as what it is intended to achieve at the local level. this approach enabled us to derive data from well beyond the physical limits of the institution as well as focus on stories from the students as a means to include the “perspectives of people located distinctively in the institutional processes” (smith, 2005:34). through our in-depth examination of the various texts and especially of students’ talk, we constructed meaning from their accounts in the context of regimes of patterned textual and social ‘realities’ of their lives in school (campbell & gregor, 2002). the case study the school was a hard-to-reach rural primary school that comprised twelve teachers, including the head teacher and 253 students. with a gender parity index (gpi) of 1.2, there were more female (136) than males (117) students. similarly there were more females (8), including the head teacher, than male (4) teachers. but unlike many rural schools in ghana, the majority (66%) of teachers were trained professionals. five females and three males were trained and 47 adzahlie-mensah & dunne continuing in the shadows of colonialism... three females and one male were untrained. a prefect system, an enduring feature of british public schools, operated in the school. students handpicked by teachers were appointed and their primary function was to assist teachers and monitor their peers. this produced a hierarchy within the student body. consistent with ghana’s free compulsory universal basic education programme, students were not required to pay tuition fees and the government was expected to provide textbooks and other teaching and learning materials. the main school policy texts were the headteachers’ handbook and the unified code of discipline for basic education schools produced by the ghana education service. these nationally constituted texts defined the institutional order and power relations within the school. every activity in the school was regulated by the timetable that detailed activities and subjects that teachers were supposed to teach each day, and the times allocated to each activity. indeed, the dominant institutional culture of the school was framed by regulatory practices within the bureaucratic administration of the school including the timetable, the prefect system, rituals like the school assembly as well as other school rules and embedded practices. the school provided the central context for the research. policy texts, observation in classrooms and across the school, teacher interactions and interviews that were more formal all took place alongside pupil focused data collection. beyond non-participant observation of students in a range of in-school scenarios, a group of fifteen students was purposively selected from primary classes 4, 5 and 6 (aged between 9 and 12 years) to comprise a critical case sample. student in these grades were selected because ghanaian education sector reports consistently identify that dropout rates are more pronounced in these grades and previous research findings conclude that students in these grades most frequently describe school as either “uninteresting or useless” (pryor & ampiah, 2003; akyeampong, et al., 2007:43). five students were selected from each of the three grades and together the critical case sample comprised seven (7) males and eight (8) females. ethical guidelines informed research procedures and interactions throughout the case study. 3. our theoretical starting points the focal point in this paper concerns the work of education in (re-) producing young ghanaian subjectivities. our interest was on the experiences of young african children within a ghanaian primary school and the ways this shaped the production of their identities. the formal structure of the school as an institution, its daily routines and the social relations between school members were vital to these processes. as foucault clearly articulates: take, for example, an educational institution: the disposal of its space, the meticulous regulations which govern its internal life, the different activities which are organized there, the diverse persons who live there or meet one another, each with his [sic] own function, his [sic] well-defined character-all these things constitute a block of capacity-communication-power. the activity which ensures apprenticeship and the acquisition of aptitudes or types of behaviour is developed there by means of a whole ensemble of regulated communications (lessons, questions and answers, orders, exhortations, coded signs of obedience, differentiation marks of the “value” of each person and of the levels of knowledge) and by the means of a whole series of power processes (en-closure, surveillance, reward and punishment, the pyramidal hierarchy)” (foucault, 1982: 218–219). 48 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) the processes of discipline and normalisation within schools were central to our exploration, however, as others have pointed out, analyses of schooling in former colonies is not productive “unless the legacies of colonialism are examined” (viruru, 2005:10). with necessary interests in the colonial roots of schooling in africa, a critical anti-colonial discursive framework (cadf) informed our analysis. cadf theorists underline the importance of formal schooling in governmentality and in colonial contexts to the “need to control populations in those colonies” (harber, 2004:71). importantly here is the observation that, even in the post-colonial context, schools as institutions of control have “proved impervious to change” (harber, 2004:71). using cadf in the study of schooling draws attention to several inter-related sets of questions that include those about institutional practices and social relations; knowledge (re-)production and the implications of both for social identities (dei & asgharzadeh, 2001; dei, 2004; smith, 2005; mignolo, 2007). locating these historically also provides the potential to initiate “radical rethinking of knowledge and social identities authored and authorized by colonialism” (prakash, 1994:1475). highlighting a persisting “vocabulary of power” associated with colonialism and “located within traditions of western rationality” (rizvi et al., 2006:251) makes evident the ways these work to marginalise indigenous knowledges in the school curriculum (dei, 2004; viruru, 2005). in our analysis of the institution of schooling in ghana and its work on framing the african child in this context, we turn to the intertwined theorisations expressed as the coloniality of power and coloniality of knowledge (quijano, 2000; sanjinés, 2007). coloniality of power refers to the ways ideas of “race” were produced and used by colonial powers to establish and naturalise relations of superiority and inferiority (quijano, 2000; smith, 2005; mbembe, 2017). further, these hierarchical orders are instantiated in the fabric of modern schooling which confers value or position on certain people while disenfranchising others (smith, 2005). discursive superiority / inferiority is integral to several discursive dyads including colonisercolonised; european-african; white-black, and similarly in the historic european positioning of women as inferior in the male-female binary (lugones, 2007, oyewumi, 1997). the persistence of these discursive social orders may be illustrated by the ways that schools, in post-colonial contexts, co-opt authoritative structures (e.g. timetables, age hierarchies, standardisations, assessment and rules of discipline including bodily comportment) that are every bit as oppressive as during colonial rule (molteno et al., 2000; london, 2002). coloniality of knowledge refers specifically to an epistemic process of privileging some knowledge as more valid for development (sanjinés, 2007). the promotion of education as a catalyst for economic development and modernity is reflected in school curriculum and its valorisation of particular knowledges. the prescribed curriculum produces an epistemic hierarchy that legitimates and privileges western knowledge and a foreign, european language of instruction. this is a wholesale disparagement and disregard of indigenous knowledges and traditions in ex-colonies, in favour of colonial interests that continue to dominate global agendas (adjei, 2007). from our cadf perspective curriculum analysis must concern: not only what knowledge is important but also whose knowledge is important in the curricula, what and whose interests such knowledge serves, and how the curriculum and pedagogy serve (or do not serve) differing interests (cohen et al., 2007:31). the prescriptions of the school curriculum are a major vector in the coloniality of knowledge. with very limited reform, the curriculum works to reproduce and valorise colonial knowledge 49 adzahlie-mensah & dunne continuing in the shadows of colonialism... and perpetrate the epistemic violence in which indigenous knowledges are persistently devalued (smith, 2005; mignolo, 2007). in schools, questions of epistemology do not refer simply to what subjects are on the curriculum, but also about the ‘how’ of learning. pedagogy is central to the framing of epistemological relations such that, interactions between and among teachers and students stand at the intersection of the coloniality of knowledge and of power. our use of cadf here allows us to trace the discursive production of the ‘african child’ in post-colonial ghana as we explore the ways pedagogical relations are framed by institutional practices of regulation and discipline and imbricated with gender (see dunne et al., 2005; lugones, 2008). in the analysis that follows, we explore the disciplinary structures, curriculum, pedagogy and valorised knowledges of schooling predominantly through the perspectives of the students. through this we trace the continuities in the education system from colonial to postcolonial times exploring the extent to which in ghana today the subjectivities of young people remain haunted by the hierarchical framings of the african child in the racist and gendered colonial era. 4. school structures and social relations we begin our analysis in this section in a discussion of the organisational structures of the school that have been shaped by school policy and practices. together these establish institutional authority structures that define the social and academic status of students and set the norms and boundaries of interaction within the school (smith, 2005). ethnographic style observations of the daily life of the school, in the class and school compound, provided insights into the rules, regulation and discipline that constructed the social order of the school. in concert with other school ethnographies in ghana (see for example, dunne et al., 2005; dunne and ananga, 2013) in the case study, age and gender structures shaped the hierarchical social relations within the school. age relations between teachers and students are fundamental structure of schooling sustained since the colonial period. this age-authority structure is the basis for the spatial organisation of the school and operates among students and teachers alike. the spatial and temporal organisation of the school, for example through the timetable, is an important technology through which students are put under surveillance, observed and disciplined. the daily assembly or morning inspection parade is an example of an organisational structure with specific spatial and temporal regulations. this entailed the whole school lining-up militarystyle in the school compound and responding without hesitation to drills and instructions from the teacher. those who failed to comply quickly and exactly to the commands were flogged with canes. as with other practices derived from colonial times, gendered assumptions and divisions infused the morning parade. although students were called to line in height order, shortest in front, girls were always at the front of each line with shortest boy following the tallest girl. gender clearly dominated height as an organising principle even though it was a cause of considerable discomfort for both female and male students: sir, i am short and i can’t see if i stand behind the girls. when they say “stretch your arms” my arms will pain me because my hand can’t reach the tall girls’ shoulder. (male student) 50 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) how can you say “shortest in front” and then the tall girl will be in front of the shortest boy? i don’t know why because the short boys cannot see anything. i think they suffer. sometimes when they say ‘straighten up your lines’ or when they say ‘arms forward stretched’ then you see that the short boys are suffering. (female student) the intersection of age and gender within the school instantiated gender differences and hierarchies. other researchers describe such gendered social relations as an artefact of colonialism (oyewùmí, 1997; lugones, 2007). specifically, oyewùmí (1997) describes the gender dynamics in africa as “the emergence of women as an identifiable category, defined by their anatomy and subordinated to men in all situations” and significantly as “one of the very first accomplishments of the colonial state” (p. 123–125). similarly, lugones (2008:8) claims that sex-gender categories were introduced in colonised societies “by the west as a tool of domination that designates two binarily opposed and hierarchical social categories”. as such colonisation is a twofold process of “inferiorization and gender subordination” where “the exclusion of women” became natural and immutable (oyewùmí, 1997:123). the strong and sustained resonances with the social dynamics of schooling suggest it is important to recognise the historical construction of a gendered african child. consistent with other school-based research, observations of the daily routines in the case study school illustrated the ways that the formal and informal curriculum produced and regulated gendered practices in terms of modes of dressing, school tasks, peer and teacher interactions and institutional posts (e.g. prefects) (avotri et al., 2000; dunne et al., 2005; dunne et al, 2010; dunne & adzahlie-mensah, 2016; akyeampong & adzahlie-mensah, 2018). taken together these studies describe mundane gender surveillance and control within schools that produce female inferiorisation, a male dominated gender hierarchy and institutionalised female subordination. within the case study school, all students were required to line-up, sit in class and respond without comment or complaint to teachers according to a hierarchical age/gender order. the disciplinary regime within the school including the ever-present threat of severe corporal punishment underscored a strong social hierarchy that positioned students as powerless, mute and lowest in the pecking order. the students elaborated their institutional positioning in the following: sir, if you come to school the teacher can even slap you … we are nobodies…. (female student) in this school, the students don’t matter… even the prefects (male student) the teachers think we don’t know anything. (female student) sir, i am a prefect, but i don’t think the teachers believe i know anything. (female student prefect) if you come to school, you know you are nobody. they say, i am the senior prefect but i cannot say anything… we just do what they say (male student prefect) clearly, the students did not see themselves as complete members of the school. as agbenyega and klibthong (2011:406) noted in reference to early years education in ghana, they viewed themselves as ‘colonized bodies’ treated as being nobodies (dei, 2004; rizvi et al., 2006, adzahlie-mensah, 2014). as colonized subjects, they were not regarded as 51 adzahlie-mensah & dunne continuing in the shadows of colonialism... full human beings and were denied rights of participation as full members of the institution. the denial of rights included the ‘inability’ to challenge their physical violation in school. students were powerless and unable to speak back to the relations of domination into which they had become inserted in school. they were not involved in decision-making and largely did what they were instructed to do by the teachers. these modes of interaction bespeak the way that students were inserted into binary power relations of violent “masculine” authoritarianism connoted in being a teacher and a ‘feminine’ submissiveness of being student. students’ in their self-positioning as “nobodies” articulated the dehumanising relational dynamics within school and its deeply felt effects were elaborated in discussions: we are not allowed to talk in the classroom. but it is impossible for a human being to be among a group of people in the same class for the whole day and not talk ... how can it be possible that people will be in class and not talk at all? me, sir, i am only here in this school because my mother will not allow me to stop school now. but these rules are just bad! (male student) observations during the study consistently indicated minimal dialogue between teachers and students and certainly confirmed the claims made by students in interviews that they could not challenge the authority of teachers. the restrictions on verbal space and simple talk illustrate how students are “caught up in a system of constraints ... obligations and prohibitions”, which work on the students’ body “to imprison it, to make it work, it is in order to deprive the individual of a liberty that is regarded both as a right and as a property” (foucault, 1977:11). the silencing exposes techniques in the social control of students within the institution that work to produce passive, politically docile and conformist citizens despite the wider rhetorical claims for empowerment and the progressive potential of formal education. (adzahlie-mensah, 2014; dunne & adzahlie-mensah, 2016). indeed, we are reminded by foucault of the operation of power within institution life and in this case its deep penetrating influence on the framing of student subjectivities: but in thinking of the mechanisms of power, i am thinking rather of its capillary form of existence, the point where power reaches the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning processes and everyday lives (foucault 1980:39). the final point of this section refers back to the organisational hierarchy that places the head teacher and teachers respectively in positions of institutional power. prefects occupy an important place in the institutional hierarchy in their function to support teachers and to enforce the institutional regime by disciplining other students. this intermediary authority position again was consistently gendered. female prefects were subordinate to male prefects and they were less visible in the school. teachers normally called on male prefects who largely acted as dominant inspectors supervising the performance of morning duties, writing names to report misbehaving students and commanding the morning assembly. female students, on the other hand, were largely engaged in service tasks. they were sent to buy food, cleanup classrooms, guard the teachers’ chairs or wash dishes. they provided water in bowls for teachers to wash their hands and cleaned the head teacher’s office. the female section leaders were also active in engaging students in sweeping the compound and classrooms. these gender segregated prefect duties mimicked a domestic division of labour in which their work was differently valued in ways that sustained the male dominated social hierarchy in the school. as oyewùmí (1997:123) points out “the very process by which females were categorized … made them ineligible for leadership roles.” 52 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) in this section, we have explored the often taken for granted institutional framework of schools, highlighting the organisational structures and positions through which power is distributed and difference is instantiated. referring back to the influence of colonialism, we have highlighted the sustained significance of institutional life to the student positionality and a normalisation of their inferiority. we have emphasised the ways that the social dynamics of age and gender re-construct particular versions of the gendered african child. in the next section, we turn to consider curriculum and classroom learning in the case study school. 5. curriculum and pedagogy in this section, we turn directly to the school curriculum, its knowledge content as well as teaching and learning. as bernstein (2000) reminds us, however, the selection of curriculum subjects is an act of power that signals legitimate and valorised knowledge. the classification of ‘sacred’ curriculum knowledge at the same time produces a distinction from ‘profane’ knowledge that is excluded from the formal curriculum. in this case, the school curriculum followed the approved national prescriptions that are broadly similar to those in other ex-british colonies. with traces back to the colonial past, the approved primary school subjects included creative arts, english language (including library), ghanaian language (fante), mathematics, natural science, religious and moral education (rme), information and communication technology (ict), and physical education (pe). in the upper primary citizenship education has been added. for each subject, the broad themes, topics, and specific objectives for each lesson are detailed in an approved teaching syllabus and associated student textbooks each subject area were also available. the time allocation to each subject is an indicator of its relative importance within a hierarchy of curriculum knowledge. within ghanaian primary schools, english language takes up over 25% of curriculum time per week compared to ghanaian language, which is allocated around seven percent in the lower primary and just over nine percent in upper primary. in addition to this, english is the medium of instruction in school. this is a strong message about the hierarchical importance of english language and culture compared to ghanaian language and culture. further, the opportunities to express local culture through creative arts was restricted to 30 minutes (2.3%) per week in the lower primary and 60 minutes (4.9%) in the upper primary. similarly, the potential space to discuss national identity, culture and citizenship values in citizenship education had no time allocation in the lower primary and only 30 minutes per week or 2.3% of all teaching time in upper primary. it is also interesting to note that religious and moral education (rme) is taught and examined through mainly christian perspectives that reflect the missionary roots of education in africa. students clearly articulated their dissatisfaction with curriculum content and relevance: sir, we need subjects that help us to know our community! (male student) please sir, some of the subjects are not useful to us. why can’t we learn about agriculture (male student) in general terms, the legacies of colonialism and the inherited focus on modernisation haunt curriculum definition and delivery while at the same time occluding and traducing knowledges of the south. post-colonial writers describe this as a form of cognitive violence perpetrated and sustained on those populations within ex-colonial nations (quijano, 2000; kanu, 2003; sanjinés, 2007; santos, 2014). in the case of ghana, it appears that despite periodic reform 53 adzahlie-mensah & dunne continuing in the shadows of colonialism... the basic curriculum structure and emphasis still bears the traces of its colonial history that has not significantly interrupted the sustained epistemic damage. this is exemplified by the restricted legitimated space available in the formal curriculum for ghanaian children to learn explicitly about the critical connections between their language, culture and identity (fordham, 1998; mereku et al., 2005; bhat, 2008). in addition, as the extracts from students above suggest, the validation and dissemination of ‘others’ language and knowledge within schools simultaneously works to disenfranchise and disengage locally “relevant” knowledge and students (quijano, 2000; adjei, 2007). the prevailing relations between teachers and students in the school, elaborated in the previous section, were reproduced within the classroom. teachers were rather distant and formal in lessons and students were generally passive. participation was limited to rote learning, repetition and chorus answers. to this extent, the teachers used transmission pedagogy to relay the received curriculum to students who were constructed as empty vessels, knowing nothing (friere, 1993). before you go to class you must be prepared to explain and explain because we all know the students do not know anything. you don’t go there to ask them questions because you will waste your time. you just have to explain the things to them as much as you can. (male teacher) if you want your teaching to be effective, just think carefully and plan how you can explain the content of the lesson to their [students’] understanding. just go there and prepare to explain everything. (female teacher) these teachers constructed themselves as the holders of legitimate knowledge and authoritarian transmitters of the formal, objectified and frozen knowledge of the curriculum (smith, 2005). without considering the possibilities of engaging students in different ways they asserted the centrality of the authoritative teacher in delivering the official curriculum. through this ‘poisonous pedagogy’ (miller, 1990) they positioned students as ‘incompetents’ – infantile, ignorant and incapable, producing “children as colonized bodies” (agbenyega & klibthong, 2011:406), as passive, unquestioning and without critical agency (giroux, 2004). such images of students, of the ghanaian child, are reminiscent of luggard (1922) and bespeak the persistence of the curriculum positioning of teachers as the civilizers of students. the preoccupation with the delivery and consumption of received, archaic curriculum knowledge denied students the possibilities of being socially and intellectually engaged in knowledge construction in the classroom. in a reproduction of the wider school gender regime, spatial arrangements in the classrooms were strongly gendered with a repeated pattern of girls at the front and boys at the back. this spatial positionings were symbolic in students’ performances of femininity and masculinity and the discursive production of female inferiority. the location of the boys at the back behind girls in the classroom or in lines suggests a form of protection by the males of the “weak” females that worked to reassert female inferiority (adzahlie-mensah & eshun, 2017). lugones (2007) highlights the way that the gendered process of colonization involved casting women in the colonies in the image of ‘fragile and sexually passive’ european women of the time. the projection of such idealised femininities also clearly has implications for gender and sexual dynamics and relations. (nayak & kehily, 2008). the normalisation of gender segregation within schools, although not prescribed in policy, echoes the colonial institution of single sex schooling. across west africa europeans set up single sex schools with gender 54 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) differentiated curricula in which girls received an education that focused on domestic and ‘home’ skills (leach, 2012). it is worth noting that the colonial tradition of single sex schooling is still sustained today in the high cost, high status, fee-paying secondary schools in ghana. within the case study, the teachers, perhaps in the discursive construction of their superiority, tended to restrict any dialogue with the students or active classroom management of the social organisation of the class. so although they recognised that the gendered arrangements looked discriminatory, they did not consider it either relevant or significant enough to provoke their intervention. both the inferiorisation of students and the normalisation of gender differences were nevertheless highly significant to the experiences and identities of ghanaian students in school (anamuah-mensah et al., 2004; dunne et al., 2005a; mereku et al., 2005). 6. language of instruction in this section, we continue to focus on the curriculum but more specifically of english as a medium of instruction in schools. while english as subject takes up around one quarter curriculum time, its use as a medium for all curriculum knowledge is much more penetrating. evidently, this is a legacy of british colonialism and an important vector of colonial power. fanon (1967) describes language as an “arsenal of complexes that has been developed by the colonial environment” (p.23) and its institution in schools as “the colonial moment of epistemic, cultural ... violence” separating people from their language, which is a central constituent of their identities (1967:479). for bhabha (2004) writing textbooks and school materials in english is a signifier of colonial cultural authority, which glowacka and boos (2002) describe as the effective silencing of a people – the “cutting of a tongue”. in reference to south africa, painter (2010) points to the use of colonial language in the production of race and ethnicity used in practices of social segregation. nevertheless, the widespread imposition of a colonial european language as the medium of instruction within education has been sustained and despite policy reforms they remain a persistent and enduring feature of schooling across africa. books, curriculum materials, and teachers – student interactions are engaged with through a colonial language whether english, french or portuguese. further, within the educational systems of anglophone west africa, proficiency in english is key to educational success and progress. the power of english as the medium of instruction is integral to teaching, learning and examination and has come to symbolise ‘good’ education. …some [parents] also think the school is not good if the children cannot speak good english (female teacher) english is an international language so it helps to learn in it. it is not our language but we all have to use it because it is the approved language for teaching. the books are written in english. (female teacher) the students, however, expressed frustration at the curriculum dominance of english: why should we learn in english? why is it that only fante teacher teach in fante? (female student) everything is in english. the books are in english ...the teachers teach us in english. they tell you everything in english. everything is english, english, english... sir, we only speak fante when fante teacher comes to teach (male student) 55 adzahlie-mensah & dunne continuing in the shadows of colonialism... as a mode of communication and representation, language can never be neutral but rather it holds deep significance for culture, identity and thought (ochs, 1993; toohey, 2000; bhat, 2008). it is in this sense that glowacka and boos (2002:295) describe the educational imposition of english as a “swallower of identities”. teachers were keenly aware of its implications, i mean english is everything which is also not very good for our local languages that are ‘dying’. but we all have to use it because it is the approved language for teaching (female teacher) emphasis on english only has ‘killed’ our languages because we all have a narrow idea that the children need good english to pass bece. we do everything in english because the final exam questions are set in english. sometimes you feel students don’t get you when you teach but the concepts are in english and you need to teach it that way. (female teacher). the use of english persists in ghana despite research evidence on the beneficial effects on learning of using the first language in schools (graham, 1971; toohey, 2000; seidu et al., 2008; bhat, 2008). for students the majority of their school experience from class texts to teacherstudent interactions were in english pushing their indigenous language to the periphery of the curriculum landscape. for teachers with their better language skills, this provided another axis through which to accentuate the asymmetrical social relations of classroom, described in a previous section, to emphasise their superiority and authority. within the case study school and classrooms, the inferiorisation of ghanaian children was further demonstrated through punishments for speaking their indigenous language. they [teachers] teach in english. sir, sometimes we don’t understand but you cannot ask. … only the fante (local language) teacher teach in fante (female student) sir, english is good but if you don’t speak good english they will beat you. they will say you don’t know anything. everything is english, everything! we do worship in english, assembly everything… (male student) for students with limited fluency, the centrality of english to educational experiences left them with reduced opportunities to participate and interact with their peers or teachers in the classroom. being poor in english was not only to lack the skills of reading and writing, in a context of transmission pedagogy, it was also to feel powerless and dependent in much broader terms (freire, 1972). there are direct negative effects on the quality of learning as ghanaian children are left with limited space to think through concepts in their own language. in this way, english language proficiency constitutes the ideological edifice for practices of segregation, not only around learning and “ability”, but also, as we suggested earlier, in producing the gender, ethnic and racial difference of the african child. english-only instruction denied students opportunities to participate fully in school activities and rendered their sociolinguistic existence invisible. the limitations on students’ ‘talk’ represents the sustained imposition of colonial cultural authority fundamental in the subjectification of african children. further, this process of linguistic colonisation radically uproots children from their ancestry (esteva, 2004). it is in this sense that african children have always been “at the risk of being alienated from their environment, people, and culture” (adjei, 2007:1048) and have even become ‘misfits’ in their own villages (mazrui, 1978). finally, it is important to note that evidence from the case study school illustrated that students with better english language skills were appointed to positions within the institutional 56 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) hierarchy as class captains and school prefects. this has the double effect of normalising the hierarchical structures of schooling and further underscoring the importance of proficiency in the colonial language. in addition, these prefects were given the power to monitor their peers at every level of task and activity and as such become a force for the educational exclusion. 7. concluding comments this paper draws critical attention to the way colonialism continues to cast a long shadow over the educational context in ghana. based on a recognition of the work of education in framing and producing student subjectivities, our analysis of ethnographic case study data illustrates the sustained influence of british colonialism on ghanaian schools and children to date. we explored the data through three analytical foci, firstly, the formal institutional structures of the school, secondly the curriculum and pedagogic practices, and finally the language of instruction. by drawing on the voices and experiences of students and teachers as well as observational data in school and classrooms, we have illustrated the ways that schooling continues to echo and re-instantiate colonial constructions of the gendered african child. the daily experiences of schooling produce an inferiorisation and silencing of ghanaian students through age and gender relations. we specifically highlighted the sustained gender inflections in the institutional routines of schooling as integral to colonization processes. in addition, we illustrated that relations between teachers and students bear the hallmarks of authoritarian regulation. the absence of teacher-student dialogue left very limited public space for student self-expression. student participation in the school was highly regulated and dominated by their compliant responses to directives from teachers and prefects both in and out of the classroom. the image of the ghanaian student as a mute, empty vessel is reiterated by teachers and informs a rationale for their pedagogic practice. compounded by a curriculum that valorises the knowledge and language of foreign others, the students come to understand and describe themselves as ‘nobodies’. significantly, we point to the constitution of legitimate, valued knowledge through the curriculum that excludes and vilifies indigenous knowledge, languages and cultures as well as students own experiences. in this paper we have highlighted the contours of a colonial heritage that continues to (re-) produce the very definitions of what ‘proper’ education is. the normalization of specific colonial organizational and curriculum structures and practices, instantiated in the institutional fabric of the school, continue to circumscribe the production of the “african child”. in this context, it would appear to us that efforts in decolonising education might usefully start with an engagement with the schooling experiences of the african child. the inclusion of their voices would open avenues through which local and national knowledge, languages and cultures could be drawn upon to 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(ncs) for get (general education and training) recently revised into a new curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps)1 in rsa has put a premium on the inclusion of environmental learning as an integrated component of all subject areas in the primary school phase of learning. this is in line with international recommendations and provisions, particularly those originating from the johannesburg world summit for sustainable development (wssd) held in 2002. while the ncs is mandatory for all government schools in the country, many schools have all but ignored the environmental learning mandate in the curriculum. in this paper, i shall examine two case studies of schools in south africa that have taken the curriculum mandate of integration seriously by specifically designing programmes for environmental learning. using a qualitative research approach, i shall explore what was involved in the two programmes for integrating environmental learning, and how these programmes were implemented in each of the two schools. i shall then discuss my key finding, this being: while their efforts were admirable, both schools worked differently to achieve the target of an integrated environmental teaching/learning programme in the various school subjects. the paper concludes with a discussion on what integrated environmental teaching in south african schools actually involves and why implementing such a programme is near impossible, given the conditions currently prevailing in south african schools. keywords: environmental learning, integrated environmental teaching. introduction just over a decade ago, south africa introduced a new curriculum, curriculum 2005 (c-2005) to replace the apartheid education curriculum. that ‘new’ curriculum has since been revised to become the national curriculum statement (ncs). ncs was also recently revised into new curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps). ncs advocated some major changes in the teaching and learning of most subjects in the school curriculum. among its mandated changes, the new curriculum introduced environmental education as a theme to be offered across the entire basic education or general education and training (get) level curriculum. one implication of this new focus on environmental education was that all the children at basic education level were to be introduced to environmental education concepts and content. while the new version of c-2005, in the form of the ncs, arguably places less focus on environmental education as a theme, it retains the focus on environmental learning (e.g. through the principles listed in the ncs: social justice, a healthy environment, human rights and inclusivity). the focus on environmental learning, whether as a principle or a theme, is an unprecedented change in south africa’s school curriculum (le grange & reddy, 1997). however, few teachers, policymakers, learners and other education stakeholders have the experience needed to make such a focus on environmental learning workable within south africa’s current education system. as le grange and reddy (1997) cautioned, when the new environmental education focus was being piloted through the new outcomesbased curriculum, to include environmental education in the critical learning outcomes does not mean that environmental education will actually be taught in many of south africa’s schools and classrooms. the question therefore remains: how, then, do teachers in south africa negotiate local conditions to implement this new focus on environmental education? to understand how teachers actually resolve this challenge in their classrooms is important, especially when we take note of what mokhele and jita (2008) argue about teachers’ capacity in this regard. they argue that many teachers often lack a coherent and practical vision 79mokhele — integrated environmental teaching in south africa of what such environmental learning should be in their classrooms, simply because many of them have never experienced this form of teaching in their own schooling and teacher training programmes. it is also arguable, especially in the context of a developing country such as south africa, whether provincial (local) governments or education departments have the necessary capacity to provide the direction and support teachers require if they are to teach environmental education. conceptual framework this study employs the concept of “opportunities to learn” (otl) in order to examine how the two teachers in the case studies were prepared to undertake the task of integrating environmental learning into their subject curricula. this framework, according to mcdonnell (1995), was first popularised by jeanie oakes and her colleagues in the usa, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when they sought to understand why schools with the same set of resources were performing differently in various assessment tests and instruments. otl is one of the most important factors influencing student achievement. numerous research studies have indicated that students learn when they are provided an opportunity (prom/se research report, 2009). some researchers point out that the study of students’ opportunities to learn provides us with great insights into variations in student achievement (floden, 2002; smith, 2002). otl is defined as the multiplicity of factors that create the conditions for teaching and learning, such as curricula, learning materials, facilities, teachers and instructional experiences (scherff & piazza, 2005). in support of scherff and piazza (2005), schwartz (2005) also defines otl as the provision of curricula, learning materials, facilities, teachers and instructional experiences that enable students to achieve high standards. in his review of studies of opportunity to learn, floden (2002) cites several interpretations which differ distinctively in their approach to measuring opportunity to learn. he further notes that some interpretations measure opportunity to learn as how much emphasis a topic receives in a curriculum or textbook; other interpretations consider otl as time devoted to a topic during instruction or the time a teacher actually is using to teach the topic. the latter approach to otl, which focuses more on what happens inside the classroom, provided the lens for the present study. mine is a response to what has hitherto been a gap in the south african discourse about “equal educational opportunities”. the south african discourse tended to privilege a conception that analyses the provision of materials and facilities and other inputs necessary for quality education without examining what happens inside the classroom as part of the otl discussion (see, for example, the discussion of equal educational opportunities by fiske & ladd (2006) and motala (2006). in their article, cooper and liou (2007) examined whether all students have equal access to the type of information that can make the difference between dropping out of and staying in the educational system. they view otl as a powerful analytic tool that has the potential to enact the kinds of progressive social policymaking that would transform the culture of schooling for children. they also note that the otl framework should be utilised within the context of reform efforts such as “no child left behind” (nclb), so that policymakers and practitioners can better assess how learning opportunities are inequitably distributed between and across schools. in the united states of america (usa), the nclb act requires states to develop assessments of basic skills to be given to all students in certain grades. such an approach to reform would require the emphasis to be placed on exploring the ways unequal schooling conditions, including the distribution of high stakes information, serve as powerful indicators of the distribution of possibilities. in addition, reeves and muller (2005) view the opportunity to learn as the degree of overlap between the content of instruction and what is tested. underlying this otl construct is the notion that curriculum frameworks and curriculum guides potentially act as inclusionary mechanisms for ensuring that high-status mathematical knowledge and skills are made equally available to all learners. focusing on otl in the current south african context, reeves and muller (2005) contend that, given the recent revisions to the curriculum framework, it is plausible to anticipate that policymakers and others involved in schooling in the country will have a revitalised interest in the opportunities to learn that are being made available to low socio-economic-status populations of learners. a more careful examination of otl in schools, therefore, should also attempt to examine exactly how these factors work together. 80 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 my review of opportunities to learn environmental education in one of the provinces of south africa will therefore examine some of these identified curriculum variables within the south african context. more specifically the framework on the otl that i used was to define the kind of opportunities in terms of what is taught and how it is taught in respect of environmental education in south african schools. methodology this study used a qualitative research approach in order to help me understand meanings, examine and describe the experiences, ideas, beliefs and values of the participant teachers. by using this approach, i attempted to understand, specifically, how different teachers and schools implement the integration of environmental teaching in their classrooms. i also gained a more thorough and contextual understanding of how my sample teachers interpreted and understood these new environmental education policies. to collect the data, i spent one-week blocks in each of the schools. during these weeks, i visited and interviewed the various stakeholders to gain an in-depth understanding of how the environmental learning policy has been interpreted and was being implemented within the primary-school curricula. the larger study, from which i drew my data, was designed as a case study on the implementation of environmental learning policy in two provinces of south africa. in this paper, however, i draw on data from only one of the provinces, the mpumalanga province. two schools were selected for my school-based implementation study focus. i used a purposive sampling approach because i was interested in finding out how teachers in the different schools implement the new policy of integrated environmental education. i took guidance from macmillan and schumacher (2010:138) who assert that in purposive sampling the researcher selects particular elements from the population that will be representative of or informative about the topic of interest. i therefore conducted both unstructured and semi-structured interviews with the curriculum implementers (subject advancers), principals and all the senior-phase teachers at the two schools. i also collected all the relevant documents and curricula for detailed analysis. both the interviews and the document analysis were designed to give information on how the teachers understand and interpret the new environmental learning policies in their own teaching. the provincial environmental education coordinator and curriculum implementers (subject advisors) were also interviewed. as far as documentation was concerned, i asked all the teachers to provide me with the policy documents they were using, including work programmes, syllabi, workshop handouts and other documents they considered relevant to their teaching of environmental education in their schools. findings and discussion2 in my findings, i focus on case studies of two primary school teachers who teach environmental education at different schools in the mpumalanga province. i allowed these two teachers to tell their own stories of how the teaching and learning of environmental education is structured in their schools. i then follow my discussion with an account of the differences and similarities in how environmental learning is implemented in these two schools. i conclude by focusing on the drafting and development of the provincial policy, with a particular focus on the tools and instruments of the provincial policy, and the prescriptions and expectations of this policy. i did this to illustrate just how little the province had to offer these two primary school teachers when they first started out trying to implement the new policy. i then go on to argue that implementing the new environmental learning policy is a little short of impossible, given the existing lack of capacity and the inadequate resource base from which the teachers were working. the case of hillside primary this school operates like any normal public school, in the sense that the official government policy on the integration of environmental learning seems to be in place and has been properly communicated to all the teachers in this school. this school has identified one teacher, mrs mafolofolo, to champion and take over the responsibility for leading the development and implementation of environmental education programmes and policies in hillside primary. she is a veteran teacher with 15 years’ teaching experience. 81mokhele — integrated environmental teaching in south africa content topics for environmental learning a critical issue to explore when we examine otl relates to the content presented to the children in the classroom (rousseau & powell, 2005). this content ultimately determines what the children will learn. given that neither the national nor the provincial framework provides any direct guidance about what should be taught as part of integrated environmental learning in the different subjects, teachers are often at liberty to pick and choose topics and appropriate content. while such an approach is a potentially empowering opportunity for the teachers, it is also fraught with danger as far as learners’ otl is concerned. for some teachers, it means real uncertainty about what to include and what not to include in their lessons. in extreme cases, it could also mean a complete marginalisation of any environmental education content in some subject areas. to understand and explain the otl environmental education at hillside primary, i asked how mrs mafolofolo (and her colleagues at hillside) approached the issue of curriculum and content determination. mrs mafolofolo seems to rely more on identifying topics that are relevant to her learners and their local environment. firstly, she identified the topic of pollution as one of the main content topics she tackles with her learners, since they usually look first at their school (and surrounding) premises to try and solve the problem of littering. littering, therefore, becomes a key subtopic she deals with under the broader theme of pollution. to further illustrate this approach (i.e. creating opportunities to learn environmental education by identifying certain relevant content topics at her school) mrs mafolofolo gave an example of how she had approached the teaching of energy and forces (physics). while other teachers are usually satisfied with discussing energy in the abstract sense, her approach to the topic went a step further; in her classes, she focused, for example, on the burning of actual things (heat energy); she then required her learners to consider the effects of this type of burning on the environment. this allowed her to incorporate the issue of air pollution and all other types of pollution (e.g. water, land and noise pollution) into the lesson on energy. to conclude the lesson on pollution, she would then take the learners around the school (and surroundings) on a clean-up campaign, as a way of solving the problem of pollution within the school surroundings. for mrs mafolofolo, therefore, the whole idea, as far as environmental education content is concerned, is to “identify and solve a real-life problem”. my discussion on the selection of content topics for inclusion in the school environmental education curriculum thus suggests that mrs mafolofolo is guided by practical problems, problems which she would like to help her learners solve. furthermore, the discussions with mrs mafolofolo and other teachers at hillside primary suggest that mrs mafolofolo is always the person who is instrumental in distributing these content topics to her colleagues (for inclusion in their own lessons). environmental education policy guidance: school level at hillside primary, the teaching and learning of environmental education is guided by a number of the recent policy documents that help teachers establish their teaching goals, as explained by mrs mafolofolo: you know, when you don’t have the policies you don’t know where are you coming from and where are you going. you won’t have your goals. you won’t know why you are teaching this. you should have a purpose when you are doing something, you should have a purpose. you know, you cannot just go into the class and say ‘children, today let us look at the littering’. what prompts you to talk about littering? you know, the policy is guiding. to have a provincial or school policy is one thing, but to understand the place of such a policy in providing some guidance for daily practice is the more critical issue. from the remarks quoted above, mrs mafolofolo seems to understand the place of such a policy in helping to organise the teaching of environmental education at the school – from selecting content topics to setting goals for teaching and learning. one of the key policy documents used at the school is the policy interpretation guidebook for the revised national curriculum statement, entitled enabling an environmental focus in social sciences/ technology/arts and culture, etc. this guidebook is designed to help teachers develop lesson plans for all 82 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 the learning areas, using environment-related learning outcomes and assessment standards from the revised national curriculum statement. teachers are provided with examples of actual lessons showing how to integrate environmental learning into their different learning areas. mrs mafolofolo and her colleagues considered the guidebook to be one of the key documents in guiding their teaching of environmental education at hillside primary. another major policy document that is used to guide the teaching of environmental education at hillside primary is the school’s environmental education policy document, which was developed by the science and technology teachers at the school. this document reflects, among other things, the school’s vision, mission and goals in terms of environmental education. while i found the environmental education policy at hillside primary to be unique in that the existence of such a policy document at a primary school would be rare, its development is not a total surprise. during our discussions, the subject advisors (curriculum implementers) mentioned the fact that every school was expected to develop such a policy on the basis of its needs and circumstances. an interesting question resulting from such an expectation is whether the different school environmental education policies are a reflection of their various understandings and interpretations of provincial and/or national policy. time allocation one of the challenges is the limited time available for teaching environmental content within the context of the present school timetable. mrs mafolofolo believes that part of the problem of this lack of time is because environmental education is not a subject in its own right and therefore has to be fitted into the content and time frames of other subject areas. learners’ projects in environmental education thus nearly always have to be scheduled for the afternoons and weekends – a situation that is not ideal, either for teachers or learners. the case of sea point primary my second school is sea point primary which, like hillside primary, also functions according to the official government policy on environmental education. this school also identified and assigned one of the teachers, ms tieho, to take responsibility in leading the development and implementation of environmental education programmes and policies at the school. content topics for environmental learning asked about the topics that should be taught in the teaching and learning of environmental education, ms tieho mentioned that there are no specific topics because environmental education is not a subject in its own right. she explained that all they have to do as teachers is to integrate it into the other learning areas (e.g. natural science) or topics that they teach in class: we don’t teach this environmental education as an independent learning area, we incorporate what we do on our environment to our teaching and learning work because we don’t have a special timetable for the environmental education. it seems that ms tieho and her colleagues at sea point do not identify specific environmental education topics; instead, they teach environmental education in the context of their specific learning areas. i therefore asked ms tieho how she was able to establish when she focused her teaching on environmental education. ms tieho stated that she and her colleagues at sea point are guided by the environmental education calendar provided by the department of environmental affairs and tourism. in summary, ms tieho and her colleagues seem to draw their environmental education topics mostly from the environmental calendar and follow the special weeks or days throughout the year. the following is an example of how such a calendar is used to guide curriculum development for the teaching and learning of environmental education at sea point primary: 83mokhele — integrated environmental teaching in south africa okay, let us say, for instance this month, we are approaching water week, with this; we incorporate it in our learning areas. i usually bring in the topic with the entire staff. the maths teachers will be involved too: they do auditing and measuring of the water, the science teachers as well: they do water purification, and the lower groups, that is, the junior phase, learn about how to conserve water and the english teachers also ask the learners to write creative writing on how can they save water at school or at home. from the above quote, it is worth noting how the teaching of environmental education at sea point primary seems to be decentralised. teachers responsible for the different learning areas seem to have an idea of what is expected of them in the teaching and learning of environmental education and are left to their own devices in terms of determining what content to teach and how to teach it. however, it was also clear that much of this integration of environmental learning at sea point primary happens through the efforts of the teacher leader at the school. environmental education policy guidance: school level the teaching and learning of environmental education at sea point primary is guided by recent national policy documents. these policies help teachers establish their teaching goals. the similarities between the two case study schools are not surprising, given that both schools belong to the same cluster and have attended many of the same provincial environmental education workshops. like hillside primary, the natural science teachers at sea point primary have developed the school environmental education policy which is also used to guide the teaching of environmental education at this school. time allocation as in the other schools in the province (and, indeed, nationally), at sea point primary there is no time period on the school’s timetable specifically allocated for the teaching and learning of environmental education, and as ms tieho stated, she always finds it difficult to create additional time for teaching environmental education. this is not surprising, given that both she and her colleagues believe that environmental learning is something that should only occur within the learning areas (a viewpoint that is in line with the national and provincial policy framework). discussion of the key findings in my discussion of the findings from the two case studies, i need to pause to examine the similarities and differences in the implementation patterns of environmental education policy at the two case study schools. first and foremost, both schools have identified specific teachers who are responsible for taking the lead in the implementation of the policy. mrs mafolofolo (at hillside) and ms tieho (at sea point) are both very knowledgeable and active in the field of environmental education. in both cases, the schools are guided by the environmental education policies provided to them by both the department of education and non-governmental organisations (ngos) that are active in the province. in addition, both schools have also developed and are implementing their own environmental education policies (as required by the provincial education authorities). the major differences in the two schools are reflected in the way the environmental learning policies are implemented at classroom level. at hillside primary, the teacher leader (mrs mafolofolo) oversees all the environmental educational activities at the school and is clearly the focal point of the implementation of this policy; at sea point primary, however, the teacher leader plays a largely instrumental and facilitative role (i.e. rather than a directive role). in other words, she (ms tieho) brings content and resources to the attention of the other subject teachers. secondly, at hillside primary, the teacher leader also identifies specific environmental education topics to be taught at the school; at sea point primary, ms tieho does not identify any curriculum topics at all, but is guided by the contents of the environmental calendar provided by the department of education. lastly, ms mafolofolo (hillside primary) allocates a specific time slot for the teaching and learning of environmental education to ensure that it receives the necessary attention and 84 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 focus. ms tieho (sea point primary) does not do this, but expects environmental learning to be integrated into all other subject areas throughout the day. the environmental learning policy: a dream? to make sense of my findings, it is important to bear in mind the national environmental education policy framework – in other words, we need to understand what the guidelines and expectations are for teachers regarding the teaching of environmental education in the schools. mpumalanga, like the other eight provinces, is working from a framework that seeks to integrate environmental education in the teaching of all the other subject areas (as suggested in the national environmental learning policy framework). in the province of mpumalanga, mr jones is the overall coordinator in charge of driving all the activities associated with environmental education. he is officially the provincial policy coordinator for environmental education; he is based at the head office of the mpumalanga department of education (mde). mr jones (who has a phd in environmental education) has been the environmental education coordinator in this province for the past seven years. although he is the highest qualified official in environmental education in the mde, a major part of his job involves coordinating and providing assistance to the curriculum implementers (subject advisers) of agricultural sciences. asked about his duties as an environmental education coordinator in the mpumalanga province, he made the point that his role is defined more broadly in terms of structuring and coordinating assistance and support to the curriculum implementers (subject advisers) and teachers in the fields of agricultural sciences, nature conservation and environmental education. environmental education (ee) is not supposed to be taught as a subject on its own. instead, it is supposed to be integrated into all the other learning areas (as discussed earlier). my discussions with the provincial coordinator also emphasised the need to integrate environmental learning in all the subject areas rather than teach it as a separate subject with its own content. in my two case studies, my data suggest that, of the two case schools, hillside primary had done better at identifying specific content to be learned and in ensuring that the learners were provided adequate opportunities to learn this content. the learners at hillside primary had to read and respond to an assessment on specific key themes and concepts in environmental education which the learners at sea point primary were expected to grasp rather incidentally (while focusing on subject areas such as mathematics, english, etc.). the second theme to emerge from my case studies relates to the amount of time allocated to environmental learning. the national framework advocates that no specific time block be allocated to environmental learning, because it is not considered to be a subject on its own, but a theme to be integrated with other learning areas. again, mrs mafolofolo would seem to have missed the point by allocating a specific time block for environmental learning at her school instead of integrating it in all the various subject areas. however, as mentioned earlier, i found that when time was allocated specifically for environmental teaching and learning, it was in fact used for that purpose. by contrast, when time had to be found within a mathematics lesson to focus on some key environmental concept, this simply did not happen. understandably, the maths teacher focused on what s/he knew best (mathematics) and tended to ignore environmental education. in reviewing all the assessments at sea point primary, for example, i found no evidence of environmental concepts being assessed (except perhaps in the natural sciences, and then only marginally). the third theme to emerge from my data was that of school-based environmental education policies. i noted earlier in my discussion of the case study schools that they are both guided by some of the national policy documents recently issued by the department of education, and by documents originating from non-governmental organisations. another key document that is also considered to be important in this province is a school environmental education policy, which each school is expected to design for itself. conclusion my study of the two schools in the province of mpumalanga suggests that, although schools were expected to begin to integrate environmental education in their teaching of other subject areas, there was no proper 85mokhele — integrated environmental teaching in south africa guidance on how this would happen. decisions about what to teach, when and how, and about what to monitor and assess are, for the most part, reserved for each classroom or subject teacher. the implication of this finding is that there are bound to be significant variations in the teaching of environmental education in provincial schools. the provinces are simply not in a position to determine and know for certain which schools and/or learners are getting the kind of exposure to environmental education recommended by national frameworks and policies. while individuals, on their own and in various coalitions, are important in understanding how state policy is interpreted and adapted locally, their work situation is likely to influence what in fact happens in practice. the data in this study also suggest that, at school level, decisions on how to teach environmental education are taken by individuals. teachers make final decisions regarding topic coverage, depth of topic coverage and emphasis on specific ideas; such decisions are likely to result in very different outcomes for students (prom/se research report, 2009). the teachers in this study reflected diverse ways of teaching and learning environmental education in their schools. this is further evidence of the fact that there is no clear guidance on how teachers should approach environmental education in schools. the situation becomes even more complex in cases where there are no clear policy guidelines – as was the case in my study. the differences in the teaching of environmental education in the schools may be the result of differences at policy level, where the policy decision-makers differ in their understanding and interpretation of policies within the same province. however, as noted in the present study, such differences could also result from a lack of coherent guidance from the province itself. as noted by spillane (1998) in the case of certain states in the united states of america, school-level efforts to guide teacher’s instruction contributed to the lack of uniformity in the district’s response to the state policy. spillane further argues that, by responding differently to the state and district-level instructional guidance, school leaders communicated to their staff messages about instruction and state policy that varied from one school to the next; these messages were also frequently different from those issued by central administrators. the vision is for schools in south africa to implement environmental education according to that prescribed by national policy. however, data from the two case studies show that the two schools read the same policy, but implemented different practices, and that these practices differ from official government policy. what about the more than 10 000 schools elsewhere in south africa? when i ponder this diversity of implementing environmental education in our classrooms, the vision behind official policy appears to be impossible. references 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2008. capacity building for teaching and learning in environmental education: the role of the public/private partnerships in the mpumalanga province of south africa. journal of international cooperation in education, 11(3):39-54. motala s 2006. education resourcing in post-apartheid south africa: the impact of finance equity reforms in public schooling. perspectives in education, 24(2):79-93. 86 perspectives in education, volume 29(4), december 2011 promoting rigorous outcomes in mathematics and science education (prom/se) 2009. opportunities to learn in prom/se classrooms: teachers’ reported coverage of mathematics content. vol.6. michigan: michigan state university. reeves c & muller j 2005. picking up the pace: variation in the structure and organisation of learning school mathematics. journal of education, 37:104-130. rousseau ck & powell a 2005. understanding the significance of context: a framework to examine equality and reform in secondary mathematics. the high school journal, 88(4):19-31. schwartz w 2005. opportunity to learn standards: their impact on urban students. eric/cue digest number 110. scherff l & piazza c 2005. the more things change, the more they stay the same: a survey of high school students’ writing experiences. research in the teaching of english, 39(3):271-304. smith b 2002. quantity matters: annual instructional time in an urban school system. educational administration quarterly, 36(5):652-682. spillane jp 1998. state policy and the non-monolithic of the local school district: organizational and professional consideration. american educational research journal, 35(1):33-63. endnotes 1 the new curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) is set to progressively replace the existing national curriculum statement, beginning with implementation at foundation phase in 2011. 2 all the names of schools and teachers are pseudonyms. 61 “our culture does not allow that”: exploring the challenges of sexuality education in rural communities ′mathabo khau nelson mandela metropolitan university within sub-saharan africa, aids is becoming a greater threat to rural communities due to the high numbers of urban dwellers and migrant labourers who return to their rural villages when they fall ill and due to the lack of information and health services. previous studies have found a reduced rate of infection among people who have high educational attainment, and thus advocate for education as the vaccine against new hiv infections among the youth. however, very little research has focussed on the delivery of sexuality and hiv&aids education in rural classrooms. with teachers positioned at the forefront of the pandemic, especially in rural communities, it is important to understand how teachers experience teaching about sexuality in rural schools. in this paper, i explore the experiences of eight women teachers through focus group discussions. thematic inductive analysis was used to identify the stumbling blocks within sexuality education classrooms in rural schools. societal constructions of childhood and nostalgia for past traditional practices were found to be the major challenges to teaching. the findings highlight the need for a sexuality education curriculum that integrates traditional ways of knowing into formal sexuality education in order for it to be effective in reducing further spread of hiv. keywords: hiv&aids, sexuality education, curriculum, rurality, lesotho. introduction an overwhelming 68% of the 34 million people living with hiv&aids globally live in developing countries (unaids, 2011). in such countries aids is becoming a greater threat in rural areas than in cities. in addition, rural communities bear a higher burden of the cost of hiv&aids as many urban dwellers and migrant labourers return to their rural villages when they fall ill. unfortunately, prevention information and health services are often less available in rural areas than in cities. hence rural people are less likely to access these resources against hiv and, if they fall ill, less likely to get care (unaids, 2010). responding to the challenges posed by hiv, hargreaves, bonnell, boler, boccia, birdthistle, fletcher, pronyk and glynn (2008) argue that education is a ‘vaccine’ against hiv due to relatively lower rates of infection among people with higher levels of educational participation. with sub-saharan africa bearing the brunt of new hiv infections and education being hailed as the vaccine against hiv infections, unicef (2007) advocated for the inclusion of life skills education in the curriculum for sub-saharan african countries as a niche for sexuality education. this has placed teachers, especially those in rural communities, at the forefront of the pandemic as prevention agents. thus it is important for curriculum developers within developing countries hard-hit by hiv to be aware of the factors that affect the effectiveness of schoolbased sexuality education, such that these can be taken into consideration during curriculum planning. it is also important for teacher training institutions to be aware of the challenges faced by teachers in the classroom in terms of addressing sexuality education such that training programmes can be tailor-made to the specific needs of teachers and the contexts in which they will be teaching. this paper draws from a postgraduate research project that aimed at exploring women teachers’ experiences of teaching sexuality education in rural lesotho schools in the age of hiv and aids in order to identify the factors creating impossibilities for their teaching. this article, therefore, aims to present and discuss some of the stumbling blocks against effective teaching of sexuality education in rural schools. the rural villages where the study was conducted are characterised by homesteads of thatch-roof huts surrounded by aloe-plant fencing and kraals for livestock. the villagers are very traditional and thus 62 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 still adhere to most basotho cultural practices. this set-up is not different from rural contexts in other african countries, especially south africa, and the basotho cultural practices are similar to those of most indigenous groups that populate south africa. thus, through the lessons learnt from the lesotho context, the south african education system can possibly reshape its offering of sexuality education for rural communities. rural areas and schooling rurality is not an easily defined concept. according to de gennaro and fantini (2002), being rural as opposed to urban is an attribute that people easily attach to a place based on their own perceptions, which may include low population density, abundance of farmland or remoteness from urban areas. the common assumption is that rural areas are more likely to have community contexts conducive to tighter social control, less anonymity and the development of pro-social peer groups and family cohesion. because of these attributes, rural communities are expected to exhibit more conforming behaviours. on the contrary, urban areas are more likely expected to display characteristics that create community contexts in which opportunities for greater involvement in deviant peer groups and weakened family control occur (wilson & donnermeyer, 2006). discussing rurality and schooling, corbett (2007) documents the ironies and contradictions of formal education and rurality. he demonstrates how education is implicated in the depopulation and decline of rural areas as a consequence of increasing urbanity fuelled by global forces. challenging corbett (2007), kelly (2009) argues that an education that encourages an investigation into the nature of people’s affinities and attachments, especially to rural areas, is an ethical project. she argues against an education that romanticises or zealously mobilises attachments to rurality. according to kelly (2009), when we understand the structures that constitute our melancholia and nostalgia towards a lost rurality, we are better able to adopt a critical stance that embraces mourning as well as new opportunities. thus, as kelly argues, education in rural areas must create the conditions for students to leave their home places and travel intellectually and emotionally within themselves and across the borders of their own communities and elsewhere in search of the forces that constitute who they are culturally, emotionally and socially. however, many teachers in rural schools are unor underqualified, making it impossible for them to deliver the kind of education that could be transformative of rural contexts and rural people (nelson mandela foundation, 2005). according to the nelson mandela foundation (2005), a high proportion of teachers in rural schools cite lack of cooperation by parents and learners, shortage of teachers and poor infrastructure as the main stumbling blocks towards quality education. despite these challenges, parents in rural communities want an education that is “useful to them and their children in making a living and recognizing and appreciating their history and culture” (nelson mandela foundation, 2005:98). thus, in terms of sexuality education, rural communities would want a sexuality education that recognises and appreciates rural histories and cultures. in order to do this, educators must understand and appreciate the history of sexuality education within rural communities. sexuality education in rural villages to set the context for the arguments raised in this paper, it is important to understand the traditional practices of the basotho in relation to sexuality issues. only young people who were of marriageable age were engaged in discussions on sexuality. basotho boys learnt about their bodies from elder brothers out in the wild while shepherding livestock. upon reaching adolescence, young boys were expected to join the traditional initiation school. during the initiation period the young men were circumcised and then taught about sex (mangoaela, 2001). upon graduation from the initiation school, the young men were expected to choose brides from the village girls, preferably those who had been initiates, and get married as soon as possible. the immediate marriage was to prevent the initiates from practising their newly found sexual skills out of wedlock (makatjane, 2002; sekese, 2002), and to ensure that those who have been initiated into sex do not mix with non-initiates, as it was believed that they would corrupt their sexual innocence (motalingoane-khau, 2010). 63khau — “our culture does not allow that” basotho girls also learnt about their bodies while out collecting firewood with friends or doing laundry in nearby rivers. older sisters and aunts taught girls how to pull their inner labia at an early age before their first menstruation (thetela, 2002). it was believed that menstruation made it difficult for the labia to elongate upon pulling (cf. arnfred, 2007). it was argued that elongating the inner labia increased mocheso (heat) in women and this made sex more pleasurable for men, while at the same time reducing the sexual excitability of women so that they could not desire sex (khau, 2009). in addition to covering the vaginal opening, the elongated labia were supposed to increase a man’s sexual pleasure by elongating the passage through which the penis passed, and was considered as the most effective way of “winning the favours of a husband” (parikh, 2005:134). thus labial elongation was used as a contraceptive measure and a way of regulating female sexuality. adolescent girls were expected to attend the traditional initiation school where they were taught about sex and how to become good wives (matsela, 1979). what actually happened during the traditional initiation ceremony was labelled as koma1 and was never revealed (see paroz, 1993). mturi and hennink (2005:133) also observe that “little is known about the content of the sex education curriculum at initiation schools as these schools are not regulated …”. paroz (1993) writes that any initiate who dared talk about the practice of initiation was supposed to be killed before they could corrupt the innocence of those who had never been to the traditional school. this was partly because anyone who had never been to the traditional initiation school was treated as a perpetual child irrespective of their age, and hence did not need to know about adult issues such as those taught at the school. considering the above, it is important to explore how rural communities perceive formal sexuality education in relation to traditional ways of teaching about sexuality. this would provide an understanding of the current negative reception of sexuality education in rural lesotho schools. thus, in this paper the question: “what challenges do women teachers face when teaching sexuality education in rural schools?” will be explored. methodology feminist research brings to light the practical and lived experiences of women in everyday life through problematising the meanings associated with the complexities of women’s daily lives (grumet & stone, 2000). thus, while i present and problematise the women’s lived experiences of teaching sexuality education together with mine, i have valued their voices in the meanings they make of their experiences. this article draws from data produced through focus group discussions that were prompted by participants’ memory accounts, drawings and photo-narratives of their experiences of teaching sexuality education and their positioning as women teachers. focus groups are important in the advancement of social justice for women because they can serve to expose and validate women’s everyday experiences of subjugation and their individual and collective survival and resistance strategies (madriz, 2000). participants for this study were eight purposively selected basotho women teachers, aged between 32 and 42 years, with more than five years’ teaching experience. the selection was based on the women being science teachers who are teaching sexuality education within the life skills education curriculum. participants were informed of the aims of the study and were assured that their contributions would be treated with confidentiality. i assured the women that their participation in the study is voluntary and that they can withdraw at any point when they feel uncomfortable, or withdraw parts of their contributions which they feel uncomfortable disclosing to a wider public. i also sought their permission to audio-record the discussions which were later transcribed verbatim (patton, 2002). pseudonyms have been used to present the women teachers’ stories. the data was analysed using thematic inductive analysis, whereby themes are generated from the data and coded for meaning (patton, 2002). i familiarised myself with the data through verbatim transcription of the discussions. the transcribing was followed by what marshall and rossman (2006) describe as immersion in the data, which involved reading and re-reading through the data. i then generated codes using open or data-driven coding (braun & clarke, 2006) where the data are opened for categories, patterns or themes emerging from the manifest content and then organised into meaningful groups. this was followed 64 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 by generating themes through axial or second-level coding (sarantakos, 2005) which involves identifying relationships between and among the generated codes. the themes were then reviewed and refined so that the “data within the themes should cohere together meaningfully, while there should be identifiable distinctions between themes” (braun & clarke, 2006:91). after generating a satisfactory list of themes from the data, i selected higher order themes with theoretical saturation and high explanatory power and named them in a way they were to be presented as research findings. i also analysed the data within these themes to ensure the internal homogeneity and external heterogeneity of themes. the participants’ words have been used verbatim when presenting the findings. findings and discussion societal beliefs regarding sexuality many societies still operate within the discourse of childhood sexual innocence (epstein & johnson, 1998), and lesotho is no exception. thus teachers are afraid of being labelled as the ones who corrupt children’s innocence through sexuality education, despite the apparent need for such an education. when one of the women teachers was faced with a question of whether donkeys enjoy sex like human beings, she could not provide a response because she would also have had to address sexual pleasure as part of human sexuality. with parents believing in childhood sexual innocence, this was a challenge because talking to children about the pleasures of sex would, according to her, be tantamount to promoting teenage and premarital promiscuity. i could not respond to that question ... how could i tell them that sex was pleasurable? parents would accuse me of leading their children astray. (‘mathuso) it is not easy talking to the children because when they get home they tell their parents and we get in trouble ... one time the chief accused me of being against basotho morality and that i had to be disciplined ... just because i had taught about sex in class. (‘mathato) in addition to teachers’ fears of addressing issues of sexual pleasure within the classroom, the curriculum is also silent on sexual pleasure and desire. programmes existing in schools are silent on issues of pleasure and desire, while emphasising risk and vulnerability and positioning women as victims of male sexual violence (ingham, 2005; jolly, 2007; klugman, 2000; petchesky, 2005). according to these scholars, even in cases where sexual desire is discussed, it is only related to heterosexuality while other sexual identities are hardly mentioned. in the case of lesotho, this happens because homosexuality, supposedly, does not exist (epprecht, 2000; kendall, 1999). with the current scarcity of information reaching rural villages, rural communities in lesotho do not have much knowledge regarding any other sexuality except heterosexuality. thus any mention of homosexuality positions teachers as deviant and creates difficulties for them to address it in the classroom. while basotho people within towns are becoming more open to different sexual identities and are embracing sexual diversity, there are still tensions that need to be addressed in relation to homosexuality in rural villages. the fear of going against societal norms and morals makes it difficult for teachers to effectively facilitate sexuality education. they argue that: anyone who talks about sex is regarded as a bad person...anyone who talks to them about sex leads them astray ... (‘mathuso) yes, any adult talking to children about sex is someone with no morals. (‘maneo) we still live in communities that regard sex and sexuality as issues to be kept a secret or taboo... the names they give us for teaching about it are horrible ... (‘mathato) my school principal asked me to stop teaching against the beliefs of the church. he said if i wanted to keep my job i should align with abstinence teachings and nothing else ... (‘mathato) 65khau — “our culture does not allow that” the rejection of anyone who dares talk about sexual issues to children presents intergenerational sex talk as taboo. within lesotho rural communities it is believed that only those who have been to the traditional initiation school have the moral standing and capability to effectively address issues of sexuality with the youth. this is reflected in this statement: “mathisa ana a rutang bana ba rona a fosahetse. a bua ntho lisele le bana ...” (these non-initiates are a bad influence to our children because they teach them bad things). it is worth noting that in basotho communities issues of sex are referred to as ‘bad things’. the implication, therefore, of the above statement is that non-initiates are not capable of properly handling issues of sexuality. this becomes problematic for formal sexuality education because most basotho people with high educational attainment have not been to the traditional school. apart from teachers being regarded as unfit for the task of teaching sexuality education, parents within the rural communities contradict the manner and content of sexuality teachings offered in schools: you tell the students that diseases and pregnancy can be avoided through safer sex practices such as using condoms or practising non-penetrative sex and the parents tell them something else. (‘mathato) yes. the children tell us that diseases are caused by witchcraft and therefore can be healed using combinations from traditional healers. arguing against this sometimes proves fruitless ... (matumo) the thing is who to listen to. i would be confused too if i was a student. traditional healers do heal most ailments within the village ... we cannot deny that. (‘mathato) i think we need a meeting point between what we teach and what the parents believe in ... (‘matsebo) parents are not necessarily against sexuality education but are against the content and how it is taught. while rural communities and the formal curriculum are not in agreement on what should be taught in sexuality education classrooms, students miss out on vital information that could save their lives. mitchell, walsh and larkin (2004) argue that this is as good as gambling with the lives of the youth. rural villages have limited authoritative sources of information whose use should be maximised. instead of communities challenging teachers’ authority as sources of information, community leaders and teachers should collaborate to provide sexuality and hiv information to the youth. one reality of rural livelihoods is that everyone knows everybody’s business within the community (see wilson & donnermeyer, 2006). hence working and living within the same rural community creates additional challenges for the women teachers because they have to ensure that when they arrive home at the end of the day, after teaching such controversial issues, they are still accepted as good members of the community. they feel that if they were staying in a different community from the one where they are teaching, it would be easier on them to teach about sexuality because they would not have to meet their students or be confronted by angry parents after school within the community (see peltzer & promtussananon, 2003). nostalgia for past cultural norms the current state of hiv infections, teen pregnancies and parenthood among basotho youth has led to a situation which invokes in adults a nostalgic glance to the “good old days” and past cultural norms. there is a popular basotho call “sekoele basotho” – which asks for going back to basics, re-establishing past cultural practices, which would curb the spread of hiv and teen pregnancies (public-eye online, 2009). this call and inherent nostalgia, however, do not take into consideration the current state of youth sexuality and the challenges young people face. the participants in this study state parents’ argument as “in our days we were not taught about sex at school and we managed just fine”. parents wish for their children to be taught past cultural practices which would instil moral values, resilience and pride in the children. they believe that these should be given equal or greater attention within the curriculum instead of the current sexuality education content. 66 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 one such practice that is being advocated for is the elongation of inner labia for girls. within the basotho culture, labial elongation is a rite of passage into womanhood (maitse, 2000; thetela, 2002). the teachers argue that their school communities believe in this practice and want students to be taught about it at school to reduce the high rates of pregnancy. the curriculum requires students to be taught about modern contraceptive devices and safer sex practices while parents believe elongated inner labia is the best contraceptive required for girls. teachers who do not believe in labial elongation, or those who do not know about it, face difficulties in addressing this issue in class especially because it is not in the syllabus. parents are also advocating for traditional male circumcision which is done in the initiation schools. they argue that traditional initiation schools are a better setting for teaching about sexuality than modern sexuality education classrooms. the value placed upon the initiation school in rural lesotho villages and the perpetual child status imposed upon those who have never attended it make such schools irresistible to youth who want to be accepted within their communities as good citizens. this creates a challenge for formal schooling as every winter male students leave formal schooling to attend the traditional initiation schools and most of them never return to formal schooling. this also creates a challenge for teachers as the curriculum requires them to teach about medical male circumcision in which rural communities do not believe. on coming back from the initiation schools the students are regarded as adults irrespective of their age. the women teachers argue that boys who have been to the traditional initiation school pose problems in formal schooling, especially if they are taught by someone who has never been an initiate: the boys are impossible … one of them told me that he could not be ordered around by a girl ... he believed that i should respect him in class as i had never attended initiation school. (‘mathato) yes … they also believe they know all there is to know about sex and they hardly listen in the classroom ... i am scared of teaching about sexuality in a classroom that has initiates. (‘matumo) me too … they look at you like you are naked and they also become very rowdy in class disturbing the other children. (‘matau) i think they are not taught everything about sex in the initiation schools ... if only they listened to us they would spare themselves from many dangers. (‘matsepo) these discussions show the apparent contradictions between the traditional initiation school and formal schooling. they also highlight the challenges this poses for both students and teachers in rural lesotho sexuality education classrooms. the high pregnancy rates among rural youth prove their sexual activity and therefore, according to the teachers, it is not realistic to deny them information on contraception and safer sex practices. however, until parents are accepting of modern contraception and its inclusion in the sexuality education curriculum and teachers can address indigenous contraception methods in classrooms, basotho youth in rural schools will have a knowledge deficit on this important aspect of their sexuality. conclusion: so what? human beings are sexual beings irrespective of gender or age, even though acknowledging human sexuality within classrooms remains a challenge for teachers in many schools. while the stories unpacked in this paper are from a few women teachers in rural lesotho classrooms, they highlight some common challenges faced by teachers tasked with addressing a private matter such as sexuality in the public domain of the classroom. the women teachers’ gendered identities and socialisation determine how they acknowledge and address sexuality discourses within the school setting in relation to societal norms. as women and mothers they are expected to protect children from the supposed corruption of sexual knowledge while as teachers they are expected to address sexuality education freely. while some of the women are challenging societal beliefs in relation to youth sexuality, they do this at the risk of their social standing within communities. 67khau — “our culture does not allow that” the sexuality education curriculum taught in schools does not acknowledge traditional ways of knowing regarding human sexuality, thus creating further impossibilities for effective teaching. as the teachers argue, there should be linkages between tradition and formal schooling. the experiences of these women teachers highlight the need to consider the gender dynamics and cultural politics within the schooling context if sexuality education is to be effective. the taboo nature of sex talk combined with the nostalgia for past practices need to be addressed by all education stakeholders such that rural youth benefit from sexuality education classrooms. it is important for curriculum planners to interrogate traditional practices within their communities in order to adopt or adapt those which prove beneficial for rural communities and ensure that there is a linkage between traditional and formal sexuality education. there is also a need for schools to use parents and traditional leaders within communities as resources in sexuality education in order to reconcile the two. rurality has always been associated with lack and characterised by loss (corbett, 2007; kelly, 2009). however, rural communities have always survived irrespective of the loss or lack, proving rural communities’ resilience and determination to make it with what they have. thus, an education for rurality should view lack and loss as opportunities to re-examine old certainties, provoke new knowledge and forge new relations. unless rural communities have a sense of ownership of the curriculum, unless the curriculum reflects aspects of what people believe in, and unless the sexuality education offered in schools is what is needed by people within rural villages, then school-based sexuality education in rural classrooms will not have the desired effect on youth. acknowledgement this article is based on work supported by the national research foundation (nrf). the author gratefully acknowledges the funding and support of the nrf. opinions, findings and conclusions herein are those of the author. endnote according to paroz (1993: 184), 1. koma means initiation secret, or a special song sung during the night when boys are being initiated. 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aids epidemic. geneva: unaids. 69khau — “our culture does not allow that” unaids 2011. world aids day report 2011. retrieved on 26 november 2011 from http://www.unaids. org/en/media/unaids/contentassets/documents/unaidspublication/2011/jc2216_worldaidsday_ report_2011_en.pdf. unicef 2007. humanitarian action in lesotho. retrieved on 1 april 2008 from http://www.unicef.org/ har07/files/countrychap_lesotho.pdf. wilson jm & donnermeyer jf 2006. urban, rurality and adolescent substance abuse. criminal justice review, 31(4):337-356. 53 the struggle for academic rigour in assessment education abstract this article explores the meaning of academic rigour in relation to a fourth year assessment education course for pre-service teachers. we present the requirements for a course to be considered academically rigorous, describe the course we offered in the light of these criteria and then present the students’ responses. our findings indicate differing perspectives between lecturers and students on what it means to learn about assessment and to be academically rigorous. whereas the lecturers were expecting engagement with assessment theory and practice from all students, many students ‘tuned out’ whenever the course did not engage them in practical examples related to their subject specialisation. only exceptional students moved beyond compliance with course requirements. the struggle for academic rigour involves developing a better alignment between lecturer and student expectations. this has implications for more explicit explanation of course purposes as well as increased cooperation with subject specialisation methodology courses. keywords: academic rigour, assessment education, alignment, curriculum, pedagogy, assessment, student perspectives, lecturerstudent interdependence 1. introduction a 2010 study of the experiences of the university of the witwatersrand’s (wits) first year b.ed. students negotiating their academic learning arrived at the claim that only students who achieved marks above 70% were able to adapt to the “new semiotic domain” of the university, where, compared to school, there is “less external locus of control and where knowledge is regarded as more than performance” (shalem et al., 2013: 1093). the students who were in the mark range of 40-60% (i.e. just below or above failure) were caught in a struggle for “epistemological access” and remained unsure of “how to differentiate between the words they need to select to explain a specialised idea. furthermore, they are unable to identify the web of concepts within which their thinking is nested and how to select the textual evidence needed to explain their views and the examples required to demonstrate their point of view” (ibid: 1093). the form and criteria of academic discourse were so foreign to them that it prevented students from accessing the content that is carola steinberg tom waspe doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i1.5 issn 0258-2236 eissn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(1): 53-67 © uv/ufs http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.5 54 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) offered by university courses. for them, at the time, writing in ways that could be considered as academically rigorous was still out of reach. it so happened that when we taught and evaluated the 4th year assessment course in 2014, we were working with the same group of students. looking at the final course marks, only 52 out of 371 (14%) students achieved a mark of 70% and above, while 264 (71%) were in the 50-69% range. that made our pass marks look acceptable enough but was it any indicator of the course having been, and enabled the students to become more, academically rigorous? this article tells the story of an assessment education (ae) course in which the staff intended to offer epistemological access to a course that was academically rigorous, which, at the time, we understood to mean high quality teaching and learning. we saw it as our responsibility to offer clear, explanatory lectures on key assessment concepts and debates, appropriate readings, challenging and relevant tasks, useful feedback, and explicit guidance for student self-regulation of their work, so that students could acquire key assessment concepts and the accompanying professional skills. from our perspective, the students’ responsibility was to engage with the lectures and ask questions, read the provided texts with understanding, put effort into writing the set tasks and generally enjoy the learning. this intention requires effort all round, which we conscientiously put in. yet, to our dismay, we found that many students did minimum work and some evaluated the course as being ‘boring’, ‘irrelevant’ and ‘useless’. rather than losing faith in ourselves and our students, we decided to embark on the road of academic rigour by engaging in “collegial conversations that encourage deep and critical reflection for teacher educators” (selkrig & keamy, 2015: 1) the question that drove this conversation was: what are students’ perspectives about what and how they learned from the assessment course? 2. a conceptual framework for understanding the term ‘academic rigour’ the term academic rigour (ar) is used in the context of a general discourse about the quality of education. while there are many variations of the definition, no decisive consensus regarding a definition has yet emerged (gray, 2008; lincoln, 2010; blackburn, 2013; draeger et al., 2013; reich, turner & volkan, 2013). despite this, there is not much debate about the definition; it tends to be defined and used to suit the context within which it is applied. nevertheless, there are shared facets that characterise the discourse of ar. ar concerns the three message systems of education: curriculum, pedagogy/instruction and assessment (blackburn, 2013; lincoln, 2010). “true rigour is weaving together the elements of curriculum, instruction, and assessment in a way that maximises the learning of each student” (blackburn, 2013: 13) and to be achieved, the three message systems need to be aligned (ainsworth, 2011). alignment operates along two axes: breadth alignment ensures that all the relevant content is meaningfully covered, while depth alignment, which can be achieved by, for example, using bloom’s taxonomy (gray, 2008), ensures that the curriculum and pedagogy reach pertinent levels of cognitive demand based on challenging learning objectives. thus rigorous and aligned curricula, pedagogy and assessment ought to “promote in-depth learning and the use of cognitive skills similar to those found in the higher order thinking levels of bloom’s taxonomy” (reich et al., 2013: 6). steinberg & waspe the struggle for academic rigour in assessment education 55 academically rigorous and aligned education infuses the three message systems with high expectations. “holding high expectations for student learning is at the heart of academic rigour” (ibid: 8). these expectations of student performance should be highly visible and be made “explicit in course syllabi, rubrics and assignment directions” (gray, 2008: 5). yet high expectations require a particular attitudinal approach when teaching: “academic rigour … is more likely to exist in schools with cultures that foster high expectations of all students and that have an overall focus on providing students with educational experiences that challenge them” (reich et al., 2013: 19). achieving these expectations involves presenting meaningful, challenging and relevant content with high cognitive value that focusses on core concepts and the “big ideas” of the discipline (ibid: 10) as well as being aligned with the official curriculum as mandated by policy. it also involves interactive teaching and active learning focusing on higher order thinking (lincoln, 2010; blackburn, 2013; draeger et al., 2013). to achieve this, methods and activities should be appropriately selected from a repertoire containing multiple possibilities (deluca et al., 2010) to suit the content. this combination of “content-based teaching” complemented by “process-based pedagogies” “seeks to engage students in active meaning-making through processes of critical reflection, dialogue, and experiential and authentic learning” (deluca et al., 2013: 130). the third component, rigorous assessment, entails quality formative and summative assessment wherein assessment criteria are explicitly explained. the design and selection of aligned and appropriate assessment methods covering both breadth and depth, theory and practice ensures the validity, reliability and fairness of rigorous assessment practices (mcmillan, 2014). arising out of this literature review, we are working with the following understanding: academic rigour entails high expectations of student attainment of deep learning which spans theory and practice. it is manifested through a curriculum which balances breadth and depth of knowledge (with an emphasis on depth) while being aligned with a supportive pedagogy, quality assessment and being appropriate to the knowledge of the discipline and the teaching context. therefore, to demonstrate in what ways the assessment education course we offered was academically rigorous in the above way, we need to show how we adapted these criteria (student attainment, deep learning, theory and practice, breadth and depth of knowledge, supportive pedagogy, quality assessment, appropriate to discipline and context) to its particular constraints. these criteria for ar are an ideal model and are crafted from the perspective of teaching and curriculum design. they also posit an, often implied, ideal role for students. this ideal role includes effective self-regulation, significant effort, commitment and motivation. empirical studies (draeger et al., 2013) have indicated that teachers and lecturers would concur with the model presented above, however, studies with students paint a contrasting picture, with differing conceptions depicted (draeger, del prado hill & mahler, 2014; mahler et al., 2014). lecturers were mostly concerned with how quality learning could be attained while students’ overriding concern was how hard it would be to get good grades. whereas lecturers emphasised active learning and participation, students were mainly concerned with workload. lecturers stressed the importance of higher order thinking while students focused on the difficulty of the material. lecturers had expectations of teaching meaningful content however, students worried about the instrumental utility of the content for their future careers. lecturers stressed higher order and critical thinking but students were concerned about grades and the degree of difficulty in attaining high standards. it is these divergent representations of ar, which sets it up as an area of contestation and terrain of struggle. so the specific question 56 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) that arose for us was: what tensions arise when attempting to ensure academic rigour in an assessment education course? 3. presenting an academically rigorous assessment education course assessment education (ae) is a relative newcomer to undergraduate teacher education programmes. yet the need for a formal introduction to assessment theory and practice is supported by professional demands on teachers, by policy mandates and by research reviews. stiggins (1999) pointed out that teachers spend an estimated 30-50% of their professional time engaged in assessment activities (deluca et al., 2010: 20). in south africa, national policy mandates assessment knowledge and skill as a professional requirement of teachers (department of basic education, 2012a, b). additionally, a research review study conducted in the usa found that “explicit assessment education at the pre-service level has the potential to support positive changes in teacher candidates’ conceptions of assessment and promote their assessment literacy” (deluca et al., 2013: 129). the question then becomes, how can ae for undergraduate students be made practically appropriate and academically rigorous? it could be argued that “given the constraints of pre-service teacher education programmes – comparatively short on-campus cycles (which does not apply in our case), competing demands on content and often large-group instruction (which does apply) – it is unlikely that candidates will complete their pre-service year with a robust and comprehensive understanding of assessment practice, theory and philosophy” (deluca et al., 2010: 25). yet if ar is understood as being relative to the purposes, objectives and constraints of a course, then the general criteria for ar can be adapted to fit a particular ae course. 3.1 the course context in response to the policy mandate that teacher education should develop teacher competence in assessment knowledge and practice (department of higher education and training, 2011), the re-designed b.ed. of the wits school of education includes a 6-week assessment module in its 4th year. as a module within the education theory major, all students are required to attend, which means the assessment course caters for student teachers from all phases and subject specialisations. prior to developing the course in 2013, we met with colleagues across the school and agreed that this course would provide key assessment concepts, principles and skills that remain appropriate regardless of educational level and subject matter, while methodology courses would elaborate on and adapt assessment principles in subject and phase specific ways. for the assessment course, it was decided to use examples from language and maths in the inter-sen phase, which we hoped would be general enough for all students to relate to. the intention of the course was to provide a concept-based approach to assessment, which would provide students with a principled way of thinking about the dilemmas posed by the practical concerns of assessment. 3.2 the course content the first few lectures in the course fulfilled the requirement of presenting the knowledge and enabling understanding of the “core concepts of assessment theory” (rudner & schafer, 2002). steinberg & waspe the struggle for academic rigour in assessment education 57 first came the educational purposes of assessment: the tension between the traditional purpose of using assessment to establish the amount of learning compared to the educational purpose of using assessment to generate more learning, i.e. assessment for and of learning and using assessment for accountability purposes (deluca et al., 2010). then came the imperatives underlying all quality assessment: the need for ensuring the reliability, validity and thus fairness of assessment, whether it was for formative, summative or accountability purposes. the second part of the course moved to the development of professional assessment practice (deluca et al., 2013) and its “authentic problems” (reich et al., 2013: 10). it covered teacher responsibilities such as evaluating and generating varied, clear, reliable and valid assessment tasks with marking schedules/rubrics, doing error analysis, understanding assessment policy and the need for record keeping, collecting and using assessment data for school improvement and the thinking behind the system-wide accountability testing in the form of annual national assessments. at the same time students learned common assessment vocabulary/concepts, such as content/construct validity, criteria, taxonomies, levels of cognitive demand, marks, averages, means and standard deviations. the course ended by presenting research on teachers’ assessment emotions. by focussing on concerns of educational purpose and professional practice, the course intends to engage students in a productive dialogue between theory and practice. the conceptual sections intend to distantiate students (slonimsky & shalem, 2006) from their taken for granted experience of having been assessed and also to offer them a lens through which to recognise the value (or not, depending on purpose) of the more technical skills of assessment they are about to learn. the practical sections intend to give students an insight into the complexity of considerations involved in generating assessment tasks and judgements, so they develop “positive professional dispositions” (stiggins, 1999) towards assessment and have a sufficient foundation to learn from school conversations as new teachers. by limiting the key foci of the course to two core concepts (i.e. educational purpose and assessment quality) that re-emerge throughout the professional responsibilities, we hope the course generates enough breadth, yet with an emphasis on depth. 3.3 the pedagogical means (deluca et al., 2013) suggest that ae should use “multiple strategies” which include “contentbased teaching” and “process-based pedagogies” (ibid: 130). that description fits our thinking precisely. our intention was to use content and pedagogical means to inform and inspire students and regulate their learning. content-based teaching refers to “didactic instruction with a focus on the transmission and application of knowledge and skills, typically through lecture-based, text-based or case-based learning” (ibid: 130). over 6 weeks we conducted 10 double-period large class lectures with some interaction enabled by the use of ‘clickers’1, plus 2 computer lab sessions, during which the lecturers were present to help students. each lecture was accompanied by 1-4 academic readings (both local and international). students received a detailed course outline with tasks and academic readings, on paper and through a course website, which also contained all the powerpoint presentations. they had office numbers and email addresses of the three staff members and came for consultations when they had administrative or academic questions. however, due to insufficient staff in relation to students, in 2014 it was not possible to offer 1 clickers are devices used in classroom response systems 58 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) tutorials for subject specialisation groups of 30-40 students, as we had during the first year of the course. we complemented the lectures with “process-based pedagogies” that “seek to engage students in active meaning-making through processes of critical reflection, dialogue, and experiential and authentic learning where the art of assessment would be practiced” (deluca et al.,2013: 130). our students needed to complete 5 out of 7 thoroughly explained and “analytically scaffolded” (ibid: 133) weekly tutorial tasks for online submission, which, between them, also spanned theory and practice. to make students more “aware of their own thinking on assessment” (ibid: 134) they were encouraged to work in pairs. the first task was conceptual, asking students to describe formative assessment and served as a preparation for the essay assignment. the remaining tasks used a “strongly demarcated practical context” (shalem & rusznyak, 2013: 1125) to give students a practise run of enacting teachers’ professional responsibilities. students were given the opportunity of preparing an assessment task and uploading it onto test design software, comparing different versions of assessment criteria, recording and reporting marks, reflecting on and discussing marks with a teacher during teaching experience, analysing ana statistics and doing error analysis. although these tasks had the potential to be (and in 2013 functioned as) “multiple-perspective conversations” that allow for engagement “in conversations with peers about readings, assessment scenarios, and dilemmas of practice” (deluca et al., 2013: 133), we think that in 2014 they were less effective. this is because with students working on their own or in pairs, the lecturers’ perspectives were missing from the discussions, making students more concerned with meeting the submission date than with discussing dilemmas raised by the tasks. 3.4 the assessment format central to rigorous assessment in ae is the modelling of “sound assessment practices as a matter of routine in their own course assessments” (stiggins, 1999: 24). formative assessment should be modelled while at the same time “explicitly instructing on assessment concepts and practice”, a combination which empirically has been found to be “highly supportive for student learning” (deluca et al., 2013: 137). deluca (2013) terms this “modelling through assessment pedagogy”, where diagnostic assessment as well as ongoing giving and receiving of feedback are fully integrated into instruction as assessment for learning. the formative assessment of our course was embedded in the tutorial tasks described above, as the tasks needed to be submitted online at the rate of one a week, so as to receive the ‘due performance’ necessary for permission to write the exam. we recorded all the submissions but were unable to give regular feedback. deluca suggests this modelling be carried through into summative assessment, where a “congruent approach between concepts taught about assessment and the mechanism for grading teacher candidates’ work” (deluca et al., 2013: 137) is practised. assessment practices in ae programmes must follow the quality assessment criteria of validity, reliability and fairness (mcmillan, 2014). the summative assessment of our course consisted of an essay assignment and a sit-down examination – both worth 50% of the course mark. the essay asked students to engage with the purposes and methods of summative and formative assessment using a range of readings. the exam offered a choice between two essay topics – error analysis and task design – and used various short question formats to cover the course curriculum. steinberg & waspe the struggle for academic rigour in assessment education 59 4. course evaluation: noticing the gap in expectations with regard to ar it is common place for student evaluations to be used as a measure of ar including lecturer effectiveness (clayson, 2005; stark & freishtat, 2014). accordingly, and as per institutional requirement, we conducted a student evaluation of the course. items for the evaluation were selected from a list provided by the wits centre for learning and teaching development (cltd), who processed the survey and provided results. the selected items related to key aspects of ar, namely teaching, learning, content, relevance, coherence, student interest, alignment, workload, effort, grades and expectations. the results of the survey were disappointing. cltd informed us that the course was rated 1.1 points (out of 10) below the institutional average and one qualitative comment said “it was one of the worst education courses ever presented!” although there were several positive comments to balance the negative, this comment galvanised us into further investigative action. we soon realised that the survey results were problematic for a number of reasons. firstly, we conducted the evaluation after the final grades were released to the students. this was a mistake because “students punish instructors for low grades” (clayson, 2005: 10) and “people tend to be motivated to act (e.g. fill out an online evaluation) more by anger than by satisfaction” (stark & freishtat, 2014: 2). secondly, the response rate of the evaluation was low, only 22% (80 out of 371). “the lower the response rate, the less representative the responses... and there is no justification for assuming that non-responders are just like responders” (ibid: 2). this means that “if the response rate is low, the data should not be considered representative of the class as a whole” (ibid: 3). thirdly, institutional “averages and comparisons make no sense, as a matter of statistics” (ibid: 3) because it is unclear what underlying constructs are being measured. fourthly, student evaluations “do not measure teaching effectiveness. we measure what students say, and pretend it’s the same thing” (ibid: 5). even “reliability has little to do with whether evaluations measure effectiveness” (ibid: 6). instead, it becomes a question of validity, are the student evaluations measuring course rigour or are they measuring some other construct such as satisfaction with course grades? this goes back to the disparity and gap between lecturer and student expectations discussed earlier. students expect high grades with minimum effort and lecturers expect learning with high effort. “students have high expectations for rewards” (clayson, 2005: 4) and rigour “is not within their perceptual norms” (ibid: 10), indicating that “students did not believe that a demand for rigour was an important characteristic of a good teacher” (ibid: 11). thus, how should rigour be evaluated and measured? learning is often used as a proxy for rigorous teaching but measuring learning is hard (stark & freishtat, 2014). course grades are often used as a measure for learning and ar but it is “not clear that higher course grades necessarily reflect more learning” (stark & freishtat, 2014: 5). “in general, to infer causes such as whether good teaching results in good evaluation scores requires a controlled, randomised experiment” (ibid: 6). for these reasons we are not reporting on the averages from the survey as measures of ar. “instead of reporting averages, we should report the distribution of scores for instructors and for courses: the percentage of ratings that fall in each category” (ibid: 4). 60 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) total frequencies for all survey items fr eq ue nc y 900 800 700 600 500 400 300 200 100 0 287 st ro ng ly ag re e ag re e ne utr al di sa gr ee sr on gly d isa gr ee 823 553 117 147 figure 1: total frequencies for all items when we aggregate the ‘strongly agrees’ and the ‘agrees’ we get 1110 (56%) compared to 324 (16%) when the ‘strongly disagrees’ and ‘disagrees’ are aggregated, with 553 (28%) neutrals. this provides more specific information than the comparison against the institutional average. yet we still cannot infer that the course was academically rigorous. at best, it may reflect a certain degree of overall satisfaction with the course as expressed by the students. 5. digging deeper: students’ perspectives on the ar of the course following due ethical procedures, we sent out invitations to participate in focus group discussions to all students. eighteen students, nine young men and nine young women, participated in one of five focus group interviews, which lasted approximately an hour each, were recorded and transcribed. it was a self-selected sample, whether students were positive or negative about the course, they came because they were more concerned and engaged. 5.1 students’ responses to the curriculum when asked what they had learned from the course, students in the focus groups2 responded with a range of issues and between them, they covered all topics and tasks in the course. when asked what they disliked about the course, much the same thing happened. this means we received useful feedback for course improvement from students but no recommendation for removing topics from the course. 2 we obviously cannot say what all students learned. a self-selected sample of 18 out of 371 students can provide insight but not generalisations. steinberg & waspe the struggle for academic rigour in assessment education 61 the reasons students gave for their choices arose primarily from their practical focus on becoming a professional. they paid attention to the course because “with assessment, it’s what you do every day as a teacher” and they approved of the course because it provided “very, very useful information” that was “more practical” than other education courses. they liked that the course went “hand in hand with the subject methodology” courses because “then at least i know, this is making me into a teacher”. they liked designing assessment tasks electronically because “it would be useful in terms of saving time and paperwork”. they liked practising skills that “could come in very handy next year” and doing tasks that “you can actually go to schools and implement this”. this practical focus generated “excitement” and was a motivator for engagement with the course and the tutorial tasks. some of their insights into assessment issues spanned theory and practice and enabled students to make a shift in perspective, to “look at it (be ‘it’ task design, error analysis, or anas) from a different view”. for example, students expressed their approval of learning about error analysis not only because it was ‘new’ and ‘interesting’ but also because it made them realise that “you have to give the learners feedback”. this was something they had “not taken seriously” before and because they learned that “maybe the things you say as a teacher might disadvantage the learners because they are a misconception of the teacher”. they commented on having gained a more comprehensive understanding of the anas whereas before, the anas had been viewed as “ah, these people (the education department) are just giving us a lot of work”, students could now see “how the anas are also doing research” which helped them to “agree with the stats that are in place”. the most dramatic description of a shift came from a student who had complained about the assigned essay comparing summative and formative assessment and who received a revised topic that required him to make an argument about why summative and accountability testing persists in the face of evidence that it does not promote learning. this “opportunity to delve deeper” pushed him into “actually looking at what we were studying”, which proved to him that he “was able to do that sort of thing” and filled him “with such a deeper knowledge of what summative assessment and formative assessment is and how it affects our classrooms”, which meant that the later “lectures started making a lot more sense”. their practical interests in the processes of assessment made it possible for students to gain an understanding of the educational purposes and conceptual complexities that assessment presents to teachers. yet the practical focus could also be an inhibitor to learning. expecting the course to be practical lead to rapid demotivation whenever students “didn’t see the whole point of doing it” and generated impatience with any theoretical exploration of purpose or methods that did not provide examples directly related to their subject or phase specialisation. the most frequent reason for students wondering, “why am i doing this?” and then “tuning out” and “being bored”, was when they could not see a direct relationship between assessment and their subject/ phase specialisation. our plan of using examples taken from inter-sen maths and english for lectures and tutorial tasks did not work well enough. students from fet, foundation phase, technology, history, arts and culture and science complained that they could not relate to the examples: “so the topics as such were useful, but the examples were not, because they were all maths and english, so you thought ‘this is a maths lecture, and i’m going to tune out’”. students in the focus groups strongly advised that the course should “use different subject areas for the examples, not just focus on maths and english”. during 2013, we had placed students into tutorials according to 62 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) their subject and phase specialisation, which enabled discussion of specialisation concerns in relation to the maths and english examples provided. however, with the decrease in staff in 2014, the tutorial activities were turned into tasks for submission, which dramatically lowered the potential for explanatory discussions. seen through the eyes of the students, it was a lost opportunity for them to engage with the specificities of their specialisations. be it “using analysis skills in history tasks”, “how to look at and assess technology models”, “how to do error analysis in social sciences” or “understanding how the impact of the anas done in primary schools filters through to high school students”. one student spoke for all when she politely insisted that “i just feel if you’re teaching a course that, you know, everyone is doing, then it should sort of relate to everyone, even if just a little bit”. the relationship between assessment principles and specialisation specificities requires much more across-courses collaboration between subject methodologies and assessment in the future – so that assessment has a greater range of examples, the specialisations remind students of key assessment concepts, and the staff needs to know enough about one another’s courses to cross-refer or even set joint projects. 5.2 students’ responses to the pedagogy students approved of the technological aspects of the pedagogy. they liked the online submissions because “you were moving with the times”. they liked the electronic tasks even though students who were less “digital” experienced it as “very tricky” and had to “do it over and over again”. they debated whether it was better to learn these skills “by themselves, through trial and error”, or whether the instructions should be written out “step by step by step”. yet they agreed that “the electronic section of the course was well done” and they liked the “freedom to be left in the computer lab to do work without being monitored” (although staff were available for support). regarding the clickers, they were unanimously positive. “keep the clickers, the clickers were exciting, so much fun” was the consensus. and for good reason: “the lecturer asked questions out of the blue and that would get us all active and working and engaging with the lecture”. “we could see the response actually on the board there – that was thumbs up for me”. “we could interact in the class, feel part of the lecture and have a voice in saying “this is more important than that”. and, in terms of the assessment conundrums they had to respond to, “when the explanation was given, i never forgot the things i got wrong”. the clickers created a space where students’ knowledge and opinions were recorded and the complexities of assessment issues could be discussed. the lectures were more ambiguously received. some students found the information provided “brilliant”, “useful”, “insightful”, and “enjoyed” the lectures because they were “very interactive and close to what we do, not theoretical”. other students found the lectures ‘boring’ and said it was too much “to expect 350 people to sit very quietly for two hours”. students had contradictory reasons for their critique: for some, the lectures “were a little bit too explanatory and repetitive”, while others wanted “more detail”. many would have preferred smaller tutorials after each lecture so as “to elaborate on some of the ideas and concepts that were covered in the lectures”. as one student argued: i think we should have more contact with lecturers and with tutors, and have more… how can i say it…like a close-up encounter with the lecturers. because we are doing a professional degree, we must learn from people who have done it before. so just to be lectured, the students get bored, and those who are not bored, get bored by those who are making noise. steinberg & waspe the struggle for academic rigour in assessment education 63 the lecture venue worked against any “close-up encounter” – the battery in the roving microphone went flat quickly, the acoustics amplified student chatter, the rows of seats were long and required many students to get up if one student needed to move. having five different lecturers, all experts in their fields, deliver the lectures, did not make an impression on the students either way. they blamed the lack of interest in the lectures on their being in the last year of their degree: “the problem is sometimes, i don’t know, like, when you get to fourth year, we kind of run out of steam or we get tired and we complain almost about everything”. 5.3 students’ responses to reading the course expected students to engage in regular reading prior to each lecture. in the openended questions on the evaluation forms, students most frequently complained that there was “too much reading” and they wanted “less reading”. in the focus groups, they elaborated on their reasons: “i hated the course when i found that book. this is the biggest book i’ve ever had in all my life”. ”just by looking” at the collection of articles they felt “scared”, “intimidated”, “too tired” and “lazy to read”. one student described how he “read the readings for 10 minutes before the lecture” when actually, he was talking about skimming the lecture powerpoint. several students admitted that after they had read the first 2 or 3 articles “it was really hard to keep up with the readings for the lectures” and there “were a lot of readings that i ended up not reading”. when asked whether they would rather find their own texts to read, the students responded negatively: “no, it’s better if you just give me what i need to do. students work better when they’re given the exact thing they need to do. looking for yourself what to read and do, no, that is a hideous task. it’s better to just work with what you have”. given this general reluctance to read for information, students tended to exercise choice. they skimmed through the book and chose articles they found “interesting” (e.g. “how do you design a multiple choice or a true/false question?”), “relevant”, “useful” and, above all, “practical” (e.g. “not case studies from europe but ideas for doing things in tembisa”). some admitted that “the readings were not that bad”, “not as long as we thought they would be” and “there were nice ones that i learned a lot from”. one student even mentioned articles that presented an academic argument and how this might be a stimulus for reflective thinking: the articles on summative and formative assessment were really helpful, particularly black, as the main argument, because after reading black, and the other guy… shepard, you got two different views. then you can be either neutral or critical. when they did read, some students found their efforts were rewarded. as one student discovered, “when i finally sat down and did the readings, i felt they were insightful, easy for me to read and understand, and i actually understood more than i had understood in the lectures”. the focus groups made it clear to us that the students were not uncooperative when they complained about “too much reading”, but rather that regular reading was not a part of their culture of learning. it required external pressure for them to make the effort to engage in the task. one student passionately made the point that “the wits education campus does not have a culture of working … hard enough” and that “we’re not required to produce our best work in order to pass and so learn to work harder”. he wondered “whether that is the subject’s fault, the lecturer’s fault, the university’s fault? where does the accountability come in for the actual people who are studying that degree?” he argued that it was not sufficient for particular courses to raise and consistently enforce the demands they placed on students but that “it’s 64 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) got to change across subjects” because “there’s something there that’s so deep, that’s got to kind of be flipped around”. using the term “institutional consistency”, he pleaded that “this university needs to create some sort of culture of learning”. breadth and depth of content coverage and understanding is not possible without sustained student reading. yet the students’ perspective expressed both resistance to and an understanding of the need for reading. it left us thinking that it is important to generate a conversation about the culture of learning and reading with colleagues across the school. what pedagogical means could build a culture more conducive to reading within and across courses? 5.4 students’ responses to the assessment the focus groups enabled students to reflect on how they functioned in a “culture of not pushing ourselves to work hard enough”: “i only do readings when i have a tutorial and i wait for somebody to tell me: okay, you must do your readings”. the prime motivator for learning was the assessment. “it’s like, why did i do this if it’s not going to be assessed?” “if it’s not for marks, we don’t take it seriously. that’s how we’ve been trained”. they responded to the assessment demands of the course by making strategic choices for learning: “as soon as i receive the coursework, i check if there is a question for the assignment. often the question states clearly what you should read, so i focus on that alone. actually, that’s all of us.” this made students dependent on the regulative mechanisms built into the course to push them into making an effort. “the wits-e thing worked a lot, because it helped me to study, because i had to submit something. if we don’t get the task, as students we won’t study”. they abdicated their responsibility for learning not only to the course but also to the lecturers: “if i don’t get a comment, so why should i bother writing the next tutorial? i was waiting for the previous comment to come before i can proceed to the next tutorial”. at its worst, this sense of being reluctantly dragged into learning through the demands of assessment and led students into a compliance approach that side-lined the subject matter being learned: “i will do cram work so that i pass. you just want to cram, pass and forget. and when the student goes to the next grade, they know nothing. they will even say, no, we didn’t do that last year (laughs). whatever we do, it’s not really here (in the head).” which made us first wonder why we bother making the effort to create what we think are interesting and academically rigorous courses if nothing we teach remains in the students’ heads – but then we became even more determined to adjust the course so that students cannot but engage with it. 6. the tensions of co-generating a culture of learning: the interdependence of lecturers and students if we understand ar as a two-way interaction, where the rigour of the lecturers needs to be mirrored by the rigour of the students, then it is not enough to understand how students respond to a course. it also becomes important to understand how students develop their ability to learn during the course or how the course fosters that development. therefore, we analysed what students said about how they motivate and regulate their own learning. as fourth year students who had spent many weeks teaching in schools over the years, this conversation about their lack of motivation for learning enabled a reflection on the difference between their motivation to learn when being in student mode compared to being in teacher mode. steinberg & waspe the struggle for academic rigour in assessment education 65 i think we as students, we become learners when we’re on campus and teachers when we’re on teaching experience. when i’m on te, i want to go and research for my preparation and my lessons, i want to get more information, come to the library, search for that. but when i’m on campus as a student, doing all of that is too much; i don’t want to do it. i get into student mode. and when i’m on te, i get into teacher mode. yes, that’s what happens with me. this insight came when it was too late for students to change anything – it was the end of their fourth year. even then, no student indicated that it might be a good idea to get out of “student mode”. they had been in that role for at least 16 years of their educational lives. the formative assessment described above generated a tension between compliance and learning for them, some students opted for compliance only (“just hand in whatever on that day”), while others used being “scared of the dp thing” as motivation to engage and “learn some things that we didn’t know before”. the way in which students simply assumed that their motivation for engaging in learning activities depended on course regulations and incentive provided by lecturer feedback, places a double educative responsibility on courses that intend to be academically rigorous. as a baseline, academically rigorous ae courses need to provide clear, comprehensive, accurate and context appropriate information about the topic at hand. in addition, they need to generate ar among their students. we would argue that this involves two aspects. the first aspect is to provide course structures that pressurise students into regularly doing academic tasks that enable learning, the second is to provide inputs that gradually wean students into an attitude of taking responsibility for their own learning. for students to develop agency and become more rigorous academically, courses require a well-explained structure, which needs to be complied with and enables choice. 7. final reflections it would appear that although learning happened and the survey, as well as the focus groups indicated a general sense of satisfaction, it is questionable whether the assessment education course achieved deep, rigorous learning on the part of the students (see the marks in section 1 above). the high expectations of the lecturers and the shallow learning of the students generated tensions in the pursuit of academic rigour. the key principles of academic rigour, as identified in the literature, are high expectations, alignment between curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, balance between breadth and depth and for assessment education, an integration of theory and practice (gray, 2008; ainsworth, 2011; reich et al., 2013). in the assessment education course under discussion, there were tensions that emerged regarding three of these four principles. no student mentioned problems caused by a lack of alignment between the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment components of the course. however, there were tensions regarding the other three principles. regarding high expectations, both the literature and the data pointed to the realisation that the issue is not a case of lecturers having high and students having low expectations – both groups have high expectations but of differing outcomes and processes. lecturers tend to have high expectations for deep and broad student learning while students tend to have high expectations for a favourable trade-off between the lowest possible effort and attaining the desired mark (draeger et al., 2014; mahler et al., 2014). 66 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) regarding the other two principles, the course intended to achieve a balance between breadth and depth, theory and practice. it covered a basic range of assessment concepts and practices (stiggins, 1991; rudner & schafer, 2002; deluca et al., 2010) both at a conceptual/ theoretical level and by enabling depth through activities of application (deluca et al., 2013). yet, from the perspective of the students, the activities offered did not sufficiently take them into the assessment practices of their specific subject and phase specialisations, thus inhibiting their depth of understanding and engagement with practice. the course needs to engage with this design issue to better meet students’ needs. another tension that arose was the volume of reading required. reading is essential for breadth and depth in theory and practice. yet, students’ tendency to limit reading to what is assessed did not match well with lecturers’ expectations of reading for deep learning. in our opinion, this lack of engagement with text is the biggest barrier to academic rigour, which would require a school-wide discussion about fostering a culture of reading. there is an unavoidable tension between lecturer and student expectations (draeger et al., 2014; mahler et al., 2014) which is constitutive of academic rigour. this research enabled us to come to an understanding of these tensions and left us with a new question: how best can these tensions be brought into a creative relationship with one another? what is needed is more congruence between the expectations built into the course design and delivery on the one hand and the expectations of students and the role that they play on the other. the struggle for ar entails resolving the divergent expectations between lecturers and students. finding our way through the struggle will involve, at a minimum, clearer explanations to be given to students regarding the assessment course purposes, collaboration between assessment staff and subject specialisation methodologists to offer a wider choice of tasks and a school-wide discussion about fostering a culture of reading. references ainsworth, l. 2011. rigorous curriculum design: how to create curricular units of study that align standards, instruction, and assessment. englewood, colorado: lead+learn press. blackburn, b. 2013. rigor is not a four-letter word, 2nd ed. new york: routledge. clayson, d.e. 2005. academic rigor: a critical analysis. universitas, 1(1). deluca, c., klinger, d., searle, m. & shulha, l. 2010. developing a curriculum for assessment education. assessment matters, 2, 20–42. deluca, c., chavez, t., bellara, a. & cao, c. 2013. pedagogies for preservice assessment education: supporting teacher candidates’ assessment literacy development. the teacher educator, 48(2), 128–142. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08878730.2012.760024 department of basic education (dbe). 2012a. regulations pertaining to the national curriculum statement grades r-12. government gazette, 36041(1114). department of basic education (dbe). 2012b. national protocol for assessment grades r-12. government gazette, 34600. department of higher education and training (dhet). 2011. minimum requirements for teacher education. government gazette, 553(34467). http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08878730.2012.760024 steinberg & waspe the struggle for academic rigour in assessment education 67 draeger, j., del prado hill, p., hunter, l.r. & mahler, r. 2013. the anatomy of academic rigor: the story of one institutional journey. innovative higher education, 38(4), 267–279. http:// dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10755-012-9246-8 draeger, j., del prado hill, p. & mahler, r. 2014. developing a student conception of academic rigor. innovative higher education, 40(3), 215-228. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/ s10755-014-9308-1 gray, c. 2008. getting rigor right: academic challenge without the backlash of failure. atlanta, ga: southern regional education board. lincoln, m. 2010. academic rigour in science assessment tasks. available at www.eprints.qut. edu.au/33209/3/mary_lincoln_thesis.pdf. 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[accessed 3 may 2015]. stiggins, r. 1991. assssment literacy. phi delta kappa, 72(7), 534–539. stiggins, r. 1999. evaluating classroom assessment training in teacher education programs. educational measurement: issues and practice, 18(1), 23-27. http://dx.doi. org/10.1111/j.1745-3992.1999.tb00004.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10755-012-9246-8 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10755-012-9246-8 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10755-014-9308-1 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10755-014-9308-1 www.eprints.qut.edu.au/33209/3/mary_lincoln_thesis.pdf www.eprints.qut.edu.au/33209/3/mary_lincoln_thesis.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2014.969104 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2014.969104 http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~stark/preprints/evaluations14.pdf http://www.stat.berkeley.edu/~stark/preprints/evaluations14.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-3992.1999.tb00004.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-3992.1999.tb00004.x _goback 1 the viability of individual oral assessments for learners: insights gained from two intervention evaluations abstract it is essential for learners to develop foundational literacy skills, ideally, in the first grade of formal education. these skills are then firmly entrenched and can be expanded in the following grades to form a basis for all future academic studies. appropriate assessment practices and tools to aid this process can inform the achievement of quality education. assessment and the curriculum are intertwined concepts in relation to teaching and learning. through assessment, it can be established if all learners have attained curriculum content, knowledge and proficiencies in a given year. furthermore, assessment can assist in advising teachers on which specific areas learners are struggling with as well as provide insight for remedial measures. together, this can offer ways to improve education. in this article, individual oral assessment using the early grade reading assessment (egra) tool is discussed based on two recent impact evaluations of teacher interventions. each intervention conceptualised its own theory of change to improve learner language and literacy development. the interventions also differed in relation to the target language; english as first additional language and setswana as home language. despite these differences, using the egra tool in both intervention evaluations allowed for a discussion on its usefulness in south africa. this was done with regard to suitability, reliability and validity, assistance to educators, amendments and suggestions to overcoming challenges related to practicalities. in conclusion, recommendations for improving education and the development of literacy in south african schools are made. keywords: early grade reading assessment (egra), individual assessment, intervention evaluation, oral assessment, teaching and learning 1. introduction studies on early literacy development in developing coun­ tries have shifted the focus from access to education to improving the quality of education (wagner, 2010; davidson & hobbs, 2013). quality education, rather than enrolment rates or the number of years of education attendance, is necessary for effective learning in schools and learners’ subsequent academic and employment trajectory. receiving quality education is also linked to lessening learner attrition (gove & wetterberg, 2011; davidson & hobbs, 2013). south african learner achievement and dropout seems to prinsloo, ch (dr) email: chprinsloo@hsrc.ac.za. human sciences research council (hsrc), education and skills development (esd) research programme harvey, jc (ms) human sciences research council (hsrc), education and skills development (esd) research programme doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i4.1 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(4): 1-14 © uv/ufs 2 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) be more of a concern in the higher grades, i.e. grade 9 upwards, rather than in the earlier grades (department of basic education, 2011, 2013). however, poor achievement and this increase in dropout is theoretically related to poor literacy acquisition during grades 1 to 3 because reading ability lays the foundation for all future learning (prinsloo et al., no date; gove & wetterberg, 2011; green et al., 2011). therefore, quality literacy instruction in the first years of formal education is crucial for each individual learner, as it influences all aspects of their future and improves the education system as a whole (heckman, 2000; cunha et al., 2006). this article examines the usefulness of the early grade reading assessment (egra) instrument to provide necessary information on the effectiveness of learning in the early phase of literacy development in south african schools. the quality of education can be monitored through appropriate assessment methods (wagner, 2010; davidson & hobbs, 2013). the egra tool supposedly offers a hybrid assessment approach. this approach is based on the idea that methodologies used in large­ scale education assessments can be reshaped into large enough instruments that can be used with greater speed at a reduced cost and can be adapted to local and linguistically diverse contexts. therefore, the egra has the fewest sampling exclusions as it allows for development in local languages and tends to sample amongst the most disadvantaged young learners (wagner, 2010). in addition, it was particularly designed for low­income country grade 1 to 3 learners who may not be able to read or write (gove & wetterberg, 2011). the foregoing explains why this tool was used in the impact evaluations designed by the human sciences research council (hsrc). firstly, it was necessary to establish a baseline assessment to identify the effect of the interventions. this took place in the beginning of the year when most learners are still illiterate. in addition, issues such as assessment sophistication, test anxiety, concentration and attention span require a one­on­one oral testing approach (hobbs & davidson, 2015; piper & zuilkowski, 2015). therefore, this assessment tool aligns well with the purpose of the impact evaluation studies referred to in this article: to assess the literacy skills developed by south african grade 1 learners. a brief background of literacy education in south africa is given as well as of the different types of assessment available before focusing on the interventions. 2. background policies regarding literacy instruction in the south african curriculum are informed by the theory of additive bilingualism. within this theory, it is argued that learners should be taught in their mother tongue/home language (hl) for as long as possible while an additional language is taught as a subject to complement rather than replace the hl. the principle is that a strong literacy base in their hl better enables learners to acquire literacy in an additional language (reeves et al., 2008; hoadley et al., 2010). it has been indicated that hl instruction is beneficial for learners and provides an advantage over learners who are solely educated in an alternate language (gupta, 1997; pretorius & mampuru, 2007). scholars recommend that grades 1 to 6 should be taught in the hl, with an additional language as a subject, for successful learning of and later through, a second language (thomas & collier, 1997, 2001; reeves et al., 2008). however, south african primary schools more often than not switch from instruction in the african hl to instruction in english from grade 4 onwards (pretorius & mampuru, 2007; reeves et al., 2008; pretorius & currin, 2010). this early switch means that additive bilingualism instead gives way to transitional bilingualism. transitional bilingualism refers to a short­lived form of bilingual education during which the 3 prinsloo & harvey the viability of individual oral assessments for learners african hl is removed as a medium of instruction (reeves et al., 2008). it is thus important that south african learners develop an adequate level of reading ability in their hl during grade 1, which is then strengthened during grades 2 and 3. as stated above, assessment can be used to inform ways to improve the quality of instruction. 2.1 different kinds of assessment techniques assessments have various purposes. with regard to classroom teaching and learning, assessments can be performed “of”, “for”, or “as” learning (black & wiliam, 1998; lorna & katz, 2006; wiliam, 2011). assessment of learning confirms the knowledge and skills learners have gained, determines if the curriculum outcomes have been achieved and may be used to relate learners’ achievement to mean score levels. this is regarded as summative assessment and can be used in large­scale studies for comparison. assessment for learning aims to inform teachers about the learning process so that their teaching and learning activities can be adjusted more immediately. this assessment is continuous in nature and involves the whole population of learners so that teachers can understand how, when and if learners apply their gained knowledge. assessment as learning is used to develop and support the metacognition of learners. it does so by recognising the learner as the connector between assessment and learning: learners themselves monitor their learning and use this feedback to alter their own understanding. here, teachers assist students to develop monitoring skills (lorna & katz, 2006; wiliam, 2011). assessment for and as learning form part of formative assessment which refers to assessments taking place during teaching to inform the teacher regarding the teaching process to allow them to make appropriate changes (lorna & katz, 2006; gove & wetterberg, 2011; wiliam, 2011). in essence, all three of the different types of assessment (of, for, and as) occurring in the classroom setting are valuable and necessary as they serve different purposes. the purpose of the assessment can therefore inform the most appropriate choice of assessment method (brown, 2004). when conducting an impact evaluation of a literacy intervention, the purpose of the assessment is to quantify learner progress, i.e. an assessment of learning, which requires a summative form of assessment. for this purpose, there are various assessment methods that can be used when using an early­grade learner sample including written, criterion­ referenced, standardised (normed) and individual oral. in addition to aligning the purpose of the assessment and its method, the reliability, validity and fairness of the assessment method must be ensured. a reliable assessment is one which is consistent and predictable (hubley & zumbo, 1996; wagner, 2010). various checks can assess this, including assessment using the same test (test-retest reliability), ensuring the assessor marks reliably to a defined standard (intra-rater reliability) and/or assessment by different assessors (inter-rater reliability). in addition, separate items on the test can be checked for their association to each other (inter­item reliability) (hubley & zumbo, 1996; brown, 2004; wagner, 2010). the assessment must also be valid. this refers to the degree that the test items actually measure what the assessment instrument aimed to assess (hubley & zumbo, 1996; wagner, 2010). in this regard, the assessment method can be checked for validity by ensuring its items or components indicate all possible items (content validity), it estimates and predicts the measured criterion (concurrent and predictive criterion referenced validity, respectively) and/or reflects the underlying construct to link to a model or theory (construct validity) (hubley & zumbo, 1996). all assessment measures, particularly in educational assessment, should be reliable and valid. 4 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) 2.1.1 reliability and validity of the egra the egra subtests have demonstrated sufficient reliability and validity in nearly 30 years of research (davidson & hobbs, 2013). with regard to south africa, rti international together with the south african department of education and the molteno institute of language and literacy (mill) conducted a study in 2009 to assess the efficacy of the systematic method for reading success (smrs). the study used the egra tool to evaluate the reliability of the sub­ tests letter sound, word recognition, passage reading and passage comprehension questions. their statistical analyses indicated that the tool is highly reliable (α = .95), with the cronbach alpha scores for each subtest being above 0.90. in addition, high levels of correlation between scores on each subtest were indicated by simple bivariate pearson correlations (p < .001) (piper, 2009; gove & wetterberg, 2011). in the two impact evaluations undertaken by the hsrc, the early grade reading assessment (egra) tool was used as an individual, oral, summative assessment based on the documentation of its psychometric properties in the foregoing paragraph. the widespread successful translation/adjustment into various additional languages appropriate to contexts similar to that of south africa provided the necessary support for this decision. it was necessary to rely on this as item­level data could not be captured due to cost constraints. marking could also not be repeated by the same or different test administrators (tas) to document retest and inter­rater reliability. the availability of norms appropriate to the learners assessed was also not required as learner proficiency was only compared with their own subsequent achievement over time. 2.2 interventions the first intervention was developed by siyajabula siyakhula (sjsk), a non-profit organisation which aims to assist learners through working with school communities (harvey et al., 2015; prinsloo et al., 2015). this intervention was administered between 2013 and 2015. the second intervention was the 3ie­funded early­grade reading study (egrs) performed by the department of basic education (dbe). this is a two-year intervention of which the firstyear implementation has been completed (2015) while the second­year is currently being concluded (2016) (taylor et al., 2016). details of each intervention as well as the methods used during the impact evaluation are presented below. 3. impact evaluation methodology the hsrc conducted impact evaluations of the two literacy interventions mentioned above, which are aimed at improving the reading achievement of early grade learners. in both impact evaluations, contextual survey questionnaires were completed and learner achievement baseline scores for the treatment and control schools were established. fieldworkers who performed the data collection underwent extensive training that not only involved administration and context information but also involved practise sessions, simulations and a final selection process. this ensured standardisation of administration. the contextual instruments consisted of self­report background questionnaires that the school principals, schoolteachers and parents/caregivers completed. both impact evaluations used the egra tool to assess grade 1 and 2 learner reading achievement, among other tests and grades dependent on the interventions’ theory of change. 5 prinsloo & harvey the viability of individual oral assessments for learners 3.1 intervention 1: sjsk (harvey et al., 2015; prinsloo et al., 2015) 3.1.1 context the intervention was administered in schools within limpopo, south africa, between 2013 and 2015. the intervention targeted english literacy as the first additional language (fal). the theory of change was the learner regeneration methodology’s corkscrew model of literacy development to develop phonics and sentence structures, comprehension and literacy. the intervention trained teachers (9 × 1­2 hour sessions) as well as community members (3 days × 5 weeks and 4 weeks in­classroom training) as reading facilitators in regenerating learners’ gaps in and automating english literacy foundations. learners were grouped according to ability with one facilitator assigned to ten learners. the facilitators (6 × 1 hour sessions per semester) used designed lesson plans, individualised for each grade, based on the developed, aligned and graded materials (dual­language readers, workbooks, wall charts and handouts). 3.1.2 participants two cohorts of grade 1, 4 and 7 learners, whose home languages were mostly xitsonga or tshivenda, took part in the intervention with the first cohort beginning the intervention in 2013 and the second cohort in 2014. the egra subtests as part of the impact evaluation were administered orally to all grade 1 learners from each school (n = 1 085). 3.1.3 instruments egra letter sound (110 letters in one minute), word recognition (50 words in one minute) and non­word decoding (50 non­words in one minute) were selected to assess phonics as well as decoding fluency at letter and word level. these are accepted as foundational skills necessary for the later development of literacy, comprehension and academic language proficiency (gove & wetterberg, 2011; davidson & hobbs, 2013; pretorius, 2013). additional literacy instruments to assess vocabulary, reading age, sentence and paragraph reading, comprehension skills and writing skills were administered as the learners progressed from grade 1 to 7. 3.1.4 procedures the sjsk intervention matched control schools to the treatment schools and the sjsk facilitators and their coordinators scored the assessments. as the assessments were not performed by the hsrc, the hsrc monitored between 30 and 40% of assessments to guard against possible manipulation and therefore for quality assurance purposes. equivalence analysis demonstrated the absence of assessment bias. 3.1.5 brief findings of the impact evaluation at all grade levels, learners from treatment schools showed stronger gains on test instrument assessment. however, these gains were less evident for grade 7 learners. this is unsurprising, as they will have the larger conceptual gaps requiring regeneration. in relation to the egra subtests, a lag was evident at grade 1 level for word recognition and non­word decoding. a full discussion is presented in prinsloo et al. (2015) and harvey et al. (2015). 6 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) 3.2 intervention 2: 3ie-funded egrs (taylor et al., 2016) 3.2.1 context this intervention was implemented in the north­west, south africa during 2015 and 2016. the intervention targeted literacy in setswana as the first language. the theory of change posited that eventual academic language proficiency is premised on adequate vocabulary, phonics-based decoding fluency, phonemic awareness and comprehension. the study provided for three different intervention types, as reflected in table 1, aimed at improving different aspects of typical classroom teaching (see taylor et al., 2016 for a full description). teacher training focused on how to implement the programme, teach reading acquisition and effectively use available materials (government provided workbooks and curriculum pacing). intervention 1 therefore involved teacher training, scripted lessons plans and graded readers whereas intervention 2 had the same format but with the addition of specialised reading coaches on a monthly basis. the coaches modelled, observed, critiqued/ advised and gave feedback regarding the interventions’ “ideal” lessons. in intervention 3, the community literacy facilitators were parents or other caregivers of the learners who received information on the school’s current achievement level along with a tool to identify and monitor their child’s reading skill stage and development according to specified milestones. these facilitators were also able to partake in facilitated group discussions with teachers to align targets, actions and responsibilities in assisting learners. table 2 overviews the sub­tests employed at each evaluation stage. table 1: overview of egrs intervention types (number of participating schools in brackets) intervention contents 1 (50) 2 (50) 3 (50) control (80) teacher training (two days per semester) ü ü teacher training (monthly coaching) ü scripted lesson plans ü ü graded readers ü ü community literacy facilitators ü 3.2.2 participants one cohort of grade 1 learners from the above schools, along with their teachers, began the intervention in 2015 and continued it as grade 2 learners in 2016. twenty learners from each school were randomly selected to take part in the impact evaluation (n = 4 600). 3.2.3 instruments 7 prinsloo & harvey the viability of individual oral assessments for learners table 2: subtests used as part of impact evaluation as progressed over the two years baseline (wave 1) feb 2015 midline (wave 2) oct/nov 2015 end-line (wave 3) oct/nov 2016 oral pictorial/vocabulary ü digit span or auditory sequencing ü phonemic awareness ü ü ü egra letter sound ü ü ü egra word recognition ü ü ü egra non­word decoding ü ü sentence reading (setswana) ü ü paragraph reading (setswana) ü ü writing (setswana) ü ü reading (english) ü 3.2.4 procedures the 3ie­funded egrs study used a randomised control trial (rct) design and an independent service provider performed and scored the assessments. this limited potential bias or manipulation. however, the hsrc still monitored 10% of data collection for quality assurance purposes. in order to conserve the benefits of an on-going single-blind study, the hsrc and the service provider remain unaware of which schools are receiving one of the intervention types and which schools are control schools. 3.2.5 brief findings of the impact evaluation at the point of this article, only the midline results were available and are considered preliminary. these indicated a significant, albeit small, impact for both intervention 1 and intervention 2. for further insights and a discussion of the survey instrument findings, see taylor et al. (2016). 4. findings and discussion related to the use of the egra tool there are several challenges concomitant with assessing literacy in early grade learners. the design of the egra tool itself as well as careful administration allow for mitigation of these challenges. firstly, test anxiety has long been noted as a negative influence in language learning (hewitt & stephenson, 2012). this can be further exacerbated in the case of learners from disadvantaged backgrounds, as in the case of the learners who participated in the two interventions. in this context, learners’ exposure to language, reading materials and other educational resources within the home is limited which negatively influences their language and self­regulation development (howard & melhuish, 2016). given the lack of stimulation within the home, there is added pressure to develop these skills at school, which augments learner anxiety in test situations. although only applicable to the sjsk intervention, it is also worth noting that learners may be assessed in a language other than their hl depending on their school and other factors. not only can this give an inaccurate measure of their literacy ability but it can also accentuate their test anxiety (phillips, 1992; hewitt & stephenson, 2012). the egra tool is 8 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) designed to assess learners who may be illiterate which ensures that the pitch of the subtests is at the right level (gove & wetterberg, 2011). the one­on­one aspect of individual testing removes any competitive pressure learners may experience. it also provides a space for the test administrator (ta) to put the learner at ease, discussed at a later stage. to relate test anxiety more specifically to the processes of early-grade (grade 1) impact evaluations, it is noted that the baseline assessment usually takes place during the first weeks of schooling. this is in order to provide a comparative measure for the results of the post­intervention assessment. it is expected that learners are for the most part pre­literate. this understandably increases their anxiety when asked to individually perform a not­yet­ learned face­to­face task with a ta who is not their teacher. in addition, formal education and assessment are still new experiences for these learners. learner anxiety may have a detrimental influence on their test performance, which may have other implications including incorrect assumptions that the test instruments are too difficult (a false floor effect which is discussed at a later stage) and, if the intervention has an effect, making the intervention appear more effective than in reality. however, careful consideration and training of the ta can assist in this challenge. in addition, quality assurers from the hsrc conducted random visits during the data collection period and made note of any test anxiety shown by the learners and what the ta did to assist. as indicated, the recruitment, selection and training of the tas are important factors. in order to offset test anxiety and put the learner at ease, the ta must be skilful in working with children and establishing rapport. here a fine balance must be maintained; the ta must also refrain from inadvertently coaching a particular learner(s) as this violates the standard manual. with regard to language, the ta must be well versed in the hl of the learner, the language of teaching and learning of the school and possibly english for training purposes. this is particularly important during an oral assessment, as the ta must be able to communicate effectively so that the learner is at ease and fully understands what is expected. furthermore, the tas must be willing to be trained in the method used during the impact evaluation and administer the assessments without deviation or personal inflection. in addition, the egra subtests are timed and these measures must be strictly retained. these are important considerations for quality assurance, as the tests must be administered in the same manner to each learner without change or manipulation. therefore, the hsrc hosted training workshops for tas, which included role­plays as well as simulations at nearby schools. the latter were included to ensure that the tas were fully proficient but also to develop their familiarity with the tests. it is not beneficial to the learners if the ta is unsure of themselves or if they robotically intone each instruction. concerning reliability and validity, the egra tool requires intra­rater reliability if it is a single ta assessing all learners at that point in time. in addition, the oral nature can mean that there is no paper­and­pen record of learner performance; there are only the recorded assessment scores (gove & wetterberg, 2011). in the impact evaluations performed by the hsrc, the fieldworkers were extensively trained and visited the schools in pairs. learner assessments were also well recorded, by means of crossing out incorrect responses and scoring on individual learner assessment packs each assigned a unique learner code. in order to ensure validity, pilot assessments were performed before each data collection period. therefore, the quality of the impact evaluations was assured by the hsrc by pilot assessments, intensive training, fieldwork monitoring and statistical analysis to assess for bias or manipulation. this served to support that in the south african context, the egra 9 prinsloo & harvey the viability of individual oral assessments for learners subtests are authentic, in that they measure what they intend to measure rather than what would be easy to assess (brown, 2004). as stated previously, it was not possible to calculate the reliability coefficients from the intervention studies. the use of this assessment method enabled the ta to separate the inability to read from a lack of content knowledge. therefore, rather than comprehension skills, it was the accuracy of reading that was assessed which indicates their knowledge of phonics and decoding skills and at most, some vocabulary. accuracy is an additional concern when assessing such young learners, as they are quick to develop literacy skills. the exponential increase in skills can lead to a large percentage increase between baseline and end line measurements. this then makes it appear that the intervention was more effective than in reality. this is also linked to floor and ceiling effects. however, much of the foregoing is obviated by implementing a (randomised) control trial, in which the relative proficiency growth of learners exposed to interventions is compared against the lower growth for learners not exposed to the interventions. the test instruments were designed in such a way that the range of responses reported by the instrument is rather wide to avoid very low (floor) or very high (ceiling) achievement scores. if the scores are all very low and demonstrate none of the skills being assessed, then little further information from the test can be derived. the same is true of the ceiling effect. such careful development of the testing instruments ensures that the pitch of the instrument is at the correct level. the use of the egra tool offsets the mentioned challenge as it is specifically aimed at low-income countries whose learners perform below the “floor” of previous international assessments. this assessment was designed specifically for grade 1 to 3 learners to assess the foundational skills necessary for the development of reading and therefore does not assume any reading or writing skills on the part of the learner (gove & wetterberg, 2011). when planning the current impact evaluations, it was envisaged that as cohorts entered higher grades, additional assessment subtests would be included. this is to measure developed proficiencies not assessed well any longer by the standardised egra tool, as used in the current evaluations, as the egra sub­tests cannot be changed. another challenge of early grade reading assessment in south africa is related to the standardisation of the curriculum language of learning and teaching (lolt). the lolt for the early grades can be any one of the 11 official south african languages and is usually the hl of the majority of learners in the area. however, despite their official status, the standardisation of african languages is subject to a complex debate between linguists, educators and policy makers. although there is insufficient space here to give this debate due consideration, it is worth noting that the resultant controversy has further diminished the use and perceived value of african languages in education (see webb, 1999, 2004, 2010; barkhuizen, 2002; wa kabwe­segatti, lafon & webb, 2008; webb, lafon & pare, 2010). despite this complex situation, the egra tool is able to overcome this challenge by virtue of its design and the fact that it can be adapted to accommodate local varieties/dialects of the home languages, besides already having been translated into the official african languages in south africa. in addition, and for the moment, the word recognition and non­word decoding subtests, in the authors’ experience, albeit quite basic, remain quite difficult for most rural learners in the grade 1­3 range, where the evaluations being discussed were pitched. with regard to practicalities, individual oral assessment is time consuming and is depen­ dent on the physical facilities and human resources available, as either the assessment must take place in a separate quiet room or the rest of the class must be disciplined to sit and work quietly without interrupting the on­going assessment. additionally, conducting many 10 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) consecutive individual oral assessments is a tiring experience. to illustrate the time needed, the entire learner assessment battery including the egra required approximately four and a half hours for assessing 20 learners in the 3ie­funded impact evaluation. of that time, the egra subtests needed approximately 4­6 minutes per learner. what was noted during the implementation of data collection was that it is important to keep up the motivation of the ta so that each child is treated equally without deviating from the administration manual or reducing enthusiasm. this does not only ensure quality assessment but also equal treatment of all learners independently of when they are assessed. together with the aforementioned, a high sophistication on the part of the ta is thus required, which also requires high payment and high training. 5. recommendations although the standard egra can be and was used in the south african context, it is suggested that a sub­committee for each african language be formed. each committee can then look in­ depth into the current relevance and correctness with particular attention to alignment with high­frequency patterns and occurrences in real language utterances, schoolbooks, etc. such a process will enable equitable assessment of all african languages regardless of complexity. this will also assist in preparations to measure very proficient learners by, for example, using longer stimulus words or, for that matter, more words. however, it is important to note that one could also record the seconds (below the allowed 60 seconds for each of the egra subtests) that it takes such proficient learners to complete all letters or words. it is also recommended that the standard egra subtests be used rather than additional or amended scales as learner achievement levels in rural underperforming schools is low and will remain so for a while still. the observations made regarding the use of the egra tool can be further extended to include classroom practice. concerning assessment, reading curriculum­based measures (reading cbms) are a type of continuous assessment with several benefits: 1) they are curriculum neutral, 2) they can be administered and scored quickly to provide feedback on learner performance to teachers who then implement remedial measures and 3) content is designed to assess learning goals rather than instructional levels. one such cbm is the egra toolkit (gove & wetterberg, 2011). in using the egra tool to inform teachers, there are several scores that can be used, namely decoding fluency, power of achievement and speed of effort. decoding fluency is given by calculating the correct ratio of the letter sound, word recognition and non­word decoding subtests as follows: • egra ls fluency = egra ls correct letters/egra ls reached letters * 100 • egra wr fluency = egra wr correct words/egra wr reached words * 100 • egra nwd fluency = egra nwd correct words/egra nwd reached words * 100 the correct letters or words also indicate the power of learners’ achievement whilst the reached word count gives the speed of learners’ reading effort. a next level would be to look diagnostically at each sub­item (letter, word, letter combination) and identify which ones each learner flies through or stumbles over consistently. the teacher can then concentrate in subsequent lessons on the latter. however, this is not without challenges as south african classes can be quite large which exacerbates the need for discipline, particularly when an individual learner is being assessed, as well as the time needed to assess all learners. the improvement of teacher training is thus 11 prinsloo & harvey the viability of individual oral assessments for learners recommended as well as the appointment of reading assistants. this training must not only focus on how to teach areas such as phonics or spelling but also the different structures of each language, their semantic organisations and discourse structure. training programmes must thus foster content knowledge, language knowledge, pedagogy as well as flexibility and responsiveness within teachers (moats, 2009). this is further motivation for sub­committees for each african language who can assist in creating such a programme. the above recommendations for sound teacher training must be accompanied by curri­ culum and policy changes. within the curriculum and assessment policy statements (caps) for grades r to 3, the grade 1 term 1 curriculum allows 4.5 hours per week for reading which includes phonics, shared reading and group reading. in the following terms, this curriculum progresses to include paired reading where learners read books to one another and independent reading. however, the curriculum does not allot time to one­on­one reading teaching. despite this, by the end of the first grade learners are assessed in terms of phonics, decoding and reading ability. it is recommended that the curriculum undergo revision to accommodate one­ on­one reading instruction as well as individual oral assessments. furthermore, adequate language development materials need to be provided by government departments that are designed and graded at the correct pitch for south african learners. 6. conclusion individual oral assessment as used in the egra tool is suitable for application in low socio-economic communities, is linguistically flexible for the diverse language context of south africa and is specifically developed for the assessment of early grade learners’ reading ability. these aspects of the egra tool meet several challenges of assessing early grade learners. however, the test also has several practical requirements in order to be an effective instrument. the most important of which is training in the administration method ensured by, as used during the impact evaluations, ta simulation training, modelling, role­play, followed by moderation and quality assurance. the egra tool can also be used within the classroom as a cbm as a continuous assessment. in addition, recommendations are made for teacher training, curriculum changes and government responsibility in ensuring the adequate provision of reading development materials. by doing so, the quality of literacy education in south africa will 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https://doi.org/10.1080/10228195.2010.500674 webb, v., lafon, m. & pare, p. 2010. bantu languages in education in south africa: an overview. ongekho akekho! ­ the absentee owner. the language learning journal, 38(3), 273­292. https://doi.org/10.1080/09571730903208389 wiliam, d. 2011. what is assessment for learning? studies in educational evaluation, 37(1), 3­14. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.stueduc.2011.03.001 pie33(1).indb perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 87 social justice as a conduit for broadening curriculum access: stories from classroom teachers melanie martin jabulani ngcobo it has become public knowledge that teachers have gradually been called to teach learners to world-class standards in order to enable them to participate actively in the global economy. this has fuelled a debate on how teachers should be prepared to fulfil this new role. in-service programmes on social justice and education have often been critiqued for failing to build teachers’ subject knowledge and pedagogical skills which are essential for facilitating learners’ access to the curriculum. this paper takes a position that teaching is an inescapably political act that often (if not always) involves ideas, power and access to learning and life opportunities. the study presented in this paper was designed to explore how teachers used social justice pedagogy as a conduit for making the curriculum accessible to all their learners. data for this study were generated from self-reflexive action research reports from a sample of 20 teachers submitted as part of the assessment requirements for the advanced certificate in education (ace) programme. the data were used to understand 1) how teachers conceptualised and understood social justice, and 2) how teachers utilised these understandings in broadening curriculum access for their learners. the study found that participants conceptualised and understood social justice on a basis of a philosophy of education as transformation, which often called on them to traverse political borders. for these teachers, teaching for social justice meant that education was construed as a means to break the cycle of social ills, victimhood and hegemony. the study presented some emerging thoughts on how knowledge about social justice in education could be deployed by teachers to broaden access to and in the curriculum. keywoords: social justice, curriculum access, in-service education melanie martin university of kwazulu natal, school of education e-mail: martinm@ukzn.ac.za telephone: 033 260 6456 (w) jabulani ngcobo department of basic education e-mail: ngcoboj32@gmail.com perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 88 introduction the field of social justice has grown immensely. however, this growth has evolved with challenges in deepening and broadening understanding of social justice. in most instances, conceptualisation of social justice has been framed within binary, ‘either or’ understandings of identity. that is, identity construction positions people either as oppressors or oppressed depending on the social identity group that one belongs to. such binary understandings have resulted in many individuals’ being positioned or actively positioning themselves as working for or against social justice, while being oblivious of the complexities involved in working for social justice. this often makes it difficult for identity to be conceptualised and understood within frameworks that allow for intersectionality, simultaneity and saliency (crenshaw, 1993; jones & mcewen, 2000). the notion of ‘social justice’ is used quite prolifically, with almost all teachers branding themselves as a social justice teacher. in a sense, the notion of social justice has become a catchphrase for political correctness and is in itself incapable of assisting teachers to interrogate and explore patterns of their internalised dominance in their attempt to broaden access to and in the curriculum for all learners. since the advent of democracy in south africa, with its formulation of the new constitutional promise of social justice, equity and equality, the concept of social justice has generally been used as a politically correct term to express one’s allegiance to the new constitutional promise – far removed from the ideals of the new constitutional framework (ramphele, 2012). the conceptualisation of social justice in this paper is that social justice denotes something more than a label such as being a social justice teacher – social justice is a political commitment that requires action and activism. social justice is less about declaring oneself as being ‘saved,’ and more about the activism to live and work towards fairness, equity, peace and equality. in our work in in-service education for social justice, we have recognised that our students come with a complex matrix of social identities. these identities often texture the way in which our students view the world, others and their teaching spaces. the contested nature of schooling often seduces teachers to participate in struggles that invite them to meddle in identity construction politics. as a foundation for living and working for social justice, it is vital for teachers to engage critically with issues of social justice in relation to how they position themselves in these struggles. as teachers working to teach for social justice, we often hear stories from our students of being confronted with situations that require them to traverse borders of dominant discourses. our reading of their stories is that this is often preceded by an awareness of a particular way in which society is constructed – that is, an awareness of the existence of oppressive practices and attitudes. as authors of this paper, we acknowledge that the extent to which their social identities are shaped, constructed social justice as a conduit for broadening curriculum access: stories from classroom teachers melanie martin & jabulani ngcobo 89 and reconstructed by their experiences as students in the ace: values and human rights in education is a matter of further investigation. we know from our experience of working with the students that when they begin participating in this specialisation, they are usually unaware of what it means to teach for social justice. it is only in the journey that they begin to develop alternative lenses for viewing the world, which often carries a promise about the way in which they might eventually think and act in the world. from our experience as lecturers, we have learned that students often join the ace: values and human rights in education specialisation with a generally uncritical understanding of their roles as teachers working in schooling contexts that are affected by a complex matrix of social, political, historical and economic factors. in a sense, they are unaware of the hegemonic ideologies underpinning the act of educating and the role that ideologies play in constructing and positioning learners and teachers. for instance, our students are initially unaware of the complex realities that their learners have to contend with daily. more often than not, students tend to cast their lenses outside of their own practice and focus on learners whom they believe are the source of the problems that make curriculum access difficult and sometimes impossible. it is our view that this thought process of students fails to acknowledge the extent to which their beliefs and actions prevent learners from accessing the curriculum. this is compounded by systemic barriers that reinforce the marginalisation of already disempowered learners. teachers need to understand that all learners must have access to the curriculum. therefore, access to and in the curriculum is not just for the chosen few, but for all learners, even those who are not the norm. our argument should be clear from the above, namely that social justice could be deployed as a useful conduit to ensure access to and in the curriculum for all learners. we refute the argument that social justice is devoid of an academic foundation and, hence, weak in its usefulness as a means to achieve academic ends. embedded in the substance of our argument is the understanding that teaching is an inescapably political act. we believe that social justice education should serve the function of empowering teachers’ pedagogy. it should also open up space for them to reflect on their own pedagogical practices and hold them responsible for ensuring access to and in the curriculum for all their learners. the notion of social justice the lens used to frame and understand this study is located within the notion of social justice. as referred to earlier in this paper, social justice is a shifting, elusive and dynamic concept. in the context of this paper, social justice is defined as both a process and a goal. adams, bell and griffins (1997:4) describe the ultimate goal of social justice education as ‘full and equal participation of all groups in society that is mutually shaped to meet their needs’. for instance, in this study, the intention is to broaden curriculum access to ensure that learners not only have access to the perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 90 curriculum, but that conditions are such that they are able to participate in the curriculum in ways that meet their individual needs. so, the vision of social justice education is to ensure equitable distribution of resources and opportunities to all learners. with regard to the process towards realising this goal, processes and mechanisms should be ‘democratic and participatory, inclusive and affirming of human agency and human capacities’ (adams et al., 1997:4). for example, access to and in the curriculum must make it possible for learners to use their current capacities to develop their full potential. that is, they must not only be present, but also be active players in the curriculum, and accrue maximum benefits irrespective of their individual differences. therefore, the notion of social justice is an ethical frame in which equity and the achievement of a primary social trajectory are elevated above all else. according to rawls (1972), two principles define social justice. the first principle is based on individuals’ having an equal right to basic liberties in a society. for instance, all learners have equal right to education – education is not a preserve for the few; it is what every learner has to enjoy. the second principle involves giving the greatest social and economic benefits to those least advantaged. social justice is not about making things equal; it is about equity, and equity, in turn, is about the fair distribution of resources and opportunities. therefore, it is about recognising that, for instance, learners do not begin from the same starting point; and about ensuring that there are supportive structures which would allow learners who are more disadvantaged to participate actively. the emerging social justice discourse calls for teachers working for social justice to interrogate the assumptions and structural dynamics which drive practices that could pose insurmountable barriers and invisible ceilings for learners who are aspiring to achieve their potential by means of education. in this sense, social justice is about levelling the ground so that all learners have access to and in the curriculum. this could mean differentiation of the curriculum to ensure that all learners do not only feel welcome, but are indeed regarded as legitimate players whose experiences are used to advance their participation. in essence, social justice education aims to broaden access to and in the social, political and economic goods available in a particular society. the study context, research methodology and design the purpose of the ace programme at the university of kwazulu-natal is to provide professional and academic advancement for practising teachers. this means that the programme aims to develop and enrich teachers’ praxis in their situated contexts. the ace: values and human rights in education, in particular, aims to develop social justice educators who, through their participation in the specialisation, become more and more empowered, and begin to work in more anti-oppressive ways with social justice as a conduit for broadening curriculum access: stories from classroom teachers melanie martin & jabulani ngcobo 91 their learners. the modules provide activities, texts and theories for development in their field of specialisation as teachers for a more just and equitable society. the study presented in this paper is located within the qualitative tradition. we read teachers’ texts using a critical paradigm. the critical paradigm problematises the notion that individuals such as teachers operate free of the political influence and regards the various ways in which people view the nature of reality, the nature of knowledge, and the concept of truth as highly contestable subjective acts. the study sought to understand how teachers conceptualised social justice education and how these understandings were deployed as a conduit to broaden access to and in the curriculum. selection of participants this paper uses data from a sample of 20 teachers completing their final year of their ace: values and human rights in education. purposive sampling was applied to select participants from a group of 150 students. selected participants were students who had obtained a result of more than 60% in the module social equity in professional practice, which is a final-year second-semester module that introduces students to self-reflexive action research. purposive sampling is in keeping with cohen, manion and morrison’s (2000) understanding that participants are selected because they meet particular criteria as determined by the researcher. for our purposes, the motive for using purposeful sampling was to be able to access participants whom we believed had demonstrated sufficient, critical and in-depth knowledge of reflexivity which could have influenced their practice positively. all participants were primary school teachers who had completed their national professional diploma in education (npde) and did not possess a university degree. participants taught in a range of schools in the province of kwazulu-natal; 16 out of the 20 participants taught in rural contexts. three out of the 20 participants were male. it is important to indicate that only six students in the whole class were male. so, three constituted 50% of the male students. this is normal for our specialisation, because the number of male students has always been significantly lower than that of female students. in order to ensure that students were not telling us what they thought we wanted to hear, we built in five sessions for students to meet with their respective tutors in their tutorial group to interrogate each student’s report with regard to processes followed and emerging understandings. the sessions were meant to assist students to progressively develop their papers based on the input that they were receiving from the group. students were required to keep a journal of their reflections and learnings. in addition, it was made clear to students that they had to frame their work around the curriculum challenges that they were currently experiencing with the learners whom they were teaching at the time. the intention was to reduce the perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 92 influence of the focus on marks, although we know that it could not be completely eliminated because it all eventually boiled down to a mark. there are many complexities involved in the use of reports intended for assessment for a study such as this one. thus, we acknowledge the possibility of a bias that could have been present in the reports and that students might have presented reports in keeping with their beliefs of what their tutors wanted, as well as the need to position themselves as teachers working for social justice. thus, there might be a presentation of an ideal teacher as opposed to what actually occurred in their practice. data generation data were generated from self-reflexive action reports that students had submitted as part of their programme assessment requirements. the purpose of the selfreflexive action research projects was for students to use theoretical and conceptual knowledge gained over the three semesters to inform their practice in a meaningful, more socially just way. students had to identify a curriculum issue affecting learning and teaching in their contexts, and design and carry out an intervention programme using critical self-reflexive action research. central to the action research was the imperative for students to be self-reflexive, that is, to engage in an ‘inquiry by the self for the self’ (mcniff, 2002:4). participants were required to develop a self-reflexive kind of consciousness of their own practice. they had to challenge and question their particular value systems that might have had a negative impact on learners’ progress in their classroom and then work towards a more just, democratic praxis in broadening access to and in the curriculum. in so doing, they had to acknowledge the need to own the problem and become responsible and accountable for changing oppressive practices that presented as barriers to maximum access to and in the curriculum (noffke & somekh, 2011; creswell, 2008). excerpts used in this paper were taken directly from students’ self-reflexive action reports and form the basis for our argument on the deployment of social justice as a conduit for broadening access to and in the curriculum. data analysis the reports were analysed using a thematic approach. initial coding involved broad categories of issues that emerged from the data that were divided into meaningful units for analysis purposes. coding was done both inductively and deductively in that particular understandings emerged from the data which were coded in particular ways. this is also referred to as emic coding which is a representation of the participants’ actions, explanations, conceptualisations that are distinct to their contexts. etic or priori categories or codes represented our researchers’ worldviews and understandings based on the literature and experiences (nieuwenhuis, 2007). we used theoretical constructs to identify emerging themes that would address our research questions. social justice as a conduit for broadening curriculum access: stories from classroom teachers melanie martin & jabulani ngcobo 93 ethical considerations all participants were requested to provide and sign consent forms for the use of their reports for this particular research study. confidentiality was ensured through the use of pseudonyms for participants and any other potentially identifying information in the reports. presentation of findings the meaning of social justice and education the data revealed that participants had constructed particular conceptualisations of social justice and education. for them, education was more than an academic endeavour. it involved the understanding that education and teaching was a political act, and that whatever they did or felt in the classroom had far-reaching implications for the future endeavours of their learners. understanding the lives of, firstly, themselves as teachers, then the lives of their learners, the curriculum and the school as an institution itself, played a vital role in assisting them to frame and adapt their teaching and learning processes in order to make it relevant to the contexts in which they taught. for instance, one of the participants, nomusa, made this synoptic comment with regard to the essence of the act of educating: i do not focus only on my learners academic performance i also strive to give them affection and understanding. this ensures that they are emotionally prepared to handle subject related issues such as knowing their multiplication tables in mathematics, their spelling in english. a better understanding of the process of teaching and learning required that participants first engage in an intense process of self-reflection, which was, for some, emotionally engaging and personally challenging (o’connor, 2008). all the participants recognised teaching and learning as more than the mere teaching of academic content. part of the self-reflexive process that teachers engaged with entailed their valuing all those involved in the educative process. this, in turn, enabled them to negotiate and sometimes challenge what they believed negated this valuing of learners and their ability. it formed part of their identification of what ‘a good and supportive teacher did’ and enabled them to regain the necessary energy in order for schools to do what they are supposed to do, namely to ‘teach and not tolerate issues like laziness, drunkenness’. it meant ‘challenging the things that the teachers in my school do and even what the school practices are’(pearl). findings from the project are reminiscent of findings by other researchers, such as maclure, (1993) and kelchtermans and ballet (2002), who indicated that teachers will use their political belief systems as a motivation and justification for their particular ways of engaging with their professional work. this understanding of access to and in the curriculum ensured that participants worked hard to ensure that learners were learning their academics, for if they failed to do this, it would mean that: perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 94 …(the) lives of our children would be lost and destroyed ... as at the end learners have to pass mathematics, natural sciences, isizulu, english and so on … it is ultimately about symbols and marks (sizwe). contrary to dominant understanding of teaching and learning, participants viewed education as education for transformation, which was underpinned by the value of action. however, their understanding of the purpose of education was varied, a mixture of neoliberalism and human rights. the participants often vacillated between two understandings, namely the need for structural change and a devolution of power (human rights discourse), but they still recognised that one had to be realistic when dealing with contexts (neoliberalism). questions need to be answered … these include what the purpose of the system is, what are the affected people’s beliefs about education, what does learning and teaching mean, why should we teach in a particular way ... communities send children to schools because they want to improve their situation. they want learners to become engineers, teachers, and accountants and so on. this means that teachers have to teach well in order to meet these needs (jane). for these participants, education has far-reaching consequences and many beneficiaries, namely the teachers themselves, learners, learners’ families, teachers’ families and the community at large. thus, for most participants, education was about survival and, therefore, skilling learners to be able to actively take part in the economy: education is not a luxury it is what breaks the cycle of poverty, victimhood and hegemony. so, it must be good and of high quality. the system must perform well (busisiwe) we must teach them now so that tomorrow we will find them ready and well prepared to face life. they must do well in school so that they would be able to have good jobs that pay well (zama). it is my belief that everybody should be able to read and write and count … is it not the function of the school to provide quality education for all? (nokwanda) from this perspective, we are able to conclude that participants were very aware of what, for them, were real purposes of education, and they were aware of the problems facing the majority of south africans. it was clear that participants had found a necessary balance between understanding the reality of the south african context and the dominant understandings of the purpose of education. constructing alternative philosophies of education academic views of teaching should highlight and problematise intersections of education and power. participants in this study argued that, where there were inequities in their schooling context, mostly as a result of dominant practices and beliefs about learners from a particular class, there would be a need for teachers to step in and provide both academic access and pastoral care. participants further struggled to decide how to provide both access to learning and access to social and social justice as a conduit for broadening curriculum access: stories from classroom teachers melanie martin & jabulani ngcobo 95 economic support. for instance, one of the participants, noluthando, painted the dilemma as follows: when i finished studying from college, i was eager to use all the good things that i had learned there. however, on my first month of teaching, the reaction of my colleagues to simple things such as using teaching aids, taught me that what i had learned from college had no place here. i knew it was the right thing but, being new, i did not have the courage to push this agenda …it is only now that i have the courage to experiment with various ways of ensuring that learners do well in the subjects that i teach … nancy frazer’s (1997, cited in rizvi, (2009) conceptual framework of social justice as recognition was important in this regard. it showed teachers’ responsive practices following an understanding of what learners required of them as their teachers. kathy, for example, understood ‘her personal beliefs, attitudes and behaviour conformed to that of a traditional teacher,’ which she felt discriminated against her english second language learners. this is not to say that teachers were not aware of their context, but rather that the context was used as an exclusionary tool to continue their practices of inequality and oppression. the exclusionary practices of the institution where zethu taught, for example, promoted the idea of ‘you need to be the boss in your classroom,’ reinforcing these practices of alienation and marginalisation. key to their transformative thinking was being critically aware of the social injustice that the vast majority of learners are exposed to daily (tickly & dachi, 2009). teachers explained in their action research self-reflexive projects that learners in their classroom displayed poor language and maths ability, discipline problems, drug and substance abuse, learning difficulties, or poor vocabulary. because this project called on them to change their own practice, they needed to focus inwardly and assess the extent to which they were contributors to the difficulties that learners faced but, more importantly, focus on how to change their practice to help learners. this kind of transformative thinking was based on a critical awareness of political and cultural assumptions and understandings that have an impact on how participants viewed themselves and their relationships with learners. this, in turn, led to a more inclusive understanding of the impact that their practice and experience had on the choices they made on how to deal with the challenge of broadening curriculum access. these were multiple, varied and contradictory at times, reflecting their attempts to construct and reconstruct an identity that they felt was in keeping with social justice thinking and activism (mezirow, 1981). for instance, participants were conscious of the unequal power dynamics that featured in their relationship with their learners, and that teaching for social justice called for something more than a mere rhetoric. zodwa’s reflection reveals her realisation that incompetent teachers could make it difficult for learners to gain maximum benefit from teaching and learning situations: perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 96 i have learned that sometimes it is me as an educator that is blocking a child to learn. as teachers, we often do this when we do not prepare our lessons well, assess in ways that do not take account of the diversity of our learners, have adequate subject knowledge, or do not cover the required amount of work … sithobile’s concerns are even greater because here she presents a dilemma about what she believes teaching has been reduced to. for her it is no longer about ‘(caring) much about other people,’ but more about ‘working to get an income, not for change and development. i am therefore concerned with what i see because it violates principles of social justice, as learners’ time has been and is being wasted ...’ foremost in her mind is that learners’ time has been ‘wasted’ and this means that learners have not had access to opportunities that develop their full academic capabilities. her concern is also an expression of understanding that teachers are socially responsible for learners and broader society (bell, 1997) constructing alternative philosophies of education often called upon participants to be critically aware of their practice in ensuring the provision of empowering opportunities to learn. thus, constructing an alternative philosophy of education constituted a political act that wrestled with issues of power. for these participants, construction was a messy, disconcerting process that involved navigating contradictions and controversies. this meant reconstructing their sense of identity or subjectivity with its historical roots steeped in inequality. for these participants the responsibility of challenging inequality and injustice lies with them as they acknowledge themselves as critical educators working for social justice. for precious, this starts with the recognition that she ‘cannot ride the blaming horse’. part of being a critical educator is taking responsibility for own practices and being accountable for the results of learners. this implied not shifting the blame for poor results on previous teachers, large numbers, own lack of disciplinary knowledge, a lack of departmental support or learners’ demotivation. instead, it was about their reflection on their own practices and then acting in new and alternative ways. however, it is important to acknowledge that some of these issues are indeed structural deficiencies which require the intervention of the department of education. for participants, constructing alternative philosophies of education called upon teachers to be transformative and future oriented despite the fact that conscientisation is arduous and painful. the challenges that exist in education for many of their learners must be taken seriously and acted upon. this means holding up the ideal that education can and should be geared towards helping every single individual to enjoy their full capabilities (ayers, quinn & stovall, 2009). the importance of providing quality education the understanding that education has an impact on people in various ways provided participants with a reason to continue working towards quality education for all social justice as a conduit for broadening curriculum access: stories from classroom teachers melanie martin & jabulani ngcobo 97 learners. working for quality education meant that they had to question what they were doing, and why they were doing things in those particular ways. here, the renewed understandings of their roles as teachers, with regard to providing access to and in quality education, instilled in participants the will to question their previously held assumptions. this allowed them space to begin a process of facilitating teaching and learning in ways that are more inclusive, non-discriminating and self-reflective (mezirow, 1997). one of the participants, khumbulani, reflects on the above as follows: i have to bring hope to the hopeless, justice and treat learners with passion and love. i have to restore their dignity so that they can gain self-esteem and confidence. restoring their dignity means ensuring that i present the curriculum in ways that make it possible for them to succeed. the low levels of performance in schools has been a major national concern for the past decade (e.g., african national congress, 2011, 2012; department of basic education, 2011; gustafsson & patel, 2008; jansen, 2012; motshekga, 2011; university of kwazulu-natal, 2010). as educators in south africa, participants were also concerned about the fact that south african education continued to present as a major source of socio-cultural advantage and disadvantage (lam, 2007). this is how one of the participants, langelihle, put forth their concern with regard to the imperative of quality education: is it not the function of the school to provide quality education for all? if it is, then i have a responsibility to make sure that my learners do not only enjoy being at school, but that they also do well in literacy, numeracy and life skills … [e]ducation is about going back home with good results, that can take you to the next level of life. the above reveals, among other things, that the work of these educators was about addressing specific curriculum issues in order to ensure quality education for their learners. improving learner performance was viewed as a way to ensure quality education. a concluding note a few cautious conclusions can be drawn from the findings of this study. first, it would seem that participation in a social justice education specialisation, and doing this kind of project, opened a space for participants to develop a new frame of reference from which to view the world and their teaching. participants understood that teaching for social justice was about meeting both the academic and social and emotional needs of learners. this came after intense self-reflection and a realisation that teaching is not a neutral act, but a political act endowed with the potential to both exclude and include. the crucial role that teachers play in this process was highlighted. secondly, findings revealed that becoming a social justice teacher is both a process and a goal (adams et al., 1997). that is, it is not a once-off event that can be achieved overnight. instead, it involves developing a personal philosophy of education that is in line with the process and goal of social justice in meeting the needs of learners in context. perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 98 lastly, social justice could be deployed as a conduit to broaden access to and in the curriculum. that is, social justice teachers are obliged to teach in ways that broaden curriculum access for all learners. references adams, m., bell, l., & griffin, p. (eds) 1997. teaching for diversity and social justice. new york: routledge. african national congress. 2011. anc statement on annual national assessments results. johannesburg: african national congress. african national congress. 2012. umrabulo special edition: let’s talk politics: policy discussion documents – 2012. johannesburg: african national congress. ayers, w., quinn, t. & stovall, d. 2009. handbook of social justice in education. new york/london: routledge. bell, l. 1997. theoretical foundations for social justice education. in: m adams, l bell & p griffin (eds). teaching for diversity and social justice: a sourcebook. new york/london: routledge. cohen, l., manion, l. & morrison, k. 2000. research methods in education, 5th edn. london: routledge falmer. crenshaw, k. 1993. demarginalizing the intersection of race and sex: a black feminist critique of antidiscrimination doctrine, feminist theory and antiracist politics. in: dk weisberg (ed.), feminist legal theory: foundations. philadelphia: temple university press. creswell, j.w. 2008. mixed methods research in education. port elizabeth: nelson mandela university. department of basic education. 2011. 2011 school realities. pretoria: department of basic education. gustafsson, m. & patel, f. 2008. managing the teacher pay system: what the local and international data are telling us. paper presented at the development policy research unit conference on the regulatory environment and its impact on the nature and level of economic growth and development in south africa. retrieved 20 april 2012 http://ideas.repec.org/p/sza/wpaper/ wpapers99.html. jansen, j. 2012. the great deception: it is extremely difficult to fail grade 12 in south africa today, the witness, 27 february, p. 8. jones, s.r. & mcewen, m.k. 2000. a conceptual model of multiple dimensions of identity. journal of college student development, 41:405-414. kelchtermans, g. & ballet, k. 2002. the micropolitics of teacher induction: a narrative 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statement on the release of the annual national assessments results for 2011 by mrs angie motshekga, minister of basic education, union building. pretoria: department of basic education. nieuwenhuis, j. 2007. analysing qualitative data. in: k maree (ed.), first steps in research. pretoria: van schaik publishers. noffke, s. & somekh, b. 2011. action research. in: c lewin & b somekh (eds), theory and methods in social research, 2nd edn. london: sage. o’connor, k.e. 2008. “you choose to care”: teachers, emotions and professional identity. teaching and teacher education, 24:117-126. olivier, b. 2012. foucault and individual autonomy. paper presented at the university of kwazulu-natal. ramphele, m. 2012. conversations with my sons and daughters. parktown: penguin group. rawls, j. 1972. a theory of justice. oxford: clarendon press. rizvi, f. 2009. international perspective on social justice and education. in: w ayers, t quinn & d stovall (eds). handbook of social justice in education. new york/ london: routledge. tikly, l. & dachi, h. 2009. social justice in african education in the age of globalisation. in: w ayers, t quinn & d stovall (eds). handbook of social justice in education. new york/london: routledge university of kwazulu-natal. 2010. the state of education in kwazulu-natal: a report for kzn treasury. pietermaritzburg. 19 understanding pre-service teacher education discourses in communities of practice: a reflection from an intervention in rural south africa faisal islam pathways to education drawing on an evaluation experience of a teacher education preparation project in a rural area of south africa, this paper attempts to explore the possibility of using communities of practice (cop) in teacher preparation. the paper concludes that the concept of cop is powerful in providing spaces for selfreflection to pre-service teachers and challenging the dominant urban-based teacher education discourses in relation to rural schools. however, the cop is also problematic, especially with regard to the issues of social differences among the members of the cop and the sustainability of the broader influence of a cop on marginalised rural communities. keywords: communities of practice, pre-service teachers, teacher preparation, self-reflection, rural communities. introduction today teaching is even more challenging than before, as learners in schools all over the world are becoming increasingly diverse with regard to culture, language, learning needs and social class. global movements to improve education, such as no child left behind in the united states of america, world fit for education in europe or education for all in other parts of the world, are focused on dealing with the diverse learner population in schools. schools, and teachers, are now under constant pressure to play a key role in dealing with the changing landscape of the learner population (dillon, mitchell & strong-wilson, 2007). a critical element within the school system relates to how teachers are prepared to address the diverse needs of learners. however, there are concerns that traditional models of teacher education are not fully capable of producing teachers for changing times (tsui, edward & lopez-real, 2009; lieberman & miller, 1990). time and again, educators have advocated the importance of linking teacher education with the local context and have contended that many of the current practices lack context-based reflective preparation for teachers (darling-hammond, 1999; kincheloe, 2003). schulz (2005), for example, asserts that traditional teacher education programmes fall short in preparing teachers, and states that contemporary teacher preparation practices need to go beyond transferring the techniques from university-based settings into school settings. similarly, lieberman and miller (1990) draw attention to the fact that many contemporary approaches to teachers’ professional development have focused on a ‘deficit model’, emphasising that teachers need to learn from experts to overcome their ‘deficits’. with no links to ground realities, this makes it difficult for teachers to teach effectively in a challenging context. in light of the aforementioned backdrop, this paper draws lessons from a case of a school-university partnership project, rural teacher education project (rtep), designed to improve teacher education discourses in rural areas of south africa. the paper is divided into the following sections: the first section briefly describes the issues and gaps in teacher education in south africa, the second section discusses the concept of communities of practice as identified by lave and wenger (1991) and its linkage with rtep, the third section informs the methodology of the paper and is followed by a section on the findings and limitations of the cop. 20 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 issues and gaps in teacher education in a south african context teacher development has been regarded as central to transforming the south african educational system inherited from apartheid. the apartheid ideology has systematically suppressed the provision of a desired number of quality teachers to the black majority. the teachers were trained in racially defined institutions to serve the needs of a specific geography, race and ethnicity. when the first democratic government came into power, the crises of teachers, both in relation to quantity and quality, were considered to be some of the most critical challenges for post-apartheid south africa (sereto, 2004). however, many difficulties have been encountered, including a shortage of qualified teaching staff, especially in rural areas. both teaching and learning in rural schools are challenging, confronted with the issue of a lack of equipment and infrastructure (south african department of education, 2005). furthermore, the hiv and aids pandemic has exacerbated the situation and schools in rural areas are confronted with the additional issues of gender violence, sexism, bullying and corporal punishment, with many of the issues direct consequences of the apartheid legacy. all of these factors have contributed significantly towards the quality of education and lack of interest in education and teaching in rural schools (motala, dieltiens, carrim, kgobe, moyo & rembe, 2007). despite major policy shifts, the restructuring of the education system, the enactment of a new curriculum, and the transformation of the teaching landscape in the post-apartheid era, many argue that the quality of education across south africa has not significantly improved (kruss, 2009; morrow, 2007; the nelson mandela foundation, 2005). in addition to the many discrepancies, one key reason for this failure relates to the gaps in teacher education itself. johnson, monk and hodges (2000), for example, observe the lack of a supportive environment (physical, social and political), which minimises the potential of teachers to act and apply all that they learnt in their practice. buthelezi (2004) observes the same, but in the context of hiv and aids. while reflecting on teacher training programmes, she asserts that many of the existing programmes are unable to address the context in which teachers are teaching in the classrooms. samuel (1998) contends that teacher education, especially pre-service teacher education, has to de-link itself from the apartheid ideology. he suggests wider collaboration between teacher preparation institutions and the learning sites (i.e. schools) not only to equip teachers with the required tools, but also to provide the needed skills to teacher educators so that they can challenge their apartheid-dominated ideologies, culture and history. barasa and mattson (1998) noted that most south african teachers who were trained in the apartheid era lack the values, commitment and competencies to improve their professional development. one way to improve teachers’ commitments towards their professional development is to provide them space for self-reflection and self-reflexivity. indeed, one of the best places to provide such space is in the schools themselves. thus, the participants of the teachers development summit 2009, convened by the department of education in collaboration with other stakeholders representing educators, educators’ unions and agencies responsible for teacher development strongly observed that teacher development is both a right and a duty of the teachers in schools, and on-site in schools are the best places to develop teachers (teacher development summit, 2009). teachers as communities of practice in light of strong disenchantment with the current approaches to teacher preparation, a call for a renewed focus on teacher education with strong connections to the local context is reiterated (islam, mitchell, de lange, balfour & combrinck, 2011). in relation to south africa, it is critical that such a focus on teacher education has to link with broader socio-political and cultural perspectives, given the apartheid history of segregating the education system, including teacher education, on the basis of race, ethnicity and language and now on the basis of social class (chisholm, 2004). thus, it is important that teacher education be seen within the wider context of social theories of learning and frameworks. one such theoretical framework, as initiated by lave and wenger (1991) and later developed by wenger (1998), is communities of practice (cop). the term was initially derived to denote apprenticeship learning of novices from the existing community of practice until they become part of the cop. lave and wenger (1991:98) defined the term as follows: 22 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 rural teacher education project (rtep) and communities of practice the rural teacher education project (rtep) (2007-2009) is a school-university partnership for teacher preparation involving two rural schools in the vulindlela district of the province of kwazulu-natal and the university of kwazulu-natal (ukzn). its aim was to study how teaching and learning can become significant and a means of professional development when cohorts of pre-service teachers along with inservice teachers interject with one another in a broader social space in rural areas (mitchell, de lange, balfour & islam, 2011). over a period of three years (2007-2009), three cohorts of pre-service teachers (n=22 in 2007; n=19 in 2008; and n=20 in 2009), bed undergraduate students from the faculty of education at ukzn were selected to participate in the project and to do their four weeks of professional practicum in schools in the vulindlela district under the mentorship of in-service teachers (mentors) from the rural schools. each year, pre-service teachers lived together close to the rural schools, performed their teaching practicum in the schools, and were involved in doing research, mainly with learners and school staff members in the area, in order to connect their teaching to the local context. rtep helped the cohorts of pre-service teachers develop a social space, which led to the creation of cop. though spearheaded by the pre-service teachers, the cop developed in the rtep represents different levels of participation and different groups of people, including interaction with mentors and rtep coordinators, who themselves were graduate students from foreign universities and interned with the preservice teachers. since the pre-service teachers lived together and worked together in the schools, they had many intense opportunities to share and learn through formal and informal ways. the most important formal means of learning was exhibited in the daily de-briefing sessions. as a part of rtep, each evening during the teaching practicum, the pre-service teachers met and reflected upon their daily experiences. they discussed and shared their frustrations and achievements in the groups, some of which were based on their “at the end of the day” experiences and some of which were organised to talk about broader issues such as addressing hiv and aids and urban-rural inequalities. some pre-service teachers described how the cop enriched their experiences and learning. one of the best things about the project is that we lived together, worked together and shared our rooms with different partners. it taught us how to interact and learn from others. whenever we dealt with any problems [while teaching], we found that others were also facing the same problems. this encouraged us to find solutions by ourselves (focus group discussion, 2009). another pre-service teacher described how he felt about the strength that he received from the group. he said: there are [a] lot of things which can cause stress but because we worked as a group and we understood each other, we were able to conquer everything (individual interview, 2007). the cop also exposes the challenge of organising active participation of all group members in relation to internal dynamics and the diverse attributes of the group around their social capital. one of the project coordinators, who stayed with the pre-service teachers and coordinated their practica, described how race and ethnicities played out in the formation of the cop. she writes in her journal: at times the lines that divide the group run deep. for example, most times the dining room is split exactly in half: white people on one side, black people on the other. other times it is one cohesive group, with shared experience overpowering any differences. one pre-service teacher expressed his concerns about how his lack of language proficiency hampered him in his ability to effectively participate. he stated: [due to my deep rural background] my english is very weak, and by listening to others [pre-service teachers] i realised that i have to improve my language to fully participate in the discussions. my main learning came out of listening to others and meeting with my friends informally (individual interview, 2007). through rtep, pre-service teachers formed a cop with a shared understanding of learning to teach. the cop provided an opportunity to the participants to share and learn from the experiences of other members 23islam — understanding pre-service teacher education discourses in communities of practice of cop. however, it also poses the challenge of offering equal opportunities of participation across all cop members. this will be discussed in the findings section of the article. methodology the data was collected using participatory evaluation for each of the three rtep phases (2007-2009) and the reports were submitted to the rtep research team. the data presented in this article is drawn from 61 pre-service teachers, who were contacted during the course of three years. the data was collected in two steps. in the first step, the author reviewed the journals of the pre-service teachers, which they maintained regularly to document their daily experiences in and out of school. the journals served as a major source of data and laid the foundation for the second step, in which the pre-service teachers were contacted through two participatory workshops, thirteen focus group discussions and twenty indepth interviews during 2007-2009. the data was analysed using the abductive method and constant comparison method. the abductive method, as described by coffey and atkinson (1996), is an exploratory and interpretive framework, which relates a particular phenomenon to a broader context. this method is an important research approach in qualitative analysis, especially when not all the research variables are known in advance (levin-rozalis, 2004). using abductive inference, the key phrases from pre-service teachers’ narratives were identified, for example, my experience [in rural schools] is an eye-opener; i am astonished to see the plight of students; it has changed my life; and i never expected that rural schools are so different, and coded to make broader categories. these categories, during the second stage of evaluation, were brought to the group discussions, interviews and participatory workshops with the preservice teachers, in-service teachers and the rtep to further investigate the factors that caused the preservice teachers to think this way. since the study involves three diverse partners (i.e. pre-service teachers, in-service teachers and rtep management), the cross-case analysis of the above-mentioned categories were conducted using what glaser and strauss (1967) called the constant comparative method, a method that constantly compares the categories and their properties until they are fully integrated. key findings and discussion the setting created through the cop provided an opportunity to the pre-service teachers to share their experiences with one another, devise their strategies in consultation with one another and constantly reflect upon their strategies. it helped them to contest the dominant perception about rural schools, look back at their pedagogical practices in relation to the needs and demands in the rural schools, and to study the self and question the way in which they were trained to teach, particularly in rural schools. more specifically, the pre-service teachers pointed out the following: dispelling the myths and misconceptions about rural schools the direct experience of teaching and learning in rural schools in groups coupled with their full-time residence near the school provided a space for the pre-service teachers to challenge some of the myths about rural schools and education. one such misconception, as identified by some in-service teachers from the rural schools, is that students in rural schools lack a learning culture (islam, 2007). the preservice teachers, when connecting themselves more broadly to the wider context, began to challenge those perceptions. in doing so, they highlighted the importance of a passion and commitment to teaching. one group of pre-service teachers contends: we very soon realised that students are very enthusiastic to learn. during our first few classes, some of us found that students were misbehaving and were not attentive. but when we kept teaching them with commitment, they [students] also became committed to learn (focus group discussion, 2008). another prevailing notion, which the pre-service teachers challenged, is the perception from many in-service teachers from rtep rural schools that effective teaching is not possible in a low-resourced environment (islam, 2007). although pre-service teachers believe in the importance of appropriate 24 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 materials and resources for effective teaching, they also lamented that a lack of resources should not be used as an excuse to teach ineffectively. one pre-service teacher noted: the poverty is no excuse, really; it’s the poverty mindset that is crippling the school (pre-service teacher reflective journal, 2007). while pre-service teachers challenged the prevailing concepts of teaching and learning that many inservice teachers hold in the rural schools, they also contested the dominant negative portrayal of rural areas. rural areas are generally seen through the lens of poverty, hardship, backwardness and deprivation. however, the experience of rtep provided an opportunity to the pre-service teachers to see the rural idyll through a very different dimension, characterised by a sense of community, local efforts and pastoral work. amid the challenges in rural areas, many strengths of the rural setting – for example, how people act as a homogenous group in support of one another – sometimes go unnoticed. one of the schools in which the pre-service teachers were placed for practicum has taken some initiative to help students affected by hiv and aids through support from local community and school staff. in their journals and focus group discussions, some pre-service teachers called their mentors (in-service teachers in rural schools) “mothers,” “social workers” and “counsellors” to the learners. other pre-service teachers were deeply impressed by the pastoral work of some teachers. given that the schools were under-resourced and teachers’ pastoral work had not accrued any professional or personal rewards, pre-service teachers clearly saw signs of empathy: i managed to speak to one of the teachers who was selling snacks [that] she sells because [the money raised] helps needy students and [she] also organises clothing and shoes [for the students]… [i also] observed three teachers who were repairing the door for a toilet. they just took the initiative to do it themselves … i was so impressed (pre-service teacher reflective journal 2007). understanding the broader role of teachers cop explored the broader role of teachers by going beyond the classroom boundaries. it provided them with the opportunity to acknowledge the importance of empathy in teaching as well as to understand the complex task of teachers. since two of the cohorts (2008 and 2009) were also involved in conducting after-school activities such as sports, drama and role-play, speech contests and poetry, they had more opportunities to interact with the learners in informal ways. pre-service teachers construed these informal spaces as opportunities to understand the students’ needs and interests as well as to build trust and relationships with students. one pre-service teacher reflects: there is another side of teaching which i didn’t notice before. learning and teaching [not only happens] in classrooms, but also in the informal interaction between students and teachers … teachers often did not realise their power. [there is the] power to make a big impact on the lives of pupils no matter how difficult the situation is (individual interview, 2007). the above demonstrates that the pre-service teachers explored multiple dimensions of a teacher’s work. it gives them an orientation that helped them understand the broader role of teachers, delimiting them from formal interaction with learners through classroom settings to in-formal socialisation with the real lives of the learners. this enriched their vision of teaching and broadened their view on teaching and learning, especially in a rural context. reflecting on ‘self’ and developing professional identities the participation in cop through rtep helped the pre-service teachers to re-imagine the self and start thinking about themselves as teachers. in particular, they confronted if and why they want to teach, especially in rural areas, and what teaching means to them. one pre-service teacher expressed his optimism toward bringing about a positive contribution through his prospective career in education. he stated: 25islam — understanding pre-service teacher education discourses in communities of practice i discovered a very good teacher in myself. i am confident that i can bring a positive change and hope in the lives of the students affected by poverty, gender violence and hiv and aids (individual interview, 2007). the optimism is not only limited to what teachers can do in schools, but also finding a way to pay back those communities, which were systematically marginalised during the apartheid period. one pre-service teacher situates himself in a place-based education with a sense of responsibility to take on the challenge and play his role in discourse on rural education. he contends: i will teach in the rural schools. i have to fill the gap. if i don’t go, no one else will go … and the rural schools will remain deprived (individual interview, 2009). not all pre-service teachers see the things this way. despite sharing some sense of responsibility and eagerness to contribute, it appeared as if some pre-service teachers were hesitant to play their part. overwhelmed by the inequalities between the urban-based, privileged schools and the rural-based, underprivileged schools, one pre-service teacher provided an honest opinion as to why she was not yet ready to teach in rural schools. she describes: i am discouraged to see that rural schools do not have electricity, drinking water and sanitation. i cannot teach in this situation (individual interview, 2007). the participation in cop enriched the understanding of pre-service teachers and allowed them to reimagine the self by contesting their pre-existing perceptions about rural areas. they started thinking about where they would like to situate themselves with respect to their teaching career. some of them openly shared their intention to teach in rural schools, while others took a cautionary position. it also indicates that a lack of an enabling physical and professional environment is also a significant factor in dissuading many of the young teachers to pursue their teaching careers in rural schools. challenging the existing teacher education programmes a constant process of gaining new experiences, sharing them with the group members in cop and relating it with their existing skills and knowledge helped the pre-service teachers to contest how they are taught and prepared by the teacher education programmes. one pre-service teacher highlighted the lack of relevance in theory and practice. she observes: most of the modules that are being offered at the faculty of education are irrelevant to what i have seen in the rural areas (individual interview, 2007). another pre-service teacher goes further by identifying how the rural education discourse is missing in the existing dominant curriculum and teaching practices. she points out: none of my courses so far have prepared me to teach a student in a rural school who needs emotional support. not even my professors know how to deal with this, as they’ve never been to rural areas (individual interview, 2008). one more pre-service teacher commented how teacher training institutions failed to recognise the urbanrural disparity and uneven distribution of resources. he asserts: we have been taught at the [university] campus that all the schools in south africa are fully equipped with basic resources and technology. but this is not the case in rural areas (individual interview, 2007). the above experience of pre-service teachers also challenged the way the teachers are prepared at the faculties of education, a key to negotiating and contesting pre-existing identities. it illustrates how pre-service teachers reflected upon their teacher training experiences in relation to schools in the rural areas. the pre-service teachers compared the existing classroom practices on the campuses with their experiences in rtep and questioned their relevance in connection with the schools in rural areas. they further questioned the relevance of the modules that are offered at the faculty in comparison to what they 26 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 saw at the rural schools. similarly, they were also disappointed to note that the classroom practices at the faculty overtly neglect the ground reality of the schools in the rural schools. the above findings demonstrate that rtep’s cop provided the spaces to pre-service teachers to negotiate and contest what terrance carson called authoritative discourses (carson, 2009:351). comprising university courses, subject areas, teaching standards and the discourses of veteran teachers, authoritative discourses shape teachers’ identities and influence them in taking a particular side on teaching (carson, 2009). concerning the rtep experience, authoritative discourses were challenged at different levels. grounded in lived experience, the cop attempts to disrupt the traditional orientation of teaching and learning in rural areas, provides opportunities for self-study and revisits pre-existing identities, and questions the relevance of urban-based teacher education programmes to rural areas. problematising cop: the issues of participation, social difference, and what stays in rural areas the rtep’s experience suggests that the group dynamics within the cop play a key role in the success, failure and effectiveness of the cop, an area that has not been explicitly attended to in the literature on cops. the tensions among race, culture, social class and language have a crucial influence in shaping the group dynamics. it appears that a lack of social capital hampers some pre-service teachers from gaining the most out of the cop. for example, one of the pre-service teacher participants specifically pointed out that a lack of fluency in the dominant language has limited him to participate fully in cop settings. he said: [due to my deep rural background] my english is very weak, and by listening to others [pre-service teachers] i realised that i have to improve my language to fully participate in the discussions. my main learning came out from listening others and to meeting with my friends informally (individual interview, 2007). in addition, the patterns of social assembly within cop on the basis of race and ethnicity were also noted. white pre-service teachers tended to fraternise with other white pre-service teachers and black pre-service teachers felt more comfortable with black pre-service teachers. even in the second stage of evaluation, the same pattern was observed when white pre-service teachers met and sat together in focus group discussions and workshops and, similarly, black pre-service teachers also preferred to remain in the social spaces marked by their racial background. in relation to south africa, this model of association is in line with what jansen (2009:136) observes more broadly, that “no adult modeling of alternative ways of being together” exists. to ascertain as to how this pattern of socialisation has affected the cop, a more careful investigation is required, as my involvement was only in the second stage of the evaluation and did not allow me to witness and fully observe how racial patterns of socialisation have shaped the dynamics of cop. however, so far a significant difference was observed in the creation of a professional identity on the basis cop as the black pre-service teachers were noticed more enthusiastic and inspired to teach in the rural areas after their graduation than the other groups. cop has the potential to strongly influence the impoverished local context. however, the complexities arise in sustaining the influence. in the case of rtep, the cop brings resources, at least pertaining to human capital in the form of young, energetic and skilful cohorts, with a strong backing from the project coordinators, rtep staff and an accredited university, for a period of one month. the influx of unprecedented resources within the context of historically ignored and disadvantaged schools in rural areas has greatly enriched the entire environment in and around the schools, changing the teaching and learning environment. learners were observed to be more engaged with the qualified, disciplined and committed strangers in an environment that seldom witnesses such an experience. some in-service teachers were bought into being part of a cop by disciplining themselves and changing their attitudes for a short time. the influence was noticed by the parents and the local department of education. however, as the cohorts departed, the impact of cop on the broader environment has also started to dissipate. in a sense, things 27islam — understanding pre-service teacher education discourses in communities of practice started to get worse when the locale realised the constraints and limitations due to new exposure, but lacked the means to remove the systematic barriers. thus, it remains unclear as to how cop can sustain the impact and influence the dominant social patterns, which are systematically induced through a history of marginalisation and impoverishment. rtep’s cop is also a reminder of the importance to explore the larger impact of cop on individual members once they are separated from the cohort. through cohesion, stability and interdependence of the rtep’s cop, the pre-service teachers overcome many challenges and influence the broader environment while working together. however, it is important to investigate more broadly how the pre-service teachers address those challenges once they leave the rtep’s cop. more research is needed to understand the full scope of cop, for example, how a cop that emerges in a supportive environment through inter-agency partnerships or collaborations is different from a cop that emerges through indigenous efforts of the teachers themselves. conclusion the experiences of living and working together and constantly sharing experiences with one another through formal and informal means within a broader domain helped the cohorts of pre-service teachers emerge as a powerful cop. the learning produced in cop is informed by the knowledge produced through mutual engagement and is constantly mediated in the larger associated social context. the rtep’s cop experience influenced many pre-service teachers’ views on teaching and learning in rural schools, especially in breaking some common misconceptions about teaching and learning in rural areas. more importantly, it also challenged the teacher preparation discourses in south africa and pointed out the dearth of voices from rural areas in these discourses. the rtep experience also problematises the concept of cop with regard to whose perspective is dominant in the cop, especially when working with those who are systematically marginalised, how a flow of resources from a powerful setting to a less powerful environment influences the local domain with no evidence of a lasting change, and how learning in an organic but permanent cop is different from a temporarily created cop. the idea of providing a social space to learn within the local context through cop has the potential to influence many of the teaching preparation practices. a critical point, however, remains as to how such practices can contribute to reducing the urban-rural gap and finding lasting changes in rural education discourses. acknowledgement this article is based on work supported by the national research foundation (nrf). the author gratefully acknowledges the funding and support of the nrf. opinions, findings and conclusions herein are those of the author. references barasa fs & mattson e 1998. the roles, regulation, and professional development of educators in south africa: a critical analysis of four policy documents. journal of education, 23:42-72. buthelezi t 2004. the hiv/aids epidemic and teacher development: defining ‘positional’ perspectives. in: r balfour, c mitchell & buthelezi t (eds), teacher development 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cambridge, ma: harvard university press. wenger e 1998. communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. cambridge, u.k.: cambridge university press. 30 between a rock and a hard place, third space practitioners exercise agency abstract academics as well as educational and academic development practitioners often find themselves in an ambiguous space in which personal and professional transformation can take place. moving constantly between contexts and cultural learning environments at the university, these practitioners inhabit a strange, in-between space between mainstream academic support work, leadership and advocacy and other roles at the periphery. this space known as the third space from which other positions emerge, displaces the histories that constitute it and sets up new structures of authority, practice and discourses which are not always congruent with the university at large. this paper critically reflects on the experiences and insights of academics in a specific professional development course for new academics. using a critical discourse analysis of in-depth, semi-structured narrative interviews, the authors explore the journey of new academic practitioners as they exercise their agency to carve out a hybrid identity in the third space across institutional boundaries. while resistance and struggle are challenging aspects of third space work, these constitute legitimate processes of identity construction and socialisation through contestation of traditional roles at the university. this paper interrogates the university’s role in creating and sustaining enabling institutional conditions so that academics can work in creative, responsive and relevant ways in a changing higher education landscape. keywords: third space, professional development, new academics, agency 1. introduction with the expansion and massification of higher education, access has been opened up to students from different political, economic and social backgrounds (bassnett, 2005). this diversity includes a large proportion of students who are ‘differently-prepared’ for university study, placing new demands on the role of academics (hesa, 2011) in the classroom. this complexity also manifests in the recruitment and appointment of professional, academic, administrative and support staff (whitchurch, 2008) with increased workloads who have to juggle a vast array of roles such as research, teaching, administration and fund-raising. universities’ increasing trend towards managerialism and corporatism (beck & young, 2005) has led to recruiting dr kasturi behari-leak university of cape town ms natalie le roux university of cape town corresponding author natalie.leroux@uct.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v36i1.3 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2018 36(1): 30-43 © uv/ufs mailto:natalie.leroux@uct.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.3 31 behari-leak & le roux between a rock and a hard place and employing new academics with a wide range of demonstrable skills that supersede the traditional role of the research-driven, middle-aged male (reay, 2004). the contemporary university with its multiple institutional identities and purposes now requires academics with a mixed set of specific skills who can work out of the proverbial ‘box’. as the ‘new’ university ushers in new institutional projects, new ways of soliciting funding and new methods of assurance, academics’ lives become more nuanced and differentiated (clegg, 2008). yet in many cases, the structural configuration at the university remains intact, with traditional arrangements far from apace with broader social changes. this tension is pronounced when academic job advertisements and descriptions require a ‘skills-set’ that is often at odds with the actual demands of the roles when incumbents enact them. professionals (administrative, support and non-academic staff) for example, are ‘silent workers’ in academics’ research projects and remain invisible (szekeres, 2004). likewise, academics who are now doing a range of non-academic tasks including administrative work (cain & hewitt, 2004: 89) must show leadership skills, gain management experience, and liaise with funders and sponsors on various projects; all of which might better be described as ‘professional’ work. academics working in this field are referred to as academic staff developers or professional development practitioners as opposed to academic developers, who work mainly with students. more and more, academics and professionals find themselves in an “in-between”, hybrid space that shares attributes of the former traditional roles and identities ascribed by the university. given the complexity of the current landscape, it is not surprising that new academics who enter higher education from varied points undergo a huge shift in identity to function as effective practitioners. this paper explores the ways in which new academics struggle with challenges of placement, belonging, purpose and self-worth as they come to terms with changing identities and roles and emerging responsibilities. in this struggle, incumbents embrace new understandings of what it means to be a professional or an academic in current times and one might argue that the university has an obligation to bring these substantively new voices into the conversation (muller & druin, 2012). this study critically reflects on the experiences and insights of academics and professional development practitioners on a customised professional development course for induction of new academics at a research-intensive university. it explores the concept of hybridity of roles and identities in an emerging field known as the third space (bhabha, 1994; whitchurch, 2008, 2013) to see if there are opportunities for professional development practitioners to grapple with the shifts and changes in traditional university practices. it also explores the emergent implications for new academics who are caught ‘between a rock and a hard place’ in the academy. as the title of the article suggests, working in the third space often means contending with a series of constraints and challenges that emerge when traditional university job descriptions do not match or align with actual job realities in spaces of practice. these challenges are often experienced as uneasy, difficult and troublesome especially for new academics who are finding their feet. however, even in this challenging space, academics can find their voices and exercise their agency in optimistic and positive ways, especially, as this article suggests, if they are inducted into the academy in thoughtful and deliberate ways. 32 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) 2. professional development programmes for new academics induction programmes are traditionally conceptualised as ways to enculturate new academics into the university’s ways of being (barnett, 2000). in current times, however, induction cannot serve merely as an ‘assimilation’ vehicle through which new academics acquire the viewpoints, attitudes and definitions of already established and more experienced people or groups (trowler & knight, 2000). assimilation models of induction do not enable academics to engage critically with their contextual complexities (leibowitz, bozalek, van schalkwyk & winberg, 2014) or to gain insights into the deeper socio-cultural issues at play at the university and in the sector (mathieson, 2011). professional development, also known as academic staff development, is aimed at developing the professional practices of academics in their teaching and research roles in the academy, and as such requires attention to a host of environmental and contextual factors (leibowitz et al., 2014). one-size-fits-all programmes cannot assume that academics will respond in anticipated ways to the content presented or comply with constraining situations (connors, 2012). when new academics do not fit neatly into the university’s designated boxes, they are bound to react in individual ways to problems thrown at them (archer, 2000). there is therefore increased attention to the need for institutional professional development programmes to induct new academics in ways that ease their transition into the complex he context (behari-leak, 2017; quinn & vorster, 2012). the new academics practitioners’ programme (napp) cited in this study is an example of a generic professional development programme for new, full time academics with not more than 5 years’ experience in higher education. ‘new’ is often conflated with ‘young’, with interesting discursive consequences for new academics regarding how they are received by different stakeholders. the napp is intentionally designed to induct new academics to the structural opportunities and cultural nuances by engaging them in critical dialogues about what it means to be a new academic in higher education today. in other words, the focus of the programme is on strengthening new academic agency as they find a place of belonging at the university. to this end, the programme consists of core modules on teaching, learning, assessment, research, management and leadership, and is supported by a range of electives such as community building, challenges of transformation and decolonisation, teaching with technology, online learning and student challenges, with the non-specificity that usually underpins institutional offerings of this nature. when three new research academics from the educational development unit at the university sought placement on the napp, their specific needs could not be catered for because they were employed as “academic lecturers” but were not involved in any form of teaching. their main function was to develop literacy tests and to translate the diagnostic information from national tests into useable information for stakeholders. their roles involved data analysis, report writing and dissemination of statistical and other information. the challenge arose when the institutionally ascribed appraisal process did not align with their job description. to complicate matters, while their roles did not carry the full responsibility of the ‘academic role’, i.e. teaching, they were evaluated using the same criteria as academics who teach. this was a huge source of discomfort and marked their first level of contestation registered by them when they signed up for the napp. this led to the creation of a customised offering of professional development. 33 behari-leak & le roux between a rock and a hard place 3. the “customised” napp offering the decision to offer the group a customised programme was based in part on the opportunity it provided for the napp professional development team to observe how these new agents exercised their agency within social and cultural contexts (archer, 2000) at the university. it was also to engage with ‘making and re-making their identities’ to establish themselves in their new environment and culture (trowler & knight, 2000: 34). the curriculum for the customised napp was derived from suggestions from the academics themselves, underpinned by a strong reflective practitioner model of induction (brookfield, 1995) proffered by the napp team. it was convened over a semester of weekly seminar-type engagements but even before it started, there was a sense these were unchartered waters. it was a new space that required a robust energy, commitment and involvement from academics and the professional development practitioners (pdp) alike. when the reflective process began, it became clear that elements of third space theory were being invoked and enacted in the customised napp. to improve understanding of the extent to which professional development programmes could respond to specific academics’ needs, third space theory is used as a theoretical framework to inform this study. in the following section, some of the central tenets of third space theory are examined in relation to the customised induction model being discussed. 4. the third space of professional development homi bhabha (1994) first developed the concept of third space as a metaphor for the space in which two cultures meet. bhabha (1994) identified a dynamic, “in-between space” in which cultural translation takes place. when migrants left their homes (1st place) to settle in a foreign land (2nd place), they defied the notion that a pure, homogeneous cultural place exists. the new ‘in-between’ space shares attributes of both spaces (saudelli, 2012) and is a generative space where academics combine diverse knowledges into new insights and plans for action (bhabha, 1990). the concept of “spatiality” (soja,1989), which is critical to third space theory in academic institutions, includes material elements such as buildings, statues, memorials as well as relationships between students, lecturers, administrators and managers. third space is thus not just a physical space but also a socio-cultural space that people occupy differently at different stages of their career (whitchurch, 2008). time is another critical element in the third space and for professional development practitioners; time is not punctuated by student calendar events such as exams, assessments and lectures. in fact, the university vacation is a peak period for staff development activities such as continuing development, conference attendance, scholarly writing, and projects. professional development thus operates in a third space temporality and its temporal orientations (past, present and future) are informed by routine and habit, a capacity to contextualise current issues and challenges and to imagine creative solutions (emirbayer & mische, 1998). how professional development practitioners choose to interpret the past, present and future in relation to their substantive work is connected (especially in a postcolonial country) to a particular history that influences their current work. third space also functions through social interactions, shared discourses and new experiences where meaning is always being negotiated and reconstructed. this ‘ambivalence’ refers to the ways people present themselves through different, ever-evolving cultural (self)representations in contradictory, simultaneous, and selective ways (bhabha, 1994). this 34 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) ambivalence of meaning is also characteristic of the postcolonial context where hybridity (dudgeon & fielder, 2006) is fundamental to understanding third space realities. ‘hybrid’ experiences involve a continual negotiation and creation of identities, which in turn creates a new hybrid or third culture (bhabha, 1994). in a hybrid space, enhanced knowledge exchange is possible through questions, challenges, reinterpretations and renegotiations (bachmann-medick, 1996). professional development practitioners and academic developers are well placed in the third space to introduce new discourses to challenge, debate, create and re-shape new ideas and meanings among academics. by critically reflecting on the discourses embraced, one can see how discourses are (un)consciously reproduced as well as how discourses shape the agential choices (fairclough, 2005) and identities as professional development practitioners. these new ‘ways of being’ draw on categories of academic and professional identity that transcend conventional frames. whitchurch (2008) identifies four categories of professional identity that relate to this study: ‘bounded professionals’ who work within clear structural boundaries (e.g. function and job description); ‘cross-boundary professionals’ who actively use boundaries for strategic advantage and institutional capacity building; ‘unbounded professionals’ who focus on broadly-based projects and institutional development; and ‘blended professionals’, who work across professional and academic boundaries. a key feature promoted by whitchurch (2013) is the building and maintenance of relationships. whitchurch (2013) advocates ‘blended relationships’ which involve partnerships rather than management; lateral teams working among senior and junior staff; less division between managers and managed; and taking on key responsibilities such as leading a project at earlier stages of careers. the concept of third space is thus very apt to explore how academics and professionals can work together in changing educational settings (whitchurch, 2008) to see how relational engagements (and disengagements) occur (emirbayer & mische, 1998). academic staff development or professional development is located in a liminal space between the institution’s vision on the one hand and academic staff needs on the other and performs primarily an advocacy role or a servicing role or both (quinn & vorster, 2012). this region of overlap or third space contains an unpredictable combination of attributes of each of the two bordering spaces (bhabha, 1994) to enable great opportunities for participatory and collaborative practices. in this paper, the authors assert that disciplinary and mainstream teaching and learning is one place; management and administrative activities are a second place while professional and academic staff development meets in the third space. the third space is a productive and engaged space where creative and innovative practices are born that enable new academics to understand their identity, find a place of belonging and rise to their full potential; all of which have added benefits of career development and growth 5. methodology the sample for this study consisted of five participants; two were new academic lecturers (who formed part of the customised napp) and three were professional development practitioners (who facilitated the customised napp). of the three professional development practitioners, one was appointed on professional and administrative support staff conditions of service but was functioning in an academic role. he was already working in a third space. the other two professional development practitioners were appointed on academic conditions of service but 35 behari-leak & le roux between a rock and a hard place were involved in many activities that went beyond the traditional academic role of teaching and research. they too were already working in a third space environment even though they had not recognised it as such. data generated and gathered during the 2015-2016 academic year included semi-structured qualitative interviews, course materials, field notes, documents such as job descriptions and written reflective narratives. the job description documents were mapped to the activities and details of the work of each academic to look for overlap and mismatch and to establish the association between the job description and the activities these academics were involved in. this method was used to exclude and confirm whether academics were functioning in a third space environment. all five participants were interviewed using an interview schedule and the recordings were professionally transcribed for the analysis. in addition, reflective pieces were used to get in-depth information from all academics and to explore the richness that qualitative data has to offer, particularly around the identities the new academics presented and the agency they exercised during the napp sessions. the authors undertook a critical discourse analysis of the interview transcriptions and reflective pieces to explore how identity and agency were being conceptualised and how these understandings were enacted in a third space of professional development. using fairclough’s realist understanding of discourse (2001, 2005), we explored how discourses as mechanisms with causal powers affect the observations, experiences and events that emerged. ‘critical discourse analysis’ is used here to refer to a set of ideas that have causal powers to affect social practice (gee, 1996; fairclough, 2000). fairclough’s (1992:64) conception of discourse as “a practice not just of representing the world, but of signifying the world, constituting and constructing the world in meaning” is critical for how new academics enter discursive spaces in higher education and make meaning of their roles and purpose. according to kincheloe, steinberg & gresson (1996: 30), “discourses as tacit rules regulate what can and cannot be said, who can speak, and who must listen, whose educational perspectives are scientific and whose are unlearned and unimportant”. to comply with ethical requirements, the academics and the professional development practitioners were briefed about the project, their participation was voluntary, and they signed consent forms, in the interest of advancing knowledge. the authors played a double role in the study; first as participants and then as researchers in this process. the research paper was conceptualised after the programme had run its course and had minimal influence on the content of the reflective pieces submitted as part of the programme. once the primary and secondary data were collected, our roles as participants ceased and our researcher roles came into play. despite the small sample of academics and professional development practitioners in the study, the richness of the data was evident in addressing our research question. this is an exploratory study to look at how context affects the types of professional development work. in the section that follows, the compelling issues, insights and reflections that emerged from the data when applying a critical discourse analytical framework are discussed. 6. contestation over roles in current contexts, professional development practitioners need to be prepared to work in creative ways to mitigate traditional practices. the need for the ‘tailor-made programme’ in this study became necessary to address concerns of the new academics who were contesting 36 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) the misalignment and disjuncture between their assigned roles and their own professional identities. as academics, they demonstrated they were not merely one-dimensional beings; they were important role players in their own right, based on their real identities and lived experiences and not on pre-conceived notions of the academic job or how academic spaces are traditionally occupied. in this study, it was challenging for the academics, new to their department or unit, to decipher which roles to foreground or in what order of priority in their disciplinary space. here is where they find themselves ‘between a rock and a hard place’ as the title suggests. their concerns were complicated by operational issues associated with process and bureaucracy, time on task and the contractual nature of work involving stakeholders outside the university, which can easily lead to a pervasive pessimism, as opposed to the more open-ended upbeat nature of academic work: the academics had not had a good experience of the institution at the point when we engaged with them. there was a lot of negativity when they started (pdp 2). academics experienced a mismatch between operational concerns and how they were going to be assessed or appraised. when there is a clash between intended and actual outcomes, it is difficult to induct people into the institution with a sense of stability. also, how people occupy roles is influenced by their personal projects and the resources which cannot be taken for granted. this issue was a significant discrepancy for academics as it caused them to feel a deep sense of misplacement. my job title might say (one thing), but this is not where my strengths lie or where my interests necessary lie (academic 2). third space theory asserts that people cannot be bound by traditional (job) descriptions in a university climate that, in current times, is dynamic and unpredictable. academics and professional development practitioners’ understanding of their own relationship to the past, future, and present makes a difference to how they interpret their roles and actions. there should be flexibility for newcomers to interpret their roles anew, as they experience and embed themselves in their contexts in particular ways. we were appointed as academic lecturing staff but our duties or responsibilities were not that of the conventional academic lecturing staff (academic 1). their position as ‘non-conventional’ academic staff meant they were unable to accrue resources in similar ways to their academic counterparts. simultaneously, newcomers have to abide by the rules of the game for pragmatic purposes. this is characteristic of third space dynamics which often result in a process of “doublespeak” or “splitting”, which involves juggling two contradictory challenges at the same time. this ‘doublespeak’ was evident in academics’ questioning their roles: …together with two of my other academic colleagues, we questioned the rationale of appointing us as academic/lecturers when it was known that we would be involved in operational and development work with no or minimal lecturing component (academic 2). 7. blurred boundaries… blended identities identity work is very much part of third space engagements and involves a process of socialisation into the practices and expectations of new academic roles. a complex set of demands related to identity formation emerges in the initial period of new academics entering 37 behari-leak & le roux between a rock and a hard place higher education. this is when the academic typically retains their identity as a professional in a new context, for example, as an architect. this transitioning period is also when newcomers integrate the norms, practices and tools used in their larger professional community of practice with the practices of the academic community they join. the way the reports are written meant a mind shift for me in terms of how i should be writing and conveying my message and the target audience for whom the writing is intended. this means that for operational work, descriptive writing is acceptable and when writing an academic or scholarly work, a different writing style is required (academic 1). the academics’ professional identity, which was strongly linked to their research writing identities, constituted a major part of their professional work, which involved analysing data and writing up these analyses in reports. however, as shown above, writing in a specified genre meant different things for different academics. in this period, new academics were involved in a process of creating and shaping new identities based on their new environments that were proving to be challenging. from their career trajectories, it became clear that the new academics in this study had already established very strong professional identities based on them being strong evaluators in their professional capacity in their distinct fields. this was sometimes at odds with their new professional contexts, which caused them considerable tension: i think it made me realise that i like to plan and organise my work life … that i like to know what is expected of me and by when. i do not like working under pressure with tight deadlines. often, work is sprung on me at the last minute and this unsettles me (academic 2). the professional development practitioners experienced this ambivalence in their professional roles as well: we know that people might have particular needs but i think our roles are a bit more strongly defined (in the generic napp). in the customised napp, i played a more kind of a flexible role – a role that is more of a responsive role (pdp 3). the new academics in this study presented as ‘bounded professionals’ with clear structural boundaries regarding their roles and job descriptions, while the professional development practitioners were more ‘cross-boundary professionals’, who actively used boundaries for strategic advantage and institutional capacity building. across both groups, the strongest identity invoked in the third space was that of the ‘’blended professionals’ whose work transcended both professional and academic boundaries and domains. new academics’ concept of self in this study thus faced two ways: to the professional and the academic identity within the cultural settings of the department, the institution and the national context. this ‘ambivalence’ is typical of third space contexts, as people present themselves differently and in selective ways. personal identity formation in professional settings is critical too. not unlike professional identity, personal identity depends on a mature ability to reflect on concerns and to prioritise these concerns in one’s professional life. the values which will guide me on my way are integrity, openness, honesty, practical, being true to myself, sharing, and above all be kind to people (academic 2). 38 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) the assertion of a personal identity in the professional space is therefore an active and reflective process, undertaken by an active agent and, when attained, can be considered an achievement. personal identity in the workplace is also a matter of what we care about in the world and cannot be blocked off, hidden or erased as one transitions into new professional roles and settings. 8. discourse of currency the discourse of ‘currency’ identified in the data is particularly interesting when one considers its links to a commodified and marketised higher education sector. at a deeper level it indicates the extent to which a neoliberal agenda has taken a firm grip on how the university sees its role in society. when new academics in this study referred to their sense of self-worth and uniqueness in terms of ‘currency’, the semantic associations with trade, bargaining, barter and exchange evoke important commentary on the competitive space they find themselves: what is my currency? what is it that i have that others do not have? what is my currency worth? what makes me special? i have claimed this particular space where in the past i have not done this (academic 2). going beyond job titles, self-worth involves how we embody our roles and resources and how our “signature” becomes an interpretation of who we are and what we do. however, the academics felt that their talent was not being employed by their department in ways that allowed them to use their currency optimally: when i look at how we work or operate … i realise many staffs’ [sic] currencies are not being utilised optimally or being called upon (academic 2). new academics’ professional ‘currency’ varies greatly, based on how well endowed or privileged the agent is, in terms of their academic qualifications when they enter higher education. this is also based on prior practical experience and performative achievement in a field or discipline, which accounts for a strong socially acquired concept of professional identity. i know who i am, i know where my strengths lie, where my weaknesses are and what i should do to improve or sharpen my skills (academic 2). once in the system, newcomers measure their worth by how much their professional identities influence their resourcefulness to increase their bargaining power and negotiating strength in their departments. in this study, those with stronger professional identities were in a better position to assert themselves with colleagues. for some, it was not easy: ... it was evident that the concerns that i and my colleagues had mainly resided in our perception that the department was run in a way that marginalised the expertise which we believed we had and which we thought was the reason for us to be appointed in our different positions in the first place (academic 1). new academics in this study felt that their social currency was being minimised or ‘marginalised’ based on the traditional expectations of their professional roles. they felt that more could be done to increase the social currency of their work: from the time i started my current job in january, i have had to write reports…these reports have focused mainly on presenting and interpreting ... performance data for various stakeholders. my concern at the beginning of the napp was that these reports were too descriptive and template driven and that i did not find it exciting to be expected 39 behari-leak & le roux between a rock and a hard place to write reports for different stakeholders in exactly the same way… when we could have turned them into accredited research outputs… this kind of research is crucial for the national programme’s credibility and ultimate survival (academic 1). through the customised napp, academics realised that their individual and professional ‘currency’ was linked to the social domain and therefore had great value in the broader social context. professional development programmes should be sensitive to contextual issues and support newcomers in ways that increase their sense of self-worth and self-confidence, whether in professional or social ways. one of the simplest yet profound ways is through building and sustaining relationships. academics’ reflections influenced how professional development practitioners saw their roles in this third space, acknowledging that a significant feature of the ‘success’ of the customised napp was based on a set of collegial relationships between academics and professional development practitioners: …as a professional development lecturer, i’m very interested in working with people and their ideas and their feelings and their attitudes. so, the positive shift for me… was the power of relationship building… through what we had established over the six months … i noticed the interpersonal relationships had strengthened so much, because we offered a strong sense of support (pdp 1). professional development practitioners realised that strategies for navigating difficulties and hurdles must be discussed openly so more newcomers feel encouraged to assert themselves in ways that contribute to a more robust and responsive higher education workforce. 9. the culture of conservatism conservatism and innovation are diametrically positioned as critical issues for transformation of higher education currently. when new academics begin to interact in their disciplinary spaces and in their departments, they can ascertain, as novices in this space, whether the departmental and institutional culture is conservative or progressive: i get the sense that despite the wheel being square, the establishment prefers it that way (academic 2). in this study, where colleagues, management and leadership, accustomed to the more traditional practices in the unit, were unable to provide cultural spaces for them to express themselves uniquely through their professional work, academics realised that the status quo may not be geared towards change and mobility but stasis: it is this culture… that has ensured the kind of conservatism that is very stifling to those who think differently … it occurred to me that the bigger source of this practice was a culture that has shaped the operational nature of the department for years (academic 1). as the new academics set about establishing their academic and professional identity at the university, they also reflected on the expectations of their line managers, heads of department and senior colleagues: ... it is this culture that i believe, informs the management of the department to treat those who are new as if they started their job in the department on a new slate ... this culture impacted negatively on the self-esteem of those who believed that they were bringing expertise and experience that would help the department grow... (academic 1). 40 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) this perception can lead to low self-esteem and can and constructs the university practitioner as a one-dimensional person. new academics expressed dissatisfaction with being expected to fall in line with the rest, with little consideration for unique cultural practices or the need for mentoring and support from other role players: my impression of xxx was that it is an excellent university modern, advanced technology, an enabling research culture and environment. while some aspects of this are true, i was surprised that xxx is finding it hard to transform in such simple ways – shows that it is a traditional university wanting to retain the old and traditional way of doing (academic 2). professional development programmes would do well to take note of different departmental cultures and work with these to enable new academics to find their feet and find their way, especially when contexts are not always conducive to embracing innovative practices that newcomers usher in. perhaps we think things should be done differently because we see ourselves contributing towards the growth of a department that will continue to exist in the future and that this might not be the necessary kind of thinking for people who are currently in charge of the department (academic 1). these tensions need to be embraced by professional development programmes as well as departmental managers and collegial units, if the university wants to retain the new academics we employ. where there is no intrinsic connection between academics and institutional management, retention will be difficult, adding to the ‘revolving door’ syndrome where new academics leave as soon as they arrive due to inhospitable conditions in higher education. third space professional development therefore must pay attention to carefully supporting new academics to ensure some level of loyalty to the institution. 10. conclusion in this paper, we reflected on a customised professional development programme for new academics who did not fit neatly into their academic roles. while their current jobs had in fact been carved out by social actors who occupied them before and incumbents entered new spaces which were conditioned by processes and people that pre-dated them (mathieson, 2011), the study shows that traditional jobs can be interpreted anew. even though, as the title suggests, it is a difficult place to be ‘between a rock and a hard place’, there are opportunities for new academics, as in this study, to create positive outcomes by displaying a considerable level of perseverance in their efforts to develop their personal concerns into useful projects. issues of identity emerged in the hybrid space between academics’ assigned roles and self-interpreted roles that raised tensions and concerns between traditional and innovative practices and identities in the academy. it was evident that all four identity categories identified by whitchurch (2008) in the third space were present and overlapped in varying degrees across academics and professional development practitioners’ identities. through the intense identity work, they had to do as new academics, to concretise their goals and address their needs as newcomers, academics reflected richly on their understanding of their professional, academic and social identity (archer, 2000). these dialogic activities enabled shifts from assumptions to reflections (carrillo, 2000). the data showed that activities and experiences enabled in the third space involved them challenging assumptions, learning reciprocally and creating new ideas, which emerged through negotiation, co-creation of identities, relationships and through multi-voiced discussions across differences (muller & druin, 2012). 41 behari-leak & le roux between a rock and a hard place this study also highlights the need for higher education to be aware of the diverse backgrounds of new academics and what the university 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https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2273.2008.00387.x _goback 842022 40(2): 84-96 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.7 connecting embodied learning to social and environmental responsibility for the realisation of life orientation outcomes abstract there is a lack of knowledge about how embodied educational practices can be used to challenge and problematise traditional life orientation teaching approaches that normally result in a lack of learner engagement on socioenvironmental challenges. the objective of this small-scale exploratory qualitative study was therefore to establish whether grade 10 life orientation teachers encouraged embodied learning experiences that are grounded in learners’ lived experiences, creativity, expressive potential and perspectives. data were generated from lesson observations combined with semi-structured individual interviews that were analysed thematically. the findings revealed that the participating teachers struggled to transform complex social and environmental matters into concrete embodied educational experiences for their learners. an additional finding highlighted the importance of how the life orientation curricula can serve as a stimulus to aid an embodied teaching-learning approach towards social and environmental responsibility. these findings provide a starting point for the development of a framework to guide life orientation teachers to employ embodied learning practices and, thus, meet the outcomes of the subject as envisaged in policy statements. keywords: caps, embodied learning, holistic education, lived-environment, life orientation, social and environmental responsibility. 1. introduction children have become increasingly exposed to and must deal with social and environmental challenges in their lived environments. challenges such as climate change, substance abuse, hiv/aids, tuberculosis, etc. therefore warrant the need for the inclusion of social and environmental responsibility in the life orientation (lo) curriculum with the aim to encourage learners to evolve into responsible citizens (department of basic education [dbe], 2011: 8). successful direction by lo teachers regarding social and environmental challenges becomes important because learners must be able to translate acquired knowledge into action. in line with this, nel and nel (2016: 35) as well as author: dr pieter swarts1 affiliation: 1north-west university doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i2.7 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(2): 84-96 published: 08 june 2022 received: 01 february 2022 accepted: 04 april 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.7 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3074-759x http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.7 852022 40(2): 85-96 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.7 swarts connecting embodied learning to social and environmental responsibility magano (2011: 119) raise the valuable point that meaningful learning in lo is evident when learners are responding to real-life challenges by the application of what they have been taught. le grange (2004:390) also reminded us that learners come to know their environment through self-discovery and self-clarification of values. policy also states that educating for social and environmental responsibility must be based on the application of knowledge, skills and values in real-life situations (dbe, 2011: 8). this suggests that educating for social and environmental responsibility, a holistic endeavour (dbe, 2011: 8), strengthened through a combination of academic and experiential dimensions (nel & coetzee, 2018:11) is needed. such an approach has the potential to enrich learners’ lives by transforming the way they see and experience social and environmental responsibility. it is here where embodied learning comes into its own. the term “embodiment”, as coined by payne (1997), presumes that our body and its experiences present a way of knowing. within the south african context, le grange (2004; 2019) expanded the discussion on embodied learning by applying it to social praxis and its relation to embodiment. for him embodied learning constitutes a contemporary pedagogical theory of learning that emphasises the use of the body in the educational practice and the teacher-learner interaction inside and outside the classroom (2004:338). this argument is supported by munro (2018:5) who sees the body as situated in the environment, and, as such, interacts with that environment on a daily basis. it can therefore be argued that teacher-learner bodies are not passively located in the world, but that they are able to change social conditions through action. this has implications for how lo teachers view their learners, including their teaching and learning approaches towards social and environmental challenges. i therefore want to suggest that the application of embodied learning practices towards social and environmental challenges is necessary for at least the following reasons: • it presents an alternative to conventional textbook-driven assessment activities; • it helps to take social and environmental challenges off outdated textbook pages; • it narrows the gap between the lo classroom and the lived environment of learners; and • it has the potential to encourage responsible citizens through praxis. given the above, i draw on the principle of embodiment and an embodied pedagogy, relate it to lo and argue that if learners can make embodied connections – at a sensory level – with social and environmental challenges in their lived environment, they will be able to translate head knowledge into positive behavioural outcomes. the purpose of this study was therefore to understand how social and environmental responsibility manifested in lo classrooms as a foundation for the initial design of an easyto-follow framework. such a framework can assist lo teachers to make effective embodied pedagogical choices with the aim to develop knowledge, values and skills that are transferable to real-life situations. my research question was specific: what guidelines should be included in such a framework that will encourage lo teachers to effectively link social and environmental responsibility to embodied learning? http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.7 862022 40(2): 86-96 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.7 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) 2. conceptualising embodied social and environmental responsibility through pragmatism central to lo is its transformative orientation toward empowerment, enablement and development (nel & coetzee, 2018:10) as well as holistic development (dbe, 2011:8). this implies that what learners learnt in the lo classroom must be applied in real-life situations in order to live a meaningful and successful life in a rapidly changing society (dbe, 2011:8). thus, teaching social and environmental content alone means that learners stop at knowing. learners need to be engaged as active human bodies at all levels on matters that affect them in the lived environment. valuing the whole learner (mind-body) as a key area of enquiry can therefore ensure that they may experience life skills education through multiple entry points (yoo & loch, 2016: 528). this approach potentially affords opportunities to equip and empower learners with meaningful embodied knowledge, values and skills to mitigate the challenges that social and environmental issues present to their wellbeing in their lived environment. such action, according to zipin (2017: 81), can encourage learners to become collaborative problem solvers through which they can recognise their agency. the aforementioned reiterates the importance of a philosophy of pragmatism towards social and environmental challenges. the basis for this philosophy, according to nel and coetzee (2018: 10), is that knowledge should be applied to real-life challenges through a process of gathering information, considering possibilities, making choices and putting them into effect. in this regard, le grange (2010: 13) proposes viewing the learner body as a “site” for understanding, explaining and acting. this suggests the need to implement teaching and learning strategies in lo classrooms that will create conditions in which learners can become aware of and develop their own voice, power and agency (athiemoolam, 2021: 161). here, education that addresses the interests and particular needs of learners and is directed at resolving social and environmental challenges in the lived environment can encourage competencies such as embodied knowing, doing and being. therefore, to enable learners to purposefully share and explain ideas and explore ways to address social and environmental challenges in the lived environment, requires from lo teachers to realise that the entire body of learners possesses knowing. this is what holistic education in lo is after (dbe, 2011:8). 3. methodology i chose a qualitative research approach because mertens (2020: 243) describes this methodology as a situated activity that locates the observer in the world and where the world is made visible through interpretive practices. such methodology assisted me to generate enough data and to develop a plan of action (mills, 2011:5). 3.1 sampling participants for this study were purposefully recruited, as insight and understanding were sought (curtis, murphy & shields, 2014: 29; o’leary, 2014: 186) regarding their pedagogical practices towards lessons under the topic “social and environmental responsibility”. the criteria for recruiting grade 10 lo teachers were as follows: they had to have taught lo at their school for at least three years and had to have some formal qualification in lo or participated in training workshops on caps organised by the department of basic education in the north-west province. five of the participants had specifically been trained in teaching lo. the schools that were selected ranged from middle to high socio-economic status. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.7 872022 40(2): 87-96 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.7 swarts connecting embodied learning to social and environmental responsibility 3.2 trustworthiness to ensure the trustworthiness of lesson observations, i drew on my experience as a teacher for 20 years and eight months and as an lo lecturer for more than 12 years. internal trustworthiness was also ensured through the completion of an observation sheet to gain input from the participants on my lesson summaries. to avoid any misinterpretation regarding lesson observation and responses during the semi-structured individual interviews, i shared my interpretations with the participants (okeke, 2015: 219). 4. ethical measures written permission to conduct this study was obtained from the department of basic education (north-west) as well as the school principals and teachers involved. ethical clearance was obtained from the ethics committee of the north-west university (nwu00040-14-a2), which ensured that i complied with its stringent ethical requirements of justice, beneficence and fairness. 5. data generation various data generation methods were employed, namely lesson observations, semistructured individual interviews, the analysis of education policy statements and my own observation of relevant aspects within the classroom. i conducted 14 lesson observations (two per participant) with the consent of the teachers when they covered social and environmental responsibility. i relied on a process of overt observation whereby my intentions were made known to the participants (okeke, 2015: 210). my reliance on lesson observations was an opportunity to move beyond the participants’ opinions towards an evaluation of their action in practice (shulman, 2014: 342). table 1 gives an overview of the behaviours i observed. table 1: examples of items on the observation sheet how are learners encouraged to experience social and environmental challenges in a holistic manner? how does the teacher incorporate useful learning and teaching strategies to encourage embodied knowledge, values and skills regarding social and environmental challenges? all seven participants were interviewed after each lesson to understand their ideas of why they used specific teaching-learning strategies and learning material to gain an empathetic understanding of and sensitivity to their educational needs (okeke, 2015: 218). using these data-generating methods enabled me to derive findings that have relevance to the real-world settings of the participants (gay, mills & airasian, 2006: 400). 6. data analysis i thematically analysed the data, which allowed the analysis process to become an embodied and a re-lived experience (struwig & stead, 2013: 12). from the lesson observations and semi-structured interviews, three important themes emerged. these are discussed in the following section. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.7 882022 40(2): 88-96 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.7 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) 7. discussion of findings this section shares insight into the three broad themes that indicate that the participating teachers did not provide opportunities for learners to have embodied educational experiences. i explain each theme substantiating my claims with direct quotations (participant a–g) and discuss these in relation to relevant literature. 7.1 theme 1: teachers tend to rely on disengaged pedagogies classroom observations revealed that all the participants relied on learner textbooks to address social and environmental issues (see table 1). table 2: lessons observed and preferred learning and teaching support material participant lessons observed preferred learning and teaching support material for two lessons teaching-learning practices a introduction to social and environmental responsibility violence, hiv and aids textbook teacher-led discussion based on textbook topics b poverty, violence, food security, hiv and aids skills for participation (activism) textbook group assignment c introduction to social and environmental responsibility poverty, unemployment and corruption textbook none d introduction to social and environmental responsibility poverty, unemployment and lack of housing textbook none e social and environmental injustice violence and corruption textbook none f social and environmental injustice violence and corruption textbook none g poverty, violence and social and environmental injustice poverty, lack of housing and unemployment textbook none for me as a researcher, the reliance on textbooks not only disengages learners from their lived environment but it also overshadows the underlying outcomes-based curriculum principles such as active learning, critical and creative thinking (dbe, 2011:3). the following responses provide evidence of my conclusion well, i go and read up on the lesson topics to make sure that i understand it [sic]. i supplement this with visual aids. at the end of the lesson, learners complete the activities in the textbook (participant a). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.7 892022 40(2): 89-96 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.7 swarts connecting embodied learning to social and environmental responsibility i first look at the policy statement and then you take the textbook and see what learners must learn for the examination (participant b). no. i work according to the guidelines of the policy statement. this document specifically indicates what must be done, and then you go back to the textbook, and then you prepare accordingly (participant d). i basically look at the textbook (participant e). i first use the textbook which is prescribed for learners (participant f). i read a lot – newspapers – and follow the news. i then use the learner textbooks during the presentation of such topics (participant g). textbooks, life skills books and magazines, as recommended sources in lo policy statements (dbe, 2011:14), strengthened the emphasis on cognitive learning about (own emphasis) social and environmental challenges without having to do anything to help address them. the danger of such learning is that it disengages learners from their lived environments which serve as a major barrier for embodied learning. furthermore, if textbooks are seen as the sole source of transmitting knowledge and values to the youth then the assumption, according to november (2015: 325), is that social and environmental challenges and the impact thereof on children in the lived environment, must be regarded as a normal occurrence. lo textbooks, in my view, support this thinking because they provide a safe space in which learners can do their work through neutral life skills educational approaches – a process that leads to learner disengagement (ankiewicz, batchelor & de beer, 2015: 212). this arguably, has the potential to reduce teacher creativity and restrict social and environmental challenges and learner experiences to the four walls of the classroom. contrary to this, only two participants (a and b), who both held a one-year postgraduate certificate in education (pgce) in lo, engaged their learners in the lesson topics through class and group discussions. their willingness to create a space for learners to share their views and ideas and express their feelings about social and environmental challenges showed that they at least realised the importance of such challenges. this could be related to the fact that they had specific postgraduate training in lo, indicating that teachers’ experience is important in determining how they approach social and environmental challenges. 7.2 theme 2: dual perceptions of social and environmental responsibility during my interview sessions, it became clear that participants attached different meanings to social and environmental responsibility. the first perception is that of an act of “caring” as expressed by the following: in the context of lo, it is to give kids an awareness of how to live, how to be and how to take care of the world they live in (participant a). i think it links with ubuntu and our christian values, which tell me we must care for each other (participant c). the above responses suggest that a different way of facilitating social and environmental challenges in lo classrooms is necessary. in this regard, petersen and osman (2015:30) emphasise an important point namely that teachers themselves must learn how to “do” care http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.7 902022 40(2): 90-96 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.7 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) in their ideas, expectations and practice. this practice was not evident during classroom observations because lo teachers viewed textbooks as the trusted source to address social and environmental challenges. another perception concerning social and environmental responsibility is that of the broadness of lo as reflected in the responses of three participants. i see it as your communication and interaction with other people and your relationship with your animals, your parents, your friends, your peers and your religion (participant d). i think it is important to educate the learner as a whole. i don’t think it must be removed from lo. learners must be orientated in terms of their responsibility. this is important (participant e). it focuses on the well-being of the person. i think it integrates well with well-being of the human being healthy and fit. in terms of these aspects, social and environmental responsibility links very well with the human as a whole (participant f). i concur with these responses because there is something special about life skills education through lo – which is the idea of being a responsible citizen (dbe, 2011:8). this observation is important because lo allows children to “do” something. this “doing” can be specific, such as preparing learners meaningfully to act responsibly in their lived environment. but preparing learners meaningfully is not just about knowledge dispositions. enriching learners with skills and values is equally important. two participants (b and g), who held a social view of social and environmental responsibility, emphasised the importance of the human being. this was evident from the following responses: it does not matter if children go into this world and are not aware of different crises in the world and especially in sa (participant b). i think it refers to the human responsibility towards the environment. here we can think about air pollution, which is caused by human beings. so, in other words, it is the human responsibility towards the environment in terms of pollution (participant g). although it is encouraging that most of the participants held a holistic view of social and environmental responsibility, it was not visible during their lesson presentations. even participants b and g’s narrow focus on only social aspects presents a challenge for the effective implementation of social and environmental responsibility. it is evident that these dual interpretations of social and environmental responsibility resonate with jacobs’ (2011: 212) opinion of a detachment between lo theory and the preferred practices within the caps curriculum (dbe, 2011: 25). 7.3 theme 3: teachers’ experience and encounters of implementing embodied learning to social and environmental responsibility from the interview sessions it was clear that lo teachers are easily overwhelmed by the practical demands of the topic social and environmental responsibility. four participants expressed concerns about taking a practical approach towards social and environmental challenges. their concerns were centred on time (participants d and g), a lack of resources (participant e) and a lack of experience in teaching lo (participant f). these challenges, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.7 912022 40(2): 91-96 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.7 swarts connecting embodied learning to social and environmental responsibility which are not new (see, for example, diale, 2016; jacobs, 2011; lamb & snodgrass, 2017; mthatyana & vincent, 2015; prinsloo, 2007; stroebel, hay & bloemhoff, 2018; van zyl, webb & wolvaart, 2021), should not serve as deterrents to steer away from implementing embodied learning experiences for learners. my argument is that the root causes of social and environmental challenges are often found in human activities, and as such, learner bodies should be encouraged to seek ways to address such issues. in this instance, yoo and loch (2016: 539) point out that embracing the body as a rich and a diverse knowledge source, can afford learners with valuable experiences and continual learning that can be beneficial in addressing social and environmental challenges. during the interviews, two participants (a and c) mentioned that the prescribed practical task from the dbe assisted them in involving learners in a community project. they (learners) go out to experience it (volunteering) so that they can get an awareness; like trying to promote awareness (participant a). yes, the project from the department of education saves us time, but it gives children an opportunity to experience volunteering (participant c). although the lo curriculum advisors from the dbe are detached from the lived environments of learners, i view their support as a positive intervention strategy because their project linked to embodied learning. for me it is important that lo teachers, who play an instrumental role in putting the curriculum into practice (stroebel et al., 2018: 124), must be supported to successfully fulfil their roles as curriculum implementers. furthermore, such intervention can assist lo teachers to take social and environmental responsibility off textbook pages. through such an action the boundaries between theory and practice, especially regarding social and environmental responsibility, will become less obvious or blurred. however, my concern, despite hints on how the curriculum must be implemented, does not guarantee that lo teachers may unlock opportunities to connect other social and environmental lessons to embodied learning experiences for their learners. the above findings of participants regarding classroom pedagogies around social and environmental challenges limit the realisation of embodied learning experiences. based on these findings, i suggest a framework that can guide teachers more easily and more effectively to fulfil lo expectations as raised in this small-scale qualitative study. 8. embodied learning to strengthen social and environmental responsibility for the realisation of lo outcomes the beneficial impact of social and environmental responsibility will only be optimised when teachers start to realise that lo reaches far beyond the classroom and a textbook-based curriculum (diale, 2016: 107). figure 1 therefore serves as an organisational and visual illustration to reconceptualise social and environmental responsibility through embodied learning which has the potential to narrow the gap between the lo classroom and learners’ lived environment. furthermore, this framework supports the view of magano (2011: 124), magano, mostert and van der westhuizen (2010: 22) as well as griessel-roux et al. (2005: 255) state that a more practical approach towards life skills education through lo is important. through such an approach lo teachers will understand how active learner bodies react to, organise and coordinate their own engagements with social and environmental challenges in the lived environment. the suggested framework therefore focuses on making learning around social and environmental challenges self-directed, purposeful and life-long. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.7 922022 40(2): 92-96 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.7 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) connecting embodied learning to social and environmental responsibility 10 an instrumental role in putting the curriculum into practice (stroebel et al., 2018: 124), must be supported to successfully fulfil their roles as curriculum implementers. furthermore, such intervention can assist lo teachers to take social and environmental responsibility off textbook pages. through such an action the boundaries between theory and practice, especially regarding social and environmental responsibility, will become less obvious or blurred. however, my concern, despite hints on how the curriculum must be implemented, does not guarantee that lo teachers may unlock opportunities to connect other social and environmental lessons to embodied learning experiences for their learners. the above findings of participants regarding classroom pedagogies around social and environmental challenges limit the realisation of embodied learning experiences. based on these findings, i suggest a framework that can guide teachers more easily and more effectively to fulfil lo expectations as raised in this small-scale qualitative study. 8. embodied learning to strengthen social and environmental responsibility for the realisation of lo outcomes the beneficial impact of social and environmental responsibility will only be optimised when teachers start to realise that lo reaches far beyond the classroom and a textbook-based curriculum (diale, 2016: 107). figure 1 therefore serves as an organisational and visual illustration to reconceptualise social and environmental responsibility through embodied learning which has the potential to narrow the gap between the lo classroom and learners’ lived environment. furthermore, this framework supports the view of magano (2011: 124), magano, mostert and van der westhuizen (2010: 22) as well as griessel-roux et al. (2005: 255) state that a more practical approach towards life skills education through lo is important. through such an approach lo teachers will understand how active learner bodies react to, organise and coordinate their own engagements with social and environmental challenges in the lived environment. the suggested framework therefore focuses on making learning around social and environmental challenges self-directed, purposeful and life-long. embodied learning to act o building responsible citizenship (connect classroom’ learning to know’ with ‘learning to act’ in the lived environment) o provide feedback. embodied learning to know community of enquiry through: o environmental print through digital literacies (photographs, mobile phone videos and voice recordings) o environmental plays (drama, poetry, world café, tableaus, etc.) o provide feedback. assessment for learning introduce an element of classroom structure for example: o listen to learners’ perspectives (do social and environmental issues bother you? what is the importance of social and environmental responsibility?) figure 1: step-by-step process of how to provide embodied learning approaches to engage diverse learners for the enhancement of social and environmental responsibility this framework provides an opportunity for teachers and learners to change the lo classroom into an enquiry hub in which learners can raise their voices and (re)discover their power and agency regarding social and environmental challenges in the lived environment. within the first educational phase, “learning to know”, lo teachers and learners have a direct multisensory, fully contextualised and actual experience of social and environmental challenges in the lived environment. when learners walk in their lived environment to capture social and environmental challenges that beset their communities through “reading the world” (freire, 2000: 75–76), they can see their environment anew. experiencing learning in this way becomes useful and relevant because learners can take ownership of their work. even more important is that a closer resemblance and connection between the learning tasks and the knowledge, values and skills learners hope to attain on social and environmental challenges, become a real experience. therefore, if the argument of ellis, cupido and samuels (2021: 55) that walking is an embodied form of knowing, then learners carry contextual knowledge that they accumulate during their presence in their living environment. this embodied knowledge can then be brought to the lo classroom, where the teacher becomes a “resource consultant” (oduaran, 2018: 178). within such a space, meaningful learning can be created through constructive, engaged conversations that are embedded in classroom presentations (e.g. environmental print [videos/photographs] and environmental plays [drama, poetry, world café, tableaus, etc.] that can be combined with techniques such as pointing out what are the challenges and why do they exist? and making suggestions [appropriate responses/ reactions]. lo teachers can also utilise chalkboards or whiteboards to further engage learners with the new environmental content. through summaries, the highlighting of keywords, making connections, drawings, and so forth, the chalkboard or whiteboard becomes an audiovisual aid. through all these methods, talk, which burke (2019: 61) sees as an essential part of children’s learning, can help to create a community of enquiry regarding social and environmental challenges within the lo classroom. not only do these activities bring learner bodies “in conversation” with their lived environments, but the learners are also able to scaffold their own understanding of social and environmental challenges through critical and creative thinking. this observation links with dei’s (2012: 115) suggestion that the education site is not just the school or the classroom but also the community. these contextualised embodied educational experiences can ensure that their reality is neither muted nor removed, as is the case with static, often outdated, textbooks with pre-designed learner activities. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.7 932022 40(2): 93-96 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.7 swarts connecting embodied learning to social and environmental responsibility during the second educational phase, “learning to act”, teachers are encouraged to draw upon the imaginative abilities of their learners when engaging them with local social and environmental challenges. for the sake of continuity, it is advisable that teachers combine contextualised activities from the learning to know phase. providing printouts of mobile phone photographs with texts of local social and environmental challenges that affect the well-being of the learners’ community is a preferred starting point. this can be followed up with problemsolving techniques, such as letters to ward councillors or community leaders, to sensitise them to the impact of social and environmental challenges on the local community. additional projects can be organised, such as cleaning campaigns in and around the school premises, joining established community volunteering projects, starting vegetable gardens, and so forth. through all these suggested activities, it is possible that learners can be embodied with particular environmental knowledge, values and skills that can enhance their responsibility through “thought in action” (le grange, 2004: 388). in this way, learners can become what wood (2021: 604) refers to as “action learners” and “action leaders”. integrating assessment for learning during the two phases (learning to know and learning to act) will assist learners to learn through the tasks they have performed in relation to the lesson outcomes and feedback during the analysis sessions. 9. limitations a limitation of this small-scale exploratory qualitative study was that it only focused on seven grade 10 lo teachers from the north-west province in the tlokwe municipality district of south africa. nevertheless, the findings provided sufficient data to suggest a framework for the topic “social and environmental responsibility”, with the potential to be refined and modified to suit contextual needs that will best benefit diverse learners as the curriculum intends lo to do. furthermore, this small-scale study opens up the possibility for future research because lo teachers have a critical role to play in the rethinking of social and environmental responsibility in light of real-life issues, such as climate change, social and environmental inequality, crime, poverty, hiv/aids, teenage pregnancy, and so forth, through critical thinking, agency and concrete action. 10. conclusion lo teachers cannot effectively prepare their learners to enter their live environment through teaching social and environmental challenges in a rote manner. instead, lo teachers need to help their learners to become creative and collaborative problem-solvers. the knowledge gained through this study therefore assisted me to argue for the acknowledgement and inclusion of embodied educational practices when addressing social and environmental responsibility. in line with this argument, a framework is presented that has the potential to bring into being pedagogical recommendations contained in the caps curriculum. with the thoughtful implementation of such a framework, it is possible to instil in learners a critical and creative mind-set to reflect on real-life social and environmental challenges and to work towards possible solutions that provide a catalyst for their own learning (geduld & sathorar, 2016: 50). furthermore, the distinct potential of this framework is that it encourages learners not to grow distant from their communities. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.7 942022 40(2): 94-96 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.7 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) 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learning environments: a case for decolonised and transformative learning abstract there is an urgent need for transformation and decolonisation of teaching and learning of physical sciences. this need is evidenced by, among other factors, the alarming rate at which learner enrolment in physical sciences and science education, in general, is decreasing. central to these causes is apparent, persistent below-expectation learner performance in science education, which, in turn, causes scepticism about the quality of teaching and learning, and questions about the quality of support given to teachers to sustain the required level of learner performance. thus, decolonisation and transformation of teaching and learning should persistently pursue meaningful and functional knowledge creation. to this end, service-learning projects for teaching and learning physical sciences hold promise. the main reason for this consideration resides in the empowering capacity and resultant decolonising and transformative nature of the created knowledge. thus, using service-learning projects to create knowledge that is meaningful and functional is equivalent to creating sustainable physical sciences learning environments. bricolage’s principles of multiple perspectives and multiple theories served as a useful lens for scrutinising the diverse knowledge of the participants. van dijk’s socio-cognitive critical discourse analysis was pivotal for analysing, interpreting and making sense of participants’ prevalent knowledge and experiences. the principles of participatory action research and free attitude interviews were applied as an approach and technique for data generation. the major finding suggests that using service learning projects to create sustainable (physical sciences) learning environments, contributes substantially to decolonising and transforming teaching and learning. keywords: decolonisation, transformation, empowerment, sustainable education, sustainable physical sciences learning environments, meaningful learning, functional learning, critical cross-field outcomes, service-learning projects 1. introduction the idea that education, and therefore teaching and learning, are contextual, enjoys global acceptance. however, some cultures dominate teaching and learning discourses, to the extent that other cultures are subjugated and excluded (cortese, 1999; hall & tandon, 2016; le grange, 2008). it is this subjugation and exclusion of some cultures moeketsi freddie tlali faculty of education, university of the free state, email: tlalimf@ufs.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i2.7 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(2): 85-98 © uv/ufs mailto:tlalimf@ufs.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.7 86 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) from teaching and learning discourses that underscore the need for decolonisation and transformation. power differential realities in respect of dominance and subjugation of cultures exacerbate tensions about epistemology and ontology of knowledge processes unnecessarily. le grange (2008) states it aptly, namely, that ontological and epistemological frameworks underpinning the knowledge creation process are still unchanged. this paper presents an attempt to contribute to changing the still unchanged epistemological and ontological frameworks underpinning the knowledge process of physical sciences. in pursuit of the envisioned change, teaching and learning of physical sciences are given considerable attention. in this regard, higgs (2007) warns that, by failing to be direct about teaching for self-reliance and emancipatory purposes, we subtly perpetuate continued subjugation of ontological and epistemological considerations grounded in communal principles. subsequently, the question that arises is, to what extent is the teaching and learning of physical sciences grounded on communal principles? inclusivity/inclusion is a communal principle of note in this study. cortese (1999:2) highlights an important consideration for inclusivity by indicating that, “the environment is not a competing interest; it is the playing field on which interests intersect”. similarly, this paper argues for consideration of physical sciences learning environments as an intersubjective space, where diverse and multiple perspectives, theories and interests intersect/synergise to sustain quality teaching and learning. however, in the case of the republic of south africa, physical sciences aims to “prepare learners for future learning, specialist learning, employment, citizenship, holistic development, socio-economic development and environmental management” (dbe, 2011a:6). this aim is problematic, especially considering the concerns raised by cortese (1999:2) regarding the estimated “2 billion jobs needed” to address unemployment in the world over the next 20 to 30 years. cortese’s problem, which is worthy of earnest consideration, is that, “our response to this situation has been irresponsible and dangerously inadequate” (1999:2). this irresponsible and inadequate response was confirmed later, in part, by a study that found that physical sciences teaching and learning practices were overly teacher-centred and examination-oriented. these approaches contributed significantly to teachers choosing and using teaching strategies that focused on learners’ academic achievement, and in the process, abstracted the learning of physical science (tlali, 2013). how, then, do we prepare learners to face an uncertain future in relation to employment, considering that there may be no jobs available? how do we teach and learn physical sciences for socio-economic development and environmental management for sustainability? teaching and learning physical sciences for socio-economic development and environmental management for sustainability have the potential to simultaneously transform and decolonise education. transformation and decolonisation of teaching and learning could be subtly derailed by the prevalence of, among other trends, domination and exclusion of learners’ cultures from learning environments; divorcing teaching and learning from socio-economic development and environmental management; thus, rendering learning meaningless and less empowering; and focusing on competing interests, instead of on interests that are complementary and mutually synergising. mahlomaholo and netshandama (2012:37) articulate the state of transformation of education in south africa by stating that the “shadows of the horrific racist apartheid past which are still lingering in practice” frustrate transformation. this paper attempts to provide prospects for dealing with this frustration of transformation of teaching and learning of physical sciences through the creation of sustainable physical sciences learning environments. 87 tlali creating sustainable physical sciences learning environments thus, the paper also argues for the strengthening of school-community coordination through service-learning projects in order to create empowering (biesta, 2010) and meaningful learning spaces that have the capacity to facilitate the generation of functional/ relevant knowledge. in pursuit of empowering knowledge, this paper asks and responds to the following question: how can the physical sciences epistemological framework(s) underpinning knowledge processes be transformed to create empowering, meaningful and functional knowledge? the aim is to demonstrate how service-learning projects (hatcher & erasmus, 2008; kiely, 2005) underpinned by communal principles (cortese, 1999; higgs, 2007) offer prospects for transforming the epistemological framework for the creation of empowering and meaningful knowledge. in this sense, the aim is to facilitate the creation of sustainable physical sciences learning environments in order to contribute to the decolonisation of teaching and transformation of the learning of physical sciences. 2. the lens the question asked by this article is evidently complex. it warrants critical interrogation of inherent realities based on multiple perspectives and multiple theories (steinberg & kincheloe, 2010; kincheloe & berry, 2004) of participants from diverse backgrounds. the complexity of reality, in this instance, emanates from the mutual inclusivity of and interdependence between transformation and decolonisation of teaching and learning, with their inherent, inescapable power differential realities. furthermore, there is a need to comprehend pertinent physical sciences pedagogical content knowledge (toplis, 2015), and to deconstruct learners and teachers’ various and alternative conceptions of scientific concepts, principles and laws, with a view to construct “new” knowledge that is contextually acceptable (foster, 2011). in addition, the opportunities and challenges relating to the sustainability (spencer, mcclelland & spencer, 1994) of the knowledge created are worth insistent consideration. the focus of this article is not to reduce the participants’ diverse experiences and knowledge about decolonising and transforming learning to any one perspective, or to numerals, in order to universalise “newly” learnt knowledge beyond its contextual bounds and scope (kiely, 2005). instead, the emphasis is on the meaningfulness and functionality of the knowledge created. thus, by interrogating this “reality” through the lens of bricolage, this consideration of participants’ multiple perspectives relies on the creation of intersubjective communicative actions (kemmis, 2008; van dijk, 1995; wicks & reason, 2009), where the most logical and convincing evidence-based argument prevails. in this sense, considerate use of service-learning projects for creating sustainable physical sciences learning environments becomes plausible. bricolage enables and is consistent with the creation of the intersubjective communicative actions that this argument relies upon. to this end, foster’s averment about bricolage is instructive. foster claims that bricolage is a “technical metaphor for a cognitive and creative process: the composition and generation of mythical discourse” (foster, 2011:358). the mythical discourse foster (2011:359) clarifies through its “characteristic feature of mythical thought”, which, on the practical plan, is that it builds up structured sets, not directly with other structured sets, but by using the remains and debris of events … or odds and ends…, fossilized evidence of the history of an individual or a society. 88 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) in this paper, the debris of events and possibilities are constrained and thus contextualised by the “means of production” (foster, 2011:363) of water-services-related challenges that often baffle schools and communities. responses to this challenge should not be limited to the academic needs of learners, but need to be simultaneously inclusive of the provision of responsive services to the community. responses, in the form of project-based teaching that serves to address learners’ academic needs, and community needs, are construed as “fossilized evidence” (foster, 2011:363) of shifts and changes in the ontological and epistemological underpinnings referred to earlier. berry’s (2004:103) views about the structure of bricolage, that it “works inwardly, playfully, complexly and rigorously”, supports its relevance to this study. furthermore, berry (2004:103) remarks that bricoleurs are often overwhelmed, “by the plethora of issues and lack of explicit directions, linear steps or structure”, because bricoleurs have “to engage the bricolage without falling back on positivistic, empirical, monological structures or depending on well-known research discourses and methodologies”. the significance of this consideration resides in the importance of understanding reality, if possible, in its complexity. it negates the reductionist and monological approaches and methodologies that tend to coerce knowledge creation in ways that are amenable to manipulation and application out of context. to this end, this paper considers bricolage as having the ability to guide the adopted participatory action research and free attitude interview principles as the approach and technique respectively for generating data, as well as van dijk’s socio-cognitive critical discourse analysis. 3. service-learning project potential using service-learning projects for teaching and learning has significant potential to contribute to achieving the general aims of the south african curriculum, as espoused in the caps documents (dbe, 2011a). in the case of physical sciences, a teaching and learning approach based on service-learning projects can be impactful in relation to preparing learners for “socioeconomic development and environmental management”, while engendering the notion that problem-solving contexts are inclusive and should not be treated in isolation (dbe, 2011b:8). thus, service learning affords the opportunity for equitable and simultaneous achievement (kincheloe, 2008) of multiple socio-economic and academic aims and objectives. importantly, teaching and learning based on service-learning projects enable learners and teachers to access diverse modes of knowledge creation that are relevant and functional in diverse contexts. it makes inclusivity possible and enables contributions that focus academic discourses on what matters most, as opposed to contestations against and for supremacy of one culture, namely, the western culture, over indigenous knowledge systems. the reflective and comprehensively inclusive parameters of service-learning projects are useful and compelling for responding to the academic and socio-economic needs of learners, and society in general. these parameters include conceptualisation of the project, determination and articulation of project outcomes, development of project plans, implementation and regular appraisals and reviews of the various levels or stages of the project performance (meredith & mantel, 2006). using projects for teaching and learning is not unique to this study. 4. service-learning projects in context there is sufficient evidence in the literature that attests to the multiple purposes and benefits of using projects for teaching and learning. for instance, the australian project, to hold our 89 tlali creating sustainable physical sciences learning environments earth firmly, shows how access to and inclusion of indigenous knowledge can be achieved (hickling-hudson, 2006). evidence of the feasibility of accommodating diversity and giving a voice to otherwise subjugated persons for purposes of mutual comprehension of development across diverse knowledge backgrounds is provided by the tanzanian jipemoyo (take heart) project (swantz, 2008). it is also provided by the basic extension skills training (best) project in botswana (gboku & modise, 2008) and south africa’s community higher educationservice partnership (chesp) project (hatcher & erasmus, 2008; thomson et al., 2010). these projects enable us to learn about community-school coordination through projectbased learning. parker et al. (2009) explain how community service learning is used for teaching and learning purposes in australia. in the case of south africa, community service in high schools is reportedly taking place without a clear framework or model in the curriculum (hatcher & erasmus, 2008; perold et al., n.d.). chesp represents one of the many community-higher education service-learning models that exist in south africa and from which we can learn. thus, in the absence of a model for schools in south africa, this study presents a servicelearning project called plug-a-leak, which serves to contribute to closing this gap. this type of project serves to augment the limited resources that are available for teaching and learning; it also seeks to engender a sense of social responsibility through the academic learning process. the service-learning project uses progressive learning theories that are inclusive and subjective and that recognise the role of experience and reflection (kottkamp, 1990) in knowledge creation; are considerate of the role of culture, politics and other influences on people’s experiences of knowledge creation and development of their abilities and they recognise the importance of content (toplis, 2015). in this sense, the creation of sustainable physical sciences learning environments through service-learning projects aims to attain critical cross-field outcomes and the general aims of the curriculum envisioned for south africa (doe, 2003; dbe, 2011a, dbe, 2011b). 5. method the plug-a-leak service-learning project was designed to be executed by participants from diverse backgrounds who were interested in, able to and felt obliged to contribute their experiences, resources and knowledge to responding to the research question. the participants gave their consent to participate in the project after the disclosure and discussion of ethical clearance given by the ethics committee of the university involved. for instance, issues of the anonymity of participants and using information and data generated strictly to respond to the research question were pivotal. a coordinating team that facilitated the execution of this project was established. it comprised 14 learners, who coordinated 14 learner study teams, three teachers of physical sciences, mathematics and english first additional language, the municipality’s environmental health practitioner and water services manager, the school governing body chairperson, a retired school principal and teacher of mathematics, a retired university lecturer and a school management governance and development (smgd) official. the study adapted and used the principles of participatory action research (kemmis, 2008) as an approach in respect of the following: to conduct a situation analysis; to compile the servicelearning project plan; to implement the plan; to reflect and iteratively appraise the project and to adjust the plan accordingly. these actions took place simultaneously. for instance, the planning 90 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) phase reflected on the implementation of other projects and was based on the experiences and knowledge of the participants. similarly, the implementation phase has elements of reflection and planning. using the principles of the free attitude interview (meulenberg-buskens, 1997) as technique, the team used broad questions to initiate discussions and participation by the participants on a range of issues. central to the discussions were issues that were consistent with socio-economic development, environmental management (dbe, 2011b), transformation and decolonisation of teaching and learning (hoggan, 2016; mezirow & associates, 2000). the purpose was to determine epistemological considerations underpinned by principles of inclusivity and sustainability in order to empower learners. in the same vein, the principles of van dijk’s socio-cognitive critical discourse analysis (van dijk, 1995) were used to analyse, interpret and make sense of the issues that emerged. the method explained above is arguably akin to the qualitative case study method as explained by baxter and jack (2008). 5.1 tools and processes the coordinating team meetings were essentially intersubjective spaces for generating data through processes of reflection and self-reflection (steinberg & kincheloe, 2010). these meetings considered and rigorously discussed inputs from the participants as per the project baseline and revised plans and tracked progress. through these engagements, the coordinating team facilitated the development of other instruments and ratified them through relevant processes before using them. for instance, a senior physical science teacher and the head of the department of science education at the school subjected learners’ worksheets on pertinent physical sciences content to be learnt from the plug-a-leak service-learning project to participants’ consideration for comments and input, “moderation” and assessment. the 70 grade 10 learner participants worked in study teams comprising not more than five members each. each study team appointed a coordinator from among the learners to facilitate the coordination of team learning activities with the support of a parent and a teacher. vygotsky’s (1978) notion of the zone of proximal development was instructive in this regard. the roles and responsibilities of the learner study teams were developed in conjunction with the learners with a view of instilling a sense of ownership and respect of the ownership. 6. data analysis and findings i organised the data according to the parameters of the service-learning project and, in the analysis of data, prioritised and integrated aspects of transformation, decolonisation, environmental management and socio-economic development. the following constructs are preferred: service-learning project identification, conceptualisation of service-learning project, service-learning project implementation and reflection. 6.1 service-learning project identification service learning projects offer opportunities to learn while serving and to serve while learning (kiely, 2005). in this sense, service-learning projects become spaces where social develop ment, environmental management, transformation and decolonisation co-exist. thus, service-learning project spaces deal with these realities complexly, rigorously and simultaneously (kincheloe & berry, 2004) as they (service-learning project spaces) relate to creating sustainable (physical science) learning environments. sustainable physical sciences learning environments are adept at creating knowledge that is meaningful and functional 91 tlali creating sustainable physical sciences learning environments (hickling-hudson, 2006). such knowledge is empowering (biesta, 2010) and extends beyond the boundaries of formal school and laboratory. the sustainability of these environments is derived from mutual respect among the participants, who feel obliged to contribute to transformation. in this sense, sustainable physical sciences learning environments are inclusive and instil a sense of social responsibility, in view of the aim of physical science as propounded in the caps document (dbe, 2011b). the coordinating team’s situation analysis engagements, which identified pertinent servicelearning projects for this study, established that the learning of science deviated from the best practices outlined above and related to the creation of sustainable empowering (physical science) learning environments (mahlomaholo, 2010). this was evident from the following summaries of reasons given for the passive attitude of the majority of learners (68 of the 70 learners) regarding challenges related to water services (drinking water and sewerage): water-related challenges, such as leaking taps and burst water and sewerage systems, are the sole responsibility of the municipality. i have nothing to do with them. the sentiment expressed above was corroborated by the following statement, given by all 70 learners concerned in response to a question that sought to establish whether the learners knew what to do when confronted by such encounters: i do not know what to do when i encounter a leaking tap, burst water or sewerage pipe. even if i know i do not involve myself. no one will pay for my involvement. the two learners who offered a different response to the first question, expressed concerns about wastage of water, which, they said, they would report to municipal officers, especially if the problem occurred close to their homes. the data suggests that learners had a carefree attitude to challenges relating to water services. the expressions, “sole responsibility of the municipality” and “i have nothing to do with them”, suggest that the learners considered municipal water services to be the municipality’s responsibility and not theirs. furthermore, they did not consider themselves as having the capacity to respond to such challenges and they were not really interested. the absurdity of this attitude is that they are direct beneficiaries of the service, at school and at their respective homes. the lack of knowledge that the learners referred to in the second excerpt is arguably broad and leads to a variety of conclusions among the different members of the coordinating team. the environmental health practitioner’s perspective was that pollution of the environment through sewer spillages had the potential to destabilise the ecosystem (lyle, 1994) and affect life and living negatively. the school governing body chairperson and a human rights lawyer provided a legal perspective, namely, that water pollution amounted to a socially unjust act and, as such, is punishable by law upheld by the public. the smgd official supported this view, stating that the socially unjust act pointed to a possible shortcoming in teaching and learning because it defeated the purpose of natural and physical sciences (dbe, 2011a). the mathematics teacher presented an economic perspective, using financial mathematical considerations to state that it made no economic sense for the public to pay for installation of water services systems and provision of water, only for them to uncaringly waste it and cause health hazards. from a technical services point of view, the maintenance of water and sewerage systems is costly and demanding. in some instances, special devices have to be designed and made to remove foreign objects from the sewerage system. 92 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) for the coordinating team members, the learners’ passivity and lack of knowledge regarding what appeared to be a glaring social problem, was cause for concern. the team viewed the learners’ act of doing nothing in this context as subtly supporting acts that were potentially wasteful of public resources (e.g. funds used to purified water), destructive to natural resources (e.g. scarce water resources and the ecosystem by sewage) and hazardous to human health (e.g. sewerage blockages where people live). it was as if learners did not care who was on the losing side. furthermore, these considerations suggest that issues of environmental management and socio-economic development might have been taken for granted during the teaching and learning processes. 6.2 conceptualising the service-learning project the conceptual stage of a service-learning project seeks to clarify the aim and scope of the project. it delineates the specifications and parameters within which the project is to operate, while being considerate of the risks and threats that might jeopardise the successful realisation of the project outcomes (meredith & mantel, 2006). in this study, the envisioned servicelearning project was claimed to have the capacity to transform and decolonise the teaching and learning of physical sciences by creating sustainable, empowering learning environments. thus, the creation of empowering knowledge, that is, useful knowledge that eases learners’ interaction with the world of work where actual lifeand living-enhancing changes are sought, is paramount. in this case, matters relating to environmental management and socio-economic development were imperative. during situation analysis sessions, the participants brainstormed possible projects that could respond adequately to the expectations set out earlier. the project had to meet numerous objectives that spanned academic learning outcomes and provision of service, while simultaneously responding to issues of inclusivity, creation of knowledge that learners could use beyond the confines of formal schooling and that addresses environmental management and socio-economic issues. the diverse objectives were, understandably, overwhelming to participants (berry, 2004). during these engagements, the project, which was ultimately dubbed the plug-a-leak service-learning project, enjoyed majority support, based on subsequent collective explications of the extent to which it met the scope that had been set out: let us go out in the community to identify water leakages from which we can collect information that can be used to convince the property owners in line with the identified and agreed scope, why it was necessary for them to be sensitive to water losses and wastages. “going out in the community,” meant that learner participants were also expected to leave the traditional classroom. the possibilities of not learning other subjects were imminent. it also posed a number of other risks, which included safety, being time consuming, exposure to delinquencies and rejection by the department of education, community members and parents. the project seemed to be an awareness campaign that lacked a practical skills component that could relate to socio-economic development. in the same vein, it appeared to fall short of physical sciences academic learning-related aspects. it was because of the apparent negative aspects that the participants considered refining the articulation of the project. it became apparent that it was not going to be cost effective to limit the scope to identification of leaks, but that plugging the leaks, where possible, had to be included. this shifted the 93 tlali creating sustainable physical sciences learning environments thinking of participants to positive and critical thinking mode, and they identified mechanisms that responded adequately to the identified limitations of the project. to this end, the following agreements in respect of the role of participants in addressing the challenges were instructive: let us request people from amongst us [participants] to help address the problems we experience… we must be smart and base our requests on criteria which are in line with the person’s interest, availability, potential and that is aligned to his or her work engagements… we should consider requesting help from public and private businesses in cases where we encounter a problem that is beyond our capacity. the sentiments expressed seemed to be based on values of humility and mutual respect for the people. this conclusion was inferred from the use of concepts such as “help” and “smart”, which described the character of the requests to be made. the requests were to be simple and understandable, clear, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound. these request traits were mindful of the duration of the project. in addition, the data suggest that, even during the conceptual stage, the process of reflection is imperative. this suggestion emanates from the consideration that the mitigating strategies were fundamentally reflections on how to address the challenges identified. it can also be seen as an analytic process. the suggestion to request businesses to assist, suggests that service-learning projects should be as inclusive as possible. it is also evident that such inclusion would be intentional and beneficial to the project. the above analysis points to the emergence of problem-solving and decision-making practices. a conceptualisation process conducted in this fashion has the potential to teach learners to think beyond their means of production (berry, 2004), failure of which tends to limit their scope of operation. the source of the rich contribution of ideas was the multiple experiences and perspectives of the participants – issues relating to risk identification, assessment and mitigation originated from participants who have management skills, such as the smdg official, school governing body chairperson and human rights lawyer as well as the environmental health practitioner. 7. implementation of the service-learning project implementing the service-learning project affords the opportunity to determine the extent to which the project has been conceptualised. it creates spaces for practical alignment of theory and practice, academic learning and provision of social service. in the latter instance, the services provided and the academic learning content learnt serve as a springboard for each other. the plug-a-leak service-learning project worksheet covered a number of physical sciences concepts and principles that pertained to the services provided. i focus on the leakage of a toilet cistern at one learner’s home. asked how she identified the position of the water leak, she explained that they had searched for the leak for the past 12 months. a plumber had also failed, as their diagnosis of a leak was not accurate. he (the plumber) replaced the washers, which were worn out. the learner, ntswaki, said that we (ntswaki and family), collected leaking water behind and below the cistern using a one litre container that became full in four hours… this was inconveniencing, because every four hours someone was to be there to empty the container…. we poured out the water down the drainage system. 94 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) the data suggest that the learner and her parents could not plug the leak that caused them the inconvenience of having to keep a close guard and to empty the container every four hours, only to throw away (waste) 1 000ml of clean water every time. furthermore, interrupting one’s work to “empty the container” was unproductive and uneconomical, hence, “inconveniencing”. doing this six times per day suggests that water to the value of r10.20 was being wasted per day (at a cost of r1.70/litre). the worksheet asked learners to use the flow rate of water in kilograms per hour and in grams per minute to express the relationship between the volume of water lost and the time it would take to lose this amount of money. they then had to plot it graphically and interpret the graph, indicating how the sustained loss of water would affect their household water bill. the graph seemed to have provided the learners with a good picture of the seriousness of the problem. this was evidenced by the urgency with which the affected learner invited her colleague(s) to help her locate the leak and to plug it immediately. the exercise demonstrates the application of mathematical skills to solve scientific problems in real-life situations. the advantage of doing so was that practical measurements of volumes and mass of water could be determined to verify the mathematically calculated masses and volumes. thus, progression of the learning of science, from concrete determination and application of concepts, to abstract levels, was demonstrable. one learner, thabiso, suggested that, “water in the cistern needs to be coloured in red or any visible colour”, so that they could see the flow of leaking water. the location of the leak was subsequently identified successfully. ntswaki was also involved and taught how to fix a minor leak. it was apparent that unless the exact location of the leak was known, the problem could not to be solved. thabiso was asked to explain how he came up with the idea to colour the water. his answer was traceable to the learners’ experiences and knowledge, which all other learners possessed too, though they had considered it as irrelevant, because it (knowledge) emanated from different contexts. learning through a service-learning project enables learning outcomes to have depth, breadth and relative stability (hoggan, 2016). for instance, including learning activities pitched at different cognitive levels ensures depth, while integrating accounting, economics, mathematics, science and technology, ensures breadth. the application of the same principles across different cognitive levels, and providing opportunities for proposing practical solutions from real-life situations have the capacity to optimise the chances that the outcomes learnt will be relatively stable and, therefore, sustainable. 8. reflection reflection and self-reflection serve to unearth knowledge that is empowering and meaningful (hatcher & bringle, 1999). reflection takes place during each stage of a service-learning project. reflection focuses on enhancing project management parameters and specified project outcomes and serves to unearth the participants’ learning points and experiences. the following sentiments were expressed during the reflection session that followed the implementation of the plug-a-leak project. the participants shared their newly acquired experiences, identifying the high and low points of the project, and suggested means of improving instances that were not as pleasing as expected. sello shared his excitement with the rest of the team: 95 tlali creating sustainable physical sciences learning environments sir, i worked with… where we fixed a leaking tap. it was so simple! the washer was worn out. i simply replaced it with the help of…. it costed r10.20 per day and the washer was far less than r10.00. ntswaki, who was exposed to a similar experience when she was involved in the replacement of the pressure ball of a cistern, remarked with excitement: i feel like i would be doing injustice to myself and the community if i cannot do anything to help reduce the water losses in our area. maybe we should join hands, sello, to form a joint venture [laughing] and specialise in these trades. even sebotsa, who did not participate in the training in minor repairs, was enthused by the amount of money she could earn as a professional plumber. she said, i can only imagine the amount of money spent wastefully and fruitlessly due to unaccounted water losses. i think this affords one an opportunity to explore plumbing profession and make money. according to the data, at least two learners had undergone training in minor plumbing repairs. data suggest that sello and ntswaki were actively involved in the actual use of relevant plumbing tools while doing the minor repairs. the data further suggest that their experience of handling minor repairs aroused their interest in the possibility of learning a trade. evidence of this interest is the suggestion to establish a “joint venture” and sebotsa’s desire to explore plumbing as a profession. these business interests are significant for the environmental management and socio-economic development perspectives of these learners. as anticipated, the act of doing actual plumbing repairs is indicative of a shift in thinking that may be related to a shift in pertinent epistemological and ontological underpinnings. this observation is made against the background of popular perception that white-collar jobs are more desirable, which seems to be challenged by these learners’ preference for a joint venture in plumbing as a means of production worthy of pursuit. the influence of multiple perspectives emanating from technology, science, accounting and economics cannot be overemphasised. similarly, the significance of reflection and self-reflection in interrogating data in an attempt to unearth the realities associated therewith should not be taken for granted. in essence, this consideration of participants’ multiple perspectives justifies the need for reflection on all processes and stages of the knowledge process. 9. findings the study found participants’ diverse perspectives and experiences helpful for guiding all facets of the service-learning project, from dissonance to the decision to pursue service learning, service-learning project identification, conceptualisation, implementation and reflection. this process required consideration of participants’ diverse perspectives to integrate learning of physical sciences and other school subjects with aspects of socio-economic development and environmental management. the study also found that it was imperative to involve all participants from the conceptual stage, during which critical decisions are made about a service-learning project. in this instance, the decision was based on, among other matters, the need to interrupt the apparently “carefree” attitudes about and a lack of responsibility for municipal water services. in the same vein, the conceptualisation of the service-learning project was found to have contributed to 96 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) teaching and learning how to develop an implementable, well thought-out plan in collaboration with others. the implementation of the plug-a-leak project eased access to and use of different media for and approaches to teaching and was found to have the capacity to instil an interest in learning. it was also found that teaching through service-learning projects does not end up as teaching and learning for its own sake, but that it responds to real-life problem(s) while exposing learners and teachers to new experiences. reflection, which takes place at every stage of the project, was found to have the capacity to maximise learning and teaching potential. insistent use of project parameters provides opportunities and facilitates the evolution of the breadth, depth and relative stability of learning outcomes (hoggan, 2016), which, in turn, can transform and decolonise teaching and learning. the use of service learning projects in this manner has the potential of being sustainable in that it does not depend on one person. sensitivity to possible negative effects of threats and risks is, however, advisable. 10. conclusion service-learning projects should be geared to creating sustainable (physical sciences) learning environments that are inclusive and respectful of diversity and have the capacity to change the epistemological and ontological frameworks that underpin the knowledge creation process. bricolage has the potential to guide the use of such service-learning projects, such that meaningful, useful and empowering knowledge is extracted from the multiple perspectives of the participants. 11. recommendations the study recommends that • considerable attention should be given using service-learning projects for teaching and learning of physical sciences; • a clearly defined service-learning framework should be developed for schools and time allocated for implementation; • service-learning projects are used in conjunction with 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(ed). 2015. learning to teach science in the secondary school: a companion to school experience. new york: routledge. van dijk, t.a. 1995. aims of critical discourse analysis. japanese discourse, 1(1995), 17–27. vygotsky, l.s. 1978. mind in society: the development of higher psychological process. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. wicks, p.g. & reason, p. 2009. initiating action research: challenges and paradoxes of opening communicative space. action research, 7(243), 243–262. https://doi. org/10.1177/1476750309336715 https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360903161147 https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360903161147 https://doi.org/10.2304/power.2010.2.2.140 https://doi.org/10.4135/9781848607934.n8 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-010-9133-9 https://doi.org/10.1177/1476750309336715 https://doi.org/10.1177/1476750309336715 _goback 120 risky writing: working with a heteroglossic pedagogy to deepen pre-service teachers’ learning abstract this article explores how course design and assessment in a first year pre-service teacher education course for english students can be imbued with academic depth and rigour in ways that enable students to take intellectual and textual risks. we argue for a conceptualisation of risky writing in which we open up student critical engagement with sociolinguistic issues by juxtaposing academic and creative genres in curriculum course material and assessment. academic writing in its current form is problematised and questions are raised about the extent to which academic courses provide students with an apprenticeship into compliance, conformity and silence. we present the possibilities of using a heteroglossic pedagogy (blackledge & creese, 2014) for learning, teaching and writing. the principles underpinning the course (linguistic diversity as a resource, the value of lived experience and the interrelation of epistemological access and academic rigour) constitute a heteroglossic pedagogy. we illustrate these principles using two examples, one from student performance during the course and the second from independent writing for an assignment. together, the two data snapshots illustrate the pedagogic possibilities of fluid movements between distantiation and appropriation using flexible genres, which ultimately facilitate deeper student engagement and understanding of disciplinary knowledge. the two data snapshots are not “mere descriptions or anecdotes” detached from principles (slonimsky & shalem, 2004: 92). they facilitate academic depth and rigour because of the carefully staged moves between the strange and the familiar in a context that encourages students to take creative and intellectual risks. keywords: heteroglossia, heteroglossic pedagogy, academic writing, risk, critical engagement, creative genres, distantiation, appropriation 1. introduction in this article we explore how course design and assessment in pre-service teacher education can be imbued with academic depth and rigour in ways that enable students to take intellectual and textual risks. the course that we discuss is a first year sociolinguistics course for english students in a bachelor of education degree. we argue for a conceptualisation of risky writing in which we open up student critical engagement with sociolinguistic issues by juxtaposing academic and creative genres in both the belinda mendelowitz university of the witwatersrand belinda.mendelowitz@wits. ac.za 011 717 3178 kerryn dixon university of the witwatersrand kerryn.dixon@wits.ac.za 011 717 3183 doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i1.9 issn 0258-2236 eissn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(1): 120-134 © uv/ufs mailto:belinda.mendelowitz@wits.ac.za mailto:belinda.mendelowitz@wits.ac.za mailto:kerryn.dixon@wits.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.9 mendelowitz & dixon risky writing: working with a heteroglossic pedagogy... 121 curriculum course material and the course assessment. we problematise academic writing in its current form and raise questions about the extent to which academic courses provide students with an apprenticeship into compliance, conformity and silence (and wonder what this suggests about the kind of teachers we produce). in addition, we make a case for working with risk as a productive resource in pre-service teacher education, rather than something to be managed and monitored. we work with thesen and cooper’s (2014) notion of risk as a productive resource in postgraduate research writing and apply this concept to pre-service teacher education. the concept of risk is worked with in three different ways: firstly, we work with the concept of risk in relation to academic discourse and academic writing in the context of teacher language education. doeke, kostogriz, and charles (2004) and cartwright and noone (2006) raise critical questions about the way pre-service teachers are positioned by academic discourse as novices required to display and reproduce dominant knowledge through their writing. what this does is raise questions about the academic rigour of courses where students may get superficial access to disciplinary knowledge without substantive depth. this narrow view of academic discourses places teacher language educators in a precarious position, as they must work to produce imaginative language teachers in institutions that marginalise imagination and creativity. compliance is frequently favoured over creative risk-taking thus silencing student voices (thesen & cooper, 2014). we believe that critical engagement and creative risk taking should be foregrounded in academic courses. secondly, we work with the concept of risk in relation to underprepared students and as a potential issue for all. this plays itself out differently depending on their levels of cultural capital. while “academic discourse is nobody’s mother tongue” (bourdieu & passeron, 1994: 8), it is generally more accessible to students who attended privileged schools and for students who have strong english language proficiency. for underprepared students, academic writing is too high stakes for risk-taking, particularly given the perception that it entails reproducing other people’s ideas. shalem et al., (2013), in their research with first year b.ed. students, found that it was only the strongest students in their sample group (in the 70-80% mark range) who perceived academic writing as a space for creativity, play, risk and freedom. all other students perceived academic writing as depersonalised, offering no space for their own ideas and it simply being about reproducing other people’s ideas and facts. we believe that it is critical to give students access to academic discourse and language in ways that allow them to take intellectual risks. thirdly, the question of risk is not only about students but also about our own identity positions as academics. academics need to be aware of the ways in which their own curriculum and assessment practices can be complicit in enforcing hegemonic practices of the institution. paradoxically, in an attempt to support students’ apprenticeship into academic writing, academics are sometimes complicit in silencing students’ linguistic histories and identities. thesen (2014) provides a valuable way out of this quagmire by reconceptualising risk in academic writing as a productive resource rather than a problem. she challenges the “cold” version of risk that is dominant in universities, the notion of risk associated with risk management. in this cold version, risk refers to a “danger or hazard” (thesen, 2014: 11) that universities need to manage to ensure that their reputations remain intact. in the undergraduate context, risk management is played out through the focus on plagiarism and managing ‘at risk’ students, generally a euphemism in south africa for underprepared black students from poorly functioning schools. 122 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) thesen (2014) argues that the written product is central to academic success; at undergraduate level, it takes the form of the academic essay. no matter who the writer is, losses and compromises are experienced in the writing process so that the writer can move safely through each level of gatekeeping. thesen (2014: 1) raises critical questions about the process of erasure and silencing: “what forms of knowledge are erased? why? who benefits? whose voice is silent?” she poses these questions in relation to the production and reception of the intended meaning of the writer and the resonance of the writer’s voice. having outlined the problems and challenges of erasure of voice through trying too hard to “play it safe,” thesen (2014: 12) offers a “warm and productive notion of risk” that emerges from the lived experiences of researchers – allowing for uncertainty, emergent meanings and possibilities for tracing ideas that are realised in writing and those that are lost. she conceptualises risk as follows: our concept of risk is that it is an analytical space for bringing into focus the tilting point between self and other, where the other refers to ideas, places, relationships, audiences and forms. this tilting point is realised in writing through voice or the erasure of voice. risk lies on the cusp, unstable and volatile, between the production and reception of the written word (thesen, 2014: 15). thesen’s (2014) focus is on postgraduate students and research writing. the question is how risk translates into undergraduate teaching and writing. as mentioned previously, academic writing is a high risk, high stakes activity in undergraduate studies. it facilitates learning and displays of learning but also serves as a mechanism for filtering successful and unsuccessful students. this high stakes aspect of academic writing lends itself to the perpetuation of formulaic and restrictive styles of writing, that seem to offer students and academics an insurance policy against failure and low throughput rates. we share thesen’s (2014: 4) concerns about “the consequences of these styles for how and what we know”. our interest is in the impact of these restrictive styles on student voice in academic writing. we use thesen’s (2014: 5) conceptualisation of voice as “a way of tracking writer agency across spaces” and “the capacity for semiotic mobility” across time, space and place. voice is conceptualised in both the abovementioned definitions as dynamic, socioculturally located and constrained by “gatekeeping practices” (2014: 5). in this article, we explore how a heteroglossic pedagogy enables first year students to take risks and to experiment with genres of writing that are more flexible. we adapt thesen’s (2014) notion of risk, voice and erasure to an undergraduate first year course and explore the relationship between academic depth, rigour and risk. 2. a heteroglossic pedagogy: theoretical underpinnings of the sociolinguistics course the sociolinguistics course for first year education students majoring in english is taught over a period of six weeks. since its conceptualisation in 2005, it has undergone a number of changes. when the course began, there was recognition of “minimal points of connection” between students (mendelowitz & ferreira, 2007: 490). the challenge was to find ways to engage all the students whose backgrounds in terms of race, language, gender, class, culture, location and education were vastly different. the driving force of this course has always been to enhance epistemological access and pedagogical responsiveness for academic depth (slonimsky mendelowitz & dixon risky writing: working with a heteroglossic pedagogy... 123 & shalem, 2004; ferreira & mendelowitz, 2009a). however, the pedagogical approach has shifted in response to changes in the field and findings from our ongoing research on the course (mendelowitz & ferreira, 2007; ferreira & mendelowitz, 2009b; mendelowitz & davis, 2011). while epistemological access is still a critical concern more than a decade after slonimsky and shalem’s (2004) seminal article, new ideas are surfacing about how to create access to academic writing and disciplinary knowledge. there has been a move away from teaching the academic writing genre through total immersion in the genre and a move towards engaging students with “diverse forms of writing which allow for, and value, greater expression and development of the student as a person and a writer” (mitchell & evison, 2006: 81). this focus on diverse forms of writing and varied writing tasks allows students to play with register and voice “and to make more connection across sections of courses than they may have done working within the stranglehold of the conventional essay” (mitchell & evison, 2006: 81). hence, mitchell and evison suggest that diverse forms of writing can generate a deeper understanding of content as well as more personal engagement and agency. despite ongoing course revisions, the course has always been underpinned by three nonnegotiable principles. the first is that linguistic diversity is foregrounded. this course is an opportunity for students to engage with each other across their differences where difference is framed as a resource. all students have rich linguistic resources and language histories shaped by their contexts. whether or not students had been flagged by the institution as ‘at risk’ or ‘underprepared’, they are not positioned in the course by lack but rather strength. as student teachers who will work in multilingual classrooms this acknowledgement of linguistic diversity as a productive resource with complex ties to identity is important. the second principle is the value of lived experience. this means valuing students’ personal experiences and intentionally making space for them in the classroom. for a number of years students were required to write language biographies as one of the assessment tasks. the task was grounded in content covered as students drew on other narratives of published authors and previous students’ work to reflect on their experiences. this form of writing was generative in consolidating students’ learning, thinking and reflection (ferreira & mendelowitz, 2009a; ferreira & mendelowitz, 2009b). because the reflective genre’s focus is on the individual, it lends itself to writing that does not silence student voices. the third principle is that epistemological access goes hand in hand with academic depth, neither works at the expense of the other. this means that students need to be given access to academic discourses, in this case, the language of sociolinguistics. however, it is important for us that students do not replicate concepts or theories located in academic disciplines in unthinking ways. students need to be initiated into academic discourses and begin to learn to use academic language purposefully as they engage with disciplinary knowledge. in other words, the course works with both the principles of distantiation and appropriation (slonimsky & shalem, 2004). it begins with appropriation by drawing on the students’ lived experience of language and then pushes students to analyse these experiences with sociolinguistic disciplinary lenses in a broader context (i.e. distantiation). the familiar is thus rendered strange and becomes an object of critical inquiry. the course moves between these two principles throughout using “an iterative, spiral pedagogy” (ferreira & mendelowitz, 2009a: 85) where students revisit “old” ideas encountered earlier in the course and learn to look at them in new ways. 124 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) however, focusing on what students bring to the course linguistically and the ways in which they can use their own lived experiences as entry points to engage with academic concepts, does not necessarily facilitate a level of critical academic engagement, especially as expressed in their writing. one reason for this is the limitation of the genres students are expected to produce. although powerful and generative, one of the disadvantages of working with reflective writing in this course is that it can promote a discourse of victimhood where students reproduce stereotypes and prejudice rather than using the conceptual tools from sociolinguistics to analyse experiences (dixon & mendelowitz, 2016). this led us to rethink the use of reflective writing and we replaced the original assessment task with a creative genre, a dialogue, which was accompanied by a more analytical critical commentary in order to shift the balance from appropriation to distantiation. these decisions to alter course design and assessment practices, based on our experiences of teaching the course, are inseparable from pedagogy. we intentionally work with the idea of a heteroglossic pedagogy (blackledge & creese, 2014). heteroglossia, a concept from bakhtin (1981), is multifaceted and contested (blackledge & creese, 2014). it has been described as a play of conflicting voices and explains the ways in which historical forces shape language varieties and non-standard dialects. for bakhtin (1981) there are two ideological forces in society that manifest in discourses. centripetal discourses are monoglossic, aiming to fix meaning; centrifugal discourses, on the other hand, resist this fixing by diversifying language and articulating alternative and often marginal worldviews. the coming together of these forces in conflict is the operation of heteroglossia: the centripetal forces of the life of language, embodied in a ‘unitary language’, operate in the midst of heteroglossia. at any given moment of its evolution, language is stratified not only into linguistic dialects in the strict sense of the word...but... into languages that are socio-ideological: languages of social groups, ‘professional’ and ‘generic’ languages, languages of generations and so forth...alongside the centripetal forces, the centrifugal forces of language carry on their uninterrupted work; alongside verbal-ideological centralisation and unification, the uninterrupted processes of decentralisation and disunification go forward (bakhtin, 1981: 271-272). busch (2014) argues that when considering heteroglossia one should distinguish between multi-discursivity, multivoicedness and linguistic diversity. multi-discursivity frames discourse as socio-ideological where discourses are shaped by time periods and social spaces. relatively stable genres develop within these discourses. in our context, as students master specific academic discourses this mastery would need to be reflected in their writing. multivoicedness refers to the diversity of individual voices that speak in multi-discursive interactions. the word, according to bakhtin (1981), belongs to the individual and the other. the speaker/writer needs to appropriate the discourse and adapt it so that it meets his/her intentions before it becomes his/her ‘own’. linguistic diversity does not refer to different languages. from a bakhtinian perspective, linguistic diversity refers to the traces left behind as a result of social differentiation (busch, 2014). thus, the intentional use of language by speakers results in a dialogue of languages. the operation of centripetal and centrifugal forces within communicative acts is important for student language teachers. understanding how language circulates unequally and that language is discursively constructed under social and historical conditions (piller & takahashi, 2014) is something language teachers need to know. our aim is to produce teachers who can work in mendelowitz & dixon risky writing: working with a heteroglossic pedagogy... 125 ways that open meaning, allow for the play of conflicting voices, do not unthinkingly reproduce dominant forms of knowledge (doeke et al., 2004), and do not silence their students’ voices. a heteroglossic pedagogy opens space for an interrogation of language varieties, discourses and practices in the south african context. although there is little work that focuses on heteroglossic practices in education (busch, 2014), blackledge and creese (2014) advocate using a heteroglossic pedagogy in language teaching. the advantage of such an approach is that “voices which index students’ localities, social histories, circumstances and identities” (blackledge & creese, 2014: 18) are foregrounded as centripetal and centrifugal forces come into play. this is illustrated in figure 1 below. a heteroglossic pedagogy that enables voices, discourses and multiple representations of the world to be heard, frames the course. the three interrelated principles that underpin the course are key. the first is students’ own linguistic repertoires, which reflect the multivoicedness of these individual voices drawing on their own lived experiences. these voices are shaped by other discourses students have appropriated in their particular contexts to articulate and understand their own experiences, thus making language their ‘own’. in terms of course design, this positions students’ voices and linguistic repertoires as resources. positioned often as marginal voices in the academic space, this would be an example of the presence of centrifugal forces. the second principle is the discourse of sociolinguistics, whose existence as a sub-discipline within the field of linguistics has been shaped over time and space. as an academic discipline, the ways in which language is used is reflected in its written genres. students need to be able to work with these text-based realities to succeed in the academy (slonimsky & shalem, 2004). the ways in which academic knowledge constructs the world and is transmitted to students is an example of a centripetal force. the linked nature of the two circles is also an example of multi-discursivity. a dialogue emerges between the multivocal voices of students, course texts and multiple discourses brought into the course so that academic rigour and epistemological access can combine. this manifests in the third idea, which focuses on student writing where linguistic diversity comes to the fore. linguistic diversity arises from the written assessment students completed in the course. students’ often silenced linguistic practices are validated as being worthy of analysis. placing the creative writing and critical commentary side-by-side creates a heteroglossic text. the two different genres enter into dialogue with each other as do nonstandard and standard varieties of language. it is in this space that students’ risk-taking became a possibility as critical student voices emerged and students began to use a powerful academic discourse to trouble other powerful discourses operating in their lives. 126 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) linguistic repertoires: heteroglossic pedagogy centrifugal forces ce ntr ipe tal for ces warm risk multivoicedness: student voices expressed multimodally: role play, writing, debate intentional use of language and varieties in texts and between texts placing creative genres alongside academic genres introduction to the field and a tool of analysis drawing on old discourses, learning new academic discourses starting with student strenghts linguistic diversity: multimodal meaning making: discourse of sociolinguistics: multidiscursivity: figure 1: a model of the heteroglossic pedagogy in a first year sociolinguistics course 3. the assignment the course covered the following topics before the assignment brief was provided to students: self, identity and language attitudes (week 1), language, context and culture (week 2) and language variation (week 3). students were briefed on the assignment during week 4, which focused on language practices, race and youth identities. the course readings consisted of a diverse mix of academic articles, narratives and newspaper articles. students were exposed to new disciplinary knowledge through engaging with formal academic texts, narratives and media texts. by the time students wrote this assignment, they had been introduced to sociolinguistic concepts such as language, dialects, standard and non-standard varieties, power and group membership, prescriptive and descriptive approaches to language and linguistic prejudice (see appendix 1: course outline) the assignment required students to write a dialogue between two or more participants using a youth language variety and to analyse the dialogue using key sociolinguistic concepts. the assignment was thus a blend of a creative/non-traditional genre (the dialogue) with a more traditional academic genre (the critical commentary): section 1: write a dialogue between two or more participants which illustrates the use of your own youth variety. your dialogue must be situated in a specific context and the audience and purpose of the dialogue must be made explicit at the outset. the dialogue may be written in any language or dialect of your choice (e.g. tsotsitaal, afrikaans). however, you must provide translations. if the entire dialogue is written in a language or dialect other than standard english, the entire text must be translated. if mendelowitz & dixon risky writing: working with a heteroglossic pedagogy... 127 the text is written in standard english with specific slang words, then a glossary must be provided. follow the format of cook’s dialogue transcript on page 58 in the reading pack. section 2: analyse the role of your youth variety in this dialogue in relation to the following categories: • intended audience • context and purpose • group membership and expression of specific identities (for example, gender and cultural identities) because the assignment required students to create a dialogue using a youth variety, it was critical that the scaffolding for the assignment was performative, enabling students to develop an authentic, ‘slice of life’ dialogue that played with language varieties in interesting ways and to literally use their voices, first in small groups and then in front of the whole group. we use bauman’s (conceptualisation of verbal art and performance in action) as modes of speaking which are characterised by “heightened attention to language” (1977 cited in deumart and lexander, 2013: 530) and the display of linguistic skills as well as by reflexivity and audience appreciation to analyse student role plays in the section below. 4. scaffolding for risky writing: performing and rehearsing the data section of this article has two components. one is drawn from interaction and performances in the lecture, which illustrates a heteroglossic pedagogy in action, while the second form of data is drawn from a student assignment to show the end product of risky writing, what risky writing looks like and how it demonstrates a synthesis of academic depth, rigour and creativity. we have made conscious choices to use snapshots of data in this paper, as examples to illustrate our argument, rather than using extensive data for in-depth analysis. in the section that follows, we discuss scaffolding for the dialogue assignment. we work with a version of scaffolding that foregrounds student agency and creativity rather than a “one way process wherein the ‘scaffolder’ constructs the scaffold and presents it for use to the novice” (daniels, 2001: 59). this negotiated approach to scaffolding foregrounds “the dialectic of creative synthesis” (john-steiner & meehan, 2000: 35), which entails a collaboration between the individual’s mind and the social environment, including the negotiation between the learner and peers and the learner and the scaffolder. volunteers presented their role-plays to the whole class, which covered a range of interactions (e.g. an errant boyfriend and irate girlfriend, hostile neighbours, lecturer and student, employer and employee). each role-play elicited a different response but overall there was a high level of enjoyment and amusement (bauman’s ‘audience appreciation’) at seeing classmates take on roles, negotiate conflict situations with verbal dexterity and the use of a mix of standard and non-standard varieties in a space that is usually only the domain of standard english. laughing together as a class cannot be underestimated as a way of opening up space and removing some of the formalities of the lecture as a mode of interaction. however, besides being engaging and entertaining, the role-plays served a number of important functions in scaffolding and facilitating risk-taking. it provided students with opportunities to “inhabit creative contexts” (grainger, goouch & lambirth 2005: 24) using 128 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) oral and kinaesthetic modalities and to rehearse for the written assignment in a relatively unthreatening, low-stakes context. the second function of the task entailed critical reflection and analysis of the role-plays presented to the group. the focus of this analysis was on the linguistic choices, language variety and register shifts in different contexts and more importantly an explanation of these shifts. the role-plays were analysed collaboratively by the lecturers and students. we framed the key issues emerging from each presentation using the relevant sociolinguistic discourses, hence modelling the process of analysing dialogues as preparation for the assignment. both the performative and reflexive components of the lecture served as important support for the two writing genres required by the assignment. from this perspective, the lecture as a whole is an enactment of multi-discursivity, the co-presence of academic and creative genres and discourses and their interrelatedness. below is a snapshot from one of the role-plays and the analysis of issues raised: ‘where were you?’ evasive boyfriend and angry girlfriend role-play two female students volunteer to present their role-play to the class, taking on the role of a zulu male and his zulu girlfriend. the girlfriend is angry and hurt that her boyfriend didn’t attend her twenty first birthday party. she confronts him but he does not provide the response that she really needs: an explanation, an apology and confirmation that she is the ‘main chick’ (this is a term that assumes that men have more than one girlfriend but that one of the girlfriends has more status than the others). the boyfriend replies that he was busy and has a lot going on. the girlfriend becomes quite shrill and continues to probe, to try and get the response she needs. the boyfriend paces up and down the room, mumbling to himself in tsotsitaal, and occasionally spouting terms of endearment ín standard zulu (‘isitandwe’) then reverting back to tsotsitaal. the role-play ends with the girlfriend’s devastating realisation that she is not ‘the main chick’. the dialogue alternates between standard english, standard zulu (used by the girlfriend) and tsotsitaal (used by the boyfriend). this was a fascinating, if disturbing, role-play to analyse with the students. the actresses and the class were clear that even though the boyfriend was in the wrong and the girlfriend had the moral high ground, the boyfriend held the power in the interaction because of zulu cultural and gender practices and beliefs. because of this gendered power dynamic, he is in a position to withhold his explanation. the reaction to the role-play was mixed. there were vocal protestations (mostly from female students) about the gendered power imbalance alongside the acknowledgement of a particular social practice entrenched in certain communities. the role-plays (and our reflection that follows) illustrate bauman’s (1977) framework of performance in action. firstly, there was a powerful sense of ‘audience appreciation’ evident in laughter and gasping while watching the performance and clapping, commenting and engagement with the issues afterwards. the two female students displayed their verbal dexterity by using multiple voices, gender crossing, and codeswitching between english, zulu and tsotsitaal. their heightened attention to language was evident in their selection of language varieties to convey specific messages about language, gender and power. the ‘boyfriend’ codeswitched to tsotsitaal as a way of escaping and avoiding having to communicate and account for his actions. students explained that this is because tsotsitaal is used and understood more widely by men than women (hurst, 2009; bembe & beukes, 2007). the students illustrate multivocality by not only taking on the role of a male and speaking the relevant language variety but also by emulating the imagined masculine body language. the mendelowitz & dixon risky writing: working with a heteroglossic pedagogy... 129 ‘girlfriend’ speaks mostly standard english and standard zulu, which are high status and dominant varieties in certain contexts. however, in this context it is ironic that the standard form is silenced. although the girlfriend is articulate and assertive, she is ultimately silenced and her voice is rendered less powerful because of the discursive practices. reflexivity, bauman’s final element of performance (1977), was evident in the discussions that followed the role-plays. students brought everyday experience to the role-plays. when left unanalysed they can simply reproduce dominance. however, the reflexive questions and the use of sociolinguistic concepts facilitated an unpacking of the meaning of the role-play. the role-play task illustrates the fluid movements between appropriation of the students’ everyday experiences and distantiation by making the role-plays the objects of analysis, using sociolinguistic categories. the students are thus challenged to interrogate and critically analyse the role-plays with a rigourous disciplinary gaze. we return to thesen’s (2014) notion of risk as a productive resource and our central argument that a heteroglossic pedagogy, which foregrounds productive notions of risk, can facilitate creativity, academic depth and rigour. the student role-plays generated a rich array of voices and social issues that we jointly problematised and analysed. the presentation and exploration of contentious issues through roles created important ‘safety valves’, enabling students to distantiate by exploring the issues with an outsider perspective. the students were required to take on two different roles: the role of creative dramatist and the role of emerging academic writer. when these two processes were in dialogue with each other, they generated depth and critical engagement with key sociolinguistic issues. working with thesen’s warm and productive notion of risk, we too are “interested in emergent meanings” (2014: 12) and opening up possibilities and tracing meanings. the lecture described above, with its combination of performance and reflection, created a space for the exploration of “emergent meanings”, which students had to consolidate in their individual written assignments. 5. doing risky writing: you should have a sugar daddy over the years that this assignment has been set (with ongoing refinements), it is evident that students have grappled with language practices in the communities in which they are located. the dialogue requires a high level of understanding about the ways language is used in context. the task of writing a convincing, authentic dialogue requires an application of the concepts and knowledge students have been exposed to on the course. students need to be able to identify an incident where language plays a key role, show how characters’ ideas, values and beliefs are evident in their choice of language and explain how language is used to reflect a wider set of inclusionary and/or exclusionary practices and power relations. student dialogues have covered a range of topics reflecting serious social issues. dialogues have been written about teenage pregnancy, homophobia, constructions of sexual and gender identity, sexism and racism. many of these dialogues combine the mundane and the taboo. we discuss one example, an exemplar of many others that shows how harnessing the known provides a platform for a more rigorous academic engagement with course content. the dialogue is set in nongoma kwazulu-natal. the mundane everyday practice of girls chatting in a yard is placed in stark contrast to the content of the discussion. there are three characters in this dialogue, two girls from nongoma and one who grew up in durban but has moved to nongoma. the girl from durban tries to convince the other two girls of the 130 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) need to ‘procure’ a sugar daddy. the clash of rural and urban cultures comes to the fore as traditional and consumption discourses compete with each other raising the issue of respect for adults and the girls as individuals in this community. the natural emergence of sexual identity and curiosity about sex is juxtaposed against complex socio-economic reasons that create environments for transactional sex. this is a real social issue faced by young women and those within our institution, where gender-based violence, hiv and std infections are just some of the long term consequences of transactional sex (hunter, 2002; luke, 2005). thandiwe, the writer of this dialogue, uses language varieties intentionally. the urban sophisticate’s language is full of slang, english and isizulu: ok, dizzy moon kumele nithole amadoda enu kodwa a-g8. (ok, loose girls, you must find your own boyfriends but they must be rich.) this is in contrast to the isizulu the other girls speak: ngicela ungaqalike nalesi silingu sakho. (please don’t start with that english of yours.) in thandiwe’s critical commentary, she is keenly aware of gendered cultural practices. she explains how “our cultures don’t allow us to go about and play with our peers, girls have to do home chores...sometimes their parents do not want girls to be seen to gather together without an elder between them”. the taboo nature of the conversation is highlighted when one of the characters tells the other girls to keep quiet. thandiwe notes in her analysis, “she [samke] knows what they are talking about is wrong...and they do not want their parents to hear”. choosing this particular incident and highlighting the discomfort and excitement of the girls in considering the possibility of a sugar daddy is an example of risky writing. as we commented earlier in the paper, real issues in students’ lives are often not the subject of lectures. as is evident in this case, thandiwe takes the risk of interrogating something that is culturally taboo and outside the academy. the assignment opens a space that enables centrifugal discourses to be validated. thandiwe’s own linguistic resources are validated in her heteroglossic dialogue. here, rural and urban practices and beliefs about girls’ behaviour come into conflict with each other. thandiwe successfully ‘speaks’ in these conflicting voices. thandiwe’s own voice adds to the multivocality of the text as a whole when one reads the critical commentary. at one point in the dialogue, the two girls from nongoma say that they do not understand the language the urban sophisticate is using. it is clear from the dialogue she is showing off and positioning herself as superior to the other girls. thandiwe writes in her critical commentary, this is how youth now use the social functions of codeswitching as i have shown in the above example to accommodate each other and sometimes to exclude other participants who have never been in other places from home...that increases the social distance between them (sic). using terms like ‘social functions’, ‘codeswitching’, ‘accommodate’, ‘exclude’ and ‘social distance’ are indications that thandiwe is taking on the discourse of sociolinguistics and academic writing more generally. the construction of this sentence contains traces of other discourses. for example, the phrasing of “never been in other places from home” has an informality that someone with full mastery of academic writing is unlikely to use. it also indicates her status as a second language speaker. this can be contrasted with the phrase mendelowitz & dixon risky writing: working with a heteroglossic pedagogy... 131 “as i have shown in the above example” which indicates an awareness of the formality and signposting prevalent in academic writing. the entire sentence demonstrates that she is able to use academic language as a tool to critically interrogate social practices. what is of importance for us is the emergence of her academic voice alongside the development of academic literacy. her emergent writerly voice that begins to take on the authoritative tone from academic discourse reveals a critical engagement that the course aimed to promote. the assignment as a whole, illustrates both the processes of appropriation and distantiation. in order to write the dialogue, thandiwe has appropriated her everyday knowledge but she has also drawn on her evolving disciplinary knowledge in order to select appropriate subject matter that lends itself to critical analysis. thandiwe’s critical commentary illustrates the process of “applying principles to familiar objects” (slonimsky & shalem, 2004: 92). 6. conclusion at the outset of this article, we problematised academic writing in its current form and raised concerns about the consequences of these styles on student voice and agency in academic writing. we would like to conclude by thinking about the consequences of the heteroglossic pedagogy described in this paper and its impact on “how and what we know” (thesen, 2014: 4). in this article we have illustrated how thesen’s notion of “warm risk” (2014) can be applied to initial teacher language education to generate critical student engagement in ways that promote academic depth and rigour. we have argued that this can be achieved using a heteroglossic pedagogy that foregrounds linguistic diversity, multivoicedness and multi-discursivity. allowing for multi-discursivity opens up possibilities for creative forms of engagement that are often absent in teacher education. a careful consideration of these interrelationships is important in the design of course curricula and assessment if the goal is deep, critical student engagement. for us, the juxtaposition of creative and academic genres and pedagogies generated critical student engagement with sociolinguistics and enabled students to explore emergent meaning. however, it is important to highlight that while most students produced vivid, rich dialogues; the critical commentaries were for the most part indicative of a slow emergence of academic voices alongside the development of academic literacy. no doubt, for some students meanings were lost along the way and did not travel across space as they might have hoped. for others, the gap between production, reception and intention were narrower. we recognise that acquisition is not an overnight process but also that focusing explicitly on developing students’ academic literacy and an academic voice remains an ongoing challenge in individual course design and courses across the degree. the two data snapshots, the role-plays and the exemplar from thandiwe’s assignment illustrate the operation of risk at different levels and in different ways: for the student who performs in a role-play for the whole group, for the lecturer who lets go of her authority and encourages every student in the class to become a resource for learning and for the students as they write the assignment, exploring risky topics and moving between the creative dramatist role and the emerging academic role. together, the two data snapshots illustrate the pedagogic possibilities of fluid movements between distantiation and appropriation using flexible, risky genres, which ultimately facilitate deeper student engagement and understanding of disciplinary knowledge. the two data 132 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) snapshots are not “mere descriptions or anecdotes” detached from principles (slonimsky & shalem, 2004: 92). they facilitate academic depth and rigour because of the carefully staged moves between the strange and the familiar. in particular, the use of a creative genre alongside an academic genre facilitates intellectual and affective engagement and deeper insights. references bakhtin, m. 1981. the dialogic imagination. austin tx: university of texas press. bauman, r. 1977. verbal art as performance. prospect heights, illinois: waveland press. bembe, p. & beukes, a. 2007. the use of slang by black youth in gauteng. southern african linguistics and applied language studies, 25(4), 463-472. http://dx.doi. org/10.2989/16073610709486475 blackledge, a. & creese, a. (eds.). 2014. heteroglossia as practice and pedagogy. dordrecht: springer. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7856-6 bourdieu, p. & passeron, j.c. 1994. introduction: language and the relationship to language in the teaching situation. in p. bourdieu, j.c. passeron & m. de saint martin. academic discourse: linguistic misunderstanding and professorial power. cambridge: polity press. pp. 1-34. busch, b. 2014. building on heteroglossia and heterogeneity: the experience of a multilingual classroom. in a. blackledge & a. creese (eds.). heteroglossia as practice and pedagogy. dordrecht: springer. pp. 21-40. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7856-6_2 cartwright, p. & noone, l. 2006. critical imagination: a pedagogy for engaging pre-service teachers in the university classroom. college quarterly, 9(4), 1-16. daniels, h. 2001. vygotsky and pedagogy. london/new york: routledge/falmer. deumart, a., and lexander, k.v. 2013. texting africa: writing as performance. journal of socioinguistics, 17(4), 522-546. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/josl.12043 dixon, k. & mendelowitz, b. 2016. giving voice to the citizen scholar: generating critical thinking by combining traditional and nontraditional genres in a first year english course. in j. arvanitakis & d. hornsby (eds.). universities, the citizen scholar and the future of higher education. london: palgrave macmillan. pp.85-101. doeke, b., kostogriz, a. & charles, c. 2004. heteroglossia: a space for developing critical language awareness. english teaching: practice and critique, 3(3), 29-42. ferreira, a. & mendelowitz, b. 2009a. diversity, double talk and (mis)alignment: pedagogic moves for epistemological access. southern african linguistics and applied language studies, 27(1), 77-92. http://dx.doi.org/10.2989/salals.2009.27.1.7.755 ferreira, a. & mendelowitz, b. 2009b. creating a dynamic contact zone: an undergraduate english course as multilingual pedagogic space. english teaching: practice and critique, 8(2), 54-79. grainger, t., goouch, k. & lambirth, a. 2005. creativity and writing: developing voice and verve in the classroom. london/new york: routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203391075 hunter, m. 2002. the materiality of everyday sex: thinking beyond prostitution. african studies, 61(1), 99-120. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00020180220140091 http://dx.doi.org/10.2989/16073610709486475 http://dx.doi.org/10.2989/16073610709486475 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7856-6 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7856-6_2 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/josl.12043 http://dx.doi.org/10.2989/salals.2009.27.1.7.755 http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9780203391075 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00020180220140091 mendelowitz & dixon risky writing: working with a heteroglossic pedagogy... 133 hurst, e. 2009. tsostitaal, global culture and local style: identity and recontextualisation in twenty-first century south african townships. social dynamics, 35(2), 244-257. http://dx.doi. org/10.1080/02533950903076196 john-steiner, v.p. & meehan, t.m. 2000. creativity and collaboration in knowledge construction. in c. lee & p. smagorinsky (eds.). vygotskian perspectives on literacy research. cambridge: cambridge university press. pp. 31-48. luke, n. 2005. confronting the ‘sugar daddy’ stereotype: age and economic asymmetries and risky sexual behavior in urban kenya. international family planning perspectives, 31(1), 6-14. http://dx.doi.org/10.1363/3100605 mendelowitz, b. & ferreira, a. 2007. engaging narratives: using language biographies to facilitate student learning. southern african linguistics and applied language studies, 25(4), 487-504. http://dx.doi.org/10.2989/16073610709486477 mendelowitz, b. & davis, h. 2011. a circle of learning: the impact of a narrative multilingualism approach on in-service teachers’ literacy pedagogies. reading & writing, 2(1), 41-62. http:// dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v2i1.12 mitchell, s. & evison, a. 2006. exploiting the potential of writing for educational change at queen mary, university of london. in l. ganobcsik-williams. teaching academic writing in uk higher education. palgrave macmillan. pp. 196211. piller, i. & takahashi, k. 2014. linguistic diversity and social inclusion. international journal of bilingual education and bilingualism, 14(4), 371-381. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13670050. 2011.573062 shalem, y., dison, l., gennrich, t. & nkambule, t. 2013. i don’t understand everything here...i am scared. discontinuities as experienced by first year education students in their encounters with assessment. south african journal of higher education, 27(5), 1081-1098. slonimsky, s. & shalem, y. 2004. pedagogic responsiveness for academic depth. in h. griesel (ed.). curriculum responsiveness: case studies in higher education. pretoria: south african universities vice-chancellors association. thesen, l. 2014. risk as productive: working with dilemmas in the writing of research. in l. thesen & l. cooper (eds.). risk in academic writing: postgraduate students, their teachers and the making of knowledge. toronto: multilingual matters. pp.1-26. thesen, l. & cooper, l. (eds.). 2014. risk in academic writing: postgraduate students, their teachers and the making of knowledge. toronto: multilingual matters. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02533950903076196 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02533950903076196 http://dx.doi.org/10.1363/3100605 http://dx.doi.org/10.2989/16073610709486477 http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v2i1.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/rw.v2i1.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2011.573062 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13670050.2011.573062 134 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) appendix 1: course outline week core readings extended readings tasks week 1 self, identity and language attitudes janks (1993) – pp.4-6 moya, johnston, merten, kamaldien (2006) pp. 9-10 khuluma (2003) – p.7 preparation for section 1 of assignment (language narrative) interview each other about language histories; language diary & metaphor exercise debating ekasi articles week 2 language, context and culture naylor (2000) – pp. 24-25 student language narratives (2009): 11-23 zodwa (pp. 11-15) candace (pp. 16-19) michelle (pp. 20 23) trevor’s biography (2005 pp. 30-31) tshegofatso’s biography (2007) – pp. 32-34 assignment section 1 draft due: monday 2 march week 3 language variation kaschula & anthonissen (1995) – pp. 35-41 crystal (1994) – pp. 44-46 anzaldua (2000) – pp. 50-54 power (2005) – pp. 47-49 writing workshop 1: monday 2 march (2-4pm) – edit drafts of assignment section 1 week 4 language practices, race and youth identities obama (2007) – pp. 59-60; wolfe (2004) – pp. 60-61; bembe & beukes (2015) – pp. 63-73 assignment section 2 draft due: monday 16 march compile youth dictionary; role-plays week 5 language profiling and prejudice dvd: afrikaans cook (2009) p. 93 blog on microaggression – pp. 76-77 full cook article available on request smitherman & alim (2012) pp. 78-92 writing workshop 2: monday 16 march (2-4pm) – edit drafts of assignment section 2 week 6 language in diverse classrooms alim (2012) – pp. 94-96 zuidema (2005) – pp. 97-106 preparation for section 3 of assignment (analysis and reflection on narrative and dialogue) _goback perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 107 the external contingencies and development processes of students with emotional disabilities john nikolaros this paper examines the external contingencies that students with emotional disabilities (ed) experience throughout childhood and adolescence. it presents an in-depth assessment of the impact of external dynamics on the emotional development of students with ed, and considers the school, home, and community support systems. the paper assesses school implementation and the ability to influence the regulation process, along with a review of strategy that assists schools and parents in assessing interventions. key words: emotional disabilities, psychopathology, emotional intelligence(ie), behaviours the problem students with emotional disabilities (ed) are misunderstood and are, therefore, not properly placed in the most conducive classrooms. the external environment is predominantly a lost variable as far as placing students with ed in classrooms is concerned. schools have support issues due to the inappropriate placement of students with ed. there is intolerance of this group, resulting in a lack of research and experiment theory and practices. school members thus lack information as far as best practices are concerned. early detection of an ed is vital for successful school outcomes. early clinical and/ or school-based interventions are more suited to provide a plan of action, and to remediate any disturbances. schoolteachers’ roles are important, as they have a profound effect on the child’s emotional context and student achievement. john nikolaros harry s. truman college, education department e-mail: jnikolaros@ccc.edu tel: 1-847-687-8310 perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 108 introduction students with ed in the united states of america present teachers with a wide range of responsive impairments that impact on their achievement in schools. teachers are inclined to refer students with ed to special education administration for case study analyses. students with ed must meet certain requirements in order to become eligible for special education services. the individuals with disabilities education act (2004) provides schools with a definition of an ed, including a list of criteria. these criteria provide school personnel with a clear delineation, adjudicating the decision to provide special education services. an ed is a condition that exhibits one or more of the following characteristics over a long period of time and to a discernible degree. it adversely affects a child’s educational performance. • an inability to learn that cannot be explained by intellectual, sensory, or health factors. • an inability to build or maintain satisfactory interpersonal relationships with peers and teachers. • inappropriate types of behaviour or feeling under normal circumstances. • a general pervasive mood of unhappiness or depression. • a tendency to develop physical symptoms or fears associated with personal and school problems (idea, 2004). some students with ed are diagnosed with mental illnesses such as anxiety, bipolar, conduct, eating, obsessive-compulsive, and psychotic disorders. there is a wide range of behavioural impediments that are not limited to withdrawal, introvert temperaments, displacement, depression, and manic episodes. the author aims to provide a better understanding of the emotional development of students with ed, of the criteria for better placement opportunities, and of the importance of external contingencies for students with ed. placement and home support systems an ed could impede a student’s learning process. schools begin to remedy eds by identifying specific emotional disturbances. students who reveal equally subversive acts of behaviour tend to be assigned to one setting or classroom. difficult placement options for students with ed result in maladjustment behaviours that restrain social learning opportunities in classrooms (poysa, 2011). public school administrators evaluate learning environments and, if deemed appropriate, they consequently place students in inclusive settings. issues and questions arise for all members linked to the student, when a student with ed returns to a self-contained classroom. in self-contained classrooms, students with ed are grouped together with other students with social aptitude problems; this tends to have more adverse implications for teachers and students (hibel & jasper, 2012). the external contingencies and development processes of students with emotional disabilities john nikolaros, edd. 109 social aptitude is a factor that prevents students with ed from fully grasping learning objectives. alternatively, demonstrating a positive social aptitude produces successful academic outcomes. social aptitude is defined as the inherent ability or awareness of the external environment, i.e. people and their context. social aptitude includes the multiplicity of social skills that enhance a person’s social efficacy (adams, 2013). the acquisition of social aptitude by students with ed is limited, due to their inability to form sustainable and workable relationships. a socially competent person is capable of initiating and maintaining positive social interactions, developing friendships, establishing collaborative networks, and coping effectively with his/her social environments (rutherford, mathur & quinn, 1998). a healthy social environment includes students with ed co-existing with their socially competent peers. several factors play a role when deciding why a child presents with ed. barbarin (2002) identifies five dynamics that impair a child’s operative performance, namely • childhood history of early deprivation and trauma; • family instability/conflict; • involvement in the child welfare system; • neighbourhood danger/limited resources, and • inconsistent school and home environments. children are at risk of poor emotional development, due to the external contexts that will influence their outcomes. conversely, the child can positively or negatively enhance his/her external environment. the external context is developed by the child’s activity within his/her circumstances. more specifically, the child could be a stimulus within the constructs of the external environment. effective intervention plans must apply a psychopathology embedded in ascertaining the role the child undertakes with his/her environment. the child’s perception of his/her experiences and surroundings influences the depth and breadth of ed. for example, a child can experience family instability and still function at a normal emotional level, partake in child-welfare systems, and find ways to neutralize the effects. the home and school external experiences throughout childhood influence the child’s intensity and variability of emotions. the emotional dynamics of the child will result in heightened levels of emotional-behavioural variability under inconsistent home and classroom interventions and/or clinical treatment (bohanon, flannery, malloy & fenning, 2009). this can cause poor academic performance, resulting in the child being left behind and in eliciting potential discussions of changes in placement into more restrictive classroom environments. the change in placement can result in a major psychological and cognitive reinterpretation of the child’s external and internal reality (poysa, 2011). some perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 110 students with ed do not process change very well, and setbacks can be detrimental to the child’s cognitive and psychological maturation (jones & hensley, 2012). the consistency between the child’s external rehabilitation, home, and school environments develops healthy forms of psychopathology. however, without this consistency in the child’s external environments, the functional continuity that is assumed to manifest in negative forms leads to eds (duchnowski & kutash, 2011). the developing inconsistency deregulates normal neurological processing and conditioning (radohl, 2011). external social emotional experiences, which are factors in the child’s developmental psychopathology, impact on the child’s normal inherent maturation. children who experience externalizing psychosomatic problems display more anger and those who experience internalizing psychosomatic problems show more fear (wright, day & howells, 2009). accordingly, children who demonstrate fear are thought to be more likely to acquire anxiety-related disorders; children who are often sad and demonstrate hardly any happiness will manifest depressive symptoms, and children who are easily angered will display behaviour disorders (muris & ollendick, 2005). external environment and context schools are refocusing instructional implementation away from teacher-centered learning. teacher-centered learning environments have been proven to be ineffective for the majority of students. schools are, therefore, examining conducive learning environments. in the current paradigm, schools believe that kindergarten-twelve (k-12) students perform better in classroom environments where teachers implement student-centered learning (miller, 2013). the evidence contradicts this assumption for students within the ed group. in addition, students with ed must first demonstrate and maintain positive social interactions. a significant proportion of adolescents who exhibit aggressive, antisocial, or delinquent behaviour often have not had the opportunity to learn the basic social skills that promote effective participation in social situations (gaffney & mcfall, 1981; short & simeonsson, 1986). students within the ed subgroup seem to thrive in direct, structured learning environments. high school teachers from a high-performing magnet school in illinois, united states of america, support the notion of direct instructional strategies for students with ed because of the organisation and system-building skills derived from direct teaching methods. magnet schools are public schools offering special instruction and programmes not available elsewhere, that are designed to attract a more diverse student body from throughout a school district. students with ed are masters of misbehaviour and task avoidance. when identified with an ed, students tend to physiologically internalize disobedient and insubordinate manifestations. the internalization produces an inner stigma to persuade one’s self the external contingencies and development processes of students with emotional disabilities john nikolaros, edd. 111 to engage in inappropriate behaviours. behaviours are internalized esoterically, resulting in students being recognized as problem learners in classrooms. the stigma is further thought to be true when eds dictate the classification of students in one classroom. students with ed peripherally as well as internally evaluate classroom dynamics. the placement option to educate students with ed in one classroom has its drawbacks. the range of emotions (e.g., emotional and behavioural) in a classroom results in high fluctuating adaptations, even in low behavioural and emotional prevalent classroom environments. this leads to the exposure of students with similar eds in one classroom, thus prohibiting self-adjustment and self-adaptation (mattison, 2011). the fluctuation of misbehaviour is a result of the learner’s inability to self-regulate. self-discipline is also a result of the student’s beliefs and reasoning. the students must evaluate abstract circumstances in order to reshape their understanding of reality and produce concrete phenomena (gendron, lindquist, barsalou & barrett, 2012). the classroom dynamics are exacerbated by the context of each student’s individual tendencies or behaviours (causton-theoharis, theoharis, orsati & cosier, 2011). the emotional prominence of each student either adds to or subtracts from the classroom’s chemistry. prominent classroom environments consist of students who prosper from the emotional functioning of their peers. the emotional display of instability impedes classroom locale, thus affecting the learner’s emotional decision-making (barrett, 2011). the close nature of the experience of negative behaviours is a stimulus that controls decisive functioning. normal emotional functioning denotes that students can perceive negative and positive experiences, and make judgements as to whether negative experiences converge within emotional functioning (valiente, swanson & eisenberg, 2012). nonetheless, the negative experience remains with the student and could manifest within the child at any time. the biological and psychological conditions of the classroom influence student characteristics (harvey, bimler, evans, kirkland & pechtel, 2012). the main influences affect students with eds’ decision-making skills to internally suppress emotional urges (meirovich, 2012). in addition, emotional behaviours that develop from the main influences over time need refining and/or cleansing in order to produce healthy emotional constancy. the brain’s infrastructure evolves while conditioning emotional experiences. as more conditions impede the psychological constructs, a pattern of physiological erosion develops which affects the body’s stimulus for emotional stability (herrington, heller, mohanty, banich, webb & miller, 2010). the teachers are challenged when students inappropriately express their feelings in the presence of other students. perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 112 this affective interaction could not only serve as therapy, but also precipitate shortterm, unwarranted emotional behaviours (spergel, 2010). over time, the visualization and experiences of adverse engagements change students with eds’ emotional dispositions, persuades inner associations, and cultivates beliefs. the epistemic virtues learned in unhealthy classroom environments metastasize into a lack of emotional competence (whiting, 2012). in classroom environments, in the presence of their peers, decision-making stimulates and initiates thoughts conditioned to act without self-control. students with ed thrive in low-stress, well-managed classroom environments, with learners controlling their behaviours and emotions (black, 2011). the student’s emotional well-being is in question when taught in a volatile environment. this results in maladjustment therapeutic conditioning, causing susceptibility to increasing eds. the child’s classroom environment has profound consequences synonymous with his/her home experiences. the child’s classroom dynamics impact on his/her capacity for emotional and social mobility and flexibility. the child’s classroom environment shapes emotional intelligence while moulding the logical thought processes for effective academic outcomes. in an ineffective climate, the morphogenesis process for each child alters the ability to normally condition the elements of neuroplasticity (choudhury & mckinney, 2013). the brain involuntarily internalizes both regulated and misguided emotions. as a result, the external dynamics, whether they are from the teacher’s presence or from the child’s peers, impact on emotional control. a teacher’s control of his/her classroom thus provides a regulated cycle of emotions that adjusts and readjusts emotional intelligence. emotional intelligence the teacher’s presence depicts a perception of emotional fortitude. students highly embrace a teacher’s enthusiasm in delivering instruction and managing the classroom (garner, 2013). the teacher’s emotional contentment has a profound impact on emotional competence. teachers who recognize the transference outcomes that impact on the emotional development of students with ed can identify and modify instruction and management models (coplan, hughes, bosacki & rose-krasner, 2011). as a result, teachers can provide services that address issues, potentially mediate, and/or improve emotional abstraction (aviles, anderson & davila, 2006). the teacher’s ability to provide a stable classroom environment has long-lasting benefits throughout a child’s life experiences. adolescent students’ maturation piques in their early years of development (mitchell & hauser-cram, 2009). over time, students absorb experiences that the external contingencies and development processes of students with emotional disabilities john nikolaros, edd. 113 promote a social culture of perceptions and opinions. students’ emotional desires are a condition implanted in the ontogenesis cycle (saarni, 2010). vast levels of prior developed experiences contribute to their perceptions. emotions are cultivated from prior occurrences in the classroom and outside the school environment (camras, 2011). external contingencies such as parents, teachers, friends, and students influence behavioural and cognitive operative processes. the researcher claims the importance of a larger context, in which multiple environments such as home, community, and school influence the adolescent’s emotional development. the emotional aptitude of students with ed will diverge, contingent on the support they receive from adults in their lives (boyer, 2013). not all students with ed experience neglect from caregivers, as their eds derive from other contextual and development forces such as psychosocial, behavioural, humanistic, and multicultural (hays, 2009). some students with ed develop a lack of perceptive acquisition from what they see, and lack the evaluation skills to self-determine a sound implication. adolescent students’ neural development is continuous and cannot fully acquire conducive emotional development, unless their contextual milieu is complete. the context espouses epidiectic relationships between the nurturing individual and his/ her intrinsic/extrinsic experimental milieu (trosper, buzzella, bennett & ehrenreich, 2009). the development process for students is consequential, in which the parameters for their inner psychological acquisition result in a humanistic adaptation (matthews, ziedner & roberts, 2012). the emotional regulation process necessitates external support. the teacher’s impact enriches or deprives the development of emotional intelligence (ei). ei is a limitation factor for students with ed. therefore, the teacher’s reliable leadership and stability are essential in classrooms (durlak, weissberg, dymnicki, taylor & schellinger, 2011). students’ emotional characteristics evolve within classroom environments. this can lead to the development of positive or negative emotional characteristics, depending on the classroom’s range of behaviours. the process of acquiring an age-appropriate level of ei disrupts a classroom of students, thus producing a high variability of emotions. this implication affects the condition for sustaining a set of emotional aptitudes, competencies, and skills to decide and display sound pre-planned interactions (zeidner, roberts & matthews, 2009). the teacher’s decision has a profound effect when s/he perceives emotions, acts unnervingly towards others and demonstrates a lack of emotional control. the teacher takes on challenges to rectify negative interactions, but the dissolution cannot successfully produce this immediately; thus, the students process emotional dissociation while undergoing maintenance (bakker & moulding, 2012). perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 114 over time, experiences impact on ei. sustainable ei occurs when adolescents combine previously internalized interactions and manage the world’s realities with self-determination. to obtain a prominent level of ei, students understand their self-worth in both society and the world. adolescents conceptualize their position in reality and their ability to self-regulate internal physiological activity. this weighs heavily on their external control and awareness of their reality (martin & dowson, 2009). students’ displacement in their reality unconsciously disassociates impulses that genuinely produce ei. some students do not consciously understand this capacity without a regulated cycle of events throughout the years of development. psychopathology leading to the incidence of disability in order to examine adolescent learners’ eds, teachers must demonstrate a high understanding of students’ processes in which pathways in their lives dictated their current emotional problems. researchers have claimed that the psychopathology of students with ed insists that a high awareness of multifinality and equifinality must be understood to conclude subsequent instructional and behavioural management design processes. multifinality consists of a point in life where a foundation is begun in which students impart a sequence of experiences that take on greater meaning for them (kruglanski, kopetz, belanger, chun, orehek & fishbach, 2013). each student’s psychological character precludes a starting process of events that influences emotional regulation. individuals may share a common starting point, but they will not all exhibit the same developmental outcomes (cicchetti & rogosch, 2002). for example, students who have been susceptible to abusive caregivers may demonstrate behaviour disorders, while others may exhibit other (evasive) behavioural disorders such as passive aggressiveness, deviancy, and obsessivecompulsive traits. the developmental outcome is contingent upon the exposure of the caregiver’s variables/factors along with internal conceptions in the student’s immediate and current state of affect (nolen-hieksema & watkins, 2011). equifinality supports the opposite distinction from multifinality, in which children can have different starting points, yet exhibit common outcomes (cicchetti & rogosch, 2002). for instance, several adolescent students may share a similar illness such as mood disorders; however, the genesis that engineered the mood disorders will differ among the adolescent students. some students may have a genetic predisposition to a disorder, while others may be struggling with social factors or unhealthy family environments. teachers must be aware of these factors and be informed of their students’ developmental psychopathology when creating a context that will benefit all students. teachers should not assume that all students have similar pathways to their diagnoses. children who exhibit depression indicators may have had multisymptomatic experiences throughout their psychopathological development (shahar, 2012). the universal ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach by teachers is not effective the external contingencies and development processes of students with emotional disabilities john nikolaros, edd. 115 when diagnosing each student’s emotional and learning competence. teachers must explore each student’s unique emotional needs, and understand their versatility in diagnoses, such as exposure to several causes that have contributed to the learner’s ed. developmental psychopathology provides a theoretical framework that promotes understanding of development as a dynamic relationship between a child’s context and his/her skills/abilities (thornberry, ireland & smith, 2001). the cognitive level of understanding for learners is dependent on the scope and sequence of the context, as well as on the maturation capacities of other key members within the child’s context. the dynamic relationship between the context and a child’s abilities determines the child’s level of ei. learners educated in emotionally component classrooms adapt metaphysically in order to sustain, manage, and negotiate their environments. special education teachers are responsible for assisting students in obtaining a maximum degree of independence. the developmental psychopathology approach blends theory in which the classroom context may support and enable adolescent development. moreover, a climate conducive to emotional self-control may develop and stabilize a student’s emotional efficacy (sungwon, kluemper & sauley, 2013). the results produce effective, long-term maintenance of emotional interdependence: an outcome that will neutralize external disassociations for optimal development in a student’s adolescent years. the developmental process matures or negates within a context of external stimuli. adulthood personality depends on the range of external stimuli that are conceptually internalized throughout the child’s development (welker, 2013). in an effort to examine students’ emotional aptitude, teachers must recognize each child’s strengths as well as his/her limitations. students are able to connect metaphysically and cognitively with their teachers, producing a rapport for higher ei and learning outcomes (culham & bai, 2011). the student’s external surroundings and the depth and breadth of these factors influence his/her emotional capacity for healthy interactions (kiyonaga & egner, 2013). these influences are transmitted by means of inductive and deductive processes. negative or positive conditions drive thought processes stored in the brain. on the contrary, some students possess the ability to negotiate and perceive negative emotional stimuli that do not have a negative impact on their emotional health (manos, 2012). however, for some students, exposure to unhealthy conditions negatively impacts on their emotional health. individuals may be susceptible to conform to external conditions, and demonstrate elicited experiences. perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 116 early intervention and support systems early intervention can have a positive impact on a child’s health. the identification of an ed is a difficult process, as an individual’s symptoms are often concealed or unnoticeable (myers & myers, 2011). the individual’s predisposition is a factor in an emotional episode. early intervention can control eds at an improved rate. with early intervention, school personnel can identify the antecedents or triggers and devise a modification plan to meet each student’s emotional needs (hammond & ingalls, 2009). at early onset, the learner must be educated in a highly structured environment, so that s/he can learn in subsequent years how to synthesize and evaluate his/her emotions. a classroom environment focused on structure and a consistent pace can develop a framework for psychotherapy. an ed can be treated when diagnosed at an early age. the child’s emotional condition might, over time, have impacted on the his/her abilities to function academically. for some children, this precedes a secondary condition (therrien, taylor, watt & kaldenburg, 2013). schools have the responsibility to act on any staff member’s or parents’ concerns or impressions that suggest that their child or student experiences difficulty in school. substantial information about the child’s problems will help school officials decide on the next steps. any information such as observations at home, in the community, or at school is imperative. medical diagnoses by a licensed physician contribute to a reliable precondition for the type of services and design for intervention (liu, ortiz, wilkinson, robertson & kushner, 2008). before a decision is made on the intervention services from the school, a written referral must initiate this process, describing the actions exhibited by the student. referrals are forwarded to the child study team (cst). children identified with an ed must be given a free appropriate public education (fape). the rehabilitation act of 1973 and the individuals with disabilities education act (idea)1 guarantee fape, an educational entitlement for all children with disabilities in the united states of america (zirkel, 2013). children with severe emotional disorders might need additional services besides their current school programming options. special education staff will need to obtain information such as the description of the impact of therapeutic strategies from service providers, so that they can provide consistency at school. for success in school, multiple service providers, including physicians, psychological counsellors and, most importantly, school-specific staff must treat students with severe ed as a group effort (carran & kellner, 2009). each identified ed must be taken seriously for a change in behaviour to occur. the external contingencies and development processes of students with emotional disabilities john nikolaros, edd. 117 endnote individuals with disabilities education act, 20 u.s.c. § 1400 (2004). references adams d 2013. the application of social-emotional learning principles to a special education environment. kedi journal of educational policy, 10(3): 5-12. aviles ma, anderson rt & davila re 2006. child and adolescent social-emotional development within the context of school. child and adolescent mental health, 1(11): 32-39. 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emotions and academic achievement: when and why emotions matter. child development perspectives, 6(2): 129-135. whiting d 2012. epistemic value and achievement. ratio, 25(2): 216-230. wright s, day a & howells k 2009. mindfulness and the treatment of anger problems. aggression and violent behavior, 14(5): 396-401. zeidner m, roberts rd & matthews g 2009. what we know about emotional intelligence: how it affects learning, work, relationships and our mental health. cambridge, ma: mit press. zirkel pa 2013. is it time for elevating the standard for fape under idea? exceptional children, 79(4): 497-508. perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 141 developing empathetic skills among teachers and learners in high schools in tshwane: an inter-generational approach involving people with dementia erna alant stephan geyer michael verde this article describes the implementation and outcomes of an experiential learning approach to facilitate the development of empathetic skills among teachers and learners at two high schools in tshwane, south africa. an inter-generational training programme, the memory bridge initiative (mbi), aimed at exposing participants to interactions with older persons with irreversible dementia, was used as a means to develop empathetic skills. programmes such as mbi have the potential to develop empathetic skills and to cultivate interpersonal and personal skills among the learners and the teachers. seven learners and six teachers, recruited through non-probability sampling, from two high schools in tshwane participated in the three-and-a-half-day training programme which serves as the basic training to equip teachers and learners for the implementation of the programme in their respective schools. focus-group discussions were conducted with the teachers and the learners separately before and after exposure to the mbi programme. both learners and teachers agreed that the programme contributed to their interpersonal and personal development. learners also adopted a more positive way of perceiving older persons and people with erna alant (corresponding author) special education, indiana university, indiana, usa and centre for augmentative and alternative communication, university of pretoria, south africa e-mail: ealant@indiana.edu stephan geyer department of social work and criminology, university of pretoria, south africa e-mail: stephan.geyer@ up.ac.za michael verde doctoral student in inquiry methodology, indiana university, bloomington, indiana usa. e-mail: jmverde@indiana. edu perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 142 alzheimer’s disease. it is recommended that inter-generational programmes should be implemented in more high school settings to determine best practices to develop empathetic skills among learners. inter-generational programmes could minimise the isolation of older persons with dementia and equip the youth with transferrable skills to educational and work settings. keywords: empathetic skills development, inter-generational programmes, memory bridge initiative, experiential learning, high school learners, people with dementia, interpersonal and personal skills development, tshwane metropole. introduction the past decade has seen a dramatic increase in training and research in empathy from multidisciplinary perspectives (ickes & ickes, 2009). this interest is not only rooted in human beings’ exceptional capacity to “feel with” others, as is evident from evolutionary biology and neuroanatomical history, but also from the central role that the ability to accurately infer another person’s thoughts and feelings has on the social development of young people (zeidner, roberts & mathews, 2002). the realisation that we are an empathetic species and that we are all interconnected has significant implications for rethinking the mission of education (rifkin, 2010). schools are increasingly educating learners to interact with others using social networks via the internet in which information is shared rather than stored. this emerging sense of interconnectivity goes hand in hand with efforts to increase understanding between people globally, not only on a cognitive, but also on a socio-emotional level. this transition is profoundly reconfiguring the way in which learners learn and create communities (nelson & christie, 1995; rifkin, 2010). it is interesting to note that conditions and experiences that promote violence in children and youth are, on the whole, the opposite of those that create caring, helping and altruism (staub, 2002). a commitment to incorporating empathetic education into the 21st-century grades 1-12 curricula is, therefore, a social necessity and not merely a pedagogical enhancement. depending on the research context, however, empathy can have many different definitions, ranging from knowing another person’s internal state, i.e. cognitive empathy and cognitive accuracy (eslinger, 1998), to states of “feeling with” or resonating with the other which can occur at any level, including neural to phenomenological, conceptual to affective (preston & hofelich, 2012). according to preston and hofelich (2012: 25), true empathy is “a compassionate other-oriented state that requires a distinction in the observer between self and other”. this “feeling with another” can be understood through direct perception or imagination of their state (basch, 1983); however, the extent to which empathy requires self-other overlap is not clear. proponents in favour of the necessity of self-other overlap do not define this overlap as primarily aversive or distressing, but rather as an “oneness” or intersubjectivity that does not confuse personal boundaries (preston & hofelich, 2012). developing empathetic skills among teachers and learners in high schools in tshwane: an inter-generational approach involving people with dementia erna alant, stephan geyer & michael verde 143 training in empathy at schools has been mainly conducted to impact on antisocial behaviour, i.e. interpersonal violence, anger management and bullying (jagers, morgan-lopez, howard, browne & flay, 2007; mcmahon & washburn, 2003; sahin, 2012). fonagy, twemlow, vernberg, nelson, dill and little (2009) described a programme using a whole-school intervention to target bullying, to improve the capacity of school staff and learners to interpret their own and others’ behaviour in terms of their mental states. in the mentioned study, 1,345 third to fifth graders in nine primary schools in a medium-sized midwestern city in the united states of america participated in a cluster-level randomised controlled trial to evaluate the effectiveness of active intervention for two years, followed by one year of minimal input maintenance intervention. outcome measures included peer and self-reports of bullying, by standing and metalizing behaviour and classroom behavioural observations of disruptive and off-task behaviour. this approach proved to be effective in impacting on reduced aggression and victimization in the treatment group. furthermore, fonagy et al. (2009) pointed out that maintaining empathy may have been an important factor in the treatment’s effectiveness. in south africa, a number of programmes address bullying and interpersonal violence among learners in the school system. the development of social skills (e.g., assertiveness training and anger management) are key among these endeavours and often coincide with the learning outcomes of life orientation as a school subject (lazarus, khan & johnson, 2012). in the western cape province of south africa, the department of basic education launched the safe schools programme, with the vision of “safe learning institutions for all”. apart from training learners to be safe in schools and in their communities, the programme contributed to the development of school safety committees, the utilisation of safety rescue officers, learner support offices and a safe school call centre (lazarus et al., 2012). lazarus et al. (2012) opine that exact research findings about the impact of the programme are still lacking. empathy necessarily includes affective attunement, or “feeling with” another; therefore, teaching a learner empathetic abilities, as opposed to merely teaching him/her about empathy, requires engaging learners’ attention in their own and others’ affective life. as this skill in “feeling with” is as much a corporeal achievement, as a cerebral one, the delicate challenge is to facilitate the learners’ increased facility with an affective balancing between the self’s needs and the other’s needs. on a continuum of emotional detachment to complete merger with another, the empathetic communicators continually coordinate their own and another’s subjective realities by using their awareness of own emotional reasoning to gain insight into the other’s experience as the other is experiencing it (galinsky, ku & wang, 2005). this complex intraand interpersonal conversation involving affects, cognitions, and existential being in the world is what martha nussbaum (2003) terms, the sympathetic imagination. perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 144 learning to relate to others empathetically is not like learning mathematics, acquiring literacy, competing in athletics, or performing in the arts, though some of the skills and aptitudes required for each of these kinds of learning overlap with aspects of empathetic education. both athletics and the arts, for instance, provide rich contexts for evoking self-other interactions. both do so, however, for the purpose of winning, on the one hand, or creating an artefact, on the other. the end of empathetic communication, by contrast, is intrinsic to its means; the world it is concerned to realise only exists between and among us, and only then when we participate in creating it. the memory bridge initiative (mbi) (www.memorybridge. org) presumes that the mindful refinement of such a skill – the affectively creative skill of “feeling with” another – will most meaningfully occur in real-time, real-world situations, that is to say, experientially. the outcome of the mbi was established in the united states of america (cf. wescott & healy, 2011). this study was a single-group preand post-qualitative design and compared learners’ perceptions about older persons and alzheimer’s disease1 at the baseline and follow-up measures. based on the outcomes of a selfadministered questionnaire, the research findings indicated that the perceptions of learners about older persons and alzheimer’s disease shifted from negative or neutral to predominantly positive after exposure to the mbi (wescott & healy, 2011). the hiatus is that the outcomes of the mbi were not yet established outside the united states of america. therefore, the rationale for the study was to explore and describe the outcomes of the mbi with south african learners and teachers. the research objectives of the study were the following: to explore and describe the experiences of teachers and learners, respectively, after exposure to the mbi programme, and to explore and describe the influence of the mbi on the attitudes/ conceptualisation that learners have about older persons with irreversible dementia before and after exposure to the mbi programme. this research study was underpinned by participatory consciousness as theoretical framework (heshusius, 1994). the researchers’ interest was on the participatory consciousness between the teacher/learner and the older person with dementia and “… the awareness of a deeper level of kinship between the knower and the known. an inner desire to let go of perceived boundaries that constitute ‘self’ – and that construct the perception of distance between self and other …” (heshusius, 1994: 16). before proceeding to an exposition of the research methods and procedure, research findings and discussion, this article provides a brief overview of the mbi programme. developing empathetic skills among teachers and learners in high schools in tshwane: an inter-generational approach involving people with dementia erna alant, stephan geyer & michael verde 145 the memory bridge initiativetm each of the three core activities of the programme (verde, 2013) motivates empathetic communication in one or more self-other relationship contexts: the buddy partnerships exercise interpersonal awareness; the i-land mapping activity exercises intrapersonal awareness, and the peer-circle communications exercise intragroup awareness. all three activities occur throughout the programme. each offers an imaginative space to reflect upon, synthesise, and reconsider one’s ongoing experiences with others. each activity constitutes both an arena for practising and for performing empathetically motivated self-other integrations. given the centrality of these activities in the initiative’s design, it is vital to explicate in some detail the structure and function of each activity. buddy partnerships all mbi learners (including the teachers who were included in the south african implementation of the mbi) are paired with a person with irreversible dementia. these cognitively frail older persons are referred to as ‘buddies’ in the programme. the student-buddy pairings are random. buddies in the programme only need to meet two requirements: the representative of the residential facility wherein they reside or visit daily must know that the older person selected for participation in the programme has an irreversible form of dementia that impairs consistently “normal” conversation, and that the selected older person will, in the representative’s judgement, gain emotional satisfaction from a learner’s visits with him/her. the cognitive capacities of the buddies invariably range from those that are able to carry on more or less sustained, socially typical conversations to those who do not speak and give few conspicuous indicators of relating to those who initiate communication with them. depending on the programme’s implementation structure, learners will either meet their buddies in person four times over a ten-week, ten-meeting implementation of the mbi, or twice over a three-and-a-half-day application of the programme. (both versions of the programme involve 20 total participation hours.) the clearly articulated and continually reinforced objective for the learners in their meetings with their buddies is for the learners to connect with their buddies in emotionally attuned and responsive ways that incline the buddies to feel that they matter to the learner. there is no instrumental purpose of the student-buddy meetings, nothing that the learners are expected to gain by, or extract from the visits. rather, the learners are encouraged simply to “be with” their buddies during their time together, to create an interpersonal space in which their buddies feel respected, attended to, and genuinely cared about. i-land mapping2 the i-land activity consists of learners creating a map of their “inner world”. they are asked to capture, on a large sheet of paper, their interior universe in whatever form perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 146 and configuration of symbols and colours that resonate with their imagination. it is stressed to the learners that there is no correct or incorrect way to render their i-land. various examples are given, illustrating the idea that the facilitator is not expecting them to emulate any particular design pattern. it is further stressed that the i-land map need not be artistically impressive. examples of what often appear on learners’ i-land maps are given: memories, hopes, fears, important people and places, familiar feelings, important moments in life, and so on. the learners are also informed that they will share their i-land maps with each other, but that no one will be able to ask them any questions about what is on their i-land map. they are reassured that only what they choose to share about their maps will be shared. learners are given about 90 minutes to complete their i-land maps, i.e., the drawings of their “inner world”. the maps are shared in the context of the peer circle. peer circle communications the content of the mbi experience emerges in the communication contexts that the programme structures and facilitates. what is learned in the programme is the “how” of empathetic communication, as opposed to a specified “what” that the facilitator teaches; hence, the designation of the teacher as the facilitator and not the instructor. the peer circle is the space of sharing and attending in which the “how” of empathetic communication is exercised in frequent intervals throughout the programme – it is comparable to the studio of an art class, the gym of a rugby team, or the laboratory of the scientist: a site of translating concepts into practices. in the peer circle, learners practise the three preconditions of empathetic communication, namely respect, attention, and care, and the three skills of “feeling with” another, namely letting go, letting in, and letting be, as operationalized in the programme (verde, 2013). the two sets of principles, which are displayed at every in-class meeting on two large animated posters, are theorised by mbi as the attitudes, in the first case, and imaginative and affective actions, in the second, that create the optimal conditions for empathetic communication to occur in the programme. in addition, the principles provide the learners with a simple meta-language (a symbol set) with which they can make associations between future novel social situations and the insights experientially gained in the programme. the participants create the peer circle by arranging their chairs at a comfortable distance from each other in a circle. the facilitator is expected to invest the peer circle with a noticeable degree of gravity. while nevertheless relaxed, the communication of participants in the peer circle is expected to be always respectful, deeply attentive, and caring. the peer circle is where a certain quality of communication engenders the felt sense of community, the experiential space in which the intrapersonal, interpersonal, and intragroup become synthesised. developing empathetic skills among teachers and learners in high schools in tshwane: an inter-generational approach involving people with dementia erna alant, stephan geyer & michael verde 147 research methods and procedure as a qualitative study, the collective case study design was used whereby a group of learners and teachers were exposed to focus-group discussions before and after exposure to the mbi in order to explore and describe the outcomes of the mbi with south african learners and teachers (creswell, 2013; fouché & schurink, 2011). focus-group discussions were conducted by one of the researchers. the participants included six teachers and seven grade 10 learners from two high schools in tshwane, south africa. the teachers were recruited through volunteer sampling by approaching the schools and requesting that they identify teachers who would be willing to participate. the teachers had to agree to participate in the programme for five days (approximately 35 hours) and meet with an older person with irreversible dementia during two visits of about 45-60 minutes each. thereafter, the teachers and their colleagues identified potential grade 10 learners (i.e., purposive sampling) to participate in the study (rubin & babbie, 2010). from all the learners identified, only those who were interested in the mbi implementation (i.e., volunteer sampling) had to submit an application form to volunteer their participation in the mbi (strydom & delport, 2011). this application indicated that they consider themselves as a young person who would like to learn and grow from the experience of communicating with an older person with irreversible dementia; must be in grade 10; must be fluent in english; agree to participate in the programme for three-and-a half days (approximately 20 hours) and be willing to meet with an older person with irreversible dementia during two visits of about 45-60 minutes each. the final selection of learners was done by ensuring gender and racial diversity. researchers deemed it necessary to explore and describe the outcomes of the mbi among research participants that reflect a micro cosmos of a typical south african classroom setting in the metropolitan areas of the country, such as tshwane. facility staff and family members identified thirteen older persons with irreversible dementia, who resided at a residential facility in tshwane (i.e., purposive sampling). the older persons had to comply with the following two criteria: have irreversible dementia and be able to benefit from and would like to have interactions. mbi training took place over a three-and-a-half-day implementation for both teachers and learners. in addition, the teachers attended an additional one-and-ahalf-day training workshop to equip them for the future implementation of the mbi in their respective high schools. focus-group discussions were conducted before and after exposure to the mbi with teachers and learners and transcribed verbatim using express scribetm. thematic analysis, according to the qualitative data analysis process proposed by creswell (2014), was implemented. after the transcription of the focusgroup discussions, the data sets were read several times to obtain familiarity with the content. thereafter, a process of coding commenced which ultimately resulted in the identification of themes. to ensure the trustworthiness of the qualitative study, the codes and identified themes were compared to ensure that the final findings perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 148 reflect agreement between the two coders (i.e., inter-coder agreement) (lietz & zayas, 2010). furthermore, an independent coder confirmed the codes and themes (nieuwenhuis, 2007). throughout the process, the dedoosetm programme was used to assist with the thematic analysis. besides exploring the experiences of the learners and teachers, respectively, after exposure to the mbi, the seven learners met for a two-hour focus-group discussion in which mbi’s basic programmatic details were explained. during this discussion, learners were asked to respond to two simple prompts: “write down the first three words that come to mind when you hear the term ‘old person’” and “write down the first three words that come to mind when you hear the term ‘a person with alzheimer’s disease’”. learners were informed that there are no right or wrong answers and that they should simply capture the first three words that come immediately to mind when they heard the terms announced. learners were requested to capture their responses independently. during a post-experience focusgroup discussion, held two days after the learners’ final visit with their buddies, the learners were asked to again capture their immediate responses to the same two terms, based on exactly the same two questions. working from the preand post-experience lists, the researchers, similarly as wescott and healy (2011), first distilled the words on each of the four lists, i.e., pre and post-experience responses to “old person” and to “a person with alzheimer’s disease”, respectively, by identifying synonyms, where such were evident. for example, “experienced” and “wise” were grouped under a single term: “wise”. secondly, the remaining words on each list were grouped into three categories: words with positive, negative, and neutral/ambiguous connotations. “friendly”, for example, was coded as positive; “sick” as negative; and “emotional” as neutral/ambiguous. if the denotation or connotation of the word was not evident to two additional peer reviewers, the word was coded as neutral/ambiguous. to identify potential shifts in the perceptions of learners about an “old person” and “a person with alzheimer’s disease”, the researchers determined the frequency of positive, neutral and negative words before and after exposure to the mbi. as such, the researchers transformed qualitative content into quantitative data (rubin & babbie, 2010). frequencies are reported in the findings section. as part of the ethical considerations of this study, all participants had to provide informed consent to participate in the study, while informed assent was obtained from learners, and informed consent from their legal guardians. furthermore, all older persons with dementia had to provide informed consent, or it had to be provided by their legal representatives. ethical clearance for the study was obtained from the gauteng department of basic education (ref. no.: d2013/248), the school management boards of the high schools concerned, the management of the residential facility, as well as the south african university (research ethics committee of the faculty of humanities at the university of pretoria, dated 07/01/2013). developing empathetic skills among teachers and learners in high schools in tshwane: an inter-generational approach involving people with dementia erna alant, stephan geyer & michael verde 149 findings and discussion teachers and learners’ perceived experiences of the training will be described first, followed by a comparison of the learners’ descriptions of “an old person” and “a person with alzheimer’s disease” before and after exposure to the mbi. teachers’ descriptions of the training experience three main themes emerged from the teachers’ descriptions of the benefits derived from the training, namely increased awareness of self and other; building relationships, and long-term benefits for personal growth. theme 1: increased awareness of self and other three of the six teachers commented on how this training increased their awareness of self and other, for example, g: “i became more aware of the people ... also if i think of myself … meeting my buddy – i think … i became aware of people around me – not just seeing them as distant creatures running around, but being aware of how human they are”. a second teacher (i) elaborated: “it enhanced one’s awareness of how one communicates and also when you communicate to be more attentional in the way you come across to a person.” another participant (l) acknowledged the impact of the training, stating: “your community understanding and awareness grow”. all these comments alluded to an acknowledgement of a narrowing of the communication distance between participants, but also of positive association with others. theme 2: building relationships the second theme related to building relationships. four of the six teachers commented on the explicit benefits of the training in facilitating relationships between teachers and learners. teachers mentioned that they felt “safe” and felt mutual trust developing with the learners and that they were aware of a new dimension in their relationships. for example, one (i) stated: “you feel safe with one another and with the learners and even when we reached out to each other we felt safe and even with the old people they felt safe”. another teacher (k) elaborated: “i did see one of [the] boys today and there was an immediate connection. we didn’t have to say it – it was in our eyes and our smile because he was the only one in the class that was selected and i didn’t want to draw attention to him and the special time we had together in front of the whole class …”. a third teacher (s) also commented on the power of an acknowledging smile between her and a student: “i agree with everyone, with [the] girls when i teach them in class, it is all it takes – just a smile. you can’t treat them special because of this, but it is really nice, i saw n today – now i don’t teach her at all ... but we saw each other and we went ‘hallo ...’. just the general skills i feel that you can really put into practice throughout your life.” perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 150 theme 3: long-term benefits for personal growth the third theme related to the long-term benefits for personal growth. three of the teachers commented on the potential value of this programme for all teachers and learners, as it focuses on enhancing understanding and “being together”. for example, h: “you don’t have to be a sport star, you don’t have to be a giant, you have to be human to participate and in terms of the bigger social context, for me the benefit is to link up communities to ... try and bridge communication gaps. that’s the core issues coming through – so ... you don’t have to do something extraordinary to be participating or to benefit from this. the benefit is not only an immediate ’feel good’ effect, it is something you can practise and it will enhance your life style – so you can replicate it”. a second teacher (l) stated: “it’s definitely been a personal growth ... and not just from the centre – there is a rippling effect to grow in this area”. a third participant (s) also elaborated on the long-term benefit of having learnt this skill: “just the general skills i feel that you can really put into practice throughout your life. it is focused now – we meet our buddies, but even broader, people that you perhaps don’t know how to communicate with on a social level, it teaches you those communication skills. letting go of judgements – i think that is a very good skill to learn for teenagers at an early age to feel comfortable in a place and to learn how to be with people – i think that is a good thing for relationships. the skills you learn you just take into your relationships in the future. especially learning these at such a young age will benefit teenagers a lot and also just experience the sort of interest and personal growth seated in the programme”. the most pervasive underlying common theme in the teachers’ responses related to the benefits of the programme in relation to the positive impact it had on their own ability to be with others, to feel safe and trusted and that they became aware of a skill that, they believed, would impact on their own and their learners’ lives beyond this experience. learners’ descriptions of their training experiences learners were asked to share how they would describe this experience to learners who have not participated in this experience. two main themes emerged from this discussion: comments related to learning about patience, kindness and meeting new people, and learning important skills. in addition, learners were also asked to comment on what specific insights they gained about themselves during the training. theme 1: learning about patience, kindness and meeting new people all seven of the learners mentioned that they learned about kindness, patience and made new friends as part of the experience. they appreciated meeting new people and making new friends during the process. these friends did not only include their peers and the teachers, but also their buddies, e.g. m: “i would tell anyone who hasn’t taken this programme that it’s a great learning experience and you can learn patience, kindness and make great new friends.” a second (f) stated: “i thought it was a great experience but it goes like c said, or p, you have to do it to understand developing empathetic skills among teachers and learners in high schools in tshwane: an inter-generational approach involving people with dementia erna alant, stephan geyer & michael verde 151 exactly how you feel and what you learn from it. and you learn definitely a lot of skills and a lot of patience. especially, if you didn’t know that you had sort of patience in you. yeah, it was just great to meet new people and learn to understand people in a better and different way”. another student (f) referred to the building of trust: “i’ll say we learned quite a lot of things and made new friends like made a [sic] … like adjusting with new people and staying with them so many days … like a trust build on people that we really never knew”. theme 2: learning important skills a second main theme related to an acknowledgement of the skills they gained. all learners stated that they have gained significant skills from the experience, but were not always able to define what exactly they thought they learned. for example, f: “um ... how do you say i learned really different things ... different … it’s like at school we never think of working with people and communicating ... i don’t know how to say it but yeah. and yeah it’s a life experience. we’ll never forget about it because once you learn something it stays forever. and yeah, i think. and patience too. and also that understanding ... how do i explain this now?”. participant k described it as follows: “to me, i’d tell them it’s exciting but also very nerve-wracking ‘cause you never know what really’s gonna happen. and like being, learning about people is very exciting and so they can also learn about new people … it’s just very exciting. you’ve gotta be dedicated and yeah ...”. another participant (f) referred to learning about alzheimer’s disease: “it was really fun. you got to learn more about alzheimer’s, i never knew such existed. and um, patience. it’s hard to control your emotions as um …”. theme 3: specific insights gained about the self during training when asked about specific insights gained during the training, the confidence that learners gained in their own abilities ranging from, for example, recognising and affirming their ability to communicate, being able to talk to a group, tolerating their buddies’ repetitions and their ability to care for others were most noticeable. for example, f: “i can’t talk in front of lots of people, like a crowd when i see a crowd i just tap out. i can’t be there now ‘cause i get scared because i don’t know half of the people ... now i’ve seen that i can actually communicate with people and yeah. i feel like i can be part of crowds and all that. i never knew that i could actually listen to someone’s problems and care about it. normally i would listen and i would roll my eyes and be like ‘mm. not my problem’. but i actually cared very much about … problem when she told me about her problems but yeah”. another learner (h) referred to the age differences in the interaction, stating: “i noticed that age is definitely just a number. it doesn’t matter how old anyone is. i also learned about myself. i’m usually an understanding person but i found that i could be patient and understanding ...”. learner (f) emphasised learning about the self: “to me i learned because sometimes when i’m in a conversation with someone i like ... sound selfish ... talk about stuff i want to talk about it, base it around me. but i kinda learned to, perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 152 just kinda go with the flow and talk to them about what they want to talk about. i can do that, but i learned how to almost improve it. and also i learned that it’s okay if something’s not always being said back to me”. similarly, m stated: “i was talking to maria (buddy) and she kept on repeating herself and i kind of tolerated that … i also learned that i could kind of tolerate. things didn’t upset me as much. it was okay that she asked me that same question ten times ‘cause it didn’t matter ...”. table 1 shows learners’ prompts on how they describe “an old person” and “a person with alzheimer’s disease” before and after exposure to mbi. table 1: frequency (f) of responses to prompts before and after exposure to mbi before exposure to mbi after exposure to mb prompts positive (f=18) negative (f=1) neutral (f=2) positive (f=21) negative neutral older person kind (f=6) wise (f=3) friendly (f=3) cute (f=1) happy (f=1) willing (f=1) intelligent (f=1) emotionally strong (f=1) motivating (f=1 slow (f=1) old (f=1) granny (f=1 kind (f=8) wise (f=4) smart (f=3) friendly (f=1) my friend (f=1) unique (f=1) funny (f=1) happy (f=1) young (f=1) positive (f=2 negative (f=15) neutral (f=4) positive (f=9) negative (f=9) neutral (f=3 person with alzheimer’s disease special (f=1) sweet (f=1) lonely (f=4) memory loss (f=3) confused (f=2) awkward (f=2) scared (f=2) sick (f=1) frail (f=1) differently abled (f=1) abled (f=1) brain (f=1) quiet (f=1) old (f=1) kind (f=2) curious (f=2) friendly (f=2) wise (f=1) patient (f=1) not so lonely (f=1) forgetful (f=4) lonely (f=3) scared (f=1) hard to share knowledge (f=1) differently abled (f=1) emotional (f=1) old (f=1) table 1 presents the terminology used by the seven learners to describe an older person and a person with alzheimer’s disease. the number of specific responses (f) is provided after each of the descriptive terms used. there were 21 responses as participants were asked to identify three terms to describe each concept before and after exposure to mbi. developing empathetic skills among teachers and learners in high schools in tshwane: an inter-generational approach involving people with dementia erna alant, stephan geyer & michael verde 153 table 1 indicates that the learners’ perceptions of both “old person” and “person with alzheimer’s disease” were more positive after exposure to mbi. after exposure, all participants described older persons as positive, while mixed terms were used before exposure to the programme, e.g., one negative description and two neutral concepts. the frequency of positive associations made with “person with alzheimer’s disease” increased from two before exposure to mbi to nine after exposure to mbi. similarly, the frequency of negative associations made with “a person with alzheimer’s disease” decreased after exposure from 15 to nine. there was also an unanticipated finding. although the positive changes in the learners’ perceptions of an “old person” and a “person with alzheimer’s disease” improved, the concepts they used to describe these two categories of people before and after exposure proved most informative. in the focus-group discussion after exposure, the learners first shared the basis of their responses to “person with alzheimer’s disease” prior to sharing the same with respect to “old person”. with the third learner’s explanation, the focus-group facilitator realised that all of the learners who had shared their prompts, based their response with reference to their buddies as the source of their response to the prompt “old person.” at that point, the focus-group facilitator interjected, asking those learners who responded to the prompt “old person” with their buddy specifically in mind to raise their hands. six of the seven learners indicated that, when responding to the prompt “old person”, they were thinking about their buddies. before the training, the difference in the kinds of associations the learners’ made between “old person” and “a person with alzheimer’s disease”, with nearly all of the associations made with the former being positive (f=18) and the associations made with the latter being negative (f=15), suggests that, before the exposure, the learners imagined an “old person” and a “person with alzheimer’s disease” to be persons of two categorically distinct kinds. after the training, all of the learners but one imagined that his/her buddy, in addition to having alzheimer’s disease, was nevertheless “an old person”. six of the seven learners’ positive post-mbi associations with “old person” were made with some reference to their buddies. the researchers did not anticipate – indeed, did not consider – the possibility of the learners responding to the prompts offered to them in ways that challenged the very basis of the categorical distinctions implicit in our questions. in what way(s), and to what extent, the training contributed to six of the seven learners coming to see a “person with alzheimer’s disease” and an “old person” as the same person assigned different cultural labels seems to warrant additional research. this study confirms findings of existing research (kimber, sandell & bromberg, 2008; preston & hofelich, 2012; staub, 2002) that showed increased gains in selfother perceptions, understanding of others, generosity, and kindness (feshbach & feshbach, 1982) in participants after training in empathic and socio-emotional skills. perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 154 these studies indicated the participants’ increased ability to engage in pro-social behaviours after training in empathy. in addition to the above gains, current findings also indicate a movement towards stronger identification and emotional overlap between the learners and their buddies. this is particularly interesting, as studies have shown that it is generally easier to empathise with people similar to oneself (cf. rogers, 1975). the majority of the learners in the current study showed a movement towards more positive association with people with alzheimer’s disease as the boundaries between “old person” and “person with alzheimer’s disease” started to become more diffuse. conclusion this study highlights the power of an experiential approach in facilitating learning and skill-building in empathetic listening, and confirms the individual benefits derived by teachers and learners after exposure to a programme focused on facilitating the development of empathetic listening. all learners and teachers agreed that this training programme contributed to their interpersonal and personal development in meaningful ways. teachers and learners grew closer together during the training and became acutely aware of the communication gaps that were evident between them. the participants also realised that these gaps, at least partially, reflected a lack of understanding and empathy in their interactions with each other. this increase in self-other awareness is particularly relevant in facilitating a safe and inclusive school context. narrowing the gap between “us” and “them” is an important process for overcoming interpersonal violence and bullying within the south african school context. another important outcome of the programme relates to the positive way in which the learners described their own perceptions of old people and people with alzheimer’s disease. people with alzheimer’s disease became more “human” to the learners, as they experienced the blurring boundaries between people with alzheimer’s disease and older persons. participants were, therefore, able to look beyond the “label” of alzheimer’s disease to regard the person as someone who is older, kind and compassionate, although they have some memory problems. this ability to “look beyond” is particularly important in view of the highly negative image that prevails in society in relation to alzheimer’s disease and dementia. the attitude that people with alzheimer’s disease and dementia are less worthy and should be isolated from society is not only prevalent in developed countries, but also in developing countries, such as south africa (van der poel & pretorius, 2009). it is, therefore, not surprising that the participants had mostly negative perceptions of people with alzheimer’s disease or dementia. however, this training programme showed that, with some exposure to older people with dementia and training, learners and teachers can understand the importance of “being with” another in an empathetic way and the impact it could have on their own interpersonal relationships, as well as the well-being of people with dementia. furthermore, the ability to look beyond labels could be transferred to the school system and be invaluable to cultivate developing empathetic skills among teachers and learners in high schools in tshwane: an inter-generational approach involving people with dementia erna alant, stephan geyer & michael verde 155 a culture of learning together and living in peace in a diverse society, such as south africa’s “rainbow nation”. limitations of the study this study included a small number of teachers and learners as participants. nonetheless, this case study research provides rich and descriptive findings about the potential of the mbi to facilitate the development of empathetic skills among young people and teachers alike. replicating this training programme with a larger number of participants would be important to provide more information on the gains made as well as individual variability between participants. in addition, the implementation of the mbi with a greater number of participants over an extended period of time could enable researchers to determine the impact of the programme in addressing antisocial behaviour (e.g., bullying and violence) in the school system. similarly to other short-term training programmes, the challenge of this experiential programme lies in sustaining the benefits to ensure lasting impact within the school context. as mentioned earlier, the mbi programme starts off with an intensive three-and-a-half-day training aimed at providing selected teachers and learners with the material, skills and experience to conduct the programme during a ten-week period in their own schools. detailed manual and video material is provided to facilitate the roll out in schools. this study used an intensive three-and-a-half-day training schedule which can be a limitation due to the practical difficulties of implementing such a schedule within the south african school context. however, this programme can also be implemented over a 10-week period: two hours per week with four exposures to the buddies. this less intensive application of the training programme might be easier to accommodate as an extra-curricular activity in south african schools. recommendations for further research more extensive research needs to be implemented to monitor the implementation of the programme in the participating south african high schools in order to document challenges and achievements over time. this would require monitoring of how the teachers in this study decided to implement the programme, the outcomes as well as the challenges experienced as part of the training process with learners. unfortunately, this extension was not within the scope of the current grant. apart from programmatic research, however, further research documenting the development of learners and teachers’ empathetic skills is important. measurement instruments focused on empathetic skills currently available are, to a large extent, inappropriate for utilisation among the diverse language groups of south african learners and not geared towards monitoring improvement in the development of these skills. the use of descriptive terms, as used in this study, could make a significant perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 156 contribution towards the development of more inclusive measuring instruments to describe and monitor the development of empathetic skills among young people. acknowledgement this research was funded by the fund for the advancement of peace and education: creative paths to peace, school of education, indiana university, bloomington, indiana. endnotes dementia, of which alzheimer’s disease is the most familiar kind, is a condition characterised by the progressive deterioration of an older person’s ability to process and express logical ideas, orientate him-/herself about time and his/her location; s/he finds it difficult to make simple decisions and his/her short-term memory is affected (mcinnis-dittrich, 2014). the i-land mapping forms part of the training as a source of shared experiences between participants. it was not a source of data for this study in order to afford both teachers and learners a safe environment for identifying “selfother” (cf. heshusius, 1994) relationships. references basch mf 1983. empathic understanding: a review of the concept and some theoretical considerations. journal of the american psychoanalytic association, 31: 101-126. creswell jw 2013. qualitative inquiry and research design: choosing among five approaches. 3rd ed. los angeles: sage publications. creswell jw 2014. research design: qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. 4th ed. los angeles: sage publications. eslinger pj 1998. neurological and neuropsychological bases of empathy. european neurology 39: 193-199. feshbach nd & feshbach s 1982. empathy training and the 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http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 20 estimation of promotion, repetition and dropout rates for learners in south african schools daniël wilhelm uys edward john thomas alant a new procedure for estimating promotion, repetition and dropout rates for learners in south african schools is proposed. the procedure uses three different data sources: data from the south african general household survey, data from the education management information systems, and data from yearly reports published by the department of basic education. the data from the general household survey are utilised to estimate repetition rates for learners in three different age groups. keeping these repetition rates fixed, the data from the other two sources are used to estimate dropout and promotion rates, which are based on a birth-year-cohort approach for the different age groups. in particular, this procedure involves minimising the difference between actual flow-through rates and simulated flow-through rates for both the birth-year cohorts and age groups. the procedure gives different results when compared to published literature. keywords: south african schools, promotion rates, repetition rates, dropout rates, birth-year cohorts introduction the quality of basic education is of great importance to the general and economic wellbeing of any nation. if the school system fails to produce well-educated learners, the effects on the socio-economic standard of the people and their workplace are numerous. nearly 21 years since the first democratic election, the south african school system unfortunately still suffers from some difficulties, partly due to the country’s long legacy of apartheid. despite government’s substantial efforts over the years to improve access and quality in education, learner performance is still low daniël wilhelm uys department of statistics and actuarial science, university of stellenbosch e-mail: dwu@sun.ac.za tel: +27 (21) 808 3879. edward john thomas alant popii research and consulting e-mail: edward@popii.info tel: +27 (21) 886 5967 estimation of promotion, repetition and dropout rates for learners in south african schools daniël wilhelm uys & edward john thomas alant 21 (chisholm, 2005). shindler and fleisch (2007) stated that access to education is lower than what most published sources suggest. according to murtin (2013), the quality of basic education for a large proportion of black learners is substandard. in addition, sedibe (2011) also found that there is no equality in access to resources, such as libraries, laboratories and computers, between previously disadvantaged schools. the south african schooling system starts at grade 1 and consists of eleven further consecutive grades up to grade 12. some schools offer grade 0 prior to grade 1; for the purpose of this paper, this grade is not taken into account. the system is further divided into four schooling phases: grades 1 to 3, 4 to 6, 7 to 9, and 10 to 12. not all learners who enrolled in grade 1 will complete grade 12. of those learners who complete grade 12, not all of them will certainly do so in twelve years. the department of basic education (dbe) reports on the number of learners in each grade.1. however, the number of learners reported includes possible repeaters, which are not specified, and excludes those learners who dropped out of the schooling system. therefore, using dbe data, direct calculation of accurate promotion (or pass), repetition and dropout rates is a near impossible task. for this reason, researchers attempt to estimate these rates. the estimation of promotion, repetition and dropout rates is of national concern, and comprehensive studies have been conducted to estimate these rates. in addition, researchers endeavoured to identify possible reasons why these rates are sometimes too high or too low. fleisch and shindler (2007) used the cohort birth to twenty dataset to address patterns and prevalence of initial school enrolment, late entry, promotion, and repetition in urban schools in south africa. they also reported on the national concern about the perceived high dropout rates from secondary schools. in an in-depth study, burger, van der berg & von fintel (2013) proposed nearest neighbour estimates for promotion, repetition and dropout rates. they utilise these rates further by studying the consequences of two policies implemented by the dbe in the late 1990s. the first was that schools were no longer allowed to enrol learners who were more than two years older than the correct grade-ages, and the second that learners were not allowed to repeat more than once in each of the four schooling phases. in particular, they consider the effect of these two policies on the unemployment in the south african labour market. anderson et al. (2001) gave evidence that, although declining, there persists a racial gap in schooling in south africa, mostly attributed to the high rate of grade repetition of black learners, with only small differences in the enrolment rate across other racial groups. crouch (2005) stated that repetition rates are poorly reported and thus poorly estimated. crouch (2005) further studies the problem of dropouts in-depth, claiming that 60% of the learners enrolled in grade 1 do not reach grade 12 or its equivalent in further education and training colleges. crouch (2005) also explained different perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 22 ways in which dropouts can be calculated, and concludes that the correct approach is to consider age-specific and grade-specific enrolment ratios from the south african general household survey (ghs).2 by using the proportion of learners enrolled, and applying this to the total population, the number of learners not in school can be determined. reasons for dropping out were discussed, and further comparisons of dropout rates were made with those of other countries. modisaotsile (2012) reported on very high dropout rates and low literacy and numeracy levels, claiming that 50% of the learners enrolled in grade 1 complete grade 12. modisaotsile (2012) also stated that sexual abuse, pregnancy and poverty are factors that increase the dropout rate in secondary schooling. in a study conducted in the kwazulu-natal province of south africa, grant and hallman (2008) affirmed this by finding a strong correlation between school performance and pregnancy-related school dropout of female learners. obtaining credible estimates for promotion, repetition and dropout rates for learners in south african schools is worthwhile for various reasons. it helps identify problems regarding teachers and teaching methods that may exist in schools. these estimates can also be used by the dbe and tertiary institutions in planning their infrastructure. they can further be applied in actuarial calculations, such as loss-ofincome claims. for example, the estimates are helpful to project the school career path of learners who sustained serious injuries arising from motor vehicle accidents or medical malpractice. data sources demographic data in south africa, in common with most developing countries (and even a few developed countries), are not completely accurate. in this regard, fleisch and shindler (2007) stated that it is particularly significant and well documented that school and census data sets can be unreliable. in this paper, we start by estimating repetition rates for each grade. keeping these rates fixed, we use enrolment numbers of learners to construct a flow-through model in order to ultimately obtain estimates for promotion and dropout rates for each grade. three different data sources are utilised for the purpose of estimation. the first data source is statistics south africa, which conducts censuses and various surveys in order to attain information about the south african population.3 one such survey is the ghs, which collects data on a yearly basis, and aims to provide government and companies with information about south african households. data of the ghs are accessible online and can easily be manipulated into a required and suitable format for further use. the survey’s results are generalised to the south african population by using a method of weighting. full details of the weighting procedure are available on the website. data from the ghs are available from 2002 to 2011. unfortunately, only the surveys done in 2009, 2010 and 2011 include questions on learner’s birth years, their current grade and whether they repeated the grade or not. the data obtained from these questions in these three years are utilised for estimating repetition rates for grades 1 to 12. estimation of promotion, repetition and dropout rates for learners in south african schools daniël wilhelm uys & edward john thomas alant 23 the second data source is the education management information systems (emis). the data are captured by the dbe on a yearly basis, usually during the months of march and april, and give the number of learners at every school in south africa. the data are available, on request, from the dbe. geographic, provincial and socioeconomic information of the different schools are also given, as well as information regarding the age, current grade and gender of learners. the data also contain the number of repeaters; unfortunately, the age of the repeaters are not recorded. data of the emis are available from 1997 to 2011. careful consideration of the emis data shows both discrepancies and vast differences in the quality of data between the nine provinces. measurement errors, due to incorrect data capturing, and missing data in some of the provinces are obvious. visual inspection of graphs constructed from the data for the various provinces shows that certain data years have significantly lower or higher numbers of learners than other years. this suggests that the data needs to be cleaned before further use. consider, in this regard, figure 1 where the number of learners for each of the data years is plotted against their age for the north-west province. an unrealistic high number of three-year olds is observed in 1997. it makes sense to remove such a data point. in addition, the substantially lower number of learners in 2001, from ages six to eighteen, is assumed to be incorrect and requires attention. figure 2, also constructed from data obtained for the north west province, shows the number of learners for each data year plotted against the current grade of the learners. clearly, again the number of learners in 2001 for grades 1 to 12 is by far less than that for other years. figure 1: number of learners per age per data year before adjustments (north-west province) perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 24 figure 2: number of learners per grade per data year before adjustments (north-west province) altering data should be done cautiously and consistently. for example, reconsider the graphs in figures 1 and 2. merely adjusting the number of learners at different ages in 2001 will affect the number of learners in different grades in 2001. for this reason, we decided to replace the number of learners per age in 2001 with a weighted average based on the number of learners in all the other years, in such a way that the number of learners per grade is adjusted correspondingly. the weights used in the calculation decline exponentially as we move further away from 2001. therefore, the number of learners in 2000 and 2002 are awarded larger weights than the number of learners in data years that are further away from 2001. figures 3 and 4 show the graphs for the data obtained for the north-west province once the adjustments have been made. estimation of promotion, repetition and dropout rates for learners in south african schools daniël wilhelm uys & edward john thomas alant 25 figure 3: number of learners per age per data year after adjustments (north-west province) figure 4: number of learners per grade per data year after adjustments (north-west province) two graphs for each of the nine provinces were constructed and visually inspected. the first is the number of learners plotted against age, and the second is the number of learners plotted against grade. for each province, these graphs were considered at the same time and, where necessary, adjustments were made. where data perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 26 were missing or erroneous, data years were replaced with a weighted average based on the remaining data years. a consistent method of data adjustment was thus followed throughout. no adjustments were made to data from the free state and western cape provinces, while other provinces such as gauteng and kwazulunatal required substantial changes. in total, sixteen adjustments were made. due to space limitations, the graphs for data obtained for each province prior to and after adjustment are omitted. the adjusted emis data for each of the provinces are combined in a single data set, representing all south african schools. this is used in estimating dropout and promotion rates for grades 1 to 11. the third data source utilised in estimating the rates are yearly reports published by the dbe. the education statistics in south africa reports from 1999 to 2005 and the education statistics in south africa from 2006 to 2011 are available on the dbe’s website.4 the data in these reports are used specifically for estimating grade 12 dropout and promotion rates. the emis data are often used to compare the number of learners enrolled in a specific grade with the number of learners enrolled in the previous year in the previous grade. in this way, dropout rates can be determined. it should be noted that this method of calculation does not accurately reflect the true dropout rates, as it does not account for learner repetition and late entry into school. the method in this paper incorporates the estimation of repetition rates from data obtained from the ghs. it should be noted that, since the ghs surveys do not include exactly the same learners in their samples for consecutive years, the estimation of the repetition rates are not based on a birth-year-cohort approach. nevertheless, these repetition rates are assumed to be reliable and are kept fixed when dropout and promotion rates for grades 1 to11 are estimated from the cleaned emis data. the estimation of the dropout and promotion rates is based on a birth-year-cohort approach, where the learner’s age at the first year of enrolment in primary school is considered. finally, data from the reports of the dbe are used to estimate grade 12 dropout and promotion rates. the method of estimation is discussed in detail in the next section. method according to legislation determined by the south african schools act (sasa), it is compulsory for children to attend school in the year in which they turn seven.5 however, many children enrol into grade 1 in the year in which they turn six and some as late as the year in which they turn eight. although there are learners in grade 1 who are even younger and also older, we only consider, for the purpose of this study, learners who are in grade 1 in the year in which they turn, six, seven or eight. learners who are two or more years younger or older for a particular grade are not considered. estimation of promotion, repetition and dropout rates for learners in south african schools daniël wilhelm uys & edward john thomas alant 27 since we consider turning seven in grade 1 to be the normal age for learners to be in grade 1, we denote this number of learners by normn . for grade 1 learners, the abbreviated notation 1 1normn − and 1 1normn + are used for the number of learners who turn six and eight, respectively. similarly 2 1normn − , normn and 2 1normn + are the number of learners in grade 2 who turn seven, eight and nine, respectively. in general, the notation g normn − , g normn and g normn + refers to the number of learners in the three different age groups that is considered respectively in each of the grades, 1, ,12g =  . data from the ghs survey for 2009, 2010 and 2011 provide the number of learners who repeat. ultimately, repetition rates are calculated for each of the three age groups, mentioned in the previous paragraph, in each of the twelve grades. the repetition rate for grade for the age group norm − for 2010 is calculated as follows: 1 number of learners who are one year older, repeating grade in 2010 in 2009g norm g n − . (1) similarly, for the same age group, the repetition rate for grade for 2011 is: 1 number of learners who are one year older, repeating grade in 2011 in 2010g norm g n − . (2) one should note the way in which repetition rates in (1) and (2) are determined: the numerator and the denominator are based on different surveys. although they are weighted up to reflect the total population, there may be incompatibilities in both the sampling of the different surveys and the populations used to weight up the surveys. we purposely determined the repetition rates using this cohort-based approach, therefore maintaining consistency with calculations in the remainder of the paper. calculating the mean of (1) and (2) for each of the twelve grades, provides us with average repetition rates for the age group norm − . denote these repetition rates by 1g normr − for 1, ,12g =  . repetition rates for the age groups norm and norm + are calculated accordingly, and are denoted by g normr and 1g normr + for 1, ,12g =  , respectively. table 1 shows perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 28 the numerical calculated repetition rates for each of the three different age groups and each of the twelve grades. table 1: average repetition rates (in %) for the different age groups in each of the twelve grades age grade 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 6 6 7 5 8 8 7 7 7 9 8 8 7 10 11 7 5 11 10 4 5 12 11 6 4 13 8 4 4 14 7 5 7 15 11 10 13 16 16 20 12 17 24 16 9 18 24 11 19 12 since estimation of dropout and pass rates from the emis data is based on a birthyear-cohort approach, we add an additional subscript in the notation used for the number of learners in each grade and in each of the age groups. the notation 1,g norm cn − , g norm cn and 1,g norm cn + will henceforth refer to the number of learners in the three different age groups in grade 1, ,12g =  , who were born in birth-year cohort . the number of learners from birth-year cohort who turned six in grade 1, expressed relative to total number of learners from birth-year cohort who turned six, seven and eight is given by 1 1, 1 1, 1 1, 1 , 1 1, norm c norm c norm c norm c norm c n prop n n n − − − + = + + (3) where 1 1,norm cprop − refers to a proportion, and the preand post-subscripts are used accordingly with previous defined notation. it is evident that, in (3), norm − , norm and norm + represent the age groups six, seven and eight, respectively. the proportions estimation of promotion, repetition and dropout rates for learners in south african schools daniël wilhelm uys & edward john thomas alant 29 1 , 1 1, 1 , 1 1, 1 1, 1 , 1 1, 1 1, 1 , 1 1, and norm c norm cnorm c norm c norm c norm c norm c norm c norm c norm c n n prop prop n n n n n n + + − + − + = = + + + + are determined in a similar manner for age groups norm and norm + , respectiv ely. it should be noted that these proportions are only determined for learners who are in grade 1. we calculated the mean over all cohorts , and represent the means as 1 1normprop − , 1 normprop and 1 1normprop + . we determined the proportions to be as follows: 1 1 1 1 10.377; 0.483; 0.140norm norm normprop prop prop− += = = (4) we return to these three average proportions below. a flow-through rate between two consecutive grades is defined as the number of learners in the higher grade expressed relative to the number of learners in the lower grade. these rates can be calculated per birth-year cohort, but differ from promotion (pass) rates in the sense that flow-through rates take repeaters into account, whereas repeaters are excluded from promotion rates. therefore, we have to distinguish clearly between flow-through rates and promotion rates, and emphasise that these rates are not the same. the emis data are used to calculate flow-through rates between grades for each of the three age groups per birth-year cohort. let the flowthrough rate between grade and for learners in the norm − age group, that were born in cohort be given by 1 1, 1, 1, g norm c g norm c g norm c n f n + − − − = . the flow-through rates for the age groups norm and norm + are determined similarly as 1 , , , and g norm cg norm c g norm c n f n += 1 1,1, 1, g norm c g norm c g norm c n f n + + + + = . it should be noted that 11 1,norm cf − , 11 ,norm cf and 11 1,norm cf + give flow-through rates from grades 11 to 12 for the three different age groups from cohort , and that calculation of 12 1,norm cf − , 12 ,norm cf and 12 1,norm cf + are not applicable in this instance. the flow-through rates are adjusted to allow for trends over time. this is done by perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 30 calculating a mean for each of the flow-through rates between grades and , where the weights are proportional to the number of birth-cohort years available. this implies that later birth-cohort years receive a larger weighting relative to the earlier years. the average flow-through rates for all birth-year cohorts are denoted as 1 1, and g norm g norm g normf f f− + (5) and the numerical values are given in table 2. table 2: average flow-through rates (in %) between grades for the different age groups age groups grades 1-2 2-3 3-4 4-5 5-6 6-7 7-8 8-9 9-10 10-11 11-12 norm 1 71 88 90 91 92 90 98 89 91 81 76 norm 86 93 94 92 96 98 99 93 99 82 75 norm + 1 120 111 104 98 99 97 110 95 108 81 64 consider again the average repetition rates given in table 1. we now express the dropout rates, denoted by , as proportions of these repetition rates. in accordance with the notation used earlier, denote these proportions as g normα − , g normα and g normα + for each of the age groups for 1, ,11g =  . it is necessary to place constraints on the values to ensure convergence in the simulation. we, therefore, assume that each of these values lies between 0,00001 and 3. the dropout rates for the three age groups for 1, ,11g =  are then given as: ( )( ) ( )( ) ( )( )1 11 1 1 1; ; g norm g norm g normg norm g norm g norm g norm g norm g normd r d r d rα α α− +− − + += = = as starting values, we choose all the values to be equal to 0.5. since we now have repetition and dropout rates for each of the age groups for grades 1 to 11, promotion rates, denoted by , can easily be obtained as follows: 1 11 1 1 11 ; 1 ; 1g norm g norm g normg norm g norm g norm g norm g norm g normp r d p r d p r d− +− − + += − − = − − = − − we use the average proportions calculated for the three different age groups for grade 1 in (4), to divide 1000 (or any arbitrary quantity) learners into the three groups. thus, 377 learners turn six, 483 turn seven, and 140 learners turn eight in grade 1. applying the repetition rates from table 1, the current dropout rates, estimation of promotion, repetition and dropout rates for learners in south african schools daniël wilhelm uys & edward john thomas alant 31 which are now 50% of the repetition rates, and the attained promotion rates to subdivided 1000 grade 1 learners result in the values given in table 3. the values in table 3 are used to obtain flow-through rates in a similar way as flow-through rates per cohort were obtained previously. for example, the flow-through rates from grade 1 to grade 2 for learners turning six, seven and eight in grade 1 are * * * 1 1 1 1 1 343 471 157 0, 91, 0, 98 and 1,12 377 483 140norm norm norm f f f− += = = = = = , respectively. flow-through rates between other grades are obtained similarly. in general, we use the notation * * * 1 1, and g norm g norm g normf f f− + (6) to denote these flow-through rates between grades for the three different age groups, respectively. it should be noted again that (6) is defined for 1, ,11g =  , but is not equal to twelve. we refer to these flow-through rates as the simulated flow-through rates to distinguish them from the actual average flow-through rates in (5) calculated in table 2. the main idea is to minimise the absolute difference between the actual flowthrough rates in (5) and the simulated flow-through rates in (6). we decided to use the absolute difference, since this form of error minimisation is more resistant to outliers in the data (although we found that squared differences provided similar results). this is done for grades 1 to 11, for the three different age groups. therefore, this amounts to finding values for g normα − , g normα and g normα + , under certain restrictions, such as to minimise the following quantity 11 1 * 1 1 g norm ig norm i g i f f −− = =− −∑∑ (7) perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 32 table 3: the number of learners in each grade in the different age groups in the first simulation repetition age grade 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 6 377 7 483 343 8 140 471 303 9 157 444 272 10 171 410 245 11 171 382 227 12 161 368 211 13 159 342 198 14 155 328 186 15 155 317 167 16 163 289 134 17 182 217 110 18 152 176 19 118 simulation in @risk software is used to obtain the minimum for the quantity in (7).6 in the actual simulation, this minimum value equals 0.3912. the finally attained values that correspond with the minimum value are given in table 4. table 4: the attained values between grades for the different age groups in the final simulation repetition age group grades 1-2 2-3 3-4 4-5 5-6 6-7 7-8 8-9 9-10 10-11 11-12 norm 1 3.00 0.53 0.48 0.30 0.72 1.01 0.00 1.26 0.29 0.46 1.00 norm 1.11 0.62 0.23 0.59 0.66 0.00 0.00 0.52 0.00 0.10 0.82 norm + 1 0.00 0.08 0.00 0.07 0.29 0.38 0.00 1.25 0.72 0.69 1.08 the values in table 4 give the estimated dropout rates, expressed as proportions of the repetition rates. thus, dropout rates and, ultimately, promotion rates for the three different age groups in grades 1 to 11 can now be calculated. by using the above procedure to obtain simulated flow-through rates that are nearly equal to the actual flow-through rates, the ratio of the number of learners in the different grades in the final simulation repetition is as good as possible an imitation of the ratio of number of learners in the different grades in the actual data. finally, data from the education statistics in south africa reports7 from 2000 to 2011 are used to estimate the dropout and promotion rates for grade 12. these reports obtain results from the national senior certificate and show the number of estimation of promotion, repetition and dropout rates for learners in south african schools daniël wilhelm uys & edward john thomas alant 33 grade 12 learners who dropped out and passed. since the repetition rates for grade 12 were also obtained from the ghs, calculation of the dropout and promotion rates for grade 12 is trivial. the obtained rates are presented and discussed in the following section. estimated results in this section, the method discussed earlier is applied and results are presented by means of tables and graphs. we start with the repetition rates given in table 1 for the three different age groups for grades 1 to 12. a graphical representation of the repetition rates is shown in figure 5. figure 5: estimated repetition rates for the different age groups it is interesting to note that learners, who are one year older than the normal age for a certain grade, have higher repetition rates than learners who are in the other two age groups. a possible explanation for this is that learners in the norm age group, who are more likely to repeat, will ultimately fall in the norm + age groups. for example, a learner turning ten in grade 4 may repeat grade 4 once before moving on to grade 5. typically, such a learner falls in the norm + age group in grade 5 in the year in which the learner turns eleven. learners in the norm age groups, who are less likely to repeat, will remain in the norm age group in later grades. since we expect those learners who failed once to have a higher likelihood of failing again (pugatch, 2012), a similar argument can be made for learners who are initially in the norm − age group and who may fall in the norm or norm + age group in higher grades. furthermore, when interpreting these rates, the dbe regulation with regard to learner progression must be borne in mind. legislation states that learners are not permitted to repeat any grade more than once, and that learners are not allowed to perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 34 repeat more than once in any of the four school phases. we would, therefore, expect higher repetition rates in the first grade of each new school phase. it is, however, not clear how this legislation is enforced by the dbe, or how different schools adhere to it. it should also be noted that there exists interaction between age, repetition and dropout rates. for this reason, repetition rates should not be considered in isolation, but within the context of dropout and flow-through rates. table 5 and figure 6 show the dropout rates for the different age groups. the grade 1 dropout rate for the norm − age group is relatively high compared to the other two age groups. in addition, the dropout rates for the norm + age groups, for grades 8 to 11, are higher relative to the same grades for the other two age groups. a reasonable explanation for this is that weaker learners are characterised by higher repetition rates, making these learners older than the normal age for a specific grade. learners who already repeated in the past are more likely to repeat again. this ultimately results in higher dropouts in the norm + age group, particularly in the higher grades. table 5: estimated dropout rates (in %) for the different age groups age group grades 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 norm 1 18 4 3 2 4 5 0 5 2 6 12 25 norm 6 4 2 4 3 0 0 3 0 2 13 23 norm + 1 0 1 0 1 3 3 0 13 12 16 25 22 one should recall that the method mentioned earlier uses the actual and simulated flow-through rates to determine dropout rates (as proportions of the repetition rates). therefore, flow-through rates play an important role when determining dropout rates. the dropout rate in grade 7 for all three age groups is zero. this is an unexpected result. a possible reason for this is the high flow-through rate between grades 7 and 8. see table 2 in this regard, where the mean of the flow-through rates between grades 7 and 8 for the three different age groups is 102%. thus, the number of learners in grade 8 is considerably more than the number of learners in grade 7, since under-reporting of the number of learners at the end of primary school (i.e., grade 7), and the over-reporting of the number of learners at the beginning of secondary school (i.e., grade 8). since we chose the values between 0.00001 and 3, negative dropout rates cannot be obtained. it should be noted that very low dropout rates have been reported in published literature (bot, 2011). estimation of promotion, repetition and dropout rates for learners in south african schools daniël wilhelm uys & edward john thomas alant 35 figure 6: estimated dropout rates for the different age groups table 6 and figure 7 show the promotion rates for the three age groups. again, the promotion rates for the norm + age group are lower for grades 8 to 11, if compared to the other two age groups. this is expected, since higher repetition and dropout rates were estimated above for this age group in grades 8 to 11. table 6: estimated promotion rates (in %) for the different age groups age group grades 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 norm 1 76 88 90 91 92 90 96 90 91 81 76 66 norm 89 89 91 90 93 94 96 93 90 78 71 66 norm + 1 93 91 89 89 86 89 93 76 72 60 51 66 perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 36 figure 7: estimated promotion rates for the different age groups finally, table 7 and figure 8 show the promotion, repetition and dropout rates for grade 1 to 12. it should be noted that these rates are given for all three age groups, by determining averages for each grade. table 7: average repetition, dropout and promotion rates (in %) for grades 1 to 12 average rates grades 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 repetition rate 6 8 8 8 7 6 5 7 11 19 17 11 dropout rate 8 3 2 2 3 3 0 7 5 8 17 23 promotion rate 86 89 90 90 90 91 95 86 84 73 66 66 in figure 8, the estimated promotion rates are on the right-hand vertical axis, while the estimated repetition and dropout rates are on the left-hand vertical axis, for grades 1 to 12 on the horizontal axis. estimation of promotion, repetition and dropout rates for learners in south african schools daniël wilhelm uys & edward john thomas alant 37 figure 8: average repetition, dropout and promotion rates for grades 1 to 12 figure 8 shows a steady increase in the dropout rates from grades 9 to 12. the repetition rates reach a maximum at grade 10, and decline then towards grade 12. reasonable stable promotion rates are observed from grades 1 to 7, followed by a steady decline from grade 8 towards grade 12. in an attempt to address the underand over-reporting observed in the data between primary and secondary school, we smoothed the flow-through rates in table 2. in particular, we fitted a linear trend line to the flow-through rates. the minimisation in (7) was repeated and the results are given in figure 9. figure 9: average repetition, dropout and promotion rates for grades 1 to 12 after smoothing of flow-through rates perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 38 given the fixed repetition rates, the effect of the smoothing is evident in the dropout rates in figure 9. this somewhat reduces the effect of the underand over-reporting observed between primary and secondary schools. we are of the opinion that these results should be used in practice. final comments in a dbe report, prepared for the portfolio committee on education in 2011, on dropout and learner retention, the following dropout rates for 2007/2008, as given in table 8, are reported.8 table 8: dropout rates (in %) for 2007/2008 for grade 1 to 11 grades 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 dropout rate 1 0.5 1.2 0.3 2 1.5 2.7 2.8 6.5 11.5 11.8 the report intended to provide information on how successful the schooling system performed in south africa, specifically with regard to retaining learners in certain grades. there are significant differences when comparing the dropout rates from the report with those estimated in this paper. possible reasons for this are that repetition and promotion rates are calculated from data obtained from the national income dynamics study survey, and that a birth-year cohort approach is not followed in calculating dropout rates.9 a cohort-based approach is, therefore, a necessity and even then, repeaters by age and grade still need to be taken into account. ignoring these factors can lead to underor over-estimation of the different rates. the report also mentions that approximately 39% of south africa’s youths obtain a national senior certificate. we performed further statistical analysis using the above results and found this value to be closer to 30%. the interested reader can contact the authors for further information regarding this analysis. discrepancies can also be due to the fact that the results in this paper are based on emis data from the dbe extending over fourteen years. differences can be expected when compared with results published for individual years. when comparing our results with those in the dbe 2013 macro indicators report,10 we found that the repetition rates are similar, but that the dropout rates differ somewhat. this is particularly evident for the lower grades. the dbe publication reported low dropout rates for grades 1 to 6, whereas our method gives steadily increasing dropout rates over these grades. according to murtin (2013), grade repetition is especially high in grades 10 and 11. we found similar results. murtin (2013) also states that 58% of the learners leave the schooling system without completing matriculation. we found that 70% of the learners who started in grade 1 dropped out before completing grade 12. estimation of promotion, repetition and dropout rates for learners in south african schools daniël wilhelm uys & edward john thomas alant 39 pugatch’s (2012) study concluded that nearly one third of learners are re-enrolled in school, after having been dis-enrolled for at least one year. it should be noted that the procedure in this paper takes the learners who re-enrolled into account, because such learners are included in the actual average flow-through rates, as calculated in table 2. we consider only learners in three different age groups for each grade, thus ignoring learners who are more than one year younger or older for a particular grade. including such learners could lead to more accurate estimated dropout and promotion rates. unfortunately, this will considerably complicate the estimation procedure. in addition, learner mortality is included in the dropout rates, which can be further refined if mortality is taken into account. repetition rates can be estimated from data sources other than the ghs. for example, the world bank databank can be utilised for this purpose.11 this will, of course, affect the dropout and promotion rates. in (4), average proportions calculated over all cohorts are used as starting proportions when the values in table 3 are calculated. these starting proportions can be chosen differently. say, for instance, that we are interested in the dropout and promotion rates of learners born in a specific year, the proportions of learners in that specific birth-year cohort could be used as starting proportions. when the school grade progression of a learner has to be determined for the purpose of loss-of-income calculation, the repetition, dropout and promotion rates can be re-estimated for the specific case at hand. for example, data from the province in which the particular learner’s school lies can be used in the estimation. the estimation can even be further refined, using only data from schools with the same socio-economic status as the particular learner’s school. the procedure outlined in this paper provides insight into the working of the basic education system in south africa. the combination of ghs data, emis data, yearly reports of the dbe, and simulation, provide an innovative approach to assess the performance of learners in south african schools. as the dbe data improve and trends emerge, the procedure can be updated and improved. in this way, the effect of dbe initiatives can be assessed. the dbe has various goals (such as the “action plan to 2014”) and the effect of the underlying actions related to these initiatives can be estimated using the proposed procedure.12 finally, applications of the proposed procedure are numerous and opportunities for future research are promising. endnotes i. http://www.education.gov.za/ ii. http://www.statssa.gov.za/ghs/ iii. http://beta2.statssa.gov.za/ perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 40 vi. http://www.education.gov.za/emis/statisticalpublications/tabid/462/default.aspx v. http://www.info.gov.za/acts/1996/a84-96.pdf vi. http://www.palisade.com/risk/ vii. http://www.education.gov.za viii. http://www.education.gov.za/linkclick.aspx?fileticket=jcssy0rhcme%3d&tabid= 358&mid=1261&forcedownload=true ix. http://www.nids.uct.ac.za/ x. http://www.education.gov.za/linkclick.aspx?fileticket=cjnr7hvwtvc%3d&tabid=8 38&mid=2824&forcedownload=true xi. http://databank.worldbank.org/ xii. http://www.education.gov.za/curriculum/actionplanto2014/tabid/418/default. aspx references anderson k, case a & lam d 2001. causes and consequences of schooling in south arica: evidence from survey data. social dynamics, 27(1): 37-59. bot m 2011. an overview of selected schooling indicators 2001-2010. edusource data news, 1. retrieved on 19 january 2015 from http://www.jet.org.za/ publications/edusource-datanews-2011-issue1.pdf. burger r, van der berg s & von fintel d 2013. the unintended consequences of education policies on south african participation and unemployment. iza discussion paper, 7450. retrieved on 19 january 2015 from http://www.iza. org/conference_files/worldb2013/burger_r9046.pdf. chisholm l 2005. the quality of primary education in south africa. background paper prepared for the education for all global monitoring report: the quality imperative. retrieved on 19 january 2015 from http://unesdoc. unesco.org/images/0014/001466/146636e.pdf. crouch l 2005. disappearing schoolchildren or data misunderstanding? dropout phenomena in south africa. retrieved on 19 january 2015 from http://www. rti.org/pubs/disappearing_school children.pdf. fleisch b & shindler j 2007. school participation from birth to twenty; patterns of schooling in an urban child cohort study in south africa. retrieved on 19 january 2015 from http://www.create-rpc.org/pdf_documents/fleisch.pdf. grant mj & hallman kk 2008. pregnancy-related school dropout and prior school performance in kwazulu-natal, south africa. studies in family planning, 39(4): 369-382. estimation of promotion, repetition and dropout rates for learners in south african schools daniël wilhelm uys & edward john thomas alant 41 modisaotsile bm 2012. the failing standard of basic education in south africa. policy brief of the africa institute of south africa, 72. retrieved on 19 january 2015 from 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student performance at an open and distance learning institution1 hélène müller research directorate, university of south africa mulleh@unisa.ac.za elana swanepoel and andreas de beer department of business management, university of south africa swanee@unisa.ac.za and adebeer@unisa.ac.za the drive to improve the academic performance of students at an open and distance learning (odl) institution has resulted in the incorporation of a blended learning component, namely satellite classes, in the learning strategy to enhance the academic performance of first year diploma students in business management and management. monitoring this intervention to justify implementation costs (mathur & oliver, 2007:3) and effectiveness in relation to student performance is essential. whereas an initial study confirmed a statistically significant relationship between satellite class attendance and academic performance, this study evaluated the interaction effect of satellite classes and additional, potential success predictors on academic performance by applying the chi-square automatic interaction detector (chaid) methodology. this decision tree methodology described the interactive driving forces that impacted on student success. satellite class intervention and biographical student attributes constituted the driving forces. the chaid analysis enabled the profiling of successful and at-risk students. the decision tree algorithm mimics true life situations where various effects interactively and jointly influence and predict an outcome. the results showed that satellite class intervention as such was an effective and significant predictor of performance, but that the critical interacting nature of satellite class attendance and additional co-predictors, such as population group and type of matriculation certificate, considerably strengthened performance prediction. keywords: odl, blended learning intervention, business management, success profile, satellite  class attendance, student performance,  throughput, decision trees, data partitioning, chaid  analysis, population group, matriculation certificate, age, at-risk profile introduction the success rate of first year diploma students in some courses in the department of business management at the university of south africa (unisa), an open and distance learning institution (odl), is of great concern. an unacceptably low pass rate of between 40 and 50 percent in the courses business management i and management i was reported between 2003 and 2007 (swanepoel, de beer & müller, 2009:2). student failure is costly to both the institution (in terms of eventual throughput rate and associated subsidy quotas) and the students (in terms of time and accumulated study expenses). overburdened parents, sponsors or the students themselves often carry the added financial burden, incurring escalating study loans. the 1 muller, h, et al. 2010. success profiling: a methodological perspective on the interactive nature of success predictors on student performance at an open and distance learning institution. perspectives in education, 28(2):63-74. perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201064 financial implications for south africa, as a developing country in need of a skilled workforce, are thus pertinent. student academic performance at odl institutions, as at residential universities, is linked to studentlecturer knowledge, communication and interaction (ansari, 2002:225). in an attempt to increase students’ academic performance, satellite classes, as a blended learning component (marx, 2007:169), were investigated and implemented by the relevant department in 2006. satellite classes mimic physical faceto-face student-lecturer tutoring and interaction by means of a series of networked, virtual real-time verbal communication and tutoring sessions. satellite classes are costly to unisa and return on the investment therefore has to be continually evaluated. success-indicator measures had to be defined in the evaluation process,. improvement in students’ examination or year marks or the pass/fail ratio of students attending and not attending satellite classes could act as success indicators. the effectiveness of the satellite class intervention can furthermore be evaluated by using different analysis methods. for example, in an initial analysis strategy, the research objective could focus solely on determining whether satellite class attendance significantly improves student performance. the authors of this paper (swanepoel et al) conducted research to this effect in 2009. the rationale followed in this approach is that research into intervention effectiveness should not continue if the intervention per se does not prove to be effective. once the effectiveness of the intervention has been established, a subsequent analysis strategy regarding the joint interactive effect of intervention and other success indicators should be followed. an in-depth analysis strategy should then recognise that no single intervention or attribute influences an outcome (such as performance), in isolation, and a combination of interacting forces usually affects an outcome. the research discussed in this article focuses on the analysis methodology applied during the second phase of the research project. in the initial research by the same authors (swanepoel et al, 2009), determination of a pass rate and satellite class intervention dependency was formulated as the research objective. the analysis results of the initial study identified a statistically significant relationship between the attendance of satellite classes and the pass rate of students. in the subsequent study, on which this article reports, the statistical significance of the contribution of satellite classes in relation to the magnitude of the contributions of other predictors in jointly and interactively predicting performance success was explored. the joint and interactive nature of predictors (which include satellite class attendance) modulating a success/failure prediction model became the main focus of the study. student biographical information on population group, age, type of formerly traditional south african (sa) matriculation board certificate obtained, and language properties describe these predictors. if the contribution of satellite class attendance in the joint/interactive prediction model proved to be substantial, initial research would be validated. favourable results would furthermore strengthen research and justify tutoring expenses for satellite class implementation. the interactive nature of the analysis strategy has the added advantage of incorporating the effect of satellite class attendance into profiles of successful and at-risk first year business management and management diploma students. although odl and the impact of satellite classes (not necessarily at odl institutions) have been researched internationally (albright, 2007; collins, 2002; zawacki-richter 2009), limited research has been conducted in the field of business management at odl institutions in sa in this regard, except for previous research by the authors swanepoel et al., (2009). this research therefore aims to fill the knowledge gap on the effect of the satellite class intervention on improved academic performance, while simultaneously eliciting biographical profiles of successful and at-risk first year students. from these at-risk profiles, in particular, it should be possible to develop student support strategies to ensure an increased student pass rate. the importance of psychographic and other possible contributing factors (such as student motivation, persistence, drive and other forms of support) was, however, not negated by this approach. these factors will be researched in the third stage of this continuing research project. müller, et al. — success profiling 65 theoretical background unisa is the fifth largest odl institution in the world, with approximately 280 000 registered students for the first semester of 2009 (subotzky, 2009). odl approaches focus on opening access and flexibility to education and training, freeing learners from restrictions imposed by time, geographical disposition, socio-economic and other constraints, and offering flexible learning opportunities (louw, 2007:1). these approaches imply that someone removed in time and space from the learner facilitates learning and support, and that student-lecturer knowledge communication occurs through an artificial medium (such as interactive satellite classes) (moore, perlow, judge & koh, 2006:217). the approach further implies that new patterns of virtual teaching and learning evolve when technology and traditional tutoring methods are intermingled in the learning process (unesco, 2002:2, 9, 10, 22). effective blended learning approaches that facilitate the pass rate and reduce tuition costs are vital to the sustainable growth of universities (unisa, 2009) following this tuition model. satellite class intervention, the focal learning approach of the research under discussion, constitutes a blended learning technique. the element of an artificial communication and support medium underlies the concept of blended learning and forms the essence of most authors’ definition of blended learning. the royer center for learning and academic technologies (2004), for example, defines blended learning as an “intermingling of multiple learning strategies or methods with a variety of (communication) media”. markus (2008) agrees. strategies or media would typically include aspects of face-to-face instruction and online (or distance) learning. marx (2007) echoes driscoll’s (2002) opinion that blended learning combines any form of instructional technology with face-to-face instructor-led training. blended learning strategies have several distinct advantages that are conducive to performance, such as a sense of community among student learners (garrison & kanuka, 2004), exposure to open dialogue, critical debate, reflection and broadening the learning experience. in developing countries such as south africa, certain blended learning techniques, such as satellite classes, have the added advantage that the implementation cost of the strategy, in relation to the proportion of students who can be serviced by the teaching approach, is relatively low (mathur & oliver, 2007). although oliver and tigwell (2005) claim that blended learning increases student performance, prinsloo and van rooyen (2007) point out that the successful introduction of a specific blended learning approach at one institution does not necessarily guarantee the effectiveness of the strategy at another institution. in selecting blended learning options, cognisance should be taken of the accessibility of the proposed strategy to students. a large proportion of the unisa students come from historically disadvantaged backgrounds and often from remote rural areas with poor infrastructure (visser & hall, 2006). these logistic realities require serious consideration when the various types of technologies that are available to facilitate learning are evaluated. external indicators and biographical characteristics (and combinations of these factors) that affect or predict academic performance translate into profiles of successful and at-risk students (wojciechowski & palmer, 2005:1). influential characteristics, the way they interact and their “influence priority” on performance have been widely researched from various analytical perspectives. du plessis, prinsloo and muller (2005:686-690) compiled an overview of research trends to this effect. numerous potentially influential success predictors are mentioned, such as cultural background as expressed via the population group, age, gender, english language proficiency, tutoring language of the institution, home language, admission policy, type of matriculation exemption, repeaters, comprehension and reading skills, to name but a few. the importance of a sound decision on the type of applicable blended learning intervention is far reaching. the primary aim of intervention is to improve performance, but this comes at a price in terms of the financial survival of the odl institution, the academic standing of the institution and the financial, mental and physical input of the student. the efficiency of the intervention therefore needs to be determined. perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201066 research methodology research objectives the initial research by the authors established that first year students’ attendance of satellite classes in first year business management and management courses was significantly related to academic performance and markedly improved performance (swanepoel et al, 2009). in this research the research objectives aim to: ■ validate the significance of the identified relationship in the initial research via an alternative analysis methodology; ■ create an exploratory prediction model (expressed as a student success profile) for the success rate of students, which takes cognisance of the interactive nature of predictor variables and evaluates the contribution of satellite class attendance in conjunction with other possible biographic predictors in the model; and ■ present the prediction model as a provisional profile for successful and unsuccessful first year business management and management students at unisa. research design the data were retrieved from first year department of business management student records for 2007. data fields extracted include information on examination marks (continuous data), satellite class attendance figures (categorical data) and biographical attributes (categorical data). for the purpose of this research and analysis strategy, examination marks were categorised into ‘pass’ and ‘fail’ categories (categorical data) according to whether a pass rate of 50 percent had been attained in the 2007 examinations. the nature of the collected data therefore required a quantitative research design (de vos, strydom, fouché & delport, 2005). the non-parametric and categorical analysis technique applied as part of the analysis methodology, namely a decision tree data partitioning analysis approach (described in the analysis strategy section), aligned with the data type and data structure and also satisfied the underlying analysis assumptions set by the statistical analysis technique (kass, 1980). in the planning stage of the research, it was decided to base the evaluation of the effectiveness of satellite class attendance on student records that indicated full participation in the relevant modules. records indicating outstanding results, or re-admission to supplementary examinations, non-attendance, withdrawals, cancellations and other exemptions, were excluded from the database. this design decision could possibly inflate the actual pass-fail ratio if it is argued that all students not participating in the examinations actually ‘failed’, but the reasoning is founded on inclusions of ‘true’ pass and fail cases in the analysis. in this way, a pure database was established without ambiguous cases. sampling the examination results of first year students in two business management and two management modules for 2007 were extracted from the official unisa student database. age, population group, home language, tuition language (afrikaans or english), type of matriculation certificate and satellite class attendance furthermore constituted the biographical components. to contextualise the inclusion of the type of matriculation certificate as a possible influential effect in the research, the following background information seems relevant: under the previous government (prior to 1994) various matriculation certificates were issued in south africa until 2007. the certificates were issued according to provincial, private, homeland and population group classifications. in addition, study admission is currently granted to older students (+23 category exemption), to foreign students and to senate-approved cases. as an odl institution unisa policy grants open admission to all matriculation certificate holders. against this background it is argued that the type of matriculation certificate held by students could, in conjunction with the effect of satellite class attendance, impact on student performance. müller, et al. — success profiling 67 for this research certificates were therefore classified according to the unisa 2008 student system codes guideline (wilson & du toit, 2008): ■ category 1: formerly traditionally white, private and indian schools; ■ category 2: previously traditionally black or coloured schools; and ■ category 3: special exemption, 23+, senate-granted exemption, foreign, etc. compared to south african residential universities with a very young student population, student-age distribution at unisa shows a larger proportion of older students, which implies that older types of matriculation certificates impact on the student population over a more extended period than at residential universities. a total of 5 740 records of students who had written exams were sampled out of a total of 12 321 registered students in 2007. slightly fewer records than the 5 864 records included in the initial research by swanepoel et al (2009:14) are analysed in the current research. the biographical characteristics of the respondents were not included in the initial research and in this research, incomplete records of biographical attributes had to be excluded, thereby reducing the sample size to 5 740 records. satellite classes as blended learning intervention satellite classes were presented simultaneously at 25 auditoriums across south africa and namibia. these venues were linked to one another and to the recording studios of the department of communication at unisa via a network. at the studio, the lecturer presented subject content matter and students could communicate live with the lecturer via telephones at the venues. presentations were also recorded on dvd and made available to students on request. five satellite classes were presented during the semester. in total, 4 608 module attendance entries were recorded (some students attended more than one satellite class – up to five classes – and others more than one of the modules, as reflected in the attendance figures: mng1m14 950; mng1m25 480; bsm1m1p 1 653 and bsm1m2p 1 535 attendees). the authors should indicate the full names of the modules here with the abbreviations in brackets afterward. ethical considerations the unisa ethical guidelines were approved by council in september 2007 (unisa, 2007), but research into satellite attendance commenced before the ethical guidelines were formally introduced. the research was, however, approved by the research committee of the department of business management and was in alignment with the unisa guidelines when these were formalised. privacy of information was adhered to since examination and biographical information was used solely to categorise the sample according to various subsets, which did not involve the disclosure or use of personal information. survey data were collected once the final examination marks had been recorded. this implied that no student was subjected to any ‘treatment’ that could have been to the advantage or detriment of any student or subgroup of students. data were collected from unisa’s official databases, which ensured data integrity. findings analysis strategy and the chaid analysis methodology as a first step in the analysis strategy, frequency distributions on all variables were calculated. this was followed by a decision tree data partitioning analysis methodology referred to as chi-square automatic interaction detection (chaid) technique (answertree 3.0 user’s guide, 2001). frequency tables were used to validate the data and to describe the sampled population. distributions are presented in table 1. it was established that 55 percent of the sampled students passed their examinations, and that 31 percent attended at least one satellite class. the majority of students, nearly 70 percent, were younger than 35. eighty-one percent were african/black students and 78 percent spoke an african language at home. the results indicated that the tutoring language was predominantly english (95%). fifty-five percent of the students were in possession of matriculation certificates of either traditionally white, indian, private, african/black or coloured matriculation boards. a substantial number perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201068 of students (45%) had other types of matriculation exemptions. the sampled population proved to be a good representation of unisa students. official unisa statistics indicate that the majority of students are young (46.4% younger than 29 years and 50.6% older than 29 years), black/african students (64%) who speak an african language at home and are tutored in english (subotzky, 2009). frequency distributions assisted in identifying and condensing category levels of potential success predictors that proved to be sparsely populated. sparsely populated predictor variables entered into the decision tree model (very low frequencies) could add bias to the eventual prediction. the levels of categories of the age and type of matriculation certificate variables, were, for example, condensed into fewer more populous categories. table 1: frequency distribution of performance, satellite class attendance and other potential biographical predictor variables predictor category frequency percentage cumulative frequency cumulative percentage missing values satellite attendance attendee non-attendee 1 758 3 992 30.63 59.37 1 758 5 740 30.63 100.00 0 exam results pass fail 3 177 2 563 55.35 44.65 3 177 5 740 55.35 100.00 0 age <25 25-34 35-44 44+ 1 666 2 319 1 423 311 29.02 40.40 24.81 5.77 1 666 3 985 5 409 5 740 29.02 69.43 94.23 100.00 0 population group white coloured african indian 536 332 4 650 221 9.34 5.78 81.02 3.85 536 868 5 518 5 739 9.34 15.12 96.15 100.00 1 home language european african 1 270 4 463 22.15 77.85 1 270 5 733 22.15 100.00 7 tutoring language afrikaans english 298 5 442 5.19 94.81 298 5 740 5.19 100.00 0 matriculation certificate category 1 category 2 category 3 1 233 1 891 2 540 21.77 33.39 44.84 1 233 3 124 5 664 21.77 66.16 100.00 36 total no. of observations = 5 740 in the second phase of the analysis (chaid), the pass/fail rate of the students was regarded as the dependent variable and satellite class attendance, along with the available biographical variables, were entered into the decision tree model as independent variables to investigate the interactive contribution of the independent variables on the students’ pass/fail rate. the technique mimics real-life situations in that several effects generally jointly influence an event such as performance. chaid methodology, a relatively simple multi-variate classification and data partitioning technique (eherler & lehmann, 2001:2), was first developed by kass (1980). it was introduced to study the interactive nature of the predictors of a dependent variable. the technique automatically selects those predictor variables that jointly, interactively and optimally predict the dependent variable. the technique works extremely well on large datasets with many predictor variables – this fits the data description of the current research. the data partitioning process is based on the following principles: müller, et al. — success profiling 69 ■ the prediction model is presented in the form of a classification tree referred to as a decision tree. ■ the method is a stepwise process and starts off with the root as the set of all respondents partitioned according to the levels of the dependent variable. in the current analysis the ’pass’ and ‘fail’ marks of the examination results variable represent the dependent variable and levels. the step is illustrated in the step 1 diagram depicted below (bm 1 = business management 1 and m1 = management 1). step 1: all respondents node 1 bm 1, m 1 pass rate pass 3 177 fail 2 563 pass/fail ratio = 1 24 step 2: population group: optimal data partitioning, based on first-year business management and management pass/failure rate as dependent variable node 1 bm 1, m 1 pass rate pass 3 177 fail 2 563 total 5 740 pass/fail ratio = 1 24 node 2 african population pass 2 377 fail 2 273 total 4 650 pass/fail ratio = 1 05 node 2 white population pass 431 fail 106 total 537 pass/fail ratio = 4 07 node 3 coloured/other pass 369 fail 184 total 553 pass/fail ratio = 2 01 pop group; prob. (chi-sq= 197.49) < 0.0001*** in the second step in the data partitioning process, the list of probable predictors is automatically evaluated to establish whether a “best” predictor variable (referred to as a “splitting agent”) can be identified that will split the initial dataset into subsets. partitioning is conducted in such a way that the most distinctive and significantly different subsets, with respect to the pass/fail categories of the dependent variable, emerge perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201070 once partitioned. the partitioning of the data into subsets is referred to as “branching” and the subsets as “branches” or nodes. the step 2 diagram illustrates the principle as set out in the text. in subsequent steps, the preceding step’s subsets are again investigated to determine which predictor variable then acts as optimal splitting agent (if such an agent exists) to once again split the subset into the most distinctly different and significant subsets with respect to the pass/fail levels of the dependent variable. at each step in the process, chi-square tests are calculated to determine whether the splits are significant. the process continues until one of a number of stopping mechanisms is encountered. before embarking on the partitioning process described above, chaid evaluates the categories of each potential predictor variable (such as the categories of population group and matriculation certificate) and merges categories if judged to behave in a similar fashion with respect to the dependent variable. dissimilar categories are maintained. the complete decision tree is depicted in figure 1. why resort to segmentation or partitioning? segmentation analysis proves to be useful in the current research in answering the questions pertaining to: ■ which predictors most strongly define the segmentation of first year diploma student success, and once established; ■ which combination of the levels of the selected predictors defines student groups most likely to pass first year business management and management modules (identified as student subsets with a high pass/fail ratio); as opposed to ■ which combination of levels of these predictors defines student groups at risk of failing first year business management and management courses (identified as student subsets with a low pass/fail ratio). the structure of the decision tree assists in this regard. if branches of the tree are followed from any given point back to the root, different combinations of characteristics that best define specific target groups can be derived. the predictor selected for the first split of the trunk represents the most critical success predictor. the importance of predictor contribution to the model decreases in the lower levels of the decision tree. results and interpretation of the chaid analysis results of the chaid analysis (figure 1) indicated that population group proved to be the first critical and significant success predictor to split performance into distinct and significantly different subsets with respect to the pass/fail ratio attached to each population group. segregation into three population subsets was significant, as indicated by a probability of less than 0.0001, associated with the chi-square statistic of 197.49. the pass/fail ratios for the african, white and coloured/other subsets were 1.05, 4.07, and 2.01 respectively, which indicates significantly different pass/fail ratios. the ratios imply that, for white respondents, four students passed for every one student who failed, while one african student passed for every student who failed in the african population group. therefore the most critical, statistically significant contributor in explaining variation in pass/fail performance was the population group. based on pass/fail ratios, level one data segregation thus indicated the white population group as probably the most successful students and the african students as probably the least successful. in the second step of the chaid analysis, the type of matriculation certificate obtained acted as the next most critical splitting agent to split african and coloured population subsets into the most distinct and significantly different sub-subsets with respect to the pass/fail ratios of the performance variable. no splitting agent was identified for the white population subset. probabilities of 0.001 and less than 0.001 were associated with the chi-square statistics of 48.40 and 18.12 respectively, for the african and coloured/other population groups. the analysis identified type of matriculation certificate as the second most critical and statistically significant success predictor (in conjunction with race group). for the matriculation categories of the african population groups, a pass/fail ratio of 1.11 was reported for category 2 & 3 matriculation certificates, and 0.71 for category 1 matriculation certificates. for the coloured/other population group, müller, et al. — success profiling 71 ratios of 1.54 and 3.72 were reported for categories 1 & 3 and for category 2 matriculation certificates respectively. based on the pass/fail ratio, level two data segregation illustrated the interactive effect of predictors on performance, and (apart from the white population subset, with r=4.07) indicated coloured students with category 2 matriculation certificates as the most likely to attain success (r=2.01), while african students with a category 1 matriculation certificate are probably more at risk (r=0.7). the diagram represents the chaid decision tree for the pass/fail ratio of first year business management students the first bar in each node represents pass rate and the second bar represents failure rate associated frequencies are indicated directly above each bar ‘r’ indicates pass/fail ratio level 0 pass/fail level 3 attendance level 2 matr cert level 1 pop group level 4 age cat african coloured, otherswhite category 2&3 category 1 category 1&3 category 2 attend not attendattendnot attendattendnot attend olderyounger population group adj p-value = 0 000; chi-sq = 194 49; df = 2 type of matric certificate adj p-value = 0 000; chi-sq = 48 40; df = 2 satellite class attendance adj p-value = 0 000; chi-sq = 29 93 age category adj p-value = 0 0024; chi-sq = 11 26; df = 2 type of matric certificate adj p-value = 0 001; chi-sq = 18 12; df = 1 satellite class attendance adj p-value = 0 0173; chi-sq = 5 67; df = 1 satellite class attendance adj p-value = 0 0032; chi-sq = 8 70; df = 1 r = 1 2 r = 1 1 r = 4 1 r = 2 0 r = 1 1 r = 0 7 r = 1 5 r = 3 7 r = 1 9 r = 1 1 r = 1 1 r = 0 7 r = 7 5 r = 1 5 r = 0 8 r = 1 2 3 177 2 563 2 3772 273 431 106 369 184 1 948 1 670 430 603 224 145 145 39 327 175 1 621 1 495 93 88 336 515 15 2 209 143 245 294 1 367 1 201 figure 1: chaid decision tree for first-year business management and management success/failure rate satellite class attendance was identified in the third level as the most influential and statistically significant splitting agent. this made satellite class attendance a contributor in jointly explaining and predicting the performance of students. the pass/fail ratios for the attendance and non-attendance categories of the satellite class-splitting agent of the level three subsets are: ■ 1.9 and 1.1 for the african population group in possession of a category 2 or 3 matriculation certificate perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201072 ■ 1.1 and 0.7 for the african population group in possession of a category 1 matriculation certificate ■ 7.5 and 1.5 for the coloured population group in possession of a category 1 or 3 matriculation certificate. the chi-square probabilities associated with the level three subsets were equal to 0.0001 (chi-square=29.93), 0.01 (chi-square=8.97), and 0.05 (chi-square=5.66) respectively, and indicate significance on the 0.1%, 1% and 5% levels of significance, respectively. level three data partitioning identified african students who wrote category 1 examinations and did not attend satellite classes as an at-risk student group (r=0.65). in addition, data partitioning suggests that african students who wrote the category 2 or 3 matriculation examination and did not attend satellite classes, also to be at risk. age level should be ignored, as the significance attached to this small proportion is negligible. (conclusions regarding the level 1-3 subset are based on more observations and represent a more conservative prediction). level three data partitioning thus indicated that satellite class attendance contributed jointly and significantly to predicting student performance. this result confirms the findings of the initial research. the risk estimate, which estimates the accuracy of the model, was calculated as 0.41, with a standard error of 0.0065. the standard error is very small, which indicates that the risk of misclassification is stable, but the chance of misclassification is about 41%. the profiling of the successful and at-risk student should thus follow the pass/fail ratio path relating to high and low ratios throughout the decision tree. the relative sample size of subsets should also be considered when making deductions. results can be summarised to describe the success profile of a firstyear business management or management student as follows: ■ either a white student (r=4.07); or ■ a coloured student (r=2.01) in possession of a category 2 matriculation certificate (r=3.72). the profile describes the at-risk diploma student as: ■ an african student (r=1.05); who is ■ in possession of a category 2 matriculation certificate (r=1.11); ■ who did not attend satellite classes (r=1.08); and ■ is younger than 35 (r=0.83). summary and conclusions the significance of the effect of satellite class attendance on performance, established in the initial research (swanepoel et al, 2009), was validated by this research and satellite class attendance, as a significant thirdlevel success predictor in the chaid model, attests to this. this research has furthermore added new and relevant applied knowledge to the field of odl and blended learning in that the interactive nature of success predictors (incorporating satellite classes) in first year business management and management modules, was identified and verified through the chaid analysis strategy. the strategy allowed the effect of interaction between success predictors to be acknowledged and described in success and at-risk profiles for students. success profiles suggested that population group, the type of matriculation certificate and satellite class attendance impacted on students’ academic performance. in research, attributes such as ethnicity are a given and appreciated as such. however, if influential forces such as varying matriculation standards can be phased out (all sa students in public schools have since 2008 written the same matriculation examinations) with a more uniform student corps entering into first year business management and management modules, the impact of satellite classes as a blended learning intervention might be found to be even more beneficial. nkomo, weber and amsterdam (2009:331) maintain that the exclusion from quality education for all has a paralytic effect on both the individual and society. a longitudinal evaluation study on the effectiveness of satellite classes will have to be conducted to monitor whether the gradual phasing in of a uniform entry level in the first year will indeed cancel out the identified current differences in entry-level effect. however, the non-uniform entry level of first year students will probably take more time to peter out at unisa, as an odl institution, than at residential tertiary institutions. the average age of students at odl institutions is typically higher and unisa is no exception (with 50.6% of unisa students in the ‘over 29’ age category, according to subotzky, 2009). students with ‘old’ matriculation certificates müller, et al. — success profiling 73 will therefore be in the system over a longer period of time than at residential south african universities, which attract larger numbers of school-leaving matriculants who study full-time. the risk estimate of the current chaid analysis was reported as 0.41, which is still relatively high and indicates that other success predictors, currently unknown, could possibly explain an additional component of the variation present in the data. further research should also consider new potential success predictors, such as psychographic factors, to the success profile. the chaid analysis methodology followed in this study proved to be highly applicable to the particular research context. the applicability of the research methodology and ease of interpretation suggest that the technique in itself could add value to the broader base of research available strategies and be applied under similar profiling conditions. an honest desire to fathom the success profile structure of first year business management and management students so as to enhance student learning in an odl context, should remain the driving force of research in this regard, in the hope that measures might evolve to contribute to improved student throughput and more effective blended learning interventions. references albright m 2007. the past, present, and 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dependency analysis. data mining for marketing applications workshop, university freiburg, germany. retrieved on 25 april 2009 from http://informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~ml/ecmlpkdd/ws-proceedings/w10/ lehmann.pdf. garrison dr & kanuka h 2004. blended learning: uncovering its transformative potential in higher education. internet and higher education, 7:95–105. kass gv 1980. an exploratory technique for investigating large quantities of categorical data. applied statistics, 29:119-127. louw a 2007. definition of odl; description of odl. retrieved on 4 march 2009 from http://staff.unisa. ac.za/forum. markus b 2008. thinking about e-learning. keynote presentation at fig international workshop, sharing good practices, enschede, the netherlands. marx j 2007. towards a unit standard for courses in finance for non-financial managers. southern african business review, 11(1), 167–179. mathur r & oliver l 2007. developing an international distance education program: a blended learning approach. online journal of distance learning administration, 10(4), 1–10. moore gs, perlow a, judge c & koh h 2006. using blended learning in training in the public health workforce in emergency preparedness. public health report, 121(2), 217–221. müller h, du plessis a & prinsloo p. 2007. validating the profile of the successful first year accounting student. meditari accountancy research, 15(1), 19–33. nkomo m, weber e & amsterdam c 2009. editorial: is education making a difference in creation of equitable societies? perspectives in education, 27(4), 331-340. perspectives in education, volume 28(2), june 201074 oliver m & tigwell k 2005. can blended learning be redeemed? e-learning. 2(1), 17–26. prinsloo p & van rooyen aa 2007. exploring a blended learning approach to improving student success in the teaching of second year accounting. meditari accountancy research, 15(1), 51–69. royer center for learning and academic technologies 2004. blended learning. retrieved on 22 april 2009 from https://royercenter.cwc.psu.edu/faculty/blended.aspx. sadler e & erasmus bj 2005. the academic success and failure of black chartered accounting graduates in south africa: a distance education perspective. meditari accountancy research, 13(1), 29–50. sas/stats. (2006). user’s guide, version 9.2. sas publications, cary, nc: sas institute inc. subotzky g 2009. unisa report: 2009. 1st registration period analysis. retrieved on 25 july 2009 from http://heda.unisa.ac.za/filearchive/2009%201st%20registration%20period%20 briefing%2024%20 april%202009.docx. swanepoel e, de beer a & müller h 2009. using satellite classes to optimize access to and participation in first year business management: a case at an open and distance learning university in south africa. perspectives in education, 27(3), 311–319. tinto v 2002. establishing conditions for student success. the 11th annual conference of the european access network, monash university, prato, italy. retrieved on 25 april 2009 from http://www.eanedu.org/news/tinto-pratoconf.pdf. unesco 2002. open and distance learning: trends, policy and strategy considerations. un educational, scientific and cultural organization. division of higher education. paris, france, unesco. unisa 2007. policy on research 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education 2015: 33(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 42 from discomfort to collaboration: teachers screening cellphilms in a rural south african school katie macentee april mandrona south africa continues to contend with an hiv pandemic. teachers have the potential to address prevention and treatment with their learners but they struggle to implement hiv and aids education. cellphilm projects—using cellphones to create videos, and then screening these—is one example of how digital technology can be used to address barriers to teacher-implemented hiv education. in this article we focus on the work of nine teachers who screened their cellphilms to three youth audiences. we explore how teachers can integrate cellphilm screenings into their teaching practice to address hiv and aids, and we consider what this integration tells us about the potential and challenges of teachers dealing with this issue in rural south africa. informed by a framework of discomfort, we analyse participant observation notes, fieldnotes, and preand post-event interviews. we argue that moments of discomfort during the events reveal the difficulties and strategies that teachers use to negotiate multiple—sometimes contradictory—sexual health education policies. the cellphilm screening events provided an opportunity for teachers and youth to learn from each other, even as it contributed to a more nuanced response to the teaching that addresses hiv and aids. keywords: cellphone videos, hiv and aids, participatory visual methodologies, pedagogy of discomfort, rurality, south africa introduction in south africa over 6 million people are living with hiv (unaids, 2013a). kwazulunatal has an antenatal prevalence of 35.9% primarily as a result of unprotected heterosexual sex (unaids, 2012). youth (aged between 15 and 25), and girls in particular, are amongst the most at risk of new infections (republic of south africa, katie macentee mcgill university, canada faculty of education department of integrated studies in education katherine.macentee@mail.mcgill.ca april mandrona mcgill university, canada faculty of education department of integrated studies in education aprilmandrona@gmail.com from discomfort to collaboration: teachers screening cellphilms in a rural south african school katie macentee & april mandrona 43 2012). in rural kwazulu-natal, male prevalence amongst individuals under 18 years of age is low (less than 1%) and tends to increase steadily once they have entered adulthood. conversely, females are at high risk of infection starting at age 15 and, by age 20, one in four females is hiv-positive (karim et al., 2014: 622). global policy such as the millennium development goals, and the convention on the rights of the child highlight the role of education in containing the epidemic (unaids, 2009). south africa’s education policy ensures a dedicated budget earmarked for hiv interventions, and a comprehensive school curriculum in the life orientation (lo) learning area (republic of south africa, 2012). this focus on hiv prevention reflects the recognition that the south african education sector has “a fundamental role in reducing new infections and responding to the needs of those infected and affected by hiv and aids” (department of basic education, 2010: n.p.). thus, as part of school policy on addressing hiv and aids, teachers are seen to be integral to providing quality sexual health and hiv education. large-scale adjustments to educational policy rolled out across post-apartheid south africa have been criticised for overlooking the input of teachers. this lack of consultation has led to some teachers viewing the policy as irrelevant, and, therefore, refusing to implement it (smit, 2005). rural teachers, more specifically, may feel isolated and, furthermore, have a difficult time connecting with sparse resources and community support (macentee, 2011). teachers can misunderstand or overlook the significance of young peoples’ sexual experiences and thus fail to implement a meaningful curriculum that is in accordance with the experiences and educational needs of their learners (smit & harrison, 2013). the lack of training and the difficulties they have in managing their personal beliefs about sexuality and its expression (for example, the conviction that abstinence is vital) that contradict the national, comprehensive, rights-based curriculum that focuses, for instance, on harm reduction methods, can make teachers hesitant to tackle hiv-related topics in class (helleve et al., 2009; mathews et al., 2006). in some communities, the appropriateness of what is described as an individually-orientated, comprehensive curriculum that emphasises personal rights to sexual education and individual choice can preclude or compete with locally-based understandings of indigenous rights (undie & izugbara, 2011). however, as moletsane warns us, we must also guard against “cultural nostalgia” (2011: 194) or the misappropriation of traditional cultural discourse by local leaders and educators in ways that actually work to reinforce patriarchal oppression. despite these systemic challenges described in the literature, there is also the suggestion that the burden of addressing these challenges rests solely on individual teachers. for example, unesco, in following its argument that “the quality of the education system is only as good as the quality of its teachers” (2014: 233), outlines four strategies to improve deficits in teaching. there is little recognition in this report of teacher resilience nor is there reference to teachers who are succeeding in addressing hiv and aids despite these challenges. perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 44 this article explores how a group of nine teachers navigating various systemic challenges in one rural south african school facilitated cellphilm screenings to address hiv and aids. we begin by introducing the cellphilm research project and the research participants, and by offering a synopsis of the cellphilms that were presented during the screenings along with a description of the rural school context in which the teachers work. the screening events are considered through a framework of discomfort (boler, 1999). four instances of discomfort that occurred during the research project are analysed. these instances are captured from the perspective of the teachers and the first author in pre-and post-event interviews, research field notes, and participant observation notes, and are considered in relation to the cellphilms that the teachers screened. the findings are discussed with reference to the existing literature on the challenges and opportunities of south african teachers in addressing hiv and aids. cellphilms and public screenings to inform hiv education the digital voices project to which we refer here aims to identify the ways in which the voices of rural teachers can become more central to meaning-making when it comes to identifying and addressing critical issues of youth sexuality in the age of aids. cellphilms, according to dockney et al. (2010) are videos made with cellphones usually with an intention to identify and address community issues. mitchell and de lange (2013) describe the actual process of cellphilm making. it follows the ner (no editing required) approach to participatory video in its inclusion of the following steps: brainstorming; carefully creating a storyboard and planning out the filming for a 3 to 5 minute film; doing the actual film shoot; and screening the film. having the teachers make cellphilms in this way has been shown to promote their personal reflection on cultural discourses of youth sexuality (mitchell & de lange, 2013). in addition, this cellphilm method also explores how knowledge is constructed and to whom this knowledge is disseminated (mitchell, 2014). this article focuses on the experience of these teachers of such dissemination in screening their cellphilms. there is a small body of literature that takes up screening and the exhibition of participant produced visual media in relation to participatory visual methodologies. in their review of the public health literature, fraser & al sayah (2011) describe the exhibition of participant-produced visual media as part of the research dissemination process, and as an alternative way of bringing research results to a wider community of stakeholders. exploring the screening of participant-produced videos, specifically, mitchell (2011) describes how screenings in community-based settings can stimulate a wider dialogue in relation to addressing participants’ identified challenges. outlining some of the limitations of screening participant-produced videos, kindon, hume-cook & woods (2012) explore the ethical considerations involved in screening participant-produced videos outside the environment in which they were produced. they highlight the unpredictable influence of an audience in the reception and understanding of visual media. wheeler calls for careful consideration of how “existing political identities of all the actors involved, from participants in the video process to from discomfort to collaboration: teachers screening cellphilms in a rural south african school katie macentee & april mandrona 45 the external researcher to particular policy makers, as well as the wider context and trajectories of existing policy arenas” (2012: 275) can shape the relationship between power and knowledge at screening events. thus, screening participant-produced videos has great potential, especially in relation to community change and to what mitchell describes as “getting the word out” (2014: 82). however, the process of screening remains relatively under-researched, especially in relation to the research participants’ experiences leading up to, during, and after the screening process as they reflect on it. the research participants and the cellphilm screening events as participants in the participatory research project, digital voices, nine teachers in rural kwazulu-natal had produced a collection of cellphilms that described what they saw as critical barriers to hiv prevention in young people (see mitchell et al., 2015). amongst them, the eight women and one man with varying years of teaching experience, taught at foundation, intermediate, and senior levels. while not all of them were lo teachers, they all expressed an interest in addressing hiv and aids in life orientation and in the community. the participating teachers live in the rural community where the school is located or in pietermaritzburg (a city approximately 50km away from the screening site). schools in rural south africa experience challenges directly related to their rural location including isolation and being overlooked for educational support and development, limited job opportunities, large classes, poor infrastructure, and limited teaching resources (nelson mandela foundation, 2005). the participating teachers’ school was formerly a catholic institution but is now part of the national public school system. despite this transition to the national, secular curriculum, the school community and many of the participating teachers maintain a strong bond with catholicism; an operational church is located in the school grounds. all the screening events took place on the school grounds and were attended by young people of both sexes. the teachers organised themselves into three groups of three members each to plan and facilitate their screening events independently. keeping to a budget of r10001 each group chose which videos they wanted to screen from their existing collection of cellphilms. they also chose the audience and the location, and planned the event activities (see figure 1). all the events took, on average, 3 hours. they all followed a similar process that began with the screening of the cellphilms, one after the other. after they had watched the cellphilms, members of the audience assembled in small groups and were prompted to reflect on the cellphilms. the small groups were then invited to present a brief synopsis of their discussion to the whole group. the teachers facilitated the group discussion based on this feedback and on questions from the audience. perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 46 facilitating teachers: specialisation and sex cellphilms screened audience grade 2 (female) grade 6 (female) secondary lo (male) be enlightened breaking the silence 2 110 grade 6 lo learners secondary life sciences (female) secondary lo (female) secondary religious studies/(female) breaking the silence 2 teen pregnancy 34 members of the peace club (grade 11 and 12) grade 4 (female) secondary lo/science (female) secondary social science/isizulu (female) breaking the silence 2 teen vibe 29 members of the community catholic youth group figure 1. teacher groups, cellphilm titles, and audience composition all the cellphilms were conceptualised, acted in, and filmed by the teachers who were facilitating the events. the videos all advocate talking about sex with adults. breaking the silence 2 is about two girls whose mother catches them looking at pornography on their phones. at first the mother is angry but she then calmly has a conversation with the girls about safer sex, a decision that she later must defend to the girls’ irate father. be enlightened tells the story of two girls who find a condom in their schoolyard but mistake it for a balloon. a teacher finds the girls playing with the condom, notices that the girls are confused about what it is, and takes this opportunity to teach them what condoms are used for. teen vibe tells the story of a group of girls who sneak out of their house to attend a party. at the party the girls drink and dance and then hitch a ride home with strange men. they are caught creeping back into their house by their mother who explains the dangers of their choices. teen pregnancy is about a girl who goes to a party, gets drunk, and then later discovers that she is pregnant. upset and scared about the unplanned pregnancy, she is consoled by a friend and encouraged to tell an adult about her situation. after the cellphilms were screened, the teachers and audience members raised various issues and formulated questions for further discussion. for example, the teachers asked: “should learners be allowed to bring cellphones to school?” and “at what age is it appropriate for young people to start dating?” topics to be discussed ranged from managing school demands and sexual relationships to seeking accurate sexual health information, and from abstinence to rape and peer pressure. from discomfort to collaboration: teachers screening cellphilms in a rural south african school katie macentee & april mandrona 47 frameworks of discomfort our research framework builds on boler’s (1999) pedagogy of discomfort. boler & zembylas describe how emotional dimensions shape our routines and allow us to subscribe uncritically to hegemonic values. a pedagogy of discomfort examines emotional reactions and responses in order to “identify unconscious privileges as well as invisible ways in which one complies with dominant ideology” (2003: 108). it is through discomfort that we come to better understand the ways in which we affect and are affected by the social contexts we inhabit. this leads to a process of “emotional labour” during which space is made for “a collective process of thinking otherwise and considering the conditions for a transformation of what individuals are supposed to be” (boler & zembylas, 2003: 126). burdick and sandlin (2010), discuss a methodology of discomfort as reflexive practice. similarly, zembylas explores how “discomfort serves as a medium for individual and social transformation” (2010: 706). discomfort, which can entail anger, shock, resistance, and grief (boler & zembylas, 2003), is considered valuable within this framework for its constructive potential (wolgemuth & donohue, 2006). working with the data there were four types of data collected during the cellphilm screening project: (1) participant observation notes that describe the teachers’ facilitation process and the discussions between the audience and the teachers following the screening of the cellphilms; (2) preand post-event, open-ended interviews with the teachers, which explore how they prepared for the screening events and their reflection following the completion of the events; (3) the four cellphilms that the teachers screened; and (4) the first author’s research fieldnotes. the first author performed the bulk of the analysis. she began by organising the analysis according to fiske’s (1992) three types of texts: primary, producer, and audience texts (see also mitchell, 2011; gubrium & harper, 2013). primary texts are the visual-media texts produced by research participants. producer texts include the documentation of the process and what the participants had to say about the primary texts. audience texts are documentations of the audiences’ responses to the primary texts. therefore, for these cellphilm events, the primary texts are the teachers’ four cellphilms. the secondary texts are the preand post-interview transcripts and the research fieldnotes. since the screening events did not include any direct contact with the audience, the audience text is also included in the participant observation notes. these notes describe the discussions that occurred between the audience and the teacher/facilitator during each event. after organising the data, the first author reviewed the excerpts from the interview transcripts and observation notes for expressions associated with the theme of discomfort such as, for example, participants’ and her own descriptions of feeling nervous, worried, uncertain, embarrassed, or uneasy. in order to explicitly perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 48 document her discomfort she wrote short narrative reflections based on fieldnotes and participant observations. in order to help analyse the primary texts she wrote short synopses of the cellphilms screened during the events. the first author collected and carried out the initial analysis of the data and the second, during the overlapping data analysis and writing phases of the project, acted as a critical friend—a trusted person who, following costa and kallick (1993) asks provocative questions and offers supportive critique. findings teachers’ discomfort with how best to engage learners in discussing hiv the teachers felt they had a professional duty to discuss hiv with young people. one participant said, “as teachers, we do have the knowledge” (pre-event interview, church group). they felt prepared to take on this topic and wanted to present a funfilled and interactive event that involved a lot of dialogue among the youth peers as well as between the youth and the teachers. however, some teachers worried that the audience members would not feel comfortable engaging in a discussion about sexual health and that the teachers’ existing relationships with these young people might hinder dialogue. i think that might be a bit of a challenge. cause, i don’t know, it might influence their level of responding. like, they will see us as their teachers so they might not be so comfortable as to respond. basically, they may be scared to say some things. (pre-event interview, church group) motivated by their apprehensions about how their presence could influence audience participation, the teachers invited the young people to engage in small peer-led discussions. in the small groups, the learners discussed the cellphilms and identified key themes. following the small group work, the teachers encouraged the audience members to share their discussions with the larger group. in all the events, the small group and large group discussions were lively. as will be described in more detail in the following sections, audience members asked the teachers engaging and sometimes challenging questions. the lively debate and the audience’s engaged questions suggest that the success of the cellphilm screening event was not impeded by having the teachers act as facilitators. teachers’ discomfort with teaching about condoms in schools the teachers were conscious of the school’s ties to catholicism and how catholic beliefs and practices might oppose some of the requirements of the national curriculum. this awareness most affected the church group screening. however, all the groups were concerned about the implications of discussing condoms, and were unwilling to distribute them or give demonstrations on their use during their event. when you say, ‘when you are sexually active use a condom’ for us to actually come out and say, ‘use a condom’ it becomes a problem. because we are preaching now a different message than the message we are supposed to from discomfort to collaboration: teachers screening cellphilms in a rural south african school katie macentee & april mandrona 49 preach…also, the department of education is…proposing learners having condoms in their school. (pre-event interview, church group) conversely, the cellphilms expressed a more secular, rights-based approach to sexual health—one that reflected the young people’s experiences. i know that it’s not like we are going to be talking about something new with the learners. it is something that they already know. and i know for sure that they sometimes think about it. and with some of them i know that they get worried and wish they could change some of the things that happen in our community. (pre-event interview, peace club group) the teachers were concerned and discomforted about the need to provide information about condoms and condom use given the community’s ties to the catholic church even though the cellphilms openly depict and discuss condoms, teenage pregnancy, pornography, and alcohol abuse because the teachers view these topics as being relevant to young people. in response to this discomfort, the teachers decided that it would be acceptable for them to discuss the use of condoms as one method of preventing hiv transmission and unplanned pregnancy. but they drew the line at providing access to condoms during the screening events. the teachers managed this discomfort by negotiating a compromise that included a discussion of condoms but not a demonstration during the events. teachers’ discomfort with discussing alternatives to abstinence-only prevention along with feeling uncomfortable about discussing condoms, these teachers believe that abstinence is young people’s best option for hiv prevention. while audience members did not oppose this message, they troubled this belief by asking about the ways that cultural factors might influence sexual debut outside of marriage. a grade 6 boy asked what a young man who cannot afford to pay lobola—the traditional bride price paid by a prospective husband to his prospective wife’s family—should do. in a rural context of high unemployment and financial difficulty, saving for lobola can seem difficult, if not impossible, for some young men, thus making marriage, and therefore sex, appear unattainable. during the post-interview, the facilitating teacher admitted to feeling uncomfortable about this question. i was surprised with that boy who asked because i said, ‘at your age you are not supposed to be involved in sex. wait for marriage.’ then there was this boy who asked, ‘what about if i don’t want to wait?’ that was a surprise! he caught me on that one! (post-event, lo group) the teacher admits that at first she struggled to respond. she said, “he caught me on that one!” in response to this question the teacher modified her original message. instead of advocating an abstinence-only approach, she advised learners not to rush into perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 50 becoming sexually active. she also suggested using condoms to prevent hiv transmission, and unplanned pregnancy. this moment of discomfort shows how the audience used questions to engage with the teachers and how these questions were able to disrupt the messages young people see as problematic. in response to the learners’ questions, the teachers adapted their messages to include discussion of a wider range of safer sexual activities. teachers’ discomfort with addressing sexual violence an instance of discomfort during the peace club screening illustrated how teachers must traverse the complex geography of sexual health education policy in a region where the hiv prevalence is particularly high amongst young women in large part because of accompanying high rates of sexual violence against women. in her reflexive writing, the first author describes the events leading up to a young female learner asking ntombi, a facilitating teacher, a discomforting question. the cellphilms were screened one after the other to the attentive audience. ntombi then facilitated a large group discussion about hiv and aids. it was during this discussion that ntombi explained to the learners that ‘a covenant is a relationship between you and the person you are having sex with as well as between you and god.’ she added that these relationships are carried with you for life even if your relationship with a sexual partner ends. at this point, a female student in the audience raises her hand and, reflecting on the message that every sexual act is carried for life, she asks: “what if you are raped? do you have to tell your husband of this experience?” (first author’s reflexive writing) this learner’s question touches on an underlying contradiction in ntombi’s explanation and the shortcomings of educational ideologies that assume, at great cost to many girls and women, that all sexual experiences are consensual. in south africa, in particular, high rates of gender-based violence mean that all sexual health discussions must consider the potential impact of sexual violence on people’s lives. in the post-interview ntombi expressed shock that a learner would bring up rape in such a public forum. ntombi was pleased that the girl felt confident to challenge her as the teacher but was also unsure as to how to respond. in the end, she referred to her own experiences as a teacher in the community. it is a different case. when you are raped it is something that you didn’t do intentionally…that is why people who are raped, they take a very long time to heal. because it is something that is done to them without their will. … and that is why they don’t tend to forget easily. it takes years and years. i don’t think they ever forget. cause i’ve got a learner who was raped in grade 7. until today, she is doing third year varsity. she is still hurting....you can see it from the way she talks. you know, sometimes she wants to give up on life. (post-event, peace club) in this example, ntombi recognised the audience members’ contribution of an alternative experience to the discussion of the impact of sex on a person’s life. while ntombi initially struggled to respond, her answer appears honest and demonstrates how teachers provide care for their students. in ntombi’s own words, “[w]e counsel from discomfort to collaboration: teachers screening cellphilms in a rural south african school katie macentee & april mandrona 51 them. so i think that is the other side that they saw [during the screening event]… it’s not all about curriculum and learning” (post-event, peace club). in responding to the question of about rape during the screening event, ntombi offers her own interpretation of the trauma of sexual violence. referencing her knowledge of the learner’s experiences and her own on-going connection to this young woman also suggests that ntombi may provide a level of on-going care for individuals in the school community who are survivors of sexual violence. discussion in considering moments of discomfort in relation to screening and discussing participant-produced cellphilms, we explore how the exhibition process is more than just research dissemination in that it also contributes to research knowledge production. we argue in this section that how teachers react to this discomfort points to their resilience in negotiating conflicting ideologies, global frameworks, and also towards the potential of screening participant-produced cellphilms to bring communities together to respond to the impact of hiv and aids. with the hiv epidemic in south africa being what it is, some teachers may view teaching learners about hiv-related issues as a monumental task that extends beyond their professional responsibilities (macentee, 2011). providing non-judgmental and empowering sexual health education is particularly difficult for some teachers (smit & harrison, 2013). these participant teachers also expressed hesitation and unpreparedness in relation to their screening events, and worried about potential barriers to audience participation. despite these inital hesitations, however, all three screening events incorporated stimulating dialogue amongst learners in the small groups, and between teachers and learners in the large groups. these experiences are similar to previous research initiatives incorporating public screening events to promote community dialogue and address difficult subjects or those about which any discussion is taboo (mitchell & de lange, 2011). the process of watching and then responding to participant-produced visual media in these contexts offers a nondidactic, youth-centred kind of pedagogy and seems to invite audience participation in interpreting, and responding to different hiv prevention messages. all three of the cellphilm screening events offered examples of youth audience members asking questions that challenged the teacher’s assumptions and that highlighted previously overlooked systemic barriers including traditional practices, gender-based violence, and the obstacles to practising safer sex. instead of being seen only as a finished product, each video screened can be seen as a starting point for engagement in teacher-learner dialogue about the overarching socio-cultural influences on the sexual safety of young people. these findings respond to smit and harrison’s (2013) observations that suggest that teachers can lack a nuanced understanding of youth sexualities, and struggle to offer non-judgemental strategies to promote sexual health. a critical outcome of the dialogue between the young people and the teachers at these screening events was the teachers’ increased awareness and respect for these young people in this rural community. perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 52 the research identified three broad influences on how the teachers addressed hiv prevention during the screening events: (1) the national curriculum; (2) religious teachings; and (3) local, experiential knowledge. the national curriculum advocates a comprehensive, secular approach that encourages individuals to choose safer sexual practices while also recognising systemic barriers that might limit the individual’s ability to choose these (department of basic education, 2010). the teachers’ and school’s religious affiliations lead them to promote a more restrictive set of options in terms of sexual safety, limiting their discussions to sexual abstinence and fidelity (casale, nixon & flicker, 2010). the teachers were uncertain, at first, about how to reconcile the rights-based policy with the abstinence policy. these influences restrained the types of resources (e.g. condom demonstrations) they might have used to teach learners about sexual health practices. the cellphilms offered an opportunity for teachers to show condoms but avoid the contentious issue of bringing the prophylactics physically into the classroom, thus distancing themselves from the discomfort generally associated with demonstrating how to use a condom in a classroom context. but, in presenting religious teachings, the teachers preferred to discuss these intimately in person. for example, ntombi presented the notion of the sacred in her description of a covenant. most surprising was the ability of the teachers to respond to the alternative perspectives raised by the learners with personal anecdotes and reference to local, experiential knowledge. in the case of ntombi, this was most evident when she chose to draw on her personal experience as a teacher caring for a rape survivor. the discomfort the teachers experienced in implementing a rights-based curriculum coincides with wood & rolleri’s (2014) critique of the national curriculum in which they argue for the need to develop a national programme that can address the confluence of social, cultural, and gendered norms that affect young people’s choices. however, using teacher-produced cellphilms suggests an alternative resource that teachers can adapt to manage curricular guidelines in keeping with local and community-based ideas, beliefs, and expectations. in any consideration of the role of public screenings in relation to participantproduced visual media, the audience is both important and unpredictable. chalfen, sherman and rich argue that “knowledge and anticipation of what [they] have termed ‘a dedicated audience’ is one of the primary variables in the success of participant media research” (2010: 209). we also bear in mind kindon et al.’s (2012) discussion of the risks to participants in screening their videos to an unreceptive audience. it is perhaps the unpredictable nature of audience reaction that motivated the teachers to screen their cellphilms to the more familiar learner audiences. we also presume that a different audience, one made up of adults (e.g. parents, other teachers, or local leaders) would have significantly affected the screening events. as mitchell et al. observe, “too often perhaps, as researchers, seeking to do ‘most good’ and getting the most out of our fieldwork in terms of impact, we think primarily of how community-based video productions might reach policymakers” (2015: 5). with this in mind, we consider the screenings a success. a strength of digital films is that they from discomfort to collaboration: teachers screening cellphilms in a rural south african school katie macentee & april mandrona 53 can be shown over and over again to different audiences. the videos were projected onto a screen made out of four pieces of poster paper during these events but they could also be disseminated from cellphone-to-cellphone, over social media,2 or by using a usb. the costs of such screenings is relatively low and they offer further potential to extend the research and the influence of the cellphilms as a pedagogical tool to address hiv. conclusion global frameworks, such as education for all, and national curriculum policy implemented at the national level recognise that teachers play a vital role in addressing hiv and aids. however, teachers experience various barriers to integrating hiv and sexual health topics into their classroom practice. in this article we seek to inform future research on the ways in which teachers might integrate cellphilms into hiv education strategies, how they might navigate the contentious relationships between current sex education approaches, and how teachers and learners might come together through public art forums. future research could explore the various ways in which cellphones and cellphilm screenings could be used by educators to teach about difficult subjects and/or those that are excluded from discussion by tradition. such initiatives could also investigate how different audiences can engage with this visual media. internationally, young people are emerging as leaders in hiv and aids policy development, especially in connection with digital technologies (unaids, 2013b). the screening of teacher-produced cellphilms to learners offered opportunities for them to contribute to the development of a nuanced hiv educational message that, in turn, supports the continued active engagement of these young people in policy-related initiatives. perhaps the most dramatic outcome of this fieldwork is the recognition of the significance of teachers and youth learning from each other. this outcome is in line with boler & zembylas’s (2003) description of emotional labour, through which an engagement with emotional discomfort creates a space for social transformation, and a re-consideration of individuals’ roles in society. the screenings lead the teachers to reconceptualise their roles as educators in relation to their learners and to consider the potential of future cellphilm initiatives between teachers and learners working together to address hiv and aids. the research into this screening event also emphasises the potential for rural teachers to implement locally accessible digital technology in order to fuel community-specific hiv and aids education. acknowledgement we acknowledge claudia mitchell, pi of the digital voices of rural teachers in south africa: participatory analysis,‘being a teacher in the age of aids’ and social action project (funded by the social sciences and humanities research council of canada). perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 54 references ahmed, n., flisher, a., mathews, c., mukoma, w. & jansen, s. 2009. hiv education in south african schools: the dilemma and conflicts of educators. scandinavian journal of public health, 37(supplement 2): 48–54. boler, m. 1999. felling power: emotions in education. new york: routledge. boler, m., & zembylas, m. 2003. discomforting truths: the emotional terrain of understanding difference. in p. pericles trefonas (ed.) pedagogies of difference: rethinking education for social change. new york: routledgefalmer. burdick, j. & sandlin, j. a. 2010. inquiry as answerability: toward a 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pens), as well as funding. 2. it is necessary to observe the ethical limits of ownership, anonymity, and distribution of research data in relation to the internet and internet servers. 57 theorising a capability approach to equal participation for undergraduate students at a south african university abstract this article applies a capability approach to the problem of unequal participation for working-class, first-generation students at a south african university. even though access to higher education institutions is increasing for historically excluded students, when race and class disaggregate completion rates, there are persistent patterns of unequal participation. in the first part of the article, the capability approach is used to conceptualise dimensions of equal participation, which include resources, agency, recognition and practical reason. in the second part of the paper, these four principles are applied to an empirical case study, which is drawn from a longitudinal research project that tracked the equality of participation of undergraduate university students at a south african university. the article makes the case for pedagogical and institutional arrangements that enable equal participation for students who are precariously positioned at higher education institutions. keywords: equal participation; access and success; socioeconomic class; capabilities approach; higher education 1. introduction: contextualising participation at south african universities equitable access to higher education remains elusive to many south african university students, as illustrated by recent protests about rising tuition fees (chetty, 2016). yet despite an increasingly representative student body, when completion rates are disaggregated by race and class, cohort studies confirm that black and coloured1 students also remain most vulnerable to uneven patterns of success once they gain university admission (department of higher education and training, 2014: 32; see also council on higher education, 2013). these students also have a significantly higher chance of leaving university before completing their qualification. this exclusion is exacerbated for first-generation students, who are the first person in their 1 while we do not subscribe to any racial classifications, the persistence of racialised classification in south africa means that the participant data reflected these categories. dr talita m.l. calitz university of the free state prof melanie walker university of the free state dr merridy wilson-strydom university of the free state doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i2.5 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(2): 57-69 © uv/ufs 58 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) immediate family to attend university, while also facing the resource scarcity associated with poverty (che, 2013; ministry of education, 2015). in an unequal society such as south africa, participation in higher education could potentially increase opportunities for university graduates to participate socially and economically, thereby narrowing extreme socio-economic inequalities (lozano et al., 2012). however, these opportunities are constrained by systemic arrangements that leave a significant number of poor and working-class students less likely to benefit from higher education. influenced in part by a poorly -resourced public school system alongside these deepening inequalities, first-generation and socio-economically vulnerable students in particular find it difficult to make a successful transition from school to university (pym & kapp, 2013). another reason for unequal participation is that students from under-resourced schools are often subjected to remedial interventions based on deficit assumptions, which alienate them from participation at university (hlalele & alexander, 2012; boughey, 2010). the recent protests also confirmed that many students do not feel welcome within university cultures, which therefore positions their exclusion at the intersection of resource deprivation and status injury (fraser, 2008; nkopo, 2015; see also archer & hutchings, 2000). in response to deficit approaches that further marginalise students our capability-informed theorisation of equal participation is transformative in its critical evaluation of structural arrangements, cultures and hierarchies that perpetuate unjust conditions. our theorisation of equal participation also incorporates nancy fraser’s critique of affirmative approaches that address unequal structural arrangements without “disturbing the underlying framework that generates them” (fraser, 2008: 82). we return to a more detailed discussion of the capability framework in the theoretical section of the article. research problem in response to the structural problems outlined above, higher education policy has prioritised access and success as crucial targets aimed at redressing historical injustice, social segregation and economic inequalities in post-apartheid south africa (department of higher education and training, 2014). yet while these are important goals, the research problem outlined in the article is that neither a representative student demographic nor academic outcomes are sufficient indicators of whether students have equal opportunities to benefit from academic resources and opportunities offered by university education. our research problem is summarised by the following question: given these structural inequalities within universities, how could student experiences of pedagogical and institutional arrangements inform a theorisation of equal participation, defined as students’ freedom to convert available resources into equal academic participation? in order to address the research problem, our argument will be developed in two separate parts. in this first section of the paper, we conceptualise equal participation using amartya sen (1999) and martha nussbaum’s (2011) capability approach as a normative theory of justice. drawing on this capability-informed definition, we then illustrate four specific dimensions of equal participation using a qualitative case study. the individual case study was part of a broader research project in which we tracked the experiences of first-generation and working-class undergraduate students on an extended degree programme. in the case study, we draw attention to the pedagogical and institutional arrangements that enabled or constrained participants’ freedom to convert available opportunities and resources at the university into expanded participation. 59 calitz, walker & wilson-strydom theorising a capability approach to equal participation... research questions in response to the research problem, our study framed the following three research questions. firstly, we wanted to understand how pedagogical and institutional arrangements at university enabled and constrained the conversion of resources into capabilities for equal participation. the second research question investigated how a capability-informed theory of participation could contribute to addressing remediable injustices at the intersection of institutional structures and individual agency. our final research question explored how student experiences could be used as evidence to inform the design of capability praxis for equal participation. in response to these questions, we evaluated existing capabilities and functionings in order to interrogate whether the structural arrangements in higher education, including the distribution of resources, were fair and just. we now move our attention to the theoretical framework used to conduct the research, which is described in the section below. 2. theoretical framing: the capability approach and equal participation the first part of our argument proposes a capability-informed definition of participation. as a point of departure, we foreground the way that structural arrangements influence students’ freedom for participation in higher education. based on the assumption that persistent patterns of unequal participation and success are remediable injustices that require a sustained response from institutions (leibowitz & bozalek, 2015), the capability approach offers a structural critique of arrangements that expand or constrain students’ freedom for equal participation. originally conceptualised by economist amartya sen and philosopher martha nussbaum, the capability approach has been theorised and operationalised as a multidimensional theory of justice (robeyns, 2006). in essence, the capability approach is an evaluative platform for interpersonal assessments of human development, framed as the expansion of individual freedom and well-being (sen, 1999; nussbaum, 2011). as an approach to justice, the capability approach examines individual well-being by taking into account the actual freedoms that are available to the individual (sen, 1999). while an individual’s capability set could bear some relation to resources and income, this is an incomplete measure of the actual opportunities available to the individual (sen, 2009: 253). therefore, instead of focusing solely on income or access to resources, the capability approach evaluates whether an individual is able to convert available resources into capabilities or functionings. a capability is defined as the freedoms or genuine opportunities available to an individual, such as being literate or knowledgeable (nussbaum, 2011). the realisation of a capability is defined as a functioning (nussbaum, 2011: 25), which is defined as an active ‘doing’, such as using the capability of one’s voice to speak confidently in a classroom. a functioning could also be a state of ‘being’ where a capability has been realised, such as being a critically educated citizen, or being an academically literate student. freedom of choice is central to the notion of capabilities and functionings because people should be free to choose the functionings that they have reason to value, once they have achieved the capability (nussbaum, 2011: 25). drawing on sen’s notion of development as the practice of freedom, our theorisation of equal participation makes the case for education as a bundle of choices, freedoms and opportunities to which each individual student should have equitable access (sen, 1999). in our analysis of student experience, we wanted to understand how an individual’s access to higher education, while taking into account her bundle of resources, was converted into valuable capabilities and functionings. 60 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) this capability-informed conceptualisation of participation deepens our understanding of the constraints that first-generation and working-class students face in their every-day experiences of the institution. in this paper, equal participation is positioned on a spectrum where on the one end, an individual has access to the resources and opportunities needed to achieve the outcomes associated with academic participation. on the other end of the spectrum, an individual may have physical access to the university but without the accompanying resources and opportunities to achieve the same outcomes as the privileged peer. this model of participation is therefore critical of access debates that measure transformation in higher education as increasing student numbers, without simultaneously interrogating the conditions under which participation is enabled or constrained. we argue that while quantifiable outcomes such as test scores and student behaviour are important for measuring some aspects of academic participation, these indicators of success are insufficient to make sense of the complexity of participation. for example, we found evidence of students performing relatively well in formal assessment but whose overall opportunities for participation were diminished by institutional alienation, poverty and discriminatory pedagogical practices. in research on widening participation, working-class students’ aspirations are often expressed as being stuck or having limited freedom to direct their lives towards valued outcomes, such as decent employment, safety, respect and dignity (see also archer & hutchings, 2000). in response to this concern, we used our capability lens to examine how individual agency was constrained by structural conditions, while foregrounding how an individual student used her agency to negotiate structural barriers (sen, 1999). with its emphasis on individual agency, freedom and well-being, we found that the capability approach enabled us to look beneath the surface of individual experiences at the freedoms and opportunities that were available within the institution to students with a smaller bundle of recognised resources. in our project, expanded freedom expands the range of opportunities from which people can choose (sen, 2009). this means for instance that higher education should expand the freedom that students have to choose between opportunities by expanding their freedom to exercise agency in the pursuit of lives that they have reason to value. 3. methodology: introducing the case study we now turn to our case study, situated at a traditional south african university. the institution is a historically white, afrikaans-medium institution, although the student body is increasingly representative of the south african demographic, with black students constituting a majority of the undergraduate student cohort. however, as is the case across the higher education sector, there is a significant achievement gap between black and white students, which this institution has identified as one of its strategic interventions. this inequality of academic outcomes is not the only constraint to equitable participation. during the national student protests at south african universities in october 2015, students raised concerns about unjust structural conditions that make it difficult for them to participate as valued members of the institution. during these national #feesmustfall protests, students and contract workers challenged escalating tuition fees alongside the outsourced labour practices adopted by higher education institutions (see chetty, 2016). some of the issues highlighted by these protests are relevant to a broader student community. however, protests against escalating fees bear particular relevance to the lives of black, working class students, whose families are less able to provide financial support for tuition fees, textbooks, meals, transport and accommodation. other pertinent concerns are the university’s language policy, the quality 61 calitz, walker & wilson-strydom theorising a capability approach to equal participation... of teaching and learning, the integration of commuter students into student life, access to learning facilities and persistent patterns of raceand gender-based discrimination. the case study explored in this paper is part of a longitudinal research project in which we investigated the experiences of undergraduate students. our sample included students who are vulnerable to unequal participation because of socio-economic class, raceand gender-based discrimination (see also unterhalter, 2003). we wanted student experiences to broaden our understanding of what happens within the walls of the university once students have entered the university gates (see also boughey & bozalek, 2012). the longitudinal research project was conducted at a south african university described above, between august 2013 and march 2015. the research project was organised into two distinct phases. during the first phase [august 2013-november 2013], the principal researcher conducted individual interviews [n = 20], facilitated digital narrative workshops [n = 4], and assisted with the production of digital narratives [n = 8]. digital narratives were chosen as a data collection tool that could expand students’ freedom to frame and narrate their experiences using creative multimedia forms. the narratives were conceptualised, designed and produced in a series of four collaborative workshops and individual production sessions. the data emerging from the research process informed an iterative process of data analysis, from which the primary researcher and the student co-researchers then distilled the foundational principles associated with our definition of equal participation. during the second phase, conducted from march 2014 and concluding in march 2015, we intensified the participatory nature of the research and involved the participants as co-researchers by offering fertile opportunities for research engagement and collaboration, such as seminars and public dissemination events (kemmis, mctaggart & nixon, 2013; see also mertens, 2008). the individual case study presented in the next section reports on the experiences of condorrera2, one of the research participants, who was a final-year student at the time of the research. we decided to focus on condorrera’s narrative because she represents the population of female, black, first-generation, working-class student, many of whom remain particularly vulnerable to weakened participation and academic exclusion3. she was a firstgeneration student from a working-class background, thus her socio-economic status has been influenced by social and economic segregation under apartheid. therefore, her family was unable to afford university tuition making her dependent on a government bursary to cover tuition and basic subsistence. she was registered on an extended degree programme, which is an access or bridging programme intended to include students with lower high-school leaving scores that offer academic development courses that aim to prepare students for the requirements of university study. another reason for drawing on her experiences is to illustrate that despite these challenges, she was a relatively high-achieving student who negotiated the environment with confidence. her experiences demonstrate how these dimensions of participation are applicable to students with varying degrees of participation. 2 this is a pseudonym. 3 although we do not claim that condorrera’s experiences are generalisable across this student demographic, we have found similar experiences of exclusion across the qualitative data, which other empirical research has also confirmed. 62 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) 4. discussion: four dimensions of equal participation4 the four dimensions of equal participation discussed in this section are framed at the intersection of the individual’s internal capabilities and structural conditions that enabled or constrained the freedom for participation. when applied in practice, the dimensions are intended to create pedagogical and institutional conditions in which vulnerable university students have a more equitable opportunity for academic participation. as discussed earlier, the four dimensions of participation explored in the following section have been distilled from the theorisation of the capability approach. these dimensions include resources, agency, recognition and practical reason. using condorrera’s narrative, we illustrate instances where these dimensions led to positive outcomes and where their absence diminished participation. based on the assumption that participation is inadequately captured as entry into higher education and is only partially captured by measurable outcomes, the dimensions of equal participation proposed in this paper respond to the following questions: how did pedagogical and institutional structural arrangements expand and constrain participants’ freedom to participate equally? how did participants navigate the academic demands of university study? finally, did students have access to support structures that allowed them to convert available academic resources such as knowledge into the capabilities and functionings required for academic success? resources the first dimension of participation is concerned with equitable access to academic resources such as textbooks, photocopies and the internet and other basic resources such as food, transport and accommodation. yet because of an uneven distribution of resources, workingclass students often negotiate a competitive academic environment with smaller resource bundles, which makes it difficult for them to participate. our evaluation of resource access draws on research that reveals how class differences create significant forms of marginalisation and exclusion from academic participation (reay et al., 2001; see also ball, 2004). at the same time, an important assumption embedded in the capability approach is that “[e]quality of resources falls short because it fails to take account of the fact that individuals need differing levels of resources if they are to come up to the same level of capability to function” (nussbaum, 2003: 35). this means that students with less academic preparation before university and less reliable access to basic resources such as transport, food and health care may need a more sustained resource threshold to convert opportunities at university into capabilities and functionings (crocker & robeyns, 2010: 66). yet because of dwindling state funding, the resources needed to ensure a resource threshold are increasingly precarious (bozzoli, 2015). in the case study, condorrera relied on limited financial support from her family, which meant that the absence of adequate resources was a recurring theme in her experiences. in our analysis, resource scarcity left working-class participants vulnerable to unequal participation (dos santos, 2005), which is highlighted in condorrera’s quote below: university is hard. and going to university requires financial support, which most of us don’t have. some students say i don’t have money or financially i’m not stable. if i could get [a job] now, why waste four years of my time to failing and having financial problems to get this done? 4 other dimensions that were not included due to space constraints include critical literacies, affiliation, values for the public good and student research. 63 calitz, walker & wilson-strydom theorising a capability approach to equal participation... closely related to resource availability, we interrogated whether participants had real opportunities to convert available resources into capabilities or opportunities and functionings or valued outcomes. for example, even when condorrera was able to afford an important resource such as a textbook, if pedagogical conditions in her university courses were not conducive to learning (for example, crowded classrooms or insufficient support from lecturers or tutors), then the resource could remain static and underutilised, thereby diminishing her freedom for participation. we also interpreted academic interaction as resources that could be converted into the capability for knowledge. in another example, condorrera explained that pedagogical arrangements sometimes made it difficult to engage meaningfully with knowledge. in the quote below, she described her observations of disengaged peers who despite having access to academic resources, could not convert these opportunities into learning: [being interested] has to come from, the course itself. listening to the lectures, doing what is expected, and seeing that you are going somewhere with this. you know, when you’re passing in class, it means you’re making progress. but if you’re not, it’s going to discourage you. so if you’re not interested in a subject, you’re not going to go to class, you’re not going to do well, you’re not going to research, you’re not going to bother about it. you’re either going to drop it, or get it over and done with. her example illustrated the importance of pedagogical conditions in which students can cultivate capabilities required for learning. for instance, condorrera negotiated these systemic constraints by affiliating herself with supportive peers and lecturers, which enabled her to maintain an interest in learning throughout her degree programme. in our analysis of her experiences, it was striking how she used reflexive observation to navigate frequently unwelcoming pedagogical arrangements, while some of her younger and less experienced research participants did not have the same freedom and remained disengaged from learning. agency the next dimension of participation is the agency that individuals use to negotiate injustices within higher education (mckenna, 2010). the case study revealed how important it was to recognise individual agency and to ensure that individual students had sustained platforms to make their agency visible. furthermore, the capability approach holds that people must have the freedom to play an active role in the process of their education instead of passively receiving remedial interventions (sen, 1999: 281). as such, the notion of agency freedom defines a student’s position within the university community as the freedom that s/he has to make choices and to claim access to real alternatives (sen, 1999). in this study, agency is framed as a meta-construct underlying our approach to equal participation. however, the qualitative findings suggested that agency freedom is also a dimension of equal participation in its own right, framed as the freedom to choose between opportunities that the individual student has reason to value. for this reason, agency cuts across our theory of equal participation as an important meta-construct underlying equal participation. here, agency freedom is comprised of two interrelated yet distinct aspects: the individual’s opportunity to pursue valued outcomes and the process underlying the pursuit of the opportunities (sen, 2009: 228). we frame agency as an opportunity to individual valued freedoms and the process aspect in which having agency means access to fair and equitable structural procedures (sen, 2009: 296). given the systemic inequalities in educational provision, the process aspect of freedom is important in evaluating how individuals negotiate 64 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) pedagogical and institutional arrangements that diminish student freedom (hart, 2013). for example, if an individual student is able to use their agency to attend a lecture, this should be accompanied by pedagogical and institutional processes and cultures within the classroom that are conducive to meaningful engagement with knowledge so that the individual is able to cultivate critical academic capabilities. condorrera identified the university’s language policy as a structural barrier that she negotiated in order to access english as the language of instruction. her freedom was diminished in comparison to students who spoke either english or afrikaans as their home language. the consequence of this arrangement was that she had to work harder to access knowledge and frequently felt alienated from lecturers and peers. although condorrera was able to access university instruction as a measurable outcome, the implications of learning in english was part of a process of adjusting to a structural inequality, as she explained below: you need english to cope academically. at school, the structure of learning was different, a mix of english and setswana. we have the right to learn in our own language, but in reality it can’t be done…the fact that you give up the right to speak your own language when you enter university, it’s really big. you have no choice but to do that. the structural inequality embedded in the language policy was that the majority of black students were instructed in english, while some white students could choose between either english or afrikaans instruction, which offered afrikaans-speaking students the advantage of being instructed in their home language. in the quotes below, condorrera was reflexive about the connection between language, identity development and access to english as a language of instruction: i have realised that my peers communicate to me mostly in english….i don’t want to associate with people who don’t know their own language. they see the importance of knowing english but they don’t realise the importance of knowing their own language. in response to pedagogical arrangements that did not recognise her home language as a valued resource, she created an alternative platform to negotiate the university environment with multilingual capabilities. however, the structural arrangements complicated access to learning and demanded additional academic resources that were not equally available to all students. recognition the third dimension of equal participation draws on nancy fraser’s conceptualisation of recognition, which is situated within her theory of justice alongside claims for economic redistribution5 (fraser, 2000: 110). in expanding the focus on identity, fraser defines recognition as “the status of individual group members as full partners in social interaction” (fraser, 2000: 113). the duality of status and redistribution makes this framework responsive to an absence of material resources exacerbated by the misrecognition of working-class students’ social, cultural and emotional resources (fraser, 2000). in this article, we have 5 for the purpose of this article, we have focused on two of fraser’s three r’s: redistribution (of resources) and recognition. we have explicitly drawn on her theorisation of recognition as discussed above. with our focus on socio-economically disadvantaged university students, we have implicitly incorporated her principle of economic redistribution. fraser’s third r is representation, which she defines as the capacity to possess political voice, particularly within the precarious marginality in which asylum seekers and refugees navigate precarious claims for legitimacy and voice (fraser, 2013). due to space constraints, we have not incorporated this third r into our analysis in this article. 65 calitz, walker & wilson-strydom theorising a capability approach to equal participation... adapted fraser’s notion of recognition to our analysis of student experiences as an analytical tool that challenges the structural biases that misrecognise students who face socio-economic constraints (fraser, 2000). in the case study, we found evidence across participant experiences of what fraser describes as “institutionalised value patterns cast some people as advantaged, as normal, as respected, and others as disadvantaged, as pathological, as unworthy of respect” (bozalek, 2012: 146). these patterns were evident in pedagogical practices that pushed students to the margins and positioned them as outsiders within the institution. condorrera had expressed concern that this misrecognition of ability affected her own and her peers’ academic participation: our lecturer said, “well, you’re going to write this test and i don’t feel that one of you is going to pass. i don’t see even one of you getting five percent for this test”. so when we left this class, this guy said, “i didn’t like the comment he made. it means he doesn’t have confidence in us”. so he should have actually told us what to do to nail the test. but in fact, he didn’t. and if you see a person is getting 50 percent, or a 60, at least that is something that they can still improve. so it’s not like we were failing. and the test that he was referring to, none of us failed that test. it’s just that the passing rate was not what he expected. but had he told us what he wanted, and how he prefers us to answer his questions, maybe we could have done better. in the example above, instead of offering support, the threat of failure created anxiety and diminished morale, which was not conducive to participation, especially for students already positioned precariously at the institution. condorrera also called attention to pedagogical conditions in which misrecognition positioned her as a vulnerable student with less potential for academic achievement and narrated an incident of a lecturer’s deficit perception of working-class students, [t]he lecturer said, one of the doctors …“some of you when i’m sitting here, i can see that you have a lot of problems. hence, you cannot even perform well.” then i said: no, how come you’re saying you see problems? you are supposed to see beyond that. if you can make it to this point, whether we have problems or not, hungry or not, it means we are willing to do something about our lives, regardless of that. it means we are able to put aside any problems that we have, to make it here. but if you can still see that [the problems], it means now we’re not going to achieve what we came here for. so, that has always been my question – what do they see in us? because that’s what he saw in us. condorrera’s experiences above connect an absence of recognition with diminished academic participation. this calls attention to the need for arrangements that simultaneously take into account the way that resource scarcity could diminish learning, while avoiding a deficit perception of student potential. while condorrera actively resisted this deficit gaze, we found evidence in other participant narratives that the opportunity to resist a deficit approach was not available to the same extent to other students. a concerning commonality across both these instances was that instead of enabling participation, the arrangements in the classroom eroded the freedom for participation. a final aspect of recognition was “the need for the people affected to participate in deciding what they want and what they have reason to accept” (sen, 1999: 32), which means giving individuals greater control and autonomy in processes that directly affect their ability to participate (crocker & robeyns, 2010). in condorrera’s narrative, she related numerous 66 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) examples where she was given autonomy in the pursuit of knowledge, which then expanded her engagement with learning over time. in our analysis of these examples, this required recognition of the individual voice that was frequently denied to marginalised students, whose experiences of schooling may not have equipped them to demand just structural arrangements (bozalek & boughey, 2012). in our definition, the aim of recognition is to create a more horizontal process of deliberation, so that all students have access to conditions under which they can develop the capability for voice. while it was encouraging to observe how condorrera claimed available platforms for voice, she reiterated our findings across the data that comparatively few students in our sample had access to the same freedom. practical reason the final dimension of equal participation distilled from the qualitative data was the capability for practical reason, which has been identified as a central capability for participation by a number of capability scholars (flores-crespo, 2007; nussbaum, 2011). the capability for practical reason encompasses the importance of epistemological access and its relation to student engagement with disciplinary knowledge, as valued members of an academic community (mclean, 2009; morrow, 2009). our capabilities-informed definition of practical reason was also a critical response to the instrumentalism of measurable outcomes in higher education policy and pedagogical arrangements that individualise academic failure or success (nussbaum, 2010). in this definition, practical reason was identified as a capability in its own right with the potential to expand the freedom for equal participation (flores-crespo, 2007). we found evidence of such reasoning in condorrera’s engagement with university courses that her peers reported as ‘boring’ or a ‘waste of time’, where she converted access to information into engagement with knowledge: going to class is not about writing a test. you explore the learning environment of what [course] is about, so you get to learn other things. there were other topics that we have to discuss in class. so listening to other people’s views is very interesting. the theoretical connection between freire’s critical pedagogy and the capability approach was particularly fertile for theorising the capability for practical reason because of the central role of reasoned deliberation in both approaches. freire envisioned critical education in which people “perceive themselves in a dialectical relationship with their social reality” towards the active transformation of this reality (freire, 1973: 34). nussbaum (2011: 34) defines practical reason as “[b]eing able to form a conception of the good and to engage in critical reflection about the planning of one’s life”, as illustrated by condorrera’s reflection below: i want to leave university knowing i’m equipped in this and that. so i’ll be able to tell others about digital narrative…about the importance of knowing your own language, and what it’s like being at university. during the research process, she demonstrated how access to knowledge expanded her aspirations for meeting the needs of her family, in particular family members who are hearing impaired, which motivated her specialisation in south african sign language. in the quotations below, condorrera employed practical reason to position herself as an agent who converted knowledge into concern for the public good, in response to unemployment and exclusion that affect members of her community: 67 calitz, walker & wilson-strydom theorising a capability approach to equal participation... [language] is big. it’s beautiful…actually the course itself made me realise, that language itself is even bigger than what we see. people are just sitting at home doing nothing; they can actually make money with their own language. they can become editors of their own language. they can translate. they can train other non-speakers to speak. as we see above, in freire’s model of education as the practice of freedom, the condition for transformative dialogue and participation includes the capacity for critical thought (freire, 1970: 23). throughout her experiences at university, condorrera identified her ability for critical reasoning as crucial to her engagement with knowledge by “using reflection, information, [and] understanding” to the end of capability development (flores-crespo, 2007: 49). conceived as such, the capability for practical reason expands the agency of the student acting upon her social world by using educational resources to develop critical consciousness. 5. conclusion we have argued for a theorisation of equal participation that consists of four dimensions, which were applied to a qualitative case study. the study aimed to deepen our understanding of equal participation in the experiences of a working-class, first-generation student on an extended degree programme. another aim of our capability-informed approach was to reimagine structural arrangements that enable equal participation for all students, particularly for those situated precariously within institutions. we conclude the paper with some final reflections on structural constraints to participation. our analysis showed that condorrera used agency to negotiate participation by converting personal and social dimensions of agency into functionings – or valued ways of being and doing. therefore, a capabilities-informed response to unequal participation should focus on providing pedagogical and institutional arrangements that recognise individual agency while avoiding a deficit approach to students making the transition to university. the findings above suggest the need for further research that involves working-class students in deliberative processes. we base this assumption on the evidence within condorrera’s experiences that an agency-focused approach could provide practitioners and educators with evaluative tools for responding to patterns of unequal participation. in addition, our analysis suggests that support structures for vulnerable students could be enriched by taking into account how accumulative injustices constrain students’ freedom to convert educational resources into capabilities and functionings. the design of support structures could also be informed by student-focused insight into the structural reasons why students are less likely to benefit from existing support structures. it is our hope that a nuanced understanding of unequal participation could contribute to pedagogical practices and student support interventions that are increasingly responsive to the complex and implicit forms of exclusion that constrain equal participation for marginalised university students. acknowledgements the authors gratefully acknowledge funding provided by the south african research chairs initiative of the department of science and technology and national research foundation of south africa. 68 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) references archer, l., & hutchings, m. 2000. ‘bettering yourself’? discourses of risk, cost and benefit in ethnically diverse, young working-class non-participants’ constructions of higher education. british journal of sociology of education, 21(4), 555–574. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/713655373 boughey, c. 2010. academic development for improved efficiency in the higher education and training system in south africa. research report. pretoria: development bank of southern africa. bozalek, v. 2012. interview with nancy fraser. the social work practitioner-researcher, 24(1), 136–151. bozalek, v. & boughey. c. 2012. misframing higher education. social policy & administration, 46(6), 688–703. http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9515.2012.00863.x bozzoli, b. 2015. behind the university funding crisis. politics web. available at http:// www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/behind-the-university-funding-crisis?utm_ source=politicsweb+daily+headlines&utm_campaign=3b24c3e2df-dhn_20_oct_2015&utm_ medium=email&utm_term=0_a86f25db99-3b24c3e2df-140192113. 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african countries: girls’ voice, schooling, and strategies for institutional change. cambridge journal of education, 42(3), 307–325. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0305764x.2012.706253 wood, d., & deprez, l. s. 2012. curricular implications for the capability approach. journal of human development and capabilities: a multi-disciplinary journal for people-centered development, 13(3), 471–493. participation, local governance and attitudes of youth: a grahamstown case study monty j. roodt rhodes university sonwabo stuurman rhodes university/university of the witwatersrand the united nations convention on the rights of the child includes children’s right to participation in processes that affect them. in this article we caution that in order to give real content to participation, it is necessary to understand what participation is and to acknowledge the problematic nature of the concept. we then demonstrate, by considering a number of international and african studies, the kinds of issues that have undermined the implementation of participatory initiatives for both adults and children. subsequently we explore the way in which participation has become a central tenet of cooperative developmental government through what has, especially at the local level, become known as governance. we argue that for these opportunities to become a reality and for citizens to benefit from the governance model, a strong and organised civil society that moves beyond the limitations of confrontational protest politics and engages with the state without becoming co-opted, is the way forward. increased inefficiency on the part of local governance structures has led to increasing disillusionment by citizens, especially younger people. the final section of the paper deals with this disaffection through a focus group interview with a small number of grade 12 learners from grahamstown/rhini. the interviews reveal a level of cynicism and lack of interest in participation in governance structures, such as ward meetings, among the learners interviewed. young people should be at the forefront of global change and innovation. empowered, they can be key agents for development and peace. if, however, they are left on society’s margins, all of us will be impoverished. let us ensure that all young people have every opportunity to participate fully in the lives of their societies (kofi annan, former united nations secretary general). introduction the connection between human rights, participation and development was made in the 1980s in the united nations declaration on the right to development, where in article 1 it is argued that ‘the right to development is an inalienable human right by virtue of which every human person and all peoples are entitled to participate, contribute to, and enjoy economic, social, cultural and political development, in which all human rights and fundamental freedoms can be fully realized’ (un, 1986: vi). the right of children to participate in decisions that affect them was also supported in november 1989 with the adoption of the united nations convention on the rights of the child. article 12 sets out the right of the child who: is capable of forming his or her own views … to express those views freely in all matters affecting the child, the views of the child be given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child. the convention states that children must have the opportunity to be heard in any judicial and administrative proceedings. the south african constitution also declares that in all decisions affecting a child, where the child is of an age to express his/her views, the child should be allowed and encouraged to participate. these are admirable ideals, and, one could argue, an essential element of democratic practice and a human rights regime. in order to give real content to participation, however it is necessary to understand the problematic nature of the concept; the way in which it has been manipulated to mean different things perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201166 in different contexts, how the concept of power is central as to who participates, and how difficult it is to achieve sustainable participation, especially with regard to slow processes of development and service delivery within a civic context. these limitations apply widely to adult citizens, and more so, as the tentative conclusions from the case study discussed in this article show, with regard to children and teenagers. in this article we consider the concept of participation and focus on problems regarding participatory endeavours in other countries, especially in africa. this leads to an exploration of the concept of local governance, which has participation as its central tenet, in south africa, and the problems encountered in implementing it. the final section comprises a case study of a small group of school learners in grahamstown/rhini, in the eastern cape in south africa, and explores their attitudes towards governance structures, showing their ambivalence toward civic participation. the concept of participation although the term participation is widely used in democratic theory, its meaning often remains vague (weale, 1999: 84). it has, as rahnema (1992) points out, become a jargon word separate from any specific context, and has been manipulated by vastly different groups of people to mean entirely different things. it has for example, served as a core concept in colonial community development (self-help), emerged as an essential part of the humanist enterprise (the creation of meaning through action), and served as an almost mystically transforming process for radicals such as paulo freire (roodt, 2001). for the purposes of this article, however,the broad definition offered by weale (1999: 84) is useful: he defines participation as “taking part in the process of formulation, passage and implementation of public policies”. in a more philosophical sense, participation may be seen as a quest to strive for a meaningful life-world, through being politically and civically active. as coetzee (1989:23) states: people have the right to live in a life-world that is meaningful to them and they are able to contribute actively to the constitution of such a life-world ... social reality is constituted, maintained, as well as continuously adapted by individuals. as soon as a lack of ability or scope to come to terms with different/opposing positions becomes evident ... there is a real danger of a dehumanisation of social reality, i.e. a rigidification of human existence (or alienation). both these aspects of the participatory endeavour are important in the context of post-apartheid south africa because of the need to overcome the divisions and alienation of the past, and to build a new nation and promote democratic traditions and behaviour. as swartz (2006:552) contends: as the discourses of rebuilding have replaced those of liberation, there has been a growing focus on shared values and renewed morality as a primary means for rebuilding the fractured society that is post-apartheid south africa. central to this process have been several areas of debate: the issue of socio-economic justice for the vast majority of her historically disadvantaged citizens; how to develop a concept of the nature of citizenship in a country newly emerged from the tyranny and totalitarianism of apartheid… attempts to introduce participatory initiatives internationally and in other parts of africa, however, have shown that it is not easy in regard to adults, and even more difficult regarding children and teenagers. problems regarding participation many studies have revealed the problematic nature of citizen participation. allan cochrane (1986), who refers to the attempts at local level participation as “community politics”, was cautious about the success of community initiatives as far back as the 1980s. in a survey of community politics in the united states of america and britain, he argued that real gains had been limited and highlighted a number of problems. briefly, these include the perceived impossibility of dealing with structural problems of economic and social inequality at a local level. concessions won were usually of a trivial nature at significant cost in time and effort, and local leaders tended to become absorbed into official structures and to feel threatened by pressure from below (cochrane 1986:55-56). roodt & stuurman — participation, local governance and attitudes of youth 67 in many countries, traditional leaders reasserted or maintained their influence. the problematic nature of these participatory initiatives in africa is well documented. in the case of botswana, the southern african report (1992:23) noted: the rapid changes of the past two decades have outstripped the capacity for popular involvement of institutions like parent teacher associations, civic organisations, community forums, and public hearings for planning boards. jansen and hoof (1990:202), discussing the style of consultation of village development committees by planning authorities (the presentation of technically complicated and complete plans for ratification), assert that “... a dependency trap has evolved in botswana that (has) led to the destruction of self-help activities ...”. botha and tandy (1992:29), writing about the functioning of similar village development committees and ward development committees in zimbabwe, state that the degree of involvement is much less than envisaged. a number of surveys have shown them to be unrepresentative with regard to the inclusion of women and youth, and in a number of areas they have entirely ceased to operate. a number of reasons have been suggested for the failure of these participatory experiments. diamond, linz, and lipset, (1988), reviewing the work of chazan on democracy in ghana from the 1960s onwards, argues that the participation of the public in institutions of civil society has been consistently undermined by residues of undemocratic colonial traditions, the presence of a high degree of economic inequality in the absence of an indigenous capitalist class, ongoing economic dependency, a weak state, inept leaders, corruption and an extractive and utilitarian political culture at the state level. more recent studies have confirmed the problematic nature of participatory initiatives in local governance, arguing that they do not always lead to more democratic and inclusive practices, because very often the decentralisation of power to the local level serves to reinforce the dependency of ordinary citizens, as well as local elites on political leaders for resources and business contracts. (blackburn, 2000; johnson & wilson, 2000; schönwälder, 1997). for children and teenagers ongoing participation in political processes and institutions is even more difficult to sustain, as the electoral institute for the sustainability of democracy in africa (2010) points out: it is a danger to democracy that young people are not considered, directly or indirectly, as anything other than a liability to democracy. young people are, in many ways, under siege: marginalised by male adults and the elderly from decision making processes, faced with the prospect of mass death by the hiv/aids epidemic, denied employment and blamed for the increasing level of crime and violence. they are not in a position to make informed choices in the exercise of citizenship. they are at the mercy of political proprietors who take it upon themselves to interpret and decide what citizenship entails for young people. in spite of numerous and well documented examples of the problematic nature of participatory politics in the western world and especially in africa, there is still optimism and support for initiatives of this kind. after south africa’s first democratic election in 1994 there was much enthusiasm for participatory democracy and development. looking back at attempts to implement citizen participation in various community-based organisations, it is clear that these have met with varying success. the civic movement along with the development forums of the early 1990s have come and gone, with many of the activists who drove these institutions moving on to formal government, the private or informal sector, or joining the ranks of the underor unemployed. as a result of the demise of civic and development forums, the main arena for citizen participation in south africa for both adults and children, are local governance structures. local governance south africa’s constitution drives a rights-based agenda that places citizen participation at the centre of transformation and development. the south african constitution also requires that in all decisions affecting a child, where the child is of an age to express his/her views, the child should be allowed and perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201168 encouraged to participate. the centrality of participation is promoted especially at local government level through the concept of developmental local governance. in terms of section 152 (1)(e) of the 1996 constitution (act 108 of 1996), one of the objectives of local governance is to encourage the involvement of communities and community organisations in matters of local government. this constitutional prescription is endorsed in the white paper on local government (republic of south africa 1998, 37), which defines developmental local government as one that is committed to working with citizens and groups within the community to find sustainable ways to meet their social, economic and material needs and improve their lives. governance can therefore be seen as a paradigm that requires local government to move beyond “the regulation of activities within its domain and enter into an equal dialogue with participants which will create new democratic ‘rules of the game’ . there is a clear implication that communities will be called upon to interact with local government beyond the conventional boundaries of representative democracy” (steytler, hollands, savage, heideman, roodt, mastenbroek, 1998:119). it is generally accepted that decentralized governance provides a structural arrangement for fighting poverty at close range and that it empowers local communities to participate in identifying problems, strategies and plans and to mobilize resources and energy to fight poverty. parnell, pieterse, swilling & wooldridge (2002: 10) argue that civil society mobilization and pressure must be used to propel and sustain internal institutional transformation in south africa to convince municipal staff and managers that they need to work differently if they want to deliver holistic, appropriate and quality service. it is apparent therefore, that the constitution, white paper and the department of provincial and local government (dplg) strongly support the idea of community participation when it comes to local issues. ward committees were introduced in south africa in 2001, with the primary aim of enhancing participatory democracy and functioning as an interface between government and civil society. cashdan (2002: 159), emphasizes the need for the ward committee system to promote a democratic government effectively, as well as to hold elected representatives accountable for promoting community participation. the ward committee system plays the critical role of being a representative structure in the community and as a means of promoting service delivery and community participation (cashdan, 2002). the problems that are outlined here regarding participatory development apply largely to the governance process as well. a study conducted by one of the authors (stuurman 2009) on the ward committee system as a means of promoting community participation and service delivery, reveals trends in keeping with experiences internationally and in other african countries, as outlined above, amongst both adults and youth in the grahamstown/rhini area. the general disillusionment of the adults with the dysfunctional nature of the ward system as a vehicle for participatory development is echoed by the views expressed by grade 12 learners in a local township school. the learners, interviewed as a small part of the wider study on perceptions of the ward committee system, can be said to represent a pilot study requiring follow up on a larger scale in order to be representative.1 nonetheless, their views offer a disturbing insight into the attitudes of present day township youth. all ethical procedures (informed consent) were followed by stuurman in pursuance of this study. grahamstown/rhini case study the south african constitution provides not only for legal representation for children but also in all decisions affecting the child: where the child is of the age and competence to express her or his views, the child should be allowed and encouraged to participate. as such the integrated development programme (idp) forum of the makana municipality is comprised of all the members of the idp steering committee, including representatives from local sectors, such as youth formations. programmes focused on youth 1 grahamstown, 22 may 2008 at 14h00 at benjamin mahlasela school. teacher: mrs. nojoko: participants: charles dingana; thembinkosi madlavu; ntombifuthi lewu; vuyokazi ntaka; vuyokazi gotyana; ntombekhaya bhebh. additional students present: xolisa magada; bathini masinda; banele mafilika. roodt & stuurman — participation, local governance and attitudes of youth 69 development are intended to have a positive influence on the growth and development of the area, and to take cognisance of the needs of youth in the area. “civic participation is for old people” the focus group participants argued that young people are not interested in issues of service delivery or development, but in other issues, such as sport or social matters. they said that service delivery, an exhausting and frustrating long-term process was mainly the concern of “old people”, something with which young people do not want to associate themselves. throughout the discussion, they emphasised that they did not participate in government programmes concerned with service delivery in their ward. for example, they argued that due to the time constraints they found it difficult to balance their academic life and “politics”. furthermore, they preferred to spend time on issues that could benefit them directly, rather than waste time on something they see as “pointless”. they pointed out that if they perceived politics to be beneficial and more interesting, they would be more motivated to involve themselves. they added that many people had in the past sacrificed their time to fight for freedom and democracy, but that they remained uneducated as a result. in their experience, freedom fighters have not benefited from the end products of democracy. one student mentioned, for example: my uncle was a local freedom fighter, and he was also a local hero. he was fighting for the rights of the poor people. but now that we have acquired freedom and democracy, he does not benefit from anything, and nobody cares about him, even the people that he used to fight with, who are now in the municipality, do not even care about him too. so i would rather focus on my education, and secure the place in the next generation. another student added: young people are not listened to, the politics is mainly an old people’s business, and young people are focusing on other aspects of life which will bring joy in their lives. unlike politics that are frustrating and psychologically disturbing, youth prefer less harmful activities. it would be much better if we were to benefit from the system, surely such frustration would be worth fighting for. the overall conclusion based on the feedback of the young people in the focus group is that participation in processes to ensure service delivery is a strenuous experience that yields very little in terms of personal reward. the students argued that service delivery, development and politics are old people’s business and that in most projects in their ward, it is always old people who benefit from and participate in these projects. there was, however, a large amount of cynicism regarding what the current generation of adults had achieved. according to a young student: old people have messed up, so it is up to them to fix the matter, and there is no need for young people to intervene. we cannot be involved, because things are already bad in the country, and if we intervene, the same old people will not listen to our views and opinions. another student mentioned in this regard: all our spheres of government are full of old people who are making laws and implementing them according to their own needs. even though they know better what is going on in the country, but they must also acknowledge that young people have opinions and views on other things. but these people are not willing to listen to what young people have to say. the obvious reluctance of the youthful interviewees to become involved in civic issues and the perception that it is older people “who know better what is going on in the country”, speaks of a reality where civic and developmental issues are often of a technical nature, requiring input from “experts” such as city engineers, planners, building inspectors and the like, and more importantly, require patience and commitment on the part of the layperson to truly understand. this aligns with experiences in other countries, as discussed above. jansen and hoof (1990:202), discussing the style of consultation of the village development perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201170 committees by planning authorities (the presentation of technically complicated and complete plans for ratification), assert that “... a dependency trap has evolved in botswana that (has) led to the destruction of self-help activities ...”. the attitude that participation in political and governance processes is primarily an activity for “old people”, is particularly ironic in the south african situation, given the massive involvement of youth (and in many cases children) during the struggle against apartheid. one explanation is the difference in the nature of the militant political struggle with the emphasis on mass action such as rallies, demonstrations, street battles with police, defiance campaigns, boycotts and underground military activities, compared with the much slower, and often frustrating business of civic and developmental processes. it can be argued that the former is more suited to the temperament of youth, while the latter requires the patience and maturity of adulthood. another explanation is that during the struggle many adults who had jobs and wanted to preserve their family, while fulfilling familial responsibilities, were not willing to take the risks that were part and parcel of militant opposition to the repressive militarised apartheid regime, whereas the youth, especially given the parlous state of education in those days, were. yet, and this was apparent in many of the rural communities in the eastern cape, post 1990, when the focus turned to civic and developmental issues, adults, especially old men, reasserted their traditional authority, and in the process sidelined women and youth. this is in line with the experience of zimbabwe also discussed above (botha & tandy, 1992:29). as stated by the focus group interviewees, the need for a good education to prosper is now much more established, and with some notable exceptions, the youth are no longer prepared to sacrifice education for participation in political and civic activities. “politicians are untrustworthy” in keeping with the attitudes of many adults interviewed for the main study on participation in municipal wards, it was clear that young people have lost faith and trust in politicians. they mentioned that local, provincial and national government level politicians have been inadequate. the students in the focus group all perceived politicians as “liars who do not care about other people, only for themselves”. it was also claimed that politicians generally make promises to the poor but never deliver services, which is why their reputations are so poor, and they are no longer trusted. in addition, the young people perceived politicians to be unreliable and nepotism and corruption to be rife. they argued that politicians, once elected forget about the people, and make sure that their own family members and friends benefit before their terms end. for example, a student said that: almost all the politicians are rich people, and they drive big cars living in huge houses. these people were not better off at first, but immediately when they got into their offices, they became rich. it should also be borne in mind that before they were elected, all these politicians have made promises to the people, about jobs, housings, infrastructure etc. but immediately when they win elections, they automatically forget about those promises, and focus only on their progress and promotions. and if one of their objectives fails, they become corrupt, and the conflicts and crisis develop. how nice it would be, if politicians were fighting for the needs of the people, instead of fighting over useless issues, like power. another participant mentioned that: generally politicians are untrustworthy. i mean in my entire life i have never come across any politician who sticks to their guns, but they always go with the flow. for example, you can get into power as people-oriented person. however, in no time at all your personality will be tested, and subsequently people adapt to the system, and join the dirty ride. politics, i mean generally, is a dirty game, so whoever is a politician surely is a part of such a game. a lack of trust in politicians has made many young people cynical about involvement in politics and service delivery as an altruistic enterprise aimed at benefiting the community as a whole and promoting democracy and accountability. their lack of interest was apparent during the focus group discussion, when roodt & stuurman — participation, local governance and attitudes of youth 71 the researcher found that none of the students in the group knew who their youth representatives were in the ward committees. furthermore, they did not know who the ward councillor was. this did not seem to bother them, as it was clear that they did not feel the need to hold these representatives accountable, or that it would make any difference if they did: we don’t know who the youth representative is, and we don’t care what he is doing because he is not representing us, surely he is also part of the politics. for these students corruption amongst municipal officials, employees and elected representatives is not something that they read about in the newspaper or hear about from other people. most of them experience it in their daily lives or in the lives of family members. one student related an instance of this phenomenon: i personally experienced that form of corruption and the unavailability of the food parcels. for example, my aunt registered before the food parcels arrived in the ward. she was not employed, and at home we were very poor. these food parcels were mainly for the unemployed and the pensioners, but there were several people with jobs who also benefited from the project. surprising enough, piles of food parcels were found in the house of another municipal employee, and her relatives and friends all received double food parcels. the attitude of these school learners confirms the findings of diamond (1988), when he argues that the participation of the public in institutions of civil society has been consistently undermined by residues of undemocratic colonial traditions, or in this case, apartheid traditions. corruption and an extractive and utilitarian political culture is characteristic, not only in the example of food parcel corruption described above, but more chillingly in the attitude of the learners themselves. if you can’t beat them, join them … one of the side effects of this direct and ongoing experience of corruption is that these youths have accepted it as an inevitable way of life. this institutionalisation of corruption and nepotism has reached such a scale that they feel powerless to stop it through active participation and involvement in the structures that are meant to deal with these problems and hold officials, employees and elected representatives accountable. from a sociological point of view this institutionalisation of nepotism and corruption has led to it being regarded as a commonplace phenomenon that no longer evokes feelings of moral outrage: rather for a large proportion of youth it is now seen as a legitimate strategy for acquiring developmental resources and benefits for the families of those in power. as one student put it: look for example at my home; we are living in a very small house as a big family. the government has been promising to build house for the people, but nothing has happened in that regard. so people are only looking after their loved ones, so when we get into power, surely the first people to think about will be our family, i mean i am being realistic now. if we were all happy, i would consider doing good things for others, but how do you expect me to cater for others, whereas my situation is not better, don’t you think people will think there is something wrong with you. it was clear during the focus group discussion that most of these young people had given up on service delivery, and appeared to be to a greater or lesser extent cynical as to occurrences in their communities. this issue raises a critical and important point about the next generation, in that these young people are the leaders of the future. from the discussion, it became clear that the form of democracy that exists in the makana municipality is not encouraging meaningful participation in local governance structures by young people, nor is it producing good and reliable leaders for the future. it is more likely to reproduce corrupt and bad leaders. the broader study on participation in ward structures in grahamstown conducted by stuurman (2009), of which the youth focus group was a part, revealed that many ward structures had been “captured” by the ruling party, and in some cases, even by factions of the ruling party. this is in essence an extreme form of corporatism, the incorporation of civil society into government. corporatism has led to institutions of civil society in south africa becoming increasingly indistinguishable from the government. this has often perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201172 led to cronyism, clientalism, nepotism and corruption. many community-based organisations have slipped into a co-opted rather than co-operative role, in the process often undermining the effectiveness of elected political representatives (steytler et al,1998:125). conclusion in this article we started off by stating that the concept of participation has many different meanings depending on the particular context and paradigm of which it forms part, ranging for example, from colonial community development with its stress on “self-help”, through humanist notions of the creation of meaning in order to be fully human, to the political and emancipatory emphasis of the brazilian educator paulo freire. a review of attempts to operationalise the concept of participation practically, focusing largely on africa, showed that many difficulties have been experienced, and that failure, rather than success has been the norm. the next section of the article examines the way in which participation has become a central tenet of cooperative developmental government through what has, especially at the local level, become known as governance. the concept of governance describes the necessity for local government to extend its range of operation beyond mere service provision to deal with broader development issues in partnership with civil society, especially citizen participation, through the ward system. ward committees were introduced in south africa in 2001, with the primary aim of enhancing participatory democracy and functioning as an interface between the government and civil society. we argue that experience and research over the past few years has shown that the lack of resources of the local government and the weakness of civil society, have led to increased inefficiency on the part of local governance structures and increasing disillusionment among citizens, especially younger people. the final section of the paper deals with this disaffection through a focus group interview with a small number of grade 12 learners from grahamstown/rhini. the interviews revealed a level of cynicism and lack of interest in participation in governance structures such as the ward meetings by the learners. these structures were seen as dominated by self-interested older adults who were not concerned with issues important to, or affecting youth, and that service delivery and development more broadly were regarded as “adult business”. politicians were characterised as self-interested, nepotistic and corrupt, in that they appropriated resources, not for the benefit of the broader community, but for their own families. most perturbing, the learners did not believe that their own participation in the system could change anything, rather, they emphasized the need to focus on their own education in order to attain positions where they could channel resources to their own families in effect perpetuating the very system about which they were critical and cynical. the strong corporatist style of civil society/government relations where political parties or even factions of political parties dominate under-resourced governance structures has thus led to a situation where citizens, and in particular young people, are cynical about the impact and benefits of participation. references annan k 2010 in mhishi l 2010 youth, socio-economic and political participation in africa. significant impact agency. retrieved on 7 november 2010 from http://www.significantimpactagency.org/blog. downloaded november 7, 2010. blackburn j 2000. popular participation in a prebendal society: a case study of participatory municipal planning in sucre, bolivia’. dphil thesis. brighton: sussex university. botha t & tandy p 1992. report on intergovernmental relations in zimbabwe, botswana and namibia. belville: university of the western cape. cashdan b 2002. local government and poverty in south africa. in s parnell, e pieterse, m swilling & d wooldridge (eds), democratising local government: the south african experiment. cape town: university of cape town press. cochrane a 1986. community politics and democracy. in d held (ed), new forms of democracy. london: sage. roodt & stuurman — participation, local governance and attitudes of youth 73 coetzee j k 1989. the quest for a more human society: a different sociology? grahamstown: rhodes university. diamond l, j j linz & s m lipset (eds) 1988. democracy in developing countries. boulder: lynne rienner. electoral institute for the sustainability of democracy in africa. retrieved on 7 november 2010 from http://www.eisa.org.za/events/yc htm. jansen r & hoof p 1990. regional development planning for rural development in botswana. in d simon (ed), third world regional development: a reappraisal. london: paul chapman. johnson h & wilson g 2000. biting the bullet: civil society, social learning and the transformation of local governance. world development, 28(11):1891-1906. parnell s, et al (eds) 2002. democratising local government: the south african experiment. lansdowne: university of cape town press. rahnema m 1992. participation. in w sachs (ed), the development dictionary. johannesburg: university of the witwatersrand press. republic of south africa 1998: the white paper on local government. march. pretoria: government printers . roodt m 2001. participation, civil society and development. in jk coetzee j graaff, f hendricks, g wood. development: theory, policy and practise. cape town: oxford university press. schönwälder g 1997. new democratic spaces at the grassroots? popular participation in latin american local governments. development and change, 28(4): 753-70. stuurman s 2009. the role of the ward committees as an interface between local government and community: a case study of makana municipality. unpublished ma dissertation. grahamstown: rhodes university. the southern african report, 1992. botswana: miracle or mirage? march issue. steytler n, hollands g, savage d, heideman l, roodt m & mastenbroek r 1998. state-civil society relations in south africa: towards a model of good governance. in g hollands & g ansell (eds), winds of small change civil society interaction with the african state. east london: afesis corplan. swartz s a 2006. long walk to citizenship: morality, justice and faith in the aftermath of apartheid. journal of moral education, december, 35(4): 551–570. united nations declaration on the right to development. 1986. new york: united nations. united nations convention on the rights of the child. 1989. new york: united nations. weale a 1999. democracy: issues in political theory. london: macmillan. theorising creative expression in children’s participation patricia c. henderson university of cape town the paper suggests that phenomenology, the anthropology of the senses and of embodiment, performance theory and multi-modal pedagogies offer a rich set of theoretical ideas with which to consider children’s expressive repertoires as overlooked forms of social participation and critique. four case studies in relation to children’s photography, dramatic improvisation, art-making and radio programming are explored as instances of meaningful participation and as forms of research. these “impassioned” forms of expression are contrasted with child participation as invitation to “speak” within the public sphere in ways that are limited and perhaps limiting. the paper therefore questions assumptions around accessing children’s “voices”. keywords: children, creative repertoires, participation, phenomenology, multi-modality, anthropology of the senses, embodiment, semiotics, voice . questioning the parameters of child participation the paper explores the rub between child participation as invitation to participate in the public sphere and children’s creative repertoires as expansive forms of participatory expression. i begin by elaborating on the difficulties of employing the notion of participation in too narrow a sense and then move on to discuss four creative projects in which children’s participation takes on semiotic depth. “participation” within a neo-liberal global context and within the process of constituting democratic states, is often used as a stand-alone concept, as if its meanings were self-evident. assuming that the parameters of its conceptual use are understood, the term becomes stripped of necessary referents. becoming aware of the implications of its use within political and development discourse necessitates exploring its imbrications in hierarchical social relations characterised by unequal distributions of power and resources and a lack of spread of socio-economic rights (robins, 2005: 2). used authoritatively, the notion sets aside questions as to who is being asked to participate in what, by whom and on what terms. it suggests that people may choose freely to participate, or may equally ignore interpellation. assumptions about the construction of personhood and of social equivalence between individuals often underpin the term’s deployment. inherent in an often submerged or obscured call to participate, is the possibility that a body of persons have already set out the social ground, the framework within which others, for example children, will be invited to participate (bray, gooskens, kahn, moses & seekings, 2010). participation, therefore, presupposes that something is already in existence to which one is invited to make a contribution. often denied, yet present within ideas of participation, is a demarcation between those who have set the parameters of its actualisation and those who have been invited into its space, as is the case when children are invited to participate in social space that has been pre-determined by adults. in being invited to participate in formulating social policy concerning children, children may indeed make important contributions that adults have overlooked or ignored. participants’ contributions may, however, be constrained, capitulating more and more to what is normative within a society, or within the vision a state has of its citizenry, its conceptions of democracy and its supporting institutions. here participation simply comes to echo entrenched expectations of the responsible exercise of citizenship, and processes of child participation may be used to legitimate state procedures that become formulaic. forms of social alienation, exclusion and marginalisation within democratic states are then ignored (von leires, 2005), and people who occupy such positions are labelled irresponsible, their marginalisation psychologised, rather than recognised as the outcome of structural forms of violence. there is also the henderson — theorising creative expression in children’s participation 19 real problem of not being able to hear discourses incommensurate within the parameters of the neo-liberal state. beth povinelli (2006) for example, has explored discourses within unequal post-colonial settings in which forms of identity are differently constituted. she refers to various modes of being predicated on differing ideological frames: one in which certain individuals have extreme autonomy and in which ties with others are characterised by what she has called stranger sociality, and the other in which collective ties and responsibilities and inter-subjectivity are conjoined through the trope of genealogy. here responsibilities to a group outweigh considerations of individual autonomy. likewise for south africa, jean and john comoroff (2005) write of the social tensions within the democratic state between collective cultural identities and notions of individual citizenship. participation not only concerns the creation of an opening for the emergence of children’s “voices” within public space, it also has to do with recognising the extent of children’s often dismissed or unrecorded social contributions to many aspects of social life, and of which the dimensions, qualities and quantities are underestimated by adults and children alike.1 children therefore participate in society in much broader ways than envisaged in discourses of the liberal state and in its attempt to include children in the formulation of policy that affects their position in society (reynolds, 1995). children contribute consistently to multiple threads within social worlds: to economies, philosophies, aesthetics, modes of consumption, cultural production, the making and unmaking of social worlds through war and its aftermath, and the improvisation of modes of survival. running through children’s life-worlds are repertoires of embodied dexterity, creativity, playfulness, humour and word-play. one effective way to convey children’s “voices” or ideas and experiences is through paying attention to children’s repertoires of performance that entail processes of reflection, selection and the attribution of meaning. expanding notions of participation through children’s creative potentialities to begin theorising why such forms of expression are important as aspects of children’s meaningful experience within the world, this paper therefore turns to four creative and multi-modal participatory children’s projects one from ghana and three from south africa. theories of phenomenology (merleauponty, 1962, 1968), embodiment (csordas, 1994, 2002; mauss, 2007) and performance (taylor 2007), together with anthropological explorations of the role of the senses in creating a depth of cultural experience through which memory, space and temporalities are marked (seremetakis, 1996; stoller, 1997) provide a set of possibilities for understanding children’s immersion within creative repertoires and their generation of semiotic depth. multi-modal pedagogies within schooling environments, i.e. the exploration of themes through various forms of expression, including writing, oral delivery, drawn images, made objects and enacted scenes, draw on the educative potential of such embodied forms of engagement in rendering learning meaningful for participants in ways that depart from narrow conceptions of learning as purely cognitive engagement (see newfield’s article in this special issue, as well as stein, 2006, 2007). pippa stein’s (2006, 2007) work, for example, shows clearly the importance of affective, embodied and collaborative aspects of pedagogy – multi-modal forms of engagement therefore call on both cognitive and emotional ways of generating meaning and consequently, understanding. i argue that performative acts, including various forms of improvisation frame, mimic and reproduce what children have come to know, yet at the same time offer possibilities of distance, the reorganisation of memory, and a degree of transcendence through creativity and imagination. such processes mark forms of exchange between children, their worlds and their interlocutors, that leave them with a sense of their own capabilities and a conscious recognition of their own knowledge about the world. in relation to the ways in which both the real and the imaginary are conjoined in such processes, and hence the recognition of lived difficulties, as well as the imagination of possible, different futures, i point to the work of gilles deleuze 1 see reynolds (1991). she suggests that due to children’s social position among tonga people involved in subsistence agriculture in zimbabwe, both adults and the children themselves underestimate the quantity and diversity of the work they do. perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201120 (1997), whose famous reinterpretation of freud’s account of “little hans” traces the sensory encounters of a child journeying in a world traduced with sounds, sights, smells, tactile qualities, animals and persons, and his subsequent imaginative reconstruction of travelled trajectories through a process of mapping. exploring expressive potentialities and their use in research and education offers the possibility of paying attention to children in ways that are not overwritten by adult conceptions of and ideological preoccupations with the place of the child. the paper therefore offers examples of agentive, self-reflexive and embodied forms of participation that differ from a narrower formulation of participation as an “invitation” to children to make their views known within predetermined contexts, for example “the public sphere”. the four examples of children’s creative and reflexive engagements considered in the paper are as follows: an art project with refugee children living in hillbrow, johannesburg; children’s compilation of radio programmes in the ingwavuma district of kwazulu-natal; the creation of a theatrical performance by young people from okhahlamba, south africa; and lastly, children’s use of photography to depict their working lives on the streets of accra, ghana. the first two explore the problematic of voice. the second two explore children’s depth of knowledge of social worlds and their abilities in representing them. problematics of voice veena das (1997, 2007) and fiona ross (2003), among others, have questioned the idea that by providing safe spaces for articulation, the accessibility of voice becomes unproblematic. they indicate broader notions of voice that are not confined to narrative speech acts, but that encompass both gestures and the decision to remain silent. in situations of violence and unequal power relations, speaking may indeed become dangerous. in the following case studies, i firstly explore the long, slow emergence of voice among refugee children over an extended time period, noting the difficulty with which some children came to ‘speak’, and that their ‘speaking’ had much to do with private processes of image making that enabled some talk, often jagged and painful, concerning their experiences. the study suggests that coming into voice is often a process requiring trust and prolonged engagement. the second case study on children’s radio work describes coming into an empowered voice on their part through the power of technology, a power that somehow facilitates new ways in which adults are able to listen to children. the programmes provide a space where the ‘mystique’ of technology enables children to ask challenging questions of adults, questions through which they are surprised and through which they re-evaluate their conceptions of children. refugee children’s suitcase stories the suitcase project, initiated in 2001 by researcher, glynis clacherty and diane welvering (2006), an artist, was envisaged as art therapy, offering psycho-social support for refugee children under eighteen years old, who had found their way to the jesuit refugee services in hillbrow, johannesburg. the children had been separated from relatives in their flight from various countries, i.e. the democratic republic of the congo (drc), burundi, rwanda, ethiopia and angola, ending up in south africa as “unaccompanied child refugees”. clacherty (clacherty & welvering, 2006) recounted their difficulties in recalling past experience through conventional forms of therapy. she had the idea that suitcases decorated by individual children could represent a collage of current and former aspects of children’s selves and experience in ways that pointed to memory, survival and current challenges about which they could choose to speak or remain silent. the young people met regularly with clacherty and welvering (clacherty & welvering, 2006), beginning a process of decorating the outside of their suitcases with images of their current lives and with the free application of paint, beads and ribbons, and then creating sets of images that recalled aspects of their past to apply on the interiors of the suitcases. researchers provided a space in which children could form relationships with one another and with researchers and if children wanted to approach clacherty with some of ‘their stories’ they could do so privately under a tree in the courtyard of the venue. this henderson — theorising creative expression in children’s participation 21 activity enabled the collection of narratives explaining some of the images (clacherty & welvering, 2006). in reading the book comprised of photographs of the suitcases and their accompanying narratives, one becomes increasingly aware of an overwhelming sense of loss, not only of children’s family members through death, but the dissolution of the familiar, a palpable sense of mourning for often rural worlds and activities that have been obliterated. there is the theme of flight, flight from immediate danger in the past and the present, flight across borders through often hostile countries, of arrival in south africa and of the experience of sometimes being unwelcome in a stimulating, yet bewildering urban environment, completely different from places that had once been home. among some of the children, a sense of restlessness was paramount in their search for lost relatives and in the haunted nature of everyday life, where severance from relatives suggested to children that on the one hand their relatives could still be alive, and on the other, possibly dead. any surviving relatives left in the countries from which the children had fled, or who were similarly scattered in different and unknown places the children assumed would also live with uncertainty as to whether the children had survived. in the inconclusive space of not knowing whether relatives were alive or dead, and if alive whether they wondered about the children, mourning and death had no resolution, but were indefinitely extended. everyday life became a haunted space, yet also one in which children attempted ongoing construction of their lives, a process in which memory and forgetting were intertwined. pasco, a boy of seventeen, who had moved from the drc with his sister aggie after the death of their mother when they were young children, drew a picture of a tree inside his suitcase. for him the tree symbolised a place for conversation, a place of stability. he called it “the peace tree”. the depiction of a generic, symbolic tree recalled the memory of an actual mango tree outside his home in the drc where he and his sister would sit and talk during the heat of day and at night. the re-evocation of this tree and its transformation into a transportable idea enabled pasco to say that his depiction of the tree now constituted something within himself that he could take to any other place he would go to in the future. lawrence langer’s (1997) writing on time seems pertinent with regard to the young people’s narratives in the suitcase stories, as well as their suitcases’ status as ritual objects in which memory and the present were in conversation with one another. langer suggests that for survivors of atrocities, “time is durational as well as chronological, and that durational time is experienced continuously, not sequentially as a memory from which one can be liberated” (1997: 55). the project run by clacherty and welvering (clacherty & welvering, 2006) offered provided a space refugee children clearly appreciated. through their protracted art-making and the possibility of speaking or remaining silent about what they had made, the refugee children entered a profound process of memorialisation in which aspects of the past were stitched onto aspects of the present in complex ways. coming to voice: children’s radio diaries in a time of hiv/aids abaqophi bas’ okhayeni abaqinile (translated from isizulu as “the strong recorders of okhayeni” (2007), comprises a group of children between the ages of ten and fourteen, attending okhayeni primary school in the rural ingwavuma district of kwazulu-natal. they are involved in an innovative radio project initiated through the children’s institute at the university of cape town under the direction of helen meintjes. the area where the children live, including kwazulu-natal as a whole, has one of the highest rates of hiv/aids infection in southern africa, and indeed the world. many of the children in the radio project have lost relatives, including parents, brothers and sisters, uncles and aunts through death as a result of hiv/ aids-related diseases. the project’s aim is to initiate a process in which children develop the technological skills and reflexive abilities to create their own radio diaries that are broadcast on a local radio station. preparations for the creation of the existing radio programmes has involved prolonged periods of writing diaries and drawing images depicting children’s concerns and everyday lives. individual children then created story-boards out of which they developed their programmes. each programme involves a child introducing him/herself, describing the place s/he is in and interviewing other people in the environment perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201122 to create the narrative thread s/he wishes to share with the public. in capturing details of children’s lives, their worries, celebrations, knowledge and observations, the diaries work against descriptions of ‘a typical’ or quintessential child living within a context of hiv/aids. each child stands alone, conveying specific circumstances: personality, passions, ties with friends and family; contours of personal pain and loss; curiosity in describing the passing world, for example, a description of cars in the main road; enjoyment of play, for example, the creation of clay animals; and the pride in learning how to travel alone for the first time, for example to run an errand for a mother, and to learn how to buy goods, handle money and account for change. in listening to the children’s broadcasts, the quality or timbre of their voices something that cannot be conveyed through written transcriptions – became apparent. their confidence in interviewing relatives, describing surroundings and greeting fellow learners at their schools, as well as idiosyncratic ways of speaking, were immediately conveyed. other themes in the unfolding narrative fragments had to do with delight at the return of migrant fathers who worked in the cities far from their rural homes and who on their return often brought presents and undertook special journeys with their children; and the love and support of a mother who, when she heard her son was being discriminated against by a “stepmother”, returned from her work as a clothing merchant in a distant town to live with her son. the closeness of their relationship was celebrated by the boy in his descriptions. his bravery was conveyed through a throwaway line indicating that he did not care if the woman who was supposed to care for him was neglectful, because he stilled his hunger by hunting mice and birds. not only his hunting abilities, but his naming of the trees along his way for part of his journey for the radio diary, conveyed dexterity within his environment and a pleasing knowledge of its qualities and presences. when he made his radio programme, his mother was surprised that he remembered his stepmother’s cruelty so well, as he had been very young at the time. another girl, whose aunt died, asked her mother why she had not been informed about her aunt having an hiv/aids-related disease. her questioning points to ways in which the mother may have been ashamed of the fact that her sister was dying because of hiv/aids, as well as to cultural predilections in which adults attempt to “protect” children by withholding painful information from them when they are very young, including information about the death of a parent. the latter responses are aimed at shielding young children from pain, but may in fact bewilder and isolate them in their experience of pain over the death of a close family member or parent. the girl’s interview with her mother concerning her aunt’s death led to the mother questioning her withholding of information from her daughter. radio diaries are an important way for children to communicate beyond their immediate neighbourhoods and are especially effective, given the high value placed on radio as a form of popular media among poorer people in south africa. the programmes increase children’s sense of their capacities and place in the world. they are an invaluable method of engaging with children in ways that promote an increasing “visibility”, an acknowledgement of their wisdom and sensitivities in the public realm. there is also something about the microphone as “power object” that smoothly facilitates children’s questioning of adult assumptions about what is appropriate for young children to know in the face of death, for example. on knowing and representing social life i present two case studies that demonstrate that if given sufficient space, children show deep knowledge of their social worlds and are capable of using cultural forms to convey their knowledge. the first discusses the creation of a play representing the social circumstances in which a group of children find themselves, while the second provides an example of the capacity of children to surprise researchers with new knowledge through the medium of photography. as adults we do not really know what children know, but it is in the following kinds of undertakings that children’s knowledge is made apparent, because it does not rest on the same sets of discursive constraints as the call to language does. children’s capacities to surprise and therefore to destabilise adult conceptions become important here. henderson — theorising creative expression in children’s participation 23 young people’s creation of a play in okhahlamba from march, 2003, to the end of 2008, i conducted anthropological research concerning people’s experience of living with and alongside hiv/aids in okhahlamba, a rural sub-district in kwazulunatal, south africa. i met regularly with 31 young people between the ages of fourteen and twenty in the neighbourhood of emfuleni.2 each young person had lost one or both parents as a result of hiv/aids. during a week-long workshop away from their homes, i facilitated a process in which the group produced a play depicting difficult aspects of everyday life that they had identified, as well as portraying people who in their opinion attempted to address such problems. threaded through the performance, were dances and songs, drawing on highly developed local performance repertoires in which the young people excelled. in their play, imidlalo yethu (translated from isizulu as “our play”), the group showed that they were astute and often humorous commentators on local realities. they portrayed different characters, agegroups and journeys through bureaucratic institutions with ease, paying particular attention to the bodily comportment of different kinds of people and to styles of address. they mirrored conversations between young and old, between families and personnel at government departments, conversations conducted during taxi rides, and the role of traditional healers and churches in attempting to support people in a context where many were dying as a result of hiv/aids. they also portrayed the attempts of groups of older men to control crime and, in particular, theft of money and cattle. the young people depicted themselves as having more knowledge than their grandparents about new government services and social grants. in one scene, children guided grandparents through encounters with state personnel and told them how to recoup essential documents that “had been burnt in fire”, not an uncommon occurrence in the high mountains of okhahlamba, where bolts of lightning burn down houses and sometimes kill people. the children displayed much wit in depicting a home affairs official working at his computer, and a charming disingenuousness on the part of grandparents who, in the play, had received no formal education, unlike their grandchildren. the play included the sound of taxis in motion, computers in operation, voices in the marketplace, gossip among inebriated grandmothers, and praying congregations. whereas in real life, children disowned the term izintandane (orphans) because of its association with complete destitution and loss of social place, they used the term openly in the play. they also referred openly to hiv/aids, something very rare in everyday life and in private interviews with the children. at funerals, for example, the ‘causes’ leading to death were often mentioned, but never attributed directly to hiv/aids. children in everyday life were reluctant to take on the identity of orphans, because they feared discrimination. in local philosophical conceptualisations, the state of orphan-hood implied radical social dislocation, a state of complete marginalisation and lack of social place – something the children insisted did not describe their lives (henderson, 2006; meintjies & giese, 2006). the last scene in the play depicted an apostolic church of zion service. in it, the young people reproduced the impassioned mannerisms of such congregations and of a prophet (umphrofethi) who appealed to god to assist his followers in the time of the mighty destroyer (mashaya bhuqe), one of the evocative names given to hiv/aids in the region. a desire to transcend the harshness of everyday life was conveyed in the scene through the relief that powerful, collective singing, dancing and prayer can effect. in reflecting on the play, i suggest that enactment, as well as depicting children’s consummate appropriation of local worlds and their enjoyment of humorously mirroring social roles, may become an important distancing device through which young people are able to approach painful aspects of life without exposing personal pain. the fact that young people themselves decided to use hiv/aids as a theme for their play suggests that in acting out parts they could point to areas of pain without discomposing themselves in the company of their peers. 2 note that this is a pseudonym. perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201124 in relation to the theoretical concerns of the paper, forms of improvisation draw on the full expressive range of human beings and generate a sense of being-in-the-world. they demonstrate the satisfaction derived from learning and reflection through serious forms of play. according to thomas csordas (2002: 3) a phenomenological appreciation of experience within ritual for example, registers “immediacy, indeterminacy, sensibility … all that has to do with the urgency of experience”. children’s photography in accra as susan sontag (2002) has shown, representation is about framing, selecting, organising and reflecting. phillip mizen and yaw ofusu-kusi (forthcoming) describe a photographic project carried out by children living and working on the streets of ghana’s capital city in which they are involved in all of the above processes. the children developed photographic accounts of their lives over the course of a day. these formed part of a collaborative participatory research project in which children as co-researchers decided what to depict, frame and isolate through the medium of photography. their photographs “told vividly of the environs and ecology of street life, its detail and design, fractures and strains, its palpable fragmentation”. they depicted a “physical fabric and infrastructure under stress, and a burgeoning informal economy within and through which the children work[ed] to survive” (forthcoming: 5). interestingly, the photographs undermined stereotypical ways of thinking about street children. mizen and ofosu-kusi experienced the fallibility of their existing knowledge of children, living and working on the streets (forthcoming: 15). although many images confirmed children’s spoken life-narratives, depicting known journeys in pursuit of livelihoods throughout the day, they also showed more delicate, private and personal moments – moments often inaccessible to researchers. despite the reality of many harsh aspects of their lives, the latter images revealed children in humorous situations, displaying palpable enjoyment and posturing for the camera. they shared moments of mutual compassion, tenderness and friendship (forthcoming: 9). many photographs showed the importance of sleeping and eating for the children. it was particularly the photographs of intimacy, conviviality, reciprocity and mutual support; of sleeping in protective groups; of creating inventive tents from discarded bags that separated sleepers from the street; of children gathering in groups to share food, to pass food to one another, or to eat from a common plate; to shower together in a public shower; that bore out broader forms of sociality. their images demonstrated care, friendship and acts of generosity, thus expanding conceptions of street life in which violence, dirt, a lack of social bonding and unscrupulous forms of individuality were more usually described. reflecting on the process of taking photographs, we may say that it included journeying through an environment, much as deleuze (1997) claims, with a child’s leaning towards an exchange with the world in a multiplicitous environment, the selection and conceptualisation of which aspects of an environment to portray, awareness of the meaningfulness of what is selected, and the physical act of taking a photograph. these are a complex and satisfying set of involvements and mediations upon the world through which self, meanings and the imaginary are enhanced. conclusion the call to incorporate children’s participation is an important intervention in democratic life. its framing in terms of “hearing children’s voices” is more problematic. liberal models of participation presuppose that all that is required is the space for verbalisation, and that words are sufficient to convey experience. this paper therefore raises questions concerning the sometimes assumed accessibility of children’s voices, as well as the conceptualisation of voice as verbal articulation and narrative. in their introduction to the book, makers and breakers: children and youth in post colonial africa, alcinda honwana and filip de boeck (2005: 2) write: children have rarely been listened to, and when their voices are not silenced, their talk is never unconstrained. children’s voices reach a broader platform only in rare, and sometimes tragic, cases, but even then these subaltern voices are often immediately recuperated, transformed, and inserted into different narratives and agendas set by other interest groups. henderson — theorising creative expression in children’s participation 25 we need to be alert to the ways in which “voices” may struggle to emerge and may not be given equal weight in terms of the quality of listening afforded them (reynolds, 1995). forms of children’s participation generated in relation to policy formulation or state governance may patronise children by involving them in only a small portion of a much larger, pre-determined social process in which power unequivocally rests in the hands of adults, and through whom a terrain has already been laid out. this leaves little room for surprise, including the surprise of what children know and how they know and represent it. the terms of child participation may become a self-fulfilling prophecy that disables children’s critique of their everyday world. i have argued that performance genres and creative acts offer young people powerful ways of exploring and articulating their concerns. diana taylor (2007: 2-3) contends that they “function as vital acts of transfer, transmitting social knowledge, memory, and a sense of identity through reiterated, or what richard schechner has called ‘twice-behaved behaviour’”. through the specific examples of innovative research methods i have drawn upon in the paper, i have therefore pointed out how unusual forms of participation promote embodied experiences that generate meaning, and at times forms of transcendence, through imagining possibilities beyond current experience. the ways in which the young may perform, enact or externalise their experience generates semiotic depth, drawing on often “hidden” capabilities rooted in local forms of comportment and expression. in exploring creative methods of engaging with children and young people in collaborative processes of immersion, self-reflection and self-representation, i have suggested that such processes are powerful and enjoyable forms of participation, with a range of possible applications and effects in the lives of children, and that do not simply instrumentalise children’s participation, but offer them an opportunity to engage in ways that have meaning for their own lives. in taking the latter approach, i have argued against a narrow formulation of what participation may entail by challenging normative assumptions that children’s voices are immediately accessible, that children are unaware of the world around them, and that they cannot offer critical assessments of world-making and events. in light of the above critique creative methodologies are likely to elicit important and sometimes unexpected perspectives. references abaqophi bas’ okhayeni abaqinile, growing up in a time of aids children’s radio project: cd-rom volume 2. 2007. cape town: children’s institute, zisize educational trust and okhayeni primary school. bray r, gooskens i, kahn l, moses s & seekings j. 2010. growing up in the new south africa: childhood and adolescence in post-apartheid cape town. cape town: hsrc press. clacherty g & welvering d 2006. the suitcase stories: refugee children reclaim their identities. cape town: double story. comoroff j & comoroff, j 2005. reflections on liberalism, policulturalism and id-ology: citizenship and difference in south africa. in sl robins (ed), limits to liberation after apartheid: citizenship, governance and culture.cape town: david philip. csordas t (ed) 1994. embodiment and experience: the existential ground of culture and self. new york: cambridge university press. csordas t 2002. body/meaning/healing (contemporary anthropology of religion). houndmills, new york: palgrave macmillan. das v 1997. language and body: transactions in the construction of pain. in a kleinman, v das, m lock (eds), social suffering. berkeley: university of california press. das v 2007. life and words: violence and the descent into the ordinary. oxford: oxford university press. deleuze g 1997. what children say. in dw smith & ma greco (transl), essays critical and clinical. minnesota: university of minnesota press. henderson p c 2006. south african aids orphans: examining assumptions around vulnerability from the perspective of rural children and youth. childhood 12(3): 303-327. perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201126 honwana a & de boeck f 2005. makers and breakers: children and youth in postcolonial africa. oxford: james currey. langer l 1997. the alarmed vision: social suffering and holocaust atrocity. in a kleinman, v das & m lock (eds), social suffering. berkeley: university of california press. mauss m 2007. techniques of the body. in m lock & j farquar (eds), beyond the body proper: reading the anthropology of material life. durham [n. c.]: duke university press. merleau-ponty m 1962. phenomenology of perception, (transl.), c smith. london: routledge & kegan paul. merleau-ponty m 1968. the visible and the invisible, (transl.), a lingis. evanston: north western university press. meintjes h & giese s 2006. spinning the epidemic: the making of mythologies of orphanhood in the context of aids. childhood: a global journal of child research, 13(3): 407-430. mizen p & ofosu-kusi y forthcoming. at work in the street: the case of the ‘kubolo’. paper presented at the living rights seminar, institut universitaire kurt bosch, sion, switzerland, 19-20 january 2009. povinelli e 2006. the empire of love: towards a theory of intimacy, genealogy and carnality. london: duke university press. reynolds p 1991. ‘dance, civet cat’: child labour in the zambezi valley. london: zed books. reynolds p 1995.‘not known because not looked for’: ethnographers listening to the young in southern africa. ethnos 60(3&4):193-221. ross f 2003. bearing witness: women and the truth and reconciliation commission in south africa. london: pluto press. robins, s l (ed) 2005. limits to liberation after apartheid: citizenship, governance and culture. cape town: david philip. seremetakis c n (ed) 1996. the senses still: perception and memory as material culture in modernity. boulder: westview press. sontag s 2002. on photography. london: penguin books. stein p 2007. multimodal pedagogies in diverse classrooms: representation, rights and resources. london: routledge. stein p 2006. fresh stories. in s nutall (ed), beautiful ugly: african and diaspora aesthetics. cape town; kwela books. stoller p 1997. sensuous scholarship. philadelphia: university of pennsylvania press. taylor d 2007. the archive and the repertoire: performing cultural memory in the americas. durham: duke university press. von leires b 2005. marginalisation and citizenship in post-apartheid south africa. in sl robins (ed), limits to liberation after apartheid: citizenship, governance and culture. cape town: david philip. 64 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 adolescents’ perceptions of an adventure-based programme r o n e l b o sc h educational psychologist, w indhoek, n amibia bosch@ iw ay.na m a r ietjie o sw a ld d epartment of educational psychology, stellenbosch university, south a frica a qualitative study was undertaken to explore the perceptions of youth regarding their wilderness rites of passage experience and its value for their lives. the researchers operated in an interpretive/ constructivist paradigm and em ployed a q ualitative research m ethodology. participants were selected through purposive sam pling, and individual interviews, docum ents, records, observations and reflections were used to collect data. d ata w e re a nalysed by m eans of content analysis. w e argue that participation in a wilderness rites of passage program m e can contribute to the personal growth and developm ent of youth at risk of experiencing or m anifesting em otional or behavioural difficulties in schools. the research findings indicate that wilderness rites of passage program m es can contribute significantly towards school support for young people. the findings also highlight the fact that young people in the south african context are in need of caring school com m unities and adult mentorship. young people are in need of support, discipline and g uidance, as well as experiences of trust, love and care. school environm ents should change from being p laces of disappointm ent to being places of safety and growth. such a culture of care could possibly curb the anger, resentment and distrust of the youth and support learners who are experiencing or m ani festing em otional or behavioural difficulties in schools. k eyw ords: adolescents; adult mentorship; adventure based education; caring school communities; emotional and behavioural difficulties; wilderness rites of passage introduction a qualitative study was undertaken to explore the perceptions of adolescents regarding an adven ture based education programme, or more specifically, a wilderness rites of passage encounter, and the perceived long term impact on their lives in terms of outcomes. relevant background information with regard to exploring the need for supportive strategies and various alternative modes of intervention related to young peo ple, such as adventure based mediums, is provided in this section. t he shift in paradigms in the philosophy of science, from the positivist to the social constructivist perspective, has led to a related shift in education and psy chology. w ithin the new p aradigm, emotional and behavioural difficulties in youth are no longer defined from a medical deficit perspective, which emphasises the control and p unishment of in appropriate behaviour (steyn, 2005). t he emphasis has shifted towards a human rights and develop mental, strength based and restorative perspective, which aims at educating and reclaiming youth at risk of manifesting challenging behaviour (steyn, 2005; w ced , 2005a). south africa consequently ratified the u nited nations convention on the rights of the child (un icef, 1990) in 1995 (allsopp & t humbadoo, 2002), as expressed in the b ill of rights in the constitution of the republic of south africa act, 1996 (act 108/1996). in adherence to the rights recognised in the convention, south african policy and legislation emphasise that children must be protected fro m any form of psychological or physical violence, injury or abuse (d oe, 2000). corporal punishment was duly abolished by the n ational e ducation p olicy a ct, 1996 (act 27/1996) and the south african schools act, 1996 (act 84/1996). t he african charter on the rights and w elfare of the child (1990) supported this move (porteus, vally & ruth, 2001; steyn, 2005). 65perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 t he move away from the traditional use of control and punishment in south africa strengthens the transformation process in education, which supports the nurturing of a culture of respect, tolerance and care, and encourages the building of self discipline, self confidence and self esteem of individuals (doe, 2000; porteus et al., 2001). h owever, the im pact of hiv & aid s, poverty, violence and crime places many children at immense risk of experiencing emotional difficulties and manifesting challenging behaviour (coetzee, 2005; p rinsloo, 2005; zins, e lias & g reenberg, 2003). challenging behaviour in schools is one of the major problems that south african teachers have to face (prinsloo, 2005). t he abolition of corporal punishment has left many school teachers without alternatives to deal effectively with unacceptable learner behaviour. violence, vandalism, bullying and disruptive classroom behaviour undermine instruction, create environments that are not con ducive to learning and pose a threat to the school population (luiselli, putnam, handler & feinberg, 2005). t his situation calls for the implementation of alternative disciplinary practices and proce dures to educate and reclaim vulnerable learners (w ced , 2004). in striving towards improving the situation, the w estern cape education d epartment (w ce d) aims “to combat the root causes of crime and violence by assisting schools in their efforts to become centres of excellence with strong community links to promote youth development” (w ce d , 2005b: 1). such efforts will contribute to a positive culture of learning and teaching in schools and a safe and orderly school environment promoting “academic excellence, positive socialisation, responsible citizenship, and healthy lifestyles” (coetzee, 2005:185). strong community links and intersectoral collaboration are essential to support schools in their efforts to become reclaiming environments in order to promote the well being of children (w ced , 2005a). t herefore, supportive strategies and various alternative modes of intervention should be explored in order to assist schools and ensure the sustained impact of the school’s reclaiming environment. in this article we present a wilderness rites of passage programme, as an adventure based edu cation medium, to illustrate that it may be considered as an intervention strategy to support schools. an explanation of the concept ‘wilderness rites of passage’ and a short explication of the theoretical underpinnings are given, followed by an outline of the research design, the consolidated data themes with salient extracts from the raw data and a discussion of the findings. theoretical framework according to the literature, the overall emphasis of wilderness rites of passage programmes falls on strengths, the discovery of potential, development of competence and nurturing resilience (d avis, 2003; neill & dias, 2001; russell, 1999; steyn, 2005). jordan (2006) argues that resilience resides in the capability to significantly and meaningfully connect with others. all people have a need to be appreciated and to contribute to the well being of others. t herefore, mutually growth fostering connection is the key to resilience. m iller and striver (in jordan, 2006:82) emphasise that “[g]rowth fostering connections are characterised by mutual empathy and mutual empowerment”. t his is congruent with the aims of positive psychology which seeks to foster personal development and growth, psychological wellness and optimal functioning (linley & joseph in sheard & golby, 2006). sheard and golby (2006:5) define positive psychology as “a constellation of personality styles (e.g. mental toughness, hardiness, dispositional optimism), positive self concept (e.g. self esteem, self efficacy) and positive emotions and moods (e.g. positive affectivity)”. w ilderness rites of passage programmes are discussed below to illustrate how they adhere to the abovementioned outcomes of positive psychology. a wilderness rites of passage programme as an adventure based education medium conducts a variety of physically or psychologically demanding outdoor activities in a remote and unfamiliar natural setting (h uman, 2006; priest & gass, 1997). t he process engages experiential learning in a group setting and employs real and/or perceived physical or psychological risk (h uman, 2006; k imball & b acon in russell, 2001; priest & gass, 1997). as the group provides emotional safety and support for all members through reciprocal inter 66 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 action and the sharing of strengths and weaknesses, participants’ interpersonal skills, capacity to trust, social responsibility and pleasure in their physical selves and in being with others increase (alvarez & w elsh in m oote & w odarski, 1997; kimball & b acon in russell, 2001). furthermore, by overcoming personal challenges, where competence is tested against various mental, social and physical risks, participants’ sense of self confidence and independence improve (m oote & w odar ski, 1997; priest & gass, 1997). in addition to self discovery and intrapersonal and social deve lopment, wilderness rites of passage program m es also aim at developing awareness and the enjoyment of nature. t hus the wilderness becomes a setting that builds a stronger sense of self and of community, while a connection is fostered with the natural environment (andrews, 1999). b esides the aspect of adventure in the wilderness, the focus also falls on rites of passage. van g ennep (in b ell, 2003) defines the term ‘rite of passage’ as a rite accompanying any kind of change in “social state, age, place, or life cycle stage, such as birth, puberty, marriage, or death” (b ell, 2003:41). t hrough the ages, in many cultures, societies have used rites of passage to facilitate the transition from childhood into adulthood (eliade in gavazzi, alford & m ck enry, 1996), thus forming a foundation of social learning within the community. t he rites of passage were intended to prepare the youth fo r future membership within a society, and for accepting responsibility to participate actively towards maintaining and developing the society (nyerere in pinnock & d ouglas h amilton, 1998). g avazzi et al. (1996) argue that the rites of passage of the pre modern era hold clear implica tions for the post modern era. m any difficulties concerning adolescence in contemporary society are linked to society’s underutilisation of rites of passage. adolescents who are left on their own to find transitional markers from childhood into adulthood, tend to fill the void with informal indicators of adult like behaviours, such as drug taking, alcohol consumption and sexual intercourse (g avazzi et al., 1996; northcote, 2006; w eibel & g rimes in b ell, 2003). such alternative rites of passage behaviours are misguided attempts to mark their transition into adulthood (d avis, 2003). t herefore, rites of passage are incorporated in the wilderness programme as an educational experience utilising the participation of trusted adults. from the above it should be clear that the wilderness rites of passage experience fosters per sonal development and growth, psychological wellness and optimal functioning, all in line with the aims of positive psychology. research supports the role of nature in mental health there is healing power when deep contact is made with nature (d avis, 2003). goldenburg, m cavoy and k lenoaky (2005) found that outdoor adventure experiences contribute to the development and strengthening of important personal values. t hese values have a positive effect on the lives of participants: the transference of skills to everyday life, fostering awareness, the fulfilment of the self, provid ing o pportunities to achieve personal goals, gaining self confidence, and building warm relationships with others. research by cross (2002) in this regard confirmed the nurturing of a sense of community and a sense of belonging. adolescents also gained a stronger sense of self control as they were trusted and supported to make important choices requiring personal accountability. adolescents also became more resilient, confident and socially responsible (clark, m armol, cooley & gathercoal, 2004). in the light of the above it is understandable that contemporary wilderness rites of passage programmes are gaining favour as a potential approach with which to develop healthy and well adjusted individuals and to foster responsible adult behaviour (brendtro, b ockern, clementson & delaney in b ell, 2003; eliade in g avazzi et al., 1996). research design w e undertook this enq uiry in the form of a basic qualitative study which was embedded in an interpretive/constructivist paradigm. t he aim of the study was to investigate the potential value of wilderness rites of passage programmes as a contributing factor towards support for young people in schools. w e were interested in the perceptions of adolescents in the w estern cape concerning their wilderness rites of passage encounter and how they perceived the encounter to have influenced 67perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 their lives. t he fieldwork for this study was conducted in the context of educo africa that focuses on youth development and provides leadership, developmental and intervention programmes through o utdoor and wilderness based experiential learning (steyn, 2005). educo africa’s programmes are rooted in a belief in the “therapeutic power of wilderness, the rich value of dia logue, deep reflection, and rites of passage methodology” (e duco, 2006:1). an environment is created where a meaningful wilderness experience has the potential to promote the perception of self and of the self in relation to others, and to strengthen learning and pro social behaviour, which can be implemented at home and in the community (roberts in steyn, 2005; steyn, 2005). educo africa’s programmes are flexible and planned in collaboration with client agencies in order to meet the needs of young people. t he programmes usually offer opportunities for action learning (experiential education through rock climb ing, abseiling, hiking, and trust and team building challenges) and the development of emotional and spiritual awareness. programmes also include time for group discussions and personal reflection (steyn, 2005). for this study we used a purposive sampling strategy to select participants. t he predetermined criteria for selecting participants were young males who had previously participated in the educo africa wilderness rites of passage programmes within the 24 months preceding the interviews. t he participants were originally referred to educo africa by child and youth care agencies. it was felt that these young people, who had experienced various psychosocial difficulties, could benefit from outdoor based capacity building interventions. t he young people had to be younger than 23, as this is recognised as the end of adolescence (kroger, 2007). since wilderness rites of passage encounters for males and females can differ, we decided to focus on encounters featuring m ales only. m ale participants were more accessible, as an analysis of profiles showed that educo africa’s wilderness rites of passage programmes for vulnerable youth received more male participants than females. q ualitative data collection methods included a review of literature, in depth interviews with past participants, a review of documents, such as background information on the organisation and various activities, as well as a training guide and systems handbook and observation and reflection notes taken during the research process. educo africa provided us with the 50 minute v ision to d ream t v documentary which was broadcasted by sa b c t v on freedom day in april 2006. t he documentary, based on the life of coleridge d aniels and his and educo africa’s wilderness rites of passage work with vulnerable youth, provided a step by step description of such an encounter at the g root w interhoek outdoor leadership centre. five participants who formed part of the documen tary were available to be interviewed. t hree participants of other encounters that did not form part of the documentary were also interviewed in order to get a variety of views. t he preferred language of each participant was used during the interview. in the case where x hosa was the participant’s first language, english as the second language was used. since all the participants, who were x hosa first language users, had a full command of english, a translator was not used. content analysis was used to reveal themes that were constructed from the data. according to patton (2002:453), content analysis refers “to any qualitative data reduction and sense making effort that takes a volume of qualitative material and attempts to id entify core consistencies and mean ings”. t he themes constructed from the data were evidence with which to substantiate the arguments about our emerging knowledge claims (henning, van rensburg & smit, 2004; rubin & rubin, 2005). t he e thical code of professional conduct of the professional board for psychology (in b abbie & m outon, 2001) has been the guiding principle for this study. informed consent was gained from educo africa and the participants individually; voluntary participation was ensured; by showing the participants respect and protecting their identities, care was taken not to harm them in any way. finally, the research report was compiled in an accurate, objective and clear way in order for the reading public to understand and gain benefit from the research findings. findings consolidated data themes derived from the analysis of the research data were the following: ‘t he 68 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 wilderness experience’, ‘t he journey inward and outward’ and ‘schools as havens in challenging contexts’. the wilderness experience according to the participants, the following factors had the greatest impact on their lives: being in the wilderness, participating in team building initiatives, keeping a daily journal, attending circle time, going on a solo and participating in adventure challenge activities. t he young people reported that there were very few distractions in the wilderness, which enabled them to focus on essential things. t hey mentioned that the communities where they came from did not allow for time to become still and listen to oneself, as emphasised by one of the young people: in the wilderness you can think norm ally. you realise things. h ere you hear lot of noise, music, here you do, you don’t think. wilderness is fine when you want to think. o ne can do your own thing. you relax there. nothing is disturbing you, it is special. (p 6) t he natural environment was experienced as a source of inspiration and freedom. one participant mentioned that he could almost hear the trees talking and in that encounter he found new ideas. another shared the following: … on the last day at base camp, early in the m orning, i was sitting there and was watching the sun com ing up. i said to myself … this thing was beautiful. it was the beautiness of the place that set me free. (p 5) t he young people often talked about the cold and rainy weather. t he exposure to the elements and unfamiliar surroundings increased their sense of vulnerability and forced them to participate and cooperate. t hey felt that they had to rely on one another in order to survive. t he following response highlights one participant’s perception of the importance of teamwork when facing the natural elements: in the wilderness i enjoyed seeing us struggling in the rain, how nice it was to be together and working together … how nice it was to see how we worked together when it was raining and how we were looking after one another. (p 2) d ifferent team building activities, such as low ropes courses and icebreaker games, were used to enhance the building of team spirit. o ne participant described these activities and remarked that success depended on mutual trust and the ability to work together as a team and stay focused: the ropes w as for building trust. you need to put the person through the rope to the other side … it’s about trust and teamwork and focus. w e did it in groups not one by one … it’s all about team work. (p 7) coming from different backgrounds and cultures did not stop the young men from achieving a sense of brotherhood. g etting to know one another and becoming friends turned their lives around. t hey looked out for one another, motivating each other not to give up, but to press on and draw on the strength of the group. t ogether they had the power to complete the course. one of the participants summarised it thus: we did not know each other and now com ing together and bonding like that. it was like we all had the power. there were no one of us w ho w as giving up, we were all com m itting ourselves to finishing the camp that was nice because if one of us said no, i’m going hom e now because the cam p is hard, we will m otivate him to do the right thing and we did. it was very hard but we did it together, we worked as a group, as a team . (p 8) a growing sense of trust in one another and in the instructo rs helped participants to share their stories. t he majority highlighted the importance of receiving and also giving love and empathy. t hese trusting relationships created a platform of understanding and empathy where they co uld share their experiences with others and grow within themselves, as demonstrated by the following response: what helped m e was to com m unicate with other people. that is the m ain thing. every tim e in 69perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 the wilderness we talked and talked and shared our experiences. it was like being in another world … just us. (p 5) d uring the course, the young men were encouraged to keep a journal of what they were feeling and experiencing. journaling gave them the opportunity to reflect upon their lives, to gain understanding and learn from their experiences. o ne participant indicated that these times of reflection helped him to grow as he allowed himself to write, or even talk, about matters that were on his mind: when you walk you think about that thing. it is a tim e to grow for m e … if you do activities like writing on a piece of paper all your pain, to read your pain, sometim es if you don’t want to read it you can take your paper and say it, you can feel it. every tim e you talk, som ething is com ing off your shoulders, every tim e you talk. (p 5) d uring the solo, participants had to spend time alone in the wilderness. t his forced them to face their fears. t he young people said that they had an incredible sense of risk as they were exposed to the elements and to animals like snakes, wild cats and baboons. b eing left on their own, they had to rely on themselves and had to find solace on their own. w hereas they experienced the solo as ter rifying at first, they gradually managed to find peace as the hours went by. t hey could then allow thoughts and feelings of the past to emerge to be meditated upon. as they left the past behind they were able to focus on the present and the future. t he young men reported that this brought relief. o ne participant shared the following: m y position was under the big rocks. i was hungry and told m yself do not think about food. before i go to sleep in the evening, i was sitting with the, what do you call it, things on the m ountains, i was sitting and they were around m e. it shows m e that nature welcomed us, the wild cats, they w ere around us, they w ere doing nothing, not attacking us. i was alone. i could relieve m y m ind from what was pressing on it and i think where i was at and on what i had to focus and what will happen in the future. (p 4) t he young people experienced the abseiling activity as very scary. t hey indicated that once they surmounted this fear, they felt proud of who they were and what they had achieved. t he participants mentioned that their success freed them from past failures and the hesitancy to face new challenges because of the fear of failure. abseiling became their symbol of success. it made them determined to transfer what they had learned in this situation to other difficult situations that they might have to face in the future. in relation to the abseiling activity, one participant emphasised that believing in oneself played a major role in achieving something: i will always remember that thing, you was [sic] on top of the m ountain a nd then you com e down. abseiling, it was nice to see i can do it. yoh, it was scary. the courage edge teached [sic] me you m ust believe in yourself. w hen you tell yourself to do som ething then nothing can stop you. i was scared. i think i cannot do it, i’m going to fall but then i do it, i go, i go, i was scared but when i’m down i see nothing was to be scared for. (p 6) the journey inward and outward t he participants indicated that the course supported them to develop within themselves, to gain life skills, to change their outlook and improve their relationships. h aving had the opportunity to leave the past behind, the participants felt that they had gained awareness and greater understanding of life. one participant mentioned that many things changed because he had the opportunity to let go of past things that were hampering him. letting go increased his awareness and ability to start anew: a lot of stuff was different afterwards. before i went i was short tempered. when i cam e back i was m ore aware, i understand more. there was a lot of stuff that i was carrying around with m e but i left it there. these things were left behind. it is done with. (p 1) t he opportunity to let go of troublesome thoughts and feelings in the wilderness also changed the young people’s attitudes towards other people. t hey realised that they were not the only ones who suffered but learned that other people also experience difficulties. t heir awareness of their own suffering and the realisation that others might also suffer, evoked empathy and care for other people. 70 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 t he participants repo rted that they had gained decision making skills. t hey became aware that impulsive decisions could have unexpected consequences. t he one participant responded wisely by comparing decision making to a key: … decision making is the key of the box. that i will never forget, you cannot open a box if you haven’t made a decision and that i will always carry w ith m e. it is key, you have to decide what the wrong thing will be. that’s why i will always carry it with m e. i will not make a decision and then i do not know where it will take m e. (p 2) o ther participants felt that having to trust and rely on one another in the wilderness increased their social skills and taught them how to manage their anger and develop their leadership and commu nication abilities. t he response of one participant was: it was really good to be aw ay from the city. i got to learn about m yself, m y inner self, and how to control myself, my anger, everything. i learned how to trust, it was all about trust. team work and trust. (p 8) t he young people stated that they had learnt to focus on the positive. t hey realised that their existence was not meaningless but that they did have a purpose in life and that it was not too late to make a turn in a positive direction to pursue their goals and fulfil their purpose. t hey realised that instead of waiting for opportunities to come their way, they had to stand on their own two feet and make their own dreams come true: i changed. i couldn’t see things that w as right for m e, only sm oking the dagga and stealing. there i said to myself try to stick w ith the rig ht not the wrong. after i stick with the right, things changed. i changed inside. i don’t want to do any drugs anym ore. i stopped sm oking. you need to listen to yourself and need to think very well. the cam p changed m y life, so m any things changed. like the person i’m now, was because of the cam p. (p 7) participants reported that they had learnt to respect and appreciate people for who they are. t hey mentioned that, upon returning to their neighbourhoods, their relationships with family and friends, and people in general, changed. after a while, people sensed the respect they showed them and started asking about their attitude change. o ne participant shared the following: … at first me and my fam ily never com m unicated. when they sit together, m aybe they are talking, it was boring, i just go. when i cam e back it w as nice. it did help to sit with them, stay at hom e, watching tv together, eating together and other normal things to do, not like before, before i never did that. (p 6) the need for schools as havens in challenging contexts t he participants mentioned that schools should be more aware of the impact of systemic factors on the lives of young people. young p eo ple also identified the need for the fostering of emotional connections to the self and others, as well as an increasing need for mentorship. t he young people indicated the impact that the environment at home and at school had on their school careers. one participant shared that his home and neighbourhood became a place of disap pointment where he lost his dreams and sense of purpose: when i ran away from hom e i was six years old. i went to the street asking money to people and also lying, saying all fam ilies are dead so they would feel asham ed of us. i had a dream , now i have ghosts, my dream was to go out there, to be the first black m an here in a frica who is an astronaut, but it didn’t happen. the youth, lot of them doesn’t go to school; they are just here around. (p 8) another participant gave a beautiful descriptive image of the impact of the home context on young people. h e explained that conditions at home can place young people in tight situations, which cause “knots” inside them. once they move away into other contexts, such as the community or school enviro nm ent, youth tend to manifest challenging behaviour patterns at inappropriate times and places. people will then brand these young people as problem children, unaware of the fact that their challenging behaviour is only a way of releasing the home related stress inside of them. t he effect 71perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 of the stress is thus transferred from home to different environments: it makes a knot and once you get out of the tight situation then you want to spread it to others at a difficult tim e and in the wrong place and when it com es out people w ill say they are problem kids but when they are at hom e they are norm al kids but at hom e they are forced into a knot. (p 2) it can thus be gathered that young people in schools can benefit if teachers and other significant people realise that youth do not necessarily demonstrate emotional and behavioural difficulties without a reason. t eachers and caregivers need to understand that challenging behaviour can be an attempt to release the pent up stress and negative emotions and thoughts. it may be the language they use in asking for support from adults. if their plea is ignored, disillusionment may lead to young people dropping out of school. however, participants reported that leaving school is not a good op tion, for life outside school is difficult, especially when living on the streets. one of the participants explained it as follows: i don’t want to live on the street because you are only in trouble and the police catches you, you don’t have a pozzie, you don’t know w here to go. it changes you inside. there is drugs everywhere. youth need to listen to them and need to think very well because being o n the street brings you nowhere, you get sick and sm oke too m uch you don’t wash and don’t have clothes to wear, no warm blankets, nothing. (p 4) t he young people expressed their concern for youth in schools and felt that they need opportunities to establish trusting relationships. t hey acknowledged that some young people do not allow others to come too close to them or to talk about their feelings and the things that trouble them. t hey could relate to this from their own past b ut said that connections with other young people and op portunities to share their stories enabled them to let go of the pain that was keeping them bound to the past. t herefore, connection to others can result in positive change and encouragement in youth: when you’re bonding w ith other people your life can turn around, it is not bad influence, it is good influences. (p 5) … it is very important to be in contact with som eone close to your heart that w ill lift you every tim e. (p 2) furthermore, it was felt that youth in schools need to feel supported by adults. t he young people mentioned that the people who encouraged them and displayed confidence in their potential, in spired and motivated them. y outh in school, therefore, need supportive and nurturing adults who have faith in them, who are willing to reach out to them and to spread hope, show love, earn trust and have compassion. h owever, the stories shared regarding their experiences at school revealed that the young people perceived teachers in general as unsympathetic, lacking understanding, having low expectations of learners, focusing on negative rather than on positive aspects of learners, having inflexible attitudes towards learners with learning problems and demonstrating unwillingness to provide appropriate learning support. t he youth stated that learners showed a lack of interest in schoolwork partly because they experienced the schoolwork as irrelevant to their circumstances but also because of the lack of motivation with which teachers presented the subject content. t hey said that teachers ridiculed learners in front of classmates and that learners teased and bullied peers. h owever, the participants could also remember a few teachers who had faith in them and who made life easier in school with their caring and supportive attitudes. another concern of the young people in this study was that the youth have negated their true selves and their life’s purpose. y oung people are in search of answers to questions such as “w ho am i?” and “w here am i going?” y outh, therefore, need guidance in this matter. reflection can be a very rewarding tool for young people when they start exploring their intimate thoughts. one of the participants had this to say: am i a person who likes to judge what other people do, w ho like to say you will never be better than me, who like to say you’ll never m ake it? d o i believe in m yself? d o i trust m yself in what i do in my life? d o i love m yself? do i pretend myself that i am a good person? am i a learner or a destroyer? (p 8) 72 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 w ith the help of adult mentors, youth can gain self knowledge and become more aware of their purpose in life. finding a purpose can give meaning to their lives and help youth in schools to be set free from their unhappy past. t he participants agreed that youth in schools can benefit greatly by having a mentor who can guide them towards a new beginning, which can break the patterns of challenging behaviour. it can also support emotional difficulties in youth, because of the inner transformation and the focus on powerfully living with a purpose. discussion of the findings t he children’s amendment b ill of the republic of south africa 2006 states that prevention and early intervention programmes must focus on promoting the well being of children and the realisa tion of their full potential. it focuses on strengthening and building children’s capacity and self reliance with respect to addressing problems that may occur or are bound to occur. resilience increases the cap acity of children and youth to alleviate the negative influence of environmental stressors and, therefore, plays an essential role in the support of learners who are manifesting ex periencing, emotional or behavioural difficulties or are at risk of doing so. since south african policy and legislation require that school communities respond to challenging behaviour in a de velopmental and restorative way, schools can benefit by employing interventions that guide youth towards pro social and responsible behaviour, whilst fostering resilience. t he research findings arrived at in this study revealed that the completion of the wilderness rites of passage process fostered personal development and growth in terms of individual charac teristics and the building of caring and supportive relationships with peers and adults. t his is consistent with the literature that states that participation in wilderness rites of passage programmes triggers the development of the individual through activities aiming to increase self knowledge, to foster intra and interpersonal growth, and to strengthen self esteem, self efficacy and self actu alisation (m eyer & w enger in shread & golby, 2006). in addition to this, the wilderness experience improves participants’ psychosocial functioning by enhancing self esteem. it also enhances life skills in areas such as conflict resolution, problem solving, decision making and communication, and fosters a sense of autonomy, identity and meaning in life (bloemhoff, 2006; m oote & w odarski, 1997; neill & richards in shread & golby, 2006; priest & gass, 1997). all the above outcomes are in line with positive p sychology and its sub disciplines with the focus falling on “building positive qualities” (strümpfer, 2005:23) and ways of enhancing psycho logical well being (strümpfer, 2005). r yff and k eyes (in ryan & d eci, 2001) present the concept of psychological well being as a multidimensional approach that “taps six distinct aspects of human actualisation” (ryan & deci, 2001:142). ryff (1989) indicates that the core dimensions of psycho logical well being are self acceptance, positive relations with others, autonomy, environmental mastery, purpose in life and personal growth. t hese constructs have been identified as outcomes upon completion of the wilderness rites of passage process. completion of the programme resulted in enhanced resilience and psychological well being for the participants. t his is in line with south african policy and legislation which clearly state that prevention and early intervention programmes must focus on promoting the well being of child ren and the realisation of their full potential. t herefore, wilderness rites of passage programmes as a culture fair medium could be considered as a major contributing factor towards school support for young people of all cultures at risk of experiencing, or manifesting, emotional and behavioural difficulties. in line with cohen and sandy’s (2003) findings, the findings from this study further suggest that a protective and supportive learning environment can foster characteristics that build resilience and enhance psychological well being in young people. according to the literature scho ols can present a setting and offer a unique opportunity where children who face many environmental risks can find structure and shelter (d oll in t aub & pearrow, 2006). n oddings (in d oyle & d oyle, 2003) argues that there is a need to create a school culture of care. she states that schools that operate as caring communities shape caring relationships among individuals, engage children in values such 73perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 as respect and responsibility, and encourage children to care for others (noddings in b aker & b ridger, 1997). joseph and efron (2005) argue that a caring community focuses on nurturing rela tionships and allows emotional attachment, mutual respect and support. individuals immersed in a sense of community are more likely to act altruistically, develop social and emotional competencies and be academically motivated. t he research findings also show that youth can benefit greatly when engaged in relationships with adults that provide emotional connection, personal involvement and trust, acceptance and gui dance. as such relationships are often not available or are not formed in the home environment, and since young people spend a significant amount of time in schools, portwood, ayers, kinnison, w aris and w ise (2005) argue that schools provide an obvious setting where youth mentoring can be promoted. t he literature emphasises that mentors are essential in the lives of young people. youth in search of answers to questions such as “w ho am i?” and “w here am i going?” need the guidance of adults (davis, 2003). in describing the psycho social crisis of identity versus role confusion, erikson (in kroger, 2007) claims that interaction with others leads to the development of self awareness or personal identity (see also newman in carr, 2006). erikson (in m oote & w odarski, 1997:147) describes identity as “having a clear sense of who one is and where one is going”. kroger (2007) argues that the stage of forming identity lays the groundwork for entry into adult life. davis (2003) believes that adolescents need support, structure and guidance to successfully complete the transition from childhood to adulthood and to gain specific knowledge, specialised skills and positive character traits. t he development of a relationship that p ro vides emotional safety and protection, personal involvement, trust and acceptance may promote a sense of being important to a significant other, thereby strengthening self esteem and other aspects of psychological well being (harter; short, sandler & roosa in dubois & silverthorn, 2005, visser, 2006). school based mentoring programmes will not only effect change in the individual but will also impact the school as a whole as it contributes to a sense of community. a sense of community will foster a sense of belonging and connectedness to the school. t his will serve as a factor that protects against adverse behaviours (simons m orton, crum, h aynie & saylor in portwood et al., 2005). y oung people who form positive bonds with their school will m ost likely choose to engage in various pro social behaviours. t hey will turn away from challenging behaviours such as fighting, bullying and truancy and improve in their attitudes towards self, others and school (simons m orton et al. in portwood et al., 2005). limitations t his study had certain limitations that need to be addressed in future research. t he first limitation relates to the transformation of the participants’ experiences on the course to their everyday lives once they are back in their communities. in this study, the researcher focused mainly on the effect of the experience. t he manner in which participants transferred their wilderness experiences to their everyday lives was not the focus of this study. m ore follow up interviews with the participants might have determined how the transference took place. t he quality of the research could have been enhanced by doing this. t he second limitation is related to the fact that the research population in this study consisted exclusively of young males. educo africa’s wilderness rites of passage programmes for vulnerable youths also cater for young females. it is important to note that since the programmes can differ, males and females attend separate courses. in general, educo africa’s programm es receive more male than female participants. m ale participants are therefore more accessible. it is interesting to note that in the past, educo africa presented programmes for wilderness rites of passage for females in provinces other than the w estern c ap e. t he researchers focused on young males in this study because there was great emphasis on documents of the w estern cape education department and the researchers felt that participants should thus be resident in this region. t herefore, in future, the 74 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 research could b e extended to include young females as well as young males in other regions of south africa. conclusion as schools have to cope with increasing numbers of students with emotional and behavioural difficulties, the benefits offered by complementary programmes call for consideration. education needs to embrace a variety of approaches in guiding youth to find constructive ways of expressing their needs and finding purpose in life. m odern day rites of passage and youth mentoring pro grammes can contribute positively to the psychological development and the social functioning of youth. t herefore, wilderness rites of passage may be considered as a potential strategy to support school communities in developing healthy and well adjusted individuals and fostering responsible behaviour in young people. collaborative partnerships between schools and programme managers could assist in the plan ning of wilderness based experiential programmes to bring about prevention or early intervention strategies on a larger scale for a wider range of young people. awareness raising regarding the beneficial contribution in the lives of programme participants could p romote the involvement of prospective funders and make the programme more accessible to vulnerable groups of society in particular. increased school involvement in these programmes can lend appropriate support to ensure sustainability after the completion of the programmes. it is recommended that south african schools start to focus on adopting the notion of caring school communities. t his transformation will require the raising of teacher awareness, departing from punitive measures to regulate learner behaviour, implementing wellness promoting strategies, and establishing an educator support system for learners. t eachers need to be made aware of the benefits of displaying caring and supportive, non judgmental and non threatening attitudes towards learners with emotional and behavioural difficulties. rigid approaches to control or punish challen ging behaviour need to be replaced by flexible approaches that allow for interaction and support, and for building self esteem by nurturing a sense of b elonging, mastery, independence and generosity in learners. since teachers will play an essential role in establishing a culture of care in schools, programmes must be implemented to enhance and support their wellness and efforts (freedman, 2003). individuals seek to satisfy their physical and psychological needs (v an n iekerk, van eeden & b otha, 2001). ignoring these needs in schools can result in learners manifesting disruptive and challenging behaviour. s chools as communities of care can proactively prevent challenging be haviours by fostering the development of physical and psychological capacities in learners to cope successfully amidst intense adversity. schools, therefore, must consider becoming providers of social and emotional reciprocal support by promoting social acceptance and interaction, and positive peer assistance. b oth pre service and in service teacher training requires an awareness of the rights of all children and the lived experience of orphans and vulnerable children. in the professional develop ment of teachers consideration could be given to focusing o n strategies by which to establish positive relationships with youth, and to manage irresponsibility and rebellion by mobilising positive youth involvement. t eachers could also be trained as counsellors to enable them to arrange coun selling interventions when needed. t his will ensure that all learners will have someone to talk to or someone who can support them when necessary. school counselling support groups could col laborate with circles of support in communities. a basic counselling background would equip teachers to create a growth promoting climate in which learners can become what they are capable of becoming. if teachers reflect the attitudes of congruence (genuineness), unconditional positive regard (acceptance and unconditional caring) and empathic understanding, learners will be less de fensive and more open to themselves and their world, and will start behaving in pro social and constructive ways (corey, 2005). t his will enhance the community of care at school. 75perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 references allsopp m & thumbadoo z 2002. child and youth care in post apartheid south africa: innovative responses to the challenges of poverty and aids. the international child and youth care network. retrieved from http://www.cyc net.org/cyc online/cycol 0802 allsopp.html on 2 september 2006. andrews k 1999. the wilderness expedition as a rite of passage: meaning and process in experiential education. the journal of experiential education, 22:35 43. babbie e & mouton j 2001. the practice of social research. cape town: oxford university press. baker ja & bridger r 1997. schools as caring communities: a relational approach to school reform. school psychology review, 26:1 15. bell b 2003. the rites of passage and outdoor education: critical concerns for effective programming. the journal of experiential education, 26:41 50. bloemhoff hj 2006. the effect of an adventure based recreation programme (ropes course) on the development of resiliency in at risk adolescent boys confined to a rehabilitation centre. south african journal for research in sport, physical education and recreation, 28:1 11. carr a 2006. the handbook of child and adolescent clinical psychology: a contextual approach, 2nd edn. london: routledge. children’s amendment bill 2006. b 19b 2006. republic of south africa. clark jp, marmol lm, cooley r & gathercoal k 2004. the effects of wilderness therapy on the clinical concerns (axes i, ii and iv) of troubled adolescents. journal of experiential education, 27:213 232. cohen j & sandy s 2003. perspectives in social emotional education: theoretical foundations and new evidence based developments in current practice. perspectives in education, 21:410 54. corey g 2005. theory and practice of counselling and psychotherapy, 7th edn. belmont: thomson brooks/cole. cross r 2002. the effects of an adventure education program on perceptions of alienation and personal control among at risk adolescents. the journal of experiential education, 25:247 254. davis j 2003. wilderness rites of passage: initiation, growth, and healing. naropa university and school of lost borders. retrieved from http://www.johndavis.com/wild/wrop%2011 26 03.pdf on 2 september 2006. department of education (doe ) 2000. alternatives to corporal punishment. pretoria: department of education. doyle lh & doyle pm 2003. building schools as caring communities why, what, and how? clearing house, 76:1 4. dubois dl & silverthorn n 2005. characteristics of natural mentoring relationships and adolescent adjustment: evidence from a national study. the journal of primary prevention, 26:69 92. educo 2006. “educo about”. http://www.educo.org.za/about/ retrieved on 28 july 2006. freedman j 2003. key lessons from 35 years of social emotional education: how self science builds self awareness, positive relationships, and healthy decision making. perspectives in education, 21:69 80. gavazzi sm, alford ka & mckenry pc 1996. culturally specific programs for foster care youth: the sample case of an african american rites of passage program. family relations, 45:166 174. goldenburg m, mcavoy l & klenosky db. 2005. outcomes from the components of an outward bound experience. the journal of experiential education, 28:123 146. henning e, van rensburg w & smit b 2004. finding your way in qualitative research. pretoria: van schaik publishers. human lh 2006. adventure based experiences during professional training in psychology. 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learners manifesting or at risk of experiencing emotional and/or behavioural difficulties. directorate special education support services. cape town: western cape education department. western cape education department (wced) 2005a. strategy for encouraging positive behaviour and responding to challenging behaviour in public schools. cape town: western cape education department. western cape education department (wced) 2005b. lsos, safe schools tackle truancy. 28 july 2005. western cape education department (wced) online 2006. zins j, elias m & greenberg m 2003. facilitating success in school and in life through social and emotional learning. perspectives in education, 21:55 67. vi editorial what could second-generation research on the doctorate be like? introduction this seminal collection of conceptual and empirical articles on the doctorate propels higher education scholarship in south africa into new territory. we have simply not spent much time thinking about higher degrees and especially not about the doctorate. there is a wealth of scholarship on the governance and organisation of higher education, the founding legislation and policies that govern post-school education after apartheid, the problems of equity, access and success in higher learning given the poverty of the school system, and the persistent legacies of racism and authoritarianism inside universities. the formal arrangements for rearranging universities (mergers and incorporations, for example), inscribing new curriculum codes (the saqa-inspired regulations), assuring quality (the industry spawned by the council on higher education), and transforming patterns of racial enrolments and appointments have all enjoyed considerable “air time” in journals and some books. it was the high-quality research of the centre for research and the authoritative report of the academy of science of south africa – alongside the foresight of individual researchers on the doctorate such as chaya herman – that drew sharp attention to the link between the doctorate, knowledge, economy and development under the tough conditions of an emerging economy. that collection of research provided us with first-generation research on the doctorate, the quantitative platform for understanding simple but crucial things such as how many doctorates are produced where and by whom; where these graduates come from and where they are employed, and – with some strong qualitative snapshots – how they value their doctoral experiences. we now have a solid baseline for longitudinal research on the doctorate and a rich source of data for higher education policy and planning. it would be a very useful starting point for framing related and new questions for masters and doctoral research on the subject. six directions for second-generation research the question now to be asked, of course, is what second-generation research on the doctorate might be like. i want to propose six new directions for the next level of research. first, it is important now to go beyond counting and delve into the quality of doctoral degrees in south africa. there is cause for concern, for example, that some institutions train massive numbers of doctoral students without the supervisory capacity to provide the intensity of guidance and mentorship that the highest degree requires. the sheer volume of doctorates registered at south africa’s premier distance education institution surely demands inquiry into capacity to do justice to the students concerned. the data suggests that, while averages for student:supervisor ratios are high for university staff with doctorates, it might in fact be worse when one accounts for the fact that the burden of supervision falls on a few academics. the financial incentives do not help, for the subsidy income from the state rises significantly for every doctoral graduate than is the case for lower degrees. the quest for professorial promotion in most universities requires that doctoral students must have been supervised to completion. all of these pressures mean that there are real threats to the quality of doctoral degrees in south africa. so what is the internal worth (as opposed to its market value) of the phd? the council on higher education might eventually get to quality assuring the south african phd across institutions, but this call is for serious research that establishes some reliable indices for measuring the quality of the doctorate. this is a sensitive issue, for there are serious differences among universities in terms of the overall quality of institutions and the net quality of the professorial pool by institution. to delve into the quality of the doctorate would invariably draw attention to the deep differences among the more privileged (former white) and the disadvantaged (black) universities. and since south africa’s higher education chiefs still vii believe that all universities can do everything for all students from the baccalaureate to the doctorate, some nasty data can emerge on quality. we could, of course, ignore the problem, and hope no researcher poses inconvenient questions of this kind. but our responsibility is to the students who might very well be short-changed inside institutions struggling to establish well-resourced libraries or to retain the best qualified academic staff or to nurture through the system the most promising honours and masters students into the phd pipeline. secondly, we need a new generation of research that describes and accounts for the epistemological and ideological character of the doctorate. i have made this point often that deep transformation in higher education must move beyond “face equity” as an account of change and take on the hard knowledge questions about what counts in the doctorate. in a study of curriculum trends in teacher education in three cape town universities, joy papier found very distinctive trends in knowledge claims, assumptions and silences across these institutions. nothing wrong with that — but what if we found that underlying the character of knowledge in these institutions in fact carried racial, class and gendered assumptions that were offensive, outdated and simply wrong? this matter was brought to attention in my book knowledge in the blood. what do we teach in universities? how is that reflected in the theses and dissertations? to what extent have we developed new conceptual and methodological lenses for making sense of the colonial and apartheid past? what are the new terrains of curriculum struggle taken on, or ignored, as reflected in the products of doctoral study? how, if at all, has our language or our theoretical frames for describing past and present realities in advanced research changed? this proposed direction for second-generation research has nothing to do with academic freedom or autonomy; academics should remain free to choose their own content and directions for student research in masters and doctoral studies. whether research undertaken is liberal or conservative or radical is not what i am questioning; all three directions, and more, make for healthy universities. but if transformation is to mean anything at all, it has to at least allow for inquiry into what counts as knowledge in the post colony. it cannot assume that because the political order changed, the epistemological order also changed. the deep democratisation of university and society depends crucially on what and how we teach; this remains unexplored territory after apartheid, and courageous researchers are needed to at least pose the knowledge problem. thirdly, we need comparative research on the meanings of the south african doctorate in a global world. how good is the south african phd measured against its counterparts elsewhere? this is important for several reasons, including the fact that the most mobile knowledge workers will be those with doctorates; that the doctorate is the highest academic attainment by which education standards can be compared across nations, and that the doctorate is the best measure of economic attainment within and across national borders. simply comparing the south african doctorate across the 23 universities is already a complex task, given the unevenness of starting quality in national terms; such comparison, however odious to some, must be done anyway as a matter of social justice. but what we also need is a set of indicators, quantitative and qualitative, that enables us to compare the domestic phd with those in countries with strong universities. this is not about ranking; it is about improvement of what we do in relation to the best performers in higher education anywhere. there is no better measure of such comparison in academic terms than the doctorate. fourthly, we need much more textured studies of the sociological meanings of the doctorate within universities but also in the broadest communities outside of the academy. it was clear in the assaf study that a doctorate was not viewed by most as something attainable and necessary in the quest for high-level human capital and economic development. south africa lags behind competitive world economies in this sense; where the doctorate is no longer exceptional but an achievement more and more students regard as worth doing for personal reasons and broader social reasons. our levels of government funding suggest, at the moment, that financial investment is heavily skewed in favour of lower levels of education. that is understandable, given the long history of underdevelopment of education. but, if south africa is to take seriously its assigned status as an emerging economy, then viii higher levels of education need to be regarded as commonplace within the populace. we need studies and strategies that make such acceptance of the doctorate in the broader society a given. fifthly, we need to know what it is within doctoral training that explains its value and significance in the marketplace. there are important curricular and pedagogical implications in this query. if we know what kinds of knowledge, skills, attitudes and attributes the doctorate conveys, we might better design and teach new phd programmes. in other words, it is not enough to know, in an economistic sense, that the doctorate is valued in social and economic life; it is important to know why. there is a sense from the available research that the qualification itself signals high-level competence. it is reasonable to assume that new knowledge is a critical component. but it is suggested in other research – such as the assaf humanities study – that the phd also conveys important soft characteristics such as attitudes to work, confidence, articulatedness, versatility, and teamwork. but we do not know with certainty what those value-added meanings of the phd are, and how they come to light in and through doctoral training. such knowledge could provide evidence for designs emerging in other parts of the world where the technical training in the phd is accompanied by workplace-related modules as part of the students degree preparation. sixthly, we need research that on a scientific basis clarifies the relative value of various kinds of phd preparation programme. in this instance, the major distinction between the american-styled course-based training and the english-styled “thesis only” supervision model needs to be thoroughly evaluated. the south african phd is styled on the old english model of one student supervised by one expert supervisor over long periods of time. it is argued that this intensive model of training is not cost-effective, given the rising demand for doctoral training, and that no one person can contain within their expertise everything a student needs to know through a phd. however, there are also criticisms of the cohort model in which small or even larger groups of students progress through a set curriculum that combines theoretical and methodological training, and that exposes the students to a range of professors in the field. the course-based model co-exists with a full dissertation. the criticisms include the dilution of depth knowledge and supervision in the discipline, and the possible ‘watering down’ of the dissertation because of the distractions of the module-based components of training. this simmering debate, which often appears more ideological than substantive, needs to be laid to rest through research that brings to light the relative value of doctoral training under these two very different models of phd preparation. conclusion first-generation research on the doctorate has provided strong quantitative accounts of the phd with some initial qualitative portraits of what the highest degree in the academy corresponds to and how it is experienced by academics and students. what we now need is to build on this platform of first knowledge and deepen our understandings of how to increase the numbers of doctorates while building high-quality value within the qualification. these six directions offer a possible starting point for such an ambition. jonathan d. jansen (guest editor) pie 33(4) book.indb perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 121 digitising and archiving hiv and aids in south africa: the museum of aids in africa as an archival intervention jenny suzanne doubt the aids epidemic in south africa has demanded interventions from a number of different forums. drawing on theory relating to the archive in post-apartheid south africa and data from the online archive from the museum of aids in africa (maa), this article explores the possibilities and challenges of using digital technologies alongside physical artefacts to intervene in the aids epidemic in south africa by creating a postcolonial aids archive. focusing in particular on the case of the maa, in this article i examine the ability of the maa to act as an archival intervention into the epidemic in two ways. the first of these is through the development of physical and digital archives that prioritise diversity and accessibility in order to reach marginalised constituencies. the second is by breaking the silence about those made most marginalised and vulnerable by hiv and aids through giving them the opportunity to contribute to the museum’s digital content. keywords: aids intervention, digital technology, hiv, post apartheid museology, postcolonial archive, public health introduction in this article i explore how digital technology can be used alongside physical artefacts to create a postcolonial aids archive, and how such an archive might intervene in the south african aids epidemic. i focus in particular on the case of the museum of aids in africa (maa), an initiative that exists in digital form and that is developing plans to build a physical site in south africa. informed by the educational concerns of ngos and government bodies engaged with the aids epidemic in south africa, the maa is, in particular, concerned with curbing hiv prevalence by “building knowledge and understanding about the history, science, and response to the pandemic, to support the ultimate goal of an africa free from aids” (maa, 2015: 2). jenny suzanne doubt university of oxford department of social policy and intervention jenny.doubt@spi.ox.ac.uk perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 122 recent aids scholarship by claire laurier decoteau (2013), kylie thomas (2014), and ellen grünkemeier (2013) identifies the persistence of “the culture of silence that has long surrounded hiv/aids in south africa” (grünkemeier, 2013: 2) and the requirement to “break the silence that shrouds the lives of so many people living with aids by including the stories of their lives in the way they saw fit to tell them” (decoteau, 2013: ix) or “make visible the lives of people living with hiv/aids” (thomas, 2014: 5). this article examines the ability of the maa to act as an archival intervention into the epidemic by building a specifically diverse and accessible aids archive—a physical and digital repository for the collection of knowledge, understandings, and responses to the epidemic—that actively includes those otherwise silent and marginalised aids-affected people. in examining this possibility, i draw, in particular, from cultural geographer cheryl mcewan’s postcolonial archive theory. extending mcewan’s argument for the positive impact of a diverse and accessible postcolonial archive that includes vulnerable communities, i ask what the implications are of introducing technology into the development of a postcolonial aids archive? how does the introduction of technology affect both the operation of the postcolonial archive and the contents that it circulates? the research presented here draws primarily from the maa’s online site1, including users of the museum’s site. this article additionally considers content from the maa’s twitter site (@mofaa), as well as the museum’s brochure (2015, available via pdf from the online site). data is therefore derived from the maa’s archive itself, which is to say content generated by users of the maa’s online site, as well as from the maa’s official pamphlet, which describes its curatorial strategies, articulates its mission statement, and lists its desired holdings. interviews published with one of the museum’s co-founders, stephanie nolen, as well as my own brief correspondence with nolen, supplement this research. as a white, north american woman, i acknowledge my own positionality in producing this research. while i have not worked directly with participants in conducting the specific research towards this article, my analysis has been informed by my experience of working directly with vulnerable individuals affected by hiv and aids in south africa both during my time as a doctoral student (during which the majority of this research was produced) and, since then, as a researcher helping to develop and evaluate a parenting programme for aids-affected families in rural eastern cape, south africa. the article has three sections. it begins with an introduction to the contexts relevant to understanding the museum of aids in africa as an aids intervention. the maa is read as an initiative that embodies both shifts in museology brought about as a result of the transition from apartheid as well as one that meets the requirement of responding to the aids pandemic. this section focuses on plans for the maa’s physical site by examining its potential to intervene in the epidemic by targeting historically marginalised audiences, promoting access to its physical archives, and digitising and archiving hiv and aids in south africa: the museum of aids in africa as an archival intervention jenny suzanne doubt 123 fostering awareness of, and education for, aids-affected audiences through the services it offers. moving away from plans for the museum’s physical site, the second section considers how the introduction of digital technology affects the maa’s ability to intervene in the epidemic through the digital extension of an aids archive consisting of diverse personal experiences of hiv and aids. extending mcewan’s (2003) notion of the postcolonial archive to the maa’s digital operation, this section examines how the mobile technology and interactive virtual spaces designed to reach diverse audiences affected by hiv and aids contribute to the operation of a postcolonial aids archive. the third section takes a closer look at the contents of the maa’s digital aids archives. having established the digital, mobile mechanisms through which to reach and include marginalised and diverse aids-affected audiences, we need to ask what these audiences are contributing. do the personal stories captured by the current digital archives include the voices of unheard marginalised aidsaffected constituencies? do the maa’s digital archives intervene in the epidemic by “break[ing] the silence” (decoteau, 2013: ix)? specific consideration is given to the example of silence around the mourning practices, identified by kylie thomas (2014), of those grieving for aids victims. the article concludes by assessing how the operation and content of an aids archive made more diverse and accessible through digital technology contributes to the maa’s overall remit to contribute to “an africa free from aids” (maa, 2015: 2). 2 public health and museology in post-apartheid south africa before proceeding with a detailed discussion of the maa as an archival intervention, it is necessary to describe the public health and museological contexts out of which the initiative emerged. these contribute an understanding of the maa’s operation in relation to broader interventions into museological practices and into the aids epidemic in the post-apartheid period. by 2003, just before the government rolled out its antiretroviral programme, 770 people per day died of aids in south africa, the majority of whom were african (fassin, 2007). with 2.5 million children who have lost one or both parents to aids in 2012, south africa has one of the largest orphan population caused by aids in the world (unicef, 2013: 80). in 2012, around 6.1 million people were infected with hiv in south africa; there are more people living with hiv here than in any other country in the world (unaids, 2013). the aids epidemic has challenged and tried the individuals and institutions of democratic governance that are responsible for delivering the promise of a “better life for all”3 to south africa’s citizens in the post-apartheid era. the south african government’s handling of the aids epidemic has been characterised by a series of national and international controversies. these include two court cases. in 1998, 42 perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 124 pharmaceutical companies took legal action against the south african government over its medicines and related substances act (see notice of motion in the high court of south africa (transvaal provincial division), case no. 4183/98n), an act that was intended to make essential aids-related medicines more affordable. the case was dropped in 2001 because of international pressure. in 2002, the treatment action campaign (tac) successfully legally challenged the south african government to make nevirapine, the drug used to prevent mother-to-child hiv transmission, publicly available to hiv-infected mothers through state hospitals (see constitutional court of south africa, minister of health et al. versus treatment action campaign et al., case cct 8/02, 5 july 2002). additionally, all three post-apartheid presidents have been criticised for their personal involvement in the failure to arrest the hiv prevalence rate. nelson mandela was accused of negligence for his initially delayed response in mobilising resources against a quickly climbing hiv prevalence rate; thabo mbeki publicly engaged with a group of aids dissidents who denied various biomedical aspects of the relationship of hiv to aids, leading to widespread confusion about how to treat hiv; and jacob zuma’s rape trial added to that confusion when the public record showed that he claimed that he had showered in order to protect himself from hiv transmission after having had sex with an hiv-positive woman. the gravity of the aids epidemic has elicited response and debate in a number of different national and international arenas. in parallel to the political, economic, and medical struggles provoked by the epidemic are those that have emerged from cultural practitioners seeking to intervene in it. cultural interventions include museological initiatives such as not alone (about which i will say more presently), and the museum of aids in africa, both of which aim to educate and promote awareness about different experiences of hiv and aids. a brief description of not alone provides context for other museological initiatives (such as the maa) that have taken aids in south africa as their subject. originally conceived of in the united states, not alone first opened in los angeles in 2008. the exhibition is designed to travel to different countries where its aids-related content is then adapted to reflect areas of national concern. the exhibition’s overall message of “international solidarity” (iziko museums of south africa, 2009: n.p.) is, however, maintained in all host countries. the 2009–2010 south african adaptation of the exhibition was curated by carol brown and david gere for two iconic cape town public spaces—the castle and slave lodge. both not alone and the maa adopt distinctly post-apartheid museological practices in curating their aids-related material. these decisions reflect, in part, key changes in post-apartheid policy. the 1989 policy that arose out of the conference “museums in a changing and divided south africa” held in pietermaritzurg in 1987, committed the south african museums’ association (sama) to transforming south africa’s museums in line with the democratic changes that were taking place. at the forefront of these transformations was the intention to address “discriminatory museum practices that reinforced apartheid legislation” (coombes, 2003: 300). digitising and archiving hiv and aids in south africa: the museum of aids in africa as an archival intervention jenny suzanne doubt 125 this would grow to include the responsibility of museums to provide relevant and educational programmes that reflect the diversity of south africa’s populations. in the post-apartheid era, representations of the aids epidemic reflect a key concern facing a large and diverse sector of the south african population. curating aids material in spaces that emphasise political change, in turn, has an impact on how the cultural texts are read and received as intervention. the spaces for the not alone exhibition—a slave-holding space and the oldest colonial building in south africa— once epitomised the oppressive and exclusive practices associated with apartheid legislation. in adapting these spaces for the exhibition of aids content, the curators challenge audiences to consider the political and social discriminatory practices of the epidemic. the apartheid histories of the castle and slave lodge are therefore significant in conveying the political and activist potential of artworks that seek to overturn many of the damaging health policies and social attitudes associated with the escalation of the epidemic in the post-apartheid period. the spaces that the not alone exhibition inhabits therefore help position the aids epidemic in relation to south africa’s struggle history as the new struggle of the post-apartheid era. many of the exhibition’s artworks also contribute to this effect, engaging an activist tone, referencing historical civil campaigns and political protest around the acquisition of antiretroviral drugs (arvs), or directly addressing the scientific misunderstandings and silences that characterise many people’s experience of hiv in south africa. much of the exhibition’s content emphasises social and political protest in order to convey that persons living with hiv are not alone in their battle against the alienating and stigmatising aspects of the epidemic. the effect contributes to the exhibition’s interventionist quality; it attempts to galvanise audiences into action, while challenging (mis)understandings and social behaviours relating to the operation of the epidemic in south africa. the museum of aids in africa is similarly designed to intervene in the epidemic by educating and promoting awareness about the epidemic in africa in reclaimed formerly colonial spaces. based in south africa, the maa was registered as an ngo in 2012 by co-founders canadian-south african museological consultant ngaire blankenberg and canadian journalist stephanie nolen. the maa currently operates primarily in the digital medium, and is the first online museum dedicated entirely to hiv and aids. the project brings together digital technology, educational facilitators, hiv and aids grief counsellors, and museologists in order to realise its vision of “building knowledge and understanding about the history, science and response to the pandemic, to support the ultimate goal of an africa free from aids” (maa, 2015: 2). the project understands itself to be a museum since [m]useums are places where communities, societies and countries preserve, in public trust, the objects, documents, photos and stories they deem to be of value. they are spaces to meet people, gather communities and strengthen relationships. they are places that impart knowledge and stimulate learning; perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 126 they can provoke wonder, pride, inspiration and curiosity. museums are places to help us remember. (maa, 2015: 4) much like not alone, plans for the maa’s physical spaces include reclaiming the empty spaces of previously colonial african museums throughout the continent. in an interview, nolen remarked that these disused museum spaces will be used to house the maa’s “travelling [pop up] exhibitions” (stone, 2012: n.p.). the intention is to make relevant, educational, and accessible information about hiv and aids available to post-colonial audiences who have otherwise been historically excluded from the museum-going public. the maa is also developing plans to build a 3,500 m2 physical home for the museum in south africa in 2016. this development will house the museum’s activities, including showcasing performances, films, and artworks of people living with hiv and aids, and its permanent holdings. the maa’s aim to repatriate an assembly of african-origin items relating to the aids epidemic in africa in order to expand its archival holdings delineates a distinctly post-apartheid curatorial strategy. its permanent collection attempts to hold and shape a distinctly african experience of the epidemic, including documents and specimens such as: first known sample of hiv from leopoldville, congo, 1953. a preserved central chimpanzee, monkey, one species from which hiv is believed to have jumped from animals to humans and in the process become lethal. aids education materials from uganda in the early 1980s—the first public education on the virus in africa. herbal remedies sold in various countries as a cure for aids, both before and after the advent of arv treatment. the bottle of pills from which treatment activist zackie achmat took his first anti-retrovirals in september 2003, ending his historic ‘drug strike’ campaign for treatment. (maa, 2015: 7) these desired holdings also reflect the maa’s interest in intervening in the epidemic by promoting a scientific understanding of hiv through artefacts. plans to use the museum’s physical spaces to include on-site testing clinics, counselling on arv treatment, and to provide psychosocial support through grief counselling to support those dealing with aids-related mourning and loss is expected to channel its public aids awareness and education initiatives into individualised interventions. this initiative should, however, be examined critically for its western bias, especially given the remit to build distinctly african exhibitions and interventions. “herbal remedies” (maa, 2015: 7) are represented in the permanent collection as static artefacts to be viewed whereas testing sites and arv counseling present more active interventionist components. biomedical approaches to hiv espouse the use of antiretroviral medication while indigenous treatments are based on a range of healing practices that have been implemented in south africa throughout its contemporary digitising and archiving hiv and aids in south africa: the museum of aids in africa as an archival intervention jenny suzanne doubt 127 and pre-colonial history. the museum has not indicated that indigenous healers will also be present to make recommendations about how best to incorporate traditional responses to hiv as a part of its treatment clinics’ regimen. given that this subject is freighted with the considerable stigma of debates that pre-date the maa’s inception, including mbeki’s public questioning of whether hiv causes aids, and the suggestions of his then health minister, mantombazana tshabalala-msimang, that arvs are toxic, failure to intervene in this debate in particular suggests a potentially serious limitation in delivering the museum’s mandate to build knowledge around the science of the epidemic. this seems an important consideration given evidence that hiv-positive south africans have adopted a “hybrid” (decoteau, 2013: 185) approach to treatment, using indigenous healing techniques while adhering to antiretroviral regimes. the plan to build the museum’s physical premises has been publicly endorsed by the south african government. the government’s interest in the maa marks a departure from the role it has historically played in relation to the aids epidemic. early decisions taken by the political actors who populate the governing halls of south africa have reflected a reticence to declare publicly the prominence of the hi-virus. justice edwin cameron, author of the well-known memoir witness to aids (2005) remains, at the point of writing, the sole public figure holding a senior title to have adopted within his public identity his hiv-positive status. however, nelson mandela, in late recognition of the opportunity he missed to address the epidemic more fully during his time as president, did publicly acknowledge his own personal experience of the hiv epidemic as a father who had lost a son to aids—a politically influential contribution. in a marked departure from the aids politics of his predecessor, thabo mbeki, jacob zuma has decisively embraced biomedical treatments in an attempt to distance his stance from mbeki’s. zuma is also widely reported to have taken a public hiv test on world aids day (rossouw, 2009). more specifically, in 2012 then deputy president kgalema motlanthe was straightforward in expressing his desire to coordinate a more permanent institution dedicated to hiv and aids in south africa, through his support of the maa. the museum of aids in africa entered on their twitter feed on july 23 from their booth at the 2012 international aids conference in washington, dc: #southafrican viceprez #kgalema #motlanthe here at #aids2012 came to visit our booth, says he wants to see the museum open in sa! 12:51 pm 23 jul 12. (@maa, 2012: n.p.) the government’s stated desire to affiliate itself with the maa provides it with an opportunity to evince a sustained interest in changing south africa’s previous restrictive apartheid-era museological practices and respond to the increasingly urgent requirement to intervene in the social aspects of the hiv and aids pandemic. a politically-endorsed physical museum dedicated to hiv and aids may go some way towards combatting the social stigma and discrimination that continue to be associated with the epidemic in south africa. until the physical museum is actually created, however, its ability to contribute innovative museological practices that perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 128 foster social change and deliver sustainable public health intervention into the aids epidemic remains to be seen. the maa’s active component is currently limited to its virtual spaces. introducing digital technology: the maa as a postcolonial aids archive? in this section, i ask how introducing digital technology—in particular, mobile phones and their interactive spaces—and generating a varied and accessible digital aids archive might affect the maa’s ability to intervene in the epidemic. before proceeding, some theoretical context relating to the south african archive in the post-apartheid era is required. conventionally understood as spaces in which documents belonging to the past are stored, and history preserved, archives have often been theorised as spaces of forgetting. they have also been theorised as sites that delineate the execution of power. according to jacques derrida, for example, the archivist plays a central role in selecting “traces of memory” for preservation (cited in van zyl, 2002: 44). this was true of south africa during the years of apartheid censorship. scholarship focusing on “refiguring”—to borrow the term from the title of hamilton et al.’s (2002) book—the south african archive in the post-apartheid era is prolific. research that has called for interventions into archives is dominated by the requirement to acknowledge what ann laura stoler (2002) refers to as “selective forgettings and collections” (87). the first part of the title of well-known art historian griselda pollock’s book, differencing the canon (1999), insists on the necessity of doing so—a universal imperative in feminist discourses. cheryl mcewan (2003) refers to the requirement to forge “postcolonial archives” (739) whose objects are both varied and accessible in south africa. mcewan’s notion of the postcolonial archive was developed in response to what she perceived to be the limitations of the truth and reconciliation commission in addressing the experiences of black women during apartheid. i argue that postcolonial archives also have wider theoretical implications for the archiving of the initiatives of distressed and marginalised (south african) communities in the post apartheid context, foremost amongst which are, arguably, those affected by hiv and aids. extending mcewan’s research to the context of hiv and aids suggests that diverse and accessible archives can play an important function in both acknowledging the agency of vulnerable people affected and infected with hiv, and in integrating and conserving their personal stories in the wider context of south african history. what are the implications of introducing technology in the development of the maa as a postcolonial archive? the maa currently uses technology to fulfil many of the requirements of postcolonial archives, in for example, reaching audiences that are otherwise estranged from museum spaces, and engaging an expanded and diverse participatory audience. digitising and archiving hiv and aids in south africa: the museum of aids in africa as an archival intervention jenny suzanne doubt 129 nolen has stressed that a “huge part of our mandate is to be a pan-african institution” (cited in stone, 2012: n.p.). accessibility is thus an important consideration in the maa’s quest to appeal to “diverse audiences and multiple income groups” (maa, 2015: 20) both in south africa and across the african continent. as discussed above, the museum has an active mobile component designed to travel to different locations, provide services, deliver exhibitions, public programmes, and “memory booths” (maa, 2015: 12) continent-wide. plans to extend the museum’s services through the use of mobile phones have the potential to further expand that accessibility to a larger number of pan-african users and audiences. the maa’s use of mobile phones thus in part realises the maa’s ability to reach previously marginalised, specifically african, museum audiences. the maa’s digital interface encourages open and uncensored communication with its users, exemplifying its drive to engage the participation of its target audiences. with access to technology, in theory at least, anybody can contribute. the ability of the site’s users to post a reply reinforces the transparency of the narrative transaction, but the format is perhaps most powerful in the control it vests in the subjects whose stories it wishes to convey. the online component of the maa attempts to democratise the accessibility of the exchanges that take place in the museum’s space, in contrast to the one-way dialogue commonly associated with colonial and apartheid-era censorship control. ola johannson (2011: 26) notes the potential of technology in challenging unidirectional dialogue about hiv and aids in particular. when it comes to comparisons with alternative prevention schemes, it is by now clear … that one-way communicative modes of information such as tv and other audiovisual media have a limited influence on young people in both regions since so few have access to such outlets. comments between and among maa users all occupy the same interface and are equally accessible. this results in, for example, levelling the input of politicians increasingly wishing to be associated with the project (through twitter accounts, for instance) with the contributions of others. given that so many aids-related initiatives are justified on behalf of more vulnerable others, the maa provides, potentially, a platform that could expose the disjunction between those whose aids agendas are heard, and those whose are not. the introduction of technology in the development of the maa’s archive therefore has several implications for the operation of the maa as a specifically postcolonial archival mechanism. it further diversifies the museum’s user-base, widens access, and makes possible the conservation of a greater number of personal histories. this extends the maa’s potential to act as an intervention into knowledge about hiv and aids by acknowledging the agency of populations made vulnerable by aids, and integrating their experiences in the wider context of a project seeking to build public knowledge and understanding about aids through both physical and digital means. perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 130 digital mourning and the maa it is, however, necessary to examine the content that the maa’s technological interface produces. this analysis problematises what emerges as what emerges as the maa’s emphasis on mourning against its broader interventionist intentions. as i have indicated, the maa’s curatorial strategies can be seen to oppose the historically discriminatory practices that seriously restricted access to, and representation in, museum spaces for the majority black population in south africa during the apartheid era; this amelioration is a priority for post-apartheid museums as outlined in the first section of this article. such discriminatory practices, though no longer enshrined in legislation, have somewhat replicated themselves during the aids epidemic, because as several scholars have noted,4 the most vulnerable of those affected and infected by hiv and aids—often the demographic in whose names hiv and aids initiatives are justified—have been silenced or largely omitted from public discourse. by archiving the contributions of its targeted online users, and ensuring that the contents of these archives are made available to vulnerable populations through mobile technology, the museum’s operation as a digital postcolonial aids archive has the potential to act as an archival intervention by generating a mechanism able to engage its most vulnerable demographic in the representation and circulation of its own aids discourses, as i have argued above. along with collecting and displaying artefacts, the maa’s vision of “absorb[ing] the personal stories of scientists, activists, political leaders and survivors” (maa, 2015: 8) is part of its strategy to develop knowledge and capture responses to the epidemic. this aspect of the maa is dependent on mechanisms dependent, in turn, on digital technology. in particular, the maa has created a platform—the virtual memorial— on its website that invites users to post personal testimonies of their experience of living with hiv and aids and/or losing someone to aids-related complications. the following are extracts from the maa’s virtual memorial: talking about the people i have lost and also writing to the imaginary letters. sometimes it is very painful but helps me to start the healing process. (michael kumuhu, 2012: n.p.) you will always be number one in my life and our son will grow and be just like you. (esther sherham, 2015: n.p.) as the extract from sherham suggests, the virtual memorial platform allows individuals to express grief and mourning, as does the museum’s share your experience with grief platform, which invites users to advise others about how they coped with loss. kumuhu stresses the healing aspect of expressing mourning by posting a testimonial on the site. an aids-related mourning forum is, potentially, an important one in which to build and circulate new knowledge and awareness about aids in south africa. in her work on mourning and hiv and aids in south africa, for example, kylie thomas (2014) has argued that it is necessary to recognise, through mourning rituals, personal histories of people who have been affected by hiv and digitising and archiving hiv and aids in south africa: the museum of aids in africa as an archival intervention jenny suzanne doubt 131 aids. drawing on judith butler’s (2004) work on mourning, and in particular on butler’s notion of “publicly ungrievable losses” (cited in thomas, 2014: 8), thomas argues that there is a dearth of mourning spaces and rituals for aids-related deaths in south africa. she concludes that this lack is detrimental to charting aids-related experiences and that aids-related deaths have been erased, as butler puts it in a different, though related, context, from public memory in south africa. the virtual memorial is well-conceived given the public memory loss around hivrelated deaths that thomas has identified. the museum’s physical site also includes provision for the expression of mourning. together with the virtual memorial and share your experience with grief platform, the maa’s public therapy pilot programme, designed to provide grief counselling to support those dealing with aids-related mourning and loss, has the potential to respond to broader issues of social discrimination associated with aids: [t]he stigma and discrimination that has defined the south african response to the epidemic has meant that people living with hiv/aids have been positioned outside of the realms within which their lives would be recognised as lives and their deaths considered grievable deaths (thomas, 2014: 114). early feedback from communities stresses the value they place in the memorialising aspect of the museum (s. nolen, pers. comm.). the ability to publicly recognise aids deaths as “grievable deaths” through the virtual memorial and therapy programme may well be an example of breaking the silence about aids through archival intervention. the virtual site has been well received by users and is able to respond, at least potentially, to concerns around mourning rituals such as those articulated by thomas (2014). the ability of many to contribute to the virtual site is, however, limited by the lack of access to technology. this potential limitation is further exacerbated by limited access to expensive mobile data, an important consideration given that the epidemic in south africa has preyed on a disproportionate number of the country’s most impoverished people. despite the potential reach of a postcolonial aids archive designed to reach members of a diverse audience, the very high cost of access to digital data may replicate the system of privilege that has characterised cultural production in south africa for decades, and will, ultimately, skew the contents of the museum’s digital archives. in addition, the interventionist capacity of an extended memorialisation restricted to those with access to digital technology and unrestricted data may compromise the project’s ability to challenge a range of social behaviours associated with hiv. this raises questions about how the virtual memorial is connected to the museum’s vision of an “aids free africa” (maa, 2015: 2). does the proliferation of testimonials relating to mourning aids-related losses increase awareness that may affect social behaviours that contribute to hiv prevalence, for example? will it help lead to the destigmatisation of the epidemic? perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 132 conclusions in their article “postcolonialism’s archive fever”, sandhya shetty and elizabeth jane bellamy (2000: 25) demonstrate … just how crucial the concept of an ‘archive’—perhaps even a ‘postcolonial archive’—is for a more sympathetic understanding of spivak’s now notorious [observation about the] ‘silencing’ [of the subaltern woman]. viewed as an archival intervention, i argue that the maa can be seen to be developing through the mechanisms of the physical and digital archives, a space for extending participatory, mobile, and digital approaches to reach a wide range of affected and infected communities with information and experiences relating to hiv and aids across africa. with the introduction of technology, the maa offers some evidence of the operation of the postcolonial archive in staging interventions into the aids epidemic by seeking to include otherwise marginalised or silenced histories relating to hiv and aids and making these accessible to both current and future generations of south africans.5 the act of archiving and circulating personal histories that process traumatic losses that belong to the very recent past, however, deserves further attention. while the museum’s digital memory cache has the potential to preserve its archive for an expanded user base, the ephemeral nature of the virtual site may well become crucial to providing the option for users to decide whether or not they wish their personal testimonies to be read as public aids history over time. until hiv-related stigma is eradicated, the potential of digital technologies to conceal identities, travel discreetly to people’s homes, and capture data anonymously may well prove vital for ongoing aids research in south africa. the maa has focused on the ability of digital technology to expose and share personal experiences of aids as public history and education; the ability of technology to capture and conceal personal experiences of aids may well prove just as helpful for research initiatives similarly concerned with expanding public aids education and eradicating the epidemic. references @mofaa. 2012. twitter. retrieved on 23 july 2012 from: https://twitter.com/ mofaa. asmal, k. 2000. truth reconciliation and justice: the south african experience in perspective. the modern law review, 63: 10. constitutional court of south africa, minister of health et al. versus treatment action campaign et al., case cct 8/02, 5 july 2002. coombes, a. e. 2003. history after apartheid: visual culture and public memory in a democratic south africa. durham and london: duke university press. decoteau, c. l. 2013. ancestors and antiretrovirals: the biopolitics of hiv/aids in post-apartheid south africa. chicago: the university of chicago press. digitising and archiving hiv and aids in south africa: the museum of aids in africa as an archival intervention jenny suzanne doubt 133 fassin, d. 2007. when bodies remember: experiences and politics of aids in south africa (amy jacobs & gabrielle varro, trans.). berkeley: university of california press. grünkemeier, e. 2013. breaking the silence: south african representations of hiv/ aids. suffolk: james currey. kumuhu, m. 2012. how we cope. retrieved on 25 march 2015 from: http:// museumofaidsinafrica.org/viewadvice. hamilton, c., harris, v., & reid, g. 2002. introduction. in c. hamilton, v. harris, m. pickover, g. reid, r. saleh, & j. taylor (eds.), refiguring the archive. cape town: david philip publishers. harris, v. 2002. the archival sliver: a perspective on the construction of social memory in archives and the transition from apartheid to democracy’. in c. hamilton, v. harris, m. pickover, g. reid, r. saleh, & j. taylor (eds.), refiguring the archive. cape town: david philip publishers. iziko museums of south africa. 2009. iziko art exhibition puts focus on aids, 30 october. retrieved on 25 march 2015 from: <http://www.artlink.co.za/news_ article.htm?contentid=270> johansson, o. 2011. community theatre and aids. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. mcewan, c. 2003. building a postcolonial archive? gender, collective memory and citizenship in post-apartheid south africa. journal of southern african studies, 29(3): 739–757. murphy, d.a., roberts, k.j. & hoffman, d. 2003. regrets and advice from mothers who have disclosed their hiv positive serostatus to their young children. journal of child and family studies, 12: 307–318. museum of aids in africa. 2015. the museum. retrieved on 1 august 2014 from: http://museumofaidsinafrica.org/themuseum. notice of motion in the high court of south africa (transvaal provincial division), case no. 4183/98n. pollock, g. 1999. differencing the canon: feminist desire and the writing of art’s histories. abingdon: psychology press. reid, g. & walker, l. 2003. secrecy, stigma and hiv/aids: an introduction. african journal of aids research, 2: 85 –88. rossouw, m. 2009. zuma’s hiv test. retrieved on 31 october 2012 from: http:// mg.co.za/article/2009-11-13-zumas-hiv-test. shetty, s. & bellamy, e.j. 2000. postcolonialism’s archive fever. diatrics, 30(1): 25–48. sherham, e. 2015. abraham hoffman. retrieved on 25 march 2015 from: http:// museumofaidsinafrica.org/memorial/133/abraham-hoffman. stadler, j. 2003. the young, the rich and the beautiful: secrecy, suspicion and discourses of aids in the south african lowveld. african journal of aids research, 2: 127–139. perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 134 stoler, a. l. 2002. colonial archives and the arts of governance. in c. hamilton, v. harris, m. pickover, g. reid, r. saleh, & j. taylor. (eds.), refiguring the archive. cape town: david philip publishers. stone, s. 2012. a first look at the museum of aids in africa with founder stephanie nolen. retrieved on 25 march 2015 from: http://one.org/blog/2012/08/17/ a-first-look-at-the-museum-of-aids-in-africa-with-founder-stephanie-nolen/. thomas, k. 2014. impossible mourning: hiv/aids and visuality after apartheid. maryland: bucknell university press. unaids. 2013. global report. geneva: unaids. unicef, 2013. towards an aids-free generation: children and aids sixth stocktaking report, 2013. new york: unicef. van zyl, s. 2002. psychoanalysis and the archive: derrida’s archive fever. in c. hamilton, v. harris, m. pickover, g. reid, r. saleh, & j. taylor. (eds.), refiguring the archive. cape town: david philip publishers. whiteside, a. 2008. hiv/aids: a very short introduction. kindle edition. oxford: oxford university press. endnotes 1. http://www.museumofaidsinafrica.org/ 2. given the regional diversities in which the epidemic is couched and its equally diverse manifestations, the attempt to consolidate pan-african identity around the hiv epidemic seems idealistic. it is equally problematic given the xenophobic attacks in south africa since it operates on the premise that africans will be happy to subscribe to a universal african identity and experience. this article focuses on the context of south africa, while acknowledging that aspects of the museum are designed to travel and that the virtual museum site is accessible to anyone with access to the internet. 3. “a better life for all” was the promise of the anc slogan in the lead-up to south africa’s first democratic election. the promise included providing housing, health care, water, and electricity (see asmal, 2000). 4. scholarship examining silence as an hiv-related discourse has, for example, examined the role of disclosure, gossip, secrecy, and metaphor in perpetuating the stigmatisation of those infected or affected by hiv (see for example, murphy et al. 2003; stadler, 2003; and reid & walker, 2003.) 5. this initiative is not without an important precedent. south africa’s truth and reconciliation commission has been theorised as an “archival intervention” (harris, 2002: 136). 76 emergent frameworks of research teaching and learning in a cohort-based doctoral programme michael samuel university of kwazulu-natal renuka vithal university of kwazulu-natal this article argues that alternate models of doctoral research teaching and learning pedagogy could address the challenge of under-productivity of doctoral graduands in the south african higher education system. present literature tends not to focus on the models of research teaching and learning as a form of pedagogy. the article presents a case study of a doctoral cohort model programme where attention to both quantity and quality of doctoral “production” are engaged in the curriculum design and methodological approaches employed. in this alternate to the traditional “master-apprenticeship”, epistemologies that the programme creates are influenced by its pedagogical methodologies. this reflective theoretical exploration draws on the experiences of supervisors, staff and students as co-producers of knowledge involved in the research pedagogical process. the doctoral graduands that emerge are able to embrace the roles and responsibilities as researchers and knowledge makers. rather than the phd being about individualistic learning, the programme attempts to infuse multiand interdisciplinary notions of responsiveness to knowledge production in community. it concludes with emergent frameworks for doctoral pedagogies –“democratic teaching/learning participation”, “structured scaffolding”, “ubuntu” and “serendipity”– as useful explanatory shaping influences which underpin and frame the model promoting a contextually relevant and appropriate doctoral research teaching and learning pedagogy. keywords: cohort model of supervision, postgraduate research supervision, learning to become researcher, teaching and learning in higher education, democracy, ubuntu, serendipity . introduction the academy of science of south africa (assaf, 2010) study has confirmed that south africa is underproducing at the scale of only 26 doctoral graduands per million of the total population of the country based on a 2007 cohort analysis of higher education institutions with only 1274 doctoral graduates qualifying in that year. education statistics released by the department of basic education (2010) suggest that, in 2009, of the 144 852 graduates and diplomates across all 23 universities in the country only 1380 (0.95%) were doctoral graduates and the percentage of doctoral degrees awarded per university ranged from 0 to 17% (an average of 13%). in 2009 the call by the national research foundation (nrf) for higher education institutions to consider a five-fold expansion of the country’s present doctoral output highlighted the production of doctoral graduands within south africa. it was argued that doctoral graduands as bearers of the crucial high-end qualifications are essential drivers of the economic and growth needs of the country (che, 2009). the impact of such a call for escalation could infuse another form of “paper chasing” into the higher education system without attention to the following details: what kind of economies are the doctoral graduands being prepared for? what are the disciplinary ranges of doctoral study that could “fuel the economy”? who are these potential doctoral students likely to be? what research education and training models are needed to realise this goal? the discussion about doctoral studies raises the question about the varied nature of the economic and development context of post-apartheid south africa, with its combinations and complexities of a juxtaposed firstand third-world economy. sen (1999) cautions one to consider how knowledge being produced perpetuates hierarchies of power across the separated “first” and “third”-world economies. he encourages new definitions of development linked not only to capitalist 77samuel & vithal — emergent frameworks of research teaching and learning productivity, but also to notions of freedom and democracy as key quality drivers for a society’s goals. the production of phds therefore cannot be restricted to only disciplines, departments or institutions (backhouse, 2009), but it is located within a broader sociological terrain questioning who becomes phd graduates, for whom, and to achieve what? the emphasis on “doctoral productivity” leans towards the “input-output” econometric analysis which has tended to be part of business systems that measure productivity. the council on higher education (che) in south africa was concerned about the skewed nature of the phd production: racially, institutionally and disciplinarily. they suggested that major policy intervention was needed to address the ongoing enrolment of students who neither graduate nor drop out; and the increasing burden of supervisors, given the shrinking of the academic workforce mostly through retirement (che, 2009:vii). a narrow interpretation of steering policy mechanisms to encourage the uptake of higher education institutions (heis) in research productivity could be regarded as potentially infusing into the system a kind of econometry which pays scant attention to the quality of the doctoral graduand: what they think, how they think, and what kinds of epistemologies they will introduce into the wider social system. these debates have certainly introduced a welcome gaze into the notions of doctoral productivity. this article, therefore, chooses to focus on how one operates within the terrain of underproductivity of doctoral graduands. it asks questions about what and how doctoral graduands are being produced, not simply from an “increase in productivity logic”, but also in terms of producing quality doctoral graduands by understanding the educational processes in that production. the article presents a model for disrupting notions of the traditional “master-apprenticeship” notions of doctoral supervision, thereby providing tools for explaining the underproductivity. in exploring alternate pedagogies for research teaching and learning, this article offers a cohort model of doctoral supervision as a counterpoint to the traditional models, arguing that its enactment has powerful consequences for the quality of students and supervisors. it simultaneously addresses the “underproductivity” or scale question, while paying detailed attention to the methodology or scope of doctoral pedagogy and supervision. it provides an analysis of how senior postgraduate students become quality researchers. the article is authored from the lived experiences of two doctoral supervisors who in 1999 founded what has come to be called “a seminar-based cohort model” of supervising doctoral studies in education. the article outlines the context and the thinking which infused the introduction of the model both on pragmatic and theoretical considerations. it highlights the philosophical and pedagogical rationale of the programme, showing how it draws on conceptions of “democracy”, “scaffolding”, “ubuntu” and “serendipity” as useful constructs underpinning the pedagogical design of the cohort model. researching doctoral programmes the 2009 che report points to the “burden of supervision” which characterised the south african university system as the average student numbers to supervisors ratios increase, and the increasing number of students become assigned to an ageing (white) teaching force. in 2005 the average supervisor would have to supervise 7 masters and doctoral students. this figure has risen to approximately 12 postgraduate students in fields such as the social sciences. traditional models of “one-on-one” supervision described as being based on “master-apprenticeship” learning relations have been sharply critiqued. the assaf study (2010:40) lists limitations such as too narrowly focused; lack of integration across traditional knowledge boundaries; completion times too long or not completed, and graduates being unable to apply knowledge and skills. these institutional resource contextual factors are not unique to south africa as research on doctoral education is being undertaken in other countries – europe and north america (kehm, 2006), australia (thompson, pearson, akerlind, hooper & mazur, 2001), united kingdom (uk grad, 2004) and the usa (national academy of sciences, national academy of engineering, institute of medicine, 2006). new modes for supervision and support of postgraduate studies are clearly needed. a particular focus has been on alternative models and approaches to doctoral supervision different from the “apprenticeship” 78 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 models elaborated on in the literature (lee 2010; parker, 2009; lierberman & dorsch, 2005; price & money, 2002; burnett, 1999). one approach refers to models that involve developing communities of sorts. in her review of approaches to doctoral supervision, lee (2010:18) identifies as one a conceptual approach to teaching and supervising at this level … [which entail] practices implied by the model of ‘community of practices’(lave and wenger, 1991), which is, in effect a decentralized version of the master/apprenticeship role …[and] in which the student is helped (or not) to move through legitimate peripheral participation to an understanding and mastery of the tacit knowledge required to participate fully in an academic community.(emphasis added). by comparison, a “community approach” usually exists side by side with traditional modes. parker (2009) describes, for instance, “a learning community approach to doctoral education involving scholarly writing groups”. in this approach communities are usually formed in respect of a particular disciplinary area or specific aspects of the research training and education such as research proposal development or seminars on advanced theoretical orientation. the literature has focused a great deal on the supervision process and the role of supervisors in the different approaches or models. sayed et al. (1998) argue that the phd research journey is one which shifts over time and that at different phases of the doctoral study the kind of support being offered to phd students should alter in relation to the evolving stages of doctoral study. a pedagogical model of research learning therefore must take cognisance of different kinds of support offered at different levels of the student’s journey. however, like all journeys the trajectory is never linear, even though planned and directed to attain some degree of systematisation. research learning must include opportunities for multiple sources of influence, especially at the doctoral level, which aims to produce new theoretical, methodological and contextual knowledge. creighton (2008) argues for the need to move towards supervision modes which address preparing phd students not just to engage with the academic nature of the research study itself, but also focus on what students will do as they enter into the career of utilising their high-end research skills. engaging in a phd is also about being inducted into the career of a professional community in the world of “work”, whether within or outside academia. it is suggested that “advisors” are needed at the early stages of the research journey; while “mentors” bridge the phd graduate into the career world. the “advisor” is a generalist commentator supporting the students on personal level (in organisational and structural concerns), whereas the “mentor” is an academic and professional inductor into the research study and the theoretical landscape of producing and engaging with new knowledge within a research community. phd programmes that do not succeed fail to acknowledge the multiple levels of support and induction needed for the emerging doctoral student: from being entered into the membership of a graduate community, to attaining candidacy of a competent independent research student and towards ultimately engaging in selfdirected research analysis (tinto, 1993 in gilliam, 2006). many studies on phd production tend to concentrate on the nature of supervisor-student relationships (dietz, jansen & wadee, 2006; lee, 2010). these are usually characterised by categories of student discontent. krauss and ismail (2010:803) report the moses (1984) review of literature from australia, new zealand and britain which lists the following factors: personality factors which include interpersonal differences in language, work style and also personality clash; professional factors which include a supervisor who is ignorant, misinformed or who has few or different research interests; and organizational factors which include the supervisor having too many students or too many competing responsibilities, and inadequate departmental provisions. alternately studies concentrate on the kind of work study groups that phd students themselves set up in the form of scholarly writing groups, focusing on providing peer support learning of academic writing (mullen, 2006; parker, 2009). 79samuel & vithal — emergent frameworks of research teaching and learning the area of research teaching and learning curriculum (sometimes referred to as research training programmes) is relatively underdeveloped. for the purposes of this article reference is made to “research teaching and learning” or “research pedagogy” as the strategies that are engaged between researcher students, supervisors and their disciplinary studies in a collaborative dialogue which produces opportunities for disruption, engagement and re-definitions of the doctoral study. these positive disruptions allow for the birth of new knowledge, new possibilities rather than simply an imitation or cloning of the knowledge systems, practices of methodologies of the master supervisor. history of and background to the cohort doctoral programme in the early 1990s the faculty of education at the university of durban-westville, much like other such faculties at historically black and disadvantaged institutions, was predominantly undergraduate with honours programmes and barely a sprinkling of masters and doctoral students and hardly any research or publications to speak of. the mid-1990s in the faculty saw a rapid expansion of coursework masters, and by the late 1990s the faculty was graduating a number of master’s students who began to put pressure on the faculty to offer a doctoral programme. a number of other factors fuelled the growth of the postgraduate sector. at the time a critical mass of relatively junior staff had completed their masters abroad and drove the faculty masters programme. this outside knowledge, experience and perspective was critical to how the programme innovated around the challenges. another factor was the rapid drop in undergraduate student intake from several hundred to a few dozen, following the implementation of the national teacher redeployment policy. a number of academics left the faculty as it was downgraded to a school of educational studies. this, however, also provided an opportunity and impetus to develop the postgraduate programmes. the pressure on staff to move into postgraduate teaching intensified as did the imperative to improve their own qualifications in order to become supervisors. many important lessons were also learnt from managing the research teaching and supervision of large numbers of master’s students across different specialisations. structured research support was provided alongside the thesis component, which initially was done informally and later formally through research education and training modules. to strengthen each specialisation in both the content to be taught at master’s level and supervision support, a number of internationally renowned scholars in various educational specialisation areas were invited to work alongside staff and students to ensure a quality programme foundation. at this time those academics who were active in the masters were also simultaneously completing their own doctorates in a variety of models of support. for example, a danish-south african mathematics education doctoral programme (vithal, 2010) provided a different model of international supervisor who travelled to south africa periodically to support a group of doctoral students, while working alongside local south african supervisors successfully enabled all 6 students who participated in the programme to graduate. by 1999 many staff members, including the authors, began to discuss models of doctoral programmes – european approaches, uk and scandanavia as well as usa – and crafted a programme that took the best elements from each. the main feature of the programme is that a collective of supervisors who recognise both their individual strengths and their limitations collaborated, complementing and supplementing each other’s knowledge base, and providing a space for a collective of students to come together to think, learn and take risks in crossing disciplinary and methodological borders. the programme also took the form it did because there were very few senior academics to supervise and the majority of them chose not to participate. the group of newly graduated doctoral staff used their own experience and networks to support each other and the doctoral students as a group. in 1999, 11 students were enrolled for the first time into the doctoral programme and committed to participate in a structured seminar support system while being assigned individual supervisors. all but 2 of the first 11 have graduated (81.8%). of a second cohort of 14 that began in 2002 (with the authors as part of the supervision team), 12 (85.7%) have graduated. soon after the first cohort began, the demand for entry led to other cohorts being set up in successive years as a set of supervisors and students continue to work with a 80 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 cohort for all three years during which a group is supported. the success of the programme and the demand from students led to the setting up of an application and selection process. the programme has evolved over more than a decade as graduating staff have joined the programme and have themselves become supervisors and teachers on the programme, several of whom now lead their own cohorts of phd students. by the time the merger between the universities of durban-westville and natal took place in 2004 and came into effect in 2005, the doctoral (and masters) programme was well established. the period between 2000 and 2005 provides a naturalistic comparison of the usual traditional one-on-one supervision at the university of natal (un) and what has come to be called the seminar-based cohort doctoral programme at the university of durban-westville (udw). during this period udw had an average of 48 doctoral students enrolled per year compared to un which averaged 39. however, udw had 25 graduates compared to un’s 3 graduates. at the time of the merger the programme again faced opposition from some of the professors. however, this resistance was not sustainable in the face of the success of the programme. the programme was adopted and offered as a doctoral programme across the newly merged faculty of education at ukzn. the doctoral programme has since its inception always been oversubscribed. many students voluntarily chose to participate in the programme, often without their supervisors’ knowledge or advice. in the 5 years (2005 to 2009) since the programme has become established in the new faculty, the average annual enrolment has been 107 and the faculty has graduated a total of 76 doctoral students (an average of 15 per year). in 2009, of the 158 doctoral graduates in ukzn, the education faculty accounted for 21 or 13%, the third highest faculty graduating doctorates. all students who are accepted into a phd in the faculty of education at ukzn are required to participate in a support programme. while the vast majority of students participate in the faculty-wide seminar-based cohort programme, other disciplinespecific smaller support programmes are also offered. some students elect to participate in more than one programme. the education faculty has since expanded the doctoral programme. in 2011, for the first time the faculty has two first-year cohorts. a second cohort, consisting of 14 doctoral students, includes staff from across the university who are researching an aspect of higher education in their disciplines. this programme is co-managed by the faculty of education and the office of the deputy vice chancellor: teaching and learning. supervisory staff members from across faculties are now drawn into the cohort model, including past graduates of the cohort model programme. versions of the cohort model of doctoral support are being introduced across other faculties (e.g. health sciences) who have perceived the benefit of this support programme for fuelling quality doctoral work. the doctoral studies cohort model the doctoral studies programme consists of three “phases”, each directed towards students’ developmental trajectory from refining the research design, to engaging with producing data within the field, and finally to the writing of the thesis report. it must be acknowledged that these three phases are not mutually exclusive and that each stage of “headwork” (epistemology), “fieldwork” (methodology), and “textwork” (representation) all co-influence each other as the study mutates and develops. the development of a research protocol (or research proposal) at the beginning of the study involves paying attention to all three “phases” of text work, methodology and potential reporting representation. the choice of methodology must be coherently linked to the epistemological framework chosen for the study, in as much as the choice of what one admits as data is influenced by the methodology and epistemological stance of the study. the purpose of defining the three phases is to organise students broadly into cohorts of students grappling with similar kinds of design phenomenon as they embark on their studies. the students are usually drawn from a range of disciplines in education, including management, psychology, and gender studies. they are also drawn from the faculties of health sciences, law, and computer sciences. each student brings his/her unique disciplinary and biographical heritage of conducting research gleaned from their particular relationship established in masters, honours and/or undergraduate studies in their disciplines. some have intersecting variants of these influences as they have found congruence or dissonance with their previous 81samuel & vithal — emergent frameworks of research teaching and learning epistemological or methodological frameworks. the choice to opt for a doctoral study within the faculty of education is often an opportunity to “escape the clutches” of the strong disciplinary rituals and routines that characterise cloning master-apprenticeship models. similarly, the doctoral cohort model includes staff members who are potential supervisors from a variety of disciples and methodological persuasions. they too represent a diversity of paradigmatic perspectives relating to educational research. the cohort group becomes an assemblage of potentially different vantage points on the nature of research, its methodologies as well as analytical frameworks and styles. the novice supervisors (usually recently graduated doctoral graduands) join more experienced supervisors. approximately 5 supervisors serve as a team of potential advisors and mentors to the phd study topics. at the initial stages of registering with the faculty of education the students present a draft research proposal which marks their broad field of study and potential methodology. this is regarded as a “candidacy” phase in which students are assigned “loosely” a potential supervisor who would serve as an advisor to the project. in the majority of instances, the student would have some notion of whom s/ he would like to work as supervisor, but the candidacy panel team makes recommendations based on the selection interview into the doctoral programme. over time students may choose to rethink and re-select their supervisors more appropriately as the research design and methodology evolves. the first phase of the study is characterised by exposing students to a variety of possibilities for redesigning their study drawing from the range of students’ and mentors’ input in the cohort. the students come together in a weekend programme from friday afternoon to sunday afternoon six times a year. the doctoral cohort weekend programme commences with an input of past doctoral graduands presenting their work, usually focusing on methodological choices made in their studies and advice to induct students into the research community and its journey. the friday afternoon seminar is also a space where all students across the three different phases meet each other, and converse with visiting lecturers or resident academic staff who present cutting edge issues in their research studies. the friday seminar is also an exemplary opportunity for students to be exposed to making research presentations, fielding questions, and participating with an audience in a research community of scholars. the saturday and sunday programme is characterised by the students presenting “work in progress”, identifying blockages and successes in their particular work according to their different phases or targets set during each successive cohort meeting, thereby also honing their future conference presentation skills about their studies. each phase group meets separately, but shares communal time and space during the tea and lunch breaks to exchange views with each other. a cohort group of approximately 100 students constitutes the students and supervisors who will meet on any given doctoral cohort weekend. in addition to the large cohort group, there are also smaller cohort groups of students and supervisors who discuss particular methodologies or epistemological opinions. some of these cohorts are constituted around single supervisors, or teams of supervisors, and may even sometimes be constituted by students themselves as a collective of students only. the collaborative model of doctoral study has many variants, and students may also belong to more than one cohort at any given time. each seminar is evaluated by the students who identify the agenda and the potential input that might be necessary on a generic issue pertinent to the group as a whole. these generic inputs are usually staff or student-driven. however, as the study progresses, the students increasingly express a need for some degree of “independence” as they become more focused on their own work. the doctoral collaborative cohort model is directed towards reaching the goals of being able to complete a doctoral study, as well as become a doctoral supervisor, a future contributor to supervising others to this high-end type of study. the new higher education qualifications framework (doe, 2007) expects the following from doctoral studies: a doctoral degree requires a candidate to undertake research at the most advanced academic level culminating in the submission, assessment and acceptance of a thesis. coursework may be required as preparation or value addition to the research, but does not contribute to the credit value of the qualification. the defining characteristic of this qualification is that the 82 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 candidate is required to demonstrate high-level research capability and make a significant and original academic contribution at the frontiers of a discipline or field. the work must be of a quality to satisfy peer review and merit publication. the degree must be earned through pure disciplinebased or multi-disciplinary research or applied research. (doe, 2007) (emphasis added). it may be stated that the doctoral cohort programme at ukzn is a classical interpretation of the expansive goals set by the higher education qualifications framework for this highest form of academic qualifications (doe, 2007). the programme signals both the process and product features required within doctoral studies: a consultative and supervisory pedagogy, culminating in a thesis report. this research learning includes learning how to become a research student as well as how to be a supervisor of research. the final product, i.e. the thesis report is the object that is examined as a demonstration of competences generated through the process of a doctoral studies engagement. the programme’s activities are specifically designed to add value to enhance the development of the expertise of the doctoral candidate as a researcher. these activities are not credit-bearing but are a key feature of the design of the development process. independent one-on-one supervision with the assigned supervisor continues to exist alongside the cohort collaborative model. a significant challenge facing students in the programme is how to negotiate the multiple sources of advice they receive from the various participants in the programme: the different students, the different advisors and mentors, and above all their assigned supervisor of the study. for many this challenge is similar to the one they will face as they negotiate entry into the world of conferencing, publication and dissemination of their studies. the student has to learn that each comment offered towards their phd study is but a potential source of influence: the choice of whether to admit such advice is the ultimate choice of the student who is responsible for his/her study. however, this is not without the vagaries of power, hierarchy and status which the different sources of advisors/mentors/supervisors have to offer. the student is hereby inducted into the world of knowledge production as a contested terrain, a matter of making choices in relation to dominant and dominating worldviews about research epistemology, methodology, and representation. ultimately, after three years of engagement with the three phases of study, the student is left to his/her own devices with the support of the assigned supervisor to bring the study to examinable status. some cohorts continue to meet on their own for an additional year, creating their own programme of support. doctoral pedagogies: emergent frameworks for research teaching and learning by understanding the weekend seminars primarily as a research teaching and learning space, and analysing these as a specific kind of teaching and learning allows for a different theorising of doctoral studies. becoming a researcher and scholar may then be considered to have many parallels with becoming a teacher or a health professional. constituting this as an educational space and bringing educational theories and conceptual tools to bear provides a different approach to doctoral studies programmes. the above model of doctoral collaborative supervision in a research teaching and learning programme could be said to draw broadly from four emergent philosophies. it should be emphasised that these are not philosophies that were prospectively assigned interpretations to design the programme. increasingly as we shared ideas about what the doctoral programme has achieved, commentators drew parallels. these are shared accordingly. the pedagogy of the doctoral programme is deeply infused and underpinned by a democratic philosophy of teaching and learning. many of the ideas for this approach and educational philosophy came from a danish-south african mathematics phd project drawing on the strong democratic traditions of scandinavian doctoral programmes (vithal, 2010). a democratic learning space is characterised by students having greater freedoms, voice and agency, and in which authority in exercised in students’ emancipatory interests (giroux, 1997). the entrenched values associated with such a philosophy have sustained it over a decade and through a merger by being inclusive and inviting participants into it and allowing the programme to transform in response to the diversity of staff and students it serves. this 83samuel & vithal — emergent frameworks of research teaching and learning underlying philosophy and its values are lived and communicated to both staff and students as participants explicitly and tacitly. ground rules for participating in the programme are agreed upon and the responsibility for observing these is shared by staff and students. the inherent hierarchy of the supervisor-student relation and the experienced-novice supervisor is present but minimised by means of strategies such as students’ chairing seminar sessions to reduce supervisors’ domination and co-construction of the programme of activities for each seminar. the programme is responsive to the needs of students who have direct input into shaping the programme as it unfolds and through their ongoing evaluations. in this way each participant’s reason for participating in the programme is valued while standards of rigour, quality output and innovative thesis generation are shared goals. the nature of the teaching learning space which the cohort model enables through its pedagogy opens out and makes transparent the largely private supervisor-student relation. during the seminars students refer to sessions with their supervisors and both bring and take advice from the seminars to their supervisors. in this way a transparent collegiality is forged as differences in perspectives, knowledge domains, and ideologies are expanded, come into conflict, and sometimes find new expression. the cohort supervisory team provides an advisory and mentorship role (creighton, parks & creighton, 2008). it also perceives and addresses gaps in supervision and in this way supports the student and his/her supervisor even when there are disagreements. seminar spaces provide a safe and caring environment for public defence of all ideas at all stages of research learning and development. confidence is built, skills are developed and modelled such as how to listen, how to engage critique as a tool for learning, questioning and challenging and allowing oneself to be open to the same in becoming a researcher and scholar. this democratised research teaching and learning space is embedded within a strong structured support underpinned by a philosophy of scaffolded learning (vygotsky, 1962; 1978) where the support is offered around the learner researcher’s present potential, with the view of enabling them with building blocks for reaching a new higher level of competence. this is not, as is often erroneously understood, a “taught doctoral programme” in which a system of formal continuous assessment may be utilised to mark the milestones of development. each activity of the doctoral programme is used as a scaffolding to reach the ultimate goal of producing better quality and more broadly trained researchers, while simultaneously leading towards the production of the thesis report. this scaffolding, which is provided through a structured programme, is critical and keeps doctoral students on the task. having to attend a seminar and account for progress made (or lack thereof) makes for self-regulatory pressure. the programme also generates the possibilities for many different disciplines to potentially influence a study by scaffolding methodological and disciplinary border crossings. for example, in any cohort there are likely to be staff and students from different disciplines, different methodological persuasions, and different paradigmatic orientations. the programme allows for all positionalities in the research process to be “put under pressure” (lather, 2001) offering new ways of approaching one’s study. disciplinary or methodological border crossings and the associated risks are encouraged and discussed to enable innovations and new knowledge possibilities. each member of the group is valued as an intellectual resource. the scaffolding is extended not only to students but also staff, especially novice phd graduates who wish to supervise other phd students and publish. as the programme matures, staff take the opportunity to use the forum assembled during a doctoral studies weekend to share papers and publications in which they were involved. this modelled research publication processes and encouraged the participation of students in seeing possibilities for presentations at conferences, sometimes with supervisors for doctoral colleagues. it was simultaneously a staff capacity-building initiative. the students also came to appreciate the value of using the publications process as a way of gaining national and subject-based expert commentary on their draft analyses in progress as they chose to either publish or present at conferences. this constitutes induction into the career of being a knowledge producer. as suggested by creigthon et al. (2008), the doctoral student needs to be inducted into the world of being a researcher, within academia, within the world of work, and within society at large. 84 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 the notion of community or collective is deeply embedded in the pedagogy of the doctoral cohort support programme. the democratic ideals and ethos infused into the doctoral seminar teaching and learning space is enhanced by what is best described by the african values and philosophy of ubuntu. murithi (2009:226) describes ubuntu as an african “world view that tries to capture the essence of what it means to be human” and defines it by citing tutu (1999:34-35), who notes the difficulty of interpreting it in western languages: we say, ‘a person is a person through other people’. i am human because i belong, i participate, and i share. a person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good; for he or she has a proper self assurance that comes with knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when other are humiliated or diminished… the notion of ubuntu has been discussed in relation to educational discourse (venter, 2004) in which it is characterised by relatedness; collectivism; communalism; spiritualism, and holism (msengana, 2006). caring about how other students are doing in the cohort, being present and generous with advice and comments on each other’s studies; sharing whatever knowledge and skills one has, and being critical, intellectually honest and yet compassionate in interactions are all values that are actively encouraged. it emphasises that the success of each person in the cohort group is linked to the success of the group as a whole. some students find this difficult to understand and accept at the beginning because of their strong focus on their own study and progress but most of them realise and perceive the importance of this value over time. a cohort implies a community (parker, 2009; lee, 2010). the programmes takes the notion of community seriously by requiring students to make a commitment not only to their own studies but also to each other, and a core group of supervisors remains with a cohort over a three-year period. the social and emotional dimension of research teaching and learning is recognised. a shared collective responsibility for the growth and development of all in the programme is set up as a ground rule. for example, all students are expected to be present at each student’s presentation. every member of the group counts and his/ her presence or absence enriches or impoverishes the group respectively. creating community is a key feature of the model but it is the fluidity, the formation and the dissolution, the temporal nature and the multiplicity of communities that form within each cohort and across cohorts that support communities in learning, not as discrete entities by themselves but in a network of co-existence. pandor (2011) critiques those who parade ubuntu merely as an abstract concept. ubuntu must translate into active engagement to reinforce communal growth and development, must engage with dialogue, respect and commitment to co-building our future through drawing on our collective resources rather than falling prey to competitive self-interest. ubuntu cannot be guided by a false egalitarianism (ginwala, 2011) where acceptance of the lowest common denominator suppresses the rights of individuals who want to move beyond fatalistic abandonment to their histories. ubuntu, like the ideals of peace, must paradoxically be a constant battle, a war against odds, but directed towards a greater common good. democracy and ubuntu entail activating one’s freedom consciously and collectively. within the cohortbased doctoral programme, this is regarded as students increasingly and developmentally self-direct their educational research goals, defining and re-defining their choices more forcibly while negotiating competing multiple perspectives, and organising their own research learning opportunities. the increasing value of working in inter-, multiand juxtadisciplinary ways has become the hallmark of researchers and designers of new knowledge systems. the interconnected realities of different valuing systems, their impact and influence on each other are regarded as providing opportunities for new insights to be fostered. the doctoral studies programme works on these framing principles of producing knowledge that is at the cutting edge of major disciplinary debates. but it brings even these cutting edge debates into dialogue and contestations with other stances, other orientations, other possibilities. the cohort programme is designed to draw on students and staff from multiple paradigmatic perspectives, with multiple orientations and methodological perspectives to educational research. it also encourages drawing students from a wide range of fields beyond merely the traditional undergraduate “teacher education” 85samuel & vithal — emergent frameworks of research teaching and learning backgrounds. students and staff from these multiple perspectives bring into the programme a range of resources to activate fresh, or different ways of engaging with the pursuits of research. the opportunities created in the doctoral cohort model programme are created so that these different voices from multiple sources can influence each other. this is referred to as providing opportunities for “creative accidents” to happen, in which students and staff members learn from each other, in confrontational and supportive dialogues. serendipity refers to the effect of finding interesting or valuable resource, in particular when one is not looking for it. there is a tendency to limit one’s horizons by the heritages one brings into the research endeavour. these may be framed from one’s own epistemological backgrounds, racialised or geographed positions, vantage points to accumulated habitual observation or articulated reasoning. posel (2011) mentions that the interdisciplinary project is by definition “transformative”, since it seeks to create new (heightened) definitions of disciplines. unlike “multidisciplinarity” which constitutes “additive” interests (accumulating parallel perspectives), interdisciplinarity seeks to disrupt, disengage fossilised disciplinary boundaries. interdisciplinarity organises itself to promote serendipitous possibilities. in the doctoral study collaborative programme various vantages are offered to potentially co-influence one’s studies. many students have reported that simply listening to others talk about their own studies is never a neutral phenomenon. listening is an act not just of hearing, but of comparison and seeking compatibility about what one already knows or does not know. serendipity is therefore a positive infusion into a collaborative cohort model of doctoral research teaching and learning. concluding thoughts the seminar-based cohort model has been in existence for over a decade and is now generating critique and research from those who have completed the programme (govender, 2010). this signals the maturity of the programme and reflects the critical knowledge and skills which the programme seeks to develop in students. cohort models are described in the literature (burnett, 1999) but are seldom theorised to provide a deeper understanding of how and why they work. models that are practised at faculty level, involving many different disciplines and large numbers of staff and students, are less common. this article outlined how the pedagogy of research teaching and learning evolved into a mature doctoral cohort model within ukzn. it signalled the emergent philosophies of democracy, scaffolding, ubuntu and serendipity as useful pillars to frame both the quantitative and qualitative generation of doctoral studies. future research should address how the assessment strategies of doctoral studies may also constrain the directions taken in doctoral pedagogy. it is also important to note that the way in which doctoral supervisors and researchers define their academic roles, responsibilities and identities must also be reviewed in order to address re-definitions of doctoral education. one learns, lives and grows in, through and with others in ways that cannot always be neatly pre-figured. curriculum design of doctoral studies should embrace these principles confidently. references academy of science of south africa (assaf) 2010. the phd study: an evidence-based study on how to meet the demands for higher-level skills in an emerging economy. consensus report. pretoria: assaf. september 2010. backhouse jp 2009. doctoral education in south africa: models, pedagogies and student experiences. unpublished phd. johannesburg: university of the witwatersrand. burnett pc 1999. the supervision of doctoral dissertation using a collaborative cohort model. counselor 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http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 63 ‘and i have been told that there is nothing fun about having sex while you are still in high school’: dominant discourses on women’s sexual practices and desires in life orientation programmes at school tamara shefer sisa ngabaza young women’s sexuality is a contested terrain in multiple ways in contemporary south africa. a growing body of work in the context of hiv and gender-based violence illustrates how young women find it challenging to negotiate safe and equitable sexual relationships with men, and are often the victims of coercive sex, unwanted early pregnancies and hiv. on the other hand, young women’s sexuality is also stigmatised and responded to in punitive terms in school or community contexts, as is evident in research on teenage pregnancy and parenting in schools. within both these bodies of work, women’s own narratives are missing, as well as their agency and a positive discourse on female sexuality. female desires are absent in heteronormative practices and ideologies, as pointed out by feminist researchers internationally. a body of work on young women who parent at school has shown that a key component of the moralistic response to women’s sexuality hinges on the way in which childhood, adolescence and adulthood are popularly understood, together with dominant notions of masculinity and femininity within heteronormative and middle-class notions of family. such discourses are also salient in the responses and understandings of sexuality education in life orientation, particularly the way in which young women are represented. this paper draws from qualitative research conducted with teachers, school authorities and young people on sexuality education in the life orientation programme at schools in the western and eastern cape. key findings reiterate disciplinary responses to young women’s sexuality, often framed tamara shefer university of the western cape tel: 021 959 2234 e-mail: tshefer@uwc.ac.za sisa ngabaza women’s and gender studies, faculty of arts, university of the western cape perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 64 within ‘danger’ and ‘damage’ discourses that foreground the denial of young women’s sexual desire and practices within a framework of protection, regulation and discipline in order to avoid promised punishments of being sexually active. key words: life orientation, sexuality education, hiv, gender-based violence, young women’s sexuality, danger, pleasure introduction over the last two decades increasing attention has been paid to young people’s sexual practices, particularly young women’s. this has been largely promoted in the contexts of hiv and reported high rates of gender-based violence (gbv) and has given rise to a proliferation of governmental response, civil society measures and academic research. much of this research has foregrounded young women’s vulnerability to unwanted, coercive and unsafe heterosexual intimacy, and a battery of research has focused on how gender normative roles and practices contribute to social problems of the high rates of hiv, unwanted early pregnancy and gender-based violence (harrison, 2008; wood, lambert & jewkes, 2007; 2008). some authors have questioned the way in which young women have been set up as inevitable victims in this body of work and associated practices, arguing that the bulk of the literature appears to reproduce the very gender stereotypes that are seen as ‘the problem’ (shefer, in press). it has similarly been argued that underlying much of this research is a regulatory imperative to control and discipline young people’s sexualities and desires, in particular young women. and indeed there is little literature in which women’s positive sexuality is represented; notions of young women’s pleasure and desire or a discourse articulating this has been relatively silenced both in public and scholarly discourse. similarly, while attempts to work with young people around hiv/aids have become more nuanced, the dominant response has historically been informed by disciplinary and constraining frameworks, most clearly illustrated by the abc approach (epstein, morrell, moletsane & unterhalter, 2004; lesko, 2010; mitchell & smith, 2001). perhaps the strongest illustration of the social surveillance of young women’s sexuality is provided by responses to young women who become pregnant and parent in school. teenage pregnancy remains an emotive issue in south africa, constructed in the popular media as well as in much of the scientific literature (macleod, 2001; 2011) as essentially problematic, ‘disastrous’ and ‘damaging’, not only for the young women, but also for broader society. at the core of this popular representation of teenage pregnancy is a range of normative assumptions about what young people should or should not do with respect to sexuality and reproduction, infused by dominant moral, cultural and ideological positions on pregnancy, parenting and families. emerging out of recent empirical research conducted with both teachers and learners at school is a continued stigmatisation and negative judgement of young women who get pregnant and parent at school, illustrating an underlying discourse ‘and i have been told that there is nothing fun about having sex while you are still in high school’: dominant discourses on women’s sexual practices and desires in life orientation programmes at school tamara shefer & sisa ngabaza 65 of denial and repression of young women’s sexual agency (see, for example, bhana, clowes, morrell & shefer, 2008; bhana, morrell, shefer & ngabaza, 2010; ngabaza, 2011; nkani & bhana, 2010; shefer, bhana & morrell, 2013). macleod (2011) has shown how both public and scholarly responses to teenage pregnancy are framed in a discourse of ‘moral degeneration’ with the teenage mother represented as a threat to the social order, both symptom and cause of social problems and decline. the association of young women’s displays of sexual agency and activity with moral degeneration also illuminates the wider discourse in which female sexuality, especially young female sexuality, is silenced, denied and viewed as morally reprehensible. given the historical repression of sexuality in the history of education in south africa and the current challenges of the hiv epidemic, sexuality education as a part of life orientation (lo) has been viewed as a key terrain where sexuality, gender and hiv might be addressed (francis, 2013). yet, there is some concern about the impact and imperatives of such programmes, with existing research illustrating how these educational spaces could rather serve to further a disciplinary and punitive response to young people, and particularly young women’s sexuality (bhana et al., 2010; shefer et al., 2013; ngabaza & shefer, 2013). this is strongly evident in the literature on pregnancy and parenting at school, some of which highlights the particular contributions of lo teachers and lo lessons to further stigmatisation and ‘othering’ of young women who are pregnant and/or parents at school, underpinned by moralistic messages about young women who are sexually active while at school (ngabaza, 2010; shefer et al., 2013). international and local literature provides evidence of the role that schools play in reproducing certain moralistic responses to young people’s sexualities. writing in the context of new zealand allen (2007:2) argues that ‘schools are heavily invested in a particular sort of student that is “ideally” non-sexual’ and that there is ‘a gulf between schools’ perception of student sexuality and young people’s lived realities’. similarly, local literature has shown that schools ‘are expected to be spaces of sexual innocence’ (bhana et al., 2010: 874) and, as such, ‘pregnant or parenting learners at school destabilise traditional notions of authority and order’ (shefer et al., 2013: 8-9). lo sexuality education is reportedly characterised by a moralistic response that emphasises abstinence, reflecting a broader national emphasis encapsulated in the public abc message (francis, 2013; francis & depalma, 2014; epstein et al., 2004; morrell, moletsane, karim, epstein & unterhalter, 2002). research on lo in southern africa further illustrates teachers’ discomfort with teaching sexuality education (adonis & baxen, 2009; francis, 2013; macleod, 2009; motalingaoane-khau, 2010; pattman & chege, 2003; rooth, 2005). it remains a priority for lo and sexuality education to serve as a constructive space for young men and women to interrogate their subjectivities, relationships and practices of gender and sexuality. this paper is, therefore, directed towards an analysis of young women’s experiences of such educational spaces, with particular focus on the extent to which these speak to a positive sexual agency for young women (and men). acknowledging within a foucauldian framework of bio-power perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 66 that a proliferation of talk and information about sex is not necessarily liberatory but rather always has a disciplinary function, we are interested in assessing the extent to which the dominant punitive response to young women’s sexuality, already documented in the literature, is reproduced and/or destabilised within sexuality education at schools. the study this paper draws from a large research project that explored how sexuality programmes at selected schools in the eastern cape and western cape provinces in south africa challenged or reproduced normative constructions of gender and gendered power relations.1 the main concern of the project, which adopted feminist principles of research, was how a critical gender lens facilitating gender transformation and gender justice could be incorporated into lo programmes in south african schools. the study was conducted at nine public schools in the two different provinces which represent the diversity of the former apartheid categorisations applied to secondary schools: two former white schools (former model c, both single sex girl schools), four former coloured and three african schools. while such apartheid terms are contested, they continue to be drawn on for equity purposes nationally. we use these here since they still have salience in south african communities and continue to be markers of class and other social privilege. although schools are less racialised in contemporary south africa, this is less so in poorer communities which continue to reflect historical divides. thus, ‘township’ schools remain the most disadvantaged, catering predominantly to working class, historically disenfranchised learners in communities characterised by poverty. the study adopted an ethnographic orientation with multiple approaches to data collection, including: a textual analysis of samples of lo teaching materials and resources; in-depth interviews with school principals and lo teachers; focus group discussions and individual in-depth interviews with grade 10 learners. multiple methods of data collection facilitated a triangulation of data and exploration of multiple perceptions and experiences of those engaged in the sexuality education at different locations, including school management, teachers, learners and curriculum developers. for this paper we draw on the data generated by the in-depth interviews and focus groups with learners. twenty-one focus groups included seven young men groups, seven mixed groups and eight young women groups. the focus group discussion addressed the following key issues: learners’ reflections on their learning and experiences of sexuality education in lo classes; how sexuality education in lo classes compared with how parents talk about sex and sexuality at home; and challenges in and out of school on sex and sexuality and how sexuality education 1. the study was a three-year sanpad-funded research project entitled ‘life orientation sexuality programmes and normative gender narratives, practices and power relations’ led by prof catriona macleod, rhodes university. ‘and i have been told that there is nothing fun about having sex while you are still in high school’: dominant discourses on women’s sexual practices and desires in life orientation programmes at school tamara shefer & sisa ngabaza 67 dealt with these. fifty-seven follow-up in-depth individual interviews with 21 boys and 36 girls were further conducted with some of the focus group participants. the in-depth individual interviews attempted to explore issues emerging from the focus groups in more depth and focused on reported practices of sexuality, relationships and reproductive health issues, including pregnancy and termination of pregnancy. all interviews and focus groups were recorded with permission of participants and transcribed verbatim, and translated where necessary. permission to access schools was granted by the relevant authority in the department of education in each province. researchers worked closely with lo teachers who facilitated access to those learners who were willing to participate in all sites. learners’ participation was obtained through signed parental consent where their age was below 16 years. all participation was on a voluntary basis and informed consent forms were completed by all participants who were aware that they could leave the research at any time without prejudice. focus group discussions and in-depth interviews were all conducted in the schools at times and spaces most convenient to both educators and participating learners. guided by qualitative thematic analysis informed by discourse analytic readings (braun & clarke, 2006), our analysis foregrounds discourses which speak to the way in which young women’s sexuality is reportedly represented in lo classes, with particular questions about the extent to which regulatory and punitive discourses are reproduced and/or subverted in sexuality programmes in schools. we present two linked narratives emerging which illustrate the dominance of teaching of sexuality through a lens of danger and consequence, directed primarily at young women, and which invokes young women to feel responsible for both their own protection from (both physical and social) ‘damage’ and disease, and for upholding the larger social framework of moral practice for young people. young female sexuality is thus located primarily within a discourse of vulnerability and fear, as well as responsibility, prohibition and control. ‘dangerous’ outcomes a dominant theme in sexuality education, already raised in recent literature as reviewed above, and emerging clearly in our data, is the teaching of sexualities through a lens of ‘dangerous’ outcomes. such teaching emerges as framed primarily within the negative consequences of being sexually active, articulated within a narrative of consequence and punishment, particularly for young women. while clearly sexuality education needs to incorporate messages about the potential negative outcomes related to unsafe sex for young women and men, sexuality appears to be primarily spoken about within the dominant discourse of the ‘dangers’ and ‘consequences’ of being sexually active. the ‘risks’ for young women of engaging in sexuality, notably also always assumed to be heterosexual, are foregrounded in the lessons and the learnings of young women and school, with particular emphasis perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 68 placed on the caution against pregnancy and disease. these are located as inevitable consequences of being sexually active with emphasis on how these have an impact on long-term life chances and experiences, even maybe a risk to their lives. as the learner below articulates it, ‘it is not worth it …’ is a powerful trope within learners’ experiences of sexuality education: and i have been told that there is nothing fun about having sex while you are still in high school. it just brings down everything that you do you now because you are gonna get pregnant at the end of the day or you might contract one of the diseases and it is just not worth it … because when you are older you are gonna be like okay here i am, i am old, i wanna go get married while you still had herpes and stuff like that and you know it is not worth it at the end, it is not worth it, really it is not. (female group, bloom high school) 2 a wide range of responses from participants, across diverse contexts of schooling, foreground the ‘kneejerk’ association of sex with dire consequences of disease and unwanted pregnancy, often presented in graphic biological terms. while clearly some useful resources are provided, regarding contraception for example, it appears that the framework of instruction serves to detach the biological, ‘factual’ material from its embeddedness in material and socio-psychological frameworks of relationships, and is primarily inspired by a cautionary imperative to ‘warn’ young people of the consequences of being sexually active. notably, it is also evident that sexuality is presented within such messages in heteronormative terms alone, with sexual activity conflated with heterosexual penetrative sexual practice, thus inadvertently reinstating a heteronormative version of sexual relationships: f5: in life orientation i learnt that i::f i’m, if i’m having sex for the first time with my boyfriend [giggles] i must use a condom and i must also protect myself from falling pregnant = /mhh/. f2: well, what i have learnt from life orientation, first of all, others do not know what sex is all about. so in life orientation they explain that sex is sleeping with a male. (female group, lincoln high) f5: /u::hm/, some of the things they teach us; = /mhh/ = they warn us about certain things, what to do and what not to do = /mhh/ = that is why i am saying it is relevant = /ok/. f3: i learnt that, if i slept with someone right, there are things i can do to protect myself from diseases = /ok/ = and pregnancy. (female group, lincoln high) f1: in sex education we learnt about hiv and ukwabelana ngesondo (stis) and how they are spread, sexual relations, we learnt about the consequences of 2. pseudonyms are used for the schools: bloom high, a former model c school (catering predominantly to white learners but now more mixed), lincoln, hibiscus and blue lagoon high schools, former coloured schools, and zamani high, an african ‘township’ school. pseudonyms are used to ensure anonymity of the schools. conventions for the referencing include: int – the interviewer; f1 – female participant in focus group, m1 – male participants in focus group; [] left out or explanatory text; = – speaker interrupts conversation; underline – emphasis; … – text omitted by authors. ‘and i have been told that there is nothing fun about having sex while you are still in high school’: dominant discourses on women’s sexual practices and desires in life orientation programmes at school tamara shefer & sisa ngabaza 69 having sex during one’s period, that one could contract aids. the teacher told us that there is a chance for one to contract aids if one has sex during one’s period; however it’s unlikely that one could fall pregnant as menstruation is the body’s way of releasing waste (biological waste pertaining to the female reproductive system). we also learnt that during sex that vaginal fluid comes into contact with semen and thereafter the chance of contracting aids is greater. f2: the teacher emphasised that what causes infection is that vaginal fluids mix with semen and as soon as this happens if one of the two is infected by the aids virus or sti then the infection takes place. m3: it helps us with matters such as the spreading of diseases such as hiv… it advises us against such matters. it exposes us to domains our homes would not take us through. f2: it has enlightened me on using of condoms … f4: it’s taught me about how to handle issues relating to stis or hiv. for example one may think that being hiv positive is a death sentence but one can still date, within dating they have to use a condom, one has to make sure that their cd4 count does not decline, once it does that is when one develops aids. hiv is a recent thing but it’s the most dangerous disease that one can contract at any time. one has to be honest to their partner regarding their status, after which one must continue to take their medication. if ever they have the disease. (mixed gender group, hibiscus high school) similarly in the conversation below, the discourse of consequence is powerfully associated with sexuality education, even for young men, in this case – thus sexuality education apparently cannot be thought of outside the teachings of consequence. in this respect, it is notable that even when invited to think about positive aspects of sexuality by the interviewer, no response is forthcoming from these male participants (rather the conversation turns back to talking about pregnancy) and pleasure or any positive aspects of sexual intimacy as associated with sexuality, at least within sexuality education, are rendered unimaginable or unspeakable. on the other hand, participants acknowledge the limitations of this discourse of consequence at the same time as they reinstate it. in both this conversation and the one above, young people also articulate a critical perspective on the dominant framework of sexuality education, highlighting in particular how punitive messages are ineffective and their resistance to this methodology of sexuality education. m1: even though we do learn about sex in class, we don’t even go out there, and like … we know, ok, we know, once you have sex, all these consequences, you might fall pregnant, you might get stds, etc., etc. we know about this stuff, but we still go out there, and we still have sex. but unprotected sex, but … and we still know what’s going to happen after that. so for me, i could say that, even though the teachers say, like, about sex in class, we don’t listen. it’s like, ok, if i’m having sex right now, nobody’s going to tell me what, you know. if i feel like, if i know how to protect myself, i know to protect myself, so we don’t listen. don’t listen, at all. perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 70 int: ok, so it sounds like that’s the negative part about it for you, hey? are there any positive aspects about it, that you can think of, that’s come out of being in class? (3) positives? can’t really think of anything? … so it’s mostly on the whole been negative? or … and uncomfortable, as well, hey, it sounds like? yes. m1: another thing, too, even my class, there’s this thing that, for girls, like, having a child, it’s like you’re taking off, like, every problem that you have on your shoulder, it’s like you’re lifting it off, then that child is going to … the child is a solution, because my class, there is this one girl that is pregnant, and then there’s two girls that already have kids … er, babies. (lincoln high school, mixed group; our emphasis) that lo teachers reproduce the equation of pregnancy with consequence/ punishment for sexual activity is also evident in this study as evident in research on pregnancy and parenting at schools (ngabaza, 2010; shefer et al., 2013). in the conversation below, the use of a pregnant or parenting learner ‘as example’ of the ‘dangers’ of sex is evident as is the silences that are then produced among learners. it is interesting that these young women share how they would rather be silent than invoke such a blaming discourse. while this could be viewed as their resistance to the stigmatisation of pregnant learners, the lesson of sex = danger = consequences/ punishment is nonetheless promoted in the teaching of sexuality: f1: well, she [referring to a young woman in their class] is pregnant. … int: okay. so does it become uncomfortable to talk about …? f2: about sex, in class. int: because of her experience? f2: because … yes. f1: teenage pregnancy, we can’t, like, talk about it, really, because it hurts her feelings, so that’s why we never brought it up. and the teacher that gives us lo, she’s, like … she’s always, like … how can i say? she’s explaining about it, but then we feel bored, because now, we don’t know, how does she feel about it, and then she makes an example of her. that’s not right. that, we don’t actually like about it, that’s why we never talk about it, we never think about that stuff. (mixed group, blue lagoon high school) while the dangers of sex as leading to unwanted pregnancies and illnesses are shown above to be central in the teaching of sexuality education through the trope of sex as being ‘naturally’ punished, sexuality also appears to be taught strongly within the context of the additional danger of sexual violence and other forms of ‘damage’ for girls. thus, when asked about what she learned about sex at school, the learner below first explains theoretical inputs on how sex (biological aspects, reproduction no doubt) takes place, but the strongest image emerging is the association between sex and rape and sexual violence. in this way, sexuality is presented strongly through ‘and i have been told that there is nothing fun about having sex while you are still in high school’: dominant discourses on women’s sexual practices and desires in life orientation programmes at school tamara shefer & sisa ngabaza 71 the lens of sexual violence. again, while high rates of sexual violence are clearly of concern, if sexuality is only dealt with within in the framework of sexual violence, learners are clearly not gaining an opportunity to think about sexuality as a realm of pleasure, of agency, within a positive and equal relationship: not learn about sex, sex you don’t learn about. i don’t know, we never learnt about it. you learnt about it in lo class theoretically in grade 8 and then you got to see scenarios like [inaudible], a person maybe is raped and then that is what the media taught me basically, then you got to watch movies where maybe a child was being sexually abused by her step dad. those things are like the basic things, otherwise every other thing you never got to learn about. (female, bloom high school) responsible ‘agents’ within these dominant discourses of sex as dangerous for young women’s current lives and futures, women appear to be set up as primarily responsible for policing young people’s sexual practices. this hinges mostly around the gendering of consequences, directed at young women in particular ways, as articulated so clearly in the dialogue below: f4: you are forbidden to have sex and then it just … that just arouses your curiosity and … = f1: = forbidden fruit always tastes the best. int: but more for the boys or more for girls? are you saying, like, is this a general thing for boys and girls, or mostly for girls? f4: it’s, sort of, mostly for girls, because we are told not to have sex because we are going to get pregnant, and the boys won’t get pregnant, so we are told, don’t have sex, don’t have sex, because you will fall pregnant and you will … = f2: = you will be the one with the baby. f4: and they will make you pregnant and then they will leave. (female group, blue lagoon high school) the notion that girls are the ones who will bear ‘the consequences’ and are therefore the ones ‘at risk’ is reportedly a popular warning by teachers in lo classes: so we’re basically, they’re really trying to make us aware of those kind of things because girls they have to take on more responsibilities once they fall pregnant than boys … because boys you know they just go to school every day you know those kind of things, so we sort of we’re more at risk than they are. (female, bloom high school) such discourse is taken up by women participants who reiterate this narrative of damage in which young women are ‘spoiled’ while young men are immune from any consequence: perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 72 f4: like, what we have been taught is that when you are busy with your boyfriend, there are things that you do and things that you don’t do. if i am a virgin, i must choose one person and not date this one and that one, if maybe i see that he is also dating. this spoils you as the girl and at the end you are the one that is being finished, not him. (female group, zamani high school) given the framing of women as those who ‘naturally’ stand to lose from sexual activity, who will inevitably bear the consequences, such lessons also hail women as responsible for not only protecting themselves from desired or undesired sexual engagement, the consequences and potential violence, but also for keeping larger social moralities in place. the quote from a participant at a single sex girls’ school is illustrative of how she has internalised such messages and promotes the notion of girls’ responsibility to protect themselves and the wider familial and social system: … honestly speaking i feel like the whole teenage pregnancy is really, really, really bringing down our system in education and stuff because more girls are falling pregnant and stis and stuff like you that … our education and uhm, uhm, there are many diseases contracted during that time and it is not going well. i think we as teenagers we need to protect ourselves and not being out there doing all this kind of stuff that put you in risk because you still got a future ahead of you and you still need to think about that and the money, i mean the money that goes into this school thing that your parents have to pay it is just not worth it. (individual interview, bloom high school) research on gender-based violence shows how young women live in a state of high alert of the possibility of sexual violence (radford & stanko, 1996) and consequently are expected to, and reportedly do, respond in protective ways to avoid such ‘danger’ through a regime of self-regulation and ‘precautionary strategies’ (sanger, 2008; gordon & collins, 2013: 98). invocations of practices of protection are similarly directed at young women at school. in the conversation below, which focused initially on a rich dialogue about ‘the double standards’, the notion of women’s need to be ‘in control’ and to protect themselves, whether from ‘losing’ their virginity (represented as something to ‘hold on to’), or whether from the consequences of pregnancy or stis, is clearly evident: int: you guys are talking about important things. you guys are talking about gender roles, you know. where a girl is supposed to be, where a boy is supposed to be, and how that creates a situation where the boy will lose interest in the girl, and the girl is left feeling, it’s my fault because i’m confused, so i need to know if i want to do this but i don’t want to do it. so, that’s an interesting situation, and then you guys are talking about, also, the roles being swapped, where … it doesn’t mean the boys have to initiate sex; you’re saying that girls are coming to the point where they are initiating sex. how do you guys feel about that? is that ok or is that not ok? f6: it’s not ok. int: it’s bad. it’s not ok? ‘and i have been told that there is nothing fun about having sex while you are still in high school’: dominant discourses on women’s sexual practices and desires in life orientation programmes at school tamara shefer & sisa ngabaza 73 f1: it’s not part of the girl-code. int: ok, so, you’re saying that it’s normal for the boy to initiate sex. the girls need to be the ones who have to wait for the boy to come and ask them. f1: yes, because if we girls initiate the sex, then we are going to be seen as a b i t c h [spells out the word]. f8: sluts. int: ok, so, if you ask for sex from your boyfriend, you’re going to be seen … or from a guy, you’re going to be seen as a bitch? participants [in unison]: yes, or a slut. int: ok, a slut, and a bitch. so, in some ways there’s also pressure on the girls to be a certain way, hey? boys have more freedom. participants [in unison]: yes, it is. int: is it like this in your school and community? f2: yes. that’s how it is. f1: girls are more closely guarded than boys. int: so, girls have to watch … you have to watch yourselves? f6: yes. self-control always. (female group, blue lagoon high; our emphasis) discussion sexuality education within the lo programme at schools is clearly an opportunity to work with young people around challenging gender and power inequalities, including the associated problems of coercive and unwanted sexual practices and violence. yet, as we have seen from existing research and this study, adding a component on sexuality education in the curriculum, does not necessarily ensure a constructive and appropriate approach that promotes young women’s positive sexual agency. on the contrary, such lessons might re-inscribe the very inequalities, stereotypes and stigma that such education could consciously hope to destabilise. thus, while there has been a particular call to work with young women in facilitating their agency to negotiate safe and equitable sexual practices, they appear to be receiving messages that arguably reinstate a form of femininity as vulnerable, submissive and inherently victimised. these research findings reinforce other work, elaborated earlier, that shows how schools are invested in reproducing dominant gendered norms that for young women could mean a reinstatement of a submissive and vulnerable femininity and a denial of their sexual desires and agency. the lessons young women are taught is that active sexuality while still at school is not only euphemistically not ‘fun,’ but indeed represents doom and despair. sexuality education emerges here and elsewhere as powerfully gendered with different emphasis in the narrative of consequence and responsibility being directed at young women versus young men. messages that are directed very specifically to young women learners, and which they appear to be perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 74 invested in, foreground a punitive response to the merest sign of their sexual desires and activity, constructing it as morally reprehensible and inherently punishable. this function, as illuminated through the narratives of a group of young people on their experiences of sexuality education, is achieved through the dominant trope of danger, risk and consequence, in which young women are constructed as those responsible for avoiding such consequences, both for their own sakes and for the larger social and moral landscape. the construction of the school as a sanitised space where signs of young sexualities are not tolerated but rendered ‘a problem’ instead, further serves to reinforce a notion that young women’s sexuality is unacceptable and will result in ‘punishment’ (the inevitable consequences of pregnancy, illness, damage and/or loss of future). conclusion it remains a challenge to ensure that young women are adequately prepared for dealing with existing inequalities in their relationships with men and within patriarchal social contexts, while also inspiring their sense of confidence, agency and strength. the sexuality education component of the lo curriculum has been viewed as one resource for facilitating young people’s development of life skills to challenge normative gender roles that facilitate unsafe, inequitable and coercive sexual practices. while it is of course important that young women (and young men) know and understand the constraints and risks of the context in which they will engage in sexuality and relationships, the prevailing image of young women as inevitably a victim, in need of protection and vulnerable to ‘damage’ of moral, emotional or physical kind, proliferating within the endless ‘warnings’ and calls for their self-policing and control, is arguably problematic for any practices of gender justice. it appears that far more work is required to challenge the way in which dominant gendered and moralistic discourses shape the kinds of messages that are conveyed to young men and women in the lo classroom. while lo teachers themselves are important figures in this project, it is also the responsibility of those who manage schools and those who write the curriculum and develop policy to generate a more critical and reflexive approach to working with young people. it is undoubtedly a complex project to work with young people towards equitable sexual and gender practices and in particular to promote young women’s sexual agency in a context which is still powerfully shaped by gender inequalities, normative violence and poverty. the challenges of lo education is to work within this contested space, harnessing the complexities as a resource, rather than reiterating the reductive and constraining messages which reduce sexual practices to danger, disease and damage and young women to unfortunate agents of negative social and personal consequences. ‘and i have been told that there is nothing fun about having sex while you are still in high school’: dominant discourses on women’s sexual practices and desires in life orientation programmes at school tamara shefer & sisa ngabaza 75 references adonis, b. & baxen, j. 2009. school culture, teacher identity and hiv/aids. 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anthropology, 27(1):43– 69. 10 doing justice to social justice in south african higher education masebala tjabane vaal university of technology venitha pillay university of pretoria “if you have come to help me, you are wasting your time, but if you have come to help me because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together” lila watson, aboriginal australian. this paper attempts to develop a conceptualisation of social justice in higher education based on a close reading of the current literature in the field. an important assumption we make is that higher education is a valuable mechanism for social justice. we set the literature against policy documents that detail south african aspirations with regard to the achievement of social justice goals. our aim is to stimulate debate on and engagement with issues of social justice in the local and global context that continues to manifest increasing socio-economic injustices. we argue that human liberation from global social injustice is intertwined at the individual and collective level and that it requires a collective human agency inherent in the radical tradition of social justice, which exhibits impressive credentials for facilitating the achievement of social justice. introduction this paper attempts to develop a conceptualisation of social justice in higher education based on a close reading of the current literature in the field. we argue that social justice is an important mandate of higher education in south africa (sa) as a developing democracy (waghid, 2008: 20). furthermore, higher education is particularly positioned in this context to produce higher knowledge that is responsive to its milieu (morrow, 2009: 113). finally we show that the quest for social justice is intertwined with the academic tradition of critique and the purpose of seeking just futures for the common good, and that the urgency for this is increasing in the context of the current economic recession and a general socioeconomic environment that appears to be hostile to radically informed strategies. methodology this paper emerged from a doctoral study on social justice, entitled higher education policy and social justice: a south african case study (tjabane 2010). the research questions that guided the study sought to address the marginalisation of the social justice agenda in higher education and focused specifically on three aspects of social justice, namely access into higher education, gender and hiv/aids. the focus of this paper is not on the findings of the study, but the central analytic point of the thesis that there is need for the revival of a social justice agenda in higher education institutions. the paper offers a brief overview of current debates on social justice and proceeds to examine efforts in sa to achieve the goals of social justice through education, largely through an examination of south african education policy documents and current literature that seeks to address issues of social justice in a post apartheid sa. literature overview social justice is a contested concept in theory and practice, with various definitions. in this article, we adopt the position of gerwitz (2002) who advances a plural conception of social justice. hence social 11tjabane & pillay— doing justice to social justice in south africa higher education 11 justice is viewed as possessing a variety of facets that entail the equal redistribution of socio-economic amenities, as well as the recognition and promotion of difference and cultural diversity (gerwitz & gribb, 2002: 499; taylor, 1997: 128). plural conceptions of social justice enlarge the agenda of such justice, the complexity and multiplicity of which has been an issue of concern throughout modern civilisation. its ancestry lies in the enlightenment ideals of freedom and equality of all humankind. in modern times, the literature refers to three traditions of social justice: the conservative, the liberal and the radical. the conservative tradition of social justice the conservative tradition of social justice originated among classical economists and advocates of enlightenment projects, such as adam smith (1723–1790) (1776) and hayek (1899-1992) (1848), whose common belief was that government should follow a laissez-faire economic policy (hill, 2003: 3). for its upholders the driving force for a socially just society is individual self-interest and the motivation for profit, operating under a laissez-faire economic policy (rizvi, 1998; starr, 1999). robert nozick (1929 2002) can be regarded as an embodiment of the conservative tradition in the field of political and moral philosophy during the latter half of the 20th century (feser, 2005; otsuka, 2005). nozick’s theory regarding political and economic ethics is based on libertarian ideals and he is renowned for the “entitlement theory of justice” in which he vindicates right-wing libertarianism and the advancement of individual rights of control over one’s own mind, body, and life: a right to self-ownership (feser, 2005: 20; otsuka, 2005: 15). the centrality of self as the means to social justice, and the progress of the self as the goal of social justice are embedded in the views of both adam smith and nozick . the conservative tradition and its ideals, particularly libertarianism, would not be palatable to socialist-minded thinkers,. the position of the conservative tradition on social justice is a direct opposite of collective effort portrayed in the aboriginal statement reproduced above. despite its support of inequality, however, this tradition continues to exist alongside the liberal and radical traditions of social justice in a context of tension between individual competition and communal cooperation. the liberal tradition of social justice the liberal tradition is associated with the egalitarian position of ‘justice as fairness’ and the liberal principles of equality and freedom. the liberal tradition’s point of convergence with the conservative tradition lies in the belief that social justice can be attained within the existing capitalist socio-economic framework. it differs, however, from the conservative tradition with regard to its position vis-âvis the role of the state. the liberal tradition favours the role of the state as a protector of society and regulator of markets for the promotion of egalitarian principles, while the conservative tradition favours a weak, aloof state (rizvi, 1998; starr, 1999). in this liberal tradition, social justice would require redistribution to those who lack the basic socio-economic amenities, while emphasising the role of the state in ensuring this redistribution (gale, 2000: 268). the roots of the liberal tradition of social justice are found in the moral and political philosophy of 17th century theorists and the ideals of the enlightenment. john locke (1632-1704) is one of the seminal thinkers of the liberal tradition(schwartz, 2007: 2; tuckness, 2005: 1). locke also exerted an influence on other enlightenment philosophers, such as kant (1724 – 1804) who was a central figure in the philosophy of the enlightenment, and who defines enlightenment as the maxim of always thinking for oneself and finding just solutions. (uzgalis, 2007: 21). during the 20th century john rawls (1921-2002) emerged as yet another liberal social scientist and philosopher who championed freedom and equality equally in advancing the position of justice as fairness, with almost similar tones to kant. (rawls, 1971: 302-303). the premise of rawls’ “justice as fairness” is the creation of a more open society based on egalitarian social justice. rawls has been hailed as one of the most influential and enduring moral philosophers of the 20th and 21st centuries (nussbaum, 2001: 1). commentators on the conservative and liberal traditions, rizvi (1998) and starr (1999), classify them under the modernisation paradigm and neo-liberal philosophy. the education reform policies informed by the said paradigm advance the human capital position on education, where education is viewed as 12 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 201112 an investment, and maintain that justice can be attained and individuals can be enabled to utilise their education in an open market society, by distributing the same amount of social good (education) to people of all classes (whitty, 2000: 93). human capital investments generate monetary and social returns and perceive education as a great equaliser. another common description of the proponents of the first and second social justice traditions is the term the new right, or the conservative alliance. according to apple (1993: 11) this social movement consists of three sectors: the neo-liberal, the neo-conservative and religious fundamentalism. in principle, the ideology of the conservative alliance appears to embody social justice, because it appears to preach the message of equality and distribution informed by human rights, which appeals to the marginalised and poor. in practice, however, owing to the unequal nature of capitalism, the distributive element of liberal social justice has come to be translated into the distribution of unequal socio-economic relations, characteristic of capitalism. the radical tradition of social justice continuities exist between the first two, the conservative and the liberal traditions of social justice, and the third (radical) tradition, in their calls for democracy and equal participation in the socio-economic and political activities of the state. the third tradition, which is socialist in its outlook, has been identified by most social scientists as possessing the greatest potential to promote social justice (starr, 1991: 22). it is couched in the language of transformation associated with leftist politics and is critical of conservatism and liberalism. according to this tradition, everyone is supposed to benefit equally from participating in the socio-economic activities and social institutions of a society (starr, 1991: 23), hence the move towards the redistribution of social wealth, other social amenities and a more equitable socio-economic system. the language of a transformation of the capitalist socio-economic order associated with the third tradition emphasises its strong affinity to critical theory and the frankfurt school of thought (kellner 2005: 2). while numerous social theorists are associated with leftist politics and critical theory, of particular relevance to this project are habermas (1984) and freire (2004), because of their clear position on democracy and collective human agency as an element of radical social justice. habermas’ position on social justice is heavily influenced by his belief that justice exists, and that reason or rationality can benefit society through communicative action leading to human emancipation . (habermas, 1984: 86). in this regard, his project could be interpreted as transforming human oppression into an expression of more humane and democratic values through communicative action. the concern of habermas, to open up communication, resonates with paulo freire’s (1927 – 1997) concern with democratic dialogue as a tool to emancipate the oppressed from the debilitating effects of capitalism. freire was critical of capitalism and the resulting crises such as abject oppression and injustices and advanced that it would take critical education to achieve a socialist utopian vision (glass, 2001: 15; morrow & torres, 2002: 11; (gibbon, 2006: 4; mclaren & faramandpur, 2005: 53). according to freire, education for critical consciousness is closely related to the quest for transformation as found in radical social justice. in a third world context, closely similar to that of south africa, freire contends that education could help men and women assume an increasingly critical attitude towards the world in order to transform it (freire, 1974: 30). the pursuit of transformation is crucial to this study. equally important is the concept of mutuality, because for social justice to be a lived reality for all humanity, there has to be mutual human agency. the agenda of the third tradition is much broader, in that it advances social justice beyond redistribution to recognition and absolute freedom. this is embodied in young’s (2000) theory of justice as freedom from the five faces of oppression, namely exploitation, marginalisation, violence, powerlessness and cultural imperialism (young, 1997, as cited in gerwitz, 1998; young, 2000: 35). each of the five faces of oppression represents a form of injustice that a member of society might experience. justice as freedom from the five faces of oppression envisages a society in which socio-economic justice is achieved through the equal redistribution of the resources of society, humane treatment of all, equal recognition of the worth of all members of society, empowerment and celebration of diversity (gerwitz, 1998: 477; young, 13tjabane & pillay— doing justice to social justice in south africa higher education 13 2000: 48). young’s (2000) broad conceptualisation of social justice is constructive, because it improves on a more restrictive liberal and conventional conceptualisation of social justice. in addition to its broad agenda it also encompasses the notion of collective human agency, indicating that human emancipation is closely intertwined with individual liberation, as embodied in the aboriginal maxim cited earlier. social justice and south african policy initiatives in south africa concerns with social justice, in line with the liberal and radical tradition, have always been high on the agenda of the anti-apartheid movement. the dawn of political independence in the 1990s led to a re-emphasis on the social justice agenda in the government’s attempts at nation-building, reconciliation and addressing the injustices of the past. the foundation of the social justice discourse can be traced to the anti-apartheid movements, culminating in the formation of the national education policy investigation (nepi) in the 1990s, a policy initiative informed by a progressive philosophy of education and reform, evident in principles of democracy, non-sexism, non-racism and a unitary system. the nepi-framework could be seen as an attempt to democratise education policy formulation, because its researchers comprised a wide range of people, including political leaders and academic practitioners (chetty, chisholm, mkwanazi, motala & tickly, 1993), who participated in a collective, inclusive process to formulate policy options, taking into account the diversity and multicultural stakeholders of the education enterprise. a plethora of policy documents focusing on transforming and reconstructing higher education has been published since 2000, including the “size and shape”-document: towards a new higher education landscape – meeting the equity, quality and social imperatives of south africa in the 21st century (june 2000), the national plan for higher education (nphe) (february 2001) and the new academic plan for programmes and qualifications in higher education (january 2002). common recurring themes raised in these documents are framed in the language of democracy, transformation, human rights and progressive critical academic culture (white paper, 1995: 11-12, “size and shape”-document, 2000: 24-28). the nphe, for instance, recognises the important role higher education plays in consolidating democracy and social justice, while contributing to socio-economic development (nphe 2001: 6-5). the enhancement of the culture of democracy is closely linked to the promotion of social justice, particularly as the country is an emerging democracy. the founding principles of the south african constitution, particularly the advancement of the culture of human rights and democracy (the south african constitution 1996: 3), are contained in the nphe . in terms of the three traditions of social justice discussed above, the language and tone of the social democratic view appear to dominate in sa policy documents. this is evident in the emphasis on open participation in the economic and social spheres, of previously disadvantaged people. the above policy documents, because they are informed by an inclusive and democratic discourse, may also be regarded as reflecting the concept that human emancipation is a collective effort, similar to that in the aboriginal proverb at the beginning of the article. social justice versus globalisation the above section has indicated that the south african government, in an attempt to break the mould of apartheid education, embraced social justice, which is evident in the commitment to the adoption of democratic principles, the human rights culture and transformation in general, while at the same time attempting to meet the demands of the global and knowledge economy. these concerns show that sa has not been immune to globalisation. in sa, like in other countries, concerns with global competitiveness and the knowledge economy have been translated in terms of the corporatisation and commodification of higher education, a trend that is eroding social justice concerns in higher education. progressive social researchers advance the view that the south african reality and the illiberal elements of neo-liberalism are obscured by the language of human rights freedom and equality: according to vally (2002: 6) “acting as if certain rights exist or all, inhibits people’s ability to recognise when they are in fact illusory, and why society does not act to protect these rights”. 14 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 201114 proponents of the radical social justice agenda, the progressive intellectual forces in the country (chisholm & fuller, 1996; muller, 1998; vally, 2002) lament the manner in which social justice is downplayed in policy due to the macro-economic regime under which the government has placed itself. the developments in question are the replacement of the rdp by the growth, economic and redistribution strategy (gear). gear has been regarded as a policy option with a rightist agenda, which has thus succumbed to the agenda of the washington consensus that is neo-liberal to the core (bond 2007: 128). at the macro-level, progressive social scientists call for the re-insertion of the transformation agenda of the rdp in addressing the impact of globalisation. (kallaway, kruss, donn & fatar, 1997: 1) writing in the mid 1990s, chisholm and fuller (1996: 713) critique south african policy formulation and implementation, indicating that the broad transformative agenda of the pre-1990 period was being narrowed down to promote the concerns of a market economy associated with globalisation. although the macro policy development points in a direction opposed to the progressive social justice agenda, social researchers in the south african context continue to argue for the promotion of an atmosphere conducive to transformation and the promotion of the elements of radical social justice that entail the fostering of higher education for the public good, accompanied by a courageous critical scholarship informed by a human rights culture, e.g. badat (2001: 1), ntshoe (2002; 9) and singh (2001). public intellectuals responding to the social justice agenda in order to illustrate the complexity and multiplicity of social justice, this section will look at some of the ways in which intellectuals and academics have responded to or interpreted the call for greater equality and social justice in education. in other words, this section attempts to answer the question as to what constitutes social justice in a transformed higher education system in south africa, as conceptualised by intellectuals with the moral responsibility of promoting the common good. it also attempts to identify themes from the higher education environment that illustrate the aboriginal proverb that holds the view that human emancipation requires for collective human agency. one of the emerging interpretations of social justice in the south african context is its association with inclusive education. in this regard, a socially just education system entails the celebration and valuing of diversity, accommodation and tolerance of all learners, creation of equal opportunities and the promotion of the capabilities of all learners (pendlebury & enslin 2004: 50). inclusive education also encompasses other mechanism of social justice, viz. increased and broadened participation of previously excluded and disadvantaged people. in the south african context, recognition of prior learning (rpl) has been used for this purpose (motaung 2009: 78). rpl opens up the educational boundaries and thus contributes to greater inclusivity. in this context, social justice agenda is advanced through optimal social and educational inclusion. the agenda of inclusivity is also portrayed the call for intellectuals to engage with indigenous knowledge systems (iks) and thus contribute to socially just knowledge systems (adora-hoppers 2001: 84). in a context where there is great concern with breaking the mould of the injustices of the past and ever-increasing global injustices and suffering, it stands to reason that progressive educators would advance and dream of ideal situations. at the classroom level, in the context of the enactment of social justice, researchers advance the position that transformed university teaching and learning entails reflexive praxis. waghid (2001: 77) suggests that this entails rationalising, acting and asking different questions with the aim of transforming current unjust realities. the quest for the ideal in alleviating injustices has its roots in critical pedagogy which has as its central object the transformation of society for the mutual benefit of all who live in it (keet, zinn & porteus 2009: 109). the importance of adopting collective responsibility to address global injustice is emphasised in maintaining that nurturing possibilities for communitarian liberalism could contribute towards deepening democracy and social justice at higher education institutions (waghid, 2002: 106). the specific elements of communitarian liberalism likely to promote democracy are identified as conversational justice and shared rational deliberation (waghid 2002:112), in almost the same vein as habermas’s communicative action. 15tjabane & pillay— doing justice to social justice in south africa higher education 15 implicit in this suggestion is an atmosphere fertile for the germination of the ideal of social justice. thus it needs to be explored further, but with caution, lest attempts at promoting it relapse into neo-liberalism. related to the notion of communitarian liberalism is the cultivation of democratic and compassionate citizenship education as an element of social justice and transformation (waghid 2003: 159). the point regarding compassionate citizenship resonates with one advanced by kissack and enslin (2003: 47), who argue that citizenship education is a crucial element and goal of tertiary education, particularly for fostering transformation and social justice. nieuwenhuis (2004: 63) expresses a similar view: “equality of treatment should promote the core human values of respect, compassion, just treatment, fairness, peace, truthfulness and freedom” ( 2004:63) in this regard mutual compassion is important in the realisation of social justice. at the micro-level, the agenda for the promotion of social justice lies in the call for more participatory and democratic policy formulation and implementation involving all social agents. de clerq (1996: 144) promotes this position, saying that policy documents separate policy formulation from implementation. similarly, unterhalter (1998: 232) contends that for policy to be more inclusive and gender sensitive, a different and more socially just form of analysis is needed, i.e. an analysis informed by a more inclusive and open discourse of social justice. the above elements of inclusive education, reflexive praxis, critical pedagogy, communitarian liberalism, democratic and compassionate citizenship and collective agency, fit the agenda of transformation and popular democratic discourse informed by socialism. this re-emphasis of the agenda of reconstruction and development in dealing with issues of equity and redress echoes the position of one south african radical social justice scholar, viz. that in the context of increasing global injustices and intolerance to radical social justice, there is an urgent need for the renewal of radical social justice in the tradition of marx, even in a global context that is vehemently opposed to marxism and has declared the end of its history (muller 1997: 196). radical social justice, referred to earlier as the third tradition, possesses a broader agenda in the south african context because of the historical legacy of the country and its specificity. for instance the consideration of the forms of ‘mode two’knowledge as social justice issues. the breadth and scope of the agenda further illustrate the inclusive and accommodative stance of the radical conception of social justice. radical social justice, however, has been criticised for being overly utopian (starr, 1991: 24). with reference to its position on education, radical social justice has also been criticised for adopting an inclusive emancipatory and political stance that would produce a cadre of social activists without adequate skills for the marketplace. its proposal of full inclusion has also been criticised for lowering educational standards by burdening educators with students from disadvantaged educational backgrounds another criticism of the radical position of social justice comes from postmodernist scholars who accuse it of being a totalising meta-narrative that excludes other ways of knowing, particularly those of feminism (burbules & berk, 1999:57). despite this criticism, this radical tradition stands a better chance than the other two of achieving a socially just education and training system because of its socialist and redistributive agenda, as opposed to the restrictive and neo-liberal agenda of the other two traditions. the tenets of the radical position on social justice, such as participation parity in all societal institutions, far outweigh the issues of marketable skills, the lowering of standards and a totalising meta-narrative. also neutralising this criticism are the broad and inclusive agenda of radical social justice and the language of possibility to which giroux (1998) alludes. therefore, the challenge is to revitalise social belief in the alternatives to neo-liberal social justice, such as found in the radical social justice agenda. 16 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 201116 some concluding thoughts there are no sources in the current document . in the context of the narrowing of the policy agenda, the shifting of policy alliances and ambiguities, this study contends that the pursuit of social justice is critical. our argument after reviewing research concerned with social justice issues in south africa is that the national policy documents appear to serve and legitimate the current socio-economic context that is informed by neo-liberalism. in principle, the social justice agenda is expressed by the recurring focus on equity, redress and social responsiveness, as well as democratic and inclusive education. this scenario tends to leave existing and traditional institutional practices intact. the question arises as to how institutional practices can be directed to support the social justice agenda. this study therefore sought to extend the scope of existing literature on social justice education by providing a reconstructed, revitalised and relevant version. furthermore, while evidence gleaned from the literature appears to indicate that history and the broader macro-economic framework of neo-liberalism stifle the concerns and practices of radical social justice, and that the essential structure of neo-liberalism remains integrated, new hope is to be found in the establishment or creation of the progressive voice and practices of dissent. these beacons of possibility provide significant potential for the restructuring of the social justice agenda along progressive and democratic lines. this is an important consideration for the 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theoretical framework for understanding pgce student teacher learning in the wild coast rural schools’ partnership project abstract this article focuses on a theoretical model that i am developing in order to understand student teacher learning in a rural context and the enabling conditions that can support this learning. the question of whether a supervised teaching practice in a rural context can contribute to the development of student teacher professional learning and their preparation to teach in a range of contexts needs to be researched in an academically rigorous way in order to understand student teacher learning in the wild coast rural schools’ partnership project and the implications for teacher education. the article aims to go beyond the “story” of the project and a description of student teacher experiences, to focus on a theoretical framework for understanding student teacher learning. previous work with postgraduate certificate in education (pgce) students has indicated that immersion in rural contexts in a supported way can provide opportunities for the interruption of the knowledge of many of the students (such as their existing schemata of rurality and of teaching in rural areas). furthermore, it can facilitate the creation of new knowledge and altered mindsets through social participation in rural communities and with each other in communal living and teaching. the article explains the construction of a theoretical model, which addresses situational and contextual elements needed to understand student teacher learning. keywords: pgce student teacher learning; case study; rurality; situated learning; communities of practice; teacher knowledge; professional learning; cultural historical activity theory (chat). 1. introduction the focus of the article is on the development of a model/ theoretical framework in order to understand student teacher learning in a rural schools’ project; thereby contri­ buting to current discourses in teacher education on teacher knowledge, professional learning, practical learning and preparation for contextual diversity. the model is being developed as part of a phd thesis, which endeavours to research the student teacher learning in the wild coast rural schools’ partnership project in an academically rigorous way. the thesis aims to go beyond the “story” of the project and a description of student teacher experiences, to focus on a theoretical framework for understanding jane pennefather school of education university of kwazulu-natal doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i1.15 issn 0258-2236 eissn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(1): 216-229 © uv/ufs http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.15 pennefather towards a theoretical framework for understanding pgce student teacher learning 217 student teacher learning. it represents a shift from reporting on a project to understanding the epistemological and ontological underpinnings of the project. in order to deepen my understanding of this project as a learning experience for student teachers, i needed to research the pedagogical spaces of the teaching placement context with their situational and contextual elements. in order to understand the “what” and the “how” of the student teacher learning in this context, i have needed to examine concepts of situated learning, rurality and teacher knowledge/professional learning. as part of the process of monitoring, understanding and reporting on the project, much of the data had been collected during the project but the doctoral study facilitated a deeper analysis of the data regarding these pedagogical spaces for a range of stakeholders. the emerging model/theoretical framework discussed in this article aims to understand the student teacher learning in the project through three interconnected and complementary aspects: situated learning, rurality and early professional learning. morrow (2007: 104) argues that in preparing students to teach, teacher education pro­ grammes should develop an understanding of the formal (i.e. the professional practice of organising systematic learning, which is the same across contexts) and the material elements of teaching (i.e. how the practice may be embodied in a range of contexts). he criticises most teacher education programmes for failing to reflect this distinction, tending to define teaching as a set of generic teaching practices free from the contexts in which the teaching happens (2007: 105). the general lack of preparation of student teachers as “professional agents” (morrow, 2007: 105), with the flexible competences needed to teach in a range of contexts as well as the shortage of teachers in many rural schools in south africa formed part of the contextual framework from which the wild coast rural schools’ partnership project emerged. in africa, between 60­70% of school age learners are enrolled in rural schools (hsrc, 2005). in south africa, more than 14 million people live in rural contexts (sa national statistical office, 2014). the inequalities of the past in south africa under apartheid therefore remain deeply reflected in what has been described as a bimodal schooling system where schools today still reflect the apartheid past, both in terms of school infrastructure, resourcing and in the results from international and national benchmarking tests (spaull, 2012). students arriving at universities reflect the bimodality of the schooling system in terms of the range of schools from which they come. universities in turn frequently teach students as though they were a homogeneous group; often resulting in the dominant voices of the more confident students from the better resourced schools being the voices of the lecture room. nowhere is this more evident, in my experience, than in the annual intake of the postgraduate certificate in education (pgce) students. whether there are spaces for the development and emergence of the capabilities of all of the students and the consequent enrichment of the lecture learning space is frequently not questioned. as a lecturer in the pgce programme, i became increasingly aware that we were not preparing our student teachers for effective teaching in diverse contexts (the authentic space of the south african schooling context) and that we were not challenging the deficit frameworks many of them had regarding rural contexts. as a response to this, i began developing a number of partnerships with rural schools, culminating in the wild coast rural schools’ partnership project. previous work with pgce students had indicated that immersion in rural contexts in a supported way could provide opportunities for the interruption of the knowledge of many of the students (such as their existing schemata of rurality and of teaching in rural areas). 218 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) it could also facilitate the creation of new knowledge and altered mindsets through social participation in rural communities and with each other in communal living and teaching – the “affordances” (kelly, 2006) of the rural school contexts in which students were placed. building on this initial partnership work with rural schools, the wild coast rural schools’ project was designed to provide pgce students, supported by university tutors, with the opportunity to complete their second six­week school placement period living and teaching in deeply rural school environments on the eastern cape wild coast. this was a three­year project involving approximately 25 pgce students per year who were each placed in one of seven deeply rural schools. this area is deeply rural, characterised by under­resourced schools, high unemployment, adult illiteracy, health challenges and poor socio­economic development. however, it is also characterised by rural communities with deep levels of organisation at a local traditional level and intact traditional cultural practices. the districts chosen and schools selected for the initial placement of student teachers all represented examples of existing and emerging partnerships and their selection was informed by my own local knowledge of the areas in which the schools were based. the educational problems addressed by this project were the challenges teacher education faces in preparing pre-service teachers for the complex and differentiated nature of south african schools and society in meeting some of the needs of rural education. a particular challenge is training teachers who have a positive orientation to teaching in rural contexts or working in partnerships with under-resourced schools and who have the flexible competences to teach in a range of contexts. the partnership approach used in this project brought together multiple voices in the construction of new knowledge, which could serve to challenge a deficiency framework regarding rural contexts and develop new flexible competences needed to teach in a range of contexts. from a university institutional perspective and a national policy perspective, there is an increasing imperative to orientate students to nuances of context. this is a shift from the national policy on teacher education, the norms and standards for educators (dhet, 2000), with its conception of teaching defined by the seven roles, which largely ignores the reality of the diverse contexts of south african schools. concepts of community engagement, social responsibility, work­based and service learning are increasingly evident in government policy for south african universities. the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications (dhet, 2011) recognises the various types of knowledge that underpin teachers’ practice and the need for teachers to be able to meet the demands of different contexts. this includes learning in and from practice (practical learning) and knowledge of varied learning situations, contexts and environments of education (situational learning). in providing guidelines for the various types of knowledge that underpin teachers’ practice, the government policy on teaching practice in south africa, the revised policy on the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications (dhet, 2015), emphasises the need for practical learning which is responsive to the contextual demands of the country. the question of whether a supervised teaching practice in a rural context could contribute to the development of student teachers’ professional learning and their preparation to teach in a range of contexts therefore became the focus of the phd study. this article articulates the development of a theoretical model to understand more explicitly the student teacher learning. pennefather towards a theoretical framework for understanding pgce student teacher learning 219 2. research design and methodology a case study methodology within an interpretive paradigm was used, with its “search for local meanings” (borko, whitcomb & byrnes, 2008: 1025), its “thick, rich descriptions” (rule & john, 2011: 7) and its focus on multiple realities and range of possible interpretations of events and situations (bertram & christiansen, 2014). the study set out to document, narrate, analyse and theorise the learning of the student teachers. the case study methodology offered an opportunity to understand the rich texture of the project within its multi­layered contexts with the focus on understanding student teacher learning and the contexts within which this phenomenon arises. bassey (1999) advocates the use of educational case studies as a means of enhancing educational practice. this project had its roots in the pgce programme and the development of students’ teaching practice, thus the case study approach became appropriate in terms of the development of teaching practice. the study attempted to understand the “how”; the “why” and the “what” of student learning, through a range of data sources, using interviews, focus groups, questionnaires and document analysis. researcher positioning in this project needs to be highlighted. the multiple roles of researcher/project coordinator/community member (with my own deep personal history in the area) and participant (as university tutor of students) meant that i was intimately immersed in all aspects of the process. although my subjectivity as participant had the potential to erode my role as researcher; the extensive literature in the field of ethnography generally highlights the value of this immersion in the context; what spry (2001: 709) describes as “an embodied methodological praxis”. insider/outsider roles and the establishment of social networks were important in understanding the dynamics of the project and in gaining legitimate access to these rural communities (elias & scotson, 1994; bruggeman, 2008). this had implications for methodological approaches and ethics in researching issues in rurality and directed the research approach in my study, which was about immersion in rural communities and authentic learning from the experience for all participants. it was about “being there” but also about respecting the place, the people and understanding issues of power. 3. an “emerging” theoretical model/framework given the layers of “story”, inhabited by so many characters/elements, it became apparent that in order to understand the types of interaction contributing to the student teacher learning in the social space of the project (the situated and social nature of the learning), i needed an analytical tool that would incorporate the shared meaning of the activity. with its focus on interaction, cooperation, support and mediation, cultural historical activity theory (chat) and in particular engestrom’s third generation of activity theory (2001), provided a language and useful set of tools to understand and visualise the various components of a complex activity system (i.e. student teacher learning in this project) with specific focus on the interrelationship between the components of the activity system. figure 1, below is based on engestrom’s (2001) reformulated third generation of activity theory , adapted for use in visualising and naming the components of the activity system in my study. this is then embedded in figure 2 (following from figure 1). figure 2 represents a composite model that i refer to as an “emerging” theoretical framework. it incorporates the chat framework and the substantive theoretical elements needed to understand and theorise the student teacher learning. 220 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) fi gu re 1 c ha t f ra m ew or k d is tu rb an ce s c ol le ct iv e as se ts m ed ia tio na l m ea ns : i.e . to ol s an d ar te fa ct s; p sy ch ol og ic al a nd m at er ia l. e .g . p g c e c ou rs e m at er ia ls , s up po rt an d te ac hi ng s tra te gi es , r ec ou rs es s ub je ct : p g c e s tu de nt te ac he rs r ul es : t p re qu ire m en ts , p ro je ct re qu ire m en ts , s ch oo l r eq ui re m en ts , d oe p ol ic ie s c om m un ity : s tu de nt te ac he rs , m en to rs , l ea rn er s, te ac he rs , c om m un ity m em be rs , p ro je ct p ar tn er s d iv is io n of la bo ur : r ol es a nd re sp on si bi lit ie s of a ll pa rti ci pa nt s o bj ec t: t ra in in g pr ac tic e ou tc om es : s tu de nt te ac he r l ea rn in g pennefather towards a theoretical framework for understanding pgce student teacher learning 221 case study of student teacher learning mediational means national context provincial context local context student teacher learning division of labourrules community chat framework object teaching practice subject pgce student teachers school school school school theory of rurality situated learning theory theory of teaching­ professional learning school school school figure 2 the model (figure 2), entitled “a case study of student teacher learning” depicts the layers of context, both past and present, national (policies, history etc.), provincial (eastern cape) and local (environmental, community, school, student groups, partners etc.) impacting upon the student teacher learning at the heart of the activity system. embedded in this model are the substantive theories, which help in understanding the phenomenon of student teacher learning in those layers of context. the chat framework (figure 1), is a tool/language for visualising the components of the activity system and is part of the structure of the model addressing the relationships among the multiple elements making up the collective activity (sawchuk, duarte & elhammoumi, 2006). the contradictions/disturbances (for example, teacher strikes during the period of teaching 222 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) practice, absent principals, flooding rivers impacting upon student teachers’ ability to get to schools etc.) and the collective assets (for example, membership in local rural communities enabling cultural immersion experiences, existing historical partnerships contributing to context of trust etc.) in the activity system are also identified as potential forces for student teacher learning. 4. towards the substantive theories informing an understanding of the student teacher learning in the journey towards understanding student teacher learning, issues of context, in particular rurality, situated learning and the contested domain of teacher knowledge emerged as key substantive theories which could provide the lenses through which the “story” of learning could be more deeply understood. applying the three lenses of teacher professional learning, rurality and situated learning (the 3 substantive theories of the model) to the data sources, a complex multifocal lens/composite is created in order to understand the “what” and the “how” of the student teacher learning in this context. 5. theory of rurality students were immersed in a deeply rural context, thus in terms of an understanding of their learning, it is necessary to engage with a theory of rurality. the partnership work upon which the wild coast rural schools’ partnership project is based acknowledges that it is not possible to find a good definition of rurality but it views rurality as a sense of place, inherently spatial, with its strengths and weaknesses (pennefather, 2011). it engages with the possibilities for place sensitive work and it is these possibilities that need to be understood in terms of the student teacher learning. gruenewald (2003: 626) describes this sense of place as a fluid “human experience of geographical contexts”. budge (2004), in writing about practised ways of living in rural contexts, suggests a context in which the “peculiarities of the local… must be understood”. balfour, mitchell and moletsane (2008) argue for a generative theory of rurality where relationships between space, time and agency are taken into account. emerging voices: a report on education in south african rural communities (hsrc & epc, 2005) provides an overview of the complexities of the problems of rural communities and schooling but also points to the importance of listening to the voices of the poor. sen (1999) writes about multiple deprivations but also the shared capabilities and the spaces for individual and community agency. the rich historical, social and cultural contexts of these rural communities provided new “transaction spaces” or “boundary zones” (gibbons, 2005), in which new relationships were developed and the frequently held deficit discourses towards rurality were challenged and new understandings emerged. when asked about their learning and in writing in their journals it was clear that much of the student learning emerged through their immersion and increasing membership in the rural communities: “i was very nervous before coming here, but now would definitely consider working in a rural area with different cultures. people welcomed us into their lives.” “i thought the children knew nothing; but they were amazing.” “they had so much knowledge of things that i did not know like looking after cattle, gathering food from the rocks, dance and cultural practices.” “people in community taught us about culture and traditional leadership.” pennefather towards a theoretical framework for understanding pgce student teacher learning 223 the cultural immersion experiences of the students in these rural communities, where they ventured outside their cultural comfort zones, where preconceptions were dislodged, leading to new, shared understandings, transformed their understanding of others. this was a form of ‘boundary crossing’ with its often contradictory and tension filled practice leading to new and different knowledge, values and skills. this concept is continued in the discussion on situated learning below. 6. situated learning theory the concept of learning to teach as a situated activity, which can be educative or non­educative (dewey, 1938) is useful in understanding the enabling conditions necessary for the student teacher learning. borko (2004) explains the term situative as a set of theoretical perspectives that are used to conceptualise learning as having both individual and socio-cultural features. lave and wenger’s (1991) social theory of learning focuses on how people learn through everyday informal interaction with significant others in the course of their shared practices i.e. learning through increasing social participation in a community of practice, starting with ‘legitimate peripheral participation’ and proceeding to ‘full participation’. what the individual and the shared practices were and how increasing social participation occurred in the project are examined. by involving students in active learning in rural contexts (“activity settings”), where they lived together in a community while on a school placement, where they travelled daily in a vehicle with other teachers or walked long distances with community members, where they grappled together with the challenges of context, there was always the possibility of new knowledge being constructed in collaboration with others. students supported each other in negotiating the challenges of their teaching and in learning to live together and in the rural community. a number of students when interviewed commented that they could not have coped without support from tutors, peers and the community: “when we did not know content or a concept we could talk to each other.” “especially important for me as i did not speak xhosa – could learn from the others who encouraged me to learn to speak some words of xhosa.” “learnt about different cultures in our group and in the community.” post­placement questionnaires also revealed that these shared practices included shared problem solving by groups of students both formally and informally regarding challenges experienced in their teaching including the lack of resources, language challenges, inadequate mentoring and large classes. increased immersion in local communities lead to deeper understanding of learners and parents’ challenges thereby contributing to more meaningful teaching, deepening understanding of each other as students from different backgrounds and learning to live with each other, for example, learning more about the shembe religion of one of the students. one of the white students, who initially found it extremely difficult to understand certain shembe practices which impacted on their daily living in a shared space, wrote about this in depth in a reflective journal. by learning to understand the prohibitions associated with the shembe sabbath, students had to move beyond the boundaries of their life experiences in order to chart new paths of learning. the quotation, “landscape shapes mindscape” (haas & nachtigal, 1998: 4), highlights the powerful effect a place might have in shaping us. haugalokken and ramberg (2005) also highlight the situated perspective on learning by basing it on the assumption that learning is 224 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) conditional on participation in a community of learning. this means that both cognition and learning are regarded as social phenomena and that learning cannot be understood in isolation from the social practice, which the students form. drawing from a socio­cultural perspective on learning which suggests that learning is situated and that the situation itself contributes to the development of knowledge through activity, student teachers in the project were immersed as a diverse group in rural contexts living, teaching and learning, both formally and informally through other people. students commented on the development of their relationships with the local community by having to walk to schools, by using local transport, by shopping in local stores and by participating in sport and other social activities. these cultural immersion experiences are seen as helping educators, (i.e. the students in my project) venture outside their cultural comfort zone and transform their understanding of others (boyle-baise & mcintyre, 2008: 310). the work of griffiths and guile (2003) on workplace learning identified ‘boundary crossing’ as one of four practices of learning. mcmillan (2011: 553), drawing on the work of gibbons (2005) and giroux (1992), explores the concept of service learning as a form of boundary work in higher education with its often contradictory and tension filled practice leading to new and different knowledge, values and skills. 7. teacher professional learning the focus of the research is on student teacher learning, which includes their early professional learning, recognising that there are different conceptions of teacher learning related to different conceptions of knowledge and respective roles for teachers. the national qualifications framework act 67 of 2008 recognises that teaching is “a complex activity premised upon the acquisition, integration and application of different types of knowledge practices or learning,” (2008: 11). the understanding of early professional learning incorporates the concepts of ‘learning’ as well as ‘knowledge’ in a broad sense and it is therefore necessary to engage in what existing literature says about knowledge in order to link it to the students’ early professional learning. eraut (2000: 114) suggests that learning occurs “when existing knowledge is used in a new context or in new combinations” and in an earlier publication that teachers’ understanding of that knowledge develops during frequent use and when tackling critical problems (eraut, 1997). student teachers’ existing knowledge was challenged in a new context where they encountered new and different forms of knowledge, where they faced a range of challenges, including having to teach large classes with few conventional resources and where they worked with others in new communities of practice. in order to understand student teacher learning, different concepts of knowledge needs to be understood namely, knowledge-for-practice, knowledge-in-practice and knowledge-of-practice, (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999). the unplanned non­formal learning experiences were useful in understanding the range of learning opportunities of the student teachers living in a rural context for an extended period of time. non­formal learning opportunities included immersion in local cultural experiences (for example, learning about local initiation practices by being taken to sacred places by the local rural community). the formal learning experiences included the formal mentoring procedures of the pgce programme. kelly (2006: 506) describes teacher learning as “the process by which teachers move towards expertise”. he explains that teacher expertise is “closely linked to the circumstances to which it pertains…” (2006: 507) and “the affordances of school practices” (2006: 510). this process of student teachers' often difficult journeys towards expertise (the “what” and the “how” of the learning; the procedural or practical knowledge) and the “affordances” of the rural pennefather towards a theoretical framework for understanding pgce student teacher learning 225 school contexts in this development needs to be understood. understanding the enabling conditions for learning, including the role of mentoring, collaboration and feedback from others in the students’ emerging critical reflection and development of new ideas form an essential part of the data analysis. interviews with students revealed that school mentors and university tutors played different roles in the development of their learning. in response to a question on the role of the school mentors, comments were as follows: “teachers had a lot of confidence in us” “often asked us for advice” “teachers seemed to undermine themselves” “not much guidance; very little lesson planning” “believed in bringing a stick to every lesson” “ helped us to understand rural contexts” however, there was also a belief that they as students had contributed to the learning situation: “often asked us for advice in content knowledge” “we revived the spirit of planning” “we brought ideas and prac work” “they lived far away so were often late but we demonstrated punctuality.” despite the frustrations regarding the quality of the formal mentoring from the teachers, it was still a learning opportunity. students revealed an increasing development in their critical reflection on what should be and why it was not the case – a type of reflective lens for students, providing an opportunity for the development of their own professional learning, mediated by the university tutors and by their peers. student responses to the role of the university tutors indicated how vital this was in the absence of school mentoring and in learning about teaching in this context: “they revived hope in us when we felt desperate ” “help in planning when there were so few resources” “afternoon planning and reflection sessions gave us direction” “she gave me more confidence to push forwards with the ideas i had even when i started doubting them.” this implies that student teachers begin to engage in critical reflection of their practices often working with others – what shulman (1987) explains as the necessary questions needed in the development of professional judgement. shalem (2010) however, acknowledging that teachers’ professional judgement is situated and context­dependent, highlights the need to understand the role of theoretical knowledge in professional knowledge. luntley (2005: 286­287) describes professional judgement as an act of attention at the foundation of teacher’s expertise. the fact that the student teachers were pgce students who had a relatively strong foundational knowledge in their teaching subjects is significant and the extent to which this shaped their emerging professional judgement in these rural contexts needs to be considered. 226 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) regarding their professional learning, interview responses revealed an initial experience of apprehension and despair, for example: “if we were not living in a group or did not have the support of tutors, i could just give up and leave or just go with the flow of other teachers and not teach”. this was in contrast to the scaffolded, mediated experiences by the end of the period when students were responding in interviews as follows: “i learnt that you can teach no matter the resources – that the resources are actually there; i can use the environment” “it is about the importance of finding support structures in teaching” “about teaching, i realised south africa has a long way to go but i as a teacher can make a difference. i can show that learning can be fun, not scary; that with my teaching strategies, i need to think about the context first; that i can’t just think that if something worked in one context it will work in another; then plan thinking about the learners; the context and the resources in that context; otherwise the lesson could be a disaster.” there was the emergence of new capabilities related to the student teacher learning where legitimate, authentic spaces were created for the expression of individual freedom (sen, 1999). this was evident in interviews with students when they were asked about what had changed for them. “i no longer felt helpless”; “i see myself as an agent of change”: “these learners are amazing – i want to help them to go further”; “there were no resources but i could see the possibilities within the environment.” from emerging data it became clear that there needed to be a set of enabling supportive conditions (the how) which allowed the emergence of student capabilities: the ability to act within a legitimate space where they could demonstrate their capabilities, where they could exercise appropriate professional judgement (the what) when facing challenges of huge classes, few conventional resources and cultural differences and where they had the flexible competences to make these professional judgements. this is what morrow (2007) describes as the flexible competences that would enable them to teach no matter how unpromising the contexts and conditions may seem. students began to ask morrow’s key question: “how can i organize systematic learning in this context and these conditions?” (2007: 105). 8. conclusion the wild coast rural schools’ partnership project was designed to create a number of learning opportunities primarily for student teachers in initial teacher education and the extent to which it may have contributed to student teacher learning needs to be understood if it is to contribute to the discourse on teacher education and what is needed for teachers to undertake their jobs well. “teaching as professional endeavour demands of teachers practical knowhow, conceptual understandings of education, teaching and learning and the ability to interpret and form critical judgements on existing knowledge and its relevance to their particular situation” (winch, oancea & orchard, 2015: 202). pennefather towards a theoretical framework for understanding pgce student teacher learning 227 in order to understand the relevance of a project such as the wild coast rural schools’ partnership project, the “story” therefore had to move beyond a description of events and experiences to a deeper, more rigorous understanding of student teacher learning in this particular context. in discussing the contribution of educational research to teachers’ professional learning, winch, oancea and orchard (2015) argue that teacher education must enable a positive relationship between educational research and teaching knowledge and practice. the study has the potential to explicate the challenges and opportunities student teachers and even novice teachers face in these contexts as well as to understand the enabling conditions under which these opportunities can be exploited. this was a complex project that from the outset had to be conceptualised and organised in rigorous detail. one of the potential dangers was for students’ existing schemata of rurality and of teaching in rural areas to be reinforced or for students to simply reproduce examples of poor teaching, thus there needed to be a deep understanding of the complexity of what learning happens and how it happens. because of the complexity of the learning experience and with few examples of research projects of this nature from which to draw, the concept of an emerging theoretical model is still being grappled with. references balfour, r. j., mitchell, c. & moletsane, r. 2008. troubling contexts: toward a generative theory of rurality as education research. journal of rural and community development, 3(3), 95­107. bertram, c. & christiansen, i. 2014. understanding research – an introduction to reading research. pretoria; van schaik publishers. borko, h. 2004. professional development and teacher learning: mapping the terrain. educational researcher, 33(8), 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teachers’ professional learning: philosophical understandings. oxford review of education, 41(2), 202­216. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2015.1017406 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511509568 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511509568 http://dx.doi.org/10.17763/haer.57.1.j463w79r56455411 http://www.polity.org.za/html/govdocs/notices/2000/not0082.html http://www.polity.org.za/html/govdocs/notices/2000/not0082.html http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/107780040100700605 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03054985.2015.1017406 _goback 15 pre-service teachers’ competence to teach science through information and communication technologies in south africa abstract research suggests that there is a need for better training of prospective teachers on information and communication technologies (icts) in order to encourage their use for teaching and learning in schools. this paper presents findings on the self-perceptions of competence by pre-service teachers to use icts for teaching science content. a mixed method approach was used where 103 final year pre-service teachers completed a questionnaire on their competence to use icts for teaching and 21 of them participated in focus group interviews concerning their experiences with icts during teaching practice. results show that pre-service teachers seem to be more competent in the non-technology related skills compared to the technology related knowledge fields and that there are significant variations in their ict competences. these variations largely result from the uneven opportunities to learn that are provided to the pre-service teachers. more significantly, the directional trend shown by the correlations indicates that the more lecturers or mentor teachers use ict tools to teach, the more pre-service teachers learn to use ict tools in their own teaching. the paper concludes with a discussion on the implication of these findings for policy and practice and specifically suggests that there is a need to review the policy guidelines on the development of the teacher education programmes to be more deliberate in their inclusion of icts. the key recommended contribution is for teacher preparation programmes at universities to be restructured in order to improve the training of future teachers on the use of icts to teach science. key words: pre-service teachers, science education, information and communication technologies, teaching practice, teacher education, technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) 1. introduction there is a great deal of variation in terms of how prospective teachers use icts to teach their subjects (hennessy et al., 2007). the variations range from some pre-service teachers who are uncomfortable and avoid using icts in class to those who are highly skilled and deploy icts with reasonable comfort and enthusiasm to the benefit of their learners. closing the competence gap in the use of icts by teachers and students in general and the preparation dr thuthukile jita university of the free state email: jitat@ufs.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i3.2 e-issn 2519-593x issn 0258-2236 perspectives in education 2016 34(3): 15-26 © uv/ufs 16 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) of teachers in using icts for teaching and learning remain important social justice issues in the 21st century technology driven world (cuban & cuban, 2009; tarman, baytak & duman, 2015). pre-service teachers’ development of competence to teach science subjects using icts requires knowledge, skills and opportunity to learn during the teacher preparation programmes. as a result, many higher education institutions have had to redesign and redevelop their teacher education programmes, partly to include the ict competence knowledge and skills that are required by teachers of various subjects. thus, teacher education programmes are viewed as important vehicles for equipping a new generation of teachers with ict skills to enable the teaching of content in the various subjects. this paper examines the use of icts by pre-service teachers in one of the critical subjects in south africa, namely, science. icts are not just an option for improving teaching and learning nowadays but a necessity for social justice in terms of breaking the “digital divide” (nykvist & mukherjee, 2016). by investigating the use of icts by science pre-service teachers in schools during teaching practice, the paper also seeks to provide answers to two other related questions. firstly, whether and how the teacher education programme aligns with the national expectations for ict usage for teaching the school curriculum and whether and how the teacher education curriculum serves the national requirement for icts to be considered a fundamental learning area for all pre-service teachers in south africa. 2. background to the study in its recent policy guidelines for teacher education programmes, the department of higher education and training (dhet, 2013) classifies icts as a fundamental learning area that all graduating south african teachers are required to be competent in. in spite of this policy pronouncement and ambition, to date there is no clear guidelines and/or national researchgenerated recommendations on how teacher educators should provide for, support and assess such competence in the use of icts for teaching subject matter in the various subject disciplines. there is thus a clear gap in terms of how teacher educators are expected to break the “digital divide” in their preparation of prospective teachers. literature suggests that even when they complete their studies and begin working, inservice teachers remain potentially unprepared to use ict tools in the classrooms despite being trained during teacher preparation (niess, 2005). local researchers in south africa have also demonstrated that although in-service teachers are trained to use icts in various government and non-government initiatives, many are still not competent to use icts in their subject teaching (mlitwa & kesewaa, 2013; ndlovu & lawrence, 2012). collectively, the current evidence seems to point towards a disturbing conclusion that the bulk of the training of in-service teachers to teach with icts does not seem to contribute to competent teaching using ict tools in the classroom. this has prompted some observers and policymakers to argue that there is a need to revisit the way teachers are prepared, especially in the use of icts, prior to entering the teaching service. at the schooling level, the national department of basic education (dbe) in south africa has tried to provide some guidance on the subject of ict integration by requiring that “students currently in higher education institutions should be fast-tracked to bring them to at least the adoption level by the end of their studies” (hindle, 2007: 8). this statement of intent is also in line with the 2006 council on higher education’s (che) report, which recommends that “there is a need to ensure that the new generation of teachers emerges from higher educational 17 jita pre-service teachers’ competence to teach science through information and communication ... institutions with an understanding of how to incorporate and use ict in their (subject) teaching in schools” (czerniewicz, ravjee & mlitwa, 2006: 22). both these arguments underscore the need to include the use of icts for subject teaching in the teacher education programmes. the trend in many universities is to offer special courses on icts for the pre-service teacher education students and/or to recommend that lecturers integrate technology in their subject method courses. while universities encourage ict usage in their policies and the integration of icts in the modules offered, the barriers in the use of icts during teaching practice for specific subjects remain unclear. it is important, however, that student teachers be provided with multiple opportunities to learn and use icts during their studies, especially during the in-school experience. there are few empirical studies that have focused on the problem of the integration of icts in teacher education and even fewer that specifically focus on such integration of icts during teaching practice, in particular. the main objective of the research is to establish prospective teachers’ levels of knowledge and skills on ict tools that are appropriate for teaching science through the examination of their tpack competencies. specifically, the paper seeks to understand the practices of pre-service teachers in terms of using ict tools during teaching practice by presenting findings from an investigation of pre-service teachers’ competence in the use of icts at one south african university by asking the following questions: 1. what are the pre-service teachers’ perceived competencies with respect to their technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack)? 2. how can the pre-service teachers’ competencies be understood and explained? 3. review of relevant literature and theoretical framework this review of literature seeks to answer the question on what is known about the preparation of pre-service teachers to use icts for subject teaching in order to present a theoretical framework for examining the use of icts to teach specific subjects. many universities seek to enforce the integration of technology through policies and investment in various ict infrastructures (valtonen et al., 2015). for instance, most south african universities include icts across all courses offered within the teacher education programme. yet, there are no defined stipulations on the required competence levels and/or required usage criteria by preservice teachers during teaching practice. thus, teaching practice is regarded as a useful platform to provide a training ground for pre-service teachers to build their confidence and competence in the use of icts. this paper presents data from a survey and interview study of the ict competencies of final year pre-service teachers after completing their final or last teaching practice placement in their teacher education programme. teaching practice exposes pre-service teachers to a number of experiences that are designed to promote the integration of theory and practice. those experiences include coherence of theory from the university-based modules offered in the teacher education programme and the practical application of ict skills to teach school subjects such as natural sciences, life sciences and physical sciences. since ict and methodology courses are part of the theoretical preparation of teachers during teacher education, it is important for pre-service teachers to practise the skills taught and be evaluated not only on the theory but also in terms of their actual performance and/or application during teaching practice. kabilan and izzaham (2008: 87) argue that teaching practice is “an excellent opportunity for pre-service teachers to experiment and test their knowledge and skills”. the argument is that teaching practice gives 18 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) pre-service teachers ample opportunities to practise their skills in order for them to be more confident in the use of ict tools as in-service teachers in the classroom. however, liu (2012) argues that teacher education modules fail to mentor the use of computers in the classroom during teaching practice. therefore, it is important for teacher education programmes to facilitate what is learned in these programmes and the practical application of icts in schools. it is the responsibility of teacher education programmes (tep) to produce professionally competent teachers. the preparation of such teachers needs innovative teacher education programmes that set high expectations for the teaching practice as would be expected of working teachers. gülbahar (2008) highlights the quality and quantity of ict courses in tep, the training of the mentor teachers in schools and the availability of icts for use by pre-service teachers during teaching practice in schools as factors that are important in influencing the development of competent teachers. the present study, therefore, sought to triangulate all known obstacles and opportunities that have the potential to shape the competence of preservice teachers by examining their university-based ict training while at the same time examining their in-school experiences and mentoring support. many studies have used the technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) framework to study the integration of icts by in-service teachers and/or to examine the theoretical knowledge of pre-service teachers on icts (doyle & reading, 2013; lin, et al., 2013; hechter & vermette, 2013). the current study thus differs from these studies in that the focus is on pre-service teachers’ practical application during teaching practice. moreover, the use of tpack instruments in south africa is still in its infancy as it has only been successfully used in a secondary data analysis study investigating the level of tpack for grade 8 mathematics in-service teachers (leendertz et al., 2013). most of the international studies that trace the development of tpack for specific subjects indicate high levels of development of the tpack knowledge dimensions. the current study opted to use the tpack instrument, which has been successfully tested and validated in other international studies. tpack is a framework that has been articulated by several researchers in the field of ict integration in schools (mishra & koehler 2006; schmidt, cogan & houang 2011). the framework is derived from and extends shulman’s (1986) framework on teachers’ knowledge for teaching with a special focus on icts. as with shulman’s framework, tpack identifies a different kind of knowledge or competence that subject teachers need in order to teach effectively with technology. the important extension from shulman (1986) is that tpack begins to describe additional and specific dimensions of knowledge that subject specialists need in order to integrate technology successfully into their teaching. specifically, tpack describes knowledge that results from a synthesis of six different kinds of knowledge components. the knowledge components and their relationship form what is called tpack and are usually represented in the form of a venn diagram with three intersecting circles with tpack in the middle representing the synthesis or intersection of all the different knowledge components (see figure 1 below). the core components of tpack are content knowledge (ck), pedagogy knowledge (pk) and technology knowledge (tk) with the other knowledge elements representing the intersections of these three core knowledge components. lin et al. (2013), who have used the tpack framework to study the integration of icts in singapore, advocate for more such studies across the world. this paper thus responds to this call and uses the tpack framework to measure the competence of pre-service science teachers during teaching practice. in this study, the tpack framework provides the means to map out and measure the competence levels of the pre-service teacher education students in terms of the different 19 jita pre-service teachers’ competence to teach science through information and communication ... knowledge components and allows the researcher to make sense of how they integrate these components during teaching practice. overall, the tpack framework presents a model that essentially describes the balance between three main components; that is content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge and technological knowledge. the researchers who have used the model argue that none of these elements exist in a vacuum and emphasise the importance of all three factors when determining how to apply icts practically (e.g. during teaching practice and with content such as science). technology ped agogical knowledge (tpk) technology content knowledge (tck) ped agogical content knowledge (pck) tpack pedagogy knowledge (pk) technology knowledge (tk) content knowledge (ck) figure 1: tpack model for pre-service teachers’ use of icts (adapted from mishra & koehler, 2006: 1025) it is important to note that the tpack survey does not only combine the three complex and inter-dependent concepts of technology, pedagogy and content but also represents the application of specific knowledge of science content, practical use of ict knowledge and the art of teaching. thus, it demonstrates the interactions among the tpack concepts that can provide a measure of competence on the use of icts by pre-service teachers. tpack thus gives a solid theoretical framework with which to examine many of the issues that arise when learning to combine technology, content and pedagogy in the teaching of science. 4. methodology this paper reports on findings from an in-depth case study of one university, with two campuses, where a tpack survey was administered together with semi-structured focus group interviews. the case study “presents and represents reality” of teaching specific content with ict tools in different teaching and learning environments for different content topics in different grades and phases of education (cohen, manion & morrison, 2011: 129). the case study design was better placed to provide rich insights on a specific teacher education programme and a group of final year pre-service teachers. a mixed method approach was 20 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) chosen for the study. a concurrent, triangulation mixed methods design was adopted where data from the tpack survey was triangulated with data from the focus group interviews (creswell, 2014). the tpack survey for pre-service teachers consisted of 59 close-ended questionnaire items adapted for the south african context, to assess the ict competencies for teaching science (schmidt et al., 2009). the researcher administered the tpack survey, with assistance from one of the methodology course teacher educators, during and after the students’ return from a teaching practice period of two consecutive weeks in schools. the questionnaire included items on the demographic information of the students, while the rest of the questions centred on the sources of ict skills, the seven tpack domains (tk, ck, pk, pck, tck, tpk, tpack) and the models of tpack. the items were rated on a fivepoint likert scale scored from zero for “strongly disagree” to four for “strongly agree”. the information was captured in an excel sheet and analysed using the south african statistics (sas) software. a pilot study was conducted with newly graduated science teachers (n = 5) to test the reliability of the tpack instrument. the pilot study helped me to modify the final survey items and the focus group questions (creswell, 2014). the adaptations to the survey included the removal and restructuring of a few questions and some of the wording changed to reflect the familiar south african terminologies better. it also enabled the use of language with which the participants would be familiar. in cohen et al. (2011), it is argued that it is important to have more structured interview questions to provide reliability to the study. ethical clearance for the study was obtained from the university’s ethics board, the necessary permission was obtained from the faculty management and the science teacher educators involved. the study selected a cohort of final year science pre-service teachers doing either the bachelor of education (b.ed.) qualification or postgraduate certificate in education (pgce), with specialisations in physical sciences, natural sciences and/or life sciences. one hundred and three participants had engaged in teaching practice for 4 weeks during the april and july periods in 2015, with each teaching practice period limited to a minimum of two weeks. the 103 pre-service science teachers who participated in the study gave their informed consent prior to completion of the survey and again at the beginning of the semi-structured focus group interviews. assurances were provided to the participants that their contribution was voluntary and that they could withdraw at any time during the study should they wish to do so, without influencing their marks in either the methodology modules and/or ict modules. the pre-service teachers were invited to participate in a focus group interview after completing a survey and through an online announcement in their methodology subject platform on blackboard. the invitations resulted in 21 volunteers who participated in the four (4) focus groups with participants ranging from two to seven per interview session. by pure coincidence, each group mostly consisted of students from the same phase of specialisation; that is intermediate phase (ip), and/or further education and training (fet) phase with the exception of one focus group that had mixed phases. in the next section, i first explore the perceived competencies of the pre-service teachers from the survey before providing a possible explanation from interview discussions. 21 jita pre-service teachers’ competence to teach science through information and communication ... 5. results the first research question is “what are the pre-service teachers’ perceived competencies with respect to the technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack)?” the tpack survey was used to examine sources of ict skills, knowledge areas and the opportunities to learn for pre-service teachers. the analysis used the sas program to identify and average a number of variables for each knowledge domain (schmidt et al., 2009). table 1 below presents descriptive statistics for the seven tpack scales showing mean scores, standard deviations, minimum and maximum values. the mean scores show differences in the three non-technology related and four technology-related scale scores. the mean scores of the non-technology related domains were the highest with mean values above three, that is ck (m=3.32) and pk (m=3.18). this is an indication that the participants regard content knowledge (ck) and pedagogical knowledge (pk) as more important than technology-related knowledge domains’ mean scores such as tk (m=3.02), which had the lesser mean score. this implies that pre-service teachers’ knowledge on technologies is lower than the content and pedagogical knowledge required to teach science. the standard deviation for all seven tpack scales were less than one and varied between 0.44 to 0.60, which indicate that data points were all relatively close to the mean and remarkably consistent. table 1: descriptive statistics for tpack scale with seven factors knowledge area number of participants mean sd min max tk 103 3.02 0.47 1.86 4.00 ck 103 3.32 0.44 2.00 4.00 pk 103 3.18 0.45 2.13 4.00 pck 103 3.05 0.58 2.00 4.00 tck 103 2.70 0.60 1.00 4.00 tpk 103 3.15 0.56 2.00 4.00 tpack 103 2.97 0.54 1.67 4.00 additionally, a paired t-test was performed to determine whether there was a statistically significant mean difference between the non-technology related domains (ck and pk) and technology related domains (tk). table 2 below confirms with the paired t-test results that the difference in mean values above are statistically significant and are not due to chance. the p value results (table 2) show content knowledge with technology knowledge (<.0001) and pedagogical knowledge with technology knowledge (0.0053). 22 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) table 2: paired t-test analysis of technology and non-technology knowledge paired knowledge areas paired differences t df p mean std. deviation std. error 95% confidence interval for mean difference lower upper tk -ck -0.2906 0.5285 0.0521 -0.3939 -0.1873 -5.58 102 <.0001 tk-pk -0.1534 0.5466 0.0539 -0.2603 -0.0466 -2.85 102 0.0053 the interview data provided further evidence of competency on the non-technology related domains, with a lack of competency on the application of the technology knowledge for teaching science specifically. when participants were asked to describe how they used icts during teaching practice, all of the pre-service teachers provided examples on how they used icts for lesson preparation and specifically to enhance their knowledge of the science concepts they were going to teach. the use of various ict tools by the pre-service teachers for lesson preparation and presentation was mentioned several times during the interviews but did not include details on how learners were to engage with icts during the teaching of the science subject. here is an example of how one pre-service teacher articulated the point, if i am preparing a lesson, and don’t have much knowledge for the subject i used the internet to research information for more knowledge using a phone and the university computers about different topics to enhance my knowledge (group one, 2). the emphasis in the quote is clearly on the use of icts for preparation and personal development and less on actual use with learners during the lessons. furthermore, when asked about how they used each specific tool identified in the tpack survey to teach science during teaching practice, it was evident that the pre-service teachers did not take the icts into the classroom for student engagement per se. the following extracts from two of the participants exemplify the perspectives on the use of icts in the classroom. when you teach it is not that easy [to use icts] because some schools do not allow cell phones to be used in class (group three, 9). i never attempted to use such [ict tools] because it was going to cost me data bundles to do all those things (group four, 16). consistent with the tpack survey results, where the items that focused specifically on the tpack knowledge dimension yielded the second lowest mean score of m=2.97, pre-service teachers’ tpack knowledge was inadequate. participants in the focus groups also confirmed being unable to implement tpack due to constraints experienced in the teaching practice schools, such as a lack of ict resources or a lack of mentor support. some of the participants in the different focus groups shared their views as follows, the teacher was asking me to help connect the computer in class. connections were not proper and i did not know how to help (group one, 2). 23 jita pre-service teachers’ competence to teach science through information and communication ... the point of the argument is that mentors are not always necessarily knowledgeable about how to use the available ict resources either. another participant corroborated the point about the lack of support or guidance from mentors by saying, the mentor should tell me or give me orientation on how to use a pointer for example, not in front of the learners because that would make me feel inadequate for the rest of the class presentation and i would not want to use that thing again. learners would be like you are going to teach us but you do not know how to use that? (group two, 6). this is one indication that the pre-service teachers had expected to be guided and supported by their mentors on the use of ict resources for teaching. the guidance and support on the use of icts was however not always forthcoming, as suggested by the preceding quotes. in summary, the data seems to suggest that the pre-service teachers were not skilled in the technology-related knowledge domains that are a pre-condition for using icts to teach. thus, it was perhaps not surprising that the pre-service teachers did not use icts extensively for classroom activities as opposed to their use for planning purposes. how then do we begin to understand and explain the pre-service teachers’ weaknesses in the technology-related knowledge domains and the lack of ict usage for classroom teaching? the next section presents data to explore this second research question. to understand and explain the findings, i first examined the two possible sources of ict competence for student teachers in general, viz. from the teacher educators (lecturers) and from the mentor teachers (in schools during teaching practice). that is, i asked the following question: what or how are the opportunities to learn (otl) about icts for the pre-service teachers in the tep and then specifically during the in-school experience. results from preservice teachers’ opportunities to learn provided answers on the development of competence in terms of the opportunities to learn that are available to the pre-service teachers first from the teacher educators (lecturers) and second from the mentor teachers in the teaching practice schools. the survey results on tpack modelling 1; examine how science content, icts and teaching approaches are applied practically by lecturers and by mentor teachers in order to model good practice for the pre-service teachers. tpack modelling 2; on the other hand, reports on the amount of time involved in the modelling by the various role models, in order to estimate the quantity of modelling that may lead to improved learning on the use of icts by the pre-service teachers. table 3: descriptive statistics for tpack models in teacher education programmes opportunity to learn (otl) number of participants mean sd min max models_tpack_1 103 3.07 0.53 1.50 4.00 models_tpack_2 103 2.85 0.68 0.50 4.00 the results in table 2 suggest that participants agreed that lecturers and teachers were exemplary in combining content, icts and different approaches to the teaching of science and thereby role modelled for them on how to use icts for teaching the subject. in contrast, the mean for tpack models 2 was low, thereby suggesting that the amount of time available for 24 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) role modelling is perceived as being less than ideal or perhaps even inadequate for the preservice teachers to acquire the necessary competence to use icts on their own. qualitative data relating to opportunities to learn from the models of tpack was used to confirm the findings of the quantitative data analyses through the following interview questions: what motivated/demotivated you to use any of the mentioned ict tools, if at all? the responses to this question revealed that the campus-based lecturers and the schoolbased mentor teachers motivated most students to use icts. a few of the participants, for instance, indicated that they were motivated by the ways in which their lecturers taught them at the university. thus, lecturers seem to be effective tpack role models for combining content, technologies and teaching approaches in their lectures. as a result of the influence from the teacher educators, the pre-service teachers wanted to apply what was learned in class into their own teaching situation, thus confirming the notion of “apprenticeship of observation” as proposed by lortie (1975: 61). for example, one participant argued, lecturers on campus use video for presentations which motivated us to use videos and ict tools in our own lesson presentations during teaching practice (group three, 1). similarly, the school-based mentors also played an important role as described by two other participants who were motivated by their mentor-teachers. in my situation, i just consulted the mentor and i had all the access, even the internet, everything to prepare for my lessons (group three, 13). my mentor was pretty much good at using the computer for everything and i had to teach like him (group three, 4). these statements provide support to the quantitative evidence, which suggests that the teacher educators and the school-based mentor teachers have the potential to model for preservice teachers how to use icts for teaching the subject. despite the positive effects of mentoring and campus based lectures, a larger number of participants felt demotivated by their school-based mentors and did not want to use icts. here is how one participant described the latter situation, i asked the teacher to like help me to set the multiple choice or something that i’m going to give the learners but she didn’t help me so i had to consult the internet and stuff and do it myself (group three, 14). the results suggest that pre-service teachers’ opportunities to learn from lecturers and in-service teachers varied and seem to be shaped by the nature of the relationship with their mentors. as argued by other researchers, most of the pre-service teachers can be expected to be native immigrants of icts but there seems to be a change when they have to teach, they become dependent on others such as mentors (wentworth, graham & tripp, 2008). these findings appear to point towards one important factor that shapes the ict competence of pre-service teachers, namely, the mentorship capabilities and opportunities in schools during teaching practice. the variations in the use of icts for teaching science among the preservice teachers can thus be understood in the context of and explained by the differences in opportunities to learn, especially as set out in the schools where teaching practice takes place. 25 jita pre-service teachers’ competence to teach science through information and communication ... 6. discussion the main research question for this paper was “what are the competences of pre-service teachers to teach science using icts during teaching practice?” the findings focused on whether the ict skills competence of the pre-service teachers is “subject-specific and relevant to the learning area” content such as science (hindle, 2007: 4). lin et al. (2013), among others, informed the research and call for further research to assist science teacher educators in the review of methodology courses to prepare competent pre-service science teachers. descriptive statistics were used to examine the results of competency on the tpack knowledge domains (ck, pk, pck, tk, tck, tpk and tpack). this was followed by in-depth analysis of all technology related knowledge areas (tk, tck, tpk and tpack) with the purpose of examining the data on the use of the icts to teach science content during teaching practice and looked at the significant role of icts when pre-service teachers teach during teaching practice. the study found that pre-service teachers perceive themselves as competent on the nontechnology related (ck, pk and pck) knowledge domains. these findings are in line with the view of koh and chai (2011) who found that there are positive levels of competence on ck, pk and pck areas relative to the technology-related knowledge domains. another set of studies conducted in new zealand and spain also support the findings of this study that pre-service teachers seem to be more competent in the non-technology related fields compared to the technology-related knowledge fields (nordin, davis & ariffin, 2013). the present research went even further by disaggregating the level of competence on the four technology-related knowledge domains (tk, tck, tpk and tpack) and tracking the otl of such skills. an important twist in the analysis relating to the technology-related knowledge domains (tk, tck, tpk and tpack) was the finding that pre-service teachers seem to be aware of many ict tools available for teaching but lack the knowledge of subject specific ict tools and experience challenges on how to use various icts during teaching practice to teach science content. this is an important finding because it suggests that awareness of ict tools is inadequate to enable their use for subject teaching during teaching practice. to explain the variations in the use of ict tools for teaching science, the paper suggests that there are two major explanatory variables. first are the significant variations in the ict competences of the final-year science pre-service teachers from even a single university and/ or a common teacher education programme, especially with respect to the technology domain of the tpack knowledge. the differences in ict module requirements for the various groups of pre-service teachers account for some of the variation in the technology knowledge domain competence. for example, the curriculum for the intermediate and senior phase (middle and senior primary) pre-service teachers includes a compulsory ict related module, which is not the case for the further education and training phase (high school) group. notwithstanding the differences in the coursework requirements that may account for variations in competence, the bulk of the explanation seems to come from the differences that accrue from the inschool experience during teaching practice, where some students are assigned to schools with no facilities or opportunities at all to use icts for teaching. pre-service teachers can also be assigned to mentors who are themselves not adept users of icts, let alone being able to mentor them in the use of icts for teaching. the second variable thus points to the uneven distribution of opportunities to learn that are provided to the pre-service teachers during the teaching practice period. these findings call for a more carefully considered and structured tep, based on the principles of quality, equity and access. programmes should be 26 perspectives in education 2016: 34(2) structured such that ict modules are accessed by all students in the programme coupled with a deliberate choice of teaching practice schools that offer opportunities for student teachers to practise with cutting edge icts for teaching science. they should also receive mentoring from school-based mentors who are themselves competent and able to offer support to novices in the use of such tools. thus, the central notion of this paper is that the richer the quality of opportunities to learn, as defined by the university-based coursework and the in-school-based opportunities for practise in the use of icts, the better the chances for developing competence among all pre-service teachers to use icts for subject teaching. 7. conclusion this study was limited by the fact that it was conducted at one university and with only one group of final year science pre-service teachers. while the results may be extended to other pre-service teachers, lecturers, mentor teachers and teacher education programmes that are similar and seek to prepare pre-service teachers to teach science using icts, caution should be exercised in doing so. a larger scale study that compares data from different programmes and universities is recommended. although there are variations in the ict competence of pre-service teachers for teaching science, teaching practice remains an ideal platform for students to learn through practise and it provides a platform for the application of knowledge for teaching or what is called craft knowledge. as part of developing competent pre-service teachers, an establishment of the support systems focusing on subject-specific use of icts during teaching practice is recommended. collaboration and better communication with curriculum developers, teaching practice schools, teacher-educators and mentors is thus called for in this regard. all stakeholders need to play a role in the development of competence by pre-service teachers in order to bridge the digital divide and address the social justice issues on the use of icts for teaching and learning in schools. this is particularly vital in the context of south africa, where there are no clear performance standards for teachers in schools and/or assessment guidelines for teacher educators on ict competence. references cohen, l., manion, 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decolonisation and transformation of higher education institutions is the re-construction of its leadership. this requires not only a review but also a dissolution of traditions, conventions and organisational forms that universities have inherited, including a reimagining of leadership in higher education. equity in representation of women in leadership has been acknowledged locally and internationally as part of the transformation agenda towards sustainable leadership. the authors argue that decolonisation and transformation are not mutually exclusive processes in the south african context, but that transformational leadership is part of the decolonisation process. this should embrace women’s ways of leadership in reconstructing leadership. the paper reflects on empirical data from personal interviews with three deputyvice-chancellors on their journeys to leadership, with a focus on psychological and cultural factors (at the micro and meso levels), their career-pathing, personal characteristics and their experiences. these experiences are considered in the context of literature on women and leadership, using critical discourse analysis. it gives insight into the pathways that women often follow and provokes us to re-imagine the construct of “leadership”. the paper concludes with recommendations on the impact of psychological and cultural factors and the importance of the implementation of transformative policies, affirming male and female role models, institutional support structures and career planning which should form part of the decolonisation and transformation of conventions in capacitybuilding towards equity and sustainable leadership. keywords: transformational leadership, decolonisation, personal life experiences, women’s journeys 1. introduction this paper is one of a series of papers (moodly, 2015; moodly & toni, 2015a; 2015b; 2017) on women in higher education leadership. the purpose of the research was to review women’s personal life experiences reflecting on what literature has indicated as factors that influence women’s ascension, or lack thereof, to senior management leadership in universities. internationally, as well as in south africa, the lack of women in positions of leadership in all spheres of society has been acknowledged, despite women constituting the majority of the population in most countries (chanana, 2013; bulick & frey, 2017). historically dr adéle l moodly rhodes university, south africa, email: a.moodly@ru.ac. za dr noluthando m toni university of fort hare, east london, south africa, email: ntoni@ufh.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i2.12 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(2): 155-167 © uv/ufs mailto:a.moodly@ru.ac.za mailto:a.moodly@ru.ac.za mailto:ntoni@ufh.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.12 156 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) and traditionally, leadership has been the preserve of men, as attributed to and perpetuated in the patriarchal nature of society. in south africa, the legacy of apartheid contributed to the oppression of women from a gendered as well as a racial perspective in all spheres of society. legislation to address these resultant inequities, manifested in amongst others, education white paper 3 (republic of south africa, 1996) the national plan for higher education (department of education, 2001) and the women empowerment and gender equality bill (republic of south africa, 2013). despite these initiatives, research reflects that women in higher education have been stuck at middle management level. this situation is attributed to various factors. these include but are not limited to the glass-ceiling, the lack of mentors, gendered organisational culture, a culture of service and caring leadership, prioritising family life, non-linear and non-chronological pathways in career-pathing, a lack of role models and lack of support by top management in a patriarchal organisational setting (chanana, 2013; nguyen 2013, grimshaw & francis, 2014). south african women, as is the case internationally, have increasingly accessed higher education, reached middle management positions, yet are unable to break through the upper echelons (shambare, 2011; chanana, 2013; shevel, 2014; bulick & frey, 2017). in her research on barriers that inhibit women’s leadership progress, nguyen (2013) points to psychological walls and cultural barriers that inhibit women from aspiring to leadership. she cites cubillo and brown’s (2003) three levels from which cultural barriers emanate, namely the “macro” socio-political level, the “mesco” (more widely known as the meso environment) organisational level and the “micro” individual level. there are also women who have broken through the barriers (chanana, 2013). the focus of this paper was to review the cultural at micro and meso levels and psychological factors at micro level associated with women’s experiences towards leadership and to ascertain whether these experiences were reflected in the three women’s journeys and to possibly identify areas of commonality that enabled them to attain their respective senior management positions. 2. transformational leadership towards addressing social injustices: a theoretical framework badat (2009: 455-456) distinguishes between “change” and “transformation” in “theorising” change. he advances that “change” does not necessarily imply “substantive changes in established policy, practice or organisation” more than being limited in scope in respect of intent and nature. transformation contrastingly, speaks to “intent” to dissolve existing social relations and institutions, policies and practices and their recreation into something substantially new. in re-imaging leadership, the authors adopt the construct of transformation in the former context. traditionally, leadership has been viewed from a male-gendered perspective, hierarchical in nature with mostly men in leadership roles, including educational leadership. the stereotypical characteristics of leadership as perpetuated within society were that of a single person wielding power and authority, with “hierarchical control over people” (muzvidziwa, 2015: 366). this bureaucratic approach has been contested, with contemporary views leaning towards communication, moral responsibilities, caring and mutual support (muzvidziwa, 2015). women reflect these transformational leadership practices in their manner of involving others, nurturing and encouraging participation in collective decision-making (sinclair, 2012, as cited in muzvidziwa, 2015). “empowerment of followers” is seen as a key component of women’s transformational leadership practice (kark, 2004 as cited in muzvidziwa, 2015). muzvidziwa (2015: 368) quotes bass (1985) in identifying four components of “transformational leadership theory”, namely, “idealized influence, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and 157 moodly & toni re-imagining higher education leadership individualized consideration”. transformational leadership is not gender-specific, but can be reflected in male and female leaders who focus on the “development and empowerment of followers to function independently and effectively” (muzvidziwa, 2015: 368). 3. decolonisation and transformational leadership: is there a link? the trajectory of the south african higher education environment towards transformation (addressing inequities and redress) and decolonisation demands a re-imagining of leadership in this context. the authors are of the view that decolonisation cannot be isolated from transforming leadership; and that transformational leadership is a catalyst (amongst others) for the decolonisation process. decolonisation is contextualised as being about “justice” as championed by the likes of frantz fanon and edward said (cited in pillay, 2013). pillay’s (2013) construct of colonialist ideology as the “devalorisation of intellectuals, of thought, of knowledge and aesthetics outside the western tradition as constituted in the modern disciplines around which the university is structured” is extended in this paper. in this paper it includes the “gendered cultures” (grimshaw & francis, 2014:211) of university environments as constructed through the colonialist ideology, valorising a euro-american construct of leadership. it is argued that transformational leadership interrogates the valorisation of the western tradition of leadership towards social justice. becker (2017:6) on reflecting on how the hashtag (#) movement in the south african (sa) he sector of 2015/2016 could “inform rethinking of transformation” in the sa he context, argues that our reality, rather than being constant, is changed and reframed (as was depicted by the protest actions). becker cites zizek (2014) in arguing that transformation is continual and embraces “ethical transformation” (“a good way of being”). further, “ethical transformation” should view “subjects of he” as “irreplaceable and unique”. in this sense, a paradigm shift and “reconstitution of the psyche” becomes important. it is through this process that decolonisation, amongst other important elements, can be engaged. 4. statement of the problem the introduction outlines that literature continuously reflects that psychological and cultural barriers at the micro and macro levels (amongst others) affect women and that these influence their lack of aspiring towards higher education leadership. moodly (2015) and moodly and toni (2015; 2017) argue that there is a need for women as role models in leadership in higher education, citing equity and social justice for the basis of their argument. this demands a reimagining of leadership as part of the transformation process, by introducing women’s ways of leading into the leadership space. the authors argue that re-imagining leadership forms part of the decolonisation process (as outlined further on in this paper), the former acting as a catalyst for the latter. given that proportionally, in the south african context women outnumber men (republic of south africa, 2017); this has a multiplicity of implications for, amongst others, the socio-economic viability and sustainability of the country. should women therefore, not be capacitated and developed as part of the labour force, including strategic leadership within various sectors of the south african society, the ramifications are dire. this, in conjunction with the principles of equity within a just and democratic society, is imperative towards acknowledging women in all spheres, including higher education leadership. principles of transformation as per the country’s national agenda, as previously mentioned, affirm the recognition of women in all spheres and levels of society. as moodly (2015) and 158 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) moodly and toni (2015) argue, there is a need for women as role models to inspire women towards leadership. however, currently, these role models are few, but do exist. there are currently women in south african higher education executive leadership. the focus of this paper is to gain insight into what inspired these women towards their positions, given the barriers that face women, with specific reference to psychological and cultural factors at the micro and meso levels, as outlined in the literature. the paper focuses on the women’s personal journeys towards higher education leadership, with specific reference to the impact of the aforementioned factors, towards re-imagining higher education leadership. given the introduction as outlined, the following research question was posed: how can the re-imagining of higher education leadership be facilitated considering factors at the micro and meso levels that influence women and decisions towards higher education leadership? the sub-questions in this regard, which also serve to expatiate the aim of the study, are: 1. what are the psychological factors that influence women’s decisions on leadership? 2. what are cultural factors at micro and meso levels that influence women’s decisions towards higher education leadership? 3. how can women advance towards higher education leadership? 5. purpose of the study the study explores psychological and cultural factors at women’s micro and meso levels respectively, that influenced their decisions towards higher education leadership, despite barriers as highlighted in literature. it focuses on these factors to understand what micro-level characteristics facilitate women’s advancement in overcoming barriers. the women in this study have attained executive leadership in higher education and insight into their journeys may contribute to the body of knowledge in addressing these challenges in re-imagining higher education leadership. 6. a review of the literature nguyen (2013) identified push and pull factors in terms of women’s experiences in advancement to leadership and management positions. for example, psychological factors affected by “negative gender stereotypes” may impede advancement. the “ingrained barrier” of women as “more communal” in contrast to “more agentic” men (seen as having the qualities for management), has resulted in the questioning of women’s ability to lead (nguyen, 2013:124-125; grimshaw & francis, 2014). cultural barriers include “hegemonic cultural traditions” of women taking more family responsibilities than men, and even in situations of partnering, domestic responsibilities were still disproportioned, with the expectancy that women take on a larger portion. cultural traditions also influenced women’s broader social behaviours, often-times as submissive and quiet. acting out of expected character, could lead to embarrassment for the family (as in the vietnamese tradition). the “meso” level reflects the barrier of universities’ “highly masculine culture”. the “balance of power” still favours men, manifesting at times in inequalities in remuneration and advancement (nguyen, 2013:126; grimshaw & francis, 2014). 159 moodly & toni re-imagining higher education leadership the extent to which women internalise cultural traditions at all levels (micro, macro and meso) may affect representation in management and leadership. what seems to facilitate women’s advancement are “personal factors, family support and mentor support” (nguyen, 2013). personal factors reflect self-motivation, independence, being a hard worker and confidence. family support included help from extended family members and partners and a strong father influence (turner, 2007, cubillo & brown, 2003 as cited in nguyen, 2013). “mentoring” by senior leaders “who support women” and “networking” advanced careerpathing into leadership and management. nguyen (2013:128) also cites various authors, in highlighting lesser-known factors that have facilitated women’s advancement. these include “early educational and career success”, “teachers’ inspiration”, “administrative career advancement”, accepting “an interim position”, as well as “adopting non-traditional leadership styles”. the gendered nature of universities, which has led to disproportionate representation of women in leadership, was a catalyst to the vice chancellors’ organisation of australian universities discussing how to identify women who aspire to future career pathing in leadership and to increase representation. this is also reflected in a broader context through the “workplace gender equality act” (2012) passed by the “labor government” (grimshaw & francis, 2014). in the south african context, moodly and toni (2017) suggested the moodlytoni framework towards implementing gender equity in higher education leadership. this framework highlights a phased-in approach and interventions at each phase in support of women in career-pathing towards leadership. it lends itself to facilitating the re-imagining of higher education leadership, in advancing and capacitating women through various phases of their respective careers. 7. methodology the primary method was face-to-face interviews, which were transcribed and sent back to the interviewees for corrections and comments. the phenomenological interpretivist approach guided the research, focusing on each “individual’s unique interpretations of her lived world” (grant 2005 as cited in muzvidziwa, 2015: 369). 7.1 analysis of data critical discourse analysis (cda) was used to carefully reflect on the responses to questions and any nuances that presented themselves. cda as explained by hammond (2006:550) is the viewing of “discourses as not only constructed by social practice, but also as constitutive of it”. hammond cites wodak (1995: 204), in stating that a critical objective (of cda), is to analyse both “opaque” and “transparent” “structural relationships of dominance, discrimination, power and control as manifested in language”. cda reviews “ideological assumptions that have become accepted and concealed” which in turn “are interpreted and explained in terms of the wider social practices that shape discourses and that are shaped by them”(hammond 2006:550). the researchers reviewed and reflected on all responses and had intense discussions, having individually reflected on questions and responses as part of the cda, before comparing views on the responses. themes were then identified in line with literature themes that had presented themselves in the theoretical phase of the study, as reflected in moodly and toni (2017). new themes that presented themselves were also recorded. the write-up of findings was in the format of themes identified, together with a reflection of the literature that reflects 160 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) the theme. this allowed the participants’ personal voices to come through in the paper, so as not to lose the rich data. the responses were analysed in terms of the theoretical framework of transformational leadership towards addressing social injustices, foregrounding women’s voices and experiences that influenced their decisions on, and styles of leadership in higher education, navigating the gendered spaces of heis. their voices speak to their own, personal journeys that assist us in re-imagining leadership as a means of correcting social injustices and decolonising the construct of leadership, through elevating traditions and practices that are inclusive of women’s ways of knowing and doing. when reflecting on participant responses, participants are referred to as participant a, b and c as a form of anonymity in line with research ethics. 7.2 population and sampling the target was women at the level of deputy vice chancellor and vice chancellor at south african universities. of a population of women within these positions in 2016, the researchers wrote to seven, of which the three whose journeys are reflected in this paper responded and were able to make themselves available for the engagements. as the research was carried out during the volatile period of the rhodesmustfall and feesmustfall protest actions of 2016 (jansen 2017), it was difficult for all participants who had initially agreed to be part of the research, to commit to interview dates. 7.3 profiles in line with confidentiality and protecting the anonymity of interviewees, it is only revealed that the dvcs were women within the age ranges of 40–60 +, and across the race diversity. all three occupied dvc positions at south african universities across two of the university types, namely traditional and comprehensive, of which two were former historically disadvantaged institutions (hdis). moodly and toni (2017) have outlined that the number of women in the position of vice chancellor (vc) had declined by almost two per cent between 2014 and 2016. 8. limitations of the study only three women were interviewed and their journeys profiled. the findings can therefore not be generalised to all women in leadership positions at south african universities. the impact of race, transgender and alternatives to the traditional view of the family has not been explored in this research. these might bring in dynamics that may influence the data, analysis and interpretation thereof, had they been considered in the research. 9. findings the findings are presented according to themes as revealed around the psychological and cultural factors at the micro and meso levels, and are discussed in relation to pertinent literature. 9.1 psychological factors at the micro-level 9.1.1 a passion for studies, uncertainty and teaching the findings reflect that there were particular choices in the initial career choices of the three participants, though not necessarily for work-family balance reasons. the career choices were based more on the uncertainty of career pathing. all three women studied in the arts and hold bachelors’ degrees. this was their first step into their respective careers, which coincidentally were as teachers and then onto lecturers with language backgrounds (english 161 moodly & toni re-imagining higher education leadership literature/applied linguistics), at various south african institutions. respondents reflected a “passion” for the choice of studies. they also expressed a self-determination to further their studies after completing their secondary/high schooling. respondent b expressed, “i really … wanted to have a higher education experience … an academic experience”. teaching was not necessarily their first choice of career, but due to uncertainty about their career-pathing after completing their first degrees, they started as teachers. participant a indicated that she was a “latecomer to higher education” having completed her master’s degree and “couldn’t think what to do with myself”. she then went into teaching and hit a barrier when she realised that she was “never going to … get any sort of promotion positions”. participant a also expressed that she knew she “didn’t want to teach” but that she taught internationally nonetheless. she then decided to continue her studies, with a second master’s degree. participant b expressed; “i didn’t want to be a high school teacher, i wanted to teach at university level”. findings tend to perpetuate the literature which reflects that women tend to socially prescribed work as previously indicated, such as teaching and nursing and moving on to occupy leadership positions traditionally. there remains a need for women to broaden into professional disciplines to extend access to leadership in other spheres (grimshaw & francis, 2014). literature states that women follow specific career paths for various reasons, in particular linked to work-family balance, with teaching and nursing the most common choices (nguyen, 2013; johnson 2014 cited in moodly & toni, 2017). 9.1.2 doctoral studies, intrinsic motivation and seizing opportunities having a phd also stood all three women in good stead at a time when most black academics (men and women) and especially women (of all race groups) did not have phds. this opened access to leadership more easily, especially in the middle management areas. their qualifications at the time, coupled with their passion for their work, saw all three women move into middle and eventually into senior management positions. as previously mentioned, part of their experience also came through their involvement beyond academic work such as lecturing and publishing, (running projects, writing reports, involvement in student affairs and consultancy). respondents a and c moved into the positions of dean, with participant c also having been a departmental head, onwards to deputy vice chancellor. significantly, as indicated in literature (as previously mentioned), the pathway was in the areas of teaching and learning and/ or student administration, rather than research. they came through academic ranks of faculties in the social sciences and humanities, rather than the pure sciences and mathematics. research output played a significant role in participant a’s career-pathing, indicating that “as my work began to be reasonably well received, that really built me as a person … and it gave me a completely new sense of myself, a completely new identity … and so i continued”. through “affirmation” participant a wanted to do “more and more academic work” which “pushed me into more research and … publishing”. she could not remember, “consciously wanting to become a leader” but ended up “with leadership jobs in academic development because of the way that the field just works … especially once i had a phd”. respondent a’s situation reflects intrinsic motivation to do better with extrinsic affirmation. it also confirms that research publications and a doctorate qualification are key to attaining leadership positions. however, her ascension to the position of dvc was “by chance” and she “didn’t aspire to it, it came to me along the way”. having obtained her doctorate, respondent c also took up a middle management position in academia. respondent 162 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) b also held middle management positions within the education arena, albeit not in higher education. her experience in higher education nationally and, together with her ability to communicate effectively, saw her move to senior management positions in the education arena. she also gained experience in industry through education-industry partnerships. her ability to keep good relations with various heis at the same time, saw her move into a senior management position at an hei, where after opportunities for movement were presented. though respondent b had not specifically focused on leadership in an hei, she had a focus in terms of her career; “i had my own plan”. she was passionate about higher education and wanted to contribute as was previously indicated. respondent b had not clearly planned to move through the academic ranks, but knew that she would “exhaust every career stamp … every career level”. she always “had the drive” with her career as she had with her studies. she did however reach a point where she “realised” that she was “more motivated” working with people from a “management side of things”, and made a choice to focus on management at this point. 9.2 cultural factors at the micro-level 9.2.1 family responsibility, self-doubt and choices participant a expressed the view that family situations influence career advancement choices in academic management. as a single parent, her family was her priority. she was also of the view that women are their own “worst enemies” in “imagining the people we could be”. she drew from her own experience indicating that she was “terrified of failing” and did not realise she had “always been good enough” until it was said to her by a male supervisor. although she had been invited to apply for positions, she had not done so, as she lacked confidence. participant b was also of the view that women are their own worst enemies, stating that, “we can sabotage ourselves”. she stated that women make excuses “for not going to the next level”, such as being “caregivers and responsibilities at home”. the “extended family or inlaws” were also reasons women expressed for not advancing. women were also “apologetic” in accepting positions, expressing self–doubt and surprise when they achieved. women should recognise their own role in achievements, rather than the tendency to attribute their achievements to someone else. participant b emphasised that women should have “their own plan” even if the start they got was accidental in nature. she indicated that women should recognise that they are capable of senior management positions. applications were usually for middle management positions, where in her view, women felt “more content”. participant c expressed that women “have been given a lot of false choices”. one of these false choices is that “you can do everything and be everything”. in her view, women should consider their circumstances when making decisions to choose senior leadership positions. she cited an example to explicate that women should decide to “focus on her (their) career” or “have time for children”. to do both, she indicated that, “you would look at what stage of your life” you are, as you cannot be a “leader of a faculty which is going to require time … to manage … you can’t do both”. she expressed that women should consider the age, for example, that they would think that their children are independent enough, and thereafter “aspire” to leadership. on the other hand, women may decide that, “children are not as important” to them, that “there are choices you need to make”. in her view women “dominantly … don’t necessarily apply” for senior leadership positions, based on the choice of “what role they want to play in those (their) children’s lives”. she believes that there are leadership roles “wherever you are” and they do not necessarily come “with seniority” but thinks that “false choices have been put to women and they burn themselves out in the process”. 163 moodly & toni re-imagining higher education leadership 9.2.2 leadership style – caring and service orientated the caring service orientation of leadership reflected in participant b’s remarks that she took up leadership positions initially at periods of transition within divisions, when someone was needed to “hold the fort” in an “area which was problematic”. she was called upon, as her caring, service-orientated leadership style was known. “i was … the motivational person, getting people back on track….the agony aunty” listening to people’s complaints but trying to …arrange things, get people to have a bigger picture”. participant a’s caring came through in her response describing her leadership style as “i’ll always stand up and greet them and try to make them feel comfortable. i believe i can exhibit warmth as a human being and i try to do that as much as possible … i really try to hear what they have come about”. she also expressed the importance of knowing “when a quiet word is more appropriate”. owing to her manner of leadership, she is viewed as a “person of integrity”. participant b also agreed that her leadership style was “diplomatic”, “sensitive” and “constructive” with “gentle persuasion”, rather than “imposing”, but with the ultimate goal of getting cooperation. 9.2.3 the non-linear/non-chronological pathway after short periods in teaching, the women did not necessarily remain on the academic trajectories towards higher positions. all three left teaching or academia at some stage and pursued other interests (in administration, community projects and consultancy) before resuming careers in mainstream academia. participant a left teaching when she realised she was not being promoted, did a second master’s degree and joined a project at a south african university. participant b taught for a few months and thereafter changed career-path, during which time she secured an international scholarship and pursued her studies. her family responsibility also saw her make a further career change for a period of time before she refocused on her career and applied for a position in which she was interested, in an educational organisation. she actively enquired about posts in education, as she “really loved higher education”. participant c also left mainstream academia, though she kept strong links with higher education institutions (heis), being involved in numerous projects that developed good working relations within the hei sector. women’s career pathing is not always chronological and linear (chanana, 2013; moodly & toni, 2017), and this is reflected in the journeys of the three women. 9.3 cultural factors at the meso level 9.3.1 influence of role models role models, in the form of men and women, influenced the career-pathing and motivation of all three women in terms of going beyond teaching at high schools, to further their studies, as well as to take up posts other than teaching. after reading a research report written by participant a, a teacher observed that she should do her doctorate and requested her proposal. “i’d never considered myself as phd material, so i think the request from this woman whom i considered an absolute guru (expert in the field of research) … bowled me over.” after a number of publications from her doctorate, she was “invited to apply” for a senior management position at a university. participant b wanted to become a lecturer when she was an undergraduate student at university, but “had never seen a black person teaching … at university”. it was only in her second year of studying that she saw “a black person on campus”, as a lecturer that she realised the possibility of becoming a lecturer. she was also aware that with her study choice (which included speech and drama), that she may be 164 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) caste into stereotypical roles in theatre “given the racial context of our country” (at the time). this realisation was part of the reasons that “informed my decision to want to be a lecturer at university”. she was also “driven by the fact that” there were very few “african, black, indian or coloured” lecturers and the few that there were, “excited her” and were an “inspiration” to her. she worked with one of them as a “research assistant”, and was “picking up whatever i could”, in terms of developing her knowledge and research capacity, where after she pursued her doctoral degree and secured an international scholarship. 9.3.2 accidental leadership to middle management qualifications to the level of a doctorate, at a time when many women and black academics did not have doctorates, also facilitated the pathway of the few women with doctorates and the ability to carry themselves academically, almost automatically ending up in middle management positions. participant a could not remember “consciously wanting to become a leader” but ended up “with leadership jobs in academic development because of the way that the field just works … especially once i had a phd”. she was then invited to apply for a middle management position. this then also opened the pathway towards her senior management position, which she had also not planned. participant c also expressed that she “never really planned to go into a … management and administrative role” but her position in middle management was rather “circumstantial”, rather than something for which she had applied. 10. discussion the findings reflect that women are capable of leadership and that their ways of leadership form an integral part of the roles of responsibility that they play in society. the reflection of passion and caring, teamwork and service orientation are distinct character traits of the forms of leadership displayed by women. muzvidziwa (2015) reflected on this as transformational leadership, a leadership form that goes to the core of addressing social injustices. there is a compelling argument in terms of addressing social injustices towards women and the role of women in society, through the re-imagining of leadership and decolonising of the construct leadership. the male-gendered character traits traditionally associated with leadership are challenged, as the journeys of the three women reflect. within their journeys towards leadership, they consistently reflect passion for their chosen paths, though at times it is tinged with uncertainty and therefore is a “safe”, more traditional path. yet, on these paths, they express courage and determination, challenging the traditional and westernised constructs of leadership, through displaying inward courage and determination and arming themselves with qualifications, and identifying role models who affirm them, at a time when women were not necessarily expressly encouraged to do so. the qualities displayed facilitate a form of leadership that is inclusive, caring and cooperative in nature, unlike the traditional masculine forms that have dominated for decades. this form of transformational leadership compels us to re-imagine leadership and to deconstruct what it means to be a leader in a period of transformation within our heis. decolonisation of ideology that valorises western forms of thought, knowledge and disciplines of leadership are contrasted with an inclusive, caring and service orientated approach. factors that contributed to these leadership qualities cannot neatly be boxed into psychological or cultural respectively, but intertwine. this is reflected in the themes as identified, such as family responsibility (cultural) and self-doubt (psychological). as previously indicated, culture plays an enormous role on decisions individuals make, and this is reflected in the women’s experiences. findings confirm that women still come through 165 moodly & toni re-imagining higher education leadership the traditional women’s career-path (teaching, in this case), which was often the choice based on work-family balance or uncertainty. the journeys reflect that women make choices about careers, in academia as well as in leadership. factors such as family responsibility influence these decisions, and whereas there is a view that women should not doubt their abilities, and be more affirming within themselves, there is a view that women have been given false choices. both views speak to a life-style continuum that women face decisions on family responsibility, career choices, etcetera, and then again reflects the perpetuation of the status quo of society’s traditional view of women’s roles and responsibilities in the family. family responsibility is still viewed as primarily a women’s role rather than an equal and collective and possibly a negotiated one, giving opportunities for career development as part of a healthy, balanced work-family environment. all participants expressed that decisions had to be made, and that women needed to be more confident and unapologetic in making these. role models (in the form of men and women) at the meso-level facilitated advancement. the effect of positive role models was a re-affirmation of their abilities to transcend barriers, as well as a new sense of self. this, coupled with intrinsic motivation (often driven by passion or uncertainty as previously indicated, and therefore the decision to continuously learn), led to opportunities in middlemanagement positions. it was also their caring and service-oriented leadership style, that saw them being persuaded into middle management. the journeys also reflect the non-linear and non-chronological pathways often followed by women through, amongst others, decisions around family-work balance, uncertainty around career-pathing, positive role models and passion for higher education. 11. conclusions as previously indicated, in re-imagining higher education leadership, women’s ways of leadership should form part of the discourse of re-creating the construct leadership. women’s forms of leadership are transformational in addressing social injustices and valorise qualities that traditional constructs of leadership have devalorised. decolonisation of the construct leadership, demands the re-imaging of leadership, and valorising qualities and values as reflected in women’s ways of leading. transformation in leadership is intricately linked with deconstructing a colonialist view of leadership, as masculine in nature, based on western traditions and thought. the valorisation of masculine characteristics, perpetuating gendered cultures within the higher education space, has to be deconstructed in favour of a paradigm that valorises men and women’s ways of leadership. this forms part of transformation and decolonisation of leadership towards social justice; bringing the voices of women into the leadership space in a more equitable manner. though the common elements of career choice (teaching) suggest a conformity in terms of women’s career choices as reflected in literature, this is not necessarily for the reasons as cited in literature (work-family balance), but rather points to a period of uncertainty in the career phases of the three women. it suggests the need for mentoring and support structures during the earlier years of career-pathing, and may assist in broadening the scope of women’s choices. role models and mentoring has been a key factor in driving men’s successful careerpathing, and women also need to reflect on their roles as role models and mentors, and building support networks, as well-established within male-networks. socialisation amongst women, inclusive of men, demands an active approach towards actively lobbying for the inclusion of women in leadership. there have been arguments for the implementation of a 166 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) framework towards professional development of women, which is cognisant of women’s nonlinear and non-chronological pathway. within this, capacity-building programmes should be cognisant of factors influencing women’s ability to participate in leadership and recognise constraints as highlighted. implementation should be embedded in policy in relation to gender equity, as this is key to the empowerment of women towards leadership. importantly, it cannot be argued that there are not sufficiently qualified women in these positions (in heis), but it cannot be ignored that women must come out of their comfort zone and also challenge the status quo. 12. recommendations the paper argues that the construct of leadership should be re-imagined and re-created in terms of valorising women and men’s forms of leadership, towards challenging the gendered nature of the higher education environment. women’s ways of leadership should be recognised through the process of deconstructing and reconstructing the colonialist traditions of leadership. this should occur within a framework that reflects the non-linear, non-chronological pathways that women often follow, guided by policy on gender equity (as proposed in the moodly-toni framework). part of this process includes identifying role models who strongly influence and affirm women. this framework should be established at sectoral as well as institutional level and should facilitate the re-construction of leadership (as part of the transformation and decolonisation process), and may affect the psychological and cultural factors that influence future generations of leadership within the sector, and beyond. men and women alike are responsible for the re-creation of leadership towards social justice. women have to be bold enough to take charge of their own career-pathing and being an equal voice in the decolonisation of the construct of leadership towards the valorisation of qualities embracing women and men’s ways of knowing and doing, towards transformational leadership addressing social injustices. engagement on this is foregrounded on a paradigm shift and a 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https://mg.co.za/article/2013-04-05-decolonising-the-humanities https://mg.co.za/article/2013-04-05-decolonising-the-humanities _goback 70 the diverse educational needs and challenges of information technology teachers in two black rural schools elsa mentz north-west university roxanne bailey north-west university marietjie havenga north-west university betty breed north-west university desmond govender university of kwazulu-natal irene govender university of kwazulu-natal frank dignum utrecht university virginia dignum delft university of technology this article reflects on the first phase of a research project aimed at the empowerment of information technology (it) teachers in black rural schools in the north-west province of south africa. in order to empower these it teachers, the first phase aimed at understanding their unique challenges and needs. qualitative research methodology was used to determine the it teachers’ experiences of teaching a difficult subject such as it in black rural schools. we report on the unique needs and challenges that these teachers experience. results indicate that mutual challenges exist with regard to internet access, lack of technical support and learners not having computers at home. challenges with regard to electricity supply, shortage of textbooks and insufficient software also occur in some instances. we conclude with some recommendations on how the unique needs and challenges of these schools could be addressed in order to empower the teachers in their desire to facilitate success among it learners. keywords: rural education, information technology, it teachers, professional development, computer science education. introduction the national plan for higher education in south africa (doe, 2001:15) indicates a shortage of highlevel professional and managerial skills, especially in information technology, engineering, technological and technical occupations. according to robb cutler, president of the computer science teachers association (csta), computer science as an academic discipline provides the knowledge foundation for the above-mentioned skills (csta, 2006). to increase enrolment in the field of computer science (cs) and information technology (it), we need to expand opportunities for learners to succeed in the subject it in schools in south africa (sa). 71mentz et al. — the diverse educational needs and challenges of it teachers in two schools it is one of the 29 subjects offered in the further education and training band (grades 10 to 12) in sa schools. learners can select the subject in grade 10 without previous knowledge of computers or programming. the larger part (60%) of the subject content deals with programming (doe, 2003:13). the subject is challenging as high-level problem-solving skills are required in order to write computer programs and specialised resources are necessary to effectively teach the subject. according to the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) for it (dobe, 2011:10), schools need to have up-to-date computer technology, specific software, anti-virus protection, a data projector and internet access in order to equip learners with the necessary skills. the caps stipulates that the provision of infrastructure, equipment and finances for the subject is the responsibility of the school. in the north-west province (nw) the number of it learners is, on average, lower than those of other subjects. nevertheless, grade 10 enrolment of it learners is relatively high at black rural schools. in this research ‘black rural schools’ refers to schools which predominantly have black learners, in remote areas in the countryside, far removed from metropolitan areas. it seems as though these learners believe that computers could be the pathway to a future career. unfortunately, a low pass rate has been obtained at these schools over the past three years. this is in contrast to more affluent urban schools where a 90-100% pass rate in each grade is not unusual. where many urban schools offer it as subject, it is rarely available in black rural schools. from the 24 schools in the nw offering grade 12 it in 2010, only two were black rural schools (varughese, 2011). the words of former president nelson mandela, namely that the rural areas of sa continue to lag behind the rest of the country in the post-apartheid era, seems to be true for it teaching as well. mandela argues that one of the challenges facing sa is to improve the quality of education in rural schools (hsrcepc, 2005:vii). despite numerous efforts for the upliftment of rural schools (herselman, 2003:948-950), amedzo (2007:85) found that very few changes seem to be occurring in this regard in rural areas. nonyane and mlitwa (2008:94) also state that the majority of schools in rural areas in sa still lack basic resources and experienced, skilled teachers. chikoko (2008:80) mentions that each rural school is unique; therefore, there may not always be universal solutions to educational problems. to improve the quality of education in these schools, it is necessary to know the specific needs of, and challenges experienced by teachers (amedzo, 2007:80). it is an enormous challenge to find qualified teachers in sa, especially in rural schools (ndandani, 2001:381). chikoko (2008:75-76) argues that the teacher is best placed to develop the learners’ potential, underscoring the importance of professional development of these teachers. this specifically concerns it teachers. the rapid changes that cs is experiencing, with new technologies and programming languages continuously influence it as a school subject, resulting in frequent changes in the it curriculum. it is therefore not surprising that sa has a shortage of qualified it teachers. furthermore, the change from a procedural to an object-oriented programming approach in 2004 caused an immediate need for professional development of it teachers. according to csta (2006:19), a worldwide crisis in cs education is inevitable due to a shortage of professional development opportunities that allow teachers to develop and keep their technical and pedagogical skills current. this research focused on the two it teachers at the two black rural schools mentioned earlier. we aimed to determine the experiences and specific needs and challenges of these teachers with regard to teaching it in rural schools, and to establish whether these differ. this will assist us in further research to empower it teachers in rural areas and establish guidelines for the support of these teachers. in the next section we explain computer programming, which is a major component of the it school curriculum, as well as the term rural as used in the context of this study. we then indicate the research methods applied to determine the special needs of the two it teachers. finally, the results, discussion and conclusions follow. theoretical framework computer programming is a difficult, complex cognitive task, including skills such as planning, reasoning and problem solving (ali, 2009:517). since programming is low based in theoretical knowledge and 72 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 memorisation, it requires a dynamic and practical approach, with the ability to apply abstract concepts when solving a problem (gomes & mendes, 2007). despite the extensive research on teaching a first programming language (guibert & girard, 2003; xiaohui, 2006), it still poses a challenge to teachers and learners. hassinen and mäyrä (2006:117) claim that there is no shortcut in learning to program. it requires extensive practice and sufficient time to master the programming skills. recent research conducted by stamey and sheel (2010:35) support the notion of learning-by-doing as they found that having learners writing several different computer programs dramatically improves learners’ programming performance. learners in rural areas are not as exposed to computers and programming as their urban counterparts, so the question of computers, programming and rurality poses interesting research challenges. cloke (2006:18-19) states that rurality is often seen as the opposite of urban and argues that it is in the social distinction of rurality that the significant differences between rural and urban remain. there exists, though, no single definition of rural. according to coladarci (2007:2), a number of different criteria for rurality exist, such as the population size and density, proximity to an urbanised area, type of economic activity, income and educational attainment levels. cartwright and allen (2002:7) define rural schools as those located in rural and small towns where the population of the town lives outside the urban centres and where less than 50% of the employed individuals commute to the urban core of a metropolitan area. balfour, mitchell and moletsane (2008:102) name poverty, inaccessibility of infrastructure and absence of support as key characteristics in rural sa and, although urban areas are not free of poverty, the same intensity cannot be found in urban areas. chikoko (2008:76) also admits that the concept of rural schools should not be seen as homogeneous, as rural communities are varied and schools in these communities could operate at very different stages of development. research design and methodology to understand the experiences of the only two grade 10 it teachers in black rural schools in the nw and develop an in-depth analysis of these two cases, we conducted a qualitative, comparative case study. yin (2009:18) defines a case study as “an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon in depth and within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident”. a comparative case study examines two or more instances of specific phenomena to discover contrasts and similarities of patterns across the cases (campbell, 2009:174). in this research the two it teachers in black rural schools in the nw form the two-case design and were compared with regard to how they experience it teaching in a particular school and what their challenges and needs are. although multiple forms of data collection can be used for case study research (creswell, 2008:488), the interviews formed the primary data collection instrument for this research. semi-structured interviews were used to determine how the teachers experience their teaching. the two teachers were interviewed and follow-up visits were paid to clarify certain aspects from the interviews. they had to elaborate on needs and challenges mentioned while explaining their experiences. the interviews were transcribed and data were analysed using atlas.ti™ software. we mainly used open-coding, a data-driven approach (gibbs, 2010:45), to determine the evolving needs and challenges of teachers. themes were identified from the analysis and a comparison of the cases was drawn. these will form the basis of the discussion and will result in the drawing of conclusions. permission to conduct the research was obtained from the north-west department of education, the ethics committee of the university, as well as from teachers and principals of the schools. teachers were informed that participation is voluntary and anonymous and that they can opt out at any stage of the research. construct and internal validity were assured by interviewing teachers directly involved with it teaching in rural schools and follow-up visits to clarify any uncertainty which arose from the interviews. apart from co-researchers who evaluated and monitored the research process, one of the co-researchers independently reviewed the data analysis and interpretation, as well as inferences made, in order to further establish validity. to establish reliability, all research procedures were clearly documented and explained to enable co-researchers to check that results derived from the data were consistent and dependable. 73mentz et al. — the diverse educational needs and challenges of it teachers in two schools although a two-case design does not necessarily provide a solid base for generalising results, it could provide a sense of the particular circumstances of the case as well as for more general relevance and interest (hartley, 2005:324). we hope to apply the results from this research in planning the further empowerment of these it teachers. results with regard to the analysis of the teachers’ experiences, two main themes evolved from the interviews, namely resources and equipment, and knowledge and skills. each of these themes involved certain challenges which the teachers experience in their teaching and will be discussed for each teacher respectively. teacher 1 (alias john, 22 march 2011, 15:00-16:15), completed a four-year diploma in applied information technology, specialising in networking and software engineering, and received training in several different programming languages. even though he already has three years’ teaching experience, he is currently enrolled for a post-graduate certificate in education (pgce). john is a very committed teacher and declares that he enjoys teaching. he is the only it teacher at his school and is responsible for it grade 10, 11 and 12. he also teaches mathematics and technology in order to maintain an adequate teaching load. this prohibits him from focusing solely on teaching it, and support from colleagues in itrelated matters is limited. the it class has 32 fully functional computers with the necessary software. john’s challenges with regard to resources and equipment involved four aspects: no internet access, learners without computers at home, no technical assistance for maintaining computers, and limited variety of textbooks and reference resources available. the school does not have internet access, resulting in learners being unable to complete research assignments and in john having to use his personal internet at home to retrieve information for learners. these learners don’t have access to the net, so i have to do research so that i can come and give them a handout or notes. one of the assessment standards for grade 10 (doe, 2003:20) requires learners to retrieve information by navigating the internet, which these learners cannot do. the lack of internet access results in a challenge to the teacher to equip his learners with the necessary skills required in the it curriculum. … you cannot give them [an assignment] to go and research this, because they don’t have any way of doing this. john has 26 grade 10 learners in his it class, none of whom have computers at home. “the only computer they know is this school computer. after school they don’t have access to computers.” due to the fact that learners do not have the necessary computer skills, the teacher needs to invest extra time in order to equip learners with the basic computer skills. … [t]hey don’t know what is a mouse. so sometimes i start doing computer literacy skills which is outside the curriculum in it, like how to type … you cannot teach them programming if they don’t know how to type. i have to go an extra mile so that i can close that gap.” a further challenge is that learners cannot prepare or practise programming at home. john tries to overcome this by asking learners to write computer programs on paper. i assign homework that they can write on a piece of paper, then i can check it. when they come to school, they can just program, testing what they have on paper. they can only practise their programming in class, which results in john having to be available after school hours to assist them. i have arrangements like mondays and wednesdays grade 10s they come and two days it’s grade 11s then saturday grade 11 and grade 12 .... john is expected to maintain the computer laboratory himself as the school has no computer technician. although he has adequate knowledge, it poses a problem as maintenance is a time-consuming task, especially during examination periods when all the computers need to be restored and checked. 74 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 with regard to resources, every learner has a textbook, but john mentioned that they only use one specific textbook for programming and that additional examples are needed. with regard to knowledge and skills, john has no problems with the it content. concerning the pedagogical and methodological issues, john relies on a basic knowledge of teaching and admits that he needs to acquire more relevant skills. personally i don’t have any problem with the it content itself ...but just adapting to the new system, these things like filing, recording, questioning techniques, things like that, so but i think my pgce is helping me. john does not formally teach any problem-solving strategies, nor does he require learners to write algorithms before commencing with a programming task. he generally uses direct teaching methods, using example programs and teaching learners general templates for programming syntax. so i start with the general format like, which is more or less like a template ... then after that it’s examples then class activity. teacher 2 (alias tom, 23 march 2011, 13:30-14:45) completed his bed degree, specialising in it. tom has four years’ it teaching experience. he enjoys teaching, though he states that it requires much work and energy to deal with more than one person’s progress at a time. he is the only it teacher in his school teaching it grade 10, as well as other school subjects. the it laboratory has 29 computers, yet few are in working order due to problems with electricity supply and computer viruses. as a result, the 22 learners in tom’s grade 10 it class do not have the privilege of working on their own computer. tom does not have his own computer at home and uses the school’s computer for preparation. tom’s interviews revealed needs with regard to resources and equipment such as hardware, anti-virus software, maintenance, internet connectivity and a lack of teaching support. as mentioned above, most of the computers are not in a working order due to problems with electricity supply, malfunctioning components such as power supplies and screens, as well as server and network configurations. …[i]t’s a problem because they need to always conceptualize what you are telling them and if most of the computers don’t work, it becomes a problem for them. another challenge tom faces are viruses on the computers. actually it’s a major problem now some of the computers are there but they are not working because of viruses. he only has five anti-virus software licences, but as the computers are connected to a network all computers are vulnerable. consequently some computers are unusable. tom does not feel competent to maintain the computers himself, and has to rely on an outside technician, who is expensive and unreliable. it’s expensive, ... we don’t have money for that. sometimes you find the problem you can sort it [out] yourself but if it persists then i call the other person [technician]. so the one we are using now is very difficult to find. tom’s school has only one computer connected to the internet for all staff members. he uses the internet often for preparation and extra resources for his learners; however, he needs more resources. i spend a lot of time trying to find resources from the internet, but there are very few. the fact that learners do not have internet access poses problems as they cannot complete the prescribed research assignments. …especially the practical assessment tasks you have to do research on the internet. now the problem we have here at this school is that we have one internet, one computer that has internet here. it seems that the school cannot afford to install internet in the it class. ... the telephone company told us the problem is it’s too expensive for them to put an interchanger here…not a lot of people are using internet here so for in the cities they have the interchanger because for adsl, we need the interchanger. 75mentz et al. — the diverse educational needs and challenges of it teachers in two schools as learners have no opportunity to work on the internet, tom used to make photocopies for them , but it’s expensive, it takes a great deal of time and the photocopier is not always in working order. one of tom’s biggest challenges is the fact that they do not have any programming textbooks for the grade 10 learners. the teacher’s copy is the only textbook in class. so the only way to go about doing that is to write notes on the blackboard. they tried to get the parents to buy the books, but parents could not afford them. there is a data projector in the it class, but it needs to be mounted before it can be used. due to the problems experienced with the computer equipment and timetable scheduling, learners dropped out after grade 10 in it last year and moved to other subjects. the other problem was attempting to schedule classes – there were a lot of clashes, so we had to sacrifice those 5 [learners] so the timetable could work. with regard to knowledge and skills, tom does not have any problems with the it content and also mentioned that he feels confident teaching the subject. he mainly uses direct teaching methods. i told them ...; i show them....; they are used to just memorising, this is how we do this. learners only practise programming on the computers during class time, providing that the computers are working, as they do not have computers at home. i will actually give them homework but they are going to write it down. because learners are not used to working on a computer they type slowly. tom does not apply group work in his classes as it “always spins out of control”. he believes that there will only be one person doing all the work and the rest end up talking or relaxing. tom’s own words summarised his overall experience of teaching it in a black rural school: even now again it’s a big problem, if you have limited resources and of those resources some of them you have them but someone must come and fix them, you end up not really doing your work correctly. discussion from the analysis of the teachers’ experiences, a number of similarities and differences can be identified regarding their needs and challenges. the common ground lies in the fact that these schools are in remote areas where community exposure to technology is minimal. the findings concur with findings reported by balfour et al. (2008:102), which indicated the absence of support and the inaccessibility of infrastructure in rural schools in sa. although the teachers have relatively up-to-date computer equipment, it is not always in a working order. as a result, these learners lack the learning-by-doing aspect of studying programming (hassinen & mäyrä, 2006:119). both schools’ learners cannot access the internet at school. teachers need to access the internet and print notes at additional cost in order to enable learners to complete their research assignments. since no learners in either one of the schools have computers at home, most do not even have basic computer skills when starting it in grade 10. teachers can only give homework assignments in the form of handwritten programs. both schools are unable to afford outside technicians to maintain the computers; therefore, it teachers need to take responsibility for maintenance as well. in both schools there is only one it teacher and in order to balance their workload they are required to teach other subjects; thus, dividing their time and focus. also, in both schools, there are more than 20 it learners in grade 10, which is above average for it learners in schools in the nw. with regard to knowledge and skills, unlike what researchers such as herselman (2003:947) and ndandani (2001:381) reported about inexperienced and unskilled teachers in rural areas, these two teachers are knowledgeable enough with regard to it content knowledge. differences between the two schools also exist. the way in which the teachers handle their challenges is unique to their specific situations. tom’s school experiences include frequent problems with electricity supply, which concurs with what herselman (2003:945) states on rural education. john did not express 76 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 any concerns with regard to electricity supply. john has recently updated anti-virus software licences for all the computers in his class. tom’s problems started with not owning enough anti-virus software licences for the computers in his class, which affected their performance. unfortunately, tom’s computers are not in good working order and learners do not get enough exposure to working on a computer, whereas john’s computer laboratory is fully functional. although tom asked for assistance in this regard, the school did not have the necessary funding. as chikoko (2008:77) argues, poverty and low levels of education characterises rural communities in sa, but still the schools in these communities vary with regard to resources and infrastructure and operate at very different stages of development. john is willing to stay after school until 16:00, and on saturday mornings to assist learners in becoming computer literate and to practise programming skills. tom needs to prepare his lessons after school in the staff room as he does not own a computer nor is he able to access the internet in any other way, lessening the opportunity learners have for extra lessons in the afternoons. john has adequate knowledge of the maintenance of computers. he performs strict control over learners bringing their own memory sticks into his classroom and has no trouble with viruses. tom does not feel capable of doing all the maintenance in his class and due to the remoteness of the school it is expensive and difficult to get a technician. where john is fortunate enough to have textbooks for each of his learners, tom only has his own copy and needs to write notes on the board as copyright protection and costs prevent him from copying notes. the shortage of textbooks, also mentioned by amedzo (2007:62), may be due to a lack of adequate telephone and e-mail communication between the school and the education department. this could be attributed to problems with electricity supply. conclusion from the discussion it is clear that the two rural schools in nw do have generic needs and challenges, typical of rural schools, but also experience unique problems and needs not prevalent in all rural schools. the challenges these schools experience with regard to it teaching do not promote the increase in numbers of it learners at school level. it is impossible for learners to achieve the set outcomes for it without working computers and internet connectivity. it is quite understandable why the grade 12 results of these schools differ from urban schools in the province. to fully support learners in their endeavour to succeed in it, a school needs to be fully equipped with the necessary hardware, software and internet connectivity. as learners in rural schools do not have an opportunity to work on a computer after school hours and as programming skills cannot be acquired without enough practice, teachers’ workloads need to be adjusted to accommodate extra classes in the afternoons. as maintenance is less available and more expensive in rural schools, continuous support is needed from the department of basic education as a once-off provision of equipment is inadequate. as long as the policy of the department of basic education (dobe, 2011:10) is that schools must provide infrastructure, equipment and finances for the subject, this will remain a problem in black rural schools. it as a school subject will become extinct in rural schools and learners’ career opportunities will be shattered. this also links to what kajee (2005:104) sees as a lack of infrastructure and resources having a detrimental effect on south african global it participation and development. the provincial departments of education should also take into consideration that standard communication channels between rural schools and the department is not a given; thus, additional measures should be taken to ensure that rural school receive all notices and information. this study shows that the teachers from the two rural schools have not given up hope, but are trying to meet their own needs and challenges with the resources available. the dobe, provincial departments of education, the school, and the teacher need to be partners in their endeavour to find the right solutions to their specific problems. it is important to assist the large number of learners who want to take it, but cannot achieve the desired outcomes. sa cannot afford not to empower learners who are interested in a career in it. 77mentz et al. — the diverse educational needs and challenges of it teachers in two schools the findings of this first phase of the research will be used in further research to establish how the it teachers at the different rural schools can be empowered and supported. acknowledgement this research is based on work financially supported by sanpad. any opinion, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors. references ali a 2009. a conceptual model for learning to program in introductory programming courses. journal of issues in informing science and information technology, 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department of education. south africa department of basic education 2011. curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) information technology final draft. retrieved on 30 may 2011 from www.learn.co.za/lc/docs/ information%20technology.pdf. varughese m 2011. information technology: the performance indicators. presentation delivered at provincial information technology teachers’ meeting on 16 february 2011 in klerksdorp. xiaohui h 2006. improving teaching in computer programming by adopting student-centred learning strategies. the china papers. november. yin rk 2009. case study research. design and methods. applied social research methods series 5. 4th edn. london: sage. 61 english education for young children in south korea: not just a collective neurosis of english fever! kyung eun jahng university of wisconsin-madison the aim of this article is to rethink english education for young children in south korea through exploring a great variety of complex, interrelated terrains in terms of its emergence and popularity in an era of globalisation. i critically examine the relevance of discursive and non-discursive conditions derived from social, political, economic, and cultural forces, for the current emphasis of early childhood education, with special reference to english education for young children in south korea. this is expected to provide international readers with an understanding of the significance of reconceptualising early childhood english education in countries where english is not the native language, considering its complicated (re) constructions through power relations embedded in its constitutive discourses. drawing on foucault’s notions of governmentality and bhabha’s term hybridity, this article explores a set of discourses, such as instrumentalism, developmentalism, and cosmopolitanism, pertinent to the reproduction of the social conditions and, simultaneously, to the constitution of subjects around english education. by politicising early childhood english education in south korea, i argue that it has not emerged out of a “collective neurosis of english fever” (kim, 2002), but is a discursively constructed product in a particular timespace. keywords: reconceptualisation; english education; english as a foreign language; south korea; english kindergarten; governmentality; hybridity introduction with a growing influx of people from different countries, by and large resulting from international marriage and foreign migration, south korean society, believed to have been homogeneous in its ethnicity, culture, and language (shin, 2006) before the 1988 seoul olympics triggered the rise in international migration, is witnessing an increase in the number of children from multicultural families, as well as those speaking foreign languages in the classroom (kim, 2007). when it comes to the background of the gained popularity of english education for young children in the context of korean society, south korea ranked first in the world in regard to the estimated consumer expenditure on private education of english language, reaching 10 trillion won (us $8.6 billion) in 2006 (kim, 2006; ma, 2007). it is reported that every year the amount that parents spend on their children’s english education drastically increases (chang, 2008). reflecting the national passion for learning english, there have been a great number of studies about english education in early childhood. however, according to ma’s (2007) analysis of research trends in this field, most of the published work is directed toward phenomenological and experimental research that explains the state of english education in south korea or assesses its instructional methods and effects on other abilities of children (e.g. the level of fluency and listening skill in english language, and development of korean language). compared to the large volume of methodological studies in the field of english education in south korea, the discussion and problematisation of constitutive discourses and paradigms in english education have been relatively marginalised in current educational research in the country (park, 2009). furthermore, there are few studies that place english education for young children in a complex social arena that investigate ways that children become the subjects of government in a pedagogical space. the aim of this paper, therefore, is to examine how young children in south korea, particularly those in preschool to early elementary school, are socially and historically constituted, by mapping the present looks of early childhood english education at the intersection of the global, national, and local levels. 62 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 2011 more specifically, the aim of this conceptual paper is to rethink english education for young children in south korea through a great variety of complex, interrelated terrains of its emergence and popularity in an era of globalisation. to do this the paper explores a set of discourses pertinent to the reproduction of the social conditions and, simultaneously, to the constitution of subjects around english education. drawing on seminal concepts and ideas derived from poststructural and postcolonial thinkers, such as foucault and bhabha, i delineate early childhood english education as a historical and cultural product whose formation is mediated by the interactions of multiple discourses. korean english education for young children emerges in a particular historical and cultural context while being discursively conceptualised and made intelligible under “the regime of truth”1 (foucault, 1977) regarding language learning in early childhood. in other words, the emergence of english education for young children is not just a societal issue that any single event or paradigmatic change in a global society has generated. it is no more than an emblem of complicity, consensus, and dissension among those who compete under power relations. the next section provides a rationale for the use of guiding epistemological and conceptual tools derived from the poststructural and postcolonial ideas, followed by the explication of the hybridising process of english in a globalising era and its resultant worldwide exigency for english education in early childhood. implementing foucault and bhabha in english education for young children considering the paucity of poststructural and postcolonial research on english-as-a-foreign/secondlanguage education in south korea, i draw on the work of foucault and bhabha in order to undo the regime of truth (foucault, 1977) in english-as-a-foreign/second-language education for young children in south korea and beyond. here, i employ the concept of ‘the regime of truth’ since my paper intends to problematise the regime of truth that hampers our questioning of what has been taken for granted in regard to early childhood english education in south korea. also, concepts such as governmentality and hybridity, derived from their ideas, are used to reconceptualise early childhood english education by bringing to the fore political rationalities inscribed in the discourses by which it is constituted. power, in a foucauldian sense, “can be productive, positive, enabling, and empowering” (ingram, 2005, 261-262) as it “traverses and produces things, …induces pleasure [and] forms of knowledge, [and] produces discourses” (hall, 1997, 49-50). extending from this notion of power, governmentality, also called ‘the art of government,’ is the way in which sovereign power is exercised in and through individual bodies, targeting the population as its object by way of the apparatus of security as its mechanism (blackman & maynard, 2008; deacon, 2005; foucault, 1991). in regard to the term hybridity, i assert that some of the effects of colonial power results in “the production of hybridisation rather than the noisy command of colonialist authority or the silent repression of native traditions” (bhabha, 1994, 112). the process of exercising this colonising power subsequently makes the positions of the coloniser and colonised unstable and flexible. according to bhabha (1994), the power relations between the coloniser and colonised are characterised by their ambivalence. however, he interprets the ambivalent locus of the hybridity as productive and procreating other possibilities. in the equivocal hybridising process transpiring in the interstices between korean particularities and western, or more specifically usor ukcentred, knowledge of early (language) education, hybrid knowledge is produced. drawing on foucault’s ideas on the ‘productive’ nature of power, i presuppose that power relations under linguistic, cultural imperialism are not necessarily static but are fluid. 1 the term “regime of truth” is defined by foucault, as “the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true, the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned… [and] the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true” (foucault, 1977, 131). by this term, i mean a set of truths that that govern ways of learning and teaching english in early childhood education. 63jahng — english education for young children in south korea english as a global lingua franca? when it comes to the nature of power in the english language and its (in)direct effects on society, there are two different strands of thought on the persistence of english ascendancy and the cessation or diminishing effect of its power. on the one hand, whether or not the global vogue of the english language is in immediate danger (graddol, 2000), english is viewed as a global lingua franca for people of different mother tongues to communicate with each other all over the world. the spread of english reflects the hegemonic power of a dominant language over other languages and cultures (house, 2003). one of the criticisms against this phenomenon is presented by the phrase ‘linguistic imperialism’ (phillipson, 2003). considering that “english linguistic imperialism is one sub-type of linguicism” (phillipson, 2003, 55) and that linguicism simply refers to discrimination on the basis of language, the idea of english linguistic imperialism indicates that english education functions as a site for the unequal allocation of power vis-àvis english proficiency – at least, in south korea (lee, 2010; park, 2006). on the other hand, some counterarguments contend that english will eventually be replaced by other language(s), for a global language (graddol, 2000), or that english will become hybridised into different englishes through glocalising processes in diverse cultural contexts (crystal, 1998). here, the notions of ‘different englishes’ and glocalisation reject the claim that the dominance of english simply homogenises the world regardless of regional diversity and eventually transmits the hegemonic ideology, especially of the us, among english speaking countries (graddol, 2000). rather, they presuppose that english undergoes the process of hybridisation in contact with local diversity. graddol (2000) argues that such language contact is “an important driver of change” (6). in this way, it is changed into different forms of english without reliance on standard american english (lippi-green, 2003) as a centre of authority that controls, for example, the form of english used in south korea. having said that, i support the contention that english becomes hybrid through its contact with other languages and cultures, while rejecting gramsci’s (1971) sense of the hegemonic power of english. the notion of hegemony is based on the conceptualisation and perpetuation of the dominant and dominated language binary. in other words, neither the notion of the sovereignty of the english language nor korean cultural uniqueness intact from english education is upheld in this article. more exactly, the focus of this article lies in how the english language has held sway as a vehicular language circulating discourses, in conjunction with nationalist endeavour for their own benefit, and how children are shaped as subjects through english education in south korea. therefore, in this article, complicity and dissension between different stakeholders in undertaking and maintaining english education for young children is examined at the matrix of historical and discursive intersections. the next section discusses how children’s english education in south korea has been configured at historical and discursive intersections and provides the articulations of three identified discourses: instrumentalism, developmentalism, and cosmopolitanism. locating english education in south korea at historical and discursive intersections korean traditional confucian values have intermingled with western ideological and social principles and rules in having formed the conception of education for children. they are rooted in ancient chinese confucianism and have motivated koreans to consider education “the best way to attain wisdom and virtue” and to achieve “political and financial success” (hurh, 1998, 94). in addition to confucianism, which forms the rudiments for koreans’ pursuit of good education, the continued impact of colonialism presently serves as a ground for popularity and exigency of english education, since british imperialism and american expansionism established english as a colonial language (graddol, 2000; spring, 1998). though korea has never been physically occupied by american or british colonial power, globalisation has unremittingly implicated and reinforced western colonial power on south korea which has been transformed into a form that is neither directly physical nor appearing overtly threatening. 64 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 2011 thus, the english language has sustained its instrumentality for the operation and dissemination of symbolic power (bourdieu, 1984; bourdieu, 1991); it has enabled one to change the actions of others who have less symbolic power. as lee (2010) argues, english in south korea functions as “a symbolic measure of one’s competence and is associated with job success, social mobility, and international competitiveness” (247). english education maintains the privileges of those who have english proficiency as symbolic capital and reproduces social stratification (lee, 2010). acknowledging the complexity of social, political, economic, and cultural landscapes grounding early childhood english education in south korea, i identify and elaborate on the interwoven discourses, including, but not limited to, instrumentalism, developmentalism, and cosmopolitanism, which set in motion a system of reasoning (popkewitz, 1998) for a mastery of, or at least familiarisation with the english language. children as human capital: instrumentalism on top of the widely perceived role of education as an instrument for one’s success and the elevated status of the english language in a global society, the close relation between education and the global economy has also led to the conceptualisation of education as a means of social investment for students identified as human resources or human capital with instrumental values, for economic growth (spring, 1998). the understanding of education within the context of the global economy is focused primarily on the nature of its instrumentality, for it assumes that education is intentionally designed to transform students into useful resources (or objects) equipped with english skills, a set of cultural knowledge, and cosmopolitan identities. to this end, their cultivated qualities are expected to eventually contribute to boosting the economic growth of the nation. thus, education functions as an apparatus for fabricating children as subjects of the government through the transmission of certain knowledge to them. by globalisation, the world has witnessed an influx of migrating people, of information, of capital, and of a global economy, to name a few (castells, 1996). as international free trade is greatly dependent on english, it stands as the primary language of the global society (spring, 1998). for this reason, the korean economic system, in its tight interconnection with the global economy, has set the stage for human resources to be well-armed with a basic, yet powerful, linguistic weapon, namely, english. hence, the lee government has attempted to incorporate into the public education system both english immersion programs and english proficiency tests as its fundamental components. according to the national human resource development plan (2006) of south korea, children’s english communication skills are viewed as the primary way of developing human resources in a globalising era (7). english, as a tool, also internationally circulates modernist knowledge and discourses. it is often said that the dominance of english as a colonising technology culminates in civilising the so-called other, less civilised, often non-western, cultures by infusing the minds of their people with the western, modernist knowledge and truths. through the development of western modes of life and reasoning as part of a process of modernisation in other non-western countries, modern individuals with ‘an english mindset’ exhibit western/american ways of thinking, behaving and feeling.. as children gain english language skills as their cultural capital in english kindergartens (park, 2009), they are transformed into useful and usable human capitals with productive efficiency, which is how social structures are reproduced by means of early childhood english education in south korea (bourdieu, 1986). in particular, the discourse of developmentalism (baker, 1999), which authorises child development knowledge as a guiding principle for education, underlies the widespread recognition that early childhood is the most opportune and effective period of time for second language acquisition. having said this, global discourses of instrumentalism and developmentalism, which have appealed to scientifically-inflected modern minds to encourage early childhood english education, are negotiated with nationalism. korean nationalist rage for a global leading position and korean exceptionalism2 leads 2 lee (2010) explains that korean exceptionalism is based on the notion that “korea is unique and exceptional” (23). 65jahng — english education for young children in south korea to artfully making use of the rationale of human capital theory that has been a justification for objectifying children as human capital and scaling down the major role of education as social investment in a technical term. nationalist reasoning ascribed to by bureaucrats and policymakers complies with and sanctions the way of conceptualising children as human capital. this results in tempering antipathy against the english language centred on children’s learning. for example, president lee myung-bak strongly argued for the significance of english learning, saying, “among non-english-speaking countries, those using english are richer than other nations.”3 as evidently expressed in his speech, the south korean government is poised to vigorously promote english language learning as its national goal. the lee government’s urge to promote english education for its access to cutting-edge global leadership resonates with nationalist tactics of reconciliation with global power for the sake of the nation. english learning from early childhood for the purpose of infusing and developing the qualities of a cosmopolitan child is currently more fortified than before. with the globally and nationally heightened status of english, south koreans view english education as the fastest, most secure way to achieve upward mobility in social class. child development knowledge:developmentalism the role of the mother tongue in successful l2 (second language acquisition) acquisition has been academically acknowledged as cummins (1984), in his developmental interdependent hypothesis, contended that children’s competence in l2 is determined upon the acquisition of cognitive academic language proficiency (calp) skills in l1. despite the finding about positive associations between l1 (first language acquisition) and l2, koreans tend to have “a strong antipathy, or even fear, of the negative influence of the korean language on the acquisition of english” (park, 2009, 55) on account of the firm belief that l1 delays the development of l2 (park, 2009; tse, 2001). consequently, adopting english as an official language or even mother tongue has been increasingly supported in korean society (chae, 2003). ignition and reinforcement by current president lee’s pro-english education policy which implements english immersion programs in public schools, complies with american/western hegemonic power in the postcolonial condition. early childhood education in south korea and elsewhere is saturated with the conceptualisation of childhood as a sensitive period for multiple developmental domains, which has been formulated by the discourse of developmentalism tied to the notion of progress (baker, 1999), underlying a set of knowledge related to child development and developmental psychology. developmentalism has globally circulated and travelled to south korea, recreating particular reasoning in the context of korean society. by virtue of the imposition of a set of rigorous scientific standards and assumptions in children’s developmental domain, the term sensitive period or even critical period is often preferred in the discussion of children’s l1 and l2 (birdsong, 1999) in south korea while it is also criticised for its insufficient attention paid to the impact of social contexts. the epithet “childhood is a critical/sensitive period (for learning a language)” has expanded and authorised the statement “the earlier, the better” that has reached the level at which it is regarded as common sense (mclaughlin, 1992). in this manner, child development and psychological knowledge that maps the state of a child vis-à-vis the pre-set, universal nature of a child has reverberated in the field of english education, as well as early education in general (bloch, 2000). given the discursive and socio-political situations that have generated the exigency of early english learning, south korean parents’ excessive hope of trend-setting education for their children’s success has been a long-lasting social issue (lee, 2002; lee, 2009). due to this widespread zeal for education, gang nam has become the longed-for district by most of south koreans, which refers to the southeast areas of seoul and is also known for their high-end real estate and its abundance of leading private educational institutions called ‘hagwon.’ attending a good hagwon is believed to lead to admission to one of the topnotch universities in korea (ahn, 2006). 3 한겨레 (the hankyoreh). (2008). lee myung-bak urges participation in english-language education initiatives. available online at: http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/267073.html 66 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 2011 after many different methods of english education (such as hagwon or private tutoring) being sought for young children, english kindergarten stands as a strategically designed space where children are expected to naturally pick up knowledge transformed by english. interestingly, an english kindergarten is classified as a hagwon, not as a formal early childhood educational institute, by the ministry of education, which means that it does not have to follow the national kindergarten curriculum. this further ensures that those affiliated with formal early educational programs preserve their vested interests under the protection of the law. in this respect, english kindergarten has emerged out of globally and nationally dispersed demands and local dissensions among different stakeholders with competing interests. english education for south korean children is thus formed as a culturally hybrid space. coupled with the national, societal needs for developing human resources in order that the nation comes into prominence in the global, political, and economic competitions, the individual desire for upward mobility in social class and the conviction of child development knowledge culminates in the popularity of english education from very early years, even at tremendous costs4. children’s english skills are often associated with the corresponding success in their lives. it is not uncommon that korean parents send or are eager to send their children to english kindergarten in spite of its considerably high tuition fees. as park (2009) pointed out, elitism as a discourse pervasive in korean society also sustains (and is circulated through) english education, mediating between parents’ desire for upward mobility and the nation’s urge towards global leadership. to this end, even the desire and demand for english language learning are initiated and forged at the crossroads of multiple discourses including instrumentalism (human capital theory), developmentalism (child development knowledge), elitism, and cosmopolitanism. cosmopolitanism another global discourse that i suggest constitutes early childhood english education in south korea is cosmopolitanism. the basic premise of the discourse is that a cosmopolitan citizen should demonstrate certain capabilities, such as knowledge of different cultures, english language competency, respect for difference and diversity, and the like (popkewitz, 2008). according to the korean presidential committee on education innovation (2007), these qualities of a world citizen are enunciated in the educational policies of the lee myung-bak government (change, 2008; kim, 2006). the system of reason ordered by the cultural theses of a cosmopolitan child and its mode of life enclosed in early childhood english education is “cultivate[d], develop[ed], and enable[d]” by pedagogy (popkewitz, 2008, 17) at englishlanguage educational sites such as english kindergartens. with the dramatic increase in the number of english kindergartens, their english immersion curriculum appears to inculcate children with western cultural knowledge by using learning materials, such as picture books and animation movies, which, for the most part, were made in the usa or uk. here, it is through postcolonial effect that young children’s english education in south korea is over-reliant upon methodological ideas derived from western-centred learning theories and educational resources produced by the usa or uk, as if they are universally applicable educational methods and materials for english language learning, without considering other influential factors (park, 2009). you (2008) asserts that educational materials for early childhood english education play the role of insidiously conveying the particular ideology held by the western culture. most videotapes korean children watch for their english learning at home, kindergartens or day care centres are disney animation movies that have been criticised as inscribing western-centred, capitalist and culturally imperialist ideologies (bryman, 2004; dorfman & mattelart, 1984; giroux, 2001; you, 2008). however, formulated by the encounter of global discourses with korean historical and contextual particularities, the regime of truth about english education in south korea (i.e. english proficiency as a requirement of human capital and a global citizen and the statement ‘the earlier, the better’) is produced as hybrid within asymmetrical power relations. 4 the high expenditure on children’s english education is demonstrated on page 2 as the numerical results of the reports (chang, 2008; kim, 2006; ma, 2007) suggest. 67jahng — english education for young children in south korea recently, the disney and nickelodeon animations and learning materials imported from the us for south korean children’s english education in local settings are inclined to emphasise “a cosmopolitan identity which shows tolerance of race and gender differences, genuine curiosity toward and willingness to learn from other cultures, and responsibility toward excluded groups within and beyond one’s society” (hargreaves, 2003, xix). for example, the animation movie ‘the princess and the frog’ released in 2009 features the disney’s first ever black princess named tiana with attempt to transform the pervasive image of feminine beauty traditionally characterised as a white, rich, blond, blue-eyed, young girl dressed in pink. tiana’s dream is not just to marry a prince like mulan, another disney’s princess character, who was a warrior in the movie. these characters represent cosmopolitan citizens with “universal qualities that are to enable personal fulfillment in an equitable world” (popkewitz, 2008, 116). south korean children today are thus more exposed to these cultural theses of cosmopolitanism than ever as their english education rests on the use of these materials. in other words, the qualities of a reasonable person who holds a global mind and rational behaviour are thus inculcated. conclusion to sum up, english education for young children in south korea has been discursively produced within complex social, economic and political circumstances. while its construction is largely indebted to global discourses such as instrumentalism, developmentalism, and cosmopolitanism, korean historical and ideological particularities transform them into a form of hybridity. under tutelage of the government’s english education policy, south korean children are constituted and embody the form of the governing power by means of the interactions and concessions among interwoven global, national, and local knowledge. these sets of knowledge concern instrumental values of children, child development, and the mode of cosmopolitan modernity. this is how governmentality operates on the population for the prosperity and security of the state. for this reason, the national obsession with english should be understood in a broader context. english education embodies the will to power in that english is not so much a linguistic tool for communication but is rather symbolic power itself (bourdieu, 1991). the population is subjected to english learning from the early years for the sake of national prosperity and individual well-being, governed within the systems of reason that orders who the children are and should be (popkewitz, 1998). in other words, english education for young children envisions a child who grows up to be a cosmopolitan citizen demonstrating english language competency. the hybrid body of a child that internalises a cosmopolitan mind and koreanness is fabricated through the “double gestures of the hopes of future progress and fears of the dangers and dangerous populations to the future” (popkewitz, 2009, 255). the governing practices of the population in english education are transferred into the individual consciousness of self-governing. though english kindergarten is provided by the private sector, the starting age for english learning has been lowered since the government publicised and strengthened english education for children. this is how governmentality operates while historically and discursively constituting early childhood english education alongside continuously changing material conditions. mapping english education for young children at the intersection of discourses and cultures can further direct attention to a “context-driven teaching practice” (amin & ramrathan, 2009, 76). after all, early childhood english education in south korea has not emerged out of a collective neurosis of english fever, but is a discursively constructed product in a particular timespace. references ahn bk 2006. 현재판 한국의 맹모삼천지교. 금융통권, 625. amin n & ramrathan p 2009. preparing students to teach in and for diverse contexts: a learning to teach approach. perspectives in education, 27(1):69-77. baker b. 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forms to be used interchangeably. in terms of where the equating method fits in the assessment cycle, there are preequating and post-equating methods. the major benefits of pre-equating, when applied, are that it facilitates the operational processes of examination bodies in terms of rapid score reporting, quality control and flexibility in the assessment process. the purpose of this study is to ascertain if preand post-equating results are comparable. data for this study, which adopted an equivalent group design method, was taken from the 2012 unified tertiary matriculation examination (utme) pre-test and 2013 utme posttest in use of english (uoe) subject. a pre-equating model using the 3-parameter (3pl) item response theory (irt) model was used. irt software was used for the item calibration. preand post-equating were carried out using 100-items per test form in an uoe test. the results indicate that the raw-score and ability estimates between the pre-equated model and the post-equated model were comparable. keywords: pre-test, post-test, equating, ability estimates, equivalent group design 1. introduction developments in the field of education, psychology and statistics communities have immensely assisted resear­ chers in assessment through its contributions towards the rapidly growing statistical and psychometric methodologies used in test equating. in large­scale examinations such as, the unified tertiary matriculation examination (utme) where candidates’ scores are used for high­stakes decisions, testing programmes require new versions of tests to be continually produced. the essence and expectation is that tests produced should be equivalent in test score difficulty as well as in functionality over time. the utme is a computer­based test (cbt) conducted by the joint admissions and matriculation board (jamb) for the purposes of selecting qualified candidates for admissions into nigerian tertiary institutions. the examination, which comprised of 23 subjects including the uoe, is conducted at different times within a specified period of 14 days for dibu ojerinde dibu65ojerinde@yahoo.com joint admissions and matriculation board (jamb), abuja nigeria omokunmi popoola kunmipopoola@yahoo.com joint admissions and matriculation board (jamb), abuja nigeria patrick onyeneho patrickonyeneho@yahoo.co.uk joint admissions and matriculation board (jamb), abuja nigeria aminat egberongbe amiegberongbe@yahoo.com joint admissions and matriculation board (jamb), abuja nigeria doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i4.6 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(4): 79-98 © uv/ufs 80 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) over 1.5 million candidates. therefore, the utme is compulsory for any candidate seeking admissions into any tertiary institution in nigeria. it is therefore a high­stakes test since results obtained from this examination is used in making important decisions about the candidates. since this examination is conducted at different times and different days using several test forms in 23 subject areas, equating of the test forms is necessary. equating is therefore a statistical procedure used in adjusting scores of two or more tests such that the resulting new forms of the test can be comparable. in supporting this assertion, livingston (2004) defined equating as a statistical procedure that adjusts test scores for difficulty of the items. equating as a statistical process refers to the derivation of transformations which places scores of different forms of a test onto a scale such that after transformation, the scores on the resulting forms are comparable. this definition can be likened to the meaning of equating by kolen and brennan (2004) who are of the opinion that it is a process that is used in adjusting scores on two or more test forms such that the scores can be used interchangeably. equating is an important component of any testing programme that produces more than one form for a test. it places scores from different forms onto a single scale. once scores are placed on a single scale, the scores are interchangeable (kolen & brannam, 2004; holland & dorans, 2006). this development permits standardisation of scores across test forms such that what is applied to one test form is also applied to the other forms enabling consistency and accuracy across test forms in classification decisions. it is for this reason that equating has become essentially important to testing programmes that use test scores for the measurement of students’ growth as well as high­stakes decisions. in the utme, pre­equating is used in establishing a conversion table prior to the operational testing. kirkpatrick and way (2008) affirmed that a series of advantages arise from the use of the pre­equating over the use of post­equating. top on the list of benefits stated include assessment that is more flexible and a better quality­control check for the tests. generally, what equating does is adjust test score difference because of score difficulty. normally, it is desirable to have the same group of test takers take the new test form as well as the reference form at the same time. the difference in average performance on the two forms indicates the difference in form difficulty. after this, scores on the new test form can then be statistically adjusted to make the average performances on both forms equivalent. nonetheless, in practice, it is not possible to compel test takers to take two different tests at the same time; rather it is more convenient to have the two different groups of test takers take the two forms of the test at the same time or on two different occasions. however, because these two groups of test takers could have different average abilities, xuan and rochelle (2011) are of the opinion that the difference in average performance on the two forms could be an indication of the existence of both group ability differences and form difficulty differences. equating may be classified as pre­equating or post­equating depending on the period when the equating practice is being conducted. pre­equating according to tong, wu and xu (2008) is to conduct equating prior to the operational testing while post­equating involves conducting equating after the operational testing. in their paper, they stated that pre­equating and post­ equating are used in k­12 large­scale assessment programmes. in many large­scale, high stakes examinations such as the utme where immediate reporting of scores are required, pre­equating is often a preferred alternative to post­equating since the equating transformation must be produced in a rather short period of time. every prospecting utme candidate is expected to enrol four utme subjects including the uoe. the subjects are selected based on the faculty and course requirements. normalised scores are reported based on the four 81 ojerinde, popoola, onyeneho & egberongbe a comparative analysis of pre­equating ... subjects for each candidate. the normalised scores are based on z­score and t­score transformations of the raw score. no other form of equating is carried out since the equating has been done prior to test administration. the utme results is solely used by the joint admissions and matriculation board (jamb) and the tertiary institutions in nigeria as an entrance examination for selecting eligible candidates into the various programmes/courses offered by the institutions. the computer­based testing administered by the jamb takes place at different times and dates and so, several forms of the same test are required in each session in order to forestall item over­exposure of the items in the item bank. this is a strategy for curbing incidences of examination security breach. since immediate score reporting is needed, all forms of tests for all the subjects are pre­ equated in order to make them equivalent. this is to ensure that no candidate is in any way placed at a disadvantage because of administering any form of the test forms. when embarking on equating, care must be exercised in order to avoid equating errors. if equating errors exceed some tolerable limits as a result of applying pre­equating, this can likely lead to multidimensionality. the probable cause for pre­equating error is the presence of bias in the item parameter estimates caused by the violation of the assumption of item local independence (kolen & brennan, 2004). a guide against committing serious equating errors through ensuring that model assumptions are to a reasonable extent complied with adds value to the final equating results. 2. statement of problem in many large­scale high stakes assessment enterprises such as the utme, stakeholders need assessment evidence as quickly as possible to enable them to make informed decisions relating to admissions or other policy issues. the nature of the utme assessment makes it pertinent to release candidates’ results as quickly as possible in compliance to requests requiring meeting some deadlines in reporting scores. to facilitate this, test items are often calibrated prior to the operational administration with the raw score to scale score conversion tables prepared well ahead of the test administration to ease problems that impede quick reporting. the use of different forms of the same test for assessment often raises the issue of the comparability of test scores across forms. in order to use the scores from different forms of a test interchangeably, they must be put on a common scale. the problem is how to make the several test forms, which consists of different test items drawn from the same content areas of the syllabus, psychometrically equivalent so that whichever form is given to any candidate, s/he will not in any way be disadvantaged. 3. purpose of study measurement equivalence is said to exist when candidates with the same scores on the latent trait have the same expected raw or true score at the item level. raju, laffitte and byrne (2002: 517) inferred that without measurement equivalence, it is difficult to interpret observed mean score differences meaningfully. the purpose of this study therefore, is to compare pre­ equating and post­equating scores of candidates in the utme high stakes examination in order to ascertain if the tests function the same way for students in a field test administration as well as in an operational test administration. 82 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) 4. literature review while some researchers have varied views regarding the efficacy of pre­equating in a high stakes examination, other studies have suggested that pre­equating can achieve satisfactory results. for instance, a study by livingston (2004) which adopted some sort of method similar to regression, demonstrated that pre­equating was highly accurate in three of the four new jersey college basic skills placement tests. studies have also shown that there is a dearth of literature on post­equating. however, kirkpatrick and way (2008) were of the opinion that in post­equating, new operational data can be obtained for items selected from the calibrated item pool. they explained that item parameters are estimated for the operational data, and operational items are post­equated using the pool (old) and current (new) item parameters as well as a scale transformation procedure. if new field test items were administered with the operational items, this transformation can be applied to their calibration results as well. furthermore, in two of the most recent studies conducted by domaleski (2006) and tong et al. (2008), they supported the use of pre­equating by having similar pre­ and post­equated scoring tables and similar accuracy of classifying students into different performance levels. apart from different research findings about pre­equating, a literature review indicates that little research has been conducted on whether pre­equating agrees with the post­equating for a test let­based and computer­administered testing programme. what is more, given the controversial view towards the use of pre­equating and the appealing features that pre­ equating can offer more research is clearly needed in this area. to this end, this study, which employed empirical data, aims at investigating whether the pre­equating results agree with the equating results based on operational data (post­equating). the study examined the degree to which the irt pre­equating results agreed with those from irt post­equating and the degree to which the two equating designs agree with each other. since pre­equating establishes a conversion table prior to the operational testing, a series of advantages often arise from the use of the pre­equating over that of post­equating (kolen & brennan, 2004) (kirkpatrick & way, 2008). these advantages include assessment that is more flexible, a better quality­control check for the tests and its ability to facilitate immediate score reporting of tests right after the test administration. 5. equating designs and equating method this research is based on the equivalent group equating design. the utme test is a high stakes standardised test that is made up of 100 items. twenty­three other subjects are also tested but candidates are only allowed to choose four subjects according to faculty and departmental requirements. the use of english (uoe) subject is compulsory for all candidates and all the tests are administered via a computer­based testing mode using the linear­on­the­fly­testing (loft) method. in the uoe test, test forms c1, c2, c3 and c4 were created with each taking into cognisance the sub­sections of the syllabus and weights as stated in the utme syllabus. in so doing, more than one parallel forms were created. each of these trial­tested items was used in 2012 in creating tests administered in a subsequent operational examination. the utme test therefore contains many versions of the same test (test forms) created from the same rational content domain as stored in jamb item banks. the test forms were built and made equivalent in terms of content and psychometric properties. for example, test form c1 in uoe from the trial­test was taken as a reference form while forms c2, c3 and c4, etc., were made equivalent and taken as the focal groups for the pre­equating. data in these test forms 83 ojerinde, popoola, onyeneho & egberongbe a comparative analysis of pre­equating ... were organised such that they have item distributions of mean = 0 in terms of item difficulties b and discrimination parameter a varying between 1 and 2. test scores on different forms of the 2013 post operational exams were also equated using a common reference form – d1 and adjusting the test score difficulties of the other 3 test forms d2, d3 and d4 respectively. the 3­parameter irt logistic model was used for the item analysis for the 8 uoe test forms comprising c1, c2, c3, c4, d1, d2, d3 and d4. 6. data data for the study was extracted from the utme master file after post­test administration as well as from the trial­test. the trial­test data is made up of responses of data from a representative sample of students from senior secondary class iii in the use of english subject and indeed all other 22 utme subjects. the students were administered the various test forms in a classroom setting at a period when they were psychologically ready for their senior secondary examination. the tests were administered to students in a scrambled form so that the groups of students taking each form were randomly equivalent. a pre­equating model, which employed the 3­parameter irt logistic model, was used. the xcalibre 4.0.0 software was used because of the necessity to have scoring tables prior to test administration. in this study, item parameter estimate and the raw score to theta (e.g., scoring table) relationship for pre­equating model were calibrated and developed on the field test data. to enable a comparison of the difference in equating results between pre­ and post­equating, data based on the post­administration for the four different test forms in uoe of the field test of 2012 and 4 different post­administration data of test items in uoe in 2013 cbt were used. each of the test forms consists of a sample of approximately 650 candidates’ responses. in all, the data used is made up of 5,166 responses. 7. irt pre-equating tong et al. (2008) defined pre­equating as conducting equating prior to the operational testing. the equating design used in pre­equating the uoe items was the irt equivalent group equating procedure. in order to pre­equate the test forms in the 2012 uoe, the response data collected during the 2012 field test were first calibrated. then, one of the test forms comprising of response data from the trial­test was calibrated using “a prior” information from previous operational data. thereafter, the pre­test items were put on the same scale as the one calibrated using information from the operational items through the mean/sigma method. the item parameter estimates from the above step were then used to create the raw­to­scale conversion table for each form to the reference form using irt pre­equating. the pre­equating process was carried out by applying the following procedures: a. estimates of item parameters were produced using the three­parameter irt model on the 2012 trial­test data. b. the item parameters were placed onto the reference scale by using the item equivalent group equating design. c. some items were selected from the item bank and used along with some pre­test items to build new test forms for parallelism d. a raw score to theta relationship for these new test forms are developed using the trial­test pre­equated item parameters. 84 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) despite the advantage of using pre­equating as a cushion where immediate score reporting is necessary and as a guide towards reducing incidences of examination security breach, this equating method can be vulnerable to equating errors and bias in a test. 8. irt post-equating in carrying out post­equating, the post administration item parameters and scoring table were produced using the operational data. during post equating, all the rules used in pre­equating were simulated during post­equating such as applying the mean/sigma equating method to place the item parameter estimates and scoring tables on the same scale. the following steps as suggested by kolen et al. (2004) were applied during post­equating: 1. calibrate all items on the operational test form by making the post­operational item difficulties centre at a mean value of zero and obtain raw score to theta scoring table. 2. obtain mean test score difficulty using the post administration item parameters from the previous stage. 3. obtain the scaling constant for post­equating by subtracting the mean item difficulty from stage 2 from the mean item difficulty from pre­equating. 4. adjust all the post­administrational item parameters by adding the scaling constant obtained from stage 3. 9. test calibration and analysis a number of procedures can be performed to achieve item calibration and item linking such as carrying out separate calibration with linking, concurrent calibration or fixed parameter calibration. in this study, separate calibrations were carried out on all the test forms using the three­parameter irt logistic model (3pl). the 3pl is an irt model that specifies the probability of a correct response to a dichotomously scored multiple­choice item as a logistic distribution that introduces a guessing parameter in addition to the discrimination and difficulty parameters. estimation of candidates’ ability was done using the maximum likelihood estimation (mle) method. in statistics, mle is a method of estimating the parameters of a statistical model’s given observations by finding the parameter values that maximise the likelihood (or probability) of making the observations, given the parameters. thereafter, the mean/standard deviation suggested by livingston (2004) was used in placing the item parameters on the same scale. 10. assessment criteria in assessing the pre­equating and post­equating results, one major area of concern is the item parameter estimates. in order to compare the item parameters of two more test forms from post­equating, the two must be placed onto a common operational scale. statistical methods such as correlation analysis can then be used in comparing the differences in the item parameter estimates obtained between the two. correlation coefficients obtained are expected to be close to .90 and the average absolute differences between estimates are expected to be below 0.20. this same criteria may be applied when comparing pre­ and post­ equating results. it is also important and interesting to observe how different the raw­score­to­theta scoring tables tend to be based on pre­post contrast. in the large­scale assessment context, decisions 85 ojerinde, popoola, onyeneho & egberongbe a comparative analysis of pre­equating ... on classifications are also important. in this study, percentages of students in each of the performance levels are also contrasted between pre­ and post­equating. another reliability index examined is the classification accuracy. this is meant to establish what percentages of students were accurately classified. the classification method adopted by gao, he and ruan (2012) was applied to compute classification accuracy index for the pre­ and post­ equating results. to calculate the classification reliability index for a given ability score θ, the observed score θˆ is expected to be normally distributed with a mean of θ and a standard deviation of se(θ) – the standard error of measurement associated with the given θ. the expected proportion of examinees with true scores in any particular level on high/low or pass/ fail classification rates given by different equating methods was also reported. each test has two cut scores, c and d cuts. classification rates for the c and d cuts were reported for the uoe test in this study. while there is no consensus on the best measures of equating effectiveness (kolen et al., 2004), three commonly employed measures used in equating studies include the root mean square error (rmse), the standard error of equating (see) and (3) bias of the equated raw scores (pomplun, omar & custer, 2004). these measures represent total equating error, random equating error and systematic equating error, respectively. notice that all three indices were weighted by the frequency of number­correct raw score at each particular level. total equating error and systematic error were calculated with the formulas below: bias = ∑ifi (xi’ ­ xi) ∑ifi (1) rmse = ∑ifi (xi’ ­ xi) 2 ∑ifi (2) where fi is the frequency of number­correct raw score level i, xi’ is the equated score at each of the number­correct raw score level and xi is the equated score from irt pre­equating at the number­correct raw score level i. the standard error of equating is a measure of random equating error and can be estimated with the rmse and bias. the standard error of equating at each possible raw score was estimated with: see (fi) = rmse(fi) 2 ­ bias (fi) 2 (3) where fi is the frequency of number­correct raw score level i. 11. results table 1 shows the item parameter estimates disparity between pre­ and post­equating results for test forms c1 and d1 representing the base test form for pre­equating and one test form from the post­equating. columns1 and 2 in table 1 shows the p­values of test forms c1 and d1. overall, the p­values appear to be higher for the post­equated form than for the pre­ equated one. the reason perhaps may be attributed to the prevailing situation during the conduction of the pre­test, as most students do not often take trial­tests as serious as other high stakes examinations. however, the item parameter values from the pre­equating were found not to be different from the post­equating item parameter estimates because of the mean/sigma equating, the average of the item parameter estimates were equated to be the same for pre­ and post­equating. 86 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) table 1: comparisons between pre–equated and post administration item parameter estimates of use of english item preequated item mean (p-value) postequated item mean (p-value) preequated item parameter (a) preequated item parameter (b) postequated item parameter (a) postequated item parameter (b) pre-post difference 1 0.9983 0.9984 4.6574 ­2.974 6 ­2.0877 ­0.8863 2 0.8831 0.2709 0.8005 ­1.526 6 2.0134 ­3.5394 3 0.2638 0.6256 1.3985 2.6616 2.6891 1.4339 1.2277 4 0.0885 0.092 1.2125 4 1.8418 2.7751 1.2249 5 0.0634 0.087 1.1432 3.7925 1.6143 3.0446 0.7479 6 0.0568 0.6273 1.1169 4 0.8547 0.2142 3.7858 7 0.0751 0.1084 1.111 4 1.4384 2.8714 1.1286 8 0.7446 0.0969 0.4233 ­0.9661 1.5148 3.0391 ­4.0052 9 0.0568 0.1051 1.175 3.5508 1.4855 2.9939 0.5569 10 0.0952 0.1002 1.0557 3.7965 1.4307 2.8522 0.9443 11 0.0351 0.0854 1.1231 3.9127 1.4269 2.7354 1.1773 12 0.0701 0.0542 1.1081 3.8988 1.5332 3.057 0.8418 13 0.0534 0.1117 1.1645 3.595 1.4537 2.8764 0.7186 14 0.2354 0.197 0.907 2.9634 1.3474 2.6269 0.3365 15 0.0501 0.1018 1.1076 3.9601 1.446 2.9046 1.0555 16 0.0501 0.4811 1.0984 3.9751 2.4416 0.3931 3.582 17 0.4474 0.1264 0.743 1.0776 1.488 2.9561 ­1.8785 18 0.0751 0.0575 1.1289 3.5074 1.5058 2.9411 0.5663 19 0.4073 0.3251 0.6921 2.2887 1.0861 1.5251 0.7636 20 0.0835 0.087 1.1354 3.5565 1.4684 2.8734 0.6831 21 0.0684 0.5386 1.2627 3.2729 1.5105 0.3335 2.9394 22 0.7563 0.2545 0.6847 ­0.7316 1.5121 3.0295 ­3.7611 23 0.1619 0.2397 1.2698 3.0003 1.1595 1.8202 1.1801 24 0.1703 0.1166 1.1809 3.265 1.4871 2.9837 0.2813 25 0.606 0.1888 0.6372 0.117 1.5196 3.044 ­2.927 26 0.3122 0.1987 1.1833 2.9771 1.5164 3.0494 ­0.0723 27 0.5476 0.2562 0.8543 0.3928 1.4251 2.8371 ­2.4443 28 0.1336 0.289 1.1425 2.9324 1.1929 1.4307 1.5017 87 ojerinde, popoola, onyeneho & egberongbe a comparative analysis of pre­equating ... item preequated item mean (p-value) postequated item mean (p-value) preequated item parameter (a) preequated item parameter (b) postequated item parameter (a) postequated item parameter (b) pre-post difference 29 0.5042 0.2841 0.624 0.7679 1.3913 2.7849 ­2.017 30 0.2404 0.1478 1.0675 3.0722 1.493 2.9872 0.085 31 0.1386 0.3465 1.1119 2.8014 1.0235 1.2874 1.514 32 0.3706 0.1757 0.9611 2.5122 1.5055 2.9795 ­0.4673 33 0.4558 0.1724 1.0753 0.8105 1.4874 2.9871 ­2.1766 34 0.2237 0.1429 1.0618 2.5839 1.4775 2.9762 ­0.3923 35 0.1135 0.2053 1.2798 2.8837 1.2783 2.5516 0.3321 36 0.0618 0.0788 1.1115 3.9954 1.4763 2.9489 1.0465 37 0.1018 0.1199 1.3219 2.8851 1.4842 2.9842 ­0.0991 38 0.0534 0.4483 1.1268 3.7298 2.2712 0.5067 3.2231 39 0.172 0.4351 1.2424 2.9521 1.9371 0.5428 2.4093 40 0.0952 0.1232 1.2425 3.2605 1.4904 3.0011 0.2594 41 0.0501 0.4943 1.3752 3.0139 2.9113 0.3305 2.6834 42 0.828 0.3268 0.7107 ­1.2719 1.5245 3.0592 ­4.3311 43 0.8731 0.3415 1.0836 ­1.2877 1.5193 3.05 ­4.3377 44 0.8514 0.3333 0.9867 ­1.2055 1.5167 3.0517 ­4.2572 45 0.0935 0.4631 1.2949 3.1726 2.0128 0.5022 2.6704 46 0.0918 0.1051 1.2881 3.171 1.5082 3.0269 0.1441 47 0.1085 0.2085 1.2021 3.4037 1.4827 2.9819 0.4218 48 0.0701 0.1067 1.3129 3.1915 1.4777 2.9619 0.2296 49 0.7462 0.1297 1.0897 ­0.5341 1.5085 3.032 ­3.5661 50 0.6761 0.243 0.6311 ­0.3727 1.4968 3.0168 ­3.3895 51 0.1369 0.0952 1.0308 3.8366 1.5069 3.0255 0.8111 52 0.0568 0.1051 1.2974 3.1161 1.4843 2.979 0.1371 53 0.0985 0.2135 1.2716 3.1313 1.364 2.5987 0.5326 54 0.0584 0.0706 1.1358 3.7712 1.4739 2.8864 0.8848 55 0.1736 0.4959 1.2232 3.1266 1.0059 0.6887 2.4379 56 0.1152 0.1248 1.0961 3.972 1.5216 3.0533 0.9187 57 0.0518 0.1248 1.3067 3.1408 1.4027 2.793 0.3478 88 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) item preequated item mean (p-value) postequated item mean (p-value) preequated item parameter (a) preequated item parameter (b) postequated item parameter (a) postequated item parameter (b) pre-post difference 58 0.7813 0.2463 1.0157 ­0.7803 1.5232 3.0553 ­3.8356 59 0.0801 0.0837 1.3068 3.1834 1.5074 3.0035 0.1799 60 0.7179 0.197 1.1117 ­0.4228 1.5052 3.0171 ­3.4399 61 0.8197 0.2677 1.2243 ­0.8248 1.5119 3.0391 ­3.8639 62 0.0785 0.1182 1.311 3.1662 1.4906 2.9987 0.1675 63 0.1619 0.1527 1.1741 2.9733 1.5076 3.0316 ­0.0583 64 0.0668 0.0788 1.1265 3.746 1.5092 3.0204 0.7256 65 0.1135 0.1264 1.2463 3.1242 1.5077 3.0346 0.0896 66 0.7295 0.2135 1.1906 ­0.3924 1.4969 3.0122 ­3.4046 67 0.6678 0.1363 1.2154 ­0.1831 1.5131 3.0425 ­3.2256 68 0.1219 0.1166 1.2231 3.3843 1.5007 3.0219 0.3624 69 0.0634 0.4269 1.3126 3.1709 2.1383 0.5417 2.6292 70 0.172 0.2003 1.1629 3.3349 1.4372 2.8649 0.47 71 0.0551 0.0772 1.18 3.7017 1.4915 3.0104 0.6913 72 0.621 0.2874 0.806 ­0.015 1.4709 2.927 ­2.942 73 0.8397 0.4089 0.8289 ­1.229 1.5122 3.0493 ­4.2783 74 0.7346 0.1757 1.1683 ­0.4817 1.5076 3.0023 ­3.484 75 0.0902 0.0542 1.1948 3.285 1.5017 3.0048 0.2802 76 0.1085 0.468 1.286 3.129 2.1233 0.5758 2.5532 77 0.1035 0.1856 1.2776 3.129 1.4768 2.9757 0.1533 78 0.202 0.1494 1.2011 3.0715 1.488 3.0004 0.0711 79 0.1386 0.0887 1.2572 3.152 1.5039 3.0131 0.1389 80 0.0668 0.3924 1.2062 3.3302 2.127 0.6414 2.6888 81 0.1135 0.2299 1.241 3.0987 1.1827 2.1068 0.9919 82 0.7646 0.2693 0.9913 ­0.7055 1.5065 3.0265 ­3.732 83 0.0735 0.3777 1.2802 3.0588 1.9903 0.7027 2.3561 84 0.0818 0.0788 1.1916 3.3853 1.483 2.9097 0.4756 85 0.1803 0.1839 1.1311 3.3307 1.4995 2.9886 0.3421 86 0.0935 0.1166 1.1268 3.5994 1.4732 2.9424 0.657 89 ojerinde, popoola, onyeneho & egberongbe a comparative analysis of pre­equating ... item preequated item mean (p-value) postequated item mean (p-value) preequated item parameter (a) preequated item parameter (b) postequated item parameter (a) postequated item parameter (b) pre-post difference 87 0.0868 0.1675 1.1469 3.6049 1.3443 2.7093 0.8956 88 0.1753 0.1297 1.0478 3.8787 1.4722 2.9693 0.9094 89 0.1336 0.1658 1.0891 3.5808 1.4459 2.891 0.6898 90 0.1068 0.1297 1.0719 3.8811 1.4595 2.8438 1.0373 91 0.222 0.1741 1.0369 3.8145 1.4599 2.9198 0.8947 92 0.0451 0.0427 1.221 3.4338 1.5177 3.0287 0.4051 93 0.8347 0.353 0.7053 ­1.3243 1.5203 3.0551 ­4.3794 94 0.1536 0.1248 1.2109 2.6945 1.5037 3.0246 ­0.3301 95 0.0851 0.0558 1.115 3.7291 1.5172 2.9931 0.736 96 0.0835 0.0887 1.1955 3.419 1.494 2.9979 0.4211 97 0.7646 0.3103 0.849 ­0.689 1.5052 3.0101 ­3.6991 98 0.8047 0.3235 0.7359 ­1.0372 1.5098 3.0369 ­4.0741 99 0.0952 0.1494 1.2025 3.4407 1.3969 2.7885 0.6522 100 0.0863 0.1084 1.1259 3.6137 1.4341 2.8826 0.7311 the average absolute difference between the item parameter estimates were computed as .000342 for c1 and d1, .00491 for c2 and d2, .00572 for c3 and d3 and .00557 for c4 and d4. in addition, all were found to be less than the benchmark of .20. table 2 also shows the correlations between pairs of pre­equating and post­equating item parameter estimates of c1d1, c2d2, dc3d3 and c4d4. the results revealed correlation coefficients of .995**, .954**, .995** and .996**. 90 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) table 2: correlation of pre­equating and post­equating item parameters c1_pre c2_pre c3_pre c4_pre d1_post pearson correlation .995** 0.036 0.062 0.082 sig. (2­tailed) 0 0.722 0.54 0.42 n 100 100 100 100 d2_post pearson correlation 0.026 .994** 0.071 ­0.1 sig. (2­tailed) 0.795 0 0.484 0.323 n 100 100 100 100 d3_post pearson correlation 0.06 0.076 .995** 0.191 sig. (2­tailed) 0.555 0.455 0 0.056 n 100 100 100 100 d4_post pearson correlation 0.076 ­0.111 .212* .996** sig. (2­tailed) 0.454 0.274 0.035 0 n 100 100 100 100 **. correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2­tailed). *. correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2­tailed). making decisions from the criteria earlier stated in assessment criteria (i.e., correlation being 0.90 and average absolute difference being less than 0.20), the item parameter estimates between the two equating models are the same. figures 1, 2, 3, and 4 also show the scatter plot of the relationship between the pre­equating and post­equating test forms. 91 ojerinde, popoola, onyeneho & egberongbe a comparative analysis of pre­equating ... fig 1: scatter plot of relationship between fig. 2: scatter plot of relationship between pre pre-equating and post-equating of c1 and d1 equating and post-equating of c2 and d2 forms fig 3: scatter plot of relationship between fig. 4: scatter plot of relationship between pre pre-equating and post-equating of c3 and d3 equating and post-equating of c4 and d4 test forms test forms all the items constituting the two different forms were aligned to the linear straight line showing highly close relationship. in the same way, figures 5, 6, 7 and 8 in depict the raw score-to-theta-scoring tables based on the two equating models mentioned above. while the horizontal axis represents the ability estimates, the vertical axis represents raw scores. from the figures, it is certain that the raw score-to-theta scoring tables for pre-equating and post-equating models were overlapping each other. ‐5 0 5 ‐2 0 2 4 po st ‐e qu at ed  u o e  sc or e pre_equated uoe scores scatter plot of c1 and d1 test  forms  of uoe scores pre and post equating of uoe scores 0 0.5 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 u o e  po st ‐e qu at in g oue pre‐equating scatter plot of c2 and d2 test forms  of uoe    pre and post equating linear (pre and post equating) 0 1 2 0 0.5 1 1.5 po st ‐e qu at in g  u o e uoe pre‐equating scatter plot of c3 and d3 test  forms of uoe pre and post equating linear (pre and post equating) 0 1 2 0 0.5 1 po st ‐e qu at in g  u o e pre‐equating uoe scatter plot of c4 and d4 test  forms of uoe pre and post equating linear (pre and post equating) fig 1: scatter plot of relationship between pre­equating and post­equating of c1 and d1 fig 1: scatter plot of relationship between fig. 2: scatter plot of relationship between pre pre-equating and post-equating of c1 and d1 equating and post-equating of c2 and d2 forms fig 3: scatter plot of relationship between fig. 4: scatter plot of relationship between pre pre-equating and post-equating of c3 and d3 equating and post-equating of c4 and d4 test forms test forms all the items constituting the two different forms were aligned to the linear straight line showing highly close relationship. in the same way, figures 5, 6, 7 and 8 in depict the raw score-to-theta-scoring tables based on the two equating models mentioned above. while the horizontal axis represents the ability estimates, the vertical axis represents raw scores. from the figures, it is certain that the raw score-to-theta scoring tables for pre-equating and post-equating models were overlapping each other. ‐5 0 5 ‐2 0 2 4 po st ‐e qu at ed  u o e  sc or e pre_equated uoe scores scatter plot of c1 and d1 test  forms  of uoe scores pre and post equating of uoe scores 0 0.5 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 u o e  po st ‐e qu at in g oue pre‐equating scatter plot of c2 and d2 test forms  of uoe    pre and post equating linear (pre and post equating) 0 1 2 0 0.5 1 1.5 po st ‐e qu at in g  u o e uoe pre‐equating scatter plot of c3 and d3 test  forms of uoe pre and post equating linear (pre and post equating) 0 1 2 0 0.5 1 po st ‐e qu at in g  u o e pre‐equating uoe scatter plot of c4 and d4 test  forms of uoe pre and post equating linear (pre and post equating) fig. 2: scatter plot of relationship between pre­equating and post­equating of c2 and d2 forms 92 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) fig 1: scatter plot of relationship between fig. 2: scatter plot of relationship between pre pre-equating and post-equating of c1 and d1 equating and post-equating of c2 and d2 forms fig 3: scatter plot of relationship between fig. 4: scatter plot of relationship between pre pre-equating and post-equating of c3 and d3 equating and post-equating of c4 and d4 test forms test forms all the items constituting the two different forms were aligned to the linear straight line showing highly close relationship. in the same way, figures 5, 6, 7 and 8 in depict the raw score-to-theta-scoring tables based on the two equating models mentioned above. while the horizontal axis represents the ability estimates, the vertical axis represents raw scores. from the figures, it is certain that the raw score-to-theta scoring tables for pre-equating and post-equating models were overlapping each other. ‐5 0 5 ‐2 0 2 4 po st ‐e qu at ed  u o e  sc or e pre_equated uoe scores scatter plot of c1 and d1 test  forms  of uoe scores pre and post equating of uoe scores 0 0.5 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 u o e  po st ‐e qu at in g oue pre‐equating scatter plot of c2 and d2 test forms  of uoe    pre and post equating linear (pre and post equating) 0 1 2 0 0.5 1 1.5 po st ‐e qu at in g  u o e uoe pre‐equating scatter plot of c3 and d3 test  forms of uoe pre and post equating linear (pre and post equating) 0 1 2 0 0.5 1 po st ‐e qu at in g  u o e pre‐equating uoe scatter plot of c4 and d4 test  forms of uoe pre and post equating linear (pre and post equating) fig 3: scatter plot of relationship between pre­equating and post­equating of c3 and d3 test forms fig 1: scatter plot of relationship between fig. 2: scatter plot of relationship between pre pre-equating and post-equating of c1 and d1 equating and post-equating of c2 and d2 forms fig 3: scatter plot of relationship between fig. 4: scatter plot of relationship between pre pre-equating and post-equating of c3 and d3 equating and post-equating of c4 and d4 test forms test forms all the items constituting the two different forms were aligned to the linear straight line showing highly close relationship. in the same way, figures 5, 6, 7 and 8 in depict the raw score-to-theta-scoring tables based on the two equating models mentioned above. while the horizontal axis represents the ability estimates, the vertical axis represents raw scores. from the figures, it is certain that the raw score-to-theta scoring tables for pre-equating and post-equating models were overlapping each other. ‐5 0 5 ‐2 0 2 4 po st ‐e qu at ed  u o e  sc or e pre_equated uoe scores scatter plot of c1 and d1 test  forms  of uoe scores pre and post equating of uoe scores 0 0.5 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 u o e  po st ‐e qu at in g oue pre‐equating scatter plot of c2 and d2 test forms  of uoe    pre and post equating linear (pre and post equating) 0 1 2 0 0.5 1 1.5 po st ‐e qu at in g  u o e uoe pre‐equating scatter plot of c3 and d3 test  forms of uoe pre and post equating linear (pre and post equating) 0 1 2 0 0.5 1 po st ‐e qu at in g  u o e pre‐equating uoe scatter plot of c4 and d4 test  forms of uoe pre and post equating linear (pre and post equating) fig. 4: scatter plot of relationship between pre­equating and post­equating of c4 and d4 test forms all the items constituting the two different forms were aligned to the linear straight line showing a highly close relationship. in the same way, figures 5, 6, 7 and 8 depict the raw score­to­theta­ scoring tables based on the two equating models mentioned above. while the horizontal axis represents the ability estimates, the vertical axis represents raw scores. from the figures, it is certain that the raw score­to­theta scoring tables for pre­equating and post­equating models were overlapping each other. 93 ojerinde, popoola, onyeneho & egberongbe a comparative analysis of pre­equating ... figure 5: tcc of test forms c1 and d1 figure 6: tcc of test forms c2 and d2   figure 7: tcc of test forms c3 and d3 figure 8: tcc of test forms c4 and d4 table 3 shows that for the classification rate, the irt post-equating tended to pass more examinees than the pre-equating methods in total. the table shows that the irt pre-equating method tended to pass fewer examinees than the irt post-equating method at the c cut and in total. however, the reverse is the case for the d cut, where the pre-equating method passed more candidates in test forms c1, c2 and c4.   0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 ‐4 ra w  s co re s ability pre‐equating post‐equating 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 ‐4 ra w  s co re ability pre‐equating post‐equating 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 ‐4 ra w  s co re s ability tcc of pre and post‐ equating pre‐equating post‐equating 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 ‐ 4 ‐ 3 ‐ 2 ‐ 1 01234 ra w  s co re s ability tcc of c4 and d4 test forms pre‐equating post‐equating figure 5: tcc of test forms c1 and d1 figure 5: tcc of test forms c1 and d1 figure 6: tcc of test forms c2 and d2   figure 7: tcc of test forms c3 and d3 figure 8: tcc of test forms c4 and d4 table 3 shows that for the classification rate, the irt post-equating tended to pass more examinees than the pre-equating methods in total. the table shows that the irt pre-equating method tended to pass fewer examinees than the irt post-equating method at the c cut and in total. however, the reverse is the case for the d cut, where the pre-equating method passed more candidates in test forms c1, c2 and c4.   0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 ‐4 ra w  s co re s ability pre‐equating post‐equating 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 ‐4 ra w  s co re ability pre‐equating post‐equating 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 ‐4 ra w  s co re s ability tcc of pre and post‐ equating pre‐equating post‐equating 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 ‐ 4 ‐ 3 ‐ 2 ‐ 1 01234 ra w  s co re s ability tcc of c4 and d4 test forms pre‐equating post‐equating figure 6: tcc of test forms c2 and d2 94 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) figure 5: tcc of test forms c1 and d1 figure 6: tcc of test forms c2 and d2   figure 7: tcc of test forms c3 and d3 figure 8: tcc of test forms c4 and d4 table 3 shows that for the classification rate, the irt post-equating tended to pass more examinees than the pre-equating methods in total. the table shows that the irt pre-equating method tended to pass fewer examinees than the irt post-equating method at the c cut and in total. however, the reverse is the case for the d cut, where the pre-equating method passed more candidates in test forms c1, c2 and c4.   0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 ‐4 ra w  s co re s ability pre‐equating post‐equating 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 ‐4 ra w  s co re ability pre‐equating post‐equating 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 ‐4 ra w  s co re s ability tcc of pre and post‐ equating pre‐equating post‐equating 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 ‐ 4 ‐ 3 ‐ 2 ‐ 1 01234 ra w  s co re s ability tcc of c4 and d4 test forms pre‐equating post‐equating figure 5: tcc of test forms c1 and d1 figure 6: tcc of test forms c2 and d2   figure 7: tcc of test forms c3 and d3 figure 8: tcc of test forms c4 and d4 table 3 shows that for the classification rate, the irt post-equating tended to pass more examinees than the pre-equating methods in total. the table shows that the irt pre-equating method tended to pass fewer examinees than the irt post-equating method at the c cut and in total. however, the reverse is the case for the d cut, where the pre-equating method passed more candidates in test forms c1, c2 and c4.   0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 ‐4 ra w  s co re s ability pre‐equating post‐equating 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 ‐4 ra w  s co re ability pre‐equating post‐equating 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 ‐4 ra w  s co re s ability tcc of pre and post‐ equating pre‐equating post‐equating 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 ‐ 4 ‐ 3 ‐ 2 ‐ 1 01234 ra w  s co re s ability tcc of c4 and d4 test forms pre‐equating post‐equating figure 7: tcc of test forms c3 and d3 figure 5: tcc of test forms c1 and d1 figure 6: tcc of test forms c2 and d2   figure 7: tcc of test forms c3 and d3 figure 8: tcc of test forms c4 and d4 table 3 shows that for the classification rate, the irt post-equating tended to pass more examinees than the pre-equating methods in total. the table shows that the irt pre-equating method tended to pass fewer examinees than the irt post-equating method at the c cut and in total. however, the reverse is the case for the d cut, where the pre-equating method passed more candidates in test forms c1, c2 and c4.   0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 ‐4 ra w  s co re s ability pre‐equating post‐equating 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 ‐4 ra w  s co re ability pre‐equating post‐equating 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 ‐4 ra w  s co re s ability tcc of pre and post‐ equating pre‐equating post‐equating 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 ‐ 4 ‐ 3 ‐ 2 ‐ 1 01234 ra w  s co re s ability tcc of c4 and d4 test forms pre‐equating post‐equating figure 5: tcc of test forms c1 and d1 figure 6: tcc of test forms c2 and d2   figure 7: tcc of test forms c3 and d3 figure 8: tcc of test forms c4 and d4 table 3 shows that for the classification rate, the irt post-equating tended to pass more examinees than the pre-equating methods in total. the table shows that the irt pre-equating method tended to pass fewer examinees than the irt post-equating method at the c cut and in total. however, the reverse is the case for the d cut, where the pre-equating method passed more candidates in test forms c1, c2 and c4.   0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 ‐4 ra w  s co re s ability pre‐equating post‐equating 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 ‐4 ra w  s co re ability pre‐equating post‐equating 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 ‐4 ra w  s co re s ability tcc of pre and post‐ equating pre‐equating post‐equating 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 ‐ 4 ‐ 3 ‐ 2 ‐ 1 01234 ra w  s co re s ability tcc of c4 and d4 test forms pre‐equating post‐equating figure 5: tcc of test forms c1 and d1 figure 6: tcc of test forms c2 and d2   figure 7: tcc of test forms c3 and d3 figure 8: tcc of test forms c4 and d4 table 3 shows that for the classification rate, the irt post-equating tended to pass more examinees than the pre-equating methods in total. the table shows that the irt pre-equating method tended to pass fewer examinees than the irt post-equating method at the c cut and in total. however, the reverse is the case for the d cut, where the pre-equating method passed more candidates in test forms c1, c2 and c4.   0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 ‐4 ra w  s co re s ability pre‐equating post‐equating 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 ‐4 ra w  s co re ability pre‐equating post‐equating 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 ‐4 ra w  s co re s ability tcc of pre and post‐ equating pre‐equating post‐equating 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 ‐ 4 ‐ 3 ‐ 2 ‐ 1 01234 ra w  s co re s ability tcc of c4 and d4 test forms pre‐equating post‐equating figure 8: tcc of test forms c4 and d4 table 3 shows that for the classification rate, the irt post­equating tended to pass more examinees than the pre­equating methods in total. the table shows that the irt pre­equating method tended to pass fewer examinees than the irt post­equating method at the c cut and in total. however, the reverse is the case for the d cut, where the pre­equating method passed more candidates in test forms c1, c2 and c4. 95 ojerinde, popoola, onyeneho & egberongbe a comparative analysis of pre­equating ... table 3: classification frequency for aggregate pass rate, c­pass and d­pass rates for the utme uoe test form equating method no. total high (n) total high (%) c-high (n) % c-high d-high (n) % d high c1 pre 559 45.48 418 34 147 11.96 1229 d1 post 670 54.51 565 45.97 105 8.54 c2 pre 563 46.87 345 28.72 218 18.15 1201 d2 post 638 53.12 452 37.63 186 15.48 c3 pre 534 45.44 438 37.27 96 8.17 1175 d3 post 641 54.55 543 46.21 98 8.34 c4 pre 694 44.37 487 31.13 207 13.23 1564 d4 post 870 55.62 671 42.9 199 12.72 the means and standard deviations of the equated scores from different equating methods are shown in table 4. from the table, it can be seen that the item parameters of the test forms from the pre­equating and post­equating consistently yielded almost the same values except for test forms c1, representing pre­equating and the corresponding d2 for post­equating which has slightly higher means and sds. table 4: means and standard deviations of the equated scores from different equating methods test form irt-pre equating test forms irt post equating mean sd mean sd c1 65.045 14.757 d1 65.034 14.818 c2 64.991 14.921 d2 64.989 14.95 c3 64.82 14.503 d3 64.806 14.438 c4 64.87 14.784 d4 64.917 14.774 finally, table 5 also presents the results of the three indices used to evaluate the equating results with irt pre­equating results as the baseline. all three indices indicated that the irt post­equating yielded closer results to the irt pre­equating method by having the smaller rmsd, bias and see in all four of the test forms. 96 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) table 5: indices used in evaluate the equating results with irt pre­equating as the baseline test form rmse bias see irt post d1 0.01857 0.000345 0.018567 d2 0.07042 0.004959 0.070245 d3 0.07612 0.005794 0.075899 d4 0.07503 ­0.00563 0.074818 12. discussions on results the perception on the higher p­values from the post­equating method can probably be explained. during field trials, the items constituting the uoe were administered in paper­and­ pencil mode while the same items used in subsequent operational examination was done in a computer­based testing environment. the difference in the modes of examination could be a direct consequence for the perceived difference between the pre­equating method and post­operational method. the design of the utme delivery system made it possible to include innovations such as the use of the four arrow keys on the keyboard as an alternative to the use of the mouse, review of items to reveal unanswered items prior to submission as well as inclusion of a timer among other things. these features added value to the test delivery system, distinguishing it from the paper­and­pencil mode of testing. the seriousness or stake attached to the two examinations may also have contributed to the difference in the p­values observed. since the trial­test does not often attract motivational gains, students often do not take the examination as serious as the utme high­stakes examination. this could account for the difference in the overall performance of the candidates. again, the level of preparedness of the students can constitute its own problem as well, which also affects performance. observing the performance of the candidates through direct examination of the p­values shows that for instance, test forms c1 and d1could offer more insight into differences in pre­equating and post­operational methods. test form c1 represents the pre­equating while d1 stands for the post­equating method. of the 100 items tested, 56 of them were found to be harder in the pre­ than in the post­equating test form. experience has shown that in the trial­testing situation, candidates are often less serious in taking examinations possibly because of a lack of motivation on the perceived consequences of the test. wolf and smith (1995) presented a research study, which showed that testing students in consequential condition compels them to out­perform other students in a non­consequential condition by an effect size of .26. they concluded that consequences influences motivation and motivation influences performance. it is certain therefore that motivation is a likely contributor to performance differences found in this study between students that took the field test compared to students that took the utme high stakes assessment. indeed, it appears reasonable to say that students taking the field test according to damaleski (2006) would not exert as much effort since no stakes were associated with this test event and, in fact, no student level results were ever reported. this lack of seriousness regarding trial­tests by students often accounts for the high rates of omitted and unreached items seen in many field tests and this possibly explains reasons 97 ojerinde, popoola, onyeneho & egberongbe a comparative analysis of pre­equating ... why trial­test items were found to be harder due to the relatively large amount of missing or incomplete data. the equality argument for fairness in assessment according to advocates assessing all students in a standardised manner using an identical assessment method, content and same administration, scoring and interpretation procedures. with this approach to assuring fairness, if different groups of test takers differ on some irrelevant knowledge or skills that can affect assessment performance, bias will exist. this situation is avoided by ensuring that pre­equating is carried out prior to real test administration. the analysis carried out in this study has shown that the pre­equating and post­equating methods have provided comparable results. this will mitigate the fears of stakeholders who are apprehensive of whether pre­ equating is actually doing what it is supposed to do or providing validity evidence as to the equivalency of the test forms used in testing in the utme uoe. 13. conclusion/recommendation the result of this study has shown that all three major indices involving rmse, bias and see which represent total error, systematic error and standard equating error indicated that the irt post­equating yielded closer results to the irt pre­equating method and are therefore comparable. however, carrying out equating using irt is complex, both conceptually and procedurally. another score point for the post­equating method is that the method passed more candidates than the pre­equating especially in the total and c­cut. this shows that the field test items are predicting performance of candidates in the utme operational examination. these results are pointers to the fact that item parameters obtained during the trial­test were remarkably equivalent to those obtained during the operational assessment of utme in the uoe. all other 22 utme subjects were also subjected to pre­equating prior to operational test administration and similar results were achieved. the extent to which those inferences are appropriate for different groups of test takers is an important aspect of fairness the practice of using the pre­equating method to build score tables prior to an operational assessment should be sustained since the method yielded comparable results with the post­ equating method. this occurs as long as the probable cause for pre­equating error such as the presence of bias in the item parameter estimates, which are caused by the violation of the assumption of item local independence, are removed (kolen & brennan, 2004). pre­equating test forms prior to test administration in actual examination is a good way of assuring equity and fairness in assessment. when the tests given to the students are unbiased and function the same way for different groups of test takers, fairness is said to have been built into the test. references domaleski, c.s. 2006. exploring the efficacy of pre-equating a large scale criterion-referenced assessment with respect to measurement equivalence. published phd thesis. ann arbor, mi: proquest information and learning company. gao, r., he, w. & ruan, c. 2012. does pre­equating work? an investigation into a pre­equated test let­based college placement exam using post administration data. ets research report series, 2012, i–18. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2333­8504.2012.tb02294.x 98 perspectives in education 2016: 34(4) holland, p.w. & dorans, n.j. 2006. linking and equating. in r.l. brennan. (ed.). educational measurement, 4th ed. westport, ct: american council on education and praeger publishers. pp. 187­220. kolen, m.j. & brennan, r.l. 2004. test equating, scaling and linking: methods and practices, 2nd ed. new york: springer –verlag. https://doi.org/10.1007/978­1­4757­4310­4 kirkpatrick, r.k. 2005. the effects of item format in common item equating. unpublished doctoral dissertation. iowa: university of iowa kirkpatrick, r. & way, w.d. 2008. field testing and equating design for state educational assessment. a paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, new york. livingston, l. 2004. equating test scores (without irt). princeton, nj: educational testing service. pomplun, m., omar, h. & custer, m. 2004. a comparison of winsteps and bilog­mg 144. for vertical scaling with the rasch model. educational and psychological measurement, 64, 600­ 616. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013164403261761 raju, n.s., laffitte, l.j. & byrne, b.m. 2002. measurement equivalence: a comparison of methods based on confirmatory factor analysis and item response theory. journal of applied psychology, 87(3), 517­529. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021­9010.87.3.517 tong, y., wu, s­s. & xu, m. 2008. a comparison of pre­equating and post­equating using large­scale assessment data. paper presented at the american educational and research association annual meeting, new york city. wolf, l.f. & smith, j.k. 1995. the consequence of consequence: motivation, anxiety, and test performance. applied measurement in education, 8(3), 227­242. https://doi.org/10.1207/ s15324818ame0803_3 xuan, t & rochelle, m. 2011. why do standardized testing programs report scaled scores? why not just report the raw or percent­correct scores? r&d connections, 16, 1­6. 186 investigating the role of nonacademic support systems of students completing a master’s degree in open, distance and e-learning abstract this paper investigates the role played by the non-academic support systems that students can access during their master’s journey within the open, distance and e-learning context. in defining support, this paper draws on the theory of connectivism, which portrays relationships as a network with various connecting nodes. traditionally, support for master’s students takes the form of academic assistance that is channelled primarily through the supervision relationship. the relationship between student and supervisor in open, distance and e-learning represents the main bridge between student and institution. as such, the process of supervision has evolved into a critical component of student success at the level of master’s studies. the theory of connectivism challenges this rigid view of unidirectional learning in a supervision relationship or programme. the connectivist approach acknowledges that learning and knowledge rest within a diversity of opinion. drawing from a cohort of postgraduate students at a south african distance‑education institution, this paper measures the learning network of each student. in total, 37 students and graduates responded to an online survey aimed at investigating the networks that students have created during their master’s studies. the instrument consisted of 34 items that covered aspects such as the cognitive, affective and systemic support provided by supervisors as well as external sources of support. while the supervision relationship remains the core process during postgraduate studies, meeting the needs of postgraduate students extends well beyond the capabilities of most individual supervisors. results in this study demonstrated that students have a range of needs for the successful completion of their qualifications. respondents reportedly had the necessary social and financial capital to support these needs outside the supervision relationships; however, not all students do. this study, therefore, provided a student‑support framework that may identify the support needs and support sources to improve postgraduate student support. keywords: connectivism, master’s, networked learning, nonacademic support systems, student success, student throughput angelo fynn university of south africa. email: fynna@unisa.ac.za herman janse van vuuren university of south africa. email: jansevanvuurenh@ unizulu.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i1.14 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(1): 186-199 © uv/ufs mailto:fynna@unisa.ac.za mailto:jansevanvuurenh@unizulu.ac.za mailto:jansevanvuurenh@unizulu.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.14 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.14 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.14 187 fynn & janse van vuuren investigating the role of non-academic support systems of students 1. introduction postgraduate supervision is seen as a practice involving complex academic and interpersonal skills in which supervisors are required to play multiple roles such as advisor, quality controller, guide and support structure (de beer & mason, 2009; bitzer, 2010). while good supervision is acknowledged as the key to success in postgraduate research training, the teaching and learning process underpinning this process is not generally understood (bitzer, 2010). furthermore, academic staff are under increasing pressure to manage higher student workloads while increasing numbers of students are arriving at universities underprepared for higher degree studies (bitzer, 2010). within the traditional conceptualisation of supervision, the process is managed by a single supervisor who is additionally responsible for the administrative management of the supervision process (de beer & mason, 2009). in a postgraduate open distance and e-learning (odel) context, supervisors are the students’ main, and sometimes only, human link to the institution (van biljon & de villiers, 2013). given the growing number of students entering south african higher education, the traditional model of supervision is unlikely to meet the complex set of needs of master’s students fully and due to insufficient support, the likelihood of dropout or prolonged time to completion increases. the stance taken in this paper posits that successful completion of a master’s qualification requires a network of support to facilitate learning. this study focuses on the non-academic support structures used by students in the master of arts in psychology (ma) and the master of arts (psychology) with specialisation in research consultation (marc) programme at an odel institution. while both qualifications are research-based degrees, the marc programme is a coursework-based training programme that leads to registration with the health professions council of south africa (hpcsa). both programmes employ a correspondence model of teaching for the dissertation component; however, the marc programme makes use of a blended approach during the first year. 2. background since 1994, a number of policy-level interventions have been established to redress the historical inequalities embedded within the south african higher education system (scott, yeld & hendry, 2007; south africa department of higher education & training, 2013). these policies all share the view that postgraduate education, particularly doctoral education, provides the basis for the production of both high level skills and research (scott et al., 2007). a cohort analysis conducted by scott et al. (2007) highlighted a number of key findings, namely that postgraduate enrolment has increased since 1995 and that the chief focus of postgraduate programmes should be to reduce the postgraduate pile up in which students neither graduate nor dropout (scott et al.,, 2007). the pile up effect refers to the situation in which students remain enrolled for longer than expected or desired. in addition, when the number of recurring students becomes excessive, the efficiency of the postgraduate system is substantially reduced (scott et al., 2007). their analysis of the postgraduate education system revealed that of all master’s students in 2005, almost two out of five (37%) were ongoing enrolments, while only one in five students were graduating during the same timespan (scott et al., 2007). the same study revealed that on average, master’s students took approximately three years to graduate (scott et al., 2007). thus, where students are graduating with their qualifications, they are doing so in times that is equivalent to their american and european counterparts; however, the rate of graduates remains consistently low. this has increased 188 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) the burden of supervision on south african academics since more students are entering the system than leaving, placing strain on the supervisory capacity of south african institutions. between the years 2000 and 2005, the burden of supervision increased from an average of 3.8 students to 5.2 students per supervisor in general and increased from 6.6 students to 8.5 students per academic in the social sciences specifically (scott et al., 2007). the increased burden of supervision does not simply pertain to the increasing numbers of students but also encompasses the complexity of the supervision relationship and the changing role of a supervisor. to understand this process better, it is necessary to examine the nature of postgraduate support systems. 2.1 supervision of postgraduate research programmes both the marc and ma psychology programmes follow the correspondence model of student supervision. both degree programmes use the dissertation mark as the summative indicator of whether or not the student should be awarded the degree (unisa, 2013). it is, therefore, important to examine the supervision process and the impact that this process can have on student throughput and retention in a master’s programme. with regard to supervision, the relationship between student and supervisor in postgraduate open distance and e-learning (odel) represents the main bridge between student and institution. as such, the supervision process has evolved into a critical component in student success (van biljon & de villiers, 2013). as mapesela and wilkinson (2005) note, the student-supervisor relationship has been redefined and can include aspects such as mentoring. schulze (2011) identifies an additional six roles that supervisors fill during supervision: provider of functional support with the emphasis on practical advice; assurer of quality; mentor; facilitator of enculturation into the academy; critical-thinking facilitator; and in some cases, provider of emotional support. students seeking quality research training need to access resources and expertise, have flexibility regarding choice of learning and learning conditions, secure the opportunity for engagement within a community of practice and procure the opportunities that allow access to relevant employment markets (bitzer, 2010). supervisors are seen as essential in assisting students to manage the complex set of demands that are placed on them when navigating viable career pathways, which adds to the overall burden of supervision (bitzer, 2010). the supervision process is, therefore, dependent on how each partner in the relationship approaches contact. due to this, a mismatch in approach could have a negative impact. in addition, a lack of personal contact, particularly in the distance-learning context, could have negative influences on a student’s confidence and self-efficacy. there is ample evidence that supervisors base their approach on their own, often unexamined, experiences as a research student, which may perpetuate maladaptive or ill-conceived supervisory practices (bitzer, 2010). for instance, confusion may result from being unable to clarify in person, and repeated requests may give the feeling of failure that could impede a student’s ability to be successful (schulze, 2011). addressing this barrier would require critical appraisals of the supervisors’ interpersonal and communication skills, which would involve being open to critical feedback from peers and students on their performance as coaches, supervisors and mentors (bitzer, 2010). effective supervisors are, therefore, required to have not only the necessary disciplinary and technical knowledge to perform research in their discipline but also the will and capability to develop a repertoire of knowledge and understandings of the different aspects of supervisory practice (bitzer, 2010). this reflective practice is particularly important for supervisors who are in multicultural supervision in which biases and lack of 189 fynn & janse van vuuren investigating the role of non-academic support systems of students knowledge about cultures may have negative implications for a relationship that is based on open communication and mutual respect (schulze, 2011). in contrast to the traditional student-supervisor relationship, van biljon and de villiers (2013) highlight the multiplicity of stakeholders involved in a supervision relationship for students in the odel context. as mentioned earlier, the supervisor is the primary and sometimes only link between student and institution, and the supervision process is, therefore, critical to student success in this context. supervisors in this context have to mediate or remove a number of barriers, which include the emotional and psychological barriers that students experience relative to their studies, poor english proficiency among students and students without the necessary research skills or methodological knowledge to conduct independent research (schulze, 2011; van biljon & de villiers, 2013). one of the key features of odel is that it aims to bridge the time and distance divide that precludes access to education by making use of a range of pedagogical approaches and technology to reach students (tait, 2000). this is achieved at the expense of increased transactional distance between student and instructor, which results in minimal contact and in some cases, the isolation of the student from a conducive learning context or community of practice. in a study on the barriers to learning within the distance-education context, galusha (1998) identifies a number of domains in which students need support to ensure success in odel. these include dispositional barriers such as insecurities about learning, fear of failure, a sense of isolation, lack of social interaction and inadequate training (ibid.). infrastructural barriers include lack of access to learning materials (i.e. journal articles), technology and the internet together with its reliability and cost of connectivity. institutional barriers include procedures and policies that do not accommodate the needs and circumstances of individual students, difficulty in the use of institutional systems and the unavailability of support services. the curriculum barriers refer to the didactic and pedagogical approaches that may exclude students on the basis of ideological assumptions about learning and knowledge that are not relevant to the student profile (galusha, 1998; subotzky & prinsloo, 2011). addressing the multiple needs of postgraduate students, particularly within the odel environment, is a burden that cannot be undertaken by individual supervisors. one of the strengths of the odel environment is the ability to achieve economies of scale to ensure economical provision of services to students (tait, 2000). the approach in this study, therefore, take the stance that a postgraduate supervision model that is premised on the principles of student support in odel would provide greater scope for supporting distance postgraduate research students. 2.2 student support within the odel context, student support aims to assist successful learning and in this regard recognises that this entails various types of support services. assisting students with their confidence or self-esteem would in turn support their perseverance and success (schulze, 2011). the three crucial aspects of student support that are considered here are the cognitive, affective and systemic structures (tait, 2003): • cognitive support refers to services concerning course material and formal learning support resources. these could take the form of tutorial classes and other academic support initiatives (tait, 2000, 2003). within the postgraduate supervision space, this would primarily refer to the supervisor as the source of support in mediating the learning between the student and knowledge repositories within the discipline. 190 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) • affective support refers to the improvement of the study environment, which could assist in improving student commitment and self-esteem (tait, 2000, 2003). affective support could also include the student’s emotional or social environment and the possible barriers that these could form during their development. • systemic support is concerned with the establishment of effective administration and information management services that are transparent and student-friendly. the purpose of systemic support is to assist students in dealing with institutional systems in such a way that persistent use of the systems is supported (tait, 2000, 2003). as proposed by tait (2000), the framework that is used to develop supportive structures for students needs to consider six factors. these include the characteristics of the students, the availability of technology, the demands of the programme, the scale of the course, the management systems employed and the geographical situation and requirements of both the student and the institution (tait, 2000). the characteristics of the students include a variety of factors that could influence the learning structure and the methods. the factors could include the student’s gender, age, employment status, disposable income, educational background, geographical location, special needs, language, ethnic and cultural characteristics, communication technology access and proficiency (tait, 2000). each characteristic could provide information regarding students that are successful and those that are not. this could thus provide useful information on possible risk factors or be an early warning for possible student support. 2.3 theoretical approach connectivism is a theoretical framework that regards learning through the creation of networks. it maintains that students develop a network by making new connections with information sources, thereby expanding their capacity to learn (duke, harper & johnston, 2013). connectivism thus commences with individuals who gain and retain knowledge through their personal networks. by making use of these networks, individuals contribute their personal knowledge to an organisation. in turn, the organisation imparts the knowledge and experience back into the system of networks. through the virtue of the individuals’ personal connections, they are able to stay updated with the current knowledge within their field (duke et al., 2013; downes, 2013). a degree of openness is required by a network to allow participants to leave or return depending on their needs and to enable ideas or perspectives within the network to flow freely between participants. this provides not only an open-learning opportunity for participants but also allows individuals or groups to separate themselves from the whole. the purpose here is not to force openness or limit and exclude participants but to maximise the structures of learning in such a way that learners can choose. the purpose is not be excluded from the whole because of barriers inherent within the structure of the course but rather to provide the freedom to make use of the various networks in the particular context needed for learning (tschofen & mackness, 2012). connectivism emphasises diversity (downes, 2008) and makes it a priority to teach everyone to build on personal strengths and develop individual learning pathways. as such, networks should be encouraged to include diversity in terms of the participants, ideas, perspectives, experiences, insights and creativity, which could provide valuable influences towards the network as a whole (tschofen & mackness, 2012). connectivism comprises 191 fynn & janse van vuuren investigating the role of non-academic support systems of students several principles that help to structure what the theory claims. according to downes (2008), learning occurs during the course of ‘connecting entities’. in order for learning to persist, these network connections have to be maintained and nurtured. however, one needs to be able to perceive the connections between concepts, fields and ideas in order to grow the network and to develop knowledge from it. this emphasises the importance of having a large capacity for new knowledge, which in return will allow access to the knowledge available in the network. thus, the ability to recognise and make new connections would widen the network through the generation of new knowledge. this means that the making of decisions is in itself a learning process for the entire network and the individuals involved (downes, 2008). 3. problem statement given the increasing numbers of recurring students within the south african postgraduate system that increases the burden of supervision on academic staff, it becomes necessary to investigate alternative models of postgraduate support that are better able to influence student and institutional networks. it is essential to take a connectivist view of postgraduate student support in order to understand the networks that students use to support themselves through their postgraduate studies. 4. research questions 1. which types of support do students draw on during the course of their postgraduate studies? 2. which sources of support outside the supervision relationship do students use during their postgraduate studies? 3. what are the levels of satisfaction reported by the students in the unisa marc and ma in psychology programmes regarding the student-supervisor relationship? 5. method as stated earlier, the purpose of the study is to explore the support students made use of and the experience of this support during the course of their studies. the study design adopted for this purpose was a descriptive design. the data for the study was collected via an online survey. participants for the survey about non-academic support systems were sampled from the groups of students who registered for either the ma psychology programme or the marc programme between 2009 and 2015. this date range provided sufficient time for students who registered in these years to complete or be close to completing their ma degree. the data collection was conducted through qualtrics, an online survey platform. the survey was uploaded and an anonymised link was sent via email to the study population with a total of 426 emails sent. in order to gain access to the personal email addresses of students, permission was requested from institutional ethical clearance committees. it is important to acknowledge that some of the participants contacted for this portion of the study were alumni of the programme since the details of students who had successfully completed their degrees were required. the rationale behind including students who had successfully completed the degree is that this particular participant group held valuable information regarding the additional support structures that they put in place to guide them through their master’s qualifications. the research instrument sent to students was developed using the framework proposed by tait (2000) and covered the systemic, cognitive and emotional domains of student support 192 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) across 34 items. the cognitive domain of the instrument covered aspects such as the supervisory and technical support that students were exposed to, while the emotional aspects of the survey investigated the sources of social and emotional support used during their studies. the systemic support aspects of the instrument covered the material and financial support that students required during the course of studies. the connectivist perspective was used to understand that these domains of support do not only originate with the supervisors, but could emanate from the networks that students have available to them. this includes resources they have built themselves over time, resources available from the institution (i.e. bursaries or software), other academic staff (within the institution or affiliated with another university), test developers or article authors, consultants, family, friends, other students, employers or co-workers. the instrument consisted of a mix of categorical information relating to the types of support received and likert scale items rating the quality of support on a five-point scale in the various domains. descriptive analyses were conducted to identify the patterns and trends among the respondents. the frequency counts, median or mode and standard deviation are reported for each of the domains. 6. results the results describe the demographic profile of respondents, the time to completion and the types and sources of support outside the supervision relationship. while the response set was relatively small (n = 37), the diversity in responses provided insight into the varying needs of students during the course of their master’s qualifications. the supervision satisfaction, time to completion, types of support, sources of support and financial support reported by respondents are discussed in the sections below. 6.1 demographics of respondents in total, 37 (n = 37) students and graduates who were registered for one of the two masters’ programmes between 2009 and 2015 answered the online survey. respondents who were registered for the ma in psychology (full dissertation) programme (n = 23, m = 41, sd = 9.84) were on average older than the respondents who registered for the marc programme (n = 14, m = 34, sd = 8.52). eight (n = 8) male respondents registered for the ma programme and four (n = 4) male respondents registered for the marc programme. regarding the female respondents (n = 29), 19 (n = 19) registered for the ma programme and five (n = 5) registered for the marc programme. with regard to ethnicity, the results were as follows: black respondents (n = 10; ma: n = 5, marc: n = 5), coloured respondents (n = 3; ma: n = 2, marc: n = 1), indian respondents (n = 7; ma: n = 5, marc: n = 2) and white respondents (n = 17; ma: n = 11, marc: n = 6). 6.2 time to completion twenty-five respondents (n = 25) reported that they had completed their studies (ma: n = 15; marc: n = 10) and 12 respondents (n = 12) were in progress (ma: n = 8; marc: n = 4). except for one marc student, all the respondents who had not yet completed their qualifications had submitted their proposals, had gained ethical clearance and had completed data collection. four ma respondents (n = 4) and three marc respondents (n = 3) stated that they had completed the conclusion chapters of their studies, and two ma respondents (n = 2) stated that they had submitted their dissertations for examination. respondents who had concluded 193 fynn & janse van vuuren investigating the role of non-academic support systems of students their studies reportedly took between two and seven years to complete their qualifications (n = 25, m = 4.08, sd = 1.32). of these, 15 respondents were ma students (n = 15, m = 4.27, sd = 1.49) and ten respondents were marc students (n = 10, m = 3.8, sd = 1.03). 6.3 supervision satisfaction (likelihood of referring supervisor) respondents reported supervision satisfaction on a scale of 0 to 10. thirty-four students indicated that they were more likely (n = 34, m = 7.5, sd = 3.145) to recommend their supervisors to other students. respondents who had completed the marc programme tended to rate their supervisors slightly higher in this regard (n = 12, m = 7.83, sd = 2.21) compared with respondents who had completed the ma degree (n = 22, m = 7.32, sd = 3.59). 6.4 satisfaction with supervision support roles respondents answered several questions regarding their satisfaction with aspects of their supervision relationship. overall, respondents reported to be satisfied with their supervision relationships (n = 34, m = 4.05, sd = 1.05). respondents who registered for the ma programme were reported to be slightly less satisfied (n = 22, m = 3.99, sd = 1.22) than respondents who registered for the marc programme (n = 12, m = 4.18, sd = 0.66, no response = 2). the difference in satisfaction between the two groups may be attributed to the nature of the two programmes. the ma students are less likely to have multiple channels of communication with their supervisor compared with the marc students who have direct, physical access in addition to email communication. 6.5 type of student support students reported the need for support systems outside their supervision relationships. these support systems were accessed from various sources. the total counts for the types of support needed are presented first, after which the descriptive statistics for the sources of support are provided. due to the discrepancy in sample sizes, the support systems that the students used are reported in terms of percentages to compare the responses from ma and marc students. in addition, students were requested to state if they made use of the same support system from multiple sources, which would provide an inflated frequency count when comparing with the number of respondents. percentages were calculated individually by dividing the number of answers by the number of possible answers in order to gain an estimate that could be compared. these estimates were compared with the total number of answers (combining ma and marc scores) to provide some context for the descriptive analysis. the ma and marc scores were transformed into percentage counts against their own population (i.e. if the ma score indicated 4% of respondents, this indicated 4% of the ma respondents, not the ma and marc combined score), whereas the total percentages provided the estimate for the total study sample. of the respondents, 15% reported that they made use of academic support systems outside their supervision relationships (marc: 19%; ma: 13%). in addition, 10% of respondents reported to use additional resources (marc: 11%; ma: 10%). emotional support was used more often in comparison (23%). more specifically, emotional support was used by 24% of the marc students and 23% of the ma students. excluding the number of students who used their own funds or received bursaries (marc: 6%; ma: 4%), 5% of respondents reported making use of funding outside their supervision relationships. 194 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) in total, 3% of respondents stated that they made use of support systems that could be classified as ‘other’ (marc: 2%; ma: 4%). students made use of ict / technical systems through their dissertation journey (5%). the marc students (7%) seemed to use this resource slightly more than the ma students (3%). almost half of the total responses indicated that the resources were not applicable to their situation (48%). it was demonstrated that 42% of the marc students indicated that the resources were not applicable compared with 51% of the ma students. 6.6 support sources when considering the sources of the mentioned resources that students accessed outside their supervision relationships, test developers / authors were accessed the least, as demonstrated by 2% of all respondents (marc: 2%; ma: 3%). lecturers (both within and outside unisa) were not frequently consulted (lecturers consulted outside unisa = 6%; lecturers consulted within unisa = 5%). however, ma students appeared to make use of lecturers outside unisa more often (8%) than the lecturers within unisa (3%). conversely, marc students accessed lecturers outside unisa (3%) less often than they accessed lecturers within unisa (9%). consultants also were not accessed frequently (5%), with the marc students (3%) making use of this source less when compared with the ma students (7%). employers appeared to have acted as sources of support 11% of the time, with the marc students making use of this source (16%) comparatively more often than the ma students (9%). colleagues followed a similar pattern in that they were reportedly accessed as sources of support (11%), with 19% of marc students using this source, which was comparatively more often than the ma students (8%). fellow students were also demonstrated as a source of support (12%), with marc students (22%) using this source comparatively more often than ma students (7%). friends were cited as a source of support (13%). similar results were observed for the marc students (15%) and the ma students (12%). family was demonstrated as the largest source of support for students (22%) for both marc students (28%) and ma students (20%). an ‘other’ option was provided in the survey for students to mention any organisation or stakeholder that may have been omitted in the provided options. a single student accessed another organisation as a source of support, which represented the smallest source in the sample (1%). this translated to 2% of ma students making use of this resource since it was used for three support systems by the same student. 6.7 financial support respondents reported on how they afforded living costs and their research projects. the analysis did not consider what was funded specifically but rather who was paying for some of these expenses. thus, the scores reported for living costs were calculated as an average of five. the reason for reporting the averages was to be able to compare the ma and marc scores. the calculation out of a possible five was because each source of funding could have been used for one or more of five possible living expenses. the research expenses were calculated out of a possible seven options. in terms of living costs, the ma respondents reportedly made use of their own funds (m = 1.65) more often than the marc respondents (m = 1.5). the ma respondents made use of funding from relatives (m = 1.52) less frequently than the marc respondents (m = 1.93). both the ma and marc respondents demonstrated similar results regarding the use of bursary funding for living costs (m = 0.78 and m = 0.64 respectively). the ma respondents appeared to make use of their employers more often (0.70) than the marc respondents (0.07). 195 fynn & janse van vuuren investigating the role of non-academic support systems of students with regard to research funding, the ma respondents again seemed to make use of their own funding (m = 2.65) more often than the marc students (m = 2.07). the ma respondents reportedly made use of funding from relatives more often (m = 1.30) than the marc students (m = 0.57). furthermore, the ma respondents appeared to make use of the bursary less often (m = 1.35) than the marc respondents (m=2.00). both the ma and marc respondents made use of their employers comparatively equally with regard to their studies (m = 0.57 and m = 0.64 respectively). finally, the ma respondents demonstrated that they made use of unisa resources (m = 0.30) less often than the marc students (m = 1.21). 7. discussion while both programmes operate within the odel context, the results of the survey show that the marc students who are physically on the main campus of the institution for certain periods of time make greater use of institutional funding and ict resources. the implication is that the ma psychology students, who predominantly communicate through their supervisors, are not sufficiently connected to the broader institution and, therefore, may be unaware of the additional resources available to them. it is important to note that students were generally satisfied with the quality of the supervision received. despite their satisfaction with supervision, the majority of the participants utilised additional sources of support to assist in the completion of their qualifications. this aligns with the argument made by van biljon and de villiers (2013) about the increasing multiplicity of the supervision relationship. thus, support needs of students exist even when supervision is taking place to the satisfaction of the student. consequently, institutions and supervisors should take cognisance to ensure that even students who appear to be satisfied and adequately prepared still require additional support. another noticeable difference between the two groups is the use of peers and colleagues in supporting their studies. the marc students make greater use of peers and colleagues in the workplace than their ma counterparts do. this difference may be attributed to the fact that the marc students have the opportunity to build a peer network during their coursework year and enter into a professional research context for employment, thus increasing their resource network. one means of addressing the reduced peer network for the ma students could be through utilising cohort-supervision methods using an online learning platform. in terms of the types of additional support required during postgraduate studies, emotional support appeared to be the most common need among students. family and friends primarily filled this role for both groups. this finding aligns with the student-support model for distance education proposed by tait (2000) who states that emotional support is a key factor in improving student retention and success. furthermore, galusha (1998) highlights that the emotional impact of distance study can be linked to a sense of isolation and fear/anxiety, which can be linked to failure and insecurity about learning that may manifest as anxiety in regard to receiving feedback from the supervisor. developing peer-support mechanisms to address the emotional stress associated with feedback and to reduce the feelings of isolation could play a key role in postgraduate success in the ma psychology programme. bitzer and albertyn (2011) propose a framework for postgraduate supervision planning that encompasses the multiple roles played by supervisors. the framework covers mentoring, sponsoring, coaching and progressing the candidate as key areas for successful supervision. the framework provides a useful guideline for discussing the roles and expectations of both the student and the supervisor during the supervision process. however, the framework works 196 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) on the presumption that learning and learning support are isolated in the institutional context. drawing on the connectivist approach to learning and the findings of the current study, we propose an alternative, complementary framework that would allow both student and supervisor to access the shared networks and thus develop a personal learning environment. the framework draws on the support needs identified within the support framework proposed by tait (2000) and covers the cognitive, emotional and systematic support needs of students. within the connectivist frame, the support needs of students would not remain the sole responsibility of their supervisors who are held liable for their supervision success rates. however, it would require supervisors to gain the additional ability of achieving economies of scale, thus connecting their students to relevant sources of information should there be gaps in their own ability or availability at the time. the idea is to augment the supervisors’ technical skills, and content or methodological knowledge with experiences from complementary sources, alleviating their ever-growing supervision burdens. apart from the technical and disciplinary expertise provided by supervisors, the types of support needs reported by students in this study included emotional, financial and infrastructural needs.   administrative  figure 1: framework for non-academic support outside supervision relationship cognitive support in this context refers to those activities that relate to facilitating the development of the technical-research skills that are required to complete the dissertation successfully. due to the low levels of academic preparedness at undergraduate level, a number of postgraduate students enter into their qualifications with poor levels of english proficiency and lack the requisite research expertise to complete their qualifications (van biljon & de villiers, 2013). mapping out the skill-development needs of students early in the supervision process can allow students and supervisors collaboratively to identify institutional resources aimed at 197 fynn & janse van vuuren investigating the role of non-academic support systems of students addressing these gaps and hopefully improve the likelihood of completion in the prescribed time. by accessing institutional resources, supervisors can shift the burden of directed training onto systems equipped for technical training and facilitation of developmental skills while assisting students to integrate these new skills into their studies. postgraduate studies entail more than simply the development of a ‘shopping list’ of skills but denote the formation of an identity as a researcher within the discipline who is an independent, critical thinker and competent researcher (botha, 2010). enculturation into disciplinary practices extends beyond developing an understanding of the disciplinary academic discourses and includes inculcating an understanding of the disciplinary norms and practices that often remain undocumented and implicit. a community of practice can be viewed as collective learning within a shared domain of human endeavour in which there is commitment to a specific goal characterised by mutual engagement (manyike, 2017). for postgraduate students, a community of practice provides a space in which students are linked to peers and experts within their disciplinary focus areas and are, therefore, enabled to learn from each other through collaboration (manyike, 2017). by explicitly facilitating a connection between the student and a community of practice, learning can take place outside the constraints of the supervision relationship and provide students with the opportunity to access a larger network for resources and career pathways. emotional support emerged as one of the predominant needs among the respondents within this study, and family and friends primarily fulfilled this role. however, it should not be assumed that all students have access to a support network to fulfil this need. by acknowledging emotional support as part of the critical support required to improve resilience during the complex transformation that students undergo as they progress from knowledge consumer to knowledge producer, supervisors can ensure that access to the necessary support is available. most higher education institutions have units dedicated to the psychosocial well-being of students at no extra cost to the individual student. at unisa, there is a countrywide network of counsellors skilled in providing counselling and support to students during their academic journey. typically referred to as career counselling or academic advising, these units provide key support structures for students who are isolated from the necessary emotional support received from family or friends during their postgraduate journey. infrastructural support comprises access to the necessary technological, financial, aca demic and physical resources required to conduct a postgraduate study. mapping out the support needs of students at the material level and linking students to the institutional resources to meet these needs will provide a substantial contribution to the improvement of retention and the likelihood of success. the results of the current study showed that a number of respondents from the ma group were self-financing the costs of conducting their research as well as carrying the cost of the ict infrastructure needed to complete their studies. this is despite the fact that the institution makes substantial provision for these services. this finding implies that the ma students are probably less informed about the network of resources available to them as part of their status as registered students when compared with their marc counterparts who are afforded the benefit of a period of time on campus at the institution. in closing, while the supervision relationship remains the core process through which teaching is conveyed for learning to take place during postgraduate studies, meeting the needs of postgraduate students extends well beyond the capabilities of supervisors. in this study, the results demonstrated that students have a range of needs that must be met to 198 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) ensure the successful completion of their qualifications. the respondents in this study had the necessary social and financial capital to support these needs outside the supervision relationships; however, it cannot be assumed that all students are aware and capable of meeting these needs. this study, therefore, provided a student-support framework for students in their postgraduate journey that could be used as a tool to identify the support needs and support sources, and improve the chances of retention and timely completion. references bitzer, e.m. 2010. postgraduate research supervision : more at stake than research training. acta academica, 2010(supplement 1), 23-56. bitzer, e.m. & albertyn, r.m. 2011. alternative approaches to postgraduate supervision: a planning tool to facilitate supervisory processes. south african journal of higher education, 25(5), 874-888. botha, n. 2010. practices in postgraduate research supervision: from apprentice to scholar. acta academica, 2010(supplement 1), 57-74. de beer, m. & mason, r.b. 2009. using a blended approach to facilitate postgraduate supervision. innovations in education and teaching international, 46(2), 213-226. doi: 10.1080/14703290902843984 downes, s. 2008. places to go : connectivism & connective knowledge. journal of online education, 5(1), 1-6. downes, s. 2013. the role of open educational resources in personal learning. in r. mcgreal, w. kinuthia & s. marshall (eds.). open educational resources: innovation, research and practice. 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prinsloo, p. 2011. turning the tide: a socio-critical model and framework for improving student success in open distance learning at the university of south africa. distance education, 32(2), 177-193. doi: 10.1080/01587919.2011.584846 swail, w.s. 2004. the art of student retention: a handbook for practitioners and administrators. in: educational policy institute. texas higher education coordinating board 20th annual recruitment and retention conference austin, tx june, 21(877), 1-39. tait, a. 2000. planning student support for open and distance learning. open learning: the journal of open, distance and e‑learning, 15(3), 287-299. doi: 10.1080/713688410 tait, a. 2003. reflections on student support in open and distance learning. international review of research in open and distance learning, 4(1), 1-9. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl. v4i1.134 tschofen, c. & mackness, j. 2012. connectivism and dimensions of individual experience. international review of research in open and distance learning, 13(1), 124-143. https://doi. org/10.19173/irrodl.v13i1.1143 university of south africa (unisa) 2013. policy for master’s and doctoral degrees. pretoria: unisa. van biljon, j.a. & de villiers, m.r. 2013. multiplicity in supervision models: the supervisor’s perspective. south african journal of higher education, 27(6), 1443-1463. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v4i1.134 https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v4i1.134 https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v13i1.1143 https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v13i1.1143 _hlk498260383 1 entrenching heterosexuality through language in south african life orientation (lo) textbooks abstract studies of the representation of sexualities in textbooks have tended to focus on inclusion and coverage of diverse content through thematic analysis. this analysis of a sample of lo textbooks is framed by the systematic linguistic framework of critical discourse analysis (cda), specifically fairclough’s (2001) theory of discourse as ideological meanings encoded in text. the sections on sex education in three popularly used lo textbooks have been analysed to make explicit the heteronormative meanings conveyed through language used. this article provides insight into how the language in the lo texts function to legitimate the dominant discourse of a particular type of heterosexuality: monogamy for the primary purpose of reproduction. the implications of this bias are raised and recommendations for fair representation of lgbt sexual orientations are made. keywords: critical discourse analysis, semiosis, heterosexuality, textbook studies 1. introduction analysis of sexuality in textbooks (hogben & waterman, 1997; whatley 1992, jennings & sherwin 2007; bazzul & sykes, 2011; temple, 2005, macgillivray & jennings, 2008, irala et al., 2008, suarez & balaji, 2007) has focussed on inclusion and coverage of diverse content through thematic analysis. these studies have pointed out the heteronormative bias (dalley & campbell, 2006), the assumption of heterosexual learner identities, the underrepresentation of lgbt sexualities and the association of lgbt sexualities with negative contexts. the universal normalisation of heterosexuality and the widespread prevalence of heterosexism have been made explicit by a range of studies (myerson et al., 2007; suarez & balaji 2007; bazzul & sykes, 2011). temple (2005:281) concluded that the texts she studied, “dichotomize heterosexuality and homosexuality, setting the stage to see sexuality in terms of opposites of normal and abnormal”. other studies have shown the inadequacy of sex education in schools on grounds of inaccuracies and lack of comprehensive information about sexualities. for example, a study mr m wilmot language educator, st dunstans college, johannesburg prof d naidoo university of johannesburg, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i1.1 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(1): 1-14 © uv/ufs http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.1 2 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) in spain concluded that, “all textbooks were neither appropriate nor sufficiently comprehensive for adolescent education on issues of sexuality” (irala et al., 2008:1103 ). a significant number of studies of textbook content note the underrepresentation and inadequate coverage of lgbt sexuality in schooland university-based sexuality education. using content analysis, hogben and waterman (1997) found that most of the widely prescribed psychology textbooks paid negligible attention to lgbt issues, with typically less than 1% of coverage. by counting the number of lines in each text and then counting the lines that dealt with lgbt content, macgillivray and jennings discovered that the highest estimated percentage of coverage given to lgbt content in foundations of education textbooks was 0.70%, while the lowest was 0.08% (macgillivray & jennings, 2008:179). in their investigation of heteronormativity in biology 12 textbooks widely prescribed in ontario schools, bazzul and sykes (2011) were struck by a general silence regarding issues of same-sex attraction and practices. temple (2005) found that disregarding same-sex sexuality was the approach taken by many human/biological sciences texts towards alternative sexualities, and that ignoring sexuality is part of the way heterosexual privilege is maintained. yet another common attribute of representation of lgbt sexualities in the texts is the association of lgbt sexualities with negative contexts (simoni, 1996; temple, 2005). according to simoni (1996), lgbt issues are usually mentioned in the context of dysfunctionality and sexual disorders (simoni, 1996:222). temple (2005) found that lgbt practices and identities were placed in a negative context 80% of the time by being related to sexual abuse, sexually transmitted diseases and prostitution. furthermore, lgbt people were depicted mainly as victims of social discrimination. they were frequently mentioned in these texts among “other” groups that are perceived to be “at risk” and are pathologised – for example, substance abusers, people living with hiv and aids, and students at risk of depression and suicide. investigations of sexuality in the lo curriculum in south africa have tended to focus on hivand aids-related education (ngwena, 2003; chabilall, 2012), sociocultural sensitivities in teaching topics related to sexual practices and safe sex (beyers, 2011) and heterosexism and homophobia in the educational environment in the preparation of pre-service teaching students (francis & msibi, 2011). it also focuses on the transformation of institutions of higher learning (msibi, 2013) and social discrimination and hate crimes experienced by black youths in the townships of south africa (msibi, 2012). macleod (2009) argued that the dominant metaphor informing the sections on sexuality education in lo manuals was danger and disease. macleod, moodley and young (2015:94) found that the main sexual subject positions featured in lo manuals – the responsible sexual subject and the sexual victim – assumed the heterosexual subject position. this article analyses how the heterosexual norm is constructed and transmitted through linguistic semiotic means such as the experiential value of the words used; the differential power relations, agency and status accorded lgbt and “straight” individuals in the sentences and the heterosexual identities of learners assumed by the text. the value of linguistic analysis is in providing a “nuanced understanding” of the “less visible workings of texts” that might also be “pernicious” (sunderland, 2012: 63). in the south african curriculum, life orientation (lo) is a compulsory subject for all learners from grade 1 to 12. of all the subjects offered in the high school curriculum, lo probably has the most significant impact on the construction and transmission of sexual identities since it deals explicitly with themes of sexuality, relationships, dating, marriage, human rights, values 3 wilmot & naidoo entrenching heterosexuality through language in south african life orientation and beliefs. three recently released and approved grade 10 lo textbooks: oxford successful lo (clitheroe et al., 2011) (textbook a); focus lo (rooth et al. 2011) (textbook b); and top class lo (shuter & shooter, 2011) (textbook c) were selected for this study. these top publishers, as ranked by south africa book development council, 2007, produce the texts. the authors had also established through discussions with lo teachers and teacher education lecturers that these texts are used by many lo teachers in schools. three of the six topics in the lo textbooks: development of the self in society, social and environmental responsibility and democracy and human rights were subjected to detailed analysis. both the language of the authors and the language of characters (sunderland, 2012) in the texts were analysed. the use of words was interrogated for their experiential, relational and expressive ideological meanings. the sentence-by-sentence analysis focussed on the representation of lgbt individuals; the ideological function that the grammar serves; the differential power and status relations of participants represented; the authoritative relations represented and the assumptions made of the sexual orientation of the learner. in this analysis, excerpts from the textbooks are cited in detail to enable validation of claims and interpretations of the authors of this article. 2. an analytical framework fairclough incorporates in his framework of critical discourse analysis (cda) the notion of semiosis. semiosis refers to meanings conveyed (fairclough 2001:123) through the experiential, relational and expressive value of texts (fairclough, 2001:93–94). the experiential value of words refers to the meanings they evoke in the reader. these include common sense or ideological meanings. over-lexicalisation or over-wording takes place when the writer uses a number of words that are synonyms or near synonyms that may indicate that it is a focus of ideological struggle (fairclough 2001:96). re-lexicalisation, or rewording, on the other hand may point to a deliberate attempt to contest existing or hegemonic meanings by substituting a dominant mode of expression with a different or alternative form of expression. the relational value of words also project ideological meanings. here the concern is with how lexical choices imply social relationships between participants. register, which is reflected in the diction or choice of words as well as phrasing, may be a sign of a differential in terms of status, position and social power between the author and the addressee. the expressive value of words refers to the means by which an author’s attitude towards reality is expressed through words. grammatical choices that either foreground or conceal agency may be deliberate or unconscious. while simple sentences in the declarative mode are written in the active voice with the subject at the beginning of the sentence, passive voice can be used to screen agency, either by reversing the subject-object positions or by deleting the agent phrase at the beginning of the sentence (fairclough, 2001:104). a further means for manipulating meaning is nominalisation, which is the device by which an event, action or process is represented as a noun and therefore as a “thing”. according to fairclough, this strips the sentence of much meaning, since elements of agent, patient and timing are evaded, “leaving attributions of causality and responsibility unclear” (fairclough, 2001:103). in exploring the experiential values of grammar, fairclough questions whether the sentence is written in the negative or positive form. when written in the negative form it may presuppose meanings that exist outside the text. the relational value of grammatical features 4 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) focuses on how grammatical constructions simultaneously reflect and construct differential relations of power and status. sentences may be phrased in the declarative, interrogative or imperative mode. the three modes position the addressee differently and may be indicative of asymmetrical relations of power. in the declarative mode, the subject position of the speaker/ writer is that of a giver (of information) and the addressee’s position is that of a receiver. in the interrogative mode, the author is asking for information, while the addressee is positioned as the provider of information. the imperative mode is a command where the addressee is a compliant actor (fairclough, 2001:105). in addition, fairclough identifies relational and expressive modality as two further features of discourse that serve as markers of ideological construction. relational modality is an indication of the author’s social authority or “the authority of one participant in relation to another” (fairclough, 2001:105). this is expressed through modal auxiliary words such as “may”, “might”, “should” and “ought”, which indicate the degree of power that the author exercises over the addressee. expressive modality, on the other hand, refers to the author’s standing with respect to “the truth or probability of a representation of reality” (fairclough, 2001:105). pronouns and articles also influence the relational value of the text. pronouns, for example, will indicate in/out relations using words such as us/we/you/them (fairclough, 2001:106). attention should also be paid to the expressive values of grammatical features. the ideological interests that the text serves are influenced by the author’s claims to incontestable knowledge and authenticity, which are evidenced by the use of expressive modalities (fairclough, 2001:107). modal auxiliaries such as “may” indicate possibility, “must” certainty as well as obligation and “can’t” impossibility or denial. the choice of verb may indicate the author’s level of certainty and commitment to the truth imparted. for example, the writer can choose between the emphatic “is” and “are” or the more tentative forms of the verb such as “may” and “maybe”. with reference to assumptions underlying the text, fairclough argues that ideologies are generally implicit assumptions. logical connectors or conjunctions of various types such as subordinating, additive, causal, adversative and temporal conjunctions might betray underlying ideological assumptions (fairclough, 2001:109). critical discourse analysis equips the researcher with the tools to rigorously investigate how language functions to construct, transmit and reproduce social inequalities. with reference to representation of sexualities in texts, discrimination against alternate sexual orientations is pointed out and suggestions for redress are made. 3. data analysis and discussion analysis of the language in the lo textbooks reveal the experiential, relational and expressive use of language that constructs heterosexuality as the norm. the use of adjectival clauses, pronouns, modal verbs and modifiers point to ideological manipulation that privilege heterosexuality. typical of this depiction is the following excerpt from textbook a: by now you should know that the best method of contraception is to say “no” and to abstain from sex until you are ready for the responsibilities of parenthood (textbook a: 109). this extract clearly depicts sex as a fundamentally heterosexual act for the purpose of reproduction. the adjectival clause “by now you should know” enables the balance of the sentence to be perceived as conveying well-known factual information that cannot be disputed. the use of the pronoun “you” communicates that the authors make certain assumptions 5 wilmot & naidoo entrenching heterosexuality through language in south african life orientation about the outlook and nature of the reader, namely that “you” are a heterosexually orientated teenager. it also conveys the impression that the meaning contained in the sentence is a shared view that all “right-thinking” people would hold. the modal verb “should” denotes a moral obligation or duty whereas the superlative “best” constructs the moral meaning of abstinence as the ideal form of contraception. the repetition of key phrases and words in the text bolsters heteronormativity. for example, the repetition of “opposite sex” in the context of attraction serves to create the sense that opposite sex attraction is the only legitimate form of attraction. this is evident in the informational content, questions and activities in the text. in textbook a, learners are required to engage in the following group discussion: … brainstorm ideas about the things that you think: a) attract the opposite sex to you b) the opposite sex does not like about your gender c) the opposite sex finds attractive in you (textbook a: 105). the repetition of “opposite sex” reveals the ideological goal of establishing that attraction between male and female is normal and natural. the language in the imperative mode leaves little room for opposition and establishes the author as the authority and the heterosexual assumptions contained in the sentence as universal. the use of nouns, verbs and subordinating conjunctions serve the ideological goal of heteronormativity. courtship and dating are depicted as exclusively heterosexual practices. this is most pronounced in the sections of the texts related to social changes arising during adolescence and early adulthood. the authors of textbook a state in the section on late adolescence: at this stage groups tend to be loosely mixed gender groups rather than the same sex groups of early adolescence. you may begin to break away from groups and begin going out as couples (textbook a: 102). on the following page, the authors assert in a similar vein: same-sex friends are a great source of comfort and security. but one of the most important social changes to happen in adolescence is dating (textbook a: 104). it is evident that authors view sexuality as a developmental progression from same-sex friendship to heterosexual pairing off. the noun “stage” in the first sentence suggests a progressive development while the verb “tend” implies a natural disposition or inclination towards opposite-sex relations. again the use of the pronoun “you” not only addresses the reader directly but also implies that the authors make assumptions about their readership, presuming them to be heterosexual in orientation. while the first extract appears to be tentative, using gender-neutral language and the modal verb “may” which allows for exceptions, the paragraph following it makes the heterosexual orientation explicit by employing the more categorical “is”. the authors assert the value of same-sex friendship and then introduce the next sentence with the logical connector “but”, a subordinating conjunction that normalises heterosexual dating as superseding same-sex friendships. a further inference that can be drawn is that opposite-sex attraction represents a sign of maturity while same-sex affinity is associated with immaturity and impaired development. 6 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) several case studies appear in the textbooks, which establish the family as a nuclear heterosexual unit. when the learners, for example, are instructed to investigate power relations in the “de bruyn family” (textbook a: 12), the underlying assumption is of a traditional family comprising a father, mother and offspring. although the learners are encouraged to question mr de bruyn’s dictum, “the bible… says that a man is the head of the home”, they are not required to consider whether there are alternatives to this conventional family unit. in dealing with changing life roles and responsibilities, the authors also write that during the ages of 26-40: you are likely to have a permanent relationship with someone, be married and a parent. you have big financial responsibilities setting up a home and maintaining a lifestyle. you have many roles at this stage – husband or wife, parent, provider and also a son or daughter… (textbook a: 95) the apparently neutral pronoun contained in the phrase “relationship with someone” is undercut by the juxtaposition of text to visuals. the pronoun “you” creates the sense that this is a generalisable principle – that as a rule people in a permanent relationship will be married and will have children. the modal adverb “likely” appears to suggest that there is the possibility of an alternative. however, any discussion of that alternative is curtailed by the next sentence, which with the modal verb “have”, casts aside any ambivalence that might have been suggested by the former sentence and makes a bold assertion, stating the presupposition as an accomplished fact. similarly, in the discussion of changing roles and responsibilities, the authors describe early adulthood in the following terms: at this stage in your life you may find a partner and marry. this involves forming relationships with many other people as well. you have to form relationships with parentsin-law and your sisters-/brothers-in-law and other relatives (textbook a: 103). while the noun “partner” is gender neutral and the sentence may be interpreted as non-specific in terms of the sexual orientation of the parties, the text is juxtaposed with a photograph of a male-female couple locked in an embrace and the woman in a bridal gown. in the first activity, which directly addresses the issue of homosexuality, learners are required to discuss a number of discriminatory statements one of which is “gay teachers are a threat to our children” (textbook c: 26). while the authors do not appear to endorse this statement, learners might interpret it as an imperative meaning. the statement clearly mimics an oppositional rhetoric that sets gay teachers in opposition to “us” – implied by the possessive pronoun “our” – the heterosexual majority. through the modal verb “are” it is established as an incontestable fact that gay teachers represent a social danger. the word “threat” has connotations of endangerment and menace and coupled with the indefinite article “a”, which is non-specific, the reader is left to project his or her own concept of what that “threat” might constitute. this allows for any number of different forms of heterosexual anxiety to be expressed. the picture on the adjacent page reinforces the negative message. a group of protestors opposing the passing of the civil union act, which gave legal recognition to same-sex unions, hold posters with the slogans reading “homosexual marriage is an act of terrorism” and “protect traditional marriage”. no context is provided for this photograph except for an accompanying caption: “these people are protesting gay marriages” (textbook c: 27). the first poster is in the declarative mode, with a subject followed by a complement, which equates gay marriage to terrorism. thus, the statement clearly establishes heterosexuality as the hegemonic form 7 wilmot & naidoo entrenching heterosexuality through language in south african life orientation of sexuality that is under threat. the text, “protect traditional marriage”, (textbook c: 27) is written in the imperative mode and is a command to the elliptically constructed subject. the word protect, with its denotation of “shielding from danger” implies a threat to a prevailing notion of marriage. the modifier “traditional”, a customary practice handed down from one generation to the next, reinforces the sense of a hegemonic institution of marriage. the textbook, however, does not address any concerns raised by these pictures except for a question on the following page: “should gay people be allowed to marry and have children? explain your opinion” (textbook c: 28). the modal auxiliary “should” has a relational and an expressive modality. it implies either “allowing for the possibility” or having the authority to decide on behalf. this is reinforced by the verb “be allowed”, which implies that permission must be sought. this may leave learners with the impression that same-sex marriage and adoption are still legally contested issues. the sentence also sets “gay people” apart as a distinct and separate group from the dominant heterosexual group. the image of homosexuality as morally and socially transgressive however, is far more pronounced in textbook a in which the only mention of homosexuality is in the context of molestation and abuse. in the section dealing with sexual abuse, two figures who appear to be young males, describe their sexual assault by older males: boy 1: my uncle told me this monster with a knife would cut my head off if i told anyone. i was only five years old, so i believed him. boy 2: i wanted to tell my gran but i couldn’t find the right words. i was sure he would say it better than i could and so they’d believe him and not me. (textbook a: 17). later in the text, there is a very similar illustration, in which two boys describe their experiences of sexual assault by males: boy 1: i was raped by my mother’s boyfriend. he said he would set his dogs on me if i told anyone. (textbook a: 117). a further instance of sexual violation associated with homosexuality is included in a case study in textbook a which relates the experiences of a thirteen year-old boy who was molested by a male teacher while on a hiking outing (textbook a: 112). according to textbooks a and c, homosexuals are victims of abuse and discrimination. textbook a alludes to homophobia in the context of a discussion on gender-based violence: so-called “corrective” rape where lesbians are raped in the mistaken belief that it will make them change their sexual orientation (textbook a: 18). using the compound adjectival modifier “so-called”, which collocates with the phrase “mistaken belief” and the use of quotation marks, the writers challenge the notion that rape will change a lesbian’s sexual orientation. the pronouns “them” and “their”, however, have the effect of distancing the reader from lesbians, setting them apart as a group. textbook c engages more extensively with the issue of the victimisation of gay people in a detailed case study accompanied by a comprehensive written activity. the case study is based on a passage written by the mother of a gay teenage boy (daniel) and recounts the events leading up to his suicide. initially, before daniel came out, he appeared to be a “normal”, “well-adjusted” child: “he always joined in when his two older brothers played 8 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) soccer in the street. he was always considerate and kind, and made sure he helped with chores in the home” (textbook c: 27). therefore, the inference can be drawn that prior to his self-identification as gay he was a healthy, robust and socially well-adjusted boy. however, in the second paragraph, daniel undergoes a change in temperament following his “coming out”. “after that daniel seemed to change. he became quiet and moody, and spent a lot of time alone in his room” (textbook c: 27). the prepositional phrase “after that” is not merely a temporal conjunction but also implies causality, suggesting that daniel’s moodiness and isolation was brought on by his realisation of his homosexual orientation. the impression that the authors create, therefore, is that emotional disturbance and social detachment are associated with adolescent homosexuality. after a failed suicide attempt, daniel goes for counselling. the narrative continues: after three sessions with the counsellor, daniel asked me to go with him. during the fourth session, daniel admitted to me that he was gay. he confessed that he was in love with one of the grade 12 boys in his school. i was so angry and upset. i shouted at him and told him that what he was saying was shameful (textbook c: 27). while both words “admitted” and “confessed” denote acknowledgement, “confess” will also evoke the experiential connotations of sinfulness. this sense of transgression and sinfulness is reinforced by the complement “shameful”. the description of the counselling situation would appear to reinforce the notion that gay identification is associated with emotional disorder and pathology. in the excerpt below, the experiential value of over-wording functions ideologically to construct heterosexuality as normal and its opposite homosexuality as abnormal: he [the counsellor] told me that daniel was an ordinary, healthy boy in need of love and support. although i found it difficult, i tried my best to accept the way things were (textbook c: 27). the words “ordinary” and “healthy”, “love” and “support” have similar connotations. the underlying ideological meaning that the text appears to be transmitting would seem to be the notion of daniel’s “abnormality” and more broadly the abnormality of homosexuals. this sentence also suggests the possible tension between the notions of affirmation and tolerance. while the counsellor seeks to affirm daniel’s identity, the mother recalls her effort to tolerate his identity in the phrase “although i found it difficult”. this is the theme of the sentence (which occupies the topic part of the sentence), while “i tried my best to accept the way things were” is the theme (the elaboration on the topic). according to fairclough, the information contained in the theme is foregrounded as the most significant. in this instance, therefore, the mother’s personal struggle appears to be of greater importance than the son’s sexual orientation. this may have the effect of causing the reader to identify with the mother’s battle to accept her son’s orientation, an identification based on a shared sense of their common heterosexuality, rather than establishing empathy for the boy’s difficult process of establishing a functioning gay identity. the narrative proceeds to describe the victimisation that daniel experiences: people treated him cruelly. some of his friends teased him and called him names, but a group of older learners started beating him up during break… some of the older boys from school attacked him and beat him up so badly that he couldn’t walk (textbook c: 27) 9 wilmot & naidoo entrenching heterosexuality through language in south african life orientation in this extract, daniel is depicted as being downtrodden and abused. this is linguistically reinforced by placing him in the object position. in addition, the writers manipulate the experiential value of words with the links being made between: “treated him cruelly”, “teased”, “called him names”, “beating”, “attacked”, “beat” and “couldn’t walk”. this reinforces his abjection and victimisation based on his sexual orientation. “four days after a severe assault daniel commits suicide”. the mother concludes: i am so angry with the people who were so cruel to daniel. why couldn’t they just leave him alone if they didn’t like what he was? why did they have to torment him so much? (textbook c: 27) the noun phrase “what he was” can be interpreted as an acknowledgement that homosexuality is more than a sexual act but also an identity – but it can also be seen as a form of periphrasis – avoiding using the term “homosexual”. the effect of this circumlocutory device may be to create the impression that homosexuality is unspeakable and can only be verbalised with discretion and in euphemistic terms. the final two sentences are in the grammatical question mode but are rhetorical in nature. the writer uses the pronoun “they” to refer to daniel’s tormentors which positions the reader in opposition to them – representing a renunciation of the actions and attitudes of the people who victimised daniel. at the same time, however, daniel remains in the object position of the sentences, suggesting that external forces have acted upon him and he lacked personal agency. though the authors of the text are evidently sensitive to the social pressures that gay teenagers experience, and through this narrative, to heighten the reader’s awareness, the narrative fails to acknowledge the agency of homosexual people. the questions that accompany this text also appear to objectify gay people by making them the object of discussion and debate: 1. how do you feel about homosexual or gay people? 2. what stereotypical things have you heard about gay people? 3. do you think gay learners should be allowed to bring a same-sex partner to a school function such as the grade 12 dance? (textbook c: 28) each of these questions appears to indicate an underlying presupposition of gay otherness (as opposed to the heterosexual norm) on the part of the authors. the first question seems to be predicated upon the unspoken assumption that the readers of the text are heterosexual. it also appears to assert the notion that homosexuals are “different” in that they are identified as a separate group, apart from the learners. the diction is also puzzling because it seems to use the words homosexual and gay synonymously, (while the term “homosexual” is defined, the word “gay” is not explained.) the learners are also required to discuss stereotypical social meanings attached to gay people. question 4 also creates the impression of gay subordination to a hegemonic heterosexual authority. the verb “be allowed” implies that gay people require the consent or licence of heterosexual people in order to enjoy what would appear to be basic social intercourse. at best, this question could direct learners to consider adopting a more tolerant approach to gay people, but it does not go so far as to confer equal social standing on gay people. while the authors appear to have sought to advocate gay equality, it seems that they may have inadvertently intensified the differentiation. 10 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) in an accompanying textbox, the authors include the following discussion of homosexuality: homosexual feelings are not uncommon amongst teenagers. they usually last only a short time, and are a normal part of growing up. most people who have homosexual feelings while they are teenagers go on to relationships with the opposite sex. however, some people have to relate sexually to members of their own sex. no one knows why people are homosexual. no one chooses to be homosexual, and people who are homosexual can’t change the way they are (textbook c: 28). while the writers accurately relate the sexual ambivalence that many teenagers experience, they appear to suggest that the natural progression is from homosexual feelings to relationships with members of the opposite sex. in the sentence, “they usually last only a short time, and are a normal part of growing up” the writers suggest that it is typical for teenagers to outgrow same-sex attraction. the word “normal” may be interpreted in two senses: firstly, the innocuous sense of ordinarily or generally, or in the more problematic sense of well-adjusted and functioning according to accepted social standards of behaviour. the discussion of homosexuality also sets up a distinct dichotomy between “most people” who appear to “outgrow” same-sex attraction and “some people” who continue to be sexually attracted to members of their own sex, and, by inference, are stuck at a certain psychosexual developmental point. in all the discussions and activities, gay people lack visibility and voice in the texts. this may further advance the notion of gay victimisation and passivity since gay people are not seen to be actors in their own right. the lack of a gay voice in any of these texts indicates its ideological power of constraining gay voice to “assert a hegemonic heterosexual perspective” (fairclough, 2002: 113). generally, the texts assume heterosexual learner identities. gender and sexual identities are depicted as polar opposites: male/female, masculine/feminine and heterosexual/ homosexual. thus, the prevalent construction is essentially categorical in its differentiation and grouping of people. for example in textbook c, learners are required to carry out the following activity (textbook c: 105): describe a man and a woman’s life roles and responsibilities as s/he changes from when s/he is a: daughter son sister brother girlfriend boyfriend fiancée fiancé wife husband mother father grandmother grandfather in this extract, the authors establish two fundamental binaries: male/female and oppositesex attraction/same-sex attraction. this dichotomous depiction of human sexuality does not permit any variation. in this regard, it is also noteworthy that none of the textbooks deal with 11 wilmot & naidoo entrenching heterosexuality through language in south african life orientation bisexuality, intersexuality, trans-sexuality, polygamy or casual heterosexual relationships that would show the complex and variable nature of sexuality. this sense of biological predestination continues in the next paragraph headed emotional changes which states: as you grow towards adulthood, you also start to think and feel differently. adolescents… become very interested in the opposite sex (textbook b: 171). thus, the impression is created by the subordinate clause “as you grow toward adulthood”, with the pronoun “you” presupposing a general normative sexuality, that there is a single growth path which all adolescents follow: “become interested in the opposite sex”. the assumption of opposite sex attraction serves the ideological construction of heterosexuality. this is not, however, an isolated instance in textbook b. on the next page, under the heading “social changes: relationships with others” the authors assert: older adolescents make friends with the opposite sex, start having romantic relationships and start dating (textbook b: 172). this sentence is written in the declarative mode, which appears to assert the content as a universal truth. the declarative mode, as fairclough points out, can be an indicator of asymmetrical relations of power; in this instance, the authors are placed in the position of being the possessors and providers of knowledge while the readers are receivers. the modal verbs “make”, “start having” and “start dating” add to the emphatic tone. again, an affinity for the opposite sex is therefore asserted as the natural outcome of biological development and maturation. this has the effect of reinforcing the previous instances in the text where personal and physical growth is portrayed as a natural progression towards heterosexual identity. this would appear to confirm fairclough’s contention that the hegemonic group legitimates its version of reality by portraying it as natural “fact” or “common sense” to conceal the subjective, arbitrary and constructed nature of this “authorised” account of reality. in the discussion of reproduction in textbook c, heterosexual sex is also established as the norm. the authors urge the learners to develop a sound understanding of the male and female reproductive systems because “in this way, we can take responsibility for our behaviour and show understanding towards the opposite sex” (textbook c: 9). the use of the phrase “opposite sex” implies that the sexual intimacy is heterosexual and the personal pronouns “we” or “our” create a sense of inclusivity, suggesting that the dominant or in-group is heterosexual. the teacher’s guide makes this even more explicit by directing teachers to: begin the lesson by telling the learners that it is important to think about the implications of sexual relationships before becoming too involved with a member of the opposite sex (textbook c teacher guide: 34). thus teachers, in their preparations for this lesson, are predisposed to view sexual relationships only in terms of opposite-sex attraction. 4. conclusion the texts entrench heterosexuality not only through content and coverage as highlighted by hogben and waterman (1997), whatley (1992), jennings and sherwin (2007), bazzul and sykes (2011), temple (2005), macgillivray and jennings (2008), irala., urdiain and burgo (2008), suarez and balaji (2007), dalley and campbell (2006), macleod (2009) and macleod 12 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) et al. (2015) but also through the experiential, relational and expressive use of language. the language used generally normalise monogamous heterosexuality primarily for marriage and the reproduction of children. the heterosexual discursive formation is achieved through a range of semiotic features such as repetition of specific words that achieve a heterosexual meaning; adversative conjunctions; the subordination of lgbt agency through the use of grammatical structures; stating conventional moral norms as universal facts; the projection of heterosexual images and the assumption of heterosexual learner identities. the experiential, relational and expressive language of the lo textbooks plays a central role in entrenching heterosexuality, heterosexism and marginalising, inferiorising and excluding lgbt sexualities. in agreement with sunderland et al. (2001) who note the effects of gender bias in texts on learners, the heterosexual bias in the lo textbooks will have an effect on all learners’ sexual identities: it affirms heterosexual learners and not homosexual learners. the latter symbolic violence towards lgbt sexual orientations would further marginalise lgbt students. it is imperative that textbook authors not only exercise sensitivity in their language but also represent the diverse forms of sexualities accurately. the example provided by macgillivray (2008: 184) shows how this could be done. briefly this includes portraying lgbt youth in a positive light, as agents and not as hapless victims; disassociating lgbt content from unfortunate occurrences such as suicide, hiv/aids, rape and bullying; and depicting lgbt students as having multiple and complex identities. furthermore, language that acknowledges diverse sexual orientations is imperative to avoid assuming heterosexuality as the norm. this includes being mindful of linguistic choices of words that do not evoke negative experiential meanings in relation to lgbt sexualities; grammar of sentences so that they construct agency of lgbt sexual orientations and not assuming that all students and readers are heterosexuals. references bazzul, j. & sykes, h. 2011. the secret identity of a biology textbook: straight and naturally sexed. cultural studies of science education, 6, 265–286. https://doi.org/10.1007/ s11422-010-9297-z beyers, c. 2011. sexuality education in south africa: a sociocultural perspective. acta academica, 43(3), 192–209. chabilall, j. 2012. educators’ roles in developing adolescent hiv/aids knowledge and attitudes within school culture. south african journal of education, 32(1), 121–131. https:// doi.org/10.15700/saje.v32n1a524 clitheroe, f., dilley, l., falken, j. & lundall, b. 2011. oxford successful life orientation grade 10 learner’s book (caps). south africa: oup southern africa via afrika. dalley, p. & campbell, m. 2006. constructing and contesting discourses of heternormativity: an ethnographic study of youth in a francophone high school in canada. journal of language, identity, and education, 5, 11–29. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327701jlie0501_2 department of basic education (dbe). 2011. life orientation curriculum and assessment policy statement. grades 10–12. pretoria: department of basic education. fairclough, n. 2001. language and power, second edition. uk: longman. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-010-9297-z https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-010-9297-z https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v32n1a524 https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v32n1a524 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327701jlie0501_2 13 wilmot & naidoo entrenching heterosexuality through language in south african life orientation francis, d. & msibi, t. 2011. teaching about heterosexism: challenging homophobia in south africa. journal of lgbt youth, 8(2), 157–173. https://doi.org/10.1080/19361653.2011. 553713 hogben, m & waterman, c. 1997. are all your 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https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2011.645021 https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2011.645021 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15328023top2304_3 https://doi.org/10.1177/0092055x0703500303 14 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) sunderland, j., cowley, m., rahim, f., leontzakou, c. & shattuck, j. 2001. from bias in the text to teacher talk around the text: an exploration of teacher discourse and gendered foreign textbook texts. linguistics in education, 11, 251–286. https://doi.org/10.1016/ s0898-5898(00)00034-6 sunderland, j. 2012. language, gender and children’s fiction. continuum: london. temple, j. 2005. people who are different from you: heterosexism in quebec high school textbooks. canadian journal of education, 28, 271–294. https://doi.org/10.2307/4126471 whatley, m. 1992. images of gays and lesbians in sexuality and health textbooks. in k.m. harbeck (ed.). coming out of the classroom closet: gay and lesbian students, teachers and curricula. new york: harrington park. https://doi.org/10.1300/j082v22n03_08 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0898-5898(00)00034-6 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0898-5898(00)00034-6 https://doi.org/10.2307/4126471 https://doi.org/10.1300/j082v22n03_08 61 agency, resilience and innovation in overcoming educational failure abstract this study seeks to understand how a group of boys in a durban township achieved exceptional educational results despite the severe financial, social and educational constraints they faced. their high school typified the worst failings of the south african educational system, but they achieved academic success in the matriculation and at university. using resilience theory as a framework, it seeks to explore the strategies employed by the group and assesses the nature of their resilience. the group formed from a recognition that they were failing in their education. they responded by developing both individual and collective strategies to guide their learning. the strategies consisted of individual study, the debating of problems in their group, using whatever extra classes were available, locating material resources and taking on tutoring and teaching roles. the study draws on a series of interviews, focus group discussion and documentary evidence over the period 2011 to 2018. a thematic analysis of the data identifies four key themes: (1) education and society have failed us (2) responding to failure, we develop strategies and we appropriate resources (3) “learning is within our blood” and (4) our success. the only possible advantage the group enjoyed over their peers was that their families valued their education. in the process they developed confidence in their deep understanding of the subjects they studied and in their own intellectual capacity. it is argued that the principles they developed hold within them the potential for ongoing transformation of the systems that disadvantaged them. the significance of this study is that it demonstrates the need for officials, principals and teachers to value and support the capacity of young people in african contexts to achieve the fullest grasp of disciplinary knowledge. key words: resilience, agency, strategies, appropriation, african context. 1. introduction a group of boys in a south african township school that failed to support their education developed highly successful strategies for their learning. this single case explores these strategies, which demonstrated considerable resilience and innovation in the face of adversity. the study speaks to a point made by soudien (2012: 230) that, in thinking through the possibilities for moving beyond the well-known structures of racial and gendered inequality of south african crispin hemson international centre of nonviolence durban university of technology doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v36i2.6 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 36(2): 61-74 © uv/ufs http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2 62 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) society and education, we have “insufficient empirical work on what strategies successful learners develop for themselves.” to some extent these strategies can be seen as how most effectively to adjust one’s responses to survive under adverse circumstances, but it is argued that these strategies went beyond that and had the potential for wider change. the research questions that guide this study are: what pedagogical strategies enabled a group of young learners in a township school to succeed despite the failures of their schooling? to what extent do these strategies offer hope for the transformation of the educational system? the article proceeds by discussing the methodology, research site and participants, including the record of their educational progress. it then presents key themes from the analysis. finally, it considers the ways in which educators take into account the agency of learners and families in african contexts. 2. resilience and resistance this study is framed by theories of resilience. more specifically with regard to human society, ungar (2012: 387) defines resilience as referring “to the processes that individuals, families and communities use to cope, adapt and take advantage of assets when facing significant acute or chronic stress, or the compounding effect of both together.” the study focuses on a context deeply marked by the history of oppression in south africa, further, one in which the resources provided by the state are failing in their most basic of commitments, specifically with regard to education (fleisch, 2008; bloch, 2009). the adverse circumstances facing young students are the legacy of the past in terms of limitations of resources, geographical marginalisation and ongoing racial and class discrimination as well as more immediate and acute challenges, such as the impact of violence. in such a context, simply to maintain family and individual wellbeing may require innovative responses. research into resilience thus focuses on such responses of individuals and communities to stress. it can thus inform policies and practices that may work in tandem with the agency and assets of people facing adverse circumstances. thus, the first research question asks what form the resilience of this particular group took. in doing so, there is a need for the study to take into account the specific cultural context in which this resilience is being exercised, in this case, a high school in a south african township. ungar (2008: 218) proposes that “tensions between individuals and their cultures and contexts are resolved in ways that reflect highly specific relationships between aspects of resilience.” the implication for this study is that what schools may see as resilience may or may not cohere with what communities see as resilient, and that individuals may fashion forms of resilience that draw on both or neither. i had noticed how african learners who had left school were assisting those in the following year with their studies, yet little of the literature on south african schooling focuses on the resources brought to education by learners. beyond south africa, critical race theory identifies the cultural capital that communities and learners bring to schooling (yosso, 2005). within the country, fataar (2012; 2016) has drawn attention to the cultural capital of students from backgrounds of racial and economic disadvantage and has argued that schools should recognise and work with that capital. theron (2013) has further focused on how students 63 hemson agency, resilience and innovation in overcoming educational failure drew on african cultural resources to enable their resilience within an education fraught with vulnerability and argues that “theorists should respect the competency-supporting potential of africentric ways-of-being.” (theron, 2013: 536). in zimbabwe, madzima (2014) has identified the role of hunhuism, a traditional belief system, as a factor in the academic success of working-class learners. the common use of the concept of resilience, in particular in public policy, has though been criticised (diprose, 2015) for promoting resilience as a proactive adjustment of people to situations that are inherently unjust, thus failing to grasp the need in contexts of inequality to transform social and economic relations. katz (2004) argues for a distinction between reworking (acting to redistribute power and resources), resilience (taking steps to maintain supportive relationships, pursuing education) and resistance (providing alternatives that are critical of the status quo). thus deverteuil and golubchikov (2016) argue for a critical resilience that goes beyond adaptation and has the kernel of resistance. the implication for this study is whether the strategies adopted by the respondents do more than constitute successful adaptations to an unjust situation, coping rather than resisting, or whether within those strategies there is the potential for resistance. the second research question thus aims to assess whether the strategies used by this group had within them the potential for further transformation of the system and were not simply ameliorative of the situation they and their families faced. 3. the study site as a result of my familiarity with many people in the one township, which i refer to as patonville, and my work on nonviolence in education, in 2009 i was asked by a student leader (whom i refer to as sizwe) from patonville high school to run a programme on addressing violence; the programme included both high schools in the area and another closer to the city centre. a residential workshop and subsequent shorter workshops were held with the student leadership. these workshops focused on students’ experience of violence. rather than dealing with the formal curriculum, this programme aimed to develop students’ abilities to listen to each other and to reflect on their experiences. the two schools are both in a historically african township in durban. a centre of struggle against the apartheid system, the area is characterised by high levels of violence (hemson, 2015). this is an area from which, each school day, primary and secondary students travel to get to schools that parents believe will offer them a greater chance of success, a pattern typical in areas with poor schooling across south africa (karlsson, 2007; rogan, 2006). early in 2009 my godson had asked me to accompany him to register him at patonville high school. we spent about an hour there before i told him that he would have to go to another school; the general atmosphere was one of chaotic confusion, with some teachers attempting to deal with student issues, while students milled around, some entering or leaving the property. previously i had been asked by a student what they must to do get teachers to teach them, and had raised the matter with the official heading the provincial department of education, whose response was that this was one of the most difficult schools with which he had to deal. “the south african school sector can be characterised as a high cost, high participation, low quality system” (taylor, 2008). south african education is constantly being scrutinised 64 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) for explanations as to why it fails so dismally compared to education in countries with far more limited resources (fleisch, 2008; bloch, 2009; soudien, 2012: 226-230; van den berg, taylor, gustafsson, spaull & armstrong, 2011). such failure of course has its roots in the racial inequality of south african history. van den berg et al. (2011: 2) refer to the “south african school system as effectively consisting of two differently functioning sub-systems…the majority of children are located in the historically disadvantaged system, which still serves mainly black and coloured children. learners in these schools typically demonstrate low proficiency in reading, writing and numeracy.” some of worst performing schools in the subsystem of historically disadvantaged are in urban townships, as is the case in this study. despite this, there are also accounts in the literature (christie, butler & potterton, 2007; taylor, 2008) of poorly provisioned schools in this sector that have nonetheless achieved well, through effective organisation and committed teaching. the school in this study is not an example of such schools. in 2009, for example, the majority of students who wrote the final matriculation examination failed (see below). the majority of the students who attended the workshops wrote their final matriculation examination in late 2010. when sizwe told me of exceptionally strong academic results in the examination by two groups of students, a boys’ group at the one school and a girls’ group at another (both are co-educational), i decided to explore what had led to this success. in 2011, i met with members of both groups. unfortunately, the girls’ group soon dispersed physically and, as a result, it was not possible to continue the study with them. it was, however, noticeable how each group was single sex and how both groups had used similar strategies for their learning. the women’s group had named themselves imbokodo, the grinding stone, an image frequently used to refer to women’s participation in the struggle for liberation. thus, while the strategies of the boys’ group strikingly attest to the form in which they expressed their masculinity, there is nothing to suggest that these strategies were more effective because of their gender. 4. methodology this study has drawn on data collected from the four participants who were in the boys’ group, with some additional data from contacts with educational officials, an interview with two former teachers at the school and an interview with sizwe. the limited number of participants and the in-depth focus on the nature of the strategies and on the relationships that developed makes a primarily qualitative case study appropriate. supplementary data from matriculation results for the individuals, as well as the data on pass rates at the school, introduces a limited quantitative element (rule & john, 2011). there were three focus group discussions with the participants in 2011 to 2012 and a series of phone calls and occasional meetings. contact with all four has continued to the present, making it possible to track their careers after leaving school. for example, in 2017 two participants spoke at a leadership programme at durban university of technology on their role as young leaders. the data covered a wide range of issues and experiences related to their educational history; analysis of data took the form of thematic analysis (braun & clarke, 2006). this began with coding of key terms; for example, the words “fail” and “failure” were used repetitively, and further analysis led into the development of themes. 65 hemson agency, resilience and innovation in overcoming educational failure ethical clearance was obtained from durban university of technology and permission to conduct research at the school was given by the department of education. the names used for the area, the school and the participants are pseudonyms. a more complex ethical and methodological issue has been the difficulty of maintaining a research focus while also being called on to assist one or other of the group. for example, in attempting to advise on the development of a tutoring business two participants started, or trying to resolve bursary problems for another. however, by the time i met them, the group had already developed their pedagogical strategies, so my involvement did not influence that, while the additional contact has provided opportunities for further discussion. 5. the participants and their progress the research participants i have named as nkosinathi, sifiso, siyabonga and thabani. the original group had consisted of six boys, some of whom had been friends from primary school. in the course of 2009 the one member was murdered; i was told that his brother had been a criminal and that he had been mistaken for him and killed. another left the area to study elsewhere and thus could not take part in the study. the group had initially got together in early 2009 while in grade 11 to talk about their situation and to plan how to respond. at this time, for example, in the annual national assessment, sifiso had achieved the highest marks in class for mathematics – 12%. it took time for them to develop their strategies, and their final marks in 2009 were still not good. the themes below describe the specific elements of the strategies that they pursued. however, the remarkable success of these strategies is readily evident from the matriculation results they achieved: nkosinathi sifiso siyabonga thabani english 78 78 59 65 isizulu 76 77 72 79 mathematics 87 100 89 100 ad maths 87 80 physical sciences 83 98 85 96 life sciences 93 92 geography 92 90 92 engineering graphics and design 70 75 computer applications technology 50 70 life orientation 77 91 75 77 as an indication of the significance of these scores, it is worth noting that in the nationwide matriculation examinations in 2010, only 44.7% of students wrote mathematics. of these, the proportion of students who achieved a mark of 30% or more was only 47.4% the modal mark was thus below 30%. for physical sciences, the corresponding figures were 34.9% and 47.8% (department of education, 2011). 66 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) the pass rates at patonville high school in the matriculation examination over this period were as follows (department of basic education, 2013): year those writing the exam those who passed pass rate 2009 40 (est.)* 2010 146 99 67.8 2011 130 84 64.6 2012 186 88 47.3 * personal communication, current principal although it has not been possible to establish the pass rate in 2009, both the current principal (who had been a teacher at the time) and a member of the 2009 class agree that it was in the range of upper 30s to low 40s. it is noticeable then that there was a spike in the pass rate in 2010; possibly the success of this group both brought greater hope to other students and also increased teachers’ sense of possibility as to what could be achieved. according to the current principal (who had been a teacher in 2009), there was an impetus from that before the school went again into a decline. 6. the themes the analysis led to the identification of four themes drawn primarily from the data provided by the four participants in the group, while reference is made also to the other sources of data that corroborate, qualify or challenge the perspective provided by the group members. education and society have failed us in the interviews the participants constantly referred to the idea of failure – why their peers failed, how the teachers failed, how the school failed them. an initial question to the group as to why they had chosen to go to patonville high school was met with raucous laughter. the poverty of their families meant that travelling to better schools, even in the next township, was not possible. they had to deal with a school whose failings were evident. as nkosinathi, who lived next door to the school, said: there is always smoking in corridors, learners dodging, bunking, there was bunking, gambling, corruption if i may say, i knew, because i was witnessing it every day, i knew what to experience when i was going there. the pass mark was not even in my mind; i knew that no-one in phs could get an a. the group’s negative expectations were borne out in reality. they complained that teachers would not come to class, or a teacher would come and get a girl to do her hair in class. sizwe mentioned the one case: “ms x went out of the class and it was towards the june examinations, she didn’t teach us until she came back in september after we had been begging her to come back to class.” part of the problem with the school was that there had been constant conflict between student leadership and the school management. the student leadership stated that the principal was generally absent and alleged that he had also assaulted learners. in addition, the continued presence of corporal punishment had been a divisive factor, with students focusing on how to avoid this instead of how to study. however, the leaders who had focused on 67 hemson agency, resilience and innovation in overcoming educational failure opposing him had changed their tactics and advised learners not to challenge him constantly. according to sizwe: we instilled a culture of fighting against the teachers to get what we need, basically what we wanted. so basically in grade 11 most of the learners failed. afterwards when i was in grade 12 i was elected deputy class rep. …i saw that it would not help if we kept pushing on the same way, we needed to change. when i kept asking if they had had one good teacher in their final year, they were insistent that they had not. in their view, most teachers communicated a pervasive negativity about the intellectual potential of township learners and the prospects for their success. however, they were being encouraged by two or three of the teachers at the school who did not teach them, in particular those who came from townships, as opposed to those who had moved to the suburbs and had their children in formerly white schools. the two former teachers interviewed (one of whom had not took the group) saw it differently. both attributed the group’s success primarily to the support they and other teachers had provided – which would not explain why success had not been sustained after the group had left, suggesting that the teachers’ support was a response to the agency of the group. however, the group members were also keen to accentuate the obstacles they faced. the students discussed how the school had failed them in other ways. they alleged that they were buying the wrong books, and nkosinathi’s parent bought him a geography book that the teacher then borrowed. in comparison, learners from patonville who went to other schools had “the sources, the best books, study guides, everything”. two students studied computer applications technology, but the resources were inadequate: our teachers were not concerned about us, and the lack of resources. we needed computers for cat, we were sharing computers. (siyabonga) there were no saturday classes for computers. (thabani) they were also up against the scholars’ own pervasive negativity about the significance of education and the sense of having very few options in society. from the outset, though, they had insisted on seeing beyond the dismal prospects in a society with extremely high levels of youth unemployment. …what is running in most of us is i must go and work, if you have grade 12, you have got everything, you end up working in factories as a general labourer, using your physical powers, not your mental powers… people settle at a lower level, they don’t know what they want to do. (nkosinathi) we were exposed to those things at grade 10, we would go to exhibition centres, these others would go to the taxi industry. (sifiso) the murder of their group member was a further reminder of the negative expectations for them, one that spurred them to invest in education as a way out: “we say that there was no life in patonville. it keeps us going” (sifiso). in the second half of their final year, 2010, there was a bitter and prolonged national strike by teachers which further demonstrated the failings of the education system. the negative effect of this on these students, however, was very limited, as by then they were operating with very little support from teachers. 68 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) finally, the failure of their peers was a troubling issue. a persistent topic was the fate of those who were with them, but who fell behind. they would refer to people i know, who had been in their class and were now hanging around the streets, some engaging in petty crime, some working at a car wash, and mostly addicted to the drug known locally as “whoonga”. a major element, in their view, was the difficulties of studying in a second language. not only was failure to understand english a problem, the experience of struggling to speak in english in class was also humiliating. if i can’t speak freely in the class in front of so many people, that would be a problem for you, it was so hard for you to get proper marks in class. (siyabonga) most people fail that part in maths where it comes to the financial maths, the section, the interpretation of language, because they cannot understand the english, they fail. (sifiso) while nkosinathi stated that “it is painful for me when they stay behind”, siyabonga’s view was rather that he was happy to separate himself from them: “not when you are studying hard, and they are chilling. i cannot feel sorry for them.” the four central participants in this study thus emphasised their vulnerability and that of those around them, while simultaneously celebrating their agency in the face of what seemed at times overwhelming obstacles. this emphasise on the harshness of their situation is consistent with a basic point about resilience made by ungar (2018), that it takes places in contexts of adversity. responding to failure, we develop strategies and we appropriate resources the second theme explores the ways in which the group confronted the structural obstacles of society and education. they took pride in their own response to failure. in fact, the recognition of failure was itself a point to celebrate: i remember the day, it was the end of the year, it was dark, at the circle, we said, next year, i am going to show them who we are. we were motivated from the results in grade 11. we got to see that we were not doing what we could be. nkosinathi as sizwe said, “the difference is how you respond to your failure.” this is a continuing theme – in speaking recently about their careers and the possibility of going into business, sifiso said, “we are quite likely to fail, but we are not scared of that.” the decision the group took in late 2009 was to marshal their own resources and to cease waiting for the school to carry out its obligations. their basic strategy was to combine individual study with an intense group process and the relentless pursuit of resources that would aid them. the teachers had promoted the ideas of study groups and some learners had contested this. in the view of the group, the teachers did not fully understand the nature of study groups; they were a supplement to individual study, not an alternative. individual study meant reading, reading again and exploring meaning. for physical sciences, also, reading, just understand i would really read for ten times, then read it again, relate to the problems. using the material, analysing the material, ja. when you analyse it you get to think about it and then relate it to something else, that helps me. (sifiso) this emphasis on individual study suggests that the strategies drew as much on the culture of schooling as the culture of the township. the participants did not use the term 69 hemson agency, resilience and innovation in overcoming educational failure “study” for their group process, which they described as similar to what i was witnessing in the focus group discussions. from the outset, meeting with the group meant taking on their style of adjusting to their boisterous swagger, with much laughter and self-praise. this style, loud and confident, matched their description of their boisterous interchanges while arguing in their study group. it compares with what zimbabwean learners call “groupworks”, the “selfmotivated process of informally building and pooling resources” (madzima, 2014: 203). at one point the comment was made that someone watching them would think they were just playing around, but the purpose was in fact entirely serious. this was a way of engaging intellectually with problems, and arguing out the solution. i recalled that i was familiar with this pattern of interaction, not from my own history in a private boys’ school, but from being present at times when young people from the township would engage in exuberant and lengthy debate. the group had appropriated this cultural style to serve the needs of intellectual enquiry. at some point learners in this group collaborated with the girls’ group at the other high school. two points arise from this – the emphasis on group process, of being in this together, a reflection of ubuntu, and the fact that their reliance on a single-gender group did not exclude co-operation across gender. the sense of confident appropriation, of turning whatever was available to serve their purpose, pervaded the discussion. nkosinathi said: “students in black society do not have a study focus. i organised a small table, i stole it from school. i placed it in the bedroom.” the group constantly identified and pursued opportunities. they found out what assistance ngos were offering, in the way of saturday classes and made full use of them. during the teachers’ strike, the education department set up study centres and they made use of these, and found that the teaching was in fact better than they were getting at school. they also needed to overcome the limitations of the materials available to them. with no access at school to the internet, they would put their limited funds together so that one of the group could go to an internet café to download study materials. as their confidence grew, they realised that they could make some small income from tutoring learners in the “multiracial” schools and in the process get more adequate materials. they would come to us and say, help us. (sifiso) if they understood it, they did not understand it in a deeper sense, they would come with a lot of information that we did not even have, and we would use it, they could get all the information, all the sources, the best books, study guides, everything... (nkosinathi) an unintended consequence of their success was that teachers began to recognise their growing capacity for success; the maths teacher then asked them to work with his other grades. the experience of teaching served to strengthen their knowledge as it compelled them to review what they knew. however, they were critical of what they found: that teacher would make us feel embarrassed that we were not so good [in comparison to the younger learners]. when we were in grade 11 the teacher asked us to teach them, and we saw that they did not know anything. i had been feeling bad that there was someone in grade 10 who was good, but these children were all spoon-fed by their teacher, everything was just given to them. (nkosinathi). in summary, the participants employed a pragmatic range of strategies: independent study – reading and solving problems, group debates and contestation, access to better 70 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) quality materials through the internet, extra classes on offer. ungar (2018) refers resilience as not so much a trait as a process: “a human system [is] resilient if that system is engaged in a continuous process of acquiring and sustaining the resources required to function well under stress.” the systematic ways of working developed by the participants constituted such a process. this pragmatic, innovative approach grint (2008) describes as bricolage, cobbling together whatever is at hand to deal with a problem for which there is no elegant solution. put differently, south african education is a wicked problem that calls for imperfect but workable ways ahead. the participants’ success was not a result of the educational capital of their parents. the group members’ parents were educated only to a low level and they did not always understand what their sons needed at school. however, they were committed to their sons’ education and would attend parents’ meetings. this commitment to education was a key resource that the group could draw upon, even if it meant that at times that the interests of other family members were subordinated to their needs to study – such as not letting them watch soap operas because they needed quiet to study. “learning is within our blood” the respondents distinguished sharply between “cramming” and what they themselves would refer to as “deep” understanding. even those teachers who were committed to teaching would communicate the need to keep solving problems without pushing to understand theory. their enemy was “spotting” (anticipating exam questions and rehearsing how to pass them) and the pressure to get the matric pass rate up by training for the examination. thabani insisted that “we did not spot for our exams.” the basic interest is to teach learners how to get deep knowledge. most teachers teach us how to attempt questions, they don’t care if you understand or not. (siyabonga) the fact that we were discovering tricky things in mathematics... i could solve any problem because i was not cramming. there were children who got as but who could not do a simple problem. (nkosinathi) similarly, sifiso referred to a key driver as the “love of the subject”. he gave an example of how, in his first year at university, he shared a room with someone who had achieved similar results to his. however, that success had come from a school where they were “crammed”, and the student finally dropped out. van den berg et al. (2011) refer to the pressure on the system for improved results, which creates perverse incentives that prioritise passing over learning. this is a significant area as it touches on an ongoing debate about the role of the cultural capital of students from areas of disadvantage (moore & muller, 1999). according to fataar (2012), “a key conceptual challenge remains, as expressed in the work of bernstein around the commensurability of horizontal (life world) knowledge and vertical school knowledge.” in this case, while the students developed strategies that drew eclectically on school knowledge and life world knowledge, these strategies were highly effective at enabling their access into the vertical knowledge systems of education. this raises questions as to ways in which teachers may draw students’ attention to their own capacity for developing strategies for learning. 71 hemson agency, resilience and innovation in overcoming educational failure our success the strategies of the group continued past the matriculation examination and enabled them to transition into university study with ease. in a context where the proportion of first year entrants who complete their degrees after four years is only 37%, (africa check, 2016), these students excelled. three students moved to the university of kwazulu-natal, where thabani and siyabonga studied electrical engineering and nkosinathi agricultural engineering. sifiso took chemical engineering at the university of the witwatersrand. by the end of 2014, sifiso and thabani had completed successfully, while nkosinathi transferred to land surveying. only siyabonga did not complete all his modules, due largely to money problems. sifiso completed his masters with excellent results. in 2017 sifiso left his work to set up a tutorial academy that would teach youngsters in schools what they had learnt, in collaboration with thabani. however, this was a frustrating experience; when i met him at patonville high to see the work with students there, no students had yet come an hour after the appointed time, even though they were donating their time. their vision of enabling township students to break through the constraints of the system was thwarted both by the lack of resources they would have needed to make decisive impact and by the lack of commitment of young people who could not recognise the significance of what they were offering. by the end of 2018, the participants were aged roughly 25 years. thabani was an electrical engineer with the municipality and sifiso a project manager for a large industrial firm. both complained that professional life insufficiently drew on their intellectual capacities. sifiso had, for example, developed a solution for a major technical problem in the firm, which was ignored because the management had brought in an expert from the uk. nkosinathi had worked as an intern for a state department but experienced difficulties that led to his leaving; he is now actively a political organiser in patonville. siyabonga was self-employed as an electrical engineer; in early 2019 he reported that he may have secured funding to develop an innovative design that would overcome the problem of intermittent power supply from renewable systems. 7. discussion this is an account that demonstrates the potential for resilience in an education system that has continued to fail south african society. in response to the adverse circumstances that confronted them and that impeded the possibility of fruitful and rewarding lives for themselves and their families, this group developed strategies that evolved into an ongoing resilient system (ungar, 2018). this enabled effective responses within the school environment and had lasting effects that sustained them through their university careers and beyond. it is though by no means inevitable that their strategies will result in success in all cases. one example was the attempt by sifiso and thabani to develop a tutoring business based on their success. nothing ensures that others, be they potential funders or township youth, would grasp the value of such an initiative. similarly, employment has so far not matched their expectations for themselves. resilience alone does not ensure that society will shift. however, the group has an enduring sense that failure is simply one stage in a process towards success. the first research question asked what pedagogical strategies enabled success; it is clear that this group drew on a range of resources and strategies that ranged from conventional studying to a collective approach that drew on the cultural style of youngsters in their context. 72 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) the one factor that seems critical in enabling them to envisage this seems to have been the positive value their families placed on education; this had translated into a strong sense of their own agency. the four students saw their own agency and innovation as central, and certainly it must be decisive, in that it was not equalled after they left. smaller elements could have been the support provided by responsive teachers and the shift in the role of student leadership in trying to find nonviolent ways of resolving conflicts in the school. however, students leave, and their agency cannot transform a school over longer periods of time. that requires the commitment of education officials working with principals and teachers who choose to work with the resources that students bring. the study draws attention to the resources that students and their communities bring to education (fataar, 2012, 2016; yosso, 2005). this is not an argument for forming an educational curriculum based on the incursion into schooling of unstructured local knowledge. the same participants whose agency reminds us that there are resources beyond the school also remind us of their love of theory and of knowledge that must be engaged with in depth. le grange (2016) refers to reciprocal appropriation in the relationship between communities and education. similarly, chisholm (2017) brings into the view the ways in which rural communities in the mid-20th century were not simply passive recipients of a eurocentric education but sought to promote the system that would best promote what they saw as their interests. the second research question addressed the potential for the participants to achieve systemic change. in one sense, because they do not spell out the broader implications, it may seem that their approach did not go as far as resistance to the system. however, i would identify these continuing features as evidence that their approach is potentially transformative: • a consistent belief in the intellectual ability not only of themselves but of their peers. • a rejection of approaches that aim simply to get by, thus setting high standards for achievement. • a readiness to explore, innovate and maybe fail, without giving up. • an understanding of ways of using collective action to advance learning. were such principles to drive the actions of officials, principals and educators in the south african educational system, the transformative potential of this thinking would become evident. 8. conclusion from 1976 young south africans forced change in the educational system, often at the cost of much human suffering. this article argues for a recognition of the value of the contributions that young south africans can make now to education and society. most research on schooling focuses little on the commitment and intellectual capacity of young people; this study aims in part to challenge that omission. young african people have the capacity to infuse education with their agency and innovation; they need that to be recognised by educators. references africa check. 2016. how many south african students graduate? https://africacheck.org/ factsheets/factsheet-many-south-african-students-graduate/ [accessed 2 september 2018]. 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_goback 30 rurality and resilience in education: place-based partnerships and agency to moderate time and space constraints liesel ebersöhn university of pretoria ronél ferreira university of pretoria in an ongoing longitudinal intervention study (star)1 we found that, although similarities existed in the way teachers promoted resilience, rural schools (in comparison to other star case schools) took longer to implement strategies to buoy support and found it difficult to sustain such support. using rurality we wanted to understand how forces, agencies and resources act, move, pull and push when adversity and resilience are centred in a discussion. similarities in promoting resilience included prioritised needs requiring support and resource use through relationships. time, space and place were relevant as forces hampering resilience initiatives. we argue that, by means of relationships, teachers prioritised needs and were aware of available resources. as a result, place and agency (as rurality variables) were reconfigured. consequently, resilience was positively effected as the changed place-patterns and agency were significant for teachers to negotiate ongoing challenges of time, space and resource. keywords: rurality, resilience, low-resource, teachers, education, schools, place-based, partnership, agency, relationships . background and rationale teaching in deep rural settings evokes countless images of barriers, hardship and despair. from literature we know that teachers in rural schools are often scripted as underand unqualified (human sciences research council – education policy consortium, 2005). we have come to expect rural schools to have derelict buildings, not enough classrooms, broken windows, limited access to water, electricity and sanitation, and restricted access to resources such as libraries and books, information technology and specialised science laboratory equipment. ‘rural’ calls to mind isolation, backwardness and even ‘being left behind’. photographs 1 and 2 may, in fact, be exact replicas of these ideas and assumptions. photographs 1 and 2: winter 2006 at the secondary school what we describe in this article is another image that co-exists as reality with the realities referred to above. we present counter-illustrations of how teachers promote resilience in schools to balance numerous 31ebersöhn & ferreira— rurality and resilience in education ongoing adversities that are synonymous with rural life-worlds. the photographs are from a secondary school in rural mpumalanga. teachers in this school (n=10, 7 male and 3 female) and at two neighbouring primary schools (n=4, 1 male and 3 female) have been participating in an ongoing longitudinal intervention study2 to investigate the role of teachers in promoting resilience in schools in low-resource environments that face an array of chronic, cumulative risk factors. as reported elsewhere (ferreira & ebersöhn, 2011), teachers involved in the star investigation initiated and sustained programmes to counter disturbances and consequently promote resilience. however, cross-case analysis and comparison indicated that implementing support strategies took longer in rural schools and sustaining implemented support structures was more challenging. our aim with this article is to explain resilience promotion of teachers in three rural schools as a way to contribute to emerging scholarship on rurality (balfour, mitchell & moletsane, 2008). we wish to add to wellness discourses related to rural education thinking, a knowledge base that has to date hovered on the margins of local education research (nkambule, balfour & moletsane, 2011). our objectives are to describe how teachers in rural schools promote resilience, and to determine what enabled and what hindered resilience support. the question directing inquiry in this article is therefore: how can insight into teachers’ promotion of resilience in rural schools be understood to inform rurality understandings? rurality and risk teachers, schools, learners and their families are confronted with very specific challenges in south africa (chisholm, 2004; ebersöhn & eloff, 2002; harley & wedekind, 2004), and even more so in rural settings (loots, ebersöhn, ferreira & eloff, 2010). this may especially be the case as education development is stymied by past and present policies (hsrc-epc, 2005) that continue to isolate rural schools and perpetuate inequalities (howley, 1997). schools in rural settings, in particular, are challenged by severe poverty (howley & howley, 2010; maltzan, 2006; tickamyer, 2006), high levels of illiteracy and unemployment, poorly developed infrastructure, limited access to services (health, social welfare) and the looming presence of hiv and aids-related loss and grief, caretaking responsibilities and additional financial strain. ‘rural’ remains an ephemeral concept dependent on either place-based conceptions (chikoko, 2008; graham & healy, 1999) or methodological considerations (arnold, newman, gaddy & dean, 2005) that drive knowledge production in this regard. whereas we earlier alluded to some descriptors of rural, variables such as geography (closeness to city limits) and demography (median household income, proximity to education services, community patterns) are also used to explain what ‘rural’ potentially entails (coladarci, 2007). the south african ‘rural’ conversation obviously also includes deficiency scripts (bundy, 1988; moore, 1984), especially of poverty as a legacy of apartheid. cloke (2006) concedes that numerous understandings of rurality exist. coladarci (2007) explains that, because of these multiple views of rurality, a clear description of contextuality places theory and methodology in research in a space of shared understanding and facilitates transferability of findings related to rurality. as signalled in such cautions, space plays out as significant variable when contemplating rurality (halfacree, 2006). in an analytical framework we prefer viewing ‘rural’ as dynamic, shaped by a variety of systems and especially by individuals who populate the rural environment (balfour et al., 2008; graham & healy, 1999). in this we embrace the generative theory of rurality provided by balfour et al. (2008). in our interpretation of the three rural schools’ resilience initiatives, we will contemplate evidence in terms of dynamic variables posited by these scholars, namely forces (time, place and space), agencies and resources (as depicted in figure 1). although these determinants will be discussed later, we will now provide a brief overview of our understanding of these drivers. 33ebersöhn & ferreira— rurality and resilience in education of resources or a low level of resources (as is the case in rural environments) will, of course, narrow options to intercede for resilience purposes. resources can be person-based (individual strengths), familybased (household income, employment), school-based (infrastructure and expertise), community-based (institutions, services, beliefs) and society-based (policies and structures). in rrr, relationships are not only resources, but they also serve as resource hosts providing hands-on access to capacity. relationships function as a way of identifying and accessing available place-based resources. resource mobilisation is generated by being aware of risks that have to be handled; being aware of resources that are required to mitigate risk; virtually mapping relationships that could provide required resources, and maintaining relationships to sustain the use of resources. in terms of resilience, relationships constitute disks of systemic strength (like a honeycomb) that enable agency, rather than depict rural as “ever-widening circles of deficit in terms of resources and entropy” (balfour et al., 2008:102). methodology research sites and participants star (intervention research) commenced in 2003 in one primary school in an urban informal settlement community in the eastern cape. star was replicated in three additional schools between 2004 and 2006 – two urban primary schools in gauteng and a rural secondary school in mpumalanga. in a subsequent dissemination research phase, star was facilitated or partially facilitated in eight additional schools (seven primary schools – of which two were rural – and one secondary school) in three provinces of south africa since 2007. we relied on a combination of convenience and purposive sampling to identify research sites and select teachers to participate (patton, 2002). data pertaining to the three rural schools involved in star (one secondary and two primary schools) are pertinent to this article. they are all situated in a mountainous region in mpumalanga close to the swaziland border. running water, electricity and sanitation are available intermittently at the three schools. in each school, the technological vestiges of globalisation are limited to one computer available to a school principal and teachers using cellular telephones. by and large, households in the school communities are dependent on subsistence farming (productive capital). research design meta-theoretically we adopted an interpretivist stance (patton, 2002) and methodologically participatory reflection and action (pra) served as research design (chambers, 2008). the first phase of the star intervention involves the identification of current needs and challenges faced by the community, as well as the resources available in the community. next, teachers identify potential ways in which the identified challenges may be addressed by utilising existing and potential resources. this phase is followed by the identification of school-based projects to promote resilience, after which teachers plan and implement these initiatives. subsequent phases of star include monitoring and evaluation. several postgraduate students at the university of pretoria have been involved in the various phases of the intervention since 2003.3 data collection, documentation and analysis this article reports on the data collected since 2005 in the three participating rural schools in mpumalanga. we used multiple data collection and documentation strategies studying the broad star study. in this paper we predominantly make use of data resulting from observation-as-context-of-interaction (angrosino & mays de pérez, 2000), and visual data collection activities in the form of community and asset mapping (chambers, 2008), as well as photographs (patton, 2002), field notes and researcher diaries. for the broad star project, however, data has also been collected by means of pra-based intervention sessions (chambers, 2008), focus group discussions, as well as semi-structured and informal conversational individual interviews (patton, 2002). data thus generated were documented in the form of audio-visual 34 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 recordings and verbatim transcription of these recordings. by means of thematic analysis we identified initial categories, relying on colour-coded word processor methods to compare potential categories and derived suitable themes and subthemes. we adhered to the ethical guidelines of relevant departments of education for obtaining permission to conduct research. we also followed the rules of voluntary participation, confidentiality, privacy and anonymity, maintaining trust and protecting participants from harm. we employed strategies such as documenting and describing the research process in detail and depth, and remained aware of potential bias due to the differences between the participants and ourselves. we clarified our preliminary findings and conclusions with participants as part of member checking, conducted regular peer-debriefing sessions, and discussed our research among ourselves and with co-researchers and peers in the research arena (seale, 2000) to enhance trustworthiness. we focused on obtaining credible, dependable, authentic, confirmable and transferable answers, rather than generalising findings. results we start this section by describing how teachers in the three rural schools promoted resilience. we then contemplate how rurality determinants actually interacted to enable and confound resilience. although teachers promoted resilience in similar ways irrespective of site (urban/rural), we show how connectedness to place was cathartic for agency to enable resilience, and that place-embeddedness and agency were instrumental to navigate continued time, place and scarce resource barriers for resilience. supporting resilience in rural schools in their efforts to entrench resilience-promoting practices, rural schools were similar to urban schools in the needs they prioritised and use of resources through partnerships. this finding supports the contention of balfour et al. (2008) that (irrespective of locality) schools face barriers especially in low-resource, emerging-economy societies, but that the intensity of dynamics plays out as the defining characteristic in rural schools. identification and prioritisation of needs like other schools in the star project, teachers in rural schools focused on particular prioritised needs to counter the presence of vast challenges (ebersöhn & ferreira, 2011). teachers did not single out children for support, but viewed needs through a kinship lens as family-oriented needs (ebersöhn & ferreira, 2011). as found elsewhere (howley & howley, 2010; maltzan, 2006; tickamyer, 2006), the reality of poverty and need pervades images portrayed by rural teachers. the following extracts from teachers in the three schools all bare testimony to needs synonymous with living in a non-enabling, low-resource school setting: when you are talking about poverty, they (the learners and families) are very, very poor. most of our learners don’t have families. they are relying on the school. they don’t do homework. after school they go to fields to work hard. they came to school because of food. needs that were identified thus did not only relate to poverty (limited household income, unemployment), but also to health (hunger, malnutrition, family members infected or affected by hiv and aids), family circumstances (children heading households, taking care of ill parents and/or younger siblings), emotions (bereavement, anxiety, fear because of hiv and aids stigma, boredom), learning support (numeracy and literacy challenges, absence of homework support, tuition in english rather than in their mother tongues), as well as lack of information and training (high levels of illiteracy among parents, shortage of information on policies, rights and services related to welfare and health services). 35ebersöhn & ferreira— rurality and resilience in education use of resources and relationships to provide support as with other star teachers, rural-based teachers developed support strategies to address prioritised needs by targeting available resources and using partnerships. networking (murdoch, 2006), as a way to structure supportive partnerships in communities (barley & beesley, 2007; butera & humphreys costello, 2010), has a strong tradition in rural studies. the teachers based their support plans on the principle of linking existing resources to identified needs. a female teacher from the adjacent high school shared insights of schools’ collaboration by stating “around our area we are aligning the schools because there are many challenges”. she continues to explain that without such relationships “we are just sitting around this corner without communicating to others”. from a relationship-resourced resilience stance (ebersöhn, forthcoming) teachers decided which resources were required to offset a need, and then determined which existing relationships hosted these resources. teachers used relationship skills to access resources and mobilise support (buoy resilience) via acquaintances, and they linked available resources to prioritised needs by means of partnerships. relationship-resourced resilience thus indicates that teacher partnerships across school community systems were instrumental to initiate, provide and sustain support services aimed at responding to needs. to address poverty needs, teachers also targeted different ways of accessing social grants. in all star schools, teachers developed and implemented policies and structures to identify vulnerable children in classrooms and on the playground. in this regard a male teacher from the high school stated that: whatever challenges learners, we refer to her (a female teacher). it is known in the school. she is the one we are piling with so much stuff. we keep records. we think of confidentiality. we allocated a room but that roof of the counselling room went off in the storms. teachers also established a referral system to route vulnerable children and families to relevant service providers in the community (health, social welfare and grants, faith-based organisations). all three rural schools planned to establish school-based vegetable gardens to provide children and their families with food. agro-food systems for food security, as a supportive measure in rural economies, is well documented (buttel, 2006). a female teacher from the high school explained: “our area is povertystricken so we started the garden project”. likewise, a female teacher from the one primary school reported: “we wrote a letter to the principal and sgb to ask piece of land from the school to start a garden”. another female high school teacher explained how they put aside produce to be “able to give them (the learners) packs so they can eat in the holidays”. as will be discussed later, observation of vegetable gardens in all the star schools over a period of time (2003-2011) indicated constant change. concerning the accessing of social grants, the referral system established by teachers helped to address health-related needs, as networks facilitated access to health services. by addressing families’ health needs, the need for information was also partially satisfied, because teachers provided hiv and aids information. one female teacher in a primary school shared that they are “involving the department of health (by) following their programme making learners and parents aware of hiv, mentoring learners and talking to them about teenage pregnancy”. in addition, teachers implemented other resource strategies to provide information. they used friendly soccer and netball matches over weekends as an opportunity to provide information to parents, who attended as spectators, on health issues and social development grants, as evident in the following contribution by a female teacher from a primary school: we started a club and invited neighbouring schools on weekends. in afternoons the children do sports so that they are not able to do what they are not supposed to do. other teachers presented adult basic education classes after school hours to assist parents who are unable to read. language teachers in these schools shared capacity to address the challenges related to language of teaching and learning. collegial isolation is synonymous with rural education (barley, 2009). however, in the following extract from a male high school teacher it is apparent how information sharing resulted in collegial appreciation: 36 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 the educators meet regularly sharing experiences of that language of teaching and learning. this (sharing ideas on literacy) came as our project. it broke down a wall. now no-one is blaming anyone (that learners come from primary schools ill-prepared for high school). lastly, teachers in the rural schools also provided learning support, counselling and career guidance to learners: “now children can do something after school. otherwise they don’t do homework.” barriers to promoting resilience in rural schools teachers in rural schools needed more time to implement strategies and found it difficult over time to sustain support. from a rurality perspective (balfour et al., 2008), we argue that space and time forces were significant in time delays. similarly, the magnitude of scarce resources frustrated attempts to build supportive networks. pulled and pushed by space and time space and time – as rurality forces (balfour et al., 2008) – played a significant role in pulling the ruralbased teachers away from their intentions of support. as a male high school teacher expressed: “our learners are coming far to school”. as all but one of the teachers stayed outside of the community in which they taught, they departed directly after school in buses to travel home. in this regard, barley (2009) notes teachers’ lack of familiarity with rural schools and communities as a characteristic of rural education. one female high school teacher explained the necessity to access resources in order to address the challenge of space: “now we are happy. the department has given us transport.” another male teacher from a primary school stated in a matter of fact manner: “we are commuters”. thus they were not present physically after school hours to cement relationships and mobilise resources. where implementation did occur, time and space constraints meant that rural-based teachers found it difficult to invest in monitoring and evaluation functions together with partners. we could best observe the challenge of promoting resilience in the rural schools in terms of vegetable gardens. in urban star schools vegetable gardens were established within on average twelve months. vegetable gardens went through prosperous and scarce cycles depending on climate, availability of labour and seeds, expertise and tools. once teachers formed partnerships to initiate school-based vegetable gardens, produce was available in one form or another to share with children and their families. in the rural schools these patterns were quite different, as illustrated in photographs 3-6. photograph 3: may 2006 photograph 4: may 2007 37ebersöhn & ferreira— rurality and resilience in education photograph 5: october 2007 photograph 6: january 2009 teachers’ agency to support initiatives remained noticeable as observed in the vegetable garden at the rural secondary school. an extensive area on the school grounds was ploughed by a farmer in may 2006 (photograph 3); mothers weeded the garden in may 2007 (photograph 4); learners and their teacher worked in the vegetable garden during a biology class in october 2007 (photograph 5); a fence was erected around a smaller vegetable garden in april 2008 and more soil turned in the terrain of the smaller vegetable garden in january 2009 (photograph 6). teachers also obtained seeds and tools from community members in april 2009, and assembled structures around young seedlings to protect them from goats in april 2010. together with these signs of agency, indications of complexity abounded. from 2005 to 2011 the vegetable garden yielded a scant harvest with the only substantial crop produced in 2006 (photograph 3). instead of a garden green with spinach, beetroot and carrot leaves, the vegetable garden at the rural school was mostly barren, dry and rocky, with goats and chickens presiding over the landscape. maintaining a vegetable garden required the presence of teachers – either directly or indirectly. because teachers could not stay after school, they could not meet with mothers or learners who were willing to cultivate the garden, nor could they follow up and maintain relationships with partners who provided equipment. the teachers could also not implement their plan to start a much-needed irrigation system with the help of community members. time and physical presence are required in order to promote resilience. because the teachers at rural schools travelled long distances between home and school, they had limited time and were physically unable to cultivate partnerships, give feedback and affirm visions of support. because teachers could not be present in the ‘school-community space’, their managing of support initiatives suffered. they did not have time to solidify plans, observe progress and adapt flawed ideas to foster partnerships. hence, because rural teachers could not spend after-school time to strengthen and invest in relationships, partnerships could not be initiated and maintained. limited resources aggravate time and space restrictions although teachers in the rural schools managed to establish referral systems with clinics for health services and with government offices for grant applications, teachers and community members found it difficult to access these services despite the established partnerships because of scarce resource/service availability and vast distances to resources/services. in all the star schools, limited resources posed as barriers to resilience (loots et al., 2010). balfour et al. (2008) argue that the level of intensity of scarce resources in rural settings served as an added burden to teachers’ attempts to enhance resilience. similarly, resources were not only scant in rural settings, but available resources were also far away from school communities, and therefore even more difficult to access. one female primary school teacher lamented: “there’s no work. there’s nothing. there’s no life in fact. they come to school because of food”. a female high school teacher explained the isolation of the schools, learners and their families: “it’s very deep rural. it’s 38 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 a remote area”. a male primary school teacher expressed the scarcity of resources: “there is no water. water is a scarcity.” a male high school teacher shared that the roof which was blown off during seasonal storms early in a year “will be replaced at the end of this (the same) year. the department says this is what they can do”. resources to promote resilience in rural schools it is obvious that the above barriers to enabling resilience also had implications for place as a rurality force. as teachers spent many hours travelling, they were literally ‘disconnected’ with the place in which they worked. although place habits (budge in balfour et al., 2008) related to the schools in which teachers worked, the same was not the case for the school communities in which teachers worked. teachers did not feel connected to school communities and activism and engagement lacked. in the following section we demonstrate that teachers’ prioritising of needs and awareness of available resources via relationships rearranged place and agency as rurality variables, thus culminating in a positive effect on resilience. place-based connection and engagement we conjecture that place-based changes occurred when teachers’ prioritisation of needs coincided with audits on available resources in school communities. teachers were drawn into their place of work-life by the knowledge of existing resources to systematically address needs. although teachers inhabited their home-life places, their place habits regarding work-life places changed as they became engaged in efforts to promote resilience. one female high school teacher explained how she and other teachers benefited from insider, community knowledge of a fellow teacher in a primary school who came from, and was a resident of, the particular rural setting: some of those, that one, reside in the community. it made our work easier. there were things, the information she brought us that was useful. otherwise there wouldn’t be a relationship between the educators and the community. another female primary school teacher explained that: we learned that our community was poor. we learned that our community needs us. we can communicate with parents, with the community. we started a club in the community for meeting, playing (sports), sharing, discussing things. we argue that specifically habits of place, as a force of rurality (budge in balfour et al., 2008), changed in terms of teachers’ connectedness, their ideology and politics, and their activism and engagement. this notion is inherent in the following description by a male high school teacher: now actually we are not teachers. we are a community. it’s only that the springboard is the school. from the school we do in the community. they began sharing the ideologies of their school communities and became activists to mediate the effects of adversity. teachers were outspoken about their belief that school communities were able to counter needs; they asked community members whom they knew to access resources, and they actively got to know more community members in order to establish partnerships aimed at providing services. because teachers started ‘owning’ their place in the school communities, they began referring to “our problems” (male teacher in secondary school) and “our plans” (female teacher in primary school), and made remarks such as “we will not give up” (male teacher in primary school). agency and resources via place-based relationships we propose that agency as a rurality variable (balfour et al., 2008), in conjunction with reconfigured place connectivity, enabled teachers to make full use of the small number of available resources. svendsen (2009) explains how social and human capital serve as conduits to enable multifunctional centres in rural areas. thus, we posit that teachers’ agency occurred in tandem with place-based connectedness, activism and engagement (see figure 2). agency was signified in the vegetable garden example. in this 40 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 habits based on agency and place (i.e. connectedness in partnerships for resource sharing; fervent persistence in engagement; joint ideology and politics of prioritised need, and resource mobilisation) constituted the core of such force navigation. the relationship between space and time was transformed by commitment and connection to place together with agency, thus extending the use of available resources. when we view photographs 1 and 2 we see the absence of teachers who do not stay where they work, and we notice neglect that accompanies poverty. we also see the presence of engaged teachers and school community members. the images carry with them a unified ideology to confront risks, to use resources, to connect and to partner. we see teachers’ resolve and desire, and of successes involving referral systems, counselling sessions, literacy interventions, networking, social grant applications and access to health services. we observed not only harsh adversity, but also tough resilience in rural education. endnotes star (supportive teachers, assets and resilience). twelve schools and 74 teachers (11 male, 63 1. female) in three south african provinces participated. star sites and participants: twelve schools and 74 teachers (11 male, 63 female) in three south 2. african provinces. bagherpour (2010); beukes (2010); de jager (2010); dempster (2010); joubert (2010); loots (2011); 3. mccallaghan (2007); mnguni (2006); odendaal, (2006); olivier (2009). references angrosino mv & mays de pérez ka 2000. rethinking observation: from method to context. in nk denzin & ys lincoln (eds), handbook of qualitative research. 2nd ed. thousand oaks, ca: sage. arnold ml, newman jh, gaddy bb & dean cb 2005. a look at the condition of rural education research: setting a direction for future research. journal of research in rural education, 20(6):1-25. retrieved on 9 may 2011 from http://jrre.psu.edu/articles/20-6.pdf bagherpour s 2010. sustainability of psycho-social support by teachers to enhance resilience in a school. unpublished med dissertation. pretoria: university of pretoria. balfour rj, mitchell c & moletsane r 2008. troubling contexts: toward a generative theory of rurality as education research. journal of rural and community development, 3(3):95-107. barley za 2009. preparing teachers for rural appointments: lessons from the mid-continent. the rural educator, 30(3):10-15. barley za & beesley ad 2007. rural school success: what can we learn? journal of research in rural education, 22(1):1-16. beukes jm 2010. collaborative partnership trends between teachers and educational psychology researchers. unpublished med dissertation. pretoria: university of pretoria. bundy c 1988. the rise and fall of the south african peasantry. cape town: david philip. butera g & humphreys costello l 2010. growing up rural and moving toward family-school partnerships: special educators reflect on biography and place. in ka schafft & a youngblood jackson (eds), rural education for the twenty-first century. university park, pennsylvania: the pennsylvania state university press. buttel fh 2006. sustaining the unsustainable: agro-food systems and environment in the modern world. in p cloke, t marsden & ph mooney (eds), handbook of rural studies. london: sage. chambers r 2008. revolutions in development inquiry. london: earthscan. chikoko v 2008. developing teachers for rural education? reflecting on the 2nd kwazulu-natal department of education teacher development conference. perspectives in education, 26(4):74-85. chisholm l 2004. introduction. in l chisholm (ed), changing class: education and social change in postapartheid south africa. cape town: hsrc press. cloke p 2006. conceptualizing rurality. in p cloke, t marsden & ph mooney (eds), handbook of rural studies. london: sage. 41ebersöhn & ferreira— rurality and resilience in education coladarci t 2007. improving the yield of rural education research: an editor’s swan song. journal of research in rural education, 22(3):1-9. de jager cj 2010. die ontwikkeling van ’n miv & vigs-skoolplan deur onderwysers. ongepubliseerde med-verhandeling. pretoria: universiteit van pretoria. dempster gc 2010. a case study of teachers’ implementation of asset-based psychosocial support. unpublished med dissertation. pretoria: university of pretoria. ebersöhn l forthcoming. building generative theory from case work: relationship-resourced resilience. in m wissing (ed), well-being research in south africa. dordrecht, heidelberg, london, new york: springer. ebersöhn l & eloff i 2002. the black, white and grey of rainbow children’s coping with hiv & aids. perspectives in education, 20(2):77-86. ebersöhn l & ferreira r 2011. coping in an hiv/aids-dominated context: teachers promoting resilience in schools. health education research, doi:10.1093/her/cyr016:1-18. ferreira r & ebersöhn l 2011. formative evaluation of the star intervention: improving teachers’ ability to provide psychosocial support for vulnerable individuals in the school community. african journal of aids research, 10(1):63-72. graham s & healy p 1999. relational concepts of space and place: issues for planning theory and practice. european planning studies, 7(5):623-646. halfacree k 2006. ‘rural space: constructing a 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emerging voices: a report on education in south african rural communities. commissioned by the nelson mandela foundation. cape town: hsrc press. joubert m 2010. dissemination research: teachers as facilitators. unpublished med dissertation. pretoria: university of pretoria. loots mc 2011. teachers’ implementation of an asset-based intervention for school-based psychosocial support. unpublished phd dissertation. pretoria: university of pretoria. loots t, ebersöhn l, ferreira r & eloff i 2010. we find ways of getting through the hurdles: addressing barriers resourcefully as teachers. national symposium on hiv&aids and education research, 1314 september, nelson mandela metropolitan university, port elizabeth, south africa. maltzan tl 2006. rurality and higher education: implications for identity and persistence. unpublished doctoral thesis. columbus: the ohio state university. mccallaghan m 2007. die gebruik van liggaamsportrette deur opvoeders in die vervulling van hulle pastorale rol. ongepubliseerde med-verhandeling. pretoria: universiteit van pretoria. mnguni m 2006. exploring the relationship between memory work and counselling skills. unpublished med dissertation. pretoria: university of pretoria. moore m 1984. categorising space: urban-rural or core-periphery in sri-lanka. in m moore & j harris (eds), development and the rural-urban divide. london: frank cass and company limited. murdoch j 2006. networking rurality: emergent complexity in the countryside. in p cloke, t marsden & ph mooney (eds), handbook of rural studies. london: sage. 42 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 nkambule t, balfour t & moletsane r forthcoming 2011. rurality and rural education: discourses underpinning rurality and rural education research in south african post graduate education research 1994-2004. south african journal of higher education. odendaal v 2006. describing an asset-based intervention to equip educators with hiv&aids coping and support competencies. unpublished med dissertation. pretoria: university of pretoria. olivier h 2009. ’n fenomenografiese ondersoek na verhoudinge binne die bategebaseerde benadering. ongepubliseerde phd-verhandeling. pretoria: universiteit van pretoria. patton mq 2002. qualitative research and evaluation methods. 3rd ed. thousand oaks, ca: sage. seale c 2000. the quality of qualitative research. london: sage publications. svendsen glh 2009. multifunctional centres in rural areas: fabrics of social and human capital. in cme frisiras (ed), rural education in the 21st century. new york: nova science publishers. tickamyer ar 2006. rural poverty. in p cloke, t marsden & ph mooney (eds), handbook of rural studies. london: sage. 66 internet use among university students: a reason for concern? abstract international studies reveal that students have more freedom, as well as unstructured and unsupervised time, which makes them susceptible to problematic internet use (piu). although students are a risk group for piu, no evidence of local research on internet use among students could be identified. this article reports on a study on the nature and impact of internet use among students at a tertiary institution. a quantitative research approach was adopted and a survey with a group-administered questionnaire was conducted with 295 second-year students (between 18 and 25 years) registered for a module in a basic social science. respondents were recruited through convenience sampling. the nature of internet use was explored with reference to internet platforms, reasons for internet use, devices for connecting to the internet, and the locations where respondents access the internet. the impact of internet use was explored through eight constructs adopted from two screening instruments in the public domain, i.e. the internet-related addictive behaviour inventory and the problematic internet use questionnaire. the research results were calculated by means of descriptive and association statistics, specifically the chi-square and fisher’s exact tests. ethical considerations, such as informed consent and voluntary participation, were observed. the research results revealed that the respondents preferred email and chatting as internet platforms, while they used the internet mostly for extrinsic reasons, such as for assignments and socialising. online activities occurred mostly on campus and at home during the early evenings via mobile phones or laptops. the respondents scored relatively low on the constructs measuring piu. however, two constructs ‘escape from problems’ and ‘loss of control’ presented with markedly higher scores and could be flagged as potential risk areas. furthermore, association statistics indicated a statistically significant difference of some constructs with regard to gender and the romantic relationship status of respondents, which could be considered in the provision of student support services. the development and evaluation of evidence-based interventions for the prevention, treatment and management of piu are recommended. keywords: internet use; problematic internet use; internet addiction; student; young adult; tertiary institution, student support services 1. introduction globally, widespread access to the internet brought about significant benefits in areas such as research, education, online banking and shopping, communication, social networking, and news (dhok et al., 2016; young, 2004). worldwide the internet is used by over three billion users (zafar, 2016) for intrinsic reasons (recreation dr ls (stephan) geyer (corresponding author) senior lecturer, department of social work and criminology, university of pretoria, south africa. email: stephan. geyer@up.ac.za dr h (herna) hall lecturer, department of social work and criminology, university of pretoria, south africa. email: herna. hall@up.ac.za dr mp (liana) le roux senior lecturer, department of social work and criminology, university of pretoria, south africa. email: liana. leroux@up.ac.za dr g (gretel) crafford senior lecturer, department of statistics, university of pretoria, south africa. email: gretel.crafford@up.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i1.6 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(1): 66-80 © uv/ufs mailto:stephan.geyer@up.ac.za mailto:stephan.geyer@up.ac.za mailto:herna.hall@up.ac.za mailto:herna.hall@up.ac.za mailto:liana.leroux@up.ac.za mailto:liana.leroux@up.ac.za mailto:gretel.crafford@up.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.6 67 geyer, hall, le roux & crafford internet use among university students and entertainment) and extrinsic reasons (for work or learning) (adiele & olatokun, 2014). the internet has modified the way individuals think and occupies a place in most aspects of people’s lives (kapahi et al., 2013). however, the misuse of the internet is becoming an increasing problem. constant and obsessive internet use has become a particular source of interest to researchers and scholars alike, leading to what is now termed problematic internet use (piu); also used interchangeably with the terms internet addiction, internet addiction disorder (thatcher & goolam, 2005), internet abuse, pathological computer/internet use, and internet dependence (chou et al., 2005). adiele and olatokun (2014) indicate that piu occurs mostly through internet usage for intrinsic reasons. piu can be described as the excessive use of the internet, which leads to biopsychosocial problems (kapahi et al., 2013). piu is not listed as a disorder in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (dsm-5) (kardefelt-winther, 2016). nonetheless, both christakis (2010) and young (2009) state that piu is often an unrecognised disorder that leads to occupational and social dysfunction. epidemiological surveys suggest that piu is becoming a serious mental health problem. groups vulnerable to piu include children, youths, males, students, single persons, sexual minorities, middle aged females, and the less educated (kuss et al., 2013; wang et al., 2013; lin et al., 2011). the focus of this article will be on students as one of the most vulnerable populations for piu (kuss et al., 2013; young, 2009). an electronic literature search confirmed a gap in research on piu among students in south africa. the rationale for this study was thus to explore and describe the nature and impact of internet use among students studying at a south african tertiary institution in order to offer recommendations to student support services at universities for the prevention, treatment and management of piu among students. the theoretical framework underpinning this research was the biopsychosocial perspective (hereafter referred to as bps perspective). this perspective was developed by george engel to incorporate the patients’ biological, psychological and socio-cultural context to understanding the impact of disease and illness, as opposed to a narrow medical focus (hatala, 2012; carrio et al., 2004). the bps perspective allowed the researchers to consider the interrelatedness of the biological, emotional, and social impact of piu on students as young adults (between 18 and 25 years). this article reports on the results of a study with the aim to explore and describe the nature and impact of internet use among students at a south african tertiary institution. the article offers a literature review as background to the empirical study, followed by the research methods, research results, discussion, and recommendations. 2. literature review internet use/problematic internet use 2.1 nature and impact of internet use it is generally accepted that piu comprises the following components: excessive internet use, withdrawal, tolerance, and adverse consequences or negative repercussions (chakraborty et al., 2010; tao et al., 2010; weinstein & lejoyeux, 2010). excessive use describes the loss of a sense of time during the online activities or neglecting basic drives. withdrawal refers to the person experiencing tension, anxiety and/or depression when it is not possible to use the internet. tolerance refers to the urge for increased internet use to satisfy a need. individuals experiencing tolerance tend to buy more software and spend more hours online. finally, adverse consequences or negative repercussions refer to the adverse effects of piu manifesting itself in lying, poor academic performance, social isolation, or fatigue. in 68 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) the literature, it is suggested that piu can negatively influence the social, psychological, health and academic functioning of internet users. it has been found that internet users could spend up to 80 hours per week online, staying awake until the early morning hours, causing sleep deprivation (young, 2009). the fatigue caused by late night online sessions makes it difficult to concentrate during the day and leads to a deterioration in academic or occupational performance (müller et al., 2014; young, 2004). furthermore, extended hours on the computer might leave the individuals’ immune systems vulnerable (young, 2004). other studies have reported irregular sleep patterns, as well as cases of sleep apnoea and teeth grinding because of piu (weinstein & lejoyeux, 2010). in severe cases, internet users could take extreme measures, for example taking caffeine capsules or wearing adult diapers, to extend online time (young, 2009). piu could also have detrimental effects on the social and inter-personal relationships of internet users. family life suffers, as individuals who experience piu tend to be absent from communal family activities (weinstein & lejoyeux, 2010). furthermore, online affairs are a common consequence of piu. these affairs have a tendency to develop more rapidly into sexual relationships, often causing relationship problems and marital discord (young, 2004). previous studies also confirmed that pre-existing symptoms such as depression, bipolar disorder, social isolation, low self-worth, loneliness, and other comorbid disorders might worsen due to piu, thereby continuing a dysfunctional cycle (müller et al., 2014; douglas et al., 2008). teaching and assessment practices at tertiary institutions encourage the extensive use of online devices, with the unintended risk of piu. students are therefore regarded as a risk group for piu (kawa & shafi, 2015; liu, 2015). 2.2 students as a risk group for piu students are considered individuals in the developmental stage of young adulthood (louw & louw, 2009). characteristics of young adults include risk taking behaviour and greater internet use (fulmer, 2011), which could increase the likelihood of piu. students may revert to addictive behaviours to cope with the developmental challenges of young adulthood, such as identity development, meaningful and intimate relationships, peer pressure, and poor planning and decision-making (chou et al., 2005). students are most likely to use the internet for communication purposes (facebook, blogs and online chatting), online games, as well as visiting websites for video, sound and music downloading, which result in much time invested online rather than focusing on academic work (kawa & shafi, 2015; liu, 2015). the consequences include poor study habits, failing modules, incomplete assignments, and loss of concentration during lectures (douglas et al., 2008; young, 2004). several factors might contribute to piu among students. these factors include free and unlimited internet access, unstructured time, newly experienced freedom from adult supervision, full encouragement from lecturers and administrators to use the internet, and social intimidation and isolation (kawa & shafi, 2015; salehi et al. 2014). 3. research methods a quantitative research approach was considered the most relevant to explore and describe the nature and impact of internet use among students (fouché & de vos, 2011). a survey design was used (creswell, 2014) and data were collected by means of a group-administered 69 geyer, hall, le roux & crafford internet use among university students questionnaire (delport & roestenburg, 2011). the nature of the internet use was explored with reference to internet platforms, reasons for internet use, devices for connecting to the internet, and the locations where respondents access the internet. several screening instruments have been developed to diagnose piu and to determine the extent of the problem, such as the internet addictive scale (iad), the internet-related addictive behaviour inventory (irabi), and the problematic internet use questionnaire (piuq) (young, 2009; shaw & black, 2008; thatcher & goolam, 2005). in this study the impact of internet use was explored by means of eight constructs derived from two screening instruments in the public domain, i.e. irabi (brenner, 1997) and piuq (demetrovics et al., 2008). both screening instruments explore the constructs by means of a 4-point likert scale, although neither of the instruments lend themselves to the diagnosis of piu. face and content validity were confirmed before data collection. cronbach alpha coefficients were calculated to determine reliability (delport & roestenburg, 2011; pietersen & maree, 2007a). the alphas, ranged between 0.25 and 0.75 (see table 1). table 1: constructs and cronbach alpha coefficients constructs α conceptualisation escape from problems 0.69 the person avoids real life confrontation (face-to-face communication), and deals with depression and loneliness through accessing the internet (young, 2009; thatcher & goolam, 2005). introversion 0.69 the internet is used to deal with low self-esteem and to withdraw from social interaction (kapahi et al., 2013). loss of control 0.61 the internet is used for prolonged periods and the person finds it difficult to decrease the amount of internet use (demetrovics et al., 2008). negative effects 0.75 excessive internet use results in adverse effects, such as sleeping disorders, physical changes such as fatigue, weight loss, headaches or backaches, lying, and poor academic/work performance (kapahi et al., 2013; young, 2009). neglect 0.69 everyday activities and essential needs, such as household chores, work, studies, eating and interpersonal relationships, are neglected due to increased internet use (demetrovics et al., 2008). obsession 0.64 anxiety, worry and depression caused by (perceived) restrictions to access the internet (yu-chen et al., 2012). related activities1 engagement in activities related to the internet when the person is not online, such as reading internet magazines and books, as well as re-organising computer files (young, 2004) withdrawal 0.66 unpleasant feelings, such as moodiness, restlessness, irritability, and/or depression, when trying to reduce internet use (young, 2004). data analysis comprised descriptive statistics (e.g. mean, standard deviation, frequency, and percentage) to compile the demographic profile of respondents and to explore the nature of their internet use (pietersen & maree, 2007b). furthermore, association statistics were calculated to compare the reasons for internet use and the internet platforms that were used with the gender of the respondents. it should be noted that where 25% of the cells have expected counts less than 5, the fisher’s exact test results are reported as opposed to the chi-square test result (weinbach & grinnell, 2015). the mean scores of the eight constructs 70 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) exploring the impact of internet use were calculated and, similar to several international surveys among students, no strong indication of piu was detected (byun et al., 2009). in this regard, steyn (2016) noted that respondents often tend to under-report on matters of addiction even if anonymity is assured and self-report measures applied. therefore, the researchers determined whether the respondents reported a score of 3 or 4 on a 4-point likert scale on any item per construct in order to flag signs of possible piu. in addition, chi-square tests were calculated to compare the eight constructs measuring piu with gender and the romantic relationship status of the respondents respectively (weinbach & grinnell, 2015). statistical significance was determined according to p≤0.05 as is often the criterion in the social sciences (weinbach & grinnell, 2015). the study population consisted of second year students registered for a module in a basic social science that attracts students across the university (babbie, 2016). non-probability sampling, specifically convenience sampling, was used and 295 students (62.9% response rate) participated in the study (babbie, 2016). the sampling criteria included that the respondents had to be young adults between the ages of 18 and 25 years and be registered for the specific second year module (rubin & babbie, 2010). ethical considerations, such as avoidance of harm, informed consent, voluntary participation, no deception of respondents, no violation of respondents’ privacy, and maintaining confidentiality, informed the operationalisation of the empirical study (strydom, 2011). ethical clearance to conduct the study was obtained (reference number: gw20150312hs). 4. results 4.1 demographic profile the mean age of the respondents was 20.23 years (sd = 1.15) at the time of the study. more female (80.89%) than male (19.11%) respondents participated in the study and this is indicative of the gender distribution of higher education institutions in south africa (statistics southafrica, 2012). the sample comprised of mostly black african (42.81%) and white (49.66%) students with little representation from other racial groupings. most respondents indicated english (31.1%) as their home language, followed by afrikaans (28.27%) and isizulu (7.77%). characteristic of young adulthood, the majority of the respondents (55.59%) were involved in a romantic relationship (sigelman & rider, 2009). in terms of living arrangements, the largest percentage of the respondents resided with their parents/caregivers (30.17%) followed by those who lived on their own (18.64%) or in university residences (17.79%). most respondents indicated that their financial situation is either adequate (46.94%) or limited (34.35%). on average, the respondents spent three hours on the internet per session and preferred online activities in the evening between 18:00 and 22:00 (76.95%) or during the early afternoon between 12:00 and 16:00 (50.85%). 4.2 nature of internet use the nature of internet use among students was explored with reference to their preferred internet platforms, their reasons for internet use, the predominant devices used for connecting to the internet, and the locations for accessing the internet. table 2 offers an overview of the internet platforms used by respondents with reference to the frequency and total percentage. 71 geyer, hall, le roux & crafford internet use among university students table 2: internet platforms internet platform n % email 262 88.81 online chat/messaging 241 81.69 general searching 214 72.54 downloading music/movies/software 207 70.17 www (world wide web) 197 66.78 reading news 123 41.69 skype 68 23.05 file transferring 64 21.77 peer-to-peer file sharing 46 15.59 online shopping 31 10.51 online interactive games 29 9.83 newsgroups 27 9.15 online gambling 6 2.04 cybersex 3 1.02 email (88.81%) and online chat/messaging (81.69%) were the preferred internet platforms. furthermore, there was a high prevalence of general searching (72.54%), downloading (70.17%), and accessing the www (66.78%). cybersex (1.02%) and online gambling (2.04%) were the internet platforms reported to be accessed the least. table 3: reasons for internet use reasons for internet use n % assignments 281 92.25 knowledge 256 87.07 information 239 81.02 friendship 209 70.85 boredom 203 68.81 learning/educational purposes 195 66.1 general knowledge 178 60.34 excitement 66 22.37 72 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) reasons for internet use new experiences 55 18.64 well-being 41 13.9 loneliness 38 12.88 independence 29 9.83 satisfaction 24 8.14 frustration 19 6.44 facelessness/anonymity 18 6.1 isolation 16 5.42 depression 13 4.41 control 12 4.07 eroticism 10 3.39 intimacy 8 2.71 almost all the respondents indicated academic motivations, namely assignments (92.25%), knowledge (87.07%) and information (81.02%), as the predominant reasons for internet use (see table 3). a relatively large number of the respondents indicated socially related reasons for internet use, as evident in the percentages for friendship (70.85%) and boredom (68.81%). noteworthy is the comorbid conditions associated with piu, such as loneliness (12.88%), isolation (5.42%) and depression (4.41%), which had relatively low frequencies. intimacy (2.71%) and eroticism (3.39%) were almost disregarded as reasons for internet use. table 4: devices for connecting to the internet devices for connecting to the internet n % mobile/cell phone 290 98.31 laptop 235 79.66 desktop computer 224 75.93 tablet 138 46.78 as indicated in table 4, most respondents reported that they connect to the internet via their mobile phones (98.31%), followed by laptops (79.99%) and desktop computers (75.93%). the respondents had extensive access to the internet in their lived environment, namely on campus (92.88%), the home environment (83.39%), library (65.42%) and their own room (63.05%), as indicated in table 5. 73 geyer, hall, le roux & crafford internet use among university students table 5: locations for accessing the internet locations for accessing the internet n % on campus 274 92.88 home 246 83.39 library 193 65.42 my room 186 63.05 restaurants/coffee shops 109 36.95 class/lecture hall 106 35.93 internet café 42 14.24 the association statistics between internet platforms and gender indicated that the utilisation of skype as a means of internet-based communication was the only platform indicating a statistical difference between males and females (χ2 (1) = 4.22, p = 0.04). more females (25.32%) than males (12.50%) reported using skype. furthermore, statistically significant differences were identified for ‘satisfaction’ and ‘eroticism’ as reasons for internet use between males and females. more males (16.07%) than females (6.33%) indicated that they use the internet for satisfaction (fisher’s exact, p = 0.03). this tendency was also observed in terms of eroticism (fisher’s exact, p = 0.03), with more males (8.93%) than females (2.11%) indicating this aspect as a reason for internet use. 4.3 impact of internet use based on the eight constructs that were explored, table 6 offers a general overview of the impact of internet use on the respondents. table 6: impact of internet use – general overview construct n % escape from problems 211 71.53 loss of control 178 60.34 withdrawal 139 47.12 negative effects 125 42.37 obsession 100 33.90 introversion 75 25.42 neglect 52 17.63 related activities 34 11.56 a large percentage of the respondents indicated that they utilise the internet to escape from their problems (71.53%), and 60.34% indicated that they lose control at some point because of internet use. a relatively small percentage of respondents (17.63%) indicated that they 74 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) neglect important tasks and responsibilities because of their internet use. furthermore, 11.56% disclosed involvement with internet-related activities, such as reading computer magazines. apart from calculating the impact of internet use on the respondents, association statistics revealed statistically significant differences between gender and the romantic relationship status of the respondents. in table 7 the chi-square test results for the comparison of the eight constructs to the gender of respondents are outlined. table 7: impact of internet use – association according to gender construct n total % % male % female χ2 p escape from problems 293 71.67 71.43 71.73 0.002 0.96 loss of control 293 60.07 66.07 58.65 1.04 0.31 withdrawal 293 46.76 51.79 45.57 0.70 0.40 negative effects 293 42.32 44.64 41.77 0.15 0.70 obsession 293 33.45 46.43 30.38 5.24 0.02* introversion 293 25.26 25.00 25.32 0.002 0.96 neglect 293 17.41 17.86 17.30 0.01 0.92 related activities 292 11.64 10.71 11.86 0.06 0.81 * p ≤ 0.05 as evident from the data in table 7, the only construct with a significant difference between males and females related to ‘obsession’ (χ2 (1) = 5.24, p = 0.02). more males (46.43%) than females (30.38%) presented with signs of obsession with the internet and may therefore be more likely to experience negative emotional effects if they perceive that they are hindered from accessing the internet. the impact of internet use as it relates to the romantic relationship status of the respondents was also explored (see table 8). table 8: impact of internet use – association according to romantic relationship construct n total % % in romantic relationship % not in romantic relationship χ 2 p escape from problems 295 71.53 67.68 76.34 2.68 0.10 loss of control 295 60.34 54.88 67.18 4.60 0.03* withdrawal 295 47.12 48.17 45.80 0.16 0.69 negative effects 295 42.37 44.51 39.69 0.69 0.41 obsession 295 33.90 39.02 27.48 4.33 0.04* introversion 295 25.42 21.95 29.77 2.35 0.12 75 geyer, hall, le roux & crafford internet use among university students construct n total % % in romantic relationship % not in romantic relationship χ 2 p neglect 295 17.63 19.51 15.27 0.90 0.34 related activities 294 11.56 13.5 9.16 1.34 0.25 * p ≤ 0.05 respondents in a romantic relationship differed significantly in terms of the impact of internet use as it relates to ‘loss of control’ (χ2 (1) = 4.60, p = 0.03) and ‘obsession’ (χ2 (1) = 4.33, p = 0.04). respondents who were not in a romantic relationship showed a higher tendency to lose control over their internet use (67.18%), as opposed to those in a romantic relationship (54.88%). on the other hand, respondents in a romantic relationship reported a higher tendency for obsession with the internet (39.02%) than those not in a romantic relationship (27.48%). 5. discussion the vast majority of the respondents had access to the internet via their mobile phones or laptops. this reflects the global trend of widespread use of the internet (dhok et al., 2016; young, 2004). free wi-fi on university campuses is likely to make the internet more accessible to students irrespective of their financial circumstances (fisher & harrison, 2013), with the unintended consequence of risk for piu among the general student population. the internet was mostly used for extrinsic reasons (e.g. assignments, knowledge and information), with a slightly lower usage for intrinsic reasons (e.g. friendship, boredom and excitement). extrinsic reasons for internet use might explain the large number of respondents who preferred to use the internet for general searching, downloading, and surfing the www. conversely, intrinsic motivations could be linked to the respondents’ preference for internet platforms related to social and communicative purposes (e.g. online chat/messaging and e-mail). the reasons for internet use are relatively similar for males and females. however, males tend to use the internet more often for satisfaction and eroticism, whereas females tend to use skype significantly more than males. these findings correspond with research by adiele and olatokun (2014) who conducted a study on internet use among university students in nigeria. the respondents reported low scores on constructs measuring the impact of piu. this finding corresponds with studies among students in greece, india, iran and mexico (cf. khadzaei et al., 2017; capetillo-ventura & juárez-treviño, 2015; kawa & shafi, 2015; tsimtsiou et al., 2015; kalaitzaki & birtchnell, 2014; salehi et al., 2014). the present study flagged a relatively high prevalence of two constructs of piu, namely ‘escape from problems’ and ‘loss of control’. these findings could be related to free and unlimited internet access, extensive periods of free time and social isolation as factors that put students at risk for piu (kawa & shafi, 2015; salehi et al., 2014; fisher & harrison, 2013). when comparing the constructs of internet use with the romantic relationship status of the respondents, it was flagged that the students who are not in a romantic relationship tend to report “loss of control” significantly more than those in a romantic relationship do. conversely, respondents in a romantic relationship reported significantly higher on the construct “obsession” than those who are single. furthermore, males reported significantly higher on the construct 76 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) “obsession”. in this regard, chou et al. (2005) caution that students could resort to the internet as a coping mechanism to deal with the developmental challenges associated with their life stage and subsequently put the internet in the centre of their university life. the low scores related to piu that were reported by the student population in this study could be viewed against a tendency of denial and underreporting of piu, as well as the fact that piu is not yet listed in the dsm-5 (chou et al., 2005; young, 2004). however, as students are a risk group for piu, the lecturing staff and management at tertiary institutions need to accept responsibility to have policies and services in place to protect student populations who increasingly function in a “fully wired society” (lenhart et al., 2008 in christakis, 2010:2). tertiary institutions could implement a number of strategies to manage internet use among students. from a bps perspective, hatala (2012) and engel (1997) emphasise that all levels of intervention must pay attention to the biological, psychological, social and cultural domains on an equal basis. such an approach implies that university policies and services for piu should be holistic and mandate both preventative and treatment services. total abstinence, as often upheld for the treatment of substance use disorders, is not viable in the case of piu, as the internet has numerous advantages for users and has become a part of people’s daily lives (chakraborty et al., 2010). therefore, harm reduction strategies should be prioritised where the focus is on the mitigation of harm through controlled use of the internet (van wormer & davis, 2013). among the harm reduction strategies that student support services could promote is that students use a timer and log off once a certain time has lapsed, and to unsubscribe from e-mail list memberships (van wormer & davis, 2013). lin et al. (2012) and christakis (2010) advise that preventative services should specifically target vulnerable students with a comorbid diagnosis, as these students tend to use the internet as a coping mechanism. when comparing effective prevention services for both behavioural and chemical addiction, a correlation was identified in terms of the nature of interventions recommended. environmental (e.g. limited wi-fi) and classroom management programmes (e.g. blocking internet access), as well as social and life skills programmes (e.g. time management) are generally suggested (strang et al., 2012; wang et al., 2012; young, 2009). scholars agree that cognitive behavioural therapy (e.g. recognising and managing triggers for extensive internet use), behavioural strategies (e.g. assertion training, rehearsal and relaxation training), and brief interventions could be effective in teaching students to manage online behaviour (strang et al., 2012; young, 2009; chou et al., 2005; watson, 2005). groupbased interventions, such as support or peer self-help groups, are also recommended (zafar, 2016:46-47; strang et al., 2012; chakraborty et al., 2010). student support services can make use of awareness campaigns and seminars targeted at management, lecturing staff and students (chou et al., 2005; young, 2004). all tertiary institutions should take responsibility to create a conducive environment for the student population and the above-mentioned strategies could contribute towards such an environment. such a commitment is embedded in goals 3 and 4 of the sustainable development goals to which south africa is a signatory, namely “ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages” and “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education … for all” (united nations, 2015:14). 77 geyer, hall, le roux & crafford internet use among university students 6. recommendations this research was an exploratory study conducted at one tertiary institution and therefore the results cannot be generalised to the south african student population at large. nonetheless, the following recommendations could be of value for universities countrywide: • the fact that extensive internet use could lead to piu and that students are a risk group should be acknowledged, especially as piu is a hidden variant of addiction. more specifically, lecturing staff and students should be aware of the unintended consequences of the increasing trend towards online teaching and assessment practices. • although the current study indicated that the impact of internet use on students is relatively low, the higher education sector should not be complacent about the phenomenon, but use the opportunity to establish prevention and early intervention services. • student support services should be holistic and address the biopsychosocial impact of piu on students, while being sensitive to gender and cultural differences. • all role players, that is the students as service users, management, lecturing staff and support services, should be involved in a team approach to ensure partnerships and participation of the whole university community. the role players could provide their inputs to assess needs, design interventions, and monitor and evaluate service delivery. • ideally, a national survey of internet use should be undertaken to gauge internet use among students in the country. this information could inform the development and evaluation of potential evidence-based interventions relevant to the local realities of the country’s diverse student population. acknowledgement the authors acknowledge the contribution of the following fieldworkers: l.c. lebese, r. mackey, g. makhubela, m.k. manaka, n.c. mandlake, k.r. mangoale, e. mavasa, p.l.c. mbatha, s. mulder, l. robbertse, h. rossouw, k.c. sebaka, e.j.m. sharp and b.l. terblanche. 7. references adiele, i. & olatokun, w. 2014. prevalence and determinants of internet addiction among adolescents. computers in human behavior, 31, 100-110. 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(footnotes) 1 only one item, therefore α could not be calculated. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1360-0443.2009.02828.x https://doi.org/10.1177/008124630503500409 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40596-014-0273-x https://doi.org/10.3109/16066359.2012.690053 https://doi.org/10.3109/00952990.2010.491880 https://doi.org/10.3109/00952990.2010.491880 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10879-009-9120-x https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764204270278 pie 33(2) june 2015.indb perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 11 a discourse of disconnect: young people from the eastern cape talk about the failure of adult communications to provide habitable sexual subject positions nicola jearey-graham catriona macleod face-to-face adult communication with young people about sexuality is, for the most part, assigned to two main groups of people: educators tasked with teaching schoolbased sexuality education that is provided as part of the compulsory life orientation (lo) learning area, and parents. in this paper, we report on a study conducted with further education and training college students in an eastern cape town. using a discursive psychology lens, we analysed data from, first, a written question on what participants remember being taught about sexuality in lo classes and, second, focus group discussions held with mixed and same-sex groups. discussions were structured around the sexualities of high school learners and the lo sexuality education that participants received at high school. we highlight participants’ common deployment of a ‘discourse of disconnect’ in their talk. in this discourse, the messages of ‘risk’ and ‘responsibility’ contained in adult face-to-face communications, by both parents and lo teachers, are depicted as being delivered through inadequate or nonrelational styles of communication, and as largely irrelevant to participants’ lives. neither of these sources of communication was seen as understanding the realities of youth sexualities or as creating habitable or performable sexual subject positions. the dominance of this ‘discourse of disconnect’ has implications for how sexuality education and parent communication interventions are conducted. key words: sexuality education; parent communication; sexuality; youth; discourse analysis; subject positions jearey-graham, nicola critical studies in sexualities and reproduction research programme, rhodes university e-mail: nicola.graham@ru.ac.za macleod, catriona critical studies in sexualities and reproduction research programme, rhodes university e-mail: c.macleod@ru.ac.za tel: +27 (46) 603 7328 perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 12 introduction school-based sexuality education, provided as part of the compulsory life orientation (lo) learning area, is the most widely implemented sexuality intervention in south africa. one of the stated goals of this intervention is to ‘guide learners to make informed and responsible choices about their own health and well-being and the health and well-being of others’ (department of basic education, 2011: 9, emphasis added). broad topics outlined by the department of basic education (2011) in its curriculum statement for grades 10 to 12 include puberty, stis (incorporating hiv/ aids), teenage pregnancies, violence, gender inequality, power relations, sexual abuse and harassment, gender ‘differences’ in terms of reproduction and roles in the community, behaviours that could lead to sexual intercourse, values and skills relating to decision making regarding sexuality, and peer pressure. officially, lo should be offered for two hours per week, with the ‘development of the self in society’ module that incorporates sexuality education taking up 8 to 11 hours over the year, depending on the grade (department of basic education, 2011). other than sexuality education teachers, parents are a primary adult1 source of information and values about sexuality, through both implicit and explicit communications (wilbraham, 2008). in light of this, attempts have been made to help parents to engage in positive and frank discussions with their children through national programmes such as lovelife and soul city (wilbraham, 2008), as well as through more locally based interventions (bell, bhana, petersen, mckay, gibbons, bannon & amatya, 2008; phetla, busza, hargreaves, pronyk, kim, morison, watts & porter, 2008). in this paper, we discuss how participants from a further education and training college spoke about these two (potential) main adult sources of input. focus group discussions were conducted in which high school learner sexualities and participants’ past high school lo sexuality education were discussed. participants’ talk revealed what we have called a ‘discourse of disconnect,’ which coheres around a construction of: (a) sexuality education as conducted primarily in a non-relational manner and as futile in terms of changing behaviour; (b) parents as inadequate in communicating about, or responding to, sexual issues; (c) cultural barriers to, and personal discomfort concerning, communication about sex; and (d) negative consequences as a result of inadequate parental communication. as such, there appears to be a disconnection between what young people see as habitable and performable sexual subject positions and the responsible sexual subject position that many sexuality classes and parents attempt to create. 1. in this paper, we concentrate on the responses of participants to adult communication about sexuality. peers also feature as a source of information and normalisation around particular sexual practices and relations. peer pressure and peer normalisation are the subject of another paper based on this study (macleod & jearey-graham, under review). a discourse of disconnect: young people from the eastern cape talk about the failure of adult communications to provide habitable sexual subject positions nicola jearey-graham & catriona macleod 13 sexuality education school-based sexuality education is well entrenched in the western world (although models differ significantly – luker, 2006). in line with this trend, and in an attempt to intervene in the high levels of hiv infections, early reproduction and inequitable sexual practices, sexuality education modules were introduced throughout south africa in the late 1990s as part of the lo learning area (francis, 2011). despite the wide-spread nature of school-based sexuality education, the effectiveness of these programmes is not always clear. evaluations can be problematic as teasing out the effects specific to these programmes (as opposed to other social influences) is a difficult task. nevertheless, kirby’s (2011) review of 87 studies of comprehensive sexuality education programmes (i.e. programmes that promote more than abstinence as a protective factor) occurring both within and outside schools, from 16 countries, showed modest but positive effects in increasing protective factors and reducing risk factors for hiv. kirby’s (2011) review outlines a number of key aspects of successful programmes. pertinent to this study is the need for ‘participatory teaching methods that actively involves students and help(s) them internalize and integrate information’ (kirby, 2011: 17), and the need to address perceived sexual norms and personal values. we shall return to these in the conclusion of this paper. evaluations of lo sexuality education modules in south africa have been scant and lacking in rigour (mukoma & flisher, 2008). those that do exist point to some positive outcomes with regard to improved knowledge, but there is no evidence of behavioural change (mukoma & flisher, 2008). apart from the evaluations of knowledge and behaviour changes resulting from sexuality education programmes, critical analysis of school-based sexuality education is growing both in south africa (e.g. francis, 2010; 2011; macleod, 2009; 2011) and elsewhere (e.g. abel & fitzgerald, 2006; allen, 2007a; 2007b; fields, 2008; luker, 2006). pertinent to this paper are critiques concerning the primary emphasis on risk and responsibility and the didactic manner in which many classes are delivered. with adolescence being constructed as a time of ‘stormy transition’ (fields, 2008; macleod, 2011), the unexamined assumption undergirding many sexuality education programmes is that youth sexuality needs to be disciplined, with the individual adolescent being taught how to exercise ‘responsible’ choices (kelly, 2001; macleod, 2011). indeed, as indicated above, the department of basic education (2011: 9) places ‘responsible choices’ at the heart of the lo curriculum. in line with the abcd approach, responsible choices are understood as, optimally, abstaining from sex (a) and delaying sexual debut (d). if this is not possible, responsibility shifts to being faithful to one’s partner (b) and using a condom (c). as such, attempts are made to ‘responsibilise’ individual young people (kelly, 2001) with self-management around sexuality being the core theme, often with little acknowledgement of the societal, perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 14 gendered and structural factors that construct and constrain sexual behaviour and ‘choices’ (macleod, 2009). responsibilisation is premised upon, and is presented alongside, constructions of youth-at-risk. sexuality education programmes are largely dominated by motifs of risk associated with disease, danger and violence both in south africa (macleod, 2009) and further afield (fields, 2008). this emphasis on the risks of youthful sex focuses attention on individual (mis)behaviour and the self-regulation in which young people need to engage in order to avoid these risks. these ‘risk’ and ‘responsibility’ messages are often provided in a didactic, non-interactive manner in south african classrooms, with transmission teaching methodologies being the mainstay of the interactions (francis, 2010; rooth, 2005). this has been found to be related to large class sizes, under-trained teachers (rooth, 2005), teachers’ anxiety and embarrassment in teaching sexuality, teachers’ fear of being accused of encouraging sex among learners, and teachers’ wish to keep a professional distance from learners (francis, 2010). the use of the ‘chalk and talk’ model leads, however, to low learner engagement and boredom (rooth, 2005). parental communication about sex wilbraham (2008) discusses how the ‘gold standard’ of child-rearing practices, based on western cultural models, includes open and frank discussion between parents and children about key life issues, including sexuality. such discussions are understood to be a protective factor against hiv. however, research findings indicate that both in south africa and other sub-saharan countries, parental communication about sex is often authoritarian and uni-directional, and contains vague warnings about the dangers of sex or the need to avoid sex (bastien, kajula & muhwezi, 2011; macphail & campbell, 2001; paruk, petersen, bhana, bell & mckay, 2005), parents themselves have reported feeling confused about communicating with their children about sex for a variety of reasons: intergenerational communication about sex is seen as the responsibility of elders (not parents) (paruk et al., 2005); it is feared that these discussions will awaken sexual curiosity and initiate sexual engagement (paruk et al., 2005); and sexual intercourse, contraception, sexual harassment and molestation are seen as taboo subjects in families (madu, kropiunigg & weckenmann, 2002). as indicated by wilbraham (2008: 102), parental communications about sex ‘are not simple, rational, individual choices … (but) are negotiated in complex, interactive contexts of multiple voices, positions and audiences.’ for example, a sense of disempowerment among black parents living in impoverished settings means that they tend to resort to punitive parenting methods; parental absence from home due to employment or other reasons often restricts opportunities for communication; and any parental communication about sexuality that is instituted is usually restricted a discourse of disconnect: young people from the eastern cape talk about the failure of adult communications to provide habitable sexual subject positions nicola jearey-graham & catriona macleod 15 to negative warnings to avoid sex (paruk et al., 2005). these warnings are directed mostly at daughters rather than sons (paruk et al., 2005). about the study the research questions that animated this study were: 1. what discourses do young people from an fet college deploy when talking about the sexualities of high school learners and the sexuality education lessons they received when they were at high school? 2. what interpretative repertoires were drawn on in the deployment of these discourses? 3. what are the implications for various sexual subject positions in the deployment of these discourses? in this paper, we talk to the discourse of disconnect that emerged in the data, animated by a number of interpretative resources. as suggested by these questions, the theoretical foundation of this study is discursive psychology, in which prevailing meanings are seen as being simultaneously enabled and constrained through discursive resources (potter & wetherell, 1987; taylor & littleton, 2006). in this paper, we understand ‘discursive resources’ as consisting of both broader discourses and more specific interpretative repertoires (equivalent to what taylor and littleton [2006: 35] call ‘wider discursive resources’ and ‘local discursive resources’). broad discourses refer to wide-ranging, commonly used systems of meaning which constitute objects of a particular type and create subject positions for people to occupy. interpretative repertoires are more circumscribed ‘culturally familiar … line(s) of argument’ (wetherell, 1998: 401). discourses are understood as being recited through the use of specific interpretative repertoires. discursive resources create subject positions, which are then available for speakers to take up, perform, or resist. the idea that subject positions are both ‘conferred from above’ in a top-down fashion by available discursive resources, and also agentively taken up or resisted in a bottom-up fashion, is commonplace in current narrative and discursive canons (e.g., davies & harré, 1990; taylor & littleton, 2006; wetherell, 1998). certain discursive resources (e.g. the discourse of disconnect found in our analysis) could provide possibilities for resisting subject positions that are conferred from above (e.g. the ‘responsible’ sexual subject). focus groups were chosen as the vehicle for data generation for several reasons: the interactive, social nature of focus group discussions provides insight into the co-construction of social realities (frith, 2000); authors suggest that disclosures about sensitive topics such as sexuality are enhanced in a group in a non-threatening way (frith, 2000; kitzinger, 1995); and cultural divides could be bridged through group dynamics (e.g., group members explaining unfamiliar vocabulary and idioms, and perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 16 jointly interpreting or explaining the interviewer’s questions) (frith, 2000; morgan, 2002). this latter aspect was particularly important in this project given the major differences between the first author (a middle-aged, white, english-speaking woman) who collected the data and the participants (young, black, isixhosa-speaking men and women). interestingly, participants indicated at the end of the discussions that this very difference appeared to have made it easier to talk about sex (there was no sense of comparison or judgement, and the usual cultural imperative in terms of addressing elders with respect did not apply). participants were recruited from the student body at an fet college in the eastern cape. fet students were decided on because, as slightly older people, they would be able to talk about the sexualities of high school learners with some degree of freedom, insight and reflexivity and, as such, could function as expert informants. although there are limitations to this in that participants were not asked to talk to their immediate experiences, we felt that, as most were newly graduated from school, they would have sufficiently close experience to provide in-depth and trustworthy data. in addition, we avoided the ethical difficulties of directly asking school learners or minors to share personal stories about their own sexualities and lo lessons. students who had completed grade 12 at school were recruited from the higher educational programmes (level n4 and n5). the first author recruited participants by going into classes to explain the research in detail (including that we would not be asking them to divulge personal information). it was stressed that participation was voluntary and that participants could withdraw at any time during the discussions. all participants signed informed consent forms. focus group discussions took place during free periods. this fet college student body has a sex ratio of approximately three females to one male. although we were able to improve on this ratio somewhat in the participant mix, male voices were still under-represented with 24 females and 14 males participating. the age range was 19 to 25 years with an average age of 21 years. all but three of the participants had attended former det high schools (schools designated for black african learners during apartheid). six initial focus groups were conducted: two with both women and men (marked in the extracts below as groups 1 and 2), two with women only (groups 3 and 4), and two with men only (groups 5 and 6). focus group discussion questions were formulated around: first, nine ‘post-secrets’ containing a sexual theme generated by grade 9 learners as part of a previous project;2 second, participants’ views on the sexual and gendered behaviours of high school learners; thirdly, their experiences of school-based sexuality education programmes; and, lastly, from where else they learnt about sex and gendered behaviours. 2. these ‘post-secrets’ served as stimulus materials in a similar fashion to vignettes. they were generated as part of a writing project that was run by a university journalism and media studies department. a discourse of disconnect: young people from the eastern cape talk about the failure of adult communications to provide habitable sexual subject positions nicola jearey-graham & catriona macleod 17 all participants were then invited to two mixed-gender follow-up groups (groups 7 and 8). a total of 25 participants attended the two follow-up groups. the follow-up groups explored in more detail some of the themes that emerged from the initial groups. furthermore, at the start of the follow-up interviews, participants were asked to write down what they remember being taught about sex and sexuality during lo classes in their high schools. discussions in both the initial and follow-up focus groups lasted between 60 and 90 minutes. although the research did not specifically ask about parental or peer communication, these topics came up frequently and spontaneously in the discussions (peer communication is the subject of a different paper based on this research). interviews were conducted by the first author in english. although the participants’ first language was isixhosa, the medium of instruction of the fet college is english. nevertheless, the voices of participants who were more fluent in english would have been favoured. feedback from participants showed that, while using a second language made the conversations more difficult for some, others felt freer to speak about sex in english. ethical clearance for this project was given by the research projects and ethics review committee (rperc) of the psychology department at rhodes university. permission to recruit and conduct focus groups was obtained from the campus manager and the higher education programmes deputy of the fet college. as indicated, informed consent procedures were followed with participants, including permission to audioand video-tape the sessions (the latter to help identify speakers in the transcriptions). in addition, containment protocols were put in place in the event of distress, and one part of the consent form included the commitment not to divulge personal information of group members to others outside the group. audio recordings were initially transcribed by an independent assistant fluent in both isixhosa and english. the transcriptions were checked by the first author against both the video and audio recordings. pseudonyms were used throughout. all data were coded using a process of immersion, sorting and sifting as we sought for common linguistic patterns and themes that cohere around interpretative repertoires and discourses both across and within interviews (potter & wetherell, 1987; taylor & littleton, 2006). background: participants’ rendition of what is taught in sexuality education at the start of the two follow-up groups, 24 participants answered the written question, what were you taught about sex and sexuality during life orientation classes in your high school? this question taps into what participants remember being taught, and speaks to the information that they retained from these classes. nineteen perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 18 participants mentioned being taught about safe sex practices, usually around the abcd (abstain, be faithful, condomise, delay sexual initiation) model. the risks or dangers of sex, specifically stis and pregnancy, were, according to participants, spelt out clearly. with this as background, teachers then reportedly spent dedicated time teaching the participants how to either avoid sex or, as a last resort, to practice it ‘safely’. six participants (five of whom were women) mentioned being taught that ‘sex is for marriage people’ (nobuhle) or that ‘sex is not something you can do at an early age’ (phumeza). thus, participants’ memories of lo sexuality education place such interventions directly within the risk and responsibility model. the discourse of disconnect participants frequently deployed what we have called a ‘discourse of disconnect’ when talking about adult-centred sexuality communications. this was evidenced both in how participants spoke about the manner in which sexuality education classes were delivered or parents spoke about sex, and in how the messages were taken up in participants’ lives. the interpretative repertoires that build up a discourse of disconnect centre on: (1) non-relational instruction in sexuality education; (2) the futility of sexuality education in creating the responsible sexual subject; (3) the inadequacy of parents in communicating about sex; (4) barriers to parent–child sexual communication; and (5) negative consequences resulting from inadequate parental communication. these are discussed below. all names are pseudonyms. ‘they all preached’: an interpretative repertoire of nonrelational instruction in sexuality education participants spoke of how the ‘risk and responsibility’ messages referred to above were delivered in non-relational ways. for example: group 5 (men) researcher: what kind of things did they, did they teach you ((in sex education))? sipho: aah, abstinence [andile: stis] they all preached abstinence /researcher: mm/ ja andile: and all that stis, hiv in this extract, the use of the word ‘preached’ constructs the teacher as a moral authority who instructed learners in the ‘correct’ way to conduct themselves sexually. such instruction was reportedly delivered in the style of a sermon, where there was no discussion, debate or interaction and where the learner was expected to take on a passive and unquestioning position. a lack of relational engagement between the teacher and the learners is constructed as problematic in the extract below, as the participants indicate a desire for more in-depth discussions about sexuality: a discourse of disconnect: young people from the eastern cape talk about the failure of adult communications to provide habitable sexual subject positions nicola jearey-graham & catriona macleod 19 group 1(mixed)3 bonani (m3 ): yes, they just don’t pay much attention [to talking about sex], they don’t go deeper [fezeka (w): go deeper] = researcher: they don’t go deeper in class /bonani: yes/ when you say they don’t go deeper what do you mean? buyiswa (w): they just say if you sleep with a boy you will get pregnant or you will get aids /fezeka (w): ja, ja/ = researcher: so, so what do you think they should be saying? fezeka (w): like straight examples, straight talk it out the way it is /woman: stories/ ja = researcher: so they should give stories= woman (unidentified): ja stories and ask questions these participants state that teachers just give the standard ‘scare’ messages about sex, rather than ‘going deeper’. participants agree they wanted classes in which there was varied input regarding sexuality, with real-life ‘stories,’ ‘straight talk’ and ‘asking questions,’ which engage learners on an interactive level. furthermore, fezeka’s request for ‘straight talk it out the way it is’ questions the plausibility of the ‘scare’ messages, as such messages are not considered to be ‘straight talk’ about the realities and complexities of sexuality. ‘we don’t do it in outside life’: an interpretative repertoire of the futility of sexuality education participants spoke about how the messages received in sexuality education classes had little bearing on their behaviour. the participant below talks about how discussions about responsible behaviour have had little impact: group 6 (men) fikile: hayi,((no)) maybe you see now there’s err a government policy whereby the kids need to know things at the early stages /r: mm/. but the rate of pregnancy does not drop /r: ok/ even now they give free condoms, they give education in schools and everything. but the rate of peer pressure does not drop it’s still there. pregnancy at school /r: mm/ they do get pregnant, it’s been years talking about abstaining, using condoms and everything … we do it as a subject, life orientation they taught us that. we just do it as any other subject /r: mm/ we write tests, don’t do, which are the best ways to abstain /r: mm/. we studied them, we know it’s in our mind /lifa: ja/ but we don’t do it in outside life /r:mm/. 3. in a mixed-sex group, participants’ pseudonyms are followed by an indication of whether it is a man or woman speaking. perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 20 this participant constructs sexuality education as being disconnected from ‘outside life’. knowledge of safe sexual practices, learnt in the classroom and studied ‘as any other subject,’ does not translate into changed sexual behaviours as ‘the rate of pregnancy’ and ‘the rate of peer pressure does not drop’. the facts learnt in the classroom are spoken of as largely irrelevant to their lives, particularly in the context of ‘peer pressure’. participants spoke repeatedly in the group discussions of ‘peer pressure’ which, as discussed more fully in jearey-graham (2014), operates through emotional and physical inclusion or exclusion from the group, as well as through the peer normalisation of sex. we see in the extract below how peer and media normalisation of sex operate to counter messages received through sexuality education: group 3 (women) researcher:how did you find your sex ed lessons in high school, how was it? … phumeza: it was, it was helpful /r: ok/ nandipha: just for the knowledge because ((but)) we don’t practice it /phumeza: yes/ later… lindelwa: to be honest i don’t think u::m (.) the ((sexuality education)) lessons will be useful /r: ok/ u::m because of peer pressure (.) ja because like always there will be like a person coming to you or like you will be over hearing or watching tv, things that happen. so obviously you will want to do that thing group 2 (mixed) researcher: in the sex ed that you had in school, what kind of messages are you given there around sex? mcebisi (m): abc menzi (m): that we must condomise, abc researcher: ok you must condomise, abstain be faithful condomise /yes/ do you think, do people follow that? nobuhle (w): no /no/, they just wanna have experience, you can’t just sit back and do nothing while many participants, including phumeza, expressed appreciation for the knowledge that they received during sexuality education lessons, the goal of such lessons to ‘responsibilise’ learners was constructed as unrealistic. peer or social representations of sex are seen as providing much more performable sexual subject positions for learners than sexuality education classes. in particular in the above extracts, these representations provide the platform through which the ‘experience’ a discourse of disconnect: young people from the eastern cape talk about the failure of adult communications to provide habitable sexual subject positions nicola jearey-graham & catriona macleod 21 of sex can be explored (‘you will want to do that thing;’ ‘they just wanna have experience’). see also jearey-graham (2014) in which it is shown how peer pressure and peer normalisation are associated with promoting gendered sexualities. an interpretative repertoire of inadequate parental responses participants generally constructed their parents as responding inadequately to their sexuality through, first, providing either insufficient or moralistic information and, second, not accepting them as sexually active people. it is notable that participants mostly spoke about their mothers as inadequate in this regard (thus bringing a gendered aspect into the assumption of responsibility around parental communication). in addition, all the women who recited this particular repertoire revealed at some stage in the interviews that they had been pregnant while at school: group 1(mixed) nokukhanya (w): my mother never told me about stuff like that ((menstruation)), they never knew that i was on the stage ((of puberty)) because i was young and naughty. … so i told this other teacher who was giving me pads, so i got to my mother at home i was like, i was just showing her this. and always she used to just buy pads and give, she does not talk. /many voices/ zanele (w): i was just told do not sleep with boys = buyiswa (w): when you’re growing boobs … /r: mm/ they say ubanangaba ((that)) you are a woman. now that you are a woman, you must behave and then kengoku ((now)) you must stay out i-sexual activities uyabona ((you see)). they, they won’t say ubana ((that)) (.) they don’t advise you in a proper way /r: mm/ how to become a woman uyabona ((you see)) /r: mm/ with morals and values = nokukhanya talks of her mother’s lack of communication as problematic. both before and after her onset of menstruation, her mother did not talk about ‘stuff like that’ (she mitigates her mother’s lack of knowledge or engagement with her growing physical maturity, however, by indicating that she was ‘young and naughty’). in addition to a lack of communication, participants bemoaned the kind of communication they received. we see in the extracts above how participants indicate that they were enjoined not to have sex and to ‘behave’. this, in the words of buyiswa, is in contrast to advice given ‘in a proper way’. the inadequacy of parents’ responses extended beyond inadequate or no talk about sexual matters, but also to their reactions to participants’ having intimate partners. group 1(mixed) perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 22 buyiswa (w): i would like my parents to say to me … you must introduce your man to your family uyabona ((you see)). because if i come with my boyfriend, mother will (slap) me uyabona. /women laugh/ she will say ubana ((that)) what’s this ntoni ntoni ((and so on)) [lihle (w): you are disrespecting] you’re disrespectful /woman: ja/ whereas we need their support /r: mm/ from them. group 1(mixed) nokukhanya (w): they ((adults)) say now that you’re having a boyfriend you lantoza ((how do i say it)) = fezeka (w): you become cheeky= bonani (m): back to this cheeky /researcher: alright/ if a girl has broken even a cup, ‘it is because of this boyfriend of yours’ /women: mm/yes/laughter/ even to guys it is happening that thing /women: mm/ that ‘the reason why you do not look after goats or some sort of or after sheep, it is because now you have seen yourself a man.’ buyiswa expresses a desire for her parents’ acceptance and support of her as a sexually active woman through welcoming her boyfriend into the family home rather than slapping her. participants refer not only to physical punishment, but to punitive messages: they are accused of being ‘cheeky’ and of no longer being responsible by breaking things and not looking after livestock. an interpretative repertoire of barriers to parental communication while parents were spoken of as communicating inadequately with young people, participants also mentioned barriers to communication, most notably ‘culture’ and their own personal discomfort. ‘culture,’ in particular, was used as an explanation for difficulties in sexual communication between parents and children: group 4 (women) zintle: and even me, i can’t talk about my boyfriend to my mom because= andiswa: especially our culture= zintle: she’s gonna shout at me= andiswa: in our culture, it is rude= zintle: ja it is rude to talk about your boyfriend to your mom or your dad or your sister… group 6 (men) lelethu: and in our culture it’s a disgrace to share feelings, t::o talk with your mother about boyfriends and girlfriend a discourse of disconnect: young people from the eastern cape talk about the failure of adult communications to provide habitable sexual subject positions nicola jearey-graham & catriona macleod 23 ‘culture’ is used in these extracts as a discursive resource to explain why parents and children cannot talk about sex together. seen as a static and homogenous social force, ‘culture’ is depicted by andiswa and lelethu as dictating what is rude or disgraceful. the notion of ‘respect’ was referred to often by participants, and has been noted in other research (wood, lambert & jewkes, 2007). ukuhlonipha (to respect) has, in general, been cited as a key component of isixhosa culture (bongela, 2001). it is interwoven complexly into a range of relations centred on gender, age and status. in this case, the disruption of respect (rudeness, cheekiness) is a generational one, in which speaking about sex, or becoming sexually intimate, marks an inappropriate up-take of adult status among those designated as not-adult. lelethu extends the notion of respect to include shame. not only is such talk disrespectful, it is also a ‘disgrace’. as macleod and durrheim (2002) explain, ‘culture’ is inhabited, particularly in south africa, by notions of ‘race’. references in these extracts to ‘our culture’ are made within a particular racialised context in which the group participants are signified as racially and culturally distinct from the facilitator. in this context, isixhosa or ‘black’ culture is ‘yoked into the explanatory framework of a problematised phenomenon’ (macleod & durrheim, 2002: 781) which, in this case, is a lack of inter-generational sexual communication. this occurred even when troubled by the facilitator, as evidenced below: group 6 (men) researcher: do you think, do you think most parents are able to talk with their children about sex quite comfortably? fikile: not in our culture /r: not in your culture/ lifa: ja they always shout /laughter/ lonwabo: you don’t even think about telling your mom /man: ja/ about girlfriends /r: mm/ researcher: it’s the same in the white culture, the the, my children, i’ve got teenage children and they don’t want to talk to me about sex /laughter/ fikile: why, why we’re saying ah, our culture is different because the, mostly we see it on tv /r: mm/ and then like white people talk to their daughters about boyfriends and all that /men: mm/ man: teach her/ that’s why we saying it, in our culture /r: mm hmm/ researcher: no i, and when i was a teenager i didn’t want to talk to my mom, i was too embarrassed /laughter/ the facilitator attempts to trouble the negative positioning of ‘our culture’ by letting the participants know that difficulties in parent–child sexual communication also occur in ‘white culture’ (thereby introducing ‘race’). the participants resist this formulation using evidence from tv programmes about how it works in ‘white culture’. this evidence serves not only to bolster the negative positioning of ‘our perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 24 culture,’ but also provides a normative framework for (racialised) familial functioning. as noted in other research (e.g. macleod, sigcau & luwaca, 2011), when ‘culture’ is used as a discursive resource to justify particular normative frameworks, the fluid, dynamic and contested nature of ‘culture’ is glossed over. participants also spoke of personal discomfort in discussing intimate relationships and sex with parents: group 5 (men) sipho: in my case, when when, the first time my mom asked me if i had a girlfriend i said (.) ‘mom (.) why are you asking me that’ /laughter/= andile: (i was) also like that= sipho: she was saying ‘answer the question’ i was like ‘mom why are you asking me that,’ i didn’t answer, i just left ... sipho: aahh discussing this sort of thing with my parents it’s it’s, i don’t see it (.) i, it doesn’t feel right /r: mm/ it doesn’t feel right= sizamile: uncomfortable= sipho: ja even today (.) if i have a girlfriend, i don’t tell my parents /r: mm/ if they ask, i deny it in this extract, we see how personal discomfort serves as a barrier to communication. with regard to being approached by his mother, sipho talks about avoiding any conversation about girlfriends, with andile affirming this as a response that he also had. sipho indicates that it ‘doesn’t feel right’ while sizamile agrees that it is ‘uncomfortable’. this leads to sipho’s denying having a girlfriend or avoiding the conversation. thus, personal discomfort acted together with ‘culture’ as discursive resources to justify why young people avoided conversations with their parents about sexual matters. an interpretative repertoire of negative consequences resulting from inadequate parental communication some participants told stories of how inadequate parental communication about sex led to ‘sexual mistakes,’ as in the extract below: group 1(mixed) zanele (w): i think it begins at home (.) it’s the parents that have to talk to their kids /r: mm/ because i personally have experience with that because nobody um ‘this and this about sex, whatever, boys.’ they just told me ‘don’t do this and don’t do that,’ so i developed a rebellious attitude /r: mm/ and i wanted to find out, what is it that they say i mustn’t do and why /r: mm/. s::o and that a discourse of disconnect: young people from the eastern cape talk about the failure of adult communications to provide habitable sexual subject positions nicola jearey-graham & catriona macleod 25 can lead to like, consequences /r: mm/ and it did in my case because i became pregnant in high school so ja /r: mm/. zanele indicates that the injunctions she received from parents did not provide a habitable subject position that spoke to the experiential aspects of sex. thus, to make up for this lack, she developed ‘a rebellious attitude’ in which she explored sex and which, in the end, led to ‘consequences,’ in this case pregnancy. the participant below muses about how the inadequacy of parental communication led to her pregnancy. unlike the participant above, however, this participant locates responsibility for the communicative disconnection with herself and her father, as well as on the gap left by her mother’s death: group 1(mixed) nokukhanya (w)): i think if i had told my mom before she passed away that i have a boyfriend, maybe things would have been better … when she passed away that’s when they found out at home that i’m pregnant. but maybe if she knew before she died, maybe i told her that i had a boyfriend maybe she was going to advise me, ‘go to the clinic.’ but now, how could i say to my dad that i have boyfriend it’s not possible mos ((just)) because obviously he would like hit me. this participant provides a gendered picture in terms of the inadequacy of parental responses, with the father engaging in punitive actions and the mother, possibly, understanding and helping. a punitive father and her personal discomfort at approaching her mother, however, meant that parental communications did not proffer a space of protection against an unplanned pregnancy. conclusion this paper analysed how fet college students spoke about the sexuality education classes they received at school, and their parents’ (lack of) engagement with them about sexuality. we have highlighted how participants deployed a ‘discourse of disconnect’ in which the responsibilisation contained in adult-centred communications concerning sexuality was seen as being delivered through inadequate or nonrelational styles of communication, and as largely irrelevant to participants’ lives. we have shown how, through the deployment of a discourse of disconnect, participants constructed the risk aversive, ‘responsible’ sexual subject (which is the mainstay of sexuality education and parental communication) as a non-performable and nonhabitable subject position. the messages of risk and responsibility that permeated adult talk on sex find, in the participants’ rendition, little traction with young people. the analysis shows that sexuality education classes were remembered as spaces in which ‘risk’ and ‘responsibility’ motifs featured strongly, with risk centring on stis and pregnancy, and responsibility centring on abstinence, safe sex, sex within perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 26 marriage, and delayed sex. these classes were spoken of as being conducted in a primarily non-relational manner and, as such, there was a disconnection between young people and the responsible sexual subject position that such classes attempted to create. furthermore, parental messages around sexuality (mostly from mothers) were generally constructed as being restricted to negative warnings, meaning that parents were also not creating habitable or performable sexual subject positions for their children. ‘cultural’ and personal discomfort barriers to parental communication serve as justifications for young people not engaging in these conversations with their parents. participants constructed the ‘risk’ and ‘responsibility’ messages contained in sexuality education and parental communication as inadequate representations of the realities of youth sexuality. peer and social representations of sexuality that speak to the experiential nature of sex were seen as more influential. as indicated by other researchers (e.g. allen, 2007b; francis, 2011), an emphasis on risk that evades discussions of sexual desire and pleasure is unlikely to resonate with learners’ own preferred self-conceptualisation as desiring sexual subjects, leading to a disengagement from sexuality education lessons. to avoid this kind of disengagement or disconnection, attention needs to be paid to kirby’s (2011) recommendation, referred to at the beginning of this paper, that successful sexuality education progammes are based on participatory methods that actively involve students and that address sexual norms and personal values. preliminary suggestions based on the data presented in this paper are that: lo sexuality education classes and the programmes encouraging parent–child sexual communication would benefit from greater engagement with young people’s own constructions of desired sexualities, as well as their uptake of social and peer representations of appropriate youth sexualities; lo programmes should provide in-depth interactional dialogue in which students’ own stories and experiences of sex are heard; and, if teachers and parents accept young people as sexual subjects, this would allow fuller and more meaningful discussions of issues concerning sexuality, and potentially overcome what young people see as cultural and personal discomfort barriers to communication about sex. in line with these possibilities, it must be noted that, while a discourse of disconnect was strongly deployed in the discussions, there were (minimal) examples of exceptions. two participants spoke of their school lo sexuality education classes as encouraging the open sharing of views and feelings in which a variety of sexual subject positions were entertained and learners were seen as knowledgeable and active. one woman spoke of her mother’s communication about sex as open and frank. these exceptions indicate that there are possibilities in terms of overcoming the dominant discourse of disconnect through interventions which encourage active and agentic discursive engagement about sexual subject positions between youth and adults. a discourse of disconnect: young people from the eastern cape talk about the failure of adult communications to provide habitable sexual subject positions nicola jearey-graham & catriona macleod 27 acknowledgements this research was funded by the andrew w mellon foundation and the south african national research foundation. we thank kayakazi mkosana for assistance with transcription, the management of the fet college where the research was conducted and the participants for sharing their views with us. references abel, g. & fitzgerald, l. 2006. “when you come to it you feel like a dork asking a guy to put a condom on”: is sex education addressing young peoples’ understandings of risk? sex education, 6(2): 105-119. allen, l. 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perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2013 university of the free state 180 mathematical literacy teachers: can anyone be one? hanlie botha, jacobus maree & gerrit stols in this case study, mathematical literacy teachers were interviewed and observed in the classroom in order to provide insight into the way this subject, relatively new in south african schools, is handled. the focus of this research was the instructional practice of these teachers specifically in terms of their mathematical knowledge regarding the subject and its learners. the idea that this subject is inferior to other subjects in general, but to mathematics in particular, was alluded to by some participants, alongside of the notion that it was infra dig to teach it. the study revealed that a working knowledge of mathematics as well as teaching-and-learning skills are necessary for this subject to achieve what it was meant to do when it was introduced into south african high schools in 2006. keywords: mathematical literacy; teachers; instructional practice; mathematical content knowledge; pedagogical content knowledge; teaching introduction in 2006, south africa was the first country in the world to introduce mathematical literacy (ml) as a school subject in the further education and training (fet) band (grades 10 to 12). this new subject was presented as the only alternative to mathematics in the fet band, ensuring that all learners are required to study some form of mathematics in grade 12. the purpose of this subject is to increase learner awareness and understanding of the importance of mathematics in the modern world, by providing opportunities to engage in real-life problems in different contexts. limited in-depth research has been done concerning the ml teachers’ instructional practices and what knowledge is required to teach this subject effectively and proficiently. since the subject was introduced as new in 2006 and was immediately taken by a large number of learners, many teachers were co-opted into teaching it, whether they had a mathematical background or not. as a result of this, and because of the fact that learners who struggle with mathematics are obliged to take ml, some view the subject as a watered-down, inferior form of mathematics (bowie & frith, 2006:32) which can be taught by nearly anyone. gerrit stols faculty of education, university of pretoria e-mail: gerrit.stols@up.ac.za telephone: 012 420 5750 jacobus maree faculty of education, university of pretoria e-mail: kobus.maree@up.ac.za telephone: 012 420 2130 hanlie botha faculty of education, university of pretoria e-mail: hanlie.botha@up.ac.za telephone: 012 420 5623 botha et al. mathematical literacy teachers: can anyone be one? 181 research aim is it true that anyone can, in fact, teach ml effectively? or does the teacher need to have an understanding of mathematics? this research aims to answer these questions by investigating ml teachers’ instructional practices as well as the knowledge they bring with them into the classroom. this study does not aim to generalise its findings, but rather to provide insight into the classroom practices of four ml teachers. specifically, two foci are considered: to what extent are these teachers equipped to teach the subject effectively, thus their pedagogical content knowledge (pck) and mathematical content knowledge (mck), and how their instructional practices may be described. literature study internationally, ml refers to “the competence of individuals” (christiansen, 2006: 6), which ranges from a competence demonstrated in word problems to a critical or democratic competence. in south africa, ml was introduced in 2006 as a high school subject presenting an alternative to mathematics in the last three years of high schooling (grades 10 to 12). in this respect, different views exist, but the most common descriptions of ml are: mathematics in action (skovsmose, 2007); mathematics in context (mccrone & dossey, 2007); realistic mathematics education (hope, 2007), and mathematising (hope, 2007). the variation in these descriptions reveals how an understanding of the depth of the required mathematical knowledge and skills ranges from functional to being advanced. while some researchers associate the application of mathematics to real-world contexts with a high level of mathematical knowledge and competence in using it (hope, 2007; jablonka, 2003; skovsmose, 2007), others believe that everyone should have sufficient mathematical know-how to make well-informed decisions in their daily lives, to care for their families and to contribute in their workplace or society (mccrone & dossey, 2007; skovsmose, 2007). the value of being mathematically literate is evident, but it remains uncertain to what extent ml should address educational practices and to what extent it can contribute to an individual’s quality of life or even the development of the country (jablonka, 2003; skovsmose, 2007). to provide only one international definition of ml is not viable, as it depends primarily on a particular social practice and the context involved. in south africa, ml as a subject was intended to bring mathematics to all people and to ensure that “citizens of the future are highly numerate consumers of mathematics” (doe, 2003a: 9). the emphasis is on the knowledge needed to be a self-managing person, a contributing worker and a participating citizen. the doe’s (2003a: 9) national definition of ml reads as follows: mathematical literacy provides learners with an awareness and understanding of the role that mathematics plays in the modern world. mathematical literacy is a subject driven by life-related applications of mathematics. it enables learners to develop the ability and confidence to think numerically and spatially in order to interpret and critically analyse everyday situations and to solve problems. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 182 thus, the focus of ml is on the applicability of mathematics in everyday life situations and on improving the low level of learners’ mathematical knowledge and mathematical literacy skills. the subject would provide the opportunity for each learner to become mathematically literate, in order to effectively deal with “mathematically related requirements in disciplines such as the social and life sciences” (doe, 2003a: 11). however, concerns in this regard are expressed by julie (2006), who regarded the ml curriculum as fraught with myths, omissions and unwarranted ambitions. he mentioned, among other constructs, the complexity of teaching ml compared to mathematics; the lack of a recreational component in ml, and the dilemma of what context should be taught. from a pedagogical point of view, the teaching and learning of ml was to provide opportunities to engage with mathematics in diverse contexts at a level that learners can access logically (doe, 2003b). however, teaching mathematics in a contextualised and de-compartmentalised manner where the content topics are integrated complicates the teaching of such a subject as ml, since teachers may or may not have the knowledge and skills to do so. research has indicated that mathematics learners and, in many instances, teachers find word or application problems requiring conceptual understanding more difficult than routine problems which require factual recall or the use of routine procedures (grobler, grobler & esterhuyse, 2001; johari, 2003). the depth of mathematical knowledge required to teach ml is not defined in the literature or by the doe. nor has the doe provided guidelines regarding pedagogical approaches in the teaching of the subject: instead, “the absence of precedents of what pedagogy and assessment should be like” (graven & venkat, 2007: 67) caused multifarious interpretations of the curriculum aims. conceptual framework the instructional practice of the teacher occurs in the classroom where teachers’ goals, knowledge and beliefs serve as driving forces behind their instructional efforts to guide and mentor learners in their search of knowledge (artzt, armour-thomas & curcio, 2008); simply put: teachers’ classroom behaviour. artzt et al. (2008) describe teachers’ practices in terms of three observable aspects of their lessons, namely tasks, discourse and the learning environment, as well as the driving forces behind their lessons, namely teachers’ knowledge. the purpose of tasks is to “provide opportunities for learners to connect their knowledge to new information and to build on their knowledge and interest through active engagement in meaningful problem solving” (artzt et al., 2008: 10). to contribute to learner understanding, the discourse in class should provide opportunities for learners to express themselves, to listen, to question, to respond and to reflect on their thinking. a learning environment consists of a particular social and intellectual climate, the use of effective modes of instruction and pacing of the content, and attending to certain administrative routines (artzt et al., 2008). botha et al. mathematical literacy teachers: can anyone be one? 183 for the purpose of this study, ml teachers’ mck is based on ball’s description of common content knowledge that can be defined as a basic understanding of mathematical skills, procedures, and concepts acquired by any well-educated adult, enabling a teacher to solve mathematical problems in the prescribed curriculum (ball, thames & phelps, 2005). hill, ball and schilling (2008) define pck in terms of three categories: content and learners, which includes teachers’ ability to understand and predict learner understanding; content and teaching, which refers to teachers’ ability to know what facilitates learner understanding, and curriculum knowledge, which includes knowledge of the purpose, aim, learning outcomes and assessment criteria of the subject, as well as appropriate teaching strategies. the level of productivity of the teachers’ instructional practices is described based on franke, kazemi and battey’s (2007) view of a productive practice: a practice where the teacher listens to learners’ mathematical thinking and aims to use it to encourage conversation that revolves around the mathematical ideas in the sequenced problems. figure 1 encapsulates the conceptual framework used in this study. the relationship between teachers’ knowledge and their instructional practices tasks modes of representation motivational strategies sequencing and difficulty discourse teacher-learner interaction learner-learner interaction questioning learning environment social & intellectual climate modes of instruction, pacing administrative routines describing teachers’ knowledge mathematical content knowledge (mck) pedagogical content knowledge (pck) ml learners ml teaching ml curriculum figure 1: adapted framework of analysis (adapted from artzt et al., 2008; franke et al., 2007; hill et al., 2008 describing teachers’ instructional practices according to the approach used and level of productivity (based on three observable aspects of their lessons) perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 184 methodology this research is qualitative. white (2005) emphasises the fact that qualitative research is concerned with conditions or relationships that exist, beliefs and attitudes that are held, effects that are being felt and trends that are developed. this exploratory case study focuses on describing ml teachers’ instructional practices and the knowledge they bring with them to the classroom. sampling the population consists of the ml teachers in south africa, including mathematics and non-mathematics teachers from urban and rural government and private schools. due to this wide variety of teachers, it is not possible to choose a representative sample. convenience and purposive sampling were implemented to select four different secondary schools in tshwane. the sampling is partly convenient, as the schools were chosen from easily accessible schools in tshwane. two traditional black, one predominantly white and one predominantly black school were chosen by way of purposive sampling. only the grade 11 teacher from each school participated, with the prerequisite that the teacher had taught ml for at least one year. data collection three lessons taught by each of the teachers were observed. these observations were done with different classes to obtain a general impression of the teacher’s instructional practice. the first observation was done before any interviews were conducted, so that the teacher would not be influenced by the questions from the interviews. the lessons were videotaped and transcribed afterwards. interviews were conducted to determine why teachers did what they did in class and to gain insight into the planning of their lessons and providing evidence of their knowledge regarding the learners, teaching of ml and curriculum. all interviews were audiotaped and the tape recordings were transcribed verbatim. ethical clearance ethical clearance was requested from both the ethics department at the university of pretoria and the gauteng department of education. both the teachers and principals signed letters of consent which explained the purpose, their participative roles, possible advantages and disadvantages of taking part in the study as well as information regarding confidentiality, anonymity and potential risks involved in taking part in the study. data-analysis strategies in this study, deductive-inductive (uppercase denotes the preference given to the style of analysis) qualitative data analysis was used, since the analysis was initially deductive and then inductive. the raw data were analysed according to the categories in this study’s conceptual framework: tasks, discourse, and learning environment. this deductive phase of analysis was followed by the inductive analysis where botha et al. mathematical literacy teachers: can anyone be one? 185 the organised data were studied, in order to explore undiscovered patterns and emergent understandings (patton, 2002). atlas.ti 6 was used to analyse the video and audio data, in order to establish a relationship between teachers’ knowledge and their instructional practices. the coding used in the programme was, to a large extent, done deductively. an external coder was requested to view the videos, read the transcripts and confirm the justifiability of the coding and interpretations. validity the hawthorne effect (cohen et al., 2001) was taken into consideration: the credibility of the data may have been influenced as the presence of the researcher in the classroom may have an impact on teachers’ behaviour during observations. to reduce this effect, the first observation was done without a prior interview or discussion, as the interview questions prior to the second and third observations could influence teachers’ behaviour in the classroom. emphasis was placed on the uniqueness of each teacher and that the purpose was not to report their performances in class to their superiors. to further enhance the trustworthiness of the observations, the lessons were videotaped, field notes were taken, and the teacher had to verify these after each observation. the data from the two interviews prior to the lessons were compared with the classroom observations. the same interview schedules, including the same questions and their sequence were used for all interviewees. the questions were short and concise, in order to avoid confusion or misunderstanding. the interviewees were asked exactly the same questions and, after each interview, the interpretation of the data gathered during the interview and observation were discussed with the participants: thus the interpretations were member-checked. results the four participants, monty, alice, denise and elaine, were observed and interviewed over a period of four weeks. pseudonyms are used to protect the participants’ identities. monty monty is a novice teacher in his second year of teaching grades 10, 11 and 12 ml. he taught grade 10 mathematics for one year. he is 24 years old and completed his bed degree with mathematics as major in 2010. apart from attending the six ml courses organised and presented by the doe and the district office during 2010, he had no formal training for teaching ml. he teaches at an inner-city school of 500 learners. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 186 monty’s instructional practice tasks monty did not consider the use of tasks to connect learners’ prior knowledge to the new mathematical situation to be a tool that he could use successfully. instead, he attempted to use a topical context to make the lesson he was about to teach relevant to the learners. for example, in introducing a lesson on simultaneous equations, he introduced local elections: ok, remember we are approaching the election day and we need to support the campaign. don’t you think the results can be solved simultaneous, how? remember he has to sit on the parliament and the province and we have 9 provinces né? remember for the vote of the 18th they are going to take the result because remember people voted for this particular party or this party or organisation. they are going to add all those results and what information do you think we can get out of that? we can convert it into equations and solve simultaneous. that will tell us how many positions that party is going to get in …? parliament, né? so you see we solve it simultaneous. however, he was not able to link the context to the mathematical content in such a way that it actually contributed to building learners’ understanding, as was evidenced by their continued misunderstanding. he did not use the context to design a task which might have facilitated assimilation of the idea of simultaneous equations. discourse he communicated in a non-judgemental manner and appeared keen to maintain a positive rapport with the learners. nevertheless, the discourse was somewhat onesided: learner participation was limited to the answering of simple questions in the style of sentence completions as in the quote above, or one-word-answer type questions: “ok, we call this one a co? efficient (completed the word himself). this one we call it? (learner answered variable). the variable”. when learners did express misunderstanding, monty explained the work again. intercommunication between the learners was not encouraged and general discussion did not happen. learning environment it was obvious to the observer that monty was confident and enthusiastic about teaching ml and kept the class quiet and working continuously. his management of the classroom was generally traditional and formal: “so, if i see you talking, i am going to chase you out and then you will come back next term”. he used direct instruction as instructional strategy. the learners’ time during the entire lesson was spent on listening to the teacher and copying work from the board. monty’s knowledge he made no calculation mistakes, taught the mathematical content with confidence, and it appeared that his mck regarding the specific content covered was sufficient. botha et al. mathematical literacy teachers: can anyone be one? 187 however, in the interview after the first lesson, he predicted what the learners would and would not understand of the content in the next lesson. this did not materialise. it seemed, in fact, that at times he could not understand what the learners could not understand, and this made him irritable. in a subsequent discussion regarding his pck, he explained his thought on examples: “the more you have examples, the more they can see how to do it”, which entailed giving the learners “more sums because the more they practice maths the more they understand it, especially if they do it individually, that is when they learn best”. although monty discussed the importance of accessing learners’ prior knowledge to promote understanding, he chose similar, basic examples without using multiple representations. for the most part, he used direct instruction “because our learners are different from other school learners so we need to use the direct instruction”, although he did not elaborate as to what made the learners in his school different from others. monty had no knowledge of other subjects’ curricula that integrate with ml. he knew about ml’s definition, purpose and learning outcomes, but was not aware of all departmental documents. alice alice grew up in the congo; she is 30 years old and, in 1995, she obtained a btech management accounting degree at a university of technology with financial mathematics as major, but did not do any mathematics education or mathematics methodology courses. she has no experience of teaching mathematics and it is her second year of teaching ml. she teaches at an independent inner-city school with 350 learners. alice’s instructional practice tasks alice believed that spending time on the development of contexts in the classroom used up valuable time which could rather be spent on learning mathematics. except for one task being set in a context, her lessons therefore consisted of mathematical content only. in none of the observed lessons did she point out the value of mathematics in every-day life. in the dialogue below, she was using the table method to teach the class how to draw a quadratic graph: teacher: you remember when we draw the graph (she cleans the board and draws an x and y coordinate table) quiet guys! (she writes: y x2) guys! now you are not given any formula. we need to start at a negative (she writes -2 on the board.) learner: why do you start with -2? teacher: because they don’t give it. i am just assuming this is a problem. (she completes the table.) this is now where you draw your graph. (she draws two cartesian planes below the table). this is your positive and this is your negative (indicating the first and second cartesian plane). quiet! learner: shhhh. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 188 teacher: let’s draw (and she draws a set of axes and labels them. learners talk and teacher looks at example and erases the set of axes before beginning to draw something on the axes) shhh shhh. ok. learner: mam, where’s my textbook? teacher: ok, we have 6x2 + x = 12 . quiet please! if you don’t want to learn, you can leave the class (and she continues to solve 6x2 + x = 12 ). discourse alice did not encourage the participation of learners, except where she needed help with her own mistakes and misunderstandings. she dominated the discourse with direct instruction and allowed no interaction by the learners other than to answer the questions she posed, mainly of the complete-the-word/sentence type: “your mean is always the? (learner answers: middle number). no, mean is the sum of the data divided by the number of data”. despite the single directional flow of the discourse, the class was noisy and undisciplined. learning environment a positive relationship with the leaners and co-operative atmosphere were not prioritised in alice’s classroom. she frequently appeared bored, irritated and un-enthusiastic, as could be observed in both her verbal and non-verbal communication. once a learner asked how alice solved the problem, she replied: “don’t ask me how to get this; you have to look at me”. the learners did not persist in their enquiries; instead, they spoke to each other and paid scant attention to what alice was doing. alice’s knowledge alice knew about ml’s definition, purpose and learning outcomes but was not aware of other subjects’ curricula that integrate with ml. she made several mistakes and it appeared that her mck is insufficient regarding the specific content covered in the three lessons. after the solution to a quadratic equation was completed on the board, alice said: am i right? (she checks her own calculations.) you are supposed to always get a negative and a positive answer. so, what happened here? i am sure there is something wrong because here we have two positive answers. guys please! (class became noisy). she appeared to believe that all quadratic equations have one positive and one negative answer. the learners seemed to think otherwise, judging by their objections and attempts to assist alice. alice had predicted that the learners would find all the content easy and was annoyed by what she perceived as their inability to assist her. in an interview, she spoke of her belief that learners learn from practising in the presence of someone who gives them confidence, but made no mention of her own mistakes and misunderstandings. instead, she indicated that the pace of instruction botha et al. mathematical literacy teachers: can anyone be one? 189 and the voluminous content that she presented in class were appropriate for the classes concerned. denise denise is 42 years old and completed a bed degree in 2003 with mathematics and methodology of mathematics as two of her major subjects. she completed her bed honours in 2009. she obtained both degrees from the university of witwatersrand, but did a 40-hour course based on ml and the teaching thereof at the university of south africa. she has seven years’ experience of teaching mathematics and it is her fourth year of teaching ml. she teaches at a school in pretoria with 908 (predominantly black) learners. denise’s instructional practice tasks the various representations used allowed her to link learners’ prior knowledge with the new content of the day. denise taught pure mathematical content and learners seemed motivated by the teacher rather than by the nature of the tasks. the tasks were sequenced over the various lessons, and suited the learners’ level of understanding. she moved through the lessons at a brisk pace and did not require explanations from the learners, preferring brief answers: teacher: number 1? length, mass or capacity? learner: capacity. teacher: can you see it? right. and number 2? what is it? learner: mass. teacher: mass … and number 3 that jenny is doing now? learner: capacity. teacher: ok. discourse denise was non-judgemental and verbally encouraged the learners as she praised their efforts and made comments such as: “you did excellent so far, guys”. she required learners to give demonstrations of their work in writing, but did not expect them to explain their work. she provided scaffolding to support learners’ understanding and also recognised and clarified learners’ misunderstandings. learning environment denise was confident and strict and seemed to have a positive attitude towards both the learners and the subject. she often adopted the role of facilitator in class discussions, and frequently invited learners to show their calculations on the board. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 190 she encouraged the learners, saying: “keep on practising till we don’t see that minor mistakes”. all information on the board was correct and ordered. denise’s knowledge she made no errors in her examples or corrections on the board and it seemed that she had sufficient mck regarding the specific content covered in the three lessons. she also proved to be correct in her predictions of what learners would and would not understand. she did not expect learners to explain their thinking so that she could hear their thinking, but as they demonstrated their work on the board, she could rectify learners’ misconceptions. denise used varied and appropriate representations to make the content comprehensible to the learners, and sequenced her tasks. however, she did not use contexts as a means of showing the learners the relevance of the mathematical content they were learning. she did not know the definition of ml and could not describe its learning outcomes. elaine elaine is 44 years old and completed her higher education diploma: senior primary with mathematics and mathematics didactics as two of her major subjects in 1989 at normaal college of education. she did not attend any courses on ml. she has eight years’ experience of teaching mathematics and it is her third year of teaching ml. she teaches at a school in pretoria with 1.300 (predominantly white) learners. elaine’s instructional practice tasks elaine used various representations, and when she selected her tasks, she took learners’ diverse abilities into account and frequently reminded them of the value of mathematics in their lives. to elicit a class discussion, she once suggested: “let us talk a little about why a person would rather wait to buy a house until he increased his deposit”. learners spontaneously took part in the class discussions. she connected learners’ prior knowledge to the new mathematical situation and also sequenced the tasks given to enable the learners to progress in their cumulative understanding of the work, set in context. discourse she was non-judgemental and all learners were involved through questioning and discussions. she expected learners to give explanations and justifications of their thinking, both orally and in writing, but also provided scaffolding to support learners’ understanding such as: teacher: which interest are we working with? learner1: compound interest. botha et al. mathematical literacy teachers: can anyone be one? 191 teacher: why did you choose compound interest? learner1: it’s not simple interest. teacher: right, but what tells you that it’s not simple interest, but compound interest? learner1: the bracket and the part below. learner2: but there is no fraction. learner3: ‘a’ is the final amount. teacher: in simple interest ‘a’ is also the final amount. i told you earlier that you know it’s compound interest when you see ‘n’ written as a power, then we reason this is more complicated than the normal formula, then it’s compound interest. so i don’t want you to just guess that it’s compound, you must be able to give a reason why you say it is compound interest. she was able to recognise and clarify learners’ misunderstandings. elaine encouraged the learners to listen and respond to other learners’ ideas. learning environment there was every indication of a good rapport with and among learners and she made her appreciation clear: “i really appreciate your efforts”. elaine was confident, wellprepared and enthusiastic, applied good discipline and created a calm and relaxed atmosphere. her style varied between mediator and facilitator, using discussion tools such as: “let’s go a little bit further …”) and direct instruction as instructional strategies. she allowed sufficient time for learner involvement and goal attainment. elaine’s knowledge no errors or misconceptions were observed and it seemed that she had sufficient mck regarding the specific content covered. she accurately predicted what learners would and would not understand and how they would understand the new content. she was aware of learners’ possible misconceptions and rectified their misunderstandings in class. elaine looked at learners’ work, and gave them opportunities to explain their thinking. she taught the content in context and used powerful examples, illustrations and explanations and various representations to make the work comprehensible to the learners. elaine knew ml’s definition, purpose, learning outcomes, relevant departmental documents, and how ml integrates with the curricula of five other subjects in school. in all her lessons, content was taught in context as ml should be taught. discussion two highly differing cases were alice and elaine. alice, as a novice teacher with no mathematics teacher training, was the only teacher who communicated judgementally with the learners; did not work at a slower pace as stipulated in the ml curriculum (doe, 2003a); did not have the ability to transform her own knowledge into forms that were pedagogically powerful, and viewed ml as similar, but inferior perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 192 to mathematics. elaine, an experienced teacher, was the only teacher who used contextual tasks effectively; pointed out the value of mathematics; required the learners to explain their answers; posed a variety of questions on different levels, and had sufficient curriculum knowledge. in this instance, it appears that experience and mathematics teacher training play a crucial role in the instructional practices of ml teachers. teachers’ knowledge teachers’ mck except for alice, the teachers in this study appeared to have sufficient mck regarding the topics they were teaching at the time of the observations. alice’s mck was not always coherent, and she made several mistakes in the written examples on the board as well as during her verbal explanations. alice, in fact, is similar to most of the participants in hechter’s (2011: 149) study, in which she concluded that the knowledge of most of the teachers in her study “was not coherent and some errors were made with respect to the mathematical content dealt with in the classrooms”. teachers’ pck the fact that the two experienced teachers seem to have developed pck confirms the findings of ball (1988), ma (1999), shulman (1986) and sowder (2007) that pck can be developed only over time through experience in the classroom and that it cannot be taught. ball (1990) also believes that solid understanding and knowledge of mathematical subject matter are prerequisites for developing pck. in this study, the two teachers who had developed a certain level of pck also had adequate mck. however, monty’s instructional practice indicates that sufficient mck (teacher training) does not guarantee pck. alice was the only teacher in this study who demonstrated insufficient mck, and her instructional practice could well be described as unproductive. this finding supports kilpatrick’s (2001) view that proficient teaching demands, among other things, teachers’ conceptual understanding and procedural fluency. in fact, both novice teachers in this study had insufficient pck and unproductive instructional practices in contrast to the two experienced teachers who had sufficient pck and productive instructional practices. this finding suggests that pck influences the productivity of teachers’ practices. according to the literature, teachers’ knowledge strongly influences their practices (artzt et al., 2008; ball, 1990). elaine was very positive about both the subject ml and the knowledge and skills required to teach it. in her final interview, elaine mentioned that, when she had been asked two years previously to be the coordinator for ml, she had initially felt that she was being demoted, but she claimed that ml had grown on her since then. she enjoyed being involved in ml and never wanted to return to mathematics. botha et al. mathematical literacy teachers: can anyone be one? 193 conclusion it appears that, apart from relevant knowledge having a definite influence on teachers’ practices, teaching experience as well as mathematics teacher training may play a significant role in the productivity of the instructional practices of the four teachers: both experienced teachers had productive practices and, comparing the practices of the two novice teachers, the teacher with mathematics teacher training had a more productive instructional practice than the teacher without any teacher training. thus, the ml teachers in this study with little or no mathematics teacher training are at a distinct disadvantage, as are their learners. they are unable to relate the real world to the mathematics classroom in such a way as to make the learners appreciate the value of mathematics. in this study, the teacher with both mathematical knowledge and experience in establishing a productive instructional practice seemed to be the only one accomplishing the requirements of the ml curriculum. data were gathered from a very small number of ml teachers and generalisation of the results is impossible. quantitative research in this regard may confirm what this small-scale study suggests: not just anyone can teach this subject. references artzt af, armour-thomas e & curcio fr 2008. becoming a reflective mathematics teacher: a guide for observations and self-assessment. new york: lawrence erlbaum associates. ball dl 1988. unlearning to teach mathematics. for the learning of mathematics, 8(1): 40-48. ball dl 1990. the mathematical understandings that prospective teachers bring to teacher education. the elementary school journal, 90(4): 449-466. ball dl, thames mh & phelps g 2005. articulating domains of mathematical knowledge for teaching. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association. montreal, quebec, canada. bowie l & frith v 2006. concerns about the south african mathematical literacy curriculum arising from experience of materials development. pythagoras, 64: 29-36. christiansen im 2006. mathematical literacy as a school subject: failing the progressive vision? pythagoras, 64: 6-13. cohen l, manion l & morrison k 2001. research methods in education. 5th ed. london & new york: routledgefalmer. department of education (doe) 2003a. national curriculum statement grades 1012 (general) mathematical literacy. pretoria: government printer. department of education (doe) 2003b. mathematical literacy guidelines for the development of learning programmes. draft june 2003. pretoria: government printer. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 194 franke m, kazemi e & battey d 2007. mathematics teaching and classroom practice. in: f lester (ed.), second handbook of research on mathematics teaching and learning. new york: macmillan. graven m & venkat h 2007. emerging pedagogic agendas in the teaching of mathematical literacy. african journal of research in smt education, 11(2): 67-84. grobler ac, grobler aa & esterhuyse kgf 2001. some predictors of mathematics achievement among black secondary school learners. south african journal of psychology, 31(4): 48-53. hechter j 2011. analysing and understanding teacher development on a mathematical literacy ace course. unpublished thesis for master of science. university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg. hill hc, ball dl & schilling sg 2008. unpacking pedagogical content knowledge: conceptualizing and measuring teachers’ topic-specific knowledge of students. journal for research in mathematics education, 39(4): 372-400. hope m 2007. mathematical literacy. principal leadership, 7(5): 28-31. jablonka e 2003. mathematical literacy. in: a bishop, m clements, c keitel, j kilpatrick & fe leung (eds), second international handbook of mathematics education. dordrecht: kluwer academic publishers. johari a 2003. effects of inductive multimedia programs in mediating word problem translation misconception. journal of instructional psychology, 30(1): 47-68. kilpatrick j 2001. understanding mathematical literacy: the contribution of research. educational studies in mathematics, 47(1): 101-116. ma l 1999. knowing and teaching elementary mathematics. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates inc. mccrone ss & dossey ja 2007. mathematical literacy it’s become fundamental. principal leadership, 7(5): 32-37. patton mq 2002. qualitative research and evaluation methods. thousand oaks, ca: sage. shulman ls 1986. those who understand: knowledge growth in teaching. educational researcher, 15(2): 4-14. skovsmose o 2007. mathematical literacy and globalisation. in: b atweh, ac barton, m borba, n gough, c keitel, c vistro-yu & r vithal (eds), internationalisation and globalisation in mathematics and science education. dordrecht: springer. sowder jt 2007. the mathematical education and development of teachers. in fk. lester (ed.), second handbook of research on mathematics teaching and learning, pp. 157-223. new york: macmillan. white cj 2005. research: a practical guide. pretoria: groep 7 drukkers en uitgewers bk. modes of participation and conceptions of children in south african education nazir carrim university of the western cape for school-aged children, schools comprise a major space of participation. formally, it is a participatory space constituted and regulated by the laws and policies that govern schooling; informally, it is a participatory space whose affordances and patterns of inclusion/exclusion are shaped by children’s diverse lives and experiences. this article examines modes of participation in relation to conceptions of children in the south african schools act of 1996 and south african curriculum policy, with particular attention to the images of children, their participatory opportunities and their implied participatory agency in the domains of school governance and pedagogy. policy and related discourse in both domains, it is argued, implicitly homogenise children by portraying them as “learners”. at the same time, there is an inconsistency between the images of children and their participatory agency at the level of school governance and at the levels of curriculum and pedagogy. drawing on empirical data that indicates the significant impact of social conditions on children’s participation in pedagogical spaces and their schooling more generally, the article makes a case for recognising difference. furthermore, the article contributes to a growing critical literature on children’s participation by examining connections and disconnections between official constructions of participatory space and the diverse life-worlds of children in south africa. keywords: children’s participation, representation, school governing structures, accountability and representation, participation and school policy, pedagogy and participation . introduction schools are among the primary formal spaces for children’s participation. educational legislation and policy play a major part in defining and regulating these participatory spaces and in defining children as participants in, and subjects of, education. the south african schools act of 1996 (hereafter sasa) and the national curriculum provide two of the formal spaces within which children’s participation is recognised educationally, namely the spaces of school governance and pedagogy. in both, children are recognised as “learners”. this view of children as “learners” provides for specific modes of participation in schools. as i will argue, the tendency in educational laws and policies and related discourses is to treat children in homogenised and yet inconsistent ways. the notion of “learner”, as well as an assumed age and stage model of children’s capacities in legislation and policy, obscures differences among children such as “race”, class, gender, and family circumstances and so treats them as a homogenous group. at the same time, there are inconsistencies in the ways in which children are viewed within and across educational legislation and policies. for example, in sasa, children are given limited participation possibilities, whereas in curriculum terms children as learners are viewed as being more active and participative. whether this is a problematic inconsistency or simply a consequence of logically distinct categories of participation1 is a matter to be addressed. educational legislation and policies do not capture the myriad ways in which children live their lives or experience schooling in reality. an emphasis on categorical differences between adults and children underplays differences within the population of children (wyness, 2009). yet, the way in which children live their lives and participate in various informal spaces are pertinent to the way in which they experience pedagogy as well as to the way in which they respond to putative opportunities to participate in school governing structures. within schools children participate in various activities in various spaces, which range from activities they engage in with each other – including bullying, playing and teasing, carrim — modes of participation and conceptions of children 75 to making and being friends – to engagements with various adults at the school and en route there; and which occur in and outside of classroom, to and from school, in toilets, playgrounds and corridors. this article draws on prevailing data to capture some aspects of the way in which children live their lives and to indicate how this impacts on their participatory experiences at the levels of school governance and pedagogy. in so doing, the article contributes to a growing critical literature on children’s participation (see, for example, tisdall, davis, hill & prout, 2006; wyness, 2009; bray & moses, 2011) by examining connections and disconnections between modes of participation, the participatory spaces of pedagogy and school governance, and the interests and life-worlds of different groups of children in south africa. the article has four main parts. the first draws on my earlier work with yusuf sayed (carrim & sayed, 1997; 1998) in order to consider the ways in which representation and participation are conceptualised in south african national education legislation, particularly as these concepts pertains to school governance. in this domain, possibilities for participation flow from and are thus constrained by modes of representation. the critical issue in this regard is who participates and who speaks for whom in a school’s representative structures. the second part considers the construction of participation, and participatory agency, in the official curriculum. here a central issue is the mismatch between the rhetoric of “learners” as independent critical thinkers and problem-solvers, on the one hand, and their severely curtailed opportunities for participation in school governance, on the other hand. children’s lived experiences have a significant impact on their schooling and life opportunities. this is a matter i pursue in the third part, which draws on empirical data to portray some of the diversity of children’s lives in south africa, with a focus on children living in especially difficult circumstances. the purpose is to demonstrate why it is important not to homogenise children. if part of the rationale for including children in school governance structures is to allow for the representation of their interests, then ways need to be found to take account of the diversity of interests. finally, and very briefly, i consider some of the ways in which children’s diverse circumstances are taken into account in major legislation outside of education, notably the comprehensive children’s act, and argue for greater consistency across the different domains of policy for children. modes of participation and representation in south african educational legislation four modes of representation and participation are recognised in post-apartheid south african educational legislation, namely “community”, “stakeholder” (which subsumes “interest-based” modes), “regulated” and “weighted” (carrim & sayed, 1997; 1998). in each, the criteria for representation delimit the field for participation. the notion of “community” participation and representation in south african educational legislation, especially in the sasa (ndoe, 1996), suggests that the community within which a school is located has a direct role to play in determining the way in which the school in their community ought to be governed. in keeping with south africa’s constitutional commitment to participatory democracy, community participation and representation allow for decentralised forms of governance and, at the same time, for processes of democracy to be brought to a local level. sound though the democratic principle may be, the notion of community in this legislation is problematic on two counts. first, it homogenises the “community”; differences among the various people that make up the “community” are ignored. thus, for example, “race”, class, gender, political affiliations and different religions in communities are not taken into account. second, the legislation does not make explicit how the notion of community is to be understood. it appears to be used in geographical terms, where a community is simply the area, or district, within which a school is located. other conceptions – such as those that view a community as being constituted by shared interests, a shared language, or shared belief systems and cultural practices – are not engaged with at all. both the sasa and the national educational policy act (nepa) (ndoe 1996) conceive of school governance as constituted by specific actors who are directly involved in schools, namely parents, teachers, students (i.e., “learners”),2 non-academic staff (gardeners, cleaning staff, security staff and administrative staff) and the school principal, who is ipso facto a member of school governance structures. these perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201176 categories of people are regarded as “stakeholders” in schools on the grounds that they are assumed to have a direct interest in schools and schooling. what is more, “stakeholders” are assumed to have the same and uniform interests and to exist as a bloc. “stakeholders” is thus also a homogenised category. even so, the sasa projects a hierarchy of stakeholders, with parents assumed as having the most “stake” in education and the most “interest” in schooling, and hence are “weighted” more favourably than the other “stakeholders”. students are regarded as “stakeholders” only in secondary schools, as “learners”. students in primary schools are not regarded as “stakeholders” and, by implication, are assumed either as not having an “interest” in primary schooling or not being competent to act in their educational interests. age, together with associated conceptions of development, appears to be the main criterion for learners’ inclusion as eligible participants on school governing boards (sgbs). as wyness (2009:543) points out with respect to school councils in the united kingdom, “age is a dominant differentiating factor” within schools and a key principle in the “regulation of pupils” and, consequently, little or no importance is attached to the voices of younger pupils. although the sasa sets no explicit age criterion for participation, school attainment level operates as a proxy for age in determining the eligibility of students to participate as representatives. “weighted” representation refers to a mode of representation which gives some people more voting power in decision making and greater numbers on decision-making structures. clearly, weighted representation has direct consequences not only for the numbers of students who are included as participates in school governance, but also for the weighting of their participation within sgbs. in the sasa “parents” or guardians are expected to be a 51% majority on sgbs. as a consequence they have more voting power on sgbs and, because of their greater numbers, more extensive opportunities for influencing participatory decision making. “regulated” participation acknowledges some of the problems with “community” and “stakeholder” forms of participation and attempts to regulate such participation by prescribing and “weighting” some representative categories more than others. as such, “regulated” representation and participation is linked to “weighted” representation and participation. three features emerge from the ways in which modes of representation and participation are portrayed in south african educational legislation. first, modes of representation are directly linked to and determine modes of participation; second, there is an overall tendency to homogenise people’s identities in the categories of description that are used; third, the modes of representation and participation that the legislation allows for do not acknowledge problems related to the “politics of representation” (ellsworth, 1989) wherein the “representative” does not, in fact, “represent the represented”. the first two features are implicated in the third, as discussed below. where modes of representation directly determine modes of participation, it is taken for granted that people elect representatives who participate in decision making on their behalf. representatives are assumed authentically to represent the group they are supposed to be representing. in this sense, people give up “their own voices” and their representatives are assumed to speak on their behalf. the assumption rests on shaky grounds, as an extensive critical literature on the politics of representation testifies (see, for example, ellsworth, 1989; young, 2000). in practice, representatives may “speak in their own voices” rather on behalf of those they represent, in a mandated, accountable and responsible way. the possible gap between the representative and the represented is ignored in the policies that regulate sgbs in south african schools. yet, the problem of representation is real, not only for children but for adult stakeholders, too. in practice, authoritarian attitudes within sgbs and dissatisfaction at tokenistic membership impede the realisation of the democratic intent of the sasa (see bentley, 2011:this issue; bray & moses, 2011:this issue). data gathered from the workings of sgbs in south african schools show that all categories of “stakeholders”, including “learners”, consistently and repeatedly complain about their representatives not representing them adequately or accurately – representatives are seen to “speak in their own voices” and not as the spokespersons of the represented (see sayed , subrahmanian, soudien & carrim, 2007; carrim & sayed, 1997). whether one is viewing representation and participation in the terms of “community”, carrim — modes of participation and conceptions of children 77 “stakeholders”, “regulated” or “weighted” modes, the homogenising of people in the terms of these categories is clear. differences in terms of “race”, class, gender and other variables are flattened and ignored (carrim, 2006, 2006a, carrim, 2009; moletsane, 1999; sayed et al., 2007). failures to recognise these differences have led to feelings of disempowerment, marginalisation and silencing among those who are of different “races”, classes and gender (see also weber, nkomo & amsterdam, 2009). women, parents and teachers on sgbs complain of not being given effective roles to play in sgbs and of their issues and experiences rarely being taken into account in the deliberations and workings of sgbs, even by their “representatives”. working class parents complain about being silenced and marginalised on sgbs. educators complain about their “representatives” being lackeys of the principal rather than authentically representing their views; and so on. not surprisingly, this was also found to be the case with students. children’s representatives also do not “speak in the voice” of the represented, but in “their own voices”. at secondary school level, girl children and working class children or children of “other races” complain that they do not have their experiences taken into account by their “representatives”. this is, in part, a consequence of the homogenisation of children in the category of “learner”. children in primary schools have no representation and no participation possibilities; instead they must rely on adults to speak on their behalf and in their interests. critical issues emerge from the above data. where significant sociological differences among people are ignored in the formally recognised categories, and practices of representation fail to represent, people’s diverse issues and concerns are ignored and, at points, “misrecognised” (taylor, 1994). in the case of sgbs in south africa, what was meant to promote participatory democracy turns out to be an exercise in marginalisation and silencing. in a recent article on school and youth councils in the united kingdom, wyness (2009:549) reaches a similar conclusion about student representation on school councils: “these formal structures can have the effect of silencing groups of young people already marginalised within society”. representation and participation in the “new” curriculum the curriculum constitutes a very different kind of participatory space for children. at the level of policy, the south african curriculum has undergone a number of revisions since the advent of democracy in south africa and the introduction of a new curriculum framework. yet, the overall principles of the “new curriculum” have been kept intact officially. informed by notions of active learning and learner-centred pedagogy, the curriculum proposes more direct forms of participation of students in their own learning (ndoe, 1997; 2000; 2003; carrim, pendlebury & enslin, 2000). especially in earlier versions (ndoe 1997; 2003), the national curriculum views children as active participants in their own learning, able to make decisions and undertake tasks independently and critically, even in primary schools. yet, this view of children as relatively autonomous, capable, rational and critical human beings contrasts sharply with the sasa’s exclusion of primary school children on sgbs and severely limited scope for secondary school students to participate as representatives on their sgbs. this ambivalence in the ways children are formally viewed in south african education does not go by unnoticed by children. they cannot understand why they are not allowed to participate in or have representation in primary schools or why their roles are so circumscribed and titular in secondary schools (cf. sayed et al., 2007; carrim, 2006). the following extract from an interview with grade 9 learners captures these sentiments: white boy learner 12: you see the rules and regulations of the school do not take our interests for real, they don’t take our views seriously. they don’t really consult us about what we think and want, and they don’t understand us. african boy learner 11: ja, they don’t know what it is like to be a teenager today, and a lot of the rules are not what we want. interviewer: are you saying that you were not consulted when the rules were drawn up? white boy learner 12: they did consult us, but everything we asked for they didn’t take. perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201178 african boy learner 11: they treat us like children and don’t take us seriously (group interview with learners, 1997; in carrim, 2006). as the extract indicates, children have an expectation that their views should be “seriously” taken into account. this is understandable given that the main drive of the curriculum is for learners to be active, engaged and critical participants in the affairs of their lives and schools. participation in pedagogical spaces is, of course, not the same as participation in school governance. pedagogical participation is aimed primarily at enabling and enhancing learning, whereas participation on levels of school governance covers a wider and deeper range of issues and requires knowledge and competencies that may not always be prevalent among children. the point at issue is that the ways in which children are imagined in pedagogy is not the ways in which they are portrayed at school governance levels, either on the level of official imaginings of children or the ways in which children seem to experience these. as the above interview extract indicates, children find this confusing. while they can be active citizens, it seems, in the pedagogical encounters of the classroom, they are prevented from enacting their citizenship capacities in the governing of (their own) schools, which incidentally is a skill that they are supposed to be developing in what they are taught. schools comprise a major space of participation for school-aged children. formally, as i have shown, it is a participatory space constituted and regulated by the laws and policies that govern schooling and the curriculum. informally, it is a participatory space whose affordances and patterns of inclusion/exclusion are shaped by children’s diverse lives and experiences. in the following section i draw on empirical research which indicates the realities that some children deal with in their daily lives and the ways in which they actually participate actively in their own worlds to cope with the conditions that confront them, how these impact on their schooling, and why it is important not to homogenise children. lived experiences of children empirical research on schooling in south africa has demonstrated the various and varying ways in which children’s participation in schooling is influenced. whether children go to school, stay at school, drop out of school, return to school or not, and whether they pass, fail or repeat grades are significantly influenced by variables such as “race”, class and gender. in this section i draw on empirical research that identifies child-headed households, domestic violence, “initiation ceremonies” and pregnancy as some of the circumstances that significantly affect children’s schooling and their life opportunities. i do so in order to reinforce the point that not all children are the same. homogenising children as a category of persons belies the heterogeneity of childhoods and the factors that support or impede children’s participatory agency. the risk of the approach i take in this brief section is that categories such as “children in childheaded households” are themselves homogenising. for the data and arguments in this section i draw on two major research projects in which i was a co-researcher. the first is create (see motala, s; dieltiens, v; carrim, n; kgobe, p; moyo, g & rembe, s, 2007); the second is the india-south africa project on educational exclusion and inclusion (see sayed, y; subrahmanian, r; soudien, c & carrim, n, 2007). create (consortium for research on educational access, transitions and equity) focused primarily on the factors that exclude learners from schools, including dropping out of school and failing. the india-south africa project examined the factors that contribute to educational exclusion and the ways in which inclusion happens in india and south africa. both projects used multiple research techniques, with both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. the south african data from both projects pointed to four particular kinds of experiences among children which have profound effects on their schooling lives and life opportunities, namely child-headed households; domestic violence; “initiation ceremonies”; and pregnancy. both south african studies found that for children in households affected by hiv/aids, the demands of care were a common reason for not attending school or dropping out altogether. they were needed to either care for their younger siblings in cases where their parents had died or care for parents and carrim — modes of participation and conceptions of children 79 other family members who are suffering from aids or are hiv positive and who did not have access to antiretroviral medication (cf. carrim, 2006a; motala et al., 2007). data from both south african studies also pointed to domestic violence and sexual abuse as an impediment to educational participation. on the basis of the data gathered, the perpetrators of the violence ranged from parents to older siblings and relatives who frequented their homes. unlike children who headed households or took on major care responsibilities within a household, such children did not drop out of school but would come back once their “wounds” have healed and they were able to return (cf. carrim, 2006, 2006a; motala et al., 2007). in these instances, children failed to attend school and, although they would return to schools within the given school year, their performances were affected and they would need to repeat a year. in relation to “initiation ceremonies”, it was found that, in the selected eastern cape schools that formed part of the india-south africa project, schooling was disrupted because of children having to go to “the mountains” and, more interestingly, when they came back from “the mountains” they did not see themselves as children but as adult men, and expected to be treated as such by all in the school, students and teachers alike. in some instances such “men” did not think it was appropriate for them to be in school because they were now “adults” and needed to do “adult things” because schooling is what children do. in these cases, boys returning from “initiation ceremonies” either dropped out of school or returned to school to experience more fractured relations with other school-based actors, but they came back to schools. the study considered children in the age-range of 12-15 years old. older boys and young men did not form part of the study. the data only indicated “initiation ceremonies” for boys. although girls may also have had a similar “rite of passage”, such girls did not leave schools for a period of time or drop out of schools (cf. sayed et al., 2007; motala et al., 2007). both the create and india-south africa research projects showed that pregnancy was a cause for girls dropping out of school. although there is the possibility for pregnant girls to return to school after giving birth, the findings of both studies suggested that they rarely do so, partly because they do not want to and would prefer to be with their babies and partly because as “mothers” they are not made to feel “included” in schools (motala et al., 2007). by contrast, the data indicated that young fathers, if they are at school, continue with their schooling in uninterrupted ways or after a short period of absence. as these and many other research findings show, school-aged children come from different backgrounds and have very different experiences and responsibilities. for some, although they are legally defined as children, the burdens of care and the experiences of initiation or motherhood permeate the boundaries between childhood and adulthood. the homogenising sociological category of “learners” is especially problematic where it is assumed that “learner representatives” on school governance structures actually represent such learners. there are also questions about the extent to which pedagogical encounters take into account the experiences of such children. i have argued that education legislation and policy are blind to crucial differences in the life-worlds and experiences of children and that this, together with age differentiation and a particular construction of representation in school governance, is problematic for children’s participation on sgbs. beyond the domain of education, some of the key legislation for children is more sensitive to the variety of circumstances that shape children’s lives and experiences. in the next section i briefly discuss the children’s act 38 of 2005 (as amended by the children’s amendment act 41 of 2007) (ndsd, 2008) in order to compare its conceptions of children with the prevailing conceptions in educational legislation and policy. children in other social policy: the children’s act schools are not isolated environments but are linked inextricably to the society of which they are a part. in this regard, another level of policy inconsistency is discernable. unlike the education legislation and policy considered earlier, the recently adopted comprehensive children’s act (i.e., the children’s act 38 of 2005, as amended by the children’s amendment act 41 of 2007) recognises some of the lived experiences of children who head households, become pregnant and are subjected to domestic violence and sexual abuse. for example, the children’s amendment act of 2007 provides for children from the age of 12 years perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201180 old to have access to hiv testing and contraceptives. the age of majority in this act is 18 years, and it recognises the age of consent to be 16 years (except for those who are married already and who have been emancipated by a court order). so, at least on the face of it, there is inconsistency within the act. be that as it may, the concern in this case is to point to inconsistency between the provisions of the children’s amendment act of 2007 and what exists officially and in practice in south african schools. an example illustrates the point. in 2009 the national minister of education at the time, naledi pandor, announced that contraceptives would not be allowed to be given to students in schools. her concern was that such an action may be seen as conveying “the wrong message” and might be construed as “encouraging school students to engage in sex” (science daily, jan. 20, 2009). so, while that children’s act allows children access to contraceptives and hiv tests from the age of 12 years old, they may not obtain contraceptives in or from schools. inconsistency in the different approaches by the social development sector and the education sector results in confusion about who children are and what they can and cannot do, and where. children’s participatory rights also appear to be more explicit and more extensive in the children’s act than in some of the education legislation. the children’s act follows international instruments such as the united nations convention on the rights of the child and the african charter on the rights and welfare of the child in specifying an express right of participation for children (see mahery, jamieson & scott, 2011). section 10 states: “every child that is of such an age, maturity and stage of development as to be able to participate in any matter concerning that child has the right to participate in an appropriate way and views expressed by the child must be given due consideration.” in the children’s act, children’s right to participation extends to collective decision making, policy making and planning. this includes participation in decisions about the operation of child and youth care centres, whose management boards are obliged to establish a children’s participatory forum for resident children (mahery et al., 2011). how effective such participatory spaces will be in practice remains to be seen. conclusion despite well-intentioned legislation – such as the south african schools act – for democratic school governance, officially sanctioned modes of representation not only constrain democratic participation (for adult stakeholders and even more so for children) but also lead to various forms of marginalisation (and thus non-participation). children’s participation in school governance is titular at best, and restricted to secondary school students. a homogenising tendency in the conception of categories of representative fails to take account of the ways in which “race”, class and gender shape people’s experience and concerns. i have argued for recognising the differences among children, especially as it affects their schooling, but also because the recognition of differences is one way of guarding against misrepresentation and marginalisation in the representative structures of school governance. i have also pointed to inconsistencies in the ways in which children and their participatory agency are imagined in official texts, both within education and social legislation such as the children’s act. although curriculum provision also homogenises children as “learners”, the modes of participation that are expected of them in the pedagogical space suggest an active, independent, autonomous person capable of critical and relational thinking – qualities that are at odds with the participatory scope granted to them on sgbs. in short, the realisation of participatory democracy, then, at the local levels of schools in south africa is still far from where it could be. there are three direct implications of the discussion in this article: 1) acknowledging difference; 2) consistency in legislation and policies; and, 3) accountability. it is to these that i now turn by way of concluding. differences among children affect their schooling and life opportunities. as discussed in this article, “race”, gender and class predominate as the variables which influence children’s schooling. for example, experiences of child-headed households, domestic violence, “initiation ceremonies” and pregnancy intersect with the variables of “race”, gender and class. recognition of difference in official texts would open up the possibility for formal processes to acknowledge the experiences that emerge from such differences and work with them. however, if such differences were taken into account in legislation and carrim — modes of participation and conceptions of children 81 policies, it would also be important to ensure a degree of consistency across such legislation and policy, within the domain of education and beyond. finally, taking the “politics of representation” seriously would entail developing better ways to ensure that “representatives” do, in fact, represent the “voices” of those they represent. in the first instance, such representatives would need to note the differences of those among the groups which they represent and, in the second instance, mechanisms to ensure that such representatives report back to the represented need to be addressed. given that modes of participation are tied to modes of representation within educational legislation and policy, the “authenticity” (cf. taylor, 1994) of the “voice” that the representative carries into dialogue on behalf of the represented is crucial for the participation of the represented, and accountability of the representative is thus of critical importance. more open deliberative forums in which elected representatives engage with their “constituents” may offer an appropriate space both for accountability and for wider participation. references bentley k 2011. learning through doing: suggesting a deliberative approach to children’s political participation and citizenship. perspectives in education, 29(1):47-55. bray r & moses s 2011. children and participation in south africa: exploring the landscape. perspectives in education, 29(1):6-17. carrim n 2009. hair: markings on the body and the logic of discrimination. perspectives in education 27(4):375-384. carrim n 2006. human rights and the construction of identities in south african education. phd thesis. johannesburg: university of the witwatersrand. carrim n 2006a. educational access in south africa: country analytic report. paper presented at the university of sussex’s comparative international research conference. england, june. carrim n, pendlebury s & enslin p 2000. education for democracy: democracy for education: the south african case: final report. johannesburg: school of education, university of the witwatersrand. carrim n & sayed y 1997. democratising educational governance in south africa: policy, problems and prospects. south african journal of education 17(3):91-100. carrim n & sayed y 1998. inclusiveness and participation in discourses of educational governance in south africa. international journal of inclusive education 2(1):29-43. ellsworth e 1989. why doesn’t this feel empowering? working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. harvard educational review 59:297-324. mahery p, jamieson l & scott k 2011. children’s act guide for child and youth care workers. edition 1. cape town: children’s institute, university of cape town & national association of child and youth care workers. moletsane r 1999. beyond desegregation: multicultural education in south african schools. perspectives in education 18(2):31-42. motala s, dieltiens v, carrim n, kgobe p, moyo g & rembe s 2007. educational access in south africa: an analytic review: create country paper. johannesburg: education policy unit, university of the witwatersrand. national department of education 1996. national education policy act. pretoria: government printer. national department of education 1996a. south african schools act. pretoria: government printer. national department of education 1997. curriculum 2005: government gazette, no 18051. pretoria: government printer. national department of education 2000. report of the review committee. pretoria: government printer. national department of education 2003. national curriculum statement. pretoria: government printer. national department of social development 2008. children’s amendment act of 2007. pretoria: government printer. sayed y, subrahmanian r, soudien c & carrim n 2007. education exclusion and inclusion: policy and implementation in south africa and india. london: dfid. perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201182 science daily 2009. south african policy on adolescents’ rights to access condoms is causing confusion, 20 january. taylor c 1994. the politics of recognition. in: a guttmann (ed). multiculturalism: examining the politics of recognition. princeton: princeton university press. tisdall k, davis j, hill m & prout a (eds) 2006. children, young people and social inclusion. bristol: policy press. weber e, nkomo m & amsterdam c 2009. diversity, unity and national development: findings from desegregated gauteng schools. perspectives in education 27(4):341-350. wyness m 2009. children representing children: participation and the problem of diversity in uk youth councils. childhood 16(4):535-552. young im 2000. inclusion and democracy. oxford: oxford university press. (endnotes) an anonymous reviewer drew my attention to this point.1. i am using the words “teachers” and “students” in this paper because these are in general use 2. internationally. in south african education and its policy and legislative framework “teachers” are called “educators” and “students” or “pupils” are called “learners”. in this paper i also use the term “student” to refer to both “pupils” and “students” who are distinguished generally from each other by the level of educational institution they occupy. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2013 university of the free state 114 mathematics: a powerful preand post-admission variable to predict success in engineering programmes at a university of technology barend van wyk, wiecher hofman & cecilia louw although student attrition and retention are researched all over the world, there is no final formula available to ensure academic success for selected students. the purpose is to share research undertaken at the tshwane university of technology (tut) in order to investigate the role of mathematics in student achievement and retention in national diploma engineering programmes. this study contributes to the identification of key aspects that exercise an influence on success at a university of technology (uot) in a country where students have diverse schooling experiences. an ex post facto study was carried out on a sample drawn from the first-time-entering national diploma cohorts of 2009 and 2010 to determine a possible correlation between their national senior certificate (grade 12) mathematics performance and their first semester mathematics performance, or with their first semester mathematics performance and the number of subjects passed after two years of study. the results indicate that the performance in mathematics i has a better predictive value than any other variable investigated. the performance in mathematics i may therefore be used as part of an early warning system for dropping out and in determining the size and nature of the support structures needed. mathematics performance during the first semester at tut is a significant determinant of academic success for national diploma students in engineering disciplines. keywords: admission, selection, higher education, mathematics, prediction of success, academic exclusion cecilia louw department of mathematics, tshwane university of technology e-mail: louwcj@tut.ac.za telephone: 012 382 5962 barend van wyk faculty of engineering and the built environment, tshwane university of technology e-mail: vanwykb@tut.ac.za telephone: 012 382 5328 wiecher hofman faculty of social sciences, university of groningen; pedagogical and educational sciences, erasmus university rotterdam, netherlands e-mail: w.h.a.hofman@rug.nl telephone: +31 50 363 2000 van wyk et al. mathematics: a powerful preand post-admission variable to predict success in engineering programmes at a university of technology 115 background due to unequal academic provisioning (nunns & ortlepp, 1994; bitzer, 2010) in south african schools, some students arrive at higher education institutions without the necessary abilities to succeed. different universities developed differing strategies for selection (the process to determine admission) and placement (the process after admission to determine the mainstream or extended programme) of students based on the factors for non-performance identified by such institutions (visser & hanslo, 2005). some authors suggest a combination of instruments rather than just one (jackson & young, 1988; ochse, 2003; jama, mapesela & beylefeld; 2008; grussendorff, liebenberg & houston, 2004). the slogan “access for success” (if you enrol a student he/she should have a fair chance of succeeding in his/her studies) became relevant as it was soon evident that an increased intake of previously disadvantaged students would not automatically result in more graduates (couglan, 2006; jama, mapesela & beylefeld; 2008; de beer, 2006), despite the best intentions of the education department. although the faculty of engineering at tut performed admission tests, which were regarded as an enabling process and not a gateway to keep students out (koch, foxcroft & watson, 2001), such tests were abandoned by the top management of the university in 2008 in many disciplines as they were perceived to restrict access. this situation necessitated the use of other means to determine students who need extra support in order to facilitate their progress. in the said faculty we therefore, with new interest, investigated models using readily available preand post-admission variables to determine and establish student success patterns. some of the factors that were found to influence student progress, not related to an admission test to determine cognitive and non-cognitive potential, will now be discussed. school performance and national senior certificate (grade 12) mathematics although zhang, anderson, ohland and thorndike (2004) determined that the high school grade point average (hsgpa) was a significant predictor of student success, the same might not be true in south africa. the changes in the school syllabi for the national senior certificate (the final national examination written at the end of grade 12, hereafter referred to as nsc) and the introduction of outcomes-based education in schools after the abolishment of apartheid were not received well by higher education institutions (jansen, 2012). students tend to arrive at higher education with less knowledge than before and this is especially true for mathematics (engelbrecht, harding & phiri, 2009; louw, 2009; rademeyer, 2009; mustoe, s.a.). in 2008, when the first of these nsc examinations was written, it was found that of the 592 000 learners who wrote the mathematics exam in 2008, only 4% had passed with more than 50% (rademeyer, 2009; klopper, 2009). the general conclusion in the literature is that the nsc is not a reliable predictor of academic success (van eeden, de beer and coetzee, 2001; grussendorff, liebenberg & houston, 2004); hence some perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 116 authors suggest that in order to access students for success (visser & hanslo, 2005), institutions have to develop alternative tests in order to select appropriately. english communication skills south african students are required to study in english at most higher education institutions (heis), but english is seldom their mother tongue. the majority of them have received schooling in english from a certain age, but code switching (setati & adler, 2002), the practice where teachers would explain concepts in the learners’ mother tongue and switch between english and another language as needed, allowed them to progress despite their language barriers. acknowledgement of these barriers has been communicated through research at many south african institutions (owino, 2002; van rooyen, 2001; mumba, rollnick & white, 2002). agar (1990) found that language barriers were ranked the number one obstacle by 75.3% of first year students at the university of the witwatersrand, one of the top ten universities in africa. determining the predictive value of the nsc english score for success in engineering studies at uots is therefore of importance. mathematics as a phenomenon the teaching and learning of mathematics on all levels have been investigated by many scholars. cardella (2008) proposed that educators should not only change the mathematical content during educational reforms, but should rather teach mathematical thinking. gainsburg (2006) advocates the inclusion of modelling in school syllabi and argues that it would assist engineering students, but realised that many of those in-class activities are not authentic enough to add value. booth (2004:24) explains the need for “developing capabilities for the future which go beyond mathematics in the curriculum, and towards mathematics in the experienced world of engineering”. she sees the need to teach mathematics for understanding, not only for passing a module. at the tshwane university of technology (tut) we offer engineering mathematics to students, but since all disciplines follow the same curriculum in their first two years of study, applications are varied and not only focussed on a student’s particular field of study. it was found in international literature that mathematics sat scores correlate positively with graduation (zhang, anderson, ohland & thorndike, 2004), but since students in south african public schools do not take the sat, the predictive value of the nsc mathematics score is of particular interest. non-cognitive aspects the prediction of retention in engineering studies focussing on non-cognitive aspects has been studied by many (immekus, maller, imbrie, wu & mcdermott, 2005; lin, reid imbrie, 2009; lin, imbrie, reid & wang, 2011). although we recognise the value of all those results, we focussed on available academic data and conducted an ex post facto study. van wyk et al. mathematics: a powerful preand post-admission variable to predict success in engineering programmes at a university of technology 117 institutional and other factors at tut the engineering student body roughly reflects the demographics of the country. we acknowledge the fact that the institution is not featured on the academic ranking of the world university’s list of 2010 (arwu, 2010) and would therefore not attract the best students. in fact, our students from previously disadvantaged groups would primarily also be from low ses groupings (bitzer, 2010; clark, 2007) (in bitzer). in our quest to widen our access, we need to increase our support to enable students to achieve their academic goals. our obligation is not over once students are admitted. student success is linked to how well students make use of existing opportunities (grussendorff, liebenberg & houston, 2004), but then we, the heis, have to supply those opportunities. we therefore have to continuously monitor student progress in order to supply students with needed support. identifying one or more post admission variables that could serve as an early warning signal that a student in a uot engineering faculty needs additional support, is therefore essential. since the most obvious common denominator among all uot engineering programmes during the first semester of study is mathematics i, the predictive value of early performance in this subject was of particular interest to this study. purpose the purpose of this study is to investigate the role of mathematics in student achievement and retention in national diploma engineering programmes. as indicated, student attrition and retention are researched all over the world and there is no final formula available on how to ensure academic success for selected students. this paper contributes to that field by, surprisingly, showing that for engineering programmes at south african uots, achievement in mathematics before a student enters the university and particularly the performance in mathematics during the first semester of study have an exceptionally strong predictive value. method research questions to investigate the role of mathematics in student achievement and retention in national diploma engineering programmes at tut, we formulated the following research questions: 1. what is the relationship between nsc academic potential score (aps), physical science, english and mathematics scores and academic performance during the first two years of the national diploma for engineering students ?; and 2. what is the relationship between mathematics results during the first semester and academic performance during the first two years of the national diploma for engineering students ? perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 118 setting and participants this study was conducted in the faculty of engineering and the built environment of tut, south africa. participants in this study were 456 first year students from the 2009 first-time-entering national diploma cohort and 274 first year students from the 2010 first-time-entering national diploma cohort. the data of 710 students were therefore available for the analysis of academic performance during the first year of study. all first year engineering students were included in the sample except those who completed the nsc before 2008, international students, and 2010 second semester entrants. currently students interested in studying engineering at a south african university of technology first enrol for a three year national diploma. after successfully completing this diploma, deserving students can add another year of full-time study to obtain the bachelor of technology degree. the engineering council of south africa, which is a co-signatory of the dublin and sydney accords, accredits these qualifications, resulting in international recognition in co-signatory countries. the national diploma comprises two years (four semesters) of theoretical study and one year (two semesters) of industry placement. since the ideal is for all students to complete the theoretical part of the national diploma in the minimum time, the number of subjects passed after four semesters (expressed as a percentage of the total number of subjects) is of particular interest to this study. students on average are required to complete 24 theoretical subjects; to gain this diploma they must achieve at least 50% in their final mark that is made up of a semester mark, called a predicate, and a final examination. mathematics i, a first semester subject, is compulsory for all engineering students at south african uots. the subject content of mathematics i entails a revision of critical work such as exponents, logarithms and trigonometry (which should have been covered thoroughly during high school, but which are lacking for many students). other topics include functions, i.e. hyperbolic, modulus and inverse functions, the binomial expansion, matrices and vectors, complex numbers (for all diplomas except geomatics and civil engineering which do mensuration and data handling) and differentiation and integration. independent variables national senior certificate results the mathematics, physical science and english scores, as well as the academic potential score (aps), i.e. the aggregate of all nsc subject scores excluding life orientation, were used. mathematics i the final results for mathematics i, a first semester subject in the south african uot national diploma engineering curriculum, were used. van wyk et al. mathematics: a powerful preand post-admission variable to predict success in engineering programmes at a university of technology 119 mathematics i predicate score the final mathematics i exam admission score, reflecting performance during the first four months of the semester, and counting 50% of a learner’s final score, was also used. dependent variables the percentages of subjects passed after the first and second years of study were used as dependent variables. the students who did not succeed in passing more than 50% of the prescribed subjects for a particular year of study at tut are forced to withdraw (academic exclusion). for the purpose of our study we have not excluded students from our sample who withdrew before the end of the period under investigation, since the ultimate aim of this study is to identify such students. the percentage of total subjects passed reflects the number of subjects passed out of the total number of subjects prescribed for the full period (differs between disciplines, but on average 24, as indicated). data analysis in summary we wish to identify which independent variable(s) (nsc results, mathematics i predicate score, and the final score for mathematics i) might serve as predictors for academic success during the first two years of study as measured by the dependent variables (percentage of subjects passed after the first and second years of study). all analyses were conducted using matlab version 7. significance tests were first conducted to determine which independent variables are significantly different for the group of students who passed more than 50% of the curriculum during the first semester, and those who failed more than 50%. both the two-sided t-test and bi-variate logistic regression were used. where appropriate the wilcoxon rank sum test was also performed to verify the results of the two-sided t-test since there were concerns that not all independent variables were normally distributed. pearson correlation was performed to determine if there is a significant correlation between an independent variable and the percentage subjects passed after one year. stepwise linear regression, a step by step iterative construction of a linear regression model to find the combination of independent variables that best explain the dependant variable, was also performed. to enable us to compare the magnitude of the regression coefficients, the independent variables were normalised by subtracting the mean and dividing by the variance. results during and after the first year: from table 1a it can be seen that of all nsc results, mathematics and physical science are the two most significant independent variables to discriminate between perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 120 the two groups. the pearson correlation coefficients, given in brackets, show that of all nsc results, mathematics has the highest correlation. however, the mathematics i predicate score, determined during the first four months of study, has a significantly higher correlation with the percentage subjects passed at the end of the first year. stepwise linear regression shows that the coefficient for the mathematics i predicate is almost 73 times larger than the coefficient for nsc physical science, even though their significance values are both smaller than 0.0001. the standard errors are given in italics. the fraction of variability in the response fitted by the model is 42%. this fraction, expressed as a percentage in the context of a regression task, represents the percentage of variance of the dependent variable that can be explained by the independent variables. expressed as a fraction (0.41 in this case) it can be interpreted as a coefficient giving an indication of the correlation between the dependent variable and the linear prediction. it therefore shares all the advantages and disadvantages associated with correlation coefficients. what is slightly peculiar in table 1a is that the final stepwise linear regression result excludes nsc mathematics. the two most significant independent variables were nsc mathematics and physical science if mathematics i (predicate) is not considered (see table 1b). if the mathematics i predicate is not considered, then as shown in table 1b, the nsc mathematics coefficient is slightly larger than the coefficient for physical science. none of the other nsc variables are included in the final results of the stepwise linear regression. although the fraction of variability in the response fitted by the model is only 15%, if we calculate the correlation between nsc mathematics and mathematics i then we obtain a correlation coefficient of 0.44 with p < 0.0001, indicating a highly significant correlation. van wyk et al. mathematics: a powerful preand post-admission variable to predict success in engineering programmes at a university of technology 121 table 1a: significance of nsc mathematics and mathematics i (predicate) in predicting success after two semesters (2009 and 2010 sample) independent variables two sided t-test/ wilcoxon rank sum significance (p-value: *< 0.1, ** < 0.05, *** < 0.01, **** < 0.001) pearson correlation bi-variate logistic regression stepwise linear regression nsc results mathematics **** **** (0.38) **** physical science **** **** (0.31) **** **** (4.34)1 1.202 english * ** (0.14) ** aps (aggregate of nsc subjects) ** ***(0.16) *** mathematics i (predicate) **** **** (0.69) **** **** (311.99)1 22.672 1fitted linear regression coefficient 2standard error table 1b: stepwise linear regression on nsc results (2009 and 2010 sample) nsc results mathematics **** (7.02)1 1.652 physical science **** (5.65)1 1.662 english aps (aggregate of nsc subjects) 1fitted linear regression coefficient 2standard error after two years tables 2a and 2b were obtained in a similar fashion to tables 1a and 1b, except that the percentage of subjects passed after two years of study was used as the dependent variable, the mathematics i final score replaced the predicate score as an independent variable, and only the 2009 sample was used since the students in the 2010 sample had not finished their second year at the time of writing this article. as seen in table 2a, the correlation between mathematics i and the percentage subjects passed after two years (four semesters) is 0.71. the fraction of variability in the response fitted by the model is 52%. the regression using only the mathematics i score obtained during the first semester accurately predicted 84.3% of the students who passed more than 50% of their subjects and accurately predicted 70.3% of the perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 122 students who passed less than 50% of their subjects at the end of the two year period. the overall weighted error rate was 21%. the results in table 2b are comparable to those in table 1b. it should be noted that if mathematics i is available, neither nsc mathematics or physical science are included in the final regression equation, and nsc english gains marginal prominence in the prediction of success after four semesters (the normalised coefficient for mathematics i is 157 times larger than the one for english), possibly pointing to the role of language in higher levels of learning. table 2a: significance of nsc mathematics and mathematics i (final score) in predicting success after four semesters (2009 sample) independent variables two sided t-test/ wilcoxon rank sum significance (p-value: *< 0.1, ** < 0.05, *** < 0.01, **** < 0.001) pearson correlation bi-variate logistic regression stepwise linear regression nsc results mathematics **** **** (0.30) **** physical science **** **** (0.33) **** english ** (0.11) *** (2.58)1 0.902 aps (aggregate of nsc subjects) ** (0.09) mathematics i (final score) **** **** (0.71) **** **** (404.9)1 18.252 1fitted linear regression coefficient 2standard error table 2b: stepwise linear regression on nsc results (2009 sample) nsc results mathematics *** (5.9)1 2.062 physical science **** (7.19)1 1.552 english aps (aggregate of nsc subjects) 1fitted linear regression coefficient 2standard error after two years figure 1 was constructed to further explore the strong correlation between the mathematics i result and the percentage of subjects passed after two years, depicted in table 2a (s1-s4 refers to the period from semester 1 to semester van wyk et al. mathematics: a powerful preand post-admission variable to predict success in engineering programmes at a university of technology 123 4). the total number of students whose mathematics i scores fall within a 5% interval and the number of students in the same interval who completed more than 50% of the total number of prescribed subjects during the first two years (four semesters), were calculated. the percentage of students in an interval who passed more than 50% of their subjects is indicated by the small round circles. the solid line is a logistic curve fitted to the result. the fascinating result is that the average number of students in a specific interval who will pass more than 50% of their prescribed subjects after two years can be fairly accurately predicted using only the mathematics i score obtained before the start of the second semester. from figure 1 it is clear that more than 80% of students who obtained more than 70% for mathematics i will on average pass more than 50% of their subjects during the first two years of study. figure 1: logistic regression on percentage s1 to s4 subjects passed and mathematics i discussion from the results it is clear that of all nsc results, mathematics, physical science, and to a lesser extent english and total aps, are all reliable predictors for success in engineering programmes at uots. it comes as a surprise that nsc mathematics and physical science have significance values less than 0.0001 (two-sided t-test, bi-variate logistic regression and linear regression, see table 2), considering the criticisms levelled at the outcomes based syllabus and the south african schooling system in general (klopper 2009; rademeyer 2009). as previously pointed out, the general conclusion reached in the literature is that nsc results are not a good predictor for academic success (van eeden, de beer & coetzee, 2001; grussendorff, liebenberg & houston, 2004). the results in this paper have demonstrated that this conclusion is not necessarily accurate for university of technology engineering students. what also came as a surprise was that the achievement in mathematics i during the first semester of study has such an exceptionally strong predictive value. however, if one takes into consideration that on average 20 out of the 24 subjects in perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 124 the national diploma are mathematical in nature and extensively use mathematical concepts (exponents, logarithms, trigonometry, functions, matrices and vectors, differentiation and integration etc.) covered during the first semester, then there should be a strong correlation between the performance in mathematics i and the percentage of subjects passed after the first two years of study. the relationship between mathematics and success is therefore worthy of deeper exploration and discussion: figure 1 shows that there is almost a linear relationship between the average number of students passing more than 50% of the national diploma subjects during the first two years and their performance in mathematics i. the logistic curve flattens out for scores higher than 70%, with the result that students who obtained 70% or more for mathematics i on average completed more than 80% of their national diploma subjects after two years of study. the problem is simply that there are not enough students after the first semester with a firm grasp of the mathematical concepts needed for the remaining three semesters. when separating the 2009 sample into those who have passed more than 50% of the subjects after two years and those who have not, the medians for the mathematics i score for these two groups are then 59 and 35 respectively. the two sided t-test confirmed that this difference is highly significant (p < 0.0001). as shown in table 3, the problem is that nearly 70% of the 2009 cohort completed less than 60% of their subjects during the first two years. table 3: cumulative percentage of applicants who passed all s1-s4 subjects (2009 sample % s1-s4 subjects passed cumulative % applicants < 50% 42% < 60% 69% < 70% 85% < 80% 95% < 100% 100% table 4: cumulative mathematics profile of applicants (2009 & 2010 sample) nsc mathematics score cumulative % applicants < 50% 11% < 60% 35% < 70% 63% < 80% 88% < 100% 100% when separating the 2009 sample into those who have passed more than 50% of the subjects after two years and those who have not, the medians of the nsc mathematics scores for these two groups are then 4 (i.e. 50-59%) and 5 (i.e. 60-69%) van wyk et al. mathematics: a powerful preand post-admission variable to predict success in engineering programmes at a university of technology 125 respectively. the two sided t-test confirmed that this difference is highly significant (p < 0.0001). as indicated in table 4, the problem is that 35% of the 2009 and 2010 cohorts had a score below 60% and according to figure 1 and tables 2 and 3, it is mainly these students who constitute the 42% who passed less than 50% of the subjects during two years. to end our discussion on the relationship between mathematics and success it is worth noting that if only 4% of the 592 000 learners passed nsc mathematics with more than 50% in 2008 (rademeyer, 2009; klopper, 2009), consequently one of the factors that this study has identified is that the national examination is a useful filter and that nsc mathematics is a sound indicator of the presence of the necessary mathematical foundation for tertiary engineering education at a university of technology. the challenge is that there are not enough students with good nsc results entering the uot system. conclusion the results demonstrate that academic performance during the first two years of study for the national diploma in engineering disciplines is significantly influenced by the mathematics foundation laid before entering tertiary education. it also became clear that performance during the first semester in mathematics is a significant determinant of academic success for national diploma students in engineering disciplines. this paper shows that preand post-admission mathematics achievement has the potential to be part of an early warning system to identify at-risk students in engineering programmes, that mathematics i should be considered as a critical intervention point for uot engineering students, and that strong support from the onset to strengthen mathematical skills could prove highly beneficial. in our opinion the results obtained have three important implications: 1) both the nsc-mathematics and the mathematics i scores could be used as powerful indicators to identify at-risk students and could be incorporated in an early warning system for potential dropouts. obviously, such a system could include other factors such as communication skills, non-cognitive aspects, quality of accommodation, distance from campus, family and socioeconomic situation, as well as overall academic performance (li, swaminathan & tang, 2009). 2) in this study only 9% of students passed all (on average 24) of their national diploma subjects in the minimum period. just fewer than 40% of students in the sample passed less than 50% of their national diploma subjects after two years, and about 12% dropped out or were excluded. seen in the light of the national study by scott, yeld and hendry (2007:25) south african uots have to face the post facto information that nearly 50% of the students we admit to our engineering programmes are at risk right from the start. since the admission of these at-risk students is driven by the national emphasis on access as well as by institutional financial viability reasons, our support structures and foundation programmes should be strengthened. 3) when students who performed marginally in nsc have been given a chance at studying towards a diploma in engineering but perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 126 after one or two semesters it becomes clear that engineering is not the best option for them, student-friendly mobility mechanisms to enter other programmes need to be investigated. this paper indicates that preand post-admission mathematics achievement has the potential to be part of an early warning system to identify at risk students in engineering programmes. future research in the faculty will pay attention to the first year experience of students (van zyl; 2010), ways to strengthen students’ mathematical pre-knowledge (mustoe, s.a.) and external, internal and demographic factors that play a role in poor progress (li, swaminathan & tang, 2009). study skills, locus of control, motivation and attitude as discussed by others (hendrich & schepers, 2004; eiselen & geyser, 2003; de beer, 2006) are all areas that need further investigation. it is clear that institutions need to provide additional support to a group of students which is increasing in size and in need. references agar d 1990. non-traditional students: perceptions of problems which influence 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[projects to improve mathematics performance at a university of technology]. die suid-afrikaanse tydskrif vir natuurwetenskap en tegnologie, 28, 366-377. mumba fk, rollnick m & white m 2002. how wide is the gap between high school and first-year chemistry at the university of the witwatersrand? south african journal of higher education, 16, 148-156. mustoe l. s.a. the mathematics background of undergraduate engineers. retrieved from http://www.hull.ac.uk/engprogress/prog1papers/lboromustoe.pdf on 3 december 2012. nunns c & ortlepp k 1994. exploring predictors of academic success in psychology i at wits university as an important component of fair student selection. south african journal of psychology, 24, 201-207. ochse c 2003. are positive self-perceptions and expectancies really beneficial in an academic context? south african journal of higher education, 17, 67-73. owino fr 2002. conquering the conqueror: the empowerment of the african languages casts a shadow over english in africa. perspectives in education, 20, 197-212. rademeyer a 2009. suid-afrika se wiskunde-krisis: innoverende oplossing nou nodig. 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[the prediction of the academic achievements of students in a university bridging programme.] south african journal of higher education, 15, 180-189. visser aj & hanslo m 2005. approaches to predictive studies: possibilities and challenges. south african journal of higher education, 19, 1160-1176. zhang g, anderson tj, ohland mw & thorndike br 2004. identifying factors influencing engineering student graduation: a longitudinal and crossinstitutional study. journal of engineering education, 93, 313-320. perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 159 multimodality in science education as productive pedagogy in a pgce programme nazeem edwards initial teacher education programmes such as the postgraduate certificate in education (pgce) in south africa are undergoing significant changes with the introduction of a new policy regime. this paper briefly outlines the policy changes advanced for teacher education programmes in south africa. it examines productive pedagogies as a conceptual framework to underpin such a restructured programme. it then proposes that multiple representations can serve as a productive pedagogy of enactment in the science classroom because it engages the student with higher-order thinking skills, connects them with the world beyond the classroom in a supportive environment, and values difference by affording students multiple opportunities to develop a deep understanding of concepts. some examples are given and the broader implications for classroom practice are discussed. keywords: productive pedagogies, teacher education, multimodality, science education introduction unless initial teacher education can prepare beginning teachers to learn to do much more thoughtful and challenging work, and unless ways can be found, through professional development, to help teachers to sustain such work, traditional instruction is likely to persist in frustrating educational reform, and reformers’ visions are likely to continue not to permeate practice broadly or deeply. (ball & cohen, 1999: 6) in post-apartheid south africa, reform efforts in education have been characterised by curriculum change with little emphasis being placed on the professional development of the teacher. the breadth and scope of these curriculum nazeem edwards department of curriculum studies, stellenbosch university. tel: 021 8082291 e-mail: nedwards@sun.ac.za perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 160 changes necessitate a broadening of the teachers’ subject knowledge as well as pedagogy to improve the teaching and learning process. science and mathematics teaching, in particular, have borne the brunt of criticism as learners’ achievements have been less than desirable in these disciplines. the country has to produce more scientists and engineers in a globally competitive environment while the declining uptake of students into these disciplines at tertiary level should be addressed as a matter of urgency. even though the reasons for this decline are multifaceted, there is no doubt that the teacher plays a crucial role in motivating students and inculcating a positive attitude towards the subject. ball and cohen’s concern about traditional instruction frustrating reform efforts would ring true unless teachers adapt their pedagogical practices. the extant literature on the content knowledge of south african teachers reveals that many have not mastered the curricula they are expected to teach (spaull, 2013: 25). garbett (2011: 36) also argued that “teaching science effectively in primary schools is dependent upon understanding the complex relationship between learners’ prior understanding, science content, teaching approaches, and pedagogical content knowledge”. these sentiments resonate with the department of higher education and training’s (dhet, 2011: 53) minimum set of competences required of newly qualified teachers, one of which is that they “must be able to reflect critically, in theoretically informed ways and together with their professional community of colleagues, on their own practice in order to constantly improve it and adapt it to evolving circumstances”. how this will translate in reality remains a moot point as it could also be argued that the new curriculum assessment policy statement (caps) for grades r-12 is very prescriptive and leaves little to the imagination of the teacher. in this conceptual paper i address the following questions: 1. what are the policy changes that are proposed for teacher education in south africa, particularly in relation to the postgraduate certificate in education (pgce)? 2. is the productive pedagogies conceptual framework appropriate for a new pgce programme? 3. how does the notion of multimodality in science education fit in with the productive pedagogies framework? in the next section i examine the policy changes advocated for initial teacher education programmes. policy changes in teacher education in south africa teacher education programmes in south africa underwent a comprehensive review process for accreditation purposes from 2006 onwards. the council on higher education (che, 2010: 48) national review report on teacher education programmes highlighted the challenges faced by the pgce programmes in general: multimodality in science education as productive pedagogy in a pgce programme nazeem edwards 161 • students’ undergraduate majors are no guarantee to sufficient disciplinary knowledge to build pedagogical content knowledge (pck). • time constraints lead to cramming within the one-year programme. • it is sometimes difficult to foster a common understanding with part-time staff to achieve a unity of purpose and coherence within the programme. an external evaluation report on the higher education quality committee (heqc) of the che (2009: 14) further stated that transformation is not just about the demographics of students and staff, but also the changing of teaching and learning practices. the heqc made certain recommendations after the review in relation to these programmes. thus, these teacher education programmes are being reconceptualised in the light of the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications (dhet, 2011) policy document which must have been implemented by 2015. the policy which acquired the acronym mrteq: requires all teacher education programmes to address the critical challenges facing education in south africa today – especially the poor content and conceptual knowledge found amongst teachers, as well as the legacies of apartheid, by incorporating situational and contextual elements that assist teachers in developing competences that enable them to deal with diversity and transformation (dhet, 2011: 6-7). the mrteq policy document outlines various type of knowledge that teachers need in order to practise effectively. five different types of learning are proposed for the acquisition of knowledge for teaching purposes: • disciplinary learning refers to subject matter knowledge. • pedagogical learning includes general pedagogical knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. • practical learning incorporates learning in and from practice. • fundamental learning refers to language competence, use of technology and academic literacy. • situational learning refers to the various contexts and environments in which learning takes place, especially the diverse challenges in the south african context such as hiv/aids. the pgce programme offers graduates in different disciplines an opportunity to develop skills and competences as teachers in specialist areas. this qualification can be phase specific from the foundation phase (grades r-3) to the further education and training phase grades 10-12). it is important that students gain the necessary subject matter knowledge from their undergraduate degree so that the focus can be on the five areas of learning outlined above. teacher educators also identify the socialising effects of school cultures as one of the external factors that undermine their best efforts (gore, griffiths & ladwig, 2004: 375). it is against this background that the productive pedagogies framework is outlined in the next section and proposed as a conceptual framework for teacher education. perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 162 productive pedagogies lingard, hayes, mills and christie (2003: 3-4) suggested that the most significant contributor to student achievement is the teacher’s classroom practice through the alignment of the curriculum, pedagogy and assessment. these australian researchers advocated the notion of “productive pedagogies” and “productive assessment” from their queensland school reform longitudinal study (qsrls). they stated that “the concept of productive pedagogies is intentionally postmodernist in its engagement with the difference dimension, and in its broader assumption that productive pedagogies can be manifested in multiple ways in the classroom” (lingard et al., 2003: 7). the concept of productive pedagogies derived from the qsrls and examined teachers’ classroom practices from a sociological perspective. it included a literature review of, among others things, “school effectiveness and school improvement research, sociocultural approaches, learning communities and constructivism, critical pedagogies, along with freirean, indigenous, post-colonial and feminist pedagogies” (lingard, 2010:172). the term “productive” was used because teachers’ classroom work produces particular outcomes (lingard et al., 2003: 9). these practices are intellectually demanding, connected to the world, supportive in a demanding way, and engage productively with differences. it also recognises “the epistemological doubt about knowledge forms, yet still works with a positive thesis about what teachers and schools can achieve” (lingard et al., 2003: 7). lingard (2010: 72) also avers that the construction of a progressive pedagogy “was evident in the emphasis upon the constructed nature of knowledge and multiple perspectives on things and also in the constructivist and collectivist approach to learning”. bourdieu’s notion of “cultural capital” was taken account of, but with the emphasis placed on providing all students with the necessary capital to navigate through their schooling. at the core was a concern about classroom practices that make a difference to student learning, particularly those from marginalised backgrounds. the 20 elements of productive pedagogies were categorised under four dimensions: intellectual quality, connectedness, supportiveness, and engagement with, and valuing of difference. these are shown in table 1 along with the productive assessment. about 1 000 classroom observations were conducted in 24 case study schools over three years (1998-2000) and about 250 teachers were each observed four times. the findings indicated that: there was a high degree of support for students (although very few opportunities for them to affect the direction of activities in the classroom), but not enough intellectual demandingness, connectedness to the world or engagement with, and valuing of, difference (lingard, 2010: 173-174). the author refers to these as “pedagogies of indifference”. multimodality in science education as productive pedagogy in a pgce programme nazeem edwards 163 the dimension of intellectual quality looked at higher-order thinking and the ability of students to manipulate information and ideas through synthesis, explanation or interpretation. the depth of knowledge considered central ideas and the extent to which relatively complex relations were established. students’ depth of understanding was demonstrated through their ability to solve problems and draw conclusions. the notion of substantive conversation examined the extent of teacher–student interaction in the classroom to promote coherent understanding. metalanguage is a reflection of whether aspects of language, grammar and technical vocabulary are foregrounded in the classroom. hayes, mills, christie and lingard (2006: 46) concluded from their findings that students benefit from activities that require them to be actively engaged in the construction of knowledge. put differently, students who apply higher-order thinking engage with deep learning rather than surface learning; they also engage in dialogue in the classroom and see knowledge as a social construction which is subject to change. dooly (2008: 22) accentuated the fact that students’ interest in learning increases when they work collaboratively by exchanging and debating ideas within their groups. the notion of cooperative learning helps students develop a better attitude towards the subject, develop better social skills, become more articulate, and end up respecting differing viewpoints more than when they are taught in the traditional teaching modes (herreid, 2007: 127). the dimension of connectedness examined knowledge integration across subject areas, the students’ background knowledge linking to their cultural, linguistic and everyday experiences, and the larger social context in which they live. another aspect of this dimension involves a focus on a problem-based curriculum in which students solve a specific practical or hypothetical set of problems. in contrast, the dimension of a supportive classroom environment considers the academic engagement of students, the implicit and self-regulatory or explicit direction of their behaviour, and whether criteria for judging student performances are made explicit. the last dimension of working with and valuing difference observed the valuing of the non-dominant culture’s beliefs, languages, practices and ways of knowing, as well as the inclusion through participation of students from diverse backgrounds. the style of teaching was identified as narrative when there was an emphasis in teaching and in student responses on form and structure. another element within this dimension “emphasises the need for schools to create learning communities in which difference and group identities are positively recognised and developed within a collaborative and supportive classroom community” (hayes et al., 2006: 69). the last element of active citizenship recognises the right of an individual in a democratic society to participate in all the practices and institutions within that society. perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 164 table 1 relationships between productive pedagogies and productive assessment classroom practices dimensions productive pedagogies productive assessment intellectual quality problematic knowledge higher-order thinking depth of knowledge depth of students’ understanding substantive conversation metalanguage problematic knowledge: construction of knowledge problematic knowledge: consideration of alternatives higher-order thinking depth of knowledge: disciplinary content depth of knowledge: disciplinary processes elaborated written communication metalanguage connectedness connectedness to the world beyond the classroom knowledge integration background knowledge problem-based curriculum connectedness: problem connected to the world beyond the classroom knowledge integration link to background knowledge problem-based curriculum connectedness: audience beyond school supportiveness classroom environment students’ direction explicit quality performance criteria social support academic engagement student self-regulation students’ direction explicit quality performance criteria engagement with and valuing of difference cultural knowledges active citizenship narrative group identities in learning communities representation cultural knowledges active citizenship group identities in learning communities source: lingard (2010: 173) it is evident from the productive pedagogies framework that the different dimensions address all the areas that the mrteq policy proposes within an initial teacher education such as the pgce programme. there is an emphasis on quality and depth of knowledge and an awareness of the different contexts within which learning multimodality in science education as productive pedagogy in a pgce programme nazeem edwards 165 takes place. in the south african context diversity plays such an important role that the teacher must consciously cultivate and promote respect and tolerance for the views of others within the classroom. more importantly, the teacher must strive for excellence in every context to promote deep learning. in the following section multimodality in science education is examined in detail as a productive pedagogy of enactment in the classroom. multimodality as a productive pedagogy of enactment in the science classroom developing the students’ conceptual understanding in science entails a plethora of representations that allow the student to engage with disciplinary knowledge. the role that language and text plays in the process of communicating this knowledge by the teacher cannot be discounted. in adopting various pedagogical strategies within different contexts, the science teacher uses a multiplicity of modes which airey and linder (2009: 40, 42) term a “critical constellation of modes” in physics. the authors propose that multimodal teaching has the potential to lead to better and more comprehensive outcomes, and research should be carried out “into which constellation of modes best opens up the possibility for experiencing each of the particular ways of knowing of physics”. van heuvelen (1991: 891) argued that student solutions are devoid of any qualitative understanding whereas physicists rely on qualitative analysis and representation. in this section the concept of multimodal representations in science education is explored as fundamental to developing the students’ conceptual understanding in science. it is also underpinned by a constructivist approach as it affords the student multiple opportunities to construct knowledge in the science classroom. in physics this was proposed as a pedagogical technique when van heuvelen (1991: 896) stated that “multiple exposures to skills and concepts over extended time intervals can assist in making these permanent”. these tie in with the view of lingard (2010) quoted earlier where he argued that a progressive pedagogy is evident when there are multiple perspectives on things and a constructivist and collectivist approach to learning. prain and waldrip (2006: 1843-1844) highlighted the fact that learning concepts and methods in science entail understanding and conceptually linking different representational forms. this focus on multimodal representations is also consistent with the nature of scientific discourse. according to these authors, the following definitions are useful: • “mode” refers to the type of representation entailed in the resource (visual, experiential, 3-d written, graphic, numerical). perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 166 • “multiple” representations refer to the practice of re-representing the same concept through different forms, including verbal, graphic, and numerical modes, as well as repeated student exposures to the same concept. • “multi-modal” refers to the integration in science discourse of different modes to represent scientific reasoning and findings. an important aspect is the ability of the student to interact between the different modes and to be able to translate from one mode to the other. the challenge is to develop a teaching and learning environment that allows for this type of interaction, and which caters for the different learning styles and abilities of the students. the different representational forms include such categories as descriptive (verbal, graphic, tabular), experimental, mathematical, figurative (pictorial, analogous and metaphoric), and kinaesthetic or embodied gestural understandings or representations of the same concept or process (prain & waldrip, 2006: 1844). in current electricity, for example, the students can engage with scientific investigations, computer simulations, 3-d models, diagrams, graphs, verbal accounts, etc. in their exploratory study, prain and waldrip (2006: 1843) aimed at identifying initial beliefs and practices of a group of teachers and students (years 4-6) in australia when the students engaged with multiple representations of the same science concepts. a multi-site case-study approach was employed with qualitative and quantitative methods; they found that while teachers used various modes to engage students and assess learning, they were not systematic in their focus on student integration and translation across modes. the study also established that various factors affected students’ understanding of different modes, and that students who recognised relationships between modes demonstrated better conceptual understanding than students who lacked this knowledge. tytler and prain (2010: 2075) cite reif and larkin (1991) who argued that understanding a concept in science involves being able to operate flexibly and coherently with a range of associated representations, and this process will involve both deductive and inductive logical modes, and non-formal personal and perceptual associations. tang, chee and yeo (2011: 1776) cite yore and treagust (2006) who posit the view that there is a general lack of a multi-representational framework that investigates how various representations and representational transformations (from one mode to another) promote conceptual understanding. there is also a need to conduct empirical research to show how multiple modes of representations can be used to support science achievement. congruent with the outline above, tang et al. (2011) define an instructional representation as a particular form of expression such as a written text, analogy, equation, table, graph, diagram, and simulation. a mode of representation, or modality, is a semiotic (meaning-making) resource system moulded and repeatedly used over time in a community. an important point of departure is that no two different representations are equivalent, and translations between representations are not as unproblematic as many would assume. multimodality in science education as productive pedagogy in a pgce programme nazeem edwards 167 the question which they pose is how are appropriate meanings constructed through the use of any kind of representation (or combination of representations) rather than which is the right representation to use. the results of the study of the role of multimodalities in representing the work-energy concept with grade 9 physics students showed that the thematic integration of multimodalities is both difficult and necessary for students in order to construct a scientific understanding that is congruent with the physics curriculum. positioning multiple representations, multiple modality, and textual, semiotic and symbolic modes within the larger framework of science literacy for all, can be seen by realizing that these modes and their use in science play roles in both the understanding of science and the fundamental literacy in science that allow scientists and students to construct understandings and to report and argue these ideas with others (yore & hand, 2010: 94). a further consideration of multimodal representations locates it within the broader framework of scientific literacy. whether it is fundamental literacy or the level at which scientists engage with research and interrogate ideas in order to establish scientific knowledge, the role of multimodalities is important. yore and hand (2010: 96) argue further that the embeddedness of representations, experience, argument, and printed words appears to be an indicator of successful integration of mental images, conceptual understanding, and stored meaningful knowledge. the focus on multiple representations of science concepts is consistent with a constructivist approach to learning science which is less restrictive than a traditional textbook approach. a review of the research has the following implications for teaching: 1. it is important for teachers to use multiple and multimodal representations to enhance student learning. 2. it is important for teachers to assist students in scaffolding their understandings using multiple and multimodal representations. 3. multiple and multimodal representations need to be carefully planned into the teaching and learning material. recent research in physics education research has also highlighted the importance of multiple representations within the discipline: • unpacking representations is a vital aspect of coming to appreciate the disciplinary affordances of representations of attaining a more comprehensive access to the disciplinary knowledge (fredlund, linder, airey & linder, 2014: 9). • in a case study which focused on how a particular set of representations facilitated meaning making in small-group discussions, it was found that representation affordance is critically related to how the representations get situated in a learning environment (enghag, forsman, linder, mackinnon & moons, 2013: 643). perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 168 • for the teaching and learning of science a productive way of thinking about the signification of the representations used is in terms of their affordance which is the inherent potential of that representation to provide access to disciplinary knowledge. it is the collective disciplinary affordance that underpins appropriate holistic meaning-making (linder, 2013: 44). some examples of how multimodality in the science classroom can fit in with the notion of productive pedagogies are illustrated below. example 1: in this example pre-service science teachers are engaged in the experimental mode (figure 1) in groups at different workstations. the students are discussing in groups of their own choice which encourages inclusiveness without anyone being allowed to dominate. this also extends the notion of a supportive classroom environment. observations and readings relating to current and potential difference for light bulbs connected in parallel and in series are recorded on a worksheet as shown in figure 2. the translation is from a 3-d experimental mode to written text. the use of the ammeter and voltmeter were meant to help students develop an appreciation of how the current divides in parallel while the potential difference is the same. the current reading is also associated with the relative brightness of the light bulbs. students should recognise that the removal of a light bulb in parallel still allows the current to flow, but affects the relative brightness. this extends their knowledge beyond the classroom, because this is the way in which schools and homes are commonly connected. multimodality in science education as productive pedagogy in a pgce programme nazeem edwards 169 figure 2: experimental observations at workstation 1 students write a test later in which the questions simulate the experimental set up. individual answers are recorded on the sheet as in figure 3. in this multiple-choice type question the correct answer must be provided as well as justification for the answer. this links to the dimension of intellectual quality and engages students’ higher-order thinking skills. they are solving a problem and drawing conclusions based on sound reasoning to substantiate their answer. figure 3: answer to a theoretical question which simulates the experimental set up of workstation 1 at another workstation the students record the data and plot a graph of the relationship between potential difference and current for two different types of conductors. a conclusion must be written from the graph which shows a translation perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 170 from the graphical to the descriptive (verbal) or mathematical as shown below in figure 4. students are meant to make inferences about the fact that the potential difference is directly proportional to the current (written mode), v∝ i (mathematical mode); the steeper gradient for nichrome implies it has greater resistance, and the type of metal thus affects resistance. figure 4: experimental data are obtained to plot a graph at workstation 2 in the test that followed one of the questions has a graph which the students must use to answer related questions. this involves translation into a hypothesis, deductions and diagrammatic representation of the investigation as shown in figure 5. this encompasses a range of representations such as written, mathematical and visual. multimodality in science education as productive pedagogy in a pgce programme nazeem edwards 171 figure 5: theoretical question which simulates the experimental set up at workstation 2 example 2: in this example students build a 3-d model that exhibits the principles of electricity that they have learnt in class over a six-week period. they work in groups of up to three and must demonstrate that the model works and explain the principles involved. a transcript of the explanation (verbal mode) provided by two students for their model in figure 6 follows below. perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 172 figure 6: students demonstrate their model to the class student a: “we have a series connection from this side. then in series the resistance is much more. the potential difference of this component and that component is the same. you must also observe that the motor is moving very fast ... yes.” student b: “the circuit is connected from the positive to the negative side where the red wire from the battery is the positive. the black wire then is the negative. as soon as i connect another component such as a light bulb in parallel, the other components such as the motor will run slower because the current must be divided. and if i connect another light bulb, it will also stop and turn much less. so the resistance decreases in the parallel connection and the current strength increases across the parallel components. what i want to add is that in most circuits a series and parallel connection is used and in this case the motor and led are in series and the light bulbs are in parallel.” the two students demonstrated that they could translate their understanding of parallel and series combinations to a model that works. however, some parts of their argument are unsound. for example, student a refers to the potential difference across two different components connected in series as the same. student b shows evidence of using her knowledge about parallel combinations acquired earlier to explain what happens to the effective resistance. discussion prain and waldrip (2006: 1853) have presented the different representational modes in a case study of electricity. the pre-service science teachers were exposed to all of the modes during their six-week study of electricity in the initial teacher education programme. in example 1 the students are exposed to hands-on activities to engage with the concepts in electricity. this signifies a particular mode of representation, but it has considerable potential to be translated into other forms. the observations made and the data obtained can be translated into graphs, mathematical equations, diagrams, models and verbal descriptions. from the evidence presented in this article, students’ conceptual understanding can be scaffolded and their scientific reasoning can be cultivated by adopting a nonformulaic approach to teaching electricity. when exposed to hands-on investigations about series and parallel combinations of light bulbs, the qualitative understanding multimodality in science education as productive pedagogy in a pgce programme nazeem edwards 173 acquired during this particular representational mode can be translated into the written mode such as a worksheet. students are also able to interpret formal representations such as graphs and translate to a written or visual mode such as a diagram to develop their conceptual understanding. sampson and clark (2011: 67) have argued that, before students can explain a phenomenon, they must first make sense of it, and the explanation must then be consistent and justifiable with what is valued and appropriate in science. osborne (2007: 179-180) proposed that students engage in dialogic interaction to construct meaning as they present their arguments with the necessary evidence. in example 2 the 3-d model has to be translated into a verbal mode when the students explain how it works. while they were not 100% correct, i would argue that it introduces them to the disciplinary ways of knowing in science. in order to develop their understanding they need to subject their arguments to their peers. students come from a variety of backgrounds when they enter teacher education. some do not have the necessary background to do science education. in preparing them for the world of teaching, the development of their pedagogical content knowledge is critical. multimodal representations function within a constructivist environment as the student assimilates their extant knowledge with new ideas to create understanding. the capacity of the student to translate between modes depends on their cognate ability. repeated exposure to the different modalities can help in constructing appropriate meanings. conclusion in positing the view that multimodal representations in science can serve as a productive pedagogy of enactment in the classroom, i want to conclude by stating to what extent it links with each of the dimensions. it is evident that students are required to engage higher-order thinking to manipulate information through analysis and interpretation. they had to demonstrate their depth of understanding by solving problems and drawing conclusions. when demonstrating their model they were actively involved in knowledge construction in front of their peers by engaging in dialogue. the collaborative efforts within the group context also develop better learning and a respect for other viewpoints (dooly, 2008; herreid, 2007). there is definite knowledge integration with mathematics when dealing with graphs and calculations as well as technology when they build a model. this also allows connections with their everyday experiences of electricity when they are presented with a practical problem. students are supported in the classroom when doing problem solving and when they are busy building their models. to an extent self-regulated behaviour is promoted, because the model constructions take place outside of class time. the criteria for assessment are also explicit because a rubric is given to the students. students from diverse backgrounds are entering the programmes. when presenting their projects many students are unable to express perspectives in education 2015: 33(3) 174 themselves adequately in english. language is not used to judge the presentation as this would prejudice these students. this speaks to the dimension of working with and valuing difference. i have shown that productive pedagogies have the potential to serve as a powerful conceptual framework to underpin an initial teacher education programme. in south africa there are huge challenges with regard to science education. students would benefit from exposure to multiple representations of concepts in science which can be enacted as a productive pedagogy in the classroom. references airey, j. & linder, c. 2009. a disciplinary discourse perspective on university science learning: achieving fluency in a critical constellation of modes. journal of research in science teaching, 46(1): 27-49. ball, d.l. & cohen, d.k. 1999. developing practice, developing practitioners: toward a practice-based theory of professional development. in: l darling-hammond and g skyes (eds.), teaching as the learning professional: handbook of policy and practice (pp. 3-32). san francisco: jossey-bass. council on higher education (che). 2009. external evaluation report of the higher education quality committee, february 2009. pretoria: che. council on higher education (che). 2010. report on the national review of academic and professional programmes in education. pretoria: che. department of higher education and training (dhet). 2011. the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications. government gazette no. 34467, 15 july 2011. pretoria: government printers. dooly, m. 2008. constructing knowledge together. in: m dooly (ed.), telecollaborative language learning: a guidebook to moderating intercultural collaboration online (pp. 21-45). bern: peter lang. enghag, m., forsman, j., linder, c., mackinnon, a. & moons, e. 2013. using a disciplinary discourse lens to explore how representations afford meaning making in a typical wave physics course. international journal of science and mathematics education, 11, 625-650. fredlund, t., linder, c., airey, j. & linder, a. 2014. unpacking physics representations: towards an appreciation of disciplinary affordance. physical review special topics – physics education research, 10, 1-13. garbett, d. 2011. constructivism deconstructed in science teacher education. australian journal of teacher education, 36(6): 36-49. gore, j.m., griffiths, t. & ladwig, j.g. 2004. towards better teaching: productive pedagogy as a framework for teacher education. teaching and teacher education, 20, 375-387. hayes, d., mills, m., christie, p. & lingard, b. 2006. teachers and schooling making a difference: productive pedagogies, assessment and performance. crows nest: allen & unwin. multimodality in science education as productive pedagogy in a pgce programme nazeem edwards 175 herreid, c.f. 2007. why isn’t cooperative learning used to teach science? in cf herreid (ed.), start with a story: the case study method of teaching college science (pp. 127-136). arlington: nsta press. linder, c. 2013. disciplinary discourse, representation, and appresentation in the teaching and learning of science. european journal of science and mathematics education, 1(2): 43-49. lingard, b. 2010. towards a sociology of pedagogies. in mw apple, sj ball & la gandin (eds.), the routledge international handbook of the sociology of education (pp. 167-178). oxon, uk: routledge. lingard, b., hayes, d., mills, m. & christie, p. 2003. leading learning: making hope practical in schools. maidenhead: open university press. osborne, j. 2007. science education for the twenty first century. eurasia journal of mathematics, science and technology education, 3(3): 173-184. prain, v. & waldrip, b. 2006. an exploratory study of teachers’ and students’ use of multi-modal representations of concepts in primary science. international journal of science education, 28(15): 1843-1866. sampson, v. & clark, d.b. 2011. a comparison of the collaborative scientific argumentation practices of two high and two low performing groups. research in science education, 4: 63-97. spaull, n. 2013. south africa’s education crisis: the quality of education in south africa 1994-2011. report commissioned by centre for development & enterprise, october 2013. johannesburg: cde. tang, k., chee, s. & yeo, j. 2011. students’ multimodal construction of the workenergy concept. international journal of science education, 33(13): 17751804. tytler, r. & prain, v. 2010. a framework for re-thinking learning in science from recent cognitive science perspectives. international journal of science education, 32(15): 2055-2078. van heuvelen, a. 1991. learning to think like a physicist: a review of research-based instructional strategies. american journal of physics, 59(10): 891-897. yore, l. & hand, b. 2010. epilogue: plotting a research agenda for multiple representations, multiple modality, and multimodal representational competency. research in science education, 40: 93–101. 135 deepening pre-service secondary teachers’ mathematical content knowledge through engaging with peers’ mathematical contributions abstract depth and rigour in mathematical knowledge for pre-service secondary school mathematics teachers may be found in particular experiences of learning and doing school-level mathematics. drawing on two cases from a course on financial mathematics for secondary school teachers, i illustrate opportunities for exploring compound and exponential growth. i show that when some students unexpectedly produced a quadratic model for an exponential relationship, opportunities are opened up to study the usefulness of the quadratic function as a model of the given situation. further opportunities are also opened up to explore the relationship between the quadratic and exponential functions, which in turn require students to draw on advanced mathematics. i also argue that the use of the compound growth formula in a situation where it is not typically used provides opportunity to deepen knowledge of the essential features of the formula. finally, i reflect on how suitable opportunities for engaging with peers’ mathematical contributions might be included in a pre-service programme for secondary school mathematics teachers. keywords: maths-for-teaching, teacher knowledge, pre-service teacher education, compound growth, depth 1. introduction what do the notions of depth and rigour mean in preparing future secondary school mathematics teachers? many might suggest it involves much attention to university-level mathematics. however, this has been challenged, partly on the grounds that advanced mathematics and the associated experiences of learning it do not prepare secondary school mathematics teachers well for the work they will do (e.g. cooney & wiegel, 2003; stacey, 2008). in south africa, there is the added complexity that many students who enter pre-service secondary school mathematics teacher education programmes are not well prepared for university mathematics1. one of the challenges facing secondary school mathematics teacher education, locally and internationally, is the appropriate selection of mathematical content and pournara doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v34i1.10 issn 0258-2236 eissn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2016 34(1): 135-149 © uv/ufs http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.10 136 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) providing appropriate mathematical experiences for students (conference board of the mathematical sciences [cbms], 2001; cooney & wiegel, 2003; stacey, 2008). mathematical selections need to take into account the breadth of the south african school mathematics curriculum and thus include algebra, functions, calculus, euclidean geometry, analytical geometry, trigonometry, financial mathematics, statistics and probability. this selection is broader than what is typically offered in undergraduate mathematics programmes. however, it does not include typical topics of undergraduate mathematics such as linear algebra, multivariable calculus, abstract algebra, group theory and real/complex analysis. the challenge of selection is not merely one of selecting topics. former president of the international mathematical union, lászló lovász, has suggested that mathematics education needs to consider seriously the recent changes in mathematical activity amongst mathematicians and the manner in which these might influence the dominance of classical approaches to mathematics in school and university curricula (lovasz, 2008). notable amongst these changes is the increasing use of computing technology and the resulting growth in applications of mathematics in new areas such as biological sciences and economics. he also argues that more attention needs to be paid to teaching students to communicate mathematics with their peers and with nonmathematical audiences, a sentiment strongly supported by fields medallist, william thurston (thurston, 1994). the practices of scholarly mathematics, school mathematics and mathematics teacher education are different. consequently, notions of depth and rigour related to the mathematics of these different practices must be different. in this article, i argue that depth and rigour in mathematical knowledge for pre-service secondary mathematics teachers may be found in particular experiences of learning and doing school-level mathematics. i am not arguing that the study of advanced mathematics2 is unnecessary but i am arguing, as do others (e.g. stanley & sundström, 2007), that school mathematics provides productive opportunities for deepening teachers’ knowledge of mathematics. i draw on data from a larger study where i designed and taught a semester-long course in financial mathematics to a group of pre-service secondary school mathematics teachers. i focus here on two instances near the beginning of the course and show that both have the potential to give student teachers experiences of learning mathematics to deepen their mathematical knowledge and develop an appreciation of the disciplines of mathematics and applied mathematics. 2. the mathematical content of secondary school mathematics teacher education across the world, there is a variety of models for the mathematical preparation of secondary school mathematics teachers (tatto, lerman & novotná, 2009). despite a wide variety in the structure and content of programmes, there is some agreement on the goals of programmes. the following list has been compiled from a variety of sources (e.g. cbms, 2001; cooney & wiegel, 2003; stacey, 2008; watson, 2008): • students should gain knowledge of mathematics beyond the secondary school curriculum; • students should gain knowledge about mathematics, including its history, philosophy, recent developments and popularist ideas that stimulate public engagement in mathematics; pournara deepening pre-service secondary teachers’ mathematical content... 137 • students should develop a deep understanding of the core of school mathematics including the important procedures, algorithms and related skills; • university mathematics should illuminate high school mathematics by providing an advanced perspective on it; • students should have experiences of doing mathematics beyond the formalism of typical undergraduate courses, to include investigations, problem solving and mathematical modelling; and • students should develop the skills to continue their own learning of mathematics and thus engage in mathematical inquiry as lifelong learners. this is an ambitious set of expectations for any programme and even more so in the south african context where many aspiring secondary school mathematics teachers are underprepared to cope with university mathematics. 3. secondary school mathematics teachers’ content knowledge for teaching when shulman (1986) proposed the distinction between subject matter knowledge (smk) and pedagogical content knowledge (pck), he emphasised the importance that teachers’ knowledge should include knowing that as well as knowing why. in mathematics, this knowledge extends beyond definitions, theorems and algorithms to understanding the structure of mathematics as a discipline, the relative importance of particular mathematical ideas within the discipline and the principles of mathematical inquiry – how new ideas are added to the body of knowledge and erroneous ideas are rejected. in this article, i focus particularly on teachers’ mathematical content knowledge for teaching. although the notion of pck has gained wide acceptance in the mathematics education research literature and in teacher education more broadly (ball, thames & phelps, 2008), clear analytical distinctions between smk and pck are not easy to make (huillet, 2007; petrou & goulding, 2011). i therefore adopt the notion of maths-for-teaching (mft) (adler, 2005; adler & davis, 2006) which i consider as an amalgam of mathematical and pedagogical knowledge. i drew on several existing frameworks of teachers’ mathematical knowledge (e.g. ball et al., 2008; even, 1990; ferrini-mundy et al., 2006; huillet, 2007) to propose a framework of nine aspects which can be grouped into three clusters: 1) aspects that are mainly mathematical; 2) aspects that are mainly pedagogical; and 3) a cluster related to financial mathematics, which spans knowledge of financial concepts and conventions, socioeconomic issues and financial literacy. since this article focuses primarily on mathematical issues, i elaborate only on the four sub-components of the mathematical cluster. • knowledge of the essential features of a concept (even, 1990, 1993) which includes identifying the concept and its representations (what it is) and executing associated techniques (how to work with it). • knowledge of the relationship of the concept to other mathematics that is primarily concerned with making connections between different mathematical concepts and topics. • knowledge of mathematical practices relates to shulman’s (1986) initial conception of teachers’ content knowledge regarding how knowledge is established and grows in a particular discipline. watson (2008) provides an extensive list of mathematical practices typical of academic mathematics, including empirical exploration, conjecturing, logical 138 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) deduction, verifying, formalising and reflecting on answers which may lead to further inquiry, comparing solutions for accuracy, validity and efficiency; reworking to identify technical and logical errors and presenting problems and their solutions to others. while scholarly mathematics and school mathematics are different practices it is experiences of such practices that lead to deepening teachers’ mathematical knowledge and an appreciation for mathematical rigour. • knowledge of mathematical modelling and applications – since the study focused on financial mathematics, modelling and applications was separated from other mathematical practices to avoid drowning all descriptions of mathematical practices in modelling. 4. deepening, broadening and connecting mathematical knowledge ma (1999) proposed that a profound understanding of mathematics consists of three interconnected components: depth, breadth and thoroughness, all of which are related to the structure of mathematics. depth of understanding concerns the ability to connect a concept or a topic “with more conceptually powerful ideas of the subject” (ibid: 121) where the power of a mathematical idea is related to its proximity to the structure of the discipline. a mathematical idea that is closer to the structure of the discipline underpins more topics and hence has more “mathematical influence” (my term) and thus mathematical power. for example, a teacher with a deep understanding of number and number operations will link the notion of subtractionwith-regrouping to the core idea that addition and subtraction are inverse operations. by contrast, breadth of understanding involves connecting a concept or topic with topics and/or concepts of similar or less conceptual power, for example connecting subtraction-withregrouping to addition-with-carrying. the notion of thoroughness concerns the ability to make connections. ma (1999: 121) argues that “it is this thoroughness which ‘glues’ knowledge of mathematics into a coherent whole”. drawing on these notions of depth, breadth and connectedness, i have developed a hierarchy of concepts relating to compound interest and annuities (pournara, 2013, 2014). following ma (1999), i have argued that percentage is a powerful idea and that linear growth, exponential growth and progressions (arithmetic and geometric) can be placed at consecutively higher levels within the hierarchy3. in addition, i have argued that the notion of growth factor is a key component of compound interest and lies between percentage and linear growth. briefly, growth factor represents the multiplicative entity by which an amount increases or decreases. it is derived from percentage increase/decrease and is easily illustrated using the example of value-added tax (vat). if an item costs r80 excluding vat, then its price including vat can be calculated as: 80+80×0.14 = r91.20 or 80×1.14 = 91.20. the entity 1.14 is the growth factor. in a more general case of an amount p increasing by a rate r%, the growth factor would be (1+r%). in the next section, i provide two cases through which i illustrate opportunities for preservice secondary school mathematics teachers to deepen their mft and to experience the rigour of mathematics and applied mathematics. i am not claiming that all this was achieved in the course. i am arguing that the potential exists for the students to learn based on my analysis of the data and reflections as the teacher-researcher. pournara deepening pre-service secondary teachers’ mathematical content... 139 5. opportunities for pre-service secondary school mathematics teachers to deepen their mft 5.1 case 1: extending a task by engaging with students’ productions in the course, students were allocated to tutorial groups and worked together on a task each week, having to submit a combined report on their work at the end of the session. in the first group tutorial, students were given the following scenario, referred to as the saturday school rent problem, and the accompanying graphic which represents an attempt by three fictitious students to answer the question. a saturday school pays rent for the building they use each week. in 2002, they were paying r4200 per year. at the end of the year, the owners of the building met with the school management and agreed to a 10% increase in rent each year from 2003 onwards. how much will the saturday school pay each year from 2002 to 2010? 14000 12000 10000 8000 6000 4000 2000 0 20 02 20 03 20 04 20 05 20 06 20 07 20 08 20 09 20 10 20 11 20 12 years saturday school rent per year r en t figure 1: graph for hypothetical learners’ response to saturday school rent problem students were required to answer the question and find a possible equation for the given graph. i had expected them to recognise that the situation involved exponential growth and hence to produce formulae of the form f(x)=a.bx such as f(x)=4200 (1.1)x where x is the number of years after 2002 and the growth factor is 1.1. most groups produced this formula or one similar in structure. however, one group produced the following formula h(x)=21.7x2+398.3x+4200. this came as a surprise since the quadratic structure of the formula does not model an exponential scenario. however, there were no computational errors in the students’ report and so i was intrigued to investigate it further. table 1 and the accompanying graph (fig. 2) show that the quadratic function is a very good model for a certain time interval. for example, the percentage error (i.e. the difference between the exponential and quadratic values, expressed as a percentage) is less than 1% each year from 2002 to 2008, and for the next 2 years, it is less than 3%. the graphical representation shows that the two lines are almost on top of each other from 2002 to 2007, and the gap between them is 140 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) still very small in year 10. however, as can be seen in the table, the gap widens substantially, and by 2020, the percentage error is more than 20%. thus, we can see that the quadratic function is a good model for predicting the rent over a certain period, but then becomes a very poor model. table 1: comparison of numeric values for exponential and quadratic models, and percentage error year exponential model quadratic model difference % error 2002 4200.00 4200.00 0.00 0.00 2003 4620.00 4620.00 0.00 0.00 2004 5082.00 5083.40 -1.40 -0.03 2005 5590.20 5590.20 0.00 0.00 2006 6149.22 6140.40 8.82 0.14 2007 6764.14 6734.00 30.14 0.45 2008 7440.56 7371.00 69.56 0.93 2009 8184.61 8051.40 133.21 1.63 2010 9003.07 8775.20 227.87 2.53 2011 9903.38 9542.40 360.98 3.65 2012 10893.72 10353.00 540.72 4.96 2013 11983.09 11207.00 776.09 6.48 2014 13181.40 12104.40 1077.00 8.17 2015 14499.54 13045.20 1454.34 10.03 2016 15949.49 14029.40 1920.09 12.04 2017 17544.44 15057.00 2487.44 14.18 2018 19298.89 16128.00 3170.89 16.43 2019 21228.78 17242.40 3986.38 18.78 2020 23351.65 18400.20 4951.45 21.20 10000 9000 8000 7000 6000 5000 4000 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 time (years) saturday school rent problem comparing exponential and quadratic models r en t ( za r ) exponential quadratic figure 2: graphical comparison of exponential and quadratic models pournara deepening pre-service secondary teachers’ mathematical content... 141 5.1.1 reflecting on the opportunities for deepening knowledge this task and the students’ unexpected response provides many opportunities for further mathematical work, some of which involves mathematical modelling and other work that requires further investigation of the quadratic function per se. inevitably, students would need to begin by investigating how the values 21.7, 398.3 and 4200 were obtained. the mathematics required to do this is within the scope of the secondary school curriculum although these values are “messy” and are not typical of the integer-values frequently encountered in school textbooks. with regard to modelling, the most obvious learning opportunity is that students are challenged to consider alternatives to the expected exponential model. thereafter they would need to investigate the domain (in this case the timeframe) over which the model is a useful one thus requiring them to engage with the notion of error in mathematical modelling, a fundamental aspect of rigour in applied mathematics. thereafter students might investigate other quadratic functions (with different coefficients and constants) and compare these as models of the situation. an important modelling consideration here would be the choice of points to establish the equation and hence an opportunity to contrast interpolation (estimating values between the chosen points) and extrapolation (estimating values outside the interval of the chosen points). apart from modelling, there are several opportunities to investigate the exponential and quadratic functions per se. for example, are the functions coincident over a particular domain? in terms of the graphs, this would mean that the graphs lie on top of each other. while it can be shown that the functions are not coincident and have exactly three points of intersection, the mathematics to do this is beyond the scope of school mathematics. this stimulates opportunity to introduce the necessary numerical methods (e.g. bisection method or newton-raphson method) to solve the problem. this in turn introduces students to some aspects of advanced mathematics in a way that connects directly to mathematical problems emerging from deeper exploration of school mathematics. students can also draw on computer applications such as spreadsheets and dynamic graphing software to investigate the points of intersection4. in the above discussion, i have illustrated the potential that lies in working with an unexpected response from the student teachers. i have shown that while this investigation begins in school-level mathematics, it easily extends beyond the domain of school mathematics and ultimately prompts the need for tools of advanced mathematics to solve a problem that arises spontaneously in school mathematics. by engaging with such a task, students have an opportunity to develop mft with particular emphasis on mathematical modelling, applications and mathematical practices more broadly. 5.2 case 2: engaging with a peer’s work-in-progress the second case provides an example of a student’s self-initiated attempt to make new connections between various aspects of exponential growth and the difficulties that emerge as he seeks the help of his peers in resolving a problem that had arisen. it also exemplifies the potential to engage in further mathematical inquiry that is directly related to school mathematics. in a previous session, students had worked on the wage doubling problem where a worker’s wage was doubled each working day, starting with 1c on the first day, 2c on the second day etc. students produced exponential equations to model this scenario. they were 142 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) then asked to represent the problem in terms of percentage change. there was consensus that the percentage increase was 100% per day. however, similar to the previous case, one group suggested the percentage increase was 200% per day. they presented a compelling argument and many students were not immediately able to identify the logical error in their reasoning. the following day, having grappled with the explanation in their own time, students could identify the logical error and recognised that 200% represented the ratio of the amount earned on the current day to the amount earned the previous day and not to the increase from the previous day. for example, if the worker earned 8c yesterday, he would earn 16c today. the increase is 8c and the percentage increase is 100% but the ratio 16/8 is 200% when expressed as a percentage. following from this, sakhile initiated his own investigation into the relationship between the doubling formula y=2n-1, and the compound interest/growth formula, a=p(1+i)n while drawing on what i shall call the 200% formula, i.e. 200%=x+100% x. in seeking to make explicit links between the different formulae, he had established that the basis of the doubling formula and the compound growth formula could be shown to be the same. however, the exponent of the doubling formula was n-1 while the exponent for the compound growth formula was n. he was unable to account for the difference in the exponents and was seeking help from the class to resolve the impasse. i invited sakhile to share his work with the class. his board work is shown below (fig. 3a and fig. 3b). the layout of his board work did not easily support his explanation and so i have introduced a different layout (fig. 3c) in an attempt to show the links and his reasoning more clearly. the lines in the new layout are labelled a-e. i refer to lines using the notation [letter], e.g. [c] is line c. figure 3a: links between 100% and 200% figure 3b: links between exponential form and compound interest formula pournara deepening pre-service secondary teachers’ mathematical content... 143 200% formula doubling formula compound interest formula a 200% = x+100% x c 2n-1 d p(1+i)n b = x (1+100%) e (1+100%)n-1 figure 3c: reformatted version of sakhile’s board work sakhile began by showing that 200% was obtained by adding the initial salary, x and a hundred per cent of the salary [a] (fig. 3a). he then factorised the expression, producing [b], which he noted had similarities with the form of the compound interest formula. he then shifted to the exponential form, recalling that the formula for daily wage on day n was given by 2n-1 [c] and then wrote the “right hand side” of the compound interest formula, i.e. p(1+i)n as shown in [d]. having written down all three forms, his intention was to describe and justify the links he had established, and to seek help with the exponent. in his next move, he appeared to be treating 2n-1 and p(1+i)n as partial templates for [e]. he first substituted p=1 because the starting wage was 1c. then he focused on the need for the bracket in [d] to have a value of two. this would occur if he substituted 100% for i. he then appeared to treat [c] as the template and copied the exponent (n-1) to produce the expression (1+100%)n-1 in [e]. he knew that the exponent in [e] did not match the exponent in [d] and this is where he sought the class’s help. 5.2.1 class discussion of case 2 many students had not followed sakhile’s reasoning and were more concerned with what he had written rather than with his reasoning. there were two main concerns: the exponent in [e] and the lack of a referent for the percentages in [a], [b] and [e]. concern about the exponent of n-1 sizwe questioned why sakhile was “subtracting one from the n” which indicated that he had not heard sakhile’s own concern about the exponent. sizwe’s concern was not surprising since [e] is not logically derived from [d] and when one looks at the vertical layout of the three lines in fig. 3b, one might expect the lines to represent some form of logical derivation. sakhile then attempted to explain once more. sakhile: okay like i said, i tried to take this, sort of the formula that we had (pointing to 2n–1), we got about the story, ja, the story about the salary, ja, relate it to the compound formula. so i’m, i’m shifting from this, sort of an exponential to, to the compound formula (pointing to p(1+i)n that we know in textbooks. so i tried to change, so i know this (pointing to 2n– 1), since this (pointing to (1+100%), it’s here (pointing to the 2) and then what about this part (pointing to the exponent in 2n-1)? where is it here from that formula (referring to the compound growth formula)? then i tried, okay it belongs (pointing to exponent in (1+100 %)n–1)… that’s how i, that’s how i worked. craig: and you said you’re not sure why … sakhile: ja, the negative one i didn’t, like, why it’s negative one, cos the compound is only n (i.e. the exponent is n). sakhile explained again how he was trying to make links between the doubling formula and the compound growth formula but students still struggled to make sense of his ideas and did not appear to be able to help him resolve the exponent issue. 144 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) lack of a referent for 100% several students were concerned that sakhile had not paid attention to a referent for the percentages. mpho questioned whether we could add together 1 and 100% without there being a referent for 100%: mpho: okay, i don’t know, maybe i’m, i’m lost. can you actually say ‘one plus hundred per cent’ or do you have to say ‘one plus one hundred per cent of something’ or do you just say ‘one plus one hundred per cent, one plus two hundred per cent’, can you actually understand? sakhile: okay, like, like, you see here (pointing to x+100%x). the way i see it, it’s like x plus hundred per cent of something, but when i try to factorise it, take out the like terms, it becomes like x into one plus hundred per cent. mpho: please clarify, okay i think i understand, but i mean there (pointing to right section of board) where you say one plus hundred per cent. sakhile: here, i know, one hundred per cent. uh, it’s one, so i try to, that’s how i try to take, fit, like, make this information like, link it to the two. link it to the two (i.e. a base of 2). i know the one is there, but what is it that i must add, which is a percentage so that i can get the two? sakhile referred back to [b] where he had factorised the expression, producing a factor of 1+100%. he noted that there was a referent, x , which had been factorised as a common factor and had been substituted with a value of 1. so he was able to provide a logical justification for moving from x+100%x to 1+100%. later hailey drew sakhile’s attention back to 200%=x+100%x and used an example to illustrate the problem with the lack of a referent for x. hailey: but what, even about that top line? how is that equal to two hundred per cent? sakhile: you mean this one? hailey: mmm. sakhile: so ... hailey: ... cos pretend, you were saying earlier that x is eight, right? sakhile: ja? hailey: so let’s say x is eight, and then we say a hundred per cent of eight is eight, eight plus eight is sixteen. sakhile: sixteen. hailey: is that equal to two hundred per cent? sakhile: yes, cos it will take from, for, for that day that’s the total, i said the x is the amount from the previous day. hailey: that’s not equal. it’s equal to two hundred per cent of x. hailey showed how sakhile’s equation 200%=x+100%x would produce the “equation”: 200%=16, where the left-hand side was not equal to the right-hand side. she then emphasised the need to include the referent on the left-hand side, i.e. 200% x. sakhile could not see her problem at this point. it appears that he was using 200% as a label and was not intending to express some kind of equivalence. so he could equally have written: double salary = x+100%x. pournara deepening pre-service secondary teachers’ mathematical content... 145 the responses to sakhile reflect the difficulty of students working together on “maths in progress”. while he sought help to resolve the differences in the exponents, many were focused on his sloppy use of notation. it is not clear whether the students’ concerns with his notation hindered them from engaging with his primary concern or whether they resorted to focus on notation because they were unable to provide help on the exponent issue. 5.2.2 reflecting on opportunities for deepening knowledge sakhile was concerned with reconciling the two formulae and the manner in which they modelled the wage-doubling scenario. while i followed his reasoning and the disconnects he was grappling with, it was not immediately obvious to me how to resolve it. after the session, i sat down to investigate the problem. table 2 shows my initial attempt to model the wage-doubling problem using the form 2n and using the compound growth formula a=p(1+i)n. whereas sakhile had focused on the signifiers within the formulae, i chose to focus on modelling the situation. table 2: modelling wage doubling problem using exponential form and compound growth formula end of day wage for day exponential form compound interest formula 1 1c 20 p=1 2 2c 21 a=1(1+100%)1 3 4c 22 a=1(1+100%)2 4 8c 23 a=1(1+100%)3 n 2n-1 a=1(1+100%)n-1 in both cases i focused on the wage at the end of day n, showing that the exponent is always one less than the day number and thus both models should have the same exponent of n-1. however, this does not address the mismatch in the exponents in sakhile’s version. after further grappling i realised that in the usual context of compound growth, the present value, p, is the value at the beginning of the first period. therefore, one period’s interest has accumulated by the end of the first period. consequently, the exponent will match the number of periods. however, in the wage-doubling scenario, the present value is the wage at the end of day 1, i.e. no increase has yet occurred. consequently, when using the compound interest formula to model the doubling scenario, the exponent will be n-1 because there is no compounding in the first period. one can also think about it as follows: the exponent, n, represents the number of compoundings. since no compounding has taken place by the end of day 1, the exponent will always be one less than the day number. it was only in working with the compound growth formula for a problem-type where it is not typically used that i became explicitly aware of the different ways in which different scenarios with exponential structure such as compounding of interest, wage doubling and bacteria growth work with different starting conditions and hence are modelled by slightly different formulae. this foregrounded the obvious meaning of present value, which i had taken for granted, that present value indicates the value at the beginning of the first period. this is so tacit when using the formula in its usual context that i was unable to draw on it immediately to resolve sakhile’s concern. thus, through the use of the formula in an unusual context, an essential feature of compound growth that was invisible, now became visible 146 perspectives in education 2016: 34(1) (lave & wenger, 1991). this suggests that using familiar mathematics in unfamiliar ways may be a productive strategy for deepening knowledge of school mathematics. the above case provides an example of mathematical practices that are not generally made visible in undergraduate or school mathematics (burton, 2004; watson, 2008). we see an instance where a student asks his peers for assistance with his own mathematical workin-progress. thus, mathematics is shown to be a collaborative enterprise to solve a studentinitiated inquiry and not merely the provision of answers to questions posed by the teacher or teacher educator. the discussion of the episode would be incomplete without some attention to the difficulties students experienced in following sakhile’s argument and his inability to make his concern clearer for them. it could be argued that the students did not share his concern sufficiently to engage deeply with it, and therefore focused on relatively superficial aspects rather than engaging with the mathematical substance of his work. however, it could also be argued that the quality of his explanation and accompanying written text did not encourage them to engage. irrespective of the reasons for students’ lack of engagement, this example shows that it is not trivial to set up a situation where students engage substantively with each other’s work-in-progress, in the ways proposed in the literature. nevertheless, the concerns around sakhile’s use of percentage notation led to a teachable moment (havighurst, 1972) for me to discuss with students aspects of mathematical communication such as presentation of ideas and use of mathematical symbols. in order to provide a convincing argument, one needs to communicate it in such a way that the logic is clear and this involves precise use of notation and mathematical language. since sakhile was presenting work-in-progress, it was inevitably less rigorous and precise. however, without a minimum level of clarity and precision, his peers struggled to make sense of his problem and hence were unable to help him move forward. 6. conclusion i have argued that working on school-level mathematics can provide opportunities for preservice secondary school mathematics teachers to deepen their mft and to appreciate the rigour of mathematical practices, both pure and applied. in both cases described above there was potential for attention to the essential features of exponential growth and to the kinds of mathematical practices proposed in the literature. since students are familiar with the mathematics, they can work more flexibly with it. therefore, the challenge is not about what the mathematics is but about how one uses it and then communicates about it. typically, mathematics content courses are characterised by covering new content at a high pace and so students, apart from those who are very strong mathematically, have little time to consider how to use it – they are much more focused on mastering the content that will be assessed. the opportunities described above are dependent on a pedagogy and a course design that is sufficiently flexible to incorporate students’ mathematical explorations into the programme, to make them available to other students and then to engage with them in a public forum. herein lies the challenge. firstly, such practices require additional time, which in turn influences content coverage and pacing. secondly, in which courses might one engage in such practices with pre-service teachers? if mathematics courses are offered in mathematics units, there is little chance of adopting such an approach given the large class sizes and vast amounts of pournara deepening pre-service secondary teachers’ mathematical content... 147 content to be covered. if, on the other hand, mathematics courses are offered specifically for teachers then such a practice becomes more possible. however, my experience has shown that even in such courses, the opportunities to deal with school-level mathematics in the ways described above may be limited. frequently school mathematics is included in methodology courses not the mathematics content courses. however, it is unlikely that the kinds of mathematical work described above will take place in methodology courses because the focus there is on pedagogical issues. consequently, one cannot imagine lecturers teaching numerical methods such as newton-raphson to find the points of intersection of exponential and quadratic functions in a methodology course. in a climate of increasing pressure and accountability in teacher education and higher education more broadly, there is less and less opportunity to be flexible and responsive to students’ work within a course. while it may be possible to design a limited number of such opportunities into a course, one cannot necessarily pre-specify the mathematical content since it needs to be responsive to students’ contributions. therefore, the content becomes mathematical practices rather than mathematical concepts, where the concepts are the means to engage in particular mathematical practices. this remains a challenge of mathematics teacher education, not only in pre-service programmes but in professional development too. acknowledgement the thuthuka programme of the national research foundation supported this work financially (grant no: ttk2007050800004). any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the author and the nrf does not accept any liability. references adler, j. 2005. mathematics for teaching: what is it and why is it important that we talk about it? pythagoras, 62, 2-11. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/pythagoras.v0i62.109 adler, j. & davis, z. 2006. opening another black box: researching mathematics for teaching in mathematics teacher education. journal for research in mathematics education, 37(4), 270-296. ball, d., thames, m. & phelps, g. 2008. content knowledge for teaching: what makes it special? journal of teacher education, 59(5), 389-407. 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http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511815355 ma, l. 1999. knowing and teaching elementary mathematics: teachers’ understanding of fundamental mathematics in china and the united states. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. lovasz, l. 2008. trends in mathematics: how they could change education? available at from: http://www.cs.elte.hu/~lovasz/lisbon.pdf [accessed 5 june 2011] petrou, m. & goulding, m. 2011. conceptualising teachers’ mathematical knowledge in teaching. in t. rowland & k. ruthven (eds.). mathematical knowledge in teaching. dordrecht: springer. pp. 9-25. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9766-8_2 pournara, c. 2013. teachers’ knowledge for teaching compound interest. pythagoras, 34(2), 1-10. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/pythagoras.v34i2.238 pournara, c. 2014. mathematics-for-teaching: insights from the case of annuities. pythagoras, 35(1), 1-12. http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/pythagoras.v35i1.250 shulman, l. 1986. those who understand: knowledge growth in teaching. educational 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r., & leikin, r. 2010. advanced mathematical knowledge in teaching practice: perceptions of secondary mathematics teachers. mathematical thinking and learning, 12, 263–281. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10986061003786349 http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/749215 http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511815355 http://www.cs.elte.hu/~lovasz/lisbon.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9766-8_2 http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/pythagoras.v34i2.238 http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/pythagoras.v35i1.250 http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/0013189x015002004 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09601-8_3 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-09601-8_3 http://dx.doi.org/10.1090/s0273-0979-1994-00502-6 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10986061003786349 pournara deepening pre-service secondary teachers’ mathematical content... 149 (endnotes) 1 this is well known amongst those working in pre-service mathematics teacher education across the country. while i make this statement based on personal experience and from conversations with colleagues at other universities, i am not aware of any published research to support this claim specifically in relation to pre-service secondary school mathematics teachers. 2 following zazkis and leikin (2010) i consider advanced mathematics as the mathematics that is learned in undergraduate mathematics courses (and beyond). 3 if one were to extend the hierarchy below percentage, it would be connected to multiplicative reasoning, which lies at the core of the structure of mathematics. 4 i have worked with students on such tasks in a subsequent course on financial mathematics. _enref_1 _enref_2 _enref_3 _enref_4 _enref_6 _enref_7 _enref_8 _enref_9 _enref_10 _enref_11 _enref_12 _enref_13 _enref_14 _enref_15 _enref_18 _enref_20 _enref_22 _enref_23 _enref_24 _enref_25 _enref_26 pie32(3) book.indb perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 118 rachel weiss department of medicine university of cape town e-mail: rachel.weiss@uct.ac.za tel: 021 4066718 a social semiotic approach to textbook analysis: the construction of the discourses of pharmacology rachel weiss arlene archer this article takes a multimodal social semiotic approach to analysing educational textbooks. we are interested in the ways in which educational textbooks contribute to designing our social futures by constructing both the student and the discipline in a particular manner. while a textbook’s primary purpose is to provide the reader with knowledge content about a specific topic, it also serves to conventionalise and entrench certain discipline-specific practices and values. a textbook simultaneously competes in an economic environment where the reader has a choice of many textbooks. the text, therefore, takes on a hybrid form, where marketisation and conversationalisation co-exist in dialogue with academic discourse. the article analyses the discourses of pharmacology as constructed in two widely used pharmacology textbooks in south africa. we take a systemic functional approach which views texts as realising meaning in three ways, namely the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual. the analysis shows how one of the textbooks tends to establish a more democratic relationship between authors and readers, while constructing pharmacology within a scientific discourse of drugs. the other textbook constructs a more traditional and hierarchical relationship between author and reader, yet tends to reinforce a clinical, patient-centred approach to pharmacology. we argue that this kind of analysis is important when interrogating curriculum, as textbooks are crucial sites of struggle over discourse, meaning and power. keywords: textbooks, social semiotics, discourses of pharmacology arlene archer academic development, university of cape town e-mail: arlene.archer@uct.ac.za tel: 021 650 3319 119 a social semiotic approach to textbook analysis: the construction of the discourses of pharmacology rachel weiss & arlene archer introduction the process of becoming a medical doctor requires more than studying science, or acquiring clinical reasoning and practical competencies. medical students also have to learn to talk, act and think ‘like a doctor’. in other words, they need to acquire the social practices and discourses of a prescribing practitioner. these social practices include open communication, responsiveness and respect, and recognising the patient’s right to participate in decisions. if the curriculum is to construct the student’s journey towards becoming this kind of practitioner, it is expressed not only through the choice of content and pedagogy, but also through the choice of resources such as textbooks that guide learning. a textbook can be viewed as “a dialectic of both linguistic form and social communicative practice” (hicks, 2003: 3). kress and van leeuwen (2006) suggest that students who are exposed to new science textbooks hold a different view of science and scientists than those schooled in more traditional texts, in that they have different notions of authority relations and of the status of science as ‘truth’. it is important to note that textbooks are “conceived, designed and authored by real people with real interests. they are published within the political and economic constraints of markets, resources, and power” (apple & christian-smith, 1991: 2). this article investigates how two textbooks, used by medical students at a particular tertiary institution in south africa, construct particular discourses of pharmacology. it analyses how these books draw on available meaning-making resources to construct particular relationships between the represented participants and between the participants and the subject ‘science’. by turning a critical lens on the construction of discourses and social relationships in medical textbooks, we foreground ideological orientations and assumptions underpinning these texts and relate them to the social context in which the texts are used. textbooks and orders of discourse fairclough (1992) uses the foucaultian term ‘orders of discourse’ to refer to a socially produced array of discourses which interact dynamically with each other, sometimes in a complementary way, and sometimes in opposition to each other. boundaries between discourses and relationships are always shifting, reshaping and reconstructing the orders of discourse. contemporary features such as marketisation, the “colonization of orders of discourse by advertising and other discourse types” (fairclough, 1992: 99) and conversationalisation, “a strategically motivated simulation and appropriation of life-world practices” (fairclough, 2000: 175) have brought about discursive shifts in social practices and authority relations. in the field of clinical medicine, viewing patients as ‘consumers’ could lead to more informal doctor-patient relationships as well as to different treatment practices. as ‘consumers’, patients are given a greater degree of choice; they are better informed, and they exert their right to a second opinion. perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 120 these discursive shifts are also noted in modern textbooks. apart from constructing the knowledge and values specific to the discipline within particular contexts of power, the textbook has to compete in the economic environment. production of a medical textbook involves negotiating the domains of media, business, marketing, research, academia and education, resulting in multiple contrasting and complementing discourses, where some emerge as more dominant. textbooks thus signify “particular ways of selecting and organizing that vast universe of possible knowledge” (apple & christian-smith, 1991: 3). power is realised not only in what is included and what is left out, but also in the relationship between the text producers (authors) and the text consumers (readers). the text could, for example, take on a hybrid form of “telling-and-selling” (fairclough, 1992: 116), where marketisation and conversationalisation co-exist in dialogue with some of the conventions of academic discourse. this could manifest in, for example, content being presented dialogically rather than as directives, and readers being positioned as colleagues rather than learners. we thus view a textbook as “being full of snatches of other texts” (fairclough, 1992: 84), and as signifying particular constructions of reality. our methodological approach combines social semiotics and critical discourse analysis. social semiotics is based on halliday’s view (1985) that texts realise meaning on three levels, namely the ideational, the interpersonal and the textual. in the ideational, semiotic modes such as writing, colour and image act as resources for constructing representations of the world. the interpersonal is concerned with social interaction between the text producer and the audience, as well as the text producer’s attitude towards the topic. the textual is that which makes the text coherent and recognisable as a particular type, for example, a discussion rather than a lecture. a social semiotic approach focuses on meaning-making in context and the socially situated use of modal resources (jewitt, 2009). to complement this approach, critical discourse analysis is employed to give insight into the social worlds in which the text belongs and to highlight the fact that the intertextual nature of texts is conditional upon relations of power (fairclough, 1992). we view intellectual work (including science) as a set of social practices that produce their own discourses and readings of the world through interaction. some readings are more powerful than others and all texts are sites of struggle over discourse, meaning and power. textbooks as circulating clinical and scientific discourses in the medical curriculum we examine two textbooks, pharmacology (rang, dale, ritter & moore 2003) and the oxford textbook of clinical pharmacology and drug therapy (grahame-smith & aronson, 2002). this study was inspired by the fact that many undergraduate medical students at our institution acquired rang’s pharmacology, even though the oxford textbook was the faculty’s officially sanctioned and prescribed choice. this raises interesting debates as to why students choose a particular textbook, and what the 121 a social semiotic approach to textbook analysis: the construction of the discourses of pharmacology rachel weiss & arlene archer stakes are in the choice of textbook. to appreciate the nature of this dilemma, a short discussion of the institution’s broader curriculum context is necessary. in response to both global ideological shifts in medical education and an increasing demand for generalist doctors nationally, the university’s undergraduate medical curriculum was revised over a decade ago. the aim of the new medical curriculum is to graduate patient-centred ‘generalist’ clinicians suitable for working in the country’s urban and rural public health sector. a curriculum model was chosen that integrated biomedical, behavioural and social sciences in relation to generalist clinical practice. bernstein (2003: 93) describes this model of curricular integration as “the subordination of previously insulated subjects or courses to some relational idea, which blurs the boundaries between subjects”. in practice, the change meant that much of the scientific content and depth of traditional preclinical subjects such as microbiology and physiology, as well as specialist disciplines such as surgical specialities, were excluded from the new core curriculum, while themes such as health promotion were expanded. the argument for an integrated curriculum has pedagogical roots; according to its designers, “many students find it difficult to apply the principles that they have learned in the first three years of pure scientific theory to their last three years of clinical practice ... a key structural change has been the removal of the preclinical and clinical divide” (university of cape town, 2002: 3). students now spend the first three years in a problem-based learning environment, where basic sciences such as chemistry and physiology are subsections relevant to clinical problems, such as a patient presenting with tuberculosis or diarrhoea. an important ideological concept underpinning this curriculum is the adoption of the primary health care philosophy. the traditional western model of health is a ‘medical’ model, where the body tends to be regarded as a ‘machine’ and the doctor as a scientist or ‘mechanic’ (macdonald, 1992). while this analogy has been useful in understanding certain aspects of medicine, its greatest drawback has been establishing a culture of “the removal of the patient or the community from any situation of control in the encounter with the medical profession” (macdonald, 1992: 30) and the perpetuation of the myth that “there is a medical answer to the problems of the world’s health” (macdonald, 1992: 32). the primary health care model, laid out in principle at alma ata in 1978 and adopted in south africa as formal health policy in 1994, follows a bio-psychosocial approach that includes emphasis on patient partnership and equity, community involvement, socio-economic causality and acceptance of certain cultural practices in health care. while the principles of integration and the primary health care approach underpin the new medical curriculum in policy, implementation has been problematic and highly contested in certain spheres. at the centre of the controversy are not only the pedagogical debates on the gains and losses associated with different curriculum types, but also a deeper hegemonic struggle. bernstein (2003) suggests that, since integration reduces the authority of separate contents, this weakens the status of the individual subject and affects the traditional authority and relationships of the highly perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 122 specialised knowledge transmitter. while the previous curriculum was associated with stronger framing (that is, stronger boundaries in pedagogical relationships, between students and teachers, and between teachers of different specialities), an integrated curriculum relies on staff cooperation across disciplines and places more emphasis on the self-regulatory nature of learning. in practice, this means that in contested spaces students may receive mixed signals on what counts as valid knowledge and valid transmission. whilst acknowledging the uneasy relationship between textbook and curriculum (cf. paxton, 2007), the degree to which a prescribed science textbook is aligned to the principles of clinical problem-solving and bio-psychosocial patient care is important in the implementation of the new curriculum. we now examine the extent to which the two pharmacology textbooks in question are aligned to these particular ideological assumptions using a social semiotic approach. we focus on the cover page, the authors’ preface and the table of contents. as far as textual coherence is concerned, we examine how components “cohere both internally with each other and externally with the context in and for which they were produced” (kress & van leeuwen, 2006: 43). textbook 1: pharmacology as ‘the knowledge of drugs’ students tend to gravitate towards rang et al.’s textbook entitled pharmacology. the front cover is lively and contemporary (see figure 1). someone with a medical background will recognise the cover image of bright yellow, red and green blotches on a blue background as a magnetic resonance imaging (mri) scan. mri is a modern and expensive diagnostic aid that constructs a technological, scientific view of medicine. the title is simply pharmacology, meaning ‘the study of drugs’, suggesting a particular product-oriented ideological view of the subject. the publisher’s logo is a small white ship with billowing sails, and together with the blurred image, it creates an impression of movement and energy. a stamp-like image identifies this book as an ‘international edition’. the lively, contemporary feel established by the cover is continued throughout the book where colour, information graphics and diagrams are extensively used. figure 1: the cover of pharmacology (rang et al., 2003) 123 a social semiotic approach to textbook analysis: the construction of the discourses of pharmacology rachel weiss & arlene archer the first sentence in the preface introduces the subject of pharmacology as not merely describing “what drugs do” (rang et al., 2003: v), but also emphasising “the mechanisms by which they act” (rang et al., 2003: v). the authors describe their approach as “a good starting point for understanding and using a new compound intelligently” (rang et al., 2003: v). in other words, this is a book about drugs, cells and systems. by avoiding reference to people as patients, the authors construct particular social roles, or “who does what to whom” (goodman, 1996: 26). in this instance, the phrase “drugs that affect the cardiovascular, nervous, respiratory and endocrine systems” (rang et al., 2003: v) identifies the participants as drugs and systems, rather than doctors and patients. according to fairclough (1995, 27), a clause which represents an event will also assess “the truth or probability of the proposition so encoded, and the relationship between producer and addressee”. rang’s relationship with the subject matter is distant; dehumanising the clause disconnects the authors from the messy emotional connotations associated with disease and death. by rearranging the world into biological systems, they are able to avoid the dilemmas of responsibility and accountability, referring to drugs acting on cells, rather than people working with patients. rang draws on the tradition of avoiding categorical modality in academic discourse, not because of a low affinity with the subject matter, but because it is “motivated by the projection of an approved cautious and circumspect subjectivity and ethos for ‘the scholar’” (fairclough, 1992: 162). in direct contrast to the linguistic distancing from the content, the authorial voice constructs a relaxed and conversational relationship between text and reader, using humour to convey a friendly persona. the phrase “as will already be apparent to the astute observer, we have gone into riotous colour” (rang et al., 2003: v) ties the image of science to the notion of fun and playfulness. neither does it require an ‘astute observer’ to notice the ‘riotous colour’ used in the design. rather, the authors use the irony and wordplay with opposites to poke fun at themselves, thereby bringing a hint of light-hearted humour into an academic discussion. the effect is repeated in a comment on obesity in the preface, where “the ‘new drug’ pipeline is expected to disgorge many more such agents – as horizontally-challenged individuals will be pleased to learn” (rang et al., 2003: vi). whereas the use of the term ‘disgorge’ may be slightly risqué when speaking about obesity, wordplay as a kind of dry intellectual humour seems quite appropriate in distinguished, academic circles. the phrase “horizontally-challenged individuals” is a humorous nod at the politically correct language of a modern society, but the discourse may not be well suited to students from a wider range of backgrounds. rang does not explicitly indicate who its readers are. halfway through the preface, the authors mention “students” of “the medical curriculum” (rang et al., 2003: v) and near the end they refer to “non-medical students studying pharmacology” (rang et al., 2003: vi). there is no specific reference to either undergraduate or postgraduate status. it is probable that an economic imperative underlies this ambiguity; the blurring of the perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 124 constructed reader corresponds with the blurring of the boundaries of academic and market discourses. in this textbook, colour is an important resource for visual communication. in terms of realising the interpersonal function, colour may convey affect, meaning that it may enable the speaker to express a certain mood or attitude. rang’s pure bright reds, blues and yellows remind one of kress’s reference to a “mondrian colour scheme” which “are key signifiers of the ideologies of modernity” (kress & van leeuwen, 2002: 356). their meaning potential connects to contemporary and current ideas. colour differentiation, or the diversity of colour in the design, is a key affordance of affect, and rang’s colours echo the energy and exuberance of the sailing ship on the cover. the choice of flat colours rather than colours that are modulated with tints and shading is related to ‘modality’ or truth value. rang’s flat colours suggest “abstract truth” (kress & van leeuwen, 2002: 357) or impartiality. both the flat colour and the choice of primary colours underscore the simplicity and boldness of the title word ‘pharmacology’. however, the communicative function of colour in rang is not restricted to affect. the colour blocks have an ideational function in that they identify specific classes and topics that belong together. they also function on a textual level, in that they form the main organisational structure of the book. the table of contents is colour-coded into six major sections. these colours are carried through to the spine of the book, facilitating easy access to a specific section, thus creating a particularly user-friendly impression. on closer inspection of the table of contents, it is clear that the majority of the chapters are organised around specific organ systems and the particular drugs that impact on that system. for example, there is a chapter entitled “the heart” with its subtitles “physiology of cardiac function” and “drugs that affect cardiac function”. clinical conditions are represented as a subsection of a particular drug group, for example, malaria is a subheading under “anti-protozoal drugs”. in other words, the organisational structure of the book tends to position the subject of pharmacology as the study of products (drugs) and their associated biological and pathological aspects. it seems that rang’s visual appearance, author-reader relationship and knowledge content bear the imprint of a scientific discourse rather than a clinical one. however, the new curriculum’s shift towards a more integrated, clinical version of science requires that only scientific principles directly relevant to the commonly used medications be considered core knowledge. this view frames drugs within the clinical context rather than viewing them as independent ‘products’. furthermore, the curriculum’s patient-centred ideology dictates that both drug and non-drug (lifestyle) management are taught as being equally important; in fact, the subject of pharmacology is now referred to as ‘therapeutics’ rather than ‘pharmacology’. rang constructs a medical model view of pharmacology. however, rang’s ideological orientation may be obscured by its modern visual design as it connects on an 125 a social semiotic approach to textbook analysis: the construction of the discourses of pharmacology rachel weiss & arlene archer interpersonal level with the private and public lifeworlds of its readers in their capacity as members of a contemporary society. textbook 2: selling the philosophy of therapy the oxford textbook of clinical pharmacology and drug therapy is the officially sanctioned textbook for undergraduate medical students. oxford’s front cover consists of two parts (see figure 2). the top part represents a large image of tablets spilling out of two containers. the image is blurred and out of focus. this, together with the choice of muted pink, red and blue, causes the image to recede visually. by contrast, the lower part of the cover is taken up by the book’s name and those of the authors, printed in clear thick letters on a black background. the absence of bright or warm colours and the long, almost ponderous title afford it a serious tone. the name of the publisher appears twice on the cover page. compared to the exuberance of rang’s sailing ship, the name oxford indexes the prestige of an internationally known institution, thereby contributing to the academic tone. closer inspection of the cover’s composition reveals characteristics of other lifeworld practices. in media advertising, for example, advertisements are often structured along a vertical axis, where “the upper section visualizes the ‘promise of the product’” (kress & van leeuwen, 2006: 186). this is also described as the ideal, the “realm of the consumer’s supposed aspirations and desires” as well as “the generalized essence” of the topic or information (kress & van leeuwen, 2006: 187). on the cover, the image of unidentified tablets in the upper section suggests the generalised theme as being medication or drugs. the choice of modulated or shaded colours suggests that the tablets belong in a naturalistic realm. in this instance, colour is figure 2: the cover of oxford textbook of clinical pharmacology and drug therapy perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 126 also a modality marker in that it may signify a naturalistic interpersonal relationship between doctor and patient. by comparison, rang’s cover constructed an abstract and distanced relationship to the topic with the use of the flat primary colours of an mri. the design elements of oxford’s cover strongly suggest that one should ‘ideally’ learn and know pharmacology in the context of treating patients. oxford’s lower section confirms this point: the title “clinical pharmacology and drug therapy” is represented in the realm of the real. not only does oxford’s lower section describe a particular view of the essence of pharmacology; it also adds truth value to the real by anchoring the title in solid black and white. this suggests a certain permanence or legitimacy and may also signify a notion of right and wrong. oxford’s cover page thus makes a firm visual and linguistic claim about its view of pharmacology as ‘therapy’. while oxford clearly stakes a particular ideological claim, it does so within wider orders of discourse, and it therefore also bears imprints of other discourses. intertextuality refers to a text’s historical connection to other texts (fairclough, 1992). the composition of oxford’s cover borrows from advertising genres, and so appropriates aspects of public lifeworlds that one would not expect in a scientific text, such as the ideal/real layout. this is an example of conversationalisation (fairclough, 1992); it attempts to make science seem ‘ordinary’ by relating it to the reader’s ‘ordinary life’. by contrast, the mri chosen for rang’s cover entrenches the exclusivity and desirability of being a member of a scientific community. oxford’s market-oriented genre can be described as ‘telling-and-selling’. the ‘ordinary’ is usually linked to common sense; therefore, it may contribute to the naturalisation of oxford’s ideological view. even so, it is still a marketing strategy, pointing to the infiltration of discourses of the market-place and the spread of consumerism into academic fields. there is a marked contrast between oxford’s cover page and the remainder of the textbook. for a start, the image on the cover is the only picture in the book. instead of continuing in a style associated with public lifeworlds and mass-media texts, oxford reverts to the stereotypical features of a serious academic publication. compared to rang, there is no ‘riotous colour’ in this instance. apart from a muted red used for headings, the densely printed pages feature a monochromatic palette. the only breaks in the print are provided by tables and graphs. oxford shuns elements that may be considered frivolous or distracting, and its overall impression is neat, disciplined and business-like. oxford’s preface is short and contains less detail about the subject, but does state that “one of our particular aims in writing this book has been to marry the scientific disciplines with the practical approach to drug therapy” (grahame-smith & aronson, 2002: preface). the first sentence is significant: “we have written this book with the needs of medical students in their clinical years paramount in our minds” (grahamesmith & aronson, 2002: preface). this, then, is the key to oxford. it positions itself as a tutor that teaches integrated pharmacology to students in the context of a clinical 127 a social semiotic approach to textbook analysis: the construction of the discourses of pharmacology rachel weiss & arlene archer medical discourse. by contrast to rang’s abstract and artificial environment, this is the world of consultant-led ward rounds, bedside tutorials and patient interviews. in line with the power structures characterising traditional academic medical education, oxford constructs a more formal, lecture-style relationship between authors and readers. rather than the conversational and humorous commentary found in rang’s preface, oxford’s tone is more authoritive and its language more business-like. for example, the authors declare that “some may be surprised that we have not included references. we did not feel this to be necessary” (grahamesmith & aronson, 2002: preface). these clauses construct what halliday (1985: 103) calls a “one-participant material process” which focuses attention on the actor, in this instance oxford’s authors. thus, in this case, the writer-reader relationship is unequal and distanced, “someone telling what the case is in no uncertain terms, and someone being told” (fairclough, 1992: 76). by playing down the need for references, the designers also position the content as ‘absolute truth’. a seemingly contradictory statement reads that “it is always possible that errors have been missed … we urge all who use this book to consult … other sources of information before prescribing” (grahame-smith & aronson, 2002: preface). rather than reflecting on the truth value of the text, this statement expresses oxford’s commitment to aspects of personal responsibility and accountability. in other words, they urge readers, as future prescribers, to assume a similar responsibility for their own texts, namely prescriptions, by verifying drug information with other resources. a closer inspection of the table of contents reveals an ideological orientation towards patient care. chapter one is headed “the four processes of drug therapy” and the word “process” is repeated nine times on that page. the dominant message is that pharmacology is about therapy, and that therapy is a process, rather than a drug. this contrasts sharply with rang’s product-oriented disposition. even a chapter that deals with ‘hard’ scientific principles is explicitly oriented towards people: science is made relevant to the old, the young, or the pregnant. psychological aspects of drug therapy are included as ‘science’, for example, patient compliance and placebos. another section deals with the principles and rules on ‘how to write a prescription’; this content is absent from rang’s textbook. section three in oxford is called “the drug therapy of disease”. each chapter in this section has a particular medical condition as its heading, rather than the drug topics in rang. this means that a drug that is commonly used in several types of cardiovascular disorders, for example, is discussed repeatedly under separate topics such as hypertension, angina, cardiac failure and so on. it is clear that oxford is a textbook based, to a large extent, on a particular ideological view that centres on pharmacology as therapy. oxford’s content presents the science of pharmacology as a clinical and, therefore, more people-oriented version of science, where psychological factors can be regarded as ‘scientific’. simultaneously, the visual mode in oxford evokes a more technical and distant view of science. according to archer (2006: 455), scientific significations “serve to create perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 128 a disjunction between everyday common-sense knowledge and the systematised knowledge of the discipline”. text that is more impersonal, objective and technical in nature is regarded as more scientific. both the written and the visual modes may express ‘scientific-ness’; the written with specific lexicogrammatical choices and the visual with features such as diagrams, labelling and organising content into analytical hierarchies (archer, 2006: 457). the word-dense pages, absence of illustration and colour and its more formal tone contribute to oxford’s legitimacy and ‘truth value’ as a scientific text. while rang’s design is geared toward quick access to drug information, oxford’s content is embedded in disease management. this means that, if students require information about a particular medication, they can only search for that drug’s information in the context of the disease for which it is used. conclusion we have used a social semiotic approach to interrogating the choice of textbooks in the context of implementing curriculum change. the new medical curriculum foregrounds two ideological shifts: that of integration between clinical and scientific knowledge types in pursuit of ‘generalist clinician’ competencies, and patient-centred views of knowledge. in rang, halliday’s ideational is constructed as an artificial world of drugs and biological systems, thereby presenting a technical and dehumanised view of scientific knowledge. in oxford, the ideational constructs a more naturalistic world of clinical therapy, whereby scientific principles are integrated with patientcentred clinical practice. on an interpersonal level, rang constructs a democratised writer-reader relationship aimed at a multilevelled and diverse audience (which may include undergraduate medical students), but a distanced and impersonal relationship with the subject matter. as such, it is an explicitly hybrid text, where medical discourse co-exists and clashes with discourses of ‘hard science’ and other lifeworlds. oxford, on the other hand, appears to be written with the medical undergraduate student in mind. it emphasises the importance of the subject matter and foregrounds an attitude of accountability and patient-centredness. however, in doing so, it constructs a rather dated view of an authoritative ‘knowledge transmitter’ and of knowledge as ‘absolute truth’. in terms of textual coherence, rang’s content is organised in drug categories and, since that type of design facilitates easy access to information on a specific drug, it creates a distinctly user-friendly text for its readers. however, rang’s scientific and dehumanised discoursal orientation to pharmacology may be unsuitable for students of the new integrated, patient-centred curriculum. oxford may seem more aligned to the ideological views underpinning the new curriculum. however, its hierarchical authorial voice may alienate students as citizens of a post-fordist modern society (gee, 2000; kress & van leeuwen, 2006). furthermore, since its design and layout make it extremely difficult to study pharmacology as ‘drug knowledge’ rather than ‘therapeutic knowledge’, prescribing oxford has implications for the type of examination questions that may be used in student assessment. in the process of 129 a social semiotic approach to textbook analysis: the construction of the discourses of pharmacology rachel weiss & arlene archer selecting or rejecting a textbook, difficult choices need to be made which entail certain gains and losses and require reflection on pedagogical processes such as alignment between learning objectives, curriculum content and assessment practices. it is clear that these texts both reflect and construct contesting discourses in the field of medical education, in what luke (1996: 308) refers to as “a battleground for a politics of representation”. what is included and excluded in textbooks signifies more profound political, economic and cultural relations (apple & christian-smith, 1991: 3). this type of analysis highlights the ways in which educational textbooks can contribute in more or less explicit ways to bernstein’s “battle over curricula”, which is “also a conflict between different conceptions of social order” (bernstein 2003: 81). references apple, m.w. & christian-smith, l.k. 1991. the politics of the textbook. in: mw apple & lk christian-smith (eds), the politics of the textbook. new york and london: routledge, 1-21. archer, a. 2006. a multimodal approach to academic ‘literacies’: problematising the visual/verbal divide. language and education, 20(6): 449-462. bernstein, b. 2003. class, codes and control: towards a theory of educational transmissions. volume 3. london: routledge. fairclough, n. 1992. discourse and social change. cambridge: polity press. fairclough, n. 1995 media discourse. london: edward arnold. fairclough, n. 2000. multiliteracies and language: orders of discourse and intertextuality. in: b cope & m kalantzis (eds), multiliteracies: literacy learning and the design of social futures. london and new york: routledge, 162-181. gee, j. 2000. new people in new worlds: networks, the new capitalism and schools. in: b cope & m kalantzis (eds), multiliteracies: literacy learning and the design of social futures. london and new york: routledge, 43-68. goodman, s. 1996. visual english. in: s goodman & d graddol (eds), redesigning english: new texts, new identities. london: open university press and routledge, 38-60. grahame-smith, d. & aronson, j. 2002. oxford textbook of clinical pharmacology and drug therapy. oxford, new york: oxford university press. halliday, m.a.k. 1985. an introduction to functional grammar. london: edward arnold. hicks, d. 2003. discourse, teaching and learning. in: s goodman, t lillis, j maybin & n mercer (eds), language, literacy and education: a reader. stoke on trent, uk: trentham and open university, 3-23. jewitt, c. (ed.). 2009. the routledge handbook of multimodal analysis. oxon: oxford university press. kress, g. & van leeuwen, t. 2002. color as a semiotic mode: notes for a grammar of color. visual communication, 1(3): 343-368. kress, g. & van leeuwen, t. 2006. reading images: the grammar of visual design. london: routledge. perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 130 luke, a. 1996. genres of power? literacy education and the production of capital. in: r hasan & g rand williams (eds), literacy in society. harlow essex: addison wesley longman, 308-338. macdonald, j. 1992. primary health care: medicine in its place. london: earthscan publications. paxton, m. 2007. tensions between textbook pedagogy and the literacy practices of the disciplinary community: a study of writing in first year economics. journal of english for academic purposes, 6: 109-127. rang, h., dale, m., ritter, j. & moore, p. 2003. pharmacology. edinburgh, new york: churchill livingston. university of cape town. 2002. faculty of health sciences: core curriculum and new mbchb curriculum. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2013 university of the free state 43 jako olivier school of languages, north-west university e-mail: jako.olivier@nwu.ac.za telephone: 018 299 1486 the accommodation of multilingualism through blended learning in two information technology classes jako olivier the south african society can be described as culturally diverse and multilingual. however, despite the advantages of mother-tongue education, english is often chosen as the language of learning and teaching at the cost of the other official languages. this article proposes that multilingualism, through the use of languages other than english in the classroom, could be accommodated through blended learning. blended learning refers to the blending of traditional instruction methods, such as face-to-face instruction, with online learning. for example, through an evaluation of e-learning tools, it was established that wikis could be used for this study. the empirical research in this article focuses on the establishment and testing of a set of steps for the accommodation of multilingualism by means of blended learning in the subject information technology. the research took the form of a sequential embedded mixedmethods design, and both quantitative and qualitative approaches were used. based on the literature and the empirical investigations, blended learning was implemented through the use of a wiki at two high schools in the free state province, and the effectiveness of the intervention was tested through a quasi-experimental study. in conclusion, it was found that multilingualism could be accommodated through blended learning. keywords: multilingualism, multicultural education, blended learning, e-learning, wiki, online teaching and information technology introduction educational systems should reflect and accommodate the language needs of the societies in which they function (olshtain & nissim-amitai, 2004: 53). furthermore, olshtain and nissim-amitai (2004: 59) maintain that multilingual speakers should “… be able to make informed decisions about investing future effort in language perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 44 knowledge and language skills of one or all of the languages they know, in order to promote their aspirations and choices in life”. this relates directly to the premise of a learner-centred approach within the south african school curriculum. thus, the focus is on facilitating learning for individual learners within the context of facilitating the use of languages other than english that are used by learners. teachers, therefore, become mediating agents in terms of national and school language policies and the actual multilingual language capabilities that are present in south african schools. this context of multilingualism in schools is the first issue explored in the literature overview of this article. developments in education internationally and in south africa have seen the emergence of alternative teaching and learning strategies such as blended learning, which is viewed as an integration of traditional (for example, face-to-face teaching) and web-based or online teaching and learning approaches, as referred to in this article (cf. bonk & graham, 2006: 4; holmes & gardner, 2006: 110; nel, 2005: 67-68, 109; olivier, 2011: 85; oosthuizen, 2004: 14). the aim of this article is to establish how multilingualism can be accommodated through teaching for “singularities in pluralities” (garcía & sylvan, 2011: 386) – adding languages other than english (lote) to the learning environment – by means of blended learning in the school subject information technology (it) within the free state province of south africa. the reason why this problem needs to be addressed is that, despite the multilingual nature of it classes, english is mainly used as the medium of instruction. this study proposes the use of blended learning as a solution to an english-only learning environment. it was chosen as it was one of the few subjects in which a substantial number of computers could be made available in classrooms throughout the province. the theoretical context of multilingualism in education is explored with a literature study, followed by a questionnaire aimed at all the it teachers in the province. interviews were also held with subject specialists and blended learning experts. based on the literature study and the empirical research, blended learning was implemented to accommodate multilingualism at two separate schools in the free state. the application of the proposed steps was tested through quasi-experimental research based on a non-equivalent group in a pre-test post-test control-group design. multilingualism in education contextualisation multilingualism can refer to the multilingual language abilities of an individual or the state of having more than one language when referring to a society or, more specifically in relation to this research, within a classroom (cf. baker, 1996: 4; franceschini, 2011: 344; herdina & jessner, 2002: 52; kemp, 2009: 12; shohamy, 2006: 171; van huyssteen, 2002: 69). the term ‘multilingualism’, as used in this study, refers to the language diversity of the wider learner community, rather than to the multilingual capabilities of individuals. hence, societal or even institutional (franceschini, 2011: 344, 346), rather than individual multilingualism, is relevant for olivier the accommodation of multilingualism through blended learning in two information technology classe 45 this study. societal multilingualism is a reality for many south africans and in many south african classrooms (cf. laufer, 2000: 3; lemmer, meier & van wyk, 2006: 52; maartens, 1998: 15), and serves as impetus for this study. language in south africa historically, mainly afrikaans (previously dutch) and english enjoyed official recognition. the two official languages in south africa, with nine languages recognised in the so-called bantustans or homelands, were recognised until 1993. after a period of negotiations, it was decided, as a compromise, to include eleven official languages at national level. this was done officially with the 1993 interim constitution and, ultimately, the constitution of south africa (act 108 of 1996) (hereafter referred to as the constitution (1996)). the following languages were selected as official languages: sepedi, sesotho, setswana, siswati, tshivenda, xitsonga, afrikaans, english, isindebele, isixhosa and isizulu (cf. du plessis, 2000: 103-105; du plessis, 2003: 106-107; laufer, 2003: 3, 7; mesthrie, 2002: 13-18; webb & kembo-sure, 2000: 9). there is no language that qualifies, even as an additional language, to be a common language for south africa (cf. alexander, 2001: 116). however, english is regarded as a lingua franca or common language that is used for communication in a multilingual context and ultimately should be used in south african schools (henrard, 2003: 11; lemmer et al., 2006: 52). language in south african schools a problem in south african schools is the occurrence of subtractive bilingualism where home languages, often african languages, are replaced by english as the language of learning and teaching. another language possibly afrikaans or another african language is then offered as a subject by a school (cf. laufer, 2003: 46-47; van der walt, 2003: 30). cushner, mcclelland and safford (2009: 192) note that in south africa “where the school’s language of instruction is not a learner’s first or home language, effective learning for such learners is usually impaired”. poor language abilities have a distinctly negative effect on academic performance. this occurs when the language of learning and teaching is not necessarily the learners’ home language, and where they do not acquire sufficient skills in either language (cf. van der walt, 2003: 33-38). despite the fact that, from a sociolinguistic and educational point of view, mothertongue education is the ideal (cf. van der walt, 2003: 1), english is generally preferred as the medium of instruction at schools, especially by parents who speak one of the african languages (cf. heugh, 2000: 15; laufer, 2003: 18; nkabinde, 1997: 99-105; van der walt, 2003: 18, 31; webb, 2002: 299; webb & kembo-sure, 2000: 6). the right to choose a language of learning and teaching is determined by policies and legislation such as the constitution (1996), the south african school’s act (act 84 of 1996), the act on national teaching policy (act 27 of 1996), and the language in education policy (1997) (cf. van der walt, 2003: 82). it is important to take cognisance of the perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 46 fact that there is a perception that a discrepancy exists between what is required by language legislation, and what is actually implemented (cf. verhoef, 2008: 9-11). in considering the aforementioned, it is necessary to explore solutions to accommodate languages other than english by means of an approach such as blended learning. blended learning as a way of accommodating multilingualism conceptualisation the concept of ‘blended learning’ is widely accepted as an integrated approach to learning with traditional face-to-face and computer-supported, web-based or online approaches (cf. holmes & gardner, 2006: 14, 110; littlejohn & pegler, 2007: 1, 26, 226; mason & rennie, 2006: 11-14; nel, 2005: 67-68, 109; olivier, 2011: 179-184; oosthuizen, 2004: 14). masie (2006: 22-25) notes that blended learning refers to the “use of two or more styles of content or context delivery or discovery” and, furthermore, traces the origin of this “blended learning” to a reaction to structural weaknesses of e-learning at the time. blended learning, as applied in this article, relates to the use of this approach in a cooperative setting, and hence communal constructivism is a relevant concept. communal constructivism is an extension of socio-constructivism or social constructivism, and is a term defined by holmes, tangney, fitzgibbon, savage and mehan (2001: 1) as “an approach to learning in which students not only construct their own knowledge (constructivism) as a result of interacting with their environment (social constructivism), but are also actively engaged in the process of constructing knowledge for their learning community” [emphasis in original.]. this approach is the key to this study, since only through a blended-learning approach can learners, who might not be geographically together, and yet speak the same languages, be able to construct knowledge cooperatively. blended learning may also provide a way in which content can be available in more than one language. in this article, blended learning is viewed as a combination of traditional teaching methods such as face-to-face teaching as well as online instruction or e-learning (cf. fee, 2009: 16; kelly, 2009: 36). blended learning using a wiki the e-learning instructional tool that was chosen to be used in this study is a wiki. a wiki refers to web software that allows for easy creation of internet or network-based wiki pages that can generally be edited by anyone. using the same kind of software as used on a site such as wikipedia, wikis can be created for specific purposes (cf. ebersbach, glaser & heigl, 2006: 1-30; fee, 2009: 87; littlejohn & pegler, 2007: 103; mason & rennie, 2006: 130-131; parker & chao, 2007: 57; richardson, 2006: 1, 8, 59-61). matthew, felvegi and callaway (2009: 51) define wikis as “collaborative webbased environments that allow multiple users to easily and quickly contribute content”. olivier the accommodation of multilingualism through blended learning in two information technology classe 47 wikis can be considered as collaborative constructions of knowledge (matthew et al., 2009: 52; richardson, 2006: 61, 65). parker and chao (2007: 58) also note the collaborative properties of wikis, and confirm that they can act as a platform for a community of practice which, in turn, refers to a group of people who are engaged in learning. based on the above discussion, wikis were used as instruction tools in the implementation of blended learning through which multilingualism could be accommodated. blended learning and multilingualism central to this study is the application of blended learning in a multilingual classroom in order to accommodate multilingualism. however, the use of blended learning in multilingual environments is not a unique south african phenomenon, and has been successfully utilised internationally (cf. hafsa, 2003; kushwah & vijayakumar, 2001). according to holmes and gardner (2006: 63), “today’s web does indeed reflect the language and social diversity of the modern world”. however, bonk (2009: 380) affirms that english dominates the web. this view is supported by cunningham (2001: 207) who states that english is the “language of the internet”. kushwah and vijayakumar (2001: 2) argue that using english only in e-learning contexts would restrict access to facilities for certain communities, and propose a multilingual e-learning system that accommodates various indian languages. projects in india (kushwah & vijayakumar, 2001: 2) that are related to this concept proved that multilingual e-learning is possible and viable. in addition, holmes and gardner (2006: 64) observe that studies concerning the cultural aspects of educational technology in multicultural classrooms showed that the usage of computers had a positive effect, especially in terms of minority groups. blended learning has particular benefits with regard to multicultural and multilingual contexts where, through online collaboration of learners, they can develop cultural sensitivity (cf. nel, 2005: 20). nel (2005: 161) notes that online environments can contribute to the development of african languages as mediums of instruction. van der westhuizen (1999: 49) is of the opinion that online education can be regarded as being non-discriminatory, as access to virtual classrooms may not necessarily be limited to certain locations or the age, ethnicity, gender, language, and physical limitations of participants. admirable as this may seem, this view does not account for accommodation in online media for different languages through the provision of multilingual interfaces. building on this literature review, an empirical investigation was launched to gather information on current practice in it classrooms throughout the free state, as well as on the way in which multilingualism is viewed by provincial and national experts on the subject it and blended learning, in order to contextualise the issue of language for the subject. finally, a blended-learning intervention was tested in two different schools in the province. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 48 empirical investigation research design in this study, a mixed-methods research design was utilised. following the descriptions by ivankova, creswell and plano clark (2007: 261-270) and creswell (2009: 206216) regarding different mixed-methods strategies, this research design can best be described as a sequential embedded design. the research design consists of two distinct phases, with some processes embedded within the two phases that follow a set order. both phases contributed towards the aim of the study. in the first phase of the empirical research, quantitative as well as qualitative data was collected to supplement information gathered from the literature study and to provide substantiated evidence in support of the envisaged experimental research. this part of the research was non-experimental and descriptive in nature in the form of surveys. in the second phase a blended-learning intervention for accommodating multilingualism was developed. this was based on the information obtained from the literature study and the findings from the first phase of the empirical research. by following an experimental design in the form of quasi-experimental research, and based on a non-equivalent group pre-test post-test control-group design (mcmillan & schumacher, 2006: 274), the intervention was implemented and evaluated. research participants the research participants for the first part of the empirical research consisted of the total population of it teachers at secondary schools in the free state province (n=17). only eleven of these participants qualified as either being grade 10 teachers or who actually returned the completed questionnaire. the rationale for this purposeful sample (mcmillan & schumacher, 2006: 126) is based on the fact that all these teachers work within a similar context in terms of the usage of the same programming language (in other provinces, some schools use java and not delphi, as in the free state). interviews were used to validate and extend the data gained through the literature study and the questionnaire that was completed by the it teachers. the interviews were conducted with provincial and national it subject specialists and blended-learning experts. with the implementation of the blendedlearning intervention, the research was conducted at two respective secondary schools that offer it as subject. choosing two different schools ensured that the study was representative of the types of schools that presented it as a school subject in the free state. one was a multilingual former model c school, with learners speaking a number of languages and being taught through the medium of afrikaans and english, and the other a township school, with mainly sesotho speakers being taught through the medium of english, from a previously disadvantaged background. olivier the accommodation of multilingualism through blended learning in two information technology classe 49 questionnaires the teacher questionnaires used in the first part of the empirical investigation provided the necessary context within which the rest of the research and implementation of the intervention could be executed. a number of findings that were important to the rest of the study could be identified. the limited individual multilingual skills of the it teachers in the free state were evident from the questionnaire data. furthermore, the importance of english as an additional language for learning and teaching was apparent. despite the teacher respondents only having afrikaans (73%), sesotho (18%) and setswana (9%) as mother-tongue languages, the data showed that the language profile of the learners was multilingual in nature. the majority (63.5%) of grade 10 it learners in the free state spoke sesotho, followed by afrikaans (17%) as a mother-tongue language. to some extent, different languages were accommodated in class, especially in terms of using afrikaans, english, sesotho and setswana. this was done mainly through code-switching, terminology lists and textbooks. despite the accommodation of some languages, many other languages that were used by learners were not accommodated. from the questionnaires, it was evident that a number of languages (such as isizulu, setswana, xitsonga, isixhosa, greek and hindi) were rarely, or never, used in class. finally, in terms of accommodating african languages such as sesotho, this did not happen in classes where teachers had afrikaans as a mother-tongue language. the responses in the questionnaire also indicated that, in terms of the availability of computers in the respective schools that formed part of the research, some infrastructure did exist. the majority of the respondents (64%) indicated that all the computers at their schools are connected to the internet, while in terms of schools where this is not possible, 36% of the respondents indicated that at least some (no more than 10) computers used by staff of the school have access to the internet. consequently, all schools had some form of access to the internet, which could allow for at least a degree of blended learning to take place, as teachers had access to online resources. in terms of electronic tools used in the class, ms powerpoint presentations and the internet were favoured, followed by some usage of wikis and a subject portal. only just over half (55%) of the respondents indicated that they used electronic tools for assessment, and 45% of the respondents showed that they used blended-learning techniques in teaching. hence, it is important to note that training for blended-learning strategies might be needed to enable teachers to use technologies that are already adequately available to them. the majority of the respondents who used blended-learning methods indicated that they employ it on a daily basis, although it was not used in every lesson. the majority (82%) of the respondents indicated that blended learning could accommodate multilingualism. multilingualism was explained to the respondents as the use of more than one language in the classroom. this result, and the responses to the follow-up openended question, implied that teachers seemed to be positive towards the aims of this perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 50 study. the respondents also appeared to be positive in terms of the implementation of a way in which blended learning could accommodate multilingualism. interviews interviews were held with provincial and national experts on the subject it and blended learning. all of these participants were associated with the free state provincial department of education or the national department of basic education. this part of the research was conducted by means of face-to-face and e-mail interviewing techniques. from the interviews, it became clear that the provincial department of education was currently focusing on developing access to hardware and teacher ict skills training without specific focus on e-learning or blended learning. according to the interviewees, very little has been done by the department of education, as many teachers still require basic computer and internet skills. blended learning offers advantages to teachers and learners in terms of learning and teaching abilities. owing to a lack of the proper infrastructure that is needed for the implementation of blended learning, it is not applied by schools. schools do not have the financial means to implement sustainable e-learning platforms, as infrastructure is expensive. however, the interviews also showed that the benefits of blended learning outweigh the costs. from the interviews, it was also evident that teachers are not necessarily adequately qualified and committed to exploring new technologies. support and training will be required for teachers to enable blended learning to be implemented. blended learning will also not complement poor teachers. training should be considered to take up a third of the cost of ownership. the interviews also indicated that english is very prominent in schools and on the internet, and despite the fact that all languages can be accommodated, it may be difficult to do so in all subjects. instruction in a language other than the mother tongue creates a barrier to learning; yet it was noted that with adequate development, languages other than english could be used. accommodating multilingualism through blended learning may attend to some of the concerns in terms of language-related learning barriers. according to a subject specialist, the new developments in the subject it, as set out in the draft curriculum and assessment policy statement, may have a positive impact on the accommodation of multilingualism. more concrete examples of how the curriculum and assessment policy statement would be more accommodating could not be elicited from the interviewees. intervention an intervention was set up based on the literature study, the teachers’ questionnaire and the interviews with subject and blended-learning experts. a wiki site was set up with multilingual content and areas where learners can interact. a wiki can be used for the following three purposes: storing of information, learner interaction, and generation of cooperative knowledge. therefore, three different distinct areas olivier the accommodation of multilingualism through blended learning in two information technology classe 51 are created in the wiki. first, there are the resources that can be supplied by the teacher, or that can even be collated from work of previous years. this resource section contains basic terminology, explanations, examples and summaries of the contents to be learned. secondly, learners must have separate wiki pages where they can introduce themselves, and post their individual tasks or contributions. finally, a common discussion forum or page should be created in order to facilitate discussion and the generation of co-operative knowledge. in this regard, discussion pages can also be grouped according to language or other groupings, as required by the relevant classes. the learners and class context determine the nature of the groups, and the manner in which they are used in the wiki. the grouping of learners can also lead to interaction between learners from different schools, if the wiki is available online and user registration is set up in a way that allows new users to register themselves. however, this approach could potentially lead to security issues since, without proper control, any individual could then register, and become part of the wiki. in the blended-learning process, the teacher must fulfil an administrative as well as a facilitation role throughout the usage of a wiki. learners should be encouraged to use the medium, but the teachers should also continuously assess the progress made on the wiki. only through constant dialogue between the learners and teachers – regardless of whether this is done face-to-face or online – can learners be guided towards effective usage of the wiki medium. the intervention involved the instruction of it content relating to loop structures used in the computer language delphi. the design was based on the it grade 10 assessment tasks on content used in the relevant classes. the implementation was done in five lessons over a two-week period. another factor that guided the quasi-experimental design was the fact that the random assignment of the research participants into control (exposed only to traditional face-to-face teaching) and experimental groups (exposed to multilingual online content in addition to traditional face-to-face teaching) at the respective schools was not possible, since the researcher was not in the position to move learners from one class to another. random assignment only took place by assigning a class to represent the control group and another to represent the experimental group at the respective schools. instruction was done through the medium of english, with the experimental groups having access to afrikaans and sesotho materials on the wiki. they also had the opportunity to communicate on the wiki in any language they preferred. assessments were conducted prior to and after the instruction of the programming content. the intervention was observed by the researcher throughout the research process and a journal was used for this purpose. furthermore, the intervention was tested in the second phase of the empirical research by means of a quasi-experimental research design based on a non-equivalent group pre-test post-test control-group design. a t-test was used to determine whether statistically there was a significant difference between the results of the pre-test and the post-test of the combined control and experimental group. these were then compared separately in terms of the two different schools. from the results of the pre-test and the post-test analysis of both perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 52 the experimental and control groups’ results, it was clear that statistically there was a significant difference in the test scores favouring the intervention. regarding both the experimental and the control groups of the schools, there was a difference in terms of the pre-tests, but not in terms of the post-tests. it may be deduced that the strategy of blended-learning intervention for accommodating multilingualism had a positive effect on the understanding of the content used in the study. for further validation, observations during the implementation of the intervention were also recorded, and supported the results of the rest of the empirical study. the following hypotheses were set for this part of the research: • h 0 the implementation of an educative intervention through a blendedlearning model to accommodate and promote multilingualism will not lead to a significant change in academic performance in a standardised test. • h 1 the implementation of an educative intervention through a blendedlearning model to accommodate and promote multilingualism will lead to a significant change in academic performance in a standardised test. in terms of the experimental group, the following data was retrieved using spss statistical software: table 1 paired differences mean standard deviation standard error mean pre – post -16.364 23.411 4.991 in the experimental group, a mean of -16.364 was identified. furthermore, the standard deviation was 23.411. table 2 t df sig. (2-tailed) pre – post -3.279 21 0.004 in terms of paired samples correlations, the t-statistic is given as -3.279 and a p-value of 0.004 was found. this means that a statistically significant difference exists between the pre-tests and the post-tests done by the experimental group. the degrees of freedom are denoted by df and have the value of 21. the same test was done on the pre-test and the post-test results of the control group. olivier the accommodation of multilingualism through blended learning in two information technology classe 53 table 3 95% confidence interval of the difference mean standard deviation standard error mean lower upper pre – post 0.000 30.394 6.480 -13.476 13.476 in the control group, a mean of 0.000 was identified. furthermore, the standard deviation was 30.394. table 4 t df sig. (2-tailed) pair 1 pre – post .000 21 1.000 with the control group, the t-statistic is given as 0.000 and a p-value of 1.000 was determined. this implies that there was no difference between the pre-tests and the post-tests done by the control group. the degrees of freedom are denoted by df and have the value of 21. hence the hypothesis (h 1 ) was proven true in terms of the intervention of the model leading to a significant difference and the null hypothesis (h 0 ) as false. the implementation of the proposed intervention did require certain criteria for having full internet access by all computers used in the classroom, as well as certain skills in using wikis by the teacher and learners. furthermore, the multilingual nature of a class determined whether the language used in a class could be accommodated. ideally, this could be done for all the languages. yet, as determined in the empirical investigations, this is a complex matter that may not be possible. in terms of using languages other than english, there was a distinct difference in the way in which it was utilised at different schools. at the former model c school, the learners spoke only in english, with some individuals writing in their mother-tongue languages. at the township school, the learners spoke english with a great deal of code-switching that bordered on whole discussions in sesotho. all writing was strictly done in english. it may be concluded that, by introducing languages other than english through the use of a wiki, more languages can be accommodated in classrooms. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 54 conclusion this study aimed at creating and testing an intervention through which a multilingual learning environment is created in an english environment and how “singularities in pluralities” (garcía & sylvan, 2011: 386) could be accommodated with the use of blended learning in the subject it. the first part of the study consisted of a literature overview on multilingualism, and the way in which it was realised in the south african context. this included blended learning in terms of its origins, related theories and standards in the field of teaching and learning. in terms of the manner in which blended learning could accommodate multilingualism, an association between multilingualism and blended learning was drawn, and tentative conclusions were made for developing an intervention to be implemented in the school subject it. the second part of the study was aimed at conducting an empirical research, based on a sequential embedded mixed-methods design, that could be categorised into different phases. the first phase of the empirical research was quantitative in nature and was based on a non-experimental survey. by means of a self-developed, semi-structured questionnaire aimed at it teachers, the researcher wanted to determine the context of language use and application of blended learning in it classes within the free state province. the findings of the questionnaire were extended by means of an embedded qualitative survey in which experts in both the subject it and blended learning (specifically the e-learning part thereof) were interviewed. based on the data obtained in the first phase of the empirical research and the literature study, an intervention was developed through which multilingualism could potentially be accommodated with the use of blended learning. in the second phase of the empirical research, this intervention was implemented and tested by means of a quasi-experimental design: a non-equivalent group pre-test post-test controlgroup design, in two different schools in the free state province. during this phase, the effectiveness of the intervention in terms of accommodating multilingualism was tested. embedded in this phase were observations for ensuring consistency among groups and for certifying the reliability of the process of implementation. in conclusion, this study has shown that, through the use of a blendedlearning intervention, 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dealing with topics that are regarded as sensitive in school m anagem ent. principals regard certain issues as sensitive, and find it difficult to discuss them with researchers. we report on an inves tigation into such sensitive issues in lim popo province, south africa, as well as the reasons why principals regard them as sensitive. interviews with 12 individual principals were conducted to gain an understanding of issues that they regard as sensitive. a 33 item self report questionnaire was adm inistered to 180 principals drawn from 272 secondary schools. results reveal a range of issues regarded as sensitive to report on that pervade the m anagement of schools. principals have re ported on the various reasons why they regard each of the aspects as sensitive, thereby making it difficult for them to provide the required information. analysis of the different sensitive issues shows that certain biographical characteristics are significant m ediators in principals’ perceptions of sensitive issues in school m anagement. when researchers wish to elicit information on the issues identified in this study, they should consider methodological issues that m ay influence the in vestigation so that understanding and giving voice and visibility is not jeopardized. k eyw ords: deceptive answers; educators charged; sensitive educational research; sensitive issues in education; sensitive research; social relations introduction m any school principals in south africa, particularly in rural areas, work under extremely stressful conditions which are often characterised by low staff morale, poor resources, inadequate facilities, mismanagement, social problems such as gangsterism and substance abuse, disillusioned learners (d e jong, 2000; e bersohn & e loff, 2002; h ayward, 1992), and teachers trying to cope with children in trauma or suffering emotionally from untold loss of family members from h iv & aid s (coombe, 2002). t hese conditions are not conducive to an effective teaching and learning environment. a great challenge that faced the education reform process in south africa, after redressing the in justices of the apartheid regime, was the restoration of a culture of learning, teaching and services (hayward, 1992). several investigations recently commissioned on the state of education in rural areas found that these areas have been seriously discriminated against in terms of finance, buildings and resources for schools (n ecc, 1993a; 1993b). h owever, when conducting research on sensitive topics such as education in rural areas, a number of the assumptions on which social science research has been based are challenged. according to lee (1993), research on sensitive topics tends to have two rather contradictory outcomes: (1) the difficulties associated with sensitive research tend to inhibit ade quate conceptualisation and measurement, and (2) problems have also led to technical innovation in the form of imaginative methodological advances. t he problems and issues that arise at each stage of sensitive research take a variety of forms less commonly found in other kinds of studies, which may be methodological, technical, ethical, political or legal. areas that are contentious or highly conflicting often produce research topics that are highly sensitive. w hen sensitive educational research is done where school principals are respondents, one would suspect that they find it difficult to respond, because they have much to lose in terms of status and reputation. t his is because research in such situations can be regarded as 90 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 threatening by those involved in a conflict, for example, those who are in positions of power (adler & adler, 1993; cole, kemeny & t aylor, 1997). t hose involved may be more likely to be untruthful or to give deceptive answers, or they may even refuse to answer (lee, 1993) in order to keep themselves in their jobs or to save face. t he methods of collecting data for such sensitive topics can therefore affect the accuracy of the answers, which is crucial given that the dissemination of invalid results and recommendations could lead to policy decisions that are not credible and are potentially harmful (sieber & stanley, 1988; sieber 1993; b rewer, 1993; lee, 1993; r eeser & w ertkin, 1997). w here problems arise in studying sensitive issues in education, researchers often find it difficult to produce valid and reliable research results, as such results are emotionally loaded, rarely discussed and may not be ignored (sieber & stanley, 1988; eisner, 1991; lee, 1993), since they address life problems. o ur main aim in the study was to ascertain which issues are sensitive for principals to report on and to identify reasons for sensitivity, thereby providing social researchers with an understanding of conditions of duress and adversity that exist in education that are potential methodological prob lems regarding the collection of valid and reliable information. researchers experience problems in getting honest responses from participants about conditions of duress and adversity in education that they regard as sensitive. for social researchers, this study may provide valuable information on researching sensitive issues in school management, placing them in a better position to cope with the effects of sensitivity in research in education. social researchers would be able to identify those issues and determine the most appropriate methodology for coping with the effects of sensitivity. w e investigated a number of cases in school management where conditions of adversity and duress exist and assessed their effect on the responses of principals to sensitive research questions. it was hypothesised that there are sensitive issues in school management that principals find difficult to provide information on. it was further hypothesised that the more sensitive or threatening the topic under examination, the more difficult it is for respondents to provide answers to the re search questions. review of literature definition of sensitive research several researchers have attempted to define sensitive topics or research. according to lee (1993: 4), the term ‘sensitive research’ refers to “research which potentially poses a substantial threat to those who are or have been involved in it”. some literature on sensitive research supports this con ceptualisation by lee. for example, t ourangeau and smith (1996) indicate that a question is sen sitive if it raises concerns about disapproval or other consequences (such as legal sanctions) for reporting truthfully or if the question itself is seen as an invasion of privacy or when it deals with things sacred to participants. reeser and w ertkin (1997) studied the sharing of sensitive information with field instructors. according to these researchers, information is defined as sensitive if it entails personal or family problems, illness, or disability (e.g., criminal history, psychiatric diagnosis, or substance abuse). sieber (1993:3) defines socially sensitive research as “studies in which there are potential con sequences or implications, either directly for the participants in the research or for the class of individuals represented by the research”. t his definition introduces another approach of defining the concept ‘sensitive topic’: that of considering sensitivity in respect of possible consequences sensitive topics are threatening be cause participation in research can have unwelcome consequences. lee’s (1993) definition of sensitive research is inclusive. it refers to the threats or risk to those involved in the study and the problems encountered in the collection, recording and dissemination of research data. for the p urp oses of this article, we therefore regard the following as a working definition: sensitive research topics are those topics that pose a potential threat in some way to those participating in the research both the researcher and the researched. 91perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 theories of sensitive research t he study looked at the question of whether sensitive research implies specific threats to the data collection methodology and the validity of the results, and if these do indeed exist, in what way they threaten the participants. t he literature on sensitive questions demonstrates that the social desira bility of the information being collected and the m ethod of collecting such data can affect the accuracy of the answers that are obtained (kilpatrick & lockhart, 1991; t ourangeau & smith, 1996). w here people are the sub jects o f research, their views of the researcher and the research itself will affect their responses and behaviour. h enderson, sampselle, m ayes and o akley (1992) and schlesinger and d evore (1994) exa mined how research is conducted in a multicultural society. t hey framed their discussion within the understanding of culturally sensitive research research methods are developed in a culture that is dominant over other cultures. according to these researchers, applying research methods and techniques developed in a dominant culture can threaten the validity and generalizability of research conducted among other cultures. b en d avid and amit (1999) state that cultural self awareness helps prevent distorted perceptions of particular groups and helps individuals realize how much their own value, knowledge and b ias affect perceptions and service delivery to different groups. b eing cul turally sensitive means understanding the values and reward systems of a given community (hattrup & b ickel, 1993; b ickel & hattrup, 1995). research with culturally diverse clients would therefore require unique methodological considerations (rodgers & potocky, 1997). several sources (t racy & fox, 1981; b lair, sudman, b radburn & stocking, 1977; b radburn; sudman; b lair & stocking, 1978) indicate that the potential for response bias in surveys of sensitive information can be considered particularly problematic: random response errors reduce the relia bility of measurements, and systematic response errors jeopardize the validity of measurements. t racy and fox (1981) further report that the differing propensities among respondents to under report or over report sensitive behaviours can lead to erroneous inferences regarding the extent and correlates of the behaviour. consequently, such bias can vitiate the self report technique, a method that is frequently the only way to measure certain behaviours. method sample a total of 12 public secondary school principals selected were given unstructured interviews. t he sampling strategy, which produced a small sample in line with the statistical rules for optimal sample size (b ogdan & b iklen, 1998; b abbie & m outon, 2001), was intended to produce a heterogeneous set of principals and thus enabling generalizability of the results, although it is impossib le to evaluate the extent to which the sam ple was representative of the population (babbie & m outon, 2001). a group of 180 public secondary school principals were selected through a purposive sampling procedure in the northern region and given self administered questionnaires. o ne hundred and fifty questionnaires were returned, providing a response rate of approximately 83% which we consider a very high return and provided a valid sample for the study. selection was determined by performance track record obtained from the d epartment of e d ucatio n o f matriculation results attained in the two years prior to the year of the study. co m prising the sample were 10 males: two came from schools regarded as most effective; two were from average performance schools; two were selected from schools regarded as ineffective and the other four came from areas other than the n orthern region, and two female principals, selected because they were the only two female principals available from the three in the region. principals of special and combined schools were however, excluded subsequent to evident differences between the two types of schools. permission to collect data was granted by the d epartment of e ducation. confidentiality for schools and individuals was assured. each questionnaire was accompanied by a letter assuring prin 92 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 cipals that the survey was anonym ous and was designed mainly to obtain an overall statistical picture. it was emphasised that participation was purely voluntary. questionnaire a structured survey instrument, t he school m anagement sensitive issues q uestionnaire (sm siq ) was developed following a literature review of the studies on sensitive research. t hemes identified from semi structured interviews with 12 principals: (1) the school policy (learning teaching situa tion), (2) working conditions, (3) code of conduct for learners, (4) learner and educator discipline, (5) administrative activities, (6) school financial issues, (7) developmental appraisal, (8) mo ral issues and (9) social relations issues, were utilized as guides for the construction of 33 item sm siq for use with our sample of principals. p iloting of this questionnaire indicated that principals judged it to be suitable for use in respect of both content and language. q uestionnaires were completed anonymously, with respondents asked only to indicate details of (1) gender, (2) age, (3) length of teaching experience and (4) length of experience as a principal. principals were asked to rate each of the questionnaire items on a five point likert type scale mea suring how each of those items was sensitive and why respondents thought each of the aspects was sensitive, thereby making it d ifficult for them to provide information on such aspects with 1 re presenting ‘extremely sensitive’ and 5 representing ‘not at all sensitive’. t hey were requested to tick only one reason they considered the most appropriate for sensitivity from those indicated. space was provided for them to identify any additional major issues they regarded sensitive to report on. analysis q uestionnaire data were entered into a data editor loaded with the statistical package for the social sciences (spss) 15.0 file for w indows. although we had taken considerable care in entering the data from the study, we checked for errors that might have occurred during capture by examining the data set directly using the case summaries approach and running the procedure ‘frequency’, which produced a summary table of values for each variable. t he following sp ss procedures were used to develop a description of the characteristics of the respondents: frequencies, crosstabs, means, and graphs. bivariate analyses were conducted to test for significance of the association between the variables using the chi square test. results t he results, obtained from the analysis of questionnaires completed by principals from secondary schools, are presented showing the main trends and patterns in the data. t he ranked results of issues in school management regarded as sensitive thereby making it difficult for principals to provide information on these issues during investigation by researchers are given in t able 1. t he results indicated that moral issues were the most sensitive issues in school management on which principals had difficulty in providing information to researchers. of the moral issues identified, sexual abuse between educators and learners, as well as educators and learners with acquired immune deficiency syndrome (aid s) were regarded as extremely sensitive. t able 1 shows that aid s related issues rated as the most sensitive in school management to provide information on during investigation by researchers. reporting about educators with aid s was rated the most sensitive while reporting about learners with aids was rated second. t hese are moral issues. t he other moral issue rated as very sensitive on which to provide information during investigation by researchers was the exercise of corporal punishment (table 1, ranked 3). t he majority of principals seemed to regard issues relating to the moral and personal integrity of their colleagues or educators as being sensitive. items ranked 4 to 8 (t able 1) were on the per sonal integrity of principal’s colleagues. m ore than half of the principals agreed that disclosing edu cators’ personal problems was an extremely sensitive issue in school management. t he other issues 93perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 regarded as sensitive, which are related to morality, were sexual abuse among fellow educators (t able 1, ranked 5); discussing sexual abuse between educators and learners (t able 1, ranked 13); exercise of corporal punishment (table 1, ranked 3) and code of conduct regarding learner preg nancy (t able 1, ranked 17). results show that discussing the record of sexual abuse cases among educators and learners was ranked 11. social relations and work related issues regarded as sensitive were identified. ninety five per cent of the principals rated backbiting among educators as being sensitive to some degree (t able 1, ranked 6). overall, principals perceived the provisio n of information on financial issues of the schools as sensitive. handling the school’s financial documents (t able 1, ranked 23) was perceived to be sensitive while the disclosure of sources of personal income was found to be not sensitive (t able 1, ranked 32). age was also identified as having a significant effect in responding to questions related to is sues regarded as sensitive. a higher proportion of principals who were 50 years or younger found disciplinary issues sensitive to provide information on to researchers compared with those who were older than 50. principals of 50 years of age or younger found educator’s reasons for being absent, to be most sensitive, while religious matters policy was found to be least sensitive. cross tabulations revealed significant differences for the principals of different ages in their rating of the item record of disciplinary procedure on educators charged with misconduct (÷² 7.106; p < 0.05; cramer’s v 0.218). w hile half of the respondents indicated that religious matters policy is sensitive to some degree, the other half indicated that this issue was not at all sensitive. further analysis showed a significant age effect with more than half (56% ) of the principals who were older than 50 years of age and regarded this issue as not at all sensitive. however, the reason principals provided for indicating that discussing religious matters with researchers was sensitive was that they felt it was a violation of their (constitutional) rights (act 108 of 1996). experience as principals also showed a significant effect on responses to questions regarding the sensitivity of disciplinary issues. t here are significant differences in the rating of this item by the principals of different years of experience as principals (÷² 14.336, p < 0.05, cramer’s v 0.309), principals with more years of experience regarding this item as sensitive to report on. t his may provide evidence that principals tend to view moral issues as being more sensitive as they grow older. issues that are regarded as not being very sensitive are mostly related to learners or the school: disclosing the sources of income (t able 1, ranked 32), coping with problems caused by educators (t able 1, ranked 31), records of learners’ disciplinary problems (t able 1, ranked 30) and reasons for learner absenteeism. reasons for sensitivity respondents were asked to provide reasons why they regard ed aspects of school management as sensitive, and why it was consequently difficult to make this public to researchers. fourteen out of the 33 items were regarded as sensitive because they dealt with confidential matters. t here was one item for which an ambiguous indication of its sensitivity was given, namely, religious matters policy. h alf the respondents regarded the issue as sensitive while the other half regarded the issue as not at all sensitive. t he reason principals provided for this was that they felt it was a violation of their (constitutional) rights (act 108 of 1996). t he constitution of this country allows individuals to belong to the religion of their choice and consequently learners or educators should not be forced to follow the particular religious policies of a given school. consistent with the literature, principals gave the following as the main reasons why they re garded issues as sensitive, and therefore difficult for them to provide information on: confidentiality, intrusion of privacy, fear of legal sanction and violation of rights. m atters personal to the educator were found to be most sensitive because of their intrusive nature. educators felt that their personal 94 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 table 1. rank order of sensitivity issues in school management (raw percentages) rank order sensitivity issue extremely sensitive very sensitive moderately sensitive slightly sensitive not at all sensitive 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. educator/s with aids learner/s with aids exercise of corporal punishment disclosing educators’ personal problems sexual abuse among fellow educators backbiting among educators disclosing information about educators’ salary issues records of educators found guilty of misconduct lack of text and prescribed books records of disciplinary procedure on educators charged for misconduct record of sexual abuse cases among educators and learners late delivery of stationery, text and prescribed books discussing sexual abuse between educators and learners learner drug use involvement in serious educator disciplinary situation influence on labour unions code of conduct for learners regarding learner pregnancies educators arriving late for school educator reasons for being absent educators absence records disclosing information about lazy teachers discussing educator’s developmental appraisal performance indicators handling school’s financial affairs making learner performance records available to researchers disclosing financial documents (receipt/cheque books, audit report, expenditure receipts) conflicts among educators lack of discipline among educators record of disciplinary action for learners reasons for learner absenteeism record of learners’ disciplinary problems coping with problems caused by educators disclosing the sources of income religious matters policy 58 57 56 55 42 39 36 36 36 34 32 32 26 22 21 20 17 16 16 15 15 15 14 14 13 13 12 11 9 9 8 7 6 17 16 15 31 27 26 35 32 23 36 32 23 28 35 36 19 28 20 31 23 31 26 31 13 28 28 31 26 11 25 26 17 10 5 7 4 7 9 20 12 11 9 11 7 14 21 9 17 26 23 17 22 25 19 29 22 20 15 20 19 30 24 31 37 21 17 5 4 7 4 3 11 8 8 3 6 7 9 8 14 15 17 10 24 23 19 15 11 11 14 7 22 21 12 21 19 16 17 17 15 15 18 3 18 5 9 13 28 13 22 22 17 20 11 19 22 23 8 18 19 20 21 39 38 17 17 21 36 16 13 38 50 security was jeopardized. issues prohibited by law are sensitive to being researched because of the threat they pose to the educators’ work situation and the legal implications they entail. discussion and conclusion t he main aim of this study was to identify sensitive issues in school management which principals find difficult to discuss with researchers. w e investigated why principals regarded some issues of school management as sensitive thereby making it difficult for them to report on. t he findings reveal that principals of secondary schools find several issues sensitive. t he results thus confirm the hypo thesis that there are sensitive issues in school management that principals find difficult to provide information on. in support of this conclusion, results show that aids related issues are the most sensitive issues in school management on which principals have difficulty in providing information to researchers. m ore than half the principals regard providing information about educators and learners with aid s 95perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 as an extremely sensitive issue. as the n ational e ducation p olicy a ct 27 of 1996 (6) (6.1) and (6.5) prohibits discussions about someone who has been positively identified as having an infection of the hiv & aid s virus (n ational department of education, 1996), such issues are understandably considered sensitive by principals, particularly if those concerned have not yet revealed their status. according to these sections, unauthorised disclosure of hiv & aid s related information in which students may be socially stigmatised or ostracised (h epburn, 2002; sephedi, m ontsi & m pofu, 2008), could give rise to legal liability. t he inclusion of a chapter about aid s policy at schools in the national education policy act 27 of 1996 is further indication of the sensitivity with which this issue is being handled at higher management levels of schools. it could therefore be difficult for a researcher to find a research method to collect such sensitive data from respondents who may not readily provide it. t he results reveal that moral issues, in particular sexual matters, are generally perceived to be sensitive, and when they involve educators, one would expect it to be a sensitive issue for principals to talk about. it is regarded as a serious misconduct if an educator is found guilty of sexual abuse of another employee (section 17 (1) (b) of e mployment of e ducators act 76 of 1998) as there may be unpleasant repercussions for the educator and the school. principals agree that since corporal punishment is morally wrong, reporting on it is sensitive (t able 1, ranked 3).t here are reports of educators who have lost their jobs because they have been found guilty of applying corporal punishment (m usetha, 2002; govender, 2005). g iven such reports about corporal punishment it is understandable that principals should rate corporal punishment as a sensitive issue in school management. t hese findings are in agreement with results of other studies which have exam ined some of these response correlates of sensitive topic research (b rzuzy, ault & segal, 1997; jansen & d avis, 1998). w hen researchers aim to capture the complexity of sensitive everyday life experiences with the goal of understanding the perspectives of those who live them, they need to consider methodolo gical issues that may influence the investigation so that validity of results is not threatened. t he results are therefore worth noting if we consider the fact that the perceived normative threat of a topic influences responses to questions the perceived threat acts as a gatekeeper to prevent further questions (everhart, 1975; b radburn et al., 1978). researchers should also consider that principals are also bound by the code of ethics with regard to reporting on information about the moral be haviour of the educator (johnson, livingstone, schwartz & slate, 2000) during collection of data. t his too may influence their responses. t hese findings provide evidence that in school management, social researchers face a complex methodological problem of researching sensitive issues. t hreatening items that ask about issues regarded as sensitive cause principals to withhold information or make them find it difficult to provide honest answers to questions from researchers. researchers may find it difficult to get honest answers from respondents who, due to sensitivity of the questions, may be reactive and may there fore not produce valid and reliable data. w e assume that sensitive research in education affects the research methodology that can be used to obtain reliable data. w e assum e that sensitive research in education affects the research methodology that can be used to obtain reliable data. researchers need to consider 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politics of sensitive research. in: cm. renzetti & rm lee (eds). researching sensitive topics. london: sage. sieber je & stanley b 1988. ethical and professional dimensions of socially sensitive research. american psychologist, 43:49 55. tourangeau r & smith tw 1996. asking sensitive questions: the impact of data collection mode, question format, and question context. public opinion quarterly, 60:275 304. tracy pe & fox ja 1981. the validity of randomized response for sensitive measurements. american sociological review, 46:187 200. multimodality and children’s participation in classrooms: instances of research denise newfield university of the witwatersrand this paper describes how language and literacy classrooms became more participatory, agentive spaces through addressing a central issue in teaching and learning: the forms of representation through which children make their meanings. it reconsiders pedagogic research in under-resourced gauteng classrooms during the period 1994 – 2005, during the first decade of education in post-liberation south africa. this research shows teachers using multimodality in productive, expressive and creative ways that work against deficit models of children, drawing on their everyday experiences and their existing representational resources. it outlines the theoretical framework supporting the pedagogical approach, that of multimodal social semiotics, known more widely as “multimodality”, and discusses three instances of children’s multimodal practice, in grades 1 and 2, 7 and 10 respectively. it sums up the role played by multimodality in participation, showing how multimodality enables cognitive, social and affective participation through expanding the semiotic space of the classroom and reconstituting the children as sign-makers. keywords: participation; classrooms; multimodality; multimodal pedagogies; forms of representation; learning; semiosis; sign-makers; agency introduction this paper describes how language and literacy classrooms become more participatory, agentive spaces through addressing a central issue in teaching and learning: the forms of representation through which children make their meanings. it reports on three instances of pedagogic research in under-resourced gauteng classrooms during the period 1994 2005, during the first decade of education in post-liberation south africa. these instances show teachers using multimodality in productive, expressive and creative ways that work against deficit models of children, drawing on their everyday experiences and their existing but submerged capacities and genres of representation. the teachers encouraged children to draw on their local forms of knowledge and semiotic practices, and on their individual strengths in writing, oral and performance activities, in order to explore and share aspects of their everyday experiences. these were integrated with curricular topics, making the classroom a forum for exchange and mutual stimulation. their creative ways of involving children resulted in positive educational outcomes and fostered excitement in relation to learning where there had often previously been disinterest, disengagement and alienation. they implemented what might be called participatory and democratic forms of educational process that build respect, dignity and excitement within classroom contexts, while developing and strengthening representational and communicative repertoires. the focus of this special edition is on children’s participation and its theorisation. accordingly, the central questions of this paper revolve around the role of the forms of representation in children’s participation, namely: what role did multimodality play in the learning activities described in the pedagogic instances? • what are the links between multimodality and participation?• in order to address these questions, it is necessary to outline briefly the concept of participation that underlies this paper and the theoretical and pedagogic framework of the instances of classroom practice that form the core of the paper. perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201128 participation a multifaceted, normative concept of participation in classrooms informs this paper. at the most basic level, it assumes that the participation of learners requires attendance and attention in class. it acknowledges that, in significant ways, learner participation depends on the way teachers present curricular content through appropriate pedagogic strategies. it considers the essential feature of learner participation to be engagement and interaction at cognitive and social levels with ideas and activities that form part of curricular content, as well as with teachers and peers. it includes the affective dimension of engagement: is the attitude of learners characterised by willingness, effort and enthusiasm, by half-heartedness, apathy, fear and resistance, or by different combinations of these? participation, however, is not seen from the individualist view of the progressive english teaching and learning that was influential in the 1970s and 1980s, in which children were considered to be creative “meaning-makers” and english was “for personal growth” (see, for example, rosen,1984; wells, 1987). although creativity and personal growth are important, the conception of participation at stake here is shaped in significant ways by the more critical and political pedagogy of paolo freire. drawing on principles of agency and voice (freire, 1987; freire & macedo 1987, 1998), it emphasises the learners’ assumption of desire and power – to think independently, dialogically and critically, to weigh up different viewpoints in order to determine their own; and, crucially, to articulate those ideas and feelings, to act and create. aligned also with post-colonialist and post-modern goals of bringing marginalised and subaltern voices out of the shadows, this paper situates participation in south african classrooms within the context of democratic ideals. in this respect it is informed by the idea of “communicative democracy” (enslin, pendlebury & tjiattas, 2001; young, 1997), which extends the strategies for democratic process from reasoned argument to a broader range of communicative practices in order to encourage the multiperspectivity that is a prerequisite of the democratic process. finally, a normative, critical conception of participation in classrooms that informs this paper cannot be separated from dominant constructions of childhood and issues of social justice in relation to children’s rights in south africa. children’s misery under apartheid has been well documented by scholars such as henderson (1999) and jones (1993). these studies suggest that children be conceptualised as significant actors in families, communities, households and schools, and as active participants in culture. in spite of the provisions for children in the south african constitution of 1996 (section 28), much work remains to be done in protecting and caring for south african children, many of whom continue to live in conditions of extreme poverty and ill health. one of the aims of this paper is to draw attention to the texts and meaning-making practices of south african children whose voices are generally unrecognised or marginalised in mainstream classrooms. as stein (2008:42) points out, “giving children equitable opportunities to represent their worlds – their voices, cultures, histories, feelings and opinions – in the modes and languages they choose and feel comfortable with is an educational right: it is part and parcel of how children’s rights to basic education needs to be reconceptualised”. multimodality and multimodal pedagogies drawing on theorisations in the emerging field of multimodal communication, this paper is located within a shift that is taking place in relation to the representation and communication of meaning in learning environments. adopting the terms put forward in the work of hodge and kress (1988), kress (1997, 2000a, 2000b, 2003, 2009), kress & van leeuwen (2001), kress, jewitt, bourne, franks & hardcastle, jones & reid (2005) and jewitt (2008, 2009), the theorisations have been variously termed “social semiotics”, “multimodal social semiotics” or, more simply, “multimodality”. in their application to the domain of literacy education, they have been termed “multiliteracies” (new london group 2000); in the domain of pedagogy, “multimodal pedagogies” (stein 2008). they are motivated by two main issues: i) the “inadequacy” of current theories of meaning and communication to account for the increasingly complex contemporary communicational landscape, both inside and outside classrooms (kress 2000a:153-4); and newfield — multimodality and children’s participation in classrooms: instances of research 29 ii) the role of the body and of the senses in semiosis (the process of meaning-making through signs) which “guarantees the multimodality of our semiotic world” (kress 2000b: 184). the multimodal pedagogies exemplified here are thus a move away from previous monomodal approaches to teaching and learning with their focus on language as the primary mode of learning and assessment, towards the inclusion of more concrete, material, sensory and bodily practices. they are founded upon the idea that meanings are made, disseminated and interpreted through many representational resources or modes, of which language is but one amongst others image, sound, music, gesture, space, colour, facial expression, body posture and movement. the pedagogies consider communication beyond the linguistic, but by no means exclude it. language is frequently orchestrated with other modes in the making of meaning, and modes are materialised through available material like clay, wood, stone, paper, sound, the body, cloth. all modes of communication are accorded equal status and hence equally serious attention. the pedagogies assume that physical, material and social affordances associated with each mode generate a specific “logic” and provide different representational and communicational potentials, for example, writing tends to “name” or “narrate”, images tend to “depict” or “display”, and layout organises information (see kress 2009b: 54-57). the assumption that modes materialise, realise and externalise meaning in different ways, enabling the expression of meanings in some modes which are inexpressible in others, is of particular significance for the question of participation. multimodal theories and pedagogies are not limited to questions of form. they are founded upon principles that foreground the role of human agency in semiosis, the making of meaning through signs. they assume that semiosis is infused with the sign-makers’ interests, purposes, desires, motives, themselves shaped by social, cultural and historical circumstances, whether in divergent, convergent or resistant ways, and place the socially situated human being at the centre of meaning-making, which allows for changes and shifts to be initiated by human processes. if meaning-making is “action”, meaning-makers are “remakers”, “transformers” and “re-shapers” of meaning, who choose “apt” semiotic resources that are “to hand” and redesign these according to their interests, capacities for creativity and invention, audiences and contexts (kress 2009a, 2000a, 2000b, 1997). the socially situated human being is thus placed at the centre of meaning-making, which is a dynamic process, “fixed” through the production of signs and texts (kress, 2009:64, 2003:40). such texts, produced in classrooms as moments of “fixing” in the semiotic chain of learning, form the primary data of the research instances follow. instances of multimodal research in classrooms in this section of the paper, i describe three instances of multimodal classroom research used to focus on particular aspects of multimodal theory and practice. ‘how do i smile in writing?’: the affordances and constraints of modes the affordances and constraints of mode are well illustrated in stein’s (2008) work. “how do i smile in writing?”, a case study discussion of the storytelling practices of a 13-yearold zulu learner (stein, 2008: 44-74) focuses on the way lungile tells the “same” story in different modes multimodal performance, writing and image. lungile was in a grade 7 class engaged in a storytelling project at spruitview primary school, east of johannesburg, in 1994. although she was called “the silent one” by her teachers, she turned out to be a gifted storyteller. stein notes that lungile’s relationship to each mode in which she told the story was not the same; she inhabited each mode differently and used the affordances of each mode in different ways. for example, in the oral story, her body was a key instrument in the multimodal performance: [h]er smile, her use of hips and torso, her specific click sounds, her eye movements – all work together to animate her meanings. as she moves through her performances, she is clearly drawing on a repertoire of representational resources which are deeply familiar to her and which she chooses perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201130 to use. these resources can be loosely characterised within the performance conventions, genres and themes associated with african storytelling ... (stein, 2008: 50). stein (2008:59) points out that her use of these resources derives not only from exposure to oral storytelling practices within her community, but from cultural norms around what it means to be female and to inhabit a “female storyteller” identity: “she has been taught how to please her audience, to use her body as a charm. she pouts, she smiles, she disengages, she seduces”. in shifting to the mode of writing to tell the same story, lungile’s orientation to her body shifted dramatically from face-to-face multimodal interaction with a living, breathing audience to the solitary confrontation with a blank page where the body was still, all energy concentrated in the eyes and hands. stein (2008:61) asks the probing questions, “what does she do with her smile, which is so central to her charming engagement with her audience? how does she smile in writing? what does she do with those special ‘ayi’ click sounds that kept her audience in her power?”. stein (2008) concludes that the shift from performance to writing involves a profound loss, a movement from embodiment to disembodiment. the story is less descriptive, pared down; it simply recounts the main events of the plot. each text has a different “take” on the story. stein (2008) speculates that lungile’s preferred semiotic mode is performance, whereas writing is the preferred and dominant mode for assessment at her school, evaluating whether learners pass or fail. the olifantsvlei dolls: resources, resourcefulness and local semiotic practice the fresh stories project undertaken during 2001 with grade 1 and 2 teachers at olifantsvlei primary school in eikenhof, south of johannesburg, demonstrates the creativity and resourcefulness shown by the children to the material aspect of design, when the teachers’ plan failed. most of the children at the school were from poor families living in informal settlements nearby, some in child-headed households with brothers and sisters and most suffering various forms of neglect and deprivation. the children were multilingual speakers of local and foreign languages in a school that followed a “straight for english” policy from grade 1 onwards in their language and literacy classrooms (stein, 2008:100). the aim of the project was to encourage the foundation level learners to produce language (any language, as opposed to english only) and create stories about their neighbourhood. this would occur in a relatively free classroom environment, with much less direction from teachers than usual. as the first stage in this process, to develop an understanding of the concept of ‘character’ as opposed to ‘person’, learners were asked to think of people they knew who could become characters in a story and to act out, walk and talk like the character. they were then asked to draw the character and write something about it in any language they wished. in the next phase, they were to make puppet-like papier mâché figures of their characters. according to the children, the teachers’ mixture was too soft and their puppet characters turned into porridge. the children responded, “don’t worry, we’ll make our own”. over the next few days, they brought to class a strangely beautiful collection of doll-like figures which they had made at home and which represented characters in the neighbourhood. among these were a matriarch wrapped sumptuously in a bubble-wrap garment with a ‘doek’ (material headdress) around her head; a timid lady in a striped outfit with skinny stick legs; a full breasted woman wrapped tightly in old stockings and a ghostly ‘gogo’ (grandmother) made from filthy, bloodied scraps of cloth gathered in the veld. the children used these figures in dialogues in their home languages, touching and holding them, moving them about and talking to them. later they used them in plays which they improvised in class, in one case producing language and dramatic action for over twenty minutes. finally, they wrote a story about their figures in a language of their choice. stein (2008:102-3) has analysed the doll-like figures as a transformation of semiotic forms with which the children were familiar, fertility doll figures, which have existed in the southern african region for hundreds of years. she demonstrates the structural similarities between the children’s figures and the fertility dolls – a cylindrical or conical shape produced through the use of a filled inner core, which is covered with layers of cloth and beads. in fertility dolls, the inner container is filled with talisman-like newfield — multimodality and children’s participation in classrooms: instances of research 31 powders and seeds; here the containers of the children’s dolls (empty plastic cold drink bottles) were filled with sand and stones. both the traditional dolls and those made by the children are not made in the likeness of children or babies, but of women, unlike typical western dolls. lacking other resources, yet being resourceful, the children fashioned their dolls out of waste found mostly in the nearby veld and rubbish dumps. their limited resources, however, proved to be generative: a discarded plastic bag became a ‘doek’, a nail an arm, a button an eye, and round stones became full breasts: ‘that which cannot be eaten is fashioned into a doll’ (stein, 2008:111). stein (2008) shows how these dolls were the product of transformation of local cultural and semiotic practices around doll figures, and discusses how they demonstrate the relationship between multimodal pedagogies, resources for representation, creativity and literacy learning. when given a chance to create their own dolls at home, the children drew on “apt” resources from their own worlds in order to participate in the class project on “character”, thus creating a valuable home-school synergy. the thebuwa poetry project: semiosis as a multimodal journey the thebuwa project was situated in a grade 10, secondary school ‘english’ classroom at lamula jubilee high school, meadowlands, soweto from march 2002 to december 2005. english was officially a second language in the school, but actually a third, fourth or fifth language for the majority of learners, while isixhosa, isizulu, xitsonga and sepedi were the predominant first languages. most of the 55 learners were disaffected, and a number of them hardly came to school, doubting its value in their lives: “why should we come to school when the educated are unemployed and the criminals are driving around in posh cars?” one of them asked. they had little interest in literature and were reluctant users of english: “we can’t speak english – we’re afraid to say the wrong things”. robert maungedzo, the teacher, felt responsible and began to examine his pedagogic practice which, in his own words, was “teacher-centred”: “the teacher was perceived as an omniscient being who transmitted information and knowledge to the empty vessel or tabula rasa. learners were drilled and indoctrinated because they were conceptualised as passive participants in the learning process ... [they] did not gain anything in terms of their thinking (pers. comm., 2006). he wanted to try something new: “my literature lessons were a bore. learners did not even bother to read their setbooks” (newfield & maungedzo, 2005: x). robert, who had been exposed to multimodality and multiliteracies during his masters degree studies, decided to apply a pedagogy of multiliteracies to the teaching of literature. although poetry had not been taught at the school for seven years, he would introduce it on account of its brevity. poems could be photocopied so that learners would at least be in possession of the text under discussion. robert photocopied two poems from an anthology he found in the school book room, poetry quest (southey, 1987), and gave a copy to each group in the class, asking them to discuss the poems’ meanings. he then asked individuals to ‘respond’ to one of the poems in a non-linguistic mode, such as drawing or sculpture, or by writing a story about its meaning. encouraged by the learners’ positive response to this task, he decided to move away from english poetry to local and indigenous poetry in the vernacular. he asked the learners to research their family or clan praises in order to recite them in class. to do this, most of the learners enlisted the help of their parents, grandparents or other senior members of the community, saying that since they had been born in the townships they did not know their family or clan praise poems. the occasion of the praise poem performance was exciting and affirming: learners felt validated by bringing their own semiotic forms into the classroom which became for the first time a space of cultural and linguistic diversity. the process of “transmodal” meaning-making, as i have called it (newfield, 2009), that is, designing meanings and ideas across different modes and languages, continued and diversified in unpredictable ways. six weeks into the programme, robert, who had been invited by the wits multiliteracies research group to attend an education conference in beijing, asked the class whether they wanted to “send a message” to delegates at the conference. after initial scepticism regarding this trip and ignorance about conferences, the idea of sending a message across the world gripped the imaginations of the learners. after intense discussion and negotiation, they agreed to send a message, a “greeting to the world” from learners in south perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201132 africa. they needed to decide what form the greeting would take and how would they identify themselves as senders of the greeting. in the reconstituted multimodal space of their classroom, they decided to use a map of south africa. each learner brought a piece of cloth of approximately 30-60 centimetres square on which they drew and then embroidered maps of the “new” south africa, showing its reconfiguration from the four provinces of apartheid south africa to the nine regions of liberated, post-1994 south africa. cloth was an apt medium, they said, since it was easily transportable and could be folded up inside a suitcase. they also said that it was a sign of identity, since cloth-making and embroidery were cultural practices in some of their ‘homes’ and communities, especially in the northern province (see becker, 2000: 108 on the embroidered minceka cloths of the tsonga). as in the example of the dolls, those learners who were not able to source pieces of fabric brought old wiping cloths and maize bags, newly washed and pressed, to class. they painstakingly drew their maps on them and completed the embroidery – both boys and girls, with greater or lesser degrees of skill – and then inked their praise poems on the cloths, some them including english translations. their teacher then suggested that they write poems in english to send along with the cloth. motivated to do so by the desire to represent themselves and their lives in yet another form, and by the prospect of having an overseas, international audience, they set themselves to work. a number of learners took to the writing of poetry in english with relative ease, enjoying the playfulness and stylistic freedom of the genre of poetry in comparison with standard prose genres in english classrooms. some of them drew on, but transformed, the genre of praise poems, celebrating ndofaya (meadowlands) and its inhabitants, instead of clans. phillipine paid warm tribute to his mother as an individual who had risen above adverse circumstances: “she is a queen in rags/ a sea without water/ an angel without wings/ a princess without a pony/ she is the queen/ powerful like a scream/ one in a million/ just like my favourite ice cream” (newfield & maungedzo, 2005: 12). thando wrote an edgily sardonic tribute to soweto, quite different in tone and style from the township poems of the 70s and 80s which focused on the suffering of the people. soweto was a place for “young freaks” for thando in 2002 (newfield & maungedzo 2005:3), not without hunger and crime, but also bursting with vital energy and fun, a place where you have to live by your wits. the poem moves seamlessly across english, sepedi, isizulu and street language, identifying thando as a young urban “metrolingual” (otsuji & pennycook, 2009). nokwanda, an accomplished seamstress, took the individual cloths home and stitched them together, making a cloth composed of 22 panels measuring three 3 by 2.8 metres. the poems were placed in envelopes and pinned onto the cloth. colour photographs of class members, taken expressly for the purpose, were attached. the cloth was named thebuwa, (which means “to speak” and was coined from three of the languages in the class, isixhosa, xitsonga and sepedi). it was sent with robert to beijing. on robert’s return, in addition to their continued writing of poetry, they shifted it to another mode, that of performance or “spoken word” (eleveld, 2003) with its emphasis on the body, the “grain of the voice” (barthes, 1992) and direct audience contact. space prevents further discussion of their varied, creative, and ongoing engagement with poetry over the next two years, save to note that it culminated in the publication of an anthology of their work, thebuwa: poems from ndofaya (newfield & maungedzo, 2005). over the next few years, several poems were republished in school textbooks and the anthology still forms part of several university courses. many learners felt that this programme was the highlight of their english studies, or, even of their schooling. in her questionnaire, precious commented, “this is the happiest thing i’ve done in english”, and sonnyboy said, “i was fortified in knowledge and understanding ... i discovered my talents and gifts”. for their teacher, it was a journey of personal transformation: “i began at the station of reluctance, travelled to the station of uncertainty, and then arrived at the station of agency” (pers. comm., 2003). what i wish to stress through this instance of multimodal classroom practice is the way a multimodal approach generated an ongoing process of semiosis in relation to poetry and identity, which lasted from grade 10 to grade 12. in the course of this multimodal and multi-sensorial journey, the learners designed and redesigned their multi-layered identities in conscious ways, exploiting the affordances of different modes and materials maps and a cloth display their national identities, praise poems in the vernacular to newfield — multimodality and children’s participation in classrooms: instances of research 33 name their family and clan identities, and english poems to describe and critically explore their identities as contemporary, urban, township dwellers. performing the poems involved a host of semiotic functions and gave them a live and present audience who applauded and jeered as they saw fit, and then discussed the poem’s theme or argument. regarding their school curriculum, broadening the base of representation and communication in the classroom returned them to english, the class subject and language of learning, which learners came to see as a resource rather than a barrier. conclusion the three instances demonstrate that multimodality was linked to improved cognitive, social and affective engagement in the learning activities of the three language and literacy classrooms. the question arises as to how and why this occurred. the instances show that multimodality opened up the semiotic space of the classroom. a number of semiotic modes were used for representation and communication, moving beyond language to include visual, three-dimensional, sonic, vocal and bodily forms. this released existing inhibitions and resistance towards the use of english, unblocked the semiotic arteries, and allowed semiosis to flow. in all three cases – storytelling, the development of “characters” and the analysis and composition of poetry semiotic performance increased in quantity and quality. an adaptable and flexible disposition towards meaningmaking, that included language as a central form, developed. the learners were constituted as sign-makers. they were no longer solely copiers and recipients, but designers people capable of making their own signs to represent and communicate meaning. designing was seen as a significant activity in the process of their learning and could utilise local or out-of-school semiotic resources, epistemologies and histories and integrate these with curricular material. this gave learners confidence, a sense of dignity and motivation, and encouraged them to take agency in relation to their learning. the representational and communicational skills of sign-makers were developed. they selected “apt” modes and material that were “to hand”, orchestrating them and shaping them to express their “interests” (kress 2003, 2000a, 2000b). using a shifting set of semiotic tools, they explored the “affordances” and “logics” (kress 2003) of different modes and materials. the oral performance of a story or poem had a different effect and purpose from a written one, and hence was seen to be more or less appropriate in different communicational contexts. since mode shapes meaning in different ways, multimodality led to the production of different meanings. this led to more complex understandings of the classroom topics. it also produced multiperspectivity different and differently positioned perspectives on a topic which were seen in relation to one another. this helped to foster a democratic process in the classrooms. multimodality encouraged both individual and collective making of signs and meanings, for individual and group audiences and readers, improving interaction and dialogue, as well as class spirit and solidarity. in summing up the effect of a multimodal pedagogic approach in these classrooms, i am not claiming that multimodality was the sole factor that influenced increased participation. the attitudes, skills and understanding of the teachers were, undeniably, important factors as well. i am not suggesting either that multimodality can be a panacea for all existing ills. furthermore, multimodality brings additional challenges to teachers: they need to be good readers in a wide repertoire of learner signs to recognise their meanings and provenance; to be facilitators of effective semiotic design; and to consider the question of multimodal assessment. a further and critical challenge is how to extend learners’ participation in classrooms into other domains of their lives. i remain troubled that only a handful of the talented thebuwa poets went into higher education after matriculating, but that is the subject of another paper. what i am claiming is that a multimodal approach to representation and communication played a role in turning the three classrooms into more participatory, agentive spaces. the expressive voices and bodies of the learners, and the ever-shifting variety of texts and artefacts, each one “fixing” meaning in its own unique way, and together forming textured and complex chains of semiosis, brought the classrooms to semiotic life. each one is a sign of vivid participation. perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201134 acknowledgements the paper draws on data used in stein, 2008; stein and newfield, 2003; newfield and maungedzo, 2006; and newfield, 2009 in the field of literacy and literature education, used here for the first time in the field of children’s rights. it pays special tribute to the inspiring work of the late pippa stein who fought for children’s participation and whose legacy lives on. it also celebrates the teachers and learners who reimagined ways of working and being in classrooms, creating powerful signs. references barthes r 1991. the grain of the voice. in r barthes, the responsibility of forms: critical essays on music, art, and representation, translated by r howard. berkeley and los angeles: university of california press. becker r 2000. a 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2009. the routledge handbook of multimodal analysis. london and new york: routledge. jones s 1993. assaulting childhood: children’s experiences of migrancy and hostel life in south africa. johannesburg: witwatersrand university press. kress g 1997. before writing: rethinking the paths to literacy. london and new york: routledge. kress g 2000a. design and transformation: new theories of meaning. in b cope and m kalantzis (eds), multiliteracies and the design of social futures. london and new york: routledge. kress g 2000b. multimodality. in b cope and m kalantzis (eds), multiliteracies and the design of social futures. london and new york: routledge. kress g 2003. literacy in the new media age. london and new york: routledge. kress g 2009a. multimodality: a social semiotic approach to communication. london and new york: routledgefalmer. kress g 2009b. what is a mode? in c jewitt (ed), the routledge handbook of multimodal analysis. london and new york: routledge. kress g & van leeuwen 2001. multimodal discourse: the modes and media of contemporary communication. london and new york: arnold. kress g, jewitt c, bourne j, franks a, hardcastle j, jones k & reid e 2005. english in urban classrooms: a multimodal perspective on teaching and learning. london: routledgefalmer. newfield d 2009. transmodal semiosis in classrooms: case studies from south africa. phd thesis. institute of education, university of london. newfield d & maungedzo r 2005. thebuwa: poems from ndofaya. johannesburg: denise newfield publishers. newfield d & maungedzo r 2006. mobilising and modalising poetry in a soweto classroom. english studies in africa, 49(1):71-93. newfield — multimodality and children’s participation in classrooms: instances of research 35 new london group 2000. a pedagogy of multiliteracies: designing social futures. in b cope & m kalantzis (eds), multiliteracies: literacy learning and the design of social futures. london and new york: routledge. otsuji e & pennycook a 2009. metrolingualism: fixity, fluidity and language in flux. international journal of multilingualism, 24 december 2009 (ifirst). retrieved on 3 january 2010from http:// dx.doi.org/10.1080/14790710903414331 rosen h 1984. stories and meanings. sheffield: national association for the teaching of english. southey p 1987. poetry quest. sandton: hodder and stoughton educational. stein p 2008. multimodal pedagogies in diverse classrooms:representation, rights and resources. london and new york: routledge. wells g 1987. the meaning makers: children learning language and using language to learn. london: hodder and stoughton. young i 1997. difference as a resource for democratic communication. in j bohman and w rehg (eds), democracy: essays on reason and politics. cambridge, ma: mit press. 143 teachers’ perceptions of how they develop self-regulated learning abstract the aim of this paper is to present a case study of the perceptions of self-regulated learning (srl) of 14 secondary township schoolteachers and their teaching behaviour to develop srl strategies in their learners. a qualitative, exploratory, descriptive research design was used. semi-structured interviews and lesson observations were conducted with 14 purposively selected secondary school teachers. specifically, this study explores how participants use teaching strategies to promote various srl strategies such as goal-setting and planning, time management, peer learning, and self-evaluation. findings indicate that participants’ teaching behaviour differ in terms of opportunities to encourage learners to become conscious of their learning processes as they use srl strategies in different subjects across grades 8-12 in the two township schools. discrepancies have been noted between some lesson observations and teachers’ perceptions of how they integrate strategies to develop srl. the findings underline the importance of developing teachers’ knowledge and the use of srl teaching strategies to foster srl learning and, hence, academic success. keywords: perceptions, self-regulated learning, township schools 1. introduction and problem statement self-regulated learning (srl) has become a major worldwide educational goal in efforts to prepare learners for the skills and knowledge they need to function in the 21 st century (unesco-ibe.2013). educational researchers, across the globe, has reported on the importance of developing learners’ abilities to self-regulate their thoughts, motivations, cognition and behaviours to prepare them to deal with the ever-changing expansion of knowledge, skills, challenges and complex demands they will experience throughout their lives (zimmerman, 2002, perry, phillips, & dowler, 2004; moos & ringdal, 2012). in literature, many empirical studies report on how srl development enhances academic achievement of learners zimmerman, 2002; pintrich, 2002; moos & ringdal, 2012). since one’s self-regulation ability is teachable, researchers also emphasise the need for clear policies on srl in education, whole school approaches to integrate srl into a curricula, teacher training and professional development of teachers to create awareness bernadette geduld north west university. email: bernadette.geduld@nwu.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i1.11 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(1): 143-156 © uv/ufs mailto:bernadette.geduld@nwu.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.11 144 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) amongst them of their roles in the development of srl (salter, 2012; rajabi, 2012; vandevelde,vandenbussche, van keer 2012). srl research in various countries, for example in, hong kong, canada, united states of america, australia, iran and austria emphasise that teachers should transform traditional teaching pedagogies to better support the development of srl (cheng, 2011; perry, phillips, & dowler, 2004; zimmerman, 2002; salter (2012), rajabi, (2012); klug, lüftenegger, bergsmann, spiel, & schober et al., 2016). in many countries such as hongkong and portugal, the development of srl is an objective of educational reform (cheng, 2011; ferreira & simão, 2012). however, klug et al. (2016) who explored classroom structures and teachers’ awareness of motivation and srl in 36 schools in austria, report that the education contexts of many countries are poorly prepared and ineffective when it comes to the development of lifelong learning practices that include the development of srl. in the same vein, salter (2012) states that in australia there is no consistent school-wide approach to the development of srl, but rather a “piecemeal approach”. although teachers play a crucial role in promoting srl (jayawardena, van kraayenoord & carroll, 2017), there are many factors that hamper their development of srl skills in learners. vandevelde et al. (2012) state in their study with seventeen flemish schools in belguim, that the teachers reported a lack of time, work pressure and diversity among learners as prevalent barriers to the implementation of srl. therefore this study focused more on teachers’ perceptions of srl and their teaching behaviour to develop srl, which in turn, according to literature, affects individual academic success and national pass rates. although many learners appear to have many learning skills in place when they arrive in secondary school, they seldom receive instruction in methods of study or srl skills (zimmerman, 2002). in the absence of assistance, guidance or exposure, many learners never acquire these srl skills and learners who are less self-regulated may experience problems with academic success. de zoysa, chandrakumara and rudkin (2014) and dzulkifli and alias (2012) noted that teachers’ unawareness of srl or lack of pedagogical knowledge of srl might prevent them from developing srl in learners. in a study, jayawardena et al. (2017) found that few teachers prepare learners to learn on their own, and a lack knowledge of how much and what types of support they should provide to enhance learners’ srl capacities. askell-williams, lawson, and skrzypiec (2012), for example, reported that there is a dearth of strong knowledge on how learners learn direct ways to foster srl, as well as how to create a conducive learning environment that nurtures srl among beginner teachers. this lack of knowledge stems from several sources, such as teacher education programmes that typically emphasise content-area knowledge and mastery of pedagogical methods, and focus less on principles of learning, development, and motivation. in many cases, teachers support learner-centred teaching and the development of srl, while others still prefer to practise a transmission teaching approach that results in rote memorisation and learning without understanding (peeters et al., 2014). the researcher supports the notion that if schools and teachers subscribe to the development of srl skills, the academic success of many struggling learners, as well as the national pass rates will improve. understanding teachers’ own perceptions about srl and 145 geduld teachers’ perceptions of how they develop self-regulated learning ways they develop srl or not, will enable one to identify personal and contextual advantages and constraints in the development of srl. the development of srl has been widely researched, but only a few studies involved secondary rural and township schools (jayawardena et al., 2017). the research reported in this article explored township schoolteachers’ perceptions of srl, its value for academic success, as well as the extent to which their teaching behaviour develops srl in their learners. understanding the factors that impact on teachers’ dispositions and aptitudes to develop srl, as well as their actual teaching behaviour, is valuable from a theoretical, as well as a practical perspective across the globe. this study further contributes positively to the understanding of schools that are underperforming as why the pass rate is so low. the research revolved around the following research questions: (1) what are teachers’ perceptions of the concept srl and its value for academic success? (2) how do teachers develop srl strategies in learners? the purpose of this article is to report on the findings of this research. to reach this aim, the remainder of the article is structured as follows: the next section contains the conceptual and theoretical framework in which the subsequent empirical investigation was located; that is followed by a report on the empirical investigation itself and a discussion of the findings. 2. theoretical and conceptual framework this research on teachers’ perceptions and teaching behaviour to develop srl was positioned in zimmerman’s (2000) social cognitive model of self-regulated learning. zimmerman (2000) defined srl as self-generated thoughts, feelings, and actions that are planned and cyclically adapted to the attainment of personal goals. this definition also refers to learners’ conscious regulation of their cognitive strategies, metacognition, motivation and environment (pintrich, 2002). zimmerman’s (2000) three phase, cyclical model of srl represents processes and sub processes that self-regulated learners demonstrate to achieve academic goals. the first phase is the forethought phase, which refers to influential motivational beliefs and processes such as planning and goal setting that lead efforts to learn and set the stage for learning. the two closely linked categories of forethought is task analysis and self-motivational beliefs. task analysis is influenced by a learner’s motivational beliefs. for example, analysing a task, planning time and strategies and setting goals to attain objectives are influenced by a learner’s motivational beliefs such as his or self-efficacy, intrinsic interest in the task interest, goal orientation and outcome expectations (zimmerman, 2002). the second phase, the performance or volitional phase involves processes and sub processes that occur during learning efforts and influence concentration and performance to attain goals. zimmerman (2000) distinguishes two categories of performance processes: selfcontrol and self-observation. in this phase, self-regulated learners apply different task strategies, focus concentration, use imagery and seek help from others. they constantly observe their progress and use different self-control strategies to complete tasks (zimmerman, 2002). the self-reflection phase involves processes that occur after learning efforts and influence learner’s reactions to their performances. in this phase, self-regulated learners evaluate their performance and make causal attributions about their performance. these positive or negative attributions generate self-satisfaction or adaptive and defensive behaviours that influence 146 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) how the learners approach similar and different tasks in future. zimmerman’s (2000) model is cyclical because learner’s positive or negative experiences, in turn, influence forethought and volitional processes in subsequent learning efforts, thus completing the self-regulatory cycle. all the processes that occur in the three phases are teachable (zimmerman, 2002). dignath-van ewijk and van der werf (2012) argue that, therefore, srl could only be developed in a conducive, constructivist-learning environment with teachers that allow active construction of knowledge and who provide learners with learning strategies to develop srl. srl and social constructivist learning complement each other. similar to srl, constructivists view learning as an active process where learners are the responsible agents in the knowledge acquisition process (loyens & gijbles, 2008). proponents of srl and constructivism both advocate that teachers should model or teach learners explicitly how to plan, to set goals, to reflect and to self-evaluate their progress. srl is developed in constructivist classrooms, for instance, when teachers recognise learners’ effort and individual progress, create awareness of the personal relevance and meaningfulness of the content, and help learners to see mistakes as opportunities for learning. teachers should furthermore provide opportunities for some choice and control over activities and motivate individual progress. learners should be taught not to learn socially isolated, but to seek help from others, to take initiative to share ideas, to persevere, and to adapt study methods (schunk, pintrich, & meece, 2014). besides creating social constructivist classrooms, teachers should also be skilful models of srl to facilitate organised and interdependent interaction between them and their learners if teachers do not model, guide, scaffold and allow opportunities for independent practice, learners are less likely to incorporate the srl strategy into their academic routines (lee, mcinerney, & liem, 2010). literature shows a variety of teaching strategies teachers can use to develop srl. examples are direct instruction and modelling, guided and independent practice, social support, feedback, and scaffolding. the creation of an open environment is emphasised where learners are motivated to participate in tasks, assessment, goal setting, planning, use of different learning strategies, and help seeking peers and teachers to enhance their srl (kramarski & michalsky, 2009). according to kramarski and michalsky (2009), teachers’ perceptions of teaching and learning lie on a continuum from teacher-centred activity to learner-centred activity. these perceptions are formed from their knowledge and beliefs about how to teach and how to learn. therefore, teachers’ knowledge and beliefs about srl predict their teaching behaviours to develop srl or not (dignath-van ewijk & van der werf, 2012). the next section contains a report on the empirical investigation that was done. 3. empirical investigation this qualitative case study, located within an interpretivist philosophical orientation, was intended to provide food for thought about the uniqueness and challenges of township schoolteachers’ perceptions and practices to develop srl strategies when teaching the national curriculum. with this purpose, it followed maree’s (2014) guidelines for conducting a case study and provided a description of participants’ perceptions and actions while teaching. this study furthermore offers an interpretative and evaluative analysis of the findings based on the semi-structured interviews with teachers and classroom observations of srl strategies, 147 geduld teachers’ perceptions of how they develop self-regulated learning as the participants were using them. the researcher did not plan to generalise the results of this study to other domains or population, considering its design. however, although this case study is subjective in nature, it is objective in its particular teaching context, namely township schools, and the research area of srl. 4. context and participants in the 2016 national senior certificate (nsc), the eastern cape province remained the worst performing of the nine provinces, with a 56.8% pass rate. high failure rates are attributed to the effect of grade 11 learners who have been progressed to grade 12 (mail and guardian, 5 january 2016), poor teaching, lack of resources and support for rural and township schools which cause major setbacks for self-regulated learning and academic achievement (hoadley & jansen 2013). consequences of failure result in negative academic self-concepts, relatively low levels of drive and an accumulated scholastic backlog in poverty-stricken communities (mampane, 2014). the 14 teachers who voluntarily participated in this study were purposively selected. they are qualified staff members of two quintile two township schools located in the eastern cape. they teach different subjects across grade 8 to grade 12. quintile two schools are representative of communities with high poverty and unemployment rates and low levels of education. the academic backgrounds of 11 teachers consist of four-year bachelor’s degrees in education, two teachers have honours degrees in education and one participant holds a master’s degree in education. all the participants have didactic and pedagogical training in education and undergo continuous professional development and training for curriculum implementation when it is offered by the school district in the region. except for one participant, all the participants teach the subjects in which they have specialised. the afrikaans, isixhosa and english additional language speaking learners from both schools are mostly from socio-economically middle and lower class families. most grade 8 and 9 classes are overcrowded, with 40 to 56 learners. grades, 10, 11 and 12 classes have fewer learners, approximately 30 to 35, depending on the subject. mathematics and science classes have approximately 15 to 20 learners. 5. data collection data were collected via observations and semi-structured interviews. a self-regulated learning observation schedule, based on zimmerman’s (2000) model for srl, was developed to explore the direct or indirect teaching of srl skills that could develop learners’ srl. participants were observed in their natural settings, namely teaching lessons of 45 minutes. the researcher decided on an a priori process of srl strategy based on zimmerman’s (2000) model and social constructivist teaching to observe (for example task analysis, planning, goalsetting, learning strategies, cooperative learning, self-evaluation, checking progress, motivation, persistence following failure, and interactions with learners). on the observation schedule participants’ teaching behaviour facilitating srl was recorded as never observable, rarely observable, often observable, or mainly observable. the presence or absence of pre-coded srl strategies in the teaching was supplemented by field notes of the teaching and learning environment, social interaction patterns among learners and the participants and learners. srl was observed as an event (winne & perry, 2000), meaning that a participant developing srl strategies and behaviour was ticked off in the 148 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) observation schedule when it occurred. this observation method resulted in a rich database of verbal and non-verbal behaviour in relation to participants’ teaching to develop srl. semi-structured interviews seemed relevant to explore participants’ perceptions regarding (1) their understanding of srl and (2) their teaching behaviour that promoted srl. the interviews took place after school hours to prevent disturbances in participants’ teaching duties. the broad questions in the semi-structured interviews were: what do you understand under the concept srl? why do you think srl is important, or not, for academic achievement? can you explain why you think teachers have a role to play, or not, in the development of srl? how do you teach to develop srl? reliability was assured by using the data collection methods consistent with the theoretical framework of srl and the research questions. a systematic approach to data collection was also used. all interviews and observations were conducted in similar procedures. the researcher avoided influencing the behaviour of the participants by conducting the interviews after the lesson observations and by sitting at the back of the classrooms. 6. procedure permission was obtained from the eastern cape department of education, the school principals and their school governing bodies. the ethics committee of the north-west university also approved the study, and written consent was obtained from the participants. privacy, integrity, professional dignity, as well as trustworthiness of the information, the anonymity of the participants, and their rights to withdraw from the investigation without any consequences were all ensured. the researcher visited the classrooms of all the participants before the data collection began in order to familiarise learners with her presence and to explain to them the reason for her presence in their classes. possible uncomforted feelings and anxiety was reduced by reminding participants of the aim of this study and assuring them that the aim was not to inspect, evaluate or judge them as persons, but to observe their teaching behaviour. the researcher employed a participant observer role throughout the observations and did not participate in lessons. 7. data analysis the researcher studied the data looking for explicit evidence, relevant responses and qualified data about participants’ perceptions of srl and ways they developed srl with their teaching. the researcher also compared and contrasted data, moving backwards and forwards between notes of participants’ lesson observation and the transcribed interviews. the next section contains a summary of participants’ perceptions of the concept srl and its value for academic success. thereafter follow the observations of srl skills developed in the lessons. 8. participants’ perceptions of srl and its value for academic achievement based on the interviews it can be concluded that participants’ knowledge of the concept srl and their perceptions of their roles to develop srl influence their teaching behaviour to develop srl (dignath-van ewijk & van der werf, 2012). 149 geduld teachers’ perceptions of how they develop self-regulated learning ten participants (p1, p2, p4, p5, p6, p7, p 8, p9, p11, p14) indicated that they understand the concept well, and knew it by other names, such as strategic learning, independent learning, or lifelong learning. their perceptions indicate that they see a teacher as a model of srl and a facilitator and guide to develop srl. they could identify characteristics of self-regulated learners, and mentioned the equally important roles of teachers in the development of srl and agreed with the value of srl to achieve academically. this is the perception of p 7: to me it is a question of learners being the initiators of learning, where you do not spoonfeed them. they take responsibility for their learning and i guide them. it helps when learners can work on their own, see their mistakes, start afresh, seek help and do things without a teacher. these characteristics are needed in our overcrowded classrooms and the teaching situation at our schools today. however, four other participants’ (p 3, p10, p12, p13) perceptions mirrored limited, onedimensional understandings of srl and contestations about their roles to develop srl. this was noted in the way in which they emphasised learners’ roles in the development of srl practises. participant 12 encapsulated the views of three others said: “yes self-regulated learning is important, but i do not have time to teach them how to learn. i must teach subject knowledge. they must figure out on their own how, when and where to learn”. this is the perception of p 10: “it is important, but how should we do it? currently it is not something we emphasise in our teaching and learning. i have noticed at workshops it is not a term that is used, but it is required in the curriculum. at workshops the focus is on the content in the syllabus. it is never about how our learners learn and how we should help them. for the past fifteen years i have never heard someone talking about how learners learn maths and science”. as indicated by de zoysa et al. (2014); salter (2012) vandevelde et al. (2012) and dzulkifli and alias (2012), these perceptions that some of the participants hold, could be the result of various influences. these include a lack of time, work pressure, traditional transmission perspective that is still dominant in some schools. additionally it also includes a lack of exposure to the development of srl during teacher education sessions and workshops, national curriculum policy statements that do not clearly emphasise the teacher’s role in the development of srl and teachers’ resistance to change and to adopt new social constructivist, methodological teaching approaches. the limited understanding of srl among these four teachers might explain why lower demonstrations of srl were observed in their lessons. when asked how they teach to develop srl, it was notable that many participants struggled to give explanations and examples. jayawardena et al. (2017), who noted teachers’ lack of knowledge to develop learners’ srl capacities, support this finding. all 14 participants mentioned their subject knowledge, being well prepared and fostering motivation in learners as vehicles to develop srl. other strategies mentioned, were creation of constructivist learning environments, regular testing, independent homework, self-assessment, and revision of previous question papers. only five participants mentioned planning, goalsetting, task analysis, different learning strategies, and cooperative learning as strategies to develop srl. one participant teaching mathematics and science, who notably has a positive perception of srl and its value for academic achievement, was adamant that he is against group work in his subjects. this is what he, p10, had to say: 150 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) our classes are overcrowded and we have too many elsen learners in each class. when it comes to group work it is obvious that only the good learners work together and the weak ones just copy. i believe in independent accountability when it comes to learning. in conclusion, it seems the majority of participants has knowledge about srl and holds positive beliefs about their roles in the development of srl. 9. class observations of srl development based on the observations, participants’ teaching for the development of srl was classified in two categories: lower and higher demonstration of srl development. the processes and sub processes in zimmerman’s (2000) srl model as well as characteristics of teaching in social constructivist classes were used in the observation schedule. the participants, who never or rarely demonstrated the use or development of srl strategies, were categorised as the group of lower demonstration and those who often and mainly demonstrated the use or development of srl strategies were categorised as the higher group of demonstration of srl. the observations from the two groups will be discussed next. 10. lower demonstration of srl development seven participants teaching grade 8, 9 and one grade 12 class, teaching behaviour demonstrated low development of srl. all the classes except for the grade 12 class were overcrowded, with approximately 50 learners. the dearth of subject posters, instructional aids and displays of learners’ work were noticeable in these classes. the following similarities in the seven participants’ teaching behaviour were noted. they all used the transmission approach and relied on textbooks, notwithstanding the fact that three to four learners were sharing textbooks. this finding is supported by the observations of (peeters et al., 2014). in none of their lessons, the objective of the lesson was explained to learners. in one economic management (p7) lesson learners were sitting passively and were not encouraged to participate. the whole lesson was used to revise concepts, such as liability, profit, assets, etc., learners had been taught the previous week. in a life orientation lesson (p5) about development of the self and sexuality, grade 8 learners were told to underline in their books, while the participant was reading definitions from the book. in a social science lesson (p6) the participant spoke isixhosa in between his lesson to help learners understand concepts such as meridian, solstice, equator, etc. the participant later asked learners to draw a diagram to show the tilt of the axis of the earth and the position of the overhead moon on june 21. although the participant knew the learners were lost, he did not intervene and told them to go through the work at home. in two other classes (p1 and p8) most of the teaching time was used to control homework and to sign books while the rest of the class were doing an activity from the textbook. it seemed these types of activities were chosen to keep learners busy and to help participants to maintain order and discipline in the overcrowded classrooms. it seemed that some participants believed that when they were talking and as long as learners were writing, they were learning. participant 1 said after her lesson, “i am not trained to teach afrikaans. i am just helping out until they find a teacher hopefully next year.” participant 11 gave a history lesson on nazi germany and the first world war. when learners could not answer the questions, it became their homework, for example: “go find out where germany is, find out what a colony is and find out what a recession is.” later in the 151 geduld teachers’ perceptions of how they develop self-regulated learning lesson the participant tried to relate problems caused by wars to real life in south africa, such as price hikes in products. only four learners could relate and responded. they were praised, while the rest of the learners were sitting passively throughout the lesson. the participant did not intervene when learners were uncertain which countries were involved and started the war. although the participant tried to be enthusiastic and seemed to have good subject knowledge, he did not succeed in keeping the learners’ attention. many questions were asked to activate the learners’ prior knowledge, but it was not directed to any specific learner (p10). in the lesson of p8, the learners’ prior knowledge was tested and the aim of the lesson was explained to learners. the participant asked many interrogative questions (why, when, what) in an effort to develop learners to reflect and to think critically, but only the same few learners answered. for the rest of the period learners did activities from the black board and homework was given. in general, very little and, in some cases, no direct or indirect development of srl skills was observed in the lessons of the seven participants in this group. the teaching behaviour of four participants (p10, p11, p6 and p7) reflected their limited understandings of srl and their perceptions of their roles to develop srl. their teaching behaviour showed they perceived a teacher’s role in srl to be that of a subject specialist, who transmits knowledge and that learners should become automatically self-regulated or the responsibility for themselves to develop srl. in this group, discrepancies were also noted between four other participants’ interviews and observation data. these participants (p8, p6, p7 and p5) attested to the value of srl for academic achievement and perceived their teaching behaviour as one promoting srl. however, the observations of their lessons proved otherwise. similarly, to the other three participants in this group, they were still doing “talk-and-chalk” teaching. 11. higher demonstration of srl development in seven participants’ teaching behaviour, higher demonstration of srl skills was often and mainly observed. the tidy physical environment and posters in these classes create an expectation for learning. the participants made efforts to develop goalsetting, planning and task analysis in their teaching. direct instruction was used to model different learning strategies. they used questioning to check prior knowledge, to intervene when learners did not understand new content or steps, and to teach learners to monitor their understanding. no planned cooperative learning was observed; however, five participants allowed learners to question, to discuss, and to work with peers of their choice, which gives learners some freedom of decision-making and allows them to take responsibility for their learning. the participants also gave homework for independent practice and made learners aware of time management. the fostering of persistence, self-efficacy, and motivation to learn was also observed in their teaching. next, a brief description of the observations of few participants will be given to illustrate their efforts to develop srl. participant 13 gave a lesson on ratios, exchange rate and proportions, from module 2 in mathematics for grade 12. the participant started his lesson with direct teaching, using a calculator displayed on an overhead data projector. he directly modelled how to use alternative strategies to get to the same answers. he revised steps, (for example, how to convert kilometre to metre and ways of making the units the same), gave verbal feedback when learners were confused, and focused on developing cognitive skills to solve the mathematical problems. 152 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) the participant developed self-evaluation, reflection, and monitoring of understanding by giving learners two examples to compare on their own. a few learners were then asked to explain their understanding and reasoning of each example to the class. he kept learners motivated by relating the relevance of the content to their everyday lives and triggering their prior knowledge with practical examples. he used examples of relations between business partners and the sharing of profit in the television series, muvango, which most learners watched. learners’ self-efficacy was strengthened when the participant constantly assured them they would be able to do the work if they just listened and practised (“you can do this. only use your calculator to test whether your own answer is correct”). he monitored learners’ understanding by asking questions, such as: “what do you expect the answer to be if i press this button?” learners were given activities on worksheets to complete in class and after school. learners had a choice to work alone or in a group. hereby the participant taught learners to take responsibility for their own learning by deciding on with whom and where to learn. like all other participants who showed higher demonstration of srl, participant 6 stated the objectives of his business management lessons and what learners are expected to learn right at the beginning of the lesson. research shows when the learning objectives are clear, learner motivation improves, learners stay on-task, their behaviour improves, they are more inclined to engage in self-regulation, and they are also able to make better decisions about how to go about the task (mctighe & o’connor, 2005). although the participant used direct teaching, learners were not mentally passive. he related business management to the real world. he started the lesson on government by asking questions about the opening speech of president jacob zuma, which had been broadcasted the previous night on television. it can be concluded that this participant developed srl by triggering his learners’ personal desire to learn, which will motivate them to persist when they are faced with challenges in their learning. in line with research on the development of srl and constructivist teaching, he let learners know why the subject, business management, is relevant to their everyday lives (schunk et al., 2014). questions were rephrased and verbal feedback was used to help learners to process new information. learners were told how they should take responsibility for their learning, how to manage time to do homework, to form study groups, to read newspapers, and to watch the news on television. the participant used humour to keep learners interested, and asked many higher order questions. learners were given enough time to think about questions before they answered, which promotes reflection and monitoring of their understanding. he furthermore modelled cognitive learning strategies in the way he organised the content on the writing board and other charts he had prepared. during his lesson, he showed learners how important concepts were highlighted in different colours or underlined. learners were explained how to take notes and to form acronyms. he gave examples of how different questions could be asked from the same content. participant 10, a grade 10 physical science teacher, taught srl skills directly and indirectly in his lesson on symbols. he gave step-by-step explanations of the formulae and on why and when to combine positive and negative integers. learners were taught to use self-questioning to improve their understanding. the participant gave examples and answers of homework on the writing board. this offered the opportunity for learners to see and hear the teacher’s thinking and to monitor their own understanding. explanations and examples 153 geduld teachers’ perceptions of how they develop self-regulated learning of how the same question could be asked differently in examinations were given. learners were instructed to use some of their break time to compare their answers again and to further assess their understanding. when learners answered wrong or did not understand, the participant referred them to work previously done and to their notes to figure out why they had the answers incorrect. this prompted learners to activate prior knowledge, to revise, and to take responsibility for their own learning. the participant facilitated reflection and selfinstruction by asking learners to explain their answers and own thinking to the learner next to him or her (zimmerman, 2002). from the learners eagerness to participate, their attentive listening and willingness to explain their answers and own reasoning, their motivation and self-efficacy were evident. when observing participant 14 in a grade 12 mathematics lesson, it was remarkable how many strategies for the development of srl, proposed by zimmerman (2000) she applied. participant 14 allowed time for learners to discuss, to reflect upon, and practise strategies. the participant explained and modelled the different steps to calculate compounded interest while learners had to work with her on their own calculators. when learners gave wrong answers, she required them to reflect and to give reasons why their answers were wrong. the participant made learners aware of the importance of focused attention to promote their learning. she constantly asked questions to model how learners should use self-questioning and self-talk to monitor their own understanding and progress. throughout the lesson learners worked cooperatively in heterogeneous pairs on the writing board, while the rest of the class seated themselves in pairs or smaller groups. they were allowed to change their groups during the lesson if they struggled to understand and no one in the group could assist them. a few struggling learners changed their pairs, when neither of them could not figure out the challenging part in a calculation, and moved to another group. this teaching strategy developed learners to take ownership of their learning and progress. it additionally taught them to make use of human resources to find more information. in the lesson each pair gave explanations and had to answer questions from other pairs, for example, why interest is different when calculated on a monthly basis. learners were mentally active and their concentration and motivation to learn were evident. the participant walked around in class, frequently interacting with all the groups. she kept them on their toes because they never knew which group would be asked to explain a sum. learners were challenged with more difficult work for individual practice at home. the participant reinforced learners with praise and motivated them to persist. the participant also made learners aware of time management when they did their calculations in class, as well as approximately how much time should be spent on specific calculations in the national grade 12 examinations. this teaching behaviour can be viewed as a democratic and interactive process that encourages learners to be active and autonomous learners. in a grade 10 mathematics class, participant 9 directly taught different strategies to calculate simple interest. higher order questions were asked and frequent explanations were given. the participant code switched from english to isixhosa when she noticed learners struggled to understand. she also used individual questioning to monitor learners’ understanding. the enthusiastic nature of the teacher and constant praising for interaction motivated learners. new content was related to work already done. learners were asked to do calculations on the board and explain them to the rest of the class. learners’ self-efficacy and motivation to learn could be observed by the ease with which they answered and explained to others. the learners worked in small groups that they had formed on their own. 154 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) in a grade 9 mathematics lesson, participant 4 modelled the steps on the board and used different practical examples from their daily lives and explanations to teach learners how to calculate interest. learners were shown different ways to use their calculators to calculate interest. the participant provided appropriate amounts of scaffolding while learners were practising. learners were taught to go back if they made mistakes, to cross out wrong answers and to write the correct answers above the crossed-out ones. verbal feedback was given and it was evident that the participant monitored individual learners’ understanding. questions were directed to individual learners, for example: ”peter, explain to us why do you divide by two years? rose, how would you convince someone to rather save and buy furniture cash?” 12. conclusion the aim of this study was to explore teachers’ perceptions of the concept “self-regulated learning” and its value for academic success, and to determine how teachers develop srl strategies in learners. it is concluded that all participants perceive srl as valuable and a requirement for academic achievement. participants varied in their theoretical and practical knowledge of srl. half of the participants had a limited understanding of what srl entails and what their roles in the development of srl are. many participants believe that primary schoolteachers, parents or learners themselves should develop srl. there was a considerable variation in the occurrence, as well as the quality of participants’ teaching behaviour to develop learners’ srl. discrepancies were noted between some lesson observations and teachers’ perceptions of how they develop srl. although all participants claimed to develop srl, only half of the participants demonstrated teacher behaviour that develops srl. these findings are supported, among others, by de zoysa et al. (2014) and dzulkifli and alias (2012). in line with literature, it can be concluded that the participants who had more knowledge about srl, who were more positive about srl, and who understood their roles in the development of srl, demonstrated more observable teaching behaviour that develops srl (dignath-van ewijk et al., 2012). this study indicated a serious need for interventions to make practising teachers, as well as student teachers aware of the importance to develop srl. workshops to train teachers to the development of srl should be convened and literature about srl should be circularised to schools. the results on teachers’ perceptions and teaching behaviour allow the assumption that the perceptions and teaching behaviour of many other secondary township schoolteachers might be even more limited and less promising for the development of srl. however, the main limitation of the study is that only one lesson from each participant was observed. the teaching srl skills might have been demonstrated more frequently if more lessons were observed. an interesting point that requires further investigation is the inconsistency between teacher perceptions of their knowledge of srl and their teaching behaviour. 155 geduld teachers’ perceptions of how they develop self-regulated learning references askell-williams, h., lawson, m.j., & skrzypiec, g. 2012. scaffolding cognitive and metacognitive strategy instruction in regular class lessons. instructional science, 40, 413-443. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s11251-011-9182-5 cheng, e.c.k. 2011. the role of self-regulated learning in enhancing learning performance. the international journal of research and review, 6(1), 1-15. de zoysa, a., chandrakumara, p. & rudkin, k. 2014. learning and study strategies affecting the performance of undergraduate management accounting students in an australian university. paper presented at the 2014 afaanz conference, australia. dignath-van ewijk c. & van der werf g. 2012. what teachers think about self-regulated learning: investigating teacher beliefs and teacher behavior of enhancing students’ self regulation. education research international, article id 741713. dzulkifli, m.a. & alias i.a. 2012. students of low academic achievement – their personality, mental abilities and academic performance: how counsellor can help? international journal of humanities and social science, 2(23), 220-225. ferreira, p.c. & simão, a.m.v. 2012. teaching practices that foster self-regulated learning: a case study. educational research ejournal, 1(1), 1-16. hoadley, u. & jansen, j. 2013. curriculum. organizing knowledge for the classroom. 2nd ed. south africa: oxford university press. jayawardena, k.p.r., van kraayenoord, c.e. & carroll, a. 2017. promoting self-regulated learning in science: a case study of a sri lankan secondary school science teacher. international journal of information and education technology, 7(3), 195. https://doi. org/10.18178/ijiet.2017.7.3.865 klug, j., lüftenegger, m., bergsmann, e., spiel, c. & schober, b. 2016. secondary school students’ lll competencies, and their relation with classroom structure and achievement. frontiers in psychology, 7(680), 1 -11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00680 kramarski, b. & michalsky, t. 2009 investigating preservice teachers’ professional growth in self-regulated learning environments. journal of educational psychology, 101(1), 161-175. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0013101 loyens, s.m. & gijbels, d. 2008. understanding the effects of constructivist learning environments: introducing a multi-directional approach. instructional science, 36(5-6), 351357. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11251-008-9059-4 mampane, m.r. 2014. factors contributing to the resilience of middle-adolescents in a south african township: insights from a resilience questionnaire. south african journal of education, 34(4), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.15700/201412052114 matric results 2015: pass rate drops to 70.7%. 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overview. theory into practice, 41(2), 64-70. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4102_2 https://doi.org/10.1155/2012/423284 https://doi.org/10.1155/2012/423284 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9620.2004.00408.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9620.2004.00408.x https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.01.504 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.01.504 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4104_3 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.06.661 www.unesco.org/newfileadmin/multimedia/hq/ed/pdf/unescoibestatement www.unesco.org/newfileadmin/multimedia/hq/ed/pdf/unescoibestatement https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.12.099 https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-012109890-2/50045-7 https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-012109890-2/50031-7 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15430421tip4102_2 1382021 39(3): 138-150 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 the use of the process approach in south african english first additional language classrooms: a discourse analysis abstract the curriculum and assessment policy statement suggests that enhanced cognitive and metacognitive writing skills are achieved when the process approach is used to teach writing (doe, 2012). this paper presents findings on the process approach instruction used in selected south african english first additional language writing classrooms. it examines how teachers used the process approach to teach writing in selected further education and training (fet) phase writing classrooms in the pinetown district in kwazulunatal south africa. underpinned by socio-cultural learning theory, the study observed 15 writing lessons using a video camera. classroom discourse analysis was used to analyse data. the findings reveal teachers’ knowledge of the process approach curriculum they are expected to implement. time constraints in the fet phase writing curriculum hinder teachers’ in-depth facilitation of the stages of the process approach to writing. traditional teaching strategies were prevalent in the process approach writing classrooms. i argue for a socio-cultural scaffolding model of writing that embraces activity-based writing strategies when dealing with writing development in the fet phase since this moves beyond formal accuracy and discrete aspects of language and situates writing within meaningful contexts and authentic purposes and, thus, prepares learners for post-school writing practices. keywords: process approach instruction; socio-cultural theory; zone of proximal development; classroom discourse; discourse analysis; caps; efal. 1. introduction writing remains one of the most critical academic skills for learners to acquire. effective writing may help learners express their ideas and thoughts eloquently and proficiently and, thus, succeed in learning (akinyenye, 2013; dornbrack & atwood, 2019; hyland, 2019). research on writing shows that writing skill is one of the best predictors of whether learners will succeed within increasingly demanding learning environments (klimova, 2013; silva & matsuda, author: dr nomalungelo ngubane1 affiliation: 1nelson mandela university, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i3.11 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(3): 138-150 published: 16 september 2021 received: 21 october 2020 accepted: 04 january 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 https://orcid.org//0000-0002-7255-4673 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 1392021 39(3): 139-150 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 ngubane the use of the process approach in south african english first additional language 2012). demanding academic environments require learners to move beyond making ideas explicit and arrange these ideas into coherent meaningful paragraphs by employing strategies such as editing (dornbrack & dixon, 2014). according to klimova, effective writing entails that learners employ metacognitive skills such as setting goals for their writing, planning carefully for their writing, thinking over the appropriate layout and logical structure and then revising their texts (2013: 147). this makes writing a complex skill. however, researchers have observed that many south african english first additional language (efal) learners struggle to express their thoughts and ideas in a clear and eloquent manner that will captivate the reader (akinyenye & pluddemann, 2016; mpiti, 2016). mpiti (2016) argues that efal learners often produce texts that indicate lack of thought processing such as brainstorming of ideas and planning for writing whereas effective writing involves multifaceted strategies that engage thinking processes and careful selection of vocabulary, grammar, layout, organisation and production of the intended message for a suitable audience (pineteh, 2013). even though a number of factors may contribute to efal learners’ poor writing skills, these may be exacerbated by inadequate teaching of writing (allen, 2015; julius, 2014), use of inappropriate writing approaches (pineteh, 2014), limited writing practice and writing in a second language in which learners are not competent and confident (akinyenye & pluddemann, 2016). current research continues to indicate positive effects of process approach instruction that exposes learners to various writing processes such as planning, drafting, revising, editing and publishing (hung & zang, 2020; hyland, 2019; mohani, mohtar & kepo, 2020; selvaraj & aziz, 2019) as opposed to traditional product-approach instruction that sees writing as a once-off activity and emphasises grammatical correctness, coherence and accurate structure of learners’ texts with little opportunities for writers’ creativity, innovation or self-expression (hyland, 2019). allen (2015) observed little scaffolding of writing in many efal writing classrooms. she (2015) also noticed that many teachers did not understand process approach instruction that the department of education (doe), through its official document, curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps, 2012) expected them to implement for the teaching of writing. it is against this backdrop that this study sought to investigate process approach instruction in which teachers are expected to systematically take learners through writing processes or stages of writing such as pre-writing or planning, drafting, revising and editing before their texts can be published. this approach to teaching writing is called process approach instruction (badger & white, 2000; selvaraj & aziz, 2019). it requires teachers to provide learners with ample time to generate ideas before they engage with their writing tasks (klimova, 2013). so far, there is paucity of research that has examined how teachers implement the process approach when teaching learners how to write. most research conducted in south african efal classrooms focuses on the teaching of writing in general (allen, 2015; delange, dippenaar & anker, 2018; dornbrack & dixon, 2014; julius, 2013) which clouds the significance of how teachers effect process approach to writing as an important aspect of the writing curriculum (caps, 2012), and attempt to improve learners’ writing skills. this paper, therefore, presents an analysis of the nature of process approach instruction among efal fet learners. first, the paper presents a literature review, in which i highlight the significance of the process approach used to teach learners in the fet phase. then, i present the theoretical framework guiding this study. lastly, i draw from writing lessons observed to show how teachers used process approach instruction to develop the writing http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 1402021 39(3): 140-150 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) skills of learners. the study focused on teachers in selected efal fet writing classrooms in the pinetown district, kwazulu-natal, south africa. 2. related literature process writing approach involves several stages that proficient writers go through when they write (badger & white, 2000; hyland, 2019). these stages involve brainstorming or prewriting, writing, revising, editing and publishing (badger & white, 2000). in other words, in a process approach classroom, the focus is on teaching learners to think before they write. this helps them to set objectives for their writing, plan their writing carefully, consider the layout and logical structure of their texts and revise their texts before publishing them (hyland, 2019). in process approach instruction teachers inform learners that they should go through the writing stages of deciding and choosing a topic for their writing, brainstorming, getting started, writing their draft, which requires ample time, getting feedback from the teacher, revising their texts while incorporating ideas from the teacher or peers and editing the final draft to remove linguistic errors until the text is ready for the reader (klimova, 2013; mohani, mohtar & kepol, 2020). currently, little is known about the writing pedagogy in south african classroom contexts, especially the pedagogy that seeks to address the use of process approach in secondlanguage classrooms. according to mpiti (2016), there is limited documented research on writing practices focusing on second-language teachers and learners in these contexts. the teaching of writing is often embedded in the teaching of second-language skills such as reading and writing in general (pineteh, 2013). this clouds the importance of scaffolding of writing as a critical academic skill, especially among fet learners. nevertheless, it is important that learners are well equipped and exposed to processes of writing to help them become effective writers and to help them cope with the writing demands across their high school curriculum (keaster, 2014; selvaraj & aziz, 2019). research shows that for learners to become better writers, they must practise the writing processes in the classroom (ortmeier-hooper, 2017). scholars such as mohani, mohtar and kepol (2020) also contend that learners who are given ample writing opportunities and constructive feedback to address their weaknesses eventually develop good writing skills. therefore, teachers must give learners ample writing opportunities and time to improve their writing. it also means that teachers should attend to what learners write and provide feedback so that learners understand what needs to be improved in their texts before reaching the final stage (dornbrack & atwood, 2019). process approach instruction is highly favoured for the development of writing at secondaryschool level because it produces independent writers (dornbrack & dixon, 2014; keaster, 2014). “the process approach focuses on the learners’ independent ability to produce coherent texts after going through writing activities in stages” (tribble, 1996: 220). this suggests that once learners grasp the writing processes they learn to be in control of their writing while the teachers play the role of supporting the development of writing. research in south africa indicates that there is minimum scaffolding of writing in lower grades of schools and this is the main reason for poor writing skills in secondary schools (allen, 2015). for example, in the western cape, allen (2015) observed writing instruction in three second-language intermediate phase classrooms after noticing poor writing skills among intermediate phase learners. her study made three important findings: firstly, there is a gap in teachers’ knowledge of the caps writing curriculum and this has a negative impact on effective implementation. secondly, writing instruction in the school drew more from product approaches to writing that http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 1412021 39(3): 141-150 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 ngubane the use of the process approach in south african english first additional language emphasised grammar rules more than textual meaning. lastly, the study found that teachers were more concerned about the overloaded writing curriculum that compelled them to spend less time on the scaffolding of writing (allen, 2015). similarly, in the eastern cape, julius (2013) observed the teaching and learning of writing in grade 5 classrooms in two schools. the study found that the teaching of writing is also affected by lack of professional development support. teachers were not provided with much support to enhance their writing instruction. after many years of teaching, teachers still use traditional approaches to teach writing. furthermore, the study found that demands of learners’ assessments marks by administrators pressured writing teachers to focus on teaching for assessment. as a result, writing instruction focused on ensuring that learners complete the written tasks and that marks are recorded on time, instead of engaging the learners in the processes of writing such as brainstorming, drafting, revising and so on, as the caps curriculum suggests (julius, 2013). there is little research in south africa that has attempted to examine process approach instruction in the fet phase. nevertheless, the above studies clearly indicate a need to spend time on the teaching of the writing process for learners to improve their writing. while caps advocates for the use of the process approach to teach writing, it is clear from the above studies that teachers need more training on how to implement the writing curriculum effectively. 3. theoretical framework this study is framed by socio development learning theory (vygotsky, 1978). although much of the work on socio-cultural theory emanates from the ideas of the russian philosopher, lev vygotsky (1986-1934), scholars (barton & hall, 2000; wertsch, 1991; zamel, 1992) have extended, elaborated and refined the theory over decades. the socio-cultural learning concept came about after vygotsky noticed that individual’s cognitive development can be traced not only to his social environment but specifically to his interactions with knowledgeable others within his social context. interactions with others in the learning environment help learners develop new constructs of their world and of their culture. relating writing to vygotsky’s sociocultural perspective, scholars such as barton and hall (2000) and zamel (1992) view writing as a social practice. social practices refer to everyday practices and the way these are typically performed in society (barton & hall, 2000). for example, what learners write, how they write and why they write are largely defined by their social participation within a particular social society, a school. it is therefore within this social context that learners, through interaction with knowledgeable others, teachers and peers, develop skills of writing. later, wertsch (1991) noticed that interaction itself is not, however, actually developmental: it is the wellstructured interactive activities that result in mental development and which set in motion the development processes that would have been impossible without learning. in other words, it is well-thought and organised learning activities that lead to learners’ cognitive development and this connects learning to development (zamel, 1992). in support of these notions, vygotsky (1978) developed a concept of the zone of proximal development (zpd). the concept of the zpd refers to the difference between what learners can do without help of adults or knowledgeable peers and what they cannot do. it is associated with “pedagogical approaches that explicitly provide support for the performance of tasks to be performed without assistance later” (carstens, 2009: 69). this implies that in a writing classroom it is actually the teachers’ careful selection and use of effective instructional approaches and teaching strategies that support and move learners progressively towards stronger cognition and comprehension of writing processes and, ultimately, to more independence in their learning process (carstens, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 1422021 39(3): 142-150 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) 2009). a socio-cultural theory was adopted for this study to understand the facilitation of writing processes in efal fet writing classrooms that could support learners’ cognition of the stages of writing resulting in deeper understanding of the writing process and help them improve their writing skills. 4. the study the study used a qualitative framework. classroom observation was used to collect data. 4.1 research design the study used a qualitative multi-case study design. baxter and jack (2008) explain that multi-case studies allow researchers to analyse the data collected from different sites about a common phenomenon, which increases validity. similarly, baxter and jack (2008) explain that multi-case studies afford researchers an opportunity to understand the similarities and differences between cases being studied, and they add to understanding of important influences. the use of multi-case design in this study provided me with a wider exploration of theoretical underpinnings and research questions across different situations under investigation. although baxter and jack (2008) caution that multi-case studies can be time consuming and often expensive for researchers, the advantages of using multi-case design in this study outweighed the disadvantages. 4.2 population and sampling five schools in pinetown district, kwazulu-natal were selected to participate in this study. out of 184 secondary schools in the district, the five schools were purposively selected based on their offering of efal, their close proximity to the researcher’s work for convenience during the data-collection phase and their willingness to participate in the study. only fet (grades 10, 11 and 12) learners and teachers were selected to participate. 4.3 data collection classroom observations were used to collect data. cohen, manion and morrison (2018) describe classroom observations as a systematic way of “looking” and noting people, events, behaviours, settings and so on. as a research tool, observation offered me an opportunity to gather “live” data from naturally occurring social situations, the efal fet writing classrooms. it enabled me to look directly at what was happening in the efal fet classroom in time, thus, collecting first-hand data (cohen et al., 2018). as a researcher, i assumed the role of a non-participant observer which meant that i was not involved in the classroom activities that were being observed (cohen et al., 2018). in total, 15 writing lessons were observed and recorded using a video camera. for the sake of this paper, five lessons, one from each school, will be presented. each lesson lasted 60 minutes. all lessons were transcribed verbatim and analysed using classroom discourse analysis. 4.4 classroom discourse analysis writing lessons were analysed using sinclair and coulthard’s (1992) model of classroom discourse. classroom discourse is structured into transactions or exchanges. exchanges are in turn made up of moves. the moves are then made up of one or more acts. sinclair and coulthard (1992) also noted that a typical classroom exchange will consist of three moves: initiation (i), response (r) and feedback/follow-up (f). the initiation moves are made by http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 1432021 39(3): 143-150 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 ngubane the use of the process approach in south african english first additional language the teacher. this includes directives, elicitation, information, acknowledgement and so on. all these moves could be in the form of questions, comments or statements. the response move, on the other hand, is made by learners. it includes replying to the teacher’s elicitation, directives and so on. learners’ responses could be verbal or non-verbal. feedback/followup is made by the teacher. it involves accepting, evaluating or commenting on the learner’s response (sinclair & coulthard, 1992). the irf moves consist of turn-taking acts such as a cue where the teacher indicates that learners must raise their hands if they want to be nominated; bidding where the learners compete for the floor by raising their hands for the teacher’s attention and nomination where the teacher nominates the learner to speak. 4.5 analysis of writing lessons this section presents data from classroom observations across the five schools. in total, 15 lessons were observed and recorded across the five schools that participated, however, due to the word limit of this paper, only five of the 15 lessons are analysed and presented below. only lesson extracts that show how teachers taught the process approach in the five schools have been selected. to protect participants, pseudonyms of school a, school b, school c, school d and school e are used to represent the five schools. lesson extract from school a is presented and analysed first. extract 1: lesson 1, school a teacher: good. now [frame], let us move on to the stages of writing. [directive] what is the first stage of writing? [elicitation] learners: free writing teacher: free writing and? learners: free writing and planning teacher: second stage? learners: drafting teacher: third stage? learners: revision teacher: fourth stage? learners: editing teacher: editing and the last one? learners: publishing in the above extract, the teacher uses the frame “now” to indicate the move to the next stage of the lesson. the teacher uses a technique of elicitation to invite learner participation (sinclair & coulthard, 1992). the learners’ responses are short, for example, “free writing”, “drafting” and “revision”. this implies that learners only spoke to respond to the teacher’s questions. only the teacher-initiated interaction through question-and-answer technique. limited learnerlearner interaction was observed, implying a teacher-centred process approach to instruction. all learners were seated in pairs facing the teacher in the front of the class. nevertheless, focus of the lesson is on the stages of writing and the learners seemed to know these stages http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 1442021 39(3): 144-150 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) as they named them when the teacher elicited them. for example, learners responded to the teacher’s questions with “planning”, “drafting”, “revision”, “editing” and “publishing”. this could mean that learners have learnt the stages of writing prior to the lesson observed. little writing practise by learners in this lesson was observed. nevertheless, the caps curriculum suggests that teachers use the process approach to teach writing. the teacher in this lesson, therefore, seems to be following the curriculum. extract 2: school b, lesson 2 teacher: and then free writing, what did we say we gonna do when we write the essay? yes x? learner: you decide on the purpose of the text and audience you are writing to. teacher: yes you decide on the purpose of the text and audience. and then on the next stage what do you do? learner: use the flow chart or listing ideas to brainstorm your ideas teacher: ok, let’s use a flowchart to brainstorm your ideas. you don’t use listing your ideas, you write a sign and then you write the ideas that come to your mind. in this lesson extract from school b, the teacher used a technique of brainstorming the topic in class to teach writing. all the ideas were written on the board. like in school a, the teacher invited learner participation through the question-and-answer method. learners sometimes waited for the nomination to respond but most of the time they responded without a cue. this implies that learners were actively involved in the lesson. from observation, they also seemed to enjoy the lesson. like in school a, this process approach lesson was centred around how much of the stages of the process approach learners could remember. the teachers seldom attempted to move the lesson from question and answer to writing activities by learners (allen, 2015). lesson 3, school c teacher: after the topic, what else must you think about? learner: planning, sir teacher: so how do you do the planning for your essay? learner: you brainstorm the topic, sir teacher: yes you can brainstorm the topic, generate ideas or do a mind map, a flow chart or float lines. now, why is planning important when you doing a narrative essay? so when you are going to do an essay you should have a planning, a planning is going to serve as a guide as to how you going to go about presenting your story to us. it helps you with presenting to us these ideas in a coherent manner. in the above lesson extract the teacher elicited the most important aspect learners should consider when writing their essays. the teacher stressed that the topic of the essay is the most important aspect of writing the essay as it shapes their thinking. this implies that the teacher is well informed about the writing process that he is using to teach writing in his class. the teacher then solicited the learners’ understanding of the stages of writing through the question-and-answer method. the learners responded that planning is important and so is brainstorming. this shows that learners are well informed about the stages of writing as http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 1452021 39(3): 145-150 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 ngubane the use of the process approach in south african english first additional language suggested by the process approach. it also implies that school c follows the process approach to writing as recommended by the curriculum. in this lesson, the teacher led the brainstorming of the writing topic and modelled how learners are expected to plan for the writing. it could be said that to some extent, the lesson provided scaffolding of the writing process (zamel, 1992). extract 4: lesson 4, school d teacher: what is the first step of writing an essay? anyone who knows? yes, over there? learner: we brainstorm the topic teacher: no. i said the first step. you were not listening. anyone? learner: we first choose a topic teacher: yes, we choose a topic for writing. what else? learner: we brainstorm the topic teacher: yes, we brainstorm the topic. what do we mean by brainstorming? learners: we do the planning for the essay. in the above lesson from school d, the teacher, through elicitations, invited learners’ participation in the discussion of the stages of the writing process beginning with choosing the topic. the teacher emphasised that when brainstorming the topic, learners can use a spider diagram to generate ideas for the introduction, body and conclusion. this classroom discourse implies the use of the process approach to teach writing. assuming the writer already has the topic, then brainstorming or planning becomes the first stage of the writing process followed by drafting, revising, editing and publishing (badger & white, 2000). from learners’ responses it is clear that they understand the stages of the process approach. for example, when the teacher asks what they mean by brainstorming, they responded “we do the planning” meaning that they understand that brainstorming involves planning for the writing (badger & white, 2000). in this lesson, the teacher gave learners three topics and asked them to choose one and use a spider diagram as a way of brainstorming their selected topics. learners worked as individuals to complete the task. there was little interaction and collaboration between learners and between the teacher and learners during the activity. this implies an individual learning approach to instruction. lesson 5, school e teacher: remember that brainstorming comes before writing your essay. i want to see your planning. we mostly use spider diagram to show our planning, right? learners: right teacher: good. brainstorming is thinking about ideas for your writing. yes you can use a spider-diagram, you can list your points down or you free write your ideas. to free-write is to write all the ideas that you think of in your mind about the topic, right? learners: yes sir. in the extract above, the teacher provided learners with time to generate ideas for their writing before they began writing their essays (mohtar, mohtar & kepol, 2020). the teacher also explained that he would check their ideas to provide feedback on whether the ideas are in line with the topics chosen by the learners. by providing feedback on the learners’ ideas, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 1462021 39(3): 146-150 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) it could be said that the teacher understands writing as a social practice (casterns, 1992; vygotsky, 1978). that is, the teacher understands his role of providing guidance and support as the knowledgeable adult in the classroom. this classroom discourse further confirms the implementation of the process approach in the writing classroom. in the next stage of the lesson the teacher instructs learners to start writing the introductions. all in all, the above lesson extracts from the five schools show the nature of process approach instruction in different classrooms. from the classroom discourse, the teachers and learners seemed to understand the different stages of the process approach. the teachers solicited knowledge of different stages of the process approach and the learners’ responses showed that they know the different stages of the writing process. in all five schools the teachers used the whole-class method where all learners sit in the desks facing the teacher at the front of class. this implied little use of collaborative classroom methods in the process approach instruction in all five schools. little learner-learner interaction was observed. teachers in all five schools adopted a teacher-centred method. teachers provided more talking in the writing classrooms. in four schools (a, b, c and d) there was limited writing practise by learners. in one lesson, lesson e, the teacher provided time for the learners to implement the process approach in their writing. furthermore, the teacher also provided time for feedback and guidance on the learners’ ideas which indicates that the classroom, to some extent, is underpinned by social learning theory. however, limited interaction between learners was observed. mostly, learners responded to the teachers’ questions. findings from the analysis of the writing lessons can be summarised into three themes: teacher-centred process approach to instruction; teachers’ knowledge of the process approach; and limited scaffolding of writing stages. 5. findings and discussion 5.1 teacher-centred process approach to instruction findings from the analyses of the writing lessons indicate the teachers mostly used a question-and-answer method to teach the process approach in the five schools. this method entails teachers controlling interactions in the classrooms through nomination-response cycle. without teacher nomination, the learners remain passive. on the flip side, i observed that the teachers used this method to invite participation from different learners in the classroom. however, i found that the types of questions that the teachers asked solicited short responses. this meant that learners’ second language production remained limited. the study also found limited interactions between learners in the writing classrooms. even though the learners were seated in pairs, the classroom pedagogy did not promote learner-learner interaction which is mostly favoured for second-language writing classrooms as it provides learners an opportunity to learn together and to help each other. vygotsky’s (1978) socio-cultural learning theory connects learning and social interaction. he argues that in a learning context where learners work together in joint activities, they embrace the effects of working together and develop new constructs of their world and of their culture. in a writing classroom, peer learning supports writing development as the knowledgeable peer may provide feedback on the writing tasks and enable learning that was not otherwise possible for the individual. limited peer learning in the writing classroom could mean that the teachers are unaware of the sociocultural learning theory and the learning benefits of peer learning for the development of writing skills. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 1472021 39(3): 147-150 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 ngubane the use of the process approach in south african english first additional language 5.2 teachers’ knowledge of the process approach findings from the analyses of writing lessons indicate that the teachers in the five schools used process approach instruction to develop writing skills in their classrooms. this was evident in the teachers’ mentioning of different process approach writing stages such as planning/prewriting (selecting a topic, brainstorming and planning what to say); drafting/writing (putting a draft version on paper); revising (making changes to improve writing); editing/proofreading (evaluation of written work for refinement and improvement) and publishing (presenting the work for the reader) (badger & white, 2000). for example, in lesson 1, the teacher asks learners “editing and the last one?” and in lesson 3, the teacher asks learners “so how do you do the planning for your essay?”. these findings imply that teachers understand the process approach they are expected to implement. analyses of the lessons also show that the teachers, in most cases, did not implement all the writing stages in their lessons. however, they selected the stages they wanted to teach in that particular lesson. in that way, the study did not observe the use of all the stages of the writing process by learners in all five schools. these findings are at odds with earlier findings on south african teachers and their implementation of writing curriculum. for example, julius (2013) found that many teachers in eastern cape intermediate phase classrooms do not understand the writing approaches they are expected to implement in their writing classrooms. julius (2013) found that for this reason, teachers paid less attention to writing activities. nevertheless, teachers in this study seemed to understand the process approach. learners’ responses also showed that they did not struggle with different stages of the writing process. for example, the teacher from lesson 4 asked learners what they meant by brainstorming and they responded that they are generating ideas for writing and planning for the essay. this suggests that learners are familiar with the stages of the writing process. 5.3 limited scaffolding of writing stages even though findings indicate teachers’ general understanding of their writing curriculum, classroom discourse of the writing lessons also revealed limited scaffolding of the writing processes. in school a, b and c, for example, the teachers explained to learners how they should approach their own writing by brainstorming their topics to generate the ideas for writing. although the teacher emphasised the use of a mind map or a flow chart diagram for the planning stage, he made little attempt to scaffold the use of a mind map or flow chart of ideas as a means of modelling the skills (akinyenye & pluddemann, 2016). teachers also stressed that the planning would help learners to produce ideas coherently. here again, there was less scaffolding of what a coherent paragraph would look like so that learners could improve their writing. dornbrack and atwood (2019) noticed limited scaffolding of writing in many second-language writing classrooms in south africa. in fact, these scholars argue that many teachers still rely on the question-and-answer method of teaching writing instead of creating activities that will take learners through the stages of the process. 5.4 a need for a learner-centred process approach to instruction contrary to teacher-centred instruction in a process approach, a learner-centred writing pedagogy is central to socio-cultural theory. in a learner-centred writing classroom, teachers perceive writing as a social process in which learners are guided and encouraged to construct meaningful texts through interactive activities that promote understanding of the writing process (badger & white, 2000). furthermore, learner-centred classrooms promote http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 1482021 39(3): 148-150 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) active instead of passive learning. in a learner-centred writing classroom, the teacher takes the peripheral role of guiding the writing processes while learners are actively engaged in the writing processes in a peer supportive environment. learner-centred teachers provide a classroom environment that is conducive to the learning of writing. they achieve this by creating a context where learners have supportive relationships and can learn from and with each other in a safe and trusting learning environment (carsten, 2009). carstens (2009) argues that in a learner-centred writing classroom, teachers cultivate peer support and this diffuses teacher-learner power relations. in a learner-centred pedagogy, learners become active partners in knowledge creation, thus minimising teacher domination of the learning process. learners are given autonomy to suggest topics for writing to which they can relate (silva & matsuda, 2012) as opposed to the teacher-centred classroom where the teacher decides on the writing topics and imposes them (badger & white, 2000). learner-centred pedagogy, therefore, empowers learners to take ownership of the writing processes and their writing development. 5.5 implications of a socio-cultural writing environment according to vygotsky (1978), the zpd is an area of learning that occurs when a learner in the social context, such as a classroom or any collaborative context, is assisted by a teacher or a peer with a higher set of skills. some learners cannot complete a task without the teacher or a peer’s assistance. the role of the teacher or peers will then be to help the learner achieve the skill that the learner is trying to master. the teacher or peers provide support until the learner can perform the task unassisted (vygotsky, 1978). for a complete developmental maturation within the learner’s zpd, vygotsky argues that teachers must consider the types of support; the sequence in which the types of help are offered and the flexibility or rigour of previously formed structures and how willingly the learners collaborate. such contextual factors can impact the level of potential development (vygotsky, 1978). collaborative learning activities, therefore, enable learners to work together to produce a text through practising the stages of the writing process such as choosing the topic, brainstorming, drafting, revising and editing (badger & white, 2000). furthermore, collaborative writing activities help learners to develop not only writing skills but also social and cognitive skills. this study suggests that teachers should encourage learners to work collaboratively with one another. teachers must also promote interaction in their writing classroom, especially in the target language, as discussions and debates in the second language have been found to help learners practise the second language skills as well (hyland, 2019). 6. conclusion this study explored the nature of process approach instruction in selected efal fet phase classrooms in the pinetown district, south africa. the study found that teachers follow their caps (2012) writing curriculum. findings from discourse analysis of writing lessons across the selected schools indicated that teachers understand the process approach they are expected to implement. the study found traditional teacher-centred instruction of process approach prevalent in these efal fet classrooms. teachers’ limited understanding of writing as a socio-cultural practice led to minimal peer collaborative writing opportunities. time constraints in the fet phase writing curriculum hinder teachers’ in-depth facilitation of stages of the process approach to writing. the researcher argues for a socio-cultural scaffolding http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 1492021 39(3): 149-150 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.11 ngubane the use of the process approach in south african english first additional language model of writing which embraces activity-based writing strategies when dealing with writing development in the fet phase since this moves beyond formal accuracy and discrete aspects of language but situates writing within meaningful contexts and authentic purposes and, thus, prepares learners for post-school writing practices. this study concludes that the success or limitations of process approach instruction depend on numerous factors. firstly, it depends on the teachers’ knowledge and understanding of the approach. secondly, it depends on a teaching environment in which writing is perceived as a social process in which learners are guided and encouraged to construct meaningful texts through interactive activities that promote understanding of the writing process. this study, therefore, suggests continuous teacher development on learner-centred writing pedagogies to improve process approach instruction in efal fet classrooms. references akinyenye, c. & pluddemann, c. 2016. the story of a narrative: teaching and assessing english writing in a township school. journal of the reading association of south africa, 7: 1–8. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v7i1.88 akinyenye, c.m. 2013. investigating approaches to the teaching of writing in english as a second language in senior phase classrooms in the western cape. med dissertation. western cape: university of the western cape. 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https://doi.org/10.1080/10573569.2019.1649223 https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108635547 https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108635547 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667251 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511667251 https://doi.org/10.15373/22501991/jan2013/4 https://doi.org/10.15373/22501991/jan2013/4 http://www.hrpub.org/journals/article_info.php?aid=9439 http://www.hrpub.org/journals/article_info.php?aid=9439 https://doi.org/10.13189/ujer.2020.080735 https://doi.org/10.5430/ijhe.v3n1p12 https://doi.org/10.5430/ijhe.v3n1p12 http://dx.doi.org/10.6007/ijarped/v8-i4/6564 http://dx.doi.org/10.6007/ijarped/v8-i4/6564 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410600899 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410600899 https://doi.org/10.2307/3587174 https://doi.org/10.2307/3587174 perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 142 michael le cordeur department of education, stellenbosch university e-mail: mlecorde@sun.ac.za telephone: 021 808 2265 constantly weighing the pig1 will not make it grow: do teachers teach assessment tests or the curriculum? michael le cordeur for a number of years now, south africa, like many other countries, has been debating a major paradigm shift in education, a shift from learning and teaching, which focused primarily on content to learning and teaching focused on outcomes. one of the most dramatic trends in education over the last decade has been the shift towards the use of assessment-based criteria, as opposed to assessment tests based on marks, scores and data. however, as jordaan (2010) quite rightly points out, assessment is an integral part of teaching and learning, not just a means of monitoring or auditing learners’ performance. assessment is much more than just measuring learning outcomes: it is an instrument to improve teaching, the curriculum and conditions for learners’ learning. the question is why the negativity about testing if assessment is associated with effective teaching. since south africa became a democratic country, it has been struggling with low levels of literacy. poor performance of south african learners in basic literacy in national and international tests has moved the department of basic education (dobe) since 2010 to place more emphasis on systemic tests as a way of securing an improvement in learner performance. however, many researchers have blamed the emphasis placed on standardised tests for the poor state of our education system. more and more voices are going up for improved teacher development and more support to teachers and learners. in this article, i shall argue that too much emphasis is placed on standardized tests, and not much is being done to develop teachers in providing a balanced teaching and learning experience to learners. i shall indicate that the continual testing of learners’ performance in literacy through systemic and standardised tests has not led to improved reading ability, but has in fact contributed to a decline in learners’ creativity, innovation and independent thinking, and the skills needed to leapfrog this country into the 21st century. these tests emphasised the skills involved in taking multiple-choice tests over those of researching, analysing, experimenting and writing, the tools that students will more 1. stein, m. 2009. weighing the pig doesn’t fatten it. mail online. [in time] constantly weighing the pig will not make it grow: do teachers teach assessment tests or the curriculum? michael le cordeur 143 likely need to be great thinkers, excellent university students and valued employees. i will argue that today’s children spend too much time preparing for tests and this has come at the expense of a broader education in other subjects. drilling pupils to pass tests does not help their longer-term learning and results in a narrower curriculum, poorer standards of teaching and lower quality of education. the point i want to make is that teachers have learnt very fast how to coach for the tests, which led to inflated results. thus, while test scores have risen, educational standards might actually have declined. therefore, rather than adding new measurements of progress, schools need to move away from data and towards a more holistic approach to assessing educational quality. i shall also argue that we must assess students’ work throughout the year by means of portfolios, rather than by means of a narrow snapshot of learning measured on one test day. as jordaan (2010) puts it, we need to ensure that learning is not simply assessment-driven. students are highly intelligent people; if we confront them with a game where learning is linked to a rigid and monotonous diet of assessment, they will learn according to the rules of that game. to improve their learning, we need to improve our game. keywords: assessment-based criteria, assessment-driven tests, educational standards, learner performance, learning outcomes, standardized tests, systemic tests introduction results of the ana tests written in february 2011 confirm that learners in south african school underperform with regard to their literacy and numeracy. the ana2 represents one of the most important interventions by the government to enhance the basic skills in literacy and numeracy. the report indicates that countrywide, only 20% of all grade 6 learners who wrote the ana in 2010 performed at an internationally acceptable level in literacy (dvbo 2011a). this has led to the situation that experts in general are very negative about the quality of education in the south african school system (bloch 2009:26; jansen 2009:37 & 49; ramphele 2008:171). the standardised tests written by more than six million learners in south african primary schools showed that the poorest schools did the worst. learners from limpopo, north-west and mpumalanga could not even attain the most basic skills in literacy (dvbo 2011a:20). according to the minister of basic education, the reasons for this state of affairs are mainly socioeconomic in nature. the percentage of schools that could not attain the basic skills in literacy and numeracy in 2011, appears in table 1: 2. the annual national assessment tests (ana), are the standardised assessment tests in literacy and numeracy annually conducted by the national department of education at all schools. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 144 table 1: percentage of schools that did not attain the basic skills in literacy in 2011: province grade 3 grade 6 western cape 41 41 eastern cape 45 67 kwazulu-natal 48 68 free state 50 80 gauteng 53 54 limpopo 61 85 north-west 63 83 northern cape 66 70 mpumalanga 67 85 statement of problem the low level of literacy amongst our learners is not unique to south africa. nevertheless, the poor performance of south african learners in basic literacy in national and international assessment tests is a matter of concern (jansen 2013, le cordeur 2013a, ramphele 2012). consequently, this poses tremendous challenges for the south african teaching profession and has led to the department of basic education (dbe) starting to place more emphasis on standardised tests since 2010 in an attempt to improve the performance of learners in literacy. however, experts (jansen 2013; ramphele 2012; de klerk 2012; le cordeur 2012) are unanimous in their view that the assessment tests per se do not promote better learner performance. this is more probably a way to force schools in the direction of greater responsibility (frederiksen 1984). according to a recent list by the magazine newsweek (2010) of the bestperforming countries in the world, south africa is 82nd altogether, and our education system 97th out of 100 countries. south africa’s education system is rated even lower than the systems of mozambique, bangladesh and iran, countries that are significantly poorer and less free. it is therefore clear that the annual standardised tests to which we submit our learners have not produced the expected change in our country’s literacy levels. on the contrary, jansen (2013:1) is of the opinion that our country’s education system is deteriorating. le cordeur (2013a:7) pleads that schools and teachers who do not do their bit should be brought to book. ramphele (2013:3) accuses the education authorities of failing the learners. as proof, she claims that 80% of our schools are dysfunctional. taking the above into account, i shall contend in this article that the dbe places too much emphasis on the annual assessment tests, but that too little is done to ensure that learners receive the maximum teaching time. in this regard, i shall constantly weighing the pig will not make it grow: do teachers teach assessment tests or the curriculum? michael le cordeur 145 concur with brown (2011), who argues that the continual measuring of learners’ performance and reading ability by means of standardised test achieves exactly the opposite: in many classrooms learners’ creativity, innovation and individuality are limited. in another article, le cordeur (2013b) writes that it is inexplicable that, while the demands for good reading are on the increase, the support for teachers gradually declines. by focusing on standardised tests all the time, the focus is deflected from an important cause of low literacy, namely the flawed in-service training of teachers in order to enhance their own skills in the teaching of reading. research question resultant from the above, the following research question is investigated: is the increase in the pass rate of standardised tests an indication of improved learning and quality teaching? methodology as research topic i have decided on a historical investigation, combined with a literature study. many current educational issues, theories and practices can be understood better in terms of experiences from the past. the knowledge acquired from the historic pedagogy often offers valuable insights in terms of which the changes in the current education system as well as the practices and approaches can be investigated. it also gives an accurate indication whether those changes will be effective and sustainable. literature study the purpose of assessment before the debate about excessive assessment is continued, it is advisable to stop for a minute at assessment first and asks oneself why it is necessary at all to assess learners regularly. according to researchers (jordaan 2010; huba & freed 2000), the purpose of assessment is not only a way to measure and monitor learners’ performance; it forms an integral part of teaching and learning. assessment is therefore synonymous with effective teaching and an instrument of learning (dochy & mcdowell 1997). according to jordaan (2010), a further goal of assessment is the improvement of teaching, the curriculum, and the circumstances under which learners have to study, while wolf, le mahieu and efresh (2002) focus on assessment as an instrument of educational transformation. assessment also offers valuable data that can serve as basis for remedial action (huba & freed 2000), while it is also the basis according to which one has to decide whether it is in the learner’s best interests to keep him/her back or to promote him/her to the following grade (dochy & mcdowell 1997). perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 146 debate about the positive or negative consequences of testing the research question under investigation in this article is whether it is possible for the pass rate of tests to improve without any visible increase in learning. in this regard, one has to refer to the research by cannell (1987) showing that standardised test programmes – like the ana tests in south africa – could lead to dubious and artificially high results. independent evidence by the national department of education in america has shown that learner performance has increased in basic literacy and numeracy during the period when the tests were conducted. at the same time, however, there was no improvement or decline in high-order and advanced skills. shepard and dougherty (1991) ascribe this pattern in the test results to the negative influence of standardised tests on teaching and learning. the question thus arises: why then the negativity around testing, if it is generally accepted that testing is associated with quality education? research in the usa by shepard and dougherty (1991) indicates that the debate about the negative versus the positive of standardised tests is nothing new; on the contrary, it has already been the topic of discussion for some time. people like popham (1987), who are in favour of standardised tests, are of the opinion that tests take the role of an external examiner similar to the state of education district to set standards and maintain the application thereof. he continues to state that, if tests measure important skills, they will serve as motivation for teaching and learning, which in turn, will lead to improved education. those who are opposed to standardised tests (cf. bracey (1987; frederiksen 1984) argue that these tests will have a negative effect on the quality of education, because it will attenuate the focus of the tuition simply to the content learners will be tested on. brown (2011) and frederiksen (1984) also refer to the pros and cons of standardised tests. according to them, the annual standardised tests lead to a decline in creativity innovation and individuality amongst learners. this emphasises the skills that are necessary for tests like multiple choice questions, at the expense of research, analysis, experimenting and writing – the very skills necessary to cultivate great thinkers, good leaders, brilliant university students and valued employees. still, according to brown (2011), it cannot be denied that, by forcing schools to enhance their literacy figures, many more learners have reached secondary school and even tertiary education. shepard and dougherty (1991) quote evidence underwriting the positive influence of test-based teaching and state that this mainly comes from those who administer these tests (i.e. the state). popham (1987), for example, refers to the sharp increase in the pass rate for tests of grade 1 learners’ reading ability. similar improvements have also been reported in other grades. popham (1987) particularly refers to the fact that, where changes had been effected to prepare learners for a specific test, the increase in the pass rate was even higher. constantly weighing the pig will not make it grow: do teachers teach assessment tests or the curriculum? michael le cordeur 147 in the following section, the situation in the united states, australia and the united kingdom will be reviewed. the united states of america (usa) research (wolf, le mahieu & efresh 2002; shepard & dougherty 1991; darlinghammond & wise 1985) indicates that teachers are pressurised by the department of education and the district office to increase their pass rates in standardised tests. because of this, according to rottenberg and smith (1990), teachers are compelled to “teach the test”. subject content not covered by the tests is ignored. for instance, according to darling-hammond and wise (1985), the creative writing of essays was abandoned in order to spend more time on work that could be examined in the tests. rottenberg and smith (1990) refer to principals who changed their school timetables and created special periods to coach learners in answering multiple choice questions, punctuation and grammar use. shepard and dougherty (1991) also refer to interviews conducted with district directors, who frankly admit that teachers spend more time on the outcomes of the test than they would normally have done if standardised tests had not been written. researchers like brown (2011) and wolf, le mahieu and efresh (2002) agree that the excessive emphasis on standardised tests and numeracy discriminates against most of the schools struggling to survive on a daily basis. furthermore, it limits the curriculum and it is unfair towards schools that perform well. brown (2011) also argues that the policy was instituted to pressurise schools to pay more attention to disadvantaged learners from the black and coloured communities. it is therefore clear that assessment has taken place for all the wrong reasons, mainly to create a false image to the outside that all is well with the education system at the expense of quality education. in this regard, it is expedient to read what the award-winning author, eugene robinson, recently wrote in the washington post: it is time to acknowledge that the fashionable theory of school reform – requiring that pay and job security for teachers, principals and administrators depend on their students’ standardized test scores – is at best a well-intentioned mistake, and at worst nothing but a racket (robinson 2013). australia in their submission to the house of representatives, the australian principals association has criticised the federal government’s intention to establish australia as one of the top five education countries in the world by 2025, based on the pass rates in reading, mathematics and science. according to a newspaper report (ferrari 2013), the danger of such a goal is that it will attenuate the curriculum by overemphasising the importance of three subjects and undervaluing the creative aspects of the primary school curriculum. this goal will focus australia’s attention on aspects of curriculum, which may well not be viewed as important by international testing authorities in 2025. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 148 according to the report, the matric certificate in australia has specifically been adapted to include fewer tests. amongst others, the adjusted policy requires that only two of the five tests in grade 11 and 12 must be done in writing. other assessment tasks could include observation, discussion and oral tests. the system rests on all that learners are able to do, rather than the “marks” attained in tests. this means the teacher has to perceive what the learners have learnt, and the learner has to provide evidence by submitting assessment tasks and a portfolio. shaw (2013) emphasises that no evidence exists that standardised tests in the australian school system have improved literacy and numeracy. shaw (2013) further writes: parents should be aware that a quality report by a professional teacher encompassing a range of measures over time, preferably accompanied by a face-to-face discussion, is a far better indicator of student capabilities. the united kingdom (uk) leading academics warn that education standards have declined with rapid strides in the united kingdom, thanks to the british government’s obsession with testing (harris 2013). it is expected of all primary schools in the uk to administer standardised tests. according to the official policy document of the department of education (circular 0056/2011), the regulations are as follows: • english-medium schools are required to administer standardised testing in english reading and mathematics during the period may/june for all students in 2nd, 4th and 6th classes on an annual basis, with effect from 2012 onwards. • irish-medium schools are required to administer standardised testing in irish reading, english reading and mathematics during the period may/ june for all students in 2nd, 4th and 6th classes on an annual basis, with effect from 2012 onwards. according to harris (2013), an in-depth inquiry into primary education has brought to light that the average child in britain spends too much time on preparation “for batteries of tests in english and maths” (harris 2013). whilst test results have increased since the mid-1990, this achievement has been reached to the detriment of children’s right to a balanced curriculum, inadequate exposure to other subjects, and excessive time spent on preparing for tests. although the pass rates for mathematics and literacy have increased from 54% to 77%, the pass rate in both subjects has stabilised over the past few years. according to harris (2013), this is in all probability because teachers have learnt very quickly how to coach learners for the tests. therefore, although the results have improved, the advantages of coaching have long since reached a point of satiety; no attention is paid to high-level skills. the report also states that coaching learners for a test does not help them in terms of their long-term learning, and consequently leads to a deficient curriculum, lower teaching standards and less quality education in general. this results in a poor constantly weighing the pig will not make it grow: do teachers teach assessment tests or the curriculum? michael le cordeur 149 relationship between teacher and learner in the classroom, which can even decline further as schools do everything within their power to improve their results (harris 2013). instead of trying a variety of teaching methods – amongst others, teaching in smaller groups – learners often do nothing more than prepared lessons that will prepare the whole class for these tests. the report concludes that, while test results have improved, educational standards have declined. the result of this is that both wales and scotland have already started to abandon standardised tests, and according to lightman (2013), a principal at a secondary school on the outskirts of cardiff, wales, they are impressed with the new results. he writes: our students now are so much more independent and capable of organizing and analysing what they’re doing, and they’re able to improve as a result of that. next, i shall focus on finland and how this country can serve as model for quality assessment. the success story of finland vs. the south african situation the question is now: how do we handle the issue of testing in future? in this regard, i want to refer to the finnish success story. according to darling-hammond (2011), other countries can learn a lot from finland, and this includes south africa. in the 1970s, when the usa was the leader in the field of education, finland’s education system had little to be proud of. from a humble beginning, the country has resolutely developed certain strategies to expand education capacity. finland, once a country that was very low on the education scale and characterised by an uninspiring, bureaucratic education system – reminding one a lot about the current south african model – is today the foremost leader on education in the world. on the oecd3 nations’ list of top-performing countries finland is followed by south korea, canada, japan and new zealand. finland has transformed its traditional education system “into a model of a modern, publicly financed education system with widespread equity, good quality, large participation—all of this at reasonable cost” (sahlberg 2012: 2). more than 99% of the learners completed the compulsory primary schooling in 2012, and approximately 90% were successful at secondary school. from these finnish matriculants, two thirds have enrolled at universities or other tertiary or technical institutions. more than 50% of the adult finnish population participate in adult education programmes (sahlberg 2012). this is in sharp contrast with the south african model, where nearly 35% of the learners who enter into the system do not pass matric (le cordeur 2013). bloch (2009:11) points out that south african learners constantly underperform and are not only regarded amongst the poorest in the world, but also amongst the worst 3. organization for economic cooperation and development – commonly known as the developed countries. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 150 in africa: “they produce barely literate and numerate learners and (i) believe the country is headed for a national education crisis.” (bloch 2009:12) laukkanen (2008) points to a recent analysis emphasising the core principles of the finnish education system. according to him the emphasis is on resources for those who need it most (in south africa, the reverse is true because the rich schools still receive more and more); high-level standards for special education needs; a healthy balance between centralisation (top-down approach) and decentralisation (bottom up approach) and qualified teachers (most teachers have master’s degrees). teachers are prepared to teach a diverse group of learners, unlike in south africa, where there are constantly court cases when government requests schools to teach learners from other language and cultural groups (malan 2013). these principles ensure that learners are taught by well-prepared teachers on a daily basis, working in tandem with a high-quality curriculum, supported by suitable learning material and assessment methods. this leads to a situation where learners, teachers, education leaders and the system as a whole constantly learn and improve (laukkanen 2008). the principle to care for learners scholastically as well as personally stands central to the finnish school system. according to darling-hammond (2011), finnish schools are generally small, with less than 300 learners per school and approximately 20 learners per class. there is greater equality in the finnish school system, with no private schools, because 98% of the education expenses at all levels are covered by the government, and not by private institutions like sponsors and even parents. all learners receive a free meal every day, as well as free health care, transport, learning material and counselling at the school, in order to ensure that an environment conducive to learning (in sa known as “foundations for learning”) exists at every school. a child cannot study when he/she is ill and hungry (sahlberg 2012). however, notice must be taken of stein’s (2009) point that more money without accountability and true transformation in schools is tantamount to milk into a basket: the money disappears into a bottomless well. this principle also applies to south africa, where the greater part of our tax money is spent on education (malan 2013; le cordeur 2013c). in contrast to finland, the shortfalls in south africa are so large that money will not make a difference overnight. despite the fact that the major part of south africa’s budget is spent on education, observers like malan (2013:3) and van den berg (2005) agree that more money allocated to schools will not resolve the problem. the most important reason for this is the fact that many principals in south africa struggle to keep up with the transformation and changes (galloway 2004:75). since 1994, many developments in the field of education have taken place, particularly with respect to education management. de klerk-luttig (2009) is of the opinion that principals are left in the dark with all the changes and are therefore not motivated to apply any new policies. in finland, the focus is on science, technology, innovation and creative thinking. buchberger and buchberger (2004:10) point out that finland has moved away from constantly weighing the pig will not make it grow: do teachers teach assessment tests or the curriculum? michael le cordeur 151 a centralised system with external tests and examinations to a local system, where highly trained teachers develop their own curriculum based on the basic national standards. this new system is applied with equal funding for all schools and intensive training for teachers. the core principle on which the entire system is based is to invest in the capacity of local schools and their teachers in order to address the needs of that specific school. together with well-thought-out guidance, each child’s creativity is realised within the collective, but accessible outcomes (buchberger & buchberger 2004). in south africa, the opposite is the case. gallie (2009) and malan (2013) argue that poverty and lack of educational resources prevent both the school and the learners to reach their full potential. according to them, approximately 50% of all learners live in poverty and nearly 25% go to school hungry. the result of unemployment is that books, pens and school uniforms are luxuries. malnutrition affects learners’ ability to concentrate and leads to learning problems. furthermore, schools’ basic functions, like timetables either are entirely absent or are not applied, departmental procedures are executed bureaucratically and service delivery in the public service has deteriorated. according to sigudla (2002:38) and le cordeur (2013a), most of the governing bodies in disadvantaged communities are simply not able to perform tasks like the appointment of new educators, because these parents are often illiterate. it is unlikely that a finnish teacher will teach for 50 minutes. according to darlinghammond (2011), learners choose the tasks themselves, which they then complete at their own pace. often they will complete individual assignments, but also group projects. sometimes they write articles for their own school newspaper. in this way, they determine their own weekly goals in collaboration with their subject teachers. the development of metacognitive skills that assist in problem analysis and solutions, as well as the skill to evaluate and improve their own progress, forms the building blocks of the finnish education system. according to laukkanen (2008), the finnish system is based on the principle that the teacher stands central to education. that is why the empowerment of teachers and the recognition of their role as professional educators form the core around which everything revolves and are the most important reasons for the finnish success. the training of teachers is entirely the responsibility of the state. after the basic training of three years, an intensive overview over the assessment guidelines and the curriculum follows. the course is developed to inculcate critical thinking within prospective teachers, thereby teaching them to think on their feet, the ability to curriculate on their own, when necessary, without first getting permission from a district office or government official. laukkanen (2008) takes the view that professional teachers must have the freedom to discover new, innovative methods and improve learning. he continues to state that teachers should not be regarded as technicians who must only apply the curriculum according to strict instructions, but as professional individuals who know how to disseminate their learners’ learning experience maximally. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 152 an investigation into the qualifications of educators in south africa still displays the legacy of apartheid (ramphele 2008:172). for instance, in 2005, only 38% of the country’s educators in public schools were in possession of matric and four years’ training. in 2001, 27% of all black learners in mathematics and 38% of the learners in science were taught by educators who had no mathematics or science qualifications, respectively. of all the grade 6 educators who teach literacy, 32% only had primary or junior qualifications in 2005. the most important thing that south africa can learn from finland is that the status that the finnish teacher enjoys is higher than any other profession’s. all the systems in a country can only work if the education system is successful. in the meantime, the usa, according to sahlberg (2009:22), has turned to even more extreme testing, which leads to yet more unequal education standards. in finland, learners only write one examination before proceeding to university: the matriculation examination, which is administered by the matriculation examination committee, appointed by the minister of education. for some educators this might sound radical, but finland’s curriculum, modelled after school-based, learner-centred and open-book tasks, is given as the main reason for the country’s success in international examinations and tests. in the south african context, experts (jansen 2010; kloppers-lourens 2010) are of the opinion that already disadvantaged learners are exposed to a curriculum that impairs a fragile learning environment even more. therefore, the following conceptual framework for the south african education system is proposed. conceptual framework during the post-apartheid era, education departments has not “trained” teachers, but has “orientated” them with respect to the policy goals and objectives of the national curriculum declaration (wkod 2006:4). there has been a lack of emphasis on issues related to epistemology, which provide the conceptual tools, by means of which teachers are enabled to enter the new education pedagogy. this has impeded the growth of knowledge regarding conceptual development, renewal, creative thought and imagination. it is therefore important that teachers who want to educate or orientate learners must have a thorough understanding of epistemological issues and the impact these have on thinking, practices and transformation in general. given south africa’s unique situation as stated above, an education approach will be proposed in this article, based on freire’s (1970) pedagogy of hope. the objective of this approach is to empower learners to do something for themselves in order to escape the yoke of oppression, poverty and injustice (crittenden 2008). that is why the education system in south africa should strive towards empowering learners with those skills necessary for life-long learning, in order to strengthen learners’ chances of success in higher education. on the other hand, the conceptual framework envisaged in this case is an example of constructivism. the social learning theory, namely that learning takes place through social interaction, had been developed by constantly weighing the pig will not make it grow: do teachers teach assessment tests or the curriculum? michael le cordeur 153 the russian psychologist lev vygotsky (woolfolk 2010). this educational approach is learner-centred (kim 2001:2) and based on the view that knowledge is not absolute, but are constantly construed by the learner on the grounds of previous knowledge and universal world views (baker 2000:260). according to piaget, one of the earliest voices that propagated this approach is the basic principle of education, namely to understand and to discover, or to reconstruct through discovery and these conditions must be fulfilled if future individuals have to be formed who are able to effectuate production and creativity, rather than simple repetition (piaget 1978:20). this is a learning theory that strives to invest learners with the skills necessary for lifelong learning. in essence, this is a moving away from the conception that knowledge is conveyed to the passive learners to the idea that active learners create knowledge while becoming involved therein. this learning theory proceeds from the viewpoint that learners are not empty beings (freire 1970:22), but that each learner possesses an own perceptual framework; that learners learn in different ways; and that learning is a dynamic, active process (kim 2001:3). developing learners are not regarded as passive receivers of knowledge, but rather as active builders of their knowledge in interaction with the world around them. passive learning with its numerous standardised tests expects very little more from learners that memorising notes and textbooks without thinking about and interpreting it. self-directed learning, on the contrary, encourages learners to reflect on learning activities and to accept responsibility for the learning process; skills that are conducive to life-long learning (baker 2000:261). to my mind, such an approach will facilitate the paradigm shift from teaching to learning the best. findings and recommendations from the preceding literature study, it transpires that education in south africa is facing major challenges. chesterson (1935) states that, “it isn’t that they can’t see the solution. it’s that they can’t see the problem.” consequently, a new approach to assessment is not something that can be resolved in isolation through extra tuition or complementary programmes – it demands a joint attempt and national strategy extending into all classrooms and districts across the curriculum. the solution to south africa’s education problem, according to this author, no longer rests with more tests and more examinations. if we realise that teachers are the key to a successful education system, we must do everything in our power to enhance their effectiveness. in this regard, i want to agree with stein (2009) that we must spend far more time, money on and pay attention to the professional development of teachers. south africa must employ more teachers. it is unacceptable that teachers have 132 learners in one class (sabc 2013). we must train and retrain our teachers intensively and provide them with the opportunity to improve their skills by means of further study, study leave and bursaries. young teachers must perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 154 complete a trial period of at least a year under the vigilant eye of a mentor or master teacher. the bureaucracy (malan 2013) must be scaled down. there are far too many teachers sitting around in district offices while their skills are needed at schools. concluding remark instead of constantly tasking teachers and learners with even more tests, schools must start to move away from marks and test results to a more holistic approach to assessing the quality of teaching. it is very inspiring to evaluate education in terms of learners’ interaction with the learning content by means of their portfolio, rather than with a single test. jordaan’s (2010: 215) warning against excessive testing is appropriate here: “we must put structures in place that will ensure that learning is not only test and examination driven”. we can argue that currently we have too much assessment but, according to jordaan (2010: 216), neither the quality, nor the variety of assessment tasks is spot on. learners are highly intelligent; if we confront them with a game where teaching and learning are simply reduced to tests and assessment tasks, they will study according to the rules of that game. in order to improve their learning, we must improve the game we propose. i conclude by referring to a saying by stein (2009): “just weighing a pig doesn’t fatten it.” the point is, if we only test for the sake of testing and then coach the learners for the test, it will not necessarily lead to enhanced educational outcomes. on the contrary. references baker cm 2000. problem-based learning for nursing: integrating lessons from other disciplines with nursing. journal of professional nursing, 16(5): 258–259. bracey gw 1987. measurement-driven instruction. phi delta kappan, 68: 683–686. brown j 2011. education: too much testing? los angeles times editorial, 13 october. buchberger f & i buchberger 2004. problem-solving capacity of a teacher education system as a condition of success? an analysis of the finnish case. voices in urban education. annenberg institute for school reform at brown university: providence, rhode island. bloch g 2009. the toxic mix – what’s wrong with south africa’s schools and how to fix it. cape town: tafelberg. cannell jj 1987. nationally normed elementary achievement testing in america’s public schools. daniels wv: 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[2013, february 2]. van den berg s 2005. apartheid’s enduring legacy: inequalities in education. paper read at the oxford university/stellenbosch university conference on the south african economic policy under democracy: a ten-year overview. stellenbosch, october. western cape department of education (wced) 2006. wced literacy and numeracy strategy 2006–2016. cape town: government printer. wolf dp, le mahieu pg & je fresh 2002. good measure: education as a tool of educational reform. educational leadership. association for supervision & curriculum development: ebsco publishing. woolfolk a 2010. educational psychology. 11th edition. upper saddle river, nj: pearson education. 1222021 39(1): 122-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.8 covid-19 challenges to access to education for learners living with severe disabilities: an education law perspective1 abstract thro (2005:1) points out that the supreme court of the united states has recognised that “education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments” because “it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education”. he adds that the court has stressed “the importance of education in maintaining our basic institutions …” thro’s summary of the american perspective on the importance of education to a person and a country is echoed in numerous national constitutions and international treaties in which education (and access to education) is treated as a non-negotiable right of all the inhabitants of a country. section 29(1)(a) of south africa’s constitution of 1996 provides that everyone (including children living with severe disabilities) has a right to a basic education, including adult basic education, section 9(3 and 4) provide that neither the state nor any person may discriminate unfairly against anyone on the grounds of disability while section 28(2) states unequivocally that a “child’s best interests are of paramount importance in every matter concerning the child”. people in south africa had every right to expect that the new political dispensation beginning in 1994 would bring with it the fulfilment of all learners’ guaranteed educational rights. however, a review of the literature reveals that south africa has left children living with severe disabilities in the lurch and that as many as 600 000 disabled learners may never have been to school (nappy run, 2019). according to yates (2020), south africa has 1179 public and independent special needs schools but not all south african children, including those living with severe mental disabilities, have access to their fundamental human right to education (yates, 2020). this article has its origin into reports that came to the authors’ 1 in the court case western cape forum for intellectual disability v government of the republic of south africa and the government of the province of the western cape 2011 (5) sa 87 (wcc) the court referred to the children with whom this article deals as “severely and profoundly intellectually disabled children”. this description of these children can be viewed as pejorative and demeaning and we will therefore refer to them as “learners living with severe disabilities” in this article. author: prof j.l. beckmann1 prof j.m. reyneke1 affiliation: 1university of the free state, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i1.8 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 122-137 published: 12 march 2021 received: 10 november 2020 accepted: 26 january 2021 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7252-8483 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.8 1232021 39(1): 123-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.8 beckmann & reyneke covid-19 challenges to access to education attention of problems involving learners with severe disabilities following the return of such children to special needs education schools2 after the relaxation of the covid-19 lockdown measures. even when following the draft (covid-19) guidelines for schools for the learners with intellectual disabilities (dbe, 2020) meticulously, schools were confronted by new challenges for principals, teachers and parents to safeguard these and other learners’ right to education and to prevent large-scale disruptions of school activities. as is the case with all actions and decisions taken regarding all learners, the relevant legal rules must be obeyed. educators and other stakeholders involved need to know these rules. in this article, we will therefore view the problem from an education law perspective and attempt to provide all stakeholders with knowledge of the pertinent legal rules to enable them to address challenges that might arise in a legally acceptable manner. we will conclude with a brief reference to possible education management responses to the challenge. such management initiatives also need to comply with legal prescripts that are still to be investigated before one can propose these responses confidently in that they comply with legal requirements. keywords: learners living with disabilities; inclusive constructive stakeholder engagement; limiting rights of learners; onus to act; best interests of the child. 1. introduction 1.1 statistics and their implications one needs to have a picture of how many learners are living with severe disabilities to get an idea of the challenge of providing access to education to all learners with severe disabilities. the department of basic education (2019a:1) used the general household survey (ghs), a survey conducted by statistics south africa (stats sa), to compile this report to assess the dbe’s “progress made in terms of access to schooling, as well as the quality, efficiency and equity in educational outcomes”. according to this report (dbe, 2019a:1), approximately 800 000 children aged 7 to 18 years old were out of school in 2002 and in 2018 this figure “decreased to around 474,000 children in 2018”. to put this into perspective, one needs to bear in mind that there were 12 819 542 learners in south african schools in 2018 (dbe, 2019b:1). this means that, in 2018, 3.69% of south african children who should have been in school were not. the department of basic education (2019a:19) provided a table giving the reasons for learners not being in school. twenty-four and a half per cent (116 130) of 7–15-year-olds cited disability as the reason why they were not in school and 4% (18 960) of 16–18-year-olds cited disability as the reason for their not attending schools. south africa has 1 179 special needs education schools (yates, 2020). the above figures imply that if the out of school (7–18 years old) learners with severe disabilities were to be placed in the existing special needs education schools, each school would get 115 additional learners. under the present circumstances, such a change could not be handled by the schools and the education system. the above figures present a bleak picture regarding the access to school for learners living with disabilities. the problem is made more serious by the fact that these learners have a constitutional right to education that the state is not meeting. in moko v acting principal of malusi secondary school and others (2020) the constitutional court reiterated that the right to basic education is “a right which, due to its transformative nature both for individuals and society as a whole, is of fundamental importance in this country” and the court also confirmed that the right includes grade 12. the department of basic education’s figures (2019a:14-18) 2 although the schools are known, we cannot reveal their identities. 1242021 39(1): 124-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.8 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) may seem conservative and are silent about matters raised by other authors but we decided to use them as our basis seeing that they are based on work that statssa has been doing since 2002. macupe (2020) summarises the position of many children with disabilities with a disturbing picture: some parents must quit their jobs to look after their children because there are no schools for them. others must uproot their families and relocate to different provinces just to access special-needs schools. it is a travesty how children with special needs are being treated in this country. there are no more than 5003 special-needs schools in the entire country. no one is planning for children with special needs. it is as if there are no women in this country giving birth to children with special needs. these children are treated as “by the way” and as if they are being done a favour by being provided with an education, even though it is their constitutional right. human rights watch (2019) published a critical report in collaboration with the south african human rights commission called “complicit in exclusion” about the government’s failure to provide disabled children with education and it raised among others the following points: • south africa has not delivered on its promises to guarantee inclusive education for children with disabilities and to ensure that they have adequate skills for employment. • an estimated 600 000 children with disabilities remain out of school in south africa (cf. yates, 2020). watt (2015) quotes the above human rights watch report that puts the number of excluded children with disabilities at 500 000. watt also refers to eight sets of government statistics in this regard between 2010 and 2015 and points out that the number of such children differs from 597 953 to 30 000 in the above sets of statistics. • education officials, doctors and social workers tend to refer many children to special schools automatically, disregarding the government’s policy to ensure that learners enrol in mainstream schools. the world health organization (who) states that persons, including learners, with disabilities will be “impacted more significantly” by the pandemic (who, 2020:1). there may be additional barriers to people with disabilities in implementing social distancing, underlying health conditions may put them at greater risk of developing more severe cases of covid-19 if they become infected or they may be disproportionately impacted because of serious disruptions to the services they rely on (who, 2020:2). the who also points out that this impact can only be mitigated if “appropriate actions and protective measures are taken by key stakeholders” (who, 2020:1). schools are enjoined to “ensure continued education for students with [disabilities] who may be required to study from home for longer periods” (who, 2020:6). south africa cannot afford to lose more learners living with disabilities because it does not handle the pandemic through appropriate measures and activities that will ensure continued education for these learners. 3 this differs markedly from the figure presented by yates (2020) and emphasises the lack of trustworthy statistics. 1252021 39(1): 125-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.8 beckmann & reyneke covid-19 challenges to access to education 1.2 interventions by the department of basic education after the closing of schools and hostels during the covid-19 lockdown, parents and other caregivers have been responsible for continuing the education of learners living with severe disabilities. many of these parents and caregivers were ill-equipped to provide suitable care and education for these children and often suffered from overload and stress (duraku & nagavci, 2020). schools and non-governmental organisations (ngos) thus had to find ways to empower parents and caregivers to continue with the education of the learners during lockdown. unfortunately, not all schools, parents and caregivers stepped up to ensure that learners living with severe disabilities did not regress while at home. furthermore, not all had access to technology to benefit from the information and services provided by schools and ngos (courtnenay & perera, 2020: 231; inclusion europe, 2020). they did not have access to the teaching and learning materials contemplated by the who (2020) and the dbe (2020b). with the closing of the schools, the learners’ well-known routines were interrupted for an extended period and caused re-adjustment problems when the schools re-opened (nelson, 2020; inclusion europe, 2020). changes tend to increase these learners’ levels of anxiety and contribute to behavioural challenges and even mental health conditions. this was exacerbated by the new health protocols. these learners do not always understand the reasons for the new regulations. this created challenges for caregivers and educators who needed to protect themselves and the learners from possible infection. many learners do not want to wear their masks and fail to maintain social distancing. some salivate excessively and create health risks for others (courtnenay & perera, 2020: 231; dbe, 2020b; inclusion europe, 2020). the department of basic education sensitises schools to these challenges in the draft guidelines for schools for the learners with intellectual disabilities (dbe 2020a; see also dbe 2020f). in terms of these guidelines, the risk level of every child should be determined to determine appropriate measures to keep learners and other stakeholders safe. schools are given protocols to observe regarding children that: • frequently put their hands or other objects into their mouths; • have language impairments that inhibit proper isolation; • have significant difficulty to maintain distance from others; or • who are unable to wear a mask or face shield. and are considered high-risk learners. guidelines and protocols are also provided for lower risk learners. in addition to the standard protocols and the provision of personal protective equipment, the guidelines propose the provision of perspex or other barriers on tables in classrooms and therapy areas. new routines should be established as soon as possible, and children should not be pushed excessively to master the curriculum (dbe 2020a). 1.3 principals’ leading role to obviate the risk of delictual claims principals lead the responses to these new challenges (see s16[3] of the south african schools act 84 of 1996, republic of south africa, 1996c) and must ensure that the school and department are not exposed to delictual claims due to covid-19-related harm. they must therefore ensure that all necessary steps are taken to ensure that civil claims will not be instituted for damages suffered by educators, learners or their relatives due to negligence 1262021 39(1): 126-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.8 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) on the part of the school in the process of managing covid-19. such claims can arise when someone causes reasonably foreseeable harm or loss to another person through his or her negligent behaviour or omission of an action that needed to be done. such a person could be found liable for delictual damages and be forced to compensate the person who has suffered harm or damage through his or her negligence or omission. furthermore, the competing human rights of the different stakeholders should be managed in such a way that management decisions are not open to human rights violation challenges. 1.4 research-related comments relating to this article we approached the problem of providing education to learners with severe mental disabilities during the pandemic while adhering to the guidelines of the department of basic education (2020a) from an education law angle. incidents at schools suggested that the guidelines also posed their own challenges for educators and other stakeholders. as an education law paper deals with established and documented law, there was no need for empirical research. we relied on textual and discourse analyses of documents such as legislation and judgements from the higher courts, policies and reports to obtain data to help us answer our research question. our work centred on the question of whether the covid-19 measures enforced on schools for special needs education could perhaps worsen the already invidious position of learners with disabilities and endanger their right to education. we also had to explore ways of dealing with problems caused by the covid-19 measures in schools catering for these children. this article may therefore be viewed as a discourse analysis and a position paper on possible solutions to a practical problem. we used the right to education and the right to access to education of learners with severe mental disabilities as our theoretical framework. we collected data that we could apply to the problem through the analysis of various documents that could lead us to suggesting legally acceptable ways of dealing with the problem. in this paper, the legal provisions applicable to learners living with severe disabilities are discussed with reference to constitutional imperatives, national legislation, regulations, directives and guidelines provided by the department of basic education (dbe, 2020a, 2020b, 2020c, 2020d, 2020e, 2020f). the role of the principal as a leader of a community of stakeholders to ensure the realisation of learners living with severe disabilities’ right to education is the foremost focus of this contribution. after examining the various features of the problems that cropped up and their legal ramifications, we considered four possible ways of alleviating stakeholders’ dilemmas in handling the problems. we briefly refer to four possibilities of dealing with the challenges. these possibilities all have legal corollaries that will need to be researched thoroughly before they can be presented as firm recommendations for dealing with the challenges. therefore, this article consists mainly of an analysis of the various legal provisions applicable to the problem and we hope to be able to draft another paper focusing on the possible solutions soon. in the paragraphs below we discuss the problems examined through an education law lens. 1272021 39(1): 127-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.8 beckmann & reyneke covid-19 challenges to access to education 2. educational and other competing rights of learners living with severe disabilities managing the competing rights of learners living with severe disabilities with the rights of other learners, other disabled learners and the rights of educators requires exceptional wisdom and appropriate management skills. without such wisdom and skills, the abovementioned challenges that learners living with severe disabilities face during the covid-19 pandemic and the severe consequences that the contraction of the virus pose to all vulnerable stakeholders in education could prove insoluble. 2.1 role of the principal section 16(3) of the schools act (rsa, 1996c) provides that the principal of the school is responsible for the professional management of a public school under the authority of the head of department. principals must ensure that learners attain the minimum prescribed curriculum outcomes and that assessments are done in accordance with the ministerial prescriptions. it is important to note that the principal should ensure the safety of everyone. most of the decisions taken by a principal constitute administrative action and should therefore comply with the provisions of the promotion of administrative justice act (rsa, 1996b). this act prescribes the legal principles to which any organ of state – in this instance the principal – should adhere to when decisions are made. all decisions must be rational and reasonable. decision-makers should be able to justify their decisions considering the constitutional and other legal imperatives. when decisions do not comply with the reasonable and rational standards set by the act, those who are affected by the decisions can approach the courts to review those decisions and have them set aside. most of the decisions made by the principal will impact on learners’ right to a basic education and this right will therefore be discussed in what follows below. 2.2 right to exemption from a basic education everyone has the right to a basic education in terms of section 29(1)(a) of the constitution of the republic of south africa (rsa, 1996a) (constitution). consequently, the south african schools act (rsa, 1996c) (sasa) obliges parents to ensure that their children of compulsory school-going age attend school, failing which could result in legal consequences for parents who could then possibly be regarded as being guilty of an offence. however, parents or other caregivers can also apply for exemptions from this duty. the head of department (hod) can consequently discharge a learner living with a severe disability from the obligation to attend school. learners can be entirely, partially or conditionally exempted from compulsory school attendance. this opens the door to the possibility of home schooling a learner or to make other appropriate arrangements for the education of learners. 2.3 what does the right to a basic education mean? the state’s obligation to provide a basic education to all is emphasised in governing body of the juma masjid primary school and others v essay no and others (centre for child law and another as amici curiae) (2011). the court held that the right to a basic education is an immediately realisable right, only subject to the provisions of the limitation provisions of section 36 of the constitution (1996a). 1282021 39(1): 128-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.8 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) education should be provided to all without any discrimination. in the western cape forum for intellectual disability (western cape case) the court held that the there is no justification for withholding government funding for learners living with severe disabilities and that the western cape department of education not only unlawfully discriminated against learners living with severe disabilities, but also infringed upon their rights to dignity, a basic education and not to be neglected and degraded. one of the aims of education is to develop the full potential of every child (uncrc, 2001). even though the educational potential of learners living with severe disabilities is severely constrained, every effort should still be made to develop their full potential. learners living with severe disabilities are therefore not only compelled to attend school, but they are also entitled to education, which right can only be limited under strict conditions. case law refined the right to a basic education and highlighted several dimensions such as the fact that the right to education presupposes the provision of textbooks for each learner (minister of basic education and others v basic education for all and others [2016]), transport to school (tripartite steering committee and another v minister of basic education and others [2015]), proper infrastructure (equal education and another v minister of basic education and others [2019]) and sanitation facilities (komape and others v minister of basic education and another [2020]). thus, when the educational needs of learners living with severe disabilities are considered during the covid-19 pandemic, one should keep in mind that they must have appropriate access to the school (if that is in the best interests of the child), learning material and special education equipment, therapeutic services and nutrition as is evident from recent case law. the principal with his or her management team is primarily responsible for managing all these dimensions of the right to a basic education. another dimension of this right was developed by the gauteng high court when it found in equal education and others v minister of basic education and another (2020) (equal education 2020 case) that proper nutrition is not only essential to ensure that children develop properly and stay healthy, but it is also an integral part of the realisation of the right to a basic education. during lockdown, the national school nutrition programme (nsnp)4 was not operational and jeopardised the food security of more than nine million learners who are dependent on this programme. when the schools re-opened, the nsnp was only available to the learners who were phased in. eventually, litigation ensured the reinstatement of the programme. the court found that the nsnp is a life-saving programme that improves learners’ ability to learn among other things. the court also highlighted the fact that: schools are thus the critical points of contact for reaching vulnerable children with no other state service that can connect with children on such scale and with such regularity. the court therefore found that suspending the nsnp constituted a violation of children’s right to education as well as the right to nutrition. the minister was ordered to submit plans to the court to ensure the reinstatement of the nsnp to all learners, irrespective of whether they attend school on a particular day or not. the court also emphasised that the minister and members of the executive committees (mecs) may not infringe on the pre-existing right to basic nutrition. any deliberate retrogressive measures should therefore be justified with reference to the provisions of the limitation clause of the constitution and duly considering 4 from 1994 to 2004 the programme was managed by the department of health. in 2004 it was transferred to the department of education. https://www.education.-gov.za/portals/0/documents/publications-/nsnp%20 -documents/3.%20nsnp%20infographic.-pdf?-ver=2018-11-09-083251-300 [accessed 24 january 2021) https://www.education.-gov.za/portals/0/documents/publications-/nsnp%20-documents/3.%20nsnp%20infographic.-pdf?-ver=2018-11-09-083251-300 https://www.education.-gov.za/portals/0/documents/publications-/nsnp%20-documents/3.%20nsnp%20infographic.-pdf?-ver=2018-11-09-083251-300 1292021 39(1): 129-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.8 beckmann & reyneke covid-19 challenges to access to education the provisions of the measures included in the united nations covenant on social, economic and cultural rights (un, 1966) pertaining to the “full use of the maximum available resources”. principals are thus obliged to consider the nutritional and medical needs of learners living with severe disabilities in addition to their educational needs when they manage the consequences of the pandemic (equal education 2020 case). this holds true even if it does not seem to be in the best interests of the learners to attend school. although parents are primarily responsible for the care of children, the state is obliged to provide acceptable alternative care in the absence of parental or family care. the principal and educators are therefore responsible for ensuring appropriate care for learners while they are at school, in line with the in loco parentis principle. the state has an active duty to provide for the other socio-economic rights of children (e.g. healthcare) when parents are unable to provide access to such rights. special schools and full-service schools have access to several professionals such as physiotherapists, occupational therapists, nurses, social workers and psychologists. they thus provide an important service to ensure that the learners living with severe disabilities receive healthcare services while they attend school. it can be argued that the same principles applicable to the provision of nutrition are applicable to the provision of healthcare services for learners living with severe disabilities. managing the education of learners obviously has financial consequences that should be considered. it is evident from the western cape case that the lack of adequate resources requires the state to distribute the available resources equitably, and if needs be, to reallocate the available resources to address the educational needs of all learners. available resources thus need to be reviewed considering the impact of covid-19 on the realisation of every learner’s right to a basic education. the ultimate test for decisions made regarding the education of learners living with severe disabilities is whether the decisions comply with the imperative in section 28(2) of the constitution (rsa, 1996a) that the best interests of the child are of paramount importance in every matter that concerns the child. determining the best interests of the child is notoriously difficult to do and is intensified when the interests of different children5 should be balanced or considered. the constitutional court held in centre for child law v minister for justice and constitutional development and others (2020) that an individualised approach should be followed, stating that “children’s rights do not apply indifferently to children by category. a child’s interests are not capable of legislative determination by group” (own emphasis added). any regulatory framework should therefore make provision for an investigation that will lead to an individualised response to the needs and interests of each learner living with severe disabilities to optimise their respective best interests. this does not imply that the best interests of the child will trump all other rights, but it does mean that the best interests of the child should be considered explicitly at some point in the decision-making process. it also means that, when any decision affects the best interests of the child negatively, measures should be put in place to mitigate the impact of such decisions. decision-makers should ensure that everyone goes the extra mile to optimise the best interests of the child (s v m [2007]). 5 those with specific categories of disabilities and those without disabilities. 1302021 39(1): 130-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.8 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) the covid-19 directions published in terms of the regulations made under the disaster management act (rsa, 2000a) rightly allow parents to apply for permission to exempt learners entirely, partially or conditionally from compulsory school attendance (dbe, 2020b). parents are, however, obliged to make reasonable efforts to facilitate learners’ education in accordance with the learning material provided by the school. the principal, acting on behalf of the hod, should facilitate the process to make learning material available to the learner and to enable the learner to access psychosocial support services when necessary (dbe, 2020c). the directions issued by the minister of basic education (dbe, 2020d; 2020e) are aligned with the best-interests-of-the-child imperatives in providing that the hod should not only ensure reasonable availability and distribution of appropriate teaching and learning materials, but should also provide for the lending of devices aiding learners for use at home. they should also provide or make access available to therapeutic services to learners learning at home. a different question arises about what the responsibilities of the principal are when parents send learners living with severe disabilities to school during the pandemic and their conduct creates a danger to themselves, the other learners, educators and caregivers at school. how should the competing interests of the different stakeholders be balanced and what would constitute the best possible response to the challenges posed in each case? in moko v acting principal of malusi secondary school and others (2020), the constitutional court reiterated that the right to education is “a right which, due to its transformative nature both for individuals and society as a whole, is of fundamental importance in this country”. as an organ of state, the principal must act on behalf of the state and ensure that there are no infringements of the rights of learners and that the rights of learners are promoted and fulfilled. the court refers to the position of the department of basic education and emphasises that the principals are the “key delivery agents in [the] education system” and therefore are “the most important partners in education”. the principal is therefore ultimately responsible to ensure that the right to education of learners living with severe disabilities are not only protected but also promoted and fulfilled. the court also stresses that access to a school is a “necessary condition for the achievement of the right to education”. however, considering the risks that the pandemic poses, attending school might not be in the best interests of all learners with severe disabilities, and other measures might be required to protect and promote these learners’ right to a basic education. it is evident from the legal principles discussed above that the addition of covid-19 to the mixture of considerations influencing decisions taken and action steps implemented makes decision making and management of educational institutions and caring for learners infinitely more complex and difficult. the pandemic also exposes educators to more forms of legal action against them. the next section will briefly touch on possible responses from schools to the complications of their tasks brought about by covid-19. as has been said above, we cannot deal with the four suggestions that we are going to make in detail now as the legal upshots of the proposals still need to be investigated before submitting them to the educational and academic communities for consideration. 1312021 39(1): 131-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.8 beckmann & reyneke covid-19 challenges to access to education 3. possible responses to the challenge 3.1 introduction: the nature of schools schools are places where the educational rights and duties of stakeholders converge and where problems about these rights and duties can originate and lead to disputes. damage and harm, including intentional and negligent acts that might lead to delictual liability or compensation for damages caused, may also occur (rossouw, rossouw & lancaster, 2012). as head of the school, the principal is the person mainly responsible for managing differences and disputes and reporting to the provincial hod (rsa 1996 s16a; dbe, 2015; dbe, 2016). the presence of learners living with severe disabilities in conflicts over rights significantly complicates the handling of already sensitive and difficult differences of opinion where the interests of the parties must be weighed in the “light of the public interest” and where the “net of unlawfulness may now be cast wider”, because section 7(2) of the constitution (rsa 1996c) places “constitutional obligations on the state to respect, protect, promote and fulfil the rights in the bill of rights” (neethling, potgieter & scott, 2007, 26–27). 3.2 constructive stakeholder engagement after the advent of democracy in 1994, south africans soon got used to the expression: “there is a problem; let us sit down and discuss it”. unfortunately, south africans also got used to meetings that led to nothing productive. these types of meetings were just held for the sake of holding meetings and were not “constructive stakeholder engagements”. principals and other stakeholders who want to do justice to the competing rights and interests of learners will have to apply the principles of meaningful engagement to facilitate difficult processes to negotiate outcomes that balance the competing rights. this should be done with due regard not only to the rights but also to the obligations of all the stakeholders and considering the lawful limitation of rights, where appropriate. the need for constructive stakeholder engagement springs from the need to find a carefully considered limitation and/or legally acceptable balancing of the rights of all stakeholders in these schools without having to approach the courts. turning a blind eye to problems or not acting is not an option and could open the principal to accusations of negligence that could lead to delictual liability for which the state might accept vicarious liability, and that might also have monetary and other implications for principals (treasury, 2005). the principal or someone instructed by him/her needs to convene a meeting by timeous written or oral notice setting out the agenda. this person should also act as chairperson or facilitator of the discussions. because there is a possibility of a violation of someone’s rights, whoever facilitates the meeting must see to it that the engagement adheres to the rules of natural justice and the rules of just administrative action, which refer to lawfulness, reasonableness and procedural fairness as set out in section 33 of the constitution (rsa, 1996b; see also rsa, 2000b). such stakeholder engagement does not equate to a hearing in a court of law and is at best a quasi-judicial event. in this regard, see the constitutional court cases occupiers of 51 olivia road, berea township, and 197 main street, johannesburg v city of johannesburg and others (2008) (occupiers case) and residents of joe slovo community, western cape v thubelisha homes and others (2010) (slovo case).6 6 in this section of the paper references are examples of sources that may be consulted to trace the relevant legal principles. the references are by no means exhaustive and may be adjusted after thorough research. 1322021 39(1): 132-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.8 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) baxter (1987: 608) and gupta (2019: slide 9) both refer to two basic legal principles underpinning the principles of natural justice with which such engagements must comply, namely audi alteram partem (one should hear the other side) and nemo iudex in causa sua (no one should be a judge in his own cause, but be impartial) (see the occupiers case). among the other legal principles that govern such engagements are the following, which will not be discussed in detail here pending required research: 1. participants must look at the problem objectively and must not be biased (see the slovo case). 2. the rights and duties of all stakeholders must be considered and balanced with one another (see the slovo case). 3. a decision must be taken on a consensus or sufficient consensus basis; the best interests of the learners living with severe disabilities being the main focus of the deliberations together with the aim to obtain a fair determination of a dispute (gupta, 2019: slide 7). participants in the meeting will be bound by such a decision. 4. a wrongful decision can expose stakeholders to a charge of delictual liability (see rossouw et al., 2012 who provide a succinct and clear exposition of what delictual liability entails). 5. participants must be convinced that, on a balance or probabilities, the decision they are going to take is the best one under the circumstances. 6. the process of meaningful engagement does not require the parties to agree on every issue. after engaging with all the parties, a decision must be made on the way forward (see the slovo case). 7. decisions reached after all the above practical steps have been carried out and the relevant legal principles heeded will have legal power and are implementable. however, when one or more parties are aggrieved by the decision of the person implementing the decision, they can approach a competent court to review the decision of the principal (rsa 2000b). what is set out above is not the only way of dealing with the problem. the professional discretion of the principal could be considered as a practical solution to break deadlocks and serve the child’s best interests well. 3.3 principals’ professional discretion regarding learners living with severe disabilities there is a misconception that principals only have authority delegated to them by parents and education officials. that assumption is simply not true. they can take autonomous decisions that may affect learners and parents’ rights without obtaining an order or permission from someone in authority (see van der merwe and olivier, 1976: 109, cited in beckmann, 1985: 172 et seq.). such autonomous decisions require principals to act in good faith with the best interests of the child and the welfare and maintenance of the institution at heart (also see smit, 2013 and beyers, 2020). the discretion does not mean that principals can take away the educational rights of a child, but they may understand the circumstances in which it is better that the child does not attend school for a specific time. we believe it would be beneficial to all if education officials are reminded of the doctrine of professional discretion and its application to the access to education of learners living with severe disabilities. 1332021 39(1): 133-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.8 beckmann & reyneke covid-19 challenges to access to education the application of the professional discretion doctrine is further supported by the bestinterests-of-the-child imperatives that require an individualised approached to optimise the best interests of every child (s v m). the covid-19 regulations further support the possibility to negotiate measures to continue with the education of learners from, for instance, home, by explicitly affording the principal discretion to lend devices to learners and arrange therapeutic services for learners (see jacobs v chairman, governing body, rhodes high school and others). 3.4 possible government suspension or limiting of the right to education of learners living with severe disabilities it is a legal dictum that most if not all rights can be limited provided that the relevant legal provisions are applied. section 36(1) of the constitution (rsa, 1996b) deals with the limitation of rights. in addition to complying with section 36, the government must remember that section 37 of the constitution provides that, even in states of emergency, some of the rights (including the right to a basic education) in the bill of rights are non-derogable and cannot be taken away or compromised under normal circumstances. an analysis of section 36 shows that limiting any right in the bill of rights is not a simple and easy process and that a limitation needs to meet stringent requirements for it to be legal. the national education policy act (rsa, 1996c) provides the minister of basic education with the right to determine national education policy that may include a limitation of a national policy (section 3). limiting a right in the bill of rights is a drawn-out, difficult process considering the importance of fundamental rights. the essence of all the restrictions on the limitation is the desire to protect the rights and best interests of all learners, including learners living with severe disabilities. limiting of rights is temporary and the right will be restored at an appropriate time. the constitution does not guarantee the right to face-to-face education in public schools. other modes of education are acceptable (see the draft general comment 25 of the united nations committee on the rights of the child [uncrc, 2020] and the use of technology in education). 3.5 parents deciding to keep their children at home in terms of the draft guidelines for schools for the learners with intellectual disabilities (dbe, 2020a) parents who are concerned about their children returning to school in the context of covid-19, may keep them at home (see par 8.1.3 of the guidelines). 4. conclusion beckmann and prinsloo (2013) point out that “going to law” (the courts) is the last option for resolving a conflict or dispute as only the courts can settle disputes authoritatively. it is merely an option when a dispute arises and only one way of achieving the purposes of the education system. they quote partington (1984), who can be regarded as the father of english education law, who reminds us that the law speaks only when spoken to. disputes can be resolved amicably before approaching the courts. disputes are almost unavoidable in schools. there are two ways of solving them: through the courts and outside the courts. the court should not be the preferred option, as going to court can create even more anxiety in learners living with severe disabilities, their parents 1342021 39(1): 134-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.8 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) or guardians as well as the educators involved, and is likely to have serious negative repercussions for these children. the most important thing about covid-19 and learners living with severe disabilities is probably that everything possible should be done to ensure that the right to education of these learners is not compromised and that the learners receive all the assistance they need. this can be a reality if principals engage meaningfully with all stakeholders to balance competing rights. the success of engagement processes will be increased when principals realise the inherent powers they possess in terms of the in loco parentis principle and by guiding stakeholders towards focusing on the best interests of learners living with severe disabilities. our analysis of the relevant documents suggests that we can safely say that the law, as it applies to this topic, makes it possible for schools to protect the educational rights of learners living with disabilities and having to deal with covid-19. references baxter, l.g. 1979. fairness and natural justice in english and south african law. south african law journal, 96: 607–639. beckmann, j.l. 1985. ’n triadies-hermeneutiese analise van pedagogies-verantwoorde samewerking tussen ouer, onderwyser en kind [a triadic-hermeneutic analysis of pedagogically accountable cooperation between parent, teacher and child]. unpublished phd thesis. pretoria: university of pretoria. beckmann, j. & prinsloo, j. 2013. selected aspects of school law. lecture series at vaal reefs technical high school, 1 june 2013. beyers, r. 2020. professional discretion of educators in preventing negligence. unpublished med dissertation. pretoria: university of pretoria. courtenay, k. & perera, b. 2020. covid-19 and people with intellectual disability: impacts of a pandemic. irish journal of psychological medicine, 37: 231–236. https://doi.org/10.1017/ ipm.2020.45 department of basic education (dbe). 2015. policy on the south african standard for principalship. enhancing the professional image and competencies of school principals. pretoria: government printers. department of basic education (dbe). 2016. revised personnel administrative measures (pam). pretoria: government printers. department of 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secondary school and others [2020] zacc 30. occupiers of 51 olivia road, berea township, and 197 main street, johannesburg v city of johannesburg and others 2008 (3) sa 208 (cc). residents of joe slovo community, western cape v thubelisha homes and others 2010 (3) sa 454 (cc). s v m 2007 (2) sac 539 (cc). shidiak v union government (minister of the interior) 1912 ad 642. tripartite steering committee and another v minister of basic education and others 2015 (5) sa 107 (ecg). van biljon v crawford unreported case 475/2007 (ec). western cape forum for intellectual disability v government of the republic of south africa and the government of the province of the western cape 2011 (5) sa 87 (wcc). _hlk53827983 _hlk55727859 document1zzsdunumber10 _hlk62379010 _hlk517095970 _goback _hlk60947733 “we cross night”: some reflections on the role of the eskom expo for young scientists as a means of accommodating disadvantaged learners into the field of science and technology dr. busisiwe p. alant school of science, mathematics and technology education faculty of education university of kwazulu-natal p/bag x 03 ashwood 3605 tel: +27 31 260 7606 fax: +27 31 260 3697 email:alantb@ukzn.ac.za this article critiques the role of the eskom expo for young scientists as a particularly salient node in the constitution of young learners’ identity as prospective participants in the field of science and technology. the eskom expo is seen as a particularly exciting means of providing access to the niche area of science and technology. yet this attraction camouflages a number of pitfalls that learners have to negotiate. looked at as a vehicle of accommodation of the scientific and technological aspirations of the young people involved in this research, the eskom expo reveals itself to be problematic in various ways. positioning itself within a postcritical ethnographic framework, this article considers these issues at two levels: a) the disjuncture between the bureaucratic institution of the expositions and the intuitiveness and spontaneity evident in the learners’ preparation for the exposition; b) issues of language and representation that tend to marginalise learners from working class backgrounds. it is argued that the institution of the eskom expo, while undoubtedly useful as a means of opening up young learners’ horizons of science and technology, is still not sufficiently flexible, both at a conceptual and an organisational level, for it to be the vehicle of technological empowerment it is intended to be. introduction – theoretical and methodological framework as a science and technology educator and researcher interested in the experiences of young people who continue to learn science and technology in various relatively deprived contexts (see vithal & alant, 2005), i align myself with research that is concerned with unearthing the inequities in science and technology education. i concur with barton (2001, 899) who works in “high poverty areas” in the us, when she argues that the foundation for making sense of science and technology education lies in situating one’s work within a critical and a political framework. this position derives from the belief that science and technology educators can play a role in contributing towards community empowerment, social action, democracy and social justice (lee & roth, 2003). the above concerns all justify the adoption of a conceptual and methodological framework such as critical ethnography. as pignatelli (1998, 403) points out, “critical ethnography regards research as action taken in the interests of those who are rendered marginal by the dominant culture and often relies upon narrative knowledge as a way to speak to issues of power and equity”. this remark brings into focus the question of voice. i deliberately evoke the notion of “voice as portraiture” (chapman, 2005) and adopt a “voice with positionality” for the construction of the narratives that are used in exploring the hegemonic practices of the eskom expo for young scientists. as madison (2005, 14) reminds us, “positionality is perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 20102 vital because it forces us to acknowledge our own power, privilege, and biases just as we are denouncing the power structures that surround our subjects”. the question of positionality is crucial, as it places the research within what has been referred to as a post critical ethnography. by taking an activist stance in advancing the “politics of positionality” (madison, 2005, 7), this article aligns itself with postcritical ethnographies rather than classic or conventional (also referred to as traditional) ethnographies. the following reasons can be advanced. firstly, the subject matter of this article, namely the position of individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds taking part in institutional, corporately sponsored competitions, is fundamentally political. secondly, although i acknowledge critical ethnography’s “transformative research practice” (hytten, 2004), i concede noblit’s (2004) point regarding the “paradigmatic conflict” inherent in critical ethnography’s historical origins. as he puts it “critical theory in some ways is the ultimate product of modernity, and ethnography is the ultimate product of colonialism” (noblit, 2004, 193). critical ethnography regards research as action taken in the interests of those who are rendered marginal by the dominant culture and often relies upon narrative knowledge as a way to speak to issues of power and equity. this use of narrative will therefore be apparent in the “voiced” narration of the individual whose experiences are reflected in this article. in a narrative analysis the researcher examines data and reports results by constructing one or more stories that are held together by common themes or plots: a narrative is a “discourse form in which events and happenings are configured into a temporal unity by means of a plot” (polkinghorne, 1995). background1 the centre for development and enterprise (cde) report (2004) indicates that despite the energetic effort and commitment that the government has put into initiatives, whether it is in policy or in private sector supported programmes, to improve science and mathematics education in south africa, little has been achieved. achievement is measured in terms of the number of learners that enroll for mathematics at higher grade level as well as the number of candidates that matriculate with higher grade mathematics. measured by this criterion, south african learners, in particular african learners, are still lagging behind. indeed, the failure to improve mathematics and science education is seen as the most significant obstacle to african advancement in south africa. against this background, the cde report recommends, amongst other things, that we need to ensure that no child with potential and aptitude in mathematics and science should be denied opportunity. furthermore, the report makes an appeal to the private sector, nongovernmental organisations (ngos) and international donors to review their support to initiatives that support the development of science and mathematics education in the country. this should be done so as to align initiatives with what the report singles out as “the country’s top educational priority at the start of the 21st century”. this article highlights the role of science and technology expositions as potential contributors to a nation-wide strategic intervention in science and mathematics education, focusing mainly on the eskom expo for young scientists. this emphasis can be justified on the basis of eskom’s particularly privileged relationship with government initiatives in the advancement of mathematics and science. the department of science and technology entered into a three-year agreement with the eskom expo for young scientists to use the expositions “to unearth the science talent and potential of particularly learners from disadvantaged schools” (mangena, 2005). this agreement had as one of its primary concerns the need to increase the number of african disadvantaged learners reaching the finals of the exposition. this article draws on the experiences of a learner, sibusiso nene2, from the hammarsdale area, some 40 km west of durban in kwazulu-natal. these experiences have been documented through a combination of data sources, established by myself, the learner, and, on occasion, by individuals (in 1 the government policies and documents dealt with in this article, as well as all eskom material and websites, refer to the period prior to 2006. 2 this article is dedicated to the memory of sibusiso nene who passed away on 30 january 2009. alant — “we cross night” 3 particular journalists) who interacted with him. importantly, the data also includes references to other learners, all from the hammarsdale area, who over a period of time, came to participate in the eskom expos alongside sibusiso nene. in a sense, then, the significance of sibusiso nene lies in the fact that he spearheaded the participation of a group of learners in the eskom expos, acting as a role model for them. the data sources concerning sibusiso nene and the other learners include reflective diaries, press articles, video recordings, photographs and interviews. this varied research approach, deriving from a relational theoretical framework (bourdieu, 1991; callon, 1986; latour, 1993), allows for a reflexive exploration of the learners’ artefact-mediated activity (susi & ziemke, 2001; rambusch & ziemke, 2005). the institution of the eskom expo for young scientists, while undoubtedly useful as a means of opening up learners’ horizons of science and technology, proved not to be sufficiently flexible, both at a conceptual and an organisational level, to be the vehicle of scientific and technological empowerment it was intended to be especially from the point of view of the disadvantaged learner. the expo is seen as a particularly exciting means of providing access to the niche area of science and technology. yet this attraction camouflages a number of pitfalls that the learners have to negotiate. the learners are continually reinventing themselves, in the process not only “voicing”, but, crucially, also “silencing” their experiences. this has been particularly evident in the experiences of the learners this article refers to, and calls into question the assumed claim that expos are a vehicle for access into science and technology. in short, they exclude even as they claim to be inclusive. overview of the eskom expo for young scientists the eskom expo for young scientists is an exposition or science fair in which learners from around south africa submit their science and technology projects. the regional expositions start in july and end in the first week of september. the expo brands itself as the vehicle “through which the south african youth can demonstrate their inventiveness and innovation in the fields of science and technology”. it has categories for primary school learners and high school learners in grades 8-9 and 10-12. the approximately 25 categories, arranged by topic, cover a wide spectrum, ranging from engineering, physics and chemistry to medical sciences and health care, and also include eco-tourism and socio-psychological services. the gold medal winners of the 26-28 regional expos are invited to compete in the national finals, which are held in october at the university of pretoria. at the national competition, exhibitors are awarded gold, silver and bronze medals. out of 477 projects displayed at the 2005 expo, there were 187 bronze, 148 silver and 78 gold medals awarded. there were also awards made by special interest groups, as well as a number of prestigious awards. a handful of the eskom expo for young scientists finalists is selected to participate in science fairs overseas. in its 25th year, the organisers of the eskom expo, place strong emphasis on the need for the exhibits to reflect “useful technological processes and development”. the eskom expo clearly markets itself as a means of accommodating the technological aspirations of the learners who participate in it. in other words, it acts as a conduit through which the learners express their interest in science and technology. sibusiso nene and the other hammarsdale learners this article forms part of an ongoing national research foundation (nrf) – funded research project. the aim of the research is to explore how learners who have been identified as having a particular talent in science and technology through their own home-based projects. relate these activities to their experiences of science and technology at school and in the broader community. the research relates to the national plan, generally referred to in government and policy documents, to work towards a model for institutional capacity development at the various levels of the communities from which future young scientists and technologists should come. i met sibusiso nene in late 2003 through his mother, mrs doris nene, who, at the time, was working in the faculty of education (of the erstwhile university of durban-westville) as a cleaner. she had come to my office to raise funds for her son’s participation in the national eskom expo in pretoria. he had won a gold medal in the local kwazulu-natal expo, but didn’t have the necessary funds to be able to make the perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 20104 trip to pretoria. doris enthusiastically shared her son’s interest in technology with me. not being entirely convinced that the money was going to be used for the cause she said it was, i inquired if it would be possible for me to pay them a visit to see at first hand the models made by her son (see pictures below of my first encounter with sibusiso nene at his house in hammarsdale). picture 1: busisiwe alant and sibusiso nene, hammarsdale, november 2003. sibusiso enthusiastically demonstrates how his model truck works. picture 2: busisiwe alant and sibusiso nene, hammarsdale, november 2003. upon walking into the four-roomed house in hammarsdale, it was clearly evident how the eskom expo had invaded, not only this young boy’s life, but indeed that of his entire family. his bedroom, which he shared with some of his siblings, was adorned with components of both finished and unfinished projects, as well as newspapers clippings and articles that covered a trip he had made to grenoble in france in july 2001 in recognition of his achievements in the 2000 eskom expo. the “cramped” lounge was full of certificates and medals he had won in past expos. sibusiso’s recollection of our first meeting was captured as follows by a local newspaper journalist: i: how did you meet sis busi? sbu: through my mother, my mother told her about my projects. sis busi wanted to come and [see] what i was doing. she and her husband drove all the way to come to hammarsdale. i showed her the project that i entered at the eskom expo in 2003 the car trapper. she really liked the project and asked me to bring the project to the university to show her colleagues. during my initial association with sibusiso nene, i was introduced to several of his peer acquaintances who had a similar inclination for the design and construction of working models of various types. within this loose, but growing formation of “technologically promising young people”, my own role gradually became that of a sister, warder, confidante, facilitator, participant-observer and action researcher. thus drawn into the action network of these learners (latour, 1992; callon, 1993), i began to facilitate their participation, not only in various expos at both provincial and national level (sappi, ffs and eskom expositions for young scientists), but also at exhibitions, for example at the natural science museum in durban. throughout all these activities, i shared in their anticipation and preparation for the events and in the ways the group experienced them. in fact, the title of this article, “we cross night”, derives from alant — “we cross night” 5 the expression the boys use amongst themselves to refer to their preparation for an exhibition, which in isizulu is “kuze kwasa sibheke ngawayizolo3”. the eskom expo has a local committee that organises each regional expo. if a school is interested in taking part, the local committee sends entry forms and relevant information to one of the teachers. each participant completes an entry form and pays the registration fee which is r80 per entrant. if entrants win in the regional expo, they proceed to the finals in pretoria. the trip costs roughly r750. as mentioned earlier, i met sibusiso’s mother when she was trying to raise this money for sibusiso’s forthcoming trip to pretoria. whereas most of the learners who participate in the eskom expo have a school workshop where the science teacher helps the learners with the conceptualisation and development of the project (with the full backup support of a well-resourced library), the learners from hammarsdale have no such luxury. whereas most learners participating in the eskom expo go to retail shops (game, toys r us, experi-lab) to look for components for their projects, the hammarsdale learners frequent the local scrap yards and workshops. mr zulu (owner of the workshop where the boys weld their models) as well as mr paul wartmann and mr grant mcgee (owners of cato scraps) are reflected upon by the learners with great fondness. it is here that the learners have honed the negotiation skills that are crucial to their projects. these skills that determine the type of material they are able to obtain, as well as the quantity. a further skill much in evidence lies in their creative use of space. as can be seen from the photographs of my first visit to hammarsdale, the “workshop” where sibusiso demonstrates the workings of his car-trapper model is simply an open space behind the house. it is here, “in the dirt” as it were, that most of the learners conceptualise / design, construct and appraise their models. dirt is creatively transformed into a workshop through the use of cardboard boxes that serve as workbenches. the important point to make is that all these practices the phrase “we cross night”, the bartering for components, the use of all kinds of makeshift tools and settings, right up to the press cuttings in the living room collectively make up ways of knowing, doing and behaving (roth, 2001, 2002; rambusch & ziemke, 2005) that constitute a certain culture (bourdieu, 1991) that has developed around the making of technological models. the two inclusionary/exclusionary institutional practices of the eskom expo a) categories of participation. the eskom expo for young scientists was established in 1980. an analysis of the hall of fame of the eskom expo special awards and international participation leaves one with many questions (see eskom expo website). for example, if one considers the meiring naude award for the period 19851995, one notices that only one black participant is included in the “hall of fame”, and then only as a partner in a collaborative project. for the period 1996-2005, there is again only one black participant. in other words, in a period of 20 years, only two black learners have managed to “earn their place”. significantly, these black learners come from former model c schools. in the 25 years of the eskom expo’s existence, i have counted approximately 35 categories of special awards and prestigious awards that have been recognized (excluding international participation). as shown below, black learners feature in no more than 12 of the 35 categories: category 1: meiring naude award – two black learners over a period of 20 years• category 6: eskom best rural project – all black learners• category 8: eskom best development project – all black learners• category 14: the royal aeronautical society of south africa – one black learner• 3 the closest english equivalent i can think of is “burning the midnight oil”. perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 20106 category 15: department of science and technology service community award – two black • learners category 16: jandri barnard award for environmental science – two black learners• category 22: – sa radiological protection society award two black learners• category 24: – grintek best development project in electronics – all black learners• category 25 – intel innovation in it prize -one black learner• category 27b: water institute of south africa 2• nd prize – all black learners (first prize awarded to white learners) category 30: royal society of chemistry – a few black learners; in general there are more black • learners in this category than in any other category category• 35 dst best female physics project – one black learner (new category, introduced in 2005) my concern with the focus on the different categories is with the conceptualisation of three categories, namely categories 6, 8 and 24. it is in these categories that sibusiso ene and the other hammarsdale learners have featured as recipients of special awards. two of these categories focus on development, whilst the third focuses on “rurality” (howley, 2001; odora-hoppers, 2004). yet the models produced by nene and the other members of the hammarsdale group can hardly be described as “rural”, nor is there anything particularly “developmental” about them. picture 3: sibusiso nene, showing his awards from the eskom expo finals in pretoria, hammarsdale, 2004. picture 4: sibusiso nene’s model of his 2010 stateof-the art soccer stadium, hammarsdale, 2004. alant — “we cross night” 7 picture 5: sbongiseni ndawonde with his models, a multifunction trolley and a snow remover, exhibited at the natural science museum, durban – 2004. picture 6: bonga mthalane with his model of the multifunction paver exhibited at the natural science museum, durban – 2004. their projects have been uniformly acknowledged and praised in the press, as well as in various other forums, for the way they engage with a highly industrialised, urban environment. for example, sibusiso nene’s state-of-the-art 2010 soccer stadium and sihle ngidi and bonga mthalane’s multifunctional paving machine not only saw them to the national finals in pretoria, but saw them commended by the local newspapers as young designers on the road to a brighter future and success. commenting on sibusiso nene’s design, the city of durban’s architect, sandy naicker, was quoted as saying: ‘this design is innovative, well thought out and exhibits an insight into mechanics. sibusiso has done his research. it is one thing to have an understanding of it and electronics, but sibusiso has a good understanding of structure’ (the mercury, 2004, 4). in the face of examples such as these, the inclusion of black participants in particular the hammarsdale group in a “rural” or, for that matter, “developmental” category, would seem to have little justification other than the fact that the learners concerned are black. as such, the rural and development categories amount to exclusion on the basis of an institutional practice. b) criteria of evaluation. “rituals are the limiting case of situations of imposition, in which through the exercise of a technical competence which may be very imperfect, a social competence is exercised namely, that of the legitimate speaker, authorised to speak and to speak with authority” (bourdieu, 1991, 41) a variation on how the eskom expo’s institutional practices come to exclude learners from disadvantaged backgrounds is seen in the system of adjudication of projects. in addition to the construction of the models, participants are expected to produce a poster, which forms the basis of an interview with the judges, during which learners are asked questions. needless to say, both the poster and the interview have to be in english, which is the only working language of the eskom expo (i am referring specifically to the kwazulu-natal and national expos). until today, the expo organisers do not seem to have given any consideration to the fact that an english-only policy by definition advantages first language speakers over second (and, indeed, foreign) language speakers. as will be seen below, this omission has crucial implications. perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 20108 the guidelines for poster presentation are based on the premise of conducting a scientific experiment. no clear guidelines are provided on the presentation of the technological models; participants either have to rely on previous experience, or, more likely, on the “cultural capital” (bourdieu, 1991) that comes from some kind of privileged access to the world of science and technology: for example, a parent who is an engineer. within the context of such ill-defined parameters, the hammarsdale learners have generally been able to merge their interpretation of the technological process involved in the construction of their models into their presentations. on the whole, this interpretation is the result of what can only be described as a “hands-on” / “minds-on” approach, which seen from the perspective of the outside observer fuses together a tacit knowledge of technological process with a series of practical “trouble-shooting” skills. some of the assessment criteria come to the fore in the comments of the judges: “neat poster presentation”, “confident presentation”, “nicely constructed model with a well intentioned design”, “present your project in a more scientific way and quote science laws applied”, “[the project] shows that you can think outside the box”. frequently, however, such positive comments are followed by secondary comments purporting to the need to improve on “presentation”. alas, there seems to be every likelihood that “presentation” in these cases is little more than a euphemism for “proficiency in english”. not only “proficiency in english”, but, indeed, a whole range of cultural “niceties” appropriate to a particular class (bourdieu, 1991). particular ways of knowing, doing and behaving (“thinking outside the box!”) have enabled the hammarsdale learners not only to make their models and to participate in the eskom expos, but through the recognition they receive in their communities as well as in the press to become role models. yet, these ways of knowing, doing and behaving count for little in the culture of the eskom expo for young scientists. conclusion this article has attempted to adhere to madison’s (2005) advice to consciously address my own positionality in the narration of the experiences of the learners involved in the research. i hope that through the use of my voice to explicate the hegemonic practices of the eskom expo, i have been able to engage in “reflexive ethnography” (davis 1999 in madison, 2005, 7). this “turning back” on ourselves relates to the way in which i had to locate and position my “own research”, my own forever-changing “position of authority”, and my “own moral responsibility relative to representation and interpretation” (madison, 2005, 7). it is hoped that this sharing of experiences of how the disadvantaged learners from hammarsdale insert themselves into the organisational structures of the eskom expo for young scientists and the challenges they encounter, will help to generate knowledge that can be provided to expos to help them understand and, perhaps, to transform any taken-for-granted assumptions regarding the categories of participation, evaluation and award. furthermore, as in the work of barton (2001, 899), it is hoped that this transformation would help in “generating new ways of understanding, valuing, and genuinely incorporating into” the eskom expo for young scientists practices the indigenous knowledge, “culture, language, beliefs, and experiences” that these learners from hammarsdale bring to the eskom expo. acknowledgements i wish to thank professor gilbert onwu (university of pretoria), professor sujata patel (university of hyderabad (india) and professor tina uys (university of johannesburg) as well as the anonymous critical reviewers for their comments on the article. i also wish to thank all the learners of the hammarsdale group for their willingness to take part in this research. support from the nrf thuthuka programme (women in research) is hereby gratefully acknowledged. alant — “we cross night” 9 references barton, a. c. 2001. science education in urban settings; seeking new ways of praxis through critical ethnography. journal of research in science teaching, 38, 899-917. bourdieu, p. 1991. language and symbolic power (translation from french by g. raymond and m. adamson). oxford, uk: polity press. callon, m. 1986. the sociology of an actor-network: the case of the electric vehicle. in mapping the dynamics of science and technology: sociology of science in the real world, callon, m., law, j. and rip, a. (eds). london, uk: macmillan. callon, m. 1993. variety and irreversibility in networks of technique conception and adoption. in technology and the wealth of nations: the dynamics of constructed advantage, foray, d. and freeman, c. (eds). london, uk: pinter publishers. chapman , t. k. 2005. expressions of ‘voice’ in portraiture. qualitative inquiry, 11, 27-51. eskom expo for young scientists [online] available url: http://www.exposcience.co.za. goldstone, c. 2004. mayor praises young designer. the mercury. august, 19, 4. from laggard to world class: reforming maths and science education in south africa’s schools. 2004. [online] available url: www.scienceinafrica.co.za/2004/november/scienceed htm howley, cb. 2001. understanding the circumstances of rural schooling: the parameters of respectful research. paper presented at an appalachian rural systemic initiative (arsi) conference on understanding achievement in science and mathematics in rural schools settings in lexington, kentucky. hytten, k. 2004. postcritical ethnography: research as a pedagogical encounter. in g. w. noblit, s. y. flores, & e. g. murillo (eds.), postcritical ethnography: reinscribing critique. crosskill, nj: hampton. latour, b. 1992. the sociology of a few mundane artifacts. in shaping technology / building society studies in sociotechnological change, bijker, w. and law, j. (eds). cambridge, ma: mit. latour, b. 1993. we have never been modern (translation from french by c. porter). new york, london: harvester wheatsheaf. lee, s. and roth, w-m. 2003. re-mapping the landscape: science educators within a community action network. perspectives in education, 2(12), 15-30. madison, d. s. 2005. critical ethnography: methods, ethics and performance. thousand oaks, ca: sage. mangena, m. 2005. address by the minister of science and technology, at the official launch of phase two of the vuwani science centre at vuwani, limpopo province, 10/09/2005. noblit, g. w. 2004. reinscribing critique in educational ethnography: critical and postcritical ethnography. in foundations for research: methods of inquiry in education and the social science, demarrais, k. and lapan, s.d. (eds). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum. odora-hoppers, c. 2004. the cause, the object, the citizen: rural school learners in the void of intersecting policies and traditions of thought. quarterly review of education and training in south africa, 1(3), 17-26. polkinghorne, d. e. 1995. narrative configuration in qualitative analysis. qualitative studies in education, 8(1), 5-23. rambusch, j. and ziemke, t. (2005). the role of embodiment in situated learning. [online]. available at url: http://www.cogsci.rpi.edu/csjarchive/proceedings/2005/docs/p1803.pdf. roth, w-m 2001. gestures: their role in teaching and learning. review of educational research, 71 (3), 365–392 strinati, d. 1995. an introduction to theories of popular culture, routledge, london. perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201010 susi, t. and ziemke, t. 2001 social cognition, artefacts, and stigmergy: a comparative analysis of theoretical frameworks for the understanding of artefact-mediated collaborative activity, cognitive systems research, 2(4), 273-290. van manen, m. 1990. researching lived experience: human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. albany, ny: state university of new york. vithal r. & alant, b. 2005. editorial: speaking the curriculum: learner voices and silences challenges for mathematics and science education in the twenty first century. pie, 23(3), vii-x. 19 teaching recent history in countries that have experienced human rights violations: case studies from chile maría isabel toledo universidad diego portales abraham magendzo universidad academia de humanismo cristiano renato gazmuri universidad diego portales incorporating recent history into the educational curricula of countries that have experienced human rights violations combines the complexities of teaching history, teaching recent history, and human rights education. recent history makes a historical analysis of social reality and a historiographical analysis of the immediate. it is located between history and present, between past and present, between witness and historian, between memory and history. this situation creates problems in teaching. this article investigates the teaching-learning process of the subunit ‘military regime and transition to democracy’ in secondary schools in santiago, chile, by means of both a quantitative methodological strategy to identify six unique cases, and a qualitative strategy that is reported in this article. a variety of practices highlighted four models: constructivism, development of meta-cognition, historical discourse, and moral discourse. these models are described. their diversity is due to the existence of different theoretical frameworks. this unit has gaps in content and historiographical knowledge, and there is no coordination with human rights education. the diversity of models is cause for concern because not all of them encourage students to understand the present as a result of a historical process and how to operate within it. keywords: classroom, school ethnography, recent history, curriculum background the incorporation of human rights education in the curriculum of countries that have experienced war, genocide, ethnic conflict or military dictatorships imposes new demands on teachers. this incorporation was necessary in south africa (jita & vandeyar, 2006:40; carrim & keet, 2005:100, 106-107), rwanda (weldon, 2009:184-185), argentina, and so forth. in latin america, it involves teaching the history of military dictatorships in the 1970s. in chile, it means teaching the 1973 coup, the military regime of augusto pinochet and the transition to democracy. teaching history is hampered by the perception of history as a scholarly knowledge of the past (pratt, 2000:73). therefore, when recent history is taught, the situation becomes more complex. there is limited access to information (de amézola, 2000:1), and ideological and theoretical diversity complicates the didactic transposition (de amézola, 2000:5). the events that are taught are part of the students’ past, whereas they remain the teachers’ present (de amézola, 2003:17). given the immediacy of the events, both teachers and students are involved in the recent history that is taught. teachers are thus afraid to present biased anecdotes, and of differences of opinion and emotions. in addition, history intersects with the memory of social and ethnic groups. teaching becomes more complex and flooded with emotionality (weldon, 2009:177). the complexity of teaching increases when recent history refers to violations of human rights. teaching human rights creates tensions because it problematises reality; demands collective work, 20 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 201120 dialogue and horizontal relationships, and reveals power relations and conflicts. thus, teachers must take a stand in the classroom to promote critical thinking. in this context, the question arises: how does the teaching-learning process during the subunit ‘military regime and transition to democracy’ take place in secondary education in chile? frame of reference recent history makes a historical analysis of social reality. it focuses on the present without neglecting other dimensions of time. from the perspective of recent history, the historical present is mobile. it is ‘temporary’ and not a concrete history. its boundaries are constantly being reformulated (aróstegui, 2004:55; cf. rousso, 2000:279). the final boundary is open, and the present is always changing. it addresses unfinished processes. its final limit is defined by the presence of actors and witnesses, the existence of a collective memory or the start of unfinished processes (stewart, 2004:48). it is written by those who experience it (aróstegui, 2004:129). recent history addresses the present for some group members and the past for others. however, they all share an extended present, which is experienced from a different temporal perspective. in addition, social structures and collective memory “... contemporize a past that remains alive in the present” (cuesta, 1993:12). thus, recent history makes a historiographical analysis of the immediate. it is located between history and present, between past and present, between witness and historian, between memory and history. thus, the presence of the historian as both an actor and a constructor of his object of study (cuesta, 1993:13) means that subjectivity is intrinsic to this historical work. in chile, the teaching of the military dictatorship was established during the transition to democracy. history and social sciences were defined as an area of learning. therefore, the curriculum reform also integrated geography, civics and economics. the history of chile is taught during the second year of secondary education, the last subunit being “military regime and transition to democracy”. conservative historians resisted the decision of teaching recent history, arguing that teaching recent history would extend the curricula, that there was a lack of historical knowledge about the period, that the events were too recent, and that such teachings would damage student politics (armendariz, 2000:e20). they found it difficult to watch the events dispassionately, and expressed their prejudices pertaining to national reconciliation. the conservative were afraid that the ministry of education would influence the young people’s image of the past. other historians have defended the epistemological legitimacy of recent history and reported the intention of its opponents to hide knowledge of the recent past (armendariz, 2000:e20). they argued that the facts have been thoroughly tested (gazmuri, 2000:2). others valued the version of the events presented by the ministry of education and aimed to defend an interpretation of recent history that legitimises the military coup and the dictatorship. in 2007, these conservative historians questioned the presence of recent history in a proposal to adjust the curriculum, arguing that this would politicise the school and generate divisions (el mercurio newspaper, 2007:a3). the ministry replied that recent history forms part of the curriculum that is valued by the school community and historians (correa, rolle, moder & gazmuri, 2007:a002). to enable a post-conflict society to establish sustainable and non-violent relationships, it needs to implement a model of education aimed at peacemaking (firer, 2008:193), allowing students to understand the conflict experienced and its impact on them and their families. they must also understand the mechanisms and situations that generate violence in order to dismantle them. from a socio-critical perspective, historically situated conflicts should be analysed at the micro (i.e. interpersonal) and macro (i.e. intergroup) levels. the development of empathy for the other must be at the heart of this pedagogical model, especially when dealing with asymmetrical power relations (ferreira & janks, 2009). in addition, this model also needs to focus on peaceful conflict resolution, social justice, recognition of social and cultural diversity, non-violence, collaborative work, multiculturalism, and environmental care. human rights education and democracy are thus essential (pantazis, 2010) for the construction of peace. 21toledo, magendzo & gasmuri — teaching recent history 21 it is necessary to face the trauma (bretherton, weston & zbar, 2003:37) caused by conflict and encourage psychosocial repair at both the individual and collective levels. note that “pedagogies of this nature aim ‘at healing the effects of traumatic events that produce guilt, anxiety, resentment and injustice that persist and distort individual and national well-being’” (hattam, 2004:1 in keet, zinn & porteus, 2009:109). thus, collective memory has a restorative role, as does the expression of emotions and dialogue. the pedagogical actions must create conditions to promote discourse and transformative practices (ferreira & janks, 2009) so that the students can take ownership of the concept of peace, enrich it and mould it to their own existence. (bretherton, weston & zbar, 2003:37). the understanding that peace demands action and participation requires reflection, critical thinking and the commitment to build a peaceful, democratic and egalitarian society (bretherton, weston & zbar, 2003, 2003a). in addition, the teachers must implement these principles in their teaching practice. methodology the population of this study consisted of teachers who taught the course history and social sciences in the second year of secondary education in 2005 at educational establishments in the santiago metropolitan region and their students who enrolled in their third year of secondary education in 2006. proportional stratified random sampling was used. the strata were defined by the administrative unit of the establishment.1 the schools were selected first, followed by the teachers and ten former students. some establishments refused to participate for political reasons. therefore, the sample was weighted to match the percentage distribution of the schools according to dependence. the sampling error for the municipal schools was 10%; for private subsidised schools, 5%, and for private schools, 11%. a selfadministered questionnaire was given to 262 teachers, and another self-administered questionnaire was given to 2.612 students. cluster analysis was applied to the results obtained from the teachers to establish teaching styles. two styles, denoted as innovative and traditional, were defined. we later identified “six unique cases of the actor” (pires, 1997:140) of a teacher and his/her students during the subunit ’military regime and transition to democracy’. table 1: cases type gender type of school commune teacher style privately funded joint no-confessional maipú traditional municipal joint no-confessional peñalolén traditional municipal men no-confessional santiago innovative municipal joint no-confessional santiago traditional private men confessional providencia innovative private women confessional las condes innovative the impact of the researcher in the classroom was controlled by establishing a relationship of trust, emphasising the non-evaluative nature of the work and allowing the researcher a prolonged stay in the field. the lead author recorded the activities in the room. the observation period varied with the time assigned to the topic. field notes were taken and audio-taped. the registration of observations was limited by the presence of a single researcher in the classroom. subsequently, in order to understand the perceptions and emotions that arise during class, teachers and two groups of four to six students (at random) per course were interviewed. all interviews were recorded. 1 there are three types of schooling establishments in chile: municipal, which are wholly financed by the state and situated within the different municipalities; privately funded, which are co-funded by the state and by the students’ parents, and private, which receive no state funding at all and are completely funded by the students’ parents. 22 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 201122 the information collected was organised as narratives. fragments from the interviews and the field notes were added to the audio recordings. a text comprising the interpretations of the researchers was then developed. the national fund for scientific and technological development regulates and monitors ethical standards and mandates voluntary participation, authorisation from the director of the school, and consent of the teacher and the students. confidentiality, protection of materials and the possibility of dropping out of the investigation were ensured. participants were also informed that the results would be made public. results the students, teachers, knowledge, time spent, activities, contents and materials used were different in each classroom. however, despite these differences, the following four teaching models of the subunit ‘military regime and transition to democracy’ were identified. constructivist a variety of activities motivates the search for information and generates the conditions for students to re-signify their ideas with a higher level of complexity and increased precision. the contents presented were adapted to the context of the students, and contributed to their civic education. the teacher created a learning environment, provided information and re-defined concepts. this model is valid for any subject; its content, rather than its form, defines it as a history lesson. this model complies with ministerial requirements. rigorous in its design, this model remains trapped in the parameters of the designed actions; as such, it fails to incorporate the students in the activities or the learning process. the lesson becomes a teacher’s performance in which the students are not integrated. first class: before the start of the subunit, the teacher asked students to talk to their families about the government of salvador allende and the military regime. in the first class, the teacher questioned the students about the information collected. the teacher then presented an audiovisual entitled ‘history of chile’ from the ministry of education and provided students with a page containing two speeches by allende, one from the day when he won the presidential elections and another while the coup was taking place. the students read the text. the teacher then instructed the students to form groups to discuss a text on general pinochet’s view of the coup in the subsequent class. the teacher also explained that students who participate in the music course must create a song associated with the class, while those students who attend visual arts class must construct a poster. the respective teachers supported both groups. second class: the students continued reading allende’s speeches, and then presented the main ideas of the text. the teacher wrote the key concepts on the board for purposes of definition. the teacher then invited the students to analyse a text by pablo neruda, nobel prize in literature, on the coup. the teacher gave them a text in which pinochet describes the organisation of the coup. the students were allowed ten minutes of reading. they were then instructed to write a paper on the dictator’s concept of democracy, the coup’s organisation, the proclamations and the military groups. a member from each student group then explained the dictator’s concept of democracy. third class: the students continued to analyse the dictator’s idea of democracy. the teacher then presented a newspaper clip (published the week prior to the class) describing how allende’s government officials were murdered. using the textbook, the students constructed a table illustrating the political, economic, social and cultural works of the three governments prior to the coup. fourth class: the students continued with this work. based on the their responses, the teacher demonstrated historical continuity and presented a chronology of the history of chile in terms of the democratically elected presidents. fifth class: during recess, the students decorated the room with old posters and posters that were made for this occasion. desks were organised in circles. songs from the era of the allende government and the opposition to the military regime could be heard from a radio installed in a corner of the room. the teacher asked the students to share what they had talked about with their families. they all discussed what 23toledo, magendzo & gasmuri — teaching recent history 23 they had learned with their families. a group of girls sang a song whose lyrics correspond to allende’s last speech. the music from the era resumed. a debate on the themes of the coup, the military regime, the national political developments and the current student movements was organised. development of meta-cognitions history is a resource for the development of skills and meta-cognitions. the students had cognitive development and skills that allow them to advance to a stipulated target level while the teacher guided the individual and collective learning process. in other words, students learned to learn. this model was observed in a male-only school attended by members of privileged groups in the country. work was done with historiographical texts. however, the class seemed always on the brink of forgetting the content of the course and instead pursued the development of cognitive skills. first class: two historiographical publications were given to each student. a list of topics for the test to be administered later was written on the board. to guide the reading, the core contents of the article were then pointed out to the students. the first article concerned the political and economic project of the military regime. the teacher gave examples of questions from the future test and explained the text. the second article referred to the management of power during the military regime. the teacher explained the context in which those articles were written and listed their main concepts. the students then began reading the texts. the teacher asked a student to read aloud and then to stop. during breaks, the teacher asked a question or clarified a concept. students asked about or commented on the reading while the teacher evaluated their understanding or explained some historical ideas. in the meantime, the students were asked to highlight the key concepts of the articles. when students encountered a text that they did not understand, they asked the teacher about it. these questions conveyed preconceived notions that were challenged and/or embellished on by the teacher using historiographical knowledge. in particular, the teacher added contextual elements that reflected the zeitgeist of the period. a key task was to find the definitions of the concepts discussed, for example, in article 5 of the constitution and a speech by pinochet. second class: students presented the definitions they had identified. based on these definitions, the teacher presented new questions. the teacher then drew a timeline on the board and wrote the title of the second article on the military regime institutions. in order to engage in analytical reading, students took turns to read aloud, and the teacher highlighted the phrases that the students needed to underline. third class: a test consisting of a series of questions on the articles was administered to the students. fourth class: the test was graded in class. several students then asked to view a contextualised fiction film that portrays the zeitgeist of the military regime. the teacher argued about the need to continue the class and thus provided a new article on the concept of the state in chile for further reading. the teacher then announced that students would do a personal assignment. silent reading followed. fifth class: the teacher wrote on the board questions that were to be answered individually by the students. the teacher then returned to her desk to help the students individually. the students approached the teacher to ask questions or verify their answers. the teacher guided the students in their reasoning to facilitate learning and to explain how to identify the concepts in the article. the teacher guided students in the development of their responses. sixth class: the teacher returned the corrected tests to the students. they read some of the answers. a state-sponsored television programme on the end of the century was introduced. from time to time, the teacher stopped the programme, depending on the content, to clarify any confusion or to explain a situation. students asked questions about what they did not understand or provided further inquiries regarding topics related to the content of the programme. the teacher pointed out that the fragments of the documentary expressed the thinking of different historians. historical this model presented a story explaining the sequence of events; this sequence was presented in increasingly wider concentric contexts. the purpose was to transfer the development of historical thinking. the 24 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 201124 professor was a historian as well as a teacher. as such, the teacher attempted to model historical reasoning. the aim was that the students would create their own interpretation of the events that affect them. first class: this class explained the role of american imperialism in the establishment of latin american dictatorships. a historical narrative was constructed from structural history and referred to economic, political and socio-cultural dimensions. it explained the processes and events in context. it presented concepts from the social sciences and promoted democratic values. the teacher then asked questions about the coup which the students had to answer using the textbook. the textbook contained interpretations from different historians. ,students were thus introduced to different interpretations of the same events. this work was done in a group, and the answers were written down in a notebook. second class: the key task was to write an essay on the coup using the information presented in the first class. the teacher then presented different interpretations of the coup. to that end, the teacher presented a documentary produced by the official military government, which justified the coup. a debate was then conducted. third class: the documentary “the latest fight of salvador allende” was presented. the class ended. fourth class: students submitted their essays during this class. moral discourse teachers have good intentions based on their political consciousness and perceived moral duty to teach recent history on human rights violations. with the moral discourse model, the teacher’s purpose is to promote the contention that ‘never again’ will crimes against humanity be allowed to occur. in the classroom, this subject was discussed from the viewpoint of the victims. assuming the role of a witness rather than a historian, the teacher relived very intense emotions that could not be controlled. both the teacher and students were overcome with sadness. this model served as an act of socio-political commitment, but it was also a personal act with the students because they are part of the social sector most affected by the economic and repressive policies of the dictatorship. as such, the teacher was identified as one of them. first class: slides were presented. prepared by a historian, these slides covered the period from 1970 to the end of the dictatorship. the presentation was stopped after the reading of the first slide. the teacher began to tell a story that took the form of a fairy tale. it was about a six-year-old girl who witnessed a raid on her home by the military during the early years of the military regime. the events occurred in the same town where the students live. it narrated the events experienced by a six-year-old child. in the middle of the story, the teacher mentioned that she is the girl in the story. emotions then flooded the classroom. both the students and the teacher could not contain their tears. the teacher indicated that they must work with a working guide on the political crisis in 1973. however, she turned to the slides and pronounced the names of the people who appeared on the slides. she then repeated that they should be working with the guide, though she continued to show the slides. she translated the historiography language of the slides in a fairy tale-like manner. this exposed the everyday knowledge of the teacher in the room. the students did not complete the task with the guide, and their reading difficulties prevented them from understanding the activity. the in-class assignment thus became homework. second class: this was suspended because of ‘environment awareness week’. classes resumed two weeks later. third class: the teacher asked the students to recount what they heard at home about the coup and the military regime. amid the tales, the teacher gave her opinion about the political situation. she then proceeded to relate another piece of personal history. this story was about her as a high-school student who opposed the military rule, and encompassed an important part of the class. throughout the story, the slides containing the historiographic knowledge were displayed on the wall in the background. nevertheless, when the slides exposed human rights violations, the teacher began a detailed account of the torture that was carried out on opponents of the dictatorship. it was a tale of horror. a dialogue about impunity was then started between some students and the teacher, who finally took the floor to explain 25toledo, magendzo & gasmuri — teaching recent history 25 the objective of the class: “in order not to forget this historical memory. and so that ‘never again, never again in chile’”. conclusion there are significant differences in the way in which recent history is taught in chile. two models are based on teaching theories inherited from psychology (i.e. ‘constructivist’ and ‘meta-cognitive’ approaches), and another is developed from historiography (i.e. the ‘historical’ model). finally, there is the ‘moral discourse’ model, which lacks a clear theoretical basis in teaching practice. the ‘constructivist’ and ‘meta-cognitive’ models emphasise form over substance, the prominent role of the teacher and the process of learning, the importance of the disciplinary knowledge; resulting in less historical knowledge on the part of students. the ‘historical’ model focuses on the analysis of historical interpretations at the expense of ethical evaluations of democracy and human rights. common sense prevails in the ‘moral discourse’ model that focuses on human experience while other content is being neglected. the content of this model is specifically limited to the coup and dictatorship, and disregards the transition to democracy and an analysis of the present. historiographical knowledge is scarce, as are concepts that can be illustrated by the daily lives of students in order to encourage democratic values (waghid, 2001:30). there is also no evidence that history teaching is being combined with the notion of ‘people with rights’; the past is not linked with the experiences of students, enabling them to confront the validity of human rights. the value of the prior meanings attached to these events is not adequately recognised, and the interpretations of these events are often exposed as polarities, thereby missing important nuances. there are few opportunities for dialogue, and there is even less development of historical empathy and expression of emotions. not all models aim to construct the students’ own interpretation of the past. the existence of a variety of teaching models is not in itself negative. however, not all of these methods are aimed at achieving the main purpose of the course, namely that students understand the present as a result of a historical process and know how to operate within it (moe, 1999:9). the existence of specific teaching guidelines were not observed. pedagogical practices were not based on proven models but on each teacher’s resources. the managers of the curriculum should ensure not only explicit and clearly explained teaching principles, (vandeyar & killen, 2003:133), but also their implementation. countries that have experienced social unrest must assume that the teaching of history is a controversial issue. as such, it is necessary to recognise and present the different versions of events, on which the teacher, as a member of society, should take a stand. for this reason, the emotions linked to these events must be managed. however, it is also necessary to develop an understanding of the human experience produced by human rights violations. it is important to develop historical empathy, an appreciation of democracy and respect for human rights. democracy, participation, reflection and critical thinking should all be practised in class (waghid, 2001:31), thus advancing the congruence between the values discussed and the teacher’s action (weldon, 2009:185). it is also necessary to recognise the victims – including generations who have inherited the legacies of the dictatorship – in the pedagogical space to allow discussion of feelings of guilt, anxiety, resentment and injustice that persist in a society traversed by conflict in order to advance social reconciliation (hattam, 2004:1 in keet, zinn & porteus, 2009:109). future research should develop methods to record the students’ actions and so-called “volatile conversations“ (geschier, 2010:31) during class, to study the learning processes promoted by the different teaching models, and to identify those models that are most suitable for students in different sociohistorical contexts (waghid, 2001:29). it is also necessary to develop theoretical and pedagogical tools based on the principles of peace education that can be applied to complex educational contexts, particularly in countries that have experienced human rights violations in “various forms of violence, poverty and discrimination” (keet, 26 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 201126 zinn & porteus, 2009:116-117). above all, “we have to find a way of remembering without becoming trapped in the past” (weldon, 2009:1007). references armendáriz m 2000. qué historia enseñamos? [what history to teach?]. el mercurio, may 21. e:20. aróstegui j 2004. la historia vivida. sobre la historia del presente [lived history. on recent history]. madrid: alianza editorial. bretherton d, weston j & zbar v 2003. peace education in a post-conflict environment: the case of sierra leone. education links, 66-67:36-41. bretherton d; weston j & zbar v 2003a. peace education in a post-conflict environment: the case of sierra leone. ethos, 11(2):12-19. carrim n & keet a 2005. infusing human rights into the curriculum: the case of the south african revised national curriculum statement. perspectives in education, 23(2): 99-110. correa s, rolle c, moder m & gazmuri r 2007. enseñanza de la historia. [teaching history]. el mercurio, oct 22. a:2 cuesta j 1993. historia del presente [current history]. madrid: eudeba. de amézola g 2000. problemas y dilemas de la enseñanza de la historia reciente [problems and dilemmas in teaching recent history]. clio, 12. retrieved from http://clio rediris.es/articulos/problemas.htm on 5 january 2008. de amézola g 2003. la historia que no parece historia: la enseñanza escolar de la historia del presente en argentina [history that does not look like history: teaching of recent history at schools in argentina]. revista de teoría y didáctica de las ciencias sociales [theory and didactics in social sciences], 8:7-30. el mercurio newspaper, enseñanza de la historia [teaching history]. 2007:a3. ferreira a & janks h 2009. doves, rainbows and an uneasy peace: student images of reconciliation in a post-conflict society. perspectives in education, 27(2):134-135. firer r 2008 virtual peace education. journal of peace education, 5(2):193-207. gazmuri c 2000. the true way to reconciliation. is it possible to study and objectively teach chile’s recent history? la tercera, may 3:2. geschier s 2010. vulnerability and belonging in the history classroom: a teacher’s positioning in “volatile conversations” on racism and xenophobia. perspectives in education, 28(3):23-33. hattam r 2004. buddhism as a resource for reconciliation pedagogies. retrieved from http://www.aare. edu.au/04pap/hat04399.pdf on 13 january 2009. jita l & vandeyar s 2006. the relationship between the mathematics identities of primary school teachers and new curriculum reforms in south africa. perspectives in education, 24(1):39-52. keet a, zinn d & porteus k 2009. mutual vulnerability: a key principle in a humanising pedagogy in post-conflict societies. perspectives in education, 27(2):109-119. mineduc [ministry of education] 1999. “history and social sciences”. academic program for 2nd grade high school. [history and social sciences. second high school year program of study]. santiago: mineduc. pantazis v 2010. peace education, multicultural school and the professionalism of the teacher. international journal of diversity in organisations, communities & nations, 10(1):141-151. pires a 1997. échantillonnage et recherche qualitative: essai théorique et méthodologique. in: j poupart, j-p deslauriers, l-h groulx, a lapirrière, r mayer & a pires. la recherche qualitative. enjeux épistémologiques et méthodologiques. québec: gaëtan morin éditeur. prats j 2000. dificultades para la enseñanza de la historia en la educación secundaria: reflexiones ante la situación española [difficulties in teaching history in secondary education: reflections with the spanish situation]. revista de teoría y didáctica de las ciencias sociales, 5:71-98. retrieved from http://www.didacticahistoria.com/ccss/ccss02 htm on 15 june 2007. 27toledo, magendzo & gasmuri — teaching recent history 27 rousso h 2000. l’histoire du présent, vingt ans après. in: dossier l’histoire du temps présent, hier et aujourd’hui. bulletin de lihtp, 75. soto a 2004. historia del presente: estado de la cuestión y conceptualización [history of the present: subject situation and conceptualization]. e-latina, 2(8):39-56. vandeyar s & killen r 2003. has curriculum reform in south africa really changed assessment practices, and what promise does the revised national curriculum statement hold? perspectives in education, 21(1):119-134. waghid y 2001. reflexivity, democracy and praxis: reflecting on a critical moment in classroom pedagogy. perspectives in education, 19(1):29-37. weldon g 2009. memory, identity and the politics of curriculum construction in transition societies: rwanda and south africa. perspectives in education, 27(2):177-189. 57 research article 2021 39(4): 57-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) turning constraints into opportunities: online delivery of communication skills simulation sessions to undergraduate medical students during the covid-19 pandemic abstract the covid-19 pandemic impacted higher-learning institutions. communication skills training in medical education needed innovative solutions to adjust to the situation. in times of change, evaluation channels should be developed, and any problems raised by learners and educators should be responded to rapidly. a remotely facilitated communication skills simulation-based training programme was piloted by the clinical skills laboratory tutors using zoom as the online platform. the goal of the pilot session was to establish a communication skills training strategy remotely, to test an online session using the defined online platform and to assess its effectiveness. though locally facilitated face-to-face simulationbased training as the conventional format is easier to use and experience, training on virtual simulation-based communication skills enabled through the online portal has been described by participants as both feasible and effective. the results show that an efficient educational environment can be provided by remote simulation of communication skills. an important requirement for learner engagement with remotely facilitated simulation-based training is the development of contextual understanding, multiple exposures and a respectful learner-teacher relationship. any negative impact of remotely facilitated simulation-based training may be concealed by an overarching high perceived value of simulation-based trainings in general. this pilot online simulation programme shows the value of using this modality and lays the foundation for communication skills teaching during future disasters. there is the need to consider how online simulation can be sustained after the pandemic and not just returning to the conventional face-to-face teaching and learning. keywords: communication skills training; covid-19; medical education; online simulation; zoom online platform. author: dr reina abraham1 affiliation: 1university of kwazulu-natal doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i4.5 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(4): 57-71 published: 6 december 2021 received: 18 november 2020 accepted: 21 january 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1732-6616 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 582021 39(4): 58-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) 1. introduction effective communication during consultations with patients and their families is essential to instilling confidence in the medical practitioner (jackson, 2005; hagerty et al., 2005). the ability to communicate effectively is a core competency needed by a healthcare professional (kalafatis et al., 2019). studies have found that patient-centric communication tends to enhance health benefits, patient experience and perceived care quality (lanoue & roter, 2018). in medical education various methods are used to teach communication skills to medical students. one of the methodologies includes simulation-based training as an integral part of the undergraduate medical curriculum (subramanian & sathanandan, 2016). the training involves simulating a doctor-patient consultation using simulated patients and a written case scenario. in health care, a simulated patient is a person trained to behave as a real patient to replicate a series of symptoms or problems, also known as a standardised patient, sample patient or patient teacher (kurtz et al., 2003). simulation helps students develop and enhance their communication skills in a controlled, environmentally safe setting where errors can be corrected based on simulated patient and trainer feedback (maran & glavin, 2003; qureshi & zehra, 2020). in health professions’ education both in-person face-to-face and web-based simulated practice has been known to allow for practice, feedback and refinement of communication skills (liu et al., 2016). remotely mediated teaching based on simulation is a synchronous approach of distance learning where teachers promote real-time online or video conferencing and simulators. christensen et al. (2018), in an interview study with newly graduated nurses and doctors, compared learners’ perceptions of remotely/online facilitated simulation-based training to locally/in-person facilitated simulation-based training and concluded that virtually facilitated simulation-based training was judged less favourably despite being deemed an appropriate alternative to in-person face-to-face simulation-based training. the study participants however confirmed having little previous exposure to immersive simulation with most participants reporting they had participated in simulation-based training on fewer than two previous occasions. in previous studies participants have reported feeling uncomfortable, where remotely facilitated communication was a barrier to learning, and the quality of instruction was inferior and expressed unwillingness to participate in future training (ahmed et al., 2014; christensen et al., 2015). to illustrate learner experiences with remotely facilitated simulation-based training, theoretical models or conceptual constructs need to be explored to understand learners’ engagement with remotely facilitated simulation-based training. the principle of cognitive load theory (clt) suggests that learning is most efficient when it decreases a task-related mental burden (intrinsic workload) and effort to control attention away from extraneous factors (extraneous workload) (young et al., 2014). the need for learners to communicate with a teacher through a monitor in remotely mediated simulation-based training, especially with limited previous exposure to immersive simulation, can theoretically increase the intrinsic mental workload during debriefing. meanwhile, if the monitor serves to deter learners from the challenge of handling the clinical scenario especially with limited previous exposure to simulation, extrinsic mental workload will increase. rudolph et al. (2014), taking on a different view through their conceptual model of psychological safety, acknowledged that the emotional activation of learners such as learners’ anxiety with remote simulation training also affects their cognitive processing. dieckmann et al. (2007) had also suggested in their theoretical discussion of realism that the cognitive and emotional reactions of learners to simulation are interdependent. as remotely facilitated simulation-based training http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 592021 39(4): 59-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 abraham online delivery of communication skills simulation sessions involves complex interactions, assessing important requirements for learner engagement with remotely facilitated communication skills simulation in medical education is necessary to provide educators with a better understanding of the processes for adapting technology to learning. as the coronavirus (covid-19) pandemic spreads, its impact on society is becoming more widespread and now threatens in-person face-to-face medical education. in march 2020 the university of kwazulu-natal (ukzn), like many universities around the world, closed all its campuses and transitioned to remote teaching and learning to reduce the spread of covid-19 (rsa, 2020). delivering high-quality in-person face-to-face clinical instruction to maximise medical student learning and performance was a challenge in the current environment. this required the clinical skills department at ukzn to adapt and develop a structure for delivering communication skills training using an online platform while retaining the key principles and structure of the in-person face-to-face communication skills teaching. the transition to online teaching platforms, gave us the opportunity to explore learner experience of adapting technology to modify an already existing in-person/locally facilitated communication skills simulation-based training. furthermore, the need to evaluate the innovative potential of e-learning systems during a crisis was necessary. the objective of this study was to adapt and develop a plan for face-to-face communication skills simulation-based training remotely, identify an online platform, pilot an online simulationbased training session using the identified platform and evaluate its effectiveness. the aim was to determine if remotely facilitated face-to-face communication skills training is an acceptable alternative to locally facilitated in-person face-to-face training. we explored medical students’ perceptions of remotely facilitated communication skills simulation-based training with the aim to explore their perceptions of its value and to identify factors that might influence their attitudes to, and acceptance of, this methodology. 2. method 2.1 context and setting this study was carried out at the nelson r mandela school of medicine (nrmsm), ukzn. prior to clinical placement undergraduate pre-clinical medical students at nrmsm, ukzn are taught communication skills in the first three years in the clinical skills laboratory. communication skills are taught in an integrated fashion within the theme-based hybrid problem-based learning curriculum. the communication skill within each theme focuses on the history-taking related to a specific body system and follows the calgary-cambridge framework to a clinical consultation (kurtz et al., 2003). the communication skills teaching sessions are delivered by a group of clinical tutors in small group sessions through role-play with simulated patients. the clinical tutors are medical doctors from a wide range of specialist backgrounds and have had at least five years of clinical skills teaching experience. 3. study design 3.1 developing a plan for communication skills training remotely with the urgent need to transition communication skills’ training in the pre-clinical year remotely, a simulated face-to-face communication skills session was piloted using an online platform. to deliver teaching remotely ukzn opted to use zoom™ (zoom video communications inc., http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 602021 39(4): 60-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) san jose, ca, usa) as the institutional online platform. zoom is a portal that allows hosts and participants to conduct real-time online meetings and webinars. it allows participants to see and hear each other using webcams and microphones on computers and smart phones. the participants for the project included the clinical skills laboratory tutors and 2nd year medical students. we tested various roles, including the roles of tutors as facilitators, tutors as simulated patients (sp), students involved in communication skills training as simulated students (ss) and students involved in scenario observation and the debriefing process. during the preparation period different channels were used to share information between tutors, training of sps and the online communication skills simulated teaching sessions. the tutors got together remotely on the zoom platform before the actual online simulation teaching session to outline the communication skills scenario to be covered and to discuss the role of the tutors as either a facilitator or an sp. the zoom platform also provided access for tutors as sps and tutors as sp trainers where the sps were trained for their role-play prior to the simulation session. the pilot online communication skills simulation teaching session was integrated into the timetable of the second year mbchb cardiovascular system theme. this allowed for online simulation teaching on the zoom platform with two groups of students per week for four weeks to ensure the whole class had access to the teaching. each group had one facilitator, one sp, four sss and twelve students observing the session. participants therefore worked in groups of fourteen to sixteen of whom four were allocated an active role in the scenario and the remaining participants observed. detailed scenario scripts were created for the sps and a cardiovascular system historytaking protocol for the students based on the calgary-cambridge guide (kurtz et al., 2003). the relevant resources such as the cardiovascular disease-based scenario and debriefing guidance sheet to initiate the online simulation session were shared by email between facilitators and sps. to ensure psychological safety, the scripts were developed specifically for the remotely facilitated simulation-based training to pre-empt some of the potential challenges of this technology, regarding interaction with the facilitator and other participants. we attempted to achieve consistency in the delivery of the debriefings by equipping facilitators with standardised debriefing prompts (arafeh et al., 2010). the objectives of the communication skills simulation session, schedule and time allotment and the history-taking protocol as prereading material were shared with the students on the university’s learning management system (moodle). an instruction on the expectation of students as either playing the role of sss or observers during the online simulation session was also shared with the students. the actual choosing of the sss was done during the online teaching session. students were also informed of the need to turn on their video and unmute their microphone when requested to talk to the sp. during the online role-play session, the sss were expected to establish rapport and gather information from the sp regarding their presenting problem based on the calgarycambridge model as in a doctor-patient consultation (kurtz et al., 2003). the online/remotely facilitated scenarios were delivered in a similar manner as the locally/in-person facilitated simulation-based training except that the facilitators, sps and students interacted with each other via a monitor and speakers from an off-site location. figure 1 provides a structural representation of the whole process and the communication channels. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 612021 39(4): 61-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 abraham online delivery of communication skills simulation sessions figure 1: representation of the communication skills training simulation process ground rules were set for all participants while using zoom. this included sufficient lighting, camera adjustment for optimum visibility, the need for unrestricted high-speed internet access, when to turn the video on and unmute or mute the microphone to eliminate distractions, etc. the communication skills simulation session for each group was scheduled as below to ensure effective use of the 1 hour zoom session: 10 minutes – welcome and pre-briefing by the facilitators that included selecting sss from the group. 20 minutes – role-play using a stable angina scenario (ss with sp, while other students and facilitator observe). 20 minutes – facilitator debriefing that included interactive feedback to the students on their communication style, reasoning through the case, constructing differential diagnoses and a medical summary. all participants were actively included in the discussion during and after the scenario. 10 minutes – at the end of the session the link to the survey form was posted on moodle for students to evaluate the pilot session. 3.2 data collection the data collection method was determined by the aim of the research (creswell, 2014). this study surveyed second year medical students’ perceptions on the effectiveness of http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 622021 39(4): 62-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) online simulation-based communication skills teaching. the survey questionnaire as the data collection instrument outlined the details of the study and possible implications. respondents were informed that participation was strictly voluntary. informed consent was obtained by requiring the respondents to tick acceptance to participate. ethical approval for the study was sought and obtained from the humanities and social sciences research ethics committee, ukzn (hssrec /00001757/2020). the survey form with rated questions gathered information on the students’ perceptions relating to if online simulation met the learning objectives of communication skills teaching, how they perceived themselves as an ss on a virtual platform and what they felt about the sps’ responses. in addition, the students’ feelings about the tutor’s facilitation during the online session and their challenges with using technology were also assessed. the survey form was initially piloted with all the tutors to assess the adequacy and interpretation of the questions. 4. results a dry run online teaching month gave us the opportunity to pilot remote face-to-face simulation-based communication skills training to the second year undergraduate mbchb class. out of 248 medical students enrolled for the second-year cardiovascular system theme, an average of 100 students participated in the online learning. the simulation process was evaluated immediately after the session through online discussions between the facilitators and sps and an online survey questionnaire for feedback from the participating students. indepth interviews with students and facilitators would have sufficed but with the limited time to evaluate a pilot dry run online teaching month, the immediate purpose was to establish instant recall to identify gaps, both positives and negatives in terms of lessons learnt and then try to bridge the gaps for the formal online teaching. a disadvantage of a post hoc interview however is its inability to investigate real-time thought processes (christensen et al., 2018). though there may be limitations of relying on self-reported student google surveys, further studies on more long-term feedback on the effectiveness of the blended learning approach, triangulating students and facilitators’ responses through in-depth interviews is considered. 4.1 survey data a total of 42 (42%) out of the 100 medical students that participated in the dry run pilot online learning consented to participate in the survey. participants comprised 28 female and 14 males. in general, the participants had previous exposure to immersive simulation. all participants reported they had participated in communication skills simulation-based training on three occasions in their first year and on two previous occasions in their second year of medical school. they have also participated in communication skills simulation-based objective structured clinical examination (osce) assessment at the end of the first year. of the participants that consented to the study 38.5% used a desktop or laptop and 78.4% had access to a smart phone to access the online sessions. seventy-three per cent of students say they have mobile data, 17% have wi-fi and 15% have no internet access. open-ended response questions were also included in the questionnaire and the student responses are illustrated with quotations below. the open-ended questions were aimed at prompting the participants to recall how they reacted and responded in the moment to the remotely facilitated simulation experience and consequently reveal their acceptance of the methodologies and preferences, if these existed. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 632021 39(4): 63-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 abraham online delivery of communication skills simulation sessions of all the respondents, 79% perceived the ease of use of the online simulation teaching session indicating that it provided a user-friendly platform that allowed facilitators, sps and students to navigate through easily and skilfully. network connectivity issues were often reasons for those that had difficulty accessing the online zoom skills sessions. participants mentioned that zoom session recordings made available has the advantage for re-watching or as catch-up, accommodating to network connectivity issues: some people have connectivity problems and may repeatedly have to log in and out of zoom sessions. sharing the recordings of the zoom role-play sessions would benefit all as well as those that need to catch-up. when asked if they found interacting with an sp on an online teleconference platform as effective as a face-to-face interaction, 65.5% of respondents agreed that it could be a good alternative to in-person face-to-face interaction but with certain challenges: except for the bad internet connection that sometimes interrupts communication; i do think it could be effective as a face-to-face interaction. though not ideal it is the best at this time and something we can look at its use as an additional learning platform. nearly all participants (93%) perceived the usefulness of technology in their learning and agreed that the online simulation session and case scenario met the objectives of communication skills training. they indicated that since they had done communication skills simulation sessions in-person before they had a better understanding of the situation, the purpose and outcomes of the activity and social relationships to ensure the consultation was patient-centred. they were therefore able to compare and perceived that the online platform allowed for appropriate greeting of the patient, obtaining patient details, addressing patient comfort, obtaining consent and reassuring the patient of confidentiality. they were able to identify the reasons for the consultation without disruptions. ninety-five per cent of respondents mentioned that they found it easy to communicate with the simulated patient while gathering information i.e. obtaining the presenting problems, the sequence of events, analysing the symptoms and to review symptoms of other body systems. just like any inperson face-to-face interaction they were able to use open questions initially, listen attentively to the patient and then narrow down to more closed questions. we did quite get the purpose of the video conferencing. it wasn’t awkward as we have been exposed to communication skills history-taking role-play. we were at ease similar to when someone was really there in front instructing us. however, picking up non-verbal cues from the patient on an online platform was still a challenge: it’s not quite the same online for a patient to convey their feelings and show the medical student areas of their body where they were affected. but for communicating events verbally and to listen to their story without interrupting, online communication is still as good as in-person because the video was on. in response to if they found it easy to use certain verbal and non-verbal skills to facilitate the sp’s responses to their questions, 69% of participants indicated it was possible. however, a few respondents mentioned that it was possible to demonstrate empathy verbally but there were challenges to adequately use non-verbal process skills on an online platform: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 642021 39(4): 64-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) it was possible to say sorry and use words to reassure the patient… more difficult to use non-verbal methods as indicating with your hands isn’t possible due to the camera only being on your face…also i tried to make eye contact with the patient by looking at my screen though i was not so sure if i should be looking at the screen or the camera. though 62% of respondents thought it was possible to pick up verbal cues, most respondents mentioned how difficult it was to pick up non-verbal cues from the simulated patients’ video: it was easy to pick up verbal cues, but it was difficult to pick up non-verbal cues since i could only see the head of the patient and not the whole body, hands etc. one participant however mentioned that adjusting the camera angle of the actors during the role-play could help: when the angle of the simulated patient’s camera was right, i could see her hand gestures and facial expressions. even though all participants were doing this for the first time, 64.3% of respondents agreed that the facilitation of the pre-briefing, scenario role-play and debriefing on an online platform was intense with less distraction and effective. learners further perceived that their engagement during the session was facilitated by their relationship with the tutors: i got feedback from the simulated patient to be careful of my judgemental thoughts of her being a heavy smoker. i know i have to be careful about next time. the tutor also gave me feedback on what i missed out and reminded me not to show certain judgemental expressions. i also felt like the tutor knows me and was just talking to me all the time. i am also able to privately message the tutor for real time feedback on my doubts.” however, 31% of participants did not find the online debriefing as effective as the traditional in-person face-to-face simulation in the skills lab: it is not easy for the facilitator to determine whether the students do understand or not by looking at our facial expressions on the video. the actual face-to-face communication in the skills lab allows for more engagement and questions. finally, most participants (88%) found that the online debriefing enhanced their understanding of how to clinically reason through a case and they felt confident to apply the clinical reasoning skills and diagnostic approach to other scenarios with more practise: the online debriefing was very informative. the facilitator gave me a good perspective on understanding how to think through the differential diagnosis and then work out a medical summary… i feel i can apply it to other cases but will still need more practise with clinical reasoning. 5. discussion this study was a pilot investigation into the feasibility, perceived utility and effectiveness of a simulation-based communication skills online teaching strategy within a second year mbchb cardiovascular theme. clinical teaching is most impactful during the clinical and pre-clinical years as this is the time where skills in taking a history, performing physical examination, clinical reasoning and making important decisions are taught and learnt (spencer, 2003). according to the miller’s pyramid, medical students need to be able to show and demonstrate their knowledge and skills (miller, 1990). our remotely facilitated simulation-based approach http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 652021 39(4): 65-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 abraham online delivery of communication skills simulation sessions was designed to retain students’ knowledge acquisition and competency attainment in communication skills. all participants agreed that the remotely facilitated simulation session met the objectives of communication skills training. participants believed the different online platforms enabled users to communicate effectively in preparation for the simulation sessions through audio, visual and textual methods and allowed for flexible and adaptive resource engagement. the zoom platform was helpful as an online simulation tool as it did not require equipment beyond what participants already had such as a smartphone/computer/laptop with built-in speakers and microphone, camera and internet connection. despite the fact that all participants were doing this for the first time, most agreed that the facilitation of the pre-briefing, scenario roleplay and post scenario debriefing on an online platform is possible with less distraction and can be effective. in this study, the perceived usefulness of the technology was measured as the degree to which participants believe that the technology would contribute to increased performance, and its ease of use was measured as the degree to which participants expect the technology to be easy to use (christensen et al., 2018). research in the information technology sector describes the technology adoption model (davis et al., 1989) which predicts that learner behavioural intent towards acceptance of remotely facilitated simulation-based teaching is most sensitive to perceived usefulness and that strongly perceived usefulness can outweigh and override the influence of negative attitudes on behavioural intent (persico et al., 2014; tarhini et al., 2015). a key strength of the study was that the learners were exposed to locally facilitated/in-person communication skills simulation-based teaching format. familiarity with immersive simulation methods through previous experience with simulation and expectations of learning allowed our learners to compare the two teaching formats. an important aspect of a good doctorpatient communication is active listening and demonstrating empathy. students mentioned that listening attentively, demonstrating concern and caring for the patient can be expressed through computer mediated communication as in in-person communication. this introduces the concept of digital empathy which needs further exploration. learner engagement with remotely facilitated simulation-based training requires contextual understanding and multiple exposures. we may consequently predict that learner perceptions reflecting cognitive workload with remotely facilitated simulation-based teaching will decrease compared to studies whose learners are unfamiliar with simulation methods (eppich & cheng, 2015). a limitation that we noticed was some students unfortunately leaving the online session if chosen to interview the simulated patient because they were too shy, which was unusual during an in-person session. also, while it was possible to have all participants at a time on the screen over video, apart from the simulated students switching on their videos, most students observing were not comfortable to keep their videos on. we could therefore not be sure of the level of engagement in the observing students. this comparison shows that while some perceptions correlated with negative experiences of teaching based on remotely mediated communication skills simulation, the same perceptions may also occur to a greater or lesser degree in either format. this confirms the need and should enable teachers to adapt, irrespective of format, to the psychosocial and cognitive reactions of learners to simulationbased instruction. to ensure active engagement with the remote simulation teachers in this study insisted on the need for students to have their communication skills protocol open during the session and to use it as a student-patient direct observation checklist to feedback on their peer’s performance. the deliberate practice of providing peer feedback has the advantage to http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 662021 39(4): 66-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) motivate students learning while also developing competence in assessing and teaching their peers (abraham & singaram, 2019). this further develops student’s self-regulatory learning response that can have a positive impact on both acquisition and transference of skills as well as improved clinical performance (abraham & singaram, 2019). zoom allows access to both university employees and students to communicate over the platform. there were however concerns with access to the clinical skills laboratory’s bank of sps as they do not have organisational email addresses as well as data concerns for internet access. this problem was tackled by using the clinical skills tutors as sps who already had an organisational microsoft outlook account and zoom licence for the pilot project. the study confirmed that facilitators as simulated patients worked well as students were not daunted by treating their tutors as simulated patients. however, using two tutors, one as facilitator and one as the simulated patient, can be a waste of academic labour. a suggestion that could work well would be to consider using one tutor to act as both facilitator and simulated patient. there has been uncertainty with the formulation of best practice guidelines for facilitation of online face-to-face simulation debriefing compared to debriefing during in-person face-to-face simulation (christensen et al., 2018; verkuyl et al., 2020). student’s evaluation of the usability of the online platform confirmed receiving real-time feedback from tutors, sps and colleagues. this included feedback on their skills of building rapport, gathering information, providing structure to the interview process and understanding the patient’s needs. they also indicated receiving feedback on their non-verbal behaviour that included their facial expressions such as smiling, frowning, nodding and head shaking. evaluation of the online simulation sessions hence concluded that the debriefing was as effective as in-person simulation and that the communication skills simulation-based training offered by virtual video conferences was both feasible and successful within an online curriculum. the zoom online facility allowed for recording of the sessions for future reflection. tutors recommended sharing the recordings with the selected student groups immediately after each online session to facilitate student reflection on the consultation towards refinement of skills. reviewing the recordings has the advantage of helping students to be aware of their non-verbal behaviour and to identify skills that need improvement to positively influence the development of communication skills (howley & martindale, 2004). hepplestone et al. (2011) mentioned that video recordings as feedback supports students’ self-appraisal and motivation to engage with learning towards closing their learning gap. the recordings in this study were also used by the facilitators to discuss and feedback to each other. students perceived the online simulation as a platform to practise their communication and clinical reasoning skills and felt confident to transfer their learning to other scenarios. the tutors suggested that the online platforms can be extended for students to practise communication skills with their peers. to make simulation more effective for learning, students can be allowed to develop simulation scenarios based on their learning needs and to work on them with their peers (babla et al., 2020). according to the social cognitive theory, students acquire competence in clinical communication and reasoning skills through practise and feedback (mann, 2011). the study participants’ engagement with the simulation training was facilitated by their perceived relationship with their teachers and their conceptualised importance of events in the case scenarios. rudolph et al. (2014) recognised that learners’ emotional activation through their rapport with teachers influences their cognitive processing. the emotional and cognitive responses of learners to simulation are an essential prerequisite for learner interaction with remotely mediated simulation-based teaching and acceptance http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 672021 39(4): 67-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 abraham online delivery of communication skills simulation sessions of technology (dieckmann et al., 2007). the online communication skills simulation was perceived as an important educational tool that can provide an effective learning experience. there is therefore the need to look at using technology as an educational enabler. in addition, during the pandemic, it is also possible to adapt assessment of communication skills within an osce to a telemedicine-based platform in the form of a “virtual visit” telemedicine format, with learners and sps communicating remotely through a simulation space built on a webbased platform. this becomes even more relevant especially as the medical fraternity looks at progressing towards adapting telemedicine platforms for virtual consultations (waseh & dicker, 2019). as we are still in an early stage of rolling out such a programme, we will need to continue to evaluate this system with more long-term feedback. while students’ feedback has been mostly encouraging, they have also pointed to certain challenges regarding interactive behaviours during communication skills training via tele-conferencing. study participants frequently mentioned a reasonable frustration about the lack of in-person “face-to-face” opportunities to adequately pick up non-verbal cues while trying to interpret the sp’s presenting problem. though most participants mentioned the ability to see facial expressions on the video, others indicated missing out cues such as body language of sps below the shoulder region which can be a limitation of this study. some found it difficult to maintain eye contact with the sp as they could not physically look into their eyes. there was some confusion about whether they should look at the middle of the screen or directly at the camera during the consultation. interestingly, the challenges identified by the students also revealed that they had experienced a deeper understanding of concepts related to the skill which meant that they appreciated the significance of non-verbal cues in communication skills. these skills are predicted to influence participants’ sense of belonging and appreciation of social presence (davies et al., 2012; cameron et al., 2015). in addition to a doctor’s verbal and non-verbal communication skills, responding to a patient’s verbal and non-verbal cues using empathy has an impact on the patient’s health outcomes (ishikawa et al., 2010). it is therefore important for medical students to pick up, respond to and develop these skills. other challenges mentioned included accessibility issues such as internet data access and difficulties with internet connectivity as one of the main problems most of them faced. this might explain the low number of students that attended the dry run online sessions as well as the low survey response rate. a significant advantage of our adaptation was that recordings of the zoom sessions can be disseminated and made available to students to re-watch later at their own pace for reflection or to catchup whenever they are able to connect, accommodating to network connectivity issues. the university of kwazulu-natal has arranged for 20gb of data per student monthly via south africa’s three largest mobile network providers (mtn, vodacom and cell c) in response to the suspension of face-to-face teaching and learning and following the decision to move to remote online teaching and learning. the best way of teaching is no doubt still through the conventional locally/in-person faceto-face facilitated simulation methods where tutors deliver teaching in 4-dimension utilising all the sensoria maximally to grasp and instil the knowledge and skill effectively. however, teaching medicine must be modified as social distancing is the cornerstone to combat the pandemic (roger, 2020). students have been reassured through announcements on the learning management platform (moodle) that as soon as the existing social distancing restrictions are eliminated, time will be allocated to revisit in-person communication skills. most study participants seem to understand that while replacing locally facilitated simulated http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 682021 39(4): 68-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) communication skills with video simulation is not perfect, they are the best possible option for reducing the health and safety risks in the current situation. furthermore, we found that participants were able to ignore shortcomings of remotely enabled simulation-based teaching because they were outweighed by the potential advantages of being provided access to simulation-based teaching despite the current situation. while for many universities, covid-19 will be disastrous, it also presents them a chance to transform how they operate. medical schools will hence need to start planning for different epidemiological scenarios and be ready to adapt. while online platforms may be sufficient for students in their pre-clinical year, senior medical students placed in the clinical environments may require patient contact. though the delivery of live teaching via online platforms may not always be ideal to substitute actual patient contact, to avoid a substantial loss of student learning time, it may prove to be an appropriate solution to the cancellations that are currently taking place due to covid-19. researchers have suggested that the use of tele-health to deliver medical education and training has not received enough attention (edirippulige & armfield, 2016; rienits et al., 2016). this study’s response on the behavioural preferences of learners to accept e-learning technology dictated by their positive or negative attitudes towards technology confirms that online teaching has the advantage of guiding student learning and places content within the overall context of their curriculum rather than leaving students to their own devices. developing new teaching models lays the foundation for more resilient and efficient teaching in the future. 6. conclusion though covid-19 pandemic halted clinical teaching due to safety reasons, teaching still had to continue and clinical tutors had to quickly adapt to online teaching methods. this study demonstrates that remotely facilitated communication skills simulation-based teaching evokes a range of emotional, social and cognitive responses in learners that can influence their attitudes toward acceptance of technology in learning. within the constraints of a remote set-up during the covid-19 outbreak, the adapted approach retains the key principles and structure of the in-person face-to-face communication skills teaching and lays out an innovative solution for providing medical students with a means to practise and enhance their communication skills and clinical reasoning skills. this article forms a basis for further investigation and opens avenues to inform practice for higher education in the time of social (or physical) distancing. however, its potential influence is not limited to undergraduate medical education. with the increasing use of tele-health, especially during the current pandemic, online simulation could be incorporated into postgraduate medical training and nurse education programmes to help health professionals to reflect on and develop their communication skills. studies to assess the application of online communication skills training in postgraduate medical and nurse education training are recommended. also recommended are longitudinal studies monitoring the development of communication and clinical reasoning skills in medical students using online platforms. a further suggestion is that other online methods instead of only zoom platforms be explored. finally, within the context of the current situation a consideration that cannot be ignored is how online simulation-based teaching and learning can be sustained after this pandemic. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 692021 39(4): 69-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.5 abraham online delivery of communication skills simulation sessions references abraham, r.m. & singaram, v.s. 2019. using deliberate practice framework to assess the quality of feedback in undergraduate clinical skills training. bmc medical education, 19:105. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-019-1547-5 ahmed, r., king gardner, a., atkinson, s.s. & gable, b. 2014.teledebriefing: connecting learners to faculty members. clinical teacher, 11(4): 270–273. 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african continent, our focus is specifically on using icts for development in a south african context. in addition, this article focuses more on using icts within the educational system in (south) africa, and specifically on the possibilities and limitations of using icts for improving both educational achievements and teaching and learning experiences in south africa. in the first section of this article, we provide an account of the importance of engaging with the increasing global ascendency of icts as a significant characteristic of the current, global information age and networked society. drawing particularly on the theory of castells (2001), we argue that access to icts is not only becoming unavoidable, but may also provide african countries with the possibilities to increase and enhance development. in this regard, we also briefly outline what we view as some of the critical features of development in an african context. in the second section, we provide an account of the pan-african agenda on icts integration in africa. this account reveals that, while pedagogic integration of icts in education is still in its nascent stage, its relevance is an urgent imperative. in the third section of this article, we specifically examine the south african educational situation and show that, while the importance of using icts is recognized and attempts to increase access to icts is increasing rapidly, critical questions as to whether or not icts can, in fact, improve teaching and learning experiences and outcomes tend to be assumed rather than engaged with critically. we conclude this article by noting that, while icts may provide valuable opportunities for development, the recognition of nazir carrim wits school of education, university of the witwatersrand e-mail: nazir.carrim@wits.ac.za telephone: :011 717 3025 mandi taruvinga wits school of education, university of the witwatersrand e-mail: mandi.taruvinga@wits.ac.za telephone: 011 717 3337 using icts (educationally) for development in an african context: possibilities and limitations nazir carrim & mandi taruvinga 101 possibilities and limitations of what icts can achieve within the african context need to be taken into account. keywords: south african education, pan-african agenda, ict’s, learning, development. introduction this article is concerned with the increasing prevalence of information communication technologies (icts) and their use in the 21st century, and particularly in educational institutions. although this article is not based on empirical research we have conducted, we provide an account of research on icts and their use, drawing on data from the pan-african agenda on using icts in pedagogy on the african continent. we also draw on some usa-, ukand australia-based research on the use of icts in educational institutions, as well as on work done by south africans on the extent of icts use in south african educational institutions. our purpose in this article is to outline why icts and their use are becoming so prominent currently and their implications for education. we are also concerned about the kind of claims that are being made about what icts use can or cannot do in educational institutions. in this regard, we point out that, as much as icts use in educational institutions does offer possibilities for improved practices, such icts use is also limited. we also intend to show that future research in this area is not only needed but that it also needs to interrogate the taken-for-granted assumptions about icts use in teaching and learning. this article points out the lapses and conflations to which such research is prone. icts, development and the global economy the ravages caused by years of colonial domination of african countries have significantly impacted upon the growth potential of such countries. despite the achievement of political independence, african countries have remained economically dependent on developed countries and on funding agencies in order to enable economic development within african countries. the material development of african countries has not been easy to realise due to lack of employment opportunities; high levels of malnutrition, starvation and disease; abject poverty; lack of infrastructure, and non-existent or poor social services. whilst civil strife, war, corruption and general instability have also been evident in some countries on the african continent, the challenges of development have been central to almost all african countries’ own country-specific policies and to organisations such as the african union (au) and the southern african development community (sadc). perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 102 the notion of development, however, is one that is debated (see, for example, gelb, 2006). for the purposes of this article, we use the notion of development as that which is contained in the african charter on human and people’s rights: convinced that it is henceforth essential to pay particular attention to the right to development and that civil and political rights cannot be dissociated from economic, social and cultural rights in their conception as well as universality and that the satisfaction of economic, social and cultural rights is a guarantee for the enjoyment of civil and political rights (african charter on human and people’s rights, 1981: 2). the above extract from the preamble of the african charter on human and people’s rights indicates that development minimally includes providing for the basic rights of people and allowing for socio-economic and political development. it also includes the importance of ensuring development that would allow people to realise their potential and to live healthy and productive lives. the centrality of development as a right is important to recognise, because it suggests that people’s basic rights are inextricably tied to development, without which they may not get to realise their basic human rights. in 2012, the minister of communications, dina pule, suggested that access to icts should be considered as much a human right as access to education, and that, given that icts are increasingly becoming a feature in our everyday lives, access to icts is necessary for survival and participation within the current global economy. minister pule was speaking after an international conference on icts held in cape town (weekend argus, june 2012). the notion that access to icts be recognised as a human right is also implied by negroponte in his “one laptop per child” un campaign (see http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?newsid=24370 for some developments in this campaign). whilst access to education is currently understood to be a human right, the point that access to icts should also be considered a human right is currently an assertion. be that as it may, asserting access to icts as a human right is undergirded by the recognition that educational systems, social lives and economic and political levels of society are increasingly becoming impacted by, if not immersed in icts. following on this, the assertion of access to icts as a possible human right suggests that, in current times, accessing the economy, social and political life, and indeed education, will increasingly depend on icts and may thus need to be considered a human right in itself. in this regard, if icts are necessary, and development is central to any african country, it follows that access to icts is essential, in the current historical moment, for development to occur under the present conditions, including those conditions that prevail on the african continent. the recognition of access to icts as important, however, is critically linked to the development of the global economy and the emergence of a networked society, of which african countries are a part. castells (2001) indicated that icts provide the “engine” for the global economy, outlining that icts provide the technological basis for the global economy to using icts (educationally) for development in an african context: possibilities and limitations nazir carrim & mandi taruvinga 103 operate. icts enable current money exchanges to occur in ways that were previously unimaginable. economic transactions between countries, among multinational corporations and various sectors of the economy are increasingly becoming more reliant on icts to be able to function. in this light, castells suggested that no country, especially developing countries, would be able to avoid engaging with, and taking on icts in their functions if they intend to be viable. failure of countries to incorporate and use icts may result in what castells (2001: 152) called being “switched off”. in the same vein, though, castells also pointed out that, if developing countries used icts, they could “leap frog” (castells, 2001: 159) development, in that using icts for development could rapidly increase development and link developing countries to the global economy at a faster rate. the above discussion suggests that access to, and the use of icts is crucial for the development of african countries in the 21st century. the importance of icts for development has also not escaped the attention of african governments, of whom the majority have referred to increasing access to icts and their use in their policies. such references are indeed within the policies of the au and the sadc. the au notes: countries that have harnessed the potential of telecommunication/ict networks and services have attained significant social and economic development. in addition, they are rapidly transforming into information and knowledge-based economies. to be perfectly integrated into the globalization process, africa must, among others, strengthen and diversify its productive base by attracting new direct investments for the production of quality manufactured goods and services. infrastructure development is a primordial prerequisite in achieving this goal. thus, aware that infrastructure constitutes not only the foundations of physical integration but should, in addition, serve as the engine of economic development and as a facility to stimulate commercial flows as well as social and cultural interactions, development stakeholders in the continent have placed the telecommunications/ict sector at the heart of their priority initiatives (african union, 2008: iii). similarly, the sadc declaration on icts notes: the southern african development community needs a coherent regional policy and strategy on information and communications technology (hereafter referred to as “ict”) that promotes sustainable economic development, technology and bridges the digital divide within the region and the rest of the world. convinced that a pervasive, reliable and affordable information and communications infrastructure is the foundation upon which the southern african renaissance can be built and sustained (sadc, 2001: 1). as such, the importance of taking on board and working with icts for development in african countries has been recognised. criticisms of the adoption of icts and using icts in africa have been of three kinds. first, criticisms have pointed out that there is a “digital divide” (see au policy perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 104 on ict harmonisation, 2008; sadc declaration on ict, 2001), whereby it is meant that there is a divide digitally between developed and developing countries, due to developed countries having the technology and infrastructure available, unlike developing countries. however, this criticism has nearly lost ground because of the increasing availability of icts and wireless networks. currently, it appears that the “digital divide” is more a generational one (see negroponte, 1996: 6), which means that the divide is more prevalent between older and younger generations of people – in all countries – than about availability of technology or infrastructure, which is increasingly becoming available to all. secondly, it has been argued that icts are foreign to african cultures and thus have limited or no use on the african continent and by african people (see sadc declaration on ict, 2001, where this is implied). these types of arguments have also lost ground because of the rapid increase in the use of icts, particularly of cellular and smart phones, throughout the african continent, even in the most remote and underdeveloped rural areas of african countries. it is useful at this point to note that the african continent is among the largest consumers of cellular phone networks, and the numbers of such users are increasing. according to global consultants pwc, the number of mobile telephone subscriptions in africa exploded from 16 million in 2000 to 246 million in 2008 and more than 500 million now – 2013 (france-presse, 2013). thirdly, some arguments have suggested that icts will erode african traditional cultures, because the icts framework is more western and eurocentric than african (see also the sadc declaration on ict, 2001, where this is implied). however, these kinds of argument have also been weakened by africans using icts and the worldwide web, not only to assert and develop african worldviews, but has also resulted in diasporas to reconnect with africans on the african continent and to put into place websites that allow for the development and preservation of african traditions and cultures. although it is not our intention to engage with the criticisms of icts in africa, it is important to note that the concern in these criticisms is about the availability of infrastructural resources to enable people to use icts and about the erosion of african traditional cultures. as indicated earlier, there is more reason to believe that access to, and availability of icts are increasingly becoming easier and less costly; icts also offer the possibilities of supporting traditional african cultures and connecting africans throughout the world. be that as it may, though, our discussion up to this point is to indicate that: • access to icts may be viewed as significant and unavoidable, even on the african continent. • the expansion of icts is driving significant changes in many aspects of human endeavours throughout the world at both micro and national levels. using icts (educationally) for development in an african context: possibilities and limitations nazir carrim & mandi taruvinga 105 • icts are linked to development strategies of african countries, the au and the sadc. • engagement with, and use of icts are unavoidable in any development strategy in africa. if the above is, indeed, the case, what have african countries actually done to give meaning to using icts for development in africa? a useful indication of this is contained in the pan-african agenda for the integration of icts. the next section of this article outlines what the pan-african agenda for the integration of icts entails. the pan-african agenda the pan-african agenda for integration of icts is specifically about the integration of icts in teaching and learning in the educational systems of african countries. premised on the assumption that the rapidly changing global technology landscape affects the political, economic, social and cultural dimensions of african lives, the pan-african agenda considers the integration of icts into pedagogy – teaching and learning – on all levels of the education and training systems to be important for the development of the ict skills needed for effective participation in an ict-driven global economy. in the first phase of the pan-african agenda, between 2007 and 2009, cameroon, the central african republic, congo, kenya, mali, morocco, mozambique, the republic of south africa, senegal and uganda jointly applied for funding in order to collect data on icts use in african schools and other educational institutions. coordinated by the réseau ouest et centre africain de recherche en education (rocare) and educational research network for west and central africa (ernwca), phase 1 is reported to have reached “nearly 245 000 learners and 9 000 educators” (ernwca, 2009: 1) and the findings reported in phase 2 indicated that icts are used as the subject of learning and not as a means of learning and teaching (ernwca, 2009). the report also indicated that: [s]everal educators use icts to conduct research with the objective of better informing their lessons in mathematics, philosophy, chemistry, history, electromechanics, industrial design, etc. icts, therefore, are serving to improve the lessons prepared by educators, notably through internet-based searches resulting in updated and enhanced professional knowledge (ernwca, 2009: 60). the variable degree to which the icts are present in african societies’ education institutions, from preschool to university as well as in the formal and informal sector, is also acknowledged (see also karsenti et al., 2012). the indication is that, currently, icts in african educational institutions are more about acquiring the skills of using icts and accessing information from the internet, rather than using icts for enhancing teaching and learning. perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 106 phase 2 of the pan-african agenda was launched in dakar in 2009 and built on the findings of phase 1. in phase 2, it framed the following question to inform the research agenda: “how, for whom, and under what circumstances can the pedagogical integration of icts substantially improve the quality of teaching and learning at all levels and scales of african education systems?” the report of phase 2 has reiterated the importance of icts for development and in pedagogy, and provides recommendations for increasing access to, and use of icts in education in africa (see http://www.observatoirectic.org for the phase 2 report). our purpose with the above discussion is to indicate that integration of icts in teaching and learning in african educational institutions is to a lesser or greater degree under way and that the reason for its presence in african educational institutions is that it is considered to be important for the acquisition of the necessary skills for participation in the global economy. the pan-african agenda, thus, recognises that the acquisition of ict skills is necessary for africans and it is hoped that the use of icts in pedagogy may also result in improvements in teaching and learning. in the following section of this article, we examine what has been done to integrate icts into south africa’s educational institutions. thereafter, we raise questions as to how much of icts integration in pedagogy can be assumed to lead to improvements in both teaching and learning. icts in the south african education and training system south africa has placed a high priority on the acquisition of ict skills and the use of icts not only in the educational system, but also in other sectors of society. the national development plan (ndp), which is currently the policy plan that informs the 2015 anc government in south africa, states: the technology revolutions of the 21st century are emerging from entirely new sectors, based on microprocessors, telecommunications, biotechnology and nanotechnology. products are transforming business practices across the economy, and the lives of all who have access to their effects (ndp, 2011: 70). in light of the ndp, icts and ict skills acquisition are also viewed as central to south africa’s development and to enhance south africa’s presence and participation in the global economy. as indicated earlier, in 2012, the south african minister of communications suggested that access to icts should be regarded as a human right and that it was hoped that, by 2025, 80% of all south africans would have access to icts and have the skills to use them (weekend argus, june 2012). however, as indicated in the first section of this article, this assertion of access to icts as a human right is a claim at present and not a manifest right. our point, in this instance, is simply to indicate that the south african government views access to icts as high premium and priority. using icts (educationally) for development in an african context: possibilities and limitations nazir carrim & mandi taruvinga 107 the south african minister of communications built on and affirmed the south african government’s emphasis on the development of skills among south africans to use icts to enable south africa and south africans to “compete in the global economy”. the department of basic education (dbe), which deals with schooling in south africa, and the department of higher education and training (dhet), which deals with higher education, further education and adult basic educational institutions, explicitly articulated policies that foreground and emphasise the importance of ict skills acquisition, which they view as critical for increasing employment opportunities, aiding the development of south africa, especially economically, and strengthening south africa’s participation within the global economy. the dbe (2004: 6) states: 1.3 the expansion of icts is driving significant changes in many aspects of human endeavour throughout the world. at both micro and national levels, icts have increased the effectiveness and reach of development interventions, enhanced good governance, and lowered the cost of delivering basic social services. 1.4 as in other spheres of social and economic development, icts have the potential to improve the quality of education and training. it is for these reasons that government has been quick to seize the opportunity presented by the practical benefits of icts to support teaching and learning in the twenty-first century. 1.5 the ict revolution has had an impact on curriculum development and delivery and continues to pose new challenges for education and training systems around the world. these challenges can be summarised into three broad areas, namely: · participation in the information society; · impact of icts on access, cost effectiveness and quality of education; and · integration of icts into the learning and teaching process. in addition, the dbe (2011) has included computer literacy as a subject in the school curriculum (caps, 2011). it has also prioritised the provision of infrastructure for schools to enable them to access icts, which is considerably easier and cheaper with the introduction of wireless technology. current research, however, indicates that 70% of the south african population use cellular phones and over 6 million have access to personal computers (ndp, 2011: 170). given that cellular phones have morphed into ‘smart phones’ with internet access, the number of people with access to the internet, using personal computers, tablets, ipads and smart phones, has increased considerably. however, there is currently no data to calculate how many people in south africa would now have access to the internet with all the icts that are available through mobile technology (including tablets, ipads and smart phones). perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 108 turning to the western cape province in south africa, czerniewicz (2004) pointed out that, although accurate statistics about computers and the internet are often hard to obtain and often unreliable, a significant number of south africa’s estimated three million internet users are in cape town ... however, most computer users in the city are men from the highest income group, living in middle-class areas and with post-secondary education. about one-sixth of south african users are in the academic sector, but only 57% of students and staff in higher education were internet users in 2002, with less than 1% of all schools being connected. western cape province schools are far ahead of the rest of the country, with over 50% of them having access to email or the internet and just under half having some pcs for teaching purposes. while these figures are remarkably high, financial constraints and teachers’ low ict literacy limit schools’ use of their equipment; anecdotal evidence suggests that many underuse it. of cape town’s 105 public libraries in 2003, only six had any computers—five each, respectively—available for public access. for educators working with ict, lack of access to hardware and software remains a huge stumbling block. uct’s 20,300 students can use 2,000 networked computers during normal working hours and those in university residences have access to another 800 machines. the ratio of students to machines varies from faculty to faculty—the ratio in humanities, for example, is 15:1. unlike universities in many other countries, we cannot assume that students (or even staff) have computers at home. our network is old, requiring extremely expensive investment to upgrade it, and our bandwidth narrow: most middleclass us homes have more bandwidth than the entire uct campus! with large undergraduate classes and a limited range of software (czerniewicz, 2004: 3). however, czerniewicz (2004) only surveyed the rate of access to, and use of icts in the western cape in 2004. nonetheless, czerniewicz raised two important points. first, bandwidth, old networks and expensive infrastructure have hampered the use of, and access to icts. this, however, has changed since 2004. wireless network technology has not only reduced infrastructural costs but also increased bandwidth. secondly, czerniewicz also points out that, while computers and access to the internet may be available in educational institutions, this does not necessarily mean that people in these institutions have the skills to use them or that the equipment is in use. as this still seems to be the case in many instances, the current situation has somewhat improved in some institutions. however, it seems that the use of icts in schools is mainly threefold: for information management purposes (e.g. recording students’ marks and keeping attendance registers); for communication purposes (e.g. email), and to access information from the internet. these uses of icts in schools have also been found to be the case in the pan-african agenda, as indicated earlier (see ernwca, 2009; karsenti et al., 2012). since 2004, two important interventions have aided the development of skills to use icts in educational institutions in south africa. the introduction of computer literacy as a subject in the school curriculum introduced by the dbe in 2011, has not only allowed for the systemic development of ict skills among school goers, but it has using icts (educationally) for development in an african context: possibilities and limitations nazir carrim & mandi taruvinga 109 also enabled icts to be used in schools, and thus to increase their usage. at the same time, the dhet also stipulated that computer literacy is a competency that all newly qualified teachers should possess, as an endorsement on their teacher qualification certificates, indicating that such newly qualified teachers should possess the ict skills to use icts and, it is hoped, to be able to use icts in teaching and learning (see dhet, mrteqp, 2011). both of these interventions by the dbe and dhet provide the basis for ict skills to be acquired and used in educational institutions in south africa. these interventions significantly change the scenario sketched by czerniewicz in 2004. there is reason to believe that the use of icts in educational institutions in south africa has improved and increased. however, it is still difficult to verify this improvement and increase accurately, since statistics in this regard are not readily available or even reliable. although it is difficult to establish the real extent of icts use in south african schools, anecdotal evidence seems to suggest that there is unevenness across the schooling system and across geographical regions in which schools are located, a point noted by both czerniewicz (2004) and the pan-african agenda. this is hardly surprising, given the country’s well-documented economic inequalities. consequently, middle-class schools seem to be more active in the use of icts, and ict skills seem to be higher than those in working-class, poorer schools. despite the marked improvements noted, the inequality across schools in south africa in terms of icts use and availability remains. this also echoes the pan-african agenda’s phase 1 findings, which indicated a variable degree of the presence and use of icts across the educational systems of african countries, and which were discussed in the second section of this article. however, whilst such inequality seems to be the case, it is also the case that nearly all teachers, pupils and parents, irrespective of region or class, have access to cellular phones (and smart phones), and engagement with social networks such as facebook, whatsapp and twitter are widely prevalent. by comparison, there seems to be a paucity of evidence for the use of mobile devices such as cellular and smart phones for teaching and learning purposes. schools tend to use such mobile devices for communication purposes mainly to inform students and/or parents of school events. e-learning is becoming increasingly prominent in higher educational institutions in south africa. the dhet has not only placed high priority on e-learning in higher educational institutions in south africa, but it has also made considerable funds available for this purpose. in 2012, the dhet allocated approximately r20 million for e-learning in higher educational institutions. this includes funds for establishing the necessary infrastructure, provision of equipment, icts technical support, and training in using icts for teaching and learning (see dhet, 2012). e-learning units now exist in the majority of the universities in south africa, with the responsibility to provide support for, and oversee the development of increasing icts competency and use in higher educational institutions in south africa. such e-learning units exist at the university of the witwatersrand in johannesburg, the university of the western perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 110 cape and the university of cape town in cape town, the university of grahamstown in grahamstown, the university of johannesburg in johannesburg, the university of pretoria in pretoria, and the university of kwazulu-natal in durban. while, in each of these instances, all the universities are seeking ways in which to embed icts use in actual teaching and learning, icts at universities in south africa have as yet not integrated icts sufficiently in mainstream university teaching and learning (see also moll et al., 2007; czerniewicz & brown, 2005). since 2007, when the moll et al. report was published, the above universities have made significant progress in integrating icts in teaching and learning. e-learning units at universities, especially at those mentioned earlier, have made steady and considerable progress in using icts for teaching and learning. using powerpoints in lecture presentations have now become a norm at universities. powerpoints also include video clips and podcasts, which not only make lectures more engaging, but also make concepts being taught more accessible to students. in addition, some university departments now post course outlines, assignment tasks and lectures on university websites, which students can access at any time to supplement their lecture notes. in some instances, lecturers also engage with students on blogs or chat rooms set up for specific courses, in which they provide information to students and address their queries. students are also able to enter into conversations with other students about their work in courses using such chat rooms and blogs. since the moll et al. study in 2007, no systematic study has been conducted of the extent to which there might be more use of icts in teaching and learning at south african universities. however, as indicated, icts use in teaching and learning at south african universities is increasing and is a priority for both government departments of education and south african universities. this article has thus far indicated that acquiring and using ict skills is crucial for development, particularly for countries on the african continent. it also pointed out that african countries have prioritised ict skills and development which have been part of organisations such as the au and the sadc. as far as south africa is concerned, it was shown that the dbe and the dhet place considerable priority in south africa to ensure that ict skills acquisition occurs systemically for the country as a whole. in all of these instances, it was pointed out that ict skills acquisition is deemed necessary for effective participation and competition within a global economy, to the point where ict skills are also deemed crucial for people’s survival and participation in the current information age and networked society. however, while ict skills acquisition may be important for these reasons, the assumption that icts use leads to better learning and teaching cannot be taken for granted. limitations of icts and icts use in pedagogy prompted mainly by the sheer dexterity with which children seem to currently use icts, many researchers have begun to explore the extent to which children’s actual using icts (educationally) for development in an african context: possibilities and limitations nazir carrim & mandi taruvinga 111 learning and cognitive abilities have improved due to ict skills and use. despite what may be expected, the results of such research drawing the conclusion that icts use leads to better teaching and learning cannot be absolute. current findings regarding children’s use of icts indicate that children seem to acquire information rather than knowledge (see lelliot et al., 2000) and are unable to transfer the skills and information from using icts to other contexts. this suggests that children do not seem to be able to transfer such information across contexts. children also seem to access information without having the understanding or emotional capacity to be able to make sense of, and deal effectively with the information they access. these findings, though still under research and debate, suggest that the assumption that using icts leads to improvements in actual learning cannot be taken for granted (see also carrim, 2011). collins and halverson (2009), in discussing educational information technology and its use in the usa context, also point out that as much as there are empirical studies suggesting that icts lead to improvements in students’ learning, there are just as many studies indicating that this is not the case. in this sense, the jury, as it were, is still out on whether icts use does lead to improvements in learning and students’ achievement levels. from an australian context, singh (2001) observed samoan students’ use of icts, and pointed out that, while icts use by samoan students increased their feelings of belonging, solidarity and friendship in that using icts to communicate with other samoan students reduced their feelings of alienation and isolation in australian universities, there was little evidence to suggest that icts use did improve the samoan students’ understanding of the content of the subjects for which they were registered. in other words, singh’s (2010) findings also indicate that one cannot assume that icts use increases learning and students’ performances. however, the england office of standards in education (ofsted) 2005/2008 reports (published in 2011) acknowledge the importance of integrating icts in the classroom. the report draws on evidence from school inspections concerning ict in over 177 primary and secondary schools between 2005 and 2008. the reports note that there is a proportional relationship between ict use and learner achievement levels. it appears that the latter were effectively better in schools using icts than in schools not using icts and those with poor management of icts. according to the ofsted reports, this relationship was established in both primary and secondary schools. it is obvious from the above discussion that the results of those studies that examined whether the use of icts enhances teaching and learning are somewhat mixed. it cannot be definitively stated that icts use do, in fact, lead to better teaching and learning. perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 112 in the south african context, hardman (2005) argued that the intervention of icts in the classroom shifts the “object” in classrooms and the elements within classrooms, but it cannot be concluded that icts would always necessarily lead to improvements in students’ performances. hardman (2005) investigated the use of computers in a primary school mathematics classroom in the western cape in south africa. in addition, and in the south african context, joubert (2008) states that, during interviews, many teachers described how software can help them make key concepts accessible to many learners in the context of the ever-growing demands of mathematics teaching. this leads to considering some of the possibilities that icts may yield in enhancing teaching and learning. the possibilities of icts and icts use in pedagogy the above discussion indicated that there are mixed results about whether, in fact, the use of icts in pedagogy leads to better teaching and learning. to summarise: • learners access information, but do not necessarily improve their knowledge when using icts. • learners access information using icts, but cannot necessarily transfer such information to other contexts. • learners may be able to access information using icts, but do not necessarily have the ability to make sense of what they are accessing. • icts use in pedagogy may enhance feelings of solidarity and reduce alienation among learners, but they do not necessarily lead to a better understanding of the content being taught. • in some instances, there seems to be a correlation between icts use and better learner performances. • icts change the object in classrooms, but do not necessarily lead to better student performances. • it appears that teachers benefit from using icts in order to make concepts more accessible to their learners. part of the difficulty in working out whether icts use does, in fact, lead to better teaching and learning pertains to the difficulties in making causal claims about what helps learning. this point has been made consistently in literature on school effectiveness and school efficiency. it is argued that there are far too many variables at work in learning to be able to definitively state that ‘x causes z’ to be learnt by a particular learner. there are many influences on learners, both in and out of schools, to be able to clearly establish whether ‘x causes z’ to be learnt. (see carrim and shalem, 1999 and meyer & motala, 1997, for more detailed discussions on difficulties using icts (educationally) for development in an african context: possibilities and limitations nazir carrim & mandi taruvinga 113 in making causal claims about what causes learning to happen.) it is in this light that the majority of educationalists would prefer to talk of “indicators” rather than of “causes” which may contribute to learning. as such, while some studies may be able to establish a correlation between icts use and better learner performances, as indicated in the ofsted study cited earlier, this cannot be taken to mean that icts cause better learning to happen. despite the limitations of making causal claims about what causes (better) learning to happen, and which bedevil studies on icts use in pedagogy, the possibilities offered by icts and icts use in teaching and learning seem to still prevail. the pan-african agenda and the results of some of the research conducted in this field and discussed in this article indicate that icts and icts use in education do assist significantly in terms of administration, communications, cost efficiency and lesson preparations. as far as administration is concerned, the pan-african agenda phase 1 and phase 2 reports indicated that the use of icts in educational institutions is increasing in order to facilitate their administrative functions. while the pan-african agenda reports also noted variation and inequalities across educational institutions in terms of the extent to which they use such technology for administration, this trend is significant and discernible. such administrative functions include record-keeping, timetabling and general administrative functions in educational institutions. icts also seem to significantly enhance communications between different stakeholders in educational institutions with a greater degree of efficiency. such communications include the use of e-mail, social media and general text messages to communicate with fellow teachers, learners and parents within educational institutions. in this respect, icts and icts use significantly facilitate the operation of educational institutions. the majority of educational policies, including those in south africa, southern africa and the au, discussed earlier in this article, also indicate that the use of icts in education may also be cost effective. this implies that icts could reduce educational costs by reducing the costs of printing textbooks for schools and, in general, make educational institutions less dependent on paper; this would ultimately reduce the costs for education. as far as lesson preparation is concerned, the pan-african agenda phase 1 study reported that the majority of teachers on the african continent are using icts and the internet to obtain more information and materials for preparing their lessons. this was also found to be the case when joubert (2008) interviewed south african teachers for a study. teachers are able to, and do use the internet to make the concepts in their lessons more accessible to their learners; they are able to use more materials, which they download from the internet, to make their lessons more exciting and accessible; they are able to design better lessons which are carefully sequenced perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 114 and paced and coherently organised with the help of downloaded materials, and they are able to access more exercises and activities to help learners go through the lessons prepared by the teachers. in this respect, icts and icts use do assist in, and offer significant possibilities for the use of icts in education that may contribute to teaching and learning. however, administration, communications, lesson preparations and possibilities of reducing costs, important and indispensable as they are to the operation of educational institutions, do not equal better learning. our aim, in this instance, is to show that one needs to be careful about conflating functions such as administration, communications, lesson preparations and cost effectiveness with actual learning and cognitive development. a great deal of careful and extensive research needs to be done in order to claim that icts and icts use in teaching and learning improve learners’ actual learning and cognition. as such, we need to recognise what icts and ict use in educational institutions can and cannot do. conclusion while african countries recognise ict skills acquisition as crucial for development in the 21st century, and have seriously put into place policies, funds and programme interventions for the development of icts and ict use in african countries, one cannot ignore the above discussion on the inconclusive findings as to whether ict use does, in fact, lead to better learning. as prinsloo (2005: 87) pointed out: the new literacies (screen-based and internet communications work) don’t have intrinsic resourcefulness. whether they offer opportunities for particular users is something that has to be established by situated research. as such, it would be advisable for african countries to be cautious about overly stating the benefits and importance of ict skills and use. while the latter are important, and perhaps unavoidable, there are good grounds to be cautious about what icts and ict skills can and cannot do. as african countries seem to be placing a high premium on icts and ict skills acquisition, it is not the panacea for all african countries’ development needs, neither can icts and ict skills be expected to solve the many levels of problems facing african countries, including in education. our purpose, in this article, was to suggest that, while icts and ict skills acquisition is important for african countries and their development, it would be a mistake to believe that icts and ict skills acquisition can solve all african countries’ issues, nor can it be assumed that icts use will necessarily improve learning and students’ performances. in this respect, it would be useful to conceptualise icts and ict skills acquisition as tools for development. like other forms of technology, icts are tools that need to be used, but that cannot be assumed to resolve many or all societal challenges, in africa or elsewhere. of critical importance to this article is the argument that we need to be careful about conflating issues, be clear about what it is that icts and icts use can and cannot do, and the need to have more refined and using icts (educationally) for development in an african context: possibilities and limitations nazir carrim & mandi taruvinga 115 more extended research on whether icts and icts use do lead to improved learning and cognitive development. references african union (au) 2008. study on harmonisation of telecommunications, information and communications technologies policies and regulation in africa. draft report. african charter on human and people’s rights 1981. adopted by the eighteenth 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2001. pedagogic discourses and student resistance in australian secondary schools. in a morais, i neves, b davies & h daniels (eds), towards a sociology of pedagogy. the contribution of basil bernstein to research (chapter 10: 251276). new york: peter lang. southern african development community (sadc) 2001. declaration on information communications technology (ict), august. 1 what we know about the dramatic increase in phd degrees and the reform of doctoral education worldwide: implications for south africa maresi nerad university of washington theories of the “knowledge economy” view knowledge, and particularly new knowledge, as a critical resource to enhance a nation’s economic growth. governments around the world have invested in doctoral education expansion. reforms in doctoral education are being shaped by the changing needs of society, of research modes, and of a changed labor markets for phd holders. the reform elements strive for excellence, expansion, quality assurance, accountability, and international and inter-sector network building. the expansion in doctoral studies has gone hand in hand with an increased flow of international doctoral students, the wish to become a world-class university, and the adoption of more standardized structures and practices of doctoral education. this paper ends with a number of promising reform practices that may be useful for south africa’s expanding doctoral systems, such as the introduction of postgraduate schools that help implement and initiate innovations in doctoral education on a campus with an eye to high quality. keywords: doctoral education worldwide, globalization in higher education, reform in doctoral education, increase in phd production, promising practices . with a population of just 330,000 and total area of 103,000 square km., iceland is a very small country. yet, despite its recent financial crisis, it is a highly developed economy and one of the most advanced nations in the world. not long ago, the annual number of “home grown” phds was 10, but in only 13 years enrolment jumped to 335, largely with the support of governmental grants, fellowships or special loans (gudmundson, 2008). furthermore, icelandic scholars have been enticed back from foreign institutions to form a small but highly respected research community actively contributing to iceland’s entrepreneurial development. focusing on the country’s vast natural resources – geophysics and geothermal energy forces, fishing and fish-processing technology – this increased research capacity and the newly developed industrial research environments, in turn, have expanded and enriched higher education, including phd production. iceland has accomplished much of these developments by setting up cooperative agreements with universities around the world for student research exchanges and joint programmes and degrees. in several ways, the story of the doctorate in iceland is a global story. since the 1990s, nations around the world have been increasing doctoral degree production and introducing initiatives to reform their master’s and doctoral programmes. these include nations as small as iceland or as large as china, nations with long traditions of doctoral education such as germany, or with shorter traditions such as australia, brazil or malaysia. the recent consensus report of the academy of science of south africa concludes that the country’s future development depends on the production of more high-quality phds (assaf, 2010). clearly, south africa is not alone in taking a fresh look at its doctoral education. why are such initiatives occurring at the same time around the world? why are both resource-rich countries with highly developed higher education systems and countries with emerging economies and young, advanced higher education systems reforming postgraduate education? the answers reflect the effects of globalisation on higher education, in general, and doctoral education, in particular. they also reflect significant demographic shifts in some countries, and an overall rapid increase in internationalisation activities at the postgraduate level.1 this article seeks to explain these developments and place the south african national concern about low production of high-quality phds in an international context. it concludes with recommendations based on successful reform efforts in doctoral education around the world. 2 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 the knowledge economy and doctoral education natural resources are no longer the key factors in economic growth and sustaining international competitiveness. instead, in today’s global economy, knowledge is viewed as a critical resource for nations. national governments and even supranational entities such as the european union and world bank have promoted science, technology and innovation policies to enhance economic growth (marginson, 2009; yusuf & nabeshima, 2007). these include attracting international business investment by developing world-class academic research facilities, which are seen as resources for discovery, innovation and highly skilled workers (altbach, 2007; salmi, 2009). new knowledge, it is hoped, will ensure prosperity for the general citizenry by generating technological innovation, new products, new firms or expansion of existing ones, and by creating high-paying jobs (dill & van vught, 2010; slaughter & leslie, 1997). this thinking is driven by knowledge economy theorists who attribute economic growth to the unexpected novel ideas that lead to scientific, technical, organizational, environmental and health innovations (powell & snellman, 2004; slaughter & rhoades, 2004). universities are sites of innovative research and the number and quality of doctoral students are critical to university research because doctoral students are centrally involved in the academic research work – doctoral theses produce a significant amount of new knowledge and, more importantly, doctoral education produces future researchers. as the knowledge economy theory has been more widely accepted around the world, national governments in many places have turned to master’s programmes and doctoral education as a way to prepare their future generations as innovators in all areas of society, but particularly in science and technology. eagerly seeking to stimulate economic growth, national capacity building and international cooperation as well as competition, governments are allocating substantial funds to increase the research and development capacities of their countries. postgraduate education is included in these funding allocations. the education of outstanding scholars and professionals who are able to bring innovative changes to their workplaces – in business, government, academia or non-profit sectors – is increasingly considered to be part of research and development activities and included in national innovation policies. no less important is the fact that countries internationally recognised for world-class, successful research capacities are those that attract major investment money and create new jobs and markets. the new mode 2 doctorate it is not just a matter of how many master’s and doctoral degrees are awarded each year. each degree has to represent the best possible education that will contribute to solving societal problems and push forward the frontiers of knowledge. this means that, as countries and their institutions expand capacity, they must simultaneously be re-thinking how they educate their next generation of professionals and researchers. first-class research minds are not shaped by rote learning during the early years of schooling, nor limited to narrow, singular disciplinary research approaches without exposure to views from other disciplines. instead, education and research training have to be organised with a problem-solving approach, using multi-disciplinary teams and including participants from various sectors of society. finding answers to the many societal problems has become too complex and too costly to be solved by one researcher, one singular disciplinary approach or one university. it is widely believed that phd education must incorporate new elements in order to produce the kind of scholars, researchers and leaders needed for the future (national academy of siences 2007). reforms aimed in this direction include efforts to prepare graduates to undertake “mode 2” research and equip them to work effectively in a variety of employment sectors and types of careers within the emerging, global knowledge economy and information society (bartelse & huisman 2008; nerad 2009; nsf 2000). mode 2 designates research characterised by solving problems which have been defined by society, by including participants from various sectors of society, and by tackling big challenges requiring multi-disciplinary approaches (gibbons et al., 1994). in contrast, in so-called mode 1 research, investigators solve isolated disciplinary puzzles; and students learn from one master scholar within one discipline (gibbons et al., 1994). this describes the traditional model of phd education. today’s reforms seek to preserve disciplinary excellence while preparing students for multi-disciplinary, team-based research. they tackle real-world 3nerad — what we know about the dramatic increase in phd degrees problems and learn to work effectively in international contexts and at the interfaces of academy/industry and academy/society, as well as in academia, industry, government and non-profit sectors (adams et al., 2005; stokes 1997). expansion of doctoral education in recent decades, phd production worldwide increased greatly. in science and engineering alone about 174,000 doctoral degrees are awarded in the world annually. in 2006, 52,000 degrees were awarded in the european union. with about 30,000 science and engineering phd degrees conferred in 2006, the united states still produced more phds than any other country, accounting for about 18% of world output.2 but growth in other parts of the world has far outpaced us growth in phd production. between 1985 and 2005, for instance, the number of science and engineering phds awarded in germany, japan and the uk nearly doubled. china’s output soared from fewer than 1,000 in 1985 to more than 14,000 in 2004. in japan, bachelor’s and master’s level education traditionally supplied industrial researchers, who were then trained within the industry. the phd was conferred mainly as an honour after a long career. today, in japan, the number of science and engineering phds awarded is increasing, more than doubling from 3,088 in 1985 to 7,658 in 2005. as phd output increases, the demographics of doctoral students are changing. the proportion of female phd recipients is rising and there is an increase in the average age of doctoral students (evans and marsh 2008; nsf 2006, appendix table 2-41; nsf 2008, appendix table 2-41). with these figures, a clear picture emerges of global trends in doctoral education. in the us the proportion of women who were awarded phds in 2009 has come close to par (46.8%) with men (norc 2010). more 30-year-olds and older begin their doctoral study after a period of employment. this is coupled with a growth in part-time phd students. also notable is the proliferation of professional doctorates such as in nursing and physical therapy. the relatively modest growth in phd production in european countries, as indicated above, is largely driven by an increase in international students. specifically in english-speaking nations and in countries where doctoral education is now offered in english, the numbers of international doctoral students have increased substantially. attracting international doctoral students not all nations have the capacity to produce more phds from among their own populations. some are “graying” nations with low birth rates (e.g., japan, northern europe, germany); others annually graduate only a small number of high school students eligible to attend college and proceed to the phd. countries with low birth rates or small populations try to attract highly skilled workers through the back door of education. to attract excellent international postgraduate students to their universities, these countries allow international doctorate awardees to remain in their countries and contribute to economic growth through innovations, research, and development. historically, a “brain drain” in doctoral education was assessed as a loss to the home country. during the last decades such countries have come to realise that these expatriates invest in their country’s economy and often return when the home country provides interesting opportunities. india and south korea are good examples. in light of low birth rates, the uk, japan and germany have launched massive recruitment efforts, particularly for their science, engineering, mathematics and agricultural doctoral programmes. in the uk an international student market analysis agency assesses foreign countries and the likelihood that their students can be recruited to uk universities. private firms advertise and recruit overseas for uk universities. japan has an initiative called “100,000 students from overseas” to attract more international students to its universities (yamamoto, 2008). australian and new zealand universities and, more recently, canadian universities, are recruiting heavily abroad, most notably from asian or caribbean countries (evans t 2000; pearson 1999). starting 2005, even the us, a country that continues to attract the largest number of international doctoral students without recruitment, began participating in an international recruitment fair in china. the initiatives to attract international postgraduate students, who may remain in the host country and contribute to the local economy, must be linked to a nation’s favourable immigration policies. 4 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 it is difficult to provide robust comparative numbers on the flow of international doctoral students, as countries have different systems for allowing international students to become residents. for countries where we know the percentage of doctoral degrees awarded to international students between 2003 and 2005, we see marked increases. in germany, for example, the proportion of international students among all phds awarded increased from 10% to 16% (3,556 international doctoral recipients) (nsf 2006, 2008, appendix table 2-49). in the uk during the same three-year period, of all the phds awarded, the proportion of international students increased from 39% to 42% (6,650 international doctoral recipients), while in the us the percentage increased from 30% to 33% for a total of 14,424 doctorates (nsf 2006, 2008). re-thinking and reforming doctoral education besides increases in the production of doctoral degrees, many countries have instituted reform efforts to improve the quality and efficiency of doctoral education. individual country initiatives show common elements of striving for excellence, expansion, quality assurance and accountability, and international and inter-sector network building. outside of north america, phds have traditionally been earned in a dyadic master-apprenticeship relationship rather than within a structured programme with a cohort of students. today’s trend is toward structured doctoral programmes, including multiple supervisors (i.e., committees rather than a single advisor and often with international members) and coursework requirements (nerad & trzyna 2008; teichler & yagci 2009). where they do not already exist, graduate schools (“research schools” in europe) are being established, which develop university-wide guidelines for doctoral education, codes of practice for the supervision of phd students, faculty development offerings, assessment of phd education, and incentives for mentoring. given south africa’s need to increase its phd production in science and engineering (assaf 2010) the following models of phd production, which are linked with the industry, will be of interest. new models of knowledge production: linking university with industry by creating programmes that link universities more closely to industry and the public sector, countries such as australia and brazil, and european union countries (ec 2010) hope that doctoral graduates learn to transfer knowledge acquired during their studies to places that will immediately use and apply this knowledge. the links between government, industry and university in this new mode of knowledge production are often referred to as a “triple-helix” (etzkowitz & leydesdorff 2000; harman 2008). the latest european commission paper on europe 2020, flagship initiative: innovation union, speaks of the necessity in times of fiscal constraints to invest even more in higher education for job creation and innovations, and systematically link researchers, creativity and ideas to goods and social services (ec 2010). the australian cooperative research centers (crc), established by the australian government in 1990, is an example of these links and new modes of knowledge production. the goal of the crc is to produce “end-user driven” or “employment-ready” graduates (harman 2004; harman 2008; manathunga et al. 2009) not only for the industry, but also for the public sector. these centres emphasise collaborative, multi-disciplinary and commercially oriented research. in 1990 germany introduced structured, interdisciplinary, theme-oriented doctoral programmes, the graduiertenkolleges, involving professors from several universities, and often having an international orientation (kehm 2008; nerad 2004). hundreds of graduiertenkolleges are each funded for up to nine years. in 1997 the us introduced similar programmes to train doctoral students by working within multidisciplinary teams on topic-driven research, in addition to acquiring traditional disciplinary research training (nerad, 2008). in 2005 the us introduced international research and training programmes, the “partnership in international research and education” (nsf/pire). world-class universities in order to indicate preparedness for innovations in the employment sectors and new markets, governments strive for world-class research preparation and research production. ireland, japan, germany, malaysia, 5nerad — what we know about the dramatic increase in phd degrees and recently canada have, or are talking about, creating such world-class universities. japan began funding centres of excellence in 2002, under the 21st century center of excellence (coe) program to strengthen and enhance the education and research functions of graduate schools (jsp n.d.). in 2005 germany created an exzellenzinitative (excellence initiative), which aims to make germany a more attractive research location and more internationally competitive. between 2006 and 2011 the german government has been providing €1.9 billion in additional funding to create more graduate schools for the promotion of young scientists. this funding also supports development of institutional strategies and implementation of clusters of excellence to promote top-level research. in 2005 germany extended the push to creating world-class universities via the excellence initiative. under this programme universities are encouraged to apply for interdisciplinary graduate schools, excellence research clusters, and innovative university profile developments which include elements such as close links to industry. for these competitive grants €2.7 billion will be allocated until 2017 (dfg 2009). similarly, in 2007 malaysia adopted an excellenzinitiative in the form of so-called apex universities in order to create excellent, world-class universities (sirit 2009). china has similar initiatives (hayhoe & pan 2005; yamamoto 2008). examples of changes in postgraduate education worldwide the following are examples of how individual countries have made postgraduate education a part of national innovation policies. europe. in the bologna declaration, europe announced its goal of becoming the leading knowledgebased economy in the world by 2010. european union leaders vowed to allocate 3% of the gnp to research and development in their countries by 2010 (nerad & trzyna, 2008). plans to implement this goal included doctoral education and the necessity to increase the number of doctoral candidates. ireland. in 2005 ireland, a member of the european union, developed a comprehensive plan to become a leading knowledge economy by 2013. the government’s strategy for science, technology and innovation included a tripling of their research and development investment in the higher education and business sector. this strategy included (irish university association 2007): building a world-class research system by increasing the numbers of researchers trained in ireland and • by attracting highly skilled, research-active individuals to ireland. this was coupled with changing doctoral education to structured programmes. capturing, protecting and commercialising ideas and know-how. • driving growth through research and innovation by taking research outputs with commercial potential • and bringing them to a point where they could be transferred to industry. providing a solid foundation in primary and secondary education through improved teachers’ • education, creating professional development and networks for teachers and emphasising effective methods of science teaching. ensuring that all parts of the research and education system worked well together • while the country has recently experienced a severe economic crisis, its postgraduate reform goals have not changed significantly. by focusing on growth in research capacity and by increasing the reputation of its universities, coupled with an enhanced research and development tax credit arrangement, ireland set up significant industrial and academic research collaborations. in the expansion of advanced degrees, ireland focused on areas in health, agriculture, marine, energy and environment sectors. brazil. the national plan for postgraduate studies 2005-2010 is a part of the brazilian government’s plan for self-sufficiency in the principal sectors of society. the specific strategies of the postgraduate studies plan included (riberio 2008): 6 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 increasing the production of advanced degrees, master’s and doctoral degrees, doubling the number • of faculties with doctoral degrees within a 10-year period, and increasing doctorates awarded in areas of relevant economic development. changing the national fellowship system, aligning doctoral education with the national goals of self-• sufficiency in principal sectors of the economy. creating links between the academic world and the world of production.• investing in research and development in the academic sector as well as in industry and business with • an investment of $660 million for these goals. implementing a clear, transparent national quality evaluation system coordinated by a council for the • improvement of higher education personnel and the national research council. india. in 2005 the indian national knowledge commission, an advisory body to india’s prime minister, stated that the country needed a knowledge-oriented paradigm of development to give it a competitive advantage in all fields (jayaram 2008). in 2007 the department of science and technology, among others, allocated funding to increase phds in nano-science. india’s expansion of doctoral production is not only a response to intra-national needs, but also a response to the establishment of research and development centres of multinational-national companies and emerging collaborations between these research and development centres, indian universities, and research institutes and indian companies (jayaram et al. n.d.). these developments are concentrated in biotechnology, computer software development and nanotechnology. malaysia. malaysia is positioning itself as the higher education hub in the asian pacific region. it has recognised that the cost of education in countries such as the uk, the us and australia has increased and that, given malaysia’s geographic location and religious diversity, it is in a good position to welcome international students. its 2007 national higher education strategic plan focused on: increasing the proportion of academic staff who hold doctoral degrees from 30% to 75%.• implementing quality assurance indicators, which include quality of academic staff, the quality of the • infrastructure, and the quality of the learning and teaching content. establishing centres of excellence at a small number of universities through competitive applications • to become apex universities. to become an apex university, it has to demonstrate a willingness to search for innovative ideas, a preparedness for change, and a readiness to implement the changes by means of a detailed plan. in its expansion of postgraduate education, malaysia’s apex university, penang, is focusing on research that seeks poverty reduction, providing wide access to health care, education and food for everyone, and spreading environmental awareness (sirit, 2009), institute of postgraduate studies 2009, malaysian ministry of higher education 2007). a global mode of phd production in spite of the differences in doctoral education systems and innovation practices, a review of university statements from countries in the east and the west identified three common features pertaining to the research doctorate: (a) a research doctorate should contribute to knowledge through original research; (b) the doctoral graduates are expected to have a substantial knowledge in their area of study; and (c) there is an increasing agreement that doctoral training should include development of transferable professional competencies and that these competencies are an integral part of becoming a researcher in one’s field (bernstein et al. n.d). beyond this common understanding of what a doctoral degree entails, the following converging practices have emerged around the world:2� 7nerad — what we know about the dramatic increase in phd degrees selection and admissions 1. more and more countries allow access to doctoral programmes after a bachelor’s degree as opposed • to only after first earning a master’s degree. the admission procedure has become a competitive, defined and formalised process. • to attract outstanding applicants, students are now offered several years of funding. in some countries • funding comes directly from the government. in other countries such as the us they are funded indirectly by the government through research grants, or by the states through teaching assistantships. students increasingly are offered a threeto four-year funding package. programme elements 2. to be attractive to international students many countries offer their doctoral education training in • english. english has become the lingua franca of doctoral education, and many academic journals are published in english. students work with more than one supervisor or advisor. a dissertation committee, a panel of several • people, guides the doctoral students throughout the dissertation process. increasingly, students, especially in the sciences and economics, have the option of choosing between • a traditional dissertation and a compilation of several peer-reviewed articles based on their research. universities are beginning to adopt policies that recognise such articles and also thesis chapters with multiple authors. countries that traditionally have not administered examinations during doctoral study are introducing • oral examinations. doctoral education as academic and professional preparation, with a global view3. students are prepared for a variety of careers, not just becoming a professor, but also for doing • research and teaching in industry, business, governments and non-profit organisations. doctorates are increasingly seen in non-academic careers. training in professional skills is offered through the graduate school or research school. this training • focuses on conducting ethical research, working effectively in teams, knowing how to teach, how to publish, how to present, how to communicate complex information, how to write group grants, how to manage time and projects. universities make efforts to provide international experiences for their postgraduate students. • university and national policies, structures to guide growth and development of phd 4. programmes where not already in existence, graduate schools are established to develop overall guidelines for the • doctoral education process. these graduate schools are, in conjunction with academic departments, developing codes of practice for supervising faculty members. they increasingly offer training for supervisors and develop evaluation surveys assessing what students think about their programmes and the faculty’s advice. departments and graduate schools offer incentives for good mentoring through special awards. national funding agencies and universities are creating templates for the review of doctoral • programmes which synthesise international standards on phd programmes. they are reaching out to international review teams for programme review. funding and regulatory agencies are asking doctoral programmes to undertake formative and • summative evaluations for ongoing programme improvements. 8 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 recommendations based on international experiences clearly, doctoral education around the world has entered a new era, marked by many significant, exciting developments. for south africa, or any country seeking to drastically expand doctoral education, and whose doctoral education is based on the british model, six practices are suggested based on successful experiences. following is a description of these six practices, combined with names of countries where they were successfully applied. 1. development of a strategic increase in postgraduate education must be aligned with south africa’s national innovation and development scheme and has to address multiple societal needs: (a) develop a 10-year plan for doubling the number of academic staff with doctoral degrees in all fields (brazil, ireland). (b) target a portion of the increase in fields that influence economic growth (ireland, brazil, eu, malaysia). (c) create novel world-class doctoral programmes (brazil, ireland, iceland, malaysia). (d) create more professional master’s programmes. (e) plan for a regionally balanced increase (brazil). 2. embrace “brain circulation”. the “brain-drain” has historically been experienced by many resourcepoor nations with few world-class universities, but now these countries are turning past losses of excellent minds (“brains”) into a positive situation. they entice back expatriates who have become outstanding researchers. south korea, australia, ireland, germany, china and, most recently, india have all set up systems to bring back to their universities (permanently or for a few years at a time) eminent scholars in areas of national and institutional needs. these countries allocate a considerable amount of funding to make such a move attractive. in these schemes, germany, for example, provides funds to support employment of spouses in cases of dual-career scholar couples (e.g., the german alexander von humboldt distinguished professorship). in the case of south africa, offers which aim to return outstanding scholars and which involve exciting missions to help expand and produce high-quality research and to train graduate students in the process, could be attractive to committed minds. success is likely if several universities and industrial research centres work together on such opportunities. 3. a differentiated higher education system can more readily provide education that addresses local needs. (a) not all universities need to offer all doctoral degrees. centres for excellence need to be built according to existing expertise at different universities. furthermore, research specialisation must be combined with a sufficient critical mass to make quantity and quality of phd production more feasible. (b) not all higher education institutions need to grant phds (see brazil, or the california master plan for higher education, which differentiates by functions and degrees among its three types of higher education institutions and has a strong system of articulation among the different institutions). 4. south africa can create a prestigious national fellowship which includes a maximum of two years of study at a foreign university to ensure international exposure. such fellowships ensure education with the international exposure necessary for a global employment market. brazil, china, thailand and demark all have successful programmes to support students to study abroad. these fellowship recipients come with their own money and are welcomed by host universities as no extra expenses are incurred. 9nerad — what we know about the dramatic increase in phd degrees 5. south africa can more readily disseminate the latest knowledge when concerted and coordinated efforts are made to bring together representatives of universities, research councils, governments, non-profit organisations and industries in on-going round-table meetings. if these meetings with representatives from outside the university include planning activities with regard to broadening information about the career possibilities of aspiring doctorates and possible mentoring of current master’s and doctoral students by men and women in industry, business, government or non-profit organisations, the gap between inside and outside academia could begin to be bridged. australia, ireland and the us are good examples of round-table activities, with representatives from relevant sectors of society meeting regularly to discuss labour force needs and plan activities which provide universities and their graduates with up-to-date information on these needs and skills. germany, for example, has implemented industrial mentorship programmes for female science and engineering doctoral students to meet regularly with female mentors from the industry as a measure to increase the number of successful female engineers and scientists working in the industry. 6. in south africa’s drive to increase phd production, the introduction of a single graduate school to support academic staff and students and to ensure quality and equality across fields can be a major asset. recent european implementation of various forms of graduate schools has found the american model of a single graduate school to be superior to several decentralised research schools. the graduate school is closely linked to the research agenda of the university. a graduate dean heading the graduate school belongs to the inner circle of a university’s governance. the graduate school is both an administrative and an academic unit. it has five basic functions: it is the executive policy body of an academic senate committee which ensures the quality of master’s • and doctoral education across the entire university. it is an administrative unit for all matters of postgraduate and postdoctoral affairs. as such, it oversees • the basic requirements of admissions and degrees. it is a service unit for postgraduate programmes and postgraduate students. in this function, it provides • additional professional skills training which allows doctoral students to be successful in a variety of employment settings. it is an institutional research unit for postgraduate matters and it collects and analyses data on • postgraduate education at its university. institutional research serves as a basis for policy setting. it is an initiator and catalyst for innovation in postgraduate and postdoctoral matters. • in sum, if strategic increases in postgraduate education are linked to the south african national innovation agenda, changes will have great potential for success. if these quantitative changes are paired with changes in the way doctoral education training is structured, and doctoral students are treated as junior colleagues in a community of research practice, then these changes will result in a high-quality education. the efficient and effective use of existing resources and the collaboration among south african universities and with government, business and industry with regard to the use of expensive research equipment will ensure that high-quality research training occurs faster and that the transfer of knowledge from the university to the industry advances more quickly. following the successful examples of south korea and india, south africa can attract expatriate south african researchers and scholars who are committed to rebuilding the new south africa. in doing so, plans for quantitative increases and qualitative changes in doctoral education may come to fruition more quickly. establishing postgraduate schools in the south african universities may be the way forward. as south africa refines its national innovation agenda, it should not underestimate the role that postgraduate education can play in helping the country to meet its long-term economic and social goals. bold, smart and highly educated men and women, applying their innovative talents and knowledge across academia, government, business and industry will become a most valuable resource for the country. this 10 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 next generation will support the “knowledge economy” critical to south africa’s internal growth which, in turn, is linked to an international presence. how is this great bank of knowledge and innovation to be built? goals for postgraduate education must be both quantitative and qualitative. “qualitative” implies thinking strategically and flexibly about how doctoral education is to be structured. as this article has tried to make clear, the traditional model is no longer adequate. doctoral students today need to be treated as junior colleagues in a community of research practice and have access to the best resources and facilities. if south african universities collaborate with one another and with government, business and industry, existing resources can be used more efficiently and effectively. in addition, if south african universities collaborate with universities and research facilities around the world and provide opportunities for their students to spend time with other research groups, postgraduate research training and the transfer of knowledge will be cutting edge. references adams jd, black gc, clemmons rj, stephan pe 2005. scientific teams and institutional collaborations: evidence from us universities 1981-1999. research policy, 34(3):26. altbach p 2007. empires of knowledge and development. in: altbach p & balan j (eds). world class worldwide: transforming research universities in asia and latin america. baltimore: johns hopkins university press. assaf 2010. the phd study, consensus report. pretoria: academy of science of south africa. bartelse j & huisman j 2008. the bologna process. in: nerad m & heggelund m (eds). toward a 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(endnotes) 1. an earlier version has appeared in the higher education forum (japan) volume 7, march 2010 and is based on a talk presented at a symposium in south africa in connection with the assaf consensus report of october 5, 2009. 2. data in this paragraph drawn from national science foundation, science and engineering indicators 2010 http://www nsf.gov/statistics/seind10/c2/c2s5.htm#s4. 101 early school leavers and sustainable learning environments in rural contexts sechaba mg mahlomaholo university of the free state in this paper, i show by means of yosso’s community cultural wealth theoretical framework how equal numbers of early school leavers (esls) from the rural and the urban parts of the north-west province cite similar reasons for their early departure from school. the conclusion drawn from this scenario is that, irrespective of their diverse backgrounds and locations, they all seem to be affected in similar ways by conditions in their respective schools and social milieu. the above conclusion indicates that there is nothing intrinsically inferior or backward about rural learners and their settings. what seems to be different though may be how they are excluded with regard to curriculum practices that do not address their specific circumstances directly. on the basis of this conclusion i suggest that these curriculum practices be customised to the needs and conditions in the rural settings towards the creation of sustainable learning environments so as to stem the high rates of learner attrition therein. this must be done with the intention of giving rural learners opportunities similar to those afforded to learners from urban backgrounds. to date, rural learners have been deliberately and/or inadvertently excluded and marginalised; thus, to remedy the situation i propose the creation of sustainable learning environments in rural schools as well. keywords: early school leavers, sustainable learning environments, rural education, community cultural wealth . the problem one of the most serious problems in the south african education system currently is the high number of early school leavers (esls) (dieltiens & meny-gibert, 2008; department of education [doe], 2007; development bank of south africa, 2008; mahlomaholo, mamiala, hongwane, ngcongwane, itlhopheng, fosu-amoah, mahlomaholo, kies & mokgotsi, 2010; masitsa, 2006). for example, in the north-west province where this study is focused, it is estimated that, in any one year, about 53 000 learners enrol for grade 1 but that 12 years later such a cohort is decimated to around 20 000 learners sitting for the grade 12 examinations (mahlomaholo et al., 2010). this implies that about 33 000 learners will have fallen by the wayside, having left school before completing at least their 12th grade. some studies use the stigmatising concept of the ‘drop outs’ to refer to the esls (see doe, 2007; jimerson, egeland, sroufe & carlson, 2000). such a concept tends to blame the victims of a system of education and schooling that does not provide adequate support for all learners and regard others, the majority, as expendable. esls are thus that category of learners who could have become productive citizens in a democracy but who, due to factors beyond their control, had to leave school before completing at least grade 12. this problem of esls seems to be compounded even further when the learners reside and attend schools in rural settings of the country. to illustrate this point, in the north-west province over 70% of the learners who leave school early come from rural environments (mahlomaholo et al., 2010; statistics south africa, 2007). while it is a fact that rurality as a setting may be exacerbating the issue of learner attrition, i wish to argue in this paper that rural learners do not enjoy the same privileges and resources as their urban counterparts. for example, schools in the rural settings are few and far from where the learners stay (mahlomaholo & hongwane, 2009). they also do not have easy access to services such as water and electricity. teachers who work in these areas are less qualified and often have very low levels of motivation (matlho, 2011). a closer look at the rural settings also shows that, unlike the urban areas, they 102 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 are not the seats of power as they lie usually on the margins and fringes of social, educational, political and economic activity (woodrum, 2011). as a country we seem not to have a very clear understanding of what constitutes rural education. our educational policies and practices of the curriculum use the urban learner as the norm and focus for educational provisioning (matlho, 2011). this results in rural learners being ignored and thus located on the periphery of the national education agenda (balfour & de lange, 2011). furthermore, there are many stereotypes about what rurality and education therein entail. there are even views expressed about the unsophisticated, inferior intellectual capacity and backward nature of rural learners and their lack of knowledge regarding technological gadgets, to name a few (sherwood, 2000; sibanda, 2004). in this paper, i am thus advocating for rural education policy and curriculum practice to take rurality as their point of departure and continue to validate the community cultural wealth thereof because it has its own experiences, fears and aspirations just like its urban counterpart. when such an approach is adopted, rurality and rural learners are understood for who they really are. it is also under such conditions that we can talk about a sustainable learning environment being created for the rural learner because it privileges equity, social justice, freedom, peace and hope. the lens such an approach is clearly articulated in yosso’s (2005) theorisation on community cultural wealth which differs significantly from bourdieu’s (2003) notion of cultural capital. the latter, when faced with the apparent disadvantage of rural learners as described by the dominant discourses, would argue that they have deficiencies with regard to the requisite cultural capital. this means that rural learners, with regard to their place of and conditions at birth, have not been adequately socialised into the ways of learning required at school; thus, precipitating an early departure (south, haynie & rose, 2005). this perspective, rather than attempting to thoroughly understand and resolve the problem of the high levels of rural learner attrition, seems to adopt a noncommittal position and ultimately finds the latter guilty as charged, without taking too much consideration of the circumstantial evidence to the contrary. high levels of attrition among rural learners would be evidence of how they lack the habitus, cultural capital and the disposition to do well at school (bourdieu, 2003). contrary to the above view, yosso (2005) would first want to establish the extent to which schooling as currently provided to rural learners is relevant, meaningful and rooted in their experiences. the point made through community cultural wealth is that rural schooling, as it is in south africa, ignores what is essential, meaningful and relevant to the rural learner. rural learners have their way of making sense of the world which has been tested through time (delgado, 2002). they are tacitly aware of the problems in their environment and of ways of responding to them adequately (campbell & yates, 2011). they have the navigational capital that helps them survive the often harsh realities of their contexts, together with having aspirations for the future and being aware of the impediments to their success. this aspirational capital is present, irrespective of the odds against its realisation. rural learners have their networks of mutual support and validation (yosso, 2005), as well as knowing that collectively, they have the power to survive and face the challenges of their lives. this social capital is built onto their familial and linguistic capitals (yosso, 2005). the sense of belonging is strong among them as is usually the case with the poor and the underclass the world over (yosso, 2005). most importantly, they also have the resistance and resilience capitals that have enabled them to challenge instances of inequity, unfairness, discrimination, oppression and marginalisation instituted against them (yosso, 2005). according to yosso, the capitals described above constitute his notion of community cultural wealth. grounded on the above perspective, i therefore tend to see the high levels of attrition among rural learners first as an indication of the exclusion of their community cultural wealth from educational policy and curriculum practices. the african national congress government has recently recognised this fact and has even prioritised both rural development and education for closer attention (mahlomaholo et al., 2010). however, this has still to be translated into concrete and practical policy and focused curriculum practices. an analysis of the many educational legislative and policy imperatives (mahlomaholo, 2010) reveals that 103mahlomaholo — early school leavers and sustainable learning environments issues of equity, social justice, freedom, peace and hope have been privileged therein, but they have not focused attention on the problem of education for the rural learner, in particular. understanding rurality rurality has not been adequately analysed in south africa. it is not a homogenous entity but includes a number of varied contexts and theorisations. in south africa it refers to those sparsely populated environments where agriculture is the dominant mode of economic activity. there are also other forms of rurality which include the many trust and tribal lands in the country led by traditional leaders (motala, dieltiens, carrim, kgobe, moyo & rembe, 2007). even with regard to theorising ‘the rural’, there seems to be multiple positions from which to understand the concept and the place. for example, hlalele (2011:1) notes the following about rurality: so long as a nation’s rural life is vigorous, it possesses reserves of life and power, which nourish, nurture, promote and sustain humanity … urban and metropolitan schools, colleges and universities may unintentionally structure their learning programmes in such a manner that they neglect rural attributes and resultantly ostracise or marginalise learners/students from rural environments. to complete the loop, these institutions are more likely to fail in preparing graduates for a decisive contribution to sustainable rural learning ecologies. the above quotation defines ‘the rural’ from an asset-based perspective, showing how resourceful rural environments are but have unfortunately fallen victim to the parasitic and pyrrhic urban demands. this definition differs from the conventional deficit-based one referred to earlier in this paper which emphasises what ‘the rural’ lacks (demi, coleman-jensen & snyder, 2010; minnaar, 2006). depending on one’s perspective, it seems that the rural can represent a space of deprivation and exclusion while, for others, it could be understood as a place full of untapped potential waiting to be explored and exploited (demi et al., 2010; hlalele, 2011; minnaar, 2006; motala et al., 2007). however, one distinguishing feature of the rural environment seems to be an abundance of land, sometimes coupled with a scarcity of skilled person power to till and develop these areas (michelson & parish, 2000; minnaar, 2006). as an example, there is a need for engineers, skilled artisans, competent commercial farmers, economists and technologists of all kinds to respond to the infrastructural and service provision needs of the rural. the challenges to feed the many with safe food and to create sustainable and decent employment for the multitudes are almost overwhelming (motala et al., 2007). without romanticising the situation, i realise that poverty is rampant but that there is a possibility of transcendence in rural settings. in fact, hope seems to lie in the creation of sustainable learning environments to unleash this latent potential which will be stifled if the high levels of learner attrition are to continue. methodology and design to demonstrate the above, i present in this paper the reinterpretation of some data on learner attrition from a study commissioned by the north-west education department (mahlomaholo et al., 2010). we traced a total of 15 695 esls from across the north-west province who fell within the cohort of 53 000 learners who started school in grade 1 in 1998 but did not reach nor write the grade 12 examinations in 2009, although they were supposed to be at that level as they had started schooling 12 years earlier. we firstly collected the names, particulars and contact details of these esls from the admission registers of all the schools in the province. we obtained permission from the north-west education department to do so with the help of the district officials and principals of the respective schools. there were almost equal numbers of rural (±48.3%) and urban learners (±50.9%) included. on the other hand, girls constituted 61% while boys made up 49% of all esls. for the purposes of this paper, i focused on the rural esls groups from the farming and tribal settings of the dr ruth segomotsi mompati municipality district (identified as the dr rsm district) and the ngaka modiri molema municipality district (the nmm district) because, comparatively speaking, these are the most rural of the four districts in the north-west province. 104 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 the urban group came from the cities in the dr kenneth kaunda (the dr kk district) and bojanala municipality districts (the bj district). in order to collect the data from these 15 695 esls, focus group interviews were conducted with them. this process spanned a period of six months. our team of nine core researchers, assisted by 200 community development workers (cdws), worked with groups of esls in community halls and centres across the province on appointed dates. from each ward in the local municipalities of the province, the department of local government and housing has people employed on a full-time basis as cdws to collect information from the local communities about any matter in order to inform the government for purposes of service delivery. these cdws agreed to assist us with the data collection process of our project. because of the trust that they enjoyed in these communities, they arranged for the data collection meetings in their respective wards. they informed the esls of the purposes of the study and assured them of the confidentiality and anonymity of the information that would be shared. they also emphasised the voluntary nature of the esls’ participation and that they could withdraw from the project at any time or refuse to talk or complete the forms without any adverse consequences befalling them. the cdws collected most of the data and our team played the supervisory and quality assurance roles. in a community hall where around 200 esls would be present at a time, the focus group discussions consisted of 20 small groups of about 10 esls each, talking and discussing the reasons for their early departure from school so as to remind and emotionally support one another. the responses were followed up with clarifying questions and reflective summaries as meulenberg-buskens’s (1993) free attitude interview technique prescribes. at the end of the session each participant completed the form, which we had provided for his/her own personal reasons, confidentially. these completed forms were collected after the sessions and information therein used as basis for our analysis. owing to the large numbers of focus groups and discussions that emanated from them, we tape recorded, transcribed and translated only from setswana texts into english; six of them where we, as the core research team members, participated directly. i selected only the significantly different contributions from the rural esls to constitute the corpus for analysis in this paper, since they were the focus herein. these i subjected to critical discourse analysis (van dijk, 2009) where the written word served as evidence for the interpretation made at both the levels of discursive practice and social structures (van dijk, 2009). i am aware that the readings of these texts are mine and that another researcher could come up with different interpretations and conclusions. however, the data from the forms which were completed by the participants were coded and simple percentages of responses calculated (see table 1). i used the 13 reasons coming from the esls’ responses and corroborated by masitsa’s inventory (2006) as themes to make sense of all the data referred to above (see table 1). findings and discussions from table 1 it is clear that there are no clear-cut distinctions between the esls from the rural and the urban settings regarding all the reasons cited for early school leaving. regression analysis (of the 13 reasons) showed that percentages of rural esls almost perfectly predicted the percentages of urban esls who left school early for the same reasons. correlation between the percentages of rural esls to urban esls: r = √r √r 2 = 0.955651276. this similarity could be interpreted as an indication that rural learners are affected in the same manner and to the same extent by the socialand school-related factors as their urban counterparts. given the gloomy picture painted in the literature about the extent of poverty and neglect rife in rural settings and schools (see demi et al., 2010; mahlomaholo et al., 2010; michelson & parish, 2000; minnaar, 2006; motala et al., 2007), credit should be accorded to the rural esls for their resilience, navigational and aspirational capitals that seem to have prevailed in spite of their sparse circumstances (yosso, 2005). hlalele’s (2011:1) observation that rural environments should not be undermined because they are actually sources of power to “nourish, nurture, promote and sustain humanity” is largely vindicated by these findings. nevertheless, further probing provided an explanation of why rural learners, in spite of their apparent strengths, are over-represented among the esls as reported in the literature (dieltiens & meny-gibert, 105mahlomaholo — early school leavers and sustainable learning environments r e a so n s f o r l se d r r sm e sl s n m m e sl s r u r a l t o t a l e sl s d r k k e sl s b j u r b a n t o t a l a l l e sl s t o t a l e sl s r a w % r a w % % r a w % r a w % % r a w % 1. fa il ur e (r ) 98 1 6. 3 73 2 4. 7 11 81 6 5. 2 60 9 3. 9 9. 1 31 38 20 2. l ac k of m ot iv at io n & t ru an cy 86 8 5. 5 55 5 3. 5 9 43 8 2. 8 37 3 2. 4 5. 2 22 34 14 .2 3. r es et tl em en t 10 4 0. 7 0. 7 10 4 0. 7 4. a bu se 2 0 0 2 0 5. l on g di st an ce s 38 8 2. 5 58 0. 4 2. 9 68 0. 4 0 0 0. 4 51 4 3 .3 6. pr eg na nc y 29 7 1. 9 16 2 1. 03 2. 93 38 4 2. 5 11 8 0. 8 3. 3 96 1 5. 8 7. po ve rt y 64 2 4. 1 88 5 5. 6 9. 7 90 6 5. 8 44 3 2. 8 8. 6 28 76 18 .3 8. il lhe al th a nd p as se d aw ay 96 0. 6 70 0. 5 1. 1 86 0. 5 33 0. 2 0. 7 28 5 1. 8 9. a tt ra ct io n of o dd jo bs 19 2 1. 2 82 0. 5 1. 7 12 5 0. 8 73 0. 5 1. 3 47 2 3 10 .l oo ki ng a ft er s ib li ng s 26 0. 2 3 0 0. 2 12 0. 1 2 0 0. 1 43 0. 3 11 e ar ly m ar ri ag e 39 0. 2 1 0 0. 2 8 0. 1 0 0 0. 1 13 7 0. 9 12 . c ri m in al a ct iv it y 1 0 3 0 0 28 0. 2 6 0. 04 0. 24 38 0. 2 13 . t ra ns fe r 78 9 5 71 6 4. 6 9. 6 18 67 11 .9 15 19 9. 7 27 .9 48 91 31 .2 t o t a l 43 19 27 .5 32 67 20 .8 48 .3 47 38 30 32 82 20 .9 50 .9 15 69 5 10 0 so ci al ly b as ed 15 .7 12 .6 28 .3 22 14 .9 36 .9 sc ho ol b as ed 11 .8 8. 2 20 8 6 14 ta bl e 1: r ea so ns c ite d by e sl s fr om ru ra l v er su s ur ba n en vi ro nm en ts fo r l ea vi ng s ch oo l e ar ly c or re la ti on b et w ee n th e pe rc en ta ge s of r ur al e sl s to u rb an e sl s: r = √ r √r 2 = 0. 95 56 51 27 6. 106 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 2008; mahlomaholo et al., 2010; minnaar, 2006; statistics south africa, 2007). rural esls seemed to be particularly unhappy about the kind of schooling to which they were exposed, as is shown by the following remarks: it was not easy to keep your focus on schooling when you stay and attend school on a farm. on some days the whole school has to go and assist with harvesting or planting, depending on the season, for the whole week. there are no classes then. we go back home tired from working in the sun for most of the time. now you tell me, is this schooling or farming? the above indicates that rural esls have to contend with school arrangements that do not support their progress academically and do not justify their spending time at school which is, in fact, unpaid child labour. it was for this reason that they left to take up employment as menial manual labourers as the school had failed them. in the same breath, the following observations emerged from another discussion: you can actually feel that the teachers are also tired or something. i mean to teach the whole lot of us at the same time in the same classroom is really demanding. there are grade three, four and five learners all in the same classroom. it is not that we were too many, but we were supposed to be taught different things by the same person at the same time. it is just impossible. most of the time we were taught the same thing which we had already passed in the previous years and this was just because there were new learners in a lower grade in our classroom. it was really frustrating. you are all lumped into the same classroom with all the other learners, especially the younger ones. then how do you learn under such circumstances? from the extract above it can be seen that rural esls address a serious problem affecting many rural schools in south africa which are organised on a multigrade basis (matlho, 2011). teachers who teach therein are trained to teach in monograde classrooms but find themselves having to teach in classrooms populated by learners in different grades. in some affluent countries which practise learner-centred teaching effectively, this is not a problem (matlho, 2011). in fact, multigrade teaching is a strength where resources are shared and utilised optimally by all learners. however, in our rural schools where teachers have never been trained to implement this effectively, it has become a great hindrance, as cited above. to emphasise this point, another contribution by a rural esl was as follows: you should remember that there are no secondary schools nearby; we have to walk long distances to the next village for these. when we get there we are tired and sometimes we are even scared to walk back home by ourselves, especially in the afternoons. there are many dangers in walking by yourself to and from school. even at school you do not get the excitement of being at school. there are no sports grounds at schools. it is just talk … talk all the time, listening to the teacher. honestly, i do not even know what i would have been able to do had i continued with schooling. there are no job opportunities here. many of those people who studied hard are still like us; no jobs and just walk around the village, spending time at the taverns and so on. the above extract indicates how under-resourced rural schools are and how they do not address the development of the whole learner due to a neglect of extra-curricular activities. the main point is a lack of infrastructure at these schools and, as such, teachers rely on traditional modes of teaching instead of using the internationally acclaimed learner-centredness approach. the unfortunate outcome of the above limitations is that learners are not adequately prepared to take up meaningful employment or create jobs upon completion of their studies at these rural schools. in addition, the context in which these limitations occur is not supportive of a culture of learning and diligence. there appears to be an atmosphere of general gloom, helplessness and desperation working against sustained engagement with schooling. moreover, there are no role models as even the graduates of such schooling roam the rural streets without any meaningful contribution to the improvement of their own lives and those of others. the extract below from another rural esl corroborates the above-mentioned comments in the following words: the school we attended had no buildings except for the principal’s. he was also the only teacher who used one of the huts in the village as his office. it can be hot in those corrugated iron structures which we as learners used as classrooms. there is no cooling system in summer and no heating in winter. i 107mahlomaholo — early school leavers and sustainable learning environments wanted to become a business person, but our teacher did not help us to understand or gain that kind of knowledge, as all the time it was social studies which never touched on the things we wanted to learn about. from morning until the end of the day we just recited. it is not fun to do all that when you do not know why you are even doing those things. we are given homework to do, but how can i do any work when i have so many things to do when i get home; fetch water and chop the wood for cooking supper and tomorrow’s meals. i did not have the time and there was nobody to help with the work as my parents were not educated. i am the only ‘grown up’ person at home who has to take care of the family. there is nobody to help me with my studies; there is nobody to motivate me or check my work. even if i do not go to school, nobody cares. the question of a lack of adequate infrastructure seems to be prominent even in this extract; therefore, it requires serious attention. teachers also seem to need plenty of support in terms of subject content knowledge and teaching methodology. they have to diversify with regard to what they can teach or at least more teachers should be employed to provide the required wide spectrum of subjects and career choices for their learners. more effective strategies to support learners with their homework, as an example, seem to be one of the priorities that need to be addressed because learners sometimes do not have parents to help them. even where parents are present, they appear not to have the requisite knowledge and education to provide relevant support. it is possible that some esls from urban environments have experienced the challenges highlighted by the rural esls above; however, they did not articulate them in their focus group discussions. for purposes of reporting and analysis, i thus selected those aspects that were different from the rural esls’ discussions which could explain why such high levels of learner attrition are occurring. what seems to be different among them are the ways in which they are excluded with regard to curriculum practices that do not address their specific circumstances directly, as exhibited in the discussions above. sustainable learning environments an adequate response to the problem of rural esls seems to lie in the creation of sustainable learning environments. such environments are those that place the highest priority on the role of the educators who have to lead, organise, manage and maintain them (de corte, 2000). among the many aspects of this role is the self-esteem and self-efficacy of rural educators. one of the most effective means of enhancing these attributes is by enabling them to discover the knowledge and power they have in themselves through sharing their expertise with peers and taking charge of curriculum planning in line with the requirements of their contexts (aldridge, fraser & ntuli, 2009; mgqwashu, 2009). to support rural educators, programmes with a specialisation in rural education could also be offered at faculties of education to empower students as they prepare to teach in rural schools where the needs are different and more specific. in this way, the reasons cited by the rural esls could hopefully be attended to. the role of the educator becomes effective when supported by meaningful, useful and effective resources, which are in short supply in rural settings (storey, 1993). in rural environments where there are extreme levels of neglect, the educator has to improvise and seek strong partnerships with other stakeholders within and beyond the immediate community because vital resources are not as readily available or as easily accessible as in urban settings (de corte, 2000; mahlomaholo, 2010). the creation of sustainable learning environments involves being aware of their limited resources and doing something about it. this involves fund raising, writing proposals to funding and donor agencies, as well as playing an advocacy role with regard to bringing the plight of the rural learner to the attention of the government and business concerns that may be in a position to assist (mahlomaholo, 2010; murry & herrera, 1998). for example, in instances where learners do not have transport to travel long distances to school, home-based learning centres could be established where they are organised into small groups in their neighbourhoods and supported by able others under the constant supervision and guidance of educators and parents. resources thus may have a different meaning for the rural environment where what is available can be utilised creatively. 108 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 over and above the resources, a sustainable learning environment refers to the presence of strong linkages between the school, the home and the community (mahlomaholo, 2010; van den berg, 2009). constant communication and feedback among these instances are very crucial. sometimes parents in the rural areas have to work long hours or are absent as they have to seek work in far-flung urban centres, often leaving children to their own devices. the school, the educator and the neighbour are thus called upon to play the role of the parent and the pastoral care giver who must go beyond responding to the academic and the cognitive needs of the learner (mahlomaholo, 2010; tella & tella, 2003). they should attempt to meet the emotional, social and many other human demands of the learners. therefore, the learning environment extends far beyond the classroom to include the community (fraser, 2002). conclusion the discussion above has attempted to demonstrate that rural and urban esls are affected similarly by the same reasons to leave school early. i have, however, indicated that, in spite of these similarities, rural learners tend to experience high levels of early school leaving more frequently than their urban counterparts; this is mainly due to how schools and curriculum provisioning by teachers exclude and marginalise them. in response to these practices i have suggested the creation of sustainable learning environments where rural teachers are empowered to learn from one another and to discover that the power that lies within them will work in the best interests of their learners. one of the strategies could be to create strong partnerships within rural communities in order to ensure that the same resources and privileges which urban learners have are also available to rural learners. rural learners have shown great resilience against all odds and if this cultural wealth can be capitalised on through the creation of sustainable learning environments in rural schools, fewer of these learners will leave school early. acknowledgement this study was made possible by financial and logistical support from the north-west education department and the national research foundation. the ideas expressed in the article are those of the authors. references aldridge j, fraser b & ntuli s 2009. utilising learning 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gender differentials in economic success: rural china in 1991. in: b entwisle & g henderson (eds), redrawing boundaries: work households and gender in china. berkley: university of california press. minnaar l 2006. causes of school dropout among learners in a rural farm school. unpublished master’s dissertation, university of zululand. motala s, dieltiens v, carrim n, kgobe p, moyo g & rembe s 2007. educational access in south africa. country analytic review. johannesburg: consortium for research on educational access, transitions and equity, wits university education policy unit. murry k & herrera s 1998. crisis in the heartland: addressing unexpected challenges in rural education. journal of research in rural education, 14:45-49. sherwood t 2000. where has all the “rural” gone? rural education research and current federal reform. journal of research in rural education, 16:159-167. sibanda a 2004. who drops out of school in south africa? the influence of individual and household 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meyer (eds), methods of critical discourse analysis. london: sage. woodrum a 2011. book review “rural education for the twenty-first century: identity, place, and community in a globalizing world.” journal of research in rural education, 26(5). retrieved on 29 july 2011 rom http://jrre.psu.edu/articles/26-5.pd. yosso tj 2005. whose culture has capital? a critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. race ethnicity and education, 8:69-91. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 51 elizabeth j pretorius department of linguistics, university of south africa e-mail: pretoej@unisa.ac.za telephone: 012 429 6028 supporting transition or playing catch-up in grade 4? implications for standards in education and training elizabeth j pretorius this paper describes an intervention programme that was originally intended to support transition to english as language of learning and teaching (lolt) in grade 4 in a township school, using a preand post-test design. because the pre-tests revealed very poor literacy levels in both zulu home language and english, the intervention programme was modified in an attempt to fast-track the learners to literacy levels more appropriate to their grade. this paper outlines the intervention, presents the preand post-test results of the english literacy assessments, reflects on the effects of the intervention, and briefly considers some of the reasons for the initial poor literacy performance. finally, a model for literacy development in high-poverty contexts is proposed to minimise the need to play catch-up in the intermediate phase. keywords: literacy, decoding, comprehension, grade 4, foundation phase, intermediate phase, high-poverty schools introduction ‘our kids are struggling. please can you help us help them?’ these words were spoken in 2009 by the principal of a primary school in a gauteng township who asked for literacy support to be given to the grade 4 learners and teachers at the school. the school provided initial instruction in zulu in the foundation phase, but the learners struggled when they changed to english as the language of learning and teaching (lolt) in grade 4 and the school was looking for ways to support this transition. this was a functional school in that it was well managed, the school grounds were neat and clean, school hours and the timetable were adhered to and the school had a good reputation in the community and the district office. yet, despite its good governance, perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 52 literacy levels were low and the school was underperforming academically. in 2008 the grade 3 learners obtained 19% for zulu literacy in the annual national assessment (ana) and it was this poor performance that prompted the principal to find ways of supporting the learners’ transition from the foundation phase to the intermediate phase. it was in this context that a grade 4 literacy intervention was planned and implemented, using a preand post-test design. the intervention at the school serves as a single case study. this paper addresses the following questions: what was the nature of the intervention? was it able to support the transition of learners in the intermediate phase? if not, why not? how was the intervention modified and did the modified intervention make a difference? what can be learned from this case study? the nature of the intervention programme is described at a broad school level as well as at grade 4 level; the literacy results before and after the implementation of the intervention are examined and, in light of the results, the changes that were effected are briefly discussed. in conclusion, some pedagogical implications are considered, and a model for successful literacy development is proposed that identifies critical factors which need to be in place for successful literacy development to occur right from the start of primary schooling. before moving to details of the study itself, a brief discussion of the transitional nature of grade 4 is given to situate the intervention case study within a broader theoretical context. why is grade 4 important? in most schools worldwide, foundational reading skills are supposedly developed in the first three years of schooling during which period there is generally a strong emphasis on teaching letter-sound relations and developing decoding skills (i.e. the bottom-up technical reading ability that converts print symbols into language). grades 1-3 are the learning to read phase. during these years, children are typically given regular reading homework to practise their fledgling reading skills and the texts to which they are exposed are usually short narrative texts which fall within young children’s frame of reference. during this phase, children’s oral language proficiency can influence the ease and speed with which they learn to read (snow & dickinson, 1991; tabors & snow, 2001), which is why a strong case is made for early literacy instruction in the home language. once children have been taught to read (i.e. decode), reading as a language and information-processing skill is then largely presupposed, the assumption being that once children have ‘cracked the code’, they can use their decoding skills to make sense of the information that they read. this typically happens from grade 4 onwards, when they move into the reading to learn phase. supporting transition or playing catch-up in grade 4? implications for standards in education and training elizabeth j pretorius 53 in most schooling systems around the world, grade 4 thus represents a transition where the instructional focus changes from learning to read to reading to learn. learners continue to build on and extend their literacy skills, but these skills become increasingly academic in nature. there is a growing reliance on literate practices for transmitting, acquiring and transforming knowledge. content subjects and accompanying textbooks become increasingly important. the nature of the texts that learners read changes from narrative to more expository text types which are often conceptually dense and abstract and, unlike narrative texts, tend to deal with topics that are unfamiliar to the readers’ frames of reference (e.g. chall, jacobs & baldwin, 1990). oral proficiency is no longer adequate for coping with school demands; children need to become competent in accessing and making meaning from written language with its vast range of vocabulary. the syntactic structures used in written language tend to be more complex than oral speech, with higher usage of passives, subordination and nominalisation. understanding and constructing meaning from language undergoes a subtle cognitive shift and increasingly depends on the ability to use linguistic and textual clues in the text itself rather than the conversational context of oral speech (reeder & shapiro, 1993). in other words, learners must start learning the registers needed to understand and produce the language and discourse of their academic content subjects. cummins (2000) terms this cognitive academic language proficiency (calp). ready access to print or electronic information and the ability to understand such information fast and accurately are critical factors in the early development of academic literacy. academic literacy, thus, has its roots in reading to learn when learners transition from grade 3 to 4. an important skill in reading to learn is the ability to recognise high-frequency words automatically, rapidly and accurately. automatic word recognition frees up attention resources so that the reader can pay attention to meaning (e.g. laberge & samuels, 1974; stanovich, 1986; kuhn & stahl, 2003). this makes reading faster, effortless, more meaningful and, hence, more pleasurable. in contrast, a learner who pays conscious attention to individual words in a text and tries to work out how to read them will not have attention resources for comprehension. oral reading fluency, measured in terms of words read correctly per minute (wcpm), is seen as the bridge between decoding and comprehension. research on norms for reading rate in english indicates that, by grade 2, children should be able to read at 90 wcpm, while the average grade 4 child (i.e. at the 50th percentile) should be able to read at 120 wcpm (hasbrouck & tindal, 2006: 639). reading rate in english as l2 is estimated to be at about 70% of that of a l1 reader (anderson, 1999). the transition from learning to read to reading to learn does not automatically or easily take place with all children. this transition is especially challenging when (i) children have reading or learning difficulties, and when (ii) education is framed by disadvantage, i.e. when large numbers of learners come from high-poverty homes and attend low-income, poorly resourced schools. the transition is also challenging perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 54 (iii) within multilingual education contexts where learners are expected to be biliterate, and reading to learn is done in a language that is not the learners’ home language. in schools in south africa where children are taught in an african language in foundation phase, grade 4 is particularly challenging because this is when english becomes the lolt. not only do learners need to develop adequate oral communication skills in english, they also need to develop the more book-oriented academic literacy skills in the lolt to cope with the increasing literacy challenges of the intermediate phase. if they have developed good reading skills in their primary language, then this should form a sound basis for developing reading skills in english. bilingual reading research has found that decoding skills can transfer across languages with an alphabetic written code (e.g. geva & zadeh, 2006; lipka & siegel, 2007). reading comprehension skills can also be transferred across languages, such as the ability to identify setting, main characters, problems and resolution in narratives, or the ability to identify main ideas, make inferences and predictions, use linguistic or text clues to construct meaning when reading expository texts. the transfer of such skills forms the basis of cummins’ interdependence hypothesis, namely that there is a common underlying proficiency relating to academic literacy that is shared across languages (e.g. cummins, 2000). in bilingual education systems it is, thus, important for learners to develop strong literacy skills in their home language as a basis for building academic literacy proficiency that can be shared across languages. grade 4 in south african schools if grade 4 is generally recognised as an important transition year in schooling systems, how is this reflected in policy and performance in south africa? although the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) has replaced the former obe assessment standards since 2011 (department of basic education, 2011), at the time that the intervention started in 2010, caps was not yet in place, and the assessment standards for reading and viewing in grade 4 in a first additional language (fal) expected grade 4 learners, inter alia, to do the following: • understand elements of a story (title, characters, point of view, role of pictures in making meaning) • read for information (e.g. in a recipe, map, timetable) • understand design and layout of print material • read for pleasure at an appropriate level • use reference books and develop vocabulary • demonstrate a reading vocabulary of between 1 000 and 2 500 words (doe, 2002: 62-67). vague as the above assessment standards are, they depict a 10-year-old child who is expected to read both narrative and informational genres of text and make meaning from them, a child who reads beyond classroom demands (i.e. for pleasure), and has supporting transition or playing catch-up in grade 4? implications for standards in education and training elizabeth j pretorius 55 developed some visual literacy. if such literacy skills are expected in the fal, then the same applies even more so to literacy in the home language. yet, how well did these literacy standards match literacy accomplishment in schools before and during the intervention period of 2010-2011? the various national and international large-scale literacy assessments undertaken in south africa during the past decade consistently paint a bleak picture of literacy achievement in our schools, irrespective of the language of testing. south africa’s involvement for the second time in the progress in international reading literacy (pirls) in 2011 show very low literacy levels compared to other participating countries (south africa participated for the first time in 2006). in 2011 grade 4 learners (n=15 744) in 341 schools across all the provinces participated in the prepirls assessments, in the language which had been their lolt during the foundation phase. pre-pirls makes use of shorter, easier texts (on par with grade 3 texts) than the international pirls assessments intended for grade 4; yet, the mean score of 461 was well below the international centre point of 500. (columbia, another developing country, had a mean of 576.) grade 4s who did pre-pirls in english and afrikaans scored the highest, at 530 and 525 respectively, while those tested in the african languages performed very poorly, ranging from the highest mean of 451 in swazi to the lowest in northern sotho at 388 (howie, van staden, tshele, dowse & zimmerman, 2012: 27-29). performance was poor even at the most basic level of reading comprehension, i.e. the ability to retrieve explicitly stated information in a text (answering literal questions). results such as these indicate that reading is more than simply a language issue; even when the lolt is the home language, reading does not just happen, it needs to be explicitly taught and nurtured. the poor performance of our grade 4 learners in pre-pirls clearly indicates that they are not well prepared for the literacy challenges of the intermediate phase. there are many contributing factors that have an impact on formal schooled literacy. a great many learners in south africa come from low socio-economic backgrounds, and many adults in these households have low literacy levels. children from such homes are seldom exposed to books or regular literacy practices in the home, and home storybook reading in the pre-school years may be entirely absent. such children have very little experience of making meaning from the printed word before they start school. in such cases, schools should play a compensatory role, providing a print-rich and stimulating environment that develops strong literacy skills and is conducive to teaching and learning. yet, in reality, many children from poor homes attend poorly resourced schools where classrooms are by no means print-rich environments and where reading plays a peripheral role (doe, 2005; pretorius & mampuru, 2007; pretorius & mokhwesana, 2009). when they start their schooling, they may start to read in their primary language, but once they can decode words, very little sustained effort goes into helping them make the transition from decoding to comprehension, and from the perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 56 simple familiar narrative texts to the more complicated and unfamiliar expository texts. the genre of expository text hardly exists in the african languages, so there are few opportunities for reading to learn from home language expository texts. even though many book resources have been put in poor schools in the past decade, these are often poorly managed or locked away in storerooms (needu national report, 2012). even if some learners manage to overcome the odds and become good readers in this print-poor context, when they change to english as lolt they move from a relatively sparse l1 narrative text base to an extensive l2 expository text base. appropriate language and literacy support is critical. if learners start falling behind in grade 4, it is very difficult to catch up later. and if learners come into this transition phase with poorly developed reading skills, the challenges are all the greater. the need to develop strong language and literacy skills in the foundation phase is critical for supporting the transition to grade 4, even in homogeneous, wellresourced schooling systems where the lolt is the home language. in multilingual school contexts when children also have to switch to another language as lolt, a strong language and literacy foundation in the home language and in the fal becomes critical in the early years. when much of this early schooling is characterised by highpoverty contexts, the probability of success is even more challenging. the research questions in this paper are: • what kind of literacy skills did the grade 4 learners have at the start of the project? • how was the intervention adapted to meet their literacy levels? • did the intervention make a difference and, if so, how? in conclusion, we consider how the lessons learned from this single case study can help inform standards in education and training. methodology the school context the school, in a township in gauteng, accommodates about 600 children per year, drawing learners locally from the township, as well as from informal settlements in and around the township. there is a feeding scheme where approximately half the children receive one warm meal a day. the school has a policy of providing initial schooling in an african language in the foundation phase, with english becoming the lolt in grade 4, while the african languages continue being taught as a subject to grade 7. originally, the school only offered zulu, but it has recently also included northern sotho (henceforth n sotho). at the start of the project there were two grade r classes (one zulu, one n sotho), supporting transition or playing catch-up in grade 4? implications for standards in education and training elizabeth j pretorius 57 three grade 1 classes (two zulu and one n sotho) and then two classes at each further grade level. in 2010 only zulu was offered in grade 4. owing to good governance, the school afforded a stable and functional site for a literacy intervention. features of the literacy coaching project the project comprised a university-based team as well as an externally appointed project co-ordinator. the project team had been involved previously in a five-year multi-level literacy project at two primary schools in the same township. that project was premised on two principles underlying literacy development in high-poverty contexts, viz. capacity building (improving the literacy levels of the learners and the literacy instructional capacity of the teachers) and resource building (making books easily accessible to learners). the project had helped each school establish a functioning and computerised school library and encouraged teachers to create print-rich environments in their classrooms. workshops on reading (what it involves, how to teach it, how to assess it, etc.) were also held regularly, to help build teacher capacity, on the assumption that teachers would take on board what they learned at the workshops and incorporate it into their classrooms (cf. pretorius & mokhwesana, 2009). however, it was found that the teachers needed more hands-on support than what the workshop approach allowed (e.g. currin & pretorius, 2010). based on the lessons learned from the limitations of the workshop approach, the multilevel intervention model was modified and extended, and became an embedded, coaching model. although the project officially started in january 2010, initial project planning, discussions and school visits took place during the last quarter of 2009 in order to become better acquainted with the school. in order to get an idea of grade 4 literacy performance before the project started, baseline tests were administered to the 2009 grade 4 cohort towards the end of the year, and these results were compared with the 2010 intervention grade 4 cohort a year later (see tables 2-4 below). in the first year of project implementation, the following procedures were put in place: • the project appointed and paid an experienced foundation phase teacher as a literacy coach to work full time (from 07:00-15:00) four days a week with the grade 4 teacher. • the literacy coach functioned as a literacy role model and helped with lesson planning, resource development, literacy assessment and record keeping, daily teaching tasks and classroom management. this was extended to the foundation phase teachers, but to a lesser extent, since the primary focus of the project in the first year was to assist with the transition into the intermediate phase. during the second year of the project, far more literacy support was given to the foundation phase. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 58 • the project co-ordinator did weekly classroom observations to see how project ideas were being implemented in classroom practice and to give supportive feedback and encouragement to teachers. • project members held regular meetings, interviews and workshops with the literacy coach, teachers and principal to discuss project progress, to address potential problems and to keep the stakeholders motivated and on target. • the project helped the school build up and manage its library, and appointed, paid and trained a young woman from the community as school librarian. the library system was fully computerised. regarding literacy focus and content, a literacy programme which articulated with the grade 4 curriculum was envisaged, the aim of which was to strengthen the learners’ reading and writing skills in english so that they could cope with the increased literacy demands of the grade 4 curriculum. the original focus was intended to be on introducing learners to extended narrative and informational texts on a daily basis and gradually increasing their length and cognitive challenge, in line with the textbooks that the learners used in their content subjects. following block and pressley’s (2007: 225-226) instructional principles, the planned reading activities included the following: 1. showing learners how to attend to words and derive meanings from new words using clues in the text and morphological clues; 2. teaching strategies for learning new words; 3. teaching pre-reading, reading and post-reading strategies; 4. asking questions, making inferences and predictions while reading and looking for evidence in the text to support reasoning; 5. noticing when comprehension breaks down and doing something about it (e.g. re-reading sections of text); 6. using story grammar elements (e.g. setting, characters, problems and resolution) to comprehend narrative texts; 7. using text features and genre conventions (e.g. headings, diagrams, tables, font size) to help understand informational texts; 8. identifying main and supporting ideas in informational texts; following sequence and arguments; 9. connecting ideas in a text to personal experience, background knowledge and other text information; 10. summarising a text afterwards; and 11. reflecting on a text after reading and discussing it. supporting transition or playing catch-up in grade 4? implications for standards in education and training elizabeth j pretorius 59 the participants a grade 4 cohort (n=31) were administered baseline tests (see below) towards the end of 2009. this cohort did not form part of the intervention, but their results were used as a yardstick by which to measure project effects. in the first year of project implementation (2010), there was only one grade 4 class comprising 44 learners (16 girls and 28 boys). this class formed the intervention group. their ages ranged from 9-13 years, with an average age of 10.2 years. the grade 4 class teacher taught both english and zulu. assessment instruments using a preand post-test quasi-experimental design (cf. dörnyei, 2007: 117) with the 2009 grade 4 cohort as a baseline control group, a battery of literacy tests was administered to the 2010 grade 4 intervention class to monitor literacy performance. these tests administered at the beginning of the year (pre-tests) and again at the end of the year (post-tests) to measure progress, included group-administered as well as individual, one-on-one tests. in addition to the preand post-tests, the baseline tests were also given to the intervention grade 4 cohort at the end of 2010. owing to space constraints, only brief outlines of all the tests are provided. baseline tests (end 2009/2010): two baseline tests (tests a and b, group administered) were given to the 2009 cohort of grade 4 learners at the end of 2009, before the project started. the same tests were also administered a year later to the 2010 intervention grade 4 cohort so as to compare project progress. test a was a literacy test assessing learners’ knowledge of alphabetic sequence (in letters and words), word structure, word recognition, plural formation and spelling of high frequency words (e.g. sister, school, bread). it assessed basic english literacy skills; learners coming out of foundation phase should demonstrate fairly sound mastery in these skills. test b consisted of one of the 2006 pirls comprehension passages (informational) on antarctica, with a combination of literal and inferential questions. although this comprehension test is intended for learners who have done their initial literacy instruction in english, it was decided to give the test at the end of the grade 4 year to see to what extent learners who have switched to english as lolt can understand an informational text in english. preand post-tests (feb 2010 to nov 2010): in addition to the baseline tests above, the intervention cohort of 2010 was also administered a battery of preand posttests during 2010. a group-administered language dictation test (test c) and a reading comprehension test (test d) were given to the intervention cohort at the beginning and end of 2010 (preand post-tests). dictation test (test c): because there are no easily accessible, standardised language tests in all official languages in south africa for different age groups, it was felt that perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 60 a dictation test would tap into ‘school’ english proficiency without requiring the learners to read. english language proficiency was, thus, operationally defined as language proficiency obtained in a dictation test. to ensure that the level of difficulty of the dictation test was in line with the age group, the dictation passage of 24 words (about ‘my house’) was adapted from an approved grade 4 textbook. the learners first listened to a reading of the passage and the dictation began on the second reading. reading comprehension test (test d): english reading proficiency was operationally defined as proficiency obtained in a reading comprehension test where a combination of multiple-choice and open, fill-in question test items were used, based on a text taken from an existing grade 4 english textbook. the text was 172 words long, comprising six paragraphs, with an accompanying picture and eight questions (literal and inferential). a map was included relating to information in the text and three questions dealt with identifying relevant information from the map. the same dictation passage and comprehension test were used for the preand post-tests as it was held that the intervening eight months between test times would neutralise memory effects. decoding test (test e): although the initial literacy coaching programme intended to focus primarily on developing comprehension skills and strategies, it was important to assess decoding skills since decoding is necessary (albeit not sufficient) for comprehension; it enables comprehension. the decoding test consisted of four subtests. the learners were tested individually in a quiet corner in the library. the test was first administered in english around march and then again in october; the zulu version was administered mid-year. syllable identification: in this subtest the child is asked how many syllables (or claps) there are in the word. three words were given beforehand for practice. in all, 10 common, high-frequency words were selected as test items. phonemic awareness: phonemic awareness refers to the ability to distinguish sounds within words. the testee does not read the words, but listens to them, repeating them and then stating what is left of the word when a sound is removed. this subtest involved only the segmentation and deletion of sounds or syllables in words. the test determines whether the learner can recognise what part of a word is left if a syllable or sound is taken away, e.g. book without /b/ is ook. this subtest contained 18 items. word recognition: this test contains words in isolation to see how well the learner has developed automaticity in reading without using other clues in a sentence to work out how to read a word. in this subtest the burt word recognition test (1974) was used. it comprises 110 words arranged in groups of ten. it starts with twoand three-letter words of high frequency (e.g. to, up, sun) and they become longer and less common. supporting transition or playing catch-up in grade 4? implications for standards in education and training elizabeth j pretorius 61 oral reading fluency (orf): orf focuses on two components of fluency, viz. rate and accuracy, comprising a score obtained for the number of words read correctly in one minute (=wcpm) from an unseen passage. for this subtest, the english and zulu passages were selected from grade 4 textbooks. the english passage was about elephants (144 words). the scores for all the tests were captured and the results analysed on spss, version 20. results of 2009 baseline tests and 2010 pre-tests we turn now to the first research question: what kind of literacy skills did the grade 4 learners have at the school at the start of the project? the 2009 baseline tests alerted us to the low grade 4 literacy levels at the school before the project started. these were confirmed by the results of the initial grade 4 pre-tests at the start of 2010 when the project commenced, as shown in table 1 below. table 1: grade 4 test a and b baseline performance (2009) 2009 gr.4 cohort end 2009 test a literacy test 2009 gr. 4 cohort end 2009 test b pirls comprehension 2010 gr. 4 cohort pretest 2010 test c (fal) dictation 2010 gr. 4 cohort pre-test 2010 test d (fal) comprehension grade 4 cohort mean % 44.3 18.6 22 27.5 (std.dev.) (14.1) (15.5) (22.2) (19.4) when the literacy coach started working with the grade 4s early in 2010, she quickly noted that their language and literacy skills were far below what was assumed by the grade 4 curriculum. the decoding subtests confirmed very poor reading ability. many learners could barely read grade 1 texts, and the mean orf score was 16 wcpm, reflecting a floor effect. according to english orf scores, grade 1s who read below 40 wpm are regarded as having reading problems (hasbrouck & tindal, 2006). although the zulu results are not dealt with in this article, it should be noted that similar poor word recognition and orf scores were obtained in the zulu decoding results later in the year. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 62 changes in programme in light of these poor results, the intervention programme needed to be revised. the second research question is as follows: how was the intervention tailored to address the grade 4 literacy levels? the literacy coach and the teacher decided to ‘go back to basics’ to establish foundational reading skills. the revised aim was to increase the learners’ literacy levels to a more maturationally appropriate level within an academic year. the focus changed to teaching phonics (e.g. letter-sound relationships, blends, word attack skills), developing phonemic awareness, strengthening word recognition, practising reading fluency, and building vocabulary. although many of the comprehension strategies listed previously were integrated into lessons, some of them were not introduced (e.g. identifying main ideas) as the learners still struggled with basic reading. the language and texts used for classroom activities were simpler and shorter. an awareness of books and an orientation to reading was strongly promoted: stories were read daily, reading homework was given daily, a reading corner was created in the classroom, reading for pleasure was encouraged, and learners were encouraged to use the school library. the very weak learners were also paid attention, and during the holidays attended a supplementary programme which included phonics work, since their grasp of these basic sound-letter relationships was still tenuous. classroom observations also revealed a common tendency in the school to teach in a fairly ad hoc manner, at quite a slow pace, and with a strong oral orientation. although teachers were required to show their lesson plans in their files, there seemed to be a disjunction between the lesson plans and what actually happened in the classrooms. the literacy coach emphasised the importance of sound and practical lesson planning in the two-week cycle, integrating activities that complemented one another, checking that learning was occurring and consolidating it, creating flashcards relevant to the week’s phonics and vocabulary focus, and preparing classroom and homework activities that related to the current teaching focus. besides the literacy nature of the programme, there were also two aspects of classroom life that received attention, viz. classroom appearance and class management. the literacy coach worked closely with the teacher to create an interesting, print-rich environment in the classroom. care and time was also given to establishing better classroom management routines in order to create a classroom atmosphere conducive to learning. the literacy coach and the teacher were both warm and nurturing adults, but clear boundaries for classroom behaviour were established. initially, the children waited for the teacher to give basic instructions. learners were encouraged to become more autonomous, e.g. taking out books relevant to the timetable at the start of a period instead of waiting to be told to do so and always having a pencil, eraser and ruler on hand. resource management was supporting transition or playing catch-up in grade 4? implications for standards in education and training elizabeth j pretorius 63 also streamlined. several plastic tubs were organised for colouring pencils, scissors, glue sticks, etc., and handed out when needed so that groups of learners had easy access to such resources without wasting time waiting to use them or squabbling over limited resources. a theme was also introduced each week, awareness raised about it through discussion, and the children reminded of it constantly through the week. for example, one of the learners had a physical disability and was initially bullied and made fun of, so the first theme was tolerance. the learners were encouraged to think of ways in which they could show tolerance towards one another through their words and actions. such occasions also became occasions for learning language in action. main results to what extent was the intervention able to improve the literacy levels of the grade 4 learners? this brings us to the central research question: did the intervention make a difference and, if so, how? baseline results: we first turn to the overall differences in the baseline tests between the 2009 (pre-intervention) and 2010 (intervention) grade 4 cohorts. table 2 shows test a results, reflecting the differences in overall mean percentage, as well as differences in mean percentage at the 25th, 50th and 75th percentiles. table 2: test a performance – end 2009 and 2010 end 2009 (pre-intervention grade 4 cohort) end 2010 (intervention grade 4 cohort) test a (literacy test) mean 44.3 65.9 (std dev.) (14.1) (15.3) gains +21.6 25th 36.2 52.6 50th 42.5 68.7 75th 52.8 79.5 as can be seen, there was an overall gain of 21.6% in performance in 2010 compared to 2009. this general improvement in basic literacy skills was reflected across the range of learners in 2010. particularly noteworthy was the more ‘normal’ distribution of scores across the percentile groups: at the end of 2010 the weaker students at the 25th percentile (i.e. 25% of learners in a given group who perform most poorly), performed at the same level as the learners at the 75th percentile (25% of learners perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 64 who perform most strongly) in 2009, while in 2010 those at the 75th percentile were approaching mastery levels. table 3 shows test b results (the pirls comprehension passage), reflecting the differences in overall mean percentage in 2009 and 2010, as well as percentile differences. this was the most challenging test and reflects the level of reading ability expected at grade 4 internationally. although there was a 12% increase in overall performance in 2010, performance even at the 75th percentile shows that the learners found this kind of informational text very challenging. table 3: test b performance 2009 and 2010 2009 (pre-intervention cohort) 2010 (intervention cohort) test b: pirls comprehension mean 18.6 30.4 (std dev.) (15.5) (19.9) gains +11.8 25th 5.8 13.1 50th 14.7 27.7 75th 29.4 42.3 test b comprised literal and inferential questions; it is especially the latter types of questions that reflect real understanding and higher-order thinking skills. the disaggregation of results for literal and inferential questions is shown in table 4. the area where the learners improved the most was in answering literal questions. table 4: test b literal and inferential questions 2009 and 2010 2009 2010 test b (pirls) literal inferential literal inferential mean 26.6 20.7 40.9 26.4 figure 1 shows how performance in literal and inferential comprehension changed from 2009 to 2010 across the percentile groups. it is interesting to note that, while all the learners coped better with the easier literal questions, engaging with the text at a higher level and being able to answer reasoning types of questions remained a challenge, even for learners at the 75th percentile. supporting transition or playing catch-up in grade 4? implications for standards in education and training elizabeth j pretorius 65 figure 1: performance in literal and inferential questions – 2009 and 2010 internal progress (preand post-tests): in order to examine more closely the intervention learners’ progress, three sets of tests (group tests c and d and individual test e) were administered in february 2010 and again in october/ november 2010. to recap, test c comprised a dictation passage and test d a comprehension test, with literal, inferential and visual literacy questions. table 5 shows test c and d results. although test d comprehension was shorter and easier than the pirls passage, there was a strong correlation of .67 (spearman’s rho, p< .001) between the two tests. although the learners show improvements in both tests, the overall comprehension levels were still far too low for learners who were expected to be able to read to learn from their content subject textbooks. table 5: test c and d grade 4 preand post-test results 2010 test c dictation % test d comprehension % pre post pre post overall mean 24 44.3 27.5 45.3 (std dev.) (22.2) (26.9) (19.4) (22.7) gains +20.3 +17.8 percentile 25% 3.5 22.7 8.3 26.7 50% 17.8 43.1 25 42.8 75% 42.8 71.5 41.6 67.8 performance in decoding skills (test e) provides greater insight into why comprehension remained a challenge. table 6 shows mean results for the various decoding subtests from pre-test (feb) to post-test (nov) as well as differential performance within the cohort. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 66 table 6: test e grade 4 preand post-decoding skills 2010 syllable identification phonemic awareness word recognition orf (wcpm) pre post pre post pre post pre post mean 70.1 90.1 53.6 74.7 18 34 16 43 percentile 25th 70 80.7 26.6 60 6 23 1 8 50th 80 100 60 76.6 20 37 10 48 75th 80 100 80 93.3 28 46 28 61 at the beginning of the year most of the children could recognise syllables, but performance dropped considerably when it came to phonemic awareness (the ability to distinguish sounds within words). this was especially noticeable with weaker readers. they also struggled to recognise common english words1 or read extended english texts. according to orf norms, at the start of the year all the grade 4 learners were reading 4 years below their grade level (i.e. at about mid-grade 1 level). the post-tests show a steady improvement in decoding at the 50th and 75th percentiles. some of the stronger readers at the 75th percentile were now reading at about grade 3 level, but many were still at grade 2 level. although the weak children (25th percentile) showed some improvement and could now, on average, recognise about 23 words on the burt word analysis, after four years of schooling, they really grappled to decode words, especially in extended text. their decoding performance in zulu was equally poor, both in conventional reading assessments and eye tracking (van rooy & pretorius, in press). high correlations (spearman’s rho) of .82, .66 and .82, all p< 0.001, were found between orf and performance on test a (literacy test), test c (dictation) and word recognition (in test e). what these correlations suggest is that basic literacy knowledge, the ability to recognise words in print, and the ability to hear words in oral language are interrelated. in other words, learners who had difficulty hearing words (and sounds in words) also had difficulty recognising and reading words in print (i.e. written words). table 7 shows mean gains across all 8 subtests according to percentiles. the weaker learners made fewer gains and, although not reflected in the quantitative results, these gains were made slowly; both the literacy coach and the teacher attested to the extremely slow pace of learning of these learners. one aspect where they made the most gains was in phonemic awareness, doubling their performance on this test from 26-60%. but this only meant that at the end of grade 4 they were performing at the level where the learners at the 50th percentile performed at the beginning of the year. these learners were, only at the end of grade 4, starting to grasp basic literacy concepts that should have been acquired during the foundation phase. they were improving slowly, but not catching up. in fact, they were slipping supporting transition or playing catch-up in grade 4? implications for standards in education and training elizabeth j pretorius 67 further away from their peers. this is typical of matthew effects in reading1, where the poor get poorer, relative to their peers, the further they go up the educational ladder. table 7: mean increases across all tests gains percentile total gain in raw scores mean gains 25% 128.7 16 50% 173.9 21.7 75% 178.8 22.3 in sum, although at all percentile levels the learners improved their performance from preto post-test time and, even though some made quite dramatic progress, the sad reality was that, at the end of grade 4, they were starting to master basic literacy skills that should have been in place when they started grade 4. discussion in its conception and early planning stages the literacy coaching project was intended to support the transition of grade 4 learners into the more demanding requirements of the intermediate phase and the challenging transition to english as lolt. this was never realised. instead, a catch-up programme was put in place. the poor language and literacy levels of the learners reflected in the baseline and pretest results necessitated a change to the programme, a ‘back-to-basics’ approach with a strong focus on phonics principles and the daily practising of reading words, sentences and short extended texts to develop more automaticity and fluency. attention was also paid to meaning, vocabulary building, comprehension, writing activities and storybook reading. the basic literacy skills that were supposed to have developed during the foundation phase were instead crammed into the grade 4 year. to what extent did the learners catch up and how did this play out? what did catching up mean? the term ‘catching up’ is a relative one. in the context of this study, the catching up that was attempted during grade 4 was not catching up so as to keep abreast with the grade 4 syllabus, but catching up on basic skills that should have been developed during the foundation phase. there was definite improvement in some of these foundational skills at the end of grade 4. but, as the literacy coach remarked, these were the kinds of skills that should already be demonstrated in grades 2 and 3. even with their improvements during the catch-up year, most of the learners in the cohort were still lagging behind by about one to two years with regard to literacy skills. for example, in terms of orf norms, they were approximating grade 2 level while some of the better readers were now reading at grade 3 level. the gap between where they were at the start of grade 4 and where perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 68 they should have been was so great that, after a year of intervention, they had not yet caught up. where did catching up first take place? basic decoding skills responded quite well to the intervention. although syllable identification is regarded as important in early reading, in this study performance on the syllable subtest did not correlate with other literacy skills. even when the weaker children improved on syllable identification, they did not necessarily improve in phonemic awareness and word recognition. when phonemic awareness improved, children could recognise more words more quickly and their oral reading fluency improved. improvement on the post dictation test suggested that learners could now distinguish common english words in the flow of speech and use their phonics and spelling knowledge to write these words correctly. improved decoding skills helped to support the learners’ basic, literal understanding of texts. performance in answering literal questions improved first, but the more open-ended inferential questions remained a challenge. these types of questions require learners to make connections in the text and to process information at a deeper level. these higher-order comprehension skills seem to take longer to develop. the results from this study show how vital decoding is for comprehension; unless learners can read with some degree of automaticity and accuracy, they are unlikely to comprehend texts even at a basic literal level. who was catching up? while literacy improved, in some individual cases quite dramatically, disaggregation of the results across the cohort shows that performance at the 50th and 75th percentiles showed similar increases (about 21 and 22 points respectively), while the weaker learners at the 25th percentile improved to a lesser extent, and slowly. these results suggest that the catch-up programme seemed to speak to the weaker and average learners. much energy went into going back to basics for the whole class, and extra attention was paid to the very weak learners because the class as a whole had such a literacy backlog to catch up on. even though the stronger learners made the most gains, they would have benefitted from an enrichment programme to stimulate deeper reading. this showed up particularly in the inferential questions; they were not yet processing texts at a deeper level, primarily because classroom instruction was still focusing on basics. to counteract the bleaching effect that whole class underperformance has on the potential for academic excellence, this outcome serves as a reminder that a catch-up programme needs to be differentiated for learners at the top end too, to develop their academic potential even further. why was so much catching up needed? given the amount of time and effort that went into trying to catch up on basic literacy skills in grade 4, in terms of standards in education and training, it is important to understand how and why these learners got off to such a bad start in the first place. this is a single case study involving one primary school in one township, so supporting transition or playing catch-up in grade 4? implications for standards in education and training elizabeth j pretorius 69 generalisations cannot be made. however, it is a fairly typical primary school in a common township context, and pedagogical implications can be drawn from it. despite three years of schooling, these learners started grade 4 with minimal literacy skills; they could barely read english fal texts at grade 1 level, yet their reading in zulu, the lolt of their foundation phase, was similarly dismal. what went so badly wrong at the start of their schooling that necessitated a literacy cram course in grade 4? there are multiple reasons why children get off to a bad start on their early reading trajectories, especially in high-poverty contexts. worldwide research shows that it is not easy educating children from poor homes and schools, especially if the language of schooling is not aligned with the home language. the reasons lie not with the intellectual potential of the children themselves but with the barriers to learning that poverty conditions impose. however, if schools are well managed, well resourced and provide quality teaching, then schools can play a compensatory role in overcoming the constraints that poverty imposes on learning. based on our classroom observations, interactions with teachers and the profile of poor literacy performance, three interrelated factors are identified as contributing to this situation: 1. an oral orientation to schooling/education: one of the strongest contributory factors to the low literacy levels was the fact that much of the teaching and learning that occurred in foundation phase was oral based. although oral interactions are held to be important for language and literacy development in the early years, this was not counterbalanced by early literate practices. there was much talk in the classrooms, and much oral chorusing of things learned, but far less reading and writing, even in the home language. strongly related to the oral orientation was the fact that books hardly featured as learning tools and resources in the fp classrooms. the children had very little exposure to reading or writing extended texts in zulu. there was virtually no whole class storybook reading on a daily basis, let alone on a weekly one; there were no book corners, no books for learners to practise their fledgling reading skills; no reading homework given; and very few written exercises to reinforce newly acquired reading knowledge. when print-based activities are peripheral, learners may unconsciously acquire the perception that books are not really important and that listening in class and chorusing answers is what counts as learning. there was also an assumption that children could not be expected to read and write in english as fal until they had acquired some oral proficiency. english was only introduced in grade 2 and the lessons were oral based. this early dominance of oral teaching and learning orientates learners to an oral mode of learning, relying on memory and fragments of information gleaned from perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 70 auditory input, with little reinforcement from visual or print-based input. although it is generally recognised that oral language proficiency helps children learn to read, research in the past four decades has consistently shown that it is through reading that children acquire a wide vocabulary, increase their general knowledge, acquire more complex syntactic structures and become familiar with the conventions of various genres of text. the same applies equally to learning an l2: a great deal of language learning occurs through reading (feitelson, goldstein, iraqi & share, 1993; vivas, 1996; cunningham & stanovich, 2001). exposure to written language forms helps to reinforce oral proficiency. 2. absence of systematic teaching of phonics and ad hoc development of decoding skills: related to the oral orientation of teaching/learning was a lackadaisical approach to reading instruction. although phonics principles were taught (such as letter-sound relations), these were not taught systematically. a list of syllables encountered in the african languages such as babebibobuwere chanted in chorus from the chalkboard with little connection between these syllables and their occurrence in words and in sentences of extended texts. the pace of teaching was slow, with learners still being taught sounds in grade 2 and 3 that could very well have been taught in grade 1 already. there was no appropriate assessment of decoding skills, so children with problems were not identified and remediated. the chorusing of answers gave the impression of learning, but when learners were assessed individually it became readily apparent that they had problems. 3. absence of meaning making: the oral orientation of teaching/learning and the whole class chorusing of answers meant that little attention was paid to discussion and meaning making. information was transmitted orally and the whole class chorusing the information back reinforced memory of the information, but with gross imprecision, a lack of accuracy and no possibility of feedback loops for correction (e.g. mai haus i snot ver bek could be chorused orally several times without a learner being exposed to the correct version my house is not very big or the chance of discussing the significance of such a statement). because books hardly featured as learning tools and resources, there were few opportunities to look at words, explain their meanings, analyse their forms, read stories, talk about the characters and events, talk about the pictures, make predictions, and draw inferences. children were seldom given opportunities to go beyond the immediate, literal meaning of information or shown how to do this when they read. supporting transition or playing catch-up in grade 4? implications for standards in education and training elizabeth j pretorius 71 the consequences of this teaching approach are disastrous from a literacy perspective as learners are neither properly taught how to read nor given opportunities to practise their reading skills so that they can read fast and accurately and engage their reading skills in meaningful ways with texts. low literacy levels will continue in south africa unless we get things right in the foundation phase. it is important to get learners onto a strong literacy trajectory from the beginning of grade 1 and to sustain and build it up throughout the foundation phase, in the home language as well as english as lolt. in this way, learners coming into the intermediate phase are better equipped to cope with the curriculum demands of grade 4. playing catch-up is very difficult, and it reduces the chances for success. caps (department of basic education, 2011) provides a far more detailed and systematic framework for teaching language and literacy content and strategies than has been the case in the past. phonics is reintroduced, and comprehension strategies are also emphasised. the new vocabulary levels for english fal have also been set more realistically at 2 000 to 3 500 words for grade 4 (department of basic education, 2011: 30). hopefully, these measures will help to address some of the gaps in the system and help to put learners on firmer literacy trajectories from grade 1 onwards. how can we prevent falling behind? integrated model for literacy development according to tabors and snow (2001), there are different pathways to literacy development. children who first acquire literacy in the home language have a considerable advantage, since it is easier to learn to read and write in a familiar language. although the language factor is an important facilitating factor in literacy development, simply having home language policies in place during the early years does not guarantee literacy development; only reading develops reading. from a literacy point of view, the children in this study did not benefit in the foundation phase from home language lolt for zulu reading simply because reading was such a marginal activity in the classrooms. although it is often believed that young children should first acquire oral proficiency in a language before they begin to read or write in it, this approach in the foundation phase did not serve the children well in this study. in fact, it brought about an adverse delay in their english literacy development. there is a large body of research that consistently shows that early exposure to reading and writing in the l2 helps children acquire literacy in the l2 and enhances their language development (vivas, 1996; jordan, snow & porche, 2000). as this intervention study shows, the children made gains in both english language and literacy when reading and writing activities became the focus of classroom teaching. for an education system to deliver academic results and produce learners who can maintain a livelihood in the knowledge economy of the 21st century, it needs to perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 72 produce learners who are fully literate. academic performance depends on literacy development. there are several factors that contribute to the successful development of reading skills and that need to be in place for learners to be launched on successful reading trajectories right from the start of schooling. an integrated model of literacy development is outlined below that identifies critical factors in literacy development home factors factors in the home can enable or constrain a child’s language and literacy development literacy development academic performancelanguage preschool school factors factors in the school can enable or constrain children’s language and literacy development in the classroom and in the school and generally. these include issues related to the implementation, management and pacing of the curriculum. 5 necessary classroom conditions for literacy • balanced literacy instruction • access to books • motivation to read • opportunities to read • knowledgeable teachers figure 2: an integrated model of literacy development irrespective of the language in which early schooling is done, all children need to be explicitly taught to read, and what happens in the classroom has critical consequences for how well children learn to read. in order to meet minimum standards in literacy education and training, there are five necessary conditions that need to be obtained in classrooms in order for literacy to develop: • phonics needs to be taught systematically; automaticity in decoding needs to be developed. this can only be achieved through an understanding of the alphabetic principle which underlies our written language systems, and through constant and regular reading practice. at the same time, attention also needs to be paid to meaning making. reading is, after all, about comprehension. we read to comprehend, and through comprehending we empower ourselves by learning, by being entertained, enchanted, or transported through reading (national reading panel, 2000). supporting transition or playing catch-up in grade 4? implications for standards in education and training elizabeth j pretorius 73 • children need easy access to books. children need to see books in their lives on a daily basis; there should be books in the classrooms, books to read for leisure and to take home to read. • children need to be constantly motivated to read. a culture of reading needs to be cultivated in the classroom, with reading perceived to be a pleasurable activity and teachers showing enthusiasm for reading on a daily basis. • children need to be given plenty of opportunities to read, in and outside the classroom. • classrooms need knowledgeable teachers. teachers need to understand the different components of reading and how they develop, and know how to assess decoding and comprehension so that they can identify where problems lie and take appropriate action. besides the above five classroom conditions for literacy, there are also enabling or inhibiting factors in the home environments that have an impact on literacy development, such as socio-economic factors, parental literacy levels, the amount and kind of literacy practices in the home, the amount and kind of extended discourse that parents engage in with their children, storybook reading in the home, the support given to children after school for homework activities, and the values that parents assign to literacy practices. children who are exposed to storybook reading in the preschool years tend to have larger vocabularies, greater background knowledge, and better language and conceptual development than their peers who have not been exposed to books or storybook reading, and they also learn to read and write more easily and quickly (wells, 1986; feitelson et al., 1993; jordan et al., 2000; vivas, 1996). children who attend preschools usually find it easier to adapt to the classroom routine of grade 1. if the children at such preschools are taught the letters of the alphabet and basic literacy skills such as drawing and writing their name, and if they are exposed to storybook reading, then they learn to read and write with greater ease when they start school. this is especially true if the language of the preschool is the same as the language of foundation phase (neuman, 1999; ntuli & pretorius, 2005). although schools have little control over the socio-economic status of their learners, a range of factors at school also play a vital role in effective schooling. these include basic organisational functionality and good governance; appropriate authority relations and discipline; safety and security; resources (including time for instruction and reading, teacher qualification and language competence); focus on teaching and learning and academic achievement; focus on learner needs; teacher professionalism, commitment, accountability and high expectations; manageable class sizes; effective implementation of the curriculum, its pacing and management perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 74 as well as monitoring and evaluation (homework and testing) (christie, 1998; muller & roberts, 2000; harber & muthukrishna, 2000; scheerens, 2001; doe, 2005). the five classroom conditions for literacy above are critical and can go a long way in launching children on sound literacy trajectories. if these conditions are not present in classrooms, then literacy development will not take place, irrespective of other favourable factors in the home or school environment that support learning. acknowledgements funding for the project was made possible by the dg murray trust. the views expressed here are not necessarily those of the funders. sincere thanks to the principal, all the learners and staff for participating so generously and willingly in the project. a special thanks to lee anne walter and virginia mahlane who put so much heart and soul into their lessons. all five factors for successful literacy development joyfully converged in their grade 4 classrooms. references anderson nj 1999. improving reading speed: activities for the classroom. english teaching forum 37: 2-5. block cc & pressley m 2007. best practices in teaching comprehension. in lb gambrell, lm morrow & m pressley (eds), best practices in literacy instruction. new york: the guilford press. burt word reading test. 1974 revised version. retrieved on 10 january 2010 day month year at: eric.ed.gov/ericwebportal/recorddetail?accno ed191016 currin sv & pretorius, ej 2010. the culture of the sharp pencil: can a literacy intervention lever school change? reading & writing, 1(1): 23-46. chall js, jacobs va & baldwin le 1990. the reading crisis: why poor children fall behind. cambridge, mass.: harvard university press. christie p 1998. schools as (dis)organisations: the ‘breakdown of the culture of learning and teaching’ in south african schools. cambridge journal of education, 28(3): 283-300. cummins j 2000. language, power and pedagogy. clevedon: multilingual matters. cunningham ae & stanovich ke 2001. what reading does for the mind. journal of direct instruction, 1(2): 137-149. department of education 2002. revised national curriculum statement grades r-9. pretoria: department of education. department of education 2005. systemic evaluation report: intermediate phase grade 6. pretoria: department of education. department of basic education 2011. curriculum and assessment policy statement intermediate phase grades 4-6. pretoria: department of basic education. retrieved on 11 november 2012 at: http://www.education.gov.za supporting transition or playing catch-up in grade 4? implications for standards in education and training elizabeth j pretorius 75 dörnyei z 2007. research methods in applied linguistics. oxford: oxford university press. feitelson d, goldstein z, iraqi j & share dl 1993. effects of listening to story on aspects of literacy acquisition in a diglossic situation. 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pretorius ej 2005. laying foundations for academic language competence: the effects of storybook reading on zulu language, literacy and discourse development. southern african linguistics and applied language studies, 23(2): 91-109. pretorius ej & mampuru dm 2007. playing football without a ball: language, reading and academic performance in a high poverty school. journal of reading research, 30(1): 38-58. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 76 pretorius ej & mokhwesana mm 2009. putting reading in northern sotho on track in the early years: changing resources, expectations and practices in a high poverty school. south african journal of african languages, 29(1): 54-73. reeder k & shapiro j 1993. relationships between early literate experience and knowledge and children’s linguistic pragmatic strategies. journal of pragmatics, 19: 1-22. scheerens j 2001. monitoring school effectiveness in developing countries. school effectiveness and school improvement, 12: 359-384. snow ce & dickinson dk 1991. skills that aren’t basic in a new conception of literacy. in em jennings & ac purves (eds), literate systems and individual lives. new york: new york state university press. stanovich ke 1986. matthew effects in reading: some consequences of individual differences in the acquisition of literacy. reading research quarterly 21:360406. tabors po & snow ce 2001. young bilingual children and early literacy development. in sb neuman & dk dickinson (eds), handbook of early literacy research. new york: the guilford press. van rooy b & pretorius ej 2013. is reading in an agglutinating language different from an analytic language? an analysis of zulu and english reading based on eye movements. southern african linguistics and language studies (in press). vivas e 1996. effects of story reading on language. language learning, 46: 189-216. wells g 1986. the meaning makers: children learning language and using language to learn. london: hodder & stoughton. footnotes in the burt word analysis test (1974) this mean post-test score reflects a mean reading age of about 7½ years for an english l1 reader. the mean age of the grade 4 readers in this study was 10.2 years. 22 diagrams in mathematics: to draw or not to draw? vimolan mudaly university of kwazulu-natal this paper describes the use of diagrams as self-explanatory tools. it considers the use of diagrams, in general, and more specifically, examines research that is currently being undertaken in the broad field of visualisation. the research participants referred to in this article were advanced certificate of education students and the paper attempts to analyse their responses to questions based on simple area problems in mathematics. the outcome of this research underscores the strategic use of diagrams when dealing with problem solving. while this is an ongoing research project, the paper attempts to capture the current status of research on the use of diagrams. keywords: diagrams, representations, visualisation, spatial, self-explanation, problem-solving, experiential learning, mathematical symbols introduction it is necessary to constantly revisit old ideas in order to improve the way we teach. a key strategy is to look at how cognition is influenced by ideas that are often taken for granted. there are researchers, for example, who argue that teaching and learning is “best conceived as a process, not in terms of outcomes” (kolb & kolb, 2005:2). one of the implications of this is that teaching and learning should arise out of the experiences of the learners themselves. as dewey (1897:79) stated, “...education must be conceived as a continuing reconstruction of experience: ... the process and goal of education are one and the same thing”. in an attempt to find better approaches to teaching and learning, this research taps into the interest that has been shown in the efficacy of diagram usage when solving mathematical problems. this exploration is necessary despite the fact that some researchers are divided on the effectiveness of the diagram as a problem-solving tool (simon, 1986). according to winn (1987), cited in diezmann (1995:223), a “diagram is defined as an abstract visual representation that exploits spatial layout in a meaningful way, enabling complex processes and structures to be represented holistically”. this would imply that diagrams afford the viewer a physical form for a mental structure. it enables the problem solver, with the requisite prior knowledge, to find associations between different visual stimuli in the diagram with mental representations and understandings. this idea is firmly grounded in the belief that diagrams help to create representations of the problem, which mediate a solution (goldman, 1989). more importantly though, diagrams should allow the viewer of the diagram to see a complete picture in the mind. the prior knowledge of the viewer will determine the understanding that is derived. correct interpretation of the symbols in the diagram depends on the meanings that exist or on the simplicity of the diagram. there are many questions associated with the use of diagrams. are diagrams simply a heuristic (or method that encourages the learners to discover solutions for themselves) that assists in understanding and solving problems? are diagrams a means to attaining higher levels of conviction and hence contributing to proof construction? can learners’ reasoning skills be improved through the use of diagrams? theoretical perspectives this research is framed within the constructivist paradigm and is underpinned by kolb’s experiential learning theory. using diagrams when solving problems engages the learners actively in constructing meaning for themselves. the constructivist paradigm allows learners to use previously acquired representations and knowledge to develop new meaning from that which is currently being experienced. much is known about the use of constructivist methods in teaching and learning (sherman, 2000; hua liu 23mudaly — diagrams in mathematics: to draw or not to draw? & mathews, 2005; mills, bonner & francis, 2006), based on the idea that teaching should be organised around allowing the learners to construct their own meaning from past and present experiences. while not much more needs to be said about the constructivist paradigm, kolb’s experiential learning theory requires further unpacking. experiential learning theory (elt) elt, according to kolb (1984), places emphasis on experiences during the process of learning. this theory is different from cognitive and behavioural theories. in affording a central role to experience, kolb postulated that the inevitable results for the learner would be empirical evidence, observation and reflection on the observed phenomena. clearly, these experiences are effective only if the “here and now concrete experiences” and the “feedback processes” (kolb, 1984:21) are genuine and real. according to borzak (1981:9), experiential learning involves a “direct encounter with the phenomena being studied rather than merely thinking about the encounter, or only considering the possibility of doing something about it”. the direct engagement with the experience could possibly entail the drawing or the viewing of a pre-determined diagram. elt defines learning as “the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. knowledge results from the combination of grasping and transforming experience” (kolb, 1984:41). in claiming that knowledge “is a transformation process, being continuously created and recreated”, kolb (1984:38) alludes to the fact that acquisition of knowledge is often a result of an iterative process. this research postulates that learning using mathematical diagrams are experiences that may arise out of many different types of mathematical actions. it focuses specifically on the experience with diagrams. the kolb model (figure 1) portrays what kolb, boyatzis and mainemelis (1999:2-3) refer to as: … two dialectically related modes of grasping experience -concrete experience (ce) and abstract conceptualization (ac) -and two dialectically related modes of transforming experience - reflective observation (ro) and active experimentation (ae). according to the four-stage learning cycle depicted in figure 1, immediate or concrete experiences are the basis for observations and reflections. these reflections are assimilated and distilled into abstract concepts from which new implications for action can be drawn. these implications can be actively tested and serve as guides in creating new experiences. in grasping knowledge emanating from the experience of viewing or drawing diagrams, learners may not be able to physically feel the picture; however, their sense of vision will play an important role. often, this experience is construed by the learner as a concrete one, and indeed these are concrete experiences because the learner uses particular skills to draw or may recall particular skills when interpreting an existing diagram. through the interaction of the viewed stimulus (what the learner ‘sees’) and his/her prior knowledge, the learner is able to reflect on the symbols inherent in the diagram. new knowledge arises out of a particular sequence in which these visual symbols are interpreted. the reflection induced may create new knowledge in the form of a new concept or some generalisation. these concepts and generalisations can be tested with different applications and examples. these ideas are reflected in figure 1. 24 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 figure 1: an adaptation of the kolb model for experiential learning the adaptation of the kolb model illustrates the process that leads to either the acquisition of new knowledge or the transformation of old knowledge. kolb’s model focusses on the experiences related to learning in general. for the purposes of this study, the model was adapted to relate specifically to experiences involving the drawing of diagrams. the process begins with seeing a physical diagram or actually constructing one (not necessarily to scale). in interpreting or analysing the symbols inherent in the diagram, the learner begins to engage in a process of meaning construction. meaning construction here is dependent on the learners’ prior knowledge. through the process of reflection and interaction with the new stimuli, meaning is enhanced. in reflecting and interacting with known stimuli in a diagram, the process of internalisation and externalisation takes place. this implies that, on seeing an external stimulus, the learner acknowledges the prior knowledge inherent in the diagram (whether mental or physical). in reflecting and interacting on the a priori knowledge, new knowledge is constructed. this becomes internalised as new knowledge. these new insights are again used to influence what is seen or added to the existing diagram. hence an externalisation process ensues. in essence, there may be a process of iteration between the internalisation and externalisation of knowledge. bertel’s (2005) emphasis on this aspect is evident. he argues that diagrams are an essential part of a learner’s mental processing in which mental constructions are externalized, internalized again, externalized, and so on. this type of analytical thinking results in new information being created or the transformation of old knowledge. current research this paper describes a short, small scale research project that was conducted with the advanced certificate of education (ace) students at the university of kwazulu-natal. eighty eight (88) students from three classes were asked to complete a three-question test. they were informed that the results were not going to be used for their year mark. however, the information obtained from analysing their responses would be important for future development of the mathematics modules. half of all the questionnaires had diagrammatic representations with word problems and the remaining questionnaires had only the word active engagement with diagram (use drawing) concrete experiences (interpreting and analysing symbols)process of meaning construction abstract conceptualisation (development of new concept) reflection (thinking about what was seen or drawn) interactive process influence of new knowledge formation of transformation of new knowledge 25mudaly — diagrams in mathematics: to draw or not to draw? problems. the questionnaires were randomly distributed, with half of the students referred to as group a students in each class receiving the questionnaires with diagrams. the remaining students, referred to as group b students, received the questionnaires without diagrams. these questionnaires were administered by a contract staff member during the course of the semester. the ace students are those who have had very little mathematical experience and this test was administered after they had completed an algebra module and were in the midst of the module on space, shape and measurement. the first question (figure 2) was a relatively familiar one and most of the students in groups a and b answered it correctly. a metal sheet of dimensions 20 cm by 5 cm was purchased to cut out metal disks with diameter 5 cm. how many disks can be obtained from the sheet? figure 2: question as it appeared on the questionnaire some students (group a) received the diagram (figure 3) as well. figure 3: diagram received by some students seventy percent of the group a students who had the diagrams already drawn answered the question correctly, while 80% of those in group b, who had to draw the diagrams themselves, correctly answered the question. the anomaly in the percentages is not necessarily significant due to the small difference. the problem was relatively simple and it set the scene for the next question. the second question (figure 4) was similar, but was deliberately manipulated to see whether students read, interpreted and understood the question itself. although there was no solution to the problem, a suggested diagram was given. a metal sheet of dimensions 20 cm by 5 cm was purchased to cut out metal triangles having dimensions base 10 cm and height 10 cm. how many triangles can be obtained from the sheet? figure 4: question with diagram 26 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 the results here were far more anomalous than in the first question. only 14% of those students from group a (who received pre-drawn diagrams) answered the question correctly (that is, that it was not possible to cut out triangles). in contrast, 55% of the students from group b (who received no diagrams) answered the question correctly. these results seem to contradict the idea that pre-drawn diagrams are tools that mediate understanding and solution of problems. it is significant and must be noted that all (55%) of the students in group b who had answered the question, had correctly drawn a diagram. of the remaining 45% of respondents in group b, a few who had drawn the diagram arrived at incorrect solutions, but the majority of these respondents did not draw a diagram at all. some may argue that the question itself was misleading, but it was expected that students should have been able to see that there was no solution possible. this could have been determined by using simple logic. no high level mathematics was required. the researcher was, in fact, attempting to show that by drawing diagrams students attain some level of understanding of the problem itself. the students who drew the diagram themselves stated with much conviction that “it was impossible to find a solution”. it seems that in physically drawing the diagram the students were able to see for themselves the impossibility of finding a solution. this illustrates the idea that by actively engaging with the diagram students are, in fact, engaging in the process of meaning construction. this perspective is strongly grounded in the belief that generating a diagram facilitates the conceptualisation of the problem structure (van essen & hamaker, 1990). cox (1999), cox and brna (1995), and brna, cox and good (2001) articulated the idea that diagrams facilitate the self-explanation effect. they argue that, as graphical representations act to constrain the interpretation of a situation by limiting abstraction, they provide learners with more salient and vivid feedback to compare against their explanations. this contention is supported by ainsworth and loizou (2001). it seems that students who drew diagrams correctly, as self-explanatory artefacts, engaged with the text more than the students from group a. in engaging with the text, the students then generated diagrams that made sense to them. in any case, by drawing the diagrams these students decreased the amount of information that they needed to remember as compared to those who did not draw diagrams. however, it is fallacious to assume that diagrams are spontaneously effective tools for students (see dufoir-janvier, bednarz & belanger, 1987). inadequate diagrammatic representations limit students’ problem-solving capabilities (klahr, 1978) because the visual stimuli inherent in the diagram is often at odds with the student’s a priori knowledge. it is therefore important to investigate factors that influence problem representation (goldman, 1986). the argument goes further: representing word problem information using a diagram involves the decoding of linguistic information and the encoding of visual information (diezmann, 2000). in this process of attempting to draw a diagram from the word problem, there are strong possibilities for the learner to acquire new knowledge. in creating a correct diagram from the verbal information given in the word problem, the learner has to carefully consider the different bits of information inherent in the problem. herein lies the potential for the learner to be able to successfully make immediate inferences via this engagement with the information through internalisation and externalisation. this translation process carries the potential for knowledge acquisition (karmiloff-smith, 1990) through the re-organisation of information (weinstein & mayer, 1986) and subsequent inference making (lindsay, 1995). this is strongly supported by the theory postulated in figure 1. it may be that, on reading a word problem, the student creates mental images because of the symbolic nature of words. for example, if the word ‘bird’ is read, there may be an inclination for the reader to imagine the shape of a bird in flight. different readers of the same word may imagine different birds, but in the case of mathematical words, there ought to be a tendency to create similar images. in contrast, it is difficult to imagine too many variations in the images formed when the word ‘circle’ is read. on reading such words and then constructing mental images, it is more than likely that the student would externalise these by physically drawing parts of the diagram. then, by drawing the diagram, the student also relates the symbolic structure to prior knowledge (internalisation). all this contributes to meaning making, even before the actual physical act of solving the problem begins. it is this visual-analytic thinking that leads to transformation of existing knowledge or the creation of new knowledge. however, this only comes with the student actually working through 27mudaly — diagrams in mathematics: to draw or not to draw? the words of the problem. regarding diagrams, it seems that unless the diagrams are simple to interpret, students struggle to make meaning. this is possibly due to the non-engagement with the diagram creation or inadequate a priori knowledge. although the diagram (figure 4) that accompanied the question for the first group could be construed as misleading, these students did not attempt to make sense of the information inherent in the question. a diagram on its own does not establish better understanding. it is the diagram generated as a self-explanatory tool that supports better solutions. drawing these self-explanatory diagrams is, moreover, not easy. it takes much effort and requires considerable prior knowledge. diagrams on their own have only symbolic value (students can identify aspects of the diagram), but when used in conjunction with text, the possibilities for meaning creation increases. in the case of the example in figure 4, those students who attempted to engage with the diagram visualised the impossibility of finding a solution. it is perhaps significant that more students who had to draw the diagram discovered the impracticality of finding a reasonable solution, while those who had the diagrams drawn attempted to show that a solution was possible. in order to further illustrate this argument, i draw on two different groups of people who answered similar questions. firstly, as part of a master’s research project, budram (2010) asked a group of primary school learners the following question: a farmer wants to fence off a square piece of land and he insists on using 12 poles on each side of the square. how many poles will he need? those learners who did not use a diagram generally gave the following response (figure 5): figure 5: learner response the learners who arrived at the correct solution drew diagrams. this is one example (figure 6): figure 6: learner drawing the significance of these responses can only be grasped if compared to the responses of a group of trainee teachers in the bachelor of education programme at the university of kwazulu-natal. sixty-nine 28 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 mathematics students in their third year of teacher training were asked a similar question: a farmer wants to fence off a square piece of land and he insists on using 8 poles on each side of the square. how many poles will he need? those who did not draw diagrams generally responded as follows (figure 7): figure 7: student solution some trainee teachers who drew diagrams still had the answer incorrect. this is illustrated in figure 8. figure 8: sample of student incorrect answers of the 69 students, fourteen did not draw the diagram, and of these 14 only one student had the correct solution. the remaining 55 students drew a diagram. those who drew the diagram (23 students), as illustrated in figure 9, had the solution incorrect. the remaining 32 students who drew the diagram, as shown in figure 9, had the solution correct. 29mudaly — diagrams in mathematics: to draw or not to draw? figure 9: sample of student correct answers again, when the correct and incorrect answers were examined, for both the trainee teachers and the primary school learners, it seems that diagrams drawn with understanding yielded better results. more importantly, the way the diagrams were drawn seemed to have had a significant effect on whether they solved the problem or not. when the diagram more closely resembled reality, the greater the possibility of obtaining a correct solution. the third question that the ace students attempted to answer demonstrated how, without sufficient knowledge, the students could not draw a reasonable self-explanatory diagram. it seems that the information contained in the text could not be interpreted, even by those who had the diagram drawn for them. this could not be directly attributed to language disadvantages because in most cases the students were very proficient in english. the third question (figure 11) yielded poor results from both sets of students. an equilateral triangle has sides of lenght 2r. three identical circles, having radius r are constructed such that the vertices of the triangle are the centres of the circles. calculate the area of the region between the circles. 30 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 figure 11: question with diagram given to students eleven percent of group a respondents and 7 percent of group b respondents answered the question correctly. the third question showed that, if the question is difficult and beyond the experience of the student, the presence or absence of a diagram is immaterial. conclusion diagrams can be effective tools for sense making and should be used wisely when presenting word problems to students. self-explanatory diagrams are true mediating artefacts that help learners develop better understanding of the mathematical problem; hence, constituting a possible means to solve the problem. diagrams often make sense to the extent that learners can interpret the symbols inherent in the diagram. this depends on the prior learning and knowledge of the learner. meaning is extracted from diagrams both visually and spatially. the act of drawing induces in the drawer the need to understand inherent ideas and concepts. this externalisation process of drawing reflects the person’s understanding of these ideas and concepts. to conclude, learning through the drawing of diagrams is an area that is worthy of further research and should be pursued vigorously. references ainsworth s & th loizou a 2001. the effects of self-explaining when learning with text or diagrams. esrc centre for research in development, instruction and training october 2001 technical report no.76.university of nottingham, nottingham. bertel s 2005. show me how you act on a diagram and i’ll tell you what you think. reasoning with mental and external diagrams: computational modeling and spatial assistance. papers from the 2005 aaai spring symposium (ss-05-06). american association for artificial intelligence, menlo park, ca. borzak l (ed.) 1981. field study. a source book for experiential learning, beverley hills: sage publications. brna p, cox r & good j 2001. learning to think and communicate with diagrams: 14 questions to consider. artificial intelligence review 15: 115–134 budram r 2009. the effects of using visual literacy and visualization in the teaching pf mathematics problem solving on grade 6 and grade 7 learners (unpublished masters thesis). ukzn : 54-80. cox r 1999. representation construction, externalised cognition and individual differences. learning and instruction, 9(4): 343-363. 31mudaly — diagrams in mathematics: to draw or not to draw? cox r & brna p 1995. supporting the use of external representations in problem solving: the need for flexible learning environments. journal of artificial intelligence in education, 1-37. dewey j 1897. my pedagogic creed. the school journal, 54:77-80. diezmann cm 1995. evaluating the effectiveness of the strategy ‘draw a diagram’ as a cognitive tool for problem solving. proceedings of the 18th annual conference of mathematics education research group of australasia, 223-228. diezmann cm 2000. making sense with diagrams: students’ difficulties with feature-similar problems. proceedings of the 23rd annual conference of mathematics education research group of australasia, 228-234. dufoir-janvier b, bednarz n & belanger m 1987. pedagogical considerations concerning the problem of representation. representation in the teaching and learning of mathematics: 109-122. new jersey: lawrence erlbaum. hua liu c & mathews r 2005. vygotsky’s philosophy: constructivism and its criticisms examined. international education journal, 2005, 6(3) : 386-399. karmiloff-smith a 1990. constraints on representational change: evidence from children’s drawing. cognition, 34 : 57-83. klahr d 1978. goal formation, planning, and learning by pre-school problems solvers, or: my socks are in the dryer. children’s thinking: what develops? : 181-212). hillsdale, nj: erlbaum. kolb ay & kolb da 2005. the kolb learning style inventory – version 3.1.2005 technical specifications. haygroup. boston. kolb da 1984. experiential learning: experience as the source of learning and development. new jersey: prentice-hall. kolb da, boyatzis re & mainemelis c 2000. experiential learning theory: previous research and new directions. perspectives on cognitive, learning, and thinking styles. j. sternberg and l. f. zhang (eds.). nj: lawrence erlbaum, 2000. lindsay rk 1995. images and inferences. diagrammatic reasoning :111-135. menlo park, ca: aai press. mills j, bonner a & francis k 2006. the development of constructivist grounded theory. international journal of qualitative methods, 5 (1) : 1-10 sherman lw 2000. postmodern constructivist pedagogy for teaching and learning cooperatively on the web. cyberpsychology & behavior, 3(1): 51-57 simon m 1986.components of effective use of diagrams in math problem solving. proceedings of the north american chapter of the international group for the psychology of mathematics education. east lansing : 1-7 van essen g & hamaker c 1990. using self-generated drawings to solve arithmetic word problems. journal of educational research, 83(6):301-312. weinstein, ce & mayer, r. 1986. the teaching of learning strategies. m. wittrock (ed.), handbook of research on teaching (pp. 315-327). new york, ny: macmillan. pie 33(2) june 2015.indb perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 77 gendering the foundation: teaching sexuality amid sexual danger and gender inequalities deevia bhana how might life skills be conceptualised in the foundation phase of schooling when a tradition of feminist literature has revealed the regulation, denial and the silencing of both gender and sexuality in early childhood? this article presents one grade 2 teacher’s perspective of addressing sexuality education in an impoverished township primary school. disrupting the tradition of sexual silencing, the teacher indicates that her teaching of sexuality focuses on bad touch and sexual danger, about and against violent masculinities, while promoting respectable and equitable gender relations. the disruption is an effect of the teacher’s recognition of the gendered patterns of boys and girls classroom practice operating amid the broader climate of brutal township poverty, overcrowding, sexual violence and cultural norms that constrain women’s and girls’ agency. nonetheless, the ability of the teacher to say ‘sex’ and to address cultural norms that tie women and girls into bonds of inequalities suggest limits to transforming gender relations and inequalities through sexuality education in the foundation phase without recognition of broader context. as such, it provides warrant for supporting teachers in the foundation phase to build on disruptive potentials in life skills sexuality education which is gender-focused, interrogative of the personal, locally relevant and disruptive of cultural norms. key words: foundation phase, life skills, sexuality education, teachers, sexual innocence, gender inequalities, social context introduction … you respect the girls, you don’t hit, you respect the girls. you are not allowed to touch the girls, you are not allowed to hit the girls, you are not allowed to take the uniform like this … because other boys will do like this to the girls … [in-depth interview with a grade 2 female teacher, mrs z, in an impoverished township primary school, kwadabeka, in kwazulu-natal] deevia bhana university of kwazulu-natal, department of education e-mail: bhanad1@ukzn.ac.za perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 78 in south africa, four study areas comprise life skills in the foundation phase as indicated by the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps): beginning knowledge, personal and social well-being, creative arts and physical education (department of basic education, 2011: 13). life skills in the foundation phase aims at equipping young learners with knowledge that will allow them to improve their understandings of personal health and safety, and social relationships. life skills includes a focus on violence, abuse and safety within the broader ambit of rights and respect for others as sanctioned in the constitution. it brings attention to the integration of gender, inequality, social and personal development of young learners but avoids the words ‘sex’ and ‘sexuality’. sexuality is not visible in caps, but it permeates the gendering of schooling experience where girls remain vulnerable to violence and harassment (human rights watch, 2001). unesco (2009) notes the significance of addressing sexuality and gender issues in all stages of schooling (blaise, 2009; macnaughton, 2000; baxen & breidlid, 2009). in developing this focus, this paper draws on the testimony of one teacher, mrs z, and highlights the inadequacies of life skills in the foundation phase for its failure to explicitly locate sexuality education within the broader context of gender inequitable relations. along these lines, the paper brings attention to developing interventions in the foundation phase that take heed of gender relations and sexuality, and children’s active participation in gendered and sexual cultures in order to transform the current context of gender and sexual harassment. this paper asks: how might gender and sexuality feature in the teaching of life skills in the foundation phase (grade 1-3) of schooling when a tradition of feminist literature has revealed that dominant teaching discourses in early childhood often frame children as asexual and degendered (macnaughton, 2000; bhana, 2003)? the highly charged gendered environment in the early childhood classroom is often overlooked because of dominant framings of children as sexually innocent, resulting in the invisibility of gendered relations of power and inequalities (keddie, 2003). the discourse of sexual innocence has resulted in minimum attention to the foundation phase in relation to sexuality education (bhana, 2007). disrupting this tradition, a grade 2 female teacher, located in an impoverished primary school, responds by focusing on gender dynamics within her classroom context, recognising male power and violence, where boys are, according to mrs z, the main perpetrators of ‘touching, hitting and taking from girls’. research in the west indicates that gender violence in schools and classrooms remains pervasive: ‘a discourse of entitlement prevails in terms of many boys’ continued domination of classroom and playground space and resources; domination of teacher time and attention; and perpetration of sexual, misogynistic and homophobic harassment’ (keddie, 2009: 3). in south africa, like elsewhere in the world, there is wide acknowledgement that schools are not only sites where sexual violence and gender inequalities are produced, but also places for educational reflection and interrogation of such inequalities (human rights watch, 2001). in the foundation phase of schooling there gendering the foundation: teaching sexuality amid sexual danger and gender inequalities deevia bhana 79 is limited knowledge and intervention around any of these issues with great silence regarding sexuality and sexuality education (bhana, 2007). by drawing on the perspective of one teacher in the foundation phase, this paper seeks to understand how gender power dynamics are possibly connected to and influence life skills. it seeks to do so in a phase of schooling which is missing from and/or marginalised within the analysis of sexuality education (epstein & johnson, 1998; blaise, 2009; alldred & david, 2007; renold, 2005; bhana, 2007). unlike other research showing how south african teachers are often blind to the social and gendered structures of learners’ experiences (depalma & francis, 2014), this paper draws attention to mrs z’s recognition of gender and sexuality as they intersect with race and class inequalities. beyond recognition, the paper is alert to the teacher’s interweaving focus on sexual danger and ‘bad touch,’ the classroom as a space for the enactment of gender and sexuality, and the entrenchment of cultural ideals that place power in the ‘man as the head of the household’. these issues are intimately connected to broader social realities where cultural norms, sexual violence, and gender ideologies combine with brutal poverty to produce vulnerabilities for girls and women. the female teacher is not separate from the larger cultural organisation of gender. in particular, the teacher’s narrative brings to light the powerful ways in which gender and sexuality feature in the foundation phase of schooling which are both enabling and constraining. as such, the paper provides warrant for supporting teachers in the foundation phase to build on disruptive potentials for teaching sexuality in life skills which is gender-focused and locally relevant. theoretical note the paper draws on theoretical approaches developed within the sociology of childhood which suggest that the study of childhood and sexuality is missing/ marginalised because of the way in which adult–child power relations are constituted within the realm of sexuality where children are regarded as powerless in relation to adults (epstein & johnson, 1998). children are deemed to be sexually innocent, their knowledge of sexuality is denied and restricted, and a protectionist discourse views children as victims of, and vulnerable to, sexuality (prinsloo & moletsane, 2013, renold, 2005; allen, 2005; tobin, 1997; robinson, 2012). within this construction of childhood, normative assumptions of gender prevail where girls, in particular, are cast as victims, their sexuality scrutinised and stigmatised when they are unable or do not live up to sexual innocence (robinson, 2012). gendered power relations are thus necessary elements in the study of children and sexuality education. following connell (2011), this paper addresses gender as a relation of power involving the social construction of the relationship between men and women which can also begin to explain the teacher’s recognition of the gendered patterns of male power in her classroom and beyond. as connell (2011: 3) states, ‘[t]hese patterns are perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 80 generally known to social actors (they are energetically learnt by children)’. gender, following connell, is embedded within the wider social context, has material effects and is connected to race, class and sexuality. of significance to this paper is connell’s approach that sees gender as related to the broader social processes which are actively shaped by social actors. while life skills policy does not mention sexuality, this is not an indication of its absence, but instead its presence in the hidden curriculum (epstein & johnson, 1998). the theoretical approach in this paper conceptualises the teaching of life skills sexuality education in the foundation phase as heavily embedded within relations of power involving dominant conceptualisations of childhood sexual innocence, gender power relations and inequalities while shaping, and being shaped by, the broader social context. as aggleton, de wit, myers and du mont (2014) note, research and theorisation into sexuality and health education require attention to the variation of relations and the social context within which these relations are forged. thus, examining the perspective of one teacher about life skills sexuality education in grade 2 requires attention to power, its manifestation in adult–child relations, gender relations in the classroom, which are also expressive of the wider context of the school. building on this approach, this article focuses on a single case, mrs z’s conceptualisation of life skills against the backdrop of an impoverished african township context. this context reflects the battlefields of extreme social suffering associated with unemployment, fragile home settings, food insecurity and poverty. farmer (1996: 274) refers to these conditions as ‘structural violence’ in a ‘political economy of brutality,’ affecting, as seekings and natrass (2005) elucidate, the ‘african poor’. the large-scale social forces interact with, and have effects on, how children enact and construct their relations in the common space of the classroom. context and method in this paper, one township teacher’s perspective of teaching life skills sexuality education in the foundation phase is examined as an element of a broader ongoing multi-school case study into understanding and addressing gender inequalities and violence in and around schools. the broader study focuses on learners, teachers, community workers and parents in both primary and high schools to understand, identify and address the contextually specific manifestations of gender/sexual violence. in adopting a case study approach, the larger study is interested in the contextually specific manifestations of violence. case studies are relevant here as this method enables an in-depth examination of schools. the research has, thus far, drawn on focus group discussions with teachers at the school (bhana, 2015) and in-depth interviews with 11 foundation phase teachers. a focus on the teaching of life skills sexuality education is to understand the potential of teachers to address gender power inequalities and confront harmful cultural norms. gendering the foundation: teaching sexuality amid sexual danger and gender inequalities deevia bhana 81 in this paper, the focus is on mrs z who participated in an in-depth interview after school, lasting approximately 90 minutes. the teacher is a head of department in the foundation phase at kwadabeka primary school (all names are pseudonyms). she is 51 years old, married with children, and has taught for 15 years in the foundation phase. she currently teaches grade 2 – a class made up of 22 girls and 13 boys. when we began the interview, questions were asked about the learners’ contexts. the teacher noted that, despite poverty and the availability of the child support grant (currently r330 per month), many of the learners could not even afford basic school necessities, for example, pencils. she noted that alcohol abuse, as well as the use of woonga (a cheap cocktail of dangerous drugs), has an impact on learners’ every-day lives and their family experience. the teacher also reported that some learners told her that their mothers used the child support grant for doing their hair and nails. ‘so instead of improving, it’s not improving because of these grants,’ said mrs z. the conditions in kwadabeka are fueled by legacies of apartheid, structural inequalities, poverty and food insecurity. unemployment in the area was almost 35.4% in 2010 (ethekwini municipality, 2010) and many of the children live with grandmothers. in the context of high rates of hiv, some children in the grade 2 class are, according to the teacher, infected with the disease, as are members of their family. the children’s homes include government-sponsored reconstruction and development homes (rdp), a hostel called kk constructed for migrant workers during apartheid, and informal settlements made with sheets of tin, concrete and brick. food insecurity is addressed, even if partially, by the provision of a daily feeding scheme at the school. amid the broader climate of poverty, social and economic depression, the children’s experiences are the effects of large-scale social forces which contribute to their suffering and the manifestation of gender violence in school. the interview was loosely structured around the following issues: how life skills is conceptualised in relation to sexuality, teachings of sexuality and children’s knowledge of it, gendered and contextual issues within and beyond the school in relation to boys’ and girls’ patterns of conduct, how specific cultural practices might support or hinder equitable gender relations, and responses to how these issues were addressed in life skills sexuality education. the interview was conducted by the author in english. the data were analysed drawing on key elements discussed around power, childhood sexuality and adult–child relations of power (robinson, 2012; renold, 2005) and connecting to connell’s (2011) theorisation of gender relations, gendered patterns of conduct in relation to broader gendered and cultural landscape. this conceptual framing supports the understanding of life skills sexuality education as embedded within and expressive of relations of power. such power is not static, but is both disruptive of dominant understandings of children and sexuality and could also advance an understanding of the ways in which relations of power are patterned with respect to the classroom and wider gendered practices. this framework allows an understanding of mrs z’s description of her actions in the classroom as they intersect with issues beyond the school. perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 82 the teacher’s emphasis on sexual danger, on gender inequalities and violent masculinities and cultural norms which uphold male power are the direct effects of the interaction between the lived experiences of learners and the social forces which create the conditions of their suffering. teaching life skills constitutes much more than simple engagement with gender, abuse and personal well-being. it is situated in, and informed by, learners’ experiences in a context burdened by overwhelming affliction and suffering. sexual danger: you teach about touching, not sex sex education, as alldred and david (2007) argue, is political and reinforces meanings and relations of power. first, the emphasis on sexual danger is often criticised by feminists who argue that risk and danger in sexuality education fails to consider positive and healthy relationships, rendering girls’ power within a domain of weakness and vulnerability (holland, ramazanoglu, sharpe & thompson, 1998). however, there must be consideration of the social and sexual context to understand why the teacher advances sexual danger as a dominant narrative. indeed, of the 64 514 sexual offences reported in 2012, 40.2% involved children between the ages of 0 and 11 (south african police service, 2013) and many of the victims of sexual violence, while spread out in the country, are reportedly located in contexts of fragile family structures, poverty and endemic violence. as cameron-lewis and allen (2013: 125) note, while recognising the need for both pleasure and danger in sexuality education, ‘[t]o effectively support young people, sexuality education needs to be relevant to the diversity of their “lived realities,” and for some young people, sexual violence is a very real threat’. at kwadabeka, the reality of sexual violence looms large when mrs z referred to monitoring the toilet habits of girls: so you must observe if you are a teacher. observe and then you call the parent and ask the parent if they have noticed that the child goes in and out to the toilet. others will say no and others will say yes. and then you say okay, you go to the clinic, take the child to the clinic. then most of them if you send them to the clinic you will get the report that the child was raped; she can’t hold her urine … mrs z recognised the patterns of girls’ toilet habits might be the effects of rape within a brutal environment where structural inequalities and male frailties in the economic front have often been argued as explanatory forces in understanding the high levels of sexual violence against girls under 10 (jewkes, sikweyiya, morrell & dunkle, 2011). the microscopic detail of the toilet habits of girls is shown above to be the effect of, and possible evidence for, sexual violence. play was also regulated within this environment: … you tell them don’t play alone; don’t play in a place that nobody sees you. don’t play until its late, night time, come early at home so that you be protected from anything that is bad outside. gendering the foundation: teaching sexuality amid sexual danger and gender inequalities deevia bhana 83 the teacher’s perspective is stamped by an indissociable recognition of the ways in which gender power inequalities within broader context creates sexual vulnerability for seven-year-old girls and points to the materiality of vulnerability: … you tell them first that nobody must touch your body. report if somebody touched your … you report to your aunt, to your teacher, to your mother. even if it’s your father who is touching you, you report. your neighbour, your brother, your cousin. in foundation phase you teach about touching not exactly sexual. … report to your parent, your sister, or to me because i’m a teacher and i’m also your mother. if somebody always kiss you and kiss you and kiss you, report … …even to them [boys] you teach them any boy who is touching you, the uncle, the father, the grandpa, report! nobody must touch you at the back and at the front. the lack of reporting sexual violence, including sexual violence against boys, continues to reproduce the silence and scourge around child sexual abuse in the country (jewkes, dunkle, nduna and shai 2010). life skills sexuality education rooted in local context has much to offer in relation to social protection and reporting. ‘bad touch,’ sexual danger and reporting are important knowledge and information strategies for young learners, as mrs z noted above. understanding the acute lack of information and under-preparedness within families to address these matters, the teacher talked about ‘bad touch’ involving the ‘breast’ and ‘stomach,’ while referring to the vagina as ‘cake’ and the humour through which sexuality was mediated: yes, they know cake. they will laugh first … because they are still young. because even at home their mothers they don’t say it’s a vagina, they tell them that it’s a gqe [local word for vagina]. the teacher went on to deny the use of the word ‘sex’: you can’t say you don’t do sex, you can’t say that word … they are still young … because their parents said no we must not use that word. they told us straight. the inability of the teacher to say ‘sex’ because of her discomfort points to the discursive strategies through which teaching sexuality is negotiated in grade 2, a point noted in other work (epstein & johnson, 1998; irvine, 2002; bhana, 2007). reproducing the problematic conceptualisation of early childhood and sexuality (tobin, 1997), the word ‘sex’ is culturally and socially sanctioned for use by adults (both parents and the teacher), thereby regulating children’s sexual knowledge and investing and reproducing sexuality as a domain of adult life. the teacher noted that in isizulu the word ‘sex’ was too abstract for seven-year-olds: ukubhebhana. yet the teacher disrupts the assumed idealisation of childhood innocence, stating: they know it [sex]. they will come and say … this one says this one ubhebhana nobani (who has sex with whom). later, in the interview the teacher repeats the contradiction in relation to hiv: they know [sex]. we tell them, a boy doesn’t sleep with a girl because if you sleep there will be a child and hiv … perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 84 life skills sexuality education is more than just sex. it relates to power and the social forces which make it possible for the classroom to be an active space where the word ‘sex’ is both silenced and alive as it interacts with the everyday experiences of learners in the context of hiv. sexual silence is not as powerful, as it is assumed to be with the teacher contradictorily upholding sexual innocence while locating the lived experience of children which brings discussion of sex alive in the grade 2 classroom. in talking about how she attempts to disrupt sexual innocence, mrs z noted how the classroom functions as an arena where children’s sexuality is enacted and practised by referring to an incident where a seven-year-old girl showed boys her panty: showing the panty here in the classroom and kissing them … i called her here and i told her this is wrong, you don’t do this; you don’t show boys your panty. your body is your body. this is the temple of god, you don’t show, you don’t show. you must see it on your own, you don’t show anybody. then i wrote a letter to call the granny so that the granny will talk to her at home again. in talking about how she tries to break down dominant discourses of childhood sexual innocence, the teacher suggested active agency of girls in the practice of sexuality where showing the panty and kissing have been found in other work to be key to the development of childhood sexual cultures in primary schools (bhana, 2003). however, children’s sexual agency has been brought under a disciplinary gaze, regulated by adult surveillance and religious strictures where the young body is seen as the ’temple of god’ (robinson, 2012). the teacher noted at this point that children’s expression of sexuality was linked to experiences in overcrowded living settings, including the fact that more than one family shared spaces in the kk hostel. her admonishment was based on social protection of girls, but it also operates to normalise ‘good girlish behaviour’ in opposition to the undisciplined and sexually contaminating life of working class girls (renold, 2005). the distinction is established between girls who invoke the body as ‘a temple of god’ against the unhealthy display of sexuality of those who should be innocent. as kehily (2012) notes childhood can invoke innocence, as well as corrupt children, with girls especially facing particular scorn for inappropriate over-sexualised behaviour. children’s sexuality is both evident and gendered where girls’ active performance of sexuality is regulated and brought under the control of what is considered appropriate for feminine conduct (robinson, 2012; renold, 2005). acting against violence and teaching respect and gender equality mrs z indicated that she is not blind to classroom dynamics and the take-up of violent masculinities in relation to male power and its exercise against girls and other boys. unlike the literature in early childhood (macnaughton, 2000) which refers to teaching discourses that make gender invisible, mrs z recognised and addressed the ‘boy problem’: she noted the gendered experiences on the playground where boys lifting girls dresses was common, as well as the sexual harassing practices in the foundation phase: gendering the foundation: teaching sexuality amid sexual danger and gender inequalities deevia bhana 85 so the child [girl] will come crying telling me that that boy is picking my uniform up and others are laughing. mrs z talked about recognising violent boys and distinguished between rural versus urban constructions of masculinity. in the interview, the teacher referred to a boy in her classroom who had come from rural kwazulu-natal who was particularly violent and the teacher explained this in relation to his upbringing on the ‘farm’. her response was akuliwa la, akuliwa la [we don’t fight here] suggesting also the division created between the modern child in the township versus the ‘other’ un-developed rural boyhood. significantly, mrs z indicated that the recognition of the classroom as a masculine domain was not unchallenged and that she used this experience to address respect and advance gender equality: you tell them to respect them … not touching them; it’s not allowed. god doesn’t want that … god doesn’t want a bad thing, you must respect. because this one tomorrow will be your mother, she’s your sister, she is everything to you, you must respect. you teach them how important a mother is to them, you tell them this is your sister; this is your mother because if you are sick this one will help you in the classroom … we tell them that everybody is equal and everybody is important. nobody is higher than anyone, all of us are equal. i always teach them that. the issues highlighted thus far show some evidence that mrs z sees life skills sexuality education as attempting to address and transform gender relations of inequalities. such potential to transform unequal gender relations takes place within opportunistic moments in the school timetable. in challenging masculine power, mrs z draws on respect, religious discourses, empathy and the significance of women and girls to the lives of boys. she presents an alternate view in the classroom, especially in a context where boys and girls learn very early on about male power and the normative constructions of gender. however, the respect that she teaches boys is within an overall pattern where girls are subordinated. as will be illustrated, the work of addressing and challenging gender inequalities requires attention to gender and cultural ideologies which continue to frame male power in south africa. when asked whether her tactics work, mrs z noted: boys will say … my father told me that a man is big in the house … and i say no you are equal, gone are those days … they think the man is bigger than the woman … they don’t believe that we are equal because they are still young … when my mother is giving my father food she uses a tray and a damp cloth but when she is giving somebody else my mother doesn’t do that … we don’t eat before my father comes. we wait for my father ... they will tell you that … they will tell you that my father’s voice is the last one in the house. my mother will not say anything when my father says this … a man is a head of the woman … in our culture, you respect the man. addressing and transforming gender relations in life skills remain a formidable task. it requires attention to everyday routines and practices in the family and the school where gender and cultural norms permeate children’s lives and where male entitlements are often the only pattern that young children witness. in the context of perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 86 gendered poverty, and even in instances where women work, the investment in and the complicity of women in supporting and endorsing the unequal relations of power are clear. cultural norms and gendered processes bring schools and families in tension and in togetherness. the teacher’s challenge to male power is in tension with the broader social experience, but it also is in sync with the gendered classroom dynamics where male power has been blamed for violence in and out of the classroom. while teaching against unequal relations of power attempts to transform gender relations, there are real challenges in relation to dominant gendered ideologies which put girls (and women) in their place. at this point, mrs z noted, too, her own complicity within the broader social and cultural organisation of gender: i cannot buy whatever i want. i must report to my husband … i cannot report everything others i will hide … you’ve got a coat, why are you buying this one too …ubaba inhloko yekhaya [the father is the head of the house] you report everything. although now it’s modernised we don’t report everything but our culture says you must report everything … i don’t challenge because once you challenge there will be noise in the house … i buy this coat and hide it somewhere and i will show it one day and say my mother bought this coat … everywhere you go … i must report … i must! mrs z highlights her own gendered position within dominant cultural norms. she is required to report to her husband, even as a middle-class income earner in a context where ‘the father is the head of the house’ replicating children’s experiences of gender relations and inequalities, as well as the constraint that girls experience both in the classroom and in the home. but power is not monolithically held by men, as mrs z suggested that, even within the tight constraints, she is able to ‘hide’ the coat, recognising that she limits ‘noise in the house’ by doing so. while mrs z is able to work against the grain, there is recognition of the imbrication of gender, power, culture and women’s overall subordinate position, albeit with contestation. conclusion the aim of this paper was to highlight, through mrs z’s narrative, the ways in which life skills sexuality education in the foundation phase, an under-studied area of research, can be mobilised within the local context of a grade 2 classroom. life skills in the foundation phase is deeply about power, gender, sexuality and the interaction with the broader social forces – although the explicit mention of sexuality is one which life skills policy fails to recognise (department of basic education, 2011). the paper recognised that life skills sexuality education is embedded within relations of power, mediated and produced within the context of sexual innocence and normative gender relations and set in a broader social context. gender weaves into the fabric of sexuality education. in particular, the paper has addressed and analysed mrs z’s testimony on the basis of a framework that is laden with power and attentive to gender and broader social relations and inequalities. this paper has theorised mrs z’s gendering the foundation: teaching sexuality amid sexual danger and gender inequalities deevia bhana 87 perspective, practice and action as an attempt to transform the sexual and gendered landscape within which young children are placed. mrs z shows the capacity for engaging with these issues and scaffolding children’s understanding of sexual danger, addressing their lived realities, while acknowledging boys’ and girls’ active construction of gender and sexuality. the attention to sexual danger is both critical and vital in the context where the school and the teacher might be the only source of hope when divulging sexual violence. teaching about how to care for oneself in the context of sexual danger is important, as is the attention to creating a climate of respect and advancing gender equality (johnson, sendall & mccuaig, 2014). simultaneously, mrs z also reinstates the discourse of danger, silence and shame by her inability to utter the word ‘sex,’ which reproduces discourses of childhood sexual innocence. there are complexities as mrs z attempts to mobilise around gender equality. the mobilisation of gender equality in the classroom takes place in a context where cultural and social norms loom large, albeit not in reductionist and deterministic ways. nevertheless, they do remain significant in understanding the persistent claim made in south africa about hegemonic male power (jewkes & morrell, 2012). there are important changes required in relation to structural inequalities and ending children’s (and girls’) particular vulnerability to sexual violence within school contexts. working with teachers to expand feminist ideas of gender equality and addressing sexuality is possible, but it requires further attention to, and support for, foundation phase teachers to address such silences in their schools, to stop the violence, to change masculinities embedded in entitlement and violence, while supporting teachers to reflect and interrogate their culpability and complicity within broader gender and cultural norms. in this paper mrs z addressed these complex issues, suggesting potential within the foundation phase to critically reflect and interrogate gender relations of power. she does so not because she has support of the school and the department of basic education, nor have there been any attempts to address these issues. mrs z’s attention to gender and sexuality in her classroom is fueled by children’s local realities demanding her attention to it in the everyday experience of classroom life. at the level of policy an explicit focus on sexuality education that addresses gender transformation is required. to date there has been no debate about the absence of sexuality in life skills policy in the foundation phase. sexuality education cannot in itself challenge the broader social system. however, the foundation phase is an important context where such work can begin to support gender equality in early childhood. acknowledgment this work is based on the research supported wholly by the national research foundation of south africa grant number (87732). any opinion, findings and perspectives in education 2015: 33(2) 88 conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and therefore the nrf does not accept any liability in regard thereto. references aggleton, p., de wit, j., myers, t. & du mont, j. 2014. new outcomes for sexual health promotion. health education research, 29(4):547-553. alldred, p. & david, m. 2007. get real about sex, the politics and practice of sex education. maidenhead, berkshire: open university press. allen, l. 2005. sexual subjects: young people, sexuality and education. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. baxen, j. & breidlid, a. 2009. researching hiv/aids and education in sub-saharan africa: examining the gaps and challenges. cape town: uct press. bhana, d. 2003. children are children: gender doesn’t matter. agenda, 56:37-45. bhana, d. 2007. the price of innocence: teachers, gender, childhood sexuality, hiv and aids in early schooling. international journal of inclusive education, 11(4):431-444. bhana, d. 2015.when caring is not enough: the limits of teachers’ support for south african primary school-girls in the context of sexual violence. international journal of educational development , 41: 262-270 blaise, m. 2009. ‘what a girl wants, what a girl needs’: responding to sex, gender and sexuality in the early childhood classroom. journal of research in childhood education, 23(4):450-460. cameron-lewis, v. & allen, l. 2013. teaching pleasure and danger in sexuality education. sex education: sexuality, society and learning, 13(2):121-132. connell, r. 2011. gender health and theory: conceptualizing the issue, in local and world perspective. social science & medicine, 74:1675-1683. depalma, r. & francis, d.a. 2014. the gendered nature of south african teachers’ discourse on sex education. health education research, 29(4):624-632. department of basic education. 2011. curriculum and assessment policy statement grades r-3: life skills. pretoria: department of basic education. epstein, d. & johnson, r. 1998. schooling sexualities. buckingham: open university press. ethekwini municipality. 2010. kwadabeka clermont urban renewal programme. durban: ethekwini municipality. farmer, p. 1996. on suffering and structural violence: a view from below. daedalus, 125(1):261-283. holland, j., ramazanoglu, c., sharpe, s. & thompson, r. 1998. the male in the head: young people, heterosexuality and power. london: tufnell press. human rights watch. 2001. scared at school: sexual violence against girls in south african schools. new york: human rights watch. irvine, j.m. 2002. talk about sex: the battles of sex education in the united states. berkeley, ca: university of california press. gendering the foundation: teaching sexuality amid sexual danger and gender inequalities deevia bhana 89 jewkes, r. & morrell, r. 2012. sexuality and the limits of agency among south african teenage women: theorising femininities and their connections to hiv risk practices. social science and medicine, 72:1729-1737. jewkes, r., dunkle, k., nduna, m. & shai, n. 2010. intimate partner violence, relationship power inequity, and incidence of hiv infection in young women in south africa: a cohort study. lancet, 376:41-48. jewkes, r., sikweyiya, y., morrell, r. & dunkle, k. 2011. gender inequitable masculinity and sexual entitlement in rape perpetration south africa: findings of a cross-sectional study. plos one, 6:e29590. johnson, r.l., sendall, m.c. & mccuaig, l.a. 2014. primary schools and the delivery of relationships and sexuality education: the experience of queensland teachers, sex education. sexuality, society and learning, 14(4):359-374. keddie, a. 2003. little boys: tomorrow’s macho lads. discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, 24(3):289-306. keddie, a. 2009. ‘some of those girls can be real drama queens’: issues of gender, sexual harassment and schooling. sex education: sexuality, society and learning, 9(1):1-16. kehily, m.j. 2012. contextualising the sexualisation of girls debate: innocence, experience and young female sexuality. gender and education, 24(3):256268. macnaughton, g. 2000. rethinking gender in early childhood education. london: paul chapman publishing. prinsloo, j. & moletsane, r. 2013. the complexities of sex, gender and childhood in present-day south africa: mapping the issues. agenda, 27(3):3-13. renold, e. 2005. girls, boys and junior sexualities. new york: routledgefalmer. robinson, k.h. 2012. ‘difficult citizenship’: the precarious relationships between childhood, sexuality and access to knowledge. sexualities, 15(3/4):257-276. seekings, j. & nattrass, n. 2005. class, race and inequality in south africa. new haven, ct: yale university press. south african police service. 2013. retrieved on 21 august 2014 from www.saps. gov.za/statistics/reports/crimestats/2012/crime_stats. tobin, j. (ed.) 1997. making a place for pleasure in early childhood education. new haven, ct: yale university press. united nations educational scientific and cultural organisation (unesco). 2009. technical guidance on sexuality education: an evidence-informed approach for schools, teachers and health educators. retrieved on 4 december 2014 from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001832/183281e.pdf. pie 33(4) book.indb perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 135 from spaces of sexual violence to sites of networked resistance: re-imagining mobile and social media technologies laurel hart claudia mitchell to date, much of the work on mobile and social media in the context of sexual violence has focused on its threats and harmful effects, particularly in relation to cyber-bullying and other forms of online harassment. but what if we think of such technologies as technologies of non-violence? in this article we make a case for exploring this work in rural south africa, where, in spite of some challenges of access, the availability of technology is increasing the number of possible ways of addressing sexual violence. building on what we offer as a primer of technologies currently available, we consider the implications of this work for researchers (especially those in education), interested in how technology can help to address sexual violence. keywords: cellphones, technologies of non-violence, rurality, sexual violence, mobile apps, social networks, information and communication technologies introduction few would argue that online social networking spaces such as facebook, google+, blogs (wordpress, blogger) and micro-blogs like twitter and tumblr do not form an important part of newly configured and imagined publics today, and are being used to dissent, protest and organize. even though access may still be limited in many african contexts, it is growing at a rapid rate because of improvements in infrastructure, the arrival of wireless access technologies, lower tariffs, and particularly mobile technologies. (mugo & antonites, 2014: 30) speaking of the ways in which social media can create a space for women to connect with each other and express their sexuality, mugo and antonites highlight the use of laurel hart concordia university, canada department of art education laurel.hart@gmail.com claudia mitchell mcgill university, canada claudia.mitchell@mcgill.ca 514 398 4527 ext. 09990 perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 136 weblogs such as hollaafrica and african women’s bedrooms that serve as community spaces for the co-creation of knowledge, particularly in the context of homophobia. this work is significant because it contests the widely held notion of social media as being solely about threat and harmful effects, while acknowledging cyber-bullying and online violence as key concerns that the vast and growing body of literature on this subject makes clear (see wasserman, 2011). while there are numerous cases from around the world of the ways in which cellphone cyber-bullying, for example, is seen as synonymous, in a sense, with sexual violence, the horrific case of a group of seven boys and men from soweto who repeatedly raped a mentally disabled girl, filmed the rape with their cellphones and posted it on youtube is particularly disturbing (smith, 2012). we refer to this case because of its high media profile in south africa, and acknowledge the tensions inherent in seeking to find alternative uses of this technology. thus, we ask whether the very medium that can be harmful, can also be a tool for protection and, ultimately, social change. in the technology of nonviolence, bock (2012) explores the ways in which technologies can be associated with advocacy and social action, citing such instances as the uses of technology in the arab spring movement. the work serves to frame a growing global movement in which social media might be examined as a way of combating sexual violence. drawing on bock (2012), we use the term “technologies of non-violence”, while acknowledging that many of the technologies we introduce are multi-use and are being applied towards or re-purposed for non-violent ends. we are interested in exploring the potential contribution of social media and mobile technologies to addressing sexual violence as a specific instance of “technologies of non-violence” as well as the challenges, particularly in rural settings in south africa. sexual violence is a critical issue in many parts of sub-saharan africa, including south africa. indeed, as has been noted in a number of participatory visual studies with girls and young women, there is an everyday relentlessness to sexual violence, including date rape, male teachers forcing female students to have sex, incest, and intimate partner violence (moletsane, mitchell, smith & chisholm, 2008). while there is a growing body of work that looks at the uses of mobile technologies and social media to address sexual violence, to date little of this work has taken place in rural and under-resourced settings. what are the possibilities inherent in thinking about this work in deeply rural areas of south africa? how might addressing critical issues surrounding social and digital media in relation to sexual violence in rural spaces contribute to what balfour, mitchell and moletsane (2011) refer to as a generative theory of rurality? how should those working in educational research be taking up the issues? to answer these questions, we begin by drawing attention to the emergence of a strong youth voice that is speaking out about social media in subsaharan africa, particularly in the context of education. to start with, we offer a primer on the devices, applications and technologies being used in south africa and globally. we present these in order to assess the appropriateness of a “technologies of nonviolence” framework in relation to sexual violence, to present new possibilities for from spaces of sexual violence to sites of networked resistance: re-imagining mobile and social media technologies laurel hart & claudia mitchell 137 adapting this work to rural settings in south africa, and to consider the implications of this work for educational researchers. setting the stage: youth, social activism, and social media in the global south features of globalisation and the strength of youth culture have put social media in the spotlight in rural areas of the global south, as we see in the burgeoning body of work illustrating how social media has become successful in mobilising citizens, including rural young people in developing areas, towards social change. the literature points to the role of social media sites in empowering people living in under-resourced areas by giving them a voice and a platform that allows them to participate in social life (edouard & edouard, 2012; iwilade, 2013; valenzuela, arriagada & scherman, 2012; wasserman, 2011). social media becomes a type of social capital for rural youth as they build social networks that facilitate the spread of news and information as well as provide a space for organising collective action towards political and social change, as exemplified by scherman’s (2012) study identifying facebook and twitter as key features of a successful environmental protest in a rural setting. as bennett (2008) observes, “having grown up with digital media, young people may be especially drawn to these collective experiences [created by social media] and the new forms of citizenship they entail” (cited in valenzuela et al., 2012: 3013). wasserman (2011) notes that the emergence of social media in the global south has been seen to provide avenues for e-democracy among youth, and mobile phones have enabled the use of sms (text messaging) and social networks that can provide a platform on which political information can be made available to citizens during elections. social media has been used in rural contexts in sub-saharan africa to convey health information as we see in apps that remind aids patients to take their arvs, and provide emotional support to aids orphans (thupayagale-tshweneagae, nkosi, moleki & human, 2014). increasingly, public health organisations are using facebook and twitter to connect youth to information on sexual and reproductive health, and on hiv (edouard and edouard, 2012). another innovative application of mobile technologies is the use of google sms to provide access to accurate information on sexual and reproductive health to youth, as well as the location of nearby health clinics and services (hellström, 2010) an understudied area is the consideration of technologies and their application in addressing sexual violence although there is an emerging body of work that we draw on. somulu (2007), for example, looks at the potential for social media to serve victims of violence in a number of different ways. victims of sexual violence often experience social isolation because of feelings of shame, fear and/or regret; in such instances social media allows for new lines of communication among peers, providing various outlets for self-expression and collaboration among victims. blogging may support the voices of women, providing them with the tools to connect with others, and allowing them to share experiences such as sexual harassment perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 138 (somolu, 2007). such initiatives help to build a community of young women who are demanding social change, and they encourage social action by allowing users to share links to information on campaigns for women’s gender rights, for instance. many organisations are also implementing projects that use information and communication technologies (icts) as a way of improving young african women’s circumstances. for example, the umnyango project uses sms technology to access information and report incidents of violence against women in some rural areas of south africa (somolu, 2007). organisations such as wougnet have used mobile technology for advocacy against gender violence, as in 2008 when text messages were sent out to raise awareness for women’s day celebrations, and to organise peaceful demonstrations against sexual violence (ngolobe, 2010). essof (2009) recommends harnessing icts towards preventing violence against women, highlighting several south african initiatives while www.takebackthetech.net provides resources and program links. new digital media have also presented new avenues for engaging youth in sexual health promotion, and risk reduction in relation to issues like sexual violence and intimate partner violence (guse et al., 2012). what is needed, however, is a consideration of the uses, challenges and benefits of technology in rural contexts in which both isolation and intimacy may be factors, and where, at the same time, there may be fewer protection services. towards a technologies of non-violence framework for addressing sexual violence in rural contexts here we develop a framework for understanding how digital technologies can be used (and misused) in combating violence. this section provides a primer of the strengths and limitations of selected technologies. as we argue here, an in-depth understanding of the forms of technologies, including their ownership, safety features, previous failures, and issues of sustainability can help to minimise the risk of user/participant harassment and harm, and will allow us to imagine creative applications, maintain constant, watchful awareness of abuses or gaps, and be alerted when problems arise in the user community. with rural south africa as the focus, we are interested in what is known about sexual violence in rural contexts, but also what is known about available technologies. paradoxically, at the very time that we are moving towards a world that is ever more virtual, we are reminded of the significance of the literal spatiality in rural settings. as balfour et al. (2011) observe: “one of the most noticeable features of rural life is the time it takes to move from place to place in space” (p. 30). it is critical to take account of place and space in relation to the various forms of sexual violence (intimate partner violence, sexual harassment on the road, gang rape, online predators, transactional sex, school-related gender-based violence, and so on), recognising that an appropriate technology for addressing intimate partner violence, for example, may not be the same as an appropriate technology for addressing sexual harassment on a remote rural road. from spaces of sexual violence to sites of networked resistance: re-imagining mobile and social media technologies laurel hart & claudia mitchell 139 features of technology in relation to differing contexts for sexual violence we consider three features of technology that are particularly relevant to combating sexual violence in rural settings: following palmer (2012) we specify (1) intimacy; and (2) mobility and the ways that particular/engaged mobile technologies (such as cellphones) function as multi-modal sensors, multi-form communication devices, and high quality receivers. we additionally examine the feature of (3) user data gathering as presented by kuzma (2011). intimacy the term intimacy or “ambient virtual co-presence” (ito & okabe, 2005: 7) here refers to the degree to which users share and receive detailed personal information through social media and mobile applications. as ibrahim notes, such applications create an environment conducive to sharing information by rewarding users through positive social feedback (such as likes, comments, expanding networks), and improved social status: “[p]ersonal information and private comments on a public platform then become a form of social capital which people trade and exchange to build new ties and to invite different types of gaze and spectatorship” (2008: 246). as macentee (2014) found in her work in rural kwazulu-natal, the eagerness of young girls to own cellphones demonstrates how important these devices are in enabling social capital. social media technologies might constitute a key site in which users could warn each other about potential predators and dangerous places, explore personal and collective experiences of violence, and discuss possible actions and solutions. while online spaces of exchange and communities of support and social capital can result, we must also be alert to the possibility of abuse of such information. bullying through social networks is common while more extreme examples include the unauthorised exchange of nude images, and the filming and sharing of videos of someone being raped, as occurred at jules high school in johannesburg (brodie, 2011). mobility the mobile nature of portable technologies such as cellphones enables the use of various sensory tools such as sms, voice phone, camera, audio/video recording, and gps to connect with (and be contacted by) people and organisations in order for information to be shared or recorded. what can be thought of as the device’s portable ever presence (ito & okabe, 2005) complements the mobility patterns of girls and young women who are travelling around, being on the road, and generally being in domestic or public spaces. in the case of urban settings, mobility may mean that girls and young women face dangers on the streets (from strangers as well as partners), hence the use of initiatives such as harassmap (www.harassmap.org). a reality of rural spaces in many parts of sub-saharan africa (including south africa) is that there are different dangers from those found in urban contexts. girls and women have to walk across fields and along open roads to carry out chores such as perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 140 fetching water from a public area at dusk or to gain access to public transport. they have to negotiate particular zones of potential concealment like roadside trees or culverts. recent work in the area of hiv and aids and the ways in which taxi drivers in rural areas offer lifts and food to girls (in exchange for sex) highlights the risk factors for girls and young women in public (and often rural) spaces (hallman et al., 2013). while technologies such as www.harassmap.org enable women to map, share, and locate places of safety and risk, we need to think about how to prevent perpetrators from becoming aware that they are being monitored lest they become even more violent. user data user data is a crucial issue because of the intimate, often immediate, and mobile nature of social media usage. for researchers and activists, the ability to access user data in immediate or real time and on location presents the possibility for innovative new forms of scholarship and timely sharing of important information (raento, oulasvirta & eagle, 2009; hart, 2013). user data is collected by applications in order to enable interpersonal information transfer, thereby making possible virtual spaces and communities. user data is also used for advertising; further concerns lie in how the information is then used, stored, shared, and for what purposes. as a study in rural uganda revealed, many women reported that the phone they used belonged to their husband (burrell, 2010). similarly, preliminary fieldwork on cellphone use by young people in several rural schools in south africa revealed that mobile phones may be shared so the privacy factor is of concern.1 privacy concerns can limit phone access, since rural village life “is marked by the delicacy of social relations” (burrell, 2010: 239). user data, privacy, and modes of access, particularly in the context of intimate partner violence, should therefore be features that are factored into how (or if) icts can be used to combat violence. creating categories for studying and evaluating technologies of non-violence knowledge networks for education, knowledge sharing and alternative media forms of knowledge networks vary. knowledge networks in the form of government or independently led social justice initiatives might deliver potentially life-saving health information to marginalised populations (www.aponjon.com.bd), thereby addressing health crises resulting from social inequality and systemic violence. other organisations or individuals might employ technology towards the creation of a social media-based community that collects and shares local knowledge on facebook, twitter or other networked platforms. in mapping out the category of knowledge networks, we subdivide the networks into (a) independent/alternative media/education initiatives and (b) collective from spaces of sexual violence to sites of networked resistance: re-imagining mobile and social media technologies laurel hart & claudia mitchell 141 knowledge communities. the first form of knowledge networks are typically run by an individual or organisation for the purpose of education and information distribution. this could take the form of an individual “content curator” (pache, 2011: 19) posting on a blog or twitter account, or a facebook group operated by a not-for-profit organisation that curates and redistributes content based on organisational goals as an alternative media service. these same education/media focused platforms can then adapt, potentially, to become the foundational technological support for victims of violence, and for anti-violence protests because of the established communication network of knowledgeable individuals. a notable example is the arab spring movement that demonstrated how technology can educate, and promote nonviolence during times of social transformation (bock, 2012). the second form of knowledge networks—collective knowledge communities— seeks to create networks of people, and promote collective, democratic knowledge formation (or information sharing). collective knowledge communities can be created around a cause, a location, an interest or other issue. such communities usually exist on social media and organise through the use of tags related to the issue or place, and pre-existing personal networks and community groups.2 they are spaces of collective knowledge-sharing and social creation which might serve as deliberative spaces in which critical discourse might be freely engaged with (dahlberg, 2007) leading to an interrogation of the systemic nature of violence. a good example of a media focused feminist activist community can be seen in the work of women action media (wam, www.womenactionmedia.org). wam has an active presence across many social media platforms including pinterest, twitter, and facebook, and is an example of the employment of cross platform technologies to create an active community of knowledge creation and interpersonal connection. lewis, hussen and van vuuren’s analysis of what they call the confessions movement mostly amongst young women across several south african universities highlights a sense of community. they note that “[f]or young women, especially, this forum has provided a crucial space for testimonies of abuse”. they further observe that [i]n many ways, then, the widespread use of social media amongst many young women—whether platforms are set up for them or serve broader purposes—creates opportunities for their expression about ‘personal’ and daily communications that more traditional forms of mobilizing and action tend to neglect. and opportunities for such frank communication about the everyday can offer crucial routes into consciousness-raising and transformative politics among south african women” (2013: 52). individuals and groups also organise social media campaigns using tags—searchable keywords that serve as metadata and are prefaced with a #. tag-based media campaigns can take place across platforms (e.g. facebook, twitter) and crossdevice (e.g. smartphone, computer), or be localised to a single device and platform. instagram, for example, is a social media photography application that can be operated fully only on a mobile device, and that requires users to upload a photo with their tag and/or comment. public interest registry (2014) provides a list of some effective tags perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 142 to promote social change; for example #charity draws attention to an organisation, while #changemakers promotes people and their ideas, and #crowdfunding draws attention to collaborative funding opportunities. tags are commonly used to unite users of a group, or to promote knowledge sharing around an issue, (#childmarriage, #rapeculture), an event such as a conference (#mobilities13), a place, or a campaign (#bringbackourgirls). networks for safety location-based intervention initiatives are often designed to address safety and to link people (or crowd-sourced information) in specific places. these networks of resistance are a global phenomenon as we see in a variety of recent initiatives (see skalli, 2014), such as harassmap.org which uses crowd-sourced data from online reporting and sms to then map stories of instances of sexual harassment throughout egypt. similarly hollaback! (www.ihollaback.org) uses a mobile app and the internet to create street harassment reporting databases in 36 countries including south africa. another app, circle of 6, incorporates education on relationship safety, gps location tracking, advice from six trusted personal guardians, and a panic button linked to a support organisation of choice. recently, circle of 6 released a new delhi version of the app that addresses local needs, language and cultural relevancy, following the public outcry after a fatal gang rape of a young woman (goodyear, 2013). many years earlier, the aphrodite project (http://theaphroditeproject.tv/) made use of us military inspired technologies to create platform sandals for street workers who could alert local support organisations of their location should they be in danger. similarly, autonets, local autonomy networks, designed by micha cardenas and ben klunker (http://autonets.org/about/) are wearable and fashionable devices designed as anticapitalist ways of enabling autonomous organisation for members of marginalised communities so that members might help protect one another from violence. forms of technologies used for non-violence technologies used for non-violence can range broadly, and their accessibility, cost, and ownership is similarly wide-ranging. the technology could be independently created diy, corporately owned or housed, or the product of a not-for-profit organisation. the forms of technologies employed for non-violence are diverse, ranging from those gps platform sandals with an audible alarm system, hidden compartment and updatable blog interface for street workers to post and search for information about problem clients in order to protect themselves and others (http://www.sexygpsshoes.com/), to call centres and automated educational health text messaging systems (www.aponjon.com.bd), and smartphone apps designed to geo-locate places where violence occurs (www.hrassmap.org). other possibilities include the use of popular internet media content (such as memes) in social media applications to educate through humour, art, and emotion about violence-enabling social constructs; user-generated media such as youtube videos and cellphilms produced and distributed with cellphones (see mitchell & de lange, 2013); and from spaces of sexual violence to sites of networked resistance: re-imagining mobile and social media technologies laurel hart & claudia mitchell 143 instagram photo feeds with accompanying comments and discussion forums. it is worth noting that completely different technological devices can serve similar purposes. likewise, similar technological devices can be used in extremely dissimilar ways that may represent diverse theoretical and political needs and beliefs as can be seen in the smartphone app, circle of 6 (http://www.circleof6app.com/) and the technology-embedded platform sandals (http://theaphroditeproject.tv/). mobile phones and safety and security increasingly, mobile phones are becoming an essential means of communication for many, while also providing access to critical services. mobile phone technologies are perceived by women as being supportive of their freedom and connectedness (gsm association, 2010) in that they are beneficial to their personal and social mobility, as well as to their safety. there are various sms-programs and non-internet-based phone platforms that incorporate mobile phone technologies for non-violence. one example is the text and voicemail-based mobile phone project mama aponjon (bock, 2012; irin, 2014). aponjon, which means dear one (aponjon.com.bd) is an automated system designed to send text and voice messages with potentially lifesaving medical advice to pregnant women in rural bangladesh, where rates of child marriage, gender inequity, maternal mortality, domestic and sexual violence are high (unicef, 2010). another example of a phone-based initiative is rave alert, a crossdevice software that allows users on a mobile phone (as well as on a computer or smartphone) to alert their network through phone and social media platforms in the event of an emergency (http://www.ravemobilesafety.com/rave-alert/). a cape town-based project headed by rlabs, working with various international non-profit organisations offers mobile support services through the use of jamix technology (through mxit and gtalk) to provide mobile-based chat advice and support service in relation to hiv and aids, substance abuse, abuse, and depression ( http://www. rlabs.org/what-we-do/community-work-and-services/). although mobile phones are often associated with autonomy, access and personal safety, they can also be associated with harassment, stalking, and control, often by an intimate partner or family member; essof (2009) provides a detailed account of the means by which these occur in south africa and in 11 other countries of the global south. as hertlein and blumer observe, “through technology, a gateway to emotional, physical, and relational control via constant monitoring of one’s partner is easily and readily accessible” (2013: 193). southworth et al. term this “intimate partner technology stalking” (2007: 835). some mobile practices connect users to unknown individuals such as the practice of gesfaia. (random number dialling), where, in order to make “phone friends” (jorgensen, 2014: 4), the caller and receiver engage in anonymous intimacy over the phone, a practice which is often frowned upon as promoting infidelity and possibly contributing to harassment. perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 144 non-internet based networks: innovative applications of technologies of and for non-violence non-internet based networks are a key means of activating technologies in underresourced areas where infrastructure or economic factors limit internet access. typically, offline networks are less reliant on capitalist/corporate or government structures and may be run independently or by members within a specific community or organisation. thus the sustainability, security, and presence of the technology may correlate with the individuals running it. offline networks are often established in places where online connection is difficult to access, or where online connections could represent a danger by exposing the identity of users. offline networks are useful in circumstances in which users face the risk of harassment, or other harmful social ramifications resulting from online association with an issue or cause. the possibility remains that devices and data may fall into the hands of an individual with harmful intentions, or they may be physically intercepted while in transit. sneakernet is one offline network that is set up through the use of portable computing devices such as raspberry pi, a usb key, or sd card (a memory card often used in cameras) and a router in order to create a local physical network where content can be created and shared.3 it is then connected to an outlying community through the physical carrying of devices on foot between communities, collecting users’ digital content (that have been created using offline digital devices), and bringing downloadable, shareable internet content to remote communities. beary and chopra (2013) use sneakernet in a girls’ education initiative in rural tajikistan. smartphones and their applications several social media smartphone applications designed specifically to address violence, hollaback!, harassmap, and circle of 6 have already been mentioned, while pan (2012) further identifies the apps not your baby, and guardly. the built-in capabilities of smartphones and apps supporting the creation of media content, crossplatform sharing, rapid distribution and ease of access can also be used to address violence. popular apps in south africa include facebook, mxit, twitter and whatsapp (world wide worx, 2014). camera and video capacities enable the creation of citizen media in the forms of photography, video/cellphilms, and audio content, and allow for editing and distribution through social media, or from person to person. these capacities can also be used for witnessing and recording (including gps location), and can be re-purposed towards non-violence. local autonomy networks (http:// autonets.org) recommends modifying foursquare settings in order to create private location alert systems for friends and personal networks (http://autonets.org). there are both advantages and disadvantages to using smart phones and also to their applications in addressing violence. when we are dealing with freely available and popular company-owned mobile applications, we need to remember that there is the ever-present issue of data in applications being legally recorded and maintained by companies and located in other countries, and then made accessible to marketers from spaces of sexual violence to sites of networked resistance: re-imagining mobile and social media technologies laurel hart & claudia mitchell 145 and governments (j castro, personal communication, december, 2013), as well as being vulnerable to being lost, stolen and used in unauthorised ways. constantly changing user conditions, company ownership, and international laws which have yet to catch up to the digital world mean that user data stored in applications can be accessed by numerous entities, based on the judgments of multiple parties. despite worldwide concerns over privacy and the protection of freedom (jónsdóttir, 2013), currently most of the world’s social media user data remains unencrypted (soghoian, 2013). the extent of this was highlighted by the revelations of edward snowden regarding privacy breaches perpetrated by american government agencies.4 the interconnectedness of apps, devices and user usage further intensifies the amount of detailed user data contained within social media applications. the ever growing monopolistic ownership of many social media companies by a single company, as in the case of facebook, can result in sudden policy change. a particularly disturbing case of illegal uses of user data from interconnected applications was girls around me, in which data was collected from facebook and foursquare users to create a realtime app that showed where women were (complete with photos and information gleaned from their facebook profiles) in an individual’s local environment; it was dubbed with alternative names such as the stalking app (stebner, 2012).5 conclusion because of the growing presence of ict technologies, infrastructural development, and cellphone ownership in south africa, we conclude that it would be a mistake to ignore the rich possibilities for using mobile and social media in rural south africa in order to address sexual violence. in our self-confessed cyber-optimism, we concur with wasserman about the need to avoid a “naïve celebration of resistance” (2011:10) in relation to popular culture in south africa. at the same time, we see that the evidence supporting the positive application of technologies for non-violence are numerous and also that the risks bear some resemblance to those faced in offline programs to address violence and sexual violence. indeed, we must consider how in most circumstances, at-risk participants are already engaged in unguided and potentially compromising uses of mobile and social media applications as they themselves reach out for answers and assistance. although these various technologies include new risks to girls and young women, their established presence in girls’ daily lives, and in the lives of many of us faced with violence, and the continued widespread adoption of these technologies, is reason for education around safety and effective use, and for the development of applications for non-violence. indeed, given the gender gap in access to and use of information and communication technologies, one means of addressing some of these inherent technological risks is through education in digital literacy, and personal security training for girls and young women in rural areas (jane, 2013). such measures include teaching them how to obscure identity online and how to use various techniques to control or confuse shared information as can be seen in the online safety toolkit (http://www.onlinesafetytoolkit.com/). at the same time, concerns should be raised regarding safety measures that are based on the silencing perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 146 of women. expectations that girls and women obscure their identity in order to protect themselves (reminiscent of victim blaming) are symptomatic of a larger systemic problem. at the same time, as lewis et al. highlight, facebook, mxit and whatsapp may offer possibilities for new alliances, and across different locations: “it is significant that these networks are not dependent on the physical localities that young women share for living or leisure. in this way, social media can offer spaces for association and identification that transcend or challenge prescribed or historically inherited patterns of separation.” (2013: 58) in this article, then, we have begun to lay out a framework for considering some of the key issues attached to addressing sexual violence in rural areas, so that researchers might examine critically the benefits and risks associated with the features of technologies such as social networking services (sns), along with several of their characteristics including user data gathering, their intimate nature, and mobile ever presence. although the root causes of sexual violence will not be solved simply by the addition of new technologies, we hope that the promise of this work, located within a framework of technologies of and for non-violence, may inspire the development and testing of new apps and other new software that can respond to rural contexts, and simultaneously lead to a re-imagining of rural spaces that are sites of networked resistance and transformation. references balfour, r., mitchell, c. & moletsane, r. 2011. understanding rurality in a troubling context: prospects and challenges. in f. islam, c. mitchell, n. de lange, r. balfour & m. combrinck (eds.), school-university partnerships for educational change in rural south africa. lewiston, ny: the edwin 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[weblog post]. retrieved on 25 june 2014 http://belldev.blogspot.ca/2013/01/fresh-off-press-bell-ground-server.html thupayagale-tshweneagae, g., nkosi, z., moleki, m. & human, s. 2014. the use of mobile phone technology as an assistive tool for emotional support of adolescents orphaned by aids in south africa. african journal for physical, health education, recreation and dance, 2(2): 698–709. retrieved on 3 july 2014 from: http://reference.sabinet.co.za/webx/access/electronic_ journals/ajpherd/ajpherd_v20_n2_2_a9.pdf unicef 2010. women and girls in bangladesh. retrieved on 20 june 2014 from: http://www.unicef.org/bangladesh/women_and_girls_in_bangladesh. pdf valenzuela, s., arriagada, a. & scherman a. 2012. the social media basis of youth protest behavior: the case of chile. journal of communication, 62: 299–314. wasserman, h. 2011, mobile phones, popular media, and everyday african democracy: transmissions and transgressions. popular communication: the international journal of media and culture, 9: 46–158. world wide worx 2014. south african social media landscape 2014: executive summary. retrieved on 5 january 2015 from: http://www.worldwideworx. com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/exec-summary-social-media-2014.pdf perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 150 endnotes 1. this fieldwork, part of a university of kwazulu-natal focus area study, “through the eyes of women teachers: indigenous knowledge systems and teaching in rural schools in the age of aids”: (r. moletsane, c. mitchell & n. de lange), took place in february, 2013. 2. in her dissertation, (tentatively entitled: “through her mind’s eye: women’s views of urban life explored through informal arts education in on and offline social media photography communities”) hart discusses her use of instagram and facebook to create a community for networked cultural creation. a similar model could be developed to help combat violence against women. 3. mit and the open learning exchange (including researchers from the ole ghana project) have provided instructions for “how to build, deploy, and sync ground servers into the sneakernet using raspberry pis,” the estimated total cost for which is $us 170.00 (steinert, 2013). 4. laura poitras’s documentary film, citizenfour (2014), offers a comprehensive account of edward snowden and the nsa spying scandal. 5. although there are numerous areas of concern in relation to apps and online technologies, it is also true that companies like google have some of the strongest security measures in place, and that these apps are widely in use and remain free and accessible to users because of the high value of user data (jónsdóttir, 2013). 70 pathways through the education and training system: do we need a new model? michael cosser human sciences research council analyses conducted by the education, science and skills development (essd) research programme at the human sciences research council (hsrc) reveal major areas of misalignment in the south african education pathway system. the majority of learners entering further education and training (fet) colleges, nursing training institutions and learnerships have already achieved national senior certificates prior to enrolment. higher education is seen as the only viable option for further learning, contributing to the inverted triangle phenomenon in which a small fet college system is secondary to a much larger higher education system which struggles to retain inadequately prepared students. against this background, this paper proposes a new model for student progression that broadens learning opportunities at the intermediate level. keywords: pathways; further education and training; higher education; progression; articulation; misalignment introduction the legislation that was introduced by the south african qualifications authority (saqa) in the 1990s (rsa, 1995; rsa, 1998) created the framework for a new education and training pathway model for the country. this consisted of: three bands: general education and training (get), further education and training (fet) and • higher education and training (het) eight levels: level 1 constituting the get phase, levels 2-4 constituting the fet phase and levels 5-8 • constituting the het phase qualifications within the three bands were designed to articulate with one another: a general • education and training certificate (getc) at the exit point of the get phase, a further education and training certificate (fetc) at the exit point of the fet phase (with the achievement of unit standards at national qualifications framework [nqf] levels 2 and 3), and certificates, diplomas and degrees (with notional learning hours of 120, 240 and 360 credits respectively attached to them) in the het phase. the post-apartheid dispensation has also seen various changes in the institutional landscape. technical colleges have been replaced by (or, more accurately, subsumed within) fet colleges, teacher and nursing colleges have been shut down to allow universities to offer improved education and training for the teaching and nursing professions respectively, technikons have been merged with other technikons to form universities of technology, and universities with technikons to form comprehensive institutions. more recently fet colleges, sector education and training authorities (setas) and the national skills authority have been absorbed within the recently established department of higher education and training (dhet). it is therefore clear that, in sixteen years, the education and training landscape has seen a great deal of change. the question raised is: have we seen concomitant improvements in the education and training system, in terms of better articulation, mobility and progression as envisaged in the principles underpinning the nqf, and of improved learning outcomes? this paper addresses the first part of this question: the extent to which the changes have promoted or hindered student mobility and progression through the education and training system. 71cosser— pathways through the education and training system problems of articulation, progression and mobility one of the key problems identified in the period following the establishment of the dhet is the limited range of opportunities for further learning at nqf levels 2 to 5 for youth who leave school prematurely (with a grade 9, or get, certificate; or after grades 10 or 11) or with a national senior certificate (nsc) (cloete, 2009; lolwana, 2010). teacher training and nursing colleges have been closed down and for a variety of reasons, including poor marketing, poor image and the lack of capacity in the sector to admit large numbers, fet colleges have not succeeded in attracting learners. this means that universities loom disproportionately large in the post-school learner imagination. this is compounded by the transition from the apartheid to the post-apartheid state in which learning opportunities for black african learners, in particular, have opened up to include study programmes other than, predominantly, teaching and nursing. moreover, the phasing out of n4 to n6 certificates by fet colleges has contributed to the gap in education and training provision at nqf levels 4 and 5. it might be argued that it is better to fix the problems of fet colleges than to consider introducing other institutional types. however, this is not a matter of “either-or”. dealing with issues of poor marketing, poor image and the incapacity of the sector to admit large numbers of learners, is indeed a logical means of addressing the demand for further learning; but the nature and location of fet colleges in their present form are not conducive to stimulating demand. in addition, the continued absence of single-purpose institutions like teaching, nursing, technology and agricultural colleges will have dire consequences for skills development in these areas, particularly if universities are seen as the exclusive source of these skills, to their national neglect at the intermediate level. the policy decision to phase out n4 to n6 qualifications and to confine fet college provision to nqf level 2 to 4 programmes was cemented by the introduction of the nc(v) as a parallel qualification to the nsc in the schooling sector. this has had negative consequences for the college sector and, more broadly, for skills development at the intermediate level. the most obvious consequence is the dearth of nqf level 5 programme provision which exacerbates the university-as-only-option scenario in which universities must perforce offer certificate and diploma programmes as well as the degree programmes that are arguably their métier. the provision of certificate and diploma programmes by universities of technology and by the technology components of comprehensive institutions goes some way towards accommodating this need. but these intermediate level qualifications are not the natural preserve of universities, and should be offered by other institutional types. figure 1 illustrates the problems of articulation, progression and mobility presented by the current pathway model: 74 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 2011 in which an estimated 2.8 million young people are “not in employment, education or training”, hence the acronym neet (cloete, 2009). fet colleges, however, are not the most appropriate vehicle for a social engineering project to get young people off the streets and into meaningful activity. such a project distorts the central mission of the fet system, which is to produce employable graduates of technical and vocational education and training programmes. the need for a viable technical and vocational education and training system as lolwana (2010: 7) indicates, “the public fet college sector did not only experience institutional mergers but also a curriculum engineering, resulting in institutions that look more like schools with young students pursuing a set curriculum [the nc(v)] pegged at basic school levels (grades 10-12) and on a full-time basis.” in the context of the need in south africa to develop intermediate level technical skills for technicians and associate professionals, a system that runs parallel to the nsc in the schooling sector would not seem to be most appropriate. what is needed is a fully-fledged technical education and training system that articulates with the labour market and with higher education, and particularly with universities of technology. such a system should, moreover, be pegged not at levels 2 to 4 on the nqf but at levels 4 and 5, thus building a bridge between school and higher education for those on the technical/vocational track. the need for singleand multi-purpose colleges fet colleges should not be the only institutional type for expanding study options at the intermediate level. as lolwana (2010) advocates, single-purpose institutions, such as nursing colleges, agricultural colleges and education colleges, are needed to allow learners greater opportunities for further learning at this level. besides single-purpose institutions, however, a multi-purpose institutional type is needed to accommodate, in particular, learners who are unsure of their abilities and of their study direction. the community college provides the best means for meeting this need, expanding intermediate provision at nqf level 5 in a way that may be an end in itself (culminating in student achievement of certificates and diplomas) and that also enables entry into university education (providing the first two years of tuition towards the achievement of a four-year degree). the community college derives its name from its ability to attract and accept students primarily from the local community (baker, 1994). this enables it to work with local businesses to develop customised training geared towards local needs. writing about the system in the united states of america, miller (2004) notes that institutions offering mainly four-year programmes generally focus on state-wide or national needs. another advantage of the community college is its open access admissions policy, which broadens access for students who achieved poorly in high school (mcphail, 2005). there is an interesting instance in the korean system, where, at tertiary level, tvet is provided in mostly private junior colleges (twoand three-year programmes) and in polytechnic colleges, which are state-funded. education at junior colleges and in two-year programmes in polytechnic colleges leads to an industrial associate degree, which is roughly the equivalent of the associate degree achieved in the american community college. whether one looks to the american community college model (which the australian technical and further education [tafe] system has been considering as a means of facilitating progression to universities; see, for example, young, 2007) or the korean, this institutional type offers clear benefits in the south african context. community colleges would provide a first chance for youth wanting to access higher education to achieve university endorsement, a second chance for neet youth to complete their nsc or nc(v), and an opportunity for youth wanting to re-enter formal education to access education and training opportunities in other, single-purpose, college types. 76 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 2011 africa. the proposed system accommodates the demand for extended learning opportunities by providing for three post-basic education and training stages: stage 1 (red), which includes education and training in schools (post-grade 12/sixth form) and in colleges (nursing, agricultural, technical, and vocational) towards the achievement of certificates; stage 2 (blue), which includes education and training in the same institutions, and in education colleges, towards the achievement of diplomas; and stage 3 (green), which comprises education and training in universities towards the achievement of degrees and postgraduate certificates. compulsory basic education is extended, in this model, from the end of grade 9 to the end of grade 11, 2. which is the first branching point in the education pathway and a multiple entry point into post-basic education and training. this extension is necessary to ensure adequate achievement of the cognitive and affective skills, particular in the literacy, numeracy and social domains, needed for progression to post-basic education and training. separate academic and technical/vocational tracks are set up at the grade 11 branching point. this is 3. not to suggest that technical education options should not form part of the grade 10 and 11 curricula. there is, in fact, a strong argument for introducing more tvet options into the schooling system from grade 10 as many learners, because of inadequate early childhood development, inferior schooling, personality type or a combination of the three, are not predisposed to succeed in the academic track. however, there is a need for a clear branching point at the end of grade 11 towards which learners will have moved purposively. those learners who have followed the academic track will proceed to grade 12 and then to post-grade 12, while those who have followed the technical or vocational track will proceed on the technical track to a college of technology, or on the vocational track to an agricultural or nursing college. particularly within the first two stages of the post-basic phase, it should be made possible for learners to switch between the academic, technical and vocational tracks; but however such options for flexibility are constructed, the aim should be to establish clearly demarcated pathways. the model opens up a number of progression possibilities: a) learners on the academic track can proceed from a grade 12 to a post-grade 12 programme in school and thence to an education college or to a two-year diploma programme in a community college, or, depending on their academic performance at post-grade 12 level, to a four-year university degree programme. importantly, the achievement of the national senior certificate at a level higher than the current nsc is a prerequisite for entry into further academic learning, including learning in an education college. providing a post-grade 12 academic year has the added advantage of bridging the gap between school and university education, in a context where attrition rates are currently around 40% in the first year of study. b) learners on the technical/vocational track can proceed: i. from a certificate programme in a nursing college (the preferred qualification for auxiliary nurses) to a two-year diploma programme in a nursing college (the preferred qualification for staff nurses) or, depending on their academic performance, to a four-year programme in a university (the preferred qualification for nursing sisters) ii. from a certificate programme in an agricultural college (the preferred qualification for agricultural extension workers) to a two-year diploma programme in an agricultural college (the preferred qualification for small-scale farmers and farming assistants) or, depending on their academic performance, to a four-year programme in a university (the preferred qualification for largescale commercial farmers and high-tech agricultural careers) iii. from a certificate programme in a college of technology (the preferred qualification for artisanal and technical assistants) to a two-year diploma programme in the college (the preferred qualification for artisans and technicians) or, depending on their academic performance, to a four-year programme in a university (the preferred qualification for technologists). the (re)introduction of the education college allows for the achievement of a two-year diploma, 1. which is the preferred qualification for teachers in the foundation and intermediate phases, while the 77cosser— pathways through the education and training system four-year degree in a university, or three-year degree plus a postgraduate certificate in a university, is the preferred qualification for teachers at the high school level. the community college, the multi-purpose mainstay of the new model, provides opportunities for 2. neet youth, and learners from school and from technical and vocational colleges, to access further learning which may be an end in itself (the achievement of a certificate or diploma) or a pathway to further opportunity within the community college or to a university. multiple points of entry into and exit from community colleges (not all are illustrated in the diagram) should be possible. from a certification perspective, the model preserves, in broad terms, the nqf logic of certificates, 3. diplomas and degrees involving respectively 120, 240 and 360 credits and the accompanying notional hours of learning. however, the model inserts a junior certificate at the end of grade 11 as the exitlevel qualification for progression to a grade 12 programme in a school or to a learning programme in a college and commutes the senior certificate to a qualification pegged at a higher level (level 5 on the nqf) than the current nsc. the revised model is consistent with the principles contained in the saqa act (act no. 58 of 4. 1995) (rsa, 1995) and the regulations promulgated under this act (rsa, 1998), which provide for enhanced articulation, progression and mobility as well as for alternative routes into post-basic education and training. the cost of the model one of the concerns about the proposed model is likely to be cost, and in particular the expense involved in constructing community colleges. however, the idea is not to incur vast infrastructural costs but as far as possible to make use of existing infrastructure to achieve the structural changes proposed. one of the 2010 fet summit task teams (dhet, 2010) proposed that fet colleges be differentiated on the basis of programme provision, with “programme and qualification mix” (pqm) shaping the process. building on this proposal, it would be logical to divide colleges into those offering predominantly n-programmes and those offering predominantly nc(v) programmes. the recent fet audit conducted by the hsrc (cosser, netshitangani, twalo, rogers, mokgatle & juan, 2010) indicates which colleges fall into each category. colleges focusing on n-programmes should become colleges of technology, while those focusing on the nc(v) should form the backbone of the community college system. the following steps would need to be taken to achieve this differentiation between communityand technology colleges: the process of designating certain colleges as colleges of technology should be based on an analysis 1. of the labour markets surrounding the present fet college campuses. college-industry links, in the form of memoranda of understanding (mous) between colleges and firms for skills training purposes, supplement information about local labour markets. both of these sets of information are available from the hsrc’s fet audit (cosser et al., 2010). one of the purposes of the community colleges, as outlined above, is to give learners who have 2. dropped out of school without qualifications or who have achieved an nsc without endorsement a second chance to re-enter formal education and training and acquire basic skills. in this regard, analysis of the community survey data used for calculating the number of neet youth (cloete, 2009) might be extended to include the qualification-geographical location nexus profile of these young people. in addition, further research should be undertaken to ascertain the number and location of community and church halls throughout the country that could serve as sites of learning. a crosstabulation of the two sets of data emerging from these analyses would inform decision-making about the number and location of community colleges that could be established. the principle determining college establishment should be that no student should have to travel for more than 45 minutes to access an institution of learning. community colleges should thus be located as far as possible in the communities in which their learners live. a feasibility study to determine the affordability of this process and the human costs involved should 3. proceed alongside and inform the research and analyses proposed above. this study would include 78 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 2011 an investigation of the costs involved in staffing such colleges, in terms of initial and in-service training of lecturers. universities of technology would be the obvious training places for lecturers at community colleges and indeed colleges of technology. how the dhet would provide for such training would need to be considered early in the feasibility study. conclusion this paper describes the problems of the existing educational pathways model devised in the wake of the saqa legislation of the 1990s. it has shown that the principles of articulation, mobility and progression on which the nqf stands have been breached over a tento fifteen-year period. it has proposed and argued the merits of the adoption of a new model to address the articulation deficiencies in the present model and remove obstacles to learner progression within the current education and training system. an important rider to the advocacy of a new model, however, concerns the quality of teaching and learning in the schooling system. without questioning the value of structural change of the kind proposed here, it is unarguable that unless there is a dramatic improvement in quality in the schooling sector, south africa will not achieve a pset (post-school education and training) system of a quality that it urgently needs. south african learners’ achievements in literacy and numeracy are far below those of their international peers (howie, venter, van staden, zimmerman, long, scherman & archer, 2007; reddy, 2006). if this continues, it will make structural change of the kind proposed in this paper expensive and possibly fruitless. references akoojee s 2005. private further education and training in south africa: the changing landscape. cape town: hsrc press. akoojee s & mcgrath s 2004. assessing the impact of globalisation on south african education and training: a review of the evidence so far. globalisation, societies and education, 2, 1:25-45. baker ga iii 1994. a handbook on the community college in america: its history, mission, and management. westport, ct: greenwood press. bhorat h, mayet n & visser m 2010. student graduation, labour market destinations and employment earnings. in letseka m, cosser m, breier m & visser m (eds). student retention and graduate destination: higher education and labour market access and success. cape town: hsrc press. breier m, wildschut a & mgqolozana t 2009. nursing in a new era: the profession and education of nurses in south africa. cape town: hsrc press. cloete n (ed) 2009. responding to the educational needs of post-school youth. cape town: centre for higher education transformation. cosser m 2003. graduate tracer study. in cosser m, mcgrath s, badroodien a & maja b (eds). technical college responsiveness: learner destinations and labour market environments in south africa. cape town: hsrc press. cosser m, netshitangani t, twalo t, rogers s, mokgatle g & juan, a 2010. further education and training colleges at a glance in 2010. unpublished report. pretoria: human sciences research council. dhet (department of higher education and training) 2010. report to the further education and training summit. task team 2: the programme mix for fet colleges. recommendations. 31 august. pretoria. doe (department of education) 2008. national plan for further education and training colleges in south africa. pretoria. howie s, venter e, van staden s, zimmerman l, long c, scherman v & archer e 2007. progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) 2006 summary report: south african children’s reading literacy achievement. pretoria: university of pretoria. letseka m, cosser m, breier m & visser m (eds) 2010. student retention and graduate destination: higher education and labour market access and success. cape town: hsrc press. 79cosser— pathways through the education and training system lolwana p 2010. expanding the south african post-secondary education system through differentiation and new forms of institutions. draft paper commissioned by higher education south africa. johannesburg: wits education policy unit. mcphail ip 2005. top 10 reasons to attend a community college. community college week, 17, 11 (3 january), 4-5. miller mh 2004. four-year schools should take more cues from community colleges, some educators say. community college week, 17, 9 (6 december), 3-4. reddy v 2006. mathematics and science achievement at south african schools in timss 2003. cape town: hsrc press. rsa (republic of south africa) 1995. south african qualifications authority act, 1995 (act no. 58 of 1995). pretoria: government printers. rsa 1998. regulations under the south african qualifications authority act, 1995 (act no. 58 of 1995). government gazette, no. 18787 (28 march). pretoria. visser m & kruss g 2009. learnerships and skills development in south africa: a shift to prioritise the young unemployed. journal of vocational education and training, 61, 3:357-374. young i 2007. building better pathways to higher education. melbourne, australia: swinburne university of technology. retrieved on 27 november 2010 from: http://www.swinburne.edu.au/corporate/ marketing/mediacentre/core/vc_releases.php. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 5 editorial standards in education and training: the challenge the articles in this special issue of perspectives in education were originally presented as papers at a conference held by umalusi in may 2012 on the theme standards in education and training: the challenge. umalusi is the quality council responsible for setting standards for general and further education and training in south africa and for assuring their quality. in addition to developing and managing the quality of the sub-framework of qualifications for general and further education and training, umalusi ensures that quality assurance policies exist and are implemented, and advises the ministers of education on matters relating to the qualifications it certifies. umalusi is currently responsible for the certification of the national senior certificate (nsc), which replaced the senior certificate in 2008 (this qualification is currently being phased out), the national certificate vocational (ncv), which commenced in 2007, and the general education training certificate (getc). the perceived challenges referred to in the framing of the conference theme were, firstly, that, in spite of the fact that education standards are a topical issue, there is no common understanding in the south african education community of what is meant by the term ‘standards’. secondly, there are many questions related to the setting and maintenance of standards in a country that is characterised by extreme inequality resulting from its colonial past. researchers go so far as to say that statistics reflects two distinct systems of education operating side by side, leading to what has been described as a bi-modal distribution of achievement (fleisch, 2008; van der berg, 2007; spaull, 2013). the notion of standards is inherently ambiguous (becher, 1997). in the past, they were generally thought of as outcomes of the process of education but, with the advent of written standards, they have become specifications of what should be learned and assessed, open to public scrutiny and, thus, a means of holding both teachers and the education system accountable. in south african schooling, assessment standards were introduced with the revised national curriculum statement (rncs) in 2002. related accountability measures are the annual national assessments (anas), which are administered in grades 1 to 6 and 9 (department of basic education, 2012) and a public examination, the nsc, at the end of grade 12. one of the many challenges umalusi confronts is how to foster parity of esteem between the nsc and ncv in a society which has traditionally valued the more academic side of learning, especially in the light of high youth unemployment and south africa’s need for vocational skills. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 6 professor catherine snow from the usa and professor michael young from the uk were among the keynote speakers at the conference; they addressed the question of standards in relation to their own countries, drawing comparisons with south africa where appropriate. in the case of the uk, until the 1970s, standards were normative. high standards were achieved by means of selective education; limits were placed on the numbers of students achieving high grades in examinations in order to maintain quality, and there was a largely tacit agreement as to what constituted these standards, though, according to young, this was always open to debate. from the 1970s onwards this approach to standards was called into question since it failed to address the needs of the majority of students in an increasingly diverse education system. the uk and the usa are characterised by relatively high levels of inequality in education, and in both countries written standards were introduced with the purpose of making the outcomes of education more explicit and, in theory, achievable by a wider range of students. as snow points out in her paper, this has the potential to create ‘a vision of excellence … a shared view of what children should learn and how teachers should teach, and of guiding the distribution of resources to schools in need’. however, in both the usa and the uk, standards have been used to emphasise the accountability role of assessment rather than as a means of improving teaching and learning. snow asks whether this view of standards will allow time for the process of education: will it allow for skills to be built up over time? will there be time for ‘knowledge building activities like discussions, field trips?’ young sums up the situation succinctly when he says, ‘you cannot fatten a pig by weighing it’. a number of common themes emerge in the papers presented at the conference and published as articles in this special issue. firstly, quality of teaching is highlighted as an important factor in ensuring that learners achieve specified standards. young in his article refers to the importance of teachers’ specialist knowledge, and bansilal, brijlall and mkhwanazi report in their paper on research into the content knowledge of a group of high school mathematics teachers attending an upgrading course. they found that the grade 12 teachers in their study struggled to answer some questions on an nsc supplementary examination paper and, as the cognitive demand of questions increased, so their responses became less adequate. this points to deep inequalities in the education system, and bansilal et al. question how these teachers would be able to prepare their students for challenging nsc examination questions. however, the teachers did better on topics that had been included in the upgrading course, pointing to the necessity of teacher development to build content knowledge. similarly, pretorius in her article reports that the grade 4 teachers in her study lacked an appropriate pedagogy for teaching reading and, at the start of the intervention, learners were reading four years below their grade level in english. this is not atypical; research shows that many developing countries lag behind developed countries in literacy achievement by several years (pritchett & beatty, 2012). with coaching, the teachers in pretorius’s study were able to make changes in their pedagogy and, as a result, the majority of learners made substantial improvements in reading – although 25 per cent were still struggling to decode in editorial 7 both english and isizulu. these two studies point to the role of teacher development programmes in improving educational outcomes, but also to the challenges of teaching in impoverished contexts where the gap between the teachers and learners and the assessment standards is often large. sosibo and nomlomo surveyed foundation phase teachers’ conceptions of education standards to find out how their understanding of the concept influences their classroom practice. the findings showed that teachers regard their school contexts as a restrictive factor in achieving the required standards. equally, absence of a clear definition of education standards and teachers’ exclusion from standards setting exercises compound the situation. in their conclusion, sosibo and nomlomo argue for clarifying the concept of ‘education standards’. scherman, zimmerman, howie and bosker argue for the inclusion of school role players such as teachers in the process of setting standards. their proposed method is what is called the bookmark standard-setting procedure, which uses a combination of teachers’ professional judgement and the rasch item-mapping to order items from easiest to most difficult on a common scale. this method, in their view, is simple to implement and results in teachers’ contributing meaningfully to the standard-setting process, because they become fully aware of the nature of the expected standard used to hold them accountable. a number of papers deal in one way or another with inequality of access to education. pienaar and mckay examine an aspect of the legacy of apartheid – the spatial organisation of south africa’s cities with regard to race – and its impact on access to quality education. they report that, after 1994, schools were allowed to define their own geographical catchment areas. they go on to show that geographic location of schools in gauteng has a strong influence on learner performance and, thus, on educational standards, and they suggest that this has implications for policy with regard to the zoning of schools in gauteng. several articles deal with the way in which language constrains what young in his paper refers to – with a nod to the late wally morrow – as ‘epistemic access’ or, more simply put, access to meaningful education. snow captures the essence of the ‘language problem’ when she writes, ‘language is not only a medium of education, but also an outcome of education – creating one of those difficult situations in which one has to know something before one can learn it’. pretorius focuses in her research on grade 4, the year in which english becomes the medium of instruction in township primary schools, and shows how inadequate the learners’ english is for this purpose. even though the learners improved as a result of pretorius’s intervention, they were still performing below grade level, which must have a negative impact on their overall achievement at school. snow reports that even in the usa, ‘children from non-english-speaking homes fall, on average, about .5 standard deviations below children from english-speaking homes in nationally administered comprehension assessments’. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 8 this suggests that learners are disadvantaged when they are assessed in a language they do not speak at home. in acknowledgement of this disadvantage, nsc candidates whose first language is not afrikaans or english and who, thus, write the examination in an additional language, receive compensation of 5 per cent in nonlanguage subjects. introduced in 1999, this policy was originally intended as an interim measure, but it is still in place. thus, taylor in his article reviews the policy, firstly, by using statistical methods to examine whether these candidates are disadvantaged by writing in an additional language and, secondly, by considering whether the practice should be allowed to continue. taylor demonstrates that language disadvantage does persist and concludes that, for largely pragmatic reasons, language compensation should continue. an additional conclusion is that, ‘increasing the english proficiency of african candidates will improve outcomes in all non-language subjects’. he further suggests that ‘giving special attention to the teaching of english in the foundation phase … could have exponential benefits’. however, he qualifies this suggestion by also emphasising the importance of a solid foundation in the learners’ home language. finally, there are four articles dealing with different aspects of assessment. le cordeur takes the view that, in response to south african learners’ poor performance on national and international assessments, there is too much emphasis on systemic testing at the expense of learning. he argues that the purpose of assessment is not simply to measure learning outcomes, but to improve teaching and learning. similarly, long, dunne and mokoena argue for an assessment model that supports instruction. they propose a model that includes ‘a monitoring component, a formative component and a professional development component’. like both snow and young, they argue that an over-emphasis on the accountability function of assessment is detrimental to education. ramnarain, sewry and mokilane in their respective articles consider different aspects of validity of the nsc examinations. ramnarain examines the validity of the assessment of ‘scientific enquiry’ in the physical sciences examination. he concludes that these questions lack construct validity and suggests ways of remedying this. sewry and mokilane report that, when the nsc mathematics examination was introduced for the first time in 2009, the professional community of mathematics educators in south africa perceived it to be too difficult, though, by 2011, this had improved. sewry and mokilane argue that, in the case of a high-stakes examination in a gateway subject such as mathematics, it is important to analyse the quality of questions in a rigorous manner. they use a rasch analysis to determine the level of difficulty of questions in the 2009 examination using candidates’ scripts from the grahamstown education district. this mode of analysis evaluates candidates’ abilities and item difficulties on the same measurement scale, enabling one to see whether the examination was too easy or too difficult for the cohort and whether it had good targeting (not too difficult for the weak candidates nor too easy for the strong candidates). the analysis confirmed that the examination was difficult for editorial 9 this cohort of learners despite the fact that there were a fair number of easy items. it also revealed that, although a number of questions differentiated amongst lowability candidates, there were no questions that discriminated amongst candidates with average to high abilities. sewry and mokilane argue that, ‘in the ideal paper the distribution of the difficulty levels of the items should be embedded in the distribution of the candidates’ abilities’. although a significant advancement in the south african education and training system was the introduction of the ncv, which stands next to the nsc as an exit qualification, most articles in this special issue focus on schooling. only young addresses further education: he provides a historical overview of changing perspectives regarding standards in the post-school sector in the uk from the 1970s up to the present. drawing on this experience, he discusses the relative strengths of the older, normative standards and the more recent, written standards. he takes the view that, whereas written standards have the potential for greater precision and can create conditions for debate, they may also undermine quality in various ways. however, in his view, neither approach ‘addresses the real sources of raising standards – better qualified teachers and improved curricula’. young also points to the limitations, especially in unequal societies, ‘of using standards for the dual purposes of maintaining quality and promoting greater equality’. the articles in this special issue of perspectives in education highlight the importance of written standards being appropriate to the context. if the gap between teachers’ and learners’ capabilities and the assessment standards is too great, this can have a negative effect on teaching and learning. this is especially important in the early years of schooling where an over-ambitious curriculum may cause learners to ‘get left behind early and stay behind forever’ (pritchard & beatty, 2012:13). such a curriculum does not allow time for the majority of children to learn, and effectively denies them access to education. furthermore, it is demoralising for teachers to be held accountable to standards they cannot possibly achieve (shalem & hoadley, 2009). however, as young reminds us, this has to be balanced against a normative view of what constitutes high and low standards. otherwise standards will not be recognised by stakeholders in higher education and the workplace, and capable students may be denied epistemic access. to work towards resolving this tension – though it will always be with us – we need a strong focus on appropriate, high-quality teacher support and development. finally, the articles also show us the importance of the quality of assessment. in particular, there must be great care and precision in setting examinations in order to not only discriminate between strong and weak students, but also to strike a balance between what is desirable with regard to disciplinary knowledge and the capabilities of the candidates sitting the examination. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 10 references becher t 1997. the hunting of the gilt-edged degree. in: j brennan, p de vries & r williams (eds), standards and quality in higher education. higher education policy series, 37. london: jessica kingsley publishers. department of basic education 2012. report on the annual national assessments 2012: grades 1 to 6 & 9. pretoria: department of basic education. fleisch b 2008. primary education in crisis: why south african schoolchildren underachieve in reading and mathematics. cape town: juta. pritchett l & beatty a 2012. the negative consequences of overambitious curricula in developing countries. working paper 293. center for global development. shalem y & hoadley u 2009. the dual economy of schooling and teacher morale in south africa. international studies in sociology of education, 19(2): 119-134. spaull n 2013. poverty and privilege: primary school inequality in south africa. international journal of educational development, 33: 436-447. van der berg s 2007. apartheid’s enduring legacy: inequalities in education. journal of african economies, 16(5): 849-880. biki lepota and sarah murray (guest editors) editorial all the articles in this special issue contribute – some more directly than others – to theoretical repertoires for thinking about the participatory rights of children, understood in legal terms as people younger than 18 years. in the introduction, henderson, pendlebury and tisdall trace the genesis of the special issue from a trans-disciplinary academic network of scholars from brazil, india, south africa and the united kingdom. they delineate the main lines of conceptual contestation around the notion of children’s public participation and indicate how these bear on education. picking up two central conceptual issues, bray and moses argue for a context-specific understanding of children’s participation and against the analytically convenient but theoretically limiting distinction between “formal” and “informal” forms of participation. bray and moses show how participation is constituted in and by different social spaces in south africa. their article serves as a platform for remaining articles. the next three articles focus on modes of participation and the modal affordances of different theoretical positions. each offers a different take on the conditions of possibility for authentic and meaningful participation. all three also raise questions, albeit obliquely, about taken-for-granted relationships between children and adults. henderson argues that children’s expressive repertoires are frequently overlooked as a form of social critique. she uses four cases studies to illustrate the richness of phenomenology, the anthropology of the senses, performance theory and multimodal pedagogies as sources of theoretical ideas for considering children’s ‘impassioned’ forms of expression. in a companion piece, newfield recapitulates instances of researched practice to illustrate how teachers have used multimodal pedagogies to expand the semiotic space of classrooms in expressive ways that worked against deficit models of children in underresourced schools in south africa. linington, excell and murris consider participatory possibilities for young children in the reception year. they propose a form of pedagogy which, they argue, addresses both the diverse realities of south africa’s children and the principles underpinning participatory democracy. theories of democracy and social justice present an array of concepts pertinent to the practice and understanding of political participation. the next two articles are rooted, in different ways, in this literature. bentley raises critical questions about the conceptions of children and children’s rights in the united nations convention on the rights of the child (uncrc). she defends deliberative democracy as a substantive approach to political participation, and considers how this might play out in children’s exercise of their rights and capabilities as political actors, for example, in school governance. bozalek proposes a normative model for children’s participatory parity in different social spaces. the model brings together elements from nancy fraser’s trivalent account of social justice, the capabilities approach of amartya sen and martha nussbaum, and literature on the political ethics of care. bozalek illustrates the model through examples from children’s participatory practices in south african families. in the absence of appropriate enabling conditions, participatory rights may vacuous. the next two articles look critically at some of the spaces for children’s participation in governance. roodt and stuurman present an overview of issues that have undermined the implementation of participatory initiatives – for both adults and children – in different parts of africa. in south africa, they argue, increased inefficiency on the part of local governance structures has led to rising disillusionment with participation by citizens, especially younger people. roodt and stuurman illustrate their argument with findings from a small study of grade 12 learners in grahamstown/rhini in the eastern cape. carrim critically examines modes of participation in relation to conceptions of children in the south african schools act and south african curriculum policy, with particular attention children’s participatory opportunities in the domains of school governance and pedagogy. according to carrim, the representative structure of school governance mitigates against genuine participation. he argues, too, that the policy conceptualisation of the learner representative is at odds with the policy conceptualisation of the learner as pedagogical subject and that both homogenise children. the final pair of articles focuses on children’s participation in educational research. the notion of ‘voice’, criticised in some of the earlier articles, is central to both. walton analyses a dilemma at the heart of research in inclusive education: whereas children’s participation in such research has the potential for ‘insider voices’ to be a ‘lever for change’, selecting children to participate on the basis of disability or another marker of difference undermines the inclusive endeavour. walton describes four research initiatives that highlight this dilemma which, she concludes, remains unresolved. sonn, santens and ravau argue that learner participation and ‘learner voice’ in school-community interventions contribute to the development of children’s critical consciousness and social understanding. sonn and her co-authors describe the role of creative participatory action research methodologies in supporting thirty secondary school learners from schools in challenging contexts to deepen their social understanding through participation in a health promoting schools initiative. together, from different disciplinary perspectives, the articles advance an ongoing conversation towards theorising children’s participation and the ways in which participation is constituted in and by different social contexts and practices. shirley pendlebury guest editor (with co-editors patricia henderson and kay tisdall) 71 leading curriculum renewal in a faculty of education: a story from within ana naidoo university of pretoria this article investigates the process of curriculum renewal in a faculty of education. i report on my own experiences as the initiator of the change to the bachelor of education curriculum. when colleges of education were incorporated into higher education institutions, some faculties of education were relocated to these campuses. this move brought to the fore the debate of whether it is better for a faculty of education itself to offer all the content in an education degree, or to outsource subject specialisations apart from education to discipline-specific departments in other faculties. the existing curricula and the recommendations of an internal audit were interrogated as a first step towards change. the idea was to strengthen the subject specialisation knowledge of the students through the involvement of the discipline-specific or specialist faculties and simultaneously include a social justice framework for the delivery of the programmes. design research methodology was used to analyse the process of curriculum renewal in the faculty of education. in order to analyse the existing curriculum, a process of document review was used. the final curriculum was negotiated with staff members and its compliance with the higher education qualifications framework is provided. keywords: bachelor of education, design research, curriculum renewal, social justice introduction change is uncomfortable for most people, and so it is not surprising that curriculum change in a higher education institution generates feelings of resistance. using resistance constructively (waddel & sohal, 1998; maurer, 1996) however, can open the doors for communication and thereby improve the chances of the adoption of change. accordingly, in this project, the lecturers involved in implementing the curriculum had to be kept informed and involved at every stage. there was thus a natural sway towards design research (bereiter, 2006). this article is an account of the process of curriculum renewal in a faculty of education at a higher education institution (hei). i opted for a participative leadership style in an attempt to overcome the resistance i sensed during my first few meetings with the academic staff. in the article, i report on my experiences and perceptions as the initiator of changes to the bachelor of education (bed) curriculum. i hope that these experiences will be of benefit to others in their attempts to introduce similar changes. background education faculties and departments in heis in south africa have been severely affected by changes in the higher education landscape (doe, 2001), specifically the incorporation of colleges of education into heis as well as the merging of some institutions (moe, 2002). the incorporation process resulted, among other things, in heis acquiring additional campuses that previously belonged to the former colleges. some faculties of education were then relocated to these campuses, which meant that these faculties, for example those at the university of kwazulu-natal and the university of pretoria, were physically removed from their original campuses. such faculties of education then chose to offer their own subject specialisations, such as history or mathematics, with the result that the students were exposed only to exteachers or other lecturers who had been trained through teaching programmes. this move brought to the fore the debate of whether it is better for a faculty of education itself to offer all the content in an education 72 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 degree or to outsource subject specialisations, apart from education, to discipline-specific departments in other faculties. during the national review of education programmes, the bed programme in my institution received full accreditation; nevertheless, it was decided to include all seven bed programmes in an internal institutional audit process in the faculty of education. this is in line with avalos, tellez and navaro’s (2010) recommendation that programmes should be examined periodically for coherence and that an accreditation process should not be relied on as the only factor for improvement. the programmes investigated were the bachelor of education degrees in the early childhood development and foundation phase (bed: ecd &fp), the intermediate phase (bed:ip), the senior phase (bed:sp) and four bed degrees in further education and training (bed:fet). following the internal audit, recommendations were made in terms of the bed programmes. among them was the recommendation to strengthen the subject specialisation of the bed students through the involvement of the discipline-specific or specialist faculties. in order to validate this recommendation further, a meeting was held with local principals to whose schools our students had been assigned for the teaching practice component of their training. the principals stated that when the students arrived at the schools, especially at the beginning of their second year, they were not capable of managing a class because of their subject knowledge deficiency. the principals consequently believed that their schools did not benefit from having the students for teaching practice too early in the curriculum. input from the students on the teaching of the education modules in the various programmes suggested a duplication of content over the three years. the input from the school principals and our students confirmed the need to revisit the curriculum. the problem an examination of the framework for repositioning the faculty of education: audit report (2008), hereafter referred to as the audit report, revealed the main research problem as: how to strengthen the bed curricula so novice teachers’ subject knowledge is deepened, allowing them to continue further studies in the discipline of specialisation if they wished to do so. a secondary concern was that the programmes lacked coherence and that some of the modules carried too few credits. my assumption was that a teachereducation degree would include pedagogical content knowledge (pck). an examination of the existing curriculum, with both the content and methodology of a subject being taught in some instances by the same lecturer, did not reveal a deficiency in pck. how pck is integrated into the curriculum as a whole will be considered later. literature review the literature (sheehan 1986; kelly 1989) speaks of curriculum development as being product driven as opposed to process driven. a teacher education curriculum that has a strong discipline (content) base has to accommodate both product and process. however, it is not the purpose of this article to participate in such a debate. rather, in terms of the need to deepen students’ subject content knowledge, muller’s (2009) views will constitute the starting point of the article. muller sees curriculum in terms of the differences in disciplines as well as coherence. he concurs with biglan’s (1973:204) division of academic areas into (a) a single paradigm (making it hard or soft), (b) practical application (in terms of pure or applied), and, finally, whether it falls under life systems or not. in this three-way differentiation, an education degree is classified as a life system in the applied area. the choice of specialisation will determine whether the degree will be soft or hard. a bed: fet in natural science, for example, is likely to be a hard, applied qualification whereas a bed: ip is more likely to be a soft, applied qualification. muller (2009) further distinguishes curricula on the grounds of conceptual and contextual coherence. depending on the occupation under consideration, the mix of conceptual and contextual coherence will differ. a teaching qualification should ideally value the abstract nature of the content (conceptual) as well as the practice (contextual). muller’s (2009) and biglan’s (1973) work was considered in determining the spread of credits in the programmes. 73naidoo — leading curriculum renewal in a faculty of education: a story from within butin (2007:177) speaks of the need for “greater equity and equality across historically marginalized populations”. having been educated during the apartheid period, i am conscious of the uncritical way in which teachers were encouraged to operate. my own historical background of being educated in the seventies in south africa influenced the underpinnings of the proposed curriculum. kruss (2008) maintains that the competing models for teacher education are based on the curriculum designers’ historical backgrounds and ideological positions. because teachers in south africa are likely to teach learners from diverse backgrounds, emphasis should be placed on social justice education (referred to by others as justice education). service learning is a means of achieving equity education (butin, 2007, blundo, 2010). while ash and clayton (2004:137) focus on the ‘centrality of reflection’ in service learning as a way of enhancing the reflective process in the curriculum, north (2006) shows that students in this case student teachers have to unlearn their oppressive assumptions before they can focus on any form of justice education. in their study, baldwin, buchanan & rudisill (2007:316) used servicelearning to encourage critical reflection and dialogue for self-interrogation and questioning. they noted that student teachers assumed that their life experiences were similar or identical to those of their students. hondagneu-sotelo and raskoff (1994) see servicelearning as having the added advantage of sparking transformation in students’ perspectives due to changes in their surroundings. of the four styles that miller (2011:35) uses to categorise curriculum design, the style focusing on social justice is aligned with a critical theorist approach. in order to see the implemented curriculum from a perspective that might be different from their own, the lecturers were provided with reading matter on critical theory, critical reflection and social justice (adorno, 1998; horkheimer and adorno, 1972; butin, 2007; banks, 2004) so that they could extend their ‘theory of experience’ (dewey, 1997:25-31). i regarded this as appropriate as the theoretical framework for the bed programmes would then be underpinned by critical reflection and social justice education. methodology design research methodology (bereiter, 2006; collins, joseph & bielaczyc, 2004) was used to drive the process of curriculum renewal. design research requires close collaboration between the designers and the practitioners in order to “make something new happen” (bereiter, 2006:17). my participative style meant meeting regularly with the staff members who would be responsible for implementing the curriculum. first, the faculty members had to acknowledge the shortcomings in the curriculum. the suggested solution of getting other faculties to offer the subject specialisations was discussed at a joint meeting of academic and administrative staff where some staff members voiced their concerns about the current student admission requirements. some also argued that not all bed students would necessarily want to engage with discipline/subject specialisation into the honours level. the students themselves were not interviewed to determine if they would prefer to continue their studies in the discipline of specialisation. although the central source of information was the audit report (2008), as part of the design research process i revisited the research problem. the research focus was fine-tuned with the emphasis placed only on strengthening content knowledge and not on the student pursuing further studies. vezzoli and penin (2006) talk about design in emerging contexts aimed at sustainability (decos), which involves linking research issues to experimental didactics. at this early stage of implementation this process cannot be seen to have reached finality. in order to take the decos method into curriculum renewal, the implementation process in terms of actual teaching will have to be monitored, and suggestions from lecturers will be used to refine the curriculum further. design research generally results in a product (reeves, herrington & oliver, 2005), and, in this case, it would be the proposed curriculum. in accordance with the decos method, repeated revision took place before general acceptance of the curriculum was reached among the staff members. after the first meeting with the staff members − where their concern about the present calibre of student was noted − the admission requirement regarding the cut-off point score was raised. it was thought that the new point score would attract students who would be capable of coping with the higher requirements of the other faculties. further meetings were held with smaller groups of staff members in 74 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 each department within our faculty to obtain their input. since the subjects taken from discipline faculties did not always align with those taught at schools, specific content had to be provided by the departments in our faculty. subjects such as physical science, life orientation and mathematics literacy would be catered for. in design research, the collaborative efforts of the different departments were used to construct the curriculum without losing sight of its theoretical underpinning. a process of document review was undertaken to analyse the existing curriculum. the process began with the identification of the purpose of the qualification as set out in institutional documents when the programmes were originally registered. other documents consulted included the audit report, the yearbook, selected study guides and the timetable. analysis the above-mentioned official institutional documents were analysed with a view to determining the level of coherence and the depth of content knowledge (muller 2009). documents the audit report (2008:66) emphasised the need for cohesion and coherence in the bed degree. the significant number of low-credit modules was also a concern. the main recommendation in the report was the need to achieve stronger subject specialisation knowledge. in the yearbook, the descriptions indicated duplication of content, which had to be verified by the lecturers since there was insufficient detail regarding the perception of duplication. the education modules received more attention as they would remain the domain of the faculty. the concept ‘perspectives in education’ appeared in two separate modules in the second year, and there also appeared to be content duplication in the second and third modules in the first year. obe, roles of the teacher and assessment were repeated topics. eleven other core modules carried between three and nine credits that were offered over the full year or a semester. many methodology module descriptions were vague and indicated the content as “as prescribed/required by the national curriculum documents”. the lecturers teaching the methodology modules had no idea what the lecturers teaching the education modules were focusing on. evidence of either conceptual or contextual coherence was lacking (muller 2009). while credits increased progressively in the modules in the other faculties, for instance from 24 to 40 to 60 in the humanities , the subject specialisation modules in the faculty of education carried only 20 credits in both the first and the second year and 24 credits in the third year. the study guides indicated that the content taught was not aligned with what appeared in the yearbook. samuel (2010:10), in his analysis of module outlines in an education faculty, also found what he called ‘distances’ between the module outlines and what appeared in the institution’s handbook/calendar. our study guides provided little guidance to students to enable them to plan and carry out their work independently. the timetable revealed that fourth-year students had lectures in the first quarter and that they spent the next two quarters at schools. they returned to campus in the last quarter but did not have any lectures that were timetabled formally. presentations had to be made during this quarter, but it was difficult to determine how many notional learning hours were meant to be spent by students on the whole teaching practice module. the secondand third-year students had lectures scheduled for the first quarter or semester that comprised either 7 or 14 weeks of lectures respectively, but the curriculum required these students to engage in teaching practice for three weeks at the beginning of the year. however, this period overlapped with the beginning of the university year and thus reduced the scheduled lecture time. this scenario was obviously not ideal and required the re-conceptualisation of the teaching practice module. 75naidoo — leading curriculum renewal in a faculty of education: a story from within existing curriculum the purpose of each of the seven programmes in the existing curriculum is essentially to provide students with the knowledge, skills and attitudes they need to assume leadership roles in particular fields. the implicit aim of the programmes is to meet the roles specified in the norms and standards for educators (doe, 2000). table 1 shows the links between the roles and the existing, related modules. table 1: correspondence between the roles of a teacher and the modules offered role module learning mediator/teacher education interpreter and designer of learning programmes and materials methodology leader, administrator and manager education scholar, researcher and lifelong learner research community, citizenship and pastoral role language across the curriculum assessor assessment learning area/subject specialist subject specialisation lecturers at many south african institutions of higher learning mistakenly believed that the curriculum required them to develop all seven roles of the teacher simultaneously, and, consequently, their students were continually referred to these roles. this was one of the reasons they perceived duplication in the curriculum. an analysis of the existing curriculum shows that the modules could be clustered into groups to determine their relevance. the programmes contained generic fundamental and core modules with the subject specialisations and methodologies for the ip, sp and fet being covered in the elective modules. the bulk of the credits of the core modules related to education, teaching practice and research. the first target for change was the education modules since they should be the fulcrum of any bed qualification. while the credits for education as a major subject were commensurate with other majors in the institution, the contact hours over the three years were disproportionate. a workshop on the content of the education modules revealed that each year was disaggregated into quarters. twelve parts were taught by various groups of lecturers who did not know what the other 11 groups were doing. similarly, samuel (2010:10) found that module course outlines “[did] not hint at any form of integration across the different modules”. in most cases, the lecturers acknowledged that what appeared in the yearbook did not necessarily match what was taught in the classroom. it was only at this workshop that the lecturers became aware of the content overlap in the education modules. stand-alone modules such as school organisation, assessment and professional ethics could also be part of the education syllabus. the first education module taught in the first year covered the pre-1994 education system. this, together with my personal ‘theory of experience’ (dewey, 1997), drew me towards a social justice paradigm, which, in turn, encapsulated freire’s (2006a) pedagogy of the oppressed and was a natural progression to education for critical consciousness (freire, 2006b). the focus of the re-curriculation process then moved to “what kind of teachers are we producing?” after the students had completed three years of the subject specialisation electives, they would have been expected to have ‘majored’ in a particular subject, for example geography or english. these students were not accepted into the discipline departments in other faculties to proceed to honours level. the general feeling in the university was that the subject specialisation in the bed curriculum was not acceptable for admission into an honours programme in the specialisation disciplines. the perception was that the content taught in a faculty of education lacked the depth required in terms of the ‘single paradigm’ notion espoused by biglan (1973). this perception was confirmed by the credits attached to the modules. while other majors carried 124 credits or more, our subject specialisation electives carried only 64 credits. the difference between the intermediate, senior and fet phase qualifications was that the ip students chose two teaching subjects while the sp students chose three of which one was a science subject. fet phase 76 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 students also had to choose three electives. the level of specialisation thus emphasised breadth rather than depth. in addition, all programmes except the fp programme required the students to take a subject called professional studies and two methodologies. while all the lecturers were aware that the undergraduate programme had a component of community engagement, this was not evident in the yearbook. on enquiring, i discovered that as part of the module called ‘language across the curriculum’, the students earned six of the 12 credits by being involved in a community engagement project. the purpose of the module was to improve the english communication skills of the students, and, accordingly, they were assessed on an oral presentation done at the end of the year. the literature (butin, 2007; north, 2007; baldwin et al., 2007) indicates that if the focus is on equity education and service learning to encourage critical reflection, then this aspect of the curriculum should receive particular attention. the changes transformation one of the purposes of higher education as stipulated in the white paper (doe, 1997:7) is “to contribute to the socialisation of enlightened, responsible and constructively critical citizens”. teacher education aims to produce such critical citizens who, in turn, will contribute to the process of developing critical thinkers in the school system. after 16 years of post-apartheid teacher training, the ideas of critical theorist theodore adorno warrant attention. in 1967, he wrote a now famous passage in his essay, raising children after auschwitz: “the very first claim for education is that there will never be a second auschwitz.” 1 in accordance with this thinking, education in south africa should be developed on the premise that the apartheid system should never again be allowed to occur. this argument makes a strong case for the inclusion of a history of south african education in a teacher education curriculum. this was the starting point of discussions on what should be included in the education syllabus. questions were asked such as “who is the focus?”, “what kind of teacher do we want to produce?” and “what is the theoretical underpinning of the curriculum?” the existing modules were dissected and then reconstructed by a team of lecturers who had been responsible for at least one of the 12 modules in education. i turned the attention of the lecturers to chapter 3 of the constitution (amato, 1994:49-50) to highlight the need to focus on democracy, equality and justice. this was the basis of the development of an integrated curriculum. following on the white paper (doe, 1997) and chapter 3 of the constitution of south africa, the theoretical framework of this curriculum is steeped in justice education. figure 1: in the context of the school figure 2: in the context of society figure 1 and 2 answer the question “who/what is the focus?” the above components were the elements that impacted the content of the education modules. when the community under consideration is one that experienced inequality and unfairness in the past, the need for community engagement becomes even teacher learner classroom/school teacher learner community 77naidoo — leading curriculum renewal in a faculty of education: a story from within more essential (butin, 2007). the purpose of community engagement in the revised bed curriculum is not only to provide a service to the community but also to enable the students to learn and grow from their experiences. strengthening content in line with credits in order to strengthen the subject specialisation of the curriculum, a management decision was taken to have the other faculties deliver the specialisation/discipline subjects. however, strengthening subject specialisation knowledge comes with its own issues, one of which is: “how much content do teachers of the different phases need in order to be competent in the classroom?” another dilemma was that not all university subjects equip teachers to engage adequately with school subjects. examples have been given earlier in the article. to resolve this problem, the proposed curriculum includes an additional choice of school subjects offered by the faculty of education. for a student doing a bed: fet, the requirement is one 24-credit module from one of the school subjects offered by the faculty of education, while the other two phases have more choices. at a workshop (naidoo, 2009) i conducted, the he mathematics lecturers concluded that a high school teacher required a pass in mathematics equivalent to at least university mathematics at second-year level. this requirement is also in line with the draft policy on the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications (dhet, 2010) for a bed: fet. if this requirement is incorporated into the stated research problem, a fet teacher with a degree could have one teaching subject as a major and the other teaching subject at second-year level. this would also enable students to pursue further study in one of the discipline subjects (major) to honours level. but, do teachers at the lower school levels require such strong subject specialisation knowledge? the foundation and intermediate phase teacher need not major in one discipline subject, and the senior phase teacher has the option to major in a discipline subject or a faculty of education subject. the number of credits required from a discipline faculty for each programme will determine the balance between conceptual and contextual coherence. a foundation phase teacher takes 64 credits from the discipline faculty, and these increase to the extent that 212 credits are taken from another faculty in order for a fet phase teacher to qualify. the bed:ecd & fp as well as the bed:ip degrees each comprise 500 credits while the other bed degrees require slightly more than 500 credits. this is in line with the statutory requirement that a bed programme should have a minimum of 480 credits (doe, 2000, dhet, 2010). consolidation of the curriculum the new curriculum for all bed degrees has education as the designator (doe, 2007) in the qualification, and the credits associated with the fourth year of study are linked to this designator. the other major subject, together with the second-year subjects, account for more than 50% of the required 480 credits with the focus on the subject specialisation and methodology of the particular phase. the education modules, the subject specialisation modules and the methodologies all contribute to the pedagogical content knowledge (ball, 1990; hill, rowan & ball, 2005) needed by a teacher. figure 3 pedagogical content knowledge methodologiescontenteducation 78 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 teachers require pedagogical content knowledge before they are allowed to teach in schools. the students practise teaching through micro-teaching lessons in the first semester of the fourth year, and the evaluations of these lessons are carried out by methodology lecturers and teams of assessors. the last semester is spent at schools carrying out site-based teaching practice – this is when the students also do research projects aimed at improving their practice through action research (somekh, 2006; mcniff & whitehead, 2009). at the end of this period, the students should be ready for immersion in the school as fully qualified teachers. the new curriculum aims to implement the transformation strategy of the white paper by improving the quality of teaching and learning throughout the system and, in particular by ensuring that curricula are responsive to national and regional contexts (doe,1997:13). the bed fulfils community engagement in the form of ‘academic service learning’ to address the “commitment to the common good by making available expertise and infrastructure for community service programmes” (ibid,1997:14). the idea is to strengthen future teachers’ knowledge of diversity, social justice and themselves (baldwin et al, 2007). the second-year students will therefore be exposed to the theory of community engagement and inclusive education in the education module. they then familiarise themselves with the methodologies of their specialisation subject in the third year when they also have to do 20 hours of community work in a disadvantaged community. critical reflection and self-reflection are integrated into the curriculum through their community engagement projects. figure 4 figure 3 shows the teacher and learner dealing with the pedagogical content knowledge in the classroom, and figure 2 shows the teacher trying to understand the learners and the community they come from. moving towards an integrated curriculum figure 4 shows the links between the practical aspects of a teacher education qualification. although the implementation appears as a linear process, it is, in fact, more complex. the academic service learning occurs in the third year while teaching practice and the research project take place in the fourth year – the latter two have a two-way arrow to show that they influence one another. an attempt at cohesion is illustrated in figure 5. i presented this figure to the lecturers, and i used it in my communication with them. the lecturers were encouraged to engage critically with the concepts. figure 5 research teaching practice academic service learning education content knowledge pedagogical content knowledige professional studies methodscomm eng t/p research/reflection who am i? social justice 79naidoo — leading curriculum renewal in a faculty of education: a story from within conclusion any curriculum process in south africa needs to incorporate issues of equity and transformation. however, foregrounding these issues may result in resistance from some staff members and sometimes even from the students themselves. at every stage of the renewal process, staff members who will be responsible for the implementation process should be informed about the thinking behind the process – they need to ‘own’ the process and be convinced of its legitimacy. my participative leadership role required me to solicit input constantly from faculty members, and this input sustained the design research methodology. at times, it was necessary to rethink ideas as a result of feedback from the lecturers. instead of devaluing the past contributions of staff members in the faculty of education in favour of the contributions of staff members from other faculties, the curriculum was structured to allow for the consideration of various contributions. the methodologies and the teaching practice aspects of the curriculum will depend on the principle of integration. as the old curricula are phased out and replaced with the new curricula over a four-year period, a supportive environment will have to be provided to sustain the changes that are about to take place. references avalos b, tellez f, and navarro s 2010. learning about the effectiveness of teacher education: a chilean study. perspectives in education, 28(4):11-21. adorno t 1998. education after auschwitz. in critical models: interventions and catchwords. new york: columbia university press. 191. amato r 1994. understanding the new constitution. parow: ctp book printers. ash sl and clayton ph 2004. the articulated learning: an approach to guided reflection and assessment. innovative higher education, 29(2):137-154. baldwin sc, buchanan am, and rudisill me 2007. what teacher candidates learned about diversity, social justice and themselves from service learning experiences. journal of teacher education, 58(4):315-327. ball dl 1990. the mathematical understandings that prospective teachers bring to teacher education. jstor: the elementary school journal, 90(4):449466 banks ja 2004. teaching for social justice, diversity, and citizenship in a global world. the educational forum, 68(4):296-305. beauchamp g a 2001. curriculum theory: meaning, development and use. theory into practice, 21(1): 23 -25. bereiter c 2006. design research: the way forward. education canada, 46(1) winter 2005/2006. biglan a 1973. relationships between subject matter characteristics and the structure and output of university departments. journal of applied psychology, 57 (3): 204-213. blundo r 2010. social justice becomes a living experience for students, faculty and community. journal of teaching in social work, 30(1): 90-100. butin dw 2007. justice -learning: service-learning as justice-orientated education. equity & excellence in education, 40(2): 177-183. collins a, joseph d, and bielaczyc k 2004. design research: theoretical and methodological issues. journal of learning sciences, 13(1):15-42. department of education 1997. education white paper 3: a programme for the transformation of higher education. pretoria: government printers. department of education 2000. norms and standards for educators. february. pretoria: department of education. department of education 2001. national plan for higher education. pretoria: government printers. department of education 2007. the higher education qualifications framework. pretoria: government printers. 80 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 department of higher education & training 2010. draft policy on the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications selected from the higher education qualifications framework. published for public comment. dewey j reprinted 1997. experience and education. new york: simon & schuster. freire p reprinted 2006a. pedagogy of the oppressed. london: continuum. freire p reprinted 2006b. education for critical consciousness. london: continuum. hill hc, rowan b & ball dl 2005. effects of teachers’ mathematical knowledge for teaching on student achievement in american educational research journal, 42(2):371-406. hondagneu-sotelo p & raskoff s 1994. community service-learning: promises and problems. teaching sociology, 22(3):248-254. horkheimer m and adorno t 1989. dialectic of enlightenment. translated by cummings j. new york: continuum. kelly av 1989. the curriculum: theory and practice. london: paul chapman publishing ltd. kruss g 2008. teacher education and institutional change in south africa. cape town: hsrc press. maurer r 1996. using resistance to build support for change. journal for quality & participation, june 1996, 19(3):56-63. mcniff j and whitehead j 2009. doing and writing action research. london: sage publications ltd. miller dl 2011. curriculum theory and practice what’s your style? phi delta kappan. 92 (7): 32-39 ministry of education 2002. new institutional landscape for higher education in south africa. pretoria: government printers. muller j 2009. forms of knowledge and curriculum coherence. journal of education and work, 22(3):205226. naidoo a 2009. fet mathematics teacher pre-service programmes (bed and pgce). presented at the sams workshop. 9-11 september 2009. gordon’s bay, south africa. north ce 2006. more than words? delving into the substantive meaning(s) of “social justice” in education. review of educational research, 76(4): 507 -535. reeves tc, herrington j, and oliver r 2005. design research: a socially responsible approach to instructional technology research in higher education. journal of computing in higher education, 16(2):97-116. samuel m 2010. searching for a “pedagogy of hope” teacher education and the social sciences. perspectives in education, 28: 5-15 sheehan j 1986. curriculum models: product versus process. journal of advanced learning, 11:671-678. somekh b 2006. action research: a methodology for change and development. berkshire, england: open university press. university of pretoria 2008 framework for repositioning the faculty of education: audit report. unpublished. pretoria: university of pretoria. vezzoli c and penin l 2006 campus:”lab” and “window” for sustainable design research and education in international journal of sustainability. higher education, 7(1):69-80. waddel d and sohal as 1998. resistance: a constructive tool for change management. management decision, 36(8):543-548. endnotes 1 this was first presented as a radio lecture on 18 april 1966 under the title “padagogik nach auschwitz”. the first published version appeared in 1967. the english translation appears in theodore adorno, “education after auschwitz”, critical models: interventions and catchwords (new york: columbia university press, 1998), page 191. i editorial the current issue is a unique collection of articles covering school and higher education, and can be divided into three broad themes: higher education, teaching and learning and teacher professional development. we open this issue with an article by john mendy and maria madiope on curriculum transformation in south africa. the article raises a number of important questions and insights in a time when the ideas of africanisation and the decolonialisation of the curriculum have gained in importance. the article by rachel barnett links with the first and looks at one of the most topical challenges related to diversity, equity and inclusion and why leadership of higher education in this regard matters in us higher education. aradhana ramnund-mansingh and mariam seedat-khan join in with a thought-provoking article on understanding the career trajectories of black female academics in south africa. the last two articles on higher education interrogate the institutionalisation of community engagement in higher education while carina america and philip mallon write on connectedness in business studies pedagogy, which nicely ties into the second cluster of articles on teaching and learning. teaching and learning include articles from early childhood development to art education. the articles explore different teaching pedagogies and approaches. salochana lorraine hasan leads us in a discussion on problem-based learning using semantics in legitimation code theory while meredith armstrong and chrissie boughey explore children’s language and literacy development in a marginalised community in port elizabeth. also discussing early childhood education challenges is the paper by keshni bipath and hantie theron that focuses on pedagogy-in-participation and the contesting of “schoolification” in early childhood development centres. liezl myburgh, janet condy and elna barnard explore pedagogical approaches to develop social skills of learners with autism spectrum disorder. to close this section, raita steyn looks at the use of the element of surprise as a teaching strategy in art education. the third cluster of articles explores issues of teacher development and teachers’ perceptions on various aspects in teaching. bernadette geduld and humphrey sikwanga argue that teachers are expected to be self-directed and to instil in their learners the ability to self-regulate their own author: jan nieuwenhuis editor-in-chief. doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38. i2.ed e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(2): i-iii published: 04 december 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0205-2042 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.ed http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.ed http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.ed http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie ii learning processes. the authors argue that there are, however, personal and contextual factors that promote or inhibit teachers’ abilities to develop self-regulated learning skills. the article presents what these factors could be. a phenomenon that is often reported in literature is teachers’ resistance to curriculum changes. arrie van wyk looks at the views of teachers and how the effect of resistance to curriculum changes could be minimised. van wyk argues that principals must be in a better position to steer the curriculum changes in schools in the right direction. he premises that, as a result, teachers will be in a better position to do their work properly to the benefit of the learners and, eventually, to the benefit of society. the proposition of van wyk is of course premised on the leadership approach/style of the school principal. van der vyver, kok and conley’s article departs from the idea that transformational and transactional leadership dimensions could positively contribute to teachers’ professional wellbeing, whereas laissez-faire leadership has a potentially negative influence on their professional wellbeing. the use of transformational and transactional leadership behaviour results in teachers reporting positive job-related affective wellbeing, which can in turn, influence teachers to remain in the profession due to their experience of enhanced professional wellbeing. the last two articles then explore two related aspects of leadership, vis-à-vis mentoring and capacity development of teachers. nontsikelelo msimango, kathleen fonseca and nadine petersen discuss the role of mentoring in preparing primary school mathematics teachers for their roles, while jabulani khanyi and parvathy naidoo discuss the role of principals in the leadership capacity development of post level one teachers for school leadership. the year 2021 promises to be a very interesting time in the history of perspectives in education: 2020 was our butterfly effect year. gleick (1987), in his renowned book, chaos, recalls the story of edward lorenz, a meteorologist, who one day in the winter of 1961, was examining one sequence of weather events at greater length. lorenz decided to take a shortcut. instead of starting the whole run over, he started midway through. to give the machine its initial conditions, he typed the numbers straight from an earlier printout. then he walked down the hall to get away from the noise and get a cup of coffee. when he returned an hour later, he saw something unexpected; something that planted the seed for a new science. the change in a small detail changed the whole weather simulation (gleick, 1987:16). in a paper read by lorenz on his findings he asked the question: “does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in brazil set off a tornado in texas?” a tiny cause can generate big consequences! while the butterfly effect remained known to the few scientists who followed lorenz’s work, it was not until “chaos” became a cultural phenomenon via james gleick’s (1987) popular book chaos and that the metaphor of the “butterfly effect” gained widespread public exposure. gleick entitled the first chapter of his book: “the butterfly effect.” it is interesting to note that he explained the concept of sensitive dependency by applying the butterfly effect (prophetically) to “…the notion that a butterfly stirring the air in peking can transform storm systems next month in new york” (gleick, 1987:8). maybe chaos theory and the “butterfly effect” can best describe the events of 2020. but the “butterfly effect” has also come to mean a turning point in history. education, and especially higher education will never be the same after 2020. the “new normal” will see an expansion in online and blended learning as delivery modes taking prominence in higher education. perspectives in education had its butterfly effect in 2020! perspectives in education is proud to include a number of international articles in the journal and in the planning for 2021 you will find this dimension growing in importance in the journal. the special edition in march 2021 will have a truly international essence, but more importantly, it will iii engage with the international butterfly effect of 2020 in education. finally, as from 2021, perspectives in education is returning to four issues per year, of which one will be our annual special issue. enjoy the journey with us. editorial _goback 15 “you should give a child love and take them warm-heartedly from their parent”: preschool teachers’ practice and understanding of care abstract this paper is based on the exploration of township preschool teachers’ perspectives of the act of caring. caring has always been associated with women as they are seen as nurturers. their role as mothers is regarded as a natural part of their being. this study explored preschool teachers’ understanding of caring as well as its implementation. literature confirms that caring has moral nuances and definite emotive features and that the one cared for is likely to develop intellectually. this paper interrogates “caring”, as one of the features of quality. the paper is drawn from a larger qualitative study conducted on teachers’ perspectives on quality. the study was conducted by using photovoice and observation. caring was highlighted as a key element of quality in the preschools that were studied. caring was understood within cultural practices of the communities that formed the sites of this study. data revealed that caring should not be viewed in an exclusionary way that does not take into account the context in which it is practised. it is this caring that has positive spinoffs and has the capability of enhancing the quality of learning. keywords: care, culture, preschool, teachers, understanding, children 1. introduction the act of caring has always been associated with women, because traditionally they are the ones who raise children and are said to “possess more perseverance than the other sex” (james, 2010:521; benhabib, 1989). it is, therefore, not surprising that preschools are predominantly the domain of women who tend to give attention to caring for children. noddings (1986) portrays caring as having some moral nuances within it. she makes a distinction between caring “for” and caring “about”. it is the “caring for” which has some implications for ethics, in that a person must step out of herself and take a keen interest in the needs of the one being cared for. this type of caring has definite emotive features, as the act of caring for someone raises some issues of affectivity. goldstein (in mcnamee, mercurio & peloso, 2007) asserts that “caring cannot be divorced from thought, and it is both an emotional and an prof nc phatudi department of early childhood education, college of education, unisa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i1.2 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(1): 15-27 © uv/ufs http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.2 16 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) intellectual act; caring is a deliberate moral and intellectual stance rather than simply a feeling” (mcnamee et al., 2007: 278). if a person feels cared for, that person is likely to develop intellectually, as the acknowledgement one receives is bound to bring stability in the life of an individual. the sense of feeling good about oneself is the foundation of the attachment theory of bowlby and ainsworth, and it is associated with multiple positive outcomes such as social and emotional competence, intellectual growth and positive self-esteem (ranson & urichuk, 2008). a caregiver, who is able to provide the multiple outcomes in such a manner that children do not lose touch with their social and cultural background, makes it possible for children to explore their environment without fear (ranson & urichuk, 2008; super, harkness, barry & zeitlin, 2011). this paper explores the act of caring experiences in the early childhood development (ecd) phase of children in peri-urban preschools, as perceived by the teachers. this formed part of a bigger study that looked into the conceptualisation of quality as conceived by teachers and factors that contribute towards quality. this paper seeks to answer the following question: what is the teachers’ conceptualisation of care in south african preschools? in a quest to answer the research question, the next section will address the history of ecd in south africa, and will proffer different understandings of the act of caring. 2. history of early childhood development in south africa ecd provisioning in south africa prior to 1994, the year the country was ushered into democracy came from a history of inequality, fragmentation and separate provisioning according to race (nepi, 1992). the legacy of the past still lingers on despite drastic changes and interventions by the democratic government since 1994 to level the playing fields. ecd in south africa, as in the rest of the world, plays a critical role in the development of children (artmore, 2014; meiring, 2014) and in ensuring that children are ready to learn formally in school (doe, 2001; phatudi & margetts, 2011). the south african government, since 1994 at the dawn of the democratic era, has been proactive and upcoming with strategies to ensure that the policy landscape creates and promotes an enabling environment in which ecd can thrive and grow so that the child’s holistic development is addressed (artmore, 2014; doe, 2001; dsd, 2015; meiring, 2014). despite new interventions to address disparity in ecd provisioning, the inequality in service provisioning and education of preschool teachers is still aligned to socio-economic contexts, with the more affluent areas having better qualified, trained teachers and resources, whereas the less affluent areas have less trained and even untrained teachers with poor resources. 3. problem statement this paper is premised on the assumption that difference in resourcing can bring about differences in terms of philosophies that underpin practices in preschools. the ecd context in south africa is disparate, unequal and has a large contingent of ill-trained teachers, especially in disadvantaged areas. there is bound to be differences in practices in the two main contexts in the country, i.e. the urban affluent areas and the rural and peri-urban disadvantaged areas, which are predominantly black. 17 phatudi “you should give a child love and take them warm-heartedly from their parent” care is at the centre of the philosophy underpinning practice in the township preschools. this article argues that despite caring being an integral component of education in preschools, it has however been given prominence as an important attribute in the development of children. practising caring is being noted as the way in which teachers feel acknowledged as individuals and is an outlet for making up for the lack of appropriate training (penn, 2012). on the other hand, care dispensed at preschools is consistent with the culture and the context in which these preschools are situated. ball (2010) and fleer (2006) are of the opinion that ecd content should be reflective of local knowledges and should not reflect only the dominant discourse. it is within the above context, that this paper is intent on seeking the understanding and implementation of care at two township preschools from the teachers’ perspectives. it interrogates “caring” as one of the features of quality as mentioned by participants. 4. contextualising the act of caring and mothering the act of caring is universal and is said to be instinctive behaviour that is related to feminine values (james, 2010; thompson, 2003). owen and ennis (2005) enumerate different characteristics of caring as an expectation of a caring teacher. a caring teacher can become engrossed in the cared for child. vogt (2002) likens caring as synonymous to parenting and mothering. this kind of caring involves commitment and that nothing else can take precedence over this act. noddings (1984; 1986) further elaborates that this type of caring “evolves from a natural sympathy being innately felt for each other” (owen & ennis, 2005). gilligan (1982), referring to this sense, says that women’s integrity seems to be intertwined with the ethics of care. women tend to enter into relationships by being emotionally connected in a situation (vogt, 2002), thus it is not surprising that mothering and caring for children is regarded as a natural sphere for women (vogt, 2002). the study conducted involved women who displayed traits reminiscent to those of a mother. despite caring being synonymous to mothering, there is a view that the act of caring is closely related to low-paying jobs and to lowly qualified personnel (vogt, 2010; penn, 2012). there is an assumption that policies for care are meant for the marginal groups, i.e. those who “are unable to live up to the autonomous expectations” (barnes, 2011:159). however caring is defined as an act of cognition that affects the emotions (mcnamee et al., 2007). despite the fact that it does not require skill, however it is said to “to imply higher responsibilities than taking care of, thus requiring knowledge, skills and experience of carrying out the act of caring” (mcnamee et al., 2007:279). davis and degotardi (2015) add that it involves “value judgements about something that is deemed worthy of care” (, 2015: 1739). we tend to value and pay more for intellectual and highly skilled kinds of jobs that are often associated with capitalism, to the exclusion of considering the powerful impact of caring, ethics and morality associated with ubuntu and more socially democratic orientations. this view tends to undermine the morality associated with care and societal values as it gives an impression that those who care occupy the lower ranks in their society, thus disregarding the importance of caring as a moral construct of ethical importance. this view is important in the study to understand the meaning accorded care by those involved in the act of caring. 18 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) 5. care and its place in ecd policies the south african ecd landscape has adopted the concept of care in its definition of this phase and in the name early childhood care and education. this is a move away from the previously held term of early childhood development – thus giving prominence to care, which was previously taken for granted as given and embedded within the phase. highlighting care in the policy documents and reports has implications in how this phase should be understood and interpreted. the interpretation of care and its practice by ecd practitioners is the basis and core of this paper in view of the vast and different characteristics associated with the act. the national integrated early childhood development policy on caring includes health and nutrition, thus adding material notion to the term (dsd, 2015). care that is relational, intuitive and is based on ethics (noddings, 1986) includes physical care. adding materialism to the concept, adds to the complexity of the ability to care for someone. this, however, is not part of this article. since care is included in ecd policies, it is expected that it should be given prominence in ecd centres. hedge and mackenzie (2012:193) say that even if care as a concept is used alongside education “it is often questioned as a good thing, and what good care is about, is left to the schools to untangle”. the interpretation of care and its enactment is at the centre of this paper. 6. theoretical framework super and harkness (2002) use the concept of a “developmental niche” to explain infant development as structurally patterned. they describe care as “based on cultural beliefs and practices of caregivers”. the developmental niche framework is helpful in that “it facilitates parsing the child’s daily environments into what we believe are operational subsystems” (super & harkness, 2002:271). these are the physical, social and historical influences, as well as customs and practices of childcare and rearing, which shape how children are socialised and cared for by the community. they are an integral part of the environment the child grows up in. the act of caring and its practices within the child’s community and caring practices are therefore defined by the culture and traditions of the group (super & harkness, 2002; harkness & super, 1994). fleer (2003) makes an assertion that children’s learning cannot be understood by using the single lens of the dominant discourse. learning and development of children are embedded “within real community contexts featuring real situations” (fleer 2003:67). she discounts the manner in which preschool classrooms are structured for “effective learning”. observing children and classrooms privileged the individual and never took into account “what adults were saying or doing” (fleer, 2003:68). children learn by observing adults or modelling what adults do. caring illustrated in the article is consistent with how the teacher dispensing the caring was raised. the interplay between caring and its embeddedness within the environment, i.e. the socio-cultural context, makes an important assumption that teaching and learning content or interactions in preschools have to be based on and aligned to such contexts. in the words of the teacher, children should imbibe the community practices from which they come from. caring, therefore, cannot be understood outside the socio-cultural contexts of the school, but it is shaped and practised within these precincts. singer (1998) says that psychologists have to be aware that the pedagogies of childhood cannot be reduced to scientific inquiry alone, but are framed within the cultural values, which are locally and contextually bound. 19 phatudi “you should give a child love and take them warm-heartedly from their parent” john whiting’s “model for psycho-cultural research” (whiting 1977:155 quoted in super & harkness, 2002:547) draws parallels between “features in the history and in the natural environments” and “the manner in which children in that society are cared for”, as being distinguishable from others. thus, there is a correlation between “natural environments” and “cultural practices”. whiting furthermore states that people, who are part of the child’s environment, determine the type of interactions and relationships they have with children. the child as part of the cultural context, in which s/he develops, is likely to be cared for according to the dictates of the cultural group s/he comes from (edwards, 2007). super and harkness (2002) maintain that the synergy between the physical and social settings of the child, the customs and practices of the context the child grows up in, and the beliefs of the caretakers, shape the child’s opportunities for learning. therefore, the familiarity of all these factors will increase the child’s opportunities for learning. 7. methodology this article is based on a larger qualitative study conducted on teachers’ perspectives on quality. the original study included six teacher participants from suburban and township preschool contexts of south africa. their qualifications ranged from a university degree to a diploma in ecd. these were obtained through universities or ngos. the teachers’ teaching experience ranged from three years to ten years. the highest qualification of teachers in township preschools was a diploma and the lowest was a certificate in ecd offered by ngos. one of the teachers with a certificate qualification was registered for an accredited qualification with one of the higher education private providers. township contexts are still largely underdeveloped and disadvantaged whilst suburban contexts have become multiracial, multicultural and advantaged. the study was conducted using photovoice (wang, 1999). the permission was obtained from the participants involved in the study. photovoice was first used with marginalised communities to represent their community’s strengths and concerns from their own perspective through photographs (wang, 1999). photovoice helps in interrogating “contextually based meanings from an insider perspective as a means to generate new insights into our constructed realities and cultures” (sutton-brown, 2014: 170). it is through the meanings that participants give to photographs by narrating their everyday experiences that they visually present the realities to research. photovoice can help in reducing the culture differences between participants and researchers, as the lived experiences are clearly narrated from the participants’ perspective without intrusion into the space of the participant. photovoice allowed teachers to reflect on their practices and identify what they regarded as quality. at the beginning of the study, participants were given cameras to take photos of what they regarded as quality in their interactions and relationships with children. quality could refer to accessing resources, following the daily routine, integrating research into the programme, and simply caring for children. one theme that emerged from the study was the caring role that teachers in the peri-urban schools highlighted as quality. this paper interrogates the theme of caring by two peri-urban teachers. it uses a sociocultural lens to understand the particular nature of “care” within the township context and its relationship to the ethics of care (noddings, 1986) and feminist perspectives. the study was interested in the teachers’ narratives – thus pictures taken in class were relevant and suitable as teachers could engage and relate them to incidences in class that were construed as representing care. 20 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) observation was employed as an additional data collection tool to confirm or disconfirm what teachers proclaimed when discussing pictures taken in their classes. participants were asked to take at least 30 photos of what they believed to be quality within a one-month period. the researchers collected the cameras, processed the photos and took them back to the schools. quality is viewed as constructed, subjective and based on values and beliefs (dahlberg, moss & pence, 1999). from this perspective, determinations of quality reflect contextually relevant judgements; thus, no one definition of quality can be applicable to all contexts. the photos were brought back to the centres and participants were asked to select at least 10 that defined quality better than the others. the findings discussed here are based on the views of two participants from the township areas, who highlighted caring as crucial to quality. at the time of the research, mary, one of the teachers, had a post-school diploma qualification in ecd. she was registered for a degree in ecd with a distance-learning university in south africa. the other teacher, johanna, was registered for a post-school diploma. she had an intermittent position at the centre. at the time of the study, she had only been in her position as a teacher for three months, but had taught at the centre for a much longer period before being re-employed again. the teachers, through the discussion of the photos, showed how they interacted with children and families. a tape recorder was used to capture the essence of the discussions. thematic analysis was used to categorise, express and report the obtained data (creswell, 2007). as the pictures and explanation of pictures continued, the researcher deliberately paid attention to emerging themes from the research respondents’ transcripts and pictures. the researcher looked out for similarities between the themes that emerged as the transcripts were read over and over and pictures were scrutinised as to the extent to which they portrayed quality. amongst the themes that emerged was the one that highlighted care as important in defining quality. this article is based upon this theme. 8. findings and discussion the photographs taken by the teachers in this research study offer a snapshot of the activities and interactions that occurred between the teachers and children inside and outside the class. they represent the arrivals in the morning and departures at the end of the day. they were also taken during class activities, meal times and during napping time. in some of the instances, teachers’ actions highlighted caring as fundamental to interactions with children. caring is seen as the extension of mothering (griffin, 1997 in vogt, 2010). this is a characteristic of caring that was highlighted by the participant teachers in the study. these teachers saw children as unique individuals with particular strengths to harness and nurture. these teachers also saw themselves as extensions of the children’s family. their work with children was meant to link the home and the preschool. caring was uppermost in their dealings with the children and teachers intentionally worked to connect home and centre goals of care and learning for each child. 8.1 an act of caring as a teaching-learning strategy teacher johanna spoke about the strengths of a child as a starting point in her interactions with children. every child, according to her, is unique, and therefore has to be treated as such. in particular, she referred to a boy in her class who was “slow” and never participated in group 21 phatudi “you should give a child love and take them warm-heartedly from their parent” activities. he was almost six years old and had delayed language development. she spoke with affection when she referred to the boy and his character. “my little opelong is as slow as i said” – (the name opelong means the lord is in my heart). when dealing with opelong, she was very considerate of the fact that he was learning more slowly than the other children in her class were. she never expected him to work quickly nor compared him to other children. even when challenging him, the teacher was always conscious of the fact that he was different from other children. she devoted time to interact with him alone and initiated discussions with him far away from other children. she offered sheltered protection for him away from other children. when defining quality in ecd, she said that: …it is represented by knowing a child, to know a child as a whole… i must know how can he develop because they don’t develop the same. her explanation of quality was punctuated by caring and mothering. she did not want anything adverse to happen to the boy. johanna was the least qualified of the two teachers who highlighted and practised caring in their relationship with children. care in ecd policies is always associated with education; however, the form and level at which it is dispensed is a matter of the centre. the care offered by johanna was embedded within cultural values embodied in ubuntu. virtues such as helping one another, doing chores such as tidying according to gender lines were prominent. boys were expected to do masculine duties such as packing chairs, whilst girls had to sweep the classroom. johanna, when referring to the photographs where children were expected to prepare the napping area so that she could see who could do it, said: they know they should tidy after themselves and put things in order. figure 1: boys packing away chairs and girls packing away mattresses responding to the question on why duties were divided according to gender, she said that it is expected in the community they come from that girls sweep the house and boys carry out masculine duties. she was acting according to how she was raised, and was emphatic in that the centre should mirror the community it comes from. according to crespi (2003), these practices are a process of socialisation whereby practices of the community are brought into the classroom. this view of caring, besides showing a sense of parenting and mothering has an inclination of being aligned to the practices of the community in which the child grows up and are defined by the culture and traditions of the group. the “developmental niche” states that the development of children is based and shaped by the cultural beliefs and practices of caregivers (super & harkness, 2002). the development 22 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) of a child in the african context is viewed as a social rather than a biological construct. that is why children are given responsibilities according to the perceived competence and gender rather than age (nsamenang & lamb, 1998). however, teacher johanna’s caring practices are aligned to gendered roles (crespi, 2003) and to traditional social responsibilities, instead of age. since the school is seen as the extension of the home, she took on the role of the “mother” by socialising children into the practices reflected in the communities they come from. according to crespi (2003), gender socialisation is a process that teaches children what it means to be a boy or girl. atekyereza (2001) says that promoting gendered roles in uganda had a negative effect of polarising roles with an adverse effect on their identity and self-esteem. he furthermore says that socialisation is tantamount to being subjected to “pressures – rewarding, punishing, – that push the child towards evoking certain acceptable responses” (atekyereza, 2001:118). gendered roles start in the home, and the schools being the microcosms of the societies they come from, are expected to promote those values held dearly in their communities (atekyereza, 2001; crespi, 2003). mary, another preschool teacher was more upbeat about her caring skills. she described how it is important to welcome children from home. most of the children were brought into the preschools by taxis and it was therefore important to note those who arrived and those who did not. she spoke with pride about her caring and mothering role, which she assumed immediately when the children were brought into the centre. in the picture below, she is receiving a child from its mother so that the child transitions seamlessly into the preschool. she said: to welcome and greet a child while they are still in their parents’ care so that they don’t feel like they are amongst strangers…and that is what i think is quality, to have an understanding about a child and how they are from home. figure 2: teacher mary taking the child from its mother 23 phatudi “you should give a child love and take them warm-heartedly from their parent” her approach of welcoming each child was to ease the transition from home to preschool for the child. in doing this, she was promoting and living the african proverb that says, “it takes a village to raise a child”. it is not just the responsibility of the family alone, but the teacher too accepts the responsibility of looking after the child. mary described the importance of the connection between home and school: you should give a child love and take them warm-heartedly from their parent…they should feel welcomed…it is when they are enjoying what you are teaching, meaning whatever you give them it should be quality and at the end of the day, they should be able to enjoy themselves in the process. if children feel comfortable, that is a sign that quality is being upheld. mary felt that care and developing self-help skills should be integrated into daily routines to promote independence. she regarded activities such as toilet routines important to promote, as it was through them that she could identify children who might be abused at home – something that she alluded to as occurring frequently. from the two respondents, it became clear that both teachers highlighted the importance of a good home-school relationship. they saw their roles as teachers as an extension of the caring received at home, adding to the positive value and quality of the children’s upbringing. 8.2 caring as part of learning content caring was also evident in the teaching of specific skills as part of the curriculum. mary used thematic instruction to weave together the cultural value of respect in their community. she would talk about road signs and colours of the robots (traffic lights), and develop the children’s fine motor coordination through drawing and colouring pictures following the walk. johanna referenced specific skills as her focus. most of her discussion of activities had to do with children’s ability to receive instruction in using crayons and scribbling or drawing − but these were never linked to a theme. this might have been her limited training in ecd. she made up for this by using her intuitive abilities to see each child as a unique individual with particular aptitudes to be nurtured, and she responded to them instinctively as a mother would. intuition underlined her relationship to children. she used her experience as mother to provide for the needs of her children. mary emphasised the importance of guiding children’s behaviour and correcting them when they were playing, especially if the game was dangerous and they could harm themselves. you should supervise them. when they do something wrong they should be told…firstly, you let them know whatever they are doing is wrong then and they would get hurt…when you teach them about safety, it is their safety. i think that is also quality. guiding their behaviour was not only confined to the playgrounds and classroom. both teachers, through modelling the culturally correct manner of greeting adults, made it a point that their children observe this and make it an integral part of their lives. this was acted out on trips taken into the neighbourhood to teach them how to cross the road. the lessons were multi-faceted; teaching safety on the road was combined with the teaching of respect for others they met. these trips were followed by the making of pictures, which were shared with the families, thus completing the home-to-school-to-home cycle of care and learning. care was used for the protection of the children and inculcating skills of independence. children were seen as capable of looking after themselves, i.e. promoting their agency 24 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) that they could be trusted to learn how to take care of themselves. the teachers offered “scaffolding” to children so that for them to function optimally, they need to see caring being modelled by the experienced adults. caring as an attribute in relationships, especially with young children, promotes affective, social and cognitive competences (ranson & urichuk, 2008). this pedagogy is foundational to the context in which the school is situated; and which is responsible for ensuring that its children have a sense of belongingness and respect for their own cultural background that is crucial for the stability and survival of every nation. 9. recommendations and conclusion despite the fact that the act of care is marked by certain characteristics that are universal, it can also take their cue from the context in which it is practised. caring, in the preschools that were studied in this research, reflected the cultural practices of the community where the schools were located. as supported by super and harkness (2002) and harkness and super (1994), children’s development is significantly influenced by the socio-cultural background they come from. fleer (2006), in explaining the ideal preschool programme, says that it should reflect and uphold local knowledges more than the dominant discourse − as local knowledges are important in upholding the community and in maintaining stability from one generation to the other. mwaura and marfo (2011), however, posit that it is the confluence between local knowledges and the dominant discourse that has to be considered as content in a programme. teachers mary and johanna ensured that the values of the culture in which the centres were situated, were transmitted to children through the learning content. caring, even if it is seen as custodial, has the importance of developing affective tendencies responsible for bringing about stability; thus the confidence to learn (super & harkness, 2002). noddings (1986) says that caring relationships are reciprocal. the caregiver is rewarded by seeing that the caring act leads to development and growth in the ones being cared for. in the example of opelong, teacher johanna mentioned that the boy is no longer shy to come to her if he is unable to carry out a task − something that he would never have done in the early days. building confidence in the boy has the potential of yielding positive results. bass (2012) in his study, found that students who were better cared for said that they felt ready to venture and experiment with knowledge they would never have thought of if they had not enjoyed the results of caring. the data of this study revealed that the act of “caring” should never be viewed in a way that excludes the context in which it is practised. however, care should be exercised not to perpetuate traditional practices that are exclusionary in nature and elevate one gender over the other (nsamenang & lamb, 1998; okwany, 2016). the teacher has to be cautious that in promoting and socialising children, she does not fall into the trap of over emphasising practices that are demeaning of other genders. in a study conducted on teachers’ views on caring, it was concluded that in practising “caring” it is not about protecting children, nor is it about feeling good about the children under their care, it is about “teachers’ thoughtful educational and moral understanding and decision making” (tirri & husu, 2002:67). care that is inclusive of education should underpin childhood professionalisation and pedagogy (davis & degotardi, 2015). teachers therefore should be conscious of the need not to unnecessarily accentuate gender differences, so that later in life girls are afforded the same political and economic equality as men (unesco, 2003). schools are the places where some of the dearly held 25 phatudi “you should give a child love and take them warm-heartedly from their parent” beliefs and traditions of the community can be challenged by not accentuating differences. accentuation of these differences is congruent with results of studies that have found that girls leave school early to get married or are pushed out of school because they cannot cope with schoolwork due to the demands made upon them at their homes (atekyereza, 2001). this study gave new insights into the perceptions of preschool teachers regarding the essence and situatedness of caring. it also highlighted the fact that “caring” and “carers” should not be under-valued when compared to the esteemed tasks of more “learned” professionals, as these acts have the potential to have positive spinoffs in the lives of children. programmes for teacher education should consider including care in their curriculum. a caring teacher is able to instil a sense of worth in children; this enhances their academic performance. reference list artmore, e. 2014. early childhood development in south africa: progress since the end of 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the social realities of working in the context of rural education to offer an expanded social and collective approach to teacher identity. through his story, as told and experienced by him, we foreground dominant discourses at work in a rural context, and show how specific discourses define hilton’s life and work as a teacher in specific ways. despite the challenges and adversities he faces, we show how as a teacher he chooses to negotiate through resistance and complicity the discourses that dominate rural schooling and its culture, learners, teachers and communities. the article concludes that a teacher’s capacity to disrupt and challenge stereotypical meanings of rural schooling involves ongoing dialogue with the self, with teachers, with learners and the wider community. keywords: teacher identity, rural, dialogue, schooling, community, disrupt, resist, discourse. introducing the enquiry my dreams of going to college and becoming a teacher had to fade away and the embarrassment of sitting at home for a year began to seep in. i must admit that the combination of not being at school and not even being allowed to play outside or push a wheelbarrow in the sun depressed me. then one day i could not take it any longer. i tied a rope around a piece of wood, placed my head through the rope and began to swing. just then my mother walked in… (interview with hilton, may 2008, marianhill monastery) this excerpt offers us a glimpse of the abyss that hilton found himself in. it sums up his pain and hopelessness as a young man growing up in a rural community. it also reminds us of his dream of wanting to study to become a teacher and live a life with some sense of normality and purpose. as a boy growing up in a rural environment, and having to live with the condition called albinism1, life was never easy: hilton found life trying. moreover, realising his dream of becoming a qualified teacher from this marginalised space was a process requiring marked redefinition. he had to rethink his identity as an albino and make the transition from “silent outsider to an authoritative insider” (richie & wilson, 2003: 76). hilton’s story2 is one of eight teachers who participated in the larger research project funded by the national research foundation (nrf), and conducted in schools in the vulindlela district in kwazulunatal. all ethical clearance issues were followed through with great care to maintain the confidentiality and anonymity of the teacher participants and the schools in which they worked. consent and permission to report the findings was obtained within the ambit of the larger every voice counts project (evc). the reconstructed story of hilton (who resided in the district), is represented here in the first person. the evc project identified five possible entry points using participatory methodologies as a cross-cutting theme for testing out the ways in which each group (community members, teachers, and learners) could regard another as a resource in the community when working with young people. reflexive methodologies in studying teachers’ lives, was chosen as one entry point by the authors, daisy pillay and sheereen 44 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 saloojee.3 within this research node, the researcher-authors used visual participatory and reflexive methodologies, showing how this could contribute to teachers acquiring a greater awareness of their own lived experiences, their strengths and of themselves as assets. context of the study critchley (2001) states that teachers define themselves according to the contexts in which they work: they see themselves as people who are willing to negotiate skills; front institutional barriers in socially appropriate ways; turn constraints into opportunity for change; reflect on the teaching process and environment, and engage in lifelong learning to the best of the individual’s capacity. according to critchley, teachers define themselves in relation to the context in which they teach. how the teacher negotiates the personal-professional self within the context of rurality and schooling is what we wish to explore, describe and explain through the lived experiences of an exemplary teacher, hilton. we start from the premise that a rural school is contextually different from the urban school in its geographical features, its practices, ethos, and economic status. while we argue that these issues and challenges are not unique to rural schooling and teachers who teach in rural schools, we hope to disrupt and challenge the stereotypical understandings adopted about it, by listening to real stories of real teachers working in rural schools. the first section examines some of the critical research that currently frames rural education and development in south africa. the second section maps out the theoretical stance that the authors adopted to frame the argument. we then consider the participatory methodologies that could contribute to teachers acquiring a greater awareness of their own lived experiences, their strengths and possibilities in the community working with young people. finally, we consider how a thorough and contextualized investigation of one teacher’s lived experience can inform teachers generally who work in schools in rural environments. rural education and schooling in south africa in the pre-apartheid era, rural settings were “reservoirs of unskilled labour and the dumping ground of the unemployed” (hsrc-epc, 2005: 136) and this remains unchanged, as schools in rural settings produce students who have limited chances of obtaining a meaningful education and life after matriculation, because of a combination of poverty and poor quality education that includes lack of encouragement from teachers (hsrc-epc, 2005). the policy of unequal education resulted in serious neglect of rural schools (hsrc-epc, 2005), the evident effects on learners, teachers and the community. many rural schooling communities are characterised by a deep rift between teachers and the guardians of the children in their care (hsrc-epc, 2005). according to the emerging voices report (hsrc-epc, 2005), some communities are proud of their school and teachers who work there, while others have serious concerns. criticisms of teachers encompass a complex set of issues related to teacher absenteeism, their lack of qualifications, their level of subject knowledge, commitment and sense of vocation. according to national studies, many teachers in rural schools have their roots amongst the rural poor; with a matriculation certificate as their highest qualification (hsrc-epc, 2005), resulting in most teachers being under-qualified to work in schools. this contributes to the poor teaching and learning opportunities available to promote quality education there. one parent in emerging voices report (hsrc-epc, 2005: 119) pointed out: “there is a pressing need for a sound relationship between the teachers, learners, and parents. however, the reality is that many parents do not set foot on the school premises and many teachers who travel to work in schools there do not set foot in the rural communities”. further, instances of ‘teacher bashing’ permeate a negative image of the profession in rural schools (hsrc-epc, 2005). while the view that the teacher is the most important factor in the learning and teaching encounters with learners is echoed internationally (cochran-smith, 2004), the need for teachers to be seen as key agents of change in improving the quality of the education in schools in rural settings, as opposed to service ‘workers’, is compelling (department of education, 2005). in this paper, we recount the story of hilton and his desire and commitment to go beyond just providing a service. this story reveals the complicated 45pillay & saloojee — revisiting rurality and schooling procedures he has to endure to make sense of his life, offering hope for transforming definitions of schooling in rural contexts and for transforming the negative perceptions of teachers who work there. theoretical framework there are alternate choices to understanding the dominant, totalising discourse for what it means to be a teacher in a rural environment. the alternate choices we argue for, offer a less fixed positioning of teacher identity and rurality. existing research and anecdotal evidence suggest that there are significant challenges faced by teachers in rural areas, and that teachers respond in very different ways to these challenges (de lange, mitchell, moletsane, balfour, wedekind, pillay & buthelezi, 2010: 10). the theoretical lens, through which teacher identity is sociologically explored and interpreted, is offered here. we draw on two theorists, foucault (1980) and his perspective on how the self works on itself and what he calls ‘technologies of the self’, and judith butler (2004) and her theory of identity as performative. these perspectives assist us to understand the identities of teachers who work in schools in rural settings – specifically to explain what kind of teacher identity is achieved as part of the social and collective endeavour (butler, 2004). from this theoretical stance we want to speak to the idea of rurality conceptualized as dynamic (balfour, mitchell & moletsane, 2008), or as a set of preferences that have value independent of urban influences. it makes available an understanding that does not homogenize ‘rural’ space but rather, opens up a multiplicity of variations (odora-hoppers, 2004) in and through which new categories of knowledge are produced that make new meanings and change possible for schooling in rural settings. this can be seen through the investments teachers may make in various subject positions they adopt in their roles as teachers in a rural school. foucault in his work links the three concepts of power, knowledge and selfhood, and argues that one of the ways in which power works is through producing ‘truths’ about the world not as a prohibitive and denying force but through productive ways of being, forms of pleasure and so on (1980). according to foucault (1980: 119), “…power traverses and produces things, forms knowledge, produces discourses.” foucault argues that power is not a possession nor is it reducible to physiological capacities or labour. for foucault (1980: 98), power is not the property of an individual, nor can it be seized or acquired. power is dynamic and unstable. a state of domination exists, for example, when a teacher is subject to the unnecessary authority of the school manager. thus, what is important is to analyse these relations of power through the range of discourses and practices teachers embody, constraining and enabling, in order to learn what is possible. the idea that power is not possessed but exercised in ways that open up spaces for resistance and agency in the interplay of shifting and mobile relations, points to fresh possibilities through which teachers like hilton can denaturalise themselves and embrace change as teachers working in a rural school. “power makes visible teachers’ identities as multiple and fluid” (foucault, 1978: 93) and produces knowledges by which people can be known and understood (lawler, 2008: 57). strathern (1996) emphasises this perspective by arguing that identity is produced through knowledge, and ‘what we are’ is ‘what we want ourselves to be’, which is aligned to foucault’s description that ‘we are addressed’, and ‘address ourselves as certain kinds of person’ and through this process, we become that person. knowledge in this instance might be termed ways of knowing or in foucauldian terms, discourses. the kinds of knowledge produced within discourse are about what kinds of persons we are, and are bound up with our sense of self. there is always struggle for new meaning, and the fact that discourses change across time and place, makes change possible in what kind of teacher-self one wants to be. in this paper, this theoretical stance is necessary to explore the range of discourses hilton adopts in his struggles for new ways of knowing what/who he is and the world in which he lives and works. in addition, we find the perspectives of feminist philosopher, judith butler, relevant here as well. her perspectives seek to destabilise the notion of a coherent, unified, stable identity (butler, 1992). like foucault, butler emphasises the relation between the individual and the social as a primary concern in the struggle for new meanings of being a teacher, and what she calls “improvisation within the scene of 46 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 constraint”. lawler (citing butler and goffman, 2008: 104) explains that in resisting a normative claim of a core authentic identity, he (lawler, 2008) highlights “identity as always something that is done: it is achieved, rather than innate…identity is not achieved in isolation; it is part of a social and collective endeavour, not an individual odyssey”. teacher identity as performative can be understood through the enacted daily practices (butler, 1993), by the individual teacher in relation to the social and collective endeavour (lawler, 2008) of the wider community of teachers and within a specific normative framing of rural schooling. these fleeting multiplicities of performances (sparkes, 1994) we map out in hilton’s story to make available the complex ways in which the past and its remembrance invade and pervade the present, to produce different ways of knowing in the performance of being a teacher in a rural school. methodology of the eight teachers who participated in the larger research project (nrf) conducted in the vulindlela district, the reconstructed story of hilton (who resided in this district), is represented in this paper in the first person genre. the reason for selecting hilton’s story as a residing teacher is important for understanding the differential impact this had on his life, behaviours and dispositions, and what was possible for him in a school located in a rural setting. the school is located in the vulindlela district, about 150 kilometres west of durban. close to 66% of pregnant women in this district are hiv-positive, with 25% of them being between the ages of 15 and 24 (de lange, bhana, mitchell, moletsane, balfour, wedekind & pillay, 2006). the school management teams collectively, or in some instances the principal or teacher as an individual, draw on the assets available in the community, for example, the existing well-resourced mafakatini clinic and the learning together project, in which the school participated. in this study, the life history approach offers a greater sense of process, gives a more ambiguous, complex and chaotic view of reality and a deeper understanding of the complex relations between ideology and culture, self and society (munro, 1993). through life history interviews, complemented by visual collages and critical conversations, memory work yielded rich and interesting data. inquiry through the collage increased access to the teacher’s voice and reflexivity in the research process and expanded the possibilities of multiple and diverse realities and understandings (butler-kisber, 2008: 268). as part of the process of self-narration, this method enabled the teachers to express, enhance, share and analyse their knowledge of life and their circumstances (mayoux, 2008), and to remember beyond words the issues that they confront daily, and those that need to be addressed in working with vulnerable children and young people (chambers, 1994; de lange, mitchell, moletsane, stuart, taylor, buthelezi & mazibuko, 2003). in the act of constructing and reconstructing ‘a life’ through story, the focus is on central moments, critical incidents and practices that revolve around the confusions and contradictions individuals face at different times in their lives and how they relive, reclaim and construct chosen identities through the telling. we use hilton’s story firstly to listen and look out for the disruptions or resistance to the norms of rural life in hilton’s daily practices (connelly & clandinin, 1990). these practices enacted at different times in a teacher’s lived life assist in understanding the nature of hilton’s days in the ‘world’ and as a teacher. secondly, we try to understand how the individual self is constituted in relation to the social world, and as butler (1993) argues that there is no identity that precedes the social. in the description of the formation of teachers’ identities, we try to critically account for the matrix of social relations that authorises how one wants to be known and understood, for example, hilton’s version of being african and albino. thirdly, we elaborate on the story’s pragmatic dimension by offering insight into hilton’s selfconstituted teacher persona through practice in/out of the school, bringing into effect his teacher position and naming of himself as african and albino. in this layer of meaning, we offer an understanding of a teacher’s ‘freedom’, his enacted practices and the resultant effects. 47pillay & saloojee — revisiting rurality and schooling analysis of hilton’s story being an albino – from invisible outsider to visible insider hilton is in his mid-forties, married and a father of six children. he was born and raised in a rural area. at birth, he was diagnosed with albinism, a pigmentation disease causing whiteness of the skin and affecting his life as a black child growing up in a black rural community, in powerful and significant ways. while particular narrative codes defined him, he narrated them in unique ways to set himself ‘free’. ironically, the choice to die was one such moment. the challenges of being albino and male particular practices within the rural community in which he grew up and lived, coupled with his experiences as a learner attending school in the same community, created certain meanings for hilton. they highlighted how he made sense of his life and the world as a male child. feeling like an outsider and a ‘stranger’ in this rural community became a struggle for him. he was open to different kinds of abuse and injury, physical and emotional: the community believed that i was ‘cursed’ or ‘bewitched’, and the children thought that if they ever touched me they would get these ‘white things’ on their hands. i can still remember those lonely nights when my family would get invited for meals and the neighbours’ children would not dare to sit next to me. “let this creature eat alone”, they whispered. at primary school, my classmates would sometimes beat me up and lock me up in the cupboard until my siblings and teachers would come to my rescue. being someone and feeling human but hilton is able to rework his meanings about some individuals that he met daily: his teachers. his relationship with teachers was one of care, support, love and understanding (witherell & noddings, 1991; nieto, 2003; gilligan, 1982). the practices enacted by his teachers gave form to particular meanings and practices: my teachers were my guardian angels. they would make me sit in the front of the class so i would be able to see the writing on the chalkboard more clearly. i remembered so clearly that my teachers showed a deep sense of care and commitment towards the disadvantaged learners in our community. this made a deep impression on me very early in my life. in those days, teaching earned you a lot of respect from the parents and the learners. i wanted to serve my community and, hopefully, become a teacher like them, one day. in the above excerpt, hilton shares with us examples of where his reserve of hope originates. it was at school that he recognises himself as being treated like a human being, with respect. the teachers’ sense of care and respect offered hilton hope to look beyond the situation as it seemed to be, and the possibility of gaining entry into a community of teachers. the teachers’ commitment to learners is a significant and critical moment in hilton’s life. being a teacher and teaching makes power hold good, it induces pleasure and inclusion, forms new knowledge and produces a different discourse and life for learners in rural schools (foucault, 1980: 119). in the school, being an albino learner was not something to be afraid of, but rather a ‘self’ to be worked on. through particular relationships, hilton’s power as an albino is extended not in a forbidding and denying force, but in a productive way involving new ways for him to be known and understood (lawler, 2008). the contextual realities of rurality combined with the institutional culture of rural schooling experienced as a boy, a learner and a son, are narrated by hilton in particular ways. interestingly, we recognise hilton’s turning point in his story and in his life when he chooses to become a teacher. within the broader cultural community that perpetuates particular preferences for what it means to be human, male and community member, hilton is able to ‘slip through’ the fractures of identity to a space outside of these oppressive and traditional relationships. through particular social formations within the school, he 48 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 is able to redefine himself as one with power and knowledge to sustain himself and cultivate new meanings of the world and the kind of person he wants to be. becoming a qualified teacher, hilton acknowledges, will create a different category and meaning for him as an african albino working in a rural community that “discarded” him. on being a teacher in this section we make sense of foucault and his perspective on how the self works on itself, and what he calls ‘technologies of the self’. we explore the range of discourses hilton takes up in his struggles for new meanings and understandings by which he can be known and understood as an african, male, albino teacher. against great odds, hilton persevered to lead a ‘normal’ life as an african male and as a student wanting to become a teacher. in reflecting on his university education at the university of durbanwestville, he draws on memories of the experiences of ‘city’ life that came with it and the challenges and opportunities that he faced as a man from a rural community. through these multiple positions and places we learn about him, and his understanding of rurality and the complexities of rural schooling: the area that i once lived in, had now fallen into the grips of despair. the sight of poor children suffering without food; of girls and women being raped by their own family members; of children hanging around corners and not attending school during school times; and of parents not being interested in their children and in themselves all this was too unbearable. the collage composition below offers a visual representation of hilton’s version of rurality and schooling: figure 1: hilton’s collage of hope and despair for teachers in black rural communities (hilton, 4 september, 2007, langelihle high school) 49pillay & saloojee — revisiting rurality and schooling hilton’s collage is a combination of image fragments of words and images that are chosen and placed strategically to communicate a sense of anguish, satisfaction, frustration and pride of life in a rural community. through these contradictory images of teachers, happy and sad; learners young and old, and the people of the community, dejected and waiting, we gain access to his experienced life and work there. hilton’s expression of his life as a teacher transcends the boundaries of the formal school. the challenges that he faces daily as a teacher touch on death, financial difficulties, and social ills like alcoholism and drugs. divided into four dimensions, each dimension offers a metaphor of good/bad. worth noting is the bottom half of the format that is dominated by more positive imaging of good health, happiness and success. though small in scale, this stark fragment of symbol and word offers a powerful contradiction to the happy scene that jars the readers’ senses. as a metaphorical product of his conscious and unconscious (burns, 2003), hilton makes available the contradictions and challenges of rurality and schooling and the position he inhabits as teacher through these constraints. whether is it about cultivating good eating habits and getting rid of the bad habits like smoking and drinking, the words, “yes, help now”, is his cry for help out of a dislocating, depressing situation. the reader/viewer is left disturbed and uneasy by the words, “are you an attention seeker?” whatever the implication, we draw on these provocative signs and symbols to get glimpses of hilton’s understanding of the ‘rural’ external world and his personal feelings and thoughts about this life. doing teacher: moving into teaching as a qualified and committed teacher unlike many teachers in rural schools who have their roots amongst the rural poor and are often unqualified (hsrc-epc, 2005), hilton is in a somewhat different position. he makes particular investments in/through a range of discourses and practices as a qualified teacher. the range of knowledges that he accumulates and negotiates from his life in the city and the rural community authorises him with power to inhabit the teacher position in unique and personally meaningful ways. we show in the next section the dominant discourses constituting schooling in the rural community and how hilton organises and makes sense of this world through particular social relations available to him. this is aligned to the foucaldian precept that we are addressed, and address ourselves as a certain kind of teacher (lawler, 2008). enacted relations within the school hilton’s beliefs about being a teacher emerge within the context of new and caring relationships with the teachers with whom he was working. in speaking about his relationships with the teachers, hilton says: whilst some teachers are genuinely helpful and supportive, others just discourage you and made you feel that as a young teacher you are inexperienced especially when working under the mentorship of an older teacher. i was fortunate to be living in the same area as the school. for some reason, both parents and learners trusted and respected the local teachers far more than the teachers who travelled from other areas to the school. drawing on his membership in the rural community as a critical resource is important for hilton as it enables him to re-visit his story of being a novice teacher in this community. it means that he can engage with his responsibility differently from teachers who are not residents there and who often have to leave because poor relationships make being a teacher ‘unbearable’. my colleagues who travelled distances to school were excellent teachers. they just didn’t get the acknowledgment from management and many of them left when parents and learners made it unbearable for them to stay. we understand from the above excerpt some of the challenges teachers face when they commute to schools and how teachers and managers respond in very different ways to these challenges (delange et al., 2010: 10), sometimes to the detriment of education. while hilton’s work is challenging, he benefits from the support of the school management and the learners in personally meaningful ways. as a committed teacher, he cultivates new ideas to better educational opportunities for young learners in rural settings. however, the situation in rural schools (including the working conditions) is not encouraging: 50 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 we don’t have the many resources that other schools have, our student numbers are very high and our classes are overcrowded. but, despite these challenges, i come to school daily to teach, to make a difference in the learners’ lives, and not to compare ourselves to township and city schools. this school is doing an exceptional job. the role that hilton as a teacher is expected to assume, is extremely burdensome (hsrc-epc, 2005). he acknowledges that little of his own educational experience and teacher training in the city have prepared him for these roles and expectations and that the two experiences speak to each other very little. but his knowledge of both capacitates him with the experience to know the difference and to acknowledge the rural community for its own complexities, uniqueness and preferences. enacted relations within the self we explore in this section how hilton is able to compose his own personal narrative of care and commitment constituted through social and collective endeavours within the teacher community. within the contextual constraints and adversities of rural life, hilton’s construction of himself as a desirable and committed teacher creates moments of hope or what butler (2004: 2) calls the “improvisation within the scene of constraint”: the call to serve my school is in the same area where i live and the children come from homes where many parents are unemployed. so, they often come without having breakfast or bringing lunch. many of their parents are also sick. there is a lot of hiv/aids in my area. i still want to teach in these schools to improve them and not just hide in them…yah! i’m happy. i enjoy being at a rural school. full of confidence and commitment, hilton is ready to put into practice his plans, desires and intentions that were important in his own development as a learner to love, care, and respect the learners. hilton is able to theorise from his experiences of being on the periphery of society as an albino, and to use the pain of his exclusion as a starting place for action and change (richie and wilson, 2000). opposed to the notion of being a service ‘worker’ (department of education, 2005: 18), in such adversarial conditions, hilton is committed to maintain a sense of purpose and enjoyment, while understanding and acknowledging with sobering awareness (nieto, 2003), the limits that prevail in such rural environments. in opposition to a culture of defeatism, the assertion that “[he] still wants to teach in these schools and not just hide in them” shows his commitment to this environment (hsrc-epc, 2005). the call to lead his sense of purpose and a belief in the promise of education in rural environments, his enthusiasm for teaching and the passion for social justice (nieto, 2003), opens up better opportunities for hilton to exercise his vision: so, after eight long years, i am proud of the fact that i have just been promoted to the position of head of department. i see this achievement as something great for myself and for others. we are all propelled towards a bigger dream. the positive climate that he instils spills over to other teachers as well. his activism and passion infiltrates the wider institutional space, inspiring and propelling others to imagine a different life for themselves and their school. working collectively, with parents and the larger business community, they find creative ways to work together, reason together and focus on what really matters (witherell & noddings, 1991; richie & wilson, 2000). the call to connect jessop (1997) argues that rural education in south africa is considered the ‘cinderella of the system’, but hilton was determined to exercise his power as a leader to “tell the people that there are schools out here 51pillay & saloojee — revisiting rurality and schooling in the rural areas that are doing well.” generating funds from the businesses in rural communities offers another version of hope for enhancing conditions in hilton’s school: i began writing letters to our businesses in the area and to some ‘high’ people i know in the department. it was amazing and encouraging to see them responding so favourably. while demotivation and frustration have a place in the lives of committed and passionate teachers, we see how hope and anger are really two sides of the same coin (nieto, 2003: 63): many learners smoke drugs, drink liquor on the school premises and disrupt my lessons. many female students fall pregnant and are forced to drop out … then there are those learners who steal the school’s electricity cables. do they not realise how this impacts negatively on their education? hilton expresses feelings of despair, contributing to what nieto describes as the school imbued with despair (nieto, 2003). but he soon works out what he needs to do to repress that which constrains his utopian vision for rural schooling and his commitment to ethical work and the ideals of democracy: in my view, if we can talk to the learners properly and make them understand that the school is theirs, and that they should own the school as a community, this will make a huge difference. hilton’s performance is a glimpse of how effective agency or social change lies in those times when fortunate conditions do not work (butler, 2004). his attempt to assist students to believe in themselves and take ownership of their lives and their education (christie, 2001) means visiting learners’ homes to meet and talk to the parents, even to the disapproval of the learners: man! you should see the look on the learners’ faces when i surprise them at their homes … they stare at me with such ‘nasty eyes’, as if they were casting an evil spell on me. given how difficult it is to be a teacher, it was interesting to explore what and why hilton continues to commit himself with care and commitment to his life as a teacher. a combination of the transforming sense of self (personal) and the community of teachers working within the dynamic context of rurality, changing and challenging what it means to serve, to lead and to connect as a teacher, becomes a life enhancing experience for all who inhabit what is sometimes construed as an inhabitable and intolerable position. conclusion in this paper we show through hilton’s narrative, that teachers’ lives and rural communities cannot be explained in singular, simplistic and deterministic ways. for hilton, his conviction with regard to education had been honed from long years of struggle and hardship as a learner attending a rural school and provides the site for altering and disrupting the culture of how rural schools work. personal history becomes the root of his endurance (nieto, 2003). while the prevailing social order is built on particular rules of behaviour and performance, it is in the improvisations that hilton continues to exercise moral choice by which he can be known and understood as an african, male, albino teacher. it’s a wonder i’m still alive today. but, i do this because i care for them [learners] and treat them as if they were my own. in valuing care and respect for himself and his life as a teacher, hilton’s embodied knowing and knowledge can be seen as constituted through the daily lived performances enacted in and through different relations inside and outside the school. this understanding opens up 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jegstad & sinnes, 2015). environmental education is therefore integrated in the subjects offered in secondary school. the integration of environmental education in the school subjects has philosophical and instructional strategy implications. of significance is the promotion of sustainable development through environmental chemistry education (eilks, 2015; warner & elsier, 2015). as a way of tackling challenges of unsustainable social, economic and environmental development through esd, the decade of education for sustainable development (desd) 2005-2014 was dr maria tsakeni university of the free state email: tsakenim@ufs.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i1.7 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(1): 81-97 © uv/ufs mailto:tsakenim@ufs.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.7 82 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) coordinated at a global level by the united nations (united nations, 2002; dawe, jucker & martin, 2005). following the above impetus, there are notable efforts in chemistry education to foster esd (burmeister &eilks, 2012; eissen, 2012). one significant way of implementing the environmental dimension of esd has been done through the integration green chemistry principles (burmeister, rauch & eilks, 2012, eilks and rauch, 2012; karpudewan, ismail & roth, 2012). green chemistry is based on the 12 principles as propounded by anastas and warner, 1998. summarised, the principles advocate for the prevention of excessive generation of waste, the reduction of excessive consumption of materials including energy and the prevention of the release of hazardous chemicals into the environment (karpudewan et al., 2012, garner, siol & eilks, 2015; warner & elsier, 2015). instructional strategy implications include the use of local place examples as a springboard to understand global environmental issues. the instructional strategy is at the heart of place-based pedagogy and esd (davis, 2000). given the contribution of chemistry and the chemistry industry to the 21st century environmental challenges, learners should understand and be able to evaluate chemistryrelated processes and products and the manner in which they affect the future (jegstad & sinnes, 2015; mandler, mamlok-naaman, blonder, yayon & hofstein, 2012). science education aims to equip learners with the ability to use science knowledge in everyday life by making informed decisions to improve the quality of life (holbrook, 2009). environmental issues and concerns are an integral part of everyday life. it has become an imperative of environmental education to inculcate in learners environmentally responsible behaviours (schild, 2016; stanisic & maksic, 2014). the inculcation of environmentally has implications on the nature of instructional strategies in the science classrooms. one way to ensure that learners begin to develop skills to care for places is the use of placed-based pedagogies in environmental education (spahiu, korca & lindemann-mathies, 2014). set amidst the global green chemistry and sustainable development initiatives the rural poor in africa rely on the local natural resources such as forests, land and water for sustenance (somorin, 2010). similarly, the livelihoods of populations in zimbabwean rural areas are intricately connected to their forests, land and water for domestic and agricultural activities. historically rural areas in zimbabwe were created as settlement areas for africans during the colonial era. these areas were agro-ecologically unfavourable and the people were deprived of meaningful livelihoods and banished to ever-deepening conditions of poverty (thebe, 2012). the areas are overpopulated as people share the available natural resources with their domestic animals. overpopulation, poor environmental management practices combined with a land tenure system that promotes overgrazing and monoculture are some of the major causes of environmental degradation in the rural areas of zimbabwe (chagumbura et al., 2016). chifamba (2011) suggests that the land use practices have contributed to the hostile changes observed on the hydrological cycle. the hostile changes have in turn resulted in the marked decline in biodiversity, degradation of the soil and water and over exploitation of natural resources (ibid). zimbabwe is situated in sub-saharan africa, which has experienced its fair share of climate change effects in the form of droughts that cripple some of the communities’ efforts to ensure food security and poverty alleviation (frost et al., 2007). embracing the esd initiatives, the teaching and learning of chemistry can be used as a platform and lens for learners in the rural areas to examine some of the environmental degradation phenomena that manifest in their communities. these include water pollution due to the release of phosphates and nitrates into the water sources from agricultural activities. the 83 tsakeni the promotion of sustainable environmental education by the zimbabwe ordinary level ... release of phosphates and nitrates is accentuated by stream bank cultivation (mapira, 2011). the presence of significant amounts of nutrients in water sources is an environmental degradation phenomenon that has provided case studies in science education. the case studies have enabled learners to observe the consequences of this kind of pollution first-hand evidenced by the growth of water hyacinth in the country’s major water bodies such as lake chivero and lake manyame (chawira, dube & gumindoga, 2013). the agricultural activities also result in the release of synthetic herbicides and pesticides into the environment. some of the pesticides such as the organophosphates and organochlorides are known to have mammalian toxicity action and low biodegradability, which make them last in the environment longer (bertolin, avanani & matos, 2013). the farming practices have also resulted in significant soil nutrient depletion and have negative implications of agricultural sustainability. environmental education is often associated with the constructivist theory of learning (kaharan & roehrig, 2015; davis, 2000). based on the works of vygotsky (1978) three basic tenets of social constructivism learning can be highlighted which are learning to learn, teachers as facilitators of learning and learning as a social activity (alt, 2016). accordingly, learners actively participate and collaborate in the construction of knowledge in authentic environments such as real life situations (bonk & cunningham, 1998). outdoor education is emphasised through place-based, experiential learning and fieldwork to encourage learners to participate actively in the construction of knowledge when learning about the environment (makoni, 2013; spahiu et al., 2014). the integration of esd requires the nurturing of skills for the care and protection of the environment such as solution finding and multifaceted problem solving in the real world (warner & elsier, 2015). similarly, there is an increasing integration of green or sustainable chemistry in chemistry education as a way of implementing esd (karpudewan et al., 2012; bertolin et al., 2013; makoni, 2013; jegstad & sinnes, 2015; garner, siol & eilks, 2015). the purpose of the study was to develop and implement placebased pedagogy activities for the integration of esd and green chemistry in the teaching and learning of the environmental chemistry component of the zimbabwe schools examination council (zimsec) physical science 5009 syllabus in rural settings. accordingly, the study answered the following sub-research questions, 1. what are the teachers’ perceptions of place-based pedagogies for the integration of esd and green chemistry in environmental chemistry education? 2. what place-based activities for the integration of esd and green chemistry in environmental chemistry education can be developed in rural school settings? 3. what is the effect of place-based activities on learner-performance, problem-solving and environmental awareness? 2. education for sustainable development through green chemistry practices the impetus on education for sustainable development has prompted chemical societies to develop operational frameworks such the green or sustainable chemistry as formulated by anastas and warner (1998). the frameworks have an ultimate goal of reducing and/or eliminating the generation and release of toxic materials (garner et al., 2015; karpudewan, ismail & mohamed, 2011). burmeister, et al. (2012) mention four ways to integrate green chemistry into chemistry education. firstly, green chemistry can be adopted in the practice of chemistry laboratory work. some traditional experiments are being substituted by green 84 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) chemistry experiments. karpudewan, ismail and mohamed (2009) suggest replacing the traditional experiments in which toxic chemicals are used with more environmentally friendly experiments. for example, the cooling and heating curve of naphthalene can be replaced with the heating and cooling curve of lauric acid. similarly, the traditional rate of reaction experiment with sodium thiosulfate is replaced with the rate of reaction experiment with vitamin c. secondly, sustainability strategies can be added as content in chemistry education (burmeister et al., 2012). for example, topics such as the fractional distillation of petroleum diesel may be replaced with the production of biodiesel (karpudewan et al., 2012). the topic on polymers may be replaced with biodegradable polymers just as the synthesis of polymers may be replaced with the synthesis of biodegradable polymers. thirdly, controversial sustainability issues, which are contained in current societal debates, can be integrated in chemistry education. for example, the ongoing controversy about the use of fossil fuels is one of the issues that were integrated into chemistry education (burmeister et al., 2012). the sustainability focus is to drive initiatives to develop alternative forms of fuels that are environmentally friendly (warner & elsier, 2015). fourthly, chemistry education can be integrated in whole school education for sustainable development projects. the projects focus on the curriculum, the school campus and the surroundings as well as interactions with other stakeholders (warner & elsier, 2015). therefore, classroom activities, teacher-learner interactions, content, class programming, professional development and training among other activities in the school should comply with sustainability requirements. 3. place-based education the advent of education for sustainable development has generated international interest in the pedagogy of the place. it can also be noted that place-based education is widely used in primary school and employed less in secondary school (waite, 2013). place-based education is notably a recommended educational approach for environmental education (ontong & le grage, 2015; goralnik et al., 2012; sloan, 2013; dickinson, 2011; tsevreni & panayotatos, 2011). davis (2000) underscores the need for learners to understand the environmental issues in their communities as a basis to understand the global environmental issues. the approach pushes learning beyond the confines of the classroom walls as the environment and the surroundings become part of the object and medium in the process of environmental education (spahiu et al., 2014). the utilisation of the environment and the surroundings is believed to be crucial for the achievement of important educational outcomes. current trends in science education have witnessed the inclusion of context-based education, the encompassment of socio-scientific problem solving and decision-making in order to enable citizens to function effectively in the real world (holbrook, 2009). additionally, education for sustainable development through science is undergirded by addressing the issues of relevance, practicality and values (ibid). in chemistry education for instance, environmental issues are used as a context in teaching and learning. some of the topical debates include the use of plastics and the environmental impact of chemical synthesis in organic chemistry as socio-scientific issues integrated in the chemistry content (eilks & rauch, 2012). there is increased emphasis on the promotion of pro-environmental attitudes and behaviours. hofstein, eilks and bybee (2011) note that traditionally the school science content and accompanying instructional strategies did not provide learners with a basic facility for everyday life because the issues of relevance, practicality and values were not 85 tsakeni the promotion of sustainable environmental education by the zimbabwe ordinary level ... addressed. literature on esd however reveals that teachers lack the skills and knowledge to implement sustainable education (garner et al., 2015; makoni, 2013; burmeister et al., 2012). environmental education as integrated in science is an avenue to expand science into the real world (warner & elsier, 2015). borg et al. (2012) point out that by using traditional instructional methods based on fact transmission teachers assume that learners will consequently display the right environmental actions. however, the emphasis by literature in the preceding discussions on the importance of developing the moral, ethical and value-based dimensions for the care of the environment and sustainable development prompts teachers to reflect on appropriate instructional strategies. a consciousness of sustainable environmental and conservational ethic that include a care for places is believed to be best developed through place-based approaches to education (ontong & le grage, 2015; dickinson, 2011). in this study, the use of place-based pedagogy to teach environmental chemistry was intended for learners to use the environmental issues in their place as a basis to understand environmental issues in the zimsec physical science 5009 syllabus. one of the syllabus aims is for pupils ‘to develop interest in, and participate in, caring for the local and global environment’ (zimsec, 2013, p. 3) 4. methodology in order to use the pedagogy of the place to implement esd and green chemistry principles in the teaching and learning of the environmental chemistry component of the zimsec physical science 5009 syllabus mixed methods were used through a case study approach. firstly, two form 3 (10th grade) science teachers responded to an open-ended questionnaire. the openended questionnaires generated qualitative data to establish how environmental chemistry was taught in the school and use the teachers’ perceptions to generate ways to implement placebased pedagogies. secondly, a post-test only control group design was used to implement the place-based activities. more qualitative data was collected from lesson observations. in a post-test control group design, there is a random assignment of subjects to the control and experimental groups and a pre-test is not applied (sousa, driessrack & merdes, 2007). since the participating learners were from the integrated science, integrated science and biology or biology and physical science electives the overlapping environmental chemistry issues were used in the study. these were global warming, the use of fossil and renewable fuels, eutrophication, acid rain, soil degradation and toxic chemicals in the environment. it is not unusual for researchers to develop learning programmes when studying the implementation of esd through chemistry education (karpudewan et al., 2009; galgano, loffredo, sato, reichardt & el seoud, 2012; sheehan, schneider & desha, 2012). in line with place-based pedagogy, the experimental group engaged in fieldwork to identify environmental degradation phenomena in the school premises and the surrounding communal land. the objectives of the fieldwork were for the learners to 1) identify environmental degradation phenomena in the school and the surrounding communal land 2) identify and explain the causes of the environmental degradation phenomena 3) suggest ways to rehabilitate the degraded environment and 4) discuss alternative practices by the community that ensure sustainable environmental management. the fieldwork generated the place-based environmental issues that were used to develop place-based activities. in the control group, the teacher used the instructional strategies that the teachers usually use for environmental education that relied on direct transmission of facts. thirdly, data were collected from post-test applied to the experimental and control groups by means of an achievement 86 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) test, an environmental awareness questionnaire and a performance checklist on a problem solving activity. sampling purposive sampling techniques were used to select a school accessible to the researcher in one rural part of murewa district in zimbabwe. convenience sampling techniques were used to select the only two ordinary level science teachers in the school to participate in this study. learners were invited to participate in the study from the different science streams in the school. these streams were, integrated science, integrated science/biology and biology/ physical sciences. science at ordinary level in the school was taught as integrated science, biology and physical sciences (zimsec, 2013, zimsec, 2011a, zimsec, 2011b). from a population of 153 form 3 science learners 105 were willing to participate in the study. these were constituted by all 35 learners from the biology/physical sciences stream, 25 from the integrated science/biology stream and 45 from the integrated science stream. however, stratified random techniques were used to select a sample of 40 learners in the ratio given by the numbers that were willing to participate that is 35:25:45. accordingly, 13 learners came from the biology/physical sciences stream, 10 from the integrated science/biology stream and 17 learners from the integrated science stream. simple random techniques were used to select leaners from each group representative group. the process was repeated in order to assign the 40 learners into the control group and the experimental group. the groups initially had 20 learners each. of these only 19 learners from the experimental group and 18 learners from the control group were available for the post-test. to ensure that the learners voluntarily participated in the study, the teaching and learning activities were informal and conducted as co-curricular activities from 2pm to 4pm, three times a week for 3 weeks. data analysis the qualitative data from the open-ended questionnaires with the two teachers and the observation of the place-based activities were analysed through a mix of directed and inductive content analysis techniques. this was a way of reducing the threats to validity (finfgeldconnett, 2014). the directed approach to content analysis entailed the organisation of the text data as predetermined by the research questions to elicit the perceptions of the teachers and identifying the place-based activities (elo & kyngas, 2008). the inductive content analysis methods were used to identify opportunities to set the findings of the study from both the qualitative and quantitative data in context of findings from the reviewed literature (finfgeldconnett, 2014). a t-test based on independent samples was run on the means of the two groups to determine whether the differences were significant. post-test the post-test applied to the experimental and the control groups consisted of an achievement test, a problem-solving task and an environmental awareness questionnaire. two teachers who taught the experimental and control group jointly set the achievement test to ensure that it covered the content taught to both groups. question items were selected from past examination and test papers. for the problem-solving activity, learners were divided into four groups of 4-5 members. therefore, the control and the experimental groups had four groups each. a performance checklist was used to establish the performance of groups as they engaged in the problem-solving activity. the problem prompted learners to use their 87 tsakeni the promotion of sustainable environmental education by the zimbabwe ordinary level ... understanding of implications of using firewood as a fuel for domestic use and design alternative forms of fuel that are more efficient as outlined in figure 1 below. figure 1: problem-solving activity the environmental awareness questionnaire focused on environmental values, ethics and morals. a bar graph to show the response patterns of learners and pie charts to show the performance of learners were used to analyse the results of the environmental awareness questionnaire. 5. findings of the study the findings are divided in three parts responding directly to the three research questions in this study. firstly, the teachers’ perceptions of place-based pedagogies for the integration of esd and green chemistry in environmental chemistry education are presented. secondly, the place-based activities that were developed applying to school rural school settings are presented. last to be presented are the results of the post-test. teachers’ perceptions on place-based pedagogy the teachers are referred to as teacher 1 and teacher 2. the teachers considered field trips, experiments and ‘research’ (investigations and projects) to be most appropriate for environmental education. however, the teachers conceded that these instructional strategies were not implemented. from what the teachers said it could be deduced that direct transmission methods were commonly used for teaching environmental chemistry. teachers cited a lack of sufficient time and resources as some of the constraining factors when they considered using some of the instructional strategies. teacher 1 wrote the following on the open-ended questionnaire in response to a question on the constraints of using some of the instructional strategies, 88 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) they need a lot of time which most teachers do not have. resources like money for transport for fieldtrips is [are] not available or inadequate. we simply lecture and the syllabus is covered in a short time. research needs time. the teachers emphasised the use of experiential learning for environmental chemistry. on being asked to suggest ways of improving the teaching and learning of environmental chemistry teacher 1 wrote: (i) students should be in touch with reality through active involvement that is field trips to sites affected by soil erosion, eutrophication and help in reclamation of these sites. (ii) choose sites as case studies or models which really illustrate the effects of toxic chemicals and acid rain to the environment (they [the environmental phenomena] usually happen over time/years of which most pupils will only be involved during the periods they are at school). teacher 2 briefly wrote, “touring industries (heavy) and places like chinhoyi caves (erosion) and lake chivero (eutrophication)”. however, on being asked whether the learners were able to relate the environmental concepts to their everyday lives teacher 2 simply wrote “yes” but teacher 1 was more expressive and wrote, yes and no. concepts such as ozone layer depletion, global warming and acid rain are somehow difficult for them to relate to their everyday life because they happen over a long period of time. the changes are very slow although noticeable. soil erosion and eutrophication to a certain extent and effects of toxic chemicals, students can relate to their everyday life activities. the open-ended questionnaire further probed the teachers to give examples of experiential learning activities and the use of projects and investigations as forms of instructional strategies for environmental chemistry education were highlighted. teacher 2 wrote, assigning research to pupils at ‘o’ level on environmental impact locally, use of small groups researching on particular concepts on the environment in this study, the term ‘research’ used by the teachers was interpreted as projects and investigations. teacher 1 gave more examples and wrote, if students are involved in projects like planting trees, filling of gullies, cleaning of rivers and water sources then they [learners] can find reasons why these activities help improve the environment through interaction with reality and the community. the teachers’ responses highlighted soil and water degradation as one of the place-based environmental issue relevant to the community. the place-based activities the fieldwork culminated in soil and water test activities as laboratory experiments. additionally, the learners were engaged in a project to observe the effects of nutrients on the growth of water plants in controlled experiments, an investigation to establish the pesticides and herbicides used by the farmers in the area and their impact on the environment and a class debate on the advantages and disadvantages of using fossil fuels. figure 2 displays details of the activities. 89 tsakeni the promotion of sustainable environmental education by the zimbabwe ordinary level ...   soil and water test activities and debate on fuels 1. soil tests: in this activity learners were tasked to compare the soil ph and the presence of nitrates, phosphates, magnesium, calcium and potassium in the soil. the soil samples were collected from six different places which were a nearby well maintained commercial farm, a maize field in the rural area surrounding the school where monoculture was practised, a gumtree plantation, vegetable gardens, a grazing land and an indigenous forest. the learners evaluated the level of soil degradation due to nutrient depletion and ph levels, if any. the learners were asked to identify the causes of soil degradation in terms nutrient depletion and soil ph and suggest environmentally friendly soil management practices. soil sampling and tests each of the six samples was made by collecting five 10g samples of soil from the different parts of an area that were mixed together to make a representative sample. the soil was air dried and crushed to make it even. a commercial test kit with colour indicators was used to determine the ph of the soil and the presence level of nitrates, phosphates and potassium. additionally, learners determined the acidity and alkalinity of the soil samples by performing the vinegar and the baking soda tests. 2. water tests: in this activity learners were tasked to compare the ph of the water and the presence of nitrates, phosphates, magnesium, calcium and potassium in the water samples using the commercial test kit with colour indicators. five samples of 20ml each were used. these were distilled water, dam water, river water, shallow well water and borehole water. the learners investigated possible nutrient pollution in the water sources and the causes of the pollution if identified. they also investigated ways of cleaning the polluting nutrients. 3. effect of fertilisers on the growth of algae: the learners set up 3 troughs of borehole water into which they introduced algae and placed them outside. in trough1 ammonium nitrate fertiliser was added. in trough 2 potassium nitrate fertiliser was added. no fertiliser was added to trough 3. the learners observed and compared the growth of the algae in the 3 troughs for 3 weeks. 4. investigation to establish the types of herbicides and pesticides used by farmers in the community: learners went out to interview farmers and came up with the names of the pesticides and herbicides and further investigated the impact of the substances on the environment and environmentally friendly alternatives that can be used. 5. debate on on the advantages and disadvantages of the continued use of fossil fuels: learners were divided in 2 groups. one group motivated for the continued use of fossil fuels whilst the other motivated to discontinue the use of fossil fuels. learners were given time to prepare their arguments before the debate was conducted. the activity aimed for the learners to gain a deeper understanding of the impact of fossil fuels on the environment. figure 2: place-based lesson plans post-test results the results of the achievement test, problem-solving task and environmental awareness questionnaire are presented below. table 1: results of the achievement test control group experimental group sample standard deviation, s 23.39 26,08 total numbers, n 18 19 sum: 870 940 mean %(average): 48.33 49.47 median% 45 55 mode% 45 65 90 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) the t-test was run on the results of the achievement test using the excel spreadsheet application as follows: h0: µ1 = µ2 (there is no difference between the two means), ha: µ1 ≠ µ2 (there is a difference between the two means) the (p-value) was 0.89. since the p-value was greater than alpha (α=0.05), we fail to reject h0. this implies that at 5% level of significance, there is sufficient evidence to suggest that the performance of the learners in the experimental group is comparable to the performance of the learners in the control group, in the achievement test. table 2: performance checklist for the problem-solving task category number of groups able to perform a task control group experimental group asking investigative questions 0 2 defining the problem 2 4 debating ideas 3 4 making predictions 2 4 accumulation of background information for designs 2 4 designing experiments 0 3 collecting data 1 4 analysing data 1 4 drawing conclusions 1 3 communicating ideas and findings 2 4 creating artefact 0 4 asking new question 0 1 total number of tasks performed 14 41 the total number of tasks performed by the experimental group of 41 is higher than the mean number of tasks of 14 performed by the control group. the performance checklist suggests that the experimental group was able to perform more problem-solving task than the control group. results of the environmental awareness questionnaire the results of the environmental awareness questionnaire are described below showing learner response patterns including positive and negative awareness distributions. 91 tsakeni the promotion of sustainable environmental education by the zimbabwe ordinary level ... figure   0 10 20 30 40 50 60 strongly agree agree not sure disasgree strongly disagree pr ec en ta ge  fr eq ue nc y  of  s el ec te d  ite m s opinion  experimental group control group figure 3: learners’ response patterns the opinion poll results show how the selection of strongly agree, agree, not sure, disagree and strongly disagree were distributed. what can be noted here is that no learner in the experimental group chose the “not sure” option while the control group had a significant number of learners who chose the “not sure” option. learners in the experimental group were confident enough to take a position compared to the control group as shown by the first and last bars. positive and negative awareness distribution the questionnaire was also used to determine the percentage of positive and negative environmental awareness displayed by the learners. the awareness in the questionnaire was measured by the opinions selected on environmental care values, morals and ethics. the experimental group displayed higher positive awareness of 84% than 61% displayed by the control group. below are pie charts that display the positive and the negative awareness distributions. 92 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) figure 4 a & b: learners’ awareness   84% 16% experimental  group n=19  positive awareness negative awareness 61% 39% control group n=18 positive awareness negative awareness   84% 16% experimental  group n=19  positive awareness negative awareness 61% 39% control group n=18 positive awareness negative awareness 6. discussion the place-based approach intervention was successful in generating real life situations for the teaching and learning the environmental chemistry component of the syllabus. authentic learning is one way in which social constructivism addresses issues of relevance and learner interest in school science (bonk & cunningham, 1998). soil and water degradation, toxic chemicals in the environment and fuels for domestic use were the place-based environmental issues that this case study highlighted for the rural school settings. these environmental issues are closely related to some of the green chemistry principles. the principles include the prevention of excessive generation of waste (water pollution), the reduction of excessive consumption of materials including energy (excessive soil nutrient depletion and firewood 93 tsakeni the promotion of sustainable environmental education by the zimbabwe ordinary level ... for domestic use) and the prevention of the release of hazardous chemicals (fertilisers and pesticides) into the environment (anastas & warner, 1998). chifamba (2011) bemoans the reduction of the quantity and quality of land and water resources in the rural areas of zimbabwe. the issues are comparable to other global environmental issues such as water quality, the need to conserve natural resources and the impact of the chemical industry on the environment (holbrook, 2009; warner & elsier, 2015). places have characteristic environmental issues that can be used as springboards for learners to develop environmental literacy. it is believed that drives for learners to understand local environmental degradation phenomena are a step to understanding global environmental issues (davis, 2000; warner & elsier, 2015). the understanding of local environmental issues through place-based pedagogies presents opportunities for learners to develop caring skills for places (ontong & le grage, 2015; dickinson, 2011; spahiu et al., 2014). the development of caring skills for the environment is a mandate of esd. esd defines sustainable development as one in which young people will be able to act responsibly for themselves and for generations to come in sustainable ways (burmeister et al., 2012). the care of the local and global environment is embodied in the aims of the zimsec physical science 5009 syllabus (zimsec, 2013). the achievement test results for the control group and the experimental groups were comparable despite the use of different pedagogical approaches. transmission of factual and procedural knowledge that heavily rely on the use of textbooks and worksheets are known for ensuring enhanced learner performance in achievement tests (reid & shah, 2007). based on the findings in this study it is concluded that the place-based approaches are also good at preparing learners for achievement tests. karpudewan et al. (2012) demonstrated that when green chemistry and sustainable development principles were integrated in instructional strategies, students’ performance in achievement tests improved. the experimental group however, outperformed the control group in the problem-solving activity and the environmental awareness questionnaire suggesting that place-based approaches better prepare learners for problem-solving. ramnarain (2014) contends that pen and paper tests lack validity for assessing inquiry-based skills. the place-based activities were inquiry-based. this paper recommends that assessment practices should be made to align with experiential approaches such as place-based and inquiry-based pedagogies. the finding that the experimental group demonstrated a higher environmental awareness than the control is supported by the finding made by karpudewan et al. (2009) that green chemistry curriculum positively impact on environmental awareness levels of students. integration of green chemistry is a way to foster esd (burmeister et al., 2012; eissen, 2012; karpudewan et al., 2012; hartwell, 2012). the development of an environmental facility in learners that ensures sustainable development is overly emphasised in the wake of environmental issues in the 21st century (schild, 2016). secondary school science syllabi are increasingly reflecting this century’s environmental issues as part of the content (makoni, 2013). however, teaching for sustainable development remains a farce in most science classrooms for various reasons (borg et al., 2012). the science teachers in this study had knowledge of what research findings recommend as appropriate instructional strategies for environmental education. however, they conceded that they usually aim to transmit the environmental facts to the learners. additionally, abdullah, halim and shahali (2011) point out that current science curriculum treat environmental knowledge shallowly. based on the above-mentioned barriers to effective 94 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) environmental education teachers are charged with planning meaningful learning experiences through approaches such as place-based pedagogy to effectively implement esd. 7. conclusion the paper sought to describe a place-based approach to implement esd and green chemistry in the teaching and learning of the environmental chemistry component of the zimsec physical science 5009 syllabus in rural settings. one fundamental principle of sustainable education is the learning of science concepts in order to gain a facility to understand and participate in socioscientific debates within the communities (holbrook, 2009). the place-based environmental issues identified were around soil and water degradation, the release of toxic chemicals in the environment and types of fuels for domestic use. the issues were in line with some of the green chemistry principles by anastas and warner (1998) concerning prevention of pollution, designing for degradation, use of renewable feedbacks and conservation of materials. learners were able to engage the environmental issues in their community and learn chemistry at the same time. however, esd relies on pedagogical strategies that are learner-centred and target habits of the mind as mediated by teacher facilitation (karahan & roehrig, 2015). the paper recommends the use of multi-dimensional approaches including place-based approaches to cater for the moral, ethical and behavioural aspects of environmental literacy. the placebased approach can also be used as a context to assess critical skills such as solution finding and problem solving in the care of the environment. references abdullah, s.i.s.s., halim, l. & shahali, e.h.m. 2011. integration of environmental knowledge across biology, physics and chemistry subjects at secondary school level in malaysia. procedia social and 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(2013). ordinary level syllabus physical science (5009). harare: zimsec. https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2013.829019 https://doi.org/10.1080/02589001.2011.601043 http://www.un.documents.net/a57r254.htm https://doi.org/10.1080/0305764x.2013.792787 https://doi.org/10.1080/0305764x.2013.792787 https://doi.org/10.1080/00958964.2014.953020 pie 33(4) book.indb perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 57 the sensecam as a research tool for exploring learner experiences in an urban classroom space carmel chetty in this article1 i describe an ethnographic exploration into the daily school life of grade 6 learners at an urban school that serves impoverished areas in durban. the school is representative of the racial demographics of the country. the study explores how grade 6 learners experience education, and probes how human experiences are mediated through everyday classroom practices and interaction, taking into account the complex influences from the community in the life of the school and, in particular, the lives of the learners. photographic evidence obtained through the use of a discreet sensecam, worn by the class teachers and by me, the researcher, in turn, is an essential part of the large data collection that also includes observation notes, interviews, and historical records. i explain the use and value of the sensecam as a research tool. i demonstrate that learners undermined their own learning and that a multiplicity of factors had an impact on learning and the way the learners experienced school life. complex social relationships extended beyond the confines of the school. keywords: ethnography, everyday, learner positioning, photographs, poverty, space and time introduction in this article i describe research that explores the lives of children, from poor families, at a durban school thus revealing the micro-social spaces in the daily learning experiences of these learners. emmison and smith, in providing some guidance on how to make social space more observable and researchable, make the point that the “visual is also spatial” (2000: 5). new digital technology provides innovative possibilities for research. according to johnson et al. (2013) the number of new wearable devices is increasing daily and it outpaces the implementation of such technology at schools and in universities. they suggest that the education sector is carmel chetty cape peninsula university of technology faculty of education (mowbray campus) carmel.chetty@gmail.com perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 58 just beginning to experiment with such devices and the potential applications are significant and vast. therefore in my research, in addition to interviews and observations, i use photographic evidence, obtained through a wearable camera called a sensecam, to enhance my understanding of learners’ positionings and attitudes to learning in the classroom space. the numerous, sequential photographs provide insight into the complexities of the learning experience. data is networked, as suggested by latour (1996) from observation notes, interviews, historical records, and the photographs to explore the research question: “what are some of the factors linking learners’ everyday lives to their learning experiences?” theoretical framing since this article explores the everyday learning experiences of disadvantaged learners in a particular school, an understanding of the everyday is important. lefebvre expounds: in one sense there is nothing more simple and more obvious than everyday life. how do people live? the question may be difficult to answer, but that does not make it any less clear. in another sense nothing could be more superficial: it is banality, triviality, repetitiveness. and in yet another sense nothing could be more profound (2002: 47, emphasis in original). i explore the everyday as that which relates to the commonplace, ordinary, and mundane in the rhythms of life from day to day, part of the known and accepted rituals associated with common-sense knowledge (sandywell, 2004). i also, however, remain mindful of the complexities related to the simple question of whose everyday life we are dealing with. important to the study of everyday life is the uncovering of that which is hidden by dominant versions of social life (highmore, 2002). it is my contention that normalisation inflicts alienation on those outside of perceived norms. norms have historical contexts that are obscured, and thus the everyday understandings of why we perform certain rituals in the way we do are hidden behind sayings like, for example, “it has always been this way”. in the context of school life everyday acts have been normalised through two centuries of ritualised actions. foucault’s insight into how perceptions and understandings come to be is important for linking alienation and what is perceived as abnormal. as foucault contends, the power of normalisation has evolved historically to “extend its sovereignty in our society” (2003: 26). institutions like schools regulate disciplinary control by demanding individuals’ participation in their own subjugation (gore, 1997). the control is exercised over teachers and learners alike. it is the common forms of disciplinary control and knowledge production that give schooling a consistent character in keeping with the sensecam as a research tool for exploring learner experiences in an urban classroom space carmel chetty 59 the ideological perspectives of the country, and the world. through normalisation practices, schools become sites of the actualisation of power relations. central to this study is the understanding of space and time. a theoretical grounding in space and time as developed by lefebvre (1991) helps me to explore learners’ experiences. the study uses, as its basis, lefebvre’s theories to dialectically expose the contradictions and ambiguities of everyday life. for lefebvre, time has evolved so that it is no longer perceivable, as time has been “apprehended within space” (1991:95). he conceives of social space as interpenetrating and superimposing. complex intertwining networks expose myriads of social relationships. murdoch says, “there is no one time or space, rather there are a number of co-existing spacetimes” (1998: 360). it is my view that social spaces conceal social relations. within the school walls are numerous networks that create complex social relationships that extend beyond the confines of the school as situated in time and space. i network the data (photographs, observations and interviews), to explore how learners see themselves and reproduce themselves within the ever changing, yet constant, environment of the school. through networking, as suggested by latour (1996, 2007), space is studied through connections and associations. the claim is that through creating a flat area the social becomes fluid and collectable since it enables the researcher to look at the how rather than the what. by tracing network activity i delve into the lives of learners, looking at them through historical, social, and educational lenses. i attempt to make visible that which is hidden behind decades of history and normalised practices in the educational arena. methodology the methodological framework of the study is set within a critical ethnographic approach and is supported by lefebvrian theoretical concepts of space and time. lefebvre (2002) considers everyday life at different levels of social reality and sees space as being produced through everyday practices. the study reveals the everyday school life of children. i position the study in the physical, social, and pedagogical context of the school environment to investigate the daily lived experiences of the children. in the following sections, i explain, briefly, why i chose an ethnographic approach; i set out the context of the study; i clarify the process; and i describe how the sensecam photographs were used. ethnography james (2001: 247) maintains that ethnography, as a research methodology, has facilitated the recognition of children as research participants who can be studied in their own right. important to her understanding is that ethnography entails “the perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 60 desire to engage with children’s own views and enables their views and ideas to be rendered accessible to adults as well as other children”. i chose an ethnographic model for this study because it enabled me to observe learners’ experiences first hand through being present in their actual setting in the classroom. as the ethnographer i had a direct view into the world in which this particular school learning occurred; this allowed me to better understand learners’ experiences, the objective of the ethnographic project. the various relationships, influences, and power structures in the classroom setting were observed and recorded as they happened. context of the study the site for this study was a primary school (that i renamed, in the interests of preserving its anonymity, good hope school) with over 1 400 learners, situated in the city of durban. i chose it because of my general understanding of its demographics in relation to its racial/ethnic diversity and socio-economic backgrounds, as well as its colonial heritage and geographic positioning. social and geographic spaces have a significant impact on the learning environment. the learners’ social contexts and daily experiences intertwine in multiplicated ways with their learning. most of the learners, south africans as well as refugees and migrants from various african countries, who make up 40% of the school roll, lived in the surrounding city environment in rapidly deteriorating flatdwellings that, according to those associated closely with the school, were teeming with drug lords, sex workers2 and gangs. the rest of the school population were learners from the surrounding townships. method and process in the first phase of the research, i, as the ethnographer, embedded myself in the life of the school. i use the word “embedded” to convey invisibility attained through familiarity rather than to describe myself, erroneously, as an “immersed insider” (carspecken, 1996: 189). the management team selected the grade 6 class where i conducted observations for a period of approximately 4 months, from may 2011 to october 2011. the entire class of 35 learners (18 boys and 17 girls) was closely studied so that i could unravel, as it were, their daily experiences of school life. the 8 educators who taught the learners were also observed. i kept a reflexive journal in which i recorded my own thoughts as well as what was happening outside of the classroom space. maintaining such a journal is in keeping with the belief that ethnographic observation should be accompanied by self-reflexivity. reflexivity, as hammersley and atkinson (1993) point out, helps to contextualise and understand the effects of the researcher on the research process. the sensecam as a research tool for exploring learner experiences in an urban classroom space carmel chetty 61 i kept detailed field notes. the primary observation record is thick (in-depth) as well as journalistic. the thick observations included notes on body language, tone, facial and eye movements, and gestures. carspecken’s (1996: 49) suggested method of using a “priority person” for the in-depth observation and changing the “priority person” every five minutes was used. i conducted the detailed observations throughout the day with intervals of general observations. i also recorded other aspects of interest in the classroom space, including informal conversations. i made detailed notes of learners’ movements in and out of the classroom, learner monitoring of other learners, teachers’ comments and teaching styles as well as responses of learners. i also took notes about the learners’ styles of dress and behaviour as well as their activities during and between lessons, as well as factors related to the use of classroom space and furniture, and evidence of general comfort and discomfort in the classroom. i recorded observations on the playground and during assemblies shortly after the relevant activity to avoid attracting attention to myself by being seen to be taking notes. real-time recording was easier in the classroom, where i was situated at the back so only a few learners and the teachers were aware of my discreet note taking. after three months of observations i conducted in-depth interviews. ten learners (five boys and five girls) from the class as well as two staff members were selected for the interviews. thereafter the whole class completed a questionnaire while watching a powerpoint presentation of the photographs (explained in 3.3.1 below). since the photographs are the focus of this article, the process is described in detail. photography i used photographs taken by a wearable camera called a sensecam, 3 first developed in 2009 and adopted by vicon revue. 4 the sensecam automatically photographs whatever is in front of the wearer, capturing an average of three to four photographs per minute. it is a digital camera with multiple sensors including a 3-axis accelerometer to detect motion, a thermometer to detect ambient temperature, and a passive infrared sensor to detect the presence of a person or persons. sensor data is captured approximately every two seconds and stored in the camera. the sensecam was used for a period of two weeks towards the end of the four month study. during that time teachers who taught the class wore the sensecam during their lessons. between lessons it was returned to me and i continued wearing it so as to take pictures from where i sat at the back of the classroom. i kept the sensecam switched on throughout the day including when there was no teacher present, when i accompanied learners to different venues, and during break. over the two-week period, the sensecam produced approximately 5466 images. however, there are difficulties in the use of an unobtrusively placed continuous camera. some of the automatically captured images were unusable because they were indistinct, blurred, out of focus, or irrelevant to the study. perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 62 according to harper (2002: 13), “images evoke deeper elements of human consciousness than do words” . common-sense understandings of photographs are that they serve as a record that embodies reality; a photo acquires value as a document of an event as it happens. from this perspective, the meaning attached to the photograph is viewed as being either in the photograph itself or in the framework from which viewers draw meaning. it is in the viewing of the photograph that meaning is constructed and, in this process, multiple meanings are generated (schwartz, 1989; mitchell, 2008). schwartz (1989: 122) views photographs as “inherently ambiguous” since multiple meanings emerge in the viewing process. the discreet photographic device produced evidentiary material to reinforce the theoretical framework of space and time explored within the context of the everyday: the digital images obtained were used to elicit and explore learners’ views as well as help reveal the complex relationships between learners, staff, and the social spaces that operated within the classroom and school environment. the photographs also helped link the classroom and school space to the social contexts of the learners’ lives through questionnaires and in-depth interviews. working with the photographs i adapted harper’s (2002: 15) ideas on photo elicitation. he suggests that photo elicitation be “based on the authority of the subject rather than the researcher”. the first part of the questionnaire captured learners’ personal details, activities they engaged in, and their views relating to school and home life. learners gave their views on the photographs in the second part of the questionnaire that they filled out after they had watched a powerpoint presentation of selected photographs. the powerpoint presentation was arranged into three categories: places around the school; behaviour; and moments. each photograph was numbered. learners matched the number on the photograph to a suggested statement on the questionnaire. the suggested statements in the questionnaires were developed from learners’ views, established through my observations and the in-depth interviews. statements about places around the school (1st category) related to emotions learners might have experienced in particular places (e.g. a place where i feel safe, or nervous); activities learners were involved in (e.g. where we meet friends); and perceptions of the learners in particular contexts (e.g. where there are secrets, where i have fun). learners filled in the number of the specific photograph next to each suggested statement. behaviour (2nd category) was selected from words the learners and teachers used to describe particular behaviours e.g. good, inattentive, bossy, etc. learners placed the number of a specific photograph next to each behaviour type. in the moments section (3rd category) learners were asked to indicate whether a particular photograph gave them a good or a bad feeling. the learners wrote the number of the photograph below one of the two statements about emotions. the sensecam as a research tool for exploring learner experiences in an urban classroom space carmel chetty 63 visual ethics the issue of informed consent is of particular relevance when visual data of a personal or sensitive nature is produced (boxall & ralph, 2009). in view of the sensitivity related to the use of photographs, the ethical issues surrounding the taking of public photographs need to be considered. wang and redwood-jones (2001: 563, emphasis in original) caution that “even though it may be legal to photograph someone in a public place, … such action is not ethically neutral”. in relation to these ethical issues, i have been mindful of the importance of respecting participants’ privacy. i recognise that a photographer wields the power to suggest meaning with regard to a particular photograph, possibly imbuing it with her or his views and values (wang & redwoodjones, 2001), and, therefore, i meticulously recorded the learners’ views. the school permitted the use of the sensecam in its environment. staff and learners involved in the study were advised as to how the sensecam worked and they gave consent for its use in the classroom and school. i have used only those photographs for which i received permission. learners gave written permission for my use of the sensecam photographs in which they appeared. i have protected the identity of all the learners. i have increased the contrast and brightness on one photograph in order to blur it so that a learner is not recognisable, thus ensuring this participant’s anonymity. in all other photographs no learners are facially identifiable. findings and discussion i set about finding networks revealed in the data linking historical records, my observations, the photographs, learners’ written responses to the photographs, and the voices of the interviewees to the photographs. networks are revealed through associations and mediations that contextualise and link the learners’ lives to their learning experience by bringing together the bits and pieces that hold together the complex relationships of learning. safety and security the learner responses illustrated that the places outside the school (picked up by the camera as i walked around the school yard and near the school gate) were generally perceived and described as unsafe places. the learners presented real experiences that demonstrated their fear of crime and violence that cannot be dismissed as mere “hysteria, paranoia or obsession” as advocated by baghel (2010: 71). the narratives of the learners and adult participants indicate that their fears are founded on personal experiences. while the streets represent places of fear, the school itself was regarded as a safe haven where learners preferred to be. perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 64 in the following representative extracts learners explain the dangers on the streets. interviewer: … what of the other kinds of dangers that you find there? penny: like every single week there is like blood on the floor. not in the flats, but around. you hear all this man was walking at night. and some people came and stab him. interviewer: and that happens a lot? penny: ja like every week some. the violence was often associated with drug use about which most of the learner participants spoke matter-of-factly as an inevitable reality of their lives since the drug trade took place around them every day. their normality incorporated living with and experiencing crime and the effects of drug use. interviewer: is the area you are living in safe? mandy: there is security, but you know area by where they sell drugs, by that side…in the street, down…. interviewer: you can see them? mandy: yes, …people and that’s why that side they stay interviewer: how do you know they are selling drugs? mandy: it was in the paper and every day police will be there, ja…. ike dealt with his personal safety by ensuring that he befriended people whom he thought could protect him. he had determined that knowing the right people was a necessity for his protection. he suggested: interviewer: so you think the beach is a safe place? ike: not anymore, but you have to have…in this town you have to know people to protect you…there’s like big names, there’s another boy adam. everyone is scared of him. he can fight. so when you with him, no one doesn’t play with you. most learner participants perceived street children as dangerous. many of them had witnessed what many would describe as unimaginable on the streets and from the windows of their flats. they understood the limitations of the spaces in which they could move around freely. interviewer: do you also go to the skateboard place? ike: no, i never go there, that’s in north beach. interviewer: is it too far away? ike: naah, you can walk but it’s dangerous to walk, there’s always like street kids. new people always come in there. they like gangsters, they always have flick knives in their pockets. so that’s why i never go to that place. there was ambivalence about the real danger of street children. a learner explained that they were not really a danger because he knew some of them. one of them had the sensecam as a research tool for exploring learner experiences in an urban classroom space carmel chetty 65 attended good hope school and became a street child when his mother died. the learners expressed their views as if detachment and violence had become normalised as an inevitable part of their lives. this perception is also supported by the inquiry conducted by hentschel (2011: 148) into “the uses of space and emotions in the governance of urban dangers” in durban close to where the school is situated. she noted that [h]igh crime rates are accepted here as a given that cannot be overcome— just like the weather: useless to even waste a thought on how to change it. … governing crime through charm initiatives in space is an undertaking on a small scale, and literally on the surface....(157) at the school the police played a positive role as the protectors of a safe school environment. they assisted with the daily scholar patrol and served on the school’s governing body. it appears that the school enjoys, possibly because of its positioning adjacent to the more upmarket areas on its borders, what hentschel (2011: 155) has called a “charm bubble” in the form of a school/community-police partnership aimed at creating a safe learning environment. in their interviews learners indicated that they felt safer at school than they did in the crime-ridden areas they traversed to and from their homes. for learners who routinely experience having their property stolen while they are on the street there are very few safe bubble spaces. confrontations by criminals generally occurred when children were alone. terry: …i was with my scooter at …. it was nice with my scooter. they put knives on me like… interviewer: mmm and did they take it? terry: they took it. they told me they going to poke me if i don’t give it to them. so i just gave it to them …. all those associated with the school to whom i spoke described the area around the school where many of the learners lived, as dangerous, run down, and overcrowded. this made life here for the learners extremely difficult. both adult participant 1 and 2 spoke about the overcrowded conditions in which many of the children lived. adult participant 1: …and maybe we’re living ten of us in one room. it’s normal. so i don’t even see that… because most of my peers live like that around here.… adult participant 2: and they share one communal toilet and bathroom. it’s like upstairs and they all go. all the people living in that floor go upstairs to use a very messy toilet and bathroom… yes, i know that one boy i taught last year ... going right down to another building to fetch buckets of water to bath…. the narratives shared by the children reflect the dangerous environment in which they lived and which they traversed on their way to and from school. crime and violence, as an everyday feature of their lives, were accepted in an unchallenging way. my interest lies is how the learners who are practically trapped in unsafe urban spaces negotiate their lives, and cope at school. perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 66 spatial dynamics in the school and classroom the disciplinary controls and teaching styles that mimicked old colonial practices are evident in the historical school logs (from 1904) that i perused. during my observation period, i noticed that learners adapted their behaviour to what was considered acceptable in the school space. they typically adopted the persona normalised and promoted by the school discourse and teaching practices. close observation of the learners revealed that they understood themselves differently in their home and school spaces. wortham (2004) suggests that schools transform learners through an ontological approach that not only changes what the learner knows but who the learner is. fataar and du plooy (2012) refer to “spatial dislocation” (18) to describe learners’ adaptations to fit in. on the surface, learner participants presented a uniform identity as grade 6 learners in a particular environment. however, social realities added different dimensions to the way learners received their learning. outdoor spaces learners’ responses to the questionnaire indicated their enjoyment of large open spaces. they cited the playground as the place where they had the most fun. the learners’ responses were in accordance with the findings of blatchford, baines and pellegrini (2003: 481) who state that break time “is one of the main ‘open’ settings with more degrees of freedom and more opportunities to interact with peers”. this was particularly so for the learners who lived in flats. during break time learners could participate freely in physical games. in the playground boys loved to run around while girls mostly sat around in conversation groups. the study conducted by blatchford et al. (2003: 491) confirmed that “boys were significantly more likely to be involved in ball games and girls in more conversation [and] sedentary play…”. in this space, informal learning was mediated through both the physical surroundings and the social relationships. figure 1: boys run around girls sit in groups the sensecam as a research tool for exploring learner experiences in an urban classroom space carmel chetty 67 the classroom space leander (2004: 189) expounds on lefebvre’s (1991) notion of human activity being situated in space and time and asserts that different activities serve to produce different types of space and time and “individuals are constantly in the process of vying for power and negotiating alignments and identities”. the familiarity of the classroom space in the collective imagination makes it appear static. yet classroom space is dynamic and constantly being reproduced differently. learners’ identities grow out of their physical positioning in the classroom space as well as out of their relationships with others who occupy that space. learner interviews indicated that the home environment created conflictual experiences for them in a school space dominated by normalised practices authenticated across decades of existence. learners learn to deal with the contradictions by conforming to the rules in the classroom and school environment as far as possible. family circumstances sometimes impinged on the learning space and poor children felt excluded. for instance, some learners could not make financial contributions to project work. penny revealed how she felt marginalised by teachers and learners. penny: like when it is difficult work like our project just now technology. it is very expensive to buy globe and batteries. interviewer: if you can’t … what do you do? do you get into trouble? penny: ja. interviewer: with the teacher or with the group? penny: the teacher and the group. they leave me alone. interviewer: they don’t let you participate? penny: the group they just leave me alone, and they won’t take me they won’t allow me…. the socio-economic plight of poor learners has an impact on their behaviour, socialising, and learning in the school space. i witnessed tensions related to home life, peer status, and symbols of belonging like shoe brands surface in the classroom and result in physical confrontations between learners. positioning the learner the following photo essay presents learner behaviour from before the teacher arrives to when she leaves the classroom. the photographs are placed sequentially and show learner attitudes, behaviour, and body positioning. much of what happens during lessons militates against learning or produces a different kind of learning. fataar and du plooy (2012: 13) use the word “suppression” as a referent for a situation in which “one type of spatial practice serves as a kind of constraint or suppressor of other positioning practices in the same domain”. learners positioned themselves differently depending on the situation. they behaved differently in different places or with different people. peer acceptance behaviour (noticeable in language use, the perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 68 assumption of macho attitudes, degrees of loudness etc.) surfaced mostly during the absence of the teacher. the way learners position themselves or the way they are positioned by teachers has an impact on how they learn. before teacher arrives in the classroom consulting over a project? stretching in confined space teacher conducting a lesson teacher faces class – learners face her. the sensecam as a research tool for exploring learner experiences in an urban classroom space carmel chetty 69 teacher’s back turned – learners’ attention diverted. after the lesson teacher leaves classroom. learners continue copying corrections from the board. monitor keeps order. more monitors at board once work is completed. teacher has left the classroom more learners out of their places… the longer the teacher’s absence, the less control monitors are able to exert. perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 70 learners positioned themselves differently in the presence or absence of the teacher. in the teacher’s absence learners relaxed but returned to the formal atmosphere in the teacher’s presence. surreptitious communication and activities continued throughout the day. during the lesson learners tried to keep out of the teacher’s immediate line of vision. the photographs show the fluidity of the classroom space and the hierarchy amongst learners. monitors were undermined and the rules about remaining seated and being quiet were disobeyed. the subverting of school rules and disobeying those in authority is related to the conflict between behaviour acceptable to teachers and that which demonstrated belonging in peer authorised domains. carter (2003), in her study of low income african-american youth, found that the youth presented different persona depending on the social setting in which they performed. they used the expected dominant discourse positionings to acquire status in that space and understood how to negotiate authentic speech to gain linguistic and cultural capital in both dominant or peer group settings. below (see figure 2) are examples of learner deflection strategies that i observed as well as saw revealed through interviews and photographic evidence. figure 2: deflecting activities that learners engage in the teacher assumed that the learners were performing the set work when the class was quiet and busy. turner et al. (2002: 48) found that avoidance strategies were often adopted to deflect attention from low ability and to undermine performance and that they “may contribute to the devaluation of learning and dropping out of school”. in their study, fataar and du plooy (2012: 25) found that learning was suppressed by dynamics at the school that “reworked the children‘s positioning in such a way that they assumed one-dimensional learning subjectivities emptied of productive and enriching possibilities”. in his view those positionings led to learners’ the sensecam as a research tool for exploring learner experiences in an urban classroom space carmel chetty 71 failure in the educational arena of the school. learners’ imaginings and creative engagement were suppressed in an environment that supported a traditional approach. like the study by urdan and schoenfelder (2006), i found that where there were ambiguities and conflicts between and among the values and social contexts of their home, community, and school, learners became less motivated and devalued their learning experience. learners at good hope school positioned themselves differently as either involved or dislocated from their learning. dislocation was seen in the numerous examples that showed a lack of interest in, as well as subversion of, the learning environment. leander, phillips and taylor (2010: 341) suggest that space is constantly in motion and subject to emotive “bodies-in-interaction” that transform our understanding of a “learning environment” from a homogeneous assembly to assemblages of learning that allow for multiple readings and interpretations. conclusion in this article i have described the use of the sensecam to photograph learners and situations unobtrusively. it is part of the digital technology now available as tools for teaching, learning, and research purposes. while it proved to be most useful in this study, the sensecam may pick up images beyond what is intended and could potentially infringe on the civil liberties of those being photographed. its use could create an atmosphere of distrust with the subjects being wary of possible unethical use, such as privacy infringement, profiling, and victimisation. in this study it remained under my control and i ensured that it was used ethically. the minutiae of classroom life, captured through the sensecam, in and out of the teachers’ presence, provide information which could be used to improve the teaching and learning environment. the use of significant photographic images in the article, together with the data collected from detailed note-taking reflect the teaching and learning processes in the classroom, as well as the experiences and behaviour of the learners. the evidence showed how learners undermined their own learning and that a multiplicity of factors had an impact on learning and the way the learners experienced school life. a complex relationship between physical and social space mediated the educational experiences of the learners. the learning experiences were circumscribed by values steeped in history that had evolved over generations in the school environment. the learning included complex interactions between and among the learners, the community and the school. poverty and urban social realities conflicted with learners’ experiences at school, and contributed to disengagement with learning. the school’s mission to teach learners within a regulative space was compromised by the complex realities of the learners’ poverty. perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 72 references baghel, r. 2010. fear of crime in south africa: obsession, compulsion, disorder. transcience journal, 1(2), 71-84. retrieved on 27 january 2013 from: http://www2.hu-berlin.de/transcience/vol1_issue2_2010_71_84.pdf blatchford, p., baines, e., & pellegrini, a. 2003. the social context of school playground games: sex and ethnic differences, and changes over time after entry to junior school. british journal of development psychology, 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(ed.). 2000. the everyday life reader. london: routledge. the sensecam as a research tool for exploring learner experiences in an urban classroom space carmel chetty 73 james, a. 2001. ethnography in the study of children and childhood. in p. atkinson, a. coffey, s. delamont, j. lofland & l. lofland (eds.), handbook of ethnography. london: sage publications. johnson, l., adams becker, s., cummins, m., estrada, v., freeman, a., & ludgate, h. 2013. nmc horizon report: 2013 higher education edition. austin, texas: the new media consortium latour, b. 1996. on actor-network theory. a few clarifications plus more than a few complications. retrieved on 19 september 2011 from: http://www9. georgetown.edu/faculty/irvinem/theory/latour-clarifications.pdf latour b. 2007 reassembling the social, new york: oxford university press. leander, k.m. 2004. “they took out the wrong context”: uses of time-space in the practice of positioning. ethos, 32(2), 188-213. retrieved on 25 july 2013 from: http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.ukzn.ac.za:2048/stable/pdfplus/3651833.pdf leander, k.m., phillips, n.c., & taylor, k.h. 2010. the changing social spaces of learning: mapping new mobilities. review of research in education, 34, 329394. retrieved on 29 april 2013 from: http://rre.sagepub.com/content/34/1/329 lefebvre, h. 1991. the production of space (d. nicholson-smith, trans.). oxford: blackwell. lefebvre, h 2002. critique of everyday life volume ii. foundations for a sociology of the everyday (j. moore, trans.). london: verso. mitchell, c. 2008. getting the picture and changing the picture: visual methodologies and educational research in south africa. south african journal of educaion, 28(3), 365-383. sandywell, b. 2004. the myth of everyday life: toward a heterology of the ordinary. cultural studies, 18(2/3), 160-180. retrieved on 5 september 2013 from: http://web.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.ukzn.ac.za:2048/ ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=4&sid=75d41035-887c-4242-bd92e6c9e5f68deb%40sessionmgr110&hid=118 schwartz, d. 1989. visual ethnography: using photography in qualitative research. qualitative sociology, 12(2), 119-154. turner, j.c., midgeley, c., meyer, d.k., gheen, m., anderman, e.m., kang, y., & patrick, h. 2002. the classroom environment and students’ reports of avoidance strategies in mathematics: a multimethod study. journal of educational psychology, 94(1), 88-106. retrieved on 23 july 2013 from: http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/edu-94188.pdf urdan, t., & schoenfelder, e. 2006. classroom effects on student motivation: goal structures, social relationships, and competence beliefs. journal of school psychology, 44, 331-349. retrieved on 23 july 2013 from: http://ac.els-cdn. com/s0022440506000380/1-s2.0-s0022440506000380-main.pdf?_tid=10a02b22f370-11e2-80e7-00000aab0f02&acdnat=1374567521_1f2510e1ec1c2081b7079c8b5 e426ab5 perspectives in education 2015: 33(4) 74 wang, c.c., & redwood-jones, y.a. 2001. photovoice ethics: perspectives from flint photovoice. health education & behaviour, 28(5), 562-572). retrieved on 10 august 2010 from: http://heb.sagepub.com/content/28/5/560 doi:10.1177/109019810102800504 wortham, s. 2004. the interdependence of social identification and learning. american educational research journal, 41(3), 715-750. retrieved on 14 march 2013 from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3699443 endnotes 1. this article draws on the research work and photographic evidence i obtained during an ethnographic study i conducted in 2011 for my phd thesis (see chetty, 2013). 2. far from putting sex workers in the same category as drug lords and gangs, i am trying to capture the problems associated with the illegal sex industry that sets out to recruit underage children. while i was at the school the counsellor told me of a grade 7 girl who had been lured by girlfriends to accompany them on sex jaunts in which they earned money. 3. omg (oxford metrics group) has announced the arrival of autographer, an updated version of the sensecam. both were designed by electronics engineer lyndsay williams. http://www.zdnet. c o m /a u to g ra p h e rwe a ra b l e c a m e ra w i l l s ave -yo u rl i fe o rt ra c k-yo u rstaff-7000004775/ 4. microsoft has licensed its sensecam technology to uk-based vicon motion systems. http://www.gizmag.com/sensecam-being-manufactured-as-vicon-revue/17311/ 1122022 40(1): 112-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 postgraduate students’ views on the use of whatsapp groups as an online communication tool to support teaching and learning during covid-19 abstract the purpose of this research was to identify students’ views on the use of whatsapp in an online postgraduate course at a south african open distance elearning institution during the covid-19 pandemic. during this time, lecturers and students relied on their mobile devices to communicate using different tools, including whatsapp. although it is a trending communication tool in teaching and learning, little is known about students’ views on using whatsapp to support teaching and learning in a time of crisis. within an interpretative paradigm, the research followed a case study design and a qualitative approach. the study used questionnaires with open-ended questions to collect data. the sample consisted of 16 students enrolled for a master’s in education programme. data were analysed using a thematic approach. the findings showed that whatsapp groups provided students with immediate, fast, easy to use and affordable communication and connection, thus, creating a sense of belonging. however, a possible disadvantage was also observed. a whatsapp group can defeat its purpose if students use it for non-academic chats and it can become a distraction. this study proposes that institutions of higher learning consider using whatsapp groups to support learning communities as they can alleviate feelings of loneliness and isolation, specifically in times of crisis. furthermore, the study recommends that the purpose of whatsapp groups should be clearly outlined to students and that lecturers and students should agree upon some ground rules before they start using whatsapp groups to support teaching and learning. keywords: connectedness; covid-19 pandemic; isolation; online communication social needs; student support; whatsapp groups. 1. introduction the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic has affected all sectors globally since the beginning of 2020. higher education was one of the worst-hit sectors as all institutions had to close to adhere to the lockdown rules that were implemented to save lives. hagerty and williams (2020) author: prof geesje van den berg1 dr patience kelebogile mudau1 affiliation: 1university of south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i1.7 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(1): 112-128 published: 04 march 2022 received: 10 august 2021 accepted: 29 november 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0306-4427 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5389-6942 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 1132022 40(1): 113-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 van den berg & mudau postgraduate students’ views on the use of whatsapp groups note that crises such as covid-19 pose a profound threat to our most basic human needs, which are connection and communication between humans. lieberman (2013) confirms that social connection is essential for survival in humans. to bridge the communication gap during the covid-19 crisis, lecturers had to find new ways to connect with students and assist them in coping with unprecedented isolation. although higher education institutions use walled platforms such as learning management systems (lms) to support students (maboe, 2017), gomes et al. (2015) found that social media can complement this support. a study by mnkandla and minnaar (2017) found that although social media such as blogs, wikis, skype, google hangouts, facebook and whatsapp lie outside conventional forms of student support, they could be used to facilitate e-learning in higher education. chaka, nkhobo and lephalala (2020) even argue for the importance of integrating online and mobile learning tools for student support in the open distance elearning (odel) arena, which is the context of this study. whatsapp is a popular smartphone application for sending instant and real-time communication to individuals or groups. it also allows for easy sharing of different forms of content files such as audio, videos and images (asmara, 2020). however, authors such as güler (2017) and giordano et al. (2015) agree that limited research has been done on the use of whatsapp as a communication tool to support teaching and learning. therefore, this research investigated if – and how – whatsapp can act as a communication tool to support teaching and learning, specifically in times of crisis. the research question we were exploring in this article is: what are postgraduate students’ perceptions of the use of whatsapp as a communication tool to support teaching and learning during covid-19? from the main question, we derived the following sub-questions: • how do whatsapp groups assist postgraduate students as a communication tool to support their learning? • what are the advantages of whatsapp groups as a communication tool? • what are the disadvantages of whatsapp groups as a communication tool? • how did the purpose of whatsapp groups change because of the covid-19 pandemic? the article begins with a literature review, followed by the theoretical framework. thereafter it covers the methodology for the empirical research before presenting the findings and the conclusions. 2. literature review the covid-19 pandemic forced higher education institutions to use different technologies available at their disposal to continue with teaching and learning during lockdown. given the need to connect socially as individuals, lecturers and students used means available to connect. in some contexts learning management systems were in use or preferred, while in others lecturers and students opted to use social media such as facebook, twitter and whatsapp and communications technologies such as microsoft teams and zoom. such technologies did not only serve the purpose for lecturers and students to stay mentally balanced and socially connected, but also to continue with teaching and learning (mishra, gupta & shree, 2020). as an example, a study by mpungose (2020) showed that many students had to submit their assignments for the first time on the learning management system, while the moodle learning http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 1142022 40(1): 114-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) management system was the preferred way for learning and connection among higher education students in ghana, followed by google classroom, whatsapp, google meeting and zoom (agormedah, et al., 2020). social media and other digital technologies such as whatsapp have become indispensable in helping users stay connected during the lockdown. although these technologies supported student learning and research needs prior to the covid-19 pandemic (deng & tavares, 2013; madge at al., 2019), they became more popular for teaching during lockdown (annamalai, 2019; mpungose, 2020) as they made communication in and outside the learning arena possible. as an example, a study by maphosa, dube and jita (2020) found that whatsapp offered students opportunities to learn during the covid-19 pandemic as it was easy to manoeuvre and it fostered engagement between students and their lecturers. the authors add that this tool allowed lecturers to give audio feedback, thereby facilitating communication. thus, it helped students to construct knowledge and to stay involved in their own learning. using whatsapp increased collaboration and communication between lecturers and students, particularly during the hard lockdown (major et al., 2020). whatsapp communication enabled lecture updates, assignment instructions and discussions about course content; students could contact their lecturers regardless of time differences, physical distance or office working hours – and thus reduce delays in feedback. as asmara (2020) points out, using whatsapp can enrich the learning experience and make it relatively easy for lecturers to contact students at their own convenience. according to scholars such as yeboah, horsu and abdulai (2014), bouhnik, deshen and gan (2014) as well as alsanie (2015), whatsapp instant messaging is a cross-platform mobile messaging service that enables users to send and receive a variety of media, such as text, images, videos and audio media messages, using the internet. it operates on smartphones such as iphone and android devices (alsanie, 2015). whatsapp uses the same internet data as for email and web browsing without additional charges (alsanie, 2015). moreover, it is easy to form whatsapp groups or to use the application for private communication (tang & hew, 2017). within an educational context, lambton-howard, kiaer and kharrufa (2020: 1712) state that it allows lecturers and students to create “interconnected groups”. stone, logan and unit (2019) summarise the advantage of whatsapp groups as facilitating online collaboration, connection and cooperation between students and lecturers. church and de oliveira (2013) posit that the reasons for the popularity of whatsapp groups are the low cost, the ability to send an unlimited number of messages, immediacy, the ability to conduct an ongoing conversation with many fellow students simultaneously and the creation of a community of friends, fellow students or family. in addition, whatsapp offers real-time texting or communication, with easy sharing of information and media content (alubthane & alyoussef, 2021). it is easier for students to enquire about academic-related matters and for lecturers to respond without having to contact students individually. every person in the group receives the same message, and possible uncertainties are cleared up. in this regard, the presence of lecturers can influence the group conversation and make it more focused, formal and controlled (nuuyoma, mhlope & chihururu, 2020). a few shortcomings of whatsapp groups were cited by various researchers. for example, statista (2017) warns that whatsapp communication, if not well managed, can defeat its purpose, create an extra workload and distract from learning. in addition, a study by alubthane and alyoussef (2021) found that instructors tended to ignore students’ questions and that http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 1152022 40(1): 115-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 van den berg & mudau postgraduate students’ views on the use of whatsapp groups there was a lack of policies to guide the use of whatsapp groups. another shortcoming stated by annamalai (2019) was a lack of student commitment to effective participation in whatsapp groups when used for learning purposes. thus, so (2016) suggests that the use of whatsapp groups for teaching and learning could interfere with students and lectures’ private lives. 3. theoretical framework because maslow’s theory of human motivation and the connectivist learning theory have connection as their key principle, they were found suitable to underpin the current study. in his seminal paper, maslow (1943) proposed his theory of human motivation outlining a set of basic human needs that are organised in a hierarchy of relative prepotency. he identified physiological needs as the lowest order and self-actualisation as the highest (maslow, 1943). at the lowest level, maslow posits that humans are driven by psychological needs to sustain life, including the need for food and air. at the second level, humans are motivated to pursue safety, driven by needs for order, certainty and comfort. the third level of maslow’s hierarchy refers to the social need to belong and the need for connection (which are relevant to the current study). according to maslow (1962), the need to belong is more important than the requirement for knowledge and understanding, and it will take precedence over esteem and self-actualisation, which comprise the fourth and highest level. the sense of belonging has been stated by educational researchers such as peacock and cowan (2019) as one of the most important needs of all students – to function well in all types of learning environments. madzalan et al. (2021) argue that in times of crisis such as the covid-19 pandemic, students do not have the luxury of the physical presence of fellow students and/or lecturers, and therefore their social needs should be met in another way so that they will not feel abandoned and isolated. this is important for successful learning and for helping students to realise that they are not left to study and cope on their own, despite the crisis. maslow’s hierarchy of needs is shown in figure 1 below. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 1162022 40(1): 116-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) figure 1: maslow’s hierarchy of needs (wikimedia commons, 2019) closely linked to maslow’s reference to social needs, which include connection and belonging to a group (madzalan et al., 2021), is connectivism. george siemens and stephen downes developed connectivism as a learning theory in 2005; it is a network learning theory for the digital age influenced by technology and socialisation (goldie, 2016). according to goldie (2016), connectivist learning occurs when knowledge is actuated by students who are connecting to and participating in a learning community. siemens defines the latter as the “clustering of similar areas of interest that allows for interaction, sharing and dialoguing and thinking together” (2005:78). the interaction takes place between humans and nonhumans and it can include text, videos and multimedia, which are referred to as nodes in the connectivist model (siemens, 2006). these nodes form networks or communities of learning. participation is dispersed and distributed using technologies such as mobile devices and mobile applications (including whatsapp), and people are seamlessly connected for a given purpose, for example communication, teaching or learning (downes, 2010; kop & hill, 2008; siemens, 2005; thomas & gelan, 2018). 4. methodology 4.1 design because the purpose of an interpretative research paradigm is to make an effort to understand and interpret what participants are thinking (guba & lincoln, 2000), we found this paradigm http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 1172022 40(1): 117-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 van den berg & mudau postgraduate students’ views on the use of whatsapp groups to be the most suitable for this study. interpretative paradigms emphasise understanding the individual and the interpretation of their experiences, rather than the viewpoint of the researcher (kivunja & kuyini, 2017). the purpose of the paradigm suited the purpose of our study, as we were interested in students’ viewpoints on the use of whatsapp as a communication tool to support their learning. within an interpretative paradigm, a qualitative descriptive approach was best suited for this study. in order to describe the facts, their properties and relationships, this approach, which refers to a specific event experienced by individuals or groups of individuals, is particularly appropriate when information is required from those who are experiencing the phenomenon under investigation (asmara, 2020). a single case study was deemed to be the appropriate design as the research intended to examine a contemporary phenomenon in a real-life situation (yin, 2013). the phenomenon under study was the use of whatsapp by a group of students enrolled for a specific qualification at the university of south africa (unisa). 4.2 participants the participants in this case study were 16 students enrolled for one or more of the four modules of a structured master’s programme in education at unisa, which is an odel institution. the four modules were offered by two lecturers who are also the authors of this article. of the 16 students, ten were women and six were men, all mature students holding a teaching position at either a higher education institution or a school at the time of the study. 4.3 context and procedure of data collection the modules under study are part of an online structured master’s programme in education, consisting of four taught modules and a research proposal which, upon approval, is followed by a mini dissertation. all modules have the same structure and consist of 12 lessons, six threaded, graded discussions, two written assignments and a summative reflective portfolio. academics, administrators and students can connect at anytime from anywhere via the institutional lms for general discussions, announcements or email. as part of their welcome message at the beginning of the 2021 academic year, the lecturers tested the level of student interest in setting up whatsapp groups for the different modules to create opportunities for communication to support their learning. students were invited to submit their mobile phone numbers if they wished to join the whatsapp groups. they were informed that signing up for the whatsapp groups was voluntary and that they could leave the group at any time should they wish to do so. all students joined the whatsapp groups of the modules for which they were enrolled. the intention of the module whatsapp groups was twofold. first, the purpose was to complement information sharing on the lms. brief notices and messages about lms announcements regarding important events such as due dates for assignments, completion of grading or the commencement of a new lesson were shared on whatsapp as an additional information source. second, the whatsapp groups served as a platform for students to contact one another or ask questions to the group or the lecturers. as lecturers, we were also mindful of the abnormal circumstances during the covid-19 pandemic and we regarded the whatsapp groups as possible additional support mechanisms for students. in line with the policy of the university, we used whatsapp as a communication tool to support teaching and learning, in conjunction with the lms, and not as a teaching tool (unisa, 2020; 2021). at the end of the fourth month of their studies, after students had completed their third graded discussions, they were requested to complete a questionnaire with biographical and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 1182022 40(1): 118-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) open-ended questions on their perceptions of the module whatsapp groups. this was done to determine the value of and the need for whatsapp groups (if any) in these modules, with specific reference to the unusual circumstances because of covid-19. the feedback from students was also intended to assist us as lecturers in our planning. the questionnaire is available in appendix a. students received the questionnaires on the module sites of the university’s lms. they were requested to complete the questions on the module sites or via email. the students were informed about the study, including the fact that participation was voluntary, and they were assured of anonymity. for this reason, participants are referred to as p1, p2, and so forth in the data analysis section to protect their identities. ethical clearance was received from the research ethics committee of the college of education at unisa. of the 19 students involved in the programme at the time of the study, 16 completed the questionnaires, and all the responses were completed on the lms. 4.4 data analysis thematic analysis was used to analyse the data, which entails searching for themes emerging from the narrative data on the phenomenon investigated. thematic analysis can either be inductive or deductive; for this study we used both. inductive analysis followed braun and clarke’s step-by-step coding procedure: become familiar with the data; generate initial codes; search for themes; review themes; define themes and write up the data (braun & clarke, 2006). deductive analysis was used to respond to the theoretical framework, as discussed earlier in this article. this dual process was used in order to be data-driven and theoryresponsive (chaka et al., 2020). based on the above steps, themes were created iteratively and revised constantly. the authors acted as independent reviewers to code the data, ensuring inter-rater reliability and validity (downing, 2003). as part of the data analysis process, we compared the codes, removed what was irrelevant, reached consensus and finalised the themes. 5. findings and discussion of the findings from the student responses, the following themes emerged, namely communication and connection to support learning; advantages of whatsapp groups as a communication tool; disadvantages of whatsapp groups as a communication tool; and the influence of covid-19 on the use of whatsapp groups. table 1 summarises the themes and sub-themes as well as their links to the theories framing this study and are discussed next. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 1192022 40(1): 119-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 van den berg & mudau postgraduate students’ views on the use of whatsapp groups table 1: the themes and sub-themes and their relation to the relevant theories themes sub-themes link to the theory (maslow’s hierarchy of needs; connectivism) communication and connection to support learning immediacy and ease of communication belonging to a group learning communities connection among humans and between humans and non-humans a sense of belonging as a basic human need lessen feelings of isolation participation advantages of whatsapp groups affordability sharing of learning materials learning communities connection among humans and between humans and non-humans a sense of belonging as a basic human need lessen feelings of isolation participation disadvantages of whatsapp groups defeating the purpose, distraction the influence of the covid-19 pandemic on the purpose of whatsapp groups change from a social networking tool to an academic and professional tool mitigates feelings of loneliness a sense of belonging as a basic human need learning communities connection among humans and between humans and non-humans lessen feelings of isolation participation 5.1 communication and connection to support learning in this theme two sub-themes emerged: immediacy of communication and the sense of belonging to a group of students and lecturers. when participants were asked how the whatsapp groups assisted them with issues related to their modules, many of the responses referred to the immediacy and speed of communication. nine students referred to whatsapp as a platform that gave them immediate responses; efficiency because it was quick; ease of access to important information and answers when they needed them. students also mentioned that important information was shared by lecturers and fellow students and urgent messages were received and could be posted on the whatsapp group when needed. the fact that both students and lecturers could post messages when they needed to do so, created a sense of belonging as they felt comfortable to be part of this network or learning community. this feeling of belonging also prevent students from feeling isolated and left on their own. regarding specific information, they mentioned examples such as sharing due dates, dates for microsoft teams meetings and assignment information by lecturers. examples of information sharing amongst students referred to interesting and relevant articles they were sharing, and guidance on how to access information on the learning management system. this aspect of information sharing http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 1202022 40(1): 120-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) showed that the whatsapp groups functioned as learning communities, which allowed for interaction, dialoguing and thinking together using digital devices (goldie, 2016). learning took place in this connected context, and these communities are possible because the immediacy and ease of whatsapp messaging have been noted by several authors (for example, church & de oliveira, 2013; alsanie, 2015; sampath et al., 2017). consequently, when students feel a sense of belonging, it can increase their educational success and assist them in staying motivated. in respect of efficiency, it appeared that some participants contrasted this mode of communication with email. this was an unexpected response that showed that email was not their preferred mode of communication, and that social media platforms may be favoured because of their accessibility and immediacy. for example, one participant indicated: whatsapp is handy real-time communication for me. i notice and engage with whatsapp communication sooner than with email (p1). another student had a similar response: the whatsapp group is fast and efficient – information is immediately at hand, rather than having to log into an email that contains so many entries that do not directly relate to my studies (p3). from this response, it seems as if email communication is not necessarily experienced as a user-friendly way of communication. the second sub-theme was the sense of belonging. participants felt that the whatsapp groups put them in contact with their fellow students and therefore assisted them in general with their learning. one participant stated: the communication with my peers has been of value and was engaging (p16). another said: the group helps us to know our peers who also have enrolled in this module. the wa group is a supportive platform. you do not panic alone. you can share your frustrations, and peers and colleagues offer support. it can be lonely to study in odel. the wa group gives you confidence that you have other people also in the course. you know, any time if you need information or support, you can get it from someone immediately. communication and support are amongst the best advantages of the wa group (p14). this statement is particularly important for distance education students who do not share a physical space with their peers and who might not have regular interaction with or know their fellow students and their lecturers (croft, dalton & grant, 2010). this aspect is confirmed by a participant who regarded the whatsapp groups as tools to meet his lecturers and fellow students online, despite the distance. another example of a participant is of relevance: if we did not have this wa group, i would not have known my lecturer and fellow students (p3). the sense of belonging to a group was mentioned by most participants and is related to maslow’s level of social needs, which is considered one of the most important needs for students (peacock & cowan, 2019). although participants referred to the connection they had http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 1212022 40(1): 121-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 van den berg & mudau postgraduate students’ views on the use of whatsapp groups with their fellow students, many also mentioned the connection with the lecturers and other students. one participant stated: our whatsapp groups help to bring students and lecturers together and are also a way of sharing ideas (p6). another added: the whatsapp groups have certainly connected me to the group and create a sense of belonging, collegiality and solidarity (p8). the fact that participants mentioned that they could get information and support whenever they needed it, confirmed that they regarded the whatsapp group as a tool connecting them to their learning community, which is in line with connectivist learning, stating that within such a community, learners can access, process, apply and create information with the help of others connected to the networks and technology (siemens, 2005). thus, whatsapp acted as a catalyst to enhance interaction and connection among students and lecturers in real time across geographical separation caused by the lockdown. 5.2 advantages of whatsapp groups as a communication tool the second theme emerged from the question about the advantages of whatsapp groups. from this theme, two sub-themes emerged, namely affordability and a supporting tool for learning. students regarded whatsapp to be an affordable tool. according to one participant: for me to use whatsapp is more affordable because the social media bundle rates are very affordable compared to any internet data bundle – whatsapp is a cost-effective communication tool with unlimited real-time messaging with the opportunity even to send and receive voice messages (p1). more students noted that they only had data on their phones and that the whatsapp groups helped them to stay connected, despite financial challenges. the affordability of whatsapp communication, confirmed by authors such as church and de oliveira (2013) as well as alsanie (2015), is an important advantage in a context where many students struggle financially. numerous participants found the whatsapp group useful for sharing information, learning material and resources. in order to support learning, sharing information between humans and non-humans virtually is a tenet of connectivist learning (siemens, 2006). it was interesting, that students used the whatsapp groups on several occasions to share relevant information related to their lesson content with each other, confirming that whatsapp was used as an actual learning tool. 5.3 disadvantages of whatsapp as a communication tool students were asked to comment on the disadvantages of their whatsapp groups. their responses indicated distraction and defeating the purpose of the group as sub-themes. three students said the group could easily become a chat group and lose its focus on information sharing. one student, while acknowledging that this had not yet happened in her whatsapp groups, stated: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 1222022 40(1): 122-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) a disadvantage is when whatsapp groups become “chat groups”, instead of focusing on the purpose for which they were created (this has not happened in any of my modules, but i do know that it does happen) (p3). other participants’ responses confirmed that students sometimes forgot the purpose of the group and indulged in irrelevant chat and messages. two participants mentioned that they found the unrelated messages especially disturbing when they had limited time and/or insufficient amounts of data. in fact, the whatsapp groups were sometimes experienced as invasive, distracting and disturbing. in this regard, one participant said: whatsapp messages can be invasive and distracting, especially when people post irrelevant messages (p7). another added: whatsapp can be very distractive. sadly, they are a necessary evil (p13). we found this an interesting finding, because, on the one hand the whatsapp groups lessened feelings of isolation, created connections and a sense of belonging to a learning community, but on the other hand, when students were involved in non-academic chatting, they felt that they did not have time and even found it distractive and evasive. in this regard, so (2016) adds that irrelevant and distracting messages might be disturbing and go as far as interfering with students’ private lives if the messages are not planned and managed well. this means that the purpose of whatsapp groups must be communicated to students when they are created. the disadvantages pointed out by participants raised questions about the management of the whatsapp groups under study. although we as the lecturers did not provide any rules or guidelines for participation in the whatsapp module groups, we are now aware that this is a necessary aspect to plan for in future. this point is confirmed by statista (2017) in concurrence with alubthane and alyoussef (2021) noting that it is common for students using whatsapp for teaching and learning to move on to other issues not related to academic matters. the authors claim that this happens if there are no policies guiding the flow of communication. 5.4 the influence of covid-19 on the use of whatsapp groups this theme flowed from a question on whether and/or how the covid-19 pandemic has changed students’ use of the whatsapp groups. from this theme two sub-themes emerged: the change from a social networking tool to an academic and a professional tool; and mitigating the feeling of loneliness. when asked if the use of whatsapp groups have changed because of the influence of the covid-19 pandemic, participants had different views. nine of them indicated that the purpose of whatsapp groups had not changed for them, but the rest of the participants had opposing views. one student went as far as referring to a “remarkable change in the use of whatsapp” (p2) and admitted that previously she had not paid much attention to whatsapp group communication as it was mainly used for social networking. she believed that since the start of the pandemic, whatsapp groups are increasingly being used as academic and professional platforms. other students made similar comments, saying that whatsapp has become a tool to supplement the other professional communication channels provided by the university. earlier research by gomes et al. (2015) as well as chaka, nkhobo and lephalala (2020) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 1232022 40(1): 123-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 van den berg & mudau postgraduate students’ views on the use of whatsapp groups confirm that social media platforms are needed to complement the formal lms in supporting students. however, from the student responses it seems that there is a new awareness of the need for whatsapp to become a supplementary source of communication and support because of the pandemic. the comment about whatsapp as a tool to supplement formal communication structures at the university was in line with one of our intended purposes, namely, to communicate important messages, events and arrangements by the university during the pandemic – such as protocols and due dates. a study in egypt by sobaih, hasanein and abu elnasr (2020) shows that facebook and whatsapp were the social media platforms most commonly used by staff and students to complement official communication channels. the second sub-theme was reducing feelings of loneliness. students said that the whatsapp groups made them feel less isolated and alone, as in this example: did the purpose change since covid-19? yes, i often feel isolated. especially during the last two weeks of a renewed lockdown, i was really struggling to sit down and work. the whatsapp group just reminded me to get over myself, everyone is feeling the way i do and that i must just work – not feeling alone, therefore it really helped (p2). this comment points to maslow’s identification of the need for connection and belonging to a group – confirmed by madzalan et al. (2021). this need is more pertinent in times of crisis when students do not have the luxury of physical contact, cannot move around freely and might feel isolated. social media such as whatsapp can create a needed sense of connectedness and belonging. 6. conclusion this study was undertaken to report on postgraduate students’ views on the use of whatsapp groups as an online communication tool to support teaching and learning during the covid-19 pandemic. the lockdown rules, isolation and social distancing caused by the pandemic have posed a threat to one of the most basic human needs, which is connection and a sense of belonging. the findings of the study indicate that the whatsapp groups assisted students to communicate and connect with their fellow students and lecturers because the platform was immediate, fast and easy to use, and it created a sense of belonging. whatsapp groups were also deemed suitable because of their affordability and the ease of sharing learning materials. however, whatsapp groups also had disadvantages, such as deteriorating into a chat group and becoming a distraction. the pandemic had brought changes to the purpose of the whatsapp groups for some participants: first, from being mainly a social networking group it became a more academic and professional group to supplement the official communication channels of the institution. the second major change was that it lessened feelings of loneliness and isolation, which is an important finding and a specific contribution to the body of knowledge. based on the findings, this study proposes that odel institutions of higher learning and lecturers in particular should consider using whatsapp groups to support their students, specifically in times of crisis, as they can alleviate feelings of loneliness and isolation while creating connectedness and communities of learning. it is important, though, that the purpose of such whatsapp groups be clearly stated to users and ground rules need to be provided to make whatsapp groups meaningful and fulfil its purpose and prevent abuse. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 1242022 40(1): 124-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) although we conducted this study with care, no study is without its limitations. one limitation of this study is that it involved a small sample of students who were studying modules in one master’s in education programme. furthermore, the feedback was not anonymous to the researchers, and the findings might have been different if we had used a platform with anonymous responses. however, we believe that the student responses were real and honest. this exploratory study should serve as a basis for more research on the possibilities and the use of social media platforms such as whatsapp groups as a communication tool to support learning, in times of crises or otherwise. references agormedah, e. k., henaku, e. a., ayite, d. m. k., & ansah, e. a. 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40(1): 128-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) appendix a: questionnaire on the use of whatsapp as a communication tool to support teaching and learning good day at the beginning of the year, with your permission we have set up whatsapp groups for all the modules in the programme. your responses will assist in gaining more information in this field of research and in our planning for next year. the ultimate goal is to serve students in general, and specifically our unisa students, in a better way. your information in this questionnaire will be treated anonymously and will be used for this research project. your identity will not be revealed to anybody or in any document and all the principles of ethical research will be adhered to (ref: 2020/08/12/90159772/19/am). many thanks in advance. 1. biographical information 1.1 your name and surname 1.2 modules enrolled for 1.3 your current position at your institution 2. questions related to the use of whatsapp as a communication tool to support teaching and learning 2.1 how did the whatsapp (wa) groups assist you with one or more of the following aspects: communication, connection and learning? 2.2 did the purpose of wa groups change since the covid-19 pandemic, and if so, how? 2.3 what do you think the advantages and disadvantages of wa groups are? 2.4 unisa has a learning management system (myunisa) and email address facilities and does not regard wa as an official communication tool. is there any need for adding wa as a communication tool in the module? please motivate. 2.5 lastly, we will appreciate any recommendations for improving communication tools in this programme. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.7 _hlk87003978 _hlk78543596 _hlk78543676 _hlk78544047 _hlk78089522 _hlk78543542 _hlk87004083 _hlk78467407 _hlk79079706 perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2013 university of the free state 129 conceptualising transformation and interrogating elitism: the bale scholarship programme hannah botsis, yasmine dominguez-whitehead & sabrina liccardo in this article, we consider the extent to which a scholarship programme at the university of the witwatersrand (wits) engages with the challenges of transformation. this scholarship programme highlights the transformative potential of a programme that focuses on excellence for a previously under-represented group, but also demonstrates how this type of programme reaffirms the dominant notion of excellence within the university space, which could be read as a reproduction of inequitable practices. theoretically, we make use of bourdieu’s concepts of ‘field’ and ‘capital’ to understand how a space that is socially elite, such as a university, engages with the issue of change. transformation efforts such as bale have meant that previously disadvantaged individuals have opportunities to pursue a university education, these efforts have also served to maintain and perpetuate elitism. this happy “marriage” between elitism and transformation ensures that the university remains elite, while simultaneously pursuing demographic equity and diversity. bale students who successfully complete a university education reap many benefits, through their access to the cultural capital of a wits degree. however bale consists of an exclusive group of students who will personally benefit, while the broad interests of a top-notch university are served. keywords: transformation, elitism, bourdieu, capital, field, south africa, higher education introduction in this article, we consider the extent to which a scholarship programme at the university of the witwatersrand (wits) engages with the challenges of transformation. this hannah botsis school of human and community development, university of the witwatersrand e-mail: hannah.botsis@ gmail.com telephone: 011 717 4503 yasmine dominguezwhitehead school of education, university of the witwatersrand e-mail: yasmine. dominguez-whitehead@ wits.ac.za telephone: 011 717 3283 sabrina liccardo school of human and community development, university of the witwatersrand e-mail: sabrina.liccardo@ gmail.com telephone: 011 717 4503 perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 130 scholarship programme highlights the transformative potential of a programme that focuses on excellence for a previously under-represented group, but also demonstrates how this type of programme reaffirms the dominant notion of excellence within the university space, which could, in some instances, be read as a reproduction of inequitable practices. theoretically, we make use of bourdieu’s concepts of ‘field’ and ‘capital’ to understand how a space that is socially elite, such as a university, engages with the issue of change. we argue that social and intellectual capital are of a mutually reinforcing nature, and thus become difficult to separate. transformation is neither a single objective, nor an orderly process (samoff, 2005). while transformation has been used broadly to refer to multiple efforts and challenges nationally, considerable attention has been paid to transformation as implementing system-wide and ideological changes within higher education (see, for example, makgoba, 1996; beckmann, 2008; oloyede, 2008). against the backdrop of these transformation efforts, wits introduced the bale scholarship programme (bale) in 2006. this programme provides first-generation, academically talented black women from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds with the necessary financial, academic, social, and psychological support needed to aid their adjustment to, retention, and graduation from university. the intention was that this support would enable them to not only graduate within minimum time and supply high-level skills for the labour market, but also make a significant contribution to society. the programme contributes to the reconfiguration of the nature of academic hegemony in south african higher education. a question that has not been addressed is whether this type of scholarship programme successfully transforms the elite nature of intellectual capital. central to wits’ transformation agenda is the notion of excellence. given the merging of discourses of excellence and transformation in bale, our aim in this article is to conceptually assess whether this marriage functions to perpetuate intellectual and social elitism while being viewed as an inclusive exercise. although we acknowledge that universities are, by default, privileged and elite spaces, the notion of elitism (and excellence) itself can function to mask inequitable practices. this article argues that, inasmuch as the university’s transformation agenda aims to move away from past discriminatory practices and achieve excellence, the university inadvertently replicates elitist practices through its transformation efforts. women in science, engineering, and technology and the bale scholarship programme despite the steady but slow increase in their involvement in science, engineering, and technology (set), women continue to be under-represented in these areas. the female student population in the natural sciences is consistently lower than that of male students across africa (teferra & altbach, 2004). identifying women with the talent to excel in set should be an essential component of social and economic botsis et al. conceptualising transformation and interrogating elitism: the bale scholarship program 131 development, because the exclusion of women in the “knowledge domain of society will aggravate existing gender inequalities” (taeb, 2005: 7). bale aims to increase the number of women in set and simultaneously provide opportunities to black students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. as part of the recruitment process, wits asked educators and school principals to nominate excellent grade 12 learners residing in the areas of gauteng, limpopo and mpumalanga, who were in the top 5% of grade 11 and achieved a minimum of 65% in mathematics, science, and english on higher grade in their grade 11 final examinations. nominators were required to rank and comment on the nominees’ academic achievement, motivation levels, personal qualities, involvement in community service, leadership, and english communication skills. nominees who received a firm offer from their chosen faculty were awarded scholarships. in total, twenty students entering the university in 2007 and 2008 were awarded the bale scholarships; ten students registered in the faculty of engineering and the built environment and the remaining ten students registered in the faculty of science. of the twenty bale students, one failed her first year of study and her scholarship was subsequently terminated. nineteen students obtained continued funding for the maximum of four years. nine students (45% of cohorts 1 and 2) completed their undergraduate degree in minimum time (eight of whom are registered in the faculty of science and one in the faculty of engineering and the built environment). the current target, set by wits, indicates that 70% of students should graduate in the minimum time plus two years (wits, 2004: 11). currently, the bale programme is on track to reach this target, as fourteen students (70% of the entire cohort) are expected to graduate within the required time frame. this target is well above the national target of 30% for set (ministry of education, 2001), as set by the department of education. we now turn to examine how the broader transformation discourses in the academy and at wits, in particular, interact with the principles of bale and how, theoretically, we can make sense of them using bourdieu’s concept of ‘capital’ and ‘field’ in relation to higher education. transformation in the academy the transformation efforts taking place within higher education are linked to the national socio-political-economic post-apartheid transformation project (van wyk, 2006). transformation has thus become a ubiquitous concept that embodies divergent meanings. as noted by soudien (2010: 882), it is necessary to illustrate the diverging emphases that have been placed on transformation. our intention is not to provide an exhaustive account of the utilisation of transformation in higher education, but rather to demonstrate the multiple and varying ways in which it has been employed. transformation in higher education has been utilised in the context of examining issues of race and gender (see, for example, mabokela, 2001; erasmus, 2006; shackleton, riordan & simonis, 2006). this literature speaks to the challenges that perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 132 women and black individuals continue to face at universities across the country (including issues of participation, success, retention, and discrimination as well as issues of promotion faced by staff), particularly at the historically white universities (hwus). the manner in which university staff and management have been affected by transformation efforts has also received considerable attention (see, for example, makgoba, 1997; mapesela & hay, 2006; portnoi, 2009; hemson & singh, 2010). transformation has also come to refer to the changing institutional structures of the university, addressing issues of equity, access, efficiency, effectiveness, and redress (see, for example, cloete & moja, 2005; van wyk, 2006; akoojee & nkomo, 2007; beckmann, 2008). furthermore, transformation has been discussed as a curriculum, teaching, and research imperative (see, for example, waghid, 2002; 2008; esakov, 2009; van wyk, alexander & moreeng, 2010). in addition, transformation has been discussed in the context of the university’s role in globalisation and internationalisation (see, for example, kishun, 2007; mclellan, 2008). yet another focus of transformation has found expression in higher education policy endeavours (see, for example, eckel, 2001; muller, maassen & cloete, 2006; cloete, 2006). the aforementioned discourses of transformation are not necessarily mutually exclusive; the following section focuses on how these intermeshing transformation discourses have been dealt with at wits. transformation at the university of the witwatersrand by analysing speeches; university governing documents and reports; publicly available information as well as the mission, vision, aims, and values statements, it is apparent that wits has conceptualised transformation by focusing on three areas, namely diversity and demographic equity; excellence, and inclusivity.1 these areas are not mutually exclusive, indeed, according to the into the future: transforming wits report, “transformation is, most importantly, a multi-dimensional process. it cannot be fully understood by singling out only one aspect” (wits, 2004: 2). diversity and demographic equity the university utilises a broad definition of diversity that includes race, gender, ethnicity, language, religion, and so on, but also diversity of scholarship. the focus on diversity and attaining demographic equity has been central to transformation efforts at wits: transformation is a process of negotiated organisational change that breaks decisively with past discriminatory practices in order to create an environment where the full potential of everyone is realised and where diversity — both social and intellectual — is respected and valued and where it is central to the achievement of the institution’s goals (wits, 2004: 2). based on this definition, transformation refers not only to respecting and valuing diversity, but also to acknowledging it as fundamental to the university’s aims. this definition notes the need to transcend the discriminatory practices of the botsis et al. conceptualising transformation and interrogating elitism: the bale scholarship program 133 past, thereby recognising past institutionalised racist and patriarchal practices that inhibited demographic equity. in discussing wits’ transformation agenda, vice chancellor loyiso nongxa stated that wits “should strive to reflect a future south african society which is successful, which will be heterogeneous and which will derive its strengths from its rich diversity with regard to beliefs, language, and religion” (wits, 2003: 11). furthermore, he called for the eradication of “race and gender stereotyping in academia” (wits, 2003: 5). this perspective on transformation is consistent with the aim of achieving demographic equity. for instance, the university needs to work toward “destroy[ing] the association between being black and not doing well” (wits, 2004: 13). in other words, achieving demographic equity is aligned with dispelling long-standing myths and unfounded claims, particularly about groups of people whose opportunities were limited due to apartheid policies and practices. in addition, demographic equity has been discussed by monitoring student enrolment and access. the university noted that “intelligent strategies are needed to manage enrolment that will be sensitive to, amongst others: staff-student ratios, race, gender, socio-economic diversity, [and] disability” (wits, 2005a: 10). transformation is not limited to racial representivity, but also focuses on delivery, efficiency, and effectiveness (wits, 2005b: 3). excellence excellence at wits refers to academic excellence, excellence in service, and internationally acclaimed excellence. while transformation initially centred on diversity and demographic equity, this focus has been broadened to include a focus on excellence. for instance, it has been noted that: conversation about transformation at wits ha[s] moved from a strong focus on staff and student demography to one which views a change in demography as a part of the larger project of transformation, which will broaden and deepen the levels of excellence in all the relations and functions within the institution (wits, 2004: 1). it follows that transformation cannot be about compromising standards, but should instead be “first and foremost about the pursuit of excellence” (wits, 2004: 4). this is not to say that excellence is not compatible with diversity and demographic equity at wits. indeed, “excellence and equity need not be intractably cast in conceptual tension and greater staff diversity can indicate greater equity ... [and] potentially contributes to excellence” (wits, 2004: 30).2 the transformation discourse at wits has thus worked toward dispelling the myth that excellence, diversity, and equity are competing priorities. with respect to academic transformation imperatives, the university recognises a need to assist students in achieving excellence. this would be done by providing assistance to, and understanding the needs of students for whom english is not their home language and students who have not had the opportunity to acquire academic perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 134 skills during high school (wits, 2004: 12-13); bale endeavours to accomplish these practices. inclusivity the transformation discourse at wits has consistently held that transformation should be an inclusive development that considers all members of the university community: transformation should be for all of us, by all of us, and for everything that we hold dear and will make us sit comfortably among the best institutions in this country, the region and the world ... the will and the commitment to transform must become everyone’s business (wits, 2005b: 6-7). transformation is intended to benefit all university members and the university urges everyone to participate in transformation efforts. in espousing this approach, wits elicits a united front that takes all of its members into consideration. furthermore, the university denounces exclusionary approaches and notes that these are equated with apartheid ideology (wits, 2005b: 7). similarly, vice chancellor nongxa has insisted that transformation at wits must not be viewed as “a process of empowering some people at the expense of others” (wits, 2003: 4). interrogating elitism at the university in interrogating elitism, bourdieu’s concepts of ‘field’ and ‘cultural capital’ (of which intellectual capital is a subset) are helpful in showing how it is the nature of elite spaces to reproduce themselves, by claiming a sense of academic autonomy. a ‘field’ is a social space that functions according to certain organising principles that meditate and reproduce systems of social classification (bourdieu, 1993). higher education is understood as a particular type of field that operates differently to say economic and political fields.3 in a field, people adopt positions and strategies in relation to their social location, in order to attain social and cultural capital or maintain their position of power within this space. ‘cultural capital’ can exist in the ‘embodied state’, as in one’s comportment, in the ‘objectified state’, as in the form of cultural goods, and in the ‘institutionalised state’. the institutionalised state is of most interest, in this instance, because educational qualifications as a form of objectification fall within this state. the degree confers properties in the form of cultural capital which it is presumed to guarantee (bourdieu, 1997: 47). in other words, this form of cultural capital is available to ‘outsiders’, albeit with the constraints of achieving the degree in the first place (functioning within the strategies of the given field). a university education is a form of institutionalised cultural capital, called intellectual capital. it could be argued that a division exists between intellectual and social capital because of the purported autonomous nature of the academy. however, we adopt naidoo’s stance that the two are mutually reinforcing. according to her, “[h]igher education is conceptualised as a sorting machine that selects students according to botsis et al. conceptualising transformation and interrogating elitism: the bale scholarship program 135 an implicit social classification and reproduces the same students according to an explicit academic classification, which in reality is very similar to the implicit social classification” (naidoo, 2004: 459, emphasis in original). in other words, higher education as a field produces its own strategies for reproducing itself (such as wits’ academic requirements for excellence), but these are closely aligned with social capital outside the university. it thus follows that higher education “reproduces the principles of social class and other forms of domination under the cloak of academic neutrality” (naidoo, 2004: 460). in describing the transformative outcomes of the bale programme, it conforms to the supposedly neutral academic requirements of the university (excellence) which reproduces the social capital that has dominance beyond the university. this is borne out in the employment statistics of different graduates discussed below. by appealing to academic merit (excellence), the university seemingly separates issues of social and intellectual elitism. a scholarship programme such as bale, while working towards transforming the higher education sector for women in set, simultaneously functions to “codify the appropriate capital required to enter the university field, [and becomes] a crucial locus of struggle because it serve[s] to legitimize or delegitimize principles underlying the recognition of existing capital in the field” (naidoo, 2004: 465). this then highlights how bale contributes to transformation at the university, by broadening access, but almost paradoxically reconstitutes academic hegemonies between hwus and historically black universities (hbus) in the south african landscape. this reveals the truly multidimensional nature of transformation efforts, where outcomes of this type of programmes are nuanced, complex and, at times, even contradictory. the current (historically informed) state of higher education substantiates the theoretical understanding of the reproduction of social and intellectual capital. while exclusion from higher education is no longer formally characterised by racism, it has been reconstituted through the medium of class, and the transformation debate can thus be rendered in these terms (soudien, 2010: 883). for example, in their investigation of university drop-outs, letseka and maile (2008) found that 70% of the families of drop-outs held low economic status. nevertheless, being part of the elite who have a higher education qualification does not necessarily equalise the life opportunities of graduates across racial groups. in fact, unemployment rates for individuals from hwus were significantly lower than those from hbus, with a large discrepancy between unemployment rates for african graduates (40%) from hbus relative to those of white students graduating from hwus (10%) (bohrat, mayet & visser, 2010). while african students’ chances of being employed increase if they attend a hwu, they are still worse off than their white peers in finding jobs (bohrat et al., 2010). corroborating these figures, in a survey of employers’ attitudes it was found that university of study was important in making decisions about who they employed, with few trusting the quality of the degrees from hbus (gultig, 2000: 45). perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 136 these statistics speak to engrained inequality in the higher education system despite efforts to demographically and culturally transform tertiary spaces. hwus continue to be places associated with quality, prestige, and racially inequitable experiences, even where demographic representivity might be near reached (gultig, 2000: 51). hbus and hwus are on two differing transformation trajectories. hwus remain elite spaces, where the qualifications are considered valuable and high quality precisely because of their historically gained privilege in comparison to qualifications proffered at hbus. transformation means radically different things at these institutions. hwus are concerned with demographically transforming to become ‘representative’ of the wider population, while closely guarding what they consider to be their excellence, ingrained in their institutional and cultural norms. hbus, on the other hand, have always been ‘representative’ in the crude racial sense, but because of their historical disadvantage, need to pursue a transformation agenda that focuses on improving the quality of their qualifications. the 1995 white paper on education and training initiated a philosophical tension between the political and educational: “balancing the political imperative to transform the philosophy and ideology which underpins south african education while at the same time fulfilling an economic imperative” to develop a system that will educate a more competent workforce (gultig, 2000: 40). this establishes a tension between protecting elitist spaces and the need to substantively transform the system. when considering elitism, the debate as to whether excellence and democratic values are incompatible (smith, 1986: 1) appears to be a red herring. smith speaks about the need for “open elites” of demonstrated merit, but this idea seems to run into trouble when contrasted with bourdieu’s explication of the different forms of capital in society – the manoeuvring of economic, social and cultural capital in protecting and reproducing elite spaces. social capital, as networks of institutionalised relationships (bourdieu, 1997: 51), is instructive in understanding continued social and intellectual elitism at hwus, as it allows for the co-opting of ‘outsiders’ in the name of transformation, while maintaining elitism and the value of cultural capital: if the internal competition for the monopoly of legitimate representation of the group is not to threaten the conversion and accumulation of the capital which is the basis of the group, the member of the group must regulate the conditions of access to the right to declare oneself a member of the group (bourdieu, 1997: 53). the notion of academic excellence maintains this monopoly, as demonstrated in wits’ transformation discourse, indicating that one may be admitted to, and remain in the institution if one is able to successfully navigate the university academically, socially, and institutionally. bale functions to maintain these forms of capital by providing access to an elite university space, while protecting the purported neutrality of the university’s academic agenda. botsis et al. conceptualising transformation and interrogating elitism: the bale scholarship program 137 the reproduction of elite spaces must be legitimated by appeals to excellence and high standards. when an elite group is critiqued or challenged on “the arbitrariness of the entitlements transmitted … the holders of this capital have an ever greater interest in resorting to reproduction strategies capable of ensuring better-disguised transmission” (bourdieu, 1997: 55). the university has a vested interest in protecting the economic value of its degrees, and will welcome new people into its space, but only on terms that preserve its social, intellectual, and economic capital. the university embraces a form of transformation which protects its social and intellectual elitism by providing access to a unique group of bale students in the name of quality and excellence. bale can indeed be viewed as a transformative project at wits. the scholarship programme recruits and sponsors academically talented black women who have performed exceptionally well, but who do not have the financial resources to pursue a university degree. this endeavour actively contributes to demographic equity and diversity at the university, and thus to the transformation agenda. however, it is pertinent to interrogate transformation, as did van louw and beets (2011). they pose the following questions: “transformation … for whom, for what, and with which results” (van louw & beets 2011: 179)? while the discourse of transformation at wits has been anchored in demographic equity and inclusivity, excellence has also played a key role. this pursuit of excellence invokes being among the best and most exclusive universities in the world – part of an elite group of students and intellectuals. however, the south african case is particularly bound up with histories of race and class for institutions that previously restricted access to these prestigious educational opportunities. undoing this legacy is complicated work, because in south africa elite spaces continue to conflate race, class and academic ability. transformation and elitism are tactfully intertwined and are manifested in bale, but do not address the crucial issue of institutional culture. it is undeniable that specific norms, values, practices, and beliefs are embedded in institutions. the institutional culture at hwus serves to maintain and renew privilege. more so, it legitimates old social elites and simultaneously conjures new ones, thus recreating the elite social strata. in other words, structures designed to reproduce privilege will do so regardless of the particularities of participants. the crucial issue is the nature of social and intellectual capital that can be accrued by individuals and that feeds into institutional reproduction of privilege. indeed, participation in bale is reserved for only the most distinguished academically talented women who qualify; as such, bale recipients can reap the benefits of belonging to an exclusive group. conclusion while transformation efforts such as bale have meant that previously disadvantaged individuals have opportunities to pursue a university education, these efforts have also served to maintain and perpetuate elitism. in this view, transformation consists of actively recruiting a limited number of academically talented black women, whose perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 138 families have scarce financial resources, to become part of an elite group that has, for the most part, been previously dominated by white men. this happy “marriage” between elitism and transformation ensures that the university remains elite, while simultaneously pursuing demographic equity and diversity. we should not ascribe excessive intent to those operating within the institution in terms of protecting privilege, because individuals within these spaces do not necessarily conspire to exclude certain groups or maintain privilege; instead, individuals tend to conform to normative practices that “contribute to both the accumulation of field specific capital and to the reproduction of the structure of ‘social space’” (naidoo, 2004: 460). the dual transformative and elitist aspects of bale allow the university to kill two birds with one stone. there is no doubt that bale students who successfully complete a university education reap many benefits, through their access to the cultural capital of a wits degree. however, it is noteworthy that bale consists of an exclusive group of students who will personally benefit, while the broad interests of a top-notch university are served. references akoojee s & nkomo m 2007. access and quality in south african higher education: the twin challenges of transformation. south african journal of higher 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johannesburg: university of the witwatersrand. university of the witwatersrand (wits) 2004. into the future: transforming wits. johannesburg: university of the witwatersrand. university of the witwatersrand (wits) 2005a. the university’s academic aims and values: a commitment to scholarship. johannesburg: university of the witwatersrand. university of the witwatersrand (wits) 2005b. university forum discussion document: the transformation debate at wits. johannesburg: university of the witwatersrand. endnotes 1. this is not to say that the concept of transformation has not been conceptualised in additional ways by particular departments, units or entities at wits. the three areas mentioned, however, reflect how the university as a whole has grappled with the transformation discourse. 2. this quote draws heavily from subotzky’s (2001) work. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2013 university of the free state 58 jabulani nyoni department of educational leadership and management university of south africa e-mail: nyonij@unisa.ac.za telephone: 012 429 4474 the efficacy of “catch-up programmes” in south african high schools: a legal jinx jabulani nyoni the south african state is mandated by sections 28(2) and 29(1) of the south african constitution to make provision for the education of a south african child in fulfilment of the child’s constitutional rights. teacher unions (tus) and provincial departments of basic education (dbes) have often promised south african high school student body, in particular, and society at large, in general, that the compensation of time lost during a teachers’ strike is duly accounted for during the implementation of subsequent compensatory intervention strategy (cis) “catch-up programmes”. the article argues that, as long as cis “catch-up programmes” remain voluntary for both educators and learners, without the backing of enforceable mandatory legislative instruments that would hold public schools and dbes to account, learners will continue losing valuable contact time, thereby jeopardising their chances of doing well in their academic school work and being denied their constitutional right to basic education in the process. the use of postpositivist, legal, rational, qualitative interpretive phenomenological analysis (ipa) was meant to explore how high school principals, teachers and students experienced cis “catch-up programmes” implementation processes by dbes (smith & osborn, 2008). keywords: catch-up programme, rule of law, child’s best interests, basic education introduction despite the phenomenal increase in access to funding and in the progress towards redistributing funding to poor schools, the quality of education for many black south african learners has remained mainly poor. on the whole, efforts to raise the quality of education for poor people have failed (national planning commission report, 2011). the report (2011: 261) goes on to infer that “only 1 per cent of african schools are top performers when it comes to high school certificate results compared to 31 per nyoni the efficacy of “catch-up programmes” in south african high schools: a legal jinx 59 cent of formerly privileged schools”. of african schools, 88% are in a poor performing state: “an improvement in the matriculation results in 2010, which brought the pass rate up to 67,8%, is a misleading indicator of success” (national planning commission report, 2011: 261). because of very low pass requirements, the reality is that, in 2010, only 15% of students who sat the examination achieved an average mark of 40% or more. withdrawal of labour by teachers, organised by teacher unions (tus), naturally causes disruptions in teaching and learning in schools. the study sought to capture the views and experiences of high school principals, teachers and pupils on how the departments of basic education (dbes) in south africa organise compensatory intervention strategy (cis) “catch-up programmes” in schools to compensate for the lost time during teachers’ strikes. theoretical reflections legitimisation theory has its roots in weber’s concept of legal, rational and political authority, the classic insight into politics as the simultaneous development of individuals and relationships with the community. weber (1958) believes that community members and leaders of state organs (public schools included) attribute legitimacy to a legal order insofar as its laws have been enacted (this concept of legal authority and its legitimacy should be understood in the light of arguments of natural law and legal positivism) (weber, 1958: 3). postpositivists who advocate for a shift of boundaries suggest that leadership must be allowed to think “outside the box” so to speak, by accommodating the plurality of voices. in line with postpositivist theory, several authors such as heifetz (1994), ladkin (2010) and grint (2008) have attempted to reconceptualise organisational leadership, for example, to a postpositivist view (postpositivism is the underlying philosophical paradigm shift associated with “design”). postpositivist research principles emphasise meaning and the creation of new knowledge, and are able to support committed social movements, that is, movements that aspire to change the world and contribute towards social justice (richie & rigano, 2001: 752). grint (2008) proffers that leadership takes place when commanding (ordering others what needs to be done) and planning (efficient management of resource allocation) not only do not work but may also interfere with effectiveness, especially under very volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (high vuca) circumstances (see figure 1). dbes’ and public schools’ bureaucratic operations are conventionally associated with planning strategies that involve human control over natural and social environments by employing rational methods. grint (2008) opines that, in complex operations, it takes all three strategies, namely command, management and leadership to win (see figure 1). command is associated with speed of decision-making and the critical need to either do or not do something, even if the public school manager is not certain whether his/ her command is the right one. the sources of power for command are sometimes associated with coercion and compliance. command is autocratic (hierarchical and perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 60 coercive) in that it requires obedience (in its ideal form, execution-without-question) (see figure 1). public school management is associated with deliberate setting of rules, process engineering, and rationally derived resource-allocation decisions to handle tame (recurrent) problems that have been solved previously. key management values are bureaucratic and technocratic (technological). the source of power for public school management in south africa is regulated by legal-rational rules and procedures (empowering provisions such as the constitution, the schools act, the child act, the policy act and a plethora of related policies to name but a few) that are underpinned by the rule of law. leadership, on the other hand, is associated with wicked situations that make command and managerial technical rationality problematic. whether the situation is diagnosed as critical, tame, or wicked should indicate whether to exercise command, management or leadership (grint, 2008). the complexity of the situation may demand elements of all three – and it is a skill to blend them appropriately (paparone, 2010). the key source of power for leadership is democratic (heterarchical) in nature in that it comes from those who, through intuitive processes and emotional responses, choose to follow. state organs’ (public schools included) leadership and management principles and practices are based mostly on the rule of law. invariably, the rule of law implies that decisions taken by the state organs must comply with the rule of law and, in certain circumstances, the prescripts allow for consultation, accountability, collective decision-making processes, and so on. nyoni the efficacy of “catch-up programmes” in south african high schools: a legal jinx 61 leadership: intuiting appropriateness wicked high vuca tame routine critical for example, time sensitive command (provide answers.) high concentration leadership (ask questions) more decentralisation management (organise process) moderate centralisation coercion/ compliance (underpinned by autocratic value) managerial legal-rational rule-following (underpinned by bureaucratic/ technocratic value) emotional influence (underpinned by democratic value) increasing requirements for design (i.e., more collaborative and unstructured)source of power level of decision uncertainty station figure 1: command, leadership and management strategies (adapted by paparone, 2010 from grint, 2008). figure 1 presents an adaptation of grint’s model. the situation dictates which strategy (command, leadership or management) should dominate given a situation – hence, the question as to whether to command, manage and/or lead is based on appropriateness (what others have called appreciative judgement). vuca is the acronym stemming from the adjectives ‘volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous’, which describe the circumstances (high vuca circumstances). taking into cognisance the “best interests of learners” in compliance with sections 28(2) and 29(1) of the south african constitution, provincial dbes, in order to compensate for lost time during teachers’ strikes, organise cis “catch-up” programmes, particularly for grade 12 learners. the national dbe uses the command style (see figure 1) to order its sister provincial departments to organise comprehensive ciss to help students catch up with lost time. bloch (2010: 12), however, contends that “[t]here is little evidence that returning teachers are interested in helping pupils, especially grade 12 classes, catch up on their lessons after the strike, which has been only temporarily suspended”. bloch (2010: 10) goes perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 62 on to posit that the majority of the teachers returning to the classroom will be “more concerned with getting paid for the days they were on strike or extra wages for catch-up camps”. tus are quick to add that any extra tuition outside working hours must be remunerated – a way of recovering money lost by striking members as a result of the implementation of the no-work-no-pay rule. this article endeavours to argue that, despite the concerted effort by the dbes to comply with sections 28(2) and 29(1) of the south african constitution by organising ciss, the study results indicate that such efforts are generally inadequate. the convention on the rights of the child (1989) acknowledges education as a right of every child. literature review on teacher absenteeism the national bureau of economic research (2009) carried out a study on how teacher absences impact on student achievement. they concluded that rates of teacher absenteeism and the effects on production are currently contemporary topics of conversation in many organisations worldwide. high rates of absenteeism may signal poor labour-management relationship. research findings indicate that “each 10 days of teacher absence reduces learner’s mathematics achievement by 3.3% of a standard deviation” (the national bureau of economic research 2009: 28). the effect would be unimaginable, should students miss 50 days or more. in africa, an observation by bradley (2002: 1), following a 17-day teachers’ strike in cairo, egypt, concluded that the time lost was never made up, and instead of education officials extending the school year, they closed the school term “as scheduled on may 29”. this decision cost approximately us$400.000 in state grants, “because it did not offer enough days to qualify for the money” (bradley, 2002: 237). significantly, protracted industrial teachers’ strikes anywhere in the world take a huge toll on tax payers’ money, particularly in developing countries such as south africa. in south africa, the so-called cis targets grade 12 learners and hardly any mention is made of the other high school grades or even primary school learners. protracted industrial strikes affect both primary and high school learners. inadequacies in the preparation of grade 1 learners might translate into poorly prepared learners up to grade 12 (chisholm, 2005). conclusions drawn from chisholm, hoadley, wa kivulu, brooks, prinsloo, kgobe, mosia, narsee & rule’s (2005) analysis of the time diary filled in by a nationally representative sample of 3.909 educators revealed that, whereas educators spent less time overall on their activities than the total number of hours specified by policy; whereas policy expected 1 720 hours (translated into 43 hours per week or 8.6 hours per day in a 5-day week) to be spent on all activities, educators on average spent 1 599 hours per year, 41 hours per week and 8.2 hours per day on all their school-related activities. in essence, educators also spent less time teaching or instructing than was specified in the policy. whereas policy expected educators to spend between 64% nyoni the efficacy of “catch-up programmes” in south african high schools: a legal jinx 63 and 79% of the 35-hour week on teaching, the average time that teachers spent on teaching is 46% of the 35-hour week, or 41% of their total school-related time, an average of 3.2 hours a day. on average, more than half of the teachers’ working week was taken up with administration and non-administration-related activities. christie (2006: 221) points out that there is no doubt that resistance has always been present in south african township and rural black schools. she chronicles the history of the resistance from the time of the early dutch settlers through the years culminating in the june 1976 south western townships (soweto) uprisings and beyond. on strikes, christie (2006: 228) posits that “[f]rom january 1973 to june 1974 there were more than 300 strikes”. if this trend is anything to go by, then it would appear that a strike culture has been embedded in south african society, in general, and labour organisations, in particular, even attaining political power post-1994. teachers’ right to strike the education labour relations council (elrc), in line with south africa’s constitution, confirms that, “every employee has the right to strike and every employer has recourse to lock-out …” (section 64(1)). teachers can be absent legally if they are affiliated union members and take part in a union-organised strike (protected strike). the right to strike is not absolute, but limitations can be instituted in terms of the law (section 36(1)) of the constitution of the republic of south africa. by the same token, learning in schools has to take place within stipulated time frames in line with notional hours. the school timetable is the key to ensuring the uninterrupted flow of teaching and learning. one might concur that strikes interrupt this flow. the subject guidelines provides an idea of how many lessons per week or cycle the school management team (smt) in south african schools will allocate for the different subjects on the timetable for the school’s instructional programmes. this is done to ensure that the learners get enough contact time to complete the syllabus and to have enough contact/engaged time to be able to pass at the end-of-year examinations and proceed to the next grade (turner, 2007). the democratic alliance (da), one of south africa’s opposition parties, is lobbying for the government to declare education an essential service and to ban strikes in this sector. essential service means that industrial action may not take place during working hours, but it can proceed on condition that provisions are made for learners to be adequately attended to by a skeletal staff or that it takes place outside working hours. the removal of the teachers’ right to strike will entail restricting teachers to schools and do the jobs for which they are employed, and hold them to account. however, the dichotomy in south africa seems to be how to maintain educators’ rights without compromising the learners’ rights. the study revealed that teachers and their unions were not, “keen to lose the only weapon that would make the employer understand”, as they indicated. students also supported the teachers’ position. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 64 critical consciousness of the rule of law skapska (1990: 700) defines rule of law as “the legal control of anyone who wields power – the strict observance of formal law by the authorities”. south africa, as a constitutional democracy, needs to conceptualise and promote a regime and culture based on the rule of law. lawlessness is an important social and political problem in contemporary south africa, one serious enough to threaten the stability of the regime (gibson & gouws, 1997). the rule of law implies that: 1. law is sovereign over all authority, therefore it is government under the law; 2. law must be clear and certain in its content and accessible and predictable for the subject; 3. law must be general in its application; 4. there exists an independent judiciary charged with the interpretation and application of the law to which every aggrieved citizen must have a right to access; 5. the law must have procedural and ethical content (mohammed, 1989: 23). for the rule of law to prevail, there must be, “the subordination of all state organs and state officials to the law, setting limitations to their power, guaranteeing civil rights and liberties and principles of due process” skapska: 700). it was noted from the study that principals and teachers were not conversant with the tenets of the law. they admitted that they relied mostly on circulars from dbes and information from their unions. research-specific objective the study collected views and experiences of public high school principals, teachers and students on the implementation of cis “catch-up programmes” in tembisa, gauteng, south africa. research methodology the qualitative method focused on statements, experiences, narratives, ideas and stories provided by the participants (seymour, 2006). the study used interpretive phenomenological analysis (ipa) to explore, in depth, how participants experienced and ascribed meaning to cis “catch-up programmes” (smith & osborn 2008). finlay and ballinger (2006) highlight how phenomenology is both a philosophy and an approach to research, which allows in-depth exploration of how phenomenon appeared in one’s consciousness and of the nature and meaning of such cis phenomenon. nyoni the efficacy of “catch-up programmes” in south african high schools: a legal jinx 65 the study included ten principals, twenty teachers and fifty grade 12 learners in tembisa, ekurhuleni north region in gauteng province, drawn from ten high schools. during the three sessions of focus groups, semi-structured interviews and observations made, i focused on the language used, cues and gestures as well as stories about how cis was implemented in their respective schools (van manen, 1990). in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with public school teachers and principals who were contracted to teach students during the cis “catch-up programme” episodes, as well as cis participating learners. five cycles of focus group discourses on the efficacy of the cis “catch-up programmes” in schools included high school teachers, representatives of high school learners (rcl). interviews were conducted until data saturation. methodological rigour and ethical considerations ethics is integral to the way we think about rigour and is intertwined in our approach to research, in the way in which we ask questions, how we respond to answers, and the way in which we reflect on the material (creswell, 2007). representativeness of samples is a critical issue in exploratory research. to the extent that one’s sample size is not representative of a population, generalisability of results is limited. sampling the purposive sampling method targeted ten principals of public high schools, twenty teachers (educators) and fifty rcl matriculation learners in ekurhuleni north district, gauteng province, since they were directly affected by the cis “catch-up programmes”. summary of findings, discussion and recommendations the discussion of the results is framed within the context of teachers’ right to strike versus the best interests of learners (section 28(2) of the south african constitution). findings indicate that cis “catch-up programmes” are singularly organised by the dbes without consulting stakeholder partners such as principals and parents through school governing bodies (sgbs). as a result, cis “catch-up programmes” do not attract a vast number of potential needy learners and there is no law regulating such activities. section 3(1) of the schools act states that every parent must cause every learner, for whom s/he is responsible, to attend school. if parents are omitted from cis arrangements, it becomes difficult for them to encourage learners to attend. principals the majority of the principals argued that cis “catch-up programmes” are organised by dbes through various structures in the education fraternity, but exclude the perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 66 school system and parents. despite the fact that public schools fall under the dbe administration structure, there was one common thread of statement on a number of occasions: these cis “catch-up programmes” are not our responsibility but that of dbes. we are only instructed to either make our facilities available or instruct our learners to go to designated venues. logistics and other arrangements were only communicated to schools as directives. there is no accountability in terms of monitoring and implementation of the process, quality assurance and appropriateness of material, as some principals argued: “departments of education work with teacher unions. the information is relayed through circulars for us to implement”. students the majority of the students argued that “catch up programmes” were simply a waste of time and money: “we are packed into buses and moved to venues that are not familiar to us. teachers are strangers to us. halls are always full and they are like a rally! sometimes buses are not even available.” reasons put forward were that classes were too large and individual attention was compromised. what they experienced was mass teaching. what came out strongly was that students came from different institutions and their degree of attainment was at different levels. programmes catered only for matriculants; the remainder of the student body was left out: “we come from different schools and it takes time to know each other well and group work is difficult to do!” most students emphasised the point that it would appear that the most affected students come from the townships, while those from former model c (former white schools) are conspicuously absent from such programmes. the reason put forward was that former model c schools usually remain functional during teachers’ strikes. teachers accounting, mathematics, sciences, business studies, english, economics, and agricultural sciences were addressed daily. the majority of the teachers indicated the following: classes are really too big and unmanageable. how can one control a class that is bigger than 100? the money is small that i cannot afford to buy petrol to the venue. the whole exercise is futile and it must be done in all schools rather than move leaners. even if the allowances are improved classes are still too big! attendance by students was poor, in some instances; remuneration was not commensurate with work done and it was never paid on time. some teachers’ comments were: “working conditions are bad and logistically arrangements often nyoni the efficacy of “catch-up programmes” in south african high schools: a legal jinx 67 leave a lot to be desired. we sometimes receive insufficient teaching materials or at times delivered late.” the period involved did not compensate fully for the time lost during the industrial action since learners received two hours per subject per session. however, the majority of the teachers conceded that it is their moral responsibility and duty to compensate for lost time in their respective schools without being encouraged to do so. discussion ad hoc ciss are inadequate and violate the learners’ rights to basic education; first, learners are removed from their natural learning environments and accommodated in foreign spaces; secondly, learners who attend for a limited period of time need to adjust socially, emotionally and psychologically. the period of adjustment takes time, thus unsettling them; thirdly, environments do not foster productive and constructive engagements, or familiarisation with the new teachers and other students. students go through adjustment modes in order to accommodate new teachers and environments. mass lectures precede all the activities at those venues. learnercenteredness is completely compromised, peer-to-peer support systems are missing and the levels at which individual learners operate, are ignored. teachers’ rights dominate the discourse of teaching; learners fear teachers’ rights because of the consequences of teachers embarking on a strike when their rights are compromised. grint (2008) opines that, in complex operations, it takes all three strategies, namely command, leadership and management to win (see figure 1). grint’s (2008) theory suggests that leadership at dbes and school levels must adhere to the rule of law by adopting the three strategies in order to effectively implement cis programmes at school level. the cis “catch-up programmes” should, in all intents and purposes, be regulated to ensure clear consequential mandatory outcomes. cis “catch-up programmes” must not be left as voluntary options for both educators and learners, without the backing of enforceable mandatory legislative instruments such as policy that would hold schools and dbes to account. at present, there is no legislation and/or policy that regulate ciss in public schools in south africa. recommendations monyooe (2009: 47) believes that south africa needs radical changes in order to save its education system: “planning, organising and monitoring of the teaching and learning environment is paramount to achieving this ideal”. it needs a professionally qualified body to monitor school performance in terms of teacher/learner performance and achievement and the overall leadership and management of schools, otherwise accountability will remain elusive and that has a huge impact on education in south africa. there is a need for commitment by all stakeholders (teachers, government and the public (parents)) to the rule of law and allow the national monitoring and perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 68 evaluation unit to do support supervision and quality assurance at school level and give all responsible teachers and principals the opportunity to account. an amendment to an existing south african schools act (sasa) legislation designed to curb teacher abuse and to hold them to account is long overdue and should include all learners, irrespective of their current school grades. the state should embark on empowerment programmes that are designed to educate sgbs, in particular, and society, in general, on their right to demand quality teaching and learning in public schools. learners need to receive their full teaching time and, should there be in the event of any disruptions, legislation should be in place to ensure that learners’ lost time is fully compensated. all parties involved with the education of the south african learner must uphold the rule of law and all the decisions taken must serve to advance the interests of all children without prejudice. a great deal of attention is paid to teachers’ rights, but very little to their responsibilities. teachers’ rights are easier when teachers are performing; rights will be respected when responsibilities are looked after. conclusion section 28(2) of the south african constitution states that “[a] child’s best interests are of paramount importance in every matter concerning the child” and section 29(1) affirms that “[e]veryone has the right – (a) to a basic education”. the study findings indicate that cis “catch-up programmes” are organised by the dbes without the consultation between itself, the public schools and the parents. public school principals are merely instructed to facilitate processes and are reluctant to take responsibility and to account. more often than not, if teachers, tus included, do not demonstrate responsibility, learners’ rights are compromised. the use of grant’s (2008) theory 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4 2007. van manen m 1997. researching lived experience: human science for an actionsensitive pedagogy. new york: state university of new york press. ritchie s & rigano d 2001. researcher participant positioning in classroom research. qualitative studies in education, 14(6): 741-756. weber m 1958. the protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. translated by talcott parsons. new york: charles scribner’s sons. education for participatory democracy: a grade r perspective vivien linington university of the witwatersrand lorayne excell university of the witwatersrand karin murris university of the witwatersrand this paper proposes a form of grade r pedagogy in south african schools that addresses both the diverse realities of south africa’s children and the principles underpinning a participatory democracy. the community of enquiry pedagogy we propose is based on a socio-cultural historical theoretical perspective and focuses on the nurturing of a reasonable person (both learner and teacher) in the context of a playbased grade r (reception year). this relational pedagogy assumes the inclusion of child’s voice and the participation of child1 as thinker, and therefore challenges teachers to take up different roles as coenquirers, democrats, guides and listeners. keywords: early childhood development, grade r, developmentally appropriate practice, sociocultural historical approach, philosophy for children, community of enquiry, reasonable person, thinking skills, participatory democracy, inclusion, childhood, voice introduction internationally, the conceptual base guiding educational practice in the early years is slowly changing (anning, cullen & fleer, 2009). in south africa, however, research (wsoe, 2009) suggests that despite the vision in the constitution (republic of south africa, 1996) and the national curriculum statement (department of education, 2002) teachers’ pedagogy is still dominated by a developmental didactic orientation and the notion of the universal child. this contradicts the idea of a participatory democracy, which implies that people (greek: demos) rule (kratos) – not through representation, but through participation. as a political concept, participatory democracy is understood to include moral principles such as freedom and equality of opportunity (kelly, 1995), and assumes that schools make space for children to participate as citizens in contexts that are meaningful to them. from a pedagogical perspective, the participatory nature of a democracy suggests a non-authoritarian approach that emphasises self-regulation and reasonableness. at the heart of a participatory democracy is the nurturing of the reasonable person (bruner, 1996), however this is not a priority in practice informed by a developmental didactic theoretical perspective. this paper argues for an alternative pedagogy, informed by a socio-cultural historical (sch) perspective which resonates with macnaughton’s (2003) transforming society position. according to this position, education can open up possibilities for an individual to be a morally, intellectually and politically engaged actor (giroux, 1990). the paper includes three sections. first, it sets out some of the assumptions and orientations underpinning traditional early childhood education2, as well as a more didactic approach and their implications for practice. second, it considers where current south african grade r practice is situated in relation to these approaches, and thirdly, argues for an alternative position that emphasises participatory democracy. linington, excell & murris — education for participatory democracy 37 theoretical orientations and assumptions relating to early childhood education and their implications for practice early childhood education (ece) draws on a traditional body of knowledge that has informed teaching and learning in young children. during the 1900s this traditional body of knowledge was informed by different theories (mainly from the field of developmental psychology) and disciplines predominantly medicine and education). the theoretical base informing ece is subsequently blurred as discrete theories jostle for precedence. one important perspective, however, is developmental theory. the developmental orientation and implications for practice the developmental orientation is informed by a number of theories about development, including piaget’s theory of cognitive development, gesell’s theory of maturation and assumptions drawn from these. the developmental stages articulated in these theories, as well as milestones emanating from a range of other theories, underpin a form of pedagogy called developmentally appropriate practice (dap). dap, which has become the dominant approach to ece in the west, was conceptualised in the usa in the late 1900s in an attempt to counter the ongoing formality and authoritarian perspective that was pervasive. dap focuses on what is known about children in terms of their developmental needs, interests, strengths and abilities (naeyc, 1997), but only recently has dap brought into focus the social cultural contexts in which children live. contextual factors must inform curriculum development. penn (2009) argues that issues of knowledge-transfer in education and the export and import of ideas from the west is underresearched area, especially within the ece context. for example, penn (2009: 57) asks “how do ideas about child-centred practice sit alongside [possibly opposing cultural] ideas about learning self-restraint and respect?” she suggests that the african concept of ubuntu3 implies there are very different ways and values underpinning childrearing practices. yet the dominant developmental discourse continues to prevail – even in africa. the dap approach implies that the structure of the learning environment is based on the principles of development stage theory so that learning opportunities offered to children are enhanced. play is central to dap, which it is claimed should be informed by developmental milestones. the notion of milestones, however, is problematised by contemporary ece theorists (see e.g. macnaughton, 2003; grieshaber & cannella, 2001; dahlberg, moss & pence, 1999). in addition, developmental milestones are informed by predominantly western, white middle class children and, as such, reinforce the notion of the universal child (james & prout, 1990). consequently developmental theory and its implications for practice have served to decontextualise children (dahlberg et al, 1999; cannella & viruru, 2004; macnaughton, 2003). the notion of ‘development’ is not value-neutral, and although it seems to speak of the individual child, it is, in fact, a “methodological abstraction” that has stripped the child of “all that tied her to her time, place and position” (burman, 2001). the idea of develop-mentality (dahlberg & moss, 2005) exposes the normativity and reductionism involved in viewing teaching as a process that should proceed from the simple to the complex, from the particular to the general, from the concrete to the abstract and from the empirical to the rational (egan & ling, 2002: 94). the conceptual confusion is based on the conflation between children’s intellectual development and their biological maturation and the mirroring of the development of the species (from ‘savage’ to ‘civilised’) with the development of the individual child (matthews, 1994). the developmental orientation and implications for a second form of practice: the didactic or instrumental model the second practice that has been derived, in part, from a developmental orientation is the didactic or instrumental model. this practice has been influenced by a major ideology stemming from the primary school, and is influenced by the utilitarian view that education is about introducing children to useful skills that will make them disciplined and productive citizens (anning, 1991; nutbrown, clough & selbie, 2008). behaviourist theory also informs perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201138 didactic practice, as learning is largely observable and primarily teacher-focused. the didactic model underpins a ‘back to basics’ approach with an emphasis on particular, non-contextualised skills linked to school preparedness. unlike dap, the focus is not on the holistic development of the child, nor does it acknowledge the importance of play in early learning. it is a more authoritarian prescriptive model, and the ideas of free choice and learning through play inherent in dap are absent. moreover, didactic pedagogy does not give credence to the role of the socio/cultural/historical context. current grade r practice in south africa explicitly, south africa follows a developmental orientation (doe, 2001a). but research has shown that the ‘focus on formal’ discourse inherent in the didactic model is becoming more prominent (wsoe, 2009). this situation, we suggest, arises out of a particular narrow interpretation of the ncs which is possibly fuelled by a lack of in-understanding of curriculum issues. the grade r teacher is often poorly qualified (the lowest recommended qualification on the national qualification framework (nqf) is an ece level 4), and some teachers have no ece/grade r training (doe, 2001b; doe, 2009). furthermore the quality of teaching and learning is variable (wsoe, 2009; eastern cape doe, 2008). coupled with a narrow interpretation of the ncs, there is an over emphasis on basic skills which prioritises numeracy and literacy and particularly learning to read. the style of instruction is largely didactic, with the teacher playing a much more interventionist role. furthermore, there is usually little focus on teaching independent thinking which is crucial to a kind of democratic education that regards children as citizens, not as becoming citizens. one major obstacle to regarding democracy as a way of life, and education as a means of nurturing democrats (biesta, 2010), has been identified by enslin (2003) who argues that many south africans understand democracy in terms of access to socio-economic goods, despite the highly participatory notion of democratic citizenship forged by the anti-apartheid struggle and laid down in the constitution and curriculum 2005. however, participation requires an approach to democracy that is not limited to acquisition of socio-economic goods, but in “the transformation of individual wants into collective needs” supported by strong reasons (biesta, 2010: 98). schools need to make room for young children to strengthen their ability to reason and to participate through deliberation in democratic processes. though dap acknowledges the child’s context, it is wanting in effectively developing children’s reasoning capabilities taking into account south africa’s diverse realities. as we have argued, neither dap nor didactic pedagogy sufficiently acknowledges the profound effects of socio-cultural historical factors which are embedded in the diverse realities of present day south africa. thus neither approach adequately prepares children for participatory democracy. an alternative orientation: the socio-cultural historical (ece) perspective an alternative orientation we now consider is the ece sociocultural-historical perspective (sch) and its implications for practice. this theoretical orientation is an attempt to counter reliance on developmental milestones and the more didactic approach to teaching and learning in the early years. sch also provides a framework in which the moral principles underpinning participatory democracy can be realised. it is based on social constructivism and is informed by a range of differing orientations emanating from sociology, anthropology, philosophy and various theories including post-structuralism, post-colonialism and critical constructivism. two of the specific theoretical perspectives on which sch draws are vygotsky’s sociohistorical orientation and wertsch’s sociocultural theory (daniels, 2001: 78). according to vygotsky, development is relational: between social context and the biological child, and not a feature of an individual child (anning et al., 2009). these interpersonal relations are a type of meditational means. an inherent part of sch informed pedagogy – though not an original vygotskian concept – is the notion of co-construction. however, exact details of ece pedagogy that mirror these constructs are till emerging, but some implications are already explicit. one of these is the co-construction of meaning and understanding which requires teachers to become aware of what children know, are thinking and understanding to enable them to engage with bodies of knowledge. reciprocally, teachers need to learn linington, excell & murris — education for participatory democracy 39 to share and develop their own thinking and reasoning skills. co-construction requires that teachers are willing to find out more about content knowledge as well as develop excellent dialogue and questioning skills (jordan, 2009). another implication is how the role of play is conceptualised in the co-construction of knowledge is wood’s (2009) construct of a ‘pedagogy of play’. although play features prominently in a dap approach, its role in teaching and learning is perceived in a different way. in dap, free play is paramount and the teacher facilitates learning. practice that is informed by a sch perspective places the teacher in a mediatory role in a ‘pedagogy of play’ which emphasises teaching as well as learning through play (wood, 2009). as podmore notes (2009), teachers need to think differently about children, assessment, types of programmes offered to them, as well as working with families. and for this they need pedagogical support to acquire the sensitivity, insight and an acute awareness of possibilities and constraints that should inform the mediatory approach adopted by a teacher. in contrast, neither the developmental nor the didactic perspective foregrounds this acute awareness. a sch-informed approach is about imagination, play, and collaborative learning. an example of grade r practice underpinned by a sch (ece) perspective is a community of enquiry (coe) – a pedagogy which emphasises reasoning, tolerance and inclusion. playing with ideas in a community of enquiry (coe) the coe is the pedagogy of an approach called philosophy for children (p4c). p4c is originally attributed to the pioneering work of american philosopher matthew lipman. influenced by john dewey, lipman claims that the democratic person emerges only through participation in ‘lived democracy’ (education through democracy). the coe is a ‘democratic laboratory’ where, independent of age, members of this community are invited to participate and are included in what biesta identifies as crucial for participatory democratic decision-making, i.e. the “construction, maintenance and transformation of the political life” (biesta, 2006: 122). lipman acknowledges philosopher charles sanders peirce as his source in understanding a ‘community of enquiry’ as a practice of self-criticism and self-correction through internalisation of the social practice of thinking with others (lipman, 1991). the pedagogy is also inspired by socrates with the prevailing metaphor of thinking as ‘inner speech’ and resonates with the vygotskyan assumption that children will learn to think for themselves if they engage in the social practice of thinking with others. as argued earlier, there is a tension between the develop-mentality that tends to dominate views of childhood and the establishment of a framework for children’s moral, political and social status as learners, as persons and as citizens. develop-mentality tends to marginalise children and limits education (burman, 2008; dahlberg & moss, 2005; haynes & murris, forthcoming; kohan, 2002). matthews calls developmental theories “condescending” and “morally offensive” as they encourage adults to “distance themselves from children – both from the children around us and from our own childhood selves” (matthews, 1994: 66, 7). developmental theories essentialise and generalise about children and their capabilities. they are based, as haynes puts it: …on detached observation rather than engaging with children and listening to their ideas, [and] position children as the objects of teaching and research, rather than as subjects with their own stories, interests and views. they tend to position adults as those who always know better what children think or need. (haynes, 2009:30). including child as thinker attributing reason “in the deepest sense” to children, and elevating the status of ‘child’ as thinker to a “valuable stranger” and the “outsider within”, are essential for the ‘self-regulation’ and ‘self-organisation’ required for participatory democracy (kennedy, 2006:148). drawing on bauman, biesta explains that the stranger is not a “natural category”, but is produced by “a specific construction of what is own, proper, familiar, rational” (biesta, 2006:59). people acquire a voice, are able to speak, when they become perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201140 members of the rational community, but they speak with their own voice only when they are outside the rational community (biesta, 2006:60; 2010:88). adult rational discourse with its focus on logico-scientific thinking constructs child as stranger, but as kennedy argues “children’s knowledge is not just a weaker, or sketchier, or more rudimentary version of adults” (kennedy, 2000: 515). we suggest an ‘expanded’ notion of rationality which includes the imagination and narrative thinking (murris, 1999), and opens up a space for “child as a voice from the margins” (kennedy, 2000: 515). the aim of education should be to speak with one’s own voice and to bring something new into the world. inspired by levinas and arendt, biesta suggests that individuals are unique in the particular ways they exist with others, and each individual has to respond, and take up the responsibility that particular situations demand (biesta, 2010:89). uniqueness is therefore not a property, essence or quality of an individual, but manifests itself in the relationship with others. the coe is a relational pedagogy in its emphasis of listening to children in contexts that are meaningful to them and the creation of educational environments that involve children’s direct democratic participation. relational pedagogy is a dialogical approach to ‘guiding children’ (pedagogy) that emphasises communication, interaction, reflection and negotiation. it implies “a relation, an obligation and the infinite attention which we owe to each other” (papatheodorou, 2008:5). the coe approach we advocate takes relational pedagogy a step further by opening up a philosophical space that encourages intergenerational play with ideas from the moment children can talk. teachers connect with children’s talk by, for example, asking open-ended philosophical questions and guiding them to build on each other’s ideas democratically and through the process of giving good reasons. inclusion in democratic experiences nurtures and develops the qualities of a democratic, reasonable person in a non-competitive manner and helps integrate private and public worlds – of utmost importance for participation. from theory to shc informed practice the notion of enquiry, a central feature of p4c, is the process of a search for understanding, meaning, truth and values supported by good reasons. it is the thinking about thinking in an enquiry that helps make the practice philosophical, and also democratic as children’s decisions and ideas shape the ‘direction’ of the enquiry. the role of the teacher is that of a ‘guide’, a ‘guardian’ and a ‘co-enquirer’, who, in a spirit of open-ended enquiry, helps the children’s investigation, but does not manipulate or steer the course of the often playful enquiry. teachers have to be willing to treat learners’ questions without prejudice, and to genuinely commit to the enquiry, while resisting the desire to drive the discussion in a pre-planned direction. the teacher’s presence, attention and responsiveness during the enquiry are of utmost importance to support the children’s experience of thinking (haynes, 2008; murris & haynes, 2002, 2010). the teacher does, however, ensure academic rigour and democratic social relations. academic rigour comes from adherence to the understanding that ‘not just anything goes’ in the co-construction of knowledge. in terms of democratic social relations, rules pertaining to participation and respect are negotiated. apart from using the coe pedagogy for informal ‘teachable moments’ haynes and murris have pioneered the use of picturebooks drawing on diverse theoretical perspectives and practices (haynes & murris, forthcoming). a p4c activity or ‘lesson’4 typically involves the whole class and starts with telling a story or reading a picturebook5. this use of story books aligns with waghid’s (2005) suggestion of using narrative to mediate autonomy and tolerance through imaginative action. and it is this imaginative action, we suggest, that can fuel participatory democracy. teachers present the narratives in such a way that the power of a resource is maximised in expressing ambiguity, producing puzzlement, or evoking a deep response. the illustrations in books are just as important as the text in prompting questions and establishing reference points for discussion. children usually sit in a circle in a way that enables them to hear and see each other. after listening to the story, the children are given the opportunity to record their first observations and impressions through quiet thinking time – usually through a quick drawing in their ‘thinking books’. in pairs or small groups they subsequently construct their own questions about the narrative – the kind that ‘internet cannot find the answer to’6. it is the examination and pursuit of the children’s questions that form the substantial part of linington, excell & murris — education for participatory democracy 41 each enquiry. the class democratically adapts or modifies the process to suit its needs. one question is then usually voted for and subsequently explored collaboratively in a large circle. for example, when one of us used the picturebook frog is hero by max velthuijs (1995), the five year olds voted for the question ‘why did frog go and get the food?’ the story features hare, duck, pig and frog who are stranded on an island after a flood. they agree that they do not want to die and frog offers to swim and get help. after all, he claims, “i’m the best swimmer of all”. the others agree that he is. he starts his journey, but the current is strong and when he is about to drown he is saved by rat who happens to be passing in a boat. the text nevertheless construes frog as a true hero. the subsequent enquiry focused on the truth of frog’s claim that he was the best swimmer. after all, duck was not only a very good swimmer, but she could also bring back food on her back! despite the embedded messages of the story, they also questioned whether frog really was a hero. some thought frog had been simply stupid, which opened up possibilities for the teacher to engage this young community of thinkers in a philosophical conversation about what it means to be ‘brave’ or ‘heroic’ as distinct from ‘stupid’. drawing on their own concrete experiences the children were expressing various opinions supported by good reasons and connecting meaningfully with abstract public concepts7. the south african context in the south african context, lena green (2005) argues how the strengthening of judgment and independent thinking that p4c promotes is consistent with the cognitive aims of curriculum 2005. enslin, pendlebury and tjiattas (2001: 129) suggest that post-apartheid democratic citizenship requires “the young to be communicative democrats”, and schools that are non-hierarchical and non-authoritarian with special attention paid to the careful articulation of reasons. furthermore, room is made for the expression of and serious listening to difference. moreover, waghid (2005) suggests that learning to speak english fluently as the “language of power” is imperative in south african schools so that learners have the courage to initiate speech and at the same time drive themselves towards listening and responding to others without inhibition. the role of emotions, imagination and narrative is central to this quest with oracy being the vehicle. in a coe, assumptions are interrogated collaboratively. possible hegemonic practices such as which stories and books feature in story time and the book corner can also be closely examined in relation to whom the texts include and exclude and the possible stereotypes they project. finding good reasons for choices made is paramount. these words – reasons, reasonable people, reasoning – are the building blocks of democracy, and they can be laid, we argue, in grade r. burbules (1995) suggests that we should understand reasoning as a situated embodied human practice, which is neither a universal, nor a necessary, mechanical application of logical rules. the conception of reason he proposes is one that is: …sensitive to cultural difference and diversity; modest about its claims to universality; situated in human relations and moral reflection; grounded more in practical, social activities of speaking, listening and reflecting than in dispassioned logical deduction or a scientistic search for “facts.” (burbules, 1995: 87, 88). burbules (1995: 90) explains that focusing on reasonableness and communicative relations in the classroom also includes a striving for objectivity construed as a recognition of what one’s own biases might be, “acknowledging the limits of one’s capacity to appreciate fully the viewpoints of others, and caring enough about others to exert the effort necessary to hear and comprehend what they are saying.” it is this element of enquiry, a particular form of enquiry that should, we argue, be woven like a golden thread throughout the grade r day. enquiry is a process, a search for understanding, meaning, truth and values supported by good reasons and should not be restricted to story time. a range of different activities, such as drawing, writing, painting and drama, can provide opportunities for exploring cultural and/or societal-embedded assumptions. perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201142 conclusion attention needs to be paid, not only to how we reason and listen, but also to how and what we question in classrooms. and this points to the particular role of the teacher in sch informed practice. in a coe the precise content of a lesson is not known in advance, but is determined by the children’s questions. teachers make room for talk about things that matter to children in ways that go beyond a repetition of the given (haynes & murris, forthcoming). using narratives as a basis for this kind of thinking differs significantly from a conventional, more didactic use of narrative. enquiry in a p4c approach is more than just discussion. it differs in the way in which abstract concepts are explored, shaped and reshaped democratically, and it includes the high expectations teachers need to have of children’s ability to think critically and creatively about their own experiences (a relevant example is stated in the story frog is a hero referred to earlier where frog is regarded as either a ‘hero’ or as ‘being foolish’). a community of enquiry opens up a space whereby children as young as 3 (see e.g. stanley & bowkett, 2004) can be included in democratic school practices. the idea is to make room for our very young citizens to be democratic persons in school and to include them in genuine opportunities for authentic democratic decision-making. the critical and independent thinking that emanates from this form of pedagogy aligns with a sch perspective, and illustrates an understanding of curriculum as everything that is taught and learnt at school. dap also understands curriculum in this way whereas a didactic orientation would view the curriculum as that which is taught by the teacher. the teacher of grade r adopting the approach that we have proposed is not using his or her agency to control from a didactic orientation but enables reasonableness, and takes into consideration choices that would reflect cultural and contextual sensitivity. the resources, the posters, the texts s/he uses, the ‘norms’ s/he models, the discourse s/he adopts and the questions s/he poses will exemplify an approach informed by a sch (ece) orientation. the teacher, in other words, would personify a practice that we suggest is called school. meaningful pedagogy as participatory democratic practice through the nurturance of reasonableness has the characteristics we propose. this, we have argued, is realised through play, story, other activities and ‘teachable moments’. evidence suggests that teachers in south africa do not take sufficient cognisance of children’s social and cultural contexts (wsoe, 2009). the challenge we face is how to guide the present grade r practitioners towards effective sch informed pedagogy given the wide range of constraints that have been discussed. our paper has argued that a didactic/developmental approach limits the space for meaningful participation in reasoning and decision-making, whereas the proposed relational 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(endnotes) we deliberately refer to ‘child’ as opposed to ‘the child’, as a main thrust of this paper is to problematise 1. the more common empirical conceptualisation of ‘child’ in an effort to start exploring the idea that e.g. adults can also ‘be child’. in south africa ece is also known as early childhood development (ecd). ecd is an umbrella term 2. referring to children between birth to age 9. grade r (the reception year) refers to the child who is between four to six years of age. under the new education dispensation though it is viewed through a preschool lens, it is also the first year of the foundation phase (doe, 2001). as this paper engages with education rather than ecd in general the term early childhood education (ece) rather than ecd has been used. ubuntu favours a different understanding of childhood. penn (2009) claims that the notion of ubuntu 3. suggests that how children should act is built into the very language they speak. ubuntu embraces many different concepts and prioritizes “collective obligations over personal concerns: rootedness in a particular community rather than within a nuclear family; independence within a community rather than dependency in an isolated family setting” (penn, 2009: 51). furthermore, issues relating to spirituality, gender, patriarchy and gerontocracy are all influenced by this concept. linington, excell & murris — education for participatory democracy 45 in grade r this could form part of story time. it could also be part of a language or theme discussion 4. ring. the practice of teaching philosophy with picture books was pioneered by karin murris in 1992 and 5. subsequently further developed in collaboration with haynes. we have found this an effective way of generating philosophical questions with audiences of all ages. 6. it helps to distinguish between factual questions that can be answered empirically, and philosophical questions that can only be answered through dialogical talk and thinking. it is beyond the scope of this paper to put forward arguments of either the possibility or 7. desirability of very young children doing philosophy. for the former, see: k. murris (2000). for the latter see: k murris (2008). 32 constructive feedback as a learning tool to enhance students’ self-regulation and performance in higher education erna du toit university of the free state if feedback is provided in a way that can develop students’ self-regulatory skills, it could enhance learning and, consequently, lead to improved performance. to improve teaching and learning in higher education (he), this study sought to determine whether the feedback to first-year students affords them an opportunity to learn from it. a theoretical framework on constructive feedback, self-regulated learning and the expectations of students was synthesised from literature which formed the basis of the research. this was followed by empirical research using a questionnaire to capture students’ perspectives regarding feedback. students experienced the feedback as not contributing towards improving their performance but are convinced that, if they receive feedback that is focused on the task level, it can improve their performance. suggestions are provided that emphasise the need to use feedback at both task and process level as a learning tool. keywords: constructive feedback, task-related feedback, self-regulated learning, self-assessment introduction the current nature of the feedback given to students does not afford them the opportunity to enhance their learning. worldwide higher education institutions are facing problems such as increasing numbers of students, heterogeneous student populations, a lack of resources, and considerable teaching pressure on staff, which have resulted in reduced opportunities for feedback (masiu & de corte, 2005). nicol and mcfarlane-dick (2006) reiterate that the lecturers’ workload can affect the quality of both feedback and learning in relation to students’ progress and academic experience. students appear to be in greater need of detailed feedback despite the fact that some value the grade more than the feedback and do not necessarily learn from comments on their marked work (weaver, 2006). this therefore necessitates an investigation into how feedback is provided and how it can be altered to enhance learning. irons (2008) regards the utilisation of quality feedback to be a constructive learning tool with which to improve teaching and learning in higher education. he maintains that feedback could empower students as self-regulated learners; thus, encourage their motivational beliefs and develop self-esteem. extensive literature on the value of self-regulated learning (srl) and the structure and function of self-regulatory processes confirms that self-regulated behaviour is associated with academic achievement (zimmerman, 2002). zimmerman (2002) asserts that “self-regulation is not a mental ability or an academic performance skill but a self-directive process by which learners transform their mental abilities into academic skills”. this implies that, if students learn from the feedback they receive and engage in various activities in a “[p]roactive way rather than as a covert event that happens to them as a reaction to teaching”, it should improve performance. garcia and pintrich (1994) explain that the implementation of this strategy has no significant value if students are unable to integrate feedback with prior knowledge. students will only be successful if they make meaning of the feedback they receive. butler and winne (1995) regard seeking feedback as pivotal to srl, and it can be assumed that, if opportunities to provide feedback in a way that can develop self-regulatory skills are created and used, it could enhance learning and consequently lead to improved performance. it is argued that feedback is under-conceptualised, with the focus merely on ‘transmitting’ to students information about their strengths and weaknesses, which does not portray the active construction of students’ own understanding of the feedback message from tutors or lecturers or engaging in a dialogue about their work. havnes and mcdowell (2008) refer to the emergence of an assessment culture and of 33du toit — constructive feedback as a learning tool to enhance students’ self-regulation an alternative ranking of students that will not focus on a single score. they link this to an envisaged new culture of assessment that will provide multidimensional feedback, which could foster effective learning. irons (2008) raises the concern that universities are not altering their teaching and learning approaches, and can thus face an uncertain future. a cause for concern in this article is how feedback – as part of a culture of learning – plays out in relation to the enhancement of learning and specifically srl. pellegrino (cited in irons, 2008) views learning as a process of “continuously modifying knowledge and skills and that feedback is essential to guide, test, challenge, or redirect the learner’s thinking”. it is suggested that an altered learning environment will encourage dialogue, motivate students to learn and, ultimately, allow students to take responsibility for and ownership of their learning. however, changes in the learning environment do not guarantee changes in feedback that will enhance learning. this article examines whether the feedback that students receive affords them the opportunity for srl. the application of srl skills could be regarded as the impetus behind using feedback as a learning tool that warrants success. this allows students to be actively involved during the feedback process; thus, increasing their sense of being responsible for their own learning. quality feedback as a constructive learning tool nicol and mcfarlane-dick (2006) capture the importance of providing quality feedback and improved learning in a self-regulated model and place the students in the centre as active role players during the feedback process. they elaborate by adding that students should monitor and regulate their performance through the learning process, which involves the application of a variety of sources, strategies, goal-setting, collaborative groups, as well as internal and external feedback. according to butler and winne (1995), feedback is inherent and a prime determiner of processes that contribute to self-regulation, allowing for active engagement. the quality therefore depends on the cognitive processes involved. sadler (in nicol & mcfarlane-dick, 2006) and irons (2008) maintain that feedback can only benefit students if they: • are certain of what is expected of them and of the level at which they should perform; • can compare their actual level of performance with the intended level or standard; and • are actively engaged in a specific action that will improve their situation or close the gap between their current level and the intended level of performance. it is imperative that students make sense of the acquired knowledge and use feedback information constructively. the appropriateness of effective feedback also affects the quality of learning and student achievement. quinton and smallbone (2010) support this view, adding that feedback is a “socially constructed process affected by the conditions in which it was produced”. students need support in linking the feedback they received and in ways to use the feedback in order to improve their performance. black and william (1999) and mcmillan (2011) refer to this as the facilitation of the development of self-assessment. nicol and macfarlane-dick (2006) argue that providing students with self-assessment tasks can improve their capacity for self-regulation if “formal and structured” opportunities are created to monitor themselves, judge their own progress towards goals, and encourage them to reflect on their processes. as an aspect of self-assessment, self-appraisal refers to a person’s capacity to review and evaluate his/her ability, knowledge and cognitive strategies by means of a variety of self-monitoring processes. as another aspect of learning, self-management refers to a person monitoring and regulating his/her own ongoing performances by planning, correcting mistakes, and using the correct strategies (hattie & timperley, 2007; paris & winograd, 2001). therefore, in managing selfassessment, nicol and mcfarlane-dick (2006) propose that facilitation can be strengthened if structured opportunities are provided to monitor the gaps between current and intended performance and if, according to frey, kettering and marshall (2009), peers are involved in the reflection process. hattie and timperley (2007) claim that when students have the meta-cognitive skills of selfassessment, “they can evaluate their levels of understanding, their effort and strategies used on tasks, their attributions and opinions of others about their performance, and their improvement in relation to their goals and expectations … [m]ost important, students know how and when to seek and receive 34 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 feedback from others”. sadler (1983) concurs that the goal of many instructional systems is to “facilitate the transition from feedback to self-monitoring”. nicol and mcfarlane-dick (2006) concur with de corte (2000) that there should be a good balance between external regulation and self-regulation. this implies that students must be actively involved in controlling and managing their own learning, independently assessing themselves to correct their own mistakes, and monitoring the gaps between internally set tasks and intended goals. black and william (1999) attest that learning can be enhanced if students recognise their desired goal and have evidence about their present position. they postulate that the implementation of the mentioned aspects can produce some understanding of closing the gap between achieving the desired goal and the present position. attaining the goal should follow once feedback has been provided in response to students’ performance and attempts to demonstrate mastery of a learning goal. information should thus be provided on attaining goals and competencies and on correcting misconceptions by giving students “specific corrective information” (thalheilmer, 2008). feedback should explicitly describe what the student did and did not do, based on what was communicated. clark (in black & william, 1999) refers to this as “closing the gaps” to improve learning by means of reminders, suggestions and questions to aid the student. feedback should support students to develop “mental models” of the concepts they have learnt. quality feedback is beneficial, especially when students are developing an understanding of complex tasks. the correct response, together with an explanation of why it is correct, will support the student in further learning (thalheilmer, 2008). students should not only learn from feedback, but also be able to evaluate their progress and compare it with their goals (nicol & mcfarlane-dick, 2006). mcdowell (2008) states that there should be a mutual understanding between the outcomes set by both the lecturer and the student before assessment procedures are instituted. nicol and mcfarlane-dick (2006) allude that students do not always understand the feedback provided by tutors because of discrepancies between the various parties’ intended goals. the emphasis is too often on what the lecturer expects rather than on trying to understand how the student thinks (chambers, 1993). feedback should be transmitted in a way that enables students to engage actively with a view to improving their learning and communicating their understanding. black and william (1998) as well as hattie and timperley (2007) capture this aim in challenging tasks that provide the opportunity for students to gain understanding of the intended goal, be committed to achieving it, be confident that they will succeed in improving their learning, be able to seek alternative strategies to complete the task, and display their willingness to enhance their learning. thalheilmer (2008) refers to the timing of feedback that should allow for opportunities to engage in cognitive processes and develop additional retrieval routes to store information. if feedback is directed at task level, immediate feedback can result in faster rates of acquisition. however, feedback at the processing level can develop a variety of learning strategies that can be utilised and that will improve future learning (hattie & timperley, 2007). active involvement during feedback to improve performance after feedback, close communication between lecturers, tutors, peers and the students is necessary in order to develop the students’ capacity for self-assessment (mcdowell, 2008). without this communication students might not be able to either internalise the feedback they receive or identify the gap between intended goals and their performance. in conceptualising the feedback dialogue or questioning, it is necessary to provoke both reflection and action. learning environments that provide for structured discussions directly or via technology (irons, 2008) and for peer assessment expose students to a variety of alternative perspectives that enable them to make objective judgements about their performance and thus motivate them. with increasing student numbers at tertiary institutions dialogue as a means of feedback can be difficult. however, nicol and mcfarlane-dick (2006) propose that students divide into small groups to discuss feedback. dialogue with peers was also found to enhance a sense of self-control and persistence because students find it easier to accept criticism from peers than from tutors (irons 2008). 35du toit — constructive feedback as a learning tool to enhance students’ self-regulation based on the premise that feedback has as its purpose the engagement of the student in both a formal and an informal way, yorke (2003) states that feedback is under-conceptualised and that the “disciplinary epistemology theories of intellectual and moral development, stages of development and the psychology of giving and receiving feedback” should be taken into account. feedback should remain focused on enhanced learning that will facilitate self-assessment by: • clarifying, informing or describing to students regarding their performance; • identifying students’ strengths and weaknesses by diagnosing, differentiating and remediation; • supporting students by motivating and empowering them; • indicating to the students their level of competence and predicting their personal outcome; and • assisting students with the evaluation and monitoring of the programme. active involvement allows students to make sense of the “diagnostic prescription” of the lecture (black & william, 1999). this equips students gradually with the evaluative skills they need to make them less dependent on others, develop the ability to assess themselves, and monitor the gaps between internally set tasks and personal goals. mcdonald and boud (2003) affirm that self-assessment and the provision of frequent opportunities to reflect on goals, strategies and outcomes are highly effective in enhancing learning and achievement. nicol and mcfarlane-dick (2006) regard feedback to be a holistic process with coherent arguments supporting the evidence. frey et al. (2009) concur, adding that the online provision of prioritising areas of improvement by means of personal response systems to provide immediate feedback can enhance learning. hattie and timperley (2007) and stiggens (2002) refer to the powerful influence of feedback on learning and achievement which can either be positive or negative. leathwood (2005) links progress to performance and goal setting, and warns that constant exposure to low marks can have a negative impact on students’ motivation to learn. on the other hand, frey et al. (2009) allude that positive written feedback can create a climate to promote self-esteem, which could lead to improved performance. research methodology the positivistic paradigm was chosen to capture the perceptions of first-year students at the university of the free state regarding the feedback they receive and to explore the practice of feedback. a questionnaire with closed-ended questions was used (pietersen & maree, 2007). the data was collected from a sample of 92 first-year students in the faculty of education who participated voluntarily. the questionnaire focused on their perceptions of the feedback they receive in this faculty. the quantitative data is presented by means of descriptive statistics, in terms of the mean (x), standard deviation (s), aggregate mean (xc) and aggregate standard deviation (sc) of the items per category (pietersen & maree, 2007). the measurement content validity was strengthened by means of the disciplinary epistemology of good feedback as suggested by the literature presented earlier. questions in the questionnaire were categorised as follows to determine whether the feedback that students receive: • will enhance their performance if they set goals and are provided with criteria; • supports the facilitation and development of self-assessment; • provides students with high-quality information about their learning; • encourages peer and lecturer dialogue; • encourages motivational beliefs and self-esteem; and • provides opportunities to close the gap between their current and desired performance. thirty-two questions were formulated to address these categories. respondents rated themselves on their perceptions regarding feedback using a 4-point likert scale, with 1 indicating very positive, 2 indicating positive, 3 indicating negative and 4 indicating very negative. statistical evidence in terms of the mean 36 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 value x can be classified as being very positive to positive (i.e. x < 2.0), and negative to very negative (i.e. x > 2.0). a standard deviation (s) ranging from 0.708 to 1.124 gives an indication of the distribution of variance around the mean if the majority of the students answered in either a positive or a negative manner. because no single item is a perfect measure of concept the researcher relied on a series of measures to assess internal consistency. the first measure is item-to-total correlation which is effected by the number of test items in each construct as well as the intercorrelation among these items (murphy & davidshofer, 2004; hair, black, babin, anderson & tatham, 2005). the second measure is the reliability coefficient that assesses the consistency of the entire scale, with cronbach’s alpha being the most widely used. hair et al. (2005) refer to cronbach’s alpha of 0.7 as reliable, which can decrease to 0.6 in exploratory research. in this research a total reliability of 0.828 was obtained for the total questionnaire, which indicates the internal consistency of the responses and makes the data reliable. it is worth mentioning that individual constructs were affected by the low number of items and the degree of intercorrelation between the items (hair et al., 2005). the cronbach’s alpha reliability value in table 3 depicts a value of 0.79 with nine items and 0.6 for table 2 with four items. discussions of findings data in table 1 indicates that the majority of the students (sc of 0.886) were negative (xc = 2.27) on the aspects of feedback they receive. however, students were positive (x = 1.70) that the feedback they receive covers some aspects of their work. they returned a response of negative in respect of whether the feedback provided information to enhance their performance if it covers all aspects of their work and relates to the assessment criteria. the findings concur with mcdowell (2008) who states that, for students to enhance their learning, there should be a mutual understanding between outcomes and criteria set by the lecturer and the student because different conceptions can exist among students and lecturers when ranking assessment criteria for a specific task. this could have an effect on the outcomes of feedback, influence performance, and inhibit the encouragement of self-assessment. all the students, as indicated in table 2, responded negatively with regard to aspects of facilitation and development of self-assessment. in support of enhancing learning, an environment that allows students to develop the capacity for self-assessment and opportunities to monitor themselves as well as reflect on their own processes can result in improved performance. in this regard, stiggens (2008) refers to the active involvement of a variety of cognitive processes. mcdowell (2008) emphasises the importance of conceptualising and internalising what has been learnt from the feedback so that it can develop selfregulation skills and result in improved performance. concerning the items relating to whether the feedback provides high-quality information during feedback to students about learning (see table 3), the majority of the students (sc of 0.878 and an s that varies from 0.708 to 1.024 and xc = 2.25) responded negatively. inappropriate feedback that students received strengthens thalheilmer’s (2008) argument that “specific corrective information” cannot only eliminate misconceptions, but will also allow for opportunities to develop an understanding of the task at hand and enable students to monitor and evaluate their progress that can result in improved performance. the findings in table 4 indicate that the majority of the students (sc = 0.849) required tutorial support and verbal discussions that would improve their performance. by contrast, most (s = 0.895 and x = 2.25) of the students indicated that they do ask for tutorial help but are of the opinion (x =1.67) that a discussion after feedback can enhance their learning. hattie and timperley (2007) affirm that understanding what is expected in relation to a specific task, is a crucial requirement for self-regulation. black and william (1998) allude that feedback can have either a negative or a positive influence on students, and can affect their performance. it is clear from the findings in table 5 that students experience the feedback negatively regarding their marks, the critique and the written comments. however, they feel positive (x = 1.79) that constructive criticism, which focuses on the mistakes and clarifies their misconceptions, will improve their learning. the students were also positive (x = 1.84) that a balance between formative and summative assessment will guide them through the learning process. 37du toit — constructive feedback as a learning tool to enhance students’ self-regulation as indicated in table 6, students responded negatively with regard to the timely aspect that will improve their performance but were positive that, if the feedback focused on the outcomes, it will enhance their learning. this is an indication that students are eager to rectify the mistakes if the misconceptions have been identified, and that they want to strengthen their weaknesses. feedback directed at misconceptions about the task, as hattie and timperley (2007) argue, will not leave incorrect “mental traces” but instead provide the opportunity for students to engage in cognitive processes to improve their learning. the majority (sc = 0905) of the students feel positive (xc = 1.97) that, if opportunities are provided to close the gap between current and desired performance, it can enhance learning. conclusion the literature consulted revealed that learning can be enhanced by means of constructive feedback that focuses on both the task and the process. however, the findings indicated that the feedback students receive does not allow for the opportunity to develop their self-regulation skills and does not always improve their performance. as pointed out in the findings, students feel positive that feedback, which focuses on closing the gap between current and desired performance that affords the opportunity to monitor and regulate their learning, can contribute towards improving their performance. the role of feedback is to inform students about their strengths and weaknesses and for them to actively engage with the information they receive. several challenges confront the lecturers if they want to ensure improvement in students’ performances that will result in effective learning and, most likely, increase the throughput rate of students. the main aim of tertiary institutions is to ensure that students progress. providing effective taskand processrelated feedback can support students in becoming more independent learners who know how to use their mental abilities to develop their academic skills. while feedback is viewed as the pivot around which self-regulation turns, it can be assumed that constructive feedback, which relates to both the task and the process, could enhance self-regulatory skills that will ultimately lead to improved performance. this study indicated that the manner in which feedback is provided to students does not afford students the opportunity to actively engage in and regulate their learning or to engage in self-assessment activities. by constructive feedback we have realised that we will have to understand not only the “technical structure of feedback such as accuracy, comprehensiveness and appropriateness, but also the accessibility to the student’s thinking processes” (sadler, 1983). this can only be achieved by discussions with students after feedback has been provided. to improve the students’ performance, lecturers will have to constantly reflect on their own assessment and feedback practices to seek causes as to why students in many cases are not utilising the feedback they receive and are not progressing as they should. references black p & william d 1998. assessment and classroom learning. assessment in education, principles, policy and practice, 9(5):7-73. black p & william d 1999. assessment and classroom learning: beyond the black box. cambridge, assessment reform group, university of cambridge, pamphlet 371.26 ass. retrieved on 23 march 2011 from http:// www.assessment-reform-group orh.uk/assess insides.pdf. butler l & winne ph 1995. feedback and self-regulated learning: a theoretical synthesis. review of educational research, 65(3):245-281. chambers dl 1993. integrating assessment and instruction. in: nl webb & af coxford (eds), assessment in the mathematics classroom. 1993 yearbook nctm, 17-25. reston. va: nctm. de corte e 2000. marrying theory building and the improvement of school practice: a permanent challenge for instructional psychology. learning and instruction, 10:249-266. frey h, kettering s & marshall s 2009. teaching and learning in higher education. enhancing academic practice. new york: routledge. garcia t & pintrich pr 1994. self-schemes and self-regulatory strategies. in: dh schunk & bj zimmerman (eds), self-regulation of learning and performance. issues and educational applications. 127-149. hillsdale, n.j.: lawrence erlbaum associates. 38 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 hair jf, black b, babin b, anderson re & tatham rl 2005. multivariate data analysis. 6th ed upper saddle river, n.j. pearson prentice hall. havnes a & mcdowell l 2008. assessment dilemmas in contemporary learning cultures. in: a havnes & l mcdowell (eds), balancing dilemmas in assessment and learning in contemporary education. 3-14. new york: routledge taylor & francis group. hattie j & timperley h 2007. the power of feedback. review of educational research, 77(1):81-112. irons a 2008. enhancing learning through formative assessment and feedback. london: routledge taylor & francis group. leathwood c 2005. assessment policy and practise in higher education: purpose, standards and equity. assessment evaluation in higher education, 30(30):307-324. masiu c & de corte e 2005. learning to reflect and to attribute constructively as basic components of self-regulated learning. british journal of educational psychology, 75:351-372. mcdonald b & boud d 2003. the impact of self-assessment on achievement: the effects of selfassessment training on performance in external examinations. assessment education, 10(2):209-220. mcdowell l 2008. students’ experience of feedback on academic assignments in higher education. in: a havnes & l mcdowell (eds), balancing dilemmas in assessment and learning in contemporary education, 237-249. new york: routledge taylor & francis group. mcmillan jh 2011. classroom assessment. london: ally & bacon. murphy kr & davidshofer co 2004. psychological testing: principles and applications. 6th ed. canada: pearson education. nicol dj & mcfarlane-dick d 2006. formative assessment and self-regulated learning: a model and seven principles of good feedback practice. studies in higher education, 31(2):199-218. paris gs & winograd p 2001. the role of self-regulated learning in contextual teaching. principles and practices for teachers’ preparation. retrieved on 27 march 2011 from http://www.ciera.org.library. pietersen j & maree k 2007. standardisation of a questionnaire. in: k maree, first steps in research, 183-196. pretoria: van schaik. quinton s & smallbone t 2010. feedback forward: using feedback to promote student reflection and learning-teaching model. innovations in education and teaching international, 47(1):125-135. sadler dr 1983. evaluation and improvement of academic learning. journal of higher education, 5(4):60-79. stiggens rj 2002. assessment crisis: the absence of assessment for learning. the phi delta kappan, 83(10):758-765. stiggins rj 2008. assessment for learning, the achievement gap, and truly effective schools. paper presented at the educational testing service and college board conference, held at the ets assessment training institute in portland, 8 september 2008. thalheilmer w 2008. providing learners with feedback – part 1: research-based recommendations for training, education, and e-learning. retrieved on 17 june 2011 from http://www.work-learning.com/ catalog/. weaver mr 2006. do students value feedback? student perceptions of tutors’ written responses. assessment and evaluation in higher education, 31(3):379-394. yorke m 2003. formative assessment in higher education: moves towards theory and the enhancement of pedagogic practice. higher education, 45:477-507. zimmerman bj 2002. becoming a self-regulated learner: an overview. theory into practice, 41(2):64-70. 39du toit — constructive feedback as a learning tool to enhance students’ self-regulation table 1: aspects of good feedback question indicator n s 1 when i am being assessed on work done, i understand what it is that i am expected to do 90 2.47 0.864 3 the feedback i receive is easy to understand 90 2.34 0.938 4 the feedback i receive covers all aspects of my work 89 2.25 0.816 5 the feedback i receive relates to the assessment criteria 90 2.21 0.910 15 the feedback focuses on the outcomes not achieved 90 2.66 0.863 32 the feedback i receive covers some aspects of my work 89 1.70 0.922 2.27 sc 0.886 c – aggregate average mean; sc – aggregate average standard deviation table 2: aspects of facilitation and development of self-assessment question indicator n s 8 the feedback i receive tells me how i can improve next time 90 2.06 1.032 16 the feedback is constructive and tailored to meet my needs 85 2.33 0.905 18 the feedback provides opportunities for me to reflect on the feedback and develop action plans for recovery or for future work 87 2.29 0.834 21 when self-assessment is used does it provide opportunities for you to validate/verify your assessment? 89 2.11 0.804 2.2 sc 0.894 table 3: promoting high-quality information to students about learning question indicator n s 2 the feedback i receive is easy to read 90 2.26 0.881 6 the feedback i receive tells me what i have done well 90 2.16 0.935 7 the feedback i receive tells me how i can improve next time 90 2.32 0.918 10 the feedback i receive highlights action points for future development 89 2.21 0.859 11 the feedback i receive offers an explanation of where i have gone wrong 90 2.12 0.859 12 the feedback gives me clear guidance on how i can improve my work 90 2.13 1.024 19 the feedback indicates the essential or priority aspects where there is much to be improved 90 2.12 0.872 22 are some of the comments considered during feedback referred to a database of comments? 88 2.64 0.847 23 is feedback given via e-mail or generated by computer, for example, after a computer-delivered test? 75 2.28 0.708 2.25 sc 0.878 xc xc xc 40 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 table 4: peer and teacher dialogue question indicator n s 14 i ask the tutor for further guidance on the module 89 2.25 0.895 20 when peer assessment is used, it is clearly defined in what way the grades are used to inform the final mark awarded and to ensure consistent practice 90 2.21 0.807 29 if i receive tutorial support after feedback, it will enhance my learning 90 1.67 0.807 31 verbal discussion with markers can help you identify your mistakes and way of thinking 92 1.96 0.886 2.02 sc 0.849 table 5: encouraging positive motivational beliefs and build self-esteem question indicator n s 13 i feel that the mark i receive is fair and appropriate 90 2.30 0.958 17 the feedback is an appropriate balance between criticism and advice 89 2.28 0.754 24 is the feedback provided legible and expressed in such a way that the student will understand and be motivated by it? 90 2.92 1.124 27 constructive criticism during feedback helps me learn from my mistakes 90 1.79 0.906 30 a balance between the feedback for formative and summative assessment will guide me during the learning process 90 1.84 0.847 2.23 sc 0.918 table 6: providing opportunities to close the gap between current and desired performance question indicator n s 9 if i get the feedback in time, i will correct my mistakes before the next tests and/or assignments 90 2.28 0.924 25 if i receive feedback from tests and/or assignments in time, it will improve my learning 90 2.21 1.022 26 focusing on the outcomes during feedback will enhance my learning 90 1.66 0.889 28 i compare my assignments and/or tests with the feedback received and then correct the mistakes 89 1.71 0.786 1.97 sc 0.905 xc xc xc perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 11 catherine e. snow harvard graduate school of education e-mail: snowcat249@gmail.com telephone: 1 617 495 3563 language, literacy, and the needs of the multilingual child catherine e. snow in this article, i first take on the issue of standards and the degree to which they do or do not contribute to the improvement of language and literacy outcomes for children in multilingual societies. then i consider the relation of standards to language and, finally, raise the vexed issue of content knowledge and its relation to standards, on the one hand, and to language, on the other. keywords: standards, accountability, language development, second language learners standards in south africa and the united states in many countries, south africa and the us among them, the default approach to improving educational outcomes for all children and to reducing gaps in academic achievement associated with language background, socio-economic status, parental education, and other such factors is to raise standards. standards can be used, in the ideal policy setting, as a way of creating a vision of excellence, of building buy-in to a shared view of what children should learn and how teachers should teach, and of guiding the distribution of resources to schools in need. in the us, though, standards have often been used as a basis for punishing the schools or the students who do not live up to expectations and in some places as one factor in decisions about teacher retention and pay raises. in particularly perverse cases, resources are distributed such that schools that meet the standards get more and those that fail get fewer – as if access to fewer resources could in any way lead to a greater likelihood of success. though the education systems of the us and of south africa differ in striking ways, there are similarities that may make the recent us experience with standards the preferred policy for driving educational improvement informative to a south african audience. both countries are characterised by particularly high levels of income inequality though, of course, the inequality in the us centres on a higher per capita income than in south africa. both countries are dealing with the fallout of decades perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 12 of inequalities in educational opportunities that have particularly disadvantaged nonwhite children. both countries are now dealing with the challenge of providing education to a very high proportion of children who must learn english if they are to have access to full resources of the educational system. these challenges galvanised policy reactions in the us somewhat earlier than in south africa: schooling was legally if not yet actually desegregated in the us in 1954, and language diversity was increasing rapidly due to immigration in the 1970s and 1980s. the brutal facts of insufficient and unequal educational outcomes had become matters of public discussion in the us by 1983 with the publication of a nation at risk (a ‘report to the nation’ written by the national commission on excellence in education). in 1995, the us department of education and the national governors association issued a set of educational goals and invited each of the 50 states to develop standards associated with those goals. (under the us constitution, there is a limited federal role in education; primary responsibility rests with the states, which can then delegate responsibility to local educational authorities.) thus, a system was developed in which each state sets its own standards, but those standards were not universally enforced with state assessments. this lack of enforcement led to a federal response in 2002. for the next eight years, during the george w bush administration, the us educational policy was dominated by no child left behind (nclb), federal legislation passed with bipartisan support which prescribed that every school be rated according to level of success on the relevant state test, and that schools be held accountable to increase the percentage of students in each school and in each identified demographic subgroup passing the state test. the laudable goals of nclb were undermined by its unrealistic expectations for rapid progress in response to sanctions, but also by huge variation across the states in the rigour of their standards and, thus, the ease of passing their state tests (linn, baker & betebenner, 2002). strikingly, states that could demonstrate high pass rates and great progress on their state tests were often those that scored lowest on the national assessment of education progress (naep), the nationally administered benchmark tests. in other words, many states had gamed the system by undermining the educational achievement of their students. nclb had firmly established in us educational policy making the principle that standards were an effective improvement tool. therefore, when its flaws became obvious, the response was not to reject standards as a lever for reform but, in fact, to strengthen the standards. thus was born the current us policy initiative, the common core state standards (ccss; see http://www.corestandards.org/the-standards). the ccss differ from the nclb-era standards in a number of ways. first, the standards articulated are much more rigorous – established by a process of determining the skills needed for successful entry to university or the workplace, and then working backwards in reasonable increments to determine how much a student would need to learn at each earlier grade. second, the standards were developed by two groups (national governors association and the council of chief state school officers) that language, literacy, and the needs of the multilingual child catherine e. snow 13 embody the constitutional authority of the states over educational policy, but that have the power to work together on a common agenda. thus, the ccss were made available for state adoption, but with prior buy-in by the governors and education leaders in many states. ultimately, almost all the 50 states have adopted the ccss, making them a national if not a federal system of expectations. more specifically, the ccss represent five major shifts in thinking from the nclb-era standards: 1. spotlighting text complexity. a major focus of the ccss is that students must be expected to read larger quantities of more complex text than is currently required. the standards define a ‘staircase of text complexity’ up which students should climb, and the staircase brings with it a focus on teaching/learning the academic vocabulary that characterises complex texts of all sorts. while the ccss commit the common error of reducing the challenges of academic language almost entirely to the subproblem of academic vocabulary, they do bring attention to the domain of academic language. most importantly, the ccss transcend the nclb focus on discrete reading and writing skills by shifting to a description of the reading and writing tasks students should be able to accomplish. 2. increased emphasis on informational text and on building knowledge. the explicit identification of the reading and writing tasks students should be expected to complete in history/social studies, science, and technical subjects complements existing content standards for those domains; at the same time, it must be mentioned that the challenging literacy tasks prescribed are also, to some extent, in conflict with current content standards, which specify lists of topics, facts, and issues so long that no time for the in-depth analysis and synthesis required by the ccss remains. the ccss place a premium on building knowledge from reading, using informational texts (anticipating the reading required in college and workforce training programs). thus, in kindergarten through 5th grade, a 50-50 balance between informational and literary reading is prescribed, whereas in grades 6–12 even more informative reading is prescribed, including much more literary nonfiction in ela than is currently assigned. the ccss also specifies the need for a coherent general knowledge foundation in k-grade 5 – though without much guidance about precisely what that entails. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 14 3. using evidence from text in writing. a major shift in the ccss is away from the emphasis on narrative writing, in particular writing personal narratives, to a focus on writing with sources, i.e., using evidence from texts to present careful analyses, well-defended claims, and clear information. relatedly, good reading comprehension questions are redefined in the ccss as those that depend on careful reading of the text rather than just responding to it in general ways. readers are expected to construct knowledge primarily from the text, so questions are meant to downplay the value of prior knowledge (a task many of us would argue is quite inconsistent with what we know about the natural process of reading comprehension). nonetheless, the salubrious shift to teaching the importance of close reading in order to grasp information, arguments, ideas and details based on text evidence should serve students better than invitations to respond to texts with affective or evaluative comments. it should be noted, though, that the focus on drawing inferences and conclusions primarily by paying careful attention to text is in some conflict with the admonition to build a strong knowledge base, particularly for younger students and for those with poorer reading skills. 4. connections across skill areas and integration of competencies. one of the strengths of the ccss is its insistence that all the processes of communication are intertwined though, for conceptual clarity, the standards are divided into reading, writing, speaking and listening, and language strands. for example, writing standard 9 requires that students be able to write about what they read, and speaking and listening standard 4 sets the expectation that students will share findings based on reading and research orally as well as in writing. thus, the ccss’ specific expectations for accomplishments in reading, writing, speaking, and listening are not meant to define separable targets for instruction or assessment. a single rich task would include both teaching and testing of several standards. for example, when drawing evidence from literary and informational texts per writing standard 9, students are also demonstrating their comprehension skill in relation to specific standards in reading. when discussing something they have read or written, students are also demonstrating their speaking and listening skills. language, literacy, and the needs of the multilingual child catherine e. snow 15 5. shared responsibility across content areas for reaching the standards. in u.s. schools ela teachers have traditionally had the sole responsibility for teaching literacy and, thus, were solely to blame if students struggled. the ccss make explicit that instruction in reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language is a shared responsibility within the school. in k-5, where students typically have a single teacher, standards include expectations for reading, writing, speaking, listening, and language across subjects, including but not limited to ela. in grades 6–12, where teaching responsibilities are shared across many content area teachers, standards specify content area literacy skills to be taught and practiced in history, science, and technical subjects. another way of conceptualizing the major difference between the state-specific and the new common standards is depicted in figure 1. the challenge of acquiring sufficient literacy for academic success involves many domains, some of which are small in size and constrained in possibility. learning the 26 letters of the english alphabet can be a challenge for a reception-class child but, ultimately, it is a very constrained task – no new letters will be encountered once the 26 have been learned. similarly, the mapping of letters to sounds, while not absolutely straightforward in english, can be represented with a set of spelling rules that numbers only in the few hundred. vocabulary, on the other hand, is a large domain (an estimated 80,000 words are needed to read introductory university-level texts), and one that continues to grow with the discovery of new phenomena and the invention of new artefacts. the language structures needed to read, write, speak, and comprehend academic language, and the knowledge base needed for reading comprehension, are huge and unconstrained domains. as figure 1 suggests, the nclb-era literacy standards tended to focus on the smaller literacy domains – accurate word reading and fluency in reading aloud – whereas the new common core standards focus much more on the unconstrained domains, of which language is one. meaning syntactic structures genre features sight vocabulary phonological representations vocabulary spelling rules letters phonemes language structures ccs: large problem spaces state specific standards: small problem space adapted from show & kim (2006) figure 1. a schematic representation of the size of various domains of knowledge required for success in literacy tasks. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 16 the relation of standards to language one of the challenges in discussing the role of language in education is the several roles it plays. language is not only a medium of education, but also an outcome of education – creating one of those difficult situations in which one has to know something before one can learn it. i will argue that a particular form of language, namely discussion, is a key tool for learning both language and content but that, at the same time, academic forms of language may have to be an explicit target of instruction for some children. the underlying assumption in the argument to follow is that we are talking about a system of education with high standards for student performance – standards like those articulated in the ccss, in which the capacity to engage in analysis, synthesis and critique are central goals. language as medium the language to be used as a medium of instruction is a recurrent question, in the u.s. as in south africa. the u.s. is struggling with a huge achievement gap associated with language background. children from non-english-speaking homes fall, on average, about .5 standard deviations below children from english-speaking homes in nationally administered comprehension assessments. on the other hand, accumulating evidence suggests they do not differ in word reading. the biggest persistent differences occur in the domain of vocabulary where, despite rapid acquisition during the early grades, they never catch up with english-only peers (mancilla-martinez & lesaux, 2011). targeted instructional programs can shrink the gap in domains explicitly taught (see, for example, carlo, august, mclaughlin, snow et al., 2004; lesaux, kieffer, faller & kelley, 2010; snow, lawrence & white, 2009), but the size of the vocabulary domain and of the domain of knowledge which it indexes frustrates efforts to eliminate skill differences that have accumulated over several years. the u.s. has been a test bed for efforts to eliminate the gap associated with language background through the use of home languages in education. bilingual education was a popular and widely implemented approach in u.s. schools in the 1970s and 1980s. it has since declined in popularity – ironically, just as the evidence indicates clearly that, other things held equal, bilingual education works better than confronting children with complex tasks in a completely unfamiliar language (francis, lesaux & august, 2006). of course it must be pointed out that other things are never held entirely equal. program quality is almost certainly a better predictor of outcomes than program type, and it may well be that, in the u.s. context at least (where bilingualism is not a societal norm), high-quality bilingual programs are more difficult to deliver than high-quality english-only programs. as noted above, english-only programs seem to be more efficient in ensuring success in the constrained-domain skills (word reading accuracy and fluency) than in the unconstrained domains. one interpretation of this pattern of findings language, literacy, and the needs of the multilingual child catherine e. snow 17 is that the degree to which use of the home language is crucial and/or productive depends on the challenge level of the task. learning to read initially is moderately challenging and might be facilitated by home language use, although home language use is not crucial. learning to read for knowledge acquisition, analysis, synthesis and critique is much more challenging and might be a domain in which home language use is more crucial and/or productive. at least, such a hypothesis is worth testing. a complementary hypothesis is that, if home language instruction is not available, then instruction in a second language has to be of very high quality to help students acquire the unconstrained-domain skills. language as an educational outcome research consistently shows that severe deficits in vocabulary are associated with second-language-learner status for students growing up in poverty and attending under-resourced schools (snow & kim, 2006). academic language is an area of considerable educational concern for such children, and many practitioners as well as researchers attribute their reading difficulties to a lack of familiarity with academic language. unfortunately, the default definition of ‘academic language’ is academic vocabulary, ignoring the reality that many of the manifestations of academic language are related to syntax and discourse structures, and that some of them are not even language specific. in other words, students could learn academic language skills in a home language and be expected to transfer those skills easily to a second, school language. my colleague, paola uccelli, and her collaborators have developed an inventory of academic language skills as a basis for designing an assessment (uccelli, barr, dobbs, galloway, meneses & sanchez, 2013). they are working in the context of a larger project in which the power of academic language to predict reading comprehension is being tested (see ccdd.serpmedia.org for more details about the larger project). uccelli’s team has identified four key testable components of academic language: information packing, linking ideas, discourse structure, and awareness of the academic language register. they have designed assessments for skills that fit into all these domains and demonstrated developmental regularities as well as reasonable correlations with state assessments of ela skills. the imminent task of the larger project is to determine how much variance in reading comprehension outcomes is explained by these academic language factors. discussion as a context for learning academic language and other academic skills as noted in the discussion of the ccss with which i began, oral language skills, collaboration, and effective communication are explicitly mentioned as part of the speaking and listening standards. our research with an instructional program called word generation (www.wg.serpmedia.org) strongly suggests that engaging in oral communication in the classroom, in particular issue-focused discussions, is itself a perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 18 context for developing the reading and writing skills highlighted by the ccss – noting key ideas and details, integrating background knowledge with new information, critiquing arguments, and understanding perspectives expressed in the text. why do i argue that discussion is such a powerful instructional strategy? because its affordances are rich and directly relevant to the skills we would like to nurture in our students. discussion creates high levels of student engagement, opportunities to practice reasoning skills (providing warrants for claims, evaluating quality of evidence), a need for perspective taking (understanding the audience, anticipating counterarguments), an epistemic orientation (academic language use, a distanced stance), and rich possibilities for the incidental acquisition of knowledge. for students with reading problems, the opportunities for incidental content learning and for full participation in classroom activities are particularly valuable, and for second-language students discussion creates opportunities to speak in class that are otherwise often unavailable. furthermore, if discussion is carried out in small groups rather than by the whole class, then home language use, with its potential to deepen understanding, also becomes possible. there is now considerable evidence in the literature that classroom discussion works to promote critical thinking skills, reading comprehension, and involvement with big ideas (e.g., applebee, langer, nystrand & gamoran, 2003; chapin, o’connor & anderson, 2003; gamoran & nystrand, 1991; lawrence & snow, 2010; murphy, wilkinson, soter, hennessey & alexander, 2009). the challenge is that teachers are often ill-trained in running good discussions and, thus, also reluctant to do so. in our current work we are exploring the degree to which well-structured issue-focused curriculum can support teachers to generate more and richer discussions and, in turn, support the development of reasoning, perspective taking, academic language, and reading comprehension. results from initial designs of the discussion-based curricular intervention are very promising (lawrence, capotosto, branum-martin, white & snow, 2012; snow, lawrence & white, 2009); therefore, we are optimistic that the current design, which supports richer discussion by providing a more extended relevant knowledge base, will promote students’ language and literacy skills. content knowledge as related to standards and to language our initial efforts to introduce discussion into u.s. classrooms relied on presenting discussable dilemmas in the context of relatively brief informative passages – 300 words or so, in which a few facts that could be used to support each side in the dilemma were provided. this led to quite satisfactory discussions in cases where the students could supplement those few facts with their own knowledge, e.g., when discussing questions like ‘should rap music be censored?’ or ‘should school uniforms be obligatory?’ some of the topics, though, could not be adequately presented in a one-page text, e.g., ‘should undocumented immigrants be given amnesty?’ or ‘should stem-cell research be federally funded?’ observing discussion of these more language, literacy, and the needs of the multilingual child catherine e. snow 19 challenging topics reminded us of the central importance of background knowledge in reading comprehension and effective argumentation. unfortunately, background knowledge is a site of deep inequality. we know about the differences in vocabulary between children from homes with low parental education and more middle-class homes (e.g., hart & risley, 1995). but responding to those differences in vocabulary by simply teaching lists of vocabulary words is demonstrably unsuccessful. the underlying difference is not whether a child can find a synonym for eruption, tide, or income. the big difference is the conceptual structures associated with those and thousands of other such words. middle-class children who have the opportunity to engage in extended conversations with adults about topics such as volcanoes, tidal pools, and budgeting, not to mention elections, kinship, historical events, and the solar system, are automatically learning words like lava, brine, debt, franchise, genetic, revolution, and orbit, and acquiring information about the concepts they refer to in the context of related words and rich contextual knowledge. these conceptual structures (acquired in a home or a school language) are then available for use in reading comprehension, in thinking about the social and physical world, and in discussion. a looming worry about the implementation of the ccss in the u.s. is that these new standards will focus on the skills of analysis, synthesis and critique so heavily that opportunities in classrooms to build student knowledge are being ignored. this danger starts in early childhood programs, where pressures to teach english to speakers of other languages and to teach the basic, small-domain literacy skills may well leave no time for knowledge-building activities such as reading aloud and discussing topics introduced through the books read, or taking field trips, or engaging in science observations and conversations. we will have done our students no great service if we teach them to read words accurately and fluently but deprive them of the information they will need to truly comprehend complex texts. references applebee a, langer j, nystrand m & gamoran a 2003. discussion-based approaches to developing understanding: classroom instruction and student performance in middle and high school english. american educational research journal, 40(3): 685-730. carlo m, august d, mclaughlin b, snow c, dressler c, lippman d, lively t & white c 2004. closing the gap: addressing the vocabulary needs of english language learners in bilingual and mainstream classrooms. reading research quarterly, 39(2): 188-215. chapin s, o’connor m & anderson n 2003. classroom discussions: using math talk to help students learn: grades 1-6. sausalito, ca: math solutions publications. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 20 gamoran a & nystrand m 1991. background and instructional effects on achievement in eighth-grade english and social studies. journal of research on adolescence, 1(3): 277-300. francis dj, lesaux nk & august dl 2006. language of instruction for minority language learners. in: dl august & t shanahan (eds). developing literacy in a second language: report of the national literacy panel. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. hart b & risley t 1995. meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young american children. baltimore: brookes. lawrence jf, capotosto l, branum-martin l, white c & snow ce 2012. language proficiency, home-language status, and english vocabulary development: a longitudinal follow-up of the word generation program. bilingualism: language and cognition, 15: 437-451. lawrence j & snow c 2010. oral discourse and reading. in: m kamil, pd pearson, e moje & p afflerbach (eds). handbook of reading research volume iv. new york: routledge. lesaux nk, kieffer mj, faller se & kelley j 2010. the effectiveness and ease of implementation of an academic vocabulary intervention for linguistically diverse students in urban middle schools. reading research quarterly, 45: 198-230. linn rl, baker e & betebenner d 2002. accountability systems: implications of requirements of the no child left behind act of 2001. educational researcher, 31: 3-16. mancilla-martinez j & lesaux nk 2011. the gap between spanish-speakers’ word reading and word knowledge: a longitudinal study. child development, 82: 1544-1560. murphy p, wilkinson i, soter a, hennessey m & alexander j 2009. examining the effects of classroom discussion on students’ comprehension of text: a metaanalysis. journal of educational psychology, 101: 740-764. national commission on excellence in education. (1983, april). a nation at risk: the imperative for educational reform. retrieved on 9 may 2012 from datacenter. spps.org/uploads/sotw_a_nation_at_risk_1983.pdf snow c, lawrence j & white c 2009. generating knowledge of academic language among urban middle school students. journal of research on educational effectiveness, 2: 325-344. snow ce & kim y-s 2006. large problem spaces: the challenge of vocabulary for english language learners. in: rk wagner, a muse & k tannenbaum (eds). vocabulary acquisition and its implications for reading comprehension. new york: guilford press. uccelli p, barr cd, dobbs cl, galloway ep, meneses a & sánchez e 2013. crossdisciplinary academic language skills: developmental trends and individual variability during the adolescent years. submitted to applied psycholinguistics. pie 32 (2) book.indb perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 37 lesley wood faculty of education sciences, north-west university e-mail: lesley.wood@nwu.ac.za telephone: 082 296 9202 values-based self-reflective action research for promoting gender equality: some unexpected lessons lesley wood the idea of using values as a means of guiding our research decisions and judging the validity of our claims of knowledge is well established in literature on the self-reflective genre of action research. values in action research should always result in virtuous behaviour – to promote the general social good. however, ideas of what constitutes the social good may differ from context to context. this article problematises the notion that ‘good’ values lead to ‘good’ action. presenting one research project as a case study, i show that the articulation of values does not always result in what i, as a researcher and white, middle-class woman, would recognise as health-promoting action. yet, the participants view such behaviour as a legitimate means to improve their quality of life, at least in the short term. first, i describe the social and cultural context of the research, before highlighting some value conflicts that emerged, as the participants and i critically reflected on our understanding of more equal and healthy gender relations. it is important to expose such conflicting value interpretations through critical self-reflection, so that researchers and participants can work towards a deeper mutual understanding of how to best address complex social issues such as gender relations in specific social contexts. keywords: action research, gender relations, hiv prevention, research as social change, self-study research, values-based practitioner self-enquiry introduction self-study action research such as that propagated by jean mcniff and jack whitehead in their joint and separate writing (see, for example, whitehead & mcniff, 2006; whitehead, 2009; mcniff, 2013) is conceptualised as a means of enquiry, whereby practitioners investigate, interrogate and evaluate their practice in order to improve what they are doing and to influence the learning of others. as a tertiary researcher perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 38 committed to the critical self-reflection of my own practice, i employ research methodologies that encourage participants to do the same. i judge the validity of my work and any claims to knowledge against my values which then become “living standards of judgment” (whitehead, 1989: 49). i proceed from a critical, emancipatory paradigm of action research (carr & kemmis, 2003) that aims to attain social change by creating space for people to critically reflect on, and problematise their current circumstances and thinking, with the ultimate aim of encouraging them to accept the responsibility for taking action to emancipate themselves from real and self-imposed social and epistemological oppression (freire, 1995). i thus work with participants to identify and articulate upfront the values that we wish to embody in our respective practices, and to which we agree, and for which we will hold ourselves accountable. the reasoning goes thus: if we all hold ourselves accountable to values that promote the social good, then we would act in a more virtuous way that could also influence others; social change should then ensue, as a result of accumulative individual change (whitehead & mcniff, 2009). action research also abolishes the notion of the academic researcher as the ‘expert’ who imposes his/her own knowledge on others, in order to guide the process (zuber-skerritt, 2011). instead, it regards participants as practitioner-researchers who, by dint of their insider knowledge, are viewed as the most capable of finding workable ways to improve their own educational/social situations by engaging in cycles of enquiry that require them to think, act, evaluate and plan (mctaggart, 2012). however, this process is not as simple as it first appears. while, in theory, ‘good’ values may be identified and conceptualised relatively easily by all concerned, agreeing on how they should be acted out in practice is more difficult. for example, in contexts of poverty and social disadvantage, the value of self-improvement may, in fact, lead to outcomes that are perceived as ‘bad’ or unhealthy: take the case where a young girl engages in unsafe sex in return for nice clothes and other material gifts. by critically reflecting on my own actions and potential influence as researcher in a two-year research project, i explain how i came to be aware of the latent danger of expecting participants to adopt and embody values, as i understand them, without considering how they could be interpreted and acted on differently in their specific social and cultural contexts. this article thus problematises the notion that engaging in a values-based selfenquiry process of action research would always lead to good or virtuous outcomes. making my own ‘self’ explicit how to reflect on my own positionality in the study is a challenge. how do i make explicit my own values and background in relation to those of the participants, since values-based self-reflective action research for promoting gender equality: some unexpected lessons lesley wood 39 my ‘self’ is a powerful source of influence on the study? as a researcher and professor, i recognise that, initially, participating teachers, and even more so learners, view me as an ‘expert’ – someone who can give them the answers they seek – and i have to work hard throughout the research relationship to convince them that they are the ‘knowers’ in this context. how do i take into consideration my privileged upbringing, and how do i avoid having my own passion to make some contribution to reducing gender violence via my research not become ‘the agenda’ for those teachers with whom i work? background to the project the project was conceived for the purpose of hiv prevention – through a gender lens. international literature emphasises the link between unequal gender relations and hiv, a fact that has prompted both south african and international bodies to make it a focal point in hiv-prevention education (kaufman, shefer, crawford, simbayi & kalichman, 2005; larkin, andrews & mitchell, 2006; department of basic education, 2012; unaids, 2010). participatory approaches to hiv and gender education can be effective in changing thinking and behaviour (de lange, mitchell, moletsane & stuart, 2012; wood, 2012). for this reason, i chose an action-research approach that would require all the participants, including myself, to critically reflect on the data generated throughout the process to guide the project (stringer & beadle, 2012). the socio-economic context of the particular project that i, as the researcher guiding the action research process, will use as a case study to reflect on my own learning can be best explained by an extract from one of the participating teachers’ reports that is typical of all six schools in the project (yin, 2013): our school is situated at the heart of k location. most of our learners come from the nearby squatter camps where parents are often sick (many from hivrelated illnesses), unemployed or abuse alcohol. they live on grandparents’ social grants or child support grants. there is no stable income. we have quite a number of orphans and vulnerable children at our school, and some of them are heading their households. they struggle to pay school fees and to buy uniforms. with such rampant poverty, many come to school on empty stomachs (teacher, school 3). i worked with 12 volunteer teachers (2 males and 10 females) and 82 learners (at 3 primary and 3 high schools) to help them develop the capacity to act as agents of change regarding unjust and unequal gender norms in their communities. the project was conducted in two phases. in phase one, i worked first with the teachers to help them become aware of the link between hiv transmission and gender inequalities; reflect on their own gender constructs and how these constructs would affect their teaching; integrate gender education into their teaching and/ perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 40 or implement programmes in their wider school community, and develop their leadership competencies for this purpose. in the second phase, the teachers and i collaborated to work with volunteer learners to develop their capacity as peer educators in gender-based issues. throughout the process, values were used as the basis for interrogating and evaluating our own constructions of gender relations. all the participants identified and operationalised the values they thought would best bring about more equitable gender relations in their specific contexts. copious data were generated by means of visual methods such as drawings and photo-voice, focus groups and participants’ written project reports and reflections (guillemin, 2004; wang, 1999; krueger & casey, 2009). for the purpose of this article, i am drawing on my own critical reflections on aspects of the data in terms of the articulation and acting out of values. although other publications have emanated from this study, highlighting successful project outcomes and contributing to the knowledge of how to work with teachers and learners towards gender equality, when i started to examine the data from a values perspective and to critically reflect on my own thinking and how it could possibly have influenced the interpretation of the data, i realised the potential danger of assuming that my interpretation of specific values, and how they should be embodied in reallife contexts, would automatically be similar to those of the other participants (see wood, 2009a; 2009b; 2012). although i intended to act for the social good and had developed ethical procedures that seemingly protected the participants from harm, after critical reflection on my own assumptions and thinking, i became disconcerted that i could have unwittingly encouraged behaviour that would result in negative emotional, social and financial outcomes for the participants, due to my own strong beliefs about gender relations (for a full report of ethical measures, see wood, 2012). the values guiding the study values refer to the ideas we hold about what we believe to be good and right and, as such, guide our decisions (lombardo, 2008). whitehead (1989: 47) suggested that we should use our values as “living standards of judgment” against which to evaluate our actions, in order to ensure that we act to promote the social good. the participants in this study, teachers and peer educators, were encouraged to identify and operationalise their values, so that they would be able to monitor their thinking and actions against such values when they critically reflected on their actions and beliefs relating to gender relations. in both phases of the study, respect, sincerity and ubuntu were high on the list of values identified by the participants. these were also values that i hold dear, and we seemed to be in agreement in our practical articulation of them. for example, after values-based self-reflective action research for promoting gender equality: some unexpected lessons lesley wood 41 collaborative deliberation, the teachers explained how they thought these values should be operationalised: • mutual respect (for example, being non-judgemental; listening to what others think, feel and say; being caring, compassionate and empathic). • sincerity (for example, modelling desired attitudes/behaviour; living out our values; not having hidden agendas; being open and honest with partners and people in general) as the values to which they would hold themselves accountable. • ubuntu (for example, treating others as you want to be treated; being kind to others; partnerships for the benefit of both in a relationship) (extract from workshop notes, may 2009). the learners also identified similar values in their visual data, as indicated in figure 1. figure 1: values of respect and love and working together towards better gender relations however, although in theory we had come to an agreement on how values should be lived out, further reflection on the data made it clear to me that the values agreed on within the research context were not being lived out in their own relationships, perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 42 or rather that there may be a disconnection between the values we state publicly and how they are lived out. the descriptions of the values resonated with my understanding of what is acceptable and what is not; it became apparent to me that these definitions were more of an imagined state of affairs than actual reality for the teachers. for example, when we started to relate our understanding of values to the life experiences of the participating teachers, different interpretations surfaced that might lead to outcomes which, in fact, contradicted the ones that i had imagined. when teachers explored further how they had been taught to convey respect in their communities, the interpretations differed, to some extent, from those we had constructed earlier. for instance, in terms of how the value of respect should be lived out, the following definitions emerged: • respect for those older than you – you cannot challenge or question your elders, particularly your mother-in-law or husband’s family. • respect for your husband, as the head of the home – you cannot negotiate condom use, and simply turn a blind eye to infidelity. • respect for the ancestors – you have to perform the necessary rituals/ consult sangomas to ensure good luck and protection from illness and other misfortunes, which practice often had considerable financial implications (extract from workshop notes, october 2009). the participants mentioned that, if people were to transgress these deeply entrenched cultural and gender norms, they would risk being ostracised by both family and others in the community. the majority of the teachers also indicated that, although they might not agree in theory with how respect was construed in their communities, they found it easier to comply with rather than to challenge them and cause possible conflict within their own families. one teacher complained that she was not happy with the way in which her daughter was being treated by her extended family (not allowed to wear short skirts, had to do all the chores), in comparison with the freedom her son had to dress as he wished, and not help around the house: i get so tired of fighting; sometimes it is not worth it and then i just keep quiet – i do not agree with what they [husband and his mother] say, but i do not want to make a fuss, because they will never change their minds (female teacher, school 4). this compliance, albeit only on the surface, reinforces male hegemony (hearn, 2004), in that this teacher chose to embrace practices which denied her the right to freedom of action and expression and which entrenched the idea of female subservience. when i critically reflected on my own thinking in this instance, i began to wonder whether my interventions would make any difference to the status quo. would the values-based self-reflective action research for promoting gender equality: some unexpected lessons lesley wood 43 participants really be able to make any difference in terms of gender relations in the face of such strong communal and cultural norms? what would happen when they actually tried to live out their values in everyday life? would this cause them more harm than good, and what right did i, as a researcher, have to encourage them to challenge the system if it might result in physical, emotional or relational harm? in the next section, i will present evidence from the data to substantiate my concerns. reflecting on the role and meaning of values in the project according to the argument put forward by the proponents of a values-based selfenquiry genre of action research, if people do not live according to their values, they experience themselves as “living contradictions” (whitehead, 1989: 49), creating a certain amount of cognitive dissonance (festinger, 1957). this feeling then propels them to take action to create harmony between their thoughts and their behaviour. however, what happens when the violation of espoused values is common practice in the environment? or when people’s ideas of how the values should be lived out differ? how simple is it then for people to act in accordance with their values? and what happens when attempts to live out values incite others to react in an abusive manner? and what if people living in contexts of poverty, violence and hopelessness found ways to improve their lives that i would have condemned as unhealthy, but that they perceived as being a legitimate means to better their circumstances? as i critically reflected on the data and my own reactions thereto, these and other questions started to trouble me. it was clear that the situation was more complex than i had first imagined. if i did not take this complexity into account in my interaction with the participants, sustainable changes in their behaviour were not likely to occur. moreover, our relationship would not be based on mutual trust and honesty, as they would be likely to tell me what they thought i wanted to hear, rather than what they were really thinking. participants might agree on the need to live out ‘good’ values and they would agree on a ‘healthy’ acceptable way to operationalise such values within the research context; but, how would they be able to enact such behaviour in environments that were not very conducive to change? the ‘living contradiction’ that is the school system the department of basic education (2011: 8) promotes adherence to the values of “democracy, social justice and equity; equality; non-racism and non-sexism; ubuntu – human dignity”, which are taken from our constitution. these values should form the basis of all gender relations in schools, and of learners and teachers in the broader community. however, the very context of education in the majority of schools in our perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 44 country denies these values, given the social inequalities and injustices that prevail as part of the daily reality of both teachers and learners (bloch, 2009; nkomo, 2013). extracts from teacher-project reports illustrate that schools are not always healthy, safe and caring environments: we have quite a number of orphans and vulnerable children at our school, and some of them are heading their households. they struggle to pay school fees and to buy uniforms. with such rampant poverty, many come to school on empty stomachs. there is also a high degree of absenteeism due to the fact that girls are expected to take care of their sick parents and siblings. this sometimes leads to drop-outs, and some girls take on sexual partners for financial support. the huge social and economic problems experienced by the learners make them very sensitive and easily angered at school (teacher, primary school 1). it is also believed that disciplining learners, especially boys, should only be done by male teachers. the teachers also expect different behaviour from boys and girls, where girls are expected to ‘respect’ the boys and do the cleaning work around the school (teacher, high school 4). even more disconcerting to me was the fact that male teachers turn a blind eye to the issue of girls being sexually abused by initiates; the female teachers are helpless to interfere, because it is viewed as “a cultural issue”. the issue that concerns us most is the behaviour of the boys, particularly when they return from the initiation schools. these amakrwalas or initiates demand a special respect from the girls, but [they] treat these girls badly. they bully the girls, forcing them to have sexual relationships with them; and if they do not comply they beat them. they also compete about having multiple partners in the same school, which, according to them, is done to prove their masculinity (female teacher, high school 5). it appears that, in such environments, girls especially are at risk and have little choice in deciding to live out their values as they see fit – if they want to exercise their right to refuse sex (based on the values of respect, equality, ubuntu), they are beaten. due to entrenched cultural norms, some of the female participants also considered themselves unable to intervene to help these girls, as this would cause their male counterparts to be angry with them – something they clearly found to be uncomfortable. i do not want to interfere, because then he will make my work life bad – that man is friendly with my husband, which makes it worse because then i will suffer at home as well if i say anything (female teacher, school 2). although difficult for me to condone, i have come to realise that i need to put my own indignation aside, and that these types of issues need to be taken into consideration when discussing expectations for change with participants. i am not saying that change is impossible, but that the potential negative consequences, fears and entrenched beliefs should be openly discussed, so that alternative strategies, that are less risky for personal wellbeing, can be found. values-based self-reflective action research for promoting gender equality: some unexpected lessons lesley wood 45 tension between the ideal and lived reality the data revealed that gender-based violence seems to be something that both children and teachers in the community witness on a daily basis. as their pictures show (see figure 2), men are depicted as violent, abusive and controlling of women – behaviour that is often fuelled by alcohol abuse. figure 2: examples of leader experiences of gender relations the children are exposed to this on a daily basis in their own homes, in contrast to the message of respect, love and care for the other, preached by myself and their perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 46 teachers. the pictures that the children drew shocked me and made more apparent the difference between their daily reality and mine. if gender-based violence was common behaviour in the relationships in their community, i realised that my encouraging them to stand up against it could not be done without also discussing the possible negative consequences of any action that attempted to challenge the status quo. this understanding was reinforced when i studied the data produced by the teachers depicting their own gender relations. their pictures indicate that women who attempt to stand up to men run the risk of being abused, either physically, emotionally or economically. figure 3: teacher depiction of gender relations several of the participating teachers also indicated that they had experienced violence and/or infidelity in their own relationships. as one female teacher (school 1) wrote: values-based self-reflective action research for promoting gender equality: some unexpected lessons lesley wood 47 we black women, it does not matter if we are educated, we still get abused and we are not meant to say anything about it. i cannot complain about his girlfriend and he says he uses a condom with her, but not with me. but i just shut up, because i think of the kids and the money he brings in. it is interesting to note that this participant started to talk about black women in general; she then lapsed into the first person, which made me think that she is talking from experience. if teachers themselves are living in such relationships, how would they be able to teach children in an authentic manner? the visual representations of gender relations and the accompanying narratives indicated that they did not – or could not – embody in their own lives the values they were supposed to teach to others. teachers in this study valued respect; yet the community understanding of respect between genders was based on male hegemony, to which they tended to conform. they valued honesty, yet they turned a blind eye to partner infidelity and lying about money to keep the peace. they valued trust, yet they could not trust their own male partners who would not tolerate any questioning of their activities. they valued autonomy, yet they could not share in decision-making – even about how many children to have, or to negotiate safer sex. they valued ubuntu, yet gender-based violence was a ‘normal’ part of many of their relationships. as a researcher, subscribing to freireian theories of education (freire, 1995), my initial response was to point out these inconsistencies, and to encourage them to take action to emancipate themselves from this oppression. however, as i reflected more deeply on the data, and my role as a potential influencer of their behaviour, i became aware that if they did attempt to act according to their values, they might suffer undesirable consequences. in one incident, a teacher participant confided in me that she had told her husband that she would not sleep with him until he wore a condom, as she knew about his extramarital affair. this attempt to embody sincerity, practising what she preached, caused serious ruptures in the marriage with the potential of harming both her and her children’s well-being. it also made me very conscious of the potential harm that my intervention could incite: if teachers act on these ‘good values’, the result may not be as ‘good’ as intended. i learnt that influencing others to adhere to my conceptualisation of what behaviour is/is not acceptable in a relationship would come at a price for participants, and that ethically i would have to discuss this with them, and to build in support for those who needed it. i was also disconcerted to learn that perhaps i was also guilty of not practising what i preached. whose interpretation of values is right? i have written and talked on many occasions on the dangers of moralising about hiv and aids, as well as sexuality, and i would certainly consider myself to be open-minded perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 48 and accepting of diversity. however, i was shocked at how the learner participants depicted transactional sex as a legitimate means of attaining material goods and social standing. although the learner narratives described this kind of behaviour as harmful, follow-up discussion with a high-school focus group revealed that several of them thought that this was perhaps the only way for them to ‘improve’ their lives: “it is not good for the girls to do this; it harms them and can make them sick; but what else can they do? they might as well, because they will probably get raped anyway” (male, 17). on reading this transcript, my first reaction was to think: “but this behaviour is not right ...”, and to prepare to present my own arguments to convince the children that their reasoning is faulty. however, would such a reaction not be what they were expecting, and to which they were accustomed? would it not discourage honesty in their responses, saying to me what they think i wanted to hear, rather than to make them think critically and deeply about the consequences of such actions, and what alternative behaviours could help them attain the admirable goal of ‘improving’ their lives? i preach dialogic interaction (winter, 1989), but was i practising it? although all these children were attending school, they were all living in poverty and did not have the same life opportunities as those from the more affluent neighbouring communities. whose interpretation of this behaviour would be more likely to resonate with them? while agreeing that entering into relationships for material gain does demean the woman, feeds into gender inequality, and perpetuates male hegemony, the participants could also argue that it was, in fact, an indication of increased autonomy that would lead to a better quality of life in terms of material gain. one female participant argued that many of the girls who engaged in relationships with men, who were able to provide material support, had high status among their peers, because they had such “nice things” and were seen to be “grown-up”. thinking long and hard about this, i have come to realise that, as a researcher, i need to listen to such interpretations and even admit their validity in certain contexts, while opening up critical discussion about other interpretations that would lead to more healthy outcomes. another example that convinced me that i needed to adhere to my espoused principles of critical and open dialogue was the assertion that some boys at the school were selling drugs, a fact that gave them high social status and financial gain (see figure 4). as one boy said, “guys don’t need education; they can get what they want through doing this” (male, 15). values-based self-reflective action research for promoting gender equality: some unexpected lessons lesley wood 49 figure 4: depiction of drug seller at school this made me realise that such behaviour could be regarded as entrepreneurial rather than deviant and morally wrong. of course, the end result would not be a healthy outcome for anyone concerned, but immediate gains are more important to adolescents than long-term consequences (kollins, 2002). this understanding helped me shape my next input with the participants. i adopted the role of ‘devil’s advocate’ and presented such ‘deviant’ behaviour as legitimate examples of living out values. this approach incited the participants to engage in lively discussion, and to come to the conclusion for themselves that more healthy alternatives did exist for living according to their values. perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 50 as one male participant (15) said after this session: “if i respect a girl, then i do not want her to do anything that might hurt her, such as getting pregnant, so i am going to make sure i have safe sex from now on.” lessons learnt by reviewing my data and my own role as researcher through a specific, valuesbased lens, i learnt some valuable lessons which, i believe, will improve my future interventions with teachers and youth on gender issues. first, the living out of espoused values is not an easy task in environments where they are violated on a daily basis. secondly, if participants do attempt to embody their values in the way that they operationalised them within the research context, it could put them in danger of physical and/or emotional abuse. because i had encouraged such behaviour, i would feel responsible for the consequences and for violating the ethical principle of ‘do no harm’. lastly, when i work with youth, i have to be open to differing interpretations of values, rather than to impose my understanding of what is ‘good’ and ‘virtuous’, developed as it is from a history of middle-class privilege. i have learnt that i have to look deeper, and work hard to ensure that my values, tinged by a hint of calvinistic conservatism (my scottish background), do not interfere with the dialectical creation of knowledge that i so highly value in my relationship with research participants. this is particularly so if i want to embrace the feminist values of self-reflexivity in relation to deepening an understanding of others.although i considered my practice to be in line with the assumptions and principles of critical pedagogy (freire, 1995), i had to admit that i had not been thinking deeply and critically enough about my own role in this project. the lessons learnt will help me ensure, in future, that i explore with the participants the possible consequences of adopting more gender-equal behaviour within the contexts of patriarchal domination. ethically, i will have to point out that more assertive behaviour towards gaining equitable gender relations, although ostensibly for the long-term good, might result in immediate negative circumstances. i will also have to ensure that psychosocial and material support systems are in place, should any of the participants need them. although this is a requirement of most ethics boards, i am also aware that it is very easy to say that this is available on paper, but more difficult to ensure that free and supportive services are readily accessible to participants at all hours of the day and night. it is even more difficult to encourage them to make use of such services. i have also learnt that i need to spend more time discussing different interpretations of values, and the implications of acting for short-term gains in terms of long-term negative consequences. the most important lesson, in my mind, is the need to continually check and question my own instinctive reactions to the values-based self-reflective action research for promoting gender equality: some unexpected lessons lesley wood 51 participants’ responses, to ensure that they do not unduly jeopardise the research relationship or aims. i have much evidence from the data generated from this project that points to its ‘success’. i have both written and visual evidence of how participants changed their views on gender relations, and how they increased their attempts to make a positive change in their communities. however, this critical reflection has also left me wondering whether the behavioural and cognitive changes they have reported, can, in fact, be implemented and/or sustained, given the many challenges they face in terms of gender equity in their own personal contexts. writing this reflection has made me aware of how easy it is to colonise the minds and values of others who live in more challenging contexts than i do. i now have a better understanding of what it means to live out these values in specific contexts. this understanding will help me be less simplistic in my interventions, promote gender equality, and continually check my actions against the freireian principles on which i claim to base my practice as an engaged researcher. changing social norms and behaviour is never easy. it is easier to interpret the data to show that we, as researchers, have influenced positive change, when perhaps we have, in fact, caused unintended harm, or merely imposed our ideas on participants who have learnt that it is easier to accept what a figure of authority says than to challenge it. the aims of this article were to problematise the notion that values-based action research would always promote the social good; to show that critical self-reflection can lead to the discovery of some uncomfortable truths, and, at the same time, to argue that, if we do not do this, we run the risk of being “living contradictions” who may cause more harm than good (whitehead, 1989: 49). values-based self-enquiry is, therefore, necessary in order to ensure that we discover the otherwise concealed findings of our data. it is also important to recognise that it is not a simple matter of encouraging others to live out ‘good’ values to improve their quality of life, particularly when dealing with complex issues such as gender relations. it is hoped that the examples offered in this article will encourage other researchers to think more deeply about what they are doing, and what this ‘doing does’, through critical self-reflection of their own practice. endnote ubuntu is a nguni word which, although not able to be directly translated into english, basically means that we only find fulfilment through our interactions with others. human kindness and brotherly love are thus central to the practising of ubuntu (http://africanhistory.about.com/od/glossaryu/g/ubuntu.htm). perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 52 acknowledgements the project was conducted with the help of generous funding from macaids and hivos. references bloch g 2009. the toxic mix: what is wrong with south africa’s schools and how to fix it. cape town: tafelberg. carr w & kemmis s 2003. becoming critical: education knowledge and action research. abingdon, uk: routledge. de lange n, mitchell c, moletsane r & stuart j 2012. youth as knowledge producers in community-based video in the age of aids [a sidebar]. in s poyntz & m hoechsmann (eds), teaching and learning the media: from media literacy 1.0 to media literacy 2.0. malden, ma: wiley-blackwell, 177-189. department of basic education 2011. values in action. pretoria: department of basic education. department of basic education 2012. integrated strategy on hiv and aids in education, 2012-2016. pretoria: department of basic education. festinger l 1957. a theory of cognitive dissonance. stanford, ca: stanford university press. freire p 1995. pedagogy of hope: reliving pedagogy of the oppressed. new york: continuum. guillemin m 2004. understanding illness: using drawings as a research method. qualitative health research, 14(2): 272-289. hearn j 2004. from hegemonic masculinity to the hegemony of men. feminist theory, 5 (1): 49-72. kaufman mr, shefer t, crawford m, simbayi lc & kalichman sc 2005. gender attitudes, sexual power, hiv risk: a model for understanding hiv-risk behaviour of south african men. aids care, 20 (4): 434-441. kollins sh 2002. delay discounting is associated with substance use in college students. addict behaviour, 28 (6): 1167-1173. krueger ra & casey ma 2009. focus groups: a practical guide for applied research. 4th edition. thousand oaks, ca: sage. larkin j, andrews a & mitchell c 2006. guy talk: contesting masculinities in hiv prevention education with canadian youth. sex education, 6 (3): 207-221. lombardo t 2008. ethical character development and personal and academic excellence. retrieved on 12 august 2013 from www.wisdompage.com/ edethicsnewwrkshp2008.doc. mcniff j 2013. action research: principles and practice. abingdon, uk: routledge. mctaggart r 2012. sustainability of research practice for social justice: a generation of politics and method. in o zuber-skerritt (ed), action research for sustainable development in a turbulent world. bingley, uk: emerald books, 107-126. values-based self-reflective action research for promoting gender equality: some unexpected lessons lesley wood 53 nkomo m 2013. south africa’s achilles heel and phoenician possibilities: reflections on structured underdevelopment and transformation challenges. south african journal of higher education, 27(1): 5-23. stringer e & beadle r 2012. tjuluru: action research for community development. in o zuber-skerrit (ed), action research for sustainable development in a turbulent world. bingley, uk: emerald, 151-166. . unaids 2010. unaids report on the global aids epidemic. retrieved on 12 august 2013 from http://www.unaids.org/globalreport/global_report.htm. wang c 1999. photo-voice: a participatory action-research strategy applied to women’s health. journal of women’s health, 8 (2):185-192. whitehead j 1989. creating a living educational theory from questions of the kind, “how do i improve my practice?” cambridge journal of education, 19 (1): 41-52. whitehead j 2009. generating living theory and understanding in action research. action research, 7(1): 85-99. whitehead j & mcniff j 2006. action research: living theory. london: sage. winter r 1989. learning from experience. lewes: falmer press. wood la 2009a. what kind of respect is this? shifting the mindset of teachers regarding cultural perspectives on hiv & aids. action research, 7(4): 405422. wood la 2009b. “not only a teacher, but an ambassador for hiv & aids”: facilitating educators to take action in their schools. african journal of aids research, 8 (1): 83-92. wood la 2012. how youth picture gender injustice: building skills for hiv prevention through a participatory, arts-based approach. south african journal of education, 32 (4).c: 349-366. yin rk 2013. case study research. design and methods. thousand oaks, ca: sage. zuber-skerritt o 2011. action leadership: towards a participatory paradigm. dordrecht, the netherlands: springer international. 157 overcoming language barriers: lessons learnt from migrant children abstract in this paper, we identify reasons for the high school achievement of some migrant children, in spite of the language barriers faced by themselves and their parents. we explore the literature to determine the factors used to overcome such barriers, particularly those beyond social economic status (ses) and other largely inherited factors that remain a common focus of migration and school effectiveness literature. we identify the need to pay greater attention to non-conventional factors, such as aspirations, expectations and creativities. we also examine school effectiveness literature in south africa, arguably a typical case of a developing country, and note that much of the literature centres on analysis and lamentation of physical and human resource constraints, instead of experimenting on non-conventional factors. keywords: aspirations, language barriers, non-conventional factors for school achievement, motivation, parent involvement, school success of migrant children 1. introduction this paper asks why some migrant children around the globe perform well at school despite the predictable difficulties of navigating a new culture and language, often with constrained social and economic resources. we acknowledge that scholarly success is not the universal experience of migrant children. in fact, a large amount of research suggests that the majority of migrant children is disadvantaged for the aforementioned reasons and tend to underperform in comparison with their native population counterparts1. the united states, the country with the largest inflow of immigrants, generates the largest number of studies on this topic. many u.s. studies reach a similar conclusion: “for more than 30 years, english language learners [those still not fluent in english, mostly migrant learners] have consistently lagged academically behind their english-proficient peers” (golden and fortuny, 2010: 5; also see hagelskamp et al., 2010). however, some scholars have found that “a small percentage of children of immigrants do manage to succeed” (alba and silberman, 2009: 1444) and even outperform natives. a longitudinal study conducted since 1991 (the children of immigrants longitudinal study in u.s., cils ke yu (corresponding author) university of johannesburg. email: kyu@uj.ac.za balungile shandu human sciences research council/university of johannesburg. email: bshandu@hsrc.ac.za/ balushandu@gmail.com doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i1.12 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(1): 157-170 © uv/ufs mailto:kyu@hsrc.ac.za mailto:bshandu@hsrc.ac.za mailto:balushandu@gmail.com http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.12 158 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) hereafter) follows the progress of a cohort of over 5000 migrant children and finds that many achieve better grades and lower dropout rates than their fellow native students (portes and rumbaut, 2001; rumbaut, 1999; also see kasinitz et al., 2008). kao and tienda (1995) compare first generation migrants (born in the foreign land and migrated with their parents) with natives of the destination country and conclude that children born to migrant parents are relatively more successful in their educational outcomes than native children born to native parents are. migrants out-performing natives are also reported in countries such as sweden (clark, 2003). in this paper, we identify factors that explain the success or failure of migrant children at school, with a specific focus on their potential for use in overcoming language barriers and other inherited factors. our analysis supplements existing migration and school effectiveness literature by expanding the focal discussion on those inherited factors. our main finding points to a need for schools and parents to pay greater attention to non-conventional factors, such as aspirations, expectations and creativities, in order to improve learning outcomes. we establish this through an extensive review of international migration literature. we also contrast our findings to a review of school effectiveness literature in south africa that we expect to represent the context of a typical developing country. this paper is organised as follows: it starts with a brief review of the migration literature on the role of language in children’s scholarly success. this is followed by an overview of why migrant children achieve (or not), and then the factors we choose to investigate in greater detail, namely various language interventions; parental involvement in terms of parental expectations, other ways parents facilitate the home learning environment; parental-school interactions, and school outreach programmes to maintain engagement. the south african literature is then examined and compared with the international literature. the article concludes by summarizing the findings and formulating the relevant implications. 2. is language ability essential to scholarly success? linguistic skills are generally regarded as critical in a migrant’s integration to their host country (allen, 2006). (early) literacy acquisition is often regarded as a prerequisite for academic success and accounts for persisting achievement gaps throughout the grades (tienda and haskins, 2011). in south africa, inability to use one’s home language at school is said to impede a learner’s capacity to perform to the best of his or her ability and therefore to result in underperformance (owen-smith, 2010). the multilingual policies adopted after the democratic change of 1994 were particularly conceived to promote the usage of indigenous languages in schools and ultimately to improve learning outcomes. but is language ability essential to scholarly success? one strand of migration studies compares different generations of migrant children2. many first and second generation comparisons, mostly undertaken in the u.s., find that school outcomes typically improve between these two generations (bonikowska and feng, 2010), suggesting that children do perform better when they acquire better language skills and are better adapted to their new homes. similar results emerge in other studies of college achievement and later life success (forbus et al., 2011) and in non-english speaking countries (di liberto, 2015, looking at migrants to italy; driessen and merry, 2011, migrants to the netherlands). allen (2006: 9) stresses the importance of “a 10or 20-year adjustment period” for any migrants to achieve success in their new homes. however, a paradox appears when the third and subsequent 159 yu & shandu overcoming language barriers generations are included in the comparisons: scholastic outcomes for the 3rd generation reach a plateau or decline (kao & tiena, 1995; also see kao, 1999; hagelskamp et al., 2010; telles & ortiz, 2008). this suggests a limit to which linguistic competence contributes to academic success, at which point factors such as willingness to do homework or to work hard in school (hagelskamp et al., 2010) might supersede fluency the language of the destination country. alternatively, it is also possible that language competence is not essential to academic success at all (rumbaut, 1999; zehr, 2009). in the u.s., there are extensive discussions on this topic under the term “immigrant paradox”, a phenomenon observable even after controlling for ses and children’s language skills (tienda & haskins, 2011). the paradox is “more pronounced among the children of asian and african migrants than other groups, is stronger for boys than for girls, and is far more consistent in secondary schools than in elementary school” (tienda & haskins 2011: 8, also see hagelskamp et al., 2010). scholars claim that this phenomenon is not necessarily applicable to all countries (zehr, 2009). they also suggest reasons such as unsatisfactory performance of the native population; the migrant children’s higher school attendance rates and the migrants’ self-selectivity (that they tend to come from more advantaged and ambitious families than those left behind in their home countries (tienda & haskins, 2011; zehr, 2009) as possible explanations. we are intrigued by the paradox as well as the pockets of success achieved by some migrant children. we seek to understand in this paper how they manage such achievement and what contributes to their successes. we aim to examine whether any factors might potentially be applicable to other developing countries, south africa included, owing to contextual similarities. contextual similarities here refer to the language barrier both for the children and their parents; family background where many are low-income parents with demanding work schedules and therefore little time to spend with their children; parents with low school attainment themselves; and limited family resources and support (e.g. financial resources, active parental involvement, ability to locate close to good schools). 3. why migrant children achieve (or not)? many studies have attempted to explain school success or failure and the academic gap between different groups of students. since the 1960s, the academic gap between white and black students in the u.s has prompted sustained investigations. findings of these studies mainly point to the enduring and substantive impact of ses, including income, education level of the parents, mother’s age first at birth (lenkeit et al., 2015). ses has also been examined extensively in immigrant studies, in addition to other largely inherited factors – such as race, ethnicity and national origins. other common barriers to migrant children’s academic performance include language skills, cultural differences and the time period since arrival in their new country (crosnoe, 2010; ji & koblinsky, 2009; poza et al., 2014; schwartz & stiefel, 2006). summarising research on mexican-americans, allen (2006: 23) suggests that “…[in addition to ses], having intact families and high educational expectations have been shown to be important in predicting school success, [although] these factors do not explain fully the low levels of mexicanamerican education”. for tienda and haskins (2011: 4), “the combination of poor parental schooling and not using english at home that is associated with poor scholastic outcomes for immigrant minority youth”. further trying to explain the immigrant paradox, tienda and haskins 160 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) (2011) point to a few other factors that could impact on school achievement, including family, school and neighbourhood qualities (e.g. family structure, relationships within the family, diet and health conditions, also see allen, 2006). allen (2006) adds that racial stereotyping (both within the society and by the teachers) could also influence children’s motivation to do well in school. lastly, older children may be expected to fulfil various family responsibilities thereby reducing their studying time. in this article we choose to focus on those relatively flexible factors, those less persistent across generations (e.g. ses) and therefore more malleable. because our interest is in how children navigate the language barrier, interventions to improve their language proficiency are also included. our review of the literature found that the following factors assist migrant children to achieve better results in schools: language intervention, parental involvement, parental-school interactions, and school outreaches (to maintain engagement). each is discussed in detail below. 3.1 language interventions different approaches to targeting migrant children’s language inefficiency have ranged “from immersion or english-only schooling—where academic lessons are taught only in english – to a bilingual instruction to various strategies in between” (golden & fortuny, 2010: 6). research starts to demonstrate the benefit of a bilingual approach compared to forcing all academic content in english (garcia 2010) or mother tongue learning (golden & fortuny, 2010). code switching (within the classroom), after been downplayed by education researchers for decades, has also regained popularity in recent years (ferguson, 2003). these trends are also consistent with another trend towards greater acceptance of ethnic values, cultures and identities and utilising these as resources instead of eliminating them as burdens as in the assimilationist attitude that prevailed in the early 20th century (allen, 2006; conger et al., 2011). despite consensus among the academics, however, this practice is still not always adopted owing to frequent strong objections from parents, who often believe english education enhances their children’s future economic and social benefits (khosa, 2012; lafon, 2009). interestingly, a number of migration studies do confirm that early exposure to english (e.g. speaking frequently at home or watching television) has a positive impact on both literacy and mathematics results (taylor et al., 2013, schneider et al., 2006). however, what also seems to be the case is that in the absence of this early exposure, children who undergo bilingual education are better off than those forced into english-only schooling. 3.2 parental involvement and expectation research has repeatedly demonstrated the role of parental involvement in children’s academic success and wellbeing (turney & kao, 2009; mncube, 2010; ndebele, 2015; o’hehir & savelsberg, 2014; okeke, 2014), often under the broader concept of ‘social capital’. research suggests that parental involvement enhances student self-esteem; improves the child-parent relationship; helps parents to get to know the teachers, thereby facilitating joint monitoring of the child’s performance; and helps children to have positive attitudes towards schools (crosnoe, 2010; marschall, 2006; turney & kao, 2009). migrant children (and children with high-risk parents or parents with limited english proficiency in general) derive extra benefit from these involvements (kao, 2004; kim, 2002; lahaie, 2008). in a modelling analysis of survey data (for over 1000 children from migrant families), eunjoo and yue (2016) conclude that parental involvement – parents’ engagement with the child in home and school settings 161 yu & shandu overcoming language barriers (together with the english proficiency of parents – a factor which is beyond the focus of this paper) are related to academic achievement, sometimes indirectly through children’s own educational aspirations. literature indicates that parental involvement may have different dimensions and take different forms. a common typology is to distinguish between school-based and home-based parental involvement (giallo et al., 2010; jeynes, 2003; lahaie, 2008; turney & kao, 2009). language has been identified as a barrier to the involvement of parents. not only does limited english proficiency affect parental ability to participate in school events but also it also affects the opportunity to contribute to home learning (ji & koblinsky, 2009; wang, 2008), or even simple tasks such as comprehending their children’s school reports or school expectations. this, together with cultural mismatches3, often leads to low involvement with the formal school system, especially parents with low sess (ji & koblinsky, 2009). parental educational values and expectations stand out as the most important factors in parental involvement case studies (crul & mollenkopf, 2012), including those that do not focus exclusively on migrants4, and particularly for low ses parents. regression analysis that includes parental expectation as a factor, such as that conducted by feliciano and lanuza (2016: 758), confirms that the immigrant paradox could “largely be explained by higher parental expectations, greater interest in school…[in addition to the use of english in early childhood]”. as hagelskamp et al. state, “parental educational expectations and aspirations [about their children’s ability to achieve academically] are among the most commonly studied explanations for both the academic success and the failures of immigrant-origin children” (2010: 720). “parents with scarcer resources may be less active in school activities, [however] they can still be entirely aware and supportive of their children’s academic progress” (centre on education policy, 2012: 2). for example, it has been noted that many such parents often engage actively in activities that facilitate home learning (schneider & lee, 1990), including allocating time and space for homework, ensuring homework is complete, setting limits on watching tv and arranging private tutoring (sometimes even with borrowed money or money from holding multiple jobs or work long hours) (liu & li, 2006). interestingly, homework help is not commonly practiced, but instead often takes the form of supervising homework or establishing “rules about maintaining a specific grade point average” (kao & tienda, 1995: 13). some parents have also been reported to have used their own life experience to teach their children both the importance of hard work and endurance, and to instil in them the value of higher academic aspiration (fuligni & fuligni, 2007; lopez, 2001). other examples of parents translating high expectations into actions include: reading to children; asking children to read to them regardless of whether the parents can themselves read or understand; taking children to the library (glick & hohmann-marriott, 2007) and talking about college (instead of school work; kao, 2004). some parents have implemented other practices aimed at enhancing their children’s academic performance, for example, reducing all the non-academic related activities of their children such as household chores (ji & koblinsky, 2009; kao & tienda, 1995), watching tv, and extracurricular activities unrelated to academic performance (pearce, 2006). high expectations are common among migrant parents (dyson, 2001; ji & koblinsky, 2009; pearce & lin, 2007). many value education and believe that it is an important tool for their child to improve their status in life. for many, an improved life is the reason why they 162 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) migrate in the first place. these values are often communicated to the children as a means of encouragement in overcoming difficulties faced at school. this sometimes results in migrant children feeling “a high family obligation and family cohesion” (hagelskamp et al., 2010: 720) and in turn results in greater willingness to work hard and spend more time on their school work (mau, 1997). studies with spanish parents have discussed this under the phrase consejos— advice composed of “spontaneous homilies designed to influence behaviours and attitudes” – regarding success in school, to provide an ongoing conversation about the importance of school (plata-potter & de guzman, 2012). similarly, appealing to family honour was also an approach identified in a study of punjabi sikh children in california’s central valley (gibson, 1988). kasinitz et al. (2008) found that even poor, uneducated migrants have often “shown that they have the drive, ambition, courage and strength to move from one nation to another,” and to transmit their determination to their children. 3.3 creativities in facilitating parent-school interactions the parents, the school or both parties might initiate parental-school interactions. as mentioned earlier, parents might attend school events, and enrol children in extra classes outside of school. likewise, teachers and schools might reach out to parents, provide dual language in their written communication with parents, make use of interpreters when they engage with parents face-to-face (oecd, 2015), establish language classes for parents, and so on. these interactions ensure greater coherence in the messages sent and actions implemented. it also acts as a signal to both sides about the extent of their care about the children’s education (turney & kao, 2009). the many challenges to migrant parents’ involvement in schools can be mitigated by creative alternatives that both parents and schools. these include sending children to additional schooling programmes, particularly those offered by their particular ethnic/ community schools (zehr, 2009); schools organising presentations on school systems; providing college information programmes or adult education programmes; connecting parents to family service providers or other resources; providing advice on how parents could assist their children (golden & fortuny, 2010). to ensure attendance at parent-school meetings, the topics addressed at strategic meetings are canvassed with the parents beforehand; free childcare and/or token bonuses for students are offered (zimmerman-orozco, 2011). inviting parent leaders from other schools as mentors, and being proactive in making home visits have also been reported and found to be effective (zimmerman-orozco 2011). owing to the limited resources of many migrant parents, outreaches by schools are generally the most effective approach. 3.4 creativities in school outreaches for better school attendance school disengagement (e.g. absenteeism) has been pointed out as a common feature of non-achieving migrant children (motti-stefanidi et al., 2015) who are stuck in the vicious circle of low achievement and low engagement. in searching for school initiatives that focus on improving school attendance, we find a recurring theme of schools/teachers creating a sense of belonging for these children (adelman & taylor, 2015). means to achieve this include the provision of financial support by schools; counselling and academic planning tailored to the needs of the students; additional (and free) classes (tienda & haskins, 2011); afternoon classes or summer school (garcia, 2010); pairing children with college students as their mentors; and other tailored support. 163 yu & shandu overcoming language barriers 4. the south african case this section triangulates the south african education literature on the factors and interventions to boost learner achievement with the factors identified above. we choose south africa as our case study, not only because both of the authors of this paper are south africa-based and therefore is particularly interested in this case, but also because of the commonalities that we observed in our initial searching and reading of the south african education literature, with that of other developing countries (yu et al., 2015). we also expect that the perceived value of children being educated in english – a second language and sometimes third language to many of the schoolchildren in south africa – in addition to a great language diversity, is not unique to south africa but applicable to other countries with populations whose first language is not english. as mentioned above, language remains an undigested challenge in post-apartheid south africa. concerns over the inability of children to use their home languages in schools have been frequently raised (lafon, 2009; owen-smith, 2010; reynders, 2014). this challenge has been used in explaining the continued discrepancy between learners with english as a first, second, or third language (lafon, 2009). simkins’s (2010) multivariate regression on school mathematics scores shows that home language ranks second only to race as a primary factor influencing learning outcomes. studies also show a strong correlation between literacy test scores and numeracy test scores (besharati, 2016; cummins, 2009), where language ability creates a domino effect for the learning results on other subjects. the current language in education policy (liep), based on a multilingual principle, as well as the national curriculum statement, encourages the use of mother-tongue in the first three years of schooling (grade 1-3). the first three years are also expected to strengthen learners’ proficiency at a second additional language (typically english or afrikaans), to which the learners then switch in grade 4 (van staden et al., 2016). incremental introduction of african languages (iial) is implemented in grades 1–12, aiming at promoting, strengthening and preserving african languages through teaching them. much like that of other developing countries where most discussions also centre on conventional factors such as physical and human resources, with rare mention of the nonconventional factors identified above, south african literature on the factors contributing to learners’ underperformance also points to ses, family and community dynamics, and poverty and inequality (including lack of appropriate nutrition) (besharati, 2016). “other factors linked to learner achievement include household income, household size, presence of both parents, home language, race, access to television, toys and other learning materials” (besharati, 2016: 124). poor school infrastructure is also often in the spotlight as is the violence experienced by some learners at home and in the community (bloch, 2009). related to the factors discussed above from the immigrant literature, we find that the link between parental involvement and learning outcomes has been reported (fleisch, 2008; luxomo & motala, 2012; singh, mbokodi & msila, 2004). however, the south african literature mainly describes the difficulties associated therewith (singh, mbokodi & msila, 2004; stephinah, 2014). we could not find reference to any actual experiments or strategies. creative parent-home interface programmes have also largely been missed by the various education interventions in south africa, except in some school development programmes implemented by joint education trust (jet)5, while relevant government interventions have 164 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) been the national school nutrition programme (graham et al., 2015) and the no-fee school policy (sayed & motala, 2012). 5. conclusion this paper asks whether language ability is key to scholarly success and examines this factor in relation to the pockets of academic success that occur among migrant children. because our interest is to understand what south african children (and their parents) can learn from migrant children about how to navigate the language barrier, we identify and focus our discussion on factors that are relatively flexible, less persistent across generations and therefore more malleable. the main findings from our review of the relevant literature pertained to the importance of being conscious of and harnessing non-conventional factors, such as aspiration, expectation and creativities. this is reflected not only in the education policy shifts towards greater acceptance of diverse ethnic values, cultures and identities, thereby instilling a sense of belonging; and acknowledgement of the importance of parental expectations; but also facilitating the creativity that emerges in many schools and parental involvement programmes. these non-conventional factors have received increasing attention in school effectiveness and learner achievement in the international literature (fouts, 2003; lee & shute, 2010; marzano, 2003), yet recognition or acknowledgement in south africa and other developing country contexts remains limited. instead, literature on school effectiveness in developing countries usually still focuses on conventional tangible, observable, and measureable factors, such as school resources, teachers’ qualifications and experience, class size and language of instruction (yu et al., 2015). much of the south african literature also discusses the different language policies in education and the factors that hinder their successful implementation, while failing to conceive, experiment with, or report on different interventions. we recognise that migrants, despite difficulties in adapting to a new environment, tend to see their “adjustment problems as temporary…[and are therefore] more creative in inventing pragmatic solutions to their current predicaments,” (kao & tienda, 1995: 5). this might be different in poor or local low ses communities that have become disillusioned with the educational outcome and system and have given up the dream of exiting poverty (kao & tienda, 1995). however, we reinforce the importance of having a different mind-set, a mindset that believes things can change and in turn induce creative and practical solutions to address the difficulties. in terms of prevailing parental objection to bilingual education, we suggest that the message could be modified – that early exposure to english is good, but in its absence, bilingual schooling is better. we believe that this message might find wider acceptance amongst parents and could potentially rally their greater support for bilingual education. references adelman, h. & taylor, l. 2015. immigrant children and youth in the usa: facilitating equity of opportunity at school. education sciences, 5, 323-344. https://doi.org/10.3390/ educsci5040323 alba, r. & silberman, r. 2009. the children of immigrants and host-society educational systems: mexicans in the united states and north african in france. teachers college record, 111(6), 1444-1475. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci5040323 https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci5040323 165 yu & shandu overcoming language barriers allen, j.p. 2006. how successful are recent immigrants to the united states and their children? yearbook of the association of pacific coast geographers, 68, 9-32. https://doi.org/10.1353/ pcg.2006.0002 becker, b.; 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(endnotes) 1 e.g. turkish origin children in germany, becker et al. 2016; migrants to greece, motti-stefanidi et al., 2015; migrants to england, lenkeit et al., 2015; migrants to the oecd countries, schnepf, 2007; comparative study of mexicans in the u.s. and north africans in france, alba & silberman, 2009. 2 in the immigration literature, the 3rd generation is generally seen as having been acculturated and become native, in terms of both language and culture. 3 e.g. parents’ “beliefs that education is the primary responsibility of teachers and school” (ji & koblinsky, 2009: 702), parents are not aware of what teachers expect from them (wang, 2008), or “self-conscious about their levels of schooling, feel uncomfortable in institutional settings, and fear that they are not educated enough to be helpful” (lahaie, 2008: 686). many of these parents also “had little time to talk with children about school, friends, interests, and extracurricular activities” because of their own workload (ji & koblinsky, 2009: 702). research trying to determine/compare the level of parental school involvement among different groups (e.g. racial groups) of parents are in abundance, but their results are not conclusive. 4 e.g. marzano’s 2003 synthesis of research findings of the past 40 years review and the factors that account for school achievement (also see fouts, 2003; lee & shute, 2010). 5 since the early 2000s, jet has experimented with various tools including: “aside from information tools such as report cards and regular dashboards on school inputs, outputs and processes, jet has also encouraged the formation of study groups led by volunteering parents who provide additional tutoring to children in the communities.” (besharati, 2016: 126). http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/03/18/25immigrant_ep.h28.html http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2009/03/18/25immigrant_ep.h28.html theorising children’s participation: trans-disciplinary perspectives from south africa patricia henderson university of cape town shirley pendlebury university of cape town e. kay m. tisdall university of edinburgh children’s participation is a popular rallying cry among child rights activists and community development groups, backed by the recognition of children’s participatory rights in the united nations convention on the rights of the child (uncrc). participation is both a guiding principle of the uncrc and an explicit right. article 12 establishes the right of children (who are capable of forming their own views) to express them freely in all matters affecting the children, and for their views to be given due weight, in accordance with age and maturity. in south africa, children’s participatory rights are recognised in the children’s act, the child justice act and, in a more circumscribed way, the south african schools act. undoubtedly, questions about the nature, extent and conditions of children’s participation are pertinent in education, health care, social services, the public sphere and in the everyday life of families and communities. yet for all the rhetoric and the legal recognition of children’s participatory rights, and despite a proliferation of typologies, a good deal of lip-service to the idea of participation, and an emerging scholarly literature on the topic, children’s participation remains an under-theorised field. a special issue of the international journal of children’s rights sought to ask – and take initial steps towards answering – some of the pressing questions surrounding the precise nature, ethical status and politics of children’s participation (hinton et al., 2008). that publication arose from an intensive seminar which gathered academics from a broad range of disciplines, from the united kingdom and across the globe. a second intensive seminar was hosted by the children’s institute of the university of cape town in 2009, with subsequent seminars in 2010 in brazil and india respectively. the seminar series is part of a trans-disciplinary, cross-country academic network aimed at investigating and theorising children’s participation in the public sphere.1 the idea for this special issue of perspectives in education emerged from the cape town seminar. scholars from a number of disciplines (childhood studies, education, literary and language studies, political science, psychology, social anthropology, socio-legal studies and sociology), as well as child participation practitioners, engaged in the seminar. members of the network, variously located in brazil, india, south africa, and the united kingdom, were present. papers were presented by south african academics and practitioners, while network members from other countries offered insights and critical perspectives from their particular research settings and country contexts. discussants at the cape town seminar teased out a multidisciplinary approach in which ideas around social participation in general, and not necessarily exclusively focused on children, could contribute to furthering the theoretical development of children’s participation. ideas around the ethics of care, participatory parity, deliberative democracy, multimodal forms of pedagogy, phenomenological creative processes, power relations, the constraints of representative democracy, and children’s local knowledge were brought to bear on the seminar theme, theorising children’s participation: learning across countries and across disciplines. differences of approach in relation to key terms – ‘the public’, ‘the child’ and ‘participation’, and indeed to ‘theorisation’ – created a set of unsettling, yet important tensions. they indicated porosity and slippage in relation to conceptions of ‘child participation’ and the assumed boundaries of their application. perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 20112 it was concluded that, in order to render the idea meaningful, instances of child participatory practice needed to be specifically located, taking into account the social, cultural and historical dimensions out of which they emerged. at the seminar, the ‘rub’ between varied and sometimes opposing positions enabled the foregrounding of different disciplinary stakes invested in the idea, its ideological underpinnings and historical antecedents, as well as its relation to visions of democratic sociality, justice and governance. conversations from differing disciplinary points of view not only enabled a widening and deepening of ideas around child participatory events, through processes of grounding within specific research agendas, but also a critical assessment of the overuse and limitations of the term ‘children’s participation’. at one extreme, the term’s application is so capacious as to be of little analytical value. at the other, the confinement of children’s participation within too narrow definitional boundaries and social spaces obscures: ideological assumptions around definitions of the child; the capacities of children; ‘appropriate’ social spaces in which children are called upon to participate; the role of adults and children in processes of participation; and the imbrications of spaces of participation with often unequal power relations. returning to the instability of the parameters of ‘the child’, ‘the public’, and ‘participation’ within the seminar, it was clear that what constitutes a child varies in different social contexts and cannot be fixed by age. children’s activities often mirror ‘adult’ contributions to society. even where their contributions in terms of work, for example, exceed those of adults, its extent and importance often remain underestimated or dismissed. some seminar participants suggested that perhaps the loaded term ‘child’, with its associated infantilisation and often patronising attribution of vulnerability and the necessity for particular kinds of care, should be replaced by ‘young person’. the discussion acknowledged that there are important formal social processes in which children could bring forward their contributions, for example, in the formulation of social policy. such processes often occur through facilitation with adults. yet children are equally involved in forms of ‘informal participation,’ shaping and unmaking sociality in all its dimensions. too exclusive a focus on formal forms of children’s participation could mark a refusal to acknowledge the extent to which children are already involved in shaping, making and unmaking social worlds. formal participatory processes engender an arena of meeting and encountering one another, involving both children and adults. implicit within any such encounter are issues of differential power. who is left out of formal initiatives, and who ‘comes to the table’, is a crucial consideration. there is a need, therefore, to question the ‘givenness’ of participation as inevitably a good, and to ask in relation to those who have vested interests in processes of participation: ‘for whom does the good operate?’ children’s inclusion in processes initiated by adults may be tokenistic, or used primarily to legitimise already constituted agendas. moralities and values attached to particular visions of society may, in their effects on processes of participation, result in the inclusion of certain kinds of children who echo and reinscribe normative, conservative interests. what of children who choose not to participate, or who are excluded from processes of participation? what social concerns, points of ambiguity, and ways of being are expunged from view due to the above forms of blindness? seminar participants therefore challenged the normative conception of ‘the public’. the cape town seminar revealed the stakes different disciplines hold in ideas about ‘public’, ‘participation’ and ‘children’. the fact that none of these terms is settled points to the shifts in knowledge and practice over time, and the need constantly to revisit terms that might otherwise be taken for granted. one seminar participant suggested that ‘theorising is not just about explaining what we see, but looking at problems we can’t solve in many different ways. we need to look at theorising as opening up spaces in the mind, not just explaining spaces.’ a creative rub existed at the seminar between disciplines that sought to create models around the notion of child participation and those that favoured the deployment of local metaphors in making processes of child participation salient. there was agreement that existing typologies of child participation risk being static. they can neither account for historical particularities in which practices of participation are embedded, nor can they account for the opening and closing, or expansion and contraction, of social spaces in which children and young henderson, pendlebury & tisdall — theorising children’s participation 3 people participate through time. typologies seldom allow for an appreciation of how children and adults moved in and out of practices of mutual or separate participation through time, or of the often disabling social conditions existing outside of initiated participative processes that may undercut any gains made within its boundaries. in south africa, for example, the first democratically elected state established in 1994 emerged out of the highly politicised 1980s in which children and young people played a seminal public role in resisting the apartheid state. with a sense of urgency in creating a ‘normal’ society there emerged in public discourse a capitulation to the normative. generations and genders were called upon to resume their so-called ‘proper places’. this was a process that infantilised children. their vulnerabilities were emphasised and calls for increasing protection were linked to a desire for moral regeneration within the society. ironically, the latter processes marked movement towards a place of conservatism. the visibility of children and young people in public spaces decreased. there was shrinkage of space of children’s informal participation in political space and the emergence of uneven and sparse arenas for their formal participation in processes of governance and policy formation (see bray & moses, 2011 in this issue). thematic strands and central questions from the cape town seminar run through many of the articles published in this special issue. early versions of several of the articles were first presented as papers at the seminar. other articles came in response to an open call for papers to be submitted for consideration. all the articles finally selected for the special issue were subject to the journal’s standard review procedures. each was blind-reviewed by at least three reviewers. in the case of submissions from fields or disciplines other than education, at least one reviewer was a specialist from the relevant discipline. although education may not be the primary focus of every article, all of them have a bearing on education, its institutional forms or its social contexts. a number of the articles explore the power of creative ways of working with children and the importance and power of embodied, multi-sensorial and multimodal forms of learning (henderson; newfield; and sonn et al.). dominant, and sometimes inconsistent, discourses in school governance and pedagogy may impede possibilities for children’s meaningful participation in the spaces of education (carrim; bray & moses), whereas alternative pedagogies may open real possibilities for even very young children to engage in meaningful deliberation about matters that concern them (linnington et al.). the rich field of democratic and social justice theory yields several possibilities for normative theorisations of children’s public participation, in the classroom and other public spaces, and for analysing the relationship between representation and participation in governance structures (see bentley on deliberative democracy; bozalek on a normative model for participatory parity and an ethics of care). children’s meaningful participation in educational research presents some difficult ethical dilemmas. two of the articles focus on children in education research: walton considers the importance, and difficulties, of research in inclusive education; sonn and her co-authors report on their work with adolescents in a participatory action research project intended to contribute to a health-promoting school. participation is itself a contested and not necessarily benign concept, as roodt and stuurman show in their tracing of the genealogy of participation within colonial governments and within development studies. they also make reference to a disillusioned body of young people who are not easily called upon to take part in local governmental processes in which their participation is sometimes needed. their work, like carrim’s, therefore points to who may be left out of processes of participation and why. together, the articles in this special issue serve as a prolegomenon to theorising and challenging children’s public participation in a southern african context – and beyond. the leverhulme network2 has shown the need to situate children’s participation in social, cultural and historical contexts. it has also shown how possibilities in one context show gaps – and opportunities – in another context, as well as very familiar challenges of tokenism and a failure to impact on (adult) decision-making. children’s participation may be international and national policy rhetoric; its actual realisation remains a key human rights issue. perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 20114 references hinton r, tisdall, e k m, gallagher m, & elsley, s 2008. introduction: children’s and young people’s participation in public decision-making. international journal of children’s rights 16(3), 281-284. acknowledgements many of the ideas contained within this special issue were developed through the intensive interaction of participants in the cape town seminar, as well as by the individual authors who presented papers. from the seminar, it is thus essential to recognise the contributions by: kristina bentley, then in the department of political studies, university of the western cape, • currently in the democratic governance and rights unit, department of public law, university of cape town vivienne bozalek, teaching and learning, university of the western cape • sandra burman, socio-legal unit, university of cape town• rachel bray, children’s institute, university of cape town• udi butler, department of anthropology, university of oxford; and the international centre for • research and policy on childhood (ciespi), rio de janeiro nazir carrim, department of educational studies, university of the western cape• glynnis clacherty, clacherty and associates, south africa• andy dawes, department of psychology, university of cape town• deborah ewing, i-mediate consulting, south africa• patricia henderson, children’s institute and department of social anthropology, university of cape • town rachel hinton, dfid and the universities of oxford and edinburgh• lucy jamieson, children’s institute, university of cape town• susan moses, children’s institute, university of cape town• zubair meenai, department of social work, jamia millia islamia central university• denise newfield, department of english, university of the witwatersrand• marcelo princeswal, ciespi, rio de janeiro• anita rampal, department of education, university of delhi• monty roodt, department of sociology, rhodes university• fiona ross, department of social anthropology, university of cape town• savyasaachi, department of sociology, jamia millia islamia central university• kay tisdall, school of social and political studies and centre for research on families and • relationships, university of edinburgh gabriel urgoiti, independent consultant on children’s participation, south africa.• the guest editors are also grateful to the referees who provided detailed critical reviews of submissions for the special issue. core members of the leverhulme trust academic collaboration network as of december 2010 brazil: the international center for research and policy on childhood (ciespi) in association with puc-rio. udi mandel butler (research fellow, ciespi; research fellow, school of anthropology, oxford • university; lecturer, department of archaelology and anthropology, the university of bristol) marcelo princeswal (researcher, ciespi) • irene rizzini (director, ciespi and professor at puc university, rio de janeiro)• india anita rampal (professor, department of education, university of delhi) • zubair mennai (professor, department of social work, jamia millia islamia) • savyasaachi (reader in sociology, jamia millia islamia)• henderson, pendlebury & tisdall — theorising children’s participation 5 south africa: the children’s institute (ci), university of cape town (uct) patricia henderson (chief researcher, ci; lecturer in social anthropology, uct)• lucy jamieson (senior advocacy co-ordinator, ci)• helen meintjes (senior researcher, ci)• shirley pendlebury (director, ci; honorary professor, school of education, uct) • uk: organised through the centre for research on families and relationships (crfr) andressa gadda (phd student social work, university of edinburgh)• rachel hinton (human development adviser, department for international development and • member wolfson college, university of oxford) kelly teamey (lecturer, department of education, university of bath)• kay tisdal• l (professor in childhood policy in school of social & political science, university of edinburgh; co-director of crfr) (endnotes) the network was funded initially by the british academy and the royal society of edinburgh, and 1. subsequently by the leverhulme trust. for further information, see 2. http://www.crfr.ac.uk/researchprojects/rp_theorising html. “they discluded me”: possibilities and limitations of children’s participation in inclusion research in south africa elizabeth walton university of the witwatersrand beyond realising the right of children and young people to be heard in routine interactions, there is much scope for research with (rather than on) children. this is particularly pertinent in the field of inclusive education where there is potential for the voice of children and young people to be a lever for change and to promote inclusive practice. south african inclusion research has, however, given little attention to the perspectives and experiences of children and young people. in advocating for research to listen to the voice of insiders – children who have experienced inclusion and exclusion, this paper explores the dilemma of inclusion research. selecting some children to participate in inclusion research on the basis of disability or other marker of difference undermines the inclusive endeavour. but without their perspective, we may never expose excluding and marginalising practices and attitudes, even within inclusive contexts. four research initiatives which highlight this dilemma are described, concluding that the dilemma is unresolvable, but that the ongoing debate is valuable. ultimately the call is for research that is both participatory and emancipatory, resulting in the reduction of exclusionary cultures and practices and the inclusion of young voices in the discourse that produces inclusion knowledge. keywords: participation, voice, children, young people, inclusion research, inclusive education, inclusion, disability, exclusion, marginalisation introduction explaining why she was alone and tearful on the playground, lerato said, “they [pointing to a group of four eleven-year-old girls] discluded me!” i suggested helpfully, “i think you mean that they excluded you”. she assured me that she meant discluded, because, as she explained, she was still part of the group so she wasn’t excluded. yet, in some configuration of pre-teen girl social politics, she was not welcome in that particular group at that time. lerato, in grade five in a johannesburg school, offered a potentially useful and alternative way of thinking about the inclusion/exclusion binary or continuum. she expressed something about the messy and contradictory nature of inclusion, framed by benjamin, nind, hall, collins and sheehy (2003: 547) as “moments of inclusion and exclusion” in contexts of multiple inclusions and exclusions. her neologism incorporates the insult or belittlement that the prefix ‘dis(s)’meant to her as she conveyed her dismay at her (apparently temporary) expulsion from her social group. this anecdote, albeit recorded outside a formal research context, is a useful reminder of the insights, perspectives and contributions that children and young people can make if they are heard. the value of the voice of children and young people article 12 of the 1989 united nations convention on the rights of the child (uncrc), which states that children have the right to express their views and be heard in matters pertaining to them, has given impetus to a growing body of research that foregrounds the opinions and experiences of children. instead of being positioned as research objects, there is increasing recognition of children and young people as social agents (with rights of freedom of expression, thought, conscience and religion) with the potential to be participants in research. children are “experts by experience” (fleming, 2010:5) and listening to their voices is a way to understand their lives (lewis, 2004:1). children can reveal novel or different aspects or perspectives of situations which may be invisible to adults (fleming, 2010:7; prout, 2002:68). in addition, children’s voice can contribute to the development of theory and has the potential to change their own and perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201184 others’ lives (lewis, 2004:1). in the context of schooling, children offer crucial and distinct perspectives which are necessary to provide a complete account of schooling (masson, 2004:44) and their voice could contribute to the improvement of education and increase teachers’ understanding of their learners (roaf, 2002:102). it has also been suggested that children and young people also benefit from participation in research. griesel, swart-kruger and chawla (2004:278) in their study of south african children address claims that participatory research results in the enhancement of self esteem, an increased sense of selfefficacy, internal locus of control, awareness and appreciation of democratic processes, greater sense of responsibility towards their communities and improved communication skills among children and young people. in addition, fleming (2010:10) suggests gains in self confidence, the belief that their views are important and can bring about change, meeting new people and the development of skills that may be relevant in seeking future employment. research is, obviously not the only way children’s perspectives can be heard. clark (2005:491) includes “everyday listening” by those who work with children regularly to the “one-off consultation” that occurs with a specific issue or event. there is clearly much scope for the development of listening skills among teachers and others who work with children and young people. haynes (2009:38), for example, refers to the philosophy for children approach that emphasises reflective dialogue in a community of enquiry as an innovation that promotes children’s participation in education. at individual, classroom and school level there are many opportunities for the promotion of listening, conversations, questions, participation in decision-making and other encounters that help to realise children’s rights as conceived by the uncrc. for the purpose of this paper, however, i have chosen to limit my discussion to the issue of participation of children and young people in research, and in particular, research within the context of inclusive education. within these limits, i have not engaged with the debates about the definition of childhood and the construction of the child, but acknowledge the usefulness of considering that the child is constituted relationally (usually in relation to the adult) and that notions of childhood are not universal, but culturally specific (burman, 2008:81, 82). i have, unless quoting, used the south african term learner to designate a child or young person in school, rather than the words pupil or student, which are found in the international literature. participation and voice in inclusion research the need to hear (and heed) the voices of children and young people has been a recurring call in the international literature on inclusive education (allan, 2007; booth & ainscow, 1998; lewis, 2005). those who have engaged with children and young people about their experiences of inclusion, exclusion and marginalisation have found that the voices of learners can be a powerful lever for change (ainscow & kaplan, 2004). messiou (2008:35) maintains that listening to children and young people helps us to understand inclusion in schools, the creation of effective inclusive environments, and that it is essential in the development of inclusive practices. she also says, “… the perspectives that are of most importance are those of ‘insiders’ especially children themselves, since they are the ones who experience the impact of either inclusive or exclusive practices” (2006:306). listening to children and young people who have been marginalised or excluded provides valuable insights into their experiences (corbett & slee, 2000:135), and where learners with disabilities are included in schools their voice needs to be heard because teachers and other learners without disabilities are not likely to recognise obstacles to access in the environment (wendell, 1996:46). giving voice to children and young people has become something of a ‘hot topic’ in research in inclusive education internationally with a variety of innovative methodologies being harnessed to facilitate the expression of views and experiences (for example, fitzgerald, jobling & kirk, 2003; jones & gillies, 2010; lewis, 2005; lewis, 2008; susinos, 2007). south africa, by contrast, has seen little research with children and young people about their views and experiences of inclusion and exclusion in schools. before describing the dilemmas inherent in conceptualising and executing such research, and suggesting some possibilities for the way forward, i offer an orientation to the concept and context of inclusive education in south africa. this is walton — possibilities and limitations of children’s participation in inclusion research 85 important, because how inclusive education is conceived will determine any research focus in the field. similarly, researchers’ assumptions and beliefs about human difference and diversity (including disability) will direct their gaze and influence research methods, findings and interpretations. for this reason, allan and slee (2008:98) advocate “[s]melling your own sweat” as a way of saying that researchers need to recognise their ideologies as they engage in inclusive education research. the concept and the context: inclusive education in south africa prior to 1994, south african state education was characterised by segregation. not only were learners educated separately and unequally according to racial classifications, a separate special education system served (mainly white) learners deemed to have disabilities. as a result, the post 1994 education department inherited a fragmented education system, characterised by multiple exclusions. there were, and still are, at least 200 000 children and young people of school going age not in school, and factors to do with disability are highlighted among reasons for this (department of education (doe), 2001; govender, 2009; republic of south africa, 2010). exclusion in education is not, however, limited to the children and young people who are not present in schools, but describes the experience of learners in schools where systematic learning is not provided (pendlebury, 2010:65) and where learners are excluded from accessing and participating fully in teaching, learning and assessment opportunities and belonging in school communities. against this background, and in the light of constitutional, human rights and social justice imperatives, international trends in schooling and united nations initiatives like the salamanca statement and framework for action (unesco, 1994), south africa has embraced inclusive education. as a concept, inclusive education is somewhat difficult to describe, given contextual variations in practice and contested definitions within the discourse community (mitchell, 2005; rose, 2010; walton & nel, forthcoming). while the debates about what constitutes inclusive education are beyond the scope of this paper, i would suggest that in broad terms, inclusive education can be understood as reducing exclusionary pressures in schools (or other sites of learning) and promoting access to and participation in curricula, and belonging in school communities (booth & ainscow, 1998:2). inclusive education is thus concerned with achieving equity by identifying and addressing direct and indirect impediments to access, participation and belonging in school cultures, facilities and curricula. this is not achieved by attempts at normalising or assimilation, but by the radical reconstruction of schools and schooling to meet the learning needs of a diverse learner population. individual learners and groups of learners may find themselves particularly vulnerable to marginalisation and exclusion in or from schools, and much of the literature on inclusive education focuses on ways of promoting their inclusion. while aspects to do with disability are not the only reasons that some learners cannot fully access the social goods of education (poverty, race, gender, sexual orientation, migrant status and geographical location are all factors that may contribute to marginalisation or exclusion), disability issues have become a particular, if not central, focus of the inclusive education discourse in south africa and internationally. this may be a result of the legacy of separate education and the visible and systematic segregation or exclusion of learners based on individual deficit explanations for school failure. it may also be because inclusive education has been integral to the expression of the rights of persons with disabilities (united nations, 2006) and the fact that disability can compound other vulnerabilities. i attempt in this paper, to reflect both the broad reaches of the concept of inclusive education in south africa by discussing a study on the experiences of marginalisation of refugee children in a school, and also a more narrow (and prevalent) view of inclusive education that focuses on issues of access and participation for learners who, because of special education needs or disabilities, are particularly vulnerable to being excluded in or from schools or schooling. since the publication by the department of education (doe) in 2001 of white paper six: special needs education that describes the framework for building an inclusive education system in south africa, a variety of research initiatives have addressed aspects of the conceptualisation, understanding and implementation of inclusive education in this country. within this research, there has been an overwhelming emphasis on investigating teachers’ attitudes, perceptions, experiences and challenges towards inclusive perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201186 education or educating learners with disabilities in their classrooms (lorenzo & schneider, 2006). the experiences, perceptions and opinions of learners towards inclusive education are relatively neglected in this country1. participation of children and young people in inclusion research in south africa: challenges it would be potentially valuable to understand how inclusion and exclusion in education are experienced and perceived by children and young people in south africa. in particular, the opinions and challenges experienced by children and young people with disabilities or other barriers to learning could influence the way inclusive education is conceived and practised here. lewis (2005:215) confirms that it is vital to explore the views of child participants in inclusive settings, but warns that doing this in valid and reliable ways is problematic. there are problems associated with any research with children, for example, regarding informed consent, unequal power relations that operate with adult researchers and child participants, and legal issues. there are questions about how authentic the researched voice of the child is (burman, 2008:121) and how to move beyond tokenism to translate children’s views into meaningful change in policy and practice (lundy, 2007:937). these problems are not insignificant and do require attention, but for the purpose of this paper, i will not explore them further in favour of addressing some conceptual difficulties associated with research with children and young people in the specific context of inclusive education. i have also chosen not to address some of the possible practical challenges of research in this field when the focus is on children with disabilities. these may be the need for additional time, communication difficulties that result from impairments or language differences and ethical/legal complexities that arise from the compounding vulnerability of children with disabilities, especially those with cognitive or learning disabilities whose consent may be contested. i propose that the major problem of research with children and young people in the context of inclusive education is an aporia, (a “double contradictory imperative” (allen, 2007:81)) or a dilemma. on the one hand, we need the voice of the insider, particularly in south africa as we enter the second decade of inclusive education. we need to know how new policies and practices are being experienced by children now included in schools which previously would have excluded them. although many (black) children who experienced barriers to learning were included by default in schools in years prior to 1994, this is the first generation of learners to be schooled within the ambit of inclusive education policies. these learners have unique challenges. they are coming into schools which themselves are finding their way (not always successfully) to inclusive cultures, practices and policies. engelbrecht (2006:260) has already suggested that the official policy and rhetoric of inclusion has not always translated into classroom experience, with bullying and exclusion experienced by those deemed to be ‘different’. researchers need to identify and engage with individual children and young people who, in south african schools, would be “informationrich informants” (mcmillan & schumacher, 2001:401) about the experiences of inclusion, marginalisation and exclusion. this would give expression to article 7(3) of the united nations convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (to which south africa is a signatory), which states “state parties shall ensure that children with disabilities have the right to express their views freely on all matters affecting them … and (to) be provided with disability and age-appropriate assistance to realize that right” (un, 2006). the dilemma lies in that generating a sample population for such research involves selecting and labelling some children and young people, and marking them as different (allan, 2007:45). in so doing, research becomes complicit in legitimising and perpetuating the categorisation of learners in a world where different is often cast as deficit or deviant. in giving a voice to children or young people, much international research tends to assume disability categories as self evident rather than constructed as they describe the research participants (see, for example, cocks, 2008; mitchell, 2010; monteith, 2004; whitehurst, 2006). while interrogating the process by which certain children and young people come to be thus labelled would probably be regarded by the researchers as beyond the scope of their research, the effect is to buttress a discourse of individual pathology rather than the social construction of disability. this concern is not insignificant in south africa. after decades of segregated special education (albeit mostly for white walton — possibilities and limitations of children’s participation in inclusion research 87 learners) and pedagogies based on conservative epistemologies, dividing and describing learners according to categories is still pervasive. current text books for teachers and student teachers continue to offer, in discrete chapters, information designed to help readers understand children with a variety of ‘barriers’, including sensory impairments, physical disabilities, intellectual disabilities and challenging behaviour (see bornman & rose, 2010; landsberg, kruger & nel, 2005 among others). compounding this, selecting specific children and young people on the basis of disability or other marker of difference to participate in research positions them as the other, called the “exotic other” by allan (2007:44). unlike the experiences and views of ‘regular’ learners, their experiences and views are presumed to be unusual, unfamiliar or strange, therefore warranting investigation. the act of research thus produces these children and young people as strangers, an identity that is reinforced by the injunction to welcome them in schools (doe, 2008:29). research with an emphasis on children who are defined as having special needs also risks reproducing stereotypes (messiou, 2008:28) and confirming the “excluded identities” (susinos, 2007:120) that participants may have constructed themselves. furthermore, casting some children in the role of being at-risk, vulnerable or marginalised risks a research orientation that does not expose learners’ strengths and coping strategies. sookrajh, gopal and maharaj (2005), for example, found in their study of refugee children in a durban school that the construct of vulnerability imposed by the school did not correspond with the needs of these learners. focusing on certain children on the basis of their having special needs or experiencing barriers to learning is problematic in other ways too. it limits the potential of research to uncover contextual and other factors that lead to marginalisation or exclusion. children’s life-worlds reflect a complex interplay of race, language, ethnicity, gender, class, age and sexual orientation, all of which may contribute to their experience of marginalisation and exclusion. this approach also risks becoming an essentialising practice with the potential to construct the identity and experience of child participants in a monolithic way (hooks, 1994:90), positioning an aspect of their identity (like disability) as the core of their identity. in addition, we cannot ignore the warnings from the wider field of disability research about “obsession with experience” (mercer, 2002:235) or “methodological individualism” (oliver, 2009:112), which can reinforce an individual tragedy lens through which to understand experiences of inclusion and exclusion in schools, instead of seeing experience embedded in social, cultural, political and economic processes (skeggs in mercer, 2002:235). the dilemma, crudely put, is this: to promote inclusive education, we need to understand the experience of inclusion and exclusion in schools from the inside and so we have to listen and respond to the voices of children and young people who have been included and or excluded. yet, in doing this, our research selects, labels and positions them as ‘the included’ or ‘the excluded’, marks ‘them’ as different from ‘us’ and so undermines the very essence of inclusive education. the field of inclusive education, encompassing dual imperatives of responding simultaneously to the universal and the individual, is no stranger to dilemmas and aporias (see, for example, allen, 2007:81, ferguson & ferguson, 1998:304; lunt & norwich, 1999:39). with due recognition of the dilemma operating include research, i would like to highlight four examples of research initiatives that could merit replication, extension or development in a south african quest for the voice of children and young people. participation of children and young people in inclusion research in south africa: possibilities one way of sidestepping the pitfalls of selection of individuals to participate in research in inclusion is to engage with a whole class or group. this avoids labelling anyone in particular and potentially reveals insights from learners who would not necessarily be regarded as experiencing barriers to learning. marginalisation is a sensitive issue, however (messiou, 2008:29), and creative ways need to be found to explore authentic attitudes and experiences such that individuals are not hurt or humiliated. research has to be carefully constructed, as talking to a group of learners about some aspect of inclusion may “present as potentially problematic an area that had not previously been perceived as unusual” (lewis, 2005:217), for example, the presence, activities or support of certain peers. it is not surprising, therefore, perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201188 to find researchers using hypothetical peers and vignettes to investigate attitudes and behavioural intentions of children towards others in inclusive classrooms (frederickson, 2010:7). popular literature also offers possibilities for research in inclusive education. grade 10s in a johannesburg high school studied mark haddon’s the curious incident of the dog in the night time. their teacher set an anonymous questionnaire to evaluate the impact of the book and how it was experienced by the learners. by focusing on christopher boone (the protagonist), rather than any of their own classmates, the learners revealed their understanding of ways in which schools (and their school in particular) and scholars include and exclude. this is congruent with fisher’s (2008:76) assertion that stories offer the opportunity for children to consider themselves in the process of looking at and thinking about others. the teacher reported that at least half of the learners recognised that christopher would be teased, mocked and ridiculed if he were to be admitted to their school (walton, 2009). the learners articulated a number of ways in which their social interactions, teaching strategies and school organisation would have to change in order for christopher to be safely included in their school. this approach may be flawed by focusing on christopher as an individual (making christopher seem like the problem), but it does suggest a way in to explore and address issues of inclusion and exclusion for high school learners. this whole group approach allows for the participation of all class members, irrespective of how they may be different from each other, and provides insight into the range of views, attitudes and concerns about inclusive education that prevail among young people, but because it does not disaggregate the responses according to learner characteristics, it cannot reveal the insider perspectives which are possible when specific individual and sub-group participants are identified in inclusion research. the young voices project (yvp) in uganda and tanzania (lewis, 2008) drew on both disabled and non-disabled participants to hear about what made them feel included in or excluded from education. using a variety of approaches, including photographs, drawing, drama and discussions, the yvp foregrounds issues of environment, policy, practice, resources and attitudes that need attention if schools are to become more inclusive. the selection of drawings, quotations and photographs presented in the report clearly indicates whether the contributor is a learner with a disability. so while a wider group has participated in this yvp, and the voices selected for publication in the report have been given expression without commentary, the mention of the presence and type of disability (where applicable) positions the contributing learner in the mind of the reader in a particular way. whether this identification ultimately works for inclusion (by highlighting the experiences of exclusion of learners with disabilities, like moses ochom, who explained the difficulty of having no suitable toilet in the hostel (lewis, 2008:21)) or against inclusion (by highlighting and entrenching labels assigned to some learners and not others), is debatable. this research does, however, reflect the value of using multiple modes to give expression to the views of children and young people. called a mosaic approach, multi-method research was developed by clark (2004:144) as a way of harnessing the strengths of young children, and included observations, child conferencing, tours and map-making. extended to the field of inclusion research, where some participants may be unable or unwilling to engage in traditional research methods like interviews or questionnaire completion, a mosaic approach, as used in the yvp, has much potential. it is inclusive in that it can facilitate the participation of a variety of children and young people by offering modes of expression best suited to individual ability and preference. interviews remain a valuable way to give voice to children and young people about their experiences of inclusion (lewis, 2005). tracy (not her real name) was included in an ordinary (as opposed to special) johannesburg school, despite the numerous learning difficulties that she experienced. an interview with her after the successful completion of grade 12 revealed useful insights into the ways in which the school both facilitated and frustrated her inclusion and participation in school life (walton, 2010). she commented, for example, on teachers’ practice of ‘peer assessment’ in which her spelling tests were ‘marked’ by her peers, and how she hated the practice as it exposed her severe spelling difficulties to her peers. teachers receiving this feedback commented that they had never thought of this practice as disempowering, seeing it as merely functional. without the mechanism of the interview, and the dissemination of its content to the teaching staff, this practice may have continued unquestioned. in their study of the development of walton — possibilities and limitations of children’s participation in inclusion research 89 inclusive practice, ainscow, howes, farrell and frankham (2003:234) found that it was useful to ask teachers to consider the views expressed by individual children within their school and to consider the implications that these views had for their practice. in this regard, shevlin (2010:116) asserts that great benefits derive from having “structured explicit pupil consultation” as a normal feature of school life. this suggests that schools in south africa would be well advised to consider ensuring that there are on-site personnel who are attuned to the voice and views of learners, and who mediate these views with teachers. the “powerful and compelling” personal stories told by foreign learners (the term is preferred over refugees) in a durban school reveal “richly textured” lives (sookrajh, et al., 2005:5). their narratives also reveal experiences of exclusion and marginalisation within a school that, unlike other schools that had denied them access, had supposedly included them. the learners expressed embarrassment at the use of the term refugees by the school principal and felt unwelcome among peers who often called them makwerekwere (a derogatory term for foreigner). the curriculum was perceived as alienating, and learning afrikaans (one of south africa’s 11 official languages) was problematic. the foreign learners were also physically separated from others, ostensibly for the provision of support. much as the narratives revealed exclusionary practices, selected teachers were able to ensure that foreign learners’ experiences were shared with all learners by using the stories in lessons in a variety of ways. as such, sookrajh and colleagues regard the narratives within a “reviewed curriculum” as emancipatory (2005:10). not only did the stories highlight the multiple dimensions of foreign learners’ experiences, views and identities, they also enabled teachers to construct and convey different meanings of the lives of these learners. did identifying tracy and the foreign learners for participation in research promote inclusion by revealing schooling practices which the well intentioned staff had never considered as exclusionary and which could then be changed? or did it impede inclusive thinking by perpetuating the division of learners into categories such as learning disabled or foreign? most likely, it did both. we would do best to refuse closure and either-or-thinking and learn to be comfortable with dilemmas which cannot always be resolved, and rather continue debating how we can best apply inclusion (allan, 2007:82). conclusion: voyeurs or agents of change? emancipatory imperatives in inclusion research fundamental to any inclusion research with children and young people is the question of whether their opinions and perspectives are interesting, or whether they count. fleming (2010:3, 4) cautions against mining children for information, saying that researchers with children should be “builders, not borrowers”. oliver (2009:117), writing in the general context of disability research, adds the metaphors of researchers as “tourists” or “colonizers”, engaged in “exploitative investigatory research”. to counteract this, there is a call for research that is empowering and emancipatory, such that it reveals social barriers, changes perceptions of disability and generates political action (mercer, 2002:237). when applied to research about inclusive education with children and young people, this means that it is not good enough to reveal children’s experiences by giving them voice as an academic exercise that only materially and professionally benefits the researcher. griesel et al. (2004:292) note that children are frustrated when they are listened to, and no concrete action results, and lundy (2007:933) maintains that “influence” (children’s views being acted upon) is a vital component of the right of children to be heard. research with children and young people in the context of inclusive education should thus be constructed in such a way that the findings can lead to meaningful change or practical outcomes for all learners and especially those vulnerable to exclusion and marginalisation. important, too, are interventions that should take place after children’s and young people’s views have been expressed, especially if these views reflect negative, discriminatory or stereotyping attitudes. without this, research may be seen as legitimising such attitudes by indulging them with time and interest. both fleming (2010:3) and messiou (2008:29) express the need for the researcher to give something back to the children who participated in the research by building relationships or engaging in classroom activities. perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201190 inclusive education is an elusive and contested concept, continually in the process of construction by the discourse community through theory, research, practice and reflection. as south africa is in the nascent stages of constructing its unique understanding of inclusion, we would do well to incorporate the voice of children and young people in that construction intentionally, by facilitating their participation in the discourse. in this way children and young people become more than a source of knowledge about inclusion, they participate in the production of that knowledge. like lerato who was mentioned earlier, they could disrupt our knowledge and suggest new and useful ways of knowing about inclusion and exclusion in south african schools. the challenge then, in our second decade of inclusive education, is to commit research energy and resources to listening and responding to 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routledge. whitehurst t 2006. liberating silent voices perspectives of children with profound and complex learning needs on inclusion. british journal of learning disabilities, 35:5561. 111 social justice and rural education in south africa dipane hlalele university of free state social justice is undeniably grounded in efforts at circumventing provisions that seek to uphold ostracism and exclusionary practices which have permeated south africa and many other societies worldwide for extensive periods of time. vast incongruities and/or inequalities between better resourced urban communities and neglected rural areas impinge on the provision of and access to education. this paper, grounded in a distributive paradigm that views social justice as a proper distribution of social benefits and burdens among members of society, traverses the positive and negative features of rural education related to social justice. it concedes that difference is an inherent, inevitable and indispensable feature of social existence and education, arguing that rural education needs to embrace difference, shape demands and model social benefits in accordance with the realities of a particular rural setting. this implies that social justice should be perceived as a humanising process – a response to human diversity in terms of ability, socio-economic circumstances, choice and rights. keywords: rural education, social justice, distributive paradigm, difference. introduction according to frattura and tropinka (2006), critical theory integrates the value of social justice into the practice of research for reform. how injustice and subjugation shape people’s experiences and understanding of the world constitutes the focus of critical theory. a critical theory perspective concerns itself with issues of power and justice and the ways in which the economy, matters of race, class and gender, ideologies, discourse, education, religion, and other social institutions interact to construct a social system. inquiry that is critical should be connected to an attempt to confront the injustices of society. kellner (2003, cited in frattura & tropinka, 2006) comments that what makes critical theory critical is not only the study and understanding of society, but also critiquing and changing it. no social arrangements are viewed as neutral, but rather as artificial constructs structured to benefit one segment of society over another. it is within this discourse that the article interrogates social justice and rural education. conventions, constitutional obligations, and requisite rights around education rights often permit individuals and groups to hold governments accountable for the progressive realisation of rights (spreen & vally, 2006). keet (2005, cited in spreen & vally, 2006) examines the contradictions in the human rights discourse of education rights as public good. focusing on south africa, he shows how ‘educationas-a-human-right’ remains elusive and why it has failed to prevent the increasing commodification of education and the attainment of social, economic and environmental justice. the failure of education policies and laws to ensure the attainment of education rights for the majority of south africans, including the rural inhabitants, is an immediate challenge. bryant (2010) asserts that one of the primary obstacles of rural education is wilful ignorance, particularly on the part of governments, of the conditions in rural areas and schools. wide disparities in access to quality education continue to plague rural areas (mcquaide, 2009). malhoit (2005) posits that society’s obligation to educate learners should not depend on a child’s demographic good or bad fortune; nor should geography dictate a child’s educational destiny. the obligation to educate learners in rural areas spawned several strategies to address the issue. however, despite all efforts deployed by countries around the world and the vigorous mobilisation of international communities, rural people still lag far behind in education and are particularly hard hit by poverty and hunger (sauvageot & da graća, 2007). in developing countries, the slow progress towards universal education is largely due to sluggish school enrolment and attendance among rural people, and 112 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 the persistence of very low enrolment rates in rural areas. poverty, hunger and underdevelopment are holding back educational development (sauvageot & da graća, 2007). social justice conceptualised as is the case with many other social concepts, social justice has varied and complex definitions. among these, there exist common threads that hold the concept together, and give it shape and identity. an early explanation by tsanoff (1956:12) suggests that justice derives from the phrase suum cuique or “one receiving their just due”. in addition, coates (2007) puts forward an alternative form of distributive justice wherein one receives fairness in social, political, and economic outcomes. kose (2009:630) opines that some scholars argue against a definitive and universal conceptualisation of social justice, while many argue that social justice has to do with “recultivating individual and institutionalised practices rooted in low expectations, deficit thinking, marginalisation and cultural imperialism”. it can therefore be accepted that a general definition of social justice is hard to arrive at and even harder to implement. in essence, social justice is concerned with equal justice, not merely in the courts, but in all aspects of society. this concept demands that all people have equal rights and opportunities; everyone, from the poorest person on the margins of society to the wealthiest. according to gerwitz, ball and bowe (1995), theories of social justice advocate mechanisms used to regulate social arrangements in the fairest way for the benefit of all. for the purpose of this article, conceptualisation of social justice hinges on nancy fraser’s definition, of justice as “parity of participation” (tikly, 2010:6). fraser (2008:16) elucidates that “overcoming injustice means dismantling institutionalised obstacles that prevent some people from participating on par with others as full partners in social interaction”. gerwitz (1998) maintains that social justice is premised on the discourse of disrupting and subverting arrangements that promote marginalisation and exclusionary processes. social justice supports a process built on respect, care, recognition and empathy. the presence of words such as ‘demands, mechanisms, disrupting, subverting’ in the definitions above suggest concerted action and seem to elicit revolutionary overtones. similarly, calderwood (2003) adopts a revolutionary approach to social justice. she posits that it works to undo socially created and maintained differences in material conditions of living, so as to reduce and ultimately eliminate the perpetuation of the privileging of some at the expense of others. frey, pearce, pollock, artz and murphy (1996) raise concern about sensibility toward social justice. they claim that sensibility should forego ethical concerns, commit to structural analyses of ethical concerns, adopt an activist orientation and seek identification with others. regarding the promotion of social justice, calderwood (2003) is of the view that people need to act to reduce and eradicate oppression, however distant they may feel from the personal culpability of its enactment. the view is further emphasised by former british prime minister, gordon brown who, quoting an unknown greek philosopher, said: “when will there be justice in athens? it will be when those that do not suffer are as angry as those that do” (lesedi, 2009). undoubtedly, there seems to be an agreement that injustice is not only an issue that concerns those at its receiving end, but also those members of society that do not seem to be affected. the situation seems to further call for alertness, or what we may call thinking beyond the visible and the ordinary. an unfortunate reality about social justice is that the mechanisms of injustice are to a large extent invisible, even to those who strive to live their lives and carry out their work ethically (calderwood 2003; solomon & murphy, 2000). the question that may arise from the debate above is whether or not, and to what extent, providers (policymakers and administrators) are aware of the practices, processes, rules and regulations that perpetuate acts of social injustice and thus consider themselves as culpable. in summary, social justice can be understood as: the exercise of altering institutional and organisational arrangements by actively engaging in reclaiming, appropriating, sustaining, and advancing inherent human rights of equity, and fairness in social, economic, educational, and personal dimensions (goldfarb & grinberg, 2002:162). questions relating to the proper distribution of benefits and burdens among sites have always posed a challenge for education institutions. fraser’s perspectival dualist framework troubles the disparate 113hlalele — social justice and rural education in south africa distribution of goods and services and/or social structures that enable material inequality (north, 2006). fraser (1997) also asserts that the increasing stress on sectoral politics undermines redistributive efforts that seek to improve the well-being of marginalised citizens. her perspectival dualist framework views recognition and redistribution as the co-fundamental and mutually irreducible dimensions of justice. social justice works to undo socially created and maintained differences in material conditions of living, so as to reduce and eventually eliminate the perpetuation of the privileging of some at the expense of others (calderwood, 2003). in order to promote social justice, we must act to reduce and eradicate oppression, however distant we may feel from personal culpability for its enactment. sabbagh (2003) indicates that distributive justice includes at least three major components: the normative patterns that regulate resource distribution (i.e., justice principles and their derivative rules); the classes of social resources that are being allocated, and the valence-positive or -negative of the expected distribution outcomes. arguments in this paper adopt a moral community perspective, viewing responsibility and care among members as central to social justice. social activists advocate the need for social change in rural areas which is linked to social justice, using a process that is consultative, collective, participative and empowering. connectedness and responsibility enrich the notions of fairness, and equality, thus extending the baseline of ethical practice (lloyd, 2000). rural education the definition of ‘rural’ still eludes us due to ambiguous connotations and the obvious and somewhat fallible comparison with ‘urban’ contexts. according to sauvageot and da graća (2007), rurality may be defined in various ways and no universal definition has been adopted in the history of human endeavour. most rural dwellers work in agriculture, often for meagre rates of compensation. from a learner diversity perspective, public schools in rural areas do not have a good track record in meeting the needs of diverse learner populations. a great deal of diversity among rural learners indicates both a challenge and an opportunity for the state to contribute to closing the many national achievement gaps (ludlow & brannan, 2010). rural students in urban areas are out of sight and out of mind. in the united states of america, the states where rural education is most notably underperforming (that is, performance ranks worse than socioeconomic challenges would suggest it should) are predominantly non-rural states, located on the east or west coast of america where the rural population is ‘out of sight, out of mind’. rural parts of china, australia and south africa are no exception. poverty, fiscal incapacity, low levels of adult education, and low levels of learner achievement run in the same mutually reinforcing circles in rural areas. as expected, regions where the educational outcomes in rural schools require the most urgent attention are those with most impoverished minority and rural learners, where schools receive the fewest resources and where rural students attend the largest schools in the largest districts. while declining enrolment remains a significant factor in some rural school districts, rural enrolment on the whole is growing while non-rural enrolment is declining. most rural areas already face tremendous barriers to learners’ high achievement and operate in less than favourable policy environments (johnson & strange, 2007). rural communities have unique and relative attributes. according to malhoit (2005), the school is the most important public institution in a rural community and also represents the economic lifeblood of the economy. a few other relative attributes are discussed below. community capital in rural areas rural people tend to live in their communities by choice, and their decision to live in a rural place should not affect the quality of their children’s education. while rural places frequently face substantial economic and social challenges, they also possess a number of assets that are often ignored or overlooked. the community capital present in many rural communities makes them attractive places in which to live and raise a family. there is a strong bond that exists among rural community members which fosters a firm commitment to protect and support children. with their sparse populations, lower crime rates, beautiful 114 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 open spaces and sense of community, many rural places offer a welcome break from the problems of urban and suburban living such as traffic congestion, crime and the high cost of living (malhoit, 2005). rural people are strong supporters of public education and communitybased schools they view a quality education as essential to an effective rural economic development strategy, because good schools produce a quality local workforce that, in turn, builds upon already present community capital. the school is the most important public institution in a rural community, a rallying point for services to poor families and children, a polling place, a library, and a community centre (doe, 2005; ludlow & brannan, 2010; malhoit, 2005). poverty in many countries the term ‘rural’ is synonymous with ‘poor’. on average, the rate of child poverty in rural communities is higher than in urban areas. poor children lack adequate housing, access to quality health care, proper nutrition, and adequate child care. there is a general agreement that these factors contribute to limited access to quality education for rural children (malhoit, 2005). ageing population with the loss of younger people to urban areas, rural places tend to have an ageing population. while there are advantages to an ageing population, especially where seniors have a substantial retirement income, in low-income rural places this trend can reduce purchasing power and increase the cost of social services that compete against education for funding (malhoit, 2005). smaller schools rural schools are frequently smaller than urban schools, either because of a community’s sparse population or by choice. rural people tend to choose smaller schools because their common sense confirms what research shows, that they are better places to educate children. overwhelmingly, education research (little, 2008; malhoit, 2005) has found many advantages of smaller schools over larger schools including better achievement, higher throughput rates, fewer discipline problems, and higher rates of participation in extracurricular activities). the rural (and somewhat relative) attributes discussed above indicate at least two issues. first, rural areas possess assets/attributes/benefits other communities may not have. secondly, rural areas need special attention, assistance and support; rural communities are more likely to be a ubiquitous phenomenon as people exercise their right to choose. malhoit (2005) posits that rural areas need the provision of high-quality education which will not only correct the policies that may have unjustly denied learners by providing them with ‘just funding,’ but also offer learners opportunities to obtain a meaningful education that prepares them for jobs that pay a living wage, participation in higher education, as well as being actively responsible citizens. the next section provides a critique on the provision of and access to rural education in south africa. reflections on rural education in south africa south africa’s rural communities, like those in many developing and some developed countries, remain disadvantaged compared to their counterparts in urban areas (doe, 2005). evidently, underlying the gains of our young democracy are the challenges that are experienced by rural communities. the ministry of education (2005) notes that the problems experienced in rural areas of south africa, though to some extent unique to rural education, are in fact widespread to varying degrees in the previously disadvantaged communities. in order to enhance impact, the programmes and policies geared towards redress, access, equity and equality clearly need further intervention in the rural areas. the ministerial committee on 115hlalele — social justice and rural education in south africa rural education (mcre) (doe, 2005) suggests that in addressing the complexities of rural development and education, in particular, the intervention strategies should aim at ensuring consistency in government’s rural development strategy, wherein access to economic activities is expanded in order to reduce poverty, invest in human rights and social justice, and improve living conditions. the observation by the ministry indicates a tacit acknowledgement of the lack, as well as the inevitable obligation to address rural education as a social justice issue. according to spreen and vally (2006), the quality of education, particularly in rural and historically disadvantaged communities, should be regarded as a human rights issue. many schools in south africa are situated in rural areas which put learners at a disadvantage. the rural environment is notably less rich not only in terms of human resources, but also in learning as well as livelihood resources (lindeque & vandeyar, 2004). kallaway (2001:16) laments: the tendency to dismiss educational initiatives that seek to make direct interventions into issues of development as attempts to control and subordinate rural people to the colonial order or dismiss them as an aspect of failed socialist experiments, or even see in them only the machinations of apartheid social engineering, as throwing out the baby with bathwater. rural occupation in south africa is directly linked to apartheid and the colonial policies of dispossession, resettlement and a systematic exclusion from opportunities (doe, 2005) and is characterised by diverse rural areas. this means that each rural area possesses a different make-up in terms of needs and resources. key features of a rural profile in south africa include long distances to towns; the poor conditions of roads and bridges to schools; a lack of or limited access to information communications technologies (icts); a lack of services such as running water, electricity, sanitation, health and educational facilities; low economic status, and little access to lifelong learning opportunities. one of the most pervasive features of rural communities is poverty (doe, 2005). food security and the cost of education are also major problems. furthermore, rural communities are characterised by high illiteracy levels. the problems of rurality are further compounded by continued under-resourcing of schools relative to need. the government’s commitment to equal and fair treatment has unfortunately yielded meagre change for rural schools (doe, 2005). in relation to education, lack of basic services (water, sanitation) affects access to and the quality of education, such as inadequate infrastructure in schools (buildings, icts) and the long distances learners must travel to schools. the attributes of rurality that adversely affect the quality of education include a lack of qualified teachers, multigrade teaching, unreasonable teacher-learner ratios, irrelevant curricula, and competing priorities between accessing education and domestic chores, while the teaching staff seem to be imbued with poor morale and motivation (mollenkopf, 2009). furthermore, teachers may be unwilling to move to rural areas where social and cultural opportunities are limited and salaries may not contain an enticement peg. even when teachers are willing to work in rural areas, working conditions are likely to make them reluctant to stay for the long term (mollenkopf, 2009). reflections on some approaches to rural education the issue of literacy has nearly always been associated with freedom from oppression (adair, 2008). there seems to be a general consensus that there is a need for greater collaboration with an integrated approach to finding solutions to address poverty and underdevelopment in rural areas. williams and nierengarten (2010) state that in addressing rural realities mandates, there is a need to consolidate, collaborate and cooperate. this implies that rural imperatives need a community aligned with and willing to draw from various sources. for example, efforts to provide cooperative and collaborative staff development for teachers in rural areas may be negatively affected due to distances and therefore, transportation costs. however, promoting a positive view of education in rural areas, encouraging innovation and initiative in the provision of rural education services, and providing a framework for the sharing of concerns, issues and experiences relating to education and training in rural areas may go some way to addressing the injustices affecting rural inhabitants. amelioration in respect of social injustices should be regarded as a responsibility of all concerned. nearly three decades ago helge (1985) noted that the enhancement of rural education should be an inter-agency effort with significant involvement from the department of 116 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 education. the realisation that rural education involves all disciplines and that efforts in the past have been fragmented has become a present reality. helge (1985) further suggests the implementation of a holistic approach, which implies collaboration among relevant agencies such as the ministries of rural development and land reform, basic education, social development, and roads and transport. various agencies, depending on the unique and relevant attributes of a particular rural community, need to form a consortium or partnership to address rural education issues. the absence of a coherent policy framework (wallace, 2007) evidence from the community survey 2007, indicates that rural inhabitants continue to face the perennial challenge of access to education (fleisch, shindler & perry, 2010). according to johnson and strange (2007), rural schools have unique needs that impact on their education. rural schools have also experienced recent problems due to increased costs for healthcare, transportation, special education services, and other expenses (thorson & maxwell, 2002; williams and nierengarten, 2010). one-size-fits-all solutions do not meet the needs of the ignored and misunderstood rural schools (bryant, 2010). the ministry of education concedes that a special focus on rural education for unique, dedicated intervention without providing fundamentally different education may ghetto-rise education for rural communities (doe, 2005). bryant (2010) further states that rural life has been wrapped in a snug cocoon of fantasy. thus, one of the obstacles of rural education, perhaps the primary obstacle, is a wilful ignorance, on the part of governments, of the conditions in rural areas and schools. for example, most teachers in various fields of specialisation face professional isolation because they are, in most cases, the only teachers in their specialisations. mcquaide (2009) states that the lack of qualified teachers is one of the most crucial factors hindering the development of basic education in rural areas. within the confines of the suggested whole-systems perspective should be the realisation that rural contexts are diverse. it can therefore be accepted that, in most cases, no two rural contexts are exactly the same. sabbagh (2003) aptly notes that the very idea of a just distribution calls for a local examination (in a specific context), and a distribution of resources should define specific boundaries when it establishes the unit of potential resource beneficiaries. fraser’s (1997, 2008) notion of difference seems inescapable in the provision of and access to education in rural schools. the consolidation of rural schools has been one of the strategies used to deal with problem of dwindling learner numbers. conclusion in this article i discuss critically rural education from a social justice perspective. arguments indicate that, even though rural communities possess assets not found elsewhere and can offer certain benefits, they need specialised support. what may be regarded as a reasonable and desirable intervention in one rural community may not necessarily be relevant to another rural community. mcquaide (2009) posits that options of universal access to, and the equity and quality of basic education in rural settings need to be thoroughly considered. this suggests a realisation and understanding of as well as a commitment to the need for an integrated approach to rural education as a social justice issue. rural inhabitants face the challenge of being conscious of their uncritical acceptance of the status quo. therefore, delivery of rural education should be shaped around and be responsive to rural social justice issues pertinent to the unique and diverse rural context (alston, 2007). agarwal, epstein, oppenheim, oyler and sonu (2010) suggest that, when seeking to transform inequities inherent in society and expressed so sharply in schools, classroom teachers can be understood as the most essential element, as they have the ultimate responsibility of navigating the curriculum and instruction with their students. agarwal et al’s. (2007) suggestion presupposes emancipatory pedagogical endeavours. according to baldwin, buchanan and rudisill (2007), this adds a dimension of social justice that requires teachers to critically analyse the perceived realities of social and environmental injustices that affect teaching, learning, and the curriculum. teachers therefore need to understand their broader role as agents of change and development; as agents in addressing rural education as a human right and a social justice issue. there needs to be an understanding that rural contexts are diverse and that context-specific solutions will be needed. in conclusion, the author agrees with wallace (2007) who states that “what matters most for economic development is the capability of rural people to be efficient producers given their natural resource base. there is little doubt that economic 117hlalele — social justice and rural education in south africa and social development, and the benefits that accrue, such as improved nutrition and health, requires an educated populace”. lastly, all endeavours to address social injustices with regard to rural education should be characterised by difference, attributable to diversity in rurality. this means that the resource base, needs, approaches and solutions for each rural context may not necessarily be the same for all rural areas. context-specific approaches are therefore recommended in the provision and promotion of access to education. references adair jk 2008. everywhere in life there are numbers: questions for social justice educators in mathematics and everywhere else. journal of teacher education, 59:408-415. agarwal r, epstein s, oppenheim r, oyler c & sonu d 2010. from ideal to practice and back again: beginning teachers training for social justice. journal of teacher education, 61:237-247. alston m 2007. rural and regional developments in social work and higher education. australian social work, 60:107-121. baldwin sc, buchanan am & rudisill me 2007. 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strengthening the human resource base for food security and sustainable livelihoods. international journal of educational development, 27:581-590. williams j & nierengarten g 2010. rural education issues: rural administrators speak out. paper presented at the american educational research association (aera), april 30may 4, 2010: denver, colorado. 3062022 40(1): 306-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 leveraging academicindustry partnerships for inclusive virtual learning abstract the covid-19 pandemic has caused serious disruptions to higher education institutions across the globe, prompting even the ill-prepared ones to embrace virtual teaching and learning approaches. academic-industry partnerships remain an underutilised and under-researched mutually beneficial way of strengthening organisational performance. this study used the case of zimbabwe to fill the gap in the literature by exploring the types and extent of cooperation between academic institutions and industry towards inclusive virtual learning in public and private universities during the covid-19 pandemic. the study used electronic questionnaires and virtual interviews to collect data from a sample of 100 university staff and executives in industry. the findings revealed major challenges concerning infrastructure, facilities, high cost of data and intermittent power cuts. at present, particularly in public universities, academic-industry synergies were focused on internet and data provision. however, no support was made available for infrastructure and related facilities. the study recommended the need for strong academic-industry partnerships towards funding infrastructure and facilities to enhance virtual teaching and learning. keywords: academic-industry partnerships, virtual teaching and learning, ict infrastructure and facilities, covid-19, zimbabwe. 1. introduction the quest for quality, accessible and affordable higher education has continued to intensify even in the face of the covid-19 pandemic. in order to ensure that teaching and learning continued with minimum disruptions, universities shifted from face-to-face to online teaching and learning approaches, thus exerting pressure on already resource constrained universities (lee & lundemo, 2021). despite education being a basic need for every citizen, the covid-19 pandemic changed the landscape favouring those with adequate information and communication technology (ict) affordances and disadvantaging those from poor backgrounds (jachna, 2021). the state of ict infrastructure and facilities in higher education institutions, especially in most third world countries where governments have struggled to subsidise education, is dire (bray, 1999). literature reveals that more than 82% of african students author: dr promise zvavahera1 prof evelyn chiyevo garwe2 mr sheppard pasipanodya3 dr farai chigora4 ms chipo katsande5 affiliation: 1africa university, zimbabwe 2zimbabwe ezekiel guti university 3catholic university, zimbabwe 4africa university, zimbabwe 5manicaland state university of applied sciences, zimbabwe doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i1.18 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(1): 306-322 published: 04 march 2022 received: 14 august 2021 accepted: 31 october 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6984-6475 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6111-8622 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9009-1297 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8932-3601 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2553-8379 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 3072022 40(1): 307-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 zvavahera, garwe, pasipanodya, chigora & katsande leveraging academic-industry partnerships did not have access to the internet in sub-saharan africa, thus, frustrating the realisation of inclusive and equitable quality education during the covid-19 pandemic (nakweya, 2021). however, in most developed countries, learners have access to the internet and digital devices at an early age in their homes, thus making it much easier to embrace online learning (livingstone et al., 2011). academic-industry collaboration systems are significantly different between developed and developing countries (wijesinghe, hansson & peiris, 2018). virtual modes of study rely on the use of ict online systems and devices. in order for online teaching and learning to be successful, universities must put in place the necessary policies, infrastructure (e.g. computer hardware and software), facilities (e.g. electricity, internet services) and strategies (chanyagorn & kungwannarongkun, 2011). lecturers and students also require devices such as laptops, tablets, smartphones and earphones to be able to participate in virtual learning (darko-adjei, 2019). albeit to varying extents, the universities across the globe that have gone virtual still face challenges regarding the availability of ict infrastructure, facilities and financing, thus depriving students equal access to quality education (mgaiwa & poncian, 2016). ict preparedness on the part of the institution, lecturers and students is very low in african universities (pillay & erasmus, 2017) including zimbabwe (zvavahera & masimba, 2019). most institutions have put in place policies for lecturers and students to “bring their own device” through a byod policy and support those without through a purchase your own device initiative for use in teaching and learning. however, although these devices are almost ubiquitous across the globe, appropriate devices with the right specifications are generally out of reach due to the high costs (chitanana, 2012). these challenges have been further exacerbated by the widespread and whole-hearted adoption of virtual teaching and learning by universities in response to the covid-19 pandemic as a way of observing physical distancing requirements. research has shown that academic-industry partnerships play a key role in creating synergies that provide additional resources to support universities and to promote innovation and technology transfer (guimon, 2013). these mutually beneficial partnerships are premised on the interchange between the academic, innovation and research capacities of universities and the resource endowments of industry (rasiah & chandran, 2009). there is limited literature on studies that provide a comprehensive picture of how higher education institutions (heis) have developed, strengthened and managed synergetic partnerships with industry at national level to rollout inclusive online learning in the covid-19 era. this study used the case of zimbabwe to investigate the status, initiatives, support and challenges regarding academic-industry partnerships to enhance virtual teaching and learning in public and private universities to create equitable, affordable, inclusive and quality education during the covid-19 pandemic and proposes further areas of cooperation during and post-covid-19. the specific objectives of the study were: • to understand the extent to which public and private universities were prepared for ict and online teaching and learning in zimbabwe during the covid-19 pandemic; • to evaluate academic-industry partnerships aimed at enhancing virtual teaching and learning during covid-19; and • to propose further areas of cooperation with industry during and post-covid-19. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 3082022 40(1): 308-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) the article is structured as follows: section 2 provides a synopsis of academia-industry partnerships in higher education institutions in africa and in zimbabwe as guided by existing literature indicating the paucity of literature in this important field; section 3 outlines the methodology of the study; section 4 presents the findings and discussion of the study in accordance with the research questions; section 5 presents recommendations on areas for further cooperation. finally, section 6 provides the conclusions of the study and implications for future research. 2. academia-partnerships in african higher education institutions the inclusive, equitable and sustainable implementation of online learning by african universities can be enhanced by collaborations between universities and industry. a scoping study of academic-industry partnerships in nigeria by ssebuwufu, ludwick and beland (2012) revealed that although great potential exists in this area, only a few higher education institutions have reaped significant gains through academic-industry partnerships. egypt and south africa are examples of african countries that have strong academic-industry partnerships (odeleye, 2012). partnerships have the capacity to uplift the quality of higher education and collaborations in the pertaining environment (boye & mannan, 2014; odeleye, 2012). the concept of academic-industry partnerships in higher education is not new (mishra & krishna, 2014). it refers to mutual agreements between academia and industry motivated by several factors inclusive of research, innovation, capacity development for staff and students, infrastructure, sharing expertise and financial support. this study focused on partnerships in internet facilities, ict and energy infrastructure and other online learning affordances. these are critical for virtual teaching and learning during the covid-19 pandemic. in this study, ict infrastructure refers to networks, devices, protocols and processes that are related to information technology or the telecommunications field to enable communication. related to ict, infrastructure is energy infrastructure that refers to alternative (off-grid) sources of power such as solar, generators, power banks and invertors among others. finally, industry refers to private business organisations that provide ict infrastructure and related facilities (egoeze, akman & colomo-palacios, 2014). barriers to forging successful academic-industry partnerships include the absence of agency to broker partnerships, for instance lack of government commitment; lack of awareness on the value of these partnerships on the part of universities and industry; limited mutually beneficial opportunities and conflicting policies and regulations and philosophies. policy implementation frameworks in the areas of cooperation, funding, support, communication and conflict resolution strategies should underpin effective and sustainable academic-industry partnerships (awasthy, et al, 2018; seke, 2020). in an exemplary show of agency at continental level, the association of african universities (aau) in partnership with elearnafricalms launched aau-elearnafricalms to provide affordable data to students and academics during the covid-19 pandemic in african universities (kigotho, 2021). this was in response to the request by african universities through the aau for digital and energy infrastructure, affordable high-speed internet access, smart devices and data for academics and students to maximise virtual learning during the covid-19 period. in order to complement the aau efforts towards enhancing virtual teaching and learning, african governments are urged to play their role by creating a conducive environment to promote the same cause. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 https://www.elearnafricalms.com/ https://www.elearnafricalms.com/ https://www.universityworldnews.com/fullsearch.php?mode=search&writer=wachira+kigotho 3092022 40(1): 309-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 zvavahera, garwe, pasipanodya, chigora & katsande leveraging academic-industry partnerships 2.1 the state of academic-industry partnerships in zimbabwe academic-industry partnerships in zimbabwe date back to the pre-independence era when the first university was established in 1955 (nyemba et al., 2018). although these persisted in the post-independence era, they lacked national and institutional frameworks to effectively implement and monitor them. maposa and munanga (2021) argue that this was so because a blanket model would not be suitable for every industry since these have unique characteristics and challenges that require different approaches and models. the persistent economic decline that bedevilled zimbabwe since the late 1990s had a profound impact on the infrastructural, service delivery, material, human and financial wellbeing of universities. it is against this background that universities, faced with a plethora of challenges because of dwindling funding, infrastructure, facilities, equipment and human resource shortages, increasingly turned to industry for partnerships and support to help stem the worsening situation (mbizvo, 2011; mpofu, chimhenga & mafa, 2013). even though this resulted in some partnerships (mashininga, 2018), some researchers (chiyangwa, 2014; zinyama, & nhema, 2015) noted that these were limited by: • slow pace of reforms and creditworthiness of the country’s public sector utilities upon which many private infrastructure investments depend; • shortage of well-structured investment and improvement opportunities; • absence of a regulatory framework; and • the perception of zimbabwe as a high-risk country due to inconsistencies in policy implementation. although incentives for academic-industry partnerships abound in zimbabwe, the depressed macroeconomic environment made a weak case as industry performance was declining. however, even under these conditions, academic-industry partnerships are reported to have worked well in the areas of universal health care in zimbabwe (chikwawawa & bvirindi, 2019) and the same could be replicated in institutions of higher education. this study aimed to explore academic-industry partnerships with respect to support for virtual teaching and learning. 2.2 conceptual framework the conceptual framework that was developed to guide the research scaffolding, data collection and framing of the findings is illustrated in figure 1 below. the framework conceptualises how a situational analysis using interrelated independent, dependent and moderating variables can be critical in achieving acceptable levels of online preparedness towards inclusive virtual learning. an example of the interrelatedness of the variables is the importance of infrastructure, policy guidelines and financial resources among other dependent factors that negate the level of preparedness by institutions of higher education. this is because of limited support from governments (independent variable) to invest in ict infrastructure and facilities (seke, 2020). lack of legal frameworks (independent variable) to guide the implementation of academicindustry partnerships (moderating variable) is also a major concern. the independent factors that affect preparedness for virtual teaching and learning at the institutional, lecturer and learner levels were analysed using the pestle model. this model is common for organisational environmental analysis. pestle is an acronym for political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental factors that when categorised, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 3102022 40(1): 310-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) understood and analysed, can be used to effectively predict the future performance of an organisation (ansah et al., 2016, stoyanova & harizanova, 2017). the independent variables that influence ict preparedness, as analysed by the pestle technique, are summarised in the following section. the factors considered under political include peace and stability; government commitment; leadership capability; policies and regulations and processes regarding icts; funding support to universities. economic factors relate to issues of gross domestic product; income levels; economic growth and stability; inflation rates; employment rates; government expenditure; loan repayments; cost of internet; allocation of funds for ict and education. social factors include demographics; ict literacy rates; ict and mobile penetration rates; culture and beliefs; digital users’ behaviours and public trust. the technological factors include the contribution of technology to the quality and quantity of available infrastructure; technology development; internet access; e-learning and ict applications in education; security and privacy. legal factors include regulation on cyber security and privacy; legal framework for promoting and supporting virtual learning. environmental factors refer to policies of government on climate change; eco-friendly technology; pollution and energy efficiency. the dependent variables refer to the institution, lecturer and learner preparedness and include infrastructure (hardware and software); policies; strategies; financial resources; digital literacy; staff and learner support; workload; teaching, learning and assessment; research and dissemination. the moderating variable is academic-industry partnerships that has the potential to improve the level of online preparedness during and post-covid-19 in institutions of higher education by creating an enabling environment with requisite resources (alsoud & harasis, 2021). figure 1: conceptual framework on the environmental context of virtual teaching and learning preparedness http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 3112022 40(1): 311-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 zvavahera, garwe, pasipanodya, chigora & katsande leveraging academic-industry partnerships 3. methodology a mixed descriptive and exploratory research design was used to collect data from private and public universities in zimbabwe. deriving from the conceptual model, and in compliance with covid-19 lockdown regulations, the study used electronic questionnaires to collect data from a sample of university management and staff. the electronic questionnaire included closed and open-ended questions. the closed questions required participants to select one or more suitable responses from the range provided with an option to insert other unlisted responses into the free-form space provided. for open-ended questions, the participants were required to insert responses into the free-form text boxes provided. virtual interviews were conducted with industry management, ict directors, registrars and deans. this study explored the types and extent of cooperation between academic institutions and industry towards inclusive virtual learning in public and private universities during the covid-19 pandemic. all 20 registered public and private universities participated in the study. a sample of 5 participants per university was considered adequate for the purposes of the study. ict directors, registrars, deans, quality assurance directors and academic staff were the main targets due to the importance of their roles in managing partnerships, icts and teaching and learning. email invitations were sent to 100 potential participants providing them with a link (survey url) to the online questionnaire using survey monkey – an online data collection tool. the brief questionnaire required an average of eight minutes to complete. the survey was distributed in may 2021 and was open for three weeks after the initial distribution, during which an email reminder was sent to participants on day 15. ethical approval to conduct the study was sought from the institution of the principal researcher. in addition, the questionnaire and interviews observed ethical and data protection protocols. the personalised email invites, the reminders and the provision of a survey url helped the study achieve a response rate of 61% (61 participants), made up of 50% participants from private universities and another 50% from public universities. the response rate of 61% for online surveys was higher than from similar studies, suggesting the high levels of digital literacy within the higher education sector. the equal distribution of participants from public and private universities enabled the researchers to make a comprehensive analysis of the situation in both categories of universities. after the data were analysed to understand the emerging industry partners, the required ethical clearance processes were undertaken with the relevant offices before interviews with representatives of the companies were arranged and undertaken. twenty virtual interviews were undertaken using the zoom platform and lasted for 20 minutes. consent was obtained to record the interviews for further transcription and analysis. 4. findings and discussion the findings were presented in accordance with the conceptual framework developed for the study. the first part sought to understand how the independent (pestle) and the dependent variables shaped the extent to which public and private universities were prepared for online teaching and learning during the covid-19 pandemic. in the second part, an analysis of the moderating variable, academic-industry partnerships to enhance virtual teaching and learning during covid-19 was undertaken. the last segment of the findings presents the recommendations regarding further areas of academic-industry cooperation during and post-covid-19. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 3122022 40(1): 312-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 4.1 pestle analysis the participants provided information on pestle when they were completing the questionnaire that the researchers synthesised and analysed. 4.1.1 political it was noted that the government of zimbabwe had in place regulations that permitted online education, thus providing universities with opportunities to go virtual. however, there was a lack of meaningful direct investment by the government towards ict infrastructure and according to bray (1999), this was found to be the case in most african countries. 4.1.2 socio-economic the poor performance of the economy made it difficult for institutions, lecturers and learners to get financial assistance for ict resources from industry and the government. a substantial capital outlay needed to be provided upfront to enable online learning. universities required ict infrastructure while lecturers and students needed access to affordable software, broadband internet connections and electronic devices inclusive of laptops, tablets and smartphones. sustainable transformation and growth of the global economy requires serious investment in human capital (mpofu et al., 2013). 4.1.3 technological the key technological challenges to virtual teaching and learning were internet connectivity, power outages and limited internet infrastructure. associated or dependent technologies are required for e-learning to be effective, examples being hardware, software and broadband internet connections or wi-fi. fortunately, these technologies are increasingly available around the globe to enable the ubiquitous uptake of e-learning. 4.1.5 legal the zimbabwe council for higher education (zimche), the regulatory body for quality assurance, monitors virtual teaching and learning in all institutions of higher learning. quality assurance directors in universities assist the zimche on compliance issues. 4.1.6 environment the shift to virtual teaching and learning may result in a decrease in the use of paper that could be a great opportunity towards a green environment. however, as highlighted in literature and the findings of this study, it was apparent that the country was far from realising the benefits of a green environment. 4.2 level of preparedness for online learning by institutions this section presents and discusses issues related to levels of preparedness for online teaching and learning by institutions. 4.2.1 infrastructure facilities, devices and data the participants were cognisant that the success of online learning is premised on the availability of requisite ict and energy infrastructure, facilities, devices and data. they presented a range of challenges faced by their universities in that respect. figure 2 illustrates the challenges being faced by public and private universities in implementing virtual teaching http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 3132022 40(1): 313-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 zvavahera, garwe, pasipanodya, chigora & katsande leveraging academic-industry partnerships and learning in zimbabwe. the challenges included internet connectivity and devices (73.9%); infrastructure and bandwidth (65.2%); high cost of data and power outages (56.5%). figure 2: covid-19 related challenges faced by universities in zimbabwe only the few university staff and students who stayed on university campuses were able to utilise university facilities and the rest who had to stay home during lockdown struggled to get the requisite devices, connectivity and data. virtual interviews with deans revealed that the cost of data bundles was an impediment for students and academic staff. it was noted that very few universities were able to support their staff and students in this regard. these findings concur with the findings by zvavahera and masimba (2019) who reported that most zimbabwean universities lacked basic ict infrastructure and facilities, and this affected the quality of their delivery. this finding can be generalised beyond zimbabwe since nakweya (2021) found that more than 82% of african students did not have access to internet in subsaharan africa. the disciplines that were mostly affected are shown in figure 3. commerce/business was the most affected discipline (69.9%), followed by information technology (60.9%), science and engineering (47.8%), education (43.5%), life sciences (30.3%) and arts, humanities and social sciences (26.1%). even though commerce/business was the most affected discipline, it was clear that every discipline had its share of challenges. the reason commerce and information technology ranked highly could be explained by the fact that every university was offering degree programmes in these disciplines with fewer universities offering sciences/engineering and health sciences. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 3142022 40(1): 314-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) figure 3: disciplines worst affected by the pandemic 4.2.2 teaching, learning and examination virtual interviews with ict directors, registrars and deans revealed that academics and students who preferred face-to-face interaction were not ready for a shift from the traditional approach to the virtual which they viewed as more detached andragogical teaching and learning. it was further highlighted that students and staff struggled to strike a balance between home and work responsibilities in a depressed economy characterised by power outages and high costs of goods and services. virtual interviews with deans revealed that the online approach increased workload for staff and students, through lecture preparations as well as continuous student assessments. it was noted that failure to access the physical library, meant students and staff had to spend most of their time glued to their computers leading to increased costs of data that was already out of reach for students and staff. one ict director had this to say: “students and staff are facing challenges in navigating the e-resources since it is first experience for some of them and they lack the skill and expertise to navigate the information super highway”. from the electronic questionnaire responses, it was noted that academics had to followup on students who could not utilise e-learning platforms, further increasing their workload by delivering lectures in multiple forms to foster an equitable learning environment. teaching staff also needed to pre-record lectures and this doubled their work, since the same had to be delivered to students synchronously with some resorting to acquiring their own recording hardware and software as the universities did not have a budget for these requirements. this included the time that was spent assisting students on various online platforms such as chat forums, whatsapp groups, video conferencing and emails. a lack of supportive environments of working from home was also highlighted, since there was no proper office setup leading to disruptions. in view of these dynamics, different ways and modes had to be devised to support student queries. with reference to the conceptual framework, social life of staff could be negatively affected as they would end up having less time with their families and friends. one of the challenging areas of virtual teaching and learning related to student term evaluation in the form of final examinations. only 20% of the universities indicated that exams were conducted online whilst 80% indicated that their institutions conducted examinations physically. virtual interviews with deans further revealed that for examinations that were conducted physically, social distancing was observed in line with the world health http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 3152022 40(1): 315-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 zvavahera, garwe, pasipanodya, chigora & katsande leveraging academic-industry partnerships organization guidelines and protocols for gatherings, including the distribution of personal protective equipment (ppes) for staff and students. for those who indicated that exams were administered online, students had to provide their own data and academics were supported with data by their institutions. in some universities, it was reported that only ict related exams were administered online. zoom interviews with internet service providers (isps) revealed that they were facing viability challenges because of the poor performance of the economy that was further worsened by the covid-19 pandemic, where businesses were required to follow strict covid-19 protocols. the same challenges were confirmed by kigotho (2021) who noted that lack of support by governments and industry across most parts of world was affecting online learning initiatives. the fact that 80% of the participants indicated that their institutions conducted exams physically, showed lack of preparedness thereby compromising on the quality of education and human capital development which is critical for the development of the global economy. twenty per cent (20%) of the respondents that were able to conduct examinations online reported that they were supported by industry which invested heavily in icts to make virtual teaching, learning and assessment a reality. it has become apparent that the pandemic has resulted in most universities being stressed since they lack capacity to transition to virtual teaching and learning as policies and contingency plans were not drafted and executed to address the key issues within universities from the onset of the pandemic in march 2020 to the present. alsoud and harasis (2021) concur with the findings of this study that policies and legal frameworks are critical for sustainable academic-industry partnerships. what has become apparent is that the new normal of doing business virtually will continue as digitisation of economies and governments has taken centre stage (seke, 2020). responses obtained through electronic questionnaires revealed that students were expected to undertake industrial attachment also known as an internship or work-related learning during their course of study. it was noted that the strict covid-19 containment measures including total shutdown for those not engaged in essential services reduced attachment opportunities for students. another challenge could be that most businesses had introduced remote working thereby compromising on the most needed practical experience by student interns. internship is by nature dependent on interns’ ability to work shadowing the experts who were now working from home. students could be forced to defer their studies because they are unable to fulfil this requirement. in this regard, industry could assist by creating environments where student interns could work from home under close supervision. developing work-related simulations for interns could assist them being attached remotely. this can be made possible through assistance from industry supporting virtual teaching and learning in institutions of higher learning. since the pandemic is a global concern, almost every country and organisation has been affected. 4.2.3 research and dissemination there was consensus from the participants that data collection for research purposes was limited because of the inability to travel due to lockdown restrictions. they further indicated that they were now relying on secondary data collection through desktop research. virtual interviews with deans revealed that even though online research was cheaper, limited availability and access to internet due to the high cost of data and power outages was compounding the problem. it was noted that observation could not be substituted where it was required, and non-verbal cues could be impossible to deduce with poor video and poor internet connectivity. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 https://www.universityworldnews.com/fullsearch.php?mode=search&writer=wachira+kigotho 3162022 40(1): 316-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) all the respondents concurred that the prevalent forms of primary data collection were being performed via virtual platforms mostly using online interviews and surveys. academics noted that online research could not fully work in all areas of study and examples given were in health sciences and engineering, unless good simulations were developed and provided. even though research was now being conducted virtually, the cost of data was found to be out of reach for students and staff. a finding from the electronic questionnaires revealed that even though covid-19 had a negative influence on physical research initiatives, online engagements continued. it was further noted that even though face-to-face interactions remained important, this could not be the best option because of covid-19 restrictions. local, regional and international travel restrictions weighed in on face-to-face interactions. however, virtual engagements were appreciated by universities because of their cost-effectiveness. the pandemic created opportunities for everyone since all staff could attend conferences and seminars in the comfort of their homes. there was consensus among the participants that stable and affordable internet as well as uninterrupted electricity supply were prerequisites for realising quality virtual education in the face of the covid-19 pandemic and into the future. one of the deans had this to say: “industry should support the new normal as a way of corporate social responsibility (csr). our institutions do not have the capacity to be fully online”. all the participants concurred through online responses that research grants in most areas from cooperating industry partners had dwindled since the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic except those targeting the containment of the pandemic. virtual interviews with deans revealed that the implementation of the existing grants was being affected by lockdown restrictions since some of them were administered in the field which was inaccessible due to travel restrictions and bans. some of the academics indicated that they had not received grants during this period mainly because there was a huge shift to encourage virtualisation of most research-based events including conferences and respondent interactions. it was noted that producing effective simulations was expensive and industry support could be more helpful. one ict director had this to say: “we encourage industry and universities to develop simulations that can replace physical presentations, systems and processes”. this could be an opportunity for industry and academia to forge strong research partnerships to solve current and future challenges associated with pandemics. in view of the challenges highlighted, it is critical for universities to engage industry to invest and support in the areas of icts and power generation since electricity and icts were viewed as the key drivers to virtual teaching and learning. even though there was evidence that some organisations were assisting universities with free and subsidised data, the level of support was not adequate considering the obtaining environment that had seen an exponential growth in the demand for the internet and internet-based services. support from industry and the government towards financial and infrastructural investment in modern technologies such as virtual reality simulators or studios that allow for a realistic life experience could go a long way in addressing most of the issues raised in this study. 4.3 academic-industry partnerships on the level of collaborations and partnerships, 56% of the respondents indicated that there was a shift towards online engagements because of covid-19. eighteen per cent (18%) of the respondents indicated that there was no change in the way collaborations were being handled, whilst 14% indicated that collaborations had declined because of covid-19. finally, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 3172022 40(1): 317-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 zvavahera, garwe, pasipanodya, chigora & katsande leveraging academic-industry partnerships 12% of the respondents indicated that they were not sure of what was happening since they were not involved in any form of collaborations or partnerships and this category of respondents could have been non-teaching staff. twenty-seven per cent (27%) of the respondents indicated that they had received support from internet service providers such as telone and econet. it was revealed that initiatives such as the buy a device scheme, computer purchase schemes and computer lab time were also made available even before the onset of the pandemic. this was in addition to the ongoing presidential computer scheme, which is a government initiative towards computerising universities and schools around the country. some ict directors pointed out that internet services from telone and econet enabled institutions to assist their students with affordable data bundles. in some cases, students were made to pay for subsidised bulk data bundles together with their tuition fees. one per cent (1%) of the participants indicated that internet grants were made available to students whilst 17% indicated that students and lecturers were using whatsapp since it was regarded as the cheapest social platform for sharing information. fifty-five per cent (55%) of the participants indicated that students were not getting any form of support and if they did, they were not aware of such support. the government of zimbabwe, through the ministry of higher and tertiary education, science and technology development (mhtestd), facilitated academic-industry partnerships with a leading pan-african telecoms group, liquid telecom to establish free wi-fi delivered across its high-speed fibre network. this initiative, aimed at assisting students to bridge the digital divide, was part of liquid telecom’s csr. the initiative established free wi-fi zones, named edu-zones, in areas where students congregate, for example dining halls, student residences, study areas and sports fields. it was noted that edu-zones were established at 10 state universities and one private university (nyemba et al., 2021). however, negotiations to expand infrastructure and facilities in all universities were ongoing as was reported by the participant interviewed from liquid telecom who indicated, our company, the largest isp in zimbabwe, established edu-zones as a long-term initiative to connect universities and other education institutions so that they could save money on internet data costs. the initiative had so far benefitted staff and students from 48 education institutions in zimbabwe. these institutions benefited from high speed, reliable internet connectivity resulting in better grades and future career opportunities. although edu-zones were seemingly a liquid telecom’s csr initiative, participants at universities indicated that in return, the beneficiaries of the initiative (i.e. the institutions) were supposed to purchase data from the organisation resulting in a win-win relationship. the edu-zone initiative exemplifies how academic-industry partnerships can help develop virtual teaching and learning in universities and to spur africa’s fourth industrial revolution (boye & mannan, 2014). however, because of the lockdown and work from home arrangements, and other covid-19 regulations, this initiative was only able to help the few students who remained on campus. virtual interviews with registrars and ict directors also revealed that the zimbabwe research and education network’s (zimren) efforts to provide universities with cheap data were to be realised in august 2021. to this effect, the post and telecommunications regulatory authority (potraz) had given zimren a free license to enable the joint provision of internet connectivity and distribution. potraz had also assigned the three isps in zimbabwe (telone, econet, and telecel) with free frequencies during the covid-19 pandemic to increase their http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 3182022 40(1): 318-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) capacity to provide data to higher education institutions. given that zimren lacked network infrastructure to act as an internet service provider and supply bandwidth to universities, it had planned to do this through consolidated bandwidth supply from telone which currently supplies 75% of the universities’ bandwidth. zimren undertook the requisite tender processes on behalf of all the universities to the procurement regulatory authority of zimbabwe. such noble initiatives have the capacity to improve the levels of preparedness for online learning in institutions of higher learning across the globe (rasiah & chandran, 2009). as far back as 2014, the zimbabwe universities vice chancellors association (zuvca), a consortium of universities in zimbabwe, in partnership with ubuntunet alliance had established zimren, a national research network (nren), to provide cheap data particularly for research purposes (chisita & rusero, 2016). zimren was to utilise its collective bargaining power to lobby for and coordinate the development of national network infrastructures and to negotiate improved and cheaper bandwidth. zimren would achieve this through facilitating inter-institutional connectivity in partnership with ubuntunet alliance, the regional research education network (rren) in eastern and southern africa (chisita & rusero, 2016). these initiatives by industry in zimbabwe can be replicated in other countries that have similar challenges. virtual interviews with state universities registrars revealed that the government provided grants to public universities to manufacture sanitisers, masks and other personal protective equipment (ppes). the universities collaborated with relevant ministries to roll out the production and distribution of sanitisers. a registrar from a private university revealed that the general board of higher education in the united states of america financially supported their institution to conduct research on zumbane (lippia javanica) and produced “cough drop sweets” that are perceived to suppress covid-19 induced coughing. the same board also supported students and staff with data bundles in the first wave of the pandemic. funding to capacitate staff and staff with online teaching and learning skills was also made available. it was encouraging to note that universities were receiving some form of support even though it was inadequate considering the number of students and staff who needed this form of assistance. in light of this glaring exposure, targeted investment towards ict infrastructure and facilities in universities could assist. it was sad to note that some members of staff were conducting teaching and learning business using the whatsapp platform which in its current form, cannot be an effective method of teaching and learning as it does not offer a 360° platform for teaching and learning and is inadequate for courses where demonstrations and pragmatism take centre stage. in view of the findings, people with networking and managerial skills necessary to attract industry partners could only broker sustainable academic-industry partnerships. furthermore, interest and commitment leading to the partnership by industry is critical as was also reported in the contexts of japan, the united kingdom and the united states of america by rahm, kirkland and bozeman (2013). as reported in this study and other contexts as well, it is clear that policy makers who stimulate academic-industry partnerships, promote global economic growth (dill & van vught, 2010). 5. recommendations attending to issues in the conceptual framework, (figure 1) could assist in addressing most of the concerns raised in this study. the conceptual framework together with the findings of http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 3192022 40(1): 319-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 zvavahera, garwe, pasipanodya, chigora & katsande leveraging academic-industry partnerships this study can be applied beyond zimbabwe through inference. the study noted that a lack of ict infrastructure and facilities, the high cost of data, devices and power outages were the major impediments in efforts aimed towards the adoption of virtual learning and teaching in zimbabwean universities. the lack of prerequisite infrastructure and facilities show the extent to which institutions were ill-prepared for virtual teaching and learning. industry-academic partnerships should strongly consider investing in ict infrastructure and facilities across the country so that even those in rural areas can benefit. a lack of internet connectivity could lead to unequal access to education affecting those who come from poor backgrounds and rural areas. this was noted to be a challenge not peculiar to zimbabwe. availability of uninterrupted internet will also allow students to have examinations and other learning related activities virtually. academic-industry partnerships should make cheaper internet and data available so that students and staff can connect from anywhere across the globe. industry, with support from the government, should come up with subsidised computer schemes for students and university staff so that virtual teaching and learning becomes a reality in the prevailing covid-19 environment. even though there were ongoing industry-university partnerships in the areas of ict and facilities development, the level of participation by industry was lower than expected considering the urgency to fully embrace virtual teaching and learning because of covid-19. in the spirit of making virtual learning a reality across the globe, governments and industry should also consider supporting partnerships similar to those proposed by zimren and zuvca so that universities and other educational institutions and students are provided with subsidised data. industry should complement the already ongoing computerisation programme by the government by providing cheaper devices to staff and students so that equal access to quality education is achieved in the obtaining environment. finally, there is also a need to capacitate students and staff with computer skills to allow a quick transition to virtual teaching and learning. apart from the above recommendations, industry should complement government’s efforts by generating electricity. the intervention by industry in power generation will go a long way in alleviating power cuts that have since become a perennial problem affecting the smooth running of universities and industry. developing ict infrastructure and facilities with no backing of power will not assist universities in achieving the desired outcomes. there is also a need for the government to establish a supportive legal framework to operationalise the existing partnerships. industry needs to invest in research so that new initiatives and innovations become a reality. connecting student interns to industry through simulations could also go a long way in assisting interns who are finding it difficult to get attachment because of covid-19. 6. conclusions the study noted that the critical analysis and application of pestle is vital for fostering strong academic-industry partnerships in addressing most of the issues raised in this study. most of the students and staff were finding it difficult to cope with the new normal of virtual teaching and learning due to a lack of capacity and preparedness by their institutions. this was a result of a lack of support from industry and the government. working from home was difficult for some, as they could not balance work with family demands leading to emotional challenges. students were concerned about access to networks, intermittent power cuts and the high cost of data. the little support by industry was attributed to the poor performance http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 3202022 40(1): 320-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) of the economy, which was further compounded by covid-19 restrictions on the operations of industry. however, it can be concluded that equipped with supportive brokers or agency, industry-academic partnerships have the capacity to improve the state of ict infrastructure and facilities in universities towards virtual learning. a shared vision by all key stakeholders could go a long way in uplifting ict standards in zimbabwean universities and beyond thereby creating a learning community that exists virtually with shared resources, access to materials and near real life virtualised environments that foster equitable, accessible and affordable education even beyond covid-19. the study contributed to knowledge on leveraging academic-industry partnerships to enhance the quality of virtual teaching and learning during and post-covid-19. the existing literature on this topic is based mostly on perspectives from academics and excludes the perspectives from industry, as was the case in this study. future research should further focus on including the perspectives of informants from those organisations that do not have existing partnerships with universities in order to 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2015. public-private partnerships: critical review and lessons for zimbabwe. public policy and administration research, 5(6): 39-44. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.18 https://doi.org/10.1109/afrcon.2017.8095578 https://doi.org/10.3991/ijac.v13i4.16525 https://www.learntechlib.org/primary/p/185008/ https://doi.org/10.32919/uesit.2019.03.04 _hlk82257302 _hlk82257255 _hlk82259983 perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 158 a model for assessment: integrating external monitoring with classroombased practice caroline long, tim dunne & gabriel mokoena the rationale for the introduction of standards in the united states in the late 1980s was that the quality of education would improve. assessment instruments in the form of written tests were constructed in order to perform a monitoring function. the introduction of standards and the associated monitoring have been replicated in south africa. it was intended that these elements would result in a more equitable education across the country. in neither of these countries has this process borne the results expected. the lack of substantive progress may be due to the fact that socioeconomic disadvantage and, therefore, opportunity to learn, has not been addressed. it may also be that systemic-type assessments have little meaning for the teachers, and bear little relation to classroom assessments; the perceived lack of relevance resulting in a lack of commitment to the process. our education system is in need of serious deliberations about the broad curriculum goals relevant to society, a classroom environment that is conducive to learning and an assessment model that supports instruction. within the assessment model we propose an instrument design that supports instruction. the assessment model includes a monitoring component, a formative component and a professional development component. we propose an assessment process where general trends can be reported for systemic purposes but also that the results of the individual learner progress obtained through both a monitoring and a formative component, are to be suitable for engagement by teachers. we honour the central teacher role in communicating both the emerging teaching successes and the currently troublesome areas of classroom learning challenges. keywords: assessment, monitoring, formative assessment, rasch measurement model, standards, mathematics education tim dunne department of statistical sciences, university of cape town e-mail: tim.dunne@uct.ac.za telephone: 021 650 3643 caroline long centre for evaluation and assessment, university of pretoria e-mail: caroline.long@up.ac. za telephone: 012 420 4175 gabriel mokoena centre for evaluation and assessment, university of pretoria e-mail: gabriel.mokoena@ up.ac.za a model for assessment: integrating external monitoring with classroom-based practice caroline long, tim dunne & gabriel mokoena 159 introduction the aim of assessment has altered over the centuries from being an instrument only of discrimination and selection to being the means of supporting the potential development of all learners (gipps, 1994; black, 1998). the philosophy underpinning the second aim is that all individuals, personally and collectively, make a contribution to society by expressing their individual qualities, and through this contribution fulfil their own and some of their community’s needs. the standards movement in the late 1980s grew from the frustration of the fragmented schooling system in the united states and the desire to engage learners in diverse educational experiences (wolk, 2012). this desire precipitated a change in educational focus from the ranking of students to the requirement that each student be educated to their potential. it was hoped through stipulating clear standards, providing the opportunity to learn and then assessing whether these standards had been attained, that the quality of education would be improved. many hold the belief that assessment embodies great potential for positive change in schools (black & wiliam, 1998; schafer, 2002; stiggins, 2002; wiliam, 2009; matters, 2009). however, where the policy makers and professional educators do not understand the proper use of assessment, it is possible that the ‘assessment instruments and procedures that [have been] created for public accountability are doing more harm than good for certain students – they are causing students to learn less, not more’ (stiggins, 2002: 19). for assessment to live up to its promise, we need to create a productive assessment environment where the emphasis is no longer on accountability in the sense of reward or punishment, but on the central role of assessment to alert the teacher, the learners themselves, the district officials and provincial departments to areas of need. in order to achieve this environment that is conducive to learning, the essential requirement for the assessment programme is to inform instruction. here we distinguish, with schafer (2002), between curriculum and instruction. we note that the curriculum, the set of standards ideally constructed by a committee of experienced and expert teachers does not of itself educate the students. it is through instruction that the learner capacities are developed. the teacher therefore has to interpret the curriculum statements into instructional components through which learners gain proficiency. schafer (2002) makes the distinction between summative assessment, which is the actualisation of the curriculum (for accountability objectives), and formative assessment which plays a central role in instruction by iterative feedback and informed adjustments. assessment products and processes of high quality are demanded for both these types of assessment. they each perform specific functions at their respective sites, namely affirmation that the curriculum requirement has been met in the case of summative assessment, and that instruction has been informed and adapted as a result of formative assessment. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 160 for assessment to perform its critical role in education, there is a prior requirement of a model of knowledge development (curriculum for the particular subject domain) and of cognitive development (understanding how learners progress to higher levels of proficiency) (black, 1998; long, 2011). this curriculum knowledge has to be made explicit to teachers in the form of curriculum statements of assessment standards. when external assessment instruments and test items, on which their students have been tested, are withheld, teachers need to be sure that their knowledge of the curriculum content domain is adequate or complete when compared with the ‘actualised content and performance standards’ envisaged by the authorities (schafer, 2002: 88). a further critical requirement is to articulate classroom assessment products with external assessment instruments primarily for the purpose of informing teachers about the external assessments to which the schools and teachers may be held accountable. this requirement is premised on the notion that the external tests are carefully constructed from the perspective of both concept development and cognitive development. while much of the literature to which we refer has been from the united states experience, we note that many of those trends and current concerns also arise in the south african educational context. the south african educational context south african schools range from highly resourcedi private schools, where the aspirations of learners and teachers are to achieve world class standards, and moderately resourced rural schools where there are few resources of the type recognised as quality education. the hope and promise for an improved system of education post-1994 is yet to be fulfilled for the majority of learners. the design and implementation of successive curricula were intended to lead to an equitable and high standard of education for all learners. each new curriculum was to provide better guidance, within each knowledge domain, that made explicit requirements for an acknowledged proficiency. these standards implied in the curriculum and operationalised in the assessment tasks both at the classroom level and in external assessment programmes, such as provincial and national testing, were to be both the means and the ends for the improvement of teaching and learning in our schools. for the past 15 years testing at provincial, district and national levels, with a peppering of large-scale international and regional assessments, have been put in place on the implicit understanding that the more we test, the more likely it will be that the education system would improve. the reality is that there has been little substantial improvement in the areas of greatest need. i. andrich (2009) uses the terms ‘highly resourced’ and ‘moderately resourced’ to refer to the resources that enable the school to engage with curriculum matters, for example, highly experienced teachers or schools where time is made available for these purposes. a model for assessment: integrating external monitoring with classroom-based practice caroline long, tim dunne & gabriel mokoena 161 failure of standards and monitoring the most obvious reason for a lack of progress in the united states has been an array of socio-economic factors, that is, the ‘the persistent discrimination that condemns low-income learners to mediocre education’ (wolk, 2012: 1). in areas of dire poverty, the efforts to turn schools around have been counter-productive, and the ‘assessment instruments and procedures created for public accountability’ are possibly doing more harm than good (stiggins, 2002: 19). a second related reason may be that teachers faced with socio-economic disadvantage lack the agency that would enable them to understand, interpret and uplift the learners, schools and communities. the sentiment expressed here aligns with the work of batra (2009) whose vision for teacher education in india is that teacher agency would be the vehicle to transform that society to a true democracy. the extent of such a training programme is indeed vast, covering many components from understanding socio-educational issues to an in-depth mastery of associated subject knowledge. a third reason may be that the current organisation and planning within american (and our own) public schools is not conducive to teaching and learning. the current arrangement, where time is the constant and learning the variable,ii inevitably leads to the situation where a large proportion of the class is left behind (wolk, 2012). here the aim of creating a productive assessment environment that accommodates differences among learners may generate attention to the needs of learners at their current phases of development (stiggins, 2002). a fourth reason points to the limitations of external assessment. the kind of instruction required to engender deep understanding of a particular knowledge domain may not be the instruction that leads to success on systemic tests. bennett and gitomer (2009) warn that the preparation for systemic-type tests may work against the attainment of deep domain knowledge. the tendency to use external or systemic assessment to hold teachers accountable points to a lack of understanding of the purpose of systemic-type assessment, and to misconceptions of their power. the failure of decades of curricular outlining and the associated disappointment of repeated test administrations has led to the view that a debate and deliberation about the aims of education is necessary. at the micro level, the classroom arrangements have to be re-envisaged as sites of learning; at the macro level the systemic assessments that are put in place require strong links to instruction. but perhaps also it is necessary at the meso level to reconsider the overarching vision and purpose of education in a radical reconstruction. for descriptions of micro, macro and meso levels, see thijs and van den akker (2009). ii. we understand the importance of engaging with the critical concepts in the knowledge domain. this engagement demands more than covering the elements presented in curriculum documents. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 162 debate and deliberation the two aims for assessment, ranking individuals on current proficiency and informed nurturing of the potential of each individual, align somewhat with the two conflicting tendencies in education described by robert young (1990), drawing on the work of habermas. the first tendency is the assertion of a mode of education which ‘seeks to meet the more urgent economic and political needs of the nation in its contemporary situation’ (young, 1990: 48). this mode calls for the strict marshalling of the knowledge and skills through defining a curriculum of a narrow or specific rather than a broad and general kind, and defining stringent criteria for passing into a new affirmed status, such as passing the matriculation certificate. this qualified status describes one as able to make a contribution to the society whose current conditions provide the frame of reference for those criteria. the second mode stresses ‘the emancipation of the individual, and through the universalization of that emancipation, the development of autonomy-promoting social institutions, nationally and internationally’ (young, 1990: 48). the vision we hold for an education system is that the three major goals, identified by biesta (2009), that of imparting skills and knowledge, of socialisation (imparting and sharing cultural and societal values), and of individuation (the encouraging and support of the unique path of the individual learner), are all given substantial weight. the argument here, though not elaborated, is that it is in the context of the quest that each person has for a fulfilled and enriched life, that the motivation for learning skills and for gaining knowledge will be achieved. here we must envision a developing world where the individual’s roles and the institutions they constitute are continuously unfolding, determined not by past educational tradition alone, but also by engaging anew with the traditions of value that support an unfolding vision of a society surpassing an existing one (osberg, biesta & celliers2008). while the strong knowledge traditions that have gone before us must be transmitted, the way in which the knowledge and skills are reconstituted may be surprising and exciting. it is therefore important to cultivate an educational environment where the potential of each learner is regarded as unlimited and where the particular direction taken by a learner cannot be entirely pre-empted. likewise, the specific direction of the teacher with her class must embody open-ended options serving the goals of transmission and empowerment, but not losing sight of the individual. while the core curriculum may be defined, within this conceptual space there should be some leeway for the creativity of teachers and learners to mould their individual and collective directions. the mitigating factor against a too narrowly defined curriculum is that the opening up of the global stage inevitably lights up the imagination of different individuals in unimagined ways. the exploring of that global environment will certainly demand that the core skills be mastered, but may also create a new vision of the future. a model for assessment: integrating external monitoring with classroom-based practice caroline long, tim dunne & gabriel mokoena 163 ironically, it may be just this attention to the individuals themselves, the acknowledgement of the role to be played in the community, rather than the current preoccupation with knowledge and skills, that motivate the learners to master the relevant knowledge and skills and, surely, the same principle would apply to teachers. we note here that it is the child who learns; the role of the teacher is to motivate that learning. improved assessment given the backdrop painted here, it is imperative that we consider the questions: what do we want children to learn? how can the curriculum be planned to take them there? are teachers equipped to implement the curriculum through designing instructional sequencesiii and assessment instruments? how may learners be motivated to learn? the answers to these questions are not obvious and will not be elaborated here. in summary, however, we propose a deep understanding of what has to be taught, the maximum development of each individual, extended assessment options with clear and appropriate standards of validity and reliability, designed to serve instruction, and attention to the critical notions of affirmation, motivation and the maintenance of self-worth (stiggins, 2002: 31). we present a strategy for providing common information to both the classroom teacher and also the external supporting or monitoring agency within which both the successful areas and the problem areas may be noted. here we focus on skills and knowledge acquisition within a knowledge framework, and provide an example of mathematics. we place this strategy within a larger model which envisages the interaction of the monitoring function, a formative function within the classroom and a collaborative professional enrichment process. we note the imperative that testing practices and the statistical procedures associated with testing are applied in a transparent way. this transparency principle of good scientific practice also makes explicit the limitations of assessment procedures. those of us tasked with the development of tests and the subsequent analyses need to retain the awareness that behind all the numbers are people who have the right to know the limitations of the numbers that are assigned to them. the onus is also on the researchers in this field to be receptive to the challenges to current assessment practices, and, where we have insights, to communicate them in such a way that they are understood and open to critique. it transpires that one of the most fundamental challenges is to convey the truth that test instruments can only be regarded as measurements of performances or competences when several strict technical criteria have been satisfied in the design stages and verified in the primary analysis of performance data, prior to any measurement based inferences. this truth has profound consequences for assessment in design and practice. iii. this requirement is ambitious, but it is only when the teachers have control of the curriculum and the classroom that optimal leaning will take place. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 164 assessment resources in support of the second, more democratic aim of education, that is, enhancing the contribution of each individual, scientific and technical resources are being developed in many research centres across the world (see griffin, 2009, bennett & gitomer, 2009). these resources envisage for every discipline the provision of valid assessment instruments which are appropriately targeted for the group to be tested. in this way valid discriminations emerge between performances. these discriminations may also admit social purposes such as verifying attainment of pass and distinction criteria. given proper subject expert inputs, and the use of important new theory for design and analysis of tests that have measurement-like properties, it is now possible to obtain precise numerical descriptions (measurements) of student performance and progress in a particular subject area, hence providing maximum information for efficient planning of educational programmes that are aligned to instruction (see griffin, 2007, 2009; long, 2011). this process, we believe, will contribute somewhat to the correction and amelioration of the vast discrepancies we find in the south african learning environment, through setting achievable goals that enable the teacher to extend each learner incrementally in the direction of greater proficiency. researchers and practitioners in education will recognise the importance of deep reflection into the principle features of a knowledge domain, for example, the exploration of the distinctive nature of mathematics (as presented in the work of dantzig, 2007, and others). we should ask: “what are the knowledge and skills inherent in this domain that are critical to learners firstly for engagement with their everyday lives, and secondly, for the subsequent trajectories of those students?” such trajectories may require that some learners are suitably equipped to enter advanced mathematics courses. similar imperatives emerge in other disciplines. following the important phase of reflection, the scientific and technical skill of constructing items which operationalize aspects of the knowledge domain is critical. here it is important to note that the curriculum as currently exemplified in curriculum documents is not sufficient for deciding on test items. a deeper engagement with curriculum is required to determine something of a plausible line of development within the knowledge domain. this view of domain development necessarily includes reflection on which underlying insights and skills are critical for learner progress in the domain. in this context, items and assessment questions are constructed so as to embody the domain, and extract evidence of both learner competence and current learner inadequacies. then, because the knowledge of the researchers and test designers does not guarantee that they are beyond making errors or sub-optimal inferences, a piloting phase is required to establish whether or not the current form of the test as a whole appears pitched at the correct level for its stated objectives. this question always involves examining whether or not the constituent items are functioning as expected by the designers. the design imperative is to obtain and report optimum information a model for assessment: integrating external monitoring with classroom-based practice caroline long, tim dunne & gabriel mokoena 165 for the stakeholders involved the schools and their teachers, the associated education department and the district officials. this phase of the test design is critical, and in this phase the input of teacher specialists can and should provide essential insights which impact on the test design. the function of a test includes not only the designation of content areas mastered, but also the identification of the elements that learners currently find obscure or challenging. underpinning this test design process is the notion that we are attempting to ‘measure’ proficiency within a field of knowledge, for example, mathematics. applying the rigour of the classical theory of measurement to social sciences, and education, and in the construction of valid instruments, is not only in the interest of good science but also in the interest of social responsibility (andrich & marais, 2008). the scientific demand is not simple nor is it easily attained. especially where assessment is used to identify individual differences or to order students, the notion of a more scientific approach to measurement is critical. as thorndike noted in 1904 (in wright, 1997), even the assessment of spelling raises issues of comparability and fairness in that there is no unit of spelling proficiency. where as in the physical sciences characteristics of objects such as length, mass, time and their many derivatives are tightly specifiable, in the social and educational sciences the characteristics of proficiency in a domain are much less tractable. to presume to make measurements in educational, psychological and sociological domains, there must first be an explication of how the domain is defined and understood. it is necessary to have an explicit context so that the validity of any instrument can be adjudicated as its fitness for a stated purpose in that context, by any appropriate peer community. then the question of the extent to which an instrument achieves measurement criteria leads to insights into its reliability and utility. in this quest to provide valid, reliable and useful instruments a resource of note is rasch measurement theory (rmt) in which the mathematical model is underpinned by the invariance of measurement . the rasch model requires that several measurement criteria are met in the data. where these criteria are not satisfied, the particular items, and the associated learner responses, must be investigated further, along with a re-examination of the construct underpinning the test instrument. for details on this process, see rasch (1960/80), wright and stone (1979), andrich and marais (2008), and dunne, long, craig and venter (2012). a study in mathematics education a research study applying the principles and processes of rmt, conducted in mathematics education at the senior phase and the further education and training (fet) phase, is currently in progress. aspects of the study are presented here merely for the purpose of demonstrating the particular assessment model that is being advocated, and not for reporting on the study concerned. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 166 the external priority for this project was to monitor learner progress over successive years. in order for this monitoring process to be valid and reliable, and to inform teaching and learning, several pre-conditions had to be in place. the first requirement in this study was to find a degree of consensus within the reference group, constituted to include representative mathematics teachers and assessment specialists, about the critical and central concepts within the particular grade for which the assessment was intended. an investigation was conducted of the current and pending curricula, and in addition, a comparison was made between the local curriculum and the curriculum frameworks underpinning the trends in international mathematics and science study (timss), the programme for international student assessment (pisa), and the australian curriculum (see discussion document, in process). in addition to the content to be explicitly included in the instrument, discussions were held concerning the response processes required for the various content areas at distinct levels of complexity. the common approach to identifying the response processes or cognitive domains is to use variations of bloom’s taxonomy (1956). here, we found this approach inadequate for identifying the nuance of what was required for mathematics. for example, the levels for algebra response processes, while increasing in complexity, were defined differently from the geometry questions which, while requiring core mathematical reasoning skills, also demand an understanding of reasoning and justification. it is at this stage of prospective item design and analysis that the involvement of teachers is necessary to establish common ground about what constitutes critical mathematics knowledge for the assessment context. black (1998) avers that assessment should be aligned with instruction. to ignore this requirement renders the instruments somewhat insensitive to the context, and at worst the information obtained may be irrelevant. this type of teacher involvement can enrich the meaningfulness of instrument use and assessment outcomes. it is important to note here that the rasch model has specific requirements for the vindication of a claim of measurement-like properties within an instrument. by applying the model to a set of data, anomalies within the data will be highlighted. these anomalies are then checked by the subject experts for explanations. the source of any problems may be in the items themselves, in the learners, or in an unforeseen extreme difficulty with an aspect of the construct being tested (smith & plackner, 2009). this scrutiny of items and test occurs at both the pilot phase of testing and after the administration of the final instrument. a model for assessment: integrating external monitoring with classroom-based practice caroline long, tim dunne & gabriel mokoena 167 person-item map an output feature of the rasch measurement model is that both the item difficulty and the learner proficiency are aligned on the same scale. as one may observe (see figure 1, learner-item map), the item difficulties located on the right side of the figure with their mean location set at zero, range from about –3 logits (relatively easy) to +2 logits (relatively difficult). for the technical details of how the items are calibrated see wright and stone (1979), andrich (1988) and dunne et al. (2012). the learners are implicitly depicted on the left side of the figure, where each cross represents two learners. here the learner locations are fairly well spread across the items at the lower end of the scale. the nature of the alignment of learners and items on the same scale is probabilistic. learners located opposite a particular item are interpreted to have a 50% probability of correctly answering that item. this subset of learners share a common probability higher than 50% of being correct on each item below their aligned items, and less than 50% for any item above their aligned items. the probabilities of correct responses shared by the aligned group increase with the item distance below (and are easier than) the aligned items, and decrease with the item distance above (and are more difficult) than the aligned items. these model probabilities follow patterns determined by the logistic function. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 168 persons [locations=estimated proficiency] items [locations=estimated difficulty] |n24 n25 | | |n23 d46 | | |n22 1 | | |n21 x| x|n20 d15 x|d14 x|d11 d12 d13 x| xx|n19 xx|n18 xx|n17 0 xxx|d08 d09 d10 xxxx|d07 n16 33 xxx|n14 n15 xxxx|n13 xxxxxx| xxxxx|n12 xxxxxx|n11 n10 xxxxxxxx| xxxxxxxxxx|n09 xxxxxxxx|d06 xxxxxxxxxx| -1 xxxxxxx|n07 n08 xxxxxxxx|d05 xxxxxxx|n06 xxxxxxxx|d04 n05 xxxxxxx| xxxxxxxxx|d03 n04 xxxxxxx| xxxxxxxx| xxx|n03 xxxx|n02 d02 xxxxxx| -2 xxx| xx| xxx| xx| xx| x| | |n01 | |d01 -3 each 'x' represents 2 cases figure 1: person-item map of learners’ proficiency and item difficulty on a common scale we see from the vertical scale that there are several items in this test above 0.5 logits, for which no learners are estimated to have a 50% chance of answering correctly. in fact the higher the item is located up the scale, the smaller the chance of even the a model for assessment: integrating external monitoring with classroom-based practice caroline long, tim dunne & gabriel mokoena 169 highest achieving learners answering correctly. although this model is probabilistic, and there is always some notional small chance of answering a difficult item correctly, the empirical information provided here is that the items above 2.0 logits are just too difficult to provide useful information for discriminations within this cohort of learners. for a next cycle some of these items would be adapted or removed, as they provide insufficient information to distinguish between the learners in this cohort. the same items might well be suitable for other cohorts. the importance of aligning the array of item difficulty locations with the array of learner proficiency locations is that when this alignment has been achieved, then optimal levels of discriminatory information may be obtained about learner competences. the instrument of this study clearly needs refinement before any future administrations to the cohorts of interest here. this outcome, diagnosing potential improvements towards increased fitness for purpose, we interpret as an advantage and not a deficiency of the test design process. an item–class percentage correct chart an outcome of interest as a result of the analysis was the construction of a matrix depicting the relationship between the items and the schools with their individual classes. an explanation follows, showing three schools, school a, school b and school c, each with two classes (c1 and c2) (see table 1). the item numbers are listed in column 1; the constructs tested are described in column 2. the first item (labelled item 1) involves knowing the sum of the angles of a triangle. the second item (item 2) involves identifying equivalent algebraic expressions. in column 3 the overall item difficulty (as estimated by the rasch model) is reported. note that the first item shown has a difficulty of –2.6 which denotes relatively easy in its context, and the second item has a difficulty location of –1.8, which while relatively easy compared with the complete set of items, is somewhat more difficult than the first item. in the cells (for item by class) the percentage of learners with correct responses is shown. note that these results have been adapted somewhat for illustrative purposes. the numbers in the classes were around 25. focussing only on the first two rows of results, we observe a pattern in school a. while over 90% (about 23) of the learners have the simple geometry item correct, only around 50% (12) have the algebra question correct. then, in school b, class 1, some 84% (21) answered correctly for the geometry item, and 76% (19) for the algebra item. in school b, class 2, the percentage correct for each of these items is reversed, a relative 74% (18) of learners answered the geometry item correctly, and 83% (81) answered the algebra item correctly. in school c, class c1 appears more proficient than class c2 when judging only on this information. the last column on the right reports the overall percentage of the whole cohort of this study who answered the item correctly. we may compare the individual class percentages with the overall percentage for each item as a reference point. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 170 table 1: item by class matrix of percentage correct correct a model for assessment: integrating external monitoring with classroom-based practice caroline long, tim dunne & gabriel mokoena 171 of course, percentages should not be reported uncritically, especially when the entire reference group is less than 100 in number, as in each of these classes and schools. the point of their use is to allow bridging between new messages that can be discerned from the table and familiar data descriptions and summaries. we note that the point of the table is not to infer any ranking of classrooms, but to explore a new form of engagement with the data in order to derive classroom-based insights into learning and teaching. some 25 items from the study (an arbitrary selection for purposes of demonstration) are presented in table 1. the item by class cells are colour coded according to the following descriptive sequence: at least 70% (unshaded); from 50% to 69.9% (light grey); from 30% to 49.9% (medium grey); from 10% to 29.9% (dark grey); and 0% to 9.9% (darker grey). the analysis of the table will not be presented here. however, we observe that one may identify similarities and differences across the 3 schools, across their 6 classes, and across pairs of classes within schools. it is also interesting to note that while an overall mean percentage is reported for each class, it is very difficult to categorically assert the mathematical superiority of any class, as their strengths vary from item cluster to item cluster. another point of caution is that, when constructing a test with relatively few items, say 50, but attempting to cover an entire curriculum, the consequence of the design is that one has very little information within each particular item alone. what is more pertinent is for researchers together with teachers to use such a matrix to identify points of interest on which to have further discussions. these discussions may focus upon learner needs or instrument improvements. we are able to establish proficiency zones by drawing on the alignment of persons and items on the same scale (see person-item map, figure 1), and from an analysis of arbitrary but convenient more homogeneous sections of the test, for example establishing bands of one logit width, from –3.00 to –2.00 (very easy), from –2.00 to –1.00 (easy) and so on (see table 2). we note that the item locations are continuous on the scale and that the use of integers to make label distinctions between the proficiency zones is merely for purposes of analysis, rather than inherently appropriate. in general it may be noted here that the message from the data on learner performance is that level 1 items require recall and some procedural knowledge, whereas level 5 items require reasoning about the co-variation of variables. this message is independent of the criteria by which they were selected for inclusion. hence it is also the justification for making a mathematical statement, based on knowledge of mathematical properties of items. given the current emphasis in the curriculum documents, it is possible that the level 5 skills do not receive enough attention in most classrooms. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 172 table 2: summary skills audit by current proficiency level from high to low proficiency zones location knowledge and skills performance description 5 (greater difficulty) [1.00 to 3.00) knowledge of rational numbers; scientific notation; co-variation of variables; time and distance; reasoning and justifying the cluster of items at this level requires critical mathematical skills such as mathematical reasoning. there are pockets where schools have shown some proficiency, for example, school b, on formulating solutions for a problem, reasoning about statistical concepts and determining average speed 4 (difficult) [0.00 to 1.00) estimation skills; scientific notation; recognising the rule determining a linear function; understanding a timedistance graph this cluster of items proved to be very difficult for this cohort. there are pockets of relative success, for example, where, for school a, 70% of learners answered the distance-time graph question correctly. (see table 1.) 3b (moderately difficult) [-0.50 to 0.00) ordering rational numbers; applying ratio concepts to proportional reasoning problems; estimating speed on a distance-time graph; knowledge of basic geometry (angles of a triangle); applying pythagoras’ theorem the most difficult items at this level are knowledge of a rational number and of pythagoras’ theorem. pockets of difficulty were experienced with determining the next number in a geometric sequence 3a (moderately easy) [-1.00 to -0.50) knowledge of decimal fractions; understanding the cartesian plane; recognising patterns within a linear function; applying pythagoras’ theorem there appear to be difficulties with decimal fractions and with geometry applications a model for assessment: integrating external monitoring with classroom-based practice caroline long, tim dunne & gabriel mokoena 173 2 (easy) [-2.00 to -1.00) knowledge of place value; fraction notation and scientific notation; elementary statistics concepts in some classes it appears that the topic of elementary statistics has not been covered. scientific notation requires attention in some cases 1 (very easy) (-3.00 to -2.00) the sum of angles of a triangle, and applying this knowledge; naming the hypotenuse; identifying algebraic expressions of the same value proficiency across classes ranges from above 90% for an easy item to a relatively challenging item for one of the classes, around 50% the implication for teaching is that suitable levels of current proficiency can be interpreted for clusters of learners whose proficiencies on the test appear to be aligned with a corresponding item level as identified in this study (see the person item map). in this analysis we invoke the concept of the zone of proximal development (zpd) (vygotsky, 1962), the cognitive space in which learners may receive optimal tuition but where the concepts are perhaps too difficult for learners to manage on their own. it is in this zone, where concepts appear currently neither so difficult as to be intimidating nor so easy as to be boring, that tuition may achieve its best results. this analysis by learner group does not necessarily imply group teaching, although it may be educationally efficient to design different educational experiences for each of the groups at some points along their learning trajectories. approaches to teaching are not discussed here, except to acknowledge that information of this nature elicited from the test may already be known to the proficient teacher. however we aver that with carefully crafted tests, insights of this sort may generate further discussion about the mathematics involved at different proficiency zones. an additional feature of this output is that the instrument, while providing some provisional information, may be revised and improved so as to inform teaching in more pertinent ways. we also concede here that the information obtained from a test is directly related to the extent and quality of the theoretical work that preceded the construction of the test. in the case of this test with about 50 items in total, and with the requirement to completely cover the curriculum, the information may not provide the precision necessary to inform mathematics teaching of more specific curriculum areas. nevertheless, this type of analysis may be the starting point for more rigorous research of the type required to understand more deeply the complexities of learning and teaching mathematics. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 174 extending the study against the background of the study briefly described above and other studies of this nature, as in griffin (2007, 2009) and long (2011), we ask the question “how may a nationwide assessment programme be envisaged, and constructed, such that it involves all the important role players, particularly teachers, in the design of a continuous range of mathematics tests covering grades r through 12, accessible for regular use by teachers in their own classrooms?” in envisaging such a programme we are warned against the unintended consequences of accountability systems where, according to bennett and gitomer (2009: 46): … the end goal for too many teachers, students and school administrators has become improving performance on the accountability assessment without enough attention being paid to whether students actually learn the deeper curriculum standards those tests are intended to represent. an assessment programme designed to avoid a narrow and self-defeating goal should involve three central components, namely an accountability component, where information is fed back into the official channels responsible for the conduct and servicing of education; a professional development component, where the indicated areas of teaching and learning needs are catered for; and a formative development component, where teachers work closely and reflectively within their classrooms and professional learning communities (see bennett & gitomer, 2009). these components are conceived as having a common conceptual base that considers the curriculum requirements and the general findings that have emerged regarding effective teaching in particular subject domains. the programme is based on the following principles: • the development of proficiency of all learners from their current levels to greater levels of proficiency is paramount. here we note that the learners currently situated higher on the proficiency scale deserve the educational experiences which challenge them to even greater proficiency, just as the learners currently situated on lower levels of proficiency require attention to assist them to move progressively to higher levels. we note also that varieties of mathematical proficiency may be required for particular vocations, and for particular students, and hence should be considered and explicit decisions recorded. a model for assessment: integrating external monitoring with classroom-based practice caroline long, tim dunne & gabriel mokoena 175 • a second principle is that teachers are intrinsic to any development plan that could serve the needs of the educational environment. this phase of the programme would involve both a professional development component in the content and pedagogy of mathematics at the grades in which the teachers are working, and a specific component on the construction of items whose objective is to assess the identified critical concepts. a pilot version of this phase has been conducted in collaboration with the mathematics development organisation count with teachers in one district in kwazulu-natal (see count-zenex report, 2011). • a third principle is the necessity of a formative aspect to the plan, in which teachers trial the formative assessment products, reflect and report on the current suitability of the items as well as the proficiency of the learners within the particular cluster of concepts of interest. also intrinsic to this phase is the teacher reflection on the construct(s) in question, and further research into the particular area of mathematics. • the principle of inclusiveness with respect to classroom teachers embraces the fact that the current mathematics classrooms are far from optimal, but that support and direction will be necessary. the importance of quality assurance at each site and at each phase of the programme is critical and can be articulated through suitable collaborative feedback loops. this component may be seen as an extension of professional development. a model, in some respects similar to this proposed model, has been envisaged by bennett and gitomer (2009) to improve current systemic assessment programmes in the united states. an idea of relevance here is that, while the putative standards may be specified in curriculum documents, they cannot easily be translated into learner skills and knowledge, unless these same standards are sufficiently specific and extensive within the minds and practices of the teacher cohort. conclusion the crisis in education and of the youth is not restricted to the south african context but is rather a worldwide phenomenon. this ferment may signal that critical elements of the society are debated and deliberated for the benefit of the youth and society as a whole. young (1990) avers that for the purposes of education, including both transmitting the knowledge, skills and culture from previous generations, and reconstituting of society through vision and creativity, some vision of society to support our ideals is required. this vision is of necessity a collaborative enterprise that involves engagement at all levels of the society, in particular the educational institutions and the youth. in this paper we acknowledge the important function of carefully crafted assessment. we also acknowledge, with stiggins (2002), that authority covering assessment for accountability purposes in the hands of people unschooled in perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 176 assessment practices may indeed cause harm to education systems. we have sought to demonstrate that powerful instruments with a diagnostic value for the classroom are possible. every such instrument is limited but nonetheless can address specific current learning needs. systemic assessments can have the same qualities, if both suitable care and planning are given to diagnostic objectives. moreover we have argued that a culture of classroom assessment can be constructed and that it will support learning development. these initiatives can be configured in ways that also inform and enrich the same processes that systemic assessments serve. our assumption is that learning, however it is structured, relies crucially on the classroom. in that context, the teacher is a principal agent, and the role of assessment is to discern and direct current learning strengths and needs. systemic efforts to enrich and support classroom assessment, conducted and led by a suitably purposeful group of specialists and teachers, will enrich a primary locus at which learning is meant to take place, namely the interaction of teacher and learner. a shift is required in our beliefs about assessment and its role in achieving effective schools. the belief that reward and punishment are motivating factors has little traction for the teachers or the youth in the 21st century. the requirement rather is to focus on a wide array of assessment types that require students to present their work in the form of portfolios, projects and presentations. the redirecting of funds to classroom support is required, as well as attention to assessment that informs instruction and that affirms the self-worth of individuals which, in doing so encourages learning, is required. in addition, involving students in their own assessment provides a sense of agency over their own learning (wolk, 2012). in order for our teachers and educational institutions to play a critical role, the imperatives of education, learning progress and classroom assessment of current learning needs, in contrast with imperatives supporting accountability through systemic assessment, are to be kept in a moving equilibrium. we propose that, by including teachers in the cycles of an assessment programme, rather than making them and their learners merely the objects of such an exercise, we position the teachers in their rightful place as agents. they are not only transmitting the knowledge, culture and skills of previous generations, but are also agents of the reconstitution of society through a creative engagement with knowledge, culture and skills by the learners themselves. a model for assessment: integrating external monitoring with classroom-based practice caroline long, tim dunne & gabriel mokoena 177 references andrich d 1988. rasch models for measurement. newbury park: sage publications. andrich d 1989. distinctions between assumptions and requirements in measurement in the social sciences. in ja keats, r taft, ra heath & sh 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measurement: issues and practice, winter: 33-52. wright bd & stone mh 1979. best test design. chicago: mesa press. young r 1990. critical education: habermas and our children’s future. new york: teachers college press. 187 research article 2021 39(4): 187-201 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) challenging vision in visual arts in the south african sociocultural context abstract this conceptual article is anchored on critical phenomenology to challenge the monopolisation of visual arts by the sense of vision, thus depriving visually impaired people of aesthetic value beyond ordinary cognitive faculties. in this study, we discuss the forms of painting, drawing and sculpting defined as visual arts referring to appreciation only by vision; thus, excluding the visually impaired as unable to appreciate or create by sight. this exclusiveness has dominated and directed art aesthetics and ethics, allowing aesthetic criteria research projects and educational curricula to be established and, conventionally, maintain their static existence unchallenged. furthermore, vision exclusiveness limits creative thinking and artistic inspiration. this article demonstrates the need and importance of broadening students’ artistic conceptualisation of inclusiveness in visual arts by exploring three fields of humanities education, i.e., academic, educational and sociocultural. the article challenges established stereotypes by introducing innovative approaches and opening alternative channels of creative and critical thinking in higher art education. from a sociocultural viewpoint in the south african context, the analysis questions the validity of certain firmly rooted stereotypical concepts about art values and standards by encountering the visually unimpeded and impaired. while the research broadens students’ artistic conceptualisation of inclusiveness in visual arts, it simultaneously promotes the concept of hephapreneurship (hepha+preneurship), a neologism inspired by the greek god, hephaestus, protector of arts and crafts, himself handicapped. the term does not draw attention to the inabilities of persons with visual impairment, but their creative abilities through encouragement and motivation. by direct and open exposure to the problem, the research promotes the importance of arts education as a challenging platform for interaction between two, by definition, opposed realities. keywords: aesthetics, hephapreneurship, infinity design process, inclusion, visual arts, visually impaired. 1. introduction certain art forms, such as painting, drawing, sculpting, and even filmmaking have been traditionally defined as visual author: dr raita steyn1 prof maximus monaheng sefotho2 affiliation: 1university of pretoria 2university of johannesburg doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i4.13 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(4): 187-201 published: 6 december 2021 received: 16 may 2021 accepted: 19 july 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7506-8179 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0704-1983 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 1882021 39(4): 188-201 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) arts,1 referring to their appreciation exclusively by sight; therefore, one human sense, vision. thus, by definition, both theoretically and in practice, the visually impaired are a priori excluded from any visual art form, as unable to appreciate by sight. the exclusiveness has also set the foundations on which art aesthetics and ethics were built, successfully developed and conventionally established. it is on and around these factors that globally ethical principles, aesthetic criteria, research projects, educational systems and pedagogical curricula have been established and diachronically maintained an unchanged and unchallenged existence. simultaneously, from an educational viewpoint, this very vision exclusiveness has set crucial limitations on creative thinking and artistic inspiration, both essential factors in developing art creativity. in this context, this research challenges the rationality of certain firmly rooted stereotypical perceptions about art values and aesthetic standards by an educational encounter of two, by definition, opposed social groups, the visually impaired and unimpeded. motivated by this quest, this article demonstrates the need for and importance of broadening students’ artistic conceptualisation of inclusiveness in visual arts. the study itself can be considered as a relevant paradigm of a conceptual research, which aims at broadening the scope of educational thinking by linking established concepts with different viewpoints in a constructive way. therefore, the study approaches its objective from three different, yet interlinked, viewpoints: 1. academic disciplinary problematic, 2. educational multiliteracy training, and 3. hephapreneurship inclusive sociocultural approach: 1. from an academic and strictly critical viewpoint, jennifer lauwrens (2007: 56) has accurately identified the seriousness of the disciplinary problem visual arts faces globally and in south africa. in her words, “... it has become increasingly evident that art history has largely been thrown into disarray, leaving its practitioners polarised in the debate concerning the scope of [the] object of study – visual art – and the methodological assumptions that have traditionally underpinned its strategies. it may now even be suggested that the identity of the discipline of art history is in a much-needed state of transition. this statement is moreover true in the south african context”. 2. referring to inclusion, teachers or designers are urged to approach as closely as possible the others’ worldview and experience their realities by first comprehending other people’s lives, needs and values. in the south african context, referring to design, steyn (2019: 156) states that “the conventional understanding of design is presently in the process of a collective mind shift towards a more inclusive platform both professionally and artistically”, translating to a great need, first, for more and broader design literacy, second, for re-evaluation of established theories and viewpoints, and third, for closer to reality educational methodologies and approaches. 3. in line with the ongoing sociocultural reforms in south africa, maximus sefotho and liesel ebersöhn introduced the term hephapreneurship, a neologism defining a framework that encourages, motivates and optimises the abilities of persons with visual impairment. beyond this form of impairment, hephapreneurship promotes transformative social justice to foster positive and meaningful existence, such as that found in experiences of persons with visual impairment when they enjoy creating art and receiving feedback about their creations (sefotho, 2015: 1). 1 note that term visual arts correspond to εικαστικές τέχνες (both in ancient and modern greek), implying the technical ability/skill of copying or portraying (as mentioned in platon: pl, sph 235d (liddell & scott, 1968: 484) or providing a visual representation of a conceptualised image or idea and the world in general (mpampiniotis, 2002: 556, 1759). for a critical analysis of the current terminology on visual arts and its impact on the present direction of the subject itself, see lauwrens (2007: 1–9). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 1892021 39(4): 189-201 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 steyn & sefotho challenging vision in visual arts in this multi-layered context, we challenge the notion of aesthetic appreciation only by vision2 as applicable to both interacting communication participants, visually impaired and normally sighted, both creator-artists as senders and both as receivers by asking: • does one need to see to appreciate a visual artwork? • how can one aesthetically experience artwork through other senses? • can creative thinking broaden its spectrum through inclusive reflection by direct participation and communication between we and others? 2. theoretical conceptualisation 2.1 the infinity of aesthetics structured around aesthetics and from a humanistic viewpoint, the theoretical framework summarises origin, nature and developing aesthetics in visual arts. relevant views and norms are assessed and applied in the context of sociocultural educational adjustments referring to revisiting aesthetics, social inclusion and committee involvement in south africa. in the middle ages, aesthetic standards were founded on integrated criteria inherited from antiquity and concepts rooted in the christian religion’s metaphysical teachings, best articulated by saint augustine (354–430 ce) and mainly in italy (mouzakes & savvides, 2007). aesthetics in byzantine art, according to their theocratic worldview, were a blend of aesthetics established by the greek fathers of the church and those set by the fifth-century author known as pseudo-dionysius areopagites and his neoplatonic philosophical concepts (maras, 2008:). the medieval theory on aesthetics, in both eastern and western europe, was built on brightness, proportional harmony and the concept of pankalia, including christian moral standards. the perception of beauty was conceptualised around three factors of artificial form, namely perfection or integrity, which rejected anything incomplete as ugly, proportion, which imposed harmony and consonance and splendour because beauty was associated with brilliant colours. beauty was experienced through sensations aesthetically evoked by luminous brightness or lively movement (huizinga, 1954; tatarkiewitcz, 1970; eco, 2004; hatzaki, 2010; mariev, 2013). accordingly, if an aesthetic perception is defined as an activity of the mind created by immediate apprehension of a sense, beauty should be identified with a mentally experienced, emotional pleasure. the intertwined history of religion and art significantly influenced the developing criteria of aesthetics, which spread to other sociocultural fields of humans. represented in archetypes and cultural stereotypes, they have influenced and shaped worldviews, sometimes with destructive consequences both individually and collectively. while concepts about brightness and splendour have been associated with sun, light, purity and hope, their opposites, darkness and blackness, were linked to night, insinuating depression, sadness and even ignorance. the eternal conflict between day and night, happiness versus misery, and good against evil are often expressed through symbolic representations, either in dreams or artistic imagery (jung & von franz, 1979). 2 based on the exhibition the blind astronomer by the south african artist, berco wilsenach, lauwrens (2019) critically examines established assumptions “about the primacy of vision in western science and aesthetics… the relationship between touch and vision, and touch as an aesthetic experience”. compare berco wilsenachs, the blind astronomer, an exhibition to willem boshoff’s blind alphabet project (boshoff, 1996). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 1902021 39(4): 190-201 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) throughout centuries of evolution, aesthetics could be grasped and formed from one period to another according to its time and interaction with its contemporary sociocultural circumstances and influences. nevertheless, next to its assumed flexibility, features, such as hierarchical distinctions and aesthetic criteria,3 have persisted and maintained their stereotypical power of space and time moving between two equally strong dynamics, subjectivity versus objectivity. in this context, humans can be certain of the subjectivity of one’s emotions in front of artistic creation and the boundless efforts of the artist to physically define the indefinable or represent the invisible (eco, 2009). the limitations of human sensibilities and the inability to grasp objects greater than the actual reality are experienced when weighted against the infinity of the sublime and universe. yet, holistically, the history of aesthetics can offer a sensation of the essence of infinity. to describe the eternity and immeasurability of emotions and sensations artistically evoked regarding time and space, eco (2009: 17) defines the infinity of aesthetics as “a sensation that follows from the finite and perfect completeness of the thing we admire”. this feeling opposes the sentiment one experiences in front of the innumerability of the stars in the universe, which is a “form of representation that suggests infinity almost physically, because, in fact, it does not end, nor does it conclude in form”. consequently, artists, both as senders and receivers, can communicate the essence of infinity either by sense or feeling and in measure with their conceptual abilities; therefore, the broader these intangible abilities are, the greater the objectivity of the artistic creation and its closeness to cosmic dimensions. thus, mutatis mutandis, in the south african sociocultural context, the importance of seeing the world from different angles and the need for developing multilateral skills, have gained momentum in terms of reviewing, reassessing, revisiting and restructuring the nation politically, socially and in our case, educationally. in this context, awareness and inclusion are subjects of focus. 2.2 inclusiveness in south africa after abolishing apartheid and implementing democracy in 1994, the collective thinking in south africa gradually and steadily entered a process of changes, involving politically, socially and culturally all levels of the country’s stratification. the development of a different form of patriotism and the sentiment of father/mother country belonging has put in motion a process for a collective national identity based on loyalty, solidarity, and fraternity among a heterogeneous and culturally multifaceted society. consequently, established definitions of nationalism, as the following one, could not qualify the requirements of the reformed south african nation and articulate its diverse aspirations. nationalism is a state or condition of mind characteristic of certain peoples with a homogeneous culture, living together in close association on a given territory, and sharing a belief in a distinctive existence and a common destiny (whitton, 1972: 749). therefore, characteristics, such as homogeneous culture, close association, and a common destiny, even if they were not always jointly present (heller, 1981: 1505), could not accommodate the structure of the new south africa nor reflect its multifaceted sociocultural context suitably characterised as the rainbow nation. during development of a meaningful democracy in a well-integrated, multi-racial and multi-cultural society, pressure for changes of 3 advocating in favour of fundamental changes and adjustments to the discipline of art history, lauwrens (2007: 133) states: “firstly, in many instances, the discipline of art history continues to be directed by a belief in the universality of aesthetic response; and secondly, notions of hierarchical distinctions, as well as the chronological development of style, continue to govern its analytical procedures” (own emphasis added). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 1912021 39(4): 191-201 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 steyn & sefotho challenging vision in visual arts a multiplex nature and in multiple fields led to reconsideration, re-evaluation and re-orientation, imposing dynamic restructuring. in this plethora of challenges, the essence of aesthetics also entered a route of transformation. in this setting, socio-culturally and technologically pressed, aesthetics, in its own right, must trace its course of changes, adjustments and reforms by turning its academic focus to local south african artistic creations from a different viewpoint. 2.3 academic disciplinary problems culturally and technologically motivated south african aesthetics studies face an ambitious aim, namely, to adjust its evaluation standards and aesthetic criteria by broadening its focus for a more inclusive view. in her critical analysis of the traditional aesthetic criteria in visual arts and its limitations, lauwrens (2019: 330) stresses the need to reconsider the validity of the “western hierarchical distribution of the senses” and move away from the established elitist order of vision → hearing → smell → taste → touch.4 furthermore, in response to calls for reforms, lauwrens (2007: ii) rejects the traditional art historical methodologies as unable to accommodate the technological image-making advances. labelled as art history visual culture studies, she proposes this innovative approach as the most suitable to build the required inclusive aesthetic standards to critically analyse and accordingly assess the ideological functions of images conceptualised and produced especially through technologically artistic creativity. according to lauwrens (2007: 121–123), “art history visual cultural studies ought to be viewed as an endeavour that can spark debate and critical thinking about naturalised concepts”.5 to understand the recognising of the south african artist jackson hlungwani and his work adam and the birth of eve, lauwrens explains that when his sculptures “became” art, in other words, when art dealers recognised the economic potential of these works (in 1984), an assumed notion of what was “art” presumably was immediately affected. lauwrens (2007: 124) furthermore states: “when objects move into the consumerist realm of art objects, they are immediately perceived, understood and experienced in a different way, which, once again, inevitably becomes the ‘natural’ way of looking at these works”. this view applied to hlungwani demonstrates the need for thorough examination and analysis of artworks, no matter from which perspective, but regarding the interaction between creation, creator and sociocultural context. it must also be noted, that placed out of “the consumerist realm of art objects”, hlungwani’s sculptures have been examined by various scholars (schneider, 1989; maluleke, 1991; nettleton, 2009), focusing on his artistic creativity within its socio-cultural context. therefore, knowledge of the african traditions and ideologies, such as the tsonga, venda, lemba, zionism and ethiopianism, is an essential factor to define or even understand hlungwani’s africanism and his metaphysical visions. 2.4 educational multiliteracy training concerning education, in the analysis of teaching and learning dynamics, abrie, blom and fraser (2016) explain how building a new state-nation has led to reconsidering and re-evaluating previous theoretical views, standpoints, methodologies and educational approaches in south africa. concepts, beliefs, convictions, principles and perceptions have been individually and collectively challenged and driven towards a different sociocultural context, where integration 4 artist, willem boshoff created 338 sculptures, hidden in boxes that could be readable only by touch. his blind alphabet project, “re-establishes the integrity of touch as a socially viable catalyst for interactive discourse. it sets up touch, in favour of sight by enabling, if not ennobling the state of blindness, and by disabling the sense of sight” (boshoff, 1996). 5 for more on arts-based research see leavy, 2009. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 1922021 39(4): 192-201 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) has replaced segmentation and inclusiveness replaced exclusiveness. justifiably, thus, in south africa, ...social inclusion should be at the heart of every discourse given the history of apartheid so deeply entrenched in the social fibre of the country. specifically, social justice issues should be emphasised in the training of career guidance practitioners at all levels. the curricula should be social justice conscious (sefotho, 2017: 28). 2.5 hephapreneurship inclusive sociocultural approach having identified the need to include disability in education curricula and the benefit of mainstreaming development programming, the importance of hephapreneurial skill development in educational training has been noted. the term hephapreneurship is inspired by the mythical greek handicapped god, the protector of arts and crafts, hephaestus, whose mythical skills are marvellously illustrated on a 4th to 5th ce shield of achilles and discussed by eco (2009). the approach itself is defined as a process of fostering positive and meaningful existence anchored on subsistence entrepreneurship of differently-abled persons and underprivileged persons, which is founded on the ethos of career choice/construction, towards transformative social justice and change (sefotho, 2015: 3, 6). this approach’s strength lies in viewing disabilities as a source of motivation in developing other capacities, rather than considering them as shortcomings in human existence. “disabled” people, thus, should be regarded as differently-abled persons to partake in the development process locally and globally (o’neill, 2011). although still somewhat controversial, the term differently-abled is now extensively used under the banner of politically correct language (smith, 2008; o’neill, 2011; mitra, shukla & sen, 2014; chhabra, 2016; gan et al., 2016; ayachit, & thakur, 2017; barclay, 2017; muster, 2017; chandrakanth & reddy, 2019; jayathilaka, 2020; leshota, & sefotho, 2020). persons with visual impairment also have talents and abilities they want to share with the world. in their ways, they create art and equally appreciate it through touchable compositions (mühleis, 2015). instead of seeing art, visually impaired persons perceive it through tactile and other means, challenging the status quo about the name and semantics of visual arts. current awareness and production of art by visually impaired persons falsify visual arts or rather disrupt the notion that art can only be visually appreciated. many examples of artists with visual impairment exist, save that they are supported to display their abilities without prejudice (mühleis, 2015). other examples include photography by visually impaired artists and are fast developing new genres in the field of contemporary art (hayhoe, 2015). szubielska (2018: 5), working on an educational and artistic project in poland on individuals with sight impairments, notes that “paradoxically ‘the experiment’ proved that the visual arts can help normally sighted people to see the world of persons with visual impairment”. thus, art by visually impaired persons must be encouraged for them to use it to communicate their world to the rest of society. if we accept that for inspired motivation, creative thinking has traditionally relied on mythology, history and mostly religion, the south african sociocultural context, viewed and analysed through its aesthetic value system, must find its proper place regarding art history visual culture studies, art scholarly research and pedagogical sociocultural approaches in education. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 1932021 39(4): 193-201 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 steyn & sefotho challenging vision in visual arts 2.6 inclusiveness in design literacy for its completion, any design project relies on the creative, problem-identifying and solving functions of the brain regarding decisions on presentation and functionality of products, environmental and service issues, sociocultural value systems and aesthetic norms. consequently, the three main interwoven forces motivating and sustaining a design process are imagination, inspiration and most importantly, freedom of expression, which has been broadly practised and highly appreciated since the establishment of democracy. in line with these reforming strategies, cassim (2013: 190) questions the traditional design educational approaches in south africa and promotes direct engagement of students with the current socioeconomic and environmental issues of the country by focusing “on the design (problem-solving) methodologies that are taught and, subsequently, employed by students as part of their design training”. furthermore, because of globalisation and the claim that more people and societies should be more design literate, the provincial and conventional understanding of design in south africa has been engaged in the process of a collective mind shift towards a more inclusive platform, both artistically and professionally. this broader sociocultural shared awareness has developed multiliteracy approaches in education. subsequently, the importance of multiliteracies and the concept of design as a creative tool in transformative and innovative learning have gained momentum. furthermore, calls for fundamental changes have motivated higher decision-making education authorities to use design curriculum structures, principles and data in the planning and structuring curricula for other teaching subjects as well (umalusi, 2019; eriksson et al., 2019). in the south african new orientation and adjustment context, academically, educationally and socio-culturally, the creative design process has earned momentum in education particularly to bring theoretical, ideological and abstract concepts closer to reality (umalusi, 2019; eriksson et al., 2019). in the framework of this need, especially from a pedagogical viewpoint, the idea of voluntarily engaging art students in an awareness experience was born. the purpose was to: a. enhance their worldview through the consciousness of the other regarding empathy, objectivity and sensibility, all essential for the successful completion of any art project and process; and b. challenge any conventional and subjective thinking in education among art students and, by expansion, society. in education, this different line of thinking intended to enhance the creative possibilities of visual arts through a direct exposure to accurate information on the unknown other using an innovative approach. thereby, a group of pre-service teachers would experience relative conditions and problems, analyse them and work methodologically towards their solutions. therefore, to broaden their artistic imagination and enhance their conceptual ability, these art education pre-service teachers were faced with a challenge, which, because of its unusual nature, became a highly tempting task and extremely appealing innovativeness by putting to test their creative and critical thinking. however, to further challenge established norms and perceptions, the visually impaired, in turn, were invited to display their artworks, breaking prejudices and stereotypes built around “inabilities” than “different abilities” regarding people with visual impairments (figure 1). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 1942021 39(4): 194-201 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) figure 1: blind jazz music band, “2 of a kind plus” entertaining the audience at the opening of the exhibition. available at: https://www.up.ac.za/humanities-education/news/ post_2734033-i-shut-my-eyes-in-order-to-see-annual-art-exhibition 3. methodology and approach this article used the qualitative and interpretative art-based methodology (cahnmann-taylor & siegesmund, 2017) crafted on exhibitions as knowledge generating activities (bjerregaard, 2019). according to rolling (2010: 104), “arts-based inquiry is grounded in arts practices rather than the sciences and is well documented in its ability to alter the ‘methodological turf’, such as accommodating visual impairment in visual arts”. the ontological and epistemological perspectives of art as practice lend themselves to subjective interpretations and creativity in meaning-making. the axiological or ethical issues surrounding exhibitions are still underresearched and little guidance is available (huang & chiang, 2007). specific to art-based research from exhibitions, it is recommended that ethics should consider dimensions such as serviceability, education, environment and marketing. because of the originality of this project, for its realisation, the researchers relied on the interlinked application of two opposing methods: the one referring to the hazards of innovation and the other to the established exclusiveness of visual arts. according to rogers (1983: xviii), an innovation highlights a new alternative or alternatives, and most importantly, new means of solving problems. however, as tempting as it might be, innovation generates uncertainty. any hesitancy, reserve or doubt automatically causes fear of risk and holding one’s comfort zone position; thus, indecision. to overcome this stage of hesitancy, during the contextualisation process, students were introduced to the concept of hephapreneurship by highlighting abilities over disabilities. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 https://www.up.ac.za/humanities-education/news/post_2734033-i-shut-my-eyes-in-order-to-see-annual-art-exhibition https://www.up.ac.za/humanities-education/news/post_2734033-i-shut-my-eyes-in-order-to-see-annual-art-exhibition 1952021 39(4): 195-201 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 steyn & sefotho challenging vision in visual arts strengthened by the students’ positive response to hephapreneurship, four stages of the innovation-decision approach were firmly and decisively applied: 1. encountering innovation through clear and precise information 2. decision-making: choosing between accepting and rejecting the innovation 3. assimilation: integrating the inner acquired data with new information 4. outlet expression: the productive manifestation of the integrated inner intelligence 3.1 the issue of risk-taking designers and artists are creative thinkers and, as such, work in a territory where nothing is clear; no right or wrong answers exist and the next step is uncertain. consequently, designers and artists are risk-takers with confidence because they trust to learn from failures rather than successes (steyn, 2019). simultaneously, this is also the stage where creative thinking occurs, as the mind explores the unknown and ideas are often formed as concealed messages, codes, and art, often as symbols. as jung explains, a symbol holds specific meanings (apart from the obvious meanings) that are unknown and hidden from us. “as the mind explores the symbol, it is led to ideas that lie beyond the grasp of reason” (jung & von franz, 1979: 20). 3.2 towards realising the visual arts project for realising the innovative creative thinking project, a fair balance had to be maintained between positive factors and negative influences by identifying the subject matter and aim of the experience through a careful and controlled introduction to the innovative approach and risk-taking exposure. based on three versions of the design process (steyn, 2019), the action project has developed through three distinctive stages. figure 2: three basic stages of the design stage stage a: the idea stage b: the process stage c: the creating stage from artistic and educational viewpoints, the design process (figure 2) has three basic stages: a = idea, the embryonic stage of a design; b = process as the active part of the design referring to the middle stage, leading to execution; and stage c = creation. following the south african design curriculum, the design process (figure 2: stage b) ends before the execution stage (stage c), i.e., before creating a prototype or final product (department of basic education [dbe] 2011a). similar to the design curriculum, the visual arts curriculum defines the developmental process as one to first “explore different approaches to generating ideas”, then “critically engage with own experience of the world through the exploration, manipulation, and interpretation of signs and symbols drawn from a broader visual culture” challenging vision in visual arts 12 position; thus, indecision. to overcome this stage of hesitancy, during the contextualisation process, students were introduced to the concept of hephapreneurship by highlighting abilities over disabilities. strengthened by the students’ positive response to hephapreneurship, four stages of the innovation-decision approach were firmly and decisively applied: 1. encountering innovation through clear and precise information 2. decision-making: choosing between accepting and rejecting the innovation 3. assimilation: integrating the inner acquired data with new information 4. outlet expression: the productive manifestation of the integrated inner intelligence 3.1 the issue of risk-taking designers and artists are creative thinkers and, as such, work in a territory where nothing is clear; no right or wrong answers exist and the next step is uncertain. consequently, designers and artists are risk-takers with confidence because they trust to learn from failures rather than successes (steyn, 2019). simultaneously, this is also the stage where creative thinking occurs, as the mind explores the unknown and ideas are often formed as concealed messages, codes, and art, often as symbols. as jung explains, a symbol holds specific meanings (apart from the obvious meanings) that are unknown and hidden from us. “as the mind explores the symbol, it is led to ideas that lie beyond the grasp of reason” (jung & von franz, 1979: 20). 3.2 towards realising the visual arts project for realising the innovative creative thinking project, a fair balance had to be maintained between positive factors and negative influences by identifying the subject matter and aim of the experience through a careful and controlled introduction to the innovative approach and risktaking exposure. based on three versions of the design process (steyn, 2019), the action project has developed through three distinctive stages. stage a stage b stage c an idea process: infinity creation 0 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 1962021 39(4): 196-201 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) and realising the concept to “document and critically evaluate the process of conceptual development” (dbe, 2011b: 32, 34, 36). however, realising a concept (i.e., design innovation) is not mainly about the idea and product concepts, but equal emphasis should be placed on the middle testing stage b, where designers and artists can improve their concepts by testing, breaking, experimenting, evaluating, and re-making products and artworks. therefore, it can be regarded as an infinity stage because it allows for an infinite number of repeats and continuation to occur, where risk-taking is an ongoing developmental stage. the infinity design process is based on original ideas and prototype projects, inviting students to redesign how they usually design their final artworks. 3.3 the infinite stage the process is ideal because it coordinates stages a and c and allows the risk-taking phase to be included in the finalisation stage. the middle stage b is labelled the infinity process, emphasising the ongoing course of the making and testing of the relevant product before its final presentation (or the solution to a pre-problem). the role of the infinity stage in developing creative ideas and their realisation is critical because it aims at an infinite number of constructive relative attempts and a better-planned continuation. this infinite stage approach has proven its validity in practice, first because it secures the coordination between stages a and c and, second, it accommodates the element of surprise regarding risk-taking, critical for successful outcomes in the context of the design teaching-learning targets (steyn, 2020). to challenge the notion of aesthetic appreciation for the practical application of the art module, the first task was given to students to create artworks to be experienced through different senses. the brief’s title was i shut my eyes to see. these artworks would be displayed at an exhibition specially created to raise awareness of the blind and visually impaired. regarding inclusivity, this creative space would similarly become a platform where artworks made by visually impaired learners were to be exhibited. the outcome was far less impressive than expected; as the prospective teachers, by excluding vision, focused on producing artworks to be experienced through only one sense, touch. according to the plan, the students were to experience the essence of their task themselves through an organised visit to a school for the blind and visually impaired. upon arrival, before being introduced to blind children, the students were informed about different vision problems. to complete the process of awareness through direct and actual participation, the student pairs, one blindfolded and the other as the assistant, worked as a team finding their way through the school corridors. each pair had to switch roles afterwards. by this direct involvement, students experienced the challenges that visually impaired people face and, most importantly, were forced to depend on their other senses. consequently, the students decided to revisit their original creations (stage c) with changed ideas and concepts; therefore, they had to revert to stage b, the process itself. they had to redesign their final artworks from another conceptual viewpoint. having themselves been the others, in terms of empathy, objectivity and sensibility, all essential factors were considered and illustrated in their re-creations. genis (2019) duly stressed the importance of contextualising an existing design artefact within the specific sociocultural situations of designers themselves. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 1972021 39(4): 197-201 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 steyn & sefotho challenging vision in visual arts 5. outcomes the major strength of the above-analysed project has been to demonstrate how innovative practical engagement and applied inclusiveness can channel creative thinking towards positive and constructive outcomes. experienced through a reformed conceptual framework, innovative approaches and using different senses, these outcomes refer to three aspects of the realised aim. 4.1 academic the infinity design process is based on ideas, prototypes and some artworks of the students. the proposed design approach was recently published under the title meaning-making in design: a practical approach to exploring multiliteracy (steyn, 2019: 153–173). furthermore, at the opening of the art exhibition, maximus sefotho announced the new advanced diploma in visual impairment offered by the centre for visual impairment studies at the university of pretoria, aimed at training pre-service teachers across study spheres to also teach visually impaired learners. 4.2 educational the morning before the exhibition, a team from the living lab for innovative teaching at the university of pretoria videotaped the art education students while they were setting up the artworks for the opening. during the evening of the exhibition, attendees could watch the time-lapse video of how the exhibition was put together, allowing for other types of sensations or sensory feelings. the exhibits were viewed in virtual reality, where the real surrounding time-lapse video was blended with what the viewers saw in digital content generated using computer software. exposing the communication problem and the direct involvement of the art creators (senders) and receivers (public) took the theme of the art exhibition a step further. people were led to look at artworks as an integrated part of an artificial, 3-dimensional environment, where dreams and imagination were interacting with the physical world in virtual reality. as for the design students, the element of direct exposure inspired them to enter the risktaking process with greater confidence because they could restructure their previous works using a different line of thinking and create artworks that were experienced and appreciated through other senses in a public exhibition (figure 3). figure 3: artworks experienced through other senses. available at: https://www.up.ac. za/humanities-education/news/post_2734033-i-shut-my-eyes-in-order-to-seeannual-art-exhibition challenging vision in visual arts 16 figure 3: artworks experienced through other senses. available at: https://www.up.ac.za/humanitieseducation/news/post_2734033-i-shut-my-eyes-in-order-to-see-annual-art-exhibition 4.3 sociocultural concerning the public, the aesthetic value of the artworks was far less important than the experience gained through the unfamiliar viewpoints of the created works. furthermore, the relevant exhibition of the works by both visually abled and impaired students led to public awareness, understanding and comprehension of physical conditions and the possibilities of a different social existence. the students created spectacles that visitors could test to experience the following degrees of blindness: 1. peripheral vision problems or tunnel vision, meaning a lack of a normal, wide-angle field of vision, even if the central vision is intact 2. central vision loss or macular degeneration 3. possible eye problems linked to albinism, including astigmatism 5. conclusion in this study, three fields of education (academic, educational and sociocultural) met under one common target, inclusion. the encounter highlighted the need for reforms and demonstrated the way for implementation. visual arts as a visual discipline must be challenged and debunked from established principles, the exclusive aesthetic value system and elitist approaches, which can disable the able. since visual arts are about insight rather than sight, it must be inclusive for those who think artistically and who can creatively express feelings other than visually. therefore, during this study, we challenged established aesthetic standards in artistic creations http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 https://www.up.ac.za/humanities-education/news/post_2734033-i-shut-my-eyes-in-order-to-see-annual-art-exhibition https://www.up.ac.za/humanities-education/news/post_2734033-i-shut-my-eyes-in-order-to-see-annual-art-exhibition https://www.up.ac.za/humanities-education/news/post_2734033-i-shut-my-eyes-in-order-to-see-annual-art-exhibition 1982021 39(4): 198-201 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) 4.3 sociocultural concerning the public, the aesthetic value of the artworks was far less important than the experience gained through the unfamiliar viewpoints of the created works. furthermore, the relevant exhibition of the works by both visually abled and impaired students led to public awareness, understanding and comprehension of physical conditions and the possibilities of a different social existence. the students created spectacles that visitors could test to experience the following degrees of blindness: 1. peripheral vision problems or tunnel vision, meaning a lack of a normal, wide-angle field of vision, even if the central vision is intact 2. central vision loss or macular degeneration 3. possible eye problems linked to albinism, including astigmatism 5. conclusion in this study, three fields of education (academic, educational and sociocultural) met under one common target, inclusion. the encounter highlighted the need for reforms and demonstrated the way for implementation. visual arts as a visual discipline must be challenged and debunked from established principles, the exclusive aesthetic value system and elitist approaches, which can disable the able. since visual arts are about insight rather than sight, it must be inclusive for those who think artistically and who can creatively express feelings other than visually. therefore, during this study, we challenged established aesthetic standards in artistic creations through inclusiveness and sharpened teaching and learning critical thinking in art through innovative approaches and more accurate decision-making and problem-solving choices, be it of ideas, viewpoint, theoretical frameworks or methodological approaches. educationally, the applied unconventional practical approach has enhanced artistic creativity through direct participation and tangible interaction between the art creator (sender) and target (receiver). most importantly, by direct exposure of all participants to the given problem, this study also promoted the importance of arts education as a challenging platform for the interaction between, by definition, socio-culturally opposed groups in south africa. references abrie, m., blom, n. & fraser, b. 2016. theoretical foundations. in: m jacobs, ncg vakalisa & n gawe (eds.). teaching-learning dynamic. cape town: pearson. ayachit, s. & thakur, m. 2017. functional clothing for the differently 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development were examined using qualitative methods. data was collected using semi-structured interview questions, and an inductive coding technique and descriptive data analysis were employed. the findings suggest that the participating pre-service teachers believed that the csl process met their expectations. most of the teachers believed that the service-learning experience was beneficial and that they would be able to make use of the knowledge they gained during the csl process in their social, academic and professional lives. keywords: higher education, service-learning, community service learning csl, pre-service teachers introduction in addition to their responsibility to educate teachers, schools of education are also expected to offer services to the entire country and to humanity in general, all while fulfiling their research and teachertraining functions (karaca, 2008). while working to achieve those goals, schools of education should be implementing an educational approach that is sensitive to social needs, based on cooperation and volunteerism and supportive of critical and creative thinking (heb, 2007). when the higher education board of turkey (heb) updated teacher-training programmes in 2006, it decided that a “community service learning” (csl) course should be added to the curriculum of schools of education in turkey. the csl course aims to encourage pre-service teachers to become aware of current community issues, prepare projects to solve these problems, and participate as an audience member, speaker or organiser in scientific events, such as panels, conferences and symposiums (heb, 2007). the course is guided by an instructor who observes students’ progress while the student takes a more active role (yaşar, gültekin & kaya, 2008). the csl course is composed of key activity stages: preparation, action, reflection/evaluation, and celebration/recognition (kaye, 2010). the concept of service learning has gone by several names and has been defined in many different ways (wang & jackson, 2005). the debate over what to call service learning is decades old. at present, there are those who favour “community service-learning” (astin, vogelgesang, ikeda & yee, 2000; smist, 2006). the csl course can be viewed as a model of experiential learning that combines voluntary community service with classroom learning (heb, 2007); the most important contribution of service learning to democratic citizenship is related to “participation” (erjem, 2004). based on project-based learning activities, the objective of this csl course is learning by serving the community. within this csl course, there is a wide range of activities for community service: general and vocational training, reading, art, sports, employment, globalisation, language, foreign language, assisting the disabled, freetime activities, industrialisation, housing, technology, health, information, immigration, urbanisation, transportation, climate protection, and energy sources (coşgun, 2009). the target group of service learning may belong to any socio-economic class; however, selecting disadvantaged groups (e.g. children with special needs, battered women, housewives, street children, prisoners, the illiterate, foreigners, unemployed youth) will contribute to fulfilling the activity’s main objectives (çuhadar, 2008). 81kucukoglu — opinions of pre-service teachers previous research research studies on csl show strong evidence that this approach offers great benefits for students, instructors and society. in 2000, billig (2000) outlined four practical benefits of csl activities: contribution to academic learning, increased social responsibility, personal development, and career planning. studies have established that when csl activities are executed during training programmes and the students participating in these activities are assisted in understanding the meaning of their experiences, the students score higher on achievement tests (furco, 2007). melchior and bailis (2002) found that learn and serve involvement had strong impacts on school engagement and math scores. a review of research indicates that high-quality csl, because of its utilisation of effective, experiential learning strategies, can enhance academic outcomes in such content areas as reading, writing, mathematics, and science (furco & granicher, 2007). the number of studies related to the effect of service learning on citizenship and social responsibility has increased (smist, 2006; lin & moore, 2009; kaye, 2010). in addition, researchers underline that by taking on more responsibilities, these students become more willing to actively participate in social issues and they form the belief that they can create greater social awareness (o’bannon, 1999; melchior & bailis, 2002). furthermore, research shows that students who participated in csl activities not only gained a greater sense of responsibility, but also viewed responsibility as an essential value (melchior, 1999). it has been observed that the students who considered themselves socially sufficient were more empathetic than students who did not participate in csl (morgan & streb, 1999). in addition to the aforementioned benefits, it has been recognised that csl also positively contributes to students’ career plans and future expectations (astin et al., 2000; billig, 2000). research indicates that, compared to their non-participating peers, students who actively take part in service learning obtain more information relevant to their chosen careers and develop better communication skills (billig et al., 1999; melchior, 1999). these findings indicate that csl improves students’ academic, social and personal skills; increases their consciousness of citizenship responsibilities; enables them to engage in team work; develops their problem-solving skills, and offers significant benefits for the school and community (billig, 2000; butin, 2006; bonnette, 2006; furco & granicher, 2007; bender, 2009; melaville, berg & blank, 2009; furco & root, 2010). although there have been numerous studies regarding the csl process in recent decades (speck & hoppe, 2004), the number of studies carried out in turkey is rather low. the author of this paper found only two research studies (i.e. erjem 2004 and çuhadar, 2008) regarding service learning in turkey. if turkey intends to design a sound csl programme, other successful programmes must be examined. south africa is one example of a country that has made advancements in csl applications. although csl is still in the initial stages, the first decade of the service learning movement in south africa (1997-2007) has been examined (bender, 2009). csl as a strategy has moved into the forefront of higher education in south africa (lin & moore, 2009). csl is tasked with transforming higher education and generating opportunities for integrating theory and practice or work-based learning and academic learning to bring higher education into contact with knowledge created in other sites (osman & castle, 2004). examining the csl applications of countries such as south africa may be useful for turkey, which has not yet developed a model for csl. the main purpose of this study is to understand the problems encountered in the implementation process of a csl course and to offer solutions, taking into consideration the opinions of the pre-service teachers taking the csl course about the learning process related to the topic. with this general objective, the current study attempts to answer the following questions: what are the opinions of pre-service teachers regarding the implementation process of the csl course 1. in turkey? what are the opinions of pre-service teachers in turkey regarding the contributions of the csl course 2. to their social, psychological and academic development? 82 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 2011 method the present research was patterned as phenomenology, a qualitative research approach that focuses on phenomena of which we are aware, though we lack in-depth understanding (yıldırım & şimşek, 2006). research data were collected via semi-structured interviews. collected data were analysed using an inductive coding technique and a descriptive analysis method. participants the participants in the present study comprised 41 pre-service teachers who took the csl course during the 2009 spring term at ataturk university faculty of education, pre-school teaching department. participants spent a total of 84 hours in community-service projects, a six-hour day each week for 14 weeks. the demographic information for the 41 pre-service teachers was collected: 29 females and 12 males between the ages of 19 and 23, with an average age of 21, participated in the study. the csl research was conducted in an elementary school for the blind, an elementary school for the deaf and an elementary school for the disabled in the city of erzurum, turkey. the csl activities were conducted mainly in private schools for children with special needs as these schools can provide valuable experiences for pre-service teachers during the csl process. preschool education is mandatory in turkey for children between the ages of 3 and 6 who have been diagnosed with special needs (enactment-23011, 1997). therefore, pre-service teachers are likely to encounter children with special needs during their careers. within this context, the csl course may help preschool teachers gain the necessary experience to develop their knowledge and skills concerning special education. during the csl process, many of the pre-service teachers provided a variety of activities: planning the process; tree planting; costume procurement; organising drama activities; food-beverage service; preparing a musical concert; organising a travel-observation programme, and making preparatory activities for a modelling lesson. in the same process, the responsibilities least taken included participating in seminars for parents and school, and preparing animations and puppet shows. in addition, during the csl process pre-service teachers also had other responsibilities: supervising; organising place procurement; setting up a contest, and organising spiritand motivation-increasing activities. csl course evaluation meetings were held weekly in the education department. during these meetings, the pre-service teachers had the opportunity to debate and share their experiences and the knowledge gained during the individual or group csl course activities. moreover, pre-service teachers filled out csl evaluation forms weekly and kept individual journals. in addition, pre-service teachers prepared portfolios (photographs and videos), including activities from the semester following the csl course, and gave them to the course coordinator. the opinions and consent of the pre-service teachers were gathered for the study after informing them at every step of the research process. they were informed that they could withdraw from the study whenever they wanted; however, none of them dropped out of the study. data gathering semi-structured interview questions were employed to collect data. a semi-structured interview is a method of research used in the social sciences (russell, 2000). in the process of creating interview questions and probes, questions were first drafted by the researcher and, prior to this study, interview questions were discussed with other faculty members from the education department. interview question analyses were performed for each question, and confusing or vague questions were rewritten before the test was used in the study. prior to interviewing the participants, practice interviews were also conducted with three preservice teachers; responses were analysed, and the interview questions were finalised. at the end of the pilot study, the required changes were made and the data-gathering tool was prepared for use. the datagathering tool consisted of four questions designed to meet the objectives of the study. the interviews lasted approximately 15 minutes. during the data-gathering process participants were asked the following four questions: 83kucukoglu — opinions of pre-service teachers a) during the csl process, in which situations did you feel you had failed? 1. b) during the csl process, in which situations did you feel successful? what kind of effects do you think the csl process has had on your knowledge, skills and values?2. do you think the activities of the projects you implemented during the csl process are 3. beneficial? how do you think you can make use of the experiences gained during the csl process?4. data analysis inductive coding techniques and descriptive data analysis were employed during the qualitative data analysis. inductive coding is a technique that is used to uncover the concepts underlying data and the relations between these concepts (creswell, 2002). descriptive analysis is a method whereby obtained data is summarised and interpreted with respect to pre-set themes, where direct references are frequently made to reflect the opinions of interviewees, and the results obtained are analysed within the framework of cause-effect relations (yıldırım & şimşek, 2006). initially, semi-structured interview data were transcribed and recorded on interview forms. the researcher read all the data and identified question-based themes together. observed themes were transformed into an “interview coding key”. later, the researcher individually read data forms within the research context and coded the themes observed in the answers using the interview coding key. after completing coding keys for each interviewee, the consistency of the coding key was checked. reliability was checked using the miles and huberman method: “reliability=number of agreements/total number of agreements+disagreements” (miles & huberman, 1994:64). the values were 89.8% for the first question, 92.3% for the second, 86.5% for the third, 94.6% for the fourth, 90.7% for the fifth, and the mean 90.8%. thus, the data can be considered sufficiently reliable. findings in this section, the 41 pre-service teachers’ opinions regarding the csl course process were analysed and the principal issues are summarised in tables. pre-service teachers’ opinions towards the csl process as shown in table 1, the pre-service teachers were of the opinion that they had failed at the following tasks: arranging transportation; time management, and providing financial support. in addition, the preservice teachers noted that they had difficulties receiving institutional support; communicating with the disabled, and working in cooperation. during the csl process, the pre-service teachers were of the opinion that they were successful at communicating with children; developing cooperative working skills, and receiving teachers’ support. 84 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 2011 table 1: opinions of failed and successful situations during the csl process during the csl process, in which situations did you feel you failed? arranging transportation 11 time management 7 providing financial support 6 communication with children 4 communication with teachers 3 overcoming my prejudice against the disabled 3 getting the disabled to perform hand skills 3 preparing material and equipment for the activity 2 getting the children’s attention 2 developing a project 2 working with a group 1 during the csl process, in which situations did you feel successful? communication with children 7 cooperative working 6 receiving teachers’ support 4 preparing activity project 4 organising modelling activity 4 developing activities that are parallel to what i learnt at school 3 fostering enthusiasm for the activities 3 organising a concert 3 getting the children’s attention 2 acquiring new information about the disabled 1 self-motivating 1 pre-service teachers’ opinions towards the contributions of the csl process on their social, psychological and academic development table 2 reveals the pre-service teachers’ observations regarding the improvements and changes in their emotional features at the end of the csl process. the pre-service teachers stated their opinions of their own skills, attitudes and values after the csl process: i can approach the disabled without any fear; i felt psychologically satisfied; i can communicate with people more comfortably (9); i learnt to be patient; my self-trust is elevated; i learnt that i should not be prejudiced. these statements from pre-service teachers are important because they indicate that within the contexts of social responsibility and awareness. on the other hand, a common statement among the pre-service teachers was i think this is not just a course; i am starting to think that i must serve the community in real life as well. this finding fulfils one of the main objectives of csl: becoming more conscious of humanitarian and environmental issues. these findings are critical because they suggest that emotional expectations, which are structural components of csl, have been met. 85kucukoglu — opinions of pre-service teachers table 2: opinions of the effect of the csl process on skills, attitudes and values i can approach the disabled without any fear 13 i felt psychologically satisfied 11 i can communicate with people more comfortably 9 i learnt to be more patient 8 i am starting to think that i must serve the community in real life as well 7 my self-trust is elevated 7 i learnt that i should not be prejudiced 6 i got a chance to develop empathetic thinking skills 6 i found peace 5 i remembered to be grateful for what i already have 3 i am more tolerant 3 i gained group working skills 3 i learnt to be patient with others 3 i realised i should take care of people’s problems 3 i realised i have responsibilities 3 i realised i should never lose hope 3 project-developing skills 3 i realised i should not be a mere observer of what is happening 2 my way of thinking about the disabled has changed 2 my belief in the possibility of working in a school for the disabled has increased 2 my own attitude towards myself is improving 2 i now feel that i could become a disabled person at any time 2 i regained my ambition 1 now i do not say “i cannot” 1 i realised i should do something for the community 1 i started to read more about the disabled 1 as shown in table 3, the pre-service teachers stated that the projects submitted at the end of the csl process created positive outcomes for the students, parents and themselves. some of the pre-service teachers answered the question, do you think the activities you implemented during the csl process were actually beneficial? with the response: yes, children not only gained social skills through activities, but they also had a lot of fun. so did we. this statement can be taken as an example that the mutualbenefit expectation of csl, which requires volunteer participation, has been met. again, many pre-service teachers emphasised the practical benefits of the process in a similar way: i believe we created at least a little awareness among parents. table 3: opinions of the outcomes of the csl process do you think the projects you developed have been beneficial? if yes, how? yes, children not only gained social skills through activities, but they also had a lot of fun. so did we. 12 i believe we created at least a little awareness among parents. 9 because unless we ensure continuity, the things we achieved will not last long. this course on its own is not enough. 8 we received some great feedback during parent meetings. 7 i believe we refreshed the school; they have asked us to visit sometimes, not just for lectures. 4 86 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 2011 i believe it has been useful in transferring the attention of parents of the disabled to the school. 3 we organised activities both for children and families; we learnt and had fun together. 2 i believe we made the children feel precious. 2 we helped the children improve their psycho-motor skills. 2 compared to the first days, the children became more self-confident. 2 this course has been a unique opportunity for me. 2 we followed up with parents, called and informed them. they were more involved than in the past. 2 we contributed to the knowledge of families about the disabled. 1 we assisted the disabled children in feeling more valuable. 1 table 4 presents the opinions of the pre-service teachers regarding their experiences during the csl process. pre-service teachers answered the question, how do you think you can make use of the experiences gained during csl process? with these responses: i can use the experiences i gained during the activities with disabled children in my own class; i will be able to do something for the disabled nearby; i will be more affectionate and empathetic towards the disabled. i gained experience on how to overcome legal procedures, which might be helpful for me in the future. these answers may justify csl’s main expectation: to create social awareness and responsibility. table 4: opinions related to experiences in the csl process how do you think you can make use of the experiences gained during the csl? i can use the experiences i gained via activities with disabled children in my own class. 10 i will be able to do something for the disabled around and nearby. 8 i will be more affectionate and empathetic towards the disabled. 6 i am not scared that i may have disabled children in my class. helping them will be a source of happiness. 5 now i try to understand every disabled person i meet. 5 i will continue to work in schools for the disabled as a volunteer. 3 i no longer find disabled people odd. 3 i gained experience on how to overcome legal procedures, which might be helpful for me in the future. 3 the sign language i learnt will be quite useful for me in the future. 3 i will be volunteering in activities for the disabled. 2 i am planning a public training (for parents) activity on the disabled. 2 i will be able to help families of the disabled. 2 i am now starting to think of working in rehabilitation centres after graduation, which i had never considered. 2 csl led me to receive further pedagogical training on the disabled. 1 i can work at a school for the disabled. 1 these findings show that the csl course provided some benefits for the pre-service teachers. these acquisitions facilitated active participation and social responsibility, and led to psychological satisfaction. furthermore, by contributing to academic development, the csl process simultaneously created a positive value in future plans for pre-service teachers. 87kucukoglu — opinions of pre-service teachers discussion and conclusion this study intended to gain information about the csl course process, which was applied for the first time in a school of education in turkey. in this study, the opinions of pre-service teachers regarding the csl process and the contributions of the experience were discussed. the pre-service teachers stated that the csl course enabled them to support the students in and outside the course processes and that they gained experience with the education of students with special needs. based on the opinions of pre-service teachers regarding the csl course, they gained awareness about children with special needs. they expressed their awareness with these words: “i became aware of children with special needs”. this result can be considered a successful gain in terms of csl. as explained earlier, it is essential for pre-service teachers to experience students with special needs. the pre-service teachers had the opportunity to take the theoretical knowledge of the development, care and learning of children with special needs they gained in the csl course and put it into practice in the schools for children with special needs, thus gaining valuable experience that they could not gain elsewhere. no other courses provide this kind of opportunity. in this regard, the csl course contributed to creating a connection between theory and practice. the gains of pre-service teachers are not limited to academic development. the csl process is beneficial in helping pre-service teachers to become aware of and develop their affective attributes (morgan & streb, 1999; o’bannon, 1999). the pre-service teachers stated these opinions as follows: i started to think of others; i became more affectionate; i realised their presence; i realised i should do something for them; i became more empathetic. the pre-service teachers also organised music, dance, drama, painting and art activities to be carried out with the students with special needs, which parents, teachers and local managers attended. in addition, three of the pre-service teachers taking the csl course in the school for the deaf stated that they learnt some sign language. meetings on the training of the disabled were organised and given by pre-service teachers to the public. visual art projects made by disabled students were exhibited and sold, and the money was donated to schools for the disabled. the pre-service teachers expressed that this organisation helped them increase their self-confidence. moreover, they stated that the activities related to the csl course that they carried out during the semester met their psychological needs. the contributions that the csl course made to participants’ affective development can be considered significant. the csl experience allowed the pre-service teachers to notice the realities of the world outside the classroom (o’bannon, 1999; melchior, 1999). the pre-service teachers in the csl process believed that external problems (weather conditions, transportation, financial support, time limits, etc.) were challenging and that they failed to overcome these obstacles. in addition, the pre-service teachers stated that the hardest situations in the practice process were establishing communication with disabled children; establishing communication with employed teachers at school; overcoming one’s former prejudice against the disabled, and getting the blind students to perform hand skills. on the other hand, the pre-service teachers stated that they were successful at establishing communication and intimacy with children; working in cooperation; receiving the support of other teachers, and producing an activity project. pre-service teachers believed that they would be able to use the knowledge they gained during the csl process in their social, academic or professional lives (billig et al., 1999; melchior, 1999). the majority of the pre-service teachers described the skills, attitudes and values they gained in the csl process: now i can approach the disabled without any fear; i felt psychologically satisfied; i can communicate with people more comfortably, and i learnt to be patient. almost all of the pre-service teachers (40) indicated that they would be able to use this new knowledge in various ways: i can use the experiences i gained via activities with disabled children in my own class; i will be able to do something for the disabled nearby; i will be more affectionate and empathetic towards the disabled; i am not scared that i may have disabled children in my class. these findings fulfil the objectives of creating social awareness and encouraging volunteering, which are among the main aims of a csl course (çuhadar, 2008). the pre-service teachers did not carry out activities only for the students. they held informative meetings for the parents, and prepared and distributed brochures about children with special needs. 88 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 2011 moreover, they prepared books written in braille and donated them to the school library. the pre-service teachers also contributed to the school landscapes by planting trees and flowers with the children to make the environment liveable. these types of activities, carried out within the scope of the csl course, are related to social responsibility. the pre-service teachers believed that the csl course affected their career plans in addition to contributing to their academic, social and affective development. some of the pre-service teachers stated that they could voluntarily take part in organisations for the disabled and that they could see themselves working in rehabilitation centres for children with special needs. these new alternatives in the career plans of pre-service teachers are positive contributions of the csl course. research studies show that csl increases social responsibities, academic skills and collaboration among pre-service teachers, and helps students create positive opinions towards themselves and their friends (osman & castle, 2004; wang & jackson, 2005; butin, 2006; bonnette, 2006; smist; 2006; furco & granicher, 2007; bender, 2009; melaville, berg & blank, 2009; kaye, 2010; kielsmeier, 2010; furco & root, 2010). likewise, this research shows that the csl course may help pre-service teachers gain individual, social, and academic skills. furthermore, this research found that pre-service teachers believe that the csl course affords them the opportunities to collaborate, and encourages them to collaborate in solving problems. pre-service teachers also reported that they realised the importance of their social responsibilities towards their environment. all of these findings may suggest that this csl course provides pre-service teachers with unique and valuable gains. the findings of this study are similar to other findings mentioned earlier. the present results suggest that csl has the potential to meet expectations in teacher education. based on the research findings, it is recommended that (a) education programmes integrated with the csl process be prepared; (b) legal guidelines, currently missing, be created for csl courses; (c) financial resources that are required during the csl process be clearly determined, and (d) csl courses be extended over the entire training process, and not be limited to a term. this study shows that the csl course improves pre-service teachers’ social, academic and emotional development. references astin aw, vogelgesang lj, ikeda ek & yee ja 2000. how service learning affects students. los angeles: university of california, higher education research institute. bender cjg 2009. changes and challenges of the service-learning movement at higher education instructions in south africa. in: m moore & pl lin (eds). service-learning in higher education: paradigsm and challenges. indianapolis: university of indianapolis press, 295-319. billig s, jesse d, calvert l & kleimann k 1999. an evaluation of jefferson county school district’s school-to-career partnership program. denver, co: rmc research. billig sh 2000. research on k-12 school-based service-learning: the evidence builds. phi delta kappan, 81:658-664. bonnette r 2006. out of the classroom and into the community: service 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social sciences. ankara: seçkin publishing. 13 doctoral production in south africa: statistics, challenges and responses1 johann mouton university of stellenbosch the past few years have witnessed new interest in doctoral production in south africa. in the first section of the article, it is argued that this new interest has its roots in various higher education policy documents over the past decade. the second part of the article presents some of the most recent statistics on various aspects of doctoral production: trends in enrolments and graduations, completion and attrition rates as well as the supervisory capacity in the system. in the final section it is argued that the policy discourse, together with the analysis of the statistical data, gave rise to four challenges. these are the goals to expand the volume of doctoral graduates being produced as well as the supervisory capacity in the system and the demands to improve the efficiency and quality of doctoral production. in the ensuing discussion of these challenges, it is argued that various factors mitigate against the easy attainment of the first three goals. although it remains important that these goals are pursued, it is argued that more emphasis should be afforded to considerations about the quality of doctoral training. the policy context: the new focus on doctoral production in south africa the current discourse on incentives to increase doctoral production in south africa has its roots in a series of policy documents introduced over the past decade. in this section of the article the evolution of the discourse on doctoral production in these documents is traced. the main aim of this discussion is to show how the current emphasis on quantitative concerns, especially on the volume of doctoral graduates, emerged. in june 2000 the council for higher education provided the minister of education with a set of concrete proposals with regard to the restructuring of the higher education landscape as advocated in education white paper 3 of 1997. the recommendations implied far-reaching consequences for the entire higher education system and included specific recommendation on increasing the production of postgraduate students. in a concurrent development, a new human resource development strategy for south africa (2001) was published. this document identified the four pillars of human resource development as (i) school-level general education and training (get); supported by early childhood development (ecd) and adult basic education and training (abet); (ii) further education and training (fet) and higher education; (iii) employers generating and articulating demand for skills; and (iv) the national system of innovation (nsi). consequently, it formulated five national objectives and associated performance indicators for human resource development. of specific relevance to the issue of postgraduate production is objective 2: “improving the supply of high-quality skills (particularly scarce skills) which are more responsive to societal and economic needs” (national departments of education and labour, 2001:26). indicators for this objective included higher education (and fet) participation rates, learner/student enrolments in set disciplines and employment rates for fet and higher education graduates. however, the most specific and relevant document for this article was the national plan for higher education, which was published in february 2001. under the heading of “research” a number of goals were included, for example, a specific recommendation to increase the outputs of postgraduate students, especially at master’s and doctoral levels. other related recommendations referred to the goal to achieve increased research outputs, to build new centres of research excellence and to facilitate more collaboration between research and post-graduate work. in a logical development to these policy initiatives, the ministry of education in november 2003 published a new funding model for public higher education, in accordance with the higher education act of 1997 and in line with the national plan for higher education of 2001. the starting point for the new model was not institutional costs as it was in the past, but affordability linked to achievement of national 14 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 policy goals and objectives, which meant that funding allocations would be directly linked to academic (teaching and research) activity and especially output. the model consisted of two components, namely (i) undesignated block grants and (ii) earmarked grants (ministry of education, 2003). block grants are determined mainly by institutional research outputs (publication units and research master’s and doctoral graduates), teaching outputs (completed non-research degrees and diplomas) and teaching inputs (fulltime equivalent student enrolments). block grants also contain a development component with regard to the specific research and teaching needs of each institution. in a bold move – and quite unique in terms of international practice – acceptance of the new model would mean that the production of (research) master’s and doctoral students would be rewarded in a similar manner to other research outputs (such as papers in peer-reviewed journals). the fact that the monetary value attached to a doctoral degree was set at three times the value of the research paper was interpreted as a clear signal to the universities to incentivise doctoral production. the policy and strategic initiatives outlined above were soon echoed in the strategic plans of the department of science and technology (dst) and the national research foundation (nrf). the dst’s ten-year innovation plan of 2007 was arguably the most influential nsi strategy published in the period 2004 to 2008, particularly as regards doctoral education. the strategy states that “… the nsi must become more focused on long-range objectives, including urgently confronting … our inadequate production (in both a qualitative and quantitative sense) of knowledge workers capable of building a globally competitive economy” (dst, 2007a:vii). it contextualises this need in terms of a human capital pipeline as a professional development path starting with postgraduate students and delivering world-class researchers. it acknowledges the limited capacity of the higher education system to enrol postgraduate students and to provide them with supervision and, consequently, it specifically and emphatically prioritises strategies that would effectively increase production of doctoral graduates by the higher education sector. another tangible result of the national prioritisation of doctoral education noted above was the launch of the south african phd project by the nrf (in partnership with the dst) in november 2007 (dst, 2007b). this project’s stated aim was to intensify the strength and diversity of the south african academic, corporate and public sectors by increasing the number and diversity of appropriately skilled phd graduates (nrf, 2007). to this end, it would provide marketing, information and support to students, supervisors and mentors, funders and sponsors, and training partners. the project stated that the target would be to increase the current number of graduates (1 274 in 2007) fivefold by 2024 (nrf, 2009), i.e. to a target of approximately 6 000 phds. in its more recent corporate strategy 2009/10, and in line with the new medium term strategic framework, the dst sets the development of appropriate human resources for research, development and innovation as one of its five strategic goals. this goal is addressed mainly under the human capital and knowledge systems programme. of particular relevance to fet and higher education are strategies to: increase school-level learner participation in science and improve mathematics and science teaching; • increase the number of publicly funded postgraduate students and improve postgraduate throughput rates;• increase participation of master’s and doctoral graduates in accelerated research professional • development at science councils; and increase the number of postdoctoral fellows at higher education institutions (dst, 2009). • in the remainder of this article, i focus first on presenting and discussing the most recent statistics on doctoral production in the country, and second, on the main challenges that sa universities face against the background of the policy imperatives and the current state of affairs. a statistical overview of doctoral production in south africa the statistical profile of doctoral production is organised according to the following themes: trends in university enrolments (2000-2009);• 15mouton — doctoral production in south africa: statistics, challenges and responses trends in graduate outputs (2000-2009);• doctoral drop-out rates;• the demographics of doctoral graduates; and• the doctoral supervisory capacity.• trends in university enrolments (2000-2009) the south african higher education system showed substantial growth over the past decade. in 2009 the number of enrolled students stood at approximately 834 000. this constitutes a significant increase over the about 670 000 students enrolled at the turn of the century (table 1). student headcounts also include about 3% of occasional students who are taking courses as part of formally approved programmes but who are not registered for any formal degree or diploma. the majority of students (82%) are undergraduate students. at postgraduate level, there are 5% of master’s students and 1% of doctoral students, with the remainder of students (8%) enrolled in lower postgraduate programmes (honours degrees and postgraduate diplomas). table 1: headcount enrolments in public higher education institutions by programme level, 2001 to 2009 year programme level totaloccasional students undergraduate degrees and diplomas postgraduate, below master’s level master’s degrees doctoral degrees 2001 23851 544183 55914 34901 6518 665367 2002 32409 537592 60840 39364 7708 677913 2003 37914 562343 65203 43953 8380 717793 2004 23175 597609 69267 45333 9104 744488 2005 19271 602612 61622 44533 9434 737472 2006 22633 607513 58510 42899 9828 741383 2007 25696 624989 59179 41172 10051 761087 2008 25474 655305 66902 41712 9994 799387 2009 24613 684419 74495 43723 10529 837779 average annual growth rate (2001-09) -2.3% 2.9% 1.8% 1.5% 5.4% 2.6% note: the average annual growth rate was estimated by fitting a linear regression trend line to the annual values after the values were converted into logarithmic values and the exponents (number of years) of these values taken. source: doe (2003, 2004, 2005a, 2005b, 2006, 2008, 2009, 2010) and dbe (2010). as far as postgraduate trends are concerned, the average annual growth rate for student headcounts between 2001 and 2009 was 2.6% (table 2). doctoral and master’s students respectively account for the highest and lowest annual growth rate in terms of headcounts (5.4% versus 1.5% growth). the distribution of postgraduate students by scientific field reveals big differences: approximately 44% of all student headcounts are in the broad field of education and the humanities (of which 16% alone are in education) (figure 1). students in science, engineering and technology constitute 28% of the total 23mouton — doctoral production in south africa: statistics, challenges and responses increase. if one takes the 2007 figures as benchmark, a comparison with other countries shows that we lag behind many of them. the 2007 figure of 1 274 graduates translates into 26 phd graduates for every million of total population. out of a list of 34 countries, south africa is placed 33rd. the top country on the list, portugal, produces a massive 569 phds for every million of total population. switzerland (454), sweden (427), finland (375) and germany (297), complete the top five countries on the international list. other significant achievers are the united kingdom (288), australia (264), norway (208), the united states (201), france (172) and japan (132). the final five countries on the list, all with scores of under 50 phds per million of total population are turkey (48), iceland (32), mexico (28), south africa (26) and chile (13). the targets that have been set by the dst of reaching 6 000 doctoral graduates by 2024 would mean that south africa – given the current growth in population – come closer to producing around 100-120 phds per million of total population. however, it is highly unlikely that this target will be achieved. there are two main reasons for this: history is against this being achieved: the system has not doubled doctoral output over the past • decade despite the fact that there has been significant growth in master’s and doctoral enrolments. the major problem lies in the “size” of the pipeline. we have simply not “converted” sufficient numbers of undergraduate students to continue to postgraduate studies, or honours students to enrol for master’s studies and, ultimately, enough master’s students to take up doctoral studies. enrolments in recent years, and especially first or new doctoral enrolments, have started to grow • at a slower rate (even declining between 2006 and 2008, figure 9). there is little evidence that the pipeline for potential doctoral candidates are, in fact, expanding in any consistent manner. this rather bleak picture would have been even worse if it had not been for the fact that south africa has received an increasing numbers of doctoral enrolments from other african countries in recent years. by 2009, 18% of all new doctoral graduates were from another african country. figure 9: trends in first enrolments expanding the supervisory capacity in the system the second challenge is also formulated in quantitative terms: to expand the supervisory capacity in the system. in my view, the current supervisory capacity in the system is already strained (cf. below) and would need to grow faster in order to be able to cope with larger doctoral graduates. a simple calculation: we 0 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 500 1000 1500 2000 2500 3000 3500 1897 2122 2480 2519 2699 2692 2916 2684 2397 2717 24 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 currently have about 4 000 academics with doctoral degrees supervising 10 000 doctoral students (an average of 2.5 per academic). in order to increase the absolute output over the next ten years to around 5 000-6 000 students, we would need to have approximately 30 000 doctoral students enrolled at any given time (given attrition rates and more efficient throughput rates). this could conceivably be achieved if each supervisor would supervise 5 students at any given time (which implies doubling the current ratio) as well as having approximately 6 000 academics with doctoral degrees (which means an expansion of 50% in the supervisory capacity in the system). this is a huge challenge which, even if achievable, would require immense resources to ensure that the current supervisory capacity is not merely replenished but, in fact, expanded. given that both of the “quantitative” challenges are unlikely to be met, it is not surprising that the question has been raised as to whether doctoral production in the system is efficient. improving the efficiency of doctoral production there are two ways to increase the efficiency of doctoral production: reduce the time to degree (ttd) of those students who do complete successfully and reducing the drop-out rates (or attrition rate) so that more students remain in the system. in a previous paper (mouton, 2007), i showed that the ttd of south african students (on average 4.8 years in 2007) compares quite favourably with many other countries. for example, elgar (2003) cites statistics from the canadian association of graduate schools which shows that the mean time for completion is about 3 years for master’s programmes and 4 to 5 years for doctoral programmes. in their study in australia, bourke, holbrook, lovat and farley (2004) found that the median age of “candidacy time” (the time actually spent on doctoral studies) varied between 4.0 and 5.2 (with a median of 4.4) across different fields of study. as the majority of south african doctoral students study part time (while working), a ttd of approximately 5 years is, in fact, quite competitive. the evidence suggests that students who study full time complete in 4 years or less (as is the case for some students in the natural sciences). one way to meet the challenge to reduce ttd, therefore, would be to invest more money into supporting doctoral students with full-time studies. current initiatives by hesa and the nrf along these lines should thus be supported. however, it needs to be pointed out that, even if sufficient funds are available to support every doctoral student to study full time, this would, at most, translate into a possible growth in annual output of approximately 20% (reducing the ttd from 5 to 4 years). a much more feasible scenario could see about 50% of doctoral students being supported full time, which could result in an additional 10% (130 students in current figures) to graduate sooner. the second part of the efficiency argument speaks to reducing drop-out rates. the comparison with data from the us council of graduates (figure 4) shows that south africa’s drop-out rate of 46% compares very favourably with the american data3. our drop-out rate is, in fact, not significantly higher than that of the usa. results from various other studies (bourke et al., 2004; chiswick, larsen & pieper, 2010; d’andrea, 2002; elgar, 2003) have confirmed that doctoral attrition rates vary between 40 and 45%. some studies have suggested that attrition rates vary by discipline or field. a recent study in canada indicated that discipline area was important for completion, with completion rates varying from 45% in the arts and humanities to 70% in life sciences, with science completions being generally in the high 60% range (elgar, 2003). however, bourke et al. (2004) argue that the results are not as straightforward as these studies usually do not take into account whether students studied full time or part time. when one corrects for these differences, they argue, there is little difference in actual time to completion (what they refer to as “doctoral candidacy time”) across disciplines. relationships between the broad field of study classification used to group discipline areas and completion times suggest a re-evaluation of the common ‘wisdom’ that science candidates generally take shorter times to complete phds than humanities candidates. although as a result of being more often part-time candidates, arts, humanities & social science candidates have a longer elapsed time, these candidates do not have a longer candidacy time than science candidates (bourke et al., 2004: 13). 25mouton — doctoral production in south africa: statistics, challenges and responses different studies, initiatives and programmes have found that there is no one reason why doctoral students discontinue their studies (gardner, 2009:97). different authors (golde, 2000; lovitts, 2001; nerad, 2004) acknowledge the complex nature of doctoral attrition, and have examined the reason for attrition through many different lenses. in an attempt to demystify the contributing factors of doctoral attrition, authors (golde, 2000; nerad, 2004) have investigated the decision-making process from the perspectives of students. other studies focusing on the institutional point of view have found that the causes of doctoral attrition have been generally unknown by faculty and administrators due to a number of structural reasons. some of these reasons given by lovitts (2001) include: the bigger value that departments place on enrolment numbers compared to retention numbers, which • causes departments to collect data on enrolments and graduate rates rather than on attrition. many academics believe that students who leave are “not the best”; thus, they do not constitute points • of concern. in many instances, these “less qualified students” are expected to leave once they have served as teaching assistants in undesirable courses for the faculty to teach. it was also found, that faculty members did not seem to feel responsible for advising pre-dissertation • students, which fosters a lack of communication between departing pre-dissertation students and the faculty. students usually leave silently without discussing the reasons why they leave (mandoza, 2004:4).• in 2009 gardner (2009:100) published a paper which combined current students’ impressions of doctoral student attrition along with faculty members’ impressions on this topic; thus, creating a more holistic picture of student attrition in doctoral programmes. for the purposes of the study, 34 faculty members were interviewed. the faculty members highlighted three main themes related to doctoral student departure in their departments: (a) student lacking; (b) student should not have come in the first place; and (c) personal problems. a lack of ability factored greatly into the faculty members’ attributions of student departure (gardner, 2009:103-104). these themes are also highlighted by golde (2000) who indicates that faculty members and deans often attribute attrition to a single factor, such as lack of money, talent or commitment. instead, it needs to be recognised that attrition is the shared responsibility of both student and department (golde, 2000:202). in the same study, gardner (2009) interviewed 60 doctoral students. the three main themes that students attributed to a departure in their programmes were: (a) personal problems; (b) departmental issues; and (c) wrong fit for the programme or institution (gardner, 2009:105). indeed, the majority of the personal problems that the students discussed as a reason for student departure related to marriage, children or family responsibilities (gardner, 2009:106). specifically, students pointed to several main programmatic issues related to their decision to leave, including bad advising, a lack of financial support, faculty attrition and departmental politics (gardner, 2009:106). thus, although universities are continuously attempting to reduce attrition rates (through various measures), the available scholarship suggests that fairly high attrition rates at this level (around 40%) are simply a reality of doctoral studies and that whatever one does to address this will, at best, have limited effect. the reasons for this state of affairs are not too difficult to understand as the studies cited above have shown that the primary reasons behind doctoral students dropping out are predominantly related to work factors, family matters (divorce, starting a family) and other personal reasons (such as a lack of funding). factors related to institutional support (or the lack thereof) and poor supervision are not the dominant reasons that are cited for high drop-out rates. the discussion thus far has focused on strategies that would increase doctoral production in the country: expanding the pipeline and improving efficiency. all attempts to expand the pipeline (which starts with a fresh look at the conversion rates from the bachelor’s degree forward) in order to support more students to do their doctoral studies full time and to increase the efficiency of doctoral production need to 26 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 be supported. at the same time, it should be recognised that one cannot focus on these “quantitative” goals only, especially not if these come at the expense of a concern for the quality of our doctoral training. improving the quality of doctoral training one of the outcomes of the “casualisation” of postgraduate studies – specifically the “interrupted nonaccumulative” nature of the postgraduates studies trajectory – are that new demands are placed on doctoral training and supervision. in my view, there is no question that it is much more difficult to supervise students who study part time than those who study full time, to supervise doctoral students in their midthirties who need to be “retrained” in theory and method, and to supervise students at a distance (which is a reality in south africa) rather than in face-to-face situations. the response from many south african universities in recent years has been the increasing structuration of postgraduate training and education. in closing, i argue that this structuration trend manifests itself in two mutually reinforcing responses: the shift towards greater “management” of doctoral training and, in particular, models of doctoral supervision. in this respect the shift has been from a kind of “laissez-faire” approach to supervision to increasingly “directorial and transactional” modes of supervision (gatfield, 2005). a concurrent shift is evident towards more elaborate doctoral training models. my basic proposition is that doctoral training in south africa has traditionally conformed to what is referred to as the “thin” model of doctoral training (figure 10). figure 10: the “thin” model of doctoral training in the “thin model” of doctoral training, which was the norm in the 1980s and 1990s, there was no formal screening of doctoral candidates, very little structured proposal development (and defence) and no required coursework. the relationship between the supervisor and the doctoral student conformed to what gatfield (2005) calls “laissez-faire supervision” where there is very little structure and direction on the part of the supervisor. over the past decade many departments in south african universities have increasingly resorted to what i refer to as “thick models” of doctoral training (figure 11). the key features of this model are the following: very structured and rigorous forms of screening that would typically involve potential candidates • submitting their cvs as well as other supporting documents (including copies of their master’s theses) as well as being interviewed and sometimes even required to take an aptitude test. coursework, especially in theory and research methods, have become compulsory components in • many doctoral programmes and in some cases are formally assessed. a case in point is the dba programme at the gordon institute of business science where doctoral candidates have to pass a journal articles optional informal screening proposal development dissertation work “laissez-faire” supervision 27mouton — doctoral production in south africa: statistics, challenges and responses formal examination in theory and methods before being allowed to proceed with the development of their doctoral proposals. the development of the doctoral research proposal is now managed as a very structured process • which usually involves screening of such proposals by departmental admissions committees and final approval by faculty boards. in some cases, such proposals are now even being sent for external “examination” before final approval is given. the predominant mode of supervision is much more “directorial” (giving clear and specific directions • to the candidate on what to do and how to proceed, and even “transactional” (supervising the student in conformance with the design and methodology stipulated in the doctoral proposal). in such a structured supervisory process, much more emphasis is put on continuous monitoring of doctoral performance (at some universities students are required to complete monitoring forms every six months). finally, given the current reward structure in south africa for doctoral and research outputs, it is not • surprising that doctoral students are encouraged, and in an increasing number of cases, required to publish one or two papers based on their theses. figure 11: the “thick” model of doctoral training conclusions the increasing attention that doctoral production has received in south africa in recent years is long overdue and must be applauded. there is no question that the south african economy and society need many more well-qualified and skilled doctoral graduates. in a global knowledge economy the doctoral graduate is perhaps the most important “commodity”. the aim of this article has been to argue that our knowledge of the trends in doctoral production in the country has increased significantly over the past 3-5 years. however, i have also argued that there has been, and continues to be, an over-emphasis on the quantitative goals of doctoral production – how to increase the number of doctoral graduates and to reduce time to degree and attrition rates. these concerns, as i have shown, have their origins in a number of policy developments (most notably a new research dissertation work structured screening + selection coursework: research methods + theory structured proposal development alignment with research journal articles required formal assessment formalised process directional/ transactional modes of supervision 28 perspectives in education, volume 29(3), september 2011 funding framework which came into effect in 2005) as well as strategic planning documents, which have set rather unrealistic targets for doctoral outputs. in the final section of the article, i argued that, although it remains important to think of strategies to expand doctoral outputs in the country, we also need to apply our minds equally to concerns of quality in doctoral training. in this regard i briefly discussed an evident shift towards “thicker” models of doctoral training, which are indeed aimed at addressing matters related to doctoral and supervisory quality. we do need more research, especially of a qualitative kind, to assess whether these “thicker” models of doctoral training will, in fact, improve the quality of our doctoral candidates and make them more employable and prepared for the new demands of a competitive knowledge society. this kind of research is as important as the need to think of creative solutions to the wide range of challenges that the country faces in producing more and better quality doctoral graduates. references bourke s, holbrook a, lovat t & farley p 2004. attrition, completion and completion times of phd candidates. paper presented at the aare annual conference. melbourne, 28 nov-2 dec 2004. chiswick br, larsen n & pieper p 2010. the production of phds in the united states and canada. iza discussion papers 5367, institute for the study of labor (iza). che (2009a) postgraduate studies in south africa: a statistical profile. higher education monitor no. 7. pretoria: council on higher education. che (2009b) report of the council on higher education’s consultative conference, 2009 council for graduate studies 2007. phd completion project. 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student descriptions of the doctoral attrition process. the review of higher education, 23(2):199-227. golde cm 2005. the role of the department and discipline in doctoral student attrition: lessons from four departments. journal of higher education, 76(6):669-700. lovitts be 1996. who is responsible for graduate student attrition—the individual or the institution? toward an explanation of the high and persistent rate of attrition. paper presented at the annual meeting of the american educational research association, new york. lovitts be 2001. leaving the ivory tower: the causes and consequences of departure from doctoral study. lanham: rowman and littlefield. lovitts be & nelson c 2000. the hidden crisis in graduate education: attrition from phd programs. academe, 86(6):44-50. retrieved from www.aaup.org/publications/academe/00nd/ nd00lovi.htm mandoza p 2004. doctoral education and attrition in science: the voice of a female doctoral student in physics. department of education policy, research and administration, university of massachusetts amherst. ministry of education 2003. government notice no. 1791: funding of public higher. retrieved on 25 june 2009 from http://us-cdn.creamermedia.co.za/assets/articles/attachments/01003_ notice1791.pdf mouton j 2007. post-graduate studies in south africa: myths, misconceptions and challenges. south african journal of higher education, 21(8):1054-1066. national science foundation (nsf) 2006. infobrief: time to degree of us research doctorate recipients. national departments of education and labour 2001. human resource development strategy for south africa: a nation at work for a better life for all. retrieved on 25 june 2009 from http://www.naci. org.za/innovation_gateway/downloads/hr_strat.pdf national research foundation 2007. south african phd project. retrieved on 25 june 2009 from http:// www nrf.ac.za/doc/phd_project_2007.pdf national research foundation 2009. trajectories of nrf research support. retrieved on 25 june 2009 from http://www.nrf.ac.za/doc/trajectories_nrf_funding.pdf nerad m 2004. the phd in the us: criticisms, facts, and remedies. higher education policy, 17(2):183-201. nerad m & sands miller d 1996. increasing student retention in graduate and professional programs. in: jg haworth (ed). new directions for institutional research: assessing graduate and professional education: current realities, future prospects. 92:61-76. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass publishers. sheridan pm & pyke sw 1994. predictors of time to completion of graduate degrees. canadian journal of higher education, xxiv(2):68-88. smith sw, brownell mt, simpson rl & deshler dd 1993. successfully completing the dissertation: two reflections on the process. remedial and special education, 14(3):53-60. (endnotes) this paper builds on the extensive work that was conducted by the centre for research on evaluation, 1. science and technology under commission for the academy of science of south africa. i would like to express my appreciation for the whole research team at crest, and especially nelius boshoff, for their contributions to this study. the participation rate divides the total number of student enrolments in the age group 20-24 years by 2. the number of people in the country within the same age group. although most studies on the american doctorate investigated the traditional time to completion 3. between obtaining a bachelor’s degree and the phd, this does not materially affect the calculation of the attrition rates of students. 28 ‘behind the doors of learning’: the transmission of racist and sexist discourses in a history classroom mark wilmot university of witwatersrand devika naidoo university of witwatersrand now that the doors of historically white schools have officially been opened to black learners, this paper presents a critical analysis of discourses of domination transmitted behind the doors of learning in a history classroom. while the official history curriculum (ncs, 2002) advocates multi-perspectival epistemological approaches, this paper illustrates the subordination of epistemic goals to racist and sexist ideological goals through the transmission of racist and sexist discourses. a teacher’s lessons were observed, audio-taped, transcribed and analysed according to critical discourse theory. the conventional grade 10 topic, the conquest of the aztecs by the spanish, was mediated through racist and sexist formal and informal discursive strategies such as the use of teacher power to silence contestation of inaccurate statements; the use of metaphor, simile, and binary oppositions to convey prejudicial meanings, derogation, inferiorisation, ridicule, jokes, disclaimers, and stereotyping that subsumed the historical topic being taught. the analysis exposes the informal yet effective workings of power for the perpetuation of discourses of domination in the history lesson. such discourses subjected learners to a form of symbolic violence which may lead students to ontological misrecognition of self and race. keywords: history curriculum, discourse, ideology, racism, sexism, symbolic violence introduction the form that the history curriculum should take is particularly challenging in post-conflict societies as traumatic memories, experiences and interests are carried by teachers and learners. how these experiences are conveyed differs in terms of who is describing the event – whatever description is legitimated socialises learners into particular ontologies or ways of thinking about and seeing the world. for example, by presenting australian history written by white people a particular set of knowledge and understandings is presented. such accounts may not be complete or accurate from the perspective of the indigenous people who experienced the process. while white australians write about “settlement” black australians describe this as “invasion, occupation and genocide” (lovett & smith, 1995). history, in the post-apartheid curriculum (ncs, 2002) is aimed at permitting the unofficial, the hidden to become visible through a commitment to the idea that historical “truth” can be subjected to rigorous analysis by providing opportunities for “border crossing” (weldon, 2009). the history teacher is called upon by the national curriculum statement (ncs) to prepare learners for full participation in a democratic society, promote their sense of personal agency, and foster among learners the skills to make informed choices. history is considered by the curriculum designers as a vehicle for examining “with greater insight and understanding the prejudices involving race, class, gender (and) ethnicity” (ncs, 2002:9). the history teacher is therefore viewed as a significant agent for positive social change as well as the intellectual development of learners. thus pupils need to be provided with opportunities to engage with texts that both affirm and interrogate the complexity of their histories through creating classroom conditions that facilitate pupils’ ability to speak, write and listen in a “multi-perspectival language”. in such multi-perspectival discourses “pupils are engaged as border crossers who challenge, cross, remap 29wilmot & naidoo — the transmission of racist and sexist discourses 29 and rewrite borders as they enter into counter-discourse with established boundaries of knowledge” (weldon, 2009: 182pp?). political and curriculum change has required all teachers to adjust their curriculum, pedagogy and thinking to embrace human rights such as non-racism and gender equality, social justice and equity. the interplay between the changing social field and the individual has been conceptualised by bourdieu (1993). he points out that one’s habitus, which refers to an individual’s characteristic ways of thinking, acting, feeling and being, is largely shaped by one’s history which intersects with one’s present circumstances and the physical spaces or field one occupies. changes in the political field in south africa, from apartheid to democracy, require individuals, both victims and beneficiaries of apartheid alike, to shift their habitus. the field is, however, continuously evolving and if the subject is unable to grow with the changing context s/ he runs the risk of clinging to anachronistic and outmoded notions and practices. the individual may be in danger of becoming what bourdieu terms “a fish out of water”, at odds with one’s social surroundings and unable to grasp the doxa which are the assumed rules and values that are perceived by most to be “natural” (maton, 2009:60-61). the aim of this paper is to critically analyse the discourses transmitted behind the doors of learning in a history classroom and briefly compare them with the intended history curriculum. the key questions posed in this study are: does history discourse in the classroom provide opportunities for border-crossing? are students provided opportunities to engage with texts that affirm and interrogate their historical discourses? are students encouraged to produce multi-perspectival texts? ideology, curriculum and discourses of domination the ideological role of the curriculum has been highlighted by a range of writers from the 1970s (apple, 2004; giroux, 1994, carr, 1993, cornbleth, 1990). ideology from the critical perspective refers to the use of repressive forms of power to legitimate meanings “which serve to establish and sustain relations of domination” (thompson, 1990:56pp?). according to fairclough (2001), the exercise of power, in modern society, is increasingly achieved through ideology, and more particularly through the ideological workings of language. ideologies are embedded in, communicated through and perpetuated or challenged by language. the word ‘discourse’ implies the view that language is not just a technical means of communication but also constitutive of meaning. fairclough’s critical discourse analysis approach, particularly the ‘ten questions’ method for interrogating texts which includes close examination of vocabulary (the experiential, relational and expressive value of words), synonymy and antonymy, strategic use of pronouns, syntax , grammar, and deployment of metaphor (fairclough, 2001:92-105), framed the analysis of the teachers discourse. the experiential value of words provides the receiver with cues as to the manner in which the producer of the text experiences the world which s/he inhabits. by relational value fairclough refers to the means by which words reveal the producer’s social relationships that are enacted in discourse while expressive value refers to the producer’s assessment of his/her reality. synonymy may be used to stress a point or affect a resemblance between things while antonymy sets up tension by creating an oppositional or binary relationship between concepts. the choice of pronouns such as ‘we’, ‘you’ and ‘them’ reflects relationships of power and creates perceptions of opposition or solidarity. in the examination of syntax and grammar fairclough recommends an analysis of active and passive voice in order to observe how agency is either revealed or concealed through tactical positioning of subject, verb and object, and how the mode of expression differentially positions the subject. whereas in the declarative mode the transmitter is positioned as the imparter of information to the receiver, in the imperative mode the transmitter seeks to command compliance of the receiver. in the grammatical question mode the speaker requires information of the addressee or makes an implicit statement by using rhetorical questioning. in all three instances there is an asymmetrical power relation in which speaker or writer commands compliance from the receiver. fairclough also points out that the use of metaphor, in which one thing is tacitly said to resemble another, serves an ideological function that can influence the recipient’s understanding of reality. 30 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 201130 van djik (2001) further recommends a focus on the tactical deployment of derogation and inferiorization, exclusion and bias, stereotype and disclaimers to identify the use of language for the perpetuation of racism. derogation ranges from the use of disparaging language to “supremacist derogation stressing the other’s intellectual, moral and biological inferiority” (van dijk, 2001:361). semantic and lexical devices may also be employed to stress difference, implying deficiency or deviance among ‘others’. the speaker or writer may, however, also attempt to mitigate the perception of racism by using semantic devices such as disclaimers (for example “i am not racist but …”). the context of the study the empirical data for this paper was collected at a former white model c school. black learners were admitted for the first time in 1992. increasing enrolment of black learners and the beginning of employment of black teaching staff led to ‘white flight’. at the time of the study the majority of the learners were black while the majority of the teachers were white. many of these teachers began their careers prior to 1992 and received their training and early professional grounding in a segregated education system as did the authors of this article. the school management and administration remains almost entirely white as can be observed from the following table: table 1 criteria school number of learners 1290 number of black learners 1225 (95%) number of white learners 65 (5%) total number of teaching staff 54 number of black teaching staff 18 (33%) number of white teaching staff 36 (67%) school management black 0 school management white 4 school administration black 1 school administration white 3 data collection and analysis since the majority of the teachers in this school are white, the teacher who was observed came from this population group. the choice was not a deliberate one, but merely reflects the demographics of the teaching staff. this teacher’s grade 10 history lessons were observed, videotaped and transcribed. informal interviews were also conducted after the lesson as a means of validating the data analysis. informed consent to collect data was obtained from the school principal, staff and teacher in the study. the school, staff and students were assured anonymity and confidentiality. since much of racist and sexist ideology was inscribed in and transmitted through language a critical discourse analysis approach was used to expose the workings of power for the perpetuation of racist and sexist power relations reflected in society. in the analysis of the classroom discourse the authors described the teacher’s activity and the interaction in the classroom in the past tense but observed the literary convention of discussing the teachergenerated text in the present tense. the findings apply specifically to the school studied. how general such discourses are across similar school contexts is a subject begging urgent large-scale empirical investigation. 31wilmot & naidoo — the transmission of racist and sexist discourses 31 overview of the lesson the topic, the spanish conquest of the aztecs, was narrated to learners and accompanied by the use of metaphors, similes, jokes and analogies that inferiorised the aztecs and the colonised, on the one hand, and aggrandised the spanish conquistador, hernan cortes and colonisation by force, on the other. the conquest of the aztecs was paralleled with the story of david and goliath. the teacher intimated that goliath’s fall was due to poor reflexes caused by a brain tumour and that the aztecs were colonised by a paltry number of white men due to their inferior intellectual abilities. learners’ questions regarding the verification of the teacher’s opinions presented as ‘fact’ were dismissed by the teacher. he then provided a description of the aztec capital, tenochtitlan, and the arrival of spanish conquistador, hernan cortes, whom he commended for his radical commitment, exemplified by the burning of his ships. the lesson was redolent with stereotypes of african people’s fear of reptiles, of suicide bombers’ belief in being rewarded ‘with 70 virgins in heaven’, of the highly emotional and irrational nature of women, and the superstitious beliefs of zulu people. racist discourses behind the doors of learning the teacher began the lesson by asserting his authority as the teacher and thus the source of knowledge in his opening sentences with the recurrent use of the first person pronoun ‘i’. the learners were informed that ‘i’ prepared the lesson and then the educator went on to share with the learners his ‘own life experience’. the teacher thus established his right to pronounce what he considered legitimate understanding of the topic and to legitimate his view as the only rational one. the teacher then set up a parallel between the aztec and african people who, he argued, shared a common fate: being colonised by a ‘handful of white men’. the aztecs and africans were othered as ‘those people’ and depicted as hapless victims who despite their numerical advantage were unable to stand up to the european colonisers. this depiction of the aztecs and africans inferiorises them – constructing them as deficient in the agency necessary to withstand even a paltry number of europeans. the teacher then discussed the military advantages enjoyed by the spanish, in particular their possession of horses. next the teacher commenced with an extended metaphor in which he likened the aztecs (and, by extension, africans) to the biblical goliath, while the colonisers, in this instance cortés and his party of 460 conquistadors, were compared to david. while superficially it would appear that this metaphor is intended to emphasise the disparity in population size and strength, it valorises the spanish, investing them with qualities of courage and righteousness that are traditionally associated with david, while the aztecs are compared to goliath – ‘the uncircumcised philistine ... (who defied) the armies of the living god’ (1 samuel 17). thus through the use of this analogy, the teacher tacitly invested the spanish conquistadors with moral authority and rectitude and vilified the aztecs and, by extension, the colonised africans. this metaphor also disseminates and bolsters eurocentric stereotypes of the heathenish nature of non-europeans. furthermore, the analogy can only be fully understood or appreciated by learners with a judeo-christian cultural frame of reference which means that any of the learners who do not have the benefit of the hegemonic cultural viewpoint established by the teacher in the classroom are excluded from accessing meaning. the teacher also clearly positioned himself as a christian by recalling his experience of sunday school and thus implicitly classified the classroom discourse within a western christian world view. in the discourse that followed goliath, who is representative of colonised non-europeans, is othered as ‘this man’. the educator then made extensive use of similes, focusing on goliath’s apparent intellectual limitations: he is described as being ‘as thick as two bricks’, having a non-functional brain and as being ‘stupid’. by logical extension, therefore, the teacher ascribed similar mental limitations to the colonised. the teacher then used antonymy to magnify the courage of david and, by implication, the colonisers. the learners were repeatedly reminded of the disparity in size in juxtapositions such as ‘big versus small’, ‘huge man ... little boy’ and ‘small and big’. this reinforces the impression of courage in the face of danger that is ascribed to david and consequently to the europeans. as the teacher’s exposition progressed he moved from the first person to the second person with the repeated use of the pronouns ‘we’, ‘our’ and ‘us’. this tactical deployment of second person pronouns is 32 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 201132 aimed at building a feeling of consensus. it creates the impression that the learners are in agreement with the teacher, particularly in phrases such as ‘we are told’, ‘we would call a catty’ and ‘we have proved our point’. further evidence of the teacher’s effort to pre-empt any challenge to his authority is the manner in which he dealt with the enquiry which one of the learners made. the learner wished to know how the nameless ‘they’, the anonymous authorities cited by the teacher, arrived at the conclusion that goliath had a brain tumour. this question would not only have provided an opportunity for discussion on methods of historical enquiry, how hypotheses can be validated and how historical reliability can be tested, but it could also have stimulated dialogue about how historical narratives are constructed, and provided an opening for an investigation based on the curriculum requirements contained in learning outcome 1 (practical competence) in which learners are required to ‘acquire and apply historical enquiry skills’. the teacher, however, was reticent to explore this avenue for at least three possible reasons: first, he seemed reluctant to relinquish any of his authority to the learners; secondly, ‘the fact’ that he had imparted to the learners seems to be dubious, particularly since the source of this information is unknown and, finally, it would appear that his presentation of his opinions as facts would have achieved his ideological goals rather than enable learners to discover the constructed nature of history as a discipline. his response therefore was to ridicule the learner ‘but duh, what person just stands there and watches a stone flying towards them?’ this implies that the assumption that goliath had a brain tumour is so obvious and self-evident and that one would be foolish to even question it. he proceeded to isolate the learner from his classmates and peers through a skilful interplay of pronouns: ‘you could turn around and call him stupid but the bible says don’t call your brother a fool so we will say he had a brain tumour’. by this juxtaposition the learner – ‘you’ – is set apart from the rest of the class – ‘we’ – and socially punished for even questioning the teacher’s assumptions. the message conveyed is that to uphold an opposing position is not only foolish but also uncharitable and unchristian. finally, the teacher’s ridicule of the learner’s question provoked laughter from his peers which was a clear indication to every other learner in the class that questioning would be socially punished. thus the teacher set the rules for what constitutes a ‘legitimate text’ and classified certain contributions and meanings by learners as illegitimate. this is communicated by means of disparagements such as “but duh” and later on ‘ag, come on’ and ‘of course’. the repeated pejorative synonyms and similes deployed by the teacher in his description of goliath’s putative brain cancer are also telling. the learners were told he had ‘a brain tumour’, his ‘brain was not functioning’ and he had a ‘cancer growing in is head’. the emphatic nature of the teacher’s assertions could indicate that he was aware of how tenuous these claims are and, unable to support them with evidence, he sought to use his authority as teacher to render them incontestable truths. the teacher ended this process of analogical reasoning with the statement ‘we have proved our point’. this would create the impression that the preceding discourse was expository and convincing, beginning with a proposition, followed by evidence and finally a justification. the teacher also used syntactical devices to create the impression of consensus. four rhetorical questions were used. ‘how old was david?’ ‘fourteen or fifteen?’ ‘what are we told?’ ‘what person just stands there and watches a stone flying towards them?’ these questions serve several functions: they are regulatory in function, ensuring that the learners are listening attentively; they contain implicit assumptions which the teacher seeks to impart to the learners, and they reinforce the notion of consensus. another striking lexical feature is the teacher’s use of an informal register. the colloquial tag ‘i mean please’ implies that what the teacher was about to say is self-evident and therefore beyond dispute whereas the slang contained in ‘... goliath checked him out as thick as two bricks’ reinforces his ridicule of the biblical character and by extension colonised peoples. the colloquialisms, however, also serve to create the surface impression that this is a democratic classroom environment in which the voices of the learners are recognised. this, however, is misleading since at no point did the teacher invite participation from the learners by asking engaging questions. the use of slang in this lesson appears at times to be a form of deficit discourse: the teacher adopted an informal register and relaxed linguistic boundaries in order to speak ‘in the language of the learners’. the teacher made an effort to speak in the learners’ register by adopting what he assumed to be their diction and cultural frame of reference. for example, the teacher 33wilmot & naidoo — the transmission of racist and sexist discourses 33 used the colloquialisms and slang which he appeared to believe the learners could relate to such as ‘chick’, ‘radical’, ‘oke’ and ‘vrekked’ and made repeated references to michael jackson to describe things that appear otherworldly and foreign: ‘a landing strip for aliens – michael jackson’ and ‘here comes a person with a white skin. he is not of this earth. he’s michael jackson.’ this does little, however, to bridge the generational and cultural gap since the language used was intended to ridicule rather than establish rapport with learners. the teacher proceeded to question cortés’ motives for burning his ships. again the spanish were valorised but the teacher also made a seemingly arbitrary comparison between the conquistadors and religious fundamentalist suicide bombers. the teacher deployed synonymy to emphasise the active agency of the spanish who were described as purposeful – ‘he’s got a mission, a purpose’. this contrasts with insinuations of aztec passivity. through the omission of a discussion of the rise of the aztec empire, its cultural advances and complex state structure, the aztecs are denied recognition and agency and are instead depicted as unresponsive and docile. this strategy enables a homogenisation of both the inferiority of the aztecs and the superiority of the spanish. again to establish superficial consensus the teacher posed the rhetorical questions: ‘do you think that that was a bit radical?’ the word ‘radical’ has multiple connotations and, although the teacher appeared to have used the word in the sense of drastic and extreme, it also reinforces the image of cortés as decisive, fearless and courageous. while this question appears to be an honest enquiry, it is a close-ended question aimed yet again at enforcing agreement. when one learner disagreed, the teacher’s response was to persuade the learner to agree. he paraphrased his initial question and then attempted to use group cohesion with the second person pronoun in ‘you would think they would work out a plan b’ in order to generate a feeling of consensus. the dissenting learner was not given the opportunity to explain his viewpoint and was silenced by the majority opinion. the teacher proceeded to depict the spanish and aztecs and, by extension, colonised peoples, in binary terms (cf table 2) table 2 spanish aztecs focused, resolute and active agents – speaking of cortés ‘he’s on this mind-blowing mission’ passive victims – ‘your attackers can just sit and wait’. religious – ‘cortés came from a roman catholic culture’ superstitious – ‘these people of five hundred years ago cloaked in all kinds of ignorance and superstition’ civilised – ‘the spanish had steel swords and steel amour and guns’ backward (and infantilised) – ‘wooden swords ... ag, come on, that’s what kids play with’ heroic – ‘those spanish soldiers must have suffered’. cowardly – described as ‘unnerved’ canny and wise – ‘cortés was a very astute, good politician ... that’s good politics’ politically naive – ‘enemies of the aztecs (could) start getting busy again’ scientific and rational – ‘for people who have scientific things here (points to his head), we know that an earthquake is a natural phenomenon’ irrational – ‘now for superstitious people an earthquake is a sign from the gods’ by using binary oppositions the teacher stressed the dissimilarity between cortés and a suicide bomber. in this instance, suicide bombers were othered as ‘those guys’ and placed in a separate category not only from cortés but from the rest of humanity. the teacher proceeded to dismiss their motives as fatuous and shallow since their reason for acting was said to be to obtain ‘seventy chicks and all the nice fruit juices and things ...’ this provides a deliberately caricatured and superficial description of a suicide bomber’s logic in order to easily ridicule and dismiss his/her actions. the teacher proceeded to imply that suicide bombers come from a ‘suicide culture’. he thus established a mental scheme for the learners based on the 34 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 201134 following classification: christians (as exemplified by cortés) are daring and brave, risking their lives for a mission or purpose. muslim suicide bombers, by contrast, are venal and shallow, giving up their lives for sensual pleasure and a material reward in the afterlife. while christians have respect for life and condemn suicide, muslims come from a ‘suicide culture’ where life is not valued. thus the teacher’s instructional discourse was redolent with islamophobia. at this point in the lesson the teacher made an intercultural comparison between zulu people and the aztecs with particular reference to their attitudes towards horses. he also compared what he termed aztec ‘superstition’ to african customs and beliefs and by means of this cross-cultural comparison made inferences not only about the aztecs but also about black south africans. first, he stated ‘zulus do not like horses’ which is an ahistorical generalisation since it creates the impression of zulus as changeless and culturally static. it is also a disingenuous ploy by the teacher to minimise dingaan’s distrust of piet retief, diminishing it to a superstition regarding men on horses. this greatly over-simplifies the complexity of voortrekker-zulu relations and trivialises dingaan’s motives, making him appear ignorant and foolish. south africa was also described as a ‘little country’ with ‘great mysteries’. this implies that south africa is somehow inconsequential when compared with other ‘bigger’ countries and that the ways of africans are murky and inscrutable. this is clearly a eurocentric view of africa, ‘the dark continent’, which holds that western science, logic and rationality is the norm whereby other societies should be measured. the teacher’s deliberate repetition of the word ‘wizard’ to describe dingaan’s perception of retief only serves to reinforce the concept of africans as ignorant and motivated by false notions. when a learner added that sotho people eat horse meat the teacher responded again by contrasting african customs with ‘european ways’ and through a comparison denigrated the learner’s contribution in a disparaging comment that makes light of sotho cultural practices. the teacher’s syntax is an effective indicator of the power relations that were at play in this classroom context. fairclough argues that the identification of the three major modes of expression (declarative, grammatical question and imperative) can all be used to expose and interrogate the power relations operating in discourse. in the following extract all three modes of communication indicate a disparity in power where the teacher is positioned as the voice of knowledge and authority: i saw an interesting thing the other day. watch the word culture. i know that in african culture snakes and lizards have a bad meaning, okay? the teacher began in the declarative mode ‘i’ (subject) ‘saw’ (verb) ‘an interesting thing’ (object). this constructs a discursive orientation where the speaker, in this instance the teacher, is positioned as a transmitter of information and the learners are positioned as the receivers (fairclough, 2001:104-105). with this opening, the teacher asserted his authority as the source of information. the next sentence is in the imperative mode in which the teacher commands the learners, who are expected to be compliant and to act in a certain manner, in this case listen attentively to the teacher’s construction of the concept culture. again, the implication is that power resides with the teacher. finally the tag (‘okay?’) at the end of the last statement serves as grammatical question. in this instance, however, the question is phrased in the declarative mode and is in fact a blunt statement. the effect of this ‘question’ is regulatory, since it is aimed at ensuring agreement from the learners. thus, even in this short extract, the teacher used a variety of syntactical devices to assert his position of expertise and authority. in the narrative that followed several themes emerged, namely black hysterics versus white equanimity and african ignorance versus western reason. the teacher expanded ‘the superstitious nature of africans’ by describing how a petrol attendant was distressed by the sight of a dragon lizard that had been left in an idling vehicle. he described how he attempted to pacify the hysterical man and expounded on the beauty of snakes. the petrol attendants are described in language which suggests buffoonery and panic through extended synonymy and repetition: ‘there was screaming. he made such a scene ... there was a lot of screaming and shouting.’ the lack of emotional control is strongly contrasted with the teacher’s composure: ‘i thought ... i looked in the car... i tried to calm him down’. the teacher maintains his composure, investigates the problem and draws a rational conclusion. on the basis of his investigation 35wilmot & naidoo — the transmission of racist and sexist discourses 35 he attempts to pacify the hysterical black men. thus the underlying message is that a white man, with his superior intellect and culture, is required to address the disorder caused by the irrational behaviour of black men. the teacher continued in the declarative mode to state that ‘in fact they (snakes) are just creatures of nature’. thus the teacher is depicted as the custodian of ‘facts’ which he seeks to impart to others who are lacking in insight and knowledge. by stressing that it is a fact that snakes are ‘creatures of nature’ he implies that his knowledge is neutral and value-free. on the other hand, the petrol attendants are constructed as irrational, and lacking in common sense. as a form of disclaimer, however, to mitigate the possibility of reproach or being viewed as racist the teacher referred repeatedly to the petrol attendant as ‘my friend’. in her examination of desegregation in american schools, picower observes that for many white teachers their social interactions with black people were of a hierarchical nature, in which black people in subordinated positions render unskilled labour or service to whites. according to picower, this establishes hierarchical assumptions “setting up the association that people of colour are there to serve or work for white people” (picower, 2009:201-202). the teacher also invoked a racist notion of the evolutionary superiority of westerners: ‘these people have not got to that stage of evolution.’ the teacher thus appealed to notions of biological superiority grounded on social darwinism. this use of a pseudo-scientific idea of evolutionary superiority is presumably intended to invest the underlying racist assumptions with scientific authority. soudien identified this kind of discourse as a form of ‘knowing’ which dominated discourses about race during the era of national party rule. he defines ‘knowing’ as “exercise of power of those who determine the conditions of knowledge and its production and reproduction in particular context” (soudien, 2007:443). soudien points out that the dominant european discourse used a biological rationale to justify white dominance: “it drew on biological justifications which unequivocally established the superiority on the human evolutionary ladder of people described as white and european” (soudien, 2007:443). according to soudien, the school played an important role during the apartheid era as the “key site for the production and reproduction of this kind of knowing” (soudien, 2007:443). the teacher’s tone when discussing african culture was frequently derisory. in addition to the strongly framed content selection, he omitted to make references to african accomplishments or affirm african initiative. in discussing the issue of ‘culture and superstition’: he asserted that ‘zulus do not like horses’ and believed that retief was a wizard since he rode on horseback, while ‘the sotho love their horses’. when a learner interrupted to inform the class that some sotho people eat horse meat, the teacher quipped: ‘that makes sense. when your four-by-four packs up you eat it and buy yourself another landrover’. the teacher then described the alarm that the aztecs would have experienced at their first encounter with white-skinned europeans and likened this to meeting michael jackson or the sighting of a ufo. while the tone was derisory it was veiled by the use of humour which formed a large part of the teacher’s communicative repertoire. humour was used as a subtle means of transmitting ideological meanings without their being apparent. it offers a further type of disclaimer against the possibility of being viewed as racist since the teacher’s reaction, if challenged, could be a protestation of innocence: ‘can’t you take a joke?’ the meanings communicated are, however, not diminished by humour. the joking tone creates an opaque type of communication which conceals its own meanings even as it transmits them, and provides the speaker with a defence should he be confronted. the attitude appears to suggest that humour offers the speaker a special licence to say whatever he pleases, and affords him immunity against the exposure of derision, bias and derogation. sexist discourses behind the doors of learning the classroom discourse was also marked by sexist gender stereotyping as well as the virtual exclusion of women from the historical narrative, except when they were cast in roles of disruptive influences, ‘girlfriends’ and objects of male fantasy. literary scholars sandra gilbert and susan gubar argue that in male-authored texts women are frequently depicted as “mere properties ... generated solely by male expectations and designs” (gilbert & guar, 1979:133). frequently men construct a binary depiction of 36 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 201136 women as either an “angel in the house” or the dangerous, unruly woman endowed with undertones of sexual force. (gilbert & gubar, 1979:227) in the following instance not merely the semiotics of the linguistic sign but also body language and gesture convey the impression that the female figure described the teacher is the wild, wayward demonic variety: i was filling up with petrol and the next moment a black beetle arrived, a volkswagen. the lady left the engine running, a blond woman (gestures cascading hair and breasts) and she got out ... her appearance is sudden (‘the next moment’) and the impression is created of someone who is impulsive and unrestrained (she ‘left the engine running’). the class was first told that she was a ‘lady’ which has connotations of refinement and good manners, but she was then termed a ‘woman’, a neutral gender noun, which casts aside the initial impression that the word ‘lady’ may have created. the teacher added that she was blond and accompanied this description with a suggestive gesture indicating cascading hair and breasts. shortly thereafter she was associated with a dragon lizard which caused great consternation. the underlying gender stereotypical message appears to be the disruptive influence of the wild and wayward woman who is the cause of male anxiety. highly masculinist language and imagery was also used, especially in the teacher’s discussion of suicide bombers. the teacher used the masculine pronoun ‘he’, suggesting that all suicide bombers are male while women were objectified as ‘chicks’ and associated with ‘all the nice fruit juices and things’ which implies that they are provided for male consumption. the word ‘chick’ has strong connotations of female submission. thus a binary opposition is established between men as active agents and women as passive objects. indeed, women were only mentioned on three occasions in the entire lesson, cast either as submissive objects for male use and consumption, as wild and disruptive, or a ‘girlfriends’. the teacher also appeared to focus his lesson on the male members of the class, to the virtual exclusion of the females. for example, he seemed to assume that males initiate relationships and send valentines: ‘on valentine’s day do you guys send pictures of kidneys to your girlfriends? you send pictures of ... hearts.’ in the next sentence he again addressed the male members of the class: ‘we talk about a broken heart if your girlfriend has broken up with you.’ this language was not only exclusionary of the fourteen females in the class but again constructs men as active agents and women as recipients of male attention. conclusion this study commenced with the questions: does history discourse in the classroom provide opportunities for border-crossing? are students provided opportunities to engage with texts that affirm and interrogate their historical discourses? are students encouraged to produce multi-perspectival texts? the analysis has shown that the discourses enacted in the lesson were a far cry from the intended curriculum that advocates that history studies provide students with opportunities to engage with texts that both affirm and interrogate their histories. on the contrary, the lesson illustrated the transmission of racist and sexist ideology that denied students access to a specialised form of knowledge and procedural skills which are prescribed by the history curriculum. the weak classification of subject content results in the majority of the lesson being deployed for the transmission of racist and sexist ideology. in terms of creating classroom conditions that facilitate pupils’ ability to speak, write and listen in a ‘multi-perspectival language’, the asymmetrical power relations between teacher and learners resulted in the teacher’s discourses being legitimised. the results are consistent with carter et al. (2009) who note the non-reconstructive responses of white teachers in former whites-only schools towards ‘dismantling apartheid’ and that perceived group interest overrode national equity goals. with reference to pedagogy, the teacher’s practice was informed by neither critical nor post-conflict pedagogy. the limitations of critical pedagogy in practice were evident as it cannot be assumed that teachers put aside their individual and group interests to become agents of transformation. having identified the transmission of racist and sexist discourses in the classroom, how does one explain it? to explain the oppressive pedagogy of the teachers it must also be borne in mind that the teachers’ habitus itself is the product of a historical process and is not static. with changes in the political 37wilmot & naidoo — the transmission of racist and sexist discourses 37 and moral field, the teacher’s discourse points to a disjuncture between his habitus and the official pedagogical field. since habitus is durable and transposable but not immutable with re-education, teachers would be in a better position to embrace change and achieve congruency with broader society in a process which bourdieu terms metanoia: “a mental revolution, a transformation of one’s whole vision of the social world” (maton, 2009:60). notwithstanding the need for urgent attention to history teaching in schools in the post-apartheid era, the implications for the learners who are currently being subjected to oppressive discourses are dire. a further aspect of bourdieu’s theory that will help to elucidate the discursive practices of the teacher is his theory of symbolic violence. this is the term that bourdieu gives to the exercise of power by a social agent who holds symbolic capital, to impose meanings and perceptions upon a subjected agent. this may lead to the misrecognition of self in which the subjected individual comes to misunderstand his/her own nature and accepts the imposed meanings and values as legitimate. the dominated social agent fails to recognise the arbitrary nature of such constructions and may therefore come to embrace these coerced thoughts and perceptions as correct, natural and just, even when they are at odds with his/her sense of self (maton, 2009:59). the racist and sexist discourses that dominated the history topic subjected learners to a form of symbolic violence which may lead students to ontological misrecognition of self and race. abdi provides a description of what may be called the ‘ideal’ situation in which teachers respond ‘positively and effectively’ to the learners’ needs. in such a situation, he argues, teachers must be capable of encouraging and motivating learners and creating a classroom environment that empowers learners to “attain both social and academic confidence to learn, achieve and develop”. he regards this as an essential part of nation-building in south africa (abdi, 2009:235-236). citing soudien, abdi argues that the role of the teacher must be conspicuously marked in his or her opposition to inequalities and discrimination ... (education) must culturally liberate african students. this liberation will enhance the self-esteem as well as the selfefficacy of these students, who should all see the positive nature of inter-group collaboration among all south africans (abdi, 2009:235-236). the challenge for teacher education is to enable teachers through preand in-service programmes to understand the difference between ideological statements and strategies and historical statements and procedures; to be forceful agents for social justice, equity and human rights. references abdi a 2009. integrated education and black development in post-apartheid south africa: critical analyses. race, ethnicity and education, 12(2):197-215. apple m 2004. ideology and curriculum. london: routledge. bourdieu p 1993. sociology in question. r. nice (transl). london: sage. carr w 1993. reconstructing the curriculum debate: an editorial introduction. curriculum studies, 1(1):5-9. carter p, caruthers j & foster j 2009. knowing their lines: how social boundaries undermine equitybased integration. perspectives in education, 27:352-365. cornbleth c 1990. curriculum in context. london: the falmer press. department of education 2003. national curriculum statement grades 10-12 (general) history. pretoria: department of education. fairclough n 2001. language and power. edinburgh gate: pearson education. gilbert, sm and gubar s, (1979) the madwoman in the attic, new haven: yale university press gilbert s & gubar s 1988. no man’s land: volume 1. new haven: yale university press. giroux h 1994. teachers, public life and curriculum reform. peabody journal of education, 69(3):35-47. jansen j 2004. race and education after ten years. perspectives in education, 22(4):122. lovet t & smith d 1995. the origins and nature of curriculum. curriculum: action on reflection revisited. 3rd ed. wentworth falls, nsw. social science press. maton k 2009. habitus. in: p bourdieu. key concepts (ed michael grenfell). uk: acumen publishing. 38 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 201138 picower b 2009. the unexamined whiteness of teaching: how white teachers maintain and enact dominant racial ideologies. race, ethnicity and education, 12(2):197-215. soudien c 2010. the reconstitution of privilege: integration in former white schools in south africa. journal of social issues, 66(2):352-355. soudien c 2007. the asymmetries of contact: an assessment of 30 years of school integration in south africa. race, ethnicity and education, 10(4):439-456. thompson j b 1990. ideology and modern culture. cambridge: polity press. thomson p 2009. habitus. in: p bourdieu. key concepts (ed michael grenfell). uk: acumen publishing. van dijk t 1993. analyzing racism through discourse analysis. in: j stanfield (ed). race and ethnicity in research methods. california: sage. van dijk t 2001. critical discourse analysis. in: d tannen et al. (eds). handbook of discourse analysis. oxford: blackwell. 61 research article 2021 39(1): 61-76 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) teaching in the covid-19 era: understanding the opportunities and barriers for teacher agency abstract the school closures necessitated by the covid-19 pandemic created a rapid shift to alternative modes of educational delivery, primarily online learning and teacher-supported home-schooling. this shift has revealed deep inequities in education systems worldwide, as many children lost access to teachers and schooling. an effective response to these changes has tested teachers’ personal capacities and individual and collective agency intensely. the research lab we report on within this paper aimed to develop a better understanding of teacher agency in meeting the challenges of the pandemic and the physical and relational enablers and constraints of their environment. drawing on case study reports from six international contexts and a series of online discussions with research lab participants, this study explores teachers’ enactment of agency in the context of various circumstances and environments. the authors argue that it is imperative that education systems support the enhancement of teachers’ personal and collective agency in the face of continued disruption to schooling and ongoing challenges to educational equity. keywords: covid-19; distance learning; home-schooling; parentteacher partnerships; teacher agency. 1. introduction since march 2020, governments around the world have temporarily or partially closed schools in an attempt to contain the spread of the covid-19 pandemic. this has had considerable implications for members of the teaching profession as schools move to online and hybrid models of learning. where schools have reopened, teaching is typically taking place under very different conditions involving strict hygiene measures and physical distancing. in response, teachers have been forced to adapt their practice in order to meet the diverse needs of their pupils and wider communities. the extent to which this has been achieved varies according to many contextual factors. however, emerging evidence suggests young people author: prof m.c.m. ehren1 dr r. madrid2 ms sara romiti 3 dr. p.w. armstrong4 dr p. fisher5 ms d.l. mcwhorter6 affiliation: 1vrije universiteit amsterdam, the netherlands 2pontificia universidad católica de valparaíso, chile 3invalsi, italy 4university of manchester, uk 5vancouver island university, canada 6independent education research consultant, canada doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i1.5 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 61-76 published: 12 march 2021 received: 9 november 2020 accepted: 23 december 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8159-7675 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8089-3384 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3043-2934 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 622021 39(1): 62-76 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) from the most disadvantaged backgrounds have been disproportionately affected by these circumstances (unesco, 2020). this paper presents the outcomes of an online research lab, involving 13 colleagues from 10 countries, established to understand the extent to which teachers have been able to change their practice to ensure (the continuation of) learning and students’ well-being during the pandemic and the conditions that have facilitated and/or impeded this. we use the term “practice” throughout to refer to the technical core of teaching, such as teaching and assessment, either online, in school or through blended modes. 2. conceptual framework the conceptual framework that underpins this paper focuses on the challenges and demands that teachers across the globe face in response to the covid-19 pandemic, drawing from the concept of agency, more specifically pragmatic agency as the “ability to innovate when routines break down” (hitlin & elder, 2007: 176), whilst simultaneously acknowledging the role of the environment in the display and enactment of individual and collective agency. in this section we further elaborate our understanding of teacher agency and how this concept is relevant to understanding how teachers have responded to the challenges the pandemic has had/is having on them. 2.1 covid-19 and challenges for the teaching profession unesco’s global education monitoring (gem) report (2020) paints a clear picture that the pandemic has been significantly more disruptive to disadvantaged students across all levels of education, a fact that may have long-lasting implications for intergenerational mobility, income inequality and health disparities. throughout the pandemic, children from poorer communities as well as girls, the disabled, immigrants and ethnic minorities in many countries have been, for a multitude of reasons including poor connectivity and a lack of parental support, at a distinct educational disadvantage. according to the 2020 gem report, educational inequality was already high with 258 million children and youth excluded from education globally, but these disparities have worsened during the pandemic, which has seen over 90% of the global student population affected by school closures. lessons from the ebola crisis indicate that health crises can leave many behind, in particular, the poorest girls who tend to leave school altogether. overcoming these growing inequalities requires extraordinary resilience, skills and a redefined understanding of teachers´ professionalism and professional identity. not only are teachers expected to have the technical proficiency to cope with the challenges and consequences of school closures, they are also required to be attentive to local values and establish educational partnerships with parents and communities to ensure an inclusive and effective approach to repairing the learning loss and socio-emotional damage to child development brought about by the pandemic. such professionalism requires collective agency: the ability of individual teachers to act collectively and draw on systems of mutual support. this professionalism also requires personal agency: the mindset and dispositions to respond to changing conditions in order to serve the learning and well-being needs of students appropriately. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 632021 39(1): 63-76 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 ehren, madrid, romiti, armstrong, fisher & mcwhorter teaching in the covid-19 era 2.2 teacher agency teachers’ mindsets and behaviours as well as whether and how they engage in change processes have been the object of significant past research. bandura’s (2006) social cognitive theory emphasises the evolvement and exercise of human agency and that people can exercise some influence over what they do. bandura defines agency as “the capacity to exercise control over the nature and quality of one’s life” (2001: 1). human agency sees people as self-organising, proactive, self-regulating and self-reflecting, where self–efficacy affects one’s goals and behaviours and is influenced by one’s actions and conditions in the environment (schunk & meece, 2006). this conceptualisation includes individual characteristics that allow for agency (“capacity”), while also connecting agency with action: work-related activities and behaviours individuals or collectives engage in and how these shape their professional identity. according to eteläpelto et al. (2013: 61) “professional agency is practiced when teachers and/ or communities in schools influence, make choices, and take stances in ways that affect their work and their professional identity”. imants and van der wal (2020) explain how agency is associated with individuals who, alone or in groups, in a given situation, make decisions, take initiatives, act proactively rather than reactively and deliberately strive and function to reach a certain end. this implies that agency is about individuals and collectives who are interacting with and within specific contexts. below we will further explore the capacities individual teachers would need to exercise agency in response to the pandemic (knowledge, skills, selfefficacy), as well as the environment that allows and prevents the enactment of their agency. 2.3 teachers’ individual capacities teachers’ personal competencies (skills and knowledge), beliefs (professional and personal) and values are shaped in the past, acted out in the present, but also structure orientations towards the future in shaping someone’s aspirational capacity. teachers’ skill level affects their perceived self-efficacy as it is a function of the specific demand of a task and the challenge teachers face to be able to fulfil their role effectively. bandura (2006) explains how someone’s self-efficacy appraisal reflects the level of difficulty individuals believe they can surmount and this will relate to whether the activity is easily performable. those teachers who require further development of their own skill set are likely to have more limited aspirations. 2.4 self-efficacy bandura’s (2006) theory explains how perceived self-efficacy is an important element of agency as it determines how environmental opportunities and impediments (such as school closures) are perceived, how these affect the choice of activities, and how long people will persevere when confronting obstacles (pajares, 1997). perceived self-efficacy is concerned with “people’s beliefs in their capabilities to produce given attainments” (bandura, 2006: 307). although efficacy beliefs are multifaceted, social cognitive theory identifies similar subskills underlying proficient performance across different spheres of activity and domains of functioning, such as skills for diagnosing task demands, constructing and evaluating alternative courses of action, setting proximal goals to guide one’s efforts and creating self-incentives to sustain engagement in taxing activities and to manage stress (bandura, 1991). moreover, teachers’ self-efficacy depends, according to vieluf, kunter and van de vijver (2013), on an evaluation of their own competences, but also the conviction that student performance is malleable. we consider self-efficacy to be highly relevant for teachers to respond to the challenges of a pandemic and thus contend that teachers who have high perceived selfefficacy are likely to believe in their ability to affect student performance, regardless of http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 642021 39(1): 64-76 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) students’ home environments, and perform teaching tasks at a specified level of quality in either an online environment or one of reduced access to in-school learning. 2.5. collective agency the literature on teacher agency is consistent in arguing that agency is simultaneously an individual and a socially mediated phenomena (bandura, 2006; biesta, priestley & robinson, 2015, hökkä, vähäsantanen & mahlakaarto, 2017). as hökkä et al. state, “individuals can be regarded as actors who are goal-oriented, and whose behaviour is determined by both self-efficacy and collective efficacy” (2017: 37). therefore, teacher agency in the context of the pandemic may be presumed to reflect an enactment of both individual capacities, the confidence and competence of individual teachers and collective agency and the ability of the systems surrounding teachers to enable and support their collective capacity. 2.6 an enabling environment: physical and relational constraints priestley, biesta and robinson (2015) and bandura (2006) explain that whether a repertoire of potential practice is translated into action not only depends on the repertoire itself and individual capacity, but also on the contextual conditions in which individuals operate. in the context of a pandemic, these conditions are particularly relevant and include students’ home environment and its suitability for learning (including access to a computer, internet connectivity and physical learning space). these elements refer to what priestley et al. (2015) describe as material aspects of the context i.e. the availability of physical resources and the nature of physical constraints. secondly, we highlight home-school relations as a relevant condition to teacher agency. in the context of the pandemic, relations extend beyond the school gate and include relations between teachers and parents. these educational partnerships are particularly relevant when schools are closed as teachers have to rely on parents to support learners in accessing and participating in home-schooling and online learning. various studies indicate that strong educational partnerships between teachers, parents and the local community contribute positively to the development of students. reviews by goodall (2017), epstein (2011) and menheere and hooge (2010) describe the type of coordination, two-way communication and knowledge sharing that is needed to establish such partnerships, as well as the interventions that are effective in supporting parental involvement, particularly of parents who are either not significantly involved in their children’s education or who are not involved at all. both physical and relational conditions have a temporal dimension as they change over time, such as when students are provided with laptops to access online learning, or when teachers improve their communication with parents. priestley et al. (2015) emphasise this temporal dimension as they conceptualise agency as an emergent phenomenon of the ecological conditions through which it is enacted, rather than a (singular) property or competence residing in an individual. teachers are seen as acting according to their environment rather than simply in their environment and so their agency results from the interplay of individual efforts, available resources and contextual and structural factors. although the social context in which they work constrains their work, they can also influence their environment and the extent to which they will do so will depend on their interpretation of these contextual constraints and boundaries. the research lab we report on within this paper aimed to develop a better understanding of teacher agency in meeting the challenges of the pandemic and the physical and relational http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 652021 39(1): 65-76 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 ehren, madrid, romiti, armstrong, fisher & mcwhorter teaching in the covid-19 era constraints of their environment. below we outline the methodology used in the research lab before presenting findings from the countries represented in the lab. 3. methodology the methodology underpinning this paper is an online research lab with members from the international congress on school effectiveness and improvement (icsei). a research lab is a collaborative research initiative structured around a set of webinars with further research activities in between sessions to analyse and share data from existing studies and work towards a joint outcome. the method was developed to continue comparative research in a time where international travel is restricted due to covid-19 and concerns about climate change. 3.1 sample of country participants icsei members were invited to sign up for the research lab in april and may 2020. the group of participants who started the work in june 2020 consisted of 13 academics and practitioners from 10 countries (netherlands, canada [ontario and british columbia], england, wales, australia, us, trinidad and tobago, indonesia, italy and chile). findings reported here are from a sample of countries in italics. 3.2 data collection and analysis at the core of the lab is a series of four webinars. these were used as a forum to organise, structure and consider the collection of country-level data and to facilitate small group discussions to review existing and relevant research being undertaken by participants between webinar sessions. the first webinar started with the scoping of the question and defining themes for further study. between the first and second webinar, participants worked in small groups on conceptualising and describing the theme and research questions and scoping the type of data/information/examples to collect. in the second webinar, each small group presented their thematic description and highlights from the initial scoping/data collection with input from the wider group. following the second webinar, each country participant worked towards a country profile, addressing the questions agreed on in the initial two lab meetings. participants collected new data or analysed emerging data from other studies and/ or documents and national monitoring reports to inform the report. the approach was specific to each country, taking into account an emerging issue where data collection was restricted due to (part or full) closure of schools. in the third session, the profiles were discussed in the context of the original research questions to explore how the findings compared against the conceptual framework and where additional country-level information was needed. the country profiles were then developed alongside the conceptual framework and a draft paper, which was discussed and finalised in webinar four. appendix a offers a summary overview of the reports and data we drew on for each country profile. 4. findings 4.1 teachers’ agency across the countries in our lab we find that many teachers at the start of the pandemic had to develop new approaches and digital skills when moving to distance teaching. in chile for example, a survey by an ngo “educación 2020” in march and april 2020 showed that 41% of teachers declared the need to develop their own digital competences. the extent to which http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 662021 39(1): 66-76 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) teachers initially shifted their pedagogical approaches however varied within and across countries and seems to be a function of whether they see the long term benefit of developing new practices as well as the wider expectations, guidelines and/or requirements to change and their available time to do so. concerns raised by teachers in ontario when schools were closed (end of the 2019–2020 school year) reflect the experiences in many other countries: they felt challenged in working from home with school aged children who also needed support and help with home-schooling and online learning. teachers initially seem to make no or limited changes to their approach; where there are changes these would include a copy and paste of existing timetables and set of activities to an online mode. teacher surveys from england suggest that almost half of exam-year pupils in years 11 and 13 were not provided with work by their school, and just over half of all pupils taught remotely did not usually have any online lessons, defined as live or real-time lessons. furthermore, offline provision, such as worksheets or recorded video, was much more common than “live” online lessons (eivers, 2020; moss et al., 2020). survey data from this context also indicated that students had uneven access to resources whereby teachers had to prioritise resources that did not require online access accordingly, such as the worksheets they would normally use in class or for homework (moss et al., 2020; lucas, nelson & sims, 2020). the initial phase of school closures was dominated by a sense of crisis where teachers not only had to learn skills but also had to ensure students’ access to it and student wellbeing, e.g. checking how families are coping in terms of basic food, health and emotional needs (lucas et al., 2020). workload is often high and, in british columbia, the netherlands and england, teachers managed by paring down curricula expectations, with a heightened focus on basic academic subjects, key learning objectives, reinforcement of previous learning, revising content and/or teaching new content over a longer period of time (moss et al., 2020; fisher et al., 2020). workload appeared to decline following the initial phase of the pandemic as teachers started to develop new skills and practices and students gained access to virtual learning technology and became familiar with new routines (teachertapp, 2020). over time however, teachers seemed to adapt to online teaching; findings from england suggest that teachers engaged more with the format of online learning over the course of the lockdown. data suggest that between april and july 2020 the percentage of teachers delivering online video lessons jumped from 7% to 29% in primary schools and 15% to 35% in secondary schools. in addition, compared with the previous year (41%), nearly 90% of teachers have taken part in online professional development during the pandemic, suggesting there is an appetite amongst teachers to engage with online learning for their own development and to support student learning (moss et al., 2020). however, when schools partially reopened, teachers had to adapt their routines once more to accommodate blended learning models and physical distancing in schools. during this phase, teachers from the netherlands and in british columbia again reported an increase in workload (aob survey, 2020) agency seems to be enhanced when teachers see the long-term benefits of investing in the development of high-quality online teaching and development of their skills and when leadership ensures a coordinated response. with respect to the first condition, dutch teachers in a study by van der spoel, noroozi, schuurink and van ginkel (2020) pointed to long term benefits of the invested time in having substantially developed their ict skills which would allow them to continue using technology in their teaching, particularly for formative http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 672021 39(1): 67-76 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 ehren, madrid, romiti, armstrong, fisher & mcwhorter teaching in the covid-19 era assessments, activating students and collaborative learning. these teachers felt that their enhanced ict skills enabled them to teach more efficiently in the long run and be better able to differentiate their teaching and be more goal-directed in their teaching. in british columbia another long-term benefit was that many teachers adopted a more individualised approach to instruction and assessment facilitating a welcome shift towards more inquiry-based and personalised approaches to practice. teachers who see the long-term benefits also tend to experience less stress it seems. dutch teachers with the highest level of working extra hours reported less stress when having high job satisfaction and a supportive work climate. not all teachers see the long-term benefits of home-schooling and online learning. a survey by the canadian teachers federation of 17,744 teachers across canada (of which 7237 teachers, or 41.49% of the total respondents from ontario) suggests teachers do not believe that online teaching and learning offers a good alternative to in-school teaching; more than 7 in 10 teachers are concerned about ensuring that students get what they need to be successful through online instruction, and two thirds of teachers are concerned about the impact of digital technologies on students. one of the reasons may be the absence of a confirmed “best practice” and methods for online teaching. a small-scale (unpublished) study in england (greenslade, 2020) of over 400 humanities teachers in primary and secondary education, for example, highlights the lack of a purposeful and widely accessible framework to enable effective distance learning. this study also indicated that teachers felt online delivery requires a trade-off between pupil participation and workload. in british columbia on the contrary, teachers in fisher et al.’s (2020) study indicated how, in some cases, teaching online led to the development of stronger, richer and closer relationships between teachers and students (and their families) where teachers gained a far more holistic view of their learners. research from the netherlands (aob, april 2020) furthermore points to the importance of coordination between online teaching and virtual platform usage, particularly in respect of parental communication. for example, 70% of teachers in secondary education and vet experienced a particularly high workload when there was a lack of coordination over online teaching and communication where teachers have to use multiple platforms to communicate with parents and students. the lack of clear boundaries between work and home adds to the stress, particularly when teachers also have to home-school their own children, or when their school has little capacity to support online teaching. this finding was also reported in british columbia. findings from england indicate that some larger schools had more staff and worked on a rota basis to spread workload; where this was not the case, teachers’ workload increased dramatically (moss et al., 2020). 4.2 enabling environment: school and community level (resources and relationships) teachers’ agency is particularly conditioned by pupils’ home environment including access to appropriate technology and suitable learning space and conditions. such access has been problematic for disadvantaged families living in deprived areas. in chile, a study by an ngo “educación 2020” in march and april 2020 showed that 50% of the students do not have permanent access to a computer and that over 75% of the students do not feel they have the conditions for learning at home (i.e. they do not have a private room where they can study or learning support from someone in the home). furthermore, families in poor socio-economic circumstances often lack the social capital to support home-schooling and online teaching. a survey by the dutch inspectorate of http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 682021 39(1): 68-76 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) education1 (administered between 15 and 23 april 2020) and the aob, early april (2020) indicated that 10% of the student population was not accessing online teaching due to a lack of parental supervision, parents not having the it skills or not speaking dutch. similar findings come from british columbia, italy and england where teachers reported a complete absence of some children and their families or where parents were unable to support learning at home. survey data from england indicated that the type of remote learning teachers offered (particularly through worksheets) was unmanageable for parents and not enabling students to progress. students thus required more live online lessons (43%), direct communication with their teachers (42%) and video clips to explain subject matter (42%) (parentkind, 2020). similarly, research undertaken in italy with 16,000 teachers highlighted the difficulties of the new relationship with families including interference and inadequate support from parents (sird, 2020). in italy, the pandemic revealed parents’ unequal access and use of an electronic school register, used to check student attendance, absences, delays, classwork, homework and assessments, where such lack of access would normally be handled (at least in part) through face-to-face communication (soriani, 2020). in some cases, the local community may alleviate some of the constraints. an example from italy (soriani, 2020) shows how parents can support each other in using digital platforms, managing homework and structuring the communication with schools through whatsapp groups and online mailing lists. however, parents who do not speak italian or have poor digital skills would often also be excluded. 4.3 enabling environment: capacity at the system level relevant conditions for teacher agency are also located at the system level. burns (2012) for example talks about social capital of education systems and how this “intangible capital stock” would allow people to have greater access to resources, share new information and collaborate to improve practice. a coordinated approach by the national councils for primary and secondary education, the ministries for education and economic affairs and a national association of school boards in the netherlands ensured that all students had access to online learning when schools were closed. these organisations collectively investigated how many students and teachers did not have an internet connection or laptop at home. based on this information, telecom providers searched for the best solutions together with the parties involved, such as issuing hotspots or public wi-fi networks and arranging laptops for vulnerable children where needed. in addition, npo z@ppelin, a national broadcaster, initially offered instruction on television for children without a laptop/tablet. clear communication by relevant authorities and sharing of information ensures that responses of various stakeholders are lined up and enable teachers to know which practices they need to change and how and are enabled to do so. for example, in british columbia there was clear communication of an expectation that all teachers should connect with each family before beginning remote instruction where they could choose the type of medium that was most suitable to the families’ access to, and use of, media (e.g. phone, email, text message, messenger or drive-by visits) (fisher et al., 2020). 1 https://www.onderwijsinspectie.nl/onderwerpen/afstandsonderwijs-tijdens-covid-19/documenten/ publicaties/2020/05/13/covid-19-monitor-po http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 https://www.onderwijsinspectie.nl/onderwerpen/afstandsonderwijs-tijdens-covid-19/documenten/publicaties/2020/05/13/covid-19-monitor-po https://www.onderwijsinspectie.nl/onderwerpen/afstandsonderwijs-tijdens-covid-19/documenten/publicaties/2020/05/13/covid-19-monitor-po 692021 39(1): 69-76 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 ehren, madrid, romiti, armstrong, fisher & mcwhorter teaching in the covid-19 era examples where this was not happening are from ontario where education policy regarding school re-opening in september changed over time, causing a great deal of confusion and anxiety among teachers, students, parents and school/system leaders. the confusion was similar to the situation in england, also caused by a stand-off between teacher unions and government relating to when it would be safe for teachers (and pupils) to return to school. this created an unfortunate situation in which teachers (and leaders) were effectively caught between very reasonable personal concerns over their own health and safety and professional concerns over the detrimental effect of school closures on the learning and pastoral needs of their students. certain factions of the media stoked this issue with accusations of laziness directed at the teaching profession, a perspective that found some support amongst members of the public and left many teachers and school leaders feeling undervalued and unappreciated with potential consequences for their level of stress and perceived self-efficacy. 5. conclusion and discussion during the early phase of the global pandemic, schools across the world were fully or partially closed only reopening (in many cases not fully) as infection rates began to level off or decline. as schools have started to work towards operating at higher levels of capacity there have been significant changes to the teaching and learning environment. physical distancing (particularly at secondary/high school) between and amongst staff and students is now commonplace whilst the need to self-isolate to prevent the spread of the virus has also led to frequent interruptions to teaching schedules often with entire cohorts or year groups of students sent home for prolonged periods. these constant changes have required teachers to be active agents in ensuring a continuation in their students’ learning. they initially had to make a rapid shift to alternate delivery to develop online materials, ensuring all students have access to a laptop and internet connection. in the second phase teachers were asked to develop a hybrid approach with a combination of online learning and face-to-face teaching to halved groups. hygiene measures and physical distancing in the third phase then required them to change their teaching practices to reduce close physical interaction with students. in secondary education, students for example do not change classrooms anymore while the amount of collaborative learning and small-group work with teachers will now have to meet physical distancing guidelines at all levels of education. in the third phase of reopening, teachers are also faced with pupils who need to catch up on learning, as well as in their development of social-emotional skills and competences. some pupils’ general well-being will also be cause for concern, particularly those where families have struggled/are struggling financially, emotionally or health-wise. 5.1 teacher agency our findings suggest variations in teachers’ agency within and between countries and that agency also varies over time such as when environmental constraints change and teachers develop new knowledge. in the context of the pandemic, teachers who, prior to the closure of schools, were used to adopting innovative learning materials, varied learning strategies and focusing on student autonomy in organising their learning were predisposed to adapt more readily to work in the new context of distance learning. in addition, those who possessed a high level of digital literacy and it skills were better able to rapidly adapt their practice to ensure continuation of their students’ learning. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 702021 39(1): 70-76 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) as time progresses, teachers learn about what works and does not work and invest time in delivering and mastering new approaches. they particularly do so when they feel there is a long-term benefit or need to change their practice (e.g. because they expect schools to be closed for a longer period of time or a returning phenomenon), when they have time, resources and a personal interest to/in develop(ing) new techniques and approaches and when external conditions enable and/or motivate them to do so. where teachers had already developed relevant it-skills pre-covid and their home situation (e.g. not having dependent children who needed to be home-schooled) was conducive to developing new approaches, they were better able to move to online teaching quickly. the external conditions that seem particularly relevant for teacher agency are their students’ access to it and home support for learning, existing educational partnership with parents, the existence of collaborative support networks, the leadership and level of coordination of/in their school and the external support and guidance offered by relevant authorities. where education systems have high social capital, national agencies would be working together to enable teacher agency, such as by providing clear health and safety guidelines, communicating clear expectations about how to move to online teaching or blended approaches and collaborating to provide teachers with an enabling environment where they and their students have access to required hardware and technology for online/remote learning. 5.2 the dynamic nature of agency the evidence reviewed from the different countries emphasises the idea of the reciprocal interaction of agency and structure/environment. that means that as teachers´ agency is modulated by the environment, they can also affect and transform it. at the same time, agency is not a static concept but develops over time, such as when teachers develop their skills, when collaborative structures provide support, when parents learn how to integrate their new role of “home-schooler” into their daily schedule and wider (work-related) responsibilities and other local/regional and/or national actors coordinate their work to ensure student learning (either at home or under changed conditions in school). emirbayer and mische (in priestley et al., 2015) talk about the social context of agency and how agency is always a dialogical process by and through which actors immersed in temporal passage engage with others within collectively organised contexts of action. vieluf et al. (2013) explain how previous experiences in particular, beliefs and behaviour are a powerful predictor of teachers’ perceived self-efficacy and as such, of future behaviour and teaching practices. this means that teachers who have had successful and positive experiences of teaching with innovative tools or methodologies in the past, will likely be more motivated and feel greater agency to change their practice in response to the pandemic. collaboration between teachers in professional networks, within their schools and with teachers in the area who face similar challenges, allows them to be more effective in their learning and response. rather than “inventing the wheel” individually, such collaboration creates collective agency of teachers and allows them to revitalise their profession in leading the development of their practice to meet the continuing challenges of the pandemic. given the concerns over long-term learning loss and rising inequality, such professional networks become ever so important. the considerable challenges to teaching and learning created by the pandemic require that teachers be supported to exercise their personal and collective agency in order to at least http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 712021 39(1): 71-76 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 ehren, madrid, romiti, armstrong, fisher & mcwhorter teaching in the covid-19 era ensure continuation of learning for the broader population, and at its best, begin to address the significant inequities that the pandemic has revealed. references bandura, a. 1991. social cognitive theory of moral thought and action. in w.m. kurtines and j. l. gewirtz (eds.). handbook of moral behavior and development (pp.45–103). hillsdale, nj: erlbaum. bandura, a. 2001. social cognitive theory: an agentic perspective. annual review of psychology, 52(1): 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.1 bandura, a. 2006. guide for constructing self-efficacy scales. self-efficacy beliefs of 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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2013.05.006 732021 39(1): 73-76 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 ehren, madrid, romiti, armstrong, fisher & mcwhorter teaching in the covid-19 era appendix 1 documents and data included in country profiles country country profile written by ehren, drawing on findings from: • andersen and uiterwijk; https://www.nro.nl/corona-gerelateerdonderwijsonderzoek-2/de-rol-van-persoonlijke-school-en-organisatie-waardenbij-afwegingen-die-scholen-maken-in-crisistijd/ • kupers, mouw and fokkens-bruinsma; https://www. nro.nl/corona-gerelateerd-onderwijsonderzoek-2/ vormgeven-afstandsonderwijs-en-docenten-over-afstandsleren-en-hun-welzijn/ • goessens; https://www.nro.nl/corona-gerelateerd-onderwijsonderzoek-2/ monitor-hybride-onderwijs/ • inspectorate of education; monitor primary and secondary education • scan of national news and websites of council for primary, secondary education and ministry of education and covid-news reports by research institute learn! between 10 april and 12 june 2020 (including reports of surveys and a monitor of catch-up programmes) netherlands chile country profile written by madrid, drawing on findings from: • survey by an ngo called educación 2020; https://www.uc.cl/noticias/encuestala-mitad-de-los-profesores-siente-que-no-esta-logrando-que-los-escolaresaprendan-lo-deseado/ • ministerio de educación, centro de estudios (2020). impacto del covid-19 en los resultados de aprendizaje y escolaridad en chile. santiago, chile. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 https://www.nro.nl/corona-gerelateerd-onderwijsonderzoek-2/de-rol-van-persoonlijke-school-en-organisatie-waarden-bij-afwegingen-die-scholen-maken-in-crisistijd https://www.nro.nl/corona-gerelateerd-onderwijsonderzoek-2/de-rol-van-persoonlijke-school-en-organisatie-waarden-bij-afwegingen-die-scholen-maken-in-crisistijd https://www.nro.nl/corona-gerelateerd-onderwijsonderzoek-2/de-rol-van-persoonlijke-school-en-organisatie-waarden-bij-afwegingen-die-scholen-maken-in-crisistijd https://www.nro.nl/corona-gerelateerd-onderwijsonderzoek-2/vormgeven-afstandsonderwijs-en-docenten-over-afstandsleren-en-hun-welzijn/ https://www.nro.nl/corona-gerelateerd-onderwijsonderzoek-2/vormgeven-afstandsonderwijs-en-docenten-over-afstandsleren-en-hun-welzijn/ https://www.nro.nl/corona-gerelateerd-onderwijsonderzoek-2/vormgeven-afstandsonderwijs-en-docenten-over-afstandsleren-en-hun-welzijn/ https://www.nro.nl/corona-gerelateerd-onderwijsonderzoek-2/monitor-hybride-onderwijs https://www.nro.nl/corona-gerelateerd-onderwijsonderzoek-2/monitor-hybride-onderwijs https://www.uc.cl/noticias/encuesta-la-mitad-de-los-profesores-siente-que-no-esta-logrando-que-los-escolares-aprendan-lo-deseado/ https://www.uc.cl/noticias/encuesta-la-mitad-de-los-profesores-siente-que-no-esta-logrando-que-los-escolares-aprendan-lo-deseado/ https://www.uc.cl/noticias/encuesta-la-mitad-de-los-profesores-siente-que-no-esta-logrando-que-los-escolares-aprendan-lo-deseado/ 742021 39(1): 74-76 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) england country profile written by armstrong and barr, drawing on findings from: • eivers, e., worth, j. & ghosh, a. (2020) home learning during covid-19: findings from the understanding society longitudinal study. slough: nfer. • greenslade, m. (2020) leading learning in lockdown. (unpublished ma) manchester: university of manchester. • lucas, m., nelson, j. & sims, d. (2020) pupil engagement in remote learning. slough: nfer. • moss, g., allen, r., bradbury, a., duncan, s., harmey, s. & levy, r. (2020) primary teachers’ experience of the covid-19 lockdown – eight key messages for policymakers going forward. london: ucl. • black, alison; alexey bessudnov, yi liu and brahm norwish (2019) academisation of schools in england and placements of pupils with special educational needs: an analysis of trends 2011-2017 frontiers in education accessed at https:frontiersin.org on the 17th august 2020 • civinini, claudia (2020) a-level results challenge sets to launch 14th august 2020 accessed at https//.tes.com on the 17th august 2020 • eyles, andrew, stephen machin and sandra mcnally (2017) unexpected school reform: academisation of primary schools in england journal of public economics volume 155 pages 108-121 • parentkind (2020) parents feel worried about the impact of coronavirus 30th march 2020 accessed at https://parentkind.org.uk on the 17th august 2020 • parentkind (2020) major new parentkind researchover a quarter of million parents have a say on school closure and coronavirus fears 6th may 2020 accessed at http://parentkind.org.uk on the 17th august 2020 • pearcey, samantha adrienne shum, polly waite and cathy creswell (2020) report 03: parents/carers report on their own and their children’s concerns about children attending school accessed at https://emergingminds.org.uk/cospace-study-3rd-update/ on 17th august 2020 • leigh sandals and ben bryant (2014) the evolving education system in england: a “temperature check” department for education accessed at https:// assets.publishing.service.gov.uk on 17th august 2020 • teacher tapp (2020) what does distance learning look like in england (and where will teachers kids be today?) 23rdmarch 2020 accessed at https:// teachertapp.co.uk/what-does-distance-learning-look-like-in-england-and-wherewill-teachers-kids-be-today/ on 17th august 2020. • waite, polly ; praveetha patalay, bettina moltrecht, eoin mcelroy and cathy creswell (2020) report 02: covid 19 worries, parent/carer stress and support needs, by special educational needs and parent./carer work status 6th may 2020 accessed at https://emergingminds.org.uk/cospace-study-2nd-update/ on 17th august 2020 • whitaker, freddie (2020) coronavirus: help poorer children access online learning, charity begs tech firms 26thmarch 2020 school week accessed at https://schoolsweek.co.uk/coronavirus-help-poorer-children-access-onlinelearning-charity-begs-tech-firms/ on 17th august 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 https://parentkind.org.uk/ https://parentkind.org.uk/ http://parentkind.org.uk/ http://parentkind.org.uk/ https://emergingminds.org.uk/co-space-study-3rd-update/ https://emergingminds.org.uk/co-space-study-3rd-update/ https://emergingminds.org.uk/co-space-study-3rd-update/ https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/ https://teachertapp.co.uk/what-does-distance-learning-look-like-in-england-and-where-will-teachers-kids-be-today/ https://teachertapp.co.uk/what-does-distance-learning-look-like-in-england-and-where-will-teachers-kids-be-today/ https://teachertapp.co.uk/what-does-distance-learning-look-like-in-england-and-where-will-teachers-kids-be-today/ https://emergingminds.org.uk/cospace-study-2nd-update/ https://emergingminds.org.uk/cospace-study-2nd-update/ https://schoolsweek.co.uk/coronavirus-help-poorer-children-access-online-learning-charity-begs-tech-firms/ https://schoolsweek.co.uk/coronavirus-help-poorer-children-access-online-learning-charity-begs-tech-firms/ https://schoolsweek.co.uk/coronavirus-help-poorer-children-access-online-learning-charity-begs-tech-firms/ 752021 39(1): 75-76 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 ehren, madrid, romiti, armstrong, fisher & mcwhorter teaching in the covid-19 era canada; ontario country profile written by mcwhorter, drawing on findings from: • campbell, c; bauman, b.; kidder, a.; daniel, bj (2020). a gentle return to school: go slow to go fast https://peopleforeducation.ca/wp-content/ uploads/2020/08/gentle-re-opening-of-ontario-schools.pdf toronto: canada • canadian teachers federation (ctf/fce) (2020). https://vox.ctf-fce.ca/wpcontent/uploads/2020/07/national-summary-report-overview-pandemicresearch-study-jul-22.pdf. • elementary teachers federation of ontario (etfo/feeo) (2020). https://ett. ca/etfo-submission-to-the-ministry-of-education-on-ontarios-plan-to-reopenschools/. toronto: canada. • ontario ministry of education (2020). https://www.ontario.ca/page/approachreopening-schools-2020-2021-school-year. toronto: canada. • ontario ministry of education (2020). https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/57838/ ontario-releases-plan-for-safe-reopening-of-schools-in-september. toronto: canada. • ontario ministry of education (2020). https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/58136/ ontario-releases-covid-19-management-plan-for-schools. toronto: canada. • ontario ministry of education (2020). https://www.ontario.ca/page/operationalguidance-covid-19-management-schools. toronto: canada. • ontario ministry of education (2020). http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/extra/eng/ ppm/164.html. toronto: canada. • ontario secondary school teachers federation (osstf/feeso) (2020). https:// osstftoronto.ca/news/2020/06/a-safe-return-for-all-osstf-feesos-framework-forreopening-schools-in-2020-2021/. toronto: canada • people for education (2020). https://peopleforeducation.ca/our-work/trackingcanadas-education-systems-response-to-covid-19/ toronto: canada. canada; british columbia country profile written by fisher, drawing on findings from a community-based participatory research project, led by vancouver island university with five local school districts and two independent schools in the central vancouver island and coastal region, comprising 415 participants, an average 35% response rate. data collection included a qualitative and quantitative survey, and focus groups with a smaller groups of participants. add references research team: fisher, moll, reidel, rasmussen, pybus, cox, and taplay http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 https://peopleforeducation.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/gentle-re-opening-of-ontario-schools.pdf https://peopleforeducation.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/gentle-re-opening-of-ontario-schools.pdf https://vox.ctf-fce.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/national-summary-report-overview-pandemic-research-study-jul-22.pdf https://vox.ctf-fce.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/national-summary-report-overview-pandemic-research-study-jul-22.pdf https://vox.ctf-fce.ca/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/national-summary-report-overview-pandemic-research-study-jul-22.pdf https://ett.ca/etfo-submission-to-the-ministry-of-education-on-ontarios-plan-to-reopen-schools/ https://ett.ca/etfo-submission-to-the-ministry-of-education-on-ontarios-plan-to-reopen-schools/ https://ett.ca/etfo-submission-to-the-ministry-of-education-on-ontarios-plan-to-reopen-schools/ https://www.ontario.ca/page/approach-reopening-schools-2020-2021-school-year https://www.ontario.ca/page/approach-reopening-schools-2020-2021-school-year https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/57838/ontario-releases-plan-for-safe-reopening-of-schools-in-september https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/57838/ontario-releases-plan-for-safe-reopening-of-schools-in-september https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/58136/ontario-releases-covid-19-management-plan-for-schools https://news.ontario.ca/en/release/58136/ontario-releases-covid-19-management-plan-for-schools https://www.ontario.ca/page/operational-guidance-covid-19-management-schools https://www.ontario.ca/page/operational-guidance-covid-19-management-schools http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/extra/eng/ppm/164.html http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/extra/eng/ppm/164.html https://osstftoronto.ca/news/2020/06/a-safe-return-for-all-osstf-feesos-framework-for-reopening-schools-in-2020-2021/ https://osstftoronto.ca/news/2020/06/a-safe-return-for-all-osstf-feesos-framework-for-reopening-schools-in-2020-2021/ https://osstftoronto.ca/news/2020/06/a-safe-return-for-all-osstf-feesos-framework-for-reopening-schools-in-2020-2021/ https://peopleforeducation.ca/our-work/tracking-canadas-education-systems-response-to-covid-19/ https://peopleforeducation.ca/our-work/tracking-canadas-education-systems-response-to-covid-19/ 762021 39(1): 76-76 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) italy country profile written by romiti, drawing on findings from: • soriani, alessandro (2020). nessuno (digitalmente) indietro? le sfide di una scuola forzata alla non-presenza. in gigli, alessandra (a cura di). infanzia, famiglie, servizi educativi e scolastici nel covid-19. riflessioni pedagogiche sugli effetti del lockdown e della prima fase di riapertura. dipartimento di scienze dell’educazione “g.m. bertin” dell’alma mater studiorum. università di bologna. pp. 31-34. https://centri.unibo.it/creif/it/pubblicazioni/ servizi-educativi-e-scolastici-nel-covid-19-riflessioni-pedagogiche • oecd (2020). school education during covid-19. were teachers and students ready? county note italy. available on the web page: http://www.oecd.org/ education/italy-coronavirus-education-country-note.pdfsird (2020). ricerca nazionale sird. per un confronto sulle modalità di didattica a distanza adottate nelle scuole italiane nel periodo di emergenza covid-19. https://www.sird.it/ wp-content/uploads/2020/07/una_prima_panoramica_dei_dati.pdf • web survey conducted by dites research center (digital technologies, education and society • age (2020). #agevoliamo un sondaggio agemarche alle famiglie sulla dad. available on the web page: https://www.age.it/ agevoliamo-un-sondaggio-agemarche-alle-famiglie-sulla-dad/ • genitori per la scuola 8 (2020) 1, 2, 3, scuola! indagine sulle scuole del municipio ai tempi del coronavirus dell’associazione dei genitori del municipio 8. report available at the web page: https://www.facebook.com/ genitoriperlascuola8/photos/pcb.170036147835738/170036041169082 • email exchange (total of 23) between the class representatives of the public school “piazza sauli” in rome in the period 7-20 april 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.5 https://centri.unibo.it/creif/it/pubblicazioni/servizi-educativi-e-scolastici-nel-covid-19-riflessioni-pedagogiche https://centri.unibo.it/creif/it/pubblicazioni/servizi-educativi-e-scolastici-nel-covid-19-riflessioni-pedagogiche http://www.oecd.org/education/italy-coronavirus-education-country-note.pdf http://www.oecd.org/education/italy-coronavirus-education-country-note.pdf https://www.sird.it/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/una_prima_panoramica_dei_dati.pdf https://www.sird.it/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/una_prima_panoramica_dei_dati.pdf https://www.age.it/agevoliamo-un-sondaggio-agemarche-alle-famiglie-sulla-dad/ https://www.age.it/agevoliamo-un-sondaggio-agemarche-alle-famiglie-sulla-dad/ https://www.facebook.com/genitoriperlascuola8/photos/pcb.170036147835738/170036041169082 https://www.facebook.com/genitoriperlascuola8/photos/pcb.170036147835738/170036041169082 _goback 802022 40(1): 80-95 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.5 technology inclusion for students living with disabilities through collaborative online learning during and beyond covid-19 abstract technology-based platforms in higher education institutions (heis), including online learning, require innovative approaches to ensure inclusive and transformative educational spaces for students living with disabilities. achieving social equality, technology access and inclusion may contribute to ensuring a seamless instructional design for students living with disabilities in heis amid and beyond covid-19. covid-19 has obliged heis to adopt alternatives to learning and teaching, making the use of open distance learning (odl) amid the pandemic more relevant. this theoretical paper considers the significance of odl by demonstrating how to achieve technology inclusion for students living with disabilities through collaborative online international learning (coil). situated within the collaborative learning theory, this paper offers a disability perspective to learning in heis, through an analysis of stipulations in the strategic policy framework on disability for the post-school education and training system (2018). the findings indicate that the application of coil for students living with disabilities may transform their learning experiences and unlock new pathways for their development. the paper recommends that coil may be used as a response to ensuring access and inclusive education provision for students living with disabilities in heis. keywords: collaborative online international learning; covid-19 pandemic; inclusive technologies; open distance learning; strategic policy framework on disability; students living with disabilities. 1. introduction the covid-19 pandemic necessitated that heis migrate from conventional face-to-face approaches to exclusively online methods of learning and teaching. thus, emphasis shifted to the execution of distance learning through several technical tools and internet-based learning systems (zhou et al., 2020). however, the adjustment from direct to virtual education, is likely to affect students in heis undesirably, especially those living with disabilities and who might find it challenging to adapt to a different mode of learning. in contrast, not only did the covid-19 pandemic exacerbate existing educational inequalities, but it has also demanded author: dr edwin darrell de klerk1 prof june monica palmer2 affiliation: 1sol plaatje university, south africa 2central university of technology, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i1.5 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(1): 80-95 published: 04 march 2022 received: 10 august 2021 accepted: 23 october 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.5 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0218-5371 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7706-879x http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.5 812022 40(1): 81-95 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.5 de klerk & palmer technology inclusion for students living with disabilities innovative ways for students to collaborate with peers at any time and in any part of the world through learning methods such as coil (dhawan, 2020; liguori & winkler, 2020). coil is considered a learning system that promotes virtual collaboration on a mutually beneficial project between students (and lecturers) from two geographically and culturally distinct areas (appiah-kubi & nichwitz, 2020). this virtual mobility creates a socially varied computer-generated setting for online collaboration where students can enhance and explore their personal abilities as well as develop their intercultural proficiency skills (rubin, 2015). appiah-kubi and annan (2020) investigated the participation of engineering technology students from ghana and the university of deyton, respectively in an 8-week coil programme, who differed in terms of language, culture and geographical regions. in this comparative study the students from the respective universities recounted that the teamwork was either effective or remarkably effective. similarly, king de ramirez (2021) explored a coil project among campus students, registered in heis, situated in the arizona-sonora megaregion. the results indicated that students revealed international citizenship abilities such as the capacity to analyse intercontinental associations as well as global interconnectedness. notwithstanding the fact that the above studies made contributions to university students’ ability to participate in coil activities, the current study focuses on advancing coil and technology inclusion for students living with disabilities, during and beyond the pandemic. in this regard, unesco proposes that, “[n]etworking among universities and institutions of higher learning in developed and developing countries should be promoted” (1994:28). when heis would develop the skills of students living with disabilities, they may be in a position to offer a desirable environment for participation and achievement at an international level. the central question that this paper addresses is: how may heis achieve technology inclusion for students living with disabilities through collaborative online international learning (coil) during and beyond covid-19? in an attempt to provide answers to the aforementioned question to offer a disability perspective to learning in heis, we analysed stipulations in the strategic policy framework on disability for the post-school education and training system (republic of south africa [rsa], 2018). an analysis of the indicated policy may be deemed relevant because it provides direction in terms of the enhancement of admission to and accomplishment in postschool education and training for individuals living with disabilities. furthermore, through an implementation of this strategic policy framework, redress and transformation with respect to inclusion of individuals living with disabilities may be enhanced (rsa, 2018). 2. inclusive and transformed spaces in higher education in what ways do heis attempt to render inclusive and transformed spaces to include all students in academic activities? ashwin and case (2018) note that such a question enjoys urgent attention internationally, because of its purpose to invite thoughts regarding inclusivity and transformation as tools to develop more understanding about students living with disabilities. although the meaning of inclusive has been entrenched in the thoughts of many to refer to individuals with learning, physical and/or sensory challenges, it should, however, not exclude individuals who experience obstacles due to a low socio-economic standing or poverty, among others (maghuve, 2015). this is regarded as the social model of inclusivity, which stands in contrast to the medical model (art beyond sight, 2014). first, the social model supports http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.5 822022 40(1): 82-95 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.5 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) the view that while sensory, physical, psychological and intellectual dissimilarities may cause personal practical constraint or deficiencies, the latter aspects do not necessarily lead to disability except if society fails to take reason for and embrace individuals notwithstanding their discrete differences. secondly, the medical model describes a disability as the consequence of a physical circumstance, which is inherent to the individual and which may decrease the individual’s value of life and cause strong difficulties to the individual. considering the aforementioned explication of the social and medical models, the white paper on disabilities confirms that inclusivity involves, “a paradigm shift away from the specialness of people to…a wide range of individual differences and needs” (department of social development [dsd], 2016: 22). interpreting the latter views from an arendtian perspective, a focus on inclusivity calls for action to put education first. this implies that education does not exist to remedy what is wrong with the world, however unjust or exclusive, but that individuals should be provided with opportunities to practise thinking about the art of being, whilst judging their relationship with others (korsgaardt, 2016). in heis, the role of education should thus be to provide equal opportunities and fostering a sense of belonging so that students (also students living with disabilities) experience, “a level of supportive energy and commitment from others so that you can best fully participate in society with no restrictions or limitations” (dsd, 2016: 8). in so doing, students living with disabilities may be able to pursue activities independently with necessary support to enable them to make decisions that may positively affect their lives. when heis focus on establishing such spaces, inclusivity may be recognised as a moral and transformable act. whilst inclusivity as a moral act suggests that, “all children are worth educating, that all children can learn” (rouse & florian, 2012: 10), transformability implies that, “human beings are capable of extending and widening their meaning horizons in significant ways” (murdoch et al., 2020: 668). moreover, to widen meaning horizons, the classroom, curriculum knowledge production and information sharing should be geared towards transformed spaces in heis (osman, ojo & hornsby, 2018) where equal opportunities and transformative learning are promoted. howlett, ferreira and blomfield (2016) posit that transformative learning may stimulate students to seriously interrogate and reflect on their principles and assumptions, because “learning happens all the time and everywhere; heavily supported by technology and the ease of access to resources that it provides…to create flexible, and multipurpose spaces” (goria & guetta, 2020: 7). to illustrate (in terms of students living with disabilities), murdock et al. (2020) refer to jean-jacques rousseau’s emile, specifically to a consciousness of learning in the territory of intelligence awareness that unavoidably embraces emile’s personal physical effort to reach new objects, such as a ball (as opposed to the ball being brought to emile by the teacher), to gain an understanding of his world. in the aforementioned example, the use of “physical effort” may, for instance, be associated with the struggles students living with disabilities might experience, especially when they are, “denied access to full participation” (dsd, 2016: 4). therefore, it is imperative that heis transform existing spaces through assistive technology (at) and inclusive learning technologies with a universal design for learning features into flexible and inspiring areas where students living with disabilities may learn to appreciate new experiences, consider such experiences, whilst taking action to rethink knowledge, ability and beliefs (english, 2016). being cognisant about new experiences, heis would be positioned to enable students living with disabilities to negotiate their skills in different places of interaction with other individuals or whilst engaging with technology. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.5 832022 40(1): 83-95 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.5 de klerk & palmer technology inclusion for students living with disabilities 3. technology inclusion for students living with disabilities dikusar (2018) asserts that technology increases the independence of students living with disabilities, freeing them from the continuous need for uninterrupted teacher involvement. consequently, students have a choice regarding the rapidity of learning that is suitable for them that may lead to more tailored learning. arguably, an implementation of technologies may allow simplifying communication and increase educational abilities of students living with disabilities. it is worth mentioning that technology inclusion for students living with disabilities aligns with the 2030 sustainable development goal 4 of the united nations (un), which pursues to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (un, 2015: 19–20). the realisation of this goal may help decrease educational inequity for students living with disabilities, specifically during a time such as the covid-19 pandemic. thus, to guarantee that logical, continuing solutions are available, policy and legal strategies must be explored (unesco, 2020). emphasising the importance of technology inclusion, peters contends that, we stand on the brink of a technological revolution that will fundamentally alter the way we live, work, and relate to one another. in its scale, scope, and complexity, the transformation will be unlike anything humankind has experienced before. we do not yet know just how it will unfold, but one thing is clear: the response to it must be integrated and comprehensive (2017: 28). the all-inclusive nature of the technology inclusion requires that heis internationally need to appraise their syllabi so that it would align with competencies and abilities that are necessary for students living with disabilities. the implication that individuals need to learn new skills quickly (atiku & boateng, 2019; whalley et al., 2021) necessitates that heis position themselves in such a fashion that students living with disabilities are enabled to increase their capacity to function in these spaces (cloudebate, 2019). the covid-19 pandemic has accelerated technology inclusion in heis, intensifying the digitalisation of human collaboration and virtual education, among others. as such, heis should find mechanisms to mitigate challenges pertaining to technology inclusion by increasing the use of digital technology, whilst sharpening the skills and capabilities of students living with disabilities (daskal & sherman, (2020; world economic forum, 2021) we contend that technology has proven to be a useful and necessary tool to ensure that heis continue to provide essential academic services to students living with disabilities during the covid-19 crisis. within this context, technology inclusion may profoundly influence the lives of students living with disabilities and ensure that they have access to information and communication with their international counterparts. 4. advancing open distance learning through collaborative online international learning unesco (2016) mentions that it is imperative to guarantee that inclusive education for students living with disabilities is possible through access to education. although unesco (2016) argues for an all-encompassing education for students living with disabilities, the situation regarding open distance learning (odl) differs in many countries around the world. for instance, china, with a robust scientific organisation, is prosperous in providing odl, but countries, such as mongolia and vietnam are not so successful, due to weak internet systems (world bank, 2020). globally, the quick transition to odl during covid-19 provided http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.5 842022 40(1): 84-95 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.5 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) stability to learning processes, but also intensified education inequalities among students, especially those with a poor economic status, as well as those living with disabilities, among others (aristovnik et al., 2020). considering that the pandemic might continue for a lengthier period than anticipated, this situation will force heis to be prepared and equipped with the necessary tools to support students, especially those living with disabilities. notably, even before covid-19, it was acknowledged that students internationally did not have equal opportunities relating to access to equipment such as the internet, tablets and computers (yazcayir & gurgur, 2021). the challenge with odl has always been an absence of clear information and the intricacy of the work as well as the study environment of students (zhang et al., 2020). on a more positive note, charles wedemeyer, who is regarded as the father of american distance education, posits that the fundamental features of odl comprise, better student answerability, accessible teaching, effective combination of broadcasting and approaches, adaptation to differences including the disabled individuals and a comprehensive variety of start, stop and learn times (wedemeyer, 1977). wedemeyer’s (1977) view suggests that education should be a collaborative and inclusive practice and, therefore, odl may be considered a viable option as it accommodates millions of students who can study remotely. significantly, odl emphasises the removal of challenges relevant to learning and flexibility of learning provision as well as broadening openness to education for the majority of individuals and people living with disabilities so that the learning process can continue (angba, 2020). in an attempt to ensure that students living with disabilities use odl optimally, this paper suggests that a collaborative approach is key. stoytcheva (2017) regards a collaborative approach as an active process aimed at encouraging and supporting students to work collaboratively to generate understanding, that is to discover, to search for strategies to transform, and, by so doing, to pursue the theoretical understanding required to solve problems. considering stoytcheva’s (2017) view and drawing on esche (2018), this paper argues that coil may be considered as an effective pedagogy that may support the design of a learning atmosphere for students living with disabilities in distinct geographical locations. appiah-kubi and annan (2020) state that coil typically comprises an organised collaboration between two or more lecturers from heis who teach related courses. during collaboration, lecturers are positioned to design a common programme, study material or specific outcomes with a joint experimental knowledge instrument. the experimental learning instrument, as an example of project work, functions as the catalyst for student partnerships (appiah-kubi & annan, 2020). the lecturers then accept mutual obligation in mentoring the students on forming partnerships. during a coil study, conducted in two faculties within heis in the united states and mexico city, marcillo-gómez and desilus (2016) explored the comparisons and variances between the two faculties in terms of the challenges of teaching students in two different countries, the effect of students’ culture on perceptions and participation and how coil may provide students with unique academic opportunities. the results revealed that students’ perspectives broadened, whilst they learnt how to understand and appreciate the differences and the realities of each student. mudiamu (2020) asserts that such an example of coil may be understood as a faculty-driven intervention for internationalisation where all students are afforded opportunities for global learning. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.5 852022 40(1): 85-95 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.5 de klerk & palmer technology inclusion for students living with disabilities heis’ commitment to support students living with disabilities to participate in coil as part of odl, should focus on fostering technology inclusion so that collaboration can be effective. ahmed concedes that, the need to pay attention to the processes of inclusion rather than on the promise of inclusion, which is capable of concealing and extending the exclusionary practices of an institution by giving the impression that those practices are overcome or undone (2012: 183). pertinently, heis should commit to technology inclusion, and move beyond conservatism and intolerance about inclusivity, so that students living with disabilities and their embodied experiences feature as agents for positive collaborative learning (fernandez, 2021). ndlovu (2021) considers at as ideal for technology inclusion for students living with disabilities. students living with disabilities frequently experience difficulties with functionality, resultant from their deficiencies, as well as inaccessibility with respect to the social and physical environments they may find themselves in, thereby limiting their functionality. recognised as a human right, governments around the globe, in africa and in south africa, made a commitment to facilitate education by empowering every individual to gain admission to learning (ndlovu, 2021). governments and heis should ensure that at is available to disabled individuals, because there seems to be a significant disparity across countries in collaboration, in terms of the availability of funds to make online collaboration possible (hersh & mouroutsou, 2015). in this regard, heis should use existing technologies together with available at to guarantee that students living with disabilities will be able to participate in coil. by providing appropriate at and digital devices, students living with disabilities may have increased access to online learning (tony, 2019). 5. theoretical framework: collaborative learning theory collaborative learning (cl) stems from the theory of vygotsky’s (1978) perception of the zone of proximal development, which is grounded on people’s capacity to learn how to use socially applicable apparatuses (such as computers) and culturally grounded symbols (such as language and writing). notably, the zone of proximal development not only addresses cognitive development, but it also makes room for human learning (vygotsky, 1978). in transitioning this zone to a collaborative learning experience, individuals are afforded opportunities to work with others in broadening their learning experience whilst sharing knowledge, exchanging ideas and solving problems (omrod, 2012). as such, individuals are afforded a myriad of enriching experiences to explore perspectives that may differ from their own. the afore-mentioned indication, “to work with others” (omrod, 2012), resonates with the aim of this paper, which is to outline heis response to achieving technology inclusion for students living with disabilities through collaborative online international learning during and beyond the pandemic. fundamentally, cl is part of a social consciousness of information, implying that it is, “a process of negotiation or joint construction of meanings which applies to the whole process of teaching” (roselli, 2016: 256). roselli further mentions that such a process, “is not about circumstantial application of group techniques, but the promotion of exchange and participation of each member in order to build a shared cognition” (2016: 256). as such, students are motivated to collaboratively find answers to challenges, through dialogue, instead of remembering accurate answers (harasim, 2012). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.5 862022 40(1): 86-95 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.5 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) when students living with disabilities are encouraged to participate in coil, cl suggests that three aspects should be considered, namely the learning design, learning collaboration and learning environment. the learning setting encompasses apparatuses that can be utilised to simplify the collaborative setting. razali et al. (2015) state that an available and flexible setting has the potential to positively enhance interaction and collaboration between students. learning interaction is significant in connecting students with others, whilst being supportive of the relationship between students and lecturers (razali et al., 2015). for the learning design, lecturers could select applicable collaboration skills, whilst providing students with a variety of learning activities and resources (kaur, shiram & ravichandran, 2011). we argue that cl is a catalyst for technology inclusion for students living with disabilities, through coil, during and beyond a pandemic by analysing stipulations in education policy. 6. the rationale for education policy analysis hartshorne offers a comprehensive description of education policy as, “a course of action adopted by government, through legislation, ordinances, and regulations, and pursued through administration and control, finance and inspection, with a general assumption that it should be beneficial to the country and its citizens” (1999: 5). interpreting hartshorne (1999), a phrase such as “a course of action” may suggest that policy signifies a conversational approach and is indicative of practices and actions that refer to wider social improvements of teaching (ball, 2015). drawing on ball (2015), we argue that education policy may consist of collaborating texts that may provide information regarding technology inclusion for students living with disabilities through collaborative online learning during and beyond a pandemic. reading education policy, “is not just a matter of understanding its educational context or reading it as pronouncements of policy-makers, but rather to bear in mind that the discursive formations they contain… await decoding” (olssen, codd & o’neill, 2004: 2). when education policy analysis comes into the picture, reference needs to be made to two dissimilar aspects of policy analysis; that is analysis for policy and analysis of policy (codd, 1988; olssen et al., 2004). analysis for policy involves policy advocacy, aiming at providing policymakers with recommendations and information with reference to the modification or making of authentic policies. analysis of policies may include an investigation into policy purposes, policy effects and policy content. with the afore-mentioned views (codd, 1998; olssen et al., 2004) in mind, this paper relates to the classification of analysis of policy, more precisely to the analysis of stipulations in the strategic policy framework on disability for the post-school education and training system (rsa, 2018). initially, an analysis of stipulations in the afore-mentioned policy may provide guidance to heis to achieve technology inclusion for students living with disabilities through collaborative online international learning during and beyond the pandemic. significantly, when, “we focus analytically on one policy or one text we forget that other policies and texts are in circulation and the enactment of one may inhibit or contradict or influence the possibility of the enactment of others” (ball, 1993: 6). therefore, our intention is to strengthen our analysis by also referring to stipulations in the salamanca statements and framework for action on special needs education (unesco, 1994) and white paper on the rights of persons with disabilities (department of social development [dsd], 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.5 872022 40(1): 87-95 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.5 de klerk & palmer technology inclusion for students living with disabilities 7. analysis of the strategic policy framework on disability for the postschool education and training system (2018) the strategic policy framework on disability for the post-school education and training system (rsa, 2018) is a policy document that gives direction in terms of the enhancement of access to and attainment in post-school education and training (including at private institutions) for people living with disabilities (rsa, 2018). significantly, through the implementation of this strategic policy framework, transformation and redress with regard to full inclusion, integration and equality for persons with disabilities in the post-school education and training system, will be accelerated (rsa, 2018: i). drawing on the promise of the aforementioned, stipulations in the strategic policy framework on disability for the post-school education and training system (rsa, 2018) will henceforth be analysed to search for policy perspectives that may provide guidance to heis to achieve technology inclusion for students living with disabilities. such policy perspectives relate to coil in that it may provide opportunities to students living with disabilities to interact with counterparts at international heis, aiming at developing digital skills and competencies whilst working collectively on subject-specific learning assignments. we thoroughly scrutinised the strategic policy framework and conducted a pre-analysis of many stipulations that might be relevant to students living with disabilities. we then chose those stipulations we were convinced could be considered strong representatives of technology inclusion for students living with disabilities through coil. we reread the selected stipulations and extracted particular words and phrases for analysis. in so doing, through analysis, we were able to propose activities that heis could use to achieve technology inclusion for students living with disabilities through coil during and beyond covid-19. arguably, through coil, odl can be advanced because it, “has become indispensable during the covid-19 pandemic, during which nearly all traditional academic and student mobility has halted worldwide; indeed, coil may have found its moment to realize its longimagined potential” (harris, se & mckeown, 2021: 1352). 7.1 inclusive and transformed spaces as a basis for coil the strategic policy framework on disability for the post-school education and training system stipulates that, “[w]e have to have a socially inclusive society that cuts across state boundaries” (rsa, 2018: v); and that, when considered from a disability lens, it is necessary to, “provide optimal opportunities for learning, the creation of knowledge and the development of intermediate to high level skills in keeping with international standards academic and technical quality” (rsa, 2018: 41). an emphasis on “inclusive”, “cuts across state boundaries”, “optimal opportunities for learning” and “in keeping with international standards” may directly be aligned with coil. the covid-19 pandemic has advanced efforts to make learning, based on international collaboration, more accessible, inclusive and equitable for all students. such collaboration serves as encouragement to students to move beyond their national identity, in an environmentally friendly and sustainable way (streeter-ferrari & wanderi, 2021). in ensuring that students living with disabilities are provided equal learning opportunities on an international level, heis should regard coil as a focal point of odl in facilitating information exchange, which would enable interaction and knowledge sharing between students at any time (zarzycka et al., http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.5 882022 40(1): 88-95 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.5 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 2021). the task of heis would thus be to create inclusive and transformed learning spaces that provide for an, “aesthetically pleasing, stimulating and culturally inclusive atmosphere that helps promote engagement in learning activities” (holeton, 2020: n.p.). the creation of such spaces may extend learning outside the walls of heis and remove some of the limitations enacted on learning, such as space and distance (howcroft, 2017). this statement (howcroft, 2017) is confirmed by the notions that, “inclusion and participation are essential to human dignity” (unesco, 1994) and for the creation of, “a free and just society inclusive [of] all persons with disabilities” (dsd, 2016: 8). we argue that inclusive and transformed spaces, as a basis for coil, may ensure that students living with disabilities feel respected and valued for who they are, enabling them to fully participate with others with no restrictions or limitations. 7.2 technology inclusion as a prerequisite for coil the incorporation of technology in the learning and teaching of students living with disabilities may result in creating an environment of collaboration, communication and support in and beyond their classes (al-kindi & al-suqri, 2017; awidi et al., 2019). in this regard, the strategic policy framework on disability for the post-school education and training system accentuates the significance of, “instructing all students through developing flexible classroom materials, using various technology tools, and varying the delivery of information or instruction” (rsa, 2018:23); and it also emphasises, “the use of specialised technology, assistive devices and assistive services geared for people with disabilities” (rsa, 2018:55). interpreting notions such as “various technology tools” and “assistive services geared for people with disabilities”, it seems that it is required from heis to deliberately implement, “an integration of high quality, synchronous, in-person learning environments with online technologies to enable students to more rapidly build skills and knowledge asynchronously” (penprase, 2018:212). heis should ensure that at are readily available for students living with disabilities and that it matches with the standards for international collaboration. notably, at is made up of rehabilitative, assistive and adaptive technologies, as well as associated services, which are explicitly made or modified to serve as practical support for students living with disabilities (chukwuemeka & samaila, 2020). similarly, beelen and jones (2015) contend that the availability of assistive technology like ipods, ipads and computers may be referred to as an internationalisation at-home activity that supports the unfolding of international perspectives in the curriculum for students living with disabilities. dsd states that at will, “enable persons with disabilities and learning differences to attain independence” (2016:3). in essence, assistive technology helps students living with disabilities’ learning processes become easier, whilst making their collaborative experiences more enjoyable and transformative (wallace, 2018). arguably, covid-19 has required that heis changed the way in which learning and teaching were offered and had to obtain innovative technology abilities within short spaces of time. technology inclusion in heis amid the pandemic brought substance to a stronger focus on coil in that, “odl’s popularity has skyrocketed as it offers the optimum solution to the academic stress during this current situation” (adnan & anwar, 2020). 7.3 transforming the experiences of students living with disabilities in heis transformative learning in education necessitates the commitment of heis in that, “[t]he empowerment of people with disabilities is critical in achieving an equitable and inclusive society” (rsa, 2018:12). heis should be cognisant that an active role in transforming the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.5 892022 40(1): 89-95 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.5 de klerk & palmer technology inclusion for students living with disabilities lives of students living with disabilities may be attained through, “education programmes and practices conducive to critical discourse and creative thinking” (rsa, 2018:38). indications such as “empowerment” and “education programmes and practices” may be indicative of heis’ task to offer abilities to students living with disabilities regarding an integration of practice and theory, as well as development of synergic activities in groups, as well as the adoption of critical thinking (howlett, ferreira & blomfield, 2016; wooltorton et al., 2015). such empowerment practices may inspire students living with disabilities not only to gain necessary international learning experiences and intercultural communication abilities, but also help to transform preconceived notions of knowledge and abilities (ortega-sánchez et al., 2018; riauka, 2019). a transformative approach to coil signifies a, “fundamental change in the way we see ourselves and the world in which we live” (merriam & caffarella, 1999:318). heis should further fully embrace and respect the experiences of students living with disabilities and afford opportunities to participate in coil. this may enable them, “to arrive at a tentative best judgement upon which to act until new perspectives are encountered” (marsick & mezirow, 2002: n.p.), whilst they simultaneously learn how to, “reflectively and critically take action” (marsick & mezirow, 2002: n.p.) regarding their transformed frame of reference. participation in coil by students living with disabilities can indeed be regarded as a way to advance odl because it can generate opportunities to reconsider educational conduits by using international learning initiatives, assisting individuals to have a fresh attitude and innovative techniques of thinking about how they relate to the world. 8. conclusion this paper endeavoured to answer the question: how may heis achieve technology inclusion for students living with disabilities through collaborative online international learning (coil) during and beyond covid-19? the south african government’s policy instructions are intended to empower individuals with disabilities through skills development, education, training and participation. one possible way to empower students living with disabilities may be through odl in which heis make room for inclusive and transformed spaces, learning of students living with disabilities amid the 4ir and through advancing participation in coil. through an analysis of the strategic policy framework on disability for the post-school education and training system (rsa, 2018), this paper contributes to knowledge by recommending that heis should consider: the creation of inclusive and transformed spaces as a basis for coil; regard technology as a prerequisite for coil as significant and transform the experiences of students living with disabilities. inclusive and transformed spaces should allow for optimal opportunities for learning through a collaboration and discussion of knowledge between students living with disabilities at any time. an inclusion of technology should be geared towards assisting students living with disabilities to experience international learning processes as accessible and transformative. by transforming their experiences, students living with disabilities may be positioned to transform their communication skills, as well as expand their knowledge and abilities. this paper supports other findings in the academic literature on coil. lakkala et al.’s (2021) study explored and compared the collaborative ways in which students in four schools in austria, finland, lithuania and poland have been supported in their learning. the study concluded that collaborative action should be regarded as significant in creating inclusive http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.5 902022 40(1): 90-95 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.5 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) spaces to support students. in another study, kolm et al. 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https://doi.org/10.1080/23311983.2021.1953228 https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm13030055 https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm13030055 33 research article 2021 39(2): 33-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) exploring the schooluniversity mathematics skills gap for economic sciences abstract the training of highly skilled persons for the areas of economics and commerce requires that degree students upon entry need certain knowledge and skills in mathematics including aspects of statistics. the context is distance education and entry students seem unable to cope with the requirements of the mathematicsbased topics that they need to study at the first year of tertiary education. it resulted in university staff speculating about a gap in pre-knowledge and skills. this study aims to investigate this phenomenon, starting with content and revised bloom’s taxonomy analyses of final year school examination papers in mathematics, comparing it with similar analyses of first-year mathematics-based module examinations in the economic sciences. students that passed mathematics at school are supposed to have had adequate preparation for the first level bachelor of commerce. coping with routine procedures mainly upon exit from secondary education does not signal well for the subsequent training of economists and commerce students. the situation seemingly does not improve at tertiary level where there is a further emphasis on routine procedures compared to higher order thinking skills. keywords: mathematics pre-knowledge; economic sciences; revised bloom’s taxonomy for mathematics; financial mathematics; distance education. 1. introduction year after year south africans in general, and university lecturers involved with the teaching and learning of numeracy skills in particular, anxiously await the results of the annual final school year (grade 12 or matric) examination in mathematics. it is well known that the stakes are exceptionally high because these results are determining factors for the future and studies of many young people. mathematics marks are not only used as entry requirements for the natural, engineering, medical and accounting sciences, but increasingly for economic and management sciences – the context of this paper. the impact of mathematics has been the topic of various academic studies shown by two of numerous examples (lithner, 2011; wood et al., 2012), but it is also regularly author: prof ilsa basson1 prof mardi jankowitz1 affiliation: 1university of south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i2.4 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(2): 33-51 published: 11 june 2021 received: 28 october 2020 accepted: 04 january 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4578-4625 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4695-9298 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 342021 39(2): 34-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) publicised in the local news media, from headings such as “school maths failing varsity entrants” (nkosi, 2013) and “adding up sa’s dire maths emergency” (tau, 2014) to “shocking facts about school maths in south africa” (news24 wire, 2015). we will be comparing the mathematics skills as assessed in the final year of school with that in the first year of university study for the bachelor of commerce (bcom) degrees. the study was prompted by the stark reality that for years now, students have been admitted to bcom degrees at the university of south africa (unisa) with university exemption based on their school results, but within the first year, the dropout rate could on average be more than 50%. of those students persisting and making it to the semester examinations, the average pass rate for first-year economics for example could be below the 50% mark (pretorius et al., 2009). the effectiveness of the school and university systems to enhance the learning experience in mathematics-based courses for economy and commerce students, is questioned here. 2. purpose of the study the aim of this study was firstly to investigate the mathematics skills and skills levels developed in the south african public secondary school system. it was done by analysing the final year examination papers of the past 5−6 years to determine the pre-knowledge and skills that students were supposed to have by the end of their school careers with a view to studying economics and commerce. these skills are mainly mathematical process skills as prescribed by the department of basic education of south africa (dbe, 2011). secondly we analysed the first-level bcom university papers dealing with numeracy of the same period to establish any gaps in the pre-knowledge and skills students might have and to what extent the university modules rely and build on the school learning. finally, we compare and propose improvements to the learning of mathematics for the economic and management sciences with a view of eventually advancing the learning and success rates of students. 3. literature review 3.1 secondary-tertiary transition for learners who choose the secondary to tertiary route, this transition is only one of a multitude of “transitions” relevant in the milieu of the teaching and learning of mathematics (gueudet et al., 2016). the transition mentioned often results in a so-called gap in mathematical knowledge and skills. in the literature, the context for researching this gap is mainly in pure mathematics, science and engineering; therefore, references from these areas and related journals are included. lately studies in other areas appeared, for example indicating the mathematics preknowledge needed to study accounting (mkhize, 2019). various methods could be utilised to answer the question posed by a norwegian study “are students transitioning from the secondary level to university studies in mathematics and engineering adequately prepared for education at the tertiary level?” (nortvedt & siqveland, 2019). the gap could be determined by curriculum studies, comparisons or mathematics diagnostic tests with or without prior notice. the national benchmark test (nbt) is a local example of such a diagnostic test (nbt, 2020). it was anticipated that before we could venture into situations of diagnostic testing or anything else, we needed to start with the basics, “where it starts”, the curricula determining what should be learnt and then the final assessments determining what has been achieved. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 352021 39(2): 35-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 basson & jankowitz exploring the school-university mathematics skills gap for economic sciences 3.2 international examples gaps in mathematical knowledge and skills are anticipated in developing countries with education challenges, but nortvedt and siqveland (2019) reported this gap even for scandinavian countries such as norway who perform above the international level on tests such as the programme for international student assessment (pisa, 2020) and trends in international mathematics and science study (timss, 2020). an initial approach is to think in terms of a comparison between secondary and tertiary content, but the challenges actually stem from primary and lower secondary level where difficulties handling symbolic language and concepts are introduced or experienced. basic mathematical knowledge i.e. numbers, algebra, measurement and geometry seem to be key, because these are building blocks for students to develop, for example, an understanding of algebra and functions. the mismatch between the nature of entrants’ pre-tertiary mathematical experiences and subsequent tertiary level mathematics-intensive courses has been described in the united kingdom as substantial and labelled the “mathematics problem” (hourigan & o’donoghue, 2007). university mathematics lecturing staff agreed that grades achieved in central state examinations were not comparable to grades ten years earlier. the shift to mass education during these years resulted in the education system becoming exam-orientated and the leaving certificate examination (lcm) in ireland for example would therefore be the foremost reason for studying mathematics. pacing through topics to cover the lcm and routine in classrooms following a day-to-day methodology, made the learning environment teacher-centred and the mathematics mastery of algorithmic procedures difficult. dialogue in classrooms became only teacher-initiated with pupils believing that their role was passive, that of listener and copier. schools were pressured to deliver good lcm results that in turn seriously weakened the greater aim of providing a high-quality mathematics education. three studies in ireland elaborated on the 2007 work 7−9 years later (faulkner et al., 2014; treacy & faulkner, 2015; treacy et al., 2016). the first study confirmed that after several different routes were provided to widen access to higher education, the result that panned out over time, was “beginning undergraduates with lower prior academic attainment, including mathematics, than ever before” (faulkner et al., 2014: 650). wider access required support services and they utilised discrimination analysis and a diagnostic test to classify students. the performance of students in higher education mathematics was best predicted by prior mathematical attainment. focusing on mathematics of service modules in science and technology, studying a cohort of students for the ten year period 2003−2013, the second study found an overall decline of 12.6% in basic mathematical skills of beginning students and an increase in at-risk students from 4% to 21%. this all happened during the time the number of students entering service modules almost doubled. mathematics remained the strongest predictor of successful progression of students through tertiary studies. ireland had a curriculum change during the period 2008−2014 that prompted the third study to probe more intensively for grade dilution. “project maths syllabus” placed renewed emphasis on problem-solving in practical contexts instead of focusing on procedural knowledge. the study just confirmed previous results; there were significant declines in beginning undergraduate students’ performance of basic mathematical skills for topics such as arithmetic, algebra, geometry and calculus. some countries such as the usa use placement tests to consider school leavers for further study. in a fairly large study in the midwest, researchers did not find any relation between http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 362021 39(2): 36-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) students’ high school mathematics curricula and their calculus readiness placement test recommendations, implying that students were not disadvantaged by a particular high school mathematics curriculum; especially considering traditionally commercially developed versus national science foundation funded curricula. the latter focusing on developing conceptual reasoning abilities and skills in modelling-based problems (norman et al., 2011). one international study in the domain of commerce and finance worth mentioning deals with threshold concepts in finance such as leverage/gearing, liquidity, risk/return, arbitrage, etc. (hoadley et al., 2015). the work was conducted in five countries namely, australia, canada, new zealand, south africa and the united kingdom. they identified threshold concepts that are considered central to mastery of finance and it was established that statistical concepts such as probability, randomness, regression, normal distribution, etc. underpin financial modelling. in the south african context, these statistical concepts point towards prior learning in mathematics and the impact thereof. 3.3 local examples a local example of probing the secondary-tertiary transition over a ten-year-period is research carried out at the north-west university. a curriculum change also prompted the results reported in 2010 (benadé & froneman, 2010). the example is from engineering when the first cohort of students completed their schooling in the time of the national curriculum statement (ncs) policy. the transition from secondary to tertiary mathematics required a shift from elementary to advanced mathematical thinking, resulting in a disjunction between the two levels. considering all first-year students for programmes including a mathematics module in either science, engineering, commerce or arts, the researchers compared a traditional transmission knowledge-based curriculum (tkc) group with an outcomes-based education (obe) group (froneman et al., 2015). the obe cohort showed poorer algebraic skills after a statistically significant difference was established for procedural knowledge. froneman and hitge (2019) recently included a cohort of students from the revised obe curriculum as documented in the curriculum assessment policy statement (caps) with that of the transmission knowledge-based and outcomes-based education groups to obtain an overview of the effect of three national curricula. they found little difference in practice for the three representative cohorts entering natural science and engineering based on a diagnostic test. all three cohorts performed poorly on questions of the test requiring conceptual understanding, despite the intention of the two outcomes-based education curricula to develop higher-order cognitive skills. 3.4 revised bloom’s taxonomy we used the revised bloom’s taxonomy (rbt) for mathematics (radmehr & drake, 2019) as a framework in this study. application of the framework is found in various contexts; for example, in the assessments of first-year accounting textbooks (ngwenya & arek-bawa, 2020), analysing assessment systems (uma et al., 2017) and the final mathematics examination problems in junior high school (himmah et al., 2019). we did not find examples in the context of the transfer of mathematics skills from secondary school to economic sciences at university level and specifically for distance education. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 372021 39(2): 37-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 basson & jankowitz exploring the school-university mathematics skills gap for economic sciences 4. background the university of south africa (unisa) is the only public open distance e-learning (odel) university in the south african higher education sector and the largest in africa (unisa, 2021). currently it serves more than 350 000 students per academic year, nearly one third of south african students (unisa, 2020). the college of economic and management sciences (cems) offers bcom degrees and hosts approximately 27% of the students. the department of decision sciences, formerly quantitative management, is responsible for the numeracy, mathematical and statistical aspects of the teaching in the college. the merger approach to the higher education system (sag, 2002) during the first five years after the millennium, resulted in unisa becoming a so-called comprehensive university offering the spectrum of post-school qualifications, including undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, diplomas and one-year certificates. cems had to adjust to a national expectation that all students, irrespective of mathematical background, should be catered for within this comprehensive system. figure 1(a) gives an overview of the progression paths devised and used from 2013−2019. grade 12 mathematics was originally not an admission requirement to register for certain bcom degrees (unisa, 2004). from 2013 the admission requirement was raised to a minimum of 60% in grade 12 mathematics. mathematical literacy was no longer considered as an admission requirement for these degrees. two modules at the first level quantitative modelling dsc1520 and introductory financial mathematics dsc1630 aim to strengthen students’ mathematical and statistical competencies. extended degrees in a foundation programme spanning four years were introduced for prospective students with grade 12 mathematics marks between 50% and 60%. business numerical skills a and b (fbn1501 and fbn1502) were introduced in 2013 to support and develop the mathematical skills of these students. students with less than 50% for grade 12 mathematics, with grade 12 mathematical literacy or older persons without mathematics were articulated to a higher certificate in economic and management sciences. after completion of ten 12-credit nqf level 5 modules, students could enter the bcom degree. two of the modules, basic numeracy (bnu1501) and elementary quantitative methods (qmi1500), address numeracy skills and reside with the department of decision sciences. a blended delivery model that includes online and paperbased resources is used to provide students with learning support. the admission criterion of 60% minimum for grade 12 mathematics to enter bcom degrees resulted in low registration numbers for these degrees. this requirement was not in line with those for similar degrees at other south african institutions. some departments in the college, where the discipline did not require a high level of mathematics skills such as public administration and tourism, applied to lower the admission criteria for their degrees. it resulted in a decision by the college tuition and learning committee to lower the minimum admission requirement for a bcom degree to 50% for grade 12 mathematics. a prospective student who does not meet this requirement, would be referred to the higher certificate in economic and management sciences (figure 1[b]). the criteria for the extended degrees were changed to a mark between 40% and 50% for grade 12 mathematics. but funding for the extended degrees terminated and from 2020 these degrees are not offered. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 382021 39(2): 38-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) figure 1: progression paths for students of two periods (a) 2013−2019 and (b) since 2020. 5. framework and methodology the national curriculum statement (ncs) grades r−12 and the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) of the department of basic education (dbe) (dbe, 2020a) governed the south african public school system for the period under investigation 2014−2018. caps provided the programme and promotion requirements. all the examination papers for the national senior certificate (nsc) examinations from 2008 are available on the website of the dbe referenced above. the grade 12 dbe mathematics examination papers of five years 2014−2018 were analysed together with all the examination papers for the following period (ten semesters) of the bcom mathematics-based modules dsc1520 and dsc1630 presented by our department. for the analysis, a qualitative research approach was used by means of a content analysis (marsh & white, 2006) of the papers. we used our knowledge and experience as university lecturers of more than twenty years each, as bases for the analytical constructs. together with the content analysis, the revised bloom’s taxonomy (rbt) for mathematics (anderson et al., 2001) provided the framework for determining the level of relative cognitive complexity of the questions in the examination papers under consideration. in a recent paper, radmehr and drake (2019) studied the literature and compared the frameworks and major theories being used to inform not only the assessment of mathematics, but also the teaching and learning thereof. they concluded that “rbt seems to be the most detailed, comprehensive and flexible framework, thus providing researchers with the most potential for exploring the teaching, learning and assessment of mathematics” (radmehr & drake, 2019: 896) and although it has not been used frequently in mathematics to date, “given its broad range of potential applications, and how flexibly it can be used, we believe it has the potential to be used more widely for mathematics” (radmehr & drake, 2019: 916). the levels of the revised bloom’s taxonomy for mathematics are displayed in figure 2 below and the actions required shown in table 1. the levels of remembering and understanding are grouped as knowledge and proposed to constitute 20% of a school examination paper. applying is classified as a routine procedure and accounts for approximately 35% of the examination paper. these three levels of the rbt form part of lower-order thinking. analysing http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 392021 39(2): 39-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 basson & jankowitz exploring the school-university mathematics skills gap for economic sciences is classified as a complex procedure and could count 30%. evaluating and creating are classified as problem solving in mathematics and could make up the rest of a paper counting 15%. questions classified as analysing, evaluating or creating are considered higher order thinking skills. figure 2: revised bloom’s taxonomy for mathematics (anderson et al., 2001). table 1: term and actions guide for bloom’s revised taxonomy for mathematics term explanation actions remembering find or remember information list, find, name, identify, locate, describe, memorise, define understanding understanding and making sense of information interpret, summarise, explain, infer, paraphrase, discuss applying use information in new (but similar) situations diagram, make charts, draw, apply, solve, calculate analysing take information apart and explore relationships categorise, examine, compare/contrast, organise evaluating critically examine information and make judgements judge, test, critique, defend, criticise creating create something new using information design, build, construct, plan, produce, devise, invent in addition to the examination papers, the department of basic education (dbe) publishes a national senior certificate examinations diagnostic report annually (dbe, 2020b). these annual reports present among other aspects, comparative performance data, curriculum topics covered and diagnostic question analyses including comments on the interpretation of the questions. this information was used in conjunction with our content and rbt analyses. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 402021 39(2): 40-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 6. results and discussion we present some interpretation and discussion together with the results because of the nature of the data and the framework used. 6.1 dbe diagnostic reports unisa students do not always proceed directly from grade 12 to university. but given that we serve almost a third of the country’s students, we assume that those who enrol with us, would constitute a reasonable representative sample of the country’s grade 12 population eligible for higher education studies. figure 3 below depicts the overall performance in grade 12 mathematics as extracted from the diagnostic reports after the november examination session of each year. data were included from 2011 to observe any trend changes that might have occurred moving from the previous curriculum to the current caps version, especially during the 2012−2014 implementation phase. there seems to be no significant change that should be reported; in fact, the 2014 data for example seems virtually the same as that of 2012. one could observe that the maximum of the data shifted from the 10−19% range in 2011 to 30−39% in 2018, but that does not alter the fact that the vast majority of learners (78%) still performed below the 50% level seven years later. figure 3: overall performance (percentage of candidates as a function of their marks) in grade 12 mathematics from 2011−2018 (dbe, 2020b). the percentages of candidates with performance that would allow them directly into the bcom (>59%), extended bcom (50–59%) and higher certificate (<50%) for 2013−2018 are displayed in figure 4. the graph confirms that more than 75% of the candidates have marks less than 50%. this explains the high student numbers in the higher certificate in economic http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 412021 39(2): 41-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 basson & jankowitz exploring the school-university mathematics skills gap for economic sciences and management sciences. on average only 12.6% of the candidates have a final mark of 60% and above. most of these candidates apply at residential universities first and those that end up at unisa are usually financially challenged, could not get in elsewhere or are more mature persons that need to work full-time and study part-time through distance education (subotzky & prinsloo, 2011). figure 4: grade 12 mathematics performance for three groups from 2014−2018. 6.2 grade 12 examination paper content the caps grades 10−12 mathematics policy stipulates assessment in section 4 of the document (dbe, 2011). it gives a clear but fixed breakdown for the marks distribution of the grade 12 end-of-year papers (table 2). from the papers analysed it seems that examiners within the limits, strictly adhered to the guidelines. the result would be standardisation and the content of papers becoming quite predictable from year to year. table 2: grade 12 papers 1 and 2 marks distribution out of a total of 150 per paper topic caps mark paper 1: equations, inequalities, algebraic manipulation 25±3 number patterns and sequences 25±3 functions and graphs 35±3 finance 15±3 calculus (differential) 35±3 probability, counting principles 15±3 paper 2: data handling 20±3 the percentage distributions of prescribed main topics covered in paper 1 and paper 2 for the years 2014−2018 are illustrated in figure 5. this figure shows that the topic functions and graphs and the topic calculus usually each count most of the total paper marks at the 22−25% level. equations, inequalities and algebraic manipulations count between 14% and 17% of the total marks, with finance and probability and counting principles around 10%. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 422021 39(2): 42-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) number patterns and sequences account for the final 15−20% but are not topics directly used in the first year of unisa studies. paper 2 data is also shown in figure 5 for the four main topics. the first topic on data handling and the other three on geometry and trigonometry. for our purposes we focused on data handling only and observed that it accounts for approximately 13% of this paper. figure 5: percentage of marks for topics in mathematics papers 1 and 2 from 2014−2018. 6.3 decision sciences (ds) modules and paper content quantitative modelling dsc1520 is the mathematics-based first-year module offered in the majority of the unisa bcom degrees. introductory financial mathematics dsc1630 is part of selected bcom degrees and of the bcompt degree as required by the south african institute for chartered accountants (saica) for accounting degrees. students registered for dsc1630 must also register for dsc1520, but not vice versa. the syllabi of these modules are summarised in tables 3 and 4. table 3: quantitative modelling dsc1520 topics topic no name contents r1 preliminaries arithmetic operations, fractions, solving equations, currency conversions, percentages r2 linear functions straight line, mathematical modelling (graphs), applications: demand, supply, cost, revenue, elasticity of demand, income r3 linear algebra solving simultaneous linear equations, equilibrium and break-even: equilibrium in goods and labour markets, break-even analysis, consumer and producer surplus, linear programming r4 non-linear algebra quadratic, cubic and other polynomial functions, exponential functions, logarithmic functions, simple inequalities, hyperbolic functions a/(bx+c) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 432021 39(2): 43-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 basson & jankowitz exploring the school-university mathematics skills gap for economic sciences topic no name contents r5 introductory calculus slope of a curve and differentiation, applications: marginal functions, optimisation of functions of one variable, point elasticity of demand and the derivative, integration as the reverse of differentiation, power rule of integration table 4: introductory financial mathematics dsc1630 topics topic no name contents s1 simple and discount interest simple interest, simple discount, time value of money s2 compound interest nominal rates, effective rates , odd period calculations, fractional and continuous compounding, equation of value s3 annuities ordinary annuities, annuities due, deferred annuities, perpetuities, increasing annuities s4 amortisation amortisation schedule, sinking fund s5 cash flows capital budgeting, internal rate of return, net present value, profitability index, modified internal rate of return s6 bonds and debentures money market instruments, all-in-price, accrued interest, clean price of a bond s7 handling of data subscript and summation, arithmetic/weighted mean, standard deviation/variance, linear relationships, correlation and regression analyses initially we were looking for the overlap between the grade 12 mathematics topics and those in the syllabi of the two bcom modules dsc1520 and 1630. a summary of the overlap is indicated by the solid blocks in table 5. the grade 12 paper 1 topics equations, inequalities and algebraic manipulation, functions and graphs and calculus overlap with topics in the syllabus of dsc1520. the paper 1 topic finance and paper 2 topic data handling appear in the syllabus of dsc1630. therefore, there are five topics in total from the grade 12 mathematics papers (t1, t3−5 and t7) that are considered to be direct pre-knowledge for the bcom modules. table 5: overlap of grade 12 mathematics topics with bcom modules dsc1520 and dsc1630 grade 12 mathematics topics topic no. dsc1520 dsc1630 paper 1 equations, inequalities, algebraic manipulation t1 number patterns and sequences t2 functions and graphs t3 finance t4 calculus t5 probability and counting principles t6 paper 2 data handling t7 analytical geometry t8 trigonometry t9 euclidean geometry t10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 442021 39(2): 44-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 6.4 revised bloom’s taxonomy and grade 12 papers 1 and 2 the questions for the 2014−2018 grade 12 mathematics paper 1 were classified according to the six rbt levels shown in figure 2, namely remembering, understanding, applying, analysing, evaluating or creating. the information displayed in the diagnostic reports from the dbe together with the paper memorandums were used in assisting us to clarify ambiguities among ourselves while analysing the questions. the resulting percentage distribution of the rbt analysis is given in figure 6. it followed that the classifications applying and analysing, which account for approximately 70% of the total. during 2017 and 2018 applying counted for more than 50% of the marks. except for the 2014 paper, evaluating counted for between 13% and 18%, which is in line with the proposed department of basic education (dbe) 15% for this level. in all instances, remembering and understanding accounted for less than 20% of the marks. our observation is that for these years, although the highest rbt level creating was not actually tested, paper 1 was set to comply with the percentages set by the dbe for the various levels of cognitive complexity. data handling is covered by questions 1 and 2 in each of the papers 2 of the years 2014−2018. we only classified the data handling questions according to the rbt, because the geometry and trigonometry questions following in the remainder of the papers are not applicable to the syllabi of the bcom modules. the percentage distribution of the bloom levels for data handling is shown at the bottom of figure 6. the percentages for each category are not consistent as for the questions in paper 1 and vary as much as 20% to 60% for the understanding category. variations of 20%−40% were found for remembering and applying. none of the questions could be classified as either evaluating or creating. data handling questions seem to be focused on a high percentage of lower level thinking skills, which could mainly be classified as remembering and understanding. aspects of statistics are fairly new to the national curriculum as part of mathematics, they are introduced to learners towards the latter part of the academic year and counts for only 7% of the final examination mark. these could be contributing factors to the nature of the data presented in figure 6. figure 6: revised bloom’s taxonomy applied to grade 12 mathematics paper 1 and data handling of paper 2. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 452021 39(2): 45-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 basson & jankowitz exploring the school-university mathematics skills gap for economic sciences 6.5 revised bloom’s taxonomy and first level bcom papers the rbt was also used to classify the may/june semester 1 and october/november semester 2, examination questions of the modules dsc1520 and dsc1630 for the years 2015−2019. these years follow on the 2014−2018 period selected for the school papers. because of large student numbers, between 1 000 to 10 000 during a given semester, these examination papers consist of 30 multiple-choice questions only. each question of each examination paper was inspected to determine the topic and classify it according to the chosen taxonomy. the percentages based on the rbt classification for dsc1520 and dsc1630 examination papers from 2015−2019 are given in figure 7 for the same period. figure 7: revised bloom’s taxonomy applied to dsc1520 and dsc1630 examination questions from 2015−2019. for module dsc1520 questions classified as applying dominate the examination paper with percentages varying from 73% to 93%. questions classified as analysing vary between 10% and 17%. less than 10% of the questions could be classified as remembering and understanding, with no questions on the problem-solving level, evaluating and creating. the content of this module consists of mathematical techniques applied to business, mainly economics, and that could be the reason why lecturers setting the papers considered the percentage in the application category to be high. it should be mentioned that basic applications are presented to students during the first year of study, with problem-solving skills following in the consecutive years. the pattern is similar for the module dsc1630. the focus is also on questions classified as applying (77%−90%, except for one semester). between 7% and 23% of the marks are http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 462021 39(2): 46-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) classified as analysing, again with no questions on the problem-solving level. as before, 10% or less of the marks are classified as remembering and understanding. this module concentrates on the application of techniques in financial mathematics to problems in the business, banking and insurance environments. the analysis displayed by figure 7 revealed shortcomings in our first level training of bcom students with almost all testing happening only in the middle of the scope of cognitive levels. it puts a firm question mark behind the effectiveness of our efforts to provide students with skills development opportunities. the results of figure 7 could be attributed to many factors such as the large student numbers, the limitation of only utilising multiple-choice test items and the student profile. without any clear indication now, this concern with related aspects need further exploration. 6.6 comparison of overlapping topics next, we focus on the five topics (table 5) that overlap between the grade 12 papers and the papers of modules dsc1520 and dsc1630. the rbt classifications for these five topics (t1, t3−5 and t7) were extracted from the data and the five-year average percentages were calculated for each rbt level. the comparisons are displayed in figures 8 and 9. figure 8: the rbt five-year average percentage of overlapping topics in mathematics p1 and dsc1520. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 472021 39(2): 47-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 basson & jankowitz exploring the school-university mathematics skills gap for economic sciences figure 9: the rbt five-year average percentage of overlapping topics in mathematics p1 and p2 and dsc1630. considering dsc1520 first (figure 8), the topic linear equations represented four categories of the rbt, linear and non-linear algebra three categories and calculus only two. in comparison, the grade 12 papers covered the bloom levels up to evaluating (level 5), with the focus on applying (level 3), for all three topics. the authors once more noted that the dsc1520 papers did not test any of the top two rbt levels in contrast to the school papers where there is consistently on average about 16% testing at level 5 evaluating. figure 9 shows the results for dsc1630. the topic finance t4 in grade 12 paper 1 corresponds with the content of the first three topics (s1−s3) in the dsc1630 papers. the school and university papers only tested routine and complex procedures (levels 3 and 4) with the dsc1630 paper having a strong emphasis on applying at the 80% level. considering data handling t7, school and university examiners viewed the topic differently. although both groups tested basically at the three lowest rbt levels, the school papers showed a similar spread (28%, 33% and 25%) at rbt levels 1 to 3 and 14% at level 4. the dsc1630 papers measured at 9% for levels 1 and 2 and again very high (82%) for level 3. the results represented here could be a topic for further investigation, because it seems that both education sectors steer away from higher order thinking skills when aspects of statistics, in this instance data handling, are examined. results for dsc1630 are similar to those recently found for assessments in accounting textbooks by ngwenya and arek-bawa (2020). 6.7 skills required for non-overlapping topics the two university modules dsc1520 and dsc1630 introduce students to new concepts and ideas related to economics and financial mathematics apart from the overlapping topics with school mathematics already discussed. these include topics such as integral calculus, the natural logarithm, amortisation, bonds and cash flow. the pre-knowledge required to study these non-overlapping topics seems to be covered by the basics of the overlapping topics and simple mathematical techniques learnt at junior high school levels. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 482021 39(2): 48-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 7. conclusions and recommendations does the south african school system provide learners with the necessary pre-knowledge and skills to pursue further studies in economic sciences? from the content and rbt investigation of the grade 12 mathematics papers, from 2014−2018, albeit strictly prescribed, it seems a balance has been developed between lowerand higher-order thinking skills. in paper 1 most of the examination questions could be classified as routine and complex procedures with small percentages indicating knowledge and problem solving on both sides of the spectrum tested. the questions on the topic data handling in paper 2 were mostly classified as knowledge and routine procedures at the lower end of the cognitive range. to the contrary, the examination questions on topics of the first level modules for the bcom degrees overlapping with school topics were mostly classified as routine procedures in the university examinations. there was a small percentage on complex procedures, with the remainder based on knowledge. no problem-solving aspects were tested by the examination questions on overlapping topics. questions probing evaluating and creating skills could have been present in the nonoverlapping topics of the syllabi of the modules. based on the above, especially the situation with overlapping topics, the answer seems obvious: the students that passed mathematics at school are supposed to have adequate pre-knowledge for the first level bcom modules. these modules are mostly taken as service modules for bcom and bcompt degrees with specialisation in other disciplines, some not mathematically based. the bcom in quantitative management is rooted in mathematics and statistics, but the specialisation only starts at the second level of the degree. in conclusion, there seems to be no glaring gaps in terms of content that should be addressed with learners when they arrive at university for further study. the question remains, why the large dropout rate and failure in university examinations if the school preparation seems suitable? it is accentuated by the fact that the two first level modules did not require students to demonstrate higher order thinking skills in examinations. similar to ireland (faulkner et al., 2014), south africa experienced a massification of education, in our case after and because of political changes in 1994. the student profile changed significantly during the period since then and as in ireland, various pathways have been opened for students to access higher education. this is particularly true for students from lower socio-economic groups. despite some positive outcomes, the reality as shown in figure 3 remains that too many learners still fail dismally in mathematics nationally despite well-meant intentions from the national department of basic education. the move from a decentralised system in the nineties to the current seemingly overregulated and standardised national education regime, did not improve the learning experiences of thousands of young people in the country, particularly when it comes to mathematics related skills. it is concerning and demands attention that our own first level modules, based on this study only, do not seem to provide students with the broad skills set needed to “survive” higher education and become competent economists, bankers, accountants and the like. as elsewhere one of the main reasons behind learning difficulties, seems to be the reduction of complexity compared to procedural focus − “fundamental competencies such as conceptual understanding and problem-solving ability are not developed by imitative reasoning since it avoids both creativity and meaning” (lithner, 2011: 295). the aim of finding solutions for our poor performance in the economic and management sciences, apart from the known challenges of distance education, has already led us to http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 492021 39(2): 49-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.4 basson & jankowitz exploring the school-university mathematics skills gap for economic sciences so-called bridging courses and various entry routes as shown in figure 1. one of the avenues that we could pursue next to get to know our entry students better, would be that of diagnostic testing combined with a more detailed student profile that would also identify students’ study needs. we would be supporting an increased emphasis on numeracy in secondary education as well as considering establishing threshold concepts (houdley et al., 2015) for our courses as a future project to explore the school-university transition in more detail. references anderson, l.w. (ed.), krathwohl, d.r. 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http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 117 anastasia p. samaras college of education and human development, george mason university, virginia, usa e-mail: asamaras@gmu.edu telephone: 703 993 8154 a pedagogy changer: transdisciplinary faculty self-study anastasia p. samaras with diana karczmarczyk, lesley smith, louisa woodville, laurie harmon, ilham nasser, seth parsons, toni smith, kirk borne, lynne constantine, ezperanza roman mendoza, jennifer suh, & ryan swanson in this article, i examine pedagogical understandings as captured through documented critical incidents of a transdisciplinary faculty self-study group which was designed and grounded in notions of sociocultural theory. i report from my lens as facilitatorparticipant-observer and from my work with eleven other participants in a threesemester research project in which we conducted individual self-studies of profesional practice as well as a meta-study of the collective. a diverse data set, which included exit interviews, mid-project and end-of-project exit slips, and individual narratives, served to triangulate and support themes of our exchanging of pedagogical activities, learning with critical friends, and re-imagining our pedagogies. the study suggests that, as universities work to improve student learning, they might consider providing creative studio spaces for self-study of professional practice so that faculty can exchange their talents in order to more deeply understand and experience pedagogical innovations. keywords: self-study of professional practice, transdisciplinary, faculty study groups, pedagogy, critical incidents, transformative learning, perspective-taking, innovation introduction in 2006, anne freese and i wrote about the paradoxical nature of self-study research in our book, self-study of teaching practices and framed that discussion within vygotskian tenets of how we learn with, and through our interaction with others (samaras & freese, 2006). our goal in writing the book was to demystify self-study research and make it practical and impactful for teacher and student learning. towards perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 118 that end, we decided to invite teachers to explore self-study research through a series of informal self-study methods but not until we first addressed the nature of selfstudy research as purposely paradoxical. we described self-study as both individual and collective and, as loughran and northfield (1998: 7) characterised, a “significant paradox” of the self-study terminology. although self-study is a personal inquiry situated in one’s professional practice, it is the audience and dialogue of critical friends that enables perspective-taking. we also noted that self-study research is both personal and interpersonal, as learning and thinking arise through collaboration and are socially mediated (vygotsky, 1978). in these ways, we recognised the private and public paradox of self-study research and the essentialness of sharing the personal to improve education inside and outside of ourselves as teachers. what i did not realise then was that the paradoxical nature was uniquely transformative when participants worked in a holistic manner not bound by discipline, but by exploring and exchanging pedagogical inquiries which transcended their discipline boundaries. i learned that first-hand when i facilitated and participated in a transdisciplinary faculty self-study group that changed the way i thought about pedagogy, which is the focus of his article. university cultures do not typically promote or support self-study groups so that faculty can collectively explore their pedagogy. consequently, faculty often rely on their own resources and efforts to connect with colleagues inside and outside their discipline and college. moreover, faculty members have generally been trained to research people, but not research with people (heron & reason, 2001: 179), and certainly not to research themselves, as they do in self-study research (whitehead, 1989). self-study research is a reflective investigative practice that springs from personally situated inquiry and generates new knowledge with the critical support of colleagues (louie, drevdahl, purdy & stachman, 2003; samaras, 2011). essentially, in self-study, faculty choose to critically examine their teaching in order to develop more consciously driven modes of pedagogical activity, as opposed to relying on habit, tradition, or impulse (samaras, 2002). the goal of self-study is for faculty to be active agents in reframing their beliefs and practices at both the personal and professional level and for improvement-aimed purposes beyond themselves (loughran & northfield, 1998). in self-study research, scholars embrace teaching “not just as a pedagogical task, but also a social-pedagogical task” prompted with moral, ethical, and political aims (laboskey, 2004: 830). self-study teacher-educators have designed faculty self-study groups composed of other teacher-educators (grierson, tessaro, cantalini-williams, grant & denton, 2010; hoban, 2007; kitchen, ciuffetelli parker & gallagher, 2008; lunenberg, zwart & korthagen, 2010; samaras, kayler, rigsby, weller & wilcox, 2006). these groups work with the goal of solving practical problems about teacher education, while generating knowledge that is negotiated and tested. my initiative to launch a transdisciplinary self-study group was inspired by my goal of introducing self-study research across my university and of extending it to faculty who were not all teacher-educators – thus a pedagogy changer: transdisciplinary faculty self-study anastasia p. samaras 119 moving self-study for teacher-educators into transdisciplinary self-study (samaras, 2002). although i had taught self-study research for classroom teachers and for doctoral students, who came from various specialisations for years, this was my first experience facilitating a transdisciplinary faculty self-study group (samaras, adamslegge, breslin, mittapalli, magaha o’looney & wilcox, 2007). i imagined it would be different and embraced my uncertainties. i was curious to see what would happen when academics from diverse disciplinary backgrounds came together to study their teaching and the authenticity of their assumptions of practice based on their ways of knowing. my goal became a reality when i received the support of the centre for teaching and faculty excellence (ctfe) in 2010 to launch a faculty self-study group known as the scholars of studying teaching collaborative (sostc). participation across disciplines and colleges was a requisite for this project. a dozen of us gathered to study our teaching practice. in this article, i share the highights and shifts in thinking about our pedagogies, as captured through our documented critical incidents from my lens as facilitatorparticipant-observer. according to tripp (1993: 24), a critical event is “a situation which marked a significant turning-point or change in the life of a person or an institution … or in some social phenomenon”. using critical incidents is common in research about teaching as well as in other disciplines (bullough & gitlin, 1995; kosnik, 2013; shapira-lishchinsky, 2011). angelides (2001) found that critical incidents are an efficient method to gather rich data that unveil participants’ deep interpretations of seemingly everyday events as well as the meanings they attribute to their significance. in addition, measor (1985) noted that when recalled, critical incidents may have negative or positive consequences as teachers reflect about their personal and professional identities. our experiences in sostc changed us on both a personal and professional level as we changed it. despite the diversity of our expertise, and possibly because of it, there seemed to be an underlying order that transpired and transformed the ways in which we thought about, re-imagined, and enacted our pedagogies. i liken this dynamical nature to chaos theory where our unique smaller systems of knowing pedagogy changed as we experienced each other’s unique ways of knowing. i frame my discussion in the very paradoxical nature and sociocultural frame, which anne and i presented, and extend that discussion, in this instance, to the paradox of exchange and change in coming to know pedagogy – a pedagogy changer. a participant captured a related notion in a sketch she made when asked to diagram how she understood her work in the context of our work in sostc. she would later find that the hub was not me, but the larger collective sphere propelling our smaller critical friends’ circles and vice versa. perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 120 figure 1: design of sostc the design for our faculty self-study group was grounded in notions of vygotksy’s (1981) sociocultural theory. accordingly, learning is situated in practice through joint activity and is socially and culturally mediated, and especially through the psychological tool of language (vygotsky, 1978; 1986). learning through dialogue is active, social, and affective and shapes individuals’ mental processes (bakthin, 1981; vygotsky, 1978; rieber & carton, 1987; wertsch, 1991). actions and thoughts are culturally mediated, “indirectly shaped by forces that originate in the dynamics of communication” (wertsch, 1985: 81). vygotsky asserted that learning, thinking, and knowing arise through collaboration and re-appropriating feedback from others and a willingness to learn with and from each other (wells, 2000). the community extends and transforms individuals’ understanding, while the individual internalises cognition when working outside his/her own perspective (lave & wenger, 1991). latta and buck (2007: 191-192) address the interplay of the personal within a collaborative in their self-study: self-study demands that all of us attend to the experiences and understandings of others, bringing this thinking back to ourselves, inciting an individual-collective movement that is always in the making, forming and reforming, transforming self and others. in this way, turning back on self is a process experienced as interdependent with others. a pedagogy changer: transdisciplinary faculty self-study anastasia p. samaras 121 as is the paradoxical nature of self-study research, our participation entailed both personal and collaborative inquiry (laboskey, 2004; loughran & northfield, 1998; samaras, 2011). personal insights were continuously documented and presented for critique with critical friends, or trusted colleagues who provided thoughtful and insightful feedback on the actions and engagement of practice (costa & kallick, 1993). the role of a critical friend is to provoke new ideas and interpretations, question the researcher’s assumptions, and provide open, honest, and constructive feedback (breslin, mittapalli, samaras, adams-legge, infranco, johri, mcilwain, magaha o’looney, pearson, pratt & wilcox, 2008). they serve to validate researchers’ interpretations (bodone, guðjónsdóttir & dalmau, 2004). dialogue with critical friends is invaluable in enabling faculty to understand their teaching from an ontological stance as lifelong learners (pinnegar & hamilton, 2009). nonetheless, self-study may trigger a self-study scholar’s heightened awareness about the assumptions and gaps in his/her practice (berry, 2007; brandenburg, 2008). teachers realise that embracing the messiness, complexities, and omissions of their teaching can lead to positive results, given how the discipline of self-study requires both self-confidence and vulnerability (loughran, 2004; smith & samaras, 2011). as mezirow (1995) asserts, the most critical learning in transformative experience takes place in the communicative domain, but that communication needs to be supportive, with learners willing to listen to one another without judgement (mezirow, 1997). context and participants in august 2010, eleven faculty members were competitively selected to participate in a three-semester research project to conduct a self-study of their professional practice facilitated by myself, a teacher-educator and self-study methodologist scholar. the selected faculty members came from eleven specialisations and four different colleges within george mason university (gmu), a large public university with a diverse student and faculty population. our faculty group was diverse by culture, discipline, and experience, and included nine females and three males. we came from departments of humanities, social sciences, recreation, education, languages, and the sciences. each of us, including myself, developed a research question grounded in practice. with the support of our group, we designed and enacted an individual self-study project. topics of individual self-studies included, for example, exploring challenges and supports incorporating inquiry-based activities in a large lecture astronomy course; probing how classroom discussion in critical arts courses can be re-imagined as a more powerful tool for learning, and analysing the use of hybrid learning techniques to influence community-building in a recreation and parks course. in addition to our individual self-studies, we also engaged in a meta-study to explore our collective experience which grounded us in a shared task (samaras, smith, harmon, nasser, smith, borne, parsons, woodville, constantine, roman-mendoza, suh, swanson & karczmarczyk, 2012a; under review). perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 122 we met monthly over a 16-month period as a whole group in 90-minute face-toface meetings. at our first meeting, we shared research interests through artefacts and then chose critical friends’ groups. three groups resulted, two with four participants and the other with three. i also worked with two critical friends, mieke lunenberg from vrie university, who had facilitated a teacher-educator faculty self-study group in amsterdam, and kim eby, director of ctfe. during our whole-group meetings, we talked about the progress of our self-studies, shared our confusions and insights about the self-study methodology, and collected and analysed data for our metastudy. throughout our time together, participants volunteered to lead pedagogybased activities during our whole-group meetings. these activities included sharing an artefact that represented our research topic; free writing about our teaching; participating in perceptual activities to provoke our ways of knowing, including observing galaxies, and a drawing activity where we sketched how we understood our self-study research within the context of the collaborative. as critical friends, we met inside and outside of the whole-group meetings both face-to-face and virtually. we also engaged in letter-writing, email and file exchanges with critical friends. a multiplier effect for presenting, writing, and publishing from the beginning of our work, we discussed how we had a wonderful opportunity to individually and collectively present and publish our research – a motiving factor for academics. nonetheless, having a choice about the level of personal involvement, which our work and schedules afforded us, gave us flexibility and variance in our contributions. that personal choice also determined our author order for various collaborative projects over time. since we all collected and analysed the data, there was a collective “we” of authorship; yet participants chose their level of involvement. regardless of level of involvement, a multiplier effect resulted. we became co-authors of collective pieces as we continued to present and publish our work over a twoto three-year period, capturing different data points in our longitudinal research. since diana, a graduate student-assistant, had contributed significantly in conducting, transcribing, and analysing interviews, conducting a partial literature review, and contributing to writing, she became a second author in the later writing. all participants were invited to take the lead on presenting, analysing, and writing which some did as analysis team leaders. a large research team and our prolonged engagement increased the validity of the study and allowed for triangulation of different sources, methods, investigators, and analysis (creswell, 2013). for example, we created three teams with leaders for data analysis based on our interests: a seven-member team analysed the narratives; a five-member team analysed the midproject and end-of-project exit slips, and diana co-analysed individual interviews with myself, conducted member-checks with participants, and check-coding with another graduate student. the seven-member narrative analysis team designed what they coined “a nested waterfall approach”, whereby each of the twelve narratives was read and coded independently with an overlap of at least two readers for each narrative. a pedagogy changer: transdisciplinary faculty self-study anastasia p. samaras 123 finally, eight of us agreed to work as a writing team to draw meaning across the full data set. for our beginning presentations, we found it manageable for each of us to prepare a powerpoint slide, discussing our individual projects within the context of our whole group at a college research colloquium (samaras, borne, harmon, constantine, suh, roman mendoza, nasser, parsons, smith, smith, swanson, woodville & eby, 2011) and at the annual ctfe conference (smith, borne, harmon, constantine, suh, roman mendoza, nasser, parsons, samaras, smith, swanson & woodville, 2011). we continued to build upon those slides and used them as a base to develop and write papers which we presented at national and international conferences (parsons, nasser, samaras, smith & suh, 2012; samaras, smith, harmon, nasser, smith, borne, parsons, woodville, constantine, roman-mendoza, suh, swanson & karczmarczyk, 2012b). each lead author adapted and extended the work of previous ones. parallel to our group research, some of us chose to also individually and collectively present at conferences related to our specialisations (for example, see constantine, 2011a; 2011b; smith & samaras, 2011; suh, 2012; woodville, 2011) as well as publish in journals of our discipline (swanson, 2014). this writing is my individual effort to step back again with some distance and consider, as facilitator, the pedagogical impact of our collective work. and yet, this writing is only possible because of the data we collected as a group. therefore, i proudly place my co-authorship “with” my sostc colleagues and graduate research-assistant, as i re-examine our critical incidents in more detail. examining critical incidents as part of our meta-study reported elsewhere (samaras et al., 2012a), our group collected data that included data about critical incidents. we asked: “what key nodal or critical incidents had an impact on how our community and individual projects evolved?”. i revisit that question, in this instance, by returning to our data with a focus on our thinking and shifts about pedagogies, as documented in critical incidents using three primary data sources, namely individual exit interviews conducted; midproject and end-of-project exit slips, and individual narratives. as a group participant, i was a part of contributing to, and analysing each data source. for the individual exit interviews, participants, including myself, responded to: “what was a critical incident that occurred during your experience with the sostc group?”. the prompt for writing the narrative was for participants to reflect on the impact of sostc on his/ her individual project and personal and professional development. the narratives addressed our thinking about our individual self-studies, individual interviews, and pedagogical activities experienced in the group, such as sharing research artefacts, sketching drawings that reflected our collaborative experience, and writing letters exchanged with critical friends. data were posted on blackboard scholar®, a webbased community site, which served as a platform to document and make transparent perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 124 all our data. we posted our emerging designs, details, instruments, data, and analyses including our preconceptions, assumptions, and re-thinking about practice. first, i read through each exit interview, identifying segments of participant exit interviews that addressed critical incidents related to pedagogy. as i read each interview, i made analytical memorandums (saldana, 2009) of preliminary codes. then, reading across the interviews, i developed categories using the constant comparison method with open, axial, and selective coding (creswell, 2013; patton, 2002). in this data set, participants expressed that one of their major ‘eureka’ moments was when they understood the self-study methodology. this occurred, to a large extent, through discussing their projects with critical friends and receiving peer feedback. critical incidents also included enacting pedagogical activities presented by participants during our whole-group meetings and articulating their thinking about pedagogy with critical friends. participants’ willingness and interest in sharing their expertise to our whole-group meetings were also particularly powerful for me. in my interview, i stated: “i have been giving mine … you know, talents. now others are jumping in. so i’d say that is what made it work. it was relevant and people seemed to enjoy it.” next, i read through the mid-project and end-of-project exit slips, again using the constant comparative method. participants reported improvement in their teaching and attitudes towards their students; the value of the group and critical friends’ meetings to provide structure and motivation, and new ways to assess and research their teaching. last, i read through each narrative to identify segments of participants’ statements that addressed critical incidents related to pedagogy. in this data set, critical incidents included enacting pedagogical activities presented by participants during our wholegroup meetings; revising preconceived notions about teaching and who they are as a teacher, as well as collaborating and communicating with a diverse and supportive group of scholars – especially critical friends who helped them articulate and rethink practice. these overlapping outcomes in the large and diverse data set served to triangulate and support repeated themes by participants related to critical incidents experienced. these included exchanging pedagogical activities; learning with critical friends, and re-imagining pedagogy. i address each of these themes next. exchanging pedagogies in planning our project launch, i considered pedagogies to engage us and, like a teacher, i began my lesson planning! nonetheless, after our very first meeting, i reminded myself that this faculty self-study group was not my classroom. i observed that the group had an inertia which moved each of us individually and collectively. in an early log to mieke, i wrote: a pedagogy changer: transdisciplinary faculty self-study anastasia p. samaras 125 i realized that i don’t have to be the only expert − indeed, i am not. each participant brought their unique talents to our whole group and collectively we changed. we worked in overlapping circles of zpd, using our expertise and talents to support each other’s efforts including mine as facilitator … we found that we were a resource for each other because of our unique disciplinary lenses. we found a common language through the self-study methodology which necessitates a public discussion of confusions and assumptions about learning. a participant remarked: “initially, i was a little intimidated by the theoretical aspect of the teaching discipline because it is not one with which i am familiar … (but) imaginative explorations helped all of us view our questions under new lights.” participant presentations invited viewing pedagogies in ways wholly alien prior to participants’ involvement in the group, as this participant shared: lesley’s creative writing activity, lynne’s presentation about the way you see things, and kirk’s presentation about citizen scientists were all useful in helping me to continue looking for new ways to see things and allow myself to come out of my “comfort zone” and learn new things, too. moreover, the exchanging of our pedagogies also changed us: “i was especially helped by everyone’s reception of my demo on the perceptual information. i now see that it is central to what i teach.” participants brought an artefact that represented his/her self-study of teaching research interest and talked about it. presenting our research artefacts was noted as a key critical incident in participants’ understanding of self-study and the development of individual projects. a participant discovered the meaning behind the object she brought: and suddenly i articulated with the group the reason i brought this art[e]fact … the way that i shared with the group what the art[e]fact meant to me was different than what i had intended when i walked in the door that day. but yet at the same time it was much, to me, much more accurate and richer. i brought a shell that reminded me of my journey in academia; “a porous and rather beat up shell with its original shape now only a guess; tattered by the currents but still quite strong and very interesting”. i am continuously amazed in how incorporating the arts makes visible our concerns about our teaching (samaras, 2010). using the arts in research helps create an understanding of a situation, while simultaneously encouraging outside interpretation (eisner, 1991; weber & mitchell, 2004). i have found that the research artefact activity gets at the underbelly of our research interests and invites critical collaborative inquiry (see samaras, 2011: 104106; pithouse-morgan & van laren, 2012). a participant posted her photograph and wrote about it on our community blackboard site: perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 126 “the underwater remotely operated vehicle (rov) represents the research i do, the collaborative nature of that research, my interest in engaging people in the outdoors, and my desire to remain technologically savvy. this “tool” offers another lens from which to view a traditionally understood part of our natural environment. this can lead to a more holistic understanding of our impacts on and connection to natural places. like the rov, i am interested in viewing my teaching from multiple lenses and the effects of using technologically enhanced tools in the classroom to facilitate learning”. at one of our whole-group meetings, we drew and shared a sketch that represented our experience as participants in sostc. we later wrote a narrative about it and posted it to each other. another pedagogy we explored included letter-writing where critical friends wrote and read each other’s letters about their research ideas (see samaras, 2011: 82-83). a participant relayed, “because i had to articulate my thinking in letters, i was better able to organize my thinking with regard to self-study. as i responded to their questions, i was able to think further about my own work”. pithouse-morgan et al. (2011) also found letter-writing useful for gaining insight into each other’s lived experiences, particularly on an emotional level. according to reiman (1999: 599), “written speech is a self-reviewing structure of thought”. when we write, we speak to ourselves and when we share that writing with others and make it public, it allows us to hear our thoughts again and understand them in a way when others ask us for clarification, elaboration, and conceptualisation. learning with critical friends gathering as a whole group and in critical friends’ groups, we supported and challenged each other’s understandings of self-study and the methodological a pedagogy changer: transdisciplinary faculty self-study anastasia p. samaras 127 soundness of our projects. these organic and diverse communities allowed us to co-mediate, negotiate, and socially construct an understanding of enacting self-study. when i talk with my critical friends, i am forced to articulate my current thinking and i get feedback from them. … i find myself with more questions about my study, about my students, and about my teaching. then i talk to my critical friends and, again, i must articulate my thinking and get feedback from them. participants enacted their individual study in two public audiences for both support and peer review within their critical friends’ group and with the whole group: the critical friends’ groups ha[ve] proven enormously supportive, and really quite transforming for me, especially as i approached the analysis of my pilot results. the larger group has proven inspiring in the exchange of ideas about research methods from different disciplines which might apply to one’s own research, and the sheer pleasure of exchanging ideas with others whose priority is teaching and the radical enhancement of student learning. moving from the large group to small groups and back to the large group provided opportunities for us to re-articulate, document, and re-assess our understandings. we particularly appreciated being able to learn from each other and discovering unexpected zones of connectivity and relationships across fields. the multiple audiences served to de-centre us through an awareness of our individual fallibilities. we made linkages to relevant existing literatures and practices across disciplines. the process of exchanging with critical friends also made us more aware of blind spots and our sources of our authority. it liberated us to discard old notions in order to re-centre and more authentically ground our practice. i cannot stress enough how important my critical friends, and indeed the entire sostc community, were in this process. they shared their musings, insecurities, discoveries, course changes, and small victories; i learned more from them about teaching and about self-transformation than i have ever learned. data analysis revealed that we found the different levels of groups beneficial. nonetheless, critical friends’ groups worked with varying degrees of consistency, accountability, and vulnerability. one participant indicated the challenges of meeting obligations with her critical friends’ group by sharing, “i really adhere when i have this once a month meeting … but with the critical friends’ piece, we are kind of doing it on our own and everybody’s got their own thing to do, myself included.” re-imagining pedagogy ultimately our work as teachers is to impact our students’ learning, as this participant’s remark reminded us: “i broke down barriers, discovered energy to implement changes in learning activities and evaluation that i had been thinking about for a long time and never had the courage to commit to.” perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 128 there was an immediate applicability of our exchanges and deliberations to our students’ learning. this artefact helped me point out the personal biography in my teaching and sharing the educational journey i went through to reach my present level of awareness to impact students’ current level of awareness to self as learners and teachers. that process began with the courage and openness to study our practice out loud with people who provided safe havens for deconstructing our ways of knowing and encouraged us to confront our preconceived notions about teaching and student learning. without the year-long experiences with sostc and the discussions, i would not have had the courage or credibility to include my students in my schooling story and my experiences as an immigrant to this country and the lessons i learned that can apply to their young students. in a narrative about her sketch, a participant expressed the complexity of her learning: my drawing represented my concept of our process as a vibrant network in which connections are virtual and ever evolving, humming with powerful energies that leap across spatial divides. (it) represents creative processes needed to answer research questions, which in some sense are like meno’s “paradox of inquiry” in the socratic dialogue: “how can you find that thing, the nature of which is unknown to you?” to me, the only possible answer lies in the sheer number of potential connections and the possibilities of novel paths. participants assisted each other with understanding that self-study includes ‘i’ and ‘we’: i learned a lot about my own pedagogy! because i was focused on my role in instruction, i really learned more about how to make instruction better for students. i am used to doing research on student learning but had not previously spent time thinking about how to study myself in the study. we gleaned pedagogical ideas from fellow participants’ presentations, which we, in turn, shared with colleagues in our departments. pedagogical connections were forged with heightened reflection from activities enacted with a diverse group of critical friends. a participant shared, “the diversity of disciplines represented by individuals of the large group was part of what created such an interesting and engaging dynamic for me”. there were notations of connection, emotion, and revelations of self-assessment: through mind-shifts such as the one anastasia encourages, i have found sostc helps me break through the limitations that a discipline’s standards, in this case art history, can impose. it also helps me with my own personal goal: to learn as much from my students as they do from me. a pedagogy changer: transdisciplinary faculty self-study anastasia p. samaras 129 another participant surmised: i also transformed the way that i approached my lecturing, testing, and student engagement … i incorporated several changes in my teaching style. i was able to document honestly what worked, what didn’t work, and what i will change in the future … in a reflective “self-study” manner... to reflect upon, document, and make data-driven (i.e., inquiry-based) decisions regarding my teaching. that is what i initially aimed to achieve within my students, and now i realize that i needed to do it first. living the paradox of exchange and change we entered sostc as individuals with preconceived notions about who we are as teachers, what self-study might do for us, and what we might bring to the table. we left the group with newly constructed meanings, perceptions, and ideas about our pedagogies mediated by the group experience. as a participant described: self-study is a process that involves me … that is the piece. i know that i am changing, but through the collaborative, i can see how that happens and i can make that the very part of the fabric that i teach my work as a facilitator guided faculty to improve the quality of their teaching, the programmes they work in, and the students they teach. and in that process of facilitating, i also changed and learned. i experienced first-hand the transformative nature of leading by working within a culture of collaboration where participants also teach each other and the leader (samaras, 2013). our interactions highlighted teaching as an art as well as a craft, as we worked towards productive action and change in our work with students. we openly shared our mistakes and epiphanies and gave each other permission to change our thinking about our teaching. our exchanges heightened an awareness of our limitations. the rigour of critical friends’ collaboration challenged us to lay bare our precious claims. working in the first person and with critical friends, we de-institutionalised our questions to find the core of our inquiries within the parameters and support of a learning community. creativity researchers suggest that learning to appreciate and transfer insights from others’ domains to one’s own enhances the possibility of genuine creative insight (sawyer, 2006). the transdisciplinary exchanges expanded these preconditions for us. auld et al. (2013: 34) argue that “academics should have a greater presence in the research literature on teaching in higher education, and self-study is one way in which such lived realities can be explored in a personal and public space”. perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 130 our work suggests that, as universities work to improve student learning, they might consider providing creative studio spaces like sostc, so that faculty can exchange their talents to improve their students’ and their own learning. engaging in transdisciplinary faculty self-study groups holds a great deal of potential for faculty professional development and especially for faculty review with selfand peer assessment in a culture of/for learning about pedagogy. endnote although this research was conducted by the author, the participation of diana karczmarczyk, lesley smith, louisa woodville, laurie harmon, ilham nasser, seth parsons, toni smith, kirk borne, lynne constantine, ezperanza roman mendoza, jennifer suh, and 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formation of mind. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. wertsch j 1991. voices of the mind: a sociocultural approach to mediated action. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. whitehead j 1989. creating a living educational theory from questions of the kind, “how do i improve my practice?”. cambridge journal of education, 19(1): 41-52. woodville l 2012. arthurian imagery in the early reign of henry viii: an examination of patent and plea rolls illuminations using sostc methodology to conceptions of space. paper presented at the international medieval congress, leeds, england, 11 july. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 77 teachers’ conceptions of standards in south african basic education and training: a case study lungi sosibo vuyokazi nomlomo in south africa, the department of basic education and training (dbe) is responsible for primary and secondary education (grades r-12). in an effort to improve educational standards in literacy, numeracy and mathematics, especially in the foundation phase (fp) levels of education, the dbe has developed several initiatives and campaigns. to monitor the standards and set targets, the department administers high-stakes standardised tests similar to those conducted in the united states of america (usa) at elementary and secondary schools. in spite of these efforts, the national low performance levels of grades r-12 remain a grave social concern. this study investigated the conceptions of standards from a purposive sample of twenty elementary school teachers selected from three cape town schools, with the objective of establishing how their understandings of standards influenced their classroom pedagogical practices. activity theory informed this research. data were collected through focus group semi-structured interviews. results showed that teachers perceived the disadvantaged contexts in which they function as limiting their pedagogical practices and availability of socio-cultural artefacts that they need, thus preventing them from achieving their objectives of maintaining good educational standards. evidently, the lack of a clear definition of standards, and teachers’ exclusion from participation in the standards-setting processes appear to restrict their understanding of standards and, by implication, their classroom practices and activities aimed at promoting standards. we conclude that a lack of clarity on the definition of standards for fp teachers has detrimental effects on their classroom practices as they function in diverse educational environments. keywords: context, educational standards, artifacts, improvement, practices lungi sosibo cape peninsula university of technology e-mail: sosibol@cput.ac.za telephone: 071 070 1266 vuyokazi nomlomo university of the western cape e-mail: vnomlomo@uwc.ac.za telephone: 082 798 1797 perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 78 introduction and background in south africa, the department of basic education (dbe), formerly known as the department of education (doe), is responsible for the general education and training (get) and further education and training (fet) sectors. the get includes foundation phase (fp), intermediate phase (ip) and senior phase (sp), which are primary, elementary and secondary (r-12) education bands. it is in the get band that foundation skills of reading, writing and mathematics are emphasised. for this reason, taylor, fleisch and shindler (2007: 37) contend that ‘[t]he single most important priority for the education and training system would be to improve the levels of literacy and mathematics of children graduating from our primary schools’. the importance of acquiring literacy and numeracy skills by learners at the fp level cannot be overstated. pandor (2008), the then minister of education, emphasised that literacy, numeracy and life skills are ‘the building blocks upon which solid foundations for learning are built’. the importance of acquiring literacy and numeracy skills is also highlighted in the revised national curriculum statement (rncs) (doe, 2002), which states that the most important task of the fp teacher is to enable and ensure that all learners can learn to read. consequently, 40% of teaching time is to be allocated to this task in the fp. in an effort to raise standards in numeracy and literacy in the get public sector in general, and in the fp sector specifically, the dbe has and still engages in a number of educational reform initiatives and campaigns. for example, the drop all and read campaign and a tool kit for schools are both aimed at improving the standard of reading among primary school learners. the foundations of learning campaign is meant to create a national focus on improving basic skills of reading, writing and numeracy among all sa children. in addition, more than 10 000 public schools received story books written in all eleven south african official languages (taylor, fleisch & shindler, 2007). moreover, the western cape education department (wced, 2006) developed a multipurpose national and provincial literacy and numeracy (litnum) strategy to enhance learners’ literacy and numeracy skills. in spite of these efforts, the poor performance of public school fp learners in these learning areas remains a grave social concern. for instance, the 2006 progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) showed that south africa, when compared with 40 countries, had the lowest reading literacy levels (mullis, martin, kennedy & foy, 2007). similarly, poor grade 3 systemic evaluation results of 2001, 2007 and 2011 confirmed this situation. moreover, reddy and van rensburg (2011) reported that only 30% of south african schools perform reasonably well in mathematics, while a whopping 70% underperforms. furthermore, the 2011 annual national assessment (ana) results indicated that grades 3 and 6 learners performed poorly in literacy and numeracy across the country with a national average of only 35% (modisaotsile, 2012: 2). this perpetual poor learner performance led fleisch (2007) to conclude that south african primary school education is in crisis. teachers’ conceptions of standards in south african basic education and training: a case study lungi sosibo & vuyokazi nomlomo 79 several reasons have been given to justify these low educational standards. pandor (2008) cited language barriers in literacy, numeracy and life skills education and emphasised the importance of teacher quantity, quality and ability to teach. other factors mentioned include poverty, a lack of adequate resources in schools, poor teacher training, teachers’ classroom practices, overcrowded classrooms and a lack of parental support (chisholm, 2004; modisaotsile, 2012; pendlebury, 2008). as will be shown later, since there is no universal clarity on the definition of standards (coetzee & le roux, 2001), we suspect that this term is susceptible to different interpretations by teachers, thus affecting their classroom pedagogical practices. the purpose of this research was to investigate conceptions of standards among fp teachers in three cape town public primary schools, with the objective of establishing how their understanding influenced their classroom practices. the research questions were: (i) what are fp teachers’ conceptions of education standards? (ii) how does this understanding influence their teaching practices? in this study we argue that ‘standards’ may have a personal, political and public dimension which influences and informs how each teacher interprets and acts on them. we further argue that fp is the most critical stage of student development in which higher-quality education standards should be enforced more than in grade 12, which is the final exit level from school. thus, putting too much emphasis on quality standards in grade 12 is too little too late. theoretical framework activity theory (at) informed this research. in this theory, the unit of analysis is an activity (leont’ev, 1974). leont’ev describes an activity as composed of a subject (a person or group engaged in an activity), object (objective/goal), actions or practices which help to fulfill the object, and operations through which actions are carried out. in this study, teachers are subjects engaged in pedagogical actions or practices, using their socio-cultural and historical tools to improve educational standards in their classrooms. nardi (1996) describes actions as conscious and goal-oriented because individuals perform an action with a goal/objective in mind. she asserts that actions are driven by certain needs that are informed by certain purposes that people wish to achieve. nardi (1996) further points out that different actions may be undertaken to meet the same goal. in this study, this might mean that teachers can perform different actions or practices and/or use a variety of activities to fulfill the same objective, which is improving standards. the activity system consists of an object, actions and operation, and ‘the activity itself is the context’ (nardi, 1996: 38). the phenomena that occur in an activity system, that is, the enactment (operation) of an activity (action) by people using artefacts in order to fulfill an object, is what constitutes context. according to nardi (1996), artefacts may be physical tools or sign systems which are embedded perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 80 in people’s cultures and histories. lev vygotsky, the russian psychologist, also emphasised the historical-cultural significance of artefacts. artefacts may include instruments, machines, signs, symbols and human language. vygotsky perceives the function of artefacts as mediating human thought/meanings and behaviour among people through social interaction. human cognitive experience is heavily shaped and influenced by artefacts, that is, tools and sign systems that humans use in their daily activities. in the context of teachers, their pedagogical classroom practices reflect and result from their own backgrounds or habitus. as such, their socio-historical and cultural contexts determine what and how they do things in their classrooms (their practices). the teachers’ habitus may enhance or constrain their pedagogical actions and practices, thus limiting them from realising their objects which, in this case, is improving educational standards. this study investigated how teachers’ understanding of standards influenced and shaped the pedagogical practices they carried out in the classroom. as it deals with the way in which subjects (teachers) mediate learning using tools or artefacts (external devices) in order to fulfill an object (raising standards), we considered at relevant to this study. literature review universally, the concept of ‘standards’ is used loosely without any clarity on its meaning. south africa is not an exception as here, too, there seems to be no clear definition of this term (coetzee & le roux, 2001). for instance, many south african official documents and curriculum policies make reference to standards, but none of them gives an in-depth definition of standards. the south african schools act of 1996 refers to the maintenance of comparable standards in schools. similarly, the south african quality assurance (saqa) document cited in allais (2003: 16) mentions the need to deliver programmes ‘to a standard’ in terms of knowledge, skills and values. one of the principles of the national curriculum statement (ncs) is to reach the minimum standards of knowledge and skills at each grade and in each subject (doe, 2005), while the curriculum assessment policy statement (caps) emphasises quality of outcomes to be achieved at the end of the learning process (dbe, 2011). all these definitions lack depth as they define standards in terms of knowledge, skills and intended learning outcomes, while the actual meaning of standards remains rather superficial and fluid. this situation might result in difficulty for teachers to establish a common understanding of standards. some scholars define education standards as benchmarks against which learning outcomes are measured (nel & kistner, 2009), while others associate them with quality (coetzee & le roux, 2001; hunter, 1999). the latter assumes an overlap between quality and standards, which suggests that a decline in educational quality leads to a decline in education standards (coetzee & le roux, 2011). these definitions resonate with that of umalusi (2013: 7), the quality council (qc) which sets and teachers’ conceptions of standards in south african basic education and training: a case study lungi sosibo & vuyokazi nomlomo 81 quality assures standards in the get and fet sectors, namely that a standard is ‘[a] statement of level of quality or attainment required’. undoubtedly, this definition falls short of being adequate. kivilu (2006) and mcclaughlin and shepard (1995) distinguish between content and performance standards. according to mcclaughlin and shepard (1995: xviii; xix), ‘[c]ontent standards are broad descriptions of the knowledge and skills students should acquire and be able to do in a particular subject area’ and performance standards are ‘the most specific concrete examples and explicit definitions of what students must know and be able to do to demonstrate mastery of the content standards’. in other words, performance standards can help to ‘clarify and explain’ content standards (mcclaughlin & shepard, 1995: 34). put differently, standards are ‘benchmarks that specify the levels of performance expected of a learner who has gone through a learning experience in a specific content (both knowledge and skills)’ (kivilu, 2006: 39). hunter (1999) extends this typology by adding opportunity-to-learn or delivery standards that relate to contextual issues such as resources, conditions and desirable learning processes that provide equality of opportunity conducive for learning. in his explanation of the process of standard setting in the south african education system, kivilu (2006) mentions that educational standards are articulated in the curriculum statements in the form of broad national goals of education. educators are then expected to translate them into classroom objectives and activities. owing to the vagueness of these educational goals, kivilu argues that it is likely that educators, especially those with poor teaching skills, become confused. this argument has serious implications for the fp teachers in this study who have to maintain high educational standards despite varying experiences, expertise and artefacts at their disposal. educational standards are often gauged through learner performance (kivilu, 2006). for example, poor learner performance in high-stakes tests is often associated with low educational standards and vice versa. this perception seems to be common in the usa and south africa and is based on the false assumption that continuous assessment reinforces high levels of quality teaching and scholarly achievement (miller, 2001). for instance, poor learner performance in the usa elementary and secondary education prompted continuous achievement testing and standardsbased education in this country (jorgenson & hoffman, 2003). similarly, poor learner performance in national and international high-stakes tests (including poor national matriculation – grade 12) resulted in the standards regime in south africa. this is indicative of a false assumption about continuous assessment as reinforcing highquality educational standards. alluding to this false notion, crouch (2008) stated that ‘you can’t fatten cattle by weighing them more often – you have to feed them’. a connection is also assumed between educational standards and teacher proficiency. for instance, in the usa the perceived lowering of educational standards perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 82 led to heightened criticism against higher education for low-quality teacher production (jorgenson & hoffman, 2003; yell, 2006; ruiz, kelsey & slate, 2009). consequently, there was urgency to raise teacher education standards in order to ensure high-quality graduates and to assure that elementary and secondary students obtained high-quality education from highly-qualified teachers (anthes, 2002). we observe the same pattern in south africa where high-stakes tests (e.g. matric exams, ana and other international assessments) have become a yardstick by which teacher efficiency is gauged (kivilu, 2006). educational standards function within a specific context and they are influenced by historical, political and socio-cultural changes. this implies that they are flexible and dynamic (coetzee & le roux, 2001). proponents of standards argue that they foster and establish the principle of equality of treatment and expectations (hunter, 1999: 2). however, educationally, their credibility could be questioned due to the vast inequality in terms of achievement of outcomes in different social contexts. consequently, north american detractors often contend that educational standards are exclusionary and not healthy for schools in multicultural societies (aronowitz, 1996). the same could be said about south africa where the literacy and numeracy crisis in the fp is more acute in poor and rural than affluent and urban schools (modisaotsile, 2012: 2; chisholm, 2004: 11). in our opinion, standards refer to the expectations or value judgements that a society places on education. thus, our view is that standards are social constructs that determine the esteem (high/low) that society places on education, depending on the variables the society uses to make those judgements (e.g. high student pass rates, teacher qualifications, employment rates). obviously, if these variables are low, the society is likely to view the educational standards as low and vice versa. research methodology this article is based on a qualitative case study which was conducted with a purposeful sample of 20 fp teachers drawn from three public township schools in the western cape. the sample consisted of five teachers from school a, seven from school b and eight from school c. all three schools were classified as quintile 1 schools. according to the quintile system, schools are categorised from 1-5 according to the parents’ income, unemployment rate and level of education (kanjee & chudgar, 2009). quintile 1 consists of the poorest schools, while quintile 5 constitutes economically advantages schools. quintile 1 schools receive higher state support than their quintile 5 counterparts (kanjee & chudgar, 2009). the selection of the three schools was based on their quintile 1 classification. such schools are often associated with lower education standards (modisaotsile, 2012: 2). for the purpose of this article, we wanted to gain insight into how fp teachers in quintile 1 schools understood education standards in such impoverished academic environments. teachers’ conceptions of standards in south african basic education and training: a case study lungi sosibo & vuyokazi nomlomo 83 all the participants were females ranging between the ages of 25 and 59. their fp teaching experiences spanned two to 35 years. two of the teachers had two years’ teaching experience, five had ten years, four had 15 and nine had more than 30 years’ teaching experience, respectively. regarding their academic qualifications, of the 20 teachers, four had a four-year bachelor of education (bed) degree, six had a two-year honours degree, while 10 had matric (grade 12). all the teachers had professional qualifications and the majority of them (18) had obtained their qualifications from the former colleges of education. these colleges were phased out in the late 1990s when the then minister of education, prof. kader asmal, made teacher education the responsibility of universities. of the 18 teachers who received their primary school teachers’ qualification at the colleges, 15 held a three-year junior primary teachers’ diploma (jptd), while another three qualified with a two-year primary teachers’ certificate (ptc). eighteen of the 20 teachers were isixhosa speakers and two spoke afrikaans as home language. data presented in this article are based on focus group interviews with the 20 teachers. each focus group consisted of approximately six to seven teachers. the interviews were used to elicit information regarding their understandings of education standards and the ways in which their conceptions of education standards influenced their classroom pedagogical practices. data were analysed qualitatively into different broad themes and categories which aimed at addressing the research questions of the study using the highlighting and colour-coding approach (cohen, manion & morrison, 2000). ethical considerations with regard to participants’ permission to participate in the study, respect and confidentiality (de vos, strydom, fouche & delport, 2005; henning, van rensburg & smit, 2004) were adhered to during data collection. permission to conduct research in the schools was granted by the wced and permission was sought from teachers before they were interviewed. research findings two themes emerged from the data analysis, namely, education standards and the curriculum policy, and education standards and teacher practices. these themes are presented below. education standards and the national curriculum policy of the 20 participants, 17 defined education standards in terms of adherence to the new national curriculum policy, the caps. this policy provides guidelines which determine learner progression, achievement and good quality of teaching and learning. teachers claimed that adherence to the caps guidelines was a means of maintaining good standards. they perceived any deviation from the curriculum policy requirements as lowering of educational standards without considering whether this perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 84 adherence facilitated meaningful learning. for example, teacher 3 in school a had this to say about the ‘set education standards’: i cannot do my own thing … i must plan …. i must follow my daily programme … if you follow caps, you will achieve good standards. this excerpt which illustrates strict adherence to the ‘prescriptive’ policy has serious implications for the expectations placed on teachers to implement standards. it may be indicative of the teacher’s lack of creativity and expertise. conversely, it may illustrate that the prescribed standards limit teacher creativity (i cannot do my own thing) with regard to exploring innovative ways of facilitating meaningful learning. while the former perception raises questions about the teachers’ (in)ability to implement standards and to formulate appropriate pedagogical activities, the latter raises questions about the teachers’ understanding of the policy as related to its purpose, content and implementation. both perceptions have serious implications for the provision of intervention and assistance to teachers with regard to implementing standards in their classrooms. kivilu (2006) notes that the vagueness embedded in the national curriculum goals poses a threat for teachers, particularly those with inadequate teaching skills, in understanding the policy and translating it into appropriate classroom activities. failure to understand or interpret the policy correctly may inadvertently result in inappropriate classroom activities and in the decline of standards. thus, it comes as no surprise that such teachers may prefer to cling to the curriculum policy and not dare deviate from it, as shown in the excerpt above. twelve participants claimed that caps assumed equality of education standards for all south african learners. they questioned this uniformity, given the vast differences in school contexts and in learner performance across racial, language and socio-economic backgrounds. their concern was that the dbe expected schools to produce the same quality standards on learners’ performance in the national evaluation tests, as shown in teacher 4’s comment below: another thing that we can add is that the education planners they must also consider the environment or the background of particular learners, the area where they are … they cannot expect the khayelitsha learners to be able to perform as, emm, areas the learners from the model c school because there is a two advantages there. number 1 – the number of learners in the class; the parents there are fully involved because they understand the education. our parents in our environment ... most i ... i would say 80% of them they ... they ... not ... ehh ... well educated. other teachers felt that the caps disregarded contextual issues such as poverty, overcrowded classrooms, language and literacy problems and a lack of teaching resources. they pointed out that poverty was not only a challenge with regard to learners’ physical and epistemological access to meaningful learning, but it was one of the factors that led to high drop-out rates of fp learners. raising her concerns teachers’ conceptions of standards in south african basic education and training: a case study lungi sosibo & vuyokazi nomlomo 85 about the impact of poverty on learning, teacher 5 in school a expressed herself thus: some of them [learners] eat here (at school) and they eat tomorrow again. can you expect effective learning from that child? in a way, the concerns expressed above seem to demonstrate the teachers’ awareness of the subjectivity of standards when applied to different socio-economic contexts. the implications of disregarding contextual diversity in the discourse on standards are huge, as these differences may drastically affect the education standards, depending on the context in which they are implemented. to expect the standards to apply similarly in diverse contexts may place those teachers, parents and learners in disadvantaged contexts in an unfavourable position. in the discussion of the at, the significance of the subject’s (teacher’s) sociohistorical and cultural context and its effect on reaching one’s objectives were highlighted. owing to their disadvantaged educational context, fp teachers in this study may find it difficult to implement effective pedagogical practices and, by extension, to achieve their objectives of maintaining good educational standards. for example, a lack of resources and overcrowding, which they mentioned, may constrain them from attaining good educational standards. hence, the notion of standards fostering equality has no place in these teachers’ situation. intricately related to the above is the assumption that teachers in disadvantaged schools produce low educational standards. more often than not, this perception affects these teachers’ personal and professional esteem negatively (modisaotsile, 2012: 2). what exacerbates the situation is that learners in disadvantaged schools in general perform poorly compared to their counterparts in affluent schools (modisaotsile, 2012) due to the factors mentioned earlier. according to some of the participants in this study, the uniformity of education standards causes authorities to undermine and undervalue their efforts and the hard work they perform under adverse conditions. teacher 1 in school b expressed her view as follows: … and they think we don’t do our best, and they ask: ‘what are you doing?’ they don’t appreciate our work, and we really try our best. in relation to the above, the question of education standards appears to divide teachers without considering the different conditions and contexts in which they work. set standards may be unfair if they are used uniformly to judge the functionality of individuals in different social contexts (hunter, 1999: 3). according to the at, the habitus is central to human thought processes. in other words, the teachers’ socio-cultural and historical contexts shape and inform the classroom pedagogical practices they carry out to maintain good educational standards. thus, as was mentioned earlier, standards are inextricably linked with the habitus in which they are applied. this has serious implications for teachers and those involved with setting and evaluating education standards. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 86 education standards and teacher practices concerning the teacher practices, the analysed data illustrated that the teachers’ understanding of education standards had an influence on how they interacted with their learners in the classroom. their responses revealed their knowledge and understanding of fp children’s learning, as shown by teacher 2’s utterance: whatever i wanted to do with ... ehh .... whatever i’m doing in the classroom, i must challenge the kids, the level of the kids must be high, they must be ... the kids are not in the same level but each and every time whatever i am doing there, the main important thing is to challenge them which is though they learn through play but that play is planned, they want concrete objects ... to play and have fun. teacher 2’s statement seems to suggest that her conception of children’s learning relate to pedagogical strategies that recognise the child’s cognitive, social, emotional and affective aspects of development. for instance, she demonstrated her theoretical knowledge of the need to scaffold and challenge young learners to think. in our opinion, critical thinking skills should be seen as integral in the standards discourse. this understanding seems to have influenced how, in an effort to maintain good standards, teacher 2 used experiences and creativity at her disposal to integrate theory with classroom activities. granted, such creativity can be possible only if the teacher understands the process of interpreting broad national goals and reformulating them into appropriate objectives and pedagogical practices. teachers with limited teaching skills may face challenges in accomplishing this task. some of the teachers acknowledged the importance of teachers’ subject content knowledge as one of the key aspects of maintaining good education standards, as reflected in the words of teacher 6’s from school b: if you do not know what you teach in a classroom, that will become a problem for you and the learners ... the standards will drop. this utterance highlights the importance of content standards alluded to earlier in the literature review (kivilu, 2006; mcclaughlin & shepard, 1995). undoubtedly, a teacher with weak content knowledge may grapple with mediating learning effectively, let alone aligning it with classroom activities that will help learners attain or exceed set education standards. similarly, teachers’ inadequate pedagogical content knowledge may adversely affect learners’ content and performance standards. this situation highlights a need for intervention in situations where teachers encounter challenges with interpreting and implementing standards effectively and where learners fail to meet or exceed set standards. teachers expressed dissatisfaction with their confusion about the meaning of standards, which they associated with exclusion and the lack of consultation of teachers and parents in standards-setting processes. these concerns raise serious questions regarding the role of teachers in curriculum development and the teachers’ conceptions of standards in south african basic education and training: a case study lungi sosibo & vuyokazi nomlomo 87 implementation of standards, as reflected in the statement made by teacher 7 from school b below: the people in the parliament are politicians ... they say: ‘teachers, come and implement this’ ... so we become implementers of something that we do not even know. teachers also voiced concerns with inadequate teacher training in the new curriculum (caps). these concerns reflect a tension between the curriculum guidelines as determinants of good education standards and teacher practices as mediation tools towards attaining these standards. the tension might be exacerbated by the roles they are expected to play in the classroom (e.g. as curriculum designers, materials developers, assessors) as stipulated in the national curriculum policy (doe, 2002) and the lack of support in their actual practices aimed at improving education standards. moss and schutz (2001) stress the significance of diversity and inclusion in the democratic process of developing consensual educational standards. yet, the findings of this study reveal the opposite. as reflected in the teachers’ utterances above, involvement of teachers and other education stakeholders in standard setting is non-existent. yet, as was noted earlier, standards function and are influenced by historical, political and socio-cultural forces within communities. hence, teachers and communities at large can contribute immensely to the development of standards relevant to their contexts. the at stresses that human cognitive development occurs through social interaction. as parents are primary socialising agents, the interaction that occurs between children and them cannot be overstated. therefore, as part of the communities, parents should be at the centre of the discourse on standards. exclusion of stakeholders is detrimental to the process of maintaining good educational standards and might possibly have adversely affected the teachers’ objectives of attaining good standards in the fp learners’ literacy and numeracy skills. summary the previous section incorporated the analysis of the findings of this study. in this section, only the salient points of the findings are highlighted. the findings revealed that some teachers’ conceptions of standards were informed by their own understanding of the caps policy, while others related standards to the theories of fp children’s learning. owing to the limited understanding of the concept of standards, probably emanating from exclusion of teachers from standards-setting processes and a lack of clarity on the definition of ‘standards’, other teachers used their own creativity and experiences to reformulate standards into classroom practices. to a certain extent, the teachers showed an understanding of the relationship between education standards and appropriate pedagogical practices. however, due to the varying conceptions of standards, the activities they carried out to reach their objectives of maintaining standards varied considerably depending on their personal, political and public understandings of standards. this situation is in line with nardi’s (1996) assertion that different actions may be undertaken to meet the same goal. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 88 this study was conducted in three quintile 1 schools with a history of poverty, overcrowding, a lack of resources and low parental involvement. what came out strongly from fp teachers was the degree to which historical, socio-cultural and political factors constrained their objectives of maintaining high educational standards. nardi (1996: 38) explains that the activity itself is the context. in other words, the context in which fp teachers function determines and informs the action/s (or activities) and operations that they, as subjects, undertake to fulfill their object, using artefacts available in that context. thus, their practices should be understood as such. while not much can be done overnight to change the plight of disadvantaged school contexts, something can be done to support the efforts of attaining good standards by teachers and parents who function in these environments. morrow (2007) argues that teacher education should prioritise formal elements of teaching which include skills of organising learning systematically. these skills comprise programme design, assessment strategies and the ability to provide constructive feedback. to improve contextual challenges in this study, we recommend that teachers be equipped with knowledge and skills that enable them to organise learning effectively in any context, including disadvantaged contexts (morrow, 2007). in addition, we recommend that teachers liberate themselves from the confines of prescribed standards by collectively developing tools and artefacts that are appropriate for their and their learners’ sociocultural contexts. conclusion this research has revealed a lack of clarity on the definition of standards for fp teachers, which has serious implications for whether it is possible for them to understand, interpret and implement standards effectively. it has also highlighted the complexity of the role that teachers are expected to play in the context of standards implementation and their exclusion from standards-setting processes. furthermore, the inflexible nature of the policy standards has been revealed, with regard to how it constrains teacher creativity and how it fails to respond to different contexts. these issues have serious implications for fp teachers as, instead of enabling them to enhance education standards, they could lead to a further decline of standards in the fp levels. the other issue relates to the assumption raised in the caps document about equality of educational standards for all south african learners, which we consider controversial. in a democratic and diverse country such as south africa, we acknowledge that the concept of standards cannot be expected to be understood, interpreted and implemented the same way by teachers and parents. as education does not occur in a vacuum (save the children, 2010: 26), the context and conditions under which teachers work influence their pedagogical practices which, in turn, determine learners’ epistemological access and success in education (hill, baxen, teachers’ conceptions of standards in south african basic education and training: a case study lungi sosibo & vuyokazi nomlomo 89 craig & namakula, 2012: 246). thus, even with the inclusion of stakeholders and training of teachers on standards, diversity in the fp teachers’ interpretation of standards and pedagogical practices should not be perceived as a weakness in the attainment of standards, but as an appropriate response to the diverse contexts. the findings of this study provide rich information and have far-reaching implications for how fp teachers understand education standards in their own 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http://www.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/ account/2004/. save the children 2010. the future is now: education for children in countries affected by conflict. london: save the children. scherman v, van staden s, venter e & howie s 2008. south african performance in pirls 2006: a national crisis. symposium papers: national reflections on international comparative achievement studies (part 4). pretoria, university of pretoria. spreen ca & vally s 2010. outcomes-based education and its (dis)contents: learnercentred pedagogy and the education crisis in south africa. southern african review of education, 16(1): 39-58. taylor n, fleisch b & shindler j 2007. education scenarios for 2019. paper prepared for the key driving forces scenarios 2019, the office of the presidency. umalusi policy 2013. standards and quality assurance for general and further education and training (revised edition). pretoria: umalusi for quality assurance in general and further education and training. western cape department of education 2006. wced literacy and numeracy strategy 2006-2016. yell ml 2006. the purpose of no child left behind. excerpt from the law and special education, pp.180-181. prentice hall: pearson education inc. 347 book review 2020 38(2): 347-353 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.23 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) book review “restorative school discipline: the law and practice” editors: r. reyneke and m. reyneke. when i received this book for review, i immediately realised it was a book of monumental proportions dealing with a comparatively new and previously much-neglected field of study and knowledge in south africa. i also realised that doing justice to a review of a book of these proportions and such importance was going to be a massive challenge and was going to require a great deal of intensive critical reading and was going to consume a mammoth amount of time. my expectations of what was going to be required of me proved to be correct. i also found that doing this review was a very worthwhile exercise. although the book is not perfect in all respects, i believe it has the potential to become the standard reference book for academics, educators and other practitioners and stakeholders as well as form the basis of a number of very important formal and non-formal training programmes, which seems to me to indicate the way the authors, readers and users need to use this book to maximise its effect. paragraphs 1–4 below contain some of my own views about the subject of this book and paragraph 5 and further will attempt to assess the book. reviewer’s thoughts on school discipline 1 this book represents a welcome and very necessary addition to the literature on aspects of education and the law. education law is an under-researched field of academic knowledge and it is also neglected in the training of prospective teachers as well as in the professional development of educators operating at various levels in education. very few south african institutions of higher education and learning employ academics with an interest in, and knowledge of, this developing field of enquiry. 2 the book is a fine example of how people from various academic disciplines can work together to develop new fields of knowledge into fully-fledged disciplines, in this reviewer: prof j. beckmann doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38. i2.23 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(2): 347-353 published: 04 december 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.23 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.23 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.23 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.23 3482020 38(2): 348-353 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.23 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) case education law. although the book deals with aspects of the law and education, it is set in an education environment where educationists are the protagonists assisted by a variety of interested people including members of other professions. hopefully, this book will make a significant contribution to equip educators and other role-players in school discipline with knowledge of legal rules that will assist them in their disciplinary practice and help them avoid legal pitfalls. 3 the book addresses the matter of discipline in schools. this has been a hotly debated issue ever since corporal punishment was totally abolished in schools after 1994 ostensibly to counter the apartheid culture of oppression and violence. after 1994, the concept of alternatives to corporal punishment (atcp) became very fashionable and the idea of replacing punitive or retributive punishment with restorative school discipline started enjoying wide support. however, both atcp and the then efforts to introduce and inculcate the notion of restorative school discipline did not seem to have much impact on disciplinary problems in schools which, if anything, became increasingly problematic. both these concepts erroneously created the impression that corporal punishment was the only form of punishment practised in public schools before 1994 and ignored the real punishment policies and law in force then. many educators felt that they were left powerless to exercise any discipline because corporal punishment had been removed from the options available to them. in addition, the idea that learners and other stakeholders such as parents had more rights under the 1996 constitution than teachers made its appearance and was believed by a large proportion of the people of south africa. atcp gave rise to the idea that, if an alternative to punitive and retributive discipline was found, disciplinary problems in schools would disappear. 4 many papers have been read and many articles have been published on restorative school discipline but all of them seemed to have a very narrow focus. by and large they ignored the implementation challenges of restorative school discipline. examples of factors that were ignored are the omission of religious and cultural angles and other objections to restorative discipline and the abolition of corporal punishment. an analysis and assessment of the book 5 the preface to the book contains a very important reference to the fact that it was only in 2009 that the authors realised that some of the school discipline practices used until then were counterproductive and that the root causes of misconduct were not addressed when learners were simply expelled or suspended. it also stresses the necessity of adopting a totally new mindset about discipline, which is “first and foremost a process of teaching socially acceptable behaviour” and not about identifying the offense and the perpetrator and meting out punishment and believing that every facet of the misconduct including the mindsets of the victims and perpetrators or offenders will be resolved that way. the preface also raises the critical point that restorative school discipline should be introduced gradually at every school’s own pace. south africa’s education landscape is littered with policies that failed miserably because of poor implementation strategies and preparation of implementers-to-be and many initiatives have just disappeared into the sand. the authors realise that restorative school discipline should be implemented as it is in the best interests of “children, our communities and educators” and that it should contribute to the “importance of building relationships” and to “repair damaged relationships”. these aims of restorative school discipline all require the utmost care to be taken to prevent this form of discipline from failing. i http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.23 3492020 38(2): 349-353 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.23 beckmann “restorative school discipline: the law and practice” believe that the book viewed in its entirety might make a significant contribution to prevent this policy from failing. the importance of restorative school discipline is further stressed in the preface by the reference to the fact that “our society is increasingly becoming disconnected”, which implies an increase in disciplinary problems at schools if appropriate methods to teach acceptable social behaviour are not taught. 6 this book presents restorative school discipline as a multifaceted phenomenon whose elements must all be borne in mind when considering its possible role in the alleviation and solution of disciplinary problems in schools. the various authors are all adamant that all legitimate relevant stakeholders must be involved in all the phases and manifestations of the process from policy making to restorative interventions. misconduct should no longer be viewed as a phenomenon consisting of an offence or breaking of a rule, a victim, a perpetrator and an educator and, in exceptional cases of serious misconduct, a quasi-judicial disciplinary hearing and serious punishment such as suspension or expulsion. the challenges associated with the implementation of restorative school discipline are explicitly acknowledged and the approach is not held up as a magic wand. although the authors prefer restorative discipline to punitive discipline, they also point out that punitive discipline may in certain cases be allowed and indicated, which shows a realistic approach to school discipline problems. 7 the multifarious nature of the phenomenon is reflected in the choice of authors whose contributions all offer valuable and unique insights on aspects of this particular type of school discipline. the authors are all knowledgeable about the dimensions of restorative school discipline that they discuss and have experience in the practical implementation of restorative school discipline. most importantly, a selection from the various applications and manifestations of restorative school discipline is discussed by a group of people who are passionate about education and about the role of positive discipline in the school and they include jurists, various academics, social work professionals, members of school governing body federations, comparative educationists, social work professionals, specialists in social justice education, practising educators in promotional posts, education philosophers, research specialists in policy development and officials at provincial education headquarters. the variety of authors must have presented a challenge to the editors to construct a cohesive book. as i will point out in the next paragraph, i believe that they have succeeded in this regard. i will make some suggestions for improvement in the next paragraphs. 8 the structure of the chapters of this book is informative. the first chapter contains a case study by an educator who has successfully implemented restorative school discipline in several schools. normally, one would have expected an illustrative case study of the success of a theory at the end of a book in which a new theory has been set out and analysed. what has been done in this book is likely to allay fears of people who might expect to be overwhelmed and confused by a new approach to discipline and who might, therefore, choose not to read the work. this chapter will motivate a reader to at least continue reading the rest of the book. chapters 2 and 3 contain a theoretical introduction to the idea of restorative school discipline and bear testimony to the authors’ profound insight into the theory and practice of such discipline in education. chapter 3, in particular, provides a thorough overview of restorative school discipline among other things by defining and clarifying restorative practices and other concepts, providing clear distinctions between concepts, announcing and discussing the basic features of the restorative approach to discipline and, very importantly, naming and discussing 8 misconceptions in regard to the restorative justice approach. the authors’ deep convictions about the value of restorative discipline approaches is illustrated by paragraph 7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.23 3502020 38(2): 350-353 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.23 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) of chapter 3 where they do not shy away from the challenges in respect of this approach but, instead, discuss them in detail so that anybody interested in exploring the possible introduction and use of this approach will not be surprised by practical challenges that might arise from the introduction of the approach. chapter 4 presents the restorative discipline model. it should be extremely helpful as a reference for people who begin to explore the practice or are in the process of implementing it. it also creates a framework for the construction of the rest of the chapters. chapter 5 examines the relationship between social justice and discipline in south african education. it contains a definition of social justice, which is to be welcomed since the concept of social justice is not always well-defined in discussions of its applicability to various situations. chapter 6 analyses the various assumptions, values and norms underpinning restorative school discipline. it is an important chapter since restorative justice is a disciplinary approach that attempts to facilitate the promotion of social values and norms through education. chapter 7 deals with trauma-sensitive schools and presents an understanding of troubled learners through a neuroscience lens. the content of this chapter is likely to be completely new to some readers and they might find it challenging to understand and link the concepts to their disciplinary practices. although it presents a neuroscience view on trauma sensitive schools, the link between such a view and restorative justice school discipline practices is clearly set out and will be to the advantage of educators who are serious about their role in school discipline practices. in fact, it could be assumed that dedicated professional educators should be abreast of knowledge about the neuroscience lens to discipline. chapter 8 introduces the concepts the circle of resilience and the circle of courage. like social justice, the concept of resilience is often mentioned in educational writings but is seldom illuminated in the way it is done in this chapter. the circle of courage discusses a very practical way of dealing with disciplinary problems. in chapter 9 the role of the school governing body in disciplinary matters is discussed. it presents a convincing case for allocating a definite role to the school governing body in disciplinary matters although school governance may not seem like an issue that is inherently linked to a clearly professional educational issue namely school discipline. the treatment of the role of the school governing body in determining the values, assumptions and norms governing school discipline as well as its role in the formal intervention level of the restorative justice model is to be welcomed and provides well-argued and clear expositions of various aspects of these two roles of school governing bodies. all school governing bodies would do well to examine their codes of conduct for learners and their involvement in disciplinary hearings regarding serious misconduct considering that is presented in this chapter. some people might view chapter 10 as unnecessary. it deals with the role of educators in school discipline and some people might assume that this role has been thoroughly explored in teachers’ pre-service and in-service training. however, research findings have revealed that that is not the case and this chapter could therefore be a most important source of knowledge for educators about an aspect of their work that could contribute to determining their level of job satisfaction and even whether they want to continue in the teaching profession. chapter 11 discusses the role of school social workers in school discipline. this is a wellwritten chapter producing conclusive evidence of experience in disciplinary matters in schools and the possible role of social workers in them. the chapter does not support the general notion of the book that all role-players and all stakeholders in the disciplinary process should be involved in restorative school discipline practices. one could list some professionals who could, like social workers, contribute to the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.23 3512020 38(2): 351-353 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.23 beckmann “restorative school discipline: the law and practice” success of school disciplinary practices. although there is no evidence to this effect in this chapter, professionals other than educationists could, through displaying their professional and relevant knowledge regarding disciplinary practices, impact and even usurp the role of educators in the process. this is a possibility that should be avoided at all costs, as discipline is fundamentally an educational phenomenon. this does not imply that other professionals cannot positively contribute to a successful conversion to the implementation of a restorative discipline approach. chapter 12 examines the role of parents in school discipline. the incidents of misconduct and the disciplinary processes followed in each of them, as described in this book, clearly indicate why parents and all the other role players mentioned should be involved in school discipline. it also underlines the necessity of constant clear and purposeful communication between educators and parents and suggests to learners that education at home and in school are not two separate unconnected issues. chapter 13 raises an issue that is seldom connected to the matter of school disciplinary practices, namely the role of the department of basic education and provincial education departments in school discipline. it is important that this chapter emphasises the role of education departments in building relationships at the prevention level and that it also examines the legal role of hods of provincial departments in deciding regarding possible suspensions and expulsions of learners. chapter 14, like chapter 12, recognises the role of stakeholders that are often overlooked, namely learners. the discussion in this chapter recognises the fact that learners at the various levels have many levels of contributions that they can make to the process. if the abilities of learners are recognised and used, the process could be made much more effective. in chapter 15 the book raises an issue that has been a bone of contention and has led to a number of courts, namely the relationship between school governing bodies and departments of education and disputes that may arise between these two bodies, also regarding school disciplinary practices. the book also highlights the absence of a dispute-resolution mechanism and the failure of the notion of cooperative governance to place the relationship between governing bodies and education departments on a sound footing. it also increases the number of disputes brought before the courts as there is as yet no alternative dispute resolution mechanism. if parts of the basic education laws amendment bill (bela) become law, the situation might improve. bullying and cyber bullying are dealt with in chapter 16 and they are the only types of misconduct that are specifically treated in this book. the discussion in the chapter provides more than enough reason for choosing this issue for “special treatment” in the book. the book does not suggest that other forms of misconduct are not serious or can be overlooked or dealt with more easily, but it does suggest that future societal developments are most probably going to exacerbate problems regarding bullying and cyber bullying and that the law has not really crystallised definite guidelines for educators and other people involved in disciplinary practice in this regard. the fact that cyber bullying can even cause learners and educators to commit suicide, is heart-rending evidence of the seriousness of this offence. chapter 17 deals with school discipline and crime and makes useful distinctions between crime and delict their possible consequences. most importantly, it gives educators clear guidelines on how to deal with incidents of crime. annexure a provides particularly useful information for people tasked with designing or reviewing school discipline policies. it stresses again that all stakeholders should be involved http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.23 3522020 38(2): 352-353 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.23 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) in disciplinary processes and that all stakeholders should be prepared (trained for) for the roles they must play. 9 the content of the book is professionally researched, using data from national and international literature and from research projects. this fact supports the notion that this book could and perhaps should become the standard reference work regarding restorative justice practices in education. some of the sources may seem somewhat old but this fact emphasises the need for more new researchers to enter this field of research. the authors of the book point out that the concept of restorative justice is difficult to define clearly. they have, however, certainly done their utmost to counter this problem by presenting guidelines for implementation (as opposed to models, which would in my opinion be inappropriate at this stage), examples of misconduct and disciplinary interventions by educators and, importantly, figures that portray the relationship between the various parts of restorative discipline as well as the various levels and steps that make up this approach. the way every chapter links back to the models and figures should contribute to the accessibility of the content of this book for all readers. 10 the authors all seem to be competent, experienced and respected writers from various disciplines sharing an obvious and almost tangible passion for education and the psychophysical well-being of all learners and our entire society. it is noticeable that a fair number of them have a history of being involved in exploring the relationship and intersection of education and law in the subject education law through participating in and leading professional associations, doing and supervising research and teaching relevant subjects. 11 the title of the book makes it clear that it will deal with the legal and educational angles of disciplinary practices. this proved to be the case throughout the book and the educational angle has been given enough prominence so as not to disappear among the legal provisions. there is a balance between the legal and educational angles and the emphasis seems, quite correctly, to be on the educational implications of the restorative justice approach to discipline. 12 i have already referred to the fact that the book provides definitions and distinctions that are going to be useful for the readers of the book in this regard. the emphasis on values and ethics is to be welcomed. hopefully, this will lead to values, norms and ethics being restored to their rightful place in the education process. 13 the book provides a thorough legal and policy framework for considering the possible value of restorative discipline in education. if one could level criticism against the book, it would be that the legal and policy framework is repeated unnecessarily in most chapters, as are definitions of concepts such as discipline, restorative justice and values. i believe one chapter dedicated to the definition of the legal and policy framework and relevant concepts could be a useful idea if it makes it possible for chapter authors not to have to write a specific legal and policy framework for each chapter. this makes the book unnecessarily long. it does not rule out the inclusion of legal and policy provisions that are specific to a particular chapter added to the general outline of the legal and policy framework in a separate chapter. 14 the readability of the content might be a problem for some of the likely readers. some paragraphs are exceptionally long and contain as many as three or four key ideas that should be dealt with in separate paragraphs. in a book like this, there is always the danger that the use of subject related academic language could cause problems for readers who are not familiar with the specific disciplines. in this book, i believe the problem has largely been avoided. 15 i need to point out that the book contains some language and factual errors that could have been avoided. it is, for instance, not true that the abolition of corporal punishment act abolished corporal punishment in schools as it only applied to punishment imposed by the courts. there http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.23 3532020 38(2): 353-353 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.23 beckmann “restorative school discipline: the law and practice” are also some differences between the dates of promulgation of certain laws and the dates of commencement that have not been handled correctly. as far as language errors are concerned, there are many examples of mother tongue interference in the use of the english language; for example, no plurals of acronyms and abbreviations should contain apostrophes. there are also several examples of concord errors, wrong tenses used, words not spelt correctly and the present participle not used consistently and correctly in bulleted lists. it needs to be stressed that the quality of the language differs from chapter to chapter. conclusion my overall impression is that this book should become the standard reference work on restorative school discipline. it highlights in no uncertain terms the need for training of all stakeholders at all levels of education to ensure the successful and impactful introduction and cultivating of a restorative discipline approach in schools. it also holds the promise of a significant improvement in school discipline, school climate and performance of the whole education system to the benefit of the entire country. i would be disappointed not to see this book forming the basis of several important blended learning programmes. i would be even more disappointed if such programmes are not supported fully by everyone associated with school discipline practices. i commend the authors and the editors on this outstanding work and trust that it will have the effect that they had in mind when they planned it. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.23 book review 562020 38(2): 56-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) understanding the career trajectories of black female academics in south africa: a case study of the university of kwazulu-natal abstract this study seeks to explore the career trajectories of black south african female academics at the university of kwa-zulu natal. their lived experiences continue to include the political uncertainties of race and gender. global scholarship on the challenges experienced by black women in academia is palpable; the south african landscape is distinctive, resultant from the complex intersections of apartheid and the 2004 higher education transformation process. fourteen in-depth interviews were conducted with 14 black female academics from five different campuses at the university of kwazulu-natal in south africa. they were invited to recount their lived experiences as academics. notable themes that emerged when examining race and gender included the old boys’ network, the leadership paradox of feminised leadership versus the “queen bee” as well as the impact of stress. the theoretical framework that underpins this paper is social constructivism with a specific focus on intersectional theory. the intersectional theory will give context to race and gender identity in the experience of academics. the south african government documents intersectional experiences recorded in legislation that addresses disparities that existed during apartheid; nonetheless, these intersectional experiences of disadvantage are perpetuated. the dimensions of race and gender play a critical role in academia, while transformational legislation is responsible for facilitating gendered targets. these findings seek to provide a tool of support for black women, as they continue to be exposed to innumerable challenges, including perfunctory appointments, remuneration incongruence and inconsistencies in the apportionment of research funding. keywords: old boys’ network, race, black women, academic, gender, south african higher education, queen bee, stress, intersectionality 1. introduction the south african higher education story is a unique one. the transforming political landscape, national imperatives of race and gender empowerment, as well as changes in the country’ higher education institutions, created authors: dr aradhana ramnund-mansingh1 dr mariam seedat-khan2 affiliation: 1mancosa honoris united universities 2university of kwazulu-natal doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38. i2.04 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(2): 56-69 published: 04 december 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 orcid.org/0000-0003-1995-6849 orcid.org/0000-0001-9056-2282 572020 38(2): 57-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 ramnund-mansingh & seedat-khan understanding the career trajectories of black female academics expectancies for black female academics. with the changes and merges that took place within higher education in 2004, a more balanced racial picture was presented (cloete et al., 2004). historically, black female academics experienced division based on intersecting factors of gender and race. almost two decades of post-higher education transformation and employment equity legislation continues to force alignment of gender development within higher education. irrespective of the legislation and attempts to equalise the higher education sector from a race and gender perspective, black female academics continue to undergo challenges based on race and gender (ramnund-mansingh & seedat-khan, 2020). this paper explores the career trajectories of black female academics by investigating and understanding their lived experiences. 2. theoretical framework the social construction of reality and intersectionality are valuable theoretical contributors to this context. imbued in the study are intertwined experiences of gender and racial incongruences foisted on black women in the academy. the authority of intersectionality augments the longstanding legacy of multiple forms of gender oppression. traditional research is male-centred and overriding; insufficient endeavours have been initiated to cognise the varied viewpoints of the lived experiences of female subjugation (ramnund, 2019). the social stock of knowledge includes the knowledge of an individual’s situation and its limits (berger & luckmann, 1979: 56). knowledge, perceptions and constructs of race and gender are critical paradigms upon which this study reposes. berger and luckmann’s (1979) rationalisations of how institutionalisation sculpts our lives are suitable for transformed higher education and the traditional institution of the old boy’s network. the leadership paradigms for male-centred and feminine leadership values are based on the foundations of the social construction of reality (berger & luckmann, 1979). doused in the leadership archetypes and intersectional accounts is the framework for power, which is the undertone throughout this study. ivancevich et al. (2013) stated that power is an individual’s ability to reward a follower for compliance with orders. reward power occurs when an individual possesses a resource that another individual wants and is willing to exchange that resource in return for specific behaviour. followers will obey orders, requests and instructions if they value the rewards that managers are eager to give. if an award has no value to the follower, it will not influence the follower’s behaviour (ramnund, 2019). 3. background: contextualising the study the encounters experienced by women in tertiary institutions grow exponentially alongside their combat for egalitarianism. badsha (2001) alleges that the causes of the slow progress of women into management at higher education institutions are directly linked to policy factors that impact on women’s advancement. there is a disconnect between policy formulation and implementation at universities (ramnund, 2019). owing to south africa’s separatist laws, women continue to struggle to fight systems that support their subjugation. albeit the equality, politically, black women endure significantly more prejudice within higher education institutions. higher education statistics pre-2004 in 2004 higher education in south africa was reorganised. statistics were announced regarding the numbers pertaining to the period before 2004. bailey and mouton (2004) indicated that in the former “technikons”, gender disparities seem less pronounced with five per cent of http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 582020 38(2): 58-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) women and ten per cent men at associate director level, and 22 per cent women as opposed to 28 per cent men at the senior lecturer level. comparatively, in the university sector, women dominated in numbers at junior lecturer levels. however, at associate professor level there were seven per cent women as opposed to 13 per cent men, and at professor level there were seven per cent women as opposed to 26 per cent men (bailey & mouton, 2004). the number of women declined along the career trajectory in the academy. this is consistent with various studies led by the american association of university professors, precisely of the work of euben (2005) and perna (2000). the scholarship by cummins (2012) maintains that female academics are consistently overlooked for promotion as they advance to a stage with increased family commitments and their responsibilities to motherhood (ramnund-mansingh & seedat-khan, 2020). the bailey and mouton (2004) study is pertinent in that it took place ten years postdemocracy but before the higher education restructure and reorganisation. between 1992 and 2001, there was a ten per cent increase to 40 per cent of women in academia. in 2001, 60 per cent (143 out of 240) of the academics were younger than 25 years of age, 50 per cent (1559 out of 3124) were from the 25–34 age category and 42 per cent (1830 out of 4342) from the 35–44-year age category. in 2001 in south africa, 42 per cent of women completed undergraduate studies, 51 per cent completed lower postgraduate studies, 42 per cent master’s degrees and 27 per cent at a doctoral level (bailey & mouton, 2004:31). the legacy of apartheid was prevalent as 76 per cent of doctoral graduates were white women. the statistics on academic publications continue this austere trajectory. while less than a third of women published research within natural science fields, 47 per cent published within the humanities and social sciences. in the science and engineering field, most of the research publications belonged to men. concomitant to the publication record is the research funding statistics. bailey and mouton (2004) indicated that between the years 1990 and 2001, female research outputs were significantly fewer than those of men. in 2001, women received only 21 per cent of research grants and 42.5 per cent for master’s and doctoral scholarships, which inadvertently inferred that the majority of these grants and scholarships were awarded to men (bailey & mouton, 2004). chesterman’s (2000) study of ten academic institutions in australia shows that women form 50.4 per cent in a junior academic role, 27.8 per cent in a senior lecturer capacity and only 15.4 per cent in higher academic ranks. payroll data in this study confirmed that declining female academic numbers occur in permanent job stature and senior roles. the lack of research support, policy formulation and implementation, also affirmed by badsha (2001), as well as reward systems, impede women’s development in tertiary institutions (chesterman, 2000). these statistics are consistent with the south african trends as well as american studies by euben (2001) and euben (2005) higher education statistics post-2004 the university of kwazulu-natal’s holistic employment equity profile as at 2015 as published in the annual report reflected the following racial picture from 2012 to 2015. it confirmed that academic staff at ukzn was 28 per cent african in 2015 compared to 20 per cent in 2012. this was an improvement from 16 per cent african academics in 2004. there were 34 per cent white academics in 2012, which decreased to 28 per cent in 2015, while indians and coloureds remained constant at 30 per cent and two per cent respectively. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 592020 38(2): 59-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 ramnund-mansingh & seedat-khan understanding the career trajectories of black female academics some discrepancies existed with the gender reporting statistics for ukzn from their 2016 annual report and the portfolio committee on higher education and training in parliament. the latter was headed up as a government imperative and was represented by all higher education institutions. in the annual report, the figures for women indicated 55% for 2015, whereas at the committee it was reported that women made up 48 per cent of the academic staff, an improvement from 41 per cent in 2004. indian, foreign nationals and white men and women were over-represented in the employment equity profile of 2016. the number of academic staff who obtained a phd increased by three per cent to a total of 50 per cent. african men and women were under-represented at the higher academics ranks of professor (5.17%) and associate professor (15%). however, the number of african women at professor level increased from 0.85 per cent in 2015 to 1.72 per cent in 2016 and african female associate professors rose from 7.14 per cent in 2015 to 8.57 per cent in 2016. in south africa, considerable improvements in numbers were visible from 1992 to 2001. however, these numbers were not consistent in senior academic ranks. a typical illustration of this is that there was only seven per cent female professors as opposed to 26 per cent male in 2001. a further challenge to the numbers of women was the emigration of skilled professionals. between 1990 and 2000, women formed the highest number of skilled emigrants within the education sector (bailey & mouton, 2004). there are stringent and prescribed criteria for the progression into senior academic management roles (irrespective of gender) dictated by the south african department of education, where an academic head of department or faculty dean cannot progress into those roles without specified academic qualifications, research outputs and/or leadership experience. hence, the declining numbers of female academics at the associate professor and professor level already indicate a slow progression of women into management roles, as per the prescribed criteria. 4. methodology fourteen qualitative interviews were conducted at the university of kwazulu-natal. to understand the lived experiences, interviews were selected as a research tool. “research is an interactive process shaped by one’s personal history, biography, gender, social class, race, and ethnicity and those of the people in the setting” (denzin & lincoln, 2017:5). the primary aim of the interviews was to understand the lived experiences of female academics, with specific emphasis on challenges related to gender and race. interviews were conducted with female academics from five different campuses of ukzn and at different levels in their career, in an attempt to understand their career trajectories. the five campuses include howard college, medical school, edgewood, westville and pietermaritzburg. the authors are conscious that the number of participants is low but given the sensitivity of the area of research and the vulnerability of their positions, only women who volunteered to speak out could be reached. while 14 participants are not a representative sample, it provides a glimpse into their lived experiences. semi-structured interviews are considered as the most appropriate research method for assembling evidence for the views and understandings of the participants (babbie & mouton, 2001). the authors utilised non-probability, purposive and snowball sampling to reach the participants. while participants were pleased to share their proficiencies, they did not want any private data revealed, as they were apprehensive of being identified by management. ethical clearance was obtained from the research ethics committee and a gatekeeper’s letter allowed for the study to be conducted. all participants also signed an informed consent document. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 602020 38(2): 60-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) among the participants who participated in the interviews, the ages ranged between 30 and 50+ years. ten of the participants were married and had children while two were single with no children. two were married with no children. the historical data will be presented first, followed by an analysis of the experiences of black women academics based on gender and race. table 1: biographic data of participants campus designation highest qualification race age no. of children pietermaritzburg lecturer masters indian 30–40 0* pietermaritzburg lecturer phd indian 30–40 0 pietermaritzburg lecturer phd african 30–40 1 howard college lecturer masters african 41–49 1 howard college lecturer phd indian 50+ 0 westville senior lecturer phd indian 41–49 1 westville lecturer masters indian 41–49 2 westville lecturer phd indian 30–49 0 medical school academic coordinator mbchb indian 41–49 2 medical school professor mbchb indian 50+ adult medical school professor mbchb indian 50+ adult edgewood professor phd indian 41–49 2 edgewood head of department phd indian 41–49 1 edgewood lecturer phd african 41–49 3 *single participants with no children were caregivers of family members – elderly/sick/frail parents participants with adult children recounted their experiences when their children were minors and living at home. table 2: breakdown per race and career level race number career level number african 3 lecturer 12 indian 11 professor 4 table 3: breakdown per age and number of children age number children number 30–40 4 adult children 2 41–49 7 0 4 50+ 3 children 8 the interview data was recorded on a dictaphone and transcribed. nvivo, as well as manual coding, was used to determine themes for the study. the themes were subsequently analysed and the findings were presented. “external validity is the transferability or generalisation of results, and could also pose a threat to the validity of the data. this means that generalisations http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 612020 38(2): 61-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 ramnund-mansingh & seedat-khan understanding the career trajectories of black female academics of the research could be made to include a wider population group” (ramnund, 2019:113). all judicious steps were adhered to ensuring the accuracy and reliability of the research. 5. intersections of gender and race – a summary of the scholarship, findings and themes the most significant challenges to the career trajectory of black female academics is the old boys’ network and the queen bee syndrome. these challenges directly influence stress. power disguises itself in almost every facet of life (ramnund, 2019), women in academia experience this within their departments, their faculties and the decision-making structures that affect promotions, funding and policy. the old boys’ network is an example of genderbased exploitation that is masked in several ways by the increased pressure and manipulation of female academics. the old boys’ network the challenges faced by women are age-old and date back to the 19th century. arguably, the question remains whether women have advanced within the sphere of higher education. the non-feminised faculties fall under the spotlight where an increased number of women in the science, engineering and technology faculties seem to be a positive shift. these numbers do not preclude the increased number of barriers and the lack of support that women face in these sectors specifically. although the 2001 statistics (laafia & larsson, 2001) of european countries indicated a 12 per cent representation of women in engineering and technological faculties, this needs to be interpreted with caution as women are still over-represented in highly feminised faculties such as humanities and social sciences. notable reference should be made to the statistics after the 1969 carnegie commission (ladd & lipset, 1975), where female numbers in engineering, which were less than one per cent, increased to 12 per cent in 2001. as skelton (2004) argues, the idea of an actual academic remains embedded within the image of male, middle-class and middle-aged men which is used as a measure against which academic women, particularly young women, position themselves and by which they are appointed. in the most recent published statistics, membership in the science faculties globally has been reviewed (ngila et al., 2017). cuba boasts the highest percentage of women in science faculties at 27 per cent, with south africa closely behind with 24 per cent. finland is the most progressive country in europe with a percentage of 17 per cent of women in the science faculties. from a global perspective, africa and latin american areas have the highest numbers of women in science faculties (ngila et al., 2017). participant e commented: the old boys’ network exists. traditionally they were made up of the prominent white male academics. the ukzn hierarchy is controlled by the old boys’ network. according to her, “if you spoke up, you would be dealt with punitively, post-merger.” she came in from the previous university of durban westville as the head of a programme. male colleagues and subordinates from the former university of natal resisted her leadership. although women make strides in terms of heading up committees and driving projects, they continuously have obstacles placed in their path by their male colleagues and subordinates. the patriarchal culture is challenging to work with, women are treated with disrespect http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 622020 38(2): 62-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) and continually get spoken to in loud and aggressive tones. the male tribe band together irrespective of their role in academia. many of them support each other as they continue to subjugate women with their mannerisms, practices and etiquette. according to eight of the participants, the boys’ network is bold and transparent in their actions. the responses to the old boys’ network confirmed that the network is still prevalent. participant c had some frightening experiences with men in academia from different perspectives, as she had a negative experience with her male supervisor. as a traditional indian man his views about women were perpetuated by socially constructed norms, and due to this he gave me no respect as an equal. she had difficulty completing her phd, as she had no support from him. he would not show up for meetings and would go into his mode of writing research, ignoring me for six months at a time, as he made his personal goals a priority. participant j confirmed that women who are seen as an academic threat are not considered for career advancement nor are they respected by the old boys’ network. the old boys’ network would make a concerted effort to ensure that she (participant j) does not climb the academic ladder, since they make up most of the decision-making structures, this was easy to apply. participant f indicated that men would often say she “doesn’t know how to perform certain tasks.” two pertinent milestones were marred by how her male colleagues and subordinates treated her. when she became head of department, academics tried to “sabotage my department” and when she made associate professor, her white male colleagues, who were ignorant of her knowledge and experience, mocked her instead of congratulating her. participant e substantiated that male colleagues are prioritised when allocating research supervision to meet university prescribed hours. “they are assigned masters and phd students, where publication from research is increased.” she is currently supervising two honours students and confirmed that male and female academics are not treated equally. male academics are supported and given more opportunities to progress. when they get home, they have their dinner prepared and the children taken care of, which allows them time to focus on research outputs. research outputs play a significant role in terms of progression in academia. the glaring gender disparities influence the number of women who could progress into senior positions. participant c had an incident where senior male academics would take parts of her research and publish it on their own after she asked for guidance on the research. it is evident why male academics can attain senior positions faster than women. it is due to increased research outputs, and the support structures that are in place for them. they use every opportunity to make anyone’s research their own. participant d validates that “academia is male dominated, so it is difficult to enter the upper echelons. the sciences especially are very male-dominated”, while participant g felt alone and alienated in the academic space. “it is daunting being surrounded by a predominantly male department. there is no support.” participant h stated that there was an innate fear of male academics. the male academics have unexpressed expectations that the female academics need to provide maternal support by supporting and helping students. students who are http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 632020 38(2): 63-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 ramnund-mansingh & seedat-khan understanding the career trajectories of black female academics having personal problems, for example, would be recommended to a female member of academia. it is evident from the reflections of the participants’ narratives that male academics are openly harsh towards them and devalue their roles as academics. often a male mentor would tear down the female academic’s idea and act in an aggressive and intimidating manner resulting in emotional trauma. perfunctory appointments are the appointment of favoured candidates by decision makers in powerful positions. academics who align themselves and are in support of the boys’ network are awarded opportunities for sabbatical leave, research time, and considered first for promotions. the network has punished women who expect fairness and support from a research perspective. all participants confirmed that the research criterion was the most demanding. favoured female incumbents are supported and put forward for promotion. the demeanour of these successful and supported women was that of someone who did as they were told, someone who performed tasks without question, and someone who executed duties by sacrificing family and personal time. these appointments achieved success by surreptitiously supporting the old boys’ network. the paradox of female leadership feminine leadership values are similar to transformational leadership, which is purely interested in the leader shifting the values, beliefs and needs of his/her followers. women in leadership specifically attempt to address issues that they believe to be hindering their advancement. female cultures are seen to be entirely different to male cultures and thus inconsistent with leadership roles. men exaggerate these differences to hinder the progress of women. gender socialisation leadership tenets associated with success are often consistent with male personae and gesticulations. women have an innate tendency to lead with a higher degree of empathy and emotional intelligence (ramnund, 2019). feminist theory substantiates that women should portray additional male-type physiognomies and moderate empathy that facilitates hesitancy and a deficiency of ferociousness. there is no compromising circumstance for women, men begrudge women who portray leadership values of aggression, assertion and self-confidence; however, they demonstrate reverence for women who exhibit reflexive and poignant physiognomies (welch, 1990). the latter is inconsistent with the attainment of accomplishment. there was a mixed response to feminised leadership in the study. the positive responses were that women who established and supported feminised leadership values in the institution were supported by their female counterparts. participant g indicated that her dean was a woman and that she was “tough, but fair”. she was described as a good, supportive leader who encouraged and supported women. all the participants at the edgewood campus confirmed that there was great leadership and a supportive culture due to a nurturing leadership style. ten of the participants confirmed that female academics in leadership positions demonstrated aggressive male-type leadership characteristics. there was no empathy or support from them. however, if women tried to exemplify feminine leadership values of being empathetic and supportive, they were viewed as deficient. women by the very nature of socialisation adopt a more participatory and democratic decision-making approach. women have much to contribute to in a leadership role, specifically in terms of collaboration, inclusivity practices, ethics and integrity, as well as the ability to harness multiple perspectives. however, when women in leadership positions did not portray http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 642020 38(2): 64-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) feminine values or a transformational leadership style, they are referred to as “queen bees”, as they adopt masculine leadership traits and sabotage other women’s growth personally and professionally. a significant stumbling block in terms of support and development for black women in academia is that of the “queen bee” (ramnund, 2019). “queen bees” are women in leadership portfolios who do everything within their power to ensure that other women do not develop or get promoted into senior positions. they align themselves with the old boys’ network to safeguard their success and in doing so, eliminate any female competition. all participants noted that there was a dire need for formalised support systems, particularly for research. participant i confirmed that female academics in senior positions “were unhelpful, blocked me and made me pay for my investigations when i did my phd, although they had the power to assist me by allowing me to use university facilities”. she confirmed that her male colleagues were well supported by these same women who “blocked her”. she strongly verbalised the need for support structures for women in her male-dominated field. participant k verified that formalised support and mentoring programmes would be highly advantageous. she indicated that promotions based on gender alone are extremely negative as its impact is far reaching. the queen bee lives at ukzn, there are women in very senior executive positions; these women were part of the team that stiffened the promotions standards. i believe this was done purely to make it arduous for women to progress into senior positions. participants confirmed that male academics on decision-making panels have the authority to impact on significant policies and practices. this is historic with the old boys’ network. however, with women in senior positions and taking up spaces on these decision-making panels, they stand with and support the male academics in processes that continue to subjugate women. participant l noted, new people coming into the institution are vulnerable because of poor support throughout the institution. women have all the career opportunities in the present, but we are not supporting each other. meanwhile participant h stated, people need space to develop but women in leadership are making sure that this does not happen. “queen bees” are openly territorial, and they refuse to develop people. participant m confirmed that there were no mentors in place and that she would have benefitted from a formalised mentoring programme. she also indicated her passion and commitment to be a mentor to younger academics. participant j confirmed the existence of the queen bee syndrome; this is explicitly displayed by african black women who are appointed into positions where they do not meet the minimum requirements. they are allowed to obtain their qualification, meeting the minimum criteria for the job, while in their posts. participant j further confirmed that “there is an entitlement culture. there is a calculated play for career growth”. participant b confirmed that women with their sights on climbing the ladder or developing themselves will “dismantle anyone else whom they perceive to be a threat”. they attach themselves to senior male academics and attempt to incapacitate women advancing professionally. by proving allegiance to the male academics and treachery to female academics, these women are sustained in their career advancement by the male academics who hold position and influence. women adopt male characters to endure and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 652020 38(2): 65-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 ramnund-mansingh & seedat-khan understanding the career trajectories of black female academics flourish into higher-ranking positions. taking on male characteristics is seen as the recipe for success. according to participant b: race plays a sizeable part in departmental dynamics, the gender divide is sensed, human resources did a presentation that there are too many indian lecturers. this created racial tension that wasn’t there before. when a position is advertised, the manager already has someone in mind for the post. four of the participants confirmed that human resources played a role in the racial divide, which contributed to the gender divide. this was because african women were recognised as preferred candidates for permanent appointments and promotions. in contrast, many of these women did not meet the requirements; there was a multidirected challenge in place. these appointments were deliberate and set the women who were appointed up for failure, as they would not accept assistance and guidance from senior members of faculty for fear that they would sabotage her due to professional jealously. these women exhibited all of the characteristics of the “queen bee” by not allowing any women in the department to progress and display competition for her role. particularly encouraging stances of self-motivation and self-initiated mentoring initiatives as well as valuable experiences of female leadership are also conferred. participant n confirmed that “they are thrown into the deep end” and there are no support structures. she adopts a different manner of dealing with new women in the department. she always creates inclusivity so that women do not feel threatened. participant n believes that formalised support structures are unnecessary; she proposed that instead experienced academics should be encouraged to provide support and mentorship. participant d asserts that her direct line manager is very supportive. according to participant g, there are no formalised support structures; however, all members of the department have a good relationship. stress according to mccallum (2007), black female executives are increasingly facing burnout. this can be linked to the fact that they are promoted prematurely without a structured mentorship plan in place or the lack of a suitable mentor. the stress is attributed to the international trends for women to grow, develop and perform. this, in turn, affects the sometimes, new female executive, who is in an influential portfolio with extraordinary expectations to accomplish amplified tasks. mccallum (2007:1) alleges “many black female executives are prone to burnout as they tend to neglect other equally important aspects of their personal lives to fit the role of the super-achiever where performance is often seen as the only criterion of their self-worth. furthermore, the high performing female executive often thinks the solution to her problem is simply to work a little harder” and prove her capability to her male counterparts. research by barkhuizen and rothmann (2008) and oosthuizen and berndt (2008) on stress experienced by academics, is consistent with reports of stress between male and female academics not being dissimilar. however, women define stress indicators differently than their male colleagues. job dissatisfaction, job insecurity and psychosocial factors are often generic causes of stress in the workplace (long, 1995). higher education institutions have to manage and protect their staff from increasing levels of stress to preserve staff well-being, organisational performance http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 662020 38(2): 66-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) and the intellectual health of a nation (barkhuizen & rothmann, 2008:322). in south africa, the changing institutional cultures may lead to job dissatisfaction due to excessive workloads and the merged institutions placing higher performance output demands as well as the perception of job insecurity (oosthuizen & berndt, 2008; cloete et al. [eds], 2004). according to male academics; workload, inadequate salaries and lack of recognition are perceived to provide the most significant stressors whereas women profess job insecurity, isolation, lack of recognition and work politics as stressors. the changes that higher education has undergone has contributed to the stress experienced by female academics. according to robbins and coultier (1999), several sources of workplace stress are identified, these are directly related to the changes that transpired in 2004 (cloete et al., 2004). the following sources of stress that could be related to the merging of institutions and the changes in institutional culture are fear, excessive rules and regulations, change in the organisation, restructuring, role ambiguity and role overload. this is an adaptation and expansion of the original cooper and marshall (1976) model of the sources of stress. barkhuizen and rothmann (2008) brought to the fore the prevalence of stress in higher education in the south african context. participant a indicated that stress levels are high due to family-life balance. she has an orthodox and unsupportive husband and has had to deal with the emotional trauma of her parents’ divorce as well as the high academic workload. participant m confirmed that high levels of stress contributed to physical manifestations of illnesses such as diabetes, high blood pressure and ulcers. according to participant j, levels of stress increased when the university became ukzn. qualified academics “left in droves to set up a private practice or to move internationally”. the stress was as a result of several reasons. there was a huge drive to push black academics who were appointed into roles without meeting the minimum requirement with no structured mentorship in place. departments did not function well, and as a result, many lost health professional council of south africa (hpcsa) registration. participant g confirmed that “trying to juggle everything” was stressful. her priority was attending to her child that was born with medical problems. she is also frequently summoned into meetings related to her deficient research production units and the timeframes on completion of her phd. according to participant b, the role overload leaves one depleted and tired. however, she has had severe physical manifestations of stress; she suffered from ulcers, a lack of circulation and a time where she became nonresponsive at work and was hospitalised in the intensive care unit. the doctors could not find medical justification for her condition and said it could be stress related. participant d confirmed that many women were suffering from severe depression as they were not coping with the excessive abuse they have to endure from male academics and their male line managers. participant i confirmed that the environment was highly stressful and could lead to physical ailments. she confides in her husband. she tries to socialise with close family and friends who help her manage and distract her from her stressful environment. levels of stress were high for participant e because there was no support structure; there was no orientation or expectations as an academic, no formal mentor, excessive workload and completion of her phd. she said she only survived because of her supportive line manager. these female academics have had to find their coping mechanisms to manage stress in order for it not to impact or minimally affect their physical health. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 672020 38(2): 67-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 ramnund-mansingh & seedat-khan understanding the career trajectories of black female academics in managing stress in academia, studies indicate that specific programmes assist in educating people on dealing and coping with stressful situations, including bullying by male or female colleagues, which cause severe stress. these interventions include mentoring programmes. they create awareness by the perpetrator as well as the victim. with the management and the tools to deal with challenges, women can move upward into leadership positions. mentoring programmes should by their fundamental nature, be successful in developing historically marginalised black women academics in south africa. 6. conclusion this article acknowledged an all-inclusive leadership experience disguised as the “old boy’s network”. other essential leadership practices include the queen bee phenomenon, which acts as one of the most detrimental obstructions to the success and advancement of black women in academia. the historical and political background seeped in the subjugating of women by race, gender and class offer further complexities for the of black women working toward professional advancement in the academy. this comprehensive study provides credibility to capricious experiences of black women in the academy and specifies a south african higher education framework post-2004 in an amalgamated university milieu. the social construction of reality and the intersections of race and gender determine a plausible theoretical framework of the impediments that black women currently experience. the researchers believe that women are equally committed to their profession as men, but have restrictions on their time due to a myriad of factors: obstacles inherent in academia and disinterest in a tenure track position because of the strain of balancing home life and academia expectancies; women have greater teaching loads than men and less access to resources essential for research and women’s commitment to teaching and service minimises their time for research (bingham & nix, 2010:5). the implications of this study are far-reaching in the broader transformed south african academy. black female academics are subject to unique intersecting challenges that are not effortlessly recognised. policies, practices and processes are gender-biased and the empirical evidence has supported this disturbing verdict. leadership committed to advancing institutional equity and providing mentorship to black female academics is lacking and necessitates serious deliberation in the academy. if the south african academy is to maintain its current position internationally, a detailed audit of the critical challenges needs to be prioritised. black women in academia face a solitary journey on their career trajectory; they are required to establish their networks of support and seek out experienced academics that are willing to provide a mentorship role over a protracted period. their lived experiences are testimony to their professional, personal and physical challenges. all of which manifest in stress with physical and emotional disorders. in an endeavour to postulate a sociological interpretation of the career trajectories of black women academics, this study has underscored the significant hindrances to the advancement and progression of black women in the academy. references babbie, e.r. 2016. the practice of social research. boston: cengage. badsha, n. 2001. policy factors which impact on the development of women leaders in higher education. presented at conference: technological demands on women in higher education: bridging the digital divide. cape town. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 682020 38(2): 68-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) bailey, t. & mouton, j. 2004. synthesis report – women’s participation in science, engineering and technology. pretoria: department of science and technology and national advisory council on innovation. barkhuizen, n. & rothmann, s. 2008. occupational stress of academic staff in south african higher education institutions. south african journal of psychology, 28: 321–336. https://doi. org/10.1177/008124630803800205. berger, p. & luckmann, t. 1979. the social construction of reality: a treatise in the sociology of knowledge. new york: anchor books. bingham, t. & nix, s.j. 2010. women faculty in higher education: a case study on gender bias. forum on public policy for a&m university. west texas. chesterman, c. 2000. women’s executive development in australian higher education: the wexdev model. presented at the nawe conference. new orleans. cloete, n., maassen, p., fehnel, r., moja, t., perold, p. & gibbon, t. 2004. transformation in higher education, global pressures and local realities in south africa. netherlands: kluwer academic publishers. council on higher education. 2013. staffing statistics 2013. available at https://www.che. ac.za/focus_areas/higher_education_data/2013/staffing. cummins, h 2012. queen bees and mommy tracking: how’s a woman academic supposed to get ahead? advancing women in leadership, 32: 1-22. denzin, n.k. & lincoln, y.s. (eds). 2017. sage handbook of qualitative research. thousand oaks: sage publications. euben, d. 2005. working mothers and gender discrimination. the chronicle of higher education, 51(30). https://doi.org/10.2307/40252038. euben, d.r. 2001. show me the money – salary equity in the academy. academe, 87(4): 30–36. ivancevich, j.m., konopaske, r. & matteson, m.t. 2013. organizational behaviour and management. boston: mcgraw hill. laafia, i. & larsson, a. 2001. women in public research and higher education in europe. statistics in focus – science and technology eurostat. theme 9(7). ladd, e.c. & lipset, s.m. .1975. the divided academy – professors and politics. london: mcgraw-hill. long, b.c. 1995. women and workplace stress. greensboro nc: canadian guidance and counselling foundation ottawa. ngila, d., boshoff, n., henry, f., diab, r., malcom, s. & thomson s. 2017. women’s representation in national science academies: an unsettling narrative. south african journal of science, 113(7/8): 1–7. https://doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2017/20170050. oosthuizen, t.f.j. & berndt, a.d. 2008. academic employees presenting stress management behaviour in a diverse context. journal of contemporary management, 5: 217–229. perna, l.w. 2002. sex differences in the supplemental earnings of college and university faculty. research in higher education, 43(1): 31–58. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1013018100387. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 https://doi.org/10.1177/008124630803800205 https://doi.org/10.1177/008124630803800205 https://www.che.ac.za/focus_areas/higher_education_data/2013/staffing https://www.che.ac.za/focus_areas/higher_education_data/2013/staffing https://doi.org/10.2307/40252038 https://doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2017/20170050 https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1013018100387 692020 38(2): 69-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 ramnund-mansingh & seedat-khan understanding the career trajectories of black female academics ramnund, a. 2019. exploring the link between institutional culture and the career advancement of female academics in higher education: a case study of the university of kwazulu-natal, south africa. unpublished phd thesis. durban: university of kwazulu-natal. ramnund-mansingh, a. & seedat-khan, m. 2020. move over ms. professor! a review of the challenges women experience in academia. journal of higher education service science and management, 3(1): 1–14. robbins, s.p. & coulter, m. 1999. management. new-jersey: prentice-hall. skelton, c. 2004. gender, career and “individualisation” in the audit university. research in education, 87–102. https://doi.org/10.7227/rie.72.7. university of kwazulu-natal. 2016. annual report 2016. available at https://www.ukzn.ac.za/ wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ukzn-annual-report-2016.pdf welch, l.b. 1990. women in higher education: changes and challenges. new york: praeger books. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.04 https://doi.org/10.7227/rie.72.7 https://www.ukzn.ac.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ukzn-annual-report-2016.pdf https://www.ukzn.ac.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/ukzn-annual-report-2016.pdf understanding the career trajectories 79 research article 2021 39(3): 79-93 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.7 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) challenges faced by rural accounting teachers in implementing web-based collaborative learning abstract the twenty-first century has witnessed a call for teachers to integrate information and communication technology (ict) into teaching and learning. however, creating a classroom environment that engages in active learning has proved to be a hurdle to south african teachers, as more traditional teaching methods continue to be utilised in teaching. these challenges have derailed the current efforts by the department of basic education to introduce ict in the teaching and learning process in an effort to create a learner-centred environment. this paper seeks to open epistemic access by determining the challenges faced by rural accounting teachers in implementing web-based collaborative learning. the paper reports on the findings of a qualitative study that employed interviews to generate data with five grade 10 accounting teachers in rural south africa. the findings reveal that accounting teachers are faced with myriad challenges that serve as a stumbling block in their attempt to implement web-based collaborative learning. contrary to the principles of critical accounting research, the teaching methods and resources used position teachers in control and authority while the learners are disempowered, marginalised and oppressed. we consequently argue that accounting teachers require support and capacity building to implement web-based collaborative learning effectively. keywords: accounting; active learning; collaborative learning; critical accounting theory. 1. introduction in the 21st century, there is a strong call for the integration of information and communication technology (ict) into teaching and learning globally (silin & kwok, 2017). in line with this call, there are hundreds of web-based tools that are created to encourage collaboration and give autonomy to the learners (marais, 2016). however, teachers in african countries such as south africa and nigeria seem to find it challenging to create a classroom environment that engages learners in active learning, practises collaborative learning, peer teaching and making use of a wide range of technological tools that support effective and quality learning author: mr thabiso jonah motsoeneng1 dr henry james nichols1 dr sekitla daniel makhasane1 affiliation: 1university of the free state, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i3.7 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(3): 79-93 published: 16 september 2021 received: 25 january 2021 accepted: 16 march 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.7 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.7 802021 39(3): 80-93 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.7 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) (ezeanyanike, 2013). these challenges are seemingly not unique to african countries. in the united states of america, turkey and brazil, a didactic gap was discovered in the teaching of accounting due to a lack of clear, secure and effective methods for teaching the subject (hales & orpurt, 2013; ozturk, 2015). this resulted in teachers experiencing pedagogical challenges in organising and ordering classroom activities and using web-based technological tools to enhance performance in their subject. in response to the 21st century pedagogical and technological demands, south african teachers have been obligated to adjust to a model shift in education from a teacher-centred approach to a learner-centred approach. this paradigm shift emphasises active participation by learners that requires accounting teachers to rearrange their teaching approach in terms of the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) and produce learners who can use technology effectively by means of pictorial, figurative or linguistic skills through numerous means (department of basic education [dbe], 2011). since the implementation of caps, the dbe has made multiple attempts to encourage the use of a broader range of technological tools, including web-based collaborative learning. web-based collaborative learning is defined as an acquisition by learners of knowledge, skills and attitudes through group interaction, where group members work together using webbased learning tools that support the learning of accounting (hadjerrouits, 2010; kay, 2011). this takes place through enhancing, amplifying and guiding the cognitive process of learners to achieve a common learning goal (laferriere, murphy & campos, 2005; letshwene, 2014). therefore, in response to the preceding problems, this paper discusses the challenges that are faced by rural accounting teachers in implementing web-based collaborative learning. 2. statement of the problem over the years, teachers in general and accounting teachers in particular, have been encouraged to adjust to a model shift in education from a teacher-centred approach to a learner-centred approach (mbatha, 2016; maddock & maroun, 2018). this paradigm shift emphasised active participation of learners that required accounting teachers to create classroom environments that would allow learners to express their gained knowledge and apply the accounting principles they were taught (dbe, 2011). however, south african teachers are still using the traditional methods and tools of teaching accounting by having the teacher as the dominant figure who assumes an authoritative role of possessing all the knowledge that needs to be transmitted to the learners. against this backdrop, the purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges that are faced by rural accounting teachers towards implementing web-based collaborative learning. with increased awareness about these challenges, in-service and pre-service programmes can be designed to empower accounting teachers with the knowledge and skills necessary for effective implementation of web-based collaborative learning. school management teams (smts) are also likely to be aware of areas where accounting teachers require support. 3. research question the study was guided by the following research question: what challenges are faced by rural accounting teachers in implementing web-based collaborative learning? http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.7 812021 39(3): 81-93 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.7 motsoeneng, nichols & makhasane challenges faced by rural accounting teachers 4. literature review: insights about challenges faced by accounting teachers in seeking to understand the challenges faced by accounting teachers in the implementation of web-based collaborative learning, we position this paper within the context of larger debates about challenges encountered by teachers in using ict and learner-centred pedagogical practices. one of the challenges that accounting teachers encounter is the ability to create a classroom environment where there is active learning. ndebele and maphosa (2013) define active learning as a planned series of actions or events to invite the participants to interact with one another and to process, apply and share experiences as part of the educational process. sekwena (2014) argues that active learning is apparent when learners actively participate in the construction of knowledge instead of being passive recipients of knowledge transmitted by the teacher. this means that learners are afforded an opportunity to be involved in the process of teaching and learning by asking questions and searching for answers to a given problem. however, teachers continue to conduct lessons in accounting using only traditional teaching tools such as textbooks, notes and the chalkboard. at the same time, learners remain stuck in the passive role of being recipients of knowledge. this is occurring in a time when caps is advocating the use of fourth industrial revolution methods and approaches of teaching that seek to equip learners with critical thinking and problem-solving skills (dbe, 2011; menon & castrillon, 2019; mkhize, 2019). the caps contains the annual teaching plan (atp) that is designed to assist teachers in teaching topics for the year, such as financial statements, whereby planning using the atp is essential. the atp, previously known as the work schedule, is made available to teachers in the caps document and is broken up into topics as per the school term and weeks (moodley, 2013; du plessis & marais, 2015). as the active learning approach is demanding, teachers with no teaching experience and those without a teaching background may find it confusing that active learning is practised within the context of a classroom environment (jawitz, 2013). teachers often want to be seen by their learners as very knowledgeable; thus, such a desire will generally result in teachercentred methods within a classroom environment, with the learners being reduced to a passive audience of the teacher’s teaching “show”. moreover, studies conducted in the united states of america, india and canada indicate that teaching large classes affects the teaching and learning process due to teachers finding it difficult to locate individual performance (shehu & tafida, 2016; nguyen, 2018). these challenges are not unique to these countries since south african schools also tend to experience the difficulties of large classes (eison, 2010; summerlee, 2010). ideally, large classes in south africa play a fundamental role in the implementation of active learning, as it renders the traditional teacher-centred approach to learning ineffective and limits the successful implementation of teamwork that is indicative of the active learning approach (rajcoomar, 2013). overcrowded classrooms tend to have an impact on classroom management, due to factors such as lack of physical space and limited opportunities to meet individual learner needs, thus resulting in diminished opportunities to create an active learning process (muthusamy, 2015). saal (2017) has identified that most south african teachers tend to rely on traditional teaching tools such as textbooks, notes and the chalkboard for teaching accounting, although teaching using web-based tools has become an essential factor within the teaching and learning of accounting in south african schools. however, existing challenges have derailed http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.7 822021 39(3): 82-93 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.7 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) the current efforts to implement teaching using web-based tools. these include a lack of ict tools to facilitate teaching and learning within a classroom context and a lack of skills to integrate accounting using technology to support teaching and learning. limited time available for lesson preparation and pressure to prepare learners for their final year examinations, among other issues, have resulted in an insufficient use of ict tools as teaching aids (sousa, richter & nel, 2017). almaiah, al-khasawneh and althunibat (2020) argue that among other reasons, the continued use of the traditional teaching tools was influenced by the teachers experiencing a lack of professional support and development, inadequate access to hardware and software and a lack of time, competence, confidence and motivation. although many schools in south africa continue to rely on traditional teaching tools, in most cases, there is a total lack of resources such as textbooks and proper infrastructure, and the learners have to share one textbook amongst them (mathevula, 2015; mukhari, 2016). in addition to this, teachers are continuously under pressure to finish teaching the grade 10 accounting curriculum in order to prepare the learners for tests and examinations. owing to insufficient time, the teachers resort to not using web-based collaborative learning, as they believe that it would take too much of their teaching time and add to their workload. thus, due to incompetence in ict, which might result in the development of a negative attitude, there is no motivation for teachers to use webbased collaborative learning (palaigeorgiou & grammatikopoulou, 2016). according to usman (2016) the dependency on traditional teaching tools tends to be a constraint towards the development of education, as the use of such tools inhibits the planned development by the dbe and prevents the rational allocation of resources to priority objectives. web-based collaborative learning provides a strategy that can be utilised to address severe academic challenges faced by teachers and learners in schools towards improving performance in the teaching and learning of grade 10 accounting (jaffer, ng’ ambi & czerniewicz, 2007). despite the challenges pertaining to the adoption of learner-centred teaching approaches, the dbe has continually encouraged the participation of diverse groups of learners and the production of the skills required for a rapidly changing society. it has done this through social transformation, ensuring that the educational imbalances of the past are redressed and that equal educational opportunities are provided for all sections of the population (dbe, 2011). it is in this educational context that new opportunities for teaching accounting using web-based collaborative learning have arisen, as the caps document suggests that it aims to produce learners that can use technology effectively and critically through using visual, symbolic and linguistic skills (dbe, 2011). adequate resources such as proper infrastructure and technological tools are deemed a prerequisite for the effective implementation of caps, as a school that has inadequate resources will be likely to use a teaching approach that tends to be more teacher-centred (o’connor, 1997; tlhapane & simelane, 2010; molapo, 2016). the inadequacy of resources not only tends to hinder the effective teaching and learning of accounting, but also derails a critical mode of implementing the principles of caps (manqele, 2012). 5. theoretical framework critical accounting research (car) is a lens or theoretical framework positioning the researchers’ stance to the participants in the aspects of this paper. car, as a theoretical framework, permits the alignment of accounting to recognise the transformation of teachers and learners through human action to ensure equal educational opportunities and social http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.7 832021 39(3): 83-93 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.7 motsoeneng, nichols & makhasane challenges faced by rural accounting teachers transformation (broadbent, 2002). this means that car, as a theoretical framework, seeks to liberate teachers from all forms of marginalisation through developing and providing sound learning conditions, addressing learning barriers and accommodating diversity. car is seen to be an appropriate theoretical framework guiding the study, as it encourages the influence of communication whereby an exchange of ideas is enthused by assurance to the common task of learning as well as confidence in individuals (mcphail, 2004). car is established upon an anti-oppressive philosophy and it is a lens through which to adjust and recognise the original foundations of domination (ledwith, 2007). it is enhanced by implementing values such as acceptance, willingness to listen and respect for alternative views (merino, 1998). laughlin (1999), as supported by gaffikin (2006), argues that there are at least four critical characteristics of car. first, he identifies that car is always contextual; that is, it recognises that accounting has social, political and economic consequences and needs to be understood in this context. secondly, it pursues commitment, which means that it allows the process of assessment and engagement to occur, leading to an improvement in the practice or profession of accounting. thirdly, it is concerned with the functioning of accounting (profession and practice) and processes at both micro(individuals and organisations) and macro(societal, government and professional) levels. moreover, car requires academic borrowings from other disciplines to provide the theoretical and methodological outlooks to address complex agendas. the objectives of car assisted us in answering the research question; these objectives are discussed below: i) build an empowering environment learners ought to be permitted by their accounting teachers to share their knowledge and experiences with an encompassing and enlightening social consciousness while pursuing to surpass the limitations of their pre-existing understanding (boyce, 2004; ngwenya, 2019). restricting learners from expressing their understanding and views on the teaching and learning of grade 10 accounting reduces accounting as a subject to appear unapproachable, insignificant and isolated. learners need to be authors of their learning experiences by designing an educational journey that allows them to tackle social diversity issues, inequality, and knowledge in an economy (watermeyer, 2012; darling-hammond et al., 2019). hence, using web-based collaborative learning permitted learners to gain the knowledge and skills in accounting through an active environment that acknowledged their pre-existing knowledge and was flexible to adapt teaching to individual needs (bengtsson, 2008; wallin, nokelainen & mikkonen, 2018). ii) promoting effective and efficient pedagogical knowledge qhosola (2016) asserts that instructional knowledge within teaching and learning of grade 10 accounting is improved by sharing and informing insights into the possibilities consistent with car. with the increased variety and number of technological tools over the past years, teachers need to take advantage of the situation through stimulating learners’ thinking and interest in grade 10 accounting. thus, in using web-based tools to teach accounting, effective teaching was linked to the reform in social, economic and political spheres that support higherorder thinking skills such as creativity and critical thinking. iii) democracy as an underlying function http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.7 842021 39(3): 84-93 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.7 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) henry et al. (2015) assert that the emphasis on the importance of common good and social justice is fundamental to learning so that learners do not view accounting and reallife events as separate but rather as one. the learners, as a result, will be able to engage in critical dialogues in a learning environment, which may lead to the sharing of local and indigenous knowledge (hill et al., 2020). therefore, accounting teachers ought to use the teaching of accounting as an instrument of a democratic function that considers the principles of equity, hope, peace and social justice. 6. research methodology this paper used qualitative research as an option for researching to focus and engage individuals or groups of people’s views, feelings and patterns without control or manipulation (mcdonald, 2012). according to denzin and lincoln (2011), qualitative research is an activity that seeks to position a researcher in a natural setting to attempt to make sense of or interpret the daily life of different individuals or groups of people. in this study, the research site served as a natural setting to make sense of the challenges faced by rural accounting teachers in implementing web-based collaborative learning. qualitative research was used to answer questions about meaning, experiences and perspectives from the view of the teachers concerned in the effort to create new knowledge to improve lives (hammarberg, kirkman & lacey, 2016). furthermore, creswell (2012) states that qualitative research begins with assumptions and the possible use of a theoretical framework that seeks to provide essential in-depth insights into the social or human problem. therefore, the reason we made use of the qualitative research approach was that it created a space whereby the participants were able to share their rich and detailed information for the purpose and benefit of a sustainable transformation (baum, macdougall & smith, 2006). this paper used an exploratory case study that allowed a comprehensive review of an unclear or new phenomenon, while it retained the complete and meaningful characteristics of real-life events (yin, 2009). harrison et al. (2017) describe an exploratory case study as a study of the case, for example, a specific group or department, which provides insight into a particular issue to build a theory or redraw generalisations. furthermore, an exploratory case study focuses on an in-depth understanding of an issue or theme through realising individual or group perceptions and how they perceive the world in which they live (mcmillan & schumacher, 2006). this was an ideal method for exploring the challenges faced by rural accounting teachers in implementing web-based collaborative learning. purposive sampling was used in this paper to select particular characteristics and elements from the population that would be a representation of the target group (mcmillan & schumacher, 1997). ideally, the purposive sampling permitted us to be able to increase the use of the information that was obtained from the sample; thus, we selected five teachers, as they comprised a specific group. we did not attempt to make generalisations, nor did this group represent the population at large. the inclusion criteria for the participants to participate in the study were as follows: • they had to be teaching grade 10 accounting. • they needed to be currently employed as teachers at a south african secondary school. • they had to have been teaching accounting for at least two years. • they had to have technological tools in their teaching environment. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.7 852021 39(3): 85-93 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.7 motsoeneng, nichols & makhasane challenges faced by rural accounting teachers the participants met with us at a setting of their choice to take part in a recorded interview of approximately 60 minutes. 7. presentation and discussion of the findings in this section, we present and discuss the findings as they emerged from the data. for ethical purposes, we use pseudonyms to refer to the participants. 7.1 failure to adopt learner-centred teaching approaches the findings from the interviews with the participants indicated that teachers failed to use learner-centred teaching approaches. as observed by ndebele and maphosa (2013), teachers continue to struggle to engage learners in the process of teaching and learning actively. this failure was characterised by challenges to create an active learning environment and pressure to complete the grade 10 accounting curriculum. commenting on the failure to create a classroom environment that engaged in active learning, poone said that: it becomes a challenge to use the active learning and learner-centred approaches due to the annual teaching plan because all the topics are given a time frame and should be taught for only a number of weeks. additionally, molefe commented as follows: sir, it’s challenging to engage a learner-centred environment especially if you using the annual teaching plan, and again we are expected to treat learners equally. in a class, there are fast learners and slow learners with different learning abilities. obviously, teachers have to work harder to enable slow learners to understand concepts and subject content. xhopo further commented as follows on the pressure to complete the grade 10 accounting curriculum: we end up not using all these other approaches; instead, we resort to our usual way of teaching that is creating a teacher-centred environment so that we push the annual teaching plan. we want to complete the curriculum even if the learners do not understand us; the topics would have been assessed and available in their classwork books. in addition, hlauza had this to say: we as teachers are caught in between, we have to push the curriculum and at the same time make sure that all the learners understand while engaging this learner-centred approach. as mentioned in pereira and sithole (2020), the participants viewed the use of learnercentred teaching approaches in accounting as an insurmountable challenge, given the demands of completing the annual teaching plan. thus, in teaching topics of grade 10 accounting, the teachers assumed a dominant role where they controlled and influenced the mediation of content knowledge in the classroom. contrary to this practice, the dbe, through caps, emphasises that learners’ exploration, participation and the development of skills in analysis, synthesis and evaluation is placed at the centre of teaching and learning (dbe, 2011). engaging the teacher-centred approach puts the learners in a passive role whereby the learners listen, memorise and regurgitate the content taught without any understanding. this, therefore, hinders the dbe’s efforts of creating an active learning approach that allows learners to express their gained knowledge and apply the accounting principles. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.7 862021 39(3): 86-93 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.7 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) the participants’ responses point out that teachers exercise control in terms of choosing the manner in which learning has to take place within the classroom, thus oppressing and marginalising any contribution the learners have (malebese, 2016; msimanga, 2017). the learners seldom participate in the planned series of actions by the teacher as they remain being passive recipients of knowledge. the car principles indicate that human beings ought to be free from dominance as it is a violation of freedom and it interferes with their capability to converse and relate with one another (boyce, 2004). the narrations by the participants are contrary to this principle of car, as issues of control and authority are evident, thus placing the learners in a position of disempowerment, marginalisation and oppression. 7.2 dependency on traditional teaching tools over the years, education in schools has been used as a medium to foster creativity and transformation with the effort of driving the learners from the known into the unknown (jaffer et al., 2007). thus, teaching and learning through fourth industrial revolution tools such as ict has brought about new and exciting possibilities within the classroom that seeks to contribute towards the learner’s ability to solve problems in laying a solid foundation of knowledge. however, more demands have been placed on teachers, as more time is required to prepare for the lesson; as a result, adding more capacity to the existing workload (manqele, 2012). hence, in efforts to prepare the learners for tests and examinations the teachers continue to rely on traditional teaching tools to deliver the content of grade 10 accounting. concerning the dependency on traditional teaching tools, poone commented as follows: my progress as a teacher was gradual; i started in a way most teachers wouldn’t want to start their careers in teaching whereby most of the learners were performing terrible. i started relying on the textbook, and the chalkboard, and i basically used teacher-centred methods to teach. the response signifies that learners may have performed very badly in accounting due to methods that might have been implemented for the purpose of teaching and learning, resulting from inadequate training and support received as a novice teacher. moreover, poone indicates that as teachers in the further education and training phase, there is a continued dependence upon traditional teaching tools in the classroom that generally results in the adoption of the teacher-centred approach (muganga & ssenkusu, 2019). according to darling-hammond et al. (2020), this demonstrates that teachers continue to pursue the role of being knowledgeable in their learners’ eyes and to assume an authoritative role whereby the shape and form of learning are engineered from their perspective. molefe commented as follows on the challenges of using technology and its inaccessibility as it relates to dependency on traditional tools: the teachers themselves are challenged by technology, so it becomes a challenge for them to integrate something they are totally not familiar with. and again, accessibility of technology in schools is a challenge because in the school i work, the tablets are there but they are kept in the strong room. this response indicates that teachers in schools may have an interest in using and integrating ict into their teaching and learning; yet, they lack digital skills and the competency to do so. additionally, molefe mentions that although schools may have the necessary ict tools to use for the purpose of teaching and learning, due to the inaccessibility of tools, teachers choose to continue using tools that they may be used to. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.7 872021 39(3): 87-93 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.7 motsoeneng, nichols & makhasane challenges faced by rural accounting teachers xhopo shared the following: a major point of teachers not using ict is the leadership. you know, when the leadership is not knowledgeable in integrating ict in teaching and learning, they discourage the teachers in the school, which leads to them developing a negative attitude towards using technology in their classes. the response attributes the inaccessibility and inadequate training of teachers in integrating technology in their teaching and learning to the leadership of schools (ghavifekr et. al, 2016). furthermore, hlauza related the dependency of traditional tools to a lack of training and bad attitude from teachers; and had this to say: sir, the resources are available but there is a lack of training that is associated with a bad attitude from the teachers themselves. the lack of training for teachers to engage technology into the classroom has resulted in the school not to make use of the resources that was supplied by the department of basic education and private companies like vodacom. these resources are gathering dust because of that! the response indicates that teachers are challenged by technology and that due to a lack of competency and skill, the teachers develop a negative attitude towards integrating ict tools into their teaching and learning. the result of teachers developing a negative attitude towards using ict tools in teaching and learning is that the learners will not be given an opportunity to access and learn accounting by means of fourth industrial revolution methods in an attempt to solve problems. melamu’s comment regarding the dependency on traditional teaching tools was as follows: the challenge that we come across is that you’d find that in schools, the management tends to withhold the gadgets that were supplied by the government from teachers and learners. the narration indicates a misuse of power by the school’s leadership to attempt to redress past imbalances, especially for previously disadvantaged learners, to provide both teachers and learners with the opportunity to apply methods that enable creativity and critical thinking skills. according to raman and yamat (2014), the responses by the participants indicate that not enough support and training are provided for the teachers concerning the integration of ict into teaching and learning. this results in teachers resorting to using traditional teaching tools that may be regarded obsolete in the long run, as fourth industrial revolution tools are being adopted into the classroom; thus, restricting the learners’ ability to engage in critical thinking and problem-solving skills (reaves, 2019; oke & fernandes, 2020). moreover, the responses confirm the school management team’s inability to promote the integration of ict into teaching and learning in an effort to create a platform for innovation, versatility and creativity. consequently, this serves as a constraint to the teaching of accounting through using tools that are effective and efficient in the fourth industrial revolution and influencing meaningful learning. instead, this disallowed learners to gain enough skills to adapt accounting expertise that is not only meant for schools but real life (mbatha, 2016). the responses above indicate that the resources of integrating ict tools into teaching and learning are available. however, the school’s leadership opts not to use it. instead, it depends on traditional teaching tools that tend to create an environment whereby teachers http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.7 882021 39(3): 88-93 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.7 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) apply a teacher-centred approach and learners assume a passive role of listening, writing and regurgitating the content taught. the issues of control and authority manifest through learners not being able to engage and interact in meaningful dialogues that seek to promote a much deeper understanding of accounting. in this case, the learners and teachers are not given the opportunity to use technological tools that may contribute to a deeper understating of accounting expertise that can be applied in real life. according to qhosola (2016), car seeks to build an empowering environment whereby accounting teachers and learners are permitted to use essential resources that are efficient and effective in the pursuit of acquiring enlightening accounting knowledge. ideally, the school’s management team ought to allow teachers to let learners to be the authors of their own learning experience in pursuing grade 10 accounting problems (watermeyer, 2012; henry, murtuza & weiss, 2015). 8. conclusion and recommendations this study explored the challenges that rural accounting teachers face regarding implementing web-based collaborative learning. the findings paint an upsetting picture about the nature of the challenges facing accounting teachers in the 21st century. it is worrying that accounting teachers are still utilising teacher-centred teaching approaches and find it challenging to engage learners in the process of teaching and learning actively. it also emerged from the findings that there is apparent mismanagement and inadequate implementation of the annual teaching plan, which serves as a stumbling block towards creating and maintaining an active learning environment. the findings indicate that accounting teachers have an interest in using technological tools to facilitate teaching and learning; yet, they lack the necessary competency and digital skills to do so. furthermore, teachers are continuously under pressure to complete the accounting curriculum in order to prepare the learners for their assessment. however, due to insufficient time, the teachers resort to using traditional teaching tools, as they believe that using technological tools take up much of their teaching time and add to their existing workload. the factor that was identified to lead the accounting teachers to depend on traditional teaching tools was the inaccessibility of technological resources in schools. inadequate access to technological tools causes the teachers to develop a negative attitude towards integrating ict into an accounting class. a critical recommendation for creating a classroom environment that engages in active learning, is that the teachers should have sound knowledge of various teaching methodologies. such knowledge may be gained through networking with teachers that are knowledgeable about learner-centred pedagogies and in-service training. learners construct knowledge through the medium of language. thus, a teacher using active learning as a teaching strategy should enable learners to build knowledge through critically discussing, reading and writing. the use of dialogue, discussion and groupwork that is set using real-world contexts is crucial towards fostering whole class understanding. it is thus recommended that the classroom culture concerning the teacher’s role should be changed by allowing the learners to be engaged in the process of learning, which includes brainstorming ideas with peers, moving around the classroom to gather resources and using web-based tools to access information. by creating a classroom environment that engages in active learning, the teacher will be able to spend most of his or her time assisting learners in developing their understanding and skills, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.7 892021 39(3): 89-93 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.7 motsoeneng, nichols & makhasane challenges faced by rural accounting teachers thus providing an opportunity for the learners to apply and demonstrate what they are learning and to be able to receive immediate 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difficulty of the national senior certificate mathematics examination joyce sewry paul mokilane the national senior certificate (nsc) examinations were written for the second time in 2009 amid much criticism. in this study, scripts of candidates who wrote the nsc mathematics examinations (papers 1 and 2) in 2009 were used as data to analyse the marks scored and then polytomous rasch analysis was conducted for all the subquestions to determine the level of difficulty of the questions. the purpose of applying rasch measurement models is to explore the extent to which a test or an examination and its associated data set permit the interpretation of an underlying linear scale of ability against which to interpret overall performance and item difficulty. in the nsc data, some questions discriminated well at the lower-ability levels of candidates, but no questions were found to discriminate among higher-ability candidates. keywords: mathematics education, grade 12 examinations, national senior certificate, rasch analysis introduction large-scale studies, including examinations, tests and questionnaires have been used for data collection for research and, in the case of examinations, teachers use the results of the analysis to guide their teaching (edwards & alcock, 2010). a number of studies have also been undertaken to determine levels of mathematical ability at different stages of schooling (wendt, bos & goy, 2011; wilson & macgillivray, 2007). the national senior certificate (nsc) was written for the second time in 2009, followed by much criticism when the results were released (association for mathematics education of south africa [amesa], 2009; keeton, 2010). amesa, which reported on the 2009 and 2010 mathematics examinations, stated that the joyce sewry department of chemistry, rhodes university e-mail: j.sewry@ru.ac.za telephone: 046 603 8259 paul mokilane statistical information and research, umalusi e-mail: paul@umalusi.org.za telephone: 012 349 1510 a rasch analysis to determine the difficulty of the national senior certificate mathematics examination joyce sewry & paul mokilane 193 2009 paper 1 was at too high a level, while the standard of the 2010 paper was fairer, despite the fact that there were not many questions at the lower level. furthermore, mathematics paper 2 of 2009 was a fair paper, and that of 2010 was at an appropriate level (amesa, 2009; 2010). the nsc examinations are high-stakes examinations in the south african schooling system, because they are school-leaving examinations. also, they are used to select candidates for higher education programmes, hence, the maintenance of high standards of these examinations. it is, therefore, important that examination papers be analysed, paying particular attention to the quality of the questions (grussendorf, booyse & burroughs, 2010). mathematics, physical sciences and accounting are seen as ‘gateway’ subjects that facilitate entry into tertiary education for school leavers. passing these subjects is critical because university study has the potential to address the lack of skills in south africa (grussendorf et al., 2010). based on this issue, more emphasis has been placed on the analysis of the examinations of different learning areas such as mathematics (umalusi, 2009). results in the nsc examinations for mathematics, in particular, have been poor for a number of years. an illustration of this is given in table 1 which shows, for instance, that in 2009, 29% of the candidates obtained a mark of 40% or more nationally, while 31% achieved this in 2010. these results point to the need for perusing candidates’ responses in the examinations. in this regard, the rasch model was used to analyse the 2009 mathematics scripts. table 1: percentage of learners who achieved greater than 30% and 40% in 2009 and 2010 2009 2010 number of candidates writing subject % achieved >30% % achieved >40% number of candidates writing subject % achieved >30% % achieved >40% mathematics national 1, 2 290 407 46 29 263 034 47 31 eastern cape 1 43 251 38 21 38 801 37 21 grahamstown 530 38 25 378 43 28 1department of basic education, 2011 2keeton, 2010 the rasch model item response theory (irt) is based on two postulates: the performance of an examinee on an item (test question) is related to the examinee’s ability or latent trait; and the relationship between the examinee’s performance and the difficulty of an item can be related by an item characteristic curve (icc). perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 194 examinees’ abilities are scaled such that an ‘average’ person has a latent trait of zero and an ‘average’ examinee will have a 50% probability of answering correctly a question of ‘average’ difficulty. also, irt has the property of invariance, in other words, the characteristics of difficulty of an item are not dependent on the ability distribution of the examinees, and the ability of an examinee is not dependent on the item characteristics (baker, 2001; hambleton, swaminathan & rogers, 1991). so, if a question is asked in a different test with a different set of examinees, it should have a similar level of difficulty. the item parameters (item difficulty and discrimination index) are independent of the test takers’ characteristics, and the test takers’ parameter (ability level) is independent of the item characteristics. rasch analysis is a specific application of irt. in rasch analysis a distinction is made between dichotomous and polytomous analysis. the dichotomous model is used in simple questions where an answer is either right or wrong, such as multiplechoice questions. on the other hand, the polytomous rasch model is used when a variety of marks can be awarded for a question (wu & adams, 2007), as was the case with questions in the nsc mathematics papers. rasch analysis is based on the model that, mathematically, the probability of a candidate of a certain ability to answer correctly a question of a specific difficulty can be represented as (yu, 2010): probability = 1/(1+exp(–(ability – difficulty))) the model assumes that the more proficient candidates (candidates with high latent traits) in the subject are more likely to get the difficult questions correct, while the less proficient candidates are expected to answer only the easy questions correctly. when plotting the range of difficulties over the range of candidates’ latent traits, an icc is formed. from the shape of the icc, decisions about the item can be made, for example, whether a question is easy or difficult. also, it may be explored whether a question discriminates among the high-performing and low-performing candidates, and it may reveal whether a question is at all confusing. the latter is evident when, for instance, high-ability candidates answered a question wrongly, but low-ability candidates answered the question correctly (van der berg & taylor, 2010). the polytomous rasch model, also known as the partial credit model (pcm), is used for question items with a scale of answers (wu & adams, 2007). for instance, if a question has a total mark of 2, then candidates could be awarded 0, 1 or 2 marks. in such a situation the icc will consist of three curves. each curve will represent a probability of attaining no mark (0), 1 or 2 marks respectively. for questions scoring higher marks, the icc will produce a corresponding number of curves. since an icc with many curves could become ‘messy’, an ‘expected score’ curve is used instead. the expected score, defined by e, is based on the probabilities of achieving each of the marks (wu & adams, 2007). mathematically, the expected score is represented by: e = 0 × pr(x = 0) + 1 × pr(x = 1) + 2 × pr(x = 2) a rasch analysis to determine the difficulty of the national senior certificate mathematics examination joyce sewry & paul mokilane 195 thus, a plot of expected scores versus latent traits is drawn. the expected score curve gives an indication of the difficulty of each part of the question. the results of rasch analysis give the level of difficulty of a test item as well as expected score curves. in essence, a score curve is a plot of the expected scores for the question against the abilities (latent traits) of the candidates. even though the difficulty levels are invariant in rasch analysis, it does not mean that the numerical values of the difficulty of each item would be the same in different tests. the obtained numerical values will be subject to variation due to sample size, how well-structured the data is, and the goodness-of-fit of the curve to the data. even though the underlying item parameter values are the same for two samples, the obtained item parameter estimates will vary from sample to sample. nevertheless, the obtained values should be ‘in the same ballpark’ (baker, 2001: 62). baker goes on to say that iccs for two different groups should be similar, since the number of candidates with a certain ability is not the issue, but rather the fact that there are different abilities present. analysis of fit of different items is also conducted during rasch analysis. two statistics are used to look at the item fit, namely the weighted fit mean square and the unweighted fit. the weighted fit mean square (mnsq) (infit) is used to indicate that the standardised residuals are weighted by the variance of the item response (wu & adams, 2007); the weighting gives more emphasis to the anomalous residuals of the examinees whose ability levels are near to the item difficulties, with much less weight to the residuals when examinees have abilities far from the item difficulty (yu, 2010). the unweighted fit mnsq (outfit) is the mean of the squared standardised residuals which are considered to have a common weight of 1 (wu & adams, 2007). the outfit will show up presence of cases with unexpected responses where a candidate’s response is not in line with the difficulty of a ‘very easy’ or ‘very hard’ item (prieto, alonso & lamarca, 2003). the ideal values of both the infit and outfit statistics are equal to 1 (wilson & macgillivray, 2007; wu & adams, 2007; yu, 2010) when a measurement-like model is valid for the data set, but ‘acceptable’ values for both statistics are between 0.7 and 1.3 (hwang & davies, 2009; prieto et al., 2003; smith, rush, fallowfield, velikova & sharpe, 2008; wilson & macgillivray, 2007). these limits may be used regardless of the size of the data set (smith et al., 2008). data collection to collect data, nsc mathematics examination papers 1 and 2 written in 2009 were analysed. the analysis focused on the candidates’ scripts from the grahamstown education district. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 196 initially, marks of each sub-question in each paper were entered into an excel spreadsheet. these marks were for all the candidates in a school. packs of scripts (per school) were selected randomly, but this strategy was soon changed, since many of the schools had no candidates who scored more than 30% for any paper. in fact, of the 284 candidates sampled, 119 scored less than 15/150 for mathematics paper 1. therefore, a decision was made to also include schools whose learners had better marks compared with the initial sample. thus, scripts from former model c schools were included. this inclusion is consistent with baker’s contention that the number of candidates with a specified ability is not important, but rather the fact that there are different abilities present (baker, 2001). the rasch model was fitted to mathematics papers 1 and 2 data using the conquest (generalised item response modelling) software. from rasch analysis and the corresponding icc, it can also be determined which questions discriminated well at different levels of ability (hambleton et al., 1991). for each question of the examination papers, an estimate of difficulty was obtained – the higher the estimate of difficulty, the more difficult the question. expected score curves for each subquestion were also drawn. rasch analysis: mathematics paper 1 table 2 represents the rasch analysis results including the maximum marks and the content on which each question was based for the 2009 mathematics paper 1 scripts (n = 290) in the grahamstown district. since the pcm was used to estimate the difficulty levels of items, the estimates could not be calculated in the case where no learner scored some of the marks between the minimum and maximum possible marks in an item. for example, if an item was scored out of 2 marks and no learner in the sample scored 1 mark, which is between 0 (minimum) and 2 (maximum), the difficulty level of the item could not be estimated using the conquest software. in this study there were six instances where this was the case – these are depicted by xxx (see table 2). table 2: rash analysis results, maximum marks and content on which questions were based question max mark rasch difficulty content question max mark rasch difficulty content 1.1.1 3 –2.475 a and e* 8.2 1 1.959 f and g† 1.1.2 4 –1.688 a and e 8.3 1 1.656 f and g 1.1.3 4 –0.925 a and e 8.4.1 1 1.111 f and g 1.2 5 –1.301 a and e 8.4.2 3 0.680 f and g 1.3 3 xxx a and e 8.5 3 1.190 f and g 1.4 3 0.412 a and e 9.1 4 –1.137 a and f§ a rasch analysis to determine the difficulty of the national senior certificate mathematics examination joyce sewry & paul mokilane 197 question max mark rasch difficulty content question max mark rasch difficulty content 2.1.1 3 –1.485 p and s** 9.2.1 3 –0.492 a and f 2.1.2 2 –0.796 p and s 9.2.2(a) 3 0.127 a and f 2.2 5 0.784 p and s 9.2.2 (b) 1 xxx a and f 3.1 1 –1.377 p and s 9.2.3 4 –0.072 a and f 3.2 4 –0.530 p and s 9.2.4 1 –0.189 a and f 4.1 3 –0.494 p and s 10.1 5 –1.270 calculus 4.2 2 0.053 p and s 10.2 2 –0.647 calculus 4.3 4 –0.736 p and s 11.1 5 –0.723 calculus 4.4 2 1.627 p and s 11.2 5 –0.604 calculus 5.1 2 1.064 p and s 11.3 3 –0.123 calculus 5.2 3 0.438 p and s 11.4 2 –0.667 calculus 5.3 3 0.754 p and s 11.5 2 0.777 calculus 6.1 6 –0.278 f and g† 12.1 2 xxx calculus 6.2 2 0.474 f and g 12.2 3 0.403 calculus 6.3 2 0.419 f and g 12.3 2 1.742 calculus 6.4 3 2.027 f and g 12.4 3 xxx calculus 7.1 1 0.556 f and g 13.1 7 0.080 lp‡ 7.2 3 –0.031 f and g 13.2 2 –0.905 lp 7.3 2 –0.126 f and g 13.3 3 0.026 lp 7.4 2 xxx f and g 13.4 2 xxx lp 8.1 1 0.988 f and g *a and e = algebra and equation; ** p and s = patterns and sequences; †f and g = functions and graphs; §a and f = annuities and finance; ‡lp = linear programming the paper started out easy, became more difficult, then questions 9-11 were easy again. in question 6.4 the learners were asked to algebraically show that: g(x)+g( 1/x )=g(-x).g(x-1) (x≠0 or x≠1) this was the most difficult question (difficulty = 2.027), while question 1.1.1 where, learners were asked to solve for x: x(x-1)=30 was the easiest question (–2.475). the analysis revealed, however, that 58 (20.4%) candidates did not get a mark for this question. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 198 figure 1 represents the expected score curve for question 1.1.1. it can be seen that the average-ability student (latent trait value = 0.0) could be expected to get full marks, that is, 3 out of 3. figure 1: expected score curve for question 1.1.1 figure 1 shows that candidates with ability measures below e 1 (expected score, e <0.5) were expected to average near 0 for this question; those with abilities between e 1 and e 2 (expected score, 0.5< e <1.5) were expected to average at 1 mark; those between e 2 and e 3 (expected score, e >1.5) 2 marks, and those with abilities above e 3 should average close to the full 3 marks on this question. figure 2: expected score curve for question 6.4 figure 2 shows the expected score curve for question 6.4, the most difficult question in the examination. the figure indicates that the average score of students at the a rasch analysis to determine the difficulty of the national senior certificate mathematics examination joyce sewry & paul mokilane 199 reference value (latent trait value = 0.0) is 0.1 out of 3. the chief marker of the eastern cape commented that ‘educators tend to neglect the topics that fell outside of the former s.g curriculum’, and also that it was evident that students were poor at algebraic manipulation (east cape education department, 2009). amesa’s (2009) comments were: ‘it is a good question although q6.4 demanded a great deal of work and effort for very few marks’. by studying item response curves, questions which can discriminate among different latent traits can be identified. thus, from figure 1, question 1.1.1 was a good question to differentiate candidates at the low-ability level, since at an ‘ability’ between –3 and –2, the curve was at its steepest. figure 3: expected score curve for question 4.3 figure 3 illustrates that question 4.3 was a good question to differentiate among candidates at latent trait values just below average (0). the average score of candidates at latent trait values between –0.9 and –0.5 should be roughly 2 out of 4. unfortunately, according to the expected score curves, there were no questions that differentiated well at the upper end of the latent trait values. in this data set there were very few candidates with high scores in this examination. in the mathematics paper 1, only four of the 290 candidates scored more than 70% in the examination paper and these marks were: 87%, 81%, 71% and 77% respectively. however, the presence of candidates with high scores should be enough for rasch analysis to fit expected score curves at all levels (baker, 2001). as far as the fit of questions to the rasch analysis is concerned, the weighted fit mnsq (infit) of most questions were within or close to the 0.7 to 1.3 range. however, 13 of the unweighted fit mnsq (outfit) statistics were not within this range. question 6.4, the most difficult question, had an outfit statistic of 0.37, which is very low. the reason for this could be that only one candidate scored 2, seven candidates scored 1, and the rest scored 0 out of three. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 200 rasch analysis: mathematics paper 2 table 3: rasch analysis results, maximum marks and content on which questions were based question max mark rasch difficulty content question max mark rasch difficulty content 1.1 2 0.172 dh* 6.1.2 2 –0.599 transformations 1.2 5 –0.939 dh 6.1.3 3 –1.045 transformations 1.3 3 xxx dh 6.1.4 2 xxx transformations 1.4 2 –0.925 dh 6.2 6 –0.135 transformations 1.5 3 –0.576 dh 7.1 2 –0.187 transformations 2.1 1 1.179 dh 7.2 2 0.020 transformations 2.2 2 –1.184 dh 7.3 7 xxx transformations 2.3 1 1.053 dh 8.1 3 –0.040 trigonometry 2.4 1 –0.244 dh 8.2 2 –0.110 trigonometry 2.5 2 –0.066 dh 8.3 3 –0.153 trigonometry 2.6 1 –0.947 dh 9.1 7 –0.608 trigonometry 3.1 1 –1.437 dh 9.2 7 –0.773 trigonometry 3.2 1 1.366 dh 9.3 7 0.427 trigonometry 3.3 3 xxx dh 10.1 3 0.400 trigonometry 4.1 2 –1.492 cg# 10.2 4 2.854 trigonometry 4.2 2 0.829 cg 11.1.1 6 0.406 trigonometry 4.3 4 –0.308 cg 11.1.2 3 1.089 trigonometry 4.4 2 0.546 cg 11.2 4 0.446 trigonometry 4.5 3 –0.609 cg 12.1 2 0.912 trigonometry 5.1 2 –2.229 cg 12.2 2 1.510 trigonometry 5.2 1 –1.171 cg 12.3 3 0.738 trigonometry 5.3 5 –0.045 cg 12.4 2 1.398 trigonometry 5.4 4 –2.020 cg 12.5 3 0.935 trigonometry 5.5 3 –0.760 cg 5.6 1 –0.966 cg 5.7 6 xxx cg 6.1.1 2 1.064 transformations *dh = data handling; #cg = coordinate geometry table 3 points to a spread of easy and difficult questions from the beginning of the examination paper up to question 9, but questions 10-12 were all difficult. this level of difficulty was supported by the amesa (2009) report: ‘some teachers feel that q10 which involved proving the tan identity, and an application of it, was “unfair”. there were some questions (q5.6-5.7, q10.2, q11.1.2 and q12) that involved critical thinking, but the high achievers should have had no problem answering them’ (amesa, 2009: 12). a rasch analysis to determine the difficulty of the national senior certificate mathematics examination joyce sewry & paul mokilane 201 most questions in the mathematics paper 2 were relatively easy. the most difficult question was question 10.2, which was formulated as follows: figure 4: diagram for question 10.2 the difficulty level of this item is estimated as 2.854. this was a trigonometry identity equation, and figure 5 shows that candidates at the reference zero would be expected to score 2 out of 5. figure 5: expected score curve for question 10.2 the easiest question was question 5.1 which asked the learners to calculate the coordinates of a point m in the picture. the difficulty level of this item was estimated as –2.229. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 202 figure 6: diagram for question 5.1 despite the easy level of question 5.1, 84 of the 295 (28.5%) candidates scored 0 for this question. figure 7 shows that question 5.1 was a good discriminator for the very low level candidates, since the curve is steepest at latent trait values between –3 and –2, but candidates with latent trait values above –1 would average close to full marks, 2 out of 2. figure 7: expected score curve for question 5.1 a rasch analysis to determine the difficulty of the national senior certificate mathematics examination joyce sewry & paul mokilane 203 in question 5.4 candidates were asked to calculate the lengths of ad and ab (figure 6). the estimated difficulty level of question 5.4 was –2.02. the item differentiated well at the very low end of candidates (see figure 8). figure 8: expected score curve for question 5.4 in question 4.3 learners were asked to calculate p, the x-coordinate of point c (figure 9). figure 9: diagram for question 4.3 perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 204 the expected score curve is depicted in figure 10. this would be a good question to differentiate among students who were just below the reference 0. figure 10: expected score curve for question 4.3 question 4.3 had a rasch difficulty estimate of –0.308. below reference zero candidates should average 1 to 2 marks, and candidates close to the reference 0 should average about 3 out of 4 for this question on coordinate geometry. as with mathematics paper 1, there was, unfortunately, no question for which the expected score curve showed good differentiation for candidates who were average or above average. (in this sample, only four candidates scored more than 70% for mathematics paper 2, and these marks were 78%, 75%, 86% and 84% respectively.) as in paper 1, there were few questions for which the infit statistic was not within the range of 0.7 to 1.3. several questions had their outfit statistics outside the range, though. both the infit and outfit statistics of question 9.3 (‘determine the general solution of; sinx + 2cos2x = 1’) were out of the acceptable range. this outcome arises because most candidates did poorly in this question, but several candidates who scored 5 or 6 out of 7 for the question achieved only between 46 and 55 out of a maximum of 150 for the paper. thus, these ‘weak’ candidates did unexpectedly well in question 9.3. many candidates who did well in questions 9.1 and 9.2, also trigonometric identities, did poorly in question 9.3. the reason for the poor statistics is unclear, since the marking was reliable. a similar situation arose with question 1.2 (‘write the five-number summary for the data’). one candidate who scored a total of only 20 out of 150, scored 5 out of 5 marks for this question, while another candidate whose total was 113 out of 150, scored only 2 out of 5 marks. there seems to be something wrong with questions 9.3 and 1.2, which needs to be scrutinised by the examiners. a rasch analysis to determine the difficulty of the national senior certificate mathematics examination joyce sewry & paul mokilane 205 -------------------------------------------------- |20 25 26 27 42 85 | 2 | | | | |91 | |24 58 89 | | | |18 92 | | | | | 1 |5 28 29 86 | |15 19 21 | |8 49 84 88 90 | |12 16 17 71 | |87 | |14 32 41 45 | x|23 34 39 62 | 0 x|33 43 59 77 78 79 83 | xx|67 74 76 80 | xxxx|22 31 36 54 55 75 | xxxxxxx|10 11 38 | xxxxxxx|40 50 64 | xxxxxx|7 13 37 72 | xxxxxxxxx|3 44 61 69 82 | xxxxxx|47 70 81 | –1 xxxxxx |9 30 48 66 73 | xxxx|4 35 53 56 63 | xxxxxx|6 52 | xxxxx|2 60 | xxxxxxxx|57 | perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 206 xxxxxx| | xxxxxx| | xxxxxxx|46 | –2 xxxxxxxx |1 68 | xxxxxxxxxx|65 | xxxxxxxxx| | xxxxxxx|51 | xxxxxxxx| | xxx| | xxxx| | –3 xxxxx | | xxx| | xxx| | xxx| | xx| | x| | x| | x| | –4 x | | | | x| | | | | | | | | | | | –5 | | ==================================================== figure 11: item person map for mathematics papers 1 and 2, 2009 a rasch analysis to determine the difficulty of the national senior certificate mathematics examination joyce sewry & paul mokilane 207 in figure 11 the items on the right-hand side in bold represent the items of mathematics paper 2, while the others represent the items of mathematics paper 1. the higher the items are on the right-hand side, the more difficult they are. there are many items below 0, which shows that mathematics papers 1 and 2 included many easy items. on the left-hand side of the histogram, the candidates are represented with xs (one x = 1.5 cases; candidates wrote both papers 1 and 2), and the candidates are plotted against their latent trait values which range from –5 to +2. the higher the latent trait value, the more able the candidate; average candidates would be clustered around 0. it is evident that most of the candidates were below the zero-ability mark – most candidates were far below ‘average’. candidates on the lower left would have a very small chance of being able to do items on the upper right (yu, 2010). for example, candidates with ability –1 should be able to do all items (on the right-hand side) to the right and below –1. figure 11, thus, illustrates that most items were too difficult for most of the candidates. conclusion in general, mathematics 2009 was difficult for this cohort of learners, as there were too many questions that were not accessible to the learners as depicted in figure11, despite the fact that rasch analysis indicated a fair number of easy items. the item is inaccessible to the learner if its difficulty level is higher than the ability of the learner. there were too many questions that were inaccessible to the most proficient learners as shown in figure 11. there were also a number of learners who did not have a chance on the simplest question on both papers. expected score curves showed that, although a number of questions differentiated among low-ability candidates, there were no questions to discriminate among candidates with average to high abilities. the rasch level of difficulty also confirmed the amesa report that paper 1 was more difficult than paper 2. the infit and outfit statistics were acceptable for most of the questions. examiners must be reminded of the questions which showed poor infit and outfit statistics. rasch analysis has been used extensively to test and analyse items of largescale examinations (wendt et al., 2011). this method can, therefore, also be used to test and analyse items and examination papers in the nsc examinations which are high-stakes examinations for south african school leavers. rasch analysis could further assist in comparing standards across the assessment bodies (independent examination body and department of basic education examinations in the south african context) and across qualifications (nsc and the national senior certificate for adults [nasca]). since the candidates’ abilities and the item difficulties are evaluated on the same measurement scale, one can tell whether the examination was too easy or too difficult for the cohort of candidates or whether the paper had a good targeting (a perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 208 paper that is not too difficult for the weak candidates and not too easy for the strong candidates). in the ideal paper the distribution of the difficulty levels of the items should be embedded in the distribution of the candidates’ abilities. references association for mathematics education of south africa 2009. report of the amesa curriculum committee on the 2009 senior certificate mathematics and mathematical literacy papers. retrieved on 21 april 2011 from: http://academic.sun.ac.za/mathed/amesa/2009%20sc%20exam.pdf. association for mathematics education of south africaamesa 2010. report of the amesa curriculum committee on the 2010 senior certificate mathematics and mathematical literacy papers. retrieved on 21 april 2011 from: http://academic.sun.ac.za/mathed/amesa/maths%20exam%20response%20 2010.pdf. baker fb 2001. the basics of item response theory. 2nd ed. united states of america: eric clearinghouse on assessment and evaluation. department of basic education 2011. report on the national senior certificate results 2010. south africa: department of basic education. eastern cape education department 2009. chief marker’s report: mathematics paper 1. eastern cape department of education. edwards a & alcock l 2010. using rasch analysis to identify uncharacteristic responses to undergraduate assessments. teaching mathematics and its applications, 29: 165-175. grussendorf s, booyse c & burroughs e 2010. evaluating the south african national senior certificate in relation to selected international qualifications: a selfreferencing exercise to determine the standing of the nsc. pretoria: hesa. hambleton rk, swaminathan h & rogers hj 1991. fundamentals of item reponse theory. california, sa: sage. hwang j & davies pl 2009. rasch analysis of the school function assessment provides additional evidence for the internal validity of the activity performance scales. american journal of occupational therapy, 63: 363-373. keeton m 2010. matric results not good enough, corporate social investment management csi agency south africa. retrieved on 21 april 2011 from: http://www.tshikululu.org.za/thought-leadership/matric-results-not-goodenough-must-do-better/. prieto l, alonso j & lamarca r 2003. classical test theory versus rasch analysis for quality of life questionnaire reduction. health and quality of life outcomes, 1: 27. smith ab, rush r, fallowfield lj, velikova g & sharpe m 2008. rasch fit statistics and sample size considerations for polytomous data. bmc medical research methodology, 8: 33. a rasch analysis to determine the difficulty of the national senior certificate mathematics examination joyce sewry & paul mokilane 209 umalusi 2009. 2008 maintaining standards report: part 3: exam paper analysis. pretoria: umalusi. van der berg s & taylor s 2010. an analysis of 2009 ieb mathematics, doe mathematics and doe physical science papers using rasch analysis tools. unpublished research report. stellenbosch: university of stellenbosch. wendt h, bos w & goy m 2011. on applications of rasch models in international comparative large-scale assessments: a historical review. educational research and evaluation, 17(6): 419-446. wilson tm & macgillivray hl 2007. counting on the basics: mathematical skills among tertiary entrants. international journal of mathematical education in science and technology, 38(1): 19-41. wu m & adams r 2007. applying the rasch model to psycho-social measurement: a practical approach. melbourne: educational measurement solutions. yu ch 2010. a simple guide to the item response theory (irt) and rasch modelling. retrieved on 14 february 2011 from: http://www.creative-wisdom.com. 121 research article 2021 39(3): 121-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) puppetry as a pedagogy of play in the intermediate phase mathematics classroom: a case study abstract research on puppets in intermediate phase mathematics is in its infancy. according to vygotsky, play affords a playful element that can optimise learning opportunities. however, many mathematics teachers are unfamiliar with the integration of pedagogy of play (pop) (in this case, puppetry). the aim of this paper is to report on one participant’s (an intermediate phase mathematics teacher [n=1]) lived experiences of teaching with puppets after a twoday intervention. a case study approach was followed and the participant constantly reflected on his experiences. data were collected through (i) a semi-structured open-ended interview, (ii) reflective prompts and (iii) a reflective journal with prompts. the data revealed the participant’s experiences of puppetry, how his metacognitive awareness developed and how he transferred new knowledge to his intermediate phase mathematics classroom. the data were analysed using content analysis. the results show that, although learners often deem mathematics “mundane” and “unexciting”, puppetry allowed the participant’s learners (according to his reflections) to experience this subject as enjoyable and creative, encouraging participation and liveliness, as the puppet was considered a peer in teaching-learning. the intermediate phase mathematics classroom became a space where content became meaningful, accessible and understandable to all learners. keywords: case study; metacognition; metacognitive awareness; pedagogy of play; puppetry. 1. introduction reports such as the trends in international mathematics and science study (timss) (isdale et al., 2017), the southern and eastern africa consortium for monitoring educational quality (sacmeq) (venkat & spaull, 2015) and the programme for international student assessment (pisa) (bethell, 2016) imply that south african learners are not meeting the minimum requirements for mathematics. mathematics is a key requirement for most disciplines in higher education and enables learners to be productive and effective citizens after school (esan, 2015; hassan & rahman, 2017). author: mrs erika potgieter*1 prof marthie van der walt1 affiliation: 1north-west university, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i3.10 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(3): 121-137 published: 16 september 2021 received: 11 march 2021 accepted: 24 may 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org//0000-0002-7065-964x https://orcid.org//0000-0002-0465-6600 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 1222021 39(3): 122-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) education in south africa has undergone curriculum and teaching-learning reform as teachers had to adapt their praxis in order to educate learners to meet the demands of the 21st century (molefe & brodie, 2010; osamwonyi, 2016). said changes are not the only challenges teachers have faced: public schools located in rural, township and urban areas in south africa each pose their own challenges, affecting the provision of quality education (du plessis & mestry, 2019). quality education is considered inclusive of nature, hence multi-cultural schools in different areas require different pedagogical approaches to teaching-learning (walton & rusznyak, 2019). south african teachers often tend to “teach as they were taught”, following traditional teaching-learning approaches that are not inclusive in nature and leads to learners being bored in the mathematics classroom (tachie & molepo, 2019: 152). 2. problem statement learning originates in a learner’s heart (ogisi, 2020) and playing is natural for learners. vygotsky acknowledged play as an opportunity for learning to take place in a sociocultural setting (bodrova & leong, 2015; vygotsky 1967). learning through play creates a safe learning environment, allowing learners to take risks, make mistakes and rectify them without fearing the authority of a teacher (hensberry et al., 2018). intermediate phase (grades 4 to 6) teachers in south africa are unfamiliar with pedagogy of play (pop) in the mathematics classroom, where playful approaches (e.g., puppetry as one type of pop) may benefit most learners (ahlcrona & östman, 2018). teachers’ teaching is a manifestation of their “apprenticeship of observation” as coined by lortie (1975: 30): they tend to teach in the way they were taught themselves. these teachers seem to lack metacognitive knowledge, self-regulation and reflection to inform their teaching-learning praxis. therefore, they are inclined to rely on the transmission mode of education: facts are transmitted to learners, while the learners struggle to grasp the link between the abstract content and reallife situations, hence mathematics becomes “mundane” and “inaccessible” to the majority of learners (saavedra & opfer, 2012: 9). the pedagogy of play, according to saavedra and opfer (2012), addresses the affective domain in education. puppetry, as one pedagogy of play (pop includes art, drama, games, music), acts as an epistemological border-crossing between real-life examples and mathematics in the intermediate phase. furthermore, pop fosters creative teaching-learning approaches (cooperativeand problem-based) to learning and provokes classroom discussion (saavedra & opfer, 2012). metacognition – through reflection before, during and after teaching – are the medium through which we teach and learn: guiding, regulating and evaluating teaching-learning praxis (cornoldi, 2009). when teachers think about their teaching praxis – planning, monitoring and evaluating, they are metacognitively conceptualising their teaching and their learners’ learning (cornoldi, 1009) and they are exposed to their own teaching strengths and weaknesses (kallio et al., 2017). this metacognitive awareness is called reflection (cornoldi, 2009). reflection focuses on teachers’ understanding of the cognitive demands of teaching, appropriate strategies and themselves, constructing connections between prior and new knowledge about teaching praxis and learners’ learning, along with the situational influences and strategy choices that are currently, or have previously, positively influenced accomplishment of that process. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 1232021 39(3): 123-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 potgieter & van der walt puppetry as a pedagogy of play in the intermediate phase the aim of this research was to investigate one intermediate phase mathematics teacher’s lived experiences of a pop (puppetry) during and after an intervention and how his metacognitive reflection enhanced his experiences of teaching mathematics with puppets. 3. conceptual framework there is a dearth in multilingual literature in south africa and abroad on the link between pop and metacognitive awareness. therefore, the theoretical underpinnings of each are discussed. pedagogy of play (in education) is based on two fundamental elements: it is (i) spontaneous and natural; and (ii) intentional (farné, 2005; potgieter, 2020). spontaneous and natural play occurs without interference of the teacher (also referred to as “free play”), while intentional play occurs when the teacher has a certain teaching-learning aim in mind (farné, 2005). according to gunilla lindqvist, pop is much needed in classrooms, since it allows for new learning experiences where learners experiment with characteristics and behaviours needed for real-life experiences – something that is seldom integrated into daily teachinglearning (lindqvist, 1996; overholt, 2010; vygotsky, 1967). learning through play occurs when the teacher integrates various games (card and board games; indigenous games e.g., morabaraba; computer-based gaming), puppets, music, dance or drama into their lessons, all of which are nested in a social context (bendixen-noe, 2010; brits, de beer & mabotja, 2016; nkopodi & mosimege, 2009). pedagogy of play creates a powerful pathway to learning, as improved thinking, examining and understanding of content are operationalised when integrating in teaching-learning (mardell et al., 2016). in this research, pop served as an overarching framework in which puppetry was nested as an intentional approach, offering several affordances for classroom integration. puppetry is an early form of entertainment that has been used to animate and communicate key ideas and needs of humans as part of their culture and oral tradition (fourie, 2009). puppetry was implemented by the participant (hereafter referred to as john*) as homo ludens – “the playing human” (huizinga, 1955). according to kröger and nupponen (2019), affordances of puppetry include: i) an increased generation of communication; (ii) fostering a positive classroom environment; (iii) creating a creative learning space; (iv) fostering group integration and cooperation and (v) influencing learner attitudes. kröger and nupponen (2019) established the affordances of puppetry in a literature study of more than 10 studies on puppetry. puppetry in education has addressed various issues; however, there is little research on the integration of puppetry in the intermediate phase, especially in mathematics (keogh & naylor, 2009). teachers are also hesitant to use puppetry as a teaching-learning approach, among others (brits et al., 2016), due to various challenges and perceptions of puppetry in education in their respective schools. according to keogh and naylor (2009), puppetry has a powerful effect on learners of all ages, since the movement of puppets transfer teaching-material in a captivating manner. puppets also allow the teacher and learner to engage with each other, since teaching-learning with puppetry is based on a problem the puppet character is facing. learners view the puppet as a “peer” in teaching-learning since through puppetry, learners’ emotions (affective domain) form a part of learning, assisting in concept formation and understanding (de beer, petersen & brits, 2018). according to soord (2008: iv), “puppets break boundaries between people, both physically and emotionally. they allow us to take on numerous identities and act as http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 1242021 39(3): 124-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) a shield for us to hide behind”. therefore, as the “puppet” faces the mathematical problem during the lesson, learners do not mind making mistakes (and learning from their mistakes) in the audience of the puppet. learners become problem-solvers in their endeavours (hinging on their affective domain) to assist the puppet in alleviating the problem and also become mathematical thinkers. transferring a newly acquired pedagogy (such as puppetry), requires teachers’ metacognitive reflections. the 21st century learner demands different “new” pedagogies from their teachers (as more is expected of them in their ever-changing futures) and as puppets are considered a three-dimensional symbolic art form (visually attractive, moving and speaking), they provide a doorway knowledge transfer through a number of senses (remer & tzuriel, 2015). furthermore, a four-dimensional education approach, suggested by the centre for curriculum redesign (ccr) (fadel, bialik & trilling, 2015:5), includes four competencies people need in the 21st century to succeed: “knowledge, skills, character and metacognition”. metacognition is defined as “thinking about thinking” (flavell, 1979: 906). according to garner (1987), metacognition allows teachers to understand how a task was performed. therefore, metacognition is deemed multidimensional and consists of metacognitive knowledge and self-regulation (flavell, 1979). reflection is intentional thinking that moves between metacognitive knowledge (static) and planning, monitoring and evaluation (active). reflection can be considered “the glue” between metacognitive knowledge and self-regulation as part of metacognitive awareness (ertmer & newby,1996: 5). reflection is a tool by which we teach, learn and grow, improving future teaching-learning endeavours (minott, 2010). metacognitive knowledge comprises the following: (i) declarative knowledge (“about”); (ii) procedural knowledge (“how”); and (iii) conditional knowledge (“why and when”) (baker & brown, 1984: 355; flavell, 1979: 907; schraw, 1998: 116). declarative knowledge (knowledge about the person) is the knowledge teachers have about their own (and others’) cognition as learners (or teachers) and their own or others’ cognitive strengths and weaknesses that could influence performance (kallio et al., 2017; schraw, 1998). procedural knowledge (knowledge about the task) refers to the cognitive demands of the teaching-learning task (kallio, virta & kallio, 2018; schraw, 1998). conditional knowledge involves strategies (both available and appropriate) employed to apply knowledge for different purposes. conditional knowledge refers to knowing when to apply declarative and conditional knowledge and to allocate appropriate strategies, resources and skills to do so effectively (dogan & cephe, 2018; schraw, 1998). self-regulation allows teachers to manage learning (or teaching) endeavours by infusing metacognitive knowledge into the (i) planning, (ii) monitoring and (iii) evaluation of the teaching experience (flavell, 1979; kallio et al., 2018; schraw, 1998). planning entails selecting the topic (or content), setting goals, selecting and applying appropriate heuristics and strategies, considering the cognitive demands of the teaching or learning task (learners) for teachinglearning endeavours to occur (pintrich, 2002). monitoring refers to teachers’ interactive conscious awareness of learners’ comprehension, progress and task performance during lessons (schraw, 1998). teachers are also consciously aware of the progress they make with the lesson they planned and if the lesson proceeds as planned. evaluation refers to the end product and efficiency of learners’ understanding; teachers’ teaching is appraised and goals and conclusions teachers have initially set for the lesson are re-evaluated for future teachinglearning endeavours (dogan & cephe, 2018; schraw, 1998). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 1252021 39(3): 125-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 potgieter & van der walt puppetry as a pedagogy of play in the intermediate phase when teachers are more metacognitively aware of themselves as “learners”, the learners in their respective mathematics classrooms and their personal teaching-learning praxis, they are more effective, hence increasing performance and academic achievement (cakir & guven, 2019; hart & memnun, 2015; kallio et al., 2017). schraw (1994) proposes the following strategies to improve metacognitive awareness in teaching-learning endeavours: (i) promote general awareness; (ii) improve self-knowledge; (iii) improve regulatory skills and (iv) promote the learning environment in such a manner that it allows for the construction and application of metacognitive skills. according to memnun and akkaya (2019: 1919), metacognitive awareness is important for success in teaching-learning, as it cultivates teachers (and their learners) who strive for lifelong learning (taking responsibility for their own learning) and self-improvement and creates a space for creativeness and critical thinking. the notion of lifelong learning is supported by kallio et al. (2017), who claim that teachers who are metacognitively aware are able to understand phenomena (in this case, mathematics concepts) theoretically and fundamentally themselves, before they can teach them to their learners and evaluate this information in a meaningful manner, informing their teaching-learning praxis. figure 1 illustrates metacognitive awareness in teaching-learning. figure 1: metacognitive awareness in the teaching-learning of mathematics (adapted from costa & kallick 1995; knowles, 1975; van der walt, 2014) figure 1 does not illustrate metacognitive awareness as a linear occurrence but rather a cyclical one, since teachers apply (and re-apply) each topic in the intermediate phase mathematics classroom as outlined in the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps [doe, 2011]). figure 1 can be interpreted as follows: for a specific lesson, teachers reflect (reflection for action) on the chosen topic from caps, they apply their metacognitive knowledge (pertaining to person, task and strategy) to (a) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 1262021 39(3): 126-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) clarify their goals and purposes for the lesson. they (b) plan the lesson (including diagnosing their learners’ needs and identifying resources needed for the lesson to commence) on a lesson planning form and (c) take action in teaching this lesson in their respective classrooms. teachers also reflect for action on their learners’ contexts and baseline knowledge, how they should formulate the task and how to equip learners with the necessary skills to use a strategy in order to meet the goals of the lesson successfully. reflection for action includes teachers’ metacognitive awareness (pertaining to their learners [person]), the task the learners need to master and the teaching-learning strategies. during the lesson, the teacher monitors (reflection in action) the progress learners are making and implements or changes appropriate teaching-learning heuristics to make content meaningful and understandable. monitoring of the lesson allows the teacher to (d) clarify goals and purposes, ensuring that the learners are on track with curriculum outcomes pertaining to the topic. alignment with the curriculum may allow for (e) more planning to occur, since the teacher should predict questions and difficulties learners might have. the teacher might (f) implement different strategies as soon as they realise that the initial planned strategies did not suffice. whether teaching-learning strategies were successful can be (g) assessed during the teaching-learning phase of the lesson, which might lead to (h) the modification of actions for evaluative purposes (such as allocating more time to learners to master the topic because they are struggling with it). teachers reflect in action when looking proactively at their lesson while being in the teaching-learning situation themselves. the teacher evaluates (reflection on action) the learning outcomes by viewing learner responses, progress and understanding when concluding the lesson. learner responses might inform the teacher whether to (i) revisit goals and purposes defined and planned for before the lesson was taught. if the teacher decides to adapt the goals and purposes of the topic, they might (j) re-plan or refine the lesson and (k) take action in searching for potential elements (such as lack of resources) that could have contributed to learners not meeting lesson outcomes when (l) evaluated as prescribed in the caps curriculum. therefore, the teacher might (m) modify their actions based on new knowledge obtained from the lesson. when teachers evaluate their lessons, they reflect on the specific lesson from an “outsiders’ perspective”, hence improving it for future teaching-learning endeavours in the 21st century. according to nair (2020), the 21st century learner seeks a different type of classroom where the teacher employs creative teaching-learning pedagogies. thus, being a metacognitively aware teacher entails the search for innovative, creative and 21st century orientated teachinglearning praxes, enhancing critical thinking (slavit & mcduffie, 2013). teachers who are increasingly aware are more likely to search for alternative pedagogies (such as a pop [puppetry]) to integrate into the heuristics of their mathematics teaching-learning repertoire. puppetry is one pedagogical tool that teachers can use in the realm of pop. however, in order to integrate puppetry successfully (and metacognitively) to report on for future research (or teaching-learning) endeavours, we implemented the following theoretical framework and methodology to collect data and report the findings. 4. theoretical framework the research reported in this case study stems from an overarching master’s degree study. social constructivism, as conceptualised by vygotsky (1978), was used as theoretical framework for this research. social constructivism emphasises social exchanges (teaching-learning or http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 1272021 39(3): 127-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 potgieter & van der walt puppetry as a pedagogy of play in the intermediate phase learning-learning) and cognitive growth (teacher and learner) that occur in the classroom (amineh & asl, 2015). the theoretical framework allowed john* to engage in the intervention and to socially collaborate, hence transferring his “new” knowledge gained in the field of a pop (puppetry). social exchanges such as these manifested when john* presented the lesson he constructed collaboratively with participants during the intervention and refined himself for his respective mathematics classrooms. social constructivism allowed john* to share his experiences on the use of a pop (puppetry) and made his metacognitive awareness visible through his reflections, serving as the motivation for the metacognitive methodology in this research. 5. methodology according to fraenkel, wallen and hyun (2012: 439), the “what” question (inviting theory and theoretical descriptions to coincide) was employed in this research. hence, the aim of this research was to investigate one intermediate phase mathematics teacher’s lived experiences of a pop (puppetry) intervention and how metacognitive awareness enhanced his experiences. creswell (2014) claims that research designs acquire a philosophical orientation, hence an interpretivistic paradigm was used, allowing us to gain insight into john’s* experiences. the nature of this research allowed john* to attach meaning to his teaching-learning praxis through rich descriptions evident in his reflections on his experiences (creswell, 2014). a case study approach was followed in this research. case study research entails a detailed description of the setting and individuals involved. therefore, clear and definite parameters were set so that this research could be repeated by other researchers (creswell, 2014). the criteria for participant selection in this case study were as follows: (a) the participant had to be a teacher in a previously disadvantaged school; (b) the participant had to teach intermediate phase mathematics and (c) the participant should have had previous teaching-learning experiences with a pop (puppetry) in mathematics or a different subject. a brief description of john*, the case in this paper, follows. 5.1 sample: the case of john* john* had between three and five years of overall teaching-learning experience, all of which were spent in the intermediate phase mathematics and natural sciences classroom. john* taught in a previously disadvantaged school and he taught more than 40 learners, as he found himself in a multigrade teaching setting. according to du plessis and mestry (2019), multigrade teaching requires teachers to teach different subjects to different grades in one class, which undoubtedly has repercussions for planning, assessment, discipline and time management. john’s* first language was afrikaans (although he was fluent in english). his school’s languages of teaching and learning (lolt) were english and afrikaans. he preferred to teach the english intermediate phase class groups. john* participated voluntarily in this research. 5.2 the intervention data were collected before, during and after a two-day intervention on two consecutive saturdays. the first workshop of the intervention allowed john* to gain insight into the theoretical foundations of metacognitive awareness and a pop (puppetry). creative strategies (such as de bono’s six thinking hats) were used to allow john* to contribute to and socially collaborate in the intervention. metacognitive awareness and how teachers’ performance http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 1282021 39(3): 128-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) are enhanced through continuous reflection were other foci in this research. metacognitive awareness was explained to the participant and illustrated using examples. the participant had to continuously reflect on activities (relevant prompts were provided). the second workshop allowed john* to participate in an adapted lesson study approach where he collaboratively planned a lesson (which was to be taught in the coming weeks) for intermediate phase mathematics. he had to write a puppetry script and infuse it into the lesson he was bound to teach after the intervention. john*, as homo ludens, experimented with puppetry in the intervention to transfer it successfully into his mathematics classroom. the following photograph (figure 2) depicts the unique design of the puppets used in this research. figure 2: some of the puppets from which john* could choose the puppets exhibit various cultural traits in the context of south africa. according to soord (2008), puppets give learners the confidence to verbalise and do things they would not usually verbalise or do, hence in a multicultural classroom, the easier learners relate to the puppets, the more confidence they may exhibit in a teaching-learning setting where puppets are used. john* had to choose one puppet to experiment with in his mathematics classroom. 5.3 data collection instruments and methods data were collected before, during and after the intervention as follows: (i) before the intervention, a semi-structured open-ended interview was conducted. this interview allowed john* to share his earlier experiences with a pop (puppetry), also allowing insight into his metacognitive awareness before the intervention. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 1292021 39(3): 129-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 potgieter & van der walt puppetry as a pedagogy of play in the intermediate phase (ii) throughout the intervention, john* had to reflect on each of the activities in which he engaged. the focus was on pop (puppetry) and metacognitive awareness. reflective prompts allowed us to gain insight into john’s* experiences during the intervention and whether it changed in comparison to before the intervention. the following elicits examples of some of the reflective prompts john* had to answer after his lesson (a) what was the most important idea/fact you learned during this presentation? (b) what important question remains unanswered? (is there something regarding the pedagogy of play which you still do not understand? (iii) john* kept a reflective journal that he submitted two weeks after the last workshop. this reflective journal provided us with insight into john’s* experiences with a pop (puppetry) and how he implemented puppetry in his classroom. in his reflective journal, john* reflected on the 15 predetermined reflective journal prompts (elements of metacognitive awareness illustrated in figure 1). the following elicits examples of some of the reflective journal prompts john* had to answer after his lesson: (a) what is the most important thing i learned during my lesson with puppetry as pedagogy of play? why do i think so? (b) what i struggled with (frustrated me) today or what i had trouble dealing with during my lesson with puppetry and why? 5.4 data analysis procedures content analysis was employed in this generic qualitative study. this method of data analysis allowed for the strengthening of john’s* voice, as he reflected on his lived experiences; he provided rich descriptions, unveiling apparent meaning for the purpose of this research (creswell 2014). data were coded, allowing for coherent overarching themes (john’s* metacognitive awareness and his lived experiences of a pop [puppetry] and the intervention overall) to emerge. subthemes, categories and codes were developed from these overarching themes. 5.5 trustworthiness and validity due to the “descriptive”, “interpretive” and “theoretical” nature of trustworthiness and validity, we ensured these by applying three of the eight strategies applicable to this research as proposed by mcmillan and schumacher (2014: 121): (i) constant comparative method – different data collection strategies were employed to align with the aim of this research; (ii) three-point triangulation – we integrated multiple literature sources (theoretical and methodological triangulation) and with our data collection methods (perspective and methodological triangulation to confirm findings); and (iii) recorded data – using a cell phone as a recording device for the semi-structured openended interview with john* in order to transcribe the data. the theoretical framework and methodology employed in this research were the road map that allowed findings to emerge. 6. results and discussion of findings due to unforeseen circumstances, we were unable to observe john’s* lesson, although he submitted a fully detailed report of the course of his lesson, his lesson plan together with his reflective journal. analysis of john’s* experiences, allowed the following affordances in the teaching-learning of puppetry as pop in his intermediate phase mathematics classroom http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 1302021 39(3): 130-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) to emerge: (i) general teaching-learning; (ii) thoughtful climate; (iii) classroom dynamic; (iv) decorum; (v) character switching; (vi) cooperative integration and communication; (vii) creativity and (viii) affective learning. each of the affordances in our discussion henceforth, will elicit teaching-learning with puppetry as a pop and metacognition. john’s* general teaching-learning praxis involved “incorporation of art” as it “captures learners’ attention”. although john* used a creative pedagogy such as art, he still “taught a lesson as is from a textbook” and if learners struggled he would only then “look for more resources”. john* tended to “refer to learners’ learning trajectory only if they fared poorly”, indicating that although he reflected on his learners’ performance, he “took mental notes, but rarely wrote anything down”, he simply “kept it in mind when teaching the topic” initially. after the intervention, when john* became aware of what metacognition and reflection entailed, he “immediately noticed his strongand weak points” during and after his lesson with a pop (puppetry). john* could acknowledge that he “needed more practise with his puppet” and that he struggled to “set up a perfect delivery in my [his] eyes” of his lesson. john* pointed out that during the planning of his lesson with a pop (puppetry), he “developed a sense of selfreliance to plan a lesson away from a traditional textbook approach”, which felt ”erroneous”. an in-depth reflection elicited here, may indicate john’s* metacognitive growth from where he presented lessons “as is”, indicating that “the more he practises to plan and present lessons in this fashion, the more routine and resourceful my [his] teaching will become upon continued use”. john* stated that “puppets enabled me to see play as a pedagogy that can fill meaningful gaps during my teaching”, fostering the idea that “puppetry can be useful for both teacher and learner to strengthen interest in the lesson”. john’s* awareness of his teaching-learning may link to the thoughtful nature of the classroom climate that emerged. the positivity in john’s* classroom upon his application of a pop (puppetry), allowed his learners to “explore their flaws and potentials” as he had learners with “low self-esteem, shyness and extreme fears”. there was evidence that during his lesson, “these learners related more with the puppet than with me [him] as teacher”. therefore, john* deemed his puppet’s character important to have “a personality forming common ground with these learners”. although john* was feeling anxious about learners being distracted by “my [his] gender as a male teaching with a puppet”, he believed that a “thoughtful climate is needed where learners are aware of what it means to learn through play, since the more comfortable i [he] is with the puppet, the more my [his] learners would be too”. john* reflected that he had to “understand what learners value in good stories and combine it with teaching mathematics” in a pop (puppetry) lesson, since “having the puppet as a guide and active participant, teaching becomes more concrete and memorable”. the thoughtful management of john’s* classroom, extended towards a unique classroom dynamic. pedagogy of play (puppetry) can be a helpful teaching-learning technique as ”learners are keen to watch puppets”. john* also mentioned that upon asking learners to reflect on the learning process, you ”see how much knowledge they have gained”. upon reflecting on the learners’ misconceptions, john* reflected that “learning through play was meaningful to tackle learning difficulties” as learners found it “fun and enjoyable” as they were more “part of” the lesson. the puppet in john’s* classroom, featured as a “celebrity figure [sport star] who joined the lesson”, and the puppet allowed for “constant learner involvement” elicited by “all learners upon request” by the puppet. therefore, the puppet’s presence “was helpful to maintain interest and decorum”. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 1312021 39(3): 131-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 potgieter & van der walt puppetry as a pedagogy of play in the intermediate phase decorum in john’s* classroom elicited “participation, liveliness and curiosity”, since “misbehaviour would compromise the lesson, making discipline manageable”. john* reflected on “usually quiet and distracted learners” who suddenly “participated in the lesson”, becoming “excited and willing” as the presence of the puppet “created introspection, dismantling distractions” that were beneficial for “meaningful learning in my [his] classroom”. according to korošec (2013), puppetry relieves fear of authority experienced by learners in the teachinglearning situation. john* had difficulty to switch between being a teacher and maintaining his puppet character. john* had to “distinguish my [his] role from the puppet’s’”, as “enacting as the puppet character and overlapping my[him]self was a repetitive error”. john* also highlighted the following difficulties and frustrations he experienced upon integrating puppetry (based on his metacognitive awareness): it is (i) time consuming; (ii) an unstructured way to teach; (c) difficult to implement and (iv) a few learners lost interest during the lesson. these difficulties and frustrations contradict his experience with a pop (puppetry) discussed in this paper, but the following recommendations may be implemented to overcome these challenges as supported by previous studies. (i) time consuming: design and management of puppetry during lessons are easier with clear goals in mind – such as knowing where the lesson is going – hence, being metacognitively aware of every aspect of lesson planning, monitoring and evaluation relating to the person (learners), task and strategies to meet lesson outcomes (fenyvesi, 2012). (ii) unstructured way to teach: traditional approaches and structuring of teaching-learning no longer suffice for the 21st century learner, since new and innovative approaches (such as pop [puppetry]) are more appealing, enhancing overall teaching-learning (baumer, 2013; girvan, conneely & tangney, 2016). (iii) difficult to implement: not all teachers benefit from working with puppets, since they are not confident at first. prolonged application and re-application may inform their teachinglearning praxis to such an extent that puppets automatically form part of their mathematics classroom (hackling, smith & murcia, 2011; remer & tzuriel, 2015) (iv) prolonged use and loss of learner interest: according to gobec (2012), puppets can be integrated over a prolonged period if they are applied creatively in different teaching-learning contexts. creative integration may also elicit cooperation and increased communication among learners. john* referred to the fully detailed report of the course of his lesson and lesson plan, where he used cooperative teaching-learning strategies. john’s* learners “asked direct questions to the puppet” within their group setting. the puppet featured as a sport star who was part of a team set to go to the olympic games. due to the covid-19 pandemic and the inability of the 2020 olympic games to take place, john* used this real-life example as a referencing framework to teach his learners about data handling. the questions posed to the puppet about the olympic games, guided learners on their data handling endeavours and learners “found the interactions with the puppet amusing and helpful”. these interactions resulted in learners learning through “insightful action and getting creative, stimulating various levels of cognitive abilities in my [his] classroom”. according to john*, “learners are expected to create as creativity is needed in the 21st century job market”. not only is a pop (puppetry) a “cost-effective pedagogy”, it “instils creativity” as learners can also “do puppetry on their own” or “use the puppet as a peer to http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 1322021 39(3): 132-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) assist in solving of problems”. therefore, john* deemed “an attention-grabbing performance [with the puppet] fosters creativity when applied coherently with mathematics teachinglearning”. according to guilford (1950), when learners are creative, they learn and when they learn, they learn through all senses (affective domain). john* linked his learners’ affective domain to being constructively busy by involving the puppet in their “real-life data handling endeavours”, making their learning experience “meaningful, uplifting and developmental”. john’s* awareness of his learners’ emotions (affective domain) experienced throughout his lesson, substantiates the study by de beer, petersen and brits (2018), where through puppetry, concept formation and understanding is fostered. a focus on metacognitive awareness allowed us to identify the elements illustrated in figure 1 in john’s* experiences. these elements informed us on his metacognitive awareness and how it deepened after the intervention, as he became more aware of how he taught upon using a pop (puppetry) in his intermediate phase mathematics classroom. note that as part of the criteria to select john* for this case study, he had to have previous experience with teaching-learning of puppetry. john’s* previous experience with puppetry included among others: (i) teaching-learning with puppetry in science education. teaching-learning with puppetry on previous occasions as well as teaching alongside peers who also participated in the intervention while participating in adapted lesson study contributed to his overall metacognitive awareness in order for him to share his experiences in more depth. as john* became more aware of what, why, when and how he was teaching, he was able to define metacognitive awareness as “thinking of planning, action and the outcome” and “to think about what you did wrong to [go] back and rectify it”. according to ertmer and newby (1996), when teachers reflect, they become critical about their teaching (and learning), which is an important element in assisting their own learners in becoming experts. john* concluded that “puppetry will remain a large aspect of my lessons as learners responded well with positive anticipation”. 7. conclusion in this article, we reported on the lived experience of one intermediate phase mathematics teacher in the south african context who attended a two-day workshop on pop (puppetry) and taught using a puppet in his own classroom. the development of the participant’s metacognitive awareness (through continuous reflection) and how he transferred knowledge with puppetry in his own classroom are highlighted in this paper. john* was able to reflect metacognitively (based on his lived experiences, understanding and feelings) on the teachinglearning experience of a pop (puppetry). the results of this case study indicated that a pop (puppetry) can be a successful pedagogy. john* experienced various advantages (and disadvantages and frustrations), and he also observed that puppetry had a positive impact based on the level of understanding by his learners. a limitation, however, was that we as the researchers were absent to observe his lesson. also, a case study of one teacher in general may not yield findings that can be generalised, but design principles can be distilled from an intervention such as this one for future research (or teaching-learning endeavours), as puppetry may empower intermediate phase mathematics teachers to make mathematics fun, meaningful and understandable. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 1332021 39(3): 133-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.10 potgieter & van der walt puppetry as a pedagogy of play in the intermediate phase 8. acknowledgements in this research, our involvement in a project on indigenous knowledge (sponsored by the national research foundation [nrf] and the fuchs foundation) allowed us to provide john* (as well as other participants not mentioned for the purpose of this case study), each with their own puppet. these 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https://doi.org/10.4102/satnt.v33i1.1169 https://doi.org/10.4102/satnt.v33i1.1169 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2015.02.002 https://doi.org/10.2753/rpo1061-040505036 442021 39(3): 44-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 academic and psychosocial challenges of health sciences students during the covid-19 pandemic: a university of technology perspective abstract the covid-19 pandemic resulted in south african universities and institutes of higher learning experiencing an unprecedented shift to online learning in 2020, coupled by limited access to campus, in order to prevent community transmission. however, the potential impact of the outbreak on the academic and psychosocial wellbeing of students warrants further exploration, as the rapid changes and the disruption to normal academic life, has left many students feeling socially isolated and struggling to cope with massive uncertainty. in addition, health sciences students may experience added anxiety due to their line of work, which places them at the forefront of the healthcare environment. this study explored the academic and psychosocial challenges experienced by students enrolled in a health sciences faculty in a university of technology (uot), as they transitioned through the covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdown. a qualitative approach with an exploratory descriptive design was used to guide the study. a sample of students across all levels of study (first, second and third years as well as postgraduates) from the faculty of health sciences at the durban university of technology (dut) in south africa were selected. sample recruitment was done through non-probability sampling techniques which include purposive and convenience sampling. data saturation was reached after interviewing 15 participants on microsoft teams. the interview schedule comprised key points on understanding how the covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdown affected students personally and academically. interviews were recorded, transcribed and subjected to content and thematic analyses. six broad themes emerged from the data, which captured the disruption students experienced within the context of their academic life, their personal fears and anxieties, struggles with online learning and connectivity issues. students also expressed challenges whilst studying remotely at home. the findings suggested that there is an urgent need for universities to reflect on ensuring students’ mental health wellbeing as well as ensuring academic success amidst a turbulent physical and psychological environment. keywords: academic challenges; psychosocial challenges; university students; covid-19; remote learning; mental health. author: dr nalini govender1 prof poovendhree reddy1 prof raisuyah bhagwan1 affiliation: 1durban university of technology, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i3.5 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(3): 44-61 published: 16 september 2021 received: 15 february 2021 accepted: 20 april 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4047-6340 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0197-8951 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1584-9432 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 452021 39(3): 45-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 govender, reddy & bhagwan academic and psychosocial challenges of health sciences students 1. background the coronavirus (covid-19) pandemic was declared a public health emergency of international concern by the world health organization (who) during january 2020 (gilbert et al., 2020) and resulted in a full lockdown in various countries, including south africa (bao, 2020). its exponential growth resulted in a spectrum of psychological aftermath, especially amongst university students (liu et al., 2020). the rapid academic transformation endured by this vulnerable population has resulted in increased levels of anxiety, depression and/or substance abuse (zhai & du, 2020). south african universities remained in varying levels of lockdown, accompanied by the suspension of face-to-face classes and closures of student residences/villages. it was postulated that the aftershock of this pandemic, as experienced by university students worldwide, would have lasting effects on their overall wellbeing (hedding et al., 2020). a meta-analysis revealed that students in medical education worldwide are more prone to depression, anxiety and stress than the general population as they perceived themselves at higher risk compared to others (puthran et al., 2016). in addition, public health measures such as social distancing and “lockdowns” may have added psychological effects on students (pandey et al., 2020) alongside academic concerns related to an “overnight” shift to the online platform. emergency remote teaching and learning adopted across all higher education centres resulted in major shifts in the teaching, delivery and assessment strategies. students were expected to transition and adapt to more innovative and flexible ways of teaching, learning and assessment within a short time. however, even though many students lacked the experience/training essential in transitioning to this new model of teaching and learning, they were required to rapidly upskill themselves with online learning platforms (hedding et al., 2020). despite the shift to level 11, which supported the resumption of activities, provided that all necessary precautions and health guidelines were followed, the durban university of technology (dut) opted to continue with a blended approach in order to limit social contact among students and academic staff. students from the health science faculty who had to complete clinics and practicals were brought back during the latter part of 2020. it appears that this limited social contact may negatively affect the academic and psychosocial health of the students. approximately one in five university students worldwide have suffered one or more mental ailments in the preceding twelve months (auerbach et al., 2016). prepandemic, significantly high rates of psychopathology-related issues were demonstrated among south african university students, especially amongst females and those with atypical sexual preferences and students with disabilities (bantjes et al., 2019). prior to the onset of this pandemic, about one in four students were either diagnosed with depression/anxiety or were engaged in psychotherapy, with yet higher numbers at risk (van der walt et al., 2020). the diagnosis of mental health disorders negatively influenced the social transition of students into the academic setting (alonso et al., 2018) and negatively affected their academic performance and health (mclafferty et al., 2017). anecdotal evidence suggests that covid-19 will significantly compromise the mental health of university students, increasing their risk of psychological consequences. the diversified student populations characterising higher education institutes in sa increases the psychiatric vulnerability of the marginalised 1 alert level 1 indicates a low covid-19 spread with a high health system readiness; level 2: moderate covid-19 spread with a high health system readiness; level 3: moderate covid-19 spread with a moderate health system readiness; level 4: moderate to high covid-19 spread with a low to moderate health system readiness; level 5: high covid-19 spread with a low health system readiness (https://www.gov.za/covid-19/ about/about-alert-system) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 462021 39(3): 46-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) and historically excluded student populations. the fact that most university students are reliant on the national student financial aid scheme (nsfas) funding is indicative of a lower socio-economic status, which correlates to a greater risk for anxiety (verger et al., 2010), depression (othieno et al., 2015) and drug abuse (yi et al., 2017). continued nsfas support is dependent on adequate academic progression and students are aware that they are likely to drop out without it (lebeau et al., 2012). this places an increased mental and emotional strain on students who are already concerned about their physical health and wellbeing during the covid-19 pandemic. limited data exists on mental health diseases and the prevalence of psychological consequences amongst university students in low and middle-income countries, especially during a disease outbreak. limited data exists on mental health diseases and the prevalence of psychological consequences amongst university students in low and middle-income countries, especially during such an outbreak. it has emerged that psychosocial issues and distress experienced by students and staff in response to isolation, physical and social distancing is increasingly common as the emotional impact of the pandemic was pervasive (motala & menon, 2020; naidu, 2020). in south african universities of technology (uot), health sciences students may experience added anxiety due to their line of work that places them at the forefront of the healthcare environment. hence, this study aimed to explore the academic and psychosocial challenges experienced by students enrolled in a health sciences faculty in a uot, as they transitioned through the covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdown. 2. introduction universities and institutes of higher learning in south africa have experienced an unprecedented shift to online learning since the first lockdown due to the covid-19 pandemic, which was announced in march 2020. there was a harried scramble to get the academic fraternity (staff and students) to embrace this transition in the absence of other alternatives (mhlanga & moloi, 2020). apart from preparing online learning materials, contact universities were required to develop innovative ways to offer practical training and find alternative methods of formative and summative assessments while still maintaining academic integrity (hedding et al., 2020). numerous publications have quickly surfaced about the closure of higher education institutions (heis) to reduce the spread of covid-19 in developed and developing countries (chung, subramaniam & dass, 2020; sahu, 2020). however, the potential impact of the outbreak on the academic and psychosocial wellbeing of students warrants further exploration, as the rapid changes and loss of structure has left many students feeling socially isolated and struggling to cope with massive uncertainty (sahu, 2020). challenges associated with the shift to online learning in china include a lack of learning discipline, suitable learning materials or good learning environments when students are self-isolated at home (bao, 2020). in south africa, students are challenged by technical operational obstacles such as poor connectivity and data limitations and/or accompanied by issues related to inadequate home environments as well as related personal issues such as unplanned pregnancy, substance use, depression and other mental health problems. it appears that technical and personal obstacles are not limited to the developing context. malaysian university students also reported poor internet connectivity and limited broadband data as their biggest challenge (chung et al., 2020), while students from the uk have missed being on campus and being able to engage in proximate learning encounters, even though there was a resigned acceptance of the online format (bryson & andres, 2020). in pakistan, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 472021 39(3): 47-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 govender, reddy & bhagwan academic and psychosocial challenges of health sciences students most of the higher education institutions surveyed reported reservations about online/digital learning. lack of access to internet facilities, lack of proper interaction and contact between students and instructors as well as ineffective technology, were among the major challenges reported (adnan & anwar, 2020). recent studies have explored the challenges and opportunities associated with online learning during the covid-19 pandemic (bryson & andres, 2020; mailizar & fan, 2020). a study conducted by mailizar and fan (2020) suggested that students’ voices are important on this issue and future research should investigate students’ opinions regarding online learning to examine challenges faced by students. even though online learning is proving helpful in safeguarding the health, safety and wellbeing of students and faculties amid the covid-19 pandemic, it may not be as effective as conventional learning, particularly with respect to training healthcare professionals. student pastoral support is crucial throughout healthcare training and is often delivered through face-to-face contact sessions with academics, clinical instructors and tutors (hodgson & hagan, 2020). this rapid change of delivery and loss of structure has left many students feeling socially isolated and struggling to cope with massive uncertainty. honours and postgraduate students’ research projects have been compromised by lockdown and social distancing regulations, with limited access to laboratories, fieldwork and supervisors. social science research often relies on interviews, focus groups and survey questionnaires, thus increasing the exposure risk (hedding et al., 2020). although the arrangements made by heis may have reduced community transmission of covid-19 as shown by closures of such institutions in previous epidemics (owusu-fordjour et al., 2020), it was potentially exclusive, as students living in deprived communities were disadvantaged in terms of technological and psychosocial factors. technical problems, domestic obligations, changing daily routines and many other forms of behavioural adaptation were reported as barriers to achieving optimal positive adaptation (huey & palaganas, 2020). in south africa, where a large percentage of students depend on financial assistance, where data costs are high and mobile connections are not readily available to all, and where devices such as laptop computers are seen as a luxury, it is unsurprising that students have protested. they argued that universities could not impose online learning without providing the necessary resources. challenges and tensions relating to the shift in teaching and learning among south african university students was recently reported, suggesting that this transition entrenched exclusion and created barriers to learning (motala & menon, 2020). while universities have made several efforts to negotiate with cellular networks and sponsors on behalf of students, they are limited in assisting students living in remote areas where electricity supply is inconsistent and network coverage is poor (dube, 2020). moreover, even resources provided by the universities may need to be shared by family members who are working or need to be home schooled. learning at home can be ineffective as distractors may impede learning and understanding. many homes in developing countries do not have an adequate learning environment and students learn either in the living room or in their bedrooms. the aspect of guided knowledge transfer is also missing when one is learning alone in households without the guidance of a teacher or other colleagues to enhance their understanding (owusu-fordjour, koomson & hanson, 2020). other challenges related to this situation included those related to communication, student assessment, use of technology tools, online experience, pandemic-related anxiety or stress, time management and technophobia (utama, levani & paramita, 2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 482021 39(3): 48-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) the who (2020) has advised universities to expect these adjustments to the “ways of doing” for some time yet, which implies that educational institutions need to design appropriate and effective content, and arrange an effective delivery system to ensure the achievement of learning outcomes and the professional readiness of students (adnan & anwar, 2020). this has caused increased stress among students, which may lead to adverse effects on learning and psychological health (al-rabiaah et al., 2020). past pandemics such as smallpox, plague, influenza and severe acute respiratory syndrome (sars), amongst others, have had severe consequences on societies (owusu-fordjour et al., 2020). identifying challenges arising from such events is the first step towards converting them into opportunities. while the covid-19 pandemic has made online learning the only practicable alternative, we need to have an inclusive approach that aligns with the lived realities of students. 3. methodology 3.1 ethical considerations ethical approval was obtained from the institutional research ethics committee (irec 061/20). informed consent was obtained from all participants prior to their participation. those who volunteered to participate were informed of the non-compulsory nature of the study and reassured that they could withdraw at any time. any potential form of coercion was minimised through the provision of clear information to participants and that they could cease participation at any time. participants could also access their recordings at will. 3.2 study design and setting this study used a qualitative research approach with the objective of engaging participants to understand the challenges they faced related to their studies during the covid-19 pandemic. qualitative research methods are predicated on understanding the significance of the “subjective meaning,” that can be brought to research by individual participants and is cognisant of the “social construction” of their reality (hesse-biber, 2017). this approach explores the views and experiences of participants linked to their context and in a way that captures their voices (creswell, 2014). given the objective to understand the personal individual experiences of students and how it impacted on their academic progress and academic wellbeing, this approach was deemed most suitable. the study was conducted in the faculty of health sciences (fohs) based in a south african uot. the fohs comprises eleven academic departments in which approximately 2971 students are registered. the research took a “reflexive approach” (guilleman & gillam, 2004) throughout data collection, by making micro-ethical decisions based on reflections of participants’ dignity and privacy, responsiveness to their emotional state and by regularly checking in on participants. methodological rigor and trustworthiness of the data was ensured by adhering to the following principles: prolonged engagement (the research team members have been teaching in the higher education context for a significant period, giving them insight into the personal and academic struggles of disadvantaged students and through peer debriefing whereby the transcripts were reviewed and engaged with by multiple team members before the emerging themes were derived (lincoln & guba, 1985). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 492021 39(3): 49-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 govender, reddy & bhagwan academic and psychosocial challenges of health sciences students 3.3 study population and sampling the target population represented a sample of students from all departments in the fohs. the students were recruited across all levels of study (i.e. first, second and third years as well as postgraduates). a sample is a sub-set of the defined population and mirrors the characteristics of the entire population. qualitative inquiries are guided by smaller samples, as the intent is to seek information richness about the experiences of participants. sample recruitment was done through non-probability sampling techniques that include purposive and convenience sampling. purposive sampling refers to the intentional selection of participants by virtue of their ability to contribute to the study (daniel, 2012). sampling continued until data saturation was reached. a total of fifteen students eventually participated in the study, of which nine were undergraduates and six were postgraduates. of this total, fourteen were females; only one white student participated and the balance included 10 black and 4 indian students. 3.4 recruitment and data collection an invitation comprising the information letter and consent form was electronically emailed to heads of departments in the fohs requesting their assistance to distribute this appeal to all registered undergraduate and postgraduate students. those who were willing were invited to a virtual 30-minute interview. a semi-structured interview guide was used to guide the data collection process on microsoft teams. the interview schedule comprised key points on understanding how the covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdown affected students personally and academically. participants were asked to share their experiences of the covid-19 pandemic in terms of understanding of transmission, effects and understanding and experience of lockdown personally and in the context of their family. in addition, they were invited to share their anxieties, stressors and challenges in relation to their personal lives and academic progress. they were requested to share being disconnected from university life and their experiences of the online teaching and learning strategy. semi-structured interviews are “knowledge-producing conversations” (hesse-biber, 2017) in which the openness of the interview will enable the participants to move the conversation in a direction that is personal, but simultaneously creating a boundary for the researcher to pursue information related to the research questions. the interviews were recorded and then transcribed. 3.5 data analysis qualitative content analysis and thematic analysis are classified under the qualitative descriptive design (vaismoradi et al., 2016). thematic analysis, which is a method for “identifying, analysing, organizing, describing, and reporting themes found within a data set” (nowell et al., 2017), was used to guide the analysis. key themes and sub-themes were identified within the data which was guided by the research objectives. this process enabled a systematic procedure for generating codes for qualitative data. thematic analysis is advantageous because it allows flexibility in the research question and sample size and allows the researcher to identify themes or shared concepts within and across the data for the study. it is also advantageous as it allows for inductive and deductive analyses in order to capture the underlying themes (clarke & braun, 2017). 4. results and discussion there were six broad themes that emerged in the data, which captured the disruption students experienced within the context of their academic life, their personal fears and anxieties, as http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 502021 39(3): 50-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) well as struggles with online learning and connectivity issues. the first theme highlighted the disruption students experienced in relation to multiple aspects of their academic life following the lockdown. theme 1: disruption of academic life there are just too much of distractions. we were discussing we might even be able to finish our lab work efficiently but now it’s like we just sitting and waiting. we don’t know when they are going to call us (p6). you have a schedule, you wake up in the morning, you go to go to campus, at around 5:00 i come back home and then there was library and there were other people doing the same thing as you saw. and if i couldn’t get something, i just asked the librarian there to help me and printing and everything. and a lot of my things, i used i printed. that was also a downside to now currently studying away from university (p4). being a first year phd student with a new topic, there are so many videos i need to youtube, how to work with certain instruments. i’m going to a new lab, i don’t want to go there not knowing anything. if i was at campus it would be so much better (p5). this uncertainty of not knowing when it will be, because in the beginning i actually thought, we might be back to campus (soon) (p4). it created a disruptive period, in the sense that we have no direct contact with our supervisors. without that proper face to face supervision it becomes difficult to move forward with our research (p11). having to complete our academic year because today it keeps on increasing the lockdown. first they said, it was 21 days and then they added two weeks [which], really decreased our hopes of completing our goals and securing our future (p6). in terms of finances, in terms of schoolwork, because we had a lot to cover, we had assignments that we had to do, most of them they were in group work… research…. we had a lot to cover… it was hectic (p1). as evidenced in the data, students experienced significant disruptions to their academic life, due to the covid-19 pandemic. they experienced a disruption to the normal routine of attending university and a disruption to their daily academic schedule. many experienced feeling helpless within the context of not knowing when the lockdown would be lifted and when they could return to their normal routine of campus academic life. as participant six remarked, what began as a 21-day lockdown continued into weeks, bringing with it the increasing reality that she would be unable to complete her degree timeously. not only was the undergraduate programme disrupted, but it was also extended. similar fears were voiced by a postgraduate student who was afraid that her phd study would take longer to complete. she felt the lockdown would delay her progress as it had interfered with her ability to visit the university laboratory. another participant lamented the inability to receive face to face supervision, which contributed to difficulties experienced with meeting deadlines. furthermore, the opportunity to work face to face with peers as part of project-based learning was disrupted. prescheduled assessments set as part of project-based learning continued despite the physical distancing measures being implemented, creating difficulties for students to complete these assessments. another student highlighted that http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 512021 39(3): 51-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 govender, reddy & bhagwan academic and psychosocial challenges of health sciences students community service was affected, as students could not travel provincially or attend placements, thereby disrupting work integrated or service-learning programmes of departments. the literature is replete with descriptions of similar disruptions (mossa-basha et al., 2020; ojo & onwuegbuzie, 2020). hall et al. (2021) in particular described covid-19 as bringing a substantial disruption to the clinical and academic learning environments and suggested that students receive individualised learning plans and increased coaching with academic tutors virtually or in person to obviate learning and assessment related difficulties. theme 2: personal fears and anxiety the second theme that emerged from the data related to the personal fears and anxieties of the participants. they reported as follows: we are just taking all taking strain psychologically, financially (p3). for me, it’s been a tough time because i felt so alone without knowing what is going on, in trying to understand it led to being anxious and having a lot of stress of how we are going to deal with this (p6). we have to finish this year … maybe the academic year will be cancelled, that’s the first thing that came to my mind, which was stressing me a little bit and looking at the assignments. the workload that we had … i was a bit scared that maybe i wouldn’t be able to finish it when we were told (p1). there is a lot to do in such a short time since we’ve got like three months to finish the first semester (p2). my biggest fear and anxiety and stress has been … about how much practical hours we are going to have to make (p7). participants also expressed significant fear and anxiety related to their academic life and progress. one student commented specifically on experiencing both financial and psychological strain. the recent #feesmustfall campaign that prompted student protests nationally, exemplified the plight of students’ hardship in terms of financial and basic needs such as food (sundarasen et al., 2020). black african households make up the majority of poor households in south africa (letseka, letseka & pitsoe, 2018). with the covid-19 pandemic exacerbating the living circumstances of these households due to job losses (ornellas, engelbrecht & atamtürk, 2020) an even greater strain is placed on university students. one participant described the fear of being unable to complete the requisite practical hours towards her module, which left her feeling distressed. she felt immense strain with respect to additional work. another participant expressed feeling “alone” and anxious in terms of understanding the pandemic and in terms of trying to understand how the pandemic was going to affect their future. the inability to attend university left one student, akin to “being in the dark” and unaware of when a sense of normality and return to university life would resume. undeniably, this prompted significant levels of stress amongst all the participants, as they felt that that they would not complete the academic year timeously. one participant described the “pressure” she felt, generated by the shortened semester that needed to be completed, despite the difficult circumstances that the pandemic had induced. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 522021 39(3): 52-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) pandemics bring on feelings of loneliness, helplessness and stress, despair and mental fatigue (cao et al., 2020, dube et al., 2020). for many students in south africa, the financial hardship of tertiary education places even greater pressure on them as they endeavour to complete in the requisite time to support their families. these descriptions of fear, anxiety, stress and loneliness reflected the description of mental health symptoms associated with the pandemic (serafini et al., 2020). theme 3: online learning there were three sub-themes that emerged under theme three. these included dealing with poor connectivity, the challenges of online learning and the disconnect from university. sub theme 1: poor connectivity and data issues sometimes i had to wait and wait for network to be good for me…. so when the network is good… then i can watch the videos again (p2). the main issue is just connectivity… there are certain spots (in the rural areas at home), that i need to be at in order to access proper connectivity (p3). the network is not so great….i’m always losing connectivity when searching for articles (p4). we still have to do assignments online. we still have to do everything which is a bit strenuous financial wise to us because data is costly and being on ms teams… it also consumes lots of data (p3). we actually have “to catch” up later on because the day data is just not sufficient. so when you get time you can actually go through the videos in midnight’s which is also difficult though (p3). since i’m doing my final year, i was busy doing my research, …. i had to stop that now because i had to travel back home. i have to buy my own data to access internet. the network is very bad at home. so, it was so hectic (p9). even though the school provide other students with data but me personally, i had some issues with data because i had to change the number on the portal. so, the first month i didn’t receive the data (p9). the data issue demonstrated that students experienced challenges with connectivity, which further impacted their academic progress and wellbeing. students who lived in remote, rural areas had to seek out spots to access proper connectivity whilst some indicated not being able to access connectivity at all. one student stated, “the network is very bad at home….so it was very hectic” and another expressed the difficulty associated with the network, saying that she could only watch videos when the network was stable. yet another student observed that the poor network and loss of connectivity created huge challenges, especially when trying to source research articles. despite the provisioning of data by certain universities, it did little to help the plight of students living in remote areas, those who lacked electricity and had poor network coverage (hedding et al., 2020). the viability of online leaning is questionable since this marginalises many rural learners regarding access to teaching and learning caused by a lack of resources to connect to the internet (dube, 2020). moreover, the lack of connectivity disadvantages http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 532021 39(3): 53-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 govender, reddy & bhagwan academic and psychosocial challenges of health sciences students students and their families regarding academic matters and prevents online education and access to information related to the fight against covid-19. participants also expressed their difficulties with data. despite the university provisioning them with data, the “day” data was insufficient. one student indicated that they had to watch videos at midnight, which is not the norm in terms of their traditional learning. some students did not receive data at all, which affected their learning in the first month of the lockdown. data is expensive and beyond the reach of many poorer families in rural communities. south africa is characterised by a large percentage of students who are dependent on financial assistance. since data costs are high and mobile connections are not readily available, laptops/ computers are considered a luxury (hedding et al., 2020). whilst universities have negotiated with cellular networks to provide data, many universities will be compelled to reconstruct their financial budgets to ensure that disadvantaged students receive devices as well. these challenges influenced their ability to complete online assignments timeously and the ability to progress with research related activities. one student mentioned that certain journal articles were not accessible and had to be purchased, which further affected their research progress. chung et al. (2020) stated that poor connectivity and limited broadband data was the biggest challenge for degree students at a university in malaysia. they reported that the understanding of course content by diploma level students through online learning, remained their most significant difficulty. zhong (2020) however, drew attention to the limited resource availability in academic institutions and the marginalisation of students, where insufficient availability of the internet and the lack of latest technology thwarted students’ ability to participate in digital learning (zhong et al., 2020). these are factors requiring greater consideration by university management, as the country braces itself for the long haul in terms of the pandemic. sub theme 2: challenges of online learning the second sub-theme that emerged linked to the challenges of online learning. most challenging moments; it was learning online. and since i’m from like rural areas, the network is not so good (p2). it was really scary and academically, it was very hard having to adjust to online learning. i’m not good with technology. so it was a very tough experience….and i’ve tried to engage in everything that was done, like learning and submitting on time, doing an assignment and writing all the quizzes (p6). it’s still affecting us even though the lecturers are trying their best to cover the work, they introduced moodle and teams to us just to cover all the work but some of us are not used to online learning. i used to have a lecturer in front of us. it’s how we were being raised. so, we are still struggling with the online learning. it is the only way that we can continue with the learning and be safe because it’s safer when we are home and doing the online learning (p9). adjusting from the fact that we are studying like on campus and we using … contact learning …teaching and learning and now having to adjust into much more than learning and teaching (p3). i had to make sure that i stay up late at night so that i can have enough time to study. but it’s not always good because sometimes i feel very tired and sleepy (p6). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 542021 39(3): 54-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) participants described online learning as “challenging”. one participant expressed that this was a “scary” and a “tough” experience, having to adjust to the new norm of online classes and that she struggled because of her unfamiliarity with technology. another indicated that students had grown accustomed to having a lecturer in front of them and was therefore struggling with the alternative teaching method. a participant highlighted that beyond the adjustment of contact teaching, they also had to adjust to a covid-19 pandemic world. the “unprecedented massive migration from traditional in-class face to face education to online education”, is evident globally (bao, 2020). the migration from traditional or blended learning to a fully virtual online strategy was associated with multiple challenges, including the inability to access online and virtual content remotely (crawford et al., 2020). chung, subramaniam and dass (2020) found that students at a malaysian university were slightly to moderately ready for online learning amidst the covid-19 pandemic. moreover, communication efficacy and poor self-directed learning abilities were cited as the biggest challenges within this context. data from their study correlated with our findings where students expressed their unpreparedness for the transition of face-to-face approaches to an online platform. sub theme 3: disconnect from university access to the library is unavailable so we cannot get books for research purposes. when it comes down to doing work, there are too many distractions in the home environment, whereas being on campus, it becomes a proper working environment where there is focus and discipline (p11). when i’m having a problem... i just have to rely on the fact that i have to send an email. sometimes a lecturer will respond sometimes they’ll take some time to respond (p3). sometimes you just send a whatsapp message then someone just don’t have data. so you’ll have to wait for the next person (p3). i had no access to internet, library equipment nor physical assistance/consultations with my research supervisor, of which i feel i could have presented more profound work had the lockdown not taken place (p10). being disconnected from normal university has been hard because you can’t access the libraries. i was used to studying at the library, without having the library now, i felt like it was hard (p6). if you have a problem … you can ask the librarian and she can help you. but now we don’t have access to them. then calling, we don’t have airtime (p4). “having your mentor and your supervisor there at any time if i encountered any problems. your door is always open and you give me a solution to the problem but now it’s a bit better because we video call. so i feel a lot better now that we started this video meetings and chats. in the first month it was stressful because i didn’t know where i was standing (p5). most participants lamented the disconnect from university and its resources whilst having to study from home. this emerged as a sub-theme under the broader theme of the home milieu. one aspect of isolation identified was isolation from lecturers and research supervisors. participants reported struggling with this lack of personal contact and support. other participants lamented their isolation from their peers, saying that communication via a “whatsapp” message depended on the prompt response of the recipient. the delay in http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 552021 39(3): 55-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 govender, reddy & bhagwan academic and psychosocial challenges of health sciences students response from lecturers was also evident in the data collected. adnan and anwar (2020) found that students had reported that a lack of instruction from instructors, tardy response time and the absence of classroom socialisation were some of the challenges endured with studying from home. moreover, 43% of the students reported experiencing difficulties in undertaking their group projects effectively. similar to the current study, almost 80% of the students in adnan and anwar’s (2020) study believed that face to face contact with their instructor was important for online learning, which created a huge void in the distance learning mode. participants also described that they felt isolated from the university infrastructure, library and access to the internet, which collectively compromised their ability to study and make academic progress. one participant said that the inability to reach the librarian was problematic, asserting that had she been physically on campus, immediate help would have been available. the notion of being disconnected and isolated resonated within the literature. bryson and andres (2020) suggested that whilst the “forced imposition of online learning was accepted as a necessary response to covid-19 and social distancing”, students “missed being on campus and being able to engage in proximate learning encounters”. hodgson and hagan (2020) emphasised the importance of student support, saying that this was critical through face-to-face meetings with academic personal tutors. they further maintained that “the rapid and unexpected change of circumstances and loss of structure,” had left students feeling socially isolated and “struggling to cope with massive uncertainty”. theme 4: the home milieu there were two sub-themes that emerged under theme four. this included struggles with the home milieu and lack of understanding from family. sub-theme 1: struggles with the home milieu the most difficult parts [was] getting sufficient time or sufficient space to do my school work that is also difficult and also in terms of academically accessing a good connectivity (p3). we don’t even have study areas at home (p3). sometimes you try to sit down and do a quiz and there’s noise in the background. it so difficult with online quizzes, because not everybody is doing it in the same environment that a controlled environment that we have at university (p7). our house is constantly busy, constantly, and they have little kids, which makes it very difficult to do work… our house is small. if the tv is on…i can hear it in my room. that made it very difficult to focus. and then the first month my phone broke and i was not in contact with you (p5). sometimes when i’m busy with my work, then they’ll say like when are you going finish your work. so i try to explain when you doing a paper there’s no time to finish. and you need to stop and then you have to come back and the thoughts flow (p5). it will be hard to concentrate at the time, because even in the morning i have to wake up since my mom, aunt and my cousin are going back to work. so i had to wake up and look after the kids in the morning. so it has been a very tough time (p6). many participants expressed various difficulties that they encountered with studying in their home environments, such as a lack of or inadequate space to study. moreover, several http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 562021 39(3): 56-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) participants expressed challenges linked to noise and overcrowding within their home milieus and how this created disturbances that affected their focus and concentration. many homes in developing countries do not have adequate learning environments, which compels students to use their bedrooms or the living room to study (owusu-fordjour et al., 2020). it is widely known that many poor households in rural communities lack access to basic running water and electricity, all of which further compounds the problem students experience in relation to learning environments. bao (2020) found that students at a chinese university experienced technical obstacles as well as challenges related to self-discipline, suitable learning materials and good learning environments whilst studying from home. many participants expressed that their study times had to be rearranged for quieter times by staying up late to study. some participants complained that family members did not understand their academic demands. family members often created pressure by asking when they were going to finish university tasks or by expecting students to babysit children while their parents worked. students within the home environment are also known to have to manage their children, other elders or siblings in the home who are not attending school (rajab, gazal & alkattan, 2020). sub theme 2: lack of understanding from family it is impossible to actually keep up with my studies … my family … don’t understand studying from home. they don’t understand that you have to sit for three hours just to hear a lecture (p3). as a student, everything revolves around academia… the most challenging thing for me is writing at home, the perceptions and …coming from a family where nobody studied (p5). having to divide my time into doing house chores and also trying to get time to study and submit on time, having to write assignments and having to deal with making time for each module, not focusing on one (p6). participants also described the complexities of trying to study at home, saying that family members did not understand the demands of university studying. some of the issues raised included that family did not understand how they could listen to an online lecture for one hour; being unable to write and study in a context where family could not relate to the challenges of studying and having to juggle household chores and academic work. one participant expressed the difficulties not only with the university-home life disjuncture, but that they had to make decisions regarding prioritising all their modules from home, as opposed to merely concentrating on one. 5. conclusion the study found that the covid-19 pandemic disrupted normal academic life and created huge uncertainty and anxiety, particularly amongst university students. the pandemic has affected the personal wellbeing and academic life of students not only locally but across the globe. as is evident within the present study, students who lived a distance away from the university and who had to travel were faced with increased fears for their safety and wellbeing, whilst most countries, including south africa, grapple with surging infections and increasing mortality. it is within this context that this study uncovered salient issues around http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 572021 39(3): 57-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 govender, reddy & bhagwan academic and psychosocial challenges of health sciences students online teaching that should be considered in ensuring students’ mental health wellbeing, as well as academic success amidst a turbulent physical and psychological environment. based on the findings it is crucial that academics become more sensitive to the plight of students from remote areas. alternative ways of teaching and supporting the academic journey of such students requires deeper consideration in the absence of connectivity in rural areas. it is crucial that such students receive greater academic support once they return to campus to ensure they stay aligned with the academic programme. the study also highlighted the psychosocial sequelae emerging from a disruption to their normal academic and heightened fears of academic failure amidst the challenge of online learning. to counter same virtual academic support workshops and the need for telephone calls to vulnerable students will be important to ensuring their academic and psychological wellbeing amidst the pandemic. 6. acknowledgements the 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of the covid-19 outbreak: a quick online cross-sectional survey. international journal of biological sciences, 16: 1745. https://doi.org/10.7150/ijbs.45221 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.5 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-009-0055-z https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-009-0055-z https://doi.org/10.1186/s13011-017-0096-3 https://doi.org/10.1186/s13011-017-0096-3 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2020.113003 https://doi.org/10.7150/ijbs.45221 editorial this issue of perspectives in education has a fascinating collection of national and international contributions. all the contributions deal with the field of education and provide a collection of perspectives on important issues in the science of education, including the transformation of higher education institutions, complexities in the teaching of history, language-in-education, assessment, and the misalignment in the south african education pathway system. the starting point of this edition of perspectives in education is provided by two thought-provoking articles which grapple with important themes in higher education, namely transformation and social justice. lesley le grange outlines two broad sets of changes characterising transformation of higher education in post-apartheid south africa. the first relates to structural changes, the reorganisation of teaching programmes and the introduction of performativity regimes. the second relates to the need to transform higher education in south africa in order to overcome the legacies of apartheid as captured in policies that have been developed to redress past inequalities. le grange argues that globalisation, neoliberalism, the technology of performativity, higher education policy and education itself play a role in the production of human subjectivity. le grange points out that this may lead to a crisis of humanism. he therefore suggests that we need to rethink transformation in higher education by replacing the term education with the term pedagogy. in our second contribution masebala tjabane and venitha pillay argue that social justice is an important mandate of higher education in south africa. they show that the quest for social justice is intertwined with the academic traditions of critique and the purpose of seeking just futures for the common good. the next two articles interrogate the complexity of teaching history in two countries that have experienced human rights violations, namely chile and south africa. in their case study on the incorporation of recent history into the educational curricula of secondary schools in santiago, chile, maria i. toledo, abraham magendzo and renato gazmuri investigate the teaching and learning process of the subunit “military regime and transition to democracy”. they found that none of the four teaching models used to teach history encourage learners to understand the present as a result of a human process and how to operate within it. mark wilmot and devika naidoo’s absorbing article exposes the informal yet effective working of power for the perpetuation of discourses of domination in a history lesson on the conquest of the aztecs by the spanish. they caution that such discourses may subject learners to a form of symbolic violence that may lead learners to ontological misrecognition of self and race. mark de vos and dina z. belluigi’s article turns to a key topic – assessment in higher education. they examine the tension resulting from criterion-referenced assessment’s (cra) links to both behaviourism and constructivism. they argue that a fully explicit set of cra is problematic in theory and unyielding in practice. they draw on mediation theory, and design what they call “an improved cra system”. the challenges of addressing the assessment dilemma of additional language learners are the focus of an article by mf omidire, ac bouwer and jc jordaan. results from their study on curriculum-based dynamic assessment (cda) among grade 8-learners in nigeria suggest a generally positive influence of cda on participants’ performance. drawing on foucault’s notions of governmentality and bhabha’s term hybridity, kyung eun jahng explores a set of discourses, such as instrumentalism, developmentalism, and cosmopolitanism, pertinent to the reproduction of the social conditions and to the constitution of english education in south korea. jahng concludes that early childhood english education in south korea has not emerged out of a collective neurosis of english fever, but is a discursively constructed product in a particular time space. michael cosser’s article focuses on the misalignment in the south african education pathway system. he proposes a new pathway model to address the articulation deficiencies in the present model. he concedes that a new model will fail unless there is a dramatic improvement in the schooling sector in south africa. the last article in this edition, written by adnan kucukoglu, examines the opinions of 41 turkish pre-service teachers taking a community service learning course. the findings, based on semi-structured interviews, reveal that the majority of pre-service teachers believe that the service learning experience was beneficial and that they should be able to make use of the knowledge they gained during the course in their social, academic and professional lives. corene de wet i editorial the contributions to this volume of perspectives in education present a collection of serious and insightful critical essays in the field of education. these articles are skilfully woven through a wide range of discussions that are both internationally resonant and conceptually relevant in education discourses. discussions in this volume incorporate and intermesh both theory and practice, and it is only by doing this that success of research may benefit the process of teaching and learning. the volume draws on an eclectic mix of research design and methodologies. the first two contributions to this issue of the journal provide an insight and value in professional development. first, in their article, “institutionalising teacher clusters in south africa: dilemmas and contradictions”, loyiso c. jita and matseliso l. mokhele argue that in south africa many provincial education departments have sought to institutionalise and encourage the formation of teacher clusters as a substitute for traditional approaches to the professional developments of teachers. this article shows the dilemma of this approach that led to undesirable outcomes. they conclude by arguing that the noble idea by the department of education has turned bureaucratic and has alienated teachers; however, their ending note is a promise for teachers to reclaim their spaces. secondly, in their article “training as a tool for community development: 25 years of experience in sparsely populated rural areas in cuenca, spain”, josé m. díaz-puente, francisco josé gallego moreno and ramón zamorano amplify the subtle training methodologies of community development in rural areas and these methods are used by training bodies not adapted to the peculiarities of rural areas. joining the chorus of voices in the ongoing debates and discussions regarding how best to create optimal conditions for excellence and quality in teaching and learning, vimolan mudaly, in his article appropriately entitled “diagrams in mathematics: to draw or not to draw?”, describes the use of diagrams in mathematics as self-explanatory tools and how these diagrams help in dealing with problem-solving. in her article “constructive deedback as a learning tool to enhance students’ self-regulation and performance in higher education” erna du toit draws our attention to constructive feedback that can develop students’ self-regulatory skills, to enhance students’ learning and improve academic performance. the effectiveness of a first-year course in qualitative literacy is shown in vera frith’s article, “a quantitative literacy course for humanities and law students: the challenges of a context-based curriculum” which explores intervention strategies necessary to assist students in developing appropriate quantitative competencies. she argues that there is an articulation gap between quantitative literacy of first-year humanities and law students at a south african university. she concludes by proposing explicit clarification between disciplinary contexts and the mathematical and statistical content. the autonomy of scientific investigation is taken by umesh ramnarain in an article entitled “exploring the use of a cartoon as a learner scaffold in the planning of scientific investigations”. this article examines how a cartoon can be used in a grade 9 natural sciences class to promote learners plan investigations. findings in this study show that a cartoon with an extended dialogue between characters on science concepts is an effective support mechanism to engage in the scientific discourse. the final contributions to this volume have higher education as a focus. in their article, “from clinic to classroom: a model of teacher education for inclusion”, elizabeth walton and gillian lloyd address the challenges associated with the implementation of inclusive education in south africa. this article reflects on the pilot years of a postgraduate course in inclusive education developed at a south african university, using the concept of “inquiry-as-stance”. they conclude their argument by stating that teachers need to develop a collaborative and classroom-based knowledge-of-inclusive practice by implementing, reflecting on and theorising inclusive pedagogies. ana naidoo, in her article “leading curriculum renewal in a faculty of education: a story from within”, explores the process of curriculum renewal. the author reflects on her experiences as the initiator of change to the bachelor of education curriculum and how the final curriculum was negotiated with staff members and its compliance with the higher education qualification framework. in their article entitled “i want to publish but..: barriers to ii publishing for women at university of technology”, andrea garnett and fathima mahomed explore experiences of community of practice of female academics with regard to academic publishing. they maintain that barriers to publishing are not compounded by gender. finally, i would like to thank all those who contributed to this volume and the peer reviewers prior to our editorship. molebatsi milton nkoane 44 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 teacher ratings of academic achievement of children between 6 and 12 years old from intact and non-intact families leph o d isa s. m o lepo , lev iso n m a u n g a n id ze a n d pilo t m u d h o v o zi d epartment of psychology, university of venda, south a frica stevemolepo@ iafrica.com th o len e so d i d epartment of psychology, u niversity of limpopo (turfloop c ampus) we investigated teacher ratings of the im pact of parental divorce on academic achievement of children between 6 and 12 years old up to 12 m onths after their parents divorced. a purposive sam ple of 120 children attending four different prim ary schools in a sm all south african town took part in the study. one third (n 40) of the children had experienced parental divorce (m ale 14, female 26) while two thirds had not. teachers rated participating children in their class on academ ic perform ance on the conners rating scale ranging from 0 to 3. in addition, teachers ob tained the average term score of each of the participating children in key academic areas, which were converted to the conners scale for classification. chi square tests w ere used to analyse the data. results showed that the academ ic perform ance of children from non intact fam ilies within the age range of 6 9 was inferior to that of their counterparts from intact fam ilies suggesting that the experience of parental divorcee had a negative im pact on children’s academ ic achievem ent. it is recom m ended that future research compare teacher ratings with children’s ratings on standardised tests. k eyw ords: academic achievement; children; divorce; intact and non intact fam ilies; parent; parental divorce; self concept; self fulfilling prophecy; teacher ratings introduction d ivorce is the choice that two people make not to live together as husband and wife (engelbrecht & renchen w entzel (1999). in the past, divorce was unheard of in many african countries as it was not sanctioned by cultural norms (d lamini, 1997). however, luttig (1997) observed that as from the beginning of the 20th century divorce has become a common phenom enon in many countries in the world, including south africa. as noted by delport (1997), in south africa spouses are now allowed to terminate their marriages virtually at will. although recently courts are trying their best to make divorce difficult, they cannot go against the will of spouses. a consequence of divorce on children is that the children may experience stress from the process and after effects of divorce. sometimes, single parent families struggle to survive making their involvement in the schooling of their children not always possible (pillay & w asiekewski, 2007). t engove (1997) observed that 40,000 children are victims of parental divorce annually and went on to predict that up to a third of all children born in wedlock risk experiencing parental divorce before the age of 18. inevitably, the family structure in south africa is transform ed by the increasing divorce rate. non intact family structures such as single parent families, stepfather families, grandmother families and families in which parents are merely cohabiting are a common sight. influence of family structure on child wellbeing parents have been identified as major role players in their children’s learning and development (pillay & w asiekewski, 2007). in the developed countries, the emergence of diverse family struc tures especially during the 1960s and 1970s prompted social scientists to investigate how the dif 45perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 fering family structures affect children. consequently, there is mounting evidence from studies on children growing up in non intact family structures suggesting that divorce has negative effects on child development (m udie, 1987; clapp, 1988; amato & k eith, 1991; m orrison & cherlin, 1995; entwisle & alexander, 1996; h ines, 1997; jerkins & g uidubaldi, 1997; swart, 1997; b attle, 1998; h anson, 1999; m iller et al., 1999; m artinot & m ontei, 2000). t he effect of growing up in non intact family structures on academic achievement has been documented by several studies. for example, m anskie et al. (1992) note that non intact family structures constrain preschoolers’ academic deve lopment by not stim ulating the development of relevant school entry cognitive and social behaviours. t his finding is elaborated by amato (2001) who notes that on average, preschool child ren in intact families are 12% more likely to be read to, every day, 6% more likely to be told stories at least three times per week, 13% more likely to visit a library at least once a month. such differen ces in grooming for schooling could possibly be an explanation for e ntwisle and a lexander’s (1995) finding that there was a strong link between two parent families and higher achievement scores in first grade. this has been recently confirmed by chen (2008) who notes that children with sup portive parents are more resilient, engage positively in schoolwork and encounter fewer problems. g reater participation in community activity settings including schooling is related to more child developmental progress and behavioural competence (t rivette, d unst & h amby, 2004). similarly, amato (2001) notes that achievement, from the primary grades through high school, can be hindered by growing up in non intact family homes. studies on the effect of father absence on children’s academic achievements made two impor tant revelations. t he first one is that father absence resulted in child repeating a grade (antwisle & alexander, 1996; b attle, 1998; m artinot & m ontei, 2000). t he second one is that boys without fathers performed poorly in school (abbott, m eredith, self k elly & d avis, 1997). t his is in contrast with m iller et al., (1999)’s observation that girls from non intact family structures performed better than boys from similar family backgrounds. m udie (1987) investigates age differences in the expe rience of divorce and found that younger children were more affected by parental divorce than older ones. t his finding is corroborated by k aplan and sadock (1998) whose study noted that school performance declined if divorce occurred between ages of 7 and 12. t he differences in the academic achievement of children from intact and non intact families were also highlighted in reading and maths. for example, the u s d epartment of education (1996) on reading literacy indicated that fourth grade children in intact families scored higher on reading comprehension than children living non intact families. according to this report, the performance of fourth graders in single parent families was equal or above the level of those in two parent bio logical families if economic resources were equal. studies by pong (1997) and pong, dronkers, and h ampden t hompson (2003) note with respect to achievement in mathematics, that non intact family structure had a negative and significant effect at both the individual and school level. reading re sults were slightly different; family structure at the individual level was not significant, but it was significant at the school level. h owever, income or other family resources did not appear to explain the lower outcomes of children from other types of non intact families. single parenthood was asso ciated with a lower academic performance on both math and science tests. h owever, recent studies employing complicated research and data analysis strategies dispute the causal link between the family structure and children’s academic achievement (e.g. g inther & pollack, 2003; pikketty, 2003; b jörklund, ginther & sundström, 2004). t he current argument is that lone parenthood may be correlated with other socioeconomic disadvantages, and so inferior academic outcomes may arise from (potentially unobserved) factors other than a parent’s absence. influences of divorce status on teacher perceptions t he findings suggesting that children from intact families perform better than their counterparts from non intact families are currently being disputed as they are based on flawed teacher perceptions. t eacher perceptions have been shown to have a lifelong effect on student performance. t he self fulfilling prophecy of teacher expectations has a direct effect on student performance. for instance, student performance will rise to the level of expectation or fall to one that is lower than their po 46 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 tential (o yserman, gant & ager, 1995). studies have demonstrated that powerful stereotypes exist among educators and practitioners regarding the academic goals, work habits, and abilities of children from different backgrounds (o yserman, gant & ager, 1995). t eacher expectations operate both through their provision of differential opportunity to children they perceive as being low versus high achieving by influencing children’s perceptions of themselves as capable learners. several studies have found that high achievers are exposed to more challenging and more difficult material and are given more oppor tunities for learning and development (jussim & h arber, 2005). c hildren who have more supportive teacher relations are more engaged in school, work harder, persevere more, participate more in class and are more attentive than their counterparts (little & kobak, 2003). furthermore, research by psychologists and marriage and family therapists indicates that individual cultural biases about children of divorce inadvertently may be causing a self fulfilling prophecy for these children (atwood, s chuster & t empestini, 1994). similarly, research on self fulfilling prophecy suggests that even professional people can not overcome their perceptions (b aras, 2009). as might be expected, these professionals often are influenced by their own interna lised socially created belief systems. t raditionally, divorce has been viewed as negative, an aberration from the “normal” two parent structure (atwood et al., 1994). t his is perhaps the single most important factor contributing to the discrepancies of the early studies proving that family divorce causes lower grades and poor school behaviour. researchers now recognise these findings only told part of the story. h owever, this partial information may have caused many educators to inaccurately predict lower grades and poorer behaviour of these children, and in so doing created a self fulfilling prophecy (atwood et al., 1994). t he flaw in many of the landmark early studies is that they relied on the ratings of teachers to compare children from one parent families with those from two parent families. t he perceptions that teachers hold, both negative and positive, may affect a child’s self concept and perception of his/her own academic ability (jussim, 1989). t his finding on the literature is problematic for self concept formation in children; labelled children may internalise self fulfilling prophecy (feldman & t heiss, 1982). it can be hypothesised that in response to their teachers’ expectations, children develop a false belief in their abilities and perform the standard set by the teachers, rather than performing to their actual abilities (rosenthal & jacobson, 1968). further, many of the data were drawn from clini cal populations of children already identified as experiencing difficulties in adjusting (atwood et al., 1994). studies where teachers were asked to rate the identical behaviours of fictitious children from single parent families, remarried families and intact families; teachers consistently gave low ratings for identified behaviours to the children from non traditional families. t eachers’ opinions of children at the very onset of their education may predict children’s success. t hey may give extra attention and motivation to the children they expect to become the most accomplished, conversely they may fail to support children they expect to fail (d ickinson, 2001). t hese differential evaluation contingencies may lead lows to believe less strongly than highs that effort will influence academic outcomes (cooper, 1979). t he erroneous premise has created conditions for lower teacher based academic ratings (atwood et al., 1994). n ew research on the outcomes of divorce for children seems to indicate that conflict between parents has a far greater impact on school behaviour, grades, and self concept irrespective of parental divorce (atwood et al., 1994). t he latest, most methodologically sound studies on the effects of divorce on children demon strate that many children emerge from the period of transition following divo rce psychologically healthy and perhaps even stronger, more independent and resilient for having successfully mastered the challenges associated with divorce (atwood et al., 1994). rationale of the study t he literature reviewed for this study show that most past researchers used archival data to in vestigate the relationship between family structure and children’s academic achievement. in some 47perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 cases complicated research designs employing complex and robust data analysis strategies have been used to investigate the relationship between family structure and children’s academic achievement. t he present researchers enter this interesting area of investigation from the south african context by finding out from teachers whether they see any d iscrep ancy in the academic performance of children from intact and non intact families. problem statement in the south african context, family bonds and relationships are broken on a daily basis due to the fast increasing rate of divorce, which also brings about drastic changes in the family structure. m any families in various parts of the country are headed by single parents, most of whom are women, i.e. single mothers, as a result of the divorce of the parents. n o study to our knowledge has ever reques ted teachers to directly rate and report the overall academic performance of six to twelve year old children from intact and non intact family structures. t hus, we wondered whether children growing up in intact and non intact family structures would demonstrate significantly different achievement profiles as rated by their classroom teachers. t he rationale for trusting teachers to rate children’s academic achievement is based on our appreciation of their knowledge of children and special training in evaluation of children’s achievements. purpose of study o ur purpose in the p resent study was to assess the impact of parental divorce on children by comparing overall teacher ratings of academic achievement of children from intact and non intact families in their classrooms. hypotheses t he following hypotheses were formulated for the study: 1. t here is no significant difference in academic performance between children from intact and non intact families aged 6 9 years old and 10 12 years old. 2. t here is no significant difference in academic performance between children from intact and non intact families by sex. method participants participants were 120 primary school children from intact and non intact families studying at four randomly selected schools from a small south african town. participants from intact families were 40 children: 10 six to nine year olds; 30 ten to twelve year olds; 14 were male and 26 were female; 23 were in grade 1 4 while 17 were in grade 5 7. participants from non intact families were 80 children: 20 six to nine year olds; 60 ten to twelve year olds; 40 were male and another 40 were female; 4 6 were in grade 1 4 while 34 were in grade 5 7. no participant was dropped from the study and all participants had never participated in a similar project before. instrument t he study employed the conners t eacher rating scale (ct rs) and end of term mathematics and language results. t he three items on the ct rs evaluate performance in spelling, reading and mathe matics. items on the ct rs are indexed on a scale of 0 (not at all) to 3 (frequently). it has the test retest reliability of .85 to .87. (conners, 1998; casat et al., 1999). t he teachers calculated the average term performance scores for mathematics and languages. t he scores of 0 to 100 were categorised as 0 25 (0 rating), 26 49 (1 rating), 50 75 (2 rating) and 76 100 (3 rating) for complementing with ct rs. 48 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 procedure permission for the study was granted by the d epartment of education and principals of participating schools. each child from non intact families in the study was matched with two of their classmates of both sexes, born closest in time, and living with both biological parents and also sitting closest in the classroom. participating teachers indicated their consent by way of signing a consent form that was given to them prior to their inclusion in the study. t he researchers assured participating teachers of the confidentiality of their responses. school records were used to obtain information on child ren’s family structure, age, sex and end of term results. children’s academic performance was also rated by participating teachers based on three items (items 29, 34, and 41) on the ct rs. data analysis t he chi square test was carried out to test for differences between teachers’ overall rating scores for children from intact and non intact fam ilies. c hi square was considered to be the appropriate statistical test because the study data was nominal. results t he difference in proportion of teacher overall rating scores of academic performance of children from intact and non intact families aged 6 to 9 years old, summarised in t able 1, shows a relationship (÷² 4.109, 1 df, p 0.042). t his means that the academic performance of children from non intact families within this age range is affected by the experience of parental divorce. fur thermore, results show a difference in proportion of teacher overall rating scores of academic per formance of male and female children from intact and non intact families (÷² 6.048, 1 df, p 0.014). t his suggests that the academic performance of female children from non intact families is affected by the experience of divorce. table 1. academic performance by age and sex (n 120) status of parents variable academic performance df ÷² p sig. level (0.05) below average average and above non intact intact non intact intact non intact intact non intact intact age age sex sex 6 9 yrs 10 12 yrs m f 6 6 11 15 7 11 10 5 4 19 19 45 7 29 16 35 1 1 1 1 4.109 1.325 2.363 6.048 0.042 0.25 0.124 0.014 s ns ns s discussion t he findings showed significant difference between teacher ratings of academic achievement of 6 9 year old children from intact and non intact families. t eacher ratings of academic achievement of children within the 10 12 year age range were not significantly different. t he results suggest that only children who were within the 6 9 year age range were negatively affected by parental divorce. t he findings are in line with those of m udie (1987) and k aplan & sadock (1998) who noted that younger children were more affected by parental divorce than older ones. t he negative effect of divorce on these children is characterised by a general decline in school performance. t he finding that there were no significant differences in the teachers’ ratings of 10 12 year old 49perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 children from intact and non intact families is not surprising. earlier studies reviewed by w adsby and svedin (1996) suggest that age plays an important role in children’s ability to cope with stressful situations. t his is probably because at certain ages children are able to reason about their circum stances and make bold decisions to resolve their challenges. in fact, p ast research referred to by w adsby and svedin (1996) indicates that children of the average age of ten years or who are in third grade through to sixth grade are capable enough to adjust satisfactorily to divorce. instead of focus ing on the stresses of divorce, these children shift their focus to their abilities and academic aspira tions. t here were also indications of sex differences in academic performance of male and female children from intact and non intact families as rated by teachers. t he academic performance of boys from non intact families was rated as better than that of girls from similar family backgrounds which apparently, is inconsistent with past findings (e.g. entwisle & alexander, 1996; abbott, m eredith, self k elly & davis, 1997; battle, 1998; m iller et al., 1999) suggesting that boys from non intact families performed less well academically than girls from similar backgrounds. the reason given for girls to perform better than boys is that they adjust better at home where the mother is usually the head of family (m udie, 1987). poor performance of boys is explained b y their problems with the mother which spill over to school where they are characterised by conduct problems. t he current finding is not surprising in view of w adsby and svedin (1996)’s warning that reports of negative divorce related impact on academic achievement of children are not consistent or conclusive. h owever, in line with the above finding, the latest, most m etho dologically sound studies on the effects of divorce for children demonstrate that many children emerge from the period of transition following divorce psychologically healthy and perhaps even stronger, more independent and resi lient for having successfully mastered the challenges associated with divorce (atwood et al., 1994). in african settings, there could be other factors which encourage boys to adjust better than girls to divorce. for example, in african communities boy children are valued more than girl children. in the absence of the biological fathers, boys are regarded as family heads. t his role makes them want to work hard for the fam ily. a cquiring a good education could be a beginning point for working hard for the family. t he other factor could be that african families are collective in nature. although the biological father may be absent other father figures in form of uncles, grandfathers, etc. can easily assume the roles which used to be performed by the absent father. in fact, african commu nities view child rearing as a collective activity. conclusion in line with earlier studies on the effects of family structure on children’s academic achievement, our study found age to be an important mediating factor. as expected, younger children were more affected by the experience of divorce than older children. in this study “younger” referred to children in the 6 9 year age range and “older” referred to children in the 10 12 year age range. t he hypothesis that children from intact and non intact families would reflect equal academic achieve ment as rated by teachers was refuted. w hile the study revealed sex differences in the experience of parental divorce, unlike previous studies, girl children demonstrated poorer academic achieve ment ratings than boy children. t he fact that the previous studies were conducted in individualistic cultural environments, quite different from the collectivistic cultural setting where the current study was conducted was given as an explanation for the discrepancy in findings on sex differences. all the sam e, the hypothesis that male and female children from intact and non intact families would show equal academic performance was not confirmed. o verall, our findings suggest that the impact of parental divorce is much less adverse than is suggested by earlier studies. t he findings of this study suggest that the self fulfilling prophecy did not influence teachers’ ratings of children’s academic performance in the rated areas. it is recommended that future research compare teacher ratings with children’s ratings on standardised tests. 50 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 limitations t here are several methodological limitations to the current study. w hen assessing children’s achievement, teachers may have taken variables other than academic achievement into consideration such as work ethic, behaviour problems, and attention during class, which may have influenced the results. additionally, teachers’ ratings were norm referenced rather than criterion referenced. only three items on the ct rs were used to rate children’s academic achievement, therefore the findings of this study may not be a true reflection of the children’s performance. t he study did not consider the characteristics of teachers (e.g. experience, training) and their prior knowledge o f children’s family status. future studies future research in this area should address a number of methodological issues as well as replicate and extend the current study. t o begin with, teachers’ reports of how well they know the children should be measured with a greater range of values. in addition, teacher experience should be mea sured. also, when teachers are asked to assess a child’s achievement relative to other children in the class, they should be asked to rate only the child’s academic abilities, and not to incorporate any other behaviours, such attention and work ethic, into the ratings. references abbott da, meredith wh, self kelly r & davis me 1997. the influence of a big brothers program on the adjustment of boys in single parent families. the journal of psychology, 13:143 156. amato pr 2001. children of divorce in the 1990s: an update of the amato and keith (1991) meta analysis. journal of family psychology, 15:355 370. amato p & keith b 1991. parental divorce and the well being of children: a meta analysis. journal of marriage and the family, 53:43 58. atwood jd, schuster d & tempestini m 1994. dealing with ‘broken’ homes. retrieved from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi m0jsd/is 4 51/ai 77195883/pg 2/?tag content;coll baras r 2009. teens don’t stand a chance against self fulfilling prophecy. retrieved from http://ezinearticles.com/?expert ronit baras 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grows up: a model for teacher expectation communication and performance influence. review of educational research, 49:389 410. delport jt 1997. social change and legal development. marriage & family life in south africa: research priorities. the family and the law. pretoria: hsrc publishers. dickinson dk 2001. teacher rating of oral language and literacy (troll): a research based tool. university of massachusetts: allyssa mccabe. dlamini crm 1997. the need for research in social sciences for family law in respect of blacks. marriage & family life in south africa: research priorities. the family and the law. pretoria: hsrc publishers. engelbrecht r & rencken wentzel, a 1999. divorce: a south african guide. south africa: zebra press. entwisle d & alexander k 1995. a parent’s economic shadow: family structure versus family resources as influences on early school achievement. journal of marriage and the family, 57:399 409. 51perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 entwisle d & 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miller pa, ryan p & morrison w 1999. practical strategies for helping children of divorce in today’s classroom. childhood education, 75:285 289. morrison dr & cherlin aj 1995. the divorce process and young children’s well being: a prospective analysis. journal of marriage and the family, 57:800 812. mudie g 1987. a family and developmental model of custody and access determination in divorce. uct. oyserman d, gant l & ager j 1995. a socially contextualised model of african american identity: possible selves and school persistence. journal of personality and social psychology, 69:1261 1232. piketty t 2003. the impact of divorce on school performance: evidence from france, 1968 2002. cepr discussion paper series no. 4146. pillay j & wasielewski t 2007. the utilisation of psychological support services in primary schools in gauteng. perspectives in education, 25:63 75. pong s 1997. family structure, school context, and eighth grade math and reading achievement. sociology of education, 71:23 42. pong s, dronkers j & hampden thompson g 2003. family policies and children’s school achievement in single versus two parent families. journal of marriage and the family, 65:681 699. rosenthal r & jacobson l 1968. pygmalion in the classroom. new york: holt, reinhart and winston. swart hj 1997. divorce its impact on the child. marriage & family life in south africa: research priorities. the family and divorce. pretoria: hsrc publishers. trengove jj 1997. the need for social scientific research for legal practice. marriage & family life in south africa: research priorities. the family and the law. pretoria: hsrc publishers. trivette cm, dunst c & hamby d 2004. sources of variation and consequences of everyday activity settings on child and parent functioning. perspectives in education, 22:17 33. us department of education, national center for education statistics 1996. reading literacy in the united states: findings from the iea reading literacy study. washington, dc. wadsby m & svedin cg 1996. academic achievement in children of divorce. journal of school psychology, 34:325 336. 53 within and between the old and the new: teachers becoming inclusive practitioners antoinette d’amant university of kwazulu-natal this paper explores how 20 african teachers in rural kwazulu-natal, south africa, construct their identities in the light of inclusive education, and how they negotiate the tensions and contradictions emerging from the process of becoming inclusive practitioners. central to this discussion is the understanding that teachers’ identities are socially constructed and that radical transformation requires teachers to draw on their transformative capacity and develop an alternative sense of themselves, not only as teachers but also as individuals. a qualitative approach using personal narratives is used to better comprehend the contextspecific experiences of these teachers and draw on their authentic voices. what emerges from the study is evidence of the simultaneous existence of both the powerful influence of historic roots of exclusion, which discourage teachers from becoming inclusive practitioners, and some fruits of inclusion, where teachers’ attitudes and practices are beginning to embrace inclusion. findings clearly show a lack of homogeneity in participants’ responses to inclusion, highlighting instead the diversity which exists within and between individual african teachers in rural contexts. keywords: inclusive education, transformative capacity, identity, teachers, rural context, white paper 6, south africa . introduction the discourse of apartheid was a calculated and systematically constructed system of social organisation, with the intended outcome of underdeveloping and subordinating non-whites, and establishing whites as the political, economic and social power and authority within south africa. educational segregation and inequality was strictly enforced, and the implementation of different curricula, pedagogies, investment and resources for different racial groups formed diverse identities and subjectivities. historically, rural areas were reserved for unskilled labour and the unemployed. this legacy of inequality lives on as rural areas are still identified as particularly prone to poverty and inequality (aliber, 2003). the advent of a democratic south africa heralded the end of a politics of exclusion and the beginning of a politics of inclusion. for south africa, the issue of inclusion is essentially one of extending quality education to the whole population (engelbrecht, green, naicker & engelbrecht, 1999). a broad definition of inclusion has been adopted, extending beyond the narrow interpretation of provision for learners with disabilities or special needs. education white paper 6: special needs education, building an inclusive education and training system (department of education of south africa, 2001) advocates a focus on identifying and minimising barriers to learning, development and participation that impact on all learners, including those in mainstream schools. the understanding of inclusion outlined in white paper 6 rejects the deficit and medical model of difference (which locates deficits and blame within individuals) in favour of the social model (which identifies and addresses barriers in the social environment). despite the international shift to inclusive education, fundamental tensions and contradictions exist in most countries between stated policy and actual practice (kavale, 2002). the contrast between policy and practice is particularly apparent in south african rural schools. rural schools suffered serious neglect under apartheid’s system of unequal education. the view prevails that better resourced, historically privileged schools are more likely to be able to implement new education policies than historically disadvantaged, mainly african schools, particularly rural schools catering for the poor and marginalised (mattson & harley, 2003). the issue of poor teacher quality in rural areas is foregrounded, along with warnings that 54 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 continued unequal distribution of resources across the urban-rural divide will result in a two-tier education system, wherein the worst prepared teachers teach the learners in most need (cochran-smith, 2001). teachers living and working in rural contexts are widely understood within a deficiency framework. they are perceived as trapped in poverty and inequality, without the means to escape these (carter & may, 2001), and defined as backward, ignorant and passive, with little capacity to change (may, 2000). despite transformational education policies, rural school practices are expected to remain largely unchanged (vayrynen, 2003). a contributing factor to the policy-practice dilemma in rural areas could be the stark contrast between the fundamental principles underpinning inclusive policy and the traditional values held by the majority of rural communities. for teachers living and working in rural contexts, implementing policy does not simply represent a new approach to pedagogy – it is also a profound challenge to individual values and beliefs, and those of their community. criticism has been levelled against education policy implementation which overlooks the highly personal element of transformation, the context and the actual agents of transformation (carrim, 2002; fullan, 1993; jansen, 2001; kalabula, 2002; mattson & harley, 2003; soudien, 2006). the universalising tendency to view all teachers as homogeneous, and the assumption that the knowledge claims inherent in inclusive education (equal rights and participation, empowerment and emancipation) transcend specific contexts and teacher subjectivities, could lead to the perpetuation of the view that african teachers living and working in rural contexts are deficient. i wanted to explore how such teachers construct their identities in the light of inclusive education, and how they negotiate the tensions and contradictions emerging from the process of becoming inclusive practitioners. in doing so, i adopt a more complex lens that takes cognisance of griffiths’ (1998: 181) assumption that individuals are embedded in the community to which they belong, therefore deriving their rationality, morality and sense of justice from their particular community. conceptual framework the conceptual framework for this study draws on theoretical arguments about the nature of teacher identity and is specifically informed by the understanding that teachers’ identities are socially constructed within social settings. conceptual considerations include how the identities of african teachers living and working in rural contexts were defined for them as products of historical circumstances of subordination and marginalisation, and how they are experiencing and responding to being called agents of transformation (giroux, 1988); social responsibility, social change and social justice (cochran-smith, 1991). investigating these teachers’ identities thus cannot overlook the deep culture (clough & corbett, 2000) of social exclusion and non-participation. inclusion challenges traditional and dominant meanings and subjectivities and introduces the expectation that teachers will take on the mantle of change agents of a new inclusive system of education and social order. such radical transformation signifies “a fundamental dislocation with the past” (harley & parker, 1999:190), especially for african teachers living and working in rural contexts. research suggests that many teachers experience the new education policy as marginalising and alienating (ainscow, booth & dyson, 2004; engelbrecht, 2003; shisana, peltzer, zungu-dirwayi & louw, 2005). while most teachers give the idea of inclusion their support, they experience the actual change towards inclusion as a radical disrupting of old and familiar values, attitudes, norms and practices. this is especially true for african teachers living and working in rural contexts, where former traditional structuring principles of identity are thrown into question, resulting in a “crisis of representation” (mclaren, 1995:58). transformation requires these teachers to draw on their transformative capacity (giddens, 1984) and begin redefining themselves. this requires that they develop an alternative sense of themselves, not only as teachers but also as individuals. this study reflects the understanding that the process of becoming inclusive practitioners for teachers who are deeply embedded in the historical cultural norms, values, attitudes and practices of segregation and exclusion, brings with it many contradictions and dissociations inherent in a dislocation with the past. 55d’amant — within and between the old and the new this framework highlights the pivotal role that the processes of ongoing identity construction play in these teachers’ transitional journeys. it highlights the need to speak of a plurality of meanings, and the understanding that all meanings are “historically contingent” and emerge “out of social conventions and sometimes in opposition to them” (mclaren, 1995:27). the conceptual framework supports the view that the subject itself becomes a site of struggle (mclaren, 1995). it acknowledges the heterogeneous and often contradictory processes of subject formation and draws attention to the ways that culture and experience intersect to constitute determining aspects of human agency and struggle (mclaren, 1995). adopting a politics of difference and individualisation is central to the conceptual framework as it speaks out against homogeneity and emphasises the need to recognise the plurality of teachers’ experiences and their individual avenues of transformation. through recognising the complex and contingent nature of identity and multiple processes of negotiating transformative capacity, it was hoped that this study would serve to shift present negative perceptions and understandings of african teachers living and working in rural contexts. the study the study attempts to gain a better understanding of the experiences of african teachers who live and work in rural contexts, becoming inclusive practitioners, by focusing on their subjective understandings and specific contexts. the research questions for this study are: how do african teachers working in a rural context construct their identities in the light of inclusive education, and how do they negotiate possible contradictions that may emerge in the process of becoming inclusive practitioners? purposive sampling was used to identify 20 teachers who presented as information-rich cases (patton, 1990). these teachers were drawn from the 16 rural schools in kwazulu-natal, south africa, which participated in the national department of education pilot project (2001-2003). this project aimed to create an awareness of inclusive education policy and practices, and to facilitate the implementation of white paper 6. the sample comprised 15 females and 5 males, whose teaching experience ranged from 8 to 28 years. three of the participants were principals. the schools which participated in the project are considered rural schools and the teachers all lived in the surrounding rural townships. critical concerns in these areas included poverty, unemployment, substance abuse, hiv/aids, out-of-school youth, and single parent, predominantly female-headed households. the home language of the area is isizulu and all teachers were african. while previously white, coloured and indian schools in south africa have shown increasing degrees of desegregation, schools historically set up under the department of education and training (african schools) have remained racially homogeneous. all teachers in the sample are therefore african and zulu-speaking. the study adopts a qualitative research approach which commits to studying the world from the perspective of the interacting individual (denzin & lincoln, 2000; merriam, 2009; de vos, 2002). the use of narratives as the main strategy of inquiry is an attempt to better comprehend the subjective, lived experiences of these teachers becoming inclusive practitioners, and to draw on their authentic voices. the narratives of participants were developed through a series of creative prompts under the umbrella of visual methodology, and expanded through in-depth, unstructured, conversational interviews. visual triggers and prompts (in the form of two self-drawing exercises and a photovoice exercise) were each followed by conversational interviews where participants were encouraged to explain their drawings and photographs in an informal group situation. these sessions went beyond mere description, giving participants the opportunity to engage in their own interpretations (mitchell, de lange, moletsane, stuart & buthelezi, 2005). these group sessions ranged from one to two hours each and were recorded and transcribed. broad ethical principles of confidentiality, autonomy and nonmaleficence (terre blanche & durrheim, 2002) were considered. consent obtained from participants was voluntary and informed and the rights, anonymity and dignity of participants were prioritised (de vos, 2002). participants themselves engaged in the first layer of interpretation, where they explained their drawings and photographs. their reflections comprised their narratives, with which i engaged directly in 56 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 the second layer of interpretation. tesch’s approach to organising and interpreting the data was utilised (de vos, 2002). narrative texts were read through repeatedly, enabling me to become immersed in the data and familiar with it. whole-text analysis was then applied to these free-flowing narrative texts. units of meaning and categories were identified. a list of the unique categories that emerged was compiled and reduced into themes. these themes were then analysed in terms of the extent to which they supported or contradicted the existing literature relating to this area of research and the conceptual framework adopted by the study. interpretation and analysis occurred at each of these levels and sought to identify and weave together concepts, categories and interrelationships which emerged from the data. the authentic voices of participants were constructed using their direct quotes, offering a thick description of the data generated. conclusions from this study shed light on the specific challenges which face african teachers working in rural contexts. it therefore contributes to the local and international conversation concerning the implementation of inclusive education in rural contexts and developing countries. discussion and interpretation of findings roots of exclusion the findings serve as a reminder that african teachers in rural contexts are necessarily products of a society steeped in historic forms of exclusion and segregation. these definitions make up the fabric of how they understand themselves and others. it is clear from participants’ narratives that notions of inclusion often directly contradict traditional roots of exclusion and the historic belief in segregation on the basis of difference. the following narrative excerpt illustrates the dislocation with the past that inclusion signifies, regarding the traditional assumptions about intelligence and ability that exist within a deep culture of inequality and social exclusion: it was initially very difficult to accept or implement inclusive education with our general lack of tolerance and interest in accepting difference. before, if you are disabled or if you have a learning barrier, you were useless, there is nothing that you can do; you don’t think as others do, you don’t have any skills, you can’t work. there is nothing that i can do to help you. it was ok that they just sit at home not doing anything because that was just the way they are. if you get a child who is disabled, even the parent of that child says that child is a curse. this stigma from the community is something that goes a long way back. the following narrative excerpts reflect how inclusion challenges participants’ classroom practices and relations which have been steeped in traditional values and practices, such as labelling, discrimination, authoritarianism, corporal punishment and routine: before, i used to label children. the teachers who taught us were labelling us. when you are in the classroom, you begin to see that this one is clever and this one is ‘dom’ [an afrikaans word meaning ‘dumb’ or ‘stupid’] – we used this kind of words. and you forget about those ones that are struggling and concentrate only on those ones that are sharp. before, we would shout at the child in front of the class. we didn’t have the idea that we were not respecting the child’s feelings. we were ignorant about the need to give that child individual attention, or maybe even find out what the particular problem is that he or she is having. before inclusive i was using a stick to discipline the learners. most of the time they were crying because of the stick. the teachers who taught me were using the stick. it seems as if we inherited this from them. it was just like that in my head the learner can learn if the teacher is having a stick in her hand. inclusion presents as a new way of making sense of classroom relations, attitudes and practices, which does not always correspond with participants’ accepted attitudes, values, norms and practices. the following excerpts illustrate how some teachers all too readily fall back on exclusive practices: 57d’amant — within and between the old and the new this is learner x (i have removed the name of the learner for ethical reasons). since he was born he had no anus. for excretion, he’s using a ‘bag’. i’ve got that problem with him because when that ‘bag’ is full, i send him home because i can’t …. i’m afraid even to see that problem. he’s excellent academically. the problem’s only that ‘bag’. he should be at that special school. there are teachers there who are trained and used to helping children in this way. but not here. because of the home backgrounds our learners come from, many teachers feel that we cannot do without corporal punishment. it worked for us when we were at school, and it works for our learners now. the parents also request that we use corporal punishment. we know it is not allowed but we will continue to use it. it is part of who we are. these findings support the theory that individuals are embedded in the community to which they belong (griffiths, 1998). many participants continue to derive their rationality, morality and sense of justice from their community, which is steeped in the deep culture of traditionally exclusive values and practices. the following participants’ narrative excerpts reflect how they are required to develop an alternative sense of themselves as inclusive teachers and redefine much of what they understand about teaching. the excerpts illustrate the crisis of representation in which these teachers find themselves, having their traditional boundaries and roles challenged by the expectations of what inclusive teachers should be: i’m frustrated as a teacher because there are a lot of things that are changing, so quickly in education and there are a lot of things to do to accommodate the new system in a very short time. it seemed we are always having to adapt ourselves. there is a transformation in such a way that sometimes we feel that we are getting lost somewhere, somehow as teachers. even the idea of inclusion itself is sometimes challenging. you have to shift focuses from the way we have been thinking before and adapt ourselves to a new system of accepting, thinking and doing things. the study highlights the difficulties that many of these african teachers, working in a rural context, experience in reconciling ideological contradictions and tensions between the old and familiar, and the new and unfamiliar. the expectation that they transform into inclusive practitioners inevitably forces them into a difficult space of choosing between two different identities and opposing social forces. findings reinforce the need to understand the lived experiences of these teachers and consider the tensions and contradictions they encounter. some participants chose to avoid the risks of engaging with inclusion on any deep level, and simply adopted the rhetoric of inclusion to appease the expectations of inclusive policy. while some participants may understand many of the policy principles of inclusive education and even describe themselves and their teaching practices as inclusive, a significant number have not yet made the personal shift to inclusion. fruits of inclusion despite revealing evidence of deep roots of exclusion, findings also reveal evidence of fruits of inclusion emerging among these african teachers working in a rural context. some teachers’ attitudes and practices are beginning to embrace inclusion and they seem genuine in their commitment to the process of extending the right to meaningful education and full and equal participation to all: inclusive education opened my eyes to the fact that learners who do not learn are not always the cause of that, but the teachers, the school curriculum, textbooks being used, methods used and other barriers can be the cause of learners failing to learn – all these factors need to be investigated before labelling a learner a failure. i know now that all learners in our classrooms need varying levels of support, and as teachers we must be able to offer them the support they need. inclusion influenced me more positively. this inclusion promotes my spirit of caring and teaches me not to discriminate. i also learned to accept learners according to their level and also to prepare the lesson according to their level. it also teaches me to be patient and helpful. 58 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 when i get into the class, i bear in mind that children have barriers from time to time because of some problems – everybody has these. inclusion helped me realise that people are born differently, and perceive information differently, at different levels. i am a much better teacher now. when time passes, the people change their mind. after they get more information about how they are going to deal with the demands this new thing places on us. and so with this inclusive education, we learn to adapt what we know and think. despite challenges, some participants remain committed to their individual journeys of transition towards becoming inclusive practitioners. some teachers are successfully negotiating their transformative capacity and redefining themselves and their teaching practices, supporting the theory that the subjects themselves become sites of struggle (mclaren, 1995). the following excerpts support the notion that participants’ professional identities play a major part in defining their sense of self and provide evidence of a parallel process of personal and professional development: teaching is the most important part of who we are. i see inclusion as in here [pointing to her heart] not anymore out there. i didn’t used to be caring for those who were not coping. i didn’t think about these things before. now i have learned to care about these learners who have barriers to learning. i’ve learned to treat every learner, and all people, equally and to give support where it is needed. i feel different as a person now. for me it has become a never-ending journey. there are challenges all the time. the more you see, the more you solve and address things, the new things come up all the time and you wonder if we’ll ever achieve this dream of an inclusive society. there are challenges but i think they are good challenges, because they make us think. and you are always monitoring your thoughts, monitoring your actions, having to think before you do. when you find you have done something that is against your social justice principles, you feel very bad about it, but then you tell yourself that next time you are not going to do it this way. you’re wanting to contribute to this dream of a just and peaceful society. for some participants, the introduction of inclusion is challenging old discourses of difference, and new sense is being made of the way life and education can be. within and between the old and the new while findings provide flickers of hope for the future of inclusion and the dream of inclusive education, the reality is that not all participants engage equally in the struggle towards new forms of identity, which inclusion requires. only a percentage of participants actually manifest the transformative capacity necessary for effective transformation. findings highlight the plurality of teachers’ experiences of and engagement with transition – a reminder that there are multiple forces, agencies and resources (balfour, mitchell & moletsane, 2008) at work in individual african teachers working in a rural context. findings also highlight the need to speak of a plurality of meanings and to understand that these emerge “out of social conventions and sometimes in opposition to them” (mclaren, 1995:27). the internal differences within the sample indicate that any blanket generalisations about african teachers working in rural contexts would be misleading. individual teachers are positioned within and between the old and the new social forces, where evidence of exclusion and inclusion exist alongside each other. wider implications of the study transformative policy requires that african teachers working in a rural context be inducted into a new way of doing and being (mudimbe, 1988), with new identities conferred upon them and a new order of activities and values instituted. this is reminiscent of the grand narratives of enlightened progress and development (kavale, 2002) which served to justify theories of colonial expansion and the discourse 59d’amant — within and between the old and the new on african primitiveness. this study uncovers evidence that these teachers are being forced to occupy a similar space of colonisation, where they are named by others and their selves are externally defined within a deficiency framework, leading to their continued disempowerment. this leads me to question whether transformative education policy, far from being a liberating and empowering force, may in fact serve to perpetuate unequal urban-rural power relations, and the exclusion and marginalisation of african teachers working in rural contexts. are these teachers not at the receiving end of a colonialist discourse, thereby making them into subjects once again? freire (1993) warns against the ghosts of the past haunting revolutionary transformation. these teachers’ contributions to the pedagogy of inclusion and liberation will be impossible if they are not liberated, empowered and inclusive themselves. further policy implementation needs to consider how the transformation and emancipation of african teachers working in rural contexts can be supported. a politics of involvement should be considered, where methods of implementing policy reflect the consciousness of the teachers themselves and reflect a commitment to working with teachers towards transformation. developing african teachers working in rural contexts into inclusive practitioners calls for a more inclusive understanding of teachers’ engagement with transformation. rather than imposing a single discourse of inclusive education, an inclusive politics would accommodate different interpretations of inclusion and its implementation (young, 2000). such a position would understand that inclusion may only be present intermittently, partially or potentially, thus allowing teachers to vary in the extent, depth and intensity of their commitment to the inclusive process. conclusion this study highlights the diversity which exists within and between these teachers. what emerges is evidence that, despite numerous tensions, contradictions and constraints, some african teachers working in rural contexts are engaging in the process of redefining their identities. while not all are equally open to the idea of inclusion and many have not yet made the shift to inclusion on any deep level, it is also clear that these teachers cannot be viewed as a homogeneous group, and that adopting a deficiency framework when considering african teachers working in rural contexts is clearly misleading and inappropriate. some display the transformative capacity to challenge historical roots of exclusion and, in doing so, are developing an alternative sense of self, professionally and personally. through this process of redefining and transforming their own historical destinies, they are constructing themselves in the role of transformative agents of social 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phenomenon is more common in medical schools, pointing to increased levels of stress and inci dences of attempted suicide among medical students. the decay in humanitarian attitudes and decline in humane values contribute to stress, although some academics believe that this type of environment is normal for medical students. to confront this criticism, academics should not only focus on cognitive aspects, but also adopt a humanistic pedagogy by integrating humane values in curricular and co-curricular activities of the academic environment. the aim of this paper is to illustrate how a humanistic pedagogy is applied in a medical school in south africa, by sharing narratives collected from medical teachers who advance and integrate humane values such as, care, empathy and love in their teaching practice. keywords: medical education; humane values; humanistic pedagogy; narrative; care; empathy; love. 1. background and context the university of the free state (ufs) in bloemfontein, south africa (sa), endeavours to be recognised as an excellent institution in two of its performance areas, namely (i) the academic project, which focuses on excellence in teaching, learning and research, and (ii) the human project, with its focus on reconciliation and social justice (ufs integrated report, 2013). this paper is situated within the human project, which is located mainly in the institute for reconciliation and social justice (irsj) at the ufs. the aim of the irsj is to “cultivate humanity as a counterstrategy to the disrespect and violence that pervade human relations and erode human dignity” (irsj, 2013). in particular, this paper focuses on the school of medicine (som) at the ufs and is based on my 15 years of experience as a lecturer, student academic support and development practitioner, tutor programme coordinator in the in the som, researcher in the field of higher and medical education and head of one of the student residences at the ufs. within the different roles and responsibilities in these positions, i have the opportunity to interact and engage dr mp jama university of the free state doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i1.3 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(1): 28-39 © uv/ufs http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.3 29 jama applying a humanistic pedagogy to advance and integrate humane values ... with students from diverse backgrounds. during these interactions and engagements, i have gained rich information on the many challenges that students face in academic environments. in addition, being from a similar social and school background as some of the students, i have realised the significance of adopting a humanistic pedagogy to advance and integrate humane values in a medical school environment, which is sometimes perceived as being inhumane. 2. introduction there are studies that have reported on dehumanising campus environments and the effects on students (chickering & gamson, 1987; wilcox & ebbs, 1992; condren et al., 2002; peréz et al., 2010). notably, the study by thomas (2002) reveals that the relationship between students and teachers is fundamental for learning and coping with academic difficulties. rovai, gallien and wighting (2005) concur that students learn from teachers who display humane values such as friendliness, warmth and kindness, and those who foster a close professional relationship with students. in sa, a study by jansen, tabane and sehlapelo (2010) describes the persistence of apartheid’s practices, with negative attitudes and racist expressions being made towards black students, thus portraying the hostility of the academic environment; hence, the significance of fostering humane values in the academic environment. relatedly, palmer and zajonc (2010) use wendell berry’s statement: the thing being made in a university is humanity.... what universities...are mandated to make or to help to make is human beings in the fullest sense of those words – not just trained workers or knowledgeable citizens but responsible heirs and members of human culture... underlying the idea of a university – the bringing together, the combining into one, of all disciplines – is the idea that good work and good citizens are the inevitable byproducts of the making of a good – that is, a fully developed – human being. although the studies referred to point to issues around the general higher education environment, some studies have focused on the medical environment (rosenberg, 1971; edward & zimet, 1976), with whitman, spendlove and clarke (1984) pointing to what is called “academic hardliners” and “academic elitists”. relatedly, cohen (2002) refers to issues in the explicit curriculum (caring, compassion, empathy, respect, fidelity, the need to be trustworthy, honest and committed) and in the hidden curriculum, in which students experience opposite values, learning environments that “revere objectivity, detachment, wariness and distrust of emotions” and the “tarnished reputation and dehumanising demands” on students. other studies (derby, thomas & shanafeld, 2006; hojat et al., 2009; gaufberg et al., 2010; veerapen & mcaleer, 2010) refer to cynism, decay in humanitarian attitudes, decline and erosion of empathy that “fades away like an endangered species”, leading to stress among medical students (hojat et al., 2009). in particular, roberts (2010) claims that contrary to expectation, many of the experiences in medical school may overwhelm and exhaust instead of inspire students. clark (2008) describes incidences in which students experience “academic incivility”, meaning any “speech or action in the form of a rude or sarcastic comment disrupting the harmony of the teaching-learning environment”. in my phd study in higher education (moagijama, 2009), one medical student wrote, “this faculty has lost the art of humanity”, thus affirming claims of an inhumane medical environment. moreover, during my interaction with students, they refer to remarks such as “what type of doctor are you going to be” and “i hope 30 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) you will not be my doctor one day” made in the presence of peers and patients, and how these remarks humiliate and lower their self-esteem. findings from the studies mentioned above suggest that there is a need to explore the humanistic domain of the academic environment in medical schools. fortunately, this area of humanistic research is gaining prominence in different countries. for instance, in the united kingdom (uk), the purpose of the strategic map of the faculty of education at liverpool hope university is to “contribute to the development of knowledge and understanding in all fields of education characterizing all the work with values arising from hope and love” (liverpool hope university, 2010). lovat et al. (2011) refer to the national framework for values education (nfve) in australian schools as a way to address some of the social, emotional, moral, spiritual and aesthetic developmental issues that schools tend to neglect. relatedly, veugelers (2011) states that currently, there is an interest in the role of education on values and norms in the post-modern world. in addition, kleijnen et al. (2009) maintain that values are reflected in mission statements and branding slogans of institutions and organisations, and how these portray powerful and stable forces that influence their performance and success. regrettably, these are not given serious consideration in practice (harland & pickering, 2011). lyons (2006) posits that one of the primary values of social sciences is opening up to studying the richness of human experiences. however, the challenge of humanistic research is teaching people how to trust their capacity to recognise choices they could make to function optimally, thus “finding their calling”. as a researcher in the field of higher and medical education, one of the choices that i made was to explore the humanistic domain of medical education by collecting narratives of lecturers who apply a humanistic pedagogy to advance and integrate humane values in their teaching practice in the som at ufs. 3. a humanistic pedagogy decavalho (1991) stated that as a paradigm, humanism evolved in the 1960s from the work of abraham maslow and carl rodgers and became a movement in american psychology, with the crisis in american education continuing because of the failure to introduce maslow and rodgers’ humanistic dimension in the education system. salazar (2013) refers to a humanisation of the academic environment and freire’s notion of the humanistic teacher. according to salazar (2013:127), in his writings, freire “grapples with the meaning of human existence and the purpose of pedagogy” and envisaged a humanising pedagogy. hence, the concept “humanising pedagogy” is regarded as freire’s original contribution. salazar further states that in freire’s 1990 pedagogy of the oppressed, he describes a humanising pedagogy as a revolutionary approach in which the teacher does not manipulate the student, but expresses the consciousness of the student. relatedly, bartolomé (1994) wrote about a dehumanising pedagogy as a deficit approach that strips off the students’ cultural, linguistic and familial aspects. relatedly, biesta (1998) referred to a “pedagogy without humanism”. in addition, a humanistic pedagogy can be related to a humanistic learning theory that ozuah (2013) posits is based on the assumption that people have a natural tendency to learn and learning will flourish in a nourishing and encouraging environment. salazar (2013:127) also writes about mechanical pedagogical approaches that devalue and dehumanise teachers and students, urging teachers to “engage in quest for mutual humanization”. linking to the above, freire made a call for educators to reinvent the pedagogical humanistic philosophy in their own context. educators are responsible for promoting a 31 jama applying a humanistic pedagogy to advance and integrate humane values ... more fully developed human world through their pedagogical principles and practices (salazar, 2013). hence, the three narratives collected from the teachers in the som at ufs reported in this article epitomise freire’s and salazar’s call for reinvention of the humanistic pedagogy and integration of such principles and practices. these narratives form part of a research project that focuses on the academic support and development of undergraduate medical students at ufs. the representation of the narratives follows a narrative research and inquiry, which according to clandinin, pushor and murray orr (2007:21) is “appealing to teachers and educators as they provide comfort associated with telling and listening to stories as well as inquiries into our own practices”. in their work, connelly and clandinin (1990:2) asserted that “by nature people live their storied lives and tell stories of those lives”. hence narrative researchers study stories that they collect from others and write narratives of experience (connelly & clandinin, 1990; polkinghorne, 2007). these researchers situate these stories within the participants’ personal experiences (their job, homes), cultural (racial or ethnic) and historical (time and place) and context (creswell et al., 2007). thus, the narratives reported in this article describe the stories of the lives of the medical teachers and ways they model a humanistic pedagogy in their practice. these narratives were captured on audio and video recording with their permission. in relating their stories, the teachers provided their personal experiences and background in their jobs as teachers as well as at home (as husbands and parents). they also relate these experiences to specific times and places. in the following representation of narratives that epitomise the values (i) care, (ii) empathy and (iii) love, the teachers will be identified as dr a, dr b and dr c. the basis for the analysis of these narratives was literature on these three values. 3.1 the care narrative some studies reporting on care in the academic environment purport that a caring relationship between a teacher and a student can influence affective and cognitive learning in a positive way (teven & mccroskey, 1997; doyle & doyle, 2003; kim & schallert, 2011). noddings (2010a:147) states that, “we do not ‘care’ in order to model caring; we model care by caring”. the following narrative by dr a epitomises this statement. dr a started with a background about his life as a child, husband and parent. he described how as a child he moved from one country to another with his parents, how he was once “dumped and deposited in a super negative environment” and was labelled a racist because he was from south africa (sa). he even said, “i faced dark moments in my life”. when he came back to sa, he met some christian colleagues and students. notably dr a said that it was important to understand the background because “this is who i am…nothing of what happened in the course of my life could have occurred if i did not experience these specific incidents”. dr a’s story on care was about how he and his family had to stay with three students, which was “a way god used us and was a season in our lives”. in the case of the first student, he received a phone call from a father who suspected that his child was depressed, suicidal and contemplating to discontinue his studies. dr a said “without any hesitation we just knew we had to take him”. in the second case, he received a phone message from a student one saturday morning stating... “prof, i am cold, hungry, writing examinations on monday, have been walking in the mall for the past two days”. once again the family “just knew he had to come” and stay with them. the challenge was having an additional person, young children and the first student. they prayed to god to provide space for this student. their prayer was 32 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) answered when a woman who was renting one of the rooms suddenly gave 24 hours’ notice to leave. eventually the first student completed his studies and left. later on they met the third student during an outreach camp and again because of his circumstances they “looked at each other and knew we had to take him”, thus having two students living with them again. eventually the students completed their studies and left. according to dr a, all three these students came from dysfunctional families and for the first time experienced a normal family environment consisting of both parents, thus changing their perspective on fatherhood and marriage. according to him, their relationship with the students was strengthened because they shared the same worldviews and values. moreover, the three students had the “humility to become children” and even called them mom and dad, and their children regarded them as their siblings. responding to calls for help affirms noddings’ (2010b:12) view that “when people attend and receive expressions of pain or need, they feel drawn to that pain, experience motivational displacement and are moved to help”. furthermore, the incidences portray noddings’ (2010c:391) position that “in a caring relation, the carer is first of all attentive to the caredfor and this attention is receptive, that is the carer puts aside her own values and tries to understand the expressed needs of the cared-for”. dr a cautioned and recommended that nobody should respond the same way “if the lord does not speak to you”, confirming noddings’ (2010a) opinion that carers must first think well in order to assess and respond appropriately to the expressed needs of the immediate cared-for. in addition, carers should consider the likely effects of their decisions on the wider web of care and on the caring relationship itself. clearly, the decisions to stay with the three students whilst having their own children had implications for the family’s life. although dr a fulfilled the role of a father, he was still their teacher and had to manage that aspect of the relationship as well, thus justifying the view that adults who know they will serve as role models, or likely to be regarded as such, have a special responsibility to show what it means to care by caring. however, their role as model should not overwhelm their actual caring (noddings, 2010a). dr a acknowledged that because this dual role was at times compromising, he requested to be excluded from the students’ assessments. he also referred to the extra time devoted to teaching by setting up “some sort of a home clinic” to equip them with clinical as well as basic skills, such as time management and effective study techniques. of note is that salazar (2013) argues that a humanising pedagogy correlates with literature on care in education stating that it includes respect, trust, reciprocal relationships, listening, mentoring, high expectation and interest in the student’s well-being, which are values that dr a models in his practice. 3.2 the empathy narrative in practice, empathy is displayed during positive, supportive interactions and studentcentred classrooms environments (mcallister & irvine, 2002). the following narrative by dr b illustrates such practice. as a start, he mentioned that he grew up as an introvert, focused on academics to define his identity and imagined himself as a surgeon who would appear on the cover of time magazine, saying, “it was all about me, all about building a life around me and my performance”. however, his life changed when he became a born-again christian, and he said, “everything changed completely”. eventually he changed from being an introvert to an extrovert, from being timid to being confident and bold. this change developed into a passion to “invest in people, develop them and see them blossom”. unfortunately, there 33 jama applying a humanistic pedagogy to advance and integrate humane values ... was a time when he was also struggling with trauma and deep emotions in his life, but after completing his studies; he left the country to pursue a master’s degree in medical education. after completion, he returned to sa and met dr b, (who was a colleague at that time) who shared the same passion for supporting students. dr b’s demonstration of empathy was displayed in his conscious approach to developing positive interactions and providing supportive, non-threatening and safe classroom environments for students. he said his desire for such an environment was based on the belief “do unto others as you want them to do unto you”. dr b further referred to the empowerment one receives from people who speak positively into one’s life. he notably became very emotional and was almost in tears during the talk, stressing... “so powerful”. he also reiterated that he makes an effort to memorise the students’ names and have their photos during classes, and said “this freaks them out” as they are not familiar with such practice. in another effort to know the students, he asks them to write a 1 500-word essay about themselves. in the beginning, students are reluctant to write and he instead starts by giving them a 30-minutes lecture about himself, his life, family and barriers around his life, including showing them photos. according to him, this is his way of saying “welcome to my family”. he further mentioned that it is a testimony that he is not perfect, demonstrates that lecturers are also human and his attempt to break the myth that lecturers are untouchable. he referred to this approach as “teachers modelling their brokenness”. eventually students write their essays, thus allowing him to know and understand them. dr b’s narrative affirms the notion that “as we listen to the other, we identify her feelings; we begin to understand what she is going through. as a result, we feel something; when what we feel is close to what the other is expressing, we may say that we are experiencing empathy” (noddings, 2010b). in addition, dr b’s practice might demystify hojat et al.’s (2004) claim of the decline in empathy in medical education. furthermore, his practice demonstrates that empathy can potentially foster openness, attentiveness and positive relationship (mcallister & irvine, 2002). another aspect of his narrative reflects the benefits of sharing short stories, how this practice can build capacity for empathy and an ability to deal with ambiguity in professional settings (osmond et al., 2012). 3.3 the love narrative according to cho (2005), plato and paulo freire claimed that love plays an integral part in the educational setting. in quoting freire, whitehead (2011:4) wrote “with love, education becomes an open space for thought from which emerges knowledge.... when a teacher and student love one another, they do not have sex, do not merely care for one another, nor do they pass knowledge between each other... if education is to be a space of thought, we must insist with freire that ‘it is impossible to teach without love’”. unfortunately, according to rowland (2008), the word love is not prominent in educational settings, yet it is not silent. jansen (2013:1) adds that, “in the voluminous published literature in educational research journals, the word ‘love’ hardly appears”. in narrating his story on how he incorporates love in his teaching practice, dr c explained how he re-defined love for himself and said, “if i say i love somebody i want the best for them”. he further stated that when he married his wife he “had to be the best for her in order to love her”. dr c said that he applies this principle to others and in his teaching practice... “if you love them be the best for them”. 34 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) dr c further explained that before he goes to class he prints out students’ photos and makes an effort to familiarise himself with their names. when he enters the class, he “purposely” looks at them with the “eyes of love” as if looking at his own children. interestingly, he mentioned that this practice helps him to have a connection and identify students who seem “stressed” and in a non-intrusive manner finds ways to support them. he related one particular moment when he saw one student who appeared stressed and called her by name during class. the student was shocked, thinking that he is targeting her, as students normally perceive. he decided to “express his love” by praying for her as his own daughter. amazingly, this student visited his church and as he was the only familiar person, she approached him. subsequently he put her in contact with one of the women in church who he knew would support her. the woman continued to pray for and with the student, thus providing further support outside the academic environment. in conclusion, dr c said that his story “signifies the importance of caring, humanity, reaching out to students, a symbol that recognises them as real people, the value of love and desiring the best for them”. dr c’s practice affirms that love is at the centre of what teachers do and in moments of happiness, loving and being loved, teachers find meaning in their work and value their lives (bullough & pinnegar, 2009). unfortunately, higher education institutions neglect this central, but difficult task of learning to love and to live in true peace and harmony with others and nature. this epistemology of love can bridge the divide between intellect and feelings (palmer & zajonc, 2010). dr c’s narrative demonstrates how love can be incorporated in the curriculum and highlights freire’s point that it is impossible to teach without love. 4. discussion the fundamental purpose of higher education institutions is to develop students holistically as human beings. regrettably, institutions have tended to focus on cognitive pedagogy and have neglected the humanistic pedagogy, as advocated by maslow and rodgers in the 1990s (decavalho, 1991). studies have levelled criticism over the inhumane, impersonal and hostile academic environment and the manner in which it affects students and staff. on the one hand, students continuously experience the academic incivility, humiliation and loss of selfesteem as well as the subsequent poor performance and decreased throughput rates. in medicine particularly, students continue to experience stress. in response, institutions design programmes that unfortunately tend to be ineffective (tinto, 2009), thus indicating a need to explore other aspects of the academic environment. on the other hand, the members of staff in these institutions are often torn apart as they neglect and/or compromise their humane values. astin, astin and lindholm, (2011) are of the opinion that institutions have emphasised “outer” aspects such as courses, grades and honours earned, and persistence towards a degree, but neglected “inner” aspects such as values, beliefs, emotional maturity, moral development, spirituality and self-understanding. in particular, salazar (2013) believes that it is a moral duty and responsibility of educators to understand and enact a humanising pedagogy that is not only grounded in theory and practice, but is shaped by the realities of students and teachers’ lives. from a south african perspective, keet, zinn and porteus (2009) assert that a humanising pedagogy is directed by compassion, care, respect and love for students and teachers, and their identities, histories and experiences. the three narratives above are an enactment of a humanistic pedagogy and are based on the realities of the students and the lives of the educators. 35 jama applying a humanistic pedagogy to advance and integrate humane values ... as aligned to clandinin, pushor and orr’s (2007) ethical consideration in research, i asked the three participants to read their narratives to verify the representation of their stories and they wrote: we do not know the impact we have on the lives of others, we do not know why we walk the paths we do, but we need to be aware there are others out there... and then consider we may be influencing them. this phrase is consistent with henry adams’ quote “a teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops” (albom, 1997: i). another comment was “wow, got tears in my eyes again”. this show of emotion is important in student-teacher relationships and pedagogical practices (zembylas, 2011). 5. conclusion in this article, i reported on the humanistic pedagogical practice of teachers in one medical school’s effort to advance and integrate humane values. this article can possibly serve as an example of how institutions and departments can model an aesthetic and humane environment displaying humane values. in addition, perhaps the article provides an answer to alleviating stress among medical students, assist staff members struggling to practice humanistic principles and soften the hearts of the so-called “academic hardliners and elitists”. in medicine, humane values are important in providing patient care and should be inculcated in students whilst still on training and be transferred to practice, as affirmed by haden et al. 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george washington university, school of education and human development. zembylas m. 2011. teaching and teacher emotions: a post-structural perspective. in: day, c. & chi-kin lee, j. (eds.). new understandings of teacher’s work: emotions and educational change. new york: springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0545-6_3 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0545-6_3 learning through doing: suggesting a deliberative approach to children’s political participation and citizenship dr kristina bentley university of cape town no one is born a good citizen; no nation is born a democracy. rather, both are processes that continue to evolve over a lifetime. young people must be includedfrom birth. a society that cuts off from its youth severs its lifeline. kofi annan, former un secretary general and nobel peace laureate the paper focuses on the issue of children’s political participation and considers the idea of political participation understood as a human right. contingently it considers the question of children as agents or potential political actors, as well as the assumed limitations of their role. the paper begins by offering an outline of how children’s rights have come to be considered in the international context as enshrined in the united nations convention on the rights of the child (crc), and the idealized concept of childhood that is implicit in this convention. the paper then proposes some alternative approaches to understanding childhood and children’s status, with a view to proposing a more nuanced approach to their political participation that neither treats them as passive recipients of duties towards them, nor as the voiceless possessions of groups or families. this is followed by an account of the emerging debate about deliberative democracy as a more substantive approach to political participation, and by some consideration of how this relates to the rights and capabilities of children as political actors. the paper concludes with some tentative suggestions about how institutions in south africa could be utilized to realize a more flexible and nuanced approach to children’s participation in this key area. keywords: political participation, deliberative democracy, children’s rights introduction the concept of children’s participation can be approached in a number of ways. this paper focuses on the issue of children’s political participation, and to that end it considers the idea of political participation understood as a human right, and contingently it considers the question of children as agents or potential political actors, as well as the assumed limitations of their role. the ultimate aim of the paper is to raise some tentative thoughts about the kind of education and institutions that would be appropriate to the demands of participatory and active citizenship that correlates with the human rights of south africans under the south african constitution (reference; reference list). it is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the particular factors which may affect children’s agency in south africa, but it is important to at least mention as starting point the staggering inequality between children in terms of their socio-economic backgrounds and opportunities, which makes children’s agency in south africa particularly problematic. the paper begins by offering an outline of how children’s rights have come to be considered in the international context as enshrined in the united nations convention on the rights of the child (crc)1, and the idealized concept of childhood that is implicit in it. in so far as the crc (reference) has not only been signed, but also ratified by south africa, it has the force of domestic law (a process whereby international law is received upon ratification) over and above the general constitutional principle of taking international law into account. the crc is then in a very real sense an actual more detailed addition 1 the crc was adopted by the un in 1989, and came into force in 1990. to date it has 191 state parties, with only the usa and somalia remaining outside of the convention. bentley — learning through doing 47 to the rights of children as enshrined in south africa’s constitution (reference), the poor enforcement of these rights in practice notwithstanding. the paper then proposes an alternative approach to understanding childhood and children’s status with a view to proposing a more nuanced approach to their political participation, that neither treats them as passive recipients of duties towards them, nor as the voiceless possessions of groups or families. this is followed by an account of the emerging debate about deliberative democracy as a more substantive approach to political participation, and by some consideration of how this relates to the rights and capabilities of children as political actors. the paper concludes with some tentative suggestions about how institutions in south africa could be utilized to realize a more flexible and nuanced approach to children’s participation in this key area. rationale for the focus on youth and children a point of clarity needs to be inserted here to explain the explicit focus on the political participation of children. south africa, like many developing countries, and in contrast with trends in the developed world, is a very “young” country. while the most recent census data that is available is from 2001,2 and must therefore be treated with some caution, the general pattern of age between this and the previous census (in 1996) is clear, and therefore it can be reasonably assumed that the next census (in 2011) will continue to reflect these patterns. of south africa’s total population of just under 45 million, more than half3 of the population are under the age of 25, while 41% are under the age of 18, and nearly a third4 are under the age of 14.5 this is highly significant in light of the role that the youth in south africa have played in the past as activists for political change (the events of june 1976 being just one example), and is further reflected by the calls in the past to reduce the voting age to 14.6 furthermore, it can reasonably be assumed that those in the under-14 age category at the time of the last census account for a large percentage of new voters in the most recent elections in 2009. schulz-herzenberg (2009) cites the independent electoral commission’s (iec) figures of an increase of 3.16 million new voters (out of a total of some 23 million) in 2009. this highlights the importance of thinking about youth and young people as nascent voters and citizens, long before they become eligible voters, as that which affects their lives today will be what influences their vote in the future. this raises a final reason for the focus on youth political participation, in particular in the south african context. not only do children comprise a significant proportion of the population of south africa, but their experience of childhood is for many far from that of the imagined ideal (see below). the toll taken by deaths due to hiv and aids and the consequent phenomenon of child-headed households and children who are breadwinners, as well as other arduous circumstances that affect south africa’s disadvantaged children, require us to take their views and opinions seriously, and create a duty to respect the role that these children have to play as citizens. bray, henderson and moses in their paper in this volume offer a detailed account of the landscape regarding children’s rights in south africa today, which underlines this point. 2 the census that was scheduled for 2006 was reduced to a community survey, owing statssa’s inability to conduct a full census at that time. the census scheduled for 2011 will therefore be the first in a decade to gather a full set of census data. 3 54.5% 4 32% 5 all the data cited here is from statssa 2001, available at: http://www.statssa.gov.za/census01/html/default.asp 6 interestingly, recent support for a lower voting age has also been voiced in the united kingdom, most notably in wales and scotland, as well as in lebanon and in the united states of america (usa). perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201148 what are children’s rights?7 the crc was signed and ratified by south africa in 1995, in the immediate period following 1994, when there was an effort to bring south africa in line with a number of international human rights instruments. these efforts were part of the general move towards entrenching a culture of human rights in south africa, and must be seen against the backdrop of the constitutional negotiations of the early 1990s, which foregrounded a commitment to human rights, in contrast to the practices of apartheid. the crc must be read in light of the context that gave rise to it the end of the cold war. as with many other international human rights conventions, the biggest challenge regarding the crc is its enforcement. while it may be possible to reach broad agreement on general standards of correct treatment for children around the world, in practice this translates into vastly different understandings of what such treatment can be taken to imply. furthermore there are many examples that challenge the crc’s universal ideal for children, not least of all that children often behave in autonomous and adult ways that challenge the notion of them as passive subjects of duties, rather than autonomous holders of rights. it is frequently argued that the supposed universal standards established by the crc are based on western standards and concepts of childhood, reflecting “western social policies which emphasise the role of individual causations and professional interventions and de-emphasise the influence of the wider social, economic, political and cultural circumstances” (pupavac, 2000: 517). the crc reflects this bias and it is also important to note that many of the rights included in the convention are in fact not specifically children’s rights, but rather more general human rights, that are included and restated in the crc because children are more vulnerable to the abuse of these rights. so while these rights do not entail anything special about their holders at the level of their specification, they have special implications for children at the level of enforcement. various socio-economic rights are included in the crc, and these, including the right to education, are also enshrined in south african constitution (reference; reference list), subject to the clause of “progressive realisation”. as noted, it is certainly the case that the duties that correlate with these rights are more pressing and onerous with regard to children, because children suffer more serious and permanent damage when such duties there are lacking. the celebrated grootboom case8 underlines this point, as it was precisely the right to housing as it impacted on children that formed the subject of the constitutional court’s deliberations in that case. the specific human right under consideration in this paper is the right of political participation, which needs to be considered in light of its universal purchase, as there is a pre-supposed universal conception of childhood (implicit in the crc) that sets some kind of standard of right treatment of children across all countries and cultures. ivernizzi and milne (2005: 1) note this problem by emphasizing that the crc presents us with a standard of treatment for children based on an imagined world where poverty does not exist, and children are therefore free from the scourges of disease and inadequate education. most of these rights are what are known as derogable rights, as they are constituted by limitations that are placed on children in terms of the exercise of their liberty, as the practice in question is one that is regarded as inappropriate for children to be engaging in by virtue of their youth. political participation therefore deserves some further consideration in terms of both its relativity (i.e. the content of the right), and contingently, its universal enforceability. 7 this section of the paper draws on bentley, k 2005. can there be any universal children’s rights? international journal of human rights, 9(1): 107-123 8 the case of government of south africa and others v grootboom and others 2000 (11) bclr 1169 (cc) is regarded as the landmark test case for the “progressive realisation” of the social and economic rights enshrined in the south african constitution. the case turned on section 26 of the constitution, which makes provision for the right of access to adequate housing, and importantly section 28, which specifies children’s right to shelter. while the court rejected the argument on the basis of section 26 (finding that the government’s existing housing programme was reasonable), it upheld the argument on the basis of section 28, but only in the event that parents, who have the primary responsibility, are unable to provide shelter for their children. for a more detailed account of the case, and its gender implications, see the grootboom case and women’s housing rights, idasa budget brief no. 111, october 2002. available at: www.idasa.org.za/gboutputfiles.asp?writecontent=y&rid=655 bentley — learning through doing 49 an ideal concept of childhood? the question of what childhood is understood to mean, and the idealized concept of this that the crc seems to assume, begs the consideration of an alternative to this notion. as already noted, the crc is thought to enshrine a largely ideal western conception of childhood, which is “a model of childhood based on the idea that children should be protected from the adult world. the western conception of childhood as a time of play and training for adulthood has become the universal standard to be enforced under the crc to the age of eighteen” (pupavac, 2000: 517). the crc’s view of the ideal of childhood is one in which children hold rights as passive objects of duties, and does not assign to them any significant levels of autonomy, nor does it require of them responsibility for the types of decisions that are entailed by political participation. this definition, however is highly problematic both empirically and normatively. firstly, children do, as we know, have the capacity to act in an adult fashion to varying degrees, often owing to circumstances beyond their control – some south african examples are cited by bray et al in their paper (in this edition). but it is also arguably not a concept of childhood that it is universal in a normative sense either. there may be other concepts of what childhood ought to entail that differ quite significantly from the ideal view of the crc, and it is one of these in particular, which i would like to raise as potentially challenging for a universal conception of children’s rights and children’s political participation. i have argued elsewhere (bentley, 2005) that there are a number of alternative concepts of childhood that may be normatively acceptable in different contexts, but that still conflict with the supposedly universal standard set by the crc. one of these concepts of childhood, which may capture the benefits of the rights-based protection of children offered by the crc, but which would not encounter the perceived problem of the passivity of children that it implies, is one that would view children as a vulnerable group. in this way, children may be regarded as having a) a higher degree of competence to order their affairs, and b) autonomy over the exercise of their rights. this would entail duties towards children, but rather than these being towards them as passive recipients, the duties would be towards them as active participants in securing their own well-being. this directly challenges the classic view of children as “citizens in the making” as articulated by marshall (cited in lister, 2007: 696), and rather seeks to emphasise the capacities and agency of children, as well as the importance of the quality of their input in matters involving their well-being. lister refers to unicef’s (write in full and then (unicef)) report on the evolving capacity of the child as following this more agency-based approach, which is sensitive to, and takes account of, children’s capacities as they evolve in different contexts (lister, 2007: 698). the paper explores the possibility of how this conception could be developed as the basis for children’s political participation, and how they could be seen to be acting autonomously and in their own best interests. this is then followed by a consideration of the emerging debate on deliberative democracy as a more substantive, participatory form of political participation, which does not require the formality of the traditional aggregative model, which relies on a specific age of majority. age-related rights and questions about autonomy: political participation in an earlier publication (bentley, 2005) i noted that political participation was one of the areas in which children manifestly do not conform to the ideal (passive) concept of childhood assumed by the crc. this paper develops this idea and relates it to the proposed “deliberative” approach discussed below. it is, however, necessary to briefly revisit the background to this question, and restate the basis of the argument from my earlier work in this area, because it establishes the link to the rationale for democratic participation that is being relied upon. in most jurisdictions the franchise is limited to those over the age of 18. some countries have further age restrictions on election to various offices and to the legislature, but generally, the competence to participate in political life is seen to begin at 18. there are of course perfectly sensible reasons to do with practicality, education and responsibility why this limit should be in place, and it is not generally or necessarily regarded as a challenge to liberal democratic principles. the rationale however, for democratic political participation is that those who are to be governed have a stake in who governs them and according to what policies they are governed. presumably, as one perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201150 also is liable to contribute to government revenue (usually through various forms of taxation), one should have some say in how that public revenue is spent. there is nothing, however, in either the definition or practice of democracy that requires the electorate to make good choices about who should govern them and what their policies should be. it is enough that they do the choosing. even in well-established democracies electorates can sometimes be seen to behave in collectively irresponsible ways. why then do we exclude those under the age of 18 from political participation? if there is nothing in democracy that implies that the electorate must meet some standard of competency to vote, then it is unclear why we should exclude the very people who are to be on the receiving end of (and expected to pay for) policies that are being decided now. this is not to suggest that children should be unquestioningly treated as political actors with a full set of civil and political rights, but rather that the political views of adolescents as future members of the electorate, at least, should be considered. a number of mechanisms could be put in place to facilitate this to make some contribution to generating better policies which make the needs of children and their human rights a priority. one of the most promising is a more deliberative approach to politics that would allow for both formal and informal inputs to be made in the political process. two models of democratic political participation: aggregation versus deliberation the concept of the democracy that dominated contemporary liberal theory for most of the 20th century is known as the aggregate model also called the distributive paradigm. the aggregate model assumes that questions of justice are about material distribution running along a continuum rooted in libertarian notions of self-ownership on the one hand, to arguments for equality of resources on the other, with rawlsian type arguments somewhere in the middle.9 recall that this was the era of the cold war, where the idea of democracy – especially liberal, constitutional democracy – was not universally accepted. a major criticism of the classic, aggregate model of democracy is therefore that it does not reflect on the relationship between theories of justice and theories about democracy, and deliberative democracy is an effort to bring thinking about democracy and thinking about justice closer together. this is not really a new idea, but rather a resuscitation of more republican ideals about the government and arguments for more direct democracy, such as those articulated by rousseau (reference; reference list). the context in which this revival is taking place, however, is that of globalization and debate about cultural relativism within democratic systems, and so we need to consider this in context. since the early 1990s political theorists have begun to think about how democracy could be handled differently in order to treat cultural minorities justly, and not just give effect to the wishes of the majority. with the end of the cold war in the last decade of the 20th century some began to think, as reflected fukuyama’s famous statement, that we had reached the “end of history”.10 in other words, the debate was no longer about what type of political system to have, but rather how to best give effect to such a system in a diverse world. this proposes a more substantive set of criteria for democracy that will take the voices and rights of minorities more seriously, and which will prevent liberal democracies from taking their own normative assumptions for granted. the other important point to note about the move towards a more deliberative approach to democracy and democratic participation is the supposedly transformative nature of the process (farrelly, 2005: 200). rather than individuals bringing their private preferences to bear in a process of winner-takes-all aggregation in the form of voting, deliberative democracy anticipates a process whereby citizens actively 9 rawls’s 1971 a theory of justice, is regarded as possibly one of the most influential works of political theory of the 20th century. it reinvigorated debate among theorists about the relationship between liberty and equality, which it is rawls’s aim to bring into balance. 10 francis fukuyama, the end of history and the last man, published by the free press (new york) in 1992 and reprinted in 2006. bentley — learning through doing 51 engage with one another, debating matters of common interest, and in the process, becoming educated, developed and improved in terms of their civic consciousness. this seems to be an approach that can be deployed with quite promising results as far as children are concerned. it is scarcely necessary to reiterate for this audience that children’s abilities – cognitive and social – are shaped by their input and interaction, and so in the absence of any clear evidence to the contrary, one can only assume that children are capable of a degree of deliberative interaction, although just how much and on what topics, remains a matter for discussion. notice how this conflicts with the idealized western conception of childhood noted above, as it projects onto children as political participants a degree of responsibility. furthermore, how appropriate would it be to expect children to engage with “adult” topics that form the core of political decision making? some tentative answers to these questions are explored in the following section. a deliberative approach to children’s participation a major dilemma faced by proponents of deliberative democracy is its inherent impracticality. for this reason, deliberative democracy has been treated largely as a purely academic enquiry (mcdevitt & kiosis, 2004: 5). questions are, however, being raised increasingly about how institutions can be designed to give effect to more deliberative methods of political interaction, and in particular, how this could be built into educational curricula with a view to educating children for active and informed citizenship. so the idea here is not to supplant the traditional forms of political decision making, but to supplement them with a range of methods which citizens can use to participate in and benefit from the transformative effects of deliberation. it is these supplementary measures that seem most appropriate in the case of children, as they are drawn gradually into political decision making in a way that is appropriate to their levels of maturity. it also allows children a space in which they are not only being groomed to be effective citizens in the sense of being informed about the issues that affect them, but that also highlights the institutions and mechanisms that they can activate in articulating their rights and interests. the main question, again, however, is the practical one of how this might best be effected. mcdevitt and kiosis (2004) describe an interactive civic curriculum in the usa, taught between elections, over a 3-year period. the project commenced just after the 2002 elections, when students were interviewed to provide a baseline from which to assess the impact of the programme. the report in question records their results midway through the project and lists several findings, three of which are noteworthy for this paper: 1) the impact on children themselves in terms of their deliberative abilities, 2) the impact on their parents and 3) the effect across socio-economic class and in light of parental political behaviour. firstly, the programme was judged a success in terms of its impact on children, as it proved a successful catalyst for deliberative democracy, as students continued on toward a discursive path to citizenship after the end of the curriculum. not only did the frequency of the discussion increase in the long run, students became more skilled at holding political conversations. for instance, the curriculum promoted dispositions such as the willingness to listen to opponents and feeling comfortable about challenging others in discussion. students learned to partake [sic] in passionate – but civil and respectful – discourse. also evident is a desire that is at the heart of deliberative democracy: motivation to validate opinions by testing them out in conversations and seeing if they are persuasive (mcdevitt and kiosis, 2004: 2). secondly, the programme had the indirect effect of involving parents in their children’s civic participation, as part of the curriculum consisted of home discussions initiated by the students, and these results were shown to persist over time. “this phenomenon illustrates that political socialization should not be viewed as a process that begins and ends in childhood. we present a model of second-chance citizenship, in which parents increase their political involvement due to their children’s participation” (mcdevitt and kiosis, 2004: 2). the curriculum also made provision for community involvement, which could presumably also have beneficial, if indirect, consequences. thirdly, the study reports that the programme “makes a difference above and beyond what we could otherwise predict from social background” (mcdevitt & kiosis, 2004: 23), including socio-economic perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201152 background, and parental voting behaviour. in other words, despite other influences that may or may not predispose them to be receptive to a programme of civic education, a curriculum that actively promotes deliberation as a mode of political participation has an identifiable and long term effect on all youth participants. these findings provide a useful basis for some comparative consideration, albeit one which must be treated with caution. how feasible would something similar in south africa be? firstly, it must be noted that while the usa study claims to have included participants from diverse backgrounds, the situation in south africa can scarcely be replicated at the level of socio-economic disparities, inequalities between educational facilities, as well as differences in language, social and cultural background. while these pose a challenge to a programme such as the one described above, with enough time and resources they are presumably not insurmountable. other reservations arise in terms of who would benefit from such interventions, with, presumably, better resourced schools in urban areas faring better, while poorly resourced schools, both urban and rural, with already overstretched staff and resources struggling to keep up. in this regard, note should be taken of the role that the law provides for learners to participate in school governing bodies (sgbs) in south africa. the south african schools act, 84 of 1996 (sasa) requires that secondary school learners should participate in their sgb if they are members of the representative council for learners for that school. it is vastly beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the various factors that may affect the functioning of sgbs, and indeed their history and evolution in the context of south africa’s post-apartheid education system is a separate topic. it is, however, worth noting that while this participation is provided for in law, and is generally regarded as a progressive step in democratizing south african schools, it does suffer from certain shortcomings. as argued above, learners at less-resourced schools are culturally and educationally less predisposed to participation than their counterparts at well-resourced schools. mncube (2008) reflects on this inequality and the outcome that it has for learner participation in a qualitative study of four schools representing the spectrum of schools in the south african system; from a formerly white (model c school) on the privileged end of the scale, to a rural, formerly black school on the least privileged end of the scale, with two township schools (formerly black and coloured respectively) representing the middle of the spectrum. mncube’s findings show that the school at the more privileged end of the spectrum “could be described as operating more democratically than the other three schools”; while the rural school was “on the negative extreme” largely as a result of the authoritarian conduct of the principal in relation to learners and parents alike (mncube, 2008: 86-87), and in the conclusion mncube emphasizes the potential of sgbs as crucibles for learner participation. mncube’s (2008) argument for the potential of schools to play this role is also explored by pretorius (2007), who argues that learner participation not only encourages democratic behaviour for citizens, but may also help to overcome difficulties that arise in contexts of diversity. while this argument cannot be explored here, it is worth noting, as pretorius’s (2007) argument echoes one of the primary claims made by theories of deliberative democracy. this theme is picked up by waghid (2009: 89), who makes a similar claim for deliberation in the classroom at university level, and refers to specific problematic instances or conflicts involving identity, such as allegations of racist practices at universities, to illustrate his argument. he concludes that “cultivating citizenship through deliberation offers much hope to counteract blindly patriotic sentiments and to engender cosmopolitan citizenship”. is there a role here for civil society in advancing a deliberative democratic agenda?11 and how might existing institutions be harnessed to encourage more deliberative spaces for children’s political 11 there are some peer education initiatives, such as generation of leaders discovered (gold), which collaborates with peer educator trainers such as oil, which operates in four schools in the western cape. the problem with these initiatives, however, is their reach, as they operate mainly in an urban setting, and furthermore their focus tends to be more on leadership as it is understood in a socio-economic, rather than a political sense. for more information, see http://www.oil.org.za/what-we-do.php bentley — learning through doing 53 participation? the conclusion will touch briefly on these two suggestions, as well as acknowledge another possible major limitation of this approach. conclusion the major voices of oppositional politics in south africa, outside of political parties, remain those that emanate from civil society. a number of civil society initiatives, such as those whose business is to articulate various aspects of human rights, could have the potential to be developed to assist in some kind of active civic engagement and participation for learners in schools. secondly, it is important not to discount the vast scaffolding of institutions supporting democracy that have been erected since 1994. while some of these are defunct, owing to their being hijacked by various political factions, and overrun with those whose aim is to benefit themselves, the potential at least exists for some of the chapter 9 institutions, and others like the youth commission, to be drawn into such a process. note that south africa has an office on the rights of the child, located in the presidency, but like its counterpart office on the status of women, its work is primarily that of reporting on work done by others, and it has thus far proven itself incapable of managing its own finances and affairs adequately.12 the point about extra-governmental fora for youth participation, however, is one which needs to be emphasized. margaret arnott argues that one solution to the problem of democracy being “equated almost exclusively with voting” is to recognize the importance of civil society in providing both a space for citizens’ participation, as well as the training and experience for active citizenship (arnott, 2008: 361). arnott (2008) is concerned about the sidelining of the role of civil society in market-based liberal democracies, but the point to note is that civil society activities and arenas are able to include children both as participants, and as those who are able to set the agenda for policy and deliberation by identifying issues that are of concern to them. the major problem, however, remains one of how this deliberation can be translated into a real stake in the political outcomes, and deliberative democracy generally suffers from the deficit that while it may allow participants to engage with one another meaningfully, it does not offer us ways to move an agenda forward or break deadlocks. would this youth deliberation be just that – a forum for the airing of immature political opinions without any real impact on political outcomes? it is quite likely, but at least it does provide an incubator for more informed, responsible and engaged citizens in the future. these are imperfect solutions to messy problems, not least of all because of the unequal basis of participation from which children in south africa will be proceeding. it seems, however, as if some avenues for informed and active youth participation require exploration in the interests of securing the future of south africa’s young democracy. references arnott m 2008. public policy, governance and participation in the uk: a space for children? international journal of children’s rights 16: 355-367. barry b 2001. culture and equality: an egalitarian critique of multiculturalism. cambridge: polity press. bentley k 2005. can there be any universal children’s rights? international journal of human rights, 9(1): 107-123. deneulin s 2009. (forthcoming). democracy and political participation” in s deneulin and l shahani (eds), an introduction to the human development and capability approach: freedom and agency. earthscan: 2009. available online at: http://www.ophi.org.uk/pubs/textbook_ch8.pdf 12 in may 2009, a ministry of women, children and people with disabilities was created, but the activities of this department have been low key, and it operates from within the presidency, and so does not, in my view, mark a major shift in either policy or practice. at the same time, the offices on the rights of the child and the status of women respectively were relegated to the status of ‘projects’ within the presidency portfolio, overseen by a minister within the presidency. perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201154 farrelly c 2004. deliberative democracy in an introduction to contemporary political philosophy. sage. available online at: http://politicalscience.uwaterloo.ca/farrelly/chapter7oftextbook.pdf farrelly c 2005. making deliberative democracy a more practical political ideal. review article, european journal of political theory, 4(2): 200-208. freeman mda 1983. the rights and wrongs of children. london: frances pinter. ivernizzi a & milne b 2005. introduction: children’s citizenship: a new discourse? journal of social sciences, special issue, 9: 1-6. lister r 2007. why citizenship? where, when and how children? theoretical inquiries in law, 8: 413 – 438. mcdevitt m & kiousis s 2004. education for deliberative democracy: the long-term influence of kids voting usa. circle working paper 22 (september 2004). available at: http://www.civicyouth.org/ popups/workingpapers/wp22mcdevitt.pdf mncube v 2008. democratisation of education in south africa: issues of social justice and the voice of learners. south african journal of education, 28: 77-90. pretorius g 2007. some thoughts on the search for just and democratic schools in south africa. perspectives in education, 25(4): 87-91. pupavac v 2000. the infantilisation of the south and the un convention on the rights of the child. in hj steiner & p alston (eds), international human rights in context (2nd ed). oxford: oxford university press. please check spelling of author’s name. it is pupavac in the text. schulz-herzenberg, c. 2009. voter turnout key to south africa’s 2009 elections. institute for security studies, iss today, 23 march 2009. available at: http://www.iss.co.za statistics south africa (statssa), census 2001. available at: http://www.statssa.gov.za/census01/html/ default.asp steiner hj & alston p (eds), 2000. international human rights in context (2nd ed). oxford: oxford university press. van bueren g 1998. opening pandora’s box. in g van bueren (ed), childhood abused: protecting children against torture, cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and punishment. dartmouth: ashgate. waghid y 2009. education for responsible citizenship. perspectives in education, 27(1): 85-90. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2013 university of the free state 141 lungi sosibo department of education, cape peninsula university of technology e-mail: sosibol@cput.ac.za telephone: 071 070 1266 views from below: students’ perceptions of teaching practice evaluations and stakeholder roles lungi sosibo interest in teaching practice as an essential component of teacher education is growing. in spite of this, there is a dearth of research investigating students’ perceptions of teaching practice evaluations from them as beneficiaries. this qualitative study examines students’ perceptions of teaching practice evaluations administered by means of observations and criteria-based forms from a systems theory approach, with a view to establishing how effectively all aspects of support, structure and teaching practice evaluation interact and contribute to the development of new teachers. the sample was drawn from one of three campuses that offer the teacher education programme. data was gathered from 12 focus groups of 57 students using in-depth, semi-structured, open-ended interviews. results revealed that, although students generally found teaching practice evaluations meaningful, several systemic factors mitigated against their growth and development. recommendations included strengthening partnerships between schools and university and among all stakeholders; development of a teaching practice theoretical framework and alignment of teaching practice in the campuses that offer the teacher education programme, and developing teaching practice frameworks and structures that could offer students meaningful learning experiences while they are in the schools. keywords: teacher education, teaching practice, collaboration, stakeholders, support, evaluations introduction teaching practice (tp) constitutes the core of teacher education programmes (teps) (maphosa, shumba & shumba, 2007). leshem and bar-hama (2008: 258) describe tp as “the application of the practical pedagogical knowledge acquired during the didactic lessons and workshops”. subedi (2009) believes that tp provides student teachers with an opportunity to integrate theory with classroom practice and to equip them with the requisite skills for the world of teaching. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 142 there is abundant research on tp and its evaluation, as well as on the importance of collaborations between university and school within which tp exists. however, few studies report research results on these issues, using student teachers’ voices as assumed beneficiaries. this study is designed to investigate student teachers’ (hereafter students’) perceptions of tp evaluations administered by means of observations and criteria-based forms from a systems theory approach, to determine how effectively all aspects of stakeholder support, structure and tp evaluation interact and contribute to the development of new teachers. the study seeks to answer the following research questions: • what are students’ perceptions of observations and criteria-based evaluations as part of a tp evaluation system? • what do students perceive as the roles of evaluators and mentors during tp evaluations? it is hoped that the results will enlighten teacher educators about the effects tp evaluations have on students’ performance and development. in addition, the results might add new insight into how teacher education policymakers, teacher educators, evaluators and mentors could better support students, while managing tp and its evaluation process. the results might further engender dialogue and debate concerning tp evaluations among teacher educators globally. ‘evaluation’ instead of ‘assessment’ was adopted, because the tp evaluation process is broader than assessment and focuses on different teacher quality dimensions such as, for example, effectiveness, competence and performance (dunkin, 1997) that are observed over time. evaluation is ongoing and uses a range of instruments, criteria and standards administered by different evaluators for professional improvement. context of current teaching practice this section presents a synopsis of how tp is managed and how evaluations are administered in a four-year further education and training (fet) teacher education programme (tep). fet students qualify to teach at high school. this tep is offered on three campuses at the level of bachelor of education degree in the faculty of education, located within a south african university of technology. this study was conducted on one of these campuses. tp is a core component of this tep. it is facilitated by a tp coordinator who oversees tp-related processes. in this tep, students and staff draw a distinction between university-based ‘evaluators’ and school-based ‘mentors’, which could suggest a perception of mentor core roles as providing support and coaching, and of evaluators as evaluating teaching performance. placement of students in schools firstto third-year students select schools in which they wish to be placed from three options. fourth-year students select any school of their preference. host schools are allocated according to relevance of students’ specialisations to the schools and sosibo views from below: students’ perceptions of teaching practice evaluations and stakeholder roles 143 according to subject specialisations which have to match those of the mentors. secondto fourth-year students are evaluated during tp, but first-year students only observe mentors teaching. secondand third-year students are randomly distributed according to the number of fet educators and part-time evaluators, irrespective of the subjects in which they specialise. school-based mentors are selected depending on availability and their teaching subjects. fourth-year students are evaluated by experts who teach related content knowledge (ck) and pedagogical knowledge (pk) (in this instance, subject didactics (sd)), to ensure accurate evaluation of students’ expertise in ck and pk prior to graduation. unfortunately, no standardised instrument to measure this accuracy exists and there is no guarantee that teaching experts are evaluation experts. expectations the tp coordinator’s responsibility is to liaise with schools about students’ placements, mentoring and evaluations. because students from five higher education institutions offering teacher education are placed at approximately the same time period, there is always the potential for overcrowding in schools. collaboration with stakeholders is weak, as there are no formal meetings between tp coordinator, mentors, evaluators and students. neither is a training workshop provided for evaluators and mentors. when students go out for tp, they take documents to schools explaining the roles of stakeholders regarding the support and guidance students need during tp. teacher educators in this faculty are expected to formulate a common tp theoretical framework and to align tp across all teps and campuses. however, attempts to do so have not materialised. formative and summative evaluations during tp, only evaluators and mentors evaluate students’ teaching performance by means of observations and criteria-based forms. these forms consist of nine evaluation criteria, including complex performance indicators. students’ final scores accrue from these evaluations and from tp portfolios in which they document reflections on field experiences, with the former constituting 150 out of 250 scores (60%) and the latter only 100 out of 250 scores (40%). this signals the weight, value and significance assigned to criteria-based evaluations. literature on formative evaluations suggests that they provide opportunities for identifying gaps and helping to improve students’ teaching performance (mathers, oliva & laine, 2008; taras, 2005). in this tep, evaluators and mentors are expected to use them to diagnose strengths and weaknesses in students’ performance and to provide scaffolding. when scores from both evaluation sources mentioned earlier are combined, they constitute summative evaluations conducted at the end of the course to make a perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 144 final judgement on the success or failure of a teacher candidate in the tp (chudleigh & gates, 2010; mathers et al., 2008). theoretical framework social systems theory informs this study. donald, lazarus and lolwana (2007) hold that this theory views different levels and groups of people as interactive systems where the functioning of the whole is dependent on the interaction between all the parts. theoretically, mentor teacher and university supervisor are perceived as key people who have to work toward a common vision of tp and its evaluation (chudleigh & gates, 2010). practically, tp constitutes a complex social system involving a wide range of stakeholders (teacher education policymakers, principals, tp coordinators, mentors, university-based evaluators, learners, and so on) who should communicate and collaborate toward a common vision of developing student teachers (zeichner, 2010; valencia, martin, place & grossman, 2009). during tp, stakeholders play a critical supportive role towards the students’ growth. darling-hammond (2010) claims that mentors’ tp evaluations are important predictors of beginning teachers’ current and subsequent effectiveness. besides evaluating, mentors also play supportive roles. mohono-mahlatsi and van tonder (2006: 386) state that mentors “pass their experience onto less experienced people”. they can also act as guide, supervisor, counsellor, overseer, coach, and so on (kiggundu & nayimuli, 2009; maphosa et al., 2007). these roles represent groups of people functioning at different levels as a social system, each group interacting and being interdependent on each other. conversely, stakeholders can impose conflicting expectations and demands on students; this can adversely impact students’ tp performance. rhodes, phillips, tomlinson and reems (2006) highlight conflicting expectations and requirements of university supervisors and mentors on students. samuel (2008: 10) states that mentors can stifle students’ growth and development if they ask them to “abandon what [they] learnt at university” instead of nurturing and supporting the knowledge and skills they bring to tp. bullough (2005: 150) notes potential conflicts between expectations of teachers, mentors, peers and interns, concluding that “affiliations and identifications may clash” in mentoring. if not addressed, conflicts may affect the functioning of the subsystem and ultimately destroy the entire system. conflicts can also develop when mentors and evaluators simultaneously act as advisors during formative evaluations and as evaluators or judges during summative evaluations (reddy, menkveld & bitzer, 2008). unaddressed, these tensions may undermine the work of mentors and evaluators and create conflicts of interest. my view is that evaluators and mentors should focus primarily on diagnosing gaps in students’ performance and then scaffold the students; evaluations should be secondary. sosibo views from below: students’ perceptions of teaching practice evaluations and stakeholder roles 145 social systems theory was specifically selected due to the multiplicity of stakeholders who should interact as organisms in a tp system (bausch, 2001). literature review in this section, i draw attention to the contexts and relationships between different stakeholders, which are indispensable in supporting students’ growth and development during tp evaluations. grossman (1990) maintains that novice teachers have the potential to acquire teacher knowledge, provided they obtain the right kind of support. students learn to teach in the context of a community of practice, which is supposed to provide them with the skills of transforming content knowledge (ck) into pedagogically sound representations, or pedagogical content knowledge (pck) (shulman, 1987). shulman (1987: 9-10) argues that, if a teacher has to “know the territory” of teaching, s/he must familiarise him-/herself with the “landscape of materials, institutions, organizations, and mechanisms”, because they constitute “both the tools of the trade and the contextual conditions that will facilitate or inhibit teaching efforts”. this also applies to students. if they are to prosper as teachers, they should establish strong bonds with communities of practice. cochran-smith and lytle (1999: 262) state that knowledge-in-practice or professional knowledge develops from the profession in which it is embedded “through experience and through considered and deliberative reflection about or inquiry into experience”. hammerness, darling-hammond, bransford, berliner and others (2005) claim that this knowledge is highly situated in experiential contexts. therefore, the role of universities and schools should be to develop students’ critical thinking and reflection skills if they are to master this knowledge. however, literature suggests that in tp students receive the short end of the stick (feiman-nemser, 2001a). bullough (2005) associates this weakness with disconnection between school and university contexts and suggests collaboration and interaction among all stakeholders. feiman-nemser (2001a: 1021) stresses the need for a shared vision and expertise between university supervisors and mentors “informed by an explicit and thoughtful mission and conceptual framework”. structure and opportunities are vital. feiman-nemser (2001a: 1020) advocates that tp programmes should structure meaningful frameworks or experiences that allow students to “link theory and practice, develop skills and strategies, [and] cultivate habits of analysis and reflection through focused observation”. teacher educators and mentors should play a prominent role in this respect. methodology this research used the qualitative method (cresswell, 2007). it was conducted in one of the three campuses that offer fet tep, as explained in the study context. the perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 146 sample was purposive (only participants who could offer meaningful perspectives on the topic were included) and convenient, as i teach in the fet tep from which the sample was selected. participants were selected from second-, thirdand fourth-year fet student cohorts, as i believed they could offer deep insights since they had spent at least one year in the tep. first-year students were excluded, as they only observe during tp. data was collected using in-depth semi-structured interviews with four focus groups of between four and five students from each of the three year cohorts, altogether totalling 12 focus groups of 57 participants. of these, 27 were males and 30 females, 21 were of mixed race and 36 were black. this sample size was reasonable, as the fet is the smallest of all teps on this campus. the small focus group size allowed all participants to contribute, and facilitated probing. each group was homogeneous regarding the phase (fet) and study levels (second, third or fourth levels), but heterogeneous as regards gender, race, and major subjects, so as to comply with equity.interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim. interview transcripts were analysed, using the highlighting approach (cohen, manion, morrison & morrison, 2007), in order to uncover thematic aspects. phrases which stood out in the text were colour-coded, classified and condensed into three themes, as shown in the results. to avoid bias, my research assistant collected data, transcribed it and conducted preliminary analysis, while a colleague (not employed in the same faculty) conducted final data analysis. the validity of data was checked by analysing 67 students’ portfolios randomly selected from secondto fourth-year fet students on the same campus, but who had not undergone interviews.participants were informed about the confidentiality of information gathered and their voluntary participation. ethical clearance was obtained from the ethics committee of the faculty of education from which participants were drawn. member checking was used to validate the inferences from the data by asking a student and tp lecturer from each level to read raw and analysed data, as well as this article, prior to submission. results for the purpose of meeting equity, students were categorised according to factors of race, gender and level of study. however, findings were aggregated and not reported according to these categories. three emergent themes are discussed below. diverse philosophical standpoints and personalities students’ accounts suggested that the evaluators’ philosophical standpoints conflicted with one another. they were of the opinion that these differences influenced evaluators’ interpretations of evaluation criteria, as expressed by thembi: each evaluator has her own way of interpreting criteria and evaluating the lesson depending on how they describe good teaching. sosibo views from below: students’ perceptions of teaching practice evaluations and stakeholder roles 147 students acknowledged the uniqueness of evaluators’ perspectives, although they believed that these led to subjective evaluations which negatively affected their tp scores, as in mbulawa’s statement: of course evaluators do not see things the same way but they should interpret the form the same way and not give marks as they feel because this lowers our marks. there could be other explanations accounting for students’ low marks other than evaluators’ subjectivity. however, perceptions of subjectivity in tp evaluations were not unique to these students, as in a previous study the then tp coordinator in the same faculty articulated the same sentiment that “[tp] assessments are subjective and therefore vary considerably” (gordon, 2009: 123). leshem and bar-hama (2008) also note subjectivity in observation-based tp evaluations, as they are based on an observer’s individual teaching approach. other students were of the opinion that evaluators’ varying ideologies led them to have low expectations of students, as stated by tiro: “they also gauge how well we can teach compared to them as professionals.” christiansen (2008) acknowledges ideological distortions emanating from asymmetrical power relations between educators and learners. other students articulated discomfort with evaluators who purportedly imposed their teaching styles on them, arguing that such practice limited their creativity and individuality, as in mabel’s assertion: all of them want you to be ‘mini me’ which mirrors their teaching style and personality. then you wonder about your own creativity and innovation. these students might not like imitating their educators, but they do so, because they believe that it is expected of them. ezati, ocheng, ssentamu and sikoyo (2010) mention the role theory which illustrates that the behaviour of actors within a social system is highly influenced by the expectations of the significant others. nonetheless, cognitive apprenticeship (liu, 2005), alluded to by the student above, is a viable model that allows student teachers to observe how experts solve problems in authentic teaching situations. when teaching students to learn to teach, it may be a good idea to guide them and allow some room for their creativity to flourish. in feiman-nemser’s (2001b: 20) study of mentor identity development, the mentor negotiated between imposing his teaching style on students and sharing ideas of good practice with them. the students also voiced their concerns about the disjuncture between pedagogical strategies taught by sd educators and those supported by mentors and part-time evaluators, as indicated by bulelwa: when we try out methods such as cooperative teaching, mentors become irritated and feel it’s a waste of time. part-time evaluators suggest methods that contradict what we learnt in class. this situation could emanate from lack of communication between evaluators and mentors. tapera suggested that: perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 148 the university should meet with mentors and part-time evaluators and explain to them step-by-step the skills and methods we have acquired in class to be evaluated on. liteboho, meanwhile, proposed that: our sd lecturers should evaluate us because they know what they taught us in class. rather than using pk educators as evaluators, as suggested above, little (1990: 316 in feiman-nemser, 2001b: 18) proposes that experienced teachers (mentors) should be assigned to beginning teachers as they have “accumulated knowledge that can serve as the basis of sensitive observation, astute commentary, sound advice”. nonetheless, not all experienced teachers meet this criterion. students described some evaluators’ personalities as having positively influenced their performance, as reflected in moegamat’s statement: it’s very encouraging when an evaluator praises you for doing well. hearing the words ‘well done’ makes you feel good inside and motivates you to do even better the next time around. in her study, feiman-nemser (2001b) observed that the mentor regularly complimented students on specific aspects of their teaching, which he referred to as ‘noticing signs of growth’, thus responding to the students’ needs for reassurance. lizelle supported moegamat, saying: some supervisors really help and point out what worked well and where there are flaws. they are not too harsh and also give great tips for future. diverse contexts and limited resources morrow (2007) distinguishes between material elements of teaching (which include conditions, context, environments and resources), and formal teaching elements (which include skills that enable teachers to organise learning systematically so that they can function in any context). he contends that teps emphasise material elements which “erroneously raises the expectation … that, unless these material conditions are present, teaching cannot take place” (samuel, 2008: 10). students echoed morrow’s thoughts. their perceptions of how tp environments and human resources impacted on their tp evaluations are presented below. students’ believed that evaluators dealt inequitably with different school contexts and that the availability or lack of resources impacted profoundly on their teaching performance. students placed in affluent schools articulated satisfaction with infrastructure, facilities and new technologies available to them, as caylin described: the school i was at had good facilities and staff was supportive. one colleague offered to teach me how to use interactive white board. when i had crits [evaluations], the mentor helped me to develop materials. sosibo views from below: students’ perceptions of teaching practice evaluations and stakeholder roles 149 however, students placed in impoverished schools differed, as xolani explained: if you use a whiteboard and powerpoint you get higher marks than a person who uses chalkboard and textbook. they don’t care to ask why you chose the chalkboard and whether a whiteboard is available or not. analysis of students’ reflections in the tp portfolios confirmed that resources played a role in their performance during tp evaluations. regarding human resources, students expressed their appreciation for guidance, support, modelling and valuable teaching behaviours acquired from mentors. others complained that some mentors were unwilling to be subjected to student observation. lorraine remarked: some mentors are exemplary and teach us invaluable lessons on classroom management, but not all teachers can be mentor teachers. most of them have no idea of what is expected of them. in their portfolios, students documented positive and negative encounters with mentors, which confirmed lorraine’s remark. their statements mainly revealed their preference for mentors who spent more time coaching them, rather than for university-based evaluators. nevertheless, lorraine’s statement is in sharp contrast to what is expected of mentors, namely modelling and providing “educative mentoring” to students (feiman-nemser, 2001b: 18). students also recognised the sd lecturers’ significant role in equipping them with theoretical knowledge, as indicated by naseema: in my first year i did not see the relevance of theories in teaching but, with the help of our subject didactics lecturer, i can now make these links. others claimed that they still needed help with these skills. analysis of portfolios confirmed that students rarely mentioned support regarding linking theory and classroom practice. technical issues on the evaluation process students raised issues concerning the evaluation process, which they believed were critical to their growth and development. mawethu expressed his concern as follows: personally i want to know why we don’t have one lesson plan for all teps and campuses, because the other lesson plans are easier to use than ours. they also remarked that marks allocated to the same evaluation criteria were disproportionate across teps and campuses. both scenarios could point to the lack of tp alignment mentioned earlier. liston, whitcomb and borko (2006) recommend common evaluation frameworks for evaluating students’ teaching performance. regarding the evaluation forms, students communicated dissatisfaction with broad criteria and complex performance indicators on the forms. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 150 these supposedly confused them and impeded their optimal performance during tp evaluations, as lionel described: i don’t think evaluators know which aspects on the form to assess. with so many performance indicators, how do they know which are important? for us it’s even more difficult as we hardly know which ones to stress when we prepare and teach our lessons. in addition, students articulated their discontent with evaluators who merely made checks on the forms without providing detailed feedback or who purportedly made inaccurate comments. tiana elaborated: some evaluators simply brush over the lesson plan and give you low marks and vague, unhelpful comments, or no comments at all. sometimes it looks like they’re just guessing comments, relying on memory and filling in marks. if this situation prevails, it could signal a lack of evaluator accountability. if students are to develop into effective teachers, evaluators should be held accountable for providing them with constructive feedback. discussion students’ statements revealed that learning to teach is complex and involves a myriad of stakeholder forces that push and pull them in all directions (samuel, 2008). this complexity highlights the significance of student support during tp evaluations, and of a clear structure of how they can be developed into teachers. in this study, students described tp evaluations as fundamental to their development, albeit with some conditions that may have impacted negatively on their teaching performance. their statements about evaluators’ and mentors’ conflicting ideologies raise concerns which, if not addressed, can potentially impede learning and development. nonetheless, students should acknowledge and perceive varying perspectives as strengths that can enrich them and provide them with opportunities to think creatively. as indicated earlier, students’ concerns about evaluators’ subjectivity negatively affecting their marks are questionable. however, a tp evaluation rubric is recommended to minimise subjectivity that may exist. it should specify students’ expected behaviours and evaluation criteria. darling-hammond (2010) suggests creating more consistency in tp evaluations. the effectiveness of tp evaluations depends, to a large extent, on the behaviours of evaluators, mentors and all stakeholders. students highlighted productive and unproductive evaluator and mentor behaviours. if not addressed, unproductive behaviours could hamper students’ success and growth. students also acknowledged the quality of mentor support, which could point to their unmet expectations of university evaluators and raise questions about “where knowledge for teaching comes from and how it can be learned” (feiman-nemser, 2001b: 18). to curb unproductive behaviours, accountability measures such as e-mail communication, telephone calls, written reports and face-to-face meetings between tp coordinator, sosibo views from below: students’ perceptions of teaching practice evaluations and stakeholder roles 151 evaluators, mentors and students should be developed. these measures can also help to keep the organisms of the tp social system interacting regularly. liston et al. (2006: 13) recommend “establishing virtual networks that allow program candidates … to stay connected to one another and to teacher education faculty”. students’ comments about the inability to link theory and practice signal a problem to which feiman-nemser (2001a) and buchmann (cited in valencia et al., 2009: 304) refer as “two-worlds pitfall”. feiman-nemser (2001a: 1020) states that cooperating teachers often feel the need to protect student teachers from ‘impractical’ ideas promoted by education professors who are out of touch with classroom realities. such mentor attitudes may result in students failing to see the importance of theory but rather emphasising practice, which could be detrimental to their profession. darling-hammond (2010) recommends a direct alignment between university-taught methods and those used by mentors in schools, while zeichner (2010) advocates a shared space through which teachers and university staff could share and exchange roles in developing prospective teachers. these recommendations confirm the importance of a social systems approach to tp evaluations, in which stakeholder roles are exchanged and shared. students also highlighted broad evaluation criteria and discrepancies in evaluation forms and mark allocation. this situation reflects the absence of a tp conceptual framework and alignment, alluded to earlier. feiman-nemser (2001a: 1023) argues that a framework “is the ‘cornerstone’ of a coherent program”. therefore, to streamline these aspects, a tp conceptual framework and alignment should be prioritised. students’ emphasis on resources, conditions and contexts could suggest that this tep overemphasises material teaching elements or that it is failing to equip them with formal teaching elements which enable them to function effectively without relying on conditions or resources. amin and ramrathan (2009: 76) argue that “contexts are important for preparing new teachers to teach in the complicated contextual landscape of south african schools”. the recommendation is that this tep begins to balance its focus on both teaching elements, as they are equally important. conclusion this research presented students’ perceptions of tp evaluations administered by means of observations and criteria-based forms, with the aim of determining how effectively all aspects of stakeholder support, structure and tp evaluation interact and contribute to their development as new teachers. one can conclude that stakeholders in the tp system do not yet work collaboratively to support students to reach their full potential. according to social systems theory, effective interaction, interconnectedness and communication among subsystems are vital for effective learning and development, as these may enhance students’ performance and growth during tp evaluations. a set of recommendations for improvements were made earlier. the research points to a need for a robust discussion on tp evaluations which should perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 152 address structures/frameworks, opportunities and support systems, so that students can gather meaningful teaching experiences in the field. this discussion should also address problematic relationships which seemingly exist between university and schools. furthermore, it should include collaborations among universities offering teps on how they can contribute meaningfully toward the development of effective tp evaluation structures, systems and theoretical frameworks. tp involves a social system of stakeholders who should work in tandem toward a shared vision of developing students. although the sample size of this study was small, the extent of concern raised by students suggests that this topic is worthy of research and should be investigated in the context of other institutions. doing so will determine whether similar concerns exist and whether systematic change is needed throughout the teacher education system locally and nationally. references amin n & 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138-145. taras m 2005. assessment summative and formative some theoretical reflections. british journal of education, 53(4): 466-478. valencia sw, martin sd, place na & grossman p 2009. complex interactions in student teaching: lost opportunities for learning. journal of teacher education, 60(3): 304-321. zeichner k 2010. rethinking the connections between campus courses and filed experiences in college and university-based teacher education. journal of teacher education, 89(11): 89-99. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2013 university of the free state 71 isaac ntshoe faculty of humanities, central university of technology e-mail: intshoe@cut.ac.za telephone: 051 507 3636 pierre de villiers department of economics, stellenbosch university e-mail: apdv@sun.ac.za telephone: 021 808 2206 funding sources for public higher education in south africa: institutional responses isaac ntshoe & pierre de villiers tuition fees and the use of student loans to complement government’s allocations have become unavoidable because of increasing competing new priorities for funding. this article addresses the funding sources of public higher education through tuition and loans. we explore the effects of shifts from first-stream income (government appropriations) towards second(tuition fees) and third-stream (philanthropic funding and academic entrepreneurialism), and how tuition fees and student loans might impact on access, equity and throughput rates in south africa. the qualitative study using semi-structured interviews was adopted to obtain data with expert information selected by purposeful sampling from four types of higher education institutions in south africa. the data were also obtained from national policy and institutional documents. we make a case for the indivisibility between first-, second and third-stream money incomes and between public-private benefits of tuition fees and student loans. we argue that the ability of institutions to raise third-stream income depends on their history, geopolitical location, programmes offered and their proximity to industry, so as to engage research activities that promote third-stream income. we further argue that institutions in mainly rural provinces, and students from poor family backgrounds, most of whom are black, generally lack the necessary cultural and social capital to make use of opportunities in the form of bursaries and student loans. keywords: funding sources, institutional response, higher education, tuition fees, student loans, global competition introduction historically, funding higher education has been through governments’ appropriations (first-stream income), although in some countries this source has been supplemented by tuition fees (second-stream income). however, shifts have globally occurred perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 72 towards the secondand third-streams through academic entrepreneurialism, in order to compensate for the relative decrease in the state’s contribution (teferra & altbach, 2004: 3-14). these shifts have resulted in the introduction (or increase) of tuition fees and of student loan schemes (johnstone & marcucci, 2007). in particular, we examine institutional responses to the government’s changing funding policy and how tuition fees and student loans impact on equity and the throughput rate in some institutions in south africa. notions of private-public or quasi-public and private good dimensions of higher education have been inserted in our discussions, using blaug’s (1972: 105-114, 203) classical work on which many subsequent works on this subject have been drawn (for example, tilak, 2009; world bank, 2002). in particular, the discussions explore competing views on the public-private good dimensions of higher education in relation to the issue of who should finance it (jonathan, 1997, 2002; tilak, 2009). our discussions on the tuition fees and the national student financial aid scheme (nsfas) in south africa have borrowed from bourdieu’s work on cultural and social capital. in terms of this work, students from working-class families are often incapable of maximising their educational opportunities, including bursaries and loans, because they lack the necessary cultural and social dispositions. conversely, upperand middle-class families transmit this cultural capital to their offspring that substitutes, or supplements the transmission of economic capital as a means of maintaining class, status and privileges across generations (bourdieu, 1984). we have employed this framework to generate debate on how cost-sharing may broaden access, and how it may limit participation in higher education in south africa. funding sources for higher education the different types of funding for higher education will now be discussed briefly. first-stream income during the economic boom of the 1960s and 1970s, some governments covered the bulk of the costs of higher education, but a general economic slowdown and corresponding competition from new emerging priorities changed that (see, for example, barr & crawford, 2005; johnstone & marcucci, 2010; teferra & altbach, 2003). similarly, de villiers and steyn (2006: 39-41) observe that government appropriations at all universities and technikons in south africa decreased as a proportion of higher education institutions’ income over the period 1986-2003. this point is corroborated by bunting (2011: 4) for south africa over the period 2000-2009. second-stream money generally, four parties directly or indirectly pay for higher education, namely governments or taxpayers (via direct and indirect taxes); students (via savings, current earnings or borrowing), or their parents (via savings, borrowing or sacrificing current consumption); philanthropists (via endowments or current contributions), ntshoe & de villiers funding sources for public higher education in south africa: institutional responses 73 and employers. the charging of tuition fees and the subsequent introduction of user charges in cases where higher education was initially ‘free’ have become common sources to fund higher education (johnstone & marcucci, 2010; massay, 2004; teferra & altbach, 2003). tuition fees have generally increased where they existed, while student grants or scholarships have been reduced, eliminated or replaced by student loans (johnstone & marcucci, 2007). student loans have become prevalent based on the assertion that the beneficiaries of higher education (students, families and the society through higher income and the ‘spillover’ effects) should contribute towards educational costs (the world bank, 2002: xxi). however, student loans have inherent limitations, including the non-repayment, or the extended time taken by students to pay back the loan. shen and ziderman’s (2009: 320-326) study in 39 countries over the period 1997-2004 for first-degree students revealed that, in canada, the repayment ratio was over 99%, but the recovery ratio itself fell to 73.8%. in the highly subsidised schemes of kenya and ghana (repayment ratios of 27.9% and 39.1%, respectively), considerable repayment defaults reduced the recovery ratios to only 5.6% and 11.0%, respectively. ziderman and albrecht’s (1995: 35) argument echoes bourdieu’s thesis that “in most systems, the poor are denied access, not because of user charges, but because of poor access to cultural and social capitals and primary schools, social attitudes and the overall private costs of higher education”. third-stream money income owing to the general decline in government allocations, institutions are forced to broaden their funding base through philanthropic funding, as well as through entrepreneurial initiatives (massy, 2004). entrepreneurial activities are embedded in university-industry funding partnerships. institutions, therefore, adopt marketlike behaviours to secure additional funding in the face of competition for scarce resources (slaughter & leslie, 1997). this phenomenon is underpinned by a belief that partnerships are beneficial to all parties involved (nixon, 2004). the university-industry partnerships through entrepreneurship are, in a sense, an acknowledgement of the private sector’s contribution to higher education. in south africa, industries are aiming to match the government’s funding, especially in the fields of science and technology (s&t). the downside of these partnerships is that they are skewed towards s&t because of increasing demands for skills in s&t programmes required in the economy. new funding framework (nff) in post-apartheid south africa although this article is about secondand third-stream incomes, the key features of first-stream income in the nff warrant brief outline (see ministry of education, perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 74 2004). the nff was the focus of one of the articles in perspectives in education (see ntshoe & de villiers, 2008: 20-23). first-stream funding funding higher education in a democratic south africa rests on three pillars: a policy of increased participation; greater responsiveness of the higher education sector to the changing social environment, and increased cooperation between the higher education sector, the state and civil society (steyn, 2005: 3). government appropriations still comprise the largest part of the total funding to higher education. figure 1 illustrates the divisions of government’s allocations and subsidies in the nff. generated by generated by generated by generated by national budget for higher education 100% instructional restructuring 3% earmarked grants 20% block grants 77% nsfas 9% other; including interest & redemption on loans & foundation programmes 11% teaching input grants 51% teaching output grants 11% research output grants 10% institutional factor grants 4% approved fte student places & level of study 1. non-research graduates & diplomas 2. underperforming institutions* 1. research masters, doctorates & publications. 2. underperforming institutions* enrolment size & percentage disadvantaged students figure 1: division of government budget for higher education into categories and subcategories: 2011/12 *underperforming institutions perform below centrally determined levels of graduation rates and research output source: bunting (2011: 7) state allocations to higher education in south africa increased from r1.422 million in 1987 to r10.215 million in 2005. however, this has not kept abreast of student numbers and real state appropriation per weighted full-time equivalent (fte) student by 36% for universities between 1987 and 2005 and by 43% for technikons (steyn & de villiers, 2006). from 2000 to 2009, real state appropriations per fte student decreased by 1% per annum (bunting, 2011: 4). over time, there has been a clear shift in south africa from first-stream towards (especially) secondand thirdstream funding. ntshoe & de villiers funding sources for public higher education in south africa: institutional responses 75 second-stream income tuition fees owing to the decrease in real state appropriations per student, tuition fees at universities increased in real terms by 49% between 1986 and 2003 and by 85% at technikons from 1987 to 2003 (steyn & de villiers, 2006). from 2000 to 2009, tuition fees per fte student increased by 2.5% in real terms (bunting, 2011: 4). this was confirmed by the higher education south africa (hesa) report (2008) which observed that some universities in south africa experienced student protests because of fee increases. hesa proposed the regulation of fees as follows: a flat rate where all students pay the same; differentiated fees according to different programmes; a redistributive tuition fee model, where fees are based on the disposable income of the prospective student or the student’s family, and a free-market model where market forces determine the fees. although hesa (2008: 3-5) was concerned about high tuition fees, it concluded that placing an upper limit on tuition fees may not benefit the poor, but only make higher education cheaper for the rich. student loans nsfas has become an important source of second-stream financial income to promote the government’s policy of expanding access to previously disadvantaged groups, and to recover the costs from those who benefit from it. in 1995, 40 002 students received nsfas awards amounting to r154 million (see table 1). in 2009, r2.8 billion was paid out to 135 208 students. in support of the government’s policy of broadening access, black students received 93% of the awards in 2008.table 1: number of students assisted through nsfas awards and amounts awarded between 1995 and 2009 table 1: number of students assisted through nsfas awards and amounts awarded between 1995 and 2009 year number of students assisted amount 1995 40 002 r154m 1996 67 641 r333m 1997 63 272 r350m 1998 67 558 r394m 1999 68 363 r441m 2000 72 038 r511m 2001 80 513 r635m 2002 86 147 r733m 2003 96 552 r894m 2004 98 813 r985m perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 76 2005 106 852 r1.217m 2006 107 586 r1.358m 2007 113 519 r1.791m 2008 117 766 r2.375m 2009 135 208 r2.818m source: nsfas annual reports 2007, 2008 and 2010 an incentive in the nsfas loan scheme was included so that 40% of the loans could be converted into bursaries, provided students pass the courses for which loans have been allocated. according to the annual reports of nsfas (2007, 2008), this has incentivised students because, on average, they passed 74.3% of the courses for which they enrolled during the period 1996-2008. these pass rates contradict the ministerial committee (2010: 69-70) which reported that only 28% of students funded by nsfas (who are no longer studying) graduated, while the remaining 72% did not complete their studies. a recent research report by de villiers, van wyk and van der berg (2012) corroborates the figures supplied by nsfas. however, student repayment remains a problem. albrecht and ziderman (1993: 71) found that students often repay only a small portion of the value of the original loan; that the default rate is high, and that high administrative costs erode the value of the repayments. in south africa, recovered money of nsfas increased from r31.7m in 1999 to r636.3m in 2009. however, ms fiona lewis, former head of research at nsfas, indicated in august 2009, at a nsfas workshop, that the authorities were uncertain about what they were supposed to receive. case study of four higher education institutions methodology and approaches four institutions were sampled: the university of south africa (unisa) (the only university dedicated to providing distance learning in south africa); the university of pretoria (up) (a previously advantaged institution); the university of limpopo (ul) (a historically black institution), and tshwane university of technology (tut) (formerly a technikon). the data sources included national policy and institutional documents on the funding of higher education, senior managers in the four institutions, annual reports of nsfas, and institutional documents on tuition fees. purposeful sampling was used to select twelve participants/informants from institutions. the participants included one senior financial officer from the selected institutions, one senior manager dealing with student loans, and one senior manager responsible for planning. permission to conduct a semi-structured interview, using an interview schedule, was negotiated with the participants themselves. written consent on the information gathered was obtained from the participants, as indicated in this article. responses from informants were reported anonymously in order to ntshoe & de villiers funding sources for public higher education in south africa: institutional responses 77 observe ethical protocol. other responses were relayed electronically at the request of the participants. consideration was given to the expertise and experience of the participants in the higher education environment and their positions within their institutions. accordingly, participants were selected, because they could provide the required qualitative data, as well as being in a position to provide a critical analysis of the financial shifts that have taken place in their institutions. the data were analysed in terms of themes and issues on sources of funding. data from the various sources were subjected to triangulation to establish collaborations and to highlight idiosyncrasies of individual institutions. results second-stream income at the four institutions traditionally, all four institutions charged tuition fees. tuition fees varied according to institutions, programmes and level of study. however, there has been a prevalence of non-payment, especially at historically disadvantaged institutions. the four institutions have had diverse experiences with second-stream income due to their history and experiences, which were reflected in the informants’ responses. the ul, originally created for blacks, experienced a decline in student numbers and a subsequent loss of revenue (from fees) during the 1990s (steyn & de villiers, 2006). this epitomised the general migration of black students to historically white institutions in search of better learning facilities, resources, qualified staff and bursaries (che, 1999). table 2 reflects the allocation of nsfas at the four institutions from 2004 to 2007. the table shows the country’s demographics, the bias towards black students, and a strategy for redressing previous racial inequities. in 2006, for example, 97.2% of the headcount of undergraduate students at the ul was black, while the number for tut was 85.4% (department of education, 2008). table 2: number of national students financial aid scheme awards by race at the four institutions: 2004-2007 institution year african white coloureds indian total amount (r million) tshwane university 2004 9 503 114 n/a n/a 10 886 123.7 2005 5 846 146 n/a n/a 11 073 135.8 2006 6 514 117 n/a n/a 11 738 144.4 2007 2 119 122 n/a n/a 12 480 168.0 perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 78 university of limpopo 2004 4 794 4 794 27.7 2005 5 300 5 300 40.7 2006 4 987 4 987 47.8 university of pretoria 2004 1 901 n/a n/a n/a 2 515 31.8 2005 2 311 n/a n/a n/a 3 031 48.3 2006 2 293 n/a n/a n/a 2 921 55.1 university of south africa 2004 6 536 139 88 133 6 896 n/a 2005 6 790 120 61 122 7 093 n/a 2006 8 947 82 89 119 9 233 n/a 2007 11 800 139 87 71 12 042 n/a results suggest that throughput rates remained a challenge. for example, at unisa, the module/course success rate was only 54% in 2006, below the approved ministerial target of 56% (pityana, 2008: 3). the data on the throughput rate at the other three institutions could not be obtained, as these institutions were reluctant to make this information public. third-stream income at the four institutions the responses of senior managers at the four institutions varied on this issue. the informants at unisa concurred that the institution was unable to attract funding from industry, primarily because, historically, the institution has been strong in the provision of social and human sciences and has generally weak science-related offerings. according to the senior manager, participation in the thrip programme at unisa prior to 2009 had been minimal because of poor science infrastructure, such as laboratories. thus, in science and technology research, unisa lacked equipment and so laboratory work was carried out in partnership with other partners, such as the arc (agricultural research council). however, by 2009, the college of science, engineering and technology had 22 national research foundation (nrf)-rated researchers (setati, 2012). tut, on the other hand, had only a 0.5% share of the thrip grants awarded during the period 1994-1996, and an 88% accumulation of this grant in 2002. the institution had 14 technology and human resources programmes and three innovation fund projects that were part of the government’s policy of encouraging university-industry funding partnerships in 2009 (tshwane university of technology, 2005). by focusing on ntshoe & de villiers funding sources for public higher education in south africa: institutional responses 79 areas of engineering and health, which bring them closer to industry, the institution has been able to secure some external funding and provide bursaries for students (van der sijde, mcgowan, van de velde & youngleson, 2005). tut, for example, was allocated r17.7m for research projects at the faculty of engineering, the built environment and the faculty of science (tshwane university of technology, 2008). in response to the issue of the institution’s ability to attract external funding, informants argued that, with its historical privileges, the up has strong structures to raise third-stream income. their views endorsed the view of the council on higher education (che, 1999) that, because of its history and the programmes it provided, the institution has been able to respond to the changing higher education landscape by exploring, inter alia, technologically based distance education, in order to attract non-traditional (working) students. the senior partnership manager pointed out that “the institution has adopted a generally strong relationship with industry and business, and receives donations from these sources because of its history”. his view was endorsed by the nrf (1997: page no?), which observes that “with the same vigour as always, up increasingly looks for commercial research funding for frontier sciences and engineering projects that are tied to national policy initiative and partnered by prestigious firms, usually those that are national and international in scope”. informants argued that, because of its history and offerings, the institution retains a strong relationship with industry and business, encourages academic entrepreneurialism, and engages in basic research or commercial research funding for the sciences and engineering projects that are tied to national policy initiatives (che, 1999). the literature suggests that the ul had a different experience compared to the other three institutions. the university did not seem to generate much funding from industry and was unable to take advantage of the government’s incentivised funding opportunities because of its geopolitical location. the fact is that the university is located in a cash-strapped underdeveloped province of south africa that lacks a strong industrial infrastructure and draws its students primarily from impoverished rural areas. this explains why the institution has relied primarily on government grants, tuition fees and student loans for its survival (see steyn & de villiers (2006) for the allocation of thrip and nrf allocations, as well as income indicators). discussion of findings although government appropriations to higher education increased from r1.4 billion in 1987 to r10.2 billion in 2005, they were outstripped by the burgeoning demands for higher education. in real terms, state appropriation per full-time equivalent student decreased by 36% for universities and by 45% for technikons between 1987 and 2003. the discussions suggest that, parallel to increased tuition fees, government continues to contribute the largest portion of funding for higher education, but perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 80 that these increases have not translated into improved throughput rates at unisa (pityana, 2008). historically disadvantaged institutions such as the ul continue to rely primarily on tuition fees to survive, as they have limited capacity to generate third-stream income because of their history and geographical location. our discussions further indicate that, while higher tuition fees have become unavoidable to supplement declining per capita government subsidies, increases in tuition fees continue to be contested by evoking entitlement to higher education by black students. entitlement was evoked in 2009 at the mangosuthu university of technology and the tut, while students’ outstanding debt amounted to r2.8 billion in 2009/2010 (munyaradzi, 2010). the participants in this study argued that, despite the exodus of black students from historically black institutions to historically white institutions since the 1990s, the majority of black students still enrol at historically disadvantaged institutions, because their tuition fees are lower. according to senior managers at the up, unisa and the tut, they did not experience as many problems with student debt compared to the ul. the situation at unisa could be attributed to the fact that the majority of students are either supported by families or are themselves working to cover tuition fees, together with the fact that tuition materials are not distributed unless fees are paid. the argument that beneficiaries of higher education should pay for their studies is challenged by a contrasting view that studies tend to underestimate the social benefits (spill-over) of higher education (see, for example, schultz, 2004 for the african case, in general, and keswell & poswell (2004) for south africa, in particular). the nsfas loans do alleviate the financial burden, improve access to higher education, and broaden the participation of students from poor backgrounds. loan repayment is expected only when graduates enter permanent employment and earn at least r30.000 and then pay back 3% of this income. “the poor experience the monthly repayment in relation to monthly income as high and this leads to repayment default” (ishengoma, 2002: 7). the burden to repay loans often leads to a general reluctance to take up loans and rather rely on families for financial support: “this is despite the fact that students who pass all courses qualify for a 40% loan rebate and those who pass half the courses qualify for a 20% loan rebate” (ishengoma, 2002: 7). drawing from the discussions, we argue that, despite some of the economic value of tuition and student loans, cost-sharing should be understood within the influences of social and cultural capital on the successful use of educational opportunities. accordingly, access and widening participation through state-subsidised tuition fees and student loans translate into high-status cultural capital and high-status credentials, including academic degrees from elite institutions (bourdieu & passerson, 1977). we, therefore, concur with the view that student fees, as a feature of costsharing restricts access for poor students and may reduce completion rates (rumble, 2006: 89). students from working-class families in south africa are often unable to maximise the use of a student loan to study due to their class status. ntshoe & de villiers funding sources for public higher education in south africa: institutional responses 81 our research indicates that the capacity to raise third-stream money depends on the institutions’ history, culture, core business and standing in communities. institutions with an established research tradition and those offering industryrelated programmes are thus more likely to engage in joint ventures with the private sector and raise third-stream money, compared to those that primarily provide social sciences and have weak research cultures. research-oriented schools and divisions form more lucrative partnerships with industry than those that offer the humanities and the social sciences (de villiers & steyn, 2009: 59). the strategy of broadening the funding base for higher education resonates with the funding model of the world bank (naert, 2004). however, while increasing university-industry partnership is a viable strategy in recognising private-sector involvement in higher education, some critics have warned that this tends to take a neoliberal and neutral liberalism bias, making these types of partnerships weak to guide social practice (jonathan, 1997, 2002). conclusion we make a case for creating space for the direct and indirect contribution by the private sector to address the imperatives of equity and efficiency in higher education. we, therefore, argue that recovering the costs of public higher education through secondand third-stream funding has become irreversible because of emerging priorities and the decline in real terms of government funding for higher education. we further maintain that the south african government is caught between a commitment to widen participation and social justice policies, on the one hand, and the fiscal pressure to recover costs through tuition fees, student loans and funding from outside government, on the other. we highlighted the simplistic approach and the belief in south africa that the post-apartheid government has the duty to provide free higher education to communities that were previously excluded from it. although this belief remains, to a large extent, unspoken, it is implied in entitlement to free higher education by black students and a corresponding unwillingness/inability to pay for higher education. drawing from the analysis of the four different types of institutions and from the literature, we argue that some institutions are better able to diversify their funding base and become involved in higher education-industry partnerships than those offering courses in the humanities and the social sciences. compared with historically advantaged institutions, historically disadvantaged institutions in south africa will inevitably become increasingly dependent on government funding. we contend that, although the perspective that students and their families should pay for higher education, because they are the major beneficiaries, this assumption is simplistic, because it underplays the possibility that these cost-recovery mechanisms have the potential to recreate and reproduce inequities, rather than reducing them because of social and cultural capital deficits for some 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exclusion: ‘understanding and challenging early school leaving in africa’ jacques zeelen, dorothy nampota, josje van der linden, maximiano ngabirano (eds) rotterdam: sense publishers. 2010 isbn 978-94-6091-282-5 reviewed by: paul wabike, saxion university, deventer, the netherlands in the burden of education exclusion: ‘understanding and challenging early school leaving in africa’ jacques zeelen, dorothy nampota, josje van der linden and maximiano ngabirano (eds) have compiled a book that explores a somewhat awkward topic in the substantial struggle against poverty in africa. the book provides a fresh look at problems associated with early school leaving, and proposes reforms by means of first-person accounts of those who have lived through the experience. in the process, the book clearly mirrors the consequences of being excluded from the mainstream educational channels. it is difficult to face the problems associated with early school leaving, particularly for communities who have few resources and who often live under difficult circumstances, both politically and socially. zeelen et al.’s choice of writing style narrates the difficult story in an easy-to-read manner while confronting tough issues with accounts from first-hand victims of this vicious circle. the editors all have a great passion for research on education. from the university of groningen, the university of mzumbe in tanzania, the university of malawi to martyrs university in uganda, the authors and editors have combined passion and excellent knowledge to give a glimpse into a subject which policymakers would love to avoid, probably due to the many problems associated with early school leavers. this passion, as revealed in the materials compiled, will surely help policymakers consider the bigger picture of early school leaving, in particular on the african continent. the book is divided into four parts, with a total of sixteen different accounts from various communities across africa and the netherlands. each part has an overarching theme: policy and curricula, globalisation, tradition and conflict, exclusion and gender, and intervention. part one provides a detailed account of policies and strategies that have been employed to combat early school leaving. from the tanzanian experiences through uganda and lesotho to the netherlands, the authors have explored different strategies employed by countries to deal with this problem. the chapter summarises important findings such as the lack of a language of instruction that speaks to the local people, poor perspectives after school completion, social problems that force young adults to adopt other income-generating activities than schooling, and the lack of proper counselling on education and what that may mean for the future. part two begins with an evaluation of education in the context of africa and provides background to early school leaving. it explores globalisation, tradition and conflicts, and their impact on education. this part tackles early school leaving head-on by introducing the reasons behind the phenomenon. it suggests that early school leaving is directly linked to culture, social and political conflicts, and developments elsewhere which impact on communities beyond country and continental borders, commonly referred to as globalisation. in a world divided more by technology than ideology, global events have far-reaching consequences, in particular for societies whose environment is not yet conducive to personal development and to using education as an instrument to foster development. this unsettling state of affairs allows for young people to shun education due to the lack of opportunities, ignorance or having no peaceful environment where education can flourish. 91book review — the burden of educational exclusion part three is the shortest of the four parts in terms of themes but carries the core message of the book. gender and educational exclusion have far-reaching consequences because they often conspire with culture to exclude seemingly intelligent members of society. particular to this part is an account of a specific case on girls in uganda. this part also sheds light on boys’ drop-out behaviour and how that has been bizarrely aided culturally. it is a good summary of an interface between culture and gender and, if not well managed and communicated, their often destructive result in aiding division perpetuates early school leaving. it appears that policies put in place by governments do not fully integrate local beliefs and culture in order to deal with early school leaving in a partnership. part four consists of four themes. it offers specific cases relating to the implementation of solutions in order to reduce early school leaving, retention and intervention. this is an important part of the book’s validity and currency. the proposed solutions are practical and supported by research on specific situations in africa. the south african baswa project, kenya’s access and retention of school leavers and malawi’s implementation of non-formal education are one-stop knowledge material for policymakers and education researchers. the book’s powerful introduction will get any first-timer deep into the early school leaving phenomenon. it sets the tone for all the themes by offering reasons for the need for a strong and collective policy on early school leaving and research needed to support the basis for tackling this problem. the book’s conclusion reiterates the need for a partnership between policymakers, community members and researchers. the authors’ biographies and affiliations can be found at the end of the book. 41 a quantitative literacy course for humanities and law students: the challenges of a context-based curriculum vera frith university of cape town this article examines some aspects of the effectiveness of a first-year course in quantitative literacy for humanities and law students at a south african university. this intervention is necessary to assist students in developing the appropriate quantitative competencies because there is an articulation gap between the quantitative literacy of many first-year students and the demands of their curriculum in this regard. interventions of this kind should be integrated into the disciplinary curriculum to as great an extent as possible, primarily because quantitative literacy is a practice embedded in the disciplinary practices. tensions involved in attempting this integration limit the course’s effectiveness and are to a large extent due to the conflicting demands on students of both the disciplinary discourses and the mathematical and statistical content. the intervention could be enhanced by being more explicit in clarifying the distinctions between the disciplinary contexts and the mathematical and statistical content, as well as by making more explicit the expectations in terms of student learning and performance in assessments. keywords: quantitative literacy, numeracy, quantitative literacy course, curriculum, higher education, humanities, law, disciplinary discourse, quantitative literacy practice, mathematical content introduction the importance of quantitative literacy (also known as numeracy) for higher education is recognised internationally (chapman, 1998; yasukawa, 2007; steen, 2004). there is an increasing recognition that many academic disciplines make complex quantitative demands on students in higher education, even those such as law and humanities, which are not obviously quantitative in nature. the quantitative demands of these disciplines in higher education are often very different from those that are the focus of traditional mathematics courses. thus, completion of mathematics courses does not guarantee quantitative literacy (hughes-hallet, 2001:93). many students in south africa are poorly prepared to meet the quantitative literacy requirements in university curricula (frith & prince, 2009:83). this assertion is supported by results from the national benchmark tests project. for example, in the pilot tests in 2009 only one quarter of all students tested were classified as “proficient” (yeld, 2009:79) in quantitative literacy. curriculum interventions are needed to reduce the “articulation gap” (scott, yeld & henry, 2005:273) between the demands of curricula and the level of many students’ quantitative (and other) literacies. a major aim of our work in the numeracy centre at the university of cape town is to address the articulation gap so as to improve equity of outcomes in university study. as with the literature dealing with teaching and learning of mathematical literacy at the school level (for example, christiansen, 2006; graven & venkat, 2007), the south african literature on quantitative literacy in higher education is limited (see, for example, brink, 2001; archer, frith & prince, 2002; prince, frith & jaftha, 2004; prince & archer, 2008). the discussion in this article is presented as an attempt to stimulate more research and debate about quantitative literacy in higher education. i will focus on factors limiting the effectiveness of a first-semester course for humanities and law students, which is developed and taught collaboratively, so that much of what i write is a reflection on the communal efforts of numeracy centre staff. i will begin by discussing what i mean by the term quantitative literacy and describe the context of the course described in this article. i will then consider some observations regarding the implementation 42 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 of the course curriculum, focusing on some factors that limit its effectiveness in achieving our curriculum goals. defining quantitative literacy my conceptualisation of quantitative literacy rests on gee’s (1990:151) notion of secondary discourse and the approach of the ‘new literacy studies’ (gee, 1990:49) which views all literacies as social practice. gee (1990:xvii) introduced the notion of “discourses” as demanding “certain ways of using language, certain ways of acting and interacting, and the display of certain values and attitudes”. he pointed out that there are specific different discourses associated with different “subject matters”, or academic disciplines, and characterised these as examples of “secondary discourses” (gee, 1990:151). he then defined literacy as “mastery of, or fluent control over, a secondary discourse” (gee, 1990:153) and pointed out that as there are multiple discourses there will be multiple literacies. this theory underlies the approach of the new literacy studies which conceptualises literacy and numeracy as social practice (street, 2005; street & baker, 2006; kelly, johnston & baynham, 2007). mckenna (2009:21) expresses this by stating that we need to understand the academic disciplines as “communities requiring certain literacy practices of their members”. in higher education there are different quantitative literacy practices associated with different academic disciplines, so it does not make sense to talk about being quantitatively literate, independently of the discourse where this literacy is to be practised. i adopt the following definition of quantitative literacy: quantitative literacy is the ability to manage situations or solve problems in practice, and involves responding to quantitative (mathematical and statistical) information that may be presented verbally, graphically, in tabular or symbolic form; it requires the activation of a range of enabling knowledge, behaviours and processes and it can be observed when it is expressed in the form of a communication, in written, oral or visual mode (frith & prince, 2006:30). the development of this definition was most strongly influenced by the definition of numerate behaviour underlying the assessment of numeracy in the adult literacy and lifeskills (all) survey (gal, van groenestijn, manly, schmitt & tout, 2005:152) and the view of literacy as social practice. it has significant overlap with what some writers refer to as “document literacy” (mosenthal, 1996:314) as well as with “statistical literacy” (gal, 2005:48). although not specifically stated in the definition, quantitative literacy often also encompasses a degree of computer literacy, as quantitative information is frequently accessed through this medium. in many situations, using a computer will be a component of the relevant “enabling knowledge, behaviours and processes”. frith and prince (2009:89) give a detailed summary of our view on what a student needs to be able to do in order to practise quantitative literacy. given that quantitative literacy is practised as a component of an academic discourse, and language is integral to any discourse, it is clear that quantitative literacy and language cannot be disentangled. quantitative information and concepts are conveyed through language, often using precise terminology and forms of expression that are associated with specific quantitative ideas. the language used for expressing quantitative concepts often uses everyday words with very specific meanings (consider, for example, the word ‘rate’ in the phrase ‘birth rate’ or the word ‘relative’ in the phrase ‘relative proportions’). a student will not encounter this kind of expression in isolation, but will have to interpret or use it embedded in the language of the disciplinary discourse. curriculum for quantitative literacy development quantitatively, literate behaviour can be understood in terms of • the contexts that require the quantitative literacy practice; • the mathematical and statistical concepts and techniques (content) that are required by the practice, and 43frith — a quantitative literacy course for humanities and law students • the underlying thinking and competencies that are called upon, for example, the ability to interpret data or quantitative text and ask critical questions about its validity, or to write statements about it. in this article i am using the term ‘context’ to refer to the disciplinary context in which the students’ quantitative literacy is being exercised. for example, in the experience of a law student, the ‘context’ might be that of a specific case that is being studied, while the ‘content’ will be the necessary mathematics or statistics that a student must know and do in order to understand the case. the ‘context’ is presented to students through the medium of a text of some kind and thus the information about the context and the quantitative information are embedded in the disciplinary secondary discourse. thus, it appears selfevident that the most effective curriculum structure for the development of students’ quantitative literacy (and other literacies such as academic literacy) would therefore integrate it into the disciplinary curriculum, and ideally not make it the responsibility of a separate add-on course. jacobs (2007:872), in writing about academic literacy in general, explains this by stating that students are inducted into discourses by modelling themselves on ‘insiders’ and that therefore “discipline-specific academic literacies are best taught by ‘insider’ disciplinary lecturers, who have mastered the discourses of those particular academic communities”. referring to the mathematical and statistical content, some of the most relevant mathematical techniques for humanities and law students, when stripped of the complexities of the context, are relatively trivial, but it is the interpreting, reflecting and thinking critically about the diverse situations and verbal and visual messages involving quantitative information that is mentally challenging. it is also obvious that learning techniques in isolation does not assist students to transfer this learning to situations in contexts where these techniques need to be applied. for example, gal (2009:58), in writing about statistical literacy, states that: instructors should not assume that students who have been exposed only to … decontextualised ... tasks in the classroom ... will be able to interpret, reflect upon, and think critically about diverse ... situations and verbal messages that they may encounter in real life. however, in our situation, the structure within which we are working for the humanities and law students is a separate quantitative literacy course which they experience in their first semester of first year. as a result, the integrating of the quantitative literacy competencies into suitable contexts must be addressed in the design of this course. this is done by designing learning materials that strive to present the necessary mathematical and statistical knowledge and procedures within contexts that we believe closely mimic those of the disciplines. the disciplinary curriculum is already at one remove from the authentic practices of say law or psychology through the process of recontextualisation (bernstein, 1990:183) into pedagogic discourse. it is possible to view the process of our curriculum design for quantitative literacy as a further recontextualisation of the disciplinary curriculum, leading to a two-tier process of recontextualisation. the fact that our teaching of quantitative literacy is at two removes from the practices for which students are being educated leads to many of the tensions we experience. there is a fundamental contradiction underlying the quantitative literacy course (which leads to this double level of recontextualisation as a compromise): the curriculum structure that dictates that the development of students’ quantitative literacy be addressed in a separate course early in their programme is premised on the idea that a literacy can be treated as a “generic mode” (bernstein, 2000:53) in which the voice of the discipline is necessarily weak (ashwin, 2009:94), while the nature of quantitative literacy itself (as practice embedded in a discourse) ideally requires strong integration with the disciplinary courses for its development. there is one respect in which quantitative literacy is different from other literacies, namely the mathematical and statistical knowledge and procedures that are involved in quantitative literacy practice and that need to be taught in a quantitative literacy course. despite the arguments in favour of embedding the development of quantitative literacy within discourses, this approach can disadvantage some students as there is evidence that teaching mathematical skills in context can cause students who have less developed language or academic literacy to become confused about what learning is valued, making the learning less effective (zevenbergen, sullivan & mousley, 2002:8; lerman & zevenbergen, 2004:40; ensor & galant, 2005:291; venkat, bowie & graven, 2009:85). given that some of our students lack basic mathematical 44 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 skills and that many of our students find it difficult to adapt to the language and academic literacy demands of the curriculum, we need to be cautious about allowing their learning of the basic mathematical and statistics techniques to be overwhelmed by the complexities of the contexts. the quantitative literacy course for humanities and law students law students and humanities students intending to study psychology or economics complete essentially the same quantitative literacy course provided by the numeracy centre in the first semester, although they are taught separately and register under different course codes. the students who take this course are either registered on an extended (four-year) degree programme, in which case it can be considered a ‘foundation course’, or are required to complete the course as a result of their performance on the national benchmark test for quantitative literacy. the course has the general objectives, namely that students should be able to: • read text, tables and graphs containing quantitative information critically and with understanding; • express quantitative information in clear english, using tables and graphical representations where appropriate, and • use a spreadsheet application to analyse and represent data. since 2009, the first half of the curriculum of this course has been structured around three contexts: a module on children’s rights, followed by one on xenophobia and then one on prison overcrowding. in the three context-based modules we present students with edited extracts from research reports of the kind which we believe they will encounter in their disciplinary studies and professions. the extracts are accompanied by comprehension-type questions which are used as a basis for workshops in which students are assisted in making sense of the quantitative information presented in the contextual material. in these modules students engage with substantial real contexts, and the necessary mathematics and statistics that arises is developed as needed. thus, the underlying organisational principle for the curriculum is the contexts, not the coherent development of mathematical content knowledge. the motivation for this is that it more closely mimics the reality of the quantitative literacy practice in the disciplines, and we assume that this will facilitate transfer of the relevant quantitative competencies. table 1 presents a summary of the curriculum for the three context-based modules in the first half of the course. unlike the intervention itself, this summary is structured around the main mathematical and statistical content so as to expose the topics that we believe are important. table 1: summary of mathematical and statistical content covered by the three context-based modules a cross indicates that a content topic is addressed in the relevant context module context module content topic: children’s rights xenophobia prison over-crowding fractions x x negative numbers x ratios x x x probability x percentages: absolute number vs. percentage x x x calculating a percentage x x x calculating the whole given the percentage x expressing the size of a change as a percentage x x x increasing or decreasing by a given percentage x x calculating the value before a percentage change x change in percentage points x x x compound change x 45frith — a quantitative literacy course for humanities and law students content topic: children’s rights xenophobia prison over-crowding tables x x x bar charts x x pie charts x x x line charts x x x scatter plots and line of best fit x frequency tables and charts x x x sampling and bias x sampling and confidence intervals x average x rank, range, quartiles, quintiles, interquartile range x scientific notation x significant figures x variables x area of a square and a rectangle x the second half of the course, which deals with financial mathematics and descriptive statistics, retains the structure which we used previously for the entire course, where the modules are built around the different categories of mathematical and statistical content, although the material is always presented in authentic or realistic contexts. the computer-based learning tutorials are intended mainly to support the learning of data-analysis and representation as well as to teach students how to use a spreadsheet application (microsoft excel, in this instance) for this purpose. some limitations on the effectiveness of the course in order to gain insight into the first implementation of the curriculum for the quantitative literacy course described earlier, in particular the context-based first part, the following kinds of data were collected. all the weekly staff meetings, at which the progress of the course was discussed, were recorded and a selection of classroom sessions was observed in two different classes. at the end of the course, focus group interviews were conducted with three groups of students. the discussion that follows deals with some of the themes arising from these observations, in particular those relating to difficulties experienced as a result of the tensions that arose between the contexts and the mathematical and statistical content in teaching and learning. in designing a stand-alone quantitative literacy course for specific disciplines, the major challenge has to do with the recontextualisation of the disciplinary curriculum by identifying and selecting suitable contexts that will mimic the disciplinary discourse which these students will encounter in other courses. given our experience that the students entering higher education have significant difficulties with the required mathematical and statistical knowledge and techniques, the contexts we choose must not demand a great deal of specialised knowledge, as we cannot afford to spend much of our limited course time on teaching students about the features of specific contexts or on developing the necessary language competencies. in the teaching of the course we encountered two major difficulties in this respect. first, even though we judged that the contexts we used (children’s rights, xenophobia and prison overcrowding) were reasonably accessible, our experience in the classroom revealed that we had unrealistic expectations for students’ familiarity with the contexts and with the meanings of commonly used english words associated with them. for example, some students defined the word ‘nationwide’ used in one text as meaning ‘all over the world’ and many made no distinction in meaning between the words ‘migration’ and ‘immigration’. from experience we anticipate that students will have difficulties with the language used 46 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 to express quantitative concepts, but we misjudged their level of familiarity with the language used in the disciplinary discourse. secondly, many students apparently lacked interest in the contexts and engaged superficially with them. this is understandable due to a lack of authentic motivation to engage with the contexts, as insight and understanding of the contexts is not perceived to be the main focus of the course and contributes only a small part of the assessment. this could be construed as a consequence of the two-tier recontextualisation inherent in the design of the course, leading to a separation between the disciplinary discourse and the material in the quantitative literacy course and a consequent perception of irrelevance by the students. the result of these difficulties was that we had to spend more time than anticipated on engaging with the contexts in class, which reduced the time we could spend on the mathematics and statistics concepts. not only were the contexts eclipsing the content in terms of time devoted in class, but the way that different mathematical concepts arose in the course (being in the service of understanding the contexts) meant that some of the students did not build up a coherent understanding of the underlying structures of the mathematics content. we sensed that the learning of the mathematics was disjointed. for example, the following was voiced in a staff meeting: i’m feeling concerned about the discomfort that students are feeling … i think we need to give them some structured framework they can slot the content into. … i’m kind of wanting to stop and say: ‘hey now this is what we’ve done: ... this is percentage increase, or percentage change, these are percentage points’ (audio recording of staff meeting, 2009). in this instance, the lecturer is expressing her sense that students need to be given a ‘road map’ of the skills and concepts making up the mathematical and statistical content of the course. students are used to a school mathematics curriculum that stresses abstract procedures not presented in context. therefore, when they were exposed to our more integrated context-based course material in what they thought was a mathematics course (since it carries a mathematics course code), some of them found it difficult to recognise what was valued by us in terms of their learning. it appears that the way we conducted our classes and the nature of the learning material did not convey this clearly enough to some of the students. this is illustrated, for example, in the following quote from a focus group interview: i always find that with maths i always do the opposite of how i do in my other courses and ... i mean there you go on writing the summary and then you get half a mark and then i’ll be like, ‘i don’t understand, half a mark, how do i get half a mark?’ and then you know, it’s always like hard to really understand where you went wrong (audio recording of focus group interview, 2009). this student is highlighting her lack of clarity on what kinds of answers were appropriate in assessments, and her choice of example (“writing the summary”) points to difficulties with using quantitative language appropriately in context. since we had to spend time in class explicating the context material, some students found it difficult to anticipate that what we valued was their ability to apply the mathematical knowledge in context, not their knowledge of the context itself. we deduced this from the kinds of questions they asked about how to prepare for assessments. we also found that some students did not understand the nature of the engagement with the context that we valued. we wanted them to display a rigorous academic engagement (for instance, only making statements that are supported by evidence available in the data), but our classroom practice did not make this clear. this was because in the process of helping students to understand the context, in the classroom we did encourage them to draw on their experience and own opinions, but then in assessments we did not value this kind of knowledge. conclusion and recommendations it is clear from the results of testing first-year students on entry that there is an articulation gap between the quantitative competencies of many first-year humanities and law students and the likely quantitative demands of their courses. the quantitative literacy course for humanities and law students described in this article attempts to address this gap. 47frith — a quantitative literacy course for humanities and law students the framing of quantitative literacy as social practice embedded in disciplinary discourses dictates that interventions intended to develop students in this area should attempt to achieve the maximum degree of integration of the quantitative concepts into the disciplinary discourse. in our case, where we are providing a separate course, we attempted to approach this kind of integration by changing from a content-based to a context-based curriculum at least in part of our quantitative literacy course. i believe that by doing this we achieved our purposes and served our students’ needs more appropriately, but the context-based nature of the learning materials led to tensions experienced by both lecturers and students. although it has not changed our belief that a context-based curriculum is appropriate for these students, the experience of implementation of this kind of curriculum raised questions about some of the assumptions we made about the appropriate balance between context and content and about the efficiency of such a curriculum in promoting transfer. i regard these questions as indicating ways in which we should further develop the curriculum as well as areas for research. although in a complex environment such as the quantitative literacy course (and the programme of study of which it is a part) there are no easy solutions to students’ and lecturers’ difficulties, and there are some changes we can make to address some of the tensions i have identified (some of which have already been implemented): • we should be more explicit in clarifying the distinctions between the disciplinary context and the mathematical and statistical content. • we should introduce ‘summary lectures’ and focused tutorials to assist students to develop a coherent sense of the mathematical and statistical content structure. • we should concentrate more on explicitly developing students’ ability to use and comprehend quantitative language in the context of the disciplinary discourse. • we should make more explicit what counts as valid knowledge and valid performance in assessments. • we should recommend and encourage students to engage with resources that would motivate their interest in and increase their understanding of the contexts. implementing these suggestions is a first step in the ongoing evaluation and further re-development of our first-year quantitative literacy course, with the ultimate goal of achieving the optimum degree of integration and student motivation. references archer a, frith v & prince rn 2002. a project-based approach to numeracy practices at university focusing on hiv/aids. literacy and numeracy studies, 11(2):123-131. ashwin p 2009. analysing teaching-learning interactions in higher education. london: continuum. bernstein b 1990. 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education system. in: j hofmeyer (ed), recession and recovery. cape town: institute for justice and reconciliation. retrieved on 11 may 2011 from: http://www.ijr.org.za/publications/pdfs/ijr_ta_ chapter3.pdf. zevenbergen r, sullivan p & mousley j 2002. contexts in mathematics education: help? hindrance? for whom? in: p valero & o skavsmose (eds), proceedings of the 3rd international mes conference. copenhagen: centre for research in learning mathematics. retrieved on 18 august 2010 from: http://www.mes3.learning.aau.dk/papers/zevenbergen_et_al.pdf. 98 factors contributing to the negation of therapeutic services by emerging adults at a south african university abstract from a practice point of view it seems as if there are certain factors that might contribute to the fact that emerging adults tend to negate therapeutic help and services. it also seems to be specifically true with regard to emerging adults at university. help negation seems to occur albeit the fact that therapeutic intervention is seen as an effective tool in managing distress. the aim of the study therefore was to explore which factors contribute to help negation behaviour in emerging adults at a specific university in south africa. a qualitative case study design was employed where participants who complied with the inclusion criteria set out for the study, were selected by means of non-probability target and snowball sampling. fifteen students residing in campus residences respectively participated in one of three focus group discussions. creswell’s spiral of data analysis was used to analyse the transcribed data. the data crystallised into four themes, which contribute to help negation behaviour in emerging adults. emerging adults have a fear of being judged, stigmatised, recognised, of not being treated confidentially and a fear of being vulnerable and hurt. they prefer to seek help and support from their family and peers and to put their trust in god and their religion; they have internalised beliefs about themselves and therapy and a need for independence; student interns work at the therapeutic centres on campus which specifically contributes to help negation for emerging adults at the university. it is crucial that the professionals revisit their strategies and approaches in order to overcome negation of formal help and create a more understandable, approachable and effective therapeutic service to emerging adults, especially at university therapeutic centres. keywords: emerging adults; help negation behaviour; student; university 1. introduction in contemporary society, the term “mid-life crisis” is widely understood and used as a term to describe the physical, emotional and psychological crisis or transition that individuals undergo during middle age, spanning from the ages of 45 to 60 (sadock & sadock, 2003:46-47). according to sadock and sadock (2003:35), it is a known fact that adolescents go through a similar transition from puberty to adulthood. arnett’s (2007a:24) research builds on the m. van den berg email: marleneterapie@gmail. com i.f. jacobs* email: 21829446@nwu. ac.za, tel: 021 864 3593, fax: 021 864 2654. compres, centre for child, youth and family studies, north-west university, potchefstroom campus, potchefstroom, po box 1083, 7654 wellington s. weideman email: suzette.weideman17@ gmail.com doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i1.8 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(1): 98-111 © uv/ufs mailto:marleneterapie@gmail.com mailto:marleneterapie@gmail.com mailto:21829446@nwu.ac.z mailto:21829446@nwu.ac.z mailto:suzette.weideman17@gmail.com mailto:suzette.weideman17@gmail.com http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.8 99 van den berg, jacobs & weideman factors contributing to the negation of therapeutic services foundational developmental-phase work of erikson (cited by sadock & sadock, 2003:211) in the 1950s. he therefore uses erikson’s term “emerging adults” to describe this life phase. emerging adulthood describes the life demands and developmental roles, as well as the internal and external conflicts, that a person between the ages of 18 and 25 experiences. although literature around the definition and theory of emerging adults is starting to increase (arnett, 2007:68), very little has been investigated around the therapeutic needs (biering, 2010:65) and age-specific intervention options (gowers & cotgrove, 2003:479) for emerging adults. this study hopes to create an evidence-based platform to gain an understanding of the interactions between emerging adults and therapeutic services, as well as to inform action to improve this relationship. 2. emerging adulthood as an independent life phase literature indicates that discrepancies exist with regard to the specific age and developmental norms of an early adult transitioning phase. for instance, it is stated that adolescence extends to the end of age 20, after which adulthood then commences (sadock & sadock, 2003:42). this implies that the interim period between adolescence and adulthood is merely a short period of adjustment and transitioning (sadock & sadock, 2003:41). anderson and lowen (2010:780), in their study, refer to individuals between 15 and 25 years as young adults whilst van voorhees, fogel, houston, cooper, wang and ford (2006:746) claim that young adults are 16 to 29 years of age. 2.1 the emerging adult as a student a large number of emerging adults occupy themselves by furthering their education through attending a university. this implies that, in addition to the developmental transition from adolescent to adult, the emerging adult also has to cope with the demands of campus life (petersen, louw & dumont, 2009:102). bojuwoye (2002:277-278) lists a variety of adjustments that emerging adults have to face in this environment, such as the fact that it is often also the first time that the emerging adults leave the security of their family homes and accept responsibility for themselves and their choices, cope with academic pressure, manage their own finances, develop a new social circle and grow in personal insight. emerging adults also face stressful decisions, not only regarding future career paths and course choices, but also with regard to difficult social choices such as substance use or sexual behaviour (arnett, 2000:475; bojuwoye, 2002:278). facing all these challenges can be a highly stressful experience and can be the cause of severe difficulty in adjusting to new life roles and environments (bojuwoye, 2002:278; mudhovozi, 2011:511). mudhovozi’s (2011:520) study on analysis of stress and life satisfaction in universities indicated that emerging adults mostly use avoidance-oriented strategies, rather than emotion or solution-focused techniques, in order to deal with distress. across cultures, this often leads to an increased use of alcohol and substances to help cope with distress (arnett, 2000:475; gasquet, chavance, ledoux & choquet, 1997:151). researchers (gasquet et al., 1997:151; pillay & ngcobo, 2010:234; wilson, deane & ciarrochi, 2005:1526) have also found a positive correlation between increased incidents of suicide ideation and attempts and the need to escape their experiences of distress in both adolescent and emerging adult populations. it seems that few emerging adults manage to adjust effectively to this developmental phase, as it is currently believed that the emerging adult group has the highest prevalence 100 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) of depression when compared against all other age groups (van voorhees et al., 2006:746; vanheusden, van der ende, mulder, van lenthe, verhulst & mackenbach, 2009:239). 3. help negation behaviour help negation behaviour, according to rickwood, deane, wilson and ciarrochi (2005:14-16), refers to an individual not utilising therapeutic services, even though intervention is needed, available and accessible. therapeutic services is seen as an umbrella term that refers to the broad range of psychological schools of thought which aim to intervene where distress upsets healthy living and disturbs successful adaptation (timmerman, 2011). existing knowledge found that help negation is, at present, a common tendency within the emerging adult population (gasquet et al., 1997:151; rickwood et al., 2005:4; van voorhees et al., 2006:751). this is supported by observations in a crisis mental health support service facility at a south african university where emerging adults utilised crisis intervention services but were resistant to being referred for long-term therapeutic intervention (weideman, 2012). in this last instance, it was found that emerging adults who would require emergency mental health support would be orientated and referred to appropriate therapeutic services, but only made use of these services on limited occasions. according to weideman (2013), it also often occurs that the same individuals later report for emergency support again, having negated the previous therapeutic help offered. briddle, gunnell, sharp and donovan (2004:253) hypothesise that a potential reason for emerging adults’ help negation behaviour is that therapeutic intervention is not created, presented and marketed to suit the specific needs of the emerging adult population. calton and arcelus (2003:294) noticed that intervention is focused mostly on the child, adolescent and adult populations, thus regularly overlooking the emerging adult age group. abraham, lepisto and schultz (1995:75), as well as gowers and cotgrove (2003:479), postulate that the lack of age-appropriate intervention for emerging adults could be due to the limited information available on the type of intervention preferred by emerging adults. even so, the tendency of emerging adults to negate help, despite distressing adaptations (asberg, bowers, renk & mckinney, 2008:482) and a high prevalence of mental health disorders in the population (kessler & walters, 1998:3; vanheusden et al., 2009:239) are alarming. it is disconcerting to know that services to support well-being and promote coping strategies, although proven effective, are often not used by the emerging adults. despite growing theoretical interest in the emerging adult phase, research on help negation is, however, scarce and often inconsistent (biering, 2010:70; rickwood et al., 2005:5, 16; wilson et al., 2005:1526), especially in the south african context (tomlinson, grimsrud, stein, williams & myer, 2009:368). no studies could be found concerning the engagement of the emerging adult population with therapeutic services in an african or south african context. the limited available research for this age group and for the south african context was confirmed in observations by the team who conducted the south african stress and health study (commissioned by the world health organization as part of the world mental health 2000 initiative) (tomlinson et al., 2009:368). this study thus aimed toward building a sounder scientific knowledge base. 101 van den berg, jacobs & weideman factors contributing to the negation of therapeutic services 4. research design a qualitative case study design aimed at gaining an intimate understanding of the behaviours and thought processes of an encapsulated population concerning a singular occurrence (fouché & schurink, 2011:320) was used. welman, kruger and mitchel (2005:193) define a case study design as the understanding of the polarities and undercurrents of a single system or case, usually of a social nature (nieuwenhuis, 2016:81). the case for the purpose of this study was thus emerging adults enrolled in a south african university. fifteen emerging adults who at the time of the study received further education at a specific university in south africa were sampled through target (strydom, 2011:233) and snowball sampling (henning, 2004:71) to participate in focus group discussions. the emerging adults were informed on exactly what would be expected of them as well as what they could expect during data collection. the emerging adults were thus able to make an informed decision with regards to whether they want to participate in the study or not. 5. data collection and data analysis three separate groups, consisting of five, four and six students respectively met for the focus group discussions that lasted for between 90 and 120 minutes. the three focus groups were conducted in different time slots over a one-week period. this was done to accommodate students who could not attend a set time slot because of class schedules. making use of focus group discussions as a data collection method with the purpose to explore factors that contribute to help negating behaviour might be considered paradoxical in the context of help negation behaviour. however, seeing that participants were expected to only give their opinions and reflect upon the specific phenomenon, focus group discussions were thus considered appropriate data collection methods (welman et al., 2005:201). the focus group discussions proofed to have worked especially well as the participants engaged eagerly in the discussion and in this way they were “building on each other’s ideas” (nieuwenhuis, 2016:96). the groups schurink, fouché and de vos (2011:403) refer to creswell’s familiar data analysis spiral, explaining that qualitative data analysis moves in a cyclic nature and is in an ever-evolving process until holistic integration is achieved. in fulfilling the process of the organisation of creswell’s spiral, the transcription documents and recorded material were carefully compared to ensure that the data were presented in an accurate manner. as multiple resources were considered in the study, the process of crystallisation permitted integrated and relevant findings to emerge from the study. nieuwenhuis (2016:121) defines crystallisation as the emergence of data from the available resources. 6. trustworthiness transferability as a construct to prove the trustworthiness of a study is considered problematic with a qualitative study. qualitative researchers most of the time use a small population group which then makes it difficult to generalise the study to other similar population groups (schurink et al., 2011:420). there are however other ways to ensure the transferability of a qualitative study. one way is to present and portray the information in the exact manner that the participants revealed it and from their intended perspective. data was therefore gathered to a point of saturation (greeff, 2012) which indicated that the quality of data was rich and sufficient. by giving a thick and dense description of the collected data further contributed 102 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) to the transferability of the data (shenton, 2004:70).transferability was also established through the recruitment of participants from a fully-representative sample of the population. promoting dependability refers to consistency of data collection and data analysis throughout the research process (greeff, 2012). confirmability refers to the manner in which the current research can confirm and support previous literature or be supported and confirmed by future literature (schurink et al., 2011:421). confirmability was achieved through accurate, uninfluenced and thorough data collection and analysis throughout the research process. confirmability was further achieved through the inclusion of a literature control during the discussion of the findings, which highlighted the fact that the research confirmed prior findings and expanded on knowledge to further future investigation (anderson & lowen, 2010:781; bradley et al., 2010:243). 7. ethical consideration once ethical clearance was obtained from the health science research ethical committee (ethical number nwu-00060-12-a1) permission was granted by the management of the relevant university to conduct the research study. ethical aspects related to the research were addressed via informed consent based on the principles of voluntary participation, confidentiality, anonymity, avoidance of harm and the debriefing of participants (strydom, 2011:115-117). 8. results and discussion the data crystallised into four themes indicating factors that contribute to help negation amongst emerging adults at a specific university in south africa. 8.1 theme 1: fears with regard to therapy one of the most challenging barriers to help seeking in emerging adults is the fears that they have regarding therapy. these fears also play a role in intensifying certain mistaken beliefs concerning therapy and can act as an aggravator for practical barriers. 8.1.1 subtheme 1.1: fear of being judged and stigmatised fear of stigmatisation as a barrier to help seeking is a widely reported phenomenon. it is reflected in findings of studies in most age populations (borge & fagermoen, 2007:200), but is also specifically noticed in the emerging adult population (bradley et al.,2010:243; vanheusden et al.,2009:240). bradley et al. (2010:244) are of the opinion that this phenomenon is especially common in the emerging adult population as peer opinions and a need for acceptance are still important to the emerging adult. this theme could be triangulated fully as the student leadership of the relevant university have also noted that fear of stigmatisation is a help negation factor. in feedback and observations by the student council, they became aware that students did not want to disclose certain issues or discuss their problems with counsellors or social workers due to the fear of stigmatisation. in consulting student leadership on this study, the student council member for current affairs and the participants felt that the origin of distress is more linked to being judged and labelled than to the actual attendance of therapy. one participant summarised the opinions of all the participants by stating that, “i think that knowing you will be labelled as a big reason why we do not go for therapy.” the student council member for current affairs was also of the opinion that students may be scared to enter the buildings on the campus where therapeutic services are offered, as 103 van den berg, jacobs & weideman factors contributing to the negation of therapeutic services they may potentially be criticised by peers when they are seen entering these buildings. this was confirmed by the participants who reported an actual experience of fear, despite only entering the building for the purpose of participating in the study. the fear of stigmatisation indicates that there is still a lack of awareness and insight with regard to mental health and distress on university campuses (pillay & ngcobo, 2010:238). 8.1.2 subtheme 1.2: fear of being vulnerable and hurt this subtheme offers what massey (2011:23) labels as emergent data. this was an unforeseen insight and offered a novel perspective on the sentiments of the emerging adult population. when participants brought up the fear of being vulnerable and hurt it was accompanied by strong non-verbal responses that indicated the intensity of emotions that this fear elicits. the fact that therapy can potentially open up old wounds was shaded with strong negative associations: “it is too hurtful to process these issues again.” another participant articulated, “you store away everything that has happened to you; if you begin to talk it will all come back again.” in a counteraction, another member questioned the group by asking, “have you really processed the issue if it is still traumatic and brings you such a lot of unsettled emotions?” most participants, however, associated more with the first statement and felt that the fear of re-experiencing such hurt and vulnerability was an obstacle too immense to surmount. 8.1.3 subtheme 1.3: fear of being recognised and not being treated confidentially in a literature review study by anderson and lowen (2010:781) on mental health services provided to youth, it was found that distrust regarding confidentiality is a significant barrier to accessing and utilising therapeutic services. during the current study, the issues concerning confidentiality and anonymity also surfaced as participants felt that the possibility of not being treated confidentially would have a help-negating effect on them. participants acknowledged that their fear of judgement and stigmatisation would increase their need for confidentially. this confirms the previous findings of rickwood et al. (2005:17) that confidentiality is an area of concern because of fear of stigmatisation by others. participants indicated that this theme also considers their need for anonymity and thus an accompanying fear that they will be recognised or will have to face their therapist in a nonclinical setting. it may be that the setting of this study influenced this finding. the university and its main campus, where the study was performed, encourage a sense of community and thus familiarity: “i think you are especially scared here on campus that a therapist might talk to a physiotherapist or a receptionist.” due to the sense of community it could well be that a student will visit the same shops or churches as a therapist. in this regard one participant remarked: “i want to see my therapist in therapy, not in another place.” in addition, participants were aware of the fact that the therapeutic services departments offer supervision opportunities or internships for final year students. again, the possibility exists that the emerging adult will be recognised by someone that they know or that they may be confronted with seeing the same person in a non-clinical setting. the dreaded awkwardness, potential judgement and sense of personal embarrassment all contribute to the fear of being recognised and not treated confidentially. as this would potentially prevent participants from attending therapy, it is classified as a conceivable help negation factor. 104 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) 8.2 theme 2: personal and developmental aspects researchers (arnett, 2000:469; molgat, 2007:495) often remark on the complexity of the emerging adult developmental phase. one of the reasons for this complexity is the critical stage that an emerging adult faces with regard to their identity formations and transitions (schwartz, beyers, luyckx, soenens, zamboanga, forthun, hardy, vazsonyi, ham, kim, whitborne & waterman, 2011:839). 8.2.1 subtheme 2.1: awareness, but need for independence the need to want to deal independently with problems and stress-related issues can be due to the need for independence and personal responsibility that according to arnett (2000:473), is a developmental attribute of the emerging adult population. this need for independence includes the right to decide about their own health-related decisions and actions (lenz, 2001:300). participants explained that whilst growing up they did not experience autonomy and were always guided or supported in some way. having now reached an age of increased independence they want to be fully autonomous, which includes accepting responsibility for their mental health (rickwood et al., 2005:16; vanheusden et al., 2009:240). participants voiced their opinion by stating that, “i can deal with my problems on my own” and “i do not like the idea that someone else helps me, because i want to cope with my problems on my own.” according to rickwood et al. (2005:16), the emerging adult’s belief that therapy is not useful, contributes to the fact that they would rather deal with their problems themselves. participants were of the opinion that all that is needed when a problem arises is to change one’s attitude and take actions toward resolving the problem. therapy would therefore be pointless. a participant pronounced, “with or without help, i will manage. the psychologist is only a placebo effect to get me to where i want to be.” although this is true for some individuals, others might need the support and skills that can be offered through therapeutic intervention, specifically in cases of severe distress and an inability to cope. lastly, participants felt that the level of autonomy they experienced as children could cause them to cling to a newfound independence associated with the freedom of campus life and they would thus not want to go to therapy where someone might engage with them from an authoritarian position. the need for autonomy extended to not wanting to be forced to go to therapy, especially by parents. one participant formulised the emerging adult’s need for autonomy as follows: “i think young adults do not want to be prescribed to and they do not want guidance. they just want to figure it out for themselves.” a participant justified the emerging adult’s need for not wanting to be forced to go for therapy as follows: “i do not like the idea that someone else helps me, because i want to cope with my problems on my own” and “i can deal with my problems on my own.” 8.2.2 subtheme 2.2: familial influences perry (cited by arnett, 2000:474) explained that emerging adults are in a precarious position regarding their beliefs and opinions. they collected various introjected belief systems and behaviours throughout their development and are only now in a position where these views can be challenged and evaluated in order to develop their personal perspectives. the emerging adult is thus exploring their new beliefs, but is still largely influenced by the beliefs and behaviours from their childhood. for instance, if parents did not encourage the expression of emotions or the notion of therapeutic support it would make emerging adults less likely to consider and utilise therapeutic services in the present. in support of this a participant stated, 105 van den berg, jacobs & weideman factors contributing to the negation of therapeutic services “it’s not like we have been brought up in a home where everyone is ok with therapy or where you know that when you have problems you can go for therapy”. the student council for current affairs at the relevant university commented that specifically in the afrikaans culture, there is a tendency to refrain from speaking about problems because of their conservative background and beliefs about needing to appear in control. these factors add to the emerging adult’s reluctance to engage in therapeutic services as they have been brought up to face and deal with their problems alone. 8.3 theme 3: societal factors this theme explores the reasons for participants negating professional help in favour of informal help from friends and families. it further elaborates on other societal factors that can influence help negation behaviour. 8.3.1 subtheme 3.1: using family and peer support bynner (2005:368) and vanheusden et al. (2009:239) state that emerging adults are in a developmental phase where establishing solid social relationships is of crucial importance. participants indicated that these relationships are often their source of support and guidance. although parents, close family members, peers, even older friends or community role models could potentially give social support in times of distress, participants however placed great value on the importance of evaluating social support resources in order to determine whether the support would be valuable and sufficient in helping a person deal with a specific problem. one participant explained the following with regard to social support resources: “i know them and what they stand for … their integrity has been tested”. two aspects are considered here namely a person needs a “good” social support structure, such as friends or family that are trustworthy that can give valuable advice when needed. secondly, a person needs enough support, thus having a sufficient number of individuals that they can go to for support. these aspects would be used to determine if a person has a solid support basis and if confirmed, therapy would often be deemed redundant. offer (cited by rickwood, et al., 2005:5), however, suggested that social support resources may not always provide sufficient support as the relevant person might lack the insight and training to provide help in severe situations. it was interesting to note that participants agreed with this hypothesis. a participant even stated, “it’s not always a good thing, because they [social support] do not always know what advice to give you and can give you wrong advice”. participants also mentioned that support resources could sometimes come from a friend with poor social influence and that following this friend’s advice could lead to more distress. however of more importance to the participants is that emerging adults normally have a variety of different support resources that are available to them in different situations. for instance, when one simply needs to have a good time a specific friend might be available, whereas another might be available to discuss relationship issues with and yet another to discuss religious matters with. in the case where emerging adults have such a support base available to them, they would not consider therapy and would negate formal help even when the help needed is critical of professional care. emerging adults thus seem to value informal support from their family and peers over sometimes most needed formal (professional) support. 106 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) 8.3.2 subtheme 3.2: depending on religion depending on religion, as with utilising social support, promotes help negation as participants felt that they would rather depend on their religion than go to therapy. participants had strong opinions regarding receiving help from god versus seeking help from therapeutic services: “in my opinion you receive your answers from god” and “i feel that he [god] reveals to me what i have to change and then the responsibility lies with me to do so.” it is of note that previous global literature on help-seeking behaviour did not raise religion as a basis for help negation. a vast number of students in the university population where this study took place, including the participants in the study, are known to have a strong religious foundation. it should be noted that the population demographic could have influenced this finding. a more diverse population is needed in order to determine the transferability of a strong religious foundation as a help negation factor of formal help. 8.4 theme 4: unprofessionalism of the therapist from the participants’ viewpoint, unprofessionalism was seen as being over-sympathetic; implying that something is wrong with the person; not having mutual respect; not respecting appointments or the emerging adults’ time; and not communicating about administrative aspects. one participant shared that: “they (therapists at the treatment centre) treated me as if there was something wrong with me; they showed so much empathy that i thought, ‘ok, maybe not’ and i literally turned around and walked away.” another participant, who had the experience of a therapist that was late for their appointment, mentioned: “the issue that put me off was that you shouldn’t be late for a session, you should be there, pitch up!” similar issues were identified in a study by klinger, ladany and kulp (2012:568-569) on therapists’ moments of embarrassment. these included aspects such as mistakes in scheduling, missing or being late for appointments and confusing clients with regard to administrative arrangements. lastly, it is important to note the participants’ concerns with setting-specific occurrences. the internship offered at the therapeutic intervention centre at the relevant university contributed to the belief that the therapist might be unprofessional and inexperienced. participants believed (whether correctly or incorrectly) that a person who is still in the process of an internship would not be sufficiently professional. although neither the professionalism nor the experience of a therapist or intern therapist could be confirmed, the emerging adults’ perspective that they might be unprofessional or inexperienced would still contribute to help negation. 8.5 theme 5: confusion with regard to the availability of specific therapeutic services and procedures anderson and lowen (2010:781) indicated that various studies considered availability of and access to services as being help negation factors. in the setting of this study therapeutic services are, however, both easily available and accessible. even though they were all aware of the centre, its logo, number and even advertisements, they were not clear as to the actual purpose and procedures of the centre. participants very honestly admitted that they thought the crisis support centre would help them change a flat tyre or replace a lost student card, confirming what one participant claimed, namely that, “no-one knows what services they offer.” they felt that some students might not even know about the option, but that it is more a case of not knowing exactly what the service entails that kept them from using it (anderson & lowen, 2010:781; rickwood et al., 2005:18). 107 van den berg, jacobs & weideman factors contributing to the negation of therapeutic services the current study indicates that emerging adults might be aware of the service, but if they do not have a sense of the procedures and a level of security regarding what will happen at the therapeutic centre, they are also inclined to negate the help. this even included uncertainty as to the exact location of the services. a potential hypothesis for this occurrence, postulated by the participants, was that students are informed of the existence of therapeutic services during their first week as students. this is often a very busy and overwhelming week for students and therefore the transfer of information can easily go astray. participants specifically attributed this to the fact that they are so overwhelmed by the magnitude of information during the first week that they later forget that therapeutic services are available. in addition, it might be that the marketing of therapeutic services is not efficient or striking enough and thus emerging adults do not pay attention to the content of the advertisement. another potential explanation for this confusion that became evident through this study is that an emerging adult needs to muster up a sufficient amount of courage to surmount fears, mistaken beliefs and potential stigmatisation in order to attend therapy and get the help they need. in using prochaska’s model of change, leite and kuiper (2008:55) discovered that confusion and uncertainty could keep an individual stuck in the contemplative stage of change, without ever progressing to action. it is therefore a possibility that even the slightest insecurity about the procedure and location would decrease the emerging adult’s courage radically and serve as an extensive help negation factor. 9. conclusions it is clear that emerging adulthood is a unique and critical developmental phase in the course of any individual’s life. in this study, it is evident that the need for autonomy, as well as the desire to be independent, is essential developmental qualities for emerging adults. it can be stated that the very fact that these individuals are currently in a phase of emerging adulthood can cause them to negate therapeutic help. a need to establish oneself as strong, capable and independent does not coincide with asking for help or going for therapy. in addition, beliefs that are cultivated and supported by the larger society, pertaining to dealing with problems alone and being weak when one needs therapy, contribute significantly to negative perceptions regarding therapeutic intervention. these negative attitudes and mistaken beliefs create a sense of doubt, insecurity and fear in the emerging adult when they consider therapeutic intervention. despite mental health and well-being becoming more popularised concepts in society, stigmatisation is still an active agent of help negation in the emerging adult population. emerging adults’ fear of appearing weak, of being vulnerable and of being labelled are the most prominent elements in instigating a fear of stigmatisation. the emerging adult’s lack of awareness and internalised negative beliefs about therapeutic participation cause stigmatisation to be a profound help negation factor. in addition, one should consider the impact of setting-specific aspects as help negation factors. in this study, for example, student interns assisted at the therapeutic centre, which caused emerging adults to be more wary of the therapists and fearful that their confidentiality would be compromised. therapeutic centres that neglect to evaluate critically all aspects of their operation, including marketing, initial contact with a client, the procedures of making an appointment and the location of their venues, risk the potential increase of help negation amongst their client base. 108 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) help negation factors are clearly denying emerging adults the opportunity to understand and manage their distress and emotions, or to gain personal insight and grow into the best version of themselves. it is crucial that the professionals revisit their strategies and approaches in order to overcome negation of formal help and create a more understandable, approachable and effective therapeutic service to emerging adults. 10. recommendations an attempt should be made to provide a positive and correct portrayal of therapy, as well as to rectify incorrect perceptions with regard to the mental health field. de-stigmatising the need for formal sources of help will greatly counter help negating behaviour. mobilising public role models in verbalising their own struggles with mental health issues can act as a positive example to the emerging adult population seeking help. therapeutic centres at universities should also take care to focus marketing strategies not only during the orientation of first year students, but to market therapeutic services constantly to students of all courses and year groups. the concept to employ intern students at these clinics should also be re-evaluated. help negation will minimise if emerging adults trust the confidentiality and anonymity of the centres and can be assured that they will receive effective, high-quality intervention. clinicians should continuously re-evaluate their method of therapeutic intervention when working with emerging adults. they for instance need to be aware of character traits such as authoritarianism, oversympathising and advice giving, which have the potential to put emerging adults off therapy. general public talks presented by 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weideman, s. 2012. therapeutic services at university and research design [telephonic conference]. september, cape town. weideman, s. 2013. therapeutic services at university and research design [telephonic conference]. february, cape town. welman, c., kruger, p. & mitchel, b. 2005. research methodology. 3 ed. oxford: university press, cape town. wilson, c. j., deane, f. p. & ciarrochi, j. 2005. can hopelessness and adolescents’ beliefs and attitudes about seeking help account for help negation? journal of clinical psychology, 61(12), 1525-1539. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.20206 http://www.health24.com/ medical/ https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-006-0091-x https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-006-0091-x https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-008-0428-8 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-008-0428-8 https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.20206 perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 21 michael young centre for researching education and labour, school of education, university of witwatersrand. e-mail: stephanie.matseleng@gmail.com standards and standard setting and the post school curriculum michael young this paper is concerned with the role of standards and standard setting in shaping the expansion of post school education in highly unequal society. it draws on an account of the debates and policies on standards in the uk from the 1980’s to today and the wider lessons that can be learned from them. it argues that relying on any type of standards on their own, independently of any consideration of curriculum, pedagogy and the distribtution of educational resources is doomed to failure. it concludes by linking the idea of higher stadards for all to morrow’s concept of ‘epistemic access’. keywords: standards, standard setting, post school education, epistemic access introduction the higher education and training department’s recent green paper proposes an ambitious plan for expanding post school education and training by 2030. in combining this overall expansion with the proposal that much of this expansion will take place in the further education and training colleges rather than in universities, the green paper represents a radical break with the pattern of provision inherited from the apartheid era. i do not intend here to consider the green paper’s proposals in any detail. there is already an excellent analysis published by hesa (2011). this paper is concerned with the broader role of standards and standard setting in shaping the expansion of post school education, with particular reference to highly unequal societies such as england and south africa. it makes two assumptions: one is that standards as measures of how quality in education is judged are in some form an inescapable element in any education system. the second assumption is that it may be useful in assessing the possible consequences of the different interpretations of standards being adopted in south africa, to draw on the experience of the changing role of standards in how post school provision in england has been developed since the early 1980s. the english case may be of interest to south africans because the meaning of educational standards, and their role in the expansion of post and upper perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 22 secondary school expansion in england, has itself been the subject of explicit debate and controversy . the assumption that all educational policies necessarily involve some idea of standards in terms of which the system and individual institutions are judged to have improved (or not) raises the question of the meaning of standards in education – a notoriously fraught and slippery idea. until the 1970s the term ‘standards’ was largely taken for granted in educational debates in england. standards were either high or low and rising or falling and ‘high’ standards were associated with the educational institutions in which the majority of pupils were successful in highly regarded examinations. it was assumed that such elite institutions (in england, the fee-charging public schools and state grammar schools) ‘set the standards’ for others to follow. at the same time, there was no expectation that more than a few of those attending non-elite institutions would reach the standards set by the elite. the main way that the ‘elite’ institutions achieved their standards was through being highly selective in the students who they accepted. the idea of standards being ‘high’ or ‘low’ was not applied to the education of the majority of pupils; they attended school, but most were not expected to achieve enough to reach any publicly recognised standard. however, this hierarchical and relatively exclusive model of standards was flexible enough to allow a small but steady expansion of the numbers achieving ‘high’ standards, even in non-elite schools. this slow expansion was supported by a steady increase in educational expenditure and in the opportunities, for students from non-elite schools, at the top the universities. the prevailing idea of standards was explicitly ‘normative’; it limited the proportion achieving the highest grades1st class honours degrees and a grades at a level(the examination taken by students staying at school until the age of 18). thus, high grades were rationed and quality was maintained – albeit it was a distinctly backward-looking concept of quality which was based on the assumption that only a small proportion of each cohort was capable of high achievement. in considering possible alternatives to this highly traditional view of standards, its ‘quality assurance’ role should not be neglected. it is difficult to imagine any expansionist policy that is concerned with quality as well as access that does not involve some form of ‘normative’ concept of standards. it is a feature, in different forms, of even the most equal education systems such as those found in the nordic countries. however, from the 1970s, and as a result of political and economic changes, this taken-for-granted idea of standards began to be called into question, especially in relation to post school education. for example: • the post school sector itself, previously relatively homogeneous, was becoming increasingly diversified as more and more students continued at school or college after the end of compulsory schooling at the age of 16. standards and standard setting and the post school curriculum michael young 23 • doubts were raised about a concept of standards that relied on implicit and relatively fixed criteria that only recognised the achievements of perhaps a third of those attending school and provided no basis for assessing the progress of the rest. • policy makers came under increasing pressure to find a more inclusive concept of standards that (a) could provide a way to assess the achievements of the majority, (b) be a measure of whether the system, as a whole, was improving, and (c) could be operationalised quantitatively. a new approach to educational standards it was in response to these pressures that, in the 1980s in england, a quite new concept of ‘educational standards’ (employment department, 1982) was developed. the proposal was that, instead of starting with existing high achievers as the basis of standards, as in the normative model, standards could be expressed as ‘written statements’, referenced to explicit criteria at different levels, and representing what any learner could be expected to do or know. these ‘new standards’ were developed independently of any traditional ideas of ‘high standards’, and made no reference to whether the person being assessed had undertaken a specific course of study. this concept of ‘written standards’ is very similar in meaning to the idea of ‘learning outcomes’ that has been the subject of much debate in south africa. a written statement might, in the language of the new standards, refer to how well someone could ‘plaster a wall’ or ‘write an essay about the french revolution’. in practice, in the first decade, the new model was applied almost exclusively to ‘know how’ competences rather than ‘know that’ knowledge.. both the implicit (normative) and explicit (written) approaches to standards have strengths and weaknesses. the strength of the former is that it recognises that, in any society, there is an implicit, and assumed but always debated view about what high standards are and in terms of which, judgments are made by admission tutors and employers in selecting students and employees. it follows that, with such a model, many of those assessed will not reach the required standards and will fail. in other words, an element of selection is built into this approach to standards. such an approach stresses maintaining high standards and, as a consequence, it neglects inclusion and widening participation, and is resistant to broadening the definition of a high standard. problems are raised for such a backward-looking and inflexible approach when economic and political circumstances change. in contrast, the idea of explicit ‘written standards’ offers the potential of greater precision about what achieving a standard means and places no prior limit on the proportion of learners who might succeed. furthermore, it creates the conditions for debates about the criteria for standards and the proportion of a cohort that might be expected to reach different levels, in terms of the standards. it is these possibilities that are limited by the traditional view of standards that assumes both the criteria and the proportion achieving high standrads are given. in broad political perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 24 terms the explicit model of standards is democratic, at least in principle, . in not making any prior assumptions about the proportion of learners who can achieve the highest standards, standards are open to anyone who believes they can comply with the criteria. however, the new approach to standards involves a number of serious weaknesses. first, by dispensing with a normative assumption about what high standards are, it weakens the role of standards in maintaining quality. secondly, reliance on the precision of the written statements as a guarantor of quality can easily lead to over-specification and the trivialisation of assessment tasks, thus undermining quality. thirdly, in defining standards independently of inputs (such as curricula and teaching), the new approach emphasises the accountability role of assessment rather than the link between assessment and improvement. each of these problems is exemplified, as i will demonstrate in the next section, in the expansion of the post school education and training system in england since the 1980s. post school education and training in the uk from the 1980s post school education in england has undergone massive expansion since the early 1980s. until then two-thirds of each cohort left school at 16 or earlier with no certificate or qualification of any kind. despite this evidence of persistent inequalities, so long as those leaving school without any certificates or qualifications found employment (mostly in factories, as unskilled manual workers), this was not seen as a problem by governments of either the right or the left. however, by the end of the 1970s, the labour market for unskilled, unqualified school leavers was disappearing, as such work moved to the low-wage economies of south east asia. it was this collapse of the youth labour market that led to the first phase of expansion of post school education and training in england and to a re-thinking of the traditional concept of standards. initially, this expansion consisted largely of work-based ‘training’ schemes, linked in some cases to off-the-job periods of study in a college. the programmes, which came to be known as youth training (yt), had some similarities with the learnerships developed after 1995 in south africa. a key difference was that youth training was based on government funding, not on a levy on employers. the second period of expansion involved vocationally oriented programmes in colleges (and in schools) for the low achieving section of the cohort who had previously left school at the age of 16. this form of expansion was initiated by conservative governments in the 1980s, but extended by successive labour governments in the period 1997–2010 . the third phase i will refer to is the present coalition government’s response to post school expansion since 2010. my argument will be that standards were interpreted by the pre and post 2010 governments in very different ways with very different implications for the form and content of post school education and post 16 education at school. the post 2010 government’s reliance on the older normative concept of standards makes it likely not only that post school education will change, but that the expansion of previous years may even be reversed. standards and standard setting and the post school curriculum michael young 25 old and new models of standards the new approach, based on written standards was introduced in the uk in the 1980s for vocational qualifications in parallel with the expansion of work-based youth training schemes referred to earlier. these ‘standards of a new kind’ were distinguished from the traditional and highly selective ‘academic’ standards, by being achievable in principle by anyone. at the same time, as a precursor to later developments, the 1981 white paper argued that, as these ‘new standards’ could be specified at different levels, and that the levels could be used to treat qualifications based on the new standards and traditional academic qualifications as equivalent. again, there are interesting similarities with the way these ‘levels’ were used in the south african nqf. in practice, in the uk, very few young people on workbased schemes obtained qualifications at other than the lowest level, so the idea of equivalence with academic qualifications was hardly tested. however, as we shall see, this was to change when the concept of ‘levels’ was extended to collegeand school-based qualifications. qualifications associated with the new ‘written standards’ (national vocational qualifications or nvqs) (young 2011) gained little credibility, either with employers or admission tutors for higher-level courses. some research showed that employers preferred candidates with no qualifications at all to those with qualifications based on the new ‘written standards’. most of the complaints, which came from both teachers and employers, were about the inflexibility and over-specification of outcomes that the new concept of standards led to. problems with the ‘standards of a new kind’ firstly, the ‘new standards’ were static. they referred to what someone could do at a particular time and at a particular level. they did not provide evidence to the learner or anyone else as to whether they might be able to progress to a standard at a higher level. it is partly for this reason that the new standards were not widely trusted, and why so few of those certificated progressed from one level to another. secondly, the new standards model (unlike the old model which was associated with specific institutions) separated the processes of setting and assessing a standard from the process of achieving a standard (teaching and learning). such a model works well for the international standards organisation (iso) when it is used to ensure that, for example, different manufacturers of screws or electrical parts make them of identical sizes. however, it causes problems when the ‘object’ being checked in relation to a standard that refers to the performance of a task that is never completely routine. thirdly, in order to solve the immediate problem of assessing those who had left compulsory schooling with no skills or qualifications, the first written standards were set at the lowest levels; as a consequence, the new standards themselves became associated with low standards (using standards in the old sense). this illustrates how an approach to standards, which starts with the learner and sets out to promote perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 26 access and includes all potential learners, can all too easily perpetuate the inequalities that it was designed to overcome. in england the expansion of post school education was based on a low achieving provision of compulsory education for the majority – a situation that i am sure has parallels in south africa. this meant that, from the perspective of policy makers, it made sense to provide the lowest achievers with some kind of certificate. the alternative, which might have been more successful in the long run, would have been to start with the higher standards that the new programmes were supposed to lead to. instead of being a developmental model, which linked standards at different levels with pedagogy and curricula, the new standards model defined learner progress in terms of a hierarchy of levels, but with no links between the levels and how the learners might progress up the hierarchy. the next period of expansion, in the late 1990s, involved extending the model to full-time courses in schools and colleges. while the ‘new standards model’ was retained, the written statements were made more flexible and assessment became the teachers’ responsibility, monitored loosely by external verifiers. however, as we will see, it was to lead to other problems. the expansion of post school education in england (1997–2010) after the election of the labour government in 1997, education and training policy was driven by the goals of widening participation and inclusion. success was measured by the increasing proportion of students achieving higher-level qualifications; this became a primary goal for schools and colleges and the main motivation for teachers and students. as the basis for a qualification system based on levels and outcomes, the new standards fitted neatly into their role as an instrument of accountability based on the ranking of schools and colleges on performance tables. in terms of more students’ gaining qualifications and an increasing proportion obtaining higher grades, the policy was undoubtedly successful. however, england’s drop in rank on the tables of the programme for international student assessment (pisa) developed by the oecd, although contested by some researchers, suggested that this success could not be straightforwardly equated with an improvement in standards (at least in a comparative sense). how then were the year-on-year increases in numbers gaining qualifications achieved? this question points to what happened when the ‘standards of a new kind’, which were originally designed for low achievers, became standards for all levels of achievement. the main mechanism which led to the year-on-year increases in the numbers gaining qualifications at higher levels was the introduction of the principle of equivalence not dissimilar to the level descriptors adopted in the south african nqf. standards were defined in terms of a hierarchy of levels and all qualifications were located on a level. in contrast to earlier policies which distinguished types of qualifications (vocational and academic), the new framework placed all qualifications standards and standard setting and the post school curriculum michael young 27 on a single set of levels regardless of their type, their methods of assessment, or their curriculum. furthermore, the government introduced a whole range of new measures designed to make assessment more accessible and to promote widening participation. these policies can be seen, as i shall explain, as an extension of the aims of ‘standards of a new kind’ that i referred to earlier. for example: • programmes were broken up into modules and assessed separately • an increased emphasis was given to continuous rather than end of course assessment • the opportunities for students to repeat assessments which they had failed were extended. all these changes were designed to make assessment more accessible and increase the role of student choice and, in this way, improve their motivation to learn. on the other hand, they focused on assessment, not the inputs (pedagogy and curricula), which might have demanded more from students and raised the quality of their learning if they became more motivated. not surprisingly, there were substantial year-on-year increases in pass rates. thanks to the new equivalence principle that required all qualifications to be located on levels defined by a single set of criteria it was achieving a qualification at a specific level rather than achieving the qualifications itself that became the new currency for both teachers and students. students who would not have obtained a good gcse in, for example, history or a foreign language under the old system, now obtained many more gcse equivalents at the same level. in the period 2007–2010, virtually no questions were raised about the possible unintended consequences of this system of equivalence, despite the fact that it was treated with great scepticism by both employers and college and university admission tutors. however, it seemed at the time like a ‘win/win’ situation; more students gained higher-level qualifications and ‘quality’ was assumed to be maintained by the ‘new standards’. politicians and policy analysts were reluctant to raise any questions for fear of being seen as undermining the efforts of pupils and teachers. there is a similarity between this situation and the earlier period when the ‘standards of a new kind’ were first launched that is worth noting. the assumptions of qualification equivalence and the loosening of curriculum criteria that characterised the post 2000 curriculum framework and the ‘standards of a new kind’ developed in the 1980s were both based on criteria that were not linked to any increase in the specialisation of knowledge, either occupational or academic. in both cases the ‘new standards’ and the new ‘equivalence levels’ acted more as accountability measures than as educational measures. as a result, they failed, in many cases, to fulfil their hoped-for educational purposes of preparing students to progress to higher-level courses or to gain employment. the contexts of the two periods, 20 years apart, were different, but the reasons why there was relatively little debate in each case may have been similar. in both cases the ‘new standards’ and new ‘equivalence levels’ only affected the lower-achieving sections of each cohort – those who, in the past, had not gained any qualifications at all. in the new system, the higher achievers perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 28 – usually in england, children of the middle and professional classes – merely found it easier to achieve higher grades. it led, however, to ‘grade inflation’ (too many students got a’s)and the introduction of the a* grade. many of the lower achievers now gained qualifications, but they were of dubious value on the labour market or in relation to progression at school or college. this brings us back to the problem of using more explicit ‘written standards’ for a system in which the traditional hierarchy of standards changes little or, at least, very slowly. as the saying goes, ‘you cannot fatten a pig by weighing it’. the conservative response: back to traditional standards the political context changed radically when the new conservative-led government was elected in 2010. for them, despite the increase in numbers gaining qualifications, standards had fallen as a result of the previous government’s policies. the idea that standards could be expressed as ‘written statements’ was, in effect, rejected and the new government returned to the old idea of ‘high standards’ expressed in the tried and tested examinations and syllabuses which the elite schools and colleges had always relied on. equating standards with public examinations in traditionally recognised academic subjects meant that the government was led to revise equivalence criteria for qualifications and, as a consequence, the basis on which colleges and schools are now funded. this had a number of consequences. for example, schools withdrew many of the vocational courses that they had previously offered and the choices open to students were limited. furthermore, many of the changes introduced by the previous government were reversed. for example: • it is no longer possible for examination boards to modularise courses and assess students separately on individual units • continuous assessment is to be reduced • opportunities for students to retake examinations are to be limited • greater recognition is now given in performance tables to traditional academic subjects – english, single science subjects, foreign languages and humanities (history and geography) – as schools are now ranked on five compulsory subjects, not three. the other change that reflects the government’s traditionalist concept of standards is that they propose to transfer responsibility for monitoring the standards of syllabuses and examination papers for a-levels (the equivalent of south africa’s national senior certificate) to the universities. each of these proposals follows directly from the new government’s concept of standards which is designed to maintain and improve standards rather than make them more accessible. this is in direct opposition to the previous government’s concept of standards which was designed to support access, participation and social inclusion, and rely on written standards to maintain quality. standards and standard setting and the post school curriculum michael young 29 not surprisingly, the government’s changes have been opposed by the labour party and the teacher unions. both claim that the changes will discriminate against low achievers, increase student disaffection and reduce participation, and lead to fewer students gaining any certificates at all. the teacher unions also argue that, as not all 18+ students go to university, giving greater responsibility for a-levels to universities is elitist and fails to take account of the needs and interests of other users such as employers and many of the students themselves. it is too early to have reliable evidence of the consequences of the present government’s reforms. however, even in 2012, the increase in numbers obtaining higher grades and the overall numbers passing fell slightly for the first time since records have been kept. we are left with two issues. one is the consequences of two very different interpretations of standards. to the extent to which inequalities are masked by the principle of equivalence, the negative consequences of the ‘written standard setting’ model are less visible than those of the traditional model. it is thus, at least superficially, a position that is easier to defend. in contrast, the present government’s justification for returning to a traditional notion of standards has been that their policy is designed to raise standards for all. social justice, they argue, requires that all students be assessed against the same standards. however, they do not acknowledge that the conditions for more students achieving ‘traditional’ higher standards are extremely unevenly distributed; a good example is the availability of teachers with specialist subject knowledge. a second and broader issue is that the standards debate raises questions that go well beyond the implications of different models of standards. the final sections of this paper explore some of these questions, albeit briefly, and call for a much wider debate about the purposes of post school education. it begins with a summary assessment of how the standards issue was approached in the two periods. standards and the expansion of post school education in the two periods: a summary assessment in the 1980s the uk government introduced a ‘new kind of (written) standards’ designed to recognise and accredit types of learning that had not previously been recognised. this model was gradually extended to learning at all levels in schools and colleges. the change was intended to have both economic and social benefits; the economic benefits were that the model would improve the skills base of the future work force, many of whom still left school with no qualifications of any kind; the social benefits were that sections of the population that had previously been excluded from post school education were now included. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 30 more young people were undoubtedly ‘included’ in some scheme or programme and the new concept of standards led to far more students gaining qualifications. however, as the majority of new certificates awarded were at the lower levels, the ‘standards of a new kind’ did not achieve a reduction in inequality nor did it do much to improve the skills of the low achievers. some apologists on the left argue that the policy had broader social benefits beyond credential inflation. for example, some students, who would never have done so under the previous system, gained a qualification and, as a result, their confidence in their abilities improved. before the bank crash of 2008 it might have been argued that these young people would find employment in the then expanding service sectors. however, as a consequence of the resulting cuts in public spending, both public and private service sectors are contracting and such arguments have lost much of their credibility. the present government takes an opposite approach in two senses. first, they have not been committed to the continued expansion of the post school sector or to widening participation. second, they have adopted a strictly market approach to vocational education. this assumes that the willingness of employers to pay for those leaving school to gain vocational qualifications is the primary criterion according to which such qualifications can be said to have value. on the question of standards, they are re-introducing a traditional standard-based approach. however, without significant other reforms in the quality of provision and the quality of teachers which appear nowhere on the horizon, it is almost inevitable that returning to a traditional model of standards will lead to greater inequalities, dropouts and failures. so, we have two contrasting approaches to standards which, in different ways, lead to similar consequences. one extends the recognition of learning by developing a new, more inclusive approach to standards, but disregards whether these standards, at the lower levels at least, have any wider recognition. the second approach starts with a highly selective concept of high standards; in practice, if not in principle, this excludes the majority of learners. neither approach addresses the real sources of raising standards – better qualified teachers and improved curricula. both approaches to standards highlight the limitations, especially in unequal societies, of using standards for the dual purposes of maintaining quality and promoting greater equality. the last section of the paper explores the implications of this analysis of the english experience for a country like south africa that is seeking to expand its post school provision and, at the same time, maintain and improve standards and reduce inequality. facing reality: possible implications of the english experience whereas selection and the persistence of inequalities are inescapable consequences of the traditional concept of ‘high standards’, it at least offers a way of judging quality. in considering how standards as a measure of quality might be linked to standards standards and standard setting and the post school curriculum michael young 31 as a tool for expanding access, i find it useful to draw on the idea of ‘epistemic access’ that i borrow from the south african philosopher of education, the late wally morrow. for morrow (2008) ‘epistemic access’ refers to ‘how we shape and guide enquiry… in the discovery of truth’ in whatever field one is studying. from an educational perspective, therefore, ‘epistemic access’ is what a curriculum or a set of educational standards entitle students to; in that sense, it has parallels with the traditional concept of standards. the difference is that morrow does not associate the principle of ‘epistemic access’ solely with elite institutions. how could access to enquiries engaged in the discovery of truth be other than an entitlement for all? it follows that the idea of ‘epistemic access’ highlights the reality that, in england as in south africa, epistemic access is denied to a significant and even majority proportion of young people. what then is its use in defining the purpose of post school education? both the uk and south africa are deeply unequal societies, so it is no surprise that ‘epistemic access’ is only assured for the few. however, that is no excuse for giving up on it as a basis for defining high standards for all; either there are rules to follow ‘in the search for truth’ or there are not. the principle of epistemic access leads to two kinds of questions. first, how do we translate such a broad idea into a post school curriculum for schools and colleges with all their subjects, disciplines and applied fields of study and their many different syllabuses and specifications? the second question reminds us of the conditions that need to be put in place if extending this goal to a progressively wider section of each cohort is to be realised. this is a question of infrastructure, equipment and buildings. but first and foremost, it must be teachers, and whether they have the specialist knowledge they need. another way of putting this point is that however high the standards are, they are only one element in achieving quality in post school provision for a wider section of each cohort. standards, like qualifications and examinations, become distorted and distort provision, as they have in england, if too much emphasis is put on them. in the end, educationists can inform politicians, parents and voters of the consequences of particular interpretations of standards; the decisions about funding and resource priorities, however, remain political. neither of the two forms of standards that we have introduced in england are an adequate basis for expanding ‘epistemic access’. so, is there a case for retaining school education? i think there is, although the dilemma of setting standards in an unequal society will not go away. the recognition that there are high standards, which can be objectively expressed and in terms of which reliable judgments about the quality of education can be made, remains important for any society committed to social justice and greater equality. all societies share beliefs about what a high standard is, whether in relation to truth, morality, or aesthetics in any field. this does not mean that such standards remain static or unchangeable or that, as in the past, there is some fixed limit on the proportion of a cohort who can reach a particular standard, or that standards are the perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 32 exclusive property of a particular group. a century ago in europe, high educational standards were largely literary and equated with studying the classics and associated with the idea of ‘knowledge for its own sake’. today, a similar idea of high standards is far more differentiated and is expressed in a diverse range of fields, some of which involve the pursuit of truth in morrow’s sense and others, the pursuit of a range of economic, technological and cultural goals. each generation in each country has to re-examine the shared notion of the standards it sets for education at all stages. in so far as high standards express as aspiration to universality they must be an entitlement for all. such standards express a society’s vision of itself and its sense of progress and possibilities for all. although the goal of a modern concept of high standards is not to set limits, the idea of high standards accessible to all does not mean that everyone can be a quantum physicist like richard feynman or a nobel prizewinning novelist like nadine gordimer or jm coetzee. what a modern version of the concept of high standards has to do and why such a concept cannot be dismissed as elitist or anti-democratic is to provide a vision for the education system (and society as whole) that should inform every stage of education from pre-school to university, so that each stage, while sufficient in itself, is also the foundation for moving higher. high standards in the sense i am referring to are not objectives or goals or levels in a framework; they are the product of ‘communities of specialists’ searching for and debating the truth ,whether the field is the best ways that houses can be built, crops grown and diseases treated – to mention only three of an infinite number of fields. there are less obvious reasons why something from the proposals for a new type of standard should be retained, but they are no less important. the ‘new type of standard’ began by addressing the issues of access and exclusion of the majority. however, they started from where the designers thought people were with no connection to where they might be or become. with their static model from the international standards organisation, they failed to design standards that were truly pedagogic. taking inspiration from vygotsky’s ‘zone of proximal development’ a new model of pedagogic standards must specify the gap between what a learner knows on their own (where they are) and what a learner could know or do with the help of a teacher or trainer (where they could be). such a model of standards would be truly educational; it would link learning, assessment with the sources of development, pedagogy and curriculum. it is as different from the ‘new standards’ introduced in england in the 1980s as it is from the iso model of standards for screws, that those new standards were based on. the link between this version of ‘standards of a new kind’ and the idea of ‘high standards’ is the curriculum which defines the high standards and pedagogy which, in turn, defines the work of teachers and students in vygotsky’s zone. standards and standard setting and the post school curriculum michael young 33 references department of employment 1982. a new training initiative: a programme for action. london: hmso. department of higher education and training 2011. green paper for post school education and training. pretoria. hesa 2011. position paper on an expanded post school education system http://www.hesa.org.za/sites/hesa.org.za/files/hesa%20paper%20on%20 the%20pse%20system_october%202011%20%282%29.pdf-retrieved 09/11/11. jessup g 1990. outcomes. london: routledge. morrow w 2008. bounds of democracy: epistemological access in higher education. hsrc press: pretoria south africa. young m 2011. national vocational qualifications in the united kingdom: their origins and legacy. journal of education and work, 24(3/4): 259-282. 179 research article 2022 40(1): 179-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) using teaching, social and cognitive presences as a lens to reflect on teaching a research module amid covid-19 abstract covid-19 forced academics to transition from face-to-face to remote teaching using various online platforms. this article focuses on my experiences of teaching a research module during the covid-19 pandemic in 2020. the social, cognitive and teaching presences from the community of inquiry framework for a successful higher education experience was used as a lens for the study. the data are generated from my reflection on teaching, the whatsapp chat transcript and student emails. my reflections on teaching a research module suggest that the teaching, social and cognitive presences were experienced to a certain extent. the findings indicate that training and trials in preparation for transition to online teaching are important. in this study trials to familiarise academics and students with online teaching influenced the establishment of teaching presence positively because challenges related to online teaching were identified and addressed before the commencement of the actual online teaching. therefore, when making instructional decisions, it is crucial first to diagnose and address challenges regarding online platforms. however, being accustomed to traditional face-to-face teaching, dominated by oral communication and telling methods, influenced the social presence negatively. online collaboration among students was unclear. notably, my social presence experiences suggest that teaching during and beyond covid-19 requires a pedagogical approach that relies heavily on the social and collaborative component of learning as a point of departure for the development of online teaching and learning practices. the community of inquiry framework used in this study could be helpful for higher education institutions to evaluate academics and students’ experiences of online teaching and learning, particularly when the institution is planning to redesign and implement online courses. keywords: covid-19 pandemic; online teaching; teaching practices; community of inquiry; presences. 1. introduction in january 2020 when the news reported about covid-19 in china nobody foresaw that it would have a huge impact on education systems across the globe. the covid-19 pandemic led to moving from a face-to-face to remote mode author: dr free-queen bongiwe zulu1 affiliation: 1university of kwazulu-natal, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i1.11 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(1): 179-195 published: 04 march 2022 received: 12 august 2021 accepted: 18 january 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5167-5302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 1802022 40(1): 180-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) of delivery in south african universities and globally. teaching and learning in higher education was disrupted by the covid-19 pandemic that forced changes in various universities’ operations. similar to other universities around the world, south african higher education institutions had to digitalise their operations. from march 2020, covid-19 lockdowns started and academics had to transition to online teaching. however, my teaching methods were not aligned to rapid changes brought by the covid-19 pandemic; but teaching in higher education requires one to provide intellectual and academic leadership, to provide tools and help students to work at the higher level (gutiérrez-santiuste, rodríguez-sabiote & gallegoarrufat, 2015). in line with the aforementioned authors, motala and menon (2020) assert that teaching and learning in higher education should create a well-educated student equipped with the knowledge, skills and attributes for a rapidly changing era. in light of this, the covid-19 pandemic is disrupting, reshaping and testing the extent to which teaching and learning in higher education meets the demands of the fourth industrial revolution (4ir) (onwuegbuzie & ojo, 2021). herein, i reflect on my teaching experiences of an honours-level research module during the covid-19 pandemic. i used the community of inquiry framework consisting of teaching, social and cognitive presences that are fundamental for a successful higher educational experience (garrison et al., 2000). this study contributes to the scholarship of teaching in higher education, especially regarding how the three presences (social, cognitive and teaching) can be used to reflect on online teaching and learning that occur during and beyond times of disruptions. the study sheds light on the theoretical underpinnings of higher education research methodology and are based on this research question: to what extent did social, cognitive and teaching presences emerge in transitioning to online teaching and learning during a disruption? 2. emergency remote education and online teaching for the purpose of this study, i define the related concepts used during covid-19 to refer to online teaching strategies and pedagogies and the brief literature on how universities and lecturers adapted to emergency remote teaching. emergency remote education (ere) is a temporary shift in delivery of education to an alternative online mode of delivery due to crisis circumstances such as pandemics, wars, local conflicts and natural disasters (firdoussi et al., 2020: 3). the covid-19 pandemic requires social distancing and does not support a face-to-face teaching and learning environment. generally, emergency remote education and online teaching are used interchangeably yet they encompass different meanings. bozkurt and sharma (2020) highlight that online teaching and learning is an interdisciplinary field that has evolved over time and has served to meet the need and to guide education practices. according to dhawan (2020: 7), online teaching is defined as teaching “experiences in synchronous or asynchronous environments using different devices (e.g. mobile phones, laptops, etc.) with internet access”. in the synchronous teaching and learning environment, students attend live lectures, for example, on zoom and there are real-time interactions between the lecturer and the students. on the other hand, in the asynchronous teaching and “learning environment, learning content is not available in the form of live lectures or classes, it is available at different learning systems and forums” (dhawan, 2020: 7). while synchronous teaching and learning environments provide opportunities for a live interaction with the students, asynchronous teaching and learning environments do not. given the two types of communication in the context of online teaching and learning, it is very important http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 1812022 40(1): 181-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 zulu using teaching, social and cognitive presences to reflect a research module to understand what communication works best for online teaching and what challenges are encountered by the students and academics with online teaching and learning. the literature on covid-19 suggests that there is a need for a comprehensive view of the pedagogy of online education that integrates technology to support teaching and learning (carrillo & flores, 2020; carlon 2020, bozkurt & sharma 2020). “teaching and learning online entails a specific process which is visible in the roles, competences and professional development approaches, as well as in the curriculum, pedagogy, assessment and the nature of interaction among the participants” (carrillo & flores, 2020: 467). there is a growing body of research (zalat, hamed & bolbol, 2020; fihloinn & fitzmaurice, 2021; maphalala, khumalo & khumalo, 2021, chiroma, meda & waghid, 2021; waghid meda & chiroma, 2021) examining how universities and lecturers transitioned to emergency remote teaching during covid-19 lockdowns. a study conducted in 29 countries (such as ireland, spain, germany and portugal) exploring the type of hardware and software used for emergency remote teaching for mathematics in universities found that diverse communication systems such as skype, microsoft teams, blackboard collaborate, zoom and pre-recorded sessions were used (fihloinn & fitzmaurice, 2021). another study conducted in egypt by zalat, hamed and bolbol (2020) on the experiences of the academics during the covid-19 pandemic reveals that synchronous (zoom and microsoft teams) and asynchronous (recorded lectures, supportive videos, external links for recommended websites and electronic books) e-learning were used via a learning management system (lms). similarly, to the aforementioned study, waghid, meda and chiroma (2021) found that lecturers in the kenyan context used synchronous classes and asynchronous methods. the lecturers engaged students in discussions during synchronous classes using zoom breakout rooms and blackboard collaborate (waghid, meda & chiroma, 2021). transitioning to online teaching and learning during covid-19 was not an easy process. a study that explored student teachers’ experiences of the emergency transition to online learning during covid-19 at a south african university highlights some of the challenges that the university encountered. these challenges included digital inequalities, constrained pedagogical approaches, compromised quality and integrity of assessments (maphalala, khumalo & khumalo, 2021). 3. community of inquiry framework the community of inquiry framework (garrison, anderson & archer, 2000) was used as a conceptual lens to understand my teaching experiences during the covid-19 pandemic. the community of inquiry (coi) framework combines the concept of a learning community with that of social activity. according to coi scholars (garrison et al., 2000) the essence of educational experience directed towards achieving best results is based on three presences: social, cognitive and teaching, which are crucial prerequisites for a successful higher educational experience. learning is the result of interaction of the three presences (garrison et al., 2000). the three presences experienced in a community of inquiry recognise teachers and students as key participants in the educational process. the cognitive and social presence are dependent on the teaching presence in that “teaching presence is a means to an end – to support and enhance social and cognitive presence for the purpose of realizing educational outcomes” (garrison et al., 2000: 87). garrison et al. (2000) clarify that the teaching presence is an act of designing, facilitating, and orienting cognitive and social processes to obtain the results foreseen according to the students’ needs and capabilities. the teaching presence is “operationalized through the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 1822022 40(1): 182-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) design of the educational experience, which includes the selection, organization, and primary presentation of course content, as well as the design and development of learning activities and assessment and facilitation” (garrison et al., 2000: 89). the teaching presence has three indicators namely, instructional management, building understanding and direct instruction. the instructional management refers to the design and implementation of the curriculum, activities and assessment. building understanding refers to the practices implemented to foster content knowledge acquisition (such as “creating an effective group consciousness for the purpose of sharing meaning, identifying areas of agreement and disagreement, and generally seeking to reach consensus and understanding”) (garrison et al., 2000: 101). social presence is defined as “the ability of participants in a community of inquiry to project themselves socially and emotionally, as real people (i.e., their full personality), through the medium of communication being used” (garrison et al., 2000: 103). according to garrison et al. (2000), social presence features three indicators. the first indicator is the expression of emotion, which refers to an emotional response to the learning experience that can be implemented through humour and self-disclosure (garrison et al., 2000). open communication is the second indicator that is fulfilled through interactions showing mutual awareness, i.e., respect, recognition and acknowledgement for peer-generated contributions (garrison et al., 2000). the third indicator is group cohesion, which is enhanced through “strategies targeted at making students feel as members of a learning community, which is instrumental in fostering information sharing and collaborative critical thinking” (garrison et al., 2000: 101). carrillo and flores (2020: 468) also relate social presence to the ability of the participants to engage effectively with the community. the community communicates purposefully in a collaborative environment and develop interpersonal relationships by projecting themselves as people they are (garrison et al., 2000; carrillo & flores, 2020). cognitive presence relates to knowledge building. garrison et al. (2000: 89) define cognitive presence as the extent to which participants “are able to construct meaning through sustained communication” in a community of inquiry. there are four unchanging, non–sequential indicators in cognitive presence: state of dissonance, exploration, integration, and resolution (garrison & anderson, 2003; garrison et al., 2000). the state of dissonance or feeling of unease is described as that of a triggering event or communication. the second category is that of exploration in a search for information, knowledge and alternatives that might help to make sense of the situation or problem (garrison et al., 2000). garrison et al. (2000) explain that integration involves looking for insights and gaining some understanding of the acquired information and knowledge to make sense of the situation or problem and attempting to orient one’s attention. the fourth category is the resolution of the issue or problem and application of an idea (garrisson et al., 2000). researchers (garrison, cleveland-innes & fung, 2010; gutierrez-santiuste et al., 2015; bozkurt, 2019; bozkurt & sharma, 2020, carlon, 2020; chiroma, meda & waghid, 2021; waghid, meda & chiroma, 2021) have used the col framework to design and reflect on synchronous and asynchronous teaching and learning. a study conducted in spain by gutierrez-santiuste et al. (2015) used the coi framework to analyse student communication in chats, forums and emails and find correlations among the three presences. one of their findings is that in forums, the cognitive dimension of communication was explained more fully by social and teaching than in chats and emails (gutierrez-santiuste et al., 2015). carrillo and flores (2020) employed the presences to analyse 134 empirical studies in their desktop study on covid-19 and teacher education. using the three presences, carrillo and flores http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 1832022 40(1): 183-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 zulu using teaching, social and cognitive presences to reflect a research module (2020) have provided insight on the online teaching and learning practices in the context of covid-19. additionally, carlon (2020) explored students’ perceptions of the effectiveness of the teaching, social and cognitive presences when transitioning to a foreign language teacher trainer course online at an italian university during the pandemic. the findings of the aforementioned study reports that the instructor focused more on content and skills development, while to a certain extent overlooking the necessity to foster social presence (carlon, 2020). waghid, meda and chiroma (2021) have assessed cognitive, social and teaching presences during emergency remote learning at a south african university. these authors established that exposing students to all three presences give them opportunities to attain 21st-century skills that are essential graduate attributes. in light of the findings of these studies, i am using the community of inquiry as a framework for reflecting on online teaching and learning in a research module during the covid-19 pandemic. 4. the honours research module research studies in the teacher development studies discipline focuses on researching and theorising formal and informal processes and policies that contribute to the development of teacher learning, teacher identities, teacher socialisation and teacher knowledge(s), among other things (research module course outline, 2020). research and scholarship in teacher development studies focuses on the processes of teacher development that can take place against a backdrop of initial or continuing teacher education programmes or interventions, but that are not limited to such programmes and interventions. the research module is vital towards developing adaptable graduates who can easily navigate to master’s level and beyond. the aim of the module is to develop students’ ability to pursue a specific line of empirical or theoretical research in education, with particular reference to the south african context, through a supervised independent research project (irp). the module also supports students in developing their academic literacy – that is the ability to write clear, relevant and interesting academic texts and to read, understand and respond to academic texts (research module course outline, 2020). typically, scheduled contact sessions are used to introduce the concept of “action research” and to support students while they identify their research focus and research processes. after the closure of campus due to the covid-19 pandemic, all staff were expected to work from home. the closure of the campus led to online teaching where the research module was delivered and supervised through online platforms. 5. methodology in this study, the learning community consisted of eight part-time students in their final year of honours in bachelor education, contract lecturers hired to assist in supervision and myself. in 2020 the eight students, who are full-time teachers, were doing action research as an independent research project that contributes to their own professional development. these teachers teach in different school contexts, five of them are in secondary schools and the three are in primary schools. the teaching experience of the seven (one male and six females) teachers range from 1 to 2 years. one female teacher has taught for 18 years. i adopted the autoethnography methodology to reflect on the online teaching and learning of a research module during covid-19. the autoethnography in this study provides a framework for disciplined inquiry that bridges the tension between personal, social, theoretical/practical and self/other to inform theory and to highlight the lived experiences and struggles with it (starr, 2010). considering that engaging in an autoethnography can be a transformative process, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 1842022 40(1): 184-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) this study is thus located in an emancipatory paradigm. cohen, manion and morrison (2011) indicate that the aim of the researcher within the emancipatory paradigm is the emancipation of the individuals and group in an egalitarian society. in line with cohen et al. (2011), i reflected on my teaching experiences during the disruption that came with the covid-19 pandemic in order to change my online teaching practices. in order to generate data on my teaching experience of 2020, i wrote my reflections for each online session in my personal journal from april to november 2020. this is supported by qutoshi (2015) who states that autoethnography enables the researcher to engage with exploration of lived experiences as a primary source of evidence. i also analysed the transcript of whatsapp chats with the students (as others), email interactions, written reflection activities and the research module course outline for 2020. i assigned each student a number (student 1–8) to anonymise their responses. however, the written reflective student submissions from the first contact session were submitted anonymously and could not be assigned a number. inclusion of data from others is supported in starr (2010) when she says that autoethnography requires parity in data gathered from the self and others as well as how they are brought together to create meaning. the col framework (garrison et al., 2000) was used to analyse the data deductively. the indicators for each presence were useful to trace the presences from the data. ethical clearance (ref hssrec/00000033/2019) was amended in 2020 as per the protocol of the university. 6. my autobiographical details: transition from schoolteacher to teacher educator i am an academic in a school of education at a south african university. i have been a schoolteacher for 26 years and i have taught afrikaans eerste addisionele taal (afrikaans first additional language) as well as economics in township and rural secondary schools. during my school teaching, there was no need to use technology in schools and it was not compulsory. i only felt a need for computer literacy in 2004 when i was promoted to the post of a deputy principal in a well-resourced school. i registered for a computer literacy course to acquire technological knowledge for administrative purposes. my computer skills were enhanced during my phd journey; my supervisor and the university’s library training helped me to improve on my technological knowledge. currently, i am teaching at honours level and supervising med and phd students in the teacher development studies (tds) discipline. covid-19 disruptions occurred during my second year of teaching at university level, a time where i am transitioning from school teaching to university teaching. though i was not competent with digital pedagogies, my colleagues in our discipline nominated me to be a discipline champion. this gave me an opportunity to attend more training about the use of zoom and online assessments as well as the range of pedagogies and content specific methods using online learning. i have relied on my colleagues in the information and communication services (ics) department of the university for technical assistance through skype and emails even before the disruption period. my friend’s critical support and advice kept me going in times of disruptions. 7. findings and discussion in this section i use the presences to reflect on teaching the research module. the section is organised into three themes, namely, teaching, social and cognitive presences. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 1852022 40(1): 185-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 zulu using teaching, social and cognitive presences to reflect a research module 7.1 the teaching presence garrison et al. (2000) stipulated that the teaching presence in the coi is the act of planning, facilitating and orienting cognitive and social processes to obtain the results foreseen according to the students’ needs and capabilities. the teaching presence is indicated by instructional management, building understanding and direct instruction. i never thought that the 8th of february 2020 would be the first and last face-to-face session with my irp students. my reflective diary shows that in this session i presented the course outline, assessment tasks and content that was based on identifying a research title; research focus, rationale and research questions. the students were provided with the printed course outline and resources needed to craft the research proposal and the final action research project. after the lecture, the students were asked to reflect in writing about the session and to state how they would like to be supported in their journey of conducting the action research. six students submitted reflections. i asked them not to include their names because i wanted them to write freely about the areas of improvement in my teaching. from the students’ reflection, i noted that the six students seemed to be more concerned about assessment and action research processes. for example, one of the students wrote: i am nervous yet excited because this module aims at improving my daily teaching methodologies. i would like to have feedback from the lecturer about assessment and ways of conducting action research effectively. one of the six students who did not understand the content, reflected as follows: the presentation of this course outline, assessment tasks and readings was well done but i am still confused but after reading at home everything will be clear. the reflections seem to suggest that the instructional management issues of the research module were addressed. according to garrison et al. (2000) the instructional management involves the structural concern including setting curriculum and methods of assessment. after the closure of the university in march 2020, i had to plan for remote teaching. i was lucky to start teaching the research module before the disruptions of covid-19 pandemic because the students’ reflections were useful in assisting me to plan for remote teaching. table 1 below shows the topics and how the teaching took place during the disruption. table 1: plan of action for remote teaching and learning of the research module in 2020 session topic plan of action for remote teaching and learning session one 4 april students’ presentation: literature review and theoretical/ conceptual frameworks (situated learning theory/model of teacher change. communication and consultation via zoom, whatsapp and emails. powerpoint with audio uploaded on moodle and emailed to students. session two 18 april methodology section: clarifying the steps involved in your action plan designing your data collection instruments, data analysis etc. communication and consultation via zoom, whatsapp and emails. powerpoint with audio uploaded on moodle and emailed to students http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 1862022 40(1): 186-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) session topic plan of action for remote teaching and learning session three 13 june research proposal oral presentation guidelines communication and consultation via whatsapp & email, powerpoint with audio (uploaded on moodle) session four 4 july ethics explanation on ethical clearance amendments were given. the amendments to the existing ethical clearance were done online through the university’s research information gate system after the students submitted their final research proposals. session five 11 july oral presentation of the proposals by the students the formative assessment was conducted via zoom by the two supervisors. session six – eight 15 29 august data collection implementation of the teaching strategy within action research stages in schools took place. supervision (individual and group). consultation was done via whatsapp and emails session 9 11 september students to reflect on their implementation action research stages in schools. data presentation and analysis discussion via whatsapp messaging & zoom with the two supervisors. students presented on zoom and whatsapp and were given support and alternative ways of implementing their teaching strategies session 10 19-26 september discussion of findings via zoom students were shown how to engage with findings using the situated learning theory and situated learning theory/ model of teacher change. whatsapp was also used. additional session 3 october address issues relating to compiling your research report this was not a formal session. students had to arrange meetings with their individual supervisors to discuss draft ir reports. first draft ir report sent to supervisors by 15 september 2020. in preparation for the implementation of the plan of action for remote teaching and learning, i participated in training for online teaching and learning that included how to use google classroom, zoom and how to record powerpoint lectures with audio. after the training, the university initiated trial runs of online teaching and learning across all modules. this trial period, known as dry runs, seemed to emphasise that “the use of suitable and relevant pedagogy for online education may depend on the expertise and exposure to information and communications technology for both lecturers and the students” (pokrel & chhetri, 2021: 135). i therefore had to combine the information from online training conducted by the university and support from my colleagues and friend to ensure that i was prepared. the aim of the teaching trial or dry-run was to test the system, technology and academic resources and to prepare students and lecturers for the real teaching and assessments that was going to be administered later, according to the curriculum for each module. the dry-run activities also aimed to familiarise students with online teaching and learning, such as using powerpoint with audio, zoom and whatsapp. the following activity was conducted during the dry run: presentation of individual research idea. this task was based on the content that was covered in the first session: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 1872022 40(1): 187-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 zulu using teaching, social and cognitive presences to reflect a research module you will each be given 5 minutes to present the rationale and proposal for your study. prepare a power point presentation that you will share on our next zoom session (course outline, 2020). this activity was initially planned for the second face-to-face session (4 april 2020) but i had to adapt it for online teaching. six students presented their ideas on zoom. importantly, practising presentations on zoom during the dry-run prepared students for their proposal presentation, which was one of the assessment tasks. the dry run allowed me to confirm the most authentic form of assessments that could be used. when i was reflecting on the dryrun teaching experience, i found that online teaching presented challenges for me and the students. preparation for online teaching requires time and familiarity to develop and deliver e-resources as shared in my experience: i had to develop [a] power point presentation [sic] and then i had to record myself explaining in each and every slide. this seemed easy but in practice it was difficult. if there are 12 slides, i have to talk to all of them. emailing and uploading on moodle presentations was a challenge because the size limit of mega bites of some presentations were above the limit; this requires me to eliminate some of the information. with the live zoom session, i forgot to record the session; i only discovered at the end of the session. however, the more i used the zoom conferencing, the more comfortable i became with its function. some of the challenges mentioned in the above extract are addressed through ongoing training provided by the university and support from colleagues. the university has provided data from different mobile networks for academics and students. due to connection problems, it was not easy to get all the students online at the same time. two of the eight students had a challenge in accessing moodle, participating in zoom sessions and whatsapp chats. this is due to the poor national infrastructure such as a lack of electricity in some rural areas and planned power cuts by the national electricity provider, known as load shedding. as confirmed by wolhuter and jacobs (2021), while the ict revolution means students can access internet resources using personal computers and mobile telephones, the lack of national infrastructure hinders the use of online teaching and learning. furthermore, one of the two students that had challenges, did not have a laptop and was using a cell phone to do the tasks. whatsapp was mostly preferred by students and was more accessible. these findings corroborate the findings of mpungose (2020) about the preferred use of easy communication tools for learning. mpungose (2020: 397) contends that “students are more exposed to informal e-learning platforms such as whatsapp, which is social and addresses societal communication needs, and leads to students being driven more into informal experiences in unpacking the content”. the challenges that emanated from the dry-run online teaching are confirmed by pokrel and chhetri (2021:136), who found that the “challenges with e-learning are accessibility, affordability, flexibility, learning pedagogy, life-long learning and educational policy”. another teaching presence indicator is building understanding. in the community of inquiry, building knowledge occurs through the process of creating effective group consciousness for the purpose of sharing meaning, identifying areas of agreement and disagreement to reach consensus and understanding (garrison et al., 2000: 104). although teaching and group supervision took place via zoom and whatsapp and was mostly attended by six students, i failed to create opportunities for sharing knowledge among students. a contract lecturer was appointed to assist with the supervision of four out of the eight students. i shared the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 1882022 40(1): 188-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) facilitation of the zoom sessions with the contract lecturer who was also supervising four of the eight students. my reflection journal says: we first sat to divide the topics amongst both of us. i took literature review and she took theoretical framework. we supported each other to prepare power point presentation [sic] with audio, uploaded it on moodle and emailed to the students. garrison et al. (2000) argue that sharing facilitation among teachers (academics) and some or all the participants is appropriate in higher education. the zoom sessions were recorded and the recording links were shared with students because moodle does not take long recordings due to file size limits. one of the students took a leadership role and posted all the email communication to students on whatsapp. sharing the recordings benefited the two students who had connection challenges. special informal sessions were also held on whatsapp. however, the two students, who had no access to moodle, missed much of the moodle communication in response to concerns and group engagement. this implies that not all people are well connected or digitally savvy (williamson, eynon & potter, 2020). connectivity challenges were also experienced by firdoussi et al. (2020), in their study conducted on distance learning in higher education during the covid-19 pandemic in morocco. their findings report that technical challenges are one of the main reasons for abandoning the transition to online education; ranging from equipment to internet connection issues or availability of platforms (firdoussi et al., 2020). direct instruction as a third indicator of the teaching presence refers to the “practices implemented to manage activities, to facilitate reflection and discourse by presenting content, questions, guide and summarize discussion and confirm understanding through different types of assessment and feedback” (carlon, 2020: 235). my role was to facilitate reflection and discourse by presenting the content proactively, guiding and summarising the discussions, as well as confirming understanding through various means of assessment and feedback (garrison et al., 2000). my reflections show that i was not proactive in presenting the content as i relied on delivery via zoom and recorded powerpoint presentations. however, various forms of assessment were used. the assessment tasks included the oral presentation (5%) the written proposal (10%) and the written final report (85%). as indicated by gutiérrezsantiuste et al. (2015), assessment should also promote students’ participation and meaningful engagement. these assessment tasks required individual and group participation from students. for example, for the online oral presentation, all the students chose to present their research proposal live on zoom. in my diary i reflected that: an oral presentation of final research proposal was done on the 11th of july via zoom. six of eight students successfully managed to share their ideas with their peers. the students received feedback and the module rubric was used to award marks. one student in a rural context did not manage to join us via zoom and the eighth student opted to deregister. sadly, one of the students deregistered, she sent an email saying that she was suspending her studies because she was not in the right space. the above extract indicates the successes and challenges of online teaching and learning during a disruption. kiernan (2020: 1) asserts that, “online learning is not an inherently active process…and as such pedagogical strategies that require active student engagement, which are central to many active learning situations became increasingly complicated and out-ofreach”. students were supported by the supervisors via online platforms. i commented at least twice on students’ draft proposal and research report drafts and offered appropriate guidance. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 1892022 40(1): 189-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 zulu using teaching, social and cognitive presences to reflect a research module i noticed that some of the written feedback and explanations were unclear to students. the following is an example of my whatsapp interaction with student 3. hi... can you please provide me with more clarity on the action research implementation i am not getting full understanding of using memrise as per the article that you emailed? (voice note from student 3) i also responded with a voice note: hi, student 3... please take memrise article as an example. it has good examples that is showing how to organise our actions. i wanted to show you how to explain each stage of action research. start by explaining what is involved in each step (lecturer). the above whatsapp interaction suggests that asynchronous communication was a challenge in that it did not always convey the exact message or explanation. i tried to address this by sending a voice note as shown in the aforementioned extracts. the voice notes were then followed by text messages in whatsapp. the next extract shows student 3 agreeing about the article and i followed up with a question and explanation. seeing that i confused the student, i apologised for the unclear communication. thank you mem i was so worried and confused. i am working with the same article that you have emailed to us. i double checked your emails and found the same one. thank you so much for the clarification. the article has given me a better understanding of each stage (text message from student 3). did you find the methodology section in the article? the methodology section of that article explains clearly what happen in each stage of the action research. i am so sorry for the vague comment (lecturer). the findings from whatsapp transcripts seem to indicate that oral communication was more beneficial than the written communication. it created live interaction with the students. in line with garrison et al. (2000), i also believe that oral communication is a rich medium. 7.2 social presence social presence involves the interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships that take place in online learning (garrison et al., 2000). the social presence is indicated by the expression of emotion in response to the teaching and learning experience, open communication and group cohesion (carlon, 2020). expression of emotions as an indicator of social presence emerged from the whatsapp conversations indicating that the students were faced with uncertainties, stress, anxiety and isolation. for example, student 4 expressed her emotions below: may i just take a moment to thank you for not giving up on me. ngiyazi ngihluphile kakhulu futhi [i know that i was giving you problems]. at times it get overwhelming. i am a mother of three kids. ziyangishuka on daily basis. but that is not an excuse. but i just wish to thank you for continuous support and motivation (s4). student 4, whose school is in a rural area, showed appreciation of the support and highlighted her home challenges as a mother. when she says “ziyangishuka” she meant that her children need her attention every day. this situation is echoed in the findings of the study conducted by maphalala et al. (2021) that unfavourable home environments, particularly in rural communities, are not conducive for online learning. the point of departure was to ease the tension and uncertainties from students through talking with them about the whole situation http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 1902022 40(1): 190-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) and what they were experiencing. this is supported by a group of south african academics in a proposed plan for social pedagogy alternative in the time of pandemic (unknown, 2020) that advocated that the pedagogies employed during the pandemic must allow students to be active citizens and engage in a socially responsive way. open communication with students occurred via the whatsapp group and individual chats that provided us with an opportunity to communicate more often. the extract from the whatsapp group shows my encouragement of communication: i am interacting with all the students through emails and whatsapp group continuously. i requested students to engage on whatsapp group on friday and saturday evenings (lecturer). however, the whatsapp transcripts show that students preferred to chat with me individually rather than using the group chat. one of the eight students (student 2) only used the whatsapp group twice to acknowledge receipt of emails. yet, he interacted with emails, individual whatsapp chats and zoom. interestingly, the action research project of student 2 was about online teaching strategies. part of his email: well... i’m going to be using guskey for my theoretical framework. thank you very much for that article you sent, it is a massive help. i look forward to the presentations on saturday. (s2) the conversation through whatsapp with students became more regular over time. in relation to regular communication, scholars (vinagre, 2017; theleen et al., 2020) assert that an effective approach to social presence includes consistent participation, prompt communication, regular group discussion, timely and relevant contribution and commitment to tasks. the group cohesion seemed to emerge during the first zoom session when a youtube video on the new normal was used as an ice-breaker activity. in this video clip, attention was paid to sonya renee tylor, a writer and the motivational speaker, when she says: we will not go back to normal. normal never was. our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalized, greed, inequality, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage hoarding, hate and lack. we should not long to return my friends. we are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. one that fit to all new garment (tylor, 2020). i related this quote to the renewal and innovation in teaching strategies at schools and higher education. according to feng, xie and liu (2017) ice-breaker activities are important and helpful for building a high degree of social presence in the initial phase of teaching. motta and bennett (2018) as well as bozkurt and sharma (2020) regard digitally-enhanced ice breaker activities as a way of fostering students’ social presence during emergency remote teaching to enhance a pedagogy of care. this is supported by dhawan (2020) who stressed that academics should make efforts to humanise the learning process to the best extent possible. during the disruption, i tried to focus on relationships, caring and building humanity. collaboration amongst students as members of a community of inquiry is central; however, the whatsapp group chats do not show that the students were sharing knowledge. it appears as if the sharing of ideas amongst students only occurred during the virtual proposal presentation, because it was part of assessment. as suggested by carlon (2020), additional http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 1912022 40(1): 191-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 zulu using teaching, social and cognitive presences to reflect a research module social presence activities could have highlighted the pedagogical value of online collaboration in terms of knowledge building. 7.3 cognitive presence the aim of cognitive processes is to promote construction and confirmation of meaning and understanding within a community of inquiry (gutiérrez-santiuste et al., 2015). the cognitive indicators consist of the state of dissonance, exploration, integration and resolution. covid-19 and online teaching in particular, created uncertainties and stress in my family and work life. while there were plenty of online tools introduced, i felt uneasy changing my pedagogical approaches. i shared my frustrations with my friend who is well versed with technological changes. i noted in my reflective journal that when i was lamenting about the sudden shift to online teaching, my friend said, “you will learn technology forcefully” (30 march 2020). this statement is supported by dhawan (2020: 7) who says that “online teaching is no longer an option, it a necessity”. i realised that i had to change my attitude towards online teaching before changing others. teaching remotely is different from face-toface delivery, it requires academics and students to have the right attitude in embracing the new paradigm (oyedotun, 2020). the whatsapp chats showed that state of dissonance occurring. the following interaction between myself and student 1 highlights a state of dissonance: let’s keep on motivating each other, no one should think of deregistering. you are almost there (lecturer). it feels very overwhelming, especially with no contact sessions. i am not even sure if i’m doing the correct thing for our proposal. do i just follow the instructions you have laid out in all the documents? (s1) let’s use zoom because we will be able to share the screen (lecturer). i will speak to others as well perhaps they also require a group discussion (s1). the above chat seems to spark the student’s curiosity for group participation on zoom (perhaps relating to a need for social presence) because the student mentioned that she was going to speak to other students about the group session. the students constructed meaning through engaging in contact sessions on zoom, reading and applying the action research in their classroom practices, with the assistance of the supervisors. exploration and integration of knowledge seem to be evident in their application of the research concepts when they were developing their research proposals, implementing the action research and writing up their final research reports. the following whatsapp voice note was sent by student 3 after the data analysis session shows this exploration and integration: hi mem! [sic] in the research proposal i have stated and explained that the study was going to adopt qualitative approach but, i feel that due to learners’ test results which is in numbers, the study is both quantitative and qualitative. should i leave it in qualitative approach or explain that it is using both approaches? can we have a zoom session to look at my data? (student 3’ voice note). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 1922022 40(1): 192-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) the nature of the research module requires the students’ critical thinking about an area of concern that they wanted to change or to study in their classrooms. students applied the knowledge acquired from live lectures and interactions with peers and supervisors to develop the research proposal and to implement the action research cycle and write the final report. student 3 reflected about using the action research approach in their classroom practices: i noted that implementing this [literature webbing] technique during the english home language lesson has had a positive effect on other subjects. i emphasized with learners how important it is to read all the information and study the pictures. during history and natural science lessons i have noticed that learners are taking more time reading their case studies and sources which has improved their performance in their class activities (s3). in line with garrison et al. (2000), it appears as if the students were engaged in critical thinking (evidence of cognitive presence) as a result of the social and teaching presences developed in the online learning environment. 8. conclusion this article presented my reflections on the teaching of a research module during covid-19, using the lens of the community of inquiry framework. this framework emphasises the need to integrate teaching, social and cognitive presences. a face-to-face research module had to transition to an online mode of delivery because of the pandemic. my reflections indicate that zoom and whatsapp were used for live or synchronous teaching and learning environments. however, a lack of national infrastructure such as electricity and internet connectivity challenges in certain areas of the country minimised students’ participation in the live sessions. the asynchronous teaching and learning environment were facilitated through the moodle lms, recorded powerpoints with audio, recordings of zoom sessions and emails. in this study, trial runs to familiarise academics and students with online teaching influenced the establishment of teaching presence positively because challenges related to the online teaching during the disruption were identified and could be addressed before the commencement of the actual online teaching. my teaching experiences seem to suggest that the teaching and cognitive presences of coi were experienced to a certain extent during the disruption. as staff and students were accustomed to face-to-face teaching, which is dominated by oral communication and telling methods, the social presence was negatively influenced. online collaboration among students was unclear. in line with carillo and flores (2020), the social presence in this study suggests that teaching during and beyond covid-19 requires a pedagogical approach that relies heavily on the social and collaborative component of learning as a point of departure for the development of online teaching and learning practices. using the community of inquiry framework in my teaching reflections highlighted areas for further personal and professional development. notably, the findings indicate that training in preparation for the transition to online teaching is important. as covid-19 is not yet over and post-pandemic teaching and learning approaches may be different, there is still a need to analyse changes in teaching and learning. therefore, the coi framework used in this study could be useful to higher education institutions to evaluate the effectiveness of online teaching and learning, particularly when the institution is planning to implement or restructure online modules. importantly, the three presences should also be http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 1932022 40(1): 193-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.11 zulu using teaching, social and cognitive presences to reflect a research module experienced by the students. future research could 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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2016.12.002 https://doi.org/10.1108/ijilt-01-2021-0006 https://doi.org/10.1108/ijilt-01-2021-0006 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.18 https://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.18 https://doi.org/10.1080/17439884.2020.1761641 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248758 perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 179 umesh ramnarain department of science and technology education, university of johannesburg e-mail: uramnarain@uj.ac.za telephone: 011 559 4394 questioning the validity of inquiry assessment in a high stakes physical sciences examination umesh ramnarain the south african science curriculum advocates an inquiry-based approach to practical work. inquiry is a complex and multifaceted activity involving both cognitive and physical activity; thus, paper-and-pencil items do not provide the authentic context for this assessment. this study investigates the construct validity of inquiryrelated questions in three national grade 12 physical sciences examinations. clarity about what is being assessed and how well a test samples a construct are critical to validity. the analysis that was guided by stobart’s conceptualisation of construct validity revealed that, to a large extent, inquiry-related questions exhibited threats to validity. the identified threats were categorised as contested validity, unclear validity and construct irrelevance. the findings of this study suggest that greater attention needs to be paid to the formulation of inquiry-related questions in written tests and examinations. keywords: science inquiry, assessment, validity, examinations introduction school science curriculum reform in south africa and other countries throughout the world has focused largely on practical work. traditionally, practical work, if it did take place, was either in the form of teacher demonstrations or it embodied a cookbook approach. this approach meant learners followed recipes for the execution of procedures handed down by teachers, and gathered and recorded data without a clear sense of purpose (roth, 1994). ‘inquiry’ has become a perennial and central term in the rhetoric of past and present science education reforms (abd-el-khalick, boujaoude, duschl, hofstein, lederman & mamlok, 2004). according to a report by the inter-academy panel (2012: 19), during inquiry-based learning, learners “use skills employed by scientists such as raising questions, collecting data, reasoning and perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 180 reviewing evidence in the light of what is already known, drawing conclusions and discussing results”. this may involve them in first-hand manipulation of objects and materials, and observation of events or it may entail using evidence gained from a range of information sources including books, the internet, teachers and scientists. the south african school science curriculum advocates an inquiry-based approach to practical work. the place of scientific inquiry is addressed through learning outcome 1 of the national curriculum statement (ncs) that is referred to as ‘practical scientific inquiry and problem-solving skills’. this outcome states that ‘the learner will be able to act confidently on curiosity about natural phenomena, and to investigate relationships and solve problems in scientific, technological and environmental contexts’ (department of education, 2003: 13). this imperative is also expressed in the new curriculum and assessment and policy statement (caps) document where specific aim 1 states that ‘the purpose of physical sciences is to make learners aware of their environment and to equip learners with investigating skills relating to physical and chemical phenomena’ (department of basic education, 2011: 8). it is evident from these curriculum imperatives that the doing of inquiry does encompass the application of investigative skills such as planning, observing and gathering information, comprehension, synthesising, generalising, hypothesising and communicating results and conclusions (department of education, 2003). an inquiry is perceived to be a more encompassing concept than an investigation and includes a range of activities with a focus on describing objects and events, asking questions, constructing explanations, testing those explanations against current knowledge, and communicating their ideas to others (nrc, 1996). these developments in south africa mirror the worldwide reform trends in science education. in the united kingdom, attainment target 1 for science in the national curriculum has apportioned much priority to inquiry (department for education and employment, 1999). in the united states, the american association for the advancement of science (aaas, 1993) and the national research council (nrc, 2000) endorse inquiry-based science curricula that actively engage learners in investigations. inquiry is a multifaceted activity and the widely quoted description given in the national science education standards captures the essence of inquiry: inquiry is a multifaceted activity that involves making observations; posing questions; examining books and other sources of information to see what is already known; planning investigations; reviewing what is already known in light of experimental evidence; using tools to gather, analyze, and interpret data; proposing answers, explanations, and predictions; and communicating the results. inquiry requires identification of assumptions, use of critical and logical thinking, and consideration of alternative explanations (nrc, 1996: 23). in order for learners to competently engage in inquiry, they need to have welldeveloped investigative skills such as ‘classifying, communicating, measuring, designing an investigation, drawing and evaluating conclusions, formulating questioning the validity of inquiry assessment in a high stakes physical sciences examination umesh ramnarain 181 models, hypothesising, identifying and controlling variables, inferring, observing and comparing, interpreting, predicting, problem-solving and reflective skills’ (department of basic education, 2011: 8). in addition to being multifaceted, inquiry is also more complex than popular conceptions would have us believe. according to the aaas (1993: 9): it is, for instance, a more subtle and demanding process than the naive idea of ‘making a great many careful observations and then organizing them.’ it is far more flexible than the rigid sequence of steps commonly depicted in textbooks as ‘the scientific method.’ it is much more than just ‘doing experiments,’ and it is not confined to laboratories. more imagination and inventiveness are involved in scientific inquiry than many people realize, yet sooner or later strict logic and empirical evidence must have their day. assessing inquiry the term ‘assessment’ is nebulous, but for this research i adopt the definition of nusche et al. (2012) cited in harlen (2013: 24). here the term is used to refer to “judgements on individual student performance and achievement of learning goals. it covers classroom-based assessment as well as large-scale, external tests and examinations”. the issue of assessing for inquiry learning has stimulated much debate amongst scholars in science education. ketelhut, clarke, dede, nelson and bowman (2005) pose the question: ‘what kinds of assessments will allow valid inferences about whether a student has learned how to engage in inquiry?’ they further speculate on whether inquiry can be adequately assessed using a standardised test format. resnick and resnick (1992) allude to the complexity of inquiry, and maintain that inquiry involves higher-order thinking skills that are not easily measured through standardised testing. buckley, gobert, horwitz and o’ dwyer (2010) agree that traditional assessments fail to capture the complex understanding of inquiry skills needed to learn from inquiry. this difficulty in assessing due to the complexity of inquiry was highlighted in an international conference held in helsinki in 2012 that was jointly planned by the global network of science academies (iap), allea (all european academies), the finnish academy of science and letters, and finland’s science education centre (luma). it was recognised there that it is almost impossible to elicit through tests the rich information needed to assess inquiry-based learning goals (harlen, 2013). ketelhut et al. express the view that, if teachers are to reinforce an inquiry-based pedagogy in their classrooms, then there needs to be more emphasis on inquirybased assessment in standardised testing such as examinations. they maintain that, in this way, the dilemma between teaching content knowledge versus scientific process skills can be resolved. this raises the critical issue that, if inquiry is to be tested in examinations, what form should the items assume? before engaging with this issue, it is worthwhile to consider more broadly what assessing inquiry science entails. firstly, inquiry involves the investigation of perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 182 phenomena in the natural world, and this requires both physical and mental activity (hein & lee, 2000). the physical activity demands the application of process skills such as observation, handling of apparatus and measuring. the mental processing skills include formulating a hypothesis, designing the investigation, drawing valid conclusions and so on. assessing inquiry would, therefore, require that attention be paid to both aspects. research into inquiry practice has provided some insight on how inquiry should be assessed. according to mislevy, chudowsky, draney, fried, gaffney and haertel (2003), inquiry skills are developed in scientific contexts and should, therefore, be assessed within these contexts. context-based assessments are more authentic because they require specific skills to solve real problems (baxter & shavelson, 1994; ruiz-primo & shavelson, 1996). it is clear that, due to the nature of inquiry, traditional forms of assessment, for example, paper-and-pencil items which feature in summative assessments such as tests and examinations, should be scrutinised more closely. quellmalz and pelligrino (2009) maintain that this type of assessment has relatively limited possibilities for measuring the complex science knowledge and skills that inquiry instruction was designed to target. against this background, the study reported in this article investigated the validity of inquiry tasks in national grade 12 physical sciences examinations. the following question is framed: can inquiry be adequately assessed in a standardised format such as an examination? in addressing this question, i present a validity analysis of inquiry tasks that have featured in national grade 12 physical sciences examinations. i consider both physics and chemistry examination papers for the november examinations of 2010, 2011 and 2012. before engaging with this, i discuss validity in assessment and present the framework that guided this research. validity in assessment in order to develop any assessment, the most important issue to resolve is determining what is going to be assessed (hein & lee, 2000). clarity about what is being assessed and how well a test samples a construct are critical to validity (stobart, 2001). kane (2006: 17) defines validity as ‘the extent to which the evidence supports or refutes the proposed interpretation and uses’. validity is, therefore, not a property of tests, or even of test outcomes, but a property of the inferences made on the basis of these outcomes (wilian, 1998). questioning the validity of inquiry assessment in a high stakes physical sciences examination umesh ramnarain 183 this assertion is also expressed in the definition of validity by messick (1989: 13): validity is an integrative evaluative judgement of the degree to which empirical evidence and theoretical rationales support the adequacy and appropriateness of inferences and actions based on test scores or other modes of assessment. sometimes the demands of a test may measure something other than what the test claims to be measuring, which threatens the validity of the claims made. for example, a science test item may contain text that has linguistic features which are synonymous with scientific writing. these may be complex sentences, density of information, subordinate clauses, unfamiliar words and ambiguous phrases. a study conducted by ramnarain (2012) revealed that the complexity of science text places a great demand upon the linguistic proficiency of learners. ‘variable’ is a word that is seldom used in the everyday language of students, and this study reported cases where learners misinterpreted the word to mean some action that needs to be taken to ensure the validity of the experimental results. in science, the term ‘variable’, in fact, refers to a factor or condition that is subject to change, especially one that is allowed to change in a scientific experiment to test a hypothesis. dempster and reddy (2007: 920) point out that readability measures do not prove to be reliable predictors of learners’ choosing the correct answer, and the problems of readability of items ‘overlie a lack of knowledge, skills, and reasoning ability in science’. consequently, the validity of assessment of students’ knowledge and skills embodied in the science curriculum becomes questionable. stobart (2001) presents a validity framework of items in national curriculum assessments in the uk. a key concept in establishing the validity of assessment items is construct validity. according to stobart (2001: 167), ‘clarity about what is being assessed and how well a test samples this construct are critical to validity’. construct validity refers to how adequately an assessment reflects the full range of outcomes of learning in a particular subject domain (harlen, 2013). the accuracy of the results as a measure of the construct will depend on how the assessment is administered as well as what it contains. a threat to construct validity is that a paper-and-pencil item may measure something other than what it claims to measure. the following questions may be used in an inquiry into the construct validity of an assessment: what is being assessed? does the assessment do what it claims to do? stobart lists the following as potential threats to construct validity: contested construct; unclear construct; and construct irrelevance. a threat to construct validity may be evident when a question relates to a construct, but the inferences made from learner results on this construct are contested. this threat is referred to as a contested construct. an unclear construct is perceived as a threat to construct validity when the construct featured in the question is not well defined and is open to multiple interpretations. an assessment is denounced for construct irrelevance when it claims to measure certain skills or knowledge but, instead, measures something else. in this article, i invoke construct validity in my analysis of inquiry items in national grade 12 physical sciences examinations. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 184 method my analysis focused on the physics and chemistry papers of the grade 12 physical sciences examinations of 2010, 2011 and 2012. i firstly identified all inquiryrelated questions in these six papers and compiled these into a set. i was guided in this process by an assessment standard for learning outcome 1 of the ncs that addresses inquiry in the physical sciences curriculum. this standard specifies the following stages in inquiry that learners should be assessed on: identify and question phenomena; design/planning of an investigation; drawing graphs; arriving at results; and drawing a conclusion (department of education, 2003). it is elaborated in the ncs that in ‘identify and question phenomena the learner can be examined on formulating an investigation question, listing all possible variables, and formulating a testable hypothesis. in examining for the ‘design/planning of an investigation’ learners can be asked to identify variables (dependent, independent and controlled), plan the sequence of steps, and suggest an appropriate method of recoding results. with regard to ‘drawing graphs’, learners can be examined on drawing accurate as well as sketch graphs from the given information. in ‘arriving at results’ learners can be questioned on identifying patterns in the data and interpreting results. finally, learners can be examined on ‘drawing a conclusion’ from the information given graphically. all questions that addressed these stages was classified as inquiry related and identified for further analysis. i sought validity in this process of identifying the inquiry questions by asking two researchers in science education to independently do the same. there was 94% agreement amongst the three of us on this classification. we resolved the small discrepancy through discussion. subsequently, i analysed the items for construct validity. i was guided in this analysis by the threats to construct validity identified by stobart. i did this by reading the items and then checked to see whether they exhibited any of the threats to construct validity. then, the items were classified in terms of whether they conformed to construct validity. the set of inquiry items was then analysed by the same two researchers in science education who were involved in the compilation of this set. inter-rater reliability in the classification of the questions was established due to a 90% agreement in the classification. again, differences in the classification of the questions were resolved through discussion. findings table 1 below informs on the extent to which the inquiry items in the physical sciences examinations violated construct validity. the physics and chemistry papers for each examination are considered jointly. questioning the validity of inquiry assessment in a high stakes physical sciences examination umesh ramnarain 185 table 1: classification of inquiry questions according to construct validity number of inquiry questions number of inquiry questions violating construct validity percentage of inquiry questions violating construct validity (%) contested construct unclear construct construct irrelevance november 2010 examination 8 4 1 0 63 november 2011 examination 9 3 2 1 67 november 2012 examination 11 4 2 2 73 total 28 11 5 3 68 it is evident from this table that there are a substantial number of the inquiry items that exhibited the threats to construct validity identified by stobart. in particular, there was a relatively high prevalence of questions that were classified as ‘contested construct’. these were questions where the inferences that could be made on the target construct were open to challenge. the following cases are presented to illustrate the threats to construct validity reported above. contested construct in question 7.1 of the 2011 physics examination learners were required to ‘write down the investigative question” for an investigation on the “change in broadness of the central bright band in a diffraction pattern when light passes through single slits of different widths’. this question relates to the stage ‘identify and question phenomena’ in an assessment standard of learning outcome 1 of the ncs (department of education, 2003). it is specified here that learners can be examined on formulating an investigation question. the following diagram of the apparatus for the experiment was provided: perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 186 a monochromatic violet light single slit screen the marking memorandum provided by the department of basic education gives the following criteria in the allocation of marks: criteria for investigative question mark the dependent and independent variables are stated 1 asks a question about the relationship between dependent and independent variables 1 the target construct that is being tested in this question is the learner’s ability to ‘formulate an investigation question’. the formulation of an investigation question is part of the problem-finding or problem-posing phase, and the question drives the subsequent investigative process. this is an ‘initial phase of problem-solving involving the construction of an internal, mental representation of the problem using existing schemata perceived as relevant by the problem solver’ (appleton, 1995: 383). if this is the primary purpose of asking learners to formulate investigation questions, the task of asking learners to write down a question does not meet this objective. the investigation is based on the topic of diffraction and refers to the relationship between the width of the central band in this diffraction pattern and the width of the slit through which light passes. it is clear that this topic would already have been dealt with in class and the envisaged outcome would be that learners would have acquired an understanding of diffraction and the relationship between central band width and slit width. the target construct of asking learners to formulate an investigation question in driving an investigation is contested and, hence, this question poses a threat to the inferences that can be made from inquiry performance. a similar threat to validity is reflected in question 7.2 where learners were required to ‘write down two variables that are kept constant’ during this investigation. the identification of variables is a process skill that is indicated in learning outcome 1 of the ncs and also specified in an assessment standard for this outcome (department of education, 2003). the listing of variables is key in the construction of a hypothesis and investigation questions in fair testing investigations. owing to a prior conception of the diffraction phenomenon, the validity of the inferences based on the learner performance through the question is threatened. questioning the validity of inquiry assessment in a high stakes physical sciences examination umesh ramnarain 187 another case where the purpose of the assessment is questionable is question 4 of the november 2012 chemistry examination. the question refers to a practical investigation on the boiling points of alkanes and size of molecules. a table of results is presented. alkane molecular formula boiling point (0c) methane ch 4 -164 ethane c 2 h 6 -89 propane c 3 h 8 -42 butane c 4 h 10 -0.5 pentane c 5 h 12 36 hexane c 6 h 14 69 in question 4.2.3, learners are asked to write down a conclusion that can be drawn from the results. the examination guidelines state that learners should be able to ‘draw conclusions from information’ (department of education, 2010: 3). this question is supposedly assessing the ability of learners to analyse the data and draw a conclusion based on this analysis. this is not an authentic task, as learners should already have a conception of the relationship and be able to correctly answer it by merely recalling their knowledge. as a result, the validity of inferences that can be based on learners’ performance becomes questionable. unclear construct in question 11 of the 2012 physics examination, an investigation is described on the relationship between the light of different frequencies shone onto a metal cathode of a photocell and the kinetic energy of the emitted electrons. a graph of results obtained is presented. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 188 in question 11.1, learners are asked to write down the dependent, independent and controlled variables. as indicated already, the identification of a variable is a skill that is related to the broader skill of formulating a hypothesis or an investigation question in the planning stage of an inquiry. in drawing a graph on the relationship between dependent and independent variables it is the accepted practice in science to label the x-axis the independent variable and the y-axis the dependent variable. in this question learners can quite conceivably correctly identify these variables from the labelling of the two axes. if the intended construct for which learner performance is being measured is ‘to identify variables in an investigation’ this would require learners to engage conceptually with the inquiry problem. instead, learners in this case can correctly answer this question without conceptual understanding by simply referring to the physical quantities indicated on the axes. it is, therefore, unclear what construct is being tested through this question. in terms of the stobart framework, the unclear construct that is evident here is a threat to construct validity, and the validity of inferences that could be made on learners’ performance on the target construct is being threatened. a more valid assessment would be made if learners are assessed on this skill when presented with a problem that is located in a meaningful context, and then asked to identify variables and formulate a question and a hypothesis on this. an example of this could be a teacher who demonstrates the photoelectric effect using a photocell, and then learners are asked to plan investigations related to this effect. this adds authenticity to the inquiry, and will give learners some insight into the nature of science at the same time. construct irrelevance question 6.2 of the 2010 november chemistry examination paper refers to the investigation of the rate of reaction between hydrochloric acid and sodium thiosulphate, and temperature. hydrochloric acid and a sodium thiosulphate solution are used to investigate the relationship between rate of reaction and temperature. learners are presented with the experimental procedure for this investigation and a graph of results is presented. questioning the validity of inquiry assessment in a high stakes physical sciences examination umesh ramnarain 189 sub-question 6.2.1 required learners to ‘write a possible hypothesis for the investigation’. this is again a requirement in assessing inquiry where it is stated that learners should be able to ‘formulate a testable hypothesis’ (department of education, 2010: 3). a scientific hypothesis is a proposed explanation of a phenomenon which still has to be tested. most of the time a hypothesis is written like this: if ____[i do this] ____, then _____[this]_____will happen. in view of the results being presented in the graph above, the target construct of hypothesising is irrelevant and misplaced here. the graph of results already reveals the relationship between temperature and rate of reaction. it is, therefore, nonsensical to ask learners to now formulate a hypothesis on this relationship. discussion this study revealed that inquiry questions in national physical sciences examinations lack construct validity. the analysis that was guided by stobart’s conceptualisation of construct validity revealed that, to a large extent, the inquiry questions exhibited threats to validity. the inferences that could be made on learners’ performance in inquiry were found to be misleading due to the inquiry construct’s being contested. in certain cases it was not clear what construct was being targeted in the question and, as a result, no valid inferences could be made on learner performance. there were also questions where the supposed construct that was being targeted was not really being addressed, and displayed construct irrelevance. the findings of this study suggest that greater attention needs to be paid to the formulation of inquiry-related questions in written tests and examinations. as with any pedagogical approach, it is important to align learning outcomes, and teaching and learning activities with assessment. a major reason why inquiry items have been incorporated in written examinations is to incentivise the teaching of inquiry at school. it is common practice that teachers will ‘teach to the test’ (phelps, 2011), which means that teachers place heavy emphasis on preparing learners for a standardised test. ‘teaching to the test’ does have a negative connotation in education, but when the assessment tasks reflect accurately the constructs inherent to the learning outcomes then ‘teaching to the test’ is appropriate (hein & lee, 2000). hein and lee also affirm that, if assessment criteria for inquiry are shared with learners, this may encourage learners to practise what will be assessed, leading to an improvement in achievement. inquiry is a complex and multifaceted activity involving both cognitive and physical activity, and paper-and-pencil items do not provide the authentic context for this assessment. as pointed out already, it is preferable to assess inquiry skills in the same context in which these skills are developed (mislevy et al., 2003; quellmalz & pelligrino 2009; ruiz-primo & shavelson, 1996). however, the implementation of standardised testing of inquiry in a school context is faced with challenges such as the lack of physical resources, the large classes and the related organisational difficulties. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 190 given this scenario, paper-and-pencil items, although not the ideal, may still prove to be the most feasible way to do standardised testing of inquiry. it is, therefore, recommended that further research be undertaken on the development of such written tasks that adhere to validity requirements. this recommendation is affirmed by delegates of the iap conference in helsinki referred to earlier who suggest that more studies are needed in order to improve the validity of assessment tools so that unrealistic assumptions of accuracy in assessment can be deterred (harlen, 2013). references abd-el-khalick f, boujaoude s, duschl ra, hofstein a, lederman ng, & mamlok r 2004. inquiry in science education: international perspectives. science education, 88(3): 397-419. american association for the advancement of science 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(2012). the readability of a high stakes physics examination. acta academica, 44(2): 110-129. resnick lb & resnick dp 1992. assessing the thinking curriculum: new tools for education reform. in b gifford & m o’ connor (eds), changing assessment: alternative view of aptitude, achievement and instruction. london: kluwer academic publishers. roth w-m 1994. experimenting in a constructivist high school laboratory. journal of research in science teaching, 31(2): 197-223. ruiz-primo ma & shavelson rj 1996. problems and issues in the use of concept maps in science assessment. journal of research in science teaching, 33(6): 569-600. stobart g 2001. the validity of national curriculum assessment. british journal of educational studies, 49(1), 26-39. wilian d 1998. the validity of teachers’ assessments. paper presented at the 22nd annual conference of the international group for the psychology of mathematics education, stellenbosch, south africa, july 1998. 39 formative assessment as mediation mark de vos rhodes university dina zoë belluigi rhodes university whilst principles of validity, reliability and fairness should be central concerns for the assessment of student learning in higher education, simplistic notions of ‘transparency’ and ‘explicitness’ in terms of assessment criteria should be critiqued more rigorously. this article examines the inherent tensions resulting from cra’s links to both behaviourism and constructivism and argues that more nuance and interpretation is required if the assessor is to engage his/her students with criterion-based assessment from a constructivist paradigm. one way to negotiate the tensions between different assessment ideologies and approaches meaningfully is to construe assessment as ‘mediation’. this article presents an example assessment rubric informed by john biggs’ (1999) solo taxonomy. keywords: criterion referenced assessment, cra, mediation, arbitration, formative assessment, bloom’s taxonomy introduction south african higher education policy has been moving towards the adoption of criterion-referenced assessment (cra) in aid of outcomes-based education (obe), in conjunction with an increased focus on constructivist approaches (boughey, 2004).1 cra models’ requirements for explicit outcomes and assessment criteria are perceived as central both to the commoditisation of education and to ensuring accountability to the state in service of societal transformation (morrow, 2007; singh, 2001). in such a context, critique of the notion of transparency in assessment criteria has been minimal, resulting in widespread compliance (for critiques of transparency in other contexts, see strathern, 2000; knight, 2001; parker, 2003). tensions arising from different conceptions of cra criterion-referenced assessment (cra) is often polemically contrasted with norm-referenced assessment (nra), which was the conventional form of assessment in the majority of south african he institutions until recently. cra is offered as the more sound alternative, where the performance or achievement of the student is referenced against standards which are determined and made explicit before the assessment event. however, these distinctions are somewhat artificial, with some arguing that “today’s over-reliance on explicit knowledge could perhaps be as naive as the over-reliance on tacit knowledge had been in the past for the communication of assessment criteria and standards” (o’donovan, price & rust, 2004: 327). in accordance with this artificial distinction, assumptions behind cra emphasise the role which assessment plays in modifying student behaviours. those informed by the competency movement would contend that assessment should be graded against criteria ranging from complete lack of competence through to complete and perfect competence, in the spirit of glaser (1963). although this is often practised by educators informed by constructivism, cra in such applications can be perceived to be rooted in behaviourism. this entails that assessment criteria must be specified in advance and should ideally specify completely the ranges of behaviour that a student should be able to demonstrate in the assessment event. knowledge of learning 1 while we acknowledge that cra is not necessarily linked to obe, in the south african context, they often go hand in hand. thus, the remainder of this article will take it for granted that the south african implementation of obe is strongly linked to cra. 40 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 201140 outcomes and criteria articulate to students the specific intentions of the course. the aim is to describe to students what they should know, understand and be able to do on completing the course. against this instrumentalist perspective are conceptions where the focus of learning outcomes is not on objective-based teaching (knight, 2001, among others). there is a difference between the behaviourist slant of shaping curricula around what a student should be able to ‘do’ and the constructivist curriculum as a “set of purposeful, intended experiences” (knight, 2001: 369). constructivist approaches are geared towards emphasising the value of learning and teaching processes. constructivist approaches make the educator more reflexive in his/her teaching and more sensitive to his/her students’ needs and diversity. behaviourist conceptions emphasise the intended result of studying, while more constructivist conceptions emphasise the process of learning during the studies. these two conceptions betray an ideological tension in the use of cra. cra is used, on the one hand, in a behaviourist way to assess performance and, on the other, in a constructivist way to co-construct understandings with learners where students actively interpret this information. the problem of transparency and objectivity a point of conflict crucial to this article is how these tensions play out in relation to the supposed transparency and objectivity of the assessor. behaviourist-based approaches require positive and negative reinforcement of student behaviours. this means that they require explicit formulation of criteria in advance; if there are no explicit criteria, there can be no objective standard on which to base reinforcement. in addition, the clarity of such criteria has been considered useful for the constructive alignment of assessment with outcomes (popham, 1993; biggs, 1999). however, clear criteria do not suffice to ensure uniform interpretation (millman, 1994: 19; knight & yorke, 2008: 178). it is often not acknowledged that “there is a degree to which criteria cannot be unambiguously specified but are subject to social processes by which meanings are contested and constructed” (knight, 2001: 20). for this reason many proponents of cra actively reject high levels of description or precision (o’donovan, price & rust, 2000; elander, harrington, norton, robinson & reddy, 2006; sadler, 2005; hammer, 2007). by contrast, constructivism requires criteria to be negotiated in context rather than set in stone in advance. in this way, the gap between ‘expert’ and student is not perceived as defective but rather as “normal learning awaiting further development” (francis & hallam, 2000: 295). consequently, there is a tension between the behaviourist approaches’ explicitness and mechanical ease of application and the constructivist approaches’ subjective and negotiated, discursive construction of assessment positions. since many measurement theorists seem to focus more on theoretical questions, large-scale test development, validity and reliability than on classroom interventions (smith, 2003), it is not surprising that this aspect of detailed cra has to a large extent been overlooked. only relatively recently have educationalists such as shay (2004; 2005; 2008) argued that assessment should be recognised as a socially situated interpretative practice, what killen (2003: 1) calls “an integrated evaluative judgement”. similarly, knight (2001) contends that assessment is local practice, because the meanings of assessment activities are bound up with the particular circumstances of their production. this requires some reconsideration of the argument for precise transparency or objectivity in order to arrive at a more nuanced alternative. possible solutions to this quandary assessors who use cra find themselves in some kind of quandary. on the one hand, transparency, explicitness and precision are the core justification for cra; on the other, this drive can make cra standards unattainable in theory and unusable in practice. despite this paradox, the lecturer is not absolved of his/her responsibility to providing students with epistemological access through insight into assessment practices. one possible way to negotiate this quagmire is to use ‘indicators’ instead of criteria (knight, 2001). this requires replacing highly detailed, outcome-referenced assessment with more general descriptors that highlight the cognitive skills or the ‘cognitive essence’ (popham, 1993: 13) which students need to practise. this idea is developed by sizmur & sainsbury (1997) who argue that the fact that criterion41de vos & belluigi— formative assessment as mediation 41 referenced behaviours have some kind of educational value implies that a theoretically prior notion exists which would allow the behaviours specified in outcomes to be mapped to more general cognitive skills. another approach to the problem is to move away from precise descriptors towards privileging the relationship between the lecturer and the student. hussey & smith (2002: 359) propose an ‘articulated curriculum’ which moves away from the focus on assessment criteria to the teaching-learning relationship. through a diverse range of assessment practices, including scaffolded tasks and selfand peer-assessment, lecturers and students can share in the responsibility of attempting to create ‘shared understandings’ of the meanings of criteria (niven 2009). however, the assumption that shared understandings can be achieved in the first place is problematic because the range of understandings possible may be infinite. moreover, there is always the philosophical question of how to determine whether an understanding is truly ‘shared’ or not. the politics of mediation it has been argued that many current applications of cra experience a number of problems, including exhaustively specified descriptors and a denial of the interpretative nature of the process of assessment, perhaps because of a behaviourist grounding that is incompatible with teaching and learning conceptions informed by constructivism. some of these problems can be overcome if assessment is reconceptualised as mediation (as opposed to arbitration). outside of the he context, mediation has been defined as a process of conflict settlement where a putatively neutral mediator facilitates the communication between two parties but does not impose a specific agreement (silbey & merry, 1986). this involves the creating of a resolution, starting from the prior understandings of the participants and ultimately changing some of those understandings as a result of the process of mediation. this approach is in many ways suited to the teacher-assessor’s mediation of the conflict inherent in transformative learning, which necessitates movements between equilibrium and dissonance, between the students’ prior knowledge and desires and that of the professional community of practice into which they are being inducted. the differences between the notion of mediation and that of arbitration or adjudication as used in legal systems should be noted. arbitration involves a third party to act as judge. unlike a mediator, an arbitrator makes no attempt to appear neutral but actively takes a side. granted institutional power, an arbitrator does not have to obtain the confidence of both sides and will rule in favour of one of the participants rather than coming to a new, negotiated settlement. enforcement of the result is often coercive in the sense that it is upheld by the law and/or the police services. mediators have an inherently contradictory task (jacobs, 2002). they need to (a) appear neutral even though they obviously have vested interests; (b) obtain the confidence of both sides in the process and final outcome of the mediation; (c) move both sides towards new negotiated common ground, (d) without the use of overt coercion. these demands often place the mediator in situations with ‘paradoxical expectations’ (silbey & merry, 1986: 7). neutrality, or rather perceived neutrality, and its construction are powerful tools used to negotiate these tensions (jacobs, 2002) and legitimate the mediation process (field, 2002; maiese, 2005; douglas & field, 2006). however, the mediator is, in fact, not neutral at all, but is an active participant in the process and wields considerable power (silbey & merry 1986; jacobs, 2002; boulle, 2005 inter alia). for instance, mediators may control the mediation process by (a) presenting themselves as having institutional support, being experts in the discipline, etc; (b) controlling the mediation process and the communication that occurs within it; (c) selecting and framing the issues under discussion and constructing a new account of the conflict and its understandings, and (d) ‘activating commitment’ by presenting the outcome of mediation in ideological terms (silbey & merry, 1986). this allows the mediator to move the discussion towards resolution without having to exert overt power and thereby threaten the face of the participants. 42 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 201142 assessment as mediation there are distinct parallels between mediators and teaching professionals in the context of he. assessment and mediation share the same basic rationale. mediation is about resolving conflicts of various kinds. assessment is, at heart, about conflicting understandings of various issues. for instance, a student expresses his/her understandings in an assignment, which may be similar or different to the ‘canon’. gradually, as a result of sustained engagement with formative assessment practices, the student develops new and deeper understandings (black & wiliam, 1998). ultimately, at advanced postgraduate level, the student may gain insights that challenge or change the understandings of the professional community (indeed, this is often expected at phd level). thus the professional community may ultimately adjust its own theory, approaches or practice in response to (admittedly advanced) learning on the part of the student. like a mediator, an assessor facilitates interaction between two other parties, the student and the community of practice – although this is not obvious at first sight as the only two parties immediately evident in the classroom are the assessor and the student. constructivist approaches to learning tend to emphasise the assessor-student relationship as a two-way interaction, often characterised as ‘negotiation’ or ‘facilitation’ between two parties. a negotiator must come to terms with a situation where both parties are more or less equals; they each have something to bargain with. it appears that this does not reflect the socio-political dynamics of the classroom: it is not the case that students negotiate outcomes with the assessor directly. rather, the assessor has institutional power over the students, but in the interests of mediating learning outcomes, the assessor may choose to mask overt expression of that power. for this reason, we prefer to distinguish assessment as mediation from approaches which conceptualise assessment as negotiation. what the constructivist conception of assessment as negotiation often omits is that the involvement of an additional third party in the learning process is necessary. this third party is the knowledge community into which students are being inducted (shay, 2004; 2005; price, 2005) and which often has institutionalised gatekeepers (such as the bar exams for legal practitioners, articles for accountants, professional licenses for medical practitioners, etc.). assessors act as mediators between that community and their students as novices in this field. the substantive difference between mediation of assessment in he and that in other contexts is that in the former, one party is not physically present in the classroom. however, the professional community’s presence is reified in various ways in the classroom: in textbooks and seminal texts, in examination memos and examples of best practice, in moderators and external examiners, in the ‘expert’ knowledge and role of the assessor, etc. learning and assessment thus become at least a three-way process – a multilogue – where an assessor mediates between the student and a broader professional community. like mediators, the assessor must maintain the confidence of both the student and the professional communities of practice in educational outcomes (douglas & field, 2006: 199; niven 2009: 281). professional communities must believe that the assessor/educational system is producing high-quality students. students must believe that the assessor has their best interests at heart in teaching relevant skills and material that will, in turn, make the student acceptable to the professional community. although this is often not acknowledged, it is a reason why in practice assessors strive so hard to ensure reliability, avoid the possibility of plagiarism, utilise external examiners and moderators, etc. similarly, mediators place a heavy focus on maintaining the illusion of perceived neutrality. this concern for neutrality seems not to be present to the same degree in he assessment literature, where more emphasis is placed on the principles of reliability and validity of assessment (cf. killen, 2003). however, assessors are definitely not neutral insofar as they have a vested interest in facilitating students’ understandings of new material and in providing bridges between students’ prior knowledge and new domains. furthermore, assessors are typically experts in their fields and may even be practitioners of their disciplines. thus, the assessor often has a strong vested interest in the community of practice. s/he must aid students in adjusting their position (with regard to knowledge and skills) to ensure agreement between the students’ position and the requirements of the professional community. formative assessment should be inherent in this approach. 43de vos & belluigi— formative assessment as mediation 43 however, engagement in an issue can lead to ethical dilemmas since attempting neutrality can disrupt what some perceive as their “ethical duty to ensure just outcomes” (douglas & field, 2006: 186). many mediators argue for an advocacy role (jacobs, 2002; field, 2002), where the mediator actively advances the cause of the weaker party. assessors, who have a sense of education as emancipatory or empowering, or where curriculum is conceived as praxis, might find such potential compelling. these parallels strongly suggest that constructivist assessment practice can be theorised in terms of mediation theory. more research is needed on other models of mediation in relation to other models of assessment. for instance, summative assessment tends to emphasise the arbitrational role of assessors. the fact that this may be the case does not undermine the argument of this article; all it shows is that there are differences between formative and summative assessment practices. however, it would be interesting for future research to explore this idea further and determine whether assessment-as-arbitration can be constructed as a counterpoint to the proposal in this article that formative, constructivist assessment practices can be regarded as mediative in character. mediating standards the previous sections argued broadly (i) for a constructivist, mediative context for assessment and (ii) for descriptors that focus on underlying, general intellectual constructs rather than mechanistic, atomised specifications for assessment criteria. given the well-documented problems in attempting to define precise specifications, we propose that we do not even try. rather, drawing on the insights of theorists arguing for an appropriate grounding of standards, each standard is couched in cognitive processes and intellectual abilities which capture the ‘intellectual essence’ (popham, 1993) of a particular activity. it is thus important to define the standards with this ‘intellectual essence’ without falling into the trap of an infinite regression of explicitness. one way of engaging with standards for assessment is by using educational taxonomies, such as benjamin bloom’s taxonomy (bloom, 1956; krathwohl, 2002), perry’s scheme of intellectual and ethical development (perry, 1970), and john biggs’ taxonomy (1999; 2003), etc. according to such taxonomies, cognitive capacities develop from simple to complex (higher order) abilities or skills. for example, the recall of facts may be subsumed by comprehension, extrapolation, application, etc. whatever taxonomy is chosen, its standards should allow implicatures (grice, 1975) about the manner in which students achieve the outcomes (killen, 2003: 10).2 note that this is different to behaviouristically influenced cra practices that stress what a student can in fact do but place less emphasis on the manner in which it is achieved. thus, bloom’s taxonomy is a system for classifying learning outcomes, not necessarily a system for classifying how students achieve them. to illustrate this difference, consider a hypothetical outcome of an english writing course: write a haiku. from the perspective of bloom’s taxonomy (1956), such an outcome can be classified as synthesis, or creating (krathwohl, 2002; knight, 2001). there are clearly different levels at which the writing of a haiku could be achieved: a student could compose a text that is formally a haiku (one which has the requisite syllable structure) without necessarily obtaining the emotional and/or succinctness qualities that make the form poetic. alternatively, a student could write a haiku which makes sense, but which does not constitute a ‘great’ haiku, etc. clearly, all of these responses are part of the create category in krathwohl’s terms, but they fall along a range of achievement. furthermore, the evaluation of each of these haikus requires an interpretive act on the part of the assessor (knight, 2001; shay, 2004; shay & jawitz, 2005) that mediates between the student’s haiku and the extended community of haiku critics and poets, and a canon of literature. 2 although this article may not be the appropriate context to discuss the types of ‘meanings’ derived from taxonomies’ standards, in the interests of precision, we have opted to use the technical term ‘implicature’ rather than remaining vague about what we mean. by ‘implicature’ we mean the conversational implicatures identified by the philosopher, paul grice (1975). implicatures are contextually derived, non-entailed meanings generated as a result of the interaction between the contextual expectations of the decoder and the apparent entailments of the message in accordance with the cooperative principle. 44 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 201144 we adopt biggs’ taxonomy (1999) below, because it usefully allows each level of achievement – prestructural, unistructural, multistructural, relational and extended abstract – to be characterised in an interpretive manner.3 biggs’ taxonomy is not necessarily a measure of (behaviourist) acts (typically characterised by verbs (spady, 1994)) but rather of manners of achievement (typically characterised by adverbs and adjectives) in which acts are implemented. thus, it is possible to write a haiku in a unistructural way, a multistructural way, a relational way, etc. as the student progresses through postgraduate study, the relational and extended abstract categories become the defining characteristics of research. table 1: proposal for a mediated cra grid outcomes the student fulfils the outcome in a … p restructural m anner u nistructural m anner m ultistructural m anner r elational m anner e xtended abstract m anner c hallenging m anner write a haiku explain the relationship between haiku and other poetic forms however, biggs’ taxonomy as it stands needs to be developed for a mediative approach to assessment. in its current form it does not necessarily provide the space for a student to exceed the expectations imposed by the taxonomy. to create a space for this kind of excellence at earlier levels, we have added another category: challenging. this gives the student licence to achieve a particular outcome in a manner which the assessor and/or the professional community to reassess their own understandings of the discipline and/ or assessment. this is partly to overcome concerns that while transparency and objectivity are clearly desirable within assessment practices, an overemphasis on them risks stultifying the learning process, marginalising exceptional qualities and consequently dampening leaps of thought and practice (gordon, 2004). such leaps are the mark of the most insightful students. some students may surpass expectations, answer or problematise questions in new and exciting ways, and actively seek new knowledge. in a highly descriptive, behaviourist, cra approach there is no room to accommodate these exceptional responses. an effective cra method should not only accommodate these responses, but actively promote them. after all, a truly successful educator is one whose students challenge his/her understandings of the subject matter. at this point, it is worth mentioning that reed, granville, janks, makoe, stein, van zyl & samuel (2002) have implemented a similar rubric using the biggs taxonomy. the proposal presented in this instance differs from theirs in many respects. first, reed et al (2002) develop a rubric that is a form of summative assessment. the mediative approach developed here is entirely focused on formative assessment. secondly, reed et al (2002) root their proposal in the need for inter-marker reliability of grading (i.e. measurement). the mediative approach regards measurement as a different issue entirely that is ultimately 3 we are aware that biggs argues in favour of explicit standards and that in this article we argue against them. however, nothing about biggs’ taxonomy necessarily entails explicitness. furthermore, our choosing biggs’ taxonomy does not mean that this is the only possible set of standards that could be used; it is merely one that fits the criteria we have outlined. 45de vos & belluigi— formative assessment as mediation 45 bound up with summative assessment. the calculation of the final mark can be done separately and is in a sense a completely different operation.4 thirdly, reed et al (2002) provide a set of explicit criteria. they acknowledge the inadequacies of this in dealing with context-dependent considerations (e.g. their discussion of ‘voice’) and point out that their proposed rubric is inadequate to deal with them. under the mediative approach, biggs’ categories are themselves the specification of the standards. the assessor must ultimately make a fine-grained analysis of whether the student’s work constitutes a prestructural, unistructural, multistructural, relational, etc. response to the requirements of the task. in doing so, the assessor must make implicatures or validity judgements (killen, 2003; shay & jawitz, 2005) from the student’s work to the assessment category and must explain why this assessment is justified. an assessment of a particular outcome could thus take the general form, “for outcome 1, this work appears to be multistructural because ….”. as black & wiliam (1998: 9) put it: “feedback to any pupil should be about the particular qualities of his or her work with advice on what he or she can do to improve …”. this analytical process is essentially context-dependent and mediative in character. it may be argued that this interpretive process is inimical to cra on the grounds that it is unclear and inexplicit. we would counter that the skill of interpretation is a desirable and authentic (wiggins, 1990) outcome of he and so, by acknowledging and incorporating the need for interpretation into assessment procedures, educators are in fact demonstrating critical alignment between outcomes and assessment. the final difference between this proposal and that of reed et al (2002) is that in developing explicit criteria, reed et al do not necessarily leave open the possibility of exceeding them. in the mediative approach, the possibility that students could challenge the conceptions of the assessor and/or the professional community is left open. this is codified in the challenging category we have included. conclusion this article argued that a fully explicit set of cra criteria is problematic in theory and unwieldy in practice. we have drawn on mediation theory to design what we argue is an improved cra system. we believe that this approach to formative assessment can more directly assist with epistemological access to the knowledge construction of communities of practice outside of he, without paying uncritical lip service to notions of explicitness and transparency.5 references biggs j 1999. what the student does: teaching for enhanced learning. higher education research and development, 18:57-75. biggs j 2003. teaching for quality learning at university of buckingham. london: the society for research into higher education and open university press. black p & wiliam d 1988. inside the black box: raising standards through classroom assessment. london: n f e r nelson publishing company. bloom b 1956. taxonomy of educational objectives: the classification of educational goals: handbook i, cognitive domain. london: longman. boughey c 2004. higher education in south africa: context, mission and legislation. in: s gravett & h geyser (eds). teaching and learning in higher education. pretoria: van schaik. boulle l 2005. mediation: principles, process, practice. sydney: butterworths. 4 the issue of measurement is clearly implicated in the assessment issue: measurement can be broadly defined as an evaluation of the extent to which a measured behaviour conforms to an external measurement standard; measurement is thus arbitrational in nature. the present article focuses on mediated, non-numerical, formative assessment only (which is strictly separate from measurement per se), and argues that assessment is a mediated practice (thus not arbitrated). consequently, measurement falls outside the ambit of this article. 5 we acknowledge the need to validate this system with thorough empirical research. however, due to space constraints, this will have to be the topic of a future paper. 46 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 201146 douglas k & field r 2006. looking for answers to mediation’s neutrality dilemma in therapeutic jurisprudence. elaw journal, 13:177-201. elander j, harrington j, norton l, robinson h & reddy p 2006. complex skills and academic writing: a review of evidence about the types of learning required to meet core assessment ccriteria. assessment and evaluation in higher education, 31:71-90. field r 2002. neutrality and power: myths and reality. retrieved from http://www.mediate.com/articles/ fieldr.cfm on 14 july 2010. francis h & hallam s 2000. genre effects on higher education students’ text reading for understanding. higher education, 39:279-296. glaser r 1963. instructional technology and the measurement of learning outcomes: some questions. american psychologist, 18:519-521. gordon j 2004. the ‘wow’ factors: the assessment of practical media and creative arts subjects. art, design and communication in higher education, 3:61-72. grice p 1975. logic and conversation. in: p cole and j morgan (eds). syntax and semantics, speech acts. new york: academic press. hammer s 2007. demonstrating quality outcomes in learning and teaching: examining ‘best practice’ in the use of criterion-referenced assessment. international journal of pedagogies and learning, 3:50-58. hussey t & smith p 2002. the trouble with learning outcomes. active learning in higher education, 3:220-233. jacobs s 2002. maintaining neutrality in dispute mediation: managing disagreement while managing not to disagree. journal of pragmatics, 34:1403-1426. killen r 2003. validity in outcomes-based assessment. perspectives in education, 21:1-14. knight p 2001. complexity and curriculum: a process approach to curriculum-making. teaching in higher education, 6:369-381. knight p & yorke m 2008. assessment close up: the limits of exquisite descriptions of achievement. international journal of educational research, 47:175-183. krathwohl d 2002. a revision of bloom’s taxonomy: an overview. theory into practice, 41:212-218. maiese m 2005. neutrality. in: g burgess & h burgess (eds). beyond intractability. boulder, colorado: conflict research consortium. millman j 1994. criterion-referenced testing 30 years later: promise broken, promise kept. educational measurement: issues and practice, winter:19-39. morrow w 2007. learning to teach in south africa. cape town: hsrc press. niven p 2009. quit school and become a taxi driver: reframing first-year students’ expectations of assessment in a university environment. perspectives in education, 27:278-288. o’donovan b, price m & rust c 2000. the student experience of criterion-referenced assessment (through the introduction of a common criteria assessment grid). innovations in education teaching international, 38:74-85. o’donovan b, price m & rust c 2004. know what i mean? enhancing student understanding of assessment standards and criteria. teaching in higher education, 9:325-335. parker j 2003. reconceptualizing the curriculum: from commoditization to transformation. teaching in higher education, 8:529-543. perry w 1970. forms of intellectual and ethical development in the college years: a scheme. new york: holt, rinehart & winston. popham w 1993. educational testing in america: what’s right, what’s wrong: a criterion-referenced perspective. educational measurement: issues and practice, spring:11-14. price m 2005. assessment standards: the role of communities of practice and the scholarship of assessment. assessment and evaluation in higher education, 30:215-230. reed y, granville s, janks h, makoe p, stein p, van zyl s & samuel m 2002. [un]reliable assessment: a case study. perspectives in education, 21:15-27. 47de vos & belluigi— formative assessment as mediation 47 sadler r 2005. interpretations of criteria-based assessment and grading in higher education. assessment and evaluation in higher education, 20:175-194. shay s 2004. the assessment of complex performance: a socially-situated interpretive act. harvard educational review, 74:307-329. shay s 2005. the assessment of complex tasks: a double reading. studies in higher education, 30:663-679. shay s 2008. beyond social constructivist perspectives on assessment: the centering of knowledge. teaching in higher education, 13:595-605. shay s & jawitz j 2005. assessment and the quality of educational programmes: what constitutes evidence? perspectives in education, 23:103-112. silbey s & merry s 1986. mediator settlement strategies. law and policy, 8:7-32. singh m 2001. reinserting the ‘public good’ into higher education transformation. kagisano higher education discussion series, 1:8-18. sizmur s & sainsbury m 1997. criterion referencing and the meaning of national curriculum assessment. british journal of educational studies, 45:123-140. smith j 2003. reconsidering reliability in classroom assessment and grading. educational measurement: issues and practice, spring:26-33. spady w 1994. outcome-based education: critical issues and answers. arlington: american association of school administrators. strathern m 2000. the tyranny of transparency. british educational research journal, 26:309-321. wiggens g 1990. the case for authentic assessment. practical assessment, research & evaluation, 2. retrieved from http://pareonline.net/getvn.asp?v=2&n=2 on ?? november 2010. making euclidean geometry compulsory: are we prepared? sonja van putten, sarah howie, gerrit stols university of pretoria, 012 420 5657, 012 420 5723, 012 420 5750, sonja.vanputten@up.ac.za, sarah.howie@ up.ac.za, gerrit.stols@up.ac.za this study investigated the attitude towards, as well as the level of understanding of euclidean geometry in pre-service mathematics education (pme) students. in order to do so, a case study was undertaken within which a one group pre-post-test procedure was conducted around a geometry module, and a representative group of students was interviewed before and after the module to discuss their experiences of learning geometry and to analyse their attitudes towards the subject. the van hiele theory of levels of thought in geometry was used as the theoretical framework for this study. the geometry module offered did change the students’ attitude towards geometry, but still did not bring about a sufficient improvement in their level of understanding for these students to be able to teach geometry adequately. keywords: mathematics, geometry, van hiele, teacher training, attitude, curriculum introduction traditional euclidean geometry has been omitted from the mathematics curricula of many countries; however, it is believed by some that the life skills honed by such geometric reasoning remain relevant, whatever the mathematics curriculum. in fact, in the usa “recent reform recommendations have advocated increased emphasis on geometry instruction at all levels” (swafford, jones & thornton, 1997: 467). the value of geometry and the associated proof construction is affirmed by hanna (1998: 5): further evidence of the importance accorded to proof in school geometry is the benefit which it is expected to bring beyond the borders of that subject. the consensus seems to be that the key goals of geometry instruction are the development of thinking abilities, of spatial intuition about the world, of knowledge necessary to study more mathematics and of the ability to interpret mathematical arguments. some would argue that the logic and ability to reason demanded by euclidean geometry renders its pursuit worthwhile, since these skills are not only essential in all mathematical disciplines, but also in life itself. suydam (1985, 481) describes the goals of teaching geometry as follows: to develop logical thinking abilities; � to develop spatial intuition about the real world; � to impart the knowledge needed to study more mathematics; and � to teach the reading and interpretation of mathematical arguments. � as from 2008 euclidean geometry in its traditional form of theorem recognition and proof construction has been voluntary in the south african grade 11 and 12 curricula. it is now a part of the optional third mathematics paper. in 2008 only 3.8% (12 466) of the grade 12 mathematics learners nationally wrote the optional paper 3 and of those who wrote paper 3, almost half (6 155) achieved less than 30% (department of education). the debate on the inclusion of euclidean geometry as part of the compulsory exit examinations “for learners in the south african school context, has risen to fever pitch over the last few years” (van niekerk, 2010, 34). according to bowie (2009, 8) some south african universities argue that “the removal of euclidean geometry from the core curriculum has created a lack of coherence in the van putten, et al. — making euclidean geometry compulsory 23 study of space and shape and that the opportunity to work with proof has been diminished”. the debate, however, is currently not based on research findings. one of the main reasons for euclidean geometry being optional in south africa is that the teachers are not familiar with the content (bowie, 2009). it depends on the teachers’ attitude and knowledge and whether they will or can teach it, if it is optional. if future educators are negatively disposed towards euclidean geometry there is little hope that they will choose to teach for the optional paper 3, and if they lack the knowledge to teach it, it will be impossible to introduce it as part of the compulsory papers in future. is euclidean geometry that difficult and will future teachers be able to teach it? what could be the reason for a possible lack of understanding of euclidean geometry amongst current teachers? the aim of this research was to look at the training of teachers at a university to explore the depth of this problem. the research was structured around the following questions: do teacher students acquire sufficient understanding of euclidean geometry at university to be 1. able to teach it effectively? what is the attitude of the pre-service mathematics teachers towards euclidean geometry?2. theoretical framework the van hiele theory of levels of thought in geometry was used as the theoretical framework for this study, as it has made a significant difference to the world in terms of geometry education, particularly after its impact on russian mathematics education became known internationally (de villiers, 1996). pierre and dina van hiele identified five hierarchical, sequential and discrete levels of geometric development (mayberry, 1983).they suggests progress through thinking on sequential levels as a result of experience which is almost entirely dependent on instruction (larew, 1999). that is why pegg and davey (1998) point out that the van hiele theory is more pedagogical than psychological. both these great educational thinkers, however, recognise that this kind of gradual proceeding must by its very definition take time. for the purpose of this study, the original naming of the van hiele levels as 0 through to 4 as developed by pierre van hiele and dina van hiele-geldoff is used. level 0 visualisation � level 1 – analysis � level 2 – informal deduction � level 3 – deduction � level 4 – rigor � the van hieles considered the levels to be discrete, but other researchers (battista, 2000; burger & shaughnessy, 1986; crowley, 1987) argue that since learners develop several van hiele levels simultaneously and continuously, it is problematic to assign a learner to a particular level. the type of questions and proof construction in south african grade 12 paper 3, requires learners to be on level 3. according to the van hiele theory, students who are situated below level 3 can do proofs only by memorisation. azcarate (1997: 29), finding in her research that memorisation is the preferred method for handling geometry and that little success in terms of understanding ensues, says, “memorising the definition of a concept is no guarantee of understanding its meaning”. jenkins (1968: 35) reflects that shortly “after matriculation, the college freshman discovers to his dismay that he has gained very little insight into the axiomatic systems which are at the foundation of not only geometry but also much of mathematics”. perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201024 euclidean geometry in paper 3 is optional. it not only depends on the teachers’ knowledge, but also on their attitudes towards euclidean geometry whether they choose to teach it. boaler (2000) found that that enjoyment and understanding were concomitant. a british student interviewed by boaler (2000) said, “i used to enjoy it, but i don’t enjoy it anymore because i don’t understand it. i don’t understand what i’m doing … but i enjoy it when i can actually do it, but when i don’t understand it i just get really annoyed with it” (method, paragraph 6). context third year bed mathematics student teachers in the faculty of education, university of pretoria follow a six-month geometry module, which deals with various aspects of geometry, including euclidean geometry, without adhering to the traditional lesson format of theory instruction followed by exercises. instead, problems and activities are presented and discussed in class gradually and almost imperceptibly, taking students from one level to the next in terms of the development of their thinking. design and method this case study describes the third year pre-service mathematics education (pme) students at the university of pretoria, who are studying to be teachers of mathematics in the further education and training (fet) phase, i.e. grade 10, 11 and 12. the research uses both quantitative data (questionnaires and tests) and qualitative (interviews) procedures. to address the first research question a one group pre-test/ post-test procedure was conducted around a geometry module. the students were first tested prior to the commencement of their third year geometry module (their first course in geometry since leaving school). they were then re-tested after completion of the semester course in geometry, which takes place during the first semester of their third year of academic study. the same paper-and-pencil test was administered prior to the intervention as after the intervention. van hiele levels were allocated on the following principle: if a respondent scored 50% or more for the questions on a particular level, s/he was deemed to have “passed” that level, and was thus categorised as competent on that level. to address the second research question a representative sample of students were interviewed before and after the module to discuss their secondary school experiences of learning geometry and to analyse their attitudes towards the subject. participants the target population was the 3rd year fet pme students at the university of pretoria, who completed grade 12 when euclidean geometry was a compulsory part of the curriculum and who all passed matric mathematics with a final mark of 50% or higher on the higher grade. these students were selected firstly for the sake of convenience, and secondly because the university of pretoria is known for the racial and demographic diversity in its student body. the students came from diverse secondary schools reflecting a mix of rural and urban, private and government, well-resourced and under-resourced institutions. although forty-three students wrote the pre-test, only thirty-two were available to write the post-test. a purposive sub-sample of five students was selected from the sample of thirty-two for interviewing. criteria for the selection of interviewees were based on gender, race, language, and range of performance in the pre-test. instruments in 1982, usiskin conducted an investigation for the cognitive development and achievement in secondary school geometry (cdassg) project, of the writings of pierre and dina van hiele to determine accurately the descriptions of behaviour at each of the levels. these descriptions were used in the construction of the questionnaire to reveal the students’ levels of understanding in terms of van hiele levels. the paper-andpencil test was designed and developed by the first author of this paper. the final instrument consisted of thirty two items of which twenty four were designed by the first author and eight were adapted from van putten, et al. — making euclidean geometry compulsory 25 the cdassg test.the first twenty eight items were multiple-choice, and the remaining four were open proof-type questions. a limited number of questions from the cdassg test were used, because some of the items of the original cdassg test are problematic, especially the level 3 items, which focus on the hierarchical classification of quadrilaterals (battista, 2000; smith, 1987). the design of the test items was based upon the south african grade 10 to 12 mathematics curriculum. expert judgment was brought to bear upon the instrument used for this research by involving a senior member of the mathematics department and an expert in geometry, specifically, in an advisory capacity in both the design of the assessment instrument and the analysis of its results. interviews subsequent to the marking of the pre-test and selection of the interview candidates, semi-structured focus group interviews were conducted with the sub-sample all together, and were videotaped for later transcription. five students were selected for interviewing and the same sub-sample was interviewed in the same way after the scoring of the post-test. thus the interview protocol allowed the researcher to explore the feelings of the interviewees, as well as their experiences of learning during the module. the interviews were transcribed and then analyzed according to what creswell (2005: 231) calls a “bottom-up approach”. ethical clearance ethical clearance was obtained from university of pretoria, approving this study’s adherence to ethical tenets such as the privacy of participants and informed consent. consent letters were obtained from all the participants before the commencement of the study. results the data for this study were collected through two sources: the pencil-and-paper test and two sets of group interviews. the test was administered three times – once as a pilot, and then before and after the intervention. the group interviews were held just after each administration of the test. level of geometric knowledge the pre-test was conducted with the forty-three students of whom the eleven who were unable to write the post-test, were not included in the data analysis. there was a definite descending trend from level 1 through to level 3, as predicted in the literature; in fact, the group average lay below 50% on all three levels. it is nevertheless important to take note of the very low percentages of achievement on level 3. judging by the percentages shown in the table below, more than half of this group of students was only efficiently functional on level 0, having been unable to achieve sufficiently to be placed on the other three levels. table 1: pre-test scores in terms of the van hiele levels van hiele level 0 1 2 3 mean score (%) for questions on each level n/a 42.5 37.5 25.8 percentage of students assigned to each level 50.1 37.5 9.3 3.1 this group’s average performance on level 3 is a mere 25.8%, which indicates that their ability to reason in a formally deductive way has not been developed to a point where this can be done successfully or consistently. the highest overall score was 59% and the lowest 16%, while the group average was 35%. only the top eight students scored a pass average on level 2, which was in fact the highest level they were van putten, et al. — making euclidean geometry compulsory 27 sure competency on level 0 to sure competency on level 1, with a 12.5% increase of students on level 2 and a 15.6% increase in students on level 3. a t-test was done on the overall preand post-test data to examine the differences in achievement between the pre-test and post-test and the possible impact of instruction. table 3: t-test using preand post-test data (n = 32) pre-test post-test mean 11.0625 16.34375 df 31 t stat −5.023 p(t<=t) two-tail 0.0002 the calculated t-value on the data is −5.023 and the means for the two tests are significantly different. in other words, since the calculated p-value is less than 0.05, the conclusion is that the mean difference between the paired observations is statistically significant. this test therefore shows that the improvement in achievement between the preand post-tests is statistically significant and can be taken to indicate that the intervention which took place between the preand post-tests made a significant difference to the achievement of the students involved. attitudes toward geometry all the interviewees expressed the confusion and frustration they experienced at being taught by teachers, at school level, who did not appear to have either mastered the subject or developed a positive attitude toward the subject. one interviewee described the process of learning geometry as follows: a teacher with apparently limited understanding leads a learner who does not understand, who becomes a learner who dislikes subject; then he gets a new teacher with good understanding and the learner understands and begins to like the subject (interviewee g -black female from an urban school). this reaction chain was confirmed by interviewee w (coloured male from a rural school), who found that geometry was like a punishment, until he began to understand it. all five interviewees were not convinced of their teachers’ prowess in euclidean geometry; they thought that their teachers explained poorly because they were themselves unsure of the reasoning behind the applications of the theory. interviewee e (white male from an urban school) stated the following (translated from afrikaans): and they [the teachers] didn’t really have a clue about what they were doing in their own geometry. for three years, i had the same teacher who would often look at the board, then quickly run back to her file to see what’s in it, then back to the board. she couldn’t explain just out of her own head … then she’d say, “don’t worry, you won’t get this problem in the exam”. i think that’s where my problem came in. by the time we got to grades 11 and 12 lots of people had problems with geometry and then they just couldn’t be fixed any more. although the situation described by interviewee e took place in an urban school, his description correlated very well with the experience of interviewee d (black male from a rural school), coming from an under-resourced rural school. he explained, my teacher is not perfect (sic) with geometry. he just put a problem on the blackboard and say, you and i prove that problem. so we discovered a lot of problems, but at the end we make a discussion, our own discussion, and do the stuff and at the end we pass. in his situation, learners who were determined to pass were dependent upon their own resources (other textbooks and group discussions) to achieve enough mastery of geometry not to fail the exam. their teacher, in his view, knew as little as they did about geometry. perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201028 the post-test interview confirmed what had been established during the first interview, but also showed that the grounding in the origin of geometric axioms which they received during the course of the module not only gave them pleasure in being able to “see” how things worked, for some, for the first time, but gave them insight and understanding into how and why proof works. all five interviewees made statements regarding the difference between the way they were taught geometry at school and the way the geometry module was presented at the university of pretoria. the students interviewed all attested to their perception that the aim of the module was not to acquire theoretical knowledge in isolation, but to foster a conceptual understanding. each interviewee testified to a change in their attitude towards geometry. they ascribed this change to three factors: they enjoyed what they were doing because they understood what they were doing; the lecturer inspired their confidence because of his thorough knowledge of his subject; and his positive attitude towards problem solving was contagious. discussion based on this case study, learners leaving secondary schools in south africa to pursue a career in teaching mathematics do not have an in-depth understanding of geometric concepts. it is expected that students leaving matric having successfully completed the mathematics course will have attained level 3 of the van hiele model. the overall pre-test results, however, show that the group as a whole did not even attain 50% on level 1 and that adequate functioning on levels 2 and 3 was even rarer. more than half of this group of students was only efficiently functional on level 0. according to the van hiele theory, students who are situated below level 3 can do proofs in no way other than by memorisation. these students were doomed to failure as teachers of geometry, since most of them obviously functioned no higher than the upper reaches of level 2 (burger & shaughnessy, 1986; senk, 1989). the pre-test results in this study reveal that general mathematics courses do not enhance mathematical thinking skills in terms of the van hiele levels. on the contrary, this study found that the majority of students, after completing their two years of tertiary mathematics, which included a pre-calculus and calculus course, were still functioning on van hiele level 0, despite the fact that they had completed several years of secondary school geometry courses, having studied under the old school curriculum in which euclidean geometry was compulsory. further research is required to ascertain whether the visualisation and thinking skills which are acquired through the study of euclidean geometry are a requirement for students to be successful in studying university mathematics. if these skills are needed, surely general mathematics courses should also develop these thinking skills. lacking understanding at school level, these students disliked and feared geometry. the interviewees in this study, when asked about their grade 12 results in geometry, spoke primarily about how they felt about the subject. pierre van hiele (1986) spoke of an intuitive aspect to proof construction, which by its very definition means that there are some who do not grasp what lies behind the rules they are required to learn. an interviewee in this study put it simply: i just did not get it. a distinctive characteristic of the fear and anxiety which underlie such a statement is that such emotions even further inhibit the acquisition of intuition and understanding, bringing students to a point where they refuse even to try. another interviewee said of riders, i just skipped them. the students who were interviewed for this study uniformly expressed their dislike or fear of euclidean geometry in general. the literature study confirms that the pleasure which learning should generate is absent when that which is being studied is not understood, or when questions that arise remain unanswered. van der sandt and niewoudt (2005) found in their research with elementary (primary) school pme teachers that students had a better understanding of geometry after leaving matric than after their professional training. this study, however, shows that in the case of the senior secondary school pme teachers involved in this research, the understanding of geometry with which they leave matric is almost universally poor, despite the fact that their final matric marks may seem to indicate differently. certainly, they are unable to teach geometry with such understanding. the post-test results show that there was a general improvement: no students remained on level 0; most students improved by at least one level. a vast improvement took place: the overall score average improved by 20%. the interviewees also described van putten, et al. — making euclidean geometry compulsory 29 the positive change in their attitude towards the subject during the course of the module because of the way it was presented: all work was done in class under the supervision of the lecturer so that problems which might have arisen were dealt with immediately before they became exacerbated through time and increased workload. while level 3, the desired level of competence for a mathematics educator in a south african secondary school, had not been uniformly achieved by the end of the intervention, considerable progress had been made towards mastery at this level. the overall improvement in the group as a whole as revealed in the post-test results, was of only one level. this implies, however, that the geometry module offered did not bring about sufficient improvement for these students to be able to teach geometry adequately. this is, in fact, corroborated by the research of gutiérrez, jaime and fortuny (1991; 249) on the levels of geometric understanding in, amongst others, a group of twenty pme primary school teachers. they found that only two of these teachers had achieved mastery of van hiele levels 0-2. the testing took place after these students had all completed a mathematics course for one year and this statistic suggests that if these are the levels that were achieved after a year’s tertiary training in mathematics, the level of geometric acquisition upon leaving school was even poorer. conclusion and implications although each interviewee testified to a change in their attitude towards geometry, a positive attitude is a good start, but it is not enough. it is an incontestable fact that no one can teach beyond their own understanding. the optional paper 3 questions require learners to be on level 3. it stands to reason, however, that with an inadequate content knowledge to begin with, unless serious work in this regard takes place during the course of a teaching qualification, many educators are entering the profession ill-equipped to teach this subject. according to discussion held in a seminar organised under the auspices of institute for advanced study of princeton, in 2001 (ferrini-mundy et al), a common issue was the lack of connection between what took place in many teacher preparation programmes and the reality of the classroom. this seems to reflect a mismatch between what prospective teachers are being taught and the expectations and needs of the classrooms. the pme fet teacher students’ learning of euclidean geometry at tertiary level is currently not conducive to promoting understanding to such an extent that they will be able to teach it. although we are making progress, the task is more challenging than we initially imagined. only six of the 32 students were on level 3 after the intervention. it seems as if we cannot afford to include geometry as part of the compulsory school curriculum if this trend continues. further research on the nature, content, and minimum duration of a geometry module is required. gutiérrez, jaime and fortuny (1991: 238) look at the acquisition of the van hiele levels of geometric understanding and come to the conclusion that “the acquisition of a specific level does not happen instantaneously or very quickly, but rather can take several months or even years”. pierre van hiele (1986: 64), writing after the demise of his wife, did not underestimate the enormity of this task: “it takes nearly two years of continual education to have the pupils experience the intrinsic value of deduction, and still more time is necessary to understand the intrinsic meaning of this concept”. the question is whether we can afford to spend this amount of time on euclidean geometry in our pme teacher programme. acknowledgements the financial assistance of the national research foundation (nrf) towards this research is hereby acknowledged. opinions expressed and conclusions drawn, are those of the authors and are not necessarily to be attributed to the nrf. references azcárate gimènez c 1997. si el eje de ordenadas es vertical, ¿qué podemos decir de las alturas de un triángulo? suma revista sobrela ensenanza y aprendajede las matematicas, 25, 23-30. battista mt & clements dh 1995. geometry and proof. the mathematics teacher, 88(1), 48-53. perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201030 boaler j 2000. the construction of identity in secondary mathematics education. paper presented at the 2000 international mathematics 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of chicago. van de walle j 2004. elementary and middle school mathematics: teaching developmentally. boston: pearson. van der sandt s & nieuwoudt h d 2005. geometry content knowledge: is pre-service training making a difference? african journal of research in smt education, 9(2), 109-120. van hiele pm 1986. structure and insight. orlando: academic press. van niekerk r 2010. the state of geometry education in south africa. in md de villiers (ed), proceedings of the 16th annual national congress of the association for mathematics education of south africa: mathematics: the pulse of the nation, 28 march 1 april 2010, george campbell school of technology, durban, volume 1, pp. 34-50. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 92 setting standards and primary school teachers’ experiences of the process vanessa scherman, lisa zimmerman, sarah j. howie & roel bosker in south africa, very few standard-setting exercises are carried out in education and, if they are, teachers are not involved in their execution. as a result, there is no clear understanding of what the standard is and how it was arrived at. this situation is compounded when teachers are held accountable when learners do not meet the prescribed standards. the aim of this paper is to explore how teachers experienced a standard-setting process and if any reflection on teaching and learning practices took place. the research question addressed is: how was the samp standard-setting exercise experienced by teachers? standard setting is an important component in monitoring systems whether national or school-based monitoring systems. the south african monitoring system for primary schools (samp) is a school-based monitoring system. the grade 1 samp assessment is administered in english, afrikaans and sepedi. as part of samp, a standard-setting exercise was undertaken for the grade 1 assessment to better inform the dissemination of performance results to schools. as part of a bigger research project, a participatory qualitative approach was followed in which 27 participants were asked to partake in a modified interactive qualitative analysis (iqa) process. several themes were identified by the teachers, namely reflections on practice; emotions before and during the standard setting workshop; benefits of working in a group; and improvements in the process. in this article, these themes are explored and their relevance for standard setting within school contexts discussed. keywords: standard setting, monitoring, professional development, standard-setting approaches vanessa scherman university of pretoria e-mail: vanessa.scherman@up.ac.za tel: 012 420 2498 lisa zimmerman university of south africa e-mail: zimmel@unisa.ac.za tel: 012 429 4755 sarah j. howie university of pretoria e-mail: sarah.howie@up.ac.za tel: 012 420 4131 roel bosker university of groningen e-mail: r.j.bosker@rug.nl tel: +31 50 363 6791 setting standards and primary school teachers’ experiences of the process vanessa scherman, lisa zimmerman, sarah j. howie & roel bosker 93 introduction standards in education and the process of generating such standards fulfil critical functions within the education system and are essential in the discussion on what constitutes quality education. at the heart of the educational quality debate is the question of what is being monitored. if levels of achievement are to be monitored, they have to be measured against something, and a standard is the mode of such a measurement. standards can be described as the degree to which excellence is required for a particular purpose or, more specifically, standards refer to the measure of what is seen as adequate specifically in relation to performance levels (livingstone, 1988). put succinctly, standards represent ‘how much is good enough’ (bandaranayake, 2008). performance levels or competence is measured along a continuum, and a standard represents the point which separates competence and incompetence (bandaranayake, 2008). for monitoring purposes, especially if academic growth of learners is to be tracked, adequate standards and levels of achievement are needed to provide fair and valid information that can be used in schools (scherman, howie & bosker, 2011). with this in mind, a project was initiated to explore the best manner to identify standards to be used in a school-based monitoring system adapted for south african primary schools, namely the south african monitoring and feedback system for primary schools (samp). the adapted samp instruments for grade 1 were explored in terms of their validity and reliability as well as how the results generated could be used in the classroom. this innovative monitoring system, targeting a variety of school contexts, includes instruments in english, afrikaans and sepedi. a baseline and follow-up assessment forms part of the suite of instruments so that academic growth over the year can be tracked. the main aim of using samp as a monitoring system was to inform schools and their own process of self-evaluation. thus, it was necessary to engage school role players to understand the level descriptors of performance so that the use of the information provided by the monitoring system could be utilised effectively at classroom level (bandaranayake, 2008). different standard-setting methods were explored for this purpose (scherman et al., 2011). the main aim of this article is to gain some insight into and describe the experiences of teachers participating in a standard-setting exercise as part of the samp. the main research question explored in this paper is: how was the south african monitoring project standard-setting exercise experienced by teachers? the standard-setting process and experiences thereof standard setting is the process of establishing cut scores (cizek & bunch, 2007), while cut scores are thought of as points on a continuum (thomas & peng, 2004). moreover, it is possible to identify more than one cut score on the ability continuum to provide a range of different performance levels so that within each performance level the perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 94 knowledge and skills that learners are able to accomplish can be described. if the knowledge and skills can be identified, teachers are better able to target teaching and learning interventions according to the needs of learners at the identified levels. setting standards is a complex undertaking (yorke, 1999) and traditionally can take place using a variety of methods, either in isolation or in conjunction with other methods. methods such as the angoff and nedelsky borderline groups and contrasting groups methods are referred to in the literature (bandaranayake, 2008; cizek & bunch, 2007; ben-david, 2000; berk, 1986; hambleton, 1994). with advances in modern test theory, additional methods are being explored. item mapping is one such example which utilises rasch modelling to explore item performance (wang, 2003). the item difficulties can be presented graphically with all items being ordered from easy to difficult. the aim of item mapping is to locate the item for which there is consensus among the participants that a minimally competent individual would have a 50% chance of answering the item correctly on the achievement continuum (wang, 2003). in the past, standard setting has been criticised for being arbitrary (glass, 1978) based on the assumption that the process involved depends on the subjectivity and imprecision of human judgement (mcginty, 2005). in the years following this initial criticism, researchers have attempted to develop technology for the application of making judgements (schafer, 2005). with these applications it is possible to set clear and explicit performance standards against which success can be judged (anderson, 2005). these performance standards provide an indication of what is seen as adequate (livingstone, 1988). thus, competence can be measured along a continuum with the standard representing the point which separates competence and incompetence. the specific content of the performance level can then be described in terms of knowledge and skills as tested by the items captured within a performance level (bandaranayake, 2008; ben-david, 2000). when standards are set, participants of the process have to understand that a ‘real standard’ is a score on an assessment that indicates the level of ability of testtakers in the context of the particular assessment used for setting standards (klein, 1998). in general, however, participants experience difficulty with the cognitive processes associated with various standard-setting activities, such as interrogating item difficulty and determining what a borderline learner at each performance level would be able to accomplish. as a result, participants tend to rely on alternative strategies such as their experience working with learners and content knowledge (hein & skaggs, 2009). research (skaggs & tessema, 2001) has also found that standard-setting participants disagree with the ordering of the items although they do understand the concept of mastery. to elaborate, there are various factors which may have an influence on how judgements are made, including the workshop process and preconceived ideas about standard setting (giraud & impara, 2005). there is also a desire on the part of setting standards and primary school teachers’ experiences of the process vanessa scherman, lisa zimmerman, sarah j. howie & roel bosker 95 the participants to set high standards and to be viewed as doing a good job (mcginty, 2005). to complicate matters, when faced with the array of information provided to aid the process, participants tend to draw on their own experience without necessarily utilising the information available (ferdous & plake, 2005). the participants may also arrive at the meetings with very different ideas, and once the standard-setting process is complete participants seem to be reporting more confidence and understanding than they actually have in the process (skorupski & hambleton, 2005). acknowledging these challenges that participants face in standard setting, the bookmark standard-setting procedure has been developed, which relies on modern test theory. for the purposes of this research, the bookmark procedure was deemed to be the most appropriate procedure to implement as subjective human judgement is combined with the empirical exploration of item characteristics such as item difficulty and associated learner ability. it is described further below. the bookmark standard-setting procedure the bookmark procedure was described by lewis, mitzel and green in 1996. this method uses an item response theory (irt) or a rasch item-mapping procedure to order items by difficulty, thereby simplifying the cognitive task of participants as they do not have to decide on the difficulty of the item themselves (buckendahl, smith, impara & plake, 2002). in this approach, items are ordered from easiest to most difficult (on a common scale or continuum) and are bound in a book format. items are, thus, mapped to locations on this difficulty scale so that individuals with scale scores near the location of items can be inferred to have the knowledge, skills and abilities which are required to respond successfully to the items. as part of the bookmark method, participants are then required to place a bookmark between the most difficult item and what a minimally competent or borderline learner would be expected to answer correctly. each participant is requested to evaluate the item in terms of whether a minimally competent individual would answer the item correctly. a difficulty parameter of 0.5 is used as a guideline for participants so that they can think in terms of whether the learner has a 50% chance of answering the item correctly (lissitz & kroopnick, 2007; schagen & bradshaw, 2003). if participants agree that a minimally competent individual would have more than a 50% chance of answering correctly, the next item would be the position of the bookmark. the next item would typically be harder than the previous one. in an iterative process, the participants are given an opportunity to discuss their evaluations as well as make revisions based on the discussions in the group (lissitz & kroopnick, 2007; schagen & bradshaw, 2003). the bookmark method is widely used within the field of education due to its logical appeal and practicality. the most important consideration for selecting the bookmark method is that the literature suggests that participants in the process understand and have confidence in the procedures and activities undertaken (buckendahl et al., perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 96 2002; dawber et al., 2002). a criticism against the bookmark method is that arbitrary values are used to establish the point along the ability continuum that is used to rank order the items (buckendahl et al., 2002). for the standard-setting procedure for the samp implementation at grade 1, four levels were decided upon: below basic; basic; proficient; and advanced (buckendahl et al., 2002). the standard-setting exercise took place over the course of four afternoons. the bookmark procedure provided a complete set of activities designed to yield cut scores in a methodologically rigorous approach and was relatively easy to implement (cizek & bunch, 2007). research methodology exploration of the standard-setting workshop for samp by means of qualitative research in the form of a modified interactive qualitative analysis (iqa) allowed for access to teachers’ experiences thereof (northcutt & mccoy, 2004). this exploration was conducted through a mutual process of meaning sharing and interpretation between the researcher and participants (berg, 1998). many qualitative studies espouse a goal to capture the meaning of a phenomenon from the research participant’s point of view. however, according to northcutt and mccoy (2004), there may be grounds to question this by explaining that, in many qualitative studies, the participant and the researcher are separated by means of the institution of a powerbased hierarchy which favours the researcher’s expert status as the role-player with the sole ability to generate and analyse data. the ability of participants to add analytical value to the research is largely ignored, which leads to the questioning of the objectivity and accuracy of the research findings. in contrast, the modified implementation of iqa used in this study allowed participants to add analytical value to the research and, in so doing, contributed to the overall rigour of the study. participants learners and teachers in 43 schools participated in the samp project. these schools were purposively selected based on geographic area as well as language of learning, namely english, afrikaans and sepedi. all of the schools were invited to participate in the standard-setting workshop. twenty-seven teachers responded to the invitation and were predominantly from the afrikaans (language of instruction) schools. on average the participants had been teaching for 13 years and had been teaching at their current school for 8 years. setting standards and primary school teachers’ experiences of the process vanessa scherman, lisa zimmerman, sarah j. howie & roel bosker 97 data collection via selected processes from the interactive qualitative analysis method the iqa method, as described by northcutt and mccoy (2004), when followed in its entirety, is a social constructionist approach to data collection and analysis. it addresses power relations between researcher and participant by encouraging greater participation of participants in the (1) elicitation of themes via collaborative axial coding and the creation of theory; and in (2) data analysis via the use of affinity relationship tables (arts). in this way participants can record their view of the possible relationships amongst themes, leading to the creation of a systemic interrelationship diagram. this analysis method ensures that participants are able to add analytical value to the research. typically, iqa involves a focus group that generates qualitative content in the form of codes, which the group then arrange into categories of meaning, providing a central theme that binds each of the codes generated together into a category. each individual will provide indications of the relationships amongst these categories via a cause–effect analysis. ultimately, after a quantitative analysis of the relative frequency of each possible relationship given by all the members of the group, a mind map of the group’s system of meaning will be drawn up using this quantitative information as a guide. for the purposes of this research, and due to time constraints, only the first step in the iqa process was implemented, namely involving the participants in the generation of their own data and elicitation of themes during a focus group. this strategy was deemed most appropriate for a standard-setting exercise in which the participation of the teachers and their own meanings was considered to be paramount. this modified data collection process was initiated as part of the standard-setting workshop which took place over four afternoons from tuesday to friday. in each workshop session on each afternoon teachers were given feedback based on the cut scores (bookmarks) they had identified the previous day. discussions as to why cut scores were collected were undertaken. after the discussion on the final cut scores teachers were asked to reflect on the activities for the week and to write down their ideas on note cards they had been provided with. practically, this meant that, in order to provide some form of guidance to the participants, the researchers asked them to think about the standard-setting process followed during the week. they were specifically asked to reflect on what they did, what they discussed, how they felt before and during the standard-setting process, what worked well and what they thought could be changed. once teachers had captured their ideas on the note cards they were requested to stick these on the wall. this resulted in what can be described as a collage of teacher participant generated codes on the wall. teachers were then provided with the opportunity to read each other’s ideas from the note cards and they could also perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 98 clarify any meanings. then teachers grouped the ideas together based on what they thought were common themes; an activity traditionally undertaken by the researcher following qualitative coding. these discussions were captured and then transcribed. scientific rigour to achieve rigour in qualitative research, northcutt and mccoy (2004) recommend data collection and analysis methods that are public and non-idiosyncratic and that do not depend on the nature of the codes themselves. in order to attain this, the participants were required to create themes. it also served as a member-checking strategy because it was used as a means of consequent contact with the participants in the study to check whether they were in agreement. member checking, as such, can also be referred to as ‘respondent validation’ (taylor, 2001). ethical considerations before the workshop started participants were asked to complete informed consent forms explaining the process of the research and the purposes for which it would be used. participants were briefed on the workshop process and were informed that they could withdraw from the research at any time. bearing in mind the limitations of focus group research with regard to anonymity, confidentiality for the overall project and reporting was confirmed. limitations of the process the standard-setting workshop took place over a period of four afternoons. the modified iqa process took place on the final day and the teachers appeared to be experiencing fatigue. participant attrition was also problematic as three teachers did not return to the workshop after the first day. another aspect was the level of uncertainty of the teachers. this was something new to them and it took some time to settle into the standard-setting process. findings: teachers’ self-generated themes as indicated teachers were asked to reflect on the process of the standard-setting workshop and, in order to provide some structure, they were specifically asked to think about what they did, what they discussed, how they felt before and during the standard-setting process, what worked well, and what they thought could be changed. five themes were identified by the teachers, namely reflections on practice; emotions before the standard-setting workshop; emotions during the standardsetting workshop; benefits of group work; and improvements in the process. setting standards and primary school teachers’ experiences of the process vanessa scherman, lisa zimmerman, sarah j. howie & roel bosker 99 reflections on practice teachers tended to think about the manner in which they were assessing at school and that perhaps they should think about their assessment practice. for example, teachers generated the following codes as part of this theme: it made me think about my way of assessing; that i must put more thought into it; we shared interesting ideas and the way of doing things in classes; i gained insight on the procedures at my own school and other schools. teachers also started to reflect on what their interpretation of a standard is and the realisation that everyone does not necessarily have the same understanding. examples of this are: dit was leersaam om te besef dat ander se persepsies oor assesseringstandaarde nie noodwendig dieselfde as myne of die skool s’n is nie (it was informative to realise that others’ perceptions about assessing standards are not necessarily the same as mine [or the school’s]) i’ve learned of how different each school or level of the work is and the process would work if there is at least an improvement from basic to the follow up. perhaps one of the most insightful reflections captured by one of the teachers was: i found it interesting to see how my thoughts changed after group discussions. this may give an indication of the level of engagement of the teachers, that they thought about the rationale of other teachers for selecting a cut score, put their ideas forward and that consensus was reached. emotions before and during the workshop teachers seemed to feel some trepidation and uncertainty about the standardsetting process and what it would entail: no idea what the process is all about; never thought that standard setting is such a big thing. initially i was negative regarding the 4 days due to lack of information what the 4 days would entail. many of the teachers were negative at the beginning of the workshop, thinking that this would be something that they would find difficult to undertake: it was going to be difficult for me, we are going to set questions. initially i was nervous and scared for some reason thinking i won’t know enough to participate but i then realised i would also be learning about certain teaching abilities that i wasn’t aware of and gaining more knowledge where teaching is concerned. other teachers were unsure of their feelings regarding the standard-setting process at first i wasn’t sure how i felt about this and what to expect. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 100 many of these negative perceptions were changed during the standard-setting workshops as participants indicated that they ... felt free, i found things easy and simple to read and work with them. no restriction, all opinions welcomed and encouraged, not bored, programme clear and we knew where we were going (goals clear). it seemed that teachers had a positive view of the standard-setting workshop and felt safe to participate and share their ideas: opgewonde, positief om te sien hoe en watter prosesse gebruik word om die standaarde te bepaal. (it is exciting to see how and what processes are used to determine the standards.) benefits of working in the group a recurrent theme was that, by working in groups, teachers had the opportunity to share ideas, listen to one another, and have the opportunity to talk through their thinking. examples of this include: groepe is ʼn baie goeie idee – kry nuwe insigte en perspektief van kollegas van ander skole. (groups are a very good idea – getting new insights and perspectives from colleagues from other schools.) in the end it was really interesting to see the different views of other educators; setting the standards is a great idea. participants felt that the process was well thought through and everything ran smoothly, that the discussion and participation by all was informative and enlightening and that the information provided was well presented and interesting, which could be discussed further within the groups. improvements in the process while all the schools participating in the samp were invited to the standard-setting workshop, the majority of the participating teachers came from afrikaans schools. teachers from three english schools and one sepedi school also participated in the workshop. for this reason the participants suggested that a wider variety of schools should be present so as to standardise the results. one participant specifically suggested 3 inner city, 3 suburban (eng(lish) and afrik(aans)) and 3 township schools. some teachers also felt that the standard-setting process was drawn out and that everything could be managed in two days by lengthening the sessions on the days: ek sou die proses korter wou maak net 3 of 2 dae met bv. bietjie langer sessies. (i would have wanted to shorten the process to three or two days with for instance slightly longer sessions.) finally, some teachers felt that the groups should be moved around between rounds or that the groups should be made bigger: setting standards and primary school teachers’ experiences of the process vanessa scherman, lisa zimmerman, sarah j. howie & roel bosker 101 mixing the groups on round 2 and 3 or making bigger groups could be more beneficial; after session 1 change groups to get other people’s views. relationships between the themes generated and literature the literature suggests a level of uncertainty associated with the standard-setting process (giraud & impara, 2005; mcginty, 2005). however, during the standardsetting procedure participants realised that they had something to offer, an expertise of their own. this is normally done by means of drawing on their own experience (ferdous & plake, 2005), a process facilitated by the modified iqa. they obtain the insight that they have something to offer by means of reflecting on their practice. by working in groups they have the opportunity to voice their opinions, listen to others and perhaps revise their previous thinking. this all contributes to the positive emotions that they are already experiencing. based on their reflections they are also able to make valuable suggestions for future standard-setting workshops. as stated above, the next step in the iqa process, (namely data analysis via the use of affinity relationship tables [arts] so that participants can record their view of the possible relationships amongst themes) was not feasible due to time constraints for this study. instead, as such, a researcher-generated understanding of the possible impact of the process of the workshop standard-setting exercise is provided in figure 1 as a discussion point for further research in this area. figure 1: visual representation of the themes. conclusion while the literature suggests that identifying the borderline candidates at each of the levels can be challenging initially, this research revealed that it is possible for teachers to adapt to the process and contribute meaningfully. the participants in this improvement in understandingpractitioner emotions before reflections emotions during group work perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 102 study tended to arrive at the workshop with very different ideas as to what would take place. however, with support and collaborative discussions participants gained confidence and deepened their understanding not only of the standard-setting process, but also of possible teaching practice applications. participants enjoyed the interaction with other teachers, the discussions often changing preconceived ideas in light of new arguments. in the south african context, teachers would have appreciated a more diverse participant group. furthermore, in a context where teachers, to a large extent, feel marginalised, participatory events such as these may instil a sense of value in the contributions they make. in the words of one participant ‘thank you for treating us with respect, as if we have something to add’. as is indicated in the literature, the bookmark method is understandable and practical to implement. however, initially, teachers disagreed with ordering of the items based on the empirical difficulty of the item as it seemed counter intuitive. teachers also seemed to initially rely on their experiences with learners as opposed to taking the item difficulty into account. this, however, was addressed by additional discussions of what the item difficulty means. teachers also tended to assist one another to obtain a common understanding of the procedure. while this paper focuses on the experiences of teachers it is important to also consider future applications for standard-setting exercises. one of the main limitations of the process was that teachers in a sense were self-selected. the participants were predominantly from a particular school context and this may have had an influence on the initial variation of cut scores. for future sessions individual schools will need to be approached based on maximum variation so that the performance levels may be applicable across the school contexts. furthermore, as two assessment instruments are involved, the way in which the performance levels are described has to be carefully considered so that academic growth can be plotted adequately. acknowledgements the authors would like to thank the national research foundation (nrf) and the south africa netherlands research programme on alternatives in development (sanpad) for the funding received. heartfelt thanks are also extended to ronald pillay and gabriel mokoena for their invaluable assistance throughout the project. setting standards and primary school teachers’ experiences of the process vanessa scherman, lisa zimmerman, sarah j. howie & roel bosker 103 references anderson j 2005. accountability in education. 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http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 54 tamar meskin drama and performance studies, university of kwazulu-natal e-mail: meskint@ukzn.ac.za telephone: 031 260 1139 the director’s ‘i’: theatre, self, and self-study tamar meskin & tanya van der walt this article interrogates the connections between the self-study research methodology and the making of a piece of theatre, and explores ways in which self-study can offer a new arts-based research paradigm for theatre-makers. there are a number of useful parallels to be explored between the self-study project and structures of drama and performance-making. while the methodology is, to a large extent, aimed at teacher educators, we argue that it is sufficiently flexible to be transferable to the context of theatre-making because of the emphasis on practice in both self-study research and theatre. using the a/r/tographic frame, we explore ways in which the experiential dynamic of both fields offers a unique intersection point from which to generate new thinking. the dialogic necessity of self-study is paralleled by the interactive processes of performance-making – what marowitz (1978: 49) calls the “actor-director two-step”. hence, the article uses dialogue as a way of demonstrating our thinking-in-action, and reflects the co-created space of learning and knowledge generation. using self-study to interrogate our own creative work opens up space for new understandings in relation to both the discourse of drama study and the broader self-study project. keywords: theatre, self-study, dialogue, a/r/tography, hermeneutic spiral, artsbased methods, praxis opening thoughts this article seeks to draw connections between self-study as research method and the artistic practice of making theatre. therefore, we ask how the model of selfstudy research can be used to interrogate the process of creating, teaching, and thinking about theatre. we address this question using dialogue as an investigative tool to explore our own practices as directors, teachers, and researchers. the roles we inhabit are not discrete – they overlap, inform one another, bleed into each other, tanya van der walt drama education, university of kwazulu-natal e-mail: tanyalvdw@gmail.com the director’s ‘i’: theatre, self, and self-study timar meskin & tanya van der walt 55 and flow together in our work. this intersection has implications for how we imagine and (re)imagine our pedagogic processes. we view ourselves as belonging to the community of a/r/tographers (sullivan, 2006), as artists (theatre-makers), researchers (investigators of our theatrical practice) and teachers (facilitators of learning for both our students and ourselves). we seek in our work ways of exploring the dynamic interplay between those functions and methods in the study of our practice that offer potential for understanding the complex steps of our collaborative a/r/tographic dance. sullivan (2006: 25) offers the following definition of a/r/tography: a/r/tography references the multiple roles of artist, researcher and teacher, as the frame of reference through which art practice is explored as a site for inquiry. a useful way to consider these roles as research practices may be to view the artist as someone who en-acts and embodies creative and critical inquiry; the researcher acts in relation to the culture of the research community; and the teacher re-acts in ways that involve others in artistic inquiry and educational outcomes. for us, these ideas connect to the critical notion of praxis, where theory and practice are inextricably linked; the varied acts of making, teaching, and thinking about theatre generate different approaches and necessities, but all are simultaneously and inherently threaded together. to begin, we need to explain what we mean by the three roles we play. by directing, we mean the selection, development, and mounting of a theatrical piece for performance before an audience. the director’s role in contemporary theatre is often considered authorial (bradby & williams, 1998), where the director’s vision shapes the playwright’s text into lived action. no production is thus ever neutral, since every director – consciously or unconsciously – brings his/her own subjectivity to the process. by teaching, we refer specifically to our roles as teachers of drama in a higher education institution in south africa. in our teaching praxis, we are driven by the principles of experiential learning, the integration of theory and practice, and an insistence on active learning. by research, we mean that we engage reflexively with our own practice, and theorise it. as philip taylor (2006: 3) observes: [i]t would be fair to argue that the history of drama education has been driven by a suspicion of researchers and research activity. the attitude that scholarship was located within a rarefied academic domain that bore no resemblance to what actually occurred in classrooms was a dominating one. drama educators prided themselves on their practice, and those who wanted to theorise about such practice were seen as getting in the way of the real work. it is our desire to explore the connections between our practice and our research by examining ourselves as practitioners. perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 56 we have found a way to interrogate our a/r/tographic practice using self-study methods. while self-study is a method most often connected with teacher and teacher-educator research, we believe that it can and should be extended into the field of cultural and performance studies. the self-study ‘i’ self-study has offered a home in which we can explore our practice in a way that recognises the complexity of our selves, and creates space for interrogating how that complexity drives our pedagogic and creative experience. shaun mcniff (2007: 39) argues that [t]he search for a method, in art and research, is invariably characterized by a crucible of tensions, struggles, a certain degree of chaos, and even the destruction of cherished assumptions. … invariably the encounter with this experience is the transformative engine that carries the researcher to significant new discoveries. the crux of our research question is how to negotiate the tensions and struggles – the chaos – of our a/r/tography. we believe that self-study is one way to embrace the multiple perspectives, knowledges, and knowings reflected in the multidisciplinary nature of theatre practice. as such, it intersects with the practice-as-research trend in theatre studies (borgdorff, 2011; fleishman, 2012) which has emerged as practitioners rebel against the idea that knowledge is only created through conventional research methods, and which insists on interrogating practice reflexively. as a discipline and a cultural form, theatre does not bend itself easily to the confinements of traditional research, given its interdisciplinary, dialogic and collaborative nature. as a seminal theorist of theatre, edward gordon craig (1968: 113-114) notes: the art of theatre is neither acting nor the play, it is not the scene nor dance, but it consists of all the elements of which these things are composed: action, which is the very spirit of acting; words, which are the body of the play; line and colour, which are the very heart of the scene; rhythm, which is the very essence of dance. … one is no more important than the other. therefore, traditional research methods are often at odds with the nature of the research that theatre practitioners wish to do, particularly in terms of connecting research to practice. self-study provides an approach to research that challenges the more rigidly defined traditional paradigmatic parameters, thus opening up new vistas for how to imagine research in creative practices such as theatre-making. as teachers, we continually ask questions related to what, how and why we teach; we must do the same for our creative practice. self-study offers a bridge between, and through, the apparently divergent discourses of directing, teaching, and research. this makes it valuable in extending the discourse concerning theatremaking in practice. the director’s ‘i’: theatre, self, and self-study timar meskin & tanya van der walt 57 self-study theorists pinnegar and hamilton (2011: 345) point to the potential for using self-study in research in drama and drama education: most self-study inquiry researchers regardless of methodology resonate with the idea that as theater educators develop knowledge useful in understanding and guiding teacher education, such knowledge and understanding should be evident in or based on their practice, submitted to the crucible of public opinion through submission for publications, and contribute and linked to the research conversations in theater teacher education specifically, and teaching and teacher education, generally. however, they do not elucidate a specific process or system for engaging in such research. we wish to make a more explicit link, and offer a methodological structure that codifies an approach for researchers of theatre – in all its multiple disciplines – to use. the methodological ‘i’ in constructing this method, we draw primarily on samaras’s (2011: 72) conceptualisation of self-study as a hermeneutic spiral encompassing the following five stages, namely questioning, discovering, framing, reframing, and revisiting. we uncover our deep understandings of samaras’s hermeneutic spiral through dialogue, and go on to demonstrate how to use the concept of the spiral to interrogate examples of our own practice. the hermeneutic spiral exemplifies samaras’s (2011: 71) construction of the self-study research process as “recursive”. the researcher begins from a question or a concern about their practice. in the ensuing discovery and framing phases, the researcher makes discoveries about their practice by reading and examining that practice. framing allows the researcher to choose the lens(es) through which to analyse his/her practice. however, this is not a linear or formulaic step-by-step approach; rather, the recursive research process allows the researcher to move organically backwards and forwards through the phases, allowing for shifts and changes to happen as the research is reframed and revisited a number of times, and understanding and knowledge is generated. we can examine our practice of theatre-making in relation to these categories, in terms of both directing productions and writing about them. in writing research about theatre that draws on theatrical modes, we believe that we are writing our theatre practice into our research. the ‘i’ in ‘we’: thinking through dialogue we have chosen to engage with our theatrical roots in writing this article. one of the central elements of theatre is dialogue; it is through dialogue that dramatic action evolves, and it is in the dialogic process that ideas are generated and discoveries perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 58 revealed. we have, therefore, chosen to write the core of this article as an interactive dialogue, based on recordings of a series of conversations about our work. in discussing approaches to theatre research, taylor (2006: 10) argues that “[i]n searching for an authentic portrait of research activity, investigators have begun to explore non-linear modes of representing data”. for us, using dialogue creates space for interactive learning and multivocality, reflecting the dialogic nature of theatre and self-study (self in relation to other). in our working process as directors, teachers and writers, we habitually solve problems, answer questions, make discoveries and clarify thinking by means of dialogue. we wished to explore whether we could translate this practice into a research technique and a means of representing our thought process in action. in our dialogue, we are attempting, as taylor (2006: 12) urges, “to struggle with the many perspectives and voices while acknowledging the contradictory tensions that often power the human experience”. the decision to utilise a dialogic frame within a self-study process is not unique to us: we came across it as a methodology in our reading (de lange & grossi, 2009), and it is increasingly recognised as a format associated with self-study practice. in this and our own process, dialogue functions both as a way of generating data and as a method of data analysis (coia & taylor, 2009: 14; east, fitzgerald & heston, 2009: 69). in choosing to reflect this in our writing, we also wished to depict the nature of our collaborative practice: we direct together, often teach together, write together, and research together. our collaboration operates in a dynamic, co-owned space, which we want reflected in our writing. thus, we can depend on both professional (east et al., 2009: 61) and personal intimacy as friends as the basis for our dialogue. in this way, it is hoped that we find, as carroll (1996: 72) observes, “another way of researching drama that tries to avoid cutting up the creative processes of drama and research into cling-wrapped packages of dead experience”. opening our directorial ‘i’s our dialogic interplay begins with the question of how to connect our theatre selves with our self-study selves. tanya: we could use samaras’[s] (2011: 72) concept of the “hermeneutic spiral”, and look at our process of directing through that lens. tamar: well, questioning corresponds to selecting a text. tanya: we choose a text because it answers – or it asks – a question about something. tamar: something that is significant for you, yes. tanya: discovering is about textual analysis, understanding the background and context of the play, and making discoveries in the rehearsal room. tamar: framing would be how it is all put together – conceptualising and putting the piece on stage. the director’s ‘i’: theatre, self, and self-study timar meskin & tanya van der walt 59 tanya: and then reframing – because in rehearsal everything shifts. tamar: we constantly adjust and improvise; but also, when we analyse and reflect, we are reframing it in a different way, so there’s a dual level. tanya: this connects to revisiting, which happens throughout, and at the end. tamar: and these are not self-contained elements; they overlap continually, creating what pinnegar and hamilton (2010: 107) call an “iterative process”. tanya: we can also see quite clearly what samaras (2011: 11) calls a “transparent and systematic research process”. tamar: like theatre, self-study is participatory in the sense that it’s experiential – you have to do it; dialogic in the sense that it’s generated in relation to other; and transformational in the sense that it’s change-oriented, that it’s seeking improvement. tanya: samaras (2011: 81) calls it a “change journey”. she is also insistent that reflections generated through self-study have to be shared and made public (samaras, 2011: 82), which links to the idea that the thinking of theatre is worthless unless it is made public. tamar: true, one’s directorial practice is only realised finally in the action of the performed play. it is an innately public representation. tanya: we could say that theatre is enacted thinking. the notion of enacted and embodied thinking is critical, because it relates to the distinctive component of theatre, its ‘liveness’, and its insistence on direct interaction between performer and audience. many theorists of theatre have established this principle (grotowksi, 1968; brook, 1968). it is always both inward-looking (the actor) and outward-looking (the audience). this parallels the self-study imperative of self in relation to other: tamar: peter brook says the core of theatre is making the invisible visible (1968: 47) – making the thinking visible. tanya: that parallels in many ways the self-study imperative to reveal, or to expose – what samaras (2011: 80) calls making transparent. tamar: so we could argue that the whole process of making a production is a hermeneutic cycle, and each element, every rehearsal, each day of that process, and the performance itself, is continually iterative, never the same. tanya: it’s also critical to understand that each stage of the cycle is not a contained experience with clear borderlines. the stages all overlap, and, while we can trace an overall evolution, each moment itself contains questions, discoveries, framings, reframings, and revisitings. tamar: so, we can use the hermeneutic spiral in relation to our own work, to show how the phases of directing parallel that spiral in practice. perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 60 the hermeneutic spiral in action – from the directors’ ‘i’ having appropriated samaras’s spiral as a methodological tool, our dialogue next focuses on analysing our artistic practice, considering two concrete examples from our practice, and applying the analytical lens outlined earlier. frontlines1 was the first inter-institutional production between the university of kwazulu-natal (ukzn) drama and performance studies programme and the drama department of the durban university of technology (dut). the project is a devised theatre production that seeks to explore the horror of the experience of war from multiple individual perspectives, including combatants and civilians, in order to foreground the need to prevent such conflicts through understanding our shared humanity. it was originally performed in 2009 at the elizabeth sneddon theatre and has subsequently had three further iterations. mary zimmerman’s metamorphoses (1996) was produced in 2011, again as an inter-institutional project. the play is based on ovid’s metamorphoses and is constructed episodically with a series of separate stories linked together through the central motif of a swimming pool on stage. tanya: let’s begin with questioning; when, as directors, we choose a text, the process involves deriving a question from the material, or having a question and finding material that allows it to be addressed. tamar: in metamorphoses (1996), for example, we were asking a question about how to realise greek mythological narratives in action, specifically in our own context. tanya: the play involved a large number of people – we had 64 cast members2 as well as a large technical team – and it has a unique staging challenge, in that it requires a swimming pool on stage, which the actors move in and out of during the action. tamar: frontlines was a piece that we created from scratch, and it arose out of very personal responses and our own family history.3 there was a desire to respond to something profoundly personal – our own grandparents’ experience of war – and also to something that matters to us morally and socially in the world. it also offered us a way to bring students from our different institutions together to work on a project – something we’d been talking about for a while and something no one had ever done before. tanya: discoveries are then made in response to the core question/s, and they continue to be made throughout the rehearsal experience. tamar: in frontlines those discoveries included structural and performative aspects. in developing the text we discovered that letters and testimony offered a way to portray the multiple narratives in which we were interested. stylistically we explored different performance techniques and playing choices to create a collage effect, drawing on text, music, song, dance, and images to portray the multiple narratives. the major discovery was how the non-linear, achronological, layered, fragmented form could convey something larger than the sum of the parts. the director’s ‘i’: theatre, self, and self-study timar meskin & tanya van der walt 61 tanya: the discovery experience in metamorphoses was different, because working with an existing text is very different from the devising process. here the discoveries concern how to realise conceptual ideas in action. this text had a particular technical challenge (the swimming pool), and we also had to think carefully about how to get students involved in narratives that were largely removed from their own lives, to find a way to connect them to the stories in the present moment. significantly, in both instances, the discoveries occur because of how the questions generate choices, and the demands those choices make on our directorial actions. tamar: the next phase is framing, which is about making directorial and conceptual choices, and determining how you are going to construct the text for reception. frames are generated from discoveries made in response to the questions asked. as a director, interpretation of any text is about choosing an aspect on which to focus, or framing the question that you as a director want to use the text to ask. this is what theatre director, playwright and critic charles marowitz (1986: 32) calls the director’s “interpretive wand”, the thing that gives the production its unique – and personal – quality. tanya: with metamorphoses we were concerned with the idea of telling old stories in new ways. we also had to think about using stage space, actors, costumes, and light, all the elements of the theatre, in completely new ways, because of the central element of the water on stage. because the text poses a dual problem, as a director you have to set up a dual conceptualisation, for both the text and the staging. tamar: much of the framing in frontlines was about actually making the text, and selecting which pieces we wanted to use from the vast body of material we had found. we needed to make choices about which stories to tell, which voices to show, and find ways to make them cohere. that was also the stylistic challenge – how to make it aesthetically coherent and construct a performance narrative from something that is not linear; how to answer the challenge of how to physicalise non-fictional, often static material – letters, testimony, eyewitness reports, and the like – and make it active and performative. tanya: reframing is about what happens in the rehearsal process. when you go into rehearsal, you as the director have all these ideas in your head, but then there are other people in the room who bring their own ideas, so rehearsal is about constant rethinking, questioning, and shifting of decisions already made. tamar: and rehearsal is also the place where the spontaneous creativity and ‘aha’ moments happen. so in rehearsal we are engaged in a continuous cycle of reframing, still in answer to the original question and driven by the discoveries and choices you’ve made. tanya: for metamorphoses, a big challenge was when we moved from the rehearsal studio into the theatre space. dealing with the water in reality meant that many of the staging choices we had already made changed and evolved. tamar: with frontlines each of the four different productions has had a very different look and feel, as we have had to reframe our response to the same basic questions. partly this has been because the production has happened in three very different venues, and the visual aesthetic is determined by the constraints of the space. shifting the space means shifting the frame, both physically and conceptually. perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 62 tanya: the last step is revisiting, which is about the continual process of reflecting. every rehearsal, every performance ends with reflection, through the process of giving notes as the director, in fixing and rethinking scenes that are not working, in planning the next day’s rehearsal or the next night’s performance. tamar: the process, like self-study, is iterative, reflexive, and never complete. essentially, when we reflect on the work, we ask ourselves: what am i doing, what is the audience receiving, what is the interplay between the two, and what is happening to my own practice as a result of this composite experience? tanya: so what we are doing here is applying samaras’[s] hermeneutic spiral to a process that we intuitively and experientially understand, as a lens through which to understand the process of directorial choice, conceptualisation, implementation, and performance. tamar: it’s a lens that fits very well. the challenge with theatre-making is that it’s both an intellectual and conceptual process, but also a practical one, and as such is quite difficult to research, because it operates on multiple planes of experience. self-study offers a way to negotiate those different planes, because it allows you as the researcher to look at what you think, but also what you do. these examples of the hermeneutic spiral in action illustrate how the spiral can operate as a theoretical and methodological lens through which to view practice, allowing the creative artist to interrogate his/her own practice in practice. finding the ‘i’ in teaching the next element in our study is to explore the pedagogic implications of these discoveries, by connecting what we do as artists with our philosophies of teaching: tamar: for me, the most important aspect of teaching theatre is that it is fundamentally praxis based. much of the challenge of teaching theatre in a university has to do with negotiating the often uneasy dynamic between theory and practice (brannen, 2004). tanya: that’s why self-study, with its focus on the engagement – and improvement – of practice, offers a profoundly important potential to find ways to weave these two things together. for me, it is connected to freire’s (1972) notion of praxis. tamar: what’s exciting is that the self-study window affords a glimpse into ways to connect with ideas not traditionally part of drama teaching but which offer useful additions to the teaching arsenal. tanya: absolutely. but it’s also about examining how our teaching practice parallels what we do as directors – ask questions, frame approaches, make discoveries, reflect on the learning, and figure out where to go next – the same spiral drives the teaching process. and sometimes the teaching and the directing happen simultaneously. tamar: for me it’s also fundamentally about the purpose of education – and particularly drama education. i think it connects to bell hooks’ notion of “engaged pedagogy” (1994); drama becomes a tool for the development of life skills, of creative, confident, and critically engaged students. the director’s ‘i’: theatre, self, and self-study timar meskin & tanya van der walt 63 tanya: yes, because in making theatre we are offering a freirean (1972) problem-posing sequence in action, which can generate new choices and new understandings of ourselves, our world, and ourselves in that world. tamar: like theatre, teaching is also, i think, highly individualistic. live theatre relies on present-tense, living input of creative artists in action. teaching is similarly present-tense and reliant on active engagement in the moment of the teacher-learner interaction. thus, both offer a clear canvas on which to imprint a self-study approach. this suggests the efficacy of self-study as a tool for the individual teacher or director to make explicit their practice and, by so doing, both improve their own practice and contribute to the development of the discipline and the art. understanding our practice creates new knowledge about the practice of theatre teaching, thus impacting on both the creative and pedagogic spheres. expanding the self-study ‘i’ the third aspect is to connect these ideas to our research practice. this involves understanding the expanded reach of the self-study project beyond teacher education, and the recognition that the inherent individuality of the theatre-making process as well as its public-making imperative resonate with the self-study model in ways that are profoundly useful. theatre research is easily understood within the well-established arts-based research model. leavy (2009: ix) explains that arts-based research practices have emerged out of the natural affinity between research practice and artistic practice, both of which can be viewed as crafts (original emphasis). drawing on the capabilities of the creative arts, abr (sic) practices offer qualitative researchers alternatives to traditional research methods and methodologies. such a challenge to the hegemony of traditional research is important for those of us working in the creative arts that grapple with the apparently contradictory demands of our creative and academic functions. the difficulty in theorising creative practice lies in its somewhat mystical motivations. as sullivan (2006: 26-27) observes: what artists do of course is to make art, and as an object and subject of study art has been well picked over by aestheticians, historians, psychologists, sociologists, critics, and cultural commentators for a long time. but what artists do in the practice of creating artworks, and the processes, products, proclivities, and contexts that support this activity is less well studied from the perspective of the artist. as an “insider” the artist has mostly been content to remain a silent participant, even if the inquiring eye of interested others has given plenty of insights into artistic experiences and activities. thus, we seek a way to voice the insider perspective, to render visible the apparently invisible working processes of the creative process. in this instance, we are attempting perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 64 to shift the parameters of what constitutes arts-based research a little further, and to elucidate more explicitly the synergies between self-study and arts-based research: tanya: we must differentiate between what is known as arts-based research and what we are articulating. arts-based methodologies generally (samaras, 2011; de lange & grossi, 2009; leavy, 2009; sullivan, 2006) use artistic practice as a means to address a research question. we want to use self-study as a methodology to excavate the process of making a piece of art (in this instance, theatre). tamar: our suggestion is that self-study offers a set of tools that can be used to understand and interrogate the process of creating a piece of art for reception – the focus is thus on the artefact itself and how it is generated, who is the maker, how does the maker’s own knowledge impact on the creation of the art[e]fact vs using the art[e]fact as a tool to access knowledge about something else. tanya: in self-study, too, the knowledge that is produced is situated and local (laboskey, 2004: 843); it is thus context-specific. productions are also contextspecific, situated and local because they are rooted in the doing and the making of the people involved. self-study thus can operate as a research methodology for theatre with the end purpose of a different kind of knowledge creation. tamar: it offers a different way of writing about theatre. rather than writing a literary analysis of a play text, a review of a production, or even a directorial concept, there’s writing about the self in the production. tanya: it enables us to take the knowledge that is intrinsic, that is evident in that particular production, and make it public. as laboskey (in pinnegar & hamilton, 2010: 99) says, the embodied knowledge leads to the public knowledge through cycles of critical reflection: doing, and reflecting, and changing, and doing again. by going through that cycle, what you know in your bones becomes public knowledge through the sharing of what you know. sullivan (2006: 32) suggests that “it is the creation of new opportunities to see beyond what is known that has the potential to lead to the creation of new knowledge”. this is the potential for self-study research in/through/with theatre practice. back to ourselves – the dialogic ‘i’ finally, we wish to reflect on how the dialogic project in writing this article has impacted on both our practice and our pedagogy. our attempt to expand the relevance and applicability of self-study to theatre arose because of the questions emerging from our own struggles to negotiate the dynamic between our theatre practice, our teaching practice and our research practice – the a/r/tographer’s dilemma. the dialogue has offered us a way to express the polyvocal nature of our thinking: tamar: in writing dialogically we have foregrounded the process inherent in our collaborative self-study. the director’s ‘i’: theatre, self, and self-study timar meskin & tanya van der walt 65 tanya: it’s like our collaborative working practice; we operate from a fundamental willingness to abandon the self in the pursuit of shared and communicated understanding. tamar: and that is paralleled in our theatre practice. of course, this is partly due to familiarity, because we have worked together enough that we have come to understand each other’s thinking processes in action; but it’s also about a shared way of thinking. i think this also is important for the self-study project, because our work seems to embody the notion of the critical friend (samaras, 2011). tanya: our ideas, our work and our concepts are constantly being tested against each other’s – this is sometimes uncomfortable and contested, but it is not contentious. tamar: this stems from our fundamental understanding of theatre as a collaborative and essentially generous act. in making theatre, we are always sharing of ourselves and our worldview, and it seems only natural to extend that into the teaching and research arenas. tanya: we have been trained to work together rather than in isolation. all theatrical action is dialogic; interaction is required to build conflict (the basis of all theatre), and relationship is critical in the unfolding of narrative. tamar: this mindset resonates with self-study as a more appropriate research approach for this art form than trying to mould a fundamentally communal and creative experience into a singular and solitary frame. in discussing the creative process, mcniff (2007: 40) suggests that the most meaningful insights often come by surprise, unexpectedly, and even against the will of the creator. the artist may have a sense or intuition of what might be discovered or of what is needed, and in some cases even a conviction, but the defining aspect of knowing through art … is the emanation of meaning through the process of creative expression. this encapsulates what happens in the directorial creative process, and it also points to the power of the dialogic initiative – to map out through the dialogue a path to understanding, where discoveries are made through the process rather than being reported simply out of the process. we thus write ourselves more fully – and more directly – into our collaborative self-study of our practice. concluding thoughts this article set out to answer a particular question about the potential for new kinds of knowledge to emerge from the dialogue between self-study research and theatremaking. we believe that our own a/r/tographic practice demonstrates the power of this connection, drawing the threads of our theatre, research and teaching practices together. the elasticity of the self-study model allows us to move its usage beyond teacher education into other fields based on interrogation of the fundamental principle of practice at work, and thus to cross and re-cross the metaphoric bridges between the three aspects of our practice. perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 66 in seeking to frame a methodology that integrates self-study, arts-based and theatre research into an investigatory model, we are focusing on, as mcniff (2007: 33) suggests: the creation of a clear method that can be easily described and then implemented in a systematic way that lends itself to the reporting of outcomes. ideally, the method can be replicable and utilized by other researchers who may want to explore the problem separately. experimentation with the method and learning more about it can even be a primary outcome of the research and an aide to future professional applications. in this way, we can begin to build a new – and creatively engaged – research paradigm for the arts. self-study offers a way to integrate theory and practice in profound ways that (re)invent and (re)invest creative disciplines such as drama in terms of what, and how, we name ‘research’. such work also extends the boundaries of the self-study paradigm, opening up whole new fields of study which may benefit from its inward/outward focus and its recognition of the value of personal knowledge in the construction, transmission and reading of discourses in any given discipline. the spaces between making, researching and teaching theatre are an a/r/tographic landscape of possibilities which facilitate, as sullivan (2006: 32) puts it: moving in and beyond the comfort of prescribed discipline knowledge, as issues and concerns demand approaches where new perspectives are opened up. consequently it is the creation of new opportunities to see beyond what is known that has the potential to lead to the creation of new knowledge. such a process engages the heart of theatre-making, research and teaching, all of which seek to imagine new possibilities of human endeavour. endnotes 1. we have written extensively about this project in other papers (see meskin & van der walt, 2010a, 2010b; coetzee, meskin & van der walt, 2014). 2. a cast of ten performed the original production and each actor played multiple roles; we expanded the cast to accommodate the large number of students who wanted to participate. this was possible because of the episodic nature of the text. 3. both of us had grandfathers who fought and were prisoners of war in world war ii, and this personal history had a significant impact on how the production was constructed. acknowledgements in developing this article, we acknowledge support from the self-reflexive research learning community project, funded by a ukzn teaching and learning innovations and quality enhancement grant, from the university teaching and learning office, the director’s ‘i’: theatre, self, and self-study timar meskin & tanya van der walt 67 and the transformative education(al) studies project, funded by the national research foundation. references borgdorff h 2010. the production of knowledge in artistic research. in m biggs & h karlsson (eds), the routledge companion to research in the arts. london & new york: routledge, 44-63. bradby d & williams d 1988. director’s theatre. london: macmillan. brannen r 2004. balancing acts: teaching theatre in british higher education today. in al fliotsos & gs medford (eds), teaching theatre today. 2nd edition. new york: palgrave macmillan, 193-205. brook p 1968. the empty space. harmondsworth: penguin. carroll j 1996. escaping the information abattoir: critical and transformative research in drama classrooms. in p taylor (ed), researching drama and arts education: paradigms and possibilities. london & new york: routledgefalmer, 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africa has been an unknown phenomenon, mostly conducted behind closed doors, as a private affair between the doctoral student and a supervisor. knowledge about the doctorate was anecdotal and informal. furthermore, until the late 1980s, such education in south africa was the privilege of élite, white, mostly male students. this is no longer the case. since the transition to democracy in 1994, doctoral education has increased and diversified. various factors, including different concepts of knowledge, changes in universityindustry-government relationships, the growing demand for postgraduate education, and a diverse student population, together with government policy, have resulted in multiple research agendas and diversity of purposes and outcomes that students as well as policymakers now expect from the phd. award (herman, 2011). subsequently, doctoral education has been drawn into the policy debate and has also become a focus of the research fraternity. like their international counterparts, south african scholars and policymakers are now raising pertinent questions about the phd. what is a phd? who are the graduates? where do they graduate? what are the disciplinary emphases? what are the major drivers shaping changes in doctoral education? and, most importantly, how can the phd become a driver for economic and social development in south africa? in 2009, the council of the academy of science of south africa (assaf) commissioned a series of studies on the status of the phd. these first systemic studies on doctoral education in south africa aimed to provide an evidentiary base from which a study panel could provide a policy advice as to what was concretely needed to increase the number and quality of doctoral graduates to meet the demands of the knowledge economy. the report (assaf, 2010) was the first publication on doctoral education in south africa. with this special issue we aim, first, to establish doctoral education as a research focus; secondly, to capture current debates on the degree and, thirdly, to assess the status of research on doctoral education in south africa and to generate a research agenda for future studies. in our call for papers, we invited conceptual and empirical articles on the subject of doctoral education. our aim was to explore the many ways in which doctoral education in south africa is changing and adapting to the new demands of the knowledge economy. we received many worthy articles on supervisory relationships or on the personal journey of becoming a doctoral graduate. these articles were rejected. we only reviewed those articles which explored mesoor macro-processes in doctoral education. in compiling this collection, we identified three main themes. the first theme linked articles that explored systemic macro-issues (nerad, mouton, backhouse, herman, sehoole, halai). the second theme linked research at meso-levels, mostly at department or faculty levels (samuel and vithal, govender and dhunpath, hattingh and lillejord, grossman and cleaton-jones). the third theme dealt with research on doctoral education in south africa (wolhuter, jansen). the main points of each article are briefly summarised below. nerad argues that south africa’s recent focus on the phd and the drive to increase the number of doctoral graduates reflect global trends. she identifies a number of global processes that prompt countries with different resources, sizes, populations and histories to reform their postgraduate education. these include the advent of the knowledge economy, the shift from mode 1 to mode 2 knowledge production, the expansion of doctoral education worldwide, and the growing phenomenon of international students. universities around the world have responded to these new realities by instituting reforms aimed at improving the quality and efficiency of doctoral education. nerad identifies the common features of these ii reforms, examining their converging practices, and points out relevant practices for south africa to assure both quality and quantity of doctoral programmes. mouton reviews the policy context in south africa in order to trace the evolution of the discourse on doctoral production and to explain the current emphasis on increasing the number of phds. drawing on a quantitative analysis of the current status of doctoral education in south africa, mouton discusses four key policy challenges: to increase the volume of doctoral graduates; to expand the supervisory capacity of the system; to improve the efficiency of the system (time to degree and attrition rate), and to improve the quality of doctoral production. he argues that while the first two “quantitative” challenges are unlikely to be met, the system, when compared to international standards, is relatively efficient. as far as the quality of the product is concerned, mouton detects a shift from a “thin” model of doctoral training to a “thick” model based, among other factors, on increased structuring, screening, coursework, and directional supervision. he calls for further research to assess whether this new model of supervision is in fact improving the quality of the students, making them more employable and preparing them for the new demands of the knowledge economy. backhouse explores three discourses on the purpose of doctoral education which are current in south africa, namely the doctorate as generating new knowledge and developing a scholar (which is embedded in the scholarly discourse); the doctorate as generating knowledge for the knowledge economy and developing highly skilled human resources (embedded in the labour market discourse), and the doctorate as producing new knowledge and developing a critical intellectual (which is embedded in the personal development discourse). backhouse argues that all three discourses contribute important understandings of doctoral education, and that the tensions between them ensure that such education develops to meet the imperatives of access, efficiency and quality in south africa. while the ongoing personal development discourse is more reflective of the national goals for equity and redress and better supports the kind of people who currently undertake doctoral studies, limited resources and the urgent need for more doctoral graduates highlight the concerns of the labour market for efficiency and effectiveness. at the same time, the concern of scholarly discourse with autonomous knowledge production is still a key part of how scientific knowledge-making is understood internationally. herman utilises the attribution theory to explore how doctoral students and phd programme leaders in south africa understand the causes of doctoral attrition. drawing on qualitative and quantitative data, she identifies common understandings, as well as misunderstandings, gaps or silences in both narratives. while phd programme leaders emphasise students’ internal attributions for attrition, such as lack of basic skills, lack of capacity to do a phd, lack of fit between students and academia, and lack of recognition of the value of the phd, the students themselves attribute attrition to external factors, such as insufficient training at postgraduate level. the role of the department or the faculty is overlooked in both groups’ narratives. since, according to attribution theory, misunderstanding the attributions of attrition can increase attrition, herman calls for further research to explore the actual causes of doctoral attrition, studies which would take into account the context and the culture of the department or institution. sehoole analyses doctoral education programmes in south africa, with particular focus on the inward-bound international student mobility which constitutes 30% of doctoral student enrolment in this country. by explicating the “pull-and-push” factors, sehoole shows that international doctoral students’ mobility patterns in south africa tend to mirror developments in global doctoral education, except that the state in this country is not active in recruiting or sending students overseas for capacity-building. in south africa, the state only creates conditions for the inflow of international students by issuing visas, providing subsidies and creating an enabling policy framework for such students to study in the country. a more active state role in both “pull-and-push” factors of international doctoral students’ mobility could help south africa to meet the challenges of global competitiveness and its set targets of doctoral graduate outputs by 2018. halai describes how another developing country, pakistan, grapples with similar objectives to those of south africa, namely how to increase the number of quality phds. in her article, halai describes the context of doctoral education in pakistan and the experiences of students in one particular department of iii education. her findings illustrate that students perceive and experience the phd as a professional rather than a research degree. halai argues that changing the conception of knowledge is a long process, one which requires support and pressure, and that the current political and economic contexts in pakistan further hinder this process. samuel and vithal revisit a seminar-based cohort doctoral programme in education which they founded over a decade ago at the university of kwazulu-natal (ukzn). they argue that this pedagogic model, which stands as a counterpoint to the traditional “master-apprenticeship” supervisory model, addresses questions of both scale and quality in doctoral education, while it mentors new supervisors. the article suggests that the structure of this interdisciplinary programme, the balance between “headwork” (epistemology), “fieldwork” (methodology) and “textwork” (representation), the diversity of the students and the supervisors, and the institutional support, are among the factors contributing to the high completion rate in the programme. on reflection, samuel and vithal offer a theory of doctoral studies which draws broadly on four emergent philosophies: the democratic philosophy of teaching and learning (giroux); the philosophy of scaffolded learning (vygotsky); the philosophy of ubuntu, and serendipity. govender and dhunpath provide the students’ perspectives on the collaborative cohort model (ccm) at the ukzn. the students’ experiences are juxtaposed with the literature on the cohort models in education in order to explore the extent to which the programme was instrumental in creating genuine learning communities. the authors argue that, while the cohort model provides rich opportunities for collaborative research learning and collegiality, it also generates conflicts, as students negotiate the multiple and often contradictory voices of cohort supervisors and peers. however, these conflicts are often symptomatic of individual teaching and learning styles and preferences, and do not necessarily threaten the creation of genuine communities of practice or the robustness of the cohort model. hattingh and lillejord explore university collaboration across borders, in this case between norway and seven developing countries. in their article, they reflect on their leading a collaborative doctoral programme, productive learning cultures (plc). they describe the programme’s design features, its participatory values, such as trust and community of practice, its future sustainability and some of its intended and unintended outcomes. they highlight the “networked” support pathway towards the phd, and its potential in providing a climate of trust for phd students to achieve their goals and to socialise them in the academic community. grossman and cleaton-jones reflect on 53 years of postgraduate output in a south african dental research institute (dri) and ask what lessons this database could offer faculties of health sciences in their efforts to expand their doctoral production and meet the demand for high-level skills. they discuss the programme’s features, the students’ demographics, and the skills that were gained during their postgraduate experience, such as publishing and presentation skills. the quantitative analysis showed that these skills were already being learned at msc level, raising the question of whether a phd is necessary for a career in clinical research. wolhuter surveys the growing international literature on doctoral education, compared to the miniscule number of publications in south africa. internationally, the research covers numerous aspects, from the contextual forces shaping doctoral education to the actual process of such education, including its objectives and outcomes, its methods, administration, supervision, and students’ issues. at the same time, there are noticeable gaps in research on the social rates of return to doctoral education, and the scholarly contribution to or impact upon this. furthermore, the international literature tends to examine doctoral education through the lens of an equilibrium paradigm and to shy away from critical theories. as a result, it does not take socio-political contexts into account. lastly, jansen brings to the fore questions of quality and significance in doctoral research, key issues in the current rush to expand the number of phds in south africa. he calls for doctoral research both as an intellectual practice and as a continuous quest for significance. significance can be achieved by dedicated scholars who have intimate knowledge of their subjects; are able to recognise the class of problems within which their research topic falls; have the capacity to articulate an independent argument; are able to recognise the limitations of the existing research and on that basis make arguments to justify their own iv research; are able to make justificatory claims in writing; know the leading thinkers in their field, and have the openness and capacity needed for learning. these traits are essential in doctoral research in order to achieve practical, theoretical, emotional or personal significance. in summary, what can these articles tell us about doctoral education in south africa? what is the status of the research on such education in south africa? in this critical time, when doctoral education in this country has attracted the attention of both policymakers and researchers, it is important to ask, “how does research inform, enter or otherwise engage with policy or policymakers”? (bridges, smeyers, & smith, 2009, p. 5). the selection of articles in this issue portrays doctoral education in south africa as a changing practice. it shows that individual phd programme leaders have been forging new pathways to doctoral education over the past decade, and that some alternatives to the apprenticeship model of one supervisor/ one student have been successfully implemented in this country. yet, as mouton (in this issue) clearly indicates, major challenges still face higher education in south africa, especially as it endeavours to improve the quality and efficiency of doctoral production. this issue highlights some of these challenges, among them misunderstanding the reasons for doctoral students’ attrition (herman); lack of supervisory capacity (mouton); lack of career paths for graduates (grossman and cleaton-jones), and the paucity of research on doctoral education in south africa (wolhuter). it is evident from the articles that have been submitted to or accepted for this special issue that research on doctoral education in south africa is taking its first steps into the field, seeking information, facts and basic knowledge about what was until recently unexplored territory. a number of the articles are reflective, with phd programme leaders describing their own practices and experiences. others use quantitative data to describe current trends or make predictions for future scenarios. there is a paucity of articles based on rigorous research or that engage with philosophical or political issues concerning doctoral education. it is important that research on such education makes the shift towards more complex and critical objectives. wolhuter’s article points to a similar gap in the international research knowledge on doctoral education. it also highlights the need for different epistemologies and methodologies, which will encourage reciprocal conversations between researchers and policymakers. the articles in this issue mostly responded to the major challenge currently facing policymakers in south africa: how to increase the number of phd awards without prejudicing the quality or the significance of the product. the majority/all of the authors cited the assaf (2009) report or the national policies as their main sources of reference. for example, mouton questions the feasibility of implementing the policy; nerad, referring to international practices, suggests the way forward for policy implementation; samuel and vithal, as well as govender and dhunpath, suggest the seminar-based cohort model as an alternative pathway to the doctorate in south africa in order to achieve the policy goals. in this sense the research takes the form of “policy advocacy” or “information for policy” (ball & stevenson, 2006). this type of research aims to promote and advance a specific policy, or provide policymakers with information and advice. bridges and watts (2009) discuss another type of research that could and should inform educational policymaking. they argue that if one considers policy as “the authoritative allocation of values” researchers have to “expose, critique, interpret, construct and deconstruct the normative assumptions of policy” (bridges & watts, 2009:50). adopting this kind of research agenda can subject doctoral education in south africa to all kinds of analysis including historical, political, phenomenological or ethnographical. halai’s article in this issue reminds us that doctoral education is provided in political, economic and social contexts. research must therefore include critical analysis of the policy itself. we need research on doctoral education that takes account of the socio-political environment and its impact on practice. and most importantly, in the current global economy, where knowledge is viewed as a critical resource for a country’s social and economic development, we need to question knowledge itself: what knowledge has been produced? how has it been produced? whose interests does it serve? and how does it serve society? such studies will secure practical and theoretical significance (jansen, in this volume) in research on doctoral education. v this special issue provides a glimpse into doctoral education in south africa, highlighting the current research knowledge on the topic, the gaps and silences. in particular, it exposes the preference for quantitative, reflective or opinion-based articles and the paucity of critical and rigorous empirical research at faculty, institutional or national level. i hope that this special issue will stimulate interest in such studies. references assaf 2010. the phd study. consensus report. pretoria: academy of science of south africa. ball l & stevenson h 2006. education policy process, themes and impact. london: routledge. bridges d, smeyers p & smith r 2009. educational research and the practical judgment of policymakers. in: d bridges, p smeyers & r smith (eds), evidence-based education policy. what evidence? what basis? whose policy? west sussex, uk: wiley-blackwell, 1-10 bridges d & watts m 2009. educational research and policy: epistemological considerations. in: d bridges, p smeyers & r smith (eds), evidence-based education policy. what evidence? what basis? whose policy? west sussex, uk: wiley-blackwell, 36-57. herman c (forthcoming). the purpose of the phd – a south african perspective. higher education policy. chaya herman (guest editor) 169 research article 2021 39(3): 169-182 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) assessing selected teachers’ adaptions towards an adolescentorientated life orientation curriculum: a case study abstract the primary aim of this qualitative case study was to explore the relevance of seven in-service grade 10 life orientation teachers’ teaching-learning operations in two different quintile schools regarding the curriculum topic social and environmental responsibility. accounts of teaching-learning strategies were used to define the orientation of these seven participants towards the topic social and environmental responsibility, which primarily focuses on content relevant to the adolescent learner. the qualitative findings are discussed thematically and their implications for an adolescentorientated life orientation curriculum are highlighted. focusing on the teaching-learning strategies of a selected sample of life orientation teachers strengthen the merit for suggesting a multifaceted framework to enhance curriculum outcomes and teaching quality regarding life skills education. keywords: adolescent; constructivism; environment; life orientation; social and environmental responsibility; multi-faceted framework. 1. introduction grade 10 life orientation teachers are expected to teach sensitive topics under the theme of social and environmental responsibility to adolescent learners from diverse socio-economic backgrounds. hiv/aids, teenage pregnancy, substance abuse and child abuse are sensitive topics that accompany the adolescent learner into the school and the life orientation classroom (diale, 2016; du preez et al., 2019; machenjedze, malindi & mbengo, 2019; malindi, 2018). these topics should, according to the life orientation policy statement, be addressed in a holistic and meaningful manner, as they link with the adolescent learner’s life outside the classroom. however, it seems that the focus on content in the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) tends to overshadow progressive curriculum principles, such as active learning author: dr pieter swarts1 affiliation: 1north-west university, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i3.13 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(3): 169-182 published: 16 september 2021 received: 02 november 2020 accepted: 21 january 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3074-759x http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 1702021 39(3): 170-182 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) and critical and creative thinking (dbe, 2011: 4). for example, if one considers the prescribed summative assessment tasks and reference to specific teaching and learning support material (tlsm), such as textbooks, regarding the presentation of critical issues relating to social and environmental responsibility (see, e.g., dbe, 2011), it is possible that the progressive curriculum principles may deteriorate into a transmission model of teaching-learning. such an approach towards life skills education through the school subject life orientation is in contrast with the cultivation of a life orientation teacher as a creator of conditions for learner agency (dbe, 2011: 25). this begs the question: how relevant are life orientation teachers’ teachinglearning methodologies in developing the south african adolescent’s knowledge, values and skills to mitigate environmental risks as outlined under the topic of social and environmental responsibility? the importance of such a question within the context of caps is crucial due to the emphasis on the “localization of learning” and “meaningful learning” (dbe, 2011: 3) as well as “holistic education” (dbe, 2011: 8). each of these dimensions is vital for quality life skills education and, therefore, demands a more critical orientation from life orientation teachers towards the quality and relevance of their teaching-learning practices. such a stance resonates with unesco’s 2004/2005 education for all monitoring report, which notes that teachers are one of the most significant determining factors in ensuring educational quality. such education, according to this report, should not merely focus on knowledge acquisition but also incorporate values to enhance responsible citizenship. since responsible citizenry is also a key focus within the life orientation curriculum (dbe, 2011: 8), it challenges life skills education, which mainly emphasises learning as a cognitive activity. therefore, it be argued that life skills education should be viewed as a life practice in which the life orientation teacher and the learners engage and employ so-called non-cognitive processes, such as emotions and social processes. based on the aforementioned information, the core focus of this project was to explore how relevant the teaching-learning strategies of seven grade 10 life orientation teachers were to the adolescent learner in light of a content-related curriculum with reference to social and environmental responsibility. 2. framing the phenomenon “environment” within life orientation since the introduction of life orientation to the post-apartheid school curriculum, the construct “environment” has received much attention. the importance thereof is congruent with the expectation of the south african constitution (south africa, 1996) that children should live in an environment that is not harmful to their well-being. despite this constitutional awareness, there is a serious decline in the environment, which has an impact on the wellbeing of the individual who is connected to their environment (le grange, 2018: 9). while real risks such as teenage pregnancy and other environmental challenges, for instance substance and alcohol abuse and hiv/aids are on the increase, merely learning about these issues in a trouble-free manner through prescribed learner textbooks becomes irrelevant. given these challenges, the adolescent learner requires nothing less than a pedagogy that examines the socio-environmental issues within their live environment in a constructive manner. such a pedagogy links with what gruenewald (2003) refers to as a critical pedagogy of place that allows for a safe space to investigate socio-environmental challenges. learning in this way becomes more meaningful because the curriculum is put into practice by linking it to current real-world problems (pleven, 2016:184). for the adolescent learner, learning in this way can http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 1712021 39(3): 171-182 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 swarts assessing selected teachers’ adaptions be significant because it is valueand purpose-driven (dabbagh, marra & howland, 2019: 7) and the knowledge and skills are connected to the context in which these will be used (vakalisa et al., 2004: 147). therefore, if caps emphasises the importance of the application of knowledge, values and skills in real life (dbe, 2011: 8), it seems reasonable to argue that strengthening the knowledge, values and skills of the adolescent learner in a resourceful manner through life experiences is paramount. this encourages the inclusion of real-world socio-environmental challenges, which the compulsory school subject life orientation does well. however, research indicates that a poor understanding of the concept “environment” exists and teachers have little capacity for infusing it into their teaching-learning practices (ramsaroop & van rooyen, 2013; swarts, 2016). this observation about the environment can be linked to what researchers such as reddy (2011), le grange (2004) and schreuder (2004) have noted as complex and difficult to define. despite this challenge, the framework adopted by di chiro (1987: 24) and fien (1993), namely that the environment is socially constructed, is particularly useful in understanding this concept. the conclusion is that human activities (social) occur within the life environment (physical), which reflects human-environment interaction to provide a balanced life. however, this interaction has deteriorated to a state where risks and environmental variables have increased in the socio-physical environment, which makes the individual vulnerable in various ways. a focus on the environment, which is in line with the topic of social and environmental responsibility that seeks to ensure a responsible citizenry (dbe, 2011: 8), therefore becomes important within caps. therefore, teaching-learning strategies that simply align with caps appear to be inadequate for the adolescent learner. more critical-orientated knowledge, values and skills, based on a holistic and meaningful approach, are required if responsible citizenry is to emerge among adolescent learners. such an approach towards life skills education through life orientation has much to offer, especially to adolescent learners who find themselves in an environment beset with contextual risks. 3. theoretical framework policy statement principles such as active learning as well as critical and creative thinking (dbe, 2011:4-5) creates the basis for adopting constructivism as the theoretical framework for this study. although a variety of constructivist views on learning exist, there are four agreed upon aspects (khalid & azeem, 2012:171; cooperstein & kocevar-weidinger, 2004:142; donald, lazarus & lolwana, 2002:95; 2006: 94) that can be summarised as follow: • principle of learners constructing their own meaning the driving force behind this principle is meaningful learning and understanding. for this to happen learners must make sense of the information that comes their way (cooperstein & kocevar-weidinger, 2004:142). with this in mind, it can then be argued that teachers cannot rely on textbooks to keep learners busy with activities that require little intellectual effort (gravett & de beer, 2015:3). to avoid this separation of learning from application, the focus should rather be to plan learning activities purposefully. for instance, in life orientation the subject matter on social and environmental issues could be taught and learnt in a formal classroom context as facts but the acquired knowledge should be translated into application (i.e. values and skills). in this way it is possible that learners will “internalise” what they have learnt (donald at el., 2002:87) and apply it in real life situations. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 1722021 39(3): 172-182 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) • the principle that new knowledge is built on prior knowledge this principle could be understood as connecting a new topic with learners’ experiences. as donald et al. (2002:91) put it “this can serve as a starting point to guide learners from what they know to new learning and discovery”. therefore, learners cannot be regarded as empty vessels to be filled with knowledge (freire, 2002:72) on social and environmental issues. • the principle of learning is enhanced by social interaction the processes of comparing and sharing ideas with others are central to this principle (grӧsser, 2017:59; cooperstein & kocevar-weidinger, 2004:142; donald et al., 2002:95). these processes, which are based upon the idea of dialogical learning, are currently viewed as a powerful and effective teaching-learning strategy for life orientation (botha & du preez, 2017:42; magano, mostert & van der westhuizen, 2010:10). research has also proven that learners prefer “debating”, and the “sharing of ideas” with others in the life orientation classroom (magano, 2011: 124). thus, to promote meaningful learning (i.e. learning with understanding) on social and environmental issues, learners need to be given the opportunity to work in a cooperative learning environment. this is relevant to life skills education through life orientation, where the focus is on holistic and meaningful education for the individual to be able to act responsibly in their society (dbe, 2011: 8). such a stance is in accordance with donald, lazarus and lolwana (2002; 2006) as well as steyn, badenhorst and kamper (2010), who point out that the social and physical environment can influence the adolescent’s well-being. • the principle of meaningful learning develops through “authentic” tasks if the aim of this principle is to stimulate learners with real life encounters (cooperstein & kocevar-weidinger, 2004:142), then the teacher cannot rely on the textbook. to involve learners in relevant learning tasks, the teacher must act as an agent of transformation who moves beyond the transfer of knowledge (november, 2015:316) particularly concerning social and environmental issues. the concept “environment” in this article is, therefore, understood to mean a “constructivist” approach where the teacher uses the live environment as a medium of instruction to enhance the adolescent’s place of consciousness. a constructivist approach towards the live environment also focuses on maximising learners’ potential to construct their own knowledge and share their constructions of knowledge on particular issues (waghid, waghid & waghid, 2018: 166). it is this awareness that, according to ontong and le grange (2014: 29), will enable the adolescent learner to understand the localness of social and environmental problems, which often require local action. consequently, the role of a constructive pedagogy to enhance local action cannot be underestimated. for this reason, dixon et al. (2018: 18) emphasise that teachers should consider children’s lives and life experiences as an important entry point to build knowledge, values and skills. from the above, it thus seems that the adolescent’s life environment can be a key component to provide meaningful real-life teaching-learning opportunities. furthermore, the adolescent’s live environment has the potential to make content personally significant. consequently, the life orientation classroom can become a critical teaching-learning space that engages the adolescent learner in how to (re)connect to their environment – the place in which they live – in order to promote responsible social and environmental citizenry. this includes the ability to generate/construct knowledge and enables access to other ways of thinking, doing, being and knowing about socio-environmental issues that are useful for their context. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 1732021 39(3): 173-182 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 swarts assessing selected teachers’ adaptions 4. methodology this qualitative study, with an interpretive approach, focused on understanding, describing and explaining research participants’ teaching-learning strategies towards the phenomenon of social and environmental responsibility “from the inside” (flick, 2018: x). this approach allowed the researcher to use various methods of data generation, such as observations and interviews. using multiple data generation methods enhanced the trustworthiness of the findings (cf. schreier, 2010: 27). firstly, 14 structured classroom observations were used to explore how useful the teaching-learning strategies of seven grade 10 life orientation teachers from two different quintile schools were regarding lessons related to the topic of social and environmental responsibility. i observed a total of 14 lessons (two per research participant). although a variety of issues were concentrated on during the classroom observations pertaining to the three phases of a lesson presentation and various questions were posed during the interviews, i drew only on three for this article: 1) tlsm; 2) teacher-approach towards life skills education and 3) the participants’ views on social and environmental responsibility. the second data generation method used to triangulate the data generated during the classroom observations was one-on-one, open, semi-structured interviews. a case study design was deemed educationally suitable for this project because it allowed for knowing as situated inquiry (cf. le grange, 2018: 11) within a bounded context (cf. rozsahegyi, 2019: 130). this approach enabled me to uncover the manifest interaction of significant characteristics of the phenomenon of social and environmental responsibility, to capture various nuances, patterns and more latent elements and to focus on holistic description and explanation (cf. berg, 2007: 284). it also opened up a pathway to gain insight into and compare and investigate the way these seven grade 10 in-service life orientation teachers from different quintile schools taught and how their learners experienced issues related to the topic of social and environmental responsibility. the focus on seven participants corresponds with neuman’s (2000: 196) opinion that qualitative researchers focus less on a sample’s representativeness or on detail techniques for drawing a probability sample but, instead, on how the sample of a small collection of cases, units or activities illuminates social life. because the pool of participants for this project was small, the interpreted data are not meant to be generalised but rather viewed as informative, as is customary with qualitative research designs (cf. rapley, 2018: xi). within this context, the research findings were shaped by the participants’ actions and perspectives and not through research bias. the faculty of education at the north-west university and the department of basic education within the jb marks region granted ethical clearance for this project. during the research process, i paid attention to anonymity, informed consent, confidentiality, the right of the participants to withdraw, privacy and conducting classroom observations and interviews within a relationship of trust and transparency. 5. contextual overview of research participants before i continue, it is important to give a contextual overview of the research participants because such information has the potential to influence teaching-learning (cf. van den berg & schulze, 2016: 71). two of the participants (c and d) received their formal teacher qualifications prior to 1997 – the year in which life orientation was introduced into the south african school curriculum. three of the participants (a, b and g) obtained a one-year postgraduate certificate in education (pgce) with life orientation (senior phase and fet phase) as a http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 1742021 39(3): 174-182 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) major subject, while participant f obtained a one-year pgce qualification with setswana and physical education as major subjects. participant e obtained an advanced certificate in education (ace) with life orientation as one of the major subjects. these qualifications suggest that participants c, d and f, who were recruited to teach life orientation, might have been exposed to ideas and approaches that are not necessarily appropriate for life skills education. the question can also be posed whether participants a, b and g could have been pedagogically prepared in one year to effectively teach life orientation, which is regarded as an academic and an experiential subject (cf. dbe, 2011: 25). the postgraduate ace obtained by participant e was introduced by the south african qualifications authority during the 1990s to provide teachers with an opportunity to upgrade their teaching skills and to specialise in specific fields, such as life orientation. however, the old-fashioned way of teaching by taking notes from the writing board in this participant’s classroom is in total contrast with an outcomes-based life orientation curriculum, which emphasises that teachers must prevent this skills-based subject from becoming too theoretical (dbe, 2011: 25). table 1: contextual information of the research participants. teacher qualification former model c-school township school quintile 1-5 diverse classroom composition tlsm (textbook) participant a pgce (lo) √ 4 √ √ participant b pgce (lo) √ 4 √ √ participant c ba (biblical studies & history) + hod √ 4 √ √ participant d bed (technical studies) √ 4 √ √ participant e ace (lo as major subject) √ 3 √ √ participant f pgce (setswana + physical education) √ 3 √ √ participant g pgce (lo) √ 3 √ √ focusing on the teaching-learning strategies of a select sample of life orientation teachers from two types of quintile schools in former model c and townships schools, highlight the need of a multi-faceted teaching-learning framework to support meaningful life skills education on social and environmental responsibility for the adolescent learner. 6. research findings a particular characteristic that emerged from the 14 classroom observations was the use of learner textbooks by all of the participants as their preferred teaching-learning source for social and environmental responsibility. a teacher-instructivist approach and a fragmented conception of social and environmental responsibility interacted with a learner textbook approach. 6.1 learner textbook approach although participants b, c, d and g felt that learner textbooks were insufficient, it was still regarded as the indispensable, trustworthy tlsm for life skills education through life http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 1752021 39(3): 175-182 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 swarts assessing selected teachers’ adaptions orientation in both former model c and township schools. this observation indicates that not only are the participants blindly following curriculum instructions that emphasise textbooks as recommended source for life skills education (see for example dbe, 2011: 18), but life orientation teachers are also prevented from asking key educational questions about content and the purpose of lessons related to social and environmental responsibility. this is in contrast with the preferred teaching-learning strategies such as debating, participating, sharing information and expressing feelings, as key contributors for successful life skills education through life orientation (griesel-roux et al., 2005; magano, 2011). these positive emotions not only engage learners in the construction of life skills knowledge, values and skills (bullard, 2017: 3; corcoran & tormey, 2012: 1; rosiek, 2003) but can also enhance the application thereof through a real-life teaching-learning environment approach (swarts, rens & de sousa, 2018). however, researchers such as diale (2016), swarts (2016), mthayana and vincent (2015) and jacobs (2011) indicate that learners are often stripped of their positive emotions through an overemphasis on textbook knowledge in south african life orientation classrooms. such teacher-controlled teaching-learning strategies have the tendency to divorce the adolescent learner from their live world. for example, practical knowledge of risky sexual behaviour, teenage pregnancy, substance abuse, hiv/aids and so forth is not only about lesson topics that can be addressed through textbooks alone. le grange (2007: 11) is of the opinion that educating learners about such real-life experiences should be viewed as, what he called, a “lesson of hypocrisy”, whereby learners are only provided with basic textbook information on (their) environments. to the contrary, teaching-learning about socioenvironmental issues must encourage learners to find alternative ways of looking at and remedy real-life experiences known to them. therefore, to enhance the adolescent learner’s learning on real-life issues, nel and payne-van staden (2017: 209) encourage life orientation teachers to develop rich teaching-learning environments outside of the textbook. to do so, i argue that life orientation teachers must have a firm foundation of a holistic approach towards educating the adolescent and a deep understanding to meet the primary curriculum outcome, namely, to ensure that meaningful learning occurs. however, the attainment of such a lofty curriculum goal is questionable if teachers are not enthusiastic about life orientation (jacobs, 2011: 217; mthayana & vincent, 2015: 53), if life orientation is seen as a secondclass subject compared to mathematics and science education (diale, 2016: 101) and when teachers are appointed to teach life orientation without proper qualifications within the field of life skills education (ferreira & schulze, 2014: 8; pillay, 2012: 171). 6.2 teacher-instructivist approach the sole use of learner textbooks by all the research participants highlighted education as a form of control (cf. freire, 2000). such an attitude, especially towards life skills education through life orientation, has the potential to silence the voice of the learner and isolate them from complex socio-environmental issues in their live environment. here, communicating knowledge about risky socio-environmental issues without learners playing an active role in creating their personal meanings suggests that intellectual awareness is enough. such an approach towards life skills education through life orientation is in contrast with education policies where the emphasis is on “active learning, critical and creative thinking” (dbe, 2011: 4). consequently, there is a need to (re)create opportunities for the adolescent learner to construct, deconstruct and reconstruct and then share their own narratives on risky socioenvironmental issues facing them in their life environment. steyn et al. (2010) support this sentiment, as their research findings revealed that the adolescent’s voice should not be http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 1762021 39(3): 176-182 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) silenced in life orientation classrooms, especially on specific social challenges such as violence, poverty, hiv/aids, and the like. instead, the idea should be to either stimulate adolescent learners or encourage a willingness in them to know and think about their own health and wellbeing when it comes to these pressing real-life issues. this raises the important issue that life orientation teachers should know their role as life skills facilitators within the context of social and environmental responsibility. 6.3 fragmented views on social and environmental responsibility only three of the seven participants held a holistic view of what social and environmental responsibility entails. the strengths of their views were expressed in phrases such as “an awareness of how to live, how to be, how to take care of the world in which we live” (participant a); “to develop learners holistically in terms of their responsibilities” (participant e) and “it focuses on the wellbeing of the person. in terms of this, social and environmental responsibility links very well with the human as a whole” (participant f). the important matter here is not that such participant views are encouraging despite a lack of a clear policy explanation of what social and environmental entails; instead, the failure to incorporate additional tlsm and alternative assessment activities that might encourage the mastering and manifestation of particular knowledge, values and skills on complex issues with which the adolescent learner was confronted in their live environment (see for example wood, 2008: 59) were evident during classroom observations. the above research findings revealed noticeable shortcomings in the participants’ teaching-learning strategies regarding an adolescent life skills-driven life orientation curriculum on the topic of social and environmental responsibility. in order to improve the evidence-based content of the adolescent learner’s knowledge, values and skills on lesson experiences relating to social and environmental responsibility, it becomes important to suggest a framework that takes into account policy requirements and serves as a valuable tool to assess lesson outcomes. 7. a multi-faceted life skills teaching-learning framework to (re)contextualise social and environmental responsibility for the adolescent learner the suggested framework (see figure 1) addresses two important issues, namely 1) strengthening the life orientation curriculum principle regarding the development of “self in society” (dbe, 2011: 8) and 2) supporting the recommendation of du preez et al. (2019: 6), namely increasing learner resilience concerning risky behaviour. this means, for example, that social and environmental responsibility should encourage adolescent learners to understand themselves in relation to the wider context of their live environment. such awareness can assist adolescent learners to move beyond knowledge acquisition towards understanding and expressing their opinions through constructive dialogue and put their reflections on risky socio-environmental issues into practice. therefore, an effective life skills pedagogy within the context of social and environmental responsibility cannot be divorced from pragmatism where knowledge should serve the needs of the individual (nel, 2017: 10). the notion that knowledge should serve the needs of the individual invites a rethinking of what the purpose of life skills education is. this observation is timely because the adolescent learner is confronted with socio-environmental issues the south african society faces daily. thus, the life orientation teacher must be skilful to educate adolescent learners about these issues for them to be http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 1772021 39(3): 177-182 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 swarts assessing selected teachers’ adaptions able to make informed decisions or choices and take appropriate action to live meaningfully and successfully in a rapidly changing 21st century society. for this reason, freire’s (2013) idea of education for critical consciousness to restore the connection between human beings and the world meets the requirement to encourage the adolescent learner to engage with socio-environmental issues in a constructive manner. using figure 1 as a curriculum vehicle has the potential to assist (and encourage) life orientation teachers to boost situational interest and to provide adolescent learners with an opportunity to expand their language on risky real-life scenarios known to them within a community of practice. in addition, if applied effectively, this framework can promote adolescent resilience by engaging in decision making and strengthening risk reduction through place-based activities. figure 1: a multi-faceted risk-reduction, cooperative teaching-learning framework to (re) contextualise meaningful and holistic life skills education regarding critical socioenvironmental issues various activities that can assist life orientation teachers in enhancing the adolescent learner’s critical consciousness of socio-environmental issues within their live environment in a constructive manner can be employed through this framework. for example, linking the interplay between burning live environmental issues such as poverty, hiv/aids and teenage pregnancy, can assist the adolescent learner to build resilience and adaptive capacity through various stages within this framework. one way to think about these links is to illustrate them by using the following conceptual loops. firstly, use constructive teaching-learning strategies to encourage the idea of learning as meaning through real-life experiences. recent evidence of teenage pregnancy in any south african newspaper article can drive this phase. the goal should be to encourage a willingness to know and think about one’s own reality. such an http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 1782021 39(3): 178-182 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) approach towards socio-environmental issues will show the adolescent learner that teachers care for their health and wellbeing, which is not the case with outdated textbooks (see, e.g., boler & aggleton, 2007: 7). secondly, learning as becoming, through effective teaching-learning practices that cannot be divorced from a constructive classroom atmosphere. researchers such as dali and hunter (2018: 93), nel (2018: 12) and magano (2011: 123) share the sentiment that a welcoming and caring classroom atmosphere creates a safe space in which learners are allowed to share ideas, express their opinions, discuss controversial topics and even respectfully disagree with their peers and teacher. this suggests that the life orientation teacher should create a classroom atmosphere in which the adolescent learner can apply their conscious mind to the lesson at hand. since the learner textbook can isolate the learner from their live environment (magano, 2011: 121), learning as becoming through meaningful real-life scenarios may, therefore, be beneficial to adolescent learners in former model c and township schools. thirdly, the notion of learning as doing can be encouraged through cooperative teaching-learning strategies such as role play, tableaus, found poetry, personalised collages and drawings, to initiate an active, critical and creative adolescent learner. through such approaches, adolescent learners can share their contextualised understandings regarding risky sexual behaviour and teenage pregnancy. awareness of reflection through cooperative teaching-learning strategies may, in this instance, promote a practical connection between knowledge, values and skills, which is a concern in life orientation (mosia, 2011: 87). fourthly, learning as belonging, which links with the curriculum principle of the “self in society” (dbe, 2011: 8), can be realised through a voluntary community project. such an activity, which is in line with policy statements (dbe, 2011: 29), would create an excellent opportunity for the adolescent learner to play a constructive role in fostering risk reduction behaviour among their peers in life environments where socio-environmental health challenges are rife. more importantly, such learning, which is situated in the adolescent learner’s live environment, can be seen as a starting point for understanding the world, acting on it and transforming it. emerging from the above discussion is the recognition that the learning process around socio-environmental issues should involve cognitive, emotional and social processes to bind the whole (body and mind) together. this optimistic outlook of shifting the focus of social and environmental responsibility towards the live environment can, thus, add value towards the holistic education of the adolescent learner (see, e.g., smith, 2018: 7). 8. conclusion life orientation can be perceived as the most significant school subject to empower the adolescent with appropriate knowledge, values and skills regarding social and environmental responsibility at a contextual level. as freire (2001: xii) would argue, teachers should not reduce their (the learners) intellectual task to pure technicism but should contribute to the development of a critical reading of the world. in the context of this study, it implies, for example, that teachers should have the ability to understand and appreciate that the live environment of the adolescent learner cannot be divorced from their teaching and learning practices. seeing the life orientation classroom as an extension of the adolescent learners’ live environment can acquaint them with other ways of knowing, thinking, doing and being. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 1792021 39(3): 179-182 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 swarts assessing selected teachers’ adaptions 9. limitations it is acknowledged that this research was only exploratory in nature. 10. acknowledgement i would like to acknowledge the contribution of prof lesley wood, director of comber in the faculty of education at the north-west university, for her critical reading of and valuable input in this article. references berg, b.l. 2007. qualitative research methods for social sciences. boston: pearson/allyn and bacon. boler, t. & aggleton, p. 2005. life skills education for hiv prevention: a critical analysis. london: save the children and action aid international. botha, j. & du preez, p. 2017. teaching-learning for democracy and human rights in the life 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2008. socio-cultural factors. in l wood (ed.). dealing with hiv and aids in the classroom. cape town: juta. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.13 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315163475 https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v30n2a337 https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v30n2a337 https://doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.5 https://doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.5 https://doi.org/10.1080/18146627.2013.853567 https://doi.org/10.1080/18146627.2013.853567 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77950-8 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77950-8 _hlk34033446 children and participation in south africa: exploring the landscape rachel bray university of cape town sue moses university of cape town much of the literature on children’s participation distinguishes sharply between “informal” and “formal” forms of participation, which although analytically convenient, may limit possibilities for theorising. this paper examines tensions and links between children’s informal and formal participation, and looks at how participation is constituted in and by different social spaces in south africa. some of the ways in which children have participated in public matters prior to and following the advent of democracy in south africa are examined, e.g. through public protest, school governance, law and policy development and service delivery. shifts in the political landscape since apartheid are shown to have both opened and closed spaces and opportunities for children to influence decision making. ultimately, a shrinking of informal spaces and the limited functioning of formal spaces due to popular attitudes and socio-economic factors has resulted in a constrained participation environment. small shifts, however, in acknowledgement of the multiple ways that children collectively and individually contribute to the unfolding of everyday life, the emergence of new informal spaces and a broadening of the focus of participation initiatives, may herald an opportunity to move beyond often formulaic “formal” participation in governance to a broader inclusion of children in decision making. keywords: children’s participation, south africa, political protest, school governance, participatory research, policy, law reform children and participation in south africa: exploring the landscape two decades have passed since the almost universal ratification of the united nations convention of the rights of the child (crc) (office of the high commissioner of human rights, 1989). during this period, both the concept and the practice of children’s participation, though slow in the initial uptake, have gathered increased international attention and support. outlined in articles 12 and 13 of the convention, children’s participatory rights comprise their right to seek information and express their views freely in matters affecting them, and for these to be given due weight in decisions affecting them. this broad conceptualisation of children’s participation has been differently interpreted and practised within and between countries, and has come to refer to a range of practices that not only have different goals, but take place in different contexts, often with varying implications for the relationships between the children and adults involved (moses, 2008). there has been limited scholarly attention to children’s participation in south africa and their contributions to south african society (see bray, 2002; moses, 2008). in an overview, moses (2008) describes the legislative, socio-economic and normative context in which children’s participation takes place in contemporary south africa and, against this backdrop, examines some of the ways in which children participate in public arenas (elaborated on in this paper). she concludes by cautioning against apolitical and ahistorical models of children’s participation (see, for example hart, 1992; lansdown, 2001) building on the earlier work of moses (2008), the purpose of this paper is to sketch some of the ways in which south african children’s participation has been experienced, undertaken and interpreted, and to draw attention to the socio-political, cultural and historical factors shaping these processes. much of the bray & moses — exploring the landscape 7 literature on children’s participation distinguishes sharply between “informal” and “formal” and between individual (private) and public (civic) forms of participation. convenient though such distinctions may be for analytical purposes, an examination of the interface between supposedly separate domains provides fertile ground for theorising children’s participation. here we begin examining tensions and links between children’s informal and formal participation, and ways in which participation and agency are constituted in and by different social spaces. south africa has a long and multi-layered history of colonialism, culminating in over four decades of legalized discrimination under the apartheid state. the result is a society rife with inequalities. chronic poverty stands to impact directly on adults’ and children’s exercise of agency and their sense of participation in society. overcrowding at home is a problem for more than a quarter of the country’s children (hall, 2010), posing challenges to privacy and domestic relationships. low levels of literacy result because the majority of children are schooled in a language other than their mother tongue (heugh, 2000). in general, the standard of education remains extremely poor (bray et al., 2010) and one fifth of children live in households where there is insufficient food (berry et al., 2010). high rates of hiv and aids have rendered very poor families and children more vulnerable to material destitution and social exclusion (giese & meintjes, 2005; wilson, 2006). ongoing high levels of violence and rape remain a cause for grave concern (jewkes, 1999). despite a celebrated constitution (government of south africa, 1996a) write in full for first reference, list in reference list, indicate year for all references in text) and processes of social and political transformation, south africa remains a country traumatized by exclusion, violence and chronic poverty, and is structured around notions of difference. it is with a keen eye to the particularities of this terrain that we consider the nature of children’s civic engagement in contemporary south africa. the paper has three main sections. first, we delineate the status of children and their participatory rights in current national legislation. second, we sketch forms of children’s participation in four different domains, examining some of their interfaces. we begin with the historically prominent, informal space of children’s public protest and then consider more formally constituted spaces of school governance, law and policy development, and service delivery. finally, in the concluding discussion, we consider two areas of fertile terrain for expanding conceptualizations of participation by children. the status of children in national legislation the south african government is duty-bound to actualise children’s rights to be heard in matters that affect their lives via its ratification of the crc (1989) in 1995 and the african charter on the rights and welfare of the child (1990) in 2000. although the south african constitution (1996) does not name specific participation rights, it requires that courts to refer to international law when interpreting constitutional rights (s. 223). given this requirement, the article in the constitution (1996) detailing that the child’s best interests are paramount could be argued to necessitate consultation with children in order to define their best interests. since 1994, a number of legislative amendments have enabled children to participate and make decisions in matters affecting them. these relate to legal proceedings such as custody and adoption cases, consent for medical treatment, as well as access to state grants and care-giving rights for children in charge of households. laws that stand to enforce the constitutional rights of children are mostly age-contingent, however, and leave few opportunities for children in their pre-teenage years to participate in decisions affecting their lives (moses, 2008). exceptions are the choice on termination of pregnancy amendment act no 92 of 1996 (government of south africa, 1996b) which allows girls of any age to access termination of pregnancy without parental consent, and the children’s act no 38 of 2005 (government of south africa, 2005) which provides for children under the age of 12, who are deemed to be of sufficient maturity, to consent to their own hiv testing without parental consent. despite legislative changes in the direction of greater decision-making power in the hands of the young, even older children rarely participate in the ways specified in medical or legal scenarios. as moses (2008:330) notes: perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 20118 perceptions of children’s (in)competence, concerns about protecting children from being burdened with too great responsibility, non-child-friendly institutional cultures, procedures and structures as well as a lack of adult skills for engaging children, all continue to limit children’s meaningful participation in court proceedings. initial consultations with medical professionals around the new provisions for engaging children about their health point to both a lack of skills for and understanding of participatory practice, as well time and human resource constraints (p. proudlock, pers. comm.). popular concerns about children’s incompetence in assessing what is best for them are intertwined with fears about the implications for society of relinquishing a traditionally authoritarian approach to children. for example, parliamentary debate of the child justice bill in 2007/2008 focused on which categories of crime should entitle a child to diversion services. a persistent sense of panic around violent children and the need for more punitive approaches resulted in legislation allowing for lengthy sentences and an over-formalisation of diversion (skelton & gallinetti, 2008). similarly, provisions banning corporal punishment in the home were removed from the final children’s amendment act of 2007 (government of south africa, 2007a) through lobbying by religious and traditional leaders1. this decision reveals the differing and often contradictory perspectives on children’s rights in relation to those of adults, that simmer just below the surface in many sectors of south african society. in short, long held beliefs about children’s place in society contribute to the minimal and slow translation of government obligations into enforceable laws and policies regarding participation. where change does occur, it is not through a sea-change in public opinion, but through the action of special interest or advocacy groups who use their legal mandate to champion a particular cause. it appears that advocacy is more successful where the interests of children and adults converge, and both stand to benefit. for example, significant policy change in the age extension of eligibility for the child support grant (hall, 2010) and changes in the types of documentation needed to access this grant were achieved in part by drawing on the views children and adults affected (lund, 2008). legislative and policy change in which children are the sole or primary beneficiaries, such as child justice discussed above, appears more difficult to achieve. forms of children’s public participation in south africa in the early years of democracy, south africa was strongly committed to public participation. the moral imperative to consult citizenry, including children, was consistent with the broader rights-based ethic of the constitution (1996). while these were powerful forces that stimulated children’s engagement in a number of important legal and policy processes (discussed below), they have not been incorporated into the modus operandi of state departments or into civil society. in the following sections we examine and critique five arenas and mechanisms, both “formal” and “informal”, through which children have expressed their views or are trying to influence decision making. child-led political action the most visible and powerful expressions of children’s public participation in south africa to date are street-based protests against government. the prominent position of children in south african history owes much to their leadership of resistance during the peak of apartheid’s repressive regime. guided by struggle politics, on june 16 1976 school children in soweto marched in protest against government’s insistence that all lessons be taught in afrikaans (neither the first or second language of these nor the vast majority of south africa’s children). the south african minister of bantu education and development, mc botha, issued a decree in 1974 that made the use of afrikaans as a medium of instruction in black schools compulsory from standard 5 onwards [from the last year of primary school to the last year of high school] (http://africanhistory.about.com/od/apartheid/a/afrikaansmediumdecree htm). the african 1 corporal punishment in schools is prohibited by the 1996 south african schools act. bray & moses — exploring the landscape 9 teachers association (atasa) launched a campaign against the policy, but the authorities implemented it anyway. the government responded with bullets, injuring 220 children and killing 23. outraged, children and adults across the country took to the streets and over 500 children were killed in clashes that year (truth and reconciliation commission (trc), 1998). children’s involvement in active resistance to apartheid continued into the 1990s, gaining momentum after 1984. they confronted illegitimate government structures in their immediate environment by rejecting bantu education and instituting boycotts of school, rent for municipal housing, and consumer goods purchased in white-owned stores. they also attacked municipal beer halls in protest against their fathers spending money on alcohol, money that swelled government coffers (carter 1991; cole 1987; marks 2001; ngcokotho 1990; ntsebenza 1993; seekings 1993). the government and its allies responded with uncompromising brutality (detainees’ parents’ support committee (dpsc), 1986; haysom, 1985; trc, 1998; reynolds, 1995a, 1995b, 2005; ross, 2003). according to the truth and reconciliation commission report (1998: 261): all the available figures indicate that the largest number of children and youth was detained between 1985 and 1989, during the two states of emergency. of 80, 000 detentions, 48, 000 were detainees under the age of twenty-five. in the popular imagination during the struggle, youth came to be regarded in polar opposite terms as at once ‘heroes’ (of the liberation struggle) and ‘villains’ (violent, threatening and uncontrolled). the heroic image of south africa’s urban youth was founded on their prominent role in leading resistance to apartheid. the opposing image of young ‘villains’ was promulgated by the government and by children’s involvement in extreme ways of enforcing consumer boycotts and in meting out ‘justice’ in people’s courts (kentridge, 1990; seekings, 1993). research undertaken in the late 1980s and 1990s attempted to move beyond the generalised stereotypes of young ‘heroes’ or ‘villains’ (for example carter, 1991; marks, 2001; ntsebeza, 1993; seekings, 1993; straker 1992; van kessel, 2000). reynolds (1995a, 1995b, 2005) and ross (2003) demonstrate how children and young adults were drawn in large numbers into violent encounters with the government, the extent of their commitment to the struggle often depending on their family histories, their critical self-consciousness as activists and their unfolding ethical commitment to support one another. in the years since the advent of formal democracy in south africa, anecdotal evidence and media reports suggest that public protest has persisted sporadically as a mechanism for children’s participation in matters of public concern. over the last few years, there have been several reports of learners protesting publicly over school governance issues. the response by schools has generally been heavy handed, and the reactions of teachers and parents suggest that in democratic south africa this form of engagement by children is becoming increasingly delegitimized, especially where the concerns of children are not shared by (powerful) adults. for example, bray et al. (2010) discuss how in 2007 in cape town, learners at a secondary school took to the streets in protest against their deputy principal’s unexplained decision to prohibit their attendance at a sports fixture for which many had already paid. summoned by the deputy principal, police confronted learners with rubber bullets. while learners expressed moral justification for their actions and felt that their protest had worked in the interim, in that the deputy principal was temporarily recalled from his position, they also feared that sponsors would be deterred from supporting the school, and that the government might halt plans to build a new high school. dominant adult discourse suggested children had expressed their views inappropriately, and that children’s participation would be legitimate only in alignment with adult agendas. refusing to go to school is seen as failing to live up to the tenets of responsible citizenship within south africa’s new democracy. thus, to be viewed in the (adult) public domain as protesting ‘heroes’ no longer appears possible for the current generation of children, because the ‘new’ south africa is considered to offer freedom, opportunity and access to government to those who were previously oppressed. yet the grievances around poor schooling and the lack of basic service delivery in poor areas remain compelling and unresponsive, and inaccessible decision-making structures perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201110 limit children’s options for “formal” participation (see pendlebury, lake & smith,,2009; seekings & nattrass, 2005). formal participation in school governance the gap between legislation and reality around children’s participation in school governance illustrates the dilemma facing children seeking to influence public spaces which affect them. principals are legally mandated by the south african schools act (sasa) no. 84 of 1996 (government of south africa, 1996c) to enable secondary school learners to elect representatives onto the school governing body (sgb), which governs the management of the school. practical and attitudinal obstacles related to meeting times and the value and skills ascribed to children by the adults in charge, often preclude children’s meaningful engagement (heystek, 2001). carrim (2010, this issue) suggests that the forms of representation specified in the sasa directly determine modes of participation, and he goes so far as to claim that, rather than promoting participatory democracy, sgbs have turned into an exercise in marginalization. authoritarian practices within sgbs also impede the realization of the democratic intent of law (bentley, 2010, this issue). the protest action of high school learners must therefore be read alongside their general dissatisfaction at the tokenistic nature of their membership of sgbs and the absence of any meaningful influence in day-today school affairs (bray et al., 2010). children are not alone in their exclusion from school governance, however, and a full understanding of this phenomenon requires attending to the high levels of parental non-participation in school affairs in poor neighbourhoods: poor parents value education very highly, but rarely attend meetings or make informed choices around which school their children attend (bray et al., 2010). among reasons for their self-exclusion mentioned by bray et al.(2010), some relate to low levels of parental education and perceptions that the government education department has the expertise to deliver quality education and is therefore the legitimate force for change. if parents do not see themselves as having a legitimate role in shaping education, then it is not surprising that children’s role is also marginalised. children’s participation in law reform and policy development despite the apparently facilitatory legal framework offered by the constitution (1996), crc and the african charter (secretary general of the african union, 1990), in south africa there are no formal mechanisms in place for children’s involvement in policy and law reform (moses, 2008). that said, it was the south african law commission, a government body, which in 2001 consulted children on the first draft of a prospective revision of the child care act of 1983 (government of south africa, 1983)) and, in collaboration with the university of the western cape, commissioned a review of the impact of the consultation of children (community law centre, 2002). in subsequent years, university-based researchers and ngos have consulted children in hiv/aids policy, child labour law, policy on social grants and the new children’s bill, a revision of the children’s act (clacherty, 2001d, 2003; giese et al., 2002; mniki & rosa, 2007). the child labour law consultation was commissioned by government; in the other instances consultation was initiated by researchers or non-government organisations (ngos). these processes have necessarily engaged with small groups of children and thus raise questions as to how representative these groups are of the wider child population. moreover, the nature of children’s engagement has varied over time, according to the willingness of the relevant government department to incorporate children’s views into decision making, and according to the decisions of researchers or advocates around the means of gathering and communicating children’s perspectives. some early initiatives did not give children the opportunity to voice their opinions directly to decision makers, but instead relied on adults leading the consultation processes to communicate children’s ideas to decision makers (clacherty, 2001d; community law centre, 2002). the extent to which this communication used children’s own words may have had an impact on its effectiveness. for example, children’s ideas about the effects of firearms on their everyday lives were presented to the parliamentary committee responsible for the fire arms control bill (government of south africa, 2006) using only bray & moses — exploring the landscape 11 the children’s words, ages and genders. in the opinion of members of the ngo which commissioned the consultation, this presentation of children’s experiences motivated a shift in thinking within the committee, and the legislation providing for stricter gun licensing procedures was passed (g. clacherty, pers. comm.). more recent initiatives involved children in direct engagement with adult decision makers around reforms to child labour and child social service legislation. researchers facilitating this engagement point to a lack of buy-in regarding the concept and the value of genuine children’s participation amongst politicians that manifest in the failure to take children’s views seriously (clacherty, 2003; mniki & rosa, 2007). the trivialization of children’s perspectives and their right to be involved imply a normative environment in which children are not deemed able to operate in the sphere of law. it is academic researchers (in collaboration with the ngo sector), rather than members of government bodies who are pursuing an agenda of children’s participation. reflecting on these processes, some have recommended the presence of adult mediators to ensure that children have influence over policy development (mniki & rosa, 2007). in so doing, researchers are effectively saying that their involvement is critical to children’s participation in the policy sphere, at least at this point. within government, an office of the rights of the child (orc) was initially established in the presidency. this office had as its core-function to “mainstream a child-centred approach to policy, planning, programming, communication and funding process in government” (www.thepresidency.gov. za). in 2009, the orc was incorporated into the newly created department of women, children and people with disabilities, with the mission “to create an enabling environment to ensure the facilitation of constitutional obligations, policies and legislative frameworks to realise all children’s rights” (www.wcpd. gov.za). this change, while maintaining a focus on children’s rights, seems to mark a shift away from the rhetoric of participation implied by ideas of child-centred planning. furthermore, both the orc and the new ministry have been conspicuous by their absence in government and civil society efforts to create an environment in which children can participate in policy decisions that stand to affect their lives. interestingly children may have begun to identify new “informal” spaces for voicing their opinion about laws that affect them when formal spaces are not provided. using internet and cell phone chat forums, children organised in protest around clauses of the sexual offences act (government of south africa, 2007b) that banned teenage kissing. these activities have not been formally researched in south africa, and their efficacy is unclear. in this case, the sexual offences act is yet to be revised. participation in community services for children although in the last two decades, a number of ngos have attempted to adopt participatory approaches in their decision making and service-delivery, children typically have very little input in the design or delivery of services that are supposedly geared to meet their needs. adults might uphold the notion of ‘participation’, but consider it inappropriate to involve children in the planning stages of service delivery, because they assume they know what children need, in a way that children themselves do not (moses, 2006). while strong notions of status difference based on age persist in this arena also, such views are also part and parcel of a more general attitude towards ‘the deserving poor’ regardless of their age. one of the lasting influences of apartheid is a welfare approach to social and economic development, including service delivery, that seems to be premised on the need for previously advantaged (white) middle class people to ‘give back’ to previously disadvantaged (black) people (patel, 2005). a welfare and paternalistic approach to development can prevent people making real shifts towards participatory engagement, even when these are espoused (hickey & mohan, 2005). longer-term consultative processes are used by some ngos to provide children with a platform to articulate their needs, views and experiences, in some cases laying the foundation for children’s selfadvocacy (moses, 2008). for example, having gained confidence as individuals and a detailed knowledge of their legal status through participating in advocacy around new child social service legislation (the revised children’s act) (government of south africa, 2005) , several children in their own neighbourhoods perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201112 initiated advocacy around children’s rights, school fee exemptions, the impact of hiv on children, and invited adult participation (mukoma, 2007). these limited activities were child-led and supported by adults, sometimes parents or teachers who had little prior knowledge of the legal arena, and sometimes by the researchers who facilitated the projects through which children developed skills and awareness. where researchers facilitated, their attitudes were biased towards children’s legitimacy and competence to act in this public arena. relationships of trust had been developed over several months or years of regular interaction. in the case of facilitation by parents, neighbours and local adults in positions of authority, trust may be established, but these adults were not part of a process in which the meanings of children’s legal rights to information and the expression of views were debated. unfortunately there have been no detailed analyses of the impact of these activities and we do not know whether differing notions of children’s engagement in the public sphere, or their capacities to act, were obstacles to their advocacy efforts. discussion south african activists and leaders who guided the early years of transformation from apartheid prioritised human rights and inclusive participation in matters of public concern. more recently however, participation, whether of children or adults, appears to have slipped down the political agenda. at the same time, there are patches of fertile ground for broadening conceptual notions of ‘participation’ and contexts in which perceptions of children begin to acknowledge their roles as social actors who shape public spaces through their interaction in “informal” spaces of families, neighbourhoods and increasingly in the virtual worlds of internet and cell phone chat forums. here we outline two broad areas of conceptual and practical development that deserve further exploration. first, as discussed above there have been some instances of effective use of the legal imperative towards children’s rights enshrined in the constitution (1996) and some progressive consultative processes that have led to effective policy change. the weaknesses of child participation processes in the public arena include their dependence on champions, both employees of the state who prioritise their mandate to include children and the individual researchers and consultants who facilitate these processes and their de facto status as useful additions, rather than critical components to policy reform. the result is a handful of small-scale, intensive processes that may create substantial internal energy and shape decision making at a moment in time, but fail to motivate a more general shift towards an inclusive approach in state or voluntary sector policy and program design. perhaps due to the precise directives of their original rationale (e.g. to inform a white paper on child labour), these groups of children and adult facilitators rarely engage with or question the broader realities of children’s civic status across the urban, rural and cultural terrains of south africa. yet, in light of the close and trusting relationships built up within these groups of children and adult facilitators, they may be best placed to grapple with questions that demand interrogation of tacit power relations, and the influence of gender, class, culture, race and religion on the ascription of role and status. there is scope here for considering how the nature and style of relationships between adults and children in these spheres of interaction may differ from relationships between children and the adults they encounter at home, at school, at church, in the clinic, the police station or sports club. it is in these more ordinary and everyday spheres of interaction that we observe the second area of fertile terrain for expanding conceptualizations of participation by children. south africa’s cultural heterogeneity underlies the range of adult conceptions of childhood. at the same time, patriarchal values hold sway across the class and cultural spectrum and underscore a marked disparity in power and status between children and adults (bray et al., 2010; clacherty & donald, 2007). recent qualitative work with children from three culturally and economically diverse communities in cape town revealed that varying cultural and religious metaphors may operate in different contexts to shape lines of authority between adults and children (bray et al., 2010; shelmerdine, 2006). for example, notions of parental responsibility for socializing children to be responsible citizens limits children’s autonomous decisionmaking in white middle-class families, whereas cultural and religious ideas about ukuhlonipha or respect for elders, appear to operate in working class black african and coloured families. differences in cultural bray & moses — exploring the landscape 13 metaphors notwithstanding, evidence suggests that children from a variety of backgrounds experience a stark power disparity in their relationships with adults. children from a variety of backgrounds state that they are seldom asked their opinion, listened to, respected or taken seriously by adults within the home and beyond (bray et al., 2010; clacherty and associates & donald, 2002; moses, 2006). this positioning of children appears to underpin some of the resistance to participation and progressive legislation discussed above. there is, however, evidence that some shifts are occurring and that children’s sustained engagement with and contribution to their households and neighbourhoods is starting to be recognised. for example, evidence is scanty, but poor parents in urban and rural settings with increasing adult fragility wrought by aids-related sickness and death are questioning long-held notions of children’s capacities to understand and to act (dawes, bray, kvalsvig, kafaar, rama & richter, 2004; henderson, 2006). hiv positive mothers are contravening usual practices of avoiding talk about sickness and death with children, by disclosing their status and discussing its implications with very young children (bray & brandt, 2006). moreover, these women recognise children’s contributions to nurture in the home and enact values of respect that are more reciprocal in nature than assertive of rigid status differences between adults and children (bray et al., 2010). gender seems influential in that there is more latitude to enact consultative relationships with children amongst women than amongst men. research to further probe such shifts in attitude and discourse would shed light on the extent to which this is occurring and how these changes might be harnessed to create more spaces (both formal and informal) for children to influence decision making. conclusion this paper has provided an overview of some of the ways in which children participated in public matters prior to and following the advent of democracy in south africa. moving away from the sharp distinctions between “formal” and “informal” to examine both public protest, as well as more formal access to governance and decision making enables us to think about what opens and closes spaces for engagement. liberal democracy seems to have de-legitimised informal public protest by children, even in the eyes of fellow adult community members, as government power has been legitimised. in the absence, however, of the meaningful opening of other more formal spaces and significant shifts in the socio-economic circumstances of people’s lives, children are left with a de facto oppressive situation and few mechanisms for engaging power structures. despite this constrained environment however, in the presence of adult champions, children do seem able to access formal structures, and small shifts in acknowledgement of the multiple ways in which children collectively and individually contribute to the unfolding of everyday life are evident among adults who are facing new health and socio-economic challenges in contemporary south africa, that have brought children’s roles into sharper relief. these shifts and opportunities could herald an 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bray & moses — exploring the landscape 17 straker g 1992. faces in the revolution: the psychological effects of violence on township youth in south africa. cape town: david philip. swart-kruger j 2000. growing up in canaan’s land: children’s recommendations on improving a squatter camp environment, a site report in the international project ‘growing up in cities’ pretoria: human sciences research council. swart-kruger j & chawla l 2002. ‘we know something someone doesn’t know’: children speak out on local conditions in johannesburg. environment and urbanization, 14:85-96. truth and reconciliation commission 1998. truth and reconciliation of south africa report, volumes one – five. cape town: juta. van kessel i 2000. ‘beyond our wildest dreams’: the united democratic front and the transformation of south africa. charlottesville: university press of virginia. wilson f 2006. on being a father and poor in southern africa today. in: l richter & r morrell (eds), baba: men and fatherhood in south africa. cape town: human sciences research council. 213 research article 2020 38(2): 213-226 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.14 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) contextualising science and mathematics teacher professional development in rural areas abstract science and mathematics teacher professional development in south africa does not adequately address teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge or ability to integrate indigenous knowledge into the curriculum. this situation is partly due to traditional teacher professional development programmes that utilise top-down and expert-driven approaches without consulting teachers. this “onesize-fits-all” model is rarely relevant to teachers’ classroom realities, especially in rural areas. the research question that guided this research was: how could the professional development intervention be contextualised to better meet the educational needs of a rural environment? in this paper, we explore the design principles for teacher professional development interventions that could address the needs of teachers and the context, acknowledging that teachers in rural areas face different challenges compared to teachers in urban areas. we use the hantam region of the northern cape province as a case study to explore the affordances of partnerships with local indigenous knowledge holders and cultural institutions (museums) in the professional development of teachers. data were generated from semi-structured interviews with hantam school and community participants using a qualitative approach. two major themes that emerged from this qualitative research was that (a) the involvement of indigenous knowledge holders and museums as “third partners” in the value chain between universities and schools, could greatly assist to better contextualise the “western” science curriculum, and (b) the incorporation of indigenous knowledge in the stem curriculum could assist in building the self-esteem of learners. we argue that contextualising science and mathematics teacher professional development for the rural environment has affordances for improving not only teacher competencies, but also learners’ views on the relevance of science and mathematics in everyday life. keywords: teacher professional development; contextualised curriculum; indigenous knowledge; rural areas; science and citizenship education. 1. introduction in south africa, education is essential for redressing past injustices and transforming society into a democratic authors: dr melissa speight vaughn1 prof josef de beer1 affiliation: research unit self-directed learning, north-west university doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38. i2.14 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(2): 213-226 published: 04 december 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.14 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4475-0834 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2411-6599 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.14 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.14 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.14 2142020 38(2): 214-226 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.14 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) nation-state. the department of education asserts that education is pivotal to economic prosperity and plays a key role in enabling citizens to improve the quality of their lives in contributing to a peaceful, productive and democratic nation (department of education, 2005). positioned at the front lines of educational reform were science, technology, engineering and mathematics curriculum reform, of which professional development was a critical component (villegas-reimers, 2003). in order to be a global player in the world economy, south africa needs innovative and creative scientists, but this means that science education in the country has to be greatly improved (centre for development and enterprise, 2011). conventional teacher professional development in the form of workshops, conferences, courses and seminars were initiated to improve identified skill deficits in content, curriculum and pedagogy (rogan, 2004; taylor, 2008; kriek & grayson, 2009). however, after two decades, teacher competency has not improved as envisaged (tsotetsi & mahlomaholo, 2015; de beer, 2016). researchers note that many professional development programmes are imported products, implemented uniformly from a top-down perspective and based on expert knowledge that is irrelevant to the classroom realities of teachers, especially in rural areas (ball & cohen, 1999; bantwini, 2009; ono & ferreira, 2010; de beer, 2016). in this paper we reflect on design principles for teacher professional development interventions that could better address the needs of teachers and the rural sector. we aim to address the gap between teacher professional development and their educational needs by investigating how teachers could be assisted to infuse indigenous knowledge into the science and mathematics curricula. this research contributes to the national “decolonising of the curriculum” debate by contextualising teacher professional development for a rural environment. the research question guiding this research was: how could the professional development intervention be contextualised to better meet the educational needs of a rural environment? many rural schools are located on former homelands, previously disadvantaged areas with a multitude of challenges to the achievement of quality education (mckinney, 2005; stack et al., 2011). rural areas represent the poorest and least resourced areas of the country. however, science in these contexts is embedded in local indigenous knowledges of the environment through generations of observation and experiences (aikenhead, 1996). de beer and mentz (2017) have shown that the holders of indigenous knowledge are often, per definition, selfdirected learners who solved problems in their environment through processes very similar to the syntactical tools utilised by scientists. through oral transmission, indigenous ways of knowing and practising science – as well as mathematics and technology – are vibrant in rural environments (khupe, 2014). researchers have documented the influence of cultural background on science education (cameron, 2010; manzini, 2006) as well as the connection between science and citizenship (irwin & wynne, 1996; jasanoff, 2004). this paper explores teacher professional development from a community-based approach, recognising that schools are integrated into the fabric of rural communities. we explore the affordances of partnerships with indigenous knowledge holders and cultural institutions (museums) in the professional development of teachers. similar to jautse, thambe and de beer (2016), we allude to the fact that a “third partner” is needed in the value chain between schools and university teacher training to effectively prepare science teachers for a complex 21st century. 2. theoretical framework this paper views teacher professional development through a socio-cultural lens that engages knowledge and cultural assets of the local community. we integrate learning http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.14 2152020 38(2): 215-226 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.14 speight vaughn & de beer contextualising science and mathematics theories – namely, social constructivism (vygotsky, 1978) and embodied, situated and distributed cognition (hardy-vallee & payette, 2008) – as a foundation from which to develop teachers professionally and promote life-long learning. we argue for a situational approach to professional development that considers teacher structures and supports that assist with knowledge transfer in classrooms (darling-hammond & mclaughlin, 1995; rout & behera, 2014). 2.1 social constructivism; and embodied, situated and distributed cognition we argue from the perspective of embodied, situated and distributed cognition (esdc) that grants the body a central role in cognition (wilson, 2002; hardy-vallee & payette, 2008). cognition is physiologically embodied, socio-culturally situated and distributed among the community. esdc emphasises the connection between brain/mind and ongoing interaction with the physical and social environment (reichelt & rossmanith, 2008). this cognitive system guides action (wilson, 2002). an important implication of esdc is the role that different modalities such as bodily movements and cultural artefacts play in the understanding of science and mathematical concepts. we situate esdc within a social constructivist framework that engages teachers’ prior knowledge in constructing new knowledge. social constructivism focuses on the construction of knowledge as opposed to knowledge transfer typical of traditional teacher development programmes (rout & behera, 2014:11). constructivism mirrors how learning takes place in the classroom environment. koohang et al. (2009) assert that learning is enhanced when the teacher and learner roles are subsumed in the learning process. social constructivism allows fluidity between these roles in the learning environment. for vygotsky (1978), social constructivism is at its best when teachers reach the “zone of proximal development” (zpd) where the knowledge of the entire group is collectively increased. this learning process requires a range of learning tasks beyond the knowledge level of any individual group member. mastery of the task requires that all learners are engaged in the process. this framework provides a sound basis for context-specific professional development that is responsive to culture and relevant to teacher needs. we employ a contextualised approach to professional development that engages knowledge and the cultural assets of the local community, acknowledging that schools in rural areas are not entities separated from the cultural community. 2.2 nature of indigenous knowledge and nature of science, and the conundrum facing us in science education several researchers have shown that many south african teachers do not hold nuanced understandings of the nature of science (cronje, 2015; pretorius, 2015). abd-el-khalick, bell and lederman (1998), who developed an instrument to capture teachers’ views of the nature of science, make it clear that a relationship exists between teachers’ views of concepts, and how they teach. the argument is that, if teachers have good understandings of the empirical and inferential nature of science, it might be reflected in how they create learning opportunities (e.g., favouring inquiry learning over transmission-mode approaches). ramnarain and schuster (2014) show that there are many systemic issues that influence such transfer in the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.14 2162020 38(2): 216-226 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.14 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) classroom. the latter authors have shown that teachers (especially in rural schools) often “teach-to-the-test”, despite their own pedagogical orientations, due to pressure from, among others, parents and principals to achieve good examination results. cronje (2015) developed an instrument to capture views on indigenous knowledge, based on the instrument developed by abd-el-khalick for views on the nature of science. she has shown that indigenous knowledge shares several tenets with the natural sciences, e.g., both are empirical, tentative, inferential and creative. there are, however, also differences, e.g., indigenous knowledge has a metaphysical character, unlike science. it is these metaphysical and holistic doctrines that create a conundrum regarding the inclusion of indigenous knowledge into the science and mathematics classroom. taylor and cameron (2016) show that there are three epistemological perspectives on such border-crossing: (a) indigenous knowledge is part of science; (b) indigenous knowledge and science are different domains of knowledge, and border-crossing is not advisable; and (c) indigenous knowledge and science should be seen as intersecting domains, and the focus in the classroom should be on the “shared space” between the domains. this complexity and uncertainty raise another concern: are teacher educators equipped to provide teachers (in-service training) and student-teachers (pre-service teacher education) with a good understanding of this complexity? this is the gap that this paper explores. how could a collaboration with the holders of indigenous knowledge and museums, as a “third partner”, address this concern? 3. methodology 3.1 the short-learning programme the namaqua district covers an area of 126,836 square kilometres and includes six municipalities, namely the richtersveld, nama khoi, kamiesberg, hantam, karoo hoogland and khai-ma. this research focused on the hantam region that is bounded geographically by the hantam mountains, with the town calvinia forming the hub of the region. it contains flora, fauna, indigenous knowledge and culture specific to this geographical region. of specific interest, is that a sizable proportion of the people in this area are of khoi-san (nama, griqua and !xam) ancestry (de beer, 2012). adhering to the design-based research principles described by anderson and shattuck (2012), research requires long-term engagement and intensive collaboration in the research context to improve short-learning programmes (slps). the first cycle of the design-based research started with an slp in the hantam district in 2017. the first slp set out to build teacher capacity to facilitate epistemological border-crossing between indigenous knowledge and science curriculum topics. in the slp, the focus was on problem-based learning, e.g., teachers engaged in an adapted kirby-bauer technique (mitchell & cater, 2000) to test anti-microbial activity of medicinal plants as well as cooperative learning, e.g., methods such as de bono’s thinking hats. cycle 2 of the design-based research began seven months later with a community-based qualitative inquiry exploring indigenous knowledge resources and the educational needs of the sector. the community inquiry and intervention follow-up ran concurrently. 3.2 research design this research was designed to investigate a professional development slp for science, technology and mathematics (stem) teachers in the hantam area in the northern cape. the hantam professional development course is an example of professional development http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.14 2172020 38(2): 217-226 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.14 speight vaughn & de beer contextualising science and mathematics that considers the social, cultural and historical context of rural education. according to stake (2005), a case study is distinguishable by its unit of study in a bounded system. yin (2014) adds that a case study is an empirical inquiry investigating a phenomenon in its reallife context. this research proceeded as a qualitative case study because the boundaries between phenomenon and context were blurred (yin, 2014). the aim in cycle 2 was to see how inputs from indigenous knowledge holders could further enhance the impact of the slp. 3.3 data sampling 3.3.1 population the target population included community members and teachers in the hantam district. a total of seventy-seven (77) teachers and eight (8) community members voluntarily participated in this research study. of the teachers who participated in the slp, thirty-seven (37) science teachers and forty (40) mathematics teachers volunteered. community member participants included indigenous knowledge holders, the museum curator and officials from the department of basic education. most notable of the community member participants, were the local holders of indigenous knowledge. 3.3.2 sampling techniques a snowball sampling method was used to invite hantam residents to participate in the second cycle of research. semi-structured interview conversations were conducted with eight (8) community members (notably the holders of indigenous knowledge), museum staff (the calvinia museum) and officials from the department of education. during cycle 1, stem teachers in the namaqua district were invited to participate in an slp held in the town of calvinia. the criteria for inclusion were that participants were stem teachers who had the desire and ability to travel to calvinia to participate in a professional development course. these criteria were met by all participating teachers in the slp. at the conclusion of the course, attending teachers were asked to voluntarily participate in the study. those who volunteered were a random sample of the slp participants. purposeful random sampling lends credibility to the sample as palinkas et al. (2015: 534) suggests. purposive sampling was used to select community member participants. patton (2002) recommends purposive sampling in qualitative research to render information-rich cases. the purposive strategy was employed with snowball sampling to recruit a homogeneous population of community members. snowball sampling is based on the connectivity of the community, as volunteers suggest other possible volunteers who have similar characteristics (huberman, 1994:90). in this regard, we were interested in indigenous knowledge holders in the hantam region. we relied on familial and network connections of the community “gatekeeper” as a strategy to collect a homogeneous sample of knowledge holders. this combination of strategies was deemed most effective for our research design and the best use of our limited resources. the sample size in this study was chosen to ensure data saturation, in order to distil design principles for contextualised teacher professional development (yin, 2003). while this case is not intended to generalise to all contexts, we do expect the findings to generalise to the “underlying” context of the study (onwuegbuzie, 2003:400), namely teacher professional development in the rural context within south africa. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.14 2182020 38(2): 218-226 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.14 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) 3.4 data collection this research proceeded in two phases. the first phase was the slp conducted in the hantam region. the second phase involved community-based inquiry. this phase occurred eight (8) months later in the hantam community. each phase is explained in detail below. phase 1 a total of seventy-seven (77) teachers attended the intervention – thirty-seven (37) science teachers and forty (40) mathematics teachers. teachers voluntarily completed one-on-one interviews during the two-day intervention. after the intervention, they were granted six months in which to complete portfolios documenting the application of professional development skills and indigenous knowledge integration into their classroom instruction. data obtained from teacher interviews and professional development portfolios assisted facilitators to distil new design principles to better serve the educational needs of teachers in the rural hantam context. phase 2 a total of eight (8) community members consented to voluntarily participate in the research. all eight participants were residents of the hantam community. one participant was a museum curator, three were indigenous knowledge holders (one employed by the museum) and four were community residents. all participants volunteered to participate in an audio-recorded biographical interview guided by a semi-structured questionnaire. two participants completed a video narrative explaining indigenous knowledge and hantam culture. the semi-structured biographical interview protocol comprised seven (7) questions. the semi-structure was selected to allow participants to narratively reflect on their residence in the hantam community and the culture of the place. this structure also allowed participants to engage in storytelling, which is a mode of cultural transmission in indigenous knowledge systems. the first three questions were biographical in nature, specifically asking participants about the length of their residence in the hantam area. one question asked whether the participant’s family had generational residence in the area. the remaining questions were topical to explore aspects of daily life and cultural values that community members hold dear. participants could choose to skip questions they experienced as uncomfortable. the biographical interview was audio recorded. the video narrative was purposed to capture visual images and representations of science in their daily lives. participants were issued cameras and asked to take pictures of aspects of nature and the environment that represent science and citizenship. in a subsequent meeting, participants were asked to explain the significance of the images. 3.5 data analysis data included researcher observations and field notes, oral interviews and video narratives. interviews and narratives were transcribed and coded along with researcher notes. descriptive codes were used according to saldana’s (2009) technique. themes emerged from the process of coding and categorising the data. codes were grouped into categories and themes emerged from comparison of categories with the research question. this paper reports preliminary findings of the ongoing design-based research. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.14 2192020 38(2): 219-226 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.14 speight vaughn & de beer contextualising science and mathematics 3.6 ethical considerations ethical clearance was obtained from the university (nwu-00271-16-a2 for cycle 1; nwuhs-2017-0135 for cycle 2) and community gatekeepers. two participants volunteered to record video narratives explaining indigenous knowledge and hantam culture. permission for teacher participation in the study was sought in writing from the department of basic education in the namakwa district. permission for involvement of khoi-san indigenous knowledge holders was obtained from community gatekeepers. we were also guided in this research by the san code of research ethics (2017), the first indigenous code of researcher ethics in africa. all volunteers were requested to complete an informed consent form that explained the research aims and objectives and volunteers’ right to withdraw from the study at any time. the consent included an explanation of risks and benefits associated with participation in the study. volunteers completed an interview. privacy and confidentiality were observed by the use of pseudonyms and firewall data protection. 4. findings themes emerging from the data show that education in the hantam rural environment is embedded in the social and cultural fabric of the area. education is connected to indigenous knowledge, cultural artefacts and issues of social justice. professional development initiatives would do well to consider the cultural context of rural schools to better meet the needs of teachers in these environments. this paper reports preliminary findings of ongoing research. 4.1 theme 1: social connectedness of education and contextualised stem education participants indicated that education in the rural environment is not an isolated institution. memci, the calvinia museum curator, stated that she often collaborates with teachers and students to provide resources and needed support for teachers: every year, foundation phase learners come to the museum to do their history project. i take them on a tour of the museum and show them the resources we have here. i work with the teachers to organize the learners to come every year. memci nurtured the educational connection between community and schools by providing cultural and historical artefacts to assist learners in constructing history projects. in the hantam rural context, sustainable professional development should utilise already existing community connections. education in the hantam is everyone’s business. gammie, the local traffic policeman, utilises the school to connect students with cultural knowledge through the rieldans. the rieldans is a form of khoi-san cultural knowledge that promotes cultural identity and community engagement (van wyk, 2013). gammie boasts: the rieldans is the property of the khoisan people. it is their knowledge and identity. the rieldans is important because people of khoisan roots are losing their identity from western influence. gammie’s dance troops are students in local schools that come from farms. his work maintains the connection between farms and schools in the hantam. gammie explained how he uses the rieldans to encourage educational achievement: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.14 2202020 38(2): 220-226 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.14 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) i tell them they can do anything. they can use what they learn on the farm in school. the rieldans is knowledge of the farm and they can be proud of what they know from the farm. the need for contextualised teacher professional development prompted the teacher educators in this project to focus on the affordances of traditional music for learning in the mathematics classroom. owing to generous funding obtained from the fuchs foundation, teachers and school learners were provided with “boom whackers”, plastic pipes of various lengths, that can be used as music instruments. these boom whackers were accompanied by sheet music, in which learners are taught about fractions (figure 1). boom whackers are coloured plastic tubes that work in the same way as xylophones. music symbols were transposed to mathematical symbols (fractions, e.g., ¹⁄6, ⅛, etc.) with the size of the fraction indicating the time duration of the “hit” (van der walt & potgieter, 2019). figure 1: teaching fractions in the mathematics classroom as inspired by indigenous music additionally, khoi-san indigenous knowledge and culture is embedded in the hantam local culture. education is not separate from social and economic issues affecting hantam residents. christien, an indigenous knowledge holder staying on a farm in the agter-hantam, stated: “i wish i could have been a teacher so i can teach the children about my plants and medicines. it is important for them to know what plants can do.” christien’s desire to pass on or transmit knowledge to future generations is a tenet of indigenous knowledge. she also recognised the importance of khoi-san indigenous knowledge to science education in hantam classrooms as she referenced medicinal properties of plants. in the hantam many people rely on plants for medicinal purposes (de beer, 2012). christien also recognised the connection between education and economic issues in the farm community: “my son has the knowledge. he wanted to be a teacher but we work on the farm. we don’t have money to send him to varsity.” http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.14 2212020 38(2): 221-226 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.14 speight vaughn & de beer contextualising science and mathematics christien’s dream of transmitting indigenous knowledge to teachers and students can be realised through the local museum. the museum curator agreed to house the memorial garden of khoi-san medicinal plants, indigenous to the hantam. the museum will also house a permanent exhibit of khoi-san indigenous knowledge and influence in the hantam area. these exhibits are an outgrowth of the cultural research we embarked on to contextualise the professional learning intervention. in the second half of 2017, we embarked on a teacher professional development programme for life sciences teachers in which insights about the importance of ethnobotany in this region resulted in tailor-made activities. de beer and van wyk (2011) conceptualised the so-called matrix method for engaging in ethnobotanical surveys in the classroom. teachers’ learning was scaffolded in this regard and they were introduced to ethnobotanical activities that learners can engage with in the life sciences classroom, such as an adapted kirby-bauer technique (mitchell & cater, 2000) to test whether medicinal plants that are culturally used, have any antimicrobial activity, as well as doing ethnobotanical surveys in the community. one of the teachers, marlize, indicated that this resulted in much enthusiasm among her learners and the attainment of affective outcomes. one of the teachers started a project where her learners engaged in making herbarium voucher specimens for a class herbarium (figure 2). figure 2: resources that were provided to schools (herbarium presses and autoclaves) on the left-hand side, and a learner’s project in ethnobotany on the right-hand side the involvement of a holder of indigenous knowledge such as christien, through her involvement in the museum, is able to provide a teaching and learning resource that could lead to more contextualised science education. 4.2 theme 2: the affordances of indigenous knowledge in stem education for building self esteem community participants indicated that they were alienated from educational institutions in the past. however, educational opportunities are available for adults since 1994. for gertjie, education was connected to social justice. he was unfairly denied education in his youth because he lived on a farm: “i had to work on the farm. when i could go to school, the farmer said i had hair on my face, i need to work on the farm.” when educational opportunities were made available, gertjie was denied the privilege of going to school because “he had hair on his face” (referring to the fact that, as an adolescent, he had a beard); otherwise stated he was too old and more useful as a farm worker than as a learner in school. in adulthood, gertjie realised education as his human right through literacy programmes. he can now learn to read and write. in his words: “no one has to read for me, i can read myself.” http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.14 2222020 38(2): 222-226 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.14 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) education is embedded in community life, but local indigenous knowledge is not common in school classrooms. carin, a foundation phase administrator, asserted: khoi-san indigenous knowledge and stories should be in the curriculum to build confidence in the learners. most of them (learners in her school) are khoi-san. they have the knowledge at home and in their communities, but it has to stay at home when they come to school. integrating communities in schools holds innumerable benefits for building children’s selfesteem. older participants stated that indigenous knowledge was confined to the realm of the home. it was not valid in schools. carin explained that khoi-san indigenous knowledge is the way that she knows in the veld. she grew up hearing khoi-san stories about the veld. she learned about the environment and atmosphere from those stories. she regards indigenous knowledge as essential for building the self-esteem of children. however, this knowledge is not included in the curriculum. the intimate connection between education, community and indigenous knowledge in the hantam is best illustrated by a vignette from marlize’s ethnobotanical survey. one of her grade 10 learners, henrico, was so inspired by this assignment that he visited the calvinia library and he asked the librarian for books on the flora of the hantam. he was given a dissertation on the ethnobotany of the hantam (de beer, 2012), and while working through the text, he stumbled upon a photograph of his uncle, martiens. the latter was consulted during this ethnobotanical survey in 2012. henrico was so inspired by this “knowledge in the blood”, that he decided that he would like to pursue a career in botany after passing grade 12. the acknowledgement of his own cultural knowledge did much to build his self-esteem and a sense of pride in his rich khoi-san heritage. 5. discussion and conclusion nelson mandela (2005:vi) stated “the most profound challenges to south africa’s development and democracy can be found in its rural hinterlands”. rural environments are typically areas of high concentrations of poverty, unemployment and low educational attainment (myende, 2014). the historically present depravation of south africa’s rural areas makes quality education not only an imperative but also an issue of social justice and citizenship (odorahoppers, 2004). teacher professional development in the rural hantam environment was contextualised by building on existing community partnerships and integrating khoi-san indigenous knowledge into stem classrooms. this community-based approach informed the design of teacher professional development aligned with the educational needs of the community. embodied, distributed and situated cognition provided a foundation to explore the interaction between physical and social environment that is active in indigenous knowledge contexts. the use of embodied ways of knowing decolonises ways of knowing and practising science and mathematics in stem classrooms. the embodied perspective also provided a lens through which to explore the affordances of cultural assets in contextualising teacher professional development. the contextualised teacher professional development approach presented in this paper strengthened partnerships between the community and schools aimed at improving teacher competencies and making science and mathematics instruction relevant to the learners. contextualised teacher professional development has the potential to http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.14 2232020 38(2): 223-226 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.14 speight vaughn & de beer contextualising science and mathematics harness knowledge assets and cultural resources present in rural communities, making social transformation a possibility. 6. acknowledgement the authors acknowledge funding from the national research foundation and the fuchs foundation. views expressed are not necessarily those of the nrf or fuchs foundation. references abd-el-khalick, f., bell, r.l. & lederman, n.g. 1998. the nature of science and instructional practice: making the unnatural natural. science education, 82: 417–437. https://doi. org/10.1002/(sici)1098-237x(199807)82:4<417::aid-sce1>3.0.co;2-e. aikenhead, g.s. 1996. science education: border crossing into the subculture of science. studies in science education, 27: 1–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057269608560077. anderson, t. & shattuck, j. 2012. design-based research: a decade of progress in education research? educational researcher, 41(1)” 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http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) implementing lesson study as a professional development approach for early grade teachers: a south african case study abstract lesson study is an internationally recognised professional development approach for teachers. this case study explores the impact of implementing lesson study in the early grades of a south african primary school, pertinently targeting early childhood mathematics teachers. the evidence suggests that lesson study has the potential to positively influence content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, general professional development and creative teaching of early grade teachers. the study established that lesson study enhanced intergrade cooperation and curriculum development and flow. participants regarded the collaborative experience as deeply enriching and fulfilling. although some implementation challenges were encountered, these were not insurmountable and the overall benefits of lesson study outweighed the potential obstacles. keywords: collaboration; early grades; lesson study; mathematics; professional development; professional learning community. 1. introduction as is commonly accepted, a link exists between competent teaching and effective learning, paving the way for learner achievement (see kane, taylor, tyler & wooten, 2011; stronge, ward & grant, 2011). teachers should continually grow their knowledge and skills in order to be more effective when it comes to implementing the best educational practices possible (mizell, 2010). professional development (pd) of teachers is a necessary process for promoting the growth of teacher knowledge and excellence, enabling teachers to put knowledge into practice for the benefit of their learners (avalos, 2011). teachers in south africa have been criticised for their lack of content knowledge (feza, 2016; musundire, 2017; venkat & spaull, 2015) and poor overall professionalism (msibi & mchunu, 2013). in mathematics, learners are lagging behind their peers in author: mrs erika helmbold1 dr roy venketsamy1 dr judy van heerden1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i3.14 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(3): 183-196 published: 16 september 2021 received: 25 january 2021 accepted: 16 march 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 1842021 39(3): 184-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) international benchmarking (reddy et al., 2016). there is an urgent call to develop our current teachers to bridge this gap, to enhance their competence to improve learner performance. effective teacher pd “continues to be the most important challenge where the improvement of south african schooling is concerned” (de clercq & phiri, 2013:77). this paper explores the impact of implementing lesson study as a pd approach in the early grades of a south african primary school, targeting early childhood mathematics teachers. extant research literature elucidates several components of successful teacher pd, including the approach of in-service co-learning through a system of professional learning communities (plcs) (feldman, 2020). “some of the most promising approaches to the professional development of teachers have been those that seek to target teachers within the multiple contexts of their schools and classrooms” (jita & mokhele, 2012:2). this form of inservice pd should be initiated and supported by school leadership for a more successful and sustainable outcome (brown & militello, 2016). interested stakeholders in the south african education arena have endorsed such in-service models of pd in their integrated strategic planning framework for teacher education and development in south africa 2011–2025 (ispfted) (dbe, 2011). the aim has been to include these plcs within all schools to promote teacher pd. evidence suggests that school-embedded collaborative pd is more effective in teacher pd than non-school based pd courses and workshops (opfer, 2016; mukeredzi, 2013). however, these professional learning communities have been slow to materialise locally and “have yet to take off across a wide range of schools” (dbe 2015:35). effective pd programmes should incorporate a strong focus on learner outcomes (cordingley et al., 2015) and be of a prolonged duration (darling-hammond & richardson, 2009; demonte, 2013; taylor, 2008) with a cyclic “rhythm” of monitoring, support and followup activities (darling-hammond, hyler & gardner, 2017). furthermore, effective professional teacher development should centre on the improvement of teacher-pedagogical and subject knowledge (cordingley et al., 2015). this article summarises key findings of a study exploring the impact of implementing an internationally well-established plc method (dudley, 2014), namely the japanese lesson study, as a potential framework for facilitating the pd of early childhood mathematics teachers in a south african primary school. the lesson study approach fulfils the criteria of schoolembedded pd and recommends components for effective pd, as discussed above. with a growing body of international evidence promoting lesson study as a powerful and flexible method of teacher development (cajkler et al., 2014; dudley, 2013; lewis et al., 2012; hunter & back, 2011), it is concerning that south africa lags behind when it comes to implementing, analysing and documenting the potential of this pd approach. particularly conspicuous in its absence is any recorded research on the impact of lesson study as a pd tool for early grade south african teachers as well as research on the potential challenges in implementing such a plc, which is the lacuna addressed by this article. 2. what is lesson study? lesson study consists of certain common and basic components, namely a teaching group formulating goals to address the needs in learner learning and development; group formulation of a lesson plan to attain the goals; presentation of the lesson by one member of the group, while the others observe and gather evidence; and discussion of and reflection on the evidence gathered during the lesson by the group, while using these to improve the lesson http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 1852021 39(3): 185-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 helmbold, venketsamy & van heerden implementing lesson study and their own teaching practice (groves et al., 2013). these plc sessions devote large portions of time discussing the flow of the lesson and anticipated learner responses (fujii, 2016). seleznyov (2018) describes how authentic lesson study incorporates the cyclic nature of gleaning knowledge from post lesson discussions to guide new lesson plans. seleznyov (2018) further expounds the way in which authentic lesson study promotes the spread of knowledge amongst teachers and across schools by means of a feedback process. one way in which to achieve this is to invite teachers not directly involved in lesson study planning to observe and discuss the research lesson (takahashi & mcdougal, 2016: 521). participants engage in lesson study for the purpose of learning something new, and not for refining a lesson (takahashi & mcdougal, 2016). in its original state, lesson study is neither “funded nor mandatory” as a form of teacher development (doig & groves, 2011:77). traditional lesson study is celebrated as a highly collaborative model, developing a “community of teachers who learn together” (stols & ono, 2016:1). 3. methodology this study employed a case study approach, entailing the examination of a phenomenon as an isolated instance occurring within its own context. the research was conducted in a single independent, non-subsidised primary school situated in urban gauteng, south africa, within the ekurhuleni north region. the community served by the school borders an urban township in the outer city suburbs. the community could be defined as having a middle socio-economic status. the school learners had a demographic distribution similar to that of the general population of south africa: 74% african, 12% indian, 9% white, 4% coloured and 1% asian. the school had 420 learners at the time of research, of which 256 were early grade learners, that is, grades rrr–3. ethics approval was obtained from the committee of the university of pretoria and gauteng department of education: research unit prior to research commencing. the lesson study sessions were held once weekly, usually for two hours, over a 14 weekperiod. two research lessons were presented during the 14-week period of data gathering. these lessons were undertaken while non-participating teachers and learners attended a school assembly, ensuring minimal disruption to the daily school timetable. research lessons were presented to grade 1 learners. initially, 11 teachers from the school were invited to participate in the research. of the 11 that were initially invited, only six agreed to participate. participants signed informed voluntary consent for their participation. the table below summarises the relevant demographics of the participating teachers. teachers were coded to ensure anonymity and confidentiality. table 1: demographics of research participants teaching grade of participant age years of teaching experience at time of research race qualification code given grade r 39 19 white ba ed t1 grade r 48 23 white hde t2 grade 1 24 1 white bed t3 grade 1 68 46 white thde & fde t4 grade 2 41 14 white ba hons pgce t5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 1862021 39(3): 186-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) teaching grade of participant age years of teaching experience at time of research race qualification code given grade 2 65 17 white ba & hed t6 researcher/ facilitator 42 23 white med t7 data collection methods included a semi-structured focus group interview at the onset of the study, live recordings of all meetings that were transcribed and accompanied by intensive field notes, weekly participant journaling and two research questionnaires, one occurring midstudy and one at its conclusion. table 2 below reflects the data collection process outlining the timeline of the research and data collection methods utilised at each stage. table 2: timeline of data collection process time data collected by researcher (observations and field notes, memos, audio recordings and researcher reflective journaling) data submitted by participants c yc le 1 week 1 introductory training on the lesson study method and a semi-structured focus group interview week 2 pre-lesson discussion reflective journaling week 3 pre-lesson discussion reflective journaling week 4 pre-lesson discussion reflective journaling week 5 pre-lesson discussion reflective journaling week 6 lesson delivery and post-lesson discussion reflective journaling c yc le 2 week 7 pre-lesson discussion reflective journaling week 8 pre-lesson discussion reflective journaling week 9 questionnaire questionnaire covid-19 compulsory government school lockdown c yc le 3 week 10 pre-lesson discussion reflective journaling week 11 pre-lesson discussion reflective journaling week 12 pre-lesson discussion reflective journaling week 13 lesson delivery and post-lesson discussion incorporating outside teachers reflective journaling week 14 questionnaire questionnaire data were analysed thematically. practical steps taken in the analysis involved gaining familiarity with the data through managing and organising the materials, while transcribing and reading, followed by the generation of initial codes. themes were uncovered and defined from coding which required a combination of inductive and deductive processing skills. initially, a limit of 50 initial codes was utilised that were later combined and reduced into a smaller number of broader categories. the coding process combined a priori coding and open coding (maree, 2007). the open coding primarily used inductive analysis of the data, allowing codes that were not prefigured to emerge. however, due to an extensive literature review and the construction of a predetermined conceptual framework underpinning the study, certain a priori codes were also utilised. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 1872021 39(3): 187-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 helmbold, venketsamy & van heerden implementing lesson study definitive attempts were made to safeguard the credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability of the data (lincoln & guba, 1985). the research project was relatively prolonged, allowing for the building of trust between the participants. multiple contextual theories and data sources were utilised, including journals, field notes, transcriptions of meetings, questionnaire feedback and group interview transcriptions, allowing for intense triangulation and crystallisation of the data. transferability of the research was enhanced through vivid and rich descriptions of the process, incorporating extensive detail and clearly bounding the research criteria. dependability was maintained through the creation of an audit trail and through a process of peer auditing. peer auditing occurred on a weekly basis with a non-participating colleague. participants member-checked all final research findings. 4. findings and discussion lesson study had a significant impact on several areas of the professional development of participant teachers. impact was primarily noted around improving content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge of participants, as well as general areas such as raising the standard at which lessons were presented, promoting the utilisation of diverse teaching resources, creative thinking, self-study and improved self-confidence. participants however noted both positive and negative affective and physical impacts of the study. improved intergrade cooperation and curriculum development and flow were evident. furthermore, the study significantly improved professional collaboration. 4.1 impact on content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge lesson study enhanced the content knowledge as well as the pedagogical content knowledge among participants. at the onset, teachers expressed high levels of confidence in their own conceptual understanding. however, as the study progressed, a number of deficits in their content knowledge were uncovered, ranging from insufficient grasp of the caps syllabus to a lack of knowledge about mathematical definitions and methods. participating in this study had the dual benefit of creating personal awareness of these content knowledge shortcomings among some participants and a means of improving these. in response to a questionnaire, t6 said: “i think my maths content knowledge improved because i saw different aspects of certain operations that i didn’t think of before”. t5 wrote: my knowledge of patterning, subtraction methods and multiplication methods has increased exponentially (and it’s not only head knowledge – the use of practical problem solving ways to approach the topic made me internalise this knowledge and i believe it will be readily available for me to draw on when i teach these areas). through lesson study discussions, participants naturally re-examined their beliefs in three particular schools of thought, namely the genetic predisposition of mathematical ability in learners developed through incidental teaching, the need for method-based teaching and the effects of teaching with a problem-solving approach. participants acknowledged that, through their involvement in this lesson study, problem-solving became a more attractive and preferential didactic approach. t4 stated: “i am now at the stage where i want to try problem solving approaches in maths.” this was confirmed by all participants at various stages during the research, as reflected in the following responses: “i moved away from only focussing on method teaching and want to try incorporate some problem solving lessons into my planning” (t5) and “the fact that i realised that we need to focus more on problem solving and allowing the children to try to solve a problem in their own unique ways, was a wake-up call…” (t6). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 1882021 39(3): 188-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) the study impacted the way in which some, but not all, of the participating teachers viewed their dependence on worksheets when it came to lesson planning and teaching. the outcome was a greater aversion to worksheet-based teaching and an awareness of alternative didactic approaches. t5 concluded: “[after lesson study] i now want to use less worksheets. by doing more problem solving lessons more learners will be reached,” t6 stated: “worksheets and workbooks cannot replace teaching. that became more evident to me during the lesson study process”. teachers engaged in discussions incorporating movement in lessons as well as unique grouping for learners. some teachers commented in meetings that this also affected their lesson planning outside of the lesson study demonstration lessons. 4.2 general professional development journal entries showed that teachers revisited their need to provide clear instructions while teaching and indicated heightening of their awareness of using mathematical language correctly. t4 wrote in her journal: “i have learnt that it is very important to be precise, brief, clear etc.”, and t2 concurred “this led me to another question i ask myself: does the success of the learner depend on their ability or the clarity of communication i.e. is this a maths problem or language barrier?” it was noteworthy that the lesson study sessions impacted the level at which demonstration lessons were pitched, provoking higher-level thinking and problem solving skills and creating lessons that were quite challenging for the learners. the high standard of lessons was noted by visiting teachers in post-lesson discussions. one such teacher commented in her feedback, “i know you spoke about some of the things that you thought was too difficult, but i thought it was interesting that you also introduced that to them... you challenged the stronger [learners]”. a visiting expert on lesson study from the university of pretoria commented in a post-lesson discussion that the “lesson was pitched at the very high level”. the desire to teach at a higher standard was not only noticeable during the presentation lessons but was an outflow of the lesson study process as a whole. this impacted the level of thinking and lesson preparation of some participants outside of the lesson study context. there was evidence of this in the journaled self-reflections of participants, where a potential evidential link between lesson study and general improved teaching in the classroom emerged. teachers recorded in their journals and questionnaires how lesson study provoked them to explore “other ways of teaching” (t1 and t5), and to “take a deeper look into the way i teach” (t3), which resulted in broader experimentation with resources and alternative didactic approaches. teachers were impacted in their implementation and demonstration of creativity and the potential of using diverse teaching resources. t5 journaled: “i was amazed at how many ideas came up and that we had a hard time selecting what we could do!” the stimulation of creative thought and sharing of creative ideas was noted as a highly enjoyable aspect of the process. there was a general provocation towards self-study, evidenced by participants researching on the internet to be prepared for the lesson study sessions. in lesson study meetings, teachers claimed to have sourced “youtube videos” (t5), “google” (t3), other online videos and “pinterest” (t6) to improve preparation for sessions. teachers also recorded that they continued to think of mathematical concepts and teaching in general outside of the pd sessions, as presented in the following journal excerpts: “i do think more about the ways i http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 1892021 39(3): 189-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 helmbold, venketsamy & van heerden implementing lesson study teach maths in non-lesson study times and try new things more with regards to teaching maths in my class” (t3) and “i found once again that by questioning myself with regards to how i teach, i can focus more on the children’s understanding of the work rather than just flying through the syllabus and ‘training’ them to pass tests” (t6). lesson study improved the self-confidence of participants. confidence levels were enhanced through teacher participation in collaborative discussions and demonstration lessons, including observation of the latter. this was a reciprocal process. participants felt affirmed by contributing and, in return, felt motivated to contribute further and attempt to implement new learning in classroom practices. t2 expressed it as follows: “i have more confidence in my ability to contribute to learner and teacher development… i faced my fears and pushed through”. participation in the study inspired discussions on the type, size, colour and use of a large variety of resources. teachers felt challenged to think of novel, recyclable and attractive resources that would best serve the purpose of teaching mathematical concepts. in the first cycle, they used discarded egg trays and pre-cut circular counters. they also used magnetised pictures, numbered discs of different colours and laminated number charts. for the second lesson, they planned to use large scale dice, a large scale box of crayons and number cards with hidden flaps (note: the presentation of this lesson was interrupted by covid-19related closures of schools). the third lesson utilised socks, buttons, coloured shapes and “folded mystery boxes” containing sweets. a large portion of each cycle was dedicated to the discussion of these resources and their practicality. participants had opportunities to observe learners and the learner thinking processes. teachers described this process as rewarding, surprising and occasionally disappointing. observing other teachers presenting lessons also prompted participants to evaluate different teaching practices. teachers were motivated to implement practices they found appropriate in their own classroom settings. 4.3 affective and physical impact this study often left participants physically drained. teachers were not always positive during the study and occasionally expressed emotions such as boredom, disillusionment, fear and frustration. particular stressors identified were differences in didactic beliefs among different grade participants, physical exhaustion, fear of participation (feelings of inadequacy), fear of presenting and clashes around expected lesson goals. although these negative affective triggers and responses were noted, the data recorded mostly positive emotions such as enthusiasm, curiosity and enjoyment. participants found that, overall, the study motivated their mathematics teaching. t3 expressed it as follows: before we started the research i was not specifically very motivated in teaching maths as i didn’t have a clear idea or guideline as to what i was doing. since doing the research where we have unpacked specifically the grade 1 syllabus and certain concepts and done more research, i feel more motivated to teach mathematics. i am more motivated to search and experiment and read up about concepts and mathematical content than before and i am enjoying it more. all participants who began the study stayed up to completion and attributed their commitment to the enjoyment of personal growth, curiosity, the fun experienced through http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 1902021 39(3): 190-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) collaboration, ownership of the product (the completed lesson) and the fulfilment of a personal desire to make a difference in the lives of other teachers. 4.4 intergrade cooperation and curriculum development and flow from the onset, it was apparent that teachers lacked sufficient knowledge about the content involved in mathematics in the grades preceding or succeeding their own. many expressed comments in their journals about it. one such example was: “how little one phase knows about what happens before or after their particular grade” (t1). the data perpetually provided examples of knowledge gaps being bridged between grades and an improvement of intergrade awareness regarding curriculum flow. this intergrade bridging outcome of lesson study was noted and undoubtedly valued by the teachers. t1 also commented: “i think that lesson study between phases has been very useful, seeing what comes before and after you, [this] has been the most beneficial part of this process for me”. initially, poor understanding regarding mathematics content covered for each grade resulted in feelings of disrespect and frustration. the grade r teachers felt disrespected in their professional capacity, mostly because the grade 1 teachers did not acknowledge the amount of work accomplished in grade r. there was no evidence in the data to suggest that the higher-grade teachers were cognisant of, or agreed with, their perception. however, the study did evidence a general improvement of respect between all participants, as expressed by t3: lesson study has definitely created new feelings of respect for the teachers from the other grades in seeing what they teach and how they teach… lesson study has given me more feelings of respect knowing that they work just as hard or even harder to teach their content even from a young age such as grade r even without worksheets. in addition to creating an awareness of curriculum flow within a grade and across the early grades, there was a general awareness of curriculum shortfalls. the study created opportunities for teachers to thoroughly plan for topics as units of progressive understanding within a grade. the participants also divided curriculum content logically and in accordance with their school calendar across given dates. 4.5 collaboration this study harnessed the power of collaborative thinking among professionals. before the study, participants acknowledged a pre-existing, unfulfilled need for collaboration. t3 lamented as follows: “i feel we as teachers often like to keep things and lessons to ourselves or often don’t have any new and fresh ideas for lessons and teaching”. the collaborative process created room for enjoyable and effective sharing, as recorded in t4’s journal: “i enjoy how the teachers are keen to share about how they teach a certain concept! love it! that is how we learn”. t2 concurred: “i enjoyed today’s session, as a collaboration of ideas with everybody having something to contribute. i like getting new ideas to try and apply”. 4.6 participants’ subjective experiences all participants felt that lesson study was more beneficial than previous professional development courses that they had attended. t2 wrote in her final questionnaire that she was impressed with the “practical ideas and teacher input (unlike a 1-hour course lecture where you mostly switch off, when nothing is really required from you)”. t1 felt it benefited her by requiring “far more interaction… not just sitting in a lecture that is so general...” she also http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 1912021 39(3): 191-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 helmbold, venketsamy & van heerden implementing lesson study mentioned the advantage of being “far more personally invested in the input and outcome of this exercise”. personal investment as a motivating factor was confirmed by other participants: “because you are actively involved in the process and more emotionally drawn to it (because of the work you put into it), you internalise and remember what is discussed a lot more” (t5). t3 noted that lesson study provided “more practical work that i can use in my class”. this was confirmed by t5 who stated: it becomes part of your easily accessible knowledge and you don’t have to recap it. you will be in a lesson and suddenly remember an idea or a way of doing something and hence implement it. 5. challenges experienced in the study several challenges were noted around implementation of lesson study. as the approach is unprecedented in the region, the participants did not have support from experienced professionals in the process. when problems presented themselves, contextually relevant solutions were sought. although hurdles were noted, most were overcome, allowing for the benefits of the study to outweigh the challenges. 5.1 conceptual understanding as a prerequisite for goal setting one of the most difficult and unexpected problems faced by the participants was that of goal setting in the initial pre-lesson discussions. without a solid conceptual base in the first lesson study cycle, the participants approached the cycle with conflicting personal goals. in the traditional japanese lesson study cycle, the collaborative teacher group establishes a research theme as the launching step of the process (fujii, 2016; seleznyov, 2018). traditionally, teachers engage in studying the curriculum and determining topics learners are struggling to understand, establishing a learner-oriented goal for the demonstration lesson (akiba, murata, howard & wilkinson, 2019). a similar adaptation is proposed by the university of pretoria and intimated as the lesson study model adopted by south africa (sekao, 2020). sekao (2020) recommends that lesson study begins with diagnostic assessment through an analysis of learner results to determine shortcomings and areas requiring intervention. “this is where the lesson study has to start, where we identify a problematic concept in mathematics” (sekao, 2020). sekao explains further how this can be accomplished through analysing learner responses to common tests or examinations. however, in early grades, such as those of this particular case study, formal testing and examinations are not readily available as diagnostic tools. given that mathematical concept formation is embryonic in grade r and grade 1, it was not beneficial to identify mathematical areas where learners were struggling or misguided around concepts, as these concepts were in the very process of being formed. the starting point of the lesson study cycle was therefore embodied in the understanding of what and how concepts should be taught. this, instead of the question: “what concepts have not been grasped?” the subtle difference between these two approaches had far-reaching implications for the preparedness of the facilitator and teacher participants in this study. it became apparent that the goal of the lesson should be based on the participating teachers’ in-depth conceptual understanding of a topic rather than learner misconceptions. the following figure summarises the slight adaptation of the steps taken in the lesson study cycle implemented in this case study to better suit the needs of early grade teachers. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 1922021 39(3): 192-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) figure 1: adaptation of lesson study model utilised in this study   1. curriculum  discussion figure 1: adaptation of lesson study model utilised in this study the lesson study participants spent a substantial portion of time (approximately 4 hours) in broadly discussing the curriculum and its division across the teaching weeks (circle 1 in figure 1) before embarking on planning the first research lesson. it was apparent in the second and third lesson study cycles that these should begin with discussions increasing the conceptual understanding of the participants (circle 2). this preceded the goal setting stage (circle 3). once goals were established, it became easier to discuss possible lesson activities to meet these (circle 4). these discussions had the potential to affect conceptual understanding again (circle 1). when the final activities were selected and the lesson flow was refined, the remaining stages of the lesson study cycle proceeded according to the expected model (circles 5 and 6) (see groves, et al., 2013:10). 5.2 facilitation the role of facilitation was fraught with challenges. finding the balance between training and facilitating was difficult. it was also difficult to ensure that participants did not monopolise the conversation. one of the most stressful aspects of the facilitation process was not having a clear “road map” to guide the sessions. the process of facilitation involved constant consideration of many personal and professional factors, making it emotionally, mentally and physically challenging. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 1932021 39(3): 193-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 helmbold, venketsamy & van heerden implementing lesson study 5.3 participant fear an unresolved challenge for the study was the fear that participants faced in presenting demonstration lessons in front of their peers and visiting teachers. although every effort was taken to emphasise that observation was to be directed at the learners’ learning, and that the teacher presenting was not the focal point of the observation process, participants remained fearful of this aspect. a secondary challenge associated with being a presenting teacher was the additional pressure they felt to perform during the sessions building up to the demonstration lesson. this was mitigated in the last cycle by keeping the identity of the presenting teacher unknown until the day of the lesson. 5.4 communication gaps challenges were noted around clear communication among participants. as found in their journal entries, teachers were largely aware of their communication shortcomings, including a propensity for speaking across each other or expressing themselves unclearly. the lesson study process highlighted these deficiencies, but also provoked a desire in some participants to change their poor communication habits. there was evidence of a small measure of improvement in interpersonal communication through the study. 5.5 timetable considerations this study employed the full cooperation of the school management, who were particularly supportive in rearranging the timetable for demonstration lessons. the sessions for lesson discussion and design were held outside school hours. although participants complained about their tiredness on several occasions, they all voluntarily remained committed to attending planning meetings for the full three cycles. their motivation to do so might, however, be attributed to their knowledge that the study was a professional development exercise and a research project. a more considerable challenge to the lesson study process and school timetabling was timetable clashes between the host school and those of surrounding schools. teachers from surrounding schools were repeatedly invited to attend demonstration lessons. most schools declined the invitation to attend because of their different timetables. it was only in neighbouring schools where management was motivated to send their staff (they made their own alternative timetabling arrangements or had reserve staff in the form of assistant teachers), that visiting teachers could attend. 5.6 too many activities a final challenge was the repetitive problem of including too many activities in demonstration lessons. this propensity made the research lessons quite full and compromised on the presenting teacher’s ability to follow through with the entire proposed lesson plan. 6. conclusion and recommendations this article attempted to address a documented knowledge lacuna around the impact of implementing lesson study at an early grade level in a south african context. although some challenges of implementing this pd approach were noted, they were not insurmountable, and the evidence garnered here suggested that lesson study was a versatile, contextually relevant and enjoyable tool of professional development for teachers in earlier grades. lesson study provided a practical structure towards implementing the ispfted goal of growing http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 1942021 39(3): 194-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) plcs in local schools. it would behove school managers and teachers to recognise the benefits of lesson study and take deliberate steps towards implementing this resourceful tool at a grass-roots level. we recommend that further research be undertaken to ascertain the longevity of the impact on participants, the influence of the role of the facilitator in the lesson study 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an analysis of sacmeq 2007. international journal of educational development, 41: 121–130. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2015.02.002 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.14 https://doi.org/10.1108/ijlls-04-2018-0020 https://doi.org/10.1108/ijlls-04-2018-0020 https://school-maths.com/documents/lesson study manual_eng_stols_ono_25dec2016.pdf https://school-maths.com/documents/lesson study manual_eng_stols_ono_25dec2016.pdf https://school-maths.com/documents/lesson study manual_eng_stols_ono_25dec2016.pdf https://doi.org/10.1177/0022487111404241 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-015-0752-x https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-015-0752-x https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2015.02.002 29 research article 2021 39(1): 29-43 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) the opening and reopening of schools in south africa during the covid-19 pandemic: an appraisal from two vantage points abstract general legislation as well as legislation specifically regulating education in south africa is aimed at the protection and advancement of the best interests of children (learners). developments in the school education sector during the covid-19 pandemic, which reached the shores of south africa in march 2020, starkly underscored that not only the interests of the learners were at stake but also those of a variety of other stakeholders such as the parents (-in-organisation), the teachers (-in-organisation), the wider community (civil society) and the state (in the form of, for instance, the departments of basic education and of cooperative governance and traditional affairs). an examination of the situation in the schooling sector reveals that decisions had to be taken about the opening and reopening of schools in a context of great complexity. this paper examines this complexity from two vantage points, a societal-theoretical and a pedagogicalethical perspective. the societal-theoretical perspective might help all the role-players to gain a deeper understanding of what their respective roles should be during a crisis: does a situation such as this indeed require a nanny-state (based on the notion of an external locus of control) or should the state allow all those involved to just muddle through the crisis; how should the different role-players interact with one another while confining themselves to their own spheres of competence and respecting those of other parties? the pedagogical-ethical perspective, in turn, might assist the various role-players to understand the ethical dilemmas that tend to surface during a pandemic. the aim of the investigation was to derive guidelines for role-players to find their way through the complexity brought about by a crisis such as a pandemic that seemed to threaten the very fibre of civil life1. 1 at the time of publication of this paper, the pandemic was still raging on in the world. second and third waves of the pandemic, spreading even more infectious strains of the covid-19 virus, have been recorded in numerous countries during december 2020 and january 2021. experts foresee no end to the pandemic before herd-immunity has been achieved. the availability of vaccines early in 2021 raised the possibility that such a level of immunity might be achievable towards the second half of 2021. developing countries such as south africa might reach this level much later. author: prof j.l. van der walt1 prof i.j. oosthuizen2 affiliation: 1,2north-west university, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i1.3 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 29-43 published: 12 march 2021 received: 30 october 2020 accepted: 9 january 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9243-5973 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1193-4699 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 302021 39(1): 30-43 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) keywords: covid-19; pandemic; education; schooling; ethics; morality; societal theory. 1. introduction the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic in south africa in early march 2020 brought with it a number of changes in our social life – to such an extent that by the end of 2020 people began talking of “the new normal” that has arrived. this new normal entailed that for the foreseeable future people (see footnote 1) will have to wear face masks in public, maintain physical and social distance, sanitise their hands, wash their hands regularly, avoid large gatherings of people, avoid buying liquor during weekends, avoid touring other countries or receiving foreign visitors, reduce the number of social visits and so on. the pandemic also caused “a new normal” to be adopted in the schooling sector in that not all learners can attend school at one and the same time, and have to maintain social distancing; school facilities have to be sanitised regularly, examinations have to be postponed, the school year extended, matric results announced later and schools to reopen later, to mention only a few of the new measures that schools (in the form of the department of basic education, teachers, learners and governing bodies), parents and the broader community may be expected to adhere to for the foreseeable future. 2. problem statement general legislation as well as legislation regulating education in south africa is aimed at the protection and the promotion of the interests of children (see below). although children, according to available research, are less susceptible to the covid-19 virus than are adults (van der berg, 2020), the measures taken by government in march 2020 contained in large part stipulations to protect the children of the country from the virus (rsa, 2020). events since march 2020, particularly the measures taken by the government, starkly revealed that more than just the interest of children, in this case the school learners, was at stake during the pandemic. teachers, particularly those with comorbidities, also had to be protected. many teachers were allowed to work from home (although many of those employed by school governing bodies ran the risk of losing their salaries – and even their jobs – if they stayed at home). most of the teachers with comorbidities were allowed to return to their work at school on 1 october 2020 after approximately six months of having worked from home. teachers were expected to teach online, particularly during the first three levels of the state of emergency. (south africa has been following a five-level strategy to combat the virus, ranging from level 5 [the strictest: total lockdown] to level 1 [requesting citizens to wear masks, maintain social distancing and washing hands regularly]. the state of emergency also affected the parent corps, particularly parents with small children, and where both parents were expected to report for work. most parents had to cope with the additional challenge of having children around the house for months on end, of keeping them constructively busy and seeing that they follow their online school programmes. since extramural activities for the children were banned, the children and the parents alike had to find creative ways of remaining occupied. the situation was exacerbated by the fact that south africans were subjected to a curfew, initially a long one, which was later on relaxed to only a few hours in the early morning. as in the case of the teacher members of governing bodies, the state of emergency also affected the participation of the parent members of governing bodies. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 312021 39(1): 31-43 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 van der walt & oosthuizen the opening and reopening of schools in south africa another stakeholder was the broader community, the civil society of which the school and all the entities associated with it as well as the parent community form part. the state of emergency initially entailed a total lockdown of all economic activity, which resulted in a strong downturn in the economy and hence loss of employment for many. entrepreneurs and workers in the international and tourism sector were particularly hard hit. most travel bureaus were still closed during the first four levels of the state of emergency (until the end of september 2020). business in the tourism and hospitality sector only began picking up when tourists from some countries were allowed to visit south africa from 1 october 2020 (following the announcement of alert level 1 on 26 september 2020) (rsa, 2020b). the state, in the shape of the government, was another major stakeholder in this process. in line with its mandate to maintain law and good order, the government proclaimed a state of emergency to commence on 26 march 2020 in order to enable the national department of health to prepare for the expected increase in the number of patients contracting covid-19 (rsa, 2020). after the president of the country had announced the state of emergency and subsequently the five alert levels, the government delegated the proclamation of the regulations associated with each level to a command council consisting of various ministries, with the ministry of cooperative government and traditional affairs (cogta) as the coordinating ministry. the two ministries of education (basic and higher) were expected to regulate the education sector. as explained below, the ministry of basic education, in particular, occasionally vacillated between taking decisive action and caution about how to proceed with the opening and closing of schools, in the process causing all kinds of uncertainty and discomfort among the teachers, parents and learners. the decades-long neglect of facilities at schools such as the provision of clean running water and flushing toilets also took its toll on this ministry and on the ministry of public works in that they had to take emergency measures to provide these amenities (louw-carstens, 2020). it is clear from this overview of the roles, mandates and measures adopted by the various stakeholders, that preventative measures with respect to the covid-19 pandemic in south africa had to be taken in a situation of great complexity. it is also clear that particularly two issues surfaced, namely those involving societal-theoretical considerations and ethics/morality. in terms of the former, we asked ourselves: what, in principle, is the sphere of authority, the mandate and the role of the respective role-players during the covid-19 state of emergency, such as the state, the parents (-in-organisation), the teachers (-in-organisation), the learners and civil society? this is a societal theory issue that needs to be addressed in order for us to be better prepared for future crises. regarding ethics/morality, we asked: what pedagogicalethical/moral dilemmas surfaced during the pandemic and how should they be addressed in order to avoid similar dilemmas in future? the aim of the investigation reported in this paper was to discover guidelines for the respective role-players to follow in their search for a way through the complexity brought about by a crisis such as a pandemic that threatens the very fibre of civil life. 3. method of investigation our starting point was an analysis of the reports in the daily press concerning the actions and decisions of the different role-players during the pandemic (the period march to december 2020). this analysis painted a picture of complexity and of the possible conflicts and uncertainties. the social space and ethical/moral action or behaviour theory enabled us to firstly, distinguish between the decisions, actions and roles played by the different stakeholders, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 322021 39(1): 32-43 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) each in its own sphere of authority or competence, and then secondly, to assess the degree to which such a stakeholder behaved in an ethically/morally justifiable manner (van der walt, 2017). in this process, we applied the interpretive-constructive method (van der walt, 2020). firstly, to understand the complexity and the actions of the various stakeholders and secondly, to interpret the events and the complexity thereof in terms of the principles that we examine in the next section of this paper (the conceptual and theoretical framework) and finally, to construct a standpoint with respect to how the various stakeholders could in future interact with one another without encroaching on others’ spheres of competence, and with an attitude of respect for the competence areas of other stakeholders. 4. conceptual and theoretical framework there has been a long-standing discussion about the degree to which a state can or should intervene in the lives and practices of individuals and groups before it crosses the line into the unjustifiable diminution of individual liberty (grayling, 2010) and encroaches on the competency areas of other societal relationships such as the family, the school, the church and civic life. berlin, hardy and harris (2002) applied the principle of positive and negative liberty to decide where to draw this line: the former they defined as the freedom of the individual to seek and realise various goals and the latter as freedom from external compulsion. they favoured the latter because they thought that the former could tempt the state to prescribe and even enforce behaviour that it deemed to be in its citizens’ best interest, whether they desired it or not. they preferred this option because it affords citizens the freedom to pursue their own interests without interference from the state. the latter is also in line with john stuart mill’s (1895/1977) classic conception of liberty in his discussion of the nature and the limits of the power that can be legitimately exercised by society (as represented by the state or the government) over the individual. more recently, nozick (1974) added his voice to this debate by stating that many believe the minimal state to be the most extensive state that can be justified, in other words, a state with limited functions of protection against force, theft, fraud, enforcement of contracts and so on. any state more extensive than that tends to violate people’s rights. in some circumstances, however, he is convinced that a more extensive state might be desirable as an instrument for achieving distributive justice. in our opinion, a workable solution to the problem of where this line should be drawn was proffered by kuyper (1880) in his opening address at the free university of amsterdam when he formulated the principles of sphere sovereignty and sphere universality among societal relationships. according to these principles, life consists of a multiplicity of life-spheres or societal relationships, each with its sovereign and proper character and boundaries (verburg, 2015: 65). these structures occasionally interact with each other based on their own areas of competence. south african philosopher d.f.m. strauss explained this principle as follows, particularly as it applies to the state, its competencies and its relationships with the other societal structures of which citizens are constituent members. in the process, he demarcates the areas of competence of the various societal relationships that can be found in differentiated societies. strauss (2014) begins the discussion by stating that we no longer live in an undifferentiated society; that is, a society that displays an undifferentiated form of organisation, a society without distinct societal institutions, each with its own mandate and responsibility. like most communities, african communities are not, broadly speaking, traditional and undifferentiated anymore. they have, according to lutomia, sibeya and lutomia (2018), become complex, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 332021 39(1): 33-43 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 van der walt & oosthuizen the opening and reopening of schools in south africa multicultural societies due to industrialisation, capitalist modes of production and modernity. as such, matolino and kwindingi (2013) aver, they do not value, at least not as much as in the distant past, communality and association drawn along traditional lines. we also do not live in a greek-roman-medieval society with a universalistic-holistic view of society in which one or another societal whole (such as the state, or the church) is regarded as encompassing all others, with the latter as mere parts of this whole (strauss, 2014). in such societies it was supposed that only the one societal whole, such as the state or the church, had a sphere of competence (strauss, 2014), and that all the others had to obey that authority. the former possessed absolute authority. the process of societal differentiation commenced in the 12th century when it was realised that the state and the church possessed different, and quite distinct, spheres of competence (strauss, 2014). in a differentiated society, strauss (2014: 4) explains, although the office of government entails the competence to form positive law, this law-giving competence should not usurp all the other jural competences present within distinct non-political societal entities, such as business enterprises, associations, families, educational institutions and faith communities. […] in a differentiated society the competence of the state is therefore delimited both by its own sphere of competence and by the competences of all the non-political societal entities. strauss (2014: 5) draws the following conclusion from the above principle: “without the emergence of distinct societal entities with their peculiar spheres of competence and accompanying legal interests, the state will not be able to fulfil its public legal task”. it is important to understand that the state does not grant existence or sphere sovereignty to any other social entity such as the school, the church, the parents-in-organisation or the teachers-in-organisation (the teacher trade unions). like all social entities, the state has to acknowledge that there are multiple distinct and sphere sovereign societal entities, all on equal footing. each of these entities functions within its own sphere sovereignty, but since all of them also function with a jural aspect (modality) and thus have typical legal interests of their own, the state is in a position where it can integrate all the interests in one public legal order (strauss, 2014). it is important to note the difference between the statement that the state has to acknowledge the sphere sovereignty of all other social forms or institutions by integrating their legal interests into one public legal order and the claim that the state enables the others to fulfil their respective normative tasks. integrating the legal interests does not elevate the state into an overarching hierarchical institution (strauss, 2014). as soon as we start analysing the places and roles of the various societal entities in a modern differentiated society, we observe that they exhibit different features and spheres of competence. in a differentiated society, every social subject, relationship, entity or structure has a specific communal function and a social space within which it performs its specific function. the concept social space arises when the nature of a differentiated society is contemplated. when the principle of sphere sovereignty is accepted, every societal sphere in a differentiated society receives its proper social space and is not subsumed by any other societal sphere. every distinct form of life (societal entity, collectivity, relationship, social sphere) is surrounded by a number of others, serving as its environment. the concept sphere sovereignty refers to the internal autonomy or independence of the societal entity in question (strauss, 2009). all societal entities or social structures possess social and non-social aspects. the connection between the social and the ethical/moral aspect as one of the non-social aspects http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 342021 39(1): 34-43 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) is important in this discourse since it embodies the notion of social morality and hence of trust; that is, the showing of respect to the spheres of competence of all other societal relationships, entities or structures (strauss, 2009). there must be a point, as verburg (2015) argues, at which the interest of the state and those of the people and the structures that form the subjects of the state converge and are in balance. it can be concluded based on the argument above, that this point is where the different societal relationships or entities respect the sphere sovereignty of all other relationships. the above outline of the spheres of autonomy and competence of the respective societal relationships might have created the impression that everything in civil society is completely and unchangeably ordered and in place. such an impression might be misleading; the way covid-19 was approached and managed in south africa revealed that civil society is a complex of ever-changing interpretations and contested meanings (barrett, 2009; del pino, jones & mayo, 2020). in a worst-case scenario, a complex system such as civic life in a country is held together by local relationships only, meaning that this is where every individual and social relationship (entity, collectivity, institution) is concerned only about its own parochial interests (anderson, 1999: 216). in such circumstances, each component seems to be ignorant of the behaviour of the system as a whole and cannot know or care about the extent of its impact on the whole. each component (social institution, such as the government, a school governing body, a parent organisation) then tends to respond locally, only in its own interests, to the situation it is confronted with, and this is where complexity arises out of all the webs of relationships and responses (dekker, cilliers & hofmeyr, 2011). one has to find a way through such a mélange, both physically and philosophically, and in this way create new order and an understanding of how things work or ought to work (plotnitsky, 2006). in essence, this paper attempts to do just that. for the state or the government to be able to integrate all the interests in the country in one public legal order, as stated, there has to be a degree of mutual trust between government and the citizenry, particularly in a time of crisis. confronted by the emergence and spread of a new and deadly virus, governments across the globe felt themselves called to forge a crisis strategy to deal with the consequences for public health, the economy and society at large. the success of such a crisis strategy depends on citizens’ acceptance of and compliance with crisis management policies (university of antwerp, 2020). in the case of south africa, the trust in government (the state) was seriously compromised by the perception among the general public that the state had been captured by corrupt individuals and interests. baijnath (2017) proffered a useful analytical lens for examining complex situations, including the actions of the various societal relationships or collectivities, in and during a pandemic, namely a five-fold ethic: an ethic of justice, an ethic of critique and ethic of care, an ethic of community and an ethic of profession. every societal relationship could (and ideally should) employ this five-fold approach to ethics in its efforts to respect the sphere sovereignty or autonomy of all the other societal spheres in its environment. this is of particular importance during a catastrophe such as a pandemic. an ethic of justice, for instance, implies that a societal relationship such as the state (government), a school or a parental home should apply principles such as fairness, equity and justice, and that decisions are guided by laws, rules, policies, codes and procedures. this implies that pre-established principles, laws and rules will guide role-players’ conceptions, perceptions and actions in a crisis. we do not agree with baijnath (2017: 201–202) when he asserts that the ethic of justice is non-consequentialist since leaders “should not consider the consequences of their actions, but make decisions http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 352021 39(1): 35-43 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 van der walt & oosthuizen the opening and reopening of schools in south africa based on predetermined rules and policies”. we attempt to show in the next section, in terms of sections 195 and 196 of the constitution of the republic of south africa (rsa, 1996), that the government and all its instruments indeed should be held accountable for the consequences of their policies, behaviour and actions. baijnath (2017: 201) counterbalances his view of the ethic of justice by defining the ethic of critique as an ethic that “critiques the moral problems caused by the ethic of justice”. this, in our opinion, is an artificial effort at damping the effect of his view of an ethic of justice. a decision has immediate consequences and cannot be critiqued only at a later stage, if at all. it does not make sense to show no regard for the consequences of a step, and then only afterwards apply an ethic of critique which, according to baijnath (2017: 201), is a critical consequentialist perspective. we agree with his formulation of an ethic of care, however, as an ethic that is “compassion-oriented and is concerned with and characterised by virtues such as compassion, understanding and trust”. nel noddings (2003) holds that caring of this quality involves stepping out of one’s own frame of reference into that of the other. this ethic is particularly important for describing and promoting the respect that not only persons should display towards others, but also societal relationships towards other such relationships. baijnath’s (2017: 202) distinction of an ethic of community is also important for the respect among individuals and among societal relationships. he defines it as regard for “the best interests of the local community as the fundamental principle in decision making” (ibid). this ethic is in line with the stipulations of sections 195 and 196 of the constitution (see below). baijnath (2017) finally distinguishes an ethic of profession: professional persons such as teachers should adhere to and obey the principles, codes, assumptions, mores and expected behaviours associated with their profession. 5. the roles fulfilled by the different societal entities during the covid-19 pandemic in south africa 5.1 the state and its agencies experience teaches that the state and its organs constantly, and in many ways, tend to limit the freedom of its citizens (verburg, 2015). grayling (2010: 220) asserts that the state is inclined “to […] nanny where it can”, often beyond its sphere of competence. in his opinion, “it is tyranny [for the state] to force others to behave as [the state] thinks they should, even if one knows for sure what is in their best interest”. a typical example of the state overstepping its boundaries was the action taken by the south african government in march 2020 when it not only proclaimed a very necessary initial three-week lockdown in order to enable the department of health to prepare for the numbers of diseased that were expected, but then went on to extend the state of emergency for yet another nine months, thereby delaying the economic recovery of the country. the decisions taken by the south african government, as part of its application of an ethic of justice, have had devastating consequences for the citizens of south africa, and also for the schools, the parents (governing bodies), the teachers and the learners. in the previous section we mentioned the state’s mandate of integrating all the interests of the societal relationships within its domain “in one public legal order”. the expression “in one public legal order” does not mean that the state/government may take control of all administrational and executive powers as was the case during the pre-1994 era in south http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 362021 39(1): 36-43 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) africa (ferreira-snyman, 2005; ferreira, 2001). the constitution (rsa, 1996) of the new post1994 south africa, particularly the bill of rights, has brought a change in this regard. sections 1 and 7 of the constitution stipulate that values such as human dignity, equality and freedom need to be respected by all in south africa; hence, also by the state/government and by the other societal relationships in the country. section 39(1) goes a step further in stipulating that these democratic values are to be enforced by courts of law, tribunals and forums, and that the government should be accountable, responsive and open towards the citizenry (cf. de waal, currie & erasmus, 2001). the state’s task and mandate to “integrate all the interests of the societal relationships within its domain in one public legal order” is explicated in chapter 10 of the constitution. section 195(1) elaborates on the constitutional values and principles that should underpin sound governance of public administration, thereby uplifting south african society to a fundamental justifiable human rights culture (cf. burns, 1998). several key perspectives can be gleaned from the list of principles and values regarding the governance of the country enumerated in section 195(1). the first is that governance should be ethical; that is, caring with respect to the interest of all south africans (principle a). the second is that resources should be used effectively and efficiently (b); the third, that public administration should attend to the developmental interests of the citizenry (c); fourthly, the administration should respond to the people’s needs and allow the citizenry to participate in policy-making (e), and in the fifth place, the administration should provide timely, accessible and accurate information (f). section 195(2) explains that the concept public administration embraces administration of all spheres of government – including the administration of public education. section 195(3) stipulates that national legislation must ensure the promotion of these values and principles (ferreira-snyman, 2005). it is for this reason that in a ruling, judge zondo in the 2008 labour appeal court case nxele v chief deputy commissioner, corporate services, department of correctional service and others referred to the values and principles contained in section 195(1). in another case, in the north gauteng high court case of freedom under law v national director of public prosecutions and others, judge murphy ruled that all public functionaries should act responsibly, accountably and transparently. it is clear from the above explanation of the phrase “the state’s task and mandate of integrating all the interests of the societal relationships within its domain” that the state/government has a clearly demarcated area of competence and hence should refrain from impinging on the areas of competence of other societal entities. if the state transgresses on the spheres of the other societal relationships or entities such as the school (the school governing bodies), the parents (-in-organisation), the teachers (-in-organisation) or the church, it has set foot on the path of a totalitarian practice, thereby disregarding (and disrespecting) the original social spaces (the sphere sovereignty) of the other societal entities. these other, non-political entities, each have the right to determine their own character and decide on their own actions, in the context of the five-fold ethic discussed above. the idea of a totalitarian state remains unacceptable in all conditions (verburg, 2015). 5.2 the learners there can be little doubt that the state/government has had the interests of the general public, and particularly of the children of the country, at heart during the pandemic. the actions of http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 372021 39(1): 37-43 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 van der walt & oosthuizen the opening and reopening of schools in south africa the government (in the form of the department of basic education) regarding the safety of the learners have been in line with the stipulations in sections 28 and 29 of the south african constitution that refer to the rights of the child. section 28(2) contains what has been referred to as the “paramountcy principle”: “a child’s best interests are of paramount importance in every matter concerning the child” (smit, 2013: 223). section 29 provides for the right to basic education. in the jurisprudence since 1996, which we need not discuss here, the best interest of the child has often been applied as a guideline. it is also clear that, despite the intentions of the department of basic education, the learners have been detrimentally affected by the decisions and actions of the department during the state of emergency which commenced on 17 march 2020. for approximately five months learners and their parents were frequently left in a state of uncertainty as to whether or not they should attend school. on one occasion, notice that schools would still be closed was given on the sunday evening before the schools were due to reopen the next day (herselman, 2020). in such cases children living on farms had already come to stay in their hostels and were thus left stranded. most learners had to learn how to study online, and large numbers of them had to be left to their own devices at home since both parents were at work. despite its declared concern about the interest of the children, the department has failed to persistently display an ethic of justice, care and community in this regard. 5.3 the civil community the civil community suffered in various ways during the lockdown period. the overall interest and well-being of the schools, the parents, the teachers and education, business, labour and other stakeholders were detrimentally affected by the proclamation of a state of emergency, particularly during the first three levels thereof. it could be argued that the government and its various ministries did not demonstrate an ethic of community by bringing the entire economy and civilian life to a total standstill for several months. the negative economic growth of around 23 per cent in the second and third terms led to widespread unemployment, a loss of income tax for the government and to widespread poverty, necessitating handouts to the poor by both government (which it could not afford and had to enter into international loans for) and non-governmental organisations. the ban on cigarettes and tobacco cost the economy more than the government handouts to the poor and derelict. in one instance, the ministry of trade and industry found it necessary to prescribe the types of apparel and footwear citizens were allowed to buy in the shops. this ministry went so far as to stipulate that only short-sleeved t-shirts to be worn under another garment could be bought. in doing this, the government transformed south africa into a nanny state. one commentator remarked: “this [stipulation] is just another illustration of the minister and the anc’s obsession to act as a parent and to dictate to south africans what they may and may not do” (barnard, wood & brand-jonker, 2020: 2). the de facto impoverishment of the population during the lockdown resulted in many parents being unable to pay school fees. the non-payment of school fees compelled some schools to lower the salaries of governing body teachers, and in some cases even caused teachers to be discharged (herselman, 2020b). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 382021 39(1): 38-43 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) 5.4 the teaching corps (the teaching staff-in-organisation – the teacher unions) the state’s proclamation of a state of emergency, particularly the extended levels of lockdown, had dire consequences for the teaching corps. the teaching corps had to bear much of the brunt of the crisis. those with underlying comorbidities lived under the threat of contracting the virus, had to work from home in less than ideal circumstances, many without online facilities had to prepare and deliver online lessons; when schooling resumed, all teachers in public schools had to teach during longer hours, had to prepare additional assessments, had to cope with large amounts of correction work, had to miss out on long weekends (for instance the long weekend around heritage day in september 2020), had to be at school until deep into december 2020, and in some cases were made responsible for sanitising the classrooms. the only redeeming factor in this situation was the fact that their unions repeatedly interceded on their behalf in an effort to keep them from contracting covid-19. in sum, the teaching corps as such seldom found itself in a position of practising their ethic of profession. according to van wyk (of the south african teachers’ union in the free state), the manner in which the closing and reopening of schools on 1 june 2020 were being managed created “much uncertainty” among parents, teachers and learners (herselman, 2020). the conditions of the teaching corps in the period from march to november 2020 once again lends credence to the view that the teaching profession might not be a true profession. too many other parties seemed to have had a final say in what transpires in the lives and professions of teachers. the way in which teachers were treated could be construed as having deprived them from practising their ethic of profession. 5.5 school governing bodies (sgbs) legislation details the competencies and duties of sgbs as follows: section 16(1) of the south african schools act (sa, 1996(b)) stipulates that the governance of a school is vested in its particular sgb. since the meaning of the word “governance” is not specified (botha, 1996: 45), the general meaning thereof is applicable, namely: to regulate, rule, organise with authority (pearsall & hanks, 2006). this section contains an inherent limitation of the “rule” by sgbs; a governing body may only perform the “functions and obligations and rights as prescribed in the act”. despite the competencies and the mandates assigned to sgbs in legislation, the sgbs of the public schools in south africa have been prevented from taking decisions about how their schools and those involved in them, such as the administration, the teachers and the learners, should conduct themselves during the pandemic. practically all the decision-making was done at either national level (the department of basic education) or at provincial level (the members of executive councils [mecs] of the respective provinces). although it might be necessary, in case of an emergency such as the covid-19 pandemic, for the relevant public administration authority, in this case the department of basic education, to override the functions of sgbs, such a public administration authority should be wary of taking disruptive decisions that could lead to the seemingly unplanned closing and reopening of schools, and last-minute announcements in this regard. such actions do not comply with the constitutional norms for public administration, as outlined above in terms of section 195(1) of the constitution. “effective” there means ‘’to be successful in producing a desired or intended result” (pearsall & hanks, 2006). the haphazard management of schooling during the lockdown period cannot be deemed to have been effective. the schools act is clear about the desired outcomes of education: the authorities have “to provide an education of progressive http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 392021 39(1): 39-43 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 van der walt & oosthuizen the opening and reopening of schools in south africa high quality for all learners and in so doing lay a strong foundation for the development of all our people’s talents and capabilities” (preamble of the sa schools act) (sa, 1996(b)). in one case, where an mec decided to take the unilateral decision to reopen the schools in her province since the schools there were ready to reopen, she was accused by the human rights commission and by the administrative authorities (provincial departments of education) of taking a step that would lead to inequality since the schools in the rest of the country were not yet ready to reopen. this incident is a clear demonstration of how the decision-making process concerning the schools opening and reopening had been centralized by that time, and also a demonstration of how sgbs, as the bodies supposedly the best informed about the situation at their respective schools, had been deprived of their right to decision-making. 5.6 the parental corps (the parents-in-organisation) since it would have been difficult for education authorities such as the department of basic education to negotiate with the parents of all the learners in all the schools, the south african schools act (sa, 1996b: section 1, 11 and 16) provides for public participation in the management of public schools in the form of representation on schools’ governing bodies. this is a typical form of deliberative democracy (smit, 2013). the act (section 20 (m)(3)) also stipulates that a governing body is entitled to join a voluntary association that represents the interests of governing bodies. a typical example of such an association is the federation of governing bodies of south african schools (fedsas) whose vision is to maintain and promote quality education in public schools. its mission is to enhance effective school governance and management in order to achieve its vision (fedsas, 2020). the decisions and actions of the department of basic education also affected fedsas. only one example of how this body was overlooked during all that transpired around the opening of schools on 1 june 2020 needs to be mentioned. on 29 may 2020 the executive head of fedsas told a reporter: “i cannot explain the logic behind (the decisions of the minister of basic education, as announced in the government gazette of 29 may), since we were not consulted”. in his opinion, the whole plan was not well-conceived. “the phasing-in plan to which we originally agreed is now clearly off the table. the situation is chaotic,” he concluded (gregan & jansen van rensburg, 2020: 8). 6. discussion the situation in south africa during the state of emergency declared by the government on 26 march 2020 undoubtedly has the appearance of an interlocking web of political, social, economic, religious, pedagogical, ethical and philosophical sub-systems that constantly rearranged themselves in response to the proclamations of the government and of the various ministries. the way things transpired during the state of emergency (march–november 2020) in south africa can be construed as a typical example of how a situation unfolds in terms of complexity theory. society, in this case the situation during the lockdown period in south africa, took the form of an endless complex of changing and contested individual interpretations and meanings. every step taken during the lockdown was dynamic, messy, driven by some or other choice or decision (mainly by the government of the day and its various organs), was occasionally contradictory or pusillanimous and a demonstration of centralised power, a form of control-driven disruption. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 402021 39(1): 40-43 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) as described, the government (in the form of the department of basic education) more than once found itself caught up in a maelstrom of pressures from all sides: the teachers’ unions (several of them), the parents-in-organisation in the form of a considerable number of school governing bodies affiliated with fedsas, the human rights commission (gregan, 2020), the nine provincial departments of education, the members of provincial executive councils charged with education (gregan, 2020b: 6), the central government in the shape of the department of cogta, the so-called command council and even the cabinet (prince, 2020), political parties (such as the one south africa movement, in a court case heard on 18 june 2020), medical advisers and several more. on one occasion, the department seemed to have been caught up in this tumult to such an extent that it had to postpone a media conference of the minister three times. on occasion, when the department and its minister seemed hesitant about what the next move should be, a provincial department of education (western cape) reopened its schools – to the chagrin of the human rights commission and the one south africa movement. although the gauteng provincial department of education allowed parents to inspect schools to see whether they were safe for the children to return to, it adhered to the reopening date of 1 june 2020, as announced by the ministry of basic education. the actions of the government and its instruments during the management of the pandemic from march to november 2020 did not give testimony of a state or government possessing the insight that its actions should ideally be rooted in a value system built on the two principles on which this paper hinges. it firstly did not demonstrate respect for the sphere autonomy of all the other societal relationships that formed part of civil society in south africa; it seemed intent on dominating the scene from the vantage point of its own sphere of competence. this approach elicited praise from some corners (understandably from those who agreed with the decisions and actions of the department of basic education) during some of the phases of the state of emergency, and also criticism (from those who referred to the situation as chaotic and unplanned). according to the latter, the minister and her department were creating uncertainty and confusion with their indecisive approach (prince, van der walt & gregan, 2020). secondly, it did not demonstrate ethics of justice, caring and community towards the learners, the parents, the teachers, school governing bodies and other parties involved in the pedagogical effort. whether the decisions and actions of the current government were deliberately state-centred and control-driven or can be ascribed to inexperience and ineptness is difficult to say. it might also be possible that the authorities lacked experience with largescale disruptive events and their socio-economic ramifications. a more accurate verdict in this regard might be passed once we have observed the government and its officials functioning in other emergencies such as a possible second flare-up of the pandemic. the government and its organs and instruments would do well if they saw all the other societal institutions as equivalent to itself and as partners in the struggle against the pandemic, and not as part of the populace that has to be governed by a micro-managing and essentially centralised nanny state. it is to be hoped that, in the event of another possible pandemic or state of emergency that might affect schooling in south africa, and of course also elsewhere, school governing bodies will be allowed the space to act in accordance with their particular sphere of competence (as outlined in the relevant legislation), within the broad guidelines proclaimed by central government, with the ancillary support and guidance of the relevant provincial departments of education and with the support of all other institutions somehow involved in school education. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 412021 39(1): 41-43 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.3 van der walt & oosthuizen the opening and reopening of schools in south africa 7. conclusion south africans, particularly their government, might learn a lesson from what transpired during the lockdown period, which is that civil society will seek its own equilibrium if allowed to do so. the state does not need to become a nanny state during a lockdown or state of emergency. it has to trust the other, co-valent, societal relationships of which civil society is made up, including teachers-in-organisation, parents-in-organisation, school governing bodies, business and industry, to take decisions in accordance with their areas of competence and within the broad guidelines provided by government. it should restrict itself to the task of regulating life and existence on behalf of all the other social entities in the country, thereby providing space for all the others to work and take decisions within their respective spheres of competence. references anderson, p. 1999. complexity theory and organisation science. organization science, 10(3): 216–232. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.10.3.216 baijnath, n. 2017. ethical leadership in higher 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theconversation.com/covid-19-school-closures-in-south-africa-and-their-impact-on-children-141832 https://doi.org/10.4102/ids.v51i1.2265 https://doi.org/10.15640/ijpt.v8n1a5 https://doi.org/10.15640/ijpt.v8n1a5 _hlk52777947 _hlk52526501 _hlk53170473 _hlk57684557 _hlk53588587 _hlk60822100 _goback pie 32 (2) book.indb perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 1 editorial self-study of educational practice: re-imagining our pedagogies where does re-imagining our pedagogies begin? as self-study researchers, we understand that it starts with our selves. through self-study of educational practice, we identify issues that we are concerned, curious and passionate about in relation to our own pedagogies and we research those issues in our own contexts. while the research topics are diverse, our common focus is on what difference we as educators can make. our exploration is about how we can re-imagine our selves, in the hope that our change will have a positive impact on other people. we have confidence that there is always room for change, no matter how small; there is always something we can see or do differently. thus, we aim to develop practitioner-led, context-specific ideas for change and to explore ways to make that change happen (pithouse, mitchell & weber, 2009). importantly though, we recognise that, although educational change begins with ‘me’, it must also involve ‘us’. because we view teaching, learning and researching as interactive processes, we realise that we need the perspectives of significant others such as students, colleagues, and other self-study researchers or ‘critical friends’ to “challenge our assumptions and biases, reveal our inconsistencies [and] expand our potential interpretations” (laboksey, 2004: 849). we also need to make our self-study research available for public critique in order to contribute to public conversations about educational change. as self-study researchers, who are concerned with educational change, we seek to contextualise and balance our inward focus by “simultaneously pointing outwards and towards the political and social” (mitchell & weber, 2005: 4). recent self-study research conducted within south africa has shown how, in contexts where teaching and learning is often undermined by multiple factors such as persistent social and economic inequities, the hiv epidemic, high levels of violence, and ongoing shifts/ uncertainties in teacher responsibilities against a changing curriculum and regulatory landscape, educators’ self-study can illuminate significant issues that have resonance beyond the self and can point to avenues for exploration and growth in the wider educational arena (see, for example, pithouse, weber & mitchell, 2009; pithousemorgan & van laren, 2012; masinga, 2012; 2014). this work has also demonstrated how educators’ self-study can contribute to social action, particularly through the use of creative and participatory research methods (see pithouse-morgan et al., 2013). perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 2 much of the initial self-study research was published by teacher educators and teachers based almost exclusively in the ‘academic north’ (primarily in north america and the united kingdom); more recently, scholarly conversations have begun to explore the significance of self-study research across a range of academic disciplines (see harrison, pithouse-morgan, conolly & meyiwa, 2012; samaras, 2013) and across north-south boundaries (see pithouse, mitchell & moletsane, 2009; pithouse-morgan & samaras, forthcoming). this special issue of perspectives in education continues this trend by offering a collection of articles by self-study researchers who are located across diverse disciplines in higher education institutions in south africa, canada and the united states of america (usa). the collection begins with contributions from teacher educators (weber, van laren and wood), moves on to work done in the domains of drama (meskin and van der walt) and graphic design (scott) and, finally, to trans-disciplinary self-study (knowles, meyiwa et al. and samaras et al.). this special edition follows on from the first south african self-study symposium held in durban in july 2007 and entitled “‘seeing for ourselves’: exploring the practice of self-study in teaching, learning, and researching for social change” and from the edited book that grew out of that symposium: making connections: self-study and social action (pithouse, mitchell & moletsane, 2009). it also taps into recent self-study research initiatives, such as the transformative education/al studies (tes) project, an inter-institutional, trans-disciplinary project that has been addressing some of the complexities of carrying out this work across disciplines in higher education institutions in south africa (see harrison et al., 2012). the tes project was a response to two national educational priorities in south africa, namely the pressing need to both transform teaching and learning and enhance research and supervision capacity in the higher education sector. tes was a three-year (2011-2013), national research foundation (nrf)-funded project led by investigators from a university of technology (durban university of technology – dut), a research-intensive university (university of kwazulu-natal – ukzn), a rural comprehensive university (walter sisulu university – wsu) and a research council (human sciences research council – hsrc). participants were 22 university educators who were registered students (staff-students) at the three participating universities and their 11 supervisors. the staff-students and supervisors, who were located within diverse academic and professional disciplines, formed a trans-disciplinary, multi-institutional educational research learning community. the participants were also diverse in terms of age, gender, race, and language and in terms of varying levels of experience in research and publication, ranging from senior researchers with extensive publication records to new scholars just beginning their masters’ studies. all tes staff-students and supervisors were involved in researching their own educational practice through self-study methodologies. three of the articles in this special issue (meskin & van der walt; meyiwa et al.; scott) are authored/co-authored by tes participants. these articles offer a taste of the diverse self-study scholarship that tes staff-students and supervisors have been producing. editorial self-study of educational practice: re-imagining our pedagogies 3 the tes project was successful in meeting (and, in most instances, exceeding) all of its 2011-2013 research milestones. moreover, in 2012, the tes project received the “top university research initiative award” at the durban university of technology’s annual research awards (http://www.dut.ac.za/node/2523). the work of the tes project continues to evolve, with the nrf awarding a follow-up three-year (2014-2016) education research in south africa grant for a new project entitled “transformative education/al studies (tes): pedagogic implications for research capacity”. through this meta-analysis project, tes researchers will seek to learn lessons about supporting self-study research and about supporting transdisciplinary, multi-institutional educational research learning communities. further explorations will include documenting the nature and processes of generating novel epistemologies and conceptualisations as well as developing innovative contextbased methodological approaches. we regard the awarding of this second grant by the nrf as highlighting the educational research community’s recognition of the value and potential of self-study research in the south african context and beyond. in keeping with this emerging area of scholarship in south africa, the articles in this special issue demonstrate the educational value and potential of self-study research, but they also reveal that starting with the self is a complex and challenging process that raises critical questions for researchers: how do we know if and how what we do in self-study impacts … unseen others? (weber) what is the value of this research to others? (scott) how do i make explicit my own values and background in relation to those of the participants, since my ‘self’ is a powerful source of influence on the study? (wood) what am i doing, what is the audience receiving, what is the interplay between the two, and what is happening to my own practice as a result of this composite experience? (meskin and van der walt) will the methodology that i choose assist effective change? (meyiwa et al.) the various contributions also raise important questions about authorship itself and the ways in which self-study can be a collective process. anastasia samaras, in her work with 12 co-authors (diana karczmarczyk, lesley smith, louisa woodville, laurie harmon, ilham nasser, seth parsons, toni smith, kirk borne, lynne constantine, ezperanza roman mendoza, jennifer suh, and ryan swanson), challenges the notion of sole authored scholarship, signalling the idea that the group process can be a very effective approach to self-study, and that we need new ways of indicating shared authorship. sandra weber highlights the significance of influence as she describes the ‘ripple effect’ of the self-study research of three researchers. then there is the work of thenjiwe meyiwa, theresa chisanga, paul mokhele, nkosinathi sotshangane and sizakele makhanya, a self-study research group that explores tensions and generativity in shared inquiry. in addition, tamar meskin and tanya van der walt use dialogue as a way of demonstrating the “interillumination” or “interanimation” perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 4 (holquist, 1981: 429-430) of their collaborative thinking-in-action as they engage reflexively with their practice as theatre-makers and drama educators. we also wish to highlight the ways in which visual and arts-based approaches to self-study can play a critical role in re-imagining our pedagogies. as maxine greene (1998: 47-49) explains, “engagements with the … arts [can] release the imaginative capacity into play [and foster] a commitment to the risky search for alternative possibilities”. sandra weber, for example, makes a case for arts-based approaches as having an obvious role in reaching and inspiring others. in their articles, linda van laren and lesley wood highlight the way in which drawing as a visual methodology can be a key feature of “getting the picture and changing the picture” (mitchell, 2008: 365) through self-study research. tamar meskin and tanya van der walt demonstrate how they are using theatre and performance in self-study. lee scott shows how she brought into dialogue her artist, researcher and teacher ‘selves’ through the use of graphic design and painting. about the articles we start with sandra weber’s article, arts-based self-study: documenting the ripple effect, which provides a convincing argument for why and how arts-based approaches make self-study iterative, and research contagious – taking on meanings that go beyond the original parameters. drawing on three documented cases in the canadian context, weber describes the potential ripple effect of arts-based self-study and shows how what begins as research becomes an extended series of teaching experiences that lead to learning and growth for many, linking personal inquiries to a broader and evolving picture of community and throwing into relief issues that demand attention and action, as the ripples expand outward. in the article, beyond metaphor drawings to envisage integration of hiv&aids education: a self-study in primary mathematics teacher education, linda van laren demonstrates how she brought together the seemingly disparate domains of art, mathematics education, and hiv&aids education by using an arts-based metaphordrawing activity with pre-service teachers. van laren explains how, through selfstudy research, she came to realise that, while the metaphor-drawing activity was an effective way of introducing the pre-service teachers to the integration of hiv&aidsrelated issues into the teaching of mathematics, she still had to find other ways to assist them with putting integration into practice in the classroom. lesley wood in her article, values-based self-reflective action research for promoting gender equality: some unexpected lessons, takes us into a project with a group of teachers who engage in examining their own assumptions and values relating to gender and gender-based violence in their teaching. significantly, wood does not merely describe the self-reflective action research of the teachers, but also draws attention to her own reflexivity in working alongside the teachers. editorial self-study of educational practice: re-imagining our pedagogies 5 the next two articles focus on self-study in drama and graphic design. in their article, the director’s ‘i’: theatre, self, and self-study, tamar meskin and tanya van der walt make a compelling case for exploring the parallels between engaging in the project of self-study and the structures of performance and drama, modelling as they do throughout the article a type of performed dialogue. in their approach, they draw on a/r/tography as a framework for writing about/performing arts. as they write: “we see ourselves as belonging to the community of a/r/tographers (sullivan, 2006), where we see ourselves as artists (theatre-makers), researchers (investigators of our theatrical practice) and teachers (facilitators of learning for both our students and ourselves)”. likewise, lee scott highlights the interconnection of her “artist-self” with her “researcherand teacher-self”. her article, ‘digging deep’: self-study as a reflexive approach to improving my practice as an artist, researcher and teacher, explores the personal and educational significance of using a combination of graphic design and painting to “[make] visually apparent the integration of artist, researcher and teacher”. in her article, vulnerability: self-study’s contribution to social justice education, corrine knowles discusses how she engages with self-study as a tool to analyse the norms that operate in her classroom so that she can become more inclusive, and in so doing, contribute to social justice pedagogy. she presents a convincing perspective of how when self-study works with vulnerability – to one’s peers, to students, to new knowledge, to loss of dearly held beliefs and stories – it has the potential to continuously inform teaching practice and expand the norms that frame them. the article powerfully demonstrates how this potential vulnerability, and loss of self, can be a “resource for politics” (butler 2004: 30). thenjiwe meyiwa, theresa chisanga, paul mokhele, nkosinathi sotshangane and sizakele makhanya, a research group of three postgraduate students and two supervisors, highlight the critical need to pay reflexive attention to context in selfstudy research. their article, complex journeys and methodological responses to engaging in self-study in a rural comprehensive university, demonstrates how they – individually and collectively – grappled with epistemological, ontological and practical tensions while undertaking self-study research across diverse disciplines in a rural, under-resourced educational context. they conclude that “self-study inquiry is an essential tool for transformative education especially for research, teaching, and learning in a poor, rural, and under-resourced” pedagogic setting. finally, working in a very different context to meyiwa et al., anasatasia samaras, with diana karczmarczyk, lesley smith, louisa woodville, laurie harmon, ilham nasser, seth parsons, toni smith, kirk borne, lynne constantine, ezperanza roman mendoza, jennifer suh and ryan swanson, also take up “re-imagining our pedagogies” in the realm of collective and trans-disciplinary self-study research in their article a pedagogy changer: transdisciplinary faculty self-study. as the article highlights, “university cultures do not typically promote or support self-study groups so that faculty can collectively explore their pedagogy”. in this trans-disciplinary perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 6 study at one university in the usa, a self-study group called “scholars of studying teaching collaborative” (sostc) was formed. as the authors note, the work of the group involved both personal and collaborative inquiry. overall, the article makes a strong case for re-imagining our pedagogies through trans-disciplinary, collective self-study inquiries. it is interesting to note that the research by samaras et al., conducted in the usa, resonates with the south african council on higher education’s new framework for institutional quality enhancement (2014), which emphasises the generative value of institutional support for higher education teaching staff who wish to contribute to new communities of practice by researching and re-imagining their own pedagogies. indeed, the framework document (2014: 21) stresses that transformation of teaching and learning in the higher education sector depends on “developing a higher education system that is improving continuously as members of the higher education community collaborate to share good practices and solve shared problems”. the framework offers rich possibilities for changes at the level of both policy and practice in south african higher education institutions. taken as a whole, the articles in this special issue highlight self-study as a fruitful area for both research and institutional transformation. references butler j 2004. undoing gender. new york and london: routledge. council on higher education (che) 2014. framework for institutional quality enhancement in the second period of quality assurance. pretoria: council on higher education. greene m 1998. art and imagination: overcoming a desperate stasis. in ac ornstein & ls behar-horenstein (eds), contemporary issues in curriculum. 2nd edition. needham heights, ma: allyn & bacon, 45-53. harrison l, pithouse-morgan k, conolly j & meyiwa t 2012. learning from the first year of the transformative education/al studies (tes) project. alternation, 19(2): 12-37. holquist m 1981. glossary for bakhtin, m. the dialogic imagination: four essays (c emerson & m holquist, trans.; m holquist (ed.). austin, tx: university of texas press. laboskey vk 2004. the methodology of self-study and its theoretical underpinnings. in jj loughran, ml hamilton, vk laboskey & t russell (eds), international handbook of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices. volume 2. dordrecht, the netherlands: kluwer academic publishers, 817-869. masinga l 2012. journeys to self-knowledge: methodological reflections on using memory-work in a participatory study of teachers as sexuality educators. journal of education, 54: 121-137. editorial self-study of educational practice: re-imagining our pedagogies 7 masinga l 2014. teachers learning about their sexual identities through collaborative storytelling: mandla and sihle’s story. agenda, 28(1): 37-43. mitchell c 2008. getting the picture and changing the picture: visual methodologies and educational research in south africa. south african journal of education, 28(3): 365-383. mitchell c & weber s 2005. just who do we think we are … and how do we know this? re-visioning pedagogical spaces for studying our teaching selves. in c mitchell, s weber & k o’reilly-scanlon (eds), just who do we think we are? methodologies for autobiography and self-study in teaching. london: routledge/falmer, 1-9. pithouse-morgan k, de lange n, mitchell c, moletsane r, olivier t, stuart j, van laren l & wood l. 2013. creative and participatory strategies for teacher development in the age of aids. in j kirk, m dembélé & s baxter (eds), more and better teachers for quality education for all: identity and motivation, systems and support. e-book available online at http:// moreandbetterteachers.wordpress.com/: collaborative works, 75-90. pithouse-morgan k & samaras a. (forthcoming). thinking in space: learning about dialogue as method from a trans-continental conversation about transdisciplinary self-study of professional practice. in a ovens & d garbett (eds), changing practices for changing times: past, present and future possibilities of self-study research. proceedings of the tenth international conference on the self-study of teacher education practices, herstmonceux castle, uk, 3-7 august 2014. pithouse-morgan k & van laren l 2012. towards academic generativity: working collaboratively with visual artefacts for self-study and social change. south african journal of education, 32(4): 416-427. pithouse k, mitchell c & moletsane r (eds) 2009. making connections: self-study & social action. new york: peter lang. pithouse k, mitchell c & weber s 2009. self-study in teaching and teacher development: a call to action. educational action research, 17(1): 43-62. samaras ap 2011. self-study teacher research: improving your practice through collaborative inquiry. thousand oaks, ca: sage. samaras ap 2013. twelve shells: learning by leading cross-disciplinary faculty selfstudy of professional practice. reflective practice, 14(4): 519-535. kathleen pithouse-morgan, claudia mitchell and daisy pillay (guest editors) 1 (re)thinking (trans)formation in south african (higher) education lesley le grange university of stellenbosch in this article i outline two broad sets of changes characterising the south african higher education landscape. the first relates to, among other things, structural changes (such as mergers and incorporations), the reorganisation of teaching programmes (influenced by the mode 2 knowledge), and the introduction of performativity regimes, most notably a quality assurance body for higher education, the higher education quality committee (heqc). these changes might be understood as outcomes of forces associated with the ascendancy of neoliberal politics and forces linked to a rapidly changing and globally interconnected world. the second relates to the need to transform higher education in south africa so as to overcome legacies of apartheid as captured in policies that have been developed to redress past inequalities, including discrimination based on race, gender, sexual orientation and so on. it is in this area in particular that challenges remain, as reflected in the soudien report. i suggest in this article that both sets of changes relate to a broader crisis – a crisis of humanism. moreover, education might be implicated in this crisis. and so i suggest that we might need to (re)think (trans)formation in (higher) education by replacing the term ‘education’ with the term pedagogy, where pedagogy is understood as a transformative event concerned with the person becoming present in context (todd 2010). introduction i begin this article with a brief orientation to this work. firstly, my discussion relates to what i have experienced and what i have seen happening around me. in foucault’s (in rajchman, 1985:36) words: “each time i have attempted to do theoretical [academic] work it has been on the basis of elements of my experience – always in relation to processes that i saw taking place around me”. secondly, i am both a subject and an object of what i describe in the article. i borrow ball’s (2004:146) words: “some of the oppressions i describe are perpetrated by me. i am an agent and subject within the regime of performativity in the academy.” thirdly, my method of inquiry is writing itself. as richardson (2001:35) points out: “i write because i want to find something out ... in order to learn something that i did not know before i wrote it. i was taught, though, as perhaps you were, too, not to write until i knew what i wanted to say, until my points were organized and outlined. no surprise, this static writing model coheres with mechanistic scientism, quantitative research, and entombed scholarship.” my interest is to find out more about broader processes impacting on my (and others’) work and to make sense of transformation processes occurring in south african higher education. moreover, i wish to explore how we might rethink the notion of transformation, not as a process driven by macro-forces (whether global or national) but one that occurs at the micro-level. transformation has become a buzzword and is often bandied around loosely. it might usefully be understood as a process that has no beginning and no end. in the context of higher education it is a term that has been used with reference to changes that the modern university is undergoing in a rapidly globalising world and also with respect to challenges within nation-states associated with issues such as access, diversity, equity and (e)quality. as far as the modern university is concerned, jacobs and hellström (2000:1) point to three significant developments in the transformation of the university research system over the past two or three decades: the shift from science systems to global science networks• the capitalisation of knowledge• the integration of academic labour into the industrial economy, also known as the coming of the • knowledge economy. 2 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 20112 concerning the first development, we are witnessing research information being captured on international databases such as international scientific information (isi), making it possible to compare countries’ growth in, inter alia, publications and citations levels. countries are also compared on several criteria and placed on global ranking lists such as the shanghai academic ranking of world universities (arwu). the second development relates to the university becoming a partner with industry in transforming primary commodities into manufactured goods which are sold on a global market. it also involves the marketing and selling of academic qualifications on a global market. for example, knowledge is one of the key sources of revenue for countries such as australia. the third development relates to the widely accepted idea that contemporary society is a knowledge society that is increasingly being driven by a knowledge economy. watson (2003) argues that the role of the university in a knowledge society is changing as a consequence of two sets of pressures: “inside-out” and “outside-in” developments. the inside-out developments refer to intrinsic pressures concerned with a set of epistemological challenges. watson refers to the theoretical intervention of michael gibbons and his colleagues – the shift from mode 1 (pure, disciplinary, homogeneous, expert-led, supply-driven, hierarchical, peer-reviewed and almost exclusively university-based) to mode 2 knowledge (applied, problem-centred, transdisciplinary, heterogeneous, hybrid, demand-driven, entrepreneurial, networkembedded) (gibbons, limoges, nowotny, schwartzman, scott & trow, 1994). outside-in developments refer to social concerns. these include aspects such as socio-economic patterns of participation, including who gains access to education, health care and so on. each of these developments is, of course, a contested terrain. however, i shall not explore the contested nature of the developments here. suffice it to say that these developments have wide-ranging implications for universities, particularly for academics who work in and constitute these institutions. they not only raise the question of the future role of the university, but also of the role of the academic – of what is meant by the concept “academic”. it is important to realise that south african universities have not been left unaffected by these developments. as a consequence of these developments (and others) the modern university has been described in dramatic terms, as an institution that is in crisis. for example, jacobs and hellström (2000:1) note, “after years of battering from without, the walls of the ivory tower are finally crumbling” and readings (1996) argues that the modern university is “in ruins”. readings (1996:119) characterises the contemporary university in terms of the idea of excellence so as to emphasise the dominance of the institution of performativity.1 he argues that when university managers invoke the term “excellence”, they unwittingly orient the question of value in favour of measurement and accounting solutions in preference to the question of accountability. readings contrasts the contemporary university with earlier incarnations: the kantian university of reason (for which the founding discipline is philosophy) and the humboldtian university (in which philosophy is replaced with literature). but, unlike its predecessors, the ideal of excellence conceals a kind of vacuity. as barnett and standish (2003) elaborate: globalisation and the decline of the nation-state create conditions where the currency of excellence can function ideally for a knowledge economy ... the modern university is dominated by procedural reasoning – in its emphasis on skills and on management systems, and in an incipient reduction of knowledge to information (all accelerated by computerization) – to the detriment of a proper attention to content and to traditions of inquiry. in the university of excellence academic freedom is not so much threatened as effaced. put differently, as a unifying principle excellence has the benefit of being entirely meaningless, that is, it is non-referential, as illustrated in an example where a university recently gave a person an award for “excellence in parking” (peters, 2004:72). peters (2004) argues that the idea(l) of excellence: 1 performativity as used here refers to the way in which lyotard (1984:11) uses it in the postmodern condition. as lyotard (1984:11) writes, “the true goal of the system, the reason it programs itself like a computer, is the optimisation of the global relationship between input and output – in other words, performativity.” 3le grange — (re)thinking (trans)formation in south african (higher) education 3 … signifies the corporate bureaucratization of the university. universities have become sites for the development of “human resources”. guided by mission statements and strategic plans, performance output is measured and total quality management (tqm) assures quality outcomes. traces of these developments are evident in the changing landscape of the south african higher education system – and the technology of performativity is firmly entrenched in the country’s universities (cf. le grange, 2009). i shall show in the next section how these developments have impacted on the post-apartheid university. however, there is another side to the transformation of higher education that deserves particular attention, namely social concerns as they are related to higher education. following the dismantling of legal apartheid, it was imperative to transform the higher education system in south africa so as to overcome the legacies of apartheid. the vision of such a transformed landscape is captured in a series of policies that were developed to address this need, culminating in white paper 3: a programme for the transformation of higher education. this need is captured in the white paper as follows: [higher education] must lay the foundations for the development of a learning society which stimulate, direct and mobilize the creative and intellectual energies of all people towards meeting the challenge of reconstruction and development (doe, 1997:7). the same white paper summarises the requirements for the transformation of higher education in south africa as “increased and broadened participation, responsiveness to societal interests and needs, and cooperation and partnerships in governance” (doe, 1997:10). these requirements include the need to “increase black, women, disabled and mature students”, and to develop “new curricula and flexible models of learning and teaching, including modes of delivery” (doe, 1997:10). however, more than a decade later issues of access, equity and quality in relation to the core functions of higher education remain challenges and were the key focal points of the higher education summit held in cape town in april 2010. i shall look at some of the changes that these developments have effected in south african higher education over the past decades. transformation of higher education in south africa over the past decade concerning inside-out developments, jansen (2002:507) points out that south african higher education policy documents (produced after 1994) bear the unmistakeable fingerprints of gibbons and his colleagues. in fact, some of gibbons’s colleagues such as peter scott served as consultants for higher education policy development in post-apartheid south africa. however, jansen argues that the accommodation of mode 2 knowledge production in south african universities is uneven. for example, whilst mode 2 knowledge forms thrive and are expanding at an institution such as the university of pretoria (up), there is little evidence of its success in a historically disadvantaged university such as the university of durban westville2 (as it was formerly known). i acknowledge the unevenness jansen refers to, and that there is not a simple and linear relationship between policy and practice. however, some policies (or elements of them) do trickle down so as to influence practices (variously and in uneven ways). therefore, i shall show how mode 2 thinking has penetrated south african universities and how it has (re)configured academic programmes. i shall pay particular attention to what might be referred to as teaching/learning programmes (for the sake of brevity i shall from now on just refer to teaching programmes). there have always been teaching programmes in universities. however, one outcome of the higher education policy developments of the late 1990s was the reconfiguration of teaching programmes at all south african universities, regarding both organisational and design features. several universities have changed their organisational structures to create larger units such as schools and colleges, resulting in the abandonment of traditional academic departments organised along disciplinary lines. school and/ or programme directors have been appointed and the traditional posts of heads or chairpersons of departments have been done away with. in many instances these larger structures are organised around programmes and not disciplines. furthermore, regarding programme design there has been a shift in the 2 the university of durban westville has since merged with the university of natal and the amalgamated institution is called the university of kwazulu-natal. 4 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 20114 sense that academic disciplines do not necessarily inform the goals and visions of programmes, but instead the outcomes (some generic to all teaching programmes in south africa and some specific to particular programmes). these outcomes are linked to the needs of both global and south african societies. the approach to curriculum design is one of “design down, deliver up”, where modules (that were traditionally organised around disciplines) now have to be (re)designed in the service of the vision and outcomes of a programme. this is how it works in theory – the extent to which these changes are reflected in practice varies depending on the institution. north-west university is an example of an institution which has made fairly comprehensive changes to its organisational structures regarding academic programmes (both research and teaching). at stellenbosch university new programme structures were put in place, but academic departments were retained. smaller programmes are located within departments, while larger ones extend across departments. the situation of having both programme chairs and departmental chairs does create tensions. for example, staff members are appointed by departments and departmental chairs manage operational budgets, but programme chairs are responsible for managing programme renewal, which might have staff implications over which they do not have control. how does this relate to mode 2 knowledge production? mode 2 knowledge production concerns a shift in the way knowledge is produced in a socially distributed knowledge system – essentially it pertains to research. i have tried to show here that the influence of the advocates of mode 2 thinking on higher education policy development south africa also resulted in a reconfiguration of both the organisation and design of teaching programmes. mode 2 thinking therefore does not only relate to the production of knowledge, but also to its transmission and acquisition, in the sense that knowledge included in teaching programmes becomes reframed. teaching programmes have further been affected by another development in south african higher education, namely the emergence of an audit culture associated with the rise of neoliberalism. the emergence of quality assurance (and related terms) in discourses on higher education might be understood against the backdrop of a rising culture of performativity in society, in general, and in education, in particular. in his seminal work the postmodern condition (a commissioned report on the university sector for the government of québec) lyotard (1984) introduces the term “performativity”. since its coinage this term has been widely invoked in the criticism of contemporary education practice. as barnett and standish (2003:16) write: the term aptly exposes the jargon and practices of efficiency and effectiveness, quality assurance and control, inspection and accountability that have become so prominent a feature of contemporary educational regimes. whatever is undertaken must be justified in terms of an increase in productivity measured in terms of a gain in time. the rising culture of performativity is closely intertwined with the ascendance of neoliberalism in the past four decades (cf. peters, 2004). ball (2003:216) argues that “performativity is a technology, a culture and a mode of regulation that employs judgements, comparisons and displays as means of incentive, control, attrition and change – based on rewards and sanctions”. my interest here is to look at how these developments have played out in south african higher education. the higher education act of 1998 legitimised the establishment of a higher education quality committee (heqc), responsible for monitoring and regulating the quality of all higher education programmes through a process of accreditation of such programmes/qualifications. on the neoliberal agenda the idea of self-regulation is evident in the work of the heqc through systems and processes of peer auditing, evaluation and review, leading to what is referred to as the attainment of self-accreditation status on the part of higher education institutions. self-regulation and self-accreditation are misleading terms because they imply an association with academic freedom and institutional autonomy. however, these terms do not mean the abandonment of state control, but the establishment of a new form of control – what du gay (1996) calls “controlled de-control”, or what vidovich (2002) calls “steering at a distance” – so performativity remains the regulatory regime. teaching programmes in south africa not only have to be reconfigured because of mode 2 thinking, but are also subject to regulation by the state, although this might be by “remote control”. 5le grange — (re)thinking (trans)formation in south african (higher) education 5 by way of illustration i next discuss how an interconnected global knowledge economy has influenced the way in which the state funds research publications in south africa. universities receive direct state funding by way of subsidy income that is based on teaching inputs, teaching outputs and research outputs. research outputs comprise completed master’s and doctoral research, and research publications. the state only gives funding for articles that have been published in accredited journals (peer-reviewed journals approved by the department of education). prior to 2004 the national department of education (doe) had a single list of accredited journals. journals were included on this list based on submissions made by south african universities through their research divisions. the submissions were evaluated by a panel appointed by the doe and decisions were made as to whether a journal was placed on the list (in other words, it received accreditation). since 2004 this has changed. journals are now automatically accredited if they appear on the international scientific information’s (isi) master list, the international bibliography of social sciences (ibss) list and the doe list for south african journals only. editors of south african journals have been encouraged to have their journals placed on the isi list. of the three lists, isi has by far the most journals, but is owned by a private company, thomson reuters, which is a multi-billion dollar usa company. the upshot of this is that a private company is now indirectly controlling which journals south african academics publish in. if academics choose to publish in journals (although they may be the best quality journals) not included on one of these lists, the income that their institutions receive will be reduced. this could impact negatively on the academic’s research funding, career advancement and the status of their institutions. south african academics and the universities in which they work have not been unaffected by this capitalisation of knowledge. i have attempted to show by way of a few examples how the transformation of higher education in south africa might be understood within broader transformations occurring in global society, namely its transition towards what has been variously described as a knowledge society, learning society, knowledge economy and post-industrialised age. wittingly or unwittingly south african universities, the academics who inhabit them and the knowledge they produce are affected by, and are also co-producers of, this epochal change. however, the south african higher education system remains challenged by several transformation issues that pointedly remind us that transformation is an ongoing process. these issues relate to structural matters (size and shape issues), staff and student diversity, and language and access (both formal and epistemological). we have witnessed several changes in the restructuring of the public higher education system regarding its size and shape, of which a key outcome was the reduction of 21 universities and 15 technikons (akin to polytechnics in other countries) to 23 higher education institutions, divided into three categories: universities, comprehensive universities (outcomes of mergers of universities and technikons) and universities of technology (former technikons or mergers of former technikons). the mergers and incorporations were introduced ostensibly to make the system more efficient – to reduce wastage as a result of duplication of programmes, etc. on the success of these mergers and incorporations the jury is still out. many merged institutions have separate campuses (the predecessor universities/technikons) that mainly still function as separate units, which is, in certain cases, problematic. an example is north-west university, where the mafikeng campus is mainly black and the medium of instruction predominantly english, whereas the potchefstroom campus is mainly white and the language of instruction predominantly afrikaans. the altered size and shape of the higher education system has also not resulted in dramatic increases in black graduates in key fields such as engineering and medicine. moreover, across the board, the success rate of students doing three-year bachelor’s degrees through contact mode is only 22.5% (letseka & maile, 2008:2). despite the altered size and shape, the system as a whole remains inefficient. the slow pace of transformation regarding staff and student demographics remains a challenge at institutions such as stellenbosch university, which was recently slated by the parliamentary portfolio committee on higher education for the slow pace of its transformation regarding these two aspects. at the same institution there is an ongoing controversy about language of instruction – in particular whether afrikaans is used as a barrier to formal access by black students. other issues concerning formal access relate to whether a lack of finances should deny historically disadvantaged students access to higher 6 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 20116 education and thereby deny them life chances they deserve as citizens. the government’s national student financial aid scheme (nsfas) and occupation-specific bursaries (e.g. the fundza lushaka bursaries for initial teacher education), and the recruitment bursaries that individual institutions provide, are examples of laudable attempts to provide wider access to, and participation in, higher education. however, here, too, challenges remain, as witnessed by ongoing student protests at various universities, and calls by them for free higher education. moreover, at the university of cape town there has been a debate recently as to whether race remains the best surrogate for admitting historically disadvantaged students to the university, or whether other categories such as class might be more appropriate (cf. soudien 2010). thus, there are ongoing challenges that universities in south africa face which, it could be argued, are legacies of apartheid. but a specific issue worth noting, which has raised its ugly head in postapartheid higher education, is that of racism, evident through several incidents, most notably at the reitz residence at free state university, which involved the humiliation of black workers by white students. this incident (and other concerns) prompted the then minister of education, naledi pandor, to establish a ministerial committee on progress towards transformation and social cohesion and the elimination of discrimination in public higher education institutions. the brief of the committee was to “investigate discrimination in public higher education, with a particular focus on racism” (soudien et al., 2008). the overall assessment of the committee was that “discrimination, in particular with regard to racism and sexism, is pervasive in our institutions” (soudien et al., 2008). there are changes in higher education associated with a rising culture of performativity, but these changes thwart the development of personal capacity. all ideas are welcome, but the higher education system is guided by a genre of discourse whose end is performativity – in this sense performativity is anti-transformational. despite policies that have been developed to transform higher education, discrimination remains prevalent and it is this issue i wish to pursue as a way of initiating discussion that critically examines the very idea of (higher) education, namely that education itself might militate against transformation. i shall try to show that, although we might assume that the role of education is to bring about change (to transform), the outcome might be formation (socialisation) rather than transformation. transformation as becoming present almost two decades after the dismantling of legal apartheid race continues to define and divide south africans. race has come to take on a unique form in south africa – it has become reinserted, entrenched and naturalised in complex ways in post-apartheid south africa. as soudien (2010:225) writes: “it fills every vacant space. it infects these to the point where its contagion is experienced, narrated and analysed as a kind of base-line ontology.” south africans are inevitably both the objects and subjects of racial categorisation. the different spaces we inhabit/occupy engender complex and often contradictory encounters with the construct “race”. although race might take on unique forms in particular contexts, i argue that its manifestation (and that of other forms of discrimination) across the globe is part of a crisis of humanism, in which education might be implicated. in light of this, i turn to a discussion on education, specifically its link to enlightenment humanism and its inherent tension in that it involves both formation and transformation. following todd (2010), i shall open up a discussion on “pedagogy as a transformative event”. education has traditionally been understood as an intervention into someone’s life – a process that makes a difference to a life. therefore, education cannot simply be constituted as practices of socialisation, although novices need to be equipped with the cultural tools to participate in a particular form of life so as to ensure cultural and social continuity. for biesta (2006:2), the danger of viewing education narrowly as socialisation is that socialisation contributes to the reproduction of inequalities. therefore, education additionally includes individuation, that is, it focuses on the cultivation of the human person or the individual’s humanity. this idea that education is about cultivating the human person might be traced back to the tradition of bildung – an educational ideal that emerged in greek society and, through its adoption in roman culture, humanism, neohumanism and the enlightenment, became one of the central notions of the modern western educational tradition (cf. biesta, 2006). the upshot of these developments was 7le grange — (re)thinking (trans)formation in south african (higher) education 7 that the notion of a human being was configured in a particular way. for example, when bildung became intertwined with the enlightenment and, in particular, the influence of emmanuel kant, a human being came to mean a “rational autonomous being”. consequently, the purpose of education was to develop rational, autonomous beings (biesta, 2006). however, some have sought to question humanism (the enlightenment idea of what it means to be human) and education based on enlightenment humanism. for example, heidegger (1962) points out that humanism’s response to the question of what it means to be human focuses on the essence or nature of the human being. he argues that the focus should instead be on the being of this being, on the existence of the human being, on the ways in which the human being exists in the world. the problem with focusing on the essence of a human being is that it opens up possibilities for defining “human” in particular ways that declares others as less human or non-human. the holocaust, apartheid, genocides in bosnia, rwanda and cambodia forcefully remind us of the manifestations of humanism. levinas (1990:279) goes as far as to argue that the crisis of humanism began with the inhuman events of recent history, for example, the 1914 war, the russian revolution refuting itself in stalinism, fascism, atomic bombings, genocide, and so on. biesta (2006:9) provides an alternative to the enlightenment understanding of education, which is based on the idea that it needs to produce rational autonomous persons. the educator in this instance takes on the role of midwife so as to release the rational potential of the human being. in contrast, biesta’s idea is not based on the educator producing or releasing anything, but that education “should focus on the ways in which the new beginning of each and every individual can come into presence” (2006:9). he not only shifts the focus away from education as developing autonomous, rational beings, but also away from education’s socialising and reproductive functions. however, todd (2010:5) points to the paradox of the term education, “since both in practice and theory it works in the impossible space of formation and transformation”. thus, she brackets out the term “education” and inserts the term “pedagogy”, which she views not as a teaching-learning encounter or a political project, but as a transformative event, namely how the individual becomes present in the world. drawing on the work of hannah arendt and adriana cavarero, she writes about becoming present as a second birth, a pedagogical birth. the birth is not from the mother’s womb, but involves our unexpected becoming as we speak and act in the world in the presence of others. furthermore, one’s becoming present is uniquely singular and occurs in context with others – “uniqueness … emerges in a particular time and context” (todd, 2010:6). a recently published work, jansen’s (2009) knowledge in the blood, is illustrative of the limits of education and the possibility of viewing pedagogy as a transformative event. when jansen began his work as a black dean at the up3 in 2000, he was startled at the views of young afrikaner students about a past (including rigid feelings about black south africans) that they had never lived. he discovers that their views had been formed through a process of socialisation involving the home, church, schools and sport. as an educationist, his response might reasonably have been to somehow intervene in the lives of students (and perhaps this was his intention when he visited schools, students’ homes, took students to the movies, etc.) so as to influence their beliefs or to change their views. such a response would be conceivable given the context and that education’s occupation since greek antiquity has been concerned with “influence”, “change”, “transformation” – how through education we might change people’s lives for the better or to conscientise people, as freire suggested. however, jansen’s narrative is, in part, about how he becomes singularly (uniquely) present in a particular context; as he spoke and acted in the presence of (young) white afrikaners, he was transformed. he writes: “at up i have had some of the most profound and life-changing experiences that any human being could expect to face in one career” (jansen, 2009:7). from this, it is clear that becoming present in context is not an easy affair. arendt (in todd, 2010:9) asserts that when our lives are spoken in a way that enables us to appear to others, we set in motion unpredictable outcomes; in our exchanges with others our actions strike others and are released into the world, generating unpredictable reactions, even unpredictable sufferings. arendt writes that these (inter) 3 the university of pretoria is a historically white and afrikaans university whose monocultural identity is being challenged (and is changing) in post-apartheid south africa. 8 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 20118 actions are “boundless because one deed, and sometimes one word, suffices to change every constellation” (todd, 2010:7). jansen’s narrative is also about how young afrikaners become present in context. importantly, it might not be grand narratives, macro-events or elaborate policies that will effect transformation, but events at the micro-level at which human beings become present in context – it is at the level of the miniscule that newness could emerge. the power of the miniscule or singular event has been documented in the field of physics as early as the 19th century and evidenced by maxwell’s words: ... the system has a quantity of potential energy, which is capable of being transformed into motion, but which cannot begin to be so transformed till the system has reached a certain configuration, to attain which requires an expenditure of work, which in certain cases may be infinitesimally small, and in general bears no definite proportion to the energy developed in consequence thereof (in pindar & sutton, 2001:11). conclusion in this article i discussed the transformation of higher education in south africa following the dismantling of apartheid. one way of connecting all the aspects that i have discussed (globalisation, neoliberalism, the technology of performativity, higher education policy, education itself) is to investigate how these forces play a role in the production of human subjectivity. forces of globalisation have influenced higher education (policy) in south africa, but globalisation has resulted in the domestication/homogenisation of subjectivity (cf. guattari, 2001). moreover, modern education itself has produced subjectivities that are passive and uninspiring (cf. le grange, 2008). despite its dream of transformation, education by definition inevitably becomes formation – socialisation remains a powerful element in it – or at least when we invoke the term “education”, it necessarily sets up a tension between transformation and formation. i have attempted to open up the possibility of imagining transformation differently by considering pedagogy as a transformative event (as todd has termed it). viewing pedagogy in this way shifts the discussion away from the aims, objectives or outcomes of education. it shifts the discussion away from what we might need to do to bring about change in the future. as todd (2010:9) writes: viewing pedagogy as transformative event in fact means shifting our understanding of the relationship between education and time, which would radically alter our focus on educational phenomena ... it means paying attention to the singularly different ways students take their place as speaking and acting subjects and it means engaging with the ‘who’ of education and not simply the ‘what’. pedagogy as transformative event does not lie in invoking old ideas and using old formulae. transformation lies in becoming present in a world of supercomplexity, where the biosphere intersects with the mechanosphere, and systems with the life world, where suffering is evident in the ecologies of mind, socius and nature. the vectors of escape from domestication/homogenisation lie in interaction with the world as it is. i end with kappelar’s (1986:212) words: “i do not really wish to conclude and sum up, rounding off the argument so as to dump it in a nutshell for the reader. a lot more could be said about any of the topics i have touched upon … i have meant to ask the questions, to break out of the frame … the point is not a set of answers, but making possible a different [higher education] practice …” references ball s 2003. the teacher’s soul and the terrors of performativity. journal of education policy, 18(2):215-228. ball s 2004. performativities and fabrications in the education economy: towards the performative society. in: s ball (ed), the routledgefalmer reader in sociology of education. london and new york: routledgefalmer. barnett r & standish p 2003. higher education and the university. in: n blake, p smeyers, r smith & p standish (eds), the blackwell guide to the philosophy of education. oxford: blackwell. biesta g 2006. beyond learning: democratic education for a human future. london: paradigm. department of education (doe) 1997. education white paper 3: a programme for the 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translators’ introduction. in: f guattari, the three ecologies, trans. ian pindar and paul sutton. london: athlone press. rajchman j 1985. michel foucault: the freedom of philosophy. new york: columbia university press. readings b 1996. the university in ruins. cambridge, mass and london: harvard university press. richardson l 2001. getting personal: writing-stories. international journal of qualitative studies, 14(1):33-38. soudien c et al. 2008. report of the ministerial committee on tranformation and social cohesion and the elimination of discrimination in public higher education institutions. pretoria: department of education. soudien c 2010. some issues in affirmative action in higher education in south africa. south african journal of higher education, 24(2):224-237. todd s 2010. pedagogy as transformative event: becoming singularly present in context. keynote address at the annual conference of the philosophy of education society of great britain. new college, oxford university. vidovich l 2002. quality assurance in australian higher education: globalisation and ‘steering at a distance’. higher education, 43:391-408. watson d 2003. the university in the knowledge society. in: s bjarnason & p coldstream (eds), the idea of engagement: universities in society. london: acu. 253 research article 2021 39(2): 253-266 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) exploring strategies teachers use to develop literacy skills among english first additional language learners in the foundation phase abstract teachers play a significant role in literacy development. they are responsible for using different approaches to develop literacy skills among learners whose mother tongue is not the same as the language of learning and teaching in schools. this article aims to explore strategies teachers use to develop literacy skills among english first additional language learners. a qualitative case study was conducted that involved focus group interviews to gain in-depth knowledge of the strategies teachers use in their classes to develop literacy skills. for this article, vygotsky’s zone of proximal development is used as a theoretical framework. the participants were six foundation phase teachers from one district in gauteng. the data gathered showed that teachers are trying to use strategies described in the curriculum policy document. teachers were unaware that they were using some of the most contemporary strategies in their classes such as balanced-literacy approach, play-based approach and evidence-based approach. findings showed that teachers had good knowledge and understanding of literacy however, they were experiencing some challenges. they cited lack of support from knowledgeable others and appropriate teacher development and training. the study recommends that teachers need continuous training and development, literacy text should be contextualised and continued support from the school heads of department, curriculum advisors and subject specialist. it also recommends an in-depth knowledge, understanding and implementation of the curriculum policy. keywords: literacy skills; english first additional language; foundation phase; learning/teaching strategies 1. introduction learning in a language that is not the mother-tongue is an international phenomenon that is brought about by increased mobility and movement of people from one place to another (dreyer, 2017). according to the language in education policy (department of education [doe], 1997), 11 official languages are nationally recognised in south africa. author: dr roy venketsamy1 ms sophie sibanda1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i2.18 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(2): 253-266 published: 11 june 2021 received: 30 april 2020 accepted: 04 january 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3594-527x http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4626-0487 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 2542021 39(2): 254-266 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) although the national policy states that learners have the right to education in their own language (mother tongue), every school has the right to its own language policy. according to dreyer (2017), many learners who are non-english speaking are attending schools where the language of learning and teaching (lolt) is english. these learners are significantly challenged in classes. teachers need to employ different strategies to ensure these learners become literate in the lolt. excell and linington (2011) define a literate child as someone who can read, write, speak and listen, however, the ability to accomplish these skill among english first additional language learners (efal) is of great concern in south african public schools (zinn, stilwell & hoskins, 2015). being literate is about learners making meaning for themselves and communicating with others (bracefield & woodgate, 2020). reading for meaning and pleasure is an essential skill that children learn in the foundation phase (fp). according to pretorius et al., (2016), all future learning will depend on the basic understanding of the relationship between print and spoken language. the department of basic education (dbe) (2017) agrees that most learners cannot read or write. therefore, it is crucial to improve the teaching and learning of literacy skills in schools, mainly serving historically disadvantaged communities. sadly, the opportunity to become literate is not afforded to most south african learners (pretorius et al., 2016). according to both national and international assessments namely, annual national assessment (ana) and the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls), literacy skills among most learners is low (dbe, 2014; howie et al., 2017). the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) explains that learning to use language successfully is the learners' ability to express their identity, feelings and ideas dbe, 2011). language is a vehicle that learners use to describe their cultural and social diversity. through language development, literacy skills can be shaped, changed, widened and refined (mudzielwana et al., 2012). the purpose of this paper is to explore the strategies fp teachers use to support efal learners to develop their literacy skills. literacy learning starts in the learner's immediate environment. being literate is not limited to reading and writing skills or that of static skills and knowledge (pretorius et al., 2016). it is the employment of a wide range of adaptable literacy practices, strategies and knowledge to effectively use texts within social and cultural situations for a variety of purposes (anstey & bull, 2010). 2. what is meant by literacy? the concept of literacy has progressed from the ability of a learner just to read and/or write to include activities such as reading, writing, listening, speaking, viewing, symbolising, with a variety of supplementary texts including, but not limited to print, digital, video, images and conversations (kennedy et al., 2012). basic literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create and communicate (dbe, 2011). to accomplish this skill, learners can use printed and written materials associated with varying contexts (pretorius et al., 2016). literacy skills help learners develop their knowledge and potential and participate fully in their community and broader society. this is achieved through developing speaking, listening, reading and writing skills (greenhill & petroe, 2010). 3. the role of the teacher in teaching literacy skills the teacher plays a crucial role in supporting literacy development (bracefield et al., 2020). what teachers do and say influences their learner's literacy development, even the language http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 2552021 39(2): 255-266 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 venketsamy & sibanda exploring strategies teachers use to develop literacy skills they use determines what is learnt and how it is learnt (mielonen & paterson, 2009). teachers need to know several approaches to developing literacy skills among learners and providing flexible instructive feedback (persaud, 2019). the victoria department of education (2020) agrees that the teacher's role is to ensure that learners develop fundamental literacy skills. they need to encourage learners to practise their literacy skills as often as possible. teachers must ensure that learners are making sense of what they read (pretorius et al., 2016). learners should be able to summarise the main ideas in a text and respond using appropriate language. according to mudzielwana et al. (2012), children need to write answers to questions on what they have read; teachers must also ensure that children can demonstrate their understanding of new concepts taught. another fundamental role of teachers is to encourage learner-centred learning by allowing learners to share decisions (mccarthy, 2015). learnercentred teaching generally involves teaching methods that move instruction from the teacher to the learner (du plessis, 2020). teachers are expected to promote literacy development with various resources such as games, audiobooks, classroom and literacy programmes. the development of literacy skills among efal learners is critical for them to become competent in the lolt (dreyer, 2017). dennis and horn (2011) agree that it is essential that teachers know and understand the various strategies that can be used in their classrooms. the dbe (2011) allows teachers to use different strategies in the foundation phase to develop literacy skills among efal learners. some of the strategies listed in the curriculum and assessment policy statements: first additional language (dbe, 2011: 12–17) include, “shared reading, guided reading, reading aloud, vocabulary instructions and guided writing.” this section describes the different strategies and techniques teachers can use to support their learners. 3.1 balanced-approach to literacy development nugent et al., (2016) articulate that children’s early literacy experiences need to involve a balance of varied activities and experiences. learners must be exposed to effective literacy instruction that requires a combination of skills-based and whole language teaching in a motivating and supportive environment. the new literacy skills system has been formulated known as the balanced literacy approach (siaulys, 2013). this approach incorporates the fundamental elements to learn the english language by combining two or more methods into the curriculum. according to uzuner cited in siaulys (2013), the balanced literacy system combines the whole language and skills development approaches. this method combines several approaches to increase the learner's level of literacy comprehension. the different strategies teachers can use in their classrooms are literature circles, basal reading programmes, reading and writing workshops, literature focus units and thematic units (tompkins, 2013) 3.2 evidence-based approach teaching literacy skills through an evidence-based approach provides opportunities for learners to engage in a dialogue. the teacher models listening and speaking skills in an additional language and provides feedback for learners’ participation. teachers need to have a comprehensive knowledge of literacy development, informed by evidence-based best practice (morrow & gambrell, 2011). teachers need to engage learners in meaningful literacy activities, exposing them to key literacy concepts and meaningful engagement. morrow et al., (2011) state that teachers need to create a classroom culture that fosters literacy motivation. they should teach reading for authentic meaning-making purposes; provide learners with http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 2562021 39(2): 256-266 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) scaffolder instructions in phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary and comprehension to promote independent reading; give children time for self-selected reading; provide learners with high-quality literature across a wide range of genres; build a whole-class context that emphasises community and collaboration and balance teacher and learner-led discussion of texts. 3.3 problem-based learning problem-based learning (pbl) is an active-learning learner-centred technique. pbl provides teachers with a way to integrate information literacy naturally into an assignment or course by guiding learners through their activities as they work to find a solution to a problem (wenger, 2014). during language lessons, the teacher must ensure that pbl depicts the real-life situation that learners can relate. pbl motivates active-learning techniques, thus maintaining learners' attention to the task on hand and becoming fruitfully engaged in the activity. pbl takes the focus away from the task-based process of information retrieval and focuses on developing an understanding of the learning (servant-miklos, 2018). information literacy skills, such as the evaluation and synthesis of information, are naturally incorporated throughout a pbl assignment. studies have shown that learner engagement and participation is higher in pbl instruction sessions than in teacher-based sessions (paterson & gamtso, 2012). according to pourshafie and murray-harvey (2013), a problem-based teaching approach shifts facilitation responsibility from teachers to learners. as learners construct their knowledge and learning, this approach creates independence in a controlled learning context. 3.4 play-based approach zosh et al., (2017) agree that play has a fundamental role in developing learners' literacy skills. during play activities, learners think about things, events, people and share and create their ideas to extend their play. research by fleer (2015) has found that learning through play enhances learners’ oral communication, their social, innovative and creative use of play material together with divergent thinking and problem-solving skills. on their website, gryphon house (2018) state that symbolic play has an essential place where children can use their voices to role-play characters in a storybook utilising a range of different props that have functions in the real world. irrespective of the kind of play, play is vital to the social development of learners. therefore, a play-based approach to literacy skills teaching is significant in relation to learners’ higher-order cognitive development, especially their flexible thinking and predicting skills (fleer, 2015). 3.5 reciprocal teaching (rt) reciprocal teaching is a systematic approach to literacy development. an instructional technique develops reading comprehension skills by capacitating learners to take on the role of the teacher. this approach makes learners active participants in learning activities. it helps learners to gradually transit from guided to independent readers and reinforces strategies for comprehension of text (bale, 2020) salehi and vafakhah (2013) articulate that the role of the teacher is to introduce the learners to the four critical components of this approach, namely predicting, clarifying, question generation and summarising to increase learners' reading comprehension. according to mcallum (2014), when applying these critical components in a lesson, they (teachers) can observe and monitor the discussion amongst learners in the class. this approach encourages cognitive dialogue before reading, during reading and after reading (meyer, 2010) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 2572021 39(2): 257-266 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 venketsamy & sibanda exploring strategies teachers use to develop literacy skills 4. theoretical framework for this article, lev vygotsky's theory of language development focusing on social learning and the zone of proximal development (zpd) are used as a theoretical framework. the zpd is the range of abilities a learner can accomplish with assistance from the knowledgeable other (teacher) (cherry, 2020). efal learners in the foundation phase have not yet mastered fundamental literacy skills and therefore need guidance and support from their teachers to independently perform literacy tasks (fani & ghaemi, 2011). teachers play a crucial role in language development and support of learners in the foundation phase. efal learners are already challenged with mastering the language of teaching and learning; however, learners will transition from being dependent to independent learners through the support from knowledge others (teachers). le, janssen and wubbels (2016) state that to develop literacy skills teachers can use group work, peer learning, paired and shared learning whereby learners will be able to interact and learn from each other socially. vygotsky (1976) believed that peer interaction is an essential part of the learning process. for children to learn new skills, he suggested pairing more competent students with less skilled ones (mishra, 2013). 5. research methods and design the researchers applied a qualitative research approach within the interpretivist paradigm (yin, 2018) to explore the strategies foundation phase teachers use to support efal learners in developing their literacy skills. qualitative research helps researchers understand the social phenomenon from the participants' perspective (viswambharan & priya, 2016). a case study method was used, enabling the researchers to closely examine the data within a specific context. for this study, a case study method was appropriate because the authors selected a small geographical area with a limited number of participants (creswell, 2014). purposive sampling was applied to this study because the authors focused particularly on foundation phase teachers teaching efal learners in public primary schools. six (6) foundation phase teachers were chosen from two schools in one district in the gauteng province of south africa. a semi-structured questionnaire guided the group interview process to collect data from the participants. for this article, teachers were coded as t1–t6 to ensure anonymity, confidentiality and privacy of the data. the coding confirmed that no individual could be identified. data analysis was inductive. according to denzin (2012), the validity and reliability of qualitative research are dependent on what the researcher as an inquirer hear and interpret the meaning that s/he thought s/he heard. the study compared multiple data sources in search of common themes. this paper's ethical consideration included obtaining informed consent and maintaining anonymity, confidentiality, privacy, avoidance of betrayal and deception to meet the requirements of the ethical code of conduct. ethics for the study was approved by the ethics committee at the university of pretoria and gauteng education department. 6. research findings and discussion during the coding process, three major themes emerged from the data: teachers’ understanding of literacy; the importance of literacy development for efal learners and the strategies teachers employ to help learners develop literacy skills in the foundation phase. verbatim quotes are included in the discussion. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 2582021 39(2): 258-266 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 6.1 theme 1: understanding of literacy the authors wanted to explore teachers’ understanding of the concept “literacy” and its significance in the fp efal classroom. it was interesting to note that the participants were eager to share their knowledge of what literacy means to them. all the participants agreed that developing literacy skills could not be taught in isolation from other skills, namely listening, speaking, reading and writing activities (dbe, 2011). participant t1 and t2 explained, literacy skills do not only involve the ability to listen, speak, read and write. in my opinion (t1), it is important for children to have knowledge, skills and the ability to comprehend the written texts of the curriculum to actively participate in classroom activities and outside of the school. this is in accordance with pretorius et al. (2015) that literacy development is more than just teaching children to read and write. they need to comprehend what they read and write. t5 added, for children to learn to speak, read and write, i think it starts with pre-literacy skills, long before the child comes to school through active engagement at home and in grade r through listening to stories, singing songs and performing rhymes. t6 stated, although i agree with my colleague about learning at home, the low socio-economic status of many families, unemployment and poverty contributes to poor literacy skills; as a result, children's literacy skills development is delayed. t2 added, most of the learner’s parents in my class cannot read or write. parents are unable to help their children at home. it is the teacher’s responsibility to help develop learner’s literacy skills. it was evident that participants understood that learner exposure to pre-literacy skills is another literacy approach at home. in the fp, participants felt that the pre-literacy skills approach has a crucial role in developing learners' literacy skills. furthermore, participants acknowledged that there are factors that contribute to the learners' literacy skills development. it was clear that without pre-literacy skills, it was unfair to expect learners to read, write and comprehend english as fal in the fp. biggs (2011) states that teachers are expected to add value to literacy skills development through the knowledge and expertise gained from higher learning institutions. according to the dbe (2011), basic literacy skills are described to teachers in the policy. although this information is available, many teachers are unaware of the different strategies. the author assumed that most of the teachers were not trained or did not read and understand the curriculum and assessment policy (caps) document. research by maharajh, nkosi and mkhize (2016) found that teachers were poorly trained in implementing the curriculum and were also plagued by the lack of appropriate resources, especially caps documents. 6.2 theme 2: the importance of literacy development for efal learners during the interviews, participants were asked about the importance of literacy development among efal learners in the foundation phase. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 2592021 39(2): 259-266 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 venketsamy & sibanda exploring strategies teachers use to develop literacy skills the authors probed further to get the participants to respond to the importance of developing literacy skills among efal learners. according to t2, every child in our classes deserves to be allowed to learn to read and write meaningfully in their lives. t5 agreed and stated, our children must become literature [literate], and that is what their parents also wish. as teachers, we need to help our learners in the best way we can. however, we are struggling with our learners. there are many challenges in teaching literacy skills. t4 interjected by saying, the biggest challenge that i face in my schools is my knowledge and understanding of how to teach the different component of literacy skills. i am also not an english first language, and i have to learn how to teach them. there are some aspects i can teach, but there are other skills i need to learn and read up before coming to class. regarding the importance of teaching literacy skills, i must agree that it is imperative, because these learners will go to grade 4, and they have to have the necessary skills to communicate in the language of teaching and learning of the school. all the participants agreed that most learners in their classes do not have english as their home language, so english is their ‘first additional language’ in school. teaching english is our school is crucial to the success of our learners, as their ability to read, write and speak will impact on all their other learning subjects. therefore, in the foundation phase, we must be able to develop the fundamental skills of our learners. t6 articulated her view on the importance of developing literacy skills among efal learners, when we help our children to become good readers and writers, we give them the key to exploring the world and community. as teachers, we need to spark their literacy development and keep it going by inspiring and encouraging them. we need to be rolemodels for our children. they come from impoverished backgrounds and they look up to us. we must be able to shine for these learners. to this comment, t5 said, “i agree with my colleague, we must make sure that our children are literate when they leave our classes.” t2 added, these children need us as teachers to help them read, write and comprehend. we must be encouragers and not break down their spirits and tell them they cannot read or write. we must use different methods of helping our children to become literate. from the above findings, there is explicit agreement that literacy development is fundamental in the foundation phase, especially to those learners whose home language is not aligned to the language of teaching and learning at the school. all the participants agreed that their role as teachers is to help learners to become literate. this view concurs with bracefield et al. (2020) who state that teachers play a crucial role in ensuring learners' literacy skills are adequately developed. pretorius et al. (2016) also agree that teachers play a pivotal role in encouraging learners to practise their literacy skills and their literacy activities; learners should be motivated to reflect on their learning. mudzielwanta et al. (2012) and mccarthy (2015) state that teachers should ensure that children can demonstrate their understanding of http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 2602021 39(2): 260-266 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) new concepts and encourage learner-centred learning and allow learners to share and make decisions during literacy lessons. it is expected that learners from diverse language backgrounds may have challenges with conceptualising efal stories, listening and comprehension, merely because they have inadequate english vocabulary. the efal teacher is therefore assumed to be the knowledgeable other in selecting suitable reading material. the language level of the story must be at the learner's ability, be contextual, meaningful and give the learner a sense of enjoyment. all the participants indicated that they always considered the learners' context when selecting stories to teach literacy skills in the foundation phase. t2 mentioned, i choose stories that the learners can relate to, they feel they know the context and situation – they can identify with the characters also. my stories are very african and i include the learner’s names in the story. regarding the prescribed reading books for foundation phase efal learners, t4 and t5 indicated, sometimes i feel that some stories are too difficult for our learners to understand. they do not link the child’s context in which he lives. for example, in the workbooks and readers, there are stories about some animals that my learners are not aware of (t4). they have not seen a polar bear and the story is all about polar bears. as teachers, we must go and research some of these animals so that we can make learning meaningful (t5). teachers play an essential role in ensuring that written text is of value to the children and that it relates to their lifeworld. as adults, they set an example for their learners, making sure that they are accommodated during literacy teaching. it is the responsibility of the teacher to select the most appropriate reading materials for their learners. to this, t3 added, the dbe select all the reading materials for our learners. we must buy books from the national catalogue. some of these stories and books are not relevant to our learners. my principal told me that i could find my own stories for my children. to this t1 mentioned, i ask my children what stories and books they like to read. i then go to the library and the internet and find literacy materials that they enjoy and bring to class.” t6 mentioned, “the biggest challenge for me is making copies of the stories. our schools do not have a photocopier or the necessary resource materials to promote literacy. however, all the participants agreed that teachers set the example for literacy development for their learners. t2 mentioned, i show my learners that i love reading. i have noticed that my children are now taking books on their own and started reading, without any coaxing from me. t3 mentioned, our schools do not have a library where our young children can get books to read. we are trying hard to build a library in our class. we have heard that the department has given some school ‘mobile libraries’, but we did not get one. t6 agreed by saying, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 2612021 39(2): 261-266 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 venketsamy & sibanda exploring strategies teachers use to develop literacy skills we need age appropriate books for our children. we want stories that reflect their own life-world, not western type stories, we need african stories. from the responses of the participants, it is evident that teachers are aware of the importance of literacy; however, the challenges are hindering them from developing literacy skills. teachers need the necessary resources to make literacy teaching and learning exciting. 6.3 theme 3: strategies for literacy skills teaching teachers believed that literacy skills teaching is meant to teach learners to listen, speak, read and write (dbe, 2011). it should be seen as providing learners with literacy skills to participate understand and gain control of the social and literacy practices entrenched within their society (nugent et al., 2016). samuels, shorter and plaut (2012) state that learning a language is dependent on the social world of the learner; it is shaped by the cultural context in which the learner resides. similarly, literacy skills embrace and integrate written language with specific ways of talking, acting, interacting, thinking and feeling, valuing and using various sorts of symbols and tools to transfer knowledge from situation to situation (dbe, 2017). during the interview, participants were asked about the strategies used in teaching efal learners. most participants indicated that they are familiar with the strategies described in the caps document. t1, t3, t6 agreed that they use the following literacy strategies to assist learners “reading aloud, paired reading, shared reading, listening comprehension, thinking and reasoning, vocabulary development, phonics, creative writing and grammar”. upon further probing, the participants responded in the following manner: t1 said, according to me the strategies to teach literacy especially reading includes decoding and understanding meaning as well as the manner in which words can be used in a sentence. t3 stated, the strategies that i use in my class involve vocabulary teaching through play-based learning during a reading lessons and i also teach through stories in my class. t2 mentioned, some of the strategies i use in my class to get my learners to understand what they read are making connections with their life-world and experience and picturing/visualising what they have read. they are allowed to act out their stories, e.g. 'wash day.’ my learners use the words in the story and convert it into a song and dramatise washing clothes and drying them on the grass. t2 and 3’s strategies correspond with zosh et al. (2017) who articulate that a play-based approach to teaching literacy encourages literacy development. this view agrees with gryphon house (2018), who state that role-play is vital in literacy development and visualisation. fleer (2015) found that learning through play activities enhance learner's enthusiasm and interest in learning. although there is evidence that teachers had some knowledge and understanding of the approaches used in literacy teaching, participant t2, t4 and t6 stated, as educators in the foundation phase we need training and development. the department should plan some training for us on the different strategies to teach literacy. t3 added, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 2622021 39(2): 262-266 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) it’s difficult when we are put in a class to teach; we have to learn from other teachers and sometimes we have to read and use the internet. that is helpful, but proper training by the subject advisors will do us a lot of good.” according to pretorius et al. (2015), there is an increasing agreement that specialised knowledge is necessary for teaching literacy skills. some of the teachers interviewed knew the required literacy skills, such as connecting with the text and real-life, visualising, inferring, questioning and determining the importance and synthesising of written text. there is still a need for more focused capacity building and teacher development programmes aligned to caps (maharajh, nkosi & mkhize, 2016). according to t4, she indicated that her class tries to use different ways and methods to develop literacy skills. she revealed, when i teach reading and comprehension, i first get my learners to skim through the text. i always ask them to look at the title of the story and the pictures. this is the first clue. once they can make meaning and understanding of the title and pictures, i then ask them to predict what the story is about. i also ask my learners to use the 5w + h questioning technique (who, what, where, when, why and how. from the explanation of t4, her strategy correlates with salehi et al. (2013) who advocate prediction as a skill in reading and understanding comprehension. her use of the 5w+h technique corresponds with a problem-based learning strategy. here the learners ask their questions about what they have read, thus shifting the teacher's responsibility to the learners (pourshafie et al., 2013). to this comment on comprehension, t6 stated, some of my learners struggle to read, so i pair them with other good readers in my class. in this way, good readers teach slow readers. they also help to explain what they have read. i found this method works very well in my class. my slow learners are always eager to learn from their peers. according to vygotsky's theory of social learning, it is evident that learners in t6's class learn from their peers through social interaction. bale (2020) agrees that this method will eventually help the slow learners to become less guided and independent learners. t5 shared her methods of developing literacy skills in her class. she indicated that she uses two or more different approaches to literacy development. she explained further, in my class, i always ask the learners to relate what they have read to their life-world – their experiences in their community or at home. i also allow them to share their own experiences in a class about a story, for example, “fat pig's birthday” from new way series. the learners love to share their birthday experiences and relate them to the story, especially all their friends whom they invited, the presents they received and what they ate at the party. it is evident that t5 uses the evidence-based approach and the balanced-literacy approach to literacy development. according to morrow et al., (2011), teachers need to create a classroom that fosters literacy motivation and this is evident in the learners' sharing their birthday experience in class. accordingly, taylor (2013) pointed out that teacher-learner talk was necessary. he further stated that the teachers could encroach into the learners' ways of thinking; push learners to think, feel or behave in a specific way, which will enhance learners' creative thinking. through adult guidance (knowledgeable others) and patience, learners can approach literacy challenges positively (cherry, 2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 2632021 39(2): 263-266 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 venketsamy & sibanda exploring strategies teachers use to develop literacy skills 7. recommendations and conclusion this paper aimed to explore the strategies fp teachers use to support efal learners to develop their literacy skills. the interpretivist approach and group interviews gave participants the opportunity of sharing their knowledge and understanding of the strategies they used in assisting efal learners in their classroom. from their discussions, the authors agreed upon the following recommendations: • strengthening teacher knowledge although teachers are applying some of these strategies to enhance literacy skills development, there should be continuous ongoing professional development and capacity building programmes on these strategies especially the following, balanced-approach, evidence-based approach, play-based approach, reciprocal teaching. caps describe a few strategies; however, teachers should be given in-depth training on the following strategies: balanced-approach to literacy development; pbl, evidence-based approach; problem-based approach; play-based approach and reciprocal teaching. • in-service training and development on policy implementation it is therefore recommended that all efal teachers be trained on implementing the content of caps in their classrooms. most teachers are restricted to using the text and resources supplied by the department. they should be encouraged to use other resources that caps describe in section 3 especially the use of magazines, comic strips, newspaper articles and library books. • appropriate teaching resources – literacy text and other resources should accommodate all learners in the class. material developers should take into consideration the different context and situations learners come from. these learning materials should resonate with the learners’ lifeworld. mobile libraries should be made available to all schools. • support from parents, district official and curriculum advisors – there should be continued support from parents. parents should encourage learners to read at home. family literacy is an essential aspect of developing literacy skills. district officials and subject advisors need to frequent schools to address and support teachers with daily challenges. in conclusion, reading for meaning and pleasure is one of the most important skills a child learns in primary school. a lack of foundation skills is a significant cause of poor performance in struggling literacy skills among efal learners. learners need to be motivated using different strategies to excel in their literacy development. all learners can develop a strong foundation for literacy and reading when they are allowed to engage in meaningful language and print activities. this study was significant because it highlighted the different approaches teachers might use to teach english to efal learners. in the process of teaching literacy, teachers make room for learner-generated ideas through oral and written text to provide efal learners with opportunities to weave their own experiences, feelings and interests into literacy development. references anstey, m. & bull, g. 2010. helping teachers to explore multimodal texts. curriculum leadership journal, 8(16): 1–3. biggs, j.b. 2011. teaching for quality learning at university: what the student does. buckingham: open university press. bracefield, c. & woodgate, f. 2020. early literacy and the teacher’s role. he kupu – the word, 6(3): 14–19. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 2642021 39(2): 264-266 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.18 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) cherry, k. 2020. the zone of proximal development as defined by vygotsky. available at https:// www.verywellmind.com/what-is-the-zone-of-proximal-development-2796034. 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https://doi.org/10.1515/libri-2015-0102 perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2013 university of the free state 155 external group coaching and mentoring: building a research community of practice at a university of technology jeanette maritz, retha visagie & bernadette johnson globally, a clarion call has been made for higher education institutions to establish creative and effective research capacity-building systems with the purpose of developing a next generation of scholars. the training and skills development of a researcher entail a process of increasing levels of participation in diverse communities of practice. we argue that external group research coaching and mentoring could provide a formative social context which negotiates the tensions of engagement. it could also improve accountability and building of a shared repertoire inherent to a research community of practice at a university of technology in south africa. the purpose of this qualitative single-case study is to evaluate the practical relevance of the external coaching and mentoring programme in negotiating the tensions inherent in building a research community of practice. the findings indicate that the majority of students moved from a peripheral position of uncertainty and doubt to one of mutual engagement. a handful of students’ participation remained peripheral and, in some instances, became outbound. the ways in which the next generation of scholars engaged with each other and with the world profoundly shaped their identity. rites of passage to membership of this research community of practice were negotiated and an initial shared repertoire of resources was developed. keywords: community of practice, coaching, mentoring, postgraduate, research, higher education, development, situated learning south africa’s got a major problem with its professoriate, with especially white men leaving the system. what we need to do is take every really promising young academic, who has more than the basic smarts, and mentor them (professor jonathan jansen, rector, university of the free state, 2011). bernadette johnson research directorate, vaal university of technology e-mail: bernadett@vut.ac.za telephone: 016 950 9445 retha visagie office of graduate studies and research, university of south africa e-mail: visagrg@unisa.ac.za telephone: 012 429 2478 jeanette maritz department of health studies, university of south africa e-mail: maritje@unisa.ac.za telephone: 012 429 6534 perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 156 introduction universities across africa are running out of academics and south africa is no exception to this trend. according to the secretary general of the association of africa universities, professor mohamedbhai, universities need to think ‘out of the box’ if they are to succeed in developing a next generation of scholars (macgregor, 2008). boyer (1990) postulates that scholarship consists of four overlapping functions, namely discovery (the research function); integration (the ability to build multidisciplinary connections and to integrate research findings into a larger body of knowledge); application (applying knowledge for the greater good of society), and teaching (the key function of scholarship). a next generation of scholars may, therefore, be described as promising young academics whose main focus areas of teaching and learning as well as research and community service are focused on serving society. more particularly, they serve their immediate communities by means of a transdisciplinary agenda. consequently, these academics are able to respond more effectively to the ever-changing knowledge environment. based on boyer’s model, the term ‘scholar’ in this study refers to young academics who seek scholarly activities related to all forms of learning. the vaal university of technology (vut), the case under study, originated from the vaal triangle college for advanced technical education which was established in 1966 in response to industrial growth in the vaal triangle region. it was anticipated that the college would be a training facility for technicians who could service the chemical and engineering industries in the region as opposed to opting for full university status. while 60 white students were registered at inception in 1966 at the vaal triangle college for advanced technical education, the vut had 22.014 students, the majority of whom were black students, in 2011 (vut, 2011). a large number of the current body of students come from underprivileged communities. the original institution did not have a primary research focus; efforts to grow research have been pursued since 1996 (vut, 2011). given the low research base from which vut departed as a university of technology (uot), the opportunity has arisen for a research culture to be socially constructed by creating a research community of practice (rcop). a one-size-fit all approach to the socialisation of a next generation of scholars, particularly within a transdisciplinary environment, has limited prospect of success. this approach neglects to consider not only the distinct disciplinary cultures of the science paradigm, scholars and research practice, but also the transitioning academic identities such as race, gender, class, academic background and phase of higher education degree studies (vut hub and spokes model, 2009). the research coaching and mentoring programme at vut was developed according to the hub and spokes model (2009). this model is a structured programme which aims at inviting mentors (research leaders of strategic focus areas at vut) into a structured relationship with postgraduate students to support the growth of the next generation of scholars at vut. the programme includes both an internal and an external coaching and mentoring approach that are facilitated maritz et al. external group coaching and mentoring: building a research community of practice at a university of technology 157 concurrently. the internal process encompasses the mentoring activities that take place during the relationship between the research leaders (supervisors) and the mentees (postgraduate students). the external process, which forms the focus of this article, refers to the formalised external group coaching and mentoring programme taking place between two external research coaches/mentors and the postgraduate students (hereafter referred to as students) of the hub and spokes programme. the agenda is led by students (external coaches and mentors are responsive to the students’ expressed needs, and the content of the meetings is, to a large extent, determined by the students). an additional unique aspect of the programme is rooted in an appreciative approach, which values the positive core of personal and organisational life. coaching and mentoring programmes clutterbuck and megginson (2005) broadly describe coaching as being associated with some form of performance change in the immediate work context, while mentoring is more concerned with career self-management. we view research coaching as a collaborative process between a research coach and coachee that facilitates personal and professional development in order to achieve sustainable, high-impact and socially responsible research output. we believe that mentoring activities are integral to a research coaching relationship. a coaching and mentoring programme refers to a purposeful and structured didactic offering including the content, sequence and accompanying activities in order to achieve specific outcomes (adapted from che, 2004). in response to a number of appeals such as the one by jansen (2011) that promising young academics be mentored, numerous public and private higher education institutions have adopted formalised, internal coaching and mentoring programmes as: • a method of structured support for research productivity (geber, 2010; mcmillan & parker, 2005; schulze, 2009); • a strategy to promote research output and manage research diversity in private higher education institutions (maritz, visagie & burger, 2012); • a career management strategy for fast-tracking newcomers (geber, 2003), or • part of staff development (de gruchy & holness, 2007; maritz & visagie, 2011). all these programmes are, however, internal institutional programmes focused on developing individual academic staff. darwin and palmer (2009) reported that internal coaching and mentoring programmes often find it difficult to obtain sufficient coaches or mentors. in addition, koro-ljungberg and hayes (2006) mentioned structural barriers such as unwillingness by faculty to mentor or faculty work overload. darwin and palmer (2009) suggested perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 158 moving away from the traditional dyadic model of mentoring to a group mentoring model. group models have the benefit of generating different perspectives, with group members integrating energies and experiences. support comes from peers as well as other external or organisational members. group models also support collaborative learning and could be more cost and time efficient. miller (2002) argued that external coaches and mentors have merit,because they do not have a personal history with the students, making it easier to start afresh without any preconceived ideas or prejudice. situated learning and communities of practice in this article, we employ lave and wenger’s (1991) sociocultural model of situated learning. according to harrison (2008), many aspects of graduate student research involved situated learning within a community of research practice in which legitimate peripheral participation occurred. over time, with recognition, support, encouragement, and nurturing, a student’s position within the academic research community typically evolved from that of an observer on the periphery to a more central and responsible role of active researcher. community of practice (cop) is a core concept of the situated learning theory. lave and wenger (1991) coined the term cop while studying apprenticeship as a learning model. although apprenticeship is normally thought of as a relationship between a student and a master, studies of apprenticeship have revealed that a more complex set of social relationships influence learning. cop refers to the community that acts as a living curriculum for the apprentice. such cops are formed by those who engage in a process of collective learning in a shared domain of interest (wenger, 2006). participating in a cop is essential to human learning: it is at the very core of what makes us human beings capable of meaningful knowing (wenger, 2000:229). wenger (1998) introduced three dimensions of the relationship between practice and community, namely mutual engagement, a joint enterprise, and a shared repertoire of ways of doing things. mutual engagement is the basis for relationships that are essential to the functioning of a cop. it involves regular interaction of the members, who negotiate meaning of practice within the community (moule, 2006). the interaction may be formal meetings or informal exchange, which enables engagement and acts to maintain the community. wenger (1998) suggested that communities are composed of diverse individuals, yet by collaborating, they influence each other’s functioning within the community. individuals create their own identities that function within the community through mutual engagement, a sharing practice. maritz et al. external group coaching and mentoring: building a research community of practice at a university of technology 159 in a previous edition of this journal, dison (2004: 97) supports this aspect in her findings: it is through this identification and commitment to pursuing a goal and through guided participation in practice, that they [postgraduate students] acquire the knowledge and develop the skills and competencies as researchers. joint enterprise refers to the collective process that maintains the existence of the cop. it not only mandates the sharing of goals, but also aims at establishing a negotiated enterprise, involving mutual accountability (wenger, 1998). working in a mutual accountable way requires a conscious concern about each participant’s engagement within such a community of research practice. there should be a sense of both individual and communal responsibility. wenger (1998) pointed out that a community of practice is not merely a community of interest, but the members develop a shared repertoire of resources: ways of doing things, and ways of addressing recurring problems – in short, a shared practice. however, it is not only about the sharing of resources, but also about understanding the technology of practice by being transparent (lave & wenger, 1991). while the ideas propounded by situated learning provided our basic inspiration, we recognise certain limitations in both theory and practice. in later writings, lave (2004) challenged the strict dichotomy between periphery and full participation by proposing that participation might involve learning trajectories which do not lead to an idealised full participation. there might be a number of other forms of participation, including marginal participation. it is argued that not everyone aspires to (or can achieve) full participation. in addition, the power relationships within a cop might deny novices full participation if the novice attempts to transform the knowledge and practice of the existing community. the students involved in the study at vut are members of different professional and research communities, and it can be anticipated that the community will not always necessarily interact harmoniously. however, if communality is favoured, it might limit diversity and conflict might be ignored (moule, 2006). in this article, we argue that external group research coaching and mentoring could provide a formative social context which negotiates the tensions of engagement, while improving accountability and building a shared repertoire inherent to a research community of practice (rcop) at a university of technology in south africa. the purpose of this study at vut is to evaluate the practical relevance of the external coaching and mentoring programme in negotiating the tensions inherent to building a rcop. methodology this study adopted a qualitative, exploratory, single descriptive case study approach (planoclark & creswell 2010). case studies focus on contemporary phenomena perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 160 within real-life contexts (yin, 2009).for the purposes of this study,the phenomenon refers to building a rcop. entrance to the setting was negotiated via the internal programme champion (bj). the external coaches (jm and rv) started building a relationship with the organisation’s internal programme champion during 2009, in order to create an awareness of the culture, values, challenges and strengths of the organisation. both external coaches have doctoral degrees, are qualified advanced business and life coaches and have over 10 years’ research experience. the programme was officially launched in june 2010. the participants selected for this study were chosen because they formed the first cohort of students in the vut hub and spokes mentor programme. due to its emergent nature, the programme was populated over a period of six months. the programme commenced with eight participants in june 2010 and grew to 17 participants by november 2010. the participants were widely diverse in terms of age (between 23 and 35years), race (13 black and four white) and gender (nine female and eight male). two were enrolled for doctoral degrees and 15 were enrolled for masters degrees. they were all at different stages of their degrees, varying from proposal stages and data collection to near completion. • data were collected by means of: five reflective reports written by the external coaches that served to document each session (number of participants attending, topic, overview of the session and coaching questions); • 15 reflective responses written by the students in letter format (the coaches wrote a reflective letter to the students after each session to which the students responded individually); • six group drawings (during one of the coaching sessions students were requested to draw and discuss a next-generation scholar); • 41 qualitative evaluations of sessions, and one in-depth interview with the programme champion. in addition, our field notes (de vos, stydom, fouché & delport, 2011) served as written accounts of the events, conversations, observations and our thoughts. data were analysed using the descriptive thematic analysis technique,as suggested by tesch (creswell, 2003). authenticity was ensured by means of the principle of fairness, awareness and action (guba & lincoln, in denzin & lincoln, 2005). this meant that the views, perspectives, claims, concerns and voices of students were heard and accepted. ethical measures were taken with reference to respect for persons, beneficence and justice (belmont report, 1979, in amdur & banker, 2011). informed consent was obtained from all the students by means of a letter communicating the necessary information pertaining to the study. participation was voluntary and the students could withdraw their participation at any time. maritz et al. external group coaching and mentoring: building a research community of practice at a university of technology 161 findings and discussion data suggested that the programme promotes the establishment of an emergent rcop by providing a formative social context to negotiate the tensions of engagement, accountability and a shared repertoire. the majority of the students moved from a peripheral position of uncertainty and doubt to one of mutual engagement. a few students’ participation remained peripheral and, in some instances, it became more removed. the ways in which the students engaged with one another and with the world profoundly shaped their identity.rites of passage of membership to this rcop were negotiated and an initial shared repertoire of resources was developed. the following themes are discussed, namely mutual engagement and identity dimensions,negotiating a joint enterprise and accountability, and building a shared repertoire. the mutual engagement and identity dimension is discussed in greater detail, as it contains both textual data and the data from student’s drawings. mutual engagement and identity dimensions being a next-generation scholar meant being engaged in the enterprise of research practice, as well as in the generation of rcops. it also refers to the commitment of the students, as a next generation of scholars, to actions, the meaning of which they negotiated with one another (wenger, 1998). the external group coaching and mentoring programme provided the time and place for monthly meetings, a range of continual research activities to promote research competence (for example, abstract writing, time and project management, coaching skills and tools), and opportunities for research participation (mock conference).mutual engagement was facilitated by interactive discussions and storytelling,sharing and pondering the challenges and highlights in research journeys, reflective letter-writing and conversations, creative drawings and, to a limited extent, online participation (e-mails and facebook). early engagement saw most students move from a position of uncertainty and doubt to a space where they experienced a sense of belonging to a community of research scholars. engagement was enriched by the awareness that other participants shared similar values and challenges: my highlight with regards [to] this session was that it enabled the mentees to be more acquainted with each other and with each other’s struggles and successes. there was a stronger sense of belonging that was established (mstudent 2). it would appear that the students especially valued the social interaction and support gained from the programme; particularly when the interaction took place in an informal and relaxed setting: …it is in informal settings where people can open up to each other (to either the group or a specific individual) and advices can flow much easier where one does not feel pressure of having their thoughts and feelings evaluated before they are accepted or validated. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 162 i therefore believe that if some kind of programme can be put in place that enables students to meet in relaxed settings in order to just have conversations. it is from this environment that some deep rooted matters can be brought forward as trust gets established towards certain individuals and/or the group (mstudent 5). goos and bennison (2004) pointed out that the participants in their cohort found the face-to-face interaction crucial in creating familiarity and trust where students could have an outlet for discussion of ideas, problems and a release valve for stress. islam (2012) noted that the setting created through the cop (with reference to preservice teachers) provided an opportunity to share experiences, devise strategies and reflect upon these strategies. govender and dhunpath (2011) also reported that the support from cohort peers within and outside cop provided emotional and social safety nets. two students did not attend the initial meeting and seemed less engaged during the second meeting. they only attended the fifth session again. at that point, some marginalisation had occurred within the group, thus creating tension between group members.their non-attendance was pointed out by fellow students during each feedback session and clearly seemed to be a cause for concern. a group member commented on this dynamic: when some of us do not show interest in some activity, this hurts me; because i believe that ultimately we are family ... it won’t work unless we all come ready to make some effort (mstudent 1). in his study, moule (2006) similarly found that some participants failed to engage in a communal endeavour, with some students obviously preferring to work autonomously. this finding also supports lave’s (2004) argument that not everyone aspires to full participation. wenger (2000) commented that a healthy social identity should be socially empowering, rather than marginalising.one member left the hub and spokes programme for another scholarship; another chose to accept a permanent industry position. this dynamic might be explained by what wenger (1998) calls ‘identity trajectories’. peripheral identity trajectories might never lead to full participation (either by choice or necessity). outbound identity trajectories led away from a community, and involved developing new relationships, or finding a different position with respect to a community. we agree with handley, sturdy, fincham and clark (2006) that these tensions are likely to be continually mediated, but might never be fully resolved and that some students’ participation may remain marginal or ambiguous. as a result of such a dynamic, compulsory programme attendance became necessary. membership is usually voluntary within situated learning. while compulsory attendance might motivate students to attend, they might simply attend for the sake of attending without actually participating. with the additional eight students joining during the second session, we (jm and rv) anticipated a change in the group dynamics. these eight members, however, maritz et al. external group coaching and mentoring: building a research community of practice at a university of technology 163 integrated effortlessly, since the original members reached out and welcomed the newcomers as part of the family. goos and bennison (2004) explained that cops evolve over time and they may have developed mechanisms for maintenance and inclusion of new members. another indication of community maintenance emerged, as the students requested at various points in the programme to be allowed to do things together: i wish that once in a while we could take a tour and visit or observe what one of the students is doing in a project, for example to see m’s photo-bioreactor to understand what he is trying to do(mstudent 7). evidence of transitioning research identities became eminent, as the students started to develop a next-generation scholar identity. an identity was not an abstract idea or a label, such as a title, an ethnic category, or a personality trait (wenger, 2000). identity was a lived experience of belonging (or not belonging). identities were thus socially constructed. one student commented: i try by all means to be a next generation scholar and to do research from the bottom of my heart (dstudent 1). a healthy identity would seek a wide range of experiences and would also be responsive to new possibilities. students demonstrated their openness in the following quotations: my perspective towards life and research has changed (mstudent 3). engaging with my fellow students is an advantage to me because it broadens my mind expanding into more realities of which research is all about (mstudent 1). one of the first activities of the programme was negotiating the concept, attributes and competencies of a next-generation scholar by means of drawings and discussions in smaller groups. most groups illustrated, by way of drawings, that they viewed the next-generation scholar not as an isolated entity, but as part of a supportive community. from the drawings and discussions, a next-generation scholar was described as a whole person (head, hands and heart) who displays the following attributes: a big, inquisitive mind to be used to the fullest extent; big eyes, to observe change around us, and large ears to listen to others and hear the problem.a large mouth would speak confidently about what [the next generation scholar] we see and think (group a). it would appear that the next-generation scholar’s most important attribute is located in the heart where there is discipline, passion, courage, motivation and perseverance. the heart cares about other people and wants to make a remarkable difference. an important skill seems to be the ability to manage time to an optimal level. finally, scholars should have large feet (figuratively speaking) to be able to stand their ground firmly, and to go the extra mile. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 164 negotiating a joint enterprise and accountability identity formation is a dual process of identification which provides the experiences and materials for building an identity and negotiability during which the students determine the degree to which they have control over the meanings of the research and research community enterprise. negotiation of these enterprises creates relationships of mutual and personal accountability among participants (wenger, 1998). although the greater joint enterprise of this community was the timely completion of postgraduate research studies, participants were adamant that rites of passage to membership be expressed by active involvement and participation in the hub and spokes programme.other regimes of accountability (wenger, 2000) whereby actions and requests are judged, were: • showing respect by attending sessions; • supportive behaviour such as providing advice and assistance (for example, statistical interpretation, proofreading literature reviews, information, feedback), and • peer coaching and mentoring. an interesting aspect that emerged from the reflective replies was that a particular provocative coaching question led to a moment of waking up, as a student realised the power of personal accountability: the external coaches asked [me]: ‘how do you stop yourself from being the researcher you want to be?’ this question and the process of answering [the question], changed the way i think of, and look at myself in relation to the output i produce in my work as a researcher ... i, on that day, started a journey to take back my power and control my destiny. this led to my completed proposal by july (mstudent 11). an aspect that may have hampered the negotiation of a joint enterprise and accountability was the evolving group dynamics when some members did not attend the session, or if they did attend, they did not participate. a divide was noticed when white students fraternised with other white students, while black students socialised more with other black students. islam (2012: 26) equally found this dynamic at play in the study of pre-service teachers, noting that “a lack of social capital hampers some…from gaining the most out of the cop”. building a shared repertoire a shared repertoire refers to shared resources while negotiating meaning. resources in this community include both internal (personal) and external resources. a student explained that self-knowledge and knowledge about their research project were critical resources: it all starts with knowing yourself (dstudent 2).i actually know more about my project than i thought i knew (mstudent 6). maritz et al. external group coaching and mentoring: building a research community of practice at a university of technology 165 external resources refer to the expertise of peers (managing a bibliography, writing skills, presentation skills), increased competence while confidence is growing, learning (intraand interpersonal awareness, and research practice), discussions (by way of storytelling and peer interactions), and tools (such as the grow model).the involvement of supervisors as an external resource with knowledge and expertise increased a sense of belonging to a trusted rcop: having the professors present and their inputs were valuable… it made me feel accepted by the ‘hub’ as a ‘spoke’ (mstudent 4). however, both the students and the external coaches raised concerns about the limited involvement of the internal mentors in the external programme and student activities. handley et al. (2006) suggest that individual learning should be viewed as emergent, involving opportunities to participate actively in the practices of the community, as well as the development of an identity which provides a sense of belonging and commitment. participating in events such as a mock conference, writing abstracts for the conference, giving and receiving feedback on research presentations, completing research proposals and dissertations allow students the opportunity to assume a more central position in the practice of research within the scholarly community. presenting at conferences allows for extending participation beyond the realm of that group, faculty and university. conclusion the external group coaching and mentoring programme facilitated students’personal and professional growth by the acquisition of new skills, the generation of opportunities for intellectual discourse, risk-taking and challenges, as well as easing the integration within the formal and informal rcop. therefore, it provided them with both a supportive space, in which their learning could be accelerated, and a formative social context in which to negotiate the tensions of engagement, while improving accountability and building a shared repertoire inherent to a rcop. the emergence of spontaneous peer mentoring activities was an additional benefit that might contribute to the students’ personal satisfaction derived from assisting someone else with developing their potential. successful programme implementation might further pave the way for extending the structured coaching and mentoring programme to postgraduate students in all research disciplines at vut. although a sense of ambiguity initially prevailed, organisational stakeholders displayed tolerance of, and even support for the growing and emerging nature of the programme. for such a programme to reach its full potential, it needed to become part of the organisational and research culture to ensure sustainability. lack of ownership and participation from related role players might, therefore, undermine the success of the programme. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 166 a limitation of this study was the limited participation and feedback from other stakeholders, such as the supervisors. we suggest an investigation into supervisors’ (as internal mentors) experience of the external coaching and mentoring programme. another limitation was the lack of surveying the students’ development as nextgeneration scholars within another cop. references amdur r & bankert ea 2011. institutional review board: member handbook. sudbury: jones and bartlett. boyer el 1990. scholarship reconsidered: priorities of the professoriate. new york: john wiley. council on higher education (che) 2004. criteria for programme accreditation. pretoria: council on higher education. clutterbuck d &megginson d 2005. making coaching work. london: cipd. creswell jw 2003. research design.2nd ed. thousand oaks, ca: sage. darwin a & palmer 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communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. cambridge: cambridge university press. wenger e 2000. communities of practice and social learning systems. organization, 7(2): 225-246. wenger e 2006. communities of practice: a brief introduction. retrieved on 13 july 2011 from http://www.ewenger.com/theory/communities_of_practice_intro.htm. yin rk 2009. case study research.thousand oaks, ca: sage. judging children’s participatory parity from social justice and the political ethics of care perspectives vivienne bozalek university of the western cape this article proposes a model for judging children’s participatory parity in different social spaces. the notion of participatory parity originates in nancy fraser’s normative theory for social justice, where it concerns the participatory status of adults. what, then, constitutes participatory parity for children? how should we judge the extent to which they are able to participate as equals in their different social environments? and how should we evaluate the adequacy of different social arrangements for children’s participation, across the ‘private/public’ divide? the article examines the usefulness of three normative frameworks for judging the conditions for children to participate on an equal footing with others, in ways that support their well-being. two frameworks are from the field of social justice theory; the third is from the political ethics of care. selected concepts from all three frameworks are used to propose a normative model for children’s participatory parity. examples from a study on children’s participatory practices in south african families illustrate the application of the model, which holds some promise for theorising children’s participation in other participatory spaces. keywords: children’s participation, participatory parity, social justice, capabilities and children, ethics of care introduction participatory parity, nancy fraser (1997; 2000; 2008) claims, is a normative ideal for social justice. fraser is explicitly concerned with the participatory status of adults. this article begins with an assumption that children’s participatory parity – namely, their ability to participate in an equitable way as full partners in their interactions with others – is an important condition for their well-being and that, while this is the case for all children, it is of particular concern for those who are marginalised or socially excluded. international and south african law categorises children as people younger than eighteen years. the assumption that participatory parity is a critical condition for children’s well-being could thus, controversially, be taken as applying as much to infants and toddlers as it does to older children and adolescents. what constitutes participatory parity for children? are the evolving capacities of children at different ages pertinent to the criteria for participatory parity and, if so, how? how should we judge the extent to which they are able to participate as equals in their different social environments? how should we evaluate the adequacy of different social arrangements for children’s participation? from a theoretical point of view, answers to these questions presuppose a normative framework. in this article i propose a model for making judgements about the extent and nature of children’s participatory parity and the social arrangements that enable or constrain it. the model is intended both as an analytical framework and as a set of normative principles for children’s participation in different social spaces, including the political. it is thus a contribution towards a growing literature on the meaning of, and conditions of possibility for, children’s rights to be heard in matters that concern them (see, for example, in this special issue, bray & moses 2011; bentley 2011). as a first move, i examine the usefulness of three normative frameworks for the conditions for children’s ability to participate on an equal footing with others – two frameworks from the field of social justice theory; the third from political work on the ethics of care. within the field of social justice, it is not approaches to the distribution of social goods, such as rawls’ (2001), that are of interest in this instance but two alternative approaches, both of which address shortcomings in distributive theories of justice, namely, first, the capabilities approach, pioneered by perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201156 amartya sen (1984; 1995; 2001) and developed by – among others – martha nussbaum (1995; 2000; 2006) and, secondly, nancy fraser’s trivalent social justice perspective (fraser, 2008), which builds upon her earlier bivalent account where the notion of participatory parity first comes into play (see, for example, fraser, 1997). the third framework to be considered is from the political ethics of care and is drawn from several sources, notably kittay (1997; 1999; 2002), sevenhuijsen (1998), and tronto (1993). selected concepts from all three frameworks are then used to propose a model for children’s participatory parity and its relation to their well-being.1 finally, an application of the model is illustrated by focusing on examples of children’s practices, and their status and positionality within a study on south african students’ families (bozalek, 2004). beyond the family domain, the model may well contribute to a theorisation of the ways in which other different spaces of participation are constitutive of agency and relationships that promote or prohibit participatory parity for children. desiderata for a normative model for children’s participatory parity traditional approaches to social justice focus on how social resources are distributed and on how to shift the distribution to achieve greater equity (for example, rawls, 1999; 2001). on this view, primary goods are the metric of social justice. the work of rawls and other primary goods theorists has been conducted with little explicit attention to how the ‘perspective of children should be represented and interpreted’ (macleod, 2010: 174). one criticism of the metric of primary goods is that it is insufficiently sensitive to human diversity. for instance, the view does not accommodate the category of children as a separate group, but rather as dependents who benefit from adults as the primary recipients of social goods. how children as a group and different groups of children are differentially placed in relation to resources means that they may require differential amounts of resources in order to achieve an equitable desired state of well-being or participation. alternative approaches address these concerns by attending to notions of difference in social categories and the different resources that these groups would need in order to achieve participatory parity and well-being. in addition, it is important to identify normative frameworks which allow us to examine how children and their attributes are valued or devalued, what sort of responsibilities they are given, whether they are able to both give and receive care, and the extent to which their voices are represented. capabilities, participation and social justice the human capabilities approach goes a considerable way towards meeting these desiderata. it provides an analytical framework for examining how children are differentially placed and the resources they would need to participate fully in social life and flourish as human beings. sen (1980; 1984; 1995; 2001) first presented the capability metric as an alternative to the primary goods metric which, he argued, paid little heed to the diversity of human beings and their very different needs depending on their situation, circumstances and personal characteristics. nussbaum (1995; 2000; 2006) has developed a version of the capabilities approach, by offering and defending a list of the central capabilities for human flourishing. the capabilities approach focuses not on what resources a person has, but on what (given the person’s resources, personal traits and circumstances) s/he has the real freedom to be and do. on this view, a person’s well-being is identified with the quality of his/her beings and doings. income and other resources are not in themselves a meaningful way of assessing human well-being or quality of life. without considering the particularity of who needs the resources and in what context these resources are needed, it is difficult to assess how effective the resources will be in allowing people, in this case children, to flourish. in other words, the capabilities approach offers a way of taking into account where children are positioned and what they are able to do with personal, material and social resources, rather than merely examining what resources children have access to and assuming that they are equally placed in relation to these resources. it acknowledges how people, including children, are differently positioned in terms of social markers, including age and generation. knowledge of differences such as dis/abilities, location (rural/urban) would make it easier to decide what resources would be needed to enable children to flourish as human beings. bozalek — judging children’s participatory parity 57 in nussbaum’s version, the capabilities approach is also one that treats each and every person as a worthy human being, as an end rather than a means to an end, and as a source of agency (nussbaum, 2000; 2006). it thus precludes a consideration of the well-being of family, household, or community as aggregations, offering instead a way of assessing the particularities of each and every child’s circumstances in relation to resources available and the child’s consequent abilities to choose to live a good life. the good life, according to sen (1984; 2001) and nussbaum (1995; 2000; 2006), is the ability to do valuable things and achieve valuable states, as well as being able to choose from different livings and meaningful affiliations, and not to be constrained into a particular form of life. participation – understood as being able to do things for oneself and for others – is considered to be an important aspect of quality of life in the capabilities approach (dreze & sen, 1989). in summary then, the capabilities approach focuses attention on the particularities of individual needs, which would require varying resources in order for individuals to achieve a threshold for human flourishing. with respect to just social arrangements, the capabilities approach requires one to examine both children’s vulnerabilities in their life circumstances and their capabilities in relation to what resources would be required to promote well-being. for instance, an impoverished rural child who is a first-generation literate family member among his/her kin would need more and different resources to be able to study at school and attain the same capability level as a middle-class urban child whose kin are all literate. a child with a physical disability might need more and different resources to study effectively than an able-bodied child. similarly, a child who is responsible for other siblings would require more and different resources to participate in education than one who has no siblings to care for. individual preferences are not reliable indicators of human needs, as those who are advantaged or disadvantaged easily become accustomed to their situations and adjust their expectations and aspirations accordingly. long-established privilege or deprivation can lead to high and low levels of desire, and to people viewing their situations as ‘normal’ or ‘natural’, respectively (nussbaum, 2000). thus, from the capabilities perspective, one is not interested in finding out how satisfied people, in this case children, are with their circumstances or what resources they have, but rather what valuable things they can do or be in order to function in a fully human way. it is for this reason that nussbaum (1995; 2000) has developed a list of ten capabilities which, she proposes, any decent society should make possible for people to achieve: life; health; bodily integrity; development of senses, imagination and thought; practical reason; affiliation; access to recreation and play; control over the material and social environment; access to a good relationship with nature and the environment, and emotional health. if people fall below the threshold of any of these core areas, a society would, in nussbaum’s (1995; 2000; 2006) view, be regarded as unjust, and people’s lives as not being fully human. one of the questions posed at the outset of this article asked how the adequacy of different social arrangements for children’s participation should be evaluated. the capabilities approach suggests a crucial criterion: what are children able to do and be (i.e. what human capabilities can they exercise) within a particular social arrangement or participatory space, and are the appropriate resources available to meet the needs of different participants? it is beyond the scope of this article to consider specific capabilities from nussbaum’s list and how they pertain to the value of, and conditions for, children’s participation in matters that concern them. resources, recognition and representation nancy fraser’s (1997; 2000; 2008; 2009) ideas on social justice can be regarded as complementing and intersecting with the human capabilities perspective. fraser, in addition to recognising the importance of redistributing resources for people to attain participatory parity, brings in a second type of claim for social justice – that of the politics of recognition. she advocates a dual consideration of redistribution of resources and recognition of status, which she terms a bivalent or bifocal view of justice (fraser, 1997; 2000). recognition has to do with how people – children in this instance – are regarded in relation to the social markers or distinctive attributes that are ascribed to them. recognition for children would impact on whether they are regarded as full members of society and on their ability to interact on an equal footing perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201158 with other members of society. misrecognition in terms of a lack of respect for one on the basis of one’s social markers (age or generation, in this instance) prevents people from being able to interact with others as full partners. recognition is an important concept in considering how societal norms in relation to race, gender and particularly generation in the case of children either value or devalue practices and social statuses. rather than assuming that one has to conform to dominant norms, a social justice perspective aims to redress misrecognition by replacing, in a range of ways, including institutional and policy changes, values that impede parity of participation with ones which foster or enable it (fraser, 2000). in other words, if institutional practices have led to institutional harms, these need to be redressed. in fraser’s (2008; 2009) later writings, she introduces a third dimension of social justice, representivity or voice. this political dimension incorporates social belonging and determines who counts as a social member. in the same way that distribution relates to who is entitled to resources and recognition relates to whose attributes are regarded as valuable, representivity relates to who is included or excluded and whose voice will be heard as legitimate. all of these factors will impact on whether and to what extent a child will be able to interact on an equal footing, or as a peer, in society and its various participatory spaces. nazir carrim’s article in this issue, for example, shows how curtailed children’s representivity is in the formal space of school governance (carrim, 2011). to sum up, fraser’s account of social justice draws attention to three conditions for children’s participatory parity: the distribution and availability of resources, recognition (how people’s attributes are differentially valued or devalued), and voice (in the sense of political representation). from this perspective, the crucial criterion for assessing participatory arrangements, or a participatory space, is whether it allows for and supports children to interact with one another and with other participants, and be heard on an equal basis. well-being, care and participation an ethic of care takes seriously the fact that care is a central aspect of human life (tronto, 1993; sevenhuijsen et al., 2003). the political ethics of care foregrounds the notion that dependency, and interdependency, are an inevitable condition of human life and well-being and that, therefore, care and dependency should be considered in the social sharing of burdens through appropriate social arrangements, just as education, health services and road maintenance are (kittay, 2002). appropriate arrangements of care are crucial for children’s survival and for their evolving participatory capacities. the ethics of care draws attention to the relational nature of participation: relationships of care are dependent on a caregiver and a care receiver. this connection-based perspective is useful in foregrounding people’s responsibilities towards each other in ensuring that they can both care for others and be cared for by others (held, 2006). destabilising notions of what people’s ‘natural’ responsibilities are in terms of gender and generation, the political ethics of care locates practices of care in both the public and private spheres, and makes a moral claim for societal responsibility to ensure that care can be both given and received with some degree of choice and without prejudicing those involved in the caring practices. joan tronto’s (1993) delineation of four phases of care, and the value associated with each phase, distinguishes the different processes in the practice of care: (i) caring about, which calls upon the moral quality of attentiveness in noticing people’s needs; (ii) caring for, which calls upon responsibility to meet the need for care; (iii) caregiving or taking care of, which calls upon competence to respond effectively and ensure that the necessary resources are available to do so; (iv) care receiving, which calls upon responsiveness. a fifth dimension, the integrity of care, integrates the four phases. because of the relationship between the cared for and the carer, the moral integrity of care means that participation in the practice of care should proceed as co-constructed meaning-making and dialogue. the viewpoint of the other is always important in the practice of care (bozalek & lambert, 2008). the political ethics of care approach is useful as a framework in that it allows us to examine the extent to which children are able to give and receive care, the responsibilities they assume, and whether they are to interact as citizens participating through dialogue. the political ethics of care also foregrounds particularity and vulnerability which are important in assessing how the contextual situations differ in bozalek — judging children’s participatory parity 59 terms of what children may need in order to achieve participatory parity and well-being. in addition, the qualities of attentiveness, responsibility, competence and responsiveness that are crucial to the daily practices of care are all pertinent to the scope and depth of children’s exercise of agency in different participatory spaces. a model for assessing children’s participatory parity and well-being in this section, i propose a way of viewing children’s participatory parity and well-being within a single, comprehensive framework that incorporates concepts from the capabilities approach, the political ethics of care and fraser’s trivalent account of social justice. the proposed model (see figure 1) is a matrix that categorises indicators of social justice and care, and focuses on how these interact with social markers such as gender, race, geographical location and generation or age. it assumes that the indicators of social justice and care are necessary conditions for participatory parity. specifically, the model provides an analytical framework for judging the adequacy of social arrangements for children’s participatory parity and well-being. figure 1 the indicators of social justice and care which have been identified in this model are: recognition (adapted from nancy fraser’s view of social justice, where she uses ‘recognition’ primarily in a restricted sense to mean status equality); resources (a concept that appears, in slightly different guise, in all three of the frameworks outlined); responsibility (to which the political ethics of care refers as a moral concept emanating from caring for and caregiving), and representation (which is the most recent aspect of nancy fraser’s view of social justice involving voice and belonging). these social indicators can be mapped against the relevant markers when assessing children’s status or the practices in which they are engaging. the model depicted in figure 1 also makes explicit the goals of social justice and care for children. these are identified as participatory parity from fraser’s idea of interacting on a par as equals with others in society, and well-being (or human flourishing) which is used in the human capabilities and political ethics of care approaches to indicate a desired state of being and doing. the model can be used to alert us to some crucial questions in relation to children’s participation and the conditions for their well-being in particular situations and participatory spaces: what are children able to do and be (i.e. what human capabilities can they exercise)? how are children disadvantaged or comprehensive model for framework to judge children’s participatory parity and well-being indicators for social justice social marker race gender generation ability geographical location regocnition resources responsibilites representation goals of social justice and political ethics of care human flourishing/well-being; participatory parity; ability to give and receive care in situations of choice perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201160 privileged? what implications does this have for them in their lives (vulnerability and otherness in relation to the political ethics of care)? are they able to interact on a par or on an equal basis with others (nancy fraser’s goal of social justice which incorporates distribution, recognition and representation)? how do they fare in terms of being able to both give and receive care in situations of their own choice (the political ethics of care)? consider, as an example, the application of the model to an interpretation of south african students’ accounts of family practices. families as participatory spaces: a south african example a study conducted at the university of the western cape (uwc) (bozalek, 2004) used four major questions to interrogate students’ accounts of children’s status and practices in their own families: to what extent were children able to gain access to resources in households, according to these • students’ accounts? how were children recognised or misrecognised in the students’ accounts?• which kinds of work were children responsible for in the students’ accounts of family practices?• what voice or representivity did children have in the students’ accounts of their family households?• in order to show how these four questions can be used to judge whether children were able to participate in an equitable manner, i use examples of data from uwc students’ perceptions and practices regarding children within their own families. students reported that it was to a large extent women and young girls who were involved in cooking and cleaning in the home. the following excerpt is typical of students’ accounts of the distribution of household responsibilities in their families: in african families children learned how to cook at an early stage. this does not mean that they were curious but they were forced by the circumstances, whereby their parents worked until late. so children have to do everything for themselves (family profile 57). students cited various reasons for expectations that as children they would engage in unpaid work within the household. the first of these reasons was cultural practices. for example, some african students reported that at a certain age girls and boys were expected to do certain gender-specific tasks: when we reached the age of 10 we were taught how to do things on our own. girls were taught on how to clean the house, cooking and looking after the family and boys were not taught anything because men cannot do household work according to our cultural belief. as from the age of 10 children are doing household work and it is not the parents task anymore (family profile 76). the second reason cited for children engaging in cleaning and cooking was that adults, usually mothers, were not available in the household, as they were involved in paid labour, usually for long hours: my mother was mainly involved in the preparation of food and cleaning of the home. but when we moved into westgate, mom was forced to get a job. so this meant that i had to take over chores at home. i had to do my chores immediately after school. at the age of thirteen i had a big responsibility (family profile 106). a third reason reported for children being involved in caregiving tasks was a sense of gratitude to their parents’ providing resources for them, for education for example. as children, the students expressed a need to reciprocate for benefits they received and said that they willingly did tasks in the household. this is evident in the following example: most of the domestic labour in the house is being performed by all the children in the household. my mother masidisau is the only parent who is paying for education of every child within the household. in this case, we feel that we should also help her in the domestic labour in the house without being paid (family profile 115). bozalek — judging children’s participatory parity 61 .in terms of caregiving, in some instances young girls missed days of school or gave up school or paid employment altogether in order to care on a full-time basis for chronically ill or dependent people. in other cases children took it in turns to be absent: my mother then had two more strokes and after the third time, she did not recover the way we all had hoped she would. my sister cathy had to quit school to take care of mother while she was still ill (family profile 107; life history of mother). this excerpt illustrates widespread expectations that adolescent girls would abandon whatever they were engaged with in order to single-handedly care for all the needs of highly dependent kin for extended periods of time. this would have had many consequences for their ability to pursue education and would have affected their future employability, and therefore their ability to acquire resources in later life. in the students’ accounts of how children were viewed in their households, they were described as those carrying the least status, as those who were not accorded much respect by their elders, and as being in the position of supplicants in relation to their elders. in many of the families described, children are perceived as a group rather than as individuals and as having a lower status than adult members of the household: children have to work for their parents and if they marry they still have to look after them if necessary. if one child in the family did wrong all the children were punished. older members of the family get their food first and then the kids. children’s duties ranged from fetching water at the river, chopping wood, baking bread and cooking food. each child knew his/her duties and had to perform these duties everyday. if they failed to perform these duties they were either punished or denied food for the whole day, therefore they didn’t focus much on schoolwork. some of the children, especially the older ones, had to go and help on the farm after school (family profile 28). students often reported that in their families, children’s expressions of their own needs were expressly discouraged by older family members. moreover, children were not even encouraged to communicate their responses directly to older members: when a child responds to the older person the child is regarded as showing disrespect. when the children need something they have to ask their mother to ask permission for them (family profile 72). hierarchically ordered practices of respect resulted in a lengthy and indirect method of requesting resources for children: children were expected to respect elderly people. if a child need[s] something like money to pay for a trip, she would start by asking her elder sister or brother to ask her mother for it. her mother is the one to approach her father and it will depend on her father whether he gives her or he doesn’t. if maybe the trip was important for her studies, and her father [was] refusing her [permission] to go, the mother would approach either the grandfather or grandmother and ask him/her to talk with the father. women also had to ask for whatever they need from their husbands and they were not allowed to call their husbands or parents-in-law by name (family profile 1). in african students’ accounts, age affected where one sat, whether one was allowed in the same room as those of a different age and gender, what one was permitted to eat, and who got the most nutritious food. for example, students reported a patriarchal and gerontocratic situation where men were given the best and biggest portions, and women and children were given the least adequate portions in terms of nourishment and amount of food. in some african students’ accounts certain parts of the meat were given differentially to men, women and children. the following excerpt illustrates these age-dependent patterns of distribution: the older members of the family were given privileges above younger members. the adults got their food before the children. the adults sat on chairs or couches while the children and teenagers on the floor or something else (family profile 103). perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201162 gender and age determined not only the amount of food to which one had access, the type of food and implements with which one could eat, the order in which people were given their food and where and when one sat to eat, but also the ability to comment upon the discrepancies in access to resources. applying the normative model for participatory parity and well-being in considering how the social markers of generation have, according to students, impacted upon them and their family members, the goals of the normative model need to be considered: were children able to participate as equals? were they able to both give and receive care, and did they have the resources to do so? were they able to flourish and/or were they prevented from doing so? students’ accounts show that generation-constructed differences impact on how resources are distributed in the household, whether children are recognised or misrecognised, who is expected to do what to and for whom, and whether children have a voice or representivity in the household. because children spend a great deal of their time meeting other family members’ needs, they are not able to participate on an equal footing, their own needs are often not being met by someone else, and they do not have the time to pursue other activities. in its vision of citizenship, the political ethics of care incorporates concern with the ability to give and receive care in situations of choice (1997; 1999; 2002). in terms of this idea of citizenship, if we are called upon to care for others, we should be able to do so without forfeiting the right to have our own needs being accommodated, and without having to assume the full burden or responsibility for caregiving ourselves. from the students’ accounts, it is clear that female children were particularly vulnerable as their own needs for care were overridden by the call to care for others. under these circumstances, the space for crucial capabilities (nussbaum, 1995) was severely curtailed. generation was influential in how students and family members were appreciated or unappreciated, in how they were valued or devalued. seniority, according to students’ accounts, entailed respect and authority. children’s positions as family members were influenced by how they were regarded and by family practices which emanated from these perceptions. what emerged from students’ accounts is that participatory parity – that is, acting as equals or peers with kin – was rarely achieved for culturally devalued categories such as children. there was neither equal respect for the ascribed attributes to these categories nor were there the opportunities for them to develop themselves so that they could achieve social esteem (fraser, 1997). from students’ accounts, kinds of doing and being, as well as permissible kinds of wants and desires, depended on social categories such as generation. what children as family members could want, say or do was different from what elders could want, say or do. from students’ accounts, it was culturally unthinkable for children to desire certain things, for example, to have their needs prioritised above or on a par with more valued adults. the students’ accounts also pointed to children’s unequal or differential access to household resources and restricted representivity or voice in matters of concern to them. using excerpts from students’ family portraits, i have illustrated how the concepts of resources, recognition, responsibilities and representivity are useful indicators for judging the conditions for children’s well-being and ability to participate on an equal footing with others in a family setting, with due regard to the concrete particulars of their lives. the framework could be similarly applied to children in any context in order to make judgements about how well they are faring in terms of participatory parity, human flourishing and the giving and receiving of care. concluding remarks this special issue is concerned with theorising children’s participation, especially in public and political participatory spaces. the model i have proposed is intended both as a comprehensive analytical framework and as a set of normative principles for children’s participation in different social spaces, including the political. while participatory parity is the normative ideal, different social arrangements and differences in children’s own evolving capacities will determine the extent to which and participatory arenas and relationships in which participatory parity is possible for children. 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m nussbaum & j glover (eds), women, culture and development. a study of human capabilities. oxford: clarendon press. sen ak 2001. development as freedom. oxford/new york: oxford university press. sevenhuijsen s 1998. citizenship and the ethics of care. feminist considerations on justice, morality and politics. london and new york: routledge. sevenhuijsen s, bozalek v, gouws a & minnaar-mcdonald m 2003. south african social welfare policy: an analysis of the ethic of care. critical social policy, 23(3): 299-321. thompson s 2009. participatory parity and self-realisation. the good society, 18(1): 57-62. tronto j 1993. moral boundaries: a political argument for an ethic of care. new york & london: routledge. perspectives in education, volume 29(1), march 201164 (endnotes) one of the guest editors notes that the approach has similarities with simon thompson’s (2009) 1. combination of nancy fraser’s and axel honneth’s rival theories of recognition as complementary elements in a unitary theory that incorporates normative principles for self-realisation and participatory parity. 2882022 40(1): 288-305 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 the need for revision of selected aspects of online master’s and doctoral student supervision abstract since the onset of the covid-19 pandemic, higher education institutions have been concerned about their master and doctoral students, in particular how and when they would be able to continue and complete their research activities and dissertations. scholars have noted the potential deterioration in the quality of research projects for a variety of reasons (transformation and/ or abandoning of approved research methods, anxiety-related lowered performance rates, altered modes of supervision and delays in completion times). in this article, i discuss the findings of a small-scale study, undertaken in july 2020, on whether there has been a significant change in the supervision of master’s and doctoral students in africa due to the outbreak and impact of the covid-19 pandemic. i used a google form online survey to obtain participants’ opinion on the frequency of interactions between supervisors and supervisees, the medium of interaction as well as the master’s and doctoral candidates’ general progress. the study participants were all instructors in higher education who supervise master and phd students. there has been a change in frequency and means of supervision, that there is more reliance on videoconferencing tools and interaction “at a distance”. however, the data cannot conclusively confirm that there has been a significant transformation in the way students are supervised because many study participants indicated their wish to return to the way things were done pre-pandemic. nevertheless, there will probably be more reliance on social media, email and other online tools such as zoom and skype post-pandemic. in the words of the study participants, “online supervision is developing” and “the pandemic has also given us more tools of engagement, which is good”. keywords: doctoral supervision; master’s supervision; africa; covid-19 pandemic; online supervision; transformation. 1. introduction the covid-19 pandemic has had many consequences, both positive and negative. since its onset, universities have been worried about their master’s and doctoral students. the concerns are related to the students’ wellbeing and the study-related progress they were able to make during these trying times. higher education institutions’ worries included finding out how and when master’s and doctoral students author: prof karen ferreira-meyers1 affiliation: 1university of eswatini, kingdom of eswatini doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i1.17 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(1): 288-305 published: 04 march 2022 received: 10 august 2021 accepted: 13 january 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4418-269x http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 2892022 40(1): 289-305 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 ferreira-meyers the need for revision of selected aspects of online supervision continued and completed their research activities and dissertations (for a general overview of doctoral supervision in africa, see jowi, 2021). motala and menon (2020), talking about what happened during the lockdown, noted the possible decline in the quality of research projects due to, among others, the modification and/or discarding of accepted research methods, reduced performance rates due to pandemic-related stress and anxiety, changed supervision modes and longer completion times. my main research goal was to discover whether there had been a noteworthy change in master and doctoral supervision due to the outbreak and impact of covid-19. below, i first describe the study context and background. 2. background and study context after the initial outbreak of covid-19 in december 2019 (world health organization, 2020a: 1), the virus started spreading rapidly all over the world in the early months of 2020. the outbreak was declared a pandemic on 11 march 2020 (who, 2020b: 1), and, from then on, the cases and related deaths increased daily. soon after the global onset of the pandemic, sanitary measures were imposed in most countries. these consisted of social/physical distancing, lockdowns, isolating (the impact of isolation on master’s and doctoral students before covid-19 was already significant, see mason [2012], for example – we can only imagine how much more this effect will be on students and supervisors during the pandemic), quarantining and working from home. schools and universities were closed, which meant that physical access to the school or campus was no longer possible. with working from home and studying away from the “normal” academic environments (classrooms, laboratories, libraries, etc.) came an expanded use of digital technologies to counteract the far-reaching interruptions of higher education and related research activities (motala & menon, 2020). in many places worldwide this is ongoing. for example, in the kingdom of eswatini, universities opened again in august 2020 but with limited access: finalyear students came to write examinations, and, as the new academic year started, only firstyear students were allowed on campus for limited face-to-face sessions combined with online course delivery modes. these drastic changes foreseeably affected the relationship between supervisor and supervisee, as well as impacting the duration and frequency of interaction, and the means of communication between the parties involved in doctoral studies, seeing that communication between both parties is essential (ives & rowley, 2005; koen, 2007, cited in prinsloo, 2016; carpenter, makhadmeh. & thornton, 2015). alternative educational and supervisory activities were actively researched in order to minimise any possible adverse impact on the continuity of academic life and research. the present study was undertaken during the researcher’s participation in the dies/ crest online course for doctoral supervisors at african universities (july–october 2020). this is normally organised once a year, face-to-face, in south africa and brings together young and more experienced doctoral supervisors from african universities for extensive training. in 2020, due to the pandemic, the course was held online for the first time. the final assignment in this course is a research report of a study on any aspect of doctoral supervision. i chose to look into the transition from face-to-face to blended/online doctoral supervision. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 2902022 40(1): 290-305 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 3. problem statement, aim and objectives the research discussed in this article was designed with the overall purpose of exploring whether master and doctoral supervision had undergone transformation due to the pandemic. the particular focus was to explore doctoral supervision. what happened before the onset of the pandemic? what is going on now during the pandemic? these were the main questions i wanted to investigate. according to gardner (2007), supervisors of doctoral candidates need to be “accessible”, they should provide regular positive criticism and feedback (botha, 2010; nurie, 2018; neupane bastola & hu, 2021) on the work undertaken by the candidates, they should show empathy towards their students while also treating them as colleagues or peers (also echoed by turner, 2015). finally, supervisors should support their students in their research (lee, 2008). the question arises what accessibility and frequency of interaction mean. in the case of doctoral supervision, appointed supervisors often have no real idea of what constitutes acceptable supervision (dietz, jansen & wadee, 2006). therefore, the current study’s major research question was whether the pandemic brought about a transformation in the way doctoral students are supervised. this translated into many related questions, namely: 1. how often did supervisors see their doctoral students face-to-face before covid-19? 2. what was the main means of communication between supervisor and supervisee before covid-19? 3. what are the main means of communication between supervisor and supervisee during covid-19? 4. which videoconferencing tools were used to interact during covid-19? 5. has there been a change in frequency of supervisor-supervisee interaction between “before” and “during” covid-19? 6. how was the viva/oral thesis defence undertaken since the start of the pandemic? 4. literature review while there is some fairly recent literature on doctoral supervision in sub-saharan africa (manderson et al., 2017; jili & masuku, 2017; ndayambaje, 2018; isike, 2018; assimwe, 2019; cekiso et al., 2019; mothiba et al., 2019; ngulube & ukwoma, 2019; nsereko, 2019; gohar & qouta, 2021), there is little research currently available on the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on doctoral supervision methods and practices in the same region of the world. even though published before the pandemic, gray and crosta (2019) did a systematic literature review to ascertain the best practices of high-quality online support to students during the thesis stage of an online doctorate in higher education programme. they provide useful information and make recommendations that apply during the pandemic too. in their section on frequency of meetings between doctoral students and supervisors, they note the following: timing and frequency of meetings is important to scaffold student progress, to build persistence and completion (pyhältö, vekkaila & keskinen, 2015, cited by gray & crosta, 2019). frequency goes hand in hand with communication (erichsen, bolliger & halupa, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 2912022 40(1): 291-305 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 ferreira-meyers the need for revision of selected aspects of online supervision spanning three continents, including africa, stevens et al.’s 2021 study entitled “doctoral supervision and covid-19: autoethnographies from four faculty across three continents” gave four faculty members the opportunity to write an auto-ethnography of their experience as doctoral student supervisors. even though their basic advising philosophies and contexts were quite different, their findings regarding the possibility and power of resilience, empathy and mentoring online, indicate that monitoring of new online practices is essential because some of these should be kept after the pandemic to expand the reach, depth and impact of doctoral education. authors such as phillips, logan and mather (2021) as well as suparman (2021) looked at the covid-19-induced need for online doctoral supervision and specialised training for doctoral supervisors. paula (2020) investigated how lockdowns due to covid-19 affected doctoral studies, while mullen’s 2020 research focused on online doctoral mentoring. tatnell (2020) is one of the few researchers noting the use of videoconferencing as part of good online research supervision relationships. earlier on, lim et al. (2019) highlighted videoconferencing as one of the possible strategies to assist distance doctoral students in completing their dissertations. research on swedish graduate students by börgeson et al. (2021) noted particular challenges in phd education due to covid-19-disrupted supervision. the few studies highlighted above are an indication of the need for additional studies on different aspects of doctoral study supervision before, during and beyond the covid-19 pandemic. 5. research design, methodology and sampling this study used a descriptive research design in view of generating useful data to answer the main research question. a qualitative case study design was selected because it allowed for the generation of in-depth data that emerged from the participants’ opinions, thoughts and feelings (creswell & poth, 2016). this design was chosen to explore the respondents’ realworld experiences of master and doctoral study supervision before and during the covid-19 lockdown/pandemic. the survey tool i implemented was an online google form selfdesigned questionnaire that provided data about participants’ demographics (such as age) and their opinions regarding the main points discussed below. the questionnaire consisted of 11 multiple choice and 2 open-ended questions. there was no ethical clearance sought. informed consent was obtained by explaining that the generated data would be used for a study that was part of the requirements for the completion of an online course and would possibly be used additionally in a published article. respondents participated on a voluntary basis and could opt out at any time. their responses were anonymised at data analysis stage. sampling was purposive in nature. the purposive sampling technique (klar & leeper, 2019), also known as non-random sampling, relies mainly on the researcher’s ability to select elements for a sample. on the negative side of this choice is that the outcome of the sampling might be biased and make it difficult for all the elements of the population to be part of the sample equally. i selected possible participants based on the aim of the study, namely, to get the opinion of a particular group of higher education stakeholders, ma and phd supervisors. it can also be described as convenience sampling. as i did not receive sufficient quality responses the first time i sent out the questionnaire (cohort 1), i sent it again, but for cohort 2, i specifically targeted my fellow dies/crest online course participants. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 2922022 40(1): 292-305 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 6. participants and their profile yin (2015) explained that purposive sampling involves the selection of participants based on their identified relevance and rich experience that can contribute towards answering a study’s research questions. in the current study, the respondents were chosen because of the rich information they could provide related to their experience as supervisors. the first cohort (survey undertaken in july 2020) consisted of 168 of the researcher’s colleagues worldwide, known to me for being/having been doctoral supervisors. of these, 27 responded to the questionnaire; this gives a response rate of 16,1%. as i was not satisfied with the number of responses, i then requested fellow participants in the dies/crest online course for doctoral supervisors at african universities to also fill in the online survey. the second cohort (survey sent out at the end of july 2020) then consisted of 143 colleagues, all working at african universities. from this group, 37 responses were obtained, which corresponds to a response rate of 25,9%. in total, 64 responses were collected out of 311 possible respondents. this brings the overall response rate to 20.6%. in a large-scale danish study on response rate differences between paper-based and online surveys, ebert et al. (2018) found that the overall response rate in the digital group was 36.31% (1303/3588), almost 10 percentage points lower than in the paper group (45.99%, 1653/3594). we can thus suppose that a better response rate might have been achieved if we had been able to use paper-based instruments (which was not possible due to the covid-19 pandemic in our particular case). in addition, we know that study participants are increasingly resistant to responding to surveys (kohut et al., 2012). general stress and anxiety related to the pandemic might also have been a factor for the relatively low response rate in this study. the following demographic information relating to age, qualification and country of residence was gathered. table 1 indicates that most supervisors were between the ages of 41 and 50 (cohort 2; supervisors solely from africa) and 51 and 60 (cohort 1; supervisors from all over the world, including africa: 9 respondents from this cohort were based outside africa). in cohort 2 all study participants were phd holders (in cohort 1 a few respondents were ma holders, but they only supervised ma students). table 1: age of respondents age cohort 1 (n=27) cohort 2 (n=37) 30–40 3 11 41–50 8 16 51–60 15 8 61 and above 1 2 total 27 37 interestingly, the participating supervisors in the second cohort were generally younger than those in the first one. does this mean supervisors in africa start to supervise at a younger age? or is it related to the fact that there is a limited pool of supervisors? further research is needed to answer these questions. 7. findings and discussion in this section, i note the main study findings and discuss them in relation to international research. i start with the number of doctoral students per supervisor and then go into the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 2932022 40(1): 293-305 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 ferreira-meyers the need for revision of selected aspects of online supervision themes identified at the start of the study, namely frequency of interaction, use of digital tools for online interaction between supervisor and supervisee and student progress during the pandemic. a few selected responses then guide a discussion leading to the recommendations and conclusion. this section is organised according to the research sub-questions: frequency and change of frequency in supervisor-supervisee interactions, digital tools and means of supervisorsupervisee interactions, variety of videoconferencing tools and oral thesis defence. in addition to information directly answering these questions, i also obtained information regarding the number of doctoral students currently under a participant’s supervision. this can be seen in table 2. table 2: number of doctoral students currently under the participants’ supervision number of students supervised cohort 1 (n=27) cohort 2 (n=37) 0 8 6 1-3 10 26 4-6 9 2 7-10 0 3 in cohort 1, 38,5% of the respondents supervised between 1 and 3 doctoral candidates, and 34,6% between 4 and 6. in cohort 2, the vast majority (70,3%) supervised between 1 and 3 doctoral students. the remaining respondents in both cohorts (8 in cohort 1 and 6 in cohort 2; some of the cohort 1 participants were supervising ma students) were not currently supervising doctoral students. in cohort 2, a significant number of participants supervised between 7 and 10 doctoral candidates. this is an indication of possible work overload. research undertaken in east and southeast asia on the number of doctoral students per supervisor in the field of nursing education shows that 45% of the participating institutions had between 1 and 5 students, while one third had between 6 and 10 supervisors and a quarter had no upper limit of students/ supervisor (molassiotis et al., 2020). 8. frequency and change of frequency of supervisor-supervisee interactions in general, supervisors interact with their own students as they were supervised, and/or they learn by doing (halse, 2011, cited in manderson et al., 2017). because there is no prescribed frequency of interaction and the frequency means of interaction varies from country to country, from university to university, from department to department even, i have not included any benchmark questions for frequency or means of interaction. however, what could be measured was the change of frequency starting from what happened before the pandemic and what occurred during the pandemic. in response to the questions – how often did supervisors see their students face-to-face before covid-19? – and – has there been a change in frequency of supervisor-supervisee interaction between “before” and “during” covid-19? – the following was noted: before the pandemic, 95,2% (cohort 1) and 67,7% (cohort 2) of the supervisors only interacted faceto-face with their students once a month. since the start of the pandemic, the frequency of interactions has changed as can be seen in table 3 below. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 2942022 40(1): 294-305 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) table 3: change in frequency of interaction between supervisor and student frequency of interaction cohort 1 (n=22) cohort 2 (n=34) less frequent 8 13 more frequent 4 9 equally frequent 10 12 cohort 1 respondents noted slightly more instances where the frequency of interaction with the supervised students did not change. as countries outside africa were included here, it could be possible that the dependency on online interactions were already higher there before the pandemic. nevertheless, it is important to note that for 26,5% of cohort 2 respondents, the interactions became more frequent during the pandemic. this might be an indication of a heightened need for communication and interaction, even if occurring online only (face-to-face was impossible during the lockdown periods), in “difficult” periods such as the covid-19 pandemic. in many master’s and doctoral programmes, two phases can be distinguished: the taught course phase and the research phase. in the research phase, supervision of doctoral research has four dimensions: “the advisory role, the quality control role, the supporting relationship nurtured by the supervisor and the guidance of the student by the supervisor” (mouton, 2001: 17, cited by beer and mason, 2009). none of these roles or dimensions can be undertaken without regular interaction. even before the covid-19 pandemic, supervisors and researchers were debating the differences and possible advantages of onor offline supervision practices (e.g. gumbo, 2019) for all postgraduate research students but also more particularly for international students (e.g. herman & meki kombe, 2019). in a study undertaken in portuguese universities, “almost all supervisors (90,2%) agree that regular contact (by email, skype, in-person) with doctoral students, is the key to monitoring and guiding student research work. regular meetings in person with students has an agreement of 76,8%. almost sixty-one per cent (60,7%) of supervisors agree with joint monitoring (phd student-supervisor) of the proposal development while more than half (56,3%) of supervisors agree with the statement “supervisor’s failure to monitor student work may lead to non-completion of the doctorate” and that 31.3% partially agree with this statement (ribau, 2020: 1585). the frequency of supervisory meetings may also affect doctoral candidates’ emotional exhaustion and intentions to dropout. supervisory interaction and meetings are also a critical consideration in the advisory relationship. the frequency and quality of meetings are important (li & seale, 2007). although the quality and frequency of meetings likely varies with the individual advisor, it may also depend on the academic discipline. gardner (2007) reported that doctoral students emphasised the importance of their supervisory interaction, but she noted that expectations regarding contact time with their supervisor varied by academic department. regardless, the frequency of interaction seems to affect doctoral students’ wellbeing and progress. for example, stubb, pyhältö and lonka (2011) found that weak and infrequent advising hindered the emotional wellbeing of doctoral students. furthermore, students who have access to regular meetings with advisors, where they can receive guidance and discuss expectations, are more likely to complete their degrees (bair & haworth, 2005). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 2952022 40(1): 295-305 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 ferreira-meyers the need for revision of selected aspects of online supervision 9. digital tools and means of supervisor-supervisee interaction the second theme of this study relates to the use of digital tools for online supervision of doctoral students and the main means of interaction between both stakeholders. this theme provides answers to the following questions: what was the main means of communication between supervisor and supervisee before covid-19? what are the main means of communication between supervisor and supervisee during covid-19? and which videoconferencing tools were used to interact during covid-19? both cohorts used face-to-face interaction as the main means of communication before the pandemic started. noteworthy is the much higher percentage (70,6%) of cohort 2 participants compared to that of cohort 1 respondents (54,5%). this could confirm what was noted above, namely that the use of technology-mediated communication was already more significant outside africa than it was on the continent. during the pandemic, there was a definite shift from face-to-face to email and skype or similar platforms, as figures 1 and 2 below indicate. figure 1: cohort 1 interaction types for cohort 1, 59,1% of the interactions between the supervisor and the doctoral student happened via email during this period of the covid-19 pandemic (march 2020–august 2020), 36,4% of the interactions via skype or other videoconferencing tools and only 4,5% took place in a face-to-face setting. for cohort 2, as indicated in figure 2 below, the numbers indicate that more interactions took place via videoconferencing (45,7%) compared to what occurred in cohort 1. a little more than half (51,4%) of the interactions were undertaken via email, while only 2,9% of the supervisor-supervisee interactions happened face-to-face. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 2962022 40(1): 296-305 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) figure 2: cohort 2 interaction types supervision using videoconferencing tools, also called remote supervision, telesupervision or even e-supervision (ghani, 2020: 38) is slowly appearing as a research topic under the broad category of doctoral study supervision. while no significant research has been done in africa in this regard, a few pre-covid-19 studies outside the continent called for the intensified use in the near future (frederick, 2020; flaherty, 2020, both cited in ghani, 2020). cuban (1986) indicated that new technologies have succeeded each other since the 19th century, in particular in the education sector. thus, students and educators have had to adapt themselves to new technologies, and today this includes digital ones (khoza, 2017) as well as social media usage for teaching and learning (annamalai, 2019; mpungose, 2020; deng & tavares, 2013; henry et al., 2016; madge et al., 2009), which means we need to ensure that users are informed about these rapidly changing digital technologies (dlamini, 2015). while lecturers and students have used skype’s videoconferencing functionality professionally and socially in the past, during the covid-19 lockdown they seem to have switched to the more flexible zoom, which is easy to install and use, and allows more participants in the same “call”. a variety of tools were used by the supervisors in this study: zoom, google meet/hangout, microsoft teams, adobe connect, skype, webex and whatsapp. zoom is by far the preferred videoconferencing/virtual meeting tool (45,5% of the participants of cohort 1 and 36,2% for cohort 2). this is followed by google meet/hangout for cohort 1 (31,8%) and microsoft teams (23,5%). researchers like mullen (2020) discuss the importance of videoconferencing tools to ensure continued interactions, in particular during extreme events such as pandemics. crawford et al.’s (2020) study explored universities’ responses, in the form of migration to online environments, to the covid-19 pandemic in relation to teaching, learning and research, in germany, hong kong, malaysia, jordan and south africa. universities started hosting lectures and meetings through videoconferencing software such as zoom, and filesharing applications such as google classroom. in addition, universities have expanded their use of learning management or content management systems such as moodle (putri et al., 2020). in the narrative, open-ended part of the questionnaire, one participant had this to say: another positive is that i find that staff and students have been kind of forced to rely more on technology and eventually find it useful for virtual meetings/interactions, etc, whereas before many relied more on print and email. some students have access challenges with http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 2972022 40(1): 297-305 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 ferreira-meyers the need for revision of selected aspects of online supervision regard to wifi and this interferes with the new arrangement of holding virtual meetings and slows down work and student/supervisor interactions (p5, cohort 2). this confirms the shift towards more use of digital interactions during the pandemic but also points to multiple challenges regarding infrastructure and connectivity which, in turn, point to access and inclusivity challenges. ribau’s study participants noted that “almost all supervisors (90,2%) agree that regular contact (by email, skype, in-person) with doctoral students, is the key to monitoring and guiding student research work. regular meetings in person with students has an agreement of 76,8% (ribau, 2020: 1585). the current study confirms this, except that because of the pandemic much less face-to-face, in-person interaction is happening. the pandemic has brought about a more diversified offering when it comes to videoconferencing. while many of these products were available before march 2020, the fact that supervisors and supervisees started using videoconferencing more as an alternative to the now prohibited face-to-face interactions, also meant that stakeholders would start looking for videoconferencing products that were better suited to their specific needs. in their research on group research supervision, kumar et al. note the following regarding the effectiveness of videoconferencing tools during a pandemic: “having a flexible structure for zoom meetings, a scheduled time to work with their mentor, a lengthy block of time to interact one-to-one, and the mentor’s prepared responses to their files and questions, with attention on anything arising while in session, proved motivating” (2021: 148). 10. oral thesis defence/viva the videoconferencing tools mentioned in the previous section were mainly used for regular supervisor-supervisee meetings, but also at the level of oral thesis defence or viva. this is normally something that happens in a face-to-face setting, even though before the onset of the pandemic it was possible to hold a viva at a distance. this occurred in particular with international students. this shift is also visible when it comes to thesis defence. more than half (56,5%) of the respondents of cohort 1 indicated that there have been thesis defences since the start of the pandemic. this number is significantly lower for cohort 2. while i have not been able to ascertain why this is the case, one of the reasons might be that in cohort 1 there are participants based outside africa who might have been better prepared to deal with online thesis defences (they might have dealt with international students on a larger scale and therefore might have had thesis defences “at a distance” even before the pandemic started). cohort 1 respondents noted that thesis defences were undertaken “virtual[ly] using zoom”, “via google meeting”, “on blackboard collaborate” and “different[ly] from before because of time management” (“the defence should not last more than 3 hours”). one of the respondents noted that besides the “initial technical glitches”, doing the defence online was “in fact, (...) an easier means to get all examiners to attend orals once we can all agree on dates. previously orals had to be waived because of the unavailability of examiners who were usually out of the country. with online oral defence, attendance can be from any part of the world”. of the 13 responses received from cohort 1, 6 indicated that the doctoral students’ thesis defence or viva was held online, while 7 said it took place face-to-face. in one case the chancellor of the university had given special authorisation to do so. in all cases precautionary measures (presence of sanitiser or request to wash hands at the entrance of the venue, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 2982022 40(1): 298-305 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) temperature checking prior to entering the venue, less than 20 people attending, social distance of at least one metre, obligatory wearing of a facemask) were in place. other changes took place in how the defence was conducted. one of the study participants indicated that students had to prepare a presentation with a voice-over and send it in. this allowed the panel to go through it in their own time. then there was a shorter synchronous presentation and discussion on blackboard collaborate where people could, for instance, pose questions. nineteen cohort 2 respondents shared their thoughts about online defences. notably, similar to cohort 1, these were done over zoom or other online platforms. for most respondents this was new and brought with it challenges of connectivity, for example, or that the students were not used to this (one respondent noted that a dry or trial run was undertaken before the actual defence) or that the examination committee was not used to this (in one case, the committee members received training on how to use zoom before the actual defence date). such challenges were already noted in other parts of the world (see, for example, salihbegovic & ribic, 2008). for some institutions this was already the case pre-pandemic as using virtual platforms ensured the participation of international supervisors and/or examiners in the examination process or even during the proposal presentations or progress reporting (so, earlier in the doctoral students’ journey). one participant noted that “zoom and other virtual means are more effective than face-to-face” (unfortunately, the respondent did not qualify that statement). as morley et al. (2002; cited in watts, 2012: 376) noted, oral examinations are variable in form and conduct, so there is nothing peculiar about a shift in mode of delivery (online versus face-to-face). however, this should have an impact on the way supervisors prepare their doctoral candidates for this part of the journey. 11. student progress during the pandemic linked to the questions regarding frequency of interaction and tools used to supervise students, an additional question sought to find out how supervisors viewed their students’ progress. overall, respondents had this to say about their students’ progress during the pandemic: for cohort 1, a large portion of the students, 40,9%, as reported by the study participants, progressed at a slower pace during the pandemic, while for cohort 2, interestingly, they seemed to be more performant (their progress was more intense). for cohort 2 almost one third indicated that progress was faster, one third that progress was similar to what occurred before the pandemic, and one third that progress was slower. several cohort 1 participants indicated that the intensity of the progression varied from student to student. it is thus difficult to generalise the data from this theme on student progress. the responses to the open-ended questions (qualitative) are helpful when it comes to interpreting the indecisive nature of the quantitative data. this is what one respondent had to say: “my students had very different experiences and their progress showed it. students with additional work (for example moving from face-to-face to online teaching very quickly and without sufficient support) or child care responsibilities had less time while others working from home progressed quickly” (cohort 2). the comment is noteworthy as it points to individual differences, personal challenges and the need for individual and flexible learning paths in postgraduate supervision. thus, caution should be exercised in not approaching supervision in a rigid manner. many doctoral study programmes are already quite flexible in nature, but probably more should be done to ensure that differing approaches and circumstances allow more people to proceed with this type of studies. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 2992022 40(1): 299-305 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 ferreira-meyers the need for revision of selected aspects of online supervision 12. recommendations infrastructure, connectivity and access are all elements that need to be improved for staff and students for postgraduate supervision to continue online during (and beyond) the pandemic. additional research is needed in the area of how supervisors can prepare their students for online interactions and defences. frequency and means of interaction have an impact on doctoral student commitment and persistence (jones, 2011; lovitts, 2001; kurtz-costes et al., 2006). frequent interaction between supervisor and supervisee is important. quality assurance aspects need to be revised and/or implemented to address frequency and quality of supervision. creating a structured model to assist advisors in providing feedback, both in terms of academic research and relationship management, may be helpful. research on how the quality of the supervisory relationship affects students’ anxiety, stress and wellbeing (such as that undertaken by stubb et al., 2011) should be envisaged, especially during a pandemic such as the one brought about by covid-19. according to pyhältö et al. (2012), doctoral students who experienced supervisory problems reported higher anxiety and emotional exhaustion, while rigg et al. (2013) found that advisor support significantly reduced emotional exhaustion among american graduate students. supervisors need to be trained and supported to provide holistic support that goes beyond academic support and supports student wellbeing. it has to be noted that with doctoral students experiencing psychological distress six times higher than the general population (barry et al., 2018) and one in three being at risk for a common psychiatric disorder (levecque et al., 2017) before the pandemic, it is important to explore the impact of covid-19 on their wellbeing and mental health, as well as on that of their supervisors. 13. study limitations this small-scale study focused on the point of view of the supervisors. this meant that no input was received from the supervised students. further research, such as sokhulu’s 2020 study entitled “students’ experiences of using digital technologies to address their personal research needs during the covid-19 lockdown”, is necessary to complement the current study. additional follow-up studies looking at how students perceived the impact of the pandemic on the way/frequency they were supervised during their doctoral studies would be useful to provide a more balanced picture of the phenomenon and impact research output (halbert, 2015). in addition, the study was undertaken soon after the start of the first lockdown (march 2020). supervisors and supervisees had to improvise and rapidly implement ways and means to deal with the changed environment for their interactions. it remains to be seen whether, close to two years after the onset of the pandemic, the situation has further transformed, whether other tools are now used and whether the frequency of interactions between supervisor and supervisee has undergone additional shifts. in this area too, further research is required. it would further be useful to study completion rates to compare what supervisors thought their students’ progress was to what really occurred. it would be vital too to look at how precovid-19 distance education and online doctoral studies programmes assure their quality when it comes to frequency of interaction between supervisor and supervisee. heeralal’s (2016) case study on improving postgraduate supervision in an open and distance learning (odl) environment would be a good starting point. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 3002022 40(1): 300-305 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.17 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 14. conclusion the current study’s major research questions were whether the pandemic brought about a transformation in the way master and doctoral students are supervised. the data collected from the online survey administered to doctoral studies’ supervisors suggests that there has been a change in frequency and means of supervision, that there is more reliance on videoconferencing tools and interaction “at a distance”. however, the impact on student progression is less clear and the data cannot conclusively confirm that there has been a significant transformation in the way students are supervised because many participants seem to indicate their wish to return to the way things were done pre-pandemic. nevertheless, there will probably be more reliance on social media, email and other online tools such as zoom and skype post-pandemic. in the words of the study participants, “online supervision is developing” and “the pandemic has also given us more tools of engagement, which is good”. in addition to what wu et al. 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education 2014: 32(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 5 research at private higher education institutions in south africa roger deacon, rex van vuuren and dave augustyn very little is known about whether and what kinds of research are being undertaken at private higher education institutions (pheis) in south africa. this article draws on a recent survey of all registered pheis undertaken by a group of interested private higher education providers. this survey was facilitated by the council on higher education (che) and aimed to examine the quantity and quality of research produced by pheis from 2008 to 2010. placing phei research output within the broader context of factors that encourage or discourage research in the sector and in the country as a whole, the survey found that, although phei research is negligible in comparison with that of public universities, it is much more substantial than previously estimated. keywords: research; private higher education; universities; south africa introduction very little is known about whether and what kinds of research are being undertaken at private higher education institutions (pheis) in south africa. in 2009, the council on higher education (che, 2009: 48) opined, “[a]t present private higher education institutions contribute little to national research production”. of the approximately 100 pheis registered at the time with the department of education (now the department of higher education and training – dhet), the che was aware of only two institutions – st augustine college and monash south africa – which were consistently producing research in the form of journal articles, books and chapters in books. at the 2009 che consultative conference, it was proposed that leading private higher education providers form a task team to understand the potential role of private higher education better. as a first step, deeper understanding is needed of the current state of the sector. five working groups were constituted to investigate, roger deacon school of education studies, university of kwazulu-natal e-mail: deacon@ukzn.ac.za telephone: 031 260 1111 rex van vuuren academic dean, st augustine college of south africa e-mail: r.vanvuuren@ staugustine.ac.za telephone: 011 380 9000 dave augustyn faculty of information technology, cti education group e-mail: davea@cti.ac.za telephone: 011 467 8422 perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 6 research and report on specific aspects of the private higher education sector, with guidance and technical support being provided by the che directorate: advice and monitoring. the working groups focused respectively on the size and shape of the private higher education sector, teaching and learning, community engagement and research, and financing and resourcing, with a final group assigned the task of coordinating and integrating the results. a questionnaire was formulated and sent to all registered pheis in the country to elicit detailed information. drawing upon the results of this survey, this article examines the recent research profile of pheis, specifically the kind and quantity of research produced by pheis from 2008 to 2010. in addition, attention is paid to the quality of this research, using the same criteria that were applied to evaluate research undertaken at public universities (i.e., publication in thomson isi-accredited and dhet-approved journals) and, where possible, comparisons are made to the research outputs of public universities. it is on this basis that this article aims to contribute to existing knowledge about a sector which, almost two decades old, “is not yet fully understood” (che, 2009: 92). a profile of phei research activities and output is presented below, with emphasis on postgraduate output. after discussing the general findings, an effort is made to place these within the broader context of the factors that encourage or discourage research in south africa and at pheis in particular. the phei landscape in south africa pheis mushroomed in south africa during the midto late-1990s (subotzky, 2003: 419). most studies of the sector have focused on questions of policy, registration and regulation, as well as quality assurance and equity, and to a lesser extent, on teaching and learning (cele, 2005; kruss, 2007; lange & luescher, 2003; perspectives in education, 2002). to date, little mention has been made of research, yet there might be untapped potential here which could be important not only for the broader higher education sector, but also for the country. as subotzky (2003: 420) noted, the potentially complementary role that pheis could play in human resource development in south africa could and should extend to conducting research. while there is evidence of the existence of hundreds of pheis in the country, only a few of these are registered (as specified in terms of chapter 7 of the higher education act, no. 101 of 1997) (rsa, 1997) and are permitted to offer and award formal higher education qualifications. a recent examination of several organisational data sets that list private post-school education providers found that, according to the south african qualifications authority (saqa), there are at least 362 pheis, while data from the sector education and training authority in the manufacturing, engineering and related services industry (merseta) indicated the existence of research at private higher education institutions in south africa roger deacon, rex van vuuren and dave augustyn 7 323 pheis (blom, 2011: 18, 39). as of april 2011, 87 registered pheis were listed in the department of higher education’s register of private higher education institutions, together with an additional 28 provisionally registered pheis. methodology during 2010, a survey instrument in the form of an electronic questionnaire was designed to cover the four areas that were examined by the working groups (namely, the size and shape of the private higher education sector, teaching and learning, community engagement and research, and financing and resourcing). a test version of the questionnaire was first developed and, after a reduction in the original number of questions in order to present a more consolidated survey, the design process was concluded with setting up a final electronic version. in late 2010, this final electronic questionnaire, which consists of 98 questions in total and begins and ends with general questions, was sent to all of the 108 registered private higher education providers listed on che’s books. of these pheis, 94 institutions responded. the responses were coded and made available to the various working groups, which examined the data. the section of the questionnaire that deals with research consisted of 10 questions aimed at identifying those institutions that do research and at collecting related information in a similar way that information is collected from public institutions. the questions focused on research publications (including creative/ performance outputs), research collaboration and research degrees. institutions were asked to indicate whether they do research and, if so, to list any books, journal articles or chapters in books (including papers in conference proceedings) published by members of their staff since january 2008 (effectively up to and including october 2010), along with any conference papers presented and any other publications (such as book reviews, opinion and position papers, and letters to the editor). pheis were asked whether their staff had produced significant works in the areas of creative writing (such as fiction, drama, poetry, film and television scripts and translations), drama (directing, choreography, design and performance in a leading or substantial supporting role), public performance or recordings of music, musical compositions or arrangements, visual arts (painting, sculpture, printmaking and design) and design (in the form of major design projects or portfolios). additional questions focused on research collaboration, with whom phei researchers collaborate, for example, with local private institutions, public universities, international universities, business/industry or research institutes, and whether an institution offered research master’s or doctoral programmes and, if so, the number of students registered for such research degrees (as of october 2010), as well as the number of academic staff involved in supervising or acting as external examiners for such degrees at their own or other institutions. perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 8 limitations there are a number of limitations to the data returned by pheis in response to the survey. for example: • not all institutions responded, and those that did respond did not always provide complete information. some of the information provided was inaccurate, some of it was duplicated and, in a few cases, it was insufficiently disaggregated. • most of the data on publications had to be counted manually and, as such, contains a further built-in margin of error. nevertheless, electronic searches succeeded in verifying the existence of most, though not all, of the information on publications provided. perhaps the main limitation of the survey data is that they represent a mere snapshot of self-reported information. owing to these limitations, together with concerns expressed by the che and the different working groups that some of the results might be inaccurate or unreliable, or that the respondents might have misinterpreted or misunderstood some of the questions, the draft report on the survey results (phe, 2011) has not been published. accordingly, the views expressed in this paper are solely those of the authors and do not in any way reflect those of the che or any particular private higher education provider. it should also be noted that the publication counts indicated below ought not to be considered as absolute. the research outputs were classified primarily based on their (book, chapter, article or paper) titles, with additional clues provided in some instances by the title of the publication (book, journal or conference proceedings) in which they appeared. furthermore, where fields overlapped (such as where a publication appeared to focus simultaneously on theology and philosophy, or public relations and business management), the research output was classified under only one of these fields. findings institutional context based on an assessment informed by dhet annual reporting data, the che has estimated that the 94 pheis which responded to the survey accounted for approximately 95% of registered private higher education students (phe, 2011: 1). research at private higher education institutions in south africa roger deacon, rex van vuuren and dave augustyn 9 the table below indicates the various knowledge areas in which the responding pheis offer programmes. table 1: knowledge areas offered by pheis cesm category number of institutions business, commerce and management sciences 40 philosophy, religion and theology 22 arts, visual and performing 21 health care and health sciences 17 communication 12 computer science 10 education 10 psychology 9 architecture and environmental design 7 languages, linguistics and literature 6 engineering and engineering technology 5 physical education, health education and leisure 5 public administration and social services 5 industrial arts, trades and technology 4 social sciences and social studies 4 law 2 life sciences and physical sciences 2 agriculture and renewable natural resources 1 military sciences 1 sources: survey data (phe 2011: 3-4) the survey found that the largest single proportion of pheis (40 of the 94 respondents) offer programmes in the classification of education subject matter (cesm) category of business, commerce and management sciences. a total of 22 and 21 pheis offer programmes in the knowledge fields of philosophy, religion and theology, and visual and performing arts, respectively. pheis effectively offer programmes in all but three of the 22 cesm categories, these three being home economics, libraries and museums, and mathematical sciences (phe, 2011: 3-4). business and management are the forte of pheis, and by this they are probably responding to, and satisfying their own, entrepreneurial need. however, less than 10% of pheis offer programmes in the field of education, arguably an even greater current social need. perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 10 the 94 institutions employ 9 438 staff members of whom more than half (4 898) are classified as academic staff (phe, 2011: 11). of these academic staff members, 1 763 are considered ‘full time’ staff, and another 823 are considered ‘major time’ staff (defined as contributing 60% or more of their time to the institution) (phe, 2011: 11). some 363 academics hold doctorates, and 728 have master’s degrees (phe, 2011: 11). one could assume that these 1 091 academics are responsible for the bulk of the research produced by pheis. it could also be assumed that the bulk of the 1 091 academics who hold doctorates and master’s degrees were responsible for most of the training of the 503 master’s and doctoral graduates from pheis in 2009. in other words, for every two research producers, one potential research producer is being trained every year. research some 46% (or 43 of 94) of the pheis reported that they undertake research. of these, 11 institutions reported no details of any traditional research outputs (books, journal articles, book chapters, papers in conference proceedings, conference papers presented or other publications as specified), and three institutions explicitly stated that no such outputs had been produced. hence, less than one-third (29) of all pheis are producing research as it is traditionally understood. moreover, six of the institutions, which affirmed that they do research but produced no traditional research outputs, also made no mention of having produced any creative/performance outputs. nevertheless, all these institutions indicated that their researchers engage in research collaboration. one of these six institutions explicitly responded ‘none’ to the four questions about traditional research outputs. it might be that these institutions are, in fact, research-active but simply have not produced any research outputs from 2008 to 2010. nevertheless, this could imply an insignificant level of research activity even prior to this most recent period. other possible reasons for this anomaly is that the institutions in question understand ‘doing research’ very differently from the norm, or that they responded in error. institutions undertaking research indicated that over the reporting period (from january 2008 to october 2010) they had produced a total of some 28 books and 281 journal articles, book chapters and papers in conference proceedings. they also listed 290 conference papers presented, and 86 other publications (including book reviews, opinion and position papers, editorials, theses, reports and contributions to newsletters, newspapers, magazines and exhibition reviews). however, these gross totals were found to include duplications and other reporting errors. accordingly, multiple internet searches were carried out in an attempt to verify the existence of all reported books, journal articles, book chapters and papers in conference proceedings. this did not include conference papers presented and other publications. as a result, some 13% of reported articles and research at private higher education institutions in south africa roger deacon, rex van vuuren and dave augustyn 11 chapters were discounted as unverified and over half of the reported books were identified as textbooks and were discounted as research. hence, the total number of research outputs produced by pheis from january 2008 to october 2010 could be more accurately stated as: • 13 books, • 243 journal articles, book chapters and papers in conference proceedings, • 290 conference papers, and • 86 other publications. figure 1: phei research output by type of publication, 2008-2010 the total number of phei research outputs does not appear to correlate very closely with the size of an institution’s academic staff complement. three pheis account for 62% of all journal articles, chapters in books and papers in conference proceedings, but only one of these institutions ranks among the ten largest pheis with regard to total academic staff numbers (and only in 10th place at that). the other nine large pheis together accounted for only 4% of all journal articles, chapters in books and papers in conference proceedings, with five of them not doing any research at all. nevertheless, in the case of the 10th largest phei, there is some correlation between research output and academic staff complement: this particular institution produced approximately one-third of all journal articles, book chapters and papers in conference proceedings. with regard to the fields in which this research was undertaken, six of the books could be classified as theology, two as philosophy, two as political and social sciences, and the remaining three as health sciences, history and engineering. (incidentally, and for comparative purposes, the fields of specialisation of those publications that perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 12 were identified as textbooks, or as chapters in textbooks, tended to be traffic science, policing, information technology, public relations and entrepreneurship.) with regard to the 243 journal articles, book chapters and papers in conference proceedings, just over half were devoted to the fields of business management and theology, in nearly equal proportions. research in political and social sciences, and in health sciences, each accounted for about one-tenth of the total, while research in the fields of education, environmental sciences and economics each made up 5% of the total. the remaining research (about one-sixth or 16% of the total) was sprinkled across the fields of information technology, library science, philosophy, design, public relations, law, engineering, psychology, tourism, history and literature. as mentioned above, approximately one-third of all journal articles, book chapters and papers in conference proceedings were produced by a single institution, where research in the fields of political and social science, environmental science, economics and business management made up over half of all publications. to put this further into perspective, the next largest single institutional producer of articles, chapters and papers in conference proceedings accounted for only 18%, while the third largest accounted for 11%. the number of journal articles outweighed the number of chapters in books by four to one, or 80% to 20%, accompanied by a handful of papers that were published in conference proceedings. five institutions produced more than 75% of all book chapters, journal articles and papers in conference proceedings. the remainder was produced by all other (89) institutions. of the 290 conference papers, about 18% (or 52) were devoted to the field of business management, and an average of 11% each to health sciences, theology, education, political and social sciences. papers in environmental science, design, engineering, economics, information technology, law, literature, history, library science, philosophy, psychology, tourism, language studies, media studies and public administration constituted the remainder (approximately 38%). research at private higher education institutions in south africa roger deacon, rex van vuuren and dave augustyn 13 figure 2: conference papers by discipline, 2008-2010 a single institution – the same institution that produced a third of all journal articles, book chapters and papers in conference proceedings – was responsible for over twofifths of these conference papers, more than 50% of which were devoted to the fields of political and social sciences, business management and environmental science. the next largest single institutional producer accounted for 10% of all conference papers, and the third largest for 7%. not surprisingly, there is a marked tendency for most – though not all – pheis to produce research in only one field, usually the one that correlates most closely to their institutional ethos. for example, most of the theological pheis produce little to no research outside the field of theology, and the same applies to some pheis focused on health science or business management. only a few pheis produce research across a number of fields. only one book was multi-authored, while four of the books were edited volumes. single individuals authored most of the articles and chapters; with only 69 (or 29%) being multi-authored. a total of 58 (or 20% of) conference papers were multi-authored. research published in journals or books was checked against the thomson isi, ibss and dhet-approved lists for 2011. of the journals in which articles were published, 45 were non-south african journals (including 16 thomson isi-indexed perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 14 and two ibss-indexed journals), and 55 were south african (including seven thomson isi-indexed and three ibss-indexed journals, and an additional 24 dhet-approved journals). of the non-south african journals, about six were health related, five theology related and four economics related journals; of the south african journals, about 20 were theology related, 10 business management related and five health related. of the books in which chapters appeared (leaving aside a handful whose publication details could not be verified), 27 books were published by non-south african presses, and seven by south african presses. in addition, approximately five papers were published in conference proceedings of which all except one appeared outside south africa (phe, 2011: 14-15). other findings related to research the general impression was that not all the respondents interpreted the survey questions in the same way and, in some cases, included works which did not meet the implied criteria of the field into which they were reported. it is unclear whether questions were misinterpreted, misunderstood, or whether all institutions understood the concept of ‘research’ in the same context as traditional universities. this misinterpretation/misunderstanding could be construed to be consistent with an industry that might still be establishing or developing a research culture and profile. it was found that research collaboration by phei academics is more likely to take place with public universities than with other private institutions or with business/ industry and is most likely to be local rather than international. academic staff members at institutions which indicated that they undertake research are about five times more likely to be supervising or externally examining research degrees than academic staff at institutions not undertaking research. more specifically, 11 institutions stated that they offer research master’s or doctoral programmes. as of october 2010, 119 master’s and 57 doctoral students were registered, involving 187 academic staff members as supervisors or acting as external examiners for research degrees at other institutions. academic staff members at institutions with an emphasis on visual arts, design, creative writing, drama and music and which stated that they undertake research are about twice as likely to be producing creative and performing artwork as staff members at institutions not undertaking research. there are certain similarities between the production of research in the public and private higher education sectors. almost two-thirds of all phei journal articles, book chapters and papers in conference proceedings were produced by three institutions, and over three-quarters by five institutions. similarly, only a handful of institutions dominate research production among the public universities: “five universities – the research at private higher education institutions in south africa roger deacon, rex van vuuren and dave augustyn 15 university of cape town, pretoria university, stellenbosch university, the university of the witwatersrand and the university of kwazulu-natal – dominate the production of research in south africa”, producing “more than 60% of all research and postgraduate output” (che, 2009: 48). it was found that some of the publications listed by individual pheis had also been listed in the annual research reports of certain public universities. because some staff members at public universities are also employed part time at pheis, and vice versa, the question is raised as to which institution should be credited with the research output. at the same time, it suggests that more research is required about possible formal and informal partnerships between public and private institutions, especially regarding access to or sharing of research funding (phe, 2011: 13). several of the outputs that were listed constituted training manuals and textbooks, or appeared in in-house newsletters or electronic discussion forums. for the purposes of this article, textbooks have not been considered to involve research. in some instances, however, it might be argued that even textbooks (especially where they have been developed from scratch and not merely reprinted unchanged from year to year) also require the selection, development and application of knowledge, hence research. in-house publications, which might well involve research, could also, through a more rigorous system of peer review and external editorial board members, serve as “nurseries” for future and more recognised research outputs. discussion contextualising research output clearly, in comparison with the research being produced annually by public universities – 8 632 south african-authored thomson isi papers in 2008 alone (che, 2009: 47) – the quantity of research from pheis is negligible. nevertheless, it is equally apparent that the pheis on the whole are producing far more research than previously estimated. for example, until recently, the che was aware of only two pheis that were consistently producing research: st augustine college lists 13 journal papers and 7 book chapters published in 2008. monash south africa lists 12 journal papers and 3 monographs/ book chapters in their research report for 2007/08. a search of the isi indexes revealed one publication by a private higher education institution in south africa between 2004 and 2008 (che, 2009: 48). it is, thus, worth reflecting on the context in which this research is taking place and on what might be driving some of the pheis to undertake research or constraining them from doing so. perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 16 one of the most important drivers of research is the availability of funding. all over the world, government and other subsidies make it possible for higher education institutions to allocate more of their often-scarce resources to research. in south africa, where pheis do not qualify for subsidies on research output, such subsidies, specifically those emanating from the dhet, appear to be a key factor encouraging research output in public universities (che, 2009: 49). the che found that the increase in research output at public institutions from 2004 to 2008, including a 69% growth in thomson isi-accredited publications, was accomplished in the absence of significant growth in the numbers of permanent academic staff. this, as indicated by circumstantial evidence from the che survey, suggests that the increased output might partly be a result of universities using incentives to increase their output by using the contributions of contract staff, visiting scholars, research fellows and postgraduate students to supplement their own output and, thus, generating increased subsidies. the che further suggested that high output reporting might be in pursuit of the monetary values associated with such output. while reference was made to higher personal-professional standing as another possible reason for the increased output over the period, the report was silent on the possibility of increased research capacity as a possible contributing factor. the report also suggested that universities might have increased the monetary amounts allocated to researchers as individual rewards in order to motivate higher output (che, 2009: 49). because pheis do not qualify for subsidy on research output, these institutions might not consider research as critical to their business. rather than generating income, research would incur additional expense. in addition, pheis that do not offer postgraduate courses might not necessarily have adequate capacity to engage meaningfully with research, or see the need to do so in the absence of higher degree offerings in their institutions – only 11 institutions indicated that they offer research master’s and doctoral programmes (phe, 2011: 11). in the absence of such monetary incentives, those pheis that are undertaking research and producing research output must be doing so for other reasons which might include: • legal reasons: research is a legal requirement for institutions that offer postgraduate degrees because it demonstrates that they have the capacity to offer those qualifications and that they are able to contribute to the academic community by producing new knowledge. institutions applying for accreditation of new postgraduate qualifications must demonstrate that they are producing research output as part of the accreditation application process (che, 2004: 14). research at private higher education institutions in south africa roger deacon, rex van vuuren and dave augustyn 17 • institutional reasons: pheis that produce research might be able to use this fact in their advertising and marketing campaigns as an indication of the overall quality of the institution and its qualifications and, thus, to attract both new students and high-quality academic staff. • career reasons: individual academics in pheis, regardless of whether their research is subsidised or whether they are personally incentivised, might produce research for purposes of continued professional development so as to enhance their career prospects, professional recognition and standing in the academic community.personal reasons: individual academics are often intrinsically motivated to participate in and contribute to the “republic of letters” and to engage in knowledge generation activities which benefit both society and the international knowledge community in general. measuring research output within pheis public universities report their research output to the dhet annually for the purpose of claiming subsidies. they do so under the following categories only: • articles in accredited journals, • book publications, and • published conference proceedings (dhet, 2009). the issue of what is considered “research” was raised earlier in this article. “subsidyearning research output” constitutes only a part of what is traditionally considered as research, or all activities involving the selection, development and application of knowledge. in other words, that for which the public universities annually submit reports so as to obtain government subsidy does not encompass the full ambit of otherwise bona fide research outputs. this implies that, for both the public and the private higher education institutions, more consideration could be given to what might be defined as non-subsidised research. with regard to the pheis in particular, a closer investigation of this category of non-subsidised research might assist in understanding both the kinds of research being undertaken and the reasons for undertaking research. in the absence of any monetary incentives, such as subsidies for research output in pheis, consideration of other forms of research and research output might more realistically reflect these institutions’ engagement in and production of research, since such activities are clearly driven by objectives other than monetary incentives. the survey on which this article draws attempted to enquire into engagement into other forms of research or research-related activities such as: • visual arts (painting, sculpture, printmaking, design), • design (major design projects or portfolios – the unique utility product or projected product of the creative act of an individual or team of individuals), perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 18 • published creative writing (fiction, drama, poetry, film and television scripts), • public performance/recordings of music, • drama (directing, choreography, design and performance in a leading or substantial supporting role), • musical compositions/arrangements, and • published creative writing (translations). sixty-seven outputs were recorded under these categories. while these categories represent mostly creative work, there might also be additional categories that could be considered as valid research-related output (and which would typically not qualify for subsidy), such as research-based policy, position or opinion papers or reports for an institution or a company, for industry as a whole or for a government department. another example might be monographs, which are defined by the che as “relatively short books or treatise on a single scholarly subject written by a specialist(s) in the field and … generally not extensive in scope” (che, 2009: 50). arguably, policy, position or opinion papers, as well as the papers and materials which go into the writing of certain handbooks, manuals, overviews, guidelines or even textbooks might be classified as monographs in certain cases. another question relates to the tracking of research output. pheis, in the absence of any real need to formally record and make known their contributions to research as part of institutional governance (in the case of institutions not offering postgraduate qualifications), let alone inform government or regulatory bodies of these contributions, might not see any need to institute or insist upon formal, cyclical reporting systems. in addition, it is known that a relatively large proportion of academic staff members at pheis are contracted to their institutions as opposed to being permanently employed there and that they could work for more than one institution, as indicated earlier in this article. this begs the question of whether there might be output which was not reported in the survey of pheis on which this article draws, because some of these academics might have chosen to rather report their research output in the returns of a public institution with which they are associated and which offers them incentives for doing so. alternatively, some output might simply not have been reported because of a lack of formal record keeping at many pheis. comparing phei research output internationally in order to locate the findings of this survey of south african pheis within a broader, international context, internet searches were conducted to ascertain whether and to what extent pheis in other countries, both developed and developing, also conduct research. these searches revealed that, while a considerable amount of research has been undertaken on private higher education internationally, very little research has examined the volume, scope or nature of research being produced by pheis around research at private higher education institutions in south africa roger deacon, rex van vuuren and dave augustyn 19 the world. nevertheless, based on the limited information available, it could be said that, for the most part, pheis globally do relatively little research and certainly do much less than public institutions. the united states and a handful of institutions in other countries are the exceptions. as a recent unesco publication indicates, pheis are multiplying across the world, with asia and latin america showing the greatest growth and western europe the least (bjarnason, cheng, fielden, lemaitre, levy & varghese, 2009: 3). typically, however, most pheis focus on attracting students to niche courses (such as business studies) and do not undertake significant amounts of research (bernasconi, 2006: 308; bjarnason et al., 2009: 2, 99). in africa, despite the proliferation of pheis, there is a general “absence of research in private higher education” (jegede, 2012: 3). the situation is similar in asia, where only a few pheis (mostly in china, malaysia, south korea and vietnam) produce limited amounts of research (levy, 2010: 40). recent media reports from bangladesh, citing the 2010 annual report of the country’s university grants commission, state that in that year not a single research project was undertaken at 29 of the country’s 51 private universities (chowdhury & joarder, 2012: n.p.). however, in pakistan the government is considering providing research funding to its pheis, where recent initiatives are said to be encouraging even though the sector still does hardly any research (saleem, 2011: n.p.). in australia, where the private higher education landscape consists of 132 providers, including five institutions owned by public universities and 17 government-owned entities, only 13 (10%) of the 132 offer research degrees (ryan, 2012: 6). the us is somewhat of an anomaly in the field of private higher education research production. many us universities that are in the forefront of research are private, but even there, financial stringencies are said to be causing the us to fall behind many other developed countries in terms of both governmentand businessfunded university research (atkinson & stewart, 2011: 2). in brazil, as in the us, many universities are private institutions but, unlike in the us, most of these produce very little research (with the exception of certain religious institutions, such as the pontifical catholic university in rio de janeiro) (bjarnason et al., 2009: 11). in this respect, chile is similar to brazil in that its private universities evidence only limited research capacity (despite the fact that their mission statements unanimously express a commitment to research) and, among those few that do do research, catholic institutions figure prominently (bernasconi, 2006: 326). based on the limited information available internationally, therefore, it can be concluded that the findings of the survey of south african pheis mirrors the paucity of research at or by pheis globally. conclusion when initially conceptualising the survey questions together with the che and the consortium of pheis, the designers hypothesised that they would find minimal research activity in the phei sector. the results of the survey both confirm and perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 20 disconfirm this hypothesis: in comparison with the public universities, the survey confirms the negligibility of research undertaken by pheis. in comparison with what had previously been known, however, the survey shows that research activity is, in fact, much more substantial than in earlier estimates. nevertheless, despite almost two decades of development of the phei sector, it could be concluded that there are only a few pockets of good research at pheis, only a handful of good researchers, and a smattering of quality research outputs. in general, the volume and quality of the research output in relation to the size of the sector is small compared to the output produced by the higher education sector in general. one of the reasons might be that the sector as a whole is comparatively young and that those institutions that entered more recently are more occupied with setting up the institutions than focusing on other dimensions of higher education. the pheis also have fewer incentives to undertake and produce research than do the public universities, given that they do not receive subsidies, and that only those institutions offering postgraduate degrees are legally required to engage in research. by and large, then, the phei sector in south africa evinces an immature understanding of the importance of, and offers as yet only a tiny contribution to, knowledge creation and dissemination. references atkinson r & stewart l 2011. university research funding: the united states is behind and falling. washington, dc: the information and innovation foundation. bernasconi a 2006. does the affiliation of universities to external organizations foster diversity in private higher education? chile in comparative perspective. higher education, 52: 303-342. bjarnason s, cheng km, fielden j, lemaitre mj, levy d & varghese n 2009. a new dynamic: private higher education. paris: unesco. blom r 2011. the size and shape of private, post-school education and training provision in south africa. june. johannesburg: centre for education policy development. cele n 2005. the consequences of the absence of a ‘norms and standards’ legislative framework for institutional accreditation in private higher education: a disconnect between policy, expectations and quality assurance practice. perspectives in education, 19(3): 188-202. che. 2004. criteria for programme accreditation. higher education qualification committee. november. pretoria: council on higher education. che. 2009. the state of higher education in south africa. higher education monitor no. 8. october. pretoria: council on higher education. chowdhury n & joarder m 2012. private universities do little research work, daily sun, 30 april. dhet. 2009. communiqué: volume 1 number 2 – april 2009. policy and procedures for the measurement of research output of public higher education institutions. pretoria: directorate: higher education policy and development support. research at private higher education institutions in south africa roger deacon, rex van vuuren and dave augustyn 21 jegede o 2012. the status of higher education in africa. address to the institute of international education, new york, 1 february. kruss g 2007. credentials and mobility: an analysis of the profile of students studying at registered private higher education institutions in south africa. journal on higher education in africa, 5(2&3): 135-154. lange l & luescher t 2003. a monitoring and evaluation system for south african higher education: conceptual, methodological and practical concerns. south african journal of higher education, 17(3): 82-89. levy d 2010. east asian private higher education: reality and policy. unpublished paper. perspectives in education. 2002. special issue on higher education. perspectives in education, 20(4) (december). phe. 2011. the state of private higher education in south africa. unpublished report based on a survey conducted by the council for higher education and written by members of private higher education institutions. august 2011. rsa. 1997. higher education act, no 101 of 1997. pretoria: government printers. ryan p 2012. growth and consolidation of the australian private higher education sector. the acpet journal for private higher education, 1(1): 5-11. saleem s 2011. 17th szabist national research conference: researchers from across pakistan read papers, the express tribune, 16 may. subotzky g 2003. private higher education and training, in human sciences research council human resources development review. cape town: hsrc press. 50 exploring the use of a cartoon as a learner scaffold in the planning of scientific investigations umesh ramnarain university of johannesburg despite curriculum imperatives, in south africa and worldwide, for learners to have more autonomy in investigations, they remain largely teacher controlled with learners having only limited opportunities in planning. this design-based study explored how a cartoon can be employed in a grade 9 natural sciences class in prompting learners to plan investigations. this innovation followed a continuous cycle of design, enactment, analysis and redesign, synonymous with design-based research. data were collected through classroom observations of the cartoon being used in practice by a grade 9 teacher, and interviews with her. the effectiveness of this innovation was established by assessing learner plans using an adapted rubric. the findings indicate that a cartoon having an extended dialogue between characters on a science concept, accompanied by a prompt sheet, is an effective support mechanism in planning investigations. using this support mechanism, learners were able to write a plan which included stating the problem, formulating the hypothesis, identifying variables, apparatus and a step-by-step procedure for conducting the investigation as well as describing how the collected data would be analysed to address the stated hypothesis. the findings also reveal that such a support mechanism, apart from shifting learners towards more autonomy, does invite learners to engage in the scientific discourse, which often serves as a barrier to science learning. keywords: scientific investigations; cartoons; practical work; autonomy; planning; prompt sheet introduction practical work in the school science curriculum has formed the focus of curriculum reform initiatives which have taken place in various countries such as the united states, the united kingdom and, in particular, in south africa. an inquiry-based approach to practical work is promulgated in the south african science curriculum (department of education, 2002) which advocates learner autonomy in scientific investigations. this emphasis on the inquiry approach stands in stark contrast to the traditional laboratory approach associated with older curricula where learners often slavishly followed teacher directions and procedures without much thought (hodson, 1993). over the past decade there has been increasing research interest on learner-centred, inquiry-focused learning environments. international studies have revealed that, despite curriculum imperatives for learners to have more autonomy in doing investigations, practical work remains largely teacher controlled (bradley, 2005; trumbull, scarano & bonney, 2006) and unrelated to the everyday experiences of learners (stears & malcolm, 2005). the situation is even more desperate in south africa’s township schools. here, factors such as a lack of laboratory resources, large classes and a lack of teacher competence result in learners having only a limited experience of doing practical work (onwu & stoffels, 2005). the need for these learners to have a quality learning experience in science is highlighted by alant (2010:2) who states that the lack of success of black learners in mathematics and science is the “most significant obstacle to african advancement in south africa”. furthermore, studies show that at schools where practical work does take place, it tends to be dominated by teacher demonstrations and a cookbook approach where learners merely follow the teachers’ directions and, in general, learners have only limited autonomy in planning investigations (rogan & aldous, 2005). the learning benefits of this cookbook approach are questionable. there is therefore a need to shift learners towards greater autonomy in all stages of the investigation, especially in planning an investigation. 51ramnarain — exploring the use of a cartoon as a learner scaffold scaffolding as a framework for shifting learners towards autonomy in light of the limited experience and expertise of learners doing investigations, this shift towards autonomous investigations will need to be gradual, with the teacher guiding learners through scaffolding. gabel (2001:61) describes scaffolding as “a bridge used to build upon what learners already know to arrive at something that they do not know”. in scaffolding, a teacher helps learners to focus on some aspect of the task that they did not attend to, or helps learners to integrate skills through interactive and situated feedback. this study investigates the use of a cartoon with a prompt sheet as scaffolds in supporting learners to acquire autonomy in planning a scientific investigation. concept cartoons, which are cartoon-style drawings showing different characters arguing about everyday situations, are designed to provoke discussion and stimulate thinking (webb, williams & meiring, 2008). cartoons have been used in a variety of ways in facilitating science learning. these include enhancing motivation in science learning (perales-palacios & vilchez-gonzalez, 2005), identifying learners’ alternative ideas and thereby remedying misconceptions (kabapinar, 2005), and provoking argumentation (webb et al., 2008). the notion of using a cartoon to stimulate investigative inquiry appears to be plausible, as a cartoon provides a context and purpose for investigating (stephenson & warwick, 2002). furthermore, a concept cartoon depicts alternative frameworks of understanding which act as a stimulus for learners to explore their own ideas which may or may not be represented on the cartoon. this approach is in accordance with the constructivist view of learning, which posits that learners bring with them to the classroom a diverse set of alternative conceptions that they have developed to explain the world around them (driver, 1983). following this exploration of alternative ideas on a scientific phenomenon triggered by a concept cartoon, a prompt sheet with questions may be used to facilitate learners’ thinking on the planning of an investigation by focusing them on the important aspects in planning (gomes, borges & justi, 2008). the notion of scaffolding which underpins this study emerged from socio-constructivist views of learning, especially vygotsky’s (1978) notion of learning in the zone of proximal development (zpd). this zone is the difference between the child’s actual development level as determined by activities that can be performed without assistance and the potential development level of the child as determined by performance of tasks under guidance of a more capable person who guides the learner through the zpd towards a new actual development level in a gradual process of scaffolding (van der valk & de jong, 2009). my study examined the use of a cartoon in conjunction with a prompt sheet as scaffolds in supporting learners to plan an investigation. accordingly, the research was guided by the following question: how can a cartoon accompanied by a prompt sheet support learners in planning scientific investigations? methodology educational researchers, policymakers and practitioners agree that educational research is often divorced from the problems and issues of everyday teaching practice. this is a split that creates a need for new research approaches that speak directly to problems of practice (national research council, 2002). such an approach is design-based research which is considered an important methodology for understanding how, when, and why educational innovations work in practice. this methodology is directed at the study of learning in context through the systematic design and study of instructional strategies and tools (brown, 1992), leading to the refinement of innovative learning environments. i considered this methodology appropriate as it enabled me to frame my understanding of teacher experiences of using cartoons in facilitating the planning of investigations. reeves (2000) proposes the following design-based research stages: (a) analysis of practical problems by researchers and practitioners, (b) development of solutions, (c) evaluation and testing of solutions in practice, and (d) documentation and reflection to produce design principles. i adopted and adapted these stages in guiding my research. this is illustrated in the diagram below (figure 1). 52 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 figure 1: design-based research stages followed in study refinement of problems, solutions, and methods in promoting learner autonomy in planning sample and context this study was carried out at a high school situated in a previously designated black township in gauteng. the school has 900 black learners. the pass rate for the grade 12 national exit examination in the previous year was 55%. the school fee was r400 with a 40% collection rate. the teachers were all employed by the department of basic education. the class size ranges between 35 and 45 learners. the school is underresourced, and has a paucity of apparatus for science practical work. miss kekana (pseudonym), the natural sciences teacher and her class of 42 grade 9 learners (1314 years) formed the focus of this study. there were 22 girls and 20 boys in this class. grade 9 was considered significant as it is the first grade in the south african school science curriculum where learners are expected to do open investigations, which includes planning the investigation. miss kekana has ten years’ experience in teaching natural sciences. she possesses a teaching degree with natural sciences and mathematics as her majors. data collection and analysis i collected data through classroom observations of the cartoon being used in practice by miss kekana and interviews with her at all stages of the research (figure 1). i used a descriptive system of observation which enabled me to obtain a “detailed description of observed phenomena in order to explain the developing processes, and to identify generic principles by exploring specific processes” (evertson & green, 1986:172). a permanent record of this observation was made by video-recording the lessons. the interviews were audio-recorded. audio from both the video-recordings and interviews were transcribed. the transcriptions were analysed using computer-aided qualitative data software, atlas.ti. data were coded and classified, a process that involved breaking up data into bits and bringing these bits together again in a new way (smit, 2002). this process was largely framed by the stages of design-based research elucidated in figure 1. in analysing the problem, i did an open coding of the data, whereby the codes were the difficulties learners encountered in planning investigations. similarly, data collected from interviews and observations during the enactment stage of the cartoon was analysed to understand and explain the use of the cartoon in supporting learners in their planning of the investigation. at the same time, during this enactment stage, i tried to identify from the collected data difficulties which still persisted in planning. the reliability of the coding process was verified by having the transcripts analysed by two other coders. inter-rater reliability was 87%. where disagreement existed, it was resolved through discussion. i developed a prompt sheet to accompany the cartoon. the prompt sheet focused on different aspects of an investigative plan, namely defining the problem, formulating a hypothesis, identifying variables, choosing the apparatus, deciding on the experimental procedure, describing how the data would be collected and recorded and, finally, how the collected data would be analysed and interpreted to address the hypothesis that was initially framed. the content validity of this sheet with regard to the prompting questions, which related to the aspects of the investigation plan, was established by having it reviewed by two researchers in science education at two south african universities. the instrument was then field-tested with a group of five grade 9 learners from another township school. i interviewed each of the learners and asked them to identify and comment on prompting questions which were considered unclear or not readable. as a result of this feedback i reworded two questions on the prompt sheet. i scored the completed analysis of problem by researcher and teacher development of the cartoon innovation to address the problem enactment of cartoon in practice documentation and reflection on the viability of using the 53ramnarain — exploring the use of a cartoon as a learner scaffold prompt sheets using a rubric that is described later. this generated quantitative data which enabled me to describe the extent to which learners were able to plan the investigation with support from the cartoon. i was then in a position to reflect upon the viability of the cartoon, and consider refinements which needed to be made to this innovation. the reliability in my scoring of the prompt sheet was confirmed by having them re-scored by a researcher in science education. there was a 90% agreement in our scoring of the sheets. the small difference in scoring was eliminated through discussion. the gauteng department of education, the principal, participating teacher and learners of the school concerned, and the parents gave consent for conducting the study and for the findings to be published. the research design was also approved by the ethics committee of the university which funded this project. both the teacher and learner participants were informed that their participation would be voluntary and that they could withdraw at any time. however, no participant withdrew. findings the findings of this study are structured according to the staged process described in figure 1. stage 1: analysis of the problem the students in miss kekana’s class lacked experience and expertise in planning investigations. she believed that, despite the curriculum requirement for learners to be able to plan investigations, learners needed much support in this regard. she explained this as follows: they need a lot of direction. it is not that i don’t have confidence in their ability, but they lack the practice of doing it. it is unreasonable to suddenly spring it upon learners that they must design an investigation on their own. they need guidelines on what is required. a particular problem the learners encountered in planning was the identification of variables. in targeting this problem she had given learners exercises whereby they would be given investigation problems to identify variables and formulate a hypothesis on the problem. an example of such an exercise problem was “does the sun heat salt water and fresh water at the same rate?” despite her efforts, the overwhelming majority of learners found this work difficult and confusing. she explained this as follows: it is very frustrating because despite spending much time on this, my learners continue to make mistakes. a problem is mainly they mix up variables. the hypothesis is not clear, and they therefore cannot know how to do it (the investigation). miss kekana was quite eager to try out a new approach with her grade 9 class. stage 2: development of a cartoon to address the problem at the initial visit to the school, i learned that the next topic on miss kekana’s work schedule was heat transfer. i presented her with the idea of using a cartoon as a support mechanism for learners in planning investigations. she was amenable to this and it was decided that a cartoon would be developed on this topic. through discussion we agreed the cartoon would meet the following criteria: • it would relate to some real-life experience/observation of the students. • it would target a scientific phenomenon on the topic of heat transfer. • it would depict alternative ideas on the scientific phenomenon. • it would be visually appealing. • it would use language which is accessible to students. • it would include characters that students could relate to. 54 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 the justification for the above criteria was that the cartoons should hold the interest of the students and engage student thinking on a scientific phenomenon related to the topic. these criteria, to a large extent, agreed with the features of a concept cartoon suggested by keogh, naylor and wilson (1998). we designed a cartoon which addressed heat transfer from two liquids of different volumes. i commissioned a graphic designer to draw the cartoon based on our design. it refers to two characters, betty and sipho, who are in conversation over whose cup of tea, the full one or the half-full one, will cool faster on a cold day (figure 2). figure 2: cartoon on heat transfer from two liquids at a different volume after looking at the cartoon, the learners would be asked to write a plan for this investigation. they would be supported in this by means of a prompt sheet focusing on different aspects of an investigative plan (appendix a). i developed the prompt sheet myself. the validation process of the questions on the prompt sheet has been described in the previous section. stage 3: the enactment of the cartoon and prompt sheet the 42 learners in the class were seated in groups of 6. this was the second lesson on the topic of heat transfer. in the first lesson learners became acquainted with the concept of heat, and learned that heat was a form of energy which moved from an object at higher temperature to one at a lower temperature. at the start of the lesson miss kekana told the learners they were going to work in groups and plan an investigation on the “cooling of full and half-full cups of tea”. she handed out copies of the cartoon (figure 2) and asked learners whether they supported betty or sipho in asserting which cup of tea will cool faster. the learners responded by raising their hands. of the 42 learners, 28 agreed with betty that her half-full cup of tea will stay hot longer, ten agreed with sipho that his full cup of tea would stay hot just as long, and four learners were undecided and would not commit themselves. the learners then each received a prompt sheet (appendix a). miss kekana asked learners to read through it and invited them to ask her questions should they not “follow what needs to be done”. the learners were encouraged to engage in discussions within their groups, but were told to “come up with your own plan”. miss kekana was confronted with many questions from learners, mainly seeking clarity on the prompting questions on the prompt sheet. they appeared to have difficulty with most questions on the sheet, especially those which related to the variables, and the data analysis and recording. it was clear the lesson had not unfolded as was planned. in the post-lesson interview miss kekana reflected that the learners “were very unclear 55ramnarain — exploring the use of a cartoon as a learner scaffold about the types of variables”. although she had spent much of the lesson responding to learners on this she believed the learners still felt “uncertain of themselves”. an examination of the prompt sheets confirmed this, as 35 of the 42 learners had either incorrectly identified the variables or not attempted a response. only 10 learners had progressed to the section on writing up a step-by-step procedure. it became apparent that additional support would need to be provided for learners. stage 4: refining the innovation by including additional support i decided to develop an extended dialogue in the form of a conversation between the characters to accompany the cartoon. this dialogue (appendix b) was envisaged to serve as a further support mechanism for learners as it would highlight key aspects being referred to in the prompt planning sheet. for example, learners would be supported in identifying control variables through a conversation taking place between the characters, where betty suggests: we will need to do two experiments. the one with half the cup of tea, and the other with the full cup of tea. we must use the same tea for both. they must be at the same starting temperature. the cups must be identical. these are called the control variables. in a similar manner the dialogue draws the attention of the learners to other stages in planning such as hypothesizing, recording and analysis. stage 5: enacting the refined innovation in the following lesson miss kekana handed out new prompt sheets together with the dialogue sheet to accompany the cartoon. learners appeared to work more independently in responding to the prompt sheet. there were fewer questions from learners compared to the previous lesson. when learners were unsure of themselves miss kekana referred them to the cartoon and dialogue. she asked them to: go and read what betty and sipho said about independent and dependent variables again. once you know what the dependent and independent variables are, go and enter it. that’s what i want you to put in there (planning prompt sheet). this appeared to work well as learners who took this advice engaged more closely with the cartoon dialogue. as the learners were completing their prompt sheets, miss kekana moved around the class listening in on group discussions taking place. she frequently stopped and asked learners to explain an entry on their prompt sheet. when she learned that learners had made an error or omitted something in their design she asked them to “have a look at this again” or “think about what betty and sipho are proposing”. at the end of the lesson miss kekana collected all prompt sheets and asked learners whether they had coped with this activity. learners almost unanimously agreed that they had coped much better this time around. after the lesson i interviewed miss kekana about the innovation. she indicated that having the extended dialogue to accompany the cartoon had made a significant difference to the manner in which learners responded to the prompt sheet. when questioned on how the prompts had contributed to learning she remarked that it created an awareness of what learners needed to consider when planning: okay, i think the prompts were very good and very useful and sort of reflected a thought process that you had to go through. this sort of verbalised what you would be thinking. it explained the whole process of planning in terms of basic concepts like variables, independent analysis and so on. she also mentioned that the dialogue between betty and sipho helped engage learners in the scientific discourse and believed this may encourage learners to use scientific language when speaking. she said: what was good was here were “cool” characters talking science in the science language. this helps popularise it for them (learners) and breaks the barrier of science being intimidating. from the completed prompt sheets it was evident that most learners were able to take their cues from the cartoon dialogue in order to respond adequately to the prompting questions. i analysed the prompt sheets for the extent to which learners were able to plan the investigation, using a rubric (figure 3) which was an adaptation of the science inquiry observation scale applied by villanueva and webb (2008) in 56 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 a south african study. the rubric assessed five areas in relation to planning an investigation: stating the investigation problem, formulating the hypothesis, identifying the variables; designing the experiment by outlining a step-by-step procedure and analysing and interpreting the data. the scoring is based on a four-point scale from zero to three describing a continuum extending from a situation where a learner makes no attempt at planning to a case where a learner completely meets the requirements of planning. the reliability in the scoring of the prompt sheet has been addressed in the previous section. figure 3: rubric for scoring the investigation plan stating the investigation problem 3 clearly and correctly states the investigation problem. 2 vaguely, but somewhat correctly, states the investigation problem. 1 incorrectly states the investigation problem. 0 no attempt. formulating a hypothesis 3 hypothesis is complete, testable and addresses the stated problem. 2 hypothesis is testable, addresses the stated problem, but needs to be more clear and concise. 1 hypothesis is either not testable or does not connect to the stated problem. 0 no attempt. identifying variables 3 clearly defines which variable is going to be changed (independent) and which is going to be measured (dependent). all controlled variables are listed. the relationship between the variables is evident. 2 variables are stated, but a clear relationship between the independent and dependent variables is not evident. some controlled variables are listed. 1 variables are not clearly stated. the relationship between the variables is unclear or not discussed. 0 no attempt. design the experiment 3 procedures are outlined in a step-by-step fashion that could be followed by anyone without additional explanations. all relevant materials are listed. 2 procedures are outlined in a step-by-step fashion, but there may be 1 or 2 gaps that require explanation. major materials are listed. 1 the procedures outlined are incomplete or not sequential, or the materials list is missing or incomplete. 0 no attempt. analysis and interpretation of data 3 explains correctly, clearly and coherently how the data will be analysed and interpreted. 2 provides a plausible explanation of how the data will be analysed and interpreted, but it is not quite clear as some gaps exist in the explanation. 1 unclearly or incorrectly explains how the data will be analysed and interpreted. 0 no attempt. an examination of the learner responses to the prompt sheet revealed that they were, to a large extent, able to plan the investigation successfully. quantitative data in support of this is shown in table 1, which indicates the frequency of scoring at each level for a particular component of planning and the average score for each component. 57ramnarain — exploring the use of a cartoon as a learner scaffold table 1: learner scores per component of science investigation plan level 3 level 2 level 1 level 0 average score per component of planning investigation problem 30 10 2 0 2.67 hypothesis 26 8 6 2 2.38 variables 22 10 8 2 2.24 design of experiment 20 15 7 0 2.31 analysis and interpretation of data 19 9 11 3 2.05 table 1 shows that the average score for all components of planning was above 2. in terms of the rubric a score of two for a component signified that a particular response was correct but incomplete. a score of 2 is therefore considered satisfactory, and it may be concluded that learners were able to adequately plan the investigation. discussion and conclusion the present study has shown that a cartoon in conjunction with an extended character dialogue and prompt sheet is a viable support mechanism for learners to plan scientific investigations. design-based research was appropriate as it enabled me to explore an innovation in trying to address both a national and worldwide problem of learners not being able to plan scientific investigations. the initial enactment of the cartoon revealed that learners needed further scaffolding in planning. it was decided to write a dialogue between the cartoon characters betty and sipho. the classroom observation showed how learners, under the guidance of the teacher, took cues from the dialogue to respond to the questions on the prompt sheet. an assessment of the prompt sheets, according to a rubric, showed that learners were now able to adequately plan the investigation, indicating that this refined innovation was an effective scaffold in shifting learners towards greater autonomy in planning investigations. the need to introduce the additional scaffold in the form of the dialogue illustrates that the shift towards greater autonomy has to be a gradual progression through the zpd. scaffolding also requires learners to, as soon as possible, take responsibility for the task and make important decisions on their own. this process of phasing out support is called fading and “involves the gradual removal of support until learners can manage problems on their own” (roth, 1995, p. 242). it is therefore envisaged in the case of miss kekana’s class that learners would eventually be able to plan their own investigations without the scaffolds of a cartoon, extended character dialogue or a prompt sheet. this issue of withdrawing support and how this affects autonomy could be investigated in another study where learners initially would be scaffolded in planning through a cartoon and then asked to plan without this support. the present study focussed on the planning stage of an investigation, as research has reported on the difficulties that learners experience in planning investigations. future studies could explore how this innovation may be used in supporting learners through other stages of an investigation, for example, in writing a research report. furthermore, miss kekana remarked that the cartoon engaged learners in scientific discourse. this was also evident from the discussions which were taking place within the groups as learners appeared to be “borrowing” phrases from betty and sipho. language is central to scientific endeavour and science learning. scholars have suggested how the language of science with its own specific genre often serves as a barrier to the learning of science (brown, 2004; lemke, 1990). learners often experience alienation from science due to the distinctive grammatical features and language structures of scientific language which are quite different from everyday language. the cartoon accompanied by the dialogue was therefore 58 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 invitational to learners as they could perhaps relate to the characters depicted. the issue of scientific language could form the focus of another study on cartoons. what is of significance in this study is the context in which this innovation was investigated, namely a disadvantaged school. practical work requirements are not being met by a large portion of disadvantaged schools where physical and natural sciences are being offered. the science experience of learners at these schools is therefore largely content based. learners at such schools have been deprived of some of the benefits of science learning associated with practical work. this study shows that if cartoons can be developed and made available to such schools where learners have scant expertise and experience in scientific investigations, competence in planning investigations can be gradually developed. a limitation of my study is that the research was carried out on small scale and confined to one school only. the validity of the claims that are made must therefore be tempered against this limitation. it is anticipated that future studies on the viability of a cartoon as a support mechanism for learners in planning investigations will be conducted on a larger scale involving more teachers at a diversity of schools. references alant bp 2010. “we cross night”: some reflections on the role of the eskom expo for young scientists as a means of accommodating disadvantaged learners into the field of science and technology. perspectives in education, 28:1-10. bradley d 2005. the science practical inventory: a new evaluation instrument for science practical programs. a paper presented at the fourth international conference on science, mathematics and technology education, victoria, canada. brown al 1992. design experiments: theoretical and methodological challenges in creating complex interventions in classroom settings. the journal of the learning sciences, 2:141-178. brown b 2004. discursive identity: assimilation into the culture of science and its implications for minority learners. journal of research in science teaching, 41:810-834. department of education 2002. revised national curriculum statement for grades r-9. pretoria: government printer. driver r 1983. the pupil as scientist. milton keys: open university press. evertson cm & green jl 1986. observation as inquiry and method. in: mc wittrock (eds), the handbook of research on teaching. new york: macmillan. gabel c 2001. effectiveness of a scaffolded approach for teaching learners to design scientific inquiries. unpublished doctoral dissertation. denver: university of colorado. gomes adt, borges at & justi r 2008. learners’ performance in investigative activity and their understanding of activity aims. international journal of science education, 30:109-135. hodson d 1993. re-thinking old ways: towards a more critical approach to practical work in school science. studies in science education, 22:85-142. kabapinar f 2005. effectiveness of teaching via concept cartoons from the point of view of constructivist approach. educational sciences: theory & practice, 5:135-146. keogh b, naylor s & wilson c 1998. concept cartoon: a new perspective on physics education. physics education, 33:219-224. lemke j 1990. talking science: language, learning, and values. norwood, nj: ablex. national research council 2002. scientific research in education. washington, dc: national academy press. onwu g & stoffels n 2005. instructional functions in large, under-resourced science classes: perspectives of south african teachers. perspectives in education, 23:79-91. perales-palacios fj & vilchez-gonzalez jm 2005. the teaching of physics and cartoons: can they be interrelated in secondary education? international journal of science education, 27:1647-1670. reeves tc 2000. socially responsible educational research. educational technology, 40:19-28. rogan jm & aldous c 2005. relationships between the constructs of a theory of curriculum implementation. journal of research in science teaching, 42:313-336. 59ramnarain — exploring the use of a cartoon as a learner scaffold roth w-m 1995. authentic school science: knowing and learning in open-inquiry laboratories. dordrecht, the netherlands: kluwer academic publishers. smit b 2002. atlas.ti for qualitative data analysis. perspectives in education, 20:65-75. stears m & malcolm c 2005. learners and teachers as co-designers of relevant science curricula. perspectives in education, 23:21-30. stephenson p & warwick p 2002. using concept cartoons to support progression in students’ understanding of light. physics education, 37:135-141. trumbull dj, scarano g & bonney r 2006. relations among two teachers’ practices and beliefs, conceptualizations of the nature of science, and their implementation of learner independent inquiry projects. international journal of science education, 28:1717-1750. van der valk t & de jong o 2009. scaffolding science teachers in open-inquiry teaching. international journal of science education, 31:829-850. villanueva mg & webb p 2008. scientific investigations: the effect of the ‘science notebooks’ approach in grade 6 classrooms in port elizabeth, south africa. african journal of research in mathematics, science and technology education, 12:3-16. vygotsky ls 1978. mind and society: the development of higher mental processes. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. webb p, williams y & meiring l 2008. concept cartoons and writing frames: developing argumentation in south african science classrooms? african journal of research in mathematics, science and technology education, 12:4-17. 60 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 appendix a: prompt sheet for planning investigation planning the investigation 1 . investigation problem what are you going to investigate? 2 . investigation variables/hypothesis what will you change in this investigation? (independent variable) what kind of effect will you observe? (dependent variable) what should be kept the same? (controlled variables) predict what you think will happen. (hypothesis) try to write this as an if-then statement: if ………………………………………………………………………………………………....................... then ……………………………………………………… 3 . designing the experiment list the apparatus and materials you will need. what precautions will need to be followed? list step-by-step what you will do. refer to how you will set up the apparatus, what you will measure, how you will measure and the number of measurements you will take. use the space below to draw a picture of how your apparatus is set up. 61ramnarain — exploring the use of a cartoon as a learner scaffold 4 . data collection and recording how will you record your observations and measurements? you may choose to draw a table to record your data. draw the table with column headings. 5 . data analysis and interpretation how will you make your data meaningful to you? will you draw graphs and/or do calculations? how will you label the axes on the graph? how will you interpret the graph and/or calculations in accepting or rejecting your hypothesis? appendix b: dialogue between betty and sipho on planning the investigation betty: i think the amount (volume of the liquid) affects how quickly it cools. but these are just guesses (hypotheses). let’s investigate it. what do we need? sipho: two cups of tea and a thermometer. betty: yes, but it has to be a fair test. sipho: what do you mean by this? betty: we will need to do two experiments. the one with half the cup of tea, and the other with the full cup of tea. we must use the same tea for both. they must be at the same starting temperature. the cups must be identical. these are called the control variables. sipho: okay, so we will have different volumes (independent variables) and investigate how the volume affects the time taken for the tea to cool (dependent variable). betty: what will it cool to? sipho: not sure, but i think it will be room temperature. betty: the thermometer shows 25 ˚c, so the tea will need to cool to this temperature. the starting temperature is the temperature of the hot tea. sipho: i think we are missing something. we want to know how quickly it is going to cool. so we need time. betty: we will need to use stopwatches. sipho: we also need to put our results somewhere (recording). how about using a table? betty: maybe we can draw a graph to see this more clearly (analysis). sipho: great! let’s do it. 40 an alternative approach to a complex issue: youthdesigned strategies for the prevention of teenage pregnancy in schools abstract teenage pregnancy of school-going girls is a persistent concern, not only in south africa, but globally. despite various curricular responses aimed at educating young people about prevention, the numbers continue to rise. while recognising the intersectionality of teenage pregnancy, we believe that school-based prevention measures can play an important role in helping youth to make healthy decisions about their sexual behaviour. however, the effectiveness of the prevention messages depends on how they are designed and delivered. using a participatory action research design, we engaged 24 peer educators in a process of data generation and analysis to help them to design, implement and evaluate prevention strategies that were found to be youth-friendly, contextualised and culturally relevant. this approach benefitted not only the participating youth in terms of the development of specific life skills, but also influenced how they, their peers and teachers began to think differently about the issue of teenage pregnancy. the research also influenced change in school policy. the findings thus indicate that the involvement of youth in finding ways to address issues that affect their lives may be an important way to improve the effectiveness of such programmes. keywords: participatory action research; participatory video; photo voice; sexuality education 1. introduction the number of teenage pregnancies in south africa increased by over 30 000 per annum between 2011 and 2013 – a situation that the department of education views as “alarming” (masondo, 2015:1). in response, the south african council for educators and the government have called for change in the sexuality education offered in schools, the provision of condoms and more involvement from parents and other social services. this latter plea indicates that the government recognises pregnancy while still in school as a wider social issue, stemming from intersectional systems of oppression and inequality, rather than just being a symptom of ineffective education. while there are many incidences of rape, not to mention sexual abuse by teachers, the majority of pregnancies do occur dr f hendricks faculty of education, nelson mandela university prof l wood comber, faculty of education, north-west university doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i1.4 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(1): 40-53 © uv/ufs http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.4 41 hendricks & wood an alternative approach to a complex issue as a result of teenagers having consensual sex (even if they are under the statutory age of consent). we proceed from the viewpoint that current curricular approaches to sexuality education are geared more towards the moral stance of abstinence rather than recognising teenagers as legitimate sexual beings (francis, 2010) who need to learn how to respond to their natural desires, without risking their future prospects. pregnancy among school-going youth is mostly unplanned and there is ample evidence that it can have negative consequences for the teenage mother and more especially for the child (ashcraft & lang, 2006; kirby & lepore, 2007). prevention of pregnancy among teenagers is also vital in light of the persisting hiv infection rate among 15–25 year olds (pettifor et al., 2004). this also makes it imperative that condom use is promoted as the preferred method of contraception, rather than just hormonal contraceptives. teenage pregnancy among school-going youth is thus a complex problem, which needs to be addressed as part of a multi-pronged approach to improving the quality of life and life opportunities of youth and their communities (panday et al., 2009). however, in the meantime, what can be done in schools to improve the sexuality education curriculum and, in particular, education about prevention of teenage pregnancy? this question was of concern to us as a teacher educator/researcher at a tertiary institution and a life orientation teacher in a school that has had up to 17 reported pregnancies per annum in the last few years (and several more unreported). although the prevention of pregnancy is a topic in the subject life orientation, which all learners have to take, there are concerns about how it is (not) addressed by teachers for reasons ranging from not feeling comfortable or competent to talk about sex, to foregrounding their own moral and religious convictions (nzioka & ramos, 2008). sexuality education has not proven to be very successful in changing the behaviour of youth, since education divorced from their everyday life contexts does not engage young people, and may even have the opposite effect of alienating them (francis, 2012: unesco, 2011). boonstra’s (2015) review of international literature indicated that effective sexuality education helped to delay age of sexual debut and to debunk the many potentially dangerous myths that abound among youth. however, what is considered effective? abstinence-only programmes aggravate a moral, judgemental approach to sexuality education, which is not effective among young people (hacker et al., 2000). merely imparting information also does not help (kirby, 2011; philliber, kaye & herling, 2001). what does seem to have a better impact are programmes that involve youth in the creation of knowledge and that position them as experts in problems that affect their lives (kegler et al., 2003). the findings of the first cycle of our research (wood & hendricks, 2017) indicated that teenagers view their very lifestyle as high risk – just being teenagers and doing the things they enjoy make them vulnerable to having unprotected sex. so how do we help them to take precautions as they express their desires, needs and wants? one way would be to involve youth themselves in the design and implementation of prevention strategies, an idea that is being heralded in various countries (boonstra, 2015). this led us to formulate our research question: how might participatory methods help youth to create relevant and contextualised strategies for addressing teenage pregnancy? in this article, we focus on the second cycle of an action research project with youth at a socially and economically disadvantaged school in south africa. in the first cycle, 24 participating youth generated data about how they and their peers perceived teenage 42 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) pregnancy and what they thought needed to be done about it (wood & hendricks, 2017). based on their findings, they developed prevention messages to address the topic in a youthfriendly, contextualised and relevant way. we first contextualise the research and explicate which theories influenced our choice of working with the youth in a participatory way, before explaining the methodology adopted. we then present the messages and related prevention strategies developed by the participants. we also present evidence of the influence these strategies had on the participants, other learners and teachers in this school and in other schools where they presented their prevention messages. the knowledge and methods we share in this article may be helpful to others who wish to engage with youth to address the issues of teenage pregnancy in their own specific contexts. 2. overview of larger action research project and development of prevention messages in this first cycle, we asked for volunteers from the existing body of peer educators in the school, who had undergone the basic peer educator training from the department of basic education. twenty-four participants (14 girls and 10 boys) agreed to take part after being briefed about the project. we adopted a participatory action research (par) design, because it combines research and action with the participant being central to the process (jacquez, vaughn & wagner, 2013). we engaged with the youth participants to help them generate data about the dominant narratives of the young people in the school about teenage pregnancy, to educate themselves about the issue within their specific context before using this knowledge to help them to devise prevention strategies. the par process that was followed in this first cycle is reported on in detail elsewhere (wood & hendricks, 2017), and suffice to say here that the youth participants gathered data from their peers, including some who were teen parents, in answer to the questions: “why do you think teenage pregnancy is so common at our school? what impact does it have on a teenager’s life, from your perspective? what do you think could be done to prevent it?” drawing also on their own knowledge and experiences, their analysis of the data revealed three main themes: i) the very lifestyle of a teenager makes them high risk for teenage pregnancy; ii) the consequences of unplanned pregnancy can really mess up their life opportunities; iii) sexuality education at school does not help them to practice safer sex. based on the findings, the participants then developed messages that they thought should be disseminated to peers and, using a logic model framework (kirby, 2001), determined which strategies would be most effective to deliver these messages. figure 1 outlines this process. figure 1: development of prevention messages 43 hendricks & wood an alternative approach to a complex issue 2.1 methods adopted in the second cycle we suggested photo voice and participatory video production in this cycle for the creation of prevention strategies because they embrace the prospect of unlocking a deeper understanding of teenage pregnancy and its impact as the youth in this school visualise it (de lange et al., 2006). the artefacts created by participants allowed them to voice their opinions, perspectives and experiences around teenage pregnancy in a non-threatening manner (bennett & roberts, 2004). these strategies allowed the participants to generate narratives by engaging them in dialogue, leading them to provide a story behind a story (singh & matthews, 2008). the participants also decided on using a messaging application on their phones to share messages around condom use; to make condoms more easily available in school; and to disseminate their messages within their school and to final year learners in the neighbouring feeder primary schools. the participatory strategies used (photo voice; participatory video production) doubled as prevention strategies. this is common in the notion of research as social change (schratz & walker, 1995) – while conducting data generation, the process is changing the way participants think, feel and act about the phenomenon in question. for both photo voice and participatory video production (on separate occasions), we introduced the concept to them by explaining how they are used to promote change (wang 1999). we facilitated a group discussion about the messages they wished to convey, based on their earlier research findings. for participatory video, they were divided into groups to make a storyboard to guide their shooting of the video. we then helped them to practise shooting photographs/ scenes. after giving them similar prompts –‘take photographs/make a video that represent the message(s) that you would like to give about teenage pregnancy” – they worked in groups to shoot the photos/videos. we also explained the ethical considerations of such processes. each participant was involved in choosing photographs/scenes and in writing narratives to go with them. they viewed each other’s photographs/videos and had a discussion around what it meant to them. we recorded these sessions, which served as rich data for analysis by the participants and ourselves later. the participants then decided on where, when and how to share these artefacts. the usual ethical procedures were followed and the institutional ethics committee approved the study in line with the stringent criteria they set. trustworthiness of the data was enhanced by multiple sources of data; a separate analysis by each researcher; participant analysis; and final consensus on findings validated by participants; as well as a detailed audit trail (creswell, 2005). 3. theoretical framing participatory action research is guided by a critical paradigm, which allows marginalised voices to become centre stage (rodríguez & brown, 2009) and so performs an educative and transformative role (babbie & mouton, 2010). a critical paradigm enabled us to work with them to raise their awareness of teenage pregnancy and enable them to devise strategies to deal with the issues it raises to improve the situation as it affects their lives (mertens, 2009). although guided by this critical and transformative paradigm, we also drew on the more interpretive social learning theory (bandura, 1977) which explains behaviour as an outcome of interaction between environmental factors, intrapersonal factors and how people make sense of these. too many programmes to prevent pregnancy focus on individual factors, for example assertive training. this is not effective because social factors also play an important role in influencing sexual behaviour. social learning theory posits that behaviour is learnt; therefore, change can be effected by providing new learning experiences. the three factors: 44 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) environment, thinking and behaviour are constantly influencing each other. behaviour is not simply the result of the environment and the person, just as the environment is not just simply the result of the person and behaviour (glanz et al., 2002). the aim in this study was for peer educators to provide environmental inputs that would speak more effectively to the individual youth and create a climate where teenage pregnancy was viewed as “uncool” and thus hopefully influence them towards making healthier behavioural choices. at the same time, participation in the project would increase their personal skills, honing their capacity for leadership and critical thinking. 4. discussion of findings in presenting the data, codes are used to ensure participant anonymity and to indicate the data source. the abbreviation (pn) refers to participant and (fgn) refers to the focus group discussions with other learners. these participants were quoted verbatim. the discussion is structured according to the messages the participants identified based on their analysis of data in cycle one (see wood & hendricks, 2017). for each message, we indicate how it was conveyed within the various strategies and critically discuss how this approach might be more likely to make an impact on their target audience in comparison with the usual strategies used by teachers and other adults. we also present evidence of the influence that participation in the project had on the peer educators, and the ways their strategies influenced their peers, teachers and ultimately school policy. 4.1 message 1: if you are having sex, then always use a condom this message was repeated through the various strategies, but was most directly addressed in one of the videos created by the participants. the poster created from the photographs by one group of participants (figure 2) sends a strong message to use condoms, by using an acronym of some sort: come on now, do oppose pregnancy until marriage. figure 2: promoting condom use 45 hendricks & wood an alternative approach to a complex issue notably, the message is not that they should not have sex until marriage, but that they should take precautions to make sure they do not fall pregnant. this is in contrast to the usual messages so often conveyed by teachers and parents. the images in this poster point out the consequences of teenage pregnancy and position it as “uncool”, but the message also recognises that young people are capable of making responsible choices about their own behaviour. it recognises that they are legitimate sexual beings (francis, 2012) and that if they decide to engage in sex, then they should be adult enough to protect themselves against the negative and far-reaching consequences portrayed in the poster. the video entitled “it’s your choice!” (https://youtu.be/8cjhdosx7ra) clearly portrays the responsibility of youth with regard to their sexual behaviour. this video was humorous as the main characters were based on a local soap opera popular with the youth. the language is colloquial and typical of how the young people talk, mixing english and afrikaans and highlighting the common myths that were identified in the data in cycle one (e.g. you don’t get pregnant when you have sex for the first time!). the actions of the characters, although exaggerated somewhat, are typical of how the young people talk and act. this video portrays the young man as a womaniser, but instead of this boosting his popularity and image, he ends up a “loser” and at the end entreats the audience to make the sensible choice and use a condom. by highlighting the ability of the youth to make responsible, “adult” choices, the message may be more likely to be given serious consideration than if abstinence is preached as the only choice. even when a more comprehensive approach is adopted towards sexuality education, the message of adopting safe sex practices is more likely to be given as a command – e.g. you must protect yourself – rather than conveyed in a humorous, contextually relevant way by people the youth identify with, as it is in this case. in addition to campaigning for the use of condoms through visual material, the participants also requested that condoms be placed in a specific room in the school, so that learners could access them without any embarrassment. this was the first time that school management had agreed to have condoms available on school premises, therefore, their actions had some impact on school policy. they also told their peers that they were available to answer any questions about contraception. another strategy they adopted was to send pictures via whatsapp to peers in their contact lists of a condom demonstration by a local nurse with short messages such as “when you stand up, cover up!” and “make the right choice, condomise”. actions such as this helped to raise awareness within the school and open up discussions among the learners. contrary to the fear that making condoms available may entice the youth to have sex, recognising their ability to make responsible choices may have the opposite effect: it improved my decision; it strengthens my abstinence of having sex before marriage (fg7). there was also evidence that it changed the way that the participants thought about their behaviour in general: doing the photos and videos made me become more responsible not only in a sexual way; to be more responsible as a person. it made me look at a girl in a different way. i have more empathy for the girls (p5). using music, humour and familiar language, using images and scenarios that resonate with the youth, the message to practise safe sex was thus delivered in a way that was https://youtu.be/8cjhdosx7ra 46 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) attractive to the youth audiences. it was also encompassed within the message that young people are responsible enough to make choices that will enhance their future prospects, a positive representation of youth that they may aspire to – and which incidentally is one of the key features of the life orientation curriculum, contained in the principle of setting high expectations and encouraging learners to attain them. 4.2 message 2: be really aware of the consequences of having a child before you have finished school this message was addressed primarily in the photo voice campaign, but also touched on in the videos. participants took photographs, symbolic of the message they wanted to put across and wrote narratives to accompany them. they used the same photographs to create composite posters (see figures 3a/b.) and individual photographs. examples of photo voice display and posters figure 3a: examples of photo voice display and posters 47 hendricks & wood an alternative approach to a complex issue being pregnant or having a baby is not only like a speedbump where the road is normal and you go over the speedbump and the road is normal again. everything will change, you can’t do the things you used to do before, you’ll be a different person, a parent. responsibilities will change. when you are a teenager, all you need to do is look after yourself and your chores. but, when you are a teenage parent you have to look after your baby as well and the chores doubled, and the road is just more difficult and longer. raising a child is not as easy as being a child (p7) what will the future be like for me? being a teenager mother can lock the door to your future. you will have to spend most of your time feeding, taking care of, and watching the baby. if you go back to school it will be hard to concentrate because you will always be thinking about your child. plans and goals you have set for yourself will have to change or will take longer to achieve. being a teenage mom or dad takes a lot of responsibility. if you do not make a success of yourself it could affect the baby’s future too (p4). figure 3b: photos about the consequences of teenage pregnancy the messages conveyed in the photo voice images again place the responsibility for decisionmaking with the youth, while also conveying the seriousness of the far-reaching consequences of having a baby before you have finished schooling. the use of language like “skurrel vir kimbies” (see figure 3a) (hustle for nappies) speaks to the context of the young people who come from an impoverished community where “hustling” to survive is commonplace. in addition, notable in the one poster (fig.3a) are that the participants pose questions, rather than give answers e.g. will you lock the door to your future? this approach encourages the viewer to think about their response, and recognises their agency, rather than admonishing them not to do something as most adult messages are framed. the use of images depicting male on female violence, gangsters and prison-like doors also arouse the emotions of the audience, since they are images that evoke scenes and experiences they encounter on a daily basis. many of the youth at this school come from homes where domestic violence is commonplace; gangsters cruise the streets and try to recruit young people; and having a relative in prison is not an unusual occurrence. since deep learning is a social and emotional experience, and not just a cognitive one (fletcher, 2015), the messages may be more likely to be internalised due to the emotions evoked and the familiar social settings in which they are portrayed. social learning theory also emphasises the importance of messages being conveyed by people and in contexts to which the audience can relate (bandura, 1997). both the videos portrayed the possible negative consequences of not making healthy choices, but also highlighted the positive outcomes of taking precautions to protect against pregnancy. again, the settings and topics portrayed were familiar to the youth, showing the 48 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) usual scenes of girls feeling unloved by parents and turning to boys for solace; boys taking advantage of this to persuade girls to have sex – but also of girls who are willing to have unprotected sex and youth who choose not to have sex. the learners who viewed the videos agreed that in general they spoke to their lives: it happens, your friend is sleeping with your friend, which is supposed to be your best friend (fg6). when asked what main message they will take away, two replied: it is your choice. (fg3) learn from your friend’s mistake, instead of bumping your head or get hurt. no turning back. (fg7). there is no judgement contained in the videos, and different attitudes and behaviours are portrayed, but the underlying theme is that it is up to the youth to make the right choice. the viewing of the videos also evoked critique by some learners who claimed the one scene did not reflect the reality of the power of the girl to say no: “ [it is] not realistic – the girl can never say no in real life! when the boyfriend scenario happened it was too easy. no challenges. it was too easy for her to get out” (fg2). several of the audience said they would like to remake a more realistic video and asked to be included in the peer educator group the following year. yes, but we want heavy one’s. we are going to take it deeper. it must be more realistic (fg8). by making the videos and creating the photo voice artefacts, the peer educators were aiming to raise awareness, evoke discussion and get their peers to think more deeply about their options with regard to sex, and reactions such as these indicate that they have had some degree of success. it made us more aware of all the consequences: emotional, financial consequences and responsibility wise. if you get pregnant, you will have a lot of responsibilities; you will have to drop your education and all of that. so it made us more aware to make other people aware of this serious thing and it needs to stop (fg5). rather than alienating their audiences by being prescriptive, they managed to open up a space for dialogue and dissenting voices to be heard. 4.3 message 3: do not let your circumstances determine your future as in many communities all over south africa, the youth in this one faces challenges to access employment or further study opportunities after they leave school (banerjee et al., 2008). this can lead to a sense of hopelessness, which makes them more vulnerable to unhealthy coping mechanisms (zimmerman, 2013). the data analysis in the first cycle informed the participants that there was a need to address context since current sexuality education did not consider it and therefore it is a strong theme in one of the videos (https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=isk9iqqvls8&feature=youtu.be). the participants portray a bullying father who walks out on his family and a mother who is not interested in the life of her teenage daughter. this drives the girl into the arms of her boyfriend who sees it as a chance to convince her to have sex. the outcome is positive in the end but the content evoked much discussion among the youth audience who could identify with the family portrayed in the video. some of them were instilled to join the “fight” against teenage pregnancy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isk9iqqvls8&feature=youtu.be https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isk9iqqvls8&feature=youtu.be 49 hendricks & wood an alternative approach to a complex issue the images are effective in depicting the realities our learners encounter on a daily basis (fg8). we must save each other’s lives. we must lower the teenage pregnancy percentage (fg6). the participating peer educators stated that involvement in the project had made them more aware of the need to take action to change their social circumstances and to spread the message to others that they can also improve their circumstances: we don’t want our world to be like that. we must take a right decision for our children. that is why we must step in now before it is going out of hand (p7). i feel it is our duty to go there and share our knowledge and tell others about the consequences of teenage pregnancy and that they do not need to fall into that trap (p6). the participants had named the project “gelvanise”, a play on the name of their school and the idea of galvanising into action. it appears that participation in the project has indeed helped to mobilise them into doing something. 4.4 message 4: don’t’ judge others – be supportive the final message deemed necessary to address the themes identified was to counter the judgemental attitudes towards those who became teen fathers or mothers, and towards those who went to the clinic to obtain contraception. the video “don’t let your background determine your future” suggests that young people can find help and support from the peer educators, rather than from those who might wish to manipulate their feelings for their own purposes. it aimed to raise awareness of the judgement young people face and to show that such attitudes did not help to improve the situation. some of the comments made after watching the video and viewing the photo narratives included: it is good to know you have friends when you go through difficulty and that people cares for you (fg5). the presentations show how difficult it is to continue life after teenage pregnancy as well as the shame involved (fg1). the manner in which learners are ostracised when pregnant is clearly illustrated (fg9). an element of understanding seemed to be developing which indicated that they were experiencing more empathy towards each other: girls must be taught that they have so much to look forward to and accomplish, and that falling pregnant can be [a] major obstacle on a path to a better future, although it isn’t always a ‘dream-killer’, if it happens. instilling a sense of self-worth in girls [as] often as possible is vital if we are to see our girls flourish (fg13). this more accepting and helpful attitude towards each other is important to instil, since statistics tell us that only about one third of teenage mothers (panday et al., 2009) return to school largely due to the stigma and lack of support they experience (welsh, 2016). even the teachers who viewed the photographs and videos could see the need for support, rather than judgement, as one commented: 50 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) teenagers are overburdened with stresses and problems that make ‘normal functioning’ on a daily basis an impossibility. these teenage girls need a space where they are able to speak and be heard by an adult that will take in the information, offer advice or assistance, and be non-judgemental. it is important to make an effort to really listen to what these girls have to say (t1). participants in this project also benefitted in terms of developing leadership skills, communication skills and an understanding of how important it is to be inclusive and to listen to all points of view, as the following extracts indicate: it makes it real. like to hear it from another person’s viewpoint. you might have your own. hear it from other people. you might see it from another point. i can add it to my knowledge. (p4) yes, because what people says give you a broader aspect, so you can take a better decision. you will think twice. differently (p7). it learnt me how to treat my girlfriend. to respect yourself as well, it made me more mature. (p3). i have learnt communication skills, negotiating skills, problem-solving and to be assertive (p5). hopefully, the peer educator participants will share their knowledge with the other learners, as is their stated intention: we are going to get other learners on board. younger learners so that they can continue with the process (p9). we are the seniors of the school. the learners listen to us (p6). we think it may be more than coincidence that out of the 24 participants, 20 did go onto study further at college or university in 2016. 5. concluding discussion the prevention strategies employed by the youth in this project seem to have had some success in spreading messages that speak to the concerns identified by them in cycle one of the project. the evidence presented in this paper (and it was only possible to present a fraction of the evidence due to limited space) seems to suggest that the strategies devised by the participants helped to convey the seriousness of the consequences of falling pregnant while at school. it also pointed out the agency that learners can have in this respect – they do not need to fall into the same patterns as others just because they come from “difficult” backgrounds. it also helped them to realise the need to support if they are to help each other to make healthy decisions, rather than judging their peers for “making mistakes”. the style of language, sense of humour and incorporation of scenes and images that resonated with the daily lives of the youth helped the messages to have impact and provoked discussion and critique – the core aim of visual methods as research for social change (schratz & walker, 1995). of course, the problem with peer education programmes is that the peers who are trained move on each year, therefore the sustainability of any change is not assured (morar et al., 2016). however, using visual methods to create artefacts means that the incoming peer educators have examples to follow when they create their own strategies. teachers can use 51 hendricks & wood an alternative approach to a complex issue the existing artefacts that they know resonate with the youth of this school to enable discussion within sexuality education, hopefully making it more relevant to the learners, while helping the teacher to feel more comfortable with a topic that s/he might not be trained to/want to address. the research question we addressed in this article was: how might participatory methods help youth to create relevant and contextualised strategies for addressing teenage pregnancy? we are able to conclude that, although the reduction of teenage pregnancy needs a multisector approach, the process of involving youth in educating their peers can do much to raise awareness and shift thinking about the phenomenon. the youth in this project focused on social risk factors that render young people more vulnerable to making unhealthy choices, and did so in a way that showed they understood the adversities facing them, rather than moralising about it. although we value kirby’s (kirby, obasi & laris, 2006) recommendations about the characteristics of effective sexuality education programmes, we suggest that this project not only encompassed many of them, but also allowed for the missing voice of the young people concerned to be heard. kirby stresses the importance of involving expert adults in the design of programmes, but we argue that this has to be complemented by participatory methods that allow the target audience (youth) to introduce more contextually relevant and age appropriate material. involving youth in finding ways to reduce the incidence just might prove to be more effective than the usual adult-devised programmes and strategies. the value of such a project is enhanced by the fact that it can be run within school hours, using the normal breaks or time allocated to life orientation or similar subjects. the idea of participatory design of teaching material can also be done in any life orientation class, rather than as a specific project for selected peer educators. to conclude: some good news – the incidence of teenage pregnancy at this school in 2014 and 2015 dropped from an average of 15 over the past few years to just 2 cases. we do not in any way claim that this was just because of the project, but maybe it did have some impact? acknowledgement this study was funded by a grant from the nrf. any opinion or finding presented herein are those of the authors and the nrf cannot accept any responsibility thereto. references ashcraft, a. & lang, k. 2006. the consequences of teenage childbearing. working paper 12485, babbie, e. & mouton, j. 2010. the practice of social research. cape town: oxford university press. bandura, a. 1997. self-efficacy: the exercise of control. new york: w.h. freeman & company. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-0351.2008.00340.x banerjee, a., galiani, s., levinsohn, j., mclaren, z. & woolard, i. 2008. why has unemployment risen in the new south 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https://doi.org/10.1080/09650792.2016.1169198 https://doi.org/10.1177/1090198113493782 https://doi.org/10.1177/1090198113493782 227 research article 2020 38(2): 227-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) contesting schoolification through snapshots of pedagogyin-participation in early childhood development centres in south africa abstract this article attempts to contest schoolification using snapshots of pedagogy-in-participation in ecd centres in south africa. educational research confirms that early childhood education can positively influence the lives, well-being, safety, growth, development and academic performance of young children in the birth to 4 years age group. in south africa (sa), early childhood development (ecd) has been recognised and identified as a critical nodal point for the country’s social and economic transformation and development. however, “schoolification” has become an epidemic that has promoted standardisation of education, reduces teacher autonomy and envisions ecd centres as preparation for school rather than preparation for life. the study investigated the perceptions of practitioners and centre managers of 5 well-resourced and 5 under-resourced centres in 5 of the 9 provinces in sa. this article forms part of a larger funded project on transformation pedagogy. the most illustrative examples from the data collected were used to elicit alternative quality practices for pedagogy in participation. the findings encourage practitioners and policy makers to reconceptualise ecd as a co-constructive process. the article offers recommendations for teacher preparedness and child-centredness by provoking a reconceptualisation that involves making schools children-ready rather than making children school-ready. keywords: early childhood development centres; pedagogy in participation; schoolification; south africa 1. introduction in the current early childhood development (ecd) context in south africa, it is imperative to provide alternatives to “schoolification”. more than a decade ago, doherty (2007:7) defined schoolification as an emphasis on the acquisition of specific preacademic skills and knowledge transfer by the adult rather than a focus on broad development[al] goals such as social-emotional well-being and authors: dr k bipath1 mrs je theron2 affiliation: 1university of pretoria 2north west university doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38. i2.15 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(2): 227-240 published: 04 december 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0588-9905 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5157-1714 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 2282020 38(2): 228-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) the gaining of understanding and knowledge by the child through direct experience and experimentation. schoolifying ecd risks making educational practices merely places for “adjustment”, instead of places where children and parents can participate in democratic educational practices (broström, 2006). pedagogy that recognises children’s agency might be a useful strategy to make sense of the participatory rights of children. this was outlined in the united nations convention on the rights of the child (uncrc), which was ratified in 1995 in south africa (ebrahim, 2011). the sustainable development goals (sdgs) signal that early childhood development (ecd) would be a priority focus in the twenty-first century. explicit mention is made in sdg target 4.2, which states that by 2030, countries should “ensure that all girls and boys have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education” (united nations, 2015). according to united nations (2015), sdg commitments to ecd are much broader than this education-focused target. the achievement of other sdg goals (poverty alleviation, hunger, health, education, gender, water and sanitation and inequality) hinges on the strengthening of ecd. as such, it represents the bedrock on which all other development goals rely for their successful achievement. the strongest evidence demonstrating the potential of ecd comes from well-planned and well-resourced programmes that are “developmentally appropriate”, ones that respect children’s rights, needs, capacities, interests and ways of learning at each stage of their early lives (world bank, 2016). the global “schoolification epidemic” has led to “an increasing focus on emergent curriculum and prescribed curricula, and presents as a serious threat to the quality of dispositions of children’s early years experiences” (ring & o’sullivan, 2018:404). investing in young children is one of the smartest investments that countries can make (sayre, devercelli, neuman & wodon, 2015). interventions to influence a child’s development should address four key domains: cognitive development, linguistic development, socioemotional development and physical well-being and growth (vegas & santibáñez, 2010; naudeau, martinez, premand & filmer, 2011). intervening during early childhood has the potential to mitigate the negative effects of poverty and promote equitable opportunities and better outcomes for education, health and economic productivity (heckman, 2008; naudeau et al., 2011). this article attempts to contest schoolification using snapshots of pedagogy in participation for early years in south africa. in the discussion that follows, a review of schoolification in ecd pedagogy has come to dominate the literature and the effect that it has had on pedagogy-in-participation in the early years. we argue further the teacher and child are co-constructors of their learning. prochner, kirova and massing (2020:81) explain the proposition that “children and adults are co-constructors of knowledge and partners in learning”. vygotysky’s theory of mediation highlighted that the development of children’s mental functions depended on the presence of mediating agents in their interactions with the environment. in an ecd centre, the mediating agent is the teacher. the teacher needs to ensure pedagogy-in-participation, which is a socioconstructive participatory pedagogy for early childhood education. pedagogy-participation is a rights-based approach under development since the early 1990s and is used in many ecd centres in the northern hemisphere (formosinho & figueiredo, 2014). in a participatory pedagogy, children and teachers are viewed as constantly developing their relational identities and having the right to participation in their learning journeys. pedagogy-in-participation http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 2292020 38(2): 229-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 bipath & theron contesting schoolification through snapshots of pedagogy-in-participation centres around the practice of listening as an active process where the actors (teacher and children) are engaged in the decisions and meaning making processes. however, according to the 2014 audit of ecd centres in south africa, the majority of ecd practitioners are mostly unor under-qualified and “…roughly 70% of practitioners nationally, do not having any specialised training in working with children” (gustaffson, 2017:5). in south africa, more than half of the ecce teachers are unqualified. one wonders how these practitioners would manoeuvre co-construction of children’s learning journeys or will they be inclined to practise schoolification. 2. schoolification and its effects the global “schoolification epidemic” has led to an increasing focus on emergent curricula. “prescribed curricula present as a serious threat to the quality of disposition of children’s early years experiences” (ring & o’sullivan, 2018:404). the “schoolification epidemic” refers to a global trend whereby, in preparing children for primary schools, pre-primary settings are required to implement a prescribed curriculum and focus on the development of children’s academic skills, to the detriment of child-centred curricula and pedagogy (brooks & murray, 2018; ring & o’sullivan, 2018). this trend is in danger of gaining unstoppable momentum through the influence of the global education reform movement, which promotes the standardisation of education; an emphasis on core subjects; low-risk ways to reach learning goals; corporate management models; a reduction in teacher autonomy; curriculum prescription and intensive assessment and performance (dahlberg & moss, 2005; hargreaves & goodson, 2006; berry et al., 2016). the organisation for economic cooperation and development (oecd, 2006) and the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) (2010) use the term “schoolification” to describe the downward pressures of school systems placed on the early years. we are alerted to the “enhanced risk” caused by schoolification, due to the pressure put on early years “as a preparation place for school” and not “preparation for future life” (dewey, 1916 in formosinho & formosinho, 2016; unesco, 2010). for dewey, schools were not only a place to gain content knowledge, but also a place to learn how to live. freire (1970) also interpreted schoolification as oppression, since it is based on an oppressive power relationship (freire, 1996: 53). dahlberg and moss (2005:24) challenged the “imperial” position taken by schooling towards ecce, which assumes that young children only learn if they are assimilating “early literacy, language and numeracy skills”: schoolified knowledge. the image of the learner was seen in a passive role of repeating the transmitted content and teachers were seen as merely passive transmitters, filling learners with content to be transmitted. this paper argues that the onus should shift from children being readied for schools to schools being readied for children and that schools should accommodate children’s “emotional and cognitive needs for autonomy, competence and relatedness” (whitebread & bingham, 2014:4). likewise, evans (2016:72) proposed reframing school readiness as “potential and possibility”. however, lenz taguchi (2010) argued for an open-ended approach to school readiness, rejecting simplistic goal-centred pedagogic approaches in early childhood in favour of egalitarian models, where meanings are co-created through communicative, complex relationships between people, ideas and material objects. the image of the learner is seen in an active role of participation in the process of learning and the image of the teacher is seen http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 2302020 38(2): 230-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) in an active role of promoting meaningful learning experiences involving learners. in these are spaces where children’s voices emerge and are valued (formosinho & formosinho, 2016). schoolification pressurises early years’ communities and the promotion of individual competitive assessment to create an accountability culture, where performance pressures threaten democratic values in the early years (dahlberg & moss, 2005; pugh, 2010; rose & rogers, 2012; kampmann, 2013; faulkner & coates, 2013; moss, 2013). dewey’s concept of the child and the curriculum is presented as a panacea to stem this epidemic and its associated threat to the erosion of childhood. in south africa, ebrahim (2015) interrogated the national early learning and development standards (nelds) document to foreground the silences in the light of the transformative pedagogy. okwamy and ebrahim (2019:3) argue for a “shift away from the constructed notions of learning to more expansive conceptions consistent with holistic early childhood care and education (ecce)”. they engage with the marginalisation of situated knowledges by troubling the stunting impacts of received knowledge and its contribution to epistemic inequalities in ecce. we too, in our article, contest the constructed notion of “schoolification” in favour of “pedagogy-in-participation”. to illustrate, we include the voices of children and their caregivers in the form of snapshots. 3. pedagogy-in-participation framed by an educational perspective of pedagogy-in-participation, as developed by formosinho and formosinho (2016) for early childhood education, this article subscribes to a democratic worldview as inspired by dewey (1902) and freire (1996). both pedagogical theorists contested the notions of transmissive pedagogies and advocated for alternatives to bring about social change. dewey (1902) drew attention to the limitations of a curriculumcentred pedagogy that bordered around teacher centrality, subject delivery and child passivity. his criticism of the narrow educational goal of transmission of facts and its constraining effects led to the development of a child-centred pedagogy. this pedagogy, grounded in the ideas of progressive education, values the child as a knower and as a curious explorer whose prior knowledge needs to be harnessed to scaffold education not just for schooling but for life. freire (1970) was equally concerned about the oppressive dynamics of a transmissive pedagogy in adult education. as an activist and a pedagogical thinker, freire (1996) saw education as a political act. he contested the “banking” (freire, 1996:53) concept of education that rendered teachers as depositors and students as depositories. this gave rise to the development of critical pedagogy and the notion of dialogue and participation as key to social interaction. pedagogy-in-participation broadly aims at making learning an interactive process embedded in experience on a continuum (formosinho & formosinho, 2016). the teacher and the child are respected as social actors who actively exercise their agency. when a child is engaged in an activity or a particular experience, these are understood as important opportunities for learning in a meaningful way. the teacher intentionally sets up the learning environment (ideally with children) or, we would argue, with a learning goal that enables active participation of children through experiential learning. the teacher then observes, listens with the view to understand and records how a child is making meaning of what is on offer. a responsive stance is enabled when the teacher naturally blends herself into the learning space using context information and the theoretical support of her beliefs, values and knowledge to intervene at appropriate times. there are opportunities for collaboration and co-construction http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 2312020 38(2): 231-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 bipath & theron contesting schoolification through snapshots of pedagogy-in-participation of knowledge through participation. hence, the child and the teacher can be co-learners and collaborators who learn through different encounters. this type of democratic practice allows for the promotion of equity and inclusion of all children. the pedagogy is constructed from knowledge that is gained from situated actions. this article investigated whether the snapshots in south african ecd centres were more illustrative of schoolification rather than pedagogy-in-participation. 4. research methodology 4.1 epistemology this research is underpinned by a constructivist epistemological paradigm. this paper is part of a larger project (tpec) that examined a transformative participative pedagogy for young children (birth to four years) project in south africa. the researchers aimed to gather information about pedagogical approaches that practitioners used when interacting with young children, ages birth to four years. according to leedy and omrod (2013), qualitative methods can be used to better understand any phenomenon about which little is yet known. for instance, in this study, little was known about the type of pedagogies that were used in south african day-care centres when teaching young children between the ages of birth to four. a descriptive case study approach with semi-structured interviews as the key method of data generation was used to study participative pedagogy between practitioners and children ages birth to four years. qualitative researchers recognise that historical and cultural settings shape human interactions and the meaning that is constructed and they seek to understand by embedding themselves in the context by personally gathering information and generating meaning from data collected in the field (cresswell, 2015). 4.2 sampling sampling involves the selection of a portion of the finite population being studied and subjective methods are used to decide which elements are included in the sample (castillo, 2018). the purposive sampling method was administered where the researchers chose participants randomly for their unique experiences and perceptions on the phenomena being studied. to engage in purposive sampling, the researchers chose a sample that could “produce credible descriptions, in a sense of being true to real life” (nieuwenhuis, 2019:85). the participants were ecce practitioners who spoke about their real-life experiences whilst caring for young children between the ages of birth to four. 4.3 participants the centres selected were situated in 5 well-resourced and 5 under-resourced day-care centres in the western and eastern cape, the free state, north-west and gauteng provinces in south africa (n=10). the centres were chosen based on the age groups they catered for, their location and their multicultural composition. the centres were located in rural and urban areas. the following criteria were paramount in choosing the purposive sampling of centres in each province and participants for this study. two community-based centres, one in an urban and one in a rural area, were chosen for data collection in each of the 5 provinces. we ensured that the centres should be registered sites with the department of social development. centres http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 2322020 38(2): 232-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) had to accommodate all 3 age categories (babies, toddlers and young children). they had to have been an established centre for two years or more. another criterion for the choice of sample was that the practitioners had to have qualifications of level 4 ecd certificate trained ncf or higher. the practitioners at the urban centres were generally higher qualified with a level 5 ecd certificate. the table below describes codes, sites and qualifications where the participants hailed. table 1: descriptions of sites and codes and qualifications of practitioners centre province codes for practitioners under-resourced resourced qualifications of practitioner a western cape apr 1  ecd level 4 b bpr2 x ecd level 5 c free state cpr3  ecd level 4 d dpr4 x ecd level 5 e gauteng epr5  ecd level 5 f fpr6 x ecd level 4 g north west gpr7  ecd level 5 h hpr8 x ecd level 4 i eastern cape ipr9  ecd level 4 j jpr10 x ecd level 4 4.4 ethics the data examined in this article were collected from 5 provinces based on geographical location and willingness to participate. consent for the study was obtained from the ethics committee of the cape peninsula university of technology. the different provinces’ department of basic education and social development also gave consent for the study to be conducted. informed consent was obtained from the different centre managers and practitioners prior to data collection. the practitioners and centre managers were briefed about the nature of the semi-structured interviews before they agreed to participate in the project. after expressing interest in participating, each teacher was provided with a letter of information and completed a consent form prior to their participation. the practitioners who consented to participate in this study were diverse in terms of years of teaching experience and qualifications. children in their class were between birth to four years old. the data consisted of 40-minute semi-structured interviews with each of the practitioners that were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. interviews were conducted with 2 practitioners (from well-resourced and under-resourced centres) in each of the 5 provinces that participated in the project, regarding their perspectives on using pedagogy-inparticipation or schoolification. 4.5 data analysis thematic analysis, the process of identifying codes, patterns or themes within qualitative data was used in the study (maguire & delahunt, 2017). thematic analysis was utilised to derive codes. after data driven codes were developed, a method of constant comparison was used to compare practitioners’ codes. three themes, namely, developmental responsiveness, cultural responsiveness and linguistic responsiveness, emerged. instead of the traditional 3rs, as in elementary school education, reading, writing and ‘rithmatic, this article highlights that http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 2332020 38(2): 233-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 bipath & theron contesting schoolification through snapshots of pedagogy-in-participation pedagogy-in-participation in the early years consisted of teachers having skills in the 3rs – developmental responsiveness, cultural responsiveness and linguistic responsiveness in the playroom. 4.6 trustworthiness and credibility the aim of trustworthiness in a qualitative inquiry is to support the arguments that findings are worth our attention (lincoln & guba, 2005). three researchers kept a data trail to ensure trustworthiness and credibility. engagement with the data was done intensively to demonstrate clear links between the data and interpretations. 5. findings and discussion we established illustrative practices of alternatives to “schoolification” through snapshots of pedagogy in participation. surprisingly, both practitioners from the urban and rural schools displayed a leaning towards responsive engagement with young children, rather than schoolification. developmental responsiveness, cultural responsiveness and linguistic responsiveness by practitioners were the strands discussed. although most of the teachers have the minimum qualification (level 4 ecd certificate), their practices in their playrooms showed the strands of pedagogy-in-participation. 5.1 developmental responsiveness use of appropriate materials to respect children’s developmental needs and to hear their voices to get them involved in the learning process was prominent in the data. hpr8 described how she used a puppet to allow children to freely express themselves. the teacher uses talk to invite children’s feelings. she is concerned about their emotional well-being in the learning experience as children “open up” when they feel included. she says that …most of the time i use puppets. because when they think they talking to a puppet then they it’s easier for them to open up. and talk about how they feel what they like and what they do not like. so, i would usually just use a puppet and they puppet will be asking them what would you like to do; what is it that you feel? and then they think they are talking to the puppet and then that way, their voice is heard. it is clear that the use of the puppet acknowledges the child’s right to co-author his/her learning experience. it provides a non-threating approach used as pedagogical support to allow children to be responsive to the learning experience. illustrative snapshots also portrayed teachers’ practices as responsive, sensitive and scaffolded. the strategy for scaffolding is carefully nurtured through considering what children are capable of at different stages and ages. this practitioner (cpr3) is aware of how babies and toddlers learn to communicate and she utilises the best approach she knows to stimulate communication skills amongst the little ones. she notes, the children love to move around, so that is the reason that i make use of singing songs and saying rhymes. at the beginning, they only sing one of [or] two words, but later on they start sing the whole song. after a year, they know the songs and it is wonderful to see that they start to use the word from the songs to communicate. then you realise that all the effort you put into learning [teaching] them the songs is worth it. so, i usually communicate to them by using words and sing songs (cpr3). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 2342020 38(2): 234-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) another practitioner created an environment for success through a thoughtful developmental trajectory for the children. for non-mobile babies, the practitioners creates accessible opportunities to select different toys. babies’ choices are enabled and this creates possibilities for manipulation, exploration and meaning. the practitioner (epr5) passionately says: although they are still small, i allow them to choose their own toys when they are sitting in their little chairs or apple boxes. i will bring different toys to them and then they take the one that they wanted to play with. for the babies that is 5, 6 months old, i will make the choice but for the elder ones, i allow them to make their own choices. the practitioner portrays a humanising process, as she intends to give the child the power to choose and if they are immobile, she takes the toys to them and allows them their choice. these interviewed practitioners realised that children are “strong, powerful and competent” and have the ability to connect with adults and peers (dahlberg & moss, 2005:155). ebrahim (2011:195) foregrounds “young children as agents” and her findings show that the children are knowledgeable, intentional and skilled actors who use strategies such as resistance, avoidance, ignoring and collaboration, to actively participate in the construction of early childhood as a structural space. 5.2 cultural responsiveness children as “socio-cultural beings have a right to educational contexts that are respectful, welcoming of children and families alike” (formoshino & pascal, 2016: 47). this practice is illustrated through the following excerpt: they always welcome, they always welcome. when mummy’s come and daddy’s come to drop off their kids, we, we don’t call them on mr and sir and mrs. we say hello mummy and hello daddy, like they feel at home, they feel at home (ipr9). the practitioner’s instinctive care and respect for the parents shows that she values the presence of the parent and wants to build up a partnership. early years classrooms and settings can be seen as potentially rich meeting places for children, families and teachers from diverse backgrounds to play and interact (broadhead & burt, 2012). however, as moss (2007: 12) argues, it requires intentional action and a shift in thinking for settings to become genuine places for democratic “encounter and dialogue”. parents need to perhaps be invited to involve themselves in the children’s play and learning. formosinho and arau´jo (2011: 223) have proposed that early childhood education centres should be organised for democracy to constitute, simultaneously, an end and a means, to constitute a presence, either at the level of central educational aims and in the realm of daily life of all actors. the practitioners explain, and i always try to encourage each child with his culture or, as i also have a different culture so i like to learn in everybody’s cultures; it’s nice and learn from it and try to teach them, in that way that they were brought up to make it easier for them (gpr7). bpr2 explained that: there is one girl in my class, i have a plastic bag with sponge in my class and as soon as we sing bible songs, she takes the plastic bag and hits/punches it. i then asked one of the assistants if they do something like this in church and she said yes, when they sing http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 2352020 38(2): 235-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 bipath & theron contesting schoolification through snapshots of pedagogy-in-participation in church, they have something accordingly that they hit/punch while they sing. so i allow the girl to do that when we sing religious songs (bpr2). here the practitioner is aware of the cultural practice at the church, and therefore, does not disturb the child’s action. the child is given the freedom to enjoy and be herself while she sings her song. in this way, children’s self-identity and self-esteem are also built; in the case of this child, her cultural practice is allowed. these “funds of knowledge” (moll, amanti, neff & gonzález, 1992:132) offer an alternative lens through which teachers can interpret children’s actions and behaviour, analyse their practice and articulate the ways in which current provision for young children’s optimal development may serve to privilege certain interests over others. 5.3 linguistic responsiveness (listening pedagogy) the pedagogy of listening is not just about dealing with the spoken word. it is infused with an ethic of care and responsibility in an encounter (dahlberg & moss, 2005). it makes salient the importance of relationships and a sense of belonging. practitioners in early childhood need to be skilled and patient in understanding the meaning children are making of actions and experiences. in the excerpt below, the practitioner showed that listening is an active process that requires interpretation and that she is relationally attuned to the babies in her care. in the situational encounter with the verbal communication of babies, she is attentive and is able to “pick up” (make sense of) their efforts to connect with “words” and “utterances”. this “attentiveness” allows for prompting and repetition, which is important for speech and vocabulary development. listening to the babies provides insights regarding how to support them. this way of working with very young children is respectful of their competence and their attempts to communicate what is meaningful for them. when the children are playing, there are some words or utterances that you can pick up from the speech that the [they] repeat. we are attentive to these utterances and prompt the children to try and repeat them (gpr7). this excerpt shows the practitioners’ attunement to the baby’s communication when she says: when the other one wants the bottle, some of them they use the bottle to drink. so they come to me (making sound), i know that she wants her bottle. so she actually make a sound and she… yes can make a sound. and she shows it. yes and shows with the finger what is happening. they show her bag. so i go to that bag and open it. what you really want. i see the bottle. i take the bottle and give it to her and go away on the bed and sleep. it is visible and evident that the practitioners use the image of the competent child to tune into the child’s needs as illustrated by sounds and body language. the child is given the space and power to articulate her needs. the practitioner is in service of the child and this promotes joint learning through listening and respecting the child, although she is only 6 months old. this co-construction of meaning, although the child cannot talk, highlights the motherly instinct of practitioners, who were all female in the sample. a listening pedagogy invites democratic practices. where this is evident, then young children are positioned as decision makers. in the study, the practitioner working with the two and three-year olds illustrates a collaborative effort made to listen and respond to children. supporting children in this way provides them with an audience and confidence to share their views, opinions and commentaries. instead of a teacher-imposed activity, the children make choices based on their interests. the reference to “child-involvement” and being “interactive” http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 2362020 38(2): 236-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) in the learning process is suggestive of inclusion of the children in the agenda setting for learning. this is a powerful way of valuing children as knowers of their lifeworld and as contributors to their own learning and those of others. working in this way requires open-ness and a willingness to learn. one teacher said, we all listen to them and hear what they have to say and if they are going to choose activities. i let them make their own choices so that they have a say in the kind of activities they want to do. i let them choose things that are interesting to them. i want them to be involved. i want them to be interactive all the time with what’s going on (hpr8). another practitioner (fpr6) notes: “each child is an individual. some point to what they want. others you need to think what they are saying to you. i listen to them. i allow to use their toys from home”. practitioner gpr7 added, her language is a smile, i am with them crawling. i use language in the ring, in an action rhyme. we sing songs. we mix…zulu songs, sometimes afrikaans songs, with english. a bit of sotho – shaya, hamba, lala…like – hamba ahmba we are walking, walking. (the teacher smiles and sings like she is with her babies group. lala phansi,,,(laughing) and i sleep on the mattresses with them, and they all sleep… start getting ready to sleep (teacher laughing sweetly). it is clear that this practitioner allows the children to be free and independent and to use their own creativity and ideas. when “listening to children” moves beyond tokenistic practices that devalues the high potential of child-led agendas, attention is given to the emotional climate of learning. in order to forge two-way communication, the presence of a warm and responsive adult is of paramount importance. young children are interpretive beings. they read the emotional climate and this affects their receptivity to interactions. the excerpt below of a practitioner with fourand five-year olds, illustrates the positive emotional triggers used to make children receptive to her. she is knowledgeable about how adult aggression can result in children withdrawing their participation, she says, whenever you are talking to them you need to have as smile, laugh so that they too can be comfortable listening to you. if you are aggressive with them, it will be difficult for them to listen or talk to you (fpr6). apr1 explained how in difficult situations e.g. dealing with babies who cannot talk, the practitioners connect with the child through tuning in via an educated guess. this evokes a response from the child and opens up for the child “possible worlds of meaning” (formoshino & formoshino, 2016:35). this pedagogical mediation style was essential when dealing with babies and we were in awe of the practitioners who used this, as they were not trained. there seemed to have been an automatic attunement to the gestures of babies. the practitioners use the image of the competent child to attune to the child’s needs, as illustrated by sounds and body language: it’s difficult, sometimes the children come and stand and babble in front of me. one of the little girls will “talk” to me by making some coo and babble noises. then i say to her, “mommy are coming in a little while”. she gets so excited and will keep on and on talking to me (epr5). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 2372020 38(2): 237-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 bipath & theron contesting schoolification through snapshots of pedagogy-in-participation the child is given the space and power to articulate her needs. the practitioner is in service of the child and this promotes joint learning through listening and respecting the child as a person (formoshino & pascal, 2016). the teacher instinctively notices that the child is anxious about her mother coming to fetch her and pacifies her, stating that her mother will be there in a little while. the teacher realises that listening is a “process of hearing the children’s thoughts on their collaboration in the co-construction of knowledge” (formoshino & formoshino, 2016:46). children are given an opportunity to discover themselves as people with motivational dynamics, although they are just 6 months old. although most practitioners in south africa are not qualified and are generally in their profession out of a need to be employed, the snapshots are powerful and show the pedagogical love, care and concern that the practitioners have for their children. in the study, this allowed for a reciprocal relationship to be formed between teacher and child and together they co-constructed learning moments. the findings and discussions show that the motherly and nurturing instincts of the female practitioners seemed to allow them to be natural in the pedagogy-in-participation practices. the portrayal of teachers’ practices as responsive, sensitive and scaffolded and taking into account the developmental appropriateness of the teachable moment was really a positive snapshot of south african practitioners, who in most cases, are underqualified. these practitioners created possibilities for immobile babies to have a choice for a meaningful exploration by allowing babies to choose their own toys. the child was given the agency and respected as a competent and capable human. some of the snapshots showed the warmth that practitioners offered to parents, knowing that parental interactions and relationship-building is paramount to optimal development of young children. an ethic of care and responsibility in the practitioners’ encounters with children and their parents illustrated their understanding of the importance of relationship-building and creating a sense of belonging. one of the practitioners actually listened to the gestures and non-verbal body language of the babies, showing just how attuned practitioners were with the toddlers and babies in their care. this was inspiring as practitioners were not trained in the pedagogy of the young child. 6. recommendations for ecd policy and practice although some practitioners interviewed had the minimum qualification, an ecd level 4 certificate, they also showed snapshots of some understanding of responsiveness towards the young children in their care. therefore, professionalising the ecce sector will definitely enhance the practices and uplift the development of children. practitioners will become more intentional in their responses towards children. the policy for minimum requirements for programmes leading to qualifications for early childhood development educators (dhet, 2017) is a positive step for training ecce teachers. transformative pedagogy, reciprocal and responsive relationship-building between adults and children, should be a core module in the programme development. higher education institutions need to make provision for the professionalisation of the existing workforce as well by providing higher certificates in education, advanced diplomas in ecce and online diplomas in ecce so that these ecd level 4 practitioners can also have a chance to upgrade their qualifications. attention needs to focus on the transformative pedagogies that qualified teachers develop in order to create centres that would be more “children-ready” rather than “school-ready”. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 2382020 38(2): 238-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.15 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) 7. conclusion this study explored whether practitioners applied “schoolification” or “pedagogy-inparticipation” in their centres. the major finding was that practitioners, in both well-resourced and under-resourced centres, showed warmth, care and respect to young children in the class. fair enough, few practitioners spoke about teaching children letters of the alphabet, counting and the days of the week, however their caring instinct stood out in the data. an innovative way of ensuring that practitioners are shown the correct way of stimulating and interacting with young learners could be setting up an ecd centre of excellence linked to a university or tvet college. good practices could be highlighted at the ecd centre of excellence and made into short 3-minute videos that could be shared via whatsapp by training institutions. if good practices are shared amongst the practitioners, they would become more confident in using their built-in instincts when dealing with the developing, capable young citizens (the birth to four child). co-construction between the adult and child for teachable pedagogical moments as well as jointly setting up the environment for developmental, cultural and linguistic responsiveness would ensure that all young children perform optimally during their formative years. this would enhance the confidence and capability of the young child to be “prepared for life” as their teachers would be professional scaffolds for pedagogy-in-participation. 8. acknowledgements prof hasina ebrahim and prof suriamurthee maistry for guidance and comments on this article. this publication was produced with the support from the teaching and learning 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http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) adapting a capacitydevelopment-in-highereducation project: doing, being and becoming virtual collaboration abstract in november 2019, scholars and practitioners from ten higher education institutions celebrated the launch of the ikudu project. this project, co-funded by erasmus+1, focuses on capacity development for curriculum transformation through internationalisation and development of collaborative online international learning (coil) virtual exchange. detailed plans for 2020 were discussed including a series of site visits and face-toface training. however, the realities of the covid-19 pandemic disrupted the plans in ways that could not have been foreseen and new ways of thinking and doing came to the fore. writing from an insider perspective as project partners, in this paper we draw from appreciative inquiry, using a metaphor of a mosaic as our identity, to first provide the background on the ikudu project before sharing the impact of the pandemic on the project’s adapted approach. we then discuss how alongside the focus of ikudu in the delivery of an internationalised and transformed curriculum using coil, we have, by our very approach as project partners, adopted the principles of coil exchange. a positive impact of the pandemic was that coil offered a consciousness raising activity, which we suggest could be used more broadly in order to help academics think about international research practice partnerships, and, as in our situation, how internationalised and decolonised curriculum practices might be approached. keywords: covid-19; internationalisation of higher education; decolonisation; coil; virtual exchange; erasmus+. 1. introduction and background it is essential for higher education (he) to stay at the forefront of knowledge production and knowledge transfer as well as to prepare students for the ever-changing future. curricula should focus on global knowledge and competences, but at the same time ensure local relevance (canen et al., 2014; niemczyk, 2019). niemczyk (2019:11) argues that “relying solely on the notion of globalisation is limiting, since it neglects the complex interconnection between the global 1 ka2 erasmus+ cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices (capacity building in the field of higher education) author: prof l. jacobs1 prof k. wimpenny2 l. mitchell3 c. hagenmeier1 prof j. beelen4 m. hodges1 v. george1 dr a. dewinter2 c. slambee1 dr s. obadire8 prof a. viviani5 dr l. samuels6 l.m. jackson7 r. klamer4 n. adam1 affiliation: 1university of the free state, south africa 2coventry university, uk 3university of limpopo, south africa 4the hague university of applied sciences, netherlands 5siena university, italy 6durban university of technology, south africa 7central university of technology, bloemfontein, south africa 8university of venda, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i1.22 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 353-371 published: 12 march 2021 received: 17 november 2020 accepted: 25 january 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1582-5024 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7338-782x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8830-4137 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4853-4215 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9410-9784%20 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0815-9708 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7399-2985 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0978-7482 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5739-7713 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7295-7627 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1849-5550 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7165-5889 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2270-1062 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7114-6133 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8713-4989 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 3542021 39(1): 354-371 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) and the local as well as existing power dynamics between the two notions”. higher education institutions (heis) should thus develop competences in students “to recognize [themselves] in the narrative of the interconnected world as well as local realities” (niemczyk, 2019: 13). it is thus necessary to develop capacity to create internationalisation opportunities that are inclusive and contextualised (de wit & altbach, 2020). heis should offer internationalised curricula and provide students with internationalised learning experiences, but in ways that embrace locality and diversity, and enable transformation (mheta et al., 2018). internationalised learning experiences in he since the previous century largely depended on student exchange (de wit & altbach, 2020). these were mostly the result of some form of relationship between institutions, be it at the level of formal partnership agreement, or collaboration between individual academics at the institutions. indeed, beelen et al. (2021: forthcoming) argue that “[t]he discourse promoting international mobility has always tended to be viewed as the most dynamic aspect of the internationalisation of universities, however, the increasing focus on the home curriculum is to a large extent a response to the fact that education abroad is limited to a minority of students”. in order to be increasingly inclusive, and close the divide between the mobile few and the grounded many it is essential to find new ways to internationalise he that will recognise the value of differences, and promote inclusion not only of people, but also of diverse knowledge systems, pedagogies and frameworks of thinking. collaborative online international learning (coil), also called virtual exchange, is a viable and affordable option to provide students from diverse contexts to interact and learn together (villar-onrubia & rajpal, 2016). coil has been described as “not a technology, or a technology platform, but a new approach to teaching and learning which provides faculty and students the ability to communicate directly and immediately with their peers far away” (rubin, 2020; rubin, 2016: 134). although certain basic equipment is needed, its success largely depends on establishing a sustainable relationship between colleagues from different heis, and the human capacity and technological support to make a success. building such capacity is urgent and essential, and this was recognised by the eu funding structure when they awarded a capacity building in higher education erasmus+ grant to a consortium of heis, and significantly, under the leadership of a south african (san) university which is as far as we are aware, unprecedented. 1.1 starting as an impala and growing into an ikudu ikudu was built on the impala project that was conceptualised in the kruger national park in 2015. the name impala is derived from international modernisation project for academics, leaders and administrators and this 3-year project, which concluded in 2018, brought together four previously disadvantaged heis from south africa (sa) and five european (eu) partners. the project name was inspired by the impala antelope, after the european proposal writer observed its social cohesiveness, yet individualistic survival response. the project focused on the modernisation of curriculum and university management with particular attention on internationalisation of the curriculum (ioc), including coil exchange (pc on 6 november 2020). in the impala project, it became evident that limitations existed in terms of the capacity to implement coil in sa, even though one of the outcomes of the project was a fully equipped coil laboratory at each of the sa partner institutions. as one of the participants shared in a written communication with the first author (pc on 22 october 2020): http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 3552021 39(1): 355-371 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 jacobs et al. adapting a capacity-development-in-higher-education project during this phase we decided that the impala should evolve into a bigger animal, namely a kudu [ikudu in isizulu]. we thus decided that we should focus and enhance one theme within the impala project, that theme was internationalisation of the curriculum, of which cooperative online international learning (coil), was a subtheme. the ikudu project2 was then conceptualised to develop a contextualised san concept of ioc, which includes coil. the project intends to connect large numbers of students utilising digital technology, thereby allowing students to gain international exposure irrespective of locality, socio-economic background, gender or disability status. it extends an international opportunity to a much broader pool of students at universities and can thus be considered an innovative and sustainable way to implement internationalisation of the home curriculum, by infusing an international dimension into the formal and informal curriculum of students whilst remaining in their domestic learning environment. the intention of the ikudu project is to furthermore integrate african indigenous knowledge and draw on classroom diversity to contextualise it, but also to decolonise the curriculum. internationalised and transformed curricula, which integrate coil as an articulation of virtual exchange, are thus a new model for he teaching and learning that allows all students to develop the graduate attributes required for success and employability in a globalised world while validating one’s own and each other’s distinctiveness. in line with the focus of the erasmus+ funding, staff capacity development is at the heart of the ikudu project, seeking to produce a group of proficient teaching staff who will have access to an international and local pool of knowledge, skills and expertise in the relevant areas within the consortium that consists of five san heis and five eu partners. hence, the ikudu project also aims at improving the management and operation strategies of the san partner universities by addressing the process of internationalisation and supporting equity and democratisation of he in internationalisation. it seeks to develop capacity for governance, strategic planning and management of heis relevant to internationalisation. pursuant to their complexity of working in a network, a sophisticated management structure was required (hudzik, 2015) and indeed, such a structure was established. at the end of november 2019, scholars and practitioners from the partner institutions celebrated the launch of the ikudu project on the campus of the coordinator. we discussed detailed plans for 2020 including a series of site visits and face-to-face training. the management was divided into two working groups (wg). specifically, wg1 was tasked to do an as-is analysis of curriculum internationalisation and relevant existing policy frameworks at san partner universities in this year and provisional dates were set for site visits. wg2 was due to do the training of teaching staff at one of the san universities and start with the first round of “coiling” in a set number of partnerships. however, the realities of the pandemic disrupted the plans in ways that could not have been foreseen and new ways of thinking and doing came to the fore. international travel and face-to-face meetings were no longer possible, even travelling within the borders of south africa was off-limits for a long time. in this paper, we thus reflect on how the pandemic required us to reshape our thinking and practices to enable new ways of engaging in an international capacity development project. 2 for detail visit https://www.ufs.ac.za/ikudu http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 https://www.ufs.ac.za/ikudu 3562021 39(1): 356-371 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) 2. methodology the approach in this paper was informed by three lenses. firstly, we based this study on principles of appreciative inquiry3 (ai) (cooperrider & whitney, 2005; elliott et al., 2020), focusing on opportunities, appreciating strengths within the project, its consortium partners and their diverse contexts, and inventing the better self through dreaming and enacting the dream even when faced with adversity. secondly, we identify ourselves in terms of diversity (e.g. unique individuals and contributors, colourful, distinctive) as opposed to binaries (e.g. north vs. south, african vs. european, research institution vs. universities of technology), and while in discussions colleagues have suggested the metaphors of quilts, collages or tapestries, in this paper we use a mosaic as our collective identity. indeed, choosing a mosaic as a metaphor has significance in that different textures, colours and materials jointly provide an image that can be seen and appreciated, and a structure that holds, or as hoppe (2018: 251) coins it “rugs of stone”. mosaic can at the same time provide identity and a sense of place (shavit, 2018) and the reflections of partners in this paper, provided in different colours in the text, create the colourful pathways of stone on which networks for future funded projects can walk. thirdly, we took an insider-researcher stance and acknowledge our subjectivities in what we share. mcness et al. (2015) acknowledge that the lines between insider and outsider in studies increasingly becomes blurred, particularly in cross-cultural studies. we thus focus first on the meaning that was made “in relation to the self” and then the meaning that was “made collectively” (mcness et al., 2015: 308) and through providing a thick description allowing the readers to become the “outsiders” and to decide the level of transferability to their contexts (merriam & tisdell, 2016). this resonates with what zbróg (2016) calls collective biography writing where memories are used as data. firstly, an open invitation was sent to all members of the two wgs to invite them to participate. positive responses were received from 14 others, making up a total of 15 cocreators of the paper. two offered to provide a project narrative, while the other 13 engaged in data creation in response to specific open questions digitally posed by the first author using secure digital software (evasys). a link was sent to these author-participants for five consecutive days, drawing from the five pointers in ai (jacobs, 2015), allowing participants to reflect on specific periods of the project thus far. collective demographic data are summarised in figure 1 below, not to provide distinct features of individuals, but to rather display the diversity within the group who responded to the questions. 3 ai informed the data generation for this paper to reflect inwardly. in addition, an ai approach is also used by wg1, but with a different focus to write the self-evaluation reports. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 3572021 39(1): 357-371 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 jacobs et al. adapting a capacity-development-in-higher-education project figure 1: mosaic representing characteristics of the survey participants participants had to choose a pseudonym to protect their identities, allowing the first author to link responses from the different datasets, but also to follow up on missing data. a second layer of identity protection was provided when, once the datasets were merged, the pseudonyms were replaced with numbers and the data from each participant changed to a unique font colour. certain themes crystalised as the first author worked through the data several times. participants’ views were directly used to construct the paragraphs using different colours to distinguish between them, but to also to collectively build a mosaic of words. the findings were then shared with the co-authors, who as participants, had to do member checks (merriam & tisdell, 2016) and as co-authors, had to provide inputs towards refinement. 3. findings the project started off on solid footing at the end of 2019. when very soon after the launch of the project the pandemic threatened to bring everything to a standstill, it was able to adapt and use the opportunity to find new ways of doing. as #p2 stated: we were building the bridge as we walked on it. five themes emerged from the data, namely strong conceptualisation and proposal writing; thorough management and administration; validating and encouraging relationships; values and enabling collective leadership. to build in some chronology, certain themes are repeated in our collective writing to narrate the situation before and after the period when the pandemic threatened to derail the project. 3.1 strong conceptualisation and proposal writing the ikudu project was envisaged as a by-product of the impala project at the partner universities with focus on the challenges encountered in the project as well as looking for other areas not covered in the project (#p5). colleagues formed a think-tank that thought up the project over a breakfast with the coordinator (#p2) and it captured the enthusiasm around putting forward a proposal for funding for what later became the ikudu project (#p12). from the beginning the core group had clarity on what they wanted to do, and kept the focus. #p6 reflected that the intention of the project was always very clear and has remained consistent throughout, despite the challenges of covid-19 and some of the re-imagining of the delivery into a wholly online space. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 3582021 39(1): 358-371 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) there was strong conceptualisation of the project and a professional and experienced writing team was used. the team trusted each other, with some having worked together over an extended period (#p1). there were experienced writers at the san side who are quite familiar with the context (#p8). #p8 believes that it would not have worked as well if “externals” would have written the application. working with a core writing team is certainly something [to] copy to another project. while the team built on their previous experiences, they allowed others to make inputs, consulted experts, yet remained on track. #p13 explained that during the deliberations, colleagues made sure that all were on the same page regarding the intention of the project, with clearly defined objectives. each member of the team could contribute to the area of their specific experience and expertise, utilised the skills of the coordinators of the past project and also consulted with members of the european commission and eu project experts (#p6). the core group furthermore included new partners, some of whom had previous coil experience. #p6, for instance shared that: this was particularly pleasing for me, as i had prior experience of the practical elements of coil so it was a great opportunity to pull some of my experiences together. these individuals could relate to how they could contribute (with experience of a couple of different coil projects and different roles (coordinator, lecturer, researcher) i thought that i could play a role in this project [#p7]). others were new to the concept of coil and the core idea of the project, but they came on board (i had to educate myself very fast in order to provide any valuable contribution. with time i became more confident [#p11]). whether they were in the first or the second category, participants who were not part of the core team appreciated the ways they were included: what was different to the experience i had in other project applications was that so many people were actually involved in the process (#p9) even if not from the very start (in an ideal world i would have loved to be involved from the very beginning, at the same time, in my experience with other erasmus+ projects it is essential that the coordinator develops the main draft of the project and then involve and includes input from the other partners, which is what happened in ikudu (#p10). clear deliverables were set and appreciated. #p2, for instance rejoiced at the idea to bring 5500 learners to interact with each other and understand each other’s world is an achievement indeed. greater clarity came when representatives of all partner institutions spent time together during the launch of the project (during the kick-off meeting, we were able to see a broader picture of how we are going to implement the project [#p5]) and everybody was excited about 2020. 3.2 thorough management and administration participants appreciated the thoroughness of the management and administration of the project, as was acknowledged by a person at the core of the team (i knew that we had an extremely reliable team in the office, which was prerequisite to success [#p1]). administrative work is done meticulously, and there is a dedicated project manager with excellent interpersonal skills (#p6). the respective working group deliverables, training and research was planned with face-to-face training, meetings and physical site visits. our steering committee (sc) meetings were scheduled for four face to face meetings linked to the training [two in europe and two in sa]. (#p3). management of the project is executed with precision, as #p3, tasked with monitoring and evaluation and reporting, explained at length: i have learnt that to submit a successful proposal http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 3592021 39(1): 359-371 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 jacobs et al. adapting a capacity-development-in-higher-education project is only the initial task in which you stipulate your vision, mission goals and intentions. [then you must consider] how you plan to utilise the resources, how you will implement and report on progress, measure impact and build sustainable post project delivery. once successful, the true tasks must be stipulated. measurable objectives must be written, with timelines and deliverables – writing a detailed implementation, monitoring and evaluation plan (ime), allocating roles with deliverables for each role and identifying gaps through evaluation and filling those gaps to assure effective implementation. #p3 also emphasised the importance of institutionalising the project: the project must be institutionalised through communities of practice which should include the executive management and deans and the regulatory meeting and written reports should be part of the project. this assures that you build on the history of the project but also identify future internationalisation needs that could be harnessed to write new funding proposals. impact, impact, impact is critical and student attributes should be foregrounded during application phase. fortunately, we emphasised that this document [ime] will be centrally managed for reporting purposes to the funders, but each participant can populate their own as a living document. precise financial management by an expert was instituted (financial control, financial management and the ability to find ways to stretch the budget to achieve the most out of what is available [#p2]). the advisors who also monitor the project were involved from the days of impala and were clear on their roles (in this quest my role was to position myself in the centre of the venn diagram being part of the decision making process but at the same time being on the outside taking an outsider’s view of both the san and the european perspective, identifying gaps and nudging the project to tackle challenges before it got out of hand [#p2]). the project also relied on structures in the institutions (the fact that i already had personal experience in erasmus+ projects and that the university offices were also already prepared was considered a strength. i did not doubt of the possibility to carry out successfully the project activities from my institution point of view [#p10]); it was quite clear that the coordinator wanted all heads of international offices to be part of the full project to ensure efficient implementation of decisions [#p13]). a definite strength was thus the clear planning of management and administration from the onset. 3.3 enabling collective leadership as participants were reflecting through all stages of the year, a recurring theme was that of enabling and inspiring collective leadership, within, but also beyond the management structures of the ikudu project. while most participants emphasised the effect thereof once the pandemic was evident, some mentioned it in their reflections at the start of the project. #p12 commented on the experience during the proposal writing as such: the positive features of the process were the commitment and leadership demonstrated by those driving the process of crafting the proposal, as well the role of coordinating the various inputs into a cohesive and cogent submission. others noted the fact that the leaders were inviting and appreciating (it was great to meet [the coordinator] and for colleagues from our centre to be able to come together with me to share ideas that felt listened to and appreciated [#p4]). a real attempt was made to connect people who were also not part of the impala project. i believe this set off the collaboration on solid footing (#p9) even if there was potential for tension (it was wonderful how the consortium welcomed our participation not least because of the political situation and the concern about how the uk would be considered as a partner on a european grant [#p4]). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 3602021 39(1): 360-371 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) 3.4 the moment in time when covid-19 disrupted the world the project was ready for implementation, and then the pandemic hit us! it was the most traumatic experience of my life (#p3). from january 2020 news about a novel coronavirus started spreading and by the end of january the first cases were recorded in italy. what stands out about the initial period was uncertainty (the situation looked unreal initially [#p5]). while some recognised the seriousness of the situation, many, particularly in sa, were still hopeful that it would pass without disrupting our lives, as colleagues shared: initially, before the sa lockdown, i felt everyone was overreacting about the virus and that it would have no significant impact on our daily lives (#p11); when china announced the news about covid-19 – i think we all thought that it will be over in three months and everything will return to normal. at that point of the global announcement, i still did not fully comprehend the extent or severity of covid-19 (#p13); in the beginning everything felt unreal. i remember looking at [a colleague from italy] during meetings, and it all felt so distant. she was telling us about how things were going in italy, and i remember feeling very sorry for her and other colleagues, but not thinking for a moment that it will indeed come to sa (#p9). the first three months of the project in large looked very much like it had been planned at the kick-off meeting in 2019. although the pandemic was spreading through europe, up to the beginning of march it looked like we may well escape the full brunt of the pandemic. we at this stage still looked forward to the face-to-face training that was to occur in sa. we worked full steam ahead around this training event and until the first week of march still hoped it would occur (#p12). indeed, we were still thinking that possibly the site visits will continue at a later stage in the year. even when we thought the europeans might not be able to visit, we considered travelling to [one partner] in a bus, so that the sans could at least be together (#p9). then the reality started to dawn on the san side. (the latter part of the first quarter: the global conversations and the effect of covid-19 on many of our eu partners started to tell different stories. i must admit that i got worried as i was supposed to participate in an international conference abroad but heard the news that it was postponed until further notice (#p13); the period between the point from when the first positive case was announced, and the day that the strict lockdown was announced, was relatively short on our side (#p9); during a lecture of mine the students suddenly started fidgeting and becoming rowdy, on inspection, i found the university just sent a communication that the campus is officially closed and students had to get off campus in the days following. i remember that day distinctly as i only then realised this might not be some distant issue (#p11). during those crucial days in march 2020, participants had to deal with uncertainty, emotions, but also practical realities. it was quite clear from the beginning that it would not be a short one. the feeling was a mix of anxiety, shock, as if it was all happening to someone else, somewhere else (#p10). there was shock, confusion, not knowing what to do at that moment (#p13). all over the world we were seeing the devastating impact of this invisible killer. in england for instance, the universities closed, non-essential shops closed, the nhs went on red alert, travel abroad and non-essential local travel was prohibited – lockdown began and has continued in some shape or form ever since (#p4). partners had to adjust to a fast changing situation, and most colleagues had to immediately manage moving to online and managing the so-called new normal of working from home and having their children at home, as #p7 shares: the focus was on first of all providing education online and for me taking care of my kids each morning and in the afternoon focusing on work. #p11 similarly shared: we were facing the spread of covid-19, we knew things were getting more complicated every http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 3612021 39(1): 361-371 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 jacobs et al. adapting a capacity-development-in-higher-education project day. not only we were all afraid of catching the virus, but very much concerned on how to guarantee teaching and supervising for our students in distant learning mode. people had to quickly adjust to a new way of teaching and meeting, had to learn new terminology and new software. #p3, for instance shared: i had to learn new techniques, technology, words and ways of doing, by hitting the ground running! all physical activity stopped! it was not without challenges and the pressure of being available online and managing one’s life at home were real. (we had to learn to use new platforms in matters of days, we had to be available every day at all possible hours [#p11]). it also came with technical challenges (we had to face internet connection problems (seldom experienced before) due to the overuse of the system [#p11]). participants were worried about the impact on the project, and as #p2 explains the project almost came to a standstill. it is during the first year of a three-year project, during physical meetings that the aims, strategies and activities to achieve them must [be] discussed, debated and responsibilities delegated, and that could not happen. plans had to be cancelled (we were planning our trips to sa for the workgroup 1 session and the tickets for the training for lecturers had just been bought. then covid-19 hit us and hit us hard. we did go through a lockdown which made it hard to actually progress with ikudu (#p7) and people were worried about the impact it would have on delivering on promises (as to the project, we were feeling very much at ill ease, knowing that all our plans for trainings and meetings had to be suddenly changed and were afraid that this will affect the quality of networking (#p11); there were announcements of bans on cross-border travels; cancellation of events and gatherings; and observation of social distancing. the project was structured to have several meetings through physical contacts and cross-border travels during workshops, conferences and meetings. the lockdown was a devastating blow to the implementation of the project (#p5). it was hugely disappointing that we were not going to meet in person for training, meetings and networking (#p12). covid-19 has affected everyone, in all stages of life, with no exception. although its consequences have hit the most vulnerable in our communities the hardest. the covid-19 crisis “has exposed the many inadequacies and inequities in our education systems from access to the broadband and computers needed for online education, and the supportive environments needed to focus on learning, up to the misalignment between resources and needs” (schleicher, 2020: 4). as the pandemic hit, the importance of the project became stronger. while there was a lot of general confusion over what covid-19 might mean to our work (and life in general), in a way, the changes made in light of the pandemic really bought everything together with renewed clarity (#p6). this is a period when the relevance of this project is more profound than ever before (#p5), and strong enabling collective leadership carried the project. 3.5 enabling collective leadership as evident as leadership was at the start, when the pandemic hit it required a special kind of collective leadership. initially a difficult situation had to be negotiated as different individuals grappled to make sense of what was happening. #p1 shared how the plans we had made gradually fell apart and required managing the differences of opinion on the impact of the pandemic on our project. it is at times like these that the leader (coordinator in this case) needed to be supported to think through what is happening as it was like a plane that took off the ground but was suddenly hit with an unpredictable environment that had to be http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 3622021 39(1): 362-371 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) weathered. #p13 articulated what many felt: i felt confused, shocked but knew that within this pandemic we must create hope within a country with so many inequalities. it was a relief when consensus emerged towards the end of march [2020] that travel was no longer an option and we had to move fully online (#p1). initially, it looked like we needed to postpone some of the physical movements for some time, but it quickly became clear that we would have to run a big chunk of the project work entirely online (#p8). despite being thrown off-balance by the pandemic, participants showed resilience and stepped up. all trainings, meetings, management, research, communication, implementation, evaluation and monitoring became an activity from the environment of your room at home (#p3). once everyone understood the situation through constant deliberations and dialogues, it was accepted by all and suddenly became easy to work together again (#p5). within all the chaos, an identity was forged of a strong network that will move forward. it was the worst of times and the best of times, because we survived it (#p3). what remained central during these early months of the pandemic was the ways in which the partners remained committed to strengthen and develop working relationships, and with care and compassion for one another (#p4). the most important lesson to take away from such a time is the need to keep the ball up in the air and keep moving...it will evolve and travel through paths that were not planned (#p2). reflecting on the situation, #p1 considers in hindsight that the best plan was the flexibility we had built into the planning. in my view, that was a period when it was most beneficial not to have a plan, since the radical change of circumstances destroyed all planning. what saw us through in this critical stage, during which emotions ran high at times, was our value-foundation and the trust between core stakeholders. a group of people rallied around the coordinator and kept the project ticking, although with trepidation as no one could predict how the situation would unfold (#p2). the project became a nice, living example of north-south projects and has really bought to life the importance of intercultural exchange and just seeing each other as real-life human beings who all share the same aspirations and issues. it’s all very well having subject knowledge and being familiar with training, but the ikudu project has really brought everything [regarding coil] to life in a meaningful way. although moving to online is a change to established norms (#p6), the advantages of collaborating online and learning and doing virtually together became evident. 3.6 thorough management and administration adapted as the pandemic then hit and threatened to disrupt our focus certainly had to adapt in ways that enabled what project activities could continue to progress (#p4). we established management teams for each level and forms of task we had to complete, supported by written templates and guidelines for reporting and role allocation (#p8) by developing a sc, advisory committee, local management teams, working groups and coordination and liaison officers (#p3). the project sc (#p5) (where all university representatives came together to ratify major decisions and for each of the working groups to present progress [#p4]) was quick to amend the process including meetings and workshop to virtual platform (#p5). the advisory committee is made up of a core team that serves as a think-tank and support group for the coordinator. the budget team adjusts the budget as resources had to be re-allocated since the modus operandi of the project was changing to a virtual set up with no physical meetings (#p2). in addition, #p3 shared that great planning, resources, management documents and a great ime plan helped us to remain on course. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 3632021 39(1): 363-371 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 jacobs et al. adapting a capacity-development-in-higher-education project what gave ikudu life during this period was its people and the focus to make this work but also with well discussed and recorded written plans and inclusive management #p8. setting up of the wg1 and wg2 task teams with competent leaders to guide the team through was an important step (#p2). the setting up of the local project teams at each san university, with the international office director as coordinator and the wg1 and 2 local coordinators as members brought about greater accountability for outcomes (#p2). all of this managed extremely effectively by a central san team of 3 individuals (#p3) and multiple platforms that were opened up to keep the dialogue moving along (#p2). a definite strength in the project is the agility of those at the centre to adapt and design as needs arise. #p9 shared appreciation for the strong collective leadership in the project, and how quickly people adapted the plans, and ran with it. soon, there was buy in and passion for the project from many, and when that is achieved there is usually a better chance to find ways to reach goals (#p2). we developed a collective sense of “we will do this one way or the other” which was inspiring (#p9) the project demanded more from partners (e.g. i am very dedicated to the project and i put in the hours and effort to make it work [#p11]). the monitors increasingly adapted their role within the new situation. where previously they would visit institutions, they became observers to online activities and provide wisdom and calm where needed. reporting structures were adapted to use a negotiated reporting template capturing the activity at each of our 10 institutions (#p3). in wg 1 we had planned that at the end of may 2020, representatives from the 10 university partners in wg1, would visit the five san universities to appreciate existing internationalisation and decolonisation of the curriculum initiatives, policies and practices, to discover the best of what exists. this also had to be reconsidered and rethought through and a protocol was developed for appreciative inquiry (#p4). in wg2 we had planned for the first wave of partnered academics to attend the first ikudu coil virtual exchange training workshop at durban university of technology (#p4). the training event’s cancellation meant that what was envisaged to occur over a week and then some follow up training, became training that was spread over the remaining months of the year (#p12). #p2 reflected that it is important to introspect how one could contribute to a joint project most effectively particularly when working online. most people need structure to perform well while some work well when provided the space to experiment. the former thinks in a more linear manner and needs clear direction while the latter takes on a more lateral approach. it is for management to identify who works best in what dimension and provide the space to do so. #p6 highlighted that while it is all very well having subject knowledge and being familiar with training, the ikudu project has really brought everything [regarding virtual exchange] to life in a meaningful way. 3.7 validating and encouraging relationships the theme that came out the strongest was how positive the participants experience the interpersonal relationships in the project. it started on a good footing during the development of the proposal (the process was truly collegial [#p3]) and with the launch of the project at the end of november 2019 (this started out well with a good social gathering and this friendly atmosphere remained throughout [#p7]), even though there were still some uncertainties (the only question i had when i left was, how is this actually going to evolve [#p7]. i was a little http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 3642021 39(1): 364-371 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) bit more concerned about the idea of working with fully unknown academic partners in the consortium. the kick-off meeting was essential to eliminate these uncertainties for all the colleagues were full of enthusiasm on the project [#p10]). in mid-march 2020, one of the partners suggested that we meet every friday afternoon through zoom for a “cuppa” tea4. it was voluntary and open, and enabled colleagues to chat and get to know each other in a very unique way. it was intended as a means to try and increase contact across the partners and especially for those colleagues not attending steering group and working group meetings (#p4). #p6 shared that the friday “cuppa” has been one of the most valuable and integral parts of the project. it has really helped the consortium get to know each other and allows us to deepen cohesion and a sense of belonging to ikudu (#p1). #p8 believes that the friday cuppa was just the best method to get to know each other and have academic fun! it felt especially important to keep in contact. there is joy and laughter shared, as well as ways in which our collaborative creativity emerges about how we can progress (#p4). #p6 expressed: i never realised this before but becoming interpersonally more familiar with colleagues across the consortium has been really valuable. it is good to mention the high spirit of partners which was very contagious despite the challenges brought about by the pandemic (#p5). the sharing of experiences during such unprecedented times was useful (it was a very important thing to be able to meet during our friday cuppa to share those feelings with other colleagues who were experiencing the same situation [#p10]; it helped many of us to regain a sense of understanding of the severity of the virus and how our eu and sa colleagues are dealing with the virus [#p13] the latest news about happenings in partner institutions or countries were shared and that is very refreshing and informative [#p5]; i think people have been even more open and honest with each other in the online space, which is really refreshing [#p6]).. although designed as a social space, a lot of critical and exciting developments have come from this informal space (#p6) and we also sometimes use the fridays for more structured talks and invite colleagues outside ikudu to share their views (#p8). our cuppa sessions allowed us to have a cup together, but also share sincerely our hopefulness, our challenges and weaknesses, the inequalities within our national education systems and what to do to best respond to covid-19 (#p13). it became a space to incubate ideas, give suggestions and socialise virtually (#p5). it has allowed us all to experience and grow intercultural competences whilst getting to know how to work with all partners in a more solid and fruitful way (#p6). this provides ikudu the opportunity to grow beyond a capacity-development network into a sustainable community of practice (#p1). the regular meetings every friday gave a sense of continuity in the project while personal relationships played a role in giving continued life to the project (#p12). through deliberate appreciative virtual engagements, colleagues are validated (e.g. i felt valued and it gave me a sense of importance [#p3]). the fact that we could not have live tête-a-têtes made us conscious of the fact that we need to pay extra attention to maintaining relationships (#p8). in addition to the regular meetings, other ways of communication were used. the blogging documents shared on the website by partners [alternating authors from eu and sa] focusing on current issues and providing possible solutions for some of the issues in a well-articulated format also provide a very good readership (#p5). the whatsapp groups further connected us, we were able to share even the smallest step forward and allowed us to celebrate each other’s efforts (#p9). #p8 appreciates how whatsapp messages early in the morning to start my day 4 the first “cuppa” took place on 20 march 2020, a week before the lockdown started in sa. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 3652021 39(1): 365-371 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 jacobs et al. adapting a capacity-development-in-higher-education project using images and text were highly appreciated and encouraging and personal consultations were spiritually strengthening. the regular interactions and meetings provided the space for friendships to develop over and above the formal manner in which everyone started off (#p2) or as #p13 put it: there was a sense of belonging to a network of colleagues and friends who engaged and learnt collaboratively in an online international space. 3.8 values the collaboration in this project started off with specific values already cemented in the project. #p1 reflected on how, at the start of the programme, the cohesion and spirit of ubuntu in the team made the writing process a memorable experience. social interaction triggered mindfulness: we have remained mindful that with teaching and learning from across all programmes now delivered in the online space, those universities not already delivering online-only programmes, remains a significant undertaking. it has refocused us again to think carefully about the potential of coil exchange and how the objectives of the trainings can be suitably tailored (#p4). although differences are acknowledged, members of the north are clearly acutely aware that there should be no room for the perception that they are trying to educate the south or leading the south, but that it should be an equal project (#p11). collaboration allowed people to reflect inwards and be thoughtful about how interactions should be. #p8 shared the importance to be sensitive to people’s feelings and guide them more sympathetically but also to help others to be more assertive (#p8). #p9 emphasised that one must never assume that what you say will be heard as you meant it. it is better to talk than to write, it is better to talk with video on than without. although bandwidth is a challenge, we have to try to see each other’s’ smiles, discomfort, etc. to gain better understanding amongst us. #p3 added: i discovered of myself that i should treat people with more sensitivity but always honestly and that the others should be guided to do likewise. it was emphasised that we must make sure that people stay included and on board. we need to reach out to others in spite of hectic schedules. we need to focus on inclusivity (#p7). a stronger feeling of belonging can be brought about when one is provided an opportunity to contribute, to have support from the group and the acknowledgement when a task is completed. it is important that anyone who contributes to ikudu [and future projects] be acknowledged and all success be celebrated (#p2). participants noted various values on which the project was built and evolves and these are displayed below. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 3662021 39(1): 366-371 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) figure 2: display of common values although the values were listed in response to a particular question posed, they recurrently crystallised in responses to other questions. to summarise, the themes and subthemes that emerged in this study are summarised in the mosaic below, which serves as a summary of this paper. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 3672021 39(1): 367-371 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 jacobs et al. adapting a capacity-development-in-higher-education project figure 3: key elements of the perceptions shared http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 3682021 39(1): 368-371 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) 4. discussion since 6 november 2020, internationalisation of he is mandatory in sa (department of higher education and training, 2019) and comes to fruition through enabling networks. networks, in general, are an increasingly popular and widespread form of university collaboration (de wit & stockley, 2011). they exist on a collaboration continuum that ranges from networks on the one end to partnerships at the other end (koehn & obamba, 2014). the theoretical underpinnings of university networks are multifaceted and closely related to those of partnerships (kehm & teichler, 2007). similar to he partnerships, they should be underpinned by the principles of mutuality, trust, respect, informed consent, long-term commitment, equality and reciprocity and should be based on ethical principles and equality (hagenmeier, 2018). capacity building is considered a significant theme for transnational he partnerships, particularly in africa and continued attention to the inherent inequality of capacity development is required. the main advantage of a partnership model for capacity development is that “symmetrical higher-education capacity-building undertakings embed ownership and selfdetermination at their foundation” (koehn & obamba, 2014: 113). major funding is injected through initiatives such as the erasmus+ programme of the european union (european union, 2020) or the us-sa higher education network5 in university initiatives that develop capacity in areas such as postgraduate education, internationalisation and he management. typically, grants are made available to small networks of universities that often transcend the global north and the global south. often, networks are explicitly established for purposes of a project application and many are not sustained longer than the project lifespan. the ikudu project was built within a strong existing network with a trusted team from the onset and was expanded to invite others. it focused on capacity development for internationalising the home curriculum through coil. over the past 12 months, across our universities and education landscapes, we have come together to explore new avenues of scholarship and theoretical understanding, not least in examining what curriculum transformation means, and from whose perspective, and as part of this, what contribution the learning space of coil exchange can offer methodologically, pedagogically and transculturally. our work also shares our collaborative research practices that has enabled each of us to benefit and be inspired. what the pandemic did was to push a capacity development project into the realm of coil, and ikudu became coil: as project partners we 1) have come together having carefully considered what each could contribute and what we would benefit from reciprocity. we each signed up to the venture. 2) regarding what we might view as the “intended internationalised learning outcomes” we clearly brought together our project proposal and within that the project aims and objectives, which are international by nature, whilst also addressing the local, national and global, and all of which were collaboratively negotiated and continue to be so. 3) we are coming together in online spaces to learn together, to be challenged and to challenge one another. we recognise the need for critical cultural awareness, the subtleties and etiquette required in effective intercultural communication, our need to be respectful of our various cultural differences and educational contexts, power dynamics, agency and voice (wimpenny & orsini-jones, 2020). we are working out all these ways to communicate effectively to achieve our project aims. 4) communication during our exchanges leads to actions that we conduct outside of our synchronous/asynchronous exchanges. in effect we have follow up actions to complete between collaborative online exchanges. we engage in 5 comprehensive information is available on the networks website at https://www.ussahighereducationnetwork. org/ http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 https://www.ussahighereducationnetwork.org/ https://www.ussahighereducationnetwork.org/ 3692021 39(1): 369-371 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 jacobs et al. adapting a capacity-development-in-higher-education project reflective practice for action, in action, and on action, about what is working well, what gaps remain, how we need to be creative and show resilience, we demonstrate our commitment over time. our time on project is recorded as part of our hours and time sheeted, as we are accountable to the project funders and in claiming on the project budget. 7) the activities we are engaging in could not be achieved by a sole person, or a one-sided team, but need the rich, diversity of our many and combined interdisciplinary experiences and perspectives. 8) we are certainly engaged in prolonged dialogic communication and action. this project is not only an example of a successful north-south capacity development project, but through the impetus that covid-19 provided, became a coil exchange amongst the project partners in action. furthermore, writing together has enabled us to be more open to explore our worlds and the possibilities of creative research practice and ways of knowing; of seeing learning as interdisciplinary, interdependence, dwelling upon possibility, being attuned, being exposed and creating uncertainty – all of which gives rise to creative thought (wimpenny et al., 2018). barnett (2010) discusses the importance of education contributing to the enhancement of “lifewide learning” to engage us as thinking, acting persons. we argue here that coil has provided us with a fertile space for providing possibilities to re-examine and extend our meanings and perspectives about our educational practices and project work in ikudu, providing space for our different and complementary means of expression, interpretation, reflection and action. 5. conclusion taking an appreciative insider approach in this manuscript certainly is telling the “good” subjective story. it allowed us to focus on the strengths within, the potential of what can be and how to enact a dream (jacobs, 2015). there is still much work ahead in terms of critical discussions on decolonisation, transformation and power. still, in a year that had the potential to bring transnational activities to a standstill, this project was able to continue in a different format with many positive outcomes beyond the original plans. strong conceptualisation and proposal writing, with flexibility built in, thorough yet agile management and administration, and enabling and resilient collective leadership kept the project going through stormy and unchartered waters. important for this project is the value-foundation and the trust between the core stakeholders that we consistently fortify and spread to others as we build relationships using the virtual spaces to validate and encourage relationships, spending time and investing in each other. to rapidly expand opportunities for learning in an internationalised environment, innovation and new ways of doing became essential. towards increasing providing students with a variety of perspectives and internationalised experience on the road to necessary global competences, coil experiences is a viable and sustainable option. for coil to succeed, some form of transnational network needs to exist or be established, and those involved in coil need to be equipped to do so. covid-19 showed that such capacity development based on virtual exchange could strengthen capacity in ways that we could not have foreseen. this work was supported by the european commission erasmus+: higher education – international capacity building programme [grant agreement number – 2019 – 2050/001-001] (october 2019–october 2022). the european commission’s support for the production of this publication does not constitute endorsement of the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 3702021 39(1): 370-371 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.22 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) contents, which reflects the views only of the authors, and the commission cannot be held responsible for any use that may be made of the information contained therein. references barnett, r. 2010. lifewide education: a new and transformative concept for higher education?. guildford: university of surrey. beelen, j., wimpenny, k. & rubin, j., 2021. internationalisation in the classroom and questions of congruence: embedding coil in an internationalised curriculum.. in: p.g. nixon, v.p. denned & r. rawal (eds.). reshaping international teaching and learning: universities in the information age. london: 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39(3): 30-43 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.4 student teachers’ experiences of the emergency transition to online learning during the covid-19 lockdown at a south african university abstract the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic brought about an abrupt transition from face-to-face to online learning, which caught higher education institutions off guard. universities had to scramble for solutions to ensure that learning was not disrupted and there was adequate technological infrastructure to conduct classes online; that academics were capacitated to conduct virtual teaching and that students had access to the necessary technology and internet connectivity. to understand this move, this study explored student teachers’ experiences of the emergency transition to online learning during the covid-19 lockdown at a south african university. the study was underpinned by the technology acceptance model (tam) and adopted a qualitative research design, generating data from ten fourth-year student teachers using a zoom focus group discussion and analysing the data using an inductive thematic framework. the discussion focused on the students’ views on digital equity and access to technology; the teaching and learning modalities they were exposed to; their proficiency with the technology and training received; assessment as well as views on the learning management system (lms, which is moodle in this case). the study found that among the issues that universities had to deal with were the digital divide; constrained pedagogical approaches; inadequate proficiency in the use of the learning management system; the fact that the quality and integrity of assessment were somewhat compromised as well as students’ unfavourable living conditions which make learning from home difficult. keywords: covid-19; online learning; technology acceptance model (tam); south african university. 1. introduction many countries have briefly cancelled classes in higher education institutions due to the unprecedented covid-19 pandemic. the availability of educational technology and e-tools learning channels in higher education institutions author: prof mncedisi christian maphalala1 dr nontobeko prudence khumalo2 ms primrose ntombenhle khumalo2 affiliation: 1north west university, south africa 2university of zululand, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i3.4 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(3): 30-43 published: 16 september 2021 received: 18 february 2021 accepted: 20 april 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.4 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1078-1985 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0792-8771 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6042-8493 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.4 312021 39(3): 31-43 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.4 maphalala, khumalo & khumalo student teachers’ experiences has proved to be extremely beneficial in facilitating the emergency transition to online learning and ensuring educational continuity (hussain, al-mannai & agouni, 2020). in employing technology, lecturers could diversify the way they present lectures, provide additional information and improve student learning (aljawarneh, 2020). although technology was used in some institutions before the covid-19 pandemic, most institutions are now being forced to rely on technology in an endeavour to continue teaching and learning activities, thus leading to a dramatic increase in online teaching and learning (mishra, gupta & shree, 2020). consequently, lecturers and students have had to intensify their knowledge and skills in the use of online tools. however, because students are the ones who are expected to prove, by progressing to the next level, that they have benefited from the online teaching, it was deemed important to obtain their views on this abrupt transition from face-to-face to online learning. 2. literature review face-to-face teaching and learning was disrupted by covid-19, resulting in institutions moving online and implementing what is known as “emergency online learning” (marinoni, van’t land & jensen, 2020). additionally, a recent study by mukhtar et al. (2020) reports that the spread of covid-19 has led to the closure of educational institutions all over the world and that such closure has accelerated the development of online learning environments so that learning would not be disrupted. the total lockdown left little time for the university under study to lay the groundwork for all the academics to teach and for students to learn remotely. the rapid translation of modules from traditional face-to-face teaching to online learning came with its challenges. for instance, lecturers found it difficult and stressful to develop effective online lessons within a short period of time (hew, jia, gonda & bai, 2020 :1). the authors further highlight that lecturers used different methods during the transition period and those mainly included uploading powerpoint slides and recording lecturers. the methods are not seen as effective as they do not promote active learning (hew et al., 2020) and peer interaction (sutterlin, 2018). based on the above, it was important for the current study to be undertaken to get student teachers’ experiences of the emergency transition to online learning during the covid-19 lockdown at a south african university. mukhtar et al. (2020) define online learning systems as web-based software for distributing, tracking and managing courses over the internet. it involves the implementation of advancements in technology to direct, design and deliver the learning content, and to facilitate two-way communication between students and faculty. similarly, kim et al. (2020) define online learning as an educational process that takes place over the internet. it is a form of distance education, providing learning experiences for students, both children and adults, who may access education from remote locations and who, for various reasons, cannot attend a school, vocational college or university. however, harandi (2015) cautions that basic knowledge of technology, including academic and technical knowledge, is required for e-learning to work effectively. hence, mukhtar et al. (2020) highlight the need to train faculty on the use of online modalities and to develop lesson plans with reduced cognitive load and increased interactivity. authors such as mailizar, maulina and bruce (2020) are of the view that e-learning is the best possible approach to continue the teaching and learning process during the pandemic, especially in the light of the strict measures that were applied such as social distancing and the lockdown policy. nguyen, nguyen and huynh (2019:9) are of the view that e-learning saves time especially for the teachers as it reduces workload, for example teachers can access questions that they http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.4 322021 39(3): 32-43 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.4 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) have banked before the time in a learning management system of their choice when compiling a test for students. the authors further argue that elearning has practical benefits that include “the automatic and speedy students’ learning process supervision, scoring and evaluation”. there are indeed advantages that are brought about e learning on the lecturers’ side. the importance of online learning and its benefit to students has been examined worldwide. for instance, harandi (2015:424) is of the view that technology “makes instruction more interesting to students”. this idea is supported by smith (2013), who affirms that online learning enables greater engagement between students and teachers. it is thus seen as having a positive effect on student learning. online learning offers students the ability to share different learning resources such as class notes, as well as to communicate with other students who may be experiencing similar challenges (masonta, ramoroka, & lysko, 2015). furthermore, the benefits of deploying technology and e-learning materials in the university classroom include more active learning, improved student focus and grasp and visual simulation (aljawarneh, 2020). additionally, hoq (2020) asserts that through e-learning more courses are delivered and this allows flexibility for learners, as they can learn anytime, anywhere, no matter how large the number of learners. additionally, hoq (2020) indicates that some of the advantages include the fact that students may access materials directly on electronic devices, may participate in examinations using the internet and can measure their performance. while e-learning has benefits and advantages, it has some challenges as well. this was evident in a study conducted by paechter and maier (2010) in all the austrian universities that offered e-learning courses from a sample of universities specialising in applied sciences. the findings revealed that in one of the five fields of instruction that were covered in the study, i.e. interaction between students and an instructor, the students preferred face-to-face contact especially when the role of the instructor was to develop knowledge. the students indicated the same in relation to interaction among students themselves, especially regarding the exchange of ideas, the development of knowledge and the establishment of socio-emotional relations. one other challenge is what nguyen et al. (2019) call “low participation rate” which is caused by the fact that some of the activities require interactions that can only be achieved through traditional classes. looking closely at the south african context, as a developing country, south africa still has its fair share of challenges in as far as information and communication technology (ict) is concerned. one of the challenges is the lack of ict infrastructure especially in rural communities and schools (masonta et al., 2015). such infrastructure plays a vital role in supporting the delivery of online learning. ict infrastructure is defined as referring to the devices (such as computers or tablets) and the telecommunication infrastructure which is responsible for bringing internet connectivity (masonta et al., 2015). the authors further caution that “connectivity is key to bridging the digital divide”; accordingly, in areas where there is no connectivity, it is difficult if not impossible for students in those areas to participate in online learning. additionally, online learning presents various challenges to higher education institutions in south africa, for instance many students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds do not have access to the internet due to the network coverage in rural areas (jappie, 2020) and cannot connect to the internet even when the universities have made data available so that data costs are not the limiting factor. the other challenge is that universities are at different levels when http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.4 332021 39(3): 33-43 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.4 maphalala, khumalo & khumalo student teachers’ experiences it comes to online learning as they differ in levels of institutional support, funding, uptake and staffing (bagarukayo & kalema, 2015:170). the rapid move to online modes of delivery in order to keep students engaged in learning has led to significantly intensified workloads for staff as they work to move teaching content and materials into the online space and also to become sufficiently adept in navigating the requisite software (allen, rowan & singh, 2020). 3. theoretical framework the current study used the technology acceptance model (tam) to explore student teachers’ experiences of the emergency transition to online learning during the covid-19 lockdown at a south african university. the model is based on the principle that “by measuring the perceived usefulness (pu) and perceived ease of use (peou) after using tools for several months the model can predict behavioural intention (bi) and actual usage” (sprenger & schwaninger, 2021:2). the model was introduced by davis in 1989 and has been used in various sectors, for example the education sector (mohammadi, 2015) and the agricultural sector (miller & khera, 2010), and has continued to be widely applied in the field of information systems (is). it is viewed as the “most influential and commonly employed theory for describing an individual’s acceptance of information systems” and has captured most attention in the is field (chuttur, 2009:1). thong, hong and tam (2002) define perceived ease of use as the extent to which a potential information technology (it) user perceives or believes that the use of an it system will be free of effort, while perceived usefulness is defined as the extent to which a potential it user believes that the use of that it system will enhance that user’s job performance. the model was developed to understand why people accept or reject information systems (szajna, 1996); over the years it has been taken as a valid framework and a reliable predictor of it adoption (miller & khera, 2010). in the words of szajna (1996:85), the purpose of tam “was to explain and predict user acceptance of is from measures taken after a brief period of interaction with the system”. for students to continue to learn during the covid-19 era they have to accept the use of online learning which is primarily driven by the use of technology. this theoretical framework is relevant for this study in order to understand whether student teachers have adopted online learning as forced upon them by covid-19. the core of the tam model is that “the more users are willing to accept the technology, the more likely they will use technology” (gamble, 2017: 27). additionally, gamble (2017) asserts that tam has been used for over 25 years, mainly by studies concerned with how users accept technology. 4. research methodology a qualitative study was used to answer the research question. the focus of a qualitative orientation is to explore the experiences, meanings, beliefs, experiences and perspectives that participants assign to a social phenomenon (nieuwenhuis, 2020). this study sought to understand student teachers’ experiences of the emergency transition to online learning during the covid-19 lockdown in a south african university. ten participants, all student teachers at a south african university, were purposively selected for this study. purposive sampling was used to identify and select student teachers who held information-rich and practical experiences of generating ideas to move from contact to online learning. the participants were selected using the following criteria: a full-time student http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.4 342021 39(3): 34-43 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.4 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) who had access to the university lms, moodle. data were generated using a virtual focus group discussion. according to dilshad and latif (2013:192), a focus group interview “provides a rich and detailed set of data about perceptions, thoughts, feelings and impressions of people in their own words”. a virtual focus group discussion was conducted with ten participants using the zoom app. the focus group took place during the south african covid-19 lockdown, on 12 may 2020, and lasted 68 minutes. the participants were university students being taught by means of online learning in the wake of the covid-19 lockdown initiated on 26 march 2020. the discussion adopted a conversational style, as suggested kvale and brinkmann (2009). the discussion was based on the following key questions: • what are your experiences with the transition from face-to-face learning to online learning during the coronavirus lockdown? • what are your views about your ability to access technology and the internet from home? • how have you adapted your content, learning materials and teaching strategies for the online environment? • what teaching and learning modalities have you been exposed to in the online learning environment? • what is your level of proficiency with the technology and learning management system (lms) adopted by your institution? • what are your views on the lms in enabling or constraining effective online learning? the focus group discussion was recorded using the zoom app recorder. the interview discussion was then transcribed and later analysed. data were thematically analysed using braun and clarke’s (2006) thematic analysis framework. braun and clarke (2006:79) note: “thematic analysis can be an essentialist or realist method, which reports the experiences, meanings and reality of the participants”. 5. presentation of findings five themes resulted from the analysis of the data obtained in answer to the research questions. the findings of the study are discussed here in detail in terms of these themes: digital inequities; online teaching and learning pedagogy; the learning management system; assessment and unfavourable home learning environments. 5.1 digital inequities the digital divide continues to exclude many students from meaningfully participating in online learning, especially under covid-19 conditions. the challenges of access to digital devices such as laptops and tablets, stable and reliable access to internet connectivity and access to affordable mobile data bundles have proven to be a constraint in the shift to online curriculum delivery. universities have committed themselves to the south african citizenry not to leave a single student behind, however a lack of devices and data stands in the way of achieving this goal. the findings reveal that students are concerned that a significant number of students who are based in underprivileged communities may not have a fair and equal opportunity to complete their academic year. prof, with regard to nsfas funding we have students who are unfunded. then they don’t have money for data and then they don’t have smartphones and laptops (participant 9). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.4 352021 39(3): 35-43 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.4 maphalala, khumalo & khumalo student teachers’ experiences participation in online learning is low because students do not have access to the learning devices, network coverage and connectivity required to enable a conducive remote online learning environment during the national lockdown. participant 1 said: i think also prof, the numbers that we see on moodle when we examine the participation numbers of students entering, it speaks for themselves, that majority of the students are not accessing moodle. this student was of the opinion that students who face access challenges should be given an opportunity to return to their residences, under strict conditions, to allow them to use university infrastructure for their learning: participant 1: i would also – if it would be possible, i don’t know, if we can organise maybe some like, quarantine on the campus for those students that are in difficulties with internet, maybe they can be allowed to come back to their residences and work on this e-learning there, not saying that they will go to classes and attend. although the government had assured the nation that no student will be left behind, the findings show that online learning is not for all, and that access to data and the internet is still a barrier, especially for students from marginalised communities in rural areas. 5.2 online teaching and learning pedagogy online learning has emerged as a desideratum amid covid-19 to deliver teaching and learning in universities the coronavirus pandemic has left students and academics with a challenge to navigate education in a completely new online environment academics have been forced to shift their entire pedagogical approach to respond to the new conditions imposed by the pandemic and to adapt to the changing situation. academics and students have to become accustomed to virtual teaching and learning. therefore, quality enhancement of online teaching and learning is crucial at this stage. the findings revealed that academics have resorted to depositing learning materials on the lms without any engagement. participant 5 had this to say in this regard: …the lecturers just leave the slides on moodle without explaining anything. just like me i sometimes like the lecturer to explain like the slides before i even try to attempt them myself. i think that is really a problem. participants feel neglected in online learning owing to the lack of guidance by their lecturers. participant 9 said in relation to this: prof i was saying that regarding the online learning personal experience, so far it’s not well. there are tasks that we have been given, assignments without any explanations on how we should do them. so far with e-learning it’s not well on our side. students indicated that they are expected to work in groups as part of virtual learning. for this purpose, an lms needs to have features or virtual tools for creating groups and enabling group participation and interaction. students found it challenging to work in groups because of the lack of internet access and ict gadgets. the lms either does not have the features for group work or lecturers have not set these up for their modules. participant 2 felt that group work was not being accommodated: the major problem with e-learning is that we are given tasks that we have to do, in groups or either individually at some point. those tasks they need us to gather up as the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.4 362021 39(3): 36-43 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.4 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) groups. we need to have a plan of meeting of which some of the students have a problem accessing to gadgets. others have problems accessing to internet or having access to the network coverage of which that is the major problem that we find. generally, students had embraced online learning as a necessity and as part of digital transformation and the fourth industrial revolution. participant 3 had this to say: e-learning we must not run away that it is part and parcel of learning. 5.3 the learning management system innovative technologies and lmss for teaching and assessment are flourishing and have given education some valuable tools for delivering courses remotely during covid-19. the findings reveal that before covid-19 students had not been encouraged to use the lms/online learning, which had a negative impact on online participation during lockdown. participant 1 confirms this by saying: prof, maybe that one let me first explain that before covid-19 before we were evicted on campus, moodle was there but students were not active on it. it was not used as it was expected now. students will face challenges in adhering to e-learning. within a short timeframe, academics had to rework and adapt the curriculum for remote or online delivery using materials that had originally been prepared for face-to-face teaching and learning. the findings indicate that challenges were experienced with the creation of appropriate e-learning curriculum content by academics. participant 8 had the following to say: about the content i think as we all know that on moodle, they usually post notes that are being shortened, meaning that they are being summarised. which leads us to a point that there is some information that is not included there which we can find in books… online learning requires lecturers to engage regularly with the students and to promote interaction and collaborative learning among the students themselves. the findings reveal that there was limited interaction online during this period. numerous participants confirm this as they commented as follows: thank you very much prof, for the opportunity however, there is zero interaction. what one is saying that when a lecturer tends to post, they post the slides on moodle followed by the activity. and then on moodle there is something that has been designed for you to leave a comment, but it is not used (participant 6). yes, prof, i think there is no interaction at all. simply because this thing is more like “do as i say” because we are not given the opportunity to ask questions as our participants have mentioned earlier on (participant 8). now you see prof, when you going to give me work that i must do without you explaining – whether that work i am in encoding in the manner that you would have explained it and in the manner that it is supposed to be encoded – that one is not being monitored (participant 9). participant 9 was also unhappy with the teaching strategies adopted by the lecturers, which did not include interaction with the students. he had the following to say: prof, i want to comment on the strategies, the first bad strategy it’s not to use the discussions platform on moodle. there is a platform where a lecturer can interact with http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.4 372021 39(3): 37-43 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.4 maphalala, khumalo & khumalo student teachers’ experiences students on moodle but none of my lecturers are using that platform. and then number 2 when giving task without any examples or samples it’s a bad strategy for me because the students as they are at home, they are not quite clear what is expected from them. as an alternative to communicate with the lecturers, whatsapp has been adopted: yes, prof, in terms of interacting with the lecturers some have created whatsapp groups and invited students. but we note that it’s not all students who can be accommodated in that. but we have tried such means to communicate with our lecturers with the content and also to get further explanations of what is expected of us to do as students (participant 1). academics who develop online courses must be appropriately qualified and supported professionally. they need to know how to prepare an engaging online pedagogical experience and how to best support the online learning process. participant 1 thought that academics are not proficient in the use of moodle (the lms). she had this to say: some of the lecturers are not proficient prof, i once informed you about it that there was a quiz of which we were expected to do but it only reflected only the options without the content of what we are choosing on. participant 6 confirmed that the use of moodle needs to improve through the provision of technical support. he had the following to say: on the issue of proficiency, the e-learning is not friendly so i doubt it will ever, we will ever master that thing. participant 9 agreed that online support is necessary to enhance learning: regarding support that we have been given so far from my side there is no support that i’ve got towards helping with the online learning. and then my expectations are that we must be – as the minister once said, we must be given data. and then number 2 the moodle itself needs to be upgraded as we have indicated. and then there is it department, that is giving us some difficult time. i have tried to call them a number of times regarding the issue of moodle is not logging in – some of the students it’s just write error… participants were of the view that academics need training too. it is therefore essential to address the rapidly changing skill requirements for a world increasingly shaped by icts. participant 6 made the following comment: i have encountered 2 problems if i’m not mistaken when you’ve asked the one lecturer to post the work on moodle she said “oh, the other lecturer is not here and i can’t do it. it’s usually done by him.” so, i picked that one there. number 2, when the lecturer enters the lecture hall another problem that we have with lecturers they just can’t connect the projectors. 5.4 assessment conducting assessment through online tools has been difficult for students. the findings reveal that the quality and integrity of assessments have been somewhat compromised. this aspect is critical to avoid compromising the quality of graduates of university programmes. participant 6 pointed out that online assessment during lockdown had not encouraged students to demonstrate learning in terms of bloom’s taxonomy to assess varied knowledge, skills and abilities. he had this to say: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.4 382021 39(3): 38-43 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.4 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) with regard to assessment – it is being said that each and every paper that is being structured it has to contain create, evaluate, analyse, apply, understand and remember. you really testing all the components of a learner whether how much he understands, how is he or she able to apply and does she understand and is able to remember. can she evaluate? now when you go to online here is a quiz, you have to click true or false. or whether you have to click the answers that are being provided for you whether it’s a, b or c. in that case prof some things are being left out. like evaluate, creating, add; we can’t. now the question will be what types of student will be produced as the faculty of education. participant 9 noted the lack of rubrics with online assessment that they need to use to reflect, analyse and improve their own work. he had the following to say: prof, in assessment during this period i’m not sure whether it’s a new way of doing things or what, but it seems as if we no longer have rubrics. there’s no rubrics that we have been given so far. the last time i saw a rubric i was on varsity premises but with this online learning so far there’s no rubric. they really help us to assess ourselves, to understand what is expected from us. we can do the self-assessment and peer assessment through rubrics. participant 8 lamented the lack of guidelines for assessment activities: i think any assignment or assessment activity given to students must be accompanied by the guidelines. for instance, i think each assignment should come with a video or an audio of the lecturer explaining what is exactly expected. i think that one can work for us but now assessments are just meaningless without these guidelines. students are of the view that as a result of the problems brought on by covid-19 they preferred continuous assessment as a method of assessment and they believe that assessment can be validated through turnitin to maintain ethics in assessment activities. participant 1 commented: i think it will be okay if we are graded on continuous assessment. i think prof. when it comes to the accumulation of a final mark it will be better if we count all the activities that have been done by the students. participant 6 had this to say about ensuring ethics and in support of participant 1 on the administering of continuous assessment during online learning: i want to concur with participant 1 because we have something called turnitin. under no circumstances or it is very rare i can submit an assignment which is identical to that of participant number 1 because we have to run it through turnitin. so, for our safety the continuous assessment it’s much better for us. 5.5 unfavourable home learning environments universities need to be aware of unfavourable living conditions that can make learning from home difficult in terms of providing the necessary support or alternatives for these students. the findings reveal that the support that students would normally receive on campus is no longer available when they are at home and overcrowded households create an environment that is not conducive to learning. this is especially applicable if students are living in economically poor environments. participant 4 had the following to say about family conditions: yes, the kind of support that we require that we might be thankful as the students is for those students who are living in an unfriendly environment whereby you find maybe five http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.4 392021 39(3): 39-43 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.4 maphalala, khumalo & khumalo student teachers’ experiences members of the family living under one roof. for those students it is very hard to study to do their work. 6. discussion the covid-19 pandemic has forced universities around the world to migrate from face-toface to online teaching and learning environments. online learning unites two main areas, learning and technology (aparicio, bacao & olivera, 2016). learning is a cognitive process for achieving knowledge and technology is an enabler of the learning process, meaning technology is used like any other tool in education. e-learning has become the main teaching and learning modality since the closure of south african universities in march 2020. this posed challenges that demanded significant adaptation, preparation, support and engagement. among the issues that universities had to deal with were the digital divide; constrained pedagogical approaches; inadequate proficiency in the use of the lms; the quality and integrity of assessment being somewhat compromised and unfavourable living conditions that make learning from home difficult. to examine the reception of technology-mediated instruction during the pandemic, the technology acceptance model (tam) was used. tam is a commonly used model for examining a subject’s attitude and adoption behaviour, especially in university settings (venkatesh & davis, 2000; pituch & lee, 2006; al-azawei et al., 2017). the model helps us to examine the acceptance of technology-mediated teaching, especially in terms of its perceived use and ease of use by students, for the purposes of this research. according to tam, two fundamental factors, namely perceived ease of use and perceived utility, are primary causes of person attitude toward technology-powered products/services, which ultimately leads to behavioural purpose (davis, 1989). perceived ease of use refers to people’s subjective likelihood of believing that using a specific technology will improve their work performance, while perceived utility refers to people’s subjective likelihood of believing that using a specific technology will improve their work performance (kim, kim & han, 2021). the digital divide continues to exclude many students from meaningfully participating in online learning, especially under covid-19 conditions. the covid-19 crisis has laid bare the inequalities in education systems. among the major problems highlighted were access to internet networks and data costs. moore, vitale and stawinoga (2018) observe that the digital divide, which they describe as the gap between people who have sufficient knowledge of and access to technology and those who do not, can perpetuate and even worsen socio-economic and other disparities for already underserved groups if it is not arrested. the higher education system in south africa is still hamstrung by historical inequalities dating back to apartheid and most of the students come from disadvantaged communities. the provision of gadgets (smartphones, tables, laptops) and affordable data will go a long way in bridging the digital divide. the government, universities and the private sector have started working together to provide access to a number of zero-rated online content. this would greatly benefit students from disadvantaged backgrounds. the findings reveal that academics could not master the online teaching and learning pedagogy, being forced to shift their entire pedagogical approach to respond to the new conditions imposed by the pandemic and adapt to the changing situations. furthermore, academics did not adequately engage with students and maintain contact throughout their studies. the findings reveal that academics resorted to depositing learning materials on the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.4 402021 39(3): 40-43 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.4 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) lms without any engagement or fostering of student-to-student contact, which constrained the learning on the part of the students. rapanta et al. (2020) concur that the covid-19 emergency situation demanded that teachers become designers and tutors overnight, using tools that few have fluently mastered. when it comes to online teaching strategies, kebritchi, lipschuetz and santiague (2017) argue that the content for online learning should include collaborative activities that have corresponding rubrics detailing criteria for interaction and engagement. they further argue that interaction between the instructor and the students play a major role in the success of online learning. interaction among the students as well should not be underplayed as it promotes cooperative learning. the findings reveal that despite the institution having innovative technologies and lmss, for teaching and assessment, students had not been adequately exposed to these valuable tools to deliver courses remotely. before covid-19 students had not been encouraged to use the lms, which impacted negatively on online participation during lockdown. academics themselves did not have adequate proficiency in the use the lms, which was evident in the challenges they encountered with the creation of appropriate e-learning curriculum content. alenezi (2020) argues that lmss have been adopted in many learning institutions because of their functionalities and applications to improve pedagogy. the findings of his study revealed that the main barriers to the use of lmss were inadequate technical support by the universities, negative attitudes toward technology and inadequate training on the lms platforms. the findings also reveal that unfavourable living conditions, particularly in rural communities, and overcrowded households create an environment that is not conducive for learning. the quality and integrity of online assessment has been questioned during lockdown. the participants found online assessment during lockdown do not require students to demonstrate learning in terms of bloom’s taxonomy to assess varied knowledge, skills and abilities. 7. conclusion the digital divide continues to exclude many students and was regarded as one of the challenges south african universities had to grapple with as universities migrated to online at the start of the covid-19 crisis. universities in south africa were urged by the department of higher education minister not to leave a single student behind, but a lack of devices and data stood in the way of this goal being met uniformly across all institutions. among the key issues that universities had to deal with in this study were the digital divide; constrained pedagogical approaches; inadequate proficiency in the use of the lms; the quality and integrity of assessment being somewhat compromised and unfavourable living conditions that make learning from home difficult. to contend with the complexities of online education, developing multimodal methods to meet course material goals for improved learning outcomes could be a better idea. government, universities and the private sector must 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increasingly, teacher clusters are being used as a substitute for the more traditional approaches to the professional development of teachers. with this goal in mind, many provincial education departments in south africa have sought to institutionalise and encourage the formation of teacher clusters as vehicles for the continuing professional development of teachers. what are the challenges of this institutionalisation and to what extent has it served teachers in their quest to learn from and with each other in clusters? in this article, we use a qualitative case study approach to examine the dilemmas of the institutionalisation of teacher clusters in the mpumalanga province of south africa. using mostly interview data with all the key central office administrators responsible for science and mathematics in the province, and a sample of the participating cluster (teacher) leaders and observations of their cluster activities, we discuss how the institutionalisation processes may have led to rather undesirable outcomes. we examine the way in which institutionalisation may have resulted in a reduction of the “opportunities to learn” for the participating teachers. we argue that, while the intentions of the policymakers to provide support and recognition for the teacher clusters were noble and progressive, the consequences of their intervention were somewhat negative and tended to bureaucratise clusters, thereby alienating teachers from these traditionally bottomup structures of professional development. we conclude the article by exploring what the possibilities are for teachers reclaiming the spaces created by the teacher cluster “movement” in south africa. keywords: teacher clusters; teacher networks; professional development; collaboration; south africa introduction many countries, including south africa, have in recent times taken steps to change their school curricula to incorporate new subjects, new perspectives and new ways of learning and assessing the content. in some of these countries, the professional development of teachers has also accompanied these new initiatives in curriculum development and learning. these professional development initiatives are based on the view that, for teachers to teach the new curriculum material differently, to incorporate the new perspectives, and to cater for diverse learners in increasingly multicultural contexts, the teachers themselves have a great deal of learning to do (borko, 2004; spillane 2001; cohen 1990). what is not clear, however, is how such learning can be constructed and organised through professional development programmes that respond adequately to the teachers’ diverse needs and challenges. that is, what kinds of professional development programmes would best meet the diverse needs of the teachers in the various subjects? this question is made even more complex by the fact that there is not a consensus, in the literature, about the meaning of professional development and its relation to teacher learning (fraser, kennedy, reid & mckinney, 2007; evans, 2002). how then do we begin to orchestrate programmes for teachers to learn and develop from when there is no clarity on the very meaning of the concept “professional development”? while not attempting to be definitive in our view of teacher professional development, in this study we are informed by evans’s conception of teacher professional development as a process that involves the improvement of teachers on at least two fronts, namely the “attitudinal and functional dimensions” (evans, 2002). using that conception, therefore, it is possible to argue that the recent investments in teacher 2 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 professional development have not delivered adequately in terms of influencing the teachers’ “motivation and intellectual engagement” with their work nor have they significantly changed their “procedures and the what and/or how much they produce or do at work” (evans, 2002:131). these are some of the most critical elements and dimensions that teacher professional development seeks to influence. although this is particularly the case in south africa (jansen, 2001; jita, 2004; kahn, 1995), the situation is not entirely hopeless. some of the most promising approaches to the professional development of teachers have been those that seek to target teachers within the multiple contexts of their schools and classrooms; in other words, the school-based professional development programmes for teachers. teacher clusters are one such recent experiment designed to bring teacher professional development closer to the classroom. other researchers and scholars refer to the teacher clusters as “teacher communities of learning” or “teacher networks” (lieberman & grolnick, 1996; lieberman & mclaughlin, 1992; adams, 2000). although the teacher cluster or network approach has gained popularity in countries such as the united states of america (usa) and the united kingdom (uk), research on its efficacy in changing teachers’ perspectives and practices is not conclusive. in fact, lieberman and grolnick (1996) contend that little is known about how such networks are formed, what they focus on, and how they develop teachers. although we now know a little more about the different kinds of networks that exist and their work in the various subject areas, in developing countries, the topic of teacher clusters as potential sites for professional development is not a well-researched topic. in their discussion on teacher clusters, jita and ndlalane (2009) explore the “opportunities to learn” that teacher clusters in south africa presented to science and mathematics teachers. the authors examine some of the modalities whereby clusters help teachers to challenge and change their professional knowledge and practices. they conclude that it is not only the existence of the structure – the cluster – that is important, but also the content (or agenda) and quality of the interactions within the cluster. this article examines one “sphere of action” where professional development of teachers in south africa takes place (fraser et al., 2007).1 we seek to take the discussion on clusters one step further, by exploring the structural conditions and overall context required for effective professional development through clusters. our premise is that, if clusters are so important to the agenda of teachers’ professional development in south africa, we need to problematise and examine carefully the kinds of structures and conditions that are required for their effective functioning. this article presents findings from a study on the institutionalisation of science and mathematics teacher clusters in the mpumalanga province.2 we provide a critique of the various processes (and outcomes) whereby the province sought to integrate teacher clusters into its systems and structures for teacher professional development. we argue that the drive to institutionalise and give recognition to the teacher-led initiative of teacher clusters has counterproductive consequences and tends to constrain the agenda and the interactions of teachers in the clusters. the purpose of the study using a japanese international cooperation agency (jica)-funded research and development project in the mpumalanga province as our context for investigation, we set about exploring the efficacy of teacher clusters or networks in helping to challenge and change science teachers’ knowledge and classroom practices. we were primarily interested in understanding the diversity of perspectives regarding the institutionalisation of teacher clusters as a preferred form of professional development for science and mathematics teachers within the province. we also examined the reported practices within these clusters across the province to understand what it is they do, and how they do it. in this article, we explore the perspectives of some key role players, including teachers and policymakers, and the processes and consequences of the institutionalisation of clusters. we then argue that the institutionalisation of teacher clusters for professional development in south africa has been characterised by a largely bureaucratic and controlling discourse that may, in fact, serve to undermine the very noble purpose of establishing the clusters as sites for teacher-centred and teacher-directed opportunities for professional learning and development. 3jita & mokhele — institutionalising teacher cluster in south africa literature and conceptual framework numerous studies have already established that many of the approaches used to develop teachers have shown minimal results in influencing and changing the teachers’ classroom practice (cuban, 1993; jansen, 1999; fullan, 2001; gottesman, 2002). many such professional development sessions are characterised by a gap between the content knowledge that the experts offer, and the knowledge and experience that the teachers bring to the workshops. in order to begin to see possibilities beyond such traditional approaches to teacher development, it became important to identify and investigate those situations where south african teachers come together to form communities of learners (southwood, 2002). clusters have in the past few years been regarded as one promising approach to teacher development (lieberman & grolnick, 1996; adams, 2000; southwood, 2002). little research on clusters has, however, been done in africa and other developing countries. for lieberman and grolnick (1988), the most common characteristics of networks or clusters are that teachers can share content knowledge, to reflect together on their teaching experiences, to give feedback and to promote collaboration and negotiation among themselves. the focus on collaboration and the sharing of knowledge and experiences among peers constitute the core pillars of a successful teacher clustering process. prawat (1992) uses the term “negotiation” to describe this social interaction, because it involves learning and unlearning new information from equals through meaningful social interaction. it is this sense of community and collective wisdom of the teachers that secada and adajan (1997) highlight in their description of clusters as a “form of professional community that provides a context within which members can come together and understand their practices”. teacher clusters, therefore, constitute one visible example of teacher collaboration and collegiality. to analyse and understand the structure and functioning of teacher clusters in the south african context, we drew to a large extent on the classical work of andy hargreaves on collegiality. while, internationally, a great deal of research on collegiality has focused on implementation issues such as the availability of time for sharing and collaboration, and the relation of this sharing and collaboration to the desired outcomes of building collegiality among teachers, hargreaves’ earlier work was instrumental in focusing attention on the micropolitics of collegiality. in using the micro-political perspective, the focus shifts from merely examining the outcomes of teacher clustering to an analysis of the clustering processes and perspectives. questions about the meaning of collegiality for the participants become important. in addition, questions such as who guides and controls teacher collegiality, and other issues of power, status and resource allocation for teacher clustering become critical within the micro-political framework. in his analytical work on the micro-politics of teacher collegiality, hargreaves (1991) developed the important concept of “contrived collegiality” to underscore the intricacies and nuances involved in the various teacher collegiality projects. for hargreaves and dawe, a truly collaborative culture differs from contrived collegiality in that the former involves evolutionary relationships characterised by openness, trust and support among the participating teachers, while the latter is distinguished by administrative control of the teacher interactions, where teachers meet to work on curriculum implementation targets set by their superiors (hargreaves & dawe, 1990). a number of other scholars have used this framework of contrived collegiality to further illuminate the perspectives, processes and outcomes of various teacher collaboration initiatives in many developed countries (blase, 1991; leithwood, jantzi & steinbach, 1999). the emergent consensus from that literature identifies five key features that define “contrived collegiality”. contrived collegiality is first and foremost characterised by administrative regulation of the teacher collaborations, where district or other officials of the education departments provide instructions and set the agenda and goals of such teacher collaborations. secondly, such collaborations are characterised by coercion and compulsion, where teachers are forced in one way or the other to attend the collaborative meetings. thirdly, in contrived collegiality, the focus is on teachers addressing the implementation issues of newly introduced changes to the curriculum, even if this is done at the expense of other agenda items they might have. fourthly, contrived collegiality is predictable, to avoid any surprises for the officials that supervise such collaborations. closely related to the issue of predictability is the fact that, when teacher 4 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 collaboration is closely monitored and supervised from the top, there is also an expectation regarding a fixed location and space in which they have to take place. teacher clusters constitute one such visible example of a teacher collaboration and collegiality initiative. although teachers have formed subject groupings of sorts in the past, the teacher cluster initiatives are mostly a post-apartheid (or post-1994) phenomenon in south africa. the approach is therefore fairly new in the country and research on its successes and failures still limited. our article seeks to contribute in closing this gap by reporting on one particular investigation of the structure and functioning of teacher clusters in the south african context. we use the micro-political perspective, as discussed earlier, to explore the dynamics of teacher clustering. methodology data for this article comes from a larger set of data that was collected over a four-year period of the second implementation of the mpumalanga secondary science initiative (mssi), 2003-2007. the larger data set was generated by using a mix of qualitative and quantitative research approaches to investigate the perspectives of teachers and policymakers on teacher clusters as sites for teachers’ professional development, to explore the practices prevalent in the institutionalised clusters, and to understand the possible consequences and outcomes of such institutionalisation of teacher clusters. appropriate permission was sought from the mpumalanga department of education, who were partners in the mssi intervention project. we also requested informed consent, verbally and in writing, from all the participating teachers in the study. only researchers on the project, as distinct from the other project partners (the mde and jica) had access to the research data. this article draws largely on the qualitative phases of the research, in particular the interviews. we chose qualitative methods, because the techniques provided us with opportunities to do a verbal descriptive analysis and interpret the phenomenon of clustering (denzin & lincoln, 1994). in order to obtain in-depth knowledge and information about the operations of the clusters in practice, we also participated in and observed a sample of 15 case studies of teacher clusters and had the opportunity to interview the leaders of these clusters. the case studies revealed a number of common features of key issues in the practice of clustering. for the larger data set, we then surveyed all the appointed cluster leaders for science and mathematics in the province (n= 120) on some of the emerging issues regarding the structure, function and outcomes of teacher clustering in order to understand the patterns within the population of these cluster leaders. given that the research was conducted between 2003 and 2007, these innovative approaches to teacher clusters in the mpumalanga province were almost exclusively targeted at the science and mathematics teachers. this was partly because of the perceived urgency of intervention into these subjects in south africa, where the majority of teachers are ill-qualified or underqualified to teach science and mathematics, especially at the senior high-school levels (kahn, 1995; taylor & vinjevold, 1999). findings and discussion we now turn to a discussion of some of the key findings from the four-year study of the institutionalisation of teacher clusters in south africa. we focus specifically on three major findings regarding the existing perspectives about teacher clusters, the operations of the clusters, and the consequences of the science and mathematics teacher clusters in the mpumalanga province. first, we explore the dichotomy that exists between the perspectives of the central office administrators in the province and those of the participating teachers. secondly, and following from these primary findings, we discuss the contradictions and dilemmas in the focus, operations and success of the different clusters across the province. we illustrate specifically how it is that a majority of the clusters in the province found it difficult to construct an agenda regarding professional development and teacher learning, and were pre-occupied with mandated administrative functions and roles. finally, we highlight briefly an emerging trend that is partly fuelled by the apparent misdirected focus and bureaucratic control of the teacher clusters, namely a movement away from the formal clusters to what we have identified as the “alternative clusters”. although the latter phenomenon was still small and emergent at the time, we felt 5jita & mokhele — institutionalising teacher cluster in south africa it necessary to draw attention to it as an example of the possible consequences of an institutionalisation process “gone wrong” in that province and elsewhere. our interview data was generated both from conversations with all the key provincial office managers (n=10) working in science and mathematics at the time, and from another set of interviews with a limited sample representing all the teacher cluster leaders from one region of mpumalanga (n=15). on the basis of this data, we analysed the dichotomy of perspectives: where the managers tended to view the clusters as one useful additional structure to the bureaucratic channels from head office to the schools and, in contrast, where the teacher cluster leaders expected the clusters to serve as important vehicles for teachers’ professional development and learning. the administrative or structural view of a cluster among the major role players we interviewed, two distinct views emerged on the conception of what a cluster is. on the one hand, a cluster meant “a number of schools that are situated within a specific radius that can work together as a group”. that is, a grouping of neighbouring schools constituted a cluster. on the other hand, a cluster referred to “a group of teachers” who work together on some specific subject matter issues. among the senior education administrators in the province, the dominant view was that of a “group of schools” which can be brought together for some kind of collaboration. the conception of clusters as “groups of schools” coming together, or what we label “the structural view”, appears to make the most sense administratively, because of its potential to simplify administration and communication from the central office to the schools. whenever administrative decisions and instruction had to be communicated to a group of schools within an area, one school would be selected and assigned the responsibility to relay the message to the other schools in the vicinity. in this structural view, a cluster merely became one of the administrative organs of the department of education that could help to simplify the management of schools, in particular the remote and hard-to-reach schools. the structural view of clusters is exemplified in the following response from one senior (provincial) central office manager: but a cluster approach would mean that we have a cluster leader and teachers will be coming together to be trained by the cluster leader. but we are saying the training would not come from the cluster leader only. that very interaction between teachers is another intensive training that each teacher will gain from the interactions among themselves. and then we get a sort of a forum where we can channel resources through the clusters in the form of (teachers’) guides and whatever material. and the curriculum implementers (or subject advisors) also if they have the schedule of the cluster meetings they can plan such that in each term they are present. one could say in each term each of the cluster leaders would have had a curriculum implementer in their meeting for other information which the cluster might not have, but the curriculum implementer might have. in a nutshell, each teacher would get more in-depth training through clusters than when we rely to the hod at the school to be the only point of contact with the teacher. this quotation from the central office manager clearly reveals that he seems to appreciate and value the role of clusters in providing spaces for teachers to collaborate and learn from one another. however, his view of clusters does not end there. he goes further and begins to appropriate their role and articulates it in terms of the managerial purposes in exchange for providing the required resources. for example, the references to the roles of the curriculum implementers and the cluster leaders in guiding or directing the agenda of the teacher clusters towards what is required during the implementation of the new curriculum are very obvious. the apparent contradictions in terms of the role of clusters in teacher development versus the bureaucratic imperatives are not surprising, given that the goal of central office in this case had been to find ways of institutionalising what they had also found to be a useful and grassroots vehicle for teacher development. in that sense, therefore, their intentions on institutionalisation had been well meaning. in pursuit of the institutionalisation project, central office developed a set of guidelines in what became the “clusters framework document”. the document set out a number of conditions and guidelines for the formation of the clusters in the province. some of the guidelines in the document included the 6 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 requirement that the schools in a cluster had to be within a 10 km radius from one another, within the same administrative unit called the school circuit, and had to include only teachers working within the same level of education, be it primary, secondary and/or high school. an illustration of how the structural view had managed to find its way further down the management units of the provincial education bureaucracy was when a senior official at the district level argued in one of the cluster workshops that “clusters are a way of reaching all schools in a better way than to go to each individual school”. the district official further argued that the clusters helped to “create uniformity amongst schools”, since it was difficult for them (as officials) to reach all the schools in the province when relaying instructions and ensuring that processes were followed uniformly as required by their policies. by the third year of the intervention project, there were 52 clusters in the mpumalanga province; this corresponded with the 52 administrative circuits that existed (an administrative circuit being the lowest administrative office within the provincial departmental structure). each cluster (of schools) was further subdivided by subject area, such as the natural sciences, mathematics, etc. as provided for by the guidelines in the framework document, each cluster had to be approved and registered officially by the local office of the department of education (i.e. the circuit office). the framework document further specified, among other things, the terms of office of the cluster leaders, the number of reports that each cluster had to submit per school term, the procedures of meetings, the approval of meetings, and the need for invitations to be issued by the subject advisors and the circuit managers before being circulated to the teachers in the cluster. clearly, the guidelines had managed not only to institutionalise the clusters by providing them with an official stamp of approval, but had also created a fairly elaborate bureaucracy around their operation. teachers and cluster leaders could no longer call meetings based on their own felt needs and convenience at the time, but had to negotiate with the circuit management and/or their subject advisors for approval. as we participated in the cluster meetings and interviewed the leaders about their election, we observed another component of bureaucratisation-cum-institutionalisation in the procedures set out for electing cluster leaders. the cluster leaders, who were themselves classroom teachers, were mostly nominated and/or recommended by the subject advisor, although they still had to be elected by the members of the cluster, with the subject advisor acting as the electoral officer whenever elections were necessary. again, we noticed the apparent contradictions in providing for cluster leaders to be elected by the teachers in their clusters while also predetermining somewhat who could be in the pool of nominated possible leaders. on the one hand, the provincial bureaucracy recognised the need for cluster leaders to be elected by the teachers in this grassroots movement, but somehow could not fathom the possibility of any teacher being nominated. senior administrators advanced the rationale that the leaders of the clusters needed to be the “best teachers” who could be exemplary. again, the structural view is evident in that rationale which seems to view the cluster leader as an appendage of the circuit or district management team. the structural rationale, therefore, misses a key point about the form and function of clusters, namely that clusters, as a form of grassroots initiative of the teachers, were about sharing where everyone brought something and also took away something from the cluster rather than the leaders being the focal point. in terms of the guidelines, the cluster leaders had a term of office of one school year, which could be extended for another year. structurally, therefore, the cluster leaders then became the most important role players in these official teacher clusters. they attended the training, received the study guides to be distributed to the teachers, communicated the messages from the head office and other officials and, most importantly, began to receive some modest payment (in addition to their normal salaries) when they performed moderation of assessment duties in their clusters. it was not surprising, therefore, to find that the official clusters in the province revolved to a large extent around assessment and moderation activities and very little else to foster the teachers’ professional development. these were the paying activities, so to speak! it became clear that the exigencies of the new curriculum implementation and the concerns with end-of-year assessments had now overshadowed the need for professional development on the substantive content issues. attention to these policy issues was reinforced by the payment of some of the cluster leaders for work done on continuous assessment (cass) during their cluster meetings. the monetary 7jita & mokhele — institutionalising teacher cluster in south africa value attached to doing cass during these meetings led to cluster leaders equating the cluster meetings with the continuous assessment (cass) policy of the department. as one teacher put it: very little content knowledge is discussed at the department’s cluster meetings. it is all about obe or cass moderation. (however) we need content knowledge in order to improve our classrooms. at the time, outcomes-based education (obe) and the use of continuous assessment (cass) approaches were the official policies of the department of education (doe) in south africa. in the conversation cited above, the teacher thus refers to the fact that all the discussions at the official cluster meetings deal with government policy issues, rather than with the substance of their teaching practice. as mentioned earlier, while the intentions of provincial officials were noble in terms of trying to find ways of supporting the teacher clusters movement, their institutionalisation, as illustrated in the foregoing discussion of the structural view, had clearly railroaded them away from their founding purpose. a collaborative view of a cluster for the teachers in the project, however, the cluster concept came in handy as a vehicle for collaboration and sharing. many of the teachers, who found the implementation of the newly introduced curriculum in the country difficult, viewed the clusters as an opportunity to solicit and receive assistance from their colleagues. this was especially important for those teachers who worked in remote schools which rarely received any formal visits and/or assistance from the subject advisors and other officials of the department. when we asked the teachers for their views on clusters, they highlighted the importance of support from their colleagues, and the fact that collaborations needed to be based on need, rather than be dictated to by administrative conveniences. a cluster (teacher) leader states his view regarding collaboration: a cluster i can say is a group of people based on educators that you know well that meet together to share ideas and try to support one another, so that they can perform better individually in their classrooms. the importance of classroom improvement as an outcome of the cluster collaborations is clearly not lost to this participating cluster teacher. the mpumalanga cluster intervention project was intended, among other things, to improve the quality of science and mathematics in all the secondary (and later primary) schools of the province. the intervention to improve quality took place at different levels, namely at the level of the cluster leader workshops, the subject advisors’ workshops and in the actual schools and classrooms. all these interventions focused primarily on improving the participants’ content and pedagogical content knowledge. to confirm our interview data with the selected cluster teachers, we also administered a questionnaire with the 120 science and mathematics cluster leaders who had attended all the workshops in year two of the project, to get an indication of the functioning and emphasis of their clusters and thereby an indication of how the professional development needs of the teachers were being met through these structures. we found very few instances of teachers sharing with each other on issues of content and its teaching. in fact, in all the 15 observation cases, we observed that the clusters started the process of sharing during their first monthly meeting (and perhaps once or twice thereafter), but could not sustain the sharing in subsequent meetings because of the exigencies of the policy agenda given to them by the curriculum implementers. this switch to the policy agenda by the clusters begins to make sense once interpreted within the context of the administrative view expressed by the central office administrators. it was not a random change of agenda by the clusters participants, but part of the contestation on the meaning and role of teacher clusters within the major stakeholders in education in mpumalanga. there was yet another way in which the teachers’ view of clusters differed from that of the central office administrators. these two major stakeholders also differed in terms of how they understood the constitution or formation of the clusters, who should participate in what cluster(s), and on the freedom to associate and/or disassociate within the clusters. the following commentary by one of the cluster teacher leaders illustrates the differences of opinions between the major role players with respect to the membership or constitution of a cluster and the freedom to associate or disassociate: 8 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 i prefer to choose schools and teachers to work with, because of their competence and the good results they always get in grade 12. but the department has already selected a cluster for us. i am not comfortable to work with some teachers and other schools around. this quotation illustrates the pattern of responses we obtained from the cluster leaders about their experiences of the clustering processes. in summary, therefore, our data suggests that there were two somewhat contesting views on the form and function of clusters, and that these views run parallel within the mpumalanga teacher development project. these somewhat contradictory views of the major role players in the clustering processes in mpumalanga resulted in a set of conditions that were less than ideal for teacher collaboration and development, thereby weakening the consequences and the possibilities for teacher development that the clusters could have provided. alternative clusters almost by accident, as we continued to interview the cluster leaders about their activities and participation in what had now become the official clusters for science and mathematics teachers in the province, we discovered that other kinds of clusters in the province were operating outside the official structures, so to speak. we also uncovered the fact that these clusters had been operating long before the official clusters were formed. their formation had for the most part been driven by the needs of the participating teachers and intermittent support, often from higher education institutions (heis) and/or non-governmental organisations (ngos). unlike the official clusters, these alternative clusters focused on the need to improve the teaching of science and mathematics by sharing and working collaboratively as a team with members from various schools. participation in the alternative clusters was voluntary and the clusters were self-directed and selfregulating. in the one example of the alternative clusters that we studied intensively, we uncovered two types of activities in these clusters: first, the teachers would identify problem areas in their subjects and then arrange to meet in order to collaboratively plan and discuss ways of teaching the identified topics. the teachers would then bring in their learners on a saturday for actual collaborative teaching of the identified topics by the different teachers. the collaborative teaching experiences and the collective reflection of the teachers supported and enriched each one of them in terms of their own classroom practices. the arrangement provided for the learners from the participating schools to attend the cluster lessons once every month. after the day’s series of lessons, the teachers in the cluster would meet and reflect on each of the lessons, with different teachers who were assigned as observers taking the lead in raising issues for discussion. one member of the alternative cluster described her experiences and reasons for engaging in this cluster as follows: because we want to support each other … but if we are told by somebody senior to come on a saturday we will not come. we support each other on content and how we teach this or that … and ‘this is what i have done in my class’ .the kids will experience the real experiences from different teachers (who teach them collaboratively). when they meet on monday at their various schools they will be talking about those teachers … hey … they were good. this quote from one of the participating teachers clearly reveals the subject and classroom focus and its improvement, together with the collaborative processes of engagement in the alternative cluster. in the alternative cluster, a cluster leader, who is elected by the participating teachers, chairs the reflection session after the teaching, and keeps the minutes and the attendance register of all meetings. the ownership lies with the teachers and the principals of the schools participating in the alternative cluster. the schools supply the photocopying paper and other consumables for the workshops and cluster teaching sessions. unlike the official clusters, more than two circuits could participate in these clusters, and teachers across grade levels were engaged in one cluster. many of these clusters had sustained themselves through their existing networks with professional teacher organisations and the institutions of higher education with which they were connected. 9jita & mokhele — institutionalising teacher cluster in south africa in general, the collective criticism of the official clusters led many of the teachers to make a decision to engage in the alternative, voluntary clusters. since their participation in the alternative clusters was not mandatory, the teachers were happy to sacrifice their time to attend the meetings of both the official clusters (which had by now become mandatory) and their chosen alternative clusters. as one of the teachers put it, “we are to continue as before even if we have to attend meetings every weekend”. another participating teacher affirmed this commitment to, and utility of, the alternative cluster: i am new in this school. i joined them this year. i have never taught grade 12, so from the help of this small group i have learnt so much. i can come to a cluster leader anytime and he can help us. i was not very clear with newton’s laws, i am now confident about it. we have no support from the department whatever, whatever …. but as educators we are volunteering to work during our free time. while the teachers continue to participate in the mandatory and officially recognised teacher clusters of the province, some have begun to invest time and energy – at their own initiative – in alternative clusters that are self-directed, and to focus on the core issues of teacher development and classroom improvement. it is this shift away from an officially sanctioned and supported clustering initiative, supposedly to encourage teacher collegiality and learning, which should be of concern to policymakers and researchers alike. the question to ponder is: if the intention was to legitimise and provide resources for the original grassroots initiative of teacher clustering, then what went wrong? why is it that what was once a grassroots movement has now been so bureaucratised as to repel the very people it is intended to assist? part of the answer to these questions may arise as we revisit and study carefully the emergent alternative clusters movement. in a follow-up study, we conduct a more elaborate investigation of the alternative clusters in order to develop insights about how better to institutionalise and support teacher clusters in south africa and elsewhere. conclusion it is clear that the systematic takeover and creation of conditions for contrived collegiality did not emerge because departmental officials had malicious intentions of constraining or even taking over the teacher clusters. on the contrary, they had every good intention to support the teachers in their professional development. they were trying to provide teachers with recognition (by rewarding the cluster leaders, for example). they were also trying to give them the necessary space and time to meet and collaborate through the permission granted by the circuit managers. in addition, it would appear that the provincial education office also wanted to provide the necessary physical resources (space), material resources (teaching guides and policy documents), and intellectual resources (heads of department, cluster leaders, and subject advisors) that the teachers would need in their clusters. however, just as hargreaves and other researchers on the micro-politics of collegiality have observed in other cases, the consequences of the institutionalisation in the present case study was that the province effectively took over the clusters and made them another arm of its bureaucracy. although a gratuity was in fact paid to the cluster leaders who focused on the policy agenda (cass moderation), the teachers were restricted in who they could nominate to lead their clusters; their agenda was often circumscribed and limited to curriculum implementation issues coming from the central office; permission to meet could only be granted by the circuit manager if the agenda met his/her approval, and teachers no longer had a choice of whether to attend or not, but were compelled by the circular from (or endorsed by) the circuit manager or curriculum implementer. the result of this unintended takeover was that the teachers did not enjoy participating in the formal clusters. the clusters began to represent officialdom and, where possible, teachers deliberately stayed away from the meetings or simply “dragged their feet” when called on to attend these meetings. gradually, some teachers began to gravitate towards existing alternative clusters or simply formed their own alternative clusters, which were not recognised by departmental officials, who might not even have been aware of their existence. the teachers opted to sacrifice their own time and resources to meet at weekends and during school holidays in their alternative clusters. one of the most critical contributions of the present study lies in its ability to shed light on the complex processes and dilemmas involved in taking what is otherwise a grassroots initiative of teachers to learn 10 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 from each other, and formalising it with the aim of providing recognition and institutionalisation within the structures of government. this article argues that, while the intentions of the policymakers to provide support and recognition for the work of teacher clusters were noble and progressive, the consequences of this intervention were somewhat negative and tended to bureaucratise and alienate teachers from these traditionally bottom-up structures of professional development. in exploring the dilemmas and challenges of the institutionalisation of teacher clusters, we have identified the need for officials to be measured and cautious when seeking to recognise these grassroots structures of teacher development. this article also uncovered the low-key, but important and previously unrecognised movement from formal clusters to what we have labelled “alternative clusters”. it would be important to study this alternative clustering process closely, with a view to exploring possibilities for a reconciliation of the formal and the (re) emerging alternative cluster movements in south africa in pursuit of a more robust and inclusive agenda for teacher professional development in the country. strictly speaking, the latter is, however, a separate discussion from the present exploration of institutionalisation. references adams j 2000. taking charge of the curriculum. colombia university, new york: teachers college press. blasé j (ed) 1991. the politics of life in schools. thousand oaks, ca: cornwin press. borko h 2004. professional development and teacher learning: mapping the terrain. educational researcher, 33(8):3-15. cohen dk 1990. a revolution in one classroom: the case of mrs. oublier. educational evaluation and policy analysis, 12(3):311-329. cuban l 1993. how teachers taught: constancy and change in american classrooms 1890-1990. 2nd edn. new york: teachers college press. denzin nk & lincoln ys 1994. handbook of qualitative research. london: sage publications. evans l 2002. what is teacher development? oxford review of education, 28(1):123-137. fraser c, kennedy a, reid l & mckinney s 2007. 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cluster in south africa lieberman a & mclaughlin m 1992. networks for educational change: powerful and problematic. phi delta kappa 73:673-677. lieberman a & miller l 1991. staff development for education in the 90s. new demands, new realities new perspectives. new york: columbia university: educators college press. prawat rs 1992. teachers beliefs about teaching and learning: a constructivist perspectives. new york: falmer press. secada wg & adajian l 1997. mathematics teachers’ change in the context of their professional communities. in bs nelson & e fennema (eds), mathematics teachers in transition. hillsdale, nj: erlbaum, 193-219. southwood s 2002. towards a collaborative approach to teacher development: a journey to negotiation. unpublished doctoral thesis, grahamstown, rhodes university. spillane j 2001. constructing ambitious pedagogy in the fifth grade: the mathematics and the literacy divide. elementary school journal, 100(4):307-330. taylor n & vinjevold p 1999. getting learning right. johannesburg: joint education trust. endnotes 1 we take note that fraser et al. (2002) develop an interesting conceptual scheme that uses three dimensions, namely the domain of influence, the capacity for professional autonomy and transformative practice, and the sphere of action, to evaluate professional development (pd) interventions. the present study has a slightly different focus, however, in that we seek to examine and unpack the institutionalisation processes for one government-selected sphere of action – the teacher clusters or networks. 2 mpumalanga is one of the nine provinces of south africa situated in the eastern corner of the country and bordering mozambique and swaziland. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2013 university of the free state 85 karin murris school of education, university of cape town e-mail: karin.murris@uct.ac.za telephone: 021 650 2835 reading the world, reading the word: why not now, bernard is not a case of suicide, but self-killing karin murris philosophical teaching gives permission to learners to explore the meaning of texts by drawing on their own experiences. by thinking out loud, they construct new meanings of texts. as a result of this oral work, what texts mean shifts in the unique relationship between text and reader and include child’s voice. if educators nurture children’s competencies and abilities in interrogating texts philosophically, their ability to read against texts will not only be strengthened, but the reading experience itself will also be transformative – but neither in the sense that south african educator jonathan jansen suggests, nor as proposed by critical literacy. philosophical teaching assumes a relationship of ‘emptying’, not ‘filling’, and a conscious effort from the teacher to resist the urge to regard education as a formation of childhood. my argument will be supported by a transcript of a dialogue i facilitated with nine-year-olds discussing bernard’s apparent suicide in david mckee’s picturebook not now bernard. keywords: listening, relational pedagogy, epistemic injustice, childism, developmentalism, picturebooks, david mckee, comprehension, early literacy, critical literacy, controversial topics, jonathan jansen talking as thinking out loud child1’s first empirical encounter in life with language is oral. however, this medium of communication is commonly regarded as unimportant for new knowledge construction. spontaneous conversation among peers is usually regarded as mere transgression from the ‘real work’ in classrooms where “speech of friends is forbidden and re-defined as idle chatter” (simms, 2011: 29). in schools, adults are positioned as the interpreters of texts and their role is to mediate between a child’s orality and the abstract language of books. adults’ authoritative speech is to be listened to by learners as a means of accessing what texts “are about” and, as such, a dichotomy has emerged in education “between the world of child’s conversation and the world of formal instruction” (consentino, 1997: 3). classroom language can be perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 86 characterised by its uniformity and its relative indifference to lived contexts (lipman, 1991: 10). by contrast, children’s speech is profoundly social and interpersonal and makes it possible to produce and sustain thinking, or as simms (2011: 23) puts it: “thought urges toward expression in language, and expressive speaking moves thinking forward”. unlike constructivists, phenomenologists hold the view that there are limits to language as a tool for expressing thought, but language is more a case of “the subject’s taking up a position in the world of his or her meaning” (simms, drawing on merleau-ponty, 2011: 23, 24). as famously expressed by paulo freire, our experience of the world is a text that needs to be interpreted; ontologically and epistemologically, the critical reading of the world or reality comes before the reading of the word (kohan & wozniak, 2009: 18). philosophical readings of the world involve questioning our being in the world and our relationship to reality; it is not simply a matter of applying academic philosophical content knowledge. philosophical questioning is not about something “external”, but crucially involves “putting oneself in question while questioning” and, in particular, one’s relationship with knowledge and with thinking itself (kohan & wozniak, 2009: 20, 22). after all, philosophy is the discipline that concerns itself with the human endeavour of ‘thinking about thinking’. reporting on their adult literacy course in brazil, kohan and wozniak describe how philosophy’s principle of problematisation through questioning changed their students’ thinking and being in the world: accustomed to being told what to think and believe by their churches, political figures, bosses at work, teachers at school and others, the process of participating in ‘emptying’ rather than ‘filling’ was at first frustrating for many of the students … participants in our course came to question the relationship they had with knowledge, as something settled that they needed to receive. this kind of relationship had to be unlearned in order to build a new one: a questioning and dialogical relationship with knowledge (kohan & wozniak, 2009: 22; my emphasis). such a philosophical stance towards knowledge cannot be taught using a prescribed method or procedure, and at first some students felt frustrated by “not learning anything” or having teachers that “don’t teach” (kohan & wozniak, 2009: 22). however, the experience of thinking out loud ultimately provoked a transformation in how they started to doubt the way in which they were living their lives and began “to think in new ways and created a new relationship with thinking” (kohan & wozniak, 2009: 22). being allowed to think out loud, using their own rich experiences, and being listened to philosophically were necessary conditions for this transformation. obstacles for listening to child kohan and wozniak’s work with illiterate adults bears many resemblances to young children’s work in literacy. when teaching people who cannot read or write fluently and with confidence, oracy offers unique experiences to explore the meanings of texts by reading their world. spaces are created where claims to knowledge can be expressed, challenged and reconstructed and, as kohan and wozniak claim (2009: murris reading the world, reading the word: why not now, bernard is not a case of suicide but self-killing 87 20), the reader finds his/her own voice in the text. lacking socio-economic status, illiterate people are often not taken seriously as knowledge bearers and their voices are perhaps heard, but not listened to. according to feminist philosopher miranda fricker (2007), in such instances there is a moral wrongdoing to a person in his/her capacity as a knower. she calls this epistemic injustice: hearers’ prejudices, based on criteria such as age, socio-economic status and accent, cause them to miss out on pieces of knowledge offered by a person. moreover, without epistemic trust and epistemic equality, people’s confidence in interpreting their own social experiences gradually diminishes and their self-confidence as knowers erodes. in our encounters with children, conceptions of childhood inform how adults interpret their educational encounters with children (the empirical bodies of a certain age in their classrooms). assumptions about children’s ‘natural’ psychological development through age-related stages still inform much of educational practice (see, for example, burman, 2001, 2008; dahlberg & moss, 2005).2 how social power operates in epistemic interactions also has a direct bearing on the texts we choose for teaching and the room we make as educators to ‘allow’ children to critically explore the meaning of a text on their own terms. texts are never ‘innocent’ in the sense that the norm of what it means to be childlike is firmly embedded in texts written for children. adults’ power in determining which texts are used in class is absolute: children are neither involved in the creation of children’s literature or textbooks, nor in decisions about what should and should not be published, nor in the selection of books for schools, libraries or shops, nor (on the whole) in decisions about which book to buy and read. in various social domains, adults – authors, publishers, booksellers, librarians, and teachers – decide what is good, better, and best for children to read. therefore, the obstacles for listening to child are not only adults’ normative beliefs about age, but also adults’ choice of classroom texts and how we use such texts – all three are interconnected. relational pedagogy: the ‘felt weight’ of the other the possibility of problematising the normativity of texts can take place through various educational interventions. for example, an approach called critical literacy (cl) offers learners definite knowledge as a tool to explore how texts position readers in terms of power (see, for example, janks, 2010). through critical rational analysis, readers can be made aware of how texts give messages about what they should think and feel, and how their subjectivity is constructed. in her defence of the importance of cl, janks (2011) argues for a need to disrupt the ways of thinking, believing and valuing that are inscribed in the discourses we inhabit. i agree with janks that all language is politicised and, as burbules (2000: 15) warns: “those modes of dialogue that put the greatest emphasis on criticality and inclusivity may also be the most subtly co-opting and normalizing”. thus, the philosophical approach i advocate for reading texts makes it possible for learners to critically interrogate texts at a metacognitive level: the knowledge perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 88 claims and experiences of all individual bodies in class can become the subject for philosophical investigation, including the normativity of teachers’ post-structuralist analysis of texts in cl and the binary opposites it presupposes. adults also bring their preferred ‘reading of the world’ into the classroom. what counts as knowledge and for whom can be interrogated by children themselves through drawing on their own experiences. significantly, the role of the teacher shifts to that of co-enquirer, rather than knowledge ‘bearer’ or ‘transmitter’. the abstract and universal knowledge cl brings into the classroom is, as jansen (2009: 256, 260) puts it, a world “divided between black and white, working and privileged classes, citizens and illegal immigrants, men and women, straight and queer, oppressors and oppressed”. he acknowledges the importance of such knowledge for critical text analysis, particularly in classrooms recovering from oppressive regimes. however, he argues that a conception of otherising the “enemy”, i.e. “a capitalist system, oppressive processes, imposing ideologies, the neoliberal state” and so forth, runs the risk of ignoring “the real human beings” teachers encounter in classrooms (jansen, 2009: 257). south african classrooms, he continues, are deeply divided places [where] contending histories and rival lived experiences come embodied with indirect (and sometimes direct) knowledge into the same pedagogical space [and the] teacher is implicated within the social and pedagogical narrative, not some empowered educator who has figured out the problems of an unequal world and stands to dispense this wisdom to receiving students (jansen, 2009: 258). jansen’s pedagogical solution is for teachers not to take sides and to create a safe psychological space in classrooms for learners to speak freely and openly. this excludes teachers’ “self-righteous” judgements (jansen, 2009: 259). aware of the complexity of education for social justice, jansen (2009: 264) argues that teachers’ own positioning and prejudices are not beyond scrutiny, and for a post-conflict pedagogy it is crucial for educators to consciously position themselves to listen to their learners, and this requires “emotional attunement” to the bodies in the room in “an empathic attempt to understand”. jansen’s psychological solution does not really touch on the epistemic injustice involved in adults’ failure to listen to the individual child and to take child seriously as thinker who can hold and justify profound beliefs, as i will exemplify later in this article. in his analysis of what it means to listen attentively to children, he suggests that teachers need to challenge (he means ‘a listening out for’), for example, racist knowledge that assumes white superiority and black subordination. despite his admirable attempt to shake off some naturalised dichotomies and his critique of south africans who interpret all human encounters in terms of race,3 his analysis assumes some clear essentialisms (‘racial psyches’), generalisations (for example, white students who are “stunted in their social, moral and emotional development”) and polarised binary opposites (for example, victim versus non-victim) (jansen, 2009: 265). the risk involved in taking such ‘certain’ knowledge into the classroom murris reading the world, reading the word: why not now, bernard is not a case of suicide but self-killing 89 as a means to ‘fill’ and ‘form’ the child is the diminished view of the young self it presupposes (ecclestone & hayes, 2009). the therapeutic trend in education presupposes a fragile self that is in need of rescuing and normalisation, and the danger is that learners start to construe themselves as victims, as racists, and so on (the ‘treatment’ may become the cause rather than the cure). people’s effort to avoid challenge and conflict in order to maintain peace and harmony in class can be to the detriment of children’s willingness and courage to think out loud about more thorny and uncertain questions they generate themselves. the creation of a space for children to ask questions that really matter to them, and the nurturing of a thinking out loud that goes beyond repetition of the given is deeply complex. it requires first and foremost adults’ critical reflexive stance towards their own prejudices about child and what child is capable of as a thinker. the relational pedagogy i use is not simply another strategy or method that helps to produce or transform certain types of subjects or outcomes: child is regarded as capable of innovative philosophical thinking. s/he is imaginative and open-minded; capable of dialogue and of self-regulation in the context of sustained participation in a community; morally alert and capable of choice and judgement; interested in the welfare of others; capable of conceptual exploration and analysis, and a person worth listening to. against someone like jansen, sinha (2010: 460) argues that the “felt weight” of the other in dialogue cannot be understood by the psychological language of feeling – feelings understood as mental states “inside” the subject. the epistemic contribution children can make to classrooms, as imagined by jansen, is to take transformation a step further and allow young thinkers to enquire collaboratively and philosophically about the meanings of abstract concepts such as ‘victim’, ‘race’ and even ‘racism’ – without guidance by adult pre-determined outcomes. ‘emptying’, not ‘filling’ texts for children are ideal opportunities for adults to carry out their ideals about childhood. by contrast, making room for children’s own questions and philosophical ideas makes it possible to read against the implicit messages in texts and – as sinha (2010: 460) would put it – to be moved, stirred or excited by that which is not the self. to reiterate, philosophical praxis assumes a relationship of “emptying” (“of unexamined ideas, dogmas, beliefs, questions and values”), not “filling” (kohan, 2011: 349) and a conscious effort from the teacher to resist the urge to regard education as formation of childhood. this requires a more critical stance towards implicit ideologies in texts, as well as much unlearning. this unlearning includes a critical stance towards teachers’ role in cl, as it assumes that adults know better and best how “discourses produce us, speak through us” and how “the discourses that we inhabit” can be “challenged and changed” and produce “resistant readers” perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 90 through activities that encourage a particular kind of reading against texts using the categories described above (janks, 2011). cl assumes that adults are in a good position to “imagine the possible and actual effects of texts to evaluate these in relation to an ethics of social justice and care” (cl, as described by janks, 2011). burbules (2000: 6) reminds us of how dialogues in class are “always on somebody’s terms and so threaten the maintenance of separate, self-determined identities”, the risk being that cl could exclude the child in decisions about what social justice and care mean in the future – concepts not ‘filled in’ by adults’ current desires and readings of the world. inspired by the writings of manoel de barros, kohan (2011: 349) argues that we need to unlearn how we regard our learners, and unlearn the relationship to thinking fostered by educational institutions. instead, he suggests a “childlike way of being in the world” in our educational encounters. less shaped and formed by their educational institutions, children are more likely to think for themselves and can teach adults to be “less ‘full’, ‘fresher’, less prejudiced”, “more open to put themselves freely into question” (kohan 2011: 349). the activities he suggests are adults’ childlike (not childish) involvement in activities such as drawing, painting and “formulating questions as a child does them”. philosophy’s boundaries have shifted under the influence of the recent rethinking of both pedagogy and childhood: the teacher needs to be open to be exposed, to be interrupted, to feel and think as if anything is possible in the space between teacher and learner. however, not only our pedagogical and socio-political beliefs and practices, but also the choice of text can hinder or support this experiential process of bringing something new into the world. choosing texts for reading against the text how adult listens to child and withholds his/her own opinions is central to the emergence of something new in the process of thinking out loud together. prejudices about children as immature or unsophisticated thinkers who so-called lack experience (murris, 2000) prevent philosophical contributions from being taken seriously by adults working with them, without romanticising, sentimentalising, or “exoticizing”4 the differences between adult and child. the point is that teachers should not underestimate the problem radical diversity (including age differences) poses in adults’ decision-making about what is important and meaningful to discuss in class. one of the most critical decisions a teacher makes is the selection of texts for teaching, a powerful choice whose significance is underexplored in the context of recent discussion about listening to children (haynes & murris, 2012). adults need to be prepared to treat their own knowledge as contestable and be willing to inhabit the perplexity of children’s questions, even when they think they already know the answers. teachers need to pay attention to the receptiveness of a resource towards what they themselves also find elusive, perplexing, troublesome or opaque. murris reading the world, reading the word: why not now, bernard is not a case of suicide but self-killing 91 picture books5 are particularly useful and enjoyable resources for teaching philosophically. they can draw us into thinking, and can be open invitations to reading against texts. they should not be reserved for the teaching of literacy to the young. the indeterminate and ambiguous nature of contemporary picture books demands a pedagogy in which teachers do not control what counts as truth and meaning. texts which maximise a sense of disorientation and uncertainty are open invitations to different ways of being and knowing, and liberate learners from the anxiety about finding the answer teachers want to hear. picturebooks entice curiosity about beings other than us. open-ended exploratory dialogues between, for example, human characters or fantasy characters such as talking animals, monsters, witches, robots or teddy bears, invite readers to engage deeply with the philosophical questions that emerge in the moment and cannot be settled through observation or reference to established facts. narrative characters such as monsters feature frequently in picturebooks and are often referred to pejoratively by adults; yet monsters’ non-particularity (they are not creatures in the world, as we know it) frees the reader to respond to narratives philosophically and in a non-instrumental manner. factual ‘inaccuracies’ can open playful unexpected lines of thought, and ironically encourage truth-seeking. it is by engaging with literature ‘horizontally’ and ‘vertically’6 that our moral imaginations are engaged and expanded, while at the same time providing safe fictional distance. picture book narratives can give both permission and protection to explore sometimes difficult questions or controversial issues when teachers are prepared to let children think out loud in their classrooms. listening to children’s own ideas a good example of a picture book that can provoke philosophical listening through its form and its content, and that engages the imagination vertically as well as horizontally is david mckee’s not now, bernard (1980). the pictures show a monster who, in the text, is called ‘bernard’ – the name of the boy who has just been gobbled up by the monster. significantly, learners often spot that the eyes of bernard’s parents are closed when talking to their son (see figure 1). perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 92 figure 1: children notice that the parents’eyes are often closed they are not listening to bernard. they do not even notice their son has been eaten by the monster – despite the boy’s efforts to draw their attention to the danger that is lurking. this story is particularly powerful in how the familiar is made to seem strange, so that we view reality in a different light. in its play with reality, not now, bernard makes little logical sense, unless readers draw imaginatively on emotions such as loneliness, sadness, alienation and vulnerability; in turn, these emotions are always embedded in readers’ own personal narratives. for example, parental neglect is easily recognisable for both adult and child. philosophical teaching opens a conceptual and experiential space if teachers are prepared to listen responsively to what emerges as significant for the learners in the moment. in my own philosophical work with not now bernard, children’s own embedded experiences of family relationships provoke imaginative speculation about other possible ethical relationships between parents and children. this includes issues concerning life and death that can easily provoke censorship by adults listening to children’s philosophical dialogues. significantly, children often ask the kind of questions, or make the kind of inferences in an enquiry, that provoke new thinking. when i was teaching a class of nine-year-olds as part of my phd research, the children raised the question as to why bernard went into the garden, when he knew that a monster was going to eat him (and they knew that bernard knew, because he had just told his mum; see figure 2.). murris reading the world, reading the word: why not now, bernard is not a case of suicide but self-killing 93 figure 2: why did bernard go into the garden, when he knew that a monster was going to eat him? the children, whose home language is english, concluded that he must have wanted to be eaten. data collection for my research took place between 1989 and 1991, when research with children did not require children’s or parental consent. however, for the purposes of this article, they have been given pseudonyms. the dialogue unfolded as follows: gregory: he said that there is a monster outside that wants to eat me, so he wouldn’t have gone to the monster. teacher: that’s a very good point. if bernard knew he was going to be eaten by the monster, why did he go in the garden? neill: i agree, why did bernard actually want to be eaten by the monster? paul: because his mum and dad don’t want him, because they don’t pay any attention to him. emma: they are not listening to him. claire: bernard wanted to be eaten by the monster, because his mum and dad were ignoring him all the time. rian: he did suicide, because nobody loved him. he thought: that’s it ... i’m killing myself. alex: he could have done it in a less painful way! [laughter] teacher: what does that mean: suicide? perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 94 kate: suicide means that you really want to kill yourself, ‘coz something went wrong really badly. paul: committing suicide is actually when you kill yourself, and he didn’t kill himself, because he got eaten. also ... suicide is against the law, but there is no point, because when you’re dead, how can you be punished? teacher: is killing yourself always suicide? georgia: killing yourself isn’t always suicide, because you might be a baby or something fiddling with electricity without your mum seeing ... you might not want to die, but you might electrocute yourself, without yourself want[ing] to die. kate: i agree with georgia, because you can have a car accident and you can get killed, and we wouldn’t know whether you crashed yourself into a brick wall. darren: bernard might have been pretending, making it up ... to get attention. the non-judgemental space opened by the teacher made it possible for these children to think out loud about a topic they wanted to talk about and made the kind of conceptual distinctions adults are introduced to when they do a philosophy course at university. georgia distinguished between ‘suicide’ and ‘killing yourself’: those who commit suicide kill themselves, but not all self-killings are suicide. suicide is a deliberate or intentional self-killing. this short transcript shows how children discuss philosophical issues when they interpret a story literally and read against the moral of the story – i.e., when children are neglected by their parents, they turn into monsters. they created their own philosophical problem, because they could not understand why bernard went into the garden if he knew the monster would eat him.7 philosophical enquiry is not so much about solving problems created by adults, but about creating one’s own new ones. the nine-year-olds took the information in the book seriously and engaged in a philosophical play with ideas. of course, they knew the story was not ‘real’ life – expressed in remarks such as ‘it’s just a story’, or ‘they did that, ‘coz otherwise there would be no point to the story’. however, within the context of it just-being-astory, they listened to each other philosophically through reasoned responses to the various contributions. a pedagogical analysis shows how philosophical listening is a necessary condition for progression in thought. everyone was listening carefully to people’s spoken contributions. paul, emma, claire and ryan directly responded to neill’s question which, in turn, was provoked by the teacher’s intervention: bernard, they said, was ignored, not loved and not listened to. then, the teacher’s question ‘what is suicide?’ problematised the straightforwardness of the concept ‘suicide’ and allowed kate to forward an answer. this was then challenged by paul, enabling him to make the profound distinction between ‘suicide’ and ‘killing yourself’. in suicide, killer and killed are the same, but in bernard’s case it was the monster who killed bernard, so bernard did not commit suicide. this, in turn, was picked up by the teacher and presented as important for further reflection, thus enabling georgia and kate to give murris reading the world, reading the word: why not now, bernard is not a case of suicide but self-killing 95 examples by drawing on their own experiences to justify their claim that intention is a necessary condition for calling a self-killing ‘suicide’. darren’s contribution to the intricate web of ideas resonated with theirs, but viewed the argument from a different angle: bernard was simply pretending. reading the world the children were making sense of the text philosophically by reading their world. their thinking was not only creative, but also very logical. a picture in the book (figure 3) shows the monster and bernard as two physical entities at the same time. figure 3: the logical impossibility that bernard and the monster can be one and the same it is important to stress that the adult moral message, namely that children turn into monsters when neglected, was not ‘missed’, because they are ‘immature’ or ‘lack experience’ – comments often heard not only in in-service work with teachers, but also in institutions that train teachers and educational research. for the children, the visual information in the narrative makes it logically impossible. they were ‘in’ the story and simultaneously knew that it was ‘just’ a story. teachers tend to protect children at the expense of academic freedom and children’s autonomy. this is often misplaced. adult responses to the children’s subsequent engaged involvement in a drawing activity exemplifies the structural and systemic extent of epistemic injustice in our work with children in classrooms. after the enquiry, some children had decided to make drawings of high buildings with children throwing themselves off them – killing themselves. the children proudly perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 96 hung them on the wall of the philosophy classroom. it is not accidental that these depicted buildings were well-known suicide spots in the part of town where they lived. the other teachers in the school were shocked when they saw the drawings for at least two reasons: they were surprised that the children had knowledge of what they had previously regarded as part of the adults’ world, and moreover they judged that young children should be protected emotionally from the sad and ‘darker’ side of living a human life. the class teacher ordered the drawings to be taken down (‘just in case their parents saw them’). this act of silencing is a good example of fricker’s notion of epistemic injustice that structurally takes place in our classrooms worldwide. the children were speaking with intent and purpose, and a particular kind of listening made it possible to hear the new knowledge they were constructing through their relationship and thinking with others. this alternative reading of texts assumes an emptying of adults’ preconceived ideas and with it enables adults to have a uniquely different epistemic relationship with children. the process of reading their world helped them make sense of their own social experiences without any obvious signs of disturbance or emotional upheaval. adults were not hearing them when censoring their drawings, but the internalised voices of other adults: parents, colleagues, and so forth. the picturebook itself disturbed the adults. this is not only because of its lack of a happy ending (bernard after all stays a monster and even as monster he remains ignored), but the parents are not depicted as caricatures or strange others; they are easily recognisable and made to look ridiculous. perhaps adults perceive these aspects as threatening or uncomfortable as they might identify themselves with the story’s characters. texts most suited for opening a philosophical space8 are those that hold up a ‘mirror’ for the adult and encourage a self-critical stance. teachers, whose usual role is to articulate certainty, often struggle more with the indeterminacy of contemporary picture books than young people who have been born into a postmodern culture full of fragmented and indeterminate ironic images and ideas. arguably, the use of such resources for education puts children on a more equal footing with adults, and appeals to people’s sense of fun and willingness to play with philosophical ideas. kohan and wozniak (2009: 24) argue that this philosophical process must be lived and felt, and that it cannot merely be discussed, written, or read about. they explain that their course with illiterate adults was not designed to produce any particular political outcome. we invited students to think, but we did not demand that they think in a certain way or toward certain ideas, much less that their thoughts correspond to our thoughts. this is not the same as saying that no transformation took place. students became increasingly aware of the power they had over the way they live: “more power to live as they desire – if not in all aspects of their lives, at least in some of them” (kohan & wozniak, 2009: 24). philosophical listening in the classroom implies turning one’s back on the assumption that older is necessarily wiser, and accepting that a child or young person, like any other, can reveal something not yet considered or so far unspoken. murris reading the world, reading the word: why not now, bernard is not a case of suicide but self-killing 97 acknowledgement this article draws partly on the paper listening, hospitality and philosophical teaching presented with dr. joanna haynes at the annual conference of the p.e.s.g.b. at new college in oxford in 2011 (haynes & murris, 2011). my writing has greatly benefited from our collaborative work on this article and our discussions about the connection between text and listening. references burbules nc 2000. the limits of dialogue as a critical pedagogy. in p trifonas (ed), revolutionary pedagogies. new york: routledge. retrieved on 23 march 2011 from www.faculty.ed.uiuc.edu/burbules. burman e 2001. beyond the baby and the bathwater: postdualistic developmental psychologies for diverse childhoods. keynote lecture given at the 10th european early childhood education research association conference in london, august 2000. downloaded september 2011 from http://www. academyanalyticarts.org/burman.htm burman e 2008. deconstructing developmental psychology. 2nd ed. london: routledge. campbell r & collinson d 1988. ending lives. oxford: open university. consentino a (1997). p4c: a bridge between orality and literacy. retrieved on 2 february 2010 from www.viterbo.edu/analytic. dahlberg g & moss p 2005. ethics and politics in early childhood education: contesting early childhood. london: routledge. fricker m 2007. epistemic injustice: power and the ethics of knowing. oxford: oxford university press. haynes j & murris k 2011. listening, hospitality and philosophical teaching. paper presented at the annual conference of the p.e.s.g.b., new college, oxford, 1-3april. retrieved on 13 june 2011 from https://www.philosophy-ofeducation.org/uploads/papers2011/murris.pdf. haynes j & murris k 2012. picturebooks, pedagogy and philosophy. new york: routledge. janks h 2010. literacy and power. new york: routledge. janks h 2011. the importance of critical literacy. keynote address presented at the 10th conference of the international federation of teachers of english, 18-21 april 2011, auckland, new zealand. jansen j 2009. knowledge in the blood: confronting race and the apartheid past. stanford: stanford university press. kennedy d 2011. from outer space and across the street: matthew lipman’s double vision. childhood & philosophy, 7(13): 49-74. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 98 kohan wo 2011. childhood, education and philosophy: notes on deterritorisation. in n vansieleghem & d kennedy (eds), special issue philosophy for children in transition: problems and prospects journal of philosophy of education, 45(2): 339-359. kohan wo & wozniak j 2009. philosophy as a spiritual exercise in an adult literacy course. thinking: the journal of philosophy for children, 19(4):17-24. lipman m 1991. thinking in education. cambridge, ma: cambridge university press. matthews g 1992. thinking in stories. thinking, 10(2): 1. mckee d 1980. not now, bernard. london: andersen press. murris k 1993. not now socrates …(part 1). cogito, 7(3): 236-244. murris k 1994. not now socrates …(part 2). cogito, 8(1): 80-86. murris k 1997. metaphors of the child’s mind: teaching philosophy to young children. phd thesis submitted for examination to university of hull. murris k 1999. philosophy with preliterate children. thinking, 14(4): 23-34. murris k 2000. can children do philosophy? journal of philosophy of education, 34(2): 261-279. murris k (2013). the epistemic challenge of hearing child’s voice. studies in philosophy and education. special issue ‘child as educator’. studies in philosophy and education, 32(3), 245– 259. murris k & haynes j 2002. storywise: thinking through stories. newport, pembrokeshire: dialogueworks. www.dialogueworks.co.uk. murris k & haynes j 2010. storywise: thinking through stories. international e-book version. johannesburg: infonet publications. www.infonet-publications.com. nussbaum m 1990. love’s knowledge: essays on philosophy and literature. oxford: oxford university press. simms e-m 2011. questioning the value of literacy: a phenomenology of speaking and reading in children. in sa wolf, k coats, p enciso & ca jenkins, handbook of research on children’s and young adult literature. new york: routledge, 20-32. endnotes 1. throughout this article i have adopted the use of the term ‘child’ without including an article ‘the’ to try and distance myself from the practice of talking about ‘the child’ as having a set of essential and universal characteristics, and often resulting in the marginalisation of children, but still to allow discussion of the concept: ‘child’. ‘children’ denotes particular children, living in particular times and places. 2. in my chapter ‘the epistemic challenge of hearing child’s voice’ (2013), i give a more detailed overview of fricker’s work and the implications for listening to children. murris reading the world, reading the word: why not now, bernard is not a case of suicide but self-killing 99 3. he writes that the post-apartheid state has produced official victims, which exclude poor whites, despite the fact that socio-economic status is “a more equitable and sensible way of accounting for difference in a capitalist society that professes nonracialism” (jansen, 2009: 265). 4. this term is borrowed from burbules (2000: 6). 5. the term ‘picturebooks’ is used instead of picture books to emphasise the interdependency of meaning constructed by the two very different sign systems (word and image). 6. philosopher martha nussbaum claims a distinct and unique role for artists in the forceful way in which they can represent characters. she writes: “… literature is an extension of life not only horizontally, bringing the reader into contact with events or locations or persons or problems he or she has not otherwise met, but also, so to speak, vertically, giving the reader experience that is deeper, sharper, and more precise than much of what takes place in life” (nussbaum, 1990: 48; my emphasis). 7. in my original research (murris, 1993, 1994, 1997), i used this transcript to show how much children can think like adult philosophers. some 15 years later, i notice how my analysis of the same dialogue has shifted from a focus on content (a comparison between adult philosopher’s knowledge and children’s philosophical knowledge) to a concern about how certain pedagogies make the construction of children’s philosophical knowledge possible. my analysis is also different from those of colleagues in the field (see, for example, matthews, 1992:1) who argue that most children instinctively recognise that not now, bernard is a fable. he claims that children seem willing to interpret the story in a symbolic way. throughout the primary age range, my learners have never asked the latter question, because the mother could not – literally – see that it was a monster and not bernard who was lying in bed. 8. for guidance with lesson preparation for philosophical enquiries using picture books, including not now, bernard, see murris and haynes (2002, 2010). 208 english studies: decolonisation, deparochialising knowledge and the null curriculum abstract this paper reports on a desktop review study of undergraduate and postgraduate english studies (both english literature and english language) module offerings (n = 48) of 24 english departments at 17 south african higher education institutions (heis) conducted in 2017. the review focused on the presence and purpose of the term, decolonisation, in these module offerings. framed within deparochialism and a null curriculum, and employing purposeful sampling and explicit inclusion criteria common in systematic reviews and meta-analyses, the study has the following findings: (a) decolonisation has a presence in only three undergraduate module offerings and it is mentioned in only one honours module offering among the 48 module offerings reviewed. (b) all four modules are english literature modules; (c) decolonisation is a module thematic or topical component and is used for critical analytical purposes in the identified modules in varying degrees. (d) in the three undergraduate modules, decolonisation is restricted to african literature or africa writings and (e) in the postgraduate module, decolonisation is offered as one of the four optional standalone modules. finally, the paper argues for a decolonisation that deparochialises the disciplines of english studies. keywords: english studies; modules; decolonisation; deparo­ chialising knowledge; null curriculum 1. introduction calls for the transformation and decolonisation of south african higher education, or the transformation and decolo­ nisation of the higher education curriculum or knowledge are not peculiar to south africa (see, for example, mbembe, 2016). they become sporadic in different parts of africa at different times, but gain special traction in most postcolonies as a natural upshot of obtaining independence from erstwhile colonial masters. sometimes such calls become synonymous with calls for the africanisation of curriculum or knowledge in south african higher education (jansen, 2017; mbembe, 2016). one view (jansen, 2017:1) has it that calls for the africanisation of curriculum, in particular, are “at least as old as the republic of ghana, the first african country to gain independence [in march 1957]”. moreover, the first wave of calls for the decolonisation of africa took place in the latter part of the twentieth century prof chaka chaka department of english studies, college of human sciences at the university of south africa. email: chakachaka8@gmail. com prof mirriam lephalala department of english studies, college of human sciences at the university of south africa. email: lephammk@unisa.ac.za ms. nandipha ngesi arts department: english unit, faculty of humanities, social sciences and law at walter sisulu university. email: nngesi@wsu.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i2.16 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(2): 208-229 © uv/ufs mailto:chakachaka8@gmail.com mailto:chakachaka8@gmail.com mailto:lephammk@unisa.ac.za mailto:nngesi@wsu.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i2.16 209 chaka, lephalala & ngesi english studies (see maringe, 2017; mbembe, 2016) with frantz fanon’s (1961) magnum opus, the wretched of the earth, serving in most cases as one of the points of reference providing loci classici cited by most decolonisation scholars. the renewed and the current calls for the transformation and decolonisation of south african higher education must be viewed against this backdrop. even in south africa, these calls do not exist in a vacuum. they have precursors. these are in the form of the protests which were engendered by the introduction of bantu education in 1955; the 1976 soweto school uprisings against the use of afrikaans as the medium of instruction in schools in 1975; and the people’s education movement in the mid-1980s. not to be forgotten in this instance, is the role played by the south african students organisation and later, by the black consciousness movement, especially under the stewardship of steve biko and barney pityana, in fuelling and sustaining the momentum for decolonising the black man’s mind, and by extension, education (see biko, 1987; brown, 2010; nolutshungu, 1982). paralleling these precursors is the 2015–2016 university #feesmustfall student movement, which, in certain quarters, is also known as the fallist movement. initiated by university students, this hashtag movement was initially meant to protest against rising and unaffordable fees at south african universities (see figure 1). figure 1: placards displaying calls for fees to fall in the higher education sector in south africa (source: #feesmustfall – placards and images). it was mainly – even though not exclusively – run and powered through twitter as one of the social media platforms, from which it inherited its hashtag name, and from which it had its other related memetic permutations and its related arab spring­like spreading. later on, the #feesmustfall student movement directed its efforts to calls for the transformation 210 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) or decolonisation of knowledge, of curriculum, and of academics in south african higher education (see figure 2). figure 2: images for transforming and decolonising higher education knowledge, curriculum and academics in south africa. 2. definitional contours defining terms tends to be a contested terrain, in effect, terminological, definitional or conceptual clarity is one of the cardinal hallmarks of many disciplines in academia. three terms that are in currency in the south african higher education sector whose definition is highly contested or is, at least, illusive are transformation, decolonisation and africanisation. what adds to the contestation and illusiveness of these triple terms is when they, at times, are conflated with each other, as is evident in the conflation of decolonisation and africanisation in the following quotation: calls to “decolonize” are not new. nor have they gone uncontested whenever they have been made. we all have in mind african postcolonial experiments in the 1960s and 1970s. then, “to decolonize” was the same thing as “to africanize”. to decolonize was part of a nation-building project (mbembe, 2016: n.p., own italics). in this regard, an implicit conflation of transformation and decolonisation can be detected in figure 2. concomitantly, this implied conflation gives rise to the implied interchangeability of the two terms (cf. mgqwashu, 2016), least of which, in the context in which they have been used. allied to this conceptual conflation are instances when each of these terms has divergent perspectives attached to it by different scholars. the case in point is africanisation whose perspectival divergence is aptly captured by letsekha (2013: n.p.): “[d]ifferent authors writing on africanisation offer varied viewpoints on what they understand africanisation to mean or entail”. an instance of the conflation of the three terms is lucidly embodied in ndofirepi and cross’ (2017: 3) reference to horsthemke (2017): “kai horsthemke argues that the africanisation of higher education is, by and large, assumed to involve institutional transformation, and more overtly the ‘decolonisation’ of higher education” (own italics) (also cf. metz, 2015: 243). in this case, it therefore appears that there are not only multiple definitions of transformation, decolonisation and africanisation, but also that each of these terms is viewed differently (cf. metz, 2015; sayed et al., 2017) (depending on a given context) by different scholars situated in diverse scholarly backgrounds. for example, appendix 1 depicts the definitions, descriptions or explanations of these three terms as documented by certain scholars, some of whom are south african. one salient feature from this appendix with reference to 211 chaka, lephalala & ngesi english studies transformation is a demographic and institutional dimension it assumes, on the one hand, and a complete and radical overhaul of the existing thinking (ideas) or status quo (processes) (see kamsteeg, 2016: 6; webbstock & fisher, 2016: 25) and the concomitant supplanting of the current status quo with the new one (see maringe, 2017: 2). another salient feature is the apparent fluidity, open-ended and complexity underlying the term, transformation, as a construct when used in higher education (du preez et al., 2016: 7). with regard to decolonisation, four observations are worth mentioning. first, is the fact that decolonisation as a term dates back to the 1960s – a point made earlier – (see fanon, 1965: 33–36; cf. sayed et al., 2017: 61) in africa, even though lately it is gaining traction in the south african higher education sector as evidenced through a student initiative such as the #feesmustfall campaign. however, again as highlighted earlier, student-led initiatives aimed at a change in education in south africa are not necessarily new. they have been there before (see biko, 1987; brown, 2010; nolutshungu, 1982). second, decolonisation is depicted and framed in an oppositional, conflictual and dialectical relationship with colonisation (see fanon, 1965: 33–36; rabaka, 2009: 187; tiffin, 1995: 95). this manichean framing of this concept has hegemonic centrist systems pitted against peripheral systems, and european/british discourses pitted against african discourses (tiffin, 1995: 95). additionally, it entails decentring european knowledge and recentring african knowledge, africanising knowledge, engaging entangled knowledges and repatriating occupied knowledge (jansen, 2017: 159-163). on the other hand, it involves dismantling hegemonic centrist systems/european or british discourses (tiffin, 1995: 95) and rejecting colonial worldviews (césaire, 2000: 89). third, is the fact that decolonisation is conceived of as a project that has to arrest, reverse or overturn the corporatised institutional culture of south africa’s higher education institutions with its attendant mechanical, statistical and numerical orientation (mbembe, 2016: 36). fourth, is the search for (re)-imagining an alternative academic model – a decolonisation area in which much is still to be done (jansen, 2017: 159). in respect of africanisation, two strands are manifest. the first strand is the envisaged coexistence between africanisation (or afrocentric thinking) and eurocentric thinking in which both draw from each other’s strength (see lebakeng et al., 2006: 77; letsekha, 2013: 15; ramose, 1998: vi). in this co-existence, the hegemonic tendencies of the latter have to be culled. this synergistic view of the two modes of thinking – in which both worldviews have a symbiotic relationship with each other – seems to be at odds with radical africanisation. as such, it tends to reflect a moderate version of africanisation (cf. letsekha, 2013; metz, 2015). needless to say that a scholar such as fanon – who is classically referenced and invoked in relation to africanisation and decolonisation – was strategically sceptical and cynical of the idea of africanisation (see fanon, 1965; ndlovu-gatsheni, 2016; rabaka, 2009; cf. heleta, 2016). the second strand has two related streaks. one streak seeks “a re-narration of the african existence” (okeke, 2010: 42) which tends to entail a refashioning of the african ways of doing things away from european worldviews. the other streak is specific to african literature, and argues that such literature ought to embody an afrocentric worldview for it to have relevance to an african context (cf. thiong’o, 1986: 91). this latter streak was later to become a launching pad for the nairobi literature debate that contested the great tradition of english literature – with its euro-american orientation – as both the focal point and the locus classicus of african literature (see thiong’o, 1986). 212 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) 3. instances of decolonisation in respect of english language and english literature elsewhere decolonisation, especially in connection with indigenous languages or indigenous studies (e.g., hall & tandon, 2017; nakata et al., 2012; pyndiah, 2016), and with regard to the english language (e.g., chakravarti, 2008; mishra & bardhan, 2009-2010; sharma, jha & kumar, 2015; vaish, 2005) has been documented in both scholarly journals and books. most of the latter – the decolonisation of the english language – seems to have occurred in india. for example, chakravarti (2008) investigates the evolving status of english studies in english textbooks used in west-bengal, india. she argues that these textbooks reflect crosscurrents of a post-colonial urge to reject the english literary canon and to respond to the emerging demand for english language proficiency in a globalising india. her work depicts decolonisation efforts mounted in post-independence india, and outlines how canonical british literary texts used in the school curriculum were replaced with indian english texts, which had relevance to indian lives and experiences. it also highlights that there was a move from english literature to functional english language teaching. even though this latter point seems to be the case, it appears that in post­independence india, the decolonisation process – in both english literature and english language – entailed appropriating english, and repurposing it to meet and suit local and national demands (see sharma et al., 2015; vaish, 2005). all these endeavours reflected the indianisation (cf. kachru, 1965) or the nativisation of english (sharma et al., 2015) and a peripherist view of english (vaish, 2005) as opposed to englishisation (kachru, 1994). thus, decolonisation in this sense almost embodied a statewide indianisation and nativisation of english. closer to home, the single most momentous and game­changing decolonisation of english literary studies in an hei – and by extension of the english literary studies in the higher education sector in general – is that which was spearheaded by ngūgĭ wa thiong’o and his two other colleagues at the university of nairobi. it started as a response to proposals presented by the english department. the following prefaced the proposals: the english department has had a long history at this college and has built up a strong syllabus which by its study of the historic continuity of a single culture throughout the period of emergence of the modern west makes it an important companion to history and to philosophy and religious studies. however, it is bound to become less british, more open to other writing in english (american, caribbean, african, commonwealth) and also to continental writing, for comparative purposes (thiong’o, 1969, cited in thiong’o, 1986: 89). part of the response from ngūgĭ wa thiong’o and his two other colleagues to this preface was as follows: here then, is our main question: if there is a need for a ‘study of the historic continuity of a single culture”, why can’t this be african? why can’t african literature be at the centre so that we can view other cultures in relationship to it? (thiong’o, 1969, cited in thiong’o, 1986: 89). this decolonisation poser was purposefully directed at the english department at the university of nairobi, and it is part of what later became known as the “great nairobi literature debate” (thiong’o, 1986: 89). crucially, this rejoinder questioned the dominance of the euroamerican literary works at the university of nairobi, and their relevance to the kenyan literary landscape. overall, in his classic decolonisation work, decolonising the mind: the politics of 213 chaka, lephalala & ngesi english studies language in african literature, thiong’o (1986) advances a cogent argument for the use of indigenous languages in african literature. in so doing, he criticises and questions the colonial legacy of writing africa literature in colonial languages such as english. part of the thrust of his argument is that a colonised people cannot reclaim its selfhood and cannot recover its cultures, economies and politics from a colonial chokehold, if it appropriates a colonial language in writing its literatures (cf. murphy, 2011). all of this forms the essence of the decolonisation he envisages not only for post-colonial kenya, but also for all post-colonial states in africa. in fact, there were other seismic developments in the wake of this, which led to more decolonisation efforts in the area of literary studies, mainly in african literature, in certain african universities. for instance, harlow (2009) aptly points out that the golden era in much of the then recently decolonised africa, especially at its universities, gained traction in the early 1970s. among these universities, was makerere university in uganda, which had drastically overhauled its literary studies curriculum and was poised to provide further impetus for new directions and imperatives in the sphere of african critical practice and african cultural production. later, the university of dar es salaam (tanzania) and the university of ibadan (nigeria) were to follow suit in respect of historiography. all these literary developments, cumulatively, culminated in what is often regarded as three major generations of african literary writers in contemporary africa. these are the first generation writers (e.g., sembene ousmane, chinua achebe, christopher okigbo, wole soyinka, kofi awoonor, ngugi wa thiong’o, and ama ata aidoo); the second generation writers (e.g., nurudin farar, isidore okpewho, festus iyayi, femi osofisan, jack mapanje, frank chipasula, tanure ojaide, and mandla langa); and the third generation writers (e.g., chimamanda ngozi adichie, sefi atta, vonani bila and contemporary younger writers) (ojaide, 2015; adebanwi, 2014). however, this generational categorisation has its own shortcomings. it pigeonholes writers into rigid typologies – some writers (e.g., ngugi wa thiong’o) have outlived the specified generations and there is a possibility of overlapping between these generation, and periodising writers through generations is a superficial representation of such writers (cf. adebanwi, 2014). pertaining to the current paper, particularly, this type of categorisation of african literary writers is framed outside of the curriculum. as such, it does not resonate with the decolonising of english literary studies curriculum nor does it with that of english language studies curriculum. the relevance of thiong’o’s views on decolonisation for the current paper is that they were articulated within and with reference to a specific discipline such as african literature as offered at a given hei (the university of nairobi). in this case, it was in response to the absence of african literary canons in or their omission from the curriculum content of the english department at the university of nairobi. his, therefore, was a curriculum decolonisation that went to and challenged the disciplinary roots of african and english literary studies. for this reason, it had far-reaching ramifications beyond the university of nairobi and beyond kenya. one kindred decolonisation similar to thiong’o’s – even though it is still in its nascent stage – is the one unfolding at cambridge university in the united kingdom. it, too, is directed at the english literature curriculum. spearheaded by black and minority ethnic (bme) students enrolled in english literature, some of the views espoused by this disciplinary curriculum decolonisation are encapsulated in the following bme student sentiments: there needs to be a complete shift in the way the department treats western literature. non­white authors must be centred in the same way shakespeare, eliot, swift and pope are. their stories, thoughts and accounts should be given serious intellectual and moral weight (evening standard, 2017: n.p.). 214 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) since this decolonisation project is still in its incipient stage – it only started on 25 october 2017 according to evening standard (2017) – its success and the traction it is likely to gain remains to be seen. needless to say that the education committee at cambridge university is reported to envisage having some robust academic debate about this matter (see evening standard, 2017). 4. theoretical frame: deparochialising knowledge and a null curriculum decolonisation is sometimes treated as a conceptual framework (oelofsen, 2015) and a theoretical framework (abawi & brady, 2017) in and of itself. at times, it is conceived of as an analytical term (mbembe, 2016; zeleza, 2017; cf. tuck & yang, 2012) or as worldviews (césaire, 2000). in this paper, decolonisation is framed within a deparochialisation of knowledge and a null curriculum. koh (2007: 13) provides a version of deparochialisation of research that is relevant to this paper. he argues that deparochialisation is about opening up research parameters confined to western epistemologies and research paradigms to non­western epistemologies and research paradigms, and that it entails a dialogue, a cross­ fertilisation and a contestation of ideas that traverses east and west and south and north. in addition, he points out that deparochialisation is not merely about generating new ideas and new knowledges. rather, it is also about broadening the horizons of one’s current knowledge. in this sense, deparochialisation stands in contrast to a scopic regime that is locally focused (also see appadurai, 2000; lingard, 2006). similarly, the current paper is of the view that decolonisation needs to embody all of the hallmarks mentioned above, and that it needs to be framed within this deparochial canvas. viewed within this framing, decolonisation needs to strive for an ecology of knowledges that recognises and is premised on epistemological pluralism: it needs to recognise the interdependence (and not the dependency) of knowledges, or inter­knowledges (see andreotti, ahenakew & cooper, 2011; santos, 2007). moreover, it has to endeavour for what perez (1999) refers to as a decolonial imaginary – which is a zone in which various types of relationships and dilemmas can be negotiated and re­negotiated (see also ritenburg et al., 2014). in keeping with this framing, decolonisation requires to entail epistemological diffidence (appadurai, 2000: 4; koh, 2007: 189). epistemological diffidence has to do with treating any form of knowledge with scepticism and with applying a questioning mind to it. it also needs a “pedagogy of discomfort” (koh, 2007: 191) which involves having students and academics deal with knowledge that does not comfort them or having them not view knowledge from their everyday confront zones. lastly, this paper situates decolonisation within a null curriculum standpoint. it does so with the full knowledge that standpoints can change, can be revised or can be rejected over time. according to eisner (1985: 107), a null curriculum refers to “the options students are not afforded, the perspectives they may never know about, much less be able to use, the concepts and skills that are not part of their intellectual repertoire”. to this end, le grange (2016: 7) refers to the null curriculum as “what universities leave out – what is not taught and learnt in a university”. following the leitmotif of the current theoretical framework, a null curriculum tends to deparochialise students’ options and perspectives. there are two dimensions related to the null curriculum: intellectual processes that are non­verbal and alogical modes of thoughts; and null content, which relates to excluded or omitted module contents or bits of curriculum information (eisner, 1985; flinders, noddings & thornton, 1986). 215 chaka, lephalala & ngesi english studies in line with the null curriculum, decolonisation entails what knowledge to foreground and background, and what knowledge to recognise and misrecognise. therefore, it is the contention of this paper that decolonisation in english studies needs to expose students to local, regional, continental and global epistemic frames and analytic categories if such students are to be truly functional global citizens, and not local misfits. in this context, supplanting one form of episteme with another, and one set of theoretic­linguistic/analytic frames with another set is tantamount to epistemic parochialism. 5. decolonisation: departments of english literature and departments of english language in south african heis 5.1 methodology this paper conducted a desktop review of the presence of the term, decolonisation/ decoloniality, in the module offerings of the departments of english literature and the departments of english language at 17 south african higher education institutions (heis). the desktop review was also about to establish the purpose this term served in the module offerings of these departments. however, these departments are called by different names as determined by a preference chosen by each department in each university. in addition, certain universities have language and linguistics departments as stand­alone departments, while others have literature and language studies as composite departments. the 17 heis that were considered for the review were traditional universities as opposed to universities of technology. the review was conducted between july 2017 and october 2017. 5.1.1 research design a qualitative case study research design informed this review study. however, elements of a systematic review design conventionally employed in systematic reviews and meta­analyses (see beller et al., 2013; dwan et al., 2013; garg, hackam & tonelli, 2008; impellizzeri & bizzini, 2012; moja et al., 2005; page et al., 2014; shamseer et al., 2015; uman, 2011) were incorporated in the current review study in order to achieve comprehensive sets of data. such elements include the following: (a) formulating the review question; (b) defining inclusion and exclusion criteria; (c) developing search strategy and locating studies; (d) selecting studies; (e) extracting data; (f) assessing the quality of studies and (g) analysing and interpreting findings (synthesising data) (beller et al., 2013; dwan et al., 2013; impellizzeri & bizzini, 2012; shamseer et al., 2015; uman, 2011). since the present study was a review study, the abovementioned elements were modified as follows: • purpose of the review • formulating review questions • establishing eligibility criteria • population and sampling • developing search strategy and locating documents • screening and selecting documents • extracting data from documents • analysing data 216 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) 5.1.2 purpose of the review and review questions the review had a dual purpose. firstly, it set out to identify the presence of the term, decolonisation (or decoloniality) in the module offerings of the departments of english literature and the departments of english language at 17 south african heis. secondly, it sought to establish the purpose of decolonisation in the module offerings of these departments. on this basis, it had the following two questions: • does the term decolonisation/decoloniality have any presence in the module offerings of the departments of english literature and english language at 17 south african heis or not? • what is the purpose of decolonisation in the module offerings of these departments? 5.1.3 eligibility criteria, population and sampling eligibility criteria refer to criteria used to include and exclude items for review purposes (impellizzeri & bizzini, 2012; kaliisa & picard, 2017; uman, 2011). the categories and the inclusion criteria employed in this review study were as represented in table 1. the population consisted of the departments of english literature and the departments of english language at 17 heis in south africa as mentioned earlier. a purposeful sampling method (suri, 2011) was used, as there was a conscious intention to consider all and to focus on all the undergraduate and postgraduate modules (including their related module outlines) offered by the departments in question. table 1: categories and inclusion criteria categories inclusion criteria 2017 undergraduate module offerings departments of english literature and departments of english language at 17 sa’s heis 2017 postgraduate module offerings departments of english literature and departments of english language at 17 sa’s heis decolonisation/decoloniality 2017 undergraduate and postgraduate module offerings of departments of english literature at 17 sa’s heis and 2017 undergraduate and postgraduate module offerings of departments of english language at 17 sa’s heis 5.1.4 search strategy, screening and selecting documents the search was conducted online. so, to search for and locate the module offerings of the departments identified above, the following key phrases were used: (full name of a given university); department of english literature or department of english language; modules; decolonisation/decoloniality and 2017. in one instance keywords were separated by an “en dash” (hyphen), while in another instance boolean operators such as “and” or “or” were inserted between the key phrases (cf. impellizzeri & bizzini, 2012; shamseer et al., 2015). in the case of decolonisation/decoloniality, the search strings, decolonisation*or* decoloniality and decolonisation*and* decoloniality were put together with the related aforementioned key phrases. this was done to allow for the co­occurrence possibilities of these concepts 217 chaka, lephalala & ngesi english studies where necessary. the search engines utilised for mounting searches were google and bing. in addition to the key phrase search, the portals of the departments concerned were visited by accessing the websites of their respective schools and faculties as hosted on their universities’ websites. the purpose for this was to access the undergraduate and postgraduate module offerings of these departments. in both search strategies, after the information related to module offerings had been located, the module files were screened to locate the presence of the term, decolonisation (or decoloniality). if located, a further search was mounted to identify in which module or in which part of the module the term appeared and to determine the purpose it served in such a module. 5.1.5 data extraction and data analysis the data sets for the current review were extracted from the information obtained from the undergraduate and postgraduate module offerings of the 17 south african heis as identified in the methodology section. the data sets were coded according to the categories illustrated in table 1. these coding categories were name of university; department; 2017 undergraduate module offerings (content); 2017 postgraduate module offerings (content); decolonisation/ decoloniality and purpose. these categories were constructed based on the content analysis and the coding procedures suggested by creswell (2012) and saldaña (2013). in this case, open, focused and axial coding procedures were used in which the data – extracted from module offerings – were broken into distinct parts, and categories were developed and streamlined. axial coding helps one understand “if, when, how, and why” a particular phenomenon happened (see saldaña, 2013: 220). table 2: an analysis of 2017 undergraduate and postgraduate module offerings of the 17 south african heis in terms of the presence of decolonisation/decoloniality, and in terms of the purpose this term serves (n = 48). name of university* department 2017 postgraduate module offerings 2017 postgraduate module offerings decolonisation or decoloniality purpose (1) applied languages studies n/p n/p n/p n/p language & literature n/p n/p n/p n/p (2) english n/p n/p n/p n/p language practice n/p n/p n/p n/p (3) english n/p n/p n/p n/p eng lang & ling n/p n/p n/p n/p (4) school of humanities p (one 3rd year module) n/o decolonisation to critique post­colonial texts (5) english n/p n/p n/p n/p general linguistics n/p n/p n/p n/p 218 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) name of university* department 2017 postgraduate module offerings 2017 postgraduate module offerings decolonisation or decoloniality purpose (6) english language and literature p (one 2nd year module) n/p decolonisation one of module themes school of languages & literature n/p n/p n/p n/p (7) english language and comparative literature n/p n/p n/p n/p (8) english (composite) p (one 3rd year module) decolonisation part of seminar topic (9) english n/p n/p n/p n/p linguistics n/p n/p n/p n/p (10) english studies n/p n/p n/p n/p languages, linguistics and academic literacy n/p n/p n/p n/p (11) school of languages & communication n/p n/p n/p n/p studies (12) n/o n/o n/o n/o n/o (13) english studies n/p p (one of 4 optional hon. modules) decoloniality to enable students to develop an understanding of and to critique concepts, themes, theories, regimes, case studies and african canomical figures from a decolonial perspective; and to help students acquire skills to frame critical thought outside euro­north american critical theory and to think from african existential conditions. linguistics and modem languages n/p n/p n/p n/p (14) english (composite) n/p n/p n/p n/p (15) english (language only) n/p n/p n/p n/p (16) english (composite) n/p n/p n/p n/p (17) english studies n/p n/p n/p n/p linguistics n/p n/p n/p n/p * = numbers have been provided instead of actual names; postgraduate = honours and (structured) master’s course modules; p = present; np = not present; n/o = not offered; n/a = not available 219 chaka, lephalala & ngesi english studies the inter­coder reliability of the data was obtained by following cohen’s κappa (κ) values for reliability (see table 3). for example, landis and koch (1977) propose the following κ values for inter-coder reliability: 0.81 to 1.00 = almost perfect; 0.61 to 0.80 = substantial; 0.41 to 0.60 = moderate; 0.21 to 0.40 = fair; 0.00 to 0.20 = slight; and < 0.00 = poor. later on cicchetti (1994) modified these k values as follows: 0.75 to 1.00 = excellent; 0.60 to 0.74 = good; 0.40 to 0.59 = fair; and < 0.40 = poor. table 3: cohen’s κappa values for inter-coder reliability name of university department 2017 undergraduate module offerings 2017 postgraduate module offerings decolonisation or decoloniality purpose k=1.00 k=1.00 k=1.00 k=1.00 k=1.00 k=0.9 6. findings as pointed out earlier, this paper conducted a desktop review of 48 module offerings of 24 departments of english literature and english language at 17 south african heis. it analysed the content of all the previously mentioned modules with a view to identifying the presence of the term decolonisation (or decoloniality). the paper also set out to discover the purpose this term served in the given module offerings of these departments. the focus of the review was on undergraduate and postgraduate module offerings. pertaining to the presence of the term decolonisation (or decoloniality), table 2 indicates that there are only four such cases that were identified across the 2017 undergraduate and postgraduate module offerings of the 24 departments reviewed. of these module offerings, three are undergraduate modules (two 3rd­year modules and one 2nd-year module) at three different heis. the three undergraduate modules are literature modules, all of which are african literature modules. the postgraduate module is a decoloniality module offered at honours level in the english studies department at this particular hei. it forms part of the group of four elective modules from which students need to choose three (see table 2). during the course of the desktop review process, no presence or no mention of the term, decolonisation (or decoloniality), was detected in any of the 2017 undergraduate and postgraduate module offerings of the departments of either english language, applied languages studies, linguistics, or general linguistics. with respect to the purpose served by decolonisation (or decoloniality), the following observations were made. for the 2nd-year module identified above, decolonisation serves as one of the themes in the critical debates on african writings. concerning the two 3rd­year modules, one appropriates decolonisation for purposes of critiquing south african and other post-colonial literature (e.g., fiction, drama, poetry, film and television) in order to unpack the problems and consequences of political and cultural decolonisation, while the other uses decolonising as part of its seminar topic. in this regard, the focus of decolonising is on literatures resisting hegemony (e.g., colonialism, neoliberalism and dictatorship) and on imposed western modernity. lastly, in connection with the honours module mentioned above, decoloniality is part of a module title. its purpose is to enable students to develop an understanding of and to critique concepts, themes, theories, regimes, case studies and african canonical figures from a decolonial perspective, and to help students acquire skills 220 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) to frame critical thought outside euro­north american critical theory and to think from african existential conditions. 7. discussion if the term decolonisation has a presence or a mention in only three undergraduate module offerings and in only one honours module offering among the 48 module offerings of the 24 english departments (both english literature and english language departments) reviewed in this paper, this means these are the only module offerings in which it has an explicit reference and usage. the converse seems to be true in this case, the remaining module offerings, at both binary levels, tend not to have any reference and usage, both implicit and explicit – of the term, decolonisation. above all, this term has a zero mention in all english language module offerings of the previously mentioned departments at the said heis at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. module offerings, similar to disciplinary curricula, may intentionally or unintentionally in certain instances serve as epistemic spaces in which certain terms, concepts or ideas are excluded by omission or by commission. as mentioned earlier, this curricular practice is referred to as a null curriculum (see eisner, 1985; flinders et al., 1986). again as argued earlier, this view of the curriculum determines what knowledge to foreground and background, and what knowledge to recognise and misrecognise. when a particular aspect is not included or mentioned in a given module content, what happens is that this aspect tends to be part of what is not taught and learnt (cf. eisner, 1985; flinders et al., 1986; le grange, 2016). as such, this omission or exclusion has the potential to parochialise students’ options and perspectives. this is what is likely to happen when terms such as decolonisation – a polemical but a necessary buzzword that it is – are excluded or are not mentioned in the curricular spaces of the aforementioned module offerings. at face value, locating whether a given term appears in any given text is a mechanical exercise that does not tell much about the term itself nor about the text in which it does or it does not appear. this is particularly the case with a university­level degree course module. its value and its content matter is more than a given term. in other words, the presence or the absence of a term in a given module is not a touchstone on which the credibility and the relevance of that module can be judged. nonetheless, when the term in question is decolonisation, engendered a great disciplinary debate in the english department at the university of nairobi in 1968, and a term which the #feesmustfall student movement appropriated (rightly or wrongly) in 2015-2016 in the south african he sector to demand a radical transformation of he curriculum, then this becomes a different epistemological game altogether. this is more so as english departments (in all their different configurations and nomenclatures) should be seen to be spearheading a decolonisation of their own curriculum content as has been the case at makerere university and at the university of dar es salaam. by so doing, by extension they would be pioneering a transformation of their disciplines. as highlighted in the preceding section, the purposes served by the term decolonisation in the four module offerings are almost the same, even though there are elemental differences in its packaging for the three undergraduate modules and for the postgraduate module, respectively. in three modules, it constitutes a thematic or topical component in each one of them, while in the other module it is a module on its own. overall, the primary purpose of decolonisation in all these modules is to serve as part of a critical analysis toolkit. in the three undergraduate modules in which decolonisation feature, it is a form of critical enterprise mounted in african literature or in african writings. by contrast, in the postgraduate module, 221 chaka, lephalala & ngesi english studies decoloniality is not only part of the module title, but it is also an optional module whose primary purpose is to offer students a decolonial analysis toolkit devoid of euro-north american frames. 8. implications on the one hand, it is worth mentioning upfront that entities or modules within english departments that price in and incorporate decolonisation, in whatever form or permutation, needs to be commended. on the other hand, vexed questions in relation to the decolonisation as applied in the three undergraduate modules need to be asked: why is it that decolonisation is only applied to one african literature module or to its components thereof and why not a discipline­wide or an across­modules­decolonisation? this is similar to relegating decolonisation to the undesirable module, while the desirable ones remain unsullied. similarly, vexed questions need to be asked with reference to the type of decolonisation used in the postgraduate module mentioned above: why an optional stand­alone decoloniality module that leaves the mainstream curriculum of the discipline-based module offerings intact or unalloyed by decoloniality? thus, this kind of decolonisation is at best ex gratia and at worst instrumental. to this end, ramrathan (2016: 2) argues that university disciplines should move beyond instrumental discipline­based curriculum endeavours characterised by removing or adding modules as and when the need arises to embrace mode 2 transdisciplinary knowledge systems. to do so, discipline-based curriculum decolonisation efforts in english studies in general, would need to embrace pluri­ and post­disciplinarity to deparochialise the knowledge students can acquire and to enable students to deal with complex problems within their disciplines and beyond (cf. ryan & tilbury, 2013). finally, borrowing hitchcock’s (2001: 758) views but repurposing them for this paper, there are instances when decolonisation is dressed up as parochialism. this can be said to be the case with the two versions of decolonisation identified above. relegating decolonisation to african literature modules alone, inserting it into disciplines as a stand­alone optional module and completely excluding it in any one module, is no different from the decolonisation that hitchcock berates. so, the form of decolonisation that will resonate with the one articulated by ramrathan’s (2016) above, is the one that should deparochialise the disciplines of english studies in general – both the literature and language disciplines together with their various cognate sub-disciplines – and their related embedded bodies of knowledge. it is, therefore, the contention of this paper that decolonisation in english studies needs to expose students to local, regional, continental and global epistemic frames and analytic categories if such students are to be truly functional global citizens and not local misfits. in this context, supplanting one form of episteme with another, and one set of theoretic­linguistic/analytic frames with another set is a practice that is tantamount to epistemic parochialism. 9. limitations and future research this study was a desktop review of the module offerings of the identified english departments at 17 south african heis. desktop-based review studies are prone to inaccuracies and misrepresentations. this stems mainly, even though not exclusively, from outdated documents or resources available on the websites and on the portals of certain university academic departments. as such, any information or any data sourced from such documents is likely not to be a true reflection of what the state-of-art is in a given department’s online documents and its real-world documents. the same may be true of online copies of module offerings of the english departments reviewed in this study. however, since the inception of the study, 222 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) all the websites and the portals of the different departments were regularly visited to look for any new or updated module offering copies. this was done until just before this paper was finally submitted. another point that needs highlighting is that module content does not express the unstated views academic staff members may have regarding that content. it also does not articulate the kind of meta-language and meta-commentaries staff members are likely to appropriate in the course of their delivering and mediating that content. this remains one instance of a null curriculum in module offerings. finally, module content is not the only vehicle for effecting the decolonisation of or changes to module offerings. the other crucial agents of curriculum decolonisation are academic staff members. the current study was an attempt to survey module or curriculum decolonisation of the english departments identified above. it was just a preliminary study in this regard. future research needs to be carried out as a collaborative effort involving more academic staff members from the english departments of other heis as decolonisation is an all-inclusive endeavour. 10. conclusion the study reported in this paper set out to conduct a desktop review of 48 module offerings of 24 departments of english literature and english language at 17 south african heis. to this effect, it had two aims: to identify the presence of the term decolonisation (or decoloniality) in these module offerings and to discover the purpose this term served in the given module offerings. with regard to the first goal, the study has discovered that decolonisation has a presence in only three undergraduate module offerings and that it is mentioned in only one honours module offering among the 48 module offerings reviewed. all these modules are english literature modules. concerning the second goal, it has established that decolonisation is a module theme or topical component and that it is used for critical analytical purposes in those modules in varying degrees. pertaining to the three undergraduate modules, the study has discovered that decolonisation is confined to african literature or to africa writings while in the postgraduate module it is offered as one of the four optional stand-alone modules. against the backdrop of these findings, the paper has characterised instances in which decolonisation as a term is not mentioned in or is excluded from module offerings as akin to a null curriculum. finally, the paper has argued for a decolonisation that deparochialises the disciplines of english studies in general. references #feesmustfall – placards and images. available at https://www.google.co.za/search?tbm= isch&q=%23feesmustfall+­+placards+and+images&chips=q:%23feesmustfall+­+ placards+and+images,online_chips:protest+placards, online_chips:permalink&sa=x&ved= 0ahukewjguyscr9zxahwpjmakhehxdayq4lyijygb&biw=1152&bih=629&dpr=1 [accessed 26 november 2017]. abawi, z. & brady, j. 2017. 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journalist. available at http://www.thejournalist.org.za/academic-papers/the-decolonization-of-african-knowledges [accessed 26 november 2017]. http://www.thejournalist.org.za/academic-papers/the-decolonization-of-african-knowledges 228 perspectives in education 2017: 35(2) appendix a: terms, definitions/descriptions/explanations & scholars terms definitions/descriptions/explanations scholars transformation “[t]ransformation could be approached as a fluid open-ended construct that is inherently complex. this complexity should be embraced when rethinking and researching transformation in higher education. du preez et al. 2016:7 “transformation is often regarded as bringing black people and white people together, yet since the days of the anglo­boer war differences between english-speaking people and afrikaners are noticeable”. kamsteeg 2016:6 “while transformation in south african higher education discourse has more often than not been associated with demographic changes in student and staff complements, a further dimension to the ‘transformation debate’ that takes it beyond numbers is institutional culture.” webbstock and fisher, 2016: 23 “i use the term ‘transformation’ to imply a complete and radical change, in which the original idea or process becomes unrecognisable, and the new creation serves new purpose”. maringe, 2017: 2 decolonisation “[w]hatever may be the headings used or the new formulas introduced, decolonization is always a violent phenomenon ... [d]ecolonization is quite simply the replacing of a certain “species” of men by another “species” of men. decolonization, which sets out to change the order of the world, is, obviously, a program of complete disorder. but it cannot come as a result of magical practices, nor of a natural shock, nor of a friendly understanding ...” fanon, 1965: 33, 34, 35 & 36 “decolonisation is process, not arrival; it invokes an ongoing dialectic between hegemonic centrist systems and peripheral subversion of them; between european or british discoursed and their post-colonial dis/manling”. tiffin, 1995: 95 “[d]ecolonisation is about the consciousness and rejection of values, norms, customs and world views imposed by the colonisers”. césaire, 2000: 89 “decolonization, fundamentally, is a form of revolution waged by, and in the best interests of, racially colonized peoples...” rabaka, 2009: 187 decolonisation is “an ongoing process of intellectual and epistemological contestation in african and (more broadly) africana contexts”. cleary, 2012: 7 “but in considering critically the decolonisation of education in africa, cognisance also needs to be taken of the other commonly revealed in african indigenous knowledge systems that speaks to the transformation of education in africa, namely, the african ethic of ubuntu”. mbembe, 2016: 30 “we need to decolonize the systems of access and management insofar as they have turned higher education into a marketable product, rated, bought, and sold by standard units, measured, counted and reduced to staple equivalence by impersonal, mechanical tests and therefore readily subject to statistical consistency, with numerical standards and units”. mbembe, 2016: 36 “today, the decolonizing project is back on the agenda worldwide. it has two sides. the first is a critique of the dominant eurocentric academic model the fight against what latin americans in particular call ‘epistemic coloniality’ ... the second is an attempt at imagining what the alternative to this model could look like. this is where a lot remains to be done.” jansen, 2017: 158-159 decolonisation is a decentring of european knowledge and a recentring of african knowledge. decolonisation is the africanisation of knowledge; decolonisation is additive­inclusive knowledge; decolonisation is critical engagement with settled knowledge; decolonisation is encounters with entangled knowledges; and decolonisation is the repatriation of occupied knowledge (and society). jansen, 2017: 159-163 229 chaka, lephalala & ngesi english studies terms definitions/descriptions/explanations scholars africanisation “first was the great humanist and democratic tradition of european literature: aeschylus, sophocles, shakespeare, balzac, dickens, dostoevsky, tolstoy, gorky and brecht to mention but just a few names. but their literature, even as its humane and universal, necessarily reflected the european experience of history. the world of its setting and the world it evoked would be more familiar to a child brought up in the same landscape than to one brought up outside, no matter how the latter might try to see jane austen’s characters in the gossiping women of his rural african setting”. wa thiong’o, 1986:91 “africanisation ... holds that different foundations exist for the construction of pyramids of knowledge. it holds further that communication is possible between the various pyramids. it disclaims the view that any pyramid of knowledge is by its very nature eminently superior to all the others”. ramose, 1998:vi “nonetheless it is noteworthy that africanisation, which inevitably contains the deconstruction of eurocentrism should not be construed as an absolute rejection of the influence of european thinking on african scholarship but rather as a rejection of assumed european intellectual hegemony”. lebakeng et al., 2006:77 “the concept of africanisation directs our attention to the fact that things are not going the way they should within the african educational, economic, political, and social lives. africanisation demands a re-narration of the african existence”. okeke, 2010: 42 “the call for africanisation is neither an advocacy to be anti­ west, nor is it discouragement to learn from the west. it is rather an encouragement to learn from the west, but in a selective and constructive manner”. letsekha, 2013: 15 “i want [to] explain in some detail what i mean by ‘africanisation’, as it, much like its companion term ‘transformation’, has been used in a variety of ways in south africa”. metz, 2015: 243 “as is well known, africanisation and transformation more broadly, have in practice over the past twenty years largely been reduced to the admissions, hirings and promotions of black people.” metz, 2015: 245-246 “in the light of the above analysis, it is useful to think of the africanisation of institutional culture along a spectrum of people manifestations.” metz, 2015: 252 _goback 2122022 40(1): 212-233 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 high-stakes online assessments: a case study of national benchmark tests during covid-19 abstract owing to the covid-19 pandemic, paper-based delivery of the national benchmark tests (nbts) was not possible during the 2020 testing cycle. the nbts, being a large-scale national assessment project, did not have alternative options, other than to offer the tests online. moving these high-stakes tests online meant that certain considerations had to be considered to retain the credibility and security of the tests, without compromising the validity and reliability of the scores. digitising the paper-based nbts required an innovative, flexible and robust solution, which promotes fairness and ensures the quality of testing is maintained, while in many ways remains comparable to the paper-based implementation. to deliver the nbts online, the following important considerations needed to be addressed: test security and integrity, test candidate identification processes, the prevention of dishonest behaviour, test scheduling and timing and technical support. the online testing solution chosen integrates the following aspects: it 1) enables all candidates to take the same test at the same time; 2) ensures the quality and similarity in experience of test delivery for all candidates as far as possible; 3) prevents candidates from accessing other applications and devices during the test; 4) enables proctoring before, during and after the tests to encourage appropriate behaviour similar to that expected during paper-based tests; 5) provides live support to assist candidates to deal with technical challenges and to guide them through the test sessions and 6) processes and presents data and scores in the same way as for the paper-based tests. in this article, we analyse the integration and complexity of the online nbts solution, the opportunities and challenges associated with this form of delivery and reflect on test candidates’ and the team’s experiences. we discuss components of online assessment and wish to argue that this is also relevant to high-stakes course assessments. this case study should help to refine the scope of further research and development in the use of online high-stakes assessments. keywords: national benchmark tests (nbts); paper-based assessment; online assessment; artificial intelligence (ai); proctoring. author: ms tatiana sango1 mr robert prince1 ms sanet steyn1 mrs precious mudavanhu1 affiliation: 1university of cape town, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i1.13 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(1): 212-233 published: 04 march 2022 received: 10 august 2021 accepted: 09 december 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7806-7457 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8640-799x http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8788-8206 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3401-0605 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 2132022 40(1): 213-233 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 sango, prince, steyn & mudavanhu high-stakes online assessments 1. introduction 1.1 the national benchmark tests project designed with the aim of ensuring that the south african higher education (he) sector understands and addresses the levels of academic readiness of entry-level students from diverse educational backgrounds, the national benchmark tests (nbts) project provides a national service to this sector using two instruments – the national benchmark test: academic and quantitative literacy (nbts aql) assessment and the national benchmark test: mathematics (nbts mat) assessment. since the official implementation of the nbts in 2009, the tests had been administered to up to approximately 90 000 candidates annually in about 26 test sessions at test centres across south africa. the assessments are administered in english and afrikaans, the two mediums of instruction used at south african higher education institutions. the first assessment, the nbts aql, consists of two components – academic literacy and quantitative literacy – and is intended to be written by all nbt candidates. for the purposes of these tests, academic literacy refers to a candidate’s “capacity to engage successfully with the demands of academic study in the medium of instruction within the context of higher education” (cliff & yeld, 2006) and quantitative literacy refers to the candidate’s “ability to manage situations or solve problems of a quantitative nature in real contexts relevant to higher education” (frith & prince, 2006). the second instrument, the nbts mat assessment, is explicitly designed to probe higher education competencies (i.e., depth of understanding and knowledge) relevant to mathematically demanding disciplines within the context of the nsc11 framework (cetap, 2019: 14). 1.2 the impact of covid-19 on the nbts’ assessment model the coronavirus (covid-19) pandemic has changed the educational landscape for most students, teachers and lecturers in 2020. the digital transformation that schools, colleges and universities have been slow to adopt, particularly in assessment modes and practices (richardson & clesham, 2021), have been accelerated dramatically during the pandemic, with the higher education sector seeking solutions to teaching, learning and assessment. accelerated digital adoption across all sectors, including education, and higher education in particular, necessitated quick responses to the question of the mode of assessment. many high-stakes examinations were postponed or cancelled entirely, and few formal in-course summative assessments were delivered face-to-face, in person or as sit-down assessments (the world bank, 2020). in many cases assessments took the form of projects, take-home assessments, open-book assessments and other forms of remote assessments (burnett & fuentes, 2020). being a high-stakes standardised assessment, the nbts could not use these alternative assessment options easily, therefore, the only way was to offer the tests online. one of the key factors that influenced the decisions the team made in terms of the development and administration of the online nbts was to ensure that the test experience (or testing conditions) for all candidates using the online testing environment would be comparable regardless of where they were writing from, and that it would also be as close as possible to the experience in the paper-based administration of the tests. these aims relate to important categories of validity evidence that form part of the nbts’ quality assurance process. considerations such as the fairness of the assessment to different 1 the national senior certificate (nsc) examinations conclude twelve years of schooling in south africa. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 2142022 40(1): 214-233 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) types of students, and the comparability of the thinking processes and skills needed to complete the assessment tasks, are crucial (brookhart & nitko, 2019; nitko, 2001). introducing a new mode of delivery complicates this, because there are not only clear differences between the modes of delivery, but several additional potential issues could compromise the test experience. some of the challenges we faced were loadshedding , unstable internet connectivity, candidates who do not have access to devices that meet the minimum requirements that would allow the testing platform to function and enable proctoring, and administrators who had to have the necessary skills and permissions to make changes on the testing platform when troubleshooting issues. candidates’ level of computer literacy could further complicate test outcomes because it could introduce construct-irrelevant variance (wise, 2019). a lower level of computer literacy may be a deterrent to taking the online nbts – if a student is not confident in their own computer skills, the student is less likely to be comfortable with online assessments. even students who are comfortable using computers, need to become used to the testing environment before using it (khan & khan, 2019). we have chosen a qualitative approach for this case study and analysed experiences by comparing two modes of assessment, paper-based and online test administration, with reference to processes, milestones, advantages and challenges. with the introduction of the online mode of delivery during the pandemic, standard processes underwent rapid redesign to achieve the intended outcomes. following the international practices, the local south african challenges were considered, and we reflect upon these in this article. the candidates’ experiences were collected and documented in the post-test surveys and live chats data were screened for overall understanding of the major challenges. as the paper-based and online modes are envisaged to continue to be delivered, some elements of the quantitative data, such as test data and candidates’ performance analysis, were also included in this article from the initial implementation round of online testing. 2. literature overview 2.1 the use of standardised tests and high-stakes assessments high-stakes examinations are mostly used for selection, progression and certification purposes, but they also play an important role in supporting policy making, accountability purposes and the making of strategic decisions that influence teaching and learning in classrooms (black et al., 2012). standardised tests are used for placement and diagnostic decisions, and for providing feedback to parents and students. by virtue of these tests administration procedures and scoring using a nationally representative sample, the test scores are comparable which allows for important high-stakes decisions to be made in relation to the candidates’ abilities (kubiszyn & borich, 2013). as a result, these tests are widely used for university admissions and placements of prospective students. for example, in the united states, the required standardised tests for undergraduate admissions usually include scholastic assessment test (sat), test of english as a foreign language (toefl) and american college testing (act), which play a significant role in the admissions decisions due to the fact that these tests are found to be the best predictor of a student’s success (leonard, 2020). course specific admissions and aptitude tests are commonly used across europe in addition to language proficiency examinations, such as the international english language testing system (ielts) or toefl (mcgrath et al., 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 2152022 40(1): 215-233 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 sango, prince, steyn & mudavanhu high-stakes online assessments 2.2 the use of nbts institutions use the results from the nbts for four main purposes: to “1) assess entry-level academic and quantitative literacy and mathematics proficiency of students; 2) assess the relationship between entry level proficiencies and school-level exit outcomes; 3) provide additional information in the admission and placement of students; and 4) inform the nature of foundation courses and curriculum responsiveness” (griesel, 2006: 4). consequently, there is a growing body of research that stems from these different uses. some have investigated student performance in the three domains and variables that may influence and/or explain these trends (prince & frith, 2020) or compared nbt results to performance on exit-level examinations, such as the national senior certificate (prince et al., 2021). other studies have looked at the use of these results for placement and selection for particular programmes and fields of studies (mabizela & george, 2020) or how teaching and learning practices should respond to the performance trends that have been observed (cliff, 2015; nel, 2020; steyn et al., 2020). 2.3 the impact of covid-19 on standardised tests and high-stakes assessments internationally the review made by magno (2020) for the network on education quality monitoring in the asia-pacific (neqmap) highlights the most common adjustments that were made during the pandemic in the conduct of large-scale assessments. these adjustments are grouped into four broad categories: 1) scheduling arrangements, 2) modality of the assessments, 3) safety measures and 4) content modifications. the scheduling of assessment is often the first option countries are faced with, considering whether to postpone and reschedule, or to cancel or suspend the exams. the choice behind changing the modality of assessments and going online is largely based on the capability of the countries in terms of their internet infrastructure, as well as the students’ access to devices and availability of the technology solution to support the assessment delivery. magno (2020) reports on china, pakistan and thailand, who were able to conduct online and offline high-stakes national examinations. while in india and indonesia, where high stakes examinations were completely cancelled, alternative measures for promotion were used, based on cumulative grades or other criteria. in the early months of the pandemic, some countries were able to conduct national high-stakes assessments under strict safety measures, in addition to decentralised seating arrangements and capacity considerations. magno (2020) also reports on examples where the content modification strategies were used for the national exam, ensuring that specific sections of the curriculum are not included. comprehensive global reviews were collated by unesco (2020a) in the working document summarising national coping strategies on high-stakes examinations and assessments in the education sector. however, what is evident is that in the context of a global pandemic, the widespread reliance on paper-based administration for high-stakes examinations is problematic and we need to continue to seek alternative ways of test delivery (richardson & clesham, 2021). 2.4 digitising assessments and online assessment administration challenges transitioning to online assessment design and administration has several challenges (aisbitt & sangster, 2005; frankl & schratt-bitter, 2012; cramp et al., 2019; moss, 2020; alsadoon, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 2162022 40(1): 216-233 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 2021). in particular, aisbitt (2005) describes the design process and implementation problems encountered during the first year of use of online assessment, making a strong case for appropriate planning, strong project management, competent and adequate technical support, careful choice of software and compatibility checks to avoid implementation issues. frankl (2012) discusses students’ positive attitudes towards online assessment and yet, the biggest category of obstacles to successful implementation is related to technical issues, suggesting that technical support is provided for students throughout an examination. in the study of remotely invigilated exams by cramp et al. (2019), the authors, emphasise the need to simulate the exam experiences prior to the actual exam day and provide students with real-time responsive technical support to ensure successful implementation. in the work by moss (2020), these factors are also supported to mitigate cognitive load and reduce stress. similarly, alsadoon (2021) reports on the challenges experienced by the administrators of online assessments, specifically making a case for developing technical skills for instructors and students to overcome many of the challenges. in the policy recommendations for online assessments as a choice, unesco (2020b) stresses the need for thoroughly examining access to infrastructure, connectivity, protection of personal data, security, integrity and online proctoring methods, as well as students’ digital skills and gaps. ngqondi, maoneke and mauwa (2021) proposed a secure online exams conceptual framework for the south african he context, also outlining the need for policies development, design of processes and establishing the required ict infrastructures, prior to the actual development or adoption of the online exam system. 2.5 the need for test security and integrity test security and integrity form an important part of the design scope for the assessment administration processes, regardless of the modality. some risks associated with paperbased test delivery are removed in the online mode, but new risks are introduced and will need to be carefully mitigated. prior to the covid-19 pandemic, these risks (cyber security breaches, personal data security, data loss) and concerns about equity and fairness for all students (test scores validity, malpractice) often contributed to the slow adoption of technology in high-stakes assessments (coombe, lester & moores, 2020). specifically, coombe (2020) suggests that malpractice causes unfairness, requiring the new structures to be created in the online mode of administration to replicate the stringent security measures that exist in the paper-based administration. ngqondi et al. (2021) give a comprehensive review of current international practices of online exams security features and components, arguing for an integrated approach to include student identification, authentication and continuous monitoring of the exam sessions while offering students support and the necessary guidance. 3. conceptual framework the nbts, being both high-stakes assessments and standardised instruments, need to adhere to strict requirements grounded in the principles of educational measurement (brookhart & nitko, 2019; nitko, 2001). for these instruments to achieve the intended purpose and be effective, the high-stakes tests must be carefully constructed, administered and scored using statistical tools to determine the degree of confidence that can be placed in the results; their usefulness depends on whether they are used and interpreted correctly (kubiszyn & borich, 2013). design decisions, whether part of the initial test development or in response to significant changes in the testing landscape – such as the shift from paper-based to online http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 2172022 40(1): 217-233 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 sango, prince, steyn & mudavanhu high-stakes online assessments administration – must be informed by the criteria we use to evaluate the instrument and its use. brookhart and nitko (2019) identify eight broader categories of evidence that are used in the process of validating a test instrument and should undergird the test development process. figure 1: the eight broader categories of validity evidence (brookhart & nitko, 2019) although all these categories were revisited during the process of implementing the online mode of delivery for the nbts, some are particularly relevant to the case study presented in this article. for example, ensuring a comparable test experience across the different sessions and modes of delivery – an issue of fairness and a necessity in the administration of highstakes standardised tests such as the nbts – would involve the careful consideration of content representativeness (1) in the new test format, as well as the types of thinking skills and processes (2) that are involved in completing the test items in this new testing environment. moreover, in addition to studying the reliability (5) of the instruments across administrations and the effects the change in mode might have on the logistics of administration and reporting (8), it is important to investigate the possible variations in testing conditions and their implications (6), and both the intended and unintended consequences that may be associated with using this new environment (7). in assessment, and in particular high-stakes assessment, the integration of technology should not be seen as an easy and quick solution. magno (2020) emphasises the importance of observing the issues of reliability and validity requirements while moving high stakes examinations online and lists five crucial factors by luna-bazaldua et al. (2020) that need to be considered when moving to an online format: 1) access to adequate device and internet connection; 2) possibility of software malfunctions; 3) possible legal challenges involved in http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 2182022 40(1): 218-233 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) using remote proctoring; 4) maintaining psychometric standards of online exams when using test items previously administered in paper format; and 5) the need for high stakes exams to adhere to the principles of universal design to observe fairness towards students. taking these considerations and requirements as the conceptual framework for this article, we will discuss decisions that were made in the process of adapting these tests for online delivery and will compare their design and administration to their paper-based counterparts. we will do so to highlight what we have been able to accomplish to date, organise our observations and frame the need for further improvement. 4. online assessment delivery model 4.1 objectives of the nbts’ online assessment model taking exams online raises, inter alia, concerns about access, students’ digital proficiency, academic dishonesty, integrity and the quality of online assessments. in addition to these concerns, students’ data protection and privacy rights, as well as the reliability of data as evidence of students’ learning, are important factors to consider when moving high-stakes assessments from paper-based to the online delivery mode. digitising the paper-based assessment and adapting it for online delivery in the nbts’ context, required an innovative, flexible and robust solution to be comparable to the paper-based implementation. the choice of the online assessment solution for the nbts was not only based on the ability to create and administer tests via digital devices, such as desktop computers and laptops, but also had to meet the objectives below. the assessment solution had to: • enable all candidates to take the same test at the same time; • ensure the quality and similarity in experience of test delivery for all candidates as far as possible; • prevent candidates from accessing other applications and devices during the test; • enable proctoring before, during and after the tests to encourage appropriate behaviour similar to that expected during paper-based tests; • provide live support to assist candidates to deal with technical challenges and to guide them through the test sessions; and • process and present data and scores in the same way as for the paper-based tests. 4.2 features of the model and the choice of digital provider(s) web-based assessment solutions are often preferred to stand-alone solutions to avoid the installation issues and complexities around data collection. however, even in a web-based environment, the installation of additional software to provide the needed security levels is often inevitable. the nbts’ online testing solution integrated the following components: test registration, test management and test delivery learning management system (lms), lockdown browser (ldb), live support (online and offline), pre-test, in-test and post-test proctoring, data analysis and reporting. figure 2 below visually depicts this integration. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 2192022 40(1): 219-233 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 sango, prince, steyn & mudavanhu high-stakes online assessments figure 2: components of the nbts’ online solution the choice of a technology provider had to be made quickly in the pandemic-driven context, and we felt that referrals from educational partners in assessment will minimise the risks. a mexican-based company, territorium life, offered a competitively priced digital solution and services, including support and training for staff, and was prepared to work with the team to customise the platform for the specific needs of the nbts. territorium’s edtest.ai platform (https://www.territorium.com/edtest-ai) had been introduced as a secure, versatile and reliable assessment platform with artificial intelligence (ai). the platform was redesigned to handle candidates’ registration, the facial recognition and identification process, test scheduling, test management and the delivery of online synchronous sessions in a way that closely matched the objectives of the nbts. the paper-based delivery model of the nbts was redesigned using the available features of ai technology to help administer tests in a secure way. monitoring testing sessions is made possible by proctoring before, during and after the tests to encourage candidates’ appropriate behaviour, similar to that expected when paper-based tests are written under invigilation. the respondus ldb software, a custom browser that locks down the testing environment within an lms, is used to prevent any unauthorised browsing on the candidates’ devices during the test session. the solution also integrates a live chat feature that provides communication between the support team and the candidates. the chat software (jivochat and later chatra) makes it possible for candidates to ask questions about technical issues, test-related matters and to make general enquiries about the test-taking process. candidates’ response data is collected automatically, stored on microsoft azure cloudbased servers hosted locally in south africa, retrieved, analysed and scored in line with the requirements of the paper-based nbts. the iteman and xcalibre programs developed by assessment systems corporation (asc) are used to produce extensive itemand test-level output regarding the examinees’ scores, to address important psychometric issues of the tests, and to ensure reviewing the nbts in terms of item and test reliability so that the scores are defensible. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 http://edtest.ai https://www.territorium.com/edtest-ai 2202022 40(1): 220-233 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 4.3 test-taking and administration for the first implementation cycle, four mat tests (60 items each), four aql tests (125 items each) and two sample tests were authored and published in an online environment. the nbts, both aql and mat, consist of multiple-choice questions with four options of which one is correct, and each paper has a 3-hour time limit. in addition to this, the aql paper-based test consists of seven timed sections of 25 to 30 minutes each. 4.4 nbts candidates in the traditional paper-based administration of the nbts, candidates register on the nbts website, book their test date and follow the prompts to complete the process. at the end of registration, candidates receive the venue details and their nbts reference number against which to make payment. candidates who take nbts online complete a similar test registration process, but in addition also have to create a personal profile on the nbts’ online test delivery portal, the “venue”, which is not hosted on the website. this process involves navigating to the testing portal, logging in with their nbts reference number, accepting the standard declaration (results data use and session recordings), capturing their photo, completing id verification and completing the pre-test simulation. in the paper-based and online-delivery modes, candidates log onto the nbt’s website two to four weeks after the test to access and download their scores and personal reports. in the paper-based administration, the candidates arrive at the venue with their official identification document (id), which is checked before they are given an answer sheet with their name and id number printed on the back. they are then given instructions by the chief invigilator on how to complete the answer sheet and make corrections using pencils and erasers. candidates may not use anything else except pencils and erasers during the test, and their sessions are supervised by invigilators. on the day of the online nbts session, candidates take the scheduled test at home or in a computer lab, using laptops or desktop computers with cameras and microphones that they have already set up as part of the registration process. invigilation is replaced by a proctored environment where candidates access proctors or support team members through the platform’s chat function to resolve technical and other test-related issues. the more involved digital nature of the tasks in the online environment requires a different skill set of candidates compared to the paper-based assessment, and thus necessitates a different level of support and engagement by the team designing these experiences. for example, the pre-test simulations were designed so that candidates can have the full experience of taking the online test and successfully download the required software to prevent any unexpected problems on the test day. 4.5 nbts team in the traditional paper-based administration of the nbts, the team assumes different roles and is expected to support various stages of test delivery: test development and research, test printing, operations and logistics, as well as data management and administration. with a major shift in the project implementation processes, many team roles and daily tasks needed to be redesigned to support the new way of working. the individuals’ transition required by the shift to online assessment necessitated steep learning to adapt to the rapid redesign of processes, the use of new technology and the shift in normal day-to-day roles and responsibilities. in addition to this, the engagement with the technology solution provider to http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 2212022 40(1): 221-233 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 sango, prince, steyn & mudavanhu high-stakes online assessments create the online testing environment hinges on the ability to translate the conventional tasks of the paper-based delivery into new ways of digital implementation. for example, preparing the tests for online delivery involved critical engagement with the design of the user interface (ui), as well as the test navigation and instructional design, prior to the actual digitisation and authoring of the test items. the latter also involved a certain level of technical editing expertise, especially in the case of the mathematics items. these skills are predominantly found in the job descriptions of instructional designers and digital editors. another skill set involved creating detailed instruction manuals and other communication instruments to explain the online test procedures, and to give test navigation support during the live sessions. to accelerate the acquisition of new skills and to promote understanding of the new ways of test implementation, many staff training sessions were designed. in addition to proctor training, everyone went through the test simulation process, downloading the software, going through the photo and id verification, and taking the sample test as a candidate. the ability to provide support requires a deep understanding of candidates’ experiences and possible difficulties. 5. discussion and analysis of experiences 5.1 access when looking at educational solutions, one of the most important concepts is access, which is seen as students’ ability to gain the necessary learning and assessment opportunities. there are two aspects to access in terms of higher education that is pertinent to teaching and learning and assessment opportunities. the first is physical access and the second is epistemological access (morrow, 2009). in terms of the paper-based and online modes of assessments there are challenges of physical access that need to be overcome. however, the challenges are different for the two modes of assessment. complex online teaching and assessment solutions generally require stable internet connectivity to deliver the desired learning and assessment experiences (luna-bazaldua, 2020). the online high-stakes examinations are no exception, with it being even more important not to lose connectivity during the session, which could result in losing data in the middle of the test. during the live testing sessions, losing connectivity creates issues with being able to pick up where one has left off, potentially also leading to a loss of focus and increased stress levels, which could impact the test performance of the candidate. some candidates also reported issues with not being able to see images, graphs and mathematical symbols correctly when logged into the test. for example, candidates would see and report “math processing error” messages being displayed, as shown in figure 3 below, or would report that “the maths is not showing how i am used to it”, referring to traces of latex code that did not fully render. this was mostly due to slower internet connections, and in some cases, candidates had to be advised to reschedule their test sessions and seek alternative connectivity solutions. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 2222022 40(1): 222-233 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) figure 3: examples of maths rendering errors the nbts’ online solution requires 512 kb/s (recommended 1 mb/s) bandwidth or internet line speed. the additional test security features, such as downloading the lockdown browser and maintaining the proctored sessions’ video streams, incur additional data costs. candidates were advised to have approximately 500mb of data to complete each test. in south africa, data costs remain relatively high, with the cost of data varying “from r149 per one gb to r99 with effect from 1 april 2020” (chinembiri, 2020), and although internet penetration in south africa “increased by 1,7 million (+4,5%) between 2020 and 2021”, it “stood at 64,0% in january 2021” (kemp, 2021). some of the test sessions happened during periods of national power shortages, when the electricity supply commission (eskom) moves the country’s energy supply to a reduced level and introduces rolling blackouts based on a rotating schedule (“loadshedding”). this problem was beyond our control and, again, the best solution we could offer affected candidates was to reschedule their nbt session. digital education assumes students’ ability to use digital technologies and tools to navigate the learning and assessment set-up process. this ability hinges on access to or the ownership of digital devices with the required technical specifications. shared devices present challenges with administrator rights, device-specific security features (firewalls, access to video and voice, etc.), which prevented some candidates from downloading additional software and installing it correctly. the type of devices required to enable the delivery of the secure assessment is also limited: smartphones and tablets are currently not supported, which becomes a limiting factor for those candidates who do not personally own or have access to a laptop or a desktop computer. other challenges reported by some candidates, which affected test presentation, relate to the technical specifications of equipment, software versions and licensing, and screen sizes and resolution. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 2232022 40(1): 223-233 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 sango, prince, steyn & mudavanhu high-stakes online assessments for the online assessment, candidates’ access to devices with the required technical specifications, high data costs, unstable internet connectivity and/or electricity or power supply, as well as software licensing challenges need to be overcome. these concerns are related to the potential so-called hidden costs involved in getting access to appropriate devices or additional costs that may arise when technical issues are experienced and a candidate’s test session is prolonged to try to resolve those issues. we must be aware of the impact these costs may have on a candidate’s ability to complete an online version of the nbts under standardised conditions. 5.2 accommodating students’ capacity accommodating students’ capacity, in the context of high-stakes assessment, means to design assessment experiences with students’ abilities, skills and expertise in mind (nusche, 2013: 139). whether the test is paper-based or online, high-stakes assessment experiences lead to unintended stress and increased cognitive load (cramp et al., 2019). test candidates are preoccupied with the test session arrangements and might be stressed about the content of the test and the consequences of not doing well in the test, seeing the outcome of their performance as a barrier to higher education. it is important to note that while the schoolleaving national senior certificate (nsc) is a statutory requirement for entry into higher education, the nbts are optional. the paper-based examination format is familiar to the majority of high school learners in south africa (ngqondi et al., 2021), whereas online learning and assessment is a novelty in many cases, even though this mode of learning and assessment became a necessity during the pandemic. given this situation, it could be expected that the introduction of a different, unfamiliar mode of assessment, increases stress and affects candidates’ cognitive load (prisacari & danielson, 2017). to minimise or reduce this impact requires student-centric high-stakes assessment design. the experience needs to be accommodating and supportive at all stages of the candidates’ engagement. “usability means quality and puts the users and their real needs in the center” (zaharias, 2004). the usability or quality of the online assessment solution can be evaluated by how well the solution fits the purpose, how easy it is to navigate and use it, and whether the engagement with it is effective. when designing online experiences, usability factors should be carefully considered to prevent the introduction of construct-irrelevant variance when taking the test online, minimising the need for computer experience during the test session. the main goal was to simplify the ui, increase the quality of the on-screen presentation and to make navigation through the test predictable. to avoid excessive scrolling, we decided to use an interface that shows only one question per page and repeats the vignette or source material where necessary, as shown in figure 4 below. the questions and the answer options are not randomised in the online tests, preserving the exact structure of the paper-based tests. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 2242022 40(1): 224-233 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) figure 4: examples of the ui and item layout it is important to note that because additional security features are needed to be activated and stay active during the entire online session, candidates still need a certain level of technical proficiency or computer literacy outside of the test-taking environment. for example, candidates need to enable their internet browsers to take photos and to bypass certain built-in security features in order to get access to the testing environment, as shown in the example in figure 5 below. these factors can negatively influence candidates’ performance in the test. for this reason, the simulation process became compulsory after the first testing session – its importance cannot be overemphasised. having dealt with all the necessary settings on their devices a few days before the test, and having experienced the testing environment, is important in reducing candidates’ cognitive load (cramp et al., 2019; moss, 2020). it also normalises their stress levels, ultimately positively impacting test performance. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 2252022 40(1): 225-233 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 sango, prince, steyn & mudavanhu high-stakes online assessments figure 5: example of camera activation for in-browser use live support is another essential aspect of the online assessment (frankl, 2012; cramp et al., 2019). different levels of support were identified during the online test delivery: technical support related to devices (integration with the platform), support with processes and test navigation, and special needs assistance. we anticipated that having comprehensive instruction guides, youtube videos and faqs, the team will be less involved in live support activities. however, candidates’ ability to follow the process by reading the instruction guides, navigating multiple channels of communication and dealing with technical challenges was overestimated. most candidates who were able to log into the system, were not shy to ask for help via the chat feature and had a high level of expectation to be assisted in real time. the number of conversations in which each agent participated ranged between 1 700 and 2 800 chats during the first two sessions and some chats involved extensive engagement, as can be seen in the example in figure 6 below, where candidates’ wait time was recorded at 13 min 33 seconds, followed by 55 messages in almost an hour. figure 6: example of live support engagement with a candidate in addition to this, another important factor is candidates’ ability to communicate their challenges, by using clear language or creating visual references to support their query. the team needs to be aware of the potential challenges in communication and patient enough to elicit comprehensive responses to understand the issue a candidate is experiencing. this engagement during large live sessions could become time-consuming and challenging due to human capacity, leading to candidates’ increased frustration and inability to write the test. 5.3 secure test delivery and proctoring in the paper-based examinations, invigilators are appointed to administer the tests and to supervise the candidates at the physical test venue. the invigilators are responsible for ensuring a rigorous test-taking environment, in which candidates are following required procedures and do not engage in any misconduct. in the case of online proctoring, the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 2262022 40(1): 226-233 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) invigilation process is essentially the same, where some of the features are automated and some are still controlled in real time by a human. the nbts’ online proctoring uses the model where online proctors are available before the exam, while candidates are taking their photos, and during the exam. the proctors are assisted by the ai technology in response to suspected violations, videos and audios are recorded to support identification of such violations. to alleviate concerns about candidates’ privacy and data protection, the nbts team chose not to outsource the proctoring task, handling all the elements of the process within the team. nbts proctoring team was relatively small and during the active test sessions, proctors were mostly focused on assisting candidates when the ai system automatically raised flags and alerted them of a potential problem. many of these alerts had something to do with movements away from the camera, low lighting in the room or the detection of foreign objects. a proctor receiving a message from a candidate was able to check the problem by reviewing photos or video clips uploaded to the dashboard. not all alerts meant that there was a violation; sometimes a picture frame on the wall or a door frame behind the candidate was identified and flagged as a foreign object; or when a candidate looked down to work out the answers to maths questions, the candidate was flagged by the system as “not detected”. even though proctoring has attracted negative publicity over the years, becoming the focus of discussions during the covid-19 pandemic (sparc, 2021), the nbts did not receive many complaints from candidates or their parents in this regard. instead, some concerns were raised about the additional software downloads (respondus ldb), where candidates were unsure of the impact of the modifications it might have made on their devices. from the test delivery and logistical issues, we can highlight the potential cost effectiveness of online sessions in a proctored environment, eliminating the need to have physical testing centres and removing travelling costs for invigilators and candidates. having said that, the human capacity to support the online testing sessions remains a concern. most of the challenges with the online nbts were related to human capacity in a large-scale implementation model – not only to support candidates during the test sessions, but also to engage with the sessions’ post-test data when decisions need to be made about the validity of each individual’s test session based on ai-reported violations. 5.4 candidates’ data: online versus paper-based there were four sessions under review for this case study. more than 6 000 candidates completed the pre-test online simulations, 7 000 candidates completed the nbt mat test online and 8 000 candidates completed the nbt aql test online in the first six months of implementation. all the candidates who faced challenges during each session have been encouraged to rewrite in the next available session. during the first session, almost 16 000 potential candidates registered to sit for the nbts. these registrations were made before the decision was made by universities not to include nbts as part of their 2021 admission criteria. this indicates that although the tests were subsequently made optional by many universities in south africa, more than 16 000 candidates were willing to write the nbts online when this mode of delivery was introduced. among those who decided to write, at least 4 000 completed the pre-test online simulations and more than 4 000 candidates successfully completed the online nbts for aql and mat and obtained scores for their tests. tables 1–6 show the breakdown of candidates in each session. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 2272022 40(1): 227-233 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 sango, prince, steyn & mudavanhu high-stakes online assessments table 1: number of nbt registrations from the website session nbts registrations july 2020 16 082 aql only 2 586 aql & mat 13 496 august 2020 6 991 aql only 1 461 aql & mat 5 530 october 2020 1 194 aql only 337 aql & mat 857 grand total 24 267 in comparison, during the pre-pandemic years of paper-based test implementation, the nbts were written by nearly 80 000 candidates annually, as shown in table 2. in particular, the registrations for the first session in each testing cycle indicate that the number of online registrations is in line with the previous years of paper-based test registrations, as shown in table 3. table 2: number of nbts candidates – paper-based test english afrikaans year aql mat aql mat 2017 76 408 56 160 6 706 4 957 2018 78 559 58 223 6 465 4 825 2019 69 278 53 617 6 291 4 796 table 3: number of nbts bookings between 2017–2019 date booked seats 2017/05/20 22 380 2018/05/26 24 513 2019/05/11 14 688 grand total 61 581 table 4 shows that there were more than 6 000 candidates who successfully completed the pre-test simulations. this is more than 70% of the candidates who completed the nbts successfully and suggests the importance of the pre-test simulation in preparation for the actual test. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 2282022 40(1): 228-233 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) table 4: number of nbts candidates who did online simulations language july august october total sam01afr 3 666 1 961 478 5 627 sam01eng 466 293 39 759 total 4 132 2 254 517 6 386 tables 5 and 6 show the number of candidates who received their scores in the period under review. table 5: number of successful aql online candidates during the 2021 intake cycle language july august october total english 4 357 2 522 574 7 476 afrikaans 565 338 67 970 total 4 922 2 860 641 8 446 table 6: number of successful mat online candidates during the 2021 intake cycle language july august october total english 3 840 1 922 404 6 196 afrikaans 500 287 41 828 total 4 340 2 209 445 7 024 while the test data management in the online test delivery model remained the same as in the paper-based model, the data processing in preparation for scoring are slightly different for the two models. nevertheless, the response matrices from both platforms are subjected to the same scoring process, which uses the three-parameter item response theory (irt). this is done using xcalibre software (guyer & thompson, 2013). looking at descriptive statistics for tests that were written online and as paper-based tests, the preliminary results show better candidate performance for those who took the nbts online. figure 7 shows that there is a similar pattern of candidate performance in all the tests for the online and paper-based models. candidates performed better in the al test compared to both the ql and mat, and mat has the lowest performance in the online and paper-based models. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 2292022 40(1): 229-233 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 sango, prince, steyn & mudavanhu high-stakes online assessments figure 7: descriptive statistical analysis: online versus paper-based we notice higher mean and median scores for all online tests, a bigger interquartile range and standard deviation for the online mat and ql, while for al these measures of dispersion remain pretty much the same for the online and paper-based tests. however, this data needs to be interpreted with caution, because the differences might not be due to a change in the mode of delivery, but may rather be due to the demographic of candidates or the timing of the test administration in the context of the pandemic. further investigations will be made and studied in the next few months to not only compare the data, but to also investigate the performance at item level. 6. conclusions in conclusion, we think that with careful design grounded in methodology, it is possible to successfully implement online tests in high-stakes examinations. however, different solutions are appropriate for different contexts. this article has reported on the first year of implementation for the online delivery of the nbts. as the year progressed, we have made many adjustments to meet the unanticipated challenges we observed during this test cycle. we expect to continue to do so as we enter a second year of running the online nbts. one of the important lessons that we learnt from the process so far is that digital assessment literacy (eyal, 2012) is required by an assessment team or a lecturer (as assessor in an online environment) that intends to embark on this kind of project. the lecturer or assessor is the designer of the experiences and tools, as well as the data miner and the interpreter of the results. as such, they must engage with all potential data points that would inform their design decisions. this includes reflecting on their own experiences during the development of the instruments and the decisions they made before and during implementation, studying the observations made by those providing support and operational services that form part of the administration of the test and, perhaps most importantly, investigating the student experience from the moment that they register to when they receive their results. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 2302022 40(1): 230-233 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.13 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) further research is pointing in the direction of comparability of test experiences and quantitative analysis of test scores due to differences in test administration (i.e., paper-based versus computer-based testing). looking at academic literacies in conjunction with other literacies, such as “functional literacy” (vágvölgyi, 2016) and “digital literacy” (tang, 2016) in the south african context would be essential to understanding candidates’ readiness, their skills and abilities to take online high-stakes assessments and to inform strategies for training and skills development. at present, there are still many restrictions that limit our ability to administer the tests in the paper-based format, as we did before the start of the covid-19 pandemic, and this will continue for the foreseeable future. even once we return to circumstances that will make paper-based delivery easier, we do not anticipate that we will ever go back to exclusively using the paper-based delivery mode. 7. acknowledgements the authors wish to acknowledge that 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brijlall thokozani mkhwanazi many studies point to the problem of poor mathematics content knowledge of mathematics teachers in south africa. the purpose of this study was to investigate teachers’ knowledge of the mathematics they are themselves teaching. data was generated from the teachers (n = 253) written responses to test that was a shortened form of a previous grade 12 mathematics paper one examination. the sample of teachers were studying towards an advanced certificate in education (an upgrading high school mathematics qualification) at the university of kwazulu-natal in south africa. the findings revealed that the teachers in this sample obtained an average of 57% in the test. using an apos theory analysis it was found that many teachers who were working at an action level of a concept would require help and scaffolding to move to process or object levels of understanding of that concept. furthermore it was found that on average teachers obtained 29% on questions which were at the problem solving level, raising concerns about how these teachers would mediate tasks that are set at high cognitive levels, with their grade 12 learners. keywords: mathematics teachers, pedagogical content knowledge, common content knowledge, apos theory, algebra, calculus introduction in south africa, many studies suggest that mathematics teachers struggle with the content that they teach. in fact, studies point to the teachers’ poor content knowledge as one of the reasons for south african learners’ poor results in both national and international assessments (cde, 2011; mji & makgato, 2006). hugo, wedekind sarah bansilal school of education, university of kwazulu-natal e-mail: bansilals@ukzn.ac.za telephone: 031 260 3451 deonarain brijlall department of mathematics, statistics and physics, durban university of technology e-mail: deonarainb@dut.ac.za telephone: 031 373 2126 thokozani mkhwanazi school of education, university of kwazulu-natal e-mail: mkhwanazit2@ukzn. ac.za telephone: 031 260 3548 an exploration of the common content knowledge of high school mathematics teachers sarah bansilal, deonarain brijlall & thokozani mkhwanazi 35 and wilson (2010) reported on a study of teaching and learning mathematics in primary schools in kwazulu-natal. they found that none of the teachers were able to achieve 100% for the test on the curriculum that they were teaching, and 24% of the respondents got less than 50%. on average, only 47% managed to get each test item correct. spaull (2011), in his analysis of the southern and eastern africa consortium for monitoring educational quality (saqmeq) 2010 results, revealed that the top 5% of grade 6 learners (559 students) scored higher marks on the same mathematics test than the bottom 12.5% of grade 6 educators (62 teachers) in the sample. most studies about mathematics teachers’ content knowledge in south africa have been reported in terms of primary school teachers (hugo et al., 2010; spaull, 2011) and there are no studies with specific details of what fet mathematics teachers are struggling with. in this study, we attempt to scratch the surface of this issue by investigating the content knowledge of 253 grade 12 mathematics teachers from various regions in kwazulu-natal. the purpose of this study is to explore the teachers’ understanding of the concepts of quadratic equations, patterns, functions (hyperbolic and quadratic), aspects of calculus and linear programming. with this purpose in mind, we formulated the research question: how do grade 12 mathematics teachers perform on grade 12 mathematics test items? we hope that the results of this study will add to the knowledge of what mathematics teachers know and understand about the content they teach. the formal two-year upgrading programme that the teachers were enrolled in was the advanced certificate in education in mathematics in the further education and training band (ace: maths fet). the programme consisted of eight modules, two of which were generic education modules that all ace students in the faculty of education studied. there were four mathematics content modules which focused on probability and statistics; geometry, trigonometry and measurement; differential calculus and integral calculus. these modules were intended to deepen the teachers’ content knowledge by including some topics from school mathematics, but also going beyond what was required in the classroom and could be seen as what ball, thames and phelps (2008) call horizon knowledge. this is an ‘awareness of how mathematical topics are related over the span of mathematics included in the curriculum’ (ball et al., 2008: 403). horizon knowledge enables teachers to make decisions about how to teach concepts to their school learners. the programme also included two pedagogic content modules. literature review and theoretical framework wu (2005: 9) argues that often ‘a well-intentioned pedagogical decision in the classroom can be betrayed by faulty content knowledge’; thus, emphasising the importance of content knowledge in the teaching situation. bansilal (2012b) focused on a teacher’s poor mathematics content knowledge and found that the teacher’s perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 36 explanations were often incoherent and illogical. the teacher’s poor understanding of the concepts of ratio and number resulted in her missing some key ideas and presenting convoluted explanations that involved circular reasoning, which made no sense to her learners. in another south african study an author explored links between the pedagogic content knowledge (pck) and classroom practice in a calculus class at a university (brijlall, 2011; brijlall & isaac, 2011). the data revealed that there was a strong link between pck and classroom practice. many researchers agree that professional development programmes should include a focus on content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (adler, slominsky & reed, 2002; peressini, borko, romagnano, knuth & willis, 2004; kriek & grayson, 2009; ono & ferreira, 2010; bansilal & rosenberg, 2011). in south africa, the need for effective professional development of practising teachers was highlighted when many colleges were shut down during the 1990s, while some were incorporated into higher education institutions (heis; universities) in 2001. the evidence suggested that many colleges of education were producing teachers of poor quality (nepi, 1993; rogan, 2007). the shutting down of the colleges meant that many graduates had to pursue studies at heis in order to upgrade their qualifications. this legacy of deep inequality in education provisioning in south africa has led to a demand for effective professional development programmes. however, coupled with the numerous changes in the school curriculum, professional development programmes often served the triple purpose of upgrading, retraining, and opening up pathways to higher education. bansilal’s study (2012a) showed that teachers who had enrolled for an ace (mathematical literacy) for different purposes had different success rates. thus, people who enrol for different purposes have different needs, and professional development programmes should take this into consideration. are formal professional development programmes the only route for teachers who want to improve their content knowledge? many researchers believe teachers will only learn if they attend lectures or workshops where they can acquire the required knowledge. however, an important dimension of teacher learning is building up teachers’ own mathematical knowledge by reflecting on what takes place in their classrooms. steinbring (1998: 159) offers a model that provides insight into some of the mechanisms that facilitate the learning of both learners and teachers in the course of a mathematics lesson. while students learn by engaging in a task, interpreting and making sense of their solutions and reflecting on and generalising them, the teacher learns from observing the students’ process, varying the learning, and reflecting upon the entire process. although formal professional development programmes might not be the only route for teachers who want to improve their content knowledge, the focus in this article is on the implications for formal rather than informal programmes. according to ball et al. (2008: 395), the term “mathematical knowledge for teaching” refers to ‘the mathematical knowledge needed to carry out the work of an exploration of the common content knowledge of high school mathematics teachers sarah bansilal, deonarain brijlall & thokozani mkhwanazi 37 teaching mathematics’. the work of ball et al. (2008) builds upon shulman’s seminal notion of pedagogical content knowledge, which includes: for the most regularly taught topics in one’s subject area, the most useful forms of representation of those ideas, the most powerful analogies, illustrations, examples, explanations, and demonstrations – in a word, the ways of representing and formulating the subject that make it comprehensible to others. since there are no single most powerful forms of representation, the teacher must have at hand a veritable armamentarium of alternative forms of representation (shulman, 1986: 9). this description demonstrates the importance of strong mathematical knowledge of ‘the most regularly taught topics in one’s subject area’, because finding ways of formulating the concept so that it is comprehensible to others requires that one must understand the concept itself very well. ball et al. (2008: 399) refers to ‘common content knowledge’ as the knowledge of ‘a kind used in a wide variety of settings – in other words, not unique to teaching’. thus, common content knowledge can be seen as the knowledge that teachers themselves mediate with the learners in the class. in addition to this common content knowledge (mathematical knowledge of the school curriculum), ball et al. (2008) have provided three other domains of mathematical knowledge for teaching. specialised content knowledge is mathematical knowledge that teachers use in teaching), while knowledge of students and content is knowledge that combines knowledge of content and students. in this domain, teachers need to be able to anticipate student errors and common misconceptions, interpret students’ incomplete thinking, and predict what students are likely to do with specific tasks and what they will find interesting or challenging. finally, knowledge of teaching and content is knowledge about instructional sequencing of particular content and salient examples for highlighting salient mathematical issues. in order to carry out the task of teaching, a teacher needs a more profound understanding of the common content knowledge. a teacher should know the various definitions of concepts, be able to select relevant examples and exercises, be able to choose the sequence in treating a specific topic, be able to recognise the usefulness of particular representations over others in certain circumstances, and distinguish between correct and unproductive strategies used by learners when solving problems. all these tasks of a teacher depend on a robust understanding of the common content knowledge that they are mediating with their learners. in this article, our focus is on the teachers’ understanding of this common content knowledge that grade 12 learners are expected to demonstrate in their final examinations. thus, in this situation we view teachers as learners who also require this knowledge. we have argued that this common content knowledge is a necessity for teachers, but it is certainly not sufficient as alluded to by many researchers (shulman, 1986; ball et al., 2008; brijlall, 2011; bansilal, 2012b). perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 38 in order to understand some of the struggles that the teachers have with the school level mathematic concepts that they teach, we draw upon dubinsky’s apos (action-process-object schema) theory. apos theory asserts that: an action conception is a transformation of a mathematical object by individuals according to an explicit algorithm which is conceived as externally driven. as individuals reflect on their actions, they can interiorise them into a process. each step of a transformation may be described or reflected upon without actually performing it. an object conception is constructed when a person reflects on actions applied to a particular process and becomes aware of the process as a totality, or encapsulates it. a mathematical schema is considered as a collection of action, process and object conceptions, and other previously constructed schemas, which are synthesized to form mathematical structures utilized in problem situations (trigueros & martinez-planell, 2010: 5) within apos theory a person’s understanding of a concept is thus seen as transformed from an externally driven entity into a totality upon which other transformations can act. thus, in learning each concept, such as the parabola, one would start by seeing it in terms of plotting the points and generating a graph from the equation of a quadratic function. then, as one reflects on the steps, one may be able to generate a graph by working with certain properties such as the turning point, xand y-intercepts. these smaller algorithms or steps can be seen as part of the overall schema of a quadratic function and these concepts, when encapsulated into objects, can be acted upon in the process of generating a graph of a quadratic function. however, previous nonencapsulations of the prerequisite procedures might hinder a learner from moving to higher levels of understanding of the quadratic function. a written response suggests an action conception when a formula (like the one to solve a quadratic equation) leads to the writer’s solving an equation that does not require any rearrangement of the equation, or requires just an input of numbers. we adopt this as an empirical setting for an action formulation since the stimulus (in this case the formula) triggered a response in the writer. this formula can be seen as an external driver. if, however, we observe that the individual can rearrange the given equation into standard form, if necessary, and can compute an expression for the solution if the coefficients are variables, then we may conclude that that individual has displayed a process conception of solving quadratic equations arising from the procedure of using the formula. if, on the other hand, we see evidence in a written response of a conclusion on the nature of roots by interpreting and deducing properties suggested by the expression under the square root sign in the quadratic formula, we can conclude that the individual has displayed an object conception of the quadratic equation because they understand the role and meaning of the constituent elements in the formula. all these notions would provide us with empirical data of the individual’s schema for quadratic theory. an exploration of the common content knowledge of high school mathematics teachers sarah bansilal, deonarain brijlall & thokozani mkhwanazi 39 methodology this qualitative case study employed an interpretative approach, which assumes that people’s subjective experiences are real (cohen, manion & morrison, 2007). denzin and lincoln (2008: 4) explain: ‘qualitative researchers study things in their natural settings, attempting to make sense of, or interpret, phenomena in terms of the meanings people bring to them’. in this study, the phenomenon of interest is the common content knowledge of the group of teachers, which is a dimension of their mathematical knowledge for teaching (ball et al., 2008). as such, this study is considered to be a case study, which is used if ‘you wanted to understand a real-life phenomenon in depth , but such understanding encompassed important contextual conditions — because they were highly pertinent to your phenomenon of study” (yin, 2009: 18). the data collection instrument was a shortened form of the national senior certificate march 2010 supplementary examination. owing to time constraints, we shortened the instrument so that the maximum mark was 75 instead of the original 150. the original paper consisted of 12 questions, which we reduced to seven. we removed those questions based on arithmetic and geometric sequences, exponential and cubic functions, financial mathematics, and some minor sub-questions. the questions that appeared in our data collection instrument are summarised in table 1. table 1: details of research instrument question description no.of sub-questions maximum mark 1 quadratic equations and inequalities 2 8 2 patterns 3 9 3 hyperbolic function 5 11 4 parabolic function 6 15 5 finding derivatives using rules 2 6 6 optimisation 2 8 7 linear programming 4 18 total 75 the teachers had two hours to write the test, and wrote under test conditions. of the group of approximately 350 teachers, 286 agreed to participate in this study. two experts marked the teachers’ responses and a moderated sample ensured consistency. we captured the marks for each item, after which we removed anomalies and inconsistencies from the cleaned data with respect to missing details or missing records. we ended up analysing 253 records. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 40 results in this section, we first present the overall results per question and then we focus on particular trends observed on certain questions. overall results the average mark obtained in this test was 57%. the teachers in this group are all teaching mathematics at fet level, which was a condition of acceptance for the programme. it is disappointing to note such a low average. the following box plot in figure 1 illustrates the distribution of the marks. figure 1: box plot showing distribution of total marks figure 1 illustrates the class median mark of 61% and shows that half of the group got below 61%. the first quartile is at 39%, which means that a quarter of the group obtained below 39% in the test of grade 12 mathematics. we now look at the results of each section in more detail. table 2 contains a summary of results per section. an exploration of the common content knowledge of high school mathematics teachers sarah bansilal, deonarain brijlall & thokozani mkhwanazi 41 table 2: summary of results per question question description average percentage number who obtained full marks number who obtained 0 1 quadratic equations and inequalities 75% 112 8 2 patterns 55% 48 13 3 hyperbolic function 70% 18 8 4 parabolic function 49% 32 13 5 finding derivatives using rules 85% 169 9 6 optimisation 25% 15 88 7 linear programming 55% 38 25 the easiest question was that of finding the derivative using rules. although differentiation in calculus (q5) was the easiest, the section which required application of the derivative in order to maximise a function (q6) was experienced as the most challenging in this paper. thus, the two sections on calculus were on opposite ends of the continuum. it is also interesting to observe that teachers did better in questions on the hyperbola. on average, they obtained 70% compared to the questions on the parabola, where the average was only 49%. also of interest is the fact that teachers did better on questions of finding the derivative than on questions of quadratic equations and inequalities. this result is surprising because the derivative appears only in the grade 12 curriculum, while quadratic equations are studied in the grade 10, 11 and 12 curriculums, and quadratic inequalities in the grade 11 and 12 curriculums. one reason for this could be that, after studying two modules on differential and integral calculus in the ace programme, using the power rule for finding the derivative became elementary. we will now briefly look at the breakdown of questions according to the four levels described in dobe (2011: 53). these levels are l1 (knowledge), l2 (routine procedures), l3 (complex procedures), and l4 (problem solving). these levels account for 20%, 35%, 30% and 15% respectively of formal assessments. each author separately carried out the categorisation of the questions, after which we compared our results. three questions were coded differently. we interrogated these items and reached consensus on how to code each of them. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 42 table 3: breakdown according to assessment levels level number of marks per level percentage of marks at each level average percentage per level 1 7 9% 84% 2 28 37% 73% 3 29 39% 47% 4 11 15% 26% table 3 illustrates that, as the cognitive level of the questions increased, teachers did progressively worse. the teachers managed to achieve only an average of 26% in the level 4 questions. this raised the question of how the teachers who got only 26% (or below) on the problem-solving items would mediate or help their learners to deal with problem-solving questions. patterns and equations table 4 reveals that the average percentage achieved in solving a quadratic equation using the formula was only 81%. table 4: details of results for patterns, quadratic equations and inequalities subquestion description level average % number who got full marks number who got zero 1.1 quadratic equation using formula 1 81% 179 25 1.2 quadratic inequality 2 69% 127 26 2.1 finding fifth term in quadratic sequence 1 93% 235 18 2.2 finding nth term 2 63% 147 79 2.3 finding a term greater than the given value 3 40% 50 104 it is concerning that 20 teachers achieved zero for this question. also disappointing is the fact that the average percentage was 69% for q1.2 (solving a simple quadratic inequality: 7x2 + 18x – 9 > 0). similarly to q1.1, 26 teachers achieved zero marks for this question. however, 179 and 127 teachers respectively got the solution to the quadratic equation and inequality correct. figure 2 provides an example of one teacher’s response for q1.1 this teacher could not recall the quadratic formula correctly. (this is ironic because the formula sheet an exploration of the common content knowledge of high school mathematics teachers sarah bansilal, deonarain brijlall & thokozani mkhwanazi 43 that accompanied the test contained the correct formula.) this incorrect formula served as a false stimulus triggering an action that led to a meaningless process. thus, a process conception of solving quadratic equations was impeded by an ineffective action level, because the incorrect quadratic formula was used. even while performing the calculations of multiplied by 0,206, the teacher could not recognise that it was an unfamiliar procedure, as one generally finds the sum and difference in the later stage of the manipulation of the quadratic formula. figure 2: a teacher’s written response to q1.1 a teacher’s attempt to solve the quadratic inequality (q1.2) is shown in figure 3. here, the teacher has factorised the trinomial and retained the ‘greater than’ sign to assume that the solution is x is greater than both the critical values. in figure 3, the teacher’s written response illustrates that a process conception of solving quadratic equations was employed in solving this inequality. although one needs to solve the associated quadratic equation, this is only done in order to generate the critical values. then one needs to understand that with an inequality, unlike a quadratic equation where one stops after identifying the roots, it is necessary to find intervals over which the inequality holds. her previous non-encapsulation of the procedure of solving a quadratic equation did not allow her to adapt her mental structures to accommodate the new situation; she drew upon her process understanding of solving quadratic equations. she did not recognise that the inequality sign required a different interpretation from that of an equality sign as used in solving quadratic equations. figure 3: a teacher’s written response to q1.2 perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 44 in general, for the quadratic inequality, teachers displayed a variety of methods for solving q1.2. some used the table method, some used the sketch of a parabola, and some used a number line. functions here we look at the questions on the hyperbola and parabola in more detail. the teachers found the questions on the parabola harder than the hyperbola, as the average on the parabola was 49% compared to the average of 70% on the hyperbola. table 5 shows that most teachers did not have problems with working out the x-intercepts of the parabola. they also found it easy to identify the equation of the asymptotes of the hyperbola. most teachers were able to sketch the graph of the hyperbola, which was encouraging because the graphs involved a vertical shift of 2 downwards and 1 unit to the right subquestion brief description of items level average % number who got full marks number who got zero q3 given 3.1 find equations of asymptotes 1 86% 211 27 3.2 intercepts with axes 2 89% 208 18 3.3 sketch hyperbola f(x) 2 84% 200 31 3.4 range of y = –f(x) 3 36% 91 162 3.5 description of transformation from f to if 3 20% 27 178 q4 given a sketch of a parabola 4.1 find coordinates of one xintercept 2 90% 226 26 4.2 find coordinates of second xintercept 2 80% 199 52 4.3 find equation in form y = a(x – p)2 +q 2 53% 102 74 4.4 find equation of reflection of f in x-axis 3 54% 133 118 4.5 find maximum value of 1 – f(x) 3 35% 77 165 4.6 solve f(x2 – 2) = 0 3 31% 70 154 table 5: description of results for items on the hyperbola and parabola an exploration of the common content knowledge of high school mathematics teachers sarah bansilal, deonarain brijlall & thokozani mkhwanazi 45 questions on a slightly higher level, which required a description of the range of the hyperbola, were more challenging. teachers had difficulty when asked to describe the transformation of f into the given function. the transformation involved a reflection of f about the y-axis (or a combination of a translation and reflection in x-axis). two teachers’ written responses appearing in figure 4 indicate that both the teachers did not seem to understand the question. figure 4: a teacher’s written response to q1.1 in terms of the questions on the parabola, the first two questions did not pose a problem for most. the questions requiring the equation of the parabola posed a challenge for many, with 74 teachers getting zero for this question. it was questions 4.5 and 4.6 that had the worst results. question 4.5 required a reflection of f(x) across the x-axis and then an upward shift of 1; however, it was necessary to just trace the movement of the one point (turning point), since this point would become the maximum point when reflected. this means that these teachers did not display a meaningful schema for parabolas. question 4.6 required an algebraic approach, substituting x2 – 2 into f(x) and then solving the equation. calculus in this section, we focus on teachers’ responses to two questions where the highest average mark and lowest average mark was attained. table 6 presents a summary of the teachers’ performance, followed by the tasks. table 6: description of results for items on calculus sub-question level average % number who got full marks number who got zero 5.1 2 90% 214 16 5.2 2 81% 192 34 6.1 3 59% 137 96 6.2 4 13% 16 183 one reason for the high averages (90% and 81% in q5.1 and 5.2, respectively) in question 5 would be the nature of the questions (find the derivative of two functions), which involved the routine application of the rules for differentiation. these can be described as carrying out procedures which are level 2 questions. in addition, the teachers spent two semesters during the ace programme studying differential and integral calculus; thus, these questions did not pose a challenge. this level of success perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 46 also shows that tasks which require instrumental understanding (rules that can be performed by just knowing the “what” and “how”) are more readily taken up than tasks which require relational understanding (understanding the “why” and “when”). apos theory postulates a leap in understanding from working on an action or process level to working on an object level understanding. this may explain the difference in performance between q5 and q6. a recent study (brijlall & ndlovu, 2013) on optimisation found a need for an itemised provisional genetic decomposition for individual tasks. for instance, questions 5 and 6 would require more scaffolding to facilitate an easy transition from the action level to the process level for encapsulation into an object. the details of the genetic decomposition of doing this one item at a time will help a teacher provide scaffolding to the learners so that they could be more successful at such tasks. with experience, the teacher will continuously refine the provisional genetic decomposition so that it can diagnose and treat learners’ difficulties in this section more accurately. figure 5: questions 5 and 6 of the test optimisation is challenging as a question, and can be seen as on level 4 (problem solving) in the assessment taxonomy (dobe, 2011) because it involves modelling of a real-life situation. figure 6 is an example of a teacher who tried to find the equation on mn by substituting the y-coordinate of n and the x-coordinate of m into the formula (y – y1) = m (x – x1). an exploration of the common content knowledge of high school mathematics teachers sarah bansilal, deonarain brijlall & thokozani mkhwanazi 47 figure 6: a teacher’s written response to finding the equation of mn another response (see figure 7) shows that the teacher found the length of line mn in terms of a and b instead of finding a general equation. figure 7: a teacher’s written response to finding the length of mn discussion and concluding remarks the results of this study raise concerns about the teaching of mathematics by fet mathematics teachers whose knowledge of school mathematics is so poor. teachers need to be able to design valid assessments that can provide a good indication of the current proficiency of particular learners in the subject of mathematics. the department of education provides descriptors of four cognitive levels that should be used to guide all assessment tasks (dobe, 2011). the dobe (2011: 53) provides the descriptions of the necessary skills for each of the four different cognitive levels. the results of this study (table 2) indicate that teachers performed well at level 1 questions (average of 84%), but as the cognitive level of the questions increased, the teachers’ responses were mostly inadequate (average of 47% and 26% for levels 3 and 4 respectively). this renders a somewhat contradictory pedagogic situation. how will teachers design fair assessments for students that perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 48 cover the four taxonomy levels if they are struggling to solve questions based on levels 3 and 4 of the taxonomy? how will they recognise valid alternative solutions to higher-level questions if they cannot produce an appropriate solution themselves? across various questions, it was found that some tasks that required an action level of understanding (such as finding the solution to a quadratic equation using the quadratic formula) were within the bounds of most of the teachers’ abilities. however, the responses to questions requiring an object level understanding of the quadratic function, such as expressing the quadratic function f(x) in the form y = a(x – p)2 +q (q4.3), were answered poorly. this shows that the teachers’ engagement with the concept of the quadratic function is very low. according to apos theory, learners who are working at an action level of a concept require help and scaffolding to move to process or object levels of understanding that concept. a teacher could identify a genetic decomposition that would help recognise the level of engagement that particular learners are at and provide opportunities that could lead learners to deeper understanding. this could take the form of explanations, providing consolidation or extended activities, focusing on particular examples, counter examples, or providing different representations of necessary concepts that could help them to deepen their understanding of the concept. these are some of the skills referred to by shulman (1986) as part of the notion of pedagogical content knowledge. however, all of these interventions would not be available to teachers who themselves are working on an action level of the concept. firstly, if teachers can work only in an externally driven manner on particular procedures, they will not be able to recognise the demands of the questions and will not have the skills to construct interventions to meet the needs of their learners. the teachers will not have access to various representations of the concept because they are only able to carry out the procedure at an action level. thus, the teachers’ limited understanding is an impediment to the pedagogic content strategies that they will be able to draw upon in the class. these poor results also call for introspection into the professional development programmes that we have offered. since the teachers wrote the test in the last semester of their two-year upgrading programme, the results indicate that the programme was not able to develop the teachers’ competence in the subject matter that they were required to teach. the results also indicated that teachers found the questions on the parabola harder than the hyperbola – the average on the parabola was 49% compared to an average of 70% on the hyperbola. initially, this result surprised us. in trying to explain this finding, we scrutinised the content covered in the various modules of the programme and found that the introductory calculus module had a strong focus on rational functions, with extensive discussions about limits and asymptotes. the emphasis of the properties and relationships between the variables of rational functions would have helped them to see the shifts and properties of the hyperbola more easily. it was assumed that parabolas were sufficiently covered at school level for many years, so the unit on the parabola was done as a self-study. an exploration of the common content knowledge of high school mathematics teachers sarah bansilal, deonarain brijlall & thokozani mkhwanazi 49 considering that this intervention on rational functions could have made a positive influence on the teachers’ competence in hyperbolic graphs, we ask the question: should the entire programme have been designed so that all school level content was taught to the teachers? we think that if this had happened, the teachers would have done much better at working out these grade 12 test items; however, we do not recommend such a step. providing correct answers to such questions forms a small part of the teachers’ task. as research on teachers’ pedagogic content knowledge indicates, there is much more than just knowing the common content knowledge (shulman, 1986; ball et al. 2008). the results of this study indicate that teachers do not know sufficient school mathematics – which needs to be addressed urgently. perhaps it should be mandatory for under-qualified teachers to complete a foundation programme that is focused on school level mathematics content before being granted entry into the formal teacher qualification programme of the ace (or advanced certificate in teaching – act) as it will be called in future (dohet, 2011). this study has provided information of how practising teachers are struggling with the mathematics content that they are teaching. although the results are discouraging, it is hoped that the specificity of the results would influence teacher educators and teacher development agencies to urgently design and implement interventions which could be used to improve the situation. references adler j, slominsky l, & reed y 2002. subject-focused inset and teachers’ conceptual knowledge-in-practice. in j adler & y reed (eds.), challenges of teacher development: an investigation of take-up in south africa. van schaik publishers: pretoria, south africa, 135-152. ball dl, thames mh & phelps g 2008. content knowledge for teaching: what makes it special? journal of teacher education, 59(5): 389-407. bansilal s 2012a. exploring success rates in a professional development programme for in-service teachers. alternations, 19(2): 236-256. bansilal s 2012b. arriving at the starting point? exploring a teacher’s use of circular reasoning in a mathematics classroom. education as change, 16(1): 35-49. bansilal s & rosenberg t 2011. south african rural teachers’ reflections on their problems of practice: taking modest steps in professional development. mathematics education research journal, 23(2): 107-127 brijlall d 2011. a case study of lecturers’ views on content knowledge and practice. in lt mamiala (ed.), proceedings of the nineteenth annual meeting of the southern african association for research in mathematics, science and technology education. north-west university, mafikeng, south africa, 34-50. brijlall d & isaac v 2011. links between content knowledge and practice in a mathematics teacher education course: a case study. south african journal of higher education, 25 (4): 660-679. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 50 brijlall d & ndlovu z 2013. exploring high school learners’ mental construction during the solving of optimization. south african journal of education, 33(2) art. #679, 18 pages, http://www.sajournalofeducation.co.za. cde (centre for development and enterprise) 2011. value in the classroom. the quantity and quality of south africa’s teachers, cde in depth, 11. cohen l, manion l & morrison k 2007. research methods in education. london: routledge falmer. denzin nk, & lincoln y 2008. introduction: the discipline and practice of qualitative research. in nk denzin & y lincoln (eds.), strategies of qualitative inquiry. los angeles: sage, 1-44. dobe (department of basic education) (2011). curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps). mathematics grades 10-12. pretoria, south africa. dohet (department of higher education and training) (2011). the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications. government gazette, no 3446. pretoria: dohet. hugo wjm, wedekind v, wilson d. et al., (2010). the state of education in kwazulunatal: a report to the provincial treasury. pietermaritzburg: kzn provincial treasury. kriek j & grayson d 2009. a holistic professional development model for south african physical science teachers. south african journal of education, 29: 185-203. mji a & makgato m 2006. factors associated with high school learners’ poor performance: a spotlight on mathematics and physical science. south african journal of education, 26(2): 253-266. nepi (national education policy investigation) 1993. the framework report and final report summaries. cape town: oxford/necc. ono y & ferreira j 2010. a case study of continuing teacher professional development through lesson study in south africa. south african journal of education, 30: 59-74. peressini d, borko h, romagnano l, knuth e & willis c 2004. a conceptual framework for learning to teach secondary mathematics: a situative perspective. educational studies in mathematics, 56(1): 67-96. rogan jm 2007. an uncertain harvest: a case study of implementation of innovation. journal of curriculum studies, 39(1): 97-121. shulman ls 1986. those who understand: knowledge growth in teaching. educational researcher, 15(2): 4-14. spaull n 2011. a preliminary analysis of sacmeq iii south africa. stellenbosch: university of stellenbosch. steinbring h 1998. elements of epistemological knowledge for mathematics teachers. journal of mathematics teacher education, 1(2): 157-189. trigueros m & martínez-planell r 2009. geometrical representations in the learning of two-variable functions. educational studies in mathematics, 73: 3-19. wu h 2005. must content dictate pedagogy in mathematics education? talk given at california state university, usa. yin rk 2009. case study research: design and methods. beverley hills, ca: sage. editorial the first article by alant, a science and technology educator and researcher interested in the experiences of young people who continue to learn science and technology in various relatively deprived contexts, engages with research that focuses on unearthing the inequities in science and technology education. alant explores the role of the eskom expo for young scientists as a particularly salient node in the constitution of young learners’ identity as prospective participants in the field of science and technology. alant argues that the institution of the eskom expo, while undoubtedly useful as a means of opening up young learners’ horizons of science and technology, is still not sufficiently flexible, both at a conceptual and an organisational level, for it to be the vehicle of technological empowerment it is intended to be. avalos, téllez & navarro reviews some of the problems faced by teacher education in general and in chile specifically, focussing on the effects of six teacher education programmes on pre-service primary level teachers’ learning of mathematics and mathematics pedagogy. this links directly to the third and fourth paper by van putten, howie and stols and essien respectively which also deals with the preparation of pre-service teachers to effectively deal with the challenges of teaching mathematics. van putten, howie and stols’ paper centres on an investigation into pre service mathematics education students attitudes towards, as well as their level of understanding of euclidean geometry. van putten, howie and stols conclude that the geometry module did change the students’ attitude towards geometry, but did not bring about a sufficient improvement in their level of understanding necessary for the adequate teaching of geometry. essien reports on an investigation into what teacher educators consider to be best practices in how to prepare pre-service teachers to effectively deal with the challenges of teaching mathematics in multilingual contexts, and how what teacher educators consider as best practices inform their own classroom practice. essien concludes by cautioning against the adoption of imported practices from other countries. essien argues that in delineating practices that are more likely to work in the south african context, it is important to bear in mind the distinctive nature of multilingualism in south africa. olivier, de lange and wood describe how they attempted to make teacher voices audible via an intervention based on participatory visual methodology. olivier, de lange and wood argue that teachers who work in economically and socially disadvantaged environments have first-hand knowledge of the challenges that can impede teaching and learning, yet their voices are often ignored when researchers and policy-makers attempt to address such issues. olivier, de lange and wood’s article illustrates that teachers’ lived experiences can be explored and made visible by means of participatory videos. the medium of participatory video allows teachers to be proactive in making their voices heard and the final product has the potential to influence other role-players in the education system. in the phenomenon of xenophobia as experienced by immigrant learners in johannesburg inner city schools, krüger and osman describe how xenophobia is experienced by a small selection of immigrant participants in five inner city schools in johannesburg. their findings make a compelling argument in support for the need for anti-xenophobia education in the schools under scrutiny. in our seventh article, petersen and henning addresses the issue of the theory-practice divide in pre-service teacher education from the viewpoint of design-based research (dbr). using the example of a course in service learning (sl), the authors discuss their reflection on a curriculum that failed to help the students convert declarative knowledge to procedures of pedagogy, or to internalise this knowledge to become part of their disposition as teachers. sung’s paper reviews neoliberal and libertarian understandings of educational equality and democratic education and interrogates the rationale for the justification of markets in education. sung is critical of the notion of possessive individualism as a principle of democratic education on the grounds that such a notion explains human action only at the individual level, as a matter of free will, and not as a part of the cultural and political struggle for nondiscrimination. sung provides reasons why the claim to equal respect and recognition needs to be given more importance in education and argues for the social responsibility to secure not only students’ educational opportunities, but also their opportunity to reflectively consider what counts as equal value. in our final article for this issue, ebrahim examines the dominant discourses teachers in early childhood education (ece) used to produce understandings of children and educational practice for them. the discourses of biology, development and difference are discussed. ebrahim show that teachers unproblematically use dominant discourses which narrow possibilities for them to understand children. this in turn limits their capacity for shaping contextually relevant practice. ebrahim concludes with a brief discussion on worthy areas to focus on in order to map a way forward for developing the skills and capacity of teachers in ece. overall, the articles in this edition collectively do flag key issues, and implicitly set out an educational agenda that is both a call for change (to fight the damaging dimensions of discrimination), a call to work (to deepen the research that can examine teacher experiences), and a call to teach (mathematics, ece, values). dennis francis editor in chief 52 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 educators’ experiences of inclusive learning contexts: an exploration of competencies ish m a el m a g a r e school for psychosocial b ehavioural sciences, north-w est university, south a frica magareish@ yahoo.com a n sie eliza b eth k itc h in g school of educational sciences, north-w est university v er a ro o s school for psychosocial b ehavioural sciences, north-w est university the successful im plementation of inclusive education relies heavily on educators. inclusive education is based on values such as hum an dignity, equality, hum an rights and freedom . the com plexity of the interactive relationships between different system s, such as learners, educators, fam ilies, schools and the learning context, was recognised in this research and an eco system ic perspective consequently applied. o ur purpose in the research was to explore the experiences of educators in ordinary schools regarding the challenges experienced in inclusive learning contexts and to identify the com petencies they used to deal with som e of these challeng es. a qualitative research design was chosen, using a case study. the study was conducted in north west province at a secondary school. various contextual and microsystemic barriers that threatened an enabling learning environm ent were observed. seven educators, one male and six fem ale, were purposively selected for the study, and three m ethods of gathering data were used, nam ely, written assignm ents, in depth follow up interviews, and a focus group discussion. them es and subthem es were identified through thematic content analysis. the findings indicated that the educators had competencies that enabled them to support learners and form collaborative relationships in an inclusive learning environm ent. various im plications for the d epartm ent of education and school m anagem ent team s are pointed out. k eyw ords: asset based approach; barriers to learning; competencies in inclusive education; deficit based approach introduction t he implementation of an inclusive education system in south africa was part of the educational reforms that occurred after 1994 and which were informed by the salamanca conference in spain in 1992 (u n es c o , 1 994; 2 006). inclusive education in this study is defined as the inclusion of learners who experience barriers to learning in a regular educational environment regardless of their diverse personal or interpersonal needs, the contextual challenges and the adversities they have to deal with. it resonates with loreman, deppler and h arvey’s (2005) definition, which emphasises the inclusion o f these learners in all aspects of schooling. inclusive education promotes the full personal, academic and optimal development of all learners (d epartment of education, 2001; engel brecht, green & naicker, 1999; n ational c ommission on special needs in education and t raining [ncsn et ] and n ational committee for education support services [n cess], 1997; rustemier, 2002). t he broad principles of inclusive education as identified by d yson (2001) serve as guidelines for defining the concept in the present study. b ased on these principles, inclusive education can be considered education that is dedicated to the development of a more democratic society. it strives for a more equitable, quality education system and calls on ordinary schools to accommodate the diverse needs of all learners in mainstream education. 53perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 according to m uthukrishna and sader (2004), inclusive education should focus on the de velopment of enabling education systems and learning methodologies that meet the needs of all learners, and particularly the needs of those learners who experience barriers to learning. b arriers to learning include learning difficulties in reading, writing, mathematics, speech, language and communication. t hey also refer to developmental delays and physical, neurological and sensory impairments. attendant implications are socioeconomic barriers, cultural prejudices, inaccessible and unsafe infrastructure, and lack of parental involvement (ainscow, b ooth & d yson, 2006; d epartment of education directorate: inclusive education, 2003; d epartment of education, 2001; lomofsky & lazarus, 2001). t he eco system ic p erspective recognises the interactive relationships between learners with barriers to learning, educators, families, schools and the learning context (d onald, lazarus & lolwana, 2002; h ay, 2003). t he interrelated nature of the ecological systems implies that educators with competencies are integrally involved in a learning environment where learners with barriers to learning can pursue their goals (hamill, jantzen & b argerhuff, 1999; hines, 2008). however, educators often regard themselves as lacking the necessary competencies (rapmund & m oore, 2002). b ecause the implementation of inclusive education is becoming a reality in south africa, main stream educators have to include learners with barriers to learning in their classes (holz & lessing, 2002). prior to 1994, educators were trained only for either mainstream education or specialised education to support learners with barriers to learning (swart, engelbrecht, eloff & pettipher, 2002). d espite their limited training, many educators seem able to cope with the challenges posed by in clusive education. against the above background , we sought to address the following research question: w hat competencies do educators apply to facilitate the development of enabling inclusive learning envi ronments? competencies in this study refer to the skills and attitudes educators require to deal with barriers to learning in an inclusive learning context. t he purpose in our study was therefore to explore the subjective experiences of educators in ordinary schools regarding the challenges in inclusive learning contexts and thereby to identify some of the competencies they have to apply to deal with the challenges posed by inclusive education. research method and design a qualitative research approach was used to make sense of the subjective experiences of educators regarding their competencies in inclusive learning environments (d enzin & lincoln, 2005; leedy & ormrod, 2005). qualitative research is based on the ontological assumption that the nature of reality is diverse and that reality has multiple facets (creswell, 2007). t his implies that educators’ perceptions of the reality of the challenges are subjective and that the identified competencies to deal with these challenges are varied. it is therefore important to get as close as possible to the educators’ experiences in order to present their different perspectives. t his also supported the use of a case study design as it allowed the researcher in the present study to explore the educators’ experiences in dealing with the barriers to learning in a specific learning context (creswell, 2007; smith & eatough, 2007). t he case study method enables researchers to obtain an in depth under standing of educators’ subjective experiences of the barriers associated with inclusive learning and to explore their competencies in dealing with these barriers (fouche, 2002; lewis, 2003). research context and participants t he study was conducted in n orth w est p rovince at a secondary school that serves an area popu lated primarily by black (t swana speaking) people and coloured people. t he school has over 1,000 learners with an average class size of 45. contextual barriers to learning include the fact that many o f the learners have to contend with low socio economic circumstances, which means that so me learners have to walk long distances to attend school, and many also arrive at school hungry. 54 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 o ther contextual barriers to learning include the impact of h iv& aids and the fact that many learners survive on government grants as they are either orphans or have to care for their sickly parents. individual barriers to learning include attention deficit diso rder barriers, language and mathematical barriers, emotional and behavioural barriers, intellectual barriers and learning im pairments. m ost of the 25 educators on the staff at the school speak e nglish. seven educators one male and six females with ages ranging from 20 to 48 years and a mix of qualifications, experiences and cultural groups participated in the study. t he participants were recruited through purposive sampling by applying the following criteria: • n o prior training in dealing with barriers to learning/education for learners with special edu cation needs (elsen ). • active involvement in learning contexts that included learners with barriers to learning. • experience of learning environments consisting of a mix of cultural groups. • m inimum qualification of a diploma in education and highest qualification of a b achelor of education (honours). ethical considerations p ermission to undertake the study was obtained from the ethical committee of the n orth w est u niversity (ethical clearance number 05k 14) as well as from the principal of the school, the edu cation manager for north w est province and the educators concerned. t he educators were informed about the purpose of the research, the expected duration, the procedures and their right to decline to participate and to withdraw from the research once it had begun. t he researcher obtained written consent from all the research participants (educators). data gathering t hree methods of gathering data were used: written assignments, in depth individual interviews, and a focus group discussion. written assignments t he written assignments were aimed at raising self awareness and providing the educators with the opportunity to reflect on their experiences and to identify the competencies they applied on a personal and interpersonal level (n elson & prilleltensky, 2005). t he following statement was formulated for the written assignments: “please think of a situation in your career where you had to deal with learners who experienced any form of barrier to learning and describe how you dealt with it.” in-depth interviews t he in depth individual interviews were used to gain an understanding of the educators’ experiences, and they also allowed the researcher to explore the meanings the educators attached to their expe riences in inclusive learning contexts (legard, k eegan & w ard, 2003; ritchie, 2003). t he in terviews lasted between 60 and 90 minutes and were conducted at the school. although all the educators were invited to participate in the individual interviews, only seven accepted the invitation. t he following statement/question was posed to the educators (participants) at the beginning of the interview: “please think of situations where you had to deal with learners who experienced any barrier to learning and describe how you dealt with the situations.” probing questions included the following: • in terms of inclusive education, what are your personal strengths as a teacher regarding the implementation of the policy on inclusion? • w hat do you consider to be your strengths within an inclusive setting framework? 55perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 • w hat are the things you have done better? • pick a specific situation or a specific learner experiencing barriers to learning and explain the process you went through in helping that particular child. w hat intervention methods did you use for such a learner? • w hat internal drive keeps you going? focus group discussion t he seven educators also participated in a focus group discussion that allowed them to share their views and experiences and to hear other educators’ experiences (finch & lewis, 2003; ritchie, 2003). t he following question was asked to initiate discussion in the focus group: t he government has introduced inclusive education into the formal system. hence, many educators have not been trained to handle learners with learning barriers yet find them in their classrooms. however, you are not sitting back. something is being done to deal with the situation. so i would like to hear from you: what are your different perceptions regarding this issue? data analysis t he qualitative data were prepared for data analysis by producing a verbatim rendition of the focus group discussion as well as the individual interviews. t he data were then examined for themes (charmaz, 2003; creswell, 2008) and the identified themes then grouped into themes and sub themes. t he researcher used the various identified themes to develop an overall description of the phenomenon (learning barriers) as the educators typically experienced it (charmaz, 2003; d e v os, 2002). t his was an inductive process as the researcher began with raw data consisting of multiple sources of data. t he final research product included the different dimensions of this particular group of educators and their experiences of an inclusive learning environment. trustworthiness t o ensure trustworthiness, g uba’s (cited in shenton, 2003) propositions were used, which include credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability (see t able 1). discussion of findings from an eco systemic perspective, the findings indicated that the educators could facilitate different micro and meso systemic interventions spontaneously. on a micro level the system in which learners are directly involved the learners were supported and motivated by the enabling skills and attitudes of the educators such as unconditional acceptance, focused observations, adaptability and flexibility. o n a meso level, enabling relationships between different micro systems were facilitated through collaborative relationships with parents to involve them in the learning process. colla borative relationships were also established with colleagues in the school and in the district. a more in depth discussion of the various aspects of these relationships is provided after the visual presen tation of the findings in t able 2. supporting learners supporting learners means emotional nurturing, building positive relationships, and communicating openly and in a trusting manner. unconditional acceptance u nconditional acceptance means that the learners in the study were not accepted solely for what they were capable of doing or what they could offer. rather, the educators expressed love and acceptance 56 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 table 1. strategies for ensuring trustworthiness strategy criteria application credibility transferability dependability and confirmability fieldwork. the researcher obtained data through engagement based on trust and good rapport with the participants in the learning environment. authority of the researcher. interviewing process member checking peer examination selection of sample dense description audit trail dense description educators were visited in the school context to establish trust and rapport. informal visits during and after the interviews allowed the researcher to spend sufficient time with the research participants (the educators) to understand their reality. the researcher is a qualified teacher and counsellor while the supervisors are qualified psychologists who have been trained in qualitative research methodologies and have knowledge of inclusive education and barriers to learning. the researcher reframed and repeated questions to elicit full descriptions of the participants’ experiences as far as possible. the interviews were sent to the participants for comments and confirmation of the findings. the findings and discussions were subjected to various discussions with the educators and the supervisors. purposive sampling was used to recruit the participants. descriptions of methods, data gathering and analysis were given. the findings were supported by direct quotes. all records of the phases of the interviews were filed and the procedure was described in detail. full description of research methodologies enables replication table 2. an overview of the main themes and subthemes of the educators’ experiences of an inclusive learning environment with reference to their competencies main themes subthemes supporting learners collaborative relationships with parents and colleagues unconditional acceptance focused observations adaptability and flexibility motivation and encouragement involving parents developing collegial relations naturally and unconditionally. o ne educator said the following: “your child is your child regardless of a ny nega tive attributes. one does not give one’s own child love only because he or she does som ething positive”. t his statement suggests that this particular educator simply accepted learners with barriers to learning unconditionally. t he educators took time to get to know the learners and their abilities and to b uild trusting relationships with them to boost their confidence. o ne educator commented as follows: “o nce i get 57perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 a class, the first two to three weeks, i will know all of them as i become fam iliar with them. i do have that m otherly connection, so w henever they h ave a problem they a lways com e to m e”. another educator illustrated her compassion for the learners by adding: “there seem s to be a lot of trust, openness and com m unication which goes to a deeper level w here children freely share with you how they feel”. t he value of unconditional acceptance is supported in the literature (e.g. engelbrecht & forlin, 1998; james & g illiland, 2005). according to james and gilliland (2005), if educators demonstrate care and appreciation for learners, regardless of their difficulties or circumstances, the learners will be more likely to accept and respect them. focused observations focused observations mean that educators take special notice of learners who are experiencing learning barriers and plan appropriate interventions for enhancing the learning environment. t he educators in the study applied holistic assessment approaches after intensive observations of the learners’ achievements and their progress to set the tone for ongoing teaching and learning. t he educators who participated in the focus group discussion said that they “observed what goes on around the child and use it to create a child profile based on strengths and weaknesses and later utilised the inform ation”. another educator confirmed this: “i get to know the learner’s background a little m ore, his state of mind, and the culture… ” t hrough these focused observations, the edu cators communicated their intention to facilitate an optimal inclusive learning environment regard less of the barriers to learning experienced by individual learners. focused observations promote effective feedback for educators and help them develop realistic assessments of learners’ capabilities, needs, achievement levels, interests and self reflection (d epart ment of n ational education (d n e), 1998; engelbrecht et al., 1999; farrant, 1994; m wamwenda, 2004; centre for the study of child care employment, 2007). adaptability and flexibility adaptability and flexibility refer to educators’ ability to adapt a curriculum and their teaching strate gies to benefit learners. t his implies sensitivity to the needs of learners who experience barriers to learning. t he educators in the study intentionally adjusted the learning content to give the learners the opportunity to engage with the learning environment. adaptability and flexibility were demonstrated in a variety of ways and illustrated the educators’ willingness to extend themselves beyond their familiar frameworks. t he educators in the inclusive learning context adapted their instruction by simplifying the learning material to match the cognitive level of the learners taking into conside ration the learning characteristics of individual learners with barriers to learning. for example, one educator said during the individual interview: “i plan, m ove at the learners’ level … in that way you find that i achieve an 80% pass rate under most circumstances as the learners operate at their own level”. t his approach seemed to create and maintain an atmosphere that nurtured the personal, cognitive and social development of the diverse learners under the educators’ care (d onald et al., 2002). b ased on their knowledge, the educators also devised ways of determining exactly what each learner needed and selected learning activities suitable for his/her level. for instance, one educator remarked: “i break down topics into very sm all units”. t he educators also adjusted their methodo logical approach. d uring the interview, one educator said: “i use the three approaches to teaching, nam ely concrete using real objects, semi concrete, drawing the pictures of those objects to the abstract, learners’ writing and reading sentences that match the pictures”. t his implies that the educators used their discretion in the selection of teaching methods as a way of accommodating a diversity of learning styles. some of the educators indicated that they slowed down and emphasised the specific skill they 58 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 wanted the learners to achieve this approach is also supported by other research (engelbrecht, g reen, swart & m uthukrishna, 2001). t his manageable workload increased as the learners mastered the skills required (g age & b erliner, 1992). t he same approach is reflected in the following parti cipant’s written assignment: “instead of doing five sum s, i em phasise the skill that i want them to learn”. another participant said: “i also change the teaching approach if the method i brought is not working”. t he educators’ ability to assist the learners through different ways of teaching indicated a flexible approach to dealing with barriers to learning as they realised that one form of instruction did not cater for the learning requirements of different learners (d onald et al., 2002; hamill et al., 1999). some of the educators even involved peer learners to assist in the facilitation of an optimal learning environment. o ne educator said the following during the focus group discussion: “i also utilise the peer’s learners to explain instruction if i find that there is a problem carrying out the tasks that i have given to them ”. in an exploration of notions of inclusive education in india, singal and rouse (2003) also found that educators demonstrate competencies to make small modifications to their usual teaching approaches. in addition, they give learners extra attention and set alternative tasks to accommodate their needs as well as make use of peer support. t he most significant contribution of the educators in the present study was made by those who indicated that they treated learners with barriers to learning holistically. t he following quotation from the in depth interview illustrates this point: “we do not just look at only academ ic activities. we also look at the perform ance from the extracurricular activities as som e of these learners are not very m uch academ ically but do well on activities outside the classroom”. motivating and encouraging learners m otivating learners means building and sustaining learners’ interest and their will to achieve by praising and rewarding the desired learning behaviours. t he research d ata revealed that the par ticipants (educators) in the study used appropriate motivational techniques. t hey created supportive learning environments by assessing individual learners with a view to setting realistic expectations regarding the behaviour of those learners who experienced barriers to learning. one educator in the focus group discussion said that she “identified strength areas through interviews and guided learners to follow their passion”. another educator added: “talking to them , getting to know them is m ore like you are m otivating. i give them som e sort of assurance and hope”. t he educators built small successes into every possible activity and reinforced these successes by telling the learners how they were progressing. one educator described her approach as follows: “children, especially the slow learners, need lots of love and lots of praise. a ny achievem ent even if it is not that big needs to be reinforced. by so doing you encourage them to engage in their learning actively and feel as valued mem bers of the class”. in her study, väyrynen (2003) found that educators who encouraged learners to express their ideas or negotiate the tasks to be completed had a more informal relationship with the learners they made jokes, encouraged eye contact and occasionally touched learners for encouragement. t he research also confirmed that rewards that are complemented by a positive educator attitude such as recognition help learners with learning barriers to develop personal and interpersonal skills (d onald et al., 2002; engelbrecht et al., 1999). t he recognition of each learner’s temperament, personality, resources and interests has equally motivational and supportive benefits in inclusive learning contexts (t he centre for the study of child care employment, 2007). collaborative relationships with parents and colleagues collaborative relationships with parents and colleagues mean that parents and colleagues are in volved in the co construction of an enabling inclusive learning environment. 59perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 involving parents involving parents implies valuing them as collaborators in the facilitation of their children’s social and emotional well being as well as their learning (engelbrecht, o swald, swart, kitching & eloff, 2005; hodge & runswick cole, 2008). t he recognition of parents as an integral part of the learning environment is clearly indicated by the educator in the following quotation: “as an educator, one cannot achieve much without the full cooperation of the parents”. parental involvement plays a major role in the education of learners with barriers to learning (d onald et al., 2002; y ang & shin, 2008). o ne educator said: “i encourage parents to com m unicate with learners; and … we share with them where they could help their children. a nother suggested that parents should read stories to their children”. t he educators in inclusive classrooms took the initiative in developing parent educator part nerships as well as in recognising the contribution of parents. o ne educator reported: “we call in the parents, and [they] know who lives with whom . we speak to them and let them know the problem of the child and how they could help the child”. educators need to draw on the knowledge of the parents and families as they are closely involved with the particular child (d onald et al., 20 02). parents are encouraged to have realistic expectations concerning their children. educators can also assess the level of support the family can offer. as a way of engaging the parents, the educators in the study visited them in their homes when they had to deal with learners experiencing barriers to learning: “som etim es i go to parents’ houses. i realise som e are orphans, they stay with grandparents, and they are divorced. i have to be aware of such things”. t hrough such home visits, the educators gained insights into how to deal with individual learners. developing supportive collegial relations supportive collegial relations mean that educators plan together, use team and peer teaching, and coach and direct small group sessions (forlin, 2001). t he supportive collab oration environment does not refer only to the immediate learning context but also to outside collaboration with officials in the department of education and community members. t he results of the study indicated that the educators actively cooperated with colleagues and other professionals in educating learners with barriers to learning. one educator noted: “in teaching a new group, i liaise with the previous [educator] and use the record availab le to in fo rm m y planning”. in line with g rangeat and g ray’s (2008) findings, the educators (research participants) found that positive relationships and supportive interactions created enabling inclusive learning environments. supportive relations also refer to interactions with professional support providers such as counsellors, psychologists, social workers and learning support staff (h amill et al., 1999). h all et al. (2004) add that the development of supportive relationships among educators contributes to the sharing of expertise and the accom m odation of the diverse needs of all learners in inclusive education contexts. one educator said: “som etim es i even seek help from other teachers to assist m e, if i find that i am not making any progress”. n elson and prilleltensky (2005) maintain that the power of collaboration lies in the merging of unique skills, which is also illustrated in the following quotation: “i consult the heads of departm ent, the form er class teachers to get a com plete picture of the child, intellectual, social and em otional aspects”. t he practice of passing a learner’s portfolio to the next educator helps him/her know where to start and to familiarise himself/herself with the particular learner. o ne of the educators remarked: “i utilise peer teaching by other teachers”. t his finding is also confirmed in research conducted by d onald et al. (2002) and engelbrecht et al. (1999). t hrough such interactions, educators develop professional skills and positive coping dispositions such as perseverance and confidence (james & g illiland, 2005; m wamwenda, 2004). 60 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 relevance of the study although this was an exploratory study, the findings suggest that despite the fact that the educators did not receive formal training in dealing with learners with barriers to learning, they intuitively explored ways of facilitating enabling learning contexts for such learners. t he educators displayed the ability to adjust to diverse challenges in inclusive learning contexts. t hey were able to provide the learners with unconditional acceptance thereby creating an atmosphere in which the learners had the space and opportunity to develop their potential. t he educators could do this through careful, observation aimed at creating an optimal fit between the learning environment, the learning material and individual learners’ needs and potential. in line with ebersöhn and e loff’s (2003) findings, it seems that these educators spontaneo usly applied an asset based approach by focusing on the potential of the learners and not b eing p aralysed by the barriers to learning experienced by the learners in their classes. t he educators evidently realised the importance of supportive, interpersonal systems. t hey also involved the parents as important role players in the learning environment and used the knowledge and insight that they gained to facilitate an enabling learning environment. t hey understood that learners with barriers to learning cannot be dealt with in isolation by focusing only on their school performance. t he educators furthermore engaged with colleagues and thereby strengthened and contributed to their own competencies. t he ability of the educators to work together provided a context for co constructing knowledge, planning and reviewing and supporting individual, group and systems efforts aimed at excelling in inclusive learning contexts. limitations of the study and suggestions for further research t his was an exploratory qualitative study with a limited number of participants due to time and financial constraints. it is recommended that a more in depth exploration of specific competencies is done through the application of a mixed methods approach to provide more meaningful re commendations for training and policy. although it became evident in this study that the competencies of the educators were important facets of the implementation of inclusive education, many areas still need to be explored with regard to such competencies. these areas include an understanding of how the educators o btained these competencies, the implications of disregarding the competencies in the implementation of inclusive education, and the learners and parents’ experience of the application of the competencies. implications for practice and policy in the light of the findings of this study, the d epartment of education should ackno wledge that educators already apply specific competencies in the development of inclusive learning environ ments. t he educators seemed willing to engage in the co creation of an optimal inclusive learning environment despite the fact that they had not been trained to function in such an environment. one educator said the following: “yes, we are not well equipped in dealing with such learners, but we do not just sit back due to such reasons”. t o ignore or deny these competencies during workshops may lead to an unhealthy power imbalance between the presenters as those who know and the educators as those who do not know. o n the contrary, facing the practical realities of dealing with learners with barriers to learning often creates valuable tacit knowledge that should be incorporated into academic knowledge. t he competencies already demonstrated by educators could be harnessed by identifying these competencies in discussions prior to workshops as well as by creating opportunities for educators to share and apply the competencies in real life case scenarios during training workshops. educators should also sit on advisory committees to give input to the d epartment of education on the de velopment of inclusive learning environments and on future policy dialogue. d istrict based support teams should promote a collaborative approach to the implementation 61perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 of inclusive education as opposed to a top down approach. in other words, educators’ expertise should be incorporated in the training and further developed to enable educators to provide pro fessional guidance to one another in practice. conclusion t he research revealed that although the educators involved with learners with learning barriers had not received formal training in the development of inclusive learning contexts, they already had competencies that could assist them. t he recognition of the educators’ competencies opened up innovative possibilities for training aimed at the development of inclusive learning environments. educators in general can certainly be guided to become more autonomous, creative and self reliant in the process of implementing inclusive education. h owever, it seemed as if the potential and the unique ability of the educators in the study to facilitate an optimal learning context, was clouded by an educational approach that was largely top down. m aintaining a top down approach implies that the very same principles that underpin inclusive education may be compromised since educators’ competencies are not recognised and the educators are not allowed to participate fully in the imple mentation process. in the light of the contextual realities in south africa, educators should be involved in the implementation process of inclusive education and their competencies should be recognised. south africa cannot afford to lose motivated, committed and creative educators 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1335. retrieved on 22 november 2008 from econpapers database. 182022 40(1): 18-38 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 epistemic access and success of historically disadvantaged students during the covid-19 pandemic: a south african experience abstract the quest for access to higher education has increased rapidly in the past 25 years of democracy in south africa. however, this increase has not been matched by student academic success. this lack of success may even be worse with the advent of the covid-19 pandemic. the pandemic has given rise to challenges that have affected student learning, especially for students who come from historically disadvantaged backgrounds. in response to these, many institutions of higher learning have resorted to online teaching and learning. despite this aforementioned lack of success, there are some who have succeeded. this group of students is the focus of our study. therefore, the question discussed here is: how do students of historically disadvantaged backgrounds have access to higher education and succeed in their studies, especially during the covid-19 pandemic? we employed a qualitative methodological approach, where the case study research design was adopted. a purposive sampling strategy was used to select a total of 18 participants from the school of education at the university of limpopo in south africa. the sample was divided into four categories. the first category was made up of 10 students. the second category comprised 2 administrative staff, the third category consisted of 4 academic staff and 2 support staff (residence and academic writing) formed the last category. data was collected through interviews and document analysis. the findings showed that students from disadvantaged backgrounds encountered challenges with their academic and their social lives during the covid-19 pandemic. however, we established that they developed coping skills (working in groups, moving around from one spot to the other in search of a strong connectivity) to navigate through their challenges. these findings imply that students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds can succeed if they leverage their studies on self-agency and social capital despite disruptions such as the covid-19 pandemic. keywords: access; success; covid-19; historically disadvantaged students; higher education. author: prof mahlapahlapana johannes themane1 prof layane thomas mabasa1 affiliation: 1university of limpopo, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i1.2 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(1): 18-38 published: 04 march 2022 received: 10 august 2021 accepted: 19 october 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2097-8538 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8270-4495 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 192022 40(1): 19-38 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 themane & mabasa epistemic access and success of historically disadvantaged students 1. introduction when the new democratic government in south africa came to power in 1994, there was a need to improve different sectors of society. amongst other sectors to be improved, was the students’ participation rate in higher education. this was done by developing different policies. these policies paved the way for the creation of a single non-racial education dispensation, transformation of the curriculum, democratisation of university management and increasing access and success (access and success roughly means when students are given the necessary support to succeed in their studies. more on this is discussed in the literature review section) to the previously disadvantaged students in higher education (badat, 2014). however, some of the aspirations these policies have not achieved, such as whether the agenda as set out by white paper 3, has been realised (essop, 2020). the white paper 3, 1997 (department of education [doe], 1997) succinctly captures the spirit of the transformation agenda of higher education in south africa. its purpose was to address the national needs by facilitating increased access to, and articulation between, career-focused and general academic programmes, thus facilitating student mobility between different programmes. its first step was to provide guidance on the shape and size of higher education and to obviate the homogenisation of the system by widening access (doe, 1997). as pillay (2020) indicates, this was also meant to increase participation rates in dealing with historical inequities and improve the lives of the citizens in south africa. this led to a rapid increase in student enrolments, which has not been matched with student academic success cross, 2018). for example, at the university of south africa (unisa), (a distance learning institution with a high student intake in south africa) … the headcount enrolments of school-leavers, that is, students in the 18–22 age-group increased by 45.3% from 43 422 to 63 109 between 2005 and 2017; and in the 18-24 age-group11 it increased by 59.7% from 64 158 to 102 448, an annual average growth of 4%, which is slightly below that for students in the 25 and above age-group (essop, 2020:14). consequently, some scholars started to question the issue of focusing on the drive for students’ physical access to institutions of higher learning without looking at their epistemic access and success (morrow, 2009; manik, 2015). from 1994 to 2014, access to higher education was still very limited (badat, 2005; nel & kistner, 2009; leibowitz & bozalek, 2014). however, in the past five years there has been an exponential increase in access to higher education (tjᴓnneland, 2017). the goal of increasing access and success in institutions of higher learning has not been realised in the past 25 years. this is evidenced by a small number of throughput rates in institutions of higher learning, especially amongst the previously disadvantaged students (tjᴓnneland, 2017). white paper 3 hinted at this slow progress when it observed that there were obstacles to epistemic access and success, such as poor funding, low throughputs and high dropout rates (education white paper 3, doe, 1997; essop, 2020). this situation may even be worse during the current covid-19 pandemic (badat, 2020; le grange, 2020; motala, sayed & de kock, 2021; dlamini & ndzinisa, 2020). in addition, these studies have not looked at its influence on the historically disadvantaged students, specifically. since the pandemic is likely to exacerbate the situation, there is a need for studies on epistemic access and the success of these students during the covid-19 pandemic. this may help to understand and manage its impact by formulating policies on the pandemic in higher education. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 202022 40(1): 20-38 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 2. literature review the literature review is divided into six sub-themes. the sub-themes are: the covid-19 pandemic and its impact on higher education, the conceptualisation of epistemic access, the conceptualisation of epistemic success, historically disadvantaged students, enabling factors affecting students’ epistemic access and success and challenges to students’ epistemic access and success. 2.1 the covid-19 pandemic and its impact on higher education the covid-19 pandemic disease has caused unprecedented harm to society (diluxe et al., 2021). its advent had an impact on different aspects of society including higher education. the sudden closure of universities and subsequent departure of students from campuses led to an alternative approach to teaching and learning. they had to resort to online learning. as maatuk et al. (2021) indicate, this includes web-based education, digital learning, interactive learning, computer-assisted teaching and internet-based learning. however, the sudden change to online learning brought with it several challenges. challenges include a lack of social interaction amongst students (alexander, 2008) and disparities among students in terms of access to online teaching and learning (azubuike et al., 2021). a review of literature on epistemic access and success reveals that it has been a hotly debated subject. as nyamupangedengu (2017) indicates, the debate on student epistemic access and success dates back to the 1990s. it then became prominent during the student protests (#feesmustfall movement) of 2015 and 2016, which were initially ignited by unaffordable fee hikes (costandius et al., 2018). blame was also placed on the irrelevant curricula, which led to the call for a decolonised curriculum by students (costandius et al., 2018). concomitant to this, was the issue of epistemic access and success. since then, there has been a steady increase in literature on these specific issues (du plooy & zilindile, 2014; lewin & mawoyo, 2014). this debate can be categorised into three themes: the debate about the concept epistemological access (morrow, 2009; che, 2010), factors affecting students’ epistemic access (bozalek, garrawy & mckenna, 2011; lewin & mawoyo, 2014; maphosa et al., 2014), factors affecting students’ success (lewin & mawoyo, 2014; nyamupangedengu, 2017) and challenges in dealing with epistemic access and success (lewin & mawoyo, 2014; cross, 2018; manram & maistry, 2018; toquero, 2020). 2.2 conceptualisation of epistemic access the concept of student epistemic access is a contested terrain because there are different meanings attached to the concept. this makes it difficult to reach a common understanding of the concept. these meanings can be grouped into two categories. those that see access as merely a physical entry into an institution of higher learning and those that go beyond physical access to include the support (additional teaching time, peer mentoring and tutorials) that goes with it. alexander (2008) and gamede (2006) explain access only as a physical entry into an institution of learning. other scholars (badat, 2014; cross & atinde, 2015; du plooy & zilindile, 2014) explain access as a process that involves integration into university academic life and the ways of knowing and connecting it to opportunity and success. therefore, our perception of access is that it is more than a mere physical presence. it calls for the creation of an enabling environment by the provision of resources such as academic, administrative http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 212022 40(1): 21-38 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 themane & mabasa epistemic access and success of historically disadvantaged students and support staff. it also requires the provision of tutorials and academic development support services to students (morrow, 2009). 2.3 conceptualisation of epistemic success on the other hand, epistemic success, similar to the concept of access, also carries multiple meanings because of its fluidity. thus, it is not easy to confine it to one meaning. therefore, it is difficult to have a common understanding of what it means. in some instances, it may refer to cognitive abilities such as achievement in learning; whereas in some cases it may refer to social wellbeing, which encompasses good social relations or interrelations in an ecological psycho-social system (morrow, 2009). the system may include collaborative knowledgebuilding, reflective learning, individual construction of knowledge (self-efficacy) and the ability to apply knowledge in practical situations (lonka, ketonen & vermunt, 2021). regarding collaborative learning, success means that the student should be able to work with others effectively in order to succeed. concerning reflective learning, and an individual’s construction of knowledge, as well as the ability to apply knowledge in practical situations, success in this article means the ability to employ strategies to mitigate challenges. our view of success is more than just cognitive success, such as pass rates and throughputs. it includes being emotionally intelligent and being able to work with others under stressful conditions. 2.4 historically disadvantaged students the concept of who historically disadvantaged students are requires our comment if we are to understand their epistemic access and success. it (the concept) still lacks a universally accepted definition despite the fact that it has been subjected to a rigorous interrogation from educational researchers who draw from the bourdean tradition (cross & atinde, 2015). in the south african context, it is used to refer to black students (african and coloureds) who through their historical race classification by the apartheid system, constituted poor and working-class students. thus, students from these backgrounds are often regarded as having socio-cultural deficits. however, contrary to this view, we contend as others do (cross & atinde, 2015) that these students have unrecognised resources (for example, multilingualism) and dispositions that stand them in good stead to succeed in higher education. they have resources such as social agency and resilience to succeed against all odds (masutha & naidoo, 2021). therefore, the narrative of the historically disadvantaged students needs to be qualified. in this context, the concept refers to black students (african and coloureds) who are classified as poor and from the working-class; mainly found in historically black universities. 2.5 enabling factors affecting students’ epistemic access and success given this understanding of epistemic access and success as more than mere physical access, there are other factors that should be considered. such factors either enable or inhibit student success. enablers include policy documents and guidelines that provide a legislative framework, such as the post-school education and training policy (2013) and credit accumulation and transfer (cat) (2014) that seek to facilitate movement across all divisions within higher education and training. there are challenges with its implementation, however, such as the differences of institutional programme requirements. furthermore, other factors that serve as enablers are teaching qualifications, the use of varied ways of presenting module content and effective handling of assessment and feedback (maphosa et al., 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 222022 40(1): 22-38 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 2.6 challenges to students’ epistemic access and success besides the enablers, there are also inhibitors to students’ access and success, such as students’ lack of preparedness, their incapability of using resources, lack of teaching and learning space, and a lack of academic writing and study skills (badat, 2020). other challenges include epistemic exclusion of vulnerable students (such as those who are from historically disadvantaged backgrounds) because of lack of resources such as laptops and internet connectivity (lavazza & farina, 2020; timmermann, 2020). additionally, online teaching and learning during the covid-19 pandemic can be a disabler for epistemic access and success (badat, 2020). finally, there is also an emergence of epistemic uncertainties brought about by the covid-19 pandemic. for example, universities are uncertain about how to implement online teaching as there are no clear policies to guide and regulate it. most of the activities are on a trial and error basis (viale, 2020; dunwoody, 2020). for example, in some instances students submit their assessment activities online, only to find that their work does not appear in the system. when students make a follow-up, there are no clear policies and guidelines yet for recourse (kaup et al., 2020). what emerges from this literature so far is: how do students from disadvantaged backgrounds succeed in their studies especially during the covid-19 pandemic? such information obtained may be helpful to universities, researchers and policy makers in addressing the covid-19 pandemic and then especially for resource-poor students. it is against this backdrop that this study sought to explore strategies used by students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds to succeed during the covid-19 pandemic. to this end, the research questions for the study were formulated. 3. research questions main question: how do students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds access and succeed in their studies during the covid-19 pandemic? sub-questions: 1. what challenges do students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds encounter as a result of the covid-19 pandemic regarding epistemic access? 2. what challenges do such students encounter as a result of the covid-19 pandemic regarding epistemic success? 3. how do such students deal with these challenges? 4. theoretical framework there are different theories that can be used in researching students’ epistemic access and success in higher education such as: social realism (archer & archer, 1995), activity theory (at), (engeström, 1999), legitimation code theory (lct) (bernstein, 2000; maton, 2013), and resilience theory (rt) (garmezy, 1987). lastly, epistemic access and success may be explained through resilience theory (rt). for this paper, we have applied the resilience theory (garmezy, 1987) to examine the issue. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 232022 40(1): 23-38 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 themane & mabasa epistemic access and success of historically disadvantaged students 4.1 resilience theory resilience can be understood in different ways: as a process and as an outcome. as a process it refers to an individual’s ability to adjust well to a special adversity (theron, 2016). as an outcome, it refers to the ability to maintain or regain strength despite significant stress or adversity (kalisch et al., 2017). therefore, in essence resilience is an individual’s ability to succeed under difficult situations. this can be achieved by the ability to draw from one’s own resources, such religious beliefs or self-efficacy. in some cases, the ability to overcome adverse circumstances may come from one’s connectivity with other people or societal structures such as family, friends and the community. this we can refer to as social capital. broadly speaking, it encapsulates how some individuals, through self-agency, can bounce back in life after experiencing adversity. but, when scrutinised more closely, it carries numerous meanings. rutter (2013) looks at it as an adaptation of an individual to a situation when given the right resources and social supportive environment. garmezy (1987) looks at it from a socio-ecological perspective: where success relies on individual, family and support factors. werner (2000) argues that for a person to succeed in the face of adversity that person should have appropriate individual attributes, family support, emotional support and external system support such as the church, political organisations and non-governmental organisations (ngos) in place. what emerges from this discourse is well captured by duchek, raetz and scheuch (2020) who outline the tenets of resilience as anticipation, coping and adaptation. these imply that the individual should be able to anticipate adversity before it arrives, and prepare for it. in doing so, the individual increases their chances of coping with adversity. but, since such an anticipated situation may be unavoidable, the individual should adapt to a new situation, that is, to bounce back. thus, in this study, we used this theory because we found it appropriate to scaffold the participants’ responses that helped us in answering the research question. this was done by using two of the three tenets of the theory, as already outlined. we looked at how students coped with adversity caused by the covid-19 pandemic. for example, how they coped and adapted in their studies during online teaching, learning and assessment. we looked at the way in which the students used their social capital to cope and also how they leveraged their self-agency and socio-ecological iterations to adapt in order to succeed during the covid-19 pandemic. the use of resilient theory is consistent with how others have used it. for example, sommer, howell and hadley (2016) used it to analyse how to stay positive and build strength during organisational crises and duchek, raetz and scheuch (2020) used it to explore the role of diversity in organisational resilience. more specifically, the theory was used by cassidy (2015) on the nature of the association between academic self-efficacy and academic resilience to develop an intervention meant to promote resilience in students. additionally, mwangi et al. (2015) focused on the relationship between academic resilience and academic achievement among secondary school students in kenya. this evidence points to the importance of the resilient theory as a theoretical lens in understanding students’ epistemic access and success. 5. methodology this study adopted the qualitative research approach, where a case study research design was used. since the study intended to serve as an instrument to inform diverse stakeholders such as researchers, policy makers, students and lecturers, we adopted a single-instrumental http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 242022 40(1): 24-38 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) case study (stake, 1995; yin, 2018). it was used to explore strategies that students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds use to succeed in their studies during the covid-19 pandemic at a south african university. we found the design suitable to understand the experiences of participants from their own viewpoint (leedy & ormrod, 2013). it also helped us to interact and gain nuanced insights on the way in which students coped with and adapted to the covid-19 pandemic challenges. 5.1 sampling a purposive sampling strategy was used to select 18 participants from the school of education at the university of limpopo. this is a sampling strategy where participants are selected because of their potential to provide data relevant to the research question (onwuegbuzie & leech, 2007). applying purposive sampling, the sample was divided into four categories. the first category was made up of 10 students, designated as s1, s2, s3, s4, s5, s6, s7, s8, s9 and s10. the second consisted of 2 members of the administrative staff, as1 and as2. the third category comprised 4 members of the academic staff, labelled as ac1, ac2, ac3 and ac4. the last category included 2 members of the support staff (residence and academic writing), referred to as ss1 and ss2. the reason for there being 18 participants was because those eighteen were deemed appropriate to provide the required data to answer the research questions. the composition of the student sample had to meet the following five criteria: first, they had to be receiving financial aid through the national student financial aid scheme (nsfas) in the final year of the programme. the nsfas criterion was important because currently it is regarded as a measure by the department of higher education and training (dhet) for students who come from historically disadvantaged backgrounds (jackson, 2002). second, they were supposed to have come from quintile 1, 2 or 3 schools. the quintile system of schools advocates for a funding system that promotes equity, which means that schools that are well resourced receive less money from the national government, while poorly resourced schools are allocated more money. schools classified as quintile 1, 2 or 3 are less resourced (mwabu & schultz, 1996). third, they had to come from a township or a rural village area. this was a measure of their being from disadvantaged backgrounds. four, they had to have succeeded in their studies, and not to have repeated a subject in their studies. this was important because we wanted only students who were successful, despite the challenges they faced during the covid-19 pandemic. fifth, they had to be well-balanced in terms of gender and residence type. the residence type question sought to find out the experiences of those living in the university residences and those who lived in the university neighbourhood because they face different challenges; for example, those off campus often experience a lack of electricity which the campus residents do not. this fifth criterion is an important one as it is high on the agenda for the transformation of higher education in south africa in pursuit of social justice and equity (department of education, 1997). this was achieved by using the purposive sampling strategy where the academic records were perused to identify successful students by gender. the administrative staff were selected based on having direct experience with the students’ access and throughput. they provided us with the data related to the profiles of students. we were then able to select those who succeeded in terms of academic performance. the administrative staff also had to have had at least two years’ experience working at the university. this level of experience was deemed necessary as they would http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 252022 40(1): 25-38 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 themane & mabasa epistemic access and success of historically disadvantaged students be able to provide data regarding how students used their services for support. academic staff had to be associated with the programmes for which the selected students were registered. these were important for the supplying of data related to the students’ academic performance in the lecture halls and laboratories. the support staff had to have had at least two years’ experience of working with students in their various capacities. this category was important for supplying data on how student support services (library, computer centre, counselling) were used by the students. 5.2 data construction data were constructed through four datasets as follows: dataset 1: data on the profile of the school of education was constructed by collating data on the academic and administrative staff, the curriculum orientation, the overall instructional programme, the formal access arrangements for students and staff, the student numbers (size) of the school, the student distribution by gender and the broad philosophy of the school in terms of what it sees as its distinctive mission and identity. this data came from a combination of interviews with the academic, administrative, support staff, students and the relevant school documents, such as school calendar (document a) and academic records (document b). these documents were important to distinguish between the profiles of students who came from disadvantaged backgrounds and those who did not. for example, the documentation was used to distinguish between those who qualified for nsfas and those who did not. they also helped us to select those who were successful and those who were not (from academic records: document b). dataset 2: sampled students were interviewed individually using a semi-structured interview protocol that covered the three research foci of the study (experience, engagement and effects) and the three cultural domains (institutional, academic, student) that frame the investigation. in line with our theoretical framework (process and outcomes) and as a response to the research questions, the interview dataset helped us to identify nuances in the students’ teaching and learning experiences as well as to explore their engagement with their peers, lecturers and support staff, and the effect thereof. of specific importance for this study, was an understanding of their biography/background and the implications of campus experience. dataset 3: school administration staff were individually interviewed to determine the formal arrangements for access and service as well as the collective experiences of student problems, needs, challenges and concerns from the point of view of the administrative staff. this evidence was meant to triangulate the data to explain experiences of the studentadministration encounter and the extent to which this interface facilitates or frustrates academic access and success. dataset 4: school academic staff were interviewed as well to determine their understanding of the student experience and their enumeration of the obstacles to student progression within the academic sphere. this data provided a lecturer’s perspective on the student encounter with the teaching and learning context of a particular school and how lecturers identified the problems and their resolution in academic terms. 5.3 data analysis de casterlé et al. (2012) argue that qualitative data analysis can be a complex, laborious and time-consuming process. this is due to the need to follow specific steps in summarising the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 262022 40(1): 26-38 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) constructed data. first, we followed miles and huberman’s (2014) recommendation that the process of data analysis should follow three concurrent processes, namely, data reduction, data display and conclusion drawing or verification. thus, we reread the data transcripts closely several times until we had distilled what we found to be manageable data. we then coded the data on a data matrix. according to miles and huberman (2014), codes are tags or labels that are assigned to the documents or segments of documents (i.e., paragraphs, sentences or words) to help catalogue key concepts while preserving the context in which these concepts occur. the coding process included development, finalisation and application of the code structure. using codes, we examined what was articulated, that is the content and how it was said, i.e. the language usage. from the process of coding we kept moving back and forth between data analysis and the literature, and that helped us to develop four themes. using the resilient theory, we could make meaning out of emerging themes, as azungah (2018) advises, and we were enabled to merge the empirical evidence from the data with theoretical explanations (miles, huberman & saldana, 2014). this oscillation between the past literature on epistemic success and the collected data to develop themes helped us to answer the research question. thus, the past literature helped us to leverage data analysis on resilient theory. therefore, we were able to distil the essence, meanings and norms, order, patterns and rules that led us to the following four themes: challenges encountered regarding access to teaching and learning, challenges encountered regarding success, strategies that students use to deal with the challenges, support that students get to deal with the challenges and lessons learnt from their experiences. these themes were derived from the research questions and the data constructed. 5.4 ethical considerations data for this article comes from a larger study project: understanding epistemic access and success of historically disadvantaged students in south african universities (rec-01-1552019) that was approved by the faculty of humanities research ethics committee at the university of johannesburg. different sites were used to collect data, including the university of limpopo. for this reason, the university of limpopo gave gatekeeper permission. regarding ethical issues, we considered the following: informed consent, confidentiality, discontinuance, anonymity, protection from harm and data management. the participants were given informed consent forms to complete. this was done before the research process commenced. they were also informed that they were at liberty to withdraw from the study should they have felt uncomfortable at any time. additionally, their identities were kept anonymous. we also promised that the data would be used for research purposes only. furthermore, we ensured that our interaction with them was not in any way harmful to them. for example, we observed social distancing by using telephone and online discussion with the participants in order to adhere to covid-19 protocols. finally, the data were secured for future use at the university of johannesburg archives and anonymised at the site where the study was conducted. this was because the research was conducted by the university of johannesburg, while the university of limpopo was just the research field. 5.5 trustworthiness of the research the trustworthiness of a study plays an important role in ensuring the integrity of a study (lincoln, lynham & guba, 2011). in this study, we undertook five steps (credibility, transferability, dependability, conformability and subjectivity) to ensure the trustworthiness of our findings. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 272022 40(1): 27-38 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 themane & mabasa epistemic access and success of historically disadvantaged students this was done as follows: to ensure the credibility of the study, we went back to the participants for member-checking after the transcription of the interviews. we read the transcripts to them to ascertain the correctness of the way in which transcripts were captured and asked them to confirm or negate. in instances where there were discrepancies, transcripts were rephrased. there was also continuous interaction between the participants and the researchers until the finalisation of the study. transferability of the findings was done by ensuring that we constructed rich and more nuanced data. for example, we ensured that their responses were thick enough by probing and rephrasing questions to give a clear picture of issues related to epistemic access and success. the participants’ responses helped us to obtain detailed information on the context. this helped us to maximise the transferability of the findings of the study to other contexts. regarding the dependability of the study, certain steps were taken to ensure whether another researcher who followed the same steps could arrive at comparable findings. to this end, we used transparent approaches by using more than one method of data construction (interviews and documents) as described earlier. regarding conformability and subjectivity, we had to ensure that the findings and conclusions are based on the data collected from the participants and not our own extrapolation. 6. findings the findings reveal that students encountered diverse challenges during the covid-19 pandemic, but were able to overcome them. they used various strategies to succeed, which provided lessons to be learned going forward. these become clear in the discussion below. 6.1 challenges encountered by students regarding access to learning we were guided by our research questions to develop themes as explained under the data analysis section. therefore, the first theme was based on the first question that focused on the challenges encountered by students in accessing higher education. the first issue noted by students and staff members was regarding the access to teaching and learning using online facilities. when the covid-19 pandemic struck, it found that universities, similar to many other sectors, were unprepared. the university staff needed to find or create alternative ways to respond to the challenges. for example, lecturers had to switch to online delivery. most historically disadvantaged universities were unfamiliar with online teaching and learning. the staff and students had to adjust to new ways of doing things (maphalala, khumalo & khumalo, 2018). the unpreparedness of staff and students posed serious challenges. lecturers struggled to prepare lessons for online teaching. in some instances, they needed guidance from students on how to use online learning facilities such as the blackboard platform. one lecturer (ac2) when asked about his experience in the use of blackboard to be able to teach, responded by indicating that: it is very difficult. it is very confusing because it is a combination of stuff and the culture. and mostly, it is … because the curriculum… you know you get it at a later stage because you missed a lot of stages because of the lack of training in the use of facilities such as the blackboard. so, we had to learn a lot of things in a short space of time. the students confirmed that lecturers encountered challenges with online teaching. in some instances, staff requested them to assist them in the use of online facilities. one student (s9) said: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 282022 40(1): 28-38 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) most of the lecturers were not familiar with this new mode of teaching online. they had to adjust. it took them a very long time to adjust. they could not even present a lecture using a blackboard. so we had to work under pressure and it was not a good thing at all. we had to accommodate our lecturers instead of them accommodating us. but even now some of our supervisors are still struggling. they would tell us that they are old, they do not know these things, referring to blackboard. these responses by the lecturer and the student highlight the challenges that students encountered regarding access to teaching and learning because of the covid-19 pandemic. this finding is consistent with the observation by badat (2020) who points out that online teaching and learning poses a big threat to access in higher education in south africa, especially for students who come from historically disadvantaged backgrounds. another set of challenges that filtered from the data was on the availability of mobile data and in some cases network coverage. one student (s4) succinctly expressed it as such: we who come from rural areas, had challenges with internet connectivity. we were unable to log into the system and consequently, could not attend some of the classes. the geographic location of where we are staying suffers from unstable network connection. to remain connected, we had to move from one room to the other or move outside the house. this was also compounded by lack of mobile data because it is very expensive for us, which affected our learning. this response shows that the pandemic affected students differently. those who came from disadvantaged backgrounds had difficulties in gaining access to online learning. the geographic area in which their homes are situated did not serve as a conducive learning environment. students who live in deep rural areas are often confronted with this type of challenge. this finding is in line with aini et al. (2020), who observed that students using e-learning tools face a variety of challenges, including internet connectivity. they also found that students had no e-learning system support. the challenge is more acute in rural areas than in urban areas. consequently, students in rural areas are likely to remain behind in terms of access to the curriculum than those in urban areas. this is likely to perpetuate inequalities. this was compounded by the lack of policy guidelines on teaching and learning during the covid-19 pandemic. 6.2 challenges encountered by students regarding success other than the access challenges, students also experienced challenges that affected their success. one such challenge was regarding assessment (motsa, 2021). staff members seemed not to have been prepared for online assessment strategies. the students, on the other hand, complained about having to switch to typing essays on blackboard from the conventional handwritten essays. they indicated that typing slowed their pace in answering questions, resulting in their being unable to finish their assessment tasks timeously. one student (s3) captured this as follows: we used to fight with our lecturers with regard to the duration of time allocated for the exam. we were not familiar with typing when writing a test. i remember when writing an economics test, 80% of us could not finish. when we told the lecturer, he just said: “that is nothing”. they were not prepared to accommodate us on assessments. they also did not give us enough time to prepare for the exams. from this excerpt, we can see that the pandemic posed a huge challenge to the academic programmes at universities, especially in terms of teaching, learning and assessment for the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 292022 40(1): 29-38 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 themane & mabasa epistemic access and success of historically disadvantaged students lecturers and students. this disrupted the academic plan as outlined in the university calendar at the sample at the university of limpopo (document a). it is also worth noting that the use of online learning destroyed the peer-to-peer collaboration amongst students. the social distancing regulation made it difficult for them to use group work in their studies. the participants argued that social distancing worked against their usual way of doing things such as studying together to assist one another. however, contrary to this assertion, one student (s1) stated emphatically that: “we do gather together. that is how we help each other with university work such as group discussions and assignment writing”. this appears to have been in contravention of the covid-19 pandemic regulations. this observation may imply that students from disadvantaged backgrounds improvised in various ways, including stepping out of the bounds of the pandemic regulation in order to succeed. this is in line with the findings by varol et al. (2021) who observed that students were willing to adhere to the covid-19 pandemic regulations; but not always, especially not when it stood between them and success. 6.3 strategies used to mitigate challenges encountered on access and success in answering the sub-question on “how do they deal with these challenges?” our findings revealed that several strategies needed to be adopted. we found that the lecturers and students collaborated to mitigate the adverse experiences in enhancing access and success during the covid-19 pandemic, especially in the use of online technologies. they had to work together to enhance access and success. one student (s5) was emphatic by saying that: we had to work well in collaboration with our lecturers. they were understanding and tried to accommodate us where we did not understand. in instances where we missed classes due to lack of connectivity or internet instability, they recorded lessons which we could have access to after the class. they also sent us notes that we were able to use. but when we write tests, they usually do not give additional time. one of the lecturers (ac4) corroborated the student’s response by saying: we work well with the students. we did provide notes for them. those who miss classes due to a variety of reasons, including network problems, are provided with recordings of lessons and notes. when they write a test, we do give them additional time due to unstable network connectivity. we also teach during weekends and after hours to accommodate all the students. the increased collaboration between students and lecturers is a vital strategy for students’ access and success. regarding assessment, contrary to what one of the students indicated earlier, one lecturer (ac1) revealed that students were given additional time to accommodate the challenges that students experienced during assessment, for example, typing. students claimed that they were not used to answering examinations through typing, and therefore needed more time to do so. the differences might be due to the variation in their interpretation of the concept of additional time. this finding is in line with what rowan and galanakis (2020) observed, namely, that increased collaboration between stakeholders held the key to mitigating adverse effects on schooling during the covid-19 pandemic. furthermore, toquero (2020) outlines additional strategies, which include the migration of students from campuses to their homes to avoid the spike in infections and scaling up lecturers’ training for online learning and teaching strategies. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 302022 40(1): 30-38 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) the students indicated that they had developed several survival strategies. for example, concerning the lack of network connectivity, they had to return to their places of residence near the university where there is strong internet connectivity. those who are far from the university, indicated that they survived by moving from one spot to another in search of strong connectivity. one student (s1) said: “we move from one spot to another. for example, i move from the garage to the living room and ultimately outside the house until i find an appropriate spot”. they also help each other by working in groups even when writing a test (s1). our findings confirmed the relevance of the resilience theory in this context and have provided a robust analysis of its use. the theory stresses the survival of an individual who is facing adverse circumstances. that is, how an individual can bounce back through self-agency after experiencing an adversity in life. the analysis shows that the students overlooked their negative circumstances (lack of resources such as computers, textbooks and proper accommodation) to beat the odds and succeed in their studies during the covid-19 pandemic. it has enabled us to reveal that, despite their impoverished backgrounds, these students have succeeded during the covid-19 pandemic, as evidenced by their academic records (document b). 6.4 support provided for students in this theme, we highlight the support that the university provides to enable epistemic access and success during the covid-19 pandemic. this support can be divided into two categories, namely, the support from administrative staff and the support from the support staff. as a result of the pandemic, students had to be sent home and this made it difficult for all students to physically access help from the university, especially from the administrative staff. for example, in a case where a student wanted to change courses and/or add a course on the study programme, it was not easy to do so. this became a barrier because it would not be possible to access such help. consequently, there arose a need for an alternative way of supporting them. the university administrative staff member (as2) enthusiastically explained the alternative supporting strategy by stating that: we have opened a school-based email address, as the volume of individual emails became too cumbersome to handle efficiently. this approach facilitated the interaction between students and us. however, the school email option had its own limitation in that some students could not communicate effectively due to language barriers in expressing what their problems actually were. consequently, in some cases, it was difficult to assist the students as they could not be easily decoded. this finding reveals the challenges the administrative staff encountered in their effort to support the students whilst they were away from campus. the challenges revolve around the limitations in the use of emails and the difficulty in decoding what students were communicating. this finding has also been revealed in a study by zhang et al. (2020). they found that to appropriately deal with the issue of many emails and to still efficiently communicate with the students, there was a need for information on the superhighway (this is an extensive electronic network appropriate for the rapid transfer of information). in addition to the support by administrative staff, there was also support from the support staff (academic excellence centre, counselling). their role in creating an enabling environment for epistemic access and the success of students has proved critical. this is evidenced by the use of some of the interventions to deal with challenges faced by the students. they provided support and counselling to staff and students who were self-quarantining. in some cases, they provided sanitisers, masks and basic information necessary for dealing with the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 312022 40(1): 31-38 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 themane & mabasa epistemic access and success of historically disadvantaged students covid-19 pandemic regulations and peer education. this kind of support and counselling was necessary for the students to help them be strong and continue to access classes. this support was critical for success in their studies during the covid-19 pandemic. one support staff (ss2) member captured their role succinctly by stating that: during the covid-19 pandemic, we counselled a number of students who had different challenges such as anxiety and depression due to the loss of a family member who had succumbed to the disease. also, there were those who tested positive and were afraid that they were going to die. furthermore, there were those who struggled to cope with their studies because they are by nature visual and kinaesthetic students. the above comment by the support staff member shows that most students were emotionally and psychologically affected by the pandemic. counselling was especially important for support and motivation to enable students to cope with attending classes, having access to lessons and ultimately succeed (govender, reddy & bhagwan, 2021). this sentiment was corroborated by one of the participating students (s3) who remarked that: peer education helped me to know people, meet different people, know them and talk to them. it helped me to be brave and outgoing and interact more. before then i was a shy and closed person. i never raised my hand in class for the past three years. they taught me about health issues such as teenage pregnancy and other health related issues. the covid-19 pandemic, similar to any other pandemic, requires group therapy as one of the strategies to conquer its psychological and social effects (sheraton et al., 2020). as brusadelli et al. (2020) indicate, group therapy is important as it could be done online, where participants can support each other to cope with adverse circumstances. thus, it could be done while observing the covid-19 pandemic health protocols. from the preceding response, one can sense that the students felt more empowered when working in groups (orrù et al., 2020; mpango et al., 2020). furthermore, the university supported the students in numerous ways, including with the provision of mobile data bundles. students indicated that this was helpful support as some of them did not have access to these resources. this was confirmed by one of the students (s7), who stressed: we experienced challenges with mobile data and had to move back to campus so that we could make use of the university computers and wi-fi. the wi-fi enabled us to form whatsapp groups, which provided us with an opportunity to form peer group learning. we were able to communicate faster with fellow students. for example, through video clips and live chat functions, we were able to make use of learning apps to make learning easier. furthermore, the university provided accommodation for us, which offered great relief. providing these facilities helped students to form study groups, which is in line with the tenets of resilient theory. thus, we used the theory to understand how these narratives about student support enabled epistemic access and success. as already indicated, the resilient theory posits that epistemic access and success is dependent on the individual’s adaptation to an environment that has an intersection of ecological support involving family, peer support and social structures (rutter, 2013; garmezy, 1987). in other words, epistemic access and success is broader than physical entry as espoused by morrow (2009). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 322022 40(1): 32-38 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 7. discussion the study sought to explore how students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds have access to and succeed in their studies at institutions of higher learning especially during the covid-19 pandemic. the study revealed that students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds had several challenges regarding access and success during the covid-19 pandemic. concerning access, the challenges included difficulties with online teaching and learning due to the unpreparedness of staff and students, the lack of availability of mobile data and network coverage, especially for students who are in deep rural areas. this is in accordance with the observation by badat (2020) when he remarks that online teaching is fraught with difficulties and challenges. the observation is also consistent with other studies elsewhere. in the philippines, agung, surtikanti and quinones (2020) found that availability, access and sustainability of an internet connection remain a challenge for individual students, especially during the covid-19 pandemic. the implication is that lack of connectivity may reinforce disparities between students who have stable connectivity and those who have challenges with connectivity. regarding success, the study revealed that students experienced challenges that affected their success. the challenges centred mainly around online assessment. these included: typing of assignments and the inability to work in groups when doing projects and laboratory experiments. however, despite these challenges, students’ narratives during interviews showed how they used their resilience to survive and succeed. this finding is in line with the observation by dewart et al. (2020) who said that students encountered challenges in running their practical clinical assessments because they could not be done online. kaup et al. (2020) also highlight the difficulties of using online assessment. however, they went further to propose a solution to the challenge by indicating that universities can use proctorio and a google chrome extension that monitors students when they write exams. mseleku (2020) indicates that a major problem is on how to avoid plagiarism during examinations. maddumapatabandi and gamage (2020) went into detail by indicating the major challenge with online assessment is that the absence of invigilators and supervisors make it difficult to ensure the legitimacy and reliability of the examinations, whilst at the same time maintaining the integrity of assessment methods. the next and the most important issue is how students mitigate against the challenges identified. in dealing with the challenges identified, the students employed varied strategies such as collaboration with one another, flexibility in teaching and learning, individual innovation and socio-ecological systems. in line with the resilient theory, the strategies enabled the students to access and succeed despite challenges posed by the covid-19 pandemic. 8. implications of the study these findings have several implications for universities, researchers and policy makers. for universities the study has laid bare the inequalities among students. our data have revealed that some students have no access to resources such as laptops and network connectivity that are often taken for granted. there is a need for universities to be more creative and innovative in maximising the use of technology in teaching and learning. the pandemic has amplified the need for student support, especially for those coming from historically disadvantaged backgrounds, in order to improve their epistemic access and success. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 332022 40(1): 33-38 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.2 themane & mabasa epistemic access and success of historically disadvantaged students additionally, this study has underscored the importance of self-agency as a cornerstone to adapting to adverse situations brought on by the covid-19 pandemic. there is also a need to improve quality assurance mechanisms on assessment. lastly, it should be noted that even though this study is not generalisable to a wider population, the implications espoused here are crucial for the south african higher education system. this could help to enhance critical pedagogies and community partnerships by allowing students to be innovative and creative to access online teaching and learning, and by fostering community partnerships with their peers, support staff, the academic and administrative staff as a leverage for their access and success in their studies. 9. conclusion the study sought to explore strategies that students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds use to succeed during the covid-19 pandemic. this was done by using the resilient theory as a lens for the study. we found that students from 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https://doi.org/10.1007/s41649-020-00140-4 https://doi.org/10.29333/pr/7947 https://doi.org/10.29333/pr/7947 https://doi.org/10.5334/hpb.32 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511529320.008 bookmark=id.gjdgxs _heading=h.30j0zll _heading=h.1fob9te _heading=h.3znysh7 _heading=h.2et92p0 _heading=h.tyjcwt _heading=h.3dy6vkm 48 addressing the assessment dilemma of additional language learners through dynamic assessment mf omidire university of pretoria ac bouwer university of pretoria jc jordaan university of pretoria many learners with an additional language (al) as their language of learning and teaching (lolt) have not acquired the level of proficiency required for them to demonstrate their knowledge and achieve the desired outcome on assessment tasks given in that language. using instruments designed for fully fluent learners and covertly including proficiency in the al when assessing them academically or clinically, is inequitable and certainly yields invalid results. the notion of language of learning, teaching and assessment (lolta) should replace lolt to represent the dilemma more accurately. this paper reports on empirical research in nigeria using curriculum-based dynamic assessment (cda) as an alternative method of assessment of al learners in mainstream education. the study aimed to determine the influence of the cda procedure on the performance and affect of al learners. eight learners in grade 8 selected from two schools participated in a process of debriefing and mediation during three continuous assessment cycles and the end-of-term examination in business studies and integrated science. the assessments were mediational in nature as they contained linguistic adaptations of the questions and incorporated a glossary of assessment terms. the results suggest a generally positive influence of cda, although to varying degrees, on participants’ performance and affect. the school context also has a crucial influence on these two aspects. keywords: curriculum-based dynamic assessment, additional language, dynamic assessment in continuous assessment, mediational assessment, equity in assessment, equity in education introduction all learning areas in the school curriculum hinge on a high level of language proficiency (brock-utne & holmarsdottir, 2004:73; cummins & swain, 1986:143; levin & shohamy, 2008:2) in learning as well as in assessment. strongly linked to cognitive development, language development is regularly described as actually determining cognitive progression (doughty & long, 2003:5; gravelle, 2000:18; heugh, 1999:301), which further emphasises the impact of language on achievement. the challenges of learning new knowledge and skills at school in an additional language (al) – in a language that learners are often still in the process of learning – are certainly severe (guglielmi, 2008:323; hugo, 2006:48). cummins’ distinction (cummins, 2000:111-115; cummins & swain, 1986:152-153) between the social use of language (basic interpersonal communicative skills – bics) and language use at an academic level (cognitive academic language proficiency – calp), should be recognised as a criterion which underpins all academic teaching, learning and assessment. to perform to their potential, al learners must be at the same proficiency level as learners using their first language (l1), since success in curricular learning and assessment depends on building a “complex network of linguistic understanding” (hutchinson, whiteley & smith, 2000:45). 49omidire, bouwer & jordaan — addressing the assessment dilemma 49 cummins (1996:111-112) argues that al learners’ academic skills depend not only on their exposure to the al, but also on all their acquired knowledge and concepts that assist them in making sense of the al. we will expand on this argument in order to recognise the severe demands faced by al learners particularly during academic assessment. learners who do not have the requisite language skills to access the assessment per se both functionally and conceptually, are incapacitated even before endeavouring to demonstrate their knowledge. it is essential for al learners to be able to decode fluently, process and reconstruct the very instructions and questions which they are expected to respond to. recognising that the academic assessment process is integral to learning and teaching, we are extending the notion of lolt to the language of learning, teaching and assessment (lolta). research has found marked disadvantages with regard to learning and assessment in an al (baker, 2001:122-132), “entrenching unequal opportunities” (barry, 2002:106) and contributing to underachievement, poor pass rates and high dropout rates (prinsloo, 2005:37). assessing learners, whose only contact with the al is at school, with the same tests and criteria as l1 learners is certainly inequitable. however, giving undue advantage to al learners would again compromise the reliability and validity of academic assessment results. it is imperative to broaden the scope of academic assessment methods as a means of addressing the language factor in education and assessment. for al learners, scaffolding is often required for access to instruction and content, and meaning often has to be mediated. static assessment, however, does not provide similar avenues in follow-up (lidz, 2002:74; losardo & notari-syverson, 2001:126-128). at best, static assessment yields information about what has been learned, whereas assessment should actively address learners’ needs and barriers in order to provide information about how to support them in the next step of their learning (bouwer, 2005:47; vandeyar & killen, 2003:124). if any barrier to demonstrating one’s learning exists, the assessment should identify and address this, suggesting ways of overcoming or reducing the barrier to fully actualise the learner’s potential. dynamic assessment (da) is one way to consider. in incorporating the current shift in focus from assessment of the learner to assessment for learning, da is based on the notion of assessment as a direct teaching intervention (feuerstein, rand, jensen, kaniel & tzuriel, 1987:35-37; haywood & tzuriel, 2002:40-41; lidz, 1997:281). the method usually follows the pre-test – intervention – post-test format. the key terms of da are modifiability of cognitive functioning (through) activity and interaction (jensen & feuerstein, 1987:380); thus, essentially acknowledging that, contrary to the popular notion, assessment should be instrumental in enhancing assessees’ performance rather than being judgemental (lidz, 2003:112-113; lidz & macrine, 2001:76; tzuriel & shamir, 2002:22). the principle of da was conceptualised by vygotsky and operationalised by feuerstein (losardo & notarisyverson, 2001:123). one of its theoretical assumptions is vygotsky’s concept of the zone of proximal development, i.e. the area of learning potential between the learner’s independent level of functioning and the level of achievement attained with adult assistance (lidz, 1991). another assumption is that of mediated learning experience, which proposes that an adult mediates between a learner and a given task to enhance its meaning. finally, there is the assumption of self-regulation, which implies that individuals have the capacity to adjust themselves and adapt to a task as the need arises (deutsch & reynolds, 2000:312; pena, iglesias & lidz, 2001:139). the interactive approach of da accords the learner an active role in knowledge construction. the assessor mediates content with the intention of inducing an enhancement of the learner’s cognitive functioning. mediation includes questions to stimulate thinking and provides leads or suggestions to apply as well as examples to follow (camilleri & law, 2007:317; elliot, 2003:16-17; kozulin & garb, 2002:113). the method of da has provided suitable alternatives to the assessment problems of a wide range of learners (swanson & lussier, 2001:342) and, in this study, we suspected that learners with an al as the lolta could also benefit. our study built on the curriculum-based dynamic assessment (cda) developed by lidz (2002:73) out of the need to “bridge assessment with intervention and for the results of the assessment to inform instruction”. seeking to examine in what ways cda could contribute to the assessment of al learners, we focused on the influence of cda on the assessment and performance of al 50 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 201150 learners, the effect of static and dynamic forms of assessment on their attitude towards assessment and their own performance, and how da should be conducted to prevent it from becoming an undue advantage for al learners. the research was conducted in nigeria, a country with about 400 languages (bamgbose, 1995:24). despite the emphasis of the nigerian national policy on education on the importance of indigenous languages in education, english is the lolta for the majority of learners, and subtractive bilingualism is inadvertently promoted. contrary to policy demands, many schools do not teach through the medium of the l1 in the first three years of schooling. learners must often cope with second or third language learning concurrently with assimilating the subject content. this situation could hardly lead to academic proficiency in the lolta, making it relevant to examine da as an alternative form of assessment and a solution to al learners’ assessment dilemma. method a qualitative multiple case study was conducted, with permission from the department of education and informed consent from the participating learners and their teachers and parents. the participants were al learners in grade 8 (ube 8), referred to as basic 8. the sampling was purposive and entailed selecting eight learners from two government-owned schools in lagos: four participants per school, a boy and a girl each from two basic 8 classes. the selections were made by the teachers, based on their knowledge of the participants’ language status and academic abilities. all the learners had yoruba as their home language and were average or low achievers suspected of under-achieving. to allow for a possible socio-economic factor, one school was from the lower-income bracket (lib school) while the other was from the middleincome bracket (mib school). the study ran for the first school term through three continuous assessment (ca) cycles and the end-of-term examination. figure 1 summarises the data collection process. phase event/action i: ca1 “welcome tests”, taken by whole class; general observation, orientation; contact, debriefing and mediation of participants; adaptation of assessments for ca2 ii: ca2 mediational assessment; observation, debriefing and mediation of participants; collation of participants’ responses and observation notes; adaptation of assessments for ca3 iii: ca3 mediational assessment; observation, debriefing, mediation of participants; collation of participants’ responses and observation notes; adaptation of examination papers iv: exam mediational end-of-term examination figure 1 phases of data collection the instrumentation consisted of ca1 assessment tasks in business studies (bs) and integrated science (is) as initially developed by the teachers, and mediational assessment tasks for the further rounds of assessment. these two subjects were selected because both offer new knowledge that learners in grade 8 might not have encountered yet in the general flow of their experience. however, at the grade 8 level these subjects differ in linguistic complexity, with bs containing fewer subject-specific terms than is and being transmitted largely by means of bics. per ca cycle, the cda procedure took the form of linguistically focused debriefing and mediation regarding assessment questions. debriefing involved discussing with participants their observed behaviour and experience of the assessment, seeking to identify the language-related challenges of the assessment tasks and engaging them in a solution-finding exercise to address the linguistic barriers encountered. mediation addressed the processing of questions. transcripts of debriefing and mediation contained the original mix of english and yoruba, and translations of the yoruba. findings derived from the debriefing and mediation were categorised in terms of language barriers at the receptive level of decoding, comprehension and processing, and the expressive level of lexicon, logical thought and writing. mediational assessment then entailed the 51omidire, bouwer & jordaan — addressing the assessment dilemma 51 linguistic adaptation of assessment questions set by the teachers to mediate cognitive-linguistic acts of response at both levels, and scaffolding in the form of a glossary. the following is an example: question adaptation what is the composition of blood? what are the things that make up blood? describe each component. describe each part of blood. the glossary contained subject-specific and functional assessment terms from the questions, e.g. agent, differentiate, describe. the strategies aimed essentially at enabling the al participants to self-direct their languagerelated acts to process the questions and construct their responses more effectively. the data comprised the scripts and observation of language-related test-taking behaviour such as underlining words, time taken reading each question, re-reading particular questions, practising responses or spellings, and writing with hesitancy or confidence. data analysis was performed per case, using an explanation-building technique. the analysis focused on the scripts to identify particular challenges of question format and linguistic complexity, and utterances and behaviours possibly reflecting personal perspective (attitude) on the assessments. collective analysis of the debriefing and mediational data per ca cycle was used per school to identify emergent themes for the adaptation of items in the subsequent assessment. an intra-comparative analysis was conducted per participant with reference to the class average in order to identify indications that suggested progress across the ca cycles and examination. owing to the small sample no statistical analysis was executed. results and discussion the results and findings are stated per school. because of limited space we present one exemplar only and a comparative overview of the results incorporating discussion. participant codes indicate class (a/b in the lib school, c/d in mib) and gender (m/f). lib school – participant bf bf was a lively, vocal girl and interesting to work with. she was fluent in yoruba (unlike some other participants) but lacked proficiency in spoken english even at the bics level; thus, constantly requiring code-switching during debriefing and mediation. by using gestures, she supplemented information not yet acquired in her expressive lexicon of the al. consequently, her assessment results could not possibly have been a reliable indication of her learning, which supports earlier findings about the impact of al deficiency on achievement (barry, 2002:106; prinsloo, 2005:37). in answer to the question, in what ways does the amount of water you drink affect what you excrete?, bf’s response was: in by taken al ot of water it excrete and affect the body organs or the stomack. the response demonstrates a breakdown of grammar, syntax and meaning and, at the conceptual level, only a vague, inadequate association between water – excrete – affect (already provided by the question) and body organs – stomack. table 1 and figure 2 show bf’s scores. table 1 bf: ca and examination (%) participant ca1bs =37.5 ca2bs =35 ca3bs =41.5 exbs =47 ca1is =18 ca2is =23 ca3is =10 exis =22.5 bf 25 25 45 50 0 14 10 30 58 perspectives in education, volume 29(2), june 201158 given the unexpectedly low levels of the participants’ proficiency in the al, the study could have benefited by a more detailed linguistic and educational contextualisation of the data. within the very limited scope of this study, observing the english language lessons (as education in the lolta) would have aided understanding of the level of difficulty faced by the learners and some of the reasons why al language education seemed to be failing them. spending more time in discussion and observation with the subject teachers would probably have given a better understanding of their current teaching and assessment practices, especially given the difference in linguistic complexity between bs and is. acknowledging the pervasive effect of al on all aspects of learning, we argue adamantly for assessment results not to be perceived merely as the outcome of a complex, frequently hopeless, personal history of learning. the implications of the two new notions proposed in this paper in respect of al, lolta and mediational assessment, are complementary. they also hinge on the issues of equitable practice. when moving away from static forms of assessment with al learners, care must be taken to prevent the reverse of the inequalities associated with traditional assessments (estrin, 2000:228) by maintaining a linguistic focus in mediation and refraining from the mediation of subject-related knowledge. bearing in mind the influence of affect and context in terms of individual background, challenges of the environment and previous learning experiences, the outcome of the study suggests that the mediational assessment had a positive impact on seven out of the eight participants. the need for clarity in the assessment questions was apparent and mediational support comprising linguistically simplified questions and a glossary of terms could serve as a temporary measure, essentially to support learning at least in the early grades of high school. more time should probably be spent on accommodating the additional reading load that forms part of the adapted questions and glossary. but much research is 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29(2), june 201160 swanson hl & lussier cm 2001. a selective synthesis of the experimental literature on dynamic assessment. review of educational research, 79:321-363. tzuriel d & shamir a 2002. the effects on mediation in computer-assisted dynamic assessment. journal of computer assisted learning, 18:21-32. vandeyar s & killen r 2003. has curriculum reform in south africa really changed assessment practices, and what promise does the revised national curriculum statement hold? perspectives in education, 21(1):119-134. 112 aligning school discipline with the best interests of the child: some deficits in the legislative framework abstract the best-interest-of-the-child concept should guide the legislative framework with regard to the approach followed as well as the disciplinary processes used in schools. currently schools revert mostly to a retributive and adversarial approach to discipline that is not compatible with the best-interests-of-the-child standard. in this article, the provisions of section 8 of the schools act are scrutinised and it is concluded that these provisions are supporting an adversarial and punitive approach to school discipline. this is evident from the lack of prescriptions ensuring that sanctions serve the best interest of children, the insufficient provision for support measures and structures for counselling, the undue focus on the best interests of the transgressor and the lack of guidance concerning the appointment of an intermediary. the introduction of restorative discipline as an alternative approach to discipline is recommended. the latter approach is recommended, because it is submitted that amendments to the existing legislative provisions would not address the key objection to the legislative framework namely its retributive and adversarial character. key words: adversarial, retributive and punitive discipline; best interests of the child; restorative discipline; school discipline; support measures and structures for counselling. 1. introduction the constitution of the republic of south africa, 1996 (“constitution”) provides, in section 28(2), that a ‘child’s best interests are of paramount importance in every matter concerning the child.’ in line with this injunction, the new children’s act 38 of 2005 (“children’s act”) and the child justice act 75 of 2008 have developed a clear focus on the best interests of the child. in addition, several constitutional court judgments, in particular, s v m 2007 (2) sacr 539 (cc):24, elevated the best interests of the child to a constitutional right and have emphasised the need to give focused attention to these interests in all matters concerning the child. (see also minister of welfare and population development v fitzpatrick and others 2000 (7) bclr 713 (cc): par 17-18; christian education south africa v minister of education 2000 (10) bclr 1051 (cc):par 41; sonderup v tondelli and another 2001 (1) sa 1171 (cc):par 29; de reuck v director of public prosecutions, witwatersrand jm reyneke university of the free state reynekej@ufs.ac.za jl pretorius university of the free state pretorjl@ufs.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i1.9 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(1): 112-128 © uv/ufs mailto:reynekej@ufs.ac.za mailto:pretorjl@ufs.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.9 113 reyneke & pretorius aligning school discipline with the best interests of the child local division, and others 2004 (1) sa 406 (cc):432; du toit and another v minister of welfare and population development and others (lesbian and gay equality project as amicus curiae) 2003 (2) sa 198 (cc):par 22). one might argue that heeding this principle is nowhere more crucial than in constructing and implementing the school discipline regime. however, as will be shown, the same vigorous adherence to the best-interests-of-the-child constitutional obligation present in other childrelated contexts, is not as conspicuous in the legal framework governing school discipline, in particular the south african schools act 84 of 1996 (“schools act”). 2. problem statement and aim discipline in the school educational setting should be understood as part of a teaching and learning process with two distinct aims. these are to create an orderly environment conducive to teaching and learning to enable the holistic development of every learner and to teach learners to behave in a socially responsible manner and to develop self-discipline, which ultimately, will result in respect for the rights and needs of others (united nations convention on the rights of the child, a 29; hanberry 2009: 18; reyneke, 2013:47). not only should all disciplinary measures achieve the abovementioned two aims of education, but as noted above, they should also meet the constitutional imperative that the child’s best interests are of paramount importance in every matter that concerns the child (constitution, 1996: s 28[2] and [3]). despite several amendments to the schools act, it still suffers from serious defects when measured against the child’s best-interests standard. in particular, this is evident from the lack of explicit prescriptions ensuring that disciplinary sanctions serve the best interests of the child; insufficient provision for support measures or structures for counselling; a narrow focus on the position of the transgressor; insufficient regulations to ensure the effective use of an intermediary during disciplinary hearings and failure to provide for exemption procedures. it will be argued that the above-mentioned defects ultimately stem from the fact that the school discipline regime is still essentially legislatively premised and practically enforced in the majority of south african schools from a retributive (or punitive) perspective and in terms of an adversarial process. (burton, 2008:28-30; de wet, 2003:116; sahrc, 2008:13; wolhuter & van staden, 2008:396). the aim of this article is to highlight the shortcomings of the existing provisions of section 8 of the schools act and to recommend further amendments to align the schools act properly with the latest constitutional imperatives and developments related to the best-interestsof-the-child standard. in particular, the advantages of approaching school discipline from a restorative justice perspective will be considered. the need to address the current defects and to find non-retributive alternatives is also highlighted by research that indicates how current punitive measures actually increase aggressive and other forms of unacceptable behaviour in schools (gonzales, 2011; ofer, 2011; sprague, 2014). the background theoretical framework will be drawn from recent conceptualisations of transformative constitutionalism. the analysis will rely on a literature study focusing mostly on the provisions of the constitution, section 8 of the schools act and case law where appropriate. after explaining the notion of transformative constitutionalism, a brief indication of the conceptual contours of the best-interest-of-the-child right will be given. the retributive 114 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) and adversarial features of the school disciplinary process will then be elucidated. thereafter, the most important shortcomings of the legislative framework, when measured in terms of the best-interests-of-the-child principle, will be identified. in short, these shortcomings relate to aspects of the discipline regime that do not fully respect, protect, promote and fulfil learners’ right to education, dignity, equality, personal security, education, social services and fair administrative action. in order for the law to be able to play its full part in addressing the multiple issues related to school discipline, the defects in school legislation need to be suitably remedied. in the concluding section, we indicate, in broad terms, a different approach to school discipline that could address most of the structural deficits of the current retributive and adversarial disciplinary system. 3. conceptual framework hailbronner (2017: 2) indicates that there is a multitude of versions of the notion of transformative constitutionalism, but it is generally accepted that karl klare did the ground breaking theoretical work. he defined transformative constitutionalism as follows: by transformative constitutionalism i mean a long-term project of constitutional enactment, interpretation, and enforcement committed (not in isolation, of course, but in a historical context of conducive political developments) to transforming a country’s political and social institutions and power relationships in a democratic, participatory, and egalitarian direction. transformative constitutionalism connoted an enterprise of inducing large-scale social change through nonviolent political processes grounded in law. i have in mind a transformation vast enough to be inadequately captured by the phrase ‘reform,’ but something short of or different from ‘revolution’ in any traditional sense of the word. (klare, 1998: 150) former chief justice pius langa linked the concept with the epilogue of the interim constitution, which depicts the constitution as a normative roadmap to lead a deeply divided society characterised by strife, conflict, untold suffering and injustice, … [to] a future founded on the recognition of human rights, democracy and peaceful co-existence and development opportunities for all south africans, irrespective of colour, race, class, belief or sex. (in langa, 2006: 352) the epilogue highlights the ideal that the constitution is the beacon of hope and ultimate benchmark to address the injustice of the past, to heal the nation and to give guidance on how to secure a better future. transformative constitutionalism encompasses the notion that the constitution should play a determinative role in bringing about fundamental social and political change to improve the lives of people. (hailbronner, 2017:7). transformative constitutionalism captures the reality that transformation is a continuing process to define, refine and improve on the goals and imperatives set by the constitution (langa, 2006; 354; hailbronner, 2017: 7). there will always be something more that can be done to respect, protect, promote and fulfil human rights even further. the state is obliged to play an active role in this process. for present purposes in particular, the notion of transformative constitutionalism requires reflexion on the transformative implications of the best-interests-of-the-child standard, captured in section 28(2) of the constitution, for current school discipline laws and practices. transformative constitutionalism aims at establishing a society firmly rooted in the democratic values of human dignity, the achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms (constitution, 1996: s 1[a]). it also aims to ensure that there is a move away from “a culture of authority” to a “culture of justification – a culture in which 115 reyneke & pretorius aligning school discipline with the best interests of the child every exercise of power is expected to be justified” in terms of these founding values of the constitution (langa, 2006: 353). this justificatory burden applies to the decisions of all those who exercise authority in the educational setting, from the legislature, executive and judiciary to the functionaries of a particular school (constitution, 1996: s 8[1] and [2]). this implies, as langa (2006: 357) indicates, that to give proper effect to the demands of transformative constitutionalism, one should realise that: at the heart of a transformative constitution is a commitment to substantive reasoning, to examining the underlying principles that informs laws themselves and judicial reaction to those laws. purely formalistic reasoning tends to avoid that responsibility. it is therefore imperative to investigate the underlying principles or philosophies that underpin the existing legal provisions and practices with regard to school discipline, in particular the still prevailing retributive and adversarial nature of the disciplinary process. it will be argued that although not all the shortcomings of the school disciplinary system, when measured against the best-interests-of-the-child standard, cannot be attributed to it, the retributive and adversarial nature of the disciplinary process is a core contributory factor. before the detail of the shortcomings is discussed, it is necessary to briefly consider the best-interest-of-the child standard. 4. the best-interest-of-the child standard although it is impossible and undesirable to define the best interests of the child precisely and exhaustively, it can be useful if it is attributed some core meaning. in director of public prosecutions, transvaal v minister of justice and constitutional development and others 2009 (4) sa 222 (cc): par 73 the court held in this regard: it is, as we put it in sonderup, “an expansive guarantee” that a child’s best interests will be paramount in all matters concerning the child. this provision thus imposes an obligation on all those who make decisions concerning a child to ensure that the best interests of the child enjoy paramount importance in their decisions. section 28(2) provides a benchmark for the treatment and the protection of children. the approach followed by the courts thus far in adjudicating matters involving the bestinterests-of-the-child is in line with the principle that all constitutional rights are mutually interrelated and interdependent and form a single constitutional value system (de reuck v director of public prosecutions, witwatersrand local division, and others 2004 (1) sa 406 (cc):432; s v m 2007 (2) sacr 539 (cc): par 26). the interrelatedness of the best-interests-of-the-child concept and the right to education is explained by the constitutional court in governing body of the juma musjid primary school and others v essay no and others (centre for child law and another as amici curiae 2011 (8) bclr 761 (cc) . the court found that the closure of a public school located on private property owned by a trust is unconstitutional despite the fact that the department of education failed to pay rent for the use of the private facilities. the court held that the closure of the school must be postponed until every child in that school was admitted to another school, since closure of the school would infringe on the learners right to education and is not in their best interests. the children’s best interests had to be given preference to the property rights of the trust. 116 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) section 8(1) of the children’s act makes provision for additional children’s rights that are not contained in the constitution. these rights supplements the constitutional rights contained in section 28 of the constitution. one of these rights is the child’s right to participate in proceedings where decisions will be taken that will affect the child (children’s act: s 10). in mec for education, kwazulu-natal v pillay and others 2008 (1) sa 474 (cc) the court emphasised the importance to prepare the child for responsible adult life and respect for human rights by expecting learners who want to be exempted from school rules to motivate why they should be so exempted. in this case the court also highlighted the importance of children’s right to dignity, non-discrimination, the right to be heard as well as their right to practice their religion. the same sentiments are found in director of public prosecutions, transvaal v minister of justice and constitutional development and others 2009 (4) sa 222 (cc), where the constitutional court held as follows with regard to the role of constitutional values in the interpretation of section 28(2): section 28(2) must be interpreted so as to promote the foundational values of human dignity, equality and freedom. these founding values are given effect to in the bill of rights, which is the cornerstone of our constitutional democracy. section 28(2), which is part of the bill of rights, protects the dignity of the child and advances the child’s equal worth and freedom by proclaiming that “[a] child’s best interests are of paramount importance in every matter concerning the child”. although the constitutional court therefore often refers to other constitutional rights when considering whether a specific decision, conduct or provision is in the best interests of the child, there are also instances where the courts interpreted section 28(2) of the constitution as a selfstanding right. this means that even if the courts do not refer to any of the other rights in the constitution, it can still find that conduct, decisions or legislative provisions are unconstitutional by simply finding that it is not in in line with the best-interest-of-the-child standard. 5. the retributive and adversarial nature of school disciplinary processes the retributive approach to wrongdoing or crime has its roots in ancient history and biblical times where people lived by the maxim ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” (fish, 2008; gerber and jackson, 2013: 62; collica-cox and sullivan, 2017:43). individuals were responsible to seek their own justice. from about the eleventh and twelfth centuries the state started to intervene and notions such as settling scores, revenge, vengeance, retaliation were tempered with the development of ideas such as proportional punishment and just deserts. in ancient times, the focus of the justice process was to ensure that the individual receives justice. the focus was thus on the victim of the wrongdoing. however, as the state’s role in the justice process increased the focus gradually moved from the needs and interests of the victim to the transgressor (redekop 2008; fish 2008; bedau, 1978). during the inception of this transition from focusing on the victim to focusing on the transgressor, the state only assisted individuals in the justice process by providing investigation services. later the services of an independent third party were made available to give impartial judgements only when community members brought their claims to the courts. however, over time, this changed and eventually courts could act on its own accord without complaints being received directly from community members (redekop, 2008). as state power increased, the needs and interests of the victim decreased even further in the criminal justice process and crime or wrongdoing was considered a crime against the king or state (redekop, 2008). 117 reyneke & pretorius aligning school discipline with the best interests of the child the state thus inserted itself into the adversarial process where the parties to wrongdoing no longer were in a position to resolve their own conflicts or have the harm done addressed in a way that focused on the needs and interests of the victim. ultimately, the state took full control of the criminal justice process by making the laws, enforcing the laws, investigating crimes and eventually presiding over the proceedings in a formal trial and sentencing proceedings in a court. sentencing takes the form of some punishment so that transgressors can pay their dues to society. the state decides not only who is guilty of what, but also what would constitute a reasonable punishment for breaking the rules (margrain & macfarlane, 2011:19). to address wrongdoing against members of the community thus became institutionalised and it is up to the state to decide on the process and the outcome the retributive approach used by the state to deal with crime became part of the way wrongdoing is addressed in other spheres of life as well. this historically ingrained system is in most instances also used by parents and by schools to maintain discipline. in this context, the retributive approach is premised on the idea that in order to learn from their mistakes and to be taught respect for rules children need to be punished consistently (collica-cox and sullivan, 2017:44). other terms normally associated with this form of school discipline include “punitive discipline” (oosthuizen, wolhuter & du toit, 2003:469-470); “corrective discipline” (joubert & prinsloo, 2008:107); and “authoritarianism” (reyneke, 2013). it displays clear parallels with the traditional punitive aims of punishment found in the criminal justice system namely retribution, revenge, deterrence and rehabilitation. general features of a retributive approach to discipline include authoritarianism, dominance, control, and power relations. this is evident from the powerful position educators hold and are in a position where they can make the school or classroom rules on their own without consulting learners, decide who transgressed the rules and what an appropriate punishment will be. since they are in a position of authority, they can control the whole discipline process. actions against transgressors are reactive in nature, focusing on establishing guilt for the breach of school rules, with the conventional aims of punishment guiding the imposition of penalties (aull, 2012:179-180; bloomenthal, 2011:303-304; morrison & vaandering, 2012:140). toews (2006:17) and hanberry (2009:16) summarises the retributive approach by stating that it focuses on the following three questions: which rule was broken? who broke it? what is an appropriate punishment for breaking the rule? the needs and interests of the victims or those harmed by the misconduct are not included in the primary focus of the process. these retributive roots is clearly visible where disciplinary hearings are held by the school governing body (sgb) or its disciplinary committee in terms of section 8 of the schools act. although some schools have also implemented positive disciplinary measures, once a learner commits an act of serious misconduct, formal disciplinary proceedings will normally follow. the sgb is responsible for conducting disciplinary proceedings in instances of serious misconduct. these proceedings must comply with strict procedural prescriptions, focusing on the rules of natural justice, administrative fairness, strict time frames, and on prescriptions as to how to conduct a hearing (hopkins, 2002:145). sections 8 and 9 of the schools act envisage that these disciplinary proceedings will be adversarial in nature because the terms typically used in an adversarial criminal court context are used to depict the key features of the process. these include: “witness”, “testify”, “evidence”, “examination, cross-examination and re-examination”, “fair hearing”, “found guilty”, and “appeal against a decision”. a provision, similar to that of the criminal procedure act 51 of 1977 concerning the appointment of an 118 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) intermediary is also included. this reinforces the impression that these proceedings are very similar to court procedures. in recognition of the fact that disciplinary proceedings are substantially adversarial in nature, the legislator added and refined some protective measures in 2002 through the education laws amendment act 50 of 2002, and in 2007 through the education laws amendment act 31 of 2007. the aim of the amendments was to assist and protect learners involved in disciplinary proceedings. however, this did not change the retributive nature of the process, as will become more evident in the discussion that follows. the analysis will inform the conclusion that the existing provisions of the schools act are not in the best interests of children. 6. lack of prescriptions ensuring that sanctions serve the best interests of the child the educational deficits of a disciplinary process with a mainly punitive focus are nowhere more clear than in the non-alignment of sanctions with the constitutional best-interests-of-thechild standard. despite strict procedural prescriptions regarding the suspension and expulsion of learners, there are no provisions as to what should happen to the learner while he or she is suspended or awaiting expulsion. (cf schools act: s 9) in practice, this will mean that suspended learners or learners awaiting the decision of the mec on their expulsions will not be attending school, but will be legally staying at home. no legislative prescriptions state that these learners should attend; for instance, anger management classes or counselling sessions. thus, they are out of school for some time, and then where applicable, return to school, the same school or to another school without any obligatory intervention to address the underlying problems or to enhance their best interests. without any rehabilitation programmes attached to the suspension, the latter can only be regarded as purely authoritarian, punitive and retributive in nature. the underlying premise is that improper behaviour at school deserves being excluded from the school society. it is reminiscent of the retributive criminal justice system where offenders are removed from society when sentenced to jail. the exclusion from society and the accompanying stigmatisation should then deter criminals from reoffending. the only difference is that prisoners are exposed to rehabilitation programmes while they are incarcerated. when suspension is not attached to adequate rehabilitation or support programmes, it serves only to punish transgressing learners. troubled children need help, yet what the law requires and what is offered in practice as we shall show in the next section are distressingly inadequate. (cf braithwaite, 2002: 565-567; mujuzi, 2003: 166-169) the same applies to instances of a less serious nature where formal disciplinary proceedings are not held. the schools act deals only with the drafting of the code of conduct, formal disciplinary hearings, search and seizures, the suspension and expulsion of learners after serious misconduct, and the prohibition of corporal punishment. there are no legislative provisions regarding informal discipline in schools, except that the sgb is responsible for the drafting of the code of conduct after consultation with various stakeholders. since most educators are still inclined to apply a punitive and retributive approach to discipline, the question arises whether this approach is in the best interests of learners and therefore, whether they live up to the constitutional standard. learners are often sent out of class, put in detention, compelled to do community service, do additional homework or have other forms 119 reyneke & pretorius aligning school discipline with the best interests of the child of punishment imposed without the underlying reasons for the misconduct being addressed. (burton, 2008:28-30; de wet, 2003:116; sahrc, 2008:13; wolhuter & van staden, 2008:396).a retributive approach to discipline is not in line with the child’s best interests and is also not in line with the right to a basic education and the aims of education as contained in the united nations convention on the rights of the child (crc), (1989). in terms of section 28 of the crc, state parties have an obligation to ensure primary education that is compulsory and free and are encouraged to develop and make secondary and higher education available and accessible. section 29 of the crc provides the aims of education and it is clear from section 29(1) that the holistic development of the child is a primary consideration. section 29(1) (b)(e) focuses on the child’s relationship with others. in essence, children should be taught to respect the human rights of others and should be adequately prepared for responsible adult life (reyneke, 2013: 286-289). the crc, article 29 makes clear that the aims of education are much broader than the mere attainment of academic skills; it also explicitly requires state parties to ensure that children are taught acceptable social behaviour. to act in a socially acceptable manner is a social skill that must be taught. to punish children for not acting accordingly, without a concerted effort to integrate the teaching of acceptable behaviour into the same process, is to disconnect the disciplinary proceedings from the broader aims of education (reyneke, 2013:286-289). furthermore, the failure to remove barriers to learning proper social skills through adequate support structures and measures for counselling is to deny children their right to education. any disciplinary measure must be measured against the aims of education and if those measures do not contribute towards the holistic development of the child and teach the child to act in a socially acceptable way, it is merely punishment and therefore not acceptable. it is thus necessary to find alternative measures to deal with school discipline that are in line with learners’ right to education and in their best interests (reyneke, 2013:286-289). the inadequacy of the existing provisions of the schools act to attain the abovementioned goals of education and discipline is further highlighted by the insufficient provision for support measures or structures for counselling in the legislation. 7. insufficient provision for support measures or structures for counselling section 8(5)(b) of the schools act does prescribe that the code of conduct must make provision for “support measures or structures for counselling a learner involved in disciplinary proceedings”. although this section ostensibly addresses some of the concerns raised in the previous section, and appears to heed the provisions of section 28(1)(c) of the constitution regarding children’s right to social services, it is still not fully compliant with the best-interestsof-the-child standard. close scrutiny of the abovementioned section of the schools act reveals several flaws namely: firstly, there is some uncertainty with regard to the question whether “a learner” refers to the transgressor only or to other learners involved in the disciplinary proceedings. other learners that might be involved in disciplinary proceedings are, for instance, witnesses or the complainant. secondly, the obligation to provide for support measures or to provide counselling structures “for learners involved in disciplinary proceedings” is technically applicable only to instances of serious misconduct because a disciplinary hearing is held only in such instances. 120 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) (schools act: s 9(1)-9(1)(a)) this is cause for concern because support measures and counselling structures are essential in the prevention of misconduct. thus, learners have to misbehave before legislation requires the sgb to ensure that these services are available. in addition, it also only makes provision for learners involved in the disciplinary proceedings. this implies that these services are compulsory only for those learners who are part of the disciplinary process and do not include learners who are not directly involved in the disciplinary proceedings, but who are affected by the misconduct. apart from being discriminatory, this is an infringement of the rights of child victims and third parties to have their best interests respected and protected, and, most importantly, promoted through support and counselling (constitution: s 28(1)(c)). thirdly, although it is laudable that the code of conduct must include provisions regarding support measures or structures for counselling a learner involved in disciplinary proceedings, no guidelines are provided to indicate the extent of the required support measures or structures for counselling. “extent” here refers to the nature of the intervention; for example, support by a life-orientation educator only or the appointment of a full-time professional counsellor. since the extent of available support measures or structures for counselling is at the discretion of the sgb, the door for decisions that might not be in the learner’s best interest is inevitably opened. fourthly, the act provides no indication of what types of training and expertise are required before counselling can be provided for learners (cf social service professions act 110 of 1978; health professions act 56 of 1974). interventions by lay people might not be in the best interests of learners and might even be detrimental to them. fifthly, the word “or” is used. thus, provision for either support measures or structures for counselling are compulsory. if the sgb decides to provide support measures, but counselling is required in a specific instance, will support measures suffice? in addition, who should provide the support or counselling? if educators should provide it, are they properly trained for these purposes? counselling structures should probably also include access to the services of professionals. to what extent, therefore, will the sgb be responsible for providing support measures or counselling services in the code of conduct if such measures or services are not readily available, for instance in rural areas? (cf jacobs v chairman, governing body, rhodes high school, and others 2011 (1) sa 160 (wcc)). sixthly, although a sgb might be in favour of support measures or structures for counselling, financial constraints and the scarcity of skilled people and proper structures to provide counselling might have a negative impact on the provisions eventually included in the code of conduct. in view of these practical problems, the sgb might include only the most basic of support measures in the code of conduct. however, these measures might not suffice to address the needs of the learners and thus be inadequate to promote their best interests. this raises the question of the responsibility of the state, and of provincial departments of education in particular, to ensure that the necessary support measures and structures for counselling are available. apart from the fact that the lack of these will not be in the best interests of the learners of a particular school, such a lack of support measures and structures for counselling are also a form of unfair discrimination, because essential support measures and counselling structures might be available to some children only (constitution, 1996: s 9). matters are further complicated by the provisions of section 28(1)(c) of the constitution, which states: ”every child has the right to basic nutrition, shelter, basic health care services and social services.” unlike other socio-economic rights, this section does not provide that the 121 reyneke & pretorius aligning school discipline with the best interests of the child child has a right to “access”, but that she or he has a direct right. in addition, these rights of children are not subject to the progressive realisation criterion applicable to socio-economic rights generally. furthermore, children are the only vulnerable group that has an explicit constitutional right to social services (cf constitution, 1996:s 26-27). yet, it should be kept in mind that despite the lack of internal qualifiers regarding the availability of resources and the progressive realisation of rights found in other socio-economic rights provisions, this right is still subject to the reasonable and proportional limitation of rights found in the limitation clause (constitution, 1996:s 36). however, if rights cannot be reasonably limited “the absence of any internal limitation entrenches the rights as unqualified and immediate” (centre for child law and others v mec for education, gauteng, and others 2008 (1) sa 223 (t):227). this raises a number of questions: what do social services comprise in general, and in the school disciplinary context in particular? which social services must be guaranteed by government to ensure that every child is in a position to enforce this right in the school disciplinary context? are the departments of education at liberty to require schools to provide social services for learners, without financial assistance, in order to shoulder this responsibility of the state? 8. narrow focus on the position of the transgressor a retributive approach to misconduct and the implementation of an adversarial process to deal with it inevitably leads to a focus on the transgressor. the primary aim is to find the transgressor guilty and to punish him or her accordingly (hopkins, 2002:145-149). however, misconduct also influences the best interests of victims of, and third parties to, misconduct. (hansberry, 2009: 17) an overly narrow focus on the transgressor can constitute an undue dilution of the constitutional obligation to respect, protect, promote and fulfil the best interests of all the children concerned in a matter (cf head of department, mpumalanga department of education and another v hoërskool ermelo and another 2010 (2) sa 415 (cc):par 80). the only explicit reference to the interests of other parties involved in disciplinary proceedings is to be found in section 8(5)(a) of the schools act, which deals with their dueprocess interests. the provision distinguishes between the transgressor and “other parties”, but does not distinguish between the interests of adult “other parties”, such as educators, or children as “other parties”. one would expect there to be a difference between the levels of safeguarding the interests of children as opposed to the interests of adults. in addition, the paramount-importance requirement is applicable only to children and not to adults (constitution, 1996:s 28(2)&(3)). the impact of undisciplined conduct on other learners is often ignored or underplayed and should be properly considered in disciplinary measures to ensure that the best interests of all the learners are served. failing to consider the best interests of the victims of and third parties to misconduct also constitutes an infringement of their right to equality and their right to dignity. (constitution, 1996:s 9-10). the best interests of all children are equally important. however, the existing legal framework does not explicitly direct decision-makers accordingly, thereby risking an overemphasis of the best interests of the transgressing learner to the detriment of other children. the interests of non-transgressor parties are only acknowledged in a limited sense in section 8(5) of the act. it requires the code of conduct to contain provisions of due process safeguarding the interests of the transgressor and other parties. “due process” here refers to 122 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) procedural due process, which concerns the application of fair procedures. substantive due process refers to the appropriateness and fairness of rules (joubert & prinsloo, 2008:130). this section thus only ensures that a fair process is followed. it does not explicitly oblige the sgb to ensure that all the other interests of all the learners in the school are also safeguarded and treated of paramount importance during the disciplinary proceedings. 9. the role of the intermediary the way in which the act fails to compensate for the adverse effects of the adversarial nature of the school disciplinary process, is also evident in the inadequate provision made for the protection of child witnesses in this context. section 8(7) of the schools act provides that if a child under the age of 18 years will be exposed to undue mental stress or suffering while testifying at disciplinary proceedings, the sgb “may, if practicable, appoint a competent person” to act as an intermediary. however, a constitutional court judgement explicitly pronounces on the unacceptability of exposing children to mental stress and suffering during court proceedings (director of public prosecutions, transvaal v minister of justice and constitutional development and others 2009 (4) sa 222 (cc)). research pertaining to the impact of the criminal justice system on child witnesses and child victims of crime indicates that being a witness and/or a victim in an adversarial system could be very traumatic for a child. in addition, children often find it difficult to articulate their case (cassim, 2003:70-72; clark, davis & booyens, 2003:43-44; hollely, 2002:1415; müller, 2003:2-9.). different factors, such as language development, suggestibility, age and developmental stage, the child’s personality, and the trauma caused during the incident play a role in the quality of the evidence provided by a child. expert knowledge is therefore necessary to elicit, understand and interpret the evidence of a child, especially that of younger children exposed to traumatic experiences (louw, 2004a:3-15; 2004b:16-24; 2005a:19-28; 2005b:18-27). therefore, special measures, such as the appointment of an intermediary were put in place in the criminal justice system to support and assist the child during a trial and to prevent secondary victimisation as far as possible (cf criminal procedure act 51 of 1977, s 170a[1]: evidence through an intermediary; s 153: in camera proceedings; s 158[5]: use of closed-circuit television or similar electronic media; and s 164[1]: oath and affirmation. see also cassim, 2003:70-72; hollely, 2002:14-15; davis & saffy, 2004:17-23 on the effectiveness of court-support and court-preparation measures). it is clear from case law (director of public prosecutions, transvaal v minister of justice and constitutional development, and others 2009 (4) sa 222 (cc); klink v regional court magistrate no and others 1996 (3) bclr 402 (se); s v mathebula [1996] 4 all sa 168 (t); s v nagel [1998] jol 4098 (t); stefaans v s [1999] 1 all sa 191 (c); s v francke [1999] jol 4451 (c); s v t 2000 (2) sacr 658 (ck); s v hartnick [2001] jol 8576 (c); s v malatji [2005] jol 15716 (t); motaung v s [2005] jol 16071 (se); dayimani v s [2006] jol 17745 (e); van rooyen v s [2006] jol 16675 (w); s v mokoena 2008 (5) sa 578 (t); ndokwane v s [2011] jol 27316 [kzp]) and criminal law regulations (gn r 1374/1993; gn r597/2001) that the appointment of intermediaries is a complex matter with several constitutional implications, and should therefore be properly regulated. yet, there are no regulations with regard to the appointment, qualifications, experience, duties or training of intermediaries in the context of school disciplinary proceedings. even more alarming is the fact that properly trained legal experts adjudicate the appointment of intermediaries in the criminal justice system, while these decisions are left to lay people in the school disciplinary context, without any guidance 123 reyneke & pretorius aligning school discipline with the best interests of the child from the legislator. the best interests of children are therefore clearly at risk and the legislator should therefore follow the guidance provided by the courts in the abovementioned cases to align the schools act with the constitutional imperatives. another worrying aspect of the provision is that an intermediary may be appointed “if practical”. this opens the door for discrimination against learners in, for instance, rural areas where there are fewer professionals available (cf constitution, 1996:s 9). teachers and former teachers can act as intermediaries in terms of the criminal law regulation. thus “professionals” will be available, but the impracticality lies in the fact that they will probably not be appropriately trained to act as an intermediary. apart from the lack of training, there are also no guidelines to assist educators on what is expected of them in such a situation. the absence of a closed-circuit television (cctv) system or a one-way mirror can also make it futile to use an intermediary (reyneke & kruger, 2006:87-89). no child should be exposed to undue mental stress and suffering while testifying. nevertheless, the legislation and regulations do not make any provision for ensuring that this is practicable. overall, this result flies in the face of the principle established by the constitutional court in government of the republic of south africa and others v grootboom and others 2001 1 sa 46 (cc): par 44, that substantive equality requires responsiveness to differing degrees of deprivation in devising measures to realise access to resources. the most vulnerable and those who suffer the worst forms of deprivation should therefore be a special focus of such programmes. 10. lack of exemption provisions the retributive approach is characterised by authoritarianism and strict adherence to rules. in contrast to this position, the constitutional court found in mec for education, kwazulu-natal v pillay and others 2008 (1) sa 474 (cc) that a one-size-fits-all approach to school rules is not compatible with the right to dignity since this right entails that one should be allowed to be who you are. learners should therefore be allowed to apply for exemption from school rules if those infringe on their dignity or religious rights. it should be noted that the court requires these learners to motivate why they want to be exempted, not to punish them but to assist decision makers and other learners to understand their specific needs and beliefs. by allowing learners to express themselves during such an exemption process, learners’ right to participate in decisions that affect them is also given effect to. the schools act does not make provision for any exemption regarding adherence to school rules. on the contrary, section 8(4) of the schools act provides that: “nothing contained in this act exempts a learner from the obligation to comply with the code of conduct of the school attended by such learner.” the pillay case was decided in 2008 and the schools act was amended in 2011, but the legislator failed to use the opportunity to bring the act in line with the prescriptions of the constitution. the legislator therefore missed an opportunity to adhere to the prescripts of transformative constitutionalism and failed in promote and fulfil children’s best-interests right. 11. restorative discipline as an alternative despite attempts by the legislator to move away from a punitive and retributive disciplinary system, the legislation and the guidelines for the consideration of governing bodies in adopting a code of conduct for learners (“guidelines”) do not really provide proper guidance on what an acceptable alternative to a punitive system should look like. furthermore, the examples of acceptable disciplinary measures provided in the guidelines (cf par 10 of guidelines) are still punitive in nature, and formal disciplinary proceedings are also very 124 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) adversarial in nature. legislation and the guidelines should be more instructive as to what would constitute alternative disciplinary measures complying with the best-interests-of-thechild standard. we started our discussion with the argument that the punitive, authoritarian and retributive approach to discipline is at the heart of the criticism against the existing provisions of the schools act. it is further contended that it is possible to address some of the criticism against the legislation by way of amendments but mere amendments would not significantly alter the punitive and retributive approach to school discipline. at the most, such a legislative approach can provide only limited respect for and protection of children’s rights, and only on condition that the legislation is carefully crafted and that those who are responsible for its implementation follow the prescriptions meticulously. as an alternative, the restorative approach to discipline entails a process that appears to be more aligned with a holistic and educationally attuned conception of the best interests of the child. the idea of restorative discipline is founded on the restorative justice philosophy that provides an alternative framework to think about wrongdoing (zehr, 2002:5). hansberry (2009:119) defines restorative justice as follows: an approach to addressing wrongdoing (or conflict) that focuses on repairing harm. unlike traditional (retributive) processes, justice is not achieved by penalizing or punishing wrongdoers, but through asking wrongdoers to take responsibility for the harm they’ve caused. those harmed are asked to identify their needs. it then becomes the obligation of the wrongdoer(s) to make [an] attempt to put things right (restore) by responding to the needs of those harmed through symbolic or tangible actions. in the school discipline context, the same restorative principles are used to address misconduct. this approach to discipline leads to the implementation of a process which respects, protects, promotes and fulfils not only the transgressing learner’s right to dignity, but also the dignity of everyone who is affected by the misconduct, such as the victim, third parties, and the educator. unlike the retributive approach, this approach entails a process of deliberation and collaboration to find solutions to problems and to fix the harm caused by the misconduct (hansberry, 2009: 21; margrain & macfarlane, 2011:19). it is also in line with children’s right to participate in matters that affect them (reyneke, 2013). the restorative approach focuses on empowering children to know how to deal with a similar situation in future. thus, the disciplinary process becomes firmly embedded in children’s right to education, which requires the holistic development of the child and specifically includes the skill to peacefully co-exist with others, to respect the rights of others and to solve conflict in a way that is compliant with the human rights of everyone involved in a matter. the restorative approach to discipline focuses on the needs and interests of everyone involved in a matter. (hansberry, 2009: 21; margrain & macfarlane, 2011:19). from a children’s rights perspective, it means that the best interests of all the learners will be addressed on an equitable basis. if it transpires during the restorative discipline process that some of the participants need specific social services or other forms of support, the necessary arrangements can be made to ensure access to the required support (vaandering, 2014: 66). in contrast to the retributive approach, where the focus is on who broke the rules and what would constitute an appropriate punishment, the restorative approach emphasises the needs and interests of all children. this approach can be summarised by asking the following questions: what happened? who was harmed through the unacceptable conduct? how can we fix the harm done? what can we do differently when confronted with the same situation in 125 reyneke & pretorius aligning school discipline with the best interests of the child future? this approach clearly seeks to uncover the needs and interests of everyone involved in a situation and to address it appropriately. it is also empowering since it teaches learners how to act differently in future. (toews, 2006:21; hansberry, 2009: 21; vaandering 2014:66) this approach to discipline requires schools to introduce mutually agreed to values that will guide the conduct of all stakeholders in the school community (toews, 2006:23). the focus of this approach is first and foremost the prevention of misconduct through explicit efforts to develop relationships among everyone in the school community. if there is any transgression the process will focus on fixing the harm caused to others. the focus of the restorative approach is thus on building, maintaining and mending relationships which aligns perfectly with a human rights culture. a human rights culture is considered to be in the best interests of all children (sprague, 2014). 12. conclusion the constitution should play a decisive role in transforming the south african society in general and school discipline in particular to give effect to the constitutional values of human dignity, equality and freedom and to constitutional rights, such as the right to education, nondiscrimination, social services, and administrative justice. real transformation is necessary to give effect to these constitutional imperatives. a school discipline system characterised by punishment, retribution and adversarial processes cannot give proper effect to the transformative aspirations of the constitution. it is evident from the discussion that the existing legislative provisions captured in section 8 of the schools act should be amended to address the highlighted shortcomings. these shortcomings impact on its ability to give proper effect to children’s best-interests-of-the-child right. most importantly, the legislator should address the problem that lies at the heart of the criticism against the legislative provisions, namely the fact that it is fundamentally retributive and adversarial in nature. an opportunity to direct educators towards measures, such as restorative discipline that will rather respect, protect, promote and fulfil the 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remote learning; learning design; higher education. 1. introduction the covid-19 pandemic propelled transformation in higher education (he) towards remote education and evolutions in technology have contributed to the emergence of new and innovative pedagogical approaches (kauppi et al., 2020). while there is an increased interest in understanding how universities responded to the pandemic (bao, 2020; greene, 2020; huang et al., 2020; lim, 2020; qs, 2020), fewer studies reflect on the abrupt switch to online teaching, author: dr bronwyn claudia swartz1 dr lucrecia zinobia valentine1 dr desiree virginia jaftha1 affiliation: 1cape peninsula university of technology, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i1.6 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(1): 96-111 published: 04 march 2022 received: 14 august 2021 accepted: 31 october 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0752-7211 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2152-4570 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 972022 40(1): 97-111 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 swartz, valentine & jaftha participatory parity through teaching with telegram especially the use of mobile learning and its impact on students and society. gronseth and zhang (2018) advanced that mobile instant messaging (mim) apps can be used as part of an inclusive digital learning strategy. they posit that through simple text messages and communication between students and lecturers, the apps can link students to their lecturers, which enhance academic achievement. moreover, various studies reported that mim apps foster communication and collaboration among peers (nitza & roman, 2016), enhance social presence (tang & hew, 2017), improve access to resource materials and provide peer support (timmis, 2012). against this backdrop, this study explores an mim app teaching intervention that was developed by lecturers at a university of technology (uot) as a tool to teach students, facilitate and engage in class interactions, and transfer content during the national lockdown in south africa, when face-to-face teaching was not possible. 2. fraser’s framework for social justice opotow (2011) describes social justice as… “the fair distribution of resources and benefits to all members of a society, is an abstract ideal that applies the concept of justice broadly”. the foregoing discussion draws attention to the value that real-time social media tools (e.g. mim apps) can contribute during unsettling times, such as the covid-19 pandemic. the ease of use of mim apps is an attribute that has expanded its popularity across the educational sector, in and outside the classroom. one such app is telegram. to contemplate our telegram teaching intervention, we adopted fraser’s (2008) justice framework. fraser (2008) proposed three dimensions that can be used when researching a community of learners. the dimensions are: (1) redistribution, (2) recognition and (3) representation, which we refer to as the 3rs. literature in educational development shows leibowitz et al. (2012); leibowitz and bozalek (2016) utilising fraser’s (2008) framework for social justice. discussing the first dimension, fraser (2008) suggests that economic structures may impede some members of a community from fully participating. she explains that when members of a community do not have resources to interact as peers, they suffer from distributive injustice or maldistribution. in this instance, “redistribution” is the corrective action to be taken. in the context of the uot where this study took place, at the onset of the lockdown, not all members of the community had equal access to adequate devices and/or sufficient data to allow them to continue to partake in class activities. with reference to the second dimension, fraser (2008) argues that when institutionalised hierarchies of cultural value prevent members of a community from interacting in terms of parity, the hierarchies of cultural value deny members of a particular community a prerequisite standing in it. as a result, the alienated members suffer from status inequality or misrecognition. aside from historical socio-economic challenges, a distinct characteristic of the student community in the programme where this research took place is that they are parttime students. thus, the research participants may be described as non-traditional students who have already reached physical maturity, are older in age, live off-campus and have responsibilities related to family and/or employment (putri & elihami, 2021). when compared to the general uot student population, the demographics of part-time students are regarded as different. lee (2017) asserts that part-time students are at a significantly higher risk for premature withdrawal from their studies than their full-time peers, due to conflicting priorities. moreover, access to institutional resources such as financial aid or support services such as http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 982022 40(1): 98-111 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) tutor-support, is also limited for part-time students. therefore, premised on fraser’s (2008) description of the second dimension, the research participants were considered vulnerable to discrimination by institutionalised hierarchies of cultural value. she advances “recognition” as a corrective action to overcome challenges associated with status inequality or misrecognition. finally, fraser (2008) deliberates on a third dimension, elucidating when decision rules inhibit members of a community from participating as equal partners in social interaction and deny them an equal voice in community discussions and democratic decision-making, they suffer from political injustice or misrepresentation. in our context, this entailed recognising who is allowed to act, provide opinions or challenge in our academic environment. this was particularly significant at the commencement of lockdown when acknowledging the student voice became critical. during this time, from march to april 2020, several authors (gachago & cupido, 2020; agherdien, 2020; rowe, 2020) argued that the only way to sustainably continue an academic programme was to consult with students during planning, to do what is best and realistic for all. by doing this, “representation” is ensured. thus, a research question arose from the preceding discussion, which is: “can an mim app, such as telegram be used as a pedagogical tool to achieve participatory parity in an online classroom environment?” accordingly, the objective of this research is to determine if the telegram app can be used as a pedagogical tool in a manner that assures participatory parity in an online classroom environment. 3. literature review to secure a deeper understanding of the research area to meet the objective of this study, literature is presented on the four important areas that underpin the research question, namely “technology for participatory parity”, “learning in lockdown”, “mobile instant messaging applications” and “telegram for teaching and learning”. this is presented in the section that follows. 3.1 technology for participatory parity bozalek (2016) argues that social justice may be equated to participatory parity. she refers to participatory parity as the ability to interact socially on an equal footing with peers. she argues that numerous social arrangements framed by fraser’s 3rs are required for the inception of participatory parity (or social justice). significantly, she points out that the three dimensions are entwined and flow into each other, however, importantly, each dimension needs to be addressed separately. discussing emerging technologies for teaching and learning, bozalek (2016) points out that although sophisticated technologies are portrayed as a feasible solution to teach in the resource-rich global north environments, in resources-constrained contexts (such as the uot where this intervention took place), careful consideration needs to be taken to ensure social justice in the classroom environment. against this backdrop several researchers such as oyewole, animasahun and chapman (2020), gon and rawekar (2017) and so (2016) explored the use of mim apps to teach. for developing countries such as south africa (sa), the use of mim apps represents a practicable solution to overcome challenges of restricted access to devices and limited data as a result of historical socio-economic difficulties. significantly, research by patnaik and swartz (2020) on using mim apps to teach in lockdown found there are several positive implications of using these, such as simplicity, quick and easy http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 992022 40(1): 99-111 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 swartz, valentine & jaftha participatory parity through teaching with telegram access for students to course work, swift feedback, self-motivation and time management. thus, using the 3rs as a guide, this study set out to explore the usefulness of an mim app teaching intervention when face-to-face teaching was not possible. 3.2 learning in lockdown the coronavirus disease (covid-19) was declared a pandemic by the world health organization (who) on 12 march 2020 (who, 2020). viner et al. (2020) reported that in an estimated 107 countries across the globe, educational institutions were closed as a measure to curb the spread of covid-19. van aard and sibanda (2021) reported that in sa, some students were forced to return home during the national lockdown. they advanced that “home” for some of these meant a remote place without any technological infrastructure, where the nearest place with internet reception was a library a few kilometres away. for other students, “home” is a low-income, densely populated township on metropolitan outskirts, not conducive to studying. moreover, in several homes where resources were available, they needed to be shared with other family members. van aard and sibanda (2021) depict this period as one characterised by crippling fear, anxiety and prejudicialness, because of the pandemic. thus on 30 april 2020, when the south african minister of higher education announced “leave no student behind” (parliamentary monitoring group, 2020), it triggered the exploration of various forms of technology by higher education lecturers in an attempt to continue teaching. this included considering low-technology remote teaching aids such as mim apps. while mim apps have not been commonly used for teaching and learning prior to 2020 (fataar, 2020), several studies (silver et al., 2019; so, 2016; kukulska-hulme et al., 2011) have argued that they can be used successfully. however, there is a paucity of information on the extent to which mim apps foster participatory parity in online classroom environments. thus, this research study sets out to empirically examine this. 3.3 mobile instant messaging (mim) applications mobile instant messaging enables smartphone and/or mobile phone users to engage in instant messaging and provides a platform for users to engage socially with one another on these devices (ogara, koh & prybutok, 2014). silver et al. (2019) purport that apps on smartphones and mobile devices have evolved from mediocre to sophisticated communication tools with the ability to aid remote learning. they add that the use of mobile devices has increased worldwide and there is no question that a large percentage of students at he institutions in sa own at least one such device. significantly, smartphones and mobile devices can be used to access internet-based educational platforms via wifi connectivity on campus, at work and in homes. an international study about adult learners at higher education institutions by kukulskahulme et al. (2011) uncovered that smartphones serve as communication, business and learning tools for them, across several environments including academic, social, entertainment and workplaces. moreover, numerous research studies have been published to support the use of messaging systems in the delivery of educational activities since these mim apps are versatile regarding them being able to be used for teaching and learning support as well as communication and administrative support (so, 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 1002022 40(1): 100-111 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 3.4 telegram for teaching and learning educational institutions are compelled to stay abreast with rapid and steady global development in technology (mahmood, 2021) of which telegram is an application used for teaching and learning. sari (2017) describes telegram as a multi-device compatible mim app consisting of a low-cost platform allowing real-time exchange of multimedia. additionally, this low-cost app can use wifi, thus requiring no additional data costs for instant messaging when in a wifi area. in an educational context, users of the app can create multiple class groups to allow participation in discussions and forums. a particularly useful feature of the app is the poll function that allows educational facilitators to offer student quizzes aside from using it for polls. the app integrates phone numbers from the device’s phone book, thus there is no need for usernames and passwords. importantly, telegram also supports offline messaging features. this allows offline devices to retrieve saved messages as soon as a device is switched on or comes in the range of network coverage (bere, 2012). notably, a recent study by iqbal et al. (2020) reported multiple utilities of the app, including easy access to educational resources and the ability to add unlimited members, as well as files in all formats and sizes. in their study with medical students, they found the app assisted students to engage in collaborative learning while maintaining their wellbeing and ensuring their security. however, they also reported some drawbacks, i.e. a complex interface, information overload and a tendency to distract the students, causing time wastage while studying. with this in mind, this study set out to determine if the telegram app can be successfully used as a tool to achieve participatory parity in an online classroom environment. 4. methodological approach at the commencement of the national lockdown in sa in march 2020, across the country, student feedback was solicited by several universities (shoba, 2020) to determine the difficulties that students were experiencing due to the lockdown. a survey conducted at a uot where this research took place confirmed that the institution’s students experienced the same challenges that were highlighted at the national level, such as restricted access to computers, laptops and advanced smartphones. ostensibly, the greatest challenge was student access to data to continue the academic programme. thus, following the minister of higher education’s announcement in april 2020 to “leave no student behind” (parliamentary monitoring group, 2020), two lecturers in the faculty of engineering and the built environment (febe) at the uot devised a multimodal low-tech remote teaching approach as described below. on 6 april 2020, all the students (70) registered for the particular qualification were asked to be part of a development team for an mim teaching intervention to continue the academic programme. at that stage a popular mim app called whatsapp was used and 58 students volunteered. from may to july 2020, ms powerpoint notes that had previously been used to present the curriculum content in face-to-face lectures were subdivided into smaller “bitesized” presentations for an mim teaching intervention. the original ms powerpoints was stripped of all unnecessary pictures and a plain white background was used to improve legibility. on average, each ms powerpoint presentation (lesson) was converted into seven smaller presentations covering all the work included in a particular lesson. the smaller presentations were then converted into pdf documents and an accompanying voice note was recorded to explain each pdf document. software was used to compress each pdf and voice note to ensure that minimal data would be used by the students who were sent these http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 1012022 40(1): 101-111 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 swartz, valentine & jaftha participatory parity through teaching with telegram learning materials. the aim was to develop low data usage resources (between 0.1mb and 8mb) to be communicated on a low-tech platform such as telegram, that could be part of a multimodal teaching strategy. significantly, throughout the entire process of the mim teaching intervention development, students were consulted and provided feedback to the lecturers on the resources developed. on 5 may 2020, the development group started using telegram instead of whatsapp, due to lecturer perception that the mobile app has better privacy features than whatsapp. this signified the commencement of “teaching with telegram”. all lessons for a particular course for semester two (july to november 2020) were delivered via telegram, as well as informal self-assessments using telegram’s poll function. formal assessments were however done on the university’s learning management system (lms). this mixed methods study took place from november 2020 to june 2021. three separate data collection instruments were used on a target population consisting of one cohort of 70 students. the first data collection instrument was an online survey circulated in november 2020 (response rate 49%, n= 34) which included 14 likert scale questions and five openended questions to obtain a general understanding of the students’ perceptions of their experience. following the data analysis of the initial survey (quantitative descriptive statistics of likert scale questions and qualitative analysis of open-ended questions), a qualitative research instrument (second data collection instrument) was developed. all students were invited to participate in an online focus group interview and six students volunteered. the focus group interview took place in march 2021 and was facilitated by a staff member who was not directly involved in the research. a pre-interview briefing session took place where students were informed of procedures to be followed, as well as the protection of personal information act (popia) and they were asked to give consent. the purpose of popia is to protect people from harm by protecting their personal information (michalsons, 2021). students were reminded that their participation was voluntary and they could withdraw at any time. qualitative data were independently analysed by two researchers on this project. a code book with predetermined codes under the themes “redistribution”, “recognition” and “representation” was developed before the start of data analysis. however, an inductive approach was also followed as researchers added new codes and allowed new themes to emerge. recurring themes were identified. the results of the focus group data analysis were triangulated with the findings of the initial online survey, which led to the development of a second (deductive) online survey that was circulated to the same cohort in june 2021 (n=32). this third data collection instrument (follow-up online survey) consisted of twenty questions, of which nine were open-ended, to explore the students’ perceptions of their experience specifically and deductively along fraser’s (2008) three dimensions. thus, the follow-up online survey consisted of three main sections. the first section solicited information on student resources (redistribution), the second focused on specific factors that had an impact on them (recognition) while the third gathered information on the students’ perceptions on the co-creation aspect of the telegram teaching intervention (representation). 4.1. validity, reliability and limitations alpha cronbach’s coefficient was used to ensure internal validity and reliability of the likert scale survey questions. the alpha cronbach result for all sections of the both online survey instruments of this study were above 0.7, thus the instrument is considered to be internally valid and reliable. during the focus group interview the same question was asked in different http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 1022022 40(1): 102-111 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) ways to facilitate data saturation to promote validity of the focus group component of the study. data saturation and peer review were the techniques used to ensure qualitative data analysis validity. moreover, the research design consisting of three separate data collection instruments (two inductive and one deductive) lends itself to imparting external validity since findings of the initial study were verified and validated by the follow-up study. thereafter the process of triangulation was used to ensure validity of the research findings. a limitation of this study is that data was only collected from students in one department at a uot and the target population consisted of part-time students only, thus these findings cannot be generalised to all situations at different universities. ethical clearance for this study was granted through institutional channels. 5. findings and discussion the findings of the analysis of data obtained from the three data collection instruments, as well as a discussion on them are presented below in the order in which data analysis was done, commencing with initial online survey data analysis, followed by qualitative data analysis and triangulation, and finally the findings of the data analysis of the follow-up online survey. 5.1 initial online survey findings and discussion a census sample was attempted in order to promote external validity of results; however, of 70 potential research participants, only 34 students completed the initial survey. 5.1.1 redistribution notably, 47% of the research participants reported that in march 2020, at the start of lockdown, they did not have access to an adequate device, stable internet connection and/or sufficient data to continue to participate in class. this situation improved only slightly as lockdown progressed, as in september 2020, a smaller proportion, 28% of research participants, did not have access to an adequate device, stable internet connection and/or sufficient data. evaluation of the responses to the open-ended questions (qualitative data) indicated that research participants concurred that telegram was instrumental in providing quick and easy access to course material that students regarded as very important in lockdown. most of the research participants (88%) felt that in general the learning materials were easy to access on telegram. significantly, 77% of the participants felt that it was easier to learn weekly lesson content using telegram than if they attended weekly face-to-face lessons, and 74% of the research participants felt that it was easier to learn weekly content than if they attended weekly webinars (online class meetings). some responses to open-ended questions explained why, such as “...uses less data, lessons are available in your own time at all times for you to listen to and access (s1-1)” and “easy to access anywhere, get to see other students’ questions which can also assist you (s1-2)”. one respondent in particular highlighted the usefulness of telegram when concurrently having to manage a personal situation, saying “you can access it anytime anywhere, it’s convenient. i sat doing my work during hospital visits of my now late grandpa. it helped a lot. (s1-3)” it is worth noting when research participants were asked to identify disadvantages of using telegram, none of the drawbacks mentioned were directly relevant to the impact of telegram on redistribution, such as “...it does not automatically go to the next audio lesson when a lesson finishes (s1-4)”. a few respondents felt a disadvantage of the app was that it requires data; however, most participants were satisfied that the app uses less data than webinars. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 1032022 40(1): 103-111 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 swartz, valentine & jaftha participatory parity through teaching with telegram 5.1.2 recognition and representation during data analysis of the initial online survey, we observed overlapping areas between fraser’s (2008) second and third dimensions. from our point of view, “recognition” is understood to be an action that is taken to prevent our part-time students from feeling unnecessarily vulnerable or discriminated against due to their personal situations. simultaneously, we understand “representation” to be adoption of measures to promote participation as full partners in social interaction and giving them an equal voice in community discussions and democratic decision-making. analysing the data, we noted that fostering “recognition” goes hand in hand with promoting “representation”. seventy-one percent (71%) of the research participants reported it was easier for them to engage with the lecturer via telegram than in face-to-face classes, and 79% of our research participants reported that it was easier for them to do so than in a webinar. significantly, 84% of the research participants reported that it was easier for them to engage with other students on telegram than in face-to-face classes or webinars. we believe these findings are particularly significant since, especially during the early months of lockdown, acknowledging the student voice became critical for the development of sustainable teaching solutions to complete the academic programme. with specific reference to the second dimension (recognition), 89% of the research participants reported that the self-paced nature of the telegram intervention (being able to do weekly lessons in their own time) was better for them in lockdown than having a weekly faceto-face class or webinar at a set time. in response to an open-ended question in the survey, one student reported that, as an essential service worker and a mother, she was able to keep up with her studies in addition to fulfilling her other responsibilities because telegram was used to teach. she said “...it worked for me because at times i would miss classes but i was able to come back to the whole class, and actually start from the beginning of the class and gradually get, like i felt like i was in class again. it gave me the opportunity to grasp everything as it was from the lecturer (s1-5)”. 5.2 qualitative findings from focus group interview and discussion 5.2.1 redistribution exploring “redistribution”, data collected from the second data collection instrument (focus group) highlighted that lack of mobile internet data was the primary concern for the participants. secondary to that was the challenge of connectivity which in most cases existed because of the planned power outages. it was noted by one research participant that “the biggest problem being not enough data and connection (fg1)”. additionally, with children at home using the wifi and occupying study spaces left our part-time students feeling doubly burdened as explained here: “the fact that everyone was at home, the kids were home so now there was there would actually be problems of data and actually having a space that is quiet enough to work in (fg1)”. another concern worth noting was the devices and/or mobile phones used by some students were not suited for learning. data analysis indicated that not all students own laptops or desktops that could be limiting when accessing course material. the following extract from one of the research participants serves as confirmation of this concern: “my expectations is that the material doesn’t use much data when you download it and also the material that will be compatible, like when you open it, it must be a document that must be compatible with your phone and it must not be bulky, it must be concise so that it can fit your screen and you can view it (fg2)”. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 1042022 40(1): 104-111 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 5.2.2 recognition focus group data analysis made it clear that the participants were concerned with time management challenges under the lockdown conditions. many participants felt that when using the telegram app, they could manage time better, as stated by one participant: “it also helped me manage my time well because i did not have to travel to the class (fg3)”. another participant concurred: “it helped me to also manage my study time a little bit better and i could retrieve information in my own time and my own space (fg4)”. further analysis highlighted that the participants had concerns related to the frequent unavailability of the institutional elearning platform (lms). findings suggest there is a need for an additional learning platform that will enable part-time students to access learning material and engage with the course provider from their various remote (rural) locations. this is evidenced by one research participant who stated: “as long as there was information on another platform like blackboard. they [lecturers] must not be quiet at all. if they can, use at least telegram (fg4)”. our study also drew attention to some disadvantages of using the telegram app. these were related to our students’ confidence in traditional teaching methods and perhaps the need for things to “stay unchanged”. one participant mentioned “...not being able to pose questions live as in i think the physical, the interaction was always better than the online (fg5)”. keeping in mind that the target population of our study were part-time students, mostly older in age, the data analysis underscored 1) a need for personal interaction, 2) an expectation that the lecturer would respond to questions almost immediately and 3) some students felt overwhelmed by the amount of information provided on the telegram app. extracts in support of this deduction are: “...cultural expectation that we attached to instant messaging is that there would be sort of a short period of time in which we respond to each other.... (fg4)”, “...sort of an expectation because of the word instant messaging, you also have instant reply (fg1)” and “it consumes time in order to decipher the necessary information you may want (fg3)”. 5.2.3 representation students felt valued when included in decision-making on which mim teaching tool to use: “there were lecturers that allowed for a broad spectrum of medias [sic] to be used and that was good (fg6)”. a further finding uncovered that the students’ concerns were acknowledged when deciding on telegram as an additional teaching tool: “...but remember one of the requirements that we made clear to the lecturer was information needs to be low data (fg4)”. the primary objectives of the lecturers on the programme were to continue teaching, engage with the student and further the academic projects. we believe the students became co-creators on the telegram app which led to the reestablishment of their confidence. this fact was highlighted while analysing data from the focus group interview, when one participant started explaining to the others exactly how the learning material was organised: “it will say part one, part two and whatever and those parts, they are exactly a duplication of your study guide that was given, i am saying it because i was asked to develop an excel spreadsheet, drawing up all those parts and label it, so umh ja. using it in conjunction with your study guide (fg1)”. it is worth noting that students appreciated the immediate feedback on their performance, after completing a self-test on telegram. the mim tool has a voting feature that allows the lecturer to set up a poll to get the students’ view on a particular issue. moreover, the poll http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 1052022 40(1): 105-111 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 swartz, valentine & jaftha participatory parity through teaching with telegram feature allows lecturers to give students an opportunity to informally assess themselves, which is evidenced by “you can get a percentage like how you did or what other answers students gave and their percentages and stuff (fg6)” and “doing quiz which was a nice way of learning also, on top of the quiz i wanted to add voting. we can vote on an issue, there’s a feature there that was for voting on a certain issue (fg2)”. the most valuable finding from the research was the ownership and discipline displayed by some of the students, as exemplified by one of the respondents: “but at the same time, on the other hand, i had to cover that up with my own personal study time and that allowed me to understand more than getting spoon-fed by the lecturer if i would say that way, because i had to put more time in my work and it made me to – everything that i’m learning (fg2)”. 5.3 triangulation of data from first and second data collection instruments evaluation of the findings of the initial online survey together with those of the focus group interview allowed us to confirm that our students (research participants) share the same challenges as the general south african student population as reported by shoba (2020). these include restricted access to data, as well as inadequate devices to continue their studies. this reaffirms the importance of “redistribution” in our context. moreover, triangulation also highlighted that aside from restricted data and inadequate devices, the lack of a conducive location to study is also a significant barrier for our students. related to “recognition”, this finding is foregrounded by general attributes of part-time students, which is they typically have families and family responsibilities, in addition to trying to complete their studies. continuing on the theme of “recognition”, the triangulation of our data showcased tensions experienced by our students as a result of conflicting priorities of being part-time students. during the evaluation of qualitative responses, we noted the sense of urgency our students exhibit towards completing their studies, which could be attributed to them being older students with responsibilities (lee, 2017). in addition, there seemed to also be a sense of appreciation for being able to continue during lockdown because of the telegram app. triangulation also allowed us to verify some of the specific needs articulated by research participants, such as the need for flexibility and simplicity over complexity. furthermore, the findings of our initial analysis led us to deduce that our students particularly valued the self-paced nature and latitude that our telegram intervention permitted, considering that they had other domestic and professional responsibilities, aside from just being students. triangulation confirmed that in our context “recognition” is closely related to “representation”. our findings directed a spotlight on the importance of student consultation while developing our intervention. we also noted survey results on student perceptions of the importance of interactions were aligned with student responses on the same subject in the focus group. from this we deduced that telegram was a valuable tool, not only for the delivery of curriculum content but also for revision and communication between lecturers and students, and students with each other. survey and focus group findings also confirmed that in the absence of traditional avenues for interaction, telegram not only provided a platform for participation, but students also perceived that participation was easier. we surmised that if our students (and their needs) were not duly “recognised” it would be challenging for them to interact and participate and therefore be appropriately “represented” in the classroom environment. we deduced that “recognition” also entails, in addition to http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 1062022 40(1): 106-111 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) mere acknowledgment of characteristics and requirements that are unique to them, action associated with prevention of misrecognition, such as soliciting their requirements, before planning a teaching intervention. importantly, during the process of triangulation, shortfalls in our initial data collection instruments became apparent, when it was realised that we could not conclusively make a deduction on whether our telegram intervention facilitated participatory parity in our classroom environment. while the general descriptive findings were of great interest to us, these findings raised further questions about the extent of social justice in our practice. thus, the results of the triangulation of our initial online survey and focus group interview data served as a foundation for us to develop a follow-up data collection instrument, namely the follow-up online survey that we used to deductively confirm our initial findings. findings of data collection and a discussion on these findings are presented in the section that follows. 5.4 follow-up online survey findings and discussion as with the initial survey, a census sample was also attempted in order to promote external validity of results; however, of the 70 potential research participants, only 32 students completed the follow-up survey. 5.4.1 redistribution in relation to fraser’s (2008) first dimension, 75% of the research participants confirmed that telegram improved their ability to continue studying during lockdown citing affordability as the reason. another recurring reason, which at face value seems unrelated to economic factors, is simplicity of use and ease of access to course notes. this validates initial survey findings, as in both surveys more than 80% of participants offered simplicity as a reason for preferring telegram over synchronous webinars. considering that a plethora of technology solutions are available that also provide simple and easy access to lessons and learning material, we believe that a statement from one research participant explains how, in this case, simplicity and easy access to course notes is related to economic factors. he attested that “low data usage” was a priority for him and, therefore, more sophisticated but more expensive technology would have been problematic for him. thus, telegram is a feasible, low-tech and more desirable alternative to more sophisticated and expensive technology platforms. we noted, however, that despite the telegram intervention being valued by students, there were some students who continued to struggle due to factors that are out of our control, as illustrated by this response to an open-ended question: “although initially it was difficult since i did not have a proper phone i extremely struggled [sic] due to data purposes and device not having sufficient space to install telegram. however, at some point my life transformed. i got an internship and i bought a new device and started using my workplace wifi to catch up with my school work. telegram was a better app to use as it charged less for data. (s2-1)” 5.4.2 recognition with respect to fraser’s (2008) second dimension on “recognition” which is concerned with institutionalised hierarchies of cultural value that prevent members of a community from interacting in terms of parity, one research participant highlighted some challenges associated with being a part-time student. aside from general challenges such as limited bursary opportunities, our uot did not prioritise purchasing data for part-time students during lockdown. this student was invited to apply for mobile internet data; however, when this http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 1072022 40(1): 107-111 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 swartz, valentine & jaftha participatory parity through teaching with telegram study took place a year later, the student still had not received the data. thus, this student in particular perceived the telegram app to be beneficial since very little mobile internet data was required when using it. moreover, in addition to an appreciation for the flexibility afforded by the app due to the self-paced user design of the telegram teaching intervention, the feature of having quick and easy access to revisable class notes and recordings, independent of the institution’s elearning platform (lms), was another significant advantage. two research participants highlighted the challenges associated with being reliant on the uot’s ict service department to resolve problems, such as server downtime and technical issues, which they felt was a common occurrence at the uot. being plagued with technical problems such as server downtime has an impact on study time. drawing from the results of the follow-up online survey, as well as the focus group interview, we understand that time management is a critical concern for our students in particular, who struggle to juggle different priorities related to academic life, work and family. we concluded that, in this regard, the telegram intervention was a beneficial tool for our students. 5.4.3 representation concerning the third dimension, we deduced that, in general, our students considered telegram to be a useful tool, giving them a voice they might not have had in a face-to-face class or webinar. significantly, 84% of our research participants confirmed that they felt more “represented” when using telegram to interact with the lecturer or other students. examples of open-ended responses that confirm this are: “everyone had a chance to communicate effectively” and “i’m a shy person and speaking up in huge crowds so telegram gave me the platform to be able to speak up without having attention on me (s2-2)”. we found it interesting that, although most research participants felt represented when using the telegram app for learning, as illustrated by this excerpt: “in class you only have that specific time to ask questions unlike telegram you can ask questions anytime (s2-3)”, some research participants suggested that telegram should only be used for communication, as opposed to for teaching, learning and communication, as illustrated by these quotes: “telegram is good for communication and loading notes but blackboard and online lectures are sufficient. telegram can be used for communication (s2-4)” and “telegram is good for extra learning activities and information sharing. however, it should not replace a more formal platform like blackboard (s2-5)”. a further point of interest was that research participants reported feeling “represented” when asked to be co-creators and participate in the design of the telegram intervention at the commencement of lockdown. open-ended questions probing this returned responses such as “made me feel welcome and important… (s2-6)”, “felt part of the team (s2-7)” , “it’s always liberating (s2-8)” and “great as everyone was given a chance to voice out their opinions (s2-9)”. when asked why participants felt that way, they answered: “...it meant that my view mattered”, “[being] part of the solution and more comfortable to participate in discussions” (s2-6), “...i was the one that was going to use telegram for teaching and learning so for the lectures to ask my opinion and input that was good (s2-8)”, “it means a lot to be involved (s2-7)” and “my voice is listened to and i feel included (s2-9)”. significantly, 100% of the research participants reported feeling as if they were partners in the planning process with lecturers as well as fellow students. from this, we deduce that our students perceived our practices when adopting telegram as a teaching tool during lockdown, as socially just. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 1082022 40(1): 108-111 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 6. conclusion the limitation of our study is that data was only collected from part-time students in one department at a uot and therefore the findings cannot be generalised to all situations at different universities. this study however, showcased how the telegram app, which was originally designed for cost-effective communication, could effectively be used to deliver curriculum content and engage with students in a low-tech, low-cost/low-data usage manner, and consequently widen access to education, thereby promoting inclusivity. the app possesses features that make it suitable for the delivery of a self-paced curriculum, which we found is particularly valuable to part-time students. moreover, the app promotes interaction between peers at the same level. another significant feature of the app is the ability to conduct anonymous polls, which give students an opportunity to express themselves without having to fear potential negative repercussions. the telegram app itself does not confer participatory parity to an online classroom environment; however, the manner in which the app’s features are utilised makes this possible. for us, fraser’s (2008) conception of social justice served as a good point of departure and a useful lens to examine and understand our practices – how technologies such as the telegram app can be used as a tool to achieve participatory parity. participatory parity in our context was providing our students with an inclusive and enabling learning experience, during a disruptive and apprehensive time in world history. we acknowledge that the telegram app is not a silver bullet; however, when used in a socially just manner, it can be a powerful pedagogical tool. references agherdien, n. 2020. covid-19: towards actions during uncertainty. available at http://heltasa. org.za/covid-19-towards-action-during-uncertainty/ [accessed 14 april 2020]. bao, w. 2020. covid-19 and online teaching in higher education: a case study of peking university. human behaviour and emerging technologies, 2(2): 113-115. https://doi. org/10.1002/hbe2.191 bere, a. 2012. a comparative study of student experiences of ubiquitous learning via mobile devices and learner management systems at a south 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[accessed 10 august 2021]. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.6 https://theconversation.com/during-lockdown-south-african-students-wrote-a-book-about-a-world-gone-mad-161502 https://theconversation.com/during-lockdown-south-african-students-wrote-a-book-about-a-world-gone-mad-161502 https://doi.org/10.1016/s2352-4642(20)30095-x https://www.who.int/southeastasia/outbreaks-and-emergencies/novel-coronavirus-2019 https://www.who.int/southeastasia/outbreaks-and-emergencies/novel-coronavirus-2019 _heading=h.gjdgxs _heading=h.30j0zll book review the brave ‘new’ world of education: creating a unique professionalism johannes a. slabbert, dorothea de kock, annemarie hattingh cape town: juta publishers, 2008 isbn 978-0-70217-713-2 reviewed by: mokubung nkomo, university of pretoria it is without a doubt an intriguing title. it has a certain enticing quality that seduces the browsing reader to follow the scent leading into an entangled web of entrapped fascination. what draws attention to the book is the ‘new’ in the title; and then the unaccentuated ‘brave’ also has a magical attraction to it. “what”, one may ask, “is so ‘brave’ and ‘new’ about the world of education in the contemporary world, most especially in south africa?” the answer is mystical until the text is read reflectively. the unarticulated backdrop is of course developments in the global arena mirrored in south africa’s mini but monumentally paralytic drama. these are the thoughts and feelings that first tickle the mind upon reading the title of the book. and therein lies the entrapment. but entrapment is also filled with contradictions that have possibilities as it contains the opposite of paralysis. although an understanding of the ‘old’ is critical in order to understand the ‘new’, it was not the intent of the book to critique the past. the authors, it seems, arguably assumed that such understanding exists. if you are inclined to be logical, you obviously would want to know something about the ‘old’ that must have preceded the ‘new’; for there is no new without the old. was the ‘old’ as brave as the ‘new’, or was it timid, cowardly and, therefore, unremarkable? surely it must have had its own bravery. a journey to the apartheid past would soon uncover a world of fixed certitudes; of ‘truths’ that could not be questioned; and knowledge willed by providence to be understood in neat racialised, gendered, and socially stratified compartments. the pre-1994 reigning ideology was an intolerant national christian education philosophy delivered through a pedantic, self-righteous fundamental pedagogics. to a large degree the bearers of the legacy, no fault of theirs, are many current school managers and teachers who imbibed both the philosophy, epistemology and the pedagogy from the old dispensation. the effects of this remain palpably stubborn today and manifest themselves in myriad educational and social dysfunctionalities. it is this troubling inheritance that is the herculean challenge to the “developmental state’s” ambitions. in some weird way this contrived education edifice can be seen as bravery on the part of the then prevailing apartheid authorities. but it is a miscreant bravery that has wasted vast reservoirs of potential that could have, it is reasonable to claim, made the present anaemic predicament non-existent. it is, however, fair to say the value or contribution of the brave ‘new’ world of education can only be measured against the weighty backdrop of the old. the authors’ aim is quite ambitious: it is premised, rightly, on the notion that the world is in a state of continuous change; that education in the contemporary world has to equip students with proper intellectual tools that will foster critical thinking skills, inquisitiveness, adaptability, and so on. they embark on a journey of critical assessment of a series of paradigms from pre-modern to post-modern educational theories and, in the process, suggesting the inadequacies of earlier forms. a thick body of research and scholarly works is marshalled to advance their argument. this critique is accompanied by associated methods of teaching and learning, ranging from the now-debunked rote learning to independent learning and critical thinking skills, for example. critical contemporary issues such as environmentalism, rapid scientific and technological changes and their impact on societies, governance and accountability systems, 111 are, as should be, addressed. this is the right diet for 21st century citizenship required by knowledge economies or learning societies. in reading this broad yet detailed critical assessment one cannot avoid sensing that the national christian education project and its handmaiden, fundamental pedagogics, were fatally flawed. the fundamentalism of the apartheid education project, like the general apartheid system, has left a deep imprint in the minds and behavioural repertoires of generations of educators whose general philosophical bent and pedagogical practice are informed by this history. and, as stated earlier, that is one of the greatest challenges of post-apartheid south africa. it was for this reason that the ill-fated obe was introduced. but unfortunately its adoption was rather hasty and an idea that may have been reasonable in certain contexts was grafted wholesale on to south africa without sufficient surgical treatment to meet the exacting conditions of the new dispensation. the brave ‘new’ world of education boldly engages varied aspects of education in south africa, nay, everywhere else. its embrace of the modern education discourse makes it eminently suitable for use in education faculties. although complex and comprehensive in its sweep, it is able to maintain a well organized structure and employs a reader-friendly style appropriate for teacher training institutions if accompanied by creative adaptations; it is laced with an abundance of supporting quotes, chapter introductions and summaries that put the material in perspective; it has a comprehensive bibliography, and accompanied by an edifying cd-rom. there are, however, three serious concerns that need special attention. the first is that utmost care must be exercised to ensure appropriate and mediated delivery bearing in mind the needs of particular communities and contexts. if care is not exercised, the book’s otherwise well-crafted design and rich content will suffer the same fate as the obe which largely ignored south africa’s current realities. the second concern is that despite claims to the contrary, the book has an overly western orientation. one example of this is (pp. 20-21, 43) references to western world events including musicians such as elvis pressley, buddy hall, the beatles, the rolling stones and the woodstock experience. there is certainly nothing wrong with that except that in so doing other equally important practitioners of this particular art form who inhabited the same space and time are excluded. in this particular genre there were the likes of chuck berry, jimmy hendricks, buddy miles to name a few who had great influence on the cultural landscape despite the prevailing racial discrimination of the times. such exclusion is contrary to the declared spirit and commitment to openness implied if not explicitly pronounced in this work. the third concern is that despite major global shifts in power centres in which the bric (brazil, russia, india and china) quartet and the asian tigers are emerging as formidable international players, the book seems strangely oblivious of the remarkable contributions these countries are making to the world knowledge system1. these countries are gravitating towards the centre of the brave and new 21st century. interestingly, or is it tragically, african contributions to knowledge hardly make a fleeting flicker on the screen. is this a case of innocuous oblivion or epistemological discrimination? contemporary education texts especially designed for teacher training are obliged to address the daunting challenges of our times. among other imperatives, education should be seen as the cradle of humane sensibilities, fairness and inclusivity in all respects. however, on balance, the brave ‘new’ world…, is a significant contribution that should be on the compulsory reading list of teacher, even school management, training programmes. it is an antidote to the forced toxic pre-democracy diet of unreflective texts. 1 for insightful analyses of these global shits see, for example, thomas l. freedman, the world is flat a brief history of the twenty-first century (new york: farrar, straus & giroux, 2005); and fareed zakaria, the postamerican world (new york: penguin books, 2008). on dramatic educational achievements in asian countries see yugui guo, asia’s educational edge current achievements in japan, korea, taiwan, china, and india (new york: lexington books, 2005). 3402021 39(1): 340-352 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 the learning experience of a visually impaired learner regarding emergency blended teaching and learning at a higher education institution abstract disability or impairment in general does not deprive one of the rights to basic human needs and care. however, often people with disabilities encounter barriers such as unfriendly infrastructure to access basic services such as education and health care. in this paper the authors explore the experiences of learners with visual impairment on the implementation of blended learning to thwart the challenges of covid-19 in institutions of higher education. this narrative case study employed a telephonic semistructured interview guide to collect data on a visually impaired learner enrolled with the university of eswatini (uneswa). there were two research questions that the study sought answers for: what was the learning experience of a visually impaired learner regarding blended learning during covid-19? and, how did a visually impaired learner cope academically during the emergency blended learning and teaching? the study found the following: a) incompatible devices; b) poor internet connection; c) challenges to log onto and manoeuvre moodle and d) a need for a step-by-step guide to help the visually impaired learner to master the moodle platform. thus, the study recommends a) awareness creation on disability issues; b) installation of jaws software in the computer labs; c) intensive moodle training for visually impaired learners; d) a need for a resource centre that caters for different impairments, e) technologically savvy lecturers to troubleshoot and f) institutional opportunities for learners to procure affordable devices. keywords: jaws; assistive technology; visual impairment; disabilities; moodle; blended learning. 1. introduction covid-19 has speeded up the implementation of blended learning; a rapid change that has brought a lot of change and challenges for learners with disability. for instance, the world came to a halt following the global mandate for closure of higher education institutions (hei) in march author: prof k. ferreira-meyers1 dr s. pitikoe1 affiliation: 1university of eswatini doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i1.21 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 340-352 published: 12 march 2021 received: 11 november 2020 accepted: 20 january 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 3412021 39(1): 341-352 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 ferreira-meyers & pitikoe the learning experience of a visually impaired learner 2020 to mitigate the spread of the disease and placed decision-makers in a tight position of ensuring that education continued through other means besides face-to-face teaching and learning. one such strategy was blended learning – “a combination of contact teaching with a teacher and of a self-contained preparation using on-line education” (hubackova & semradova, 2016:552), which is gaining significant global momentum. nazarenko praises blended learning as an approach that preserves traditional teaching and learning methods while also “handing over” (2015:77) some educational functions to digital learning. this means that blended learning as a “a fundamental shift in instructional strategy” (watson, 2008:6) blends or mixes face-to-face with digital teaching and learning methods to serve three main purposes, namely those of effectiveness, access and affordability of education (graham, 2009). some of the advantages of blended learning include facilitation of accessible individualised flexible self(paced and directed) learning on the move. also, blended learning promotes collaborative learning “of varied interaction patterns in a synchronous/asynchronous” mode (medina, 2017: 42). in addition, the learners gain time management as well as digital literacy skills in the comfort of their homes while allowing simultaneous multiple tasking (medina, 2017). this flexible nature of blended learning implies that visually impaired learners too can benefit from blended learning in the comfort of their own homes. however, more research is required to explore the experiences of visually impaired learners regarding blended learning during covid-19 era. given the socio-economic dilemma that most learners face in hei in nations such as the kingdom of eswatini (formerly swaziland), blended learning could come in as a remedy that opens up access to teaching and learning to the marginalised groups of society such as those living with visual impairment. latchem (2017) argues that inclusion of information and communication technologies (icts) supports unicef’s vision towards education inclusion. leporini and buzzi (2007) also applaud icts in education for breaking barriers of education access. this is echoed by nisar, munir and shad (2014) who discovered the positives of icts in pakistan’s education system. however, nisar and colleagues posit that icts in education have to be affordable and accessible by all learners, including those with visual disabilities (leporini & buzzi, 2007). while scholars generally applaud the remedial role of bl there are challenges that come with this approach. for instance, vaugnan (2007) explored the perspectives of bl in higher education and discovered limited commitment to self-directed learning as well as limited access to and ownership of modern technological resources that come with sophisticated applications to access remote learning. in the same vein, smyth, houghton, cooney and casey (2012) understudied postgraduate students in ireland and identified some of the bl challenges such as: a) lack of non-verbal cues, b) time consumption, c) technological illiteracy, d) access to and ability to navigate the learning tools and that e) technology overshadows the traditional teaching roles. in addition, simui et al. (2018) identify limited access to information and infrastructure such as roads, transport and buildings coupled with orientation and mobility limitations for visually impaired learners. another study by fichten et al. (2009), which focused on the problems and solutions of e-learning for learners with a disability in institutions of higher education in canada, revealed limited access to online learning material and learning platforms such as audio and video material and adaptive technologies as major impediments for learners with a disability. the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 3422021 39(1): 342-352 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) study also found that learners with disabilities needed flexible time to attempt and complete online assessments. these limitations tend to reinforce disability – (inability/limited functionality) as opposed the learners’ actual impairments (simui et al., 2018). this implies the need for decision makers to make proactive decisions and plans that are cognisant that no one is immune to disability; hence, proper prior planning to accommodate the frail nature of human beings (siebers, 2007). this narrative case study interrogates equity and access to blended learning by marginalised visually impaired learners. simui et al. (2018) argue from the zambian context echoed by mutanga (2017) from south africa that learners with a disability are relegated to the periphery in terms of access to social services. for instance, some african societies consider disability as a bad omen (thwala, ntinda & hlanze, 2015) which could result in such a child being denied access to education (mutanga, 2017); the notion that counteracts simui et al. (2018). for simui et al. (2018), individuals with different forms of impairments also have basic human needs such as access to services, freedom of choice, love and education. nonetheless, the attitudes and reactions of “non-disabled people” (simui et al., 2018:164) degrade people with different forms of disabilities. such unwelcoming attitudes and environmental settings further intensify the learners’ impairment by rendering such learners unable (disabled) beyond their actual impairments (johnson, 2003). a need for a conducive environment that accommodates people with disabilities unconditionally is highlighted (siebers, 2007). while much has been done globally to avert the devastating impact of covid-19 (who, 2020), visually impaired learners in particular are systematically marginalised from mainstream educational systems, in relation to access to online teaching and learning resources. traditionally, learners with visual impairment could not perform at the same level as the “normal learners” because of the mismatch between their functional abilities and social demands (eide & jele, 2011). in most cases, the institutional infrastructure was unfriendly to their diverse needs, medical ones included. a few examples of insufficient resources is the teaching staff’s limited skills in braille, signed languages, technical support as well as the lack of access to assistive software in the computer laboratories (mouzakis, 2008; mwakyela, 2013) which relegates those marginalised learners to the periphery in terms of education access. simui et al. (2018) argue that there are positive efforts made to accommodate learners with visual impairment in lower education. however, the gap still remains in institutions of higher education. seemingly according to these authors bl for learners with visual impairment experiences a) negative learner perceptions towards online learning; b) lack of policies that support inclusive education; c) an unfriendly teaching and learning environment; d) exclusive pedagogy as well as; e) insufficient orientation and mobility training programmes for learners with visual impairment. based on these arguments, the authors were keen to explore the experiences of learners with visual impairment enrolled with the university of eswatini (uneswa). before covid-19 the plight of learners with disabilities in hei has always been topical with emphasis on the unfriendly infrastructure that did not accommodate the diversity of the learner community. for instance, while the computer laboratories have installed the job http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 3432021 39(1): 343-352 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 ferreira-meyers & pitikoe the learning experience of a visually impaired learner access with speech (jaws1) software, an assistive technology2 that helps visually impaired3 learners, there is little else to accommodate different medical conditions. this situation further escalated during the covid-19 pandemic which came with limitations on mobility and social distancing as precautions against the spread of the virus. notably institutional student support for learners with disabilities should transcend the needs identification stage to reach the putting in place of learning environments that support the diverse conditions presented by the learners (fossey et al., 2015). ngubane-mokiwa applauds the university of south africa for its disability policy and a “well-resourced library” (2018:2) in support of visually impaired learners. however, she laments that most institutions of higher education such as uneswa lack the necessary infrastructure that supports visually impaired learners. along the same lines, ngubane-mokiwa (2020) argues that the rapid transition from traditional teaching and learning to online learning did not only escalate the exclusion of learners with disabilities by introducing a rapid e-learning approach that did not accommodate the diverse learner impairments. for instance, use of visual presentations such as power point that excluded the visually impaired learners. also, not much preparation was done to harmonise the learning management system with the needs of the visually impaired learners; an implication of major institutional gaps in learner support. similarly, gunawardane and fernando (2020) conducted a study on the readiness of heis of sri lanka to accommodate the educational needs of the learners with disabilities during the pandemic. they found that shifting from the classroom-based offering to an offsite mode brought about “digital isolation” (2020: 13) for the visually impaired learners with challenges of limited computer literacy skills coupled with absence of assistive technology that then impacted on their access to online teaching and learning. for instance, institutions of higher education implemented offsite learning without prior training of the visually impaired learner on how to manoeuvre the lms to access teaching and learning material as well as messages from the lecturers. this implied unequal access to teaching and learning material between the disabled and the non-disabled learners (gunawardane & fernando, 2020). the latter also highlighted while issues of access to technological devices due to the limited “purchasing power of technological supportive equipment” (ibid: 13), the prevalence of covid-19 further barred these learners from access to quality and equitable education that the authors further associated with insensitivity of the decision-makers and a disconnect between the policy and the implementation of appropriate measures to execute such policies in hei. henceforth, the learners with disabilities were caught in the middle between their impairment and the shift in the education provision. findings by gunawardane and fernando (2020); ngubanemokiwa (2013; 2020) and those of fossey et al. (2015) reveal similar issues that learners with disabilities face globally, including in eswatini. 1 one of the most important technologies for someone who is blind to access a computer is a screen reader. this is software that interacts with the operating system that reads aloud elements on the screen and allows the user to navigate and select elements. in addition to voiceover and talkback, there is jaws for windows and nvda for windows, a free open-source screen reader. 2 assistive technology refers to “any item, piece of equipment, or product system, whether acquired commercially off the shelf, modified or customised, that is used to increase, maintain or improve functional capabilities of individuals with disabilities (as defined by the 2004 individuals with disabilities education improvement act or idea promulgated in the usa). 3 defined in terms of function to describe the vision of individuals who have uncorrectable vision loss to the extent that they qualify for extra educational support (encompasses both low-vision and blindness). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 3442021 39(1): 344-352 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) 2. background/context of the study set against the kingdom of eswatini’s higher education context, this paper focuses on the university of eswatini (uneswa) whose traditional education provision faced a drastic change following the repercussions brought about by covid-19 starting in march 2020. uneswa, like many other hei in the region, adopted the modular object orientated dynamic learning environment (moodle) as “her” learning management system (lms) as early as 2008 (ferreira-meyers & nkosi, 2013) albeit at a snail-paced adoption rate. notably, uneswa is not immune to the challenges that learners with disabilities face in hei. developing countries such as eswatini places education at the centre of “her” economic development with the notion that an educated society can contribute positively to the national economy. while the national development plan of 1999 and the vision 2022 of 1999 both advocate for poverty eradication and economic growth, not much research has been done on the learning experiences of visually impaired learners enrolled in institutions of higher education; hence, the rationale behind this paper. the eswatini rights of persons with disability act of 2018 defines disability as a long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairment that limits full and equal participation in various spheres of life. in eswatini alone, people with disabilities account for 16 per cent of the entire population and most of these (82%) reside in rural areas. according to the swaziland population and housing census preliminary report of 2017 the rural areas are characterised by limited access to basic services such as education and healthcare, poor infrastructure such as internet connection, roads as well as high poverty levels (adebayo & ngwenya, 2015). in order to ensure continued education, the university of eswatini (uneswa) also embarked on a massive roll out of online learning to bridge the gap imposed by covid-19 closure, extended lockdown and social/physical distancing. hubackova and semradova (2016) argue that effective blended learning requires the following: a) prior assessment of the quality of the content to meet the online learning demands, b) evaluation of learners’ preparedness to transition from traditional methods to online learning, c) the quality and strength of the institution’s virtual environment and d) the level of learner interaction with the learning management system (lms). in the case of uneswa, these drastic changes were introduced and implemented with little or no prior preparation to ensure the readiness of the institution, lecturers as well as learners. in addition, little consideration was given to the adversities and special needs of the learners with disabilities, who have de facto become “locked out” of the remote transformed learning approach. in this paper we discuss the general challenges related to the sudden shift from traditional to online teaching and learning also called “network learning [or] hybrid education” (carius, 2020:1) before examining the additional challenges faced by learners with disabilities. we look at a particular case of a learner with visual impairment to find out how this learner was (or was not) able to cope during the period between march 2020 and september 2020. in our conclusion we propose recommendations on how to ensure a more inclusive online learning environment. this paper addresses two research questions as follows: a) what was the learning experience of a visually impaired learner regarding blended learning during covid-19? b) how did a visually impaired learner cope academically during the emergency blended learning and teaching? while attempting to answer these questions, the outline of the paper covers: a) theoretical framework; b) methodology and research questions; c) findings and discussions and d) conclusion and recommendations. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 3452021 39(1): 345-352 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 ferreira-meyers & pitikoe the learning experience of a visually impaired learner 3. theoretical framework 3.1 social model of disability the social model of disability (oliver, 1981) was inspired by the work of the british disability movement that took place in the 1960s and 1970s (retief & letšosa, 2018). the assumption behind this model is that disability is a social construct that results from the “interrelationships between a dysfunction, an individual response to this dysfunction and the environment” (sztobryn-giercuszkiewicz, n.d:5). in other words, the social environment plays an important role in disabling people with impairments. therefore, instead of advocating for rehabilitation of people with impairments, the society needs to come up with strategies to bring about a positive perception of people with disabilities. this assumption is that people with different forms of impairments are subjected to unfriendly environmental conditions that deprive them the opportunities, liberty and choices to uphold their values (mutanga, 2017). similar sentiments are shared by nussbaum (2006) who laments that people with disabilities need to enjoy special arrangements that will make them live a fulfilled life worthy of social recognition in the social and the world of work to empower them to take control of their lives (retief & letšosa 2018). the implication here is that learners with visual impairment need a conducive environment that will enable them to be self-directed in their learning process. the social model of disability is a paradigm shift from the medical perception of disability or the social labelling of people as weak and pitied individuals (mutanga, 2017) into “a relational approach that considers both individual impairment and educational arrangements” (mutanga, 2017:137) that is cognisant of the specific needs of each impairment and tailors the support needs to their specific differences. libera and jurberg (2019) state that a deep understanding of how learners with visual impairment interact with technology enables tailoring the educational practices to address the needs of the visually impaired learners. in this paper, the social model of disability helps the authors understand the interplay between visual impairment as a dysfunction and the visually impaired learner’s response to the environment – in this case being the remote/blended learning in order to answer the two research questions of: • what is the learning experience of a visually impaired learner regarding blended learning during covid-19? • how did a visually impaired learner cope academically during the emergency blended learning and teaching? 4. methodology and research questions this narrative qualitative case study documents the experiences of a visually impaired learner who is enrolled with uneswa. a narrative case study is an interpretivist research design that examines cases or experiences or a social phenomenon (gilgun, 1994) where the experiences of the research participants are pivotal (brandell & varkas, 2001). this study used a narrative case study to harvest a rich data source on the experiences faced by the visually impaired learner who is currently enrolled with uneswa. data collection employed a semi-structured interview guide that was administered telephonically in recognition of the covid-19 prevention guidelines (who, 2020) to answer http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 3462021 39(1): 346-352 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) the following two key research questions: what is the learning experience of a visually impaired learner regarding blended learning during covid-19? how did a visually impaired learner cope academically during the emergency blended learning and teaching? to answer the research questions, a telephonic semi structured interview guide was employed for data collection in recognition of the covid-19 prevention guidelines. the focus areas included i) device compatibility; ii) connectivity; iii) logging into moodle; iv) manoeuvring the platform; v) academic performance in general and; vi) learner support needs. the data were analysed thematically based on the objectives of the study. 5. findings and discussions the findings in this study revealed the devastating effects that the learner experienced during the lockdown phase since the beginning of march 2020. by virtue of his impairment, the need for a helper or a guide becomes a dire need. the key findings in this study are discussed below in the following thematic areas: i) device compatibility; ii) connectivity; iii) logging into moodle; iv) manoeuvring the platform; v) academic performance in general and; vi) learner support. 5.1 device compatibility the findings in this area revealed that the learner experienced some challenges in accessing the teaching and learning content on the uneswa learning management system, moodle. while it is true that the learner’s laptop and cellular phone have the jaws software (see, for example, yurtay et al., 2015, for a discussion on this software, used mainly for learners with visual impairments), his phone was old and incompatible with online teaching. for him to access the material meant travelling from home to the manzini public library (the nearest town from his rural community) to access the internet: ...while it is true that the online teaching and learning is a good strategy that minimises travel to and from school, the opposite has been the case with me. i cannot access the content from home because i am using an old phone which is not even a smartphone which makes it challenging for me to log on to the moodle platform because this phone is incompatible with modern technology. for me to log on to moodle and access the material i need someone to accompany me to manzini library. this means i have to incur transport costs for my bus fare and that of my guide. this shift has really had a bearing on my finances. when probed further on his ability to receive and respond to whatsapp messages he said: i can receive and respond to whatsapp messages because my cell phone has jaws to help me with on-screen reading and typing back the feedback. this makes it easier to communicate with my lecturers as well who sometimes sent text messages or audio notes. in this learner’s case it was not only an issue of limited or lack of access to education, the shift also bore a significant impact on his finances when he had to travel from his rural home to the nearest town in order to access the teaching and learning content. nonetheless, the whatsapp messages were to some extent another mode of communication. this is in line with research undertaken by libera and jurberg (2017; 2020) who lament that social media has a strong visual appeal to all students including those with visual impairment who tend to use them as much as their sighted peers do. the visually impaired learners in particular enjoyed using social media and do so preferably on mobile devices (libera & jurberg, 2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 3472021 39(1): 347-352 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 ferreira-meyers & pitikoe the learning experience of a visually impaired learner if the university ensures that students with disabilities have access to proper devices as part of the teaching and learning as well as the blended learning policies then these travel costs would not have been a problem. these findings also indicate that the visually impaired learner experienced problems because his device was outdated, hence it was incompatible with the latest technological applications. this implies a need for uneswa to consider providing the visually impaired learners with subsidised mobile devices that the visually impaired learners can use in learning and teaching; a course for blended learning policy change agenda. 5.2 connectivity the learner resides in a rural community where poor infrastructure and limited internet connection are rife. when asked to share his experience in terms of internet connection the learner had this to say: ...internet connection in the rural areas is sporadic. sometimes in a bad weather it becomes even more challenging. i have subscribed to both swazi mobile and swazi mtn to complement each other. with swazi mobile i have access to a bigger monthly data bundle which i use to access my emails from my laptop through the hot-spotting facility [setting the cell phone as a hotspot to connect to the laptop]. sometimes swazi mobile would not connect in which case then i would use my swazi mtn. the shift mandated that i check my emails at least once a day to keep abreast with any updates communicated through emails. this means i must have data available at all times and that also comes at a cost! his narrative highlights the infrastructural limitations experienced in the rural settings and the challenges brought about by such to learners with disabilities. it also underscores the need for a reliable data source to connect with and get regular updates from the lecturers. in other words, the rural context and the fragile internet infrastructure present an additional challenge to the learner in spite of data availability. the implication for the lecturers is that the course content has to be organised into shorter audio visuals that could be accessible to the learner with limited data consumption. 5.3 logging into moodle the findings revealed the learner had been exposed to a computer course upon registration that included skills on how to log in and out of moodle. however, the challenge of this training was that the institutional computers did not have the jaws software to help with onscreen reading. in his own words he said: i have always wanted to own a laptop! i just loved it! but then it seemed more befitting for university students. therefore when i finally enrolled into the university i was determined to have my own laptop. when we went for these computer training sessions i then discovered that the machines did not have the jaws software which i had thought the university would have thought about and had it installed in at least one or two computers to accommodate us. i felt discriminated against. then i bought my personal laptop and installed jaws. i am able to log on to moodle with some assistance though. but the question that keeps bothering me is what will happen if my laptop crashes and i am unable to access the teaching and learning because of the unfriendly infrastructure? in the new normal, i have been able to log on to moodle, typed assignments and submitted them on time. the narrative revealed that the institution has a programme in place to capacitate learners with computer skills. however, not much thought has been put into accommodating the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 3482021 39(1): 348-352 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) learners’ diversity (in the computer labs) and the various medical conditions that they may have. if the students have the necessary devices and software, it was going to be possible to log in, use moodle to do and submit assignments. thus, they will be able to work off-campus. also, an installation of software in the computer labs can also allow the students to work on campus like the rest of the student community and not feel neglected or left out. 5.4 manoeuvring moodle it was found that manoeuvring moodle remained a problem because the student had to request someone to be close by whenever he had an assignment to work on/to submit. for instance, he needed someone to help get into the editing mode of moodle up to the submission stage of an online test. he elaborates: i am not confident to use the learning portal especially when it comes to taking timed online tests. i feel like i might put myself in jeopardy of failing because of my slow pace and limited ability to move from one step to the next in the portal. my condition makes it difficult to control the cursor without assistance. while it is true that i can get some help, the main challenge is the time of the test. i might not complete within the given timeframe. this makes the tests different from the assignments because with the latter i have more preparatory time while the test is a matter of a few hours. in his case, he still needed to build more confidence while exploring the portal before taking timed assessments online. his lack of confidence and the slow pace in using the portal pose a danger of not completing the online assessment especially tests on time which could finally jeopardise his academic performance. 5.5 academic performance the findings on the effects of the offsite mode on the learner’s academic performance revealed no negative effects on his performance. one of the reasons for this is the patience exhibited by the lecturers. he indicated that, in most cases, the lecturers were flexible and accommodating to his particular needs. he narrates: the lecturers used different learning platforms to continue teaching and learning. for instance some used the google classroom which makes learning much easier for me because all the updates immediately go to my gmail account and i can access the material. therefore i was able to keep up with the pace provided the documents were in word or pdf formats. the lecturers’ flexibility was also seen in the administration of the test whereby instead of taking a normal online test some provision was made to accommodate my needs. my tests were sent via an email and i was given extra time to work on the test and submit via email. so my academic performance was not affected by the new change. evidently, the lecturers were compassionate enough to accommodate the needs of this learner by making special provisions for him to access the assessment activities. it also seemed that complementing moodle with other learning platforms such as google classroom and providing other formats when it came to documentary resources, made it easier for this particular learner to access teaching and learning material. however, little was known regarding the support that the institution could afford him to become competent in using the moodle platform. this means that, even though individual lecturers did their best to assist, there was limited (if at all) institutional support when it came to learners with disabilities accessing learning materials. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 3492021 39(1): 349-352 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 ferreira-meyers & pitikoe the learning experience of a visually impaired learner 5.6 learner support need when asked how the institution could help/assist to build his confidence, he had this to say: i wish i could be workshopped on moodle because i really need expert guidance in using the portal. i want to learn how to use the navigator and the combination or hot keys (ctrl+alt+shift) maybe they could help me to move the cursor faster. i need to know how to get to the editing mode without support. generally i need to see myself being able to use moodle independently if at all possible. following that workshop i need a mock test where i will check my level of confidence and the time taken to complete the task at hand. when asked to comment on how the infrastructure could be improved to accommodate the learning needs of students living with a disability, in particular a visual impairment, he had this to say: currently, there are a number of computer labs on campus but not even a single computer has jaws software to accommodate the needs of the visually impaired learners. i would like to see the university installing jaws in at least one or two computers in each lab so that we could have a broader choice of which lab to use and get the maximum benefit like the rest of the scholars. at the moment we are excluded in the teaching and learning practice. at least if there are such machines which have jaws then there would be no need for me to carry my laptop to and from class each day; instead i would use the labbased computers. also, the lecturers have to be well equipped on blended learning to assist the learners with troubleshooting. maybe in the near future, the institution might think of having a centre that fully caters for the needs of the learners with disabilities. these suggestions imply the need for learner support strategies that are sensitive and accommodative of the diverse requirements of the learners. there is also an implication on the timing of the teaching, learning and assessment activities that are cognisant of the diverse disability conditions of the learners. our study respondent also recommended that lecturers be assisted in acquiring the necessary technological competences to be able to help in cases where learners’ computer literacy skills are limited. 6. conclusion in this paper, the focus was on the experiences of a visually impaired learner during the educational paradigm shift from traditional teaching to a blended/online learning approach at uneswa as a result of the covid-19 pandemic. the study revealed the implications of the new normal on access to online teaching and learning for learners with disabilities. for instance, the incompatibility of his device limited his access to the learning content from his home. instead he was compelled to travel to the nearest town to access the material, which had a travel cost implication for him and his guide. secondly, his residence in the rural setting with poor infrastructure also had a significant bearing on his connection and access to the internet. in spite of his subscription to the two network providers, the poor infrastructure led to sporadic connection, not to mention the prohibitive costs of data bundles. thirdly, the participant indicated that regardless of the computer course that he took upon registration, the institution did not accommodate the digital needs of the learners with disabilities. for instance, the available moodle learning management system software does not cater for the needs of the visually impaired learner. hence, he felt incompetent to use the learning portal to take online assessments, especially the tests. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 3502021 39(1): 350-352 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) fourthly, he indicated that apart from using moodle as the formal learning portal, some lecturers complemented this lms with other platforms such as google classroom that he could easily access and that allowed him to keep abreast of the latest course-related information. also, the lecturers were flexible to accommodate his diversity when administering assessment by allowing him to take offline tests and giving him additional time to complete the tests. as a result, his academic performance was not negatively affected by the shift. he also made some recommendations that included a) the need to install specific software in some of the computers in the available labs to give the learners with disabilities a choice to use these laboratories as and when the need arose; b) the need for the lecturers to be technical computer skills savvy and c) the need for a centre that will be fully accessible to learners living with disabilities. 7. recommendations we believe the insights gained from the small case study can inform the way forward for higher education institutions. there is a need to raise awareness on matters of importance to learners with disabilities. while in our study, only those with visual impairments were examined, there are many other learners with disabilities whose needs should be studied. computers made available to students should be equipped with particular software to make learning and teaching accessible to students with disabilities, even if only at dedicated computers. there has to be a needs-based training for learners with disability, in particular those with visual impairments, to build their confidence to independently manoeuvre the learning management systems. higher education institutions should establish and equip centres that cater for the learners with disabilities and their diverse medical conditions. while students can be assisted by lecturers who possess technical skills in computer literacy who can become a resource for learner support in trouble shooting, institutions should provide the learners with opportunities to procure subsidised modern gadgets that allow the learners to participate in blended and/or online learning activities. these findings and recommendations could have a positive bearing on 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[accessed november 8 2020]. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.21 https://doi.org/10.1136/eb-2017-102699 https://doi.org/10.18061/dsq.v27i1/2.13 https://doi.org/10.1177/0264619617739932 https://doi.org/10.1177/0264619617739932 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2011.05.014 https://doi.org/10.1057/sth.2012.7 https://doi.org/10.1057/sth.2012.7 https://doi.org/10.11114/jets.v3i4.902 https://doi.org/10.11114/jets.v3i4.902 about:blank https://doi.org/10.1111/an.2008.49.6.3.3 http://www.who.int/health-topics/disability _goback editorial this issue of perspective in education represents ongoing debates and paradigmatic conversations across a myriad of different educational platforms, levels and disciplines, both locally and internationally. as the editors, we are pleased to articulate, through this issue, the different perspectives and collaborations that have accumulated to form this body of knowledge. the issue draws on disciplinary and interdisciplinary research that spans across primary, secondary and higher education contexts illustrating the interconnected nature of knowledge across the lifespan. furthermore, the papers in this issue bring out the various connections between, for example, topics in educational psychology, curriculum studies and education policy making them central to the creation of a thematic whole within this issue, and underscoring the importance of collaborative research in understanding current issues and debates in education. readers are thus provided with the chance to reflect on how these issues, conversations and perspectives form a cohesive whole across these disciplinary boundaries and platforms. the first three articles privilege various issues and perspectives centred on the discipline of psychology of education/educational psychology. the first article, entrenching heterosexuality through language in south african life orientation (lo) textbooks, by wilmot and naidoo, demonstrates, through a critical linguistic and discourse analysis, the manner in which life orientation textbooks convey heteronormative standards and in turn amplifies the discourses dominant to topics of normative sexuality representations and reproductive perspectives within textbooks used at secondary level schooling within south africa. the second article, “you should give a child love and take them warm-heartedly from their parent”: preschool teachers’ practice and understanding of care, by phatudi, places the ethic of caring as central to the perspectives of preschool teachers in a township school. the author argues that the “ethic of caring” promotes the quality of learning only when viewed from a contextual perspective. the third article, titled an alternative approach to a complex issue: youth-designed strategies for the prevention of teenage pregnancy in schools, by hendricks and wood, uses participatory research methods to demonstrate that the voices and subsequent involvement of youth are valuable when considering the impact and prof lc jita editor-in-chief prof ml mokhele-makgalwa co-editor effectiveness of programmes aimed at the intervention of teenage pregnancies that are prevalent and growing in numbers within schools. in their article, understanding learner attitudes towards the use of tablets in a blended learning classroom, laher and boshoff, take us into a project that explores how learners perceive the use of devices, such as ipads in schools. the authors argue the importance of integrating learner attitudes as a means to successfully implement and adopt electronic technologies within schooling environments, while further underscoring the importance of this research at policy and practical implementation levels. teachers’ perceptions of how they develop self-regulated learning, by geduld, presents a case study of 14 secondary schools as a means to investigate perceptions of teachers in relation to self-regulated learning. the article advocates the importance of enhancing teachers’ knowledge and use of self-regulated learning as a core means to enhance academic success. the sixth article, aligning school discipline with the best interests of the child: some deficits in the legislative framework, a product of the research done by reyneke and pretorius, again places the learner at the core of the initiatives aimed at addressing discipline in schools. the ethic of caring comes to the fore, once again, in the argument on the importance of developing a school disciplinary framework that subscribes to the best interest of the child. the next four articles shift focus to higher educational contexts. the work of naudé and botha, in their article it’s a virtual child!: postgraduate students’ experiences in a developmental psychology class, investigates postgraduate students’ development within the discipline of psychology, in relation to a web-based program my virtual child. naudé and botha argue that this platform of learning provides students with a comprehensive and authentic basis of learning and helps to translate theory into practice at comprehensive and relevant pragmatic levels. aligning with psychology within the context of university-based research, van den berg, jacobs and weideman questioned why adults tend to negate therapeutic services. the article, factors contributing to the negation of therapeutic services by emerging adults at a south african university explores the factors related to the fear of judgement, uncertainty of confidentiality, the fear of vulnerability and hurt and how help is rather sought from family and peers or religion than from therapeutic centres. in the series on higher education, applying a humanistic pedagogy to advance and integrate humane values in a medical school environment, jama discusses how medical school environments at universities are often perceived as impersonal spaces of heightened stress. the research advocates the need to apply a humanistic pedagogical approach and illustrates its implementation within a context of a school of medicine at one university in south africa. the next article, by bhagwan, adopts a qualitative inquiry with academics and community engagement administrators in an effort to understand how community engagement is conceptualised within the higher education space. subsequently, the article towards a conceptual understanding of community engagement in higher education in south africa draws on data accumulated from six south african universities and explores the four prominent themes that emerged: context, process, mutual beneficial relationship and knowledge production. the following article by muthama and mckenna, the contradictory conceptions of research in historically black universities, investigates and troubles the manner in which research is conceived and the implications thereof for research output. using critical discourse analysis, it is argued that four dominant conceptions are often contradictory to one another within historically black universities, namely research as integral to academic identity, research for social justice, research as an economic driver and research as an instrumentalist requirement for job security, promotion and incentives. in their article, investigating the role of non-academic support systems of students completing a master’s degree in open, distance and e-learning, fynn and janse van vuuren explore the concept of support through connectivism theory. specifically, the traditional linear model and rigidity of the student-supervisor relationship as a core means to distance education at postgraduate level is challenged. the authors of this article reflect strongly on the manner in which the success and performance of students do not depend solely on the traditional conception of supervision, but instead focus on the myriad of different non-academic nodes and networks that shape student success at this level. to conclude this section on higher education-based research and perspectives, we include the article, internet use among university students: a reason for concern? in the article, geyer, hall, le roux and crafford contribute to the discussion on possible risks in the use of the internet by students at a tertiary level institution. by using items from two screening instruments, viz. the internet-related addictive behaviour inventory and the problematic internet use questionnaire, the authors examine the nature and impact of internet usage among students at a tertiary level institution and conclude that the students scored low on indicators of problematic internet use (piu) except on two items that could indicate potential risk areas. in the final section, the authors engage with suggestions on evidence-based intervention strategies to prevent, treat and manage pius among this population group. the final two articles bring us full circle and return to secondary schooling level research and perspectives. the first of the final two articles, the promotion of sustainable environmental education by the zimbabwe ordinary level science syllabi, authored by tsakeni, adopts a mixed method approach to explore a case study of a rural school in the murewa district in zimbabwe as a means to engage with place-based education within physical sciences. the recommendations of the study include the need for such approaches to be emphasised within environmental education, education for sustainable development, as well as during assessment practices. in the final article of this issue, overcoming language barriers: lessons learnt from migrant children, ke and shandu reflect through a lens of agency on the literature underscoring high school achievement of migrant children in spite of language barriers. the authors draw on the important need to consider non-conventional factors, specifically beyond the normative lens of social economic status, such as aspirations, expectations and creativities. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 105 mapping socio-economic status, geographical location and matriculation pass rates in gauteng, south africa richelle pienaar tracey morton mckay in south africa, prior to 1994, the racially defined geographical neighbourhood in which a child resided usually determined which school they could enrol in. post 1994, this changed to legally allow enrolment in any public school. unfortunately, due to the legacy of apartheid, in particular, resource allocation inequity, schools in african areas seldom offered quality education. thus, african parents seeking quality public education for their children had to either opt for commuting or moving home, both options having financial implications. for the purposes of this study, quality education is defined using three variables: matriculation pass rates, learner-to-teacher ratios, and quintile rankings, even though use of these variables have their limitations. almost two decades since the demise of apartheid, this study found that there is still a strong relationship between the old ‘apartheid’ geographical zoning, where the right to reside in an area was previously designated by race, and resourced schooling in the south african province of gauteng. it also found a collinear relationship between resourced schools, teacher-to-learner ratios, school fees and matriculation pass rates. that is, schools ranked as quintile 4 and 5 schools, which have low teacher-to-learner ratios and charge more than r6 500 per year in school fees, generally produce high matriculation pass rates. there were some exceptions, with a few no-fee, quintile one schools, located in formerly african zoned areas, which also achieved high matriculation pass rates. keywords: matriculation success; spatial distribution; teacher-learner ratios; school fees; gauteng; quality education richelle pienaar department of geography, university of south africa e-mail: pienar@unisa.ac.za telephone: 082 680 6566 tracey morton mckay department of geography, environmental & energy studies, university of johannesburg e-mail: traceymc@uj.ac.za telephone: 011 559 3302 perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 106 introduction prior to 1994, south african children in school usually attended a neighbourhood one, close to where they lived. but, as apartheid laws restricted where people could live by their race, school enrolment was effectively both racially and geographically zoned (swilling, 1991; kalloway, 1997; bell & mckay, 2011). under apartheid, racial categorisation also conferred socio-economic status, so schooling was further segregated by class. furthermore, children usually attended a school that had their home language as the language of teaching and learning (johnson, 1982; molteno, 1984). post 1994, the south african schools act (sasa), act no 84 of 1996, gave learners the legal right to access any public school, regardless of race. african learners, who could afford it, flocked to enrol in former white schools (soudien & sayed, 2003; maile, 2004; msila, 2008; fataar, 2009; bell & mckay, 2011). this movement was primarily to access ‘quality’ education, as apartheid actively embedded inequality into south african society by purposefully (and massively) underfunding african schools (christie & collins, 1982; pillay, 1990; weber, 2002; fleisch, 2008). african schools under apartheid were characterised by too few teachers (many of whom were under or unqualified), thinly spread physical resources, and poor school management (chisholm, 1983; nattrass & seekings, 2001; fataar, 2008). furthermore, as sites for the anti-apartheid struggle, any culture of teaching and learning that did prevail, was destroyed in the ‘liberation before education’ campaign (enslin & pendlebury, 1998; hofmeyr, 2000; maile, 2004). unfortunately, in general, most schools offering quality public education were semi-privatised under the de klerk government, just prior to the 1994 transition. these schools, thus, began charging school fees, meaning that access was restricted by the ability to pay. even though the post-apartheid government subsequently introduced a school fee waiver system, there is evidence that it does not work well. moreover, in gauteng, schools are allowed to manage admissions using geographical catchment zoning, the boundaries of which often conform to former apartheid spatial configurations (bell & mckay, 2011). so, not only must parents be able to pay the fees, they must also either relocate to a former white area or commute to gain access to quality education (sekete et al., 2001; louw, 2004; redpath, 2006; soudien, 2007; bell & mckay, 2011; gde, 2011; lancaster, 2011; lucas, 2011). thus, access to quality education is now driven more by class division than by race division alone (lemon, 1994; 1995; sayed, 1999; bush & heystek, 2003). that is, children of people of high social standing (regardless of race) access well-resourced schools. children of the poor do not (sujee, 2004, soudien et al., 2004, fiske & ladd, 2006; redpath, 2006; woolman & fleish, 2009; bloch, 2010; bell & mckay, 2011). sadly, then, it seems that many learners, by dint of their socio-economic status, may be permanently locked into enrolling in poorly resourced schools. geographically, in gauteng, they are ‘zoned’ outside of the catchment zones of the resourced schools. mapping socio-economic status, geographical location and matriculation pass rates in gauteng, south africa richelle pienaar & tracey morton mckay 107 financially, they are confined to township schools which have not transformed into sites of excellence, despite massive injections of money into education by the post-apartheid government. township are still characterised by fewer, less qualified teachers, poor physical resources (such as libraries), and poor school management systems (bush & heystek, 2003; herman, 2003; gustafsson & patel, 2006; motala, 2006; evoh & mafu, 2007). this study seeks to contribute to the literature by providing a detailed analysis of high school location, socio-economic status, and matriculation pass rates for the province of gauteng. it seeks to examine the effect that embedded spatial apartheid and resource inequality has on the distribution of matriculation pass rates across gauteng. it, therefore, seeks to address the call by fleisch (2008) to provide a comprehensive picture of the effects of funding inequalities. results presented here represent the early empirical findings of a much larger, on-going study. the impact of neighbourhood socio-economic status on schooling internationally, several studies have found that the geographic location of a school is significant. that is, the geographic neighbourhood a school is located in influences the quality of the education provided by the school. in the united states of america, for example, bell (2003; 2007; 2009) concluded that poor learners end up with poor quality teachers because schools reflect the socio-economic characteristics of the neighbourhood they are located in. research conducted in peru by peters and hall (2004) concurs. they found that schools located in low socio-economic areas are less likely to have sufficient resources or modern infrastructure. thus, while attending a neighbourhood school is ideal, if the quality of the school is poor, it may be better to commute or move house to access a better one (sinha et al., 2005; nettles et al., 2008). moving house to access quality schooling was found to be a common practice in countries such as new zealand, sweden, united kingdom and germany (parsons et al., 2000; white et al., 2001; butler & robson, 2003; la rocque, 2004; sӧderstrӧm & uusitalo, 2004; pearce & gordon, 2005; noreisch, 2007; thrupp, 2007). however, only financially stable parents can do this. for example, davidoff and leigh (2007) demonstrated that australian parents pay up to 3.5% more for a house located in the catchment area of a ‘better’ school than one which is not. this drives up prices of homes in such localities, further excluding low-income households from accessing quality education. the cheaper alternative to moving house is commuting, although a long commute may negatively affect the child’s well-being due to weakened family bonds and less family and relaxation time (bell, 2007). thus, when parents move house or pay for a commute and/or pay school fees, yamauchi (2011) found that schooling costs invariably rise. under such circumstances, socio-economic mobility is limited (weber, 2002; lemon, 2004; gibbons & machin, 2007). it can, therefore, be concluded that social equality and intergenerational mobility is best promoted by perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 108 ensuring that neighbourhood schools are ‘schools of choice’, that is, they are well resourced and viewed as providers of quality education. accessing public schools in south africa since the demise of apartheid, south africa’s education landscape has begun to mirror international trends. in particular, it seems that several limiting socioeconomic mobility factors are at play. for example, poor learners are not able to enrol in resourced schools because their parents cannot afford the school fees, as bell and mckay (2011) found for sandton schools. anderson et al. (2001) found evidence that parents are moving house in order to fall into the catchment zones of resourced schools. that is, educated, financially secure people actively selected to reside in neighbourhoods with schools that had small classes and high test scores. as moving house is a costly option, many more parents opt for the learner commute. this daily school commute has two important trends: (1) a commute from former african areas to schools in former white areas, and (2) an intra-township commute where learners travel from one part of an african township to a school in another part of the same african township (sekete et al., 2001; soudien et al., 2004; bisschoff & koebe, 2005; fataar, 2007; 2009; hunter, 2010; soudien, 2010). sekete et al. (2001) maintain that the driver of this commute is a desire to access quality education. this commute is costly, so only those who can afford it do it. there is evidence that parents make many sacrifices to fund this commute (woolman & fleish, 2006). money, however, is not the only issue. bush and heystek (2003) found that the commute has social costs as well, leading to lower school enrolment, higher dropout rates and poor academic performance. as access to resourced schools comes at a price, structurally, then, the poorer you are, the more likely you will be confined to a poorly resourced school (weber, 2002; lemon, 2004). as a result, intergenerational poverty will persist, as poorly resourced schools do not sufficiently equip learners with the knowledge and skills required to access the world of work and/or tertiary education. research design quantitative data on 561 high schools in gauteng with regard to teacher-to-learner ratios, school fees, matriculation pass rates, geographical coordinates and quintile rankings were supplied by the gauteng department of education (gde). the data were for the year 2012, with the exception of the matriculation pass rates, which were for 2010 and 2011. analysis was initially conducted at the level of district and then collated for the province. geographical coordinates were used to assign schools into pre-1994 apartheid boundaries. matriculation pass rates were determined by averaging the results for 2010 and 2011. using the natural break method, schools were placed in one of three categories: (1) poor performers; (2) average performers; and (3) good performers. as quintile rankings are used by the state as a measure of mapping socio-economic status, geographical location and matriculation pass rates in gauteng, south africa richelle pienaar & tracey morton mckay 109 wealth or poverty, quintile 1, 2 and 3 schools were placed in one – poorly resourced – category and quintile 4 and 5 placed in another – well resourced – category (gde, 2011). teacher-to-learner ratios, also an indicator of resources, were determined by dividing the number of learners by the number of state and educators paid by the school governing body for each school. both the data and the methodology have their shortcomings. the gde database had gaps, although, where possible, schools were contacted to obtain the missing data. some high schools only offer grade 7 to 9, so they were excluded. also, using matriculation pass rates as an indicator of quality, is not without its critics (carnoy, & chisholm, 2008). we acknowledge that matriculation pass rates can be manipulated, by, for example, holding weak learners back, encouraging weak learners to drop out of school, or by encouraging learners to substitute a difficult subject (e.g. mathematics) with an easier one (e.g. mathematical literacy). in addition, learners can pass matric without passing all their subjects. finally, in the south african schooling system, a pass mark of 30% is considered by many to be too low (gilmour & soudien, 2009). quintile rankings and teacher-to-learner ratios are also not absolute indicators of quality. for example, some schools dispute their quintile rankings. in addition, a low teacher-to-learner ratio does not automatically guarantee academic success. results as table 1 shows, each education district has, on average, 8.8 and 11.53 quintile 4 and quintile 5 schools respectively. so, gauteng is a wealthy province dominated by resourced schools. however, some education districts have more resourced schools than others. for example, districts such as ekurhuleni north, ekurhuleni south, johannesburg east and tshwane south have a disproportionally high number of resourced schools with an average of 19.75 quintile 5 schools across these four districts. in general, quintile 4 and 5 schools are located in former ‘whites only’ residential areas. in general, matriculation pass rates in these resourced districts are high; with average matriculation pass rates above 80%. yet, gauteng west and tshwane north both report pass rates of over 80% as well, despite far fewer quintile 5 schools. there was a less distinct pattern between quintile ranking and matriculation pass rates for schools that produce only ‘average’ matriculation pass rates. this is due to the mean pass rates for ‘average’ performers being dragged downwards by some schools located in the johannesburg north, johannesburg south and johannesburg west districts. importantly, johannesburg central district, dominated by orange farm and lenasia-based schools, is a significant outlier. this district is a significantly poorer performer than any other district in gauteng, despite these schools not having quintile 1 and 2 status. thus, based on their quintile rankings, they should be performing better than they are. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 110 district matriculation pass rate quintile former area school fees lowest average highest 1 2 3 4 5 african white average highest gauteng north 41% 81% 98% 2 7 0 2 2 69% 31% r1 443 r8 200 sedibeng west 35% 68% 99% 6 13 13 5 6 84% 16% r750 r5 900 jhb south 46% 73% 100% 3 12 0 5 7 78% 22% r1 375 r12 584 jhb west 52% 76% 100% 1 2 12 4 8 70% 30% r2 439 r13 500 tshwane north 43% 84% 100% 10 3 2 7 8 73% 27% r2 011 r8 350 gauteng east 45% 78% 100% 4 6 12 14 9 76% 24% r1 677 r8 700 sedibeng east 46% 79% 100% 1 2 5 2 9 63% 37% r2 577 r6 700 tshwane west 33% 81% 100% 10 3 7 16 9 73% 27% r1 598 r8 250 jhb central 24% 66% 100% 1 1 17 20 10 90% 10% r936 r9 750 gauteng west 50% 83% 100% 4 6 11 10 12 53% 47% r3 042 r16 900 jhb north 50% 77% 100% 5 8 7 5 14 64% 36% r4 458 r22 350 jhb east 47% 83% 100% 0 7 4 6 17 32% 68% r6 988 r26 100 ekurhuleni south 50% 80% 100% 0 11 14 10 18 60% 40% r2 248 r11 900 tshwane south 39% 82% 100% 2 2 10 17 21 58% 42% r5 635 r24 500 ekurhuleni north 56% 85% 100% 0 1 9 9 23 50% 50% r4 026 r13 500 average 44% 78% 100% 3.27 5.60 8.20 8.80 11.53 66% 34% r2 746.99 r13 938.93 table 1: matric pass rates, quintile rankings, former apartheid zoning and school fees overall, there was a strong positive correlation between the average matriculation pass rate of a district and the extent to which it is home to schools located in former white areas (see figure 1). as figure 1 shows, schools in former white areas have higher matriculation pass rates than schools in former african areas. there are some exceptions to this, with the districts of gauteng east and gauteng north doing well despite the majority of their schools being located in former african areas. significantly, as can be seen in table 1, the two districts with the most number of schools located in former african areas (johannesburg central and sedibeng west) are also the two districts with the lowest average matriculation pass rates and are home to some of the worst-performing schools in the province. mapping socio-economic status, geographical location and matriculation pass rates in gauteng, south africa richelle pienaar & tracey morton mckay 111 figure 1: correlation between average matriculation pass rate for a district and the percentage of schools located in former white areas in that district with regard to school fees, there are two key findings: first, there was a big range (r26 100) and, secondly, the majority of schools located in african areas are no-fee schools. of the schools who do charge fees, a distinct geographical pattern emerged. the districts of gauteng west, johannesburg north, johannesburg east, tshwane south and ekurhuleni north all charge fees higher than the average (r2 746.99) for gauteng. the highest fees were recorded in the districts of johannesburg north, johannesburg east and tshwane south. as these districts are dominated by very expensive real estate, it is speculated that school fees could be linked to household income. however, this would need further investigation. in general, schools in areas where home property values are relatively low, such as johannesburg central and sedibeng west, school fees are also low, but some individual schools in gauteng east and johannesburg south charge very low fees. with the exception of ekurhuleni south, it was found that the more quintile 4 and 5 schools a district has, the higher the average school fees are. thus, resourced schools charge high school fees. furthermore, there was a large gap between average fees and the highest fees (see table 1). thus, each district has a small set of schools which charge very high fees, although for gauteng west, johannesburg north, johannesburg east and ekurhuleni south the gap was the widest, making these districts more unequal than the rest. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 112 table 2 and figures 2 and 3 detail the topand the bottom-performing schools for gauteng. for the top-performing schools it was found that pass rates, school fees and teacher-to-learner ratios enjoy a collinear relationship with a high correlation (r=−0.5; p=<0.0001; n=183) (see table 2 and figure 2). in particular, by examining the best-performing schools by district, it was determined that there was a high correlation between school fees and teacher-to-learner ratios. that is, the higher the school fees, the better the teacher-to-learner ratio although, for some schools, charging very high fees did not improve the teacher-to-learner ratio or the matriculation pass rate (as it reached 100%). overall, the best-performing schools all had teacher-to-learner ratios of less than 1 : 24. the best-performing schools all charge school fees of more than r5 500 per year, with one exception in johannesburg east. for the worst-performing schools, the average teacher-to-learner ratio was 1 : 28.5 and the average school fees were r35, as most were no-fee schools. in general, there was no correlation (r=0.14; p=0.3; n=188) between teacher-to-learner ratios and matriculation pass rates for the worst-performing schools (see figure2) figure 2: correlation between school fees and teacher-to-learner ratio, top schools mapping socio-economic status, geographical location and matriculation pass rates in gauteng, south africa richelle pienaar & tracey morton mckay 113 district best-performing schools worst-performing schools t : l ratio school fees pass rate quintile t : l ratio school fees pass rate quintile ekurhuleni north 24 r7 900 100.00% 5 28 r0 55.83% 3 19 r11350 100.00% 5 ekurhuleni south 23 r9 700 100.00% 5 27 r0 49.82% 2 gauteng east 22 r7 080 100.00% 5 26 r0 44.70% 3 gauteng north 19 r8 200 98.08% 5 31 r0 40.93% 1 gauteng west 21 r11670 100.00% 5 29 r200 50.00% 4 23 r5 500 100.00% 5 johannesburg central 24 r8 500 99.67% 5 17 r150 24.00% 4 johannesburg east 34 r2 300 100.00% 5 29 r0 46.78% 2 17 r16 800 100.00% 5 johannesburg north 16 r14 500 100.00% 5 33 r0 49.84% 2 19 r19 950 100.00% 5 18 r22 350 100.00% 5 johannesburg south 21 r12 584 99.79% 5 33 r0 46.17% 1 johannesburg west 23 r7 200 99.65% 5 32 r0 52.14% 1 sedibeng east 18 r6 700 99.53% 5 29 r0 46.13% 2 sedibeng west 24 r5 800 99.48% 5 20 r0 35.14% 1 tshwane north 23 r8 350 100.00% 5 16 r0 42.57% 2 tshwane south 16 r18 865 100.00% 5 27 r200 39.30% 3 21 r12 400 100.00% 5 19 r12 300 100.00% 5 19 r12 000 100.00% 5 19 r8 510 100.00% 5 tshwane west 26 r5 000 99.56% 5 35 r0 33.14% 3 average 21.17 r10 646.21 99.82% 5 27.47 r36.67 43.77% 3 table 2: bestand worst-performing schools in gauteng, by district perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 114 figure 3: school fees, teacher-to-learner ratios, worst-performing schools an in-depth view: the case of ekurhuleni north although all education districts were analysed for this study, one, ekurhuleni north, is showcased here as it illustrates the key findings of the study. this district forms part of the ekurhuleni metropolitan municipality. it is home to 42 high schools located in the northern part of the east rand, which includes urban areas such as benoni, germiston, kempton park and tembisa. as can be seen from figure 4, the majority (76%) of the schools are resourced, as most are either quintile 4 or quintile 5 schools. quintile ranking is clearly linked to geographical location. most schools in former african areas are quintile 2 to 4 schools, whereas most schools in former white geographical areas are quintile 5 schools. thus, african learners living in formerly designated african areas will either have to commute or move house if they want to enrol in a resourced school, although there were a few exceptions. school fees ranged from r0 (no-fee schools) to r13 500 per annum. twenty five per cent of the schools were no-fee schools. fifty per cent of the schools charged r1 350 or less per annum, and three quarters of the schools charged less than r7 872.50 per year. overall, no-fee and low-fee schools dominate the district (53.4%). as with the rest of gauteng, there are a minority of schools – all quintile 4 and 5 – that charge significantly higher fees than the average. mapping socio-economic status, geographical location and matriculation pass rates in gauteng, south africa richelle pienaar & tracey morton mckay 115 figure 4: quintile ranking of schools by former geographical zones according to race matriculation pass rates for this district ranged from 55% to 100%. it was found that school fees have a positive relation to matriculation pass rates. in general, the higher the fees, the better the matriculation pass rate, although there were some cases of schools charging very low or no fees that achieved good pass rates (see figure 5). the majority of schools located in former white areas charged fees and recorded high pass rates. moderately and poorly performing schools are mainly located in the former african neighbourhoods and they are quintile 2 to 4 schools. however, one school in a former white area had a low matriculation pass rate and eight schools located in former african areas had pass rates of over 80% (see figure 6). one school located in a former african area achieved a pass rate of over 95%. some notable exceptions are schools located in tembisa and daveyton (see figure 7). this suggests the possible presence of another factor or mediating variable at play in these few low-fee, low quintile schools. teacher-to-learner ratios have a negative correlation (r=−0.4; p=<0.0001; n=561) to matriculation pass rates. that is, schools with low teacher-to-learner ratios produced better matriculation pass rates than those with higher ratios. in particular, schools with a teacher-to-learner ratio of 1 : 23 or less had matriculation pass rates above 90%, with one outlier, as documented in figure 8. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 116 figure 5: correlation between matriculation pass rates and school fees by quintile ranking overall, geographic location has a strong relationship with performance. the bestperforming schools are located in former white neighbourhoods (see figure 6). figure 6: correlation between matriculation pass rate, school fees and geographic area mapping socio-economic status, geographical location and matriculation pass rates in gauteng, south africa richelle pienaar & tracey morton mckay 117 figure 7: distribution of schools by matriculation pass rates and former apartheid spatial zoning figure 8: correlation between matriculation pass rate and teacher-to-learner ratios perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 118 overall findings for gauteng we believe, like fleisch (2008), that all children have the potential to achieve, so the uneven geographic distribution of matriculation achievement revealed here should not occur. for gauteng, it is clear that, for many learners, their neighbourhood school is not one that is likely to prepare them to perform well in the matriculation examinations. the highest matriculation pass rates (85% or more) are generally found in quintile 4 and 5 schools located in former white geographic areas and it is most likely that this finding is the drive behind the school commute and/or causing parents to move house to access such schools. such a finding has implications for gauteng’s catchment zoning policy. schools that are performing well in african areas may also be driving the intra-township commute documented by sekete et al. (2001). this study confirms the significant role that resources play in matriculation pass rates, supporting the work of fleisch (2008) and van der berg and louw (2007). in addition, matriculation pass rates are influenced positively by teacher-to-learner ratios, that is, small class sizes generally result in better matriculation pass rates. in particular, schools posting matriculation pass rates above 95% usually had a teacher-to-learner ratio of less than 1 : 25. school fees also have a positive impact on matriculation pass rates. in particular, schools charging over r6 500 all had good matriculation pass rates. schools charging relatively high school fees had lower teacher-to-learner ratios, so we speculate that school fees are used to employ additional teachers. it is clear that, on the whole, the resources allocated by the state to schools under the current public funding system is insufficient to enable matriculation pass rates to improve across the board. in general, schools who are achieving good matriculation pass rates are doing so by ‘topping up’ state funding through collection of school fees. recommendations the results of this study show that teacher-to-learner ratios affect matriculation performance. class size, therefore, needs to be managed actively. in line with the recommendations of peters and hall (2004) and davidoff and leigh (2007), additional state funds will have to be provided to poorly resourced schools if matriculation pass rates are to improve. it further seems that the quintile rankings of some schools may need to be investigated, as some may be incorrectly assigned a higher quintile rank. this is especially true for johannesburg central schools. in addition, the practice of geographic catchment zoning may need scrutiny, as it is inhibiting learner choice. with regard to research recommendations, exploring the relationship between school fees, teacher-to-learner ratios and academic success could be extended to primary schools, using the ana results. investigating no-fee schools located in former african areas which are achieving high pass rates could also provide insight into other mapping socio-economic status, geographical location and matriculation pass rates in gauteng, south africa richelle pienaar & tracey morton mckay 119 factors that may be affecting academic success, such as school management, teacher qualifications, and teacher experience. finally, the causal relationship between fees, teacher-to-learner ratios and matriculation pass rates should be investigated. this could be done by unpacking if multi-co-linearity is present so as to determine which factor may spark a virtuous circle and provide a way to systematically improve matriculation pass rates across the board. conclusion the analysis of schools in gauteng by geographical location, teacher-to-learner ratio, school fees and matriculation pass rates has demonstrated that poor education performance in the province can, in part, be attributed to both past historical legacies of inequality and post-1994 funding decisions. the legacy of apartheid is still embedded in our society as schools located in former african areas consistently underperform compared to schools in former white areas. however, policies relating to investment in school resources post-1994 mean that many schools are still under resourced. their inability to raise school fees to make up for the lack of state investment is hampering their ability to offer quality education to their learners, in particular, to hire sgb teachers in order to reduce their teacher-to-learner ratios. it seems that schools located in former white areas have not only inherited significant resources from the apartheid era; the neighbourhoods they are located in enable them to levy school fees with which they are able to keep matriculation pass rates high. acknowledgements the authors would like to extend a big vote of thanks to the gauteng department of education for supplying the data, as well as to the uj library, and wendy job of the uj cartographic unit for the map. much gratitude is extended to kerry chipp for statistical assistance. thanks also to the anonymous critical reviewers whose comments significantly improved this paper. errors and omissions are our own. references anderson kg, case a & lam d 2001. causes and consequences of schooling outcomes in south africa: evidence from survey data. social dynamics: a journal of african studies, 27(1): 37-59. bell ca 2007. space and place: urban parents’ geographical preferences for schools. journal of education, 39(4): 375-403. bell ca 2009. all choices created equal? 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development, 22: 617-635. white p, gorard s, fitz j & taylor c 2001. regional and local differences in admission arrangements for schools. oxford review of education, 27(3): 313-337. woolman s & fleisch b 2006. south africa’s education legislation, quasi-markets and de facto school choice. perspectives in education, 24(2): 1-24. woolman s & fleisch b 2009. the constitution in the classroom: law and education in south africa 1994-2008. cape town: pretoria university law press. yamauchi f 2011. school quality, clustering and government subsidy in post-apartheid south africa. economics of education review, 30: 146-156. 17 research article 2021 39(3): 17-29 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.3 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) covid-19: understanding and responding to the educational implications for the vulnerable children of eswatini abstract in a bid to contain the spread and infection rate of covid-19, eswatini closed all its schools on 17 march 2020, and for a year they remained closed. despite education being the only viable means towards a better future, the closing of schools set-off to heighten prevailing educational disparities towards academic access, experience and achievement for the vulnerable children of the country. adopting intersectionality as a theoretical framework, the paper seeks to analyse the educational effects of covid-19 on the vulnerable children of eswatini. the aim is to identify and discuss how educational systems and processes amidst the covid-19 era sought to amplify the already compounded, complex and dominant educational disparities for children affected by vulnerability. a systematic literature review was conducted to understand child poverty and vulnerability in eswatini schools and the implications of the covid-19 school restrictions on the vulnerable children. strategies to minimise the adverse effects of the pandemic on inclusive and equitable schooling for the vulnerable children have been suggested. keywords: covid-19; intersectionality; schools; social justice; vulnerable children; eswatini. 1. introduction the novel human coronavirus, covid-19, has brought havoc to the economic systems of countries worldwide (doyle, 2020), and predominantly poor countries have been affected the most (gaynor & wilson, 2020). eswatini, one of the poorest countries in southern africa (kingdom of swaziland, 2019), recorded its first confirmed case of covid-19 on 14 march 2020 (dlamini, 2020). on 17 march, the country’s late prime minister, ambrose mandvulo dlamini, declared it a national emergency, with the first recorded death from the coronavirus on 16 april 2020 (mdluli, 2020). as one of the means to contain the spread of the coronavirus, the country’s minister of education and training closed all schools on 17 march 2020, and for a year they remained closed. whilst the economic effects of author: dr ncamsile daphne motsa1 affiliation: 1university of kwazulu-natal, durban, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i3.3 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(3): 17-29 published: 16 september 2021 received: 21 april 2021 accepted: 16 june 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.3 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.3 182021 39(3): 18-29 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.3 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) covid-19 on eswatini are alarming (ntiwane, 2020), the country’s educational system has equally been devastated, with vulnerable children being the most affected and prone to bear the blunt reality of the school closure and this pandemic (doyle, 2020). benach (2021) agrees that covid-19 has come with a potential pandemic of educational inequality, again inclined towards the poor and vulnerable in our communities. child vulnerability in eswatini is mostly attributed to child poverty and the very high number of hiv/aids deaths experienced by the country for over three (3) decades (swaziland ministry of health, 2017). the kingdom of swaziland (2010) defines a vulnerable child as one, with or without parents, who lacks the basic needs for survival, is living in circumstances with high risk and whose prospects for health, growth and development are seriously impaired, mostly due to the effects of hiv/aids. similarly, mkhatshwa (2017) says, these are children who are orphaned, from child headed households and children from poor family backgrounds. however, these children share one thing in common and that is extreme poverty. as covid-19 overwhelms the functioning of educational systems, educational access, experiences and outcomes for the vulnerable children in the country are bound to be greatly affected (benach, 2021). yet, the importance of education as one of the means to break their circle of poverty and that of their families (achoki et al., 2020) cannot be overemphasised. similarly, the sustainable development goals (sdgs) set out by the united nations advocates that by 2030 all learners will have all the knowledge skills needed to promote and sustain global development (unesco, 2015). achoki et al. (2020) warn that, as the world works tirelessly to find a permanent solution for the coronavirus, educational systems of countries should ensure that they do not crumble. one way would be through limiting the educational effects of the pandemic especially on the most vulnerable, considering their desperate need for education. educational systems need to consider that, improving the quality of life for the vulnerable children, post-covid-19 or in the “new normal” (cahapay, 2020), depends largely on the quality and effectiveness of the education they receive (achoki et al., 2018). indeed, aligning with the state’s initiative to meet agenda 2030 for the sustainable development goals (sdgs). however, even though the narratives in eswatini point to the glaring economic effects of covid-19, making it a major topic of debate (e.g. dhemba & tatenda, 2020; ntiwane, 2020), a systematic analysis for its implications on the education of children who are poor and vulnerable is still lacking. the inequalities established by the pandemic in the educational spaces have been neglected and the mitigation of these effects is also woefully absent. the paper therefore seeks to analyse the effects of covid-19 on the education of the vulnerable children of eswatini. the aim is to identify and discuss how educational systems and processes amidst the covid-19 era and school restrictions seek to amplify the already compounded and dominant educational disparities in the educational spaces. that is, providing an intersectional sense and a new perspective in understanding how the government’s approaches might have educationally disadvantaged and compromised the vulnerable children in the country, whilst advantaging children not affected by vulnerability. by so doing finding means not only to mitigate the effects of the pandemic and the governments’ policies and processes in regard to the vulnerable children’s education, but also to encourage social justice in all avenues of their educational lives and spaces, as one of the means towards ensuring they get quality, effective and equitable education. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.3 192021 39(3): 19-29 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.3 motsa covid-19: understanding and responding to the educational implications 2. understanding poverty, vulnerability and education in eswatini before covid-19 eswatini (formerly swaziland) has a population of slightly above 1.1 million people (kingdom of swaziland, 2019), and approximately 72% of the country’s people live below the nationally defined poverty level (kingdom of swaziland, 2019). child poverty in eswatini stands at 56.5% (unicef, 2017), and approximately 80% of the country’s poor live in the rural areas depending mainly on small-scale subsistence agriculture for survival (rugube et al., 2019). besides poverty, eswatini has also been hard hit by the effects of hiv/aids for almost three (3) decades; hence, the escalating numbers of children who have been relegated to extreme poverty and vulnerability (mkhatshwa, 2017). to ensure the welfare of the vulnerable children, the national education and training sector policy of 2018 commits the government of eswatini and the education sector as a whole to a number of systems strengthening efforts and targeted interventions to care for, protect and support the vulnerable children (the government of the kingdom of eswatini, 2018). it provides for the routine monitoring of vulnerable children in schools, at the same time assisting schools in responding to these children’s needs. as one of the means to reaffirm its pledge, in 2010 the state introduced free education (fpe) for all primary school going children (khumalo, 2013). the aim was to eliminate barriers and encourage educational access, participation and achievement with special focus on the poor and vulnerable children in the country. ensuring institutional flexibility in accommodating the needs of destitute children and to continue rolling out free, equitable and inclusive basic education for all children, especially the vulnerable, underlines government’s commitment towards the plight faced by the vulnerable children of eswatini (the government of the kingdom of eswatini, 2018). however, the economy of the country is presently on its knees and has been ailing for the past two (2) decades (rugube et al., 2019). maintaining support for the vulnerable children and aligning policies adopted and practice within a difficult public sector fiscal environment has been a mammoth task to achieve. over and above, the state was a signatory of numerous un declarations on children’s rights and other policies related to the welfare of vulnerable children. for example, in april 2000, the government of eswatini endorsed the dakar framework for action, committing the government into taking a different yet inclusive stance by emphasising not only on compulsory primary education but also one that is equitable, free and of good quality by 2015, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged child populations (unesco, 2015). in september the same year, eswatini again committed itself to the millennium development goals (mdgs), reaffirming its pledge to put more emphasis on poverty and the needs of all children by 2015 (khumalo, 2013). later, in 2015 the country was also a signatory of the 2030 sustainable development goals (sdgs). one of the commitments towards the sdgs was for every member country to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education, ending poverty and also achieving gender equality in all aspects of social life (unesco, 2015). with such perfectly crafted policy statements, one would conclude that the educational affairs of vulnerable children in the country are well taken care of. regrettably, discrepancies between these policies and practice cannot be ignored and their implementation to the desired level remains a dream. eswatini is indeed not only far from safeguarding the future of its marginalised children but also from achieving its educational goals (khumalo, 2013). this is with ruinous effects to the vulnerable children who presently live within very challenging economic, educational and welfare situations (mkhatshwa, 2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.3 202021 39(3): 20-29 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.3 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) for instance, vulnerable children still struggle to get food daily (mkhatshwa, 2017). educational inequalities remain an endemic problem and a major concern in the school contexts (motsa & morojele, 2019). the vulnerable children still have to deal with exclusion, discrimination (zwane & malale, 2018) and mostly end up dropping out of school, either because of ill-treatment by teachers and learners, owing school fees (khumalo, 2013), overwhelming family responsibilities for the boys (motsa & morojele, 2019) or pregnancy for the girls (mkhatshwa, 2017). this is a clear indication that, despite policies to redress the challenges faced by vulnerable children, the state has failed to keep its promises. inclusivity and educational equity in eswatini schools has made very little progress if any, as the vulnerable children’s quest for education is still compromised. with covid-19, these inequalities and challenges faced by the vulnerable children are set to reach new and ruinous heights (doyle, 2020). 3. theoretical framework: the intersectionality framework the study was guided by the intersectionality framework. the intersectionality framework is on the premise that marginalisation and inequalities experienced by people in disadvantaged positions is “intersectional” (crenshaw, 1989). in other words, most marginalised groups of people have multiple identities, which all carry their systems of oppression, exclusion and subordination (crenshaw, 1991). for example, social identities such as gender, race and socio-economic status within an individual may map into different levels in the social order, where they interact and simultaneously intwine (else-quest & hyde, 2016) in ways that amplify disparities at the same time making individuals’ daily life experiences complex and compounded (crenshaw, 1989). intersectionality based research therefore seeks to bring about the explicit awareness and recognition of subjugation, inequalities and social exclusion of subordinately positioned individuals coming from all levels of their multiply marginalised social identities (freeman et al., 2020). that is, acknowledging that the vulnerable children’s individual identity in eswatini is a conjunction of a number of social elements concurrently affecting and affected by one another, in ways that frame their daily educational experiences. in essence, covid-19 functions not as a distinct separate entity affecting the vulnerable children’s schooling, but as a mutually reinforcing phenomenon widening the educational inequalities at the same time acting as a compromise to their education (crenshaw, 1991). trying to address discrimination of intersectional(ly) subordinated groups of people looking from only one level of their subordination will therefore distort their lived experiences and also disregard the root cause of their challenges, discrimination and oppression (crenshaw, 1991). for the vulnerable children of eswatini, their education is already framed within multiple areas of disadvantage. to understand the implications of covid-19 on their education therefore, one needs to look at their (the vulnerable children) intersecting social identities within the educational spaces. again, how the government’s stereotypical processes and decisions as they imposed school restrictions intersected with the vulnerable children’s already vulnerable situations to amplify the prevailing educational disparities in the country (nichols & stahl, 2017). intersectionality was therefore the effective lens through which the paper could interrogate government’s educational policies, regulations and processes during the “covid times” at the same time challenging the invisibility and neglect of the vulnerable children in making these policies. this is in ways that would not only identify how these processes seek to aggravate the subordination of the vulnerable children, but also how such disregard presented compromising and complex educational problems for them (the vulnerable children), requiring http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.3 212021 39(3): 21-29 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.3 motsa covid-19: understanding and responding to the educational implications deep enquiry (mccall, 2005). indeed, the study argues that, whilst these processes privileged children who were not affected by vulnerability (dennissen et al., 2020), the interaction of such structures and processes within the vulnerable children’s identities aggravated their subordination and severed most of these children from educational access and success (freeman et al., 2020). hence, violating their rights to effective education. 3.1 research methodology to collect data, a systematic literature review was conducted. this was from 20 march 2021, (immediately after the government announced the re-opening of all schools in eswatini, after closing for a year), until the end of april 2021. conducting a systematic literature review allowed the researcher to identify, review and synthetise empirical evidence (atlantis et al., 2013) in trying to align with the aims of the study. reviewed literature focused on child poverty and vulnerability in eswatini and how these social identities affected the vulnerable children’s schooling, before covid-19. it then focused on literature about covid-19 and its educational implications especially for the most vulnerable in the schools. the researcher used electronic databases and only focused on studies published between 2015 and 2021 in order to provide recent information. finally, approximately fifty (50) publications on covid-19 and vulnerability that could possibly fulfil the criteria were found. however, twelve (12) of these studies were excluded. utilising the intersectionality framework, these findings were then discussed in view of the schooling of the vulnerable children of eswatini and the country’s educational restrictions, processes and systems meant to mitigate the educational effects of covid-19. 4. covid-19 and the education of the vulnerable children of eswatini it is indeed true that the educational effects of covid-19 on the world’s poor and socially vulnerable is devastating (gaynor & wilson, 2020) and eswatini is no exception. covid-19, coupled with the country’s restricted schools’ regulations has provided further structural and indeed compromising contexts for the resolve, educational performances and success for the vulnerable children of eswatini (mkhatshwa, 2017). it has come as a further threat to their already compromised social and educational life (raza, 2017; motsa & morojele, 2019), at the same time compromising and constraining their equitable participation and success. this is because, for eswatini the implications of covid-19 on the vulnerable children interacts with prevailing vulnerabilities and systems of inequality dominant within educational spaces “to create yet another [and intensified] dimension of [vulnerability] disempowerment” (crenshaw, 1991:1249). issues relating to equitability for the vulnerable children of eswatini have always been wanting and posed a challenge in the education system. farkas and romaniuk say “any discrimination allowed during a time of peace may become a matter of life and death in a period of crisis” (2020:70). undoubtedly, the outbreak of the pandemic comes as a compromise to the glossy world of the vulnerable children of eswatini envisioned by the united nation’s sustainable development goals of 2030 and the effects are catastrophic. unfortunately, the country’s efforts to ensure children get effective education during the “covid times” disregarded all systems of the vulnerable children’s disadvantage (crenshaw, 1989) and how they all intersected to further worsen their learning experiences. the designed educational processes and procedures were far from being inclusive, but rather oppressive as they were discriminatory and further placed the vulnerable children at a disadvantaged position towards educational access and success (hart, 2019). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.3 222021 39(3): 22-29 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.3 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) whilst, the closing of schools on 17 march 2020 was a smart move by the country’s authorities to slow down the transmission of the coronavirus, the same cannot be said in regard to the wellbeing and education of the vulnerable children. such a decision did not only reject, obscure and disregard the vulnerable children’s realities and social standing but was also devastating (gaynor & wilson, 2020), and this need not be ignored or minimised. firstly, whilst the affluent were sent back to the comfort of their homes, the poor and vulnerable were sent back to their abhorring life situations and their daily needs as provided by the schools were overlooked. for example, as the vulnerable children were sent home nothing was said on how they would get their daily nutritional meals offered by the schools, yet for most of these children this is the only assured meal for the day (motsa & morojele, 2019). the closing of schools therefore not only severed them from their educational resource but also their daily sustenance, hence aggravating their food insecurity. again, the emotional impact of such detachment from the school contexts for some of the vulnerable children whose only parental figure in their lives is a teacher (dowd, 2019), was also ignored and no follow up was made to ensure their welfare. further ignoring the serious psychological effect of being deprived of education (chaturvedi, vishwakarma & singh, 2021) – the one practical means to break their circle of poverty. it is expected therefore that most of these children will not see the inside of a classroom again because most of them were forced to find other means to put food on the table, in ways that ended up compromising their lives and their educational future. for example, the school closure forced boys to withdraw from education and opt for the lucrative business of dagga (marijuana) cultivation to put food on the table for their families (pitikoe, 2018). the same way girls were taken advantage of by men who promised them food and money and unfortunately, most of them fell pregnant thus putting an abrupt end to their education (phungwayo, 2020). the covid-19 era also introduced a period of technological innovation and digitalisation in the country’s education system. the government, through the ministry of education and training, put structures in place as a means to ensure that learners do not completely lose a year. this was done by conducting lessons through the national radio, daily newspapers and the national television stations (tv). however, rather than being practicable, such aspirations remained theoretical for most vulnerable children in the country. these initiatives were not inclusive as they neglected the issues of intersectionality amongst groups of children in the education system. for example, the accessibility of such platforms for the poor, vulnerable children of the country was never considered (un, 2020). how feasible is it that parents or caregivers of these children can afford to buy newspapers for their children? let alone radios or even own television sets when they struggle to put food on the table (mkhatshwa, 2017). again, as much as television is very engaging and interactive, and probably effective to replace the face-to-face traditional mode of teaching and learning, for many vulnerable children of eswatini, it remains a far-fetched dream. this points out to the sad reality that, only children with resources and not affected by vulnerability were considered and advantaged to access education (blundell et al., 2020). it is true therefore that, as these children continued with their education through the set-up platforms, the vulnerable experienced an educational gap and could only wish for the next day at school. yet instability and a gap in a child’s cognitive development, “contributes to patterns of educational stratification […] [amongst learners] … [at the same time] widening the achievement gap” (alexander, entwisle & olson, 2007:175). such highlights the stark disparities between children who had the flexibility to access education and those who were limited by their poor socio-economic conditions. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.3 232021 39(3): 23-29 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.3 motsa covid-19: understanding and responding to the educational implications again, shifting education from schools to family contexts, meant more responsibilities for the poor parents and caregivers, who are mostly not only illiterate (unicef, 2017), but also unquestionably living in the stressful situations that accompany poverty and/or is brought about by the pandemic (doyle, 2020). in the face of most parents being unemployed in the country, numerous parents with low paying jobs and/or are self-employed have also been deprived of their source of income (blundell et al., 2020). a situation that is unfortunately bound to worsen, considering that more job losses in the country are projected in 2021 (ntiwane, 2020). consequentially most parents in poor families are unable to invest in their children’s education physically and financially. they have also not been in a position to “cultivate valued educational skills in their children” (alexander, entwisle & olson, 2007:176) or provide educational support at a time when education has moved into the home contexts and these children needed parental involvement in order to achieve. certainly, these myriads of factors will coalesce to amplify educational disparities and widen an already prominent attainment gap amongst learners affected by vulnerability and those who are not (blundell et al., 2020). it is without doubt therefore that as these two groups of children finally go back to school, they are further stratified by the effects of covid-19 and the vulnerable children’s system of discrimination is further deepened by the pandemic (crenshaw, 1991). it is therefore negligent of the government to ignore intersectionality amongst groups of children and only concentrate on the effects of covid-19 disregarding how these effects are and have been made complex by the effects of poverty and vulnerability. undoubtedly, without swift and tactful action, the country might not recover from the educational implications of the pandemic especially for the poor and vulnerable (blundell et al., 2020). hence, the urgent need to consider education anew in the light of emerging challenges brought about by the pandemic (cahapay, 2020) and from the perspective of the vulnerable children. the question therefore is, considering the goals of the country towards education, what can we invest in as a nation to challenge the effects of covid-19 and to mitigate the compromising implications of the educational systems and processes amidst the covid-19 era, at the same time trying to meet the goals we set to fulfil? 5. engaging the educational implications of covid-19: the social justice way the question of how to provide quality, equitable and prosocial education for the vulnerable children of eswatini, is an important one to address. as the country’s authorities prepare for education beyond covid-19 and/or characterised by the new normal (cahapay, 2020), educational stakeholders need to consider how existing inequalities, social structures and the conditions surrounding the pandemic have facilitated vastly different realities for children in the schools with the vulnerable facing a more complex reality (gaynor & wilson, 2020). again, how covid-19 has broadened the vulnerable children’s educational needs and further made their disadvantaging situations multifaceted. it is also important for the government of eswatini to acknowledge how, through designing a “one size fits all” programme in efforts to ensure that children get education even during the schools’ restrictions, it stereotypically constructed children in the schools, as one social group, hence obscuring and concealing the needs and realities of the vulnerable. considering that the vulnerable children have been disadvantaged in similar yet different ways from other groups of children in the schools, this warrants the ministry of education and the government of eswatini to address such variations equitably (hart, 2019), and ensuring that, the set off risks for widening already dominant educational http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.3 242021 39(3): 24-29 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.3 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) gaps is ultimately eliminated and a safe and equitable opening of schools, especially for the vulnerable children is guaranteed. indeed, covid-19 has increased the presence of diverse minority groups in the schools and brought into light a number of advocacy issues in need of addressing. this calls for the adoption and incorporation into practice the principles of social justice approaches as one way to ensure effective education for the vulnerable children. according to klaasen (2019:2), social justice is entrenched in the structures and practices that integrate those at the subservient as well as the advantaged positions. social justice “works to undo socially created and maintained differences in material conditions of living, so as to reduce and eventually eliminate the perpetuation of the privileging of some at the expense of others” (calderwood, 2003:4). considering the need for a social change to a curriculum that is flexible enough to compensate for the gaps in the vulnerable children’s education, approaching education from the lens of social justice could therefore be one way the government of eswatini could “right its wrongs” and ensure equitable educational access, experience and success for all swati children (children of eswatini) (hart, 2019). this perspective could enable the government to design new policies and programmes that would help navigate and outwit the exclusionary practices that infiltrated the educational system during the covid-19 schools’ restrictions (hlalele, 2012). furthermore, by embracing social justice the government could also be ensuring “full and equal participation of all … [children in the schools] … that is mutually shaped to meet their needs,” (bell. 1997:3). that is to say, effective help for the vulnerable children, the “high need” learners (castro, kelly & shih ,2010), should go beyond the “ordinal” to help that meets their real needs. as much as schools need resources to reconstruct the damage caused by covid-19 and the schools’ closure for all children, strategies should target and give more support to the children whose education has been hit hard by the pandemic – the vulnerable children. making more resources and specialised support available to them (nieuwenhuis, 2010) in ways that would compensate and accommodate their special and different needs. in essence, giving equal educational opportunities for the vulnerable children of eswatini during the “covid times” would mean devising policies and programmes that ensures education that is shaped in such a way to consider the dominant structural barriers to their education as further brought about by the pandemic, at the same time addressing their varying levels of need as predicated on poverty and vulnerability (gaynor & wilson, 2020). that is, not actually giving equal resources to all children in the schools but rather eliminating inequalities in educational access, experiences and opportunities. with the end goal being equitable educational outcomes for the vulnerable children and those not affected by vulnerability (hart, 2019). crenshaw (1989:139) agrees that, as opposed to “being harmed by being treated differently, [children in vulnerable situations] … are harmed by being treated the same”, being covered by the same governmental processes, because their multiple burdens make them different and in need of specialised support (nieuwenhuis, 2010). considering how the vulnerable children’s intersecting identities have driven them further away from the idealised reality of equal educational opportunities (gaynor & wilson, 2020), and further blurring their educational success (un, 2020), it is imperative to note that, disregarding their real life needs, which makes them “different”, is prone to perpetuate their circle of poverty and that of their families. recognising diversity amongst learners would help ensure that children in the schools, from the poorest to the wealthiest, are given equitable opportunities to succeed (north, 2006), increasing the probability to free the vulnerable children http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.3 252021 39(3): 25-29 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.3 motsa covid-19: understanding and responding to the educational implications from the shackles of poverty. as a country we therefore, need to discard the centralised, standardised and homogenised education system, as it does not only ignore diversity but also underestimates the realities and needs of the vulnerable children (ciftci & cin, 2018), in favour of education that would cater for and also consider learners who have been mostly educationally disadvantaged by the school restrictions. as the children go back to school, teachers can also help shape the new world of the vulnerable children by being inclusive practitioners. that is, they should move beyond concentrating on their brilliant learners’ achievements and making it to “top achieving” schools in the country (dover, 2013), to meeting the individual learners’ needs in the schools/classes at their actual “point of need”. hence, giving every child the freedom and possibilities to achieve (hart, 2019). teachers should also take into consideration the contemporary problems in the educational spaces and the vulnerable children’s presently changing yet becoming complex realities. with an understanding that children’s experiences are diverse and thus context and individual specific solutions are needed towards the creation of equitable educational spaces (hlalele, 2012). the core value of social justice is associated with the skills and tasks of advocacy and policy reform (farkas & romaniuk, 2020:71). it encourages and supports teaching that is “built on respect, care, recognition and empathy” (hlalele, 2012:112). teaching that “involves how teachers regard the work of teaching, what they consider to be reasonable expectations for various learners, how they incorporate into the curriculum the knowledge traditions and experiences of marginalised groups” with the greater focus of challenging and diminishing inequalities and redistributing educational opportunities (enterline et al., 2008:270). linking principles of justice and adopting a complex understanding of their learners’ diverse identities could help tailor and guide their pedagogical practices (farkas & romaniuk, 2020). with a deeper understanding of the relationship between learners’ lived realities and content delivered. in essence, content should be designed in a way that gives attention and attends to the vulnerable children’s learning gaps (upoalkpajor & upoalkpajor, 2020). lastly, the government of eswatini needs to consider that the vulnerable children’s ability to recover from the effects of covid-19 rests chiefly on their socio-economic resources or lack thereof (gaynor & wilson, 2020). effective response would therefore go beyond the education system to catering for the individually fashioned socio-economic needs of these children as a foundation for strategies and reforms aimed at inclusivity and improving their educational access and achievement. 6. conclusion the paper has highlighted the inequalities that exist in the educational system of the country as driven by covid-19, and the role played by the government of eswatini in proliferating such inequalities (bailey, o’flaherty & hogan, 2017). as this review has demonstrated, the intersectionality lens could be effective in identifying and understanding how inequality plays out in the educational spaces for diverse groups of learners in ways that further places marginalised children in the subordinate position. intersectionality calls for the consideration of individual children’s social identities that they bring into the schools as one of the ways in any efforts towards the development of policies and processes meant to benefit all children. bringing into light the need for social change within the education system. considering the social standing of the vulnerable children of eswatini, indeed disregarding the intersectional nature of their educational experiences in the development of new educational processes during the covid-19 lockdown of schools masked their real educational experiences riddled http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.3 262021 39(3): 26-29 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.3 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) with challenges, hence failed to meet their specific needs. unfortunately, this did not only introduce new injustices within the education system but also produced outcomes that are inclined to further compound their marginalisation towards academic access, experience as well as success. whilst, children not affected by vulnerability obtained more privilege and unfair advantages, the vulnerable children were further relegated and placed at the receiving end of the unjust decisions made by the country’s authorities. if any efforts are to be made to address the effects of covid-19 on the vulnerable children of eswatini, educational stakeholders should therefore acknowledge their broader disadvantaging nature – their poverty and how it has always framed their educational access, capability and achievement. hence, adopting the tenets of social justice could be one way through which children in the schools receive equitable education, acknowledging the ways in which both covid-19 and the governments’ decisions have further compromised the vulnerable children’s education and resolve towards educational success. 7. acknowledgments i wish to acknowledge my mentor, prof pholoho j. morojele for the support, guidance and critical insights that led to the conceptualisation, write up and completion of this article. references achoki, t., alam u, wer l., gebremedhin, t., senkubuge, f., lesego, a., liu, s., wamai, r. & kinfu, 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school children picturing family life naydene de lange nelson mandela metropolitan university tilla olivier nelson mandela metropolitan university johanna geldenhuys nelson mandela metropolitan university claudia mitchell mcgill university rurality is an active agent and central to the lived experiences of children growing up on a farm and attending a farm school. it is a key to their everyday experiences, and influences family life, schooling and their future. previous studies elsewhere in the world have explored the notion of childhood in rural contexts, but there is a dearth of similar research in south africa, which has a vast section of the population living in rural areas and therefore a vast number of children attending school in rural areas. a farm school – a public school on private property provides the context for this study’s exploration of children’s views of family life in a rural area. the data was obtained using drawing as a visual participatory methodology with 16 primary school children, aged between 6 and 10, both boys and girls, providing an insider local perspective on growing up on a farm in a rural environment. how do children picture their lives? what do these pictures tell about rural family life? how does this influence schooling? this paper reports the findings and makes critical recommendations for turning the tide for children in rural education contexts. keywords: rural community, farm school, public school, family life, visual participatory methodology, drawings. introduction education is the great engine of personal development. it is through education … that a child of a farm worker can become the president … (mandela, 1994:144). the context within which children grow up influences their everyday lives, their family life, their schooling and their future (taylor & hyde, 2002). indeed, the establishment of a favourable teaching and learning context in the classroom becomes even more decisive if the school accommodates learners who come from less favourable contexts, such as under-resourced rural communities. south africa is a developing country, which “has not yet reached the stage of economic development characterized by the growth of industrialization, nor (as was once thought) a level of sufficient national income required to finance the investment necessary for further growth” (bannock, baxter & davis, 2003:97). despite its backlogs, it is a country with a richness and diversity of people, and with textured family lives. it also has an interesting array of schooling settings: urban, peri-urban and rural contexts, as well as private, semi-private and public schools, ranging from large comprehensive schools to small rural farm schools, all aiming to contribute to human development. in south africa, farm schools, which are the focus of this study, are located on private property, and were initially established for the children of farm workers. while there is a body of literature focusing on rural schooling in international contexts (clare, jimenez & mcclendon, 2005; cummins, 2009; riley, 2009; henderson, 2008; saloojee, phohole, saloojee & ijsselmuiden, 2007; hancock, 2005; mckinstry, 2005), there is a dearth of literature on rural schooling, 80 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 rural farm schooling and family life of children attending farm schools in south africa. our research is aimed at making a significant contribution to filling this gap. children’s everyday family life in rural contexts rurality (and childhood and family life in rural settings) is itself an area that is relatively understudied within the social studies of childhood. corbett (2007) notes, there is a need for social research that is place-sensitive and that takes account of the differing social-spatial environments of growing up in urban, peri-urban, township and rural spaces. this study is located within a larger international project entitled textual display of children’s everyday lives in norway,1 being undertaken in china, the united states and south africa. the fourcountry project is organised around the use of teddy diaries where children (or their parents) document through the ‘voice’ of a teddy bear their everyday activities. as haldar and waerdahl (2009) highlight, the diaries, which are made up of writings (by children and sometimes their parents or siblings) along with drawings, offer a window into what the families themselves perceive as significant. since the teddy diary circulates from family to family and between families and school it yields textual material informed by local cultural norms which would otherwise be difficult to obtain by “outsider” researchers alone, and as such the methodology complements and extends other approaches to understanding the experiences of very young children such as “kitchen research” (mitchell & reid-walsh, 2002) and the “least adult approach” (mandell, 1988). the context of south african rural schooling, the farm school and the study rural education in south africa is experiencing many challenges. a study of the human sciences research council (hsrc), entitled the emerging voices: a report on education in south african rural communities (hsrc, 2005), presents a picture of rural education as one where the inequalities of the past linger. another report by the south african department of education (doe), a new vision for rural schooling, resulted in the establishment of a rural education directorate within the doe (doe, 2005). a subsequent step forward was the formulation of the national framework for quality education in rural areas which has five key focus areas, “improving quality of teaching and learning in rural and farm schools; attracting and retaining learners at rural schools; planning, restructuring and improving infrastructure at rural and farm schools; promoting advocacy and sustainable partnerships; and building effective school governance and management of rural and farm schools” (doe, 2009:3). the specific setting for the study is the langkloof, a beautiful valley in the western cape, and an area producing deciduous fruit such as apples, pears, peaches and plums. a hamlet, called noll (also known as nolls halt), situated near a larger town uniondale, is the nearest economic centre to the farm school we focus on in this study. the farm school lies in a larger farming district with a population of 16.565 individuals (dorrington, 2005:20). approximately 11% of the western cape population is living in rural areas (tom, 2004). this rural district has a large coloured population,2 with many of the people living and working on the farms, and their children attending the nearest school located on a nearby farm. various socio-economic factors such as unemployment, poverty, illiteracy, alcohol abuse, gender violence, teenage pregnancy, malnutrition and child labour (blum & diwan, 2007) influence community life. the farm school itself was established more than one hundred years ago (hough, personal communication, 2009) and was linked to a church, with the school’s name bearing testimony to this link. over the years it has generally only had one teacher, who also acted as principal, administrator and factotum. currently, there are two female teachers teaching the 27 children in the school. the children are divided into two classes, one consisting of the foundation grades 1-3 and the other of the intermediate grades 4-6, utilising a multigrade approach.3 the original building still exists and one section is used as a classroom and the other as a small computer laboratory with 11 computers. another prefabricated classroom has been erected and a container does duty as a kitchen, from where the children are provided 81de lange et al. — rural school children picturing family life with meals as part of a school feeding scheme. a new small ablution block has been built, with toilets, hand basins and doors which can lock, improving the sanitation and safety of learners (human rights watch, 2001). the school is fenced and the playground has a swing or two on a dusty patch. getting an insider local perspective of growing up on a fruit farm in a rural environment research question and aim against the backdrop of family livelihoods and the context of rural schooling, the aim of the research was to investigate the following: what can children’s drawings tell us about family life and growing up in the context of a rural farm in south africa? research design the research was undertaken within the boundaries of a constructivist philosophical approach, investigating how the participants construct their own reality, while actively involved as participants in the research process (adler, 2005). the research further draws on an interpretive theoretical approach, seeking to “understand the world in terms of the experiences of the people involved in it” (mcfarlane, 2000:27). in order to explore and understand the family life of a group of children and what it is like for them growing up in a rural environment, we used a qualitative applied research paradigm. the research was systematic, subjective, naturalistic, contextual, descriptive, inductive, exploratory, interactive and holistic in nature (creswell, 2003; struwig & stead, 2001). research methodology as noted above, we drew on the methodology developed by haldar and waerdahl (2009), who worked with children in a norwegian setting, using teddy diaries. sample a purposive, convenience and availability sample (struwig & stead, 2001) was utilised, whereby we included all the foundation phase children of the school. there were sixteen in total, seven boys and nine girls. their ages ranged from six to ten and all were coloured children. data generation according to creswell (2003), data collection comprises three features, namely delineating the boundaries of the study to the participants; collecting data by means of various methods, including using visual material, such as drawings, and establishing the process of recording the information. these features are also to be found in our data collection. the boundaries of the study have been explained in the introduction; the collection and the recording of the data are explained below. the teddy diary protocol developed by haldar and waerdahl (2009) requires one teddy bear and one diary to be circulated among the whole class, with each child getting a turn to take the teddy bear and diary home. we decided not to circulate one teddy only for the following reasons: first, we wondered whether a teddy bear would be the most suitable soft toy, and decided to have toys which we thought this group of children would play with if they had the opportunity to. secondly, we wanted some differentiation between the different grades of the multigrade classroom, so we decided on a different soft toy for each grade (a monkey, a dog and a dinosaur). thirdly, there was a consideration of ownership, so we elected to buy enough soft toys so that each child could not only take the soft toy home when it was his/her turn to write and draw in the diary, but also to keep it to play with, returning only the diary to school. the research team visited the school where we explained the project to the children, using pictures and posters to assist their understanding of the project. we then introduced the soft toy and the diary. 82 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 the following prompt (translated here from afrikaans into english) was written on the front page of the diary: hello, my name is … and i am a special friend of this class. this is my book. i will be very happy if you write and draw in my book about the things you and me experience together. maybe your mother or your father can help you. warm regards, … because the children were in the foundation phase we suggested that they draw and write in response to the prompt. in this article we focus only on the drawings which they also explained orally to us during a follow-up visit, reminding us of the “talking drawing” approach of mcconnell (1993:260), which combines drawing (visual representations) with talking (oral representations), to clarify their illustrated experiences. their explanations (“speaking to the pictures”) were recorded at the time and later transcribed verbatim. some of the advantages of using drawings include the possibility that participants may find it easier, quicker and more pleasurable than writing to reflect on their thoughts, feelings and experiences (ozden, 2009). the tool is even more valuable in cases of verbal and especially writing language barriers (smith, meehan, enfield & castori, 2005). drawings might also include mental representations of which participants may be unaware (leon, wallace & rudy, 2007). from a research perspective, however, a limitation of drawing is that it cannot always be taken as an accurate representation of thoughts, feelings and experiences (ozden, 2009). for that reason, we saw drawing as part of triangulation where the participants could also speak about their drawings. data analysis the data consisted of 3 class diaries, one for each of the three grades, plus drawings. these drawings were not done collectively in the classroom setting, but at home, as an individual activity of each participant. we analysed the 16 individual drawings, not only in terms of the visual content, but also in terms of the oral narratives of the children. thus, as is suggested by cross, kabel and lysack (2006:192) “… the use of drawings is optimized when used alongside participants’ explanations of them”. the oral narrative of each child is viewed as a first layer of analysis of the drawings. we then examined all the transcriptions and used an open coding technique to analyse their explanations, as a second layer of analysis, in terms of the research question (mouton, 2002). all four researchers analysed the transcriptions, carried out constant comparisons to continually refine the analysis (ary, jacobs, razavieh & sorensen, 2006), and finally reached consensus regarding the emerging themes (willig, 2001). ethics and consent we obtained permission to do research from the western cape department of education, as well as from the principal of the school. the principal – on our behalf – sent the consent forms home with the learners. all forms were signed and returned to the school. we also obtained ethical clearance for the research from the ethics committee of nelson mandela metropolitan university. findings: growing up in a family on a fruit farm in this section we offer our analysis of the 16 drawings and of the follow-up interviews with each child. while the drawings offer a window on a number of different thematic areas, we focus in this instance on the everyday lives of the children and what the drawings reveal about rural childhood. we interpret the data according to three main themes. rurality and the influence of place/space on growing up the drawings that the participants made of their homes confirm the notion of open space, and their descriptions of their drawings provide us with insight into their experiences. these experiences include 83de lange et al. — rural school children picturing family life playing outside in the river or dam, on the gravel road running past their homes, or in the orchard near their homes. the drawings of the children all depict very basic and small homes (see figure 1) set close to each other, usually one-roomed or one bed-roomed. the drawings compare well with the photograph of a home (see figure 2) taken to visually document the context of the research. the homes are not equipped with running water and water has to be collected from the river or the dam, as one of the children indicated, “we draw water for washing from the dam” and “we fetch the water in a bucket”. the homes do have electricity. to heat the water for bathing they have to “boil the water in the kettle”. the small homes are often overcrowded, as one child indicated that “me, my mom, my dad, my dog, and my little brother sleep there … [in the room]”. the homes on the farms are also long distances from the nearest shop, which sells the basic necessities, and which they frequent in the afternoons after school to buy some sweets or food stuff for their mother, as the following quotations indicate, “i walked from boskloof to get to the shop” and “i went to the far shop … we bought chips and sweets …”. the school is also a long distance away requiring the teacher to collect some of the children from their homes in the morning and drop them off at home after school. figure 1: drawing by grade 3 learner figure 2: photograph of some of the children’s homes of her home the isolation and distance from school and town, according to phometsi, kruger and van’t riet (2006), can have a negative impact on children in terms of services and resources; yet these children draw and describe how they go about their daily living to circumvent the apparent challenges. the distance of the homes from resources influences access which impacts on a whole range of activities. although bray and dawes (2007:49) highlight the need for electricity to power computers, none of these participants had computers at home because of their families’ low income. however, the children did have access to computers at their school. engaged as a family a critical feature of the drawings and narratives relates to the ways in which children and their parents are ‘engaged’ together in their living and working on the fruit farm. the participants drew and talked about the activities their parents engaged in to earn money on the farm. while the fathers are the main providers of income and work on the fruit farms as pickers, packers and transporters, the mothers mostly take care of the children, sometimes being able to supplement the family income by doing seasonal fruit picking, 84 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 for example “… she works in the orchard …”. the participants also refer to their mothers doing domestic activities such as baking bread, cake and roosterkoek (a type of breadroll baked on an open fire or in an oven) and making jam from the fruit available on the farm, with one participant sharing how his “mother surprised the two of us [she brought them cake to eat]”. however, the children are required to share in the chores and have to fetch water and wood, and run errands, such as walking to the shop to buy groceries, as in “we walked to the shop to buy bread for mom”. as biersteker and kvalsvig (2007) note, these activities are regarded as children’s work and have to be performed efficiently. this practice of assigning responsibilities to children is viewed positively as part of their socialisation and making them feel valued, and as a practice which allows children to be absorbed into households when necessary, without placing an intolerable burden on adult caregivers. while child labour is a contentious issue, the services children contribute to the management and maintenance of livelihoods and household economies seem far more valuable than previously estimated (mcgarry, 2008). however, the chores that contribute to the running of the household could have an impact on the time and energy available for learning. only once did a participant mention school work, i.e. “we had done our studies …”, which raises the issue of how skilled and prepared the parents are to motivate and assist their children with their learning. atkinson (2007) writes about how poor educational and skill levels condemn farm workers to manual and semi-skilled work. while the quality of rural schooling in south africa might be uneven, the farm school from which the participants are drawn appears adequate and efficient, in spite of the fact that the school cannot “offer the wealth of facilities and learning options that can be provided in larger schools” (doe, 2005:68). equally important is the lack of provision for secondary school education as the children need to go to boarding school at the nearest town to complete secondary school. in addition to the family engagement in relation to work is a type of family togetherness as depicted in terms of doing things together, such as listening to the radio and watching television (see figure 3). figure 3: drawing by grade 3 learner depicting the family and the soft toy (dog) watching television for the children, going to town on friday evenings included going to the tavern with the parents, who consume alcohol and also dance, “we go dancing at the tavern … they dance, eat and buy wine …”. although the use of alcohol by the parents is only mentioned once, alcohol abuse is a concern in such isolated communities, with foetal alcohol syndrome impacting on the unborn child with implications for later learning (vaux & chambers, 2010). 85de lange et al. — rural school children picturing family life consumption is clearly depicted in the activities of the children and the parents, mainly buying necessities such as food and clothes. the income generated provides money to buy small treats at the shop, “my mom gave us money for sweets”. it also provides money to visit the mall in the nearby town, “in the mall there are clothes, and shoes and dolls” and “mom buys things when we go to the mall”; “we go to the shops on sundays and saturdays”. friday evenings, the weekly entertainment event in town sees the consumption of alcohol “… buy wine …”, which is a particular problem in the western cape (baxen, 2008). a sense of having fun it is interesting to note the frequent reference to games and playing. many of the participants’ drawings showed them playing outside the house in the garden and among the flowers. the participants also described their love for nature, e.g. “we play on the grass … climb in the tree”. many of the participants mentioned that they like swimming in the river, waterhole or dam, for example, “i am not afraid of the water. i taught myself how to swim” and “we’ve been to the river”. other places where they usually played were on the side of the road, in the sand, on the farm, in the house, in the bath and in the bed. the activities included watching television and listening to children’s programmes and stories on the radio. when they have some money for buying chips and sweets, they do not mind walking to the shop, e.g. “we walk to the shop – it’s not far – then we buy sweets”. going to town over the weekend seems to be a highlight for them (“on saturdays and sundays we go to the shops”). they also mentioned playing with the family dog, swinging or playing with a ball, a toy car made of wire, a doll’s house, and participating in games: “we play a game of ‘touch’ (afrikaans: jagentjies). when i catch him, he must chase me.” the participants mentioned playing with friends, siblings or the soft toy, e.g. “one of my school friends went with”, and “i play a little bit with flappie (soft toy dog)”. excursions were usually undertaken with family members, extended family, neighbours, the teacher or the farmer. figure 4: drawing by grade 1 child depicting children at play 86 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 the literature on childhood calls attention to the importance and value of play. ward (2007:76), for example, points out that both article 31 of the convention on the rights of the child and article 12 of the african charter on the rights and welfare of the child describe the child’s right to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities. kekae-moletsane (2008) explained the significance of play by saying it is the medium through which children express their experiences as well as their feelings and it lays the foundation for the cognitive styles of adulthood. in play children confirm their existence and affirm their worth, and they can re-create events and exercise control over them. conclusions the words of nelson mandela used in the beginning of this article encourage us to think deeply about the experiences of growing up as a child of a farm worker and the future of such children in contemporary south africa. the children’s voices clearly speak to many positive experiences which should not be overlooked when conceptualising interventions for children living and learning in rural areas. as such the positives challenge the stereotyping of family life and growing up in a rural context as deficient and allow us to build on such positives when considering schooling in a rural context. while this small-scale research allowed us to get an insider perspective on growing up on a fruit farm in a rural district, it also provides us with an opportunity to consider implications for rural education and how it is taken forward in the second decade of the 21st century. clearly, this study raises a number of critical questions. to what extent is the rural environment a deficient space or one that is rich in opportunities for the development of children? how can the challenges of sustaining a family on a small income be offset by access to and support for schooling which is efficient and where teachers are well trained, enabling the children to excel, complete their school career and gain employment in order to break the cycle of poverty? how can the doe provide quality teachers (trained in multigrade teaching), and after-school support so that children can be committed to a culture of learning and completing their homework? how can the school be positioned as a centre of community development and an environment where children and their families are enabled to acquire appropriate knowledge, skills and values for making a good life? how can the distance from resources and services be countered through making technology available at the school? rurality (and distance) is a fact of life in south africa, and rural livelihoods in southern africa remain a key feature in the experiences of many children. while this study has gone a small way in uncovering some of the realities of growing up rural, its greatest significance, we would argue, is the approach itself, and the importance of tapping into the voices of rural children. as such, the study confirms the need to research children’s experiences of family life in a rural context and to use such findings to argue for interventions that will bring about change in the lives of children and their families through improved schooling in rural contexts. acknowledgements we acknowledge the excellent supportive work of research assistant, sarie marais, and the language editing of david morton. endnotes the data presented in this article was collected as part of a larger project called the “international 1. project on teddy diaries: textual display of children’s everyday lives”. the international project was initially funded by oslo university college in a grant to marit haldar. data were gathered by naydene de lange, johanna geldenhuys, marit haldar, claudia mitchell, tilla olivier, eréndira rueda and randi wærdahl. the multi-year project entailed an international comparison of the textual display of everyday life among elementary school children in china, norway, south africa and the united states. through the use of teddy bear diaries circulated among the homes of first-grade children, project members used the diary entries as a source of knowledge about normative standards of everyday life. see haldar and wærdahl (2009) for a methodological introduction to the project. 87de lange et al. — rural school children picturing family life in south africa the term coloured (also known as 2. bruinmense or kleurlinge) refers to an ethnic group of people of mixed race who stem from slaves, asians, europeans, khoi, and africans. within the coloured group (8.9% of the south african population) there are vast differences with regard to religion, language and socio-economic status (family life in coloured families, n.d.; erasmus & pieterse, 1999). multigrade classes have learners from two or more grades taught by one teacher in one room 3. simultaneously. they are usually found in rural communities which are isolated by geography and social differences, and populated by marginal social groups who may lack any meaningful access to education. while more than 2 million children attend multigrade schools on a daily basis in south africa (jordaan & joubert, n.d.) most teachers teaching such classes are not trained in multigrade teaching approaches. references adler e 2005. communitarian international relations. london: routledge. ary d, jacobs lg, razavieh a & sorensen c 2006. introduction to research in education. belmont, ca: thomson wadsworth. atkinson d 2007. going for broke. the fate of farm workers in arid south africa. cape town: hsrc press. bannock g, baxter r & davis e 2003. the penguin dictionary of economics. london: penguin books. baxen jm 2008. population and education in the western cape. in r marindo, 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shelley barnsley the experience of food insecurity in the south african university student population is not well documented or researched. data to assess vulnerability to food insecurity in a sample of 1.083 students from the university of kwazulu-natal (pietermaritzburg campus) was collected between 2007 and 2010 via a questionnaire developed specifically for this purpose. the results indicate that 20.8% of the sample experienced some level of vulnerability to food insecurity, with 16.1% reporting serious levels of vulnerability, and 4.7% experiencing severe to critical levels of vulnerability to food insecurity. students on financial aid were found to be significantly more vulnerable to food insecurity when compared to those who were not on financial aid. a similar relationship was found between students in a bridging programme when their level of vulnerability to food insecurity was compared to those in mainstream programmes. the potential impact on university students’ educational outcomes and social and psychological well-being are discussed. the results are also contextualised within the retention and throughput efforts of south african higher education institutions, and recommendations for institutional responses are made. keywords: food insecurity; south african university students nicholas munro discipline of psychology, school of applied human sciences, university of kwazulu-natal e-mail: munron@ukzn.ac.za telephone: 033 260 537 micheal quayle discipline of psychology, school of applied human sciences, university of kwazulu-natal e-mail: quaylem@ukzn.ac.za telephone: 033 260 5016 heather simpson formerly of student counselling and careers centre, university of kwazulu-natal e-mail: heath.simpson@gmail.com telephone: 033 260 5233 shelley barnsley college student support services, college of agriculture, engineering and science, university of kwazulu-natal e-mail: barnsley@ukzn.ac.za telephone: 033 260 5697 munro et al. hunger for knowledge: food insecurity among students at the university of kwazulu-natal 169 introduction this study reports on food insecurity (fi) among students in the south african higher education (he) context, and specifically focuses on the dimensions of “access to food”, the nutritional value of food, and the stability of these over time (fao, 2008: 1). as an international norm, it is now accepted that all people in a society should have a right to access enough food to enable active participation in social life (labadarios, mchiza, steyn, gericke, maunder, davids & parker, 2011). beyond this human right, it is pragmatic to ensure that all students at higher education institutions (heis) have their basic needs met so that they have a fair chance of academic success. although issues in respect of fi have probably always been central to human existence, sen’s (1981) work in this field is probably most influential in bringing to the fore a focus on human rights, poverty, and the fi dimension of access to food. in particular, sen (1981) highlighted a decline in food entitlement, characterised by the persistent, chronic and irregular ability to access food by people from poorer, rural and working-class backgrounds. in south africa, food entitlement is inextricably linked with “extreme inequalities in the distribution of endowments and entitlements” (bernstein, 1994: 5). despite positive advances in south african human rights legislation since 1994, and accompanying socio-economic shifts, inequalities persist in how south africans are able to routinely access nutritious food. the household food insecurity access scale (hfias), administered as part of the general household survey (ghs) in 2011, suggests that 21.2% of south african households experienced limited access to food in 2011, while 24.6% of south african individuals experienced food access limitations (stats sa, 2012), this being more prevalent in poorer and rural communities (labadarios et al., 2011). as south african heis have become more successful in admitting students from diverse backgrounds, particularly those from “working class and rural backgrounds” (che, 2010: 3), it thus becomes more likely that fi will increasingly impact on he experiences and outcomes. the majority of programmes aimed at addressing fi in southern africa appear to be aimed at rural and poor communities, and within school feeding schemes (ebersöhn & ferreira, 2012). while these communities are undoubtedly in need of intervention in relation to fi, the experience and extent of fi in the south african he sector is under-researched and poorly understood. indeed, much more attention is paid to the issue in better resourced countries such as canada, australia and the usa (for example, rondeau, 2007; chaparro, zaghloul, holck & dobbs, 2009; hughes, serebryanikova, donaldson & leveritt, 2011). willows and au (2006) note that canadian he students are increasingly vulnerable to fi because of the impact of university fee increases on the growing numbers of students on financial aid. they also highlight that the first canadian university campus food bank was opened in 1991, and that, by 2004, one in five university campuses in canada had established food banks. most fi research in education, however, is carried out in pre-tertiary contexts. for example, taras (2005) summarises ten multinational studies that focus on perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 170 food insufficiency and cognitive functioning in school-aged children. nine of the studies suggest a correlation between food insufficiency and diminished academic achievement in school-aged learners, while it is also evident that the quality and variety of diet also impact on academic performance (florence, asbridge & veugelers, 2008). although these studies were conducted on school-aged children, there is no reason to believe that similar relationships between quality, quantity and variety of nutritious food and academic performance would not exist for he students. context the university of kwazulu-natal (ukzn) is a south african public hei with a mission to be meaningfully engaged with society and demographically representative. black students (including black african, coloured and indian students) constitute 88% of the student population (department of basic education, 2010), thus signalling the institution as demographically representative of the general population of south africa. ukzn offers several on-campus residences and all offer facilities for selfcatering. as with other south african heis, ukzn is concerned with reducing student academic failure, and enhancing retention and throughput. internal ukzn reports have highlighted financial causes of failure as being especially relevant for students from poor backgrounds, with these students finding it difficult to fund study-related expenses such as accommodation, textbooks and meals. a study of five other south african heis reported similar causes underlying student failure (jones, coetzee, bailey & wickham, 2008). the exploratory study reported on in this article aims to document the scope of vulnerability to fi among ukzn students, the experience of fi in the university student population, and the likely impact of fi on the well-being and academic experiences of students at university. method the first phase of the study involved administering the university student’s food insecurity questionnaire (usfiq), as a pilot project, to 310 students (fourie, 2005). we then embarked on consolidating the items in the usfiq (second phase), these being refined and selected for inclusion in relation to three sources. the first source included reflections and findings from the first phase of the study, while registered dieticians employed as lecturers at ukzn provided a second source of expert input on the questions. thirdly, we ensured that the three domains from the hfias were reflected in the usfiq, these domains pertaining to “anxiety or uncertainty about … food supply”, “insufficient quality” of food, and “insufficient food intake [quantity] and its physical consequences” (coates, swindale & bilinsky, 2007: 6). unlike the hfias, however, questions on the usfiq were designed to apply to the individual he student and not a household. additional items were included to explore the self-reported physiological, affective, and study-related impact of fi in the local student population. the questionnaire takes approximately 20 minutes to complete, respondents reporting on biographical and demographic data, eating habits, munro et al. hunger for knowledge: food insecurity among students at the university of kwazulu-natal 171 spending habits, and questions exploring their responses to possible university strategies to address fi in students. most items are formatted on a 5-point likert scale with options ranging from “never” to “almost always”. a subset of these items was intended to specifically measure vulnerability to fi in he students, although some items were dropped during item-analysis procedures discussed below. a copy of the full usfiq is available from the primary author, while the items included in the scale for measuring vulnerability to fi appear in the following questionnaire. scale items embedded in the university students food insecurity questionnaire 1. how often do you eat a smaller meal than you felt you needed because there was not enough food? 2. how often do you eat fewer meals in a day because there is not enough food? 3. how often do you eat cheaper foods or eat the same foods for several days in a row because there is not enough money for food? 4. how often do you have no food at all because there is not enough money to get more? 5. how often do you struggle to concentrate in class and/or while you are studying because you are hungry? 6. how often do you feel weak (tired) because you are hungry? 7. how often does hunger negatively affect your moods? 8. how often do you miss lectures/tutorials because you are hungry? 9. do you feel that your health suffers because you don’t get enough food or because you don’t eat good enough food? 10. how often do you worry where your next meal will come from? 11. how often do you go for 24hrs without eating because you did not have enough money for food? 12. how often do you go hungry at the beginning of the semester? 13. how often do you go hungry at the end of the semester or during examinations? the third phase of the study (2007, 2008 and 2009) involved the administration of the consolidated usfiq to a sample of 792 ukzn (pietermaritzburg campus) students recruited from mainstream degree programmes, and 291 students recruited from ukzn’s centre for science access (csa) programme. the csa offers foundational and extended perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 172 curriculum programmes to students from disadvantaged schools who do not meet entrance requirements for mainstream science degrees. csa students were particularly targeted for this study, given their socio-economic and educational backgrounds. of the 792 mainstream student volunteers, 367 were purposively recruited from second-year courses (across three faculties). since we were aware that highly vulnerable students may have been under-represented in lectures, a further 425 volunteers were recruited from various student residences (which house both underand postgraduate students). overall, our sampling was purposive, with a view towards maximising exposure to the usfiq for students across a range of residential, socio-economic and faculty arrangements. this article reports on the results of the third phase of the study with a sample of 1.083 ukzn students. each participant completed the questionnaire anonymously and only once. ethics ethical consent for this study was obtained from the relevant research ethics committee at ukzn. before completing the questionnaires, research participants were informed of the nature and scope of the research and that their participation was voluntary. researchers also advised potential participants that their completion/non-completion of the questionnaire would have no bearing on the allocation of food parcels/vouchers or money to participants. it was recommended that participants seek assistance from relevant student service departments at ukzn for assistance with accessing support for fi. results table 1 summarises the demographics of our sample. table 1: demographics of sample demographics % of sample gender female 52.4% male 47.6% nationality south african 88.6% non-south african 11.4% residence on-campus 63.5% off-campus 36.5% funding financial aid 34.5% non-financial aid 65.5% overall vulnerability to food insecurity as mentioned earlier, a scale (within the usfiq) representing vulnerability to fi was developed using item-analysis procedures. specifically, a factor analysis was used to confirm that the items pertaining to fi were unidimensional. the procedure yielded munro et al. hunger for knowledge: food insecurity among students at the university of kwazulu-natal 173 a single dominant factor (eigenvalue 7.506, accounting for 37.5% of the variance) on which all items loaded positively, except for items 5-9 which loaded negatively. these items also loaded strongly and positively on a marginal second factor (eigenvalue 1.494, accounting for 7.5% of the variance), suggesting that they were not assessing the same core construct as the other items in the scale. a reliability analysis using cronbach’s alpha confirmed these results. when the least reliable items were successively dropped until cronbach’s alpha exceeded .9, items 5-9 were the first and only items removed. on reflection, item 9 (how often do you buy take-away food (for example, pizza, kfc, burgers)?) did not relate directly to fi, and items 5 (do you eat at least one meal a day?), 6 (do you eat when you wake up (for example, breakfast)?), 7 (do you eat during the day (for example, lunch)?), and 8 (do you eat at night (for example, supper)?) conflate personal (and possibly religious) habits with fi. item 21 (what is the longest period that you have had to go without food during the semester?) was dropped, because we realised that it conflated religious-based fasting (for example, ramadan) with genuine fi and was also on a different numerical scale than the other items (ranging between 0 and 3 instead of 0 to 4). factor analysis confirmed that the variables remaining after the item-analysis procedure comprised a single factor solution. the dominant factor had an eigenvalue of 6.505 (accounting for 46.5% of the variation), while the next largest factor had an eigenvalue of only 1.107 (accounting for 7.9% of the variation, with all items loading strongly and positively on the dominant factor. the final scale yielded a cronbach’s alpha of .916 for the full sample, suggesting a high degree of scale reliability. a vulnerability to fi score was calculated for each participant by averaging their scores on the 13 scale items. when interpreting the fi scale, it should be noted that it is anchored at 0 and, since many students have no problems with fi, it is positively skewed and has a strong floor effect. for example, middle-class students living with their parents would probably score very close to nil on the scale. by contrast, to achieve a score of four, a student would have to answer each of the 13 scale items as “almost always”, indicating an untenable level of hunger that would make it impossible for them to continue with their studies. since the scale averages 13 items, for a student to near the midpoint of the scale, s/he generally needs to score higher on at least some of the items. since our basis for understanding food security includes all people being able to access enough food all the time so that they can actively participate in society (labadarios et al., 2011), it follows that no student should be hungry, because they do not have the resources to access food. as a result, it was reasoned that the midpoint of the scale would already indicate serious problems with fi, with the upper extreme of the scale indicating extreme vulnerability. as expected, the mean for the vulnerability scale was low (m = 1; sd = 0.8), indicating that the majority of students (79.2%) in the sample reported low levels of vulnerability to fi. however, this metric also classifies 16.1% of the sample population as reporting serious levels of vulnerability to fi, and a further 4.7% of the sample as reporting severe or critical vulnerability to fi. all students with fi coded as “serious” or above (that is, with fi scores from the perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 174 midpoint of the scale and above) reported experiencing at least one of the conditions referred to in the scale “often” or “almost always”, and 65% reported experiencing at least one aspect “almost always. table 2 displays the thresholds for describing the levels of vulnerability to fi, along with a summary of the results from our sample. table 2: average scaled scores and levels of vulnerability to food insecurity average scaled score average experience of fi across items level of vulnerability to fi % of sample 0 never none 38.8% 1 seldom low 40.4% 2 sometimes serious 16.1% 3 often severe 4.3% 4 almost always critical 0.4% concentration, fatigue, and worry in relation to food insecurity when asked how often deficits in concentration as a result of hunger were experienced, 11.3% of the sample reported that this occurred “often” or “almost always”, while 21.5% indicated that this happened “sometimes”. respondents were also asked to report on the effects of hunger on their fatigue. trends similar to those in relation to concentration were observed, with 12.2% of the sample reporting effects of “often” or “almost always” being fatigued in relation to hunger. when responding to the experience of worry in relation to an individual student’s capacity to access food/meals, 10.7% of the sample indicated experiencing this worry “often” or “almost always”. consistency of food insecurity across the semester we were interested to find out if students were more likely to go hungry at the beginning of a semester, or at the end of a semester (near examinations). a repeated measures (paired samples) t-test using bonferroni adjusted alpha levels of .0169 revealed that students are significantly more likely (t = -6.817; df = 1059; p<.001) to report going hungry at the end of a semester (m = 1.12; sd = 1.3) than at the beginning of a semester (m = 0.9; sd = 1.2). specifically, 17.3% of students reported going hungry “often” or “almost always” at the end of a semester compared to 11.4% who reported going hungry “often” or “almost always” at the beginning of a semester. we were also interested to find out if students on financial aid1 were more vulnerable to fi when compared with those who were not on financial aid; and likewise, whether students in the csa were more vulnerable to fi when compared with those in mainstream programmes. an independent samples t-test using bonferroni adjusted alpha levels of .0169 revealed a significant difference in vulnerability to fi (t = 7.955; df = 1027; p<.001) between students on financial aid (m = 1.3; sd = 0.8) munro et al. hunger for knowledge: food insecurity among students at the university of kwazulu-natal 175 and those not on financial aid (m = 0.9; sd = 0.8). when comparing mainstream and csa students, an independent samples t-test with the same bonferroni adjustment revealed that the difference in vulnerability to fi between students in the csa (m = 1.4; sd = 0.8) and those in mainstream programmes (m = 0.9; sd = 0.8) is also significant (t = 9.708; df = 1034; p<.001). discussion in principle, we believe that all students accepted into hei should be provided with access to the resources that may give them a fair chance of succeeding. this includes access to food, and is resonant with internationally accepted norms of what constitutes food security. it is suggested that students from financially and/or educationally compromised backgrounds face significant challenges in adapting to he, especially in relation to peers from well-resourced backgrounds. this research confirms our suspicions that a proportion of our students are confronting the challenges of knowledge acquisition while hungry. analysis of individual items from the usfiq revealed high levels of worry in relation to sourcing food, as well as adverse concentration and fatigue in relation to self-reported levels of hunger. in particular, between 11% and 18% of the sample reported “often” or “almost always” experiencing hunger-related difficulties with concentration and fatigue. this is a concerning percentage of students. since a quota sample was used, it is not possible to directly extrapolate the results to the ukzn population. however, the fact that vulnerable students were less likely to be recruited in lectures (since this subgroup reported less frequent lecture attendance) is likely to be offset by possible over-representation of vulnerable students in the smaller access programme subgroup. on balance, these results suggest that thousands of students at ukzn are likely to experience adverse hunger-related effects. although effects pertaining to fi at any point in a student’s life are concerning, they are potentially even more deleterious at the end of a semester near examinations. variations in the timing of learning and assessment protocols differ for ukzn courses; however, the authors have observed that the academic demands at ukzn are generally highest towards the end of a semester. the consequences of poor concentration and fatigue on academic performance are probably most serious at a time when students are preparing for examinations. the results from this study suggest that 17.3% of the sample report “often” or “almost always” going hungry at the end of a semester/near examinations. this is significantly higher than the same frequency levels of hunger at the beginning of the semester (11.4%), and could provide important explanatory information regarding performance in examinations. prior research has suggested that effective study and examination-preparation behaviours are dependent on the foundation of sound nutrition (taras, 2005; florence et al., 2008). given the influence of fi on self-reported concentration, motivation, energy levels, and overall cognitive functioning (such as thinking, memorising, goalsetting and self-regulation), it is probable that the food security of individual students perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 176 influences examination performance and subsequent graduation and throughput rates. vulnerability to food insecurity of central importance for this study is the finding that 4.7% of the sample reported being severely or critically vulnerable to fi. a further 16.1% of the sample reported a serious level of vulnerability to fi. in summary, this translates into an experience for 20.8% of the sample of “sometimes”, “often” or “almost always” worrying about where they will obtain food, eating food that is substandard in quality and/or variety, reducing the quantity of food consumed, and experiencing adverse nutrition-related effects. it is interesting to note that our results are comparable with the most recent estimates of vulnerability to fi in south africa, as indicated in the ghs of 2011 (stats sa, 2012). beyond the descriptive findings pertaining to vulnerability to fi, the results also indicate that ukzn students on financial aid are significantly more vulnerable to fi. these results are consistent with the positive correlation between fi and reliance on financial aid reported by willows and au (2006) in a canadian study. although some of the students in our dataset are not on financial aid, but are also vulnerable to fi, there is nonetheless a significant increase in vulnerability levels for those on financial aid. given that students qualify for financial aid on the basis of their family’s financial circumstances, this pattern is not surprising. students on financial aid come from disadvantaged financial backgrounds, and as such it is probable that their family and other social networks of support are less likely to have the means to supplement expenses often associated with he study (for example, textbooks, stationery, travel, accommodation, and food). however, these findings demonstrate that the current funding strategy for these students is not offering sufficient support for he study. the current funding system results in that students from poorer backgrounds are academically undermined by their nutritional deficit, and that students from wealthier backgrounds experience a relative academic advantage endowed by their superior food security. during 2011, ukzn students on financial aid received meal allowances to the value of r5.026.00 annually paid in eight instalments of r628.25 (four per semester) (http://studentfunding.ukzn.ac.za/policy.aspx). this is equivalent to r20.85 per day (r6 per meal) during the lecture and examination periods; however this assumes that these students have individual and family resources to support them during the mid-year and end-of-year vacations. we raise the question of whether r6 per meal is really enough to provide optimum nutrition for academic success. in addition, these calculations assume that students on financial aid will only need to spend this money on food. for many students, their meal allowance will also be needed to supplement textbook allowances (as the financial aid textbook allowance is likely to be inadequate), pay for stationery, photocopying and other student expenses (as their families may not have the resources to fund these), cover travel costs, fund munro et al. hunger for knowledge: food insecurity among students at the university of kwazulu-natal 177 food for family members (in the case of the university student being the head of a household), and supplement other living expenses for family members (if no member of the family is working). in addition, the results indicate that students in the csa are significantly more vulnerable to fi when compared to ukzn students in mainstream programmes. as mentioned earlier, csa students are drawn from disadvantaged schools and socio-economic backgrounds with the intention of “boosting the academic and developmental potential of learners from disadvantaged schools and preparing them for entry into mainstream study” (http://csa.ukzn.ac.za/homepage.aspx). it seems likely that fi is an important factor undermining these pedagogic aims. the extent of vulnerability to fi in the university student sample is concerning from a humanitarian perspective, and in relation to the adverse impact this could be having on positive educational outcomes and eventual graduation rates at ukzn. these results demonstrate that many students’ persistence and success at ukzn (and possibly other south african heis) is potentially undermined by their vulnerability to fi. despite reasonable success in widening access to he, the results suggest that ukzn students from previously disadvantaged backgrounds may continue to be vulnerable to fi, and lack the nutritional resources to effectively meet the academic demands required of them. conclusion and recommendations apart from the ideal that no individual should go hungry, it is evident that fi poses a threat to a substantial proportion of ukzn students’ academic performance, degree completion, entry into the labour market, as well as social and economic advancement. a series of management and intervention strategies are proposed to lie in the formation of partnerships both within and beyond he structures. this is likely to require involvement by individual heis, as well as government, non-government and private organisations. we would like to make six specific recommendations for addressing the problems associated with fi in the south african university student population: • creating awareness across heis and relevant government departments about the serious problem of fi, and the threat that it poses to individual students and national transformation aims. • provision of ethically and responsibly managed food vouchers funded by heis and/or via funds from external organisations. • investigating the viability of on-campus food banks or reduced fee meals by on-campus vendors. • bolstering on-campus student employment opportunities (student assistants, mentors, demonstrators, research assistants, and entrepreneurial endeavours). • provision of life-skills training in money management and budgeting. • reassessment of financial aid meal allowances, taking into consideration individual students’ personal circumstances. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 178 limitations and recommendations for future research assessing nutritional habits and fi by means of self-report questionnaires may hinder reliability, especially if respondents are not able to clearly remember their diet or spending habits. in addition, our purposive sampling technique limited the generalisability of our findings to the larger ukzn and hei student population. future research in this field would benefit from addressing the abovementioned limitations. in addition, we could improve the usfiq by adding replacement items for those dropped in the item-analysis procedures, balancing the number of items assessing each domain of fi, and including behavioural or longitudinal measures to validate the cross-sectional self-report data. moreover, participants in this study were asked to respond to the questionnaire anonymously in an attempt to protect their identity, encourage honest response behaviours, and discourage attempts to over-emphasise vulnerability to fi. unfortunately, this compromised the opportunity to correlate academic performance with reported levels of vulnerability to fi. the impact of future research in this field could be enhanced by exploring the actual (not implied) relationship between fi and academic performance. finally, further research is recommended on the qualitative experience of fi in the student population, which would potentially provide insight into the coping strategies associated with this phenomenon. acknowledgements funding for this research (and for food vouchers/parcels) was facilitated by professor clarence-fincham from the faculty of humanities, development and social sciences at the university of kwazulu-natal. we also acknowledge the gift of the givers foundation for their support of food-insecure students at the university, and our colleague, mariam jassat, for her ongoing advocacy for a food-secure society. references bernstein h 1994. food security in a democratic south africa. transformation, 24: 3-25. chaparro mp, zaghloul ss, holck p & dobbs j 2009. food insecurity prevalence among college students at the university of hawai’i in manoa. public health nutrition. 12(11): 2097-2103. council on higher education (che) 2010. higher education monitor 9. access and throughput in south african higher education: three case studies. pretoria: council on higher education. coates j, swindale a & bilinsky p 2007. household food insecurity access scale (hfias) for measurement of household food access: indicator guide (v. 3). washington, dc: food and nutrition technical assistance project, academy for educational development. department of basic education (dbe) 2010. education statistics in south africa 2009. retrieved on 8 december 2011 from http://www.education.gov.za/emis/ statisticalpublications/tabid/462/default.aspx. munro et al. hunger for knowledge: food insecurity among students at the university of kwazulu-natal 179 ebersöhn l & ferreira r 2012. rurality and resilience in education: place-based partnerships and agency to moderate time and space constraints. perspectives in education, 30(1): 30-42. food and agriculture organization of the united nations 2008. an introduction to the basic concepts of food security. retrieved on 25 august 2012 from http://www. fao.org/docrep/013/al936e/al936e00.pdf florence md, asbridge m & veugelers pj 2008. diet quality and academic performance. journal of school health, 78(4): 209-215. fourie ml 2005. a survey of psychology students’ food insecurity at the university of kwazulu-natal. unpublished honours thesis. university of kwazulu-natal. hughes r, serebryanikova i, donaldson k & leveritt m 2011. student food insecurity: the skeleton in the university closet. nutrition & dietetics, 68: 27-32. jones b, coetzee g, bailey t & wickham s 2008. factors that facilitate success for disadvantaged higher education students. an investigation into approaches used by reap, nsfas and selected higher education institutions. cape town: rural education access programme. labadarios d, mchiza zj, steyn np, gericke g, maunder emw, davids yd & parker w 2011. food insecurity in south africa: a review of national surveys. bulletin of the world health organisation, 89: 891-899. doi:10.2471/blt.11.089243. maxwell s & frankenberger tr (eds) 1992. household food security: concepts, indicators, measurements: a technical review. new york: unicef. rondeau k 2007. hunger on campus: understanding food insecurity in post-secondary students. alberta centre for active living. retrieved on 25 august 2012 from http:// www.centre4activeliving.ca/publications/research-update/2007/jun-hunger.pdf. sen a 1981. poverty and famines: an essay on entitlement and deprivation. oxford: oxford university press. statistics south africa 2012. general household survey 2011. pretoria: statistics south africa. retrieved on 1 august 2012 from http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/ p0318/p0318april2012.pdf. taras h 2005. nutrition and student performance at school. journal of school health, 76(6): 199-213. willows nd & au v 2006. nutritional quality and price of university food bank hampers. canadian journal of dietetic practice and research 67(2): 104-107. endnotes financial aid refers to the need-based loan awarded by the national student financial aid scheme of south africa (nsfas). typically, recipients come from a family with a gross income of less than r130.000 per annum (http://studentfunding.ukzn.ac.za/policy.aspx). 942021 39(3): 94-108 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 exploring the effects of youtube on technology education students’ cognitive achievement in a mechanical system module abstract understanding the effects of various multimedia technologies on students’ cognitive achievement is essential in this technological era. this study explored students’ cognitive achievement in a technology mechanical system module using youtube videos compared to microsoft powerpoint (mpp). the study employed a quasi-experimental research design, using a pre-test-post-test. the sample consisted of 53 (29 males and 24 female) students. twentyeight (28) students were randomly assigned to the experimental group (eg) and 24 to the control group (cg). students’ cognitive achievement was measured by administering the geometric optics conceptual understanding test to each group of students before and after teaching. a t-test shows that there were significant differences between the eg of the pre-test (m = 60.50, sd = 7.2) and the post-test (m = 65.70, sd = 9.60) t (53) = -2.17, p = 0.03 with a gain of 5.20 and the cohen d was 0.60. the eg students performed better in mechanical technology practice and retention tests than those in the cg. in the eg, female students performed better (m = 69.00, sd = 9.20) than the male students (m = 61.40, sd = 8.60). these results have some theoretical, instructional and institutional implications on the use of youtube as an effective tool to enhance students’ achievement in mechanical technology. keywords: youtube; microsoft powerpoint; multimedia; cognitive achievement; quasi-experimental. 1. introduction teaching media plays an important role in meaningful learning and skills acquisition. for many years, various forms of teaching media have been used to support learning. traditional media such as printed materials (books, newsletter, and bulletin board), overhead radio and television are still very popular in educational settings (bajracharya, 2016). with modern technology development, multimedia worldwide and the traditional media are gradually replaced by different interactive multimedia. multimedia such as computers, videos, youtube and microsoft powerpoint author: prof. israel kibirige1 prof. ronald james odora1 affiliation: 1university of limpopo, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i3.8 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(3): 94-108 published: 16 september 2021 received: 12 december 2020 accepted: 03 march 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6908-2361 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2061-183x http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 952021 39(3): 95-108 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 kibirige & odora exploring the effects of youtube are now considered more effective teaching and learning tools than traditional teaching media (kieny, 2013). youtube is a web 2.0 platform of distributed video sharing, widely used by students, universities and scholars (martinho, pinto & kuznetsova, 2012) and has limitless opportunities to maximise learning. it also “…has the potential to anchor instruction in such rich learning contexts” (bonk, 2008: 10). it offers a variety of user-generated and commercial media videos. the accessible content includes video clips, tv show clips, music videos, live streams, short and documentary films and other content such as video blogging, short original videos and educational videos (srinivasacharlu, 2020). thus, the combination of the aural input with the visual images on youtube has encouraged many educators to adopt the technology as a teaching tool in their classrooms (kuo & lien, 2009; kasch, 2019). microsoft powerpoint (mpp), on the other hand, is an electronic presentation program that helps people present a speech using a collection of slides (prentice, 2019). there are many reasons for using mpp for classroom instruction. mpp slides made up of words, pictures, flow charts and schematics during lectures may provide more vivid information and be more attractive to students (xingeng & jianxiang, 2012) compared to chalkboard-writing in talkand-chalk (tac) methods. bartlett et al. (2000) reported a decrease in students’ performance when the instructor switched from tac to mpp presentation, while duffy (2008) concluded that mpp’s effectiveness depends upon the discipline, the learning objectives and learner types. thus, an innovative and versatile teaching tool such as youtube is needed but little is known about its effectiveness in promoting cognitive learning in technology. 1.1 multimedia in higher education the rationale for multimedia is that people can learn more from words, pictures, videos and animation than words alone (mayer & mayer, 2005). multimedia enhances students’ understanding, improves retention and advances problem-solving transfer (mayer & moreno, 1998). the use of multimedia in lectures has proven to be very favourable to the educational processes and provides numerous benefits for the students’ cognitive abilities (kotevski & tasevska, 2017). when youtube is applied correctly, students gain the breadth and depth of the subject, and it renders efficient use of class (fleck, et al., 2014). 1.2 research problem teaching using the chalkboard, textbooks and in recent times mpp zheng (2008) and iskandar et al. (2018) contend that multimedia have a positive effect on learning. for example, iskanda et al. (2018) investigated the effects of multimedia learning on students’ achievement in terms of cognitive demand by comparing the students’ learning achievement between classes that apply multimedia learning applications with those using the tac method. the research results show that: (1) the application of multimedia learning improves student achievement for robotics courses; (2) that the learning achievement of the multimedia learning class student is better than the tac. similarly, multimedia is a multimodal approach that effectively teaches english foreign language (efl) in danish year-seven students because of the assistive multimedia that combines sound and images (kasch, 2019). students learn better, when they use their eyes and ears in mpp. dewitt et al. (2013) used a descriptive approach to investigate the cognitive effects of multimedia. other studies have collected basic information directly from youtube, such as the length of videos, while others have developed coding schemes to rate youtube content (paek, kim & hove, 2010). this study’s quasi-experimental http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 962021 39(3): 96-108 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) research design based on pre-test and post-test explored the cognitive effects of youtube videos on technology students’ cognitive achievement in the mechanical system module. consequently, students do not perform well possibly because they lack interest to enhance their cognitive capacity. furthermore, none of these studies used youtube videos to improve students’ cognitive achievements and this is a knowledge gap in research. therefore, to address this knowledge gap, the researchers posed questions similar to any research process (plowright, 2011) as follows: 1) what is the difference in students’ cognitive achievements between students taught using microsoft powerpoint presentations compared to students taught using youtube videos? 2) what are the cognitive achievement of males compared to females taught using youtube videos? 2. theoretical framework this study’s main design guidelines are grounded in the cognitive theory of multimedia learning (ctml) (mayer, 2005). ctml is relevant to this study because it is built on other established theories, such as adaptive control of thought-rational (act‐r): a cognitive architecture for modelling cognition (ritter, tehranchi & oury, 2019), dual coding theory (paivio, 1990; clark & paivio, 1991) and cognitive load theory (sweller, van merriënboer & paas, 2019). according to ritter, tehranchi and oury (2019), act-r is a theory of the mechanisms that constitute cognitive architecture. the theory postulates that a fixed set of mechanisms can be used to perform an activity to predict and explain the steps of cognitive human behaviour. the theory belongs to a unified cognition paradigm theory (newell, 1990; byrne, 2012). it also surmises the brain activation for human behaviour to know how to do an activity (procedural knowledge) and knowledge of facts about the world around them (declarative knowledge). these two forms of knowledge work together for an individual to perform an activity. thus, act-r is a hybrid cognitive architecture that comprises programmable information-processing mechanisms that can predict and explain human behaviour. one of the most important concepts in act-r is the distinction between declarative and procedural knowledge. the formation of two types of knowledge working together to create human cognition and memory as well as behaviour (anderson & schunn, 2000; anderson & gluck, 2001). for example, using pavio’s theory of dual coding (1992), images and words are processed in separate channels of working memory before becoming integrated into a single, coherent, organised conceptual framework. thus, the duo visual and audio components provide a unique mental model formation (kasch, 2019). in this study, researchers envisaged students to explain their cognitions as they used videos to learn technology. however, the cognitive load theory (sweller, van merriënboer & paas, 2019) may limit the amount of information one can process at one time. therefore, the cognitive theory of multimedia learning (mayer, 2005) and the theory of cognitive load (sweller et al., 2019) add credence to researchers to examine how youtube multimedia instruction could be designed to improve cognitive performance. 3. literature review in higher education, youtube videos play a vital role in courses that use flipped classrooms, online e-learning, massive open online courses (moocs) and mobile learning (chapes, 2017). youtube videos’ use can be traced from the first video clips created by the three former paypal employees, hurley, chen and karim (2005), to sharing video materials among its workers (youtube, 2012). today, the youtube platform enables users to share video clips through uploading, viewing and sharing. there is no doubt that youtube videos connect, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/wcs.1488 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/wcs.1488 972021 39(3): 97-108 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 kibirige & odora exploring the effects of youtube inform and inspire individuals and transform and how teachers deliver instruction to learners. consequently, online videos that are of academic and professional nature reinforce classroom discussions and engage students (kasch, 2019). youtube allows teachers and students to explore and download visual and audio content relevant to their courses. in rural areas where some students may not access youtube, they can rely on what their teachers present to them in class. these videos can facilitate thinking and problem solving (haugsbakken & langseth, 2014); assist students with mastery of learning (galbraith, 2004) as well as inspire and engage students (willmot, bramhall & radley, 2012). to demonstrate that youtube videos support multimedia learning, fralinger and owens (2009) investigated students’ achievements. the research focused on applying youtube, major strengths of the youtube project in the learning process, instructors’ effectiveness and improving learning. 3.1 pedagogically designed videos martin (2016) investigated the potential of pedagogically designed video demonstrations to support students’ engagement and learning outcomes in a land surveying module at a college of engineering and built environment. the outcomes of multimedia resources show that students showed increased retention of key topics (mayer, 2019). thus, this study’s findings suggest that youtube videos and related quality multimedia learning materials will continue to play a significant role in serving the needs of 21st century students. 3.2 limitations of youtube-based instruction based on research by liimatta (2015) on the use of online youtube videos in the classroom, one of the limitations is that youtube does not always allow students to communicate with their instructors. additionally, youtube videos do not promote communication among students yet. while social media, in general, offers space for innovative teaching in classrooms, they pose several ethical dilemmas for teachers (henderson, auld & johnson, 2014). in addition, there may be issues about the use of youtube videos regarding what constitutes private and public data. rosenberg (2010) posits that people may perceive multimedia data differently. for example, a video developed and posted on youtube for friends would not be suitable for classroom instruction. on the other hand, unmonitored youth access to youtube raises genuine concerns in light of adolescents’ lack of knowledge about the risk attenuation needed to discern and manage online dangers (delmonico & griffin, 2008). therefore, instructors are strongly encouraged to determine whether the video’s content is credible, particularly technology education information. lastly, computer protection against spyware and viruses is important to consider, as recent reports have indicated that computer hackers may be using online video sources to upload spyware and viruses (trier, 2007). 4. methodology the study employed a quasi-experimental design to explore the effects of youtube videos on students’ cognitive performance (campbell & stanley, 2015). the quasi-experimental design aims to establish a cause-and-effect relationship between independent methods used (youtube, mmp and ppt) and dependent variable (students’ achievements). one reason http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 982021 39(3): 98-108 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) for choosing a quasi-experimental design is that researchers often do not have control over the treatment but instead study pre-existing groups that received different treatments after the fact (thomas, 2020). 4.1 validity the study employed a researcher constructed cognitive assessment test (cat) for pretest and post-test. both tests consisted of 30 multi-choice questions covering the three cognitive domains (understanding, comprehension and application). two academic staff in the department of mathematics, science and technology education validated the cat content. the recommended changes were effected before the pre-test and post-test were administered. 4.2 internal consistency the researchers employed the following four steps (slack & draugalis (2001): 1) to guard against selection bias, samples were randomly assigned to eg and cg. 2) researcher bias was avoided by the researchers not showing preferences of any aspect during data collection. 3) for instrument reliability, a pilot study was conducted with six students (3 males and 3 females) who were not part of the study but from a similar environmental background like the study groups and a strong cronbach alpha was 0.84, suggesting that it was reliable since it was above 0.70 (taber, 2018), and 4) for testing effects, questions of post-test materials were rearranged to avoid cognition. 4.3 participants fifty-three students consisting of 29 (54.7%) males and 24 (45.3%) females with a mean age m = 22, sd = 4 participated in the study. based on the research design, twenty-eight (28) students were assigned to the experimental group (eg) and twenty-four (24) to the control group (cg) based on non-random criteria (table 1). table 1: distribution of sample for the study group gender mean age (years) male female 22 ± 4 powerpoint lecture slides 15 13 youtube video 14 11 total 29 24 4.4 data collection the cg was taught using microsoft powerpoint slides. altogether, the researchers designed four sets of mpp slides based on hydraulic system content. the mpp lecture slides were presented during the lecture period that covered 45 minutes. the mpp lecture slides consisted of words, pictures and animation as an alternative treatment for the cg. the eg was taught hydraulic mechanical system using online youtube video clips that are posted on the internet via next vista. english is used in all the video clips. four youtube video clips were selected because they were considered relevant to the study topic. the constructs explained in the video clips are components of the hydraulic system, fluid mechanics and how the hydraulic pump works. to avoid internal validity threats, the youtube video clips were restricted by the designer’s license terms and conditions for access and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 992021 39(3): 99-108 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 kibirige & odora exploring the effects of youtube use, which were only granted to the researchers. to avoid boredom, the video clips were used during the lecture for not more than 20 minutes. the researchers used informal rather than formal discussion during a video presentation. this method has yielded a large effect on students’ learning, partly because of the students’ sense of social partnership with the narrator (mayer, 2008). 4.5 procedure the hydraulic, mechanical system is offered as a module to year 3 pre-service technology students. this module followed an earlier module on the pneumatic system and control. the hydraulic system and control covers hydraulic fluids, pascal theory, hydraulic components and system design and function. for the study, the lecture timetable was adjusted to cover two periods per week. this allowed the cg and eg to be taught the same topic through using different multimedia. before the treatment commenced, a pre-test was administered to both cg and eg to assess their prior knowledge of hydraulic systems and controls and their test scores recorded. the treatments were administered in a technology classroom by a researcher for 45 minutes per period. during treatments, both groups were taught the same hydraulic system and control content by the same lecturer to minimise personality effects. the exception was that while the cg received lectures supported by mpp lecture slides, the eg received lectures supported by youtube videos. at the end of the intervention period, the researchers administered a post-test to both groups. the scripts were marked and the posttest scores were recorded for comparison with the pre-test scores. 4.6 data analysis data were analysed using descriptive (sharma, kanchan & krishan, 2018; igual & seguí, 2017) means, standard deviation and inferential statistics (gibbs, shafer & miles, 2017; amrhein, trafimow & greenland, 2019): t-test, and cohen d. all pre-test and post-test data were analysed using spss version 22. kolmogorov-smirnov test (field, 2009) from spss was used on mean scores to identify if the data were uniformly distributed so that a parametric statistics t-test could be applied. indeed, data were uniformly distributed and so the researchers used the t-test. also, a t-test was run on the pre-test and post-test results to identify any differences between the eg taught using youtube and cg taught using mpp at confidence level (p < 0.05), and cohen d was calculated using cohen formula d (m2 m1) ⁄ sd (cohen, 1998) to find the magnitude of gain. 4.7 ethical considerations this study was part of a larger collaborative work, the irg – south africa/uganda cooperation bilateral programme with makerere university, which is approved by the national research council (nrf) (grant number197811). before the commencement of the study, consent was obtained from the participants and they were informed about ethical principles such as privacy, anonymity and confidentiality (bryman & bell, 2007). 5. results data analysis results related to the effects of mpp presentations and youtube videos on students’ cognitive performance are presented in this section based on the two research questions. to answer the first research question, a t-test was conducted to establish if http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/pmc5132380/#b21 1002021 39(3): 100-108 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) there was any significant difference between the cg pre-test and post-test scores (mpp). a summary of the t-test results is presented in table 2 below. table 2: t-test of cg pre-test and post-test results for students taught using mpp results: pre-test post-test count 28.00 28.00 mean 56.07 54.94 standard deviation 12.48 17.44 mean difference 1.14 std error difference 4.06 df 54.00 t 0.28 p-value (2-sided) 0.78* uc (2-sided, 95%) 9.26 lc (2-sided, 95%) -6.98 *denotes statistical significance table 2 show that in the cg there was no significant difference in the mean scores for pretest (m = 56.0, sd = 12.4) and post-test (m = 54.9, sd = 17.4) conditions; t (56) = 0.28, p = 0.77 and cohen d is 0.07. the reasons for no significant difference between pre-test and posttest can be explained as follows: first, the p-value (0.77) was higher than the significance level (0.05). second, the test statistic (tstat, 0.28) does not fall in the critical region of 5-28, third because the zero falls within the confidence interval (9.26, -6.98) and provides a reason for no significant difference between pre-test and post-test. similarly, a t-test was used for eg to determine if there were significant differences between pre-test and post-test scores. the results are presented in table 3. table 3: t-test pre-test and post-test for eg taught using youtube results: pre-test post-test count 24.00 24.00 mean 60.48 65.72 standard deviation 7.28 9.62 mean difference -5.24 std error difference 2.41 df 48.00 t -2.17 p-value (2-sided) 0.03* uc (2-sided, 95%) -0.39 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 1012021 39(3): 101-108 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 kibirige & odora exploring the effects of youtube results: pre-test post-test lc (2-sided, 95%) -10.09 *denotes statistical significance table 3 shows that in the eg there were significant differences in the mean scores for pre-test (m = 60.5, sd = 7.2) and post-test (m = 65.7, sd=9.6) with t(24) = -2.17, p = 0.03, and cohen d is 0.6. three reasons can be given for the mean score differences between pretest and post-test scores of eg using youtube eg. first, the p-value (0.03) was lower than the significance level (0.05). second, because the test statistic (t = -2.17) does not fall in the critical region. third, the zero value falls within the confidence interval (-0.39, -10.09). these results suggest that youtube videos affected students’ cognitive achievements. furthermore, the cohen d of 0.6 confirms that the gains achieved using youtube videos are significant. the pre-test and post-test mean scores for cg taught using mpp and for eg taught using youtube were compared (table 4). table 4: the pre-test and post-test mean scores for cg and eg treatment pre-test post-test mean gain score microsoft powerpoint for cg 56.00 54.90 -1.10 youtube video for eg 60.50 65.70 5.20 mean score difference 4.50 10.80 4.10 table 4 shows that there is a mean gain in both cg taught using powerpoint presentations (-1.10 points) and the eg taught using youtube video (5.2 points). the mean score difference between pre-test and post-test for cg and eg was significant. these results suggest that the use of youtube videos in eg improved students’ cognitive performance and not in the cg taught using mpp. a t-test was conducted to establish if there was a significant difference between male and female students’ post-test mean scores using youtube videos to answer the second research question. the t-test was calculated between the post-test of the cg taught using mpp and the eg taught using youtube. the result of post-test of cg (mean = 62.70, sd = 5.90) and the post-test eg (mean = 65, sd = 9.60); t-2.17, (51); p = 0.03) and a cohen d of 1.74 were statistically significantly different. these results suggest that eg outperformed the cg in their cognitive achievements. a t-test was done to establish if there were any differences between males and females in eg (table 5). table 5: t-test of eg post-test mean scores difference for male and female taught using mpp results male female count 11.00 14.00 mean 61.46 69.07 standard deviation 8.61 9.29 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 1022021 39(3): 102-108 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) results male female mean difference -7.62 std error difference 3.63 df 23.00 t -2.10 p-value (2-sided) 0.04* uc (2-sided, 95%) -0.12 lc (2-sided, 95%) 15.12 *denotes statistical significance table 5 shows that female students performed better (m = 69.00, sd = 9.20) than the male students (m = 61.40, sd = 8.60) and there were significant differences between male and female students (24) = -2.10, p = 0.04, cohen d is 0.85. the mean gain scores between the pre-test and post-test for males and females in the eg is shown in table 6. table 6: mean gain scores of male and female students in the youtube group group post-test mean gain score male 61.50 7.50 female 69.00 these results in table 5 show that female students have higher mean scores than male students. equally, the data analysis posted 7.50 mean gain score indicates a significant difference between the two gender groups and also cohen d of 0.85 suggests that the gain was significant. 6. discussion the study explored students’ cognitive achievement in a technology mechanical system module in the eg taught using youtube videos compared to cg taught using microsoft powerpoint (mpp) presentations. the results show that the eg students’ cognitive achievements taught using youtube videos were higher than the achievements for cg students taught using mpp presentations. students taught using ppt did not increase their cognitive achievements. these findings are consistent with that of beets and lobingier (2001), susskind (2005), szabo and hastings (2000) and gier and kreiner (2009), who did not find any beneficial effects of mpp. in contrast, amosa, gambari and balogun (2015); and nouri and shahid (2005) found a significant difference in the learning achievements in favour of the group taught technical drawing concept using mpp presentations. these results suggest that students taught using videos used their duo senses: visual and audio to learn, which is consistent with the dual coding theory (pavio, 1990; kasch, 2019). the post-test results of the eg and cg were statistically and significantly different from each other (t-test: t = -2.17, p = 0.03) and a cohen d of 1.74. these results show that the cognitive achievement of eg students taught using youtube videos was better than that of cg students taught using ppt. the high value of cohen d of 1.74 suggests that the increase in the eg was not by chance, but it was due to the use of the intervention, the youtube http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 1032021 39(3): 103-108 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 kibirige & odora exploring the effects of youtube videos. furthermore, the pre-test and post-test results of eg were significantly different (table 3). this observation also agrees with the cognitive theory of multimedia learning (ctml) (mayer, 2002) and the positive role of dual coding theory where students use audio and visual to improve their cognitive achievements through various forms of representations (pavio, 1992; kasch, 2019).thus, the words and images generated from videos provided permanent images in the students’ minds for a long term, which explains in part, why students in the eg who used videos increased their cognitive achievements. furthermore, mayer (2003) argues that meaningful learning from words and videos happens when a student engages in five cognitive processes. these five cognitive processes include: 1) selecting relevant words for processing verbal working memory; 2) processing visual working memory, 3) organising selected words into a verbal model and 4) selecting images and 5) integrating the verbal and pictorial representations with prior knowledge. the results suggest that eg students could have used such processes to attain better cognitive achievements compared to the cg students. the pre-test and post-test mean gain scores show that while mpp decreased by 1.10-point score, youtube video increased by 5.20 points score (table 4). the decreased scores of -1.10 in cg results are not surprising because mpp obscures varied professional and pedagogically sound presentations (jones, 2003). furthermore, xingeng and jianxiang (2012) contend that mpp often uses too many slides and may lead the instructor to stick to the order of slides. consequently, that approach may limit the extemporaneous performance of the instructor for the learners’ cognitive achievements. the increased scores of 5.20 in eg suggest that students taught using youtube had higher cognitive achievements in the post-test than the pre-test. our findings are consistent with that of guy and marquis (2016) who found that the youtube instructional method improved students’ final grades. the eg students’ results show that females scored 7.5 points higher than males, suggesting that youtube video affected female students more than male students. these results are in contrast to hoogerheide et al. (2018) who found that males’ achievements were higher than females on troubleshooting electrical circuits. the gender differences could be due to positive attitudes and the time spent using the videos (pickowicz, 2008). in addition, a few studies show that there are gender cognitive differences among students from other fields of study (petri et al., 2017; sagala et al., 2019). although other factors were not explored, it seems that females easily develop positive attitudes with videos compared to males. the results of this study show that the integration of youtube in teaching increased students’ cognitive achievements and the youtube videos improved female cognitive achievement more than the males. these results have implications for lecturers in stem education. more studies are needed to ascertain the students’ achievements when both visual and audio sense are engaged in technology using different topics and also explore other salient factors regarding gender differences exhibited in the is study and other earlier studies. 7. limitations and future research this research has some limitations that can also serve as areas for future research. firstly, the study used a small sample that limits the generalisation of the results. future studies on the topic could be carried out using a larger sample size. secondly, the lack of the qualitative aspects also limits its interpretation in terms of attitudes that the two groups had on the methods used. thirdly, the study used internet-based youtube videos. future studies should consider using internet-designed youtube videos and for various topics in technology. also, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/cognitive-theories https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/social-sciences/electronic-circuits 1042021 39(3): 104-108 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) insufficient consideration was given to the cg on the access and prior background knowledge of the youtube video used by the eg. consideration of these factors in future studies could greatly improve the reliability of the data collected. while this research and others have shown that youtube videos can support learning, further research is still needed to compare the effects of youtube videos with other multimedia learning materials. 8. conclusion notwithstanding the limitations, the study results show that the integration of youtube videos can improve students’ cognitive achievements. these results are consistent with the cognitive theory of multimedia learning (ctml) (mayer, 2002) and the dual coding theory (pavio, 1992). according to mayer (2003), the use of multimedia (youtube videos) in teaching encourages the learner to build an intelligible mental representation from the presented materials. thus, multimedia enables a learner to make sense of the material, which leads to the construction of new knowledge. as studies show, youtube 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(ed.). 2008. cognitive effects of multimedia learning. usa: igi global. https://doi. org/10.4018/978-1-60566-158-2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.8 https://www.raeng.org.uk/publications/other/using-digital-video-reporting https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-60566-158-2 https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-60566-158-2 113 research article 2021 39(2): 113-127 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.9 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) low research productivity: transformation, institutional and leadership concern at a south african university abstract a key indicator of the academic worth, value and development of a university is its research capacity and publications. the universities of technologies (uots) that merged from former technikons have been poorly ranked due to low research performance. hands have been pointed at the academics, some school of thought blamed the institutions, others pointed at the government agencies in charge of higher education policies, regulation, and restructuring. the aim of this paper is to examine empirically from the institutional point of view, reasons for low research output in the uots. a qualitative research approach was adopted by conducting semi-structured interviews with 15 academic staff and a comprehensive focus group meeting among six academics from three faculties in the same uot. heavy workload, career ambiguity, poaching, staffing, sabbatical leave policy, large student numbers, unawareness of incentives, poor retention strategies, institutional history, understanding of research mandate, clarity of policies and procedures and poor time management emerged as the contributing factors to low research output in the uot. according to the fourth dimension of systems archetype, the study contributes to knowledge by allowing a level of understanding into the problem under investigation. strategic issues to be considered were suggested for the stakeholders as a way forward. keywords: transformation; productivity; institution; research; leadership; academics; policies. 1. introduction on national unity, the consensus of the government in south africa regarding higher education was in need of reformation. it was documented in the white paper 3 on education that higher education must be transformed to redress the inequalities of the past, to serve a new social order and to meet the national need to address opportunities and realities. twelve goals were spelt out on education in the white paper 3, six of the goals are concerned with the issues of equity between learners and lecturers in the higher education reforms. a new institutional landscape was proposed by the national working committee that author: dr isaac abe1 dr virimai mugobo1 affiliation: 1cape-peninsula university of technology doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i2.9 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(2): 113-127 published: 11 june 2021 received: 19 august 2020 accepted: 30 october 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.9 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1670-6801 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0136-3343 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.9 1142021 39(2): 114-127 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.9 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) made provision for the foundation for establishing a higher education system that is in line with the vision, principles and values of a non-racial, non-sexist and democratic society that responds and contributes to the human resource and knowledge in south africa. the era of university autonomy ended for government regulatory control and performance management (akala, 2018). on the challenges of the transformation of higher education institutions (hei) in south africa, in respect of ranking universities and relative policies, mautincairncross documented that: there has been a wide array of transformation-oriented initiatives seeking to effect institutional change inter alia the definition of the purposes and goals of higher education; extensive policy research, policy formulation, adoption, and implementation in the areas of governance, funding, academic structure and programmes and quality assurance; the enactment of new laws and regulations; and major restructuring and reconfiguration of the higher education institutional landscape and of institutions (2014:234). research reform is at the centre of university transformation programmes in south africa, just as the standard is globally. research profiles of universities, institutes and colleges are used as measures of ranking performance. interests in research activities transcend the managerial discretion and internal control of governments. university administration and funders (international and national) are stakeholders in research stimulation with insights into specific contexts and institutional constrains. in the south african context, the uots that converted from technikons have been rated lowest in research productivity among the league of universities (venter, 2016). the educational transformation plans, programmes, vision and goals of the government of south africa that appear robust with lots of promises have left many of the merged uots at the base of research performance. research performance in south african universities has created a dichotomy and institutional class. the low research performance of these uots has awakened a salient question. what are the other high-ranking universities doing research-wise that has been neglected by the low ranks? this is a pointer to the factors that contribute to low research output and what should constitute the research characteristics of the uots in south africa given their non-research background. the aim of this article is to affirm a deeper understanding of the barriers that mitigate against research productivity from the institutional viewpoint (snowball & shackleton, 2018:127). studies that attempted to document this problem have muddled up the factors. however, the focus of this paper is on the management issues that call for the attention of university leadership and higher education agencies (cele & lekhanya, 2014). 1.1 research contexts of the uot in south africa the tripartite functions of the academics in heis are research, teaching and community engagement. research has emerged as the most imperative of these three. a key indicator of the academic worth, value and growth of a university is its research publications. research output influences the strength and funding of universities. it improves the university ranking, contributes to the growth and development of industries and formulation of governmental policies, thereby enhancing national and global development. the downfall of an institution is predicted on a heavy workload due to massification of student enrolment and academics’ fear of termination of contracts (moosa, 2018). higher education in africa has remained weak due to a communication gap between institutions and their academics. many academics are of the view that a master’s degree or doctoral is the peak of their learning, only to discover that after http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.9 1152021 39(2): 115-127 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.9 abe & mugobo low research productivity a phd they have just been initiated to a career in research and publications. an ill-defined path amid competition is weighing down on many institutions (masaiti & mwale, 2017). institutions’ research proliferation is on the increase since it is a determinant of institutional prestige and status (chipeta & nyambe, 2012; masaiti et al., 2017). academic poaching of talents has been on the increase, thereby reducing the chances of non-performing institutions. between 2000 and 2006, the total number of permanent academic staff decreased gradually despite the increase in student enrolment in the uots. many academics in specific professions are lost to the industry due to better employment contracts. this has put untold pressure on the workloads of the academics as well as the burden of coping with daily academic activities, coupled with consistent research delivery (cloete, 2009). moreover, the ratio of students to staff remained well above the national target at 44:1, which is far above the institutional average (dhet, 2015). universities that embrace the internationalisation agenda incorporated massified student enrolment and knowledge economy into their academic operations as a way of demonstrating transformation (altbach, 2016). institutional massification has impacted negatively on the uots, with student enrolment well in excess of the national average. in 2000, 5700 students were enrolled and by 2015 11 500 students were enrolled in one institution (dhet, ssauf, 2015). institutional policies need to be designed and monitored to improve employee working conditions in higher education. in a study conducted by awung and dorasamy (2016), respondents were asked to suggest policies that will contribute to institutional development and gender parity and 31.8% of them suggested sabbatical leave. hoosen and butcher (2019) examined the challenges of open educational resources reiterating that operation of sabbatical leave policy is a major hinderance on human resources. knowledge development, production and innovation in technologies are available in diverse forms to attract research interests. one of the major problems of knowledge development is the unawareness of research incentives for research activities by academics (javed & liu, 2018). human resource practitioners are saddled with ways of designing, attracting and retaining skilled employees, which makes the labour market mobile and globalisation friendly. heis are forced to constantly be on the edge of their seats in search of strategies to retain academics (noe et al., 2017). the university challenges of social competitiveness and new demands that facilitate constant changes are little perceived by the academics (ion & castro ceacero, 2017). observers of research policies have not been silent on research conditions in uots. as the number of people with doctoral degrees increase, funders of research are also interested to know the extent to which their investment in a researcher has achieved the purpose. to this end, funders are always on the neck of research institutions with new and engaging policies. the institutions are forced to comply with new policies of research funders (scott, 2018). as the organisation of research shifts, several factors that are discussed in this paper are affected (ipaye, 2018). considering the research challenges faced by uots and heis in south africa, how bold are we to refer to efforts at changing the institutional landscape transformation? 1. 2 concept of system’s archetype (transformation) edward deming’s knowledge on systems theory is based on the principle that “each organization is composed of a system of interrelated processes, and people which make up the components of the system” (deming, 2019:2). modern enterprise-minded universities have embraced the use of systems thinking archetypes, which suggest that relationship exists http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.9 1162021 39(2): 116-127 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.9 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) between our experience of the world and our sense of coherence in explaining the story that supports the notion of “no theory, no learning” (deming, 2021). absence of a working theory results in having no means to integrate different experiences into an organised picture. most organisations are so structurally large that people only see a fractional piece of the whole, they get a skewed picture of the large chunk. therefore, learning as an organisation demands the creation of a theory about what we do not know, based on what we currently know (kim & lannon, 1997). there are four dimensions to the application of the systems archetypes. one is as lenses, which is like wearing a pair of glasses. it is applied by initiating a general enquiry into the nature of a problem. understanding the main lessons (information taught) and key element (corner stone) and initiating an action or outcome that embodies each archetype. two, as structured pattern templates, or “shifting the burdens” by asking different questions and giving attention to different things at the same time. three, as dynamic scripts or tragedy of the commons. the concern of the archetype is not a question of which is right, but which offers unique insights to the archetypes. four, as tools predicting behaviour or “trying on” different stories that lead to asking provocative questions that result in provocative conversations. systems archetype enables a level of understanding that permits the analysis of a situation, identification of storylines at work, exploration of implications and gaining understanding of the problem under investigation (kim & lannon, 1997). 2. research design the design of this paper is rooted in hermeneutic phenomenology. this entails a credible and rigorous strategic approach that investigates the phenomenon under investigation. the aim was to understand the reasons for factors that are responsible for low research output in the uot. the aim was to empirically interpret participant’s journeys and experiences relating to the phenomenon. the main question asked dough-tailed on the aim of the research. the goal of this paper was to understand the phenomenon from the human perspective. the research paradigm is the interpretive research that considers the epistemology of ideas. by interpretive research, the focus is to access through understanding participants’ experiences instead of explaining and predicting their behaviour. researchers assumed that findings would emerge from participants as the research process progresses (creswell, 1998). 3. research methodology to produce rich text that describes the experiences of selected phenomena in individuals that relates collectively with the experiences of others, this research adopted a hermeneutic phenomenology (smith, 2004). the frame of the research methodology of this paper depends on the research question and the philosophical approach of the question. employee profile questions (demographic) were asked, and the principal question was what are the institutional factors that contribute to low research output at the uot? the research design for the empirical research is adopted from the interpretive perspective and rooted in hermeneutics works with qualitative research. a qualitative research technique was adopted for this study, the researchers value the respondent’s experiences, personality and cultural orientations at work which influences the way they perceive research (buscatto, 2016). according to rennie (1998), a qualitative method justifies a coherent logic of study. ideological components of an established approach are identifiable (maxwell, 2008). for a research study of this nature that involves exploration, definition, clarification and explanation of data gathered in a specific context, mugenda and mugenda (2003) recommend a qualitative research method. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.9 1172021 39(2): 117-127 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.9 abe & mugobo low research productivity the gathering of data, analysis of same and theory to share associations is permitted by the constructivist theory (strauss & corbin, 1994). the themes discovered in the interviews and focus group meeting were selected according to the responses of the participants (fetterman, 2009). the researcher studied the workplace dispositions of the academics at the uot and carefully carved out questions that would reveal the issues described in the statistics of employees. information collected was in the context of the work of the institution of participants individually (interview) and collectively (focus group meeting). the interviews and a focus group meeting were conducted at the work environment of the respondents. the timing, rules and regulations for the data collection exercise were agreed upon by both parties prior to commencement of the procedure. the researcher dove tailed on the process of planning and procedures to conduct and analyse qualitative data, as recommended by hennink, hutter and bailey (2020). a purposive sampling method was applied as a non-probability sampling technique for the qualitative research design. this was adopted to produce information-rich cases and in-depth study of the reason for low research output in the uot (bless et al., 2013). this study employs qualitative interviews and focus groups as a data source. according to walliman (2017), all qualitative research employs interviews, focus groups and participants as primary data sources as well as analysis of texts and documents. fifteen senior academic staff of three faculties at the uot were interviewed and six senior staff members participated in the focus group meeting. participants were informed in advance before the interviews were conducted and facts obtained were duly consented to by both parties. 4. data analysis the questions used in the interviews and focus group meeting were framed to respond to the data collected from participants with respect to their views about the factors that contribute to low research output in the uot. the first names of the respondents in this study were documented sequentially and numbered from 1 to 15 and 1 to 6 respectively. the responses were documented initially on a spreadsheet to avoid data loss and to ensure trustworthiness, credibility and quality. thereafter, the captured data were transferred to nvivo 12 software to make it easier to conduct content analysis. the software presented the coded data as nodes and child nodes thereby classifying the information into manageable groups and subgroups. from the coded and categorised data, core themes and sub-themes emerged. coding was done deductively and inductively. nvivo 12 software was utilised to organise the data collected through semi-structured interviews and a focus group. the information obtained from the set of non-numerical data was trusted and credible and could be relied upon, since it represented the participants’ perspective of the problem under investigation. in this paper, data elicited from the semistructured interviews and focus group was authenticated to validate the integrity of the findings (le roux, 2017). this was achieved by engaging two experienced researchers in the subject area who coded the data and conducted the essential comparisons. the used responses were numbered to further strengthen anonymity. exact statements are also presented to validate the grouping of the themes. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.9 1182021 39(2): 118-127 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.9 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 5. results the findings of this research are grouped into two distinct categories. one is the result obtained from the demographic questions and two, the result from the main question. the results follow each other respectively as follows: 5.1 demography of participants table 1 below indicates the responses of fifteen participants. table 1: demographic schedule of analysis item questions participants (15) years in the university service number of years in university employment over 20 years = 11 15–19 years = 1 10–14 years = 2 under 9 years = 1 age of participants how old are you now? above 61 years =1 51–60 years = 2 41–50 years =9 31–40 years =2 25–30 years =1 entry qualification what was your highest entry qualification? masters & phd =1 bachelor’s degree = 12 higher national diploma =2 current qualification what is your current qualification? looking to obtain a master’s degree =13 have a bachelor’s degree=2 from the description above, most of the academic employees that participated in the study have been in the employment of the university for over 20 years. several of the respondents are between the ages of 41 and 50, most of the academics have only a bachelor’s degree while almost all are looking forward to obtaining a master’s degree. the interest of this research is not on the smaller contributions of participants but on the high contributions being mindful of the objective of the study. 5.2 institutional factors that hinder research output figure 1 represents the flow of information from respondents in respect of the institutional factors that hinder research output at the university. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.9 1192021 39(2): 119-127 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.9 abe & mugobo low research productivity contributory factors to low research output table 2: reasons for low research output themes summary of response from semi-structured interview summary of responses from focus group heavy workload respondents quoted an average number of academic lectures at 60 hours in a week instead of 48 hours. none? career ambiguity no clear path for career evolution. professionals are forced to pursue degrees, not research. we develop professionals for the industry and the care for our career is limited. academic poaching migration of intelligent academics to financially rewarding institutions. our institution is not interested in professional growth. staffing the need for more qualified phd holders with experience in research publications. the university is circulating staff who have been long doing the same thing. sabbatical leave policy understanding of employees is limited. self-interpretation is given to sabbatical leave. our understanding is that we are only qualified for sabbatical after we obtain a phd. large student numbers massification of student enrolment weighs on uot compared to other traditional universities. student enrolment policy at uot is a horrible policy. for example, annually another university admits only 40 students for quantity survey, and uot admits 180 students. unawareness of incentives incentives are in place, but many employees are ignorant of appropriate climate and organisational culture. lack of knowledge about the incentives and corporate climate on motivation of employees. institutional history background of the institution from technikon to uot. our background as a technikon has affected our culture and orientation at the uot. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.9 1202021 39(2): 120-127 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.9 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) themes summary of response from semi-structured interview summary of responses from focus group understanding the uot mandate academics have different views of the institutional mandate. adding research to the mandate of uot is not in favour of the institution. clarity of policies and procedures respondents blame their human resources and management for not clarifying the various policies to them. management should employ experienced academics who can interpret rightly policies that change from time to time. time time devoted to teaching and learning activities leaves little room for research activities at the uot. we have no time in the university for research. 6. discussion universities are institutions that, in all societies, have performed basic functions that result from the combination of cultural and ideological, social, economic, educational and scientific roles that have been assigned to them. they are multi-purpose or multi-product institutions that contribute to the generation and transmission of ideology, the selection and formation of elites, the social development and educational upgrading of societies, the production and application of knowledge and the training of the highly skilled labour force (enders, 2004). to achieve the tasks assigned to them, basic facilities, resources, and leadership must be in place. recently, research policy observers and academics have voiced their concerns about the potential impact of research conditions in uots (shaw & ward, 2014; philips & heywood-roos, 2015). these concerns are often associated with recent shifts in the organisation of academic research, such as increased workloads, intensification and the pace of change (petersen & riccaboni, 2012; sandy & shen, 2019) and factors including those discussed below. in this study, respondents overwhelmingly cited workload, which is the concentration of tasks or assignments that an academic employee is accountable for at work, to be heavy at the uot. for example, in trying to paint a clear picture about the employee workload using the number of hours engaged at work, one respondent said: well, the most important thing is that you need staffing. i mean right now an average lecturer is lecturing about 60 hours, or let us put it this way, a workload analysis reported 60 hours… another respondent referred to workload as administrative work (teaching and learning) and affirmed that it ate away 70% of the time available to do every other thing that needed to be done including research. furthermore, respondents identified career ambiguity as a problem that contributes to the low research output at the uot. the phenomenon occurs when the institution has not been able to map out a clear career structure for its academic staff. in watermeyer (2015), career progression was specific and tied to an interpretation of academic excellence derived from the productivity, prolificacy, status and reputation of the academic as researcher. in this study, respondents argue that they would have been better left with teaching and learning as the value of research was unnecessary. respondents do not see the idea behind focusing on research since it clearly did not affect their career development. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.9 1212021 39(2): 121-127 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.9 abe & mugobo low research productivity this study found that the private sector, herein referred to as the “industry”, was poaching highly skilled academics to work in companies. the rationale for academic poaching was based on a logic of cost reduction and “business efficiency”, which was to be accomplished by importing artefacts of financial accounting (“assets”, “cost centres”, “added value”) into the internal governance of heis (shore & wright, 2016:47). respondents in this study were of the view that if the dhet makes the demand of research and additional qualifications, then they should be ready to increase their salary once the demand is met. this is because the industry would naturally approach the skilled academic and entice them with better benefits, reduced workloads and better conditions of work. according to a respondent: “yes, and even if they are not head hunted, that is poaching, there are other opportunities that people are seeking for various reasons”. another respondent contended that their professional background leaves them with no option than to go with industry poachers who are ready to offer more incentives. this qualitative study provides very substantive information regarding the human resource practices on sabbatical leave at the uot. the concept of sabbatical leave was identified in the literature as an enabler of research (snowball & shackleton, 2018; altmann & kroll, 2018), but this study found that the academics in the uot were either unaware of the sabbatical policy content or not abreast of its meaning and importance. forward thinking institutions, through the human resources (hr) management, advise academics on the meaning and appropriate time for taking sabbatical leave in the institutions (phillinger et al., 2019). however, because of the heavy workload of teaching and learning, many uots allow six months’ sabbatical leave. traditional universities allow a year depending on the policy adopted by the institution. sabbatical leave affords time for academics to work/research to attain a higher qualification. it becomes a challenge if the hr department of an institution is either unaware of the policy of sabbatical or ignores its importance altogether. the respondents in this study confessed they are not aware and do not understand the concept of sabbatical leave. respondents in this study are of the view that they need more knowledge on sabbatical leave and how it functions. with respect to sabbatical policy, the findings at the uot are not consistent with extant literature (straub, 2007; furbish, 2009; miller, bai & newman, 2012; & heathfield, 2019). despite the importance of sabbatical leave, the concept is misunderstood, misapplied and quite obscure at the uot. with respect to teaching large numbers of students, cadez, dimovski and groff (2017) warned that research-based performance management may be detrimental to high quality teaching. where an academic is a good teacher with good delivery, what if the teacher does not have publications to back up his good work? or is tied down with many students to teach and no time for research? that is the case with the respondents in this study: i’ll give you an example, a traditional university, say has got 40 students. forty students per year average. we have got 180 students, a 180. another respondent said: we have got to deal with huge groups of class sizes, especially in s1, s2, even right up to s4. the classes are quite enormous to say.’ this result indicates that massification of student enrolment is seriously ongoing at the uot. that speaks contrarily to the position of scholars. dee and goldhaber (2017) documented that massification would undermine quality as teachers reduce. this is because, where academics must carry out the administrative responsibilities attached to teaching and learning and aspire http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.9 1222021 39(2): 122-127 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.9 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) to be productive in research, the expected outcome may not be better than what it is currently. as much as research is important, it must not be given more attention than teaching time. this is necessary in order to not sacrifice quality of teaching on the altar of quantity and research outputs as suggested by blatchford, russell and webster (2016). the teacher-student ratio as found in this study has already matched and beaten the projections of the uot for 2025 and rose exponentially from the audit of the uot in 2012 (che, 2012). moreover, cloete, maasen and bailey (2015) emphasised that the current conditions of the global knowledge economy, knowledge production and technological innovation have become the most important productive forces. research output and outcome are often used as bases for measuring knowledge development and production and are predicted to be based on the support incentive mechanism of the institution directly involved (javed & liu, 2018). to encourage knowledge development, production and innovation in technologies, incentives for research are made available in different forms and ways to attract the interest of researchers. however, this is not without attendant challenges. one of the challenges is the unawareness of incentives for research purposes by academics in universities. the respondents in this study claimed that the academic staff of the university under investigation are unaware of incentives available for them. it is one thing to provide support, and it is another thing to make support known, available and accessible. for the effective application of the system’s archetype theory in this study, more than one of the perspectives of the theory is applicable. applying the system archetype as lenses, we can understand the main lessons and comprehend the key elements but are not able to initiate actions or outcomes that embody the archetype. the tragedy of the commons is established on the basis that if the use of a common resource becomes too great for the system to support, the common will become overloaded or depleted and the result will be total diminishing benefits. massification of student enrolment that has resulted in heavy workloads for academics and the institution has exponentially resulted in diminishing returns for the uot. through the application of the tragedy of the commons the study was able to identify between the research actions of the academics and the collective institutional result of low research productivity in the uot (shilling, haki & aier, 2017). the elements brought into this study are the factors that contribute to low research performance. 7. conclusion the investigation carried out in this uot is limited to the institutional reasons for low research output in the uot. there are also individual reasons for low research productivity that are outside the scope of the objective of this paper. the qualitative approach followed in the article revealed the need for the university to engage with capacity building initiatives and enhance those strategies that enable research output in the uot. there are future avenues to explore in this regard, especially now that there is a change in the mode of delivery of teaching and learning. with more reliance on technological way of researching, the educational landscape may soon be predictable due to imminent changes in the laws, regulations and restructuring of the academic environment. the state effort to use educational transformation as a tool to redress the inequalities of the past in south africa has left a gap and disparity between performing and non-performing universities. in the bid to use research as an instrument of development in heis, policies that aided the growth of universities elsewhere have turned out to be an instrument of the downfall of others who are either ignorant of the applications of those http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.9 1232021 39(2): 123-127 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.9 abe & mugobo low research productivity references akala, b.m. 2018. challenging gender equality in south african transformation policies a case of the white paper: a programme for the transformation of 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https://doi.org/10.1080/21568235.2015.1044546 1062021 39(1): 106-121 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 home-schooling in south africa: adapting to the new normal of providing education abstract interest in home-schooling is increasing especially in the era of covid-19. this pandemic has raised concern among many parents about the future education of their children. homeschooling is increasingly seen as a safer and more viable option. this paper aims to gauge the potential of home-schooling based on the experiences and perspectives of parents who are home educators. this study delves into aspects such as the advantages and disadvantages of contemporary home-schooling experiences. using a qualitative approach, this research draws on 10 semistructured interviews with parents who are currently home-schooling their children in order to understand their lived experiences. the study finds that most parents opted for home-schooling to ensure that their children had access to an affordable, high-quality form of education. furthermore, parents wanted to ensure that each child was provided with an individualised experience, which is particularly beneficial for those with special needs. however, some parents struggled to find the balance between their role as a parent and a teacher. additionally, the lack of support from the government was outlined as a prominent challenge. the study recommends a more nuanced and integrated approach from policymakers and the government to ensure a safe and efficient home-schooling environment. keywords: home-schooling, learners, parents, home-based education, south africa 1. introduction home-schooling is relatively widespread in more developed countries (ray, 2015, 2016a) but is also gaining momentum in many developing countries, including south africa (ebrahim, 2020). it gives children the opportunity to learn in an atmosphere that is different from the mainstream public or private schooling sector (ray, 2016b). home-schooling is where parents, a designated teacher or tutor takes primary responsibility for providing education for the learner (donnelly, 2012; moore, lemmer & van wyk, 2004). it is an informal learning environment that provides children with a rich social experience that is more natural in enabling them to discover different things and learn through experiences (mills, 2009). home-schooling is strictly regulated by the author: ms n. dlamini1 prof p. maharaj2 ms s. dunn3 affiliation: 1,2,3university of kwazulu-natal, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i1.7 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 106-121 published: 12 march 2021 received: 30 september 2020 accepted: 23 december 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3518-8237 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0292-0305 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 1072021 39(1): 107-121 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 dlamini, maharaj & dunn home-schooling in south africa government in terms of attendance, progression and continuous assessment; however, parents are solely responsible for the decisions regarding their children’s education. this firmly establishes their control and sovereignty within the home-schooling environment (winstanley, 2009). parents can take over the role of mentors or use the services of a certified teacher to provide instruction using an accredited curriculum (moore et al., 2004). during the apartheid era, south africa experienced major difficulties regarding equal access to education that was especially pronounced within black african communities (kallaway, 1984; kallaway, 2002; levin, 1991; nkomo, 1990). however, in 1996 the constitution of the republic of south africa guaranteed equal access to education regardless of ethnicity. the south african schools act no. 84 of 1996 recognises home-schooling and requires education to be transformed into a democratic system where non-sexism, non-racism, human dignity, rights, equality and freedom are valued (rsa, 1996a, 1996c). although there has been a concerted effort to improve education in the democratic era, residual effects of apartheid are still apparent in disadvantaged communities (dodge & welderufael, 2014). apartheid ended more than 20 years ago, yet many schools remain without basic facilities (simkins, 2013). the effects of apartheid are still experienced daily as many south african students, especially those within the most impoverished communities, lack the basic educational resources that they require (dodge & welderufael, 2014). these issues within the south african education system are likely to influence parents to consider alternative measures for their children to acquire a good quality education (mills, 2009). although home-schooling has enjoyed a fair amount of exposure in the media in south africa, it is not recognised as a priority area. therefore, there is a need to explore the potential of home-schooling in south africa within the broader social context as an alternative for parents who are concerned about current available options. further, south africa is currently experiencing the devastating effects of covid-19, which has widespread implications for the country. at the end of march 2020, a nation-wide lockdown was imposed that led to the closure of all sectors considered non-essential, including schools. embarking on a nation-wide effort to salvage the academic year, the south african government announced a plan for the gradual opening of schools. however, many stakeholders, including parents, have voiced their disapproval of children returning to school, as many schools are ill-equipped to deal with the current pandemic (may, 2020; mcdonald, 2020). public sector schools are largely under-resourced and lack the necessary protective equipment and resources to safeguard students and staff, while parents of children in private schools are also concerned about the potential for acquiring the virus in the school environment. as a result, many learners will not be returning to the classrooms and many parents are forced to re-think their educational options and the learning environment (mcdonald, 2020). in this context, home-schooling is seen as an alternative form of learning. there are various terms that refer to home-schooling such as home-based education, home education, un-schooling, home-centred learning, home instruction, de-schooling, autonomous learning and child-centred learning (donnelly, 2012). in its simplest form, home-schooling is the education of school-aged children at home (green & hoover-dempsey, 2007). however, every term or concept has its philosophical underpinnings, context and various factors that influence how people define it (donnelly, 2012). for the purpose of this study, home-schooling is defined according to the south african national education policy act no. 27 of 1996 (rsa, 1996b), as an alternative form of learning that takes place outside the government designated http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 1082021 39(1): 108-121 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) public or private school environment, and primarily conducted at home with parents as the principal instructors of academic knowledge (de waal & theron, 2003; mills, 2009). research suggests that a structured, controlled and organised home-schooling environment can prove to be effective in enhancing academic success of the learner (cogan, 2010; harding, 2003; rudner, 1999). generally, the decision to home-school is due to dissatisfaction with the formal education system (morton, 2010). a south african study conducted by moore et al. (2004) revealed that parents were dissatisfied with the schools that their children attended. the parents cited the curriculum, the system of reward and punishment and the emphasis of the school on technology as the reasons for their dissatisfaction. thus, the family’s decision to home-school was a response to this and they felt that the home-school environment created a new setting in which principles of child discipline could be applied (moore et al, 2004). additionally, parents are able to exert more control over the moral and social aspects of the child’s upbringing that may be absent or challenging in mainstream schools (morton, 2010; spiegler, 2010). however, the current body of south african literature lacks contemporary, empirical evidence of the lived daily experiences of home-schooling. while there are studies that exist, these are outdated; thus, a renewed perspective into home-schooling is needed (van schalkwyk & bouwer, 2011). to address this gap, this study seeks to explore the potential of home-schooling as an educational alternative amid the global pandemic. the study is particularly interested in investigating contemporary experiences of home-schooling among parents who identify as home educators in an urban area in kwazulu-natal, south africa. the paper is concerned with the following key question: what are the experiences of home-schooling among parents who identify as home-educators in an urban area in kwazulu-natal? the overall aim of this study is to broaden understanding of home-schooling in kwazulu-natal, south africa, by specifically focusing on the perspective of parents. the study focuses on the province of kwazulu-natal because it has one of the highest estimates of registered home-educators in the country (wits education policy unit, 2008). additionally, kwazulu-natal has the highest population of learners in the public school sector (department of basic education, 2018). 2. methodology the study adopted a qualitative approach to capture the perspectives and experiences of parents who identified as home-educators in south africa. given the nature of the study, using qualitative methods allowed for an in-depth understanding of the key experiences of parents (hennink, hutter & bailey, 2011; patton & cochran, 2002). the primary data collection tool consisted of semi-structured interviews with a series of open-ended questions. the study employed purposive and snowball sampling strategies (patton & cochran, 2002), as the intended study sample was a particular home-schooling population that can be difficult to reach. this was beneficial in recruiting eligible study participants, as home-schooling is not a common occurrence in south africa. in order to be eligible to participate in the study parents needed to be currently involved in home-schooling of one or more children and reside within the province of kwazulu-natal in south africa. ten participants were interviewed for this study. the aim of the study was not to generalise but rather to provide detailed accounts of homeschooling from the perspective of parents; hence, relying on the gains of information power. ethical approval for the study was obtained from the university of kwazulu-natal’s human social sciences research ethics committee (protocol reference number: hss/0300/017m). participants were assured that their identities would remain protected. pseudonyms instead http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 1092021 39(1): 109-121 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 dlamini, maharaj & dunn home-schooling in south africa of real names were used in the reporting of the findings. once eligible participants agreed to partake in the study the interview was arranged. the interviews were conducted within their homes as they felt that it provided them with a sense of comfort and privacy. the interview guide covered a broad range of topics including socio-economic and demographic characteristics of parents, their understanding of home-based education, reasons for homeschooling, challenges and benefits associated with home-schooling as well as the feasibility and accessibility of home-schooling. participants signed consent forms to indicate their understanding of the study purpose and willingness to participate. they were also informed that they may withdraw from the study at any point with no implications for them. they were also asked to provide their consent for the interview to be audio-recorded. each interview was audio-recorded and thereafter transcribed verbatim and analysed. for the study, thematic analysis was used, which involves sorting the data into particular themes (hayes, 2000). themes are defined as ideas or topics that emerge on more than one occasion during the interviews. the emerging themes were then categorised and analysed. from the outset of the analysis, certain key features emerged from the transcripts, which were categorised into particular themes: definition of home-schooling, advantages and challenges of home-schooling. 3. findings 3.1 characteristics of the study sample table 1 below displays the characteristics of the study sample. all, except for one, were female. in addition, the participants were married and educated. the majority (9 out of 10) of the study sample had a tertiary level education and only one female had completed her secondary education. when the participants were asked about the number of children that they are currently home-schooling, five indicated that they were home-schooling two children; three one child; one three children and another one was home-schooling four children. table 1: characteristics of the study sample characteristic n % gender female 9 90 male 1 10 total 10 100 race white 10 100 other 0 0 total 10 100 marital status married 10 100 unmarried 0 0 total 10 100 education primary 0 0 secondary 1 10 tertiary 9 90 total 10 100 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 1102021 39(1): 110-121 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) characteristic n % no. of children home-schooled 1 3 30 2 5 50 3 1 10 4 1 10 total 10 100 3.2 attitudes towards home-schooling the rise of home-schooling over the years has grown in popularity (burke & movement, 2009), with many parents appreciating its flexibility and the freedom of choice to utilise a variety of teaching strategies. this affords home-educators greater options to accommodate individual learner’s needs and personal circumstances (lines, 2000; olatunji, 2014). parents indicated that the choice to home-school presented an opportunity for them to provide a specialised learning experience for their children in the comfort of their own home with either the father or the mother acting as the teacher. they highlighted the individuality of the home-schooling experience, indicating that it is more personalised than mainstream schooling and allows for an educational approach directed towards customised learning suited to the needs of the child. there is a huge difference, with the mainstream. it is this way or no way. it is very academic they are not willing to stir from anything. i think personally it is not correct. there are no real-life situations where you are thrown into the same room every day with 50 people, and you are forced to get along with them. on the playground, you are limited to run around for a few minutes. with home-schooling you can tailor make learning for each child, even if you have four children in the home you can work according to each child, and you can go at each child’s pace. unlike mainstream, where you got to keep up, or you get left behind, so there is a big difference (participant 2). parents stated that they opted for home-schooling because they believed that children are unique and should be afforded the opportunity to develop at their own pace. they have a positive attitude towards home-schooling and adopted it for the primary benefit of their children. they felt that their children needed to be offered a holistic education that encourages individuality, which they felt was missing in mainstream education. when we talk about education, we never talk one-sided, ever! children are individuals, and i think we often forget we are dealing with individuals. if you mind their individuality, mind that special person and ask “who do you have the potential to be one day?” the classroom is so big; teachers cannot get to the child as an individual. when you talk about education, you need to be looking at it as a whole: “who is this person? who is this individual? how can i mind and educate them holistically?” education is not only on paper, based on one method and one-sided. i feel they want our children to be the same; they are just teaching the same concept and want them to be robotic. we are all individuals, we all have so much to contribute, and that is what is missing in the mainstream, a way to encourage individuality and educate holistically (participant 10). parents further described mainstream schools as rigid and not accommodating to the varying needs of individuals. in addition, they argued that the class size in mainstream schools are very large, consisting of approximately 50 learners, which results in limited focus on the individual. parents who are not satisfied with conventional schooling feel that their children do not receive enough attention to help them develop through the education system. children feel pressure to complete a set of activities within a closely defined time in order to progress http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 1112021 39(1): 111-121 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 dlamini, maharaj & dunn home-schooling in south africa to the next level. they preferred home-schooling because there is greater flexibility and the teaching experience can be tailored to the needs of each individual. this allows children to receive the undivided attention and commitment of the home-educator (mills, 2009), which poses as a challenge in larger, mainstream classrooms. parents felt that this is beneficial with one describing their children as being stress-free, relaxed and generally happy. it is the best thing i ever did for my children. it allows each child to learn in a way that suits them. it also gives me insight into where they excel and where they have difficulties. i have absolutely no doubt that i am doing the right thing. my children love school; they have a love of learning and reading. they are unstressed, relaxed and happy. i would recommend it for those that have the need and the desire, your heart and commitment need to be there. i believe it is the way of the future (participant 5). 3.3 advantages of home-schooling 3.3.1 quality and care all of the parents felt that they were able to provide a better education for their children than they would receive from public or other mainstream schools. one parent stated that they felt that south africa has a low standard of education, especially for subjects such as mathematics and science, and that a good quality education is available via the home-schooling curricula, much of the content being free. we are aware that south africa has the second lowest standard of education in the world, and the lowest standard of maths and science. whereas, good quality education is available in boxed curricula as well as online, much being free (participant 5). parents indicated that they wanted a high-quality education for their children and felt that they are in the best position to provide it. they wanted to adopt a system that does not impair their children’s development or hinders them from progressing, and to provide a more appropriate learning programme, especially those who have special needs. one parent explains that her child was considered “problematic” as she was not able to concentrate and was not performing at the average level of the other learners. however, directing more time and attention towards the child has allowed her to build a solid learning foundation and make satisfactory progress. my youngest daughter has always been seen as a problem child which she is not. i took her out of school because the first term of grade one teachers had already picked up three problems; she was performing below average, she was a roadie and could not concentrate. my daughter has problems with concentration so she needs more time with me just to consolidate concepts and make sure her foundation is solid (participant 6). four of the parents had children that were reliant on medication to cope in the mainstream system and wanted a learning environment for the children that does not require them to be medicated. learning difficulties were a strong motivation for choosing to home-school, and can be challenging to accommodate in a classroom environment (mills, 2009); hence, parents felt that they were able to educate their children in an environment that does not mandate the use of medication. ritalin (a type of stimulant medication) is often advised as a way for some children to cope in the mainstream school environment. parents are concerned with the type of properties that ritalin has that is similar to cocaine (a narcotic substance). it has sideeffects that suppress emotions and ideas, and diminishes self-esteem (powers et al., 2008). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 1122021 39(1): 112-121 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) my son is far behind in school, with reading, maths and every other subject, he is two years behind. we decided to home-school because of the label teachers put on our children, that medication is the only way. ritalin! ritalin! ritalin! the side effects! i cannot believe the side effects of ritalin (participant 2). another parent was unable to find a school that could accommodate the special needs of the child. parents wanted to ensure that their children would be provided with appropriate care and education within the learning environment and home-schooling presented itself as a “wonderful” option where they would not be subjected to any form of neglect or abuse. i was unable to find a school for my mentally challenged child. for those children with learning difficulties and special needs, home education can be a wonderful option as there are few special needs schools (participant 5). 3.3.2 academic enhancement all the parents indicated that being involved in their children’s education is a rewarding experience as they are able to understand the individual process of learning for their children, what they are interested in and how well they absorb information. if the child struggles with any concept they have the advantage to work on it before moving to another concept. this way the children are able to fully grasp a concept before proceeding further. they are able to help their children without the pressure of working at the pace of a collective group of learners. parents felt that this approach helped their children to achieve more in a short space of time. as a result, many of the parents were satisfied with the results of home-schooling based on their children’s academic performance. one parent shared the difficulties that she encountered with her son who was displaying poor work effort however, home-schooling enabled him to advance academically as well as provided an environment for him to reach his full potential. my children are excelling academically as home-scholars. home-schooling allows us to enrich our children’s strengths and supplement their weaknesses. the child’s education moves as fast or as slow as required for that particular subject area. we can work on the child’s behaviour and work ethic throughout the day. my son’s poor work effort at school was nearly impossible to address. the teachers did not have time to make my son repeat work they felt was average quality. we would not see the work until days after it was completed. finally, we have been able to push him to his full potential (participant 10). eight of the parents indicated that academic performance does not only depend on assessment criteria that their children need to achieve. they were concerned with the quality of education that their children are exposed to which fosters a love for learning and encourages them to continuously seek opportunities to learn and develop into well-rounded individuals. they encouraged their children to pursue their interest as a way of further enhancing their educational development. my son is eleven and he is two years behind in school, but i am not worried because every person learns at a different pace, he wanted to study world war 2 which is high school history, so he can study anything. i am not concerned with testing and pressurising him as he is still young (participant 2). 3.3.3 a flexible, individualised experience the experience within a home-schooling environment is very different from that which is encountered within the classroom. parents can devote an unlimited amount of time and attention to their children, as they are most likely to know their strengths and weaknesses. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 1132021 39(1): 113-121 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 dlamini, maharaj & dunn home-schooling in south africa when one approach fails there is the option to try a different approach or even change teaching methods. one mother stated that her child is more inclined towards practical learning methods; however, they have tailored a method to ensure that he can inclusively incorporate reading as well. this individualised approach has aided the child to develop a love for reading. the freedom of the child to learn the way their brain operates. my child is very practical, he likes doing things with his hands. reading was never his thing, but i have to trick him. i got him a toy, a train and we had to assemble it but first, we had to read the manual, now he enjoys reading especially if it is for his projects, he builds those prototypes; a water well and irrigation systems and they all require reading a manual (participant 7). parents believed that the home-school environment offered stability and flexibility such as a customised learning schedule as well as school holidays. seven of the parents have a structured routine that helps in guiding the children’s daily activities. one parent allows her youngest daughter to play a musical instrument before beginning her day, as this is calming for the child and allows her to focus throughout the day. on average we start at 7:30am. i am very structured and routine. it is school at home. my youngest daughter starts playing the cello at 7:30am; music calms her and helps her focus. every day is different; we have a break at 9:30am for an hour, then we are back at it until 1:00pm or 1:30pm (participant 6). parents who home-school can teach anywhere, which means that their classroom is not limited to the home, and they can take trips during the school year, visit relatives and take vacations. learning is a year-round experience and home-schooling provides for this. the continuum of experience is an important factor in learning and should not be interrupted by the calendar (martin, 1997). however, parents indicated that they do consider the mainstream school calendar to ensure that their children can socialise with peers during the holidays. i go according to the national school term holidays to accommodate my children’s friends from mainstream school so that they get to spend time with them (participant 1). 3.3.4 love, protection and values according to yin, zakaria and baharun (2016), home-schooling promotes family bonding by fostering a nurturing atmosphere, allowing families to develop strong bonds. the home-school environment reduces the generational gap between children and parents, while building good relationships among siblings. the family bonds are strengthened, as children begin to enjoy each other’s company, they become friends and parents feel closer to their children. this further cultivated an environment where learning is embraced. i love being with my children, and getting to know my children, spending time with them, they are my children, and i need to spend time with them. my children are happy, they are well adjusted, and they love learning (participant 1). there was a feeling that the home-school environment offered protection from the many social ills that children are exposed to within formal schooling systems. parents are particularly worried about protecting their children from harmful implications resulting from peer pressure. they noted that there are problems with bullying as well as drug and alcohol use in mainstream schools and they fear that they will not be able to protect their children from these social ills. there are problems with bullying, drugs, alcohol, and sexual promiscuity in many schools (participant 5). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 1142021 39(1): 114-121 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) religious and spiritual beliefs feature strongly as the motivation for home-schooling among parents. parents emphasised family unity and surrounding their children with a loving, familyoriented environment that allows them to be nurtured in a way that is also consistent with their religious values and beliefs. the ability to include religion into the learning programme is an advantage that some parents enjoy. one parent suggested that they use a curriculum that allows for the incorporation of religion as it creates a space for their children to proclaim their faith. this is an element that is not always, or entirely incorporated in mainstream schools. i am a christian and that is my motivation. i use a curriculum that incorporates christianity. i want my children to be able to proclaim their faith, for them to know god, live and learn about him through the day and throughout their lives (participant 1). 3.4 challenges 3.4.1 separation of roles: parent versus teacher although home-schooling is advantageous for an array of reasons, it is not without its challenges. the reality of home-schooling requires parents to play the role of teaching their children, supervising their schoolwork, evaluating their work and planning for activities (green & hoover-dempsey, 2007). this demands a great deal of time and energy, and parents may then suffer emotionally from stress, frustration and a lack of motivation. this is not always the situation; however, some parents did suggest that home-schooling requires a great deal of commitment. the demand to accommodate each child individually may leave parent-educators feeling overwhelmed and frustrated (botha, 2005). one parent found it particularly difficult to be an educator and a parent at the same time. distinguishing between the two roles were not easy and it was challenging to remain approachable as a teacher during the set school hours, and as a parent, at the allocated family time. another parent stressed the effectiveness of teaching methods and ensuring that the material is made enjoyable and understandable as a way to avert challenges. you need to be interested in what is best for the child. i find it challenging to separate myself from being a mother and being a teacher, but in the morning i try my best to be a teacher and a mother throughout the day. everything is so integrated and my children do everything together, and i try my level best to be approachable (participant 1). one parent describes the journey of home-schooling as “lonely” as she has to take full control and responsibility, and despite support being available from other family members, such as a spouse, they need to be innovative and resourceful. as the parent teaching, it can be a very lonely journey, the responsibility is completely on you as the educator. yes, my husband has been amazing, but at the end of the day, the responsibility is on one individual (participant 5). six of the parents suggested that they need to constantly plan and organise activities, which becomes costly at times. parents find that they have to be resourceful and the responsibility of teaching and providing relevant learning material rest upon one parent regardless of the support the parent may receive from other relatives. you need to know places to get things because it is not a school setting. you as a parent have to manage all things for the children to have sports. we as parents have to arrange all activities. activities are not always free. in order to get the best of the world and learn more while they are at it, i supplement their lessons with trips to planetariums, art exhibits, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 1152021 39(1): 115-121 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 dlamini, maharaj & dunn home-schooling in south africa lectures, showcases, nature preserves and my children are enrolled in various community activities, but these things can cost money (participant 9). 3.4.2 lack of government support parents felt that the government was attempting to over-regulate home-schooling in south africa (van der eems, 2017). on the contrary, west (2009) noted that it is important for the government to regulate this form of schooling due to children being at a greater risk of abuse and to avoid parents from not immunising their children, which creates a health risk for the nation. the findings suggest that there is limited government support and one parent suggests that home-schooling is actively discouraged by the government. as far as i know there is no government system to support; they do not like what we are doing (participant 2). the main challenge is the active discouragement by government. the government actively discourages home education (participant 5). owing to lack of support, parents choose to register their children with home-school associations or groups and not with the south african department of education. parents were quite critical of the government in their processing of home-schooling. they fear that should they register with the department of education they will forfeit their freedom to choose any curriculum programme that they want. this will further forfeit the opportunity to tailor a conducive and alternative method of learning, which they feel is more suited to their children. those that are registered with the department of education complain that it is generally a complicated process, which takes too long. america is very big on home-schooling so the support from there is massive, for example, if you want a learning programme, you will get it from there, help is just an email away (participant 2). 4. discussion in the decades since it first gained prominence, home-schooling in south africa has transformed significantly. it has become an important part of the education system and the growing interest in home-schooling has led to the emergence of an immense industry offering support and resources to parents who choose to home-school their children (moore et al., 2004). home-schooling is expanding at approximately 20% per annum in south africa and is projected to significantly expand in the coming years (nhlapo, 2018). the findings from the study largely suggest that home-schooling is an option that is openly embraced by the study sample, in this instance parents that intend to provide their children with quality education that is affordable, efficient and beneficial for their child’s optimum development. parents stressed the importance of the quality of education that is provided to children. concerns about the standard of education offered in mainstream schools, exposure to peer pressure and other social ills (such as drugs) and the inability of mainstream school to accommodate a child without the use of mental stimulants such as ritalin were among the most prominent reasons for the decision to home-school. parents took primary responsibility to ensure that their children were provided with a standard of education that they regarded as valuable and efficient. unicef (2000) suggests that quality education is inclusive of a safe and healthy environment that provides adequate resources and facilities to enable a conducive learning space. it provides content that is reflected in relevant curricula and materials that http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 1162021 39(1): 116-121 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) promote the acquisition of basic skills in literacy, numeracy, life skills and knowledge. parents indicated that the content of the curricula was of a good quality and freely available for the academic development of their children. quality education is a teaching and learning system that strengthens the capacity of children to act progressively on their own behalf (unicef, 2000; 2007). as suggested by the parents, their children were able to excel academically and enhance their learning capability by using various methods that met their individual needs. additionally, as reflected by the findings of this study and other research, it is evident that home-schooling can produce learners who are healthy, ready to participate and learn and are supported by their families (unicef, 2000; 2007). the other main advantages of home-schooling include individualised educational experiences, flexibility together with freedom for a child to learn at their own pace. education is customised to the needs of every individual, which allows the learners to develop a love for learning. in a study conducted by thomas (2016), some families highlighted the types of courses that support particular learning styles that were available, but the majority emphasised the growth and development of their relationship as a family, as with this study, where parents valued building relationships and strengthening bonds with their children. additionally, as evidenced by this study and other research, parents are motivated by the medical needs of their children as they view home-schooling as an educational alternative that accommodates special needs (thomas, 2016). parents felt that they could ensure that their children would not need to be dependent on medication and would not be neglected or abused. however, the need for home-schooling extends beyond the outlined benefits and documented contributing factors. while it is evident that quality education is of paramount importance, more recently interest in home-schooling is gaining popularity especially in the era of covid-19. the current global pandemic of covid-19 is mandating that action be taken to enforce basic protective measures and safeguard students and staff from the pandemic. prior to the pandemic there was a lack of educational resources for south african students as well as other challenges that they experienced such as occupational deprivation (dodge & welderufael, 2014), influenced by well-known problems such as a shortage of teachers, underqualified teachers and inadequate teacher performance (levy, 2009). these challenges are expected to be further exacerbated by the impact of covid-19. this presents itself as a challenge for many south african learners and as a result, parents and educators are redirecting focus towards home-schooling as an alternative option. most governments around the world have temporarily closed educational institutions in an attempt to contain the spread of the covid-19 pandemic and south africa has followed suit. the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) is supporting countries in their efforts to mitigate the immediate impact of school closures, particularly for more vulnerable and disadvantaged communities, and to facilitate the continuity of education for all through remote learning (unesco, 2020). this study presents key insights from parents who are currently home-educators and will add to the existing debate central to education and schooling across south africa to enable parents to use the findings of this study to make an informed decision regarding home-schooling as well as plan and prepare for the challenges outlined. the study also outlines the lack of support from the government, mandating a call to action across south africa in order to accommodate parents who plan to home-school their children. furthermore, as evidenced by the parents in this study, the home-schooling experience is a lonely journey and it is difficult to differentiate between the role of a parent and educator. while parents acknowledge the support of relatives, it is solely http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 http://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019 1172021 39(1): 117-121 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 dlamini, maharaj & dunn home-schooling in south africa their responsibility to take full control of all aspects of the teaching experience. this proves to be challenging for parents, as this requires a consistent level of dedication and commitment, which can be tiresome and exhausting for parents. being resourceful entails that the parent has to constantly generate new and innovative ways of teaching. lack of support for parents who are home-educators is a common occurrence (kidd & kaczmarek, 2010) and although the findings acknowledge home-education as positive, the personal challenges experienced by the parent should not be overlooked. hence, finding innovative ways to assist parents with these personal challenges will enable them to have a more positive, stress-free experience. hence, this highlights valuable implications for practice and intervention in the sphere of home-schooling to incorporate accessibility of support outside of the family. this study recommends the need to support parents and experts and all those who are positioned to provide education in considering alternative approaches such as homeschooling. school drop-out rates across the globe are likely to rise as a result of this massive disruption to education access. this is further compounded by the fear, anxiety and stress of becoming infected and the lack of preparedness of the education sector to deal with reducing the opportunities for infection. this study opens platforms to address issues such as how south african parents prepare and adapt to home-schooling. this is an effort to mitigate the disruption caused by covid-19 and establish approaches to develop more open and flexible education systems for the future (unesco, 2020). continuing education through alternative learning pathways needs to be a nation-wide priority to prevent students from falling behind in their learning. 5. study limitations and recommendations the study focused on one particular geographic area and in addition, the sample size was relatively small. the aim of the researchers was to gain key insights on an under-studied population and thus enhance information-power. in light of this limitation, it is recommended that future studies of a similar nature expand in their scope of geographic location and incorporate a diverse study sample. this research recommends a deeper investigation into home-schooling; one that captures contemporary perspectives and experiences of the homeeducator and learners. this is recommended based on the scarcity of studies that consider the feasibility of home education in south africa. a deeper investigation into accessibility and functionality of home-schooling as an alternative option needs to be explored especially since many parents across south africa are increasingly showing interest in this platform of learning. this will aid in the revision and implementation of existing policies and initiatives central to home-schooling. furthermore, on the basis of the challenges documented in this study, it is also recommended that the government needs to be supportive of the home-schooling sector and encourage parents to adopt this as a viable strategy to ensure that the education sector is supported in their transition from disruption to recovery during the global pandemic. this approach should be holistic and inclusive to ensure that researchers, parents, policymakers and the education sector details a concerted response that allows thinking and acting accordingly to adjust to a “new normal”. as a start, nation-wide awareness of home-schooling should be publicised and information should be readily and easily available. the scope of quantitative studies on home-schooling is almost non-existent especially in south africa; therefore, future research should consider adopting a quantitative approach http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 1182021 39(1): 118-121 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.7 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) where a descriptive database captures detailed and statistical information about the socioeconomic status, marital status, employment status, educational level, type of curricula and geographic-specific demand for home-schooling. this will enable the government and relevant institutions to plan and prepare accordingly for the expected influx of home-schoolers. 6. conclusion home-schooling has been recognised as an alternative and viable option, allowing children to continue their education in the comfort of their homes and affording parents the full responsibility of providing a protective, safe and clean environment. however, there are a number of challenges that need to be considered and addressed that are largely central to the lack of support from the government and the tedious administrative processes involved. additionally, the current pandemic has resulted in many parents considering how to provide their children with education to prevent them from contracting the virus. in light of the great disruption that the pandemic has brought, the government needs to consider ways of providing instruction to children that does not require them to physically attend school. the discussion on home-schooling needs to be broadened in the country to accommodate those in circumstances who cannot make the full transition, but where the principles can be applied to fill short-term gaps when the education environment is not conducive to learning. references botha, m. 2005. the most common stressors experienced by home-educators. unpublished masters dissertation. johannesburg: university of johannesburg. burke, l. & movement, g.h. 2009. homeschooling sees dramatic rise in popularity. washington, dc: the heritage foundation. de waal, e. & theron, t. 2003. homeschooling as an alternative form of educational provision in south africa and the usa. evaluation & research in education, 17(2–3): 144–156. https:// doi.org/10.1080/09500790308668298 cogan, m. 2010. exploring academic outcomes of homeschooled students. 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12023 41(2): 1-2 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7440 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) editorial over the past decade we have witnessed an explosion in the number of studies focusing on education in times of crisis such as the covid-19 pandemic. although the vast number of articles in this edition of perspectives in education will focus on education during the covid-19 pandemic, we will start by looking at several other topical issues related to education in times of crisis. we open the discourse with the insightful article on interaction between teachers’ emotional intelligence and classroom management by kirikkaleli and kanbur. they argue that educators with well-developed emotional intelligence have a positive effect on academic achievement and that these teachers also increase their classroom management skills, but does this claim also hold true in the science education classroom? remaining with the issue of leadership, in the next article by so-oabeb and du plessis we look at leadership competencies for teacher professional development in namibia, as well as at factors that influence public school principals’ professional discretion in an article by beyers and du plessis. very often researchers tend to focus their attention on school-based education. in the next article by shushu, we look at the experiences of mathematics subject advisors when conducting school support visits. some significant findings come to the fore in this study when he points out that some negative union influence, lack of specialisation in mathematics by foundation phase departmental heads, lack of coherence in communication, and lack of cooperation and collaboration amongst district officials act as inhibitors in the delivery of quality education. teaching during the covid-19 pandemic was indeed very challenging. the closing of schools and higher education institutions has disrupted the learning of learners to a great extent. new ways had to be found to use online opportunities to continue with the education of learners. regardless of how challenging the covid-19 pandemic was, many lessons were learned that could benefit education in future years. in this edition of perspectives in education we look at some of those lessons learned. we open the discussion with an insightful article on exploring south african university academics’ level of preparedness for the emergency multimodal remote teaching during the covid-19 pandemic authored by ugwuanyi and author: jan nieuwenhuis1 affiliation: 1university of the free state doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i2.7440 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(2): 1-2 published: 30 june 2023 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7440 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7440 22023 41(2): 2-2 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7440 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) colleagues. the findings demonstrate that most of the academics in the education faculties lack the necessary preparation for distant teaching and learning. this is attributed to the fact that academics and students felt that they did not receive any support as they transitioned from routine to unusual working conditions. in the next article by cherrel africa et al. they explore the role of crisis leadership during the pandemic, indicating how people were unprepared for this role. this is further illustrated in the article by hlatshwayo, zondi and mokoena when they indicate how the pandemic has caused anxiety amongst academics. at many higher education institutions education took on an almost emergency approach. this is well illustrated in the article by hu and venketsamy, but also in the article of pietersen when he discusses perspectives on dialogue and care in teaching and learning relationships in an ever-changing online higher education landscape. if there is one lesson that higher education institutions learned from the covid-19 pandemic, it is that students very easily become discouraged and lose interest and commitment towards their studies. this is well illustrated in the research of moosa and aloka when they review factors that kept first-year students motivated at a university in johannesburg. another case in point is the research of ndlovu et al. regarding students’ acceptance and perceptions of online assessments after the covid-19 pandemic. a review of the research that emanated from the pandemic is that new strategies emerge for dealing with education in times of crisis. in this regard, mnisi argues a case for deliberate and accommodative design for blended teaching and learning at universities in developing countries, while khumalo et. al. discuss how technology-mediated advising for student success could be achieved through the implementation of self-mediated academic support. it is trusted that you will find this edition of perspectives in education informative and stimulating and in support of your own research within the field of education. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7440 _hlk120781552 62 from clinic to classroom: a model of teacher education for inclusion elizabeth walton university of witwatersrand gillian lloyd university of witwatersrand one of the challenges associated with the implementation of inclusive education in south africa is the effective training of teachers to meet diverse learning needs in their classrooms. this article reflects on the pilot years of a postgraduate degree course in inclusive education developed at a south african university, using cochran-smith and lytle’s (1999) concept of “inquiry-as-stance”. replacing previous courses which focused on equipping students to provide individual support in clinical settings, the course emphasises inclusive teaching strategies appropriate for whole-class teaching. the course is designed to avoid both individual deficit constructions of learner difference and a rigid theory/practice dichotomy. to ensure context relevance and practical implementation of the pedagogies taught, lecturers visited students in their classrooms and provided support and feedback. students also kept journals, supported one another by sharing experiences, and were assessed on a critical incident report. course evaluations attest to student satisfaction with the course content and delivery. the difficulties that both students and lecturers encountered while implementing inclusive pedagogies can be explained as challenges associated with change. the article concludes that teachers need to develop a collaborative and classroom-based knowledge-of-inclusive practice by implementing, reflecting on and theorising inclusive pedagogies. keywords: inclusive education, postgraduate teacher education, inclusive pedagogies, inquiry as stance introduction white paper six: special needs education (doe, 2001) asserts that classroom teachers are the country’s primary resource in attaining the goal of inclusive education. since 2001 there have been various initiatives by the doe, non-government organisations and universities to train teachers to be able to respond to diverse learning needs in their classrooms. the impact of this training is hard to ascertain, and reports on the implementation of inclusive education are mixed, with some evidence of progress in state and independent schools (walton, 2011), and a lack of implementation due to inadequate funding and service delivery challenges (wildeman & nomdo, 2007). teachers’ attitudes towards inclusive education in south africa have been extensively researched, and prevailing negativity is often ascribed to a lack of training and preparation for inclusive classrooms (stofile & green, 2007). in 2006, a report from a roundtable discussion organised by the human sciences research council and disabled people of south africa noted that the studies showing teachers’ negative attitudes and lack of preparedness for inclusion had been overemphasised and offered little in terms of the way ahead for inclusive education. one of the key practical and implementation-focused research questions which emerged in the report was: what is the most appropriate human resource development strategy to ensure integrated and inclusive teaching, learning and management practice in all educational institutions in south africa? for example such as models of teacher development emerging from international experience and for the south african context and the basic minimum that must be provided to ensure effective implementation of an inclusive education system (lorenzo & schneider, 2006:9). 63walton & lloyd — from clinic to classroom this call for teacher training for the effective implementation of inclusive education is reiterated in the recently published integrated strategic planning framework for teacher education and development in south africa (doe, 2011:10) where inclusive teaching has been prioritised as it has been identified as a “key lever for improving quality across the system”. because of these policy imperatives, and the practical reality of 200.000 children and young people out of school, often because they cannot access the specialised support they require (rsa, 2010), research needs to focus on models of teacher development that emerge from the international experience and that are appropriate for the implementation of inclusive education in south africa. after a brief review of international and local models of teacher education for inclusion, we describe and reflect on the development and implementation of a postgraduate course in inclusive education offered at our university. the course is an option for a bachelor of education with honours (b.ed hons) degree – a one-year full-time or a two-year part-time qualification that for some students ‘rounds off’ their undergraduate qualification, and for others, is the first step in an academic career. our approach adopts “inquiry-as-stance” – cochran-smith and lytle’s (1999:289) term to describe work within an inquiry community, generating local knowledge, envisioning and theorising practice, and interpreting and interrogating others’ theory and research. inquiry-as-stance is linked in orientation to various approaches in practitioner inquiry, including action research and reflective practice, and is a valuable and documented way of coupling theory and practice in the scholarship of teacher education (christie & menter, 2009; cochran-smith, 2003; melville & bartley, 2010). central to the idea of inquiry-as-stance is the relationship of the knower(s) (in this instance, we as teacher educators and researchers) and knowledge. cochransmith (2003:21) maintains that “the practitioner/researcher is both user and creator of knowledge, which is always regarded as generative and tentative, to be questioned, challenged, connected, tried out, revised, reshaped, and held problematic”, and it is this conception of knowledge as being inseparable from the knower that resonates with mcniff’s (2008:352) understanding of knowledge as “generated by a knowing subject, from within a social context, and ... best communicated through narrativised accounts that tell the story of one’s learning”. we find this a useful way to position our work, situated as it is in our institutional context and reflecting a collaborative construction of knowledge about teacher education for inclusion. we identify ourselves in this article as ‘knowing subjects’, not devising theories or reporting findings, but rather, through a critical perspective on the research and theory of others (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999), and by observing, questioning and transforming the way in which we enable teachers to teach more inclusively, we are narrativising our learning. because south africa comes relatively late to inclusive education, we can learn a great deal from the international experience of teacher education for diversity. however, inclusive education is not a universally agreed upon concept, with nuances of meanings across and within countries. despite different policy frameworks and contextual realities, there are models, courses and topics that could inform local practice. models of teacher education for inclusion international models in the case of pre-service teachers, two broad approaches are evident. the first approach, which is less prominent, is that of an infused approach, where inclusive education is not taught as a separate course or curriculum, congruent with the idea that “inclusion cannot be taught in isolation” (forlin, 2010:8). this is exemplified by loreman (2010) who describes how the knowledge, skills and attitudes that would usually be taught in a single unit on inclusive or special education are spread across a number of courses or an entire programme. this is considered a promising model for teacher preparation, but one which requires further research. the second approach, which is not necessarily more effective (sharma, forlin & loreman, 2008), involves single unit courses that engage students with various aspects of the philosophy and practice of inclusion. examples of topics offered as part of pre-service teacher education for inclusion internationally are preparation to work with the families of children with ‘special education needs’ (hornby, 2010; scorgie, 2010); engaging in collaborative collegial relationships, such as co-teaching 64 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 (wang & fitch, 2010); interacting positively with people with disabilities (chambers & forlin, 2010; sharma et al., 2008), and apprenticeship in inclusive schools (waitoller & kozleski, 2010). while courses in inclusive education must be regarded as vital for pre-service teachers who may not proceed to further studies, our interest is in in-service teacher education, specifically at postgraduate level. there is, however, a paucity of literature about in-service professional development for inclusion in comparison to that of initial teacher preparation programmes. features and emphases of postgraduate courses that seem prominent internationally include collaborative inquiry (armstrong, moore, russell & schimanski, 2009; deppler, 2010) and site-based supported learning (ashman, 2010; o’gorman, 2010). local initiatives published research on teacher education and inclusion in south africa still tends to focus on issues of attitude (nel, muller, hugo, helldin et al., 2011), challenges that teachers face, and the skills and support that teachers perceive they need (eloff & kgwete, 2007; magare, kitching & roos, 2010), with relatively little attention being paid to models of teacher education that would enable teachers to address the challenges and gain skills. lessing and de witt (2007) report positive outcomes of a professional development workshop designed to empower teachers to work with learners who experience learning difficulties, and swart and oswald (2008) suggest that, among other things, teachers use workshops and courses to navigate their learning about inclusive education. williams, olivier and pienaar (2009) describe a model to develop teacher competence in inclusive education that involves a consultant working with a group of teachers. in the context of university studies, amin and ramrathan (2009) describe the benefits of first-year students doing practicum teaching in a context very different from their own experience and pienaar and lombard (2010) reflect on a teacher educator living the values of inclusivity as he teaches a module on inclusive education to undergraduate students. it appears that a particular gap in the literature on teacher education for inclusion in south africa is that of how a postgraduate qualification in inclusive education could be structured and presented in a way that draws on international best practice while reflecting local realities. to this end, we report and reflect on the pilot years (2009-2010) of our institution’s postgraduate teacher education course in inclusive education. each year 10-12 students were enrolled in this elective, having completed their core courses in the honours programme. they represented diverse races, and taught in a variety of urban schools, from well-resourced independent schools, to inner-city schools and special schools. among the group were preschool, primary and high-school teachers. their years of teaching experience varied, but none had had any previous formal learning about inclusive teaching. a rationale for the features of the course how a course is constructed, what it contains, and how it is taught reveals a great deal about the underlying ideologies and assumptions of the course designers, and prevailing institutional and contextual pressures. as we describe the features of the course and the rationale for the various components, we acknowledge that our biases and perspectives both determine and leach into the course content and how it is presented to students. epistemological considerations teachers come to a professional learning course with existing knowledge, experiences and theories about teaching and learning (deppeler, 2010). as far as south african teachers are concerned, naicker (2005:250) specifically mentions the challenge of teacher education for inclusion, given the legacy of conservative teacher training in the years of apartheid. in particular, he is concerned that conservative thinking and practices, which buttressed segregated education and which make special education practices seem like common sense, need to be replaced at a “pedagogical level”. bearing this in mind, we approached the design of the course anxious to avoid, if not disrupt three epistemological orientations. the first is that teaching inclusively is a matter of identifying ‘barriers to learning’ that individual learners may experience 65walton & lloyd — from clinic to classroom and then designing interventions or supports to address these barriers. we were concerned, rather, to present teaching and learning strategies that would be effective for all learners in a classroom. the second is related to this. we wanted to reject individual deficit constructions of difference or disability which are based on normalising discourses and which have in the past, and continue to perpetuate marginalisation and exclusion. instead, we wanted to focus critical attention to how prevailing curricula, cultures and practices in schools work together to marginalise certain learners, even those who are now ‘included’ (slee, 2011), and enable teachers to effect transformation in their schools and classrooms (dunbar-krige & van der merwe, 2010). the third is our unease with a traditional theory/practice dichotomy. in this regard, we find cochran-smith and lytle’s (1999:250) distinction between “knowledge-for-practice” and “knowledge-of-practice” useful. “knowledge-for-practice”, they maintain, is the formal knowledge and theory that teachers are taught to use to inform their practice, whereas “knowledge-of-practice” is “constructed in the context of use, intimately connected to the knower, and ... also inevitably a process of theorizing” (cochran-smith & lytle, 1999:273). we were thus concerned to generate and co-construct, with our students, knowledge-of-inclusive practice that blurred the boundaries between lecture theatre and classroom. in doing so, our approach emphasised teachers’ voice and lived classroom experiences, rather than imposing techniques and strategies on teachers based on our (or other researchers’) appraisal of what teachers need (armstong, moore, russell & schimanski, 2009; deppeler, 2010). a university course needs a curriculum, however, and as content and pedagogy are vital considerations (sharma et al., 2008), we mapped a course that would introduce students to inclusive classroom practices through contact sessions, readings and a day spent at an inclusive school, support them as they implemented these in their classrooms by site visits and creating a collaborative peer culture, and assess them authentically in ways that acknowledged their diverse characteristics and contexts. introduction to inclusive classroom practices the contact sessions with students were designed to explore and engage with various classroom strategies that are regarded in the international and local literature as supportive of learner diversity. whereas previous courses in this programme focused on individual interventions designed to be implemented in a clinical setting, we emphasised classroom practices which students could realistically and immediately implement in their classrooms. these included universal design and curriculum differentiation (endorsed by ferguson (2008) and loreman, deppeler and harvey (2010)); co-operative learning (recommended by sapon-shevin (2007) and loreman et al., (2010)); positive discipline and resilience (described by conway (2010) and roffey (2010)); using the concentrated language encounter (described in the south african context by donald and condy (2005)), and dialogic teaching (recommended by lyle (2008)). we also addressed generic topics that arose from teachers’ experiences, including teaching literacy and numeracy, and assessment, and responded to specific concerns raised about learners who experienced various difficulties. classroom implementation with supportive feedback advocating for school-based approaches to prepare teachers for inclusive practice, ainscow, howes, farrell and frankham (2003) argue that professional learning needs to be context-specific and directly related to teachers’ work in schools. in support of this, deppler (2010) mentions that a connection must be made between knowledge of instructional practices and the school environment. ashman (2010:146) maintains that a key issue in postgraduate professional learning is the “practical application of new knowledge ... that will change their classroom practices”. we thus asked that as teachers learnt about inclusive classroom strategies, they begin intentionally to implement these in their practice. recognising that students may experience what fullan (2007:171) calls an “implementation dip” which is a “dip in performance and confidence as one encounters an innovation that requires new skills and new understandings”, we realised that it was very important that lecturers respond to students’ efforts with feedback and reassurance. while classroom visits are not usually associated with postgraduate learning in south african universities, lecturers visited the students in their classrooms in order to provide a safety net of support and on-site 66 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 guidance as they implemented the inclusive strategies. we were aware that a supportive environment is necessary for change to happen (zimmerman, 2006), and that more positive attitudes to inclusive education are associated with the availability of support (chhabra, srivastava & srivastava, 2010:221). collaboration and participation collaboration and participatory teamwork among teachers is necessary for the effective implementation of inclusion in schools (ferguson, 2008; loreman et al., 2010) and promotes effective professional learning (o’gorman, 2010). while the lecture theatre cannot approximate the school staffroom, we did want to promote participation and collaboration and provide opportunities for students to give and receive support to one another, acknowledging that positive relationships and supportive interactions enable the creation of inclusive learning environments (magare et al., 2010). students were encouraged to share their experiences, advise one another, and pool their knowledge. in this regard, jita and ndlalane (2009) maintain that collaboration and sharing of knowledge among peers helps teachers to reflect on their practices as equals through meaningful social interaction. in addition, the students were consulted throughout the experience as to what they found to be helpful and otherwise, enabling them to participate in decision-making about their own learning and the course trajectory. reflective journal keeping a journal is a well-documented means whereby teachers can reflect on their practice (collier, 1999; ezati, ocheng, ssentamu & sikoyo, 2010; larrivee, 2000). during this course, students were required to complete at least one journal entry each week that required reflection on their experience and how they had integrated concepts and strategies from their course into their practice. this process of selfreflection necessitates an examination of conceptual frameworks: identifying what it is that structures how we think and act (blignaut, 2007). as a course requirement, the journal was assessed according to criteria given to the students at the outset of the course. their reflections were evaluated according to three levels of reflection, namely a tacit level, an aware level, and a strategic level (perkins, 1992 cited in dison, 2009). in essence, we were concerned with the extent to which students explained and elaborated on the implementation process, showing their capacity to evaluate their own teaching practices in the light of the theories of others, and by referring to the lecturers’ comments. in other words, we were asking them to generate knowledge-of-inclusive practice as they reflected on their work. observing inclusive teaching in practice waldron suggests that school teams visit other schools to observe inclusive teaching strategies, with the belief that teachers will find ideas more credible if they observe them being worked out in practice (cited in walther-thomas & brownell, 2001:177). o’gorman (2010:194) recommends that teachers “witness others’ practice” as this may offer insights into pedagogies for diverse learners. arrangements were made first for students to visit a local school where inclusive education is practised, with the opportunity to observe classes and engage the teachers in questions and discussion (walton, 2011). subsequently, when overlapping school terms made this difficult, video recordings of lessons from this local school were made, and the students watched these together, discussing and critiquing what they saw. critical incident report rather than set a standard examination at the end of the course which would deny the diversity of students’ characteristics and contexts, we set an examination equivalent in which students had to submit an action research report describing their learning through the year. we decided to use the vehicle of a ‘critical incident’ taken from a literacyand a numeracy-related lesson (or series of lessons) which had been described in the journal. we described critical moments/incidents in teaching practice as ‘defining moments’ or ‘turning points’, using haynes and murris’s (2011) suggestion that incidents in practice become significant when they dramatically contrast with previous experience. these events stand out 67walton & lloyd — from clinic to classroom and can become turning points in professional life. these authors maintain that the moment of surprise, awareness or noting the distinctive character of such events is a first step, but for the episode to become critical it has to be interpreted and interrogated. the students were asked to choose incidents that disturbed or excited them about their developing inclusive practice. the requirements of the report included a literature review, a reflection on relevant theories, and an explanation of how the critical incident had occurred within the context of the lesson. reflections on change the presentation of the course and the students’ implementation of inclusive practices foregrounded the challenges and complexities of change. not only did students have to grapple with making changes to their classroom practices by introducing different ways of teaching and learning, but we were also challenged by new ways of being ‘lecturers’ and of presenting and assessing a course. while the theory and literature on educational change is beyond the scope of this article, we find that many of the challenges encountered in the presentation and implementation of the course are issues of change, rather than issues of inclusive education. for example, while change is “a highly personal experience” (fullan, 1991:127), it is ideally worked out in collaboration with others (fullan, 1991; swart & pettipher, 2007). although students enjoyed collaborative relationships with each other and with lecturers in support of their changing classroom practices, many met with scepticism, rebuttal and hostility from their colleagues in schools. reasons for resistance to change among teachers are well documented (for example, by zimmerman (2006)) and include entrenched habits; threats to their expertise and identity; lack of understanding of reasons for change, and the fear of the unknown. individual students often found it difficult to sustain their innovations in institutional contexts that were indifferent to their efforts, or where colleagues undermined their work. mcintyre (2009:607) gives credence to this, noting that “... the concept of inclusive pedagogy itself is disruptive to the status quo in many schools, and will, no doubt, be an uncomfortable idea for many school staff”. change is multidimensional, and in this course lecturers and students worked in the three dimensions of change described by fullan (2001:26): the use of new materials; the use of new teaching approaches, and the alteration of beliefs. this multidimensionality accounts for the “complexity, difficulty, uncertainty and ambivalence” that blignaut (2007:50) associates with change. we were challenged (as were the participants in gravett’s (2004) study on transformative learning) by the sense of losing control of the learning process, as it moved from the familiar terrain of our lecture theatres to the unpredictability of students’ classrooms. we could not teach about inclusive pedagogy without using these teaching approaches ourselves, and we were thus challenged with how to teach dialogically, how to differentiate curriculum, instruction and assessment, and how to promote cooperative learning in a postgraduate learning context. evaluation weekly feedback helped us to pace the course to meet students’ needs, and to know when to pause for emphasis and when to move on. as this course represented a new way of teaching an honours module, we were concerned to access students’ formal evaluations of the course. to this end, they filled in a standard university course evaluation form and we drew on their journal entries to understand more about what helped or hindered their learning. we have limited our use of extracts of students’ responses for the purpose of illustration in this article, being aware of the danger of using others’ voices manipulatively (armstrong et al., 2009), in particular when disembedding statements from their original textual context. it emerged that the aspects of the course that students highlighted as being particularly beneficial were the on-site supervision visits which, in turn, led to positive and supportive relationships with lecturers. it appears that this gave students both the impetus and the encouragement needed to try new methodologies. in particular, students seem to have appreciated the mediation of the feelings of panic, frustration, anxiety, and inadequacy they experienced as they began to implement changes to their teaching. reabetswe, in an inner-city primary school, described feeling “frightened” and anxious about whether her classroom strategies were going to work. janet (a foundation phase teacher in a well-resourced suburban school) 68 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 mentioned: “the help and support from the lecturers was very good. they didn’t always give the impression that implementation worked the first time around. they described all angles of the situation. this helped when i thought i’d failed as i knew it wasn’t a major problem and that i could try again.” student responses to the course have generally been encouraging. helen, a preschool teacher stated: “this course has made me a better educator. i am able to adapt content and context to meet the needs of learners in my class and, as a result, they are benefitting”. however, while this remains a popular honours option, we have to contend with various threats to the sustainability of the course as it is currently presented. because the course is structured around classroom application of inclusive pedagogies, it effectively excludes teachers who are not currently teaching, either because they are studying full-time, or because they have been unable to secure a teaching post, or because they are employed in another sector and they are retraining with a view to returning to teaching. some arrangements have been made for such students to spend time in a local school, but this has been far from satisfactory. compounding this are the institutional and higher education debates about ‘professional’ versus ‘academic’ postgraduate qualifications in education, and how a course such as this could or should be positioned in the academy. instead of rendering our research and reflection on the pilot years of the course irrelevant, such challenges point to the pressing need for a scholarship of teacher education that will result in the effective implementation of inclusive education in south africa. conclusion we have deliberately avoided writing this article as research ‘findings’, resisting the closure that the words ‘finding’ or ‘found’ imply. instead, we have documented our ‘searchings’ as we seek a model for teacher education for inclusion that is simultaneously theoretically rigorous and practically applicable. our experience suggests that knowledge-for-inclusive education that is transmitted in the lecture theatre and that only requires that teachers understand and articulate inclusive strategies may not be sufficient. enabling teachers to facilitate access and participation in the curriculum for all learners requires that teachers develop a collaborative and classroom-based knowledge-of-inclusive practice by implementing, reflecting on and theorising inclusive pedagogies. references ainscow m, howes a, farrell p & frankham j 2003. making sense of the development of inclusive practices. european journal of special needs 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(ed), teacher education for inclusion. london: routledge, 112-119. wildeman ra & nomdo c 2007. implementation of inclusive education: how far are we? idasa budget information service. occasional papers. williams e, olivier t & pienaar c 2009. a model to revitalise teacher competence. acta academica, 41(4):195-217. zimmerman j 2006. why some teachers resist change and what principals can do about it. nassp bulletin, 90:238-249. 12 training as a tool for community development: 25 years of experience in sparsely populated rural areas in cuenca, spain josé m. díaz-puente technical university of madrid francisco josé gallego moreno association institute of community development of cuenca ramón zamorano technical university of madrid training is a key tool for community development processes in rural areas. this training is made difficult by the characteristics of the rural areas and their population. furthermore, the methods used by traditional training bodies are not adapted to the peculiarities of these areas. this article analyses the training methodology used by the institute of community development, cuenca (idc cuenca). for 25 years, this association has been applying a training method specifically conceived and designed for sparsely populated rural areas. this methodology, known as ‘training/development’ is characterised by the implementation of a professional project, the creation of work groups, adaptation and flexibility. the results show that this type of training is a tool for promoting and developing human resources; a catalyst for starting economic and personal promotion projects; and a means for involving the rural population in community development processes. keywords: training/development tool; education; endogenous development; rural development; spain introduction the failure of the exogenous development model in generating even and sustainable development in rural regions (hammer, 2001; gonzález & garcía, 1998) led to the implementation of endogenous development approaches in europe’s rural development policies during the 1980s and early 1990s (lowe, ray, ward, wood & woodward, 1999; ray, 2000). these approaches are based on promoting local resources and encouraging local human capital to participate as active agents in a development process (lowe et al., 1999; rooij, milone, tvrdoñová & keating, 2010) that involves a change which should be adopted at a pace that is in line with the population’s needs (caride, 1992; eloff & ebersohn, 2001). in order to enhance the most important endogenous resource, human capital, comprehensive education programmes should be carried out (orduna, 2000; razeto, 1990) in such a way that the educational process of developing local human resource becomes an active agent in the development process (calvin, 1992; orduna, 2003). this process requires active and organised participation among the community (díazpuente, cazorla & de los ríos, 2009) with real content (roodt & stuurman, 2011) in order to foster a process of learning by doing (bentley, 2011) and be able to create a network of associates available to the community (díaz-gonzález, 2000; muthukrishna & sader, 2004). however, in many cases, disadvantaged communities may need an external stimulus, planned by an external agent that encourages the population to begin this development process (fragoso & lucio-villegas, 2010; melo, 2000). studies carried out in rural areas show that individuals with a higher level of education demonstrate more participative behaviours and show leadership in social, economic and cultural aspects (gasperini & maguire, 2002; kuenzi, 2000). these people make better use of information, sense the need for change, anticipate measures for solving problems, have better forward vision, and are in favour of participating in government programmes (gasson, 1998). however, the majority of rural areas are outside of the normal 13diaz-puente, et al. — training as a tool for community development scope of training. this is partly due to the fact that, although rural areas have similar characteristics, each is different and has distinct problems that must be considered individually. these features restrict the effectiveness of the training in rural areas. on the one hand, there are determining factors of the environment itself, namely the dispersal of the population, which makes it difficult to participate in faceto-face sessions; the scarce implementation of new technologies, which makes communication difficult; and insufficient training resources and infrastructure (tena, 2004). on the other hand, there is the social situation, with significant unemployment problems, widespread exodus and a lack of participation (andrés, 1996). in addition, there can also be situations of personal hardship which, in many cases, presents serious training and educational shortfalls (caride, 1992; chosson & loupias, 1981). furthermore, the methodology and structure that the traditional training bodies offer (vocational training, occupational training and continuous training) suffer from a series of implementation problems in rural areas. the training content responds to a given syllabus and not to an analysis of the training needs and socioeconomic context. this results in training activity that does not facilitate finding a job in the area. the training programmes are not coordinated; are independent from one another; and do not follow a common path that connects the various agents involved. this leads to a lack of coordination between training activities and other tools for supporting the development process. in many cases, the profile of the technical teams is insufficient for carrying out training activities (european commission, 1997; tena, 2004). in order to compensate for these problems, different authors have suggested a number of methodological indications aimed at bodies that provide training in rural territories. we will highlight the main four: 1) carry out a permanent analysis of the context and training needs in order to respond to the needs of the population (de groof & lauwers 2001; escarbajal, 1992; tena, 2004); 2) plan training activity and relate it to a development project or programme (escarbajal, 1992; leader european observatory, 1999; melo, 2000); 3) promote participation and involvement of the population with regard to training activity (caride, 1992; hubbard & spencer, 2009; van riezen, 1996); and 4) seek a multi-agent focus that aims for synergies between objectives, targeted groups and training providers (tena, 2004) and the incorporation of training within the wider set of development processes (mokubung, weber & amsterdam, 2009). this article analyses the training methodology used by the institute of community development (idc cuenca), which has been acting as an external development agent in rural areas in the province of cuenca, spain, for 25 years. in this province spain’s economic development during the second half of the 20th century led to the depopulation of its rural areas due to rural-urban migration. this halved cuenca’s population (collantes, 2007). in this context the idc’s training methodology, known as training/ development, is especially designed for sparsely populated rural areas. it takes into account the problems and individual characteristics of rural areas and responds specifically to the needs and abilities of the audience as well as their lifestyle potential. during these 25 years the training/development processes have become tools for promoting and training the rural population. these programmes have become a catalyst for personal and economic projects that have promoted associationism and participation of the rural population in the development of their local areas. the idc cuenca – serving the area the idc cuenca started its work in the province of cuenca in 1985. it was created as a charitable association with the objective of contributing to the comprehensive development and promotion of the most disadvantaged rural areas in the province of cuenca. its principles are endogenous development, through the practice of social animation, promoting participation of the population with regard to improving their lifestyles and favouring these actions over sensed or requested needs. its strategy is based on four pillars: 1) to guarantee access to information for the rural population; 2) to improve training of human resources; 3) to help create a dynamic network of associates; and 4) to help all of these processes through animation strategies. the main objectives of the idc cuenca can be divided into three major lines of action. the first is the revaluation and promotion of human resources and the social framework which allows top-down, 14 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 endogenous rural development. the second line is the preservation and promotion of the area’s identity; the culture of its population; the conservation of natural resources; and the promotion of quality, ecological agriculture. the third is to strive for innovation and the introduction of quality criteria in the production processes of rural companies, and to boost computer literacy and the socialisation of new technologies. to achieve this, the idc cuenca has a multidiscipline team of professionals consisting of 19 members who are highly qualified in different areas. the association is structured under two large areas of operation: development services and internal services. each area is also divided into departments and each department has a coordinator who is responsible for the department’s resources. the technicians receive tasks and instructions from the association’s management body. at the same time, they enjoy a certain level of autonomy to carry out the tasks in which they specialise. this allows them to achieve a more flexible and fluid structure. the geographical scope of the association’s activity is the province of cuenca, which is located in the northeast of the autonomous community of castilla-la mancha, towards the centre of the iberian peninsula. it is one of the most sparsely populated regions in europe with a population density of 12.7 people per square kilometre, well below the national average of 90.6 and the european union average of 113.5 (spanish national institute of statistics [snis], 2008). the population is spread across 338 population centres covering 238 municipalities. eighty per cent of these areas have a population density of less than ten people per square kilometre, and 46% have less than four people per square kilometre (snis, 2010). the area shows a clear tendency towards dominance in agricultural activity; a shortage of services and training; shortfalls in communication (with regard to the road infrastructure and currently linked to problems with information and communication technology); and social deconstruction. these tendencies are reflected in the programme for sustainable rural development for the period 2010-2014 in which three of the five areas of cuenca are classified by the spanish national authorities as rural areas that need to be regenerated due to their low population density, the dominance in agricultural activity, low salaries, their geographic isolation, and difficulties with territorial structuring (spanish ministry of environment, rural and marine issues, 2010). the training/development methodology used by idc cuenca the technical team of professionals at idc cuenca carries out two types of training activity: specialist training activity (conferences, seminars) for awareness and animation to cover specific subjects with particular groups; and training/development programmes focused on equipping the rural population with the technical and personal skills they need in order to be active agents who are responsible for the development processes in their areas. the association channels public resources and expands on the relevant training content of the rural development programmes’ framework by running the courses which are promoted by the civil service within employment programmes or formalising direct agreements with local or provincial authorities. therefore, the training activity is free-of-charge or has a minimal cost for participants. training/development programmes are formed, taking into consideration the initial difficult conditions in the rural areas. traditional training systems (vocational training, occupational training and continuous training) are not the most suitable. this is due to the lack of flexibility of their content and the fact that they focus on specific activities with objectives defined by the training body which makes them ineffective in the rural context. in view of the need to improve on these models, the training/development model surfaces because it combines people’s needs or interests with the needs of the labour market (tena, 2004). in the last 25 years the idc cuenca has configured the training/development programmes in order to avoid the problems associated with training in rural areas. these programmes have four main characteristics: 1) creating work groups as training, motivation and participation units; 2) carrying out projects as structured training elements; 3) adapting training content so that it is more relevant to participants and the environment; and 4) flexibility with regard to content. 15diaz-puente, et al. — training as a tool for community development the creation of work groups as a unit for training is a characteristic that encourages active participation from people during the training process; promotes the participants’ involvement in the objectives that are being pursued; and motivates people to continue and complete each of the proposed phases. the formation and stages that work groups go through are closely linked to the project. this element is the catalyst and key objective of the activity that the work group will carry out throughout the training/ development process, from the initial idea to its implementation. without an idea there is no project and training wouldn’t make sense. the adaptation characteristic has a double meaning: adaptation to the environment and to the people. with regard to the environment, a thorough understanding of the area enables detection of real possibilities for taking action. an understanding of the people facilitates the design of training content in line with their previous knowledge (chosson, 1994). as a result, this facilitates an understanding of the content without compromising on the breadth or depth. the final characteristic is the flexibility of the content. this does not correspond to previously established programmes. instead it relates to the possibilities of promoting people, the project objectives and the needs of the area or local community. training that is based on an unrealistic approach for the environment – or has objectives that are not wanted by the participants – serves no purpose (champetier, 1995). the training/development methodology is a gradual process that is not simply based on training. active participation from people, motivation and self-esteem must also be considered (wallace, 2008). it starts with a thorough and genuine understanding of the area. to achieve this idc cuenca analyses the needs, interests, abilities and expectations of the rural population and develops ideas to propose for intervention. subsequently, it captures these ideas in professional or personal promotion projects; analyses other similar successful experiences; provides training in collective and individual techniques and skills; and encourages teamwork for carrying out feasible projects. finally, it supports work groups and project instigators by accompanying them and providing technical support to them when projects begin (see figure 1). figure 1: methodology of the training/development process source: idc cuenca. in the first phase working as a group is used as a way of facilitating people’s mutual understanding and establishing a teamwork ethic. the first task that the group carries out is a reality check, which allows the participants to discover their strengths and those of their environment. this is a fundamental activity on which a large part of the training process is based. project ideas emerge following a study of the environment. in the second phase stable groups are formed of people who will work on a common project. in this phase other projects are also analysed. phase 1 discovering the environment carrying out practical work emerging ideas phase 2 consolidation of ideas draft project study of experiences group work garry out project phase 3 accompaniment/ technical support implementation project evolution of the group and the project 17diaz-puente, et al. — training as a tool for community development (uncear, 1988). as a result each project was adapted to the individual’s potential as well as the area’s potential. it is important that the participants take ownership of the project in order to avoid a lack of motivation or giving up on training (wallace, 2008). the biggest threats for an individual or group when undertaking a project include becoming pessimistic and not believing in their own abilities. the vast majority of the solutions to these problems come from within the group or through external relationships. active participation in practical activities – such as carrying out studies of their environment; site visits to similar projects; participation in informal discussions; or communication with experts – encourages reflection, analysis and decision making, and has a motivational and stimulating effect. the results that were obtained indicate both social and economic impact (uncear, 1988). the creation of economic projects in disadvantaged areas helps to establish the population; create new services and improve existing services; and strengthen self-confidence among rural residents who begin to see the possibility of improving their standard of living. one example of the participants of pile activity stands out. since the age of 15, this individual was responsible for selling cheese from the family farm. this young person had to temporarily stop selling cheese while the pile training activity was being carried out. this was due to stricter health rules that prevented selling unless the facilities are approved by the government authorities. the end result of their participation in the training activity was a development of a project to build and implement a cheese dairy. the implementation of the project required full commitment to the town and local area. once the first challenge was overcome, new ones arose. as economic activity increased and production expanded, the transportation of milk and distribution of the cheese slowed down the company’s profitability. the key was to increase direct sales. once again, as an exercise to analyse the environment, the individual designed and supplied contents to an ethnological museum in the cheese dairy, with technical support from idc cuenca. the idea of creating a museum was to attract visitors and tourists to the factory. the result was an increase in direct sales which, in turn, increased the company’s profitability (m saiz guijarro, company director, personal communication). the improvements in communication, the increase in local services and the developments in rural tourism in the area allowed this person to undertake a new project aimed at providing rural accommodation. once again, by means of a project, he built a series of rural apartments that provide the town with a new service that was previously not available. these projects now involve his wife and three children and provide work for four people. the work group: together, we can another of the threats to the rural environment is the lack of organisation within the population and the destructuration of their society (lowe et al., 1999). the idc cuenca promotes participation and the organisation of students to improve living standards as a result of the knowledge they acquire. in the local development process the responsibility lies with the community. therefore, it is necessary to have organised groups of individuals who act as one team (sanderson & polson, 1939). ongoing work with a group of people enables activities to be carried out parallel to training/ development programmes. this is the case in specialised, informative training activity (conferences, seminars). the intention is that participants truly recognise the possibility of establishing themselves as a stable group; are aware of the reality; and analyse their living environment. the objective is that the organised group proposes project ideas to meet its needs and then carries them out. in this context the idc cuenca adapts the rhythm of the activities to the rhythm of the group’s work because it is the group that really leads the project. as a result the group members are able to acquire a good teamwork ethic. consolidation and group work in the rural world is very difficult to achieve. several factors can lead to the group not working: distrust between members; personal interests; apathy of its members; tiredness of the executive boards; lack of team spirit; or activities outside of the group. the case we are going to focus on took place in el picazo, one of the few horticulture production areas in the province of cuenca. in the 1980s horticultural farming was suffering from a lack of modernisation, 18 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 and was typically a family-run farming model with low qualification levels among producers. between 1988 and 1992 the idc cuenca delivered a course in cut flowers, a course in growing indoor plants and a course in business management in cooperatives. fifteen producers took part. the objective of these courses was to technically train the farmers. this training resulted in an increase in the modernisation of production; the construction of greenhouses; and the introduction of drip irrigation. however, the real added value of the training and parallel activity was the consolidation of a group of professionals as a stable team with common interests; thus, eliminating the distrust among them and equipping them with the necessary tools to take on a future project together. after overcoming the first challenge of modernising production, the group of farmers – having faced up to reality – identified the need to differentiate their high quality products and improve marketing channels. the idc cuenca collaborated on a project to “design a quality brand for horticultural production in the municipality of el picazo”, by providing assistance and technical support. the first step was the creation of the association of horticultural companies in el picazo, “huerta el picazo”, in 2003. the group included nine producers. following the creation of the association, the members set the pace for the design and subsequent registration of their brand and, in 2005, the community brand, “huerta el picazo”, was born. adapting the content: a necessity the adaptation of training content to suit the participants is a universal concept that idc cuenca prioritises in order to achieve objectives. it is important to use content that is adapted to the needs and practicalities of everyday life. this adaptation enables participants to be constantly involved in the training process and encourages an active attitude for acquiring new knowledge. however, adaptation towards a specific group can lead to a reduction in the number of participants in relation to the planned objectives, which is restrictive in a sparsely populated area. on the other hand, the strict nature of examinations – with the aim to target training activity at a specific industry – can exclude other groups who are interested in that training activity. the case that is being presented is an experience of computer literacy in the agricultural sector in which over 200 farmers spread across 21 municipalities participated. it is vital that agricultural companies adapt to technological changes. after analysing the environment the idc cuenca proposed a training programme aimed at exposing the farmers to new technologies. the programme is based on “fermin”, a farmer from the area. it involves helping him to search for information on the internet; send e-mails to suppliers; write letters using a word processor; look for information on the cartography of his land; create invoices using a spreadsheet; and organise clients’ addresses in a database. as a result participants discover how using new technology can make their day-to-day tasks easier. participants are constantly involved in the training process. solving these practical cases fosters a proactive attitude for learning new skills. in addition to solving practical case studies, participants also learn to relate their training to their real-life situations, incorporating the use of new technologies into their day-to-day business management. flexibility of content: à la carte training in addition to adaptation, flexibility is an important universal characteristic that the idc cuenca applies to its training processes. it is very useful in different situations. one of these situations is when the majority of the course’s participants have roles that prevent them from attending courses during normal hours. for this reason, the sessions are scheduled at convenient times for the participants and take place at locations that require minimal travel. another situation arises when the distrust among people from a particular sector limits participation in training activities or leads to falsifying information. flexibility is also crucial when training is provided to groups of people or organisations that carry out the same professional activity, but who possess different levels of knowledge of the training content. a situation where flexibility is particularly needed is for so-called ‘à la carte training’. the methodology that idc cuenca uses is based on two factors: 1) personalised service at the participant’s workplace or home, including agreed-upon session dates based on their availability; and 2) tailored training content focusing 19diaz-puente, et al. — training as a tool for community development on the needs of each participant. in these programmes the general training content established to meet the objectives is divided into flexible modules that are adapted to the participant’s knowledge and needs. one of these à la carte training experiences is included in the “homogenization of quality in small and medium rural tourism enterprises (smes)” project, in which 13 promoters across ten municipalities participated. the idc cuenca designed an à la carte training programme, divided into five modules, to provide technical consultancy to the promoters and support them with the creation and implementation of the initiative. each of the promoters received personalised training, consisting of four modules, adapted considerably with regard to content and length of training in accordance with the promoter’s previous experience. the other module was delivered as a group session for all of the participants. the result was that the smes from the tourism industry acquired a standard for offering a quality image; thus, differentiating them from other areas and positioning rural tourism as an industry capable of generating an alternative income for the rural economy. conclusion training activities have been strongly linked to the results of the endogenous development that the idc cuenca pursues and to the characteristics of the province’s rural areas and their population. training/ development has been an important tool for promoting and up-skilling the workforce in rural areas. this revaluation of human resources has been a catalyst for professional projects and for projects that promote people who have helped to preserve a sense of cultural identity, associationism, and the involvement of the rural population in their development. other results of the training activity allowed the introduction of quality criteria and innovative techniques in production processes among rural companies, and the implementation of new communication and information technologies. the training/development methodology has enabled the training activity carried out by idc cuenca to be effective in sparsely populated rural areas. the analysis of these 25 years of experience suggests that we consider training in these areas as a universal concept which serves as a support tool and fits in with the other development tools. before training, an analysis of the area should be carried out in order to understand the needs of the population. the training that is delivered should be adapted to the needs of the population and should be applied practically by considering day-to-day life. it should be flexible in content, timing and training locations. structuring this training around a project and a stable work group was crucial to the success achieved by this methodology. both methodological characteristics complement each other during their evolution and promote the involvement of participants in the approach and the objectives being pursued. this activity should not move too fast or too slow, but it should be adjusted to the pace set by the participants during each training process. once the training/development programme has finished, it is important to adjust to the pace of assimilation of the change in each circumstance. in general, training needs change as the training/development programme evolves. during the first stages general training content prevails, along with reinforcement activities to create a trusting environment and consolidation of personal skills, as well as the new initiatives’ animation activities. subsequently, training needs become more precise, technical and personalised, and training tends to confuse 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(2012) educators wanting prof l naudé* department of psychology, faculty of the humanities, university of the free state, south africa dr a botha department of psychology, faculty of the humanities, university of the free state, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i1.5 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(1): 54-65 © uv/ufs http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.5 55 naudé & botha it’s a virtual child! to increase student satisfaction in graduate school should expand experiential learning opportunities. furthermore, stansbury and munro (2013) found that implementing nontraditional teaching methods (such as a video game to teach research methods), increased students’ knowledge, interest and motivation. wilson (2013) added the positive impact of interactive activities on students’ attitudes, and blessing, blessing and fleck (2012) suggested the use of social networking sites (such as twitter). lastly, twenge (2013), who did research regarding the teaching strategies applicable to generation me students, recommended the use of (amongst others) interactive learning material, images and video clips, as well as incorporating frequent and honest feedback on performance. thus, the aim of this study was to explore postgraduate psychology students’ development, as facilitated by the use of an interactive web-based simulation programme, my virtual child©. a social constructivist developmental approach, with specific focus on cognitive development towards self-authorship, served as the overarching framework for the study. 1. theoretical grounding the social constructivist perspective underpins the current study as it is hypothesised that the use of a non-traditional, interactive teaching method, the my virtual child© programme (as will be discussed in the next section), facilitates this collective construction of knowledge. more specifically, a social constructivist developmental approach is taken in order to also illustrate the link between social constructionism and students’ cognitive development. the theory of baxter-magolda (1998) on the development of students’ ways of knowing is especially relevant. learning is a process of constructing (rather than receiving) reality. knowledge is therefore not static or given to passive observers, but constructive in its origin and development – in order to know something, it must be acted upon (piaget, 1976). theorists such as dewey (1963), kolb (1981; 1984) and piaget (1976) all agree that learning happens when attention, energies and abilities are focused on solving real-world dilemmas, and that learning involves a transaction between the person and the environment. these ideas are marked by a shift towards social constructionism – the collective construction of knowledge, where the teacher is decentred and the search for knowledge is more dialogic, student-directed and reflective. learning is further emphasised as a social practice based on ideas of connectedness, an ethic of care and the importance of community (fear et al., 2002; west, 2004). as students in higher education are challenged to construct knowledge, their cognitive development is facilitated through various positions of reasoning – from more dualistic divisions of life towards the ability to commit within relativity and embrace the tension of paradoxes and polarities (perry, 1981; west, 2004). considering students’ ways of knowing, baxter-magolda (1998; 2004) proposed four stances of knowing. firstly, absolute knowing where knowledge is seen as certain, possessed by certain authorities, and information acquisition is prioritised. secondly, transitional knowing where some knowledge is seen as certain and some as uncertain, and the process of learning becomes more important than acquiring information. thirdly, independent knowing where most knowledge is seen as uncertain and independent thinking and the right to express views are favoured and lastly, contextual knowing where knowledge claims are relative, ideas of others are interpreted in context and independent thinking is valued. 56 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) baxter-magolda (1998; 2007; 2008) referred to self-authorship as the manner in which individuals create meaning and form a sense of the nature of knowledge based on their experiences. this self-authorship requires trusting one’s ability to make knowledge claims, the confidence to construct knowledge, the capacity to make decisions relating to one’s personal views and the internal identity to act on one’s beliefs. it also presupposes a capacity towards interdependence; hearing other’s views without being consumed by those views and the ability to balance various different views. meaning making is therefore a balancing process between individual worldview and the context (baxter-magolda, 2008; 2009). higher education should prepare students to rise to the challenges of contemporary society by assisting them in authoring their own knowledge. facilitation of the development of self-authorship requires higher education to validate students as knowers. this entails educators respecting students’ current ways of knowing and thinking styles, situate learning in students’ experiences, as well as engaging students in exploring multiple perspectives and the mutual construction of meaning (baxter-magolda, 1998). 2. context of this study in this research study, the learning experiences of students in a developmental psychology module of a postgraduate programme are considered. the aim of the developmental psychology module is to equip students to form theoretically integrated perspectives regarding human development; describe the progression of physical, cognitive, personality and social development during the lifespan and demonstrate sensitivity regarding the genetic aspects, environmental factors and cultural contexts affecting human development. this six-month module entailed weekly contact sessions (consisting of lectures, class discussions, student presentations and debates), as well as individual and group assessment tasks (such as a semester test and a group portfolio). the uniqueness of this module lies in the incorporation of the my virtual child© programme. my virtual child© is a comprehensive and interactive web-based simulation programme developed by frank manis (2011) and regulated by pearson publishers. the module coordinator decided to include the my virtual child© programme, since it provided an experiential learning opportunity enriching and deepening students’ learning experiences. more specifically, the coordinator envisioned that this programme might be able to facilitate the development of self-authorship (baxtor-magolda, 1998) due to the programme encouraging students to construct knowledge, make decisions and act on their own beliefs. aligning with the aim of this developmental psychology module, the programme presented students with a growing child, demonstrating the progression of development in the physical, cognitive, personality and social domains of development. this interactive website is aligned with a chronologically organised textbook and simulates the classic sequences of normative development, the common experiences (and variations) of individuals from birth up to the age of 18 years. the conceptual foundations of the programme are eclectic, integrating various theoretical perspectives, such as ideas from piaget, vygotsky, bronfenbrenner, kohlberg, social learning theory, attachment theory, developmental systems theory and family systems theory (manis, 2011). at the beginning of the module, students register and receive a password for accessing the programme. after completing a basic questionnaire regarding the student’s personality and salient characteristics, each student creates a virtual child. thereafter the student has the opportunity to take on the role of parent and raise this child from birth up to the age of 18 years. the programme randomly provides certain scenarios including immediate 57 naudé & botha it’s a virtual child! parenting tasks, such as decisions regarding various milestones (e.g. whether to send a child to pre-school) and unplanned events (such as a teenage pregnancy). this prompts students to make decisions and respond via multiple-choice options. these decisions require the student to have an advanced knowledge base of normal development from infancy to late adolescence. the student’s answers imply certain parenting actions that will affect the child’s course of development over time. students’ responsibility to rely on their own knowledge and opinions to make decisions regarding their virtual children may facilitate a process of selfauthorship as conceptualised by baxtor-magolda (2008). guidelines provided in the my virtual child© instructor’s manual were followed to structure the experience by using reflective questions such as “what theories of child development are you following?”, written assignments and class discussions. one aspect in which this module deviated from the general instructions, was the incorporation of group work. at the beginning of the module, the module coordinator allocated students to diverse groups of three to four students. a virtual child was created for each group and the parenting of this child was assigned as a team effort. exposure to multiple perspectives in such a team could therefore stimulate the development of self-authorship in the students. this project was completed over a period of six months, during which the students were expected to not only meet regularly, but also frequently visit the online site, complete weekly reflection reports and report on their learning at the end of the semester by compiling a group portfolio. 3. method a qualitative research approach was followed in order to explore postgraduate psychology students’ development during the my virtual child© programme. participants and sampling: in this qualitative study, research participants included all the students registered for a postgraduate module in developmental psychology, in the department of psychology, university of the free state. there were 29 registered students, with 23 being women and six being men. furthermore, 14 were afrikaans speaking, nine english and six participants spoke sesotho and other indigenous african languages. eight students were purposively sampled for the focus group at the end of the semester. the focus group consisted of three males and five females, of whom five were afrikaans-, two english and one sesotho-speaking. data collection: various forms of data were collected. firstly, all students were expected to complete an individual weekly reflection report articulating their academic, social and personal learning processes. the reflection reports provided valuable information regarding the students’ learning processes and their challenges experienced throughout the process. secondly, the summative portfolios completed at the end of the semester were used to gain insight into students’ final thoughts on their achievement of the overall outcomes of the module (such as the integration between theory and practice, evaluations of the group’s ability to raise a child, and general reflections on human development). thirdly, a focus group was conducted at the end of the semester. a semi-structured interview schedule with questions posed in order to facilitate the group discussion included questions regarding the learning experiences and challenges of the my virtual child© programme (e.g. in what way, if any, did my virtual child© contribute to your learning? how did you apply your knowledge to the decisions you made regarding your child? what did you learn from your group members? how did your group members challenge you? in hindsight, which decisions would you have made differently?). 58 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) finally, the personal reflections of the module coordinator, who also acted as a participant observer in the learning experience, were used to corroborate information. ethical aspects: students were informed about the intention to use this implementation of the module for research and evaluation purposes. all students were informed about the aim of the research process, what their participation would entail, and which information would be used. respecting the autonomy of the students, each student’s written informed consent was obtained; they were assured of the voluntary nature of the research, their right to withdraw at any moment in time and the confidential nature of the information. data analysis: being interested in the complexity of students’ ways of knowing, the researchers employed a constructivist developmental lens (baxter-magolda, 2009) in analysing the data. data were analysed by means of a thematic analysis approach as proposed by braun and clark (2006). thematic analysis provides a rigorous method for identifying and analysing patterns within data (braun & clark, 2006). the method allows flexibility in the choice of theoretical framework and results in a rich and complex description of the themes emerging from the data. 4. results in the following section, the eight themes emerging from the thematic analysis are presented. in order to provide authenticity to the analyses, direct quotes from participants are provided (some of these quotes have been translated from the original afrikaans contributions; minor language editing was done for clarity). theme 1: a novel, challenging and authentic way of constructing knowledge the my virtual child© experience provided a novel and original way of discovering and applying information that facilitated participants’ eagerness to learn. participants took the activity very serious due to the authenticity of the experience. they mentioned they “responded as i would to a real child” and “this module is so real, like you can apply it in reality”. students opined that these real-life experiences were in some ways more appropriate than the textbook. for example, a student stated, “because the textbook goes very much like ‘this is how psychologists do things’ and this [my virtual child© programme] is as close to it as actually being a parent and experiencing all these things”. participants also enjoyed the challenge and admitted to learning more by “being thrown into the deep end”. using descriptive words such as visible and visceral learning, participants reported the real-life experiences aided memory, understanding, and insight: “like when i studied for the exams, i remembered what my child did, and then it did somehow just make the work easier for me to understand”. theme 2: absolute knowledge, subjective knowing and relativism interplay was observed between the value of theory and practice. on the one hand, many participants articulated the importance of textbook knowledge as a guide in directing their learning and decision-making processes. they mentioned the manner in which the theoretical knowledge assisted them in being prepared and making informed decisions. on the other hand, the practical experiences assisted in illuminating the theory. through the practical activities, participants stated they “became more aware of theories” and experienced “an improved understanding of the topics covered, seeing that they become personally relevant with the raising of the virtual child”. through the practical experiences, the memorising of theories became easier. for example, one participant reported that, “cognitive schemas are 59 naudé & botha it’s a virtual child! also now created for various developmental processes, which makes the studying of the topics somewhat easier”. however, an interesting contrast was observed regarding the importance participants attached to theory. while some participants regarded theory as the ultimate answer, others focused more on their personal experiences or their gut feeling. those prioritising theory mentioned knowledge made it easier to be a better parent. with “textbooks lying all over,” these participants leaned strongly on textbook information. they often went back to the textbook and said, “we found that the theory we learnt in class prepared us to be able to know in which developmental stages the child is. this made it easier for us to respond to the needs of our child. without this knowledge, it probably would have been trial and error”. another participant mentioned, “i think if one wants to raise a perfect child, it would have been better to study first”. some participants used prior experience, which they called “day-to-day theories of raising a child” and trusted their intuition: “we didn’t apply any knowledge out of the textbook – we just answered the questions as we felt it was fitting to us”. a few participants attempted to balance prior experiences with textbook knowledge and realised the difficulty of integrating various truths (such as personal opinions and normal developmental patterns as described in the textbook). these participants mentioned, “it was difficult to make decisions where your heart tells you one thing and the book says something else,” and “even though we are trying to incorporate literature, it is interesting to see how motherly instincts overrule research”. participants could clearly articulate which aspects of the theory assisted them, and they considered these theories on a deeper level. for example, this resulted in debates regarding nurture versus nature and arguments regarding the appropriateness of different parenting styles at different developmental stages. furthermore, participants could comment on the relevance of the theories of piaget, vygotsky, erikson and bronfenbrenner. one group came up with the slogan: “wwpd? what would piaget do?” participants acknowledged that their existing knowledge and thought patterns were challenged and expanded. all these learning experiences assisted participants in realising the complexity of knowledge and parenting. one participant reflected: “i think i’ve just realised that there is a very thin line between being good and being bad. you can easily step over this line…” theme 3: intra-personal reflections the my virtual child© experience also provided participants with the opportunity to reflect on their own lives – past, present and future. many participants described a deeper understanding of their own development from a theoretical perspective. they remembered significant events such as the birth of a sibling, a divorce, the influence of hormones on their behaviour, and being a terrible teenager. one participant said, “i realised that even virtual children struggle with their parents (i was not alone)”. with statements such as “our choices were influenced by our upbringing,” many participants referred to the prominence of their past experiences and the effect it still had on their present decisions. although participants could relate to parental activities either having a positive or negative effect on their development, most participants expressed empathy, respect and an appreciation for their parents. they referred to their parents’ courage and sacrifices and realised “what a handful we were”. the importance and complexity of parenting were also highlighted: 60 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) “i realised the difficult positions in which parents often find themselves when raising a child, and i feel it was a valuable experience having to put myself in the same shoes that my parents are in”. some of the participants, being parents themselves, experienced the my virtual child© exercise as an opportunity to reflect on their current parenting styles and experiences. many felt they understood their children better, whilst others considered their parenting styles more closely. for example: “i believe that i have grown as a mother, and it will help me in how i make decisions in the future in raising my kids”. and “i have become so much more aware and sensitive to the development of the children around me. i find it enlightening to be able to understand them better.” in addition, many participants considered what it would be like to be parents one day. some met this thought with excitement and feelings of being better equipped to be parents after the my virtual child© experience: “hope. i think that is the emotion i felt the most this week. hope that maybe in the future i will be lucky enough to have a child that i can raise as well as we raised this virtual one.” other participants considered the complexities of parenting (such as working with a partner, deciding about another human being’s life and sacrificing their own independence) and realised they were not ready to be parents. they saw the experience as “eye opening” and some even mentioned fear at the thought of being a parent. theme 4: connecting heads and hearts participants often mentioned how the work stirred some emotions (such as feeling proud, thankful, empowered and happy) in them: “the experience was only virtual, but the feelings we had for ruby [name given to the virtual child] were real”. various references were also made to how this programme made learning fun. it ignited students’ interest and raised their curiosity: “i have never been so excited to do homework before – it really is a different educational experience”. however, participants agreed that, “being a parent really is no laughing matter”. theme 5: having good company on the journey the group work elicited various strong responses. many participants valued group work, since it was a form of social support, motivation and persistence. in getting to know one another, participants could discuss personal problems and experienced the group sessions as a stress release: “well, let’s say this. if you came into our group at any time, you would find us not necessarily doing academic stuff. our work revolved around a lot of other stuff as well, not only academic”. and “…the project gives the opportunity to socially interact despite a busy schedule. this is the joking and laughing time, a chance to get to know your group members or friends better and not feeling guilty about work not done.” most participants valued the different viewpoints provided by the various group members. they mentioned the importance of “listening to their ideas and opinions [that] helped me to make a decision”. they appreciated others’ experiences to “shed some light and make for an interesting final product”. the groups celebrated their uniqueness and felt they “thought deeper about aspects when combining their skills” and learnt to “think outside the box”. they enjoyed the unique perspectives and interesting ideas each member brought to the table. participants saw how other students assumed different roles and styles, whilst some were there for advice or provided a reflective/thoughtful perspective. others “would always like to 61 naudé & botha it’s a virtual child! play devil’s advocate”: “…i noticed that each one of us have our own individuality and opinions regarding the health of the child...” theme 6: finding one’s own voice among others it was interesting to note the different processes the groups employed. some groups had easy-going styles. they mentioned, “we did not really challenge each other; we just talked and listened to each other; friendly bearing each other and we don’t want to step on each other’s toes”. some mentioned “finding the midway”; “reaching consensus decisions”; “compromising” and “working through a process of elimination”. some referred to the importance of patience during heated debating and intense deliberations: “we bumped heads very lightly ... but we ended up laughing … i think the most important thing i learnt was to negotiate.” however, this does not imply that there were no difficulties and challenging group processes. participants admitted, “i think that with us, we were so tired. it’s like, okay, just pick your option!” some also took the discussions very personal: “i took some of the arguments very personal … so i got a bit like attacked to evaluate my parenting style”. regarding value-laden topics such as discipline, religion and sexual relationships, “you could see that there was a lot of passion behind what we were arguing for”. one student mentioned, “we didn’t have an issue with anything in development until we hit moral development in adolescents, and we got the question that we got stuck on for an hour and a half. we argued that thing and we still didn’t completely agree at the end of it. we kind of settled on an answer, because we just didn’t agree on it”. some could reframe this as an important learning experience restoring their faith in others and challenging their stereotypical ideas. it also taught them to let go of complete control, work in a multi-disciplinary team, and be more open minded, for example: “we laughed about the journey we have travelled raising this baby. it has not been easy at all”. and “…we have grown very close and understanding of each other’s point of view. they have challenged my parenting style… which i have also looked into as well”. others, however, did not experience the group work as fair. they referred to some group members as “seat warmers” and said, “i felt that was very unfair because it’s rolling the dice on my academic success”. theme 7: taking it one step further many participants were inspired to take their learning one step further and mentioned applying the competence gained in this module in other fields such as practical work in the training programme and volunteering in community engagement projects. “i’ve started a project where i live to help parents understand their kids when they get to that adolescent stage … creating awareness for parents”. some also mentioned the opportunity for further research in the field: “what i’d like to do for my master’s research … this definitely ranks up there now”. theme 8: challenges time management was a real challenge: “…we are all busy… there would be a lot of dynamics. it will be arguing when we phone: ‘i don’t have time’ … make time!” apart from challenges regarding group work and time management, many participants felt the my virtual child© programme provided an american perspective limiting applicability in the south african context. however, the value of intercultural experiences was noticed in 62 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) statements such as the following: “with my one, we had issues with discipline, especially it came out as we are different cultures. well, i am zulu, the one is sotho, the other one is xhosa…” and “… the others may feel that it is good for her to know her peers better…. in my zulu culture, allowing a child such privileges is like giving them a key to do what they want.” 5. discussion in the following section, the eight themes presented above, will be linked to the theoretical framework employed in this study by referring specifically to a) the development of cognitive complexity; b) the positions of knowing followed in the learning process; c) the integration between cognitive and emotional experiences and d) collaborative learning practices. a) the development of cognitive complexity baxter-magolda (2000) explained students’ journeys of finding ways that are more complex in meaning making. she regarded it as a learning process including cognitive, intrapersonal and interpersonal dimensions, such as “how do i know? ... who am i? …what kind of relationships do i want?” (baxter-magolda, 2004: 39). as specifically witnessed in theme 1: a novel, challenging and authentic way of constructing knowledge, the authenticity of the my virtual child© experience facilitated deep learning in each of these dimensions. graves (2013) reported on the perceptions of pre-service teachers in a my virtual child© programme, also referred to the relevance of the real-life value of the experience. this corresponds with the work of various constructivist and experiential theorists emphasising the importance of reallife experiences (dewey, 1963; kolb, 1981; 1984; piaget, 1976). b) the positions of knowing followed in the learning process the development of cognitive complexity is a specific outcome of the my virtual child© experience. this was seen in theme 2: absolute knowledge, subjective knowing and relativism. students were challenged to move beyond dualism. owing to the reality of the situation, the balancing of theory and practice and the group discussions, participants realised early on the uncertainty of knowledge and the diversity of opinions. as perry (1981; west, 2004) suggested, participants in this study used various avenues, such as analysing, comparing and judging different opinions in order to become more comfortable with multiple perspectives and reach a cognitive space of contextual relativism. one of the consequences was participants reporting deepened critical thinking about parenting and new perspectives regarding the implications of parenting on child development, similar to the findings of graves (2013) and the intentions of the programme developer (manis, 2011). although some students committed to a reality within this relativity, others still found it difficult to embrace the tension of paradoxes and dilemmas. evidence of the evolution of students’ way of knowing was also seen according to the stances proposed by baxter-magolda (1998; 2004). it moved from absolute knowing (where trust was placed in textbook knowledge), to transitional knowing (where the process of learning became important during group discussions), to independent knowing (through students’ expression of their own views) and finally to contextual knowing (where students’ own ideas and those of others were placed in context). furthermore, many participants moved from a position of not knowing and depending on others or the textbook (received knowing) to trusting their intuitive and subjective knowing. they also discovered processes and techniques for acquiring, validating and evaluating knowledge (procedural knowing) in order to reach a place where truth is understood as 63 naudé & botha it’s a virtual child! being contextual (constructed knowing) (belenky et al., 1997). in addition, baxter-magolda (2009: 632) described the learning process as starting with the focus on external formulas (before an internal voice can be cultivated). next in the process, students enter the crossroads where they start to listen to their own voices and then develop their own voices by sifting through different beliefs, prioritising and integrating. this then helps students to move to the place of self-authorship where students 1) learn to trust their internal voices (and recognise the difference between reality and their reaction to reality), 2) build an internal foundation where they learn to trust their voices and commitments and 3) secure their internal commitments where choice becomes “second nature”. c) the integration between cognitive and emotional experiences as seen from theme 3: intra-personal reflections and theme 4: connecting heads and hearts, the construction of knowledge often starts in students’ heads and later moves to their hearts. indeed, clear evidence was found for the incorporation of the intrapersonal dimension and emotional component in the participants’ learning process. these include the various emotions participants referred to, reflections on their own development, and honest evaluations of their own current or potential parenting. manis (2011) also reported on students’ emotional reactions to the programme, for example, students stating they became emotionally attached to their virtual child or experiencing emotions such as pride and sympathy. the my virtual child© programme definitely facilitated the integration between cognitive and emotional experiences. the use of reflective exercises in implementing the my virtual child© programme further contributed to this process. connor-greene (2000) advocated that journal writing increases student learning, since these exercises actively engage students, foster understanding and assist in connecting module material to personal experiences and observations (as presented in theme 7: taking it one step further). d) collaborative learning practices collaborative learning practices were reflected in theme 5: having good company on the journey and theme 6: finding one’s own voice among others (with the challenges highlighted in theme 8). baxter-magolda (2002) proposed the notion of successful journeys requiring good company. whilst the general implementation of the my virtual child© programme includes group work in the form of class discussions, this specific implementation had the added benefit of placing students in groups to parent their child together. this provided ample evidence for the value of dialogic, student-directed and reflective teaching and learning. student interactions, social relations, collaborative learning, and the importance of community (belenky et al., fear et al., 2002; vygotsky, 2004) were some of the most important drivers of learning. these interactions also emphasised the role of context and culture. the diversity of the groups (in terms of their language, ethnicity, previous experiences and moral beliefs) further added to the richness of the experience. baxter-magolda (2004) referred to the crossroads in describing students’ experiences where external and internal frames of reference collide. thereafter they move to “becoming the author of one’s life” (baxter-magolda, 2004: 40) and form an internal foundation where they become comfortable with their own knowledge creation and its relation to that of others. 6. concluding remarks: implications for practice the my virtual child© programme includes features of good teaching practices as previously proposed by various research studies, such as experiential learning opportunities 64 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) (stoloff et al., 2012), interactive activities (wilson, 2013), social networking and interactive sites (blessing et al., 2012; stansbury & munro, 2013; twenge, 2013). baxter-magolda advised educators to “view students as capable participants in the journey to self-authorship, provide direction and practice in acquiring internal authority, establish communities of learning among peers and support the struggle inherent in the journey” (baxter-magolda, 2000: 94–96). in this study, the my virtual child© programme provided an excellent opportunity for authentic, relevant and challenging learning, whilst balancing theory and practice. furthermore, it provided space for deliberate reflective activities, group interaction and the integration of a diversity of experiences. this programme therefore created a practical and pragmatic teaching environment for more engaging and theoretically rich learning, preparing students for self-authorship in a complex world. based on the literature and evidence provided in this article, our main recommendation for lecturers is the inclusion of non-traditional interactive teaching methods, such as simulation programmes in their modules. although there is a need for continued research in this field in south africa, the use of the my virtual child© programme provides preliminary evidence of the important role such a teaching method may play in facilitating students’ self-authorship. references barnett, r. 2014. imagining the humanities – amid the inhuman. arts and humanities in higher education, 13(1–2), 42–53. https://doi.org/10.1177/1474022213511338 baxter-magolda, m.b. 1998. developing self-authorship in graduate school. new directions for higher education, 101, 41–53. https://doi.org/10.1002/he.10104 baxter-magolda, m.b. 2000. teaching to promote holistic learning and development. new 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european psychology, 42(1), 7–97. west, e.j. 2004. perry’s legacy: models of epistemological development. journal of adult development, 11(2), 61–70. doi:1068-0667/04/0400-0061 wilson, s.g. 2013. the flipped class: a method to address the challenges of an under graduate statistics course. teaching of psychology, 40, 193–199. https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628313487461 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15328023top2701_10 https://doi.org/10.1207/s15328023top2701_10 http://www.che.ac.za https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-46323-5_2 https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628312475037 https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628312437721 https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628312437721 https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628312465870 https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628312465870 https://doi.org/10.1177/0098628313487461 bookmark perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2013 university of the free state 100 carol mitchell department of psychology, university of kwazulu-natal e-mail: mitchellc@ukzn.ac.za telephone: 033 260 6054 david jonker department of psychology, university of kwazulu-natal e-mail: david.jonker23@gmail.com telephone: 033 260 6054 benefits and challenges of a teacher cluster in south africa: the case of sizabantwana carol mitchell & david jonker this article explores teacher clusters as possible mechanisms for teacher development in dealing with a number of the difficulties facing education in the south african context. it describes the benefits and challenges experienced by primary school teachers who are involved in a self-sustaining teacher cluster (development and support group). this cluster is unique in that it focuses on psychosocial issues confronting the teachers in their classrooms. the study uses an interpretive qualitative approach to report on the experiences of the members of the cluster in an attempt to extract some lessons that may be useful to practitioners in the south african context. this study highlights the value of using a long-term developmental and organic approach to develop a community of practice for teacher support and development. keywords: teacher cluster, psychosocial support, community of practice, afrocentric approach introduction recent articles by jita and colleagues (2009; 2012) prompted this article, which aims to describe a teacher cluster in kwazulu-natal called sizabantwana1 (in isizulu ‘helping children’). jita and ndlalane (2009) report on the effectiveness of teacher clusters in the professional development of mathematics and science teachers, and jita and mokhele (2012) describe the challenges of institutionalising such clusters. sizabantwana differs from other clusters due to its focus on psychosocial issues within the school context and not on a particular subject area. since the cluster was developed following a community psychology approach, the lessons learned during its 15 years’ existence may have broader application and offer an alternative approach to teacher development, particularly for those interested in the challenges of inclusive education. mitchell & jonker benefits and challenges of a teacher cluster in south africa: the case of sizabantwana 101 from the outset, the development team (consisting of two psychologists and two pioneer educators) conceptualised sizabantwana as an educator development project, with the primary aim of developing teachers’ capacity to deal with children’s psychosocial issues. given the contested domains of ‘teacher development’, ‘teacher learning’ and ‘professional development’ (evans, 2002; fraser, kennedy, reid & mckinney, 2007), this form of professional development most closely resembles day’s (1999: 4) description: “… alone and with others, teachers review, renew and extend their commitment as change agents to the moral purposes of teaching; and by which they acquire and develop critically the knowledge, skills, planning and practice with children, young people and colleagues”. the challenges of the south african education context, outlined below, necessitate an innovative, locally relevant approach to teacher development. background to this study: the sizabantwana group in 1997, two teachers from township schools approached a university’s applied psychology unit for assistance, because learners in their classrooms required assessment and intervention. given the extent of the challenges faced by these teachers and the lack of services available to their schools and learners, an alternative community psychology model for intervention was developed and has been in operation ever since. the sizabantwana project aims to develop educator capacity to deal with psychosocial issues in their school communities. the intention is that these teachers should become agents of change in their contexts, and be identified as resources by other community members. the model thus developed centres on the following principles: respect for the capacity and agency of teachers; respect for the local knowledge of teachers as community members (teachers are experts of their own situation), and the belief that people are able to generate their own solutions. there simply were, and still are, no resources available to adequately attend to these children’s psychosocial (and other) needs. regarding teachers as resources provides a way forward. in addition, establishing a community of practice is consistent with the teachers’ cultural values which, following an african philosophical approach, emphasise collectivism and a communal perspective (mkhize, 2004). a group support model was thus developed and launched, in which teachers from the same geographic area would meet in a cluster and offer each other support. at these fortnightly meetings, workshops were held about a particular problem area identified by the teachers (for example, hiv, discipline), with the aim of facilitating discussions about what could realistically be done in each of their schools. subsequent meetings continued with this approach, with teachers discussing and supporting each other concerning issues of implementation. as the cluster progressed, the initial volunteers encouraged other teachers to join, and thus the project grew substantially to now include 37 member schools. schools are represented by at least one educator (a volunteer) who attends the meetings. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 102 there is a natural process of attrition and new membership; hence, schools join and leave the cluster over time. however, many of the currently participating schools have been involved since the cluster’s inception. from the outset, a developmental plan was established to deal with issues of sustainability. while the project was initially driven by the psychologists, as the programme evolved, this leadership role devolved to the group members. a group member assumes the leadership role for five years, while simultaneously mentoring his/her successor. thus, issues of sustainability are managed, with both the original psychologist and the former lead educator available to assist where required. the sizabantwana group meets fortnightly. although there is a focus on content, the by-product of this support process has been the development of leadership in the teachers themselves. thus, during a meeting, the group may be focusing on ‘inclusive education’, while simultaneously being involved with spearheading other initiatives at their schools. these range from developing vegetable gardens to referring an abused child to the appropriate authorities. the project develops and supports these skills. the current study aims to investigate teachers’ experiences of this teacher cluster, which appears to have capacitated teachers to be pro-active agents of change for their communities. educational context in south africa moon (2007) describes the school-based teacher development context, arguing that the millennium development goal of ‘education for all’ by 2015 will not succeed without extensive investment in teacher professional development. however, he acknowledges that few efforts to improve teacher development “are situated in the developing world. few are driven by the real agendas of the poor and the dispossessed” (moon, 2007: 369). since the end of apartheid, the south african government has increased education expenditure to supply disadvantaged schools with necessary equipment and resources. in addition, the educator rationalisation initiative attempted to improve the pupil-to-teacher ratio in poor schools. however, jansen and taylor (2003) argue that there is a wide implementation gap between policy and practice. in a recent report of educators’ perceptions of education in south africa, matoti (2010) found that the stresses experienced by teachers mirrored the wider social and political contexts in south africa, resulting in fear and uncertainty. he argues for the creation of communities of practice, so that educators do not “suffer quietly” (matoti, 2010: 582). teacher clusters are one possible way to create these communities of practice. mitchell & jonker benefits and challenges of a teacher cluster in south africa: the case of sizabantwana 103 research on teacher networks lieberman and mclaughlin (1992) describe the power and potential pitfalls of teacher networks. they report that networks can be powerful for teacher development when they are driven by the educators’ agendas; provide opportunities for shared vision and learning, and have mechanisms for the development of stability and appropriate leadership. however, networks may be problematic when issues of quality and application are not addressed, or when ownership and decisions regarding goals and objectives become disputed. despite these guidelines and possible areas of enquiry, provided 20 years ago, research into teacher networks or clusters remains limited. jita and mokhele (2012) and jita and ndlalane (2009) review the evidence about teacher clusters and conclude that little is documented about how these structures serve to develop teachers. whilst acknowledging the lack of research into links between teachers’ participation in networks and changed classroom practice, niesz (2007) argues for their development based on the notions of communities of practice. lima (2010) argues that networks have grown mainly as a result of ‘faith or fads’ and not on the basis of sufficient evidence of effectiveness. niesz (2007) claims that traditional approaches to professional development do not recognise the time and support required to inspire changes in practice, whereas teacher networks have the potential to work through various mechanisms, namely creating a community of belonging; providing a “context of dignity and respect that teachers do not always experience” (niesz, 2007: 608), and providing legitimacy for ideas, actions and advocacy. maistry (2008: 131) also argues for teacher development through communities of practice, but cautions that south african conditions require the move beyond wenger’s (1998) model of communities of practice to include the input of an expert other. lima (2010) proposes a number of dimensions for understanding networks, including their genesis and interactional aspects. the reasons for the creation of the network and participants’ motivations for joining are important for a sense of ownership of the group. lima (2010) notes that networks are often externally sponsored or that participants are coerced into joining. he argues that face-to-face interaction helps to develop trust, which allows for deeper relating. however, some participants in the study reported difficulties with colleagues when they tried to share their learning in their work contexts. jita and ndlalane’s (2009) study mentions that the majority of teachers work in isolation with little opportunity for sharing practices and experiences. the teacher cluster in their study was able to break down some of the barriers to collaboration, which included feelings of isolation, an absence of professional identity, and “the lack of trust and suspicion displayed by other colleagues” (jita & ndlalane, 2009: 63). critical success factors in the teacher cluster included the sense of collegiality that developed; ownership of the process and participation as peers, and a sense of resourcefulness within the group. they caution that developing trust and overcoming perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 104 the fear of opening up goes beyond structural adjustments and is a process requiring personal change. they warn against “‘contrived collegiality’, where teachers come together as a bureaucratic requirement rather than for their own benefit and growth” (jita & ndlalane, 2009: 66). community psychology the principles of community psychology informed the development of the sizabantwana group. community psychology can be practised in different ways (fryer & laing, 2008), from mainstream initiatives, which do little to challenge the status quo, to radical approaches, which appear more political than psychological. the most appropriate approach depends on resources, context and the communitypsychologist ‘fit’ (dunbar-krige, pillay & henning, 2010). for sizabantwana, the values of community psychology described by nel, lazarus and daniels (2010) are pertinent, where the role of the psychologist extends beyond micro-level interventions, to ensure widespread delivery of mental health services, particularly to previously (and currently) under-served groups. this particular approach considers and respects local knowledge and attempts to foster personal and political empowerment. it aims to embrace diversity and develop a sense of community. given the context of education in south africa, and the lack of services available to children in most disadvantaged schools, it is important to conceptualise psychosocial problems (and their solutions) from a systemic perspective, focusing on preventative and health-promoting interventions. this particular approach to community psychology also aims to facilitate community participation and inter-sectoral collaboration. one of the main aims is to address exclusion and oppression through transformative interventions, rather than perpetuating the status quo through amelioration (fryer & laing, 2008). in the south african context and in education and schools, in particular, these aims remain challenging. sizabantwana is thus an attempt to work beyond the level of individual children with difficulties, to effect transformation in schools through educators as change agents. the principles of community psychology practised in the development of the group are consistent with an afrocentic world view that is collectivist rather than individualistic and that recognises that all life is interconnected and extends beyond the immediate physical realm (mkhize, 2004). mkhize (2004: 46) explains that “a sense of community exists if people mutually recognise the obligation to be responsive to one another’s needs”. the sizabantwana group is, therefore, an attempt to develop an african community of practice in the south african context. methodology a qualitative interpretive research design was employed to investigate the participants’ perceptions and experiences of the sizabantwana group. as the interpretive approach mitchell & jonker benefits and challenges of a teacher cluster in south africa: the case of sizabantwana 105 privileges participants’ experiences, this allowed the researchers to develop a better understanding of the meanings, opinions, perceptions and experiences of the teachers who are involved (terre blanche, durrheim & kelly, 2006). ethical procedures were adhered to in the research. the sizabantwana group were approached at a group meeting where the research was explained and participants volunteered. only those who had been with the group for at least one year were included. informed consent, anonymity, and confidentiality were negotiated at the start of the interviews, as was the possibility of publication/dissemination of the results. this study used purposive sampling (cohen, manion & morrison, 2000) to select a sample of eight black female teachers employed at township and rural schools in anonymous town and the neighbouring areas. table 1 provides details of the sample. table 1: details of the research participants participant no. of years teaching (as at 2010) no. of years in sizabantwana (as at 2010) quintile rank of school2 estimated number of pupils enrolled at school (as at 2010) 1 15 14 4 1.400 2 14 >10 3 1.050 3 19 7 2 600 4 32 >10 4 500 5 27 6 4 1.157 6 16 1 3 700 7 14 4 3 700 8 8 4 3 770 data was collected via semi-structured interviews, which were approximately an hour in length. the interviewer asked open-ended questions about the teaching context; the role and function of sizabantwana, and the benefits and challenges of being part of the group. these interviews were recorded and transcribed. thematic analysis was used to analyse the data (braun & clarke, 2005). the trustworthiness of the data was enhanced, with the two researchers conferring over the themes emerging from the data, and recording a detailed description of the research process, including the context of the research. as this was a small qualitative sample, the researchers aimed for transferability of findings rather than generalisability. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 106 results the themes that emerged from the interviews centred on three core issues: the difficulties experienced by teachers in the current educational context; their experiences of being part of the sizabantwana group, and the challenges and rewards of being in the cluster. difficulties experienced by teachers in their contexts although not the focus of the study, the difficulties described by the teachers provide the context in which the sizabantwana cluster emerged. the majority of their learners come from impoverished socioeconomic circumstances; as one participant stated, “we have starving children at our school”. in addition, the schools are characterised by a lack of resources; one teacher explained, “the classrooms were very packed. maybe a teacher has 65/70 [learners] in a class”. many teachers struggle with a lack of parental involvement and poor relationships between various stakeholders: “you try to consult the parents, they just ignore or they not up to it because they don’t see a problem”. lastly, the participants mentioned their difficulties with the department of education (doe) and policy issues: “they impose to educators without involving them”. district-initiated professional development programmes the participants acknowledged that, whereas some doe-driven development programmes are helpful, there were a number of criticisms. they reported structures that had been set up in schools without proper training of those who were required to run them: “the department introduced the tsts, teacher support teams. but they never really trained the teachers”. they also reported time-limited workshops where teachers were expected to gain and implement skills: “if there’s the teacher development, not just to go for 2 days, 1 or 2 days, or 4 days workshop and then you just expect the educators to go and implement. ah, ah, it doesn’t work that way because the time is too limited, too short”. in addition, they reported feeling intimidated at doe-based workshops: “we are having a workshop and when the officials are around, you feel threatened to speak your mind. because maybe you will be targeted”. experiences of the sizabantwana group the participants reported benefits for the teachers themselves, the children they teach, the families of the children and the communities in which they work. there were, however, also challenges to being part of the cluster, both within their schools and in the broader community. mitchell & jonker benefits and challenges of a teacher cluster in south africa: the case of sizabantwana 107 benefits for teachers one of the benefits reported by the participants was exposure to new information and learning which promoted their understanding of their learners: “it makes us understand some of the problems that our children have”. participants highlighted gaining information from multiple sources, not only the doe, and access to specific resources. one participant stated, “i found out that they [sizabantwana] open doors, like the other doctors’ sections”, in reference to the referral system set up with the paediatric departments at the state hospitals, where children from sizabantwana schools are assessed and assisted. the information shared at cluster meetings also extended beyond classroombased issues to topics pertinent to the teachers’ personal development: “they also had um someone from bank k; she came to talk to us about how to start your own companies”. in addition, one participant mentioned, “if we can’t sort that problem, we call for an expert to come in”, demonstrating awareness of their own resourcefulness (“we can solve problems”) and of the need for expert intervention and assistance (“call for an expert”). many of the participants referred to the support and belonging they experienced, with one participant referring to the cluster as: “the way we sharing our problems, our experiences, in this fraternity …”. this sharing and support facilitated problemsolving and relief: “as we sit together as a group and discuss those problems, it becomes easier”. one participant went further, noting how the group provides an advocacy function: “we get to share ideas of how to deal with the situations that we are faced with in our schools ... we can use sizabantwana as the voice”. for another participant, the support in the group extended further: “we do so much. we have spiritual [pause] discussions, we discuss the bible, we discuss anything”. it has become standard practice for the group to open meetings with prayer and song. it appeared that the sense of belonging to a community went beyond a superficial experience of support, with many participants making reference to stronger bonds, for example: “we are like sisters now”; “it’s a sizabantwana family”; “sizabantwana is a home”. these bonds may have been promoted in part by an annual retreat on women’s day, as one participant noted: “we comfort each other and once a year we go out to chillax”. since everyone in the group is a volunteer, the annual retreat (a night away) is offered as recognition for the work that the group members do during the year. a sense of trust has developed between the group members: “even our family problems, we talk about them. ja, we, we trust each other”. several participants mentioned a further benefit of belonging to the cluster, namely their perceived sense of personal development: “even personally, we’ve grown”; explaining, “… then i, so have acquired that confidence to stand in front of people and address them”. another participant stated, “we are helping one another to develop academically, financially, emotionally and even spiritually”. this illustrates the sense of ownership and agency that has developed. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 108 benefits for learners the participants reported on the various ways in which children at their schools had benefited from the initiative. teachers’ improved networking skills had led to donations, for example: “we’ve been able to acquire donations. we had a sports day for the foundation [phase] for the first time”. through a partnership with an australian doll-making group, many children received dolls as comfort objects; one participant reported, “we have kids here who are affected and infected, so let us make them feel that they are a part of us, they are not discriminated against. so we used those dollies to give to them”. through the referral system to the hospital, children with eyesight and other medical problems have received assistance: “most of the children are getting their glasses now and the problem is solved”; “sizabantwana has granted us permission to refer learners who are sick, who have learning problems”. group members have also participated in training in child participation, for example, “they did also expose us with one of the aspects like empowering learners to voice out … and how to attack problems in their community”. broader impact according to the participants, the benefits extended beyond the school into the broader community. children are able to access grants as a result of the group’s activities: “so the child now is receiving grant”. schools have accessed feeding schemes, which sometimes extend to the children’s families: “i also help the parent to get some food”. in addition, parents are being encouraged to participate and cooperate with the schools: “we even call the parents to the meetings and make them aware”. the cluster also enabled networking with other organisations and sectors: “the networking scope is widened. it has gone bigger and bigger”. this includes general networking (“we can write a letter, take it somewhere, maybe to a business, a company and request for sponsorship”) and relationships with specific services: “they’ve got a, eh, teachers there who are good in remedial work. so they’ve been visiting our school for remedial work to children”. challenges from the school some participants reported that not all school principals willingly allow their staff to attend sizabantwana meetings: “so, some of the teachers have stopped to come to sizabantwana because of their principals”. in addition, teachers face competing demands on their time – their commitments at school sometimes conflict with their commitment to the cluster: “attendance is not good because maybe at that time that particular member has to be somewhere else”. challenges from families and communities sometimes the interventions that are promoted by sizabantwana are not welcomed by families who appear to fear stigma and marginalisation: “you will be collected by mitchell & jonker benefits and challenges of a teacher cluster in south africa: the case of sizabantwana 109 the car and everybody sees that the child is attending a special school. they don’t want to be er, identified like that”. this is especially problematic in instances of child abuse, as one participant related, “the family was angry with the teacher … plus sometimes they want to protect the breadwinner”. as a result, parents sometimes remain uncooperative, or in denial, and the child remains unattended to; one participant emphasised that it is difficult “dealing with a parent that doesn’t want to accept the problem”. one of the main challenges facing the group is the scale of the problems that require intervention. the nature of the cluster is such that only a limited number of issues can be addressed at any one time. as one participant stated, “sometimes it’s a drop in the ocean, because we’ve got so many learners that have got problems, especially learning problems”. discussion this study investigated teachers’ experiences of being involved in a cluster. the participants indicated that they have benefited from the group in a variety of ways, including opportunities to learn and implement new information and skills; networking and referral; support and problem-solving; advocacy; personal development, and a sense of belonging. the sizabantwana group attempted to empower teachers and equip them with the necessary skills and support to address important challenges in their schools. the participants’ experiences in their school environments echo the difficulties reported by others (matoti, 2010). the sizabantwana members struggled in contexts of poverty with few resources available for intervention. in addition, they cited difficulties with both departmental decrees and decisions and traditional teacher development workshops which were imposed by externally driven agendas and coerced participation (lima, 2010). the community of practice that has developed took time and social support in order to be effective (maistry, 2008; niesz, 2007), but it appears to have yielded many benefits. the participants highlighted social support as a primary benefit of belonging. the face-to-face interaction that developed trust and deep relating (lima, 2010) was apparent in the participants’ responses in respect of “sharing problems” and “comforting each other”. in addition, the participants indicated a deep sense of belonging (jita & ndlalane, 2009) and solidarity that went beyond collegiality. the participants came to rely on each other for problem-solving advice and assistance, enhancing their resourcefulness. the participants also recognised when they required expert assistance (maistry, 2008). the network was created at the request of the teachers (lieberman & mclaughlin, 1992; lima, 2010); it was an initiative that was independent of the doe, and has not been institutionalised (jita & mokhele, 2012). the sizabantwana cluster members are all volunteers. it appears that there was no coercion or imposed membership perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 110 of the group. this resulted in a sense of ownership contributing to its sustainability (participants often used the term ‘we’ when talking about the group). the sizabantwana experience confirms the potential of teacher networks (lieberman & mclaughlin, 1992). this cluster, with its focus on psychosocial issues, was able to mobilise services and resources for children: they accessed grants, food, medical care and donations. they were also referred for treatment and to more appropriate educational placements. this may be an outcome unique to this kind of cluster. the cluster approach may, therefore, offer great opportunities for these kinds of issues. in addition, lieberman and mclaughlin (1992) argue for the need for good cluster leadership. for sizabantwana, this has been addressed through the notion of a five-year leadership term and through a mentoring process for the incoming leader. this long-term developmental approach is consistent with community psychology principles of recognising local knowledge and promoting these within the community in question. the participants’ experiences in this teacher cluster highlight the potential for this kind of intervention in the south african context. in particular, an afrocentric approach was useful in embracing a spiritual dimension to the group which appears to make it more meaningful to the group members. however, lima (2010) and lieberman and mclaughlin (1992) warn that there is a ‘dark side’ to teacher clusters. some of the participants reported difficulties in their school and broader communities. being part of this initiative is, therefore, not without costs. in some instances, the school management appeared to be threatened by the development of the teachers (both in terms of their improved skills to deal with issues at schools and their personal empowerment) and denied them permission to attend. they may have feared that the innovations which the teachers attempted to bring back to their schools may have exposed problematic practices and were, therefore, unwelcome. concerned about issues of territory, doe officials attempted to discredit the cluster. at one point, a doe official attempted to sabotage the group, and teachers were afraid to attend, as they believed that the group did not have departmental approval. some children’s parents have been unreceptive to the interventions proposed at cluster meetings and teachers have struggled with resistance, sometimes even threats, or have been blamed. another challenge was the overwhelming demands of the context such that what can be done may have appeared insufficient and inadequate in the light of what was needed. this may have resulted in group members experiencing frustration at the lack of progress. on the whole, the sizabantwana group, therefore, seems to have been beneficial to its members in various ways. although it is a small, local initiative, there are useful lessons for others wishing to attempt this form of teacher support and development. these are highlighted below, following an explanation of the potential limitations of this study. mitchell & jonker benefits and challenges of a teacher cluster in south africa: the case of sizabantwana 111 limitations the design of this study is not sufficient to provide strong evidence for the effectiveness of teacher clusters. however, the fact that the sizabantwana group is still in existence 15 years since its inception, and that it continues to grow in teacher and school participation, suggests that it is serving some important functions. in addition, in the absence of a control group, it cannot be concluded that the benefits recorded are a result of the teacher cluster and not some other, broader developmental process. as this is a qualitative study, the participants’ experiences and perceptions have been privileged. a further limitation is that one of the researchers who conducted the interviews was from the anonymous university’s school of psychology. although he was not directly involved with the group, his institutional affiliation (the primary strategic partner of the teachers) meant that socially desirable responses may have been given. a researcher who was perceived as more neutral may have elicited more critical responses. conclusion despite these limitations, this article attempted to document some of the benefits and challenges of teacher clusters in the south african context. to respond to moon’s (2007) concern that these kinds of interventions are seldom driven by the agendas of the poor, this is an initiative from the developing world, drawing on some of the unique strengths of our context and culture. the following key lessons may be helpful to others working in this field. teacher clusters can work and are more likely to succeed if they are conceptualised as long-term, developmental and organic clusters that will flourish in a context of respect, relationship and trust. the culture and values of the cluster members must guide the approach in the group. the developments in the group members and the goals of the group may not be welcomed by outside parties, often in authority, and group members need support (from one another) in order to persevere. finally, in launching such a group, one should recognise that successes will be limited in the light of the overwhelming task that is required, but it is also important to celebrate those small successes. acknowledgements the authors would like to thank the group members who volunteered to be part of the study, and the entire sizabantwana group for the lessons we continue to learn together. in addition, thanks are extended to the anonymous reviewers for their useful feedback on earlier drafts of this article. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 112 references braun v & clarke v 2006. using thematic analysis in 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(re-)positioning educational psychology in high-risk school communities. education as change, 14(3): 3-16. evans l 2002. what is teacher development? oxford review of education, 28(1): 123-137. fraser c, kennedy a, reid l & mckinney s 2007. teachers’ continuing professional development: contested concepts, understandings and models. journal of in-service education, 33(2): 153-169. fryer d & laing a 2008. community psychologies: what are they? what could they be? why does it matter? a critical community psychology approach. the australian community psychologist, 20(2): 7-15. jansen j & taylor n 2003. educational change in south africa 1994-2003: case studies in large-scale education reform. washington, dc: world bank. jita lc & mokhele ml 2012. institutionalising teacher clusters in south africa: dilemmas and contradictions. perspectives in education, 30(2): 1-11. jita lc & ndlalane tc 2009. teacher clusters in south africa: opportunities and constraints for teacher development and change. perspectives in education, 27(1): 58-68. lieberman a & mclaughlin m 1992. networks for educational change: powerful and problematic. phi delta kappa, 73(9): 673-677. lima ja 2010. thinking more deeply about networks in education. journal of educational change, 11(1): 1-21. maistry s 2008. transcending traditional boundaries for teacher professional development: exploring a community of practice approach to cpd. journal of education, 43: 127-153. matoti sn 2010. the unheard voices of educators: perceptions of educators about the state of education in south africa. south african journal of higher education, 24(4): 568-584. mkhize nj 2004. psychology: an african perspective. in d hook, n mkhize, p kiguwa & a collins (eds), critical psychology. cape town: university of cape town press. moon b 2007. school-based teacher development in sub-saharan africa: building a new research agenda. the curriculum journal, 18(3): 355-371. nel w, lazarus s & daniels b 2010. education support services policy and practice in south africa: an example of community psychology in action? education as change, 14(2): s17-s31. niesz t 2007. why teacher networks (can) work. phi delta kappan, 88(8): 605-610. mitchell & jonker benefits and challenges of a teacher cluster in south africa: the case of sizabantwana 113 terre blanche m, durrheim k & kelly k 2006. first steps in qualitative data analysis. in m terre blanche, k durrheim & d painter (eds), research in practice: applied methods for the social sciences. cape town: university of cape town press. wenger e 1998. communities of practice: learning, meaning and identity. new york: cambridge university press. endnotes i. the name was chosen by the group members. ii. quintiles are ranked with 1 being poorest and 5 being the least poor. schools that are declared as quintiles 1, 2 and 3 are “no fee” schools. 185 research article 2020 38(2): 185-200 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.12 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) problem-based learning training and implementation: an analysis using semantics in legitimation code theory abstract this article reports on the analysis of problem-based learning (pbl) training within a teaching development programme (tdp) and the subsequent experiences of implementing pbl by respondents who participated in the training. the semantic dimension of legitimation code theory (lct) was applied as a conceptual tool in the study. the data for the study was gathered through face-to-face interviews with 10 respondents who were alumni of the tdp; document analysis and reflective journal entries of the researcher. the findings are explained in terms of strengthening and weakening the organising principles of semantics, namely, semantic density (sd) and semantic gravity (sg). it was found that the adoption of the medical model for pbl training might have been overly contextualised within the medical field. as a result, it was often challenging for the respondents from other disciplinary backgrounds to transfer knowledge gained during the pbl training to their respective disciplines. the findings also showed that respondents found it challenging to implement pbl in its pure form and needed to adapt the application of pbl to meet the unique requirements of their discipline. therefore, it is important to consider the diverse nature of disciplines when implementing pbl training. the pbl training should be designed and implemented specifically for the discipline concerned. also, semantic waves that pertain to the movements between context-dependent knowledge and condensed meaning, should be addressed during pbl training to expedite the transfer of knowledge of pbl. keywords: problem-based learning, semantics, legitimation code theory, teaching in higher education, academic staff development 1. introduction this article reports on the implementation of problem-based learning (pbl) by respondents who had received training in pbl through a teaching development programme (tdp). the tdp is underpinned by constructive alignment (see biggs and tang, 2011: 104–107) with a specific focus on author: a/professor s.l. hassan1 affiliation: 1cape peninsula university of technology doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38. i2.12 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(2): 185-200 published: 04 december 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.12 1862020 38(2): 186-200 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.12 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) social constructivism. thus, social constructivist methods of teaching and learning, such as pbl, are promoted (biggs & tang 2011:178–184). it has been argued that for many academics accustomed to traditional methods of teaching and learning, the implementation of pbl poses a challenge because of its constructivist nature (lim & choy, 2014: 64, 53; bouhuijs, 2011: 19; coffin, 2013: 206). therefore, in the tdp, pbl training was intended to provide respondents with the knowledge and skills to facilitate learning and promote student-centred, self-directed learning, which, according to the meta-analysis of pbl conducted by hung, jonassen and liu (2008: 486–500) are the hallmarks of pbl. the other predominant feature of the pbl environment is small group discussions that promote collaborative learning (hung et al., 2008: 493). in the pbl training for this study, respondents were also trained in the management of small group discussions. the aforementioned training was undertaken because it was acknowledged that it would have been unlikely that the competencies required to implement pbl would have come naturally to the respondents who were new to pbl. endorsing this, farmer (2004: 59–66) explains that academic staff development is an important aspect of curriculum change (to pbl), especially since many faculty members might be unfamiliar with the pbl process. the role of the teacher within a pbl environment is so disparate from their role within a traditional teaching environment that academic staff development is deemed necessary when shifting to pbl (nayer, 2010:138–148). irby (1996: 76–79) argues that it is difficult for academics to learn an innovative method of teaching, such as pbl, because assumptions about learning might be at odds with their existing beliefs. in the irby (1996: 76–79) study, medical models for academic staff development on pbl, derived from medical schools that implement pbl, are addressed. hitchcock and mylona (2009: 52), whose study is centred around training academics to implement pbl, posit that the success of a pbl initiative depends on availability of academics who are skilled in pbl. they added that re-training to pbl is a challenging transition for many academics. bouhuijs (2011: 22), who discusses the importance of academic staff development with respect to medical teachers, points out that the role of the teacher is shifted from a presenter of knowledge to promoter of learning, when shifting towards pbl. teachers and learners alike need to understand pbl from the perspective of “why” and “how” so that they are able to work effectively in a pbl environment: “teacher training provides an initiation in pbl” and the ‘culture shock’ can be addressed directly. coffin (2013: 195) reports on the importance of developing staff for pbl from the findings of a needs analysis study that involved universities on a global level, such as aalborg university, maastricht, central university of queensland and mcmaster. these findings helped inform the design of a framework for pbl for academic staff development. lim and choy (2014:64) advise that in order for pbl implementation to be successful it is important to address the essential elements of pbl, in particular helping the pbl facilitator adapt to the constructivist notions of teaching and learning that underpin pbl. when it comes to the challenges attributed to implementing pbl, bouhuijs (2011: 20–22) also discusses organisational management issues such as number of hours for a course, preparation time to implement pbl and adaptations to infrastructure; cultural adaptations (to constructivist approaches to pbl and the importance of working across disciplines), and the importance of academic staff development in introducing the teaching implications of pbl. however, the study does not pay adequate attention to the actual process involved in training and the recontextualisation of pbl within disciplines. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.12 1872020 38(2): 187-200 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.12 hassan problem-based learning training and implementation there is some evidence of training academics for pbl in the literature (dalrylmple, wuenschel & shuler, 2006: 948; creedy & hand, 1994: 696; hassan, 2010: 84–97, murray & savin-baden, 2000: 111–113). development of staff for pbl is predominantly located within the medical field. for example, dalrylmple et al. (2006: 948–955) refer to a staff development programme for pbl training of dental educators and creedy and hand (1994: 696), as well as hassan, 2010: 84–97, refer to training for nurse educators. there are limited accounts, however, of pbl training of academics from contexts outside of the medical field. this article addresses that gap. a further gap that is addressed by this article is the link between pbl training, pbl implementation and semantics in legitimation code theory (lct). thi anh phuong and coworkers (2018: 37, 41) explored the relationship between academic performance of nursing students within a pbl environment and the application of kolb’s learning styles (kolb, 1984: 38). they found that learning is most effective when students move through the cycles between concrete experience and abstract conceptualisations using kolb’s learning styles. their finding, that learning is most effective when students move through the cycles of concrete experience, observation, experience and abstract conceptualisations before drawing on tentative conclusions that can be transferred to new situations (thi anh phuong et al., 2018:41), is important for the arguments that are presented in this article. indeed, the literature provides limited examples of the enactment of semantics in the analysis of pbl training. semantics superimposes well with pbl because pbl case studies demonstrate the continuous movement between abstract, conceptual knowledge and concrete, everyday experiences, thereby creating semantic waves, which is a hallmark of semantics. according to maton (2014a:122) the application of semantics addresses the creation of semantic waves for cumulative learning to occur. it is for these reasons that semantics was chosen as a conceptual tool for the analysis of pbl training of academic staff within a teaching development programme. the purpose of the study described in this article was to analyse the creation of semantic waves during pbl training, and to investigate the application of pbl by respondents who had participated in the training. the study was guided by the following research questions: 1) how is semantics in lct addressed in pbl training within a tdp for cumulative knowledge building?; 2) what are the experiences of respondents regarding the implementation of pbl, within the context of their own practice, following pbl training in a tdp, from the perspective of semantics in lct? the next subsection provides a brief explication of the theoretical framework (semantics) that underpinned the study. thereafter, a semantic analysis of pbl training within the context of a teaching development programme is provided. 2. theoretical framework semantics is a dimension of lct and can be employed to analyse how the context-dependence and complexity of meaning develops over time in a learning episode (waite, curzon, maton & tuttiett, 2019). semantics conceives social fields of practice as semantic structures whose organising principles comprise the semantic codes of semantic gravity (sg) and semantic density (sd) (maton 2014b:2; maton 2014a:18). semantic gravity (sg) refers to the degree to which meaning relates to its context and can be strengthened (sg+) or weakened (sg-) along a continuum where meaning is more related to its context in the former and less related 1882020 38(2): 188-200 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.12 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) to its context in the latter. semantic density (sd) pertains to the condensation of meaning and can be strengthened (sd+) or weakened (sd-) along a continuum where fewer meanings are condensed in the former and more meanings are condensed in the latter (maton, 2014a:110). therefore, the organising principles are sg+, sgand sd+, sd(maton, 2014a: 130). when the continua of sg and sd are placed perpendicularly to each other a semantic plane is produced. the concepts transcend dichotomising categories to create differences between and within forms (maton, 2014a:130). figure 1: the semantic plane exhibiting semantic codes (adapted from maton, 2014b: 3–4). the principal modalities generated from sd and sg are integrated from maton (2014b:3– 4) and shay (2013:572) as follows: 1) top right quadrant: rhizomatic codes (sg-, sd+) which refer to context-independent, complex condensed meaning as in theoretical knowledge; 2) bottom left quadrant: prosaic codes (sd-, sg+) which refer to context-dependent, simple meaning as in practical knowledge; 3) bottom right quadrant: worldly codes (sg+, sd+) which refer to context-dependent, complex condensed meaning as in professional knowledge; and 4) top left quadrant: rarefied codes (sd-, sg–) which refer to context-independent, simple meaning, as in everyday generalisations. the main characteristics of knowledge building and achievement are semantic waves that encompass recurrent shifts in context-dependence and condensation of meaning that “weave” different forms of knowledge (maton 2014b:1). a semantic wave is created by recurrent upward and downward movements on the semantic scale of the sd and sg of knowledge (maton, 2013:12). upward movements on the semantic scale encompass a shift from particular concrete contexts towards the condensing of meanings into abstract terms and concepts. on the other hand, downward movements would involve shifts from complex, condensed meaning towards concrete terms (mcnaught, maton, martin & matruglio, 2013:50). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.12 1892020 38(2): 189-200 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.12 hassan problem-based learning training and implementation according to maton (2014a:122–123), the focus on decontextualised knowledge would result in a (high) flat line of weaker sg that would result in students being incapable of applying the knowledge within everyday life contexts. tracing the strengths of sg and sd of practices over a certain period would produce a semantic profile. in other words, semantic profiles show how context-dependence and complexity of meaning change over time. a semantic range is the region between the highest and lowest point of a semantic profile (maton, hood & shay, 2016:17). 3. context of the study and research methods this study was conducted at a university of technology in the western cape. the respondents in the study had attended the tdp, which is a mandatory programme for all newly appointed academic staff. the programme provides knowledge and skills in teaching and learning as well as assessment. it runs for a year with weekly workshops on pedagogical topics being implemented in the first semester and the development of a teaching portfolio in the second semester. the training on pbl was one of the workshops conducted within the tdp. a pure pbl medical model approach, as given by barrows and tamblyn (1980:13), (discussed in the introduction section) was followed. the respondents, who were part of a larger group, were randomly assigned to groups of six during the training to expedite small group discussions. large group discussions involving the entire group were also employed. the research design adopted for this study was an interpretative approach. in this regard, the following qualitative methods of data collection were applied: 1) document analysis, namely, course materials including reflective journal notes of the researcher and 2) face-toface interviews with respondents. the course materials that were analysed were powerpoint presentations of a pbl case study used by this researcher during the pbl training session. this document analysis was undertaken to determine how semantic waves were being created for cumulative knowledge building during the pbl training. this would have addressed the first research question. the face-to-face interviews were conducted in order to determine, from the viewpoint of semantics, respondents’ experiences of implementing pbl within their own pedagogical practice and discipline after they had participated in pbl training as part of the tdp. this was done in order to answer the second research question. for the face-to-face interviews, a purposive sample of ten participants in total was drawn from the tdp alumni. only those participants who had completed the tdp could participate in the study. an email was sent to the participants inviting them to be interviewees in the study; 10 of them responded in the affirmative and became the respondents in this study. all interviews were audio recorded and handwritten notes taken. the duration of the interviews was between 20-45 minutes. the face-to-face interviews focused on questioning respondents about their experiences of implementing pbl within their respective disciplines. they were questioned about the case study they designed and employed, and how they facilitated learning among their students. all face-to-face interviews were transcribed manually. the data was coded according to the organising principles of semantics, namely semantic gravity and semantic density. these codes were categorised and themes were identified. the particular themes that emerged were the strengthening and weakening of sg and sd during the implementation of pbl by the respondents. 1902020 38(2): 190-200 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.12 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) ethics approval was obtained for the study at the university where the study was conducted. all respondents in this study were required to provide informed consent by signing a consent form that explained the purpose of the study and how the findings would be used. they were given the option of withdrawing from the study at any time. they were also assured that they would not be identified and that confidentiality would be guaranteed. 4. results the findings of the study are reported in terms of: 1) the analysis of the pbl training using semantics and 2) the results of the face-to face interviews that reveal the manner in which respondents weakened and strengthened sg and sd when implementing pbl within their respective disciplines following training. 4.1 analysis of pbl training through the lens of semantics this sub-section is concerned with the description of the pbl training and analysis thereof from the perspective of semantics. the latter is in answer to the first research question. the pbl training was premised on the hypothetical medical model designed by barrows and tamblyn (1980). with this model, students must develop problem-solving, diagnostic or clinical reasoning skills. they must obtain information, synthesise the data available, generate hypotheses and apply deductive reasoning to the medical problem at hand (barrows & tamblyn, 1980:13). the medical model was chosen by virtue of this researcher’s expertise in medical education and pbl. this allowed this researcher to address the pbl case study in sufficient detail, which might not have been possible had she used a generic, non-technical case study or a case study in another discipline. this researcher took on the role of “pbl facilitator” while the respondents assumed the role of “pbl students” in the pbl training. the facilitation of pbl entailed the asking of probing questions related to the pbl case study so that respondents, as pbl students, could identify learning needs or learning issues for self-directed learning. the respondents had to rely on their everyday medical knowledge in order to answer questions related to the pbl case study. the pbl training was analysed using the organising principles of semantics, namely semantic density and semantic gravity. the analysis started at the beginning of the pbl training with the presentation of a medical case study that entailed progressive disclosure of information regarding the treatment of a patient. initially, context-rich information was provided: a patient comes in presenting with particular symptoms (sg+, sd-). the patient’s medical history summary is built up and data is collected through laboratory analysis. concomitantly, hypotheses around the patient’s probable illness are generated and motivated for, alongside the derivation of relevant learning issues that would help better understand the medical problem. in the process of analysing the medical problem, there is a shift towards greater abstraction and a move away from concrete knowledge (sd+, sg-). this allows for the testing of hypotheses and the generation of a differential diagnosis. the treatment plan for the patient would see the move towards weaker sd and stronger sg (sd-, sg+) as the case study moves back to the concrete level where the patient’s problem is managed (for example, through medication). everyday medical examples applied in pbl are complex rather than simple. for example, a scenario that depicts a patient with a deep cough and complaining of fever (sg+) is laden with information pertaining to an abnormal functioning of the lungs. to understand this http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.12 1912020 38(2): 191-200 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.12 hassan problem-based learning training and implementation problem, one needs to strengthen sd so that the anatomy, physiology and biochemistry of the lungs can be better understood for a resolution of the problem (diagnosis and treatment). when these subjects are studied individually, the structure and function of the lungs will be addressed independently of each other. the context provided in a scenario (sg+) gives the bigger picture, the whole, which is not always easy for students to assimilate at first, but helps to integrate the relevant disciplines, thereby increasing the complexity of knowledge. when sd is strengthened in a pbl environment, that is, when one aims for deeper understanding of the pertinent knowledge in anatomy, physiology and biochemistry, the problem gets disassembled. this knowledge can then be applied to the context of the patient’s medical problem, for assigning meaning to the medical condition, which will assist in the arrival of a differential diagnosis. within a pbl setting, multiple disciplines would co-exist within a particular context (see figure 2). when moving towards greater abstraction (strengthening sd), each discipline is addressed separately (see figure 2). therefore, although semantic gravity is multi-disciplinary, sd is not because abstraction can only exist in a uni-disciplinary manner, as demonstrated in figure 2. figure 2: increasing sd and decreasing sg for various disciplines with respect to a pbl case study (adaptation of semantic waves by maton 2013:12) although the disciplines separate (diverge) as knowledge moves upwards on the semantic scale, they converge when knowledge moves down the semantic scale, towards increasing semantic gravity, albeit at a different place on the graph. that is, additional contextual knowledge is provided in the form of a patient’s physical examination summary, such as measurements of blood pressure, temperature and pulse. this contextual knowledge moves up the semantic 1922020 38(2): 192-200 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.12 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) scale, in a uni-disciplinary fashion, towards greater abstraction and for meaning construction. it must be noted that when studied through the pbl route, some subjects, are more abstract than others (hassan, 2013:48–64). hence, sd is relative. biochemistry and physiology, for example, would require a higher level of abstraction during meaning making, that is, sd will have to be strengthened more in these subjects than in subjects such as anatomy (hassan, 2013:48–64). knowledge then returns down the semantic scale towards increasing sg, but on a different location on the semantic scale. it is at this point that more information relating to the context (which increases in complexity each time the wave comes back down) is provided in the form of laboratory test results, such as blood gas analysis, etc. thereafter, the sd in each discipline is strengthened yet again during the upward movement. during the downward movement that follows, the context is revisited so that more sophisticated information in the form of x-rays, scans, etc. can be obtained. the upward movement occurs once again, followed by the downward movement towards another context that deals with the eventual diagnosis and treatment of the patient. these cycles of upward and downward movements occur as a series of waves. in figure 3, the aforementioned recurring semantic waves are illustrated using an adaptation of the intersecting continua, depicted in figure 1. movements occur from the prosaic code (sg+, sd-) towards the rhizomatic code (sg-, sd+) and back again. this process is repeated several times until a final movement is made towards the worldly code (sg+, sd+), where treatment is rendered following a differential diagnosis (see figure 3). figure 3: semantic waves illustrated on the intersecting continua of sg and sd (adaptation of the semantic plane by maton 2014b:3-4) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.12 1932020 38(2): 193-200 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.12 hassan problem-based learning training and implementation 4.2 respondents’ experiences of implementing pbl through the lens of semantics this subsection addresses the finding related to the second research question in terms of the following themes: • weakening sg and strengthening sd when implementing pbl (sg-, sd+) • weakening sg and sd during the application of pbl (sg-, sd-) • strengthening sd and sg during the implementation of pbl (sd+, sg+) • implementing pbl by weakening sd and strengthening sg (sd-, sg+) 4.2.1 weakening sg and strengthening sd when implementing pbl (sg-, sd+) although the context provided by the scenarios would have been wanting, respondents who were operating in this quadrant were able to apply the principles of pbl. one of the respondents explained that she had applied the principles of pbl when adopting a flipped classroom approach to her teaching, which proved to be useful in transitioning from teacher-centred to student-centred approaches. she added that in the past she simply “delivered the content” and that there was little interaction between herself and the students: previously, i would do most of the teaching and try to control students but now i am able to better manage the class and give students an opportunity to explore. i incorporate research activities in the teaching and learning and give students research assignments. 4.2.2 weakening sg and sd during the application of pbl (sg-, sd-) a respondent (from the faculty of informatics and design) indicated that when she tried to implement pbl she found it challenging. she explained that she had given her students a scenario and tried to facilitate learning using pbl principles: i immediately tried to implement it in my teaching and learning but i really struggled with it…it’s difficult. we were just copying you…its hard with pbl…you come from the students’ perspective. she explained further that pbl is difficult to apply in large classes with 120 students: “some students sit at the back and don’t want to participate. they want notes to learn from and there is resistance when you ask them to explore for themselves.” another respondent was of the opinion that pbl would work best at the bachelor of technology level. students could start with case-based learning and traditional methods of teaching and learning at the firstand second-year levels, and later apply that knowledge at the (final) fourth year of study. she also felt that she needed more training in pbl in order to be able to implement it effectively. some lecturers, who had worked in the industry sector prior to joining the university, had capitalised on their workplace knowledge to develop case studies, while other lecturers, who lacked industry experience in their field, found it challenging to develop case studies. in this category, respondents were neither able to design real-life scenarios to contextualise knowledge (which would have weakened sg), nor were they able to apply the hallmarks of pbl such as problem solving (which would have weakened sd). 1942020 38(2): 194-200 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.12 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) 4.2.3 strengthening sd and sg during the implementation of pbl (sd+, sg+) one respondent explained how he had linked the medical problem adopted during the training, to his discipline (which is business). he reported: “i looked at the problem in business. in marketing it is all about problem solving and i came up with a potential problem…all fields have problems…pbl can be applied in any field.” when it came to acquiring the necessary facilitation of learning techniques he reported: “i learnt from you…i learnt how to facilitate pbl from you. you didn’t just give us the answers…i approached it the same way”. he stated that he employed small group discussions to promote engagement with a case study related to a coffee shop that was losing customers. students were required to generate hypotheses as to the cause of this problem. his students’ perceptions of pbl were positive and they “loved pbl”. another respondent from the business faculty (tourism and events) explained that she drew on her experience of travelling to develop scenarios for the implementation of pbl. by way of illustration, she provided an example of a scenario of a couple who were on a cruise and experienced a problem that had to be addressed. her experience with pbl was positive, as could be gleaned from this comment: “i enjoyed pbl. it forces students to think critically and to have a problem-solving thought pattern; to think what is happening in real life.” a respondent from the engineering faculty, who taught electrical engineering, developed programming problems, which he had presented to students, cold (that is, they had not seen the problem before). he commented that he would identify components of a problem, such as capture records, new records, sort captured records and calculate averages. in general, although he felt he could apply pbl effectively, he sometimes noticed that only one student would be working whilst the others simply looked on. one of the respondents indicated that it was possible to address the language barrier within a pbl environment. that is, in the pbl groups the use of the students’ mother-tongue and not english, was evident. english was not the mother-tongue of the majority of students, as can be established from her explication: “most students (70%) speak xhosa; only 5–10% are bilingual and speak english and afrikaans while the others speak venda.” by being given the opportunity to speak in their mother-tongue, she observed that: “students understand better and the commonality helps them”. the aforementioned respondents were able to strengthen sg by providing real-life scenarios and expecting their students to generate hypotheses as to the cause of the problem and coming up with learning issues. thus, these respondents were successful in strengthening the sd of the pbl process. hence, the hallmarks of pbl, such as critical thinking and problemsolving, were attended to. 4.2.4 implementing pbl by weakening sd and strengthening sg (sd–/sg+) one of the respondents from the faculty of business explained how, as a chef, she was able to apply everyday life experiences in her teaching. for example, her students were given two ingredients and asked to prepare a dish of the day for two people. she then assessed them on food handling procedures, consistency, taste and the texture of the dish. this pedagogical method demonstrates a strong context (sg+) but weak sd (sd-) in terms of applying the principles of pbl. that is, scenarios, the generation of hypotheses and the derivation of learning issues, were absent. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.12 1952020 38(2): 195-200 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.12 hassan problem-based learning training and implementation the respondent positioned in this quadrant applied everyday life experiences in her teaching without aligning them with the principles and methods of pbl. therefore, in terms of the implementation of pbl, the context was strong (sg+) while sd was weak (sd-). 5. discussion this section is concerned with discussing the analysis of pbl training as well as the experiences of respondents regarding the implementation of pbl within their own pedagogical practice. 5.1 analysis of pbl training using semantics within a pbl environment that is established around the medical model, the context is not drawn from everyday life experiences (sg-, sd-, prosaic code), but is located within the medical field (thus, it is more complex) and allows for the addressing of clinical reasoning skills or problem-solving skills that are paramount for a doctor in training. context, which is related to the profession, is laden with condensed meaning and is used as a vehicle to make semantically dense knowledge more relevant and understandable. during the pbl process, one needs to ascend the semantic scale towards greater abstraction (sd+) as well as descend towards greater contextualisation (sg+) in order to make a differential diagnosis and effect a treatment plan. if this is not addressed, one could risk operating on a low flat line, which is undesirable. by asking probing questions, and not simply covering content knowledge on a superficial level, the pbl facilitator can avoid a low flat line. it is advisable to handle complex information with condensed meaning (sd+) within a context-rich (sg+) environment so that the semantic range can be expanded. when designing case studies, the expansion of the semantic range can be achieved by providing sufficient cognitive complexity to enable students to engage with the knowledge at an abstract level. the semantic ranges will differ across various disciplines. this should be considered when planning and executing pbl. 5.2 respondents’ experiences of implementing pbl within own teaching it became apparent that it was not feasible to provide a crash course in pbl and then expect candidates to apply it; further support was needed, as was alluded to by the respondents. in the creedy and hand (1994: 696) report, a seven-month professional development programme focused on introducing pedagogical transformation associated with the adoption of pbl. coffin’s (2013:208) study found that at least a year of staff development is required. furthermore, a recommendation was made that pbl should not be regarded as an “add-on teaching approach” (coffin, 2013:208). respondents in this study also felt that they needed buy-in from their line managers and other colleagues, and that it was not viable to implement pbl by themselves; the entire department or faculty needed to shift to pbl. coffin (2013: 208) suggests that in order for pbl to be successfully implemented, formal support from executive managers is necessary from the outset. another drawback was the challenge faced by academics from other (non-medical) disciplines with respect to applying pbl within their respective contexts because pbl was presented to them from the perspective of the medical model. this researcher adopted the medical model, and therefore, it was contextualised within the medical field; as a result, some respondents from non-medical disciplines had difficulty understanding and applying pbl to 1962020 38(2): 196-200 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.12 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) their disciplines. in addition, the contextualisation of knowledge within the medical field was too complex for most respondents from other disciplines to understand and transfer. thus, although the medical model of pbl was contextualised within the field of medicine, it was actually decontextualised for other disciplines. some respondents found this decontextualised knowledge difficult to apply and therefore, were unable to implement pbl in its pure form. this researcher needed to have strengthened the sd of pbl which would have given respondents the necessary pbl principles for application within their own disciplines. this researcher did not possess knowledge of the context of other disciplines and assumed that by adopting the context of the medical field (with which she was more familiar) she was providing the (pbl) context for other disciplines. however, the pbl principles were not easily transferable and only some of the respondents managed to achieve the desired application of the pbl principles within their disciplinary contexts. nevertheless, the hallmarks of pbl, such as the facilitation of learning and the promotion of self-directed learning were what respondents grasped from the training. during the training, this researcher focused more on the implementation of pbl in terms of facilitating pbl tutorials (sg+) and understanding the principles of facilitation (sd+), than on case study design, which would have strengthened sd. this resulted in respondents struggling to design pbl case studies, as it was deemed to be too rigorous and sophisticated. instead, they designed short case studies, which were used as tools to enhance active learning. nevertheless, many respondents indicated that they were able to apply the facilitation techniques within their own teaching (whether they were adopting pbl or not). the pbl facilitation techniques that they were exposed to during the training had an influence on the respondents’ pedagogical styles. they shifted from traditional, didactic methods of teaching to student-centred, participatory learning that embraced authentic learning. adjusting to the conceptual changes associated with the implementation of pbl has been explored by creedy and hand (1994:698–701). they discovered that by experimenting with new approaches to teaching and learning, receiving feedback, reflecting on practice and improving their skills, trainees were able to gain more confidence as they transitioned from teacher-centred instruction towards student-centred facilitation in an attempt to promote active learning. lim and choy (2014: 62) found that when it came to the facilitation of learning, participants were satisfied that they were able to incorporate more collaborative learning strategies, apply listening and questioning techniques and promote participation for active learning among students. arguably, those respondents who had prior experience in implementing case studies in their teaching might have found it easier to apply pbl than those who did not normally use case studies. therefore, even though she operated predominantly from a low flat line (sg+, sd-) and did not make sufficient semantic waves with respect to pbl case study design, the respondents were still able to apply the knowledge gained during the pbl training. another aspect of pbl transfer had to do with the fact that the respondents were implementing pbl within their own (single) discipline, as opposed to the manner in which pbl was presented to them (as multi-disciplinary). multi-disciplinary contexts did not necessarily exist in their faculties, which made it challenging to implement pbl. in offering an explanation as to why pbl implementation can be so difficult, bouhuijs (2011:19) refers to a culture clash of professionalism. within academia professionals usually work individually and independently within their respective fields and with little collaboration across disciplines. this is at odds http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.12 1972020 38(2): 197-200 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.12 hassan problem-based learning training and implementation with the culture of pbl, which crosses disciplines and calls for an integrated curriculum that demands teamwork and cooperation amongst university teachers. consequently, when strengthening sd during pbl training it is important to do so within a discipline-specific context, if that is the manner in which it will be applied by the recipients of the training. this argument corroborates other findings. for example, macdonald and isaacs (2001: 315) describe pbl implementation within a single course, which was successful in helping students engage in problems relevant to their profession. referring to the application of pbl at departmental level, raine and symons (2005:73–74) describe how pbl has been successfully incorporated into undergraduate physics teaching, using various modes of implementation that involved the entire programme or aspects thereof, as well as the entire module or parts of the module . perrenet, bouhuijs and smits (2000: 356–357) undertook a comparison between pbl implementation in medical education (following the maastricht model) and pbl application in engineering education, with a specific focus on the feasibility of teaching mathematics and physics. they conclude that the hierarchical nature of mathematics would render it difficult to be administered through a pbl route that does not follow a particular sequence of meaning or knowledge creation. separate direct instruction and supervised practise, which involves teacher-guided discussions, problem-solving tutorials and structured group work, are required. a further limitation of the application of the medical model of pbl within engineering education is the emphasis on short cycle problem analysis and problem-solving, which does not adequately address the nature of the professional work of engineers. in this regard, ramsden (1991:159–184) warns that teachers in scientific and professional fields would tend to lean more towards didactic teaching methods than student-centred teaching and learning approaches. lahtinen (2005:93), on the other hand, gives an account of the successful implementation of pbl within engineering education, which is described as “very challenging but rewarding…” this success is attributed to the contextualisation of knowledge drawn from everyday life experiences and the conceptualisation of knowledge based on theory. during the pbl training this researcher operated too heavily from the rarefied code (sd-, sg-). the sg was weak because she used a medical context that might not have been relevant to the respondents’ disciplines. the sd was also weak since she did not focus on the discussion of pbl principles, that is, condensed meaning. in future, this researcher will need to shift towards the worldly code in the bottom right quadrant (sg+, sd+) by offering further training in pbl related to the development and implementation of pbl case studies and the discussion of pbl principles. hung et al. (2008: 497) lament that research pertaining to pbl problem design is wanting, especially when it comes to problems across disciplines. the problem is exacerbated when individual teachers have to independently design pbl case studies without resources and support (angeli, 2002). the aforementioned limitations concerning pbl case study design could provide an avenue for future research. 6. conclusion this article focused on analysing pbl training of academics within a tdp and through the framework of semantics. it was reported that the medical model was applied during the training, which allowed for the creation of semantic waves within the context of that model. in general, however, the training might have been over-contextualised for the medical field as it did not address the generation of abstract principles for the application of pbl within other 1982020 38(2): 198-200 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.12 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) discipline-specific contexts. to a large extent, the findings demonstrated that respondents found it challenging to implement pbl in its pure (medical model) form and needed to adapt it (pbl) to meet the unique characteristics of their discipline. therefore, it is important to consider the diverse disciplinary backgrounds of participants when it comes to pbl training. it is this researcher’s recommendation that these principles be addressed when training academics from multiple disciplines so that the transfer of knowledge in pbl is possible within their respective disciplines. a limitation of this study is that it focused on the training of academics at one institution. the involvement of academics at additional institutions might also be useful. future studies could involve peer observation of teaching to analyse respondents’ capability to address semantic wave construction when applying pbl within their discipline, that is, the weakening and strengthening of sd and sg using pbl case studies. there 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is important to understand the thought patterns of students and supervisors that underlie the choice of paradigm and determine the progression of doctoral studies as an integral part of articulating scholarship at the doctoral level and subsequently, to completing the research. this paper traces a student’s and a supervisor’s thought patterns in the contested space of paradigms by adopting bryman’s (2007) phrase ‘paradigm skirmishes’ to explore their experiences of a doctoral research study. it analyses some of the contested issues in paradigm proliferation and juxtaposes the doctoral research journey within it. we observe that engaging within the paradigm ‘skirmish arena’ is a tricky process, but an inevitable part of the doctoral student’s academic discourse. the use of the term ‘cradle’ in this paper is a metaphor to imply the ‘nurturance’ and ‘upbringing’ that doctoral students might require to develop intellectual maturity in academic authority and voice. as a ‘written conversation of minds’ of supervisor and supervisee, this paper not only traces some of the tensions that doctoral students undergo, but also illustrates how some university structures and supervision are critical to nurturing originality and critical engagement with discourse, particularly during moments of uncertainty and intellectual exhilaration. keywords: doctoral research, postgraduate supervision, research supervision, guided autonomy, paradigm, paradigm contestations introduction: ‘paradigm identity’ and doctoral study during the course of their study, doctoral students engage in and espouse, even if temporarily, what we call in this paper, a ‘paradigm identity’, as a lens to successfully conceptualise and complete their study. denzin and lincoln (2008a:31) cite guba’s (1990) definition of a paradigm as “basic set of beliefs that guides action”. nespor (2006:115) offers kuhn’s (1977) definition that “a paradigm is what the members of a scientific community, and they alone, share”. in this discussion, we clarify a “paradigm identity” as the choice and adoption of, and engagement with a particular paradigm to guide the research process, for example, in regard to the clarification of the topic, literature review, data generation, analysis and interpretation. choice of paradigm, even if not openly acknowledged, is relevant to any study. as denzin and lincoln (2008a:31) note “all research is interpretive … each interpretive paradigm makes particular demands on the researcher, including the questions the researcher asks and the interpretations he or she brings to them”. creswell (2009:11) contends that “the researcher not only selects a qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods study to conduct, the inquirer also decides on a type of study within these three approaches”. within this effort to follow already established paradigms, supervisors and doctoral students are perhaps concerned about argumentation, independent thinking, creativity and originality (kiguwa & langa, 2009), as “by-products” of the doctoral study (whitelock, faulkner & miell, 2008:143; lovitts, 2005:140) but also about the paradigm within which to explore their study. discourse on paradigm relates to philosophical issues of ontology, epistemology, methodology and axiology, all of which constitute a paradigm framework or a “basic set of beliefs” that researchers use to interpret and act on their world (guba, 1990 in denzin & lincoln, 2008a:31, 245). ontology addresses issues of the nature of the human being, and that of reality; epistemology explains the relationship between the inquirer and the known; and methodology embraces procedures of accessing and gaining knowledge perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 2010100 from the world (bryman, 2007; denzin & lincoln, 2000; 2008a; guba & lincoln, 2005; hesse-biber & leavy, 2006; mertz & anfara, 2006; rubin & rubin, 2005). denzin & lincoln (2008a) add axiology, an ethical quest, to their definition of paradigm. rather than viewing a qualitative or quantitative approach to research from a continuum, we seek to validate our argument by limiting our paradigm discourse to the schism between them, and the consequential influence on paradigmatic perspective. through paradigm discourse and writing, among other requirements for the doctorate degree, doctoral students seek entry, engagement and acceptance into professional disciplines to qualify them as “professional scholar[s]” (colbeck, 2008:9). writing, as a conscious process is an identity exposition process, as text is intricately linked to the author of the text (pillay, 2005:540). in regard to identity and writing, swadener and mutua (2008:35) suggest that “… these identities are represented in texts that script, ascribe and/or reify identities”, suggesting that some identities are more prominent in discourse than others. thody (2006:130) adds “writing or presenting [data] cannot, should not be neutral”. perhaps holliday’s (2007:117) suggestion about doctoral students as writers locates them in contradictory spaces, as [they] find themselves newly constructed, not as experienced professionals, but as [junior members] of an academic discourse community which decides for them what they are allowed to say, how they are allowed to say it and who they are allowed to be as writers. it seems however, that the level of acceptance of the discourse engaged by the doctoral student may be regarded as “work in process” (boot & beile, 2005), notwithstanding the controls from the academic community which still expects originality and creativity from them. these contradictions and possibilities for the growth of doctoral students through paradigm discourse are the subject of the discourse with which we engage in this paper. entry: redefining my paradigmatic identity: the ‘i’ emerges in the doctoral support sessions (rose, the student) i enrolled for doctoral studies as an academic, with some experience of teaching in higher education and engagement with academic discourse. i had five peer-reviewed publications, had supervised and examined four graduate students whose studies were all quantitative. at the start of my doctoral studies, it appeared that this previous experience in higher education would ease my adjustment to the doctoral journey. however, i realised that i could not assert my level of proficiency in academic discourse for several reasons that i subsequently explore. first, as i engaged with paradigm discourse as a student, i encountered the qualitative approach not previously entrenched in my repertoire (hesse-biber & leavy, 2006; mertz & anfara, 2006; rubin & rubin, 2005). as a positivist i had also come to associate research with quantities (denzin & lincoln, 2005; 2000; flick, von kardorff & steinke, 2004; hesse-biber & leavy, 2006). second, in my research template was “the formal language”, used to reflect the scientific position of neutrality (bogdan & biklen, 2007; denzin & lincoln, 2005; rubin & rubin, 2005). altogether, i had learnt that research is a process “within a value-free framework” (denzin and lincoln, 2000:8), as an objective process within controlled scientific procedures (flick et al., 2004; hesse-biber & leavy, 2006). on the contrary, on an elementary level of referring to the author him/herself, in the faculty support sessions, one professor echoed the sentiments of authors such as bogdan and biklen (2007) and guba and lincoln (2005), mentioning that qualitative research privileges the researcher’s voice as it locates it in the research process. accordingly, references to the researcher might be to “i”, rather than to “the researcher”, the latter being “out there” or “the voice from nowhere” (lather in guba & lincoln, 2005:209). mcniff (2008:352) agrees that there is an increasing trend in scholarship to use “i” as a new form of scholarship to generate living forms of theory. the professor gave us an article by morse, barrett, mayan, olson and spiers (2002), entitled: “verification strategies for establishing reliability and validity in qualitative research”, which explores ruto-korir & lubbe — locating the doctoral study in the ‘paradigm skirmishes’ 101 the progressive debate on the qualitative paradigm, especially how to verify qualitative data vis à vis quantitative data. i single out the following quote which i thought would disqualify me as a prospective qualitative researcher: also important were characteristics of the investigator, who must be responsive and adaptable to changing circumstances, holistic, having processional immediacy, sensitivity, and ability for clarification and summarization (guba & lincoln, in morse et al., 2002:5, emphasis added) [n.b. regarding adaptability during research, i wrote in my personal journal on 24/05/2006: “i do not qualify”]. the call to be flexible during research contradicted my quantitative tradition of research as a ‘concise’ process. besides, research that located me in the text resulted in a cognitive dissonance of sorts, as it contrasted with my previous knowledge about ‘scientific’ research. therefore, even as i went through the above-mentioned article, i sensed a strong persuasion to cling to quantitative research which i thought was concise, predictable and objective, or perhaps i was being true to “institutional conservatism” (pillay, 2005:540), a stance that required me to underplay qualitative research which was not familiar to me or not necessary at that point [since i had a quantitative proposal]. however, since i was engaged in a scholarly exercise, i thought of familiarising myself with the qualitative paradigm, even if only for the sake of knowledge. i needed a paradigmatic shift if i was to assimilate the qualitative approach into my research repertoire. such a ‘new realization’ would affect my research journey throughout. clearly, my coming from a positivist paradigm resulted in this exposure to the qualitative approach to jolt my thinking somewhat, with the new realization that disturbed my research knowledge equilibrium. in the months that followed this new ‘discovery’, as i endeavoured to understand the role of a paradigm in research, i experienced and interrogated intellectual tensions arising from the discourse on paradigms such as noted by lather (2006), bryman (2007), denzin and lincoln (2000; 2005), flick et al. (2004); guba and lincoln (2005) as the following synthesis illustrates. clarifying the path to follow: reading about paradigm incompatibility (rose, the student) immersing myself in literature on paradigmatic perspectives, i entered into a paradigmatic contest, a topic that raises diverse worldviews and different ways of interpreting the world (bryman, 2007; creswell, 2009). the contest on paradigms is currently obscure as a multidimensional concept that might be determined by students of research, type of discipline area, and faculty members, as part of shaping the research process. however, in this section, i aim to highlight some possible sources of intellectual tension for doctoral students (creswell, 2009). according to bryman (2007:14-15), “paradigm wars”, or the assumptions of quantitative and qualitative research, are likely to continue because of the perceived “differentness and incompatibility of [qualitative and quantitative] approaches” as “fundamental philosophical issues about the nature of the human being and society” and how to study it. however, to creswell (2009:6) “worldview” refers to different ways of interpreting the world that do not necessarily lead to contestation among researchers. he observes that qualitative and quantitative methods are compatible, as researchers can “triangulate” data sources across the divide (creswell, 2009:14). regardless of the call to see the two approaches as compatible (guba & lincoln, 2005; 2008; denzin, 2008; creswell, 2009), researchers cannot ignore the presence of a dichotomy, as highlighted by bryman (2007). a critical reading of the literature on the controversy and resistance to paradigm options and choices reveals constantly shifting spaces and issues with which to engage. previously, some researchers discredited the qualitative approach for being “unscientific” (denzin & lincoln, 2000; 2005; flick et al., 2004; guba & lincoln, 2005) and less rigorous than quantitative research (flick et al., 2004; hesse-biber & leavy, 2006). denzin and lincoln (2000; 2005) confirm that in this discourse, quantitative scholars assumed supremacy over qualitative researchers. besides the duality of the basic assumptions of the two perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 2010102 approaches resulting in contention, there also have been intra-paradigm wars (bryman, 2007), in which qualitative researchers have resisted colonisation in research (denzin & lincoln, 2000; guba & lincoln in guba & lincoln, 2005; smith, 1999; swadener & mutua, 2007; 2008). currently, paradigm controversy reflects on issues of “politics and ethics of evidence and the value of qualitative work” (denzin, 2008:316), subjectivity inherent in designing qualitative research, and the use of non-randomized samples (denzin & lincoln, 2000; 2005; flick, et al., 2004; lincoln & denzin, 2003; reyna in nespor, 2006). however, hatch (2007) and tesch (1990) advise that bias is inherent in human nature, whether in quantitative or qualitative research. despite paradigm controversy, there is potential for a future of paradigm harmony between qualitative and quantitative researchers (creswell, 2009; denzin, 2008; guba & lincoln, 2005; 2008). besides, some of the scholars initially opposed to the qualitative approach have since softened their stance. for example, guba and lincoln (2005; 2008) argue that a paradigm framework should include issues about axiology (role of values in research), as they have also revisited their earlier stance on paradigms, viz. “a second reading of the burgeoning literature and subsequent rethinking of our own rationale have led us to think that the issue is much larger than we first conceived” (guba & lincoln, 2005:201). there seems to be “production of respite in hostilities” between the two groups that allows the “mixing of methods that cross the quantitative-qualitative divide” (bryman, 2007:15; creswell, 2009:14). denzin (2008) supports this position, “i seek a non-military metaphor, something more peaceful, less combative. i believe we are in the midst of a complex set of discourses which are moving in several directions at the same time” (denzin, 2008:16). despite increased tolerance to divergent views about research approaches, discourse on paradigms continues to generate controversy, as “there are occasional paradigm skirmishes” (bryman, 2007:17), as certain “methodology [as part of paradigm framework] is interwoven with and emerges from the nature of particular disciplines” (guba & lincoln, 2008:256). what is the value of the debate about paradigm discourse to the doctoral scholar identity? in the following section, we locate the student’s anxiety in the paradigm contentions and the role that the supervisor played to counter the experience. paradigm position shift as intellectual exhilaration begins: the super visor’s role (rose, the student) the intellectual tensions i encountered with paradigm debates furthermore arose out of a discussion i had with my supervisors, who challenged my critical thinking and subtly encouraged creativity. these invaluable interactions with supervisors turned out to be my paradigm search, as they re-awakened my level of introspection and conscience to embrace a scholarly identity that goes beyond entrenched experiences. whitelock et al. (2008) and kiguwa and langa (2009) locate the responsibility for originality and creativity in doctoral students’ work on the supervision process. the former list some of the processes identified by supervisors that lead to academic creativity: providing guidance while promoting autonomy, building confidence through positive feedback, encouraging risk-taking, filtering knowledge, identifying problems, modelling, and sharing practice. for me, apart from confidence building, promoting my autonomy, and periodic meetings to explore my thinking, my supervisors also encouraged me to keep a journal of my thoughts. the interplay between some of these supervisor-related processes and the development of my thinking are inherent in my paradigm journey. in this part, i mention how two supervisor-related scaffolds led to my paradigm cradle. breaking the boundaries of officialdom one striking distinction between my previous experience in academia and my supervisors’ approach to feedback rested on style. besides their dislike for a red-pen (which to me was synonymous with teacherauthority), they also used non-conventional approaches which include hand-drawn bulbs, lights, stars and various motivational stickers such as smiling (happy) or sad emoticons (a qualitative approach to feedback). this approach not only focused my attention on both the strong and weak areas of my work, ruto-korir & lubbe — locating the doctoral study in the ‘paradigm skirmishes’ 103 but its emotional appeal also synergised both my affective and cognitive energy. in the following caption reflections from my journal [27/03/2006] reflect on the supervisors’ style of assessment and feedback: [today i received feedback (actually the first draft of my proposal) from both of my supervisors. i am surprised by their mode of assessing the document with little stars and emoticons. i take note that the ‘smiling’ emoticons herald approval, while sad faces signify disapproval. the document is decorated with all kinds of drawings a light bulb, smiling faces, sad faces, etc. the size of drawing determines the level of acceptance of a piece of writing. one of the supervisors has attached a homemade floral card saying ‘dear r, good start keep going!’, while another has ‘written’ ‘an impressive start!’ both packages arrived in two separate envelopes with smiling emoticons appended next to my name]. given the stage at which i received these comments (at the start of the doctoral journey), these are significant. apart from encouraging progression in words such as “keep going”, “an excellent start”, their style of comments with the use of emoticons ‘loosened’ the boundaries of officialdom for creativity to emerge [in line with qualitative research]. in addition, i perceived their positive energy and interest in my work (to make all the drawings and package the document in envelopes that i still file to date!). from each piece of the non-verbal cues, emerged a paradigm identity [qualitative, or so i thought] related to the progression and completion of my doctoral. somerville (2008) reflects from her experiences that a doctoral programme which is regimented might hinder the creative process, or stifle independence (lovitts, 2005:140) as essential components in doctoral studies. the call to supervisors is to open up space for doctoral students to contribute original knowledge, rather than to restrict creativity through rigid measures, because the doctoral programme is a developmental process (boote & beile, 2005) that initiates candidates to engage in scholarship (kiguwa & langa, 2009; lovitts, 2005:140). as my supervisors gave me space to think, explore and write as reflected in the cited journal, my experience was of an ‘opening-up’ rather than of a ‘closing down’ nature (somerville, 2008). encouraging risk-taking and creativity although not explicit in the feedback [largely qualitative] that came from the supervisors, in a way, the call to think beyond conventional boundaries in doctoral studies was evident. to reflect the level of risk-taking and creativity i enjoyed, i designed my thesis in a series of ‘voyages’ that takes the reader down various ‘terrains’ instead of the conventional chapters, thus allowing my creative self to emerging. admittedly, as i struggled to determine the best way to present my thesis, my supervisors’ positive comments gave me the confidence to have a playful mind, without losing the scholarly touch. guiding the student through paradigm tensions (dr lubbe, the supervisor) situating oneself in research and identifying an epistemological and ontological stance can be a challenge for any researcher. however, what rose highlighted and reminded me of, was how overwhelming this process can be for the novice researcher, as she sought guidance and reflected on her process. once again, the apparent binary view of quantitative versus qualitative methodologies emerged. my aim in guiding the student was for her to acquaint herself thoroughly with different stances, and to explore the potential to interweave and incorporate different or multiple viewpoints. this probably stemmed from my own doctoral journey, the continuous reflection on my paradigmatic framework, and the complexity and interrelatedness that can emerge. reflecting back on my own doctoral journey is perhaps due to the fact that i engaged with rose as a novice research supervisor, probably because the way we supervise is usually based on our own experiences (bartlett & mercer, 2001; fraser & mathews, 1999). the quest or urgency then to continuously engage with updating supervisory skills is of great importance. as a qualitative orientated researcher, i typically and spontaneously engage from an interpretive and social constructionist paradigmatic perspective. during my own doctoral and postdoctoral research i realised the extent to which one could engage with ambiguities and pluralist assumptions, which even necessitates drawing on perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 2010104 different perspectives. incorporating different points of view is valuable for the way in which one analyses current literature, conducts the analysis, and reflects on the research. a complex methodological hybrid composed of elements that are typical of apparently different paradigms, might serve a study well. at the same time, acknowledging his might be more effective and congruent if there are shared elements between the different paradigms (lincoln & guba, 2000:174). the thought process about epistemological and ontological concerns has to be combined with a grounded, strategic and practical consideration of the methods we choose and use. everything we write and research is coloured by a personal epistemology and ontology, which in turn influences the methodology. lincoln and guba (2000:167) reiterate laurel richardson’s comment, “even as we write, the boundaries between the paradigms are shifting”. once students engage with the formal writing process, it requires them to reflect on multiple realities and to engage with the ambiguities that qualitative research entails (alvesson & sköldberg, 2000). for me this was evident in the student’s process. the overarching quest during this important time in the student’s doctoral journey however, was not to impose my own paradigmatic perspective on her, but for her to engage continuously with different stances in a reflexive manner. as schwandt (2000:195) argues: … the reaching of an understanding is not a matter of setting aside, escaping, managing or tracking one’s own standpoint, prejudgments, biases or prejudices. only in a dialogical encounter with what is not understood, can we open ourselves to make sense of the previously not known and to manifest new meaning. as barnacle (2005) maintains, doctoral students should be focused upon engaging with the problematic status of knowledge and critically scrutinising the way knowledge is produced, as well as pondering the purpose and use of that knowledge. rose’s experience of the feedback process made me reflect on the manner in which i give feedback to postgraduate students. this could stem from the influence of positive psychology with a strong focus on encouragement, but in addition, also reveals a personal epistemology and ontology, as an attempt is made to develop and sustain a symbiotic and cordial relationship (li & seale, 2007): “the effective management of criticism is a joint activity that underlies the capacity for supervision to be educationally effective” (li & seale 2007:511). though each supervisory relationship is uniquely created, i would advocate establishing a climate of supportive mentoring, partnership and collaboration whilst leading the student to independence. contemplating the status quo: locating the self in academia (rose, the student) i acknowledge, as does mcniff (2008), that peers in expert fields legitimise academic discourse, as a scholar engages with ongoing conversations (holliday, 2007). discourse on paradigms is inherent in researching within a discipline (guba & lincoln, 2008), regardless of the topic chosen. therefore, as i position myself in paradigm discourse as a novice researcher, i am aware of academic genres and ‘on-going conversation’ related to disciplines. hence, i have three objectives. the first is to attempt to establish reflexivity with regard to my journey; secondly, i contemplate the status quo to legitimise the identity (of the doctoral student); and thirdly, i learn to participate in the “discursive community of practice” (kiguwa & langa, 2009:53) as an upcoming scholar. smith (1999:36) values a critical mind, because “if we write without thinking critically about our writing, it can be dangerous”. lather (2006:47) further justifies this: “teaching [or being taught] educational research in such a way that … [the student] develop[s] an ability to locate … [the self] in the tensions that characterize fields of knowledge”. besides, to write is to reveal one’s paradigm identity. huang and archer (2008) suggest that, as they write, individuals take up a social, cultural, and institutional identity to define an “essential self”, while pillay (2005) argues for an active “self” in text. even as i engaged with the contested paradigms, i experienced intellectual inadequacy, and even helplessness. the tensions that existed before the current respite are telling. although researchers are ruto-korir & lubbe — locating the doctoral study in the ‘paradigm skirmishes’ 105 invited to view “blurred” boundaries (denzin, 2008:16) between qualitative and quantitative approaches, i reflect on several questions: does an idea hold because it originates from an acclaimed identity? if that is the expectation, where does the doctoral student’s originality fit? in the space of paradigm discourse, what are doctoral students to do in the interim before such [paradigms] debates become conclusive? for example, if their stance contrasts with that of the acclaimed identities in discourse, does the academic community still sustain their contribution? given their novice position in voice and academic discourse, does such rhetoric operate within the reach of both doctoral students and even an ordinary scholar’s reach? hence, how should supervisors and supervisees decide between contested paradigms? my ‘intellectual heart’ asking these questions resonates with seale’s questions: “what is a practising social researcher to make of all this? how can these inconclusive debates become a resource for researchers rather than a source of frustration and negativity?” (seale, 2003:174). the literature on paradigm discourse does not offer a solution to these unsettling questions. rather, as i continued the quest, i reached a stage of intellectual exhilaration, arising from my perception of what seemed to be rhetoric on the scholarly level for ontological as well as methodological hegemony (guba & lincoln, 2005). these questions are pertinent to the doctoral scholar’s identity development, but a doctoral student may not yet answer them, as s/he has still to qualify to legitimise his/her voice (holliday, 2007; mcniff, 2008). contemplating the status quo: locating the self in academia (dr lubbe, the supervisor) pertaining to qualitative research, the existence of a multiplicity of ‘truths’ (daiute & fine, 2003) implies that no researcher can make a claim that their text represents some privileged truth that is beyond critical scrutiny. in my view, the knowledge and meaning that we derive from that with which we engage throughout the doctoral journey is perhaps more like construction than finding or discovering (alvesson & sköldberg, 2000; schwandt, 2000). as i observed rose’s quest to make sense of her ontological and epistemological premises, i could see that she was confronted with the challenges of the “messy, uncertain age” that qualitative research was entering in the 21st century (denzin & lincoln, 2000:23). i hoped that lincoln and guba (2000:167) might comfort her: “there is great potential for interweaving of viewpoints, for the incorporation of multiple perspectives and for borrowing in bricolage, where it is useful or richness-enhancing or theoretically heuristic”. locating the researcher self throughout the doctoral journey might be characterised by multiplicity and even conflict, as it is entails bringing different aspects of the self together into a unifying and purposegiving whole. the researcher self will express different, multiple aspects of the personal self (mcadams, josselson & lieblich, 2006). scholarly works increasingly comprise an important part of a doctoral student’s identity (mcadams & logan, 2006). therefore, even though still a student, i would argue that doctoral candidates should indeed have the opportunity to express, to contribute and to confront these deep-seated questions and challenges, and through critical engagement share the platform with mature scholars regarding the raised disputes of different epistemological and ontological stances. being confronted with “blurred boundaries”, uncertainty and ambiguity so early in her doctoral studies, according to my observation, taught rose critical thinking and reasoning skills, which laid the foundation for her work to become exemplary. the significance of paradigm debates to the doctoral journey: voices converge how do paradigm discourses relate to the doctoral student’s identity development? we explore their influence on the doctoral journey from three perspectives. firstly, rhedding-jones (2007) locates a significant attribute of the doctoral scholar’s identity in the supervisor-student power relationship. she argues that methodological choices are complex, sometimes seen as “politically-correct”, as doctoral students make their choices. however, in what appears to subdue academic freedom, rhedding-jones perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 2010106 (2007) acknowledges and situates such politics of choice in her own experience as a supervisor, as she suggests that she might have influenced her own students to adopt her methods. she reflects that “beginning researchers [should] seriously think about who they are, and how their ontologies or ways of being might make research a richer and more connected practice …” (rhedding-jones, 2007:209). it appears that supervision that nurtures dialogue might develop a doctoral student’s critical conscience (kiguwa & langa, 2009). secondly, johnson and onwuegbuzie (2004) present another perspective about the allegiance of graduate students. they claim that students who graduate from educational institutions with an aspiration to develop a career in the world of academia or research are left with the impression that they have to pledge allegiance to a school of thought (johnson & onwuegbuzie, 2004:15). therefore, the question arises as to whether students who allege loyalty to a school of thought still nurture their critical consciousness in divergent thinking away from the norm. the third level of significance of paradigm wars for the doctoral journey and scholarly development is the influence that funding might have on the research process. nespor (2006:117) argues that paradigm debates are sometimes located outside the university community, as funding agencies might determine the paradigm approach to be used. the issue of allegiance for future employment, supervisor control of the research process and adherence to academic genre, together with funding as part of the paradigm agenda (nespor, 2006; rhedding-jones, 2007), further complicates paradigm discourse, especially if one views the supervisorstudent relationship as a space for the doctoral student to develop critical consciousness. therefore, the assertions from reputable scholars introduce complexity to the development of scholarly identity. it would be naïve to suggest that research agenda might not include these issues. on the contrary, we view these issues as part of a holistic approach to research. however, caution in meeting the academic standards for qualification, in addition to other motives, such as funding for the doctoral student, might restrain the student’s intellectual autonomy and freedom, consciously or otherwise, as some thoughts or issues might be outside the domain of ‘the current’. as we interrogate paradigm contestation, questions abound. whose knowledge is it that we generate? who generates knowledge? edward said (in smith, 1999:37) asks questions that resonate with our experience, for example, regarding the purpose of or for whom we generate knowledge. smith (1999:173) reiterates these questions in relation to writing, asking several research-related questions to counter the basic belief that anybody “has an inherent right to knowledge and truth”. whitelock et al. (2008) argue that creativity and originality form the basis for doctoral students to qualify. can originality, however, emerge from hegemonic controls where “institutional elites ensure academics comply with established traditions?” (bourdieu as cited by mcniff (2008:354). given their positionality in terms of voice and agenda for research (johnson & onwuegbuzie, 2004), can graduate students make a claim to ‘becoming’ who they are (barnacle, 2005)? can they claim a substantive contribution to ontology from what they bring along to research? do they even always have an ‘ontological position’ in the first place (rhedding-jones, 2007)? do students of research really have a voice in scholarship as ‘novice’ researchers? (holliday, 2007). to attempt answers to these questions is to limit the range of possible answers. however, these questions are germane to the development of a critically conscious doctoral student, so they are not just rhetorical. these are questions for both doctoral students and supervisors to reflect on, as there might be contradictory demands for graduate students to display originality in hegemonic spaces, as already pointed out by holliday (2007) and bourdieu (cited by mcniff, 2008:354). most significantly, these selfintrospective questions provide a platform for doctoral students to reflect on the paradox of locating their voices in those of others, even as they remain critical, creative and original. summarising thoughts: unity of perspective the doctoral degree draws on and demands the highest intellectual and emotional resources from the student. to explore their topics, doctoral students ought to locate their research in a paradigm cradle, even as they depend on the subject expertise and their supervisors to guide the research process. understanding, ruto-korir & lubbe — locating the doctoral study in the ‘paradigm skirmishes’ 107 articulating and engaging various topics through a paradigm framework are not only germane to completing the doctoral study, but they also confer upon the student a scholar’s identity. therefore, the student’s scholarly identity is a growth process as well as an end product that ought to be nurtured in the doctoral programme. the student’s reflections in this paper evolved from supervision that encouraged guided autonomy according to the negotiated order model (acker & black, in kiguwa & langa, 2009:51) and the article resulted from the student’s shared tensions with supportive supervisors. it appears that nurturing the scholarly identity among doctoral students begins with such support, without which superfluous knowledge might be encouraged at the expense of critical consciousness, argumentation and originality. references 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of internal medicine and anaesthesiology at the university of the free state (ufs) has been using the traditional face-to-face mode of teaching and learning for over a decade. owing to the emergent transition to online teaching and learning, ufs has had to make drastic changes to how lessons are presented. although it is believed that moving to online learning has been a smooth transition, various challenges hinder disadvantaged students from realising the full potential of online learning. the study’s main objective is to propose alternative measures to overcome the students’ challenges and access to effective e-learning. interpretivist qualitative research was conducted using descriptive research methods, with case studies and existing aggregated data collected during a module evaluation on students’ experiences and challenges with emergency remote teaching and learning and the effectiveness of resource access during covid-19. connectivism and selfdirected learning theories are the theoretical frameworks for this study. the findings agree with the digital divide as a hindrance to students realising the full potential of e-learning. yet, lecturers still want students to submit assessment tasks and engage with course activities on the blackboard learning management system. owing to the covid-19 pandemic and other challenges that result in a shutdown of university campuses, alternative measures need to be sought to allow students, particularly disadvantaged students, to realise e-learning. keywords: access; connectivism; covid-19; emergency remote teaching; online learning; self-directed learning. author: miss mojaesi violet phejane1 affiliation: 1university of the free state, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i1.10 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(1): 164-178 published: 04 march 2022 received: 10 august 2021 accepted: 10 january 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1085-3050 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 1652022 40(1): 165-178 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 phejane a case study on the emergent transition towards online teaching and learning 1. introduction in this covid-19 pandemic, learning can now be realised online, and knowledge can be transferred virtually through multiple media. to help prevent the spread of the virus that causes covid-19, many institutions decided to cancel all face-to-face classes, including labs and other learning experiences, and mandated their faculties to move their courses online (hodges et al., 2020). therefore, jena (2020) agrees that online learning is the best solution during this crisis. motala and menon (2020) stated that covid-19 is a global pandemic showing no abating signs. it brings with it a prolonged period of disruption, with these levels of disruption possibly continuing for the foreseeable future. according to rayner and webb (2021), higher education institutions shifted courses to online platforms in an attempt to maintain instruction and normality during this unique period of global history. while the world was dealing with the covid-19 pandemic, higher education institutions were hit hard at their core through the students who were affected by this stressful and unprecedented period, as onsite classes were moved online, semesters were postponed, and examinations were rescheduled (aristovnik et al., 2020). as a result, there is an urgent need for in-depth studies to investigate how the pandemic crisis has affected students’ lives worldwide. choosing what resources to use and learning to offer depends on the rationale, time management and goals to be achieved during e-learning (correia, 2020). this will assist students to incorporate physical and online resources to achieve effective e-learning (mpungose, 2019). anderson (2016) affirms that e-learning is education that takes place over the internet and can also be referred to as online learning. it is an umbrella term for any learning that takes place across distance and not face-to-face. with most south african universities transitioning from face-to-face to online learning, alternative measures needed to be sought to allow disadvantaged students to realise e-learning. the department of internal medicine and anaesthesiology at the university of the free state (ufs) has been using the traditional face-to-face mode of teaching and learning for over a decade and has had to make drastic changes in the way lessons are presented, practicals are done and assessments are completed due to the emerging transition to online teaching and learning. although it is assumed that the transition to online learning has been smooth, disadvantaged students face several challenges, such as a lack of sufficient data and internet connectivity in realising the full potential of online learning (ufs, 2020). this study aims to explore and analyse the challenges and experiences of students at the university of the free state registered for the internal medicine and anaesthesiology module (miam5810) regarding emergency remote teaching and learning. the study’s main objective is to propose alternative measures to overcome students’ challenges to enable access to effective e-learning. the study focused on a single research question: what were the students’ challenges in the miam5810 module in 2020? 2. literature review 2.1 higher education and covid-19 the current pandemic has added a new layer of complexity and uncertainty to a volatile and contested south african higher education sector, as evidenced by protests over fees, decolonisation and affordability, among other issues (motala & menon, 2020). as stated by jena (2020), the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) is assisting countries in their efforts to mitigate the immediate impact of school closures, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 1662022 40(1): 166-178 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) particularly for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged communities, and is attempting to facilitate the continuation of education for all through remote learning. however, not all students have the necessary knowledge, skills or resources to stay safe online (jena, 2020; unesco, 2020). higher education, in particular, is tasked with preparing graduates for tumultuous shifts in society and economies. similar to those around the world, universities in africa are expected to contribute to the development of their societies (motala & menon, 2020). higher education institutions have long recognised that holding onto past learning and teaching practices is not consistent with the needs of our knowledge society (correia, 2020). in south africa, the education and social purposes of the higher education system have been in the spotlight, especially in respect of the possibilities and limits of the role of artificial intelligence, the fourth industrial revolution (4ir), and digitisation (motala & menon, 2020). 2.2 online learning, access and emergency transition online education is not a novel concept. historically, higher education institutions have used online platforms to develop cost-effective learning provisions, meet the demands of non-traditional students and establish a contingency design for higher education’s long-term sustainability (rayner & webb, 2021). as stated by du preez and le grange (2020), online learning carries a stigma of being of a lower quality than face-to-face learning, despite research showing otherwise. the hurried move online by many institutions at once may cement the perception of online learning as a poor option, when in reality, no transition to online teaching under these conditions will be designed to fully exploit the affordances and possibilities of the online format (hodges et al., 2020). however, videoconferencing may be effectively used in online learning to enhance group collaboration with a sense of community between learners that may replace face-to-face classroom learning to some extent (jena, 2020). while moving teaching online can create a unique and flexible learning environment, covid-19 accelerated this process, leaving institutions with little time to reflect on and design appropriate course learning outcomes suitable for an online delivery platform (rayner & webb, 2021). mpungose (2020) indicates that fully equipped university information centres should be identified and used to provide blended lectures, through the special arrangement of community libraries (even though these may not be accessible owing to covid-19), to meet the needs of students coming from remote areas halfway. the emergent transition became “the great online-learning experiment” (rayner & webb, 2021). many active academic community members, including lecturers and students, have been hotly debating the terminology in social media, and “emergency remote teaching” has emerged as a common alternative term used by online education researchers (hodges et al., 2020). rayner and webb (2021) affirm that the emergent shift to online delivery during the pandemic prompted a global push to reduce wasting the academic year. as stated by jump (2020), at least 50% of institutions that were still using face-to-face modes moved all of their teaching online as a result of the global pandemic, according to a times higher education survey done in september 2020 on senior managers representing 189 global higher education institutions. any option to deliver face-to-face classes, including traditional campus-based delivery modes such as laboratory sessions and workshops, was eliminated (rayner & webb, 2021). while transitioning to online learning may result in a distinct and adaptable learning environment, it is not without drawbacks. the pandemic has had a massive impact on higher http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 1672022 40(1): 167-178 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 phejane a case study on the emergent transition towards online teaching and learning education students’ academic work and life practices, e.g., switching to online lectures/ tutorials, closed libraries, changed communication channels for teachers and administrative support, new assessment methods, different workloads and performance levels (aristovnik et al., 2020). by providing flexible locations, class times and high-quality content, e-learning plays an important role in transforming lives for the digital world. it allows humanity to develop during a period of physical isolation caused by a pandemic (jena, 2020). 2.3 challenges and issues of access to effective teaching and learning jansen (2004) argues that traditional face-to-face learning excludes students’ experiences, because it occurs in the presence of a lecturer depositing knowledge for students in a demarcated classroom, using traditional methods (lecturer-centred) and traditional resources such as textbooks, charts, chalkboards and others. teaching and learning tactics that produce well-educated, socially conscious citizens equipped with the knowledge, skills and traits for a changing era must underpin such improvements from traditional learning strategies to online platforms. as stated by mpungose (2020), learning management systems such as blackboard and moodle should not be used as a repository but should be customised to be linked to social media sites such as whatsapp, facebook and connectyard; lecture-recording software, video and audio conferencing such as zoom, blackboard collaborate, skype, microsoft teams and other learning resources to provide interactive lectures (both synchronous and asynchronous). lemay et al. (2021) also agree that participating in remote meetings via zoom or other teleconferencing technologies has become a new normal. in this system, learners use internet technology to communicate virtually with their teachers and fellow learners through email, whatsapp and videoconferencing, instant messaging or other tools (jena, 2020). these technologies may serve to eliminate the dichotomy between face-to-face and e-learning because the learning taking place at the university should be the same as that which is available when students are at home (lemay et al., 2021). several student issues emerged in terms of access to learning and the broader societal context in which it occurs, such as a lack of access to a device such as a laptop or a smartphone, no network coverage or limited coverage, high data costs, limited bandwidth and living conditions that were unsuitable for studying (motala & menon, 2020). waha and davis (2014), on the other hand, discovered loneliness and isolation, the lack of motivation, poor communication, fear of online communication and a lack of teacher guidance as issues reported by students in online learning. other psychosocial factors identified by motala and menon included issues of social capital, access and vulnerability, which “included poor living conditions, environments not conducive to learning, student hunger and, while not necessarily quantifiable, a possible worsening of economic conditions during the covid-19 lockdown that would impact on the students” (2020: 89). students and lecturers had trouble obtaining continuous and seamless internet connections. access, equity, student safety and development are top priorities for parents, educators and policymakers worldwide (du preez & le grange, 2020). previously, students from rural areas were denied many of the opportunities that their urban and suburban peers took for granted. connecting these rural students to online learning through video conferencing can significantly improve their learning experience (jena, 2020). this allows rural/disadvantaged students to study from home while also having access to experts. downes (2010) affirms that http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 1682022 40(1): 168-178 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) e-learning necessitates the connectivity of specialised information sources so that students can learn in any way, anywhere and at their own pace, despite the challenges that such disadvantaged students face in many contexts. videoconferencing is a synchronous model for interactive voice, video and data transfer between two or more groups/people (jena, 2020). 2.4 factors affecting the emerging transition to online learning and the difficulties encountered worldwide a study by rayner and webb (2021) of sports management education utilising online provision found that students can complete assignments, listen to lectures and submit work at their leisure. yet the caveat to their findings is that any such research is comparing emerging data to planned and pedagogically informed programmes. because academics have not been given the time or resources to fully review and maximise the opportunities within an online educational framework, this stigma has the potential to be reinforced as a result of the urgency with which institutions have responded to covid-19 (rayner & webb, 2021). as evidenced by the lessons from china, quality and equality of provision is a central tenet for the university, and these must be factored into this unusual shift to remote learning (wu, 2020). the rapid conversion of modules from traditional face-to-face to online learning revealed a new level of under-preparedness among students. inequitable student resourcing in terms of required technology was a factor due to the lack of proper preparation for the transition (motala & menon, 2020). the latter study believes there is still a challenge between face-to-face learning and e-learning. many students communicated with academics about their difficulties and experiences transitioning to remote teaching and learning (correia, 2020; du preez & le grange, 2020; motala & menon, 2020). in a study conducted by aristovnik et al. (2020), they first studied the students’ academic work and academic life aspects before asking various students about their experiences with access and remote teaching and learning. concerning the availability of the infrastructure needed to efficiently study from home, three-quarters of the respondents had computers where, not surprisingly, students from advanced countries prevailed. nearly half of the respondents did not have a quiet study space, and one-third did not have regular access to printers, with african, asian and south american students reporting the lowest results. a good internet connection is a key element in efficient online learning (aristovnik et al., 2020). students were also polled on their confidence level in the computer skills required for effective online learning. they expressed confidence in their abilities to use online communication platforms, search for information online and share digital content (aristovnik et al., 2020). however, they lacked confidence in adjusting advanced settings of some software and programmes and using their ability to adjust advanced settings of some software and use online learning platforms such as bigbluebutton, moodle, blackboard, gotomeeting, etc. this discovery necessitates the implementation of intensive training and support for students. the findings also show significant differences between students from developing and developed countries in the availability of digital equipment and the development of computer skills (aristovnik et al., 2020). students do not have equal opportunities to study online efficiently due to different living conditions, domestic duties and other factors. the agenda for the transformation of higher education outlined the need to “redress inequalities of access, participation and successes” and “expand sa’s competitive participation in the global context” (council on higher education, 2004). with the introduction of covid-19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 1692022 40(1): 169-178 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 phejane a case study on the emergent transition towards online teaching and learning and the unprecedented full closure of campuses, debates about access to higher education have shifted and reshaped, with a greater emphasis on affordability and the quest to create ideal remote learning environments for students (motala & menon, 2020). the findings from both studies importantly call for public and higher education authorities to closely collaborate in bridging the gaps (hodges et al., 2020), especially concerning the degree to which the accessibility of learning materials might not be addressed during the emergency remote teaching period. this is to ensure that all students can access and learn from the course materials, activities and assignments for successful teaching and learning in the future, not only during the covid-19 pandemic. another study that correlates accessibility issues for students is the students’ access to and use of learning materials (saulm) survey 2020 report completed at the university of the free state (ufs, 2020). the saulm report stated that almost all (92%) of the ufs students own one to two electronic devices, mostly smartphones and laptops, to engage with their learning when off-campus. most students obtained their devices from family members or purchased them themselves. those who do not own devices are most likely to access smartphones borrowed from family or friends. although most ufs students used smartphones to engage in academic activities, this was also the device that students found the most difficult to use for academic purposes (ufs, 2020). according to the department of higher education and training (dhet, 2020), institutions cannot promote blended teaching and learning if students do not have access to the internet, appropriate study devices, enough data and the relevant skills to use devices and technology during the covid-19 pandemic and moving forward. this study argues that alternative measures are needed to overcome students’ challenges to allow them to have access to effective e-learning. 3. theoretical framework for this study, the connectivism and self-directed learning theories were used to guide the miam5810 module and the students’ challenges and experiences with the transition from traditional to e-learning in bridging the digital divide gap. according to siemens and downes (2009), connectivism is a learning theory that can guide the integration of principles such as chaos and complexity through self-organisation and the understanding that decisions are based on rapidly changing foundations. in this article, connectivism is used as a theoretical framework for understanding learning in the digital age. because of its various attributes ranging from face-to-face to e-learning, connectivism is a promising first lens to conceptualise learning in this digital age (mpungose, 2020) (see table 1 below). table 1: connectivism principles and conceptualised learning (siemens & downes, 2009): connectivism principles f2f learning e-learning learning and knowledge rest in the diversity of opinions. teacher-centred activities student-centred activities learning is a process of connecting specialised nodes or information sources. university home/resident learning may reside in nonhuman appliances traditional resources modern resources http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 1702022 40(1): 170-178 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) connectivism principles f2f learning e-learning the capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known. passive student active student nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning. institutionalised connections social connections seeing connections between fields, ideas and concepts is a core skill. summative assessment formative assessment currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivism learning. formal content informal content the rapidly changing technological landscape of the twenty-first century has forced university lecturers to “adapt their teaching approaches without a clear roadmap for attending to students’ various needs” (mpungose, 2020: 2). making connections allows students to create meaningful learning experiences through available internet and technological resources in increasing their effectiveness, which leads to encouraging lecturers to work towards rethinking the possibilities of internet access and other technological resources for effective learning so that each student can gather and share information regardless of the challenges (the digital divide) they face (mpungose, 2020). students from low-income families and disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to suffer during online learning as they may not be able to afford a high-speed internet connection and the required technical devices. jena (2020) stated that the lack of affordability widens the gap between privileged and unprivileged enrolled university students. for effective e-learning to occur even if students are at home, access to the internet and technological resources should be made available to connect with one another and lecturers, regardless of any difficulties they may face (siemens & downes, 2009; mpungose, 2020). instead of seeing students as blank slates or passive users of information, connectivism sees them as active participants who can nurture, maintain and traverse network connections to access, share and use the information for learning (siemens & downes, 2009). in general, siemens and downes (2009) argue that traditional resources such as books, charts, chalkboards and others form the foundation of learning, but that in the digital age, they must be supplemented by modern resources such as the internet, computers, mobile phones, and others for students to connect and share information. mpungose (2020) argues that during the pandemic, lecturers aimed to provide audio and video content and selfassessment exercises for students. in other words, additional resources increase active student participation and the ability to learn more; thus, the active student, as opposed to the passive student, can use provided resources to seek out current information from primary and secondary sources (siemens & downes, 2009). as a result, lecture contact sessions are insufficient for student learning and should be supplemented with self-study time to achieve learning outcomes. however, e-learning provides many of these benefits over face-to-face learning because it creates a more intense atmosphere that transitions from synchronous to asynchronous teaching and learning. as a result, e-learning advocates for student-centredness rather than teacher-centredness in http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 1712022 40(1): 171-178 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 phejane a case study on the emergent transition towards online teaching and learning teaching and learning because “students learn together online, and support mechanisms such as guiding questions influence how students interact in general...” (damsa et al., 2015: 56). looking at siemens and downes’ (2009) connectivism principles and conceptualised learning, we look further at self-directed learning as a theoretical underpinning for bridging the digital divide and challenges students in miam5810 experienced when emergent e-learning was introduced. self-directed learning (sdl) is a process in which individuals take the initiative to diagnose their learning needs, formulate goals, identify human and material resources and evaluate learning outcomes without the assistance of others (knowles, 1975; mahlaba, 2020). self-directed learning principles have the following ideologies (mahlaba, 2020): • sdl portrays learning as a collaborative activity done with others. • sdl describes a learner’s overall approach to learning. • self-directed learners are able to regulate their learning. • sdl is typically concerned with the learning environment that promotes sdl skills and learners’ ability and readiness to be self-directed in their learning. according to the principles, mahlaba (2020) stated that self-directed learners are selfmotivated to learn, autonomous and self-monitor their individual learning. they can assess their own learning progress by setting clear individual goals for themselves. self-directed learners develop individual learning strategies to achieve their learning objectives while taking the initiative to learn. they are open and willing to learn new things through identifying resources for their learning. self-directed learners value learning and possess self-control in their learning. they are also curious and intrinsically motivated to learn (mahlaba, 2020). when looking at connectivism and self-directed learning, they complement each other in a way that states for any individual student to effectively learn, each one has to begin learning through connecting with the materials they receive as well as other information sources while being the pioneer of their own learning. using both theories can help students move toward a more independent and flexible learning environment by engaging in more “out of the box” ways of getting resources and other digital learning materials that may be more cost-effective for students while also being easily accessible to all students. this implies that utilising connectivism and self-directed learning, students cannot rely solely on prescribed readings, taught content, consultation with a single lecturer and students in a specific subject/ module. however, both theories encourage students to enjoy exploring the world to connect with other people outside of the formal study context, using search engines, social media and other means, because learning is about more than just knowledge consumption (siemens & downes, 2009; mahlaba, 2020; mpungose, 2020). 4. research paradigm and method interpretivism contends that the study of human society must include subjective views, opinions, emotions and values that cannot be directly observed and counted in addition to empirical and ostensibly objective evidence (creswell, 2014). interpretivism is concerned with understanding the world from subjective experiences of individuals with phenomena that must be interpreted to confirm certain phenomena. one advantage of using an interpretive paradigm is that the responses are valid and close to the truth (creswell, 2014). interpretivism is used in this study as a way to understand and describe students’ experiences and how they http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 1722022 40(1): 172-178 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) made sense of their actions during the transition period in their own context of the national shutdown and the move from traditional methods to emergency remote teaching and learning. this qualitative interpretive case study of an internal medicine and anaesthesiology module presented at the university of the free state was purposively selected. the aggregated data were collected from the students’ summarised module evaluation form responses completed online at the end of the academic year (2020). the section that was used for this study was the open-ended question section where 135 of the 214 registered students reflected on their experiences and challenges with emergency remote teaching and learning, as well as the effectiveness of access to learning resources and technological abilities due to covid-19. the methodology also involved a secondary literature review from the university of the free state student engagement survey (2020) and critical reflection on the department of internal or general medicine case, specifically focusing on the miam5810 module. a detailed and deep description of students’ experiences (as discussed in the next sections) and challenges was generated using a more descriptive case study design of identifying patterns and themes from the summarised student evaluation form while also comparing and supporting the responses with the ufs report on students’ access to and use of learning materials (ufs, 2020), which resulted in proposing alternative measures to overcome limitations in realising e-learning in practical modules such as internal medicine and anaesthesiology. 5. ethical considerations a formal written email requesting permission from the lecturer and telephonic agreements to use the module for research was provided by the miam5810 course leader before granting access to the students’ aggregated evaluation responses, summarised from the evaluation forms as part of ethical clearance. ethical clearance to conduct the study was also obtained from the general human research ethics committee (ghrec) at the ufs (protocol number ufs-hsd2021/2016/21). all information received from the forms was treated with utmost confidentiality, anonymity (via the aggregated summarised responses on one document without any student numbers or names) and professional conduct. 6. findings using the principles of self-directed learning and connectivism, the “new normal” in table 2 was developed, comparing previous methods of learning in miam5810 with the new way of teaching and learning, which requires students to be self-directed and capable of making connections between their learning and educational technology. table 2: “the new normal” – changing methods of teaching and learning: traditional methods “the new normal” 1. the study material was provided as hard copies for students from the xerox study material centre. 1. the study material is now posted in the blackboard miam5810 course. 2. practicals twice a week with tutors assisting in the lab. 2. online practicals with e-tutors once a week. 3. two semester tests and one exam in an invigilated venue. 3. two questionmark online tests and an online exam without invigilators. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 1732022 40(1): 173-178 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 phejane a case study on the emergent transition towards online teaching and learning traditional methods “the new normal” 4. physical lecturer consultations. 4. blackboard collaborate consultations with a group of five or ten students. 5. lecturer refers you to bookstores and the course study guide. 5. download everything from the blackboard miam5810 course and e-libraries. 6. classes and lectures in venues. 6. classes and lectures on blackboard collaborate, microsoft teams and zoom. i will now present the key findings of the students’ challenges and experiences in miam5810 regarding the emergency transition from face-to-face to e-learning before discussing the themes that emerged from the summary of the responses and suggesting alternative measures through the themes and their respective categories. from the students’ evaluation forms feedback, the responses were focused on students’ challenges concerning miam5810 and the move to e-learning. the research question was used to summarise the student’s feedback. the following were the themes/challenges identified from the analysis of the summarised evaluation forms: 6.1 access to learning materials according to the summarised responses of students, the majority reported difficulty in easily accessing learning materials, with downloading of learning materials such as study guides, reading material and powerpoint slides being reported to be too costly. another issue with learning materials that emerged from the summarised responses was the difficulty in obtaining information from the university’s learnon portal, with some students expressing that the #learnon site had too much information about remote teaching and learning that was not easily explained and it was difficult to make sense of all the information. 6.2 access to the internet and devices another evident theme was the challenge in accessing the internet for students to attend online classes, logging into the university’s lms, and the difficulty in owning devices that were compatible with logging in to the university’s lms, as well as the difficulty in owning devices that were compatible for online learning. some students from rural areas experienced connectivity challenges due to a lack of bandwidth. some students did not know how to use the blackboard and questionmark assessment tools from their smartphones. one student noted that they experienced “poor audio/video quality in some areas due to poor network connectivity” and another student highlighted that “data costs were a big problem because i struggled to connect to the university’s website with global protect (vpn)”. when looking at the students in miam5810 who are not able to afford devices and other high-speed connectivity that could make their e-learning easier, it becomes one of the hindrances to their success. 6.3 knowing how to use the technology resources according to stevenson (2010), technology resources are defined as information, tools or devices that motivate students and provide information. students reported that using technology is a challenge because practicals that moved online were difficult to complete. students also reported not knowing how to write online assessments and use the blackboard lms as they lack sufficient training on the tools. some of the challenges that emerged from the aggregated data on students’ experiences included the problem of blackboard logging out http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 1742022 40(1): 174-178 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) during an online test due to connectivity issues, the helpdesk centre being too busy to assist students immediately, the problem of changes in the objective structured clinical examination (osce) practicals, which used to take place physically but were moved online, as well as the problem of missing important information due to the lack of a miam5810 whatsapp group. 6.4 other challenges other challenges that students reported included using the elibrary that was not physical anymore, load shedding1, which interrupted online assessments and classes, their feelings of loneliness and sadness because they were unable to share how they felt with their classmates and laziness, tiredness and lack of self-discipline, which was caused by studying from home. 7. discussion this section compares the literature used in this case study to explore the themes identified from the aggregated students’ summary input while integrating sdl and connectivism principles. according to mpungose (2020), the adoption and use of online resources in a south african university demonstrate the critical need to prepare students for e-learning. while medical education teaching and learning have been adapted, areas of concern have been identified. according to motala and menon (2020), concerns include assessment, laboratory work and practical classes, clinics and patient interaction, as well as experimental work and other primary data collection, administrative updating and examination progress. while online methods could be adapted further, there remain limitations that required strategic revision (motala & menon, 2020). when considering the connectivism principles, which resonate with learning as a process of connecting specialised nodes or information sources, students were moved from traditional face-to-face learning to online and required self-directed skills to support their overall learning. as affirmed by the findings, the biggest difficulties students encountered were due to the transition of internal medicine and anaesthesiology (miam5810) from traditional teaching and learning methods to e-learning. the difficulties with connectivity and network issues, a lack of appropriate devices for studying and a lack of data to engage in their studies were common from the student evaluation forms with 78% of the students outlining these as difficulties. according to the department of higher education and training (2020), students’ access to appropriate devices was frequently noted as a barrier to their participation in remote learning. fifty-five per cent of the students outlined other issues such as living conditions that were not conducive to learning and studying, because some students came from disadvantaged backgrounds. the environment in which many students found themselves during the nationwide lockdown in south africa was not conducive to learning (dhet, 2020). modules with osce practicals and clinical training, such as miam5810, meant that students struggled to come to terms with and adjust to the new way of doing things. seventy per cent of the students expressed frustration at not participating properly in the changed osce practicals. additional resources (a key component of connectivism) were made available to students during the transition, such as the e-library, study materials posted on blackboard, and online osce practicals with e-tutors. this allowed connected students to be more active in managing their learning, rather than just being passive learners. in this regard, students must take a more active role in managing their learning rather than relying solely on lecturers for information. 1 load shedding: a method of distributing available power across all eskom customers in a regulated manner. this is similar to the rolling blackouts experienced in the usa. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 1752022 40(1): 175-178 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 phejane a case study on the emergent transition towards online teaching and learning sixty per cent of the students expressed dissatisfaction with communication platforms during remote teaching and that there was not enough communication, such as the lack of a class whatsapp group. furthermore, 58% of the students also reported having struggled without immediate communication platforms like when they previously used to walk into the lecturers’ offices for immediate communication. from the 135 student responses, 60% of the students reported having attempted to bridge the gap between known methods of learning and the emergent e-learning methods but were not always successful. according to dhet (2020) additional to concerns with devices, skills, data and network connectivity, students in south african institutions mentioned other technical issues with their schools’ lms and library systems, dissatisfaction with not being aided with technical issues or flaws in systems that impacted assessments. nurturing and maintaining connections between students and lecturers is required to facilitate continuous learning, where collaborative activities such as study groups and peer support whatsapp groups would suffice to assist students in becoming connected and self-directed. the inability or lack of training on how to use the blackboard lms was also identified as a challenge for 72% of the miam5810 students, who stated that the lms was complicated, that they could not understand how most tools worked and that they were in desperate need of proper training on the use and navigation of the blackboard platform. students were frustrated by a general lack of interactive engagement between students, instructors and classmates, as well as a lack of communication from lecturers. some students also found it challenging to interact with instructors via online platforms (dhet, 2020). fifty-five per cent of the students responded to being frustrated in having their study guides and textbooks accessible in a different electronic format. according to the dhet (2020) report, many students may have to acquire new textbooks for the second semester due to reduced engagement with other students from various year groups who may sell their books. more than half of the students (58%) expressed struggling with the transition and being fearful. for successful teaching and learning, students need to be equipped with a learning environment that promotes sdl skills and their own readiness to be self-directed in their learning. students ought to learn how to connect their learning materials with the university’s lms while using the principles of selfdirected learning to achieve meaningful learning successfully. 8. limitations this present study is only descriptive of the experiences and challenges of one group of 135 of the 214 students registered in the miam5810 module at the university of the free state. it is solely based on the aggregated data from their 2020 course evaluation feedback. the study does not generalise all university of the free state students’ experiences regarding the transition to online teaching and learning. 9. recommendations the following are recommendations to propose alternative measurements to overcome students’ digital divide challenges and enable them to access effective e-learning. despite the challenges experienced by students in transitioning from face-to-face to e-learning, the prominence of the digital divide is the main limitation to students realising effective e-learning. the customisation of the blackboard lms needs to meet the local needs of disadvantaged students and be beneficial in ways that can help realise e-learning. literature states that to http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 1762022 40(1): 176-178 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) create a structured online learning environment, a social presence, community and meaningful interaction is required (anderson, 2016; jena, 2020; mpungose, 2020). alternative accessibility pathways for students such as the provision of free mobile data, free physical and online resources, and the use of an information centre for blended learning, seem to be the solution going forward in the context of covid-19. traditional definitions of effective online learning principles emphasise using a systematic design, high quality instruction and the development of appropriate assessment strategies to ensure learning outcomes are met at the threshold (rayner & webb, 2021). the need for capacity building on the use of learning management systems and other newly adopted online learning software is also necessary. as covid-19 continues to impact higher education, this module’s continued move to online learning should consider the outlined strategies in improving teaching and learning while attempting to resolve the challenges outlined by students concerning the emergent transition. the module’s course leader and lecturers require time and the skills to create asynchronous activities, innovative pedagogical approaches, appropriate learning outcomes and assessment strategies that ensure learning environments that place students at the centre of successful engagement with the online course. a learning environment should be generated that actively supports inclusion and establishes structure and convenience to meet the needs of an online student. traditional face-to-face lectures can be replaced or supported with smaller bite-sized lectures such as six to twelve-minute recordings. for face-to-face lectures, recording these will assist students who might be ill or have limited internet access to not miss out. the lecturer needs to have presence online, through establishing virtual office hours as part of the tutorial and consultation and using talking-head videos where appropriate. introducing a module whatsapp group for students to communicate and engage with each other and the material within a specific time outside consultation time and using asynchronous communication techniques can stimulate peer connection to build a learning community. to meet the new needs of student learning in challenging situations, lecturers can provide interactive activities such as quizzes and surveys to allow students and lecturers to interact. hosting weekly forums and question-and-answer sessions can help lecturers communicate effectively with students. lecturers could also consider assessment approaches that promote group work, such as encouraging students to create a podcast, video clip or web page for their osce practicals to increase group engagement – or adding mini self-evaluation tests to supplement individual learning activities. these are critical considerations for internal medicine and anaesthesiology lecturers, who will train specialists who will be at the forefront of managing the health sector in the years and decades following covid-19. 10. conclusion online teaching/learning threatens formal and educational access, as some students may be disadvantaged by the abrupt move to a different mode of provision. the findings of the miam 5810 module student feedback agree with the digital divide as a hindrance to students realising the full potential of e-learning. yet lecturers require students to submit assessment tasks and engage with course activities on the blackboard lms. necessary steps must be taken to train staff and students in how to effectively use online learning platforms. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 1772022 40(1): 177-178 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.10 phejane a case study on the emergent transition towards online teaching and learning lecturers and administrators are urged to consider that students require time to transition to a new mode and might not be able to participate in courses immediately due to experienced challenges. students who are used to the contact mode of provision, in particular, may find it more difficult to adapt to a digital mode of learning, not because they are not digitally literate, but because they may not have adequate access to digital platforms. furthermore, having access to technology does not ensure educational access. institutions should adopt the policy to provide free internet and digital devices to all students who need it to encourage successful online learning. going forward, this may require institutions to redefine their teaching and learning initiatives in considering the need to invest in new technologies, the provision of different resources to support the different modes of delivery and what kinds of graduates are being produced for a post-covid-19 world and society. self-directed learning is required to succeed in the “new normal” under these strenuous teaching and learning conditions. the rapid transition requires redirected resources. these include human resources, such as academics to transition to teaching and assessing online. it also requires resources to overcome the problems posed by the need for practicals, clinical training and work-integrated learning. in addition, the flexibility of a more blended teaching and learning environment enables students to cut down on travel costs and potentially frees up 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https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/03/coronavirus-china-the-challenges-of-online-learning-for-universities/ pie 32 (2) book.indb perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 69 lee scott fashion and textiles department, durban university of technology e-mail: lees@dut.ac.za telephone: 031 373 3716 “digging deep”: self-study as a reflexive approach to improving my practice as an artist, researcher and teacher lee scott in this article, i show how i enhanced my understanding of my practice as an artist, researcher and teacher using a self-study approach in my recently completed master of technology (m.tech.) dissertation in graphic design. as part of my m.tech. research, i conceptualised and developed a creative teaching tool that i named ‘pictopics’. pictopics are palm-sized cards with pictographic illustrations similar to street signage. i used these pictopics in a variety of ways, but essentially as creative prompts to foster a variety of creative educational skills within the university, and personally as a tool to generate my own artistic expression at a deeper level. i demonstrate the re-storying of my learning through writing about these artworks as visual indicators of my values, personal and professional growth. i show how the paintings reflect my experiences and perceptions of my youth, their effect on my adult self, my individuality and ultimately my teaching self. keywords: self-study, creative teaching tool, creative prompts, individualism, values, professional growth adult crusade i have an orange net bag of memories i survived my laaitie-hood and an adult crusade with the aid of a pen knife, matches and a pair of takkies (just in case i had to escape). i had my place where i would go to hide, if … if ak’s and fn’s decided to play adult games in our back yard after blood red sunsets, cicada solitariness and hot dusty bleached grasses went pale i thought i had a way out. silly really, since in childhood, there is no way out of grown up wars. author (2010) perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 70 introduction when i first decided to study for my m.tech. degree in graphic design, i knew i wanted it to be about my practice, that it be practice-based and include my paintings and meaning-making through the use of a visual medium. i also knew that i could not separate my artist self from my researcher and teacher self and that they were indivisibly integrated, and that my research and new learning would affect all these aspects of self. consequently, i realised that i was both the object and the subject of my study. it was also important that i emphasise my role as an “active learner” in this study “instead of an expert judging research participants” and that i was interested in writing in a “literary style” (cresswell, 1998: 15). i interpret “literary style” to mean using a story-telling style in the crafting of my dissertation. my research purpose my study included the conceptualisation of the pictographic cards that i have named ‘pictopics’– as in ‘pick a topic’ (see figure 1). the pictopics are a set of 120 cards, approximately seven by seven centimetres, with the type of graphic images one sees as signage on our roads and freeways. by testing the cards and gathering stories in various settings – from galleries to classrooms – i was able to recognise their potential as a creative educational tool.1 my research questions included exploring the role of the pictopics in communicating a story or message, and how they could be pertinent to my practice as an artist, researcher, and teacher. i consciously wished to use simplified graphic images in my research to find ways to foster the concept and creation of a ‘visual voice’. my wish to ‘create a visual voice’ for others and myself was a major factor in my study. i asked myself why it was important that i find an alternative way for people to voice their thoughts and ideas and tell their stories. i questioned how, why and what led me to conceptualise the idea of the pictopics. i believe that playful ways of eliciting the telling of stories are important. not all human beings are spontaneously oral storytellers, or able to put pen to paper successfully, or paint a canvas in order to be heard. i realised that my interest in finding a way to create a ‘visual voice’ came from recognising that i have been an outsider and have felt inarticulate on many occasions. i saw my study as giving me a purpose. i realised that i needed to find out the ‘why’ behind my wanting to do this research and, in asking myself why i would want to create pictographic visual prompts, i was able to ‘tease out’ a sense of purposefulness that would benefit not only myself but also others. methods and methodology my practice-based self-study approach adapted a variety of methodological tools to support my “methodological inventiveness” (dadds & hart, 2001: 166). i recognised that my methodological preferences could interrelate with each other. i found “digging deep”: self-study as a reflexive approach to improving my practice as an artist, researcher and teacher lee scott 71 whitehead’s (2008) “living theories” philosophies and methodologies,2 mcniff’s (2002) “action research”,3 schön’s (1983) “critical reflection”, as well as irwin et al.’s (2006) “a/r/tography”4 intertwined with chase’s (2005)5 and ellis’s (2004) “narrative auto-ethnographic” approach to conducting research the most appropriate. figure 1: two pictopic cards (author 2010) the value of the methods used in this study self-study highlights the importance of the self and makes the experience of the teacher a source for research (tucker, 2011: 4). tucker cites lyons and laboskey’s (2004) five characteristics to be considered when using personal experience in selfstudy. self-study should be self-initiated, aimed at improvement, interactive, use multiple qualitative methods, and use trustworthiness in order to establish validity. samaras (2011) discusses a series of steps for conducting self-study research which, accordingly, ensures rigour, reflection and critical thinking. i authored my own questions, documented and continuously assessed my research process by sharing my learning with colleagues and friends, and continuously asked myself “what is the value of this research to others?” because i was using non-traditional ways of conveying my research, it was vital for my study that i continually reflect and act upon new interpretations or the analysis of past events in order that the narrative style in which i related various events not appear trite. thus, i had to “negotiate a particularly sensitive balance between biography and history” (bullough & pinnegar, 2001: 15). whitehead and mcniff (2007) also speak of the importance of critical feedback in evaluating the validity of one’s research. accordingly, i used peer review to strengthen the comprehensibility and explanations in my research. my study was about my ontogenesis, my ‘becoming to know myself’ and thus highly subjective. i was “emphatically and subjectively immersed” in my research perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 72 (maree, 2011: 33), and realised that my ontological assumptions are embodied in the values of my practice and the way in which i live my life. my subjectivity as an artist, researcher, teacher and social being involves noticing and recording how people perceive, think, and feel about things. thus, i took into account how people interpreted my pictographic images on the cards from their own perspective in the creation of their own narratives, and then captured my subjective interpretation visually on canvas. my canvases are a subjective explanation of the stories i was told by the visitors at the artspace gallery, and the metamorphosis of my critical reflections and internal meanderings. a sequence of events the sequence of events unfolded very naturally during the course of this study. apart from first designing and developing my pictopics, other aspects of the study fell into place in a serendipitous manner. the first occasion on which i tried out the pictopics to establish whether they ‘worked’ and could be used by people to create or prompt stories was held at artspace gallery in april 2009. i invited the audience at the gallery to play with the cards and create narratives with them. with their permission, their stories were documented on video. i then selected certain stories to discuss, and interpreted or re-storied them as paintings. i did these paintings during a three-month professional practice course (pp course), from september to november 2009. the pp course was a forum in which my paintings were critiqued by brenton maart, the then curator of the kwazulu-natal society of arts (kznsa), durban, and peers who also attended the course. this experience was pivotal to my intellectual growth, learning and development of self and artistic practice. i then facilitated a workshop in august 2009, with the durban university of technology (dut) drama students. many of the students’ performances contained comment about south african socio-economic realities. this workshop affirmed my belief in alternate ways to foster autonomous learning skills in a playful and compassionate way. thereafter, i started examining the stories i had painted for the pp course and it was in examining my choices of stories i told on canvas, as well as analysing my choice of cards for a self-portrait (see figures 8 and 9) that i started to understand the importance of memory on the un-conscious social self and its influence on me the artist, researcher and teacher. “digging deep”: self-study as a reflexive approach to improving my practice as an artist, researcher and teacher lee scott 73 the paintings youthful perceptions as influence my childhood, in my mind’s eye, is filled with contradictory beauty. i had the privilege of growing up in the bush as my dad was farming for a large sugar concern. i found immense solace in the bush, in the dry hot dusty nostril-tickling, pale ochre, cicada-filled solitariness. it was over forty degrees in the summer months, and the dusty itchy colours of summer were coupled with the fiercest sunsets and sunrises. i remember the intense joy of fishing for bream and barbel before the sun had lifted above the trees, escaping quietly (while mum still slept), through the electric security fencing. the electric three meter high fencing that surrounded the house and garden was turned off at five-thirty in the morning to let the sheep out to go and graze and that was when i made my trips, a can of worms in hand and stick rod. i was about ten years old and an introverted child, not quite fitting in at school and bullied at times. i always felt like an outsider looking in, a peripheral person. yet my solitariness, and my solitude, was partly what sustained me. as i relate in the opening poem, adult crusade, i had under my bed an old orange bag, and in it i had a knife, matches, my ‘takkies’ [sports shoes], and other items i no longer remember. it was crucial for me to be prepared if we ever came under attack and i had to ‘escape’. i had my hiding places in the bush and orchard to go to. i had it all planned out. looking back through adult eyes, i realise now that the fencing that was to keep the ‘enemy’ out also trapped me within. i have included the poem and my childhood memory narrative in this article because, in the words of malinowski (1948: 104), “[t]here is no text without context”. i am an ex-rhodesian, born in the then rhodesia, in 1964, a year before ian smith’s unilateral declaration of independence from britain in 1965.6 i left rhodesia with my family to live in south africa at the age of 14, a year before zimbabwean independence, in 1980, and the end of white minority rule. the rhodesian childhood years i write of are between 1972 and 1979 – between the ages of 7 and 15 years – and boarding school, in south africa, until 1981, until the age of 17 years. the fact that i never ‘fitted’ in as a youngster in rhodesia, i was mocked for being rhodesian when i arrived in south africa, and yet conversely was made welcome in boarding school, sharpened, i have realised, through the writing of my m.tech. thesis, and my empathy as a teacher and social being. this awareness, coupled with recognising the privilege i have of being able to express myself through the act of painting and writing, was what prompted my awareness to explore, create and conceptualise an alternate and inclusional visual voice for others via the medium of the pictopic cards. perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 74 the body of work my early painterly influences in art stemmed from a social realist tradition (heller & williams, 1982: 18). i have always needed to reflect critically on my observations of life and make social comment. i believe that this basic humanism has prompted my practice over the years and is evident in the paintings i write about in this article. i painted 15 paintings in all for the three-month-long pp course at the kwazulunatal society of arts in 2009. the majority of these 15 paintings were re-storied versions of the documented stories from the artspace gallery. for this article, i write about four paintings done during the pp course, and three others that were the consequence of insightful yet informal peer reviews. the first paintings i write about are those painted as a response to selected stories told at artspace gallery (see figures 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7). i selected these particular pictopic narratives to translate into paintings because of the emotional connection i felt with the stories being told. in the fourth painting (see figures 8 and 9), i show my choice of pictopic cards as symbols of myself and representative of my values. thereafter, i discuss two paintings that developed through critical reflection, much introspection, as mentioned, and my acknowledgement of the impact of immigration on my psyche and professional self (see figures 10, 11, 12 and 13). these corresponding paintings reflect my experiences and perceptions of my childhood, their effect on my adult self and my individuation. title: future the painting is in oil paint with gold foil. the wording and blue pictographic figures in the background have been spray-painted using handmade stencils. the closely packed blue figures represent claustrophobia and monotony, while the gold foil represents the value of looking forward, of seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, so to speak. “digging deep”: self-study as a reflexive approach to improving my practice as an artist, researcher and teacher lee scott 75 the storyteller, in this instance, was a young man who held up three pictopics, that of a ‘smiling mouth imbibing a pill’, the next of ‘a pair of scissors and comb’ and, lastly, of ‘a boeing airplane’. holding them up one by one, he said simply: “this is my past, this is my present and this is my future”. i responded strongly to his choice of pictopics with my own feelings of claustrophobia, of wanting to escape the pressures of life and wishing to be somewhere else. this painting is about well-being, about recognising the necessity of finding balance and harmony in order to function effectively in society. i associate ‘future’ with determination to change one’s life, and experience new adventures, and the values i express in this painting are self-honesty and well-being. title: looking at life this painting is in oil paint on canvas board (see figures 4 and 5). the storyteller chose three pictopics, namely that of ‘an atom and revolving electrons’, ‘a coat hanger’ and the image of two figures to indicate ‘male and female toilets’. this story was a strong statement, challenging societal definitions of self and how people relate to accepted norms. it is about the storyteller’s acknowledgement and acceptance of his difference. the storyteller mentioned that he was a science teacher with a love of fashion, a combination which might have seemed odd. he suggested that opposites create balance in society: “yin and yang, black and white? looking at life in terms of what it isn’t instead of what it is”. the ‘opposites’ for him are indicative of a barrier that conventional society puts in place to keep him ‘an other’, and he challenges the concept that what is conventional and the norm for one has to be applicable to all. figure 3: ‘future’ (author 2009). mixed media on canvas, 40cm x 55cmfigure 2: pictopic cards used to represent past, present and future perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 76 i have often felt that i am what i term a ‘peripheral’ person, always on the outside of the group, only looking in. even when invited to be a part of the group, i have often still felt like an ‘outsider’, which someone defined as “a person not belonging to a particular group, set, party, etc.: society often regards the artist as an outsider.”7 this connection with the ‘outsider’ led me to create this piece, which reflects the value i attach to inclusion and my empathy towards others’ feelings of being ‘outside’ of societal norms. title: rarity – heartbroken ‘rarity – heartbroken’ (see figures 6 and 7) depicts what was told to me by a young girl who was unhappy about the slaughter of animals for food. the pictopics she chose included pictographs of ‘a sheep’, ‘a pig’, ‘a steak’, ‘a hamburger’ and ‘a figure with a broken heart’. figure 4 (above): pictopics chosen to represent science, fashion and opposites in the painting ‘looking at life figure 5 (right): ‘looking at life …’ (author, 2009). oil on canvas board, 95cm x 52cm “digging deep”: self-study as a reflexive approach to improving my practice as an artist, researcher and teacher lee scott 77 this painting is of mixed media, mostly in oil paint, with the floral images spraypainted onto the walls of a box room. when re-telling this story in my painting, i chose to paint a beast with a fierce glint in its eye that the photographer had somehow captured. the beast seemed fierce, but i painted it roped, and ‘boxed in’ by floral walls, implying a deceit, a pretence of tameness in contradiction with my dearly held values of freedom, inclusion and selfworth. i also portrayed story cards being thrown away as a negation of their worth, implying the low worth of the small beast with the fierce glint in its eye. figure 6 (above): ‘rarity – heartbroken’ (author 2009). oil and spray paint on canvas, 100cm x 40cm figure 7 (right): pictopics chosen for ‘rarity – heartbroken’ perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 78 title: self-portrait as storyteller – my cards my fellow participants and facilitator, brenton maart of the pp course, encouraged me to choose cards for myself and create a painting telling my own story. this painting, ‘self-portrait as storyteller – my cards’ (see figures 8 and 9), was the piece that prompted the start of reflection and analysis of my personal history and its link to my practice. in this painting, i chose to tell something about myself by portraying images or symbols that represent elements of me. the pictopics are floating just above the surface of the ground laid out in an unfinished circle. the cards i chose were of ‘a woman’, ‘a suitcase’, ‘an atom and electrons’, ‘a house painting brush’, ‘a house with a person walking away from it’, an image of ‘a couple holding hands’ and ‘a pair of lungs’(inverted to represent a tree and the bush). the woman image or pictograph is at the fore of the circular layout of pictopics. there is a suitcase on my right and a house on my left. they represent for me the fact that i can never ‘go home’, having emigrated from rhodesia, and the desire to belong somewhere – to find hearth and home. the inverted lungs represent the bush and my animist philosophies. this painting, and a colleague’s critique thereof, really prompted me to engage deeply in thinking about myself as a person and to fully realise my values and belief systems and how integral they are to my practice as an artist, teacher, researcher and social being. i had my son take photographs of me outside in my small garden to find an image to go with the pictopics i had chosen. the fire hose reel was incidental, but after i printed the photograph i liked the irony of its bloody red halo, so decided not to omit it. my stance is casually authoritative, implying i realise a guarded openness, implying: “here i am, this is me and yes, i am wary and defensive”. this painting reflects my core values of creativity, playfulness, holism, a determined work ethic, freedom and intense love and passion for what i do as artist. “digging deep”: self-study as a reflexive approach to improving my practice as an artist, researcher and teacher lee scott 79 title: i haven’t unpacked yet it was the work ‘self-portrait as a storyteller – my cards’ that made me think deeply about the individual symbols i had chosen for myself, and one of the first symbols was the suitcase. i remember choosing the ‘suitcase’ pictopic card to symbolise my wish for a spiritual hearth and home. it was only much later after deep reflection that i was able to realise the ‘pull’ of the suitcase because of its continual re-appearance in my paintings. i now see the suitcase as a metaphor for ‘not belonging’ and ‘baggage’ as in ‘everyone has baggage’, which, translated from the colloquial, means to me that figure 8 (above): my pictopics figure 9 (right): ‘self-portrait as a storyteller – my cards’ (author, 2009). oil on canvas, spray paint, 150cm x 45cm perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 80 all people carry their fears and experiences with them. these experiences generally colour their expectations of, and outlook on life. in my paintings, the metaphor of the suitcase is both figuratively visual but also profoundly literal. ‘i haven’t unpacked yet’ was painted after the pp course (see figure 10) and that ‘damn’ suitcase followed me from painting to painting. i could not escape it and i was compelled to paint it and repaint it as part of a cathartic technique to face old memories and understand my feelings of dislocation. it was quite a revelation to ‘click’ that i had been carrying these ‘eina’ [painful, yet beautiful] memories with me. these memories have weight. they are heavy, and i became conscious that i had been dragging them along with me for years. i realise, through introspection and a (kicking, screaming and protesting) determination, how they have shaped my life, as an artist, researcher, teacher, social being and the values and beliefs that (in)form me. figure 10: ‘i haven’t unpacked yet’ (author, 2011). oil on canvas, spray paint, 55cm x 70cm “digging deep”: self-study as a reflexive approach to improving my practice as an artist, researcher and teacher lee scott 81 title: ‘rhodesia is super’ the ‘rhodesia is super’ painting took me the longest to paint. it is titled ‘rhodesia is super’ after a logo that was very prominent in the 1970s, just prior to zimbabwe being granted its post-colonial identity and independence in 1979. i remember seeing it on bags and t-shirts during those years. figure 11 (above): ‘rhodesia is super’. print design8 figure 12 (right): ‘rhodesia is super’ (author, 2011). oil on canvas, spray paint, 200cm x 60cm perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 82 in my painting, i depict the logo ‘rhodesia is super’ on the vest i am wearing (see figures 11 and 12). i shied away constantly from working into it after the initial stages of painting it up on the canvas, because i suspected/realised that i would be opening up myself to much criticism if i were to exhibit it. the ‘rhodesia is super’ painting depicts an image of me in camo-army pants floating above a desolate, pre-dawn or dusk landscape. there is a long narrow dirt road stretching tautly beneath me and there is this plague of rifle silhouettes pushing me further above this landscape. this is not an easy painting for me to explain and i found it physically painful to paint. i had to wrestle with the ghosts that had settled in my inner child’s memory. i asked a friend to critique the painting. she exclaimed “rhodesia? what? excuse me! how dare you use that word?”. she said that i was trying to atone for the ‘white man’s guilt’, and expressing the ex-rhodesian ‘when-we’ nostalgia. yet she also spoke to me of how, through the act of painting, i was unpacking guilt and presenting the rhodesian conflict within the larger palette of humanity caught up in the struggle for liberation. her opinion was extremely useful, as she represents the dominant anti-colonial voice, with a personal background steeped in exile and ‘other-ness’ as a result of unjust oppressive rule and upheaval. i am grateful for her fiery critique, although i disagree that i am trying to atone for ‘white man’s guilt’. in translating my fear of storying that painting and of revealing myself, i realised that i had resisted using the ‘r’ word because i have loathed being called a ‘when-we’. my intense dislike of being labelled a ‘when-we’ reveals in me what whitehead (1998:1) identifies in the self as a “living contradiction”.9 the contradiction, in this instance, being the recognition of love enveloped in shame, being able to acknowledge an intense love of a country, dislike of its colonial history of oppression, and yet shy away from that acknowledgement of that love for fear of rejection and being labelled. the values this painting reflects are integrity, freedom and respect. title: resolution i write about this painting, because it symbolised a kind of closure to me. it was one of the last pieces i painted and has a printed background of rifles, dense and layered, which peter away to smaller and increasingly scattered images. in the centre of the composition sits an oval frame enclosing a portrait of my feet (see figure 13). one of the toes has a ring with the face of the sun on it, and the feet have a luminescence that is offset by the fading red background. i have come to realise that mystical or religious connotations can be attached to the rendering of the feet, and that they could be read as the portrayal of martyrdom or crucifixion; however, the feet in my painting are from india. let me explain. i have been photographing my feet – always barefoot – for years in different places. so, i had many images to choose from for this painting. i like to see where my feet have walked and i realise that they represent, symbolically, my connection to “digging deep”: self-study as a reflexive approach to improving my practice as an artist, researcher and teacher lee scott 83 the earth. yet i unconsciously chose that photograph taken in particularly dusky and pearlescent surroundings in india, where in that moment, i remember feeling a deep serenity. i understand now why i chose this image taken in a moment of profound peace and have used it to explain a symbolically harsh transformation interpreted as a peace offering and a form of resolution. the values this painting reflects are freedom and well-being. figure 13: ‘resolution’ (author, 2011). mixed media, 112cm x 45cm perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 84 reflections how are the painted stories visual indicators of my learning? my living standards of practice (in)form and are (in)formed by my values. the ongoing critical conversations with my peers have been one of the ways that has helped me evaluate my artworks and their social and educational influence. i have been able to employ self-awareness, describe, critically analyse, evaluate and synthesise my processes, through the useful prompting of brown’s (1994) reflexive self-questioning, and my “living standards of judgement” (whitehead, 2008:103), of integrity, empathy, passion, creativity and playfulness. what did i learn from this self-study experience? i learned and provided evidence of how the pictopics are an invaluable tool for people to open up and share their thoughts – whether questioning, moral, spiritual, or for fun – and that these stories are a form of social commentary. the stories i was told at the artspace gallery and at the drama workshop showed me how people are connected through the commonality of experiences and just how intensely i related to those stories. in addition, my belief that the pictopics can be used as a way to encourage a creative approach to teaching and learning, and that they can play a transformational role, was demonstrated by the stories documented at the artspace gallery, and by the storied performances of the dut drama students.10 what is the value of reflexivity in my practice? widdershoven (cited in jousselson & lieblich, 1993:7) writes of how we only become aware of the significance of experiences by telling stories about them and fusing them with other stories. in remembering/writing and painting my stories, i set out on a path of facing, challenging and interpreting/expressing my own painful conceptions of myself. i realise that i was negotiating the tricky path of “memory-work” (mitchell & webber, 1998; 1999, cited in pithouse-morgan, mitchell & pillay, 2012: 2) as a tool for reflective analysis of self and its impact on my various practices. according to pithouse-morgan et al. (2012: 1), “memory work is aimed at revealing and gaining insight into the social meanings of and influences on memory”. they further write that one can then intervene creatively through consciously working with memory. by reflecting on my choice of pictopic stories to interpret as paintings, i was obliged to examine why i would choose to paint the symbols to tell the stories in the way i did. the insights i have gained from painting and storytelling have led me to acknowledge how these symbols are all linked to life experiences which have ultimately impacted upon my perceptions of self. i learned that deliberate and conscious reflexivity “engages the self in critical exploration of experience, perceptions and positions” (kirk, 2005: 239). i believe that acknowledging this train of thought has successively impacted on my teaching self. “digging deep”: self-study as a reflexive approach to improving my practice as an artist, researcher and teacher lee scott 85 how have self-study and reflexivity affected my teaching self? i am aware now, post-masters, that in reflecting upon, remembering and “bringing forward the past, as painful as it might be” (pithouse-morgan et al., 2012: 4), the re/ remembering became an act for the future (mitchell & weber 1999, cited in pithousemorgan et al., 2012). i was able to unpack these memories through meta-reflection and understand how these memories have impacted on my practice as an artist and, in turn, as a teacher and social being. i was able to gain an understanding of how and why i taught the way i did and, in turn, consider ways to improve my practice(s). acknowledging that my own sociocultural background shapes how i construct, interpret and understand the world, and that i develop “subjective meanings of these experiences” (cresswell, 2007: 20) led me to understand that this (in)forms many of my world views. i have the world view of the immigrant, the educationalist, the fine artist, the designer, and these all (in)form who i am and my practices as artist, teacher and researcher. i also acknowledge that these world views contain specific lenses, so that, for example, when i write of my experiences of growing up in the bush, i see through the eyes of the child. when i teach and notice a student struggling to understand me, i understand him/her through the lens of myself as a child because of my learning experiences, enabling me to empathise and find the patience to understand others. because i have become aware of the pertinence of engaging deeply with matters that are important to me and because i believe that by “embark(ing) on an inward journey as a part of the creative process of learning”, as de beers (2009: 92) eloquently explains, i am far more aware of persuading my students to creatively, yet unconsciously, enjoy their learning. i have identified many ways that allow students to personally identify and connect with a brief or project, despite the prescriptive boundaries. to name a few: individual and group consultations with me; getting the students to review each other’s illustrations and design work (informal peer review), and allowing students to film on their cellular phones the technical painting demonstrations i give. in other words, finding ways to ‘strike a chord’ within the individual so that s/he quite simply enjoys what s/he is doing is, i believe, the key to his/her learning. conclusion overall, as leavy (2009: 250) writes, i learned that integrating artistic processes into educational research is important because this generates unique ways of understanding and representing experiences. through valuing different ways of perceiving, knowing, and making meaning, an artist-researcher can contribute holistic and intimate perspectives to research. however, the greatest learning for me in my self-study has been connected to my identity. using the pictopic cards as prompts to tell my own stories, i was encouraged to ‘dig deep’ into my psyche. by reflecting on my choice of cards as symbols for self, perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 86 i really had to examine the ‘who and why’ of me, and realised that i had intuitively used the cards as a tool with which to make my values evident. in the creation of my own story/stories, i was able to unlock memories, and find new subject matter and creative routes to travel. through the concrete evidence of artefacts – the artwork and the pictopics – i believe that i have developed a conduit that makes visually apparent the integration of artist, researcher and teacher. i also believe that it is the reflexive aspect of self-study that, while prompting the painful poem ‘orange net bag of memories’, also helped me develop a determined degree of consciousness; a determined consciousness where i now understand my wish to help others to be the best that they can be. endnotes 1. brevity does not allow for in-depth detail on the value of the pictopics as an educational tool and their pertinence as visual prompts, but my dissertation titled telling tales: pictograms as a visual voice can be accessed via the dut library repository. 2. retrieved on 25 september 2010 from http://ejolts.net/node/80. 3. retrieved on 6 october 2009 from http://www.jeanmcniff.com/ booklet1.html. 4. retrieved on 3 april 2009 from www.ecuad.ca/~rbeer/text/pdf/ studies%20-%20richgate.pdf. 5. retrieved on 6 march 2011 from http://www.creativityandcognition. com. 6. retrieved on 19 december 2011 from http://www.newzimbabwe.com/ pages/mawere72.16305.html 7. retrieved on 19 october 2011 from dictionary.com (accessed 19/10/2011). 8. retrieved on 7 february 2010 from www.lekkerwear.com/ 9. retrieved on 8 july 2009 from www.actionresearch.net/writings/livtheory. html 10. these stories can be read in my dissertation titled “telling tales: pictograms as a visual voice”. acknowledgment i wish to acknowledge the support from the activities and facilitators of the transformative educational studies (tes) project. this project was funded by the national research foundation (nrf), education research in south africa grant. “digging deep”: self-study as a reflexive approach to improving my practice as an artist, researcher and teacher lee scott 87 the various workshops and the researchers who facilitated them have been highly instrumental in the growth of me as a teacher and researcher and for this, i thank them sincerely. references atkins s & murphy k 1994. reflective practice. nursing standard, 8(39): 49-56. boyer el 1990. scholarship reconsidered: priorities of the professoriate. the carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. brown r 1994. the ‘big picture’ about managing writing. in o zuber-skerritt & y ryan (eds), quality in postgraduate education. london: kogan page, 38-50. bullough rv & pinnegar s 2001. guidelines for quality in autobiographical forms of self-study research. educational researcher, 30(3): 13-22. chase se 2005. narrative inquiry. multiple lenses, approaches, voice., in nk denzin & ys lincoln (eds), the sage handbook of qualitative research. 3rd edition. thousand oaks, ca: sage, 651-679. cresswell jw 2007. qualitative inquiry and research design. choosing among five approaches. 2nd edition. thousand oaks, ca: sage. dadds m & hart s 2001. doing practitioner research differently. london: routledge/ falmer. de beer m 2009. memory-based expressions of the self: demonstration/expression of memory through the art of making. in k pithouse, c mitchell & r moletsane (eds), making connections: self-study and social action. new york: peter lang, 77-96. ellis c 2004. the auto ethnographic l, a methodological novel about auto ethnography. walnut creek, ca : ravman & littlefield publishers, alta mira press. heller n & williams j 1982. painters of the american scene. 2nd edition. new york: watson-guptill publications. irwin rl, beer r, springgay s, grauer k, xiong g & bickel b 2006. the rhizomatic relations of a/r/tography. accepted for studies in art education june 2006. retrieved on 3 april 2009 from http://www.ecuad.ca/~rbeer/text/pdf/ studies%20-%20richgate.pdf. josselson r & lieblich a (eds) 1993. the narrative study of lives. volume 1. newbury park, ca: sage. kirk j 2005. starting with the self. reflexivity in studying women teachers’ lives in development. in c mitchell, s weber & k o’reilly-scanlon (eds), just who do we think we are? methodologies for autobiography and self-study in teaching, london and new york: routledge/falmer, 231-241. leavy p 2009. method meets art. arts-based research practice. new york: the guildford press. lyons n & laboskey v 2004. narrative inquiry in practice: advancing the knowledge of teaching. new york: teachers college press. perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 88 maree k (ed) 2011. first steps in research. pretoria: van schaik. malinowski b 1948. magic science and religion and other essays. new york: london souvenir press. mcniff j 2002. action research for professional development. 3rd edition. retrieved on 6 october 2009 from: http://www.jeanmcniff.com/booklet1.html. mcniff j & whitehead j 2007. offering explanations for our contributions as creative educational practices for a living network of educational quality. paper presented at the british educational research association annual conference, institute of education, university of london, 5-8 september 2007. retrieved on 6 october 2009 from www.jeanmcniff.com/items.asp?id=18. mitchell c 2008. getting the picture and changing the picture: visual methodologies and educational research in south africa. south african journal of education, 28: 365-383. pithouse-morgan k, mitchell c & pillay d 2012. editorial: memory and pedagogy special issue. journal of education, 54: 1-6. samaras a 2011. flying solo. journal of staff development, 32: 42-45. retrieved on 9 february 2014 from http://learningforward.org/docs/october-2011/ samaras325.pdf?sfvrsn=2. schön da 1983. the reflective practitioner. how professionals think in action. : new york: basic books, inc. springgay s, irwin rl, lego c & gouzouasis p (eds) 2008. being with a/r/tography. rotterdam, the netherlands: sense publishers. tucker m 2011. ways of knowing: self-study research megan hl tucker educ. unpublished ph.d in higher education. george mason university. retrieved on 9 february 2014 from: mtuckereportfolio.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/ ways-of-knowing-paper-educ800.doc. whitehead j 1998. how do i know that i have influenced your learning for good? a question of representing my educational relationships with my research students. the second international conference on self-study of teacher education practices, herstmonceux castle, uk, 16-20 august 1998. retrieved on 8 july 2009 from www.resources.educ.queensu.ca/ar/sstep2/whitehea. htm. whitehead j. 2008. using a living theory methodology in improving practice and generating an educational knowledge in living theories. educational journal of living theories (online), 1(1):103-126. retrieved on 3 october 2009 from http://ejolts.net/node/80http://ejolts.net/node/80 whitehead j 2008. how do i influence the generation of living educational theories for personal and social accountability in improving practice? using a living theory methodology in improving educational practice. retrieved on 8 may 2009 from http://www.actionresearch.net/writings/jack/jwltm080508.pdf. what teacher educators consider as best practices in preparing pre-service teachers for teaching mathematics in multilingual classrooms anthony a. essien marang centre for maths and science education, university of the witwatersrand, south africa anthony.essien@wits.ac.za author’s mailing address: anthony a. essien address: p. o. box 453, wits, 2050, south africa office: +27-11-717-3408; fax: +27-865186392 this paper reports on an investigation into what teacher educators consider to be best practices in how to prepare pre-service teachers to effectively deal with the challenges of teaching mathematics in multilingual contexts, and how what teacher educators consider as best practices inform their own classroom practice. twelve teacher educators (tes) from four universities in a province in south africa participated in the study. through a qualitative analysis of the interviews, five practices emerged as best practices for these teacher educators: the use of code switching, the creation of an environment of trust in the classroom, the use of one (rather than two) medium of instruction, namely english, the use of linguistic metaphors that the languages present in the class potentially provide for use in mathematics, and, finally, the creation of an awareness of the multilingual context in which pre-service teachers would teach at the end of their qualification. given that most teachers in south africa teach in multilingual classrooms and teacher education research on mathematics education has not, thus far, focused on multilingual mathematics education, it is hoped that these five practices would serve as an inducement for both teacher educators and researchers alike. the author also cautions against the adoption of imported practices from other countries and argues that in delineating practices that are more likely to work in the south african context, it is important to bear in mind the distinctive nature of multilingualism in south africa. keywords: multilingual mathematics education; teacher educators, practices, pre-service teachers introduction concerns on improving the quality of teacher education have followed quite an interesting trajectory over the past centuries. it can be argued that the paradigm shifts in what constitutes quality mathematics teaching have aligned themselves very intricately to the shift in the perception of the nature of mathematics, what constitutes mathematical knowledge and what it means to engage with mathematical activity (wood, 1996). over the years, from the notion of mathematics as “a set of rules and formalisms invented by experts, in which everyone else is to memorise and use to obtain unique correct answers” (romberg, 1992: 453), most psychologists and educationists now conceptualise mathematics as involving the understanding of mathematical concepts as well as the ability to communicate mathematically. moschkovich (2002), for example, holds that in addition to algorithmic competence, solving word problems and using mathematical reasoning, interaction/communication in the mathematics class is also important in the teaching and learning of mathematics. hence, the argument advanced by both research (pimm, 1987, 1991; adler, 2001; setati 2005; sfard, nesher, streefland, cobb & mason, 1998; moschkovich, 1999, 2002) and curriculum (doe, 1997, 2002) is that learning to communicate mathematically is one of the central aspects of what it means to learn school mathematics. from this new understanding arise not only questions regarding mathematics essien — what teacher educators consider 33 knowledge for teaching and pedagogic content knowledge, but, fundamentally, questions concerning teachers’ knowledge of the use of language(s) to create epistemological access to the mathematics content. the situation takes on an added complexity in multilingual classrooms. in multilingual classrooms of learners whose home language is not the language of learning and teaching (lolt) and who are not yet proficient in the lolt, teachers are faced with the triple challenge of striking a balance between attention to mathematics, attention to english (lolt) and attention to mathematical language (barwell, 2009). it can be argued that it is not a given that pre-service teachers would acquire the skills required in dealing with this challenge by the mere experience of being in a multilingual environment, but rather through some form of formal teaching or enculturation. the question is: how are teachers trained to deal with teaching mathematics to multilingual learners whose first language is not the language of instruction? this paper reports on the first of two phases of a wider research study which investigated the pedagogic/discursive practices of teacher educators who are preparing pre-service teachers to deal with the complexities of teaching mathematics (in multilingual classrooms) to learners who do mathematics in a language which is not their home language. the study was informed by the anthropological perspective of situativity which holds that, in context, different discourses give rise to different kinds or forms of knowing (putnam & borko, 2000) and that the pattern of language used by teachers and students within and about a particular content area (mathematics in the case of this study) would determine the nature of enculturation into the discipline and would invariably lead to the internalisation of the ability to engage in discursive mathematical practices in particular kinds of ways (brilliant-mills, 1994). the knowledge, skills and practices of the teacher educator in bringing this to bear, namely creating an enabling environment for the learning of mathematics, cannot be underestimated. in a multilingual pre-service class, therefore, the practices used by the teacher educators make teaching a central focus of the professional learning experiences for the pre-service teachers. using the anthropological perspective of situativity, the main aim of this first phase of the study reported in this paper was to describe, interpret and interrogate teacher educators’ practices in pre-service multilingual mathematics classrooms and what, given their context, they consider as the best practices in creating opportunities for epistemological access in multilingual mathematics classrooms. hence, in this paper, the following specific question is of interest: what do teacher educators consider to be the best practices in how to prepare pre-service teachers for teaching mathematics in multilingual classrooms and how does what they consider as best practices inform their own practice? in this paper, the term “practice” is taken to incorporate the mathematics-related activities that teacher educators engage in deliberately with the aim of enculturating pre-service teachers into the dynamics of teaching mathematics (in multilingual contexts). one size fits all? as broeder, extra and maartens (2002) rightly pointed out, south africa presents a complex and interesting picture of multilingualism. this is due not only to its political history of apartheid, but also to its very distinct nature of multilingualism. of the eleven (official) languages in south africa, nine are indigenous african languages. these african languages can be grouped into two major groups based on their linguistic distance (linguistic distance is taken as the extent to which two or more languages differ from each other/one another with regards to, amongst myriad other characteristics, vocabulary, grammar, written form, structure and semantic aspects of the language and their status): the sotho languages and the nguni languages.. the languages in each of these groups are mutually intelligible (this is not the case with the remaining two african languages: tshivenda and tsonga) and are linguistically very “close”. because of this mutual intelligibility of languages, it becomes easy for one to learn the other indigenous languages. it must be noted that this is not the case with most multilingual settings in other african countries. the example of nigeria is a case in point. even though there are over 250 indigenous languages in nigeria, most of them are very autonomous in the sense that they share very little (if at all) common vocabularies. in most classrooms in most cities in nigeria, there might be about 10 completely different perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201034 languages present in the classroom, so much so that if the teacher uses his/her home language to teach, a good number of learners would not understand and would be thus, disadvantaged. elsewhere (essien, 2010), i have argued that in her comparison of the south african linguistic context to that of nigeria, cele (2001) ignores both the fact that the nigerian indigenous languages are mostly autonomous and mostly linguistically very distant from one another. she also ignores the fact of the existence of the pidgin language. this has serious implications for her recommendation that “the south african education language policy should be modelled after countries like nigeria that in spite of many indigenous languages existing in their cultural fabric, english is used as an official unifying factor” (cele, 2001: 192). i argue that not only are the colonial legacies or the historical contexts of language development in a country important in determining what the best practices are in teaching and learning, but also important is the nature of the languages (indigenous and otherwise) present in the country in question. hence, practices that have been proven to work in multilingual classrooms elsewhere may not necessarily be the best practices in the context of south africa. teaching/learning mathematics in english as a second language although the south african constitution and the language-in-education policy make provision for learners to learn in any of the eleven official languages of their choice, research has shown that due to economic, political and ideological factors, most learners prefer to learn mathematics in english, a language which for most, is not their first or home language (de klerk, 2002; setati, 2008). learners who come from homes where the language of learning and teaching is the only language spoken at home are to some extent familiar with the linguistic structures they encounter in the mathematics classroom (cuevas, 1984) even though they still have to deal with the mathematics language (pimm, 1987). research (adler, 2001; barwell, barton, & setati, 2007; gorgorio & planas, 2001) has shown that this is not the case with learners whose home language is not the language of teaching and learning. these learners need to deal not only with learning mathematical concepts, but also the language in which these concepts are embedded (barwell, barton, & setati, 2007). in fact, underachievement in matric examinations (mathematics) in south africa has been found to be more prevalent amongst learners who use english language less frequently at home (simkins in taylor, muller & vinjevold, 2003) and in areas where english is less frequently used at home. mathematics educators dealing with learners whose first language is not the language of instruction thus need to be conscious of the complex process of not only learning a second language (cuevas, 1984), but also the even more complex process of learning (mathematics) in a foreign language. research design in order to address the critical questions which this research sought to explore, a qualitative case study approach was adopted. case studies involve detailed contextual analysis of a limited number of events and their relationships and can strengthen what is already known through previous research (o’leary, 2004). my choice of a case study was motivated by its ability as a research method to bring new variables or understanding to the fore. semi-structured interviews focusing mainly on teacher educators’ practices in multilingual classrooms were conducted with teacher educators and tape-recorded. sample this first phase involved the interviewing of twelve teacher educators at four universities in a province in south africa. all twelve tes were involved in training pre-service teachers for both the get and the fet phases. because of the distinct nature of multilingualism in south africa as argued above, in the selection of participants for the study, all the teacher educators who were newly employed in the participating universities, but who had experience in teacher education from other countries were systematically excluded from the study. teacher educators who were newly employed and had no previous experience in teacher education were also excluded from the study since the interviews took place at the beginning of the academic year. those who were newly employed in the participating universities, but had experience in essien — what teacher educators consider 35 teacher education in other teacher education higher institutions were, however, considered for interviews in this phase. furthermore, teacher educators teaching either of (or both) mathematics methodology and mathematics content courses were included in the study. the table below presents a list of the teacher educators involved in pre-service teacher training in the institutions where the research was conducted and how many were interviewed: table 1: number of teacher educators in the institutions of research institution total no. of te no. of te interviewed a 2 2 b 4 2 c 3 3 d 9 5 total 18 12 of all those interviewed, three speak more than one of the african languages of south african, four are afrikaans speaking, one was not a south african, and one had english as the first language. as at the time of the interviews, of the six teacher educators who were not interviewed, two declined to participate in the study, and the others were new to the participating universities. all twelve teachers selected for the study were involved in teaching multilingual mathematics preservice teachers. amongst other questions, tes were asked what, for them, constitutes the best practices with regards to preparing pre-service teachers for teaching mathematics in multilingual contexts, whether or not tes think pre-service teachers need to be apprenticed into particular ways of teaching mathematics in multilingual contexts and what tes think needed to be done to accomplish this. ethical considerations access to the universities was negotiated with the heads of the school (faculty) of education of each university and the teacher educators were asked for a written consent to participate in the research. the teacher educators (and research institutions) were informed by the researcher that their anonymity would be protected. it is my contention that the community of teacher educators is different from the community of teachers. the former is much smaller, more academically and research inclined, and more conversant with one another’s institutional and historical contexts. this makes research in teacher education an ethical mine-field. in this light, in all the publications resulting from this study, i have refrained from both describing the teacher educators involved in the study and the context of the institutions as doing either or both of these would put the anonymity of the teacher educators or the research institutions in jeopardy. following from this also, the pronoun, “she would be used for all the teacher educators in this study to protect the anonymity of the tes. data analysis and discussions in what follows, i discuss the five practices that emerged as best practices in preparing pre-service teachers for teaching mathematics in multilingual classroom. the use of code switching ayeomoni (2006: 91) defines code as “a verbal component that can be as small as a morpheme or as comprehensive and complex as the entire system of language”. given this definition, a single morpheme in the zulu language, for example, can be regarded as a code, as is the zulu language itself. code switching has been defined by many researchers and scholars. in this paper, i take code switching as a term which covers the phenomenon of alternating between two or more languages in the same conversation. perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201036 a noteworthy finding in this study was that all twelve teacher educators were in a position where they could not code switch in their classrooms (for various reasons such as the language infrastructure of the classes they were teaching or their inability to speak the african languages). the context depicted in excerpt 1 was typical of most of the teacher educators in the study. excerpt 1 r do you sometimes code switch? te elm, for me, it is difficult because of the background. because the students we have here are from all over south africa. you find students as far as venda. in fact, even in the class, we have vendas, spedis, shangans, we’ve got zulus who are in the majority, we’ve got xhosa and ndebele. so, for me as a lecturer, when to code switch is going to be a problem, because some would not understand. it would disadvantage others when i try to… even though as teacher educators they did not code switch in class, they all agreed that code switching is a good practice, which could have added value to their teaching. all twelve teacher-educators, therefore, said they encourage code switching by the pre-service teachers in their classes. they do so by asking learners for mathematical expressions in their home languages, by asking learners to interpret/translate to the teacher educators when a pre-service teacher asks questions in another language not familiar to the te, by encouraging learners to do group discussions in a language they are comfortable in and/or by using metaphors that the different languages in the class potentially provide for use in mathematics (i will return to this last point in a later section). excerpt 2 is indicative of the sentiments of other te with regards to this: excerpt 2 r ok, do you notice any linguistic challenge when you visit them during teaching practice? te1 my usual resolve is that if you see that your learners are grappling with the language, break the concept in as many parts as possible. let the learners bring in some input, maybe call a learner and say, how would you explain it in xhosa. then the learner would explain in xhosa and you ask: have you understood? yes. ... te2 ok, what i realise is that they use code switching a lot... i don’t have a problem because the learners would benefit. and i always encourage them that they can only code switch if they realise that the learners have a problem with understanding something. it should not be a matter of making things easy for them [pre-service teachers]. it should be to the advantage of the learners... the medium is english, and from there, they can only code switch where there is a need. te1 uses the practice of asking pre-service teachers to explain concepts in their home language in the hope that this would enable epistemological access to concepts which the pre-service teachers are struggling to understand. what is interesting is that te2 also encourages code switching as a strategy of teaching, but on one condition, namely that it is for the benefit of the learners in the class and not as a strategy for enabling the pre-service teachers to switch to a more comfortable language for them in order to communicate their message. in the above teacher educator’s practice, she tries to get learners who are not proficient in english to ask questions in english and only employs the services of a translator as a last resort. this strategy of persuading pre-service teachers to communicate mathematically in english resonates with the strategy used by other tes who also encourage their pre-service teachers to present lessons or tasks in english so they can enrich themselves linguistically in the lolt and become better at communicating mathematically in the lolt. in this regard, kasule and mapolelo (2005: 611) note the following concerning the dilemma of being an african teacher: essien — what teacher educators consider 37 african teachers know that they must enhance learners’ exposure to the english language, must overcome their own sense of inadequacy in that language, and must ensure that learners are prepared for higher education and that outside world, so they must not code switch; but they must ensure that learners understand and participate in classroom talk... this is exactly what te2 envisages when she discourages her pre-service teachers from code switching to make up for their english language deficiencies, and when she and the other tes encourage their preservice teachers to communicate in english despite their pre-service teachers’ low proficiency in english. in a study by setati (2008), it was also found that both teachers and learners who position themselves in relation to english are concerned with access to social goods (higher education, jobs, etc). the conclusion that can be drawn from the above discussion is that even though code switching is an important strategy for access to mathematics in multilingual classrooms, sometimes the deliberate use of english is essential for enculturating pre-service teachers into the (english) mathematics register. in my estimation, the call by de klerk (2002) for policies and practices which cater for the development of concepts in home languages while at the same time ensuring adequate access to english, is pertinent not only in the early education of learners, but also in pre-service teacher training. creating an environment of trust trust is also important for teaching in a multilingual context according to the tes. it is important that the pre-service teachers do not feel that the tes look down on them because of their language deficiencies or/ and that the tes are not negatively critical of their culture as evident in excerpts 3 and 4: excerpt 3 i got my degree in afrikaans and later on had to study in english for my honours degree… so, i can identify with my students in many ways. it is difficult and they are scared and it is intimidating and overwhelming, and we need to create that environment where they can comfortably risk things, risk making mistakes, risk talking english and learning the language while they are learning the subject specific discourse. from the te’s utterances in excerpt 3, it can be deduced that what constitutes the best practice for this te is the creation of an environment where pre-service teachers can risk making mistakes when they speak english, that is, where they are not shy to express their mathematical thinking in the language they are still learning even as they speak, and where pre-service teachers see their linguistic inadequacies as an opportunity for becoming linguistically enriched. this sentiment is also echoed by the te in except 4: excerpt 4 r given your vast experience of teaching both in-service and pre-service teachers, what can we learn from you in terms of what it means to teach in multilingual pre-service classrooms of preservice teachers preparing also to teach in multilingual classrooms? te it is important that we acknowledge the fact that our students are coming to our classrooms with a multitude of backgrounds... and not only acknowledging it, but making it apparent from the word go, that you respect them, and that you think that they can make a contribution; that the learning process is a 2-way street. for me, that has worked over the years, because that also sets the tone for respect and for trust. because of trust, the student knows he/she would not be ridiculed if he/she makes a mathematically or grammatically incorrect statement. i look at this whole thing as some kind of immersion in the context of south africa, and we must be very careful not to take another country’s model of multilingual situation as model for south africa. it can be argued that some form of teacher-learner trust is required in any classroom (including a monolingual context where the pre-service teachers and the te share the same language). in a multilingual context such as that of south africa, the issue of trust takes on an added importance in the creation of an environment perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201038 conducive to learning. the nature of multilingualism and, therefore, any attempt at suggesting what the best practices for teaching and learning are for a country, as i have argued previously, depend not only on the nature of the languages (indigenous and otherwise) present in the country in question but also on the colonial legacies or the historical contexts of language development in a country. in south africa where mother-tongue education was used as a tool for suppression – a tool for “institutionalised racism of apartheid” (pluddeman, 2002: 47) and where english was synonymous with superiority, power and whiteness, and fluency in english was perceived as an “emblem of educatedness”, the issue of creating or building trust between (especially monolingual, namely only english speaking, and bilingual, namely only english and afrikaans speaking) tes and their pre-service teachers, and of creating an environment where pre-service teachers feel comfortable to speak english without fear of ridicule or criticism, becomes essential in multilingual classrooms. to go back to cele’s (2001) recommendations, the issue of the creation of an atmosphere of trust is a typical example of where colonial history plays an important part in what is perceived as a best practice for a particular context. the remark, therefore, by the te (in excerpt 4) that south africa “must be careful not to take another country’s model of multilingual situation as model” is of critical importance. the use of afrikaans and/or english as media of instruction it must be noted that at the micro-level of the individual universities, what teacher educators considered as best practices to some extent was a function of the educational university contexts in which they find themselves. it is, therefore, not surprising that some of the practices mentioned by teacher educators from historically black universities were not a concern for teacher educators in historically afrikaans medium universities and vice versa. in excerpt 5 below, the teacher educator from a historically afrikaans university was responding to the question about what she considers as best practices given her (multilingual) context of teaching: you know at the beginning, i had afrikaans and english in two separate classes. then i said no, no, one class. at the beginning, they didn’t like it, but now they are actually fine with that. and i think it is a good way to do this because, if they are going to be teachers, they’ll get all kinds of learners in one class. and so at university, it’s not gonna help if you are going to sit in only afrikaans class. so, i think this is a way of learning how to cope when you are out there as a teacher. that is why i also advise my students that they go to a school that they are not used to. so if you attended a rural school, you try to go to a different kind of school. or if you attended some kind of a modern school, try to do your school practice in a different school. excerpt 5 what comes out forcefully in this excerpt is that for the te, the best practice for preparing pre-service teachers to deal with the challenges of teaching in multilingual contexts is not to have separate classes for pre-service teachers according to their language background at the university or teacher training level. her conviction that this is good practice is foregrounded by her advice to pre-service teachers to go to a different school to what they are familiar with during their teaching practice. in the te’s own practice, even though her university allows for a course in the first year to be taught both in english and in afrikaans and for the pre-service teachers to choose which of these classes to attend, she merged the afrikaans and the english class together in order to give all pre-service teachers the opportunity to acquaint themselves with the cultures of others. her reason for this is because when they (pre-service teachers) become qualified teachers, “they’ll get all kinds of learners in one class”. essien — what teacher educators consider 39 the use of linguistic metaphors when asked about best practices, three of the teacher educators interviewed identified the use of linguistic metaphors that the different languages in the class potentially provide for use in mathematics. this is evident in excerpt 6 from one te: excerpt 6 ..for me the best practice would be if i know the languages to such an extent that i can use the metaphor of the languages. if i knew these languages, i would still teach in, say, a shared language, english for instance. but if i were aware of imageries evoked by the different languages [present in the class], i would make a point of bringing that in. i am talking about something like, if you think of the concept of multiplication. there is a lovely zulu word for multiplication called phinda phinda, right? when they don’t understand and you say ‘it’s like phinda phinda’, ....they say ‘ohhhhh, repeat repeatedly’. and they understand it. so if i know more of those, i would use them and make explicit in teaching. if i knew them, i would bring them in to enrich mathematical discussions. and i think it can help english speaking people to generate more interesting cases of mathematical applications. for the teacher educator in excerpt 6, good practice would be to be able to use multiple languages to engage with pre-service teachers using different metaphors and imageries around a mathematical register in the different languages present in her class to enable epistemological access. another related best practice for teaching in multilingual class for this te is the ability to use subtle differences for expressing a mathematical idea/word that exist in one language to enrich discussions around the mathematical concept under consideration. she cites an expression in the zulu language that expresses the concept of multiplication – phinda phinda – “repeat repeatedly” and how she uses the few words she knows in some of the pre-service teachers’ home languages to teach in class. studies (see for example, arzarello, robutti and bazzini, 2005) have shown that the use of analogical representations (metaphors) can help in the development of mathematical concepts. this, in my opinion, is much more so if in a multilingual class the metaphors are in the home languages of the learners and are used to enrich classroom discussion around a particular mathematical concept. the creation of awareness of the multilingual context pre-service teachers would be teaching after their qualification even though excerpt 7 reinforces the importance of linguistic metaphors in multilingual mathematics classrooms, behind this smokescreen is the importance of the creation of an awareness of the pre-service teachers’ future context of teaching. the te in excerpt 7 cites an example with white pre-service teachers who do not know the african linguistic structures and do not think there is a big problem in the class since they believe that once the learners are proficient in english, that is all they need. excerpt 7 let me give an example; many white students that are here, are not aware of the complexity of the african language structures. and i see it and i talk to them about it. they don’t think there is a big problem in the class. “if i can speak english and the teacher speaks english, that’s fine” – that’s what they think. whereas, my black students, …i was once in a class where the students were trying to understand the mathematical term for the spatial term, ‘behind’ in 4 dialects in shangan. they couldn’t agree on the meaning of the term in their language. and the white kids were surprised because they couldn’t understand why that was a problem. of course, for them they only have one word for it. what i’m saying is that depending on your background, your understanding of the problematic situation of language is sometimes very limited. the white kids are not familiar with this, the white teachers are not familiar with this – the whole thing of double language, kafasi fasi – double language to show steps of big, bigger biggest – different terms for showing your degree of comparisons. so, in this country, i think there is definitely a need for people to be perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201040 aware of the complexity of language imbedded in culture. the language structure of the african languages is different from english. excerpt 7 foregrounds the te’s awareness of her context of teaching and the pre-service teachers’ lack of awareness of the important role language plays in multilingual contexts of teaching. as wagner (2007) argues, students need to be able to problematise language in such a way that they come to the realisation that language problems are inherent in mathematics classroom discourse. besides the issue of linguistic structures which both teacher educators and pre-service teachers need to be aware of, five teacher educators strongly think that creating an awareness of the complexity of teaching mathematics in multilingual contexts (starting with teacher educators themselves) is important in dealing with the teaching and learning of mathematics in the south african context. they also indicated that at the undergraduate level, a module or a course which focuses on language issues in the teaching and learning of mathematics in multilingual classroom needs to be introduced. as i have argued elsewhere (essien 2010), even though a course at university level that attends to teaching and learning in multilingual classrooms is essential, creating an awareness of the multilingual context of teaching and learning and what it entails should be a thread that runs through the entire teacher education mathematics curriculum. conclusion the findings from this study clearly indicate a strong awareness on the part of the teacher educators about i) the context of their classroom practice and ii) the prospective context in which the pre-service teachers would be teaching at the end of their undergraduate studies. this awareness runs through what these tes consider as best practices in enculturating pre-service teachers into the complexity of teaching and learning mathematics in multilingual classrooms. at the micro level of the universities, it can be argued that the delineation of what constitutes the best practice for the tes in this study was, to some extent, dependent on the immediate educational contexts in which teaching and learning occurs at the universities. such contexts included the context of teacher education, the context of the individual universities involved in the study, the language infrastructure of the classroom, and who the teacher educator is (that is, whether the te is monolingual, bilingual/multilingual). as barwell (2009) argues, these different contexts (at the micro-level in universities) have something of a wider value to contribute to teaching and learning in the south african multilingual contexts. the question that remains to be answered is: to what extent should teacher training institutions adopt some or all of the five practices delineated by the tes in this study? in south africa where most of the classes are multilingual and where most learners, despite their low english language proficiency, choose to do mathematics in english (setati, 2008), one of the challenges for teacher education institutions, teacher educators and researchers alike is to legitimate practices that would equip pre-service teachers to deal with the complexity of teaching effectively in multilingual mathematics classrooms. investigating what teacher educators themselves consider as best practices is an integral part of that process. acknowledgements this paper is based on a research jointly supervised by professors jill adler, mamokgethi setati and richard barwell. i am grateful to them for their insights. i am also grateful to the teacher educators who participated in this study and to one of the blind reviewers for his/her insightful comments. references adler j 2001. teaching mathematics in multilingual classrooms. dordrecht: kluwer academic publishers. arzarello f, robutti o, & bazzini l 2005. acting is 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[1]. for the learning of mathematics, 18: 41-51. taylor n, muller j & vinjevold p 2003. getting schools working: research and systemic school reform in south africa. cape town: pearson education. wagner d 2007. students’ critical awareness of voice and agency in mathematics classroom discourse. mathematical thinking and learning, 9: 31-50. perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201042 wood t 1996. events in the learning of mathematics: insights from research in classrooms. educational studies in mathematics 30: 85-105. pie 32 (2) book.indb perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 8 sandra weber department of education, concordia university, canada e-mail: weber@education.concordia.ca telephone: 514 848 2424 arts-based self-study: documenting the ripple effect sandra weber like all forms of inquiry, arts-based self-study research can have unexpected consequences. although we may start out with a fairly clear objective, the data we generate through arts-based methods might address other questions that are even more important than the ones we thought to ask initially, and our study might have an impact that extends beyond the original parameters of the design. the most powerful results of an arts-based self-study intended to improve our own practice might occur in another arena, a ripple effect that is visible only after our inquiry is completed, and hence, undetected because our gaze has shifted elsewhere. by describing and analysing what happens during and after three self-studies done by teachers and teacher educators, this article illustrates the use of visual and other arts-based methods (photography, video, creative writing and drawing) and explores the challenge and nature of the potential ripple effect in/of self-study for learning and growth for many. keywords: arts-based research methods, critical pedagogy, media education, ripple effect, self-study, visual methodologies introduction intimately related to issues of improving education, self-study is often a multi-purpose endeavour that simultaneously involves research, teaching, learning, and evaluation. the design of any self-study usually centres on key questions such as: what am i really doing/teaching? what influences my practice? how does my teaching affect others? how might i improve what i do? how might i view things differently? how can i make a difference to others? these questions reflect the hope of touching the lives of students and teachers in positive and significant ways and point to a widespread awareness that the ultimate consumers of teacher education are not only the teachers whom we teach, but also their future students, people whom, for the most part, we are never likely to meet (weber, 1990; zeichner & noffke, 2001). arts-based self-study: documenting the ripple effect sandra weber 9 how do we know if and how what we do in self-study impacts on these unseen others? is there a ripple effect to our inquiry, a series of ever-expanding concentric circles, gentle or not so gentle waves, which extend our influence outward to others not involved in our initial study? or do our studies sink quietly without a ripple? the challenge and nature of this potential ripple effect in arts-based self-study is the main focus of this article. depending on how a stone is cast into a pond or lake, the resulting ripple pattern will vary according to certain factors and often extends far beyond the view of the person who casts the stone or pebble. throwing a stone might frighten nearby fish or waterfowl; the ever-expanding ripples might push a child’s toy boat farther away from the edge or carry seed pods across to the other side where they may germinate new life. a young child observing someone throw a stone might be tempted to do likewise with perhaps disastrous consequences. whatever happens and whether or not the person who casts the stone is aware thereof, the thrower, the stone, the pond, the fish, the observers, the ducks, the seeds, the boats and all that the ripples touch are interconnected, are affected in some way. in explaining how sustainable educational leadership is inevitably linked to issues of social justice, hargreaves and fink (2006: 16) refer to a ripple effect to show how the fates of schools are increasingly intertwined: “what leaders do in one school necessarily affects the fortunes of students and teachers in other schools around them; their actions reverberate throughout the system like ripples in a pond”. although people unfamiliar with the field of self-study might mistakenly assume that self-study concerns mainly the people studying themselves, self-study has far-reaching effects. as griffiths, bass, johnston and perselli (2004) and pithouse, mitchell and weber (2009) assert, when done with a critical gaze, self-study facilitates professional growth in ways that not only lead to changing oneself, but also serve as impetus for addressing the wider social problems that contextualise our individual lives. arts-based approaches to self-study the purpose of art, as dewey ([1934] 1958: 184) puts it, is ‘‘to break through the conventionalized and routine consciousness” so that we might view things in new and perhaps truer ways. as i explain at length in a chapter written for an international handbook on arts-based methods, images can simultaneously present multiple viewpoints and generate multiple interpretations, and can draw attention to the importance of the everyday by making it strange or casting it in a new light (weber, 2008). images can be used as elegant and economical representations of theoretical positions by retaining more of the complexity of the whole within less space than words would necessitate. moreover, images can combine cultural and transcultural elements; they can evoke, but also sometimes transcend the specific context in which they are created, and they can use specific instances to comment on, or illustrate wider generalities (weber, 2008). perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 10 growing out of the pioneering theoretical work on visual knowledge by philosophers such as john berger (1972) and educational philosophers such as elliot eisner (1991) and maxine greene (1977), a burgeoning field of arts-based scholarship and practice has emerged in the social sciences, spearheaded initially by visual sociologists such as howard becker (1974) and doug harper (1998), and by activist scholars such as jim hubbard (1994), jo spence (1995), and caroline wang (1999). as interest has expanded widely from one discipline to another, visual research is now supported and reported by international handbooks, research associations, refereed journals, and granting agencies. given the centrality of images to our increasingly visual and digital cultures, researchers are becoming interested in developing more sophisticated understandings of image processes and are almost routinely incorporating deliberate and rigorous uses of images as part of their research methods. as academics become increasingly concerned with issues of social justice and educational reform, they realise the value of image-based modes of dissemination to making scholarship more accessible and more useful to a broader audience. researchers in this you tube age notice the value of public performance and art installations and are eager to post visual representations of their work on websites and e-journals in addition to (and, in some instances, instead of) the more traditional academic venues. the use of project websites and other approaches to public and restricted digital archives makes this type of sharing all the more feasible, creating a digital memory of arts-based inquiry. an example of this kind of archive can be found at the image and identity research collective (iirc) website (www. iirc.mcgill.ca), which features research that serves as a resource (with prompts and exemplars) for arts-based approaches to self-study. in a recent chapter for a book on teacher education, strong-wilson, mitchell, morrison, radford, and pithouse-morgan (2014) draw together a series of self-study memory-work digital-based projects to highlight the potential for the development of digital archives as a generative tool. some scholars might not be familiar with all the complex procedures, protocols, and ethical considerations that underlie a simple listing of the specific art genres and media used for a particular study, and might, therefore, underestimate its value. that would be both misguided and unfortunate. methodological guidelines and theories for arts-based research in the social sciences have become increasingly detailed, rigorous, ethical, and convincing (see, for example, coles & knowles, 2008; denzin & lincoln, 2011; mitchell, 2011; margolis & pauwells, 2013). although arts-based approaches to research are being used for a wide range of purposes, nowhere, i would argue, are they more useful than in self-study in education. visual and other arts-based methodologies such as creative writing and performance enable researchers to cast a wider net during data collection and offer a panoply of valuable lenses for analysing experience in meaningful ways that relate back to ethical practice. arts-based approaches to research expand our knowledge base by including many of the neglected, but important ways in which we construct meaning through artistic forms of expression. in a chapter that i co-authored with arts-based self-study: documenting the ripple effect sandra weber 11 claudia mitchell for an international handbook on self-study, we discuss in detail the growing use of visual artistic modes of representation for self-study and describe what we consider to be the key features of arts-based research that make it so suitable to self-study inquiry (weber & mitchell, 2004: 979-1036). the more salient of these features could be summarised as follows: • arts-based approaches, by their very nature, foster reflexivity. photographs, drawings, or videotapes of ourselves-in-action force us to take a step back and view our practice from the new perspective provided by the medium itself, increasing the potential for a deeper self-analysis. • artistic forms of representation can help capture the ineffable, the hard-toput-into-words. sometimes words do not suffice. eisner (1995: 1) argues that visual forms afford us an ‘‘all-at-onceness’’ that reveals what would be hard to grasp through language and numbers alone. this is particularly useful for bringing to light important elements of a situation that we had not thought to observe intentionally. teaching is a complex act involving many things happening at once. visual methods such as video and photography help capture that complexity and hold it up for inspection. • through visual detail and context, arts-based approaches show why and how the study of the one can resonate with the lives of many. artful representation works well when it facilitates empathy or enables us to see through the researcher-artist’s eye. hearing or seeing or feeling the details of a lived experience, its textures and shapes, helps make the representation trustworthy or believable, and helps the viewers realise how the researcher-artist’s experience relates to their own as well as the ways in which it differs. as eisner (1995: 3) writes, artistically crafted work creates a paradox, revealing what is universal by examining in detail what is particular. the more visual detail that is provided about the context of the researcher’s experience and interpretations, the better able the audience is to judge how this may or may not apply to their practice or concerns, and the more trustworthy the work appears, leaving the reader to decide or ‘see’ for themselves. this aspect of arts-based methods makes it possible to discern and describe potential ripple effects. • arts-based approaches involve embodiment and provoke embodied responses. if educators are acknowledging the importance of the body to models of learning in their rhetoric, it is important to acknowledge that self-study, like all research, is an embodied enterprise (for a detailed discussion, see chapter 4 ‘‘undressing and redressing the teacher’s body’’ in mitchell & weber, 1999). we are not ideas, but flesh and blood beings learning through our senses. visual methods help researchers keep their own and their students’ bodies in mind and push for a more sophisticated analysis and theorising that considers learning and teaching as embodied. perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 12 • art engages a wider public and either solicits or elicits reaction. an essential aspect of an arts-based approach to self-study is that it is at least partially a collective, participatory process. visual essays are meant to be displayed; videos are intended for a viewing audience. the feedback and collaboration of others is an integral part of the creation and dissemination of the study. it is perhaps most of all this ability of arts-based self-study to engage others that fosters, what i call, the ripple effects of self-study. artsbased self-studies often constitute a call to action, whether deliberate or incidental, to others who are not the central participants. the ripple effects of arts-based self-study: some examples like all forms of inquiry, self-study can have unexpected consequences, not all of them necessarily positive. although we may start out with a fairly clear objective (for example, what my students are learning), the data we collect might address other questions that are even more important than the ones we thought to ask (for example, what circumstances in their personal lives, or what institutional barriers make it difficult for my students to learn). equally significant is the impact that an inquiry can have beyond the original parameters of the design. the most powerful results of a self-study intended to improve our own practice might occur in another arena, a ripple effect that is visible only after our inquiry is completed, and hence, undetected, because our gaze has shifted elsewhere. that is the focus in the following three cases. the first two cases show what happens when two teachers, who were also my graduate students, discover some of the unanticipated implications (ripples) of the self-studies they began as part of their university work. the third case is, in a certain sense, itself a ripple effect of the first two cases, documenting the additional ripple effects of a subsequent project i led with one of them. case 1: the ripple effects of self-study: arts-based methods as transformative teaching a good example of, what we might call, the ripple effect can be found in the changing practice of adult educator and mentor kathy childs, documented partially in her master’s thesis (childs, 2001) as well as in a video from a cd compiled by weber and mitchell (2004), and further analysed by her in a book chapter (childs, 2005). what follows is my own synthesis of some of child’s experience to illustrate how participating peripherally in her work helped me consider the ripple effect. as the central assignment of a graduate course she was taking on professional development, a high school english teacher, katharine childs, conducts a self-study in her adult education classroom for disadvantaged, troubled youth who had dropped out of school, but who are back for a ‘last chance’. creative in her approach, childs explores different uses of various arts-based media in attempts to turn a critical eye towards her own teaching practice. this involves drawing, poetry, taking and analysing photographs and videos of herself in action, her students, her environment, and so arts-based self-study: documenting the ripple effect sandra weber 13 forth. she wants to see the things that she does not know she should be looking for, the things she needs to consider in understanding and improving her practice. she engages her students in the process – they too generate art and images and reflect on them. without her students there can be no self-study. the results are powerful and interesting (see childs, 2001, 2005). in a compelling video she scripted and shot with the help of her students, she revisits a moment when she was appalled by some of her actions as a teacher, actions that she views as betraying her own pedagogical beliefs which centre on empowering her students. this self-critique led her to consider how she might change some aspects of her teaching, and resulted in an exceptionally fine thesis and subsequent publications. all of the above is well and good and worthy of reporting. however, what is more central to this article is what happens the year after that self-study was completed. feeling transformed by her self-study, childs’ impulse was to apply the same processes she had used to critique her own practice to the kind of pedagogy she uses in her teaching. as part of her work as an english teacher (she prefers the term mentor), childs’ attempts to empower her own students by facilitating their self-studies – in short, she adapts and uses self-study processes as a pedagogical approach, one that could be described as critical in stance. the result is an array of creative self-studies whereby her students produce excellent, albeit sometimes disturbing, work that helped them situate themselves in their community, identify personal problems and obstacles to their academic success, and imagine ways in which they might meet at least some of the many challenges they face. their self-studies variously draw on poetry, creative writing, journal-keeping, drawing, and photography. not incidentally, in producing their studies, they also meet the curriculum objectives of the high school english curriculum. in some instances, the students share their studies, making them public. as researchers such as loughran and northfield (1998) and laboskey (2004) have noted, ‘the public face’ in and of itself is a critical component of engaging in self-study. by engaging a wider community in reflecting on issues such as drug abuse, violence, and poverty, the self-studies produced by these marginalised high school students can be viewed as a call to action; one that remains too often, by and large, ignored. case 2: the ripple effects of self-study: video as empowerment as part of her doctoral studies, a high school art teacher, leanne levy, learns about arts-based methods of self-study (weber & mitchell, 2004) and experiments with them, filming and reflecting critically on her own practice as part of her thesis work. in addition to doing drawings to document her research and teaching, levy videotapes herself in action during the interviews she conducts for her thesis and reflects on her teaching and research practice. what is most relevant to this discussion in terms of ripple effects is the relationship between the original self-study and levy’s subsequent teaching. it is not simply that levy modified and refined the way she teaches (that is to be an expected outcome of a self-study); it is what she asks her own students to do a year later as part of their assigned artwork (levy, 2007, 2008). perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 14 phd in hand, levy returns to the classroom at an all girls’ school, determined to make a difference. and make a difference she does. like childs did in the first case, levy notes the potential of self-study methodology for her students, and actually incorporates it into the curriculum by inviting her students to conduct their own selfstudies on topics that matter to them, using new media art techniques, especially video. she frames the process she advocates in terms of three central objectives: know who you are and where you have been; know where you are going and how to get there, or how to change course, and actualise your potential and inspire others to develop theirs. she sums it up with a motto own your story, share it for change. although hesitant at first (wondering if she really meant that they could choose issues of personal relevance), her high school students soon respond with enthusiasm, and set out to investigate themes, issues, or questions that relate directly to their own situations. the results are powerful, albeit disconcerting to some, especially to one of the school’s administrators: cutting, eating disorders, drugs, sexuality, violence, loneliness, bullying, abuse – these are the sort of socially ‘hot’ topics chosen. in the face of some administration opposition to the project, the girls remained adamant that their voices be heard, maintaining that studying their own lives (which, i argue, could be at least partially framed as their ‘practice’) was a significant learning activity that could be crucial to their future. they were of the opinion that critically examining their experience in the supportive environment of the art class was empowering, providing them with insight and inspiration to improve and take charge of their own lives. as so often happens with self-study, there was an element of social critique and reaching out to others. the students hoped that the ‘results’ of their self-studies might help other girls who struggle alone silently with similar issues. the end result was a collective documentary that was eventually distributed by the national film board of canada (levy, 2007) and is now in use in some high schools, accompanied by a teacher’s manual written by levy (for an article about the project, see also levy, 2008). and so, the ripple effect spreads further. levy’s own self-study begets a critical pedagogy that incorporates self-study methods training and assignments for her students. her students’ self-studies are, in turn, being used as a pedagogical instrument in other classrooms. this does not mean that teachers’ or students’ lives become automatically or magically improved, but it does often mean that people can better identify and articulate the problems and challenges they face and better understand their situations (including both positive and negative aspects). they may feel better equipped to face the future. case 3: the ripple effects of self-study: arts-based study inspires more arts-based studies this final case describes some of the unanticipated ripple effects that occurred when i ventured out of my more usual university teaching setting into a community institution, a home for pregnant teens and young moms in difficulty. as part of a national team of investigators conducting funded research on arts and media arts-based self-study: documenting the ripple effect sandra weber 15 education for marginalised youth in community settings, i designed and led project teen m.o.m. (mirrors on motherhood) to develop and assess pedagogical approaches that might engage and empower young people, helping them develop multi-media skills that could be used for their own educational purposes. in collaboration with my co-investigator/facilitator, leanne levy, whom i hired for the project because of the excellent work i had seen her do with girls in case 2, we incorporated arts-based self-study into the pedagogical design of a media education curriculum for the weekly workshops that we gave to the pregnant teens and teen moms who agreed to participate in our study. using drawing (including drawing on their bodies), collage, poetry, and photography, we encouraged these teen moms and mothers-to-be to articulate and reflect on their own situations and experiences. simultaneously, as the workshop facilitators, we investigated our own practice. in addition to many other interesting arts-based self-study exercises, the core activity that extended over several weeks was the creation of what mitchell, weber and pithouse (2009: 127) describe as “curated photo albums”. these were intended for a vernissage/exhibit that was scheduled to culminate the project. in order to make and curate their individual albums, the participants had the difficult task of choosing only nine of the hundreds of photographs they had taken with the cameras provided to them by the project. they wrote captions or accompanying text for each picture, often turning to each other for advice or feedback during group sessions. part of the challenge of this activity lies in recognising the potential significance of individual photographs as well as the links between them. choosing which photographs to include from among the many taken is no easy matter. it forces the photographers to consider and examine how the pictures represent their lived experience. presenting their work to each other during one of the final workshops, and then displaying these images taken from their lives at the exhibit in their community centre was a way of ‘going public’, that encouraged them to articulate and take ownership of their images and ideas. not only were they able to perceive how others react to their work, they were also compelled to step back and almost literally look at themselves. the combination of photos and words within the confines of a small album allows them to express or represent their views in a powerful way. there is an intimacy to their albums that draws the reader/viewer close. the young women who took our workshops used their albums to deliver messages to other teens and to the broader community about the challenges faced by pregnant teens. as we discuss in detail in journal articles (levy & weber, 2010, 2011) and in video and other reports (www.iirc.mcgill.ca/projects/teenmom/), the self-studies done by these young women were powerful and revealed a more varied portrait of teen pregnancy than that portrayed by mainstream media. of equal importance to the project were the media skills and critical perspectives the young women acquired during the course of the workshops. perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 16 even more germane to this present article are the unintended ripple effects we only noticed towards the end of the project when many of the educators who worked with the young women on a daily basis began clamouring for a professional development self-study workshop of their own. staff members commented that they witnessed unexpected and positive changes in some of the participants’ attitudes and behaviour outside the workshops and speculated that they too could benefit from doing self-studies similar to those the teen moms were doing. they seemed to envy our opportunity to study ourselves in action, and a few of them started hanging around our workspace when they were on breaks from their duties. some of them even ‘crashed’ the workshops to get materials and pointers on how to create their own self-study art. they also talked about incorporating elements of our curriculum into their own future programming for teens, noting the pleasure and meaningful learning they saw associated with doing the workshop activities. the public exhibition of the participants’ work produced further ripples. impressed by the messages and artwork on display, other community organisations voiced their support for the work being done at the community centre that housed project teen m.o.m. there were tears as some family and friends of the young women gained more insight and compassion for them. some of the studies were quite dark and troubling, reflecting the participants’ lived realities and reminding us of the barriers society and institutions unthinkingly erect that make it hard for pregnant teens to succeed and of the prevailing prejudices that underlie cultural depictions of youth. this seemed to depress some viewers and galvanise others. the staff and teen residents (some of whom had not participated in the project) were so taken with the self-studies on display along the corridors and walls of the public spaces of their building that they decided to keep them up for a very long time in order to generate discussion and make new teen mom arrivals feel better understood. the research project literally became part of the institution’s décor. collectively, the self-studies transformed the bare institutional walls into a welcoming and valued conversation. the exhibit that we planned to leave up for two days remained on display for over a year, engaging people in discussions of the challenges posed by teen pregnancy and the merits of such arts-based work. long after the funded project ended, the ripples continued their outward drift. the iterative ripple effects of arts-based self-study as teaching arts-based approaches, i suggest, help make self-study iterative. this type of research tends to be contagious and takes on meanings that go beyond its original parameters. a teacher educator’s self-study inspires him/her to show other teachers (his/her university students) how to conduct similar inquiries. those teachers, in turn, conduct their own studies and notice the potential of the arts-based methodologies for their own teaching, incorporating self-study into the curriculum for their school students who then take up and apply these methods to their own learning and to arts-based self-study: documenting the ripple effect sandra weber 17 their particular life situations. the artwork and digital footprints that often results from this work carry the potential effects even further. the cases outlined in this article are all based on documented experience. whitehead (2000) would call this ‘evidence’, indicating that potential self-study has not only to reach well beyond its initial intent, but also to be transformative: knowing more about ourselves as teachers and learners changes us, provokes growth, jolts us out of complacency – sometimes radically, in ways that can seem transformative. in the course of examining one’s practice systematically, a pivotal ‘aha’ moment can occur, a jolting of the kaleidoscope that shifts our view when we reach one of those precise or fuzzy points at which we are irrevocably changed” (denzin & lincoln, 1994: 578). the very process of self-study itself changes its practitioners and their situations (pithouse et al., 2009: 48). by some definitions, teaching is, at heart, a kind of research (tidwell & fitzgerald, 2004). the argument made, in this instance, is that the inquiry process of artsbased self-study research is also a kind of teaching. as the cases in this article show, the methods used in arts-based self-study research can also support a variety of curricula. although critical theorists such as bell hooks (1994), paulo freire (1985), and joe kincheloe (2004) did not write under the umbrella of self-study, the transformative and emancipatory practice they envision describes quite aptly what sometimes happens in self-study, especially when participants on the outskirts of a self-study take up and use the methods they see in action and adapt them to their own emancipatory purposes. self-knowledge is power; sharing self-knowledge is empowering. when self-study reveals the connections between personal experience and social action and inspires others to examine theirs critically, it becomes a form of critical pedagogy. in conclusion, the process of researching our own practice is too compelling and has too much potential to sink without a ripple. what begins as research becomes an extended series of teaching experiences that lead to learning and growth for many, linking personal inquiries to a broader and evolving picture of community and throwing into relief issues that demand attention and action, as the ripples expand outward. the incidental learning, peripheral vision (bateson, 1994), and unintended consequences of such research may constitute some of the most important yet overlooked knowledge we generate. we cannot know for certain how advantageous or dangerous or benign the ripple effects may be. although some students may succeed in overcoming obstacles that have previously stumped them, others may find it difficult to improve their situations or be subjected to increased violence as a result of attempting to stand up for themselves. it is not possible to observe or anticipate all the distant ripples, but it is important to try at least to imagine them. once you toss the pebble, you cannot avoid the ripples. perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 18 endnote this article is based partially on a paper written by sandra weber, claudia mitchell and kathleen pithouse for presentation to the american educational research association (aera), san diego, 2009. references bateson mc 1994. peripheral visions: learning along the way. new york: harper collins publishers. becker hs 1974. photography and sociology. studies in the anthropology of visual communication, 1(1): 3-26. berger j 1972. ways of seeing. 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ys lincoln (eds), collecting and interpreting qualitative research. thousand oaks, ca: sage, 404-411. hooks b 1994. teaching to transgress: education as the practice of freedom. new york: routledge. hooks b 1995. art on my mind: visual politics. new york: new press.hubbard j 1994. shooting back from the reservation. new york: new press. kincheloe jl 2004. critical pedagogy primer. new york: peter lang. levy l 2007a. girls’ meaning making practices and critical art education. journal of cultural research in art education, 25: 129-141. levy l (ed) 2007b. this is my body: a film by high school girls. montreal, canada: national film board of canada. levy l 2008. the skinny on this is my body: filmmaking as empowerment intervention and activism. visual culture and gender, 3: 7-24. levy l & weber s 2010. teen moms using digital photography to share their views. girlhood studies: an interdisciplinary journal, 3(2): 129-139. levy l & weber s 2011. community-based media production as critical 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weber sj 2008. image-based research in the social sciences: issues and perspectives. in a cole & gj knowles (eds), handbook of the arts in qualitative research: perspectives, methodologies, examples and issues. london: sage, 41-54. weber sj & mitchell ca 2004. using visual and artistic modes of representation for self-study. in jj loughran, ml hamilton, vk laboskey & t russell (eds), international handbook of self-study of teaching and teacher education practices. dordrecht, the netherlands: kluwer academic publishers, 979-1037. whitehead j 2000. how do i improve my practice? creating and legitimating an epistemology of practice. reflective practice, 1(1): 91-104. zeichner km & noffke se 2001. practitioner research. in v richardson (ed), handbook of research on teaching. washington, dc: american educational research association, 298-332. 197 research article 2021 39(3): 197-213 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) determining the needs of introductory statistics university students: a qualitative survey study abstract since we are entering the fourth industrial revolution, it becomes increasingly important that students, irrespective of their field of study, are data literate. however, many students view their mandatory statistics modules with contempt. this qualitative study analysed students’ comments to determine what their needs are to improve these modules to increase the students’ enjoyment and improve their performance in statistics. monte carlo simulations were used to scientifically justify that data saturation was attained by the survey study. this is an objective reproducible method to determine if a sample size is large enough to ensure that important themes are not missed. it is clear from the students’ responses that they do not enjoy being taught in the same way students were taught statistics years ago. statistics education needs to change to keep up with changing times and the needs of the new generation. the comments of the students touched on similar topics that are being addressed internationally regarding the instruction and assessment of statistics students; therefore, it will be sensible to implement these recommendations in future. keywords: statistics education research; enjoyment; performance; qualitative survey; data saturation; monte carlo simulations. 1. introduction this paper describes an exploratory qualitative study in which students studying at a south african university were asked to complete a survey that contained openended questions. the purpose was to determine what students’ experiences were of their introductory statistics modules and what suggestions they had to improve these modules to make them more enjoyable, as well as to improve performance in these courses. their responses were compared to the recommendations of the guidelines for assessment and instruction in statistics education (gaise) college report (wood et al., 2018). educational institutions and lecturers can use the resulting information to improve statistics modules so that students’ attitudes towards statistics may become more enthusiastic, and their ability to use statistics in everyday life, as well as in their careers, may be improved. author: ms wilma coetzee1 affiliation: 1north-west university, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i3.15 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(3): 197-213 published: 16 september 2021 received: 20 november 2020 accepted: 10 march 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7418-4581 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 1982021 39(3): 198-213 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) the gaise report was compiled in the usa and provides useful guidelines to enhance the teaching of statistics. some of the guidelines it presented include the following: statistical thinking, conceptual understanding and the statistical analysis process should be taught rather than tools and recipes provided in isolation; students have to be exposed to real data that have a context and a purpose; active learning should be fostered; technology should be used so that the focus is on analysing the data and interpreting the results rather than performing computational mechanics; assessments should be used to enhance learning – lecturers should ensure that adequate formative assessments are completed (wood et al., 2018). these guidelines would probably be useful for other countries such as south africa. however, before simply implementing these recommendations, it is wise to tap into the perspectives and views of the students concerned, lest we fall into the trap of thinking that we as educators know better than them what and how they need to learn (cook-sather, 2002). it is important to listen to the students so that changes that are made to statistical instruction in future are more likely to meet the needs of young people (warren & marciano, 2018). to ensure that the student sample used was adequate to identify all the important perceptions of the students regarding the two questions (enjoyment and performance), monte carlo simulations were applied to determine if data saturation was reached. this paper explores the voice of south african university students of statistics using qualitative techniques to ascertain their needs and ideas on a statistics course. data saturation is determined using a technique that is not well known and has not yet been implemented in the field of statistics education. recommendations are made on how introductory statistics education at tertiary level can be improved to address the needs of the students and thereby better prepare them for their careers. 1.1 research approach since the objective of this survey was to explore what would make students enjoy statistics more, and what would make them perform better, an interpretive research philosophy was adopted. the primary goal of interpretive qualitative research is to explore the participants’ experiences and to understand and interpret these experiences (tavakol & sandars, 2014). according to hanson, balmer and giardino (2011), suitable topics for this research paradigm include programme evaluation, needs assessment, opinions, attitudes and challenges. theories should not be developed from the researcher’s hypotheses but rather from participant perceptions (kennedy & lingard, 2006). as stated by tavakol and sandars (2014), researchers should refrain from making their own assumptions and hypotheses, in order to ensure objectivity. the preferred method advocated to collect data for qualitative research is through interviews, focus groups and/or audio-visual data, whereas qualitative surveys are rarely mentioned in textbooks on research methodology (jansen, 2010). such surveys with openended questions are inexpensive means to discover the essentials of a phenomenon (jansen, 2010). in open quality surveys, appropriate topics are identified through the analysis of raw data that are obtained from open-ended questions. in most qualitative research projects, the focus is on the iteration of data collection and analysis, which forms the basis of grounded theory (ramani & mann, 2016). however, jansen (2010) argues that many qualitative projects are built on a ”single one-shot, one-method sample” that consists of only one cycle of data collection and analysis. while this is not necessarily the best way of conducting qualitative research, one should keep in mind what the primary purpose of a qualitative study is. usually, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 1992021 39(3): 199-213 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 coetzee determining the needs of introductory statistics university students it is to explore the participants’ views as they have expressed them in their own words. it is important that the diversity of the phenomenon studied is represented by the sample. in this study, it was decided to use a qualitative survey design because it is a relatively fast and easy way to explore the views of many students. another benefit is that respondents can freely express their views given the anonymous nature of a survey. 1.2 listening to the voice of the students in order to determine what the young people’s opinions and recommendations are regarding the teaching of statistics, they were asked to respond to two open-ended statements, namely, “i would enjoy statistics more if…” and “i would perform better in statistics if…” 1.2.1 enjoyment enjoyment can be defined as “a pleasant activating emotion” (putwain et al., 2018). in contrast, boredom is having trouble remaining alert and continuing work (schukajlow & rakoczy, 2016). enjoyment of a course has a positive effect on a student’s performance (mega, ronconi & de beni, 2014; schukajlow & rakoczy, 2016). rowe, fitness and wood (2015) found that positive emotions in learning are associated with enhanced cognitive functioning, increased motivation as well as amplified self-efficacy, coping and resilience. it is thus important that students enjoy courses to enable them to perform well. 1.2.2 performance in addition to enjoyment, many other factors influence students’ performance. numerous quantitative studies have been conducted to ascertain the indicators of students who are likely to fail. factors that have a positive effect on their performance in statistics include the following: mathematical ability (jaafar et al., 2012), motivation (morris & fritz, 2015; dunn et al., 2012), attitude towards statistics (ratanaolarn, 2016) and an engaging classroom environment (nguyen, charity & robson, 2016). 1.3 data saturation large samples are not needed in qualitative research since each participant may generate several concepts and perspectives (starks & trinidad, 2007). however, it is important that a qualitative researcher does not assume that the sample size used is adequate, but evaluates the sample size to determine if data saturation has been reached (tran et al., 2016). according to guest, bunce and johnson (2006), data saturation is reached when additional responses acquired from participants produce little or no new information. surveys using openended questions require larger sample sizes than interview or focus group studies, because the data collection and analysis is sequential rather than iterative (tran et al., 2016). views differ on the identification of data saturation and when sufficient data have been gathered. guest et al. (2006) assert that specific tools are required to determine if the sample size is sufficient for analysis. 1.4 monte carlo simulations to verify data saturation a technique that has been proposed to determine if the sample size of a qualitative survey is adequate, is to use the data so obtained and subject it to monte carlo simulations (tran et al., 2016). the resampling of the data provides a technique to assess objectively the cumulative number of themes identified as a function of the sample size. it was asserted that “data saturation was reached in simulations where at least 90% of all themes coded in the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 2002021 39(3): 200-213 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) original study had been identified” (tran et al., 2016: 90). frequent and infrequent themes were identified. a frequent theme was defined as one that had been mentioned by more than 2.5% of the participants. the probability of identifying a new theme as a function of the sample size, as well as the probability of missing an important (frequent) theme, were reported. this method is not only objective, but also easily reproducible, which makes this transparent technique very appealing. it was therefore employed in the study reported here. since it is not a well-known method and has never been used in statistical educational research before, it was decided to provide the reader with a little more background explaining the method. 2. methods 2.1 participants the target population of this study was undergraduate male and female students enrolled for an introductory statistics module at a south african university. the survey was distributed online and 284 students voluntarily completed it. the sample included 81% black students, 11% white, 6% mixed race and 2% indian students. this was a true reflection of the racial composition at the university where the study was undertaken. most of the respondents (74%) were females, which corresponded to the gender distribution of the students enrolled for introductory statistics modules. 2.2 data gathering it was decided to use an online questionnaire because students are often afraid to speak out, especially against their lecturers, for fear of being victimised. such a study is completely anonymous and participants can write down anything about the module/lecturer/study material, without fear of being labelled or victimised afterwards. 2.3 data analysis the open-ended questions were analysed using atlas ti©. codes were assigned to data fragments after which the codes were synthesised. thematic analysis was used to explore the data to identify, analyse and report patterns within the data (clarke & braun, 2018). themes for each question were identified, which were then divided into two groups: those that occurred frequently, i.e. more than 2.5% of the participants mentioned them, as defined by tran et al. (2016), and those that reported occasionally, i.e. by less than 2.5% of the participants. to determine if data saturation was reached with the number of participants using the openended questionnaire design, the monte carlo simulation method proposed by tran et al. (2016) was followed. the resampling of the data provided the opportunity to assess the cumulative number of themes identified as a function of the number of participants in the study population. in accordance with tran et al. (2016), data saturation was defined as having been reached when 90% or more of all the themes coded in the original data set had been identified. simulations were repeated 10 000 times. upward coding was then used on the themes that were reported frequently. the aim of this was to move towards an advanced level of abstraction, as explained by jansen (2010). the ideas that emerged after analysing the voice of the students qualitatively were then compared to the recommendations of the gaise report to determine if students studying in south africa raised similar issues, or if they had ideas that differed substantially. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 2012021 39(3): 201-213 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 coetzee determining the needs of introductory statistics university students 3. results 3.1 enjoyment of the 284 respondents, only 144 replied to the statement: “i will enjoy statistics more if…” the researcher identified 27 different themes of which 15 occurred frequently (more than 2.5% of the participants mentioned them [tran et al., 2016]), and 12 arose occasionally (they were reported by less than 2.5% of the participants). overall, 84% of the respondents used frequent themes. the simulation was run 10 000 times. the percentage of frequent themes (indicating what would enable a student to enjoy statistics more) that was covered, is indicated in figure 1, according to the sample size that was taken. at a sample size of 100, 99% of the frequent themes were reported and 93% of all the themes. this indicates that the 144 respondents who answered the question are more than adequate to include all the frequent themes. it is highly unlikely that a frequent theme was missed. figure 1: percentage of enjoyment themes covered. the probability of a theme being excluded from a data set, according to sample size, is indicated in figure 2. at a sample size of 20, 38% of the frequent themes were excluded, and 52% of all the themes. as the sample size increased, these probabilities dropped. when considering samples of size 100, only 0.2% of the frequent themes was excluded and 6.5% of all the themes. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 2022021 39(3): 202-213 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) figure 2: probability of an enjoyment theme being excluded from the data set when considering the percentage of themes covered as well as the probability of a theme being excluded from the data set, it can be seen from figure 1 and figure 2 that a sample size of 160 would have been sufficient. however, we used a much bigger sample of 284 respondents, therefore we can be confident that our sample was sufficient to achieve data saturation. the most common response (13% of the returns) was that students wanted an active learning experience. they indicated that they desired fun activities, more interaction with the lecturer and with fellow students, more computer-based problems and more challenges. they required more practical sessions where they get an opportunity to practise in class. a few of the responses received are provided below. …if there were more fun activities included in the work. …it included some fun or laughs in between lectures. …more examples are produced with the content as my understanding is built on practicals, doing it. …it was more practical and it applied to daily activities the students indicated that they would enjoy statistics more if they understood it better. overall, 7.9% of the respondents specified that if statistics were easier to understand and less confusing, they would enjoy it more, whereas 7.2% of the students indicated that they would enjoy statistics more if the content of the course was changed. not all the students wanted it to be changed in the same way, though. some would have liked more calculations and less theory. others preferred more theory. a few wanted fewer formulae. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 2032021 39(3): 203-213 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 coetzee determining the needs of introductory statistics university students assessment was another frequent theme. some preferred more multiple-choice questions, others would have liked an open-book test. one undergraduate proposed that the exam should count less than the tests. students wanted to understand the relevance of statistics to their future career. they desired to know how it is related to what they might do one day in the workplace. some of the responses are provided below. …if we did practicals of how statistics is used in the workplace pertaining to the course i’m studying. …if it was related to what i will be doing in future. …if it had real-life problems. …if the lecturer could try to be a bit slow while teaching us because some of us think she’s too fast. …it is related to new developments in the real world. the statistics lecturer was another recurrent theme. they wanted a lecturer who is competent and can explain clearly, one that can link new work to previous knowledge and a person who can speak the language of tuition well. …if i had a good lecturer who was patient enough to help me understand, and if the lecturers changed their teaching ways. in addition to this, respondents indicated that assistants would make statistics more enjoyable. table 1 indicates all the frequent themes that were mentioned for greater enjoyment. table 1: frequent enjoyment themes identified during 10 000 simulations frequent theme for enjoyment frequency per cent cumulative per cent active learning 20 13.2 13.2 understand better 12 7.9 92.1 content 11 7.2 42.8 visual learning 11 7.2 99.3 assessment 9 5.9 23.0 relevance to degree/job 9 5.9 75.0 lecturer–explain 8 5.3 51.3 maths flare 8 5.3 63.2 assistance 7 4.6 27.6 already enjoy 6 4.0 17.1 lecturer–slower 5 3.3 54.6 less complicated 5 3.3 57.9 attend classes 4 2.6 30.3 memos 4 2.6 65.8 time management 4 2.6 84.2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 2042021 39(3): 204-213 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) 3.2 performance of the 284 respondents only 144 gave responses to the statement: “i will perform better in statistics if…” we identified 25 different themes of which 12 occurred frequently, and 13 arose occasionally. of the respondents, 84% used frequent themes. the simulation was run 10 000 times. since 49% of the data were missing values, it was decided to include the missing values in the population from which the samples were drawn in the simulation, to see when saturation was reached in such a sparse data set. the percentage of themes (indicating what would enable a student to perform better in statistics) that was covered, is indicated in figure 3, according to the sample size. at a sample size of 20, only 47% of the frequent themes were produced and 33% of all the themes. increasing the sample size to 160, 99% of the frequent themes were elicited and 86% of all the themes. figure 3: percentage of the performance themes covered. the probability of a theme being excluded from a data set, according to sample size, is indicated in figure 4. at a sample size of 20, 52% of the frequent themes were excluded and 67% of all the themes. as the sample size increased, these probabilities dropped. at a sample size of 160, only 1% of the frequent themes was excluded and 14% of all the themes. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 2052021 39(3): 205-213 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 coetzee determining the needs of introductory statistics university students figure 4: probability of a performance theme being excluded from the data set. bearing in mind the percentage of themes covered, together with the probability of a theme being excluded from the data set, it can be appreciated from figures 3 and 4 that a sample size of 250 would have been sufficient. our sample of 284 respondents is satisfactorily greater than 250, therefore data saturation can be assumed to have been reached. the greatest proportion of students (17.5%) indicated that they would perform better in statistics if they studied more. they realised that they should do their homework, prepare before class, ask questions and put in much more time. another common theme was time management. the students declared that they should manage their time better, spend more time studying and practising and studying in advance. they should allow themselves more time to study statistics in general. active learning was another popular topic for a better performance. the students indicated that they would perform better if they had more practical computer work, if there were more class activities and if games were used to teach statistics. … if it is more practical (on computers etc.) to show us how we will use it one day. it will make it easier for us. practising statistics was mentioned several times. the students said that they needed more practice opportunities and had to spend more time practising. many students believed that they would have performed better if they had a flair for mathematics. they said things like: “if i were a genius”, “if i was good at maths”, “if i enjoyed working with numbers”, and “if i didn’t need a mathematical background”. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 2062021 39(3): 206-213 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) assessment was once again a frequent theme. students would like more small tests often, so that they can study a small section of the work, write and receive constructive feedback. some students indicated that their achievement would improve if the lecturer explained complicated subject matter better, broke down study units into manageable parts, changed teaching methods and did not become emotional if students did not understand the work. table 2 indicates the frequent themes mentioned for better performance. table 2: frequent performance themes identified during 10 000 simulations. frequent theme for better performance frequency per cent cumulative per cent study more 25 17.5 17.5 time management 22 15.4 32.9 active learning 12 8.4 41.3 practice more 11 7.7 48.9 maths flare 10 7.0 55.9 assessment 9 6.3 62.2 lecturer 9 6.3 68.5 assistance 5 3.5 72.0 attitude 5 3.5 75.5 content 4 2.8 78.3 train to answer 4 2.8 81.1 understand better 4 2.8 83.9 4. discussion and recommendations the monte carlo simulations performed on the results indicated that data saturation was satisfactorily obtained. this study therefore serves as an example of how to use the method in qualitative survey research that records the voice of students and in particular, yielded insight into the students’ perceptions of what they would enjoy in the statistics class and what they think would improve their performance. many of the themes that emerged can be linked to recommendations made in the gaise report. most of the frequent themes can be grouped under faculty, student or lecturer (see figure 5). the topics that need to be addressed by faculty include relevance to degree/job, subject content, focus of the content, the amount of work, the method of assessment and assistance offered to students. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 2072021 39(3): 207-213 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 coetzee determining the needs of introductory statistics university students figure 5: a graphical representation of the themes, grouped in terms of the three principal influences. the student group indicated that they need to appreciate the relevance of statistics to their future career. many felt they did not understand why they should spend time and energy on something that they did not think would ever be used. one way to address this is to ensure that the examples employed are directly linked to the degree course. a psychology student should have examples and exercises related to the field of psychology, whereas a business student should rather have examples directed at how statistics can assist a business owner to run his company more profitably. this can be addressed by teaching the investigative process of problem-solving and decision-making, exposing the students to real data with a context and purpose and analysing data that relate to their field of study, as advocated in the gaise college report (wood et al., 2018). many of the themes emerging from the student voice are addressed by the gaise report. figure 6 shows which themes are addressed and which themes are not directly addressed, although some of them may be indirectly appealed to. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 2082021 39(3): 208-213 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) figure 6: student voice: topics addressed by the gaise report, and those not addressed. it was also clear that there is a difference in the focus of the content among students. the one-size-fits-all approach of current introductory modules does not consider the different needs of students from a wide variety of fields. faculty needs to determine what the particular needs of a specific group of students are and develop a tailor-made module. the amount of work that should be covered was another popular theme that emerged. for some fields, less may be better. for students who are not comfortable with numbers and calculations, it may be sensible to include less study material in a module, and to ensure that the focus with regard to practical versus theoretical will meet the desired needs. giddens and brady (2007) refer to “content saturation”, which is characterised by curricula being overloaded with content. this results in covering a wide range of topics but leads to a lack of deep understanding. critical thinking is also not being developed. burch et al. (2015) suggest the use of a conception-based curriculum to overcome these problems. the gaise report endorses that if the focus were more on teaching statistical thinking and conceptual understanding by concentrating more on the process of solving problems and making decisions, rather than emphasising monotonous calculations, a better understanding could be achieved (wood et al., 2018). students indicated that the method of assessment should be addressed. a practical project may be better. formative assessments where smaller pieces of work are covered, followed by constructive feedback, are requested. this issue was also addressed in the gaise report, which noted that assessments should not only be used to evaluate student learning, but also to improve it (wood et al., 2018). it is essential to transform the way students solve problems to move away from the mechanical use of formulae. they should get to the point where they want to understand the concepts, not only to be able to repeat exercise solutions, but to solve real problems. this can be accomplished by using project-based instruction (magalhães & magalhães, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 2092021 39(3): 209-213 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 coetzee determining the needs of introductory statistics university students in some fields, it is important that students understand the formulae and are able to do the calculations. burch et al. (2015) advocate the conception-focused curriculum to introduce statistics students to the “real world”. students who were exposed to this curriculum indicated that they experienced deeper learning than with a traditional curriculum. faculty also needs to provide the means by which assistants can be made available to students should they require it, as proposed by crowe, ceresola and silva (2014), who recommend the use of undergraduate teaching assistants, because students’ performances improve significantly when they are helped by peers. students realised that they themselves are responsible for their enjoyment of, and performance in, the subject. they indicated that they would enjoy it more if they managed their time better. they acknowledged that they needed to put in much more work. extensive research has indicated the positive correlation between time management and performance (george et al., 2008; häfner, oberst & stock, 2014; häfner, stock & oberst, 2015; meeuwisse, born & severiens, 2013). since 81% of our survey sample were africans, whose african cultures tend to let issues emerging from the immediate future dictate their time use, african students may well not place a high value on long-term planning (mpofu et al., 1996). this should be kept in mind if faculty decides to develop a programme to train undergraduates in time management. on the other hand, some participants thought that since they do not have a flair for mathematics, they were not able to enjoy statistics. this perception may be difficult to change. if the focus of the module moves from calculations to conceptual understanding and interpreting, students may realise that they can succeed in applying statistics even with a somewhat compromised mathematical foundation. in addition, the students indicated that they would probably perform better if they had a more positive attitude towards statistics, which reflected research on the correlation between attitude towards and performance in statistics (nguyen et al., 2016; ratanaolarn, 2016). a negative attitude may change if the module’s content is more applicable to the student’s field of study and if the lecturer presents it in a manner that makes it more enjoyable and effective. respondents indicated that their classroom experience had a great effect on their enjoyment of statistics and that they saw the lecturer as the person ablest to improve this. students do not enjoy a passive classroom where they simply receive the content. they enjoy it more when they are actively involved. rowe et al. (2015) suggested that, by providing students with challenging assignments and opportunities to relate their learning to real life, their emotions will become more positive towards their studies. however, it is not an easy task to implement active learning successfully (strayer et al., 2019). a method that can be used to ensure that students are actively involved, is to use a flipped classroom where the class use online slides and/or videos to learn the concepts and then class time is utilised for interactive group learning. swart and wuensch (2016) used this approach in a quantitative business class and found that it increased student satisfaction and retention while keeping academic standards high. exploring statistical concepts and analysing data using technology is another way to involve students. students are no longer content with boring presentations (slides) with many formulae and calculations. they want a visual experience. they want to see how different concepts are linked to one another. research conducted by chei-chang (2009) and chiou et al. (2017) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 2102021 39(3): 210-213 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) indicate that concept mapping can be used effectively in the statistics classroom. constructon-scaffold concept mapping whereby students are provided with a basic concept map structure, which they have to complete, may be a good way to get students actively involved in a class and guide them to find the links between different concepts for themselves, and presenting it in a visually attractive manner. students would also like colourful study guides and supplemental videos to help them understand better. here a lecturer may provide a platform where students themselves can upload links to videos they find helpful. our students indicated that a statistics lecturer should be someone who has the ability to explain difficult concepts in an easy way. the lecturer should be in touch with the students to know when to slow down, repeat or explain from another angle. an ideal lecturer is one who has high emotional stability and conscientiousness, and likes to be among people (kim & maccann, 2016). the themes that emerged from the students’ responses indicate that it will be worthwhile for south african universities to implement the recommendations of the gaise college report, since the voice of the students echoed the needs addressed in this document. while the report does not directly address all the issues raised by the students, it is possible that it may have an indirect influence; for example, if students understand the relevance of statistics by applying technology and the investigative process to real data to find solutions that relate to their field of study, their attitude towards statistics may improve and they may be more motivated to put more time and effort into their statistical studies. 5. future research the research reported here included students from one university only. to generalise the findings, similar research should be conducted at other institutions. the qualitative study should be complemented by a quantitative one to determine which particular factors are associated with greater enjoyment of, and better performance in, statistics. more qualitative survey research studies should employ the monte carlo simulation method to determine if data saturation has been reached. 6. conclusion the use of monte carlo simulations was found to be useful to determine if data saturation had been reached in this qualitative survey study. one of the benefits of this method is that studies could be objectively compared if this approach was used. this study produced valuable insight into students’ experiences of their introductory statistics modules. topics that need to be addressed, as identified by students studying at a south african university, are similar to recommendations of the us-based gaise college report (wood et al., 2018). students did not want to learn for the sake of learning, they desired to know that they will be able to apply their knowledge in their field of work one day. it is therefore imperative that faculties should think critically about the way they structure their introductory statistics modules. the content, its focus as well as the amount of work to be covered should be carefully planned to be relevant to the field in which the student is likely to work one day and prepare them to be comfortable in a data-rich world. assessment methods should be used http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 2112021 39(3): 211-213 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.15 coetzee determining the needs of introductory statistics university students that encourage critical thinking and understanding rather than mechanical reproduction of calculations. creating platforms for peer assistance would be appreciated by students. undergraduates should be guided to manage their time better to enable them to study and practise more. contact sessions must be fun with lots of opportunities for active learning so that students will want to attend class. by making the content more appropriate and the learning experience more worthwhile, students’ attitudes towards statistics may improve. moreover, they need statistics lecturers who are able to explain difficult concepts in an understandable way and are able to adapt their teaching style and speed of delivery to the specific group they are lecturing to. when these suggestions are implemented, the students’ enjoyment as well as their performance in statistics modules should both increase. this should better prepare the graduates for the challenging world of the fourth industrial revolution. 7. acknowledgements i thank north-west university for allowing me to conduct this study. 8. declaration no potential conflict of interest was reported by the author. references burch, g.f., burch, j.j., heller, n.a. & batchelor, j.h. 2015. an empirical investigation of the conception focused 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increased workplace challenges in south africa. through a process of intervention research, this study aimed to develop and evaluate the efficacy of a work-based support programme for teachers. maslow’s hierarchy of needs was adopted as the theoretical framework informing both programme design and evaluation. teachers (n = 10) were recruited through simple random sampling in the north west province, south africa. qualitative data were collected through focus group discussions before and after exposure to the programme. data were thematically analysed. pre-exposure findings supported existing literature that states that teachers face numerous malleable workplace challenges such as learner indiscipline, parental disengagement, overcrowded classrooms, considerable administrative work and burnout. postexposure findings indicated that the programme mitigated teachers’ perceived weaknesses and seems to have enabled them to cope with and manage their workplace challenges. it is concluded that the programme facilitated a process to enable participants to navigate towards self-actualisation and reaching their full potential in the work environment. recommendations are offered for the further implementation of the programme and in addressing workbased challenges experienced by south african teachers. keywords: efficacy testing; intervention research; qualitative research; teachers; workplace challenges; north west province. 1. introduction education is a social phenomenon and an important institution with unique processes and characteristics in every society. it is through the process of education that the course of imparting knowledge, skills and values continues from one generation to the next. the personnel administrative measures (pam) of the department of basic education (henceforth referred to as dbe) (2016) recognises teachers as employees of the state (excluding governing body appointed teachers). the task of the teacher as an educator, is not just to teach content-based conceptual knowledge, but also to understand the (workbased) challenges and be well-equipped to cope with author: dr kabelo moloantoa1 prof stephan geyer1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i2.15 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(2): 208-224 published: 11 june 2021 received: 22 september 2020 accepted: 25 november 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3765-3051 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 moloantoa & geyer efficacy testing of a work-based support programme for teachers 2092021 39(2): 209-224 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 such challenges (corzo & contreras, 2011). abonyi (2014) commented that the system that produces teachers is just pushing them into the labour market without preparing them for emerging workplace challenges. in south africa, teachers have to cope with demands, such as learners from neighbouring countries, an excessive workload, the defacement of school properties, learner indiscipline, lack of parental involvement, lack of resources and an increase in the number of learners per classroom (freeks, 2016; vandeyar, 2010). overcrowded classrooms and inadequate teaching resources characterise the realities that south african teachers have to face daily (west & meier, 2020). isingoma (2014) identified that overcrowding occurs despite the dbe’s highest approved learner-teacher ratio for south african primary schools being 40:1 (motshekga, 2012). a study by dehaloo (2011) established that south african teachers were dissatisfied because of excessive administration and assessment associated with overcrowded classrooms. in addition, khumalo and mji (2014) found that the vast majority of south african schools, especially those in township areas where overcrowding is a concern, lack resources such as teaching materials. in some instances, teachers resort to using their own funds to ensure that additional teaching materials are made available (sedibe, 2011). what makes resources even scarcer is the fact that school properties, particularly in the township areas, regularly fall prey to vandalism which is mostly committed by the school learners (ncontsa & shumba, 2013). teachers appear justified in fearing for their safety, with the consequence that the learning process is stymied by the need to deal with this unruly behaviour. teachers in south african schools not only battle with the challenge of vandalism but also with other problems related to learner discipline as highlighted next. the most prevalent forms of learner indiscipline include talking without permission, teasing other learners, truancy, non-completion of given tasks, verbal attacks on other learners and teachers and the use of drugs (pijoos, 2018). in some instances, teachers carry weapons to school to protect themselves against learners (freeks, 2016). serame et al. (2013) indicate that the level of discipline in some schools in south africa is far from satisfactory and that problems with discipline in the north west province (henceforth referred to as nwp) are more serious than the international norm dictates. manamela (2015) has linked the lack of discipline among learners in public schools to lack of parental involvement. the current review of available literature has yielded a considerable amount of information regarding parent disengagement at farm, rural and urban schools. maluleke (2009) specifically mentions that there is a lack of parental involvement at preprimary, primary and secondary schools in the vhembe district, limpopo province. similar findings were made by matshe (2014) in the ngaka modiri molema district in the nwp. previous studies reiterate that teachers are not adequately prepared to manage the aforementioned challenges (lumadi, 2008). badugela (2012) specifically posits that south african teachers are confronted with such enormous educational burdens that their skills and knowledge no longer match the new demands. jackson and rothmann (2005) observed that teachers in public schools in south africa experience high levels of exhaustion as a result of workplace challenges. from the aforementioned, it is evident that teachers in the north west department of education and sports development (henceforth referred to as the nwpdoe) need to cope with http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 2102021 39(2): 210-224 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 a plethora of work-based challenges necessitating the development and efficacy testing of a support programme for them. however, a holistic work-based programme could not be identified (moloantoa, 2019). the concept “holistic programme” outlines all pragmatic procedures relating to accessibility, retailing and intervention steps as well as making challenge-specific intervention materials available. the following three are examples of programmes that did not fulfil the requirements for a holistic programme based on their narrow scope. the resilient educators support programme developed by theron et al. (2008) aim to enable teachers to navigate towards resilience in an hiv and aids altered teaching milieu. the model for teacher support, developed by eloff et al. (2001), was developed to enable teachers to cope with stress in inclusive education. the job demand resources model of montgomery, mostert and jackson (2005) address stress and burnout amongst teachers. hence, a work-based support (wbs) programme for teachers in the nwp was developed through the implementation of the first three steps of the intervention research (ir) process proposed by fraser and galinsky (2010). the adopted steps are as follows: (1) specifying the problem and programme theories; (2) designing programme materials and (3) refining and confirming programme components in efficacy tests. these steps allowed the authors to determine the workplace challenges confronting teachers across the nwpdoe. the programme was exclusively tested (during step 3) in the nwp, as it enabled the authors to determine the efficacy of the programme in a province with urban and rural school communities within the south african context. reporting on the details of all three steps of the ir process concerning qualitative and quantitative data is beyond the scope of this paper. during step 1 of ir, the qualitative phase adopted the collective case study to solicit in-depth views from the key informants (n = 16, four school principals from each of the four districts in the nwp as key informants) regarding teachers’ workplace challenges. this phase was complemented by a survey design, as a quantitative research design, to obtain information from the teachers (n=281) in the nwpdoe recruited from four districts through a process of stratified random sampling in order to further understand the challenges confronting them. in step 2, programme materials were developed leading to the design and development of the programme manual. however, this article specifically focuses on the qualitative data collected during step 3 – the efficacy tests of the wbs programme. hence, the aim of this article is to report on teachers’ experience of the efficacy of this wbs programme in addressing their coping needs in the nwpdoe, more specifically, the study endeavoured to answer the following overarching research question: how effective is the wbs programme in addressing teachers’ coping needs in the nwpdoe? firstly, an overview of the wbs programme is offered, followed by the theoretical framework underpinning the study. thereafter, the research methods as well as the findings and discussion will follow. the article ends with a comparison of the preand post-exposure data, conclusion and recommendations. 2. work-based support programme this wbs programme was designed after an extensive needs assessment (step 1 of ir) (fraser et al., 2009) across the nwp. the findings of the needs assessment were synthesised into five sets of malleable indicators to be addressed through a wbs programme. malleable indicators involve those challenges that can be modified when exposed to an intervention, such as the wbs programme (fraser et al., 2009). the malleable indicators were as follows: learner-related challenges (e.g. learner indiscipline, immigrant learners), schoolrelated challenges (e.g. overcrowded classrooms, teacher workload), management-related http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 moloantoa & geyer efficacy testing of a work-based support programme for teachers 2112021 39(2): 211-224 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 challenges (e.g. poor leadership from principals and departmental heads), family-related challenges (e.g. lack of parental involvement) and community-related challenges (e.g. crime and drugs in communities) (moloantoa, 2019). the process ultimately determined the contents of the programme (in the format of a manual) that are synoptically outlined in table 1. table 1: a synoptic overview of wbs programme for teachers in the nwp programme sessions description objectives core practice activities session a face-to-face session duration: 45 minutes assist teachers to establish a mental road map that should answer the following two questions: why is it important to work through this manual? how will this manual advance new knowledge or new ways of managing my workplace challenges? teachers are provided with stepby-step instructions on how to use the manual. teachers are asked to discuss their workplace challenges and to provide the facilitator with their expectations concerning the programme manual. teachers are introduced to the process of engaging in different self-help strategies. in the end, teachers are asked to review and reflect on what they have learnt during the briefing session. session b self-help sessions duration: 8-12 weeks the manual and materials aim to: enable teachers to accomplish greater effectiveness in their work-life balance; equip teachers with self-help/ self-actualisation skills to cope and/or manage the specific workplace challenges effectively; and provide additional information regarding the nature and possibilities of professional help available for those whose problems do not yield to self-help. the challenges to be addressed through the wbs programme for teachers include the following: managing an overcrowded classroom; strategies to deal with workload; dealing with learner indiscipline in the classroom; benefits of and strategies to improve parent involvement; enhancing peer group relations; and prevention of social welfare problems, such as child abuse and neglect. as depicted in table 1 above, the programme manual (as the result of step 2 of ir) (fraser et al., 2009) comprises an overview and session-by-session content that explains session objectives, important materials and activities that may be used to reinforce key content. session a encompassed an introductory face-to-face interaction. participants were provided with step-by-step instructions relating to the contents of the programme manual. in session b, participants were expected to take the programme manual home and work through the strategies provided on their own for a period not exceeding eight weeks. fraser et al. (2009) suggest to programme manual designers that the duration of the intervention must http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 2122021 39(2): 212-224 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 be determined to guarantee compliance. the programme design and efficacy testing were underpinned by a theory. 3. maslow’s hierarchy of needs maslow’s hierarchy of needs informed the programme design and the efficacy testing. the theory has relevance to the field of education as it posits that every individual has the potential to, and also the drive, to move up the hierarchy towards a level of realising his/her full potential (maslow, 1943). the theory provides authors with a reminder and framework that teachers are less likely to perform at their full potential if their basic needs are unmet. maslow (1943) conceived that human needs could be split and prioritised into five levels. these five levels are physiological, safety/security, belonging/social affiliation, self-esteem and self-actualisation needs. maslow’s (1943) basic position is that this five-step (level) archetype can be split into deficiency needs and growth needs and that the individual’s needs usually emerge only when more prepotent needs have been relatively gratified. the first four steps are frequently alluded to as deficiency needs (lower level needs) and the final step is referred to as growth needs (higher level needs). the individual’s actions are customarily pointed towards realising the succeeding cluster of needs that is yet to be fulfilled. the growth needs persist to be discerned by an individual and grow powerful the moment they become engaged. if the growth needs have been practically fulfilled, the individual may be capable of achieving the highest level, known as self-actualisation. engler (1985) describes self-actualisation as a desire to fulfil one’s highest potential through a full exploration of one’s talents and capabilities (potentialities). every individual has the desire and the potential to proceed up the hierarchy towards selfactualisation. aruma and hanachor (2017) state that the focus of self-actualisation is on the development of human potential with the ultimate aim of stimulating enhanced performance, competency, efficiency and effective service delivery. the model in figure 1 below demonstrates that the individual as a totality/whole strives towards self-actualisation. secondly, it asserts that teachers in south africa are confronted with relentless workplace challenges that are potentially affecting their deficiency and growth needs. thirdly, the model suggests that some of the teachers are unsuccessful in realising their peak career experiences. lastly, the model indicates that the wbs programme offers teachers an opportunity to embrace new experiences, adopt new views and expertise. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 moloantoa & geyer efficacy testing of a work-based support programme for teachers 2132021 39(2): 213-224 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 figure 1: model presentation of a wbs programme the model in figure 1 above is established upon the premise that a desire for the highest needs in the hierarchy is “not a fixed state, but a process of development which does not end” (heylighen, 1992: 41). the wbs programme aims to identify the workplace challenges experienced by teachers and features as a “vehicle” to actualise/empower themselves and become self-actualised and achieving their full potential in the workplace. 4. research methods 4.1 research approach and design this article focuses on step 3 of this ir process. step 3 called for a series of studies to refine and confirm programme components through efficacy testing (fraser et al., 2009). although a mixed methods approach (i.e. convergent mixed methods design) was adopted to undertake step 3 of the ir process (ivankova, creswell & plano clark, 2020), this article focuses only on the qualitative data. qualitative data were collected preand post-exposure to the wbs programme. the collected data highlighted areas in the programme manual that needed refinement, adaptation and expansion (fraser et al., 2009). rubin and babbie (2017) opine that qualitative data are often the most helpful during formative evaluations (such as step 3 of ir) to inform the further refinement of the programme for test effectiveness in different practice settings (i.e. step 4 of ir) (fraser & galinksy, 2010). 4.2 participants the study population was teachers at the nwpdoe. simple random sampling in the moses kotane district enabled the authors to recruit 20 participants (i.e. 10 experimental group participants and 10 control group participants) for the efficacy test of the programme http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 2142021 39(2): 214-224 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 (babbie, 2016). it is important to note that all 20 teachers agreed to participate and none of them dropped out. 4.3 data collection preand post-exposure focus group discussions were only conducted with the experimental group members. interview guides were developed for data collection. the pre-exposure focus group discussion aimed to gather two sets of information, namely the workplace challenges faced by the participants and how those participants could expect to benefit from the programme. the post-exposure discussion guide considered the impact of the programme as reported by participants as well as their suggestion for the improvement of the programme manual (fraser et al., 2009). 4.4 data analysis and trustworthiness in analysing the data, the six phases of thematic analysis proposed by braun and clarke (2006) were implemented. different strategies were followed to ensure the trustworthiness of the study. credibility was ensured by utilising member checking, as the interpretation of the findings was confirmed with several participants (anney, 2014). thick descriptions are provided to convey the authentic voice of the participants and to ensure credibility and transferability (lietz & zayas, 2010). to comply with confirmability, the first author and an independent coder analysed the data independently and had a consensus meeting (i.e. observer triangulation) (lietz & zayas, 2010). 4.5 ethical considerations the study received permission from the nwpdoe and ethics clearance by the research ethics committee of the university before implementation (ref no.: gw20160918hs). ethical considerations, such as informed written consent, no harm to respondents and the maintenance of confidentiality, were adhered to (babbie, 2016). 5. findings and discussion the findings are outlined in two sections: preand post-exposure to the programme. the findings relating to the workplace challenges facing teachers are organised in themes and sub-themes to allow an unequivocal understanding of the problem. another six themes were extracted from the post-exposure data focusing on the efficacy testing of the programme. thereafter a section follows with a comparison of the two sets of data against the background of the theory underpinning the study. 5.1 themes pre-exposure to the programme the responses were grouped into themes, namely learner-related, family-related, schoolrelated, teacher-related and community-related challenges as well as the expected efficacy of the programme. theme 1: learner-related challenges teachers were exposed to innumerable forms of learner-related challenges. they experienced the challenges of having to deal with learner indiscipline. the following are only a few of the similar statements: bullying is common among learners. learners are aggressive and bully others. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 moloantoa & geyer efficacy testing of a work-based support programme for teachers 2152021 39(2): 215-224 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 some learners bring weapons to the school just to intimidate others and us as teachers. we have very angry children here. disruptive behaviour has become a great concern, as it renders many schools ineffective in teaching and learning. from the above excerpts, it is clear that participants concurred that teachers encounter learners who are showing disruptive behavioural tendencies. disruptive behaviour by learners has the potential to leave teachers with the perception that they are incompetent and inefficient in their teaching (cf. aruma & hanachor, 2017). empirical studies in south africa (freeks, 2016), and in the nwp in particular (tlhapi, 2015), confirm that the problem of indiscipline is escalating in schools. theme 2: family-related challenges parental engagement is a combination of dedication and active contribution on the side of the parent or caregiver to the school. teachers have to deal with situations where some parents/ caregivers are uninvolved with and unsupportive of their children concerning basic psychosocial and educational needs. the family-related challenges are reflected in the comments recorded below: teachers face the challenge of the lack of involvement by parents… the majority of learners come to school dirty. teachers take it upon themselves to bath these learners. we have pregnant learners who stay with their older boyfriends and at time even miss their final examinations ... we delegate life orientation teachers to go and look for them as parents. another participant reported a concern about orphaned and vulnerable learners as follows: “this is a poverty-stricken area… most orphaned learners come to school hungry”. much has been written about orphans and vulnerable children with regard to their education and living conditions and these were confirmed by the comments forwarded by the participants (mwoma & pillay, 2016). participants were again confronted with a situation where learners simply become disengaged with their school activities because of pregnancy and teachers perpetually have to contend with the matter of pregnant learners. theme 3: school-related challenges the participants were also concerned about what appeared to be the three major schoolrelated challenges currently facing public schools in the nwp, namely overcrowding, an administrative overload and lack of resources. participants commented as follows: “...teachers have about 80 learners per class. all in all, the administrative overload has become the worst of the worst”. participants continued to mention that “[w]e have a shortage of resources in our schools. it is indeed difficult to maintain a no-fee school.” the above responses demonstrate that the participants view teachers in the nwpdoe as being overloaded with administrative work resulting from the over-enrolment of learners. the dbe (2015) reports that the enrolment of learners is generally very high in lower grades. the nwpdoe (2017) concurs that the average number of learners per classroom exceeds the national average by 3.4%. the discussed school-related challenges impede the potential of teachers to navigate towards self-actualisation, because they feel ineffective in their service delivery (cf. aruma & hanachor, 2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 2162021 39(2): 216-224 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 theme 4: teacher-related challenges teachers experience an inability to cope emotionally and physically with workplace demands. badugela (2012) concedes that teachers are confronted with such a range of educational demands that their skills no longer match the new challenges. participants commented as follows: burnout is worse... i have a colleague who resigned as a result of burnout. if you resign, you will never come back. but those who come back are doing so purely because of financial problems... teachers have no time to relax and unwind. it is too much for us. from the above comments, it is clear that participants concurred that teachers are experiencing a great degree of burnout. they considered the inordinate workload to be the fundamental cause of their burnout, stress and lack of quality time with family members. workplace challenges affecting teachers’ emotional and physical needs (i.e. deficiency needs) hinder them from achieving their full potential in the workplace (maslow, 1943). montgomery et al. (2005) specifically reported that one-third of teachers in the nwp suffer from a high degree of emotional burnout and stress. participants were also concerned about the extent to which their weaknesses act as barriers to healthy work relationships. one participant expressed this view as follows: in the case of teachers, they are stubborn.... in the best sense, the quality of our work relationships is meant to contribute to an “all-hands-on-deck” mentality. poor quality work relationships divert attention from results and create negativity. steyn, de klerk and du plessis (2004: 59) aptly comment that “sound, interpersonal relations depend very much on ethically sound behaviour”. lack of social connection in the workplace put the navigation of each teacher towards achieving their full potential at risk (maslow, 1943). participants appear to be concerned that, at times, teachers display a negative work ethic, show inappropriate values and conduct themselves in a manner that does not enhance the teaching profession. theme 5: community-related challenges working with immigrant learners is a growing phenomenon in the nwpdoe. the challenges of working with immigrant learners include linguistic problems. statements such as the following indicate the responses by the participants: “most of the learners experience barriers to learning due to language problems. their language is not used in our schools.” there is an indication from the participants that immigrant learners find it difficult to speak or read the predominant language of their host schools. the mother tongue of the majority of these learners is different from the language spoken in the host school. vandeyar (2010) proposed different approaches for “blending” immigrant learners with the rest of the learners in terms of acknowledging diversity, practising tolerance, respecting human rights and engaging meaningfully with the immigrant parents. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 moloantoa & geyer efficacy testing of a work-based support programme for teachers 2172021 39(2): 217-224 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 theme 6: expected efficacy of the programme participants stressed that developing a teacher-specific support programme may give teachers tools to meet the growing challenges they encounter. for example, participants commented as follows: “there is a need for a programme to help teachers to attend to their challenges.” the quote above suggests that there is a need to intervene in the challenges faced by teachers in the nwpdoe. a greater number of participants felt that, on the national level, the dbe should introduce specific support programmes and that all roles relevant to those teachers should become part of the design of such programmes. participants concur that a programme should also empower teachers to become proactive in addressing workplace challenges. in the next section, the results gathered from the efficacy testing of the wbs programme are presented. 5.2 themes post-exposure to the programme during the post-exposure focus group discussion, participants indicated in more detail how the programme assisted them in addressing workplace challenges. theme 1: programme serves as an awareness-raising tool participants contextualised their comments in terms of the programme’s ability to provide them with an awareness of and insight into their past ineffective ways of handling workplace challenges. the following statements represent some of the comments: the programme helped me to consider the views of teachers and their perceptions... i now try to avoid misunderstandings when new ideas are presented by dividing the basic structure of those ideas into small segments and responding appropriately. after exposure to the programme, participants began to realise that the question of whether workplace challenges will occur is no longer relevant. instead, the issue was how teachers responded to and coped with the challenges that they were confronted with daily. although challenges are a fact of teachers' work life, they can no longer be content simply to let those challenges occur. they must be aware of how to plan, direct and control those challenges effectively in an attempt to achieve self-actualisation. theme 2: programme counteracts decreasing motivation participants reported that the programme promoted a healthy work-health balance which improved their motivation. participants elaborated on their views as follows: i am starting to look at my work differently now. i wish some teachers would be exposed to this manual. learnt about techniques to maintain good physical and social well-being and to act resiliently. after exposure to the programme manual, participants indicated that, by going through a series of strategies that constituted several steps towards addressing workplace challenges, they felt that they gained the necessary “tools” for enhancing work-health through selfmodification (self-direction) of thought and behaviour. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 2182021 39(2): 218-224 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 participants recounted that the wbs programme manual implementation had a therapeutic effect, especially during the introductory face-to-face session (i.e. session a). participants also commented that “the face-to-face session allowed us to let off steam”. from the extracts above, it is evident that participants were relieved that they were able to bring into the open their discontent caused by workplace challenges. they were able to bring to the fore the suppressed negative emotions resulting from those challenges. peters, overall and jamieson (2014) warn that engaging in emotional suppression has negative consequences, such as harming professional working relationships. conversely, expressing those emotions is crucial for overall well-being (peters et al., 2014) and towards achieving full potential in the workplace (maslow, 1943). theme 3: programme breaks down barriers between staff groups participants indicated that the programme provided lessons on matters relating to building healthy professional relationships. participants expressed their opinions as follows: …i should be willing to approach my colleagues and discuss my concerns... i have learnt that, when you relate well with people around you, you will be fulfilled and productive. as can be noted, participants were feeling confident about trying to build and maintain healthy and harmonious relations. in fact, social affiliation is an important building block in navigating towards your full potential as a teacher (maslow, 1943). participants reported that they have gained strategies to improve relations with their fellow colleagues. individuals need to get along well with their fellow workers for a positive ethos in workplaces and for healthy interpersonal relationships (obakpolo, 2015). theme 4: programme empowers teachers to handle all structures with an interest in education an education partnership represents the collective activities by various stakeholders with each participating member making a meaningful contribution to the organisation (steyn et al., 2004). the nwpdoe (2017) states that schools must promote working relationships among a range of public services and supporting structures. before participating in the programme, participants identified that they used many ineffective strategies to resolve the challenges they encountered when dealing with various stakeholders within the field of education. after participating in the programme, participants realised that a healthy relationship with other social structures is important in creating a positive impact on individual teachers’ work. participants’ remarks are reported below: … in addition to the training provided to both teachers and parents as members of the cluster child-care coordinators (cccs) and school based support teams (ssts). i am using the strategies from this book [manual] to improve my relationship with parents and vulnerable learners. i have learnt that learners have something positive to contribute to classroom activities. participants reported that they gained the following insight from the programme: it is important to work on building proper relationships with all structures, especially parents and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 moloantoa & geyer efficacy testing of a work-based support programme for teachers 2192021 39(2): 219-224 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 learners, and also to learn to be flexible, so that other structures can contribute freely towards providing solutions to various challenges within the education sector. theme 5: programme promotes appreciation for ethnic diversity learners represent a wide range of divergent conditions. participants reported that the programme offered practical tips on how to appreciate diversity and to create a sense of belonging within classrooms. the following quotation is representative of the views of the participants: “… programme manual helps a lot for teachers ... how to deal with immigrant learners, as this has been a challenge for several years.” south africa is experiencing the entry of streams of legal and undocumented migrants from outside the southern african development community (sadc) region and new ethnic constellations within (vandeyar, 2010). participants concurred that the programme enabled those involved in the teaching profession to realise that the classroom is the place where both teachers and learners should show tolerance, especially to those who are different from them. theme 6: programme could advance the principle of total quality management total quality management (tqm) represents an integrated effort designed to improve customer satisfaction and organisational excellence (abu & umana, 2016). participants felt that the programme could contribute to a general effective management of the school. the following remarks represent participants’ views: …i suggest to school principals to read this manual to get closer to understanding how to address different issues. the programme manual could provide additional information to the school management team [smt] regarding the overall management of the school. participants considered that the programme could empower the smt to manage the school efficiently. as school principals and teachers learn new skills, they may become effective in their roles. two sets of qualitative data presented above are now compared below to deduce the strengths (and limitations) of the wbs programme in addressing the coping needs of teachers. 6. comparison of preand post-exposure data overall, the ir entails a critical interplay of literature review, theory, needs assessments, the development of and efficacy testing of the wbs programme. preand post-exposure findings are now compared using themes. theme 1: stakeholder relationship three workplace challenges emerged related to fellow workers, learners and parents. after exposure to the programme, participants reported that they were empowered with strategies to engage meaningfully with other stakeholders in order to fully intervene in the challenges faced by teachers in the nwpdoe. firstly, it was perceptible that they were beginning to gain ground over their own weaknesses which were acting as barriers to healthy work relationships. furthermore, participants gave feedback that the programme provided them with a range of skills necessary to manage learner-related challenges such as indiscipline and bullying. participants also held the view that since parental involvement is paramount to promoting http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/2120590393-abu-saleh-md-sohel-uz-zaman https://www.researchgate.net/profile/umana_anjalin perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 2202021 39(2): 220-224 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 effective teaching and learning, they have acquired the necessary strategies to encourage parents to become involved with school-related activities. the dbe (2018) also emphasises the importance of meaningful interaction between the teachers, parents and learners in order to sustain credible operations. theme 2: social welfare issues presenting in a classroom it is comprehensible from the data set that social welfare issues affecting the learners remain at the fore of teachers’ workplace challenges. these challenges include learners who lack proper adult care, orphaned and vulnerable children and teenage pregnancy. given this context, participants indicated that teachers carried the additional responsibility of caring for these learners to facilitate effective teaching and learning. the wbs programme suggested strategies on dealing with the challenges. post-exposure data suggest the wbs programme provided teachers with additional strategies on dealing with the social welfare challenges of learners. theme 3: management of the school only one challenge emerged from the data under the theme, namely leadership challenges. after exposure to the wbs programme, participants displayed sensitivity to potential changes that may be brought about by the programme. the participants were convinced that what they acquired from the programme may, to some degree, be used to influence the management of the school in terms of successful leadership. successful leadership involves a process where all partners (i.e. smts and teachers) are prepared to work collaboratively on problem identification and resolution to increase overall management of the school. theme 4: work-health balance (whb) pre-exposure to the wbs programme, participants reported that they experienced an inability to cope emotionally and physically with workplace demands. whb represents a process of prioritising physical and mental well-being for the purpose of improving work productivity (gragnano et al., 2015). after exposure to the programme, participants reported that the wbs programme raised their awareness of and insight into their past ineffective ways of solving their workplace challenges and improved their level of motivation to deal with challenges. from the comparison of the data, it seems that the programme enabled teachers to realise they have the potential to cope with learner-related, teachers-related, family-related and community-related challenges. considered from maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the wbs programme enabled participants to identify and ultimately cope with their workplace challenges (i.e. deficiency needs). furthermore, the programme offered participants a “vehicle” to actualise/empower themselves and navigate towards self-actualisation and aim to achieve their full potential in the workplace (cf. aruma & hanachor, 2017). 7. conclusion and recommendations the authors are aware that the data reported on is of limited scope, although permissible within the ambit of qualitative research. the programme was designed, implemented and evaluated by the first author. although the findings originated from only one province in south africa, the efforts to ensure the trustworthiness of the study elevate the potential of the conclusions and recommendations originating from this study towards application in other provinces in south africa. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/andrea_gragnano2 moloantoa & geyer efficacy testing of a work-based support programme for teachers 2212021 39(2): 221-224 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 due to workplace challenges, teachers’ work has become more complex and demanding. teachers have to cope with demands such as learner indiscipline, large class sizes, lack of parental involvement, considerable administrative work and burnout. the numerous challenges identified exert a negative influence and lead to undesirable outcomes for teachers. from the extant literature, it was identified that there is a hiatus in terms of a holistic wbs programmes for south african teachers. hence, a wbs programme was designed and the efficacy thereof tested through a process of ir. more specifically, the efficacy testing of the wbs programme (step 3 of ir) facilitated the refinement of the programme through efficacy trials (fraser et al., 2009). based on the data, the authors conclude that after exposure to the programme manual, participants reported that they had gained the necessary skills to cope with and address their workplace challenges. holistically seen from the themes identified when comparing the pre and post-exposure data, it is concluded that the programme manual succeeded in providing teachers with strategies to deal with the identified malleable challenges and to navigate towards self-actualisation and reaching their full potential. the following recommendations are offered to relevant stakeholders (i.e. the dbe and the nwpdoe) to manage the workplace challenges in the education sector: • sustained efforts are necessary to strengthen the capacities of teachers to find and deal with workplace challenges as they occur. adopting the wbs programme at the school level could represent such efforts. • professional development is part of the work of all teachers and is important for their long-term career development. engagement in professional development could also be directed through means that seek to discuss hindrances that undermine the professional work and growth of teachers. the wbs programme could be registered as part of teacher training for those teachers involved in employee health and wellness programmes to ease the introduction of the programmes to fellow teachers. • the dbe needs to develop and enforce education policies linked to priority issues such as learner indiscipline, large classroom sizes, lack of resources and heavy teacher workload, by drawing on current experience, but also by giving more structured support. a wbs programme cannot effectively address the mentioned challenges. • teacher well-being should firmly be placed at the centre of all efforts to improve the quality of education. the nwpdoe, school principals, teacher unions, each individual teacher, the south african council for educators (sace) and the education, training and development practices sector education and training authority (etdp seta) should each play a significant role in this regard. • future research should evaluate the wbs programme across the nwp in different practice settings (i.e. step 4 of ir). the programme should also be implemented and evaluated across south africa to ultimately be disseminated to all schools to enable teachers to reach their full potential amidst the challenges posed by their role and task as teachers. the wbs programme discussed in this article represents an innovative intervention to capacitate teachers to reach their full potential in the workplace and subsequently offers a humble contribution to enable south africa to achieve goal 4 of the sustainable development goals, namely to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education” (united nations, 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 2222021 39(2): 222-224 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.15 8. acknowledgements the financial assistance from the national institute for humanities and social sciences (nihss) [sds15/1108] towards this study is acknowledged. the opinions expressed and conclusions made are those of the authors and cannot necessarily be attributed to the supporting organisation. references abonyi, o.s. 2014. coping with the challenges of the teaching profession. available at https:// www.researchgate.net/publication/281177690 [accessed 21 september 2020]. abu, a. & umana, s. 2016. implementing total quality management in education: compatibility and challenges. open 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https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) technology-driven proctoring: validity, social justice and ethics in higher education abstract the covid-19 pandemic has led to rapid change, unprecedented in higher education. one such change has been the almost complete shift to online assessment. the simultaneous employment of online assessment and proctoring has not enjoyed the rigorous academic debate and research traditionally associated with such shifts in academia. this engagement is essential and this article aims to discuss aspects of social justice, ethics and the validity of digital proctoring to the burgeoning debate. digital proctoring is a lucrative industry (coghlan miller & paterson, 2021), notwithstanding the admitted opportunities for cheating, irrespective of the intensity of overwatch. digital proctoring is marketed and has become entangled with issues of institutional reputation and the legitimacy of qualifications. the student seems to be a secondary consideration compared to the technocratic digital proctoring arena. however, the introduction of online assessment, specifically with digital proctoring, impacts the assessment’s validity by introducing intervening variables into the process. the drive to detect and prevent online cheating has led to algorithmic proliferation. this technologically driven approach has embedded social injustice and questionable ethics and validity into the assessment systems. this article examines the social justice, ethical and validity issues around technological proctoring under the grouped themes: emotional factors; racial and/or skin colour; digital literacy and technology; and disability. however, the covid-19 pandemicdriven shifts have provided the unprecedented opportunity to elevate assessment from recall to critical thinking and applicationbased assessment. an opportunity to ensure that our assessment is valid, assesses higher-order learning, and truly evaluates the concepts we wish to assess. keywords: digital proctoring; cheating; ethics; social justice; validity author: prof elizabeth archer1 affiliation: 1university of the western cape, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i1.6666 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(1): 119-136 published: 31 march 2023 received: 15 august 2022 accepted: 3 march 2022 research article https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7537-4259 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 1202023 41(1): 120-136 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) those who oppose equality, compassion and social justice have been on the wrong side of history time and time again. laurence overmire 1. introduction change is inevitable, as is crisis. however, if we do not engage and plan for the future, the change will not be directed, but will take place without sufficient forethought and guidance. the covid-19 pandemic has provided us with the opportunity and impetus of crisis to consider our assessment practices. this paper does not aim to explore the validity of assessment instruments, but rather digital proctoring during assessment and the impact on performance. the shift to online assessment, specifically digital proctoring, has moved assessment from somewhat similar environmental assessment conditions to highly differential environmental factors in the assessment process (barry & finney, 2009). digital proctoring provides an avenue for attempting to prevent and detect cheating during test taking, but is not unbiased or cheat-proof. the introduction of digital proctoring has led to a highly differential impact on students’ performance. these challenges and unfair discrimination have often been humorously shared through memes (all public domain or under fair usage) (scialabba, 2020). some of these will be shared to provide the student perspective. the focus is on the challenges of digital proctoring, as the benefits of digital proctoring are already highly publicised and pushed by proprietary proctoring companies. the article aims to provide a voice and contextualisation for the challenges that digital proctoring introduces. this is framed by walter’s (2016) 5d conceptualisation of data: disparity, deprivation, disadvantage, dysfunction, and difference. within this framework, the paper addresses four issues around current digital proctoring: emotional factors; racial and/or skin colour; digital literacy; technology; and disability. this is discussed in the methodology section. finally, the covid-19 pandemic-driven shifts have provided the unprecedented opportunity to re-elevate assessment practices, particularly online, from recall to critical thinking and application; an opportunity to ensure that our assessment performance is a valid reflection and truly evaluate the concepts we wish to, without introducing social justice, ethical and validity issues. digital proctoring is likely to be a part of this new assessment landscape, but must be applied and developed with forethought, contextualisation and deep conceptual engagement. 2. conceptualisation as this study focuses on the social justice, and ethical and validity aspects of digital proctoring, walters’ (2016) 5d conceptualisation of data: disparity, deprivation, disadvantage, dysfunction and difference was employed. the development of big data and algorithms has served to amplify and embed the 5d concept, thus increasing the likelihood of social injustice (bounegru & gray, 2021). this paper focuses on the complexity of utilising digital proctoring and the possibilities of structurally embedding these social injustices. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 1212023 41(1): 121-136 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 archer technology-driven proctoring many aspects of social justice, ethics and validity share significant commonality, which is open for examination. based on the most prominent of these as related to digital proctoring and 5d data, the paper focuses on race and/or skin colour; digital literacy and technology; and disability. these factors will be discussed in some detail after the presentation of the study’s methodology, as well as the background and literature review to frame the discussion. it is important to note that while this is a south african publication, the challenges are global and often not only experienced by current or previously disadvantaged groups. there is a great dearth of research on digital proctoring on the african continent. prinsloo and kaliisa (2022) note that higher education in africa is seen as a new data frontier with great commercial interest acting as a driver for digital tool providers to penetrate and saturate the market. 3. methodology the research question for this study is: what are the complexities surrounding digital proctoring with regards to social justice, ethics and validity? scholarly publications, grey literature and memes were utilised in this study to provide a comprehensive view from multiple stakeholders. an investigation of the social media constructs in the form of memes often shows disturbing resonance to what is represented in scholarly works. “at first glance, memes may seem inane and meaningless; however, they actually serve as an important form of cultural currency, allowing people to share ideas, jokes, critiques, and commentary on a variety of topics.” (scialabba, 2020: 352).1 identified articles were reviewed for relevance and recency. the arguments presented in the literature were supplemented by resources focusing on the specific aspects of digital proctoring being examined. 4. background and literature review the article is to be read against the backdrop of an understanding of digital proctoring and its influence on assessment’s social justice, ethics and validity elements. these aspects are introduced in the sub-sections below. digital proctoring digital proctoring is often interpreted as leading to decreased cheating. in response to these perceptions, institutions may focus more on increased surveillance and punitive practices to maintain the institutional reputation and intervene in, or discourage perceived cheating (sutherland-smith, 2016). with these pressures on institutions, digital proctoring has become more pervasive and is a lucrative industry (hussein et al., 2020). this has not gone unnoticed by students (see figure 1). 1 the following search term was applied employing boolean logic: (digital* or online* or web* or remote*) and (proctor* or invigi* or monitor* or super*) and (education* or universit* or college*); meme and (digital* or online* or web* or remote*) and (proctor* or invigi* or monitor* or super*). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 1222023 41(1): 122-136 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) figure 1: meme: proctor u be like (proctor u be like ... [online]. meme-arsenal.com) however, digital proctoring can increase the digital divide (hussein et al., 2020; silverman et al., 2021). it may reduce the assessment’s validity, as students require additional digital literacy to employ more advanced proctoring tools and additional technological infrastructure requirements (hussein et al., 2020). at the same time, any additional proctoring modules and tools mean additional income to the proprietary proctoring company. some institutions have turned to developing their own proctoring systems. in both cases, resources that could be utilised to improve teaching, learning and assessment, are diverted to digital proctoring measures (flaherty, 2020; arnò et al., 2021; kimmons & velestsianos, 2021; silverman et al., 2021). digital proctoring includes recorded, live and automated proctoring with or without human intervention (hussein et al., 2020; labayen et al., 2021). the main features of such systems are (i) authentication (whether it is the correct student), (ii) browsing tolerance (can the student print the screen or use a browser), (iii) remote authorising and control, automated, live or a combination (flagging, pausing or ending the examination if it seems questionable), and (iv) report generation (hussein et al., 2020; coghlan et al., 2021). while proctoring’s technological aspects receive much attention, the social justice, ethical and validity aspects have not enjoyed as much scrutiny (coghlan et al., 2021). digital proctoring often evokes images of the most intense proctoring activities, although there are various levels of intrusion and application (slusky, 2020; coghlan et al., 2021). it is vital to note these technologies’ levels of intrusiveness. figure 2 below reflects the author’s perception of the intrusiveness of various digital proctoring technologies, moving from the least intrusive at the bottom to the most intrusive at the top. there is no standard digital proctoring battery, but it may include various mechanisms and additional, less common tools, which are not explicitly mentioned here. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 1232023 41(1): 123-136 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 archer technology-driven proctoring figure 2: levels of intrusiveness of digital proctoring tools (author) the stricter the protocols and measures, the higher the socioeconomic, psychosocial and environmental demands on students (ngqondi, maoneke & mauwa, 2021). the more intrusive the proctoring process is, the more social justice, ethical and validity issues are raised. validity and technology-driven assessment the aim of assessment (particularly summative assessment) is to determine aspects such as students’ knowledge, critical thinking, application, and skills in the particular study area. this requires instrument validity and appropriate assessment conditions. validity is a matter of degree and no assessment is completely valid or invalid within any context (knight, 2002; hattie, 2009; gyll & ragland, 2018). the debate on cheating is a “very complex, interdisciplinary field of research requiring contributions from linguists, psychologists, social scientists, anthropologists, teaching and learning specialists, mathematicians, accountants, medical doctors, lawyers, and philosophers, to name just a few” (bretag, 2016: v). the intellectual debate about cheating has not been able to keep pace with the rapid shifts to online assessment and digital proctoring during and post the covid-19 pandemic (coghlan et al., 2021). the existing debate focuses on students’ cheating but largely neglects environmental and contextual factors in administration, which influence the degree of validity of the assessment process and the results of the assessments. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 1242023 41(1): 124-136 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) digital proctoring to prevent online cheating is becoming the red herring in the opportunities provided by new online assessment modes. assessment conditions’ validity and ethics are mainly disregarded in favour of the debate on detecting and preventing student cheating during assessment (coghlan et al., 2021). research on cheating is widely disparate when examining the challenges of digital proctoring vs traditional proctoring (coghlan et al., 2021). some research shows that while students view it easier to cheat online, they are less likely to do so than in a traditional class environment (miller & young-jones, 2012; astuti, arso & wigati, 2020). other research illustrates no difference in cheating between different assessment environments (heberling & flint, 2002; felea et al., 2020). finally, some research shows that cheating is more prevalent online than in traditional face-to-face approaches (lanier, 2006; weimer, 2015). in all cases, ensuring that the cheating of students is the focus. however, it is relevant that online cheating is viewed as easier to detect with digital proctoring (akaaboune et al., 2022). three aspects are important concerning proctoring, be it online or traditional; firstly, the invasiveness of proctoring; secondly, whether the purpose of the assessment is achieved or negatively influenced by the choice of approach; and thirdly, the environmental factors during assessment which may impact performance. assessment environment and performance research on environmental quality’s effect on assessment performance is an established field. this includes research on both outdoor and indoor factors. there are many factors to consider: air quality, thermal factors, acoustics, lighting conditions, humidity (bell & provins, 1962; palacios temprano et al., 2020; brink et al., 2021), and airflow rate (wargocki & wyon, 2007). these factors are relatively consistent across the assessed group in an assessment venue within a face-to-face environment. thus, the environmental factors should similarly influence the whole group’s performance. however, when online, digitally proctored assessment takes place, the environmental quality is different for each student being assessed. these preconditions may exclude some students, or require extraordinary measures on the part of the student to achieve (coghlan et al., 2021; ngqondi et al., 2021). for instance, low-income students may be flagged as suspicious due to aspects in their environments that they cannot control, such as noise in a crowded one-room house or connectivity issues (barrett, 2021). the impact of such differences in online assessment and digital proctoring on performance is not necessarily random. the digitally proctored environment often systematically discriminates against certain groups of students, artificially increasing performance gaps. these performance differences are not purely determined by knowledge or skills but by various additional factors that cannot be controlled for, or even attained by many students. some of these are discussed below. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 1252023 41(1): 125-136 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 archer technology-driven proctoring 5. unpacking the threats to social justice, ethics and validity in digitally proctored assessment in this section, the author explores some of the threats to validity, social justice and ethics in assessment performance as introduced by digital proctoring. the following discussion is not exhaustive, but covers some grouped threats to validity and ethics: emotional factors, race and/or skin colour, digital literacy, technology, and disability, as per the 5d framework. these threats differentially influence students in different categories, reinforcing social injustices. emotional factors emotions such as anxiety and the associated behavioural changes are modified by digital proctoring’s intrusiveness, adversely influencing performance (chin, 2020; swauger, 2020a; visser-knijff, 2020). the quasi-experimental design by dendir and maxwell (2020) found that students consistently performed lower in online, digitally proctored courses and assessments than in traditional assessments, even when controlling for confounding factors in a regression framework. according to langenfeld (2020), digital proctoring has increased assessment anxiety and student withdrawal (barrett, 2021). any behaviour deemed slightly out of the ordinary by the proctoring tool, such as slight movements of the eyes, head or body, glancing off to the side of the computer, leaving a seat, or requests for bathroom breaks, may be tagged as suspicious activity (hussein et al., 2020; zhu, 2021). there are multiple examples, such as a student with allergies being flagged repeatedly for sneezing and the tissue paper identified as illicit scraps of paper (barrett, 2021). such restrictive digital proctoring measures result in students trying to control and change movements and behaviours, redirecting cognitive resources from the assessment and increasing anxiety (coghlan et al., 2021). anxiety is also a self-sustaining feedback loop, decreasing performance, self-esteem and confidence (goonan, 2003). as a student faced with explaining this flagged behaviour, or without the flagged behaviour investigated by the academic, the student will likely spend more mental and emotional resources to prevent being flagged. a quote from a university newspaper (adams, 2020) relates one student’s experience, “i do worse on my exams [with digital proctoring] rather than when i don’t use them because of my heightened anxiety.” this self-sustaining feedback loop amplifies stereotype threat. research on stereotype threat shows that when a group is stigmatised and expected to perform poorly, such as african students or female students (pennington et al., 2016), performance is adversely influenced. the person from this group may be so anxious about trying not to conform to the stereotype that it adversely influences performance and decreases working memory, which may already be strained within the digitally proctored environment. race and/or skin colour an exhaustive study published in 2019 by the national institute of standards and technology examined 189 facial recognition algorithms made by 99 companies (grother, ngan & hanaoka, 2019). the study only focused on whether the algorithm could identify a photo accurately and match the correct two presented images. the study found a consistently higher rate of falsenegative results for african and asian people than for white people, with many producing a rate of 10 to 100 times higher false positives for these groups (grother et al., 2019). even with a basic assessment of algorithms’ ability to identify a person correctly, it seems biased towards people of colour. similarly, different genders and age groups found higher false positive and https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 1262023 41(1): 126-136 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) negative rates. for example, women and young or older people were more likely to be falsely identified (grother et al., 2019). these findings are supplemented by the notorious racial and gender-based machine bias in automated job applications, parole applications and policing distribution (coghlan et al., 2021). when applied to the digital proctoring environment, it is a common complaint that proctoring systems have difficulty identifying and tracking students of colour or people with darker complexions (coghlan et al., 2021). this is particularly concerning in countries such as south africa, where nearly 90% of the population is not classified as white. racial bias is one of the core ethical concerns against digital proctoring (coghlan et al., 2021). the software often prompts darker-complexion students for more lighting, as seen in figure 4. figure 4: prompting for more lighting for darker complexion people (surveillance killjoy, 2020) https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 1272023 41(1): 127-136 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 archer technology-driven proctoring any difficulty the digital proctoring tool has in tracking students and movements is a possible point for flagging and an increased risk of being placed in a group of students seen as highly probable of cheating (barrett, 2021). an exam may even be terminated if a student cannot be tracked (coghlan et al., 2021). the termination of examination is not just an international practice; south african examples include the university of south africa (unisa, n.d.) and the university of cape town, which utilises proctoru (the university of cape town, n.d.) algorithms also learn; therefore, previous misidentification and flagging of tracking issues reinforce the algorithm’s sensitivity in flagging students of colour (barrett, 2021). as these algorithms are often proprietary, institutions that employ these digital proctoring tools have no insight into whether there is any human intervention and supervision (coghlan et al., 2021). thus, institutions cannot interrogate this algorithmic learning (barrett, 2021). this issue with digital proctoring and darker complexions also means that any movement is more likely to be flagged as problematic. every day for a week, a student of colour attempted to register for the practice version of the california state bar exam. “every time, the software’s facial recognition system told me the lighting is too poor to recognize my face. it just seems to me that this mock exam is reading the poor lighting as my skin color,” he told motherboard (feathers & rose, 2020). this student is not alone. at the time of the publication, multiple emergency petitions had been made to the us supreme court, with four states scrapping the digitally proctored bar exam (feathers & rose, 2020). by november 2020, more than 60 000 students had signed petitions in the usa to end digital proctoring (barrett, 2021; silverman et al., 2021). a blog (swauger, 2020b) claimed that an estimation at two usa universities had identified some 30 000 cases of racial discrimination by proctorio over only two higher education institutions in a year. these petitions and litigation are not limited to the usa. digital literacy and technology the concept of digital proctoring raises many technological challenges. firstly, having digital devices that meet the needs for digital proctoring (langenfeld, 2020); secondly, the access to the internet at the required speeds and stability (langenfeld, 2020) (these are extensively documented and requires little further discussion); thirdly, invasion of digital systems (chin, 2020; flaherty, 2020; visser-knijff, 2020); and fourthly, the digital literacy of the students (visser-knijff, 2020). notwithstanding the technology, digital proctoring is not cheator hack-proof (dendir & maxwell, 2020). the automated systems have also been disappointing in identifying possible misconduct, compared to the human examination of identified video clips (arnò et al., 2021). it could be argued that digital proctoring and the overt emphasis on preventing cheating may encourage students to find new ways of cheating (slusky, 2020; coghlan et al., 2021). the proliferation of social media and internet postings on how to conduct online cheating in a proctored environment is a testament to this (slusky, 2020). the proctoring system often treats students as criminals, encouraging them to game the system (flaherty, 2020). as reported in one university newspaper, social media and youtube are rife with tricks and tips to cheat in an online exam (geiger, 2021) (see figure 5). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 1282023 41(1): 128-136 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) figure 5: about to break the law … (when the test proctor says … [online]. meme on me.me ) in addition, automated proctoring algorithms are prone to reinforcing structural inequality, particularly socioeconomic bias, sexism, racism and non-binary phobia (swauger, 2020a). digital proctoring seems to reinforce inequality and suppress efforts towards social justice (langenfeld, 2020; coghlan et al., 2021). digital proctoring demands a different and additional data literacy of students and requires specific infrastructure such as a stable internet connection (yates & beaudrie, 2009). these aspects reinforce and increase the digital divide. visser-knijff (2020) highlights the need for different digital literacies for students. the digital literacy and skills required are broader than initially perceived (visser-knijff, 2020). for instance, the student requires the literacy to be able to install software and set up the system; literacy to be able to use the software once installed; the ability to read on-screen; the ability to type at a specific minimum speed (without looking at the keyboard and not too loudly); and the ability to access technical support (unisa, n.d.). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 1292023 41(1): 129-136 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 archer technology-driven proctoring this closely relates to the additional digital infrastructure, resources and literacies required to participate in a digitally proctored assessment. some students noted that they spent more time setting up and troubleshoot the online digitally proctored exam than studying (adams, 2020). the university of south africa introduced digital proctoring, employing three different proctoring systems. the system employed depends on the module being studied as well as the types of assessment (thus a student may have to employ more than one type of invigilation tool for various modules) (unisa, n.d.). these invigilation tools included moodle proctoring, the invigilator app and iris. each tool has specific technical requirements with extensive guidelines for setup and use. their requirements and preparation decrease the time available to students to study. it is also worth noting that the technology removes specific tools usually available to students, such as writing or drawing mind maps to support and organise thinking, amongst other strategies employed during assessment. there is also a significant issue in respect of protecting personal information. in many cases, students have launched class-action suits based on the lack of protection of their personal information (bilyk, n.d.; errick, 2021). students are pushing back through multiple means, from hacking digital proctoring companies and publishing code to a multitude of petitions (kelley, 2020). security breaches are not uncommon with digital proctoring systems (slusky, 2020; goveas, 2021). by october 2020, some 440 0000 records were stolen and leaked by proctoru (adams, 2020). ict experts describe the lock-screen software that needs to be installed for digital proctoring as “malware or academic stalkerware” (adams, 2020) (see figure 6 below). figure 6: spyware (i assure you fellow students [online]. imgflip) a haunting thought is that digital proctoring does not prevent cheating, nor is it hack-proof. “there’s no perfect system out there.” (goveas, 2021: 6). this sentiment is echoed by multiple institutions (the stuyvesan spectator, n.d.; flaherty, 2020). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 1302023 41(1): 130-136 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) disability the discussion around digital proctoring and disability seems to have faded into the background. a digital proctoring tool has a proprietary algorithm designed for the “normal student” and “normal assessment environment”. this constitutes a white, preferably male, middle-class and neurotypical person (coghlan et al., 2021). it is designed for the able-bodied, sitting still and holding in bodily functions for extended periods. the “normal” for a proctoring system is far removed from most students’ lived realities and demographics. it is even further removed from the reality of differently-abled students. this undifferentiated approach to digital proctoring reinforces social injustice, ignoring diversity and opting for a one-size-fits-all approach, with the “normal student” being the one size (smith & chestnutt, 2021). lockdown browsers prevent students from employing digital accessibility tools (adams, 2020; feathers & rose, 2020). equal treatment does not equate to equity for differently-abled students and places them at a disadvantage (quapp & holschemacher, 2021). yet standard treatment is the basis of digital proctoring. the quest for reasonable accommodation is far more complex in the digitally proctored environment than in face-to-face arrangements (barrett, 2021). even when approved, basic requests for an extension of time are often not observed (gin et al., 2021). one example is a student with type 1 diabetes who requested accommodation to use the bathroom during the exam. eventually, she was allowed two breaks of one minute each. as a result, the student had to relieve herself in water bottles for the duration of the examination (zhu, 2021). the indignity imposed on such students is unacceptable. different eye movements, behaviour and communication are common for differentlyabled persons (barrett, 2021). these would immediately be flagged as suspicious by digital proctoring systems (coghlan et al., 2021). assistive technologies such as text-to-speech engines may cause differently-abled students to be flagged as displaying suspicious behaviour (barrett, 2021). the digital proctoring guidelines force students to disclose medical information to an external proctoring company in an attempt to receive accommodations (many of which cannot be accommodated by the system). even neurotypical students may have physical disabilities that require accommodation, such as chronic pain sufferers with hand-cramping, which requires hand exercises and additional time (feathers & rose, 2020). “[digital] exam proctoring, timed assessments, and required attendance are often framed as ways to increase integrity and accountability, yet all of these decisions could be considered ableist and exclusionary for students with disabilities” (gin et al., 2021: 13). 6. alternative approaches currently, digital proctoring focuses on behavioural control instead of providing an additional development tool (stephens, 2016: 1001). it is possible to move from costly digital proctoring systems to a people-centred approach instead of a technocratic-solutionist approach (silverman et al., 2021). it is beyond the scope of this paper to fully engage in alternatives to digital proctoring. it is, however, important to show that there are viable alternatives (ngqondi et al., 2021; silverman et al., 2021). the covid-19 pandemic has given us an unprecedented opportunity to elevate assessment from recall to critical thinking and application. an opportunity to ensure that our https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 1312023 41(1): 131-136 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 archer technology-driven proctoring assessment is valid and truly evaluates the concepts we wish to; a shift to assessing the higher levels of learning taxonomies, be it bloom, revised bloom, structure of observed learning outcomes (solo), finks, or others (o’neill & murphy, 2010). along with the opportunity for more student-centred, constructivist approaches to assessment (reyneke, shuttleworth & visagie, 2021). differentiation in educational practices (and assessment) is required to promote social justice and prevent the reproduction of traditional power divides in higher education (smith & chestnutt, 2021). compassion and trust may bear more fruit than surveillance, and an expensive, dubious sense of control is likely to increase inequality. this does not mean that there are no avenues to provide oversight in online assessment. there are multiple means of using unproctored means to limit student cheating and show due diligence (silverman et al., 2021). these means are less intrusive, less prone to bias and may provide opportunities for improved assessment practices (dendir & maxwell, 2020). these are illustrated in figure 7 below. these unproctored measures do not require proprietary software with unknown algorithms assessing students’ level of suspiciousness.2 figure 7: level of intrusion of proctored vs unproctored online assessment (author) 2 level of suspicion is terminology often employed by digital online proctoring systems when referring to how students are flagged. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 1322023 41(1): 132-136 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6666 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) statements opposed to digital proctoring by faculty and institutions have not gone unnoticed by proprietary digital proctoring companies. these statements have been met with litigation at every corner or the more sedate warning letters from legal representatives (bilyk, n.d.; the stuyvesan spectator, n.d.; feathers and rose, 2020; long, 2021; pelletier et al., 2021). proctoru attorneys threatened to sue one faculty association for defamation. the accusation (as reported in the university newspaper) specifically described the action as “directly impacting efforts to mitigate civil disruption across the united states by interfering with education during a national emergency” and stated they were sending his complaint to the state’s attorney general (feathers & rose, 2020: 11). it is vital that our ethics and integrity not be swayed by threats and litigation but people-centred social justice, ethics and validity considerations. 7. conclusion digital proctoring is not the panacea to prevent student cheating while striving for social justice, ethical standards and valid assessments. it is costly to purchase from an economic perspective and is prone to litigation. from an equity and social justice perspective, it is intrusive. it introduces structural inequalities ranging from racial factors to student socioeconomic status to being impractical and biased against students who have disabilities or do not fit a neurotypical picture. equality with a white, male, upper-middle-class student template does not equate to social justice or equity (espinoza, 2007). digital proctoring increases anxiety and stress and may encourage students to find ways to bypass and game the system, all in the pursuit of the perception of preventing and identifying student cheating (langenfeld, 2020). online assessment and digital proctoring are part of the evolution of assessment. however, we must be cautious in how it is applied and how we can mediate its effects on the validity of the assessment process and performance. this requires academic engagement and not technocratic approaches with immediate problem-solving in mind. online assessment and digital proctoring will be part of the higher education landscape, but must be approached with caution and forethought. references adams, m. 2020. lockdown browsers: protecting integrity or invading privacy? the tower. available at https://bit.ly/41b8spx [accessed 30 march 2021]. akaaboune, o., blix, l. h., carrington, l. g., & henderson, c. d. 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(2021) highlights that the author: sekanse abiner ntsala1 pricilla mamare seabela1 affiliation: 1university of the free state, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i2.6823 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(2): 233-246 published: 30 june 2023 received: 11 october 2022 accepted: 25 may 2023 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6823 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9062-6688 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6823 2342023 41(2): 234-246 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6823 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) performance of most intermediate learners is not satisfactory. a detailed scrutiny of the results of the annual national assessments (ana), stretching from 2009 to 2014, attests to this fact. this problem has been reported broadly (howie et al., 2017: 11; govender & hugo, 2020; willenberg, 2018). when faced with a situation such as this one, it is imperative to look for solutions to the problem, and the integration of information communication technology (ict) is one of the possible solutions. the use of technology has become an unavoidable reality for human beings and schools (adnan et al., 2019). technological innovations have impacted all the facets of life (oke & fernandes, 2020). there are benefits associated with the phenomena. in addition to increased performance, garg (2021) mentions the following benefits: exposing new ways of learning; promoting inclusion; the development of higher order thinking skills, promoting collaboration, increasing the motivation to learn, differentiation of the curriculum, and preparing learners for knowledge economy. henderson (2020) highlights that ict in education will encourage individual learning, and develop life skills such as communication, leadership, productivity, research skills and online etiquette. these will arguably be some of the expected benefits of the 4th industrial revolution (4ir), and education 4.0 has been adopted to keep up with the needs of the 4th ir (hussain, 2018). this writer points out the following nine important expectations of education 4.0: universality of learning, personalising learning, granting students choices in terms of the methodology, increasing project-based learning, increasing experiential learning, data interpretation, alternative assessment methods, involvement of students in curriculum design, and independent learning. south africa, as a global player, has also seen the need to maximise the benefits of this phenomenon (munje & jita, 2020: 265). the integration of technology is now encouraged in all the subjects, not only those subjects that are classified as scientific or technological. unfortunately, the education sector has not been keen on adopting technology for pedagogic purposes (oke & fernandes, 2020). this concern is shared by munje and jita (2020: 266), who postulate that south african schools are behind in terms of integration of ict in education. this paper investigates the latter challenge with the focus on south african rural intermediate phase english first additional (efal) classrooms. in du plessis and mestry (2019), the challenges facing the rural schools and the reality that they are perceived as marginalised and under-resourced are outlined. if there are challenges in terms of integration of ict, this is probably where it will be more prevalent. additionally, a study such as this is necessitated by the actuality that not many studies have focused on the impact of 4ir in south africa (moloi & mhlanga, 2021: 7). the reports that have been reviewed are also not subject specific, meaning that they report at a generic level. 2. literature review contextual factors this discussion commences with this quotation presented by kayembe and nel (2019: 89): the human condition and social justice should be strongly considered. the ways in which technological advancement and shifting economic power impact on society at different socio-economic levels should be considered. the threats that exist in a world that is increasingly interconnected should be understood, and intercultural understanding, an abiding respect for freedom, and human rights should be promoted. intercultural and interpersonal skills should therefore be developed. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6823 2352023 41(2): 235-246 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6823 ntsala & seabela obstructions to the integration of ict in english first additional language lessons to a certain extent, this encourages the need to consider contextual factors when dealing with the implementation of ict. this is a necessary consideration for a country like south africa with an uneven socio-economic spectrum. in the school setup in south africa, schools are periodically expected to provide school improvement plans, and these plans accommodate the contextual factors. in that context, the contextual factors are the aspects that have a negative impact on teaching and learning. brownell et al. (2014: 36) provide an array of contextual factors that can be associated with special education teachers in literacy classrooms, such as moderate pedagogical knowledge, a lack of desire to learn new things, and a reluctance to implement policy. these can be attributed to the individual teacher. very close to this is the concept of identity, as many teachers feel that reform challenges their professionalism (salinas, 2017). in their study into motivation and contextual factors, hornstra et al. (2015: 365) argue that, regardless of whether the teacher is controlling or autonomous, the contextual factors teachers must deal with will also have an impact on their choices. in their work, richards et al. (2018: 774-780) discuss several possible factors that can be regarded as contextual, such as stress, burnout, support/empowerment, appreciation of students, morale, sense of community, student/parent apathy, and policies. because the integration of ict in the language classrooms may be a new phenomenon in some south african classrooms, it is important to illuminate such problems with the view to find alternatives or solutions. the inclusion of contextual factors in school improvement plans is aimed at finding solutions to the impediments at school and classroom level. this paper elucidates the challenges faced by rural eafl teachers in limpopo in their attempts to integrate ict, with the hope that such frustrations will be addressed. the 4th industrial revolution south africa, like most countries, is pursuing the prescripts of the fourth industrial revolution (4ir), which is driven by the coming together of physical and digital technologies. it is not something that has been predicted, but it is now alive in the country (kwinana & mohau, 2019: 14). 4ir is a term that was created by schwab, the founder and executive chairperson of the world economic forum, describing it as a technological revolution that will change the way people live, work and relate to one another (schwab, 2017: 1). it is the latest industrial revolution, focusing more on ict (kayembe & nel, 2019: 92). the first industrial revolution moved people from the handicraft economy to the use of water and steam power. the second industrial revolution brought with it the use of electric power to create mass production while, during the third industrial revolution, people used electronics and information technology to automate production. the 4ir added a layer on the third industrial revolution, which is the digital revolution that has been occurring since the middle of the previous century (kayembe & nel, 2019). south african children are exposed to technology; therefore, it needs to be used in schools to prepare learners so that they can fit in the world of 4ir. kwinana and mohau (2019: 15) emphasise that this can be achieved through the following: the involvement of politicians, policy makers and teachers to be fully equipped with relevant instruction and standardised curricula. the discussion introduced in the background section raises the argument that, for several reasons, some of these expectations may be difficult to achieve. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6823 2362023 41(2): 236-246 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6823 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) ict in a language classroom for some time, there has been a huge drive to integrate ict into classrooms (helmers, 2017). munje and jita (2020: 265) provide evidence that the south african government has long accepted the integration of ict as a necessity in the classroom. there is the belief that young people are very used to technology, to the extent that they may feel lost in a space without technology (hogenbirk, 2016). this, though, may not be the case for everybody in south africa, due to varying socio-economic conditions. the work by olatoye, nekhevha and muchonyerwa (2021) highlight the fact that the ict skills which learners accumulate will ultimately benefit them if, or when they reach a higher education level. it is believed that the introduction of technology will help to develop the literary skills for the 21st-century digital age (hogenbirk, 2016). what should be concerning for those in applied linguistics is that most of the discussions on the integration of ict in education are focused on stem subjects (carrim, 2022). however, there are some arguments in favour of the integration of ict in language classrooms (fariyah & fauziyah, 2018; floris, 2014: 139; huang & hong, 2015:175). in fact, this need was authenticated by unesco in 2007. as much as the integration of ict is portrayed as beneficial, evidence is that south africa has not managed to make significant gains in terms of the integration of ict in education. munje and jita (2020: 266) undertook a study to determine the impact ict has had in south african schools, and the verdict is that not much has been achieved. the study referred to was generic in terms of focus. gajek (2015: 1) undertook a study to determine how language teachers implement ict, but an important assertion by the author is that language teachers tend to shy away from technological projects. it must be mentioned that there is not much literature on the integration of ict on the teaching of efal in south africa; hence this paper raises challenges specific to the integration of ict in efal classrooms, with a specific focus on a rural limpopo school. 3. theoretical issues this paper is premised on connectivism as a guiding theory. connectivism is a relatively new theory, seeing that it can only be traced back to 2005 (western governors university, 2021). this is one of the theories for the digital age (downes, 2019: 113). connectivism is one of the learning theories that have been developed for the e-learning environment (goldie, 2016: 5). e-learning refers to the sharing of information and knowledge via different technology related channels (akhter, javed & javaid, 2021). this work by goldie highlights the need for broadness, multimodality, and interactions insofar as learning is concerned. these are some of the requirements that this study focused on. furthermore, there are eight principles related to connectivism, and the third one, which states, “learning may reside in non-human appliances”, resonates well with the discussions in this paper (picciano, 2017: 175). in a nutshell, this theory advocates the intensive integration of ict in the classroom. the discussions on the integration of ict in the language classrooms, as discussed above, resonate with this postulation. 4. research design and methodology this section expounds the methodological processes that were followed in collating and analysing the data, including the design limitations. all the processes were aimed at determining the extent of the integration of ict into the intermediate phase efal classroom. an interpretive paradigm guided this study, because the focus was on the individuals’ own interpretation, https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6823 2372023 41(2): 237-246 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6823 ntsala & seabela obstructions to the integration of ict in english first additional language lessons understanding and integration of ict in the intermediate phase efal classrooms (rahman, 2017: 103). in other words, it brought the researcher closer to reality (dean, 2018: 3). in resonance with the guiding paradigm, a descriptive case-study research design was selected to determine how teachers can work collaboratively to promote the integration of ict in the grade 4 efal reading classrooms. the study explored a bounded system (a single case study). in line with the selected design, qualitative research approaches were used to make connections in terms of how the participants experience the integration of ict in their efal classrooms (glesne, 2016). this approach provided the opportunity for researchers to interview and observe the participants. the focus of observations was on how teachers implement reading lessons, and how they prepare, in their own setting (creswell, 2013: 166). the participants were asked to outline how they integrate technology into their reading lessons, and the challenges they encounter. semistructured interviews focused on obtaining rich and detailed qualitative data from participants (castello-montoya, 2016: 811). purposive non-probability sampling was used. the aim was to select a case which would best help to answer the research questions (zapta-barrero & yalaz, 2018: 163). the school selected is the only one with a computer laboratory in the potgietersrus circuit in the mogalakwena district, limpopo province. from this school, a total of four grade 5 efal teachers formed part of this study. all these teachers have more than five-years’ experience as efal teachers. the data were mainly analysed thematically. the process of analysing data started by repeatedly reading through the interview transcripts and observation checklist to obtain an overall understanding (javadi & zarea, 2016: 36). trustworthiness was used to ensure the quality of the study. to achieve trustworthiness, the following four aspects were ensured: credibility, transferability, confirmability, and dependability (nieuwenhuis, 2020: 144-146). 5. ethical statement all necessary permissions were acquired from the university of the free state, the free state provincial department of education, and the school principals and participants. all participants signed consent forms. anonymity of the participants and confidentiality of the responses were strictly adhered to. 6. findings and discussions 6.1 poor pedagogical knowledge the first issue which needs to be highlighted is the fact that teachers have a problem with the teaching of reading. the statement below by one of the teachers serves as evidence: i am teaching english, but i don’t know how to teach reading. this is a most frustrating and challenging aspect. (t2) we lack instructional knowledge on how to teach vocabulary but, students also are having little vocabulary which might be caused by lack of attention during teaching and learning … (t3) https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6823 2382023 41(2): 238-246 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6823 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) this highlights a challenge which is not necessarily technical. experienced language teachers with more than five years’ experience should complete a reading lesson comfortably. this lack of expertise on the part of the teachers is a worrying factor because it has a direct impact on success in the classroom. the above scenario should be disturbing, as poor pedagogical knowledge is likely to impact negatively on the learners’ reading development. the integration of ict will not be a priority in a situation where the teachers are still struggling with the basics of effective teaching. it will be difficult to find additional strategies appealing when one is still struggling with the basics of teaching prescribed content. it is important that teachers possess knowledge about their subject, knowledge of how to teach at a general level, and knowledge of effective strategies to teach their subject (killen, 2015: 30). on this matter as well, teachers need to take some action. they need to improve themselves in line with the needs of their situation. gulton, hutauruk and ginting (2020) explicate an array of skills that teachers need to have, such as questioning ability, the ability to strengthen learning, varying leaning, ability to explain explicitly, and classroom management skills, amongst others. this signifies the need for teachers to be prepared to upgrade these skills, as knowledge is dynamic by nature. the western governors university website (2020: 2) raises an argument for a drive for self-improvement. according to this, teachers need to attend workshops and study further, as in-service training serves to do away with inadequacies in the teaching fraternity (osamwonyi, 2016: 83). 6.2 teachers’ lack of ict skills like the previous discussion, another major concern is with regard to ict skills and competency in the use of ict equipment. most of the teachers were born before technology. they cannot operate a computer. they don’t know how to use data projector. this is a serious challenge (t1). this quotation echoes the concerns raised by the other teachers. in fact, the observations prove that at this school, only one individual is competent in ict, and he is not even a language teacher. this individual is expected to assist all teachers across all subjects. according to schwab (2017: 3), changes are historic in terms of their size, speed and scope. kayembe and nel (2019: 92), when reporting on their research on the integration of ict in the classroom, indicate several challenges identified in adapting to the 4ir. these include pedagogical adaptation, teacher development, and increased funding for investment in resources and infrastructure for technological advancement. these pronouncements by kayembe and nel indicate that the challenges experienced by the participants are not limited to their area. the suggestions suggested earlier about the need for self-development may also suffice in this regard; however, it must be noted that the teachers working in rural areas like these participants may face additional hurdles in terms of expanding their knowledge and skills level. a simple aspect of movement or transport may be challenging. avenues in terms of training centres that offer the necessary skills may be limited. in addition, teachers complain that they do not find many texts that are in line with the policy document. for example: https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6823 2392023 41(2): 239-246 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6823 ntsala & seabela obstructions to the integration of ict in english first additional language lessons every time when i say they must look for a story, or when i look for a story, i do not find many stories on what the caps say we must read. i end up now making copies for the learners, or i scan one copy and project it. that is why most of us use the projector a lot. (t4) this may be a tangible concern, more so because the material on the internet is not uploaded based on a particular country’s curriculum. the texts on the internet may be relevant in terms of the grades and the phase but may not be relevant in terms of the prescribed themes. this may make it difficult to achieve meaningfulness in reading lessons. a question to all the participants after this statement was whether they knew about local publishers or organisations that publish reading material, and their response was a no. it is not guaranteed that these publishers will cater for all the prescribed themes, but because they are local, the likelihood of this happening is higher. another issue, which may be linked to poor competency, is that not much was taking place in terms of assessment and feedback. no observation by the teachers took place during the lessons. no form of feedback took place after the lessons. it was more like an exercise designed only to meet the requirements. it seemed as if the lessons which involved ict were just add-ons, and this should be a concern. jozwik and douglas (2017) postulate that assessment should not be ignored when ict is used, even with struggling readers. it is advisable that the methods of assessment like oral questioning, written tasks, and the use of tools such as observation sheets, checklists and rubrics should not be ignored. the reason for this is that the teachers should still measure performance against a set of objectives. as already pointed out, participants showed a lack of content and pedagogic knowledge, which is a common problem for most language teachers (siddiquah & salim, 2017). it can be argued that this limits their knowledge, or even their interest, in additional requirements such as ict. 6.3 competence of learners observations indicate that the learners in some rural areas are not very competent in terms of technological equipment. most of the time, the main activity for them was to search for information using ipads, but some of them struggled with this activity, even though visits to schools for this study took place after july. the expectation is that by this time learners should be familiar with all the processes, but that was not the case, because they could not operate the word program. another aspect that became obvious during the observations is that a significant number of learners flounder when reading on ipads, which may be a reason why searching for information was problematic for them. the above scenario raises the importance of helping learners to master the basics of ict before it can be integrated, as their computer literacy skills are needed to manipulate technological tools. for a person to benefit from a computer, that individual must communicate with it. a person should be able to read and respond, with actions, to some messages that the device may show. 6.4 inadequate computer applications another challenge noted during observations, and confirmed by the teachers is that the devices used at their school do not have the necessary language-related applications. this signifies a critical concern and a gap between what is expected and what is happening. for instance, dalton and grishan (2022: 4-14) advocate an evoc strategy, which is sub-divided https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6823 2402023 41(2): 240-246 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6823 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) into ten mini-strategies. all these mini strategies are aimed at the development of vocabulary. additionally, parenti and chen (2015), suggest the use of web 2.0, a technological tool which may improve reading fluency, particularly among struggling readers. furthermore, capodiceci et al. (2020) recommend several ideas that can develop various aspects related to comprehension. they mention that istart can promote self-explanation, schemata, understanding of scientific text. itss assists with identifying main ideas and classifying information. they point out that 3d readers and cacsr promotes metacognition and understanding of reading strategies. this discussion serves to highlight the presence of the relevant ict tools to use during reading lessons, and it also shows the extent to which the learners lose out when the relevant ict applications are not used during reading lessons. they do not get an opportunity to develop the competencies mentioned in the previous paragraph. this raises a need for teachers to search for information on these technological tools and applications and have discussions with their managers on how to source and use them. 6.5 limited access and poor network as the discussion on the resources has explicated, lack of resources is still one of the worst contextual factors for south african schools. the participants in this study also have concerns about the availability of ict equipment. we do not have enough resources. the school has twenty-five ipads, but not all learners can have access to use them … (t2) the entire school only has 25 ipads, which means they must be booked in advance. this limits the availability of devices to teachers and students. this has an impact on teaching and learning. in between opportunities to use devices, teachers must operate as usual. in addition to this poser, because the number of learners often amounts to more than the available number of ipads, they must share. the observation was that this also contributes to a delay in terms of understanding how to use technology. in other word, students may simply not have enough time to master the use technological devices. another disturbing observation is that the devices work well only when used closer to the school office, due to a weak signal strength. learners in classes further away have a problem with connectivity. in such cases, they mainly work offline. this could be mitigated by arranging classroom swaps with the teachers in classes closer to network points, but in some instances, this is not possible. the shortage of ict equipment is not a problem limited to the limpopo province. in the free state, for example, the department installed computer laboratories at some schools, and even provided electronic equipment. however, similarly, there is not enough equipment for the number of learners enrolled. unfortunately, in south africa, departments of education in various provinces are financially constrained. it will take some time before they are able to supply all the schools with adequate ict equipment. the schools are therefore expected to find ways to increase the amount of equipment available. depending on the quintile of the school, some may find this easy to achieve, while for other schools it will always be difficult because of socio-economic circumstances. in some areas, parents may not be able to assist schools to achieve all this. this impact of socio-economic circumstances may also be relevant to the aspect of poor connectivity because it can only be solved by changing network providers, or by buying a more powerful internet option. asssertions made do not necessarily exonerate schools from their fundraising responsibilities. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6823 2412023 41(2): 241-246 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6823 ntsala & seabela obstructions to the integration of ict in english first additional language lessons 6.6 issues of safety reports are rife of learners losing or breaking ipads, as well as the theft thereof. teachers at this school also seem to be worried. in my opinion, i am concerned about the safety of these ipads. what if learners drop them off? they are good and brought positive impact to teaching and learning, but the safety part of it is not satisfactorily. (t4) the teacher here is raising a possibility, but this may be based on knowledge of what has been going on around the country. the concern is also an indicator that there is no policy on the management of ict equipment. in addition, teachers seem to be responsible for the safety of gadgets, as the statement by t1 insinuates, … the issue of dropping them is the teacher’s responsibility … the above concern may also result in problems, signifying a possibly unfair situation that may discourage teachers from integrating ict devices into their lessons. schools should rather come up with measures to help safeguard devices. there must be a clear policy that will encourage learners to be responsible. knowing that a teacher will be held responsible for their irresponsible behaviour is not a good way to moralise learners. this is another aspect that schools and teachers should engage parents about. the parents should be aware that ict equipment should be kept safe, like all other learning support and teaching material. on the same note, they need to accept that parents will pay for the devices if their children damage or lose them. the importance of the ict equipment should be discussed with learners, for them to appreciate the privilege they are enjoying. 6.7 systemic issues the issue of loadshedding affects everybody, and teachers did raise it as a concern as well. the challenge with loadshedding is that it happens anytime and anywhere. when this happens, ict lessons are disrupted, because electricity in some form is required for ictrelated lessons. the assertions made on the shortage of resources highlight challenges in terms of funds and fundraising, but in cases like this, schools should consider fundraising, and for this initiative to succeed, they must engage robustly with the parent community. schools may consider using generators or installing solar power. 6.8 workload this is a rural school, but the number of learners is high. the teacher-learner ratio is not favourable, as one of the teachers indicated: we are having more subjects to teach with more students, so it’s really a challenge. (t3) this was noted during the observations as well, and the teachers seemed to struggle to deal with the situation. if teachers have too many subjects this is indeed problematic. the efal subject has four prescribed skills, and the intermediate phase teaching plans are loaded. having to teach other subjects in addition to a language subject makes things difficult. the fact that the teachers, by their own admission, are not competent in the target language also aggravates the problem. this infers that the quality of teaching and learning is compromised due to being overworked (dianabasi & ugochukwu, 2020 :3). all these realities combined may result in a situation where a teacher may be demotivated to attempt the lessons that involve ict. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6823 2422023 41(2): 242-246 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6823 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) having said that, teachers need to understand that over-crowdedness is a national challenge, if not international. there may be another cohort of schools that are overcrowded that are managing the situation better. they can approach these schools and identify how they do things differently. this will be in line with the principle of twinning, which is about teachers from different schools initiating collaborations that result in the sharing of expertise and resources. as already indicated in the discussion on poor competency, self-development is partly a teacher’s responsibility. 6.9 issues of power observations highlighted the actuality that in some instances there are issues of power at play. this became evident in some of the meetings which were observed, where the hod was involved. in some instances, teachers would simply agree to some of the decisions, even when they were not clearly in favour thereof. this may demotivate teachers. in situations where managers monopolise processes, organisational resistance is a reality (zanin, ryan & bisel, 2018). this means that teachers may deliberately avoid the whole issue of ict. for the benefit of the learner, in cases such as this it may be useful for fal teachers to share their objectives with their line managers. even if no maximum support is enjoyed, efal teachers can continue with what they are doing. that will be in line the theory of hope, which highlights the reality that problems should not necessarily discourage committed teachers from continuing with good deeds (huen et al., 2015). 7. limitations of the study as much as it is our conviction that this study is valuable, we must concede to the fact that it may be difficult to achieve the principle of generalisation, due to the sample size. selecting one school, and interviewing five teachers may not be enough, but it must be emphasised that in the selected region, this was the only school with a computer laboratory, at that time. the use of the interpretive paradigm and qualitative research methods did provide the desired results, to a large extent, but other researchers on the topic of ict in the efal classrooms, who are faced with a similar situation in terms of the population, can opt for a different research design, such as a quasi-experimental design. this will enable them to identify a particular variable and base research processes on it. 8. conclusions this paper highlights the reality that even though it is vital to promote the integration of ict in language education, it is also important to focus on the impediments. in this case, the very fact that only one school in a whole education district has a computer centre should be concerning. the government must do more in this regard. additionally, teachers have limitations in terms of ict usage, and it will be difficult for the prescripts of 4ir to be attained if this situation is left unresolved. as much as teachers have a professional obligation to upgrade their skills, departments of education should also play an important role in this regard. learners also require training on the use of gadgets such as mobile phones, tablets, laptops and desktops. the reality of limited resources can also not be left unresolved. to have enough resources necessitates fundraising in most instances, but schools in certain areas will not find it easy to raise funds. the department of education can use its resources to do that for the schools. unfortunately, schools will not be able to create ict material as easily as creating other teaching media. additionally, there is a need for policies at school https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6823 2432023 41(2): 243-246 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6823 ntsala & seabela obstructions to the integration of ict in english first additional language lessons level to safeguard ict equipment that has been secured already. the policies should factor in appropriate consequence management, to ensure that both learners and staff take good care of the ict equipment. references adnan, m., karim, a., karim, h., tahir, r., tahir, m., haniff, m., 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https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76861-8 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6823 https://doi.org/10.5430/wje.v7n6p1 https://doi.org/10.5430/wje.v7n6p1 https://doi.org/10.12973/eurasia.2017.00977a https://www.wgu.edu/blog/top-qualities-skills-good-teacher2001.html#close https://www.wgu.edu https://www.wgu.edu https://theconversation.com/south-africas-reading-crisis-focus-on-the-root-cause-not-the-peripherals-96129 https://theconversation.com/south-africas-reading-crisis-focus-on-the-root-cause-not-the-peripherals-96129 https://doi.org/10.1177/0893318917717640 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76861-8 _hlk114308837 _hlk116386522 303 research article 2020 38(2): 303-317 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) transformative conflict mediation in multi-faith schools in south africa abstract contradictions and contestations regarding the implementation of religion policies have become a worldwide phenomenon. research suggests an increasing number of costly and protracted court and legislative battles between schools and parents over religion in schools. in this article, i aim to highlight some of the conflicting issues that need to transform while implementing the national policy on religion and education of 2003 in selected south african schools. based on mediation theory, the study used individual interviews to gather data from twelve purposively selected school principals to investigate how they implemented the religion policy in their respective schools. the findings show that despite the implementation challenges of this policy, most of the school principals displayed the qualities of a transformative mediator by transforming conflicting religious interests of stakeholder groupings in their schools from destructive to constructive. i therefore recommend that universities should consider training school principals in the use of transformative mediation as a strategy to transform conflicts in schools as it holds potential benefits for fields such as education. keywords: conflict transformation, mediation, implementing policy change, religion in education, south africa 1. introduction in terms of section 15(2) of the constitution of the republic of south africa (hereafter referred to as the constitution), religious observances may be conducted at state or stateaided institutions, provided that (a) those observances follow rules made by the appropriate public authorities; (b) they are conducted in an equitable manner and (c) the attendance at them is free and voluntary (rsa, 1996a). section 16(2)(c) of the constitution further extends respect for and protection of the right to freedom of religion, reassuring everyone that they have “the right to freedom of expression”, although indicating that such a right may be “limited” if it extends to advocacy of hatred based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion. in line with the constitution, section 16(1) of the south african schools act (sasa) of 1996 (rsa, 1996b) vests the governance of every public school in its school governing body (hereafter sgb) and it may perform only such functions and obligations as specified in the same author: dr m.a. nthontho1 affiliation: 1faculty of education, university of pretoria doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38. i2.20 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(2): 303-317 published: 04 december 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9175-5318 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 3042020 38(2): 304-317 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) act. the act categorically allocates the professional management of the public school to the school principal (hereafter referred to as the principal), who is accountable to the provincial head of department (sec. 16 [3]). what this means is that the sgb of a school is responsible for the determination of its policies, for making recommendations on staff appointments and for its financial management, while the daily running of the school (professional management) resides with the principal and his/her school management team (smt). the irony in the national and provincial policy implementation process is that, school policies, whether language, admission or religion, must be developed within a potentially polarised situation, where various stakeholder groupings may want to influence the process and outcome. the policies cannot and may not be developed in a lacuna; they must be framed within the requirements of the constitution, existing legislation and with due attention to other policies or expectations of national and provincial departments of education and other interest groups (rsa, 1996b). it is important however, to mention that since the promulgation of sasa, potentially conflicting occurrences regarding not only parental powers but also the demarcation of governance and professional management roles and responsibilities in practice have been reported (xaba, 2004). key among these is the challenge of interpreting and translating national and provincial legislation and educational policies into school policies. this poses serious challenges for principals, especially in terms of their leadership roles (hallinger, 2010). the situation has not only led to protracted court cases but has also negatively affected the quality of education (heystek, 2011). 2. conflict and its origin conflict is inevitable in a school, similar to any social arena. putting into perspective implementation of policy in the south african school, conflict can manifest itself in at least three ways. first, separation of roles and responsibilities of the sgb (governance) and smt (management) of which the principal is a member in both structures, has potential to fuel conflict. second, like other human beings, members of the sgb, for instance, have diverse ideas, interests and goals, values, beliefs and opinions about the need for and nature of school governance (van der merwe, prinsloo & steinmann, 2003) and such differences have the potential to fuel conflict. the third and intra-conflict is with the principal (own emphasis added). in his/her position as the ex-officio of the provincial department of education (hereafter referred to as the department), the principal is accountable to both parties – the department and sgb. in this way, he/she finds himself/herself caught in the middle of the two: one with the power to dismiss him/her (the department) and the other in a position to undermine his/her authority and make his/her life miserable (the sgb) (clarke, 2007). for the purpose of this article and based on the illustration of conflict manifestations above, i view conflict as opposing ideas, goals, interests, perceptions or opinions within an individual or between parties through a behaviour or actions that weaken oneself or parties under play. conflict could have a positive and a negative effect on the policy implementation depending on the way it is led (okotoni & okotoni, 2003). it becomes negative (destructive) when it draws attention away from other important activities, undermines morale or self-esteem, polarises people and groups, reduces cooperation, increases or sharpens difference and leads to irresponsible and harmful behaviour, such as fighting, name-calling and so forth (dhiaulhaq et al., 2017; yasmi et al.. 2013). suspension of learners from schools because they are said to violate the school’s code of conduct in terms of religious observances including attire and symbols; denying admission of learners to schools because of their religious belief systems http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 3052020 38(2): 305-317 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 nthontho transformative conflict mediation in multi-faith schools in south africa and practices; forcing learners to observe religions other than theirs are few examples of the effects of destructive conflicts (see mec for education: kwazulu-natal v navaneethum pillay 2008 [1] sa 474 [cc]). conflict is positive (constructive) and is also referred to as “conflict transformation” when it results in the clarification of important problems and issues, generates solutions to problems, involves people in resolving issues important to them, promotes authentic communication, encourages cooperation between people and helps individuals develop greater understanding and/or additional skills (dhiaulhaqa, mccarthya & yasmib, 2018). for example, the principal, sgb and teachers agree on religious observance strategies that can fairly accommodate almost all religious beliefs represented in the school. according to reimann (2004) as well as bush and folger (2005), conflict is transformative when it promotes an opportunity for social change, aiming not only to stop the conflict but also to change the negative or destructive interaction to positive, constructive and humanising interaction by empowering parties and recognising shifts in their interaction. this then distinguishes “conflict transformation” from “conflict resolution” and “conflict management”. the former assumes that conflict is negative and should be resolved and ended without addressing the underlying causes of conflict while the latter comes with the assumption that conflict is complex and can never be resolved entirely; hence, the goal is to manage the conflict by avoiding destructive escalation and attaining positive outcomes for all parties (kriesberg, 2011; reimann, 2004). bush and folger (2005) and augsberger (1992) suggest three indications of a transformed conflict: (a) transforming attitudes: emergence of “new” perceptions among the conflicting parties, based on a commitment to view each other in a spirit of goodwill and mutual respect. (b) transforming behaviours: parties focus on collaborative behaviour, including in their communication, and commit to mutually beneficial actions. (c) transforming conflict: parties attempt to remove incompatibilities to pursue mutual gains. while some implementers follow conflict resolution, others opt for conflict management when implementing the religion policy in their schools. however, almost all principals in this study opted for conflict transformation with an understanding that the core aspect that they needed to transform was changes at the micro level (i.e. intrapersonal and interpersonal relationship) (dhiaulhaq et al., 2017). furthermore, in an attempt to transform conflict, change agents use a number of approaches including negotiation, mediation, arbitration, adjudication and coercion (yasmi et al., 2011; engel & korf, 2005). in this article, i consider mediation and its potential for conflict transformation. i base this decision on the premise that the study underpinning this article found transformative mediation helpful to the conflicting parties to transform conflict (engel & korf, 2005). similar studies also discovered transformative mediation as an effective tool not only for transforming conflict (bercovitch & gartner, 2006), but also for transforming social relationships and building peace (porter & bagshaw, 2009). what then is mediation and transformative mediation in particular? 3. transformative mediation: a promise for conflict transformation many scholars define mediation differently depending on a theorist’s point of view at a particular time. for example, scholars such as engel and korf (2005), wall et al. (2001) and moore (2003) understand mediation as an assisted negotiation process facilitated by a third party (or parties) that aims to assist the conflicting parties to find mutually acceptable solutions, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 3062020 38(2): 306-317 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) including by addressing the underlying causes of the conflict. from a slightly different point of view, bush and folger (1994) define mediation as a process in which a third party works with conflicting parties to help them change the quality of their interaction from negative and destructive to positive and constructive. for the purpose of this article, i follow the definition by bush and foger (1995) for the following reasons. first, some scholars associate negotiation with mediation whereas the two are different processes. scholars such as scanzoni (1979) and stevens (1958) see negotiation as a voluntary bargaining process whereby conflicting parties take the initiative to meet face-to-face to find a compromise. whereas dryzek and hunter (1987) see mediation as a form of a third-party intervention where a mediator facilitates conflict transformation without imposing any solution. additionally, some scholars believe that negotiation cannot be trusted for conflict transformation because of its weakness and unequal power to deal with complex and intense conflict (bercovitch & jackson, 2001). in contrast, mediation has the ability to facilitate collaborative integrative problem solving rather than adversarial distributive bargaining (fisher & ury, 1981). this serves as the reason why mediation is often the option where negotiation has failed (yasmi et al., 2010). lastly, research suggests that during the negotiation process, a protracted destructive conflict often generates mistrust, fear, hostility and other emotions that deter actors from taking part and that often result in failure of the process (katila, 2014). contrary to this, dhiaulhaq et al. (2017) point out that within the mediation field, transformational approaches are increasingly prominent for practitioners and scholars. my second reason is that, very often literature on mediation refers to a third “objective or neutral” party that is brought into the conflict situation to assist in its transformation (schellenberg, parks-savage & rehfuss, 2007; boulle, 2005; domenici & littlejohn, 2001). this is true for many of the different forms of conflict management. based on fullen’s (2007) claim that conflict transformation cannot be managed or controlled, but can merely be understood and led, i would, however, like to argue that only mediation ideally situates the principal as “an insider” within the sgb to perform the task of a mediator, provided that he/ she is well-trained in this strategy. i base my argument on the fact that in his/her position as the head of the school, an ex-officio member of the department as well as an official member of the sgb, the principal is in an ideal position to understand conflict transformation in the way the school experiences it. because of this, he/she stands in a good position to lead it in an amicable way. mediation serves two different purposes namely “problem-solving” and “transformative” mediation. the transformative approach is often put in contrast with a “problem-solving” or “settlement” approach, which emphasises generating a “resolution” in order to settle the conflict. in contrast, the transformative mediation model does not put resolution or consensus as the immediate priority (dhiaulhaq et al., 2017). instead and, as put by bush and folger (1994), for transformative mediation to reach “settlement of conflict” is only at most an incidental success measure. what counts most is empowering the parties (empowerment) and getting them to have a genuine appreciation of the other’s predicament (recognition), and transformative rather than problem-solving mediation has the potential to offer such. in other words, with the two capabilities (empowerment and recognition), transformative mediation does not only aim to transform conflict, but also to foster long-term relationships and cooperation (katila et al., 2014). in order for these capabilities to manifest during the transformative mediation process, bush and folger (2005) advocate for a “relational” rather than “individualism” framework http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 3072020 38(2): 307-317 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 nthontho transformative conflict mediation in multi-faith schools in south africa because a relational framework “sees the world as containing *both* the plurality of individual selves and the (potential) unity made up of the network of their relationships. it is therefore important to point out that the analysis of principals’ narratives as presented in this article embraces the relational and leaves aside the individualism framework. the next section then presents the methodology followed to gather principals’ narratives after which i present and discuss the findings. 4. methodological framework 4.1 research design the study followed a phenomenological research design as informed by the qualitative research approach to explore the ways in which principals mediate religion education in their schools. i conducted individual interviews to solicit information from the principals regarding their experiences in implementing the religion policy in their schools (saldaña, 2015). research evidence suggests that not much is done on experiences of principals implementing the religion; hence, the reason behind the study employing a phenomenological research design. i intended to study the experiences that shape principals’ thoughts, actions and choice of strategy when implementing democratic policies such as the religion policy (grey, 2014). 4.2 selection of participants i purposefully selected twelve principals as the sample for the study to avoid generalised findings. while this sample size may seem small, it is important to note that in qualitative research the focus is generally not on sample size, but rather on sample adequacy. the adequacy of my sample was justified by my reaching a point of sampling saturation (fargher & dooley, 2012), i.e. a point where no new information could be obtained from further data. qualitative researchers regard that as an indication of quality (guest, 2006). one occurrence of a piece of data, or a code, is all that is necessary to ensure that it becomes part of the analysis framework. frequencies are rarely important in qualitative research, as a single occurrence of the data is potentially as useful as many, in understanding the process behind a topic (ritchie, lewis & elam, 2003). qualitative research is concerned with meaning and not with making generalised hypothesis statements (crouch & mckenzie, 2006). since the principals were postgraduate students at a university, they participated in their private capacity and not as spokespersons of specific schools (mcmillan & schumacher, 2014). in other words, they narrated their stories as they experienced the implementation of the religion policy and not in accordance with the expectations of their provincial departments of education. the principals (a) were engaged in leadership and management training at postgraduate level; b) had served in the departments of education for at least fifteen years; c) had been exposed to various religion policies prior to 1994, post-1994 and post-2003; and d) were from various religious orientations as well as language and cultural groupings. although their schools and school administration were not the focus of this study, it transpired that the principals worked in public and independent schools located in the northern regions of south africa, namely gauteng (seven), limpopo (two), mpumalanga (two), and kwazulu-natal (one). despite the fact that the sample was from one region of the country and that can count as a limitation of the study, it provided a detailed perspective into the principals’ distinct leadership backgrounds and experiences. the study population was representative in http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 3082020 38(2): 308-317 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) terms of gender, race and religion. principals in this study came from three religions namely hinduism (one), islam (two) and christianity (nine), and they comprised nine males and three females, two whites, one coloured, two indians and seven blacks. however, it must be clear that the participants’ gender, province, historical origin or the type of school (secondary or primary) were not central to their selection. 4.3 ethics considerations i obtained approval from the faculty ethics committee to involve the principals and postgraduate students in the study. in my position as the research assistant in the academic department to which participants were enrolled, i had access to the database of postgraduate students and was able to send invitations to those who were principals and deputy principals. i considered deputy principals worthy to participate, since they carry quite a similar mandate as principals. i then directed invitations to ten principals who had indicated their willingness and availability to participate in the study. realising that e-mail would most likely not produce an adequate number of participants, i had to contact those that i knew to be principals directly, and two more agreed to participate in the study. 4.4 data collection i used narrative interviews to collect data, and i personally recorded, transcribed, analysed and interpreted principals’ stories. usually, the society either debates and discusses religious issues on a sentimental level or elevates them to litigation through the courts, as i stated in the introduction. that is to say, we rarely explore the subject scientifically. in an innovative approach, i used narrative inquiry to examine and understand principals’ experiences of religion that were without emotion or sentiment. understanding previous religious experiences of principals in this study allowed me an “insider view” that resulted in the illumination of real people in real settings through the “painting” of their stories (haydon, browne & van der riet, 2018; wang & geale, 2015). thus, i was able to probe further what principals like or dislike about the religion policy (farrell, 2012). 4.5 data analysis and trustworthiness of the results it is important to mention that i initially identified categories that enabled me to collect and analyse, interpret and make conclusions about the data. the categories included the principals’ understandings of their mediating role in the implementation of the religion policy (babbie, 2014). i therefore transcribed the audio-recorded interviews and analysed the transcriptions in terms of the mentioned categories. from this, themes such as policy development, learner admissions and educator appointment, teaching about religion and religious observances emerged. i used peer briefing to audit the raw data (audio-recorded interviews), interview transcripts, interview guides, list of participants and their profiles, as well as my field notes throughout the study period to validate their accuracy and authenticity. in addition, i sent transcriptions to the participants, asking them to correct factual errors. this ensured that i represented them and their ideas accurately (major & savin-baden, 2010). finally, my promoter submitted the study to the similarity checker called “turnitin”, as per the university’s requirements, to ensure its originality. having presented the methodology carried out in the study that underpins this article, i then share the findings as i contextualise them within the transformative conflict mediation. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 3092020 38(2): 309-317 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 nthontho transformative conflict mediation in multi-faith schools in south africa 5. findings in presenting the findings in this study, it is important to reiterate that the south african schools act of 1996 does not deal with religion in education, religion education or religious instruction in proper detail. for instance, the act does not specify how schools should respect, protect, promote and fulfil the rights contemplated in sections 15(1) and 31(1) of the constitution. it also does not define “religious observances”; thus, leaving the door open to schools (legal persons) and their sgbs (their brains) to give meaningful content to the standards entrenched in national legislation, the constitution and international human rights instruments. in situations such as those presented above, conflict is highly evident. it is therefore within these perimeters that i find the principal, being an “in-sider”, to be the best-positioned person to carry the role of transformative conflict mediator. their interpretation and understanding of their role as they navigate within the policy implementation process is therefore presented below. the principals in this study employed diverse strategies as they implemented the religion policy in schools and they attached a few reasons to that. while some blamed the lack of training from the department, others put fault on inadequate training. the lack of the necessary skills could be the reason for this challenge, which was claimed by principal one: “the policies just come and there are no people to unpack them”. the narratives of the other participants indicate that, “we were trained. for instance, we were told what was required of us and how to go about doing what we were expected to but we chose to ignore it”, principal two stressed. according to principal six, the facilitators of the courses they attended told them “everyone has the right to freedom of religion, but practically, when we come to the school, we would want learners to practise christianity”. ironically, these principals sensed the conflict fuelled by the department with this policy. in a way, they tried to ignore it. releasing learners from islam faith became a challenge to some principals in this study. principal nine stated, “one of the completely strange things to me was the request by parents that we had to release 35 learners from the islamic faith to leave for mosque at 12:00 on fridays”. however, with others, this was never a challenge, all they needed was a confirmation letter from a parent. it was expressed by principal three that “unless the parent comes and explains to us in a form of a letter from mosque that the learner is actually a committed member of the islamic faith and he should be permitted to attend mosque, we would not release such a learner to leave for mosque”. by interpretation, this practice may not be accommodative to islam on the one side while protective on the other. according to principal seven, “releasing learners early on fridays to attend mosque became a problem in terms of teaching and learning because there was no cover up time of activities they missed”. in this way, while they recognised diverse religious beliefs in schools, these principals protected and promoted learners’ right to education. however, it is imperative to mention that incidences where learners and staff had to attend school assemblies and occasions such as opening and closing of gatherings where only christian devotions, for instance, were observed, were evident. principal eight admitted, “we would emphasise the point of assembly attendance”. this approach was dependable on parents’ expression though. “unless there are cases where a parent would tell us that his child must be excused from the assembly, all learners had to attend,” emphasised principal ten. contrary to this open policy, this study discovered that at some of these principals’ schools, it became a problem for learners from the islamic faith, for instance to practise their religions by means of the religious apparel. in principal five’s school for example, “if learners would come http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 3102020 38(2): 310-317 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) wearing muslim hats, we would call and tell them to stop wearing such hats with the aim of discouraging them from influencing others”. in trying to avoid the destructive conflict that could erupt due to mismanagement of multi-faith observances in schools, principals in this study promoted singular religious beliefs while they prohibited the others. as they played their support role in the development of the religious observances policy, principals continued to meet with conflicts that called for their mediation attention. as principal nine, for instance, guided the sgb that they had to indicate in the policy that religious observances should be free and attendance to them should be voluntary, the sgb said, “no, no, no, wait, what are you actually saying? in terms of our school code of conduct, all learners must attend the assembly regardless of what they and their parents believe in”. in order to avoid destructive conflict, some principals would accept the policy as adopted by the sgb but implemented it in an amicable way. for instance, they would excuse educators from attending and/or conducting morning assembly. principal seven pointed out that “educators are told when they are appointed at the school that they are welcome to arrive at school five minutes later if they are uncomfortable with the way morning assemblies are dealt with”. similarly, principal eleven indicated, “if an educator is not comfortable with the conducting of the assembly, s/he must report [it]. although his/her name remains on the duty roster, one smt member stands in for him/her”. in order not to deviate from the adopted religion policy of the school and not to call for conflict between stakeholder groupings in schools, other principals implemented the policy as agreed. however, if they see that the preferred mode of dealing with religious observances has hiccups or brings conflicts, “we bring the matter back in a forum. we reassess, we amend and then we continue. that is why the policies are not constant but, evolving depending on what is happening to the school illustrated the principal”, principal six articulated. principal twelve reiterated this approach, we once gave the committee member from the islamic faith an opportunity to conduct religious observances at the assembly on the argument that there are also muslim children in our school, but it was not appreciated by both learners and members of staff. you could just see from their response that they do not enjoy it as they do with christianity. we then had to discontinue. it is apparent from these findings that while they were confronted with situations that required their best possible conflict mediating skills, principals in this study demonstrated their willingness and ability to mediate them in diverse ways ensuring that they do not compromise the smooth running of the schools. in the section that follows, i discuss the findings. 6. discussions in discussing these findings, it is crucial to point out that depending on the context to which it is applied, mediation can take different pathways or strategies in addressing conflicts (lee & teh, 2009; callister & wall, 2004). as i discuss these findings, i map the different ways in which principals conceptualised and approached the implementation of the religion policies of their schools (as presented above) by paying particular attention to two capabilities of transformative mediation namely “empowerment” and “recognition” as suggested by bush and folger (1994). it is within these perimeters that i carried out the analysis of principals’ narratives. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 3112020 38(2): 311-317 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 nthontho transformative conflict mediation in multi-faith schools in south africa 6.1 empowerment: a transformative conflict mediation tool according to bush and folger (1994, 2005) “empowerment” improves the capability of the conflicting parties by enabling them to handle and make better decisions on their conflict problems. that is, they are able to clarify their goals, options and preferences as well as to communicate and negotiate these with the opposing party. it transpired from the principals’ narratives that as the department of education introduced the religion policy, schools received copies without further guidance on how to implement it. “the policies just come and there are no people to unpack them,” principal one said. with or without clear direction of religion policy implementation in schools, it became evident that conflict regularly occurred between the department as policy initiator, sgbs as policy developers at school level and principals as implementers of the policy. realising a need to strengthen capacity in this regard (dhiaulhaq et al., 2017), it is important to mention that measures that some of the principals in this study used to attend to the conflicts are amicable and transforming. for instance, in another principal’s school, if they saw that the preferred mode of dealing with religious observances caused hiccups or conflicts, they would: bring the matter back in a forum. we reassess, we amend and then we continue. that is why the policies are not constant but evolving, depending on what is happening to the school (principal six). by enhancing communication and building consensus, the approach helped prevent unnecessary disruptions and tensions while generating more technically sound policy implementation plans that drew upon the variety of expertise and knowledge within the school community and beyond (leach & pelkey, 2001). in this way, the conflicting stakeholder groupings agreed on and put in place a procedure that could be used as a platform to address, maintain and prevent conflict in future. this approach, according to mitchell (2002), is one of the important mechanisms needed to ensure that conflict transformation can be sustainable. one other aspect of importance with the sgbs is that most parent governors (parents who are sgb members) are not educated, and that those who are educated do not have the time or necessary skills to carry out their functions (xaba, 2011). besides their level of education, “not all the parents understand what was meant by the new approach of the sgb because they were used to the old school committees which were not so democratically elected”, emphasised principal three. when faced with the challenge of sgb members’ lack of the necessary skills to execute the mandate of the department, some principals became advisors and explored alternative options, when necessary, providing suggestions to the sgb, especially when the sgb could not propose any mediation strategy themselves (dhiaulhaq, gritten & de bruyn, 2014). in all this, they would do everything to ensure that the conduct of the sgb and the department was lawful, fair and reasonable (joubert & prinsloo, 2009). in fact, one of the principals took the initiative to find the right representation (i.e. members from diverse religious backgrounds) in the candidates coming through for sgb portfolios, regardless of religion. this is what principal four said, “if i see that there is not really a good representation in the candidates coming through, i would phone a particular parent and say, ‘i know you can add value to the governing body of the school, don’t you want to make yourself available…?’” in this way, members with a shortage of the necessary skills would benefit from those with them. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 3122020 38(2): 312-317 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) the principals’ narratives indicate that the life orientation (lo) educators in their schools did not give religion education the attention it required. one reason for this was educators’ lack of knowledge of religions other than christianity as well as resources. “in most cases, educators are knowledgeable about christian matters but not that of other religions because most of them are christians”, principal seven explained. principal two echoed, “honestly, there are no materials to support the teachings except that you will have content in the textbook”. in addition to a lack of resources in schools, ferguson and roux (2003) remind us that the majority of public schools officially based their religion education programmes on bible education (mono-religious christianity) until 1997. this implies that the majority of educators and parent governors in public schools are products of schools that exposed them to either one religion only or to no religion at all, with some schools having eliminated religion education from the school’s curriculum (ferguson & roux, 2003). this scenario is enough to perpetuate conflict amongst parent governors and educators as well as between these stakeholder groupings and the department. admitting that each religion is worth learning about, other principals became resource providers and secured support material or resources as well as creating staff development opportunities where their educators lacked skills and knowledge (dhiaulhaq, gritten & de bruyn, 2014). in addition to the prescribed supporting material for religion education by the department, “we have also organised a publisher who provides us with additional support material (i.e. cds, dvds and textbooks) for the subject area”, said principal five. considering the religiously diverse composition of his school and the possibility that some of the religious leaders might be unavailable, principal eight recalled, “on several occasions, i invited and allowed the invitation of different religious leaders to the school to give the insights of their religions to learners and staff”. in so doing, these transformative conflict mediators had their eyes and ears open as they searched for opportunities to increase stakeholder groupings’ clarity about or skills in areas of need (bush & folger, 1994). 6.2 recognition: a transformative conflict mediation tool as bush and folger (1994, 2005) put it, “recognition” as a transformative conflict mediation tool enables parties to see and understand the other person’s point of view. meaning, to understand how they define the problem and why they seek the solution that they do. according to dhiaulhaq, gritten and de bruyn (2014), it is crucial to understand conflict issues and the context when addressing the conflict. in their position as official members of the sgb and ex-officio members of the department, the principals in this study were aware of the religious changes that came about with the adoption of the country’s 1996 constitution. some of the changes they mentioned were that schools might not refuse the admission of learners and/or appointment of educators on religious grounds (rsa, 1996a, 1996b). based on these changes, their religiously oriented schools (schools with a religious ethos) “appointed educators and admitted learners despite their faith”, expressed principal four. the narratives of these principals also indicate that their schools, despite their status of being of christian character, allowed appointees and learners from other religions to excuse themselves from morning assemblies (van der walt, 2011). they would also “allocate a classroom for learners to observe their religions”, as principal nine indicated and “permit muslim learners to leave school early to attend mosque on fridays at 12:00”, extended principal twelve. principal seven pointed out that in her school, when they appoint educators, they would tell them “you are welcome to arrive at school five minutes later if they are uncomfortable with http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 3132020 38(2): 313-317 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 nthontho transformative conflict mediation in multi-faith schools in south africa the way morning assemblies are dealt with”. in the same vein, principal eleven indicated that, “if an educator is not comfortable with the conducting of the assembly, he/she must report [it]. although his/her name remains on the duty roster, one smt member stands in for him/her”. it is important to point out that in fulfilling the role of transformative conflict mediators, principals acknowledged the diversity that existed among learners and staff in terms of religious and cultural backgrounds (tam, 2010). as such, these principals charted a direction that convinced stakeholder groupings that it was time to change (moloi, 2005). it is important to note that principals in this study did not cite religion as a factor that had an influence on deciding who could play a role in the sgb. in fact, this study revealed that most of the sgbs had diverse religious representation in leadership portfolios (i.e. chairperson) (naidoo, 2005). based on these insights, i can argue that the schools led by most principals in this study demonstrated a commendable level of religious recognition. that is, they played the role of transformative conflict mediators and that made them agents of change (bush & folger, 1994). they appointed sgb members from diverse religious backgrounds to reflect the acknowledging nature of their schools. as principal five put it: “my previous chairperson of the governing body was a hindu and his wife a muslim. he was very happy with the way we dealt with religious matters at school”. principals in this study did not only recognise learners and staff in their initiatives to transform conflicts in the process of religion policy implementation. parents were also highly recognised. while learners’ attendance of school assemblies and occasions such as opening and closing of meetings where only christian devotions were observed was evident, this approach depended on parents’ expressed wishes. “unless there are cases where a parent would tell us that his child must be excused from the assembly, all learners had to attend”, principal ten underlined. furthermore, while allowing learners to leave school early to attend mosque on fridays, all they needed was a “confirmation letter from the parent that the learner was ‘a committed muslim’”, highlighted principal three. these principals did not only care for the safety of the learners, but they also recognised and accommodated islamic faith (sulaiman, 2016; fatima, 2014). all-in-all principals in this study could be described to be “religiously sensitive” in that they did not only try to understand their own religious belief systems but also encouraged other stakeholder groupings to better understand and respect religious views and beliefs of others (dhiaulhaq, gritten & de bruyn, 2014). based on the preceding discussions, i infer that most of the principals in this study understood and interpreted (a) the aim behind the religion policy; (b) their mediation role in the implementation process and, more importantly, (c) that as transformative conflict mediators in multi-faith schools, they are obligated to transform conflicts that erupt because of hotly contested policies. however, more often than not, their previous experiences – and not their theoretical knowledge of policy acquired through training – informed their decisions and practices. 7. limitations of the study for the purpose of this study, the six important criteria used in the selection of participants resulted in certain limitations to the research. the first of these was that, in accordance with qualitative research principles, it was important to purposefully sample participants, principals in this case, who had experience of the religion in education policies prior to and after 1994. selected principals were therefore typically more mature and middle-aged. the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 3142020 38(2): 314-317 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) second limitation was the fact that all of the participants were students from one south african university and thus predominantly from a specific region, the northern region of the country, which could limit the findings. third, since more than 70% of people in south africa belong to the christian faith, it was expected that christians would possibly also dominate the sample group. last, but not least, my position as a student with insufficient time and resources could not allow me enough time in the field to really get to know participants. 8. conclusion despite the practical challenges that school principals encountered in the implementation of the religion policy, they demonstrated confidence, openness and generosity in developing the identity of their schools as transformative conflict mediators. in striving to maintain this status, they displayed the reasonable amount of empowerment by making decisions and acting on them while they recognised the interests and opinions of stakeholder groupings from a religious “other”. i therefore have a strong belief that the capabilities of transformative conflict mediation at school level were made possible by the fact that the principals in this study were “insiders”. they understood the cause of the conflict since they lived and experienced it themselves and they were present to monitor the situation. 9. recommendations i therefore recommend proper and adequate training for principals in order to assist the state’s attempt to facilitate the implementation of policies fraught with tension. these policies may pose moral dilemmas in schools regarding people’s understanding and expression of spirituality, diversity, morality and human nature. after all, policies are meant to bring harmony 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conflicts over forests: perspectives from southeast asia. forest policy econ. 33: 21–27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. forpol.2012.05.001. yasmi, y., kelley, l. & enters, t. 2011. forest conflict in asia and the role of collective action in its management. capri working paper. ifpri 102: 1−25. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.20 https://doi.org/10.2307/2065133 https://doi.org/10.2307/1884190 https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v31n3a543 https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002701045003006 https://doi.org/10.1177/0022002701045003006 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnss.2015.04.014 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnss.2015.04.014 https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v31n2a479 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2012.05.001 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2012.05.001 transformative conflict 5perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 searching for a “pedagogy of hope”: teacher education and the social sciences m ic h a el sa m u el faculty of education, university of k w azulu-natal, south a frica samuelm@ ukzn.co.za i analyse m odule outlines within a particular school of social sciences located in a faculty of education, and uncover the evolving systems of teaching social sciences in a teacher education curricu lum . t he data are analysed through two theoretical lenses: firstly, through the lense of m odels of teacher education and professional developm ent, and secondly, through the lense of m ulticultural and multi disciplinary studies. the analysis reveals that a new language around social sciences is still in the ea rly stages of developm ent, drawing its m ain referencing from the official policy of the national c urriculum statement. unable to develop an independent new language, the social sciences in teacher education tend to capitulate to external dom inant forces. there is little evidence of engaging with a critical discourse around the potential of teacher edu cation, resulting in a perpetuation of an applied science notion of professional growth. the juxta posing o f existing disciplinary boundaries constitutes the character of the delivery of the social sciences. i point to a “pedagogy of hope” which focuses on the future rather than on the present status of marginalisation of the social sciences in a teacher education curriculum . the paper offers a way to develop a “creole”, a language and a discourse around the social sciences in general, for teacher education in particular. k eyw ords: multi cultural education; multi disciplinarity; social sciences; sociolinguistics; teacher education curriculum; teacher professional development t he birth and death of languages is a well researched phenomenon in the field of sociolinguistics (b atibo, 2005; crystal, 2000; pride & holmes, 1972). social, political, cultural and economic factors coincide and collide as certain languages develop ascendancy and others become margina lised. in this paper i attempt to explore the ways in which teacher educators in the social sciences engage with developing a (new) language to talk about the courses they offer in an undergraduate initial teacher education curriculum. t he focus is on how this language relates to the existing discourses which surround teacher education reform in south africa. competing languages interact with each other in the formation of the new language of teacher education and the social sciences. t he language that teacher educators use to describe their curriculum reflects these competing influ ences in regard to the identity of the social sciences in the context of teacher education pedagogy. i aim to record this emergent language from a sam pled teacher education institution case study, namely, the u niversity of k wazulu n atal (uk zn ), faculty of education, and to comment on the prospective agenda for teacher education and the social sciences. languages, prime carriers of cultural history and heritage, are never born in a neutral vacuum, absent from the issues of conquest. in this paper therefore i record the self declared areas of focus of the social sciences teacher education curriculum at uk zn , and embed, perhaps unconsciously, elements of the contested and ‘conquested’ nature of curriculum development in teacher education. the lens of teacher education t he first lens through which to analyse the discourse of social sciences teacher education draws from conceptual models of teacher education. it is acknowledged that the practice of teacher edu cation might reflect a permutation of models: such variance occurs both across and within different learning sites, specialisations and pedagogies of initial teacher education programmes. h ence, the models are offered as tools for thinking about the phenomenon of how professional learning and teacher development occur within the teacher education curriculum. i choose to reflect on four broad models: nam ely, the master apprenticeship model, the applied-science model, the reflective6 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 practitioner model, and the socially critical-reflective-practice model (see m inisterial committee on t eacher education (m ct e), 2005 for a detailed elaboration of the strengths and limitations, divergences and overlaps of such conceptual modelling of teacher education). t he first model, the master-apprenticeship model, suggests that a novice teacher learns best through behavioural modelling, through imitating an expert teacher. t he process of acquiring tea cher competence would be through the master making overt (through demonstration or explanation, usually oral), the procedures for executing targeted practice. t he apprentice mimics these proce dures in simulated or real future contexts. t he dominant model of teacher education (more correctly “teacher training”) in south africa prior to the demise of apartheid, was the applied-science model. t his model is also dominant in other professions, where it is believed that novice practitioners must first learn the theoretical basis of the discipline, and then seek contexts within which they will enact and apply the theory in practice. t he model presumes that knowledge of the discipline base will provide the foundation for practice (lewin & stuart, 2003). t he reflective-practitioner model of teacher education, on the other hand, attempts to draw resources from within the teachers themselves. t rue to its interpretivist and constructivist roots, the belief within this model is that the novice practitioners can expose the ingredients for alternate improved practice through personal self reflection. it seems to me that teacher education is thus seen as an extension of self development, as the novices see themselves and their classroom practices through deliberate planning, acting, o bservation and reflection cycles. t he tradition of “action research” in which teachers explore cycles of new forms of action characterises this model (eg gleston, 1979; elliot, 1985). finally, the critical-reflective-practice model of teacher development recognises that teaching, schooling and education are implicated in establishing and maintaining particular notions of power and hierarchy within society in general through the forms of practice of schooling. t he model seeks to develop teachers to understand the power laden ness of their actions and the nature of the quality of social justice meted out within school and classroom contexts. critical reflective practitioners are thus expected to seek better forms of social justice through their actions and practice in their specific contexts (lewin, samuel & sayed, 2003). any curriculum of teacher education, including that of social sciences, could be subjected to an analysis using these models or permutations of the models. m ost institutions reflect divergences between the official declared model of teacher education (as contained in the faculty’s handbooks), the academic staff’s espoused, declared version (as revealed perhaps in interviews), and the expe rienced curriculum (as students report its enactment). in this paper i choose to focus largely on the officially declared curriculum, i.e. what module designers declare in writing publicly as their espoused structure, outcomes, elements and assessment within their module or course outlines. understanding disciplinarity a second lens to be used in this paper focuses notions of disciplinarity. recently published literature in education seems preoccupied with the ways to deal with a wide spectrum of clashes across cultural, racial, national and religious boundaries as the world increasingly evolves into a global village. new forms of mobility into the world of others, more specifically, enable many people to relatively easily cross boundaries, something denied to previous generations. t hrough technology or even physical transportation, the new generation of learners in the schooling and education system is able to enter into the spaces and lives of others. t his trend has sparked a growing literature which attempts to explore notions of ‘multicultural education’ (sleeter, 1995; 1996). in this paper, i will point only to the following forms of “border crossings”: juxta-culturalism, fusion, transdisciplinarity and critical, restorative multiplicity. i regard these as a possible range on the con tinuum of possible conceptions of ‘multi cultural’ or ‘multi disciplinary’ education. juxta-culturalism was created in south africa by the apartheid government, as it believed in the need to promote cultures alongside each other as separate, contained entities. in this context, the different cultural worldviews of different groups of people evolved. in south africa, this form of cultural education was organised alongside the marker of racial categorisation, based on a racialised 7perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 interpretation of hierarchies across different peoples. g ood education was interpreted to promote these separate worlds, which could exist alongside each other. o f course, other forms of apartheid found within many countries beyond south africa, could be organised along class lines: where members of society with different role functions in relation to keeping the economy productive, were afforded different cultural notions of what education entailed. each separate gro up was provided with interpretations of education that operated in juxtaposition to each other. some even tried to argue for a ‘separate but equal’ philosophy to justify the borders between different education models for different groups (of course, these juxtapositions are also not devoid of notions of power). such juxtaposition could take the form of separate and/or interactive dialogue, as different ‘cultural systems’ co existed. w ithin a “fusion” ethos, the campaign of educationalists is seen to seek the blending of diffe rent forms to create a new form, drawing on both cultural worlds. t his fusion may be argued to have quantitative or qualitative elements from both the intersecting cultures. fusion has the possibility of producing a new culture if it is, itself, taken to be an accepted form of intercultural life. it draws from source cultures and aims to develop a new target culture, and contains elements of both cul tures. pavis (1992), for example, uses the image of an hourglass which funnels through a narrow aperture, the transition to the new order. such transitions are usually abrasive, painful and demand ing as experiences of the losses of the “source culture” come to be reported. as the new “target culture” (in the lower half of the hourglass) is formed, it resists essentialising and begins another cycle of reformation in new attempts at inversion, to begin another cycle of reformulation (see samuel, 2001). cultural formation is thus an ongoing re fusion. w ithin the terrain of transdisciplinarity, the attempt is to pay attention to how one disciplinary base (culture) transports itself into another discipline (culture). t hese two disciplines or cultural worlds may not necessarily have anything in common, but they are deliberately brought to bear on each other. w ithin a critical restorative multiplicity, the intention of intercultural communication is to foreground notions of seeking better forms of social justice in the interactive platforms of the two intersecting cultures (disciplines). t he emphasis in this form of multiculturalism or multi disci plinarity, is that it has a healing dimension, which actively seeks ways of addressing iniquitous power. it could be regarded as a “pedagogy o f forgiveness” (w aghid, 2005; 2006; 2007), a “pedagogy of possibilities” (v olmink, 2008) or a “pedagogy of hope” (v ithal, 2008). t hese models of pedagogy clearly locate themselves within a critical and post modern discourse. v ithal (2008) argues that a “pedagogy of hope” includ es a recognition of the tensions and conflicts which are embedded in any teaching and learning situation. b y surfacing these tensions, a potential for new forms of dialogue are created in complementarity with the conflicts. bringing together the conflicts and dialogue allows for the possibility of reaching new forms of social justice, of being and of new hope. t he purposes of this exploratio n are to question what notions of multiculturalism/multidis ciplinarity exist within the social sciences discourse of teacher education (figure 1). data production and research context in this paper i draw on the discourse aro und social sciences in teacher education from only one source of data in one context. t his is thus a case study of emerging attempts to define a new language within the teaching of the social sciences. t he data were collected as a routine quality as surance data gathering experience, which reqiures staff members in a teacher education programme to submit to the discipline co ordinator, head of school, qualification co ordinator and deputy dean, the specific course/m odule outlines which inform the delivery of their modules in an initial profes sional teacher education (ipet) teaching programme. the module outlines are presented to ipet students at the commencement of the module to frame the terms of reference for the delivery and assessment of the module, and constitute a public document of the faculty. t he data were gathered from one school in the u k zn , namely, the school of social sciences education (sse), in 2008 and i hereby acknowledge the contribution made by the authors of the module outlines as co contributors to this paper via the data they made available. 8 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 it is recognised that these data represent a limited set of what may be regarded as the social sciences. it is also recognised that the organisation of what constitutes the social sciences reflects the historical setting up of this faculty into a particular combination of disciplines, after the merger of a former college of education and two universities, including staff. t his merger suggests that interpretations of social sciences education may be symptomatic of historical governance issues of the newly formed institution, rather than disciplinary considerations about the identity of the social sciences. m oreover, these understandings of social sciences might also be merely pragmatic m anagem ent clusters of staff, prepared to work alongside each other and reflect the choices of staff who rallied to support each other as the pangs experienced in a merged institution influenced their everyday practice. it is, however, worth noting that some schools, such as the school of social sciences, consists predominantly of ex college staff, and others, for example, the school of edu cation and development (sed ), is constituted predominantly by former university staff. presently, there is only one recently appointed professor in the school of social sciences, whilst professors are distributed across other schools within the faculty. t his raises an important question: how does this affect the ability to profess “social sciences” within teacher education? t he following self named discipline clusters constitute the school of social sciences: a rts and c ulture education (which consists only of the sub disciplines of m usic, and d rama, which in cludes d ance); c ommerce education (with the sub disciplines of accounting, b usiness economics and b usiness m anagement), g eography, h istory, sports sciences and travel and tourism. w hilst the ab ove d escriptions of the disciplines derive from the course outlines of the further education and t raining (fet ) school phase specialisations of the b achelor of education (b ed) programme, a further demarcation of self named disciplines for the g eneral education and t raining (g et ) school phases is described as follows: a rts and culture, economic and m anagement sciences, life o rientation and social sciences. an immediate first analysis indicates that teacher education disciplines largely mirror and draw their identity and language labelling from the national school curriculum nomenclature, where the learning areas of the g et and the teaching subjects of the fet have come to be defined as “the disciplines” within teacher education. of course, it is im portant to ask whose language/lab elling d ominates in this case, or whether the proponents of the figure 1. schematic representation of the research design 9perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 language usage signal anything symbolically significant. a clear alignment in the case of arts and culture is evident, despite its incomplete mirroring of the school type subjects in the school fet curriculum. commerce education has chosen its own labelling outside the school fet labels. should the teacher education curriculum mirror school curriculum directly? is this alignment desirable? if this is so, why? w hat likely consequences will this have fo r the development of the discourse of the social sciences in teacher education? w hose identity/ what power forces are framing what goes on within the teacher education curriculum definitions? w here does the power basis for reform reside in terms of the social sciences disciplines? w ho has the authority to define the “social sciences”? w hence does this authority emanate? w ho are the authors of such authority or authori tative definitions? from where do such authors gain their rationale for ascendancy? it should be noted that the same lecturers often teach across the g et and fe t phases in the teacher education curriculum at uk zn , yet they choose to label their offerings differently. is it important that sports science chose to retain its disciplinary label, despite such a ‘teaching subject’ not being a separate disciplinary/teaching subject of the fet school curriculum? it is noted that sports, as a major cultural (albeit claimed ‘extra curricular’) activity of predominantly former white schools, finds a mirror in the teacher education curriculum. a cultural activity, like choral m usic, however, a similar ‘extracurricular activity’ of predominately former black schools, does not have a similar marked representation as a ‘separate discipline’ of the teacher education curriculum. it may be argued that our language only reflects existing power relations still at play b etween white and black schools, and our teacher education curriculum labels for social sciences merely reinforce, and do not challenge, these differentials. a close examination of the module outlines reveal that the d iscipline co ordinators (dcs) usually teach the final year students, whilst more junior/newly appointed/part time staff teach the ‘lower’ first, second and third years in the b ed ipe t programme. w ithin the former u niversity of n atal, one of the merging partners of the new uk zn , discipline authority was vested in heads of department, who were organised along disciplinary lines. t he former u niversity of durban w est ville, by contrast, was organised around programmatic lines, and hence disciplinary clusters were relatively loose formations. b udgetary constraints to recognise these dc roles have prevented remuneration, and a model of programme, rather than discipline, positions has been created. it appears that seniority of teaching responsibilities has replaced remuneration status. besides this being an interesting example of how former hierarchical power relations between merging partners continue to play themselves out in a merged institution, this lack of formal remuneration status of d cs, of course, has implications for the development of the identity of the discipline. m any of the d cs are the more senior staff m em bers with doctorates, and are expected to lead theoretical and academic research. in the sse however, only one former university staff m em ber is a dc. t his identity of not being a college of education, but instead a university faculty of education, is an emerging one within the sse, as it shifts to balance teaching, research and community engagement responsibilities. t he quality of disciplinary identity in the social sciences must be influenced by this specific contextual landscape. it should also be noted that the particular sse has, in its most recent appointment, employed a new head of school from outside the sse . his roots in social justice, drama education and gender education debates also bear influence. t his has sparked significant curriculum reform and transfor mation debates within the sse , as issues of multi disciplinarity and the social sciences’ theoretical basis are now being explored. t he module/course outlines that staff constructed during the first semester of 2008 therefore reflect how these debates and the context have engendered a new dis course amongst the teacher educators. t his emerging identity is reflected in the fact that at least three sse staff members are now pursuing their doctoral studies, something that did not previously characterise ‘college’ staff. t he analysis of the module outlines below will reveal whether a new language has emerged as the worlds of the former college of education (the academic staff) and university (discipline co ordinators and head of school) intertwine. t his analysis might also be about the hierarchies between these levels, as much as it is about emerging social sciences discourses. t he course outlines were interpreted as data, and were subjected to a document analysis in 10 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 terms of the following issues: the location of the module within the ipet curriculum (the b ed is a four year degree; the postgraduate certificate in education (pg ce) is a one year qualification); the definition of outcom es for the module; the declared com ponents of the module; the conception of teacher education it promotes; the notion of disciplinarity; and the modes of assessm ent. t hese issues were regarded as proxy of the ability to language about the specific discipline within the social sciences. as such, this then could be regarded as an empirical analysis of the curriculum of the social sciences within teacher education. t he intention is to draw attention to the notions of disciplinarity, with the view to developing theoretical possibilities for new ways of thinking and talking about social sciences in teacher education, i.e. a socially critical “pedagogy of hope”. data analysis t he data constituted approximately 60 modules taught in either the b ed or pg ce in the first semes ter of 2008. w hilst the b ed modules span 16 credits in only one semester of approximately 16 weeks, the pg ce 16 credit m odule is offered interspersed across the 32 week academic year, punctuated by two school based placements during the professional practicum period. t he b ed programme consists of separate “content” and “methodology” modules: the “content/discipline” modules focus exclusively on the knowledge base of the discipline, disconnected from any peda gogical referencing. t he “methodology” modules constitute a direct reference to the teaching of the disciplines in the school curriculum. t he pg ce programme consists of only methodology focused modules related to the disciplines, since it is presumed that the disciplinary content knowledge base has been already developed at undergraduate degree level. t he b ed students usually commence with a methodology module simultaneously with content modules in their second year of study after a generic foundational year. b oth the content and methodology modules of the b ed, however, pre cede the school based t eaching p ractice component. t he equivalent placement of pg ce students is referred to, not as practice, but school experience. t he nomenclature to refer to the specific modules signals the notion of its conceptual identity in the minds of the programme designers. t he lingua franca for the b ed modules, which deal with the developm ent of pedagogical content knowledge (pck ) (shulman, 2004) (the teaching of a discipline within a specific classroom context), makes reference to different aspects of this pheno menon: reference to practical strategies for executing the discipline, namely “m ethods”/“m ethodo logy” (e.g. “t ravel & t ourism m ethods 1”) or a reference to the target audience of the discipline (e.g. “g eography for educators”). b y contrast, the pg ce modules refer to the purpose of the module, e.g. “sports science t eaching” modules. it sho uld b e no ted that the lingua franca often distances itself from the official (legal) labelling set out in the official university/faculty handbooks/ calendar. perhaps this points to the perceived distance between the official writers of the module in the faculty handbooks and the designers of the modules who teach the module. t he sequencing of these modules also signals the conception within the b ed that teacher education is to follow an applied science notion, i.e. learn the “theory” first (include something about the practical execution of the theory), then apply it to practice. zeichner (1983) calls this a “front loaded” curriculum, where lecturers usually expect to see what they have taught in their lecture halls being replicated in practice in the school classrooms. t he label “school experience” for the pg ce, suggests a model which values the interaction between the world of academic knowledge (university campus based) and the world of practical experience (school based). w hen viewing the overall delivery roll out of the b ed over a four year period, however, the same inter active quality between academic and experiential knowledge might be said to characterise the bed programme as well. t he description above is not unique to social sciences, since it informs the design of the pg ce and b ed curriculum and the timetable offering as a whole. w hilst this integration across the entire curriculum might constitute the students’ experienced curriculum, the module course outlines do not hint at any form of integration across the different modules offered in the discipline. t here appears to be very little dialogue across the different levels taught in the different modules, and across the content and method modules. t here does not, further more, appear to be a strong sense of a developmental sequencing in most of the disciplines, where each of the sub disciplines are often simply located in separate entities across different modules, or 11perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 within clearly boundaried time slots within the delivery of the module. exceptions are noted in the teaching of history, b usiness economics and accounting. w ithin the social sciences of the get curriculum, however, the boundaries between h istory and geography are kept in juxtaposition, perhaps reflecting the separate fields of expertise of the lecturers who teach the module. t here is, however, an attempt to cohere a course/module outline with common outcomes and purposes. w ithin life o rientation, the “separate” sub disciplines of sports science (physical), r eligious education (moral/social), educational psychology (personal/psychological), do not appear to have found a co existence. t his is despite the attempts in life o rientation learning area studies to construct semblance of the integration and “wholeness” as suggested by its reference to the inter section required in the introduction to the revised national curriculum statement. in the b ed content modules generally, the disciplines are reflected in a bland description and listing of the “topics to be covered”, often described as such. t his suggests that disciplinary know ledge is a fixed body of knowledge which has clearly defined boundaries. t he listing of topics suggests a lack of engagement with the contested nature of the knowledge within the discipline. for example, the following list appears in one module: “history, anatomy, kinesiology, water activities and creative gymnastics”. since the research study did not probe classroom pedagogy, i am unable to comment on whether these “topics” are dealt with critically or engaged with to reflect an inter connected analysis of the discipline of sports science. by contrast, other listings of some bed content modules grapple with the relationship between the knowledge of the disciplines and society, e.g. the learning outcomes specified for “b usiness m anagement 210” are stated as follows: “students should be able to understand the role of business organisations in society and discuss critically the interaction between society and the organisations as a social process”. further modules seek innovative and creative labelling of the modules, perhaps to attract students to the discipline of h istory, or more importantly, to mark the contested nature of disciplinary knowled ge, e.g. the module “t eaching w ar”, an interpretation of the official label “history education 410”, sets out in its detailed approximately 20 page course outline an interest in exploring the purposes of war for “conquest, insurgency or liberation”. t he module designer hereby actively recruits students into a worldview of a contested multidisciplinarity. it expressly also states its base in a philosophy of history, declaring its argument that the stud ent outcomes for this module are to understand the teaching of history in schools and to “be guided towards sound historical knowledge, values and skills pertaining to war and conflict”. it expects students to “demonstrate an understanding of concepts such as cause and effect, time, chronology, objectivity, subjectivity, bias and prejudice”. it is not surprising that a large body of reading references, website addresses, and journal articles permeate these latter modules. t he identity of many of the social sciences modules seems to reflect a painful abrasive grind ing, especially since the different sub disciplines attempt to find themselves in new re definitions. t he arts and culture education “discipline”, for example, grapples with what constitutes the sub disciplines: performing and visual arts; music, art, drama, dance, visual arts; and what con stitutes the relationship between arts and culture. t his grappling is reflected in the absence of many of the constitutive sub disciplines of “arts and culture education” as offered in the sse. it is recognised that the “arts and culture person in the faculty” has only recently (2008) relocated to be repositioned in the school of social sciences education, rather than w ithin the school of languages, literacies and m edia education, which could also, theoretically, equally have been a home base. t his again raises the question: what does not constitute a “social science”? skovsmose (2008) argues that all forms of knowledge are social constructions, embedding and implicated in the “wonders and horrors o f a social, cultural and political endeavour”. arguably then, it is not surprising to see languages not regarded as a social science, but having a demarcated separate existence with the same status as an equivalent, separate school of m athematics, science and t echnology education within the faculty of education. it could, perhaps, be argued that “languages” constitute a more powerfully defined social science discipline warranting elevated separation, relegating the other “social sciences” to the periphery. it is interesting to note, furthermore, that in the present module offerings of the a rts and culture u k zn ipet curriculum, m usic (an fet subject) is not offered at b ed level, and visual 12 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 arts does not feature explicitly. t his is ironic in a faculty which boasts a very productive “centre for visual m ethodologies for social change” (centre) located alongside the school of languages, literacies and m edia education. t he module outlines of offering in the first semester in 2008 of the sse, make no reference to dialogue with the centre and its influence within the ipet curriculum. t his location of the c entre might have more to do with funding matters, than any disciplinary argument. t his suggests that disciplinary boundaries across schools should be more permeable, to allow better dialogue, fusion and re fusion. t he presumed pedagogical strategy of most modules takes the form of lectures presented on specific topics. t he lack of reference to purpose or outcomes for each of the separate sections is notable. also noted is an absence of detailed description of the pedagogical strategy to be employed in delivering the module sub sections. t here is scant mention of project work as a pedagogical strategy in most modules. project work is usually only reflected as a grouping strategy to manage assessment tasks. t he use of excursions, field trips or modelling of creative pedagogies to engage with learning the discipline does not feature in the content modules. this tendency, it seems to me, perpetuates a model indicating that learning is about listening to an expert (or perhaps a group of experts). in one particular case, for example, 50% of the assessment tasks for a p ck module rely on student presentations. t his suggests that the module designer’s responsibility is that of spectator and assessor of the students’ activity: a flawed interpretation of a learner centred curriculum. per haps designers of content modules relegate teaching pedagogical strategies to the so called pck modules/methodology modules (as an add on). t his further reinforces an applied science notion of teacher education. it should b e noted that only exit level modules are externally examined, i.e. reviewed by an expert outside the university. one wonders whether the more elaborate exit level modules are a factor of this external review process. perhaps module designers need to concep tualise the teaching of the discipline as culminating in these target exit programme outcome levels. w hen examining the module outlines with respect to the quality of disciplinary depth of the undergraduate modules, especially in non exit level modules, clear concerns arise. are these mo dules equivalent to undergraduate level modules in feeder faculties? is the disciplinary content of the undergraduate modules being directed by the content of the sse (at a national qualifications framework level, below that of post secondary school education)? t he language of many of these non exit level modules suggests that the p urpose is to align them with the content of the phase specialisation within which the targeted teacher will prospectively teach. t he depth of the nature of the discipline itself within the conception of a higher education module is somewhat under developed. t he clear marking of the identity of the teacher education curriculum of these social sciences modules seems to be driven by the n ational c urriculum statement. n ational curriculum statement becomes the powerful dominating technology of undiscerning teacher education social sciences module designers. of course, the argument might be made that in the absence of a language to talk about the interconnected ness o f the disciplines at teacher education level, the source of inspiration is derived fro m the “language from outside”. t his could be regarded as a “dumbing down” of the teacher education curriculum, but, as some provincial departments of education like to argue, presents “a more relevant teacher education curriculum, serving the needs of the school curriculum”. some argue that this “dumbing down” is a response to the poor quality of matriculation entry requirements (across all race groups), which characterised earlier admissions into teacher edu cation programmes. it needs to be seen whether a boosting of the standards and curriculum re quirements will follow the notable, improved intake of marticulants with significantly higher achievement into the b ed undergraduate curriculum since 2006. w ill the opposite of a “building up” of module depth be guaranteed? t his also brings into question whether school and university curriculum should be loosely or tightly aligned. put differently, should teacher education curriculum be the dominant partner that defines the nature of the emerging social sciences discipline, encompassing a broader, holistic development of prospective teachers, able to critically engage with any school curriculum policy, confident in theorising and choosing forms of practice which enable them to endure the teaching profession within the ambit of many potentially different masters, managers or policy makers? should teacher education reflect a tight alignment between the school curriculum and the teacher 13perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 education curriculum, a pragmatic, utilitarian preoccupation with being ‘relevant’ to the demands of the present organs of power? t his latter interpretation surely casts teachers as servants of policy rather than as professionals who inspire quality teaching and learning. t he former casts teachers as ongoing professionals, organising systematic learning and drawing from their deep knowledge of and commitment to their discipline. o ne therefore needs to ask whether the social sciences teacher educators are preparing future teachers as sufficient masters of their discipline. t he quality of the assessment tasks, as indicated in the module outlines, seems to suggest that disciplinary boundary crossing is largely not empha sised. t he majority, especially of the content modules, reflect a staid conception of disciplines in their historical entities. m aybe this is a direct, slavish interpretation o f the module descriptions, which feature in the official template descriptions, and which novice module designers are hesitant to o verride. m ore junior staff members or less experienced lecturers are likely to follow more prescriptively, rather than innovatively, the potential and possibility for module design, including assessment. t his suggests a more assertive responsibility for senior staff and d cs to induct junior and new staff into the creative establishment of the discipline through reconfiguration and rede finition. another argument is that newly appointed staff ought to have cutting edge conceptions of the boundary blurring of disciplines to be able to direct new ways of thinking in the disciplines, and this should be brought forward into the usual curriculum reform processes which operate in de signing modules for the teacher education curriculum. w hen curriculum module designers are con fident of the breadth and depth of their knowledge of their disciplines, and their interconnectedness with other disciplines, they are more likely to engage in confident boundary crossing. t his con fidence regarding boundary crossing seems to characterise staff who hold advanced degrees, such as a masters or a doctorate. such is the advantage of senior studies and advanced research. w hen resources and governance arrangement support, boundary crossing, as well as qualitative and critical disciplinarity emerges. concluding thoughts it is easy to interpret the above critique of the teaching of social sciences within the teacher educa tion curriculum at u k zn as not offering a fundamental reconfiguring of the constituting disciplines. t he picture is, however, more nuanced, as different disciplines within the target school reflect different levels of interest, commitment and the competence to make a change. t here are those who interpret the development of module outlines as yet another form of the managerialism that cha racterises university education; hence, the module outlines reflect a “strategic compliance” (m attson & harley, 2003) with policy expectations in the faculty. t here are, of course, some module outlines which simply reflect no more than the “official” descriptions in the university calendar/handbook. t his leads one, perhaps erroneously, to conclude that the module designers have not grappled with the dominant discipline boundary blurring literature. those teacher educators who choose to be directed from outside of the university, and see themselves as dictated to by school policy reform, are part of the legacy of those who are still victims of a mentality that framed teacher education institutions as extensions of the d epartment of e ducation. w e have not yet found a completely new language defined by teacher educators themselves. t he new language of the social sciences that is emerging is a language framed by the powerful school policy. u p to now, it has only evolved into a pidgin, a way of talking across two systems of school education and teacher education. it has not yet developed its own d ictionary of new terminology, of new definitions. instead, it is still being framed by the powerful technology of the official school curriculum. t he technology of the official g et and fet school curriculum of the d epartment of education is framing a powerful ‘creole’, (over)defining the potential of only certain forms of knowledge, certain framings of disciplinary connections. m athematics, science and t echnology have become the new mantras of the new discourse. language education has gained a place within the laager of the powerful, but student teachers of the social sciences (read: life o rientation, commerce education, t ravel and tourism, arts and culture education, history and g eography) are not offered any prestigious space within the enacted curriculum . f or example, the national funza lushaka bursary scheme, promoting particular targeted areas of prospective teacher education students, does not select the social scien 14 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 ces as a category for investment in preparation for the new school curriculum. arguably, this is because there is a claimed over supply of teachers in the social sciences. t he consequence in the long term is that it will weaken the valuing of social sciences, as faculties of education choose to invest in the strong and powerful mathematics and science disciplines. alternately, it might be argued that teacher education module designers can learn from the language from outside. t he changed school curriculum is the product of much deliberation and consultation, reflecting a wide consensus of newly aligned multi disciplinary interests. t he social sciences of the school curriculum also now reflect a polyglot of multiple disciplines tending towards promoting, in theory, a fusion of disciplines, but often relegated to exist in practice as trans disciplinary fields alongside each other (akin to a forced, arranged marriage). it remains, never theless, for teacher educators to assert the kind of critical relationship they which to adopt in relation to these newly formed alignments in the school curriculum policy. t he new language will emerge, not when the weak bow down before the strong. t he weak could be reinterpreted as powerful when new, deeper moral, ethical and social readings are offered as new possibilities. t eacher educators can develop a new language if they turn to each other for inspiration within the context of university education and higher education, which seek to find new knowledges and new systems of talking across the divides. unfortunately, many teacher educators frame themselves as recipients of the wisdom and language from others, perhaps also defining their identity too closely with the protection of the disciplines in the curriculum of undergraduate bachelor degrees. w e as teacher educators tasked with the possibility of creating new learners within the sse, should embrace the responsibility to be more critical of the capitulation to the forces of dictation from outside our contexts. instead, we should be directing ourselves to build capacity to become dreamers of new possibilities of the relationships between the bounded boundaries, building a “pedagogy of hope” (vithal, 2008), recognising the powerful conflict and d ialogues which mark our present education and knowledge systems. w e should be seeking to expose the value of aligning different disciplines alongside each other, and seeking forms of fusion, critical forms of inquiry designed to examine, as i hope this paper has, the social, cultural and political values of all disciplines. t eacher education has the possibility to cultivate a generation of inquiring minds, creative and critical of our social systems and our organisation of knowledge systems. t his, after all, is what the new school curriculum professes. m any, however, choose to interpret training for practising in the new curri culum in robotic, functionalist terms. w e need to learn to dream, trust our potential, and seek new ways of ‘being’ in the social sciences. o nly then can we begin to develop our new language in, of, and for, the social sciences, which traverses all areas of knowledge production: arts, science, mathematics, music, dance, drama, languages, technology, confidently since all knowledge systems are but social sciences. references batibo h 2005. language decline and death in africa: causes, consequences and challenges. clevedon: multilingual matters. crystal d 2000. language death. cambridge: cambridge university press. department of education 2007. the national policy framework for teacher education and development. government gazette, no. 29832. cape town: department of education. department of education 2002. national curriculum statement for the get phase. government gazette, no. 23406. pretoria: department of education. eggleston j 1979. teacher decision making in the classroom: a collection of papers. london: routledge & kegan paul. elliot j 1985. educational action research. in: j nisbet & s nisbet (eds). research policy and practice world year book of education. lewin km, samuel m & sayed y 2003. changing patterns of teacher education in south africa: policy, practice and prospects. sandown: heinemann. lewin k & stuart j 2003. researching teacher education: new perspectives on practice, performance and policy. multi site teacher education research project (muster) synthesis report. education paper series 49a. seven oaks: department of international development, united kingdom. mattson e & harley k 2003. teacher identities and strategic mimicry in the policy/practice gap. in: k lewin, m samuel & y sayed (eds). changing patterns of teacher education in south africa. policy, 15perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 practice and prospects. sandown: heinemann. ministerial committee on teacher education 2005. a national framework for teacher education in south africa. report of the ministerial committee on teacher education, 16 june 2005. pretoria: department of education. morrow w 2007. learning to teach in south africa. cape town: hsrc press. pavis p 1992. towards a theory of culture and mise en scýne. in: l kruger (transl.). theatre at the crossroads of culture. london: routledge. pride jb & holmes j (eds) 1972. sociolinguistics. harmondsworth, middlesex: penguin. samuel g 2001. the emergence of intercultural dialogues: children, disability and dance in kwazulu natal. case studies of three dance projects held at the playhouse company (1997 1999). unpublished master of arts in drama and performance studies dissertation. durban: university of natal. shulman ls 2004. the wisdom of practice. san francisco: jossey bass. skovsmose o 2008a. students’ foreground. experiences from travelling through education. paper presented at symposium: mathematics education, democracy and development: challenges for the 21st century, 4 april. durban: faculty of education, university of kwazulu natal. skovsmose o 2008b. beyond the assumptions of modernity. challenges for university education within science, technology and mathematics. presentation at westville campus, university of kwazulu natal. sleeter c 1995. multicultural 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responsibilities and democratic justice: cultivating friendship to alleviate some of the injustices on the african continent. educational philosophy and theory, 55:323 342. zeichner k 1983. alternative paradigms of teacher education. journal of teacher education, xxiv:3 9. 129 the contradictory conceptions of research in historically black universities abstract research is conceptualised in multiple and contradictory ways within and across historically black universities (hbus) with consequences for knowledge production. under the apartheid regime, research was deliberately underdeveloped in such institutions and this continues to have an impact. we argue that if hbus are to move from the constraints of the past into the possibilities of the future, there is a need for a thorough understanding both of how research is currently conceptualised, and of the consequences of such conceptions for research output. we used a critical discourse analysis of interviews, documents and survey data from seven hbus to identify the dominant discourses about the purposes of research. the findings are four dominant conceptions of research that sometimes contradict each other across and within the hbus. these are research as integral to academic identity; research for social justice; research as an economic driver and research as an instrumentalist requirement for job security, promotion and incentives. these conceptions seemed to emerge in part because of the history of the institutions and create both constraining and enabling effects on research production. keywords: research, historically black universities, academic identity, discourse analysis 1. introduction research has long been central to the role of a university as a space of knowledge production (see for example castells, 2001; leathwood & read, 2013; imenda, 2006; badat, 2009). however, this focus on the research role of the university has never been as central as it is today in the so called ‘knowledge economy’ when universities are seen as playing a pivotal role in the provision of a skilled labour force for innovation and technology. in historically black universities (hbus)1 in south africa, there have been deliberations around the extent to which research should be a central part of their profile because historically research was not one of their core functions. this article argues that if hbus are to nurture research output as a key function, they need to make sense of how research is currently conceptualised by those working within such universities. evelyn muthama centre for higher education teaching and learning (chertl), rhodes university. email: g15m6440@campus. ru.ac.za prof sioux mckenna centre for higher education teaching and learning (chertl), rhodes university. email: s.mckenna@ru.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v35i1.10 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2017 35(1): 129-142 © uv/ufs mailto:g15m6440@campus.ru.ac.za mailto:g15m6440@campus.ru.ac.za mailto:s.mckenna@ru.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.10 130 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) 2. hbu as institutional type institutional differentiation is generally seen to be a positive characteristic in a nation’s higher education landscape (singh, 2014) because having varied types of institution allows for a spectrum of knowledge specialisation, broader access to higher education, and enhanced articulation (cloete, maassen & bailey, 2015). in south africa, the university sector has developed such a differentiation of type with traditional universities, comprehensive universities and universities of technology. however, history continues to plague a different kind of institutional differentiation with real effects across the sector. the extension of university education act, introduced in 1959 by the governing national party, laid the foundation for the establishment of the hbus. the main reason behind the establishment of hbus by apartheid government was to train manpower to meet the needs of the black population and to service the apartheid administrative structures and thereby to maintain the political agenda of racial division (bunting, 2002). ten hbus were established which were classified into three broad groups based on geographical location and the ethnic population they were designed to serve (education policy unit, university of western cape, 1997). the first group comprised six rural universities: university of zululand; a campus of the university of the north, established in qwaqwa; the university of fort hare (that existed prior to apartheid but was then designated for the xhosa population), which became the homeland institution for ciskei (subotzky, 1997; department of higher education and training, 2013); and three universities found within “independent homelands”2 – university of transkei; university of bophuthatswana, and university of venda (subotzky, 1997; dhet, 2013). the second group comprised two urban universities, university of the western cape for ‘coloured’ people, situated in cape town, and the university of durban-westville for ‘indians’ in kwazulu natal. the last group comprised two specialist institutions, the medical university of south africa (medunsa) which was established in response to demand for medical care for the black population, and vista university, which was established to offer teacher education through seven satellite campuses across the country (subotzky, 1997; dhet, 2013). there were also a number of technikons developed under apartheid to provide vocational education for different racial and ethnic groups. this institutional type was not encouraged to undertake research, regardless of which racial group the institution was serving (boughey, 2010). during apartheid, the ten universities mentioned above were all discriminated against in terms of funding, networking opportunities, and autonomy, especially in regards to restrictions placed on research and postgraduate production (bozalek & boughey, 2012; bunting, 2002). in the post-apartheid era, through a series of state-legislated institutional mergers from 2002, some of these institutions changed their compositions and names. out of the ten hbus established during apartheid only six exist today in that identifiable form: university of zululand, university of venda, university of limpopo, university of fort hare, walter sisulu university (formerly university of transkei), and the university of the western cape. to this, we can add mangosuthu university of technology, the only technikon that remained as a historically black institution after the formation of universities of technology. 131 muthama & mckenna the contradictory conceptions of research in historically black universities see table below (dhet, 2013) for an overview of these seven institutions, classified as hbus, which form the study sites for this paper. table 1: historically black universities: geographical location and dates of establishment institution location date established walter sisulu university of science and technology eastern cape with campuses in mthatha, butterworth, east london and queenstown 2005 university of limpopo limpopo 2005 university of fort hare eastern cape with campuses in alice, bhisho and east london 1916 university of zululand northern kwazulu-natal 1960 university of venda for science and technology limpopo 1982 university of the western cape western cape 1960 mangosuthu university of technology kwazulu-natal 1979 the ideology of the apartheid government framed the intellectual agenda of these institutions. few academics employed by these institutions believed it necessary to introduce research in these institutions and indeed the national structures made it very difficult for them to do so (bunting, 2002). the limited funding provided to hbus under apartheid, and the requirement to spend such funding entirely within each financial year on nationally approved budgets, greatly limited capacity in ways that remain evident today. the current funding formula does not distinguish between universities, though it does provide a small redress line item to hbus. that we have one ‘flat’ funding formula skewed to reward postgraduate education, research output, and science and technology fields, areas in which the hbus were intentionally poorly developed (subotzty, 1997), means that hbus continue to be disadvantaged in the current system (moyo, 2018). these institutions were largely established in remote rural areas in the former homelands or in semi-urban areas to serve the black population who lived there. the geographical locations have an impact on the social life of those working and studying within them by contributing to apartheid legislated segregation (subotzky, 1997). post 1994, this continues to impact on research production in significant ways, including that these institutions are less likely to attract highly qualified academic staff, that these are rarely students’ first choice of university, and that it is difficult for such institutions to readily forge strong research networks with advantaged institutions in urban areas (bozalek & boughey, 2012). 3. methodology this study forms part of a larger project which brings together seven phd studies that each consider the implications of institutional differentiation on a particular core function of universities3. muthama’s study focuses on the core function of research and in this paper we 132 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) argue that identifying the discursive conceptions of research is key to increasing engagement with research. we use critical discourse analysis to establish how research is conceptualised by academics and heads of research in hbus. discourses are understood to be: …systematically organised sets of statements which give expression to the meanings and values of an institution. beyond that, they define, describe and delimit what it is possible to say and not possible to say (and by extension – what it is possible to do or not to do) with respect to the area of concern of that institution, whether marginally or centrally (kress, 1989:7). we thus understand discourses to have effects in the world. we draw in particular on fairclough’s (2005) conception of discourse which uses a realist ontology (bhaskar, 1993) to argue that discourse are mechanisms that have causal powers to enable and constrain how we think, talk or act and which thereby contribute to the emergence of events in the world and to the experiences of such events. in realist terms, mechanisms are defined as causal explanations or internal dynamics (archer, 1996, 2015). events and experiences, such as the production of research in hbus, emerge from multiple mechanisms, which include but are not limited to, discourses. in any social context there will inevitably be multiple discourses interacting with each other in complementary or contradictory ways (archer, 1995), and these in turn will interact with mechanisms of other orders, such as social structures and the agency of individuals. for example, the discourses identified in this study may have effects on how research is valued and undertaken in hbus, but these will intersect with issues such as institutional policies and leadership, the national funding formula and so on. an analysis of discourses alone cannot fully explain the events and experiences we may observe, but attaining an understanding of the effects of discourses is central to social change (archer, 1995). it is with this understanding that discourses have real effects in the world that we sought to identify the discourses by which those working in hbus construct the concept of research. before collecting the data, ethical clearance was sought from the institution where the larger phd study is lodged and then from each of the seven institutions where data was collected. after gaining such clearance, an online questionnaire was sent through the heads of research to academics in these institutions. one hundred and fourteen respondents completed the questionnaire online and all seven institutions were represented. the questionnaire was anonymous and we assured participants that any data used would reveal neither their own identity nor the identity of their specific institution. the last item in the questionnaire requested that those respondents willing to be interviewed submit their contact details. in total 53 out of the 114 participants who completed the questionnaires provided their contact details in the questionnaire. in the end, it was possible to interview 40 of these participants. these 40 interview participants represent all seven institutions and comprise both academics from different faculties and senior managers responsible for research (dvc: research, directors of research, senior research manager and so on). data quotes used from the interviews do not reveal the individual participants’ identities or their employing institutions and they are cited as ac 1 to ac 34 (for academics) or as hor 1 to hor 6 (for heads of research). thirty-six documents were also analysed such as mission and vision statements, research policies, annual strategic reports, university audit reports and annual research reports. where data quotes from such documents are used, they are referenced to the specific institution because they are all in the public domain and readily identifiable. 133 muthama & mckenna the contradictory conceptions of research in historically black universities in the next section, we present the dominant discursive constructions of research that emerged from our data. these are research as integral to academic identity; research as means of social justice; research as an economic driver; and research as an instrumentalist requirement. 4. research as integral to academic identity the discursive understanding that undertaking research is central to being an academic is dominant in the literature (for example henkel, 2000, 2005; becher & trowler, 2001). this discourse understands research as being fundamentally entwined with and as driving the practices of academic staff. for example, one academic said, “i am very much involved in research and i want to believe that as an academic staff you must be engaged in research” (ac 5). henkel argues that in traditional universities an academic’s identity emerges from their affiliation to a disciplinary home and commitment to knowledge production, more than it does from the particular institution in which he or she works (2000, 2005). this was echoed in some of the data. what is an academic or who is an academic? the definition of academic: you try to produce research, disseminate knowledge and also question knowledge that is in existence and you cannot do all these things without doing research. teaching is there to disseminate knowledge but you also have to produce new knowledge, which you are disseminating. so you cannot disseminate something that you are not producing. you cannot be a kind of consumer if i may use that word. you also have to take part in development of new knowledge and disseminating it. (ac 4) i do see that research is where you generate new ideas and again you cannot actually impart knowledge to students if you tell them things that you actually do not investigate. so it forms a fundamental framework of developing new ideas and passing those new ideas and knowledge to students. (ac 6) a similar discourse about academic identity in research can be seen in the way the following academic expresses concern about not embodying a research identity. to me actually there is very little time that is left to do individual research. so as an academic and a researcher at the same time, there is need to create time, and also to find resources to do the research. this is where we have some challenges and …this is the dilemma that i have. (ac 16) for these academics, the value of being an active researcher was not just about disseminating knowledge but participating in the production of new knowledge. there was also an understanding among some of these academics that those who do not do research are not “proper” academics. the academics above are using their agency to draw on the discourse that to be academic you have to do research and that research is key to academic identity. twenty-one out of the forty interview participants in the study drew on this discourse in some way. the skewed nature of the data cautions us against reaching any quantitative generalisations because those who are actively doing research are presumably more likely to participate voluntarily in a study about research. furthermore, the literature on research identities suggests that this would be the dominant discourse evidenced across all the data (henkel, 2005; becher & trowler, 2001; waitere et al., 2011), but this was not the case in this study. it would seem that the discursive construction of research as integral to academic identity, while drawn upon 134 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) frequently in the data, was not as overwhelmingly dominant as it is in historically advantaged universities (mckenna & boughey, 2014). the history and nature of the hbus seems to be constraining some academics and heads of research from drawing on this discourse. while many of the academics interviewed used their agency to situate themselves as being ‘proper’ academics because they do research, there was also frequent mention of the ways in which various structures pertaining to the institutional context constrain their ability to take up this identity. for example, some participants explained that although they saw research as central, they felt they were constrained by heavy teaching loads, insufficient funding and “poor quality students”. many of us feel that our teaching load is too heavy to allow us to do research. (ac 2) when i got here i realised that, for example, time allocations and teaching allocations… all have hugely explicit teaching requirements, and they are largely non-negotiable... i think we are employed primarily as educators rather than as researchers. (ac 7) …the challenge is the huge teaching work load, we have to do research but we also have huge classes with over 200 students sometimes, so you are marking, and the administration and we have to do community work engagement… (ac 9) in terms of funding… sometimes you won’t attract very good students because the issue is that you don’t have competitive bursaries… so there can be a lot of dropouts, not being able to conduct research just because there is not enough funding. (hor-1) in contrast to this discursive construction of research as being integral to the identity of an academic, there was also ample evidence that for some it was not a major aspect of their work. for example, one of the academics remarked: not everyone appears to understand the value of research, so if someone doesn’t understand the value of research, they probably won’t take part in the research. (ac 14) boughey and mckenna’s study of how hbus represented themselves in documentation (2011) found that academics in these institutions often suffered from low morale and they raised concerns about weak academic identities. this was echoed in some of the data: so … some have gone more to research and some into re-curriculation. [but others] are happy to just be told: ‘this is the new curriculum, this is what you have to do’. (ac 9) a number of the academics mentioned that research was not central to their work and that they tied their identities more to teaching than research. for example, two of the academics said: i think, first and foremost i am a teacher and then a researcher. (ac 2) you have to be a lecturer because that is the first and the foremost reason you are an academic. (ac 23) while this is not a comparative study, it is worth noting that the extent to which the discourse of ‘research as integral to academic identity’ was drawn upon differed notably between the seven institutions. the head of research in one institution said: “very few in general academics have been really engaging in research” (hor 1). another head of research in a different institution commented: 135 muthama & mckenna the contradictory conceptions of research in historically black universities i could also say that some academics are not really, really committed. and that’s a constraint. it’s difficult to work on the people’s mind-set, because even this constraint of big numbers, one has to find ways of conducting research. (hor 4) 5. research for social justice the second discursive construction of research in the data was research as a public good with a social justice perspective, whereby research is understood as addressing the problems of society and ultimately contributing to the betterment of society (o’donoghue, 2014). research in this construction was understood in terms of producing useful and relevant knowledge to address the problems of local and broader communities as opposed to producing blue-sky knowledge or more theoretically focused research. research plays a pivotal role in developing communities and finding solutions for various challenges. it is important that we encourage our academics to undertake research continuously to address challenges faced by our country. (annual research report 2014, university of limpopo) it is of no use doing research for the sake of doing research. it must impact the teaching; it must impact on society. (ac 9) many of the participants in this study are involved in community based research projects that focus on improved access to basic services, better access to water, more equitable legal representation, and so on. academics listed many examples of such research projects in the survey data, citing the rural positioning of the university within specific communities as important. so for instance, we’re looking at sustainable livelihoods and the role of entrepreneurship, assisting particularly women and youths. so that’s the kind of research that where we know that it’s a challenge that is happening in the community, and if we find a solution to that, we’re not only making theoretical contributions but also finding practical lived solutions to challenges that are in our context. (ac 14) through research output, we advance knowledge production with the aim of improving the lives of people and our environment. (hor 3) …we’ve got a lot of rural areas surrounding our university, and the question is, the ground through which these rural communities can benefit and find solutions to their problems, happens is the universities that are located near them. so that’s the kind of stuff i would advocate. (ac 14) the tying of research to social responsibility was thus explicitly stated in reference to the geographical positioning of these universities. linked to this discourse, that research should serve the public, was the issue of knowledge dissemination. researchers in some institutions understood this as going beyond communicating research within the discipline through traditional academic publications and included a focus on knowledge production that informs the public sphere. academics have a responsibility to announce research results by way of presentations at national and international conferences and/or by way of publication in journals as well as in popular publications. (research policy 2008, mangosuthu university of technology) 136 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) some institutions had various structures for disseminating research knowledge to communities beyond academia, such as collaborations with local and government departments, community partnership agreements and so on. given the extent to which the rural positioning of hbus has been acknowledged to constrain research engagement (cooper, 2015; bozalek & boughey, 2012), this is an important discourse with which to engage. this discourse suggests that engaged research is significant to the research identities of those working in hbus and furthermore that such research has the potential to have a major impact on social development in the country. it was also evident that there is scope for better national support for this research, and for it to be more carefully conceptualised and celebrated at a system level, as many participants commented on the ad hoc nature of such initiatives. 6. research as an economic driver alongside these discourses of research as central to the academic identity and research as a social justice imperative, there was a discourse in the data that research is tied to economic imperatives. this is perhaps unsurprising given that this discourse permeates national policy documents (department of education, 1997; dhet, 2013; department of science and technology, 2008), which make clear that universities are expected to produce knowledge and develop graduates that contribute to economic growth. we as academics assist and contribute to the economy of our societies through knowledge production building, through capacity and skill building. that for me is very important. how we do that is through our research. (ac 9) higher education literature argues broadly that the global knowledge economy requires a strong university sector to produce highly skilled and knowledgeable workers, especially at doctoral level who can produce globally competitive knowledge for innovation (castells, 1994; powell & snellman, 2004; sorlini & vessuri, 2007). …i think there is now a slow kind of inclination towards what i can term as an innovative way of doing research, rather than just to say, okay, we want to just prove this is related to this, this is whatever, then you’re confirming what another country, can confirm it to south africa, but there is like…people are now aspiring to be quite innovative (hor 1). the vice chancellor of university of venda, professor mbati, draws on the same discourse of research as an economic driver when he makes the following comment in the foreword of 2012-2016 institutional strategic plan. the quality and profile of our graduates must be continuously monitored to be in sync with the national skills development plan and with the realities of a developmental state that has taken a conscious decision to move from a resource-based economy to a knowledgebased economy. in 2007, the government launched a ten-year innovation plan to help south africa’s transformation towards a knowledge-based economy. part of this plan involved highlighting the role played by science and technology in driving growth and development of the country. this discourse was strongly evident in the data: i think what we need more is more work on developing emerging researchers, particularly in key clusters of the economy: science, engineering and technology (ac 14). 137 muthama & mckenna the contradictory conceptions of research in historically black universities while many of the academics drew on the discourse of research as an economic driver to articulate their understanding of research, they also saw economic drivers as potentially constraining research: it is good because more output is like more knowledge is being produced. and more innovation, like new ideas are coming to the market, the solutions to the problems that we are facing, you know, social economy problems that the country is facing, the world is facing, they can be resolved, … but the bad part is that, for instance, so if it is not really monitored very well, sometimes you’ll find that just the same output might not be sufficient because the quality might end up being compromised. because people are competing for more and because of the incentives that you find that hbis like they offer like researchers, that can encourage, but that is where you see a trade-off. …some of academics when they are starting they start off by publishing in… predatory journals that are just like after money, they are not really following the peer review processes. ... so, in a way that kind of competition, that kind of pressure could also put like academics in a tight fit where it compromises the quality now also of the output… (hor 1) such concerns are evident in the literature too (for example frick, mckenna and muthama, 2017). what was apparent was that the discourse of research as an economic driver is in tension with some of the other discursive framings in ways that can be difficult for academics to untangle. this, in part, seemed to result in another discursive construction of research as instrumentalist, a discourse to which we now turn. 7. research as an instrumentalist requirement the fourth discursive conceptualisation of research that we identified in the data was an instrumentalist one where participants understood research to be an activity undertaken primarily for individual benefit. in our institution and in the outside world any academic is judged by research. for instance, if as an academic you’re applying for a promotion, you have to show evidence of having conducted research. if you apply for a position elsewhere, you have to show that you have conducted research in another higher education institution… you may be teaching, having hundred percent and all that, but you cannot be promoted only based on that, you must show evidence of research. and also research is very crucial because academics have to attract funds that bring income... (hor 4) and also because promotion and also the issue of having like a career advancement moving to other institutions and so forth, is also linked to the kind of research output that like quite a distinctive factor now between like one academic to the next. ‘how many articles have you published? how many students have you actually supervised?’ (hor 1) … you don’t get promotion unless you have produced a certain number of papers. and, in fact, we have a quota system for the number of papers that you have to produce each year. (ac 13) the only way to survive in this academia is by doing research. there is no any other better way of saying it. (ac 10) for us to further your career and you need some research progress, in terms of research output and publications. (ac 18) … one of the criteria that is used is supervision of postgraduate students, publications in accredited journals, and research funding or practice. so all these count towards 138 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) your promotion of course there are that criteria like teaching, but research is the major component. (ac 27) some of the research policies explicitly foregrounded the production of accredited research outputs as the core objective for research, and not, as in the earlier examples, as being for the benefit of society broadly, ensuring community engagement, or being disseminated in alternative platforms. arguably, this discourse constructs research as actually constituting research only if it brings money into the university. …if we are looking at [research] from the university perspective in terms of where the emphasis is this university…okay, remember that money is an issue, right? the university generating some money, obviously you’re going to get that through publication, right. so that means they would want people to publish a lot. but, their focus is publishing on those subsidised journals…journals that when you publish in, then the department of higher education and training would give the university money... whether you are publishing in a journal that has high impact factors or low, you see. here we don’t care about that. what we care is whether that journal gives the university money. (ac 19) most of hbus had incentive structures for academics undertaking research. these included reference to research outputs in job descriptions and in promotion requirements, but they also included the payment of rewards to researchers who published in accredited journals. such funds were paid into research codes, for the funding of research related expenses, such as conference attendance, and in some cases, the academics could elect to be paid part or all of such incentives into their salaries. the department of higher education and training repeatedly cautions institutions that the payment of incentives to individual researchers promotes ‘perverse behaviour’ (for example government gazette 38552, 2015). the idea behind incentives is that they will increase research productivity, but it has been found to also have the effect of lowering the quality of research, of leading to ‘salami slicing’ of research, and of rewarding individualistic behaviour that works against collaborations and mentoring of junior researchers, and so on. in this study, there were participants who spoke in favour of such reward systems as encouraging output and those who indicated that these systems either had little effect or had bad effects: then because also of the incentives that are provided by the institution … like adds more output. so the incentive is also working to increase the output. (hor1). … it’s like taking the horse to the river but you can’t make that horse to drink. because we say here, some people say themselves that ‘i don’t care about incentives i’m teaching and i don’t have time’ (hor 4) there are lots of attractive incentives behind research which started as a good thing ... but i think that is now coming at a cost. it’s costing teaching and learning because now every academic is more interested or more concerned about publishing, and then they know that if they publish at least one point two five units per annum there are going to be very good incentives. you are entitled for an international conference, fifty thousand rand for anywhere you want to go in the world ... (ac 15) there are institutional incentives, which include assisting in promotions, vice chancellor’s award for research excellence. funding is promoted via outside sources like for example nrf, companies, governmental agencies and so on. these have positively impacted on my 139 muthama & mckenna the contradictory conceptions of research in historically black universities research when still a junior researcher. however, as part of the senior research corps, this has not impacted on my research output. (ac 20) there was thus little agreement about the effects of institutions paying funding incentives to individual researchers, but it did seem that participants tied this structure to an instrumentalist discursive construction of research in which research is understood as a vehicle for reward, rather than a discursive construction of research as being a contribution at the boundaries of a field. in an institutional context where a strong commitment to research as integral to the academic’s identity has not been nurtured historically, it seemed that this discourse was able to flourish. 8. conclusion discourses have effects in the world (archer, 1995) and it is thus important to identify these and to consider what effects they might have in enabling or constraining any particular phenomenon, such as research production in hbus. this study identified the discourses of academics and heads of research who volunteered to participate in a study about research production and thus, as has already been pointed out, are possibly more likely to be those who are research active. therefore, the findings presented here are not exhaustive. furthermore, discourses do not occur in isolation of structural enablements and constraints, and in large part the emergent powers of discourses depends on the agency of those who draw on them (archer, 1995). this means that we cannot understand the discourses described here in a causal way as determining research production but rather we have to understand that they intersect with the effects of a myriad other mechanisms (archer, 1995). issues related to funding, the country’s precarious economic state, and so on, would also have bearing on a university’s capacity to produce research (mda, 2013). having cautioned that this study has limitations, it is nonetheless our contention that the discourses identified have significant effects on the production of research in hbus. some of the data suggested that where there was a discourse that undertaking knowledge production was central to academic identity, though this was perhaps not as dominant a discourse as the literature on academic identities would suggest, and this discourse was at times constrained by structural systems. the interpretation of the national funding formula down into institutional practices of incentives seemed to complement a more instrumentalist discourse of quick output. understanding research as related entirely to publication counts or individual benefit will have negative consequences for hbus. a key finding in this study was the unevenness of discursive conceptions of research. there is no university in the world in which every staff member or researcher will have exactly the same conception of research and indeed even a single participant might draw on two or more of those conceptions. it is thus possible that the finding of this study will well be echoed in institutions that are not part of the category of hbus. however, we argue that the history of hbus has had a particular effect on the ways in which research is conceptualised. it would thus seem work needs to be done on building a meaningful research culture in hbus if research production is going to be strengthened. there was a nascent discourse of social justice focused research as being a core driver of knowledge production in some of the hbus. such areas of strength should be nurtured, if research production is to be developed in less instrumentalist ways. 140 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) references archer, m.s. 2015. generative mechanisms transforming the social order. cham: springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-13773-5 archer, m.s. 1995. realist social theory: the morphogenetic approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511557675 badat, s. 2009. valuing the role of higher education in a society: an address at the her-sa academy to 80 women from universities throughout africa. available http://www.cepd.org.za/ files/pictures/valuing [accessed 05 february 2015]. becher, t. & trowler, p. 2001. academic tribes and territories: intellectual enquiry and the cultures of disciplines, 2nd ed. buckingham: open university press. boughey, c. 2010. a meta-analysis of teaching and learning at universities of technology. pretoria: council on higher education. boughey, c. & mckenna, s. 2011. a meta-analysis of teaching and learning at historically disadvantaged universities. pretoria: council on higher education. bozalek, v. & boughey, c. 2012. 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https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.29.010202.100037 https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137385284.0019 https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230603516 https://doi.org/10.2307/2668176 142 perspectives in education 2017: 35(1) (endnotes) 1 different nomenclature has been used for such universities over the years, all of which remain contentious and problematic. some policy documents and research literature refer to these institutions as “historically disadvantaged universities”. however, as we argue in this article, these institutions continue to be disadvantaged in some significant ways. “historically black” can similarly be argued to be a misnomer because, while these institutions are now open to students of all race groups, in reality they continue to serve the ‘black’ south african population with 95% of their students coming from this racial category (cooper, 2015). 2 the term homelands or bantustans was used by the apartheid government to refer to the ‘independent republics’ of transkei, bophuthatswana, venda and ciskei. these republics and others (ten in total) were created by the apartheid government in rural areas of south africa for the majority black population. the homelands served to separate the black population from the white and to give them responsibility for running their own independent governments separate from the republic of south africa governed by the whites. one of the consequences of this was that the blacks in these republics had no protection or any rights in the republic of south africa. 3 the institutional differentiation project is funded by the nrf with sioux mckenna as the principal investigator (grant number 87646) and muthama is the beneficiary of the nrf student scholarship (grant number 94969). pie32(3) book.indb perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 22 shrouds of silence: a case study of sexual abuse in schools in the limpopo province in south africa boledi masehela venitha pillay this study seeks to understand the reasons that allow a parent, a principal and a teacher to maintain silence when young girls under their care are sexually abused. put another way, it attempts to explain what it is about sexual abuse that makes these parties relinquish their role as protectors of innocent children. this paper, based on a larger study of sexual abuse in schools in the limpopo province, investigates the possibility that teacher/learner sexual abuse has, over the years, become imbued in a cultural silence linked to african cultural practices. it is argued here that the silence on sexual abuse might be rooted in traditional, patriarchal views on gender and social justice. the research findings indicate that there might well be a growing resistance to what is regarded by some communities as the imposition of liberal, urban, value systems on traditional, rural african people. key words: sexual abuse, rural schools, cultural silence; social justice, social power introduction the constitution of south africa calls for all citizens to be treated equally irrespective of race, culture or any other difference. no person has the right to degrade, exploit or unfairly discriminate against others (rsa, 1996a). in direct contrast to this constitutional imperative, the most vulnerable sector of our communities, namely children, are frequently degraded, exploited or treated unfairly, ironically, by those who have been granted the responsibility for their well-being. of particular concern is the continuing sexual exploitation of school children by their teachers (masuku, 2008: 6). boledi masehela rasekgala secondary school maleboho central circuit (senwabarwana) e-mail: masehelats@gmail.com telephone: 076 494 0516 venitha pillay department of education management and policy studies, university of pretoria e-mail: venitha.pillay@up.ac.za telephone: 012 420 5574 shrouds of silence: a case study of sexual abuse in schools in the limpopo province in south africa boledi masehela & venitha pillay 23 in 2005, two teachers from bolobedu in the limpopo province were found guilty of sexually abusing learners at the schools where they taught. in the one instance, the teacher was accused of adjusting the learners’ marks in exchange for sexual favours; in the other, the teacher was caught red-handed having sexual intercourse with a learner (matlala, 2005: 3). in 2007, a school principal and a teacher were accused of sexually abusing a number of girls under the age of 18, two of whom had fallen pregnant as a consequence. charges against the principal were dropped owing to insufficient evidence, but the teacher concerned was arrested on charges of statutory rape (mogakane & mnisi, 2007: 15-16). we cite only two incidents of abuse of children in disadvantaged communities although there is anecdotal evidence of this being a pervasive problem in the country. while many such incidents are known to the community, most go unreported. these incidents suggest that even though the employment of educators act (76 of 1998) categorically declares such actions on the part of educators to be illegal, principals and teachers have been the perpetrators of sexual abuse of learners while simultaneously being vested with powers to protect learners’ right to education, human dignity and a safe school environment. this paper offers some insight into this anomaly. literature review some of the literature linked to the research on sexual abuse offers tentative ways of understanding the problem. hules (2005) states that african culture and religious tradition have a moral blind spot when confronted with sexual abuse; he ascribes the perpetuation of sexual abuse to gender inequalities that stem from ancient times. in the past, incidents of child sexual abuse were kept secret and were a regular occurrence. accordingly, perpetrators took advantage of the silence and continued abusing children sexually, while the victims had no grounds on which to object. in line with hules (2005), the findings of research carried out by vujovic (2008) indicate that the african tradition of a patriarchal social order forbids women and children from discussing sexual matters. women and children are treated as men’s property; a view which serves as a universal code of sexual conduct. consequently, the cultural tradition of enforced silence has created an environment that is vulnerable and open to a variety of abuse. it is not surprising, therefore, that the silence surrounding the sexual exploitation of women and children has contributed to a high rate of sexual abuse in south africa. according to the medical research council, one in nine women in south africa is reported to have been raped (jewkes & abrahams, 2002). in addition to the contributing factors indicated above, a high level of poverty renders women vulnerable to sexual abuse (sikes, 2006; van niekerk, 2005). men take advantage of this poverty, exercising their role as masculine providers to achieve more power over women and go to the extent of abusing women sexually because they are in control. a masculine provider with a high income has the perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 24 privilege of engaging multiple partners (bhana & pattman, 2011). in the poor rural area of acornhoek in the mpumalanga province, for example, three-quarters of the community is unemployed and depends on government grants. women depend on men for economic survival and when abuse occurs their silence is a form of payment or compensation for their survival. this reinforces makgoka’s (2007: 7) and sikes’s (2006) views that socio-cultural and socio-economic factors contribute to the sexual exploitation of women and children. in acornhoek, only 2% of sexual abuse incidents were reported during an 18-month period. most women were not even aware of the availability of help (vetten, 2000). conceptual framework this paper rests on two related conceptual frames. the first is amadiume’s (2005) discussion of sexuality in traditional african communities living in modern-day contexts. the second related concept is that of the value of cultural practices as part of a human rights discourse as a potentially liberatory tool for women in patriarchal societies. amadiume (2005) describes sexuality in terms of modernist and african religious traditions; acknowledging the existence of ambiguities regarding sexual behaviour in a post-colonial african society, ascribing them to the inevitable mix of modernist and traditional african mores and cultures. sexuality in africa is centred more on prescribed sexual practices than on individual sexual freedom. such prescribed sexual practices often act as a form of resistance to the changes and challenges brought about by modernity. women have become subservient to their husbands as a result of male power over female sexuality. wives compete with daughters and younger females with the intention of securing their husband’s attention. male sexual controllers display extreme patriarchal power over their women. amadiume argues that these practices are forms of serious sexual abuse. undoubtedly, describing sex and sexuality in terms of modernist and african traditions exposes the ambiguities that create confusion in post-colonial african society as a result of its mix of modernist and traditional african mores and cultures. urbanites and western globalists regard themselves as superior to the uninformed or primitive societies of rural africa (rapport & overing, 2000). in stark contrast to the above view, african communities want to retain their indigenous ways of doing things, and this has nothing to do with being inferior or superior. according to them, such practices help them to remain stable and maintain the political authority of the amakhosi (chiefs) (maud, murphy, robinson & kock, 2008). the security found in customary practice is also taken up by waentjen and mare (2010), who suggest that african communities cling to their customs regardless of how well these serve them, as long as their customs make them feel safe. taboos could also make members blindly accept what their elders tell them because questioning traditional beliefs could result in punishment or exile (jackson, cassere & hardacre, 2002). as a result, shrouds of silence: a case study of sexual abuse in schools in the limpopo province in south africa boledi masehela & venitha pillay 25 when it comes to law enforcement, the patriarchal framework seems to take first preference. addressing the ambiguities outlined above, cowan, dembour and wilson (2001) argue that society exaggerates the notion that culture and rights are at odds with no possibility of reconciliation. such people believe that there is no common ground that could lead to social transformation. if this is the case, it would mean that african women would have to do away with their cultural traditions and beliefs before enjoying their rights as stated in the liberal laws (tamale, 2008). it is imperative to strike a balance between principle and practice in the implementation of human rights (amadiume, 2005) by expanding sexual awareness while simultaneously incorporating the positive messages from cultures, religions, politics and science, without opting for the wholesale use of one at the expense of another. there is a need for a broader perspective (mutua, 2001) which would gradually lead to social behavioural change. method data for the larger study were collected using both in-depth semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire. however, for this paper only the data from the interviews are used as they produced the most data on the silence around sexual abuse. given the sensitive nature of the problem under investigation, we knew that we had to get secondary school principals interested and involved in the research. as one of the researchers is a principal in the senwabarwana district, she was able, at a meeting of principals, to tell other principals of the planned study. at the meeting, the principals acknowledged that teacher-learner sexual abuse was a problem and suggested that the investigation be conducted in all the secondary schools in the circuit. this was not feasible and principals were then asked to participate voluntarily. from the volunteers, three schools whose learner enrolment is high and three whose enrolment is low were selected. in-depth interviews were conducted with the principals of the six selected schools, with district and provincial officials involved in this area of work, and with two individuals from the south african council for educators (sace) that is the gatekeeper of teacher conduct in schools. each interview lasted approximately one hour. the interviews were transcribed and thematic coding was used to analyse the data. while the broad aim of the study was to understand specific contextual factors that might underline school-based sexual abuse in the limpopo area, this paper focuses on a single finding from the study: the silence the surrounds sexual abuse. the six schools selected as cases, referred to here as schools a, b, c, d, e and f, are all located in senwabarwana, in the blouberg municipality of the limpopo province. perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 26 the people of blouberg, a deep rural, isolated area of limpopo, are desperately poor and, in many cases, steeped in what could best be referred to as “traditional african ways”. senwabarwana, one of the rural areas in blouberg, is more than 100 kilometres from the city of polokwane. most of the villages in senwabarwana have limited access to water and/or electricity. these schools were specifically selected for their rural location. in addition, the data collected were read alongside relevant policy documents and the minutes of selected school meetings. given the sensitive nature of this study, it was important to obtain the necessary permission from school principals and provincial officials before conducting the research. one of the pertinent limitations of this study is that the interview data from principals and other figures of authority could not be triangulated by similar interviews with learners. given the sensitive nature of the topic it was felt that interviewing learners on their knowledge and experience of sexual abuse could open wounds that the researchers were not in a position to address. findings the silence of parents examples of silence from parents abound in the stories told by the principals interviewed. in school c the principal was informed that one of the best performing girls in his school had been raped by a fellow learner. he called the parents to the school to discuss the matter. having heard all the details, the parents decided not to report the matter to the police. instead they opted to settle the matter with the perpetrator’s family, insisting on monetary compensation for the harm done and the loss of respect that the girl’s family would have to endure as a consequence. with regard to the family’s reputation, justice seemed to have been served according to custom. what was left unanswered was whether justice had been served for the young girl. while it is arguable that traditional justice might have been served for the family, it is unclear whether any form of justice, legal or customary, was accorded to the young girl in question. indeed, in this story the voice of the young girl is eerily silent. ironically, the fact that payment was made by the perpetrator’s family might be construed as an admission of guilt. despite this, the parents saw no reason to seek legal justice for their child. the outcome of the “case” echoes amadiume’s (2005) view that sexuality in african communities is often about prescribed sexual behaviour and what constitutes acceptable or unacceptable behaviour for the community and is not viewed as a matter of individual infringement. principal b indicated that there had also been a sexually related incident at his school, between one of his learners and a teacher from a neighbouring school. upon hearing of the alleged abuse, the principal offered to take the girl and her mother to the doctor and the police station in his own car, but the mother refused. she shrouds of silence: a case study of sexual abuse in schools in the limpopo province in south africa boledi masehela & venitha pillay 27 wanted to consult her relatives first, particularly the girl’s uncle, on whom they were financially dependent. after the consultation, the mother informed the principal that the incident would be dealt with as a family matter and that one of the family members had already been delegated to demand payment from the perpetrator. she then instructed the principal to drop the matter and the girl not to discuss it at school. as waentjen and mare (2010) argue, african families often seek safety in customary practices regardless of whether this serves them well or not. some months later the girl had a spontaneous abortion in the school toilet. she failed at the end of the year and dropped out of school. the notion of justice is questionable in this regard. the principal failed to act on his obligation in terms of the sexual offences act (rsa, 2007) which required that he report the case to the police. in this regard, traditional beliefs gainsay democratic human rights. mulaudzi (2003) indicates that cultural taboos prevent parents from discussing sexual matters with children. sex and sexuality are only discussed at initiation schools which are administered by the elders who have been tasked with doing so. on the other hand, modern liberal values encourage openness and reporting of cases, yet parents tend to resort to their cultural values. instead of discussing and reporting sexual abuse cases, they resort to silence. any actions showing disrespect are punishable. they demand compensation for the damage (e.g. pregnancy) or simply turn a blind eye to incidents of sexual abuse. the private ways of dealing with sexual infractions are aligned with tradition and culture. the data yielded an example in which a woman was blamed for her daughter’s predicament and was faced with two challenges because her daughter had become pregnant as a result of sexual abuse by a teacher. on the one hand, according to african tradition, she could not break the taboo against discussing sexual matters with her daughter but, on the other, the school should have conformed to the modernist aspirations to a safe school environment. accordingly, such cases of sexual abuse are regarded as criminal cases and should be reported (amadiume, 2005). the silence of victims the silence of those hurt seemed intuitively easier to understand. however, these silences are often aided and encouraged by the adults who surround them. in school d, a male teacher was accused of inviting girl learners to his cottage, showing them pornographic videos and ordering them to perform actual intercourse like the ones on the video. the principal, having been informed of this teacher– learner sexual abuse, confronted the learners concerned. at first, they admitted that the incident had occurred, claiming that they had been invited to the teacher’s cottage under false pretences. according to them, he had offered to help them with one of their subjects. the next day, when their parents arrived at school as per the principal’s request, the girls recanted. their new story was that the teacher showed them the video to teach them life sciences. the principal had to drop the perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 28 case but, since then, relations between him and his staff have been extremely tense. in another incident a learner fell pregnant by a teacher, and her mother, who was unemployed, reported the matter to the principal. however, when no action was taken, the learner attempted to abort the foetus. the abortion was unsuccessful but she had a miscarriage and lost the baby anyway. the father of the baby dumped the girl and she dropped out of school. neither she nor her mother claimed or was offered any compensation for her loss of dignity or for the shame that the teacher had brought on the family. according to the principal of school a, a learner from another secondary school was admitted to hospital after she had gone to have an abortion at the expense of the man who had impregnated her – one of her teachers. the teacher was never reported. the girl’s parents were divorced and, according to the mother, the father blamed her for condoning the daughter’s “affair” with the teacher. the father, as head of the family, accused the mother of failing to carry out her responsibility of taking care of the daughter. researchers levitan, rector, sheldon and goering (2003) ascribe a victim’s silence to guilt, shame and self-blame. the investigation at selected schools indicates that learners describe their feelings as shock, hurt, hopelessness, worthlessness, anger, confusion and frustration. modernist values regard school sexual abuse as an illegal, immoral act (doe 2001) which has a negative impact on the psychological, physical and educational development of the victim. accordingly, victims are encouraged to break the silence by reporting such cases. traditional culture regards sex as being part of nature (waetjen & mare, 2010). sexual activities such as ukuthwala and ukumetsha (see definitions sections) form part of these natural tendencies (thornton, 2003). hules (2005) indicates that children of all ages have silently been used as sex objects. the abuser is not accused of committing a criminal offence; instead the matter is settled between the two families in the form of compensation payments. it is arguable that the reasons for the silence on sexual abuse, and the abuse of women and children in particular, are encapsulated in cultural and traditional beliefs. evidence for this claim can be found in the reasons that school principals give for the silence on teacher–learner abuse; in the victims’ decisions not to tell their parents or teachers about the abuse; in the pressure that the community places on the victims and their parents (firstly to honour traditional taboos and, secondly, to accept the advice of male elders); in the parents’ choice for material compensation rather than legal justice; and in the manipulation of disciplinary processes and outcomes by teacher unions. in fact, the reasons for the silence are neatly encapsulated in those given by the national department of education, namely fear, unequal power relations, cultural taboos, confusion and uncertainty. shrouds of silence: a case study of sexual abuse in schools in the limpopo province in south africa boledi masehela & venitha pillay 29 child victims are afraid that reporting the abuse would lead to retribution by the teacher concerned (falling grades, harsh punishment, public humiliation), punishment by their parents (traditional values forcing children not to discuss sexual matters), inability to survive due to loss of income (termination of child maintenance payments) and alienation from the community and its (emotional and social) resources. the conflict between modernist (urging to report) and traditional values (against discussions about sex and sexuality) leaves victims caught in the middle, and as a result, they resort to silence. the silence of schools the stories of those interviewed seem to reflect that the entire school with all its surrounding support structures is maintaining the silence. one of the principals interviewed told of an incident where a member of the school management team, a friend of the previous principal, was sexually involved with both a female teacher and a girl learner at the same school. when the girl, who had given birth to the teacher’s child, found out about the teacher’s “other” girlfriend, she arranged with some of her relatives and friends (fellow learners) to beat up the female teacher. they did so at her cottage. when the matter was reported to the principal, he organised transfers for both teachers and advised the male teacher to arrange an out-of-court maintenance settlement for the girl concerned. the case was never reported to anyone else. in school d, the parent of a girl who fell pregnant after being sexually abused by one of her teachers came to the principal to ask for advice on how to deal with the matter. unfortunately, the principal was not at work on that particular day, so the mother spoke to the deputy principal, now the acting principal. he reported the matter to the principal who, once again, without initiating disciplinary measures, arranged an exchange transfer to another school for the accused teacher. the sexual incident was a closed case. yet another example was to be found in school a. in this instance, a whistle blower (an unknown person who was aware of the incident) informed the media that the principal of one of the secondary schools in the cluster had regularly abused girl learners. although teachers and some community members were aware of the situation, the matter was kept under wraps. even when two of the girls fell pregnant, no action was taken: the parents, who allegedly had been “paid” in groceries and money, refused to talk to the media and prevented their daughters from giving evidence. according to the parents, the principal in question was taking care of his children born to the girls and was not supposed to be punished. principal a ascribes the secrecy around the sexual abuse of learners to tribal traditions, poverty and illiteracy, all of which are still typical of rural areas. according to him, there is no independent thinking and most of the time parents are bribed with small incentives. moreover, parents do not seem to be aware of the fact that perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 30 children have rights, and are unwilling to accept responsibility for protecting the rights of their own offspring. it is not surprising, according to him, that parents are easily manipulated into keeping quiet about the sexual abuse of their children, even when the perpetrator is their child’s teacher. teacher unions, meant to be the custodians of teacher behaviour in schools, were also partners in the veil of secrecy. in school f, in an incident reported to the principal by parents, teachers were accused of engaging in sexual activities with girl learners in the school toilets. the department, having been notified of the incident, instituted a disciplinary hearing. during the first session of the hearing, learners admitted that the incident had indeed occurred. during the second session, the unions of which the accused teachers were members, pleaded with departmental officials present to issue the accused with warnings only. the case was consequently not reported to the police and the teachers are still employed at the school. this implies that the principal, teacher union and the departmental official protected the perpetrators at the expense of the learners. schools operate according to the values of the constitution, although some of them exist in communities that uphold cultural values. consequently, all stakeholders are caught between western liberal laws and traditional values. the modernist approach encourages a school culture that is open to discussions on sexuality which might include breaking the silence, whereas african traditional culture prohibits such discussions. the research findings show that the sexual abuse of school children evokes fear in all concerned. some of the principals who participated in the study indicated that their lives had been threatened when they confronted the teacher culprits. others, like the former principal of one of the schools, not only kept quiet, but did everything in his power to protect offenders, even transferring them to other schools, in order to “make the problem go away”. in doing so, such principals ensure that culprits are not found out. some principals even go as far as ensuring that the culprits’ jobs are secured and that the image or reputation of their schools remains intact. sexual abuse reported to principals and teachers by victims or parents is often ignored. furthermore, the silence might be exacerbated by the fact that even some principals, according to the media, are culprits of learner sexual abuse. they use their engendered positions of power to abuse defenceless learners and silence them with incentives. a school exists within a community and parents are central players in the modernist institution of the school. research findings indicate that communities trapped in cultural, traditional values present a challenge for the implementation of modernist values. poverty and silence there were repeated examples of parents accepting some form of compensation, such as money or cattle, for the abuse of their children. shrouds of silence: a case study of sexual abuse in schools in the limpopo province in south africa boledi masehela & venitha pillay 31 in school f, a female teacher was accused of sexually abusing male learners; this was also reported by parents. there was a disciplinary hearing and learners gave evidence with the accused teacher being represented by her union. on the last day of the disciplinary hearing the learners’ parents and the school governing body decided to treat the incident as a family matter. the principal was left out of the discussions and discovered afterwards that the parents and the school governing body had withdrawn because they had been “paid off”. data collected during the course of the investigation – at local, provincial and national levels – indicate that learners and their parents are willing to keep quiet about sexual abuse in exchange for food and/or money. although they might not initiate sexual activity in exchange for incentives, some of the children in the sample, as well as some of those interviewed by sace, indicated that they were offered incentives in exchange for sex. most of the girls who fell pregnant as a result of their sexual engagement with teachers, played the “victim” card afterwards, reporting the teacher either to the police or to their parents (resulting in an outof-court settlement) in order to receive maintenance money for their illegitimate child. parents are prepared to go to the extent of sacrificing their daughters’ honour for food and money. this act is against modernist values which would regard such arrangements as prostitution. ironically, as poverty culture theorists murray (1999) and anderson (1999) argue, it is their “pathological” victim mentality – their feelings of helplessness, inferiority and low self-esteem – in conjunction with their selfishness, disregard for the law and self-defeating cultural values and practices that will destroy their chances of ever improving their socio-economic condition. this attitude is also self-defeating in terms of overcoming their fears, stress and confusion. in particular, most of the girls who fall pregnant as a result of teacher–learner sexual abuse tend to leave school to care for their babies. as a result, learner victims of sexual abuse might never get the opportunity of studying further, something that, according to hunter (2010), is crucial to their upward mobility. by implication, their sexual behaviour traps them in an everlasting cycle of poverty. conclusion: silence versus speaking despite the resounding silence from parents, principals, victims and other stakeholders, there was consensus among the learners who responded to the questionnaire that it is government’s responsibility to keep schools safe, to protect learners and to punish teachers where applicable. there is no doubt that abuse has a negative impact on learners – both physical and psychological. for this purpose, it is argued that the government should monitor teacher behaviour and ensure that the requisite laws and policies are implemented in schools. in breaking the silence, the illegal behaviour of teachers, principals, teachers’ union representatives and departmental officials who contribute to the abuse should be reported. perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 32 the increase in reported cases of sexual abuse at both provincial and national levels suggests that the veil of silence could be penetrated and that, by implication, cultural conflicts could be resolved to the advantage of the poor. indications are that the silence could be broken as a result of the fusion of managerial, legal and socio-cultural notions on the best way to approach the problem. this fusion is evident in recent joint government–stakeholder initiatives aimed at community and victim empowerment and support. this approach, based on an awareness of cultural differences and the devastating effect of sexual abuse on those who are most vulnerable, has the best chance of stopping the tide of child sexual abuse that is threatening to engulf the nation. this study has shown that cases reported with evidence have been attended to. perpetrators have been arrested and charged and, in some cases summons were issued, forcing them to maintain their children born of such liaisons. sace indicated, in particular, that it takes any form of reporting seriously, whether formal or informal. the silence is most prevalent in provinces that are least urbanised and in communities in deep rural areas (bhana & pattman, 2011). as argued above, the reasons for the silence are cultural in nature (socio-cultural and socio-economic), and strategies for breaking the silence should take cognisance of this fact. in attempting to change behaviour with regard to school-based sexual abuse, it is necessary to create a balanced approach in dealing with sex and sexuality. one should consider addressing both cultural tradition on sexuality and liberal laws in order to break the silence which makes learners vulnerable to sexual abuse and incurable sexual diseases (bhana & pattman, 2011). social capitalist theorists would probably ascribe the silence either to the “pathology” of poverty cultures (murray 1999; anderson 1999) or the resistance capital of marginalised communities − capital that they use to manipulate social systems whose “wealth” and “power” would otherwise not be available to them (solorozano & delgado, 2001; yosso, 2005). it is possible that learners submit to abuse in exchange for material or scholastic benefits, some for pleasure, some to escape punishment or avoid being humiliated by the teacher concerned, and others by peer pressure. it is possible that because of the unequal power relationship between teachers and learners, confusion about social roles, as well as conflicting positions regarding traditional and emergent/ modernist value systems will persist unless there is conscious and direct intervention from parents, the community and the school and that such intervention seeks to protect the child. research evidence on the effectiveness of current strategies aimed at the prevention of sexual abuse and the breaking of silence in this regard indicates that success has been mixed (doe, 2002). government institutions have done what bureaucracies do best, that is, create the necessary structures, procedures and shrouds of silence: a case study of sexual abuse in schools in the limpopo province in south africa boledi masehela & venitha pillay 33 processes to curb sexual abuse at schools, but these have not been particularly effective if official statistics are to be believed. other initiatives, launched by organisations that focus more on empowerment and support rather than on management and control, seem to have been more successful. innovative approaches that are not only culturally sensitive, but that regard the cultural capital of traditional communities as a resource for transformation rather than as a stumbling block in the way, are more likely to be effective. during the whole process of moving towards a solution, those who have to sacrifice what they hold dear need to be made to feel valued and worthy. telling them that their ways are illegal and/or out-dated will not endear the cause to them. instead, it is best to think of noble ways of incorporating things that worked in the past into strategies for the future. workshops could serve this purpose, but not if their focus is on laws, processes and procedures. rather, they should serve as clearing houses where people feel safe enough to express their fears, anger, sorrow and frustration about the way things are changing, without worrying that there will be repercussions. only when the air is clear should the transformational leader take their hands, metaphorically speaking, and lead them on new paths alongside him or her. communities that are close knit, with a common history and a common culture, that care about and for one another, are much more likely to consider changing their ways if the emphasis in workshops is based on sharing – sharing ownership, responsibility and values. even parents with stereotypical thinking might reconsider whether they benefit or not. perhaps then parents will have the courage to stand up against those who sexually abuse their children and intimidate the parents to keep quiet. finally, creating and maintaining a culture and climate that foster quality learning and teaching is crucial to the health of the school as an organisation and, by implication, to the health of education systems. therefore, it is the obligation of school governing bodies (rsa, 1996b) to ensure that any form of child abuse is reported to the police or to the welfare. definitions: ukuthwala is a very common practice in the rural black communities of kwazulunatal and eastern cape provinces (south africa) whereby young men abduct young girls and forcing them into marriage, often with the consent of their parents. the man can invite his peers to assist him in carrying the girl if he experiences any form of resistance. force can be applied and the man’s peers can hold the girl down, assisting his penetration. the girl’s family will be offered a cow in compensation. in this culture, the act is not referred to as sexual abuse; instead it serves as an act that unites the girl and the man, or their two families (refer to wood, 2005). perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 34 ukumetsha is mostly practiced among the black cultures such as the xhosaspeaking transkei region of the eastern cape, whereby rural elders encourage ukumetsha (sweet-hearting). this activity was historically condoned in unmarried unions. in this act, boys are allowed to sleep with girls through an indirect penetration of thighs without sexual intercourse. the boy’s family are then expected to offer an animal in exchange for this act, which is seen as a natural activity in a teenager’s life (refer to wood, 2005). references amadiume i 2005. sexuality, african religion, cultural traditions and modernity: expanding the lens. department of religion, 6036. thornton hall, hanover, nh 03755, usa. anderson e 1999. the code of the street. new york: norton. bhana d & pattman r 2011. girls want money, boys want virgins: the materiality of love amongst south african township youth in the context of hiv and aids. culture, health and sexuality, 13(8): 961-972. cowan j, dembour mb & wilson r (eds) 2001. culture & rights: anthropological perspectives. cambridge: cambridge university press. department of education (doe) 2001. opening our eyes: addressing gender based violence in south african schools. a manual for educators. pretoria: department of education. department of education (doe) 2002. issues on gender in schools, an introduction for teachers. pretoria: department of education. hules ja 2005. civilization sexuality: a culture of sexual abuse. the missing commandments: a permission for perpetrators. retrieved on 23 august 2011 from http://www.hules.us. hunter m 2010. love in the time of aids: inequality, gender and rights in south africa. pietermaritzburg: university of kwazulu-natal press. jackson d, cassere d & hardacre c 2002. issues on gender in schools. an introduction to teachers. pretoria, republic of south africa: department of education. jewkes r & abrahams n 2002. the epidemiology of rape and sexual coercion in south africa: an overview. social science & medicine 55(7): 1231-44. levitan rd, rector na, sheldon t & goering p 2003. childhood adversities associated with major depression and/or anxiety disorders in a community sample of ontario: issues of co-morbidity and specificity. usa: ontario press. makgoka m 2007. kgonama o ponye mahlo. seipone. 30 may-12 june 2007: 7. masuku s 2008. mentally disabled had sex in full view of kids. sowetan. 31 june 2008: 2. matlala aj 2005. teacher trades exam paper for sex. capricorn voice. 30 novemberdecember: 3. maud j, murphy p, robinson n & kock t 2008. child sexual abuse, the law and culture: gang-rape judge in child sex furore. retrieved on 19 february 2008 from http:// www.news.com.aulstroly.html. shrouds of silence: a case study of sexual abuse in schools in the limpopo province in south africa boledi masehela & venitha pillay 35 mogakane t & mnisi o 2007. principal, teacher in sex scandal. retrieved on 5 september 2010 from http://blog.thembarnetts.com/2007/05/principalteacher-in-sex-scandal.html. mulaudzi fm 2003. women and sexually transmitted disease. an exploration of indigenous knowledge and health practices among the vhavenda department of health studies. pretoria: university of south africa. murray c 1999. the underclass revisited. washington, dc: aei press. mutua m 2001. savages, victims and saviours: the metaphor of human rights. harvard international law journal, 42: 201-245. rapport ns & overing g 2000. social and cultural anthropology: key concepts. london: routledge. republic of south africa (rsa) 1996a. the constitution of the republic of south africa, 1996. cape town: government printer. republic of south africa (rsa) 1996b. south african schools act, 84 of 1996. pretoria: government printer. republic of south africa (rsa) 1998. employment of educators act, 76 of 1998. pretoria: government printer. republic of south africa (rsa) 2007. sexual offence act of 2007. sikes p 2006. scandalous stories and dangerous liaisons when female pupils and male teachers fall in love. journal on sex education, 1(3): 265-280. solorzano d & delgado b 2001. critical race theory, transformational resistance, and social justice: chicana & chicano students in an urban context. urban education, 36: 308-342. tamale s 2008. the right to culture and the culture of rights: a critical perspective on women’s sexual rights in africa. female legal studies, 16: 47-69. thornton r 2003. flows of sexual substance and representation of body in south africa. department of anthropology, university of the witwatersrand, republic of south africa. van niekerk j 2005. child pornography with some note on association to child trafficking. paper presented at conference against child pornography, coega village, port elizabeth.1-3 june. vetten l 2000. invisible girls and violent boys: gender and gangs in south africa. development updates, 3(2): 1-12. vujovic m 2008. experiencing violence: a phenomenological study of adolescent girls. phd thesis. johannesburg: university of johannesburg. waetjen t & mare g 2010. tradition’s desire: the politics of culture in the rape trial of jacob zuma. concerned africa scholars, 84: 52-61. wood k 2005. contextualizing group rape in post-apartheid south africa. culture, health and sexuality, 7(4): 303-317. yosso t j 2005. whose culture has capital? a critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. race, ethnicity and education, 8(1): 69-90. 622021 39(3): 62-78 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 resilient english teachers’ use of remote teaching and learning strategies in gauteng resource-constrained township secondary schools abstract in literature and education policies, the teaching of english using remote learning strategies is recommended, but for the most part, some teachers are not pedagogically capacitated to teach their respective subjects using technology in south africa. to explore the experiences of such teachers, this study sought to understand the models and pedagogical initiatives on the teaching of english through remote teaching and learning. emergency remote teaching is one of the initiatives taken by resilient english teachers in resource-constrained township secondary schools in south africa, during and after the covid-19 outbreak. an interpretive, qualitative case study predicated on a constructivist framework was undertaken to explore how english teachers use remote learning strategies in teaching english as a second language in township secondary schools in gauteng. data were collected using semi-structured interviews (phone calls) and collecting documents in the form of class worksheet texts and homework activities produced and used by learners during remote learning. data were analysed using an inductive thematic framework to answer the key research question: what are the digital pedagogic initiatives and strategies used by resilient english teachers to support learners during remote learning? findings of the study indicate that collaboration, networking, social media communication and other digital literacy practices are teacher initiatives leading to the utilisation of digital connection platforms for socialisation, teaching and learning. findings emphasise that english teachers should use distance learning, blended learning, mobile learning and online learning as strategies in times of crisis and in resource-constrained environments to help learners achieve their outcomes. conclusions drawn support the fact that focusing on digital literacies in the english classroom supports proficiency in the use of the language. participation in online learning programmes and utilisation of digital platforms provide learning opportunities for english learners in resource-constrained secondary schools. learners eventually improve digital writing and reading skills when they participate in selected remote learning platforms. keywords: digital literacy; digital platforms; e-learning; resourceconstrained schools; remote learning; teacher resilience; tpack; township schools. author: dr christopher rwodzi1 dr lizette de jager1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i3.6 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(3): 62-78 published: 16 september 2021 received: 23 february 2021 accepted: 20 april 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6805-0109 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5923-1490 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 632021 39(3): 63-78 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 rwodzi & de jager resilient english teachers’ use of remote teaching and learning strategies 1. introduction and background the outbreak of the global coronavirus (covid-19) pandemic triggered radical changes in the approach to the provision of educational service. national lockdowns and restricted human movements and interaction had serious implications on curriculum implementation in south african schools. the devastating effects of the coronavirus led to closure of schools and pushed english teachers in gauteng township settings to search for options to continue providing service to learners. in addition to the pandemic challenges, three issues in south african education remain pertinent today (rwodzi, 2018). the first is the pressure of technological advancement and innovation, the second is the english language proficiency of teachers and learners and the third is resource-constrained schools, particularly in townships. this study brings the issues together under the lockdown and post-lockdown circumstances in exploring the digital and pedagogical initiatives used by resilient english teachers to support learning when they teach remotely. key questions guiding the study were: • what are the digital pedagogic initiatives and strategies used by resilient english teachers to support learners during remote learning? • what is the role of digital technology in remote learning in resource-constrained township schools? in a quest to find insight to the research questions, the background review sought to provide an axiom upon which the purpose of the study is founded. according to means, bakia and murphy (2014), the onset of a crisis perpetuated by diseases outbreak, war or research constraints can lead to remote learning models such as mobile learning, radio and blended learning. according to czerniewicz, trotter and haupt (2019), the choice of online platforms for teaching and learning is a result of disruptions in the conventional classroom teaching. english second language teachers’ choices of online remote learning in gauteng township secondary schools take place within a broader context of factors in the education and socio-economic environment. yonezawa, jones and singer (2011:12) state that, “… adverse teaching conditions in urban schools such as overcrowding or outdated textbooks, pose challenges to teachers’ ability to be successful with their students”. in addition, difficult community contexts of impoverished neighbourhoods, homelessness or gang violence can contribute to a challenging professional context for teachers. apart from teaching, rwodzi (2018) states that marking, supervision of extra-curricular activities and other personal matters, as mentioned by yonezwa, jones and singer (2011), may be a source of stress for teachers in gauteng resource-constrained township secondary schools, which may result in early retirement of teachers or changes in profession. in such situations, the classroom management demands and the changing nature of digital-aged learner requirements challenge teachers’ conditions of service. as a result of a ubiquitous digital environment and availability of different network providers in some parts of the country, learners in south african township secondary schools have different expectations in terms of learning english as a second language. however, the use of technology in some gauteng township schools still faces a challenge due to network connectivity, availability of digital devices and the costs of connectivity particularly for township and rural schools (ferreira, 2013). in addition to the challenges, van dyk and white (2019) state that the ranking of schools according to quintiles mean that those in quintile 1 to 2 are the poorest and progressively those in quintile 3, 4 and 5 have relatively stable incomes. for the gauteng province, most quintile 1 and 2 schools are located in townships and informal settlements. van dyk and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 642021 39(3): 64-78 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) white (2019) further explain that poverty levels limit access to adequate financial and material resources required for digital based remote teaching and learning. the focus of this study was to understand the digital and pedagogical initiatives taken by resilient english language teachers in gauteng township schools when implementing a remote learning approach within the context of the coronavirus pandemic on education. in the south african curriculum context, lack of understanding of grammatical structures and of english competence among learners is a cause for concern in the education sector. this has also been the experience of the authors of this article as both have been english language teachers and are currently lecturers at universities in gauteng. in this capacity, both have experienced that learners in gauteng resource-constrained secondary township schools struggle with using english proficiently. mutasa (2006) claims that english in education and business positions is at the top of the list of languages used in south africa and learners from townships are forced to use it for learning at school. since english is not their first language (mbatha, 2016), learners in township schools struggle to use english proficiently as a second language in academic domains. evidence from research clearly indicates that poor proficiency in english affects academic performance (thanasoulas, 2001; martirosyan, hwang & wanjohi, 2015; okura, 2016). the need to explore this problem is as urgent as ever under pandemic circumstances. possible models for emergency remote learning as a mitigation measure against the effects of the coronavirus outbreak as well as the effects of resource constraints in gauteng township secondary schools need investigation. 2. literature review literature informs us that technology can be used as information repository, data storage, transfer and creation of content and text used for teaching and learning (hartmann et al., 2017; bhoi, 2017). in support of digital technology integration, mahalingam and rajan (2013) make recommendations on the adoption and use of cloud computing for schools. hartmann et al. (2017) state that the challenge of teacher digital skills competence limits the possibility of expansion of learning in terms of time and space. dietrich (2018) argues that technology integration based on the technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) model supports teacher initiatives when they plan, organise and execute lessons using technology during crisis. the gap exists between the content, technological competence (digital competence) and the pedagogic strategies used to teach digital literacy, particularly on remote learning pedagogy (petterson, 2017; dube, 2020). in the south african context, english teachers are to use information and communication technology (ict) extensively in their practices (department of basic education, 2011), but they are not instructed on how to go about it. in view of the curriculum requirements, english second language teachers are expected to take up initiatives and use digital technology to deliver lessons remotely. networked computers can be used for communication by teachers and learners particularly for a specifically chosen emergency remote learning programme for learning subjects such as english, and for storage of information for future uses and transfer. according to hodges et al. (2020), an e-learning system as a selected learning programme is understood as formalised teaching. it is one of the popular selected programmes by the dbe in south africa. the e-learning programme depends on the availability of the digital devices and connectivity. in other contexts, e-learning is described as network enabled transfer of skills and knowledge for academic purposes. it also includes the delivery of an educational service to many recipients at the same or different times but may be in various geographical locations (rwodzi, 2018). according to pahomov http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 652021 39(3): 65-78 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 rwodzi & de jager resilient english teachers’ use of remote teaching and learning strategies (2014) and dhawan (2020) the e-learning model of teaching and learning includes web-based learning, online learning and multimodal facilities such as videos. however, this article does not seek to pursue e-learning opportunities but to understand english teachers’ pedagogic initiatives when implementing remote learning and borrowing from e-learning principles and practices in resource-constrained township schools in south africa. dube (2020) claims that covid-19 and the implementation of online learning has magnified the challenges faced by resource-constrained learners and teachers. on the other hand, hodges et al. (2020) say that remote learning occurs when the learner and instructor (teacher) or sources of information are separated by time and distance and therefore cannot meet in a traditional classroom. the settings can be synchronous or asynchronous depending on the circumstances. in other words, e-learning can be a selected model for an emergency remote learning programme (dhawan, 2020). however, it is important to mention that e-learning, online learning and webbased learning as digitally based programmes, do not directly mean remote learning. remote learning may in other cases include the distribution of printed material to people in different geographical locations. in combining principles and common practice, english second language teachers in resource-constrained township schools may borrow from all the different forms of learning and use them in their different situations. the use of social media platforms such as facebook, tweeter, instagram and whatsapp help resilient english teachers to teach and communicate with learners. the use of social media to teach and learn can also be an emergency remote learning programme. in circumstances such as the current coronavirus challenge, emergency remote learning is an option for resource-constrained secondary school learners because english teachers and learners cannot converge in a conventional classroom with high covid-19 restrictions. in support of a digitally based remote learning model, pahomov (2014) and dube (2020) state that learners’ active participation in the digital environment, particularly when the coronavirus restricts movement and interaction, improves their digital competence skills, thereby developing communicative skills and proficiency in english as well as solutions to real-life problems. in addition to the digital literacy process, moodley (2013) says critical thinking as part of the process involves the ability to carry out logical and mental constructions clearly and rationally, explore problems, integrate all available information and arrive at a hypothesis or solution through systematic means. in this study the concept of digital tools refers to critical thinking support tools that can be used to make logical relationships and interpret data for possible alternatives to human problems. in view of the role of digital literacy in a remote learning programme, hague and payton (2010) state that it also includes the ability to read, interpret, analyse and write comprehensible textual matter for communication, transfer, storage and retrieval in english learning contexts. for this study, a lack of resources such as digital tools can lead to other choices of remote learning programmes such as distributed learning (printed material). however, this study focuses on remote learning options involving digital literacies. remote learning can be a result of a lack of material resources. according to ebersöhn (2016) the term “resource-constraint” refers to the limited supply or access to quality of services in communities. resource-constrained schools for this study refer to schools where resources such as textbooks, classrooms and digital equipment are in limited supply – particularly those located in townships (rwodzi, 2018). according to ouma (2019) resource constraints can be at two levels in the education system. material resource constraints refer to the shortage of digital devices and network facilities and connections, while intellectual resource constraints refer to limited skills to function on digital platforms. in an effort to elevate intellectual capacity, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 662021 39(3): 66-78 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) du plessis and mestry (2019) say that there is a need to put pedagogic strategies in place to improve the working conditions of teachers in line with technological developments and the teaching in impoverished schools and consequently improve learner achievement. english teachers are resilient because they need to support learners in achieving their outcomes. in addition, resilient english teachers are under pressure from the technological developments for their role to remain significant. furthermore, teachers have to be resilient because the nature of teaching involves learning new things and upgrading existing knowledge. english second language teachers’ initiatives for this paper refer to creations and inventions as they resiliently attempt to integrate digital tools in english language learning (rwodzi, 2018). english teacher resilience is demonstrated by their learning of new skills, re-skilling and personal motivation to develop competence and proficiency. in addition to skills development, mhlanga and moloi (2020) say that tasks involving connectivity, texting, collaboration and video gaming in educational contexts support remote learning programme. ferreira (2013:75) identifies three forms of resilience: capacity to absorb stress forces through resistance or adaptation, maintaining certain basic functions and structures during a high risk event and the ability to recover from an event or “bounce back”. for this study, english teachers endure the risk conditions of the pandemic in addition to existing challenges in the profession. developing suitable approaches to emergency remote learning strategies and adjusting to the circumstances is part of the resilience leading emergence of new practices and ways of supporting learners in their academic work (mhlanga & moloi, 2020). english teachers learn new skills and modify existing skills as a process of adjusting and adapting to new settings. previously, researchers used to recommend teacher professional development (tpd) programmes in situations where human contact was permissible. postholm (2012) mentions standardised, school-centred and self-directed models as part of tpd programmes that can be implemented in schools. with regard to tpd theories, pettersson (2017) postulates that the unpreparedness as well as the need for re-skilling and the demand for professional adjustment to new crisis situations require english second language teachers to be creative and initiate strategies to integrate technology for emergency remote learning programmes. based on the writings of wanjala (2016) and wastiau et al. (2013), poorly-prepared teachers and a lack of electronic writing skills as well as competence in reading and interpretation of electronic texts and visuals, affect progression in digital literacy and effective emergency remote learning programme in the teaching of english. gilster (1997) identifies and summarised key competences, which include assembling knowledge, evaluating information, searching and navigating non-linear routes in order to discover patterns and relationships. rwodzi (2018) says assembling knowledge involves accumulating constitutive data and processing it by intellectual procedures into meaningful and usable units. the practice of english language teachers in south african curriculum prescriptions would include selecting contextually relevant english units such as grammar, comprehension passages and business and social communication products (rwodzi, de jager & mpofu, 2020). evaluation information involves accreditation, authentication and relating to diverse situations and contexts. in expanding gilster’s (1997) notions relating to the roles of teachers as instructors, evaluating includes upraising, validating and relating content to real life situations for problem solving and creativity. subscribing to similar notions, lankshear and knobel (2006) claim that searching competence for english second language teachers involves the ability to use electronic devices to identify information sources. english teachers have a responsibility to break the content into manageable units in a carefully selected language code which matches the level of learners. in support of the above views, gallardo-echenique et al. (2015) state that digital literacy is a convergence of http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 672021 39(3): 67-78 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 rwodzi & de jager resilient english teachers’ use of remote teaching and learning strategies several literacy practices including elements of ict literacy, information literacy, media literacy and visual literacy, all fundamentally and practically relevant for an emergency remote learning programme. in the context of gauteng township secondary schools, the set of digital skills and practices involving digital tools could help create english learning opportunities. when learners become proficient, they gain access to content knowledge repositories. for this study, digital literacy covers an awareness, attitude and ability of individuals to appropriately use digital tools to identify, manage access, integrate, create media expressions, communicate with fellow learners, analyse, evaluate, construct new structures of knowledge and enable constructive social action (rokenes & krumsvik, 2016). the set of practices all aim to provide valuable education and language service to learners. english teachers’ initiatives and creativity is an invaluable asset for the success of learners. for the purpose of an effective remote learning programme, hague and payton (2010) posit that initiatives are generational steps involving creativity, innovativeness and an ability to demonstrate job ability with the integration of digital technology especially in adverse conditions (matos, pedro & piedade, 2019). in this context, initiatives include human creations, modifications and curation of existing strategies and skills to suit new settings (rwodzi, de jager & mpofu, 2020). as mentioned earlier, initiatives resemble properties of human courage, learning readiness and being proactive in changing the learning landscape for the benefit of the learner (pahomov, 2014; savage & mcgoun, 2015). resilient english language teachers adapt to new english curriculum demands by showing courage, readiness and a positive attitude in order to adjust to new english language learning settings. gu and day (2007) posit that teacher resilience is a psychological construct that incorporates the study of personal factors such as self-esteem, self-efficacy, motivation, resourcefulness and health for the purpose of surviving in adverse conditions. in the current south african situation, resilient english language teachers have to grapple with coronavirus’ devastating effects and death threats as well as creating opportunities for their learners to continue with their education (czerviewicz, trotter & haupt, 2019). in view of the circumstances, resilience is understood to be a series of socially and intellectual protective factors minimising or reducing the impact of english language teaching challenges. resilient english language teachers negotiate academic challenges in the standard process of adversity (richardson et al., 1990). english language teachers under the remote learning programme need to learn, unlearn and re-learn pedagogical skills due to the changing nature of the learning environment. in this case, the relevance and importance of digital technology is that it is fast and convenient for information processing and retrieval (ebersöhn, 2016). as an intervention measure to the above context, mafenya (2013) and dube (2020) claim that teachers need to learn about technology functions and capabilities before they teach subjects such as english first additional language with technology. the availability of the networks guarantees connectivity for online teaching and learning within regions and across borders (dube, 2020). this situation supports the use of emergency remote learning programmes during a crisis due to the availability of the digital technology infrastructure despite that some learners cannot afford the digital devices and the costs of connectivity. as lecturers, we have realised that undergraduate students from resource-constrained township schools have poor computer application skills leading to universities’ justification for the teaching of end-user computing as a subject for all first-year students. in this study, we thus assumed that teachers struggle with digital technology for teaching, not only because they have few computers in their classrooms, but also because of crowded classes and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 682021 39(3): 68-78 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) pedagogic choices for english as a second language (andrei, 2017). english teachers should engage learners in english language experiences that challenge previous conceptions of their existing knowledge to allow responses to drive lessons to seek elaboration of learners’ initial responses and encourage the spirit of questioning as well as developing an autonomous initiative (hague & payton, 2010). in support of the above view, savage and mcgoun (2015) state that the resilient english language teacher’s role is to create an enabling environment that is academically interactive, socially immersive and informative even in emergency remote teaching and learning using digital technology. in addition to the pedagogic strategies, matos, pedro and piedade (2019) and altavilla (2020) indicate that the process of digital technology integration in learning of subjects such as english requires the teachers to inculcate a positive mind set (mental readiness), develop digital literacy skills and understand their environment as they embark on a project to facilitate teaching and learning in crisis situations. distinctly, the whole approach should not focus on digital technology but its use in providing english educational service. 3. justification for the need for remote learning interventions to support learners struggling with mastering content and proficiency in english, additional or emergency remote learning strategies have to be adopted. thanasoulas (2001) contends that students who come from under-privileged educational backgrounds are unable to effectively understand and interpret information presented in digital form in order to use it for examination purposes and other career opportunities. the general focus of the study is on the initiatives by resilient english teachers in resource-constrained secondary schools on implementing a remote learning strategy using digital technology. the paper seeks to inform and share experiences of resilient english teachers on use of online platforms to support learners especially in times of a crisis. for computer technology to support strong cognitive functions in learning and encourage higher achievement of learning outcomes, teachers have to reconceptualise the way digital devices and software are used in the integration of language learning theories and practice (jonassen, 2006). the reconceptualised procedure should result in a shift away from a teacher-centred approach to instruction that attempts to engage learners in activities that support knowledge construction. in the modern paradigms of language teaching, english teachers are not necessarily knowledge reservoirs, but are facilitators who should enable learners to discover and understand their environment (hokanson & hooper, 2000). in support of the process of understanding the environment, rwodzi, de jager and mpofu (2020) posit that there needs to be an increase in teacherlearner interaction in authentic scenarios. additional time for tasks and other out-of-school literacy practices compels learners and teachers to engage in remote learning using digital technology in gauteng resource-constrained township schools. 4. conceptual framework the study utilised the technological pedagogical content knowledge framework (tpack) (mishra & koehler, 2006). kurt (2018) and dietrich (2018) state that specific technological tools (hardware, software, applications and associated digital literacy practices) support effective learning if integrated with the various ways in the tpack framework. technological, pedagogical knowledge accounts for the relationships and interactions between technological tools and specific pedagogical practices while pedagogical content knowledge describes the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 692021 39(3): 69-78 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 rwodzi & de jager resilient english teachers’ use of remote teaching and learning strategies relationship between specific learning objectives (kurt, 2018). mishra and koehler (2006) based their model on shulman1986’s pedagogical content knowledge and identified these three core components at the centre of good teaching practice. teachers need to choose appropriate technology, select the ideal methods and integrate with the relevant content to be delivered. in this study, the key principles and guidelines from the tpack framework were blended with sets of beliefs in social constructivism that place virtual learning at a high level of collaboration, a feature that is advocated by digital literacy practices in remote learning because it personalises learning and encourages technological integration. in support of the tpack model, constructivist theories of learning (vygotsky, 1987) were also used. these theories propose that learning takes place through active construction of knowledge in different contexts necessitated by social interaction. according to pappert (1988), constructivism is a process by which knowledge is built by learners, thereby implying mental activity involving combining of old structures and new structures to form different forms of knowledge, which is used to solve contextual problems. in support of the constructivism trajectory, abbas, lei-mei and haruil (2013) say that a constructivist perspective supports the combined use of digital technology and other remote learning capabilities in the process of providing educational service and also during crisis. while cognitivists and constructivists attune to mentally based processes, ebersohn (2017) posits that human adjustments to new and adverse conditions require emotional intelligence and mental cooperation, all destined to support resilience for performance accomplishment. the psychological process of adjusting by incorporating behaviourist and cognitive concepts is part of adaptive resilience because it involves modifications in teaching methods, approaches and strategies (ebersohn, 2017). in support of the adaptive resilience of english teachers during adverse conditions, bates (2018) and altavilla (2020) strongly recommend english second language teachers’ need to understand that their roles have dramatically changed in comparison to the traditional system. learning should be led by planning, organising, interacting with learners and determining strategies for effective teaching in the new circumstances where face-to-face is no longer possible. social constructivist theories of learning dominate today and propose that learning takes place through active construction of knowledge in different contexts necessitated by social interaction (young, 2002). the views on constructivism as indicated by bates (2018) place virtual learning at a high level of collaboration, a feature that is advocated by digital literacy practices in remote learning because it personalises learning and encourages technological integration. 5. methodology this research was a qualitative, descriptive case study. the qualitative approach is concerned with subjective understanding of attitudes, opinions and behaviour. qualitative research is grounded in knowing sciences that allows researchers to talk about action, experiences and attitudes (cohen, manion & morrison, 2011) and to help the researcher understand the social problem in its natural context (silverman, 2016). it provides an interactive platform for researcher and participants to understand the phenomenon under exploration. a case study includes designing the study, collecting data and analysing and presenting the results in a particular format (yin, 2016). the research process involves a selection of participants and sites as cases as well as putting procedures in place that adhere to the case study design principles. creswell (2013:20) posits that “…individuals seek an understanding of the world in which they live and work”. humans develop subjective meanings of their experiences and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 702021 39(3): 70-78 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) the meanings are varied and multiple that lead researchers to look for the complexity of views rather than narrow the meanings into a few categories or ideas. in pursuit of the need to understand emergency remote learning opportunities, we used purposive and convenient sampling to select participants. the selection was influenced by the fact that the chosen schools are previously disadvantaged and that the schools have awareness of the use of technology in teaching and learning. the selected participants are english teachers teaching the subject at grade 9, 10 and 11. only qualified resilient english teachers who had an experience of more than five years teaching english participated. the reason for choosing the schools in the selected district was also a result of convenience in terms of proximity of the researchers to research sites and accessibility via technological connection. selected teachers participated voluntarily and consent forms were completed for learners in order to comply with ethical considerations in the study. the total number of participants was nine english teachers out of a total of 42 experienced english second language teachers in the district. data for the semi-structured interviews were collected through phone calls due to covid-19 movement restriction and social distancing. the examination and analysis of documents digitally produced also included analysis of communication records as well as discussions on digital platforms that indicate that participation provides opportunities for emergency remote learning programme. the process of data collection and analysis stretched for 2–3 months, due to availability of participants and a chance for member checking (birt et al., 2016). we made appointments with participants and adhered to their time of availability. data were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. we analysed interview recordings, extracts from digitally shared texts and social media chats. the aspects from the conceptual framework were used to map the data against which yielded themes and patterns. we included the voices of the participants which are anonymously presented for trustworthiness and ethical compliance respectively (korstjens & moser, 2018). 6. findings and discussion the research questions required an understanding of the digital pedagogic initiatives undertaken by resilient english teachers during remote learning in resource-constrained township secondary schools. the analysed data and findings attempt to answer the research question. in view of the context and focus of the study, major themes that emerged from the thematic analysis are: 1) collaborative participation of english teachers and learners on digital platforms; 2) presence of learners and teachers in online groups creates learning opportunities; and 3) electronic reading and writing using digital platforms improves english language proficiency and extends learning time for learners during crisis. the three themes are briefly discussed in an attempt to provide insights to the research questions. theme 1 shows that english teachers use collaboration as a digitally-based pedagogic initiative during covid 19 lockdowns to assist learners, which is in line with the key principles of the tpack model of technology integration (mishra & koehler, 2006). the principles of tpack include a change in teaching strategies as a result of the selected appropriate technology, pedagogic choices and the level of content to be delivered in accordance with the psychological level of development of the learners. findings show that resilient english teachers form social media groups with their learners and use the platform to ask critical questions which ignite debate. collaboration involved teamwork which was coordinated using online platforms. the learning process included sharing past examination question papers, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 712021 39(3): 71-78 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 rwodzi & de jager resilient english teachers’ use of remote teaching and learning strategies discussions on a variety of topics and transferring of information using pictures, emojis and written texts on different social media platforms. in support of the role of the tpack model, mishra (2020) further indicates the role of contextual factors in the revised diagram of the tpack model and reinforces the use of technological pedagogical content knowledge in remote learning. this view was supported by the fact that resilient english teachers embarked on an initiative to use technology due to covid-19 lockdown restrictions. theme 2 indicates that communication in groups is a pedagogic choice where english teachers and learners constructively discuss, share and transfer information using digital connection. participants indicated that reading and writing in english using social media platform groups form part of learner constructivist practice. this finding concurs with czerniewicz et al. (2019) who indicate that resilient teachers can opt for remote learning when faced with adverse circumstances. group work discussions relating to english language parts of speech, literary works, essay writing and comprehension passages forms part of remote learning when tasks are completed on social media or online platforms. for example, english teachers and learners discussed the use of emojis in creative electronic writing indicating the influence and role of digital technology in learning english. this shows a strong link between social constructivism and the tpack model when teachers and learners use technology for connecting and learning english. participants say the use of emergency remote learning is strongly associated with technological developments in english teaching and learning. digital innovative practices in emergency remote learning refer to participants’ actions and motivation towards the use of digital literacy in english (savage & mcgoun, 2015). in this study, innovations included pedagogic strategies, learner tasks and participation on digital connection platforms for the purpose of teaching and learning of english as a second language. for effective emergency remote learning, the innovations on pedagogic strategies and learner tasks are what leask and pachler (2013) regard as technology integration in teaching different subjects at schools. the use of a collaborative approach is supported by andrei (2017) who state that self-directed online learning and other digitally based learning programmes form the remote learning programme in resource-constrained schools for learners who have access to the digital tools and connectivity. participants understand digital connection as online facilities and platforms that are used for teaching and learning of different subjects and transfer of information from one source to another in learning contexts. according to fewkes and mccabe (2012) social media as part of digital technology intervention on emergency remote learning refers to computer-mediated technologies that create platforms to share information on educational, social and career interests. participants confirm that digital platforms can be used to share social information, entertainment and schoolwork discussions. therefore, sharing on social media is a strong social constructivist tenet leading to learning (andrei, 2017). in view of the availability of social media and other academic platforms, english second language teachers connect with learners to discuss homework, respond to questions, share experiences and provide guidelines on completing tasks or reading programmes. participants in this study confirm their use of digital platforms such as facebook, twitter, whatsapp and instagram. participant (p3) says: oh yes! i use facebook, whatsapp, and twitter to communicate with my learners and to share and provide guidelines for completing assignments. ummmm i, eeeh have discussed different types of essays/ or forms of writing such as descriptive, discussive, creative etc. the discussions include social issues and sharing of short videos and music. kkkkkk the learners also enjoy the jokes shared during the discussions. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 722021 39(3): 72-78 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) resilient english language teachers indicate that remote learning takes place using digital platforms. social media also connects english teachers and learners for discussions. evidence from the analysed online documents show conversations involving academic work and collaboration among learners and teachers (altavilla, 2020). the major challenge for this model of learning is for learners who do not have digital devices and consequently do not have access to digital connection for participation on emergency remote learning programmes. some participating teachers suggested during the telephone interviews that the education authorities could use a radio broadcast or provide digital devices to learners in cases where financial resources permit. in other cases, english teachers suggested cloud computing models or television programmes (bedell, 2014). however, most participants indicated the need to set up the infrastructure and train teachers on how to use the models. furthermore, participating resilient english teachers indicated that television and radio broadcast may not be as personalised as social media platforms on cellular phones. the implication for the circumstances commanded by coronavirus means the choice of a digitally based emergency remote learning programme benefits learners with access to digital devices and connectivity. despite the recent coronavirus pandemic, participating english teachers suggest adopting a cloud computing programme by the department of education (doe) in different districts and provinces for learners’ easy access to information repositories. in cases where digital resources are limited, resilient english teachers are circulating hand outs and modules to support learner participation but during the lockdown, distribution remained difficult. participants confirm that the models particularly on assessments that they are using are not yet authorised by doe for formal assessments on the remote learning options. english teachers connect with colleagues from other teaching and learning environments within and across provinces and districts. digital texts analysed indicated that the digital platforms provide opportunities for teachers to share content, videos, rubrics, teaching notes and other curriculum documents through social media. in this case, learners benefit when content and other essential information disseminates to learners in different geographical spaces. participant (p4) said: yes! i connect with english teachers in other provinces, districts, circuits and clusters for the purpose of sharing information. learning also takes place when we get access to information and ask question relating to the teaching and learning of english as a second language. communication and discussion by english second language teachers on digital platforms is a form of informal teacher professional development as teachers share the skills and experiences in their respective subjects. the skills and experiences shared are repatriated to their respective teaching and learning contexts. the responses from participants indicate that remote learning takes place even at the level of staff development. digital tools on an emergency remote learning continuum provide access to videos on youtube, pictures, cartoons, texts, diagrams, tables and graphs – all combined to communicate and present content to teachers and learners (tpack and constructivism combined in practice). shared videos on social media and scanned or pictures of worksheets and information sources show that resilient english teachers use technology to create learning opportunities for learners. participants confirmed that digital literacy in emergency remote learning contexts breaks boundaries between learning environments such as schools and social situations (hidden curriculum as propounded by bowles and gintis, 2002) and extended the english learning to social settings, thereby providing pragmatic learning opportunities http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 732021 39(3): 73-78 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 rwodzi & de jager resilient english teachers’ use of remote teaching and learning strategies (leask & pachler, 2013). the experience of merged learning environments makes digital literacy a socio-cultural practice and excites learners when they combine work, play and learning (digital generation multitasking way of doing things) in one continuous process (reid, 2016). participants shared learner tasks, english marking guidelines, subject teaching notes, past examination and preliminary question papers as well as experiences using digital connections. the crucial fact is that digital technology breaks environmental boundaries and eliminates limitations on access to information for english teachers and their learners. there are more opportunities for interaction online by the two partners. however, the digitally based remote learning model effectively works for learners who have access to digital devices and connection. evidence from interviews and discussions indicate that the movement restrictions necessitated by the coronavirus eliminate the option to exchange storage devices with learners who are not digitally connected. on another positive note, participants were making positive adjustments to challenging situations in cases where they had to design activities and tasks (content knowledge), select methodology that is suitable for the learner needs (pedagogic knowledge) and implemented strategies in order to meet their learners’ educational outcomes. the major challenge in coronavirus contexts is to support learners who do not have access to digital devices and printed texts cannot be distributed physically because of movement restrictions. in addition to material shortages, some learners cannot afford the costs of connectivity even in cases where devices are available (ouma, 2019). the participants suggested cloud computing to be a possibility that schools and universities could pursue seriously to solve the current and future challenges of limited human contact as well as increasing english language learning time in emergencies (hartmann et al., 2017). during discussion group chats, google searches, emails, tweets and smss were used to ask questions relating to the learning of english and responding to issues under discussion on topics such as literature analysis and to create texts, make meaning and transfer information to other digital platforms for the emergency remote learning programme (savage & mcgoun, 2015). participants indicated that learners’ reading habits and patterns improved as evidenced by their presence on digital platforms. in support of developing a culture of reading, the reading of digital texts help learners to become text participants, text decoders (code breakers), text users and text analysts (reid, 2016; ouma, 2019). theme 3 indicates that learners read, write and interpret information on digital platforms. based on the findings from interviews and digital texts analysis, learning english as a second language using digital tools makes learners become aware of the phonological structure, reading strategies, spelling and grammar competence using different fonts, colours and sizes. this process takes place during reading, writing and interpretation of electronically written texts. analysed data from digital documents indicated that learners construct sentences, choose appropriate words for the register and consult online dictionaries using online facilities. the interviews revealed that learners and teachers developed critical thinking skills and evaluated and analysed content and information sources when they used digital literacy in english learning in remote learning contexts. views shared during interviews indicated that participants engaged in critical thinking during planning of learner activities and completion of tasks and this forms part of the tpack planning process (moar, 2017). participants confirmed that they carefully selected content, designed english tasks and identified sets of english language skills to be imparted. the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 742021 39(3): 74-78 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.6 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) process affords the english teachers opportunities to conceptualise, develop pedagogical strategies and make adjustments by inclusion of digital technology and software in the teaching of digital literacy for an emergency remote learning programme. the creation of texts such as poems and essays, for example, creates a context for learners to use their experiences to formulate texts that communicate sense and logic to the readers thereof (savage & mcgoun, 2015). human interaction continued for academic purposes using digital technology during the coronavirus lockdown period in south africa. 7. conclusion this study confirmed that resilient english teachers are taking initiatives in the use and teaching of digital literacy in secondary schools to improve proficiency. english teachers take up the initiatives as support for an emergency remote learning programme. english teachers use digital facilities such as social media, internet, digital equipment and mobile devices to communicate and discuss english language learning material while they are in different geographical spaces. key points emerging from the study indicate that teachers are connecting with learners as individuals and in groups for academic group discussions, sharing, developing electronic documents, curating, communicating and transferring of english information for learning purposes by using digital connection platforms. findings further indicate the communication, conversations, transfer of information and discussions support learners in achieving their desired outcomes. communication and conservations in groups on social media platforms create opportunities for collaboration and sharing and critical thinking which are opportunities for learning. a limitation for the study was that it could not be extended to rural settings due to financial constraints. the study recommends that the doe develop an all-inclusive and precise set of guidelines and pedagogic prescriptions on the use of digital technology and social media for learning purposes. based on the tpack model, inclusion of digital technology (hardware and software) in remote learning forms part of resilient english teacher initiative in bridging the gap between learners and teachers due to covid-19 conditions. clearly, resilient english teachers in township schools 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https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/3807.001.0001 33 research article 2023 41(2): 33-48 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) factors that influence public school principals’ professional discretion: perspectives of south african public-school principals abstract through the lens of the contextual intelligence theory, this article utilises previous empirical research studies as a base to support the application of professional discretion practices of public-school principals. the study focused in particular on the factors that influence or limit their use of professional discretion in their daily tasks. a mixed-methods study was conducted in which quantitative survey data were used to inform the questions that were asked to participants during semi-structured interviews. the findings suggest that public-school principals are susceptible to both internal and external factors that could limit or influence the application of their professional discretion. even though public-school principals within a particular school district operate under the same set of policies, it is evident that some principals are more inclined to apply professional discretion than others. keywords: accountability, contextual intelligence, professional discretion, public-school principals, school leadership, school management 1. introduction and background to provide a broader understanding of principals’ obligations and the discretionary components of their decision-making it is important to recognise that virtually every day principals are faced with situations in which they are required to apply professional judgement (thorn, 2015: 46). the application of discretion in decision-making requires professional wisdom and acumen and is regarded as an essential aspect of a school principal’s professional responsibilities. the responsibilities of the principals often relate to their duty of care in relation to the well-being of the schools’ staff, community and all their learners (heilmann, 2006: 3). it is argued by du plessis (2019: 112) that it would be virtually impossible for school principals to fulfil their obligations without discretionary powers. however, principals need to be prudent in the way they apply their discretionary power, author: rené beyers1 andre du plessis1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i2.7067 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(2): 33-48 published: 30 june 2023 received: 2 february 2023 accepted: 2 june 2023 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0041-3975 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2561-5138 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 342023 41(2): 34-48 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) because every decision taken makes them accountable. moreover, the authority to make decisions resulting from the power bestowed upon them can be restricting or limiting to principals’ discretionary powers (marishane & mampane, 2018: 45). 2. literature review when exercising professional discretion, principals must often balance the conflicting demands of internal and external forces. a principal’s knowledge, experience, leadership practice and personal belief can be categorised as internal forces. external forces include legislation and policy requirements (may, 2010: 11, 16). professional discretion is exercised when principals use their learned expertise to determine what should be done in a specific situation and to take the necessary steps in the best interests of learners. it is therefore necessary to mitigate the demands of external factors in the process of making decisions (jeffries, 2013: 76). according to heilmann (2006: 3, 7) and may (2010: 11, 16), principals’ decisions are influenced by several factors, such as case facts, their personal values, the context of the school and individuals concerned (learners, parents, educators, etc.), and school and departmental policies. although these factors often limit the extent to which a principal can apply professional discretion, there is always space for a principal to manoeuvre his or her decision-making if they choose to do so (heilmann, 2006: 120). however, it is difficult to foresee the products and consequences of discretionary reasoning, because the internal and external forces will not have the same effect on every decision (molander, grimen & eriksen, 2012: 218). in this regard, molander et al. (2012: 218) argue that the same case can be judged differently at different times, in different situations and by different persons, even if it is an unchanged case and the case has been handled in a thorough, conscientious, and reasonable manner. boote (2006: 464) explains that principals’ values often guide them in their decision-making to come to what they would believe is the best possible decision. however, their judgements can also be influenced negatively by their values and such decisions may, for example, not be in the learners’ best interests. additionally, a lack of competencies, a lack of self-control and a lack of independence could make it difficult for principals to apply professional discretion appropriately (boote, 2006: 465-466). although competencies alone do not necessarily result in the application of professional discretion, relevant competencies are important contributors to the appropriate application of professional discretion (boote, 2006: 466). moreover, school principals require particular knowledge, competencies, and context-specific practical applications in the key areas of managing a school in order to apply adequate professional discretion (du plessis, 2019: 98). in south africa, the autonomous decision-making freedom of principals is restricted by external factors such as laws and policies. however, laws and policies are often ignorant of local school contexts and principals often have to contravene legislation and policies to act in learners’ best interests. in such cases, they should use section 36 of the constitution (limitation of rights) (rsa, 1996a) to guide their decision-making. this section stipulates the factors that should be considered when limiting a right. consideration should be given to the nature of the right, the importance of the purpose of the limitation, the nature and extent of the limitation, the relation between the limitation and the purpose, and the availability of less restrictive means to achieve the purpose (rsa, 1996a). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 352023 41(2): 35-48 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 beyers & du plessis factors that influence public school principals’ professional discretion in this regard it is important to note that constitutional rights and freedoms are not absolute; they have limitations placed on them by others and by important social concerns, for example, democratic values and public order and safety and security (currie & de waal, 2005: 163). to be lawful, a limitation of a right must be justifiable in accordance with the criteria in section 36 of the constitution (prinsloo, 2015: 47). principals need to consider these factors when deciding what is in the best interests of learners and other members of their school community. these factors impact on the decision-making process and should become everyday working habits. marishane (2016: 164) argues that the context within which schools and school leadership interact is ever-changing. a school’s context is shaped by many internal and external factors which influence the principal’s behaviour and discretionary power and to which the principal must adapt. marishane (2016: 164) explains that among the contextual factors which influence learners’ learning and achievement are the school’s climatic conditions, school safety considerations, and the school’s teaching and organisational structure. external factors may also include technological advancement, socio-economic conditions, and accountability systems. due to the variety of contexts within which principals operate, they must develop contextual intelligence in order to be able to apply appropriate professional discretion. moreover, when exercising professional discretion, good judgement is required, which is to be exercised within a framework of accountability consisting of laws and policies (du plessis, 2019: 102). ottesen and møller (2016: 428) argue that there is tension between internal and external accountability when applying professional discretion. international studies of professional discretion have indicated that there is increased pressure from national and local governments, and this directly influences principals’ professional discretion (grace, 2014: 22; ottesen & møller, 2016: 429). within the south african context, there is, however, not much evidence to show how legal forms of authority are key aspects in the regulation of education or how principals handle legal standards and professional discretion. 3. theoretical framework – the contextual intelligence theory the contextual intelligence theory framed this study. this theory is rooted in psychology and popularised from the original work of sternberg (1985), beyond iq: a triarchic theory of human intelligence. the theory presents contextual intelligence as a principal’s “ability to influence anybody, in any place at any time” (kutz, 2015: 11). sternberg (2005: 5) states that a successful intelligent person demonstrates the ability to set goals, capitalise on strengths to adapt and to shape and select environments through analytical, creative, and practical abilities. in terms of principalship, kutz (2008: 23) defines contextual intelligence as: [the] ability to quickly and intuitively recognise and diagnose the dynamic contextual variables inherent in an event or circumstance and results in intentional adjustment of behaviour in order to exert appropriate influence in that context. according to marishane (2016: 164) contextual intelligence combines acquired knowledge and technical skills and practical know-how. contextually intelligent individuals know for certain which decisions to make and which actions to take under different conditions (marishane, 2020: 8). in other words, principals with contextual intelligence will seize the first opportunity available to them to decide on how best to protect their respective schools’ best interests. hence, being contextually intelligent could enable principals to make appropriate decisions. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 362023 41(2): 36-48 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) kutz (2008: 18) reiterates that there are three competencies that overlap in the conceptual foundation of contextual intelligence. firstly, contextual intelligence requires an intuitive grasp of relevant past events. secondly, it requires acute awareness of present contextual factors. thirdly, it requires awareness of the preferred future. it is of paramount importance to have knowledge of the interactions between the three competencies as they enable school principals to apply adequate professional discretion (kutz, 2008: 18). in addition, sternberg’s beyond iq: a triarchic theory of human intelligence (1985) underscores that all human activity is contextualised within a specific historical and social context. contextually intelligent principals must always view their current context through the dual lenses of past experience and the preferred future, as it could influence the success of their professional discretion (kutz, 2008: 24; molander et al., 2012: 221). marishane (2020: 9) reiterates that “the influence derives from the leader’s freedom of choosing how to relate to the environment – to change the environment or to be changed by the environment”. furthermore, a contextually intelligent principal will know when, how, and whether to adapt to the environment and when to manipulate and shape it for a given purpose. this is because they are equipped with experience gained from previous situations, knowledge and understanding of appropriate behaviour needed to deal with the current situation, and a sense of imagination about future situations (marishane, 2020: 9). hence, contextual intelligence is composed of being aware of the past, having an accurate sense of the present and understanding the future. intuition as used to describe contextual intelligence involves being proficient at instantly assimilating past events into the current context, irrespective of the context in which the original event occurred (dane & pratt, 2007: 33). kutz (2008: 23) emphasises that intuition is an asset for principals to make appropriate decisions in the best interests of their learners. dane and pratt (2007: 33) found that the accuracy of principals’ decisions decreases when principals spend too much time on decision-making due to influential internal, external, and contextual factors. boote (2006: 462) argues that professional discretion should be appropriate to a specific context. it is therefore important that school principals develop an acute awareness of contextual factors that may have an impact on their school. this suggests that any school improvement effort requires context-sensitive approaches and adequate professional discretion from school principals (marishane & mampane, 2018: 48). 4. problem statement it is argued by du plessis and heystek (2020: 847-850) that education authorities have managerialist mindsets and are applying bureaucratic control over public schools. also, kruger, beckmann and du plessis (2022: 317) found that many principals have negative experiences with their school governing bodies who drive their own hidden agendas. these experiences, together with the managerialist approach of the education authorities, leave little room for public school principals to manoeuvre in terms of applying their professional discretion. the purpose of this study was to identify the factors that influence public school principals’ professional discretion. hence the question: what factors influence a public-school principal’s professional discretion? https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 372023 41(2): 37-48 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 beyers & du plessis factors that influence public school principals’ professional discretion 5. methodology and research design the study utilised a mixed methods research approach with an explanatory, sequential mixed-methods design. firstly, survey forms were distributed to secondary and primary public school principals of both fee-paying and non-fee-paying public schools. thirty-four (34) responses were received. the purpose of the survey was to gather quantitative data to inform the questions asked during online semi-structured interviews with fourteen (14) purposively sampled principals. according to cohen, manion and morrison (2018: 224), it is commonplace for mixedmethods research to use more than one kind of sample (probability, non-probability) and to use samples of different sizes, scopes, and types. according to teddlie and tashakkori (2009: 185-191), in sequential mixed-methods sampling, one kind of sample (both probability and non-probability) precedes another and influences the proceeding sample. in other words, what one gathers from an early sample influences what one does in the next stage with a different sample. in this study, the numerical data from the quantitative phase set the scene for more in-depth interviewing in the qualitative phase. google forms were used to analyse the quantitative data obtained in the surveys. this provided valuable information to inform the interview questions in the interview protocol that was used in the qualitative phase of the study. thematic analysis, utilising open or substantive coding, was carried out after the interviews were completed in the second phase of the data collection process. atlas. ti (version 22.0.0) was used to analyse the qualitative data to ensure that all records of identified codes and themes were well documented and structured. 6. ethical considerations after ethical clearance had been obtained from the ethics committee of the faculty of education at the university of pretoria, permission was obtained from the gauteng department of education to conduct the study and informed consent was obtained from each respondent and participant. the informed consent included aspects such as the purpose of the research; what participants would be required to do if they consented to participate; the potential benefits or consequences of participating in the study; the issue of privacy; participants’ right to withdraw; anonymity and confidentiality; and how the data would be used once the research is completed. 7. findings and discussion the responses of the participants revealed both internal and external factors that may influence when and how they apply their professional discretion. 7.1 external factors the evidence suggests that a variety of external factors influence a principal’s ability to exercise appropriate professional discretion. the external factors are as follows: 7.1.1 laws and policies the participating principals generally acknowledged that they are guided by relevant legislation and policies in their decision-making. for example, principal 1 explained that the application of his professional discretion “is determined by what the laws are and what the rules are ...” https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 382023 41(2): 38-48 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) this was echoed by other participants: i must think about what is the school law saying. i must look at sasa (south african schools act) and from there i must, of course, know what’s in sasa so that i could make that specific decision (principal 2). the most important … is to always have what the law says at the back of your mind … (principal 5). principal 4 provided a different perspective, the “unchangeable” factor, which is beyond his control, but which can also undermine his professional discretion: … that unchangeable factor … there are certain things that you as a principal or as a manager cannot change (principal 4). according to principal 4, one of the most difficult aspects of professional discretion relates to accommodating different religions in the school. he explained as follows: will you still open a day or start the day with christian prayer for example, or finish the day with a christian prayer? will you do it, but allow learners of another religion to also practice the religion at school? will you allow them to, for example, miss your assemblies because of the fact that you are using a different religion than theirs? the religion factor is a very big thing in professional discretion (principal 4). the participants expressed their thoughts on the influence that the rigid laws and policies have on their professional discretion as follows: … there can never be a 100% rigid template for everything that you have to do … if there were a strict book of rules and those are the only things that you are allowed to do, then it’s straightforward and easy. but you have to act in every child’s best interest and things change, and they differ (principal 1). they just want to force you. this is policy, this is the law, this is the guidelines and you have to keep to it (principal 7). the bill of rights (chapter 2 of the constitution) (rsa, 1996a) should be the starting point from which principals apply their discretionary decision-making. the participants encountered ambiguity in that on the one hand they are required to apply professional discretion, while on the other hand they are being constrained by the rigidity and inflexibility of policies. in other words, principals are expected to adhere to these policies, thereby losing their ability to use their discretion. this confirms du plessis and heystek’s (2020) argument of managerialist mindsets and bureaucratic control as indicated in the problem statement. the data confirmed that principals regularly find themselves in a position where, on the one hand, their judgements or decisions may require of them to contravene the provisions and prescriptions of departmental policies, and on the other hand, are obligated to act in accordance with policies, although it may not be in the best interests of a learner. in such cases, their discretionary decision-making should, for example, be guided by section 36 of the constitution (rsa 1996a). generally, the participants use laws and policies as guidelines to apply appropriate professional discretion. however, the participants indicated that laws and policies often compel them to make decisions that they may not necessarily be comfortable with and that may not be https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 392023 41(2): 39-48 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 beyers & du plessis factors that influence public school principals’ professional discretion in the best interests of the learners. in addition, one can argue that making decisions based on legal and policy requirements rather than what is best for the learners can be damaging for principals, since they should constantly keep section 28(2) of the constitution (rsa, 1996a) and section 9 of the children’s act (rsa, 2005) in mind. sub-section 28(2) of the constitution (bill of rights) states that “[a] child’s best interests are of paramount importance in every matter concerning the child”. this is reaffirmed in section 9 of the children’s act (rsa, 2005), which specifies that “[i]n all matters concerning the care, protection and well-being of a child the standard that the child’s best interest is of paramount importance, must be applied”. 7.1.2 political factors the participants indicated that political parties frequently intrude on or disrupt their schools to express their views or to impose a particular political agenda and therefore the political factor is worthy of mention. principal 2 expressed his concern in terms of the potential influence political parties could have on his professional discretion as follows: in my school there is the whole issue of political parties who want to play a role in the school. and i am working with multi-racial groups, there are different groups, different cultural groups … we had a few incidents last year where political parties entered the school and there were a lot of issues on racism that have actually never been shown to be true. but when these people are standing outside your door, you don’t know how to handle them. you don’t know what to do with them. and they are aggressive, and they are noisy, but they put you under a lot of pressure. and usually what i do then is i just step away for five minutes and i phone somebody that i know, that will give me a legal opinion at that specific moment. what must i do now? because as i’ve said, we are not trained to work with political parties, storming into your office, demanding all kinds of things. section 33a of the south african schools act (rsa, 1996b) prohibits political activities during school hours. however, political parties do not always abide by this law, and some principals have come across instances where they had to intervene and use their professional discretion to protect the physical safety of their learners and staff. hence, principals are expected to rely on their professional discretion and intuition when dealing with political influence because they are generally not prepared or equipped for such situations. they have no other choice but to apply professional discretion. 7.1.3 frequent policy and curriculum changes some of the participants indicated that constant policy and curriculum changes have an impact on their professional discretion. they must continuously adjust their discretionary considerations to keep up with the changes in policy. principal 7 stated that if a principal does not stay updated with all the latest developments, it will be difficult for him or her to make informed decisions: if you do not stay on top of recent changes and amendments and court [cases], that are going on, you will never be able to make an informed decision. in addition, principal 12 expressed his opinion regarding constant curriculum changes and the challenges they pose: i think we are aware that we had many curriculums and policies that have changed. i think this is the third or the fourth one. and every system was unique and it had its own challenges. so, you had to get the system and structures right to get good results. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 402023 41(2): 40-48 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) furthermore, principal 13 confirmed that these changes occur frequently: and also, the changes that came this year, we’re doing it this way, but next year we are changing it and the process will be different. the implication of the frequent policy and curriculum changes is that the legislative and policy contexts in which schools operate are constantly in a state of flux. principals therefore need to update themselves continuously regarding the latest legislative, policy and curriculum changes. only with this knowledge will principals be contextually intelligent and will they be able to exercise professional discretion appropriately. sternberg (2005: 5, 189) and marishane (2016: 164) argue that contextually intelligent principals have a better chance of fitting into an environment and being able to appropriate professional discretion than less contextually intelligent principals because they can relate to their environment through selection, adaptation, and rephrasing. 7.1.4 contextual factors all school contexts differ, and the past histories of school principals will undoubtedly influence how they use their discretion. accordingly, principal 1 stated that: my professional discretion is influenced by contextual factors. in addition, principal 7 explained that she must take “all contextual factors into consideration” when making decisions: you need to be able to understand that sometimes contextual factors will definitely influence your decisions and that you have to keep that in mind. principal 2 also indicated that it is important to understand the specific situation at hand since it will influence the decision that must be made. similarly, principal 5 explained that: the biggest mistake you can make is making a decision without considering all the different contextual factors. principal 6 explained that a principal’s failure to understand the context or circumstances could result in poor decisions: i think my professional discretion … shouldn’t be a discretion that is in vain, that doesn’t have the context, that does not have the background to it. it does not need to stem from my personal opinion or experience as this might be detrimental to the process of my decision-making, which might lead to a situation whereby i’m careless and negligent in my decision-making and lose the respect of law and policy, probably because i feel that i’m the law myself. principal 4 explained that his decision-making is influenced by the different cultural and racial groups in his school. and i am working with multi-racial groups, there are different groups, different cultural groups. so, all those things will influence my decision-making. in addition, principal 2 added that his school is a bilingual school in which afrikaans and english are the languages of teaching and learning, which makes decision-making even more difficult. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 412023 41(2): 41-48 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 beyers & du plessis factors that influence public school principals’ professional discretion … multi-cultural school, we’ve got double parallel medium, all those kinds of things. so, we are really getting in different situations each day, we need to apply different thinking patterns. foreign learners could also impact principal 14’s professional discretion. she explained that although being a double-medium school at the time of the interview, the language of teaching and learning at her school would soon be english only. she too has a school with diverse cultures being represented. … our language of learning and teaching is only english from next year. so, there will be no english and afrikaans learners. and then i had to do a summary and then obviously there are let’s say around about a hundred different cultures in this school … the other difference in my school to other schools is the fact that we have a lot of immigrants in this school. we have a lot of refugees in the school that stay here … when applying professional discretion, principal 7 emphasised that principals “need to take all aspects into consideration” including the “background, the culture of the learners”. the above responses by the participants relate to section 9 of the constitution, which determines that everyone is “equal before the law” and may not be unfairly discriminated against based on “race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social origin, colour, language and birth” (rsa, 1996a). in addition, the policy on the south african standard for principals (rsa, 2016: 3) acknowledges that due to the diversity of school contexts in south africa, issues that principals must resolve are more complex. this implies that school principals require particular knowledge, competencies, and context-specific practical applications in the key areas of managing a school to apply adequate professional discretion (du plessis, 2019: 98). similarly, boote (2006: 462) argues that professional discretion should be appropriate to a specific context. 7.2 internal factors participating principals’ professional discretion has been influenced by a variety of internal factors. these are discussed in the following sub-sections. 7.2.1 principals’ experience and knowledge it is essential for principals to possess the necessary knowledge and experience to support their work and guide their decision-making. experiential knowledge will assist principals in applying professional discretion in the best interests of the school community. principal 12 explained: there are a number of factors that affect and influence the professional discretion, such as the experience of the principal. like they say: “experience is a good teacher”. the more experienced you are, the more strategies you have learned to use professional discretion. principal 12 expanded on this point: experience is good, the good teacher; meaning that if you have a challenge that has taken place for the second or the third time, the principal will automatically use the same strategy used to solve the same problem previously. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 422023 41(2): 42-48 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) principal 13 stated that she took notes on how the principals of her neighbouring schools addressed certain situations. she also acquired knowledge from their experiences: we’ve studied all of that, but when it comes to experience, it comes with dealing with certain situations and then making a call or talking during principals’ meetings to your neighbouring schools’ principals and say: “they had a situation like this [and] this is what they did. principal 14 explained that a principal’s ability to successfully apply professional discretion will only improve with experience. you can never learn that from any book. you can never learn professional discretion from any law. you have principles and guidelines, but i think to act in a professional way with a lot of discretion only comes with experience … you will only be successful in applying your professional discretion, once you have enough experience. principal 8 believed that although he has knowledge and experience, it will never be enough. he argued that lifelong learning might reduce the risk of being negligent in the school environment. i do have knowledge and experience, but i don’t think it is enough. i’m still learning a lot. i’m still referring to the textbooks that i have. i’m still reading online or whatever, just to keep myself up to date in terms of what is happening around education and the law to reduce the risk of being negligent at school. therefore the participants regard experiential knowledge as essential to apply appropriate professional discretion. moreover, principals need autonomy in making decisions that are consistent with their knowledge and experience. however, several participants maintained that their experience and knowledge alone will never be sufficient. additionally, several the participants claimed that while exercising discretion, they usually depend more on their experiences rather than their knowledge. principal 14 suggested that she would be able to use professional discretion effectively as she gains more experience. hence, it is imperative for principals to have leadership and management experience prior to being appointed as a principal. 7.2.2 personal beliefs or values a principal’s decision-making is influenced by their values. principal 1 suggested that: discretion comes from within you. and i think it’s based on your values system. so, if your value system is awkward and “vrot” (rotten) … your discretion will fail you. discretion is seated in my value system. principal 1 explained that his decisions will be based on his religious beliefs and values. according to principal 11, it is easier to teach because of his religious background and values as they allow him to exercise appropriate professional discretion in his school: i come from a religious background. all religions have it, but values are quite important. and once the values are in place within the teaching environment … that is what i try to preach as much as possible. principal 4 provided a different dimension as he indicated that the personal feelings of people need to be considered. he explained that when he makes decisions, he considers the feelings of the school governing body, educators, and the management team: https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 432023 41(2): 43-48 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 beyers & du plessis factors that influence public school principals’ professional discretion you as a principal need to factor in the feelings of your management, the feelings of all your educators, the feelings of the school governing body. the beliefs and values of a principal can add value to the contextual understanding of when and how to make decisions. it is important that principals are clear-headed and rational in their thinking when making decisions within the school environment. from a subjective standpoint, a school principal must behave responsibly and with the belief that doing so is in the interests of the learners and the staff. principal 11 argued that because he himself comes from a religious background where values are respected, it was easier for him to appreciate the religious background of his learners and staff and to apply his discretion accordingly. to be contextually intelligent, principals must have a full awareness of and respect for the values and beliefs of others. there is, however, a danger that the personal values of principals could also influence their judgment negatively and decisions might not be in the best interests of learners. 7.2.3 time constraints participating principals frequently asked themselves if there is a sense of urgency or whether there are time constraints when making decisions. this is evident in the participants’ responses: do you have a time limit to make this decision? is that something that must happen the same day? is it something that gives you time to consult? so, the first thing is, is the time factor is very important? (principal 5). in a similar vein, principal 10 stated: the factors that influence my professional discretion are time and the urgency of the matter. in what time and in what space and area? the urgency or how urgent it is. it is imperative to note that time constraints and the urgency of the situation within which a decision must be taken influence the principal’s capacity to exercise professional discretion. numerous principals stated that the seriousness or importance of the situation affected how they make decisions. some situations warrant immediate action while others can be postponed until a later suitable time. nonetheless, time constraints can also raise the principals’ stress levels, which could influence how they make discretionary decisions. 7.2.4 stress the data suggested that stress experienced by principals is an important determinant when and how principals exercise professional discretion. this was articulated as follows by principal 13: personal stress. if i had a bad day at home coming into school and then something comes up, i might not act as discreetly as i must … especially this time of year, and during covid… i think that stress is a very big influencer for my behaviour and my discretion. she (principal 13) believed that most principals’ decision-making will be influenced by the stress factor: i think the stress factor is the biggest demand at this stage. similarly, principal 2 stated that: because these days we have a lot of stress, and it is difficult out there. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 442023 41(2): 44-48 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) furthermore, principal 6 stated that training can potentially reduce uncertainty and stress when it comes to making decisions: so, i do understand that such training is very, very critical and essential, and it does help us so that we don’t get confused about what to do. when there are situations, we don’t get confused and stressed about how to behave or act. the above responses highlighted the demanding nature of being a principal. principals will inevitably be confronted with difficult situations where they are expected to apply discretion. as a result, it can make principals feel more anxious. an example of a stressful situation, according to principal 13, was the covid-19 pandemic. moreover, stressful situations can influence the discretion of principals, particularly when they are afraid of the consequences of their decision-making. principal 6 suggested that more training, in general, can potentially reduce uncertainty and stress when it comes to decision-making. 7.2.5 fear of making decisions some participants disclosed that, because they are controlled by legislation and policies, principals are often afraid to make decisions. the fear to make decisions could therefore create a sense of uncertainty in the discretionary abilities of principals. the fear of litigation has compelled school principals to adjust their decision-making. principal 1 was, however, very confident in his abilities to apply professional discretion without the fear of being reprimanded he motivated is confidence as follows: i don’t care what anyone else tells me how to do that. i have to use my discretion how to do that. so, i will not base decisions on fear of being reprimanded either by a school governing body or by the education department. moreover, principal 1 disclosed that he was aware of principals who are afraid of making wrong decisions. he admitted that he too, was once afraid of making the wrong decisions: i think that some principals, and i was like that too when i started, are so scared because you are being threatened the whole time. so, yes, i think most principals are very scared of what can go wrong, and they don’t want to upset their employer … i’ve been in this thing long enough to understand that i don’t really have to answer to them. i’ve lost my fear of them. my sense of duty to the children in my care is larger than my sense of being scared of them. principals 3 and 8 indicated that some educators might be hesitant to make decisions, and this could in the end jeopardise their duty of care towards their learners: i’ve seen that a number of teachers are very, maybe i won’t use the word “scared”, but they are very hesitant and very aware of the reactions of parents. and then sometimes i think they are so intent on not crossing any lines whatsoever that i think the best interest of the child is often not met (principal 3). i do find teachers who at times don’t want to be that much involved. they’re scared, and then they will tell you that these kids have rights … i used to say to them it’s not that kids have rights, but it is you who are afraid to exercise the rights that you have in a way that you don’t trample on their rights. that means it is your knowledge of the law that makes you to fear to exercise your own rights, without trampling on their rights as learners (principal 8). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 452023 41(2): 45-48 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 beyers & du plessis factors that influence public school principals’ professional discretion principal 6 also suggested that work experience could reduce the fear of making decisions: most of the educators tend to work based on experience … therefore, they are not afraid to do certain things, because they’ve never been punished or found to have offended legislation. evidently, there are participants who are hesitant to apply their professional discretion since they are constrained by laws and policies, and they fear the potential repercussions of making the wrong decisions. therefore, the fear of making decisions may indicate that principals do not believe that they have sufficient legal knowledge to be able to understand when to apply discretion. principal 1 acknowledged that, although he had confidence in his ability to exercise professional discretion, at an earlier stage he was nervous about making the wrong decision. with 16–20 years of experience as a principal, he now has more self-confidence when applying his professional discretion. training, such as legal training, could enable principals to be more confident in applying professional discretion and this will automatically reduce the fear of making the wrong decisions. 8. discussion principals do not have control over the external factors (laws and policies, political factors, frequent curriculum changes and contextual factors) which impact how they apply professional discretion. they do, however, have control over how they react to these factors. this means that to be effective in their discretionary decision-making, principals must have intimate knowledge of these external factors and must understand how these factors may or may not impact their school. although the level of discretion could be limited by these factors, there is still space for a principal to apply appropriate discretion if they choose to do so. however, as explained by molander et al. (2012: 218), it is difficult to predict discretion, because outcomes of discretionary reasoning can differ due to these external forces. in contrast to the external factors impacting principals’ professional discretion, principals have much more control over internal factors such as experience and knowledge, personal beliefs and values, time constraints, stress, and fear of making decisions. one could argue that by arming themselves with knowledge of the regulatory environment and the contextual nuances (external factors) of their schools, principals can empower themselves to develop their experiential knowledge. they will then be more likely to develop leadership and management competencies regarding time and stress management, which in turn could mitigate the fear of making decisions. the data suggest that principals’ values often inspire them to make what they perceive as the best decisions. however, values may also have a negative influence on their decisionmaking because a principal’s personal values may not necessarily be compatible with the best interests of the learners and the values of the broader school community. for this reason, principals must have full awareness of and respect for the values and beliefs of others. 9. recommendations it is evident that to apply professional discretion appropriately, public school principals not only have to have good knowledge and a sound understanding of the regulatory framework in which they operate, but they also have to develop a range of competencies to aid them in discretionary decision-making. leadership and management experience and training prior to being appointed as a principal is thus important. however, the minimum requirements to https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 462023 41(2): 46-48 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) be appointed as public-school principal in south africa does not include prior leadership and management training or experience (rsa, 2016a: b-46). therefore, it is recommended that principals acquire leadership and management experience and training before being appointed as a school principal. in addition, in-service training focusing on the development of soft skills such as empathy and emotional intelligence, teamwork, problem-solving, adaptability and flexibility, and the development of self-confidence should strengthen principals’ discretionary decision-making abilities. hence, there is a need for further research on how these soft skills influence a principal’s leadership and management practice. 10. conclusion principals are exposed to both internal and external factors that influence or limit their discretion. this can ultimately result in an inability to maintain a high standard of care at their schools. there is space for a principal to manoeuvre beyond these external and internal factors when applying professional discretion if they choose to do so. however, it is difficult to predict discretion, because outcomes of discretionary reasoning can differ due to these internal and external forces. even though the participating principals operate under the same set of policies in the same school district and are subject to the same restrictions, it was clear from reviewing these limitations that some principals exercised more discretion than others. having a thorough understanding of discretion and the factors that influence or limit discretion, as well as relevant leadership and management competencies will enable principals to make appropriate and correct decisions. hence, it is imperative that principals continuously educate and develop themselves to enhance their leadership and management practice. references boote, d.n. 2006. teacher’s professional discretion and the curricula. teachers and teaching: theory and practice, 12(4): 461-478. https://doi.org/10.1080/13450600600644319 cohen, l., manion, l. & morrison, k. 2018. research methods in education, 8th ed. new york: routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315456539 currie, i. & de waal, j. 2005. the bill of rights handbook. cape town: juta. dane, e. & pratt, m. 2007. exploring intuition and its role in managerial decision making. academy of management review, 32(1): 33-54. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2007.23463682 du plessis, a. 2019. school governance and management decentralisation and school autonomy in the south african education system. unpublished phd thesis. potchefstroom: north-west university. du plessis, a. & heystek, j. 2020. possibilities for distributed leadership in south african schools: policy ambiguities and blind spots. education management, administration and leadership, 48(5): 840-860. https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143219846907 grace, g. 2014. professions, sacred and profane: reflections upon the changing nature of professionalism. in young, m., & muller, j. (ed.), knowledge, expertise and the professions, pp. 18-30. london: routledge. heilmann, m.r. 2006. principals’ perspectives on discretion and decision-making. unpublished phd thesis. winnipeg: university of manitoba. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 https://doi.org/10.1080/13450600600644319 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315456539 https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2007.23463682 https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143219846907 472023 41(2): 47-48 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 beyers & du plessis factors that influence public school principals’ professional discretion jeffries, s.d. 2013. mandated mediocrity: modernizing education law by reducing mandates and increasing professional discretion. cornell journal of law and public policy, 23(45): 46-84. kruger, j., beckmann, j. & du plessis, a. 2022. the management and governance conundrum in south african public schools: principals’ perspectives. perspectives in education, 40(4): 312-324. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 kutz, m.r. 2008. toward a conceptual model of contextual intelligence: a transferable leadership construct. kravis leadership institute: claremont mckenna college, 8: 18-31. kutz, m.r. 2015. contextual intelligence: smart leadership for a constantly changing world. perrysburg: roundtable group. marishane, m.r. 2016. leadership and context connectivity: merging two forces for sustainable school improvement. in popov, n., wolhuter, c., kalin, j., hilton. g., ogunleye, j. & niemczyk, e. (ed.). education provision for everyone: comparing perspectives from around the world, pp, 163-169. sofia: bces conference books. marishane, r.n. 2020. contextual intelligence in school leadership (first edition). boston: brill sense. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004431263 marishane, r.n. & mampane, s.t. 2018. contextually intelligent leadership for improving schools across different contexts and regions. in: predictive models for school leadership and practices, pp. 43-58: igi global. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-5858-3.ch003 may, d.s. 2010. curriculum control and teachers’ perceptions of professional discretion and satisfaction. educational research technology and leadership. florida: unpublished phd thesis. university of central florida. molander, a., grimen, h. & eriksen, e.o. 2012. professional discretion and accountability in the welfare state. journal of applied philosophy, 29(3): 214-230. https://doi.org/10. 1111/j.1468-5930.2012.00564.x ottesen, e. & møller, j. 2016. organisational routines – the interplay of legal standards and professional discretion. european educational research journal, 15(4): 428-446. https://doi. org/10.1177/1474904116638853 prinsloo, s. 2015. human rights in education. in r. joubert, p. du plessis, v.p. mahlangu & i.j. prinsloo (eds), the law of education in south africa pp. 35-77. pretoria: van schaik. republic of south africa [rsa]. 1996a. constitution of the republic of south africa (act 108 of 1996). pretoria: government printer. republic of south africa [rsa]. 1996b. south african schools act (act 84 of 1996). pretoria: government printer. republic of south africa [rsa]. 2005. the children’s act (act 38 of 2005). pretoria: government printer. republic of south africa, 2016. policy on the south african standard for principals. pretoria: government printer. sternberg, r.j. 1985. beyond iq: a triachic theory of human intelligence. new york: cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004431263 https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-5858-3.ch003 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5930.2012.00564.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5930.2012.00564.x https://doi.org/10.1177/1474904116638853 https://doi.org/10.1177/1474904116638853 482023 41(2): 48-48 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) sternberg, r.j. 2005. the theory of successful intelligence. international journal of psychology, 32(39): 198-202. teddlie, c. & tashakkori, a. 2009. foundations of mixed methods research. thousand oaks: sage. thorn, k.r. 2015. tort liability for school personnel. unpublished phd thesis. tuscaloosa: university of alabama. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7067 _hlk138754848 622022 40(1): 62-79 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 academic and institutional readiness towards e-learning to inform policy and practice in an evolving post-school education sector abstract prior to the occurrence of the global covid-19 pandemic, some african higher education institutions had already adopted a hybridmode for all their programmes, including distance education. policies and strategies were put in place to improve the practices, skills and competencies of staff and students. however, the closure of education institutions globally due to the pandemic resulted in the rethinking of current education practices and highlighted the inherent inequalities in the system. this baseline qualitative study, underpinned by the affordance theory, explores the appropriateness of education responses that were utilised and interrogates the readiness of educators for e-learning during the pandemic. the participants were purposively selected educators (n=11) from distance and contact african institutions. the study sought to contribute to the reconceptualisation of policies and strategies for distance education provision using e-learning approaches, which have now become a mainstream reality for the post-school education and training (pset) sector. data were collected through individual semi-structured interviews. thematic analysis was applied to the rich data. the findings identified the successes and shortcomings of facilitating e-learning at a distance during the pandemic. some participants felt ill-prepared for the extent of work required to be well equipped to use this approach. in many cases, it was felt that support strategies could have been better structured. further analysis highlighted possible restructuring that should occur to meet the needs of educators in the twenty-first century and to survive any future pandemics through greater use of e-learning. evidence-based recommendations for policies are discussed. keywords: post-school education & training (pset); restructuringlearning; education restructuring; policies; strategies; practices; affordance theory. 1. introduction many institutions adopted a hybrid and blended learning model (cleveland-innes & wilton, 2018) way before the breakout of the covid-19 pandemic. lalima and dangwal (2017: 129) define hybrid and blended learning as “an author: prof margaret funke omidire1 dr folake ruth aluko1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i1.4 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(1): 62-79 published: 04 march 2022 received: 10 august 2021 accepted: 15 january 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5784-7734 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0499-042x http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 632022 40(1): 63-79 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 omidire & aluko academic and institutional readiness towards e-learning innovative concept that embraces the advantages of both traditional teaching in the classroom and ict supported learning including both offline learning and online learning”. nonetheless, the authors assert that the mode requires “rigorous efforts, right attitude, handsome budget and highly motivated teachers… for its successful implementation” (ibid). most traditional faculty are new to the online teaching component of the mode and lack formal education in how to successfully teach online (gülbahar & adnan, 2020), sometimes as a result of “fears of the unknown…and failure” (mitchell et al., 2015: 358). in addition, maphalala and adigun (2021) decry the deficits of e-learning policies in many african higher education institutions, and a lack of technical and administrative support for staff for the implementation and use of e-learning facilities. for its effective implementation, institutions need to put in place policies that speak to the context. there is also the need for relevant training for stakeholders. according to roberts (2018: 40), “from a more holistic point of view, effective training and development interventions should address staff members’ knowledge, skills and attitudes”. overall, from various studies, the author identifies three common features of professional development, which are “(a) it is context and time specific; (b) technology has a significant role in the professional development of staff… that depends on organisational policies and purposes for which technology is being used at any given context; and (c) it is continuous and dynamic” (roberts, 2018: 41–42). although many african institutions had started putting policies and strategies in place regarding the implementation of e-learning, including diverse training for staff and students, just like other institutions all over the world, nothing had prepared them for the huge impact covid-19 would have on education provision. institutions therefore had to react swiftly through diverse interventions to ensure teaching and learning continued. distance education has become a reality for the post-school education and training (pset) sector. the purpose of this baseline study was to explore the appropriateness of education responses that were utilised and to interrogate the readiness of educators. this is in order to contribute to the reconceptualisation of policies and strategies of distance education provision. hence, the research question that guided our study was, “in what ways can the readiness of educators for e-learning during the covid-19 pandemic inform our knowledge on e-learning policies, strategies and practices in an evolving pset sector?” we adopted the affordance theory for the study to help us to probe to what extent the academic participants involved in the study have been able to maximise the technological affordances provided by their institutions. other aspects that we probed were how the institutions have responded to the need that arose from this and what the impact of the reaction is on academics; and to what extent this experience should help to improve institutions’ e-learning policy, strategies and practices. 2. literature review the integration of technology into teaching and learning in higher education has been on the increase in recent years with use of hybrid and blended learning as well as flipped classrooms (bussmann et al., 2017). higher education institutions invested significant resources in introducing and/or upgrading their information and communication technology (ict) infrastructure. they also invested in staff development. the emergence and development of ict and its application in education systems has given rise to a new wave of evolution in the world’s educational systems; this has pushed the current learning systems towards e-learning and made it an important teaching tool (alhabeeb & rowley, 2018). the term e-learning refers to the types of training that use the internet and intranet technologies to learn (akbarilakeh, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 642022 40(1): 64-79 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) razzaghi & moghaddam, 2019). according to rodrigues et al. (2019: 95), e-learning is “an innovative web-based system based on digital technologies and other forms of educational materials whose primary goal is to provide students with a personalized, learner-centred open, enjoyable, and interactive learning environment supporting and enhancing the learning processes”. e-learning and online instructional environments utilise interactive network systems to enhance the quality of teaching and learning by managing content provided to learners across various learning activities (chang & fang, 2020). e-learning and provision of online courses in higher education has been accelerated due to the coronavirus pandemic (arum & stevens, 2020). the coronavirus pandemic has accelerated faculty’s transition to online teaching, which has enabled higher education institutions to continue functioning (quintana, 2020). while e-learning was previously seen as an optional way to deliver lectures, conduct tutorials and provide skills training for interested educators, it became the lifeline for higher education during the covid-19 pandemic. this is a welcomed development on many levels. apart from continued functioning of institutions, students’ wellbeing in knowing that their studies have not been derailed is also significant. in addition, the pandemic-related measures forced many institutions to accelerate the development as well as the deployment of technologies and the related infrastructure (ferri, grifoni & guzzo, 2020). according to the authors, the pandemic response also involved offering courses to support educators in the adoption of online teaching technologies and strategies to enable the continuation of teaching and learning with reasonable quality. however, those forced to move classes online due to university closures in response to the coronavirus pandemic had no choice even if unprepared to do so (hechinger & lorin, 2020). even though e-learning implies connectivity in the global world, at the same time, it implies distance. this physical absence, which is the separation of learners and educators, profoundly affects teaching and learning (stapleford, 2021; vitoria, mislinawati & nurmasyitah, 2018). with separation, there is psychological and communication space to cross, a space of potential misunderstanding between the inputs of instructor and those of the learner (moore, 1997). being forced to remain at home can lead to feelings of isolation, therefore being able to talk with colleagues or classmates is not an aspect to neglect. studies show that lack of social interaction could have negative “psychological effects including post-traumatic stress symptoms, confusion, and anger” with long-lasting effects (brooks et al., 2020: 912). furthermore, home circumstances might not be suitable for working/teaching or studying. indeed, some people have to deal with situations such as working at the kitchen table or managing the constraint of time for family or children or sharing spaces with multiple family members (maphalala & adigun, 2021). 2.1 role of educators in the implementation of e-learning educators play a key role in the success or failure of e-learning and they must be well-trained and technically comprehensive in order to apply and integrate technical tools to achieve the success of e-learning. coupled with that, golden (2016) emphasised that faculty transitioning to e-learning must be able to resolve stress related to using technologies. the educators’ role thus becomes a dual one, juggling subject knowledge and expertise with effective functioning in the e-learning environment. poor teaching evaluations due to the steep learning curve of transitioning courses to e-learning formats could also compromise faculty members’ identity as seasoned experts (cutri & mena, 2020). sockman and sharma (2008) described professors’ emotional resistance to such pedagogical and implicit power shifts as being a result http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 652022 40(1): 65-79 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 omidire & aluko academic and institutional readiness towards e-learning of faculty’s distaste for feeling like novices again. the role of educators now also includes managing the attitudes of students who want to take advantage of the e-learning to refrain from full participation in activities and supporting those students who have challenges with adequate access to e-learning. e-learning is difficult to implement without the cooperation and support of lecturers, as the degree of interaction between lecturers and students is still predominant in an e-learning environment (cutri & mena, 2020). 2.2 readiness of educators and its effect on attitudes and wellbeing the introduction of icts in higher education has huge implications for the whole education process ranging from investment in ict infrastructure to the use of technologies in dealing with key issues of access, equity, management, efficiency, pedagogy and quality of education (navani & ansari, 2020). inan and lowther (2010) defined e-learning readiness of teachers as teachers’ perceptions of their capabilities and skills required to integrate technology into their classroom instruction and teachers’ readiness to integrate technology which is the most important factor that has a direct impact on technology integration. the importance of e-learning has led to the need in assessing the mental and physical preparation of the users before using the e-learning environment. therefore, e-learning readiness is required in making sure the users are capable of using the e-learning environment and associated technology in the best way possible. mitchell et al. (2015: 358) asserted that a “source of faculty resistance to online education is related to fears of the unknown, loss, and failure”. redmond asserted that faculty must be willing to “try new ways of thinking and acting” (2015: 107–108), which she concluded requires “intellectual courage” (2015: 128). these findings prompt questions regarding how faculty are supported through such affective responses to the process of transitioning to and developing online teaching. dyment et al. (2013) argued that the first step to increase levels of personal engagement with teaching online is to acknowledge faculty’s fears and concerns and encourage those feelings to be expressed in a safe environment. considerations for rank and status toward tenure and full professor in academia rarely privilege teaching innovations such as pursuing the development of online teaching (tagg, 2012). rather, conducting and publishing research holds higher status. research has found that transitioning courses to online also takes large amounts of time, which is most often time away from research and writing (bussmann et al., 2017). these structural characteristics of academia could affect faculty teaching online and represent a form of professional vulnerability. faculty could potentially be caught in a double bind between their responsibilities for citizenship and scholarship and their online teaching efforts. 3. theoretical framework the authors adopted james gibson’s (1979) affordance theory, in which the scholar invented the term, “affordance” to explicate the relationship between an animal (including human beings) and an object. according to the theorist, the affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or bad. these affordances have to be measured relative to the animal (gibson, 1979: 127). therefore, affordance generally refers to the range of functions and constraints that an object provides for, and places upon, structurally situated subjects (davis & chouinard, 2017). hammond (2010) indicates these are not opposites but are rather complementary. although the theory first emanated from the field of ecological psychology, it is currently being used for scholarly analysis across diverse fields in relation to tools and people, while debates continue about its core issues (davis & chouinard, 2017; sarkis, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 662022 40(1): 66-79 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) commenting on the value of the theory to the use of ict in the education field, hammond (2010) asserts it provides special perceptiveness into the relationship between the device and the user with prospects for action. this is because “objects compel use, and people are conditioned at the level of perception by the form, substance, or texture of the objects. this means, objects have intrinsic, pre-cognitive meanings; they speak a language of their own, shaped by what they can do for us” (matei, 2020: 3). nonetheless, there are factors that could assist or hinder the user. these, according to bankole and venter (2017: 11), include, “…ease of use, access/availability/free, effective, convenient, attractiveness and innovativeness…” others are policies, procedures, culture, rules and regulations (alshawmar, 2021). in other words, affordances rest on the acuity, deftness, and social conditions of the user and institutional legitimacy (davis & chouinard, 2017) and the latter because affordances are always part of a world that is “propertied by other people” (schmidt, 2007: 137). donald norman, a cognitive psychologist, added to the debate by defining affordances as “the perceived and actual properties of the thing, primarily those fundamental properties that determine just how the thing could possibly be used” (1988: 9). it is one thing for a user to perceive an affordance, however, it would be another thing for them to actualise it. according to wang, wang and tang (2018), more researchers are now focusing on actualisation because previous studies from ecological psychology assumed that users can easily actualise an affordance, which is not so. strong et al. define actualisation as “the actions taken by actors as they take advantage of one or more affordances through their use of technology to achieve immediate concrete outcomes in support of organizational goals” (2014: 70). commenting on this important aspect, wang et al. (2018: 68) conclude that actualisation is an “individual journey” that “depends on actors’ goals and intentions”, while affordances “are potentials for action – existing independent of people’s perception or actualization…”, and are “relational” thus, including both the properties of enabling and constraining. finally, we have not approached the affordance theory from the design perspective of technology, which is one aspect of the theory. rather our attention was on the multiple factors that could assist or hinder the user, with their implications for policy and practice as users undergo their individual journey within an institution that propertied affordances. 4. methods the purpose of the study was to explore the appropriateness of education responses and interrogate the role and readiness of educators for e-learning during the covid-19 pandemic. the aim was to contribute to the reconceptualisation of policies and strategies for e-learning, which has now become a reality for the post-school education and training (pset) sector. a qualitative research approach and exploratory case study design (yin, 2018) were employed in the study to allow for depth in the discussions with the participants. the main research question that guided the study was “in what ways can readiness of educators for e-learning during the covid-19 pandemic inform our knowledge on e-learning policies, strategies and practices in an evolving post-school education and training sector?” the participants were educators from the african higher education sector. there were 11 participants (male – n=5 and female – n=6) from five different institutions. of the 11 participants, 6 have been teaching in higher education for over 10 years while 2 had under three years of experience in the sector. all the participants have doctoral degrees. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 672022 40(1): 67-79 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 omidire & aluko academic and institutional readiness towards e-learning ethics approval was obtained from the authors’ institution before contact was made with prospective participants. the nature and extent of the study was explained to the participants. they understood that participation was voluntary. informed consent was obtained from the participants who also consented to the interviews being recorded. data were collected through semi-structured interviews conducted virtually. inductive thematic analysis (neuendorf, 2018) was applied to the data, and this generated five themes. the derived themes were educators’ e-learning training, capability and experience prior to covid-19; institutional response to lockdown and management of e-learning; the role of e-learning and educators’ experience of institutions’ response during covid-19; the impact of e-learning during lockdown on wellbeing and implications for e-learning policies, strategies and practices. 5. results the results are presented in this section and a discussion follows in the next section. the participants were given codes p1, p2, p3 and so forth until p11 while the institutions were coded a, b, c, d and e as shown in table 1. table 1: participants’ information participant gender highest qualification institution code experience in years p1 f phd a 16 p2 m phd b 6 p3 m phd c 16 p4 m phd d 1½ p5 f phd c 9 p6 m phd a 8 p7 f phd b 19 p8 f phd c 3 p9 f phd a 17 p10 f phd e 10 p11 m phd b 15 the results of the study highlight the five themes that were derived from the study captured on table 2. each of these themes is presented below: table 2: emerged themes from the data themes description theme 1 educators’ e-learning training, capability and experience prior to covid-19 theme 2 institutional response to lockdown and management of e-learning theme 3 the role of e-learning and educators’ experience of institutions’ response during covid-19 theme 4 impact of e-learning during lockdown on educators’ wellbeing theme 5 implications for e-learning policies, strategies and practices http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 682022 40(1): 68-79 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) theme 1educators’ e-learning training, capability and experience prior to covid-19 all the participants (p1 to p11) indicated that they attended in-house training organised by their various institutions. some of this training was deemed part of their jobs, particularly for those who were actively engaged in blended or hybrid learning. in support of this, participant 1 had this to say: i work in the open distance unit, so we have received long before covid, we learn to work on white boards, we learn to work on the e-fundi system. so, that’s basically what we have, there’s always white board training, e-fundi trainings, so when covid came there was nothing new for me because we have been working online for the past 16 years (p1). four of the participants (p2, p4, p7 and p11), indicated that since they belonged to institutions that were predominantly distance education mode, they were trained regularly in the use of online platforms and that some of the training was certified. in these instances, assessment was also conducted on the learning management systems used. we have been exposed to so many trainings. like we have moodle, using moodle to teach online, using teams to teach. those are some the short courses that we have had here at (my institution) in impacting students and even in engaging them in research practices whereby we conduct m and d research training for masters and doctoral students and even for honours students as well (p11). however, two of the participants indicated that they had no formal training, but their knowledge was self-developed through personal experience. theme 2 – institutional response to lockdown and management of e-learning the participants were from five different institutions and each institution had their own response to the lockdown situation and move to the e-learning mode. there were however overlaps in terms of some institutions having similar policies and management styles for e-learning. there were institutions that provided step-by-step policies and guidelines for staff to follow while others addressed staff concerns on an ad hoc basis at the beginning of the lockdown. all five institutions provided additional training and support for staff, for example: we had education innovation specialist that we can call on if you are having any challenge with the program (p5). there were regular communications and information dissemination platforms that were used by the institutions’ executives. however, institutional readiness varied. there were institutions that had to put learning management systems in place in response to the demand of the total dependence on e-learning during the lockdown. ….we didn’t have a proper system in place by the time that covid hit us…(p4) well, in the beginning of the pandemic we were not ready. i think most institutions that had learning management systems in place were more ready (p4). the challenges of the lockdown for both students and staff soon became apparent and one of the institutions (c) took the decision to provide devices such as laptops for the students http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 692022 40(1): 69-79 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 omidire & aluko academic and institutional readiness towards e-learning and free internet access (zero-rating) when on the learning management system. the free access was negotiated with service providers. a few institutions (a, b and d) further initiated the provision of data for students and subsidising the data for staff. within all five institutions, updated training programmes were developed to meet the perceived needs of lecturers during the lockdown. lecturers were further supported with training on online content creation, development of interactive content and video and creatively adapting powerpoint presentations. the use of youtube videos and online discussion boards were also encouraged and supported. for instance: … and for people who didn’t know how to make the voice overs and voice recordings there was a guide, it was step-by-step it was typed out instructions (p1). we received quite a number of support [strategies] in relation to working from home, related to how to communicate to students or with students in this difficult time. …they have been sending information on how to use technology (p3). there was an increase in the numbers of instructional designers and information technologist made available to support staff and students in institutions a and c. as reflected in the excerpt below, institutions that had these services prior to the lockdown, enhanced the services considerably, while those that did not, had to accelerate the setting up of such services. so, i think each department in the faculty across the university has a specific person or people that they could call on to help them manage whatever the problem was. the response was very helpful (p5). theme 3 –the role of e-learning and educators’ experience of institutions’ response during covid-19 the role of e-learning identified by the participants included innovative lecturing applications, and opportunities to record lectures and maintain student supervision. in addition, the participants indicated that it provided avenues for extra tutorials and the management of administrative tasks and extended student support during the pandemic we communicate on how to use online platform to deliver lectures, to do marking, to respond to enquiry and how to help with whatever complexity they (students/lecturers) might encounter. for managing modules and managing people teaching them, so it’s more of giving support to them … (p3) in terms of readiness, all the participants reported that prior experience with e-learning was an added advantage. those who were not already conversant with this struggled and had to catch up with the demands, as indicated by participant 2. psychologically, for some times, like a month or two i was unable to do something because i was unsure of this specific approach, to employ and also in performing my task as an academic at (institution b). initially, it was difficult for me, but later on, i just have to get used to some of these things, use some of these devices and mediums of communicating for meetings and students (p2). the institutions that operated in a hybrid mode prior to the lockdown had lecturers who were somewhat conversant with the use of technology in the teaching and learning and could build on that. the excerpts reflect participants’ diverse levels of readiness: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 702022 40(1): 70-79 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) it took us awhile; it took us about a year to be in a good space where we can say: okay but we are now ready (p4) i would rate it good because i am comfortable using technology and i am not scared to try out new application to contribute to useful learning for my students. i was quite comfortable using our learning management systems because i did the advanced training. so i wouldn’t say i wasn’t knowledgeable or prepared since i did the advanced training (p6) nine participants indicated that they had received support from their institutions and appreciated the efforts of their various institutions. however, they stated some of the responses created a sense of urgency that often led to increased stress and anxiety on the part of staff. the participants who had received regular training indicated that they were inundated with information regarding necessary steps to take and protocols to follow and this heightened their sense of vulnerability when compounded by new knowledge that had to be acquired or enhanced. in addition, the dependence on network availability and application functioning created a sense of urgency and uncertainty with constant anticipation of what could go wrong. in the attempt to make sure that everybody is covered and all the boxes are ticked, we were… bombarded with a lot of information at the same time. … it became really overwhelming because you are trying to keep up. … it could lead to panic attacks for some people... it made it worse for me last year because it made me really anxious. it became counter-productive... (p5) participants from four of the institutions (a, b, c and d) reported that communications and guidelines came from different support departments and information overlapped further creating a sense of a constant need to catch up and never fully being in control of the situation at any time. in some instances, the participants reported that there were no properly coordinated systems in place. the response was there but better coordination could have made it easier for me to take advantage of everything (p5). there was a disconnection between the university management and the staff, we found it difficult to have communication between the staff and the university management (p2). one of the critical issues raised by many participants was that the communications received were often general and not module specific. this means that lecturers then had to still adapt the information to their individual modules. according to the participants, information that is more module specific would have been more useful, as stressed by participant 3: often times it is general for me, issues are not to a particular module, every module is different, content, assessment processes. so, if information or what you call response is module/department specific, perhaps then it could have been more effective… (p3) understanding the various methods of online assessment was a source of concern for participants that were not used to this type of assessment. it was a learning curve for which the participants believe appropriate and dedicated training should have been provided. a lot of additional self-development activities was embarked on, and this was time consuming and often frustrating. the excerpt below confirms one participant’s frustration after an assessment approach did not work: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 712022 40(1): 71-79 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 omidire & aluko academic and institutional readiness towards e-learning …what we did then, we reverted to google forms. so, our students completed assignments and examinations on google forms and then only after that, the institution developed a system (p4) in addition, participants reported that they needed to upgrade their home internet facilities to accommodate the e-learning during lockdown. this had to be done at personal costs with increase in data use. however, participants 3, 5 and 8 reported that their institution provided additional support for data for those who required it. theme 4 – impact of e-learning during lockdown on educators’ wellbeing the use of e-learning during the lockdown had an impact on the wellbeing of the participants. participants reported feeling frustrated and often overwhelmed by too many meetings they had to attend virtually. according to participant 1, i was a bit frustrated right at the start. there were so many meetings and forms ... there was a lot of forms and stuff and you had to report (p1). in addition, there appeared to be increased workload and new things to learn and master daily. eight participants reported mental and emotional fatigue while the other 3 indicated that they were already used to the e-learning platform and had no negative impact on wellbeing. the excerpts below confirmed this information: …hearing that they have changed the marking tool really stressed me up a lot. the possibility of things changing again was not good for my stress levels. i worry sometime whether the classes that i have uploaded on our learning management system… was it sufficient for the students so that they will be able to do what it ask from them. it makes me feel sometimes very unsure whether what i have done was okay. …. with e-learning it makes me wonder whether the students will pass and that makes me stressed… (p9). i have always been used to hard work and long hours in the office to do my work... but i think that i have never worked as hard as i do at the moment. i am not the only one, i think this is a trend in our institution. colleagues that i am talking to are experiencing the same. ... there are always meetings... so.in that sense, it is difficult to decide to make time available for resting, relaxing (p7). wellness programmes were initiated due to the toll the lockdown was taking on the mental health and emotional wellbeing of staff and students. in some instances, weekly programmes were provided and communicated via email to staff and via the learning management system to students. all participants reported that the home environment was often not conducive for focused work for lecturers and students. all the participants stated that there were a lot of distractions from family members, pets and crowded environments. another important idea reported by the participants was that they missed interacting with their colleagues. excerpts from participants 2 and 3 confirmed this. you’re tired of using computer, you want to, we’re social beings, so in a particular way it affected me for some time (p3) …the children are at home… while my son was reading i was busy telling him that ‘mummy has to do this now’… (p9). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 722022 40(1): 72-79 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) participants reported often missing the opportunity to simply knock on a door and ask for advice when unsure about what to do. those uncomfortable with the use of technology found it more difficult to cope and took longer to adapt to the new method. but the main thing there is that lecturers didn’t know how to teach online, so most lecturers at most contact universities were used to face-to-face teaching. there were really only a few lecturers that were really ready to teach online…(p4). the fact that lecturers had to be flexible was an additional learning curve as not all situations could be anticipated. additionally, the situation became more overwhelming as it dawned on participants that the lockdown was becoming prolonged and uncertainties prevailed. participant 7 had this to say regarding this. we had thought for a few months and then it will be all over. as much as we thought that we were prepared, i don’t think that i was ready or prepared for anything. it was just like i said, crises management… meetings on teams, on zoom, on google meets like we are doing at the moment it is one thing that really saved many of us. we were not really ready for this kind of communication …no not ready... to cope (p7). theme 5 – implications for e-learning policies, strategies and practices the participants concur that student and lecturer morale was affected. they agreed that emotional support for health and wellbeing was necessary and that institutional policies should mandate wellness activities. according to the participants, institutions should incorporate compulsory breaks for their academic staff. one of them had this to say: be more flexible regarding lecturers’ inability to take time off from work. not only giving lecturers one week between semester, but be more flexible and supportive concerning the wellbeing of staff (p9). in addition, dialogue should be encouraged where lecturers are able to share their experiences and contribute to the development and revision of the policies that affect them. policy needs to provide more innovative and effective teaching and learning methods to be implemented, but also to cater for continuous support of lecturers regarding the use of these effective teaching and learning methods. …cater and to be open for the reality of what is really the situation in teaching and learning, not forcing staff to implement ‘things’ that does not fit within the real situation of staff and students (p9). …needs to be adapted because education has changed so much and of course, if policy changes, it will affect practice. so, the way of doing things are changing all the time and will keep on changing. it is definitely necessary that policies are adapted. i think that we have already started with our policy with regards to teaching and learning. specifically, assessments. i think in my context when i think about it, assessments have really changed dramatically (p7). there was also a call to involve government in the provision of additional funding for the further development of e-learning infrastructure and structured training of lecturers in higher institutions. the excerpts below confirm these suggestions: higher education needs to look at the lack of reliable access to digital infrastructure, adequate bandwidth, the internet and ict for future use in the teaching and learning landscape…so as to be able to provide more assistance and continuous support… (p5) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 732022 40(1): 73-79 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 omidire & aluko academic and institutional readiness towards e-learning there is still a big lack in guidance for online education, the policy and the guidelines do not address the online aspect of distance education.… we all know that policies and guidelines regulate and guide the way we do things. …at the moment, is that, unfortunately we need to consult policies, practices, guidelines that institutions from other countries developed and then we have to check how we can adapt it to really fit into our environment (p4). 6. discussion of the findings the research question that guided this study was “in what ways can the readiness of educators for e-learning during the covid-19 pandemic inform our knowledge on e-learning policies, strategies and practices in an evolving pset sector?” the discussion in this section will revolve around the extent to which participants in the study were prepared by their institution prior to the covid-19 pandemic lockdown to maximise the available affordances at their institutions, the institutions’ response during the covid-19 pandemic, the impact of the response on the participants, and the extent to which the findings can help to inform our knowledge on and improve institutions’ e-learning policies, strategies and practices. as indicated earlier, according to the affordance theory adopted for this study, factors that could assist or hinder the user of ict include ease of use, convenience, policies, procedures, culture, rules and regulations (bankole & venter, 2017; alshawmar, 2021). authors assert these factors are invariably influenced by for instance, the social conditions and the deftness of the user. the findings from our study show that prior to the covid-19 pandemic, the participants and institutions were at different levels of readiness and preparedness for e-learning during the covid-19 pandemic. while the majority have attended in-house training organised by their various institutions, a few have had to learn for themselves. the implications of this are that first, institutions, prior to the pandemic had made some level of affordances available to their staff; and second, academics had also utilised some of the affordances provided by their institutions. these moved the available affordances beyond mere perception for the participants. according to mateil (2020: 5), “perceived” is a mere synonym for any modifier that would turn “affordances” from “something-that-is-demanded-by-use” into “somethingthat-i-infer-this-thing-can-do.” therefore, based on the theory of affordance, the question that should be uppermost should be the extent to which the participants utilise the presented affordances. as asserted earlier, current research in the field of the theory has shifted from mere assumption that users with technology will use them to actualisation (wang et al., 2018). findings from this study showed that the level of ease of use differed among participants depending on their previous experience. for instance, while prior experience with online teaching helped those that were already exposed to it indicating those that were comfortable with technology, others were not ready at the beginning, while others were unsure of what to do; therefore, each participant went through their own individual journey. commenting on this important aspect, wang et al. (2018: 68) conclude that actualisation is an “individual journey” that “depends on actors’ goals and intentions”, while affordances “are potentials for action – existing independent of people’s perception or actualization, and are ‘relational’ thus, including both the properties of enabling and constraining”. availability of affordances is the first step in the affordance theory. the unexpected lockdown during the pandemic forced all institutions to hurriedly address the challenges posed. as confirmed by the participants, data was made available (although in some instances, not adequately); laptops were provided, and additional administrative/it support personnel, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 742022 40(1): 74-79 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) guides and training were put in place. in addition, some learning management systems (lms) were improved upon while regular communication was maintained. in order to further support academics, institutions have put in place diverse training opportunities for using their lmss, some of which are certified, while others are informal. roberts (2018) earlier highlighted the value of effective training and development interventions for academics to boost their use of affordances provided by their institutions. nonetheless, research during the pandemic showed a lack of training, inadequate bandwidth, and little or no preparation regarding hurriedly prepared e-learning (hechinger & lorin, 2020; li & lalani, 2020). other studies (babbar & gupta, 2021; basilaia & kvavadze, 2020; khan, 2020) confirm that most of the emergency plans put in place by many institutions cannot cope with the magnitude of the impact of the pandemic on education, while most institutional lmss were inadequate for fully online classes. most of the participants in our study confirmed a lack of readiness by academics in contact institutions, who might not have been previously exposed to e-learning. one participant was from a tertiary college that has been described as being at the lower end of e-readiness. in such instances, babbar and gupta (2021) assert inadequate acquaintance with online teaching is a major challenge. additionally, participants in our study lamented the improper or inadequate systems put in place by their institutions, communication difficulties, inadequate data and incurring personal expenses for data. others identified haphazard or generic support not specific to their module, too much information or improper timing, a lack of formal or in-depth training and a lack of exposure to different online assessment types. left with no choice, academics were forced to teach online even if they did not feel properly prepared to do so with dire consequences for their practice (hechinger & lorin, 2020). our findings also corroborate those of bankole and venter (2017) and davis and chouinard (2017), that there are several factors that could assist or hinder the user. as earlier asserted, our findings raise questions about the extent and the quality of preparation, and support provided to academics to address their concerns prior to and at a time such as this (dyment et al., 2013). all of the above had a negative impact on academics’ wellbeing. this included heavy workloads, working long hours, frustration with too many meetings dealing with uncertainty, mental tiredness, distractions from working from home and isolation because they missed other colleagues and their office space. only two participants reported no negative impact on their wellbeing due to their vast experience in this area. our findings corroborate earlier ones from other parts of the world on the negative impact of isolation, which include trauma, fatigue and other physical ailments due to long screen time (moore, 1997; brooks et al., 2020; babbar & gupta, 2021) and unconducive home environments for working for academics as a result of lack of boundaries (maphalala & adigun, 2021). ironically, babbar and gupta (2021) argue that although there were concerns worldwide about the physical health challenges caused by the pandemic, very few concerns were about its mental effect on people’s well-being. schmidt (2007: 137) indicated that affordances are always part of a world that is “propertied by other people”, therefore, as custodians of technologies adopted for their mode of study, institutions are expected to put in place policies to guide their practices. in their study, maphalala and adigun (2021) indicated few african institutions have e-learning policies in place for the implementation and use of e-learning facilities. in our study, all the participants, except for one, confirmed their institutions have policies in place to guide teaching and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/14782103211021937 752022 40(1): 75-79 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 omidire & aluko academic and institutional readiness towards e-learning learning. it also suggests that prior to covid-19, the institutions already had some varying degree of e-learning policy and practice in place. as indicated earlier, alshawmar (2021: 3598) asserts policies, procedures, culture, rules and regulations are some of the factors that affect the extent to which users utilise the affordances. these have a varied impact on their awareness, experiences and attitudes towards e-learning (maphalala & adigun, 2021). findings from our study support these claims, which signify a gap between policy and practice. although there are high expectations regarding return to normalcy to all facets of life after the covid-19 pandemic, part of what may defy this is revised approaches to teaching and learning. despite previous complaints about the inadequacies of e-learning, institutions worldwide have no choice but to embrace it. as asserted earlier by scholars (mcdonald, 2020), the current situation might be the reagent for action to start confronting our challenges. 7. implications of findings and recommendations this section considers the implications of our findings for institutional e-learning policies, strategies and practices. first, our findings exposed the divergence in institutional and individual preparedness and readiness for e-learning prior to the covid-19 pandemic, which would necessitate a major review of higher education’s policies, strategies and practices. because policies should direct practices and strategies, we think institutions that already have e-learning policies in place need buy-in from their staff members. greater awareness is required regarding these policies and the implications for teaching and learning practices. for instance, in our findings, one staff member was not really sure if her institution has an e-learning policy. one wonders what guides the practices of academics at the institution, which will also have a negative impact on student learning. another way of improving on policies would be their continual evaluation to ensure they meet with current trends and the needs. although not devoid of challenges, better-prepared institutions coped better with the crisis. second, findings from our study showed that the training provided by institutions may not necessarily equate to staff readiness for e-learning. thus, institutions would need to move beyond “nice-to-have” platforms to ensuring staff’s ability to use them. in this instance, we suggest a “pull and push” approach that encourages all staff to start working online by adopting, for instance, a blended approach for a specified percentage of a module. third, in relation to this is the need to recognise the diverse “individual journey” of each academic and to provide tailor-made support for each level. as asserted earlier, literature shows fear of the unknown and failure is a major reason for faculty resistance to e-learning (mitchell et al., 2015). fourth, although the pandemic was unexpected, plans need to be in place to structure communication regarding, for instance, the source, the timing and the specificity. findings from our study show that uncoordinated communication and information-overload adversely affected the mental health of the participants. fifth, staff would need to be provided with carefully structured bite-sized training (e.g., on assessment and diverse pedagogies), which will help to provide some form of policy guidance. it will also help prevent stakeholders from becoming overwhelmed. furthermore, understanding academics’ readiness towards e-learning will help institutions to better understand the challenges posed by it (lakshimi et al., 2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 762022 40(1): 76-79 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.4 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) in relation to this is the pedagogy of care (moorhouse & tiet, 2021), part of the covid-19 experience in the pset sector is the need for moral and emotional support for staff. institutions should be interested in the wellbeing of their staff. according to noddings (2003, cited in walker-gleave, 2019: 93), “care and caring have deep roots in education since they form the basis of all pedagogies”. nonetheless, walker-gleave (2019: 93) asserts this pedagogy of hope needs further research regarding academics’ perceptions and students’ experience in relation to their learning, and its cost implication. lastly, as suggested by one of the participants, government would need to invest more to support struggling institutions in e-learning infrastructure, including other technical requirements considering the huge costs involved (babbar & gupta, 2021). 8. conclusion one of the areas severely affected by the global covid-19 pandemic was education, which had to transition to an online mode. many institutions and educators were not ready for this rapid transition to e-learning. findings from this study showed that staff members at african 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article 2021 39(3): 109-120 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.9 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) students’ feelings about the online submission of assignments using turnitin abstract the integration of information and communication technologies (icts) into teaching and learning, and the implementation of computer-mediated methods of instruction in the form of e-learning in higher education, have led to the emergence of new methods of submitting assignments electronically. one of these methods employs a learning management system (lms) for teaching, learning and assessment. while significant research has been conducted on this phenomenon in developed countries, little has been published on how students experience and perceive this method of submission in a developing country such as south africa, where a slow pace of technological innovation in education has been reported. the mixed methods study on which this article is based reports on how the moodle lms was used in a business management education (bme) course of a bachelor of education undergraduate degree, where students had to submit assignments through turnitin. the qualitative component had a sample of 15 participants selected from 156 students using phenomenography as a methodological approach. personal reflective journals, focus group discussions and individual interviews were qualitative data sources. a questionnaire was used to collect quantitative data that was analysed using the statistical package for social sciences (spss). the study found that participants viewed this method of submitting assignments as a conduit for monitoring plagiarism in bme. findings from the study may offer insight into how emerging economies might engage with the crucial aspect of developing student consciousness about the importance of speedy and safe delivery of assignments in ways that promote academic honesty. keywords: learning management system, business management education, plagiarism, turnitin. 1. introduction and background the increase in student numbers in south africa’s higher education institutions (heis), a consequence of the need to address inadequate access by historically disadvantaged groups triggered by apartheid era policies (hesa, 2014), has rendered traditional face-to-face models of instruction inadequate for teaching and learning. massification in higher education has led to large class sizes and a greater need to accommodate diversity (mashau, mutshaeni & author: dr muntuwenkosi abraham mtshali1 affiliation: 1school of education, university of kwazulu-natal, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i3.9 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(3): 109-120 published: 16 september 2021 received: 09 october 2020 accepted: 21 january 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.9 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org//0000-0002-7346-5162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.9 1102021 39(3): 110-120 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.9 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) maphosa, 2014). exclusive attention is barely possible in large classes when conventional methods of transacting teaching and learning are used, and assignments are submitted in class during the lecture as this consumes more teaching time with less likelihood of detecting plagiarism that turnitin is able to detect in classes of different sizes (baillie-de byl, 2004). a virtual learning environment (vle), in the form of a learning management system (lms), is considered to be a meaningful solution to the problem of managing teaching, learning and assessment in classes of a relatively large size (padayachee, van der merwe & kotze, 2016). handling hard copies of assignments, as well as assignments submitted electronically through email, can be a strenuous task in contexts where class sizes are relatively large (wahab & al-alaiwat, 2015). the conventional approach to handling assignments in large classes by way of students submitting printed copies has created problems for students and lecturers, as assignments are often lost in the process (kuzma, wright & henson, 2012). the problem is further compounded as the number of assignments completed by students increases during the semester (wahab & al-alaiwat, 2015). evidence has been documented where students had persistently claimed to have submitted assignments through the physical drop-box or handed them over the counter, only to find that these cannot be traced, as the outcome of their physical search had been negative (kuzma et al., 2012; ramnarainseetohul, abdool-karim & amir, 2012). to alleviate this problem, online learning systems that offer the latest brand of educational technology for transacting teaching, learning and assessment, have been deployed by heis in south africa (padayachee et al., 2016). these electronic technologies offer students and lecturers a wide range of assessment tools (wahab & al-alaiwat, 2015) that offer them space for the convenient submission of their assignments online (king et al., 2017). students have demonstrated appreciation of online mediated feedback as it comprises remarks that are easier to read than handwritten comments on their scripts, and have also commended the privacy with which online feedback is communicated to them (yildirim, erdogan & cigdem, 2017). for this reason, amongst others, heis have turned to turnitin in their effort to promote a scholarship culture while attempting to minimise the habit of plagiarism among students in the process (batane, 2010). while assignment box alert takes the form of an lms designed to monitor students in the submission of assignments (noraziah et al., 2011), turnitin is a feature, tool or web-based software in the lms that monitors the quality of the assignment that a student submits in a way that assists the lecturers and students in their endeavour to foster originality in students’ work (batane, 2010). the study on which this article reports sought to explore students’ experiences of learning using an online lms in business management education (bme) at the teacher education institute of one university in the province of kwazulu-natal, south africa. the bme module, which features in the bachelor of education degree programme that is designed to train students to become teachers, had a relatively large class size of 156 second-year students and this complicated the administration and collection of assignments. this university had earlier-on adopted moodle as its official lms and this is currently the most extensively used system for online learning in all its campuses (padayachee et al., 2016). students in bme used the moodle lms for communicating learning among themselves as a group and with their lecturer. as part of their online learning experience, students had to submit their assignments through turnitin, a web-based application that is integrated with the moodle lms. this article therefore aims at reporting on how students felt about turnitin as a tool for http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.9 1112021 39(3): 111-120 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.9 mtshali students’ feelings about the online submission of assignments submitting assignments and what students learn about plagiarism through online submission of assignments using turnitin. studies have been conducted on the submission of assignments through turnitin in courses such as information literacy blackboard (mphahlele, simelane & selepe, 2011), english literacy course for english second language students (bensal, miraflores, & tan 2015) and in cross curriculum secondary school subjects (khoza, 2015). however, it is not yet known how students experience this in bme, a module that relies heavily on case-based pedagogy for making meaning of content by linking content to real-world business settings. the problem this article strives to address relates to students’ encounters with learning as they engage with the submission of assignments. it may seem reasonable to presume that submitting assignments online tends to enhance academic writing because of the capacity of the online submission tool to detect plagiarism. however, there is great uncertainty as to how students in the south african context, where the integration of technology into teaching and learning has happened at a slow pace, are likely to feel about innovative ways of submitting learning tasks, considering that university students have had disparate schooling experiences regarding the accomplishment and submission of tasks. 2. literature review a variety of options for the submission of assignments have emerged with the advent of lmss that provide tools for conducting teaching and learning (padayachee et al., 2016), and tools for the submission and management of assignments in the form of assignment box alert (noraziah et al., 2011), turnitin (kiriakidis, 2012) and assignit (barker, fiedler & johnson, 2008). these options are reported to have provided an expedient method of handling assignments while also providing students with quick feedback on their submitted work in the process (geri & naor-elaiza, 2008). numerous methods related to the traditional submission and administration of assignments give rise to several problems to lecturers in contexts where class sizes are relatively large (yildirim et al., 2017). while the traditional manual submission methods are reasonably simple and common to lecturers and students, heis have come across numerous problems with methods of manually submitting assignments (kuzma et al., 2012; ramnarain-seetohul et al., 2012). these problems relate to part-time students, as traditional methods of submitting assignments over the counter may not be convenient for these students as they have to be on campus on dates these assignments are due (kuzma et al., 2012). owing to distance and time that separate off-campus students and lecturers, some assignments are manually submitted to lecturers after the due date and this reveals another problem of late submission, with the potential to interrupt the process of learning between students and lecturers (ramnarainseetohul et al., 2012). noraziah et al. (2011) suggest that these problems can best be alleviated by adopting an lms that manages students in submitting assignments, as this has the capacity to block late submissions, and is therefore likely to inculcate in students the habit of timely submission of assignments to avoid marks being deducted for submitting a hard copy to the lecturer. quteishat, al-mofleh, al-mefleh and al-batah (2011) alluded that a web-based lms has provided solutions to the problem emanating from the distance that separated lecturers and students in a distance education course with a comparatively large class size. yildirim et al. (2017) observe that the administration of assignments submitted using traditional methods http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.9 1122021 39(3): 112-120 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.9 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) that often delay turnaround times, lowered the quality and extent of feedback directed to students and required more resources. the implementation of the online system of computerbased assessment by the joint admission and matriculation board in nigeria comes with the flexibility of submitting assignments at any time and place (osadebe & ojukonsin, 2018). access to devices that improve students’ attention capacity and offer worthwhile and instant feedback benefits students in improving their writing skills, while also enhancing valuable and meaningful communication between teachers and students (osadebe & ojukonsin, 2018). recent investigation into teaching and learning feedback indicates that traditional methods of writing feedback disadvantage students as these methods cannot offer students the legible and clear feedback that electronically generated feedback can offer (chang et al., 2012; wang & wang, 2014). a study conducted at a vocational college found that students preferred rich and valuable feedback received from electronically submitted and marked assignments, as this helped them develop good understanding and knowledge (yildirim et al., 2017). furthermore, due to increased workloads, teachers of learning areas with more theoretical content such as bme are likely to give inadequate feedback on students’ writing when this has to be handwritten (xiong et al., 2012). personalised feedback received by students online, offer shy students the privacy they prefer as a means to avoid unnecessary contest with competitive students (yildirim et al., 2017). protagonists of open online submission of assignments (bridge & appleyard, 2008; yildirim et al., 2017) assert that submitting assignments through an open online system enables students to view their peers’ work and provides feedback to highand low-quality peer work. existing research indicates that feedback from a number of peers is a valuable source of feedback that may yield similar results, as feedback generated by instructors in a teaching and learning situation (xiong et al., 2012). owing to the reported increase in incidents of collusion and copying between students in heis, the deployment of plagiarism detection systems (pds) such as turnitin has become the best alternative for higher education (lingard, 2009). eradicating plagiarism is good for protecting the moral integrity of the institution since the problem of plagiarism and the difficulty of eradicating it is, though individual perpetrators are responsible, considered by academics to be with institutions that are unable to stop it from happening (batane, 2010). it thus follows that eradicating the problem of plagiarism could require lecturers to embrace the use of online assignment submission tools such as turnitin as these have the capacity to expose incidents of plagiarism (mphahlele et al., 2011), and could motivate students to improve their academic writing skills by being original when they write (stoltenkamp & kabaka, 2014). there is a variety of other pdss that are available, such as safe assignment, that has an intuitive user interface, the essay verification engine (eve2) system that does not have a database of its own and plagiarism-finder, that permits the user to vary the detection process according to need (kakkonen & mozgovoy, 2008). however, turnitin is the most commonly used pds by teachers and students, as it is reported that 10 thousand institutions in 126 countries with over a million teachers around the world are currently using its software (bensal et al., 2015). this pds is hosted on the world wide web and functions from several data stations to monitor similarity indexes for originality with a view to promoting academic honesty (stoltenkamp & kabaka, 2014). the practice of submitting assignments into turnitin is therefore not only intended to alleviate problems that are typical of orthodox approaches to submission and improve timely http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.9 1132021 39(3): 113-120 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.9 mtshali students’ feelings about the online submission of assignments receipt of feedback, but also to enlighten students about the importance of writing in ways that acknowledge other peoples’ work and avoid the violation of academic honesty (kiriakidis, 2012). while turnitin has succeeded in inculcating a sense of vigilance and alleviating incidences of plagiarism brought about by advancing technology and the availability of information in the internet, certain limitations have been observed in the software (batane, 2010; mphahlele et al., 2011). among these is the tendency of the software to consider some texts to be plagiarised even though they are not, while the accuracy with which plagiarism reports are scrutinised cannot be confirmed (khoza, 2015). it is also not possible for the software to identify inappropriately cited material and to verify sources cited in the text of the assignment with the reference list (bensal et al., 2015). cases where students may unwittingly use common words or sources that were used by other researchers in the past are erroneously considered by the software as incidents of plagiarism (batane, 2010). 3. research methods and design the research upon which this article is based used a mixed methods approach to explore students’ feelings about submitting assignments using turnitin as an online assignment submission tool. the question central to this article is “how do students feel about using turnitin as a tool for submitting assignments?” 3.1. design the sequential exploratory strategy was used to guide the blending of qualitative and quantitative research since the generation and analysis of quantitative data occurred subsequent to the generation and analysis of qualitative data (creswell & zhang, 2009). three out of four data generation methods used in the study were qualitative, making the design a qual-quan model with more weight on the qualitative than on the quantitative component of the study. while the qualitative research sought to explore the lived experiences of participants as they manifested in real settings (henning, 2004), the quantitative component sought to ascertain whether the quantitative data corroborated the qualitative data. the use of the questionnaire was therefore motivated by the desire to achieve greater validation of the themes that emerged from qualitative data sources (creswell & plano clark, 2007). another reason for using the questionnaire was that i assumed that participants enjoy greater freedom when responding to questions at their leisure and in private than when interacting with the researcher. the quantitative component was used as a way of achieving better understanding of the research problem than could be accomplished when using either a qualitative or quantitative approach only (creswell, 2003 and creswell & zhang, 2009). the purpose of using questionnaires was to enhance the validity of the research through multiple methods of data collection. 3.2. research methods phenomenography as a theoretical approach to qualitative research postulates that the experience of learning has to be viewed through the “how” aspect and the “what” aspect of learning as an experience (stamouli & huggard, 2007). phenomenography was used to guide the sampling, generation and analysis of qualitative data and is described as follows (han & ellis, 2019: 2) “… the method that examines qualitatively different ways in which people experience, conceptualize, perceive, and understand various aspects of, and phenomena in, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.9 1142021 39(3): 114-120 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.9 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) the world around them”. the survey was, in the main study, used as an approach that guided the process according to which the sampling, collection and analysis of quantitative data were conducted. to enter the research context, approval to conduct the research was obtained from the university’s research ethics committee and ethical clearance was granted as per ethical protocol hss/0016/012d. informed consent was sought with participants through a written letter of request inviting them to participate in the research study as a means to secure ethically negotiated consent from the would-be participants. this written request explained the nature and purpose of the study and informed them of their rights to either accept or decline the invitation as participation was voluntary, and also that they could withdrew from participation at any time. the written letter, which they had to sign before returning it to the researcher, also indicated that their identities were going to be protected by using pseudonyms instead of their real names on compilation of the final research report. 3.3. sampling guided by phenomenographic sampling for purposeful variation, 15 participants were purposively selected for the qualitative component as the study sample from a bme class with 156 students registered in a bachelor of education programme. all students in this class had the experience of learning to use the lms as the medium of negotiating learning. sampling in quantitative research intends to select people who are typical of a population so that the outcomes can be generalised to a broader population (creswell & plano clark, 2007). however, the main study did not seek to generalise the results to a broader population; it sought to acquire a better understanding of the phenomenon. sampling was therefore under these circumstances, non-random and purposive for the quantitative component of the study. this enabled the researcher to circulate the questionnaire to all students that were enrolled in the bme class. 3.4. collection and analysis of research data the use of personal reflective journals that were updated by all students registered in the bme class was the starting point in generating qualitative data. after analysing these journals, 15 participants were selected for participation in the focus group discussion (fgd) and interviews for the further probing of important matters that emerged from the journals and pseudonyms were used for citing from interview transcripts. phenomenographic inductive analysis was used to analyse all three qualitative data transcripts to ascertain that participants’ conceptions of an experience were truly captured from the data to derive the subsequent categories of description, rather than being imposed onto the data from some theoretical frame. after analysing personal reflective journals using the approach mentioned above, the researcher presented these in a phd cohort seminar for a critical review to ascertain that data description and the generation of findings truly emanated from the transcripts. data analysis in the phenomenographic tradition is considered a process of discovery as well as of construction (mann, dall’alba & radcliffe, 2007) that pursues the development of a descriptive framework constructed on the two elements of meaning and structure (bruce et al.,2004). questionnaires that were circulated to the respondents who ultimately completed these to generate quantitative data, were analysed by a specialist statistician whose services were specially sought and acquired to develop quantitative and descriptive statistics. to be able to do this, the statistician used the statistical package for social sciences (spss) version http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.9 1152021 39(3): 115-120 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.9 mtshali students’ feelings about the online submission of assignments 14.0, a software for analysing quantitative data. statistics comprised numeric representations that had either confirmed or conflicted with the qualitative themes (creswell, 2003), while analysis of interpretations of the conceptions indicated whether the quantitative findings supported or opposed qualitative themes. this article reports on a phd study conducted by the researcher and the tables that feature in the presentation of data constitute the researcher’s own work. this implies that the citing of these in the following section and the subsequent replication of such tables in this article did not require any permission to be sought from any person or institution. 4. results engagement with data through an iterative process of reading from the data transcripts yielded evidence that suggested that students acknowledged various purposes for which the online space could be used as a channel for communicating learning. one of these purposes, other than engaging with learning in the chatroom and the discussion forum, and distributing announcements via the news forum, was to submit assignments via the medium of a space that monitored plagiarism. besides categories of description such as “complexities of epistemological access” and “the safety-net effect” that emerged, the emergence of the category of description or phenomenographic finding “conduit for submitting assignment with capability to monitor plagiarism” derives from participants’ awareness of what the space “turnitin assignment” was capable of doing. 4.1 conduit for submitting assignments with capability for monitoring plagiarism this category of description emerged from participants’ view of turnitin as a tool that monitors levels of plagiarism when students submit assignments using it. turnitin is a space in the lms that allows students to write and submit assignments online while also detecting levels of similarity between the students’ writing and the source of origin of this writing (plagiarism). students had varying feelings about using this method of submission. this is evident in the following extracts from the reflective journals (j): the first assignment had to be submitted online via the “turnitin” space. i was unhappy, stressed because it was my first time submitting online, and was assumed to have plagiarised… (j49) another participant expressed their experiences regarding submitting assignments via the online learning space: the method of submitting the assignment using the learning management system is fast and it is the safe method (j47). the following quote reveals another participant’s feelings about online assignment submission: the online submission of assignments makes my studying difficult because when i submit, it always reports that i have plagiarized my work (j45). the above three statements extracted from the reflective journals indicate that participants’ experiences of submitting assignments online varied. the first statement depicts the participant who experienced anxiety and unhappiness about this method of submission when they had to submit for the first time. the second statement depicts the participant who http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.9 1162021 39(3): 116-120 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.9 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) experienced this practice as hassle-free as it ensured a safe and speedy method with which assignments were submitted. the third statement depicts the participant who felt frustrated when the turnitin report indicated that submitted work had been plagiarised. these varied accounts of participants’ feelings about submitting assignments using turnitin are consistent with phenomenography’s assumption that there is a number of qualitatively different ways of experiencing a specific phenomenon (han & ellis, 2019). participants in the focus group discussion (fgd) shared views on this, as in the following instance where students were asked the question “what would be your comments on the method of submitting tasks using the lms?” i think it also helps us…to learn to write, to reference, cite and write something on our own…now with this system in place i know now that i have to write my work, research it and reference sources and do everything required to avoid plagiarism (fgd). another view emerged from the interviews that the researcher conducted. responding to the question “what are your experiences of submitting assignments using turnitin?”, one participant said: … despite that it was all my work it still…reported plagiarism that was quite vast, i think it was about 39% and i know that, that i referenced accordingly and…whatever was required i did it…but what shocked me was that this plagiarism was so high (suria). interviews conducted by the independent person also yielded comments on the method of submitting assignments online in response to the question “ok, what are your feelings towards “turnitin” and how has this helped you develop academically?” i would say my, my feelings towards “turnitin” is hatred (laughing). i have never liked “turnitin” though it helped me to be original you know, by not taking other peoples’ work. yes, it has quite improved my, my research skills, yes. however, i do not like the idea of “turnitin” (sihle). participants’ experiences of submitting assignments using online support varied in terms of how they felt about this method of submission. this is because phenomenography as a theoretical approach to qualitative research does not take any interest in the nature of the experience as such, but on identifying the manner in which people feel about the same phenomenon in different ways (mann, dall’alba & radcliffe, 2007). the participant in the fgd experienced this method of submission as helpful in inculcating writing habits that observe academic conversions in a way that enable them to circumvent plagiarism. the participant in the interviews was surprised to learn that her work was reported to have been plagiarised despite having done all that was required to comply with academic writing. this indicates that participants who experienced high similarity indexes plagiarised by either copying and pasting from the internet or reproducing texts from their sources without being aware that they were plagiarising, leading to high similarity indexes. the third participant seems to have hated this method passionately, as she expressed feelings of dislike for this method while acknowledging that the method helped her to produce non-replicated work. table 1 below presents statistics relating to the number of students who felt offended by the turnitin report that they had plagiarised: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.9 1172021 39(3): 117-120 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.9 mtshali students’ feelings about the online submission of assignments table 1: students who felt offended by turnitin similarity-index reports i felt offended when turnitin reported that i have plagiarised even when i have cited and referenced frequency per cent valid per cent cumulative per cent valid strongly disagree 12 12.9 12.9 12.9 disagree 5 5.4 5.4 18.3 neutral 25 26.9 26.9 45.2 agree 22 23.7 23.7 68.8 strongly agree 29 31.2 31.2 100.0 total 93 100.0 100.0 51 out of 93 respondents (54.9%) who completed the questionnaire declared that they felt offended by the turnitin report when they submitted their work online as their work was declared to have been plagiarised. however, 17 out of 93 respondents (18.3%) seem to have approved this method of submission, while 25 out of 93 respondents (26.9%) felt indifferent about the impact of turnitin in monitoring their assignments. this points to a variation in the way participants experienced the consequences of having plagiarism monitored and is consistent with phenomenography. 5. discussion participants’ experiences of submitting assignments through the lms comprised mixed feelings of appreciation, anxiety and displeasure, though some acknowledged the process to have been fast and the method safe. the reason could be that this method of submission monitored their work by providing evidence of plagiarism in the form of a similarity index. submitting assignments electronically through “turnitin assignment” helped students by facilitating a quick and safer method of conveying their assignments to the lecturer in ways consistent with swart’s (2014) observation that students efficiently upload, download and submit their assignments within the shortest possible time than when these are posted. while most students did not approve of this method as they seem to have despised it, the research reported in this article responds to a call by stoltenkamp and kabaka (2014) for a need to investigate how students feel about submitting assignments through an online assignment submission tool. this could suggest what needs to be done to address concerns students have relating to the practice of submitting assignments using a tool for online assignment submission, leading to a successful breakaway from the practice of submitting assignments using conventional methods that are less likely to expose incidents of plagiarism. it will be inappropriate to generalise the results from this study to other contexts. however, a combination of two methodologies in a single study where the results from one methodology (quantitative) have been used to establish whether these are consistent with results from another methodology (qualitative), enhances the validity of its findings. 6. conclusion based on the data from which the findings of this study emerged, participants seem to have had inadequate information about what constitutes plagiarism. their thinking around the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.9 1182021 39(3): 118-120 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.9 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) concept of plagiarism seem to have been limited to not listing the sources of their references in the reference list at the end of the assignment, like in the case of suria’s response to the interview question in one quotation above. this constitutes failure to acknowledge the work of others and not necessarily writing in ways that are free from copying and pasting from the internet or replicating other peoples’ work and replacing certain words from the source with synonyms. presenting other peoples’ work by writing text that they wrote in their publications word-for-word, copying from the internet and pasting into one’s own assignment, and paraphrasing seems to have not featured in their understanding of plagiarism. this article contributes to scholarly work by exploring students’ feelings about submitting their assignments using turnitin, while also educating students about the need to write in ways that eradicate high similarity indexes, which would otherwise not have been noticed if assignments were submitted using conventional methods of submitting tasks over the counter. the article therefore recommends that students in heis, especially at entry level courses, be offered some training that covers all aspects of what constitutes plagiarism when assignments are submitted using turnitin as the online assignment submission tool. research outcomes documented in this article have implications for the national and the international contexts. they offer insight into how emerging economies (such as south africa) might engage with the crucial aspect of developing an understanding of how students feel about submitting assignments using turnitin so that whatever needs to be done to prepare students for submitting their assignments using an online assignment submission tool can be considered. it points to the need for universities as agencies of scholarship to create spaces for improving the administration of students’ submission of tasks in ways that embrace constant monitoring of the quality of work submitted by students in their quest to curb academic dishonesty. references 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http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.9 1962022 40(1): 196-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 engaging mathematics student-teachers in an open distance e-learning context abstract isolation, lack of connection and/or belonging, difficulty maintaining engagement and motivation for learning are common complaints for students separated from teaching and support staff in distance education. using a mixed-methods approach, this article utilises dimensions of student engagement: cognitive, emotional and social behaviour to argue on student-teachers’ engagement in mathematics learning for teaching in the open distance e-learning (odel) context. a survey was administered to 654 students in an institution registered for postgraduate certificate in education mathematics didactics course. furthermore, five of the students were interviewed using emails and audio-recorded telephone calls. findings reveal that student-teachers sometimes feel hopeless due to connectivity and data issues, which then impacts their time to engage with mathematics content. they also revealed that when they engage in discussion forums, they enjoy learning mathematics with their peers. it was also revealed that feedback on their assignments guides them on the correctness of their solutions as they otherwise would not have been able to do this on their own. it is recommended that further work be done to establish how cognitive engagement with mathematics can be positively impacted in an odel context. keywords: engagement; open distance e-learning (odel); teaching; students; learning; fet mathematics; online discussions; classroom practice. 1. introduction the preparation of mathematics teachers through open distance e-learning (odel) has been a challenge due to the nature of communication with student-teachers and material delivery during instruction. in addition, alfonso (2012: 2) defines odel as a “form of education provision that uses contemporary technologies to enable varied combinations of synchronous and asynchronous communication among learners and educators who are physically separated from one another for part or all of the educational experience”. it has been further observed that while the provision of teacher education shares many common features in goals and structure across countries, it is strongly influenced by local conditions and norms, and by cultural notions of the knowledge that is considered author: prof zingiswa jojo1 affiliation: 1university of south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i1.12 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(1): 196-211 published: 04 march 2022 received: 10 august 2021 accepted: 18 january 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4949-1694 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 1972022 40(1): 197-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 jojo engaging mathematics student-teachers in an open distance e-learning context essential in framing how quality is to be defined and operationalised when learning to teach the subject (tatto, rodriguez & lu, 2015). according to the mathematics teaching and learning framework for south africa, a balanced and multi-dimensional approach to teaching mathematics for understanding should be conducted in a learner-centred classroom where learners and teachers engage actively, discuss and experiment with mathematical ideas (department of basic education, 2019). drawing from the modification of kilpatrick et al.’s five strands of mathematical proficiency (graven & stott, 2012), the proposed framework prescribes that for the transformation of mathematics teaching in the country, teachers must (i) teach mathematics for conceptual understanding to enable comprehension of mathematical concepts, operations and relations; (ii) teach so that learners develop procedural fluency that involves skill in carrying out procedures flexibly, accurately, efficiently and appropriately; (iii) develop learners’ strategic competence in which the ability to formulate, represent and decide on appropriate strategies to solve mathematical problems is promoted; (iv) provide multiple and varied opportunities for learners to develop their mathematical reasoning skills with capacity for logical thought, reflection, explanation and justification; and (v) promote a learner-centred classroom that enables all of the above, supported by teachers engaging with learners in ways that foreground mathematical learning for all (department of basic education, 2018). mathematics teacher preparation should be an intuitive process that equips learners with skills that enable learning and the construction of the concepts in their own minds. the south african millennium development goals (mdg) considers mathematics as a fundamental requirement essential to pursue a career in an economic sector for development and growth (mogari, 2014). this article uses dimensions of student engagement: cognitive, emotional and social behaviour to explore student-teachers’ engagement in mathematics learning for teaching in the odel context. student-teacher engagement refers to the degree of attention, curiosity, involvement, optimism and passion that they display while being taught, and this is related to how much they learn and retain, as well as their persistence and enjoyment in completing tasks or assignments given. for the student-teachers enrolled for the further education and training (fet) mathematics didactics course, learning mathematics occurs from the perspectives related to (i) mathematics and teacher preparation courses, (ii) pre-service field experiences and (iii) schools of employment. it is the student-teachers’ engagement over varying periods in different contexts that they refine their conceptions about their craft of the big ideas of mathematics, mathematics-specific pedagogy and sense of self in becoming a mathematics teacher. in line with re-imagining thinking, additional resources for the subject didactics’ module in the form of readings, digital lessons and some open educational resources are uploaded for student-teachers to access online. all those additional content types were provided in order to support the student-teachers and unpack the content in simpler terms. this article reports on a study that was conducted with the university of south africa (unisa) student-teachers enrolled for a postgraduate certificate in education with specialisation in subject didactics in mathematics. the mode of delivery was odel. the module is delivered through a study guide that is divided into six units, each of which addresses various topics from a different perspective. the units cover the exploration of what it means to “do” mathematics, the development of understanding in mathematics, mathematics in the fet band, teaching through problem-solving, planning in the problem-based classroom and the building of assessment into teaching and learning respectively. all the aforementioned topics are compiled such that the training of student-teachers is appropriate for them to teach fet phase mathematics. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 1982022 40(1): 198-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) students are expected to engage with the content in this module and submit four compulsory assignments. the fourth assignment is submitted as a portfolio that represents evidence of the extent of mathematics professional development and readiness of the student to teach the subject at fet level. i became interested in understanding how student-teachers engage with odel mathematics teaching when i received a phone call from one of my subject didactics mathematics students in september 2020. he asked me about examples of relevant activities linked to student-teachers’ lives outside the classroom that can empower students with the capacity to transform and reform their lives. usually, all the assignments would have been submitted and student-teachers would then prepare for a two-hour venue-based examination. it was also observed that their interest became invested in the writing of either assignments or examinations and very rarely on “becoming professionally developed fet mathematics teachers”. the challenge became: how do i ensure that the student-teachers engage with mathematics concepts taught in an odel context? i will not repeat the considerable evidence pointing to the several challenges that odel student teachers usually face in learning mathematics. such evidence is available in abundance (simon, 2008; thorpe, 1993; rameli & kosnin, 2016, musingafi et al., 2015). this study contributes to the new explanations of how mathematics student-teachers engage with mathematics concepts in an odel context. 2. literature review attard (2014: 1) defines engagement in a mathematics classroom as ”a multidimensional construct, consisting of three domains: operative, cognitive and affective”. in addition, authors such as team (2006) as well as fredericks, blumenfeld and paris (2004) note that the coming together of those domains lead to students feeling good, thinking hard and actively participating in their mathematics learning. from a framework of engagement, attard (2014) suggests that an engaging mathematics classroom pedagogical repertoire includes (i) a substantive conversation about mathematical concepts and their applications to life; (ii) challenging tasks that provide an opportunity for all student-teachers to achieve a level of success; (iii) provision of student-teachers with an element of choice; (iv) technology embedded and used when appropriate to enhance mathematical understanding through a student-centred approach to learning and (v) relevance of the mathematics curriculum explicitly linked to learners’ lives outside the classroom and empowering students with the capacity to transform their lives. with real-world experiences being key for conceptual learning, student-teachers must recognise that it is not only a teaching strategy that is required, but also ensuring that their learners learn and can relate the mathematics learnt to their everyday situations. those suggestions can work if mathematics lessons regularly include a variety of tasks that cater for the diverse needs of learners. fredricks (2011) asserts that higher engagement in classrooms is characterised by student-teachers’ development of strong relationships with their lecturers and peers; where lecturers support student-teachers’ autonomy; hold high expectations, give consistent and clear feedback; use varying, challenging, interesting and meaningful tasks. in this odel setting, the latter is applicable since it is the main tool used to interact with student-teachers’ submitted assignments. in addition, student-teachers communicate with lecturers in an odel setting through emails, whatsapp and phone calls. however, research (maboe, 2019; paolini, 2015; panthi & belbase, 2017) has consistently shown that those student-teachers in many cases, require support either in the form of clarifications of the content in the study guide and/or suggestions on additional resources they should consult. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 1992022 40(1): 199-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 jojo engaging mathematics student-teachers in an open distance e-learning context leversha (2014) asserts that understanding a piece of mathematics involves explaining mathematical concepts, making logical connections between different facts and concepts, recognising the connection when one encounters something new inside or outside of mathematics. student-teachers registered for the didactics course must understand mathematical symbols, visualise patterns and understand mathematics concepts (debrenti (2013). riccomini et al. (2015) assert that those teachers must understand mathematics vocabulary words and be able to build mathematics knowledge using mathematics language. more specifically, the student-teacher must understand how mathematics concepts are related. for example, after learning the factor theorem in algebra, the learners should be able to use it to find zeros or roots of cubic functions in drawing cubic graphs in differential calculus. this implies that student-teachers’ conceptual understanding is knowing more than isolated facts and methods about mathematical ideas. it also infers the ability to transfer their knowledge into new situations and apply it to new contexts. currently, challenges identified in open distance learning institutions include high drop-out rates and late completion of programmes (musingafi et al., 2015). student-teachers registered for the postgraduate certificate in education with specialisation in mathematics have also experienced this challenge. in most cases a student would succeed in all other modules for this qualification, except mathematics. those challenges according to berge, muilenburg and haneghan (2002) have been found to be situational, epistemological, philosophical, psychological, pedagogical, technical, social, and/or culturally related challenges. situational challenges are classified by rameli and kosnin (2016) as a) self-factors such as negative perception, low self-regulation, b) student-teachers’ behaviors, practices, and characteristics c) lack of cognitive, emotional and financial support, d) negative attitudes, behaviors, lack of support and e) others factors such as the nature of mathematics and assessment pressure. in addition maboe (2019) identified (i) computer illiteracy, (ii) students staying in rural areas having problematic or no internet connectivity,(iii) students experiencing stress due to the uncertain security of their information, (iv) multiple roles of students, leading to a lack of time to go online regularly and (v) minimal communication between peers and lecturers as barriers to online learning in an odel context. according to musingafi et al. (2015), strategies to improve student engagement in mathematics learning in odel include ongoing engagement with student-teachers in focus groups, motivation from the lecturer and encouragement to prepare for their assessments timeously, continuous assessment and group discussions. it is common to find that when student-teachers in the odel context work on multiple simple and mundane algorithms, they may be behaviourally engaged and yet bored, frustrated and mentally unchallenged (maboe, 2019). this could be associated with the habit observed when student-teachers interact with the study content in the tutorial letters only when they must hand in assignments that are due. consequently, those student-teachers fumble through the guide without knowing relevant sources to correctly respond to tasks prescribed in the assignment. musingafi et al. (2015) assert that challenges experienced by the studentteachers include failure to cope with odel learning strategies such as video/audio tapes material and the internet, a lack of self-motivation due to isolation from tutors and peers and difficulty in forming study groups due to differences in how they use time. online library access is a facility readily available to all student-teachers registered in the institution in which the study was conducted. according to cranton (2006) and mezirow (1991), preservice teachers are adults that come to the university classrooms with prior assumptions and knowledge about mathematical concepts that need to be challenged in order to transform their thinking. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 2002022 40(1): 200-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) moreover, sriwongchai, jantharajit and chookhampaeng (2015) affirm that the creative thinking skill should be improved by new concepts and flexible concepts and that the lecturer should realise the relationship among the components of mathematics and be able to design problem-based learning activities. 3. theoretical framework this study was underpinned by the framework for engagement with mathematics (fem), (attard, 2014). according to attard (2014) engagement with mathematics occurs in a combination of cognitive, affective and operative student-teacher involvement. in that process the studentteacher reflects on a deep understanding of mathematical concepts and applications, values that the knowledge is useful to them outside the classroom and can therefore participate in group discussions, practical and homework tasks. i chose this framework because durksen et al. (2017) used it as a a qualitative framework for teacher-student interactions in motivation and engagement in mathematics. this is a framework that can provide student-teachers with the foundations necessary for learners to engage with mathematics. moreover, attard (2014) asserts that the fem highlights that it is not simply the pedagogical repertoires or the resources that teachers use that influence student engagement, it is the deeper level of pedagogical relationships that develop between students and teachers that are a necessary foundation for engagement to occur. there is therefore a need to prepare student-teachers to design learning experiences that help learners to learn mathematics and choose teaching and learning strategies most suitable for a chosen lesson to be taught. abbott (2016) asserts that student-teachers’ engagement with mathematics learning can either be intellectual, emotional, behavioural, physical, social or cultural. in applying attard’s (2014) framework in the mathematics subject didactics course, student-teachers were supplied with several readings such as murray and olivier (1998) on learning through problem-solving, together with bereiter (1992) on referent-centred knowledge and problem-centred knowledge. they had to use these elements of an educational epistemology as sources from which they could draw their intellectual knowledge. in addition, some positive emotions such as immediate feedback on their submitted assignments facilitate the learning process and minimise negative behaviour of non-compliance with assignment submissions. this collaboration amongst student-teachers enhanced their social interactions and established a sense of belonging amongst them since those registered for the module belong to diverse backgrounds. in addition, fredricks, blumenfeld and paris (2004: 62–63) identify the behavioural, emotional and cognitive engagements as three dimensions of student-teachers’ engagement. consequently, it is envisaged that student-teachers who are behaviourally engaged would typically comply with behavioural norms such as timeous submission of assignments and involvement in discussion forums. moreover, according to sesmiyanti (2016), cognitively engaged student-teachers would be invested in their learning, would seek to go beyond the requirements and would relish the challenge. christenson et al. (2012:161) associate cognitive engagement with strategic learning strategies and active self-regulation that enables student-teachers to display independent learning and flexible problem-solving skills. cognitive engagement is also defined as the thinking that student-teachers do while engaged in the academic learning tasks (clarke, 2001), motivational goals and self-regulated learning (sharan & geok, 2008). in this study, student-teachers’ engagement with mathematics concepts is informed by the four forms of cognitive engagement namely, (i) self-regulated learning where students’ cognitive processing is driven by a higher-order or metacognitive component, (ii) task focus in which students use task-specific planning and self-monitoring, (iii) resource http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 2012022 40(1): 201-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 jojo engaging mathematics student-teachers in an open distance e-learning context management in which student-teachers draw help from external sources, and (iv) recipience, in which student-teachers respond passively with little mental investment, often to instruction that has short-circuited their self-regulatory cognitive process (clarke, 2001). 4. methodology from critical research and interpretivist epistemologies, this article reports from an explanatory sequential mixed-methods approach research project that analysed how student teachers in an open distance e-learning context engaged with learning fet mathematics. those paradigms were chosen in this study because they involve a methodology that recognises the importance of cognitive, emotional, social and behavioural variables that impact the engagement with mathematics content and that these interconnections cannot be ignored (maroun, 2012). i began with collection and analysis of quantitative data, followed up on specific quantitative findings, and explained those responses through qualitative data collected by conducting semi-structured interviews with some respondents (wisdom & creswell, 2013). six hundred and fifty-four (654) student-teachers in an institution’s postgraduate certificate in education mathematics didactics course participated in the study. data were collected using a structured online questionnaire administered to the 2020 student-teachers cohort, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with five purposely selected student-teachers based on their responses in the questionnaire. the online questionnaires were sent to six hundred and fifty four student teachers. interviews were conducted by telephone call or email. the survey included questions on cognitive, behavioural, emotional and social student-teacher engagement with mathematics. the first section of the questionnaire required the participants to give their biographical information, namely the previous degree or diploma completed before enrolling for the course, gender and the year in which they completed their schooling. there were six questions to which the participants had to respond freely in their own words. the open-ended questions included, among others, if students enjoyed mathematics, do activities in discussion forums, how they felt about feedback on assignments, interest, creativity and innovation. no limit was set on the length of the responses and there were no predetermined options. thus, the questionnaire acted as a writing prompt for the participants. the questions intended to probe the student-teachers’ engagement and experiences with mathematics from the four assignments prescribed in this course. ethical considerations included, among others, stating the research aim, indicating voluntary participation, ensuring anonymity with pseudonyms, together with the right to withdraw from the study at any time without penalty. this study formed part of a multi-case study conducted by the college of education lecturers at the university of south africa to enhance the scholarship of teaching and learning (sotl). ethical clearance was also obtained from our institution in the college of education at unisa (ref: 253 2017/09/13/90188500/44/mc). the researcher used the following stages of data analysis, namely the initial stage that involved the contextual coding of the qualitative data. i adapted miles and huberman’s (1994) technique to analyse data collected from the questionnaires and interviews to identify the frames of analysis, which are levels of specificity within which the examination of the data took place. the coding of the data resulted in the formation of categories. after the data reduction process, constant comparison analysis together with content analysis, were applied in the coding and identification of underlying themes. quantitative data were analysed statistically using graphical representations. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 2022022 40(1): 202-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 5. results and discussion 5.1 biographical information of the 654 student-teachers who participated in this study, 273 were males while 381 were females. their previous degrees included diplomas in engineering studies and commercial subjects. approximately 74% of them passed their matric mathematics thirty years ago, before 1990. five student-teachers were interviewed, two were males and three were females. four were from either a rural or township setting while one was from an urban setting. during interviews some indicated that they enrolled for the mathematics education teaching course because of the scarcity of mathematics teachers in the country. this was a guarantee that when they qualify, they will be absorbed by the education system. in line with the organisation of the questions in the survey, data are presented and discussed following the themes identified. those are (i) cognitive student-teacher engagement, (ii) behavioural student-teacher engagement, (iii) emotional student-teacher engagement and (iv) social student-teacher engagement. in the following section, results and discussions on cognitive, behavioural, emotional and social student-teacher engagement with mathematics are presented. 5.2 cognitive student-teacher engagement cognitive engagement was measured quantitatively through questions about studentteachers’ certainty regarding providing correct responses, thinking about different ways in which they can solve problems, connecting new information learnt with older knowledge, being able to detect mistakes in their work, together with their choice to do easy problems and leave out the hard tasks in their assignments. positive cognitive responses involve deep understanding of mathematical concepts and applications, and expertise in how students wrote their assignments. for example, 518 of the 654 (79%) students could not think about different ways in which they could solve problems given in the assignments they wrote. that is a cognitive negative response. results are displayed in figure 1. 474 136 300 120 160 200 518 354 434 494 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 i ascertain that my assignment responses are correct i think about different ways in which i can solve a problem i connect what i learnt now with my previous knowledge i understand my mistakes when something goes wrong when work is hard, i only do the easy tasks cognitive engagement cognitive positive cognitive negative figure 1: student-teachers’ cognitive engagement with mathematics the cognitive engagement levels displayed in figure 1 indicate that 79% of studentteachers often do not think of different ways of solving a task or problem and 75% of them http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 2032022 40(1): 203-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 jojo engaging mathematics student-teachers in an open distance e-learning context noted that they are reluctant to try harder tasks when the tasks are difficult. both findings signify “cognitive negative” responses. however, the same student-teachers are expected to design learning experiences that can help their learners learn mathematics using different and suitable strategies for specific mathematics concepts to be understood. this could perhaps be associated with the fact that during the interviews, some student-teachers indicated that they last engaged with learning mathematics almost twenty years ago. they had this to say: s1: i last did my school mathematics in 2008, i have now forgotten most of it. asked why he is interested in teaching mathematics, the student-teacher said: s1: you know i never thought i would teach mathematics, i studied electrical engineering, but now i have not been employed for the past four years after i completed my diploma. also, i thought i would easily understand and enjoy teaching mathematics since i did engineering mathematics, calculus to be precise. but now, i find it hard to do my assignments. student-teachers were also asked if they were able to try different approaches to doing the same problem. some of the responses were: s5: yhoo, that one is not possible, you know i am usually battling even to finish the assignment, so i just start with the easy tasks and then go and try the easier ones. s3: it would be great to try several methods as i can imagine that when i teach this will be necessary to accommodate the diverse nature of the learners in my classroom. but i’ll be honest with you, these assignments take a lot of time, you just have to finish the assignment and submit. asked about the connections they make with their previous knowledge; they revealed that: s4: yes, sometimes i do, for example, i had to remind myself about the mathematics i did on parallel lines in grade 9 to be able to make sense of the circle geometry that i’ll be teaching in grade 11. however, for me, i always find it difficult to take content learnt in algebra for example and apply it in trigonometry sometimes. but i have since realised through this course that sections like factorisation, for example, should be applied across the curriculum. s2: to refresh my mathematics knowledge, i made it a point that i collect textbooks and download mathematics material from grades 9 to 12 so that i can remind myself of the content required in teaching fet mathematics. it becomes very difficult to connect the prior knowledge, i think it evaporated, it has been too long since i last studied mathematics. s3: i am so fortunate to be teaching grade 10 mathematics as a temporal teacher now. so, connecting previous knowledge to new mathematics is what i follow almost every day. learners easily understand if you build on what one already knows. the cognitive engagement levels indicated that 66% of the student-teachers did not understand their mistakes when something went wrong. this cognitive negative response indicates that students lacked understanding of mathematical concepts. in such a case, sesmiyanti (2021) suggests that students’ cognitive engagement should involve the students thinking during the task, be motivated to improve their ability in learning and also participate actively in the classroom. clearly, results in this study indicate that the student-teachers could not engage cognitively with the tasks prescribed in their assignments. on understanding and being able to detect their mistakes when doing tasks, one of them had this to say: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 2042022 40(1): 204-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) s1: that one is tricky; it is not easy to even notice that there is a mistake in response to a task. i become aware when i get feedback on the assignment submitted. but i remember calling my lecturer one time when we had to indicate how we would help learners to draw a graph from a quadratic equation that could not be factorised or had no real roots. to my surprise, she noted that the problem was deliberately meant to allow us as studentteachers to explain in diverse ways why it could not be factorised and how it should be corrected. i think this was teaching us to first attempt problems before we give them to our learners. it is clear from the above responses that few student-teachers think about different ways in which they can present a task because of time constraints. it is not that they are unaware of other ways in which tasks can be solved. this skill, as suggested by attard (2014), that an engaging mathematics pedagogical repertoire includes student-teachers’ choice of methods that explain how problems are solved was found lacking among the participants. this skill is needed to prepare student-teachers to accommodate the diversity of their own learners. in addition, from figure 1, fewer students had a deep understanding of how to connect new mathematical knowledge to previous knowledge. this finding shows that this is a skill to be further developed, echoing the finding of sriwongchai, jantharajit and chookhampaeng (2015), who assert that the creative thinking skill should be improved by new concepts and that the teacher should realise the relationship among the components of mathematics and be able to design problem-based learning activities. this is a skill that mathematics teachers need to develop with their learners. moreover, according to sesmiyanti (2016), for student teachers to be cognitively engaged, they should seek to go beyond the requirements prescribed in an assignment and relish a challenge. 5.3 behavioural student-teacher engagement there were four different assignments in this course. the first was a multiple-choice question with four options to choose from, based on calculations. the second and third assignments assessed the methodological applications of mathematics teaching and mathematics content related questions respectively. assignment 4 was a portfolio of learning composed of activities and selected samples of the student-teachers’ work throughout the year that demonstrate their professional development towards becoming a competent mathematics teacher. behavioural engagement was measured through questions posed to student-teachers that included how often they talk about mathematics, giving up when they do not get answers, waiting for help from others, doing assignments timeously, putting effort into learning mathematics, staying focused and only doing easy tasks. student-teachers’ responses that agreed with the given statement were recorded as behavioural positive, while those who did not agree were recorded as behavioural negative. results are displayed in figure 2. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 2052022 40(1): 205-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 jojo engaging mathematics student-teachers in an open distance e-learning context engaging mathematics student-teachers in an open distance e-learning context assignments assessed the methodological applications of mathematics teaching and mathematics content related questions respectively. assignment 4 was a portfolio of learning composed of activities and selected samples of the student-teachers’ work throughout the year that demonstrate their professional development towards becoming a competent mathematics teacher. behavioural engagement was measured through questions posed to student-teachers that included how often they talk about mathematics, giving up when they do not get answers, waiting for help from others, doing assignments timeously, putting effort into learning mathematics, staying focused and only doing easy tasks. student-teachers’ responses that agreed with the given statement were recorded as behavioural positive, while those who did not agree were recorded as behavioural negative. results are displayed in figure 2. figure 2: student-teachers’ behavioural engagement with mathematics it can be noted from figure 2 that 69% of the student-teachers indicated that they talk about mathematics quite often. additionally, only 8% indicated reliance on other student-teachers for help with mathematics tasks. furthermore, just 13% of the student-teachers indicated that they put an effort into learning mathematics. however, an equal percentage of them indicated that they could stay focused on studying mathematics as compared to those who could not focus. when the student-teachers were asked about the relevance of the mathematics curriculum to students’ lives outside the classroom and if it empowers students with the capacity to transform and reform their lives, they had this to say: s2: you know i have noticed that some of the examples in the study guide bring in scenarios relevant to our everyday lives. i could mention for example those questions on application of calculus. but one does not know how to apply them to transform one’s life. 200 277 84 120 54 494 454 474 277 470 434 600 160 200 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 only do easy tasks stay focussed put effort in learning mathematics do my assignments timeously i wait for help from other students igive up quite easily when i do not understand the question i talk about maths quite often behavioural engagement behavioural negative behavioural positive i give up quite easily when i do not understand the questions i talk about maths quite often i wait for help from other students i do my assignments timeously i put effort in learning mathematics i stay focused i only do easy tasks figure 2: student-teachers’ behavioural engagement with mathematics it can be noted from figure 2 that 69% of the student-teachers indicated that they talk about mathematics quite often. additionally, only 8% indicated reliance on other studentteachers for help with mathematics tasks. furthermore, just 13% of the student-teachers indicated that they put an effort into learning mathematics. however, an equal percentage of them indicated that they could stay focused on studying mathematics as compared to those who could not focus. when the student-teachers were asked about the relevance of the mathematics curriculum to students’ lives outside the classroom and if it empowers students with the capacity to transform and reform their lives, they had this to say: s2: you know i have noticed that some of the examples in the study guide bring in scenarios relevant to our everyday lives. i could mention for example those questions on application of calculus. but one does not know how to apply them to transform one’s life. s4: sometimes as i browsed through the assignment or the study guide, i noticed some familiar instances in which real life situations were used. however, it is not easy to engage with it as one always worries about which formulas to use when and how. s5: you know what? i will not lie. given the fact that most of us usually do the assignment in the last minutes, it is not easy to really engage with the activities, you just do as many as you can just to get the assignment done without making meaning of it or looking at its relevance one’s life transformation. s3: since i last did my maths some time ago, it is not easy for me to understand how to do the activities, i usually wait for my group members to meet and draft them, but now it is so hard, we cannot meet because of the pandemic. from the results, it appears that some students could identify the relevance of activities in the study guide to daily situations. however, those students were unable to apply or see how those activities could transform their lives. it appears that although a substantive number of students often talk about mathematics, many of them give up quite easily when faced with difficult tasks. also, while a few of them do not wait for other students to do their tasks, very few put an effort into engaging with mathematics. this concurs with attard (2014) who asserts that in engaging with mathematics, there must be a substantive conversation about mathematical concepts and their applications to life. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 2062022 40(1): 206-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 5.4 emotional student-teacher engagement emotional student-teacher engagement was measured through questions about emotional reactions to engaging with the course such as being worried about learning new things in mathematics, frustration about learning mathematics, feeling good when doing mathematics, wanting to understand what is learnt in mathematics, enjoying learning new things in mathematics and looking forward to doing assignments and tasks in mathematics. from the results displayed in figure 3, it can be observed that 80% of the student-teachers want to understand how to teach mathematics. however, only 59% enjoy engaging with mathematics, and 58% indicated that they look forward to engaging with their assigned tasks. most student-teachers felt worried (emotional negative response) about learning new things about mathematics and frustrated whenever they had to do their assignments. 380 387 520 220 260 300 274 267 134 434 394 354 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 looking forward to doing mathematics assignments/tasks i enjoy doing mathematic i want to undertand how to teach mathematics i feel good when doing mathematics i get worried when i learn new things about mathematics i get frustrated about doing my mathematics assignments emotional engagement emotional negative emotional positive figure 3: student-teachers’ emotional engagement with mathematics during the interviews, the participants had this to say regarding their frustrations about doing mathematics assignments: s5: most of us who chose online schooling did that because we are working, we have family and other obligations. what frustrates me most is that i was not strong in mathematics even at school, and so i take time to do even one activity. time is always not on my side and that frustrates me. i wish i had time to join study groups because i also need to learn mathematics. s2: i get frustrated because the content that one must learn and respond to is huge, it is therefore not easy to submit a handwritten assignment. i get frustrated therefore when i must type mathematics symbols or draw graphs. s1: you know, sometimes i have mixed emotions. i enjoy doing mathematics and i feel good when doing it, but i wish submission dates were flexible enough to allow one to collect all the relevant information needed in the responses before the due date. but sometimes it is issues of connectivity, we don’t have access to the internet in my area. most time when i can connect, data issues are at play. that makes me feel hopeless. results indicate that the students participating in the study had to juggle multiple elements in their lives, which made it difficult for them to spend as much time as they wanted to on the study and doing their assignments. student-teacher engagement is negatively affected due to technological issues such as poor connectivity and a lack of mobile data. there was also http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 2072022 40(1): 207-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 jojo engaging mathematics student-teachers in an open distance e-learning context a link between positive emotions and satisfaction where those student-teachers who were satisfied with their learning experience were more likely to use emotions such as “hopeful” or “energised” to describe how they currently felt about their studies. those student-teachers were always looking forward to engaging with their mathematics tasks. these results concur with hewson (2018) who recognises the importance of relationships amongst student teachers as peers as much as technology, and that lecturers need to pay attention to personal relationships that must exist behind the screen for online learning to be a shared experience, not just ingestion of mathematics content. in addition, several studies suggest the importance of emotion in learning (maguire et al., 2017; oriol et al., 2016), but hewson (2018) delves deeper and shows that the type of emotion experienced by learners is important: autonomous motivation. 5.5 social student-teacher engagement social engagement was measured on how student-teachers build on others’ ideas, how they understand other people’s ideas in mathematics, how they collaborate with others, help those who struggle with mathematics and whether discussion forums were useful (good for them). results are displayed in figure 4. 474 377 470 334 600 200 277 184 320 54 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 i build on others' ideas. i try to understand other people's ideas in mathematics i collaborate with others who can help me in mathematics i try to help others who are struggling in mathematics discussion forums are good for me social engagement social positive social negative figure 4: student-teachers’ social engagement with mathematics from the results, 92% of the student-teachers note that discussion forums were good for them (social positive response). also, 51% of the student-teachers tried to help others who struggled with mathematics and 58% tried to understand other people’s ideas when engaging with mathematics. in addition, positive social engagement about collaboration with peers and building on other student-teachers’ ideas was registered. in explaining this social engagement, s2, s4 and s5 said: s2: the other time, i did not have a clue of how to attempt the trigonometry section in my assignment 3, guess what? my friend who is also registered for this module guided me http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 2082022 40(1): 208-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) through a whatsapp voice note, explained each step as if she was teaching and sent it to me. that example helped me to be able to tackle the rest of the task. s4: you know the other time, i was assisted by other students in the discussion forum. my study guide had some missing pages, and thus i had missed some questions. but as i followed discussions in the forum from other peers, the other students shared the missing activity questions with me. s5: mathematics being one of my best subjects, i always do my assignments in advance. i do this because i always avail myself to assist other struggling students. i teach them using whatsapp voice notes. this always helps me to polish my own work and correct some mistakes that i had made. student-teachers’ access to discussion forums appears to favour their positive social engagement with mathematics. several student-teachers indicated that they were able to build on others’ ideas and collaborate with others who can help them in mathematics. however, letseka and pitsoe (2013) worry that it might not be easy to validate or authenticate odel students’ written work and to ascertain whether the work they have submitted is theirs and that it constitutes a true reflection of their level of content knowledge and understanding of the subject matter. this implies that while students collaborate with each other when engaging with activities, some might not be aware of each student’s mathematical abilities and learning needs. moreover, maboe, eloff and schoeman (2019) note that the students must actively interact with peers, lecturers, study materials and the university using online tools. this is a call for odel institutions to prescribe technological tools for the students to interact online, support distance students academically, cognitively, administratively, institutionally and affectively. in that way, social engagement with mathematics tasks will also be improved. 6. conclusion in this article, i have tried to outline how student-teachers engage with mathematics in an open distance e-learning context. data were collected via a questionnaire and semistructured interviews to measure cognitive, emotional, behavioural and social engagement. findings revealed that student-teachers sometimes feel hopeless due to poor connectivity and issues relating to lack of data and that this impacts their time to engage with mathematics content. this indicates that there are external factors that influence student engagement. however, participants also revealed that when they engage in discussion forums, they enjoy learning mathematics with their peers. this emphasises the need for social engagement in learning mathematics. it was also revealed that feedback on their assignments guides them on the correctness of their solutions as they are unable to correct their work without it. thus, lecturers must make themselves available in discussion forums by initiating and posing questions that will prompt student-teachers to talk about mathematical concepts. moreover, the assignments, especially portfolio assignments, should allow students to reflect on their own understanding while making sense of and critiquing the ideas of others. i suggest that the assignments should include questions that have incorrectly represented responses to tasks wherein student teachers must critique the response and correct it. additionally, a collaborative and supportive learning environment can be created for student-teachers to peer review their own responses, thereby learning from each others’ contributions and support achievement of higher order thinking skills. in that way student-teachers can make conjectures, connect prior knowledge to current understanding, reason about mathematics, refine and amend their approaches, and take ownership of their mathematical knowledge. further research needs to http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 2092022 40(1): 209-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.12 jojo engaging mathematics student-teachers in an open distance e-learning context be done to establish how cognitive engagement with mathematics can be positively impacted in an odel context. references abbott, a. 2016. processual sociology. 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kwazulu-natal this paper gives prominence to rural children’s accounts of their journey to school. twelve children (male = 6; female = 6) from three different rural villages in lesotho participated in the study. individual and focus group interviews were used to generate data, and these were preceded by three participatory research techniques: family drawings, route mapping and diamond ranking, to engage children in dialogue and discussion. the study provided insights into the implications of family dynamics on children’s school journey and the meaning of the school journey to the children. it illuminated how children actively define and re-define the varied places, power-laden spaces and social relations embedded in the journey. the study also highlighted how children’s agency is expressed in their negotiation of the school journey, and represented rural children as heterogeneous with the capacity to navigate their localities in complex and autonomous ways. keywords: rurality, journey, agency, children’s geographies, school, lesotho . introduction over the past two decades, the notions of space, place and human experience have become a key focus of research across various disciplines (e.g. mcconaghy, 2006; thomson & philo, 2004). these studies contribute to explaining the temporal and spatial dimensions of human lives, and the social and cultural construction of space and place. the centrality of space to people’s lives and the multiple meanings, values, identities, subjectivities and power dynamics associated with space are fore-grounded in this body of research. the notion of a single rural space would be challenged as there is a multiplicity of social spaces which intersect in the same geographical area. human experience is argued to be both determined and limited by space and place. how identities are formed, negotiated and reproduced in different spaces has been the subject of analysis in studies (e.g. christensen, 2008; tucker, 2003). space is also seen as the site of production of social relations. aligned to the above debates, research on rural studies has highlighted the importance of space and place in the analysis of the concept ‘rurality’ (balfour, mitchell & moletsane, 2008; corbett, 2009; mcconaghy, 2006). the aim has been to capture the multifacetedness and the intensity of the everyday life experiences in rural contexts. mcconaghy (2006:329) argues that “spaces and places are ideological landscapes whose representations are entangled with both relations of power and complex hierarchies of advantage and disadvantage.” further, there has also been an emphasis on the realities of rural areas, and the cultural, economic, environmental, political and social forces that impact rural places and spaces (thomson, 2007). thus, there is a focus on mechanisms of causality, conditions of occurrence and regularities or patterns (kurtz & craig, 2009). everyday lives in rural contexts are seen as situated. therefore, research on rural children’s everyday livedness must take account of the fact that it is always situated in a context, socially, culturally, spatially and historically. more recently, studies have explored childhood experiences of space and place (e.g. meinert, 2003; tucker, 2003; weller, 2003). a related emerging field of study has been referred to as ‘children’s geographies’. children’s geographies is an area of study within human geography, and rests on the idea that children as a social group share certain characteristics which are experientially, politically and 91morojele & muthukrishna — the journey to school ethically significant and which are worthy of study. space matters, particularly in children’s daily lives (christensen, 2008). researchers in the field argue that children’s lives will be markedly different in differing times, places and spaces, and in differing circumstances such as family, school, peer groups and church. research in the field therefore requires multiple perspectives and the willingness to acknowledge the ‘multiplicity’ of children’s geographies. the journey to school represents significant places and spaces in children’s everyday experiences, and is an in-between space outside the family, home and school. a small body of international studies in this area have shown that children negotiate this journey spatially, and the dynamics are often fluid with inherent tensions and contradictions (e.g. murray, 2009; walker, whyatt, pooley, davies, coulton & bamford, 2009). the study reported in this article explored the journey to school from the perspective of children in a rural context in lesotho. we situated this research within the sub-field of children’s geographies. the study was also located in theory on the sociology of childhood and new childhood studies which foregrounds the rights of the child (christensen & james, 2000). this view recognises children’s agency in the construction of their own identities. the shift in new childhood studies is to seeing children as active social agents who shape the structures and processes around them, and whose social relationships are worthy of study in their own right (prout, 2000). the study further explored how rural children experience the journey to school, and the meanings they make of the journey. the key research questions were: how do rural children experience and negotiate the journey to school? what are the meanings of these journeys to children? what does the school journey reveal about the identities of the rural children? the research design context of the study and participants the study was conducted in lesotho, a country with a population of 2 130 819. thirty four per cent (34%) of the population comprises children between the ages of 0 and 14 years (index mundi, 2010). lesotho’s terrain is characterised by very mountainous areas where travel is difficult, infrastructure poor and the climate harsh. the population is dispersed and, as a result, schools in mountain areas are generally smaller than schools in urban areas (world bank, 2008). about 70 per cent of the people live in rural areas. more than half of rural people are poor, and more than one quarter of them are extremely poor. more than half of all households in lesotho are headed by women. while education has benefited many women, there are large numbers of poor women, particularly in rural areas, who remain disadvantaged. hiv and aids are taking its toll and many primary school children have lost one or both parents allegedly due to hiv and aids (morojele, 2009). rural people’s scarce resources are consumed in caring for the sick, covering funeral expenses and supporting orphans, with, as illustrated in this study, devastating consequences for school children (international fund for agricultural development, 2009). the research site was a rural primary school selected by means of purposive sampling. the purposive characteristic was that it had to be a school located in a rural community, with children travelling long distances to school. the participants were twelve learners (male = 6; female = 6) from three different villages (ha tente, ha matoli and ha metje). two boys and two girls from each village were randomly selected to participate in the study. these children were in grade 6, and between the ages of 10 and 15 years. generating the data data was generated through individual semi-structured interviews and focus group interviews. during the individual interviews the personal background of each child was obtained, and children were engaged in dialogue with the researcher about their journey to school, based largely on family drawing and routemapping activities that they completed. in gender-constructed focus groups, the learners engaged in a diamond-ranking activity (discussed below) to further elucidate their experiences of the school journey. in 92 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 addition, key issues that emerged in the individual interviews were raised with children in the focus groups for further debate and discussion. embedded in this research are the concepts of relationships and power between researchers and child participants. we were particularly concerned about the power imbalances between researcher and child. for this reason, we used child-friendly, participatory and visually mediated techniques to gather the data. our approach was to use the techniques to create spaces and channels for individuals to discuss issues relating to their life experiences. thomson (2007) argues that the critical issue within such created spaces is the power relations between the researcher and participants, and among the participants. using various participatory research techniques, we attempted to embed participation within the social-spatial interactions between the researcher and the child participants. ethical research practice with children has to recognise their competence and their right to participate as fully as possible. children-centred research methods are advocated, which treat children as competent informants and seek to understand the world from their perspectives (ansell, 2009). the following participatory research methods were used either in the individual interviews or during the focus group interviews: family drawings, route mapping and diamond ranking (muthukrishna, 2006). family drawings: this activity enabled us to gain insight into the families of the children. children were given coloured pens and told to draw their families. route mapping: during the individual interviews, each child was given coloured pens and was requested to draw their journey to school in creative ways. children’s maps yielded important information on their navigation of places and spaces, place preferences, safe spaces, risk spaces and spatial boundaries. diamond ranking: this is a thinking tool that involves written elements. learners were given cards on which they were requested to write words to describe: what i like/do not like about my journey to school. they were then given an a3 piece of paper with a large diamond shape drawn on it. they were told to stick the cards on the diamond shape, with the item most liked at the top and the most disliked at the bottom. the task was undertaken in two gender-constructed focus groups. after the activity was completed, the children were given the opportunity to talk about their rankings, giving reasons for the particular order in which items were ranked. a voice recorder was used with the permission of the participants for the sake of verbatim reporting. data analysis data was analysed qualitatively. firstly, the data was analysed through an inductive process whereby research findings were allowed to emerge from frequent, dominant and significant events in the raw data (cohen, manion & morrison, 2007; nieuwenhuis, 2007). thereafter analysis involved identifying broad categories of constructs across the data related to children’s experiences of the school journey, which necessitated a line-by-line reading of the different data sets. the second phase of data analysis involved identifying theoretically and conceptually informed themes across these categories (cresswell, 2009). this allowed for explicit themes to emerge, for example, family background as a centrality in children’s experiences, as well as identity and situated lives denoting the power-laden geographies of the school journey. ethical considerations permission to undertake the study at the school was obtained from the ministry of education. informed consent was obtained from the school principal, teachers, parents and the learners who participated in the study. the principal was the gatekeeper who had the power to provide or withhold access to the child participants. the school, teachers and students were assured of anonymity and confidentiality. children were given a detailed explanation about the nature of the research, the data collection approach and the children’s role in the study. children were told that their participation was voluntary, and they had the option to withdraw from the study at any stage. 93morojele & muthukrishna — the journey to school experiencing the school journey: the children speak this section discusses the findings of the study. the data suggests that, at the surface, the school journey seems to cohere in a relatively smooth, consistent pattern. as far as the spatial arrangement is concerned, children go to school and leave school to travel home. yet, there are conflicting experiences, which are characterised by regularity and linearity on the one hand, and tensions and contradictions on the other. children’s journey to school at different times of the year involves the negotiation of precarious dongas (ditches), treacherous rivers, forests and valleys, and whether they are orphaned children, poorly clad children, or hungry children. they traverse cattle crossings, with teachers waiting at the school gate with a whip, feared muthi murderers and circumcision initiates and so forth in the back of their minds. the findings reveal that children have both a temporal and spatial awareness of their school journey, ranging from awareness of time frames they have to negotiate, resources or lack thereof, risks and potential harm, as well as social and cultural relationships. children’s voices denote that they also have a discursive understanding of their school journey – a space impacted by diverse values, meanings, dilemmas and interpretations, which are further influenced by forms of human difference such as class, gender and age. the children’s voices explicate how they understand, explain and articulate the complexity of demands and experiences originating from the social and physical environments in which they are immersed. they are able to highlight both the harsh and the pleasurable realities of everyday life as they journey to school. there is no doubt that they actively engage in how their world is organised – they make sense of and mediate their physical world and its symbolic elements. the discussion below highlights two key themes: the centrality of children’s family background to their experiences of the school journey and the power-laden dynamics of children’s agency in navigating their rural localities. family background: a centrality in children’s experiences of the school journey the findings show that children’s family background has a significant impact on their experiences of the school journey. eight of the twelve children in this study had either lost one or both parents, allegedly due to hiv and aids. these children experience the school journey in particularly intense ways. it was clear that the socio-geographic challenges of these rural communities affect children differently depending on the nature of support they receive from their families. children in the study emerge as a heterogeneous social grouping who often tend to be cast by policy makers and educationists as homogeneous. there were children who had care and basic needs provided by parents and caregivers such as food, clothing, and support with school assignments and homework. for these children the school journey begins and ends with some degree of power and control over events to come. on the other hand, there were girls and boys whose school journey reflected the dynamics of emotionality and compromised quality of life and wellbeing. the family drawing (figure 1) illustrates the fractured, fragile families – spaces from which the school journey emanates: 94 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 figure 1 the above is a drawing by a 10-year-old orphaned girl ithabeleng1, denoting that, at home, she only has her grandmother and grandfather. she has to travel one hour and 10 minutes to school every morning on a road that passes through a forest and crosses a river without a bridge. in my interview with her, ithabeleng talked about her family situation: this is me, this is my grandmother and this is my grandfather (pointing to her family drawing). my mother passed away. i don’t know when, i was very young. my father also passed away this year. my grandmother is at home – she does not work. i help to plough sometimes, plant vegetables and maize, and i fetch water. i feel hungry and tired on the way to school, especially when it’s cold in the morning. when i get to school sometimes i don’t listen in the class, i think about what i am going to eat. we don’t tell anyone or the teacher that we have problems. i am always looking forward to lunch time (at 11:30 am) so that i can eat. after that i feel much better. similar dynamics came out in our interview with a 12-year-old-boy (molefi) whose mother and father died, and who lived alone in his home. although the drawing (figure 2) shows many family members, all these relatives worked away from home. some of them only visited once in six months. the discussions on the family drawings showed that he often goes to school without food, facing the long journey to school on an empty stomach. 95morojele & muthukrishna — the journey to school figure 2 this is my biggest aunt, this is my uncle that comes after her. this is me, kicking the ball. my grandmother died, my mother and father died long time ago. my uncles and aunt are not there, they have gone to work. i stay alone at home. sometimes my other uncle comes to prepare food for me, but most of the time he doesn’t come. i stayed alone after my aunt left to look for a job. she left after my grandmother was taken to the mortuary, and said she will come back for the funeral. before i leave for school in the morning, i fetch water from the well, then check the goats and go to school. so if i am late i fear to go through the forest alone … but i just go. when i get to the river i am afraid to cross alone and i stay there until someone comes to cross. and i then arrive late to school. you see if i had some shoes it will be better in winter when it is cold. if my parents were there i would have the uniform. i feel bad sometimes, other children have shoes. they can walk fast and i cannot because my feet ache when it is cold. there is no one helping me, when i do my homework. my mother used to help me. but when i am at school … i don’t think about these things. the above data illustrates the dire need of assistance to families in stress as a result of death, sickness and poverty. there are few support structures in the community. a worrying feature of the children’s responses is that many of them understood their experience of poverty and underdevelopment in shameful terms, as a pervasive stigma. there is no doubt that the cycle of poverty and underdevelopment in the lives of these rural children is likely to undermine life chances in the long term. bond (2006) argues that the intersections between poverty and stigma reinforce the fact that stigma cannot be isolated from other social processes and phenomena and that it must be understood in the context of other events occurring in situated spaces, for example, the impact of hiv and aids, sickness and death, a lack of support structures and networks in the community such as a caring school. bond (2006) points out that the practicalities of poverty fuel stigmatising actions and attitudes in such a long, tortuous journey to and from school by a certain group of children that may be constructed as ‘the other’. without a doubt, pervasive forms of 96 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 inequality in rural spaces in which these children’s lives are played out could add to the vulnerability of the poor, women and orphans to this stigma. the data also revealed that an aspect of masculinity, which denotes boys as tough (morojele, 2009), is present in molefi’s reflections about this life. he continuously underplayed the difficulties in his life, stating that his situation does not affect him at school. identity and situated lives: the power-laden geographies of the school journey despite the difficulties experienced, the findings suggest that children have a great deal of independence in their negotiation of school journey. the data indicates a level of resilience in children whose school journey experiences are deeply affected by family dynamics at home, by poverty, and limited support from the school. a drawing (figure 3) by a 12-year-old girl from ha matoli shows that she leaves home at 06:00, crosses dongas and rivers. she passes the circumcision initiates in dense forests before she arrives at school at 07:30. fear of crossing rivers and dongas was associated with the rainy seasons when these become flooded with rain water. the forests were, according to the children, hiding places for muthi murderers and circumcision initiates. figure 3 contestations among the children over the navigation of safe and risky spaces were marked by both terror and pleasure for school children. children held intense culturally associated fears of muthi murderers who 97morojele & muthukrishna — the journey to school allegedly hid in the forest and harmed children on their way to school. three children reported experiences of a mysterious man chasing them from the forest, and they suspected he could be a muthi murderer. in this rural community, a muthi murder is often associated with basotho traditional circumcision where the muthi from human parts is allegedly thought to make a stronger medicine which can protect the initiates against any evil spells that could be directed at them. one boy narrated an incident in which he and his sister had a frightening confrontation with the initiates: one day i was walking with my sister from school. when we crossed a donga in the forest, there they were (the initiates) on the way. the forest was dense and we could not see them. we are not supposed to go near them. then they threw stones at us, letting their dogs to chase us, we ran away. i was very scared but my sister thought i could protect her. the bomamokhahlana [circumcision initiates] trouble us when we come from school. you see they hide in the forest until we get closer, and they say if we mix with them their muthi will force us to join them. and then they throw stones and chase us. however, the study revealed that the relationship between the school children and circumcision initiates is a complex one. on the one hand, the children feared them, but on the other hand the data shows initiates in a supportive space. this suggests that the spaces on the journey to school in which the boys interact with the initiates provided them with food when they were hungry. there were accounts of initiates who cooked maize (likhobe) and fed the children on the school journey. ironically, the children were very aware that this might have been a strategy to recruit the school boys. there were boys who held the initiatives in awe. one reason alluded to was that, in these communities, boys from circumcision schools are regarded as ‘real men’. once they graduate, their title changes from man (monna) to father (ntate), regardless of their age. there is no doubt that boys constructed the circumcision school as an important rite and route to respect and high social status in the rural community. this suggests that the spaces on the journey to school in which the three boys interact with the initiates are in many ways an identity formation experience. the boys indicated that one of their goals was to join the traditional school at some stage in their lives. in her study in the united kingdom, ross (2007) found that girls and boys positioned themselves in complex ways in order to navigate the structural and cultural challenges of their journey to school. during the diamond-ranking exercise, four girls placed ‘boyfriends’ in the category of the most liked aspect of their school journey. a dialogue with girls in a focus group interviews is illustrated below. mamotobaki: i also put ‘boyfriends’ at the top, because i like them a bit (not too much) (laughing). leboela: when you go with a boyfriend, herd boys don’t bother you, you just pass and even if they want something, they will bother him (the boyfriend) (other girls laughing). ithabeleng: one day i was going with a boy, he is not my boyfriend, but i was just going with him (laughing), and then one herd boy made a line on the road where we were going to pass (a seha qholo). then he sat back and shouted, ‘if you cross the line, you must know we are in love’. we didn’t know what to do, and we waited for a while. then my boyfriend went to cross the line and the other herd boys laughed at the one who made the line, ‘hey, man you are in love with a boy’. they laughed, we laughed, and then we passed and ran home. a similar gender dynamic emerged in a focus group discussion with boys: molise: yah, i put ‘girlfriends’ at the top because as we go home we help each other. we discuss and share things that hurt us, and they like to cry, so you have to be strong. sometimes they explain things we didn’t understand in class. we also protect them. so the herd boys don’t bother you when you are going with a girl because they see you are a man, as long as you don’t allow a girl to cut across their cattle (it is taboo in basotho culture for unmarried girls to walk across or in the middle of) a herd of cattle. the above excerpts indicate that these rural children take advantage of their long school journeys to engage in heterosexual relationships, and that these relationships often serve as resource to navigate sometimes dangerous spaces on the journey to school. in other cases, the boy-girl relationship is a social 98 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 and supportive space to discuss school work and personal problems. the data also suggests that these relationships gave children a sense of worth and belonging, which is crucial to their wellbeing, particularly given the reality that some of them did not have supportive adults or siblings in their lives. in the space of the school journey, the study revealed how multiple identities play themselves out. for boys, the feeling of being real men who protect girls and support them with personal problems was quite illuminating. for the older children, to be seen as a protector to younger children reinforced feelings of self-worth. children also actively strategised in their attempts to negotiate risky places, which included walking in groups, where young boys and girls walk in front, and older boys positioned behind in a protective stance. the children perceived and interpreted the dynamics of their school journey in their own unique and nuanced ways, and acted upon these dynamics with varying degrees of consciousness and intent. the study shows that these children were able to act within and transform their harsh social and physical spaces into resources that affirmed their identities as girls and boys. ithabeleng: i like the dam because when it is hot and we are tired on the way from school we swim. we also play mock family games (mantloane) and fetch water from there. it is fun. lineo:i like the forest because when we are being chased, we hide in there and no one will see you. mamotobaki: yes, i also like the forest because on the way from school we collect wood from the forest so when we get home we just have to fetch water and then we can play. the level of agency that the children in this study exercise denotes that, when discussing marginalised children, it is important to examine their agency, as argued by beazley (2003). the data in this study challenges the constructions of rural children in simple binary terms, for example, as vulnerable or victim. conclusion the study has shown how the school journeys of young children are affected by a myriad and complex intersection of factors, including family background, the structural and social dimensions of the geographic localities, poverty and underdevelopment, uncaring and unsupportive aspects of the school as an institution, as well as the role that children play in favourably positioning themselves in relation to these dynamics. the rural children in this study displayed a clear conceptual understanding of the spatial aspects of their school journey (such as the rivers, dongas and forests). they also understood the discursive dimensions of the places they traversed (such as the herd boys and the initiates), and positioned themselves in strategic ways to navigate the power-laden spaces. they adopted complex identities, formed into solidarity groups, formed heterosexual relationships, took advantage of the mountainous terrain and the forest as resources, as they negotiated what might otherwise be just a regular tortuous school journey. the study argues for an understanding of the notion of rurality from the perspective of how children make sense of and position themselves within the socio-spatial dynamics of rural schooling. understanding rural children’s identities is a powerful resource in the development of strategies aimed at improving the lives and livelihoods of children in rural contexts. this study aligns with the findings of other research (christensen, 2008) that children are active agents in the construction of their everyday lives and their childhoods. this study makes a contribution to wider academic debates concerning rural children. it problematises the constructions of rural children as passive victims of their circumstances and stresses the critical importance of context to both social constructions and embodied experiences of childhood. ansell (2009:204) argues that: if research into children’s geographies is to be relevant to the transformation of children’s lives, it is crucial to consider not only children’s encounters with the world, but also the processes, decisions and events that shape the world they perceive, interpret and act upon. 99morojele & muthukrishna — the journey to school endnote pseudonyms chosen by the children are used to protect their identity.1. references ansell a 2009. childhood and the politics of scale: descaling children’s geographies? progress in human geography, 33(2):190-209. balfour r, mitchell c & moletsane r 2008.troubling contexts: toward a generative theory of rurality as education research. journal of rural and community development, 3(3):100-111. beazley h 2003. voices from the margins: street children’s subcultures in indonesia. children’s geographies, 1(2):181-200. bond v 2006. stigma when there is no other option: understanding how poverty fuels discrimination towards people living with hiv/aids in zambia. in s gillespie (ed), aids, poverty, and hunger: challenges and responses. washington: international institute of food policy research. christensen p 2008. place, space and knowledge: children in the village and the city. in: b lingard, j nixon & s ranson (eds), transforming learning in schools and communities: the remaking of education for cosmopolitan society. london: continuum. christensen p & james a 2000. research with children: perspectives and practices. london: falmer press. cohen l, manion l & morrison k 2007. research methods in education. 6th ed. london: routledge. corbett m 2009. rural schooling in mobile modernity: returning to the places i’ve been. journal of research in rural education, 24(7):1-13. creswell jw 2009. research design: qualitative, quantitative and mixed approaches. los angeles: sage. index mundi 2010. lesotho demographic profile 2010. retrieved on 10 june 2010 from http://www. indexmundi.com/lesotho/demographics_profile html. international fund for agricultural development (ifad) 2009. rural poverty in lesotho. retrieved on 10 november 2010 from http://www ruralpovertyportal.org/web/guest/country/home/tags/lesotho. kurtz m & craig v 2009. constructing rural geographies in publication. acme: an international e-journal for critical geographies, 8(2):376-393. mcconaghy c 2006. schooling out of place. discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education, 27(3):325-339. meinert l 2003. sweet and bitter places: the politics of school children’s orientation in rural uganda. in: k olwig & e gullov (eds), children’s places: cross-cultural perspectives. london: routledge. morojele p 2009. gender violence: narratives and experiences of girls in three lesotho rural primary schools. agenda, 80:80-87. murray l 2009. making the journey to school: the gendered and generational aspects of risk in constructing everyday mobility. health, risk & society, 11(5):471-486. muthukrishna n (ed) 2006. integrated report nrf project – mapping barriers to basic education in an hiv and aids context. pietermaritzburg: school of education and development, university of kwazulu-natal. nieuwenhuis j 2007. qualitative research designs and data gathering techniques. in: k maree (ed), first steps in research. pretoria: van schaik. prout a 2000. childhood bodies: construction, agency and hybridity. in: a prout (ed), the body, childhood and society. london: mcmillan. ross nj 2007. “my journey to school ...”: foregrounding the meaning of school journeys and children’s engagements and interactions in their everyday localities. children’s geographies, 5(4):373-391. thomson f 2007. are methodologies for children keeping them in their place? children’s geographies, 5(3):207-218. thomson jl & philo c 2004. playful spaces? a social geography of children’s play in livingston, scotland. children’s geographies, 2(1):111-130. 100 perspectives in education, volume 30(1), march 2012 tucker f 2003. sameness or difference? exploring girl’s use of recreational space. children’s geographies, 1:111-124. walker m, whyatt d, pooley c, davies d, coulton p & bamford w 2009. talk, technologies and teenagers: understanding the school journey using a mixed-methods approach. children’s geographies, 7(2):107-122. weller s 2003. ‘teach us something useful’: contested spaces of teenagers’ citizenship. space and polity, 7(2):153-171. world bank 2008. lesotho: country brief. washington, dc: world bank. 157 research article 2021 39(1): 157-172 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.10 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) adapt or die in the time of a pandemic: towards a grounded theory of strategic adjustments by an early childhood development training organisation abstract the covid-19 pandemic has led all role players in the early childhood care and education (ecce) sector in south africa, including the particular non-profit organisation (npo) under investigation, into unchartered territory. the organisation, which is involved in training and mentoring community-based early childhood development centres in marginalised settings, was forced to pivot its service as the country went into lockdown in march 2020. the purpose of this grounded theory study is to discover how employees and associates of this organisation view the adjustments that had to be made during and after lockdown to support principals, staff members and through that the children, their parents and the community during covid-19 lockdown. findings indicated that the team was able to rely on existing strengths that intersected on several points to tackle the challenges, namely strong internal and external relationships, sound administrative and business systems and a flexible, risk-taking and social entrepreneurial ethos. this kaleidoscopic combinations of relational, attitudinal and organisational factors, permitted swift adjusting, a strength that may support the sustainability of this npo and others of its kind, not only during the pandemic but also in its aftermath and with the socio-economic upheaval it has caused particularly among indigent communities. keywords: business systems; change management; social entrepreneurship; resources; community well-being. 1. introduction the world we live and work in has changed irreversibly due to the covid-19 pandemic and the steps taken to minimise infection rates such as the complete lockdown instituted by the south african government on 27 march 2020 affected citizens at every level of society, every sphere of life and in many different ways. this includes the early childhood care and education (ecce) sector in general and in particular author: me. e. kruger1 affiliation: 1university of the free state, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i1.10 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 157-172 published: 12 march 2021 received: 17 november 2020 accepted: 20 january 2021 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6982-3759 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.10 1582021 39(1): 158-172 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) non-profit organisations (npos) involved in training and mentoring community-based early childhood development (ecd) centres in marginalised settings. the decision to halt ecd services on 18 march 2020 has had wide-ranging consequences caused and amplified by existing structural weaknesses in the sector including poor leadership and ineffective communication from the department of social development (dsd) (giese, 2020). giese (2020) refers to the “deeply inadequate response” that “called into question our commitment to the rights of children that are enshrined in section 28 of our constitution”. moreover, closing ecd centres also emphasised deeply entrenched socio-economic and political fissures in the country that not only affected children’s right to education but also access to food, shelter and protection. this rigid approach necessitated the 16 july 2020 court case compelling the department of social development to open private ecd centres if they met health and safety requirements (grobler, 2020). to fully understand the particularities of the ecce sector in south africa and the reasons why the pandemic regulations had such severe consequences, i briefly explore the landscape of ecce service provision and training. 2. background 2.1 the socio-economic significance of ecce early childhood covers three age-groups: 1) conception to two years or the first 1000 days; 2) three to five years and 3) the first year of formal schooling or grade r (aubrey, 2017). it is a period of immense mental, emotional, physical and social expansion for children, making it critical for their future cognitive and physical development, health, wellbeing and self-actualisation (kotze, 2015; world health organization, n.d.). effectual ecce includes opportunities for learning but also nurturing care related to health, nutrition, safety and security. the academic, emotional and socio-economic benefits of quality ecce with the lasting effects of these, have received widespread recognition from several areas of study in the past decade (bakken, brown & downing, 2017; gomez, 2016; weinert et al., 2016). a report by the national research council as far back as 2001 identified three trends that was to propel ecce to the foreground: 1) the number of women participating in the formal labour force and who require child care; 2) professionals and parents advocating for young children to receive education; 3) increasing evidence their learning capabilities have been underestimated and 4) that ecd programmes can stand them in good stead when they enter formal schooling. studies also indicate that such programmes can also help mitigate developmental disparities (weinert, et al., 2016). ecd programmes can bring about considerable decreases in special education placement and grade retention as well as improve high school grades. it results in reduced demands on the tax base and imbalances (mccoy et al., 2017). these findings support the neoliberal market-economy perspective that investing in ecce is important to develop human capital in service of the economy and creating equity by uplifting economically disadvantaged children (duncan & magnuson, 2013; who, n.d.). ecd programmes also assist parents, particularly those from low-income households, by providing safe places for the children while the parents are at work. 1592021 39(1): 159-172 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.10 kruger adapt or die in the time of a pandemic 2.2 ecd service provision in south africa ecd service refers to a commercial service offering that supports the physical, mental, emotional and social development of a child between birth and school-going age (the year in which the child turns seven) (jules-macquet, 2016). the term ecce service provider encompasses several types of ecd services offerings: partial care by someone taking care of no more than six children in a private or public venue during set hours, with or without remuneration (julesmacquet, 2016). such centres follow a formal ecd programme appropriate to children’s levels of development and which may or may not be officially prescribed. to receive funding from the state, an ecd centre has to comply with norms and standards and be registered with the dsd although not all registered centres receive state support. ecd centres may be affiliated with a school as a pre-school and/or grade r. another option is to establish an ecd centre as a private for-profit business (pre-school, day‐care service, crèche or home‐based care facility) (jules-macquet, 2016). a sizable number of ecd centres are established informally and are mostly not legally constituted. these are run by individuals as businesses or by community-based committees (etdp seta, n.d.). as is often the case in indigent communities and informal settlements, such privately-owned centres begin as informal arrangements among parents and usually a female carer, making their homes or other spaces available to care for children at a fee. over time some of these child-minding ventures develop into more organised centres that introduce structured programmes and employ other community members. however, they remain unregistered as the regulations are unattainable for most. from this group some owners will show the desire to grow their businesses. typically, they will enrol for training courses, invest in their employees by sending them for training or partner with an npo or other organisation such as a church to expand their services. in communities with high levels of poverty, joblessness, substance abuse, crime and low levels of maternal education, ecd centres often fulfil not only socialisation and educational functions. it also sees to the children’s basic needs by providing food, primary health care and looking after their general welfare (harrison, 2020; munthali, mvula & silo, 2014). an organisation like joint aid management (jam) (joint aid management sa, n.d.) is currently feeding more than 120 000 south african children in more than 2 500 centres in nine provinces (joint aid management sa, n.d.). with no access to ecd centres, children forfeit meals, often their only meal of the day. furthermore, as not only the children gain from ecd services but also their families and broader community too, when centres close it affects everyone (munthali, et al., 2014). this includes the service providers. the covid-19 lockdown has severely affected the livelihood of owners and staff members of ecd centres, in some cases irrevocably so. 2.3 ecce training in south africa as with other areas of the ecce sector, training opportunities for ecd educators also vary greatly, this despite the consensus among educationalists that quality ecce depends on knowledgeable, skilled and self-reflective educators able to navigate changing and challenging circumstances (harrison, 2020). training remains mostly at vocational and occupational level with diploma and certificate courses at technical and vocational education and training (tvet) and further education and training (fet) colleges. entry-level ecd qualifications offered at level 4 and level 5 1602021 39(1): 160-172 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) for grade r educators have been introduced at some universities. higher education ecd qualifications are offered at both tvet colleges and universities starting at nqf level 6 (diploma and advanced certificate) and can go up to level 10 (doctorate). yet, according to harrison (2020:2), these often offer no more than “a foundation phase (fp) degree that may have a module that addresses the basics of ecd”. in summary, despite the consensus among educationalists, psychologists, social workers, healthcare professionals, economists and politicians that ecce is vital for the development of individuals, society and the economy (yizengaw & tessega, 2020), it would not be an understatement to describe the south african ecd sector as complicated, disjointed and ineffectual. services to the diverse society with its varied economic, education and cultural needs can be described as inadequate at best (harrison, 2020; excell, 2016). some of it can be attributed to the organisational complexity of the sector, the plethora of laws and policies governing it as well as historical factors reaching back to the pre-democratic dispensation. this is exacerbated by an administrative quagmire, fragmented oversight responsibilities and a lack of effectual communication and collaboration among the many public and private sector stakeholders (harrison, 2020; jules-macquet, 2016). the upshot is disparities in the type and quality of ecd service offerings and training. it must however, be stated that the intricacies inherent in the ecce sector is not unique to south africa with researchers from developed and developing countries alike, commenting on variations in content, capacity, policy, regulation, quality and funding (harrison, 2020; weinert, et al., 2016). 2.4 the role of npos involved in ecce as this article focuses on the functioning of a particular npo and the lived experience of its staff members and associates, the role of such organisations has to be highlighted. harrison (2020) points out that npos are the primary providers of private ecce training at various levels by way of the education, training and development practices sector education and training authority’s (etdp seta) at nqf levels 4 and 5. npos also offer informal and enrichment courses primarily to educators from indigent communities who cannot gain access to formal training due to inadequate finances and/or schooling. as in the rest of sub-saharan africa, these are often faith and community-based initiatives (yizengaw & tessega, 2020). 2.5 the npo under the spotlight the organisation under the spotlight provides training to approximately 300, primarily female ecd educators, caregivers and staff members annually. the organisation’s vision is based on the widely held premise that for children from disadvantaged communities, timely and appropriate interventions holds the potential to mediate the effects of poverty and early deprivation through access to good quality ecd programmes (yizengaw & tessega, 2020). the aim is to empower women and children within marginalised communities to become self-reliant, independent and to reach their full potential benefitting the whole community. training courses include basic and advanced ecd training; a first-1000-days course; business management for principals, teaching enrichment workshops for educators and well-being programmes for staff. training programmes are combined with post-training onsite mentorship to increase knowledge retention and skills application. mentors guide ecd leadership to plan and implement management, financial, operational and human resource systems. educators are supported in developing and executing ecd programmes. 1612021 39(1): 161-172 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.10 kruger adapt or die in the time of a pandemic further support provided by the npo includes ensuring that nutritious meals are served to children daily by 1) sourcing, building partnerships and managing food donations and 2) training ecd centre cooks in menu planning, budgeting, portioning and healthy food preparation methods. according to the npo’s founder, over 2 000 children from 48 ecd centres had been served meals during 20191. resources to supplement and enrich lesson plans are available from the early learning resource library including lesson plans, theme table items games, activity ideas, equipment, teaching aids and books based on the themes taught at the centres. educational items are donated and procured from donations. between march 2019 to february 2020, 329 theme bags and 5 838 items had been issued. since 2019, annual developmental assessment of children from 4 to 6 years old has been undertaken by occupational therapists. the aim is to improve formal school readiness. the results are shared with the educators and principals to inform parents on how to encourage developmental skills. the results are also used to adapt the npo’s training, mentorship and in-service training programmes to improve teaching and to better support children facing developmental delays. according to the npo founder, in march 2019, 100 children were assessed and results indicate that 76% of the children in this sample group experienced delays in the essential areas of development, with only 24% of children showing competent development according to age group. results of post-intervention re-screening in october/ november 2019 indicated that only 22% of the children tested in october/november showed delays, with 78% of children showing developmental competencies according to their age group. two other projects are worth mentioning. in mid-2019, the organisation embarked on developing a curriculum for 2 to 5-year olds which is relevant for south african context. the project is sponsored and the team members include ecd educationalists and occupational therapists. the second noteworthy project is the npo having been tasked by dsd to audit and assist with registering all partnering partial care facilities (pcf) within the geographical area. until end of march 2020, when lockdown was instituted, these activities had been going ahead as planned. however, it all came to a halt when people were prohibited from leaving their homes. owners and principals of ecd centres were forced to close their doors indefinitely not knowing for how long they would be without an income and the means to pay staff. npo training activities also immediately ceased. however, the organisation’s involvement with the community continued in other ways focusing on relief work and finding innovative ways to support educators to support parents in teaching children at home. this article explores the lived experience of this npo’s leadership, staff and associates of the role it played during the lockdown and their understanding of how the support role differed from what had been done before. the aim is to develop an informed grounded theory (igt) from themes emerging from interviews with the participants based on the question: how do staff and associates perceive the support this npo had offered the leadership, staff children at ecd centres and the broader community during the covid-19 lockdown as compared to its role prior to the pandemic? 1 details in the section that follows are available on the npo’s website as well as in annual reports. however, in order to protect the identity, the sources have been withheld. references have been provided to the editors of the journal to confirm the information. 1622021 39(1): 162-172 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) 3. methodology 3.1 grounded theory grounded theory (gt) is a suitable technique to investigate “what is happening?”-questions specifically during a time of social upheaval such as the pandemic (nathaniel, 2020). it can reveal novel and unfamiliar patterns, processes and practices of human behaviour through observation and interrogating people’s lived experiences (nathaniel, 2020). rather than describing a phenomenon or attempting to prove a hypothesis rooted in a particular theory, the emphasis in gt research is to develop a substantive theory from the raw data itself (charmaz & thornberg, 2020). however, much debate surrounds the researcher’s ability to prevent contaminating emerging theory by ignoring their personal and project-specific context, prior knowledge and experience and theoretical assumptions, even if classic gt insists that the literature review is delayed until after the analysis. thornberg (2012) holds that shifting between the data set and existing literature in the researched field to compare, interpret and find patterns that best explain the data, is acceptable, even advantageous as long as “data sensitizing principles” such as openmindedness, critical thinking and recorded reflection are applied. research rigour resides in the researcher’s relentless commitment to remain noncommittal and to allow emerging theories to be constructed from the data itself. the theoretical and contextual influences on the researcher as well as her interactions with the participants and field of study, although useful, remains background to the “empirical figure” (thornberg, 2012:11). unlike classic gt that uses inductive reasoning, informed grounded theory (igt) requires abductive reasoning to form a conclusion from information that is known about a specific case and has the possibility for general application. this is achieved by combining themes emerging during data collection, coding, conceptualisation and theoryidentification processes with the use, even modification of one or more external, but firmly fit-for-purpose theory. the introduction of extant literature at this point should not strong-arm the data in a particular direction. the aim is to serve as a heuristic tool to inform, to create associations and to draw attention to potential patterns that will, in the final analysis, assist in identifying one hypothesis among many that better explain the data set under investigation (thornberg, 2012). 3.2 setting and respondents in this study, participants were purposefully selected on account of my familiarity with the work of the particular npo. the name and location of the organisation have not been disclosed and pseudonyms have been used for the six out of the eight all-female staff and associate complement who participated. the women’s roles and background in the organisation include training manager, resource library manager, mentors, head of curriculum development, occupational therapist and auxiliary social worker. the age-range of the participants is between 30 and 55. the process started with gathering data by way of an unstructured focusgroup meeting to gain an in‐depth understanding of the topic and generate narrative data through natural conversation, an individual interview with the founder, field notes and memos. electing a focus group interview to gather data was to simplify logistical arrangements as the team does not have set office hours as well as to harness the group dynamic and to take advantage of the interviewer’s trusted relationship with the participants and the organisation. 1632021 39(1): 163-172 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.10 kruger adapt or die in the time of a pandemic 3.3 procedure after receiving signed informed consent forms, a general discussion was initiated and participants’ conversation was recorded and notes taken by the researcher. they were asked to answer one broadly-stated “what is happening?” question (glaser, 2020) to avoid delimiting the phenomenon under scrutiny and allow the problem to emerge in the iterative constant comparison process during open coding and thematic analysis. in line with igt, no specific problem or hypothesis was defined, and no formal literature review was conducted prior to data analysis. the abbreviated gt two-stage coding procedure followed, using only one data set and themes were clustered around related concepts emerging from the data until data saturation was reached. the nature of igt requires rigorous attention to establishing trustworthiness, conceptual reliability, confirmability and transferability of the findings to ensure reliability and validity. guidelines posted by charmaz and thornberg (2020) guided this study namely methodological self-consciousness as well as being transparent about the how’s and why’s of the specific topic, the type of gt methodology, the processes, the influence of the researcher and openness, criticality as well as sensitivity to and tolerance of ambiguity (charmaz & thornberg, 2020). this is reinforced by collecting rich data and following an iterative process to compare data with data, data with themes and with literature and themes with themes and literature until the analysis yielded strong categories and laser-focused findings rooted in theoretical explanations that answer the “what is happening?”-question. 4. findings and discussion the first stage of the open-coding meant sifting through the data to identify broad themes around the organisation’s re-directed efforts to support the leadership, staff, children at ecd centres and the broader community during the covid-19 lockdown. the following topics kept cropping up in relation to the npo’s response to the lockdown: the leadership and team being proactive, sensitive to the needs of the ecd community, agile and well-organised, a strong team spirit, deep and trusting relationships with “clients”, committed donors and a supporting community. during the second stage of coding, the initial themes were combined, collapsed and integrated until three themes emerged that characterises the participants’ lived experiences of the npo’s revised service offerings: 1) that it relied on strong relationships; 2) that it was the result of venturing innovative and strategic thinking and 3) that it was bolstered by sound business operating systems. 1642021 39(1): 164-172 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) figure 1. themes emanating from the data regarding the npo’s revised covid 19 lockdown and subsequent service offerings to support the leadership, staff, children at ecd centres and the broader community in the interviews with the participants, they were asked to reflect on how the role of the npo they are involved in, had to be adjusted during the lockdown. the general impression noted was that despite being thrust out of their professional and personal comfort zones in the last few months, the team was proud of what had been achieved. they were grateful for the support they had received from within and without the organisation. also, despite some apprehension for the financial future of the npo, and uncertainty about the form training will take, they were certain that they will be able to continue serving the community in future as they had managed in this time. as indicated previously, three themes characterised their lived experiences of the npo’s revised service offerings emphasising relief work and educator support rather than formal educator training and mentoring: 1) that it relied on strong relationships; 2) that it was the result of venturing innovative and strategic thinking and 3) that it was bolstered by sound business operating systems. the cogency of the emerging themes was reinforced by the leitmotifs of the npo sustainability model (npo-sm) after a 2017 investigation of romanian organisations (ceptureanu, et al., 2017). according to this model, three determinants are correlated with npo sustainability: 1) social awareness and 2) cognitive competence and 3) financial vulnerability. these factors align with the themes identified in this study. furthermore, as the thematic analysis of the data progressed, the image of a kaleidoscope came to mind. in the same way as the succession of changing patterns of a kaleidoscope is created by the same pieces of coloured glass in the object chamber, the same motifs (themes) kept emerging from the data in assorted combinations and configurations. these interconnected patterns formed thematic nodes as illustrated in figure 2, that further illumine the situation under scrutiny: firstly, strong internal and external relationships (theme1) support and are supported by the npo’s business operations (theme 3) as well as its change management proficiency (theme 2). secondly, an innovative and strategic problem-solving capability (theme 2) contributes to client/stakeholder satisfaction and strong relationships 1652021 39(1): 165-172 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.10 kruger adapt or die in the time of a pandemic (theme 1) and thirdly, employing sound operating systems to make internal processes more efficient and build organisational capacity (theme 3) contribute to sound governance (financial and otherwise) that expedite new projects that fulfil the changing needs of the ecd centres and the community. figure 2. kaleidoscopic combinations form thematic nodes that underpins the re-direction of support efforts during the covid-19 pandemic of a south african npo involved in ecd training. the thematic notes are highlighted throughout the discussion of individual themes. 4.1 relying on relationships building relationships imply moving outward to engage another party. successfully doing this requires astute social awareness. ceptureanu et al. (2017) refer to the relational aspects of an npo as its external activities – cooperating to solve common problems, accepting joint responsibilities, sharing ideas and resources and addressing the community’s needs. every participant emphatically stated that the sole motivation for every decision and every action during the first few weeks of lockdown, was their concern for the welfare of the centres’ staff and the children. “we were worried for them”, emelia explained. “it was clear that lockdown was not going to last for a few days or weeks only. with no children around, what was going to happen to the centres’ income? how will they be able to pay the staff members?” another major concern was that with the centres closed, the feeding programmes also ground to a halt. the depth of these relationships facilitated consultation with ecd centre principals to establish the needs at the centres and in the community. according to linda this affiliation with the ecd staff has been reinforced by the emphasis the npo puts on face-to-face mentoring. “we know them, and they know us personally, so when we asked what it was 1662021 39(1): 166-172 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) they needed, the open, caring and trusting connection that already existed, made honest communication possible.” having strong relationships among the npo team members also fostered a pro-active approach and becoming, as sonja (npo founder) puts it, change agents guided by the needs of the ecce community. once they had realised the enormity of the pandemic and the lockdown’s impact on ecd centres, children and communities, the team instituted regular web-based meetings to plan their own and the community’s short-term survival and build longterm resilience. linda, babalwa and kirsten said that they were able to build on an already strong bond among team members and with the npo leadership. “there were no question in our minds, when sonja said, we are meeting to plan our response to the crisis, that this was what we would be doing. no shutting down”. iwu, et al. (2015) make a direct link between bringing together and retaining a talented management and operating team and the viability of an npo. the team showed its true colours during this time, kirsten adds. “we are stronger and more committed than ever”. the results of a survey conducted among 41 principals revealing what had been accomplished in 2020, has further strengthened their resolve. most outstanding among these successes is that 95% of ecd centres involved with this npo had managed to reopen compared to a national average of 15%. however, sonja says, feelings of uncertainty and being overwhelmed by loss of income and the general state of affairs persist. “there is still much to be done”. soon after lockdown, consultations with the ecd centres leadership made it clear that the first priority was to assist them to continue the existing feeding schemes. according to sonja, the collaboration among the npo principals and donors, made it possible to by early april 2020, deliver 525kg of porridge and 804 bars of soaps to be distributed from the ecd centres. each kilogram provides a child with a nutritious breakfast for a month. “by july 2020”, she says, “we were able to provide food parcels to almost 2 000 families and supporting five soup kitchens each feeding over 80 people per day at least three times a week”. books and educational kits for over 2000 children were also donated and distributed. sonja points out that making food provision the first priority meant approaching longstanding project funders to request that aid be re-allocated. “they happily agreed”, and she bases this on the npo’s strong operational and financial systems. “it quickly became apparent that there was a huge need for financial relief for principals, staff and their families”, sonja recounts. “we were fielding daily calls of women and children in dire need of food, electricity and hygiene products.” a call for funding for store vouchers was put out and by mid-april 2020 they were able, thanks to multiple generous donations, to purchase 700 vouchers of r250 each to be redeemed at local supermarkets. participants reiterated that open and trusting relationships between the npo and funders, local and international businesses and individual donors, is the result of building strong and long-standing networks over years. however, by july 2020, and after a court case compelling the dsd to allow private ecd centres to reopen (grobler, 2020), the npo team again had to come up with a plan to support the centres as the majority were not able to afford nutritious meals for the children. thanks to generous donations, sonja says, the organisation was able to supply 31 centres with over 900 children with cooked meals three times a week. this was in addition to the long-term project of providing fortified porridge to 45 centres. 1672021 39(1): 167-172 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.10 kruger adapt or die in the time of a pandemic more evidence of the value of good relationships, according to emelia, was the drive to help ecd centres to acquire personal protective equipment (ppes) when centres were preparing to reopen. “this had to be done among great confusion, uncertainty and anxiety in the sector as a result of a lack of national leadership” in the sector. “the centres had not had any income since march including the few that receive state subsidy”, sonja explains. “they could simply not afford ppe kits”. to make matters worse, while principals were already fretful and frazzled by the fallout of the pandemic, scant official guidance emerged besides the dsd’s 66-page operating-and-best-practice manual, which left the women overwhelmed and dispirited. “that is when we decided that our role as trainers and mentors were now more needed than ever”, sonja explains. the npo team stepped in to simplify the manual and make it fit for purpose. this morphed into a fully-fledged covid19 management programme that included documentation requirements, policy development, protocols for screening and sanitisation. “we also included covid19-specific human resources and financial management practices, adapted from our business management training”, coordinator, laetitia explains. two training sessions were organised attended by 58 women. “in the end”, she says, “besides the training sessions, we were also able to supply over 70 centres with ppes and information posters thanks to donations”. “with the centres reopening yet few children returning, and their income limited, we realized the level of stress and anxiety were climbing. we created a wellbeing course for 18 educators to help the women develop tools and strategies to improve overall emotional wellbeing during this time of great uncertainty,” sonja says. sonja attributes the npo’s longstanding and trusting relationship with funders and donors to responsible financial management and consistent and thorough reporting. this is corroborated by the npo-sm indicating that the concept social awareness includes building and maintaining a good public profile and strong relationships and networks to help access resources, funding and donations. however, it also has to be supported by solid organisational systems and processes (ceptureanu et al., 2017). this underscores the value of strong relationships (theme 1) and benefitting from sound business operation systems (theme 3). both of these are expected to be critical in the aftermath of the pandemic with possible donor fatigue and funding constraints (southern african ngo network, 2020). several participants expressed apprehension about how these factors might affect the work of the npo and how to counteract it with improved efficiency of production, resource allocation and planning. as linda emphatically states: “this pandemic is no longer a health problem only. it is a longterm financial issue for most people and organisations. what if resources dry up?” “we are concerned that, despite the determination, drive and passion of the principals, they may not have the resources to maintain their centres and their staff until february 2021 when the new year will begins for them,” sonja adds. “this will obviously affect our activities and decisions”. a number of the suggestions offered by the southern african ngo network (sangonet) (2020) to respond to the possible drying up of funds, align with the organisation’s approach to redirecting efforts: 1) staying in touch with beneficiaries to better understand their needs 2) keeping communication with donors transparent and consistent; 3) leveraging existing partnerships 4) creating new forms of support and 5) continuing to plan for the medium and long term. one of the npo’s first steps undertook halfway through the lockdown was to redefine the functions of its board to actively advocate for the npo and identify potential funders. 1682021 39(1): 168-172 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) strategies to continue training and other services offered in case of reduced funding, are under discussion (sonja). under social awareness, the npo-sm also includes aspects like project management proficiency, entrepreneurial know-how and financial and legal expertise, all of which contribute to strong and professional relationships in and with the community (ceptureanu et al., 2017). moreover, the authors quote the ashoka foundation, an international npo promoting social entrepreneurship, that a viable npo must also be ready to learn and change (theme 2). 4.2 venturing strategic and innovative thinking linking an organisational vision to strategic objectives for long, medium and short-term goals strengthens operations, establishes agreement around the intended outcomes and, rather than hinder it, allows for adjustment as circumstances change (quesado et al., 2018). while long-term thinking is vital, being able to adapt to unexpected challenges creatively has proven to be equally important. these are important features of a social entrepreneurial mind-set and the social awareness concept of the npo-sm of (ceptureanu et al., 2017). an indication of the social entrepreneurial approach of the npo, is evident in sonja’s reference to the organisation’s desire to act as “change agents” during the crisis and to transform the way the organisation functioned during lockdown. the aim was to introduce new initiatives, processes, procedures and structures to facilitate official directives, communicate reliable information and generally deliver value to the ecd community. a social entrepreneur is driven by necessity, has a high tolerance to risk and actively seeks out opportunities and novel options (purdy, 2018; kerr, kerr & xu, 2017). this aligns with the determinants identified in the npo-sm construct of social awareness, namely entrepreneurial attitude, risk acceptance, initiative and a relaxed attitude towards change. iwu et al. (2015) link quality of service to innovativeness, creativity and successfully adapting to environmental change, which they consider critical to effectiveness and sustainability. according to linda, the reason why she thinks this npo managed to swiftly change direction to respond to the crisis was because its mission is clear: “we went back to what started this organisation – we exist not because we [the staff and volunteers] need to do something for the community. we exist to fulfil a need they had. and as their needs changed, so we had to change.” the npo’s handling of the crisis provides numerous examples of innovative thinking such as the use of technology to stay in touch with their customers. after lockdown was declared and the ecd centres had closed its doors, the burning humanitarian issues, sonja explains, had to be addressed from a distance. like the rest of the world, the solution was to turn to technology. however, a number of problems had to be overcome: 1) the nature of ecd education is a hands-on, face-to-face interaction 2) the high cost of data in south africa and 3) the financial pressure ecd staff and the parents are under. cell phones became the instrument of choice to communicate and share educational material to principals for distribution to educators and parents. it was also implemented as a tool dealing with the hunger issue. sonja relates that the npo responded immediately by distributing data vouchers to the principals to ensure access to communication. then followed distribution of almost 2 000 printed and sms food vouchers. mentorship for 30 centres also continued via regular cell phone contact. “our initial thoughts were to support the principals and their staff as best we could, sonja says. “we formed a whatsapp group of over 70 principals to share relevant and accurate covid-19 1692021 39(1): 169-172 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.10 kruger adapt or die in the time of a pandemic information, to assess their needs and to offer guidance and support”. the group also became a source of emotional support with motivational messages sent on sundays and when needed during the week. the concern at the npo however, remained how to support ecd centres to continue children’s learning while at home. sonja explained that team members got down to business and acquired new skills like using online programmes to design and share creative activities daily so that parents and caregivers could engage the children whilst using minimal resources. these were also shared on several social media platforms to make it widely available. emelia explains that increasing the use of technology has been a priority in the organisation’s longterm strategy. the crisis merely pushed this goal forward. 4.3 benefitting from sound business operating systems a business system is what links all the building-blocks (systems and procedures) of an organisation to effect its strategy and achieve its goals as efficiently as possible. it also improves management practices and problem-solving and decision-making processes (zhao, kuo & wang, 2014). the combination of social entrepreneurial awareness and sound business, financial and operational systems encourage innovation and risk-taking leading to improved results, quality services and increased financial efficiency (purdy, 2018; ceptureanu et al., 2017). aspects related to operations emphasised in the npo-sm are comprehensive reporting, complying with specific donor rules, allowing less options to reallocate expenditures, revenue diversification, financial planning and publishing financial and other results. regular and detailed report-back to funders and ecd centres throughout the lockdown and continuing now, has enabled the researcher to confirm the participants’ versions of events with up-to-date information via reports and newsletters posted on the website and in correspondence to board members. features of the reports are transparency, clear communication of measurable results fostering trustworthiness and accountability. sonja quotes from an email she has received from a donor organisation lauding the npo for being reliable and not needing to be supervised with respect to using funds. “then he added how impressed he had been with the way information was presented in the report illustrating the extent of the project, but also the efficiency of our work and the strategic thinking in regard to next steps and measures”. extracting the relevant and accurate data that inform long-term objectives but also about decisions such as those related to the pandemic, relies on efficient operational systems. accurate data depend on realistic needs assessments and on access to trustworthy sources and which in turn, is strengthened by trusting internal and external relationships. 5. conclusion the covid-19 pandemic has led all role players in the ecce sector into unchartered territory. as the pandemic rages on, and undoubtedly in its aftermath, npos will be compelled to find new ways of serving the ecd community as their needs change. in the case of this npo, many innovative and out of the ordinary measures were taken to support the centres. however, the conversations with employees and associates highlighted that although the role changed from training and mentoring to include relief work, it was the fact that they were able to rely on existing strengths that saw them through and which they will reply on in future too. 1702021 39(1): 170-172 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) aspects such as strong internal and external relationships, sound administrative and business systems and a flexible, risk-taking and social entrepreneurial ethos enable them to adapt and ensure the npo’s sustainability not only during the pandemic but also in its aftermath and the socio-economic upheaval it has caused particularly among indigent communities. the aspects that assisted this organisation to pivot 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https://www.westerncape.gov.za/dept/social-development/services/1078 https://www.westerncape.gov.za/dept/social-development/services/1078 https://www.etdpseta.org.za/education/sites/default/files/2018-06/early-childhood-development-sector-skills-plan-2019-2020-update_0.pdf https://www.etdpseta.org.za/education/sites/default/files/2018-06/early-childhood-development-sector-skills-plan-2019-2020-update_0.pdf http://www.ngopulse.org/article/2020/10/02/impact-covid-19-non-profit-sector http://www.ngopulse.org/article/2020/10/02/impact-covid-19-non-profit-sector https://doi.org/10.1080/00313831.2011.581686 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40723-016-0022-6 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40723-016-0022-6 https://www.who.int/topics/early-child-development/en https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2020.100013 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssaho.2020.100013 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07776-5_46 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07776-5_46 _goback perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 124 reviewing the language compensation policy in the national senior certificate stephen taylor the national senior certificate or “matric” examination is a key point of access to further education and the labour market in south africa. since 1999, matric candidates whose first language is not afrikaans or english and are, therefore, forced to write in a second or third language have received a compensation of five per cent of their original mark in non-language subjects. whether this policy, which was intended as an interim measure, should continue is a matter of on-going debate. two questions must be answered for a decision to be made. the first is an empirical question: is there a significant disadvantage facing candidates not writing in their first language? the second is normative: should these candidates receive the compensation? this paper employs several statistical techniques, beginning with a replication of the method used previously by umalusi (the official education quality assurance council), to arrive at a credible estimate of the language disadvantage faced by candidates qualifying for the compensation. after demonstrating that a language disadvantage does persist, the normative question of whether the policy should be continued is discussed. it is argued that the answer to this question depends on various political, economic and philosophical considerations regarding the fairness and the purpose of the matric examination. keywords: education, language compensation policy, rasch, instrumental variable, south africa introduction the national senior certificate (nsc) or “matric” examination is widely regarded by south africans as the all-important school-leaving examination. apart from the pressure on schools and government to achieve high pass rates, attaining a nsc stephen taylor department of basic education e-mail: taylor.s@dbe.gov.za telephone: 012 357 4156 reviewing the language compensation policy in the national senior certificate stephen taylor 125 substantially improves the prospects for further educational opportunities and successful labour market participation for individuals (branson, garlick, lam & leibbrandt, 2012). in order to obtain a nsc, candidates must take one language at the home language level, one first additional language subject, mathematics or mathematical literacy, life orientation and a further three subjects. candidates must pass at least six of the seven subjects, achieving at least 40% for three subjects and 30% for the remaining three. for practical reasons, candidates must write all non-language subjects in either english or afrikaans. therefore, since 1999, a candidate whose first language is not afrikaans or english has received a compensation of five per cent of their original mark in non-language subjects. this paper investigates whether this policy, initially envisaged as an interim measure, should be continued. language in education remains a thorny issue in south africa. on the one hand, the pedagogical benefits of first-language instruction, especially in the early grades, are widely recognised. the influential work of cummins (2000) suggests that a strong foundation in first-language literacy is important for the effective acquisition of a second language. on the other hand, there are practical reasons for providing education in english, especially in secondary school. as alidou, boly, brock-utne, diallo, heugh and wolff (2006: 10) explain: “an educational system which emphasizes the use of african languages will only be viable if the socio-economic environment values these languages”. indeed, posel and casale (2011) find that english proficiency is strongly associated with higher wages in south africa, after other productive characteristics such as years of education. therefore, unless there are major structural adjustments to the economy, such as enforcing a particular language-inthe-workplace policy or a retreat from the global economy – adjustments which are probably not feasible – south africans will benefit from becoming fluent in english. policy and practice reflect these tensions. most children are educated in their first language during the foundation phase (grades 1 to 3) and then experience a transition to english as the language of learning and teaching (lolt) in grade 4. however, there is some debate as to whether this transition should occur later at, say, grade 6 or 8. without entering this debate, it is important to recognise that literacy, in particular reading acquisition, is extremely unsatisfactory in south african schools. data from the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) of 2006 indicate that more than 90% of learners in schools with mainly african-language children had not yet learnt to read with comprehension by grade 5 (author’s own calculations using raw pirls data). while this dismal situation largely reflects learner socio-economic status and low school quality and not necessarily language policy (taylor & yu, 2009), such reading deficiencies are likely to contribute to insurmountable learning deficits in all subject areas that will, ultimately, influence educational attainment negatively. fleisch (2008) describes how language disadvantages operate in the school system through children being confronted with unfamiliar words, through the perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 126 problems associated with teachers switching between languages (which effectively diminishes instructional time) and through a lack of exposure to the language of instruction outside of school. moreover, many teachers themselves are not fluent in the language of instruction, which further hinders learning (needu, 2013: 33). there are, thus, strong reasons to expect children who are not learning or writing a test in their first language to be at a disadvantage. this applies to the non-language subjects in the nsc examination, which are offered only in english and afrikaans. in recognition of this expected disadvantage and on the recommendations of a ministerial research team in 1998, since 1999 a compensation of five per cent of their original mark on non-language subjects has been awarded to matric candidates whose first language is not afrikaans or english, and who do not take either afrikaans or english as a subject at the home language level. for ease of reference, this group of learners will, henceforth, often be referred to as “compensation candidates”. the compensation policy was initially intended as an interim measure, based on the expectation that the english proficiency of learners would improve over time due to policy interventions. the question of whether this practice remains justifiable and preferable is a matter of on-going debate amongst policy makers. although this question has various economic and political implications, a necessary starting point in arguing for the continuation of this practice would be to demonstrate that those candidates qualifying for the compensation do indeed face a significant language disadvantage in the relevant subjects. the primary research objective of this paper is to determine whether there is a measurable language disadvantage facing compensation candidates in the matric examination. it should be noted that, although there is an abundance of theoretical literature examining the process of learning in a second language (e.g. collier, 1989; cummins, 2000), there is less work specifically dealing with the effect of being tested in a second language. one empirical study in south africa (vorster, mayet & taylor, 2013), compared the performance of the same children in the same numeracy test when writing in english and when writing in their home language. this study found that children performed substantially worse when they were not writing in their home language. however, this study focused on grade 3 children and its relevance to the present research question pertaining to matric is, therefore, limited. using data from 2010 nsc examinations, this paper employs four strategies in an attempt to measure the effect of writing non-language subjects in a second language. the first strategy replicates the method used by umalusi (2004) in their review of the language compensation policy. this strategy compares pre-adjustment performance in non-language subjects between afrikaans learners and compensation candidates who performed equally well in english fal. although this strategy appears promising at first, it has been shown that english fal is not a suitable “comparator” subject. reviewing the language compensation policy in the national senior certificate stephen taylor 127 a second strategy examines whether compensation candidates find languageintensive subjects, such as history and geography, more difficult (relative to subjects that are less language-intensive, such as mathematics) than other learners do. this strategy, although an improvement on the first, remains subject to some statistical bias due to measurement error inherent to test scores. therefore, instrumental variable regression, using one non-language-intensive subject as an instrument for another non-language-intensive subject to correct for measurement error, is applied as a third strategy. a fourth strategy recognises that, even in less language-intensive subjects, such as mathematics, language proficiency may influence performance. therefore, an item analysis of the 2009 mathematics paper is presented. using race as a proxy for language, the performance on language-intensive items is compared for black and white learners who performed equally well on items that were not language intensive. the next section presents these four strategies to estimate the magnitude of the language disadvantage. thereafter, a simulation exercise shows the potential impact on the matric pass rate if the language compensation policy were discontinued. the paper concludes with a discussion about whether candidates facing a language disadvantage should be compensated. various political, economic and philosophical considerations pertaining to the fairness and to the purpose of the nsc are explored. estimating the language disadvantage strategy 1: using first additional language as a base subject as observed by umalusi in 2004, the english fal performance of compensation candidates was again particularly low in 2010. figure 1 shows percentile plots for compensation candidates who took english fal and for afrikaans students who took english fal.1 the distribution of english fal achievement was considerably better for afrikaans students than it was for compensation candidates. for example, performance at the 30th percentile of afrikaans students was equivalent to performance at the 70th percentile amongst compensation candidates. furthermore, only 34% of compensation candidates scored above 50% for english fal (150 out of 300). the low english proficiency of compensation candidates presents a strong a priori reason to expect these students to face a language barrier when writing nonlanguage subjects in english. perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 128 figure 1: percentile plots of english fal for compensation candidates and other candidates in figure 2 the approach used by umalusi (2004) is replicated using one of the subjects that featured in the umalusi report – accounting. kernel density curves (corresponding to the right-hand axis) depict the distributions of english fal scores for two groups of students – compensation candidates taking english fal and afrikaans students taking english fal. the distributions depict the proportion of learners (along the vertical axis) who achieved specific english fal scores (along the horizontal axis). the distribution of scores for the afrikaans learners lies to the right of that for the compensation candidates, indicating better overall performance of afrikaans learners in english fal. the straight lines show predicted scores in accounting based on an ordinary least squares (ols) regression in which the explanatory variables were achievement in english fal and whether the student is afrikaans.2 this regression can be represented formally by the following equation: where b 1 is the constant or y-intercept, b2 is the estimated coefficient on subject y2 which, in this case, is english fal. b3 is the estimated coefficient on the dummy variable a, which takes a value of 1 if the learner is afrikaans and 0 if the learner qualifies for the language compensation, and e is an error term capturing unexplained variation in accounting (ŷ1). the intuition behind this approach is this: for two students achieving the same mark in english fal one would expect the afrikaans student to perform better in accounting than the african language candidate because the afrikaans student writes accounting in their first language while the african language candidate does so in english. this is indeed what the regression results depicted in figure 2 suggest: at every level of english fal achievement the predicted accounting score is higher for afrikaans learners than it is for candidates who qualify for the compensation. ŷ1= b1+ b2y2 + b3a+e reviewing the language compensation policy in the national senior certificate stephen taylor 129 figure 2: predicted accounting scores at given levels of performance in english fal there is, however, a statistical problem with this approach. this is demonstrated by figure 3, where equation (1) is inverted so that english fal is the outcome variable (y1) and the accounting score is an explanatory variable (y2). now, those qualifying for compensation perform worse in english fal at given levels of accounting performance. thus, it would appear that we have contradictory results: figure 2 points to a language disadvantage in accounting, whereas figure 3 seems to suggest the opposite. figure 3: predicted english fal scores at given levels of performance in accounting perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 130 the reason for this apparent contradiction is somewhat technical. regardless of which subject is y1 and which is y2 in equation (1), the assumption is that y2 takes account of proficiency, therefore, b 3 represents the estimated effect of writing in one’s first language. however, y2 (in umalusi’s case, english fal) will not perfectly measure this proficiency. a test score will always be a noisy measure of true proficiency because of the degree of randomness that is present in determining test performance (e.g. a bad night’s sleep, different interpretations of markers) and because different examinations will test somewhat different aspects of proficiency. if true proficiency were uncorrelated with a (whether a candidate is afrikaans or qualifies for compensation), the extent to which this proficiency is imperfectly measured by y2 would simply be reflected in the error term e and it would not matter. however, if true proficiency is correlated with a, the coefficient on a ( b 3 ) will be biased because it will capture some of the proficiency that is unaccounted for by y2. in south africa one would certainly expect true proficiency to be correlated with a due to differences in socio-economic status and school quality between these two groups of learners. therefore, the coefficient on a ( b 3 ) will be upwardly biased, hence, the gap between afrikaans candidates and compensation candidates will be over-estimated in both figures 2 and 3. there is a further problem that is caused by this measurement error, known as regression to the mean. this refers to the phenomenon that individuals recording particularly high or low outcomes on any measurement will tend to record outcomes that are closer to the population mean on a second measurement.3 regression to the mean in the case of english fal and accounting is definitely present. learners who achieved at the 10th percentile of performance in english fal, achieved at the 33rd percentile of achievement in accounting on average. learners who achieved at the 90th percentile in english fal, achieved at the 74th percentile in accounting on average. regression to the mean becomes a problem when comparing two populations with very different distributions of achievement. in figure 2, the range of english fal scores in which there was a significant overlap between afrikaans learners and compensation candidates was roughly between 130 and 180. therefore, the regression results are driven largely by what is going on within that range. however, within that range one is comparing some of the top-performing compensation candidates with some of the lowest-performing afrikaans learners. therefore, within that range of english fal scores, compensation candidates would tend to perform lower in accounting, and afrikaans learners would tend to do better in accounting, simply due to regression to the mean. in terms of equation (1), therefore, b 3 would be upwardly biased. figures 4 and 5 represent two strategies to use english fal as a type of base subject in a way that avoids bias caused by regression to the mean. the first uses an alternative to ols regression called deming regression. ols produces a line of best fit reviewing the language compensation policy in the national senior certificate stephen taylor 131 through minimising the sum of the squared vertical discrepancies between observed y values (for instance, observed accounting scores) and the predicted y values (for instance, predicted accounting score at given english fal scores). this is how the lines in figures 2 and 3 were produced. for this reason, when the y and x variables are flipped around the resulting lines of best fit are not necessarily symmetrical. deming regression, however, minimises both the vertical and horizontal discrepancies between observed and predicted values simultaneously. thus, it analyses the relationship between two variables without forcing one to be the dependent variable and the other the explanatory variable. the limitation of deming regression is that it can analyse only two variables at one time. figure 4 shows predicted values from deming regressions. in the first pane of figure 4 the english fal score is the x-variable while, in the second pane, the accounting score is the x-variable. this time the predicted values across the two graphs are symmetrical. in both panes it would seem that compensation candidates actually find accounting relatively easier than english fal compared to afrikaans students. put differently, for given levels of english fal achievement african learners actually performed better in accounting than afrikaans learners. figure 4: predicted values from deming regressions the same unexpected result was obtained when using a different method to overcome regression to the mean. figure 5 was derived by adding geography and english fal marks together and then dividing learners into deciles based on combined achievement. decile 1, for example, includes the 10% of learners who performed the worst in geography and english fal combined. the graph shows, for each decile of total achievement, the ratio of geography marks to english fal marks, first for compensation candidates and then for afrikaans learners. for most deciles (especially deciles 3 to 9 in which there were sufficient numbers in both groups of learners) the ratio of geography to english fal was larger for compensation candidates, indicating perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 132 that this group found geography easier (relative to english fal) than afrikaans learners did. the same result was obtained for accounting and history, which were analysed in the same way, but the results are not shown here. figure 5: ratio of geography marks to eng fal marks for each group by performance decile there is, however, a logical way to reconcile this result with there still being a language disadvantage in subjects such as geography: there may be even more of a language disadvantage facing african language learners in english fal than in the non-language subjects. when tested in any subject, a learner’s performance will depend on their “technical proficiency” in that subject and on their competency in the language of testing. put differently, the following formal relationship applies to any subject: yij= β0j+β1jtij+β2jlij+uij (2) where yij refers to the score obtained by student i in subject j, tij refers to the technical proficiency of student i in subject j, lij refers to the competency in the language of the test of student i in subject j and uij refers to all other factors influencing performance. the language intensiveness of the test is reflected in β2j and the extent to which the test relies on technical proficiency is expressed by β1j. in subjects that are not language intensive (i.e. small β2j ), a large gap in language competency between two students will have little effect on their performance. on the other hand, in a language subject such as english fal, β1j effectively falls out of the equation and β2j becomes the all-important parameter because the technical proficiency that is being tested is one’s language competency. the english fal paper reviewing the language compensation policy in the national senior certificate stephen taylor 133 is explicitly designed to test language competency (lij). in contrast, lij has only a partial impact on geography performance. although it sounds like a truism, english fal is far more language intensive than geography. next, consider that the effective language disadvantage (z) in subject j depends on the subject’s language-intensiveness (β2j) and the language ability gap (x) so that: zj= β2j. x (3) a key point is that there is most likely going to be a language gap in the case of english fal. firstly, afrikaans and english are both germanic languages making it easier for an afrikaans child to adapt to english than for a child who speaks isixhosa or isizulu, for example. secondly, afrikaans children may tend to grow up with a more extensive exposure to english through parents, community members, media and books than african language children do. under what conditions, then, will the effective language disadvantage for compensation candidates be larger in english fal than in geography? formally, when will ζe > zg? from equation (3), ζe > zg? can be rewritten as: ß2e.xe> ß2g.xg? which, rearranged, gives: (4) e g g e x x > 2 2 β β (5) although we expect the language competency gap in geography (xg) to be larger than the language competency gap in english fal (xe) we also expect ß2e to be larger than ß2g (because english fal is more language intensive than geography). this inequality, thus, demonstrates why it is perfectly possible for there to be a greater overall language disadvantage in english fal than in geography and, therefore, why one observes in figures 4 and 5 that compensation candidates experience english fal to be harder (relative to non-language subjects) than afrikaans-speaking learners. to summarise this section, even after correcting for measurement error caused by regression to the mean, the use of english fal as a type of base subject is problematic because there may be an even greater language disadvantage faced by compensation candidates when writing english fal. strategy 2: comparing relative performance in language-intensive subjects and non-language intensive subjects consider again the process by which technical proficiency and language proficiency determine performance in a given subject, as described in equation (2): yij = ß0j + ß1jtj + ß2jlij + uj (2) perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 134 we cannot observe the true tij or lij and, therefore, we require proxies. the best available proxy for technical proficiency is a student’s score in a subject that is not particularly language intensive. arguably, mathematics and accounting are less language intensive than subjects such as history, geography, and economics which require longer responses and essays. therefore, the next estimation strategy predicts student performance in language-intensive subjects taking into account their performance in non-language-intensive subjects and whether the student qualifies for compensation. figure 6 shows a number of graphs derived from deming regressions of mathematics against various language-intensive subjects. in all the graphs two groups are compared: those who qualify for the compensation and those whose home language is english. the graphs on the right depict deming regressions as well as kernel density curves to indicate where the bulk of each group’s marks are located. in these graphs on the right the sample has been restricted to exclude the bottomand the top-performing 10% of each group so as to avoid the influence of outliers. the graphs on the left depict the predicted values from deming regressions with the sample restricted to include only english-speaking children who scored between the 10th and 50th group-specific percentiles of performance in both subjects and compensation candidates who scored between the 50th and 90th group-specific percentiles of performance in both subjects. this ensured that the lines were determined within the range of performance with sufficient overlap across the groups. reviewing the language compensation policy in the national senior certificate stephen taylor 135 figure 6: predicted values from deming regressions for various subjects against mathematics in the case of business studies, the graph on the right provides an inconclusive picture. the graph on the left, though, shows that, at given levels of mathematics performance, the english-speaking students performed better in business studies than the compensation candidates. if one regards mathematics as a proxy for technical proficiency, then the gap is indicative of a language disadvantage for compensation candidates. for economics, however, there is no clear pattern of differential relative performance between the two groups. the case of history is similar to that of business studies while, for geography, there appears to be a large language disadvantage. it is also noteworthy that, for geography, there is a fair deal of distributional overlap for the two groups. therefore, geography may be the subject offering the most meaningful comparison. in order to gauge the sensitivity of these results, the same type of analysis as in figure 6 was conducted using accounting, rather than mathematics, as the proxy for technical proficiency (results not presented). a similar picture emerged: in the case of economics there was no observable language disadvantage, while in history and geography the english-speaking candidates appeared to have performed better than the compensation candidates, at given levels of accounting achievement. strategy 3: an instrumental variable approach the previous strategy used performance in a non-language-intensive subject, such as mathematics, as a proxy for technical proficiency (tij) and whether the student perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 136 qualifies for compensation as a proxy for language proficiency (lij). however, mathematics cannot be expected to perfectly measure technical proficiency. therefore, an ols regression predicting performance in geography by mathematics (tij) and whether one is english or a compensation candidate (lij) will have a biased coefficient on lij (ß2j) because it would pick up some of the variation in technical proficiency that is not reflected in the mathematics score. in an attempt to correct for measurement error, a set of instrumental variable (iv) regressions were estimated. this method is regarded in statistics and econometrics as a credible way to deal with measurement error in covariates (angrist & pishke, 2009: 84). the idea is to use one non-language-intensive subject (say accounting) as an “instrument” for another (say mathematics). for example, when predicting geography achievement using iv regression, only the variation in scores that is common to both mathematics and accounting will be used. this reduces the influence of cases where, for instance, a learner does well in mathematics but poorly in accounting. iv regressions were estimated for five language-intensive subjects using accounting to instrument for mathematics.4 the results are reported in table 1. the iv strategy reduces bias on the coefficient for “english” by indicating the influence of technical proficiency more accurately. for history, geography and life sciences the coefficient on “english” is positive and statistically significant. in these subjects english-speaking candidates scored between 20 and 30 points (out of 300) higher than compensation candidates of a similar technical proficiency. in economics and business studies, however, negative coefficients were returned on the “english” variable. table 1: instrumental variable regressions history geography life sciences economics business studies maths (β₁) 0.51*** 0.66*** 0.69*** 1.01*** 1.04*** english (β₂) 22.10*** 30.46*** 23.40*** −16.80*** −15.09*** constant (β₀) 112.71*** 61.94*** 62.43*** 61.38*** 52.76*** observations 693 1751 10991 44408 46554 r-squared 0.62 0.78 0.80 0.28 0.34 strategy 4: analysing the language disadvantage within mathematics up until now, mathematics and accounting have been treated as subjects that are not language intensive. while it may be true that these subjects rely less on language than history or geography, it is improbable that language competency would have no influence on mathematics performance. in order to measure language disadvantage within mathematics an item analysis was conducted on the 2009 mathematics papers 1 and 2. reviewing the language compensation policy in the national senior certificate stephen taylor 137 this analysis was based on a sample of scripts from three provinces for which item responses were recorded. the sample included 271 white students and 388 black students.5 this distinction allows one to use population group as a proxy for language, since most white children would have written in their first language and most black children would have written in their fal. each item was then categorised subjectively into one of three categories: not language intensive, fairly language intensive, and very language intensive. using data for the white learners only, rasch modelling was used to derive difficulty scores for all the items. six very language-intensive items and six nonlanguage-intensive items were selected from the middle range of difficulty. this means that, for learners who probably wrote in their first language, these 12 items were of similar difficulty. the six language-intensive items amounted to 18 marks and the six non-language intensive items amounted to 22 marks, thus, creating two subtests.6 for each sub-test a percentage score for each learner was calculated. figure 7 shows the relative performance in these two groups of items using deming regression. the left pane of the figure indicates that, at given levels of achievement in the non-language-intensive items, white learners did better than black learners on the language-intensive items. this confirms that, even within mathematics, learners are at a disadvantage when not writing in their first language. furthermore, the gap increases at higher levels of achievement, which is significant for two reasons. firstly, this is where the majority of the students are located as the kernel density curves indicate. secondly, black learners who scored above 60% or even 80% on the non-language-intensive items have fairly good content knowledge. thus, when the precondition of sufficient content knowledge is in place, the language factor becomes more influential. the graph on the right excludes outliers (those who scored 100% or 0% on either set of items). here the picture of a language disadvantage is even clearer, and is consistently about 15 percentage points. figure 7: relative performance in language-intensive and non-language-intensive items perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 138 this item analysis casts the preceding estimation strategies in a new light. the language disadvantages estimated when using mathematics as a proxy for technical proficiency probably underestimate the true disadvantage because mathematics itself is subject to a language disadvantage. the impact of removing the language compensation on the nsc pass rate a simulation exercise using 2010 data was conducted in order to assess the potential impact on the nsc pass rate of removing the language compensation. this excluded candidates who were immigrants, those who did not take life orientation, those who did not take a south african home language and at least one other language subject, those who did not take at least seven subjects, and those who did not have recorded scores for at least one subject. the pass rate after awarding the language compensation was calculated to be 65.54%. when applying the same pass criteria to the pre-adjustment scores (i.e. before the language compensation had been awarded) the pass rate was calculated to be 61.92%. therefore, removing the language compensation would have led to a pass rate of about 3.6 percentage points lower. expressed in terms of numbers, 20 332 candidates who passed in 2010 would not have passed without the language compensation. concluding discussion: should the language compensation policy be discontinued? four methods were employed to measure the effect of writing non-language nsc subjects in a second or third language. the first method, following umalusi (2004), was shown to be inappropriate for the intended purpose. the second and third methods demonstrated that, after accounting for student performance in relatively technical subjects, compensation candidates were at a disadvantage in language-intensive subjects. the fourth method strengthened this conclusion through demonstrating that, even in mathematics which is a relatively technical subject, the compensation candidates were at a disadvantage when responding to test items that required substantial language proficiency. none of these methods offer precise estimates of the causal impact of language proficiency on test scores, but together they provide strong evidence of a language disadvantage for compensation candidates. in relating these empirical results to political, philosophical and economic factors relevant to the language compensation policy, five concluding comments are made below. first, if the sole criterion for deciding on the future of the language compensation policy is the existence of a language disadvantage, there are still grounds for continuing the policy. quite apart from the statistical results though, it seems intuitively obvious reviewing the language compensation policy in the national senior certificate stephen taylor 139 that those not writing in their first language should be at a disadvantage. it is, therefore, unlikely that the disadvantage will subside over time, something which is naively implied by the intention that the compensation policy should be an interim measure. second, one could argue on the basis of fairness that, if a test is intended to measure a particular underlying trait, such as technical proficiency in mathematics, and if this underlying trait does not include language proficiency, then the language of testing introduces unfairness. following this logic, there is, however, a more scientific and, therefore, fairer way of adjusting scores than by adding five per cent to their original mark for all compensation candidates. rasch modelling could be used to identify differential item functioning (dif) between firstand second-language candidates. this method identifies test items where learners of equal ability perform differently depending on whether they are firstor second-language candidates. after adjusting for dif, the rasch model generates a set of learner scores which better reflect the underlying trait measured by the test (zumbo, 2007). the institutionalisation of rasch modelling in the matric examination process would, however, greatly increase the time and capacity required for processing results. therefore, although the use of rasch modelling would be more scientific than the arbitrary compensation of five per cent, it is not recommended that this be pursued as a solution to the language compensation question. third, the fairness argument may not hold if one regards the purpose of the nsc as a means to an end: a way to inform universities and the labour market of suitable candidates. if proficiency in english is just as important in university and in the labour market as it is in matric, then the compensation could cause inefficient sorting into higher education and the labour market by disguising the true proficiency of candidates. when employers do not have access to accurate screening information they tend to employ fewer people at a given wage (strand, 1987). therefore, at least in theory, the language compensation policy could be contributing to lower overall employment and to a sub-optimal matching of people to jobs. fourth, this analysis has implications for how to improve educational outcomes in matric and throughout the school system. increasing the english proficiency of africanlanguage candidates will improve outcomes in all non-language subjects. considering the hierarchical nature of learning (all learning builds on prior foundations), paying special attention to the teaching of english in the foundation phase, as recommended in the national development plan (national planning commission, 2012), could have exponential benefits. this recommendation should, however, not be interpreted as a call for diminished emphasis on first language learning. indeed, some pedagogical theory predicts that a solid foundation in a first language will facilitate a smooth transition to a second language (cummins, 2000; macdonald & burroughs, 1991). fifth, if the language compensation policy were to be discontinued it should be incrementally phased out. the impact of the language compensation on the overall perspectives in education 2014: 32(1) 140 pass rate is not dramatic but neither is it negligible. reducing the compensation by a single percentage point each year over a five-year period would help avoid a situation in which a matric certificate in one year is regarded in the labour market as different to that of a subsequent year. incrementally phasing out the policy would also reduce the risk of a scenario in which candidates suspect that they may have passed matric had they written the previous year. finally, debates around the language compensation policy should not distract from more important policy questions around language, such as how to improve the acquisition of reading in both first language and english, how to ensure a smooth transition to english as the language of instruction and at what stage this transition should occur. acknowledgements i am indebted to martin gustafsson for detailed advice on the statistical methods used in this paper, to servaas van der berg for helpful comments on an early draft, to the department of basic education for facilitating access to data and the time to work on this research, and to four anonymous referees for suggested revisions. references alidou h, boly a, brock-utne b, diallo y, heugh k & wolff, h 2006. optimizing learning and education in africa a stock-taking research on mother tongue and bilingual education in sub-saharan africa. retrieved on 21 february 2013 from: http://www.adeanet.org/adeaportal/adea/downloadcenter/ouga/ b3_1_mtble_en.pdf. angrist jd & pischke js 2009. mostly harmless econometrics. an empiricist’s companion. princeton, new jersey: princeton university press. barnett a, van der pols j & dobson a 2005. regression to the mean: what it is and how to deal with it. international journal of epidemiology, 34(1): 215-220. branson n, garlick j, lam d & leibbrandt m 2012. education and inequality: the south african case. saldru working paper, 75. collier vp 1989. how long? a synthesis of research on academic achievement in a second language. tesol quarterly, 23(3): 118-140. cummins j 2000. language, power and pedagogy: bilingual children in the crossfire. clevedon: multilingual matters. fleisch b 2008. primary education in crisis: why south african school children underachieve in reading and mathematics. cape town: juta. international association for the evaluation of educational achievement. 2006. the progress in international reading literacy study. raw data. macdonald c & burroughs e 1991. eager to talk and learn and think. bilingual primary education in south africa. cape town: maskew miller longman. reviewing the language compensation policy in the national senior certificate stephen taylor 141 national education evaluation and development unit (needu) 2013. national report 2012: the state of literacy teaching and learning in the foundation phase. retrieved on 3 june 2013 from: http://www.education.gov.za/ documentslibrary/reports/tabid/358/default.aspx. national planning commission 2012 national development plan: vision for 2030. retrieved on 18 january 2013 from: http://www.npconline.co.za/ posel d & casale d 2011. language proficiency and language policy in south africa: findings from new data. international journal of educational development, 31(5): 449-457. strand j 1987. unemployment as a discipline device with heterogeneous labor. the american economic review, 77(3): 489-493. taylor s & yu d 2009. the importance of socio-economic status in determining educational achievement in south africa. stellenbosch economic working papers, 01/09. umalusi 2004. investigation into the standard of the senior certificate examination: a report on research conducted by umalusi. pretoria. vorster c, mayet a & taylor s 2013. the language of teaching and learning in south african schools. in n taylor, s van der berg, and t mabogoane (eds), creating effective schools. cape town: pearson. zumbo b 2007. three generations of dif analyses: considering where it has been, where it is now, and where it is going. language assessment quarterly, 4(2): 223-233. 16 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 implementing a multi-faith religious education curriculum in botswana junior secondary schools b a a m ph a tlh a din a m a u niversity of b otsw ana, b otsw ana dinamab@ mopipi.ub.bw i explore the ways in which re teachers understand and im plement a multi faith religious educa tion curriculum in botswana junior secondary schools. the m ulti faith re curriculum cam e about as a result of an educational policy change in 1994. the study is based on case studies and draws its data from classroom observations, interview s and docum ents such as the re teaching syllabus, and the schem es of work. in highlighting the teachers’ understanding and classroom practices, i adopted the concept of the teachers’ professional knowledge landscape. when the multi faith re curriculum was introduced in botswana, there were two groups of teachers, those who taught the m ulti faith curriculum and those who taught both the single faith and the m ulti faith religious education. five them es emerged from the data, nam ely: pedagogical and content knowledge, assessm ent, m entoring, and collaboration. i conclude that there are no m arked differences between these two groups of teachers in term s of their understanding of the curriculum and their classroom practices. k eyw ords: assessment; collaboration; educational policy; mentoring; multi faith religious edu cation; pedagogical and content knowledge; teachers’ professional landscape introduction t he year 1994 was characterised by major educational changes in post colonial b otswana and one of the key policy shifts was the termination of the christian based religious education (r e ) curriculum which was replaced by a multi faith r eligious education curriculum (b otswana g overn ment, 1994; seretse, 2003). o f significance too, is that this type of curriculum aims to sensitise students in regard to issues of diversity (botswana g overnment, 1 995). yet, more than ten years after the introduction of this curriculum change, little is known about how re teachers in b otswana understand and implement the multi faith re curriculum. i have used the phrase multi faith to refer to an re curriculum of which the content is a variety of religions and which does not necessarily require students and teachers to be religious. in this study, i adopt the term curriculum as presented by kauffmann, johnson, liu & peske (2002:74) as “what and how teachers are expected to teach”. after the introduction of the multi faith re in schools, teachers struggled to translate this cur riculum into classroom practice, largely due to a lack of pedagogical skills and content knowledge. d uring the inception of the multi faith re curriculum , r e teachers had not been adequately pre pared, through intensive in service programmes, to teach the curriculum. t wo key research ques tions informed this study: 1. w hat are the practices of the religious education teachers in b otswana secondary schools? 2. h ow does the teaching environment impact on religious education teachers’ translation of the multi faith curriculum into practice? background to the study t he first major educational reform in post independent b otswana in 1977 recommended a new religious and m oral education curriculum to replace b ible knowledge as an optional subject at secondary school level (b otswana government, 1977). the curriculum was christian centred, hence it required that teachers be active practitioners of christianity. significantly, students were equally expected to be devout christians whose faith was to be further developed in the classrooms. it is important to note that historically, churches played a major ro le in education and in the national affairs of many sub saharan african nation states, including b otswana, hence the inclination of many african governments to accept christian religious education (sutcliffe, 1984). 17perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 a number of studies indicate that the christian inclined religious and m oral education curriculum was unpopular amongst b otswana teachers mainly because it had the clear intention to openly convert learners into the christian faith (m molai, 1988; m orake, 1993; seretse, 1990). as a result, this undermined both the status of the re programme as an educational enterprise and the professional status of the r e teacher. in 1994 the revised national policy on education recom mended that re be separated from m oral education (b otswana government, 1994) and the two became discrete and distinct subjects. of significance too, is that religious education still main tained its status of being an optional subject at junior secondary school, while the m oral education aspect was elevated to a core status, which means a subject that is compulsory for all the students (b otswana governm ent, 1994). t hough re is offered in all government schools alongside other optional subjects such as design and technology, art, m usic, home economics and physical e ducation, it is viewed as being capable of helping in citizenship building by fostering societal values such as tolerance, respect for persons and mutual understanding (b otswana government, 1995). t he re curriculum is multi faith in its content and phenomeno logical in its methodology (b otswana g overnment, 1995). it does not single out any particular religion for study, since that decision lies with the teachers. w hen the multi faith re was introduced, however, teachers who had initially taught the single faith r e were not re trained. furthermore, scant attention was paid to how the re teachers teach the curriculum practically in terms of content knowledge, teaching techniques and strategies, and also how m uch the policy has changed them in terms of their awareness and sensitivity towards issues of diversity. in the research literature reviewed, there are few empirical studies in terms of the classroom practices of multi faith re teachers in both b otswana (m atemba, 2005) and elsewhere (ferguson & roux, 2003; gommers & hermans, 2003). t here is limited empirical literature on teachers’ understanding and implementation of the multi faith re curriculum, even in european countries like b ritain, where it has been in schools since the 1970s (jackson, 1999). in a collection of articles on pedagogies edited by grimmitt (2000), there is little reference to teachers’ classroom practices because the articles concentrate on the relationship between religion and education and how both serve young people. research on multi faith re in b otswana has thus far focused on perceptions of students (o ntiretse, 2001) and their attitudes towards religion (seretse, 2003) as well as on problems regarding resources (sepotlo, 2004). m ore could be known about re teachers’ practices if studies done were to explore how tea chers understand and implement the re curriculum w ithin their contexts. w riting from a b ritish context, with a similar multi faith re curriculum, sikes and e verington (2001:15) note that “very little is known about what it is like to be an re teacher”. similarly, w englinsky (2002) observes that teachers’ classroom practices are rarely studied; if these are studied they are, in most cases, far re moved from the classroom environment which gives meaning to their practice; and even though that is the case, teachers’ classroom practices have as marked an effect on the students’ performance as the students’ social b ackground. it is against this background that the study aimed to explore re teachers’ understanding and classroom implementation of the multi faith re curriculum. conceptualising a multi-faith religious education curriculum a multi faith re curriculum aims at promoting liberal values such as autonomy, freedom and tolerance and it can also encourage the search for common cross cultural values in a pluralistic society (w right, 2004). w riting from a south african post apartheid perspective, chidester (2003) maintains that re, especially the multi faith type, can help to build citizenship among young people in terms of students recognising, affirming and exploring the multiplicity of their identity, as well as the identities of those who are different from them. t he emphasis of a multi faith re curriculum is embedded in its focus on the importance of tolerance, respect for persons and mutual under standing, especially in diverse contexts (d agovitz, 2004; w olf, 2004). furthermore, the multi faith 18 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 re emphasises the knowledge about religion and reflection on what is happening in relation to religion (grimmitt, 1987). it is viewed as having the potential to bring about attitude and behaviour change to those exposed to it, hence promoting a sense of good citizenship in a liberal democracy and a pluralistic society (cox & skinner, 1990). in teaching this type of re, teachers expose students to ways in which different religions respond to various issues, especially contemporary ones such as equality, democracy, sexuality and many more. teachers’ professional landscape i explored how r e teachers understand and implement the multi faith curriculum using clandinin and connelley’s (1995) notion of teachers’ professional knowledge landscape. t he authors use the metaphor “landscape” to indicate the various contexts in which teachers operate and how the con texts influence the teachers’ classroom practices. levin (2004) says that instituting a reform entails destabilising what is normal. routines and relationships set and accepted by the school community are challenged, since the reform will modi fy, or even completely change them. t he reason is that teachers belong to schools with cultures that might resist any change that is premised on a different set of beliefs. levin (2004:34) notes that “when reforms are forced on schools that are not receptive, the school often has more influence in modifying the reform than the reform has in modifying the school”. it is against this background that teachers need to be fully involved in curriculum change because they possess some degree of influence, especially regarding what happens in their classrooms. methodology in this study i adopted the qualitative interpretivist approach, which is ideal for und erstanding a phenomenon holistically, in the way it is lived or experienced by participants (cohen, m anion & m orrison, 2000; creswell, 2003; m erriam, 1988). t his study is a multiple, comparative case study of four teachers who were teaching at two public junior secondary schools and who were solicited through convenient purposive sampling. i used pseudonymns for the participating teachers and the schools which were both government owned and run. the sites were togala and m akala junior secondary schools in an urban area in b otswana, and the teachers from the former school were m rs laban and m rs koloni, whilst m r t iro and m iss rabin were from the latter. m rs laban was a senior teacher with 13 years teaching experience, and a christian, while her colleague in the same school, m rs koloni was also a christian and had four years of re teaching experience. m iss rabin who was a senior teacher at m akala junior secondary school had 12 years teaching experience, and indicated that she was not a religious person. her colleague m r t iro had two years teaching experience, and was a lay preacher at his church. in each of the two schools, one o f the teachers had a minimum of 10 years of re teaching experience while the other had less. i chose the two pairs of teachers b ecause those who had 10 years or more of re teaching experience had taught both the old single faith, christian based re, as well as the new, multi faith re. t hose who had less experience had taught only the new, multi faith re. i selected two pairs of teachers in order to determine whether there were any differences between the two pairs in terms of their understanding of the curriculum and classroom practices. t he two schools were selected due to their accessibility and convenience, since they were relatively close to each other. in addition, besides being in the same region and funded by government, the schools have similar facilities and enrolments. w hen collecting data for this study i chose a small sample so that i could spend a considerable time with the participants. in collecting the data, i used classroom observations, pre lesson inter views, post lesson interviews and documents, such as schemes of work and syllabi. i used several instruments to validate my findings, i.e. in each school a teacher was observed at least 10 times over a perio d of eight months. after collecting the data, i analysed these according to the emerging themes. 19perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 findings i divided the findings into the following themes: pedagogical and content knowledge, assessment, mentoring and collaboration. pedagogical and content knowledge a teacher’s pedagogical content knowledge involves the way in which a teacher presents the subject matter to the students, while content knowledge refers to what the teacher knows about the subject. t he teachers’ pedagogical knowledge is largely influenced by their understanding of the curriculum. all four teachers used mainly group work, even though in most instances, no guidelines were given to students for the group work, nor were they made aware of the skills required to carry out the work. t his is shown in the interview with m iss rabin. w hen asked about the best way of teaching students to learn religious education she said: norm ally they work as a group and then present their findings to the whole class. they work in groups so that they can be able to help each other and that tends to be m ore effective than when a teacher stands in front of the class (interview with m iss rabin, 29 september, 2006). students worked in groups and later presented their findings to the whole class, even though there was no clear sign of students helping each other during their discussions. m iss rabin indicated that there were no specific skills were described to guide students when they worked in groups, even though, for her, it was the most common teaching technique. t his is what she said: i just give them the work. i don’t tell them how they should do it, except that they should pick from the book what they think are correct answers to the question given. no particular skills are given as what to pick or not to pick (interview with m iss rabin, 29 september, 2006). similarly, another experienced re teacher, m rs laban from t ogal junior secondary school, said that she engaged her students mainly in group work, which was followed by a presentation to the whole class. t he teachers indicated that the problem with that arrangement was that students who were fluent were the ones who were constantly presenting, arguing that the main purpose of a pre sentation is for the audience to understand what the presenter is saying. b oth m iss rabin and m rs laban said that they mixed their students so that the “intellectually gifted” could help those whom they referred to as “the weak ones”. t hese two teachers also indi cated that they did not provide their students with particular skills for discussion in their presenta tions of the findings to the rest of the class. t he teachers, however showed some understanding of the content knowledge, even though at times the knowledge was limited, as shown by m r t iro: when i tea ch a bout the aim s of re there is one which says that students have to know btr (botswana traditional r eligion) and other religions of the world. in this case, if it says other religions, it suggests that all students who are learning re are members of a religion called btr, hence they need to know more about their religion com pared to other religions out there (interview with m r tiro, 3 october, 2006). m r tiro was not aware that a multi faith re curriculum does not aim at comparing and contrasting religions. similarly, m rs koloni indicated that there was nothing to contrast in religions as far as the myths of creation were concerned, yet there were several syllabus objectives that contrasted various issues. t eachers drew their examples mainly from c hristianity, largely due to their dependence on textbooks. furthermore, religious affiliation or lack of it did not explicitly influence the classroom practices of any of the teachers in the sample in terms of understanding, teaching styles, and content and curricular knowledge. t eachers did not write out any lesson plans, and in most cases, just before going to meet their classes, they browsed through the syllabus objectives and what the students’ textbooks suggested were possible class and homework tasks. it is significant to no te that teachers did not fully allow their students who were religious to express their beliefs because they barely allowed their students 20 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 to refer to them. t his is shown in m iss rabin’s response on the issue of diversity: we always encourage them to stick to what is in their books and not what happens at hom e, because at hom e they may do certain things differently from what teachers tell them in class. we tell them to forget about their denom inations (interview with m iss rabin, 29 october, 2006). in my interview with teachers, they told me that they were tolerant and open in their treatment of the various religions. for example, in my initial interview with m rs laban, she indicated that she encouraged openness in her treatment of religions: we first make use of the learners’ knowledge and what they bring into the classroom , which is very im portant, for example, through brain storm ing (interview with m rs laban, 4 o ctober, 2006). t eachers indicated that they did no t know their students’ social and cultural backgrounds, even though they indicated that such knowledge could enhance their teaching. for example, when a newer teacher m rs koloni, was asked if she knew where her students came from, she said that she only met parents when they came to collect their children’s reports. similarly, m r t iro, another, newer teacher, said that he only met parents when they came to school to collect their children’s reports. t wo of the teachers, m iss rabin and m rs koloni, did not know the names of some of their students and remembered them only when giving back assignments and tests, even though they had been with those students for more than two years. w ith regard to teaching and learning resources, teachers depended mainly on students’ textbooks, as shown by m r t iro, when he said “with me i look at the students’ textbooks and identify a religion that has more inform ation”. similarly, m rs k oloni said that she relied on textbooks be cause the information is simplified: i look at the inform ation that is available in textbooks that can help the students answer a question. the inform ation in the students’ textbooks has been presented in a way that students easily understand, since it has been made simple (interview with m r tiro, 7 m arch, 2007). m rs laban, an experienced teacher, also said she hardly used other resources besides textbooks. in addition, she indicated that her school had eno ugh computers to use, but she did not make use of them, saying that teachers were too lazy. t he over dependence on textbooks is also shown in m iss rabin’s response to why she gave students incorrect information when she said that in b otswana and elsewhere armed robbery is one of the crimes punishable by death. w hen i asked her about the correctness of that information she said: it is not correct, but that is what is in one of the books. w e go w ith what is written down in the textbook. i m ay know what is correct, but what is important is to m ake sure that my students pass (interview with m iss rabin, 9 m arch, 2007). it is clear that anything that was viewed by teachers as helping their stud ents to pass was empha sised, especially if it was in the textbook. t his could be one reason why teachers adhered to the same teaching and learning aids and did whatever they could to help their students pass. t he teachers indicated that other than the students’ textbooks they never used any other teaching aid. t he teachers did not make use of a variety of learning activities such as drama, artwork, videos and visits in order to enrich their lessons, as well as to tap into the students’ sense of imagination. in both schools, students were not taken out on educational trips, a practice that could have enriched the teachers’ practices. for example, both schools were close to some religious sites, yet no speakers from these religious institutions were invited to address the students. similarly, visiting and inviting speakers to talk about issues related to some topics can be an integral part in the teaching of re, since it could help develop various thought capacities in students. assessment t hroughout my fieldwork the poor results in re at national level were a common concern among teachers, who believed that the assessment was unfair, because too much was expected of the 21perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 stud ents. some teachers, however, ascribed the poor results to teachers’ inadequate pedagogical knowledge and low levels of understanding many concepts, and others believed that it was because there was no single core textbook which could cover the content of the curriculum fully. t he tea chers also noted that when students failed re, teachers came into conflict with school adminis trators, who believed they did not take their work seriously. i also found that teachers did not have easy access to certain important government documents, because some circulars remained in the file of the school head or head of department. m rs laban, however, indicated that at times teachers were not interested in reading government documents, even when they were made available to them. newer teachers in both schools indicated that they had never read any re report since they had started teaching. w hen i asked m rs k oloni about her allocation of marks in a test her students had written, she said that she had certain expectations from her students. even though she said that she did not make her expectations known to her students, she assumed that they could find out for themselves how they were to answer questions. she was, however, convinced that she assessed her students fairly. similarly, when i asked m iss rabin how, for example, she awarded marks for an end of term exami nation question: “d iscuss the creation of human beings according to the scientific explanation” she said: i expected them to write on evolution, but there w as confusion, because m ost students wrote about anything that they knew about creation. i could have asked the question like: d escribe the 4 stages of hum an developm ent according to science (interview with m iss rabin, 9 m arch, 2007). in another test m iss rabin’s students wrote, there was a question where the mark allocation was too low and did not tally with the demands of the question. t he question was: give and explain the two types of leadership (2 marks). providing the two types of leadership is worth two marks, while explaining those two types is worth much more. w hen i asked m rs laban, another experienced teacher, why she penalised her students for using a religion of their choice as the question demanded, she said: it is the m arks allocated per question that should guide students as to what choice they should m ake regarding a religion. several religions will have been dealt with, but the student should choose one with m ore points in order to score more (interview with m rs laban, 23 m ay, 2007). she indicated that questions were determined by the nature of the curriculum, which she said needed to be revised, because it had some shortcomings. it is interesting to note that each time teachers encountered difficulty in understanding the curriculum and classroom practices, especially assess ment, they blamed the re curriculum. even though teachers were unhappy with re assessment, they rarely collaborated as colleagues. mentoring and collaboration another issue that emerged, was that after graduating and joining teaching, re teachers did not receive any mentoring in their schools. t hey said that it was because the older and the more ex perienced teachers did not have time to mentor new members and that there was very little collaboration among teachers within and across schools, and that many re teachers were mainly left to their own devices. t eachers in the two schools did not watch each other teach, and as a result they lost an opportunity to be observed and to discuss their classroom practices with their colleagues. w hen i asked m rs laban, if there was collaboration, especially across schools, she said there used to be, but it had gradually disappeared. similarly, m r t iro indicated that there was no collaboration among re teachers in his school and that the poor junior certificate results could be a result of the lack of collaboration amongst re teachers. m rs koloni indicated that she had never taught a topic for a colleague or vice versa. similarly, m iss rabin indicated that there was lack of collaboration within schools, because teachers across 22 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 subjects did not work together. she, however, indicated that collaboration across subjects could be of help to teachers, since they could learn from one another, especially regarding related subjects. she said: “r e teach ers could benefit especially from social studies, which is detailed in som e topics”. t he teachers also indicated that junior teachers were not adequately assisted in their schools. for example, m iss rabin indicated that in her first two years in the field she was not assisted when the new multi faith re curriculum was first introduced. she said that she had not received any support from any senior teacher, even of a related subject, and that she was left to her own devices. a newer teacher, m rs koloni, admitted that she had had no form of orientation in her school espe cially regarding what she was expected to do as an re teacher. she also indicated that there was no collaboration, not even among schools. conclusion w hile in theory the multi faith re curriculum has to emphasise knowledge and understanding, in practice teachers have modified it so that students are able to pass re examinations. passing exami nations was, during the interviews, shown to be a priority over knowledge and understanding of the subject. t he teachers engaged their students m ainly in group work, and no particular skills were explained or focused upon regarding this exercise. furthermore, teachers chose religions that they preferred teaching about, although that was not the expectation of the curriculum. it is remarkable to note that there were no differences between re teachers who were actively religious and those who were not, in terms of understanding and classroom practice. t eachers did not use students’ knowledge and experiences as a resource in relation to their religious affiliation or lack of religious affiliation when teaching, hence students were not viewed as a unique and valuable teaching and learning resources. w here the students’ knowledge was used, it went only as far as brainstorming, and not beyond. t eachers did not model skills that could en courage learners to be open and tolerant, since the teachers themselves were not tolerant and open in their treatment of the various religions, because they concentrated on christianity. t eachers did not use a range of easily available resources, such as the library and the internet, to increase their own and their students’ knowledge about religions, because they relied heavily on textbooks. t hey did not retrieve information, especially on some of the religions regarding which inadequate information was provided in textbooks. it is important to note that re teachers should be provided with more opportunities to receive professional in service training each time there is a curriculum change. furthermore, teachers as a learning community need to collaborate in regard to reform as a way of shaping their professional development. finally, there is need for qualitative and quantitative research on how r e teachers interpret a multi faith re curriculum in their classrooms, and the need for research on how the teaching of a multi faith re curriculum can affect re teachers emotionally, i.e. in terms of how they accept or reject it. references botswana government 1995. three year junior secondary syllabus, religious education, ministry of education, curriculum development division. gaborone: government printer. botswana government 1994. revised national policy on education. gaborone: government printer. botswana government 1977. education for kagisano: a report on the national commission on education. gaborone: government printer. chidester d 2003. global citizenship, cultural citizenship and world religions in religion education. in: r jackson (ed.). international perspectives on citizenship, education and religious diversity. london: routledge. clandinin dj & connelly fm 1995. teachers’ professional knowledge landscapes. new york: teachers college 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education, 24:8 19. sutcliffe jm (ed.) 1984. a dictionary of religious education. london: scm press. wenglinsky h 2002. how schools matter: the link between teacher classroom practices and student academic performance. education policy analysis archives, 10. available at http://www.epaa.asu.edu/epaa/vion12/. accessed 19 april 2007. wolf jj 2004. teach, but do not preach: practical guidelines for addressing spiritual concerns of students. professional school counselling, 7:363 366. wright a 2004. the justification of compulsory religious education: a response to professor white. british journal of religious education, 26:119 131. perspectives in education 31(3) perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2013 university of the free state 94 sarah bansilal, university of kwazulu-natal e-mail: bansilals@ukzn.ac.za telephone: 031 260 3451 lizzy’s struggles with attaining fluency in multiplication tables sarah bansilal many learners struggle to make the transition from addition and subtraction to multiplication and division, which hampers further progress in mathematics. in this article, i present a case study of one learner who struggled to attain fluency in multiplication by seven. the purpose of this study was to identify and explain how previous non-encapsulations related to addition and subtraction number bonds hampered her efforts in attaining fluency in the multiplication tables. data for the study were generated from observations and interactions with the child, lizzy, over a period of two years. the study employed a narrative analysis technique, while drawing upon the apos (action, process, object, schema) framework together with the notion of conceptual embodiment. the findings suggest that lizzy’s struggles were due to a non-encapsulation of the various number bond strings, which did not allow her to see patterns in addition by seven. by using an alternative intervention, lizzy was able to use this strategy as a conceptual embodiment leading her to greater fluency in the seven-times table. introduction although most learners spend much time in early years of numeracy on practising addition and multiplication, many struggle to reach the kind of fluency that could make their calculations less burdensome. ernest (2006: 89) says fluency in addition is reached only after several years of practice, when a child knows all of the 100 one-digit addition facts and is able to retrieve any of them in a ‘single rapid mental operation’. achieving this fluency can be made less painful if children were able to compress some of the processes into ‘derived facts’ which is distinguished from ‘a rote learned fact by virtue of its rich inner structure’ (gray & tall, 1991: 3). gray and tall (1991) discuss how progress from counting all to counting on can be hampered when compression to derived facts does not take place. their discussion starts by considering a number, e.g. ‘three’, as representing the process of counting ‘one, two, three’ and can also be seen as the outcome of that process (gray & tall, 1991: 2–4). usually, the counting-all conception is transformed or compressed into a conceptual entity when the child can see the number 3 as an object. if this transition 95 lizzy’s struggles with attaining fluency in multiplication tables sarah bansilal does not take place, the child’s progression to the counting-on conception of addition will be hampered. consider the sum of two numbers, e.g. 3+2. this can be seen as a process of counting all or counting on. a child whose conception of 3 is as a process will have available to her only the counting-all strategy because, with the counting-on strategy, one takes 3 as an object and then counts on from the 3. a child who is still working with a process conception of 3, can still reach an answer for 3+2 but, in so doing, she will use a more cumbersome procedure which involves counting-all the three, then continuing and counting-all the two. by the time she reaches the end of the process, she may have forgotten the beginning; thus, the sum of 3+2 will not be available to her as an object that could be used in further processes such as in subtraction or in sums such as 13+2, which depend on an understanding of place value as well. as the demand in complexity increases, the strategies used by children who have not moved beyond counting all, lead to ‘intolerable difficulties and a high probability of failure’ (gray & tall, 1991:4), while the child who has encapsulated the operations is able to move on to greater fluency. in this study, i consider the case of one child who spent more than two years practising the various number bonds in early primary school. however, her understanding of these bonds remained at a process level and did not allow her to work at higher levels by using them as derived facts. consequently, her methods of working out the eight-times and seven-times table were laborious and complex. i will describe how an alternative path was followed to develop the fluency she required in using these time table strings. theoretical framework simon, tzur, heinz and kinzel (2004: 306) consider learning mathematics as ‘a process of transforming one’s ways of knowing (conceptions) and acting’. dubinsky’s (1991) apos (action, process, object, schema) theory provides a more precise description of these transformations: [a]n action conception is a transformation of a mathematical object by individuals according to an explicit algorithm which is conceived as externally driven. as individuals reflect on their actions, they can interiorize them into a process. each step of a transformation may be described or reflected upon without actually performing it. an object conception is constructed when a person reflects on actions applied to a particular process and becomes aware of the process as a totality, or encapsulates it. a mathematical schema is considered as a collection of action, process and object conceptions, and other previously constructed schemas, which are synthesized to form mathematical structures utilized in problem situations (trigueros & martínez-planell, 2010: 5). within apos theory, a person’s understanding of a concept can be transformed from a process into a totality (object) upon which other transformations can act. when these objects are operated on in further processes, the cycles add layers in the perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 96 system of mathematical concepts. if the previous layer is available to a learner as an encapsulated object, then building upon it becomes a little less burdensome. de lima and tall (2008) propose (using piaget’s work) two different ways of operating on the world; the first is the process-object encapsulation development described by dubinsky (1991) and the second is what they refer to as a conceptual embodied world arising from concrete or physical representations of a mathematics operation or concept. the authors distinguish between a conceptual embodiment and procedural embodiment. many learners develop procedural embodiments arising from a concrete embodiment which may work for one situation but, in trying to extend it to other situations, they develop misconceptions. conceptual embodiment, on the other hand, refers to a concrete embodiment that is productive in enabling a shift from the concrete to the symbolic which, in turn, enables a further processobject development in understanding. in their study, de lima and tall (2008) suggest that a robust concrete embodiment can develop into a conceptual embodiment, which will then facilitate further movement in understanding. the study the purpose of the study was to identify reasons why one learner struggled to develop fluency when working with the multiplication tables. the participant, lizzy (a pseudonym), was between 9 and 10 years old at the time of the study. data were generated from lizzy’s written and verbal responses to various questions, lizzy’s school workbooks and my own reflections (comprising field notes) as i worked with lizzy trying to improve her fluency in the multiplication tables. the process followed in constructing a vignette of lizzy is what polkinghorne (1995) described as narrative analysis. outcomes were identified and i went back to the data and identified ‘thematic threads’ relating to those outcomes (polkinghorne, 1995: 12). these thematic threads relating to the conception of the multiplication table were then configured into the vignette. the analytical framework comprising the genetic decomposition of the concepts is presented next. a genetic decomposition of multiplication tables an essential construct of apos theory is a theoretical description called a genetic decomposition. this is used to ‘characterise the linkages and representations within a concept’ (meel, 2003: 154). a genetic decomposition ‘provides a possible path for a learner’s concept formation; however it may not be representative of the path taken by all students’ (meel, 2003: 154; dubinsky, 1991). in this framework, i present a possible genetic decomposition that can be used to characterise progression from single addition facts to multiplication. i refer to the progression as encapsulation paths, and the various elements of the genetic decomposition are called layers. however, it is important to note that this is a possible path for a learner’s conception, 97 lizzy’s struggles with attaining fluency in multiplication tables sarah bansilal and it will be shown that this path did not work particularly well for lizzy’s own conception. layer 1: process-object understanding of single number bonds a first step is understanding single number bonds or addition facts, e.g. the sum of 5 and 7. at a process level, learners would be able to work out each single element (say, 5+7=12) belonging to the number bond string of, say, 12. when learners can use other forms of the addition fact to perform manipulations upon it such as being able to answer the questions ‘5+ what = 12’,or ‘12–5 = what?’ they show evidence of being able to see the addition fact as a whole – suggesting that they have an object understanding of the addition fact 5+7=12. 5 + 7 = 12 12-5= 7; 12-7=5 figure 1: a single addition fact layer 2: process-object understanding of a number bond string the next stage involves working with the set of decompositions of one number, e.g. 12. by string i refer to the complete set of possible number bonds or decompositions for 12, such as 12+0=12; 11+1=12. being able to do the decompositions of each one separately implies a process understanding. figure 2: the number bond string of 12 an object understanding involves seeing this set of possible decompositions as a whole or a totality, which enables comparisons of the elements making up the string, such as identifying relationships between the addition facts comprising the string, by de-encapsulation. an object understanding of each string facilitates further operations and manipulations on these strings, some of which are detailed in the next few paragraphs. 12+0 =12 11+1 =12 10+2 =12 9+3 =12 8+4 =12 7+5 =12 6+6 =12 perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 98 layer 3: using the encapsulation of the individual number bond strings to recognise patterns across them when a concept has been encapsulated into an object, the learner can: de-encapsulate an object, thereby returning to the process in a form prior to its encapsulations. de-encapsulation enables the learner to use the properties inherent in the object to perform new manipulations upon it (meel, 2003: 152). when the encapsulation of individual number bond strings is extended to strings of different number bonds (e.g. 12 or 13), a learner should be able to pick out particular decompositions across different strings, for example, seeing that 7+5=12, while 7+6=13 (together with the associated subtraction relationships). when they can simultaneously see the difference between groups of sums such as 5+7=12, while 5+8=13, and 5+9=14, they are operating on the single strings as objects. by seeing 5+9=(5+8)+1 they are displaying an object understanding of the different individual strings, because they are able to see the differences between the sets of decompositions belonging to 13 or 14. for example, in the figure below, which shows the decompositions for strings 12 and 13, a child should be able to see a commonality in the addition facts of 7 by identifying patterns in the sums 5+7=12 and 6+7=13 across the different strings. similarly, de-encapsulation of pairs of strings will allow them to see commonalities in adding and subtracting other numbers, for example, 9. figure 3: recognising relationships across number bond strings 12+0 =12 11+1 =12 10+2 =12 9+3 =12 8+4 =12 7+5 =12 6+6 =12 13+0 =13 12+ =13 11+2 =13 10+3 =13 9+4 =13 8+5=13 7+6 =13 99 lizzy’s struggles with attaining fluency in multiplication tables sarah bansilal further layers applying number bond strings in other complex calculations will also require a place value understanding, and this will allow them to work towards problems such as 25+8 and 35+8. for example, we can infer an object level understanding of the number bond string of 13 when they can see 25+8 as 20+5+8=20+13=33, showing that they are able to de-encapsulate the constituent elements of the individual number bond string of 13. their understanding of place value has enabled them to break down the 25, while their object level use of the number bond string of 13 is revealed by replacing 5+8 by 13. multiplication layer at the stage of working out single multiplication elements, they are able to draw upon seeing 3 lots of 7 dots and then seeing 4 lots of 7 dots as adding another 7 to the previous product. thus, they could develop fluency in the multiplication facts of 7 by moving through 7; 7+7; 14+7; 21+7; etc. fluency at this stage requires the previous encapsulations of the number bond strings. results in this section, i provide a vignette of lizzy’s progression in addition and multiplication. multiplication by 7 and 8 towards the end of lizzy’s grade 5 year, i watched her struggle with multiplication of the kind 70×2 or 30×70 and found that she could not see 30×70 as 3×7×100. while investigating this, i found that she was using her fingers to work out the multiplication tables. i was puzzled at the fact that, as soon as she tried to verbalise the tables, she reached immediately for her fingers. as i watched lizzy, i realised that she was using her fingers as a positional reference; the first finger represented 7×1, the second finger was 7×2=14, etc. then she would write down the sequence. once when i asked her to recall the seven-times table she said: ‘7, 14, 22, 22, 21? i struggle to ever get that right’. this struggle showed that she did not recognise a pattern of addition by 7. it took many attempts of working through the various products before she could fluently move through the multiples of 7 as ‘7, 14, 21, 28, 35, 42, 49, 56, 63, 70, 77, 84’. she could then generate in writing the pairwise products in order 7×1=7; 7×2=14; etc. however, when questioned out of that order, i noticed that she could calculate some of them, but not all, for example, she was unsure whether 6×7=48 or 7×7=48. when challenged, lizzy would go back to counting on her fingers, 1st 7, 2nd 14, and so on, and drawing on her two toes to help get to twelfth product. when asked if she confused 7×7 with the six-times table, she said no: ‘i confuse it with this one [pointing to 4×7=28]’. this showed confusion between 48 and 28 (without realising that 7×7 perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 100 is actually 49, not 48, in any case). after rehearsing the seven-times table, she would get them without a problem, and similarly for the eight-times table. however, as soon as i tried to go across the tables, she would get a bit confused when facts from both were required. this indicated a process understanding of each time table string, because she was able to work within one string at a time, but was unable to move across two or more strings. i pondered about how i could help her move to a more fluent understanding of each of the tables. her primary referent understanding of the multiplication facts of 7 was the use of her fingers, where she associated the different multiples with positions on her finger. i realised, however, that the automaticity of her multiplication depended on the previous layer of adding by 7. thus, it seemed that a previous encapsulation of the strings of number bonds was not readily available to her. lizzy’s situation seemed to exemplify simon et al.’s (2004) argument that ‘if a certain conception is not available, the learner cannot recognise a situation’ in the same way that someone who has the conception might. lizzy could not readily access the addition and subtraction facts related to 7. i realised that i needed to help her find a concrete referent that could help her concretise the process of adding by 7. that is, i needed to help her to find a concrete embodied understanding of adding by 7. i was spurred on to this task when i watched her struggle one day with the eighttimes multiplication string. when asked to write out the eight-times table, lizzy just wrote the answers 8, 16, 24, 32, … (as opposed to writing the fact 8×1=8; etc.) and explained: ‘i knew the answers so i just wrote them down’. to generate the next number she just added the 8. when questioned she said ‘i know it’. however, when she got stuck, around the 50s or 60s, she found herself in a tight position. when adding the next 8, she needed to free up her fingers from keeping place or position of the number that was multiplying the 8 in order to use her fingers to add the 8 again. at this stage, her anxiety deepened while she was trying to juggle the different processes that need to be carried out. when that was done, it meant starting counting in 8s again, but one step further with the new sum she had worked out. with all these different operations going on, trying to keep track of the different processes became harder to manage as she moved on to higher multiples of 8. anghileri (1989) presented a similar description of a learner’s struggle to coordinate sequential processes by juggling the tasks between the fingers on each of her hands while trying to recount the three-times table: having counted the middle three fingers of her left hand, ‘one, two, three’ she raised one finger on her right hand. now she focused again on her left hand to count, ‘four, five, six’ and raised a second finger on her right hand. using her left hand she counted, ‘seven, eight, nine’. when she raised a third finger on her right hand, her gaze passed from right hand to left hand and back again. at this point, she abandoned her first attempt, apparently confused over the differing roles of the fingers on her right and left hands (anghileri, 1989: 373). 101 lizzy’s struggles with attaining fluency in multiplication tables sarah bansilal this description of trying to keep track of what was being counted and what was being multiplied, by assigning the functions to the fingers from different hands, resonates with the way in which lizzy was trying to reproduce the times tables. the struggles of lizzy and the learner in anghileri’s study (1989) demonstrate that, when a previous encapsulation has not taken place, further developments that rely on that necessary encapsulation become compromised and more complicated, leading to anxiety. however, if addition by 7s and addition by 8s was readily available to lizzy, then the multiplication by 7 and 8 would be more manageable, because the automaticity of the addition would leave her some space to focus on the seven-times table. i realised that, if she could encapsulate addition facts for particular numbers (such as 1+7, 2+7, 3+7), this may improve her fluency in obtaining the multiplication facts for 7. problems with previous non-encapsulations at this stage, i decided to go back to investigate lizzy’s use of addition facts. lizzy had no problems seeing the different possible decompositions of the single addition facts such as 5+7=12. she was able to answer questions such as ‘5+what = 12’ as well as ‘12–5 = what?’ in assessing her use of the number bond string, i first asked lizzy to write bonds of 12 such as 0+12=12; 1+11=12. when she got to 5+7=12, she said: ‘then what comes next, i forgot’. i prompted her by saying ‘6+ what =12? she then completed the list and was able to recite the whole string, by rote. when asked to write the possible decompositions of 13, lizzy proceeded without any problems. after she got to ‘6+7=13’, she wrote, ‘7+8=13’. when asked ‘what is 6+7=?’ (reminding her of the previous step), lizzy replied: ‘oh, i made a mistake’. she then corrected her error to write ‘7+6=13’. she was able to rattle off the number bonds of 13. also when asked questions such as ‘7+ what =13?’; ‘10+ what =13?’, she was able to answer these without a problem. with questions such as ’13–4 = what?’, ’13–7 = what?’, she was a little bit slower but able to get to the correct answer. however, when i moved back to the question ’12–7 = what?’, she said ‘6’. this showed that she was only fluent when considering one string at a time. i then probed her by asking ‘what is 7+6?’; her reply was 13. then i asked: ‘so what is 13 – 7’; the reply was ‘6’. so when i returned to the original fact (12–7) and asked her ‘7+ what is 12?’, lizzy was then able to reply correctly ‘5’. this shows that moving across different bonds by looking at addition by 7 or subtraction of 7 was staggered and not fluent. lizzy was working with the string of number bonds on a process level. she used a pattern starting with 0+12=12. she then increased the first number and decreased the second number to generate the new addition fact or decomposition of 12 (1+11=12). however, lizzy has struggled to reach past this level – she could not see the string as a whole or a totality, which requires associating the different pairs of numbers in the string with 12. she could not identify those addition facts related to decompositions of 12, that is, she could not de-encapsulate the string of number bonds for 12. in perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 102 order to use the different strings to fluently extract the addition facts of 7 across different strings (12, 13), one requires an object level understanding of these bond strings, which was not accessible to lizzy. an alternative route in pondering over the barriers faced by lizzy, i realised that the two years she spent learning the number bonds did not help her recognise pairs of numbers which add up to 12 or 13, say. she could see only those pairs in terms of the 12 or the 13 – she could not de-encapsulate the string which would allow her to ‘use the properties inherent in the object to perform new manipulations upon it’ (meel, 2003: 152). in order to gain fluency in multiplication by 7 (or by 8), she needed a fluency in addition by 7 (or by 8). getting to that sense via the number bonds route, is complicated because it requires two layers of movement and no concrete embodiment to revert to, which could help consolidate or support her ways of working. at this stage, i consulted with a colleague from columbia i met at a conference, who suggested that i use two tables made up of ten cells each, as illustrated in figure 4, with red and black counters to represent different numbers. we practised addition facts of 9 such as 9+5=?; 9+6=?; where the 9 was represented by nine black counters in the first table, and the 5 or the 6 was represented by the red counters. the associated subtraction (15–9, say) could also be modelled by leaving the nine black counters on the first table and then placing in red counters until there were ten in the first table, then five in the second table. we then blocked the black counters, and asked: ‘how many counters are left?’. this helped her see addition and subtraction by 9 in a concrete manner, and also helped her concretise various decompositions of 10. then, a similar situation was set up with eight black counters being used for addition by 8 and subtraction by 8. when she got stuck, she placed the counters and physically counted them. after a while, she could imagine what 8+7 meant – two reds to make up the ten, leaving five reds for the next block, therefore 15. this is referred to as the ‘make ten’ bridging strategy (ernest, 2006: 90). 103 lizzy’s struggles with attaining fluency in multiplication tables sarah bansilal ernest (2006) uses the example of 3+8 to argue that the sum involves a series of transformations which depend on an intuitive understanding of the associativity of addition. he lists these as 3+8, 3+(7+1), (3+7) + 1, 10+1, 11. however in this very concrete example, lizzy could see that 8 +7 = 8+ (2 +5) = (8+2) +5 = 15, and the transformations inherent in the associative grouping were supported by the concrete situation. the sum 7 + 7 would be concretely modelled as 7 + (3 + 4) = 10 + 4, while 7 + 5 would be seen as 7+(3+2) = (7+3) +2 = 10+2 = 12. thus, the use of the counters helped lizzy access a concrete embodiment of what it meant to add 7 and another one-digit number. she first practised using the counters and then, when she was comfortable with that, she was able to reach the answer without physically moving the counters around. by doing this repeatedly, she could then see patterns in adding 7 to other one-digit numbers, leading her to an object understanding of the number facts associated with 7. de lima and tall’s (2008) explanations of conceptual embodiment help shed light on this development. the manipulation of counters can be seen as a conceptual embodiment because it led her to see patterns in adding and subtracting by 7, eliminating the need for her to go back to checking with her fingers. thus, using the counters for addition and subtraction by 7 acted as a conceptual embodiment allowing her to gain fluency in establishing the seven-times multiplication table. now that lizzy had access to a conceptual embodiment of adding and subtracting by 7, her methods of working out the seven-times table (by using her fingers as position) worked fine for her needs. lizzy’s anxiety has reduced considerably. i think that having the concrete method has helped to make it less burdensome so that she only has to concentrate on finding the next multiple of 7. in time, she will reach the fluency in seeing the whole string of pairs making up the seven-times table. the increasing fluency has induced a sense of confidence; so she is more certain about the results she figure 4: using the ‘make ten’ strategy to consolidate addition and subtraction facts, red counters illustrated as grey. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 104 obtains. i have noticed that lizzy is finding equivalent fractions and simplification of fractions much easier because the multiplication facts are now so fluent. discussion and concluding remarks lizzy’s experiences illustrated that a previous non-encapsulation of the number bond strings hindered her from gaining fluency in multiplication strings which would, in turn, hamper her in further work that relies on multiplication and division. by using an alternative approach, she was helped to concretise her experience of adding and subtracting particular numbers such as 8 or 7. although lizzy still uses her fingers as a prompt for the different multiples of 7, it is being used in a simpler manner because she does not have to interrupt the rhythm to then work out, for example, 56+7. if she momentarily hesitates, she has a picture that helps her ‘see’ the addition fact 7+6=13. the coloured counters served as a concrete embodiment that helped her develop a conceptual embodiment of addition and subtraction by 7 which is available to her now as an encapsulated object. as ernest has noted, there are 100 one-digit addition facts, and a non-encapsulation of previous patterns adds a large load to the processes that children have to manage in the course of doing a calculation. in primary schools, children spend an inordinate time (in lizzy’s case, two years) practising these number bonds or decomposition strings, because it is assumed that these form the building blocks for solving problems based on addition, multiplication and division in future. however, in lizzy’s situation all that effort spent on writing it down and rehearsing it was not productive, because it did not help her in building her understanding of the multiplication strings. a focus on the addition and subtraction by 7 and addition and subtraction of 8, etc., proved to be more useful to her in learning multiplication, because it opened up an alternative encapsulation path which was strengthened by the use of the conceptual embodiment (the counters). based on her experiences, i suggest that teachers consider using these addition and subtraction blocks, shown in figure 4, which focus on adding and subtracting a particular number. these can then lead to seeing patterns in adding and subtracting specific numbers. trying to encapsulate the strings of bonds proved to be difficult, because we could not find a concrete embodiment that could be used to lead to a conceptual embodiment for further development. however, the use of the two blocks, which was based on the ‘make ten’ strategy, while being concrete, allowed lizzy to go back to the board to verify and confirm her results. in this case, the concrete embodiment has facilitated further movement to a conceptual embodiment. de lima and tall (2008: 17) argue that it is important to build upon the learner’s experience, and they caution that a teacher has to be sensitive to the child’s current knowledge and need to recognise ‘earlier fragility of knowledge’ as exhibited ‘in subsequent knowledge that causes a rethink of how to teach earlier knowledge in future’. 105 lizzy’s struggles with attaining fluency in multiplication tables sarah bansilal in this detailed single case study, it was possible for me to introspect on many of these issues that de lima and tall (2008) have highlighted, because of the time that i was able to spend with lizzy. most teachers, however, do not have the luxury of providing such detailed attention. nevertheless, there are many teachers who have developed insight through the teaching of similar concepts using similar methods, and many such dedicated teachers develop a repertoire of strategies and indicators which help them recognise which strategies may be more helpful than others. it is my hope that such teachers are supported and recognised for the work they do in reducing the struggles of their learners in learning mathematics concepts. list of references anghileri j 1989. an investigation of young children’s understanding of multiplication. educational studies in mathematics, 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falmer. simon ma, tzur r, heinz k, & kinzel m 2004. explicating a mechanism for conceptual learning: elaborating the construct of reflective abstraction. journal for research in mathematics education,35(5) : 305-329 tall d 2004. the three worlds of mathematics. for the learning of mathematics, 23(3):29–33. trigueros m & martínez-planell r 2010. geometrical representations in the learning of two-variable functions. educational studies in mathematics, 73: 3–19. perspectives in education 31(3) perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2013 university of the free state 19 peter pausigere south african numeracy chair project rhodes university e-mail: peterpausigere@yahoo.com telephone: 071 709 5226 mellony graven south african numeracy chair project rhodes university e-mail: m.graven@ru.ac.za telephone: 046 603 7268 unveiling the south african official primary mathematics teacher pedagogic identity peter pausigere & mellony graven this article is theoretically informed by bernstein’s (2000) notion of pedagogic identity, supplemented by tyler’s (1999) elaboration of bernstein’s theory into an analytical framework that describes four possible identity positions relating to classification and framing properties. the article analyses key primary mathematics curriculum policy documents to investigate the official primary mathematics teacher identity as constructed by both previous and current south african education curricula. the article reveals that the first post-apartheid curriculum, curriculum 2005 (c2005), projected a ‘therapeutic’ primary mathematics teacher identity with symbolic pedagogical intentions. the recent south african curriculum policy changes to a common curriculum framework (curriculum and assessment policy, caps) and universal primary learner tests (annual national assessments, ana) construct and promote a ‘market’ (bernstein 2000) primary mathematics teacher identity. keywords: south african primary maths teacher identity, bernstein, pedagogic identity introduction in this article, we investigate the type of primary mathematics teacher identity promoted by post-apartheid curriculum reforms and recent changes in south african primary mathematics education, as revealed in curriculum policy documents. to help us explain the construction of primary mathematics teacher identity, we draw upon bernstein’s (2000) model of pedagogic identity, which explains how different modalities of curricular reform construct different such identities. we supplement bernstein’s concept of pedagogic identities with the findings of tyler’s (1999) study, which interprets bernstein’s pedagogic identity positions in terms of knowledge coding properties (that is, classification and framing). perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 20 bernstein and tyler used the concept of pedagogic identity to analyse british and australian educational reforms in the last quarter of the 20th century, which were characterised by a homogeneous national curriculum and the compulsory testing of primary learners in core subjects. in the post-apartheid era, south africa has also experienced major curriculum reforms: curriculum 2005 (c2005), revised national curriculum statement (rncs), national curriculum statement (ncs), curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) and, recently, the introduction of standardised annual national assessment (ana) tests in numeracy and literacy. this development is similar to aspects of the education reforms experienced in the united kingdom and australia in the 1990s. the question, therefore, arises as to whether (and in what ways) the south african primary mathematics teacher identities promoted by both the previous and the current south african mathematics education policies relate to bernstein’s model of pedagogic identity and its realisation through classification and framing principles. to investigate the concept of primary mathematics teacher identity, we analysed key national curriculum documents, focusing mainly on the caps and c2005 primary mathematics policy documents. given that ana is part of the raft of measures associated with caps, we also draw from policy documentation relating to ana in our discussion of caps. embedded in these curriculum policy documents is an officially sanctioned version of primary mathematics teacher identity (tyler, 1999; bernstein & solomon, 1999). coupling our theoretical perspective with our document analysis indicates that the educational reforms that gave rise to c2005 promoted a ‘therapeutic’ primary mathematics teacher identity, whereas the current caps curriculum changes project more of a ‘market’ primary mathematics teacher identity (bernstein 2000). the south african curriculum context in this section, we discuss the basic principles of c2005, from 1997 when c2005 was launched to 2002 when the rncs was introduced. we analyse the curriculum policy documents for this period and briefly explain the type of mathematics primary teacher identity promoted during this era. we focus only on this five-year period, for we argue that, after 2002, the revised curriculum changed its focus and the teacher identity it promoted. it is beyond the scope of the present article to include discussion of the primary mathematics teacher identity promoted by the rncs. thereafter, we focus on education policy changes from the time of the foundations for learning strategy, launched in 2008, until the present day. we analyse the implication of such changes for the resultant primary mathematics teacher identity promoted. curriculum 2005 in the wake of the first democratic elections in 1994, south africa introduced a new curriculum in 1997, called curriculum 2005. local education literature and the curriculum policy document reveal that this new curriculum had a clear political 21 unveiling the south african official primary mathematics teacher pedagogic identity peter pausigere and mellony graven agenda, for it was regarded as the educational route out of apartheid (tyler & vinjevold, 1999; chisholm et al., 2000; jansen, 2001; doe, 1997c). the core curriculum design features which underpinned c2005 were constructivism manifested in learner-centredness, integration and outcomes-based education (chisholm et al., 2000; chisholm, 2005). other key principles on which c2005 was based were “… holistic development, relevance, participation and ownership, accountability and transparency, flexibility, critical and creative thinking, progression, anti-biased approach, inclusion of learners with special education needs, quality standards and international comparability” (doe, 1997a: 2-3; doe, 1997b: 2-3).1 these core design features, principles and values of c2005 affected the mathematical knowledge that was to be taught, and how it was to be taught and evaluated at the primary level. the post-apartheid curriculum’s main shift was from a content-based syllabus to an outcomes-based approach (doe, 1997a; doe, 1997c). the then learning area of mathematical literacy, mathematics and mathematical sciences (mlmms) for grades 1 to 9 had specific outcomes which outlined the general skills, abilities and values that a learner was expected to demonstrate at the end of the general education and training (get) band (doe, 1997c). because c2005 was learner-centred, it emphasised that learners should take “responsibility for their own learning” through co-operative and learner-engaging activities (doe, 1997b; doe, 1997c: 29). teachers no longer bore the responsibility of being ‘source[s] and transmitters of knowledge’, but were instead designated as ‘facilitators of learning’ with the freedom to develop their own learning programmes (doe, 1997a; doe, 1997c). the outcomes-based approach meant that primary mathematics teachers had to shift from focusing exclusively on mathematical knowledge and include attention to aspects of learning that promoted acceptable societal attitudes, attributes and competences among learners. c2005 involved the most radical form of integration, across all learning areas, through the pursuit of cross-curricular themes (doe, 1997b). because c2005 foregrounded learners’ personal experiences and everyday knowledge, learners were mainly evaluated through continuous portfolio-based formative assessment. teachers awarded learners marks not only for subject knowledge, but also for their creativity and critical thinking (doe, 1997c). through c2005’s emphasis on integrating mathematics with other learning areas and applying it to reallife situations, conceptual mathematical knowledge was downplayed (taylor & vinjenvold, 1999; chisholm et al., 2000; graven, 2002; chisholm, 2005; reeves & muller, 2005; fleisch, 2008). graven (2002) points out that the mlmms’s specific outcomes and its rationale had political reconstruction aims, and revealed a radical shift in the philosophy of mathematics and the development of mathematics teacher identities. with progression and summative assessment shifted to the background, and integration between learning areas and everyday knowledge emphasised, the subject specific (mathematics) pedagogic identity of the primary teacher was significantly weakened. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 22 curriculum and assessment policy statement curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) makes numerous changes influencing the teaching and learning of primary mathematics. the tone for these changes was, however, set in the foundations for learning campaign, launched by the minister of education in 2008. this strategy was motivated by south african learners’ poor performance in regional and international tests and aimed at ensuring that 60% of learners achieve 50% and above in literacy and numeracy by 2014 (doe, 2008). under the new national monitoring measures, all south african primary learners undergo annual national assessments (standardised tests) to monitor and track their literacy and numeracy (mathematics) levels across grades 1 to 6 and grade 9. the 2012 ana national maths mean scores reveal that performance tends to decline as one moves up the grades, with 77.4% of grade 1 learners achieving over 50% for mathematics, reducing to 10.6% for grades 6 (dbe, 2012). caps was implemented at the primary level across grades in 2012. this new curriculum took heed of the numerous criticisms levelled against the ncs (taylor & vinjevold, 1999; chisholm et al., 2000; reeves & muller, 2005; fleisch, 2008; schollar, 2008), and repackaged the ncs into a content-based curriculum organised around knowledge. the restructured caps curriculum hopes to result in standardisation of the curriculum requirements across the country (dbe, 2011c) and aims to improve the knowledge and learner performance levels in numeracy and literacy (dbe, 2012). it specifies content knowledge and skills to be taught, with explicit sequencing and pacing (dbe, 2011a; dbe, 2011b). in the area of primary mathematics, the caps curriculum emphasises the need for deep conceptual understanding and the acquisition of key numeracy concepts, involving mental mathematics, number sense and word problems (dbe, 2011a). the new curriculum policy document encourages an active and critical approach to learning in which learners “do, talk, demonstrate and record” their mathematical thinking (dbe, 2011a: 9; dbe, 2011b). the new policy also recommends that evaluation of learners’ work include both informal and formal assessments (with ana tests forming part of the formal assessment tasks), which must be recorded, rated and reported to all stakeholders. the new caps document thus projects a primary mathematics teacher, who supports learners, to master fundamental mathematics concepts, and assesses and tests learners’ understanding of these. bernstein and tyler’s pedagogic identities in investigating officially projected south african primary mathematics teacher identities, this article draws on bernstein’s (2000) concept of pedagogic identities, which was originally used to analyse contemporary curriculum reforms in britain in the mid-1980s. central to bernstein’s pedagogic identity model (bernstein, 2000; bernstein & solomon, 1999) is the argument that the official knowledge and pedagogic modalities of curriculum reforms distributed in educational institutions construct, 23 unveiling the south african official primary mathematics teacher pedagogic identity peter pausigere and mellony graven embed and project different official pedagogic identities. bernstein’s concept of pedagogic identities generated four distinct pedagogic identity positions, namely conservative, neo-conservative, therapeutic and market,2 which are constructed and projected through changes in the official knowledge brought about by curricular reform. we supplement bernstein’s pedagogic identity model with tyler’s (1999) work, which explains how pedagogic identities and their realisations are constructed by variations in classification and framing relations. before discussing bernstein’s four pedagogic identity positions, we briefly explain the concepts of classification and framing, as these are core to bernstein’s (1971) educational knowledge code theory. classification is concerned with the organisation of knowledge into curriculum. with strong classification, areas of knowledge and subject contents are well insulated into traditional subjects (sadovnik, 2001; bernstein, 1971). weak classification refers to an integrated curriculum with blurred boundaries between contents (sadovnik, 2001; bernstein, 1971). the concept of frame “determines the structure of the message system” and refers to the “options available to teacher and taught in the control of what is transmitted and received in the context of the pedagogical relationship” (bernstein, 1971: 205). where framing is strong, there is a sharp boundary; where framing is weak, a blurred boundary exists between what may or may not be transmitted, which results in reduced insulation between everyday and educational knowledge (bernstein, 1971). bernstein (1971: 214) further elaborated that the “selection, organisation, pacing and timing of knowledge [is] realised in the pedagogical frame”. whilst in his earlier writing, bernstein (1971) explained pacing, sequencing and progression as critical variables of the frame strength, in his later work he also considers hierarchical and evaluative (criteria) rules as core components of framing (bernstein, 2003). bernstein (2000: 66) classified conservative pedagogic identities as being those teacher positions generated and shaped by national resources or discourses and “grand narratives of the past” that provide exemplars, criteria, belonging and coherence. conservative teacher identities are “formed by hierarchically ordered, strongly bounded, explicitly stratified and sequenced discourse and practices” (bernstein, 2000: 67). the resulting identities, according to tyler (1999: 276), are “inflexible and generalised”. in this category of identity, there is tight control over the content of education but not over its outputs. tyler (1999) explains that, in terms of educational codes, this identity position can be described as having both strong classification and framing properties, as was the case with britain prior to the 1960s. neo-conservative pedagogic identities are “formed by recontextualising selected (and appropriate) features from the past to stabilise” and facilitate “engaging with contemporary change” (bernstein, 2000: 68). this externally-oriented fusion of identity emphasises performance and thus requires the state to control education inputs and outputs (bernstein, 2000: 76; tyler, 1999). because of its dual desire to stabilise the past and engage with change by creating appropriate attitudes towards it, this teacher identity category exhibits strong framing typical of the conservative perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 24 position, yet its disregard for traditional disciplinary boundaries and academic identities leads to weak knowledge classification (bernstein, 2000; tyler, 1999). in other words, neo-conservative pedagogic identities are sustained in official education arenas whose curriculum is strongly framed and weakly classified. therapeutic pedagogic identities are “produced by complex theories of personal, cognitive and social development, often labelled progressive” (bernstein, 2000: 68) or “child centred” (bernstein, 2003: 63). the therapeutic position projects autonomous, sense-making, integrated modes of knowing and adaptable co-operative social practices that create internal coherence. bernstein cautions that such pedagogic identities are costly to produce with outputs that are not easily measurable. the transmission which produces this identity rebels against specialised categories of discourse and prefers weak knowledge boundaries (bernstein, 2000). tyler (1999: 276) describes the therapeutic position as “weakly classified and framed since it exhibits low specialisation and localised, adaptable practices”. bernstein (2000) explains that in the educational reforms introduced by the national curriculum in the united kingdom in the late 1980s, the therapeutic identity was ‘projected weakly if at all’. in this article we discuss how this identity position was promoted by means of c2005, launched in south africa in the late 1990s. lastly, bernstein (2000: 71) identified the market position, which integrates “a de-centralised device of management (for example in evaluation) embedded in a curriculum emphasising national enterprise (cultural, economic and political)”. the market teacher identity category is characterised by autonomy, with a focus on producing competitive output-products (students) with an exchange value in a market and constructing an outwardly responsive identity driven by external contingencies. this identity is also oriented towards the intrinsic value of the discourse responsible for the serial ordering of subjects in the curriculum, and has to contend with the possible tension between enhancing learners’ test performance and teaching disciplinary knowledge. this pedagogic position has “strong knowledge boundaries but contingent and personalised practices” (tyler, 1999: 276). this implies that, according to tyler’s (1999) theoretical scheme, the market identity is weakly framed but strongly classified. tyler (1999: 270) notes that there are similarities between this identity category and “visible market pedagogy”, notably, according to bernstein (2003: 213), in terms of “explicit rules of selection, sequence, pace and criteria”. the explicit rules of selection, sequence, pace and criteria have two different implications. first, according to bernstein (2003: 213), they “readily translate[s] into performance indicators of schools’ staff and pupils”. in this instance, the strong pacing and sequencing rules of the market position serve as performance measures of the education system’s effectiveness and distribution procedures for homogenising acquisition (bernstein, 2003). secondly, the explicit rules of selection, sequencing and criteria can also be read as measures to strengthen the frame of educational knowledge (bernstein, 1971). these two propositions resonate and contradict 25 unveiling the south african official primary mathematics teacher pedagogic identity peter pausigere and mellony graven tyler’s (1999) theoretical scheme, especially on how the market pedagogic identity category is realised through strong classification and weak framing. this article will explain how this position is reflected in current changes in the south african primary mathematics education. figure 1, adopted from tyler (1999: 276), presents bernstein’s four pedagogic identity positions in relation to framing and classification principles. figure 1: bernstein’s pedagogic identity classes repositioned according to classification and framing properties research method the data collection technique used for this study is based on document, or content analysis (best & kahn, 2006). the primary official sources of data were the official curriculum policy documents. we scrutinised and analysed the coverage of mathematics for the foundation and intermediate phases in c2005 and caps, the foundations for learning campaign policy document and an ana report. these official documents project teacher professional identities and practices as intended by the national government. a theory-driven deductive data analysis approach was used to synthesise data obtained from curriculum policy documents (best & kahn, 2006). the coding and exploration of data was guided mainly by bernstein’s model of pedagogic identity, supplemented by tyler’s interpretation of bernstein’s work. bernstein’s concept of pedagogic identity provides an analytic tool to analyse positions of south african primary mathematics teachers in the context of education reform. bernstein and tyler’s typology of pedagogic identity also provides the language to describe and explain the official projected primary mathematics teachers’ positions during the process of curriculum change. the unit of analysis for this study is primary mathematics teacher identity. this collectively refers to both foundation-phase teachers (who teach across the curriculum and thus not only mathematics) and intermediate-phase teachers (some of whom teach only maths within this phase). perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 26 discussion south african primary mathematics teacher identities in this section, we discuss the primary mathematics teacher identities projected by the focal south african curriculum reforms. first, we explain how c2005’s reforms promoted a therapeutic primary mathematics teacher identity in relation to classification and framing. secondly, and paramount for this article, we explain how recent curriculum changes project a shift towards a market primary mathematics teacher identity, interpreted within classification and framing theory. c2005’s therapeutic primary mathematics teacher identity the key purpose of post-apartheid education was to make a significant shift from apartheid’s fundamental pedagogics, which had “perpetuated race, class, gender and ethnic divisions”, to c2005, that was “restructured to reflect the values and principles of our new democratic society” (doe, 1997a: 1). both taylor and vinjenvold (1999) and jansen (2001) agree that c2005 was a politically symbolic pedagogical route out of the legacy of apartheid education, with the new curriculum promoting knowledge, globally transferable skills and social justice values for all citizens. bernstein (2000: 73) states that the therapeutic identity “is a truly symbolic construction” probably meant, in the case of south africa, to serve a political mandate and inculcate democratic and social values. the primary mathematics teacher’s role could not evade the key macropolitical responsibilities that characterised the new south african pedagogical order. constructivism underpinned c2005, manifesting itself in learner-centredness (chisholm, 2005). curriculum policy documents outlined the characteristics of the learner as an “active, participating learner”, thriving in a “co-operative learning environment”. children would take “responsibility for their own learning”. bernstein (2000: 68) notes that the therapeutic identity “is produced by complex theories of personal, cognitive and social development often labelled progressive”. constructivism is one such modern progressive social cognitive theory. the learner as characterised by c2005 moreover accords with bernstein’s therapeutic pedagogic category’s production of a “participating, co-operative modality of social relations” which is oriented to “autonomous … flexible thinking and socially to team work as an active participant” (bernstein, 2000: 68). the therapeutic teacher identity thus foregrounds facilitation of a particular kind of learner and learning through cooperative social approaches, thus resonating strongly with c2005’s promoted teacher roles (graven, 2002). our reading of the curriculum policy documents through bernstein’s theoretical lens indicates that the pedagogical relationship between the ‘facilitator’ and the ‘learner’, implied weak framing, with the teacher having a limited degree of control of both the pupil and the knowledge transmitted (bernstein, 1971). tyler (1999) also maintains that therapeutic positions are weakly framed. from a framing perspective, c2005 projected a therapeutic primary mathematics teacher identity of one who 27 unveiling the south african official primary mathematics teacher pedagogic identity peter pausigere and mellony graven would facilitate learning for an active and creative learner (doe, 1997c). this official position skewed the teacher-pupil-knowledge triad relationship and constructed a weak identity for primary mathematics teachers. the key c2005 guiding principle of integration relates to the therapeutic teacher identity. south africa’s radical form of integration effectively implied the combination of all eight learning areas through cross-curricular themes (nde, 1997; doe, 1997a; doe, 1997b). taylor and vinjevold’s (1999) review of the department of education’s illustrative learning programme indicates the predominance of non-mathematical tasks at the expense of mathematics conceptual knowledge in primary mathematics classes. in terms of bernstein’s (1975) concept of classification, c2005 was weakly classified, as the boundaries of discipline knowledge were blurred through the integration of the eight learning areas and the blending of educational and everyday non-school knowledge. bernstein (2000) and tyler (1999) concur that the therapeutic teacher identity’s transmission prefers weak boundaries, or that this position is weakly classified. bernstein (2000) and tyler (1999) outline some therapeutic pedagogic identity features that can be related to c2005, especially the fact that this identity is opposed to specialised categories of discourse and prefers an integrated modality of knowing – hence its recourse to regions of knowledge or arenas of experiences that are referred to as learning areas. even the naming of the mathematical learning area, as mathematical literacy, mathematics and mathematical sciences (mlmms) foregrounded integration. under c2005, teachers had to continuously assess learners by using a wide range of strategies, including learner portfolios, selfand peer assessment, group work and project work, with external formal assessments being undertaken at the end of grades 3 and 6 (doe, 1997a). c2005’s emphasis on continuous formative assessment strategies over summative assessment is consonant with bernstein’s (2000: 213) portrayal of the therapeutic pedagogic identity as an “internally regulated construction … relatively independent of external consumer signifiers”. bernstein (1971) notes that evaluation is a function of the strength of classification and framing – thus in an integrated, weakly classified and framed curriculum, such as c2005, evaluative criteria tend to be weak with multiple criteria for assessment emphasising ways of knowing rather than the acquisition of knowledge. from a bernsteinian perspective, c2005’s assessment forms were meant to recognise and liberate individual learner qualities and inner attributes (bernstein, 2003). such evaluative practices impacted on the assessment of learners’ mathematical work, with the result that the primary mathematics teacher had to contend with awarding learners marks not only for “remembering subject content”, but also for “different aspects of the learners’ abilities, such as their creativity and critical thinking” (doe, 1997c: 12). in summary, c2005’s radical form of integration, weak classification, orientation to integrated mathematical knowledge and emphasis on continuous formative assessment projected a south african therapeutic primary mathematics teacher identity, which foregrounded social and political healing at the expense of perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 28 progressive mathematical conceptual understanding (taylor & vinjenvold, 1999; chisholm et al., 2000; graven, 2002; chisholm, 2005). caps’ market primary mathematics teacher identity the caps primary mathematics curriculum documents emphasise the need for deep conceptual understanding and the acquisition of key mathematics knowledge. the main focus falls on the first of the five content areas, “numbers, operations and relations”; this makes up 60% and 50% of the foundationand intermediate-phase mathematics content, respectively. the focus stems from the intention of ensuring that learners acquire “secure number sense and operational fluency” and are “competent and confident with numbers and calculations” (dbe, 2011a: 8; dbe, 2011b). the importance of mental mathematics, initially highlighted in the foundations for learning campaign, also features strongly in the primary mathematics curriculum, which promotes “number bonds and multiplication table facts” (dbe, 2011a: 8; doe, 2008). the primary mathematics curriculum documents also highlight the need for learners to engage in problem-solving activities, thereby creating a context for the development of higher order mathematical concepts (dbe, 2011a; dbe, 2011b). south african primary mathematics education’s focus on improving learners’ number sense, operational fluency, mental mathematics and problem solving aligns with the influential and international primary mathematics studies that have identified these mathematics activities as central for developing learners’ mathematical proficiency. the resulting primary mathematics teacher identity thus corresponds with bernstein’s market pedagogic position, which is oriented towards the segmental, serial ordering of subjects within the curriculum. regarding primary mathematics teaching practices, the curriculum policy allows for both learner-centred and teacher-centred activities that foreground mathematical concepts and skills. whilst whole-class activities, small-group and independent activities are the main primary mathematics teaching classroom skills listed in the new curriculum policy documents, they also encourage an active and critical approach to learning, under which teachers accommodate learners’ computational strategies (dbe, 2011a; dbe, 2011b). reading through the primary mathematics curriculum documents, one gets mixed messages on the teaching approach advocated by this new curriculum. analysis of the primary mathematics curriculum documents using bernstein’s work (1971; 2000; 2003) and tyler’s (1999) theoretical insights reveals that the new curriculum’s framing is strengthened and thus stronger than c2005’s frame. it is useful to view strengths of classification and framing along a continuum rather than simply as polar opposites of strong and weak classification and framing. in our analysis of the framing of caps, we have found it more useful to locate the shift as a process of movement between the poles of weak and strong framing, where the starting point, direction and distance of movement along the continuum are important. the strengthening of the frame under caps could be a result of the 29 unveiling the south african official primary mathematics teacher pedagogic identity peter pausigere and mellony graven type of mathematics knowledge that is supposed to be learnt in local primary classes, especially given the fact that the new curriculum emphasises the learners’ operational fluency. this argument emanates from bernstein’s (1971) assertion that the form of knowledge transmitted affects the nature of the framing. it logically follows that the strong caps content knowledge classification has resulted in a strengthened primary mathematics frame. if “frame … refers to pacing” (bernstein, 1971: 228), and “instructional or discursive rules” (bernstein, 2003: 198), then strong pacing is evident in the caps primary mathematics curriculum documents through its specification, clarification, timing and sequencing of content from grade to grade across the four terms of the year (dbe, 2011a; dbe, 2011b). in other words, strong pacing and sequencing is indicated through grade by grade “specification of content to show progression” (dbe, 2011a: 19; dbe, 2011b). such sequencing serves to indicate the “progression of concepts and skills” and how content can be adequately spread over time (dbe, 2011a: 19; dbe, 2011b). these two purposes of strong pacing reported in the new curriculum show strong framing, as there are “reduced options” available to teacher and taught in terms of the primary mathematics “concepts and skills” that are supposed to be transmitted and received in the pedagogical relationship (bernstein, 1971: 205; dbe, 2011a: 19; dbe, 2011b: 12). furthermore, bernstein’s (2003: 206) elaboration that “with strong pacing, time is at a premium” is illustrated in the primary mathematics curriculum documents’ recommended distribution and allocation of mathematics teaching topic-cum-time schedules (dbe, 2011a; dbe, 2011b). the mathematical concepts to be relayed at the primary level have been explicitly stated and timed in the curriculum documents and this indicates a strong framing. on the other hand, the specification, sequencing and pacing of content elaborated in local primary mathematics curriculum documents should not be viewed exclusively as strengthening the framing, but also serves to give a guidance “on the spread of content in the examination/assessment” (dbe, 2011a: 11; dbe, 2011b: 12) which, according to bernstein (2003), translates into school learning performance indicators. such intentions are also stated in the ana report (dbe, 2012). secondly, though the curriculum is highly sequenced and paced, it leaves room for primary mathematics teachers to “sequence and pace the maths content differently from the recommendations” in the policy documents (dbe, 2011b: 32). thirdly, like the previous curricula, caps is founded on, and retains allegiance to the principles of “social transformation … human rights, inclusivity and social justice” that were foregrounded initially in c2005 and later in the ncs (dbe, 2011a: 3). according to bernstein (2000), the market position radically transforms the regulative discourse of the institution, as this affects its conditions of survival, resulting in weakly framed transmission (tyler, 1999). similarly, caps did not forego the political pedagogical intentions that initially set the groundwork for curriculum reform in south africa and these are carried through. thus, while shifting towards the market, there is still some overlap with certain features of the therapeutic perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 30 identity within c2005. because of this, the weak framing of c2005 is shifted to the background in the strong pacing of caps, resulting in a strengthened frame. the primary mathematics teacher identity projected thus actively engages learners within the recommended mathematical concepts and discourse. with regard to the objective of “improving the quality of basic education” (dbe, 2012: 1), the new caps curriculum seeks to ensure that there are similar interpretations of the curriculum across the country (dbe, 2011c), and to improve the knowledge and learner performance levels in numeracy and literacy (dbe, 2012). however, the latter function is primarily grounded in the ana standardised tests which are meant to monitor, track and improve the literacy and numeracy levels of south african learners. secondly, the ana tests are meant to serve as a diagnostic tool for identifying areas of strength and weakness in teaching and learning, provide information for school-focused interventions, and afford teachers benchmark information and baseline data that can ameliorate classroom assessment practices and inform the teaching and learning of literacy and numeracy (dbe, 2012). thirdly and from an education policy management perspective, the anas provide credible and reliable information to monitor progress, and guide planning and the distribution of resources to help improve learners’ literacy and numeracy knowledge and skills (dbe, 2012). both bernstein (2000; 2003) and tyler (1999) argue that a common national curriculum framework and the periodic mass testing of learners enables centralised monitoring and the homogenisation of educational practices, thereby creating performance indicators for accountability, transparency and efficiency. according to bernstein (2000), the market pedagogic identity position realises these intentions by integrating a decentralised device of evaluation management within a curriculum emphasising national enterprise. thus, teacher identities in this category must negotiate the tension between “satisfying external competitive demands” and “the intrinsic value of the discourse” (bernstein, 2000: 71). similarly, south african primary mathematics teachers’ identities have to meet the dual challenge of teaching learners key mathematical concepts and improving their performance in the ana tests. the new caps curriculum accommodates both formal and informal forms of assessment, with the ana tests forming part of the formal assessment tasks. the tests claim to cater for different cognitive levels, are written per grade, to provide teachers with a systematic way of evaluating how learners are progressing in mathematics and testing their readiness to be promoted to the next grade (dbe, 2011a;, dbe, 2011b). teacher observations, discussions, practical demonstrations, selfand peer assessment, assignments, projects and investigations are recommended for the informal assessment and evaluation of primary mathematics learners. for reporting learner performance, the rating codes have seven points with corresponding levels of competences and percentage ranges (dbe, 2011a; dbe, 2011b). as stated earlier, bernstein (1971) noted that evaluation is a function of the strength of classification 31 unveiling the south african official primary mathematics teacher pedagogic identity peter pausigere and mellony graven and frames but, in the case of caps, where the strength of the classification and framing differ, this is not a straightforward issue. the caps primary mathematics evaluative system, made up of informal and formal assessment, gives rise to both multiple criteria and ordered principles of evaluation, thus emphasising both the inner attributes of students and relatively objective procedures. for both the caps curriculum and the ana tests, however, the latter forms of assessment are dominant, with the resultant primary mathematics teacher identity being objective rather than attributes-inclined when it comes to assessment. this resonates with strong classification of the market position, yet some of the informal, multiple criteria and attributes-inclined forms of assessments, which reappear in the new curriculum from c2005, points towards weak framing which, as we have suggested in this article, has been strengthened under caps. concluding remarks this article sought to investigate the type of primary mathematics teacher identity projected by the current caps mathematics education curriculum documents as compared with c2005. it explores primary mathematics teacher identity using bernstein’s concept of official pedagogic identity and draws on tyler’s elaboration of these identities as a function of classification and framing. our findings indicate that, under c2005, the south african primary mathematics education curriculum projected a “therapeutic” primary mathematics teacher identity whose main concern was to promote acceptable societal norms. the new caps curriculum indicates movement towards a ‘market’ primary mathematics teacher identity that focuses on the progressive development of fundamental mathematics concepts and the improvement of learner performance in annual national assessments. however, elements of the therapeutic identity remain in the new caps curriculum documents which continue to state political redress, social transformation, active and critical learning as its “general aims” (dbe, 2011a: 4-5; dbe, 2011b: 4). the impact of this has been that some aspects of weak framing of c2005 have been embedded in the strengthened frame of caps. bernstein (2000) notes that therapeutic and market identities are, in a sense, in opposition to each other. this opposition holds for these identities in the postapartheid south african primary mathematics education context. however, according to bernstein (2003: 213), the market position is “ideologically a much more complex construction … perhaps more sinister”. this position can lead to tensions that primary mathematics teachers must navigate within local contexts, such as actively engaging learners and teaching key prescribed mathematical concepts while simultaneously maintaining a focus on learner performance in national assessments. in the larger research study of mathematics primary teacher learning and identity transformation of teachers participating in an in-service mathematics programme, in which both authors are involved, one participating teacher wrote in response to the anas written in october 2012: perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 32 the anas are assessing all learners using the same strategy. i know my learners best, with all their different learning abilities. they (the ana exemplars) were not very useful because they cover a whole year’s work in september. i can’t rush to finish everything in september, because that way i will be teaching the syllabus, not the learners. i don’t think they helped the learners. i was just like drilling them. it only helped them for specifically the exams. this teacher’s comment serves to illuminate some of the tensions teachers have to navigate when aspects of the market identity are projected in curriculum and assessment policies. whilst our key arguments have been based on analysis of primary mathematics curriculum and assessment policies, many arguments and tensions are likely to relate to other subjects. we cautiously suggest an extension of our findings to enable an understanding of south african teacher identities generally under c2005 and in the new curriculum dispensation. endnotes 1. c2005 and caps publish separate policy documents for foundation (grades 1 to 3) and intermediate (grades 4 to 6) phases, but the introductory pages are similar. thus this quote appears on pages 2-3 in both documents. 2. of the many terms interchangeably used by bernstein to describe the pedagogic identity categories, we preferred to use these four terms consistently throughout this article. references bernstein b 1971. on the classification and framing of educational knowledge. in mfd young (ed), knowledge and control: new directions for the sociology of education pp. 202-230). london: collier-mc millan. bernstein b & solomon j 1999. ‘pedagogy, identity and the construction of a theory of symbolic control’: basil bernstein questioned by joseph solomon. british journal of sociology of education, 20: 265-279. bernstein b 2000. pedagogy, symbolic control and identity theory, research, critique. rev. ed. new york: rowman & littlefield publishers. bernstein b 2003. the structuring of pedagogic discourse. vol iv. london:routledge. best jw & kahn jv 2006. research in education. london: allyn & bacon. chisholm l 2005. the politics of curriculum review and revision in south africa in regional context. compare, 35: 79-100. chisholm l, volmink j, ndhlovu j, potenza e, mohamed h, muller j, lubisi c, vinjevold p, ngozi l,malan b & mphahlele l 2000. a south african curriculum for the twenty-first century. report of the review committee on curriculum 2005. presented to the minister of education, professor kader asmal. pretoria, 31 may 2000. department of basic education (dbe) 2011a. curriculum and assessment policy statement (foundation phase mathematics). pretoria: department of basic education.department of basic education (dbe) 2011b. curriculum 33 unveiling the south african official primary mathematics teacher pedagogic identity peter pausigere and mellony graven and assessment policy statement (grades 4-6 mathematics). pretoria: department of basic education. department of basic education (dbe) 2011c. dbe presentation to hesa education deans forum. east london, 24 august 2011. department of basic education (dbe) 2012. report on the annual national assessments 2012. pretoria: department of basic education. department of education (doe) 1997a. foundation phase (grades r to 3): policy document. pretoria: de partment of education. department of education (doe) 1997b. intermediate phase (grades 4 to 6): policydocument. pretoria: department of education. department of education (doe) 1997c. curriculum 2005: lifelong learning for the 21st century. pretoria: national department of education. department of education (doe) 2008. foundations for learning campaign. pretoria: department of education. fleisch b 2008. primary education in crisis: why south african schoolchildren underachieve in reading and mathematics. cape town: juta. graven m 2002. coping with new mathematics teacher roles in a contradictory context of curriculum change. the mathematics educator, 12: 21-27. jansen j 2001. explaining non-change in education reform after apartheid: political symbolism and the problem of policy implementation. in y sayed & j jansen (eds), implementing education policies: the south african experience (pp. 271292). cape town: uct. reeves c & muller j 2005. picking up the pace: variation in the structure and organisation of learning school mathematics. journal of education, 37: 103-130. sadovnik ar 2001. basil bernstein (1924-2000). prospectus: the quarterly review of comparative education, 31: 687-703. schollar e 2008. final report: the primary mathematics research project 20042007. towards evidence-based educational development in south africa johannesburg: the project. taylor n & vinjenvold p 1999. getting learning right: report of the president’s education initiative. johannesburg: joint education trust. tyler w 1999. pedagogic identities and educational reform in the 1990s: the cultural dynamics of national curriculum. in f christie (ed), pedagogy and the shaping of consciousness (pp. 262-289). london: cassell. informing educational psychology training with students’ community engagement experiences liesel ebersöhn1 department of psychology, university of pretoria, south africa liesel.ebersohn@up.ac.za cj gerda bender university of pretoria, south africa wendy m carvalho-malekane university of pretoria, south africa the purpose of this article was to describe students’ experiences of community engagement in an educational psychology practicum in order to inform relevant educational psychology training literature with experiences of students’ community engagement. experiential learning served as our theoretical framework and we employed an instrumental case study design, purposefully selecting eight students in the med educational psychology programme to participate in a focus group. other data sources included reflective journals and visual data. the following themes emerged from the thematic analysis: students gained insight into themselves as prospective educational psychologists, the curricular community engagement benefited students’ professional development and the practicum supported students in integrating theory with practice. keywords: community, curricular, educational psychology, engagement, experiential learning, practicum introduction as a result of recent developments in higher education institutions, pillay (2003) indicates that psychologists in the south african context need to be trained and supervised to work in communities. according to pretorius-heuchert and ahmed (2001), reasons for this need include an abundance of people with psychological problems and too few people to help, a lack of financial and physical resources, and the fact that, traditionally, mental health services provide inefficient, ineffective and inappropriate services. in addition, societal factors, such as apartheid, poverty and oppression, have resulted in psychological problems and stressors, followed by a need for intervention within the larger system (pillay, 2003; pillay, 2006). consequently, the training of educational psychologists has to prepare these professionals to function within an ecosystemic paradigm, which focuses on prevention and mass intervention, while developing theory and research, especially in the context of oppressed and disadvantaged communities. furthermore, training should address the requirement that educational psychologists fulfil different roles and get closer to communities and community organisations in order to focus on prevention and expand interventions (pillay, 2003). in addition, by working in communities and non-urban areas, students are exposed to the need to be critical of existing methods of psychology and are encouraged to make adjustments to their techniques, or to learn more appropriate intervention methods (pillay & kometsi, 2007). 1 correspondence should be addressed to prof liesel ebersöhn; department of educational psychology; faculty of education; university of pretoria; pretoria, south africa 0002. email: liesel.ebersohn@up.ac.za perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201088 in this article, we contemplate the way in which one group of educational psychology students experienced community engagement in their training as a means of providing relevant learning opportunities. therefore, the question guiding the article is: what are students’ experiences of an educational psychology practicum relating to community engagement in a module of a med educational psychology programme? the aim of the inquiry is to inform knowledge and practices related to educational psychology training. pillay (2003) states that, in order to make the training of educational psychologists relevant in the south african context, training should be integrated in all modules in a cohesive and holistic manner and should be more practically orientated. within the south african context, it has become increasingly evident that the traditional role of the educational psychologist in rendering an individually based service, whether in private practice consulting with schools or based at a school or similar agency, is not effective and does not make a sustainable impact on the children (pillay, 2007; lubbe & eloff, 2004). lubbe and eloff (2004) state that the only way to address vast socio-economic and socio-psychological disparities and inequalities in terms of the needs of the people of south africa is for educational psychologists to focus more on communities, on establishing networks and partnerships, and to collaborate with the relevant stakeholders. therefore, educational psychologists should not only be exposed to theories but also gain experience working directly with communities through practicum, fieldwork and case studies (pillay, 2003). pillay (2003) has identified several reasons why the training and supervision of psychologists should be more community orientated. these reasons include the following: educational psychologists should test theory in practical situations and have cross-cultural training within a south african context; a paradigm shift needs to occur from individual to collective practice and students should engage in action research. in addition, action research should be directed at action and intervention in terms of meeting the needs of communities. educational psychologists should implement an ecosystemic approach in training and trainees should acquire skills to empower and mobilise people in the community to deal with social issues in the south african context. educational psychologists should collaborate with stakeholders and also acquire a repertoire of generic skills for working with communities, as, if they wish to be of value to their clients and communities, they should be able to deal with a variety of problems and implement a diverse range of interventions. psychologists should also focus on preventative, rather than curative, interventions (pillay, 2006; pillay, 2003). these strategies are being implemented in the educational psychology curricula of several universities in south africa, such as the university of pretoria, the university of johannesburg and stellenbosch university, which reflect the changing scope of the educational psychologist (pillay, 2003). one approach to training that is relevant to educational psychology students is community engagement. in recent years the pressure on universities worldwide, including universities in south africa, to bridge the gap between higher education and society, and to become active partners with communities, has increased. the white paper 3 (department of education (doe), 1997) has laid the foundation for making community service, or, rather, community engagement, an integral part of higher education in south africa. the white paper (doe, 1997) states that one of the goals of higher education should be to promote and develop an awareness of social responsibility among students, both socially and economically, by integrating community engagement in the curriculum of academic programmes (bender, 2007; bender, daniels, lazarus, naude & sattar, 2006). the university of pretoria has, as have the other universities in south africa, developed an appreciative understanding of the potential that community engagement holds for transforming higher education in relation to societal needs and, consequently, for producing graduates with a sense of civic responsibility and an ability to apply the theory of their disciplines to local developmental issues (bender, 2007). conceptualisation community engagement and curricular community engagement the quality committee of the council on higher education (higher education quality committee, 2004:24), cited in bender (2008a), provides the following definition of community engagement (ce), which is used ebersöhn, et al. — informing educational psychology training 89 as a basic reference in most institutions of higher education in south africa: community engagement can be defined as the initiatives and processes through which the expertise of the higher education institution in the areas of teaching and research are applied to address issues relevant to its community. community engagement finds expression in a variety of forms, ranging from informal and relatively unstructured activities to formal and structured academic programmes addressed as particular community needs. at the university of pretoria, the concept of curricular community engagement is used as a framework for academic programmes. curricular community engagement is a credit-bearing, educational experience which encompasses a curriculum (learning content), teaching, learning, research and scholarship activity that engages academic staff, students and community service agencies/organisations and community members in mutually beneficial and respectful collaboration. their interactions address needs and assets that have been identified by the community, deepen students’ civic and academic learning, and enrich the university’s scholarship. at the university of pretoria, curricular community engagement can be divided into various types of community activities, such as community-based learning, academic service-learning (an example of best practice), community service, internships, clinical practicals, practicums, work-based learning, experiential education, community-based education, cooperative education, community-based projects and community outreach (bender, 2007; bender, 2008a; bender, 2008b). educational psychology practicum several modules in the med (educational psychology) programme in the department of educational psychology at the university of pretoria make use of community engagement in their training of future educational psychologists. one example of how training of educational psychologists at the university of pretoria has been adjusted to accommodate changes in their scope of practice is seen in the changes that have already been made to the practicum in one of the modules, namely, career assessment and counselling, of the med educational psychology programme (ebersöhn, 2007) since 2006. this collaboration flowed from an existing partnership between a lecturer and educators in a rural mpumalanga secondary school. the training purpose of the ongoing collaboration is to create opportunities for students to develop practical experience of the (i) asset-based approach and (ii) principles of positive psychology (ebersöhn, 2007) and to provide educational psychology students with an opportunity to work in a community situated in a secondary school in a rural area. in terms of the collaboration with the school and the learners, the purpose was for the educational psychology students to form partnerships and to create learning and research opportunities. this particular partnership was formed with the grade 9 learners and educators in order to obtain educational psychology practice experience. in addition, the partnership involves working closely with the school and the educators to help address career and learning challenges that the learners may have, and to assist those learners to gain skills in their learning at school, so that they can be better equipped to support themselves during their further education and after leaving school (ebersöhn, 2009). the practicum is administered twice a year. the first visit entailed implementing planned group-based activities with grade 9 learners in terms of assessment. the purpose of the assessment is to (i) establish rapport, (ii) get to know the learners in the group, (iii) and to determine an intervention focus for the group. the outcome of the assessment is to acquire information on the strengths and barriers of each learner in order to plan an educational psychology intervention for that group. the second visit focused on implementing planned group-based intervention activities. the intervention focused on areas identified during the assessment that took place after the first visit (ebersöhn, 2009). students developed their assessment and intervention strategy individually. subsequently, the students travelled to the school and worked with groups of grade 9 learners for one-and-a-half to two hours each day during the two-day visits. in the relevant module, the students were assessed on their ability to act as educational-psychologistsin-training in a new and different environment containing diversity and language differences. each student’s ability to plan and facilitate the activities and her subsequent reflection was also evaluated (ebersöhn, 2007). lecturers from the department of educational psychology of the university of pretoria supervised the practicum at the secondary school. prior to the two implementation phases, each student discussed her planning for both the assessment and the intervention phases of the project with her supervisor. the lecturers perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201090 observed the students during their interactions with the grade 9 learners and other significant people at the school. they also guided the students during the assessment and intervention processes as well as in the reflective dialogue, which was conducted away from the school after each session (ebersöhn, 2009). experiential learning as theoretical framework when defined from an experiential learning perspective, learning is understood to be “the process whereby knowledge is created through the transformation of experience. knowledge results from the combination of grasping and transforming experience” (kolb, 1984, 38). therefore, the effectiveness of such learning depends on the student’s ability to learn from the experience (le roux, 2007). experiential learning provides a holistic model of the learning process, as it helps individuals to learn, grow and develop (kolb, baker & jensen, 2002). kolb’s experiential learning model (1984) portrays two dialectically related modes of grasping experience, namely, apprehension (concrete experience) and comprehension (abstract conceptualisation), as well as two dialectically related modes of transforming experience, namely, intension (reflective observation) and extension (active experimentation). experiential learning is a process of constructing knowledge that involves a creative tension among the four learning modes that is responsive to contextual demands. this process of constructing knowledge is portrayed as an idealised learning cycle during which the learner comes into contact with all the bases, namely, experiencing, reflecting, thinking and acting, in a recursive process (see figure 1) that is responsive to the learning situation and what is being learnt (kolb & kolb, 2005; kolb et al., 2002). concrete experiences entail direct practical experience, thus the learner actively experiences an activity. reflective observation focuses on the learner consciously reflecting back on the experience, which requires the individual to observe, examine, analyse and interpret the impact of a specific concrete experience. abstract conceptualisation gives meaning to discoveries by relating them to other discoveries and other forms of knowledge. this usually results in the learner trying to conceptualise a theory or model of what is being observed. finally, active experimentation is when the learner plans how to test a theory or model for a forthcoming experience. learning in this cycle (see figure 1) is flexible, as learning can begin at any stage of the cycle (healey & jenkins, 2000; bender et al., 2006). in this study, kolb’s experiential learning cycle was used as a framework for curricular community engagement in academic programmes and learning methodology with practical work in the community. in summary, experiential learning includes the active involvement of the learners in their environment. the importance of reflection on activities both during and after an experiential learning activity or experience is emphasised. in addition, the context and environment in which the experiential learning activity occurs plays a significant role in the learner’s experience (benecke, 2004). kolb’s theory is recognised as underpinning the concept of community engagement, as it recognises that experience is important for enhancing learning. experiential learning affirms the importance of experiential activities and techniques, such as practicum, internships, service learning, on-the-job training and work-based learning. experiential activities are creative and varied and their application will depend on a number of variables, such as the support structures available within higher education (benecke, 2004). perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201092 participants were stimulated by one another’s perceptions, opinions and ideas, to increase the richness of the data. in addition, focus groups provide a deeper understanding of the perspectives and experiences of the participants (mcmillan & schumacher, 2001). the focus group interview was held in a secure, quiet room and the chairs for the participants were arranged in a circle with the audiotape recorder in the middle. the focus group data was later transcribed and analysed. during the practicum, after each session at the secondary school in mpumalanga, the students made notes in reflective journals of their daily experiences (babbie & mouton, 2001) in order to document their personal expressions and views on the practicum. these reflective journals were later submitted to the lecturer as a part of their portfolio of evidence. after obtaining verbal and written consent, we accessed the reflective journals for data collection and analysis. as a further source of data, we used photographs taken by the students and lecturers during the course of their practicum. the analysis of the photographs contributed a further perspective from which to explore the experiences of the educational psychology students of their community engagement practicum. in order to analyse data from all data sources, we used thematic analysis, which enabled us to evaluate key words, meanings, themes, messages and meanings obtained from the data collected (cohen et al., 2003) with the aim of establishing what students experienced during the practicum. we also studied the transcripts, reflective journals of the participants and photographs in order to become familiar with the content of the data sources. we then reduced the data to themes using a process of coding, condensed those codes and, finally, represented the data in tables and discussions (creswell, 2007). in analysing the photographs, meaningful and symbolic content from the visual data was sought (nieuwenhuis, 2007b). as stated by viljoen (2004), cited in ebersöhn and eloff (2007), the photographs provided an opportunity for the researchers to work with a visual, concrete medium and not just field notes that might be subjective in nature. for the purpose of member checking (babbie & mouton, 2001), we emailed themes that emerged, after the data analysis of all data sources, to each participant. rigour and ethical considerations the trustworthiness of this study was monitored by using different methods of data collection to determine whether there were any discrepancies in our research findings (maree, 2007; babbie & mouton, 2001; schwandt, 2007). to find regularities in the data, various sources and methods were employed to observe whether the same patterns continued to recur. credibility was enhanced by using different methods of data generation (maree, 2007; mcmillan & schumacher, 2001), as well as member checking to assess the intentionality of the participants, to correct obvious errors, and to have them provide additional volunteer information (babbie & mouton, 2001). as researchers, we obtained written informed consent from the dean of the faculty of education of the university of pretoria to conduct this research with the masters students from the educational psychology department and obtained written informed consent from the students themselves. in the consent forms, the students were made fully aware that all the activities that they would participate in would remain confidential, and that the findings of the study would be published. in addition, all participants involved in the research were informed both verbally and in the letter of consent that their participation in the interviews and the analysis of their reflective journals and photographs were voluntary and that they could withdraw from the research study at any time. this implies that the research participants knew they had a right to choose whether to participate in the research process after being informed of the facts that could influence their decisions (cohen et al., 2003). research findings three main themes relevant to the focus of our article emerged as the result of thematic analysis and interpretation. the following section illustrates each of the identified themes by including examples from the raw data. the raw data comprises the direct quotes used from the focus group interviews and from the participants’ reflective journals, and visual data from the photographs. the raw data is numbered according to the specific participant who made a comment (each participant was assigned a number, e.g. p2 or p8). ebersöhn, et al. — informing educational psychology training 93 theme 1: students gain insights into themselves as educational psychologists in south africa firstly, during the focus group interview, the students conversed about how they gained insight into themselves as educational psychologists in south africa. the educational psychologists-in-training expressed the opinion that the practicum had given them the opportunity to work with diverse cultures, races and ethnicities and stated that the experience assisted them in developing respect for diversity. pillay (2007) states that trainee psychologists should be exposed to and equipped to work with different racial and ethnic individuals and communities. he mentions that students should acquire knowledge and skills to work in different contexts with different people. the opportunity to work with diverse cultures was expressed by several of the students: “it was an opportunity to work with diverse cultures, foreign languages” (extract from reflective journal of p2, ); “the opportunity to work with such rich diversity has enriched my learning experience” (p3) and “it made me respect diversity more, just in the fact that, you know, we are all different but we can all work together so well” (p3). many of the students experienced language as having been a communication barrier during the practicum. pillay and kometsi (2007) state that language is often a challenge for practitioners in nonurban settings, as the vast majority of psychologists in south africa speak no indigenous language, apart from afrikaans. students expressed the opinion that the language barrier may have affected their abilities to assess the learners and to implement their interventions: “i knew the learners were second language speakers but i was not prepared for the fact that very few of them really understood english at a level to be able to communicate” (extract from reflective journal of p6); “it was also difficult to communicate, as most of the learners are siswati speaking” (p2) and “so especially language wise, that for me was a big thing because, how should you prepare your stuff and your forms, what language? can you just make it in english, should you make it really simple or are you then going to sort of insult them” (p5). students expressed the need to engage in future community engagement activities; “i would really like to do this kind of work in underprivileged areas when i have completed my studies” (p4) and “yeah, it just opened up my eyes to things where or possibilities where i could work one day, what i could do, what’s really more, sort of satisfying and fulfilling and you can make a difference everywhere not just in an office or in a school or in a little private practice” (p3). having engaged in the practicum they realised that by engaging in community engagement activities in the future they could offer their services to those who could not easily access their services and, at the same time, they would touch more people’s lives. an awareness of both civic and social responsibility was conveyed by students stating that their engagement in the practicum had made them aware of societal issues prevalent in the south african context. that experience had made them realise the importance of offering their services to society at large, so that they could work towards resolving problems in society: “you actually get to reach a lot of children who cannot afford to come to you” (p1) and “i think this is also a more practical approach in south africa because you can reach more people that have limited resources” (p7). according to pillay (2007), psychologists should rather focus on working with groups than only working with individuals. this is especially important in the south african context so that more people can be reached in terms of psychological interventions. students maintained that they had gained experience in working with groups, different genders and adolescents. the students expressed this as follows: “it is also an opportunity to expand our experience regarding group assessment and intervention. it is important as the need for group counselling has increased over the last few years” (p7); “i feel more confident in working with groups” (p4); “i also found it quite positive, i feel i only had a group of boys and it was really nice to see how they engaged in each and every activity that i gave them” (p4) and “i see this as an opportunity to expand my experience with teenagers. i would like to work with the whole spectrum of age groups one day and this is just another opportunity to prepare me for that” (p7). perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201094 plate 1: students learning to work with groups during the practicum in the above photograph, one of the students is working with a group of learners from the secondary school in mpumalanga. students expressed the opinion that the practicum had given them an opportunity to acquire skills in working with groups. theme 2: experiences of professional development secondly, the students also experienced professional development as a result of their experiences from the educational psychology community engagement practicum. this included experiencing themselves as being more confident, able to adapt to new situations and having deeper insight into their role as a professional. this was expressed in the following extracts: “when i got there i actually realised, i got more self-confidence” (p6); “today was a positive experience and i feel that i have more confidence in myself” (p7); “it challenged me because i am a very structured person, so the personal growth is to go into a situation and see what you get and be flexible with what you get and just to calm down and be flexible” (p2); “i was able to think on my feet, how i was adaptable” (p3) and; “i think the personal growth was when i realised for the first time, really realised, that educational psychologist is more than just an office practice” (p5). engelbrecht (2004) notes that the scope of educational psychology requires a shift from the traditional child-deficit, medical approach towards an ecological and multilevel systems approach. educational psychologists must now not only be prepared to intervene on an individual level but also on a systems level by implementing and evaluating preventative programmes. in those efforts they should conduct ecologically and systemically valid assessments and interventions to promote positive learning environments within which learners and educators from diverse backgrounds have equal access to effective educational psychological support. the realisation of their changing scope of practice was expressed by the students as follows: “i think the personal growth was when i realised for the first time, really realised, that educational psychologist is more than just an office practice” (p5); “i think community engagement should definitely be in our scopes, i think it is important for especially… in the south african context. as we said, there is so much need and so little resources in terms of professionals” (p8) and “i have realised during our visit that the field of psychology is far more than assessments, therapy and writing reports. our services are not only for clients who can afford our service” (p 5). theme 3: integration of theory and practice thirdly, the students discussed experiences related to the integration of theory and practice. their ability to understand theories, such as the asset-based approach and positive psychology, was enhanced as a result of putting them into practice. students stated that they developed academically and that they had an ebersöhn, et al. — informing educational psychology training 95 increased ability to put theories into practice, as well as an increased ability to apply skills that were learnt in the classroom environment to a real-life setting. pillay (2007) notes that community projects and fieldwork give trainee psychologists the skills they need in order to work with communities, as they give them the opportunity to reach out to people in those communities, while simultaneously gaining experience in testing what they have learnt. this also provides them with the opportunity to test theory in practical situations. the students were given opportunities to test theories during the practicum: “i planned an activity without really linking it theoretically and then later on, it might be days later when the activities are actually done and you are discussing it with someone, then it finally clicks that oh! i’ve been working from this standpoint all the time but i just never got to a point where i’ve integrated the two, so theoretically and in terms of application of all the theories that we have learnt i think it’s been great. because you actually get a chance to see the theory in action” (p1) and “i felt only asset-based and positive psychology i was able to put in practice” (p2). plate 2: students and learners implementing the asset-based approach in the above photograph, learners are making asset-maps of themselves as individuals, which assists the students in implementing the theory of the asset-based approach in real-life settings. pillay and kometsi (2007) discuss how important it is for students working in communities to be critical of existing methods of psychology and many of the traditional approaches to psychological care. such students should mindfully adjust their techniques or learn more appropriate intervention methods. these authors stress that it is vital for students to understand the need to tailor approaches to suit the needs of their clients. whilst implementing their assessments and intervention strategies in the practicum, the students realised that the standardised assessments and theories in current use by the university are not indigenous to the south african context. they, therefore, realised how important it is to adjust theories and assessments to make them more suited to the south african context: “but we actually need to go in there and actually take our psychology and make it south african as well, because what is the point of learning about all these western instruments and everything else if you can’t apply it to your own context” (p1) and “the assessment tools that i used to gather information were different from the traditional psychometric instruments that i would use while in pretoria. i had to think outside the box, i had to be more creative, and make sure that the activities i had planned were going to be culturally friendly, so that during the course of the visit the learners would feel as ease with themselves and their abilities” (p1). discussion kolb’s (1984) theory of experiential learning was evident during the practicum. the four learning modes of experiential learning were shown through different activities undertaken during the practicum. the students acquiring direct practical experience during the practicum as educational psychologists-inperspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201096 training demonstrated concrete experience. this was evident in the students engaging with the learners through various activities, engaging with their peers and forming partnerships with the educators at the school. indicators of active experimentation were evident in the following: students accumulated knowledge on how to implement future community engagement activities, such as the importance of having the collaboration of educators and community members in future community engagement activities, the importance of creating sustainable community engagement activities, and ensuring that the community engagement activities are evaluated in the future so that improved interventions can be planned. in addition, the practicum made them aware of what their role as educational psychologists would be in the future and the students also realised the importance of getting involved in future community engagement activities. abstract conceptualisation was shown through the ability of the students to relate theories and previously acquired knowledge learnt in the classroom situation to the practicum. this involved students being able to apply theories, such as the asset-based approach and positive psychology, to their planned assessments and interventions, the use of the theories in their interactions with others and practising skills learnt in the classroom within the school community. finally, students engaging with reflective dialogue and writing in their reflective journals indicate that reflective observation did indeed occur during the practicum. the results of this study contribute to and extend existing literature on curricular community engagement by informing literature on students’ experiences of community engagement in an educational psychology practicum. similarly, the emerged insights give information on the facilitation of community engagement activities using experiential learning theory and reflective learning theory as the theoretical framework. in addition, the study contributed to an expanding body of literature that mirrors a changed scope of practice for the training and practice of educational psychologists in south africa. this study indicated that students were interested in and benefited from taking part in community engagement activities. this finding therefore indicates the need for educational psychologists to be trained in community educational psychology and to practise within different communities. the practicum gave the students opportunities to integrate theories from other med educational psychology modules, for example systems theory. therefore, theories on educational psychology are applied across the programme and not just in the career assessment and counselling (bop 804) module. it is shown that professionals working in communities could benefit from an understanding of community psychology, community engagement theories, experiential learning, reflective learning and community-engaged learning. it is therefore recommended that students be trained in modules that include service learning in order to practise community psychology theories and to add experiential, reflective and community-engaged learning theories to relevant curricula. the students seemed to have benefitted from an understanding of the prevalent needs, assets and issues in the communities they plan to work with. it is thus recommended that the asset-based approach and positive psychology be integrated into educational psychology modules with community engagement activities. in addition, the ecosystemic approach could also be added to the curriculum as it is in this way that students learn the importance of looking at the whole system when working with and in communities. there is a need for institutions of higher education to encourage and support students of educational psychology in terms of their professional development by providing curriculum-related opportunities for active participation in communities. in every community engagement activity, experiential and reflective learning and service learning can be used as tools to facilitate well-organised and structured curricular community engagement activities. conclusion it was established that students seem to have benefitted by acquiring greater intercultural competence. as a result of their experience, some students reportedly acquired the competence to communicate in a different cultural context. to be culturally competent, a student must cultivate a mindset (analytical framework for understanding culture), a skillset (interpersonal and group skill for bridging differences) and a heartset (motivation and curiosity to explore cultural variables) (reitenauer, cress & bennett, 2005). the students expressed the desire to work with people throughout the country in the south african context. this specific module trained students to work in a context with people of diverse cultures, race and ethnicity. ebersöhn, et al. — informing educational psychology training 97 in terms of community engagement, students acquired group work competence, such as facilitating the development of a group (which entails forming the group, storming, norming and performing), group cohesion (factors that encourage members to remain united and be committed to a group) and communication in groups (ensuring contributions from all members of the group) (collier & voegele, 2005). in addition, students were exposed to a broader range of diversity than was the case at the training centre at the university. in this regard, students worked with children from different age groups, different race groups and of different genders. the students stated that they had enjoyed the practicum as they realised they could reach more people through it. reportedly, acquiring group work competence meant that students have the capacity to reach out to people in rural community settings. in conclusion, community engagement practicum provides an avenue for experiential learning in educational psychology. educational psychology training provides students with a forum for personal and professional development and helps students in integrating theory and practice. references babbie e & mouton j 2001. the practice of social research, 7th edn. oxford: oxford university press. bender cjg 2007. pathways to change for integrating community service learning into the core curriculum. special issue of education as change – community service learning, 11(3):127-142. bender cjg 2008a. curriculum enquiry about community engagement at a research university. south african journal of higher education, 22(6):1154-1171. bender cjg 2008b. exploring conceptual models for community engagement at higher education institutions in south africa. perspectives in education, 26(1):81-95. bender cjg, daniels p, lazarus j, naude l & sattar k 2006. service learning in the curriculum: a resource for higher education institutions. pretoria: council on higher education/higher education quality committee/ jet education 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dunbar-krige h & fritz e (eds). the supervision of counsellors in south africa: travels in new territory. pretoria: van schaik. pillay j 2007. teaching community psychology in south africa. in: duncan n, bowman b, naidoo a, pillay j & roos v (eds). community psychology. analysis, context and action. cape town: uct press. pillay j & kometsi m j 2007. training psychology students and interns in non-urban areas. in: duncan n, bowman b, naidoo a, pillay j & roos v (eds). community psychology: analysis, context and action. cape town: uct press. pretorius-heuchert jw & ahmed r 2001. community psychology: past, present and future. in: seedat m, duncan n & lazarus s (eds). community psychology: theory, method and practice. cape town: oxford university press southern africa. reitenauer vl, cress mc & bennett j 2005. creating cultural connections: navigating difference, investigating power, unpacking privilege. in: cress cm, collier pj, reitenauer vl & associates (eds). a student guidebook for service learning across the disciplines. virginia: stylus publishing, llc. schwandt ta 2007. the sage dictionary of qualitative inquiry. 3rd edn. los angeles: sage publications. strydom h 1998. ethical aspects of research in the caring professions. in: de vos as (ed.). research at grass roots: a primer for the caring professions. pretoria: van schaik. viljoen j 2004. identifying assets in the memory-box-making-process with vulnerable children. unpublished med dissertation. university of pretoria, pretoria, south africa. in: de lange n, mitchell c & stuart j (eds). 2008. putting people in the picture: visual methodologies for social change. rotterdam: sense publishers. 247 research article 2023 41(2): 247-257 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6328 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) advances made by the university of the western cape in the support of remote online teaching and learning for student success and access abstract during the covid-19 pandemic, ongoing advances were made by higher education institutions (heis) to support remote online teaching and learning for student success and access, which are increasing areas of research. the major objective of this paper is to address the shift to remote teaching and learning practices that covid precipitated in higher education. we report on literature that captures the ongoing shift to remote teaching and learning practices. the response of the university of the western cape (uwc) to the crisis of the pandemic will be highlighted. various themes related to the pedagogical value of emergency remote teaching (ert), online learning, and continual post-pandemic support are discussed. we examine how challenges presented new opportunities for curriculum innovation and transformation at the uwc. the focus is the importance of a continual professional academic support structure and post-covid awareness campaigns in order to sustain fully online and hybrid teaching and learning approaches. recommendations highlight that departments across faculties need to focus on training and support with regard to the attainment and effective application of eskills and etools; and that there is a need to intensify this, especially as part of the broader curriculum transformation agenda. more research that focuses on ongoing advances in the support of remote online teaching and learning for student success and access during a pandemic is necessary. keywords: access, emergency remote teaching and learning, innovation, student success, transformation 1. introduction the university of the western cape (uwc) has made advances in promoting transformation and favourable student outcomes in lieu of the unique challenges that confronted the university student at the onset of the covid-19 pandemic in 2020. the reality is that many students and lecturers faced the lack of computer literacy, online resources, lack of proper infrastructures, reliable author: paul dankers1 juliet stoltenkamp1 affiliation: 1university of the western cape, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i2.6328 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(2): 247-257 published: 30 june 2023 received: 20 may 2022 accepted: 16 june 2023 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6328 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8424-8625 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4103-738x https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6328 2482023 41(2): 248-257 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6328 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) electricity supply, lack of data and access to laptops and internet connections. these challenges highlighted the type of conversations that should take place to fast track processes and provide greater online resources and support for students and teaching staff. in order to develop a platform for improved computer literacy, the uwc improved its blended approach to teaching, and to train students and teaching staff in the use of etools in the institutional learning management system (lms), ikamva. these dynamics precipitated much concern on how to create fair technological opportunities for everyone, provide access to ict, narrow the digital divide, and provide a cost-effective method of providing support to students. this has been done through increasing remote online teaching and learning to promote student success and access. in order to see transformation through the lenses of student achievement, the researchers had to conceptualise transformation. likewise we identified how proactive remote teaching and learning support measures that had been put in place had become practice at the uwc. in addition, key concepts in remote online teaching were explored within the lenses of student achievements, particularly those aspects that hindered the delivery of fully online and hybrid teaching and learning approaches. manda and backhouse (2018) claim that south africa is one of the leading african countries to have identified digital transformation as a priority. the south african government invested in skills and education via three specific agendas to convert south africa into an inclusive, digital society. the agendas included the digital transformation of government, digital access, and digital inclusion. manda and backhouse (2018) conclude that even though the agendas and policies are progressive, south africa still faces significant challenges in implementing the agendas that focus on student success and access. 2. integrative literature review: themes related to the pedagogical value of emergency remote teaching (ert) snyder (2019) suggests that using literature reviews as a research methodology enables researchers to build on existing knowledge. according to snyder (2019), the different approaches to doing a literature review depend on the purpose of the review and can be categorised as systematic, semi-systematic or integrative. in this paper, we use an integrative approach. integrative literature reviews are usually used with different outcomes in mind. typically, integrative reviews, “should result in the advancement of knowledge and theoretical frameworks” (snyder, 2019: 336) instead of merely being an outline or explanation of a topic. the literature review and practices perpetuated at the uwc was used to answer our critical questions in this research: how did the covid-19 pandemic prompt heis, especially the uwc, to reimagine teaching and learning, student support, and staff matters across faculties? how did the pandemic provide a new lens for heis to include innovative education and communication technologies in the pursuit of student success and access? in these reviews’ themes are identified and organised in relation to the pedagogical value of ert, in the way, and similarly how they were adopted in different departments across faculties at the uwc. given the rapid expansion of technology, accelerated teaching and learning encouraged by the adoption of remote pedagogies, chisadza et al. (2021) predict that online learning will probably become the new norm for heis in south africa. however, these authors identify weak internet access as a major reason for students’ poor performance. they go on to suggest that heis must take cognizance of “the inequality dynamics in the country” (chisadza et al., 2021: 122). difficulty in obtaining internet access and the unequal distribution of infrastructure will probably lead to present inequalities being exacerbated rather than reduced. social https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6328 2492023 41(2): 249-257 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6328 dankers & stoltenkamp advances made by the university of the western cape inequalities that prevent access to higher education need to be considered or factored in postpandemic if heis are going to continue with remote online pedagogies. motala and menon (2020: 90) agree it is the covid-19 pandemic that increased social exclusion and emphasised inequities, as well as created more barriers to learning. motala and menon (2020) acknowledge that progress has been made in the adoption of emergency online pedagogies ,but caution heis to reconsider how to invest in teaching and learning. a decision should be made on whether to invest in technologies or a completely new mode of delivery. different key skills that include digital capabilities will be critical in the future (kopp, gröblinger & adams, 2019). the conclusion reached from the above is that inequitable distribution of digital infrastructure was noticeable during the pandemic, but is still of great concern after the pandemic. the first theme to emerge from the reviews is the inequality factor that the ‘new normal’ highlighted. at the uwc, the emphasis before covid-19 was on design, using the addie model linked to stages of e-moderation. this focus enabled academic staff to design their online environments and platforms to facilitate using blended e-pedagogies (stoltenkamp & dankers, 2022). within the south african context, there seems to be an increased willingness of academic facilitators to adopt blended and distance pedagogies. lecturers use “structural enablements” to experiment with “new pedagogical practices and reflect on old practices more deeply and critically” (padayachee & dison, 2021: 49). however, padayachee and dison (2021: 49) question whether these new practices will be feasible in the long term, even after the pandemic. what is of concern is that lecturers are hesitant to engage with blended and online pedagogies. in researching the value of supporting technologies that drive curriculum, khoza and mpungose (2020) conclude that the five principles of transformation, namely reflection, translation, rotation, enlargement, and reduction drive digitalised curriculum transformation. in fact, khoza and mpungose note that “the principles of transformation that promote the use of technology in education” (2020: 4) help academics as they embrace the use of technology. their reflection on their use of technologies also changes their ideologies as they transform the way they teach. on the basis of these findings, researchers conclude that if educators ponder on their practices and transform their teaching style to include technology (like an existing lms), they support the drive to digitise the curriculum. in addition, khoza and mpungose (2020) believe that if heis were to set up technology centres for lecturers and students to drive a digitalised curriculum, it would enable academics to focus on teaching and learning as well as their research. further studies on curriculum change during the pandemic conducted by patrick, abiolu and abiolu (2021) assessed the implications of curriculum change and delivery options on heis. they used the theory of localisation to discover the peculiarities in the south african education system, especially in the present socioeconomic, cultural and political setting. patrick et al. (2021) note that the change in the mode of delivery brought about an increase in the adoption of new measures and alternatives for the online transfer of learning materials. however, this change of delivery mode had far-reaching consequences for curriculum adjustment, as well as students and lecturers. these authors highlight that socioeconomic, cultural, and political configurations are unavoidable considerations when changes in the curriculum and mode of delivery are undertaken. the second theme to emerge is the emphasis on the shift from design to supporting technology that drives curriculum design in online teaching and learning. in characterising the effects of the digital divide in south africa, du preez and le grange (2020: 91) stress that the “digital divide deprives certain students of epistemological access”. in addition, unequal access to technologies, data and connectivity will continue to be a problem https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6328 2502023 41(2): 250-257 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6328 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) in south africa even after the ert practices brought about by the covid-19 pandemic. du preez and le grange (2020: 95-96) stress that a disparity or gap exists between “knowledge consumers and knowledge producers”. the gap is the result of inequalities in the socioeconomic sphere as well as inequalities of access and the acquisition of the necessary skills. in addition, those who have access, skills and training will probably contribute to knowledge production, whereas those who do not have access will not (ndlazi & allsobrook, 2020). for du preez and le grange (2020: 99), “context impacts on epistemological access”, meaning that knowledge production is often related to socio-economic status. this is because limited access to technologies and online learning are more likely to occur in poor communities than in middle-class communities that have access to a range of resources. these authors stress that an extended notion of emergency remote teaching/learning is necessary to guarantee epistemological access (du preez & le grange, 2020: 100). ensuring this kind of access means that lecturers will need to have not only technical and pedagogical knowledge and competencies, but also an appreciation of the learning contexts of students (du preez & le grange, 2020: 100). dlamini and ndzinisa (2020) agree and suggest that “emergency remote teaching must be contextualised instead of being prescribed”. this is because many lecturers were not sufficiently prepared for the change in the mode of delivery during the pandemic. such a lack of preparedness could increase “systemic inequalities and epistemic injustice” (dlamini & ndzinisa, 2020: 62). the third theme to emerge is the deprivation of epistemological access and lack of training available for staff and students. in discussing higher education in south africa during the pandemic, badat (2020: 28) suggests that although access to technology has improved to a certain extent and student numbers have increased, participation in online learning is low and there is still a high dropout rate of students in various race groups (badat, 2020: 28). badat (2020: 31) concludes that the norm after the pandemic could have a negative impact on student enrolment, permanent and temporary staff appointments, shrinking learning opportunities, and research output. institutional preparedness and knowledge and usage of technologies are essential. the pandemic has afforded south african heis an opportunity to close the digital divide by ensuring that students are technologically literate and are given the tools (data and computers) to learn online. heis should use the learning opportunities provided by the covid-19 pandemic to prepare their institutions, staff and students for future problems. in order to achieve such preparedness, heis should invest in ict infrastructure sooner rather than later because the future of the pandemic is not known. it is generally thought that investment in technology will help to mitigate the negative effects the covid-19 pandemic has had on the higher education landscape (shava, 2022; mawere et al., 2020). mawere et al. (2020) see the need for heis to become leaders in digital trends and disruptive technologies to allow them to compete both locally and globally. in promoting this paradigm shift in education post-pandemic mbhiza (2021) agrees that there needs to be a paradigm shift in education post-covid-19 and that alternative ways of teaching, learning and doing research must be implemented. this author foresees that traditional methods will be incompatible with those in the “post-covid-19 era” (mbhiza, 2021: 283). it is imperative for lecturers to use their experience of online teaching and learning to inform their future efforts to encourage learners to be self-regulating learners (mbhiza, 2021: 286). one cannot conceptualise what the future of teaching and learning practices will look like post-covid. however, ndlovu, mbatha and msiza (2020) look forward to an imagined future by exploring how this might be shaped after the pandemic. the authors suggest that online learning and teaching should be part of the strategic plans of heis in the future. in addition, they imagine that future programmes offered at heis will need to be https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6328 2512023 41(2): 251-257 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6328 dankers & stoltenkamp advances made by the university of the western cape collaborative and interdisciplinary. undoubtedly the pandemic has brought about a shift in teaching and learning practices and highlighted many inequalities. in this regard ndlovu et al. (2020: 49) caution that the divide might widen post-covid, and that heis will need to be flexible and encourage collaboration. the fourth theme that emerged is the changing landscape of education that necessitates high-quality ict infrastructure to ensure that teaching and learning will not suffer in the post-covid-19 era. 3. ert practices implemented at the uwc in the next sections, we describe the uwc’s emergency and remote learning and teaching practices adopted by departments across faculties during the covid-19 pandemic. we also describe the continual professional academic support provided and highlight campaigns that promote awareness to sustain fully online and hybrid teaching and learning approaches. in addition, we identify patterns that emerge related to data access, digital competencies, digital tools, the transformation of the curriculum, and pedagogic shifts in teaching styles and methods adopted at the uwc. with the aforementioned in mind, we associate the four themes that emerged from the reviews with the uwc’s ert practices, namely the inequality factor that the ‘new normal’ highlighted; the emphasis on the shift from design to supporting technology that drives curriculum design in online teaching and learning; the deprivation of epistemological access and lack of training to staff and students; and the changing landscape of education that necessitates a high-quality ict infrastructure to ensure that teaching and learning will not suffer in the post-covid-19 era. the following sections will identify the themes and associate them with practices employed within different departments across faculties at the uwc that who participated in and utilised ert practices in support of lecturer and student development. prior to the pandemic, the uwc’s centre for innovative education and communication technologies (ciect) contributed to enhancing teaching, especially online teaching, learning and assessment practices for both blended and distance delivery modes. by ensuring alignment of outcomes, course content, assessment tools and the selection of relevant etools that support course design circumvented any kind of inequality that discouraged student access and success. 4. the first theme: inequality factor that the ‘new normal’ highlighted to circumvent any form of inequality caused by the pandemic, the uwc placed high value on student support. with regard to student support, the centre for student support services (csss) team collaborated with the ciect to create online environments. online training sessions and consultations familiarised csss facilitators with content creation, assessment and communication activities on the online platform, ikamva. students were added to these online environments and were able to access the resources. the interactive online environments that were created included the following: learning support 2021; office for academic support (oas) the learning hub 2021; the office of student development (osd) student orientation 2021; graduate development programme (gdp) 2021. embedded in these environments were multimedia components and documentation. learning content was structured and shared in course resources and students’ lessons pages. important videos and related presentations that address various topics are embedded in the online spaces that are easily accessible by students. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6328 2522023 41(2): 252-257 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6328 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) to prevent inequality patterns to emerge that are related to data access, the uwc’s departments across faculties were encouraged to use online resources by conducting ‘live’ online sessions via the meetings tools facility in the lms. the meeting tool is effective, because students can join a class by connecting through the uwc’s virtual private network (vpn), which does not use any data. during the class students can unmute themselves and ask the lecturer questions, which allows for an interactive online engagement in real-time. the meetings were recorded so that students can watch the lecture afterwards and reinforce their learning. the online test and group assignment submission environment allowed students to engage in an online test which drew in questions from various question banks. multiple-choice questions were aligned to the topics presented during the two-week period. at the end of this teaching block, students submitted group assignments. these were checked for plagiarism via turnitin, especially since the module focused on research and writing. further student involvement was achieved as students engaged in a peer evaluation activity and rated the group participation. in addition, a lecturer teaching english home language made use of social learning via whatsapp and ikamva to support students. this format of learning embraced the uwc’s #nostudentwillbeleftbehind campaign. the lecturer scheduled synchronous meeting times for each of his eleven groups of students. information was shared with the students who had challenges connecting to the internet and those who had no devices. 5. second theme: emphasis on the shift from design to supporting technology that drives curriculum design in online teaching and learning different faculties at the uwc adopted a blended learning approach with regard to planning, design, development, prior to and during the pandemic. as many as 90 lecturers created online modules on ikamva for the 2020 academic year. they made use of various etools for content creation, communication and assessment, and included the integration of turnitin (tii). they also created structured online environments to provide students with relevant interactive learning material such as videos, powerpoint presentations, articles and documents. ‘lessons etool’ is used to present content in an interactive manner by embedding presentations, videos, and other learning material. one lecturer created an ‘online reading corner’, which was aimed at motivating students to read pieces of literature and share their reactions in a discussion forum. lecturers engaged in online meetings with their students, using various online meeting applications (bbb, zoom, and google meet). students were expected to engage in weekly tasks which were designed using the tests and quizzes etool. these tasks included different question types such as true-and-false, short answer and multiple-choice questions (mcqs). formative tasks were used as a form of consolidation of course content, as well as a space for reflection and goal setting. in addition, these tasks assisted not only with reinforcement, revision, and preparation for examinations, but also with their training as educators. ‘take-home’ assessments were set upwhereby students needed to submit a research proposal. rubrics that outlined the assessment criteria were shared with students. these assessments were placed on tii platform on ikamva and students were expected to submit their assignments on the same platform prior to their final online submission. the students were given sufficient time to submit and edit for re-submission purposes. as a means of reflection, students were required to complete course evaluations (surveys shared via ikamva), which provided feedback of lecturers’ teaching approaches, and students’ learning and progress. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6328 2532023 41(2): 253-257 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6328 dankers & stoltenkamp advances made by the university of the western cape 6. third theme: deprivation of epistemological access and lack of training to staff and students this aspect that emerged from our reviews is that regular in-service training of teaching staff and administrators to increase understanding of pedagogical issues and digital platforms is necessary to empower staff and students (shava, 2022: 87). by increasing the skills sets of both students and lecturers, the gap in the digital divide can be bridged. in addition, the implementation of a high-quality ict infrastructure ensures that teaching and learning will continue to improve, even post-covid-19 and regardless of the mode of delivery. to corroborate our findings, we explored the uwc’s current infrastructure that prevented the deprivation of epistemological access to academic staff and students. the uwc’s center for innovative education and communication technologies team (ciect) designed and developed an academic digital literacy programme to ascertain the technological skill levels of students. the team collaborated with departments across faculties to identify student needs and a programme is offered over a semester to students of participating departments in different faculties. early in 2020, the uwc’s digital literacy programme assessments were conducted via the lms. since the assessment was accessed via smartphones, some students could not participate because of device and data challenges. even though the uwc made provision for data, it still remained a salient problem at south african universities. most of the deficiencies such as epistemological access and lack of training to staff and students were coordinated by the ciect. lecturers engaged with the ciect training team to design structured, blended and learning experiences. these lecturers embedded learning materials, simulations, worksheets, and activities in their online environments to enhance their teaching practice. they also used a variety of teaching applications such as narrated powerpoints, documents, whatsapp, google meet, zoom, cmap software, and learning simulations to enhance the student learning experience. a lecturer in one faculty created a structured online module for second-year students in collaboration with faculty tutors. pre-recorded videos (structured presentations) as well as tutorials, practical exercises and solutions were uploaded on the ‘course resources’ etool. often in collaboration with the ciect team, lecturers were able to attend online etools workshops and one-on-one consultations to design and develop online environments. during these sessions, lecturers were introduced to the use of the institutional lms, ikamva, personal learning environments (ples), turnitin (tii) as well as google applications (gapp’s). the uwc’s lms ‘lessons etool’ allowed for the embedding of multimedia learning material. specific multimedia learning materials were developed and embedded in online environments, enabling students to engage with course content from any geographical setting via their mobile devices. lecturers were taught how to structure their own online environments, making use of the ‘lessons etool’ to share relevant learning materials that included podcasts and narrated presentations. the lecturers developed ‘epreps’ that students submitted online before tutorial classes. this preparation enabled tutors to address specific problem areas during online tutorials. furthermore, turnitin integration on the ‘assignment etool’ was enabled to allow the written pieces to be checked for plagiarism. lecturers, tutors and students made use of chat rooms on ikamva for tutorials and consultations. the ciect team engaged in various sessions with the lecturers and offered departmental training and presentations to lecturers on the effective selection of etools; the design and development of interactive online environments aligned to their specific module learning outcomes. an example of an interactive online environment was created within the uwc’s https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6328 2542023 41(2): 254-257 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6328 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) dentistry faculty. this module introduced the clinical discipline of dentistry, as well as concepts of academic literacy and laboratory-based teaching. the lecturers created a concept map highlighting the learning units and key concepts of clinical dentistry. the concept map was embedded in the course outline etool on ikamva. an interactive module guide highlighted the organisation and administration of the module. lecturers provided a ‘one-stop’ information guide which students were required to read prior to attending classes. the interactive guide included aspects pertaining to prescribed learning materials, lecture schedules and attendance, graduate attributes, assessment strategies, clinical dentistry teaching and student support methods. this resource was a quick reference and reminder of the module organisation. the ciect also assisted lecturers in developing an interactive analytic and the critical thinking module that focused on design, development and structuring content. the lecturers engaged with the ciect team to assist with the use and application of the lessons, the discussion forum, and tests and quizzes etools. the lecturers used the teaching guides and online module exemplar shared by the ciect as a guide to develop a first-year module online. this module consisted of an orientation lesson and familiarised students with the important processes related to the course, including a course outline, assessment and etiquette policies, reading instructions, and appropriate communication channels to engage lecturer and peers as they embarked on studies. 7. fourth theme: changing the landscape of education that necessitates a high-quality ict infrastructure to ensure that teaching and learning will not suffer in a post-covid-19 era to highlight the changing landscape of education, by the implementation of a high-quality ict infrastructure, particularly the use of the document camera, a high-quality tool at the uwc, i would like to present the following case applied by a senior technical officer at the department of physics and astronomy at the uwc. the officer created a seamless movement between whiteboard, ikamva and presentations using a hybrid teaching approach with the use of a document camera. the lecturer downloaded the sphere2 software that accompanies the document camera. this enabled him to project objects and windows side by side (e.g. live video and static content displayed side by side). the lecturer also made use of a physical whiteboard and placed it on the desk in the venue to project learning material, and enlarge elements like equations to improve visibility. the lecturer was able to create seamless movement between platforms and presentations, such as between ikamva, a powerpoint presentation and the document camera, allowing him to explain complex concepts, and record entire lectures and embed them on ikamva. students are then able to retrieve recordings. the document camera can project demonstrations and zoom into real-world objects and enable many more teaching innovations. the ciect offers continuous training and exploration to this new teaching approach. the aforementioned bears scrutiny of motala and menon’s (2020: 93) observation that heis need to re-evaluate their teaching and learning practices and consider investing in technology, to support the new mode of delivery. it seems inevitable that ert modes will continue even after the pandemic, and it would be wise for heis that if educators reflect on their practices and refresh these by transforming their teaching styles using existing technology, they would be supporting the drive towards a digitalised curriculum. to demonstrate hybrid teaching systems to faculties at the uwc, the ciect’s audiovisual services (avs) team assisted in how to conduct online course orientation by making https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6328 2552023 41(2): 255-257 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6328 dankers & stoltenkamp advances made by the university of the western cape use of the document camera. the course online orientation was streamed in different venues with google meet, enabling more than 50 students to log into the sessions from various geographical settings. lecturers introduced themselves and gave a breakdown of the course. a pre-recorded message from the dean was played and students were able to engage with the lecturers. during the pandemic some lecturers adopted a hybrid teaching approach by going to campus and teaching in the physical venue using the document camera while students logged in remotely. this enabled all students to see and hear the presenters, view presentations, listen to pre-recorded messages, and engage with the lecturers. the avs team were present to address the technical set-up, monitor the orientation session, and facilitate technical aspects of the sessions. more innovative approaches (affordances with high-quality ict infrastructure) are taken by lecturers particularly in the math education department who make use of external tools, such as geogebra (https://www.geogebra.org). the tool is integrated into the ikamva lessons tool and allows students to practise graphs, geometry, and 3d illustrations. students were able to download the programme onto their own laptops or pcs and as an app on their smartphones. the benefits of using this tool were numerous, as learning was made more meaningful when concepts were visualised in real time. short tests enabled students to assess and reinforce learning as they received their scores immediately; they were also able to engage repeatedly in their self-assessment tests. the engagement of lecturers with the ciect team to adopt the changing landscape of education that necessitates a high-quality ict infrastructure post-covid-19 era validates a theme that emerged in our reviews. lecturers are willing to engage with blended and online pedagogies, and lecturers used their new-found knowledge to experiment with new technologies and reflect on their traditional teaching practices during the pandemic (see padayachee & dison, 2021). 8. concluding remarks the major objectives of this paper were accomplished as the researchers identified several themes in teaching learning practices precipitated by the covid19 pandemic. we identified how the uwc responded proactively to the shift in ert, specifically in terms of providing an ongoing professional academic support structure. the following major themes emerged which i would like to reiterate. firstly, the inequitable distribution of digital infrastructure is noticeable and marked the pandemic, which is still of great concern. there was a hesitancy on lecturers’ part to engage with blended and online pedagogies prior to the pandemic and is still of great concern. it was noticed that curriculum change in heis is incumbent of socio-economic, cultural and political configurations. most of the literature consulted in this research confirms that even during the pandemic education is still deeply embedded in inequity, inequality and social constructs and the digital divide still deprives certain students of epistemological access. lastly, high-quality ict infrastructure will ensure that teaching and learning continues in the post-covid-19 era, regardless of whether it is done remotely or face-to-face. in this paper we set out to answer questions and confirmed that the pandemic prompted heis, especially the uwc, to reimagine teaching and learning, student support, and staff matters across faculties to provide a new lens for heis to expand their view of student success and access in relation to the new challenges presented by a pandemic, and provided a new lens for heis to include innovative education and communication technologies in the https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6328 https://www.geogebra.org 2562023 41(2): 256-257 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6328 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) pursuit of student advancement. more research that focuses on ongoing advances in support of remote online teaching and learning for student development during a pandemic that have an impact is necessary. this then leaves us with one last question: how can heis create equitable remote teaching and learning strategies post-pandemic to ensure student success 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(eds.), blended learning and the global south. virtual exchanges in higher education, pp. 39-54. digital publishing. patrick, h.o., abiolu, r.t. & abiolu, o.a. 2021. reflections on covid-19 and the viability of curriculum adjustment and delivery options in the south african educational space. transformation in higher education, 6: 101. https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v6i0.101 shava, e. 2022. reinforcing the role of ict in enhancing teaching and learning postcovid-19 in tertiary institutions in south africa. journal of culture and values in education, 5(1): 78-91. https://doi.org/10.46303/jcve.2022.7 stoltenkamp, j. & dankers, p. 2022. designing online learning environments in higher education: building capacity of lecturers to design and facilitate blended e-pedagogy for mature students. in z. groener & s. land (eds.), adult education and learning access: hope in times of crisis in south africa, pp. 168-200. university of the western cape. snyder, h. 2019. literature review as a research methodology: an overview and guidelines. journal of business research, 104: 333-339. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.07.039 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6328 https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v6i0.101 https://doi.org/10.46303/jcve.2022.7 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.07.039 _hlk105139735 _hlk108176430 _hlk105407708 _hlk108019308 _hlk105424075 _hlk105139171 _hlk105508198 _hlk105139203 _hlk106029683 _hlk105400724 _hlk105165089 _goback _hlk108012737 _hlk135763567 _hlk135664459 _hlk135664686 _hlk108180095 _hlk107999737 _hlk135665157 _hlk135678913 _hlk135760743 _hlk135760657 _hlk135763071 _hlk107998242 _hlk107908950 perspectives in education 31(3) perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2013 university of the free state 170 ulla runesson jönköping university, sweden & university of the witwatersrand e-mail: ulla.runesson@hlk.hj.se telephone: +46 36101361 focusing on the object of learning and what is critical for learning: a case study of teachers’ inquiry into teaching and learning mathematics ulla runesson during the last decade, lesson study, a japanese professional development model involving a community of learners, has been spreading to countries around the world. lesson study is a systematic process of inquiry into classroom practices where teachers collaborate in planning, implementing, observing and revising lessons. the approach used in the study reported in this paper involves a version of lesson study, namely learning study. whereas the underpinning theory in lesson study is often implicit, learning study has an explicit theory that can help teachers to pedagogically theorise about their practice, students’ learning and the object of learning. through one swedish learning study in mathematics, i demonstrate what teachers can learn by exploring what is critical for their students’ learning and how teaching can be improved to enhance learning. keywords: lesson study, learning study, teaching algebra, teacher learning, variation theory it has been argued that teachers’ professional learning must build on interaction and collegial learning in professional learning communities (plcs) (e.g. borko, 2004; cochran-smith & little, 1999). in plcs, teachers’ learning is directly related to and embedded in their work, deriving from teacher experiences in relation to the specific context in which they work and the learners they encounter daily. similarly, following dewey’s model for ‘learning to teach’, elliott (2012) argues that it is important for teachers to get opportunities to inquire into teaching and learning using a systematic approach, where the classroom serves as a laboratory. the classroom teaching and learning, therefore, become a source for collecting data that can be analysed critically and reflected upon. van driel and berry (2012: 26) have noted concerns, however, that plcs ‘tend to ignore issues related to teaching and learning subject matter’. i share these concerns, particularly from the point of view of current discussions 171 focusing on the object of learning and what is critical for learning: a case study of teachers’ inquiry into teaching and learning mathematics | ulla runesson regarding the importance of teachers developing sufficient knowledge to teach the subject effectively (pedagogical content knowledge, pck). i suggest that the plc approach should include opportunities for teachers to develop their knowledge of students’ learning and, at the same time, increase their knowledge on how to teach their specific subject matter effectively. what and how teachers can learn from a plc approach, with emphasis on specific subject matter and student learning, will be described and discussed. below, i describe a group of primary teachers’ collective learning experience as they worked with converting a sentence into an algebraic expression, for example, a sandwich costs 2 dollars more than a coke or x+2=y. particular attention will be paid to the process by which teachers surmise and predict the critical aspects of the above algebraic expression and how teaching strategies are reshaped to account for newly surmised critical aspects. learning study: a systematic inquiry based on a pedagogical theory the approach used was learning study, a version of the japanese lesson study (lewis, 2002; stigler & hiebert, 1999; yoshida & fernandez, 2004). just like lesson study, learning study is a kind of teachers’ collective exploration of classroom practice. it contains a jointly planned lesson, observation of the enacted lesson, and a revision of the lesson plan based on reflection on the lesson, usually in a cyclical sequence. however, compared to lesson study, which can have various objects of enquiry (lewis, 2009), learning study always has the object of learning as the focus. this is a consequence of the underpinning pedagogical theory, namely variation theory. (for a more detailed account see, e.g. marton & booth, 1997; marton, runesson & tsui, 2004.) one element of variation theory is that learning is seen as the learning of something; learning always has an object. from a variation theory perspective, learning primarily involves a qualitative change in the way the object is experienced. the way an object is experienced can be defined in terms of the aspects that are focused on and discerned simultaneously. in other words, for learning to take place, learners must be able to discern aspects of an object they were not able to discern before. for every object of learning (the capability we want the learners to develop), there are certain critical aspects. what the critical aspects might be, cannot be derived from the subject matter alone, but from the learners, their difficulties and their ways of experiencing what is learned. teachers can conjecture on what the critical aspects might be and, by putting them to the test in their practice, confirm or reject them as being critical. for example, it could be that an important aspect of the subject matter has already been discerned by learners and thus need not be featured as a critical aspect within the current focus of teaching. consequently, critical aspects perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 172 figure ‘relationally’ – as a function of both the subject matter and the focal learner group. discernment comes from being able to make distinctions: to see differences and recognise those aspects that are necessary to discern. for example, to discern an aspect of an object, it is necessary to see it as an aspect that can vary (a dimension of variation). ‘colour’ is an aspect that can vary (different colours); ‘shape’ is another. to be able to discern a certain aspect, the learner has to experience a variation in that aspect. to discern the aspect ‘colour’, it is necessary to have experienced at least two different colours. without having experienced at least two different shapes, it is unlikely that the aspect ‘shape’ will be discerned. this principle can guide teachers when they plan for helping learners to discern the critical aspects. according to bowden and marton (1998), that which varies against a stable background is likely to be discerned. by creating a pattern of invariance and variation (e.g. showing five cups of the same size, shape and material, but with different colours), it is likely that the varying aspect (colour) will be attended to and, thus, discerned. learning study draws upon the variation in the way both students and teachers see and deal with the object of learning, while being guided by the aforementioned principles from variation theory (the object of learning and its critical aspects, and experienced variation as a prerequisite for discernment). the various ways in which students’ perceive the object of learning are regarded for distinguishing what is critical (i.e. what is not yet discerned). in the same way, the sharing of variation in the teachers’ knowledge and experience (often tacit or unnoticed) provides valuable input into learning study (pang & lo, 2012). this sharing is an important aspect in identifying what is critical for learning and how to make this learnable in the classroom. to summarise, the aim of the collective inquiry into teaching and learning is not to develop teaching practice in general (e.g. to make the lessons more interactive or implement new teaching strategies and technologies), but to gain insights into the relationship between the subject matter, how it is taught, and student learning, with a particular focus on a specific object of learning and its critical aspects. it includes systematic data collection and collective analysis of teaching and students’ learning in terms of what learners must connect, differentiate and be aware of. furthermore, the teacher must determine how this could be made possible in the lesson. the cyclic process and the purpose with each step are described in figure 1. after having decided on the object of learning, the teachers conjecture what the critical aspects for learning may be. this phase is based on previous teaching experience and a diagnostic ‘test’ comprising several tasks they believe can reveal learners’ difficulties and conceptions. the aim of this test is to confirm and/or identify critical aspects to be taught in the lesson. based on an analysis of how the learners solve the tasks, the first lesson in the cycle is jointly planned with a particular focus on how 173 focusing on the object of learning and what is critical for learning: a case study of teachers’ inquiry into teaching and learning mathematics | ulla runesson to teach the critical aspects. next, one of the teachers implements the lesson(s) in her class. from an evaluation of the learning outcomes (how the learners solved the same set of tasks after the lesson), together with close observation of the recorded lesson(s), conjectures about the critical aspects and how to teach them to make them discernible are discussed and confirmed or rejected, and a subsequent revised lesson plan is produced. a second teacher uses this revised lesson plan with her class, and this continues until all the teachers in the group have taught the lesson(s). one learning study process usually takes approximately three months. figure 1: the learning study cycle the study in the following sections, i demonstrate how this systematic inquiry into classroom practice can be a site for teachers to obtain insight into their assumptions about their students’ learning, and how their taken-for-granted ideas about how to facilitate learning and how to teach a particular lesson can evolve. the research context and participants a group of three year-4 and -5 teachers in a swedish school in a suburban area of a large city worked together with two researchers (the author and a research assistant) from the local university. they took part on a voluntary basis and were selected for this study because the researchers were aware of their interest in school development. the teachers were familiar with variation theory because they had attended a perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 174 one-day seminar held at the university and had participated in two previous learning studies. they were all primary school teachers and were, therefore, general teachers rather than subject experts, with between 5 and more than 30 years of teaching experience. they taught their own classes and were familiar with the students. with a few exceptions, the majority of the students had a swedish ethnic background and the medium of instruction was swedish. the classes were all mixed-ability groups consisting of 25, 27 and 23 learners respectively. all students were 11 years old. participation was optional for the learners. the parent(s) of the participants had given their written consent. the ethical guidelines given by the swedish research council were followed (information, confidentiality, consent and voluntariness). data construction and data analysis data for this article included video-recordings and full, verbatim transcripts from the six lessons (in total 240 minutes) and (partially transcribed) audio-recorded meetings with the teachers before, during and after the completion of the lessons (in total six meetings, each one approximately 90 minutes). initially, i listened several times to the audio recordings, and noted instances that were interesting from the perspective of the aim of this study. all of these were transcribed verbatim. while analysing the data from the teacher meetings, i listened carefully to the audio recording and followed the discussion in order to ascertain the aspects that the teachers commented on in the recorded lesson (although talk from the lesson they were watching could be overheard). by simultaneously reading the timecoded transcripts from the lessons and the recording from the planning/evaluation sessions, i was able to interpret the instances in the lesson they commented on, even though they were not talking in full sentences and often referred to ‘this’ or ‘there’, for instance: ‘there i could have given an example that was incorrect,’ or ‘did you write x and y there?’ in the analysis, i worked with the (full) audio recordings, the (partial) transcripts of these and transcripts from the lessons in parallel. the focus was on how the teachers expressed their ideas about enhancing student learning in terms of the following: what they assumed to be critical; how their understanding of critical features changed on the basis of their observation of the recorded lessons; the analysis of pupil learning outcomes of the diagnostic preand post-test; and how the lessons were taught. exploring teaching and learning of converting sentences into algebraic expressions in the first meeting, the teachers decided on the capability that they wanted the student to develop (i.e. the object of learning). from the results of the national assessment test, they noticed that the learners had difficulties with converting sentences into algebraic expressions (c.f. booth, 1984; kieran, 2004; knuth, alibali, 175 focusing on the object of learning and what is critical for learning: a case study of teachers’ inquiry into teaching and learning mathematics | ulla runesson mcneil, weinberg & stephens, 2005). for example, transforming a relationship such as ‘an ice-cream costs 5 kronor more than a coke’ into an algebraic expression’ (i.e. x+5=y) confused the learners, possibly because there was no calculation needed. one teacher commented: ‘they are used to always doing a calculation, so they do not know what to do’. so, the point of departure was the identified difficulties and, from this, the aim was to explore why they were problematic and how teaching could help the students to overcome these learning problems. this is a specific feature of learning study: the object of learning is chosen from teachers’ experience of what they have found to be difficult to learn. to gain deeper understanding of these difficulties, the teachers designed the diagnostic test that they hoped would reveal specific problems the learners experienced. from a variation theory perspective, learners’ difficulties with learning and the variation between different ways of understanding the same thing, can be due to learners not having ‘discerned’ the aspects that need to be discerned. the diagnostic pre-test was designed by the teachers and comprised tasks they believed would give more information about the learning difficulties. in this way, they identified what learners had not discerned yet. this test was taken by all the students in the three classes. conjecturing the critical aspects the teachers used an interpretative approach to analyse the results of the diagnostic test. the total score was not the main interest, but rather how the tasks were interpreted and solved by the learners. they found the results from two of the items on the diagnostic pre-test particularly informative. one of the tasks entailed matching a sentence with an algebraic expression. in the sentence, ‘3 pens and 1 book costs as much as 5 pens’, students were given a choice between four algebraic expressions, where two were correct. only 12 of 47 pupils were able to find the two correct expressions. the other valuable sources of information were the responses to the open question: ‘why do we sometimes use letters in mathematics?’ only seven out of 47 students answered in a way that suggested they could conceptualise letters as substitutes for numbers (e.g. ‘there could be a figure instead and you have to find the number’, ‘a secret number’, ‘a short-hand for a number’). a majority gave answers which the teachers interpreted as letters relating to the cognitive demand of mathematics: pupils expressed that letters either make mathematics easier (‘because it is easier to understand’) or more complicated (‘so you have to think really hard’) or even that letters have a purpose of their own (‘so there is something to learn’). in this discussion, two conjectures arose. one was that the letter representing the variable might be problematic, particularly the letters x and y. one teacher noted: t3: if we use x and y, it will be frightening to the student. therefore, they conjectured that, in order for the learners to understand that a letter represents a variable, it would help if the letter chosen was as ‘close’ as possible to perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 176 the variable by using abbreviations. t1 gave an example of how a sentence could be represented algebraically in the lesson: t1: let’s take ‘john is three years older than david’. this we could write ‘john’s age – david’s age = 3 years’... and next, shorten this to ‘j–d=3’. t2: yes, that would be one way. so, instead of using x and y as representing the variables, it was suggested to use abbreviations that were close to what the variable represented (j=john’s age and d=david’s age). it must be noted that teachers have ownership of a learning study; they are allowed to decide on the object of learning and how to teach. this implies unpredictability and management dilemmas (adamson & walker, 2011). however, fernandez, cannon and chokski (2003: 182) conclude that the collaboration ‘must include room for knowledgeable coaches who can stimulate the thinking of groups so they can rise beyond their own limitations into rich arenas’. we (the author and the research assistant) took this advice seriously and, even though we were doubtful about some of the teachers’ suggestions, we did not reject their ideas. instead, teachers were asked to continually justify their decisions and we encouraged them to come up with varying alternatives. we conceived of ideas as well, but only as alternatives, not as the experts’ ‘truth’. our aspiration was to create an atmosphere of open inquiry and debate, a conversation with argumentation, while maintaining a critical approach to the process. the second conjecture the teachers had was that, in order to see the relational character of the expression (i.e. there is a relation between john’s and david’s age, in the example above), they must be able to discern the various ways in which this can be described (verbally and mathematically). they, therefore, decided to demonstrate a variation of the expression, for instance: ‘david is three years younger than john’, ‘the difference between their age is three years’ and the corresponding algebraic expressions (e.g. ‘j–d=3; j–3=d; d+3=j; j=d+3; d=j–3; 3+d=j’). the equations are all permutations of d+3=j, that is, the position of the symbols and, thus, the operation changes whereas the variables are the same. this pattern of variation they planned to apply to several examples. only after decisions were made on how to work with the content in the lesson, were the particular teaching arrangements, organisation and resources determined. this is also a principle from variation theory; that teaching what is critical for learning is significant, and that solely taking a general approach to teaching (e.g. whether the learners should work in groups, what material to use) does not provide the necessary conditions of learning. instead, the specific conditions in terms of aspects of that which is learned play the most significant role in making the learning of the object of learning possible. 177 focusing on the object of learning and what is critical for learning: a case study of teachers’ inquiry into teaching and learning mathematics | ulla runesson they agreed on the structure of the lesson: 1. introduction (whole class): converting a sentence into an algebraic expression and presenting all the possible permutations (several examples). 2. activity in pairs (worksheet): learners should find the algebraic expressions and all the permutations to each sentence and vice versa. 3. learners at the blackboard (whole class): accounting and arguing for their solutions on the tasks. this structure was used in all three lessons. the first lesson was taught in accordance with the planning by teacher 1 to her class. while planning the first lesson, what were the views of the teachers regarding how to best teach the object of learning in order to enhance learning? one aspect they highlighted was ‘to see the relational character of the expression’. when they designed the teaching of this aspect, they drew on principles from variation theory; the same example was used, whereas the positions of the variables (and the operations) varied. the lesson was designed also to teach the ‘representation of the variables’. their assumption was that the abstract letters x and y were the problem and they decided to avoid them by using other letters. instead of having x and y invariant in the different expressions, they decided to vary them depending on the variable they represented. revising and rejecting the critical aspects as explained previously, the main aim of a learning study is to enhance students’ learning by ascertaining the critical aspects which might make a difference in learning. therefore, it is important for teachers to study the lesson, the learners’ reaction to the teaching, and their ways of dealing with tasks given after the lesson (usually the same as before the lesson). the analysis of this diagnostic post-test implies that teaching be related to learning, not as a one-to-one correspondence, but finding out whether the topic was dealt with in a way that made it possible to learn what was intended and what must be changed for the next lesson. with the background of the particular tasks on the post-test the learners still had difficulties with, the teachers carefully observed the recorded lessons. this inquiry into teaching and learning allowed them to consider how appropriate their teaching strategies in the lessons actually were. in the post-lesson meetings following the first lesson, new conjectures were made about aspects that must be made learnable in lesson 2, and previous assumptions were reconsidered and even rejected. in the post-lesson meeting after lesson 1, a new conjecture was devised: to understand that the difference between the variables is the same, independent of the values taken. this was initiated by t1 when she observed herself teaching. in the lesson, she gave an example of the relationship of age between two persons. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 178 different permutations of one expression describing the relationship were presented. she commented on this by saying: t1: [in a low voice] but … it doesn’t matter if i am 60 [years old] or 20! he is always 5 years younger … i don’t know if that came up in the lesson, did it? my interpretation is that t1 noticed a feature of the relationship she had not noticed before. however, nobody answered the question on that occasion and the discussion led into other issues while they were attending to the recording. later on, when they talked about using the same example (about comparing age) in lesson 2, my interpretation is that the idea was obtained. one teacher said: t3: change their ages! even though they did not explicitly say that this was necessary to learn, it was taught in lesson 2. the teacher showed the same example (invariant) and varied the numerical value of the variables. in this way, the learners would be able to realise that the difference in age between john and david is the same, independent of their age at a particular point in time. then they decided to bring out an important feature of the relational character of the expression; not all permutations correspond to the example. this came from reflections on the result on the diagnostic post-test together with their observations in the recorded lesson. it was noticed that many of the learners could still not choose the two correct algebraic expressions for the sentence: ‘3 pens and 1 book costs as much as 5 pens’. in the lesson, the teacher asked whether the examples she gave corresponded with the expression, even though all the examples were correct. she said: t: does that [example] correspond with the formula? questions such as these or ‘is it correct?’ were used repeatedly throughout the lesson. the teacher who had conducted the lesson became aware of the character of the questions she asked in the lesson when she observed the recording: t1: here [in this situation] i could have given an example that was incorrect. yes, i could have come up with that, one that was wrong! researcher: yes, writing an incorrect one! t1: yes, i could. they should have had [an incorrect] one. that’s why they failed on that [test] item [in the diagnostic post-test]. that’s why they haven’t got any further. t2: yes, when going through the first example you could have chosen … t1: … i could have given the example ‘i+7=9 [and asked] is that correct’? this excerpt suggests that she could see a connection between what happened in the lesson and the results on the post-diagnostic test: ‘that’s why they have failed’, she said. she could also see a possible solution to this: presenting an incorrect expression. 179 focusing on the object of learning and what is critical for learning: a case study of teachers’ inquiry into teaching and learning mathematics | ulla runesson the excerpt illustrates how they became aware that only ‘correct’ expressions had been used through carefully watching the recorded lesson and questioning what they had previously taken for granted. using incorrect examples had not occurred to them when planning the first lesson, but was now seen as a possibility. consequently, an incorrect expression was added to the previously planned examples. for example, d–3=j was used with the example above as an incorrect expression that maintained the relational character of the algebraic expression, while varying the relation itself. as a result, the second lesson taught by t2 in his class, was taught in accordance with this planning, except for one unexpected suggestion by the learners, namely that other letters (x and y, a, b, c and symbols such as square and circles) be used for the variables. when the teacher asked for a formula for the example given, one pupil suggested using x and y. christian: you can write x minus ten equals y! t2 writes x–10=y on the board. t2: explain. how did you work this out? christian: mm, x that’s you [your age] minus ten years and y is johan. although the teacher wrote this on the board (x–10=y), he did not pick this up at all. instead he said: t: okay, so you changed our names to x and y instead. is it possible to change my name to something else besides x and y? elsa? elsa: er ... to letters. t2: yeah, what letters? elsa: a or b, c. t2: yes, what else? s?: (inaudible) t2: yes. fredrika? fredrika: if you knew the age, you could take johan’s age plus ten equals yours. this episode was observed in the post-lesson meeting. for instance, t1 expressed her awareness by asking: t1: did you write x and y there [later on in the lesson]? t2: no, i didn’t. i wanted to get to the abbreviations h and j. therefore, i didn’t want to confuse them with x and y. i didn’t want to use that. when noticing how the learners responded, they realised that some of their assumptions about the learners’ problems were not totally correct. the learners (at least several in this class) seemed to understand that any letter could be used as a representation, so using abbreviations might not be a good thing. therefore, they decided to deliberately introduce other symbols than abbreviations in lesson 3, but keep to the planning to show incorrect algebraic expressions and substitute the perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 180 values of the variables to emphasise the relational character of the expression. this was also taught in the third lesson. to summarise, the teachers had certain conjectures about how to learn and teach an algebraic expression, which were rejected, changed or refined. the conjecture that using the symbols x and y was the problem was rejected when it became apparent that the learners could easily use any symbol for the variable. in this case, it appears that the teachers had underestimated the learners’ abilities and they realised that their conclusions about the reasons for the learners’ problems from the diagnostic pre-test may have been incorrect, thus, they changed the strategy in lesson 3. however, conjectures were not only rejected, but also further developed. the second conjecture that ‘the relational character of the expression could be made learnable by opening up for a variation of the relation between the variables’ was kept throughout all the lessons, but with minor enhancements in the two last lessons. they thought that the relational character could be more explicitly exposed by using incorrect expressions together with the substitution of different numerical values for the letters. teachers’ learning from the learning study the results of the data analysis pointed to a collective process of open and critical scrutiny into teaching and learning. furthermore, the study entailed a bottom-up approach where the teachers ‘owned’ the object of inquiry. in other words, the teachers did not implement tasks or activities produced by experts but had to develop alternatives on their own, making choices independently, and seeing where the different choices might lead them. the process was close to and embedded in their practice and related to their professional task. the content, the learners’ difficulties and how to teach algebraic expression were the focus. however, i would also suggest that the teachers had to deal with learning and teaching in a specific way. they explored the conditions for learning, not as general learning conditions, but specific to the object of learning in terms of what must be made possible to learn in order for their learners to develop the targeted capability. it has been demonstrated how the critical aspects emerged through the learning study, not from the content alone, but through a combination of the learners’ understanding together with the teachers’ instruction. marton et al. (2004) suggested that learning study entails learning on three levels: students’ learning, teachers’ learning and researcher’s learning. the data in this study only allowed me to establish what was made possible to learn, not what was actually learned. one thing made possible to learn was that the teachers’ assumptions about students’ learning could sometimes be incorrect. for instance, the assumption that the representations x and y were frightening and unknown to the students had to be rejected. this allowed them to understand the importance of being sensitive to the students’ perception of the object of learning and, consequently, adapting the teaching to their level of understanding. 181 focusing on the object of learning and what is critical for learning: a case study of teachers’ inquiry into teaching and learning mathematics | ulla runesson further, it is likely that the teachers’ came to realise that some of the takenfor-granted ideas for facilitating learning may not have the expected outcome (i.e. avoiding the letters x and y was not an effective strategy). at the very least, teachers were provided with the opportunity to see alternative ways of teaching a particular content and, moreover, how lessons can be changed to maximise targeted objects of learning. variation theory offers the opportunity to focus on the object of learning and to find answers to the question: ‘what is critical to the object of learning?’ to some extent, the teachers in the study succeeded in finding answers to this question. from the diagnostic pre-test, they found that very few students connected letters in mathematics with numbers. therefore, the teachers surmised that the introduction of the x and y factors would be confusing to the students and was deemed a critical aspect (although this was later dismissed). another potential critical aspect that was discovered was the relational character of the algebraic expression. this implied that they identified features of the relationship as being critical for the learning of the object of learning, for example, an algebraic expression could be permutated in multiple ways but it will still describe the same relationship, and the relationship is the same regardless of the values of the variables. nuthall (2004) argues that teachers need an explanatory framework in which to understand how their actions affect students’ learning. in learning study, variation theory is used for this purpose. it has been demonstrated that it adds value to lesson study in that respect (pang & marton, 2005; pang & lo, 2012). it is not possible to draw far-reaching conclusions about the significance of the use of variation theory from this study, since this was not the aim. however, in my opinion, if subject matter is to play a larger role in teachers’ learning in plc, and if we are going to follow nuthall’s (ibid.) advice, a theory for the learning of the content will likely contribute to more efficient learning. otherwise, there may be a risk that the focus will fall solely on general aspects of learning, as van driel and berry (2012) argue. this is not to say that variation theory is the only possible theory. implementing lesson and learning study learning study, and similar teacher research groups, has contributed considerably to the education systems of japan and china. stigler and hiebert (1999) give credit to the lesson study approach as contributing to japanese students’ excellent performance on international tests. in china, ma (1999) attributes elementary teachers’ profound understanding of fundamental mathematics to their involvement in teaching research activities, which are quite similar to learning study. china has a long tradition of teachers engaging in teacher research groups similar to lesson study (yang & ricks, 2012). the strength of teachers’ instruction in chinese mathematics and their profound understanding of fundamental mathematics – despite elementary teachers not having university degrees – has been explained by their involvement in teaching perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 182 research activities and in school-based networks of collective learning (ma, 1999). it appears that learning study not only helps students achieve high test results, but also aids teachers’ in acquiring knowledge of subject matter. in china, at least, it seems as if such research activities can compensate for a lack of formal education. if lesson study can lead to better student learning, it follows that engaging teachers in lesson study approaches will likely assist in achieving educational goals. ono and ferreira (2010) report on an initiative to introduce lesson study as a model of in-service training for teachers of mathematics and science in south africa. they point to several challenges. one is that teachers must change focus from covering the curricula to learners’ understanding of the content. doig and groves (2011: 89) suggest that a crowded curriculum might also be a constraint, since it gives fewer opportunities for a ‘longer-term, deeper study of a more limited number of mathematical topics’. another challenge concerns time. lesson and learning study take place over a period of time; it is therefore necessary to secure time for regular meetings (ono & ferreira, 2010). despite obvious concerns as to whether lesson study is possible outside the collaborative school cultures of japan and china, research (e.g. andrew, 2012; davies & dunnill, 2008; lewis, 2009; perry & lewis, 2009; yoshida, 2012) has demonstrated that lesson study can, in fact, be sustained in other counties and be applied to different subjects and levels of education. acknowledgements this study was financed by a grant from the swedish research council. list of references adamson b & walker w 2011. messy collaboration: learning from a learning study. teaching and teacher education, 27: 29–36. andrew v 2012. using learning study to improve the teaching and learning of accounting in a school in brunei darussalam. international journal for lesson and learning studies, 1: 23–40. booth lr 1984. algebra: children’s strategies and errors. a report of the strategies and errors in secondary mathematics project. windsor: nfer-nelson. borko h 2004. professional development and teacher learning: mapping the terrain. educational researcher, 33: 3–15. bowden j & marton f 1998. the university of learning. beyond quality and competence. london: kogan page. cochran-smith m & lytle sl 1999. the teacher research movement: a decade later. educational researcher, 28: 15–25. davies p & dunnill r 2008. ‘learning study’ as a model of collaborative practice in initial teacher education. journal of education for teaching: international research and pedagogy, 34: 3–16. doig b & groves s 2011. japanese lesson study: teacher professional development through communities of inquiry. mathematics teacher education and development, 1: 77–93. 183 focusing on the object of learning and what is critical for learning: a case study of teachers’ inquiry into teaching and learning mathematics | ulla runesson elliott j 2012. developing a science of teaching through lesson study. international journal for lesson and learning studies, 1: 108–125. fernandez c, cannon j & chokski s 2003. a us–japan lesson study collaboration reveals critical lenses for examining practice. teaching and teacher education, 19: 171–185. kieran c 2004. algebraic thinking in early grades: what is it? the mathematics educator (singapore) 8: 139–151. knuth ej, alibali wm, mcneil mn, weinberg aa & stephens ca 2005. middle school students’ understanding of core algebraic concepts: equivalence and variable. zentralblatt fur didaktik der mathematik, 37: 68–76. lewis c 2002. lesson study: a handbook of teacher-led instructional change. philadelphia: research for better schools inc. lewis c 2009. what is the nature of knowledge development in lesson study? educational action research, 17: 95–110. ma l 1999. knowing and teaching elementary mathematics: teachers’ understanding of fundamental mathematics in china and the united states. mahwah, nj: erlbaum associates. marton f & booth s 1997. learning and awareness. mahawa nj: erlbaum. marton f, runesson u & tsui bm 2004. the space of learning. in f marton & abm tsui (eds), classroom discourse and the space of learning. mahwah, n.j.: lawrence erlbaum. nuthall g 2004. relating classroom teaching to student learning: a critical analysis of why research has failed to bridge the theory-practice gap. harvard educational review, 74: 273–306. ono y & ferreira j 2010. a case study of continuing teacher professional development through lesson study in south africa. south african journal of education, 30: 59–74. pang mf & lo ml 2012. learning study: helping teachers to use theory, develop professionally, and produce new knowledge to be shared. instructional science, 40: 589–606. pang mf & marton f 2005. learning theory as teaching resource: enhancing students’ 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associates. 1662023 41(2): 166-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 factors that kept first-year students motivated at a university in johannesburg during lockdown abstract the academic achievement of first-year university students continues to be a concern and priority for higher education institutions in south africa. the mandated lockdown in 2020, because of the covid-19 pandemic, compelled first-year students to adapt from face-to-face lecturers to emergency remote teaching. this study explored what has kept first-year students motivated to succeed at a university in johannesburg during the lockdown period. self-determination theory was used as the theoretical lens and analytical tool in this research. one hundred and seventyfive first-year students were selected using a purposeful sampling method to participate in this study. data were collected using openended questionnaires. responses were categorised by means of an emergent and a priori thematic analysis. the findings indicated that first-year students were internally motivated to succeed at university on the basis of attitude, competence and achievementbased motivations. the findings also reported that reward, fear, power-based and affiliation motivations were important external motivators in making first-year students succeed. we recommend that universities continue to provide the various forms of additional support students have received during the lockdown period in order to enable students to remain motivated to succeed. keywords: covid-19 pandemic, external factors, first-year university students, internal factors, motivation 1. introduction the emergence of the covid-19 pandemic globally caused education institutions to shift from a face-to-face mode of learning to an online mode. the online learning has made it possible for students to continue with learning without the need to travel to distant physical locations in order to acquire such knowledge (harandi, 2015). the covid-19 pandemic affected the educational field, which led to adjustments so that continuity could be maintained by instructors and students at institutions of learning (hasan & bao, 2020). universities put in place measures which were meant to manage, plan, deliver and track the educational process during emergency remote teaching and learning (almaiah, al-khasawneh & althunibat, 2020). due to this author: moeniera moosa1 peter jo aloka1 affiliation: 1university of the witwatersrand, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i2.6296 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(2): 166-179 published: 30 june 2023 received: 18 may 2022 accepted: 18 may 2023 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6231-9370 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4298-9211 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 1672023 41(2): 167-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 moosa & aloka factors that kept first-year students motivated at a university in johannesburg new shift, the students and instructors had to adapt to restricted social interactions causing a notable effect on the sector of education. there exists a motivational sphere in terms of its stability, structure, subordination of motives, their hierarchy which, in turn, affects the manifestation of educational activity, subject position in educational activities and students’ career development (ilyin, 2006). therefore, many students find it difficult today to deal with these changes because of a new mode of learning in the current educational environment (bovermann & bastiaens, 2020). 2. context of the study while online learning is an emerging field in education, with a number of universities offering blended or fully online learning before the onset of the pandemic, for many institutions, faceto-face learning was the main mode of delivery. this was the case for this institution, a public university in johannesburg at which this study took place. the university calendar at this institution comprises two semesters, february to june and july to november, with two teaching terms in each semester consisting of six or seven weeks per term. this cohort of students were inimitable in that they began their university journey in a face-to-face mode of learning, on campus, with many of whom living in university residences or communal spaces; and then suddenly moved to an online mode of delivery under stressful emergency circumstances. the need for an online mode of learning was brought about by the significant change our world had to undergo a as a result of the coronavirus disease of 2019 (covid-19), which was brought on by the sars-cov-2 virus (le grange, 2020). the pandemic has significantly impacted the educational system on a national and international level (daniel, 2020). the south african government attempted to stem the spread of covid-19 by imposing a mandated lockdown, from 26 march 2020, and prohibiting public gatherings, as well as enforcing social distancing and closing schools and universities (dube, 2020). the sudden move from face-to-face pedagogies to online learning forced the 2020 cohort of student to develop two endurance mechanisms within the first few weeks of being at university, the first being to mediate the expectation and challenge of transitioning from high school to university, and the second, adjusting from face-to-face modes of pedagogies to emergency remote learning before they were fully familiar with the expectations of being at university. literature on what has kept students motivated to learn during the mandated lockdown period is scarce. it is against this background that this research aimed to gain an understanding of the factors that kept students motivated to learn during this period. 3. theoretical framework self-determination theory (sdt) is the theoretical lens and analytical tool used in this research. sdt is an empirically based theory that provides an understanding of human motivation, development and wellness (deci & ryan, 2008). the cornerstone of sdt is the distinction made between autonomous motivation and controlled motivation (gagné & deci, 2005). this distinction is linked to intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors, which are both viewed as intentional motivators, as opposed to amotivation which lack intention (gagné & deci, 2005). this broad framework enables an understanding of the factors that facilitate or undermine intrinsic motivation and autonomous extrinsic motivation (ryan & deci, 2020). this links to the stance that sdt “is concerned with the particular social contexts that support or undermine humans’ tendency toward assimilation” (darner, 2009: 42). social situations can aid individuals’ need to assimilate and as such plays a role to stimulate curiosity and desire https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 1682023 41(2): 168-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) to be drawn to ideal challenges (deci & ryan, 1990). a person’s tenancy to assimilate is not fixed and as such can be revealed in different ways and be embodied by various motivational processes (ryan, 1995). based on this we were interested to see how working from home impacted on first-year students’ ability to assimilate into the university context by specifically focusing what motivated them to learn during the lockdown period. we found this framework useful for our research as sdt is linked to human motivation and includes a description of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations (deci, olafsen & ryan, 2017). this study views intrinsic motivation as activities that people participate in because they find it attention grabbing and derive spontaneous satisfaction from the activity itself, whereas extrinsic motivation is linked to various external rewards or consequence that encourage participation. 4. literature review previous research on internal motivational factors among students for online learning exists in varied contexts. recent studies suggest that internal motivational factors for online learning in the first place links with personal needs and traits such as self-determination, the need for socialisation, competence, satisfaction of basic psychological need, self-regulated motivation, interest, and learning strategies (chiu, lin & lonka, 2021; gustiani, ardiansyah & simanjuntak, 2021; hsu, 2019; luo, lin & yang, 2021; meşe & sevilen, 2021; randi & corno, 2022). in the second place, internal motivation relates to how the student perceives and experiences the course design such as situational interest intensity of engagement with course material, perceived relatedness, perceived knowledge transfer and the increased achievement of course objective (çebi & güyer, 2020; chiu et al., 2021; hsu, wang & levesque-bristol, 2019; luo et al., 2021; meşe & sevilen, 2021; randi & corno, 2022). intrinsic motivation is not static, as a study by van roy and zaman (2018) shows. they found that intrinsic motivation fluctuated and decreased at the start of the course, but increased over time. the fluctuation of intrinsic motivation is important in this study because the first-year students face adjustment challenges in online learning at university and this is likely to cause decrease in their levels of motivations, but this later stabilises as they develop better coping mechanisms. thus, the levels of intrinsic motivation among first-year students would later increase as they adopt better academic, social, emotional and psychological adjustment to the challenges experienced in online learning at university. in addition, other current research indicates that the external motivational factors which affect online learning among students are learning from more knowledgeable others at the institutions, namely teachers, classmates, their distant learning situation and organisation (chiu et al., 2021). in another study, institutional support from instructors, technical support and sufficient communication affects remote learning among students (berestova et al., 2022). another extrinsic factor which affects remote learning among students is existing institution rewards which boosts students’ motivation (kyewski & krämer, 2018). in addition, external regulation factors, including identified regulation, integrated regulation, introjected regulation and external regulation, play crucial roles in enhancing online learning among students (dhingra et al., 2021; gustiani et al., 2021). from the above it is clear that most previous research focused on either intrinsic or extrinsic motivator factors influencing online learning among students, which would leave out one of the two aspects. however, the present study combined both intrinsic and extrinsic https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 1692023 41(2): 169-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 moosa & aloka factors that kept first-year students motivated at a university in johannesburg motivator factors to fill address this gap in literature. in addition, most studies focused on motivator factors in face-to-face learning environments. also there is scant research, in this regard, about the online learning classroom environments, which is the focus of the present study. this paper thus examines first-year students’ motivation to succeed in more detail, with particular reference to the emergency shift to online learning. 5. research question of the study the key research question which guided this study was stated as follows: what has kept first-year students motivated to succeed at university during the lockdown period? in order to fully answer the key research question, the objective of the study was to establish which internal and external factors motivated first-year students to succeed during the lockdown period. 6. methods a constructivist research approach was adopted. this design sought to rely on “the participants’ views of the situation being studied” (creswell, 2014: 37). this design was relevant because it enabled us to capture how first-year students “construct meaning” (creswell, 2014: 38) about the factors that kept them motivated at university during lockdown. participants were 175 first-year students registered to do a bachelor of education at an urban south african university in 2020. the study adopted a purposive sampling method to obtain the 175 students the criteria used to select participants were that they were required to be registered for education i, which is a compulsory course that all first-year students need to complete for their degree. permission to conduct this research was given by the university of the anon’s ethics committee. participants were made aware that their involvement in this project was voluntary, and that they could withdraw at any given point if they chose to do so. all identifying participant information were kept confidential. data were collected by means of an open-ended questionnaire, where participants were asked to email their short paragraph responses on the key research question to a specially created gmail address. all participants were given the same question to answer at the same time (in october 2020) to ensure reliability. participants’ emailed responses were copied into an ms excel spreadsheet. the responses were numbered as they were received from 1 to 175. data were analysed using a two-set process. responses were categorised by means of an emergent and a priori coding methods by using both inductive and deductive reasoning approach. we firstly read participants’ responses and categorised them according to internal and external motivating factors. we then further categorised the data under internal factors according to achievementbased motivation, competence motivation and attitude motivation. the external factors were categorised according to reward-based motivation or incentive motivation, fear-based motivation, power-based motivation and affiliation motivation. in this way the data were analysed using the a priori coding method using a deductively reasoning approach. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 1702023 41(2): 170-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) 7. findings the findings indicate that this cohort of students were equally motivated by internal and external factors. we noted with interest that students’ attitude motivation was specified as the most significant internal driving force by participants. what this revealed is that this cohort of first-year students were mostly driven by their personal desire for change, which meant that they were focused of attaining a degree and they believed this would improve their lives. less significant internal motivating factors were linked to competence motivation and achievementbased motivation. one fifth of participants were internally motivated by competence factors, which included their personal drive for success and achieving their full academic potential. less than a fifth of participants were motivated by achievement-based motivation where they were driven by their need to achieve their set goals. the most prominent external motivating factor cited by participants cited was rewardbased motivation or incentive motivation. with regard to reward-based motivation or incentive motivation, more than half of the participants were driven by their family background, support and making their parents proud, while less than half were motivated by the email communications and support they received from their university, lecturers, tutors and the firstyear team. less than a fifth of participants were motivated by fear and power. we found it interesting that fear and power were equally important motivators for this cohort of students. fear-based motivation was linked to not getting or losing financial support from funders and not acquiring a degree. with regard to power-based motivation, students were prominently motivated by having a better life, compared to being employed or finding employment. the last external motivation was their need to be affiliated to a university. less than a tenth of participants indicated being at university as an external motivator. the next section presents the individual emergent categories under internal and external motivators as well as the other minor forms of motivation. this will be expanded on by including direct quotes from participants. 7.1 internal motivating factors the internal factors that motivated half of the participants included attitude motivation, competence motivation and achievement-based motivation. each one of these factors will be discussed below. 7.1.1 attitude motivation first-year students indicated that they remained motivated by acquiring a degree that would change their lives, being afraid of failing, being an excellent educator who is passionate about teaching as well as knowing that others were in same situation as they were. 7.1.1.1 acquiring a degree would change their lives almost half of the participants believed that attaining degree would change their lives and allow them to “build a brighter future” for themselves and “better [their] home situation” as they would “start making [their] own money”. below are additional examples of what participants had indicated: i accepted that at university i will have to learn to adapt to every situation that i will face, one thing that this pandemic taught me is to make good out of every situation, from learning to assess myself and learn on my own whereas most of us were used to being https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 1712023 41(2): 171-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 moosa & aloka factors that kept first-year students motivated at a university in johannesburg taught face to face and enjoyed the lessons, this has motivated me to strive to succeed at university so that i can be able to tell my story and live my dream. i’m doing this for me and only me. pushing hard and graduating is what has kept me motivated. i want to be able to make a difference and be able to provide for myself and my family, should another pandemic like this occur again in future. i do not want to remain stagnant in life. 7.1.1.2 fear of failing over one quarter of participants were motivated by their “fear of failing” and believed this assisted them “to pass the academic year”. they did not “want to repeat a year at university” and “want[ed] to finish [their] degree in record time”. one participant noted that: i constantly motivate myself to do well and succeed because failure has never been an option, i fear failing hence i constantly motivate myself to do well. another participant stated that: failing and having to repeat the year and waste the money that my parents have spent [has motivated me because] i did not want to be in the statistics of those who gave up because of lockdown. 7.1.1.3 being an excellent educator who is passionate about teaching “fulfilling” their “dream [of] becom[ing] a brilliant teacher who will one day make a difference in a child’s life” was an aspect indicated by less than a quarter of the participants. in addition, they noted that it has “always been my dream to succeed in being a teacher. a constant reminder of my dreams and goals has kept me motivated to succeed during lockdown”. participants also stated that, “having a good foundation for this bed degree so that i can be the best educator i can offer to my future learners” is an aspect that motivated them. participants further stated that: the passion that i have for teaching has kept me motivated, even when i feel like giving up i remember that i’ve wanted this for such a long time. the courses that i am studying. i am very interested in what i am studying and the sections taught are always interesting and i enjoy learning about it. thinking about the children that need professional teachers and better education is another think that kept me motivated. 7.1.1.4 knowing that others are in same situation less than a tenth of participants were “motivated by [their] fellow classmates” and indicated that “fellow peers have also played a huge roll in motivating” them. their interactions with their peers allowed them to feel “motivated [because of] the new connection” they had made in that they were “communicating with [others] and giving each other hope and helping each other where [they] can”. one participant summarised their experiences by stating that: i worked with my classmates through online platforms such as whatsapp and we also updated each other and motivated each other. some of my friends were experiencing challenges which i was also facing and by connecting to each other, we was (sic) able to help each other in some ways and this also encouraged me to continue learning. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 1722023 41(2): 172-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) 7.1.2 competence motivation a quarter of participants were motivated by their desire for self-improvement and this made them “goal driven and hungry for success” which meant that “… self-motivation keeps [them] going”. under this category the majority of participants were motivated by their personal drive for success and just over a quarter were motivated by the need to achieve their full academic potential. 7.1.2.1 personal drive as a motivation to succeed students indicated that “i motivated myself every day to get up and do the work so that i learn more and do better for myself`”. the following participants summarised the idea of selfdetermination best when stating that: when you know what you want in life, when you thirst for success, when you hunger for great things, nothing can stop you from trying to prosper even when things are tough. i went to university and started this year with the energy and a goal to succeed. i promised myself that no matter how hard it may be i will strive to make my family proud and to change the situation at home. even when we had to shift to remote learning, even when things were hard i kept on reminding myself that i made a promise and am not going to let myself down on the first obstacle. i have been able to keep motivated during the lockdown period by visualising the positive outcomes that will be in my future if i work hard. i have also remained positive as i have celebrated the achievements (even if they are small) that i accomplish each day. another thing that i feel has helped me stay positive is allowing myself to have a balance between work and relaxation in my life. this allowed me to avoid feeling overwhelmed. by creating a daily schedule this allowed me to reduce stress as i was able to create realistic and attainable goals. reminding myself of the reason why i started studying education was the motivation during this period as this is my dream and dreams shouldn’t be forgotten just because times are hard. some participants viewed the pandemic as “a passing phase, and all will go back to normal in time”. these participants indicated that: i never allowed the pandemic that we are facing to ruin my goals, rather i was studying hard because even though the pandemic was occurring throughout (sic) the world but that was not something that was there to change my goals of achieving my degree of becoming a qualified teacher. being goal orientated at an academic as well as personal level kept participants motivated in that they stated: my children. they were the main reason i embarked into the journey of teaching and they have been the greatest motivation. short term goals that i have created, are the ones that so far are keeping me motivated. but goals without action plan would not work, so i created a plan of action that serves as a roadmap keeping me motivated in achieving my goals. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 1732023 41(2): 173-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 moosa & aloka factors that kept first-year students motivated at a university in johannesburg 7.1.2.2 achieving their academic potential one participant stated that “the need to pass and finish the year with something positive in my life” and “make sure that [their] work was always done to [their] satisfaction and to the best of [their] abilities” was the overarching motivator. others wanted to make sure they “understand the content of modules better so that [they] can be a good teacher”. 7.1.3 achievement-based motivation less than a quarter of participants linked their achievement-based motivation to “the goals that [they] had set out for [themselves] and know what [they] want to achieve and when … to achieve it”. their goals were linked to “acquiring a degree after four years” and because they “really want to pass [the] year and move forward and achieve success in [a] bed degree”. 7.1.3.1 graduating with a degree the vast majority of participants indicated that “i want a … degree”; thus they needed “excellent results” to “graduate” and acquire a ‘degree in 4 years’ time”. their desire to “graduate after four years [of the] degree course … this is why [they were] motivated even under the hardship encountered due to the pandemic”. in addition participants stated: that i wanted to finish my degree in the time i planned on. because i felt i am still able to learn and grow even if i had to adapt to new learning environment. i just wanted to be able to succeed in what i was doing and studying during lockdown. knowing that the situation will change and i still needed my degree to follow my passions in the future is what motivated me to succeed… 7.1.3.2 passing at the end of the year a tenth of participants were motivated by their desire to “want to pass [their] first year of study and move forward”. in addition, they indicated that they “wanted to save the academic year and still be eligible to get [their] degree in record time”. overall, they were motivated to “pass” and achieve “good grades”. 7.2 external motivating factors half of the participants cited external motivating factors that were important, which included reward-based motivation or incentive motivation, fear-based motivation, power-based motivation and affiliation motivation. next, we will elaborate on each one of the emergent categories found under the minor forms of motivation. 7.2.1 reward-based motivation or incentive motivation the majority of this cohort were motivated by their need to be recognised either by their family members, the “assistance and motivation [they] have been getting from [their] family” or the support from the greater university, as this is what motivated them to continue to succeed. 7.2.1.1 family background, support and making parents proud more than half of participants noted that “my … family has kept me motivated to succeed at university, they kept remanding me of my purpose in life and gave me reasons to focus, [and] do what is required in terms of my coursework”. in addition participants stated that, “my family that always encourage me to study even under difficult circumstances like this”. participants further noted that: https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 1742023 41(2): 174-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) i have a good support network such as my parents, so they motivate me to do my best and because of this it pushed me to work hard. the constant motivation by my family. my family were the ones who kept on pushing me to do good and they supported me throughout i didn’t want to disappoint my family 7.2.1.2 communication and support from university, lecturers, tutors and first-year team for less than half of the participants “the support [they] have been getting from the university, [their] lectures and tutors” and the “first-year experience team” kept them motivated. they we reliant on the “emails [they] received from the university and lecturers [as this] served a great deal [to] encouraging [them] to work hard towards [their] studies despite the circumstances [they] faced”. they noted that “my mentor from the university has also kept me motivated as he continuously checks up on me and provide assistance whenever i need it”. participants specifically noted the “heart-warming motivation emails” from the university as an aspect that allowed them to be “able to succeed with course work during lockdown”. in addition, participants stated that: i was motivated by the fact that the university was doing, by all means, to help us succeed 2020 academic year, therefore, i had to use that opportunity as no excuses would not assist at all, rather impact my academic progress. during this period of lockdown i felt like giving up for a moment but then due to the support materials and the help i received from my wuru1 tutor and lectures who always respond to emails when i need help, i then started getting motivated that i can still make it with this support structure. the constant emails from the institution have been encouraging as well. 7.2.2 fear-based motivation for less than a quarter of participants fear-based motivation was a driving force. their fear was linked to “losing” or not getting funding as well getting a “degree”. 7.2.2.1 not getting or losing funding more than half of the participants were motivated to succeed because they wanted to “get good marks so that [they] can get a bursary”. the greatest motivator for these participants was “fear of losing my bursary … keeps me going”. 7.2.2.2 not attaining a degree slightly less than half of the participants in this category were driven by the notion that they were “nothing without [a] degree”. their general views are best captured below: i was motivated to succeed because i want to get my degree and do my best. it would be such a waste to just not do the work, or if i were to fall behind because i cannot go to university in person. 1 wuru is an abbreviation for read up write up, which is a programme specially to provide students with academic support. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 1752023 41(2): 175-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 moosa & aloka factors that kept first-year students motivated at a university in johannesburg 7.2.3 power-based motivation for less than a quarter of participants, being motivated was linked to their desire to find employment, as they believed that this would enable them to have a better quality of life. 7.2.3.1 having a better life the greater majority of participants in this category were driven by a need “to be able to change the situation of [their] community when it comes to the education side, people are not motivated to get to university or change their lives i want the next generation to see things different”. furthermore, participants stated that “i am the only hope in my home to change the poverty situation all people are looking from me”. apart from making changes to those in their community and immediate family, participants also stated that they were motivated at a personal level to have a better life in that they indicated: … my desire for success has been greater than my fear of failure, hence i motivate myself daily by wanting to achieve great things and realise my dreams. so above all, i have used my current situation and contexts to motivate myself to do better and become better. what has kept me going during the lockdown was the fact that i want to have money so that i can take care of my family, more especially my strong mother, siblings and myself … so i want to be independent and pay my own bills (food bills and other bills). 7.2.3.2 being employed or finding employment less than a fifth of participants were motivated by being employed once they qualify. one participant stated that: what kept me motivated is seeing qualified employed teachers who were still receiving stable income despite the drastic deterioration of the economy. many people were retrenched due to the economic conditions but teachers still remained employed and received stable income. 7.2.4 affiliation motivation a sixth of participants were motivated by the fact they have been accepted to study at “university”. 7.2.4.1 being a university student for those participants that were motivated being accepted ta university, all stated that: … to think that i have been given an opportunity of a lifetime, the thought of ruining this chance i have been given it will be a waste. … i am at university from the results, it can be concluded that some first-year students were motivated to succeed at university due to their affiliations to the university and this was considered to be a golden opportunity. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 1762023 41(2): 176-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) 8. discussion the findings indicated that the internal motivating factors making first-year students succeed at university included attitude motivation, competence motivation, and achievement-based motivation. the above-mentioned intrinsic factors determine the extent to which first-year students would manage themselves in online learning environments leading to effective learning. meşe and sevilen (2021) argues that internal motivation factors that determine the effectiveness of online learning include students’ interest in the course material, perceived relatedness, knowledge transfer of learnt content. similarly, çebi and güyer (2020) reiterate that students’ self-regulation ability in online learning environments would determine the extent of effectiveness of learning that takes place. in addition, luo et al. (2021) opine that students’ engagement on remote learning depends on internal factors such as perceived relatedness of content and their competence in managing themselves individually. moreover, hsu (2019) argues that intrinsic factors that affect learning in online courses include self-regulated motivation, increased achievement, satisfaction of basic psychological need, and perceived knowledge transfer of learnt content. randi and corno (2022) argue their motivation, learning strategies, and the course environment influence student learning in online courses. gustiani et al. (2021) also affirm that intrinsic factors such as perceived enjoyment, interest, motivating and satisfaction play an important role in making online learning effective among students. the study also indicated that the external environment is crucial in supporting online learning. thus, in this study, external motivating factors namely rewards, incentive-based motivation, power-based, fear-based and affiliation-based motivations play an important role in enhancing the effectiveness of online learning among first-year students making them to succeed. this finding agrees with chiu et al.’s (2021) study, which reports that external factors such as teachers’ effort, support from peers, distant learning situation and organisation of courses are important in making first-year students succeed in online learning environments. in addition, berestova et al. (2022) argue that external factors such technical support, sufficient communication, relevant, adequate training and support from instructors affect remote learning. similarly, research by kyewski and krämer (2018); dhingra et al. (2021) and gustiani et al. (2021) all confirm that extrinsic factors which contribute to effective online learning among students include rewards, external and introjected regulations. the findings also support the self-determination theoretical assertions which reiterate that there exists both autonomous and controlled motivations (gagné & deci, 2005), and these are linked to intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors which determine or affect a particular outcome. 9. conclusion and recommendation this study examined factors that kept first-year students motivated at a university in johannesburg, south africa during lockdown. on the basis of the findings, the study concludes that there were both intrinsic and extrinsic motivators for first-year students to succeed at university. therefore, the study concludes that attitude motivation remained the key intrinsic factor that motivated first-year students at the university. thus, students remained motivated to succeed because of the belief that acquisition of the degree would change their lives and families by raising their socio-economic status. moreover, the first-year students had an internal drive for self-improvement, resulting in setting goals for success at the university. the study also concludes that the most prominent external motivating factor among first-year students is reward-based motivation or incentive-based motivation. in this regard, the first-year students were motivated to succeed on the basis of rewards from family, support and making https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 1772023 41(2): 177-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 moosa & aloka factors that kept first-year students motivated at a university in johannesburg their parents proud. therefore, it can be argued that both internal and external mechanisms are crucial for first-year students in adjusting to online learning environments. the findings could imply that first-year students remained motivated to succeed because of their internal drive to do so as well as various forms of external support they received. we recommend that universities should continue providing the various forms of instructional and other technical support to students to enable students to remain motivated to succeed. moreover, parents should continue to provide psycho-social support to the students at universities in an effort to enhance success in their education. 10. limitation of the study one limitation of this study is that our data were collected from a single cohort of first-year students at one urban university in johannesburg, south africa. therefore, we cannot claim that our findings are generalisable to all first-year students. we recommend that more research be conducted at other universities on first-year students’ expectations and experiences at university that lead to feelings of inclusion and exclusion. references almaiah, m.a. al-khasawneh, a. & althunibat, a. 2020. exploring the critical challenges and factors influencing the e-learning system usage during covid-19 pandemic. education and information technologies, 25: 5261-5280. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-020-10219-y berestova, a. burdina, g. lobuteva, l. & lobuteva, a. 2022. academic motivation of university students and the factors that influence it in an e-learning environment. the electronic journal of e-learning, 20(2): 201-210. https://doi.org/10.34190/ejel.20.2.2272 bovermann, k. & bastiaens, t.j. 2020. towards a motivational design? connecting gamification user types and online learning activities. research and practice in technology enhanced learning, 15(1): 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41039-019-0121-4 çebi, a. & güyer, t. 2020. students’ interaction patterns in different online learning activities and their relationship with motivation, self-regulated learning strategy and learning performance. education and information technologies, 25(5): 3975-3993. https://doi. org/10.1007/s10639-020-10151-1 chiu, t.k.f. lin, tj. & lonka, k. 2021. motivating online learning: the challenges of covid-19 and beyond. the asia-pacific education researcher, 30: 187-190. available at https://doi. org/10.1007/s40299-021-00566-w creswell, j.w. 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1016/j.compedu.2018.08.018 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6296 https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-6494.1995.tb00501.x https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/s0361476x20300254?via%3dihub https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/s0361476x20300254?via%3dihub https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2018.08.018 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2018.08.018 323 research article 2021 39(1): 323-339 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) progress of an african student during covid-19 and beyond in higher education: re-colonisation of decolonisation? abstract following the closure of educational institutions, after the outbreak of covid-19 in december 2019, even though grossly unprepared, universities sent their students home and adopted the online teaching approach to continue with the education of their students. however, little was done to assist most african students who were living in the rural context and trying to shake off the constraints of colonisation. using the decolonisation lens, this qualitative case study used the lecturers’ personal experiences and observations from the south african and zimbabwean higher education context to report on the educational progress of the african student during covid-19. discussions of the two lecturers who communicated via whatsapp, telephone and email were thematically analysed to generate data. findings suggest that while the online teaching was regarded as the only way forward in the middle of the covid-19 pandemic, it had remnants of colonialism that hampered the progress of the african student; thereby derailing the decolonisation project. the study suggests the employment of umuntu akalahlwa pedagogy as it safeguards humanisation of all students to avert the re-colonisation of the decolonised. the rationale for this article is thus to contribute towards the need for umuntu akalahlwa pedagogy in higher education given the background of covid-19 and the socio-economic status of the african student. keywords: covid-19; decolonisation; higher education; rural context; re-colonisation; umuntu akalahlwa pedagogy. 1. introduction and background to the study the general populace across the globe expressed concern over the tremendous impact of covid-19 on education, its leadership and students. more so, it had multiple challenges for lecturers in higher education (he) given the dearth of online teaching and learning (t&l) technologies, methodologies and content considering the socio-economic status of students in low-income countries. locating the lecturers’ auto-ethnographies in the study of the impact of author: dr m.c. kgari-masondo1 dr p. chimbunde2 affiliation: 1university of kwazulu-natal, south africa 2seke teachers college, zimbabwe doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i1.20 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 323-339 published: 12 march 2021 received: 5 october 2020 accepted: 23 december 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1850-6363 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3423-2163 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 3242021 39(1): 324-339 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) covid-19 on rural students in the african context has remained an uncharted area. as such, this study is african lecturers’ self-reflections on how umuntu akalahlwa pedagogy could assist the marginalised students in rural africa to escape re-colonisation by navigating how their needs can be met during a context such as covid-19 bearing in mind their economic backgrounds. the significance of this study is its contribution to scholarship, on issues of re-colonisation of “decolonisation” juxtaposed to issues concerning online learning and rural students (ndlovu-gatseni, 2015a). when covid-19 was declared a pandemic on 20 march 2020, countries in all corners of the world implemented national school closures; affecting students (adnan & anwar, 2020; cucinotta & vanelli, 2020). the outbreak of covid-19 and the emergence of online teaching presents concerns for researchers and educators in contexts as diverse as india (bozkurt & sharma, 2020), china (bao, 2020), greece (karalis & raikou, 2020) and morocco (hibbi, abdoun, & el khatir, 2021) and deepened our understanding of the ramifications of covid-19 on educational matters. for example, a growing number of universities across the world were reported to have either postponed or cancelled all campus events such as workshops, conferences, sports (both intraand inter universities), and other activities (united nations, 2020). the trenchant challenges posed by covid-19 were exacerbated by the fact that the online teaching in african universities was still at the embryonic stage and most of them were caught unprepared. as posed by karalis and raikou (2020) universities had moved rapidly to transition various courses and programmes from face-to-face to online delivery mode. this move was bound to render teaching and learning (t&l) a difficult undertaking for lecturers and students. studies across the globe report that, with the spread of covid-19, countries in africa, asia, europe, the middle east, north america and south america have announced or implemented school and university closures and most universities have enforced localised closures (viner et al., 2020). however, a scan through recent research reveals that the move to an online environment took place overnight, and that most he institutions were totally unprepared (sutton & jorge, 2020). the sudden adoption of online teaching in response to challenges posed by covid-19 brought one good thing: it demonstrated how poorly he was prepared for a radical change in instructional delivery (bao, 2020). in light of that concern, viner et al. (2020) suggest that we should rethink new approaches for digital delivery of experiential education. there was therefore a need to unpack the dimensions of the best practices and the appropriate pedagogy during this unprecedented and disruptive period of covid-19 in developing countries, where lecturers were already battling to teach students from low strata of the social classes of the society. most researches from december 2019 to date concentrated on management practices (viner et al., 2020), students’ perspectives (adnan & anwar, 2020) and the imminent challenges (qian et al., 2020; yuan, 2020). little research was undertaken to present self-reflections by university lecturers on their experiences in teaching using online teaching, especially in the rural context of africa. more so, from research undertaken, no study has been undertaken on issues of re-colonisation of decolonisation and issues in relation with online learning and rural students during the covid-19 context. hence, the study sought to assess the educational progress of the african student during covid-19 in he and how this is linked with re-colonisation of decolonisation. another objective of the study is to suggest some strategies to avert challenges posed by the covid-19 induced online learning and teaching approaches. in south africa and zimbabwe, most students in he are black and come from rural ecological settings. as a result, they struggle with connectivity and obtaining necessary http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 3252021 39(1): 325-339 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 kgari-masondo & chimbunde progress of an african student during covid-19 instruments required for online teaching, which are essential during this era of covid-19. therefore, the narratives in the unofficial arenas tend to slide to the view of re-colonisation of the marginalised african students since they lack resources to engage with online learning. this is due to what ndlovu-gatsheni regards as: euro-north american-centric modernity as a broad discursive terrain that produced the slave trade, imperialism, colonialism and other systemic, structural and coercive external impositions constituted an epic form of disruption of the historical development of the continent (2015a: 12). african areas are underdeveloped because it is taken as a norm that their inhabitants are the underclass and as such do not deserve better. even after the decolonial period black areas continue to be under resourced. this paper emphasises the need for shaping ahead the unfinished projects of decolonisation of the modern world system and combatting recolonisation. generally, the article reveals how global imposed designs and colonial mediums of power actively work to unsettle and restrain african development. african countries vigorously feed to the global situation of certifying underdevelopment of their countries. as put by mudimbe, africa is sealed in continuing the “paradigm of difference” that demotes its standing in world affairs and questions its influence on human civilisation, progress and development (1994: xii). the “paradigm of difference” is a dominant theme of coloniality, which reproduced an africa that was and is considered primitive, underdeveloped, unscientific and irrational. hence quijano perceives coloniality as “a constitutive element of global model of capitalist power”; grounded on the imposition of a racial and ethnic classification of the global population as the cornerstone of that model of power and it operates on the material and subjective levels of everyday social existence (2000: 342). as a result, institutions, including he, suffers the negative impacts of such underdevelopment under which students enrolled in their institutions live. covid-19 exposed the level of disregard for the poor especially african areas where most students live, which are underdeveloped with no electricity, limited water supply, poor infrastructure and no access to networks. this article exposes that the manner in which rural areas are treated indicates coloniality as little is done to invest in such areas which results in dire ramifications towards people who reside in them especially students during this period of covid-19. this is articulated well by mamdani that, through colonisation the “native is pinned down, localised, thrown out of civilisation as an outcast, confined to custom, and then defined as its product” (2013: 2-3). many students from zimbabwe and south africa who study in he could not engage in online t&l due to issues of connectivity and electricity, and such students live in rural ecology as depicted in the narratives of lecturers in this study. universities in both countries tried their utmost best to navigate the connectivity issues by inviting students to residences. but the government failed to see the urgency of improving rural areas by speeding up installation of electricity and network powers. this is the niche of this paper as debates in academia also miss the global agenda of decolonisation as we discuss issues of covid-19 and its impact on education because issues of development and progress have to be key for all – despite race or locality. the main aim of the paper is to investigate how the educational progress of the african student was affected and what could be done to curb the looming crisis of re-colonisation of the marginalised in society, to ensure uniform and quality education despite the hurdles of online t&l in he. chief in our contribution to scholarship is “who” are our students in african universities and “where” do they come from? in this article, we report on how to decolonise http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 3262021 39(1): 326-339 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) the online pedagogy through employing umuntu akalahlwa to cater for the african student and offset re-colonisation which appears imminent in he during covid-19 and beyond. our understanding of the covid-19 situation and its impact on the progress of the africa student in he is of value to scholarship that celebrates the decolonisation of the university curriculum and its pedagogy that does not cater for integration of all students especially those who cannot engage in online t&l because of connectivity and related issues. therefore, zeleza resolved that “african history has yet to rid itself of the epistemic violence of imperialist historiography” (2005: 1). 2. conceptual framework in order to contextualise this study, it is imperative to unpack key concepts to provide the reader with an understanding of what re-colonisation and umuntu akalahlwa pedagogy entail. 2.1. re-colonisation in this study, re-colonisation is derived from the term colonisation, which connotes domination of the colonised way of life including its epistemology. re-colonisation in education refers to those disparities arising from the lack of unified or uniform education offered by different bodies that “set the stage for rising conflicting expectations and inequalities in life” (nyamnjoh, 2015: 15). consequently, decolonisation of the curriculum, content and pedagogy is indispensable. 2.2. umuntu akalahlwa pedagogy umuntu akalahlwa is the zulu idiom inferring that a person cannot be thrown away or abandon humanity when things get tough for them. masondo (2018 cited in kgari-masondo & masondo, 2019) says that, the idiom – umuntu akalahlwa focuses on two facets, that is, (a) the obligation of humanity to care and love others, and (b) dealing with nonconformity. this means that for amazulu this idiom indicated that there is inherent value in each person and therefore must be treated in a humane manner. we consider geduld and sathorar (2016) who see pedagogy as determined by how, when and by whom it is ratified, a philosophy of education, informed by positionalities, ideologies and standpoints of lecturers and students. this also acknowledges their relationship to each other and their relationship to structure and power. to decolonise the pedagogy implies emphasising humanisation which, is directed by compassion, care, respect and love for others, their identities, history and experiences. this is what umuntu akalahlwa embraces of which fataar (2018) argues it addresses the notion of knowledge redistribution and identities of students. in essence, umuntu akalahlwa pedagogy emphasises participation of all learners. this suggests that it is a strategy that addresses diversity, reconciliation and promotes social cohesion, mediating inequalities and continuities within he in the face of covid-19. the pedagogy defies the colonial governmentality project that ensured that the colonised african people lose their african partiality as they were replicated by the colonial patterns as objects. the pedagogy fights against the anguish of africans against estrangement and deprivation that was executed through a mixture of colonial adaptation policies, indirect and direct rule, obligatory particularism and ghettoization, and even “dilution in a nameless universalism” (gallagher 2009: 34). umuntu akalahlwa pedagogy in the context of covid-19 and beyond promulgates autonomy of the disadvantaged african students who cannot engage in online t&l due to diverse reasons including connectivity by ensuring that t&l is an inclusive global norm that forces those in power to seek creative ideas to not leave any student behind in http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 3272021 39(1): 327-339 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 kgari-masondo & chimbunde progress of an african student during covid-19 t&l. as suggested by ndlovu-gatsheni “decolonisation must robustly engage with euronorth american-centric epistemology that continues to sideline knowledge from other parts of the world that is more relevant to the realities of the struggling peoples of africa” (2015: 33). umuntu akalahlwa pedagogy provides insightful alternatives in he if students are to benefit from the decolonisation project that they initiated and demonstrated during the feesmustfall campaigns by ensuring that all knowledge must be integrated in t&l through africanisation and indigenisation of education (ndlovu-gatsheni, 2015b). students also fought for free education so that no student is excluded from he. the campaign is similar to the idiom of umuntu akalahlwa as it safeguards non-discrimination and exclusions. 3. theoretical framework the decolonisation lens was used in this paper. at the centre of decolonisation of the curriculum is the idea of considering the contexts of the learners, their cultures that are characterised by respect for all people and their culture and knowledge systems when constructing and implementing the curriculum (chimbunde & kgari-masondo, 2020). decolonisation considers the relationships between the goal of education, the context and content of education as well as the pedagogy of how it is distributed. fataar (2018: vi) explained that decolonisation is constructed on a nullification of contemporary foreign training whose systematising attitude is aligned on modelling the people as foreign subjects and in the process “stripping them of their humanity and full potential”. so by decolonising the curriculum, we are giving space to those historically marginalised to communicate from their frames of reference (le grange, 2018). the decolonisation project had been built on a strong foundation as evidenced by much research whose foci are anchored in the need to respect the marginalised people, their culture and their knowledge systems (america & le grange, 2019; charles, 2019; fataar, 2018; ndlovu-gatsheni & tafira, 2019). decolonising the pedagogy therefore means creating spaces and resources for a dialogue among all members of the university on how to imagine and envision all cultures and knowledge systems in the curriculum, and with respect to how knowledge is being taught and how it frames the world (charles, 2019). charles explains that decolonising pedagogy helps us to recognise, understand and challenge the ways in which our world is shaped by colonialism. it also prompts us to examine our professional practices (2019: 3). this suggests that as lecturers we need to constantly self-reflect and interrogate how the content in he is taught because decolonisation of knowledge is not about changing the content only but goes beyond that to encompass transforming the pedagogy. this is so because the way lecturers teach and students learn is of value. we used the decolonisation lens to assess the educational progress of the african student in universities considering that these students were from different social classes with different socio-economic statuses. it also became useful in introspecting why online teaching marginalised students in universities and suggesting humanistic approaches lecturers could have used rather than the class-based pedagogies currently in use during the covid-19 period. the decolonisation lens tallies with the umuntu akalahlwa pedagogy that denounces the disposal of people. the pedagogy promulgates all students must be respected and taught despite their context. this pedagogy is in line with the decolonisation pedagogy as it tackles the tension of whether decolonising he is (in)commensurable with other social justice and transformation developments, not only in south africa and zimbabwe, but also internationally, particularly in relation to the extent to which decolonisation has become a global project. umuntu akalahlwa pedagogy as part of the decolonisation pedagogies is an important http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 3282021 39(1): 328-339 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) political and pragmatic way that ensures education practitioners have to reflect critically on what it means to decolonise he pedagogies in south africa, zimbabwe and globally by means of transformative education dialogues and practices that repossess humanity in knowing and knowledge construction. as clearly put by mackinlay and barney (2014: 54) “putting in conversation humanising pedagogies with decolonising discourses, the goal is to reconfigure those pedagogical practices through which he continues to operate as a site of colonial power”. also, fataar (2016) argues that a humanising pedagogy should declare the notion of knowledge reorganisation, that is, it requires providing acknowledgement of students’ knowledge. this implies that in the midst of covid-19 and beyond it is pivotal for the decolonisation agenda in he not to neglect the context of the marginalised students from rural contexts who experience connectivity and other challenges inhibiting them from engaging in t&l. 4. empirical investigation using the decolonisation lens, the study drew from the south african and zimbabwean he context to assess the educational progress of the african student during covid-19. the case study deeply rooted in the qualitative approach, used auto-ethnography focusing on observations and experiences of two lecturers in he to generate data on how students in universities were coping, given the outbreak of covid-19 and the context of their rural background in the two countries. the case study was used because we were motivated to explore, seek understanding and establish the meaning of experiences from our perspectives since we were involved as university lecturers (yin, 2014). we used the case study to investigate the african students’ educational experiences and how these students understood the organisational context of their academic world, with the aim of gaining insight into how african universities interpreted and reacted to their covid-19 experiences. the case study enables us to carry out the study in the natural setting of those experiences with results presented as narratives (yin, 2014). the term auto-ethnography was described by reed-danahay as a form of self-narrative that places the self within a social context (butz & besio, 2009). we borrowed from ngunjiri et al. (2010) who argue that auto-ethnography utilises data about self and context to gain an understanding of the connectivity between self and others. the study used the lecturers’ personal teaching experiences as well as the context in which the lectures were conducted to discern how covid-19 impacted on equality regarding the provision of education materials. this was in line with the arguments raised by mcilveen (2008) that the researcher using autoethnography consciously embeds him-/herself in theory and practice, and by way of intimate autobiographic account, explicates a phenomenon under investigation or intervention. we aimed to offer a way of giving voice to personal experience for the purpose of extending sociological understanding of how students were affected by the pedagogy changes posed by covid-19. as such, the study was a self-reflection of two lecturers teaching in the social sciences (social change and education to masters of education students as well as economic history and development to honours students) in zimbabwe and south africa respectively. the use of our personal experiences was predicated on the basis that if lecturers in africa were to be party to a global conversation on knowledge production and consumption, it was appropriate that it did so taking into account the interests and concerns of the lecturers. autoethnographic in nature is based on highly personal accounts and practises of the author(s) (sparkes, 2000). personalised auto-ethnographic accounts of professional practice in http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 3292021 39(1): 329-339 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 kgari-masondo & chimbunde progress of an african student during covid-19 education, such as the ones in this article, can help to reconfigure power relations, introducing interpretations of experience and reconstructing practice communications. this is supported by denshire who argues that the impact of auto-ethnography can be to “create discomfort through their challenges to traditional realist modes of representation” (2014: 840). the methodology is aligned with critical discourse analysis used in this article as it highlights matters of power irregularities, manipulation, exploitation and structural injustices (blommaert & bucean, 2000). this discourse relates with current debates globally of decoloniality as it concentrates on “mechanics and operations of colonial and re-colonial relations and the implications of imperial projects” (simmons & dei, 2012: 74). we used our personal experiences as lecturers; observations of students’ work and then engaged in telephonic, email and whatsapp discussions to generate data. our personal experiences assisted us to connect the self and the context in which students learnt during covid-19 which confirmed views that auto-ethnography allows the researcher to draw on his or her experience to extend understanding about a societal phenomenon (wall, 2006). as authors we are african by race and we grew up in a rural context where we experienced abject poverty. we could therefore use our experiences to understand the challenges students from low-income families experience as we share similar backgrounds. we observed the students’ work and how they managed time and tasks given. the purpose of the online discussion was to ascertain and explore from each other as authors about our students’ experiences and what we observed in our classes. the online prompts provided open-endedness in terms of responses, which was intentional. following the advice of creswell and poth (2017) on trustworthiness of the study, we adopted an approach that used multiple data sources namely personal experiences, observation and online discussion to generate multiple perspectives directed at obtaining a more complete interpretation of the phenomena. thus, there was methodological triangulation. to avoid personal bias of the findings we used peer review, which entails consulting some associates who were in a similar context to re-interrogate the raw data (creswell & poth, 2017). we employed a thematic analysis by reducing the size of the data through sieving the most relevant data and identifying common and noteworthy patterns relating to our experiences and observations of our students during covid-19 while teaching. we then used these patterns as themes. in analysing data, we followed maree (2012) and patton’s (2015) advice that data analysis must be done concurrently with data generation to curb accumulation of large volumes of data. 5. data presentation the first narrative is that of a lecturer (chris) who teaches at a university in kwazulu-natal in south africa. the students she teaches are mostly african and come from an underprivileged setting located in a rural context where homes are overcrowded, with a lack of electricity, running water and poverty is rife. the second narrative is that of chimbu, a part-time lecturer at a university in zimbabwe. his students are mainly from a rural context and come from poverty-stricken homes. the two lecturers took a self-reflective narrative inquiry approach to make meaning from their observation of their students’ experiences while teaching in he during the covid-19 pandemic. chris observed the following from her students: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 3302021 39(1): 330-339 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) my observation of my students is that they were keen to study because i received emails enquiring about how the university will help them get access to internet and also since most of them were from rural areas. many lecturers made matters worse as they emphasised the poverty of students with no solutions to how these students can be assisted to learn online despite their connectivity issues. to me it sounded as if these lecturers were endorsing re-colonisation as they were putting poverty as a buffer rather than understanding that the students not long ago used to study up to university level before the introduction of the online teaching. yes online was the major buffer but other alternatives could be implemented. students in my university were provided with wi-firouters and data. initially my university was confused on what to do and it looked as if the poor were going to be left behind as many reside in rural areas without access to electricity and network. as one of my african students said, the university by not taking their economic background into consideration and the failure by the government to exert financial means to improve rural areas is like “balahliwe” (disposed) as the poor. but eventually decisions were made and it was decided in south africa by the minister of higher education mr blade mzimande that no student must be left behind in the context of covid-19. those without laptops were given the gadgets through the national student financial aid scheme (nsfas). the students from rural context who did not have access to network were allowed back to campus. such ventures that my university implemented were pivotal in navigating negative impact to the decolonisation agenda. the fourth industrial revolution requires students to learn to use technology and it is important to encourage that. some of my students mentioned that they want to engage in online learning as long as data is provided and there are ways of assisting with connectivity issues. my university thus allowed students with connectivity issues to come to residences at university but they were not taught using face-to-face they continued to learn online. this truly shows that we cannot allow decolonisation to halt due to challenges students experience, creative measures must take place to safeguard what students fought for when they demanded feesmustfall and decolonisation of the curriculum. chimbu mentioned that: after the closure of universities in zimbabwe, soon after the outbreak of covid-19, the students and i were overnight asked to embark on online t&l. a video on how to conduct the lectures was sent through e-mail by the coordinator, suggesting the employ of google classroom – one of the virtual learning platforms. i was then asked to contact the five students located in rural parts of the countries which was done telephonically. joining the google classroom by the students took long and thus was a challenge. lectures notes and assignment were sent and the reaction time was long. that ignited my motivation to unearth the challenges the students were experiencing. my sociology courses had taught me to study the students’ background in order to understand why they learn and behave the way they do. face-to-face interaction was impossible due to the covid-19 induced lockdown. i then checked their social records from my database i kept. the social record revealed that most of my african students were located in areas where mobile network connectivity was a challenge. my students mentioned that mobile connectivity was poor especially in some peripheral rural areas of zimbabwe. this adversely affected them in joining the google class platform and it was taxing to do research for their assignments yet they were expected to meet deadlines for submission. besides network connectivity, data purchase was a tall order because of poverty. i remembered well how we lived in the rural areas as a student growing up. ict gadgets were a preserve of the rich. my students mentioned that they had no laptops except for smart phones. some indicated that whatsapp data bundles were cheaper than internet data. the students pleaded for [the] university to partner with mobile network providers in providing them with reasonably cheaper data so that all of them could benefit from he. this suggested one strategy that he could rope in to ensure that the decolonisation http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 3312021 39(1): 331-339 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 kgari-masondo & chimbunde progress of an african student during covid-19 project progresses even during covid-19 and beyond. so the introduction of the google class was not aligned with the contextual realities in he, as well as the background and material conditions faced by the majority of african students. this then was re-colonisation in the making if he neglects to reshape the pedagogies to embrace students from marginalised context. reconfiguring pedagogies which are sensitive to african students from rural ecological settings remains locked in human intellect and has to be unpacked for the betterment of society. my university called students to attend a once off 2 to 3 days of face-to-face interactions with lecturers where social distance was maintained. the face-to-face interactions in a controlled environ[ment] was a stop-gap measure to retard the re-colonisation as that allowed all students to gain equal access to he which colonisation had earlier restricted. drawing from the two lecturers’ experiences, it emerged that the way the universities treated the students revealed that there was non-involvement and participation of students in deciding how they were to learn during the covid-19 period. yet, one critical imperative for the fidelity implementation of the decolonisation project is to embrace the student in all activities that had to do with their education. it was also revealed from the lecturers’ narratives that poverty was described as a buffer to online teaching. the perspectives drawn from those experiences could be construed as re-colonisation since the way lecturers, through their universities, treated the students was against decolonisation. for instance, chris narrated that lecturers could not provide an alternative way to deal with the poverty that could have been proffered through consulting the students. from the two lecturers’ discussions and narratives, the study revealed that internet connectivity and availability of modern instruments was a challenge that worked against the progress of the african student. the two universities later realised that there was a need to reconfigure and restructure their pedagogy to allow the african student to access education. the approaches taken by universities to ensure no student was left behind shows that the universities had other options other than to follow the online route. following the online mode only could be understood as re-colonisation. we argue that re-colonisation emerges only if african universities, which were inherited from the colonial past and were decolonised, resort to modern technology in response to the covid-19 pandemic without respect to the african student coming from very poor rural areas. both narratives exposed that covid-19 influences decolonisation pedagogy as the african student was affected negatively due to the socioeconomic context from which many students come. in south africa online teaching continued as indicated by chris’s narrative while in zimbabwe chimbu’s reflection indicates that online was not a complete success and his university had to utilise face-to-face teaching for 3 days. this partly explains why decolonisation is still a dream both locally and globally. but sharing our insights and observations with each other as colleagues from different universities and countries meant that we were willing to learn from our obliviousness, t&l and improve our practice through discussion in order to mediate factors that impact negatively on decolonisation and revamp re-colonisation in he. we encouraged each other to make decisions and find solutions together. 6. findings and discussion we used thematic analysis to reduce the amount of data by separating the most relevant data and identifying common and noteworthy patterns relating to our experiences and observations of our students during covid-19 while teaching and learning, and how that relates to decolonisation and re-colonisation in he. to analyse our self-reflection narratives, we used http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 3322021 39(1): 332-339 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) written archival documents, papers and scrapbooks as well as other secondary sources such as articles, books, online literature and newspapers to supplement the gaps. the key themes identified from our reflection journals were teased out based on the connection with the purpose of this paper, which ensured credibility and trustworthiness. 6.1. internet connectivity and re-colonisation from our personal experiences and observation, it emerged that online teaching at universities was, at this moment of the covid-19 pandemic, one of the pedagogies that could be used. this was confirmed by naciri et al. (2020) who argue that the use of mobile learning allows learning anytime, anyplace and anywhere; hence, it is a good alternative during covid-19 though it has its own limitations. for the success of the online teaching to be realised, it needs preparation in terms of content, internet connectivity, the choice of a suitable online platform and provision of related materials. the lack of modern instruments such as laptops and data can be construed as re-colonisation because that disposes the african student and limits his/her participation in the education system as emphasised by the decolonisation project. it emerged from the narratives of the two lecturers that while online teaching was one of the choices available, it presented challenges related to internet connectivity and the covid-19 induced lockdown. some of the solutions to engage students in online t&l are part of recolonisation because rurality stopped students from continuing with online learning because of infrastructure. the state in both countries never took firm decisions on improving rural areas to ensure that connectivity issues will be alleviated. this is part of what ndlovu-gatsheni regards as the ramifications of colonisation and other systemic, structural and coercive external impositions that they constituted an epic form of disruption of the historical development of the continent (2015a: 12). but it is important for africans to fight against decolonisation and re-colonisation as indicated by chris’s narrative. chris’s university ended up allowing students who struggled with connectivity to reside at the university campus so that online t&l could be used during the covid-19 period. the online t&l was therefore negatively affected by a lack of connectivity. this finding was also consistent with several studies (adnan & anwar, 2020; daniel, 2020; karalis & raikou, 2020; naciri et al., 2020) which succinctly claimed that lack of access to fast, affordable and reliable internet connections hindered the process of online learning especially for those who were living in rural as well as marginalised communities. but the fact that the government never saw the agency of improving rural areas especially where africans reside shows that, the decolonisation agenda is far-fetched globally. as ndlovu-gatseni attested to the fact that; “… while african people continued to make history after the colonial encounters and even under direct colonialism, they were no longer able to do so outside coloniality” (2015a: 18). this infers that africans must ensure they fight colonialism and not allow its resurfacing by building their countries to meet the demands of the changing globalised world. chimbu’s narrative explains how in zimbabwe his students could not fully engage in online learning, therefore, his university resorted to face-to-face teaching for three days to supplement the online t&l. the university did not engage in online t&l and succumbed to challenges of connectivity that were beyond their capabilities. he mentioned that “my university called students to attend 2 to 3 days of face-to-face interactions with lecturers where social distance was maintained. the face-to-face interaction in controlled environs was a stop-gap measure…” this means the educational progress of the rural student was disturbed by poverty as witnessed at the two universities where the data were generated. but the ways of navigating http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 3332021 39(1): 333-339 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 kgari-masondo & chimbunde progress of an african student during covid-19 rural students’ challenges to engaging in online t&l were different in both universities. in chris’s context, online t&l continued but in chimbu’s it was halted and replaced by face-toface teaching. the question arises; how are countries going to navigate towards the fourth industrial revolution if the governments do not see the agency of improving underdeveloped countries and areas? as such, incessant glitches in network connectivity and related costs defeated the feasibility of the online teaching in chimbu’s university and became the preserve of a few at the expense of many african students who reside in rural settings this means the overnight change from traditional classrooms to online learning had resulted in completely different learning experiences for students in the same university and country. this became some form of re-colonisation of de-coloniality as students, despite their economic context, were not afforded other means such as providing data as occurred in chris’s university. such alienation occurred because of colonial underdevelopment and the government’s failure to exert financial means to improve such areas that form part of ukulahlwa (see student in chris’s narrative). chris maintains that: the fourth industrial revolution requires students to learn to use technology and it is important to encourage that. some of my students mentioned that they want to engage in online learning as long as data is provided and there are ways of assisting with connectivity issues. my university thus allowed students with connectivity issues to come to residences at university but they were not taught using face-to-face they continued to learn online. inherent in this observation, was that online teaching in some universities like chimbu’s was in another manner alienating rather than embracing by not continuing to integrate the fourth industrial strategies of technological empowerment of students despite their social and economic context. this is so because it perpetuates exclusion and dehumanisation of some sections of students, which is against the decolonisation project that celebrates respect for all in knowledge construction; how that knowledge is distributed and the strategies of delivering it. students in chris’s context are not against online t&l but they need infrastructure to engage in such learning so that they can participate in the fourth industrial revolution. their plea is aligned with umuntu akalahlwa pedagogy as they maintain that no student must be left behind but progress must occur. this indicates that there is no urgency in ensuring the decolonisation agenda globally by improving areas and countries that were colonised so progress can occur. as mentioned by chris that, “…we cannot allow decolonisation to halt due to challenges students experience, creative measures must take place to safeguard what students fought for when they demanded feesmustfall and decolonisation of the curriculum”. the proposed rehabilitation by chinweizu (1987) is that of “decolonising the african mind”, which ndlovugatsheni (2015a) argues “is proving to be very difficult in a context where coloniality is still actively working to hail africans into embracing coloniality as a dominating worldview”. in this context it implies that, african governments need to take responsibility and develop their african states that are underdeveloped. drawing from our personal experiences and whatsapp discussions, it emerged that the modern education systems in africa had their origin in colonialism. we, therefore, argue that the state of poverty in african communities was created by humans during the colonial period in which resources meant for them were expatriated to develop the west. it was not by choice, but the african students are victims of colonial circumstances that again disadvantage them in he during this pandemic. but other universities such as chris’s indicated that recolonisation of colonisation cannot be allowed to persist as they went and bought data and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 3342021 39(1): 334-339 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) ensured those who reside in a rural context and struggle with connections come back to the university and continue with online learning and teaching. but colonialism continues to live with the african student in he in the form of re-colonisation as reflected in chris’s narratives where lecturers viewed poverty as a buffer to online learning. as argued by morreira (2015) that whilst colonialism may have been and gone, the colonial matrix of power was still very much seen, lived and felt in the present day. 6.2. umuntu akalahlwa pedagogy and the online teaching and learning it arose from personal experience, observations and whatsapp discussions that while online t&l was appropriate during this time of the covid-19 crisis, the mode was to work well if complemented with other strategies drawn from the decolonisation pedagogies. for chris, students at her university who encountered problems of data and internet connectivity were asked to stay close by the university to access the university facilities and continue learning online and not face-to-face t&l. chris mentioned that poor students felt dehumanised and discriminated against since the university was not forthcoming with data and strategies to not leave any student behind in terms of t&l. she revealed that, “…one of my african students said, the university by not taking their economic background into consideration is like ‘balahliwe’ (disposed) as the poor.” as for chimbu, his university conducted a controlled faceto-face interaction between students and lecturers for about 3 days where social distancing was practised. his students suggested he partner with internet service providers in providing cheap data bundles. from this finding, we argue for community participation in assisting all students with data that can be used for online learning by african students. otherwise the progress of the african student will lag behind those who have access to data and the internet. when this happens then it becomes anti-humanisation, which the umuntu akalahlwa pedagogy does not embrace because it rejects the disposal of other students. the significance of this study was that there is a stronger need for he to rethink outside the box and reconfigure strategies to complement the online t&l and ensure decolonisation and not to leave any student behind. we argue that online t&l is here to stay beyond covid-19 but should not somehow discriminate against sections of our african students in he. as such, use of the umuntu akalahlwa pedagogy remains an area for exploration that can alleviate problems in the context of disasters such as covid-19. this suggests that if covid-19 induced online teaching continues without taking aboard the umuntu akalahlwa pedagogy then a vicious cycle could occur in which the underprivileged remain cosseted in their poverty. once redress fails, students could face re-colonisation of the mind after completing the uneven and selective he. as explicitly put by fishbane and tomer (2020), the covid-19 pandemic exposed that many white students were advantaged due to access to infrastructure compared to other races. this suggests that, due to the “long-standing notions of being founded on racial classification and hierarchisation of human population” students will continue classism, racism and discrimination, and ndlovu-gatsheni argues that it “must be totally rejected” (2015a: 33). considering the covid-19 induced online teaching, those advantaged by the old education system before the pandemic enjoyed on the pretext of merit or their socio-economic status to do their he work, thereby positioning themselves in the upper rungs of the society, which confirms what colonial education did. this stresses the perspective that colonisation was resurfacing as re-colonisation during the covid-19 period because the covid-19 induced online learning was incompatible with the pursuit of real social responsiveness and genuine collective interests (nyamnjoh, 2012). this was particularly so when we look at the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 3352021 39(1): 335-339 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 kgari-masondo & chimbunde progress of an african student during covid-19 participation of the poor african student in the educational activities during the covid-19 period as emerged from the narratives and the observations in this study. in order to increase the participation of the african student, this article argues that there is a need to contextualise and decolonise the pedagogy as suggested by charles (2019). umuntu akalahlwa pedagogy provides insightful alternatives in he if students are to benefit from the decolonisation project that they initiated and demonstrated during the feesmustfall campaigns. 7. recommendations the study revealed many gaps in the development of online t&l because mobile connectivity was poor, especially in peripheral rural areas of developing countries. the socio-economic challenges plaguing developing countries were highly taxing on students in terms of incurring cost for data bundles, which are expensive. therefore, it is imperative for universities to partner with mobile network services in providing students with reasonably priced data bundles. if possible, universities can cushion students from economic challenges by organising the crediting of data bundles to students and lecturers’ mobile numbers for academic purposes to buffer the re-colonisation process that is beckoning in he if not abated. governments globally must expedite development of rural and areas inhabited by the poor. covid-19 has exposed the disregard of such settings and this paper has highlighted how such underdevelopment has affected students especially the poor residing in rural areas who are mainly african. not improving rural areas contributes to re-colonisation as it indicates discrimination and disregard of the african people as insignificant and not worthy of progress. electricity, network poles and proper infrastructure must be critical for the governments globally if the fourth industrial revolution and decolonisation can be realised. there is a greater need for he to reclaim the decolonisation of the pedagogy by inserting umuntu akalahlwa pedagogy to complement the online t&l approach in the context of covid-19 and the fourth industrial revolution, which both demand the use of modern technology by students. this will go a long way in reaffirming the decolonisation project that is under threat of re-colonisation in the face of covid-19 and beyond. 8. conclusion while covid-19 has and continues to threaten human life it has proved to be a litmus test for he to show the seriousness in pushing further the decolonisation project beyond such pandemics. this paper indicates that education has been the battleground of the poor and rich and as a result, he t&l approaches still neglect the integration of the context of the poor so they can enjoy quality education and “no student is missed”. covid-19 has underlined the stringent gaps between the poor and rich students and that little has been done by the governments and he to bridge and make sure that the poor enjoy quality education amidst their challenges to resources. given that backdrop, marginalisation of african students in he has been heightened by this scourge, where insufficient and discriminatory access and availability of the internet affected students’ capacity to participate in digital learning. as such, he, through the online pedagogy, remains a site for colonial power and contestations among students of different socio-economic status. to ameliorate this position, which reflects the recolonisation of the decolonisation project, the study proposes the employment of the umuntu akalahlwa pedagogy that is embedded in the decolonisation pedagogies to complement the online learning and teaching in order to make he embracing rather than alienating. the call http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 3362021 39(1): 336-339 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.20 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) for this paper is how can we ensure that decolonisation remains at the centre of he and african students are not alienated from enjoying quality education during and beyond the covid-19 period? through the reflections of two lecturers, one from south africa and the other from zimbabwe he institutions, the paper has indicated that we have to move away from silencing students’ context when we adopt teaching strategies that are accorded as significant but due to political propaganda are pushed to the periphery. for example, the narrative of a zimbabwean lecturer depicted a scenario of students being forced into face-to-face teaching due to the fact that they come from a rural poverty context and had no means of access to network and data. the south african lecturer mentioned that, at her university students from rural contexts and those without network access were also recalled to campus to use university facilities but continued with online t&l. this indicates that he has to be at the centre of the fourth industrial revolution by being creative at all times on how they can best engage technology in t&l despite the context of students. therefore, this paper warns against he engaging in recolonisation of decolonisation by not integrating online t&l as it occurred in other universities during the covid-19 period. hence, the study proposes umuntu akalahlwa as a possible strategy of ensuring that he does not engage in re-colonisation of decolonisation by excluding students from poor backgrounds to engage in education based on their social setting. this calls for the government, teachers, lecturers and everyone globally who strives for equality, respect and tolerance to defy research received that undermines the “other” people’s context (poor) and teach integrating all social contexts to safeguard that no student is left behind when teaching. the paper is a contribution to the topical global debate on decolonisation by stating that the poor students who are african and their social setting must be considered in he while constructing 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https://doi.org/10.1177/160940690600500205 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40249-020-00650-1 _goback 2502022 40(1): 250-267 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 shaping the future of distance learning in teacher education: moocs during covid-19 abstract the current research aimed to investigate the perceptions of pre-service students regarding the usefulness and contribution of massive open online courses (moocs) in initial teacher education programmes, particularly in times of emergency. participants comprised 202 second-career pre-service students who enrolled in alternative teacher education programmes during covid-19. on average, students studied 4–5 courses that were a mandatory component of their programme. students completed an anonymous, voluntary, self-report questionnaire at the end of their studies. findings show that students found the moocs to be a good teaching model. they were satisfied with their mooc studies and reported their learning experience to be significantly more rewarding and positive than lonely and stressful. learning outcomes were ranked high. in terms of the usefulness and contribution of the moocs, three student profiles were identified. the “zealous” type is enthralled by the merits of moocs including their impact on their future teaching, professional development and lifelong learning. the “guarded” type perceives only some of the moocs’ attributes as positive, primarily convenience, independent learning and studying a variety of courses with well-known experts. the “pragmatic” type is highly opportunistic and utilitarian, perceiving moocs only as a means to overcoming barriers of time and place. finally, students who study more moocs perceive them as having a positive impact on their future teaching, acknowledge their importance in times of crisis and opt for including a higher proportion of moocs in initial teacher education programmes. the favourable impact of studying several moocs as part of an initial teacher education programme is one of the main findings of the current research highlighting the importance of students experiencing several such courses during their pre-service studies. keywords: moocs; distance learning; pre-service teachers; initial teacher education; covid-19; education policy. 1. introduction the lockdowns of the covid-19 pandemic required all higher education (he) institutions in israel to switch to distance learning. while online learning was by no means a new phenomenon, online teaching and learning comprised a fraction of the curriculum in teacher education programmes (aharony & bronstein, 2014). under the author: prof smadar donitsa-schmidt1 dr rony ramot1 dr beverley topaz1 affiliation: 1kibbutzim college of education, israel doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i1.15 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(1): 250-267 published: 04 march 2022 received: 06 august 2021 accepted: 16 november 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2477-3967 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5650-9581 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3188-4227 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 2512022 40(1): 251-267 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 donitsa-schmidt, ramot & topaz moocs during covid-19 emergency circumstances of the pandemic, massive online open courses (moocs) became an ad-hoc solution for the difficulty some teacher educators encountered while teaching online. offered free by experts in some of the top ranked he institutions, and allowing flexibility in terms of time, space and pace of learning, moocs seemed an ideal response given the state of emergency. the demand for moocs further increased with the launching of ad-hoc alternative initial teacher education (ite) programmes aimed at recruiting postgraduates who had lost their jobs because of the coronavirus crisis. these programmes offered accelerated online teacher training programmes to hundreds of unemployed academics nationwide to partially resolve the massive chronic shortage of teachers (ramot & donitsa-schmidt, 2021). immediately after the ministry of education (moe) launched the first programme in may 2020, additional programmes followed, attracting hundreds of candidates who considered teaching an attractive profession during the ongoing economic disaster. the curricula designed for these students included several moocs due to the inability to recruit faculty members able and willing to teach so many online courses. previous research has already shown that moocs hold great potential for he (wang & zhu, 2019), and could serve as an effective tool for ite (montgomery et al., 2015; nortvig & gynther, 2017) and for the professional development of in-service teachers (vivian, falkner & falkner, 2014). yet, certain types of knowledge and skill acquisition have been acknowledged as lending themselves better to moocs than others in terms of efficiency and effectiveness (fyle, 2013). fyle concluded that moocs best addressed the acquisition of content knowledge whereas assessment, feedback and practical in-classroom skills required in teaching were deemed to be less suited to moocs. despite the positive results of mooc integration in ite, little research has explored to date the inclusion of several mandatory moocs as part of ite programmes. the purpose of the current research was to investigate the perceptions of pre-service second-career students regarding the usefulness and contribution of moocs in ite programmes in general and in times of emergency such as covid-19 in particular. looking to the future of teacher education, students’ views on moocs promise to shed light on the degree to which these courses cater to their needs as future teachers. this paper contributes to the current debate on teaching and learning in future teacher education programmes and the degree of open distance education incorporation in a changing educational landscape (carrilo & flores, 2020; rice & deschaine, 2020). 2. massive open online courses moocs are university courses that have migrated from the closed, limited audience physical classroom setting to online courses open to an almost unlimited number of participants and have gained popularity since 2013 (scholz, 2013). he institutions offer moocs free of charge via the internet and partnerships with external providers such as coursera and edx (shah, 2020). they are among the main types of open educational resources (oers), i.e., digitised materials offered freely and openly for all to use and re-use for teaching, learning and research (oecd, 2007; unesco, 2002). among the numerous acknowledged advantages of moocs, they have been noted to be efficient tools for democratising learning by providing quality education for all (dillahunt, wang & teasley 2014), internationalising he (schuwer et al., 2015), developing digital competence http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 2522022 40(1): 252-267 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) (aljarrah, ababneh & cavus, 2020), increasing self-regulated learning strategies (zhu, bonk & sari, 2018), promoting ongoing professional development and endorsing lifelong learning (vivian et al., 2014). from the learners’ perspective, moocs allow flexibility and convenience while breaking the boundaries of time, space and learning pace, and overcoming barriers such as scheduling and location (shapiro et al., 2017). moocs also offer an opportunity to study a wide array of subjects with worldwide experts in prestigious he institutions, experience online social interactions and enjoy the learning process without pressure of completion or accreditation (hew & cheung, 2014; koller et al., 2013). despite their popularity, there is evidence that most mooc participants do not complete the course (goopio & cheung, 2021). several studies examined student behaviour profiles in moocs platforms (kahan, soffer & nachmias, 2017; khalil & ebner, 2017; poellhuber, roy & bouchoucha, 2019). while they identified students who were “perfect students”, “online engagers” or “active-independent”, they noted that most of the students were “dropouts”, “tasters” and “disengagers”. among the reasons for the high dropout rate and disengagement were lack of individual interaction or attention from the teacher and failure to understand the content or have anyone to turn to for help (hone & el said, 2016). given their massive proportions, moocs provide little or no instructional support beyond the videos and course material posted by the instructors. baek and shore (2016) indicated that greater interaction reduces students’ dropout rate and enhances student performance. additional reasons for dropping out are lack of incentive and no financial consequences (chiu & hew, 2018; north, richardson & north, 2014). on the other hand, studies have shown that the perceived usefulness of the courses and users’ overall satisfaction increase the motivation to continue using moocs (alraimi, zo & ciganek, 2015; zhou, 2016). applying the biggs model of teaching and learning (biggs, 2003) has revealed that mooc features such as pedagogy, tools, duration, feedback and assessment directly affect students’ learning experience, whether positive or negative, and thus students’ learning outcomes (pilli & admiraal, 2017). 3. moocs in teacher education programmes teacher education programmes are a particular he sphere. the management and faculty of institutions training future teachers devote considerable attention to serving as models for the soon-to-become teachers, placing much emphasis on the medium of instruction. the instructors and courses must therefore meet high expectations in terms of content and pedagogical strategies as they are likely to influence students’ motivations and learning outcomes (biggs, 2003). in addition to expanding students’ content knowledge (ck), ite courses should also offer other types of knowledge required in teaching, such as pedagogical content knowledge (pck) and technological and pedagogical content knowledge (tpack). pck stands for the understanding, skills and dispositions of a certain discipline and includes the ability to transform ck into valuable representations, instruction modes and evaluation procedures (shulman, 1987). tpack is a technology integration framework that includes technological, pedagogical and content knowledge (mishra & koehler, 2006). before including a ready-made mooc in ite programmes, it is necessary to verify that its instructional and organisational design meet the required quality criteria (margaryan, bianco & littlejohn, 2015). in their current design, moocs seem to lend themselves well to ck acquisition. however, it has been suggested that their assessment criteria and peer evaluation need to be redesigned to include components that would allow teacher-educators to monitor the quality of products http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 2532022 40(1): 253-267 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 donitsa-schmidt, ramot & topaz moocs during covid-19 developed and constructed (fyle, 2013). furthermore, to meet the need for social interaction, moocs should also include more sophisticated interactive features that could support socialconstructivist learning (fyle, 2013). while moocs have been researched extensively in the past few years, research of the usage of moocs in ite has been rather scant. the few research studies that have investigated mooc usage in ite were limited in scope. they examined issues such as participation in individual moocs (gómez-galán et al., 2020; orsini-jones & cerveró carrascosa, 2019), moocs developed especially for the ite programme (gonçalves et al., 2016) or moocs that were an optional part of students’ curriculum (donitsa-schmidt & topaz, 2018). other studies examined the use of moocs in ite mixed designs rather than as stand-alone components (orsini-jones & cerveró carrascosa, 2019; montgomery et al., 2015; nortvig & gynther, 2017). thus, despite the positive results and overall satisfaction that emerges from these studies, indicating the favourable potential of moocs for ite, there is a need to explore further the inclusion of several stand-alone moocs as mandatory and integral parts of an ite programme. the current study aims to fill this gap. 4. moocs during the covid-19 pandemic the covid-19 pandemic caught everyone off guard and obligated all he institutions to switch to an online mode of teaching and learning. moocs thus became a viable solution for many, leading to a dramatic increase in market demand, enrolment and participation in all mooc platforms (shah, 2020). during the pandemic, some mooc providers cancelled their restrictions on access offering he institutions the opportunity to introduce students to quality online learning through moocs (purkayastha & sinha, 2021). universities worldwide reported resorting to moocs to sustain he during the coronavirus crisis. the utilisation of high-quality moocs appeared to be a more viable option than improvising online courses (haber, 2020) and provided a contingency plan for online education during the pandemic (nordmann et al., 2020). moocs were integrated into study programmes either to complement existing courses by incorporating mooc modules or by adopting entire mooc courses (haber, 2020). a study by alqaidoon and shah (2020) investigated the role of moocs in he during the coronavirus pandemic using a systematic review of 21 research articles. their findings revealed a significant increase in he’s use of moocs during the pandemic. they concluded that although researchers view using moocs in he differently, i.e., whether they should replace existing courses, support courses or combine with other technologies, most of them agree that moocs play a significant role. a study conducted by purkayastha and sinha (2021) of 161 he students studying in moocs during the pandemic, 83% stated they wished to keep studying in moocs. yet, the same study revealed that 74% of the students wished to combine moocs with faceto-face learning. additionally, houston (2020) noted that students who actually engaged in mooc learning, adopted a positive attitude towards the experience. this supports the earlier findings of aharony and bar-ilan (2016) who reported that students’ sense of uncertainty was replaced by confidence as the course progressed. a study conducted by sun (2020) revealed that most students participating in moocs were displeased with the lack of interaction with the teacher and their co-students, which frustrated them and negatively affected their satisfaction with the mooc experience. she considers this a major factor contributing to the high 58% dropout rate in her study of 195 participants. sun attributes this phenomenon to their http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 2542022 40(1): 254-267 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) inability to learn autonomously. nevertheless, she acknowledges the benefits of moocs over traditional learning modes and offers suggested ways to improve the use of moocs in he such as introducing moocs into a flipped learning model, providing more interactive support, and improving the type of evaluation feedbacks students receive. sun concludes that while moocs may challenge traditional he, they could also constitute a driving force towards a breakthrough in he (sun, 2020). while the covid-19 crisis has boosted the popularity of moocs in colleges and universities worldwide, their adoption and use in teacher education programmes are not as widespread (taranto, robutti & arzarello, 2020). the present study investigates the incorporation of moocs in ite during the first sixteen months after the covid-19 outbreak in march 2020. while it does not rely on a specific framework, it explores numerous variables identified in the literature as potentially relevant to moocs studies. these include students’ level of satisfaction with the courses, their learning experience, perceived learning outcomes, the perception of the courses as well as the benefits. since we conducted the study in a teacher education setting during covid-19, we also examined whether students perceived moocs as a good teaching model and how important they thought integrating moocs in ite was in times of crisis. 5. research context moocs entered the israeli educational scene at a considerable delay after gaining popularity in numerous countries. to accelerate the opening of moocs and promote their usage, the israeli government initiated and budgeted in 2016 a national project entitled “digital israel”, which was led by the ministry for social equality and the council for higher education. this national project encouraged universities and teachers’ colleges to create moocs in hebrew, israel’s majority language. the courses were to appear on a new national platform called “campus il” (lexman, john & friedler, 2020). when the covid-19 pandemic hit, this platform offered several dozen courses in a variety of disciplines. the lockdowns imposed during the pandemic obligated all of israel’s he institutions to switch to emergency distance learning. moocs became an overnight ad-hoc solution for the difficulty some faculty members faced teaching online. the situation was even more dramatic in teacher education colleges that opened alternative ite programmes for unemployed second-career academics. the moe seized the opportunity to lure quality candidates into the teaching profession, launching these new programmes to partially solve the israeli education system’s chronic and massive teacher shortage at all school levels and in most school subjects (maariv daily, 2020; moe, 2020). the moe in collaboration with several other national bodies such as the israeli employment service, the israeli defence force and the local authorities, initiated several alternative accelerated teacher education programmes. in 2020 and 2021, these programmes attracted several hundred candidates who were interested in becoming teachers. opening these programmes posed a dilemma for the colleges as they were already short of teaching staff capable of undertaking so many online courses. under these circumstances, moocs emerged as the most feasible solution. 6. purpose and research questions to unearth the way students perceived the inclusion of moocs in ite programmes we asked the following research questions http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 2552022 40(1): 255-267 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 donitsa-schmidt, ramot & topaz moocs during covid-19 1. to what extent do students perceive moocs as a good teaching model? 2. how satisfied were students with their mooc studies, how did they perceive their learning experience, and what were the mooc learning outcomes? 3. how useful do students perceive incorporating moocs in ite programmes, and what purposes do they serve? 4. what is the preferable proportion of moocs in an ite programme, and which variables best explain students’ recommended proportion? 7. methodology although we used a mixed-method design in this research, we only present the quantitative results to avoid an over-lengthy report. the institutional ethics committee of the kibbutzim college of education, where the researchers work, approved the research. it was conducted transparently and without conflict of interest. 7.1 participants the participants comprised 202 students who studied in alternative teacher education programmes in the largest teacher education college in israel between march 2020 and june 2021. since participation was voluntary, the response rate was 35% (202 out of 550). of the total number, 67 (33%) of them studied in 2020 and 135 (67%) in 2021. they took different teaching tracks to become pre-school teachers (7%) or teachers of specific disciplines (e.g., mathematics, science, hebrew, english) in elementary schools (50%) or secondary schools (43%). participants’ ages ranged from 21 to 60 (m=39; sd=10). they all held either a bachelor’s degree (60%) or a master’s degree (40%). 7.2 moocs enrolment in the moocs was mandatory. once accepted into the programme, students were informed that their studies would require taking several self-paced online courses. the assigned courses matched the students’ educational background and field of studies. all the courses were offered in hebrew by israeli he institutions and appeared on the “campus il” platform. a total of 46 courses were identified as suitable for the offered teaching and learning programmes. these included 11 courses in education and teaching (e.g., multicultural education, assessment and evaluation, empathy in education, philosophy of education) and 35 content-based courses (e.g., geometry, introduction to chemistry, islam, modern hebrew poetry, literature). students had to take 1 to 15 courses, depending on their academic status, with an average of 4.5 courses per student (sd=3.02). upon completion of each mooc, students had to submit a statement of accomplishment, a portfolio of all assignments and tasks and an in-depth reflection addressing the learning experience, benefits and challenges of that specific mooc and whether they wished to participate in other similar courses in the future. the final grades in each course were either those appearing on the statement of accomplishment, or a grade based on the portfolio they submitted to the college. to receive the teaching diploma, they had to complete the courses successfully. all the students who took the courses completed them successfully and on time. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 2562022 40(1): 256-267 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 7.3 research instrument the research instrument was an anonymous online self-report questionnaire especially put together for this study. its design followed the variables identified in the literature review and it underwent the scrutiny of two educational mooc experts that checked its content validity. all the students received the questionnaire by email, inviting them to participate on a voluntary basis. the questionnaire’s introductory part briefly described the purpose of the research and assured participant anonymity. while participation was voluntary, students who agreed to participate had to fill in all the questionnaire items without exception. most items were on a five-point likert scale ranging from very little/low (1) to very high (5). the questionnaire included the following eight sections: 1. personal information, educational background and moocs taken as part of their ite programme. 2. moocs as a model for quality teaching: students had to choose one of the studied courses and indicate the degree to which it was a good teaching model through 14 items. in an exploratory factor analysis, seven factors emerged as explaining 92% of the total variance. each factor included two items and all the factors were reliable with cronbach’s alpha coefficients ranging from 0.83 to 0.93. the factors were: (1) has a clear syllabus and purpose; (2) applies diverse teaching methods; (3) is user-friendly and suitable as an online course; (4) presents novel content; (5) includes aids and visuals to help the learner; (6) caters to needs of a variety of learners; (7) includes varied assessment procedures. the total mean was also calculated (α=0.93). 3. satisfaction with the course and recommending that others study in mooc frameworks (3 items, α=0.93). 4. learning experience: nine adjectives representing positive and negative feelings experienced during mooc studies. the five positive ones were rewarding, educational, enjoyable, hi-quality, and in-depth (α=0.91) and the four negative ones were lonely, stressful, difficult and burdened (α=0.79). 5. learning outcomes: the degree to which students felt they had gained the necessary knowledge in the course and understood the material (α=0.92). 6. the perceived usefulness of including moocs in ite programmes: 16 items that converged into six factors: convenience and studying in my own time, place and pace (3 items; α=0.95); becoming an independent learner (2 items; α=0.89); studying varied topics that my institution does not offer with prominent experts (3 items; α=0.76); improves one’s digital competence (2 items; α=0.94); opens new horizons for future professional development (pd) and lifelong learning (lll) (3 items; α=0.91); will make me a better teacher and affect my teaching in the future (3 items; α=0.95). 7. the importance of moocs in ite in times of crisis such as covid-19 (6 items; α=0.76). 8. the preferable proportion of moocs in an ite programme – (0%, 10%, 20%...100%). 7.4 data analysis reliability (cronbach’s alpha) was calculated for all study variables. we used descriptive statistics (i.e., means, standard deviations and bivariate pearson product-moment product correlations) to provide a sample description, and conducted data driven k-means cluster analysis to identify potential student profiles through their perceived usefulness of moocs. to explore profile differences, we ran a one-way manova test, t-tests for independent http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 2572022 40(1): 257-267 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 donitsa-schmidt, ramot & topaz moocs during covid-19 variables and chi-square statistics. two linear regression analyses were performed to detect which variables best predict students’ learning outcomes and students’ preferences regarding the preferable proportion of moocs in an ite programme. all the statistical analyses used spss 25.0. 8. findings q1: moocs as a good teaching model table 1 below presents the means and standard deviations of all seven factors that characterised a good teaching model as well as the total mean. when answering these questions, students were instructed to relate to one specific mooc and state which one they chose. in all, the students referred to 35 different courses. table1: moocs as a good role model for teaching (means and standard deviations) mean sd is user friendly and suitable as a self-paced course 4.35 .82 includes aids and visuals to help the learner 4.29 .84 has a clear syllabus and purpose 4.24 .91 presents novel contents 4.06 1.00 caters to needs of a variety of learners 4.04 .96 uses varied teaching methods 3.96 1.06 uses varied assessment procedures 3.78 1.08 moocs as a good teaching model (total mean) 4.10 .80 although students each referred to a different course in answering the above questions, they concluded that moocs were good teaching models with a total mean of 4.10 in a fivepoint scale. three aspects of the courses were ranked the highest: user-friendliness and suitability as an online self-paced course; included aids and visuals that provide scaffolding to the course and clear syllabus and purpose of the course. the lowest ranking aspects were the variety of teaching methods and assessment procedures. q2: satisfaction with mooc studies, students’ learning experience and learning outcomes. table 2: means and standard deviations of satisfaction, learning experience and learning outcomes. mean sd satisfaction and recommendation of moocs 3.99 1.06 a rewarding, educational and enjoyable experience 3.75 0.89 a lonely, stressful and difficult experience 2.41 0.94 learning outcomes 4.12 .86 as table 2 shows, students were generally satisfied with their mooc studies. they described their experience as significantly more rewarding and positive than lonely and stressful (t=12.30; p<.001) and ranked the learning outcomes as high. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 2582022 40(1): 258-267 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) bivariate correlational analysis shows that students who described their chosen mooc as a good teaching model were also highly satisfied with mooc studies and recommended them to others (r=.62; p<.005), had a rewarding and positive learning experience (r=.61. p<.001) and ranked their learning outcomes as high (r=.69; p<.001). feelings of loneliness and stress were not strongly related to the quality of the mooc (r=-.33; p<.01). in a linear regression analysis where the learning outcomes were the dependent variable, the following four variables significantly explained 60% of the total variance (f=72.90; p<.001). of the four variables, three were significant: the degree to which the mooc was a good teaching model (beta=.37; t=6.20; p<.001), the degree to which the learning experience was rewarding and positive (beta=.25, t=3.46; p<.01), and the level of satisfaction from the mooc studies (beta=.26, t=3.49; p<.01). feelings of loneliness and stress did not significantly contribute to the regression equation. q3: perceived usefulness of moocs in ite programmes table 3: perceived usefulness of moocs in ite programmes mean sd convenience 4.56 .68 becoming an independent learner 4.32 .71 study varied topics with prominent experts 3.88 .80 open the horizons for future pd and lll 3.81 1.02 improve digital competence 3.64 1.16 positive effect on future teaching 3.23 1.24 as table 3 above shows, the factors ranked as the most useful assets of moocs were convenience in terms of flexible time, place, pace and becoming an independent learner. next came the opportunity to study diverse courses that are not offered by the college with prominent experts and viewing moocs as an avenue for future professional development (pd) and lifelong learning (lll). last were moocs as a means for improving students’ digital competence and moocs’ effect on the future teaching of teachers-to-be. a k-means cluster analysis of the potentially useful aspects of studying in moocs revealed three meaningful profiles of pre-service students. the 3-cluster solution was favoured because it resulted in a maximum number of non-redundant profiles with good representation (n=80; n=84; n=38). the manova showed a significant main effect (f=57.38; p<.01) with univariate significant effects in all six factors: convenience (f=18.34; p<.001), independent learner (f=35.61; p<.001), studying varied topics with well-known experts (f=47.85; p<.001), professional development and lifelong learning (f=88.35; p<.001), digital competence (f=177.03; p<.001), and impact on future teaching (f=256.58; p<.001). figure 1 displays the means of the three profiles that emerged from the data. the first is the zealous type (n=80) that ranks all factors as positive attributes of moocs. the second is the guarded type (n=84) that only perceives some of the moocs’ attributes positively, mainly convenience, becoming an independent learner and studying a variety of courses with well-known experts. the third profile is the pragmatic type (n=38) that is highly opportunistic and benefit-driven and perceives moocs merely as a means to overcome barriers of time and place and does not attribute any other advantage to them. while the aspect of convenience ranked high in all three profiles, the widest gap emerged in the degree of perceived impact of moocs on future teaching. to rule out background variables affecting these three profiles, we examined the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 2592022 40(1): 259-267 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 donitsa-schmidt, ramot & topaz moocs during covid-19 differences using chi-square, t-tests for independent samples and analysis of variance. the analysis revealed no significant differences due to the participants’ gender, age and education. the only significant background variable was the type of teaching diploma the pre-service students were studying for: the zealous type was more frequent among those studying to become primary or secondary school teachers in different school subjects; the guarded type was more frequent among those studying to become kindergarten teachers and the pragmatic type was more frequent among those studying to become english teachers for all age levels. 4,85 4,73 4,24 4,49 4,51 4,37 4,48 4,17 3,94 3,72 3,6 2,92 4,12 3,78 2,97 2,55 1,91 1,53 1 2 3 4 5 convenience independent learner variety of courses and experts prof dev. & lifelong learning digital competence effect future teaching the zealous type (n=80) the guarded type (n=84) the pragmatic type (n=38) figure 1: k-means cluster analysis of perceived usefulness of moocs in ite students were also asked how they perceived the importance of moocs studies in times of emergency such as covid-19. the total mean of this factor was 4.28 (sd=0.89), displaying agreement with the notion that moocs play an important role in times of crisis. q4: preferable proportion of moocs in an ite programme figure 2 below presents the distribution of students’ preferences as to the proportion of moocs that should be included in an ite programme. preferences varied from 0 to 80% with a mean of 33%. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 2602022 40(1): 260-267 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 5 15 16 22 17 13 5 4 3 0 5 10 15 20 25 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% figure 2: distribution of the preferred proportion of moocs in ite programmes positive and significant correlations were found between the preferred proportion of moocs in ite programmes and all other research variables: the moocs as a good teaching model (r=.38), students’ learning outcomes (r=.49), students’ learning experiences (r=.51), degree of satisfaction with the moocs (r=.58), number of moocs in the programme (r=.32), moocs’ importance in times of emergency (r=.55) and all six variables of the perceived usefulness of mooc studies (correlations ranging from .30 to .66). table 4 below presents the results of a stepwise linear regression analysis performed to detect what variables best predicted students’ preferred proportion of moocs in an ite programme. all twelve variables listed above were inserted into the equation as independent variables. results revealed a significant regression (f=17.27; p<.001) with variables explaining 52% of the total variance. yet, only three of the twelve variables were found significant and explained 50% of the total variance all together. the contribution of the remaining variables was not significant, and they were discarded from the equation. table 4 includes only the significant predictors. table 4: regression analysis predicting the preferred proportion of moocs in ite programme β t(p) moocs positively affect my future teaching .51 7.97 (p=.000) number of moocs studied .16 3.15 (p=.002) the importance of moocs in times of emergency .19 2.94 (p=.004) as table 4 above shows, students who studied more moocs, perceived them as having a positive impact on their future teaching and acknowledged their importance in times of crisis. thus, they opted for including a higher proportion of moocs in ite programmes. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 2612022 40(1): 261-267 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 donitsa-schmidt, ramot & topaz moocs during covid-19 9. discussion the findings of the present study revealed that students of the alternative ite programmes initiated in response to the covid-19 crisis considered the moocs they took as a good teaching model. the students related to both courses in education and in different disciplines, a total of 46 courses provided on the “campus il” platform, israel’s national mooc platform. the pre-service teachers described the courses as accessible and user-friendly, a weighty feature in online courses studied independently. students also ranked highly the wealth of scaffolding provided to mooc learners, including visuals, infographics and multimedia that support the learning process. the moocs received a high ranking for catering to the needs of diverse learners, having a clear syllabus and having a clearly stated purpose; these were all regarded as positive attributes of the courses that made them a good teaching model. the moocs were positively perceived as offering quality academic content. these findings substantiate previous studies that also attested to these positive features (donitsa-schmidt & topaz, 2018; gómez-galán et al., 2020). it is perhaps no surprise that students praise so many instructional mooc elements. after all, their careful construction and design involved technopedagogical experts and the input of many other professionals such as content consultants, sound technicians, graphic designers and movie directors (king et al., 2014). yet, the ranking of two of the qualities of this good model was slightly lower than the others: the diversity of teaching methods and particularly that of the assessment procedures, corroborating the findings of previous researchers (atiaja & proenza, 2016). the limited variety of teaching methods and assessment procedures may hold true when comparing moocs to regular faceto-face courses. however, this is not necessarily the case when compared to online courses taught by faculty members. in many cases, the latter suffer from similar weaknesses inherent to online delivery characterised by little communication and interaction with the instructor and co-learners (e.g., crews, wilkinson & neill, 2015; jaggars & xu, 2016). in other words, in times of emergency, the quality of moocs is likely to be higher than that of many in-house online courses developed instantly by faculty members. while previous research noted that little interaction is a shortcoming that may lead to a high dropout rate (baek & shore, 2016), there were no dropouts in the current research. this remarkable completion rate could be explained by the mandatory nature of the courses and the fact that they are an integral part of students’ learning programmes. such circumstances may have been an incentive for students to complete their studies since failure or even delays would have postponed their certification and entailed additional tuition fees (chiu & hew, 2018; north et al., 2014). findings also showed that students ranked the courses’ learning outcomes highly and that the degree to which the moocs served as a good teaching model and the learning experience was perceived as positive significantly influenced these outcomes. these findings support previous arguments acknowledging the positive effect of various dimensions of good teaching in moocs on students’ investment in their studies and hence on their learning outcomes (hone & el said, 2016; pilli & admiraal, 2017). as in our findings, the mentioned dimensions included a well-organised, clearly displayed and easily understood course structure, challenging, interesting and up-to-date course content, good information delivery and varied learning paths. while moocs ranked as a good teaching model contributing significantly to students’ learning outcomes, pre-service teachers differed in their perception of their usefulness. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 2622022 40(1): 262-267 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) the research identified three main student types: the zealous type, who is enthusiastic and fascinated by moocs and their advantages, the guarded type who admits to some advantages but is still apprehensive about other aspects, and finally the pragmatic type who values moocs for being convenient. not surprisingly, convenience considerations ranked high with all types. as others have observed, flexibility and the ability to overcome numerous barriers such as time constraints, scheduling and travel expenses are among the most salient characteristics of moocs (shapiro et al., 2017). the current study confirmed the findings of previous ones which noted that the mooc experience helped students become independent and self-regulated and decide their own path of studies (littlejohn et al., 2016). this phenomenon was particularly notable among the zealous and guarded types. while these two types saw moocs as an opportunity to study a range of courses with well-known experts, the students classified as pragmatic did not seem to agree. this finding is surprising since moocs, as oers, are renowned for opening new horizons for the learners by offering them numerous optional interesting topics free of charge at institutions other than their own (unesco, 2002). the pragmatic type does not really care about learning opportunities, professional development or any lifelong education, rather focusing primarily on completing their studies as quickly as possible. fortunately, this group was the smallest among the preservice teachers as such an attitude was not what we would have expected from soon-tobecome teachers and educators. finally, only the zealous type ranked the possible favourable effect of moocs high on students’ future teaching. while this was slightly disappointing, we should bear in mind that the zealous type was most frequent among those studying to become primary or secondary school teachers. kindergarten teachers mostly belonged with the guarded type, and the pragmatic type frequently appeared among future teachers of english as a second language. we may assume, therefore, that moocs have a greater weight for schoolteachers while kindergarten teachers find them less relevant. yet, the results for future english teachers need further investigation as they seem to contradict previous research findings of the authors (donitsa-schmidt & topaz, 2018). while the pre-service teachers agreed about the value of moocs in times of emergency, their answers about the desired proportion of moocs in an ite programme differed considerably, ranging from none to eighty per cent of the curriculum. our findings showed that the number of moocs that students took as part of their programmes stood in direct relation to their preferred proportion, the perceived usefulness of moocs for their future teaching and the attributed value of moocs in times of emergency. the cumulative impact of studying several moocs within an ite programme is a central finding of the current research, highlighting the effect of experiencing several courses. previous studies have noted that exposure to moocs improved students’ attitudes towards these courses (aharony & barilan, 2016; houston, 2021). although all moocs share many characteristics, each of them has numerous individual qualities that set it apart. taking several moocs introduces students to varied mooc models and helps them realise their many inherent benefits and added value to students’ current learning and future professional development opportunities. 10. conclusions to conclude, this study is significant in shedding light on the positive perceptions of students taking multiple, mandatory moocs as part of their ite. as such, it could offer educational policymakers alternative options to benefit their student body. evidently, teachers cannot http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 2632022 40(1): 263-267 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 donitsa-schmidt, ramot & topaz moocs during covid-19 acquire all the knowledge they need solely through moocs. yet, judicious use of moocs may offer an appropriate balance between face-to-face and online learning. the right balance between the two requires further examination. while improvements are required in several elements and characteristics of moocs, these courses can indisputably pave the way for a noteworthy breakthrough in the field of distance education. in terms of educational policy, it is highly recommended that every student in he, including ite, be exposed to several moocs as part of the training programme. a positive mooc learning experience over their period of studies may encourage them to continue using this open educational resource in the future. while these courses face he institutions and their faculty members with an enormous challenge and might appear to represent a conflict of interest (goglio & parigi, 2019; tømte, 2019), we believe that the advantages of including moocs as a compulsory component of the training programme outnumber possible shortcomings. yet, this requires the teaching staff to enlist in the process. they should be aware of the positive results of mooc integration in ite and the challenges this involves. this is how the process can become a communal effort to determine the best and most effective way to integrate moocs into the programme. in doing so, several issues must be addressed, such as which moocs to include and which courses they should replace. such decisions would have serious consequences for the institutions and on the teaching staff. one should not ignore broader implications regarding issues of equity in education. many developing countries do not have the technological infrastructure required to run moocs smoothly. even affluent countries have disparities in access to internet services and infrastructures (fyle, 2013; adam, 2020). moreover, as learning spaces become more diversified, educational policymakers need to consider learner diversity such as digital learning abilities, self-directed learning skills and time management issues, to name but a few. finally, since only the zealous type ranked the possible effect of moocs on students’ future teaching high, further research is recommended to investigate the low ranking among the two other groups. additional research could also follow up on the participants once they have begun their teaching careers. such research could use the typology that emerged from the findings of the zealous, guarded and pragmatic student profiles 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zhu, c. 2019. mooc-based flipped learning in higher education: students’ participation, experience and learning performance. international journal of educational technology in higher education, 16(1): 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-019-0163-0 zhou, m. 2016. chinese university students’ acceptance of moocs: a self-determination perspective. computers & education, 92–93: 194-203. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu. 2015.10.012 zhu, m., bonk, c.j. & sari, a.r. 2018. instructor experiences designing moocs in higher education: pedagogical, resource, and logistical considerations and challenges. online learning, 22(4): 203-241. https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v22i4.1495 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.15 https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1011.23 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-020-01178-2 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-020-01178-2 https://doi.org/10.3402/rlt.v22.24691 https://doi.org/10.1186/s41239-019-0163-0 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2015.10.012 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2015.10.012 https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v22i4.1495 _hlk92184526 291 research article 2021 39(1): 291-303 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.18 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) the covid-19 pandemic: streamlining or capsizing the global higher education revolution abstract the aim of this article is to interpret the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic within the frame of the global higher education revolution. one of the striking elements of the contemporary world since 1990 is a global higher education revolution. while the most prominent feature of this revolution is massification, it is a multifaceted revolution, involving all aspects of higher education, including the curriculum, methods of teaching and learning, the academic profession, funding, relations between higher education and government and management. this article first outlines the societal drivers of this revolution, being demographic shifts, increasing affluence, the rise of knowledge economies, the neo-liberal economic revolution, the information and communication technology (ict) revolution, the rise of multicultural societies, democratisation, individualisation and the rise of the creed of human rights and next key features of the revolution will be surveyed. the revolution is then critically evaluated by interrogating and using as yardstick the unique, indispensable mission of higher education in society. the changes that the pandemic are forcing in the higher education sector is then assessed against the potential of the disruption brought by the covid-19 pandemic to redress or strengthen the discontents of this global higher education revolution. keywords: covid-19 pandemic; global higher education revolution; higher education; higher education scholarship; managerialism. 1. introduction over the past thirty years, a global higher education revolution has been sweeping through the world (altbach et al., 2009). while the key feature of this revolution has been massification, it is a multifaceted revolution, involving all aspects of higher education, including the curriculum, methods of teaching and learning, the academic profession, funding, relations between higher education and government and management (see altbach et al., 2009). these facets will be unpacked in a section later in this article. on top of this, in 2020, covid-19 has impacted higher education externally and internally, forcing major changes in the way universities are operating. while the most obvious change is to give momentum to the trend towards online learning, author: prof c.c. wolhuter1 prof l. jacobs2 affiliation: 1north-west university, south africa 2university of the free state, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i1.18 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 291-303 published: 12 march 2021 received: 17 november 2020 accepted: 18 january 2021 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4602-7113 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1582-5024 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.18 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.18 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.18 2922021 39(1): 292-303 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.18 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) this impact is also of a multifaceted nature, to be unpacked in a later section of the article. the aim of this article is to investigate whether this pandemic can or will effect a correction or a calamity, to the global higher education revolution. 2. the global higher education revolution one of the often not fully appreciated signature features of the present era in world history, is the world-wide higher education revolution. it is a basic theorem in the scholarly field of comparative and international education that education systems are shaped by societal forces (typically analysed under the rubrics of geography, demography, level of scientific and technological development, social system, economy, political system, religion and life and world philosophy), and that education systems can only be comprehended from these societal forces (see wolhuter, 2021; harris & jones, 2018). this applies to the higher education sector as much as to other levels of education. the global higher education revolution has likewise been driven by numerous societal drivers and in order to fully comprehend this revolution, this section will commence with an examination of these societal drivers of the global higher education revolution. this will be followed with a discussion of the main dimensions defining this revolution, after which the revolution will be assessed. 2.1. the societal drivers of the global higher education revolution at least nine interrelated societal forces are driving the global higher education revolution. these are demographic shifts, increasing affluence, the rise of knowledge economies, the neo-liberal economic revolution, the information and communication technology (ict) revolution, the rise of multicultural societies, democratisation, individualisation and the rise of the creed of human rights. numerous demographic trends are visible in the world. the first is that the world is experiencing a population explosion and every year 81 million people are added to the global population total. this means every year, more people are clamouring for admittance to institutions of higher education. secondly, most of the increase in population takes place in the countries of the global south. the present annual population growth rates for the various parts of the world are: 2.49 per cent for africa (2.63 per cent for sub-saharan africa), oceania: 1.31 per cent, asia: 0.86 per cent, south america: 0.83 per cent, north america: 0.62 per cent and europe: 0.06 per cent (world population review, 2020). furthermore, the global south has a youthful population age profile, meaning every year the demand for higher education is increasing. the median age per continent at present is 18 years in the case of africa, 31 years in the case of asia, 31 years in the case of south america, 33 years in the case of oceania, 35 years in the case of north america and 42 years in the case of europe (desjardins, 2019). a third demographic trend is that the global population is an increasingly mobile population. the number of international migrants in the world (i.e. those residing in a country other than the country of their birth), stands at 258 million, or 3.4 per cent of the global population (institute national d’etudes demographiques, 2020). this number of international migrants in the world rises at a rate of 2.4 per cent per year (ibid). it is not only international migration that has been picking up momentum. while in 1800 people in the united states of america travelled on average 50 metres per day, by the beginning of the twenty-first century they have travelled 50 kilometres per day (urry, 2007). this mobility has obvious implications for higher education in, for example, facilitating faculty and student mobility, intra-nationally as well as internationally. thus, serving one of the drives of the university, namely internationalisation. 2932021 39(1): 293-303 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.18 wolhuter & jacobs the covid-19 pandemic at least three economic trends currently salient, are driving the global higher education revolution. since 1990, the world has entered one of the most forceful phases of economic upswing in history, which may be related to the downscaling of the welfare state and the beginning of the neo-liberal economic revolution, technological advances especially in information and communication technology and the era of relative peace which followed the conclusion of the cold war. in the ten-year period 2005–2015, the global annual economic output has more than doubled, from us$29.6 trillion to us$78.3 trillion (world bank, 2016). this rise has continued to reach us$ 84.4 trillion in 2018 (world bank, 2020). this upswing has brought higher education within financial reach of a growing number of people. while at the time of writing (march 2021) the long-term economic effect of the covid-19 pandemic is all but clear (particularly the growth or decline in economic output in the various countries of the world), it should be stated that from the above cited figures, the 2008 economic crisis made no dent on the long term economic growth trajectory. similarly, the major economic crises of the twentieth century (the 1993 depression, the 1973 oil crisis and other), as well as other economic slumps, could not, in the long term, deflect the upward economic curve (see mortimer, 2014). the second economic trend is the transformation towards a knowledge economy. a knowledge economy is an economy where the production and consumption of new knowledge has become the driving axis of the economy (corporate finance institute, n.d.). historians of the economic evolution of societies distinguish between a number of successive phases in the economic evolution of economies, based on the economic mainstay of the phase. these are the phase of hunting and gathering, agricultural economies (which commenced in the middle east and north africa 8000 to 10000 years ago; from where it spread to the rest of the world), industrial economies (the industrial revolution started in england around 1750), and service economies (which came strongly to the fore during the twentieth century). now, economists identify a growing knowledge economy breaking through in the most advanced economies of the world. in such an economy an even higher value is attached to higher education. occurring concomitantly with the economic upswing since 1990, another economic trend has been the neo-liberal economic revolution, coinciding with the economic upswing. this revolution entailed the scaling down of the role of the state not only in the economy, but also in other sectors of society, for example as transport, health services, and – important for its effect on higher education – education, and the commodification of education, giving the forces of the free market free rein (see ball, 2015; jacobs & teise, 2019; davies & bansel, 2007). another societal driver in the higher education revolution is the ict revolution that has put in place an instant 24-hour planetary information network, comprising free access to and widespread use of the personal computer, the internet, the fax machine and the mobile telephone. in the higher education sector, this revolution has made higher education accessible to larger numbers of people, notably through the expansion of distance education programmes. the revolution has also enabled the more mobile global population. maintaining contact with home base makes it easier to leave that base for extended periods of time. societies have become diverse and multicultural; replacing the more homogenous societies of past times. at the same time as the economic upswing, the neo-liberal economic revolution and the knowledge explosion, a process of democratisation has taken off in large parts of the world since 1990. the proviso should be added, however, that in many parts of the world, africa included, much of the progress made on the scale of democratisation, have again been 2942021 39(1): 294-303 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.18 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) reversed since about 2005 (see lührmann & lindberg, 2019; mills et al,, 2019). the process of democratisation, combined with the emergence of the creed of human rights (to be discussed later), and the empowerment that the ict revolution brought to individuals, all have given impetus to another trend in modern society, namely individualisation. finally, in the diverse multicultural, including multireligious societies in the contemporary world, the creed of human rights has come to constitute the basis of the new (global) moral order (prozesky, 2018). 2.2. dimensions of the global higher education revolution the above outlined societal drivers have, in combination, resulted in a global higher education revolution that displays the following features: massification, competition and differentiation, changing funding patterns, changing relations with government, changing relations with industry, a call for relevance, the rise of new modes of knowledge generation and packaging, an extraordinary growth in distance education, internationalisation, managerialism (procedures and techniques employed to regulate and command conduct (jacobs & teise, 2019), a new student profile and a changed academic profession. these features will now be clarified and unpacked. altbach et al. (2009) describes the single defining feature of this global higher education revolution as massification. globally higher education enrolments surged from 88.6 million in 1990 to 223.7 million in 2018 (unesco, 2020). even after discounting global population growth, the enrolment explosion of higher education remains impressive. on a global aggregate level, gross higher education enrolment ratios grew from 14 per cent in 1990, to reach 38.04 per cent in 2018 (unesco, 2020). the increasing affluence, economic transformation, democratisation (promoting the belief that higher education is a right everyone has) and the ict revolution have ensured that higher education is no longer limited to a privileged few, but that mass participation has become the norm in many parts of the world. while enrolment ratios are the highest in the global north (the gross enrolment ratio of higher education has now reached 143 per cent in greece, the highest in the world), in terms of absolute numbers (enrolments) most growth has taken place in the countries in the global south. in sub-saharan africa for example, higher education enrolments have surged from 1.3 million in 1990 to 8.2 million in 2018 (unesco, 2020). the rapid expansion in the context of the contemporary world contains two imperatives. firstly, in a globally competitive world, virtually every institution aspires to become a world class university (see wolhuter, 2012), creating an ectropic-isomorphic imperative in higher education systems all over the world. evidence of this is the university ranking industry, something non-existent a generation ago. on the other hand, the proliferation of universities has forced differentiation, different kinds of institutions, each seeking a particular niche (see altbach et al., 2017). the runaway expansion of higher education, more so in times of a neo-liberal economic revolution, meant that government funding for the entire higher education expansion project became unsustainable. funding patterns changed, as the burden of funding shifted from government to the direction of the clientele, i.e. industry and students. the extreme end of this was privatisation – a host of private universities mushroomed in many parts of the world (while both americas historically had a strong private higher education sector, in the post-1990 era this sector surged in many countries in asia and in virtually all parts of africa, save south africa), and by 2009 already an estimated one third of all universities in the world were private institutions (altbach et al., 2009), opening up many spaces for enrolments, thus it helped to 2952021 39(1): 295-303 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.18 wolhuter & jacobs the covid-19 pandemic make possible the massification of higher education. by 2018, for instance india had 345 state funded universities, compared to 233 private universities, with an array of other classifications added to make a total of 864 (tiwari & singhal, 2018). however, in most countries in the world, governments remain the largest single funder of higher education institutions. in times of neoliberal economics, governments claim more say in universities, representing a revolutionary change from the autonomy and freedom from government interference that characterised the university (at least the western university) a generation ago. it is not only university-government relations that have changed. industry too, in return for their financial commitment to universities, claim a say in universities, representing another front in the onslaught of the autonomy of universities. curricula and programmes are clearly packaged to be more relevant to the needs of industry. the imperative for relevance is also very visible in the rise of mode ii knowledge. mode ii, an expression coined by gibbons et al. (1994) to name the trend whereby knowledge is no longer generated, ordered and taught in a discipline-defined format (mode i knowledge), but in a transand interdisciplinary open system, and where knowledge is ordered and evaluated not so much in terms of scientific criteria as in terms of practical and utilitarian considerations (mode ii knowledge). the principles of the neo-liberal economic revolution, such as performance measurement, efficiency and accountability, are also carried into the management style of universities, thereby creating a culture of managerialism: an entirely new professional environment for the academic profession. furthermore, the ict revolution gave particular impetus to the expansion of distance higher education. tellingly, the mega-universities in the world today, are typically distance education universities, including the largest university in the world, indira gandhi national open university (ignou) (established 1985), with its more than 4 million students. mass online open courses (moocs) have mushroomed from nowhere the past decades, bringing university education to an even larger clientele. the phenomenon of offshore campuses of universities represent a new way of universities transcending national boundaries. the economic affluence, and the ict revolution, as well as the global isomorphism created by democratisation, the creed of human rights and the neo-liberal economic revolution all facilitated increased internationalisation of students, of faculty, and of curricula. while an international dimension has always been, since the inception of the university almost a millennium ago, a distinguishing feature of the university (see welch et al., 2004), in the past thirty years, internationalisation of higher education has reached new levels. carrying into the university the principles of the neo-liberal economic revolution, such as the profit-motive, performativity, performance appraisal, efficiency, quality control and like, subjected the university to a strong trend of managerialism, unknown in the university even a single generation ago. the student profile too changed: from the ideal type of the student coming to university to sit at the knees of the master, receiving knowledge and education, to a client, much more challenging and demanding than the student a generation ago. no longer an autonomous and prestigious profession, the academic profession now finds itself sandwiched between the exigencies of managerialism and the demands of students (see locke et al., 2011). 2962021 39(1): 296-303 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.18 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) 2.3. assessment: achievements of and challenges and discontents brought by the global higher education revolution the global higher education revolution will now be assessed, using a yardstick, the very nature of a university and its unique role in society. the merriam-webster dictionary (2020) defines a university as “an advanced autonomous educational institution for the promotion (teaching and research) of various branches of science”. from this definition and based on an analysis of the history of the university and its place in society, the following six roles or functions of the university can be delineated (wolhuter & langa, 2021). in the first instance, the university is an institution of teaching and learning. from the definition cited above, it flows that, various branches of learning should be taught and studied, at their most advanced level. virtually everywhere in the world, the university represents the pinnacle of the education system. a second function of a university is to conduct research. the idea is that of a teaching-learning-research nexus: the results of research should be percolated back to enrich teaching-learning programmes; on the other hand, teaching-learning should be the training ground of researchers. the service delivery function represents a third role of the university. this service role is the vaguest and most difficult to define of all roles of the university. sometimes scholars attach the meaning of “engagement” to this function, at other times they identify it as “outreach”. one elaborate description of this function of the university, is that of ward (2003), in which he enumerates a comprehensive gamut of activities which could be regarded as the service activities of the university. ward (2003) distinguishes between internal and external service activities. internal service could, in turn, be sub-divided into on-campus and offcampus discipline/scholarly field-oriented service activities and external service activities. oncampus service includes institutional governance and institutional support, student advising or counselling (on matters outside the narrow scope of the curriculum) and academic oversight. off-campus service activities, which faculty occupy themselves, include service activities to disciplines or scholarly fields by means of membership and commitments to various associations, e.g., professional/scientific societies or publication-related activities (such as serving on editorial boards or acting as reviewers of papers). external service refers to the way higher education institutions put their expertise to the benefit of different external stakeholders and can include consulting, service learning, community action-based research, community upliftment projects, participation in cultural activities and civic service. such service activities may be paid or unpaid; however, the common factor among all service activities is that it is based on the expertise of faculty members. a fourth role of the university is to act as the conscience of society, meaning to critique on society (cf. habermas, 1968: 3–4). this role assumes particular importance at this point in time in history when societies and governments are pledging allegiance to the creed of human rights, and where humankind is facing challenges and critical issues such as the threat of ecological destruction and the possibilities created by the fourth industrial revolution. the university can fulfil this role only on the precondition that it is an autonomous institution, out of reach of any decree or sanction from government or any constituency (interest group) in society. the university also has a role with respect to the maintenance, the preservation and the development of culture. a final function of the university is to be a location of innovation. this means innovation produced by human resources with high levels of expert knowledge 2972021 39(1): 297-303 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.18 wolhuter & jacobs the covid-19 pandemic of a scholarly type and in a knowledge economy. this role of the university is evident in the number of patents emanating from universities, i.e. where the expertise of academics brings forth innovations. the global higher education revolution represents a remarkable achievement of humanity the past generation, in addition to participation in higher education opening new possibilities to students and education representing an ameliorative force in society. the value of higher education is also set to rise even more in the face of a nascent knowledge economy and the immanent fourth industrial revolution; however, a number of cautionary notes should also be made. to commence with, there are rising levels of graduate unemployment in virtually all parts of the world. the problem is that of a wastage of public resources as well as that of the financial sacrifice that the student and his/her family have made. problematic consequences of graduate unemployment also include feelings of failure on a personal level and on societal level, there is the danger of a pool of unemployed graduates being very susceptible for socio-political mobilisation (especially for populist causes creating even more unrealistic expectations). then there is a tendency, in places where all graduates cannot be absorbed into the labour force, of especially the well-connected and elite getting employed, thus inequality in society gets exacerbated. an unresolved (if in any way resolvable) issue is who should bear the costs of the global higher education project. arguments for expecting students to pay include that they are the beneficiaries of higher education, and that the fiscus is limited and more worthy causes for the needy (including primary and secondary education, especially for the needy) should be prioritised. arguments against students paying for higher education (and expecting government to pay) include that a system of students financing their own higher education mean only the elite, the already privileged will then enjoy higher education, thus higher education will serve to deepen inequalities in society. there is also the argument that society as a whole or as a collective benefit from the expertise and education supplied by higher education, and therefore public money should be invested in higher education. what we want to highlight surrounding problematic aspects or results of the higher education revolution, however, hinges on the sacrificing or at least diluting of the two principles of excellence and autonomy. the definition and unique functions of the university, as delineated at the outset of this article, is contingent on two principles, namely the pursuit of excellence and the safeguarding of autonomy. both these are seriously threatened by the global higher education revolution, at the least the form it is taking on in the world of today, and particularly the way it is being shaped (or contorted) in the south african societal contextual ecology. the double layer of managerialism emanating from national governance and institutional governance from the top, and from the bottom, student empowerment and entitlement, mean that the academic profession finds itself sandwiched between these two powerful blocs, no longer in the comfortable space where they can pursue their quest for truth and academic excellence. in the south african context in particular, these factors are present in the superlative. that the south african university finds itself in a pincer movement between these two forces, to the extent that it can eventually mean the end of the university, has been remarked by alarm by scholars and education commentators straddling the entire political spectrum: from conservative scholar and former principal of the university of pretoria, flip 2982021 39(1): 298-303 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.18 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) smit (smit, 2020), to liberal academic and journalist, r.w. johnson (2012), to progressive scholar and former rector of the university of the free state, jonathan jansen (2017). another red flag is the denigration or marginalisation or outright excising of basic research, as part of the force exerted by the parameters of relevance and (immediate) demonstrable profit of the global higher education revolution. this trend of the demise of basic research has been criticised — rightfully and commendably — by no less than former world bank president, josef stiglitz (2019). even from the sole criterion of utility, it should be borne in mind that the basis of much technology and practical use of scientific knowledge today have their roots in labours of basic research, where the researcher had nothing of the modern applications of that research in mind. when oersted explored the relation between magnetism and electricity at the end of the eighteenth century, he did not remotely have in mind electric bulbs, the diode, the automobile, and the like. neither had the pioneers of nuclear physics in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, from dalton to nils bohr, rutherford and cavendish, any visions of nuclear power generators or interventions curing people from life threatening diseases. a graphic illustration of the (unforeseen and unpredictable) beneficial results of basic research, is the history of the bayes theorem (see bryson, 2010: 7–8). today this theorem, expressing and offering a way to calculate probability distribution, is used routinely in an uncountable variety of applications, including forecasting of weather, predicting climate change, equity market analysis, astrophysics and social policy analysis. yet when thomas bayes penned it down somewhere in the second half of the eighteenth century, it had no obvious utility. in fact, bayes thought so little of it, an exercise he did out of mere interest and amusement, that he did not even try to publish it. after his death a friend found it in his notes, sent it to the royal society which published it, and in that way, it originally became part of the stock of common scientific knowledge. finally, the pressures of the neo-liberal economic revolution and the parameters these laid down for the global higher education revolution, as outlined in the preceding paragraph, brought about a neglect of the function of the university with regard to the preservation, transmittance and development of the cultural wealth of humanity. not only will that impoverish the richness and quality of human life, but it has wider adverse consequences too. to name one example, the lack of attention and resources to the development of dictionaries will negatively affect scholarly development, as science and scholarly writing depend on precise word choice and careful language use. it is this higher education revolution, with its massive momentum, and its possibilities, promising assets as well as discontents that encountered the worldwide outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic in the first months of 2020. 3. the global higher education revolution met by the covid-19 pandemic thus, the global higher education revolution, which had been steaming ahead, with ever increasing momentum for thirty years, unexpectedly encountered the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic during the first months of 2020, coming like the strongest of crosswinds. this pandemic forced the captains of higher education to urgently make contingency plans, as the pandemic made it impossible to carry on as usual. the thesis of this article is that the pandemic, necessitating changes, has brought on an opportunity which, used wisely, can rectify much that is objectionable and concern-raising about the global higher education 2992021 39(1): 299-303 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.18 wolhuter & jacobs the covid-19 pandemic revolution, while capitalising on and furthering the commendable aspects of the revolution. on the other hand, handled unwisely the pandemic can aggravate matters in higher education; undo what good the global higher education revolution has yielded and amplify its discontents. this thesis will now be illustrated by focusing on ten aspects of higher education vis-à-vis the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic. 3.1. massification the most common immediate reaction to the pandemic by universities worldwide was to close contact-mode teaching and to shift towards distance education or online learning. mindful of what has been stated earlier regarding the possibilities the ict revolution has opened for expanding access to higher education, the movement towards increasing online education certainly has much to be commended. the context of the covid-19 pandemic has, for example, as mentioned earlier, spawned an exponential growth of moocs (see impey, 2020), to which ever an growing number of adult students enrol (by july 2020 110 million students globally), whether to further their careers or for personal growth. 3.2. inequality at the same time, going online can easily exacerbate existing inequalities, working against higher education constituting a force of equalisation in society. for example, the digital divide here comes to mind. after going into online mode, south african universities are aiming to end the current (2020) academic year in a staggered pattern. it is striking that the historically most advantaged institutions with the highest concentration of students from the upper socioeconomic echelons have managed to work for the end of the academic year in november/ december 2020, the usual time, those institutions less well-endowed will end january 2021, while the universities least well-endowed and with the largest concentration of students from poverty stricken families and communities, will only end the academic year in february 2021 (du plessis, 2020). 3.3. internationalisation the internationalisation of universities (internationalisation of higher education here understood as defined by jane knight (2003: 1) as “integrating an international, intercultural, or global dimension into the purpose, functions or delivery of postsecondary education”), particularly in terms of faculty and student mobility, has also been rendered difficult by the covid-19 pandemic (as travelling is no longer possible). however strong the arguments in favour of the principle of internationalisation of universities, progressive scholars had always raised the questions “what internationalisation, whose internationalisation, and what for?”, and interpreted the existing pattern of internationalisation as favouring the global north and serving to strengthen northern hegemony. with the epicentre of the pandemic in the global north and especially the borders of the united states of america (usa) now closing and in the process stifling the flow of international students and faculty to the usa, the pandemic may prove to be conducive for strengthening south-south collaboration between universities and also lead to new ways of internationalisation, including redesigning internationalisation at home (e.g., cf. kigotho, 2020). 3.4. assessment assessment practices at universities, and south african universities in particular, have been criticised for the heavy emphasis on summative assessment. this kind of assessment being 3002021 39(1): 300-303 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.18 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) skewed towards lower level learning objectives (in bloom’s taxonomy) such as memorisation and regurgitation of facts, is out of step with the contemporary context and education, and in the case of south africa, with international developments. the covid-19 pandemic, and the movement towards online education in particular, has forced universities to resort to and to devise new assessment methods, moving towards formative assessment; an experiment that universities may well capitalise on to effect a salutary permanent development in higher education (winstone & boud, 2020). 3.5. education quality or excellence one of the risks of a rapid expansion of enrolments is always that quality of education will be sacrificed (the quantity versus quality dilemma). quality in education is a term difficult to define but is used here as referring to the components of input quality, process quality, output quality and product quality (see wolhuter, 2014b). this caveat is all the more present when funding is curtailed, as is the case with the dwindling financial commitment of the public fiscus being one part of the global higher education revolution. online higher education has its own cost structure and embracing ict technology in pursuing higher education can open new possibilities for raising and ensuring quality. 3.6. character formation one mandate of higher education neglected in recent decades, at least in the scholarly and even in the public discourse, is that of character formation of students (see rogers, 1991). while it can be argued that a residential university with contact teaching-learning lends itself better for character formation (see gouws, 2020), at the same time online teaching and learning opens possibilities of individualised interaction between student and lecturer (no matter how demanding and time-consuming for the lecturer), which do not always happen in mass lecture halls. 3.7. the academic profession as was explained above, the matrix of the global higher education revolution saw to it that the academic profession was squashed between two sets of vicious forces. while the ict revolution makes managerialism, micro-management and control possible like never before (see zuboff, 2019), on the other hand, the new arrangements of higher education necessitated by the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic can also be used to loosen the grip of stifling, dispiriting control structures and to let the academic profession reclaim its professional autonomy. 3.8. the university as social conscience of society the solidarity that was induced in society by the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic presents to the university the opportunity to rise to the occasion, to reassert its social critique function, which was forced out of the centre of higher education by the specific matrix of the higher education revolution the past thirty years (as was explained above, cf.section 2.1). 3.9. realigning the world of (higher) education with the world of work the covid-19 pandemic has also ravaged the world of work, leaving in its aftermath many people in the economy at large with either a loss of work or a reduced income. with the twenty-first century and the looming fourth industrial revolution in any case creating a new world of work, which historically developed education is not geared to supply what is needed, 3012021 39(1): 301-303 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.18 wolhuter & jacobs the covid-19 pandemic the pandemic also has the potential and the opportunity to rethink radically the preparation for work aspect of higher education. 3.10. the research agenda of higher education scholarship finally, the disruption that the covid-19 pandemic has caused in higher education worldwide creates the opportunity to take stock of the higher education research agenda (similar to the exercise done a decade ago by wolhuter, 2014a), and to adjust 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https://theconversation.com/universities-should-learn-from-assessment-methods-used-during-the-pandemic-and-cut-down-on-exams-for-good-143374 https://doi.org/10.20853/28-1-323 http://dx.doi.org/10.15700/201412071120 http://dx.doi.org/10.15700/201412071120 https://worldpopulationreview.com/continents/ https://worldpopulationreview.com/continents/ hier 1042021 39(4): 104-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.8 the influence of learner behaviour on beginner teachers’ perceptions of their own credibility abstract traditionally, teacher credibility has been influenced by how others perceive them. however, exploring teachers’ own perceptions of their credibility through the observation of learner behaviour may prove to be meaningful to teacher credibility. the aim of this study was to explore intermediate phase beginner teachers’ perceptions of their own credibility based on displayed learner behaviour in their classrooms. this qualitative study was presented through a case study research design. eight intermediate phase beginner teachers were purposively selected. the data collection techniques used were interviews and observations. semi-structured interviews and a researcher journal were used as data collection instruments. the data were analysed using inductive thematic data analysis. the conceptual framing of this study was underpinned by a modified theoretical model developed by mccroskey, valencic and richmond (2004). the findings showed that teachers’ perceptions of their own credibility were fluid as they engaged with various learners’ behaviour, which was used as a form of feedback during lessons and this feedback impacted teachers’ reactions and decisions to classroom situations. ultimately, teachers’ perceptions of their own credibility focused on their immediacy, trustworthiness, competence and dynamism displayed in their practices. keywords: beginner teachers; intermediate phase; learner behaviour; perceptions; south africa; teacher credibility. 1. introduction as content conveyors, knowledge constructors and learning facilitators, teachers are in constant communication in the classroom. under such intense surveillance (page, 2017), it is important for teachers to consider their credibility as an influence on their practice. in its broadest sense, credibility is conceptualised as the degree of believability (page & duffy, 2018). hence, in the classroom context, teachers are placed in the position of enticing learners to believe in their communication of subject-related content. teachers’ credibility, which ultimately influences the overall quality of education (cubukcu, 2013) and affects teachers’ wellbeing (shapiro, 2010), is foregrounded in daily classroom situations. author: miss tanita reddy1 dr yolandi woest1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria, pretoria, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i4.8 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(4): 104-117 published: 6 december 2021 received: 17 may 2021 accepted: 19 july 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.8 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2419-1169 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5595-0546 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.8 1052021 39(4): 105-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.8 reddy & woest the influence of learner behaviour on beginner teachers’ perceptions credibility is bound by time and context (freeman, 2011). thus, credibility is highly influenced by others’ perceptions and may be likened to being under constant construction, deconstruction and reconstruction (van lankveld et al., 2017). considering the highly influential nature of credibility, it is important to acknowledge teachers’ perceptions of their own credibility (freeman, 2011). as suggested by freeman (2011), exploring teachers’ views of their own practices provides a more valuable depiction of the classroom situation in terms of teachers’ credibility through reflection. this study aimed to explore beginner teachers’ perceptions of their own credibility based on the behaviour displayed by learners in intermediate phase (ip) classrooms. ip beginner teachers within the south african schooling system are the focus population of this study. winters and cowen (2013) suggested that there is considerable growth in teacher quality within the initial five-year period in the profession. therefore, the term “beginner teachers” refers to teachers in practice for up to five years. the general education and training band (get) is the main category of compulsory schooling, which is further subdivided into phases called the foundation phase (grades 0 to 3), the intermediate phase (grades 4 to 6), and the senior phase (grades 7 to 9). 2. overview of literature the literature review is divided into two main sections, namely teachers and learners. 2.1 teachers 2.1.1 teacher credibility several studies over the years conceptualised credibility by making reference to various dimensions including: authoritativeness, goodwill and trustworthiness (cooper, 1935); authoritativeness and character (mccroskey, 1966); immediacy (mehrabian, 1967, 1969); competence, dynamism, objectivity and trustworthiness (whitehead, 1968); and caring, character, competence and goodwill (mccroskey & teven, 1999). mcglone and anderson (1973) directed their focus on teacher credibility in which the abovementioned credibility dimensions were compared and grouped to be used as umbrella terms when conceptualising teacher credibility in this study. thus, the following teacher credibility dimensions were used: immediacy, trustworthiness, competence and dynamism (berlo, lemert & mertz, 1961; mccroskey, 1966; mehrabian, 1967; whitehead, 1968; mccroskey & young, 1981). 2.1.2 beginner teacher immediacy conceptualised and established by mehrabian, immediacy directs attention to the degree of physical and psychological closeness communicated between individuals (mehrabian, 1969). teacher immediacy was described by lefebvre and allen (2014) as the closeness shared between teachers and learners which influences verbal and nonverbal perceptions held by learners about their teachers. learners rely heavily on teachers’ verbal and nonverbal behaviours as communicative structures. these behaviours, in turn, affect how learners respond to various classroom situations (claessens et al., 2017). positive verbal communicative behaviours include words of affirmation, whilst negative verbal communicative behaviours include swearing, name calling and demotivating language, to name a few (lefebvre & allen, 2014). moreover, positive nonverbal communicative behaviours include regular eye contact, moving around the classroom, use of hand gestures and facial expressions, whilst negative http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.8 1062021 39(4): 106-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.8 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) nonverbal communicative behaviours include regular frowning, folded arms, standing behind an object, limited eye contact and inappropriate attire (lefebvre & allen, 2014). 2.1.3 beginner teacher trustworthiness within a communicative situation, trustworthiness refers to the extent to which the receiver is able to believe that what the source is saying is indeed true (hovland, janis & kelley, 1953). trustworthiness is fundamentally linked to integrity and, in many cases, directed by one’s already existing moral compass (simons, 2002). teven and hanson (2004), for example, highlight the connection between immediacy and trustworthiness by stating that teachers who refrain from embarrassing and belittling their learners strengthen trustworthy relationships. in the classroom context, trust acts as the catalyst for an effective learning and teaching environment. thus, learners confiding in their teachers, teachers providing guidance and support to their learners and teachers playing a role in their learners’ holistic development all form elements of trustworthiness (haskins, 2000). in establishing trustworthiness in teacher-learner communication, haskins (2000) foregrounded sincerity, honesty and believability as important communicative elements. the “openness” shared by beginner teachers in the classroom may allow learners to feel comfortable enough to engage in sincere discussions. hence, when learners perceive their teachers to be honest, credibility is increased (teven & hanson, 2004). 2.1.4 beginner teacher competence competence, as described by haskins (2000: 3), is “a perception that others have of people concerning their degree of knowledge on topics, abilities to command such knowledge, and abilities to communicate this knowledge clearly”. teachers are continuously being watched (page, 2017) and tested on their knowledge of curriculum content. to be competent means to be prepared enough to control a lesson and actively facilitate intended learning (teven & hanson, 2004). haskins (2000) therefore emphasised the importance of relatability. teachers need to continuously connect learners’ prior knowledge to relevant contextual and cultural settings and experiences. this element enhances the competence of teachers and, overall, their credibility. moss, brookhart and long (2011: 66) summed up competence by suggesting that teachers are able to “convey to students the destination for the lesson – what to learn, how deeply to learn it, and exactly how to demonstrate their new learning”. 2.1.5 beginner teacher dynamism dynamism is the extent to which learners admire and identify with their teachers in relation to the teachers’ displayed charisma and energy (haskins, 2000). haskins (2000) stressed the importance of voice variation, body movement, and the use of visual stimuli to capture the learners’ interest. body language, facial expressions and eye contact are powerful tools that can be used to increase dynamism (haskins, 2000), which is closely related to immediacy. part of teacher credibility relates to developing a powerful style of speaking. similar to competence, teachers need to learn the art of talking with limited vocal hesitation. to reinforce credibility, dynamic teachers string together aspects found in immediacy and competence. reference is made not only to how intense and involved a teacher is in terms of dynamism but also to the vigour and panache added to a lesson, which strengthens the presence of dynamism (haskins, 2000). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.8 1072021 39(4): 107-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.8 reddy & woest the influence of learner behaviour on beginner teachers’ perceptions 2.1.6 intermediate phase beginner teachers establishing their identities according to ticknor (2014:290), identities are “plural, temporary, slippery, messy, contradictory, and full of tension with personal identities” and due to the notion that identities are time dependent, they tend to change based on situational and circumstantial factors that best suit the social settings. thus, identities are also argued to be contextually dependent (francis & le roux, 2011). beginner teachers’ identities are constructed using an array of elements including personal, professional, and social identity, which may be influenced by contextual variances (freeman, 2011; flores & day, 2006). 2.1.7 beginner teachers’ perceptions perception can be described as the judging of a situation or person within a specific context and based on preconceived notions (shapiro, 2010). perceptions are views that people use as a baseline to make sense of situations or people based on individual realities and world views (sefotho, 2015). hence, perceptions are a combination of belief systems based on subjective realities. in this study, beginner teachers’ perceptions were intertwined with teachers’ establishment of their own identities. freeman (2011) stressed the need to foreground both teachers and learners’ perceptions for a more holistic and transparent overview of the educational needs in the classroom context. once teachers have an overall understanding of their classroom and learners, relevant content can be relayed by observing displayed behaviours underpinned by verbal and nonverbal immediacy factors (frymier & shulman, 1995). 2.2 learners 2.2.1 intermediate phase learners’ behaviours according to hudson (2012), the greatest challenge faced by beginner teachers is classroom and behaviour management. stansbury and zimmerman (2000) highlighted that beginner teachers in china, new zealand and switzerland perceived their greatest challenges to be classroom management, motivation of learners and the accommodation of individual differences amongst learners. in this study, learner behaviour was conceptualised using three components, namely learner discipline, learner interest and learner motivation. 2.2.2 learner discipline learner discipline is described as the external management of learner behaviour within the classroom context (kapueja, 2014). it thus becomes the teachers’ responsibility to engage in understanding each learner in order to manage learner discipline. discipline is the root of learning in which orderliness, structure and expectations are clearly outlined and strictly adhered to. kapueja (2014) described learner discipline as a process of fostering and promoting acceptable behaviour such as listening while the teacher is teaching, raising of hands when asking questions and respecting peers. conversely, unacceptable behaviours highlight actions of disobedience aimed at the teacher, displays of rude language in the classroom and incomplete homework. reyneke (2013) provided evidence that learner discipline is a common issue that south african teachers face in the classroom. such disciplinary issues include “disruptive behaviour, rudeness, dishonesty, obscene language, cheekiness, untidy/incorrect clothing, neglect of duty, telling lies, and absenteeism on a daily, weekly or monthly basis” (reyneke, 2013: 68). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.8 1082021 39(4): 108-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.8 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) moreover, according to wolhuter, oosthuizen and van staden (2010), factors of dishonesty, rebelliousness, cheekiness, disinterest, violence, vandalism, theft and bullying resulted in the highest occurrences in the intermediate phase. hence, beginner teachers perceive their credibility in relation to displayed learner behaviour within the classroom by observing and monitoring learners’ behaviours throughout their lessons. 2.2.3 learner interest and motivation learner interest is closely coupled with learner motivation so productive learning occurs when the learners’ full attention is engaged throughout a lesson. according to renninger and hidi (2019: 265), “[t]he components of interest include knowledge and value, which are usually accompanied by positive feelings”. learners exhibit interest in activities that they feel competent engaging in and completing. learner interest is thus, to a large extent, based on learners’ willingness to engage with the learning-specific subject areas where they feel the most knowledgeable. such competencies are drawn from prior experiences such as doing well in assessments, being able to relate to discussed content and enjoying the content of the lesson. williams and williams (2011) maintained that motivation is the key ingredient to quality education in enhancing and sustaining effective learning within the classroom. motivation revolves around the concept of learner interest in which the learners display curiosity and awareness to content matter that is being taught (williams & williams, 2011). liu, wang and ryan (2016: 1) conceptualised motivation as “a force that activates, directs, and sustains goal-directed behaviour”. more specifically, when learners feel a sense of involvement, they are more likely to be stimulated to answer questions and listen more intently, which will “drive and energize behaviour” (liu et al., 2016: 1). 2.2.4 learner behaviour as a form of feedback ünver (2014) highlighted the imperativeness of feedback in the classroom. this feedback from learners’ use of language, paralinguistic cues or nonverbal behaviours supplies immediate responses to teachers based on content taught during lessons. attentively monitoring learners’ behaviour may allow teachers to take a closer look into the background of each learner. using learner behaviour as a form of “immediate” feedback is closely linked to that of knowing one’s learners well enough to detect sudden or out-of-character behavioural changes (mcarthur & bostedo-conway, 2012) and to then act on these behavioural changes accordingly. molloy and boud (2013) suggested that feedback requires mutual communicative channels between teachers and learners. therefore, both teachers and learners play crucial roles in establishing open and clear communication in the classroom. in terms of teachers using learners’ behaviour as a means of feedback, it is important to remember that behaviour, much like identities, is inconsistent, time-bound and contextually dependent (ticknor, 2014). however, using learner behaviour as a means of making short-term decisions, such as differentiating lessons, monitoring and managing learners’ behaviour, and evaluating teachers’ own emotional responses, should be considered and are highlighted in this study. 3. conceptual framing a modified theoretical framework underpins this study that is used to develop the conceptual framing. the mccroskey et al. (2004) model for instructional communication entails the mutual exchange of information between teachers and learners with the intent of developing a http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.8 1092021 39(4): 109-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.8 reddy & woest the influence of learner behaviour on beginner teachers’ perceptions constructive and progressive learning relationship (mccroskey et al., 2014). learning, referring to this model, accommodates for inferences and synthesis of information to occur between learners and teachers (mccroskey et al., 2004). this model for instructional communication includes six interrelated components: the instructional environment, learners, teachers, teachers’ verbal and nonverbal behaviours, instructional outcomes and learners’ perceptions of the teachers (mccroskey et al., 2004). considering that much research focuses on learners’ perceptions (mcarthur & bostedoconway, 2012) and this study focuses on ip beginner teachers’ perceptions, it is important to propose the additional component of teachers’ perceptions to the model. this addition to the model invites a more realistic outline of how ip beginner teachers’ perceptions of their own credibility are influenced by learner behaviour displayed in a classroom context. 4. research methods and design a case study design was employed to explore the participants’ perceptions of displayed learner behaviour. the participants were private school, beginner teachers who taught in the gauteng area in south africa. as mentioned earlier, the beginner teachers had one to five years of teaching experience. the eight participants were representative of diverse races, which gave rise to a culturally diverse dataset. the participants were selected using the purposive sampling technique, specifically focusing on the availability and accessibility of the ip beginner teachers. the data collection techniques used were interviews and observations, specifically semistructured interviews and written notes, whereby verbal and written data were collected. the first instrument used was semi-structured interviews with an average duration of one hour during which time 25 questions were asked, audio recorded, and thereafter transcribed. the second instrument included a researcher journal whereby additional observation notes were captured. inductive thematic data analysis was used to analyse the data using colour coding and pattern finding (nowell et al., 2017). since qualitative studies are focused on exploring contextual aspects, interpreting phenomena and searching for meaning through inductive reasoning (yilmaz, 2013), this allowed for subjectivity and interpretation in the decoding of data. the audio recordings of the interviews were listened to several times and compared to the transcripts for accuracy and validity purposes. the transcripts were then read through again and thereafter grouped according to themes, subthemes and categories. the integrity of the study was maintained by ensuring trustworthiness and credibility. a researcher journal captured and guided the research process to ensure that the findings were transparent and reliable. ethical clearance was obtained (hu 17/03/03) from the ethics committee at the university of pretoria and all the participants were aware of the particulars of their consent, as stated in the consent form. the participants were aware that their participation was voluntary at all stages of the research process. their privacy, confidentiality, and anonymity were protected using pseudonyms in place of real identities and schools’ names. no harm to the participants resulted from this research. 5. findings data from this study showed that most of the participants reported using their learners’ behaviour to adapt their teaching styles and methods. thus, the learners’ behaviour was used as a form of feedback that influenced their lessons. in the participants’ observations http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.8 1102021 39(4): 110-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.8 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) of their classroom situations, it was also mentioned that dealing with and managing learner behaviour affected their lessons. the participants explained that using their schools’ policies when dealing with the learners’ behaviour played an important role in directing their reactions. however, some beginner teachers reported that there were discrepancies between what was expected from teachers in response to learners’ behaviour versus the reality of the classroom situations. some teachers believed that their own behaviour in classroom situations, such as how they responded to the learners’ behaviour, directly influenced that behaviour. the study’s findings were grouped into three themes: beginner teachers’ adaptation methods of lessons based on learner behaviour; dealing with learner behaviour in alignment with school policies and the influence of beginner teachers’ emotional responses on learners’ behaviour. 5.1 beginner teachers’ adaptation methods of lessons based on learner behaviour teachers’ awareness of their own observations of learners’ behaviour could encourage adaptation of lessons to relay content effectively. the data showed that some teachers were eager to modify their lessons to best suit their learners’ needs based on their observations of the learners’ behaviour. some teachers mentioned that using practical content allowed for active engagement by learners. through this method, teachers could immediately identify and distinguish between those learners who understood and those who did not. the teachers below stressed the need to accommodate diverse learning needs and styles. these teachers highlighted the importance of knowing learners individually in order to create content that was relatable and inclusive: …we either have a little shop and we’re selling things, to introduce money, or we have clocks and we work with the clock with time, where i just explain, well, let them experience it a bit, and then we explain… (participant 4, interview on 25 may 2017) another teacher associated her teaching with actively involving her learners in the lesson: we will try to do the lesson also practically, by doing, i will get them involved by say for example i am teaching afrikaans then we will get up in class and i will say, “okay get, staan op jou stoel,” [okay, get up and stand on your chair] and then they will stand up and stand on their chairs. (participant 7, interview on 07 june 2017) other teachers explained that their learners’ behaviour provided feedback as to what had been taught. when learners did not understand the taught content, their levels of interest and motivation decreased and that was where teachers identified a change in learners’ behaviour. at this point, differentiation of teaching methods began, based on the received behavioural feedback “...when learners are attentive and they are focused on their work and they listen” (participant 1, interview on 18 may 2017). another teacher mentioned that the learners’ behaviour confirmed the learners’ interest and motivation: you can also pick up the vibe in the class. when i would ask them a question and multiple hands come up and people will stand on the desk and then people are like, “pick me! pick me!” (participant 6, interview on 06 june 2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.8 1112021 39(4): 111-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.8 reddy & woest the influence of learner behaviour on beginner teachers’ perceptions the responses of these beginner teachers revealed that their awareness of their perceptions of their learners’ behaviour influenced their willingness to adapt their lessons to accommodate learners’ needs. 5.2 dealing with learner behaviour in alignment with school policies this theme is associated with beginner teachers holistically developing their learners to become responsible citizens of the world. operant conditioning was a behaviourist theory founded by b.f. skinner, who justified a stimulus-response mechanism (passer et al., 2009). using positive and negative reinforcements were based on rewarding acceptable behaviours and ignoring unacceptable behaviours (passer et al., 2009). some teachers explained that the use of positive reinforcements was preferred and encouraged by their schools: well, i am, at our school we’ve got a positive behaviour approach, to discipline, where we only have five rules in the classroom, and we focus a lot on encouraging and praising positive behaviour, and less on the negative behaviour (participant 4, interview on 25 may 2017). one teacher highlighted the importance of refraining from demotivating learners: we have got a system at school where we rather award the children for good behaviour than demotivate the children by giving demerits so we rather use positive reinforcement (participant 7, interview on 07 june 2017). another teacher reported that her school followed a system of “peace makers” and “peace breakers” that focused on learners’ behaviours and choices. she further explained that she used a group behaviour approach where she highlighted the consequences and responsibilities of each learner: if they get a minus one as a class – just because of one person – then the positive peer pressure comes in. they are able to adjust each other; adjust themselves – so they learn, “okay, there is a consequence for everything that we do, and it also didn’t just affect me but it can affect those around me” (participant 5, interview on 05 june 2017). one of the teachers viewed learner behaviour as a result of consistent structure and routine. she stressed the need for teachers to communicate classroom rules, roles and expectations to learners with the aim of setting boundaries and teaching learners about accountability: well from the first minute you have to have good discipline outside of the classroom before they come in, and they stand behind their chairs and would properly greet each other. uhm they would know from day one as well what the rules in the classroom are and everybody will have to just sign that they agree with the class rules. we also have a discussion in the classroom, uhm and they can also give their ideas of the classroom rules (participant 7, interview on 07 june 2017). the above responses indicate that several beginner teachers in this study encountered challenges in dealing with learner discipline. they mostly agreed with following their schools’ policies in managing learner behaviour. many of the beginner teachers highlighted that positive reinforcement was more commonly used and preferred according to their schools’ policies which influenced the methods used in their classrooms. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.8 1122021 39(4): 112-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.8 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) 5.3 the influence of beginner teachers’ emotional responses on learner behaviour as outlined by mccroskey et al. (2014), instructional communication is a culmination of various components that influence each other. since the aim of this study was to understand ip beginner teachers’ perceptions of their own credibility based on displayed learner behaviour within the ip classroom, it became increasingly important to consider the influence of teachers’ emotional responses to learners’ behaviour. the teachers confirmed that their behaviour affected the learners’ behaviour: so, i also think that it [learner behaviour] depends on the teacher as well, because if i am like in a bad mood and i am like very strict with them, then automatically that will also influence their behaviour (participant 4, interview on 25 may 2017). another teacher supported this point: well, if, if i am feeling a little bit down the day and uhm, ja [yes] i am not in a good mood, the children definitely pick up on stuff like that, uhm they, they won’t be as enthusiastic, uhm if i don’t show a lot of energy, they tend to also not show a lot of energy (participant 7, interview on 07 june 2017). however, some teachers shared that they were under immense pressure and that managing the daily pressures of teaching influenced their emotional responses (shapiro, 2010). another beginner teacher emphasised that teachers were expected to segment their own emotions from their classroom personas: i’d rather focus on the kids and their problems and everything than my own. it was kind of the case where i felt like breaking down but some of the kids were coming to me crying and i just had to breathe and just put them first and i carried on that way (participant 2, interview on 22 may 2017). the findings revealed that teachers were aware that they too were being observed by learners (page, 2017) and that their emotions did indeed influence their learners’ behaviour. most of the participants declared that managing their own emotions was important but they believed that learners’ needs and emotions should be dealt with first. the teachers explained that their personal feelings or moods should not affect their behaviour towards their learners, alluding to the need to separate their personal emotion from their practice. 6. discussion of findings this study foregrounded three important findings. these findings showed that the ip beginner teachers used their observations of learner behaviour to adapt their teaching methods and thus deal with and respond to learners’ behaviour accordingly. 6.1 adaptation of teaching methods the first important finding relates to the beginner teachers adapting their teaching methods based on observed learner behaviour. according to the underpinning theoretical model (mccroskey et al., 2004), teachers and learners are the main elements within the classroom. the data from this study revealed the significance of observations and awareness of learners’ behaviour from teachers within the instructional environment. two out of the eight participants stressed the importance of making lessons practical and encouraging active participation from learners as a method of adapting lessons. knowing the learners and their needs was http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.8 1132021 39(4): 113-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.8 reddy & woest the influence of learner behaviour on beginner teachers’ perceptions emphasised by most of the participants in directing teachers to make informed decisions about how to adapt lessons effectively. in creating and sustaining comfortable learning environments, teachers highlighted the need to know their learners’ strengths and weaknesses (cubukcu, 2013). 6.2 dealing with learners’ behaviour the second important finding of this study is how the beginner teachers deal with learners’ behaviour in accordance with their school policies. this theme highlights the instructional environment component in the conceptual framing (mccroskey et al., 2004), foregrounding the proposed methods of dealing with learner behaviour using the schools’ policies. the data from this study showed that most of the teachers used their school policies to shape and guide their methods of dealing with their learners’ behaviour. five out of the eight beginner teachers shared that they used operant conditioning techniques in their practices (skinner, 1985) which was in alignment with their schools’ policies. several of the teachers refrained from using negative reinforcement, as this was not a method that was encouraged by their schools. a few of the teachers expressed the thought that relying solely on positive reinforcement posed challenging behavioural situations. this forced teachers to find methods better suited to dealing with learners’ behaviour. in response to dealing with persistent unwanted learner behaviour, some teachers felt that getting to know their learners enabled them to use their own strengths to manage the unwanted behaviour displayed by the learners and to follow a value-driven approach in stressing the development of moral accountability. moreover, rahimi and karkami (2015)recognition/ reward, discussion, involvement, and aggression supported several of the teachers’ claims related to establishing structure and routine within the classroom. the teachers explained that by making learners aware of their expectations, roles and responsibilities, a better sense of judgement and decision-making by the learners was observed. 6.3 the influence of teachers’ behaviour on learners’ behaviour the third important finding is that the beginner teachers’ emotional responses do indeed influence the learners’ behaviour. according to the underpinning conceptual framing (mccroskey et al., 2004), this theme relates specifically to the influence of teachers’ verbal and nonverbal behaviours. the findings of this study, as proposed by the adapted conceptual framing, suggest that as learners’ behaviour influences teachers’ perceptions of their own credibility, the teachers’ behaviour influences learners’ perceptions. this theme foregrounds the complexity of the credibility construct and reiterates the plurality of perceptions (sefotho, 2015). some teachers admitted that their emotional reactions influenced their learners’ behaviour (bruney, 2012), whereas others explained the need to separate their emotions from their practice and to mask their emotions in order to deal with learners’ emotional needs (shapiro, 2010). hence, in the construction, deconstruction and reconstruction of teachers’ perceptions of their own credibility (van lankveld et al., 2017), the inevitable interjection of their own behaviour influencing the learners’ behaviour has value and should be considered. the three themes outlined in this study relate to the four credibility dimensions of immediacy, trustworthiness, competence and dynamism. the beginner teachers referred to at least one of the four credibility dimensions in their responses. in theme 1, the beginner teachers mentioned having to be flexible and willing to adapt their lessons when the behaviour displayed by the learners did not meet their expectations, such as learners http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.8 1142021 39(4): 114-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.8 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) becoming disruptive or disinterested. also, the teachers explained that ensuring a safe and open atmosphere in allowing learners to feel included and teachers to know their learners enabled teachers to be better prepared in knowing how to adapt lessons (trustworthiness and competence). in theme 2, some teachers expressed that knowing learners’ strengths and weaknesses assisted in managing and dealing with learners’ discipline more effectively by assigning learner responsibilities appropriately (immediacy and dynamism). in theme 3, some teachers were aware that their moods and emotional responses influenced their learners’ behaviour, whilst others explained that they separated their personal and professional emotions (immediacy and dynamism). 7. conclusion learner behaviour may be used as a form of feedback to beginner teachers in assisting with the adaptation of lessons to better suit learners’ learning needs. it is important for teachers to become aware of the hidden messages behind their learners’ behaviour and to redirect this feedback as a platform to implement differentiation in lessons. learners’ perceptions are a crucial segment in the effectiveness of the development and implementation of classroom rules. this study highlighted that beginner teachers relied on and were guided by their schools’ policies when dealing with learners’ behaviour. however, in some instances, the implementation of these policies needed to be modified in order to better manage learners’ behaviour. these modifications in lessons and behaviour influenced beginner teachers’ perceptions of their own credibility, which was conceptualised using four main dimensions: immediacy, trustworthiness, 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129 research article 2022 40(1): 129-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) investigating tvet college educators’ experiences while transitioning from the traditional classroom to the virtual classroom during the covid-19 pandemic abstract the growing utilisation of digital technologies in today’s complex and fast-changing world has taken the reality of education beyond the physical classroom. however, the covid-19 pandemic has forced many educational institutions to make hasty and unprecedented decisions as they switched to the virtual classroom. this study explores teachers’ experiences in transitioning from traditional teaching to virtual teaching during and after the covid-19 college closure. a sample of seven technical and vocational education and training (tvet) educators was conveniently selected from colleges in an urban area in south africa using a case study research design. data were collected through semi-structured interviews and analysed using thematic analysis. in this regard, all ethical considerations were adhered to during this study. three of the educators demonstrated a positive cognitive, affective and behavioural attitude towards transitioning to virtual learning. six of the educators used whatsapp and online platforms integrated into their college’s website to communicate during virtual teaching. however, challenges such as lack of support on the integration of technology into their practice, access to connectivity, provision of little or no training on pedagogical practices, unconducive home environment, students’ attitudes in the online space, lack of infrastructure and poor policy guidelines and framework for implementing virtual learning pose a threat to educators’ desires to change and support a transition to virtual learning permanently. therefore, it is recommended that tvet education providers and managers provide adequate support and training for educators to foster pedagogical practices aimed at enhancing students’ virtual learning. keywords: change management; covid-19; traditional classroom; tvet college; virtual classroom. 1. introduction for the educational system to strive for excellence in the ever-changing technological world, technical and vocational education and training (tvet) colleges’ relevant stakeholders must be willing and ready to accept author: adebunmi yetunde aina1 ayodele abosede ogegbo2 affiliation: 1university of pretoria, south africa 2university of johannesburg, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i1.8 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(1): 129-142 published: 04 march 2022 received: 23 july 2021 accepted: 29 november 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9417-1510 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4680-6689 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 1302022 40(1): 130-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) change. change is a constant and important factor in life, affecting families, businesses, colleges and nations. however, more important is how the change is managed. parlakkiliç (2017: 640) describes change management in a virtual learning context as the “combination of processes, activities, and approaches that manage the people of the organisation through the transition from the old way of teaching to new e-learning”. parlakkiliç (2017) further indicates that it is very difficult to change the behaviours, culture and routine of an educational institution’s users, such as the students, educators and school leaders. as a result, achieving change appears to be more difficult when the change process is abrupt and forceful, especially when most colleges are compelled to continue with teaching and learning during the covid-19 pandemic. the coronavirus disease (covid-19) was a silent and unexpected pandemic that quickly spread around the whole world. at the initial stage of the covid-19 pandemic, to salvage the devastating impact on peoples’ lives and the health systems, most governments across the globe were forced to embark on national lockdowns. the national lockdowns brought a sudden change to the mode of teaching delivery in the education sector globally, including technical and vocational education and training colleges (tvet colleges). tvet colleges in south africa were compelled to move from the traditional classroom to the virtual classroom (mapulane, 2020). the concept of online learning is not new, however, recently there is an increasing awareness of the use of virtual classrooms in an online environment because of covid-19 (zalat, hamed & bolbol, 2021). a virtual classroom “is an online learning environment, also known as a virtual learning environment which can be web-based and accessed through a portal or software-based” (rajagopalan, viswanathan & rahman, 2013: 4). within the context of this study, a virtual classroom is an online learning environment that allows educators and students to participate in learning activities. several authors have written about virtual learning and its benefits in the school setting, such as the provision of teaching and learning anytime and anywhere (remotely); the capacity to engage diverse audiences; cost-effectiveness; increasing access to information; providing measurement tools for learning outcomes and facilitating collaboration between the students and the educator (ramorola, 2013; parlakkilic, 2017; mwapwele et al., 2019; torres & giddie, 2020). despite several identified benefits of virtual learning, there appear to be many challenges that impede virtual learning in the tvet college setting. thieman (2008) identified related virtual learning challenges to include a low rate of student participation, student resistance, a high rate of non-completion and poor student performance. according to hew and cheung (2014), virtual classrooms involve greater workloads compared to traditional classrooms. however, “there is no clear agreement on how online teachers are evaluated for tenure purpose” (palloff & pratt, 2013: 38). in a study conducted by torres and giddies (2020) on teachers’ perceptions regarding information and communications technologies (ict) use in south africa, it was revealed that teachers often have limited access to icts and lack the necessary computer literacy skills to facilitate in the virtual classroom. torres and giddie (2020) noted that the attitudes and willingness of educators towards the use of technology are key factors for the successful adoption and effective use of virtual classrooms. in the tvet sector, teaching and learning are mostly designed and conducted in the form of practical work and work integrated experiences (makgato, 2019). however, research http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 1312022 40(1): 131-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 aina & ogegbo tvet college educators’ experiences while transitioning to the virtual classroom claims that delivery of educational activities in the tvet sector is affected by the influence of technological development, thus making the delivery of online learning in tvet colleges challenging (nundkumar & subban, 2018; hoftijzer et al., 2020). in south africa, the tvet sector was compelled to move their teaching and learning activities online in order to ensure continuity of their programmes during the covid-19 lockdown. as a result, this present study aimed to investigate tvet college educators’ experiences regarding the sudden and forceful transitioning from the traditional classroom to the virtual classroom during the covid-19 lockdown. the research question guiding this study was: what are the experiences of tvet college educators when transitioning from a traditional classroom to virtual classroom during the covid-19 lockdown? 2. literature review technical and vocational education and training plays an essential role in increasing a knowledgeable and skilled community that will be able to effectively improve the social and economic growth of a country (department of higher education and training, 2013: 3). similarly, according to boateng (2012: 108), “vocational technical education refers to the educational processes that involve the study of technologies and related sciences and the acquisition of practical skills and knowledge aimed at discovering and developing the individual for employment in various sectors of economic and social life”. for the tvet colleges to achieve skills development for economic growth, effective management from the relevant stakeholders is vital, especially the educators’ ability to manage the change process that would enhance their performance during teaching and learning engagements with students. technologically, the world is changing fast. hence, educators must be able to adapt to these changes and still deliver quality teaching. the fourth industrial revolution (4ir) brought about changes in our teaching and learning environment globally, including in south african colleges (nundkumar & subban, 2018). more so, it is believed that the availability and use of information communication technology (ict) resources play a significant role in enhancing the effectiveness of tvet education in a rapidly changing world. in this regard, the integration of ict in tvet colleges can help students acquire practical 21st century skills that are needed for their personal employability (adebesin & adelakun, 2020). according to mohd ishar, wan derahman and kamin (2020), the use of ict tools in tvet colleges does not only enhance the quality of the teaching but also improves educators’ technological self-confidence. in addition, integrating technology into tvet colleges can also help educators to create a more proactive learning environment through improved interactive media and course content (ghavifekr & yulin, 2021). ramorola (2013) points out that the focus on the use of ict in south african colleges indicates that educators are expected to use computers and other technologies as tools to adopt the new and evolving teaching methods within the physical and online learning environments. in addition, mbanga and mtembu (2020) argue that before online learning can be used effectively in tvet colleges, resources must be available and there must be some level of readiness and willingness on the part of educators and learners. however, research shows that there is no strategic direction in place that aligns online learning with the needs of programmes offered at tvet colleges (mbanga & mtembu, 2020). hence, the implementation of online learning in tvet colleges might not be well catered for. as a result, this study seeks http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 1322022 40(1): 132-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) to explore the experiences of the tvet college educator when transitioning from traditional learning to virtual learning during covid-19. for educators to effectively adapt to the use of technologies (the virtual classroom) instead of the usual face-to-face traditional classroom, many factors must be considered. these factors include the educators’ understanding of virtual learning, their readiness or attitudes towards technology and the availability of relevant tools and training. educators, students and administrators are used to traditional pedagogy. research reports that virtual learning projects fail to achieve their objectives for many reasons; the most noticeable of these is user resistance to change (parlakkilic, 2017). parlakkilic (2017) further states that there are different views about the nature and aims of icts in education; consequently, diverse behaviours and attitudes are found in the development, use and change management of virtual learning environments. in line with parlakkilic’s (2017) finding regarding the use of virtual learning, this present study seeks to explore and describe tvet college educators’ experiences regarding virtual classrooms during the covid-19 lockdown. according to nawaz and kundi (2010), the use of icts by educators is influenced by several factors, including demographics, availability of hardware, educators’ experience regarding the use of instructional technology and users’ perception regarding the usefulness and ease of using digital devices. in agreement with nawaz and kundi (2010), research echoes that educators, students and other ict users perform according to their demographic characteristics, educational level, cultural background, experience, motivation, familiarity with different instructional methods and previous experience with elearning (bagarukayo & kalema, 2015; thieman, 2008). this implies that the effectiveness of virtual learning during the college lockdown will depend on the factors mentioned above. 3. theoretical framework research describes change management as a process of planning, initiating, realising, controlling and stabilising change processes on corporate and personal levels aiming to serve the ever-changing needs of external and internal customers (anyieni, 2013; moran & brightman, 2000). in other words, one can describe change within the context of this study as the process of transforming or realigning educators and the education system to a changing environment. the kanter, stein and jick (1992) theory of change is adopted as the theoretical base for this study, given its correlation with the researchers’ intentions to explore and describe the experiences of tvet educators when transitioning from the traditional classroom to the virtual classroom, particularly during the covid-19 lockdown. the kanter et al. theory of change states that employees respond differently to change based on the availability of operational support (flinsch-rodriguez, 2017). however, kanter et al. (1992) state that organisational habits and attitudes are determined by social systems in the organisation, not personal predispositions. the authors indicate that workers are motivated when they understand that their work environments provide an opportunity for the development and the strength required to meet job demands. this implies that an educator’s skill base becomes very important in making informed decisions that might lead to improvement. workers, however, seem to feel incompetent when certain conditions/skills are absent. such workers’ passivity makes them more vulnerable to burnout and decreased job satisfaction, which threatens the organisation’s efficiency (kanter et al., 1992). thus, it could be said that experiences of workers tend to influence their attitude and behaviour towards the process of change. the kanter et al. theory informed this study by highlighting how tvet educators managed the change processes involved in their attitudes and behaviours during transitioning to virtual http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 https://www.emerald.com/insight/search?q=john%20w.%20moran https://www.emerald.com/insight/search?q=baird%20k.%20brightman 1332022 40(1): 133-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 aina & ogegbo tvet college educators’ experiences while transitioning to the virtual classroom classrooms. badenhorst and radile (2018) claim that lecturers in south africa’s post-school vocational education system continue to face challenges in various aspects of teaching and learning, which is a substantial weakness in the capacity of these lecturers to meet the skills needed for effective teaching. one of the reasons why change becomes vital at tvet colleges, particularly during the covid-19 era, is the introduction of new ways of teaching due to the use of emergent technologies. 4. methodology a qualitative research approach was used to obtain first-hand information in the research setting to achieve the objectives of the study (neuman, 2011), and to interpret and understand the participants’ experiences regarding their transition from the traditional classroom to the virtual classroom (babbie & mouton, 2015). the interaction between the researchers and the participants provided a clearer understanding of virtual learning in tvet colleges during the covid-19 lockdown. this study used a case study research design as it was deemed most appropriate to obtain in-depth and multi-faceted understandings of educators’ real-life experiences (crowe et al., 2011). furthermore, the use of a case study design in this study provides a comprehensive view and understanding of how participants interpret the phenomenon under investigation (brink, 2018). this allowed the researchers to pose open-ended questions and to explore a deeper and broader understanding of how tvet educators experienced transitioning from traditional learning to virtual learning during the lockdown. the major benefit of using a case study design was that the approach helps to capture explanatory information on the “how” and “what” questions such as how educators within the sampled tvet colleges perceive and implement the virtual classroom for tvet courses during the covid-19 lockdown. the case study design also offers additional insights into the gaps that exist while transitioning to a virtual classroom. the study focused on four private tvet colleges in central pretoria, south africa, to provide answers to the research question. case studies permit spending time in the setting of the research subject (hamilton & corbett-whitter, 2013). while the covid-19 restrictions were observed, the researchers conducted face-to-face semi-structured interviews with each participant. a minimum of 45 minutes was spent with the participants at each college to understand their viewpoints. 5. ethical considerations the researchers considered participants’ rights throughout the process of the study. research approval was obtained from the department of higher education and training (dhet) and consent was obtained from the tvet college managers. before data were collected, the aims and purpose of the study were explained to all the participants. the participants were told that they could withdraw from the study at any time after they have given their consent to participate. it was also explained to the participants that their real identity or that of their college will not be disclosed, instead, pseudonyms would be used. participants read, understood and signed the consent form before the interview sessions. 6. data collection data were collected through semi-structured interviews with seven participants from the four tvet colleges. using semi-structured interviews in this study allowed the researchers to explore participants’ thoughts and beliefs about virtual learning and also to delve deeply http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 1342022 40(1): 134-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) into participants’ personal experiences while transitioning from traditional learning to virtual learning. the interview data were used to gain a better understanding of the experiences of participants regarding virtual learning. the interview guide contained questions that explored how the participants felt about changing from traditional teaching to online/virtual teaching, their views/beliefs regarding online/virtual teaching, what online learning materials and tools were provided during the move from the traditional classroom to the virtual classroom in their colleges and any experiences or professional development they have had regarding online/ virtual teaching during the short period available before transitioning from the traditional classroom. other questions explored the communication processes that build a culture of engagement, transparency and trust critical for innovation to succeed in their colleges and environmental factors/challenges/barriers that impact their teaching performance/experience during the transition at their respective college. the interview session was conducted by the first researcher and participant responses were audio-recorded. the recorded responses were then transcribed into a microsoft word document. the credibility of the findings was enhanced through member checking (mcmillan & schumacher, 2014). this was achieved by returning the transcribed data to participants at the end of the collection process to ensure accuracy and resonance with their experiences. this also provided participants the opportunity to interact with and contribute to the interview and interpreted data. 6.1 sampling four private tvet colleges situated in the city area of pretoria were purposively sampled to explore educator experiences regarding moving from the traditional classroom to the virtual classroom due to the covid-19 lockdown. nieuwenhuis (2014) describes purposive sampling as selecting participants because of some defining characteristics that make them the holders of the data needed for the study. purposive sampling allowed the researchers to select the tvet college educators who were most likely to offer rich data. the following criteria were used to purposively select the participants: the participating college must be a private institution since they control their own funds and administrative issues, unlike the public colleges that are funded by the government. in addition to this criterion, the college must have been in existence for a minimum of five years; the educator must have been teaching in a tvet college for a minimum of three years and the educator must have a minimum qualification of a diploma certificate. a detailed representation of the participants’ information is provided in table 1 below, using pseudonyms to ensure anonymity and confidentiality. table 1: biographical data of participants college educators’ pseudonyms age gender highest qualification teaching experience 1 mr a 31 male national diploma 6 years ms b 28 female bachelor of science degree 3 years 2 ms c 27 female bachelor of science degree 3 years ms d 35 female national diploma 6 years 3 ms e 40 female bachelor of science degree 2 years ms f 40 female master’s degree 10 years 4 ms g 33 female bachelor of science degree 10 years http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 1352022 40(1): 135-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 aina & ogegbo tvet college educators’ experiences while transitioning to the virtual classroom 7. data analysis the collected data were analysed using thematic analysis. clarke and braun (2014) describe thematic analysis as a process of identifying and/or interpreting patterns of meanings (themes) within a data set. to better interpret and understand participants’ responses as data, their words and actions were interpreted in the form of codes that emerged from the data, while keeping the research question of the study in mind. thus, thematic analysis was deemed appropriate because it assisted in analysing and comprehending the educators’ experiences with transitioning from the traditional classroom to the virtual classroom during the school lockdown. the second author read the transcripts and undertook the coding, which was then verified by the first author. both researchers collaborated on coding and categorising the findings, which are presented in themes. the research question and conceptual framework also guided the researchers in the systematic analysis of data to sort it according to themes. 8. results to understand the experiences of tvet college educators when transitioning from a traditional classroom to a virtual classroom during the covid-19 lockdown, the findings from this study are presented in terms of three themes that emerged from the data and are informed by the theoretical framework. these themes are educator’s attitudes and beliefs, facilitating in the virtual classroom and challenges to transitioning from a traditional classroom to a virtual classroom. 8.1 educator’s attitudes and beliefs the covid-19 pandemic has brought about an accelerated change process in the transitioning from the traditional teaching and learning approach to an online approach in most tvet colleges across south africa. thus, the attitude formation and attitude change of tvet educators become significant in the successful transitioning and implementation of the virtual learning process at tvet colleges. the findings reveal that some of the educators demonstrated a positive affective attitude towards transitioning to online or virtual learning, while some demonstrated a negative affective attitude. for instance, ms g indicated that initially, she was not enjoying the transitioning process, but she started feeling excited about teaching online after some time. she further reported on what she enjoyed about the transitioning process when she said: i feel excited about changing from a traditional classroom to a virtual classroom because it made me realise that i can access students nationwide, that is, students from other campuses can be in my class. unlike traditional learning where i only teach students at a specified campus, but with virtual learning, i am now able to teach students from over 6 campuses and this makes me feel good (ms g). ms g’s response reveals how reinforcement through accountability for more classes and students across different campuses supports her in adopting the change to the virtual classroom. during the interview, ms e indicated a positive cognitive judgement towards changing from traditional to the virtual classroom. this was noted when she said: i think it was about time because from my observation when i started; i realised that young people in tertiary institutions were bored with the structures of the traditional ways of teaching. there is a definite need for change; i immediately start[ed] with the flipped classroom approach when i joined [the] tvet college as a lecturer, and that was what helped to keep some of my students engaged. luckily for me, i was from the it industry, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 1362022 40(1): 136-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) so i was able to apply my background knowledge by giving them online activities with traditional face-to-face teaching. so, i think the students in my college are happy with the online classrooms because they know the topic to be discussed so they can as well research and learn more online (ms e). this remark reveals ms e’s desire and willingness to change. the result also shows that ms e believes that the virtual classroom is essential and proposes the possibility of adopting a blended/hybrid approach to learning as an effective structure to complement the process of change in transitioning from a traditional to a virtual classroom. this viewpoint confirms her knowledge of how to change to a virtual classroom and her ability to implement the change. the view of adopting virtual learning was also expressed by ms b where she indicated that her behavioural attitude towards transitioning to online learning is a result of her past experience. online teaching is good for me personally. i love it because i went through online learning while i was a student. i cannot say that i am happy moving to online learning because of the condition of moving to online is not official. while i was a student, i faced a lot of challenges doing online learning from home with babies around, noise from neighbours and i know the same will apply to other students and even educators (ms b). ms b’s response reveals that although she values online learning, she seems dissatisfied with the college’s sudden decision to switch to virtual learning because the transition was made without adequate planning and preparation from the college. in addition, her previous experiences with online learning seems to influence her reaction towards moving to virtual learning. nevertheless, analysis of the interview responses revealed that despite educators’ awareness of the need to transition to a virtual classroom during the covid-19 pandemic, some of the participants expressed dissatisfaction with the idea of transitioning to a virtual classroom. for instance: personally, i am not so happy because we are rushing to change the mode of teaching because of the national lockdown (mr a). i am not excited about the change to [a] virtual classroom because of the challenges is more than the benefits as far as [i] am concern (ms d). in addition, one of the participants mentioned that transitioning to a virtual classroom presents more challenges and risks than benefits, implying a negative attitude towards the transition process. this attitude was observed when ms c mentioned how the absence of reinforcement through feedback from students and educators in the virtual classroom directly poses a resistance to the change process. 8.2 facilitating in the virtual classroom the analysis of participants responses revealed communication and monitoring as practices employed by the educators in facilitating a virtual classroom. one of the interview questions required the participants to describe, “how they were able to facilitate teaching and learning in a virtual classroom”. during the data collection, it was observed that some of the participants described how they use various communication tools for teaching and learning during the emergent transition to a virtual classroom. for instance, it appears that some of the educators such as mr a, ms b, ms c and ms d created whatsapp groups and used the platform to upload videos, voice notes and content for their lessons as a way to build a culture of engagement and interaction with their students. the following is an excerpt from one of the participants: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 1372022 40(1): 137-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 aina & ogegbo tvet college educators’ experiences while transitioning to the virtual classroom i typically send the content of the topic, videos of the lesson, and tutorial materials that we receive from the department of education to the students through the whatsapp group. i also give them assignments from their textbooks which they are supposed to submit directly to me on whatsapp (mr a). the findings also revealed that some tvet colleges already have a learning management system (lms) making it easy for these colleges to immediately incorporate different online educational platforms and services into their existing websites. this also supported and enabled some educators to successfully transition to a virtual classroom within a short space of time. in addition, some of the educators also mentioned how they used virtual meeting tools and applications to facilitate teaching and learning in the virtual classroom. what we are doing in our college is just sending voice notes and material to the students via the website and whatsapp. the students visit the website to get the class activities, assignments, and tests while we lecturers send whatsapp voice-note to explain to the students what they need to do. the website was created during the lockdown, and it is still active now. so, we hope the college management might decide to upgrade or do something more about the website later (ms c). basically, we are using microsoft team[s], we had to go through pieces of training in order to learn how to upload activities for students, how to mark online, and conduct assessments online. we are also using some interesting apps like mentimeter.com and kahoot to engage our students (ms f). apart from the use of communication tools in facilitating teaching and learning in the virtual classroom, participants also indicated how monitoring practices employed by the academic managers enhanced the facilitation of activities in the virtual classroom. for example, ms g indicated that they have an attendance register that students sign and the campus manager also monitors the process by joining the session to see if the lecturer is present. this opinion was also reported by other teachers, as revealed in the following excerpts: the principal is part of the whatsapp group chat to monitor what the lecturer is sending to the students and also how students respond. most of the time students do not respond. so, i cannot say the monitoring is 100% okay (mr a). our academic managers are responsible to monitor and check the content of the works uploaded for the students. sometimes the academic managers join the virtual class to ensure that you are actually holding the class. from the system the academic manager can also see the time you started your class and when you finished your class. we also send a weekly report to the head office regarding what we do regarding virtual classrooms (ms f). 8.3 challenges to transitioning from a traditional classroom to a virtual classroom analysis of participants’ responses reveals that tvet educators encountered several challenges during the transition to virtual classrooms. one of the major challenges identified by participants was a lack of access to digital resources and tools. for instance, ms b mentioned that no support or resources were provided for the lecturers regarding online learning. she also indicated that students always complained about not having data, no access to active wi-fi, no smartphones or laptop as excuses for not attending virtual classes. this viewpoint was also reflected in the responses of other participants, as shown in the excerpts below. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 http://mentimeter.com 1382022 40(1): 138-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) there is no proper implementation of online classes because no proper tools and gadgets in place to make online learning possible, and students also do not have the necessary gadgets for online learning because of various challenges from their parents some of the students cannot buy data and other aspects of things that will enable them to be online for lectures at the right time (mr a). the challenges are not all students have smartphones or laptops that they can easily come online. another challenge is whereby the students say we do not have data; they do not have money for airtime, they are not able to join the online class at the time given. they only have data in the middle of the night because it is free. those are some of the challenges that we really face. for example, may be out of 30 students, only five students come online during the lecture time, maybe two hours after the lecture time. others will come and say, ma’am, i really need you to explain. the students are not ready for online learning. the college also has challenges, for example, not providing data for the lecturers and lecturers using their own data (ms d). in addition, it was found that all the participants expressed concern about the openness and control of assessment practices as another challenge in the virtual classroom. for me, transparency in a virtual classroom is not effective because the online process does not reflect the true evaluation of learner’s ability because you can easily notice that when you give students assessment online some of the students were able to do it and send it to your email while some students are not able to do the assessment. another problem is lecturers are not able to give immediate feedback. virtual marking is not really effective (ms d). you cannot successfully say that the process of students’ assessment is transparent. i will share this with you, the students just finished writing an examination online and we discovered that all the students got 100 out of 100, we actually set a time limit, so at the expiration of the allocated time, the system automatically closes. however, we discover there are shortcomings. the students are so clever, they are able to research for answers from another device. so, we cannot say that there is 100% transparency when it comes to assessment online (ms f). another significant challenge that was mentioned by participants was students’ unruly behaviour and attitude. this challenge was noted when ms f said: “we also get some naughty students that are knowledgeable about information technology, so they usually mute the lecturers from their side”. this concern was also reinforced by ms e when she stated that “some of the students will login to join the online lecture and the lecturer will be talking and teaching but the students are not there”. other factors that were reported by participants as problems encountered when transitioning to virtual classrooms include inadequate electricity or rolling blackouts also known as load-shedding, network and connectivity issues, time management, background noise and distractions from the home environment. these challenges encountered by most of the participants made them conclude that virtual learning has not come to stay in their college but was used to ensure continuity of teaching and learning during the covid-19 lockdown. 9. discussion this study explored the experiences of tvet college educators when transitioning from a traditional classroom to a virtual classroom. it was found that most of the participants in this study have a positive cognitive, affective and behavioural attitude towards transitioning from a traditional classroom to a virtual classroom. however, a few of them were dissatisfied with http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 1392022 40(1): 139-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 aina & ogegbo tvet college educators’ experiences while transitioning to the virtual classroom the idea of transitioning to a virtual classroom. this finding correlates with the kanter et al. (1992) theory of change that indicates that employees respond differently to change. all the participants recognised the value and benefit of adapting to a virtual classroom amidst the pandemic and beyond. this finding is significant if transitioning to virtual learning is to become an important tool for change in tvet colleges. this attitude is also critical in enhancing the hybridisation of tvet colleges, the experiences and overall digital competence of tvet students and educators. when looking at the experiences of tvet college educators during the transitioning process, it was found that educators used digital tools such as whatsapp, microsoft teams, the lms, mentimeter, and kahoot to facilitate teaching and learning at their respective tvet colleges. however, one significant thing preventing the effective use of the identified digital tools was the educators’ beliefs on the reliability of the assessment practice in a virtual classroom, supporting the findings of arnold (2014). literature attests that one of the significant issues preventing effective transitioning to virtual learning, particularly in tvet colleges, is resistance to change (abdel-ghany, 2014; parlakkiliç, 2017). resistance to organisational change usually occurs due to a lack of planning and implementing strategy on the part of the initiator, employees’ readiness, behaviours and opinions about the change process (abdel-ghany, 2014). even though most participants in this study recognise the significance of virtual learning and are aware of the need for change, problems in the adoption process continue to emerge, indicating a critical gap between educators’ perceptions, theories and practices (makgoto, 2019; parlakkiliç, 2017). when looking at educators’ experiences in terms of adapting virtual learning for successful course delivery in tvet colleges, it appears that the existence of contextual factors such as a lack of learning facilities, access to data and connectivity, home climate, inadequate or lack of training and support for tvet educators and students have a strong mediating impact on adapting virtual learning in tvet colleges (denhere & moloi, 2021; schwartz, 2010). these factors are also present in south africa and other african countries. while some of the participants were excited about the move to virtual learning, the resources they needed to work online were not provided, nor were they given sufficient training to help them implement the various techniques and methods necessary for successful online pedagogy. the interview responses from all the participants revealed a complex set of challenges facing the enactment of policies on digitisation and the effective integration of technology into the pedagogical practices of tvet educators. in addition, participants indicated that transitioning to a virtual classroom might not be effective because most of the students do not have access to digital resources, internet connectivity, laptops, smartphones or tablets. thus, the efficiency of virtual learning in tvet colleges depends on the motivation provided to educators and students in terms of support and continuous training (kanter et al., 1992). this motivation is crucial in promoting pedagogical innovation, policies and growth in digital solutions required to make virtual learning more acceptable and effective in tvet education. the findings also revealed that all the participants participated in the emergent transition process as instructed by their college. however, only a few of them demonstrated their desire to support the change effectively and make the change permanent. to effectively transition to virtual learning, tvet educators, students and managers need the ability and desire to consider the possibilities and developmental use of technological tools and educational technology (videos, smartphones, learning management systems and social media sites). these technologies can enhance the acquisition of students’ employability, knowledge, digital literacy skills and competencies (mpungose, 2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 1402022 40(1): 140-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.8 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 10. conclusion despite the implicit and explicit attitudes displayed by tvet educators toward online learning, they seem to have a generally low desire and willingness to transition to virtual classrooms as a result of the problems they face in this environment. since the transitioning process to virtual classrooms in the sampled tvet colleges took place during the covid-19 pandemic, the educators did not have the operational support and training to facilitate effective teaching and learning in the virtual space. in addition, the findings suggest that most of the participants appear not to be strategically, pedagogically, technically and structurally prepared to adapt to virtual learning. it is therefore recommended that tvet college principals, human resources 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https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 students’ acceptance and perceptions of online assessments postcovid-19 pandemic: a case of community extension students at a historically disadvantaged institution abstract traditionally, research has shown poor uptake and acceptance of non-traditional assessments. the covid-19 pandemic, however, necessitated a drastic shift towards online assessments and negated the practicality of traditional assessments. the acceptance of online assessments by university students enrolled in historically disadvantaged higher education institutions is currently underresearched. to address this gap, the technological acceptance model (tam) is employed as a theoretical framework to examine the acceptance of online assessments and identify barriers to their adoption. the study used a quantitative research design and data were collected through an online questionnaire distributed via ®microsoft teams, the university’s learning management system (lms). descriptive and inferential data analysis was conducted using a combination of microsoft excel and jasp version 0.16.1.0. a total of 83 second and third-year students registered with the department of community extension participated in the study. the results showed that 42% (n=35) of students found online assessments difficult to complete. anxiety during the assessment was prevalent in 57% (n=47) of the students. forty percent (n=50) of the students indicated that online assessments improved academic performance. the percentage of students that still preferred face-to-face invigilated tests over online assessments was also 40% (n=33). the results indicate that online assessments were accepted by students in historically disadvantaged institutions. however, results emphasised the need for the implementation of effective measures to maintain academic integrity, mitigate technical challenges and the provision of training and support to reduce anxiety among students caused by assessments. keywords: community extension university students, covid-19, historically disadvantaged universities, online assessments author: ntombenhle ndlovu1 phiwayinkosi r. gumede1 sandile mthimkhulu1 affiliation: 1mangosuthu university of technology, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i2.6912 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(2): 180-194 published: 30 june 2023 received: 1 december 2022 accepted: 12 june 2023 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 https://orcid.org/0009-0009-5396-9636 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9203-8457 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6778-8064 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 1812023 41(2): 181-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 ndlovu, gumede & mthimkhulu students’ acceptance and perceptions of online assessments 1. introduction in more recent times, there has been a drastic shift towards the global adoption of technology. this trend has given rise to the rapid growth of online assessments in the higher education sector. although students’ acceptance and perceptions of online assessments are reported (alsalhi et al., 2022) in developed countries, little is known in developing countries such as south africa. consequently, understanding students’ acceptance and their perceptions of online assessments is critical for institutions of higher learning, particularly historically disadvantaged institutions. given the reduced teaching resources and increased student numbers in the sector, donnelly (2014) concedes that technology integration within the higher education sector is a persistent requirement in line with the global industry’s fourth industrial revolution (4ir) trajectory. kala and chaubey (2022) assert that the diffusion and acceptance of online learning have become a common approach to education in developed and developing countries. therefore, the understanding of students’ acceptance and perceptions of the online assessments post the covid-19 pandemic is critical in assisting the institutions of higher learning to prioritise the deployment of relevant and targeted student support initiatives. the use of online assessments in its primitive form dates back to the late nineties (between 1960 to 1970) when the first known attempt to use computers to assist education assessment processes was recorded (woolley, 1994 in ćwil, 2019; caleb & elaine, 2022). this trend has increased the rapid growth of both online learning and assessment approaches within the higher education sector. while there are various factors which can be attributed to the exponential shift towards the use of online learning, assessments generally play a vital role in teaching and learning since they measure the level of students’ understanding of subject matter; determine the level of knowledge acquired by students; and are used to determine students’ academic progression from one grade to the next. in the recent past, online assessment has come to replace paper-based assessments in many universities (boitshwarelo, reedy & billany, 2017). the 4ir is understood to be the core driver of such a gradual shift of the traditional face-to-face assessment methods towards more technologically driven methods such as online assessment. this exponential evolution has been compounded and fast-tracked by the unpredictable nature of the universe in which we live. the covid-19 pandemic is one example of such a catastrophe that fuelled the recent drastic shift in higher education, rendering old traditional methods of teaching and learning unfeasible and impractical (yadav, sankhla & yadav, 2022). as a result, this has altered the way students are taught and assessed. due to the covid-19 pandemic, the higher education sector around the world was confronted with overwhelming challenges because university campuses had to be shut down. institutions were forced to find ways to continue teaching and learning activities without the physical attendance of academic staff members and students (unesco, 2020; lin, foung & chen, 2022). the synergies had to be refocused to ensure that academic years were saved, and no students were left behind because of the pandemic. unavoidably, universities turned to online learning platforms to deal with this challenge. as a global response, unesco (2020) listed a shift to online assessments as one of the five main strategies that countries had adopted to manage high-stakes assessments during the covid-19 crisis. online assessments as an assessment approach continue in many universities post the covid-19 pandemic, hence, it is important to understand its acceptability amongst students because of the existing contestation with issues of effectiveness of online assessments when compared to traditional invigilated paperbased assessments (ellis, oeppen & brennan, 2021). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 1822023 41(2): 182-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) according to khan and khan (2019), the benefits of online assessments were an answer to the numerous challenges of traditional paper-based assessments which include high paper use when printing; fears related to the security of transporting assessment scripts; lack of automated marking and high administrative costs (snekalatha et al., 2021; vazquez, chiang & sarmiento-barbieri, 2021). the advantages of online assessments may be counteracted by a lack of resources, poor infrastructure and access to the internet with acceptable speed. these conditions are synonymous with historically disadvantaged universities, and this may potentially have impacted the acceptance of online assessments among students enrolled at these heis. while research indicates some of the challenges involved in the use of online assessments, it does not dismiss the value of online tests in the assessment of 21st century learning, but provides insight into identifying how these concerns can be addressed (boitshwarelo et al., 2017). generally, students’ perceptions and acceptance of online assessment are positive (alsalhi et al., 2022; caleb & elaine, 2022). however, there is limited research that has been conducted post-covid-19 and at historically disadvantaged institutions. hence, this study closes a gap that currently exists regarding the implementation of online assessments post covid-19 in historically disadvantaged institutions – thereby contributing to the body of knowledge. 1.1 theoretical framework the technological acceptance model (tam) which was developed by davis in 1986 is used as a theoretical framework to understand the acceptance of online assessments by university students in historically disadvantaged higher education institutions. tam is an adaptation of the theory of reasoned action (tra) specifically tailored for modelling user acceptance of information systems (davis, bagozzi & warshaw 1989). tam explains how individuals make decisions to accept and use a particular technology. the model postulates that perceived usefulness (pu) and perceived ease of use (peou) are crucial in determining users’ intention to use or adopt technology (davis et al., 1989). the technological acceptance model is shown in figure 1. the purpose of the tam is to provide a basis for tracing the impact of external factors on internal beliefs, attitudes, and intentions. figure 1: technological acceptance model within the context of this paper, pu refers to the extent to which students perceive online assessments as beneficial and valuable in improving their learning outcomes. if students believe that online assessments can enhance their academic performance, they are more likely to accept and adopt this mode of assessment. on the other hand, peou relates to https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 1832023 41(2): 183-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 ndlovu, gumede & mthimkhulu students’ acceptance and perceptions of online assessments the degree of ease and convenience students associate with using online assessments. if students perceive the online assessment system as user-friendly, accessible, and easy to navigate, it positively influences their acceptance and intention to use it. tam is used to achieve the overarching aim of this paper, which is to provide insights into the factors that affect students’ acceptance of online assessments, particularly within the context of historically disadvantaged higher education institutions. 1.2 research objectives the objectives of this study were 1) to determine students’ perceptions of online assessments, 2) to establish the acceptance of online assessments, and 3) to establish barriers to the acceptance of online assessments. 2. methodology 2.1 study design the study was descriptive by nature and employed a quantitative research design. although a quantitative research approach was selected, participants were afforded an added opportunity to expand on the selected option/s. the study sought to determine students’ perceptions of online assessments, students enrolled within the department of community extension at a historically disadvantaged institution, in undertaking online assessments during the covid-19 pandemic. the methodological integrity of the study was assured by enlisting a non-academic university staff member to recruit participants and administer the online questionnaire. this was done to limit any conflict of interest that could have arisen due to power relations between the participants (students) and researchers (academics/study investigators). 2.2 study population and sampling strategy whole-population sampling was used to collect data. the decision to use the whole-sample selection method was driven by several considerations, which included a fear of a high dropout rate by respondents, as the population being investigated was already at a low number and we needed maximum participation to conduct statistical manipulation. an invitation to participate in the study, information letter and consent letter (embedded in the online questionnaire) were published via one of the learning management systems (lmss), ®microsoft teams used by the institution. a meeting with interested students was arranged online (ms teams) to introduce the study. the prospective participants (students) were allowed to read the study information letter, ask questions, and voice any concerns they might have regarding the study. after factoring in the students’ input, the link to access online questionnaires was uploaded on ®ms teams to allow respondents to complete the online questionnaire. 2.3 recruitment and data collection participants were recruited from a pool of 95 (secondand third-year) students for a period of five months (december 2021 to april 2022). of the 95 students recruited, 83 participated in the study. these were students who had registered in 2020 as firstor second-year students. the online questionnaire was set to allow only one response from each student. to ensure anonymity, no personal information such as student numbers or respondents’ names was required on the online questionnaire. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 1842023 41(2): 184-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) 2.4 data analysis descriptive and inferential data analysis was conducted using a combination of microsoft excel and jasp version 0.16.1.0. the microsoft excel spreadsheet was primarily for descriptive statistics of student responses obtained during the survey. more complex correlational information and analysis were conducted through jasp. for example, the analysis of variance (anova) provided data to measure if the observed differences in recorded responses were statistically significant. 2.5 ethical considerations permission to conduct the study was obtained from the institution’s research ethics committee (rd1/09/21). the participants were reassured that the study was voluntary and that they could withdraw at any time. they were also advised that there would be no financial gain for participating in the study. furthermore, participants were advised that no costs would be incurred by being part of the study since the institution provided wi-fi or student data. all information collected from the participants was kept confidential. 3. results 3.1 characteristics of respondents table 1: characteristics of the community extension students who participated in the current study gender classification freq. perc (%) male 31 37% female 52 63% study level 2nd level 45 54% 3rd level 38 46% residence home 11 13% student residence 70 84% renting 2 3% location during exam home 7 8% on campus 23 28% student residence 53 64% a device used in online test mobile phone 74 89% laptop 9 11% data source campus wi-fi 13 16% residence wi-fi 20 24% crg data 48 58% personal data 2 2% **crg: covid response grant https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 1852023 41(2): 185-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 ndlovu, gumede & mthimkhulu students’ acceptance and perceptions of online assessments table 1 above indicates that among the total of 83 students, 37% (n=31) were males and 63% (n=52) were females. there were 54% (n=45) second-level and 46% (n=38) third-level students. an overwhelming majority of 84% (n=70) of students lived in university residences located in various parts of the city of durban, whereas 13% (n=11) and 3% (n=2) lived at home and stayed in lodgings, respectively. at the time when this study was conducted, most students (64%, n=53) indicated that they wrote online tests in their residences. the majority (89%) of the students used mobile phones to write tests and only a few (11%) used laptops. most of the students (58%, n=48) used the covid responsiveness grant (crg) data to access and write the online test. only 2% (n=2) of the students wrote the test using their personal data. table 2 and table 3 below report on the useability and accessibility of ms teams as an online assessment platform for community extension students. table 2: the useability and accessibility of ms teams as an online assessment platform for community extension students (the values in parentheses represent the percentages) variables median sd 1 2 3 4 5 were there any technical/practical problems when undertaking the online test? 4 0.47 yes (34) no (66) how would you rate the structure of the online assessment? 4 0.84 poor (0) fair (4) good (23) very good (40) excellent (33) navigation through the online test was easy 4 0.58 completely disagree (1) disagree (12) neutral (0) agree (69) completely agree (18) the acquisition of skills needed to complete the online test was easy 4 0.51 completely disagree (0) disagree (5) neutral (0) agree (70) completely agree (25) how would you rate the functionality of ms teams as an online test platform? 4 0.93 poor (1) fair (4) good (20) very good (34) excellent (41) did you experience any significant wi-fi issues during the test? 1 0.49 yes (63) no (37) https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 1862023 41(2): 186-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) table 3: the analysis of variance for the useability and accessibility of ms teams to community extension students as an online assessment platform (the values in parentheses represent the percentages) source of variation ss d.f ms f p-value f crit were there technical/practical problems during the online test? 264.55 1 264.55 4.31 0.286 161.45 structure of online test 1407.13 3 469.04 59.2 0.004 9.28 navigation through the online test 636.67 4 159.17 17.83 0.008 6.39 acquisition of skills to complete the online test was easy 1523.26 3 507.75 239.86 <0.001 9.28 functionality of ms teams as an online test platform 625.05 4 156.26 29.49 0.003 6.39 did you experience any significant wi-fi issues during the test? 160.04 1 160.04 1.96 0.395 161.45 table 4: academic performance and quality as perceived by the participating community extension students (the values in parentheses represent the percentages) variables median sd 1 2 3 4 5 would you say online tests have increased or decreased your academic performance? 1 0.45 increased (72) decreased (28) i found the online test easy to complete 4 0.70 completely disagree (2) disagree (13) neutral (0) agree (58) completely agree (27) the online test was useful in my learning process 4 0.64 completely disagree (2) disagree (6) neutral (0) agree (64) completely agree (28) the online test covered the intended course content 4 0.52 completely disagree (0) disagree (6) neutral (0) agree (65) completely agree (29) were you anxious before and after the online test? 1 0.49 yes (57) no (43) did you have easy access to a suitable quiet space to sit the online test? 1 0.36 yes (84) no (16) how easy is it to cheat on an online test? 4 1.45 very easy (12) easy (17) neutral (13) difficult (19) very difficult (39) which strategy is most effective in preventing cheating in online tests? 3 1.01 limited time (34) noa (10) soq (50) spa (6) **the students’ responses indicating academic performance and perceived quality on online assessment (n=83). noa: none of the above. spa: shuffling the possible answers. soq: shuffling of questions (different order for everyone) https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 1872023 41(2): 187-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 ndlovu, gumede & mthimkhulu students’ acceptance and perceptions of online assessments table 5: the analysis of variance for the academic performance and quality as perceived by the participating community extension students source of variance ss d.f ms f p-value f crit would you say online tests have increased or decreased your academic performance? 496.81 1 496.81 54.76 0.086 161.45 i found the online test easy to complete 864.24 3 288.08 24.43 0.013 9.28 the online test was useful in my learning process 1193.75 3 397.92 47.33 0.005 9.28 the online test covered the intended course content 1356.33 3 452.11 16.87 0.022 9.28 were you anxious before and after the online test? 43.91 1 43.91 2.47 0.361 161.45 did you have easy access to a suitable quiet space to sit the online test? 1179.05 1 1179.05 3249 0.011 161.45 how easy is it to cheat on an online test? 231.67 4 57.92 10.23 0.022 6.39 which strategy is most effective in preventing cheating in online tests? 352.01 3 117.34 7.46 0.066 9.28 3.2 the useability and accessibility of the online assessment platform the results as reflected in table 2 and table 3 above indicate that the majority of students (66%) reported no technical/practical problems when undertaking the online test, while 34% reported having experienced technical/practical problems. a total of 40% (p=0.004) of the students reported that the structure of the online assessment was very good, while 69% (p=0.008) agreed that navigating through the online assessment was easy, compared to only 12% that disagreed. most students (70%, p<0.000) admitted that the acquisition of skills needed to complete online tests was easy, 25% (p<0.000) completely agreed, while only 5% (p<0.000) disagreed. the functionality of ms teams as an online test platform was rated as excellent by 41% (p=0.003) of the students, good by 34% (p=0.003), and fair by only 4% (p=0.003) of the students. a higher percentage of students (63%) reported significant wi-fi issues during the test, compared to 37% who reported no significant wi-fi issues during the online test. the following section will cover the impact of online assessments on academic performance and the overall quality as perceived by students. 3.3 the academic performance and quality as perceived by the students table 4 and table 5 above denote the results obtained from students in relation to academic performance and the overall quality of online assessments. the results show that most students (72%) stated that online assessments increased their academic performance, while 28% indicated that online assessments decreased their academic performance. most students agreed (58%, p=0.013) that they found online assessments easy to complete, 27% (p=0.013) completely agreed, and 13% (p=0.013) disagreed. the majority of the students agreed (64%, p=0.005) that online assessments were useful in the learning process, 28% (p=0.005) completely agreed, 6% disagreed (p=0.005), and 2% completely disagreed (p=0.005). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 1882023 41(2): 188-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) in addition, a large percentage (65%, p=0.022) of students felt that online assessments covered the course content adequately, 29% (p=0.022) completely agreed and (6%) disagreed (p=0.022). most students (57%) reported feeling anxious before and after the online test, compared to 43% who did not feel any form of anxiety before or after the online assessment. eighty-four percent of the students were able to access a suitable, quiet space to sit for the online test, while only 16% of the students reported not having access to a suitable, quiet space to sit. most students reported that cheating on an online test would be very difficult (39%, p=0.022), while 19% (p=0.022) found that cheating would be difficult, 17% (p=0.022) found that cheating would be easy, and only 12% (p=0.022) found that cheating would be very easy. half of the students reported the shuffling of questions as the most effective strategy to curb cheating during online assessments, followed by limiting time (34%) and shuffling of possible answers (6%). table 6 below depicts the assessment method preferences for community extension students. table 6: the responses (a) and analysis of variance (b) for students’ preference for assessment method in the department of community extension (the values in parentheses represent the percentages) a median sd 1 2 3 4 5 how likely are you to accept completing online tests in the future? 4 1.16 most unlikely (5) unlikely (5) neutral (24) likely (20) most likely (46) having completed both online tests and face-to-face invigilated on-campus tests, which do you prefer? 2 0.49 face-to-face (40) online (60) b ss d.f ms f p-value f crit how likely are you to accept completing online tests in the future? 571.35 4 142.84 51.79 0.001 6.39 having completed both online tests and face-to-face invigilated on-campus tests, which do you prefer? 104.88 1 104.88 1.71 0.416 161.45 3.4 student assessment method preference table 6 above reported on students’ online assessment method preferences. the results show that a large percentage of students (46%, p=0.001) were most likely to accept completing online assessments in the future; 5% (p=0.001) were unlikely to complete online assessments in the future; 24% of the students were neutral; and 5% (p=0.001) of the students reported they would most likely not accept the completing of online assessments in the future. the majority of the students (60%) preferred online tests, compared to 40% of the students who preferred face-to-face invigilated tests completed on campus. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 1892023 41(2): 189-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 ndlovu, gumede & mthimkhulu students’ acceptance and perceptions of online assessments 4. discussion the aim of this paper was to provide insights into the factors that affect students’ acceptance of online assessments, particularly in the context of historically disadvantaged higher education institutions. the technological acceptance model was used as a theoretical framework. it explored the relationship between students’ perceptions of usefulness, ease of use, and their attitudes towards using online assessments. we evaluated community extension students’ perceptions of online assessments and the perceived ease of use with the aim of incorporating this practice into the formative assessment methods of the diploma programme. the following three objectives guided the study: 1) to determine students’ perceptions of online assessments; 2) to establish the acceptance of online assessments; and 3) to establish barriers to the acceptance of online assessments. 3.4 student assessment method preference table 6 above reported on students’ online assessment method preferences. the results show that a large percentage of students (46%, p=0.001) were most likely to accept completing online assessments in the future; 5% (p=0.001) were unlikely to complete online assessments in the future; 24% of the students were neutral; and 5% (p=0.001) of the students reported they would most likely not accept the completing of online assessments in the future. the majority of the students (60%) preferred online tests, compared to 40% of the students who preferred face-to-face invigilated tests completed on campus. 4. discussion the aim of this paper was to provide insights into the factors that affect students' acceptance of online assessments, particularly in the context of historically disadvantaged higher education institutions. the technological acceptance model was used as a theoretical framework. it explored the relationship between students' perceptions of usefulness, ease of use, and their attitudes towards using online assessments. we evaluated community extension students’ perceptions of online assessments and the perceived ease of use with the aim of incorporating this practice into the formative assessment methods of the diploma programme. the following three objectives guided the study: 1) to determine students’ perceptions of online assessments; 2) to establish the acceptance of online assessments; and 3) to establish barriers to the acceptance of online assessments. perceived ease of use (peou) 1. ease of navigating online test (77%) 2. functionality of teams (96%) 3. no technical problems (66%) 4. skills to complete online test (95%) 5. no technical problems (60%) 6. access to quite spaces external variables 1. infrastructure 2. lack of support 3. covid-19 perceived usefulness (pu) 1. increased academic performance (72%) 2. easiness to complete (85%) 3. usefulness for learning (98%) 4. coverage of learning content (94) behavioural intention to use 1.prefered online assessment (60%) 2. conduct future online test (66%) actual system use acceptance of online assessment figure 2: technological acceptance model (adopted from davis, 1986) 4.1 objective 1: to determine students’ perceptions of online assessments the current study indicated that a higher percentage of students reported that cheating was difficult when completing an online assessment. this result is inconsistent with the literature, which reports a high prevalence of cheating during online assessments (valdez & maderal, 2021). academic dishonesty has significantly contributed to the poor adoption and acceptance of online assessment among the education fraternity (petrisor et al., 2016; iskandar et al., 2021; valdez & maderal, 2021) and varies in severity. similarly, meccawy, meccawy and alsobhi (2021) reiterate the increasing prevalence of online cheating among students and recommends curbing or reducing this common practice by: 1) increasing awareness of ethics and integrity among students; 2) training educators on cheating methods; and 3) imposing substantial disciplinary actions on students that participate in academic dishonesty. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 1902023 41(2): 190-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) on the contrary, peled et al. (2019) put forth an alternative view, in that the decision to engage in academic dishonesty is independent of whether an assessment is online or face-to-face, but rather, is determined by the student’s personality traits and the university’s assessment-related policies and procedures. this view suggests that online assessment itself is not an obstacle, but rather the academic integrity of the students that participate in online assessments. this view supports the need to increase student awareness of matters relating to academic integrity and ethical behaviour during assessments of any kind (meccawy et al., 2021). this does not, however, negate the need for heis to ensure that online assessments meet the learning objectives and outcomes while still maintaining acceptable levels of rigour. the rapid transition to online learning and assessments may have caused anxiety and stress among students. a greater percentage of students in the current study reported having experienced anxiety before and after online assessments. govender, reddy and bhagwan (2021) further suggest that students from disadvantaged areas might be prone to added stress, especially when subjected to remote online assessments. this is attributed to persistent connectivity issues which may exacerbate online test anxiety and may affect the academic performance of the students. interestingly, although the majority of the students reported experiencing online test anxiety, 72% of the students indicated that online assessments increased academic performance. in contrast, woldeab and brothen (2019) advise that the prevalence of test anxiety has a negative impact on the academic performance of students, which is greatly supported by the literature. the results from this case study suggest that test anxiety may not impact the academic performance of students. in addition, we were not able to ascertain distinctively whether online test anxiety existed before the online test or after the online test. further research is required to understand the impact of pre-online test anxiety and post-online test anxiety and the resultant factors that influence anxiety in both stages of the assessment. 4.2 objective 2: to establish the acceptance of online assessments the study found that the majority of the students preferred online assessments over faceto-face assessments. this finding echoes previous research by iskandar et al. (2021) which shows a preference for new modes of assessment over more traditional options. however, aguilera-hermida (2020) asserts that those face-to-face options, despite being dated, remain the preferred option for some students. this view is supported by 40% of the study participants who indicated a preference for face-to-face assessments. these divergent views show that both old and new modes have substantial support for varying reasons. the loss of support for online modes was blamed on the numerous technical and resource-related challenges that students reported during the completion of the online assessments. most of the students indicated an acceptance of online assessments for future use. however, 24% were still neutral, 5% were unlikely to accept them and 5 % of the students still reported to be most unlikely to accept online assessments in the future. these results emphasise that although most students accept online assessments, there is still a substantial number of students that are not keen on completing online assessments in the future. this is concerning, especially with the educational trends touting e-learning and e-assessments as the future of education. more research needs to be conducted to establish solutions to ensure online assessments are acceptable to every student, especially students enrolled in historically disadvantaged universities. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 1912023 41(2): 191-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 ndlovu, gumede & mthimkhulu students’ acceptance and perceptions of online assessments the impact of online assessments on academic performance has been an area of interest even before the recent pandemic. literature suggests that online assessments have a positive impact on academic performance. butler-henderson and crawford (2020) attribute the improved academic performance to 1) the flexibility of the online assessments; 2) the time-saving capabilities of online assessments; 3) the trustworthiness of test results; and 4) economical aspects (saving on printing and paper costs). meanwhile, a multitude of scholars and educators have, however, attributed the improved results to the level of academic dishonesty and the lack of academic rigour that online assessments inherently possess. 4.3 objective 3: to establish barriers to the acceptance of online assessments most students reported an ease in completing online assessments despite infrastructural and technical difficulties. the result is unexpected, as the sample group had never engaged in online assessments prior to the covid-19 pandemic. in addition, the movement from faceto-face to online assessments was a drastic shift, which left many heis unprepared, with previously disadvantaged heis incurring an added triple burden due to a lack of resources, inferior infrastructure, and technologically untrained educators (ndebele & mbodila, 2022). other studies that have sought to determine technology acceptance among students enrolled in historically disadvantaged universities have found persistent challenges, which include poor connectivity, limited technology access and security, and an unwillingness to engage with unfamiliar technology and language being the major barriers. in contrast, the current study reports that most students (66%) reported no technical problems while undertaking online assessments, while many students (63%) reported wi-fi challenges. this inconsistency in reporting may be attributed to students regarding wi-fi challenges as a system issue rather than a technical issue. furthermore, the latter results are in alignment with nyahodza and higgs’ (2017) sentiments of an existent digital divide between historically disadvantaged universities and well-resourced universities, which was heightened by the shift to online learning and assessments during the covid-19 pandemic. 5. limitations of the study this study had some potential limitations. the sample group was limited to community extension students. this was the only group of students that participated in online assessments during the recent covid-19 pandemic within the faculty of natural sciences. furthermore, this sample had no prior engagements with online assessments before the pandemic. this prevented the study from taking a holistic approach by involving all students at the outset. secondly, the study excluded senior students, i.e. advanced diploma students, who were not allowed to participate in online assessments during the pandemic. this also hindered the ability of the study to establish the acceptance of online assessments from the different levels of study within the department of community extension. therefore, in future, studies need to be conducted involving all student levels within the faculty or across faculties within the institution. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 1922023 41(2): 192-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6912 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) 6. conclusion the development and implementation of online assessments are challenges for the whole educational community. this study focused on university students from historically disadvantaged institutions. the study concludes that, despite the challenges emanating from the nature of the institution, i.e. historically disadvantaged, there is a general acceptance of online assessments among students. while students reported various challenges such as technological difficulties, resource-related challenges, academic dishonesty, and anxiety during the assessments, these did not deter the acceptance of online assessment by students. however, the findings of this study highlight the need for institutions to develop and implement strategies to curb academic dishonesty, improve infrastructure, acquire the necessary resources, and increased training prior to students engaging in online assessments to increase acceptability. using the tam assisted the study to identify critical factors influencing the acceptance of online assessment by students at a historically disadvantaged institution. these factors include the infrastructure, lack of adequate support, and the covid-19 pandemic which served as external variables influencing both the perceived usefulness (pu) and the perceived ease of use (peou) of online assessments. through the identification of the pu and peou, we were able to conclude that most students preferred online assessment and were willing to conduct online tests in the future. these indicated the behavioural intention to use online assessments; hence the conclusion that students from the community extension department accept the online assessments as a useful modality. therefore, the study concluded that being an historically disadvantaged institution has no fundamental bearing on the perception of students about online assessments. it also suggested practical solutions to improve online assessment practices. we concluded that future studies should investigate possible strategies to deal with the identified challenges so that student acceptance of online assessments could be further improved. references aguilera-hermida, a. 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https://www.ijede.ca/index.php/jde/article/view/1106 https://doi.org/10.47310/iarjms.2022.v03i01.019 https://doi.org/10.47310/iarjms.2022.v03i01.019 _hlk114650678 pie32(4) book.indb perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 93 a capabilities perspective on education quality: implications for foundation phase teacher education programme design jean baxen, yvonne nsubuga & liz johanson botha while governments and communities across the globe are faced with the challenge of providing their citizens with good-quality education, there is lack of consensus on how education quality should be defined. whereas a great deal has been written about the human capital and human rights approaches, which currently dominate the debate, the potential value of the capabilities approach to the field of education quality policy and practice is yet to be fully explored. this article aims to advance discussions on education quality, through critical engagement with discourses on the capabilities approach and its implications for education quality thinking, and offer an example of what implementation of this approach might mean in a south african teacher education context. the article outlines the core concepts underpinning the capabilities approach to education quality against the background of critiques of the human capital and human rights approaches. it then critically explores what a capabilities approach has to offer to education quality thinking, and describes how these concepts and principles are being interpreted within the new rhodes b.ed. (foundation phase) programme, currently being developed. keywords: education quality, capabilities approach, educational capabilities, human capital approach, human rights approach discourses on education quality: issues and debates many governments and communities across the globe are faced with the challenge of providing their citizens with good quality education. this is especially so in those countries that have experienced rapid growth in student enrolment figures as a result jean baxen education department, rhodes university (currently wits university) e-mail: jean.baxen@wits. ac.za tel: 011 717 3014 yvonne nsubuga education department, rhodes university (currently university of fort hare) e-mail: ynsbga@yahoo.com liz botha education department, rhodes university e-mail: ekbotha@gmail.com tel: 082 780 1920 perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 94 of the education for all (efa) agenda, amid growing evidence of a simultaneous decline in learner achievement levels (unesco, 2004). education quality is currently attracting a great deal of attention in south africa. this is due, inter alia, to the persistence of racial and regional inequalities in learner achievement levels (van der berg, 2007; dbe, 2010), and a critical skills shortage in scientific and technological spheres which is threatening not only the country’s path to sustainable economic growth, but also its economic competiveness at global level (pennington, 2011). among wide-scale interventions designed to address this challenge is one targeting improvements at foundation phase (fp) level, within which context the current research has been carried out. the article aims to advance discussions on education quality through critical engagement with the capabilities approach, against a background of critiques of dominant current discourses. it concludes that the capabilities approach has the potential to significantly enrich education quality thinking and practice, and describes how its principles are being interpreted within the new rhodes university b.ed. (foundation phase) programme, currently being developed. approaches to education quality few issues in education have stimulated as much public debate as that of education quality and its evaluation (nsubuga, 2011). many definitions have been offered of ‘a quality education’ and, based on these, governments and international bodies have made many attempts to define and assess ‘education quality’ (a term usually associated with monitoring and measurement) (barrett, chaula-duggan, lowe, nikel & ukpo, 2006; tikly, 2011; tikly & barrett, 2009). is a quality education one that prepares the learner for the world of work, maximising his/her earning power, and contributing to national gdp? is it one that liberates the mind, or one that familiarises a student with the world’s great artistic and scientific achievements? is it one that encourages critical thinking, promotes human rights, or instils discipline? with numerous options such as these available, the lack of agreement in the literature on what education quality entails is not surprising. the assessment of quality requires identification of its dimensions and the development of appropriate indicators (unesco, 2004; tikly & barrett, 2011; tikly, 2011). depending on the concept of quality, findings are obtained through testing and computation, or through some kind of qualitative process. thus, the multiplicity of education quality conceptions affects not only how it is understood and researched, but also the design and implementation of assessment, monitoring and improvement strategies. this article does not allow for a full exploration of this complex field. it examines in some detail the capabilities approach to education quality against the background of critical outlines of the human capital and the human rights approaches (tikly & barrett, 2011; tikly, 2011), both dominant currently. this is followed by an example of the capabilities approach in action. a capabilities perspective on education quality: implications for foundation phase teacher education programme design jean baxen, yvonne nsubuga & liz johanson botha 95 human capital approach quality education from the human capital (hc) perspective is education that equips learners with knowledge, competences and skills which increase personal earnings and contribute to economic productivity (robeyns, 2006). from this point of view, the purpose of investing in education is to contribute to national economic development (robeyns, 2006; tikly & barrett, 2011; tikly, 2011). within this framework, preferred indicators of education quality relate to measurable inputs and outputs, for example teacher numbers, cost of resources, enrolment and retention figures, gdp and scores in assessment tests (alexander, 2008, tikly & barrett, 2011). human rights approach in the human rights (hr) approach, education’s role in addressing justice, moral and political concerns takes precedence over its contribution to economic productivity (robeyns, 2006). human rights need to be promoted to, in and through education (tikley & barrett, 2009: 3). they are pivotal to human development, impacting positively on peace, human security, and environmental sustainability (tikly & barrett, 2011). school practices should enact both negative rights (for example, protection from abuse and discrimination) and positive rights (for example, promotion of creativity, local languages and learner-centred approaches) (tikley & barrett, 2009). indicators of quality relate to the presence or absence of such features, and qualitative methods are usually used for assessment. the hc and hr approaches have been used extensively to guide educational policies and practices worldwide, and have made invaluable contributions to the education quality debate. however, they are widely critiqued for reflecting a limited view of education quality which downplays the central role of teaching and learning processes (alexander, 2008; tikly & barrett, 2009), reflects predominantly western world views, and is insensitive to the contexts of developing countries such as those in sub-saharan africa (tikly & barrett, 2009; tikly & barrett, 2011). the hc approach is criticised for treating learners as a homogeneous group, measuring quality in instrumental and quantitative ways (unterhalter, vaughan & walker, 2007), and having a commodity-based view of human development. while the hr approach takes a more democratic and less mechanistic view of education, it is criticised for its individualistic view of learners, which takes little account of their context, and offers no way of analysing social and economic forces (tikly & barrett, 2009). it is no surprise then, that there is growing interest in alternative approaches which address some of the weaknesses mentioned earlier. the capabilities approach (ca) is receiving growing attention, although little is known about it in education circles1 outside academia, and its full potential in informing education quality theory and practice remains, to a large extent, unexplored. this article engages in this exploration, by first outlining the main features of the ca. it then investigates the meaning of education quality within a capabilities framework and discusses criticisms perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 96 and expansions of the approach. finally, it draws some conclusions on the value of the ca as an alternative education quality framework, and illustrates how it is being used within the programme design of the b.ed. (fp) at rhodes university. basic tenets of the capabilities approach the ca is rooted in the concept of human capabilities, which has gained prominence since the 1980s as an effective metric for evaluating human well-being and development. in its current form, the ca derives from the work of the economist amartya sen (1992, 1999), and the philosopher martha nussbaum (2000, 2003). briefly, the ca rejects expansion of incomes, goods and services, or of happiness and desire fulfilment, as the sole aims of human development. it argues that, while resources and utilities are important, they form an inadequate informational base for the evaluation of human well-being (sen, 1992; robeyns, 2003). they are needed as means to other valued ends, and not for their own sake. people differ in their commodity requirements depending on their culture, gender, age and social circumstances, and the accumulation of commodities can also have negative consequences (saito, 2003). furthermore, there are components of human wellbeing, not directly linked to income growth, that also need to be taken into account when evaluating human development. human dignity, for example, is valued for its intrinsic worth, rather than its contribution to wealth or happiness. to “effectively use health-care, and enforce one’s legal rights” are valuable functionings apart from their contribution to income (wigley & akkoyunlu-wigley, 2006: 289). the ca offers ‘capabilities’ as an alternative to economic wealth as a measure of development (tikly & barrett, 2009). this term refers to people’s real freedoms, opportunities and powers to engage in valued functionings. a narrow range of capabilities limits choice with regard to what individuals can do and be. capabilities can be categorised in various ways. lanzi (2007), for example, recognises three groups, namely s-caps, concrete skills and knowledge; e-caps, including social and political rights and institutions, cultural practices and norms (robeyns, 2006), and m-caps, ethical principles and judgements (lanzi, 2007). a second core concept of the ca is that of ‘functionings’, defined as valued activities and states which contribute to an individual’s well-being (clark, 2005). examples include being well-fed, safe, literate, healthy, having a job, having selfesteem, and belonging to a community (sen, 1992). according to sen (1999), ‘agency’ and human flourishing are interlinked, since agency allows people to act on behalf of the goals for which they have reason to strive, while limited agency constraints one’s ability to choose preferred functionings (walker, 2006). a capabilities perspective on education quality: implications for foundation phase teacher education programme design jean baxen, yvonne nsubuga & liz johanson botha 97 the ability to convert commodities into capabilities and functionings depends on what are called ‘conversion factors’, of which there are three types, namely personal conversion factors (for example, race, sex, age, physical condition, education level); social conversion factors (for example, public policies, social institutions, power relations), and environmental conversion factors (for example, geographical location, climate, infrastructure) (robeyns, 2003). people also differ in their choice of functionings and preferred life options (robeyns, 2011). hence, conversion factors and human heterogeneity are key tenets in the ca, demonstrating clearly why incomes and other commodities alone form an insufficient information base for evaluations of human well-being and development (robeyns, 2003). capabilities and education quality: what is the link? from the point of view of the ca, education has both intrinsic and instrumental value. it is simultaneously a basic capability, a capability input, and a personal conversion factor (otto & ziegler, 2006: 10). wigley and akkoyunlu-wigley (2006: 289) maintain that “[i]f we gauge the value of education in terms of the capability to achieve valued functionings … rather than the accumulation of resources … it becomes clear that society is duty-bound to enable each child to complete at least a basic education, irrespective of their relative contributions to growth”. the ca has implications, then, for how education quality is understood and monitored (tikly & barrett, 2011), although hardly any research and writing has so far explored this relationship in depth. apart from the work of researchers such as tikly and barrett (2009, 2011), tikly (2011), terzi (2007), walker (2003, 2006) and unterhalter (2003), few attempts have been made thus far to analyse comprehensively the potentiality of the ca as an education quality framework, and hardly any empirical research using the approach. however, a body of evidencebased research, conducted by people such as maarman (2009), tao (2009), walker (2003, 2006), wies (2012) as well as wigley and akkoyunlu-wigley (2006), is slowly beginning to emerge. this article wishes to contribute to this body of knowledge. before describing the rhodes b.ed. exemplar by outlining decisions in design of the programme, the article describes six components of education quality, from a capabilities viewpoint. expanding learners’ sets of capabilities ca researchers agree that the content, processes and contexts of education should serve to expand learners’ capabilities (saito, 2003; bakhish, hoffman & van ravens, 2004). while the ca recognises the significance of developing learners’ literacy and numeracy skills (s-caps), it also insists on the development of other capabilities that contribute to learners’ current and future well-being. examples of these will be given later in the description of the rhodes b.ed. (fp) programme. perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 98 paying attention to conversion factors according to the ca, quality education should not only expand learners’ capabilities, but also help learners overcome obstacles that prevent them from living the lives to which they aspire (otto & ziegler, 2006; walker, 2006). these obstacles may originate from learners’ individual characteristics or from their social, cultural or school contexts (tikly & barrett, 2011). walker (2006) cites lack of school safety, sexual harassment, bullying, drugs and various forms of abuse as obstacles which can prevent south african female high school learners from achieving desired functionings. otto and ziegler (2006: 3) emphasise that “converting capabilities are highly diverse among people”. thus, paying attention to the influence of learners’ heterogeneity on their ability to achieve valued functionings is one of the cornerstones of education quality within the ca. developing learners’ agency quality education should foster agency by developing self-determination, participation, public debate, democratic processes and empowerment (alkire, 2005), and working against oppression, passivity and coercion. valuing all benefits that accrue from education by foregrounding capabilities and functionings instead of accumulated resources, the ca extends the gaze of education quality practitioners beyond education’s impacts on productivity and human rights to a wider array of benefits which promote human flourishing. according to sen (1992), these include fostering debate on a wide array of issues; facilitating participation in decision-making processes; giving voice to minority groups, and facilitating their access to centres of power. the ca also acknowledges that, apart from its instrumental value, education can be valuable for its own sake (terzi, 2007; robeyns, 2006). centralising the needs of the individual learner ca has been described as “a species of a human rights approach” (nussbaum, 2006, in tikly & barrett, 2009: 7). however, rather than emphasising the equalisation of access to resources for all learners, as the hr approach does, it highlights the need to describe the quality of educational experiences and outcomes at the level of individual learners (walker, 2006). it insists that, since learners have different values, needs and interests, and differ in their abilities to convert educational inputs into capabilities and functionings, the same level of resources might not be adequate, for example, for urban and rural learners, girls and boys, and different population groups. it thus helps to reconceptualise what needs to be equalised in and through education, drawing attention to equality of access to capabilities (real opportunities to achieve valued life choices), instead of focusing on inputs and outputs (tikly & barret, 2011). a capabilities perspective on education quality: implications for foundation phase teacher education programme design jean baxen, yvonne nsubuga & liz johanson botha 99 reconceptualising the right to education the ca also alleges that the human rights’ conceptualisation of the right to education is inadequate and mainly theoretical; in many developing countries, there are vast numbers of out-of-school children in spite of the fact that education in these countries has been declared a legal right (mccowan, 2011). the ca foregrounds access to capabilities that cover all aspects of a learner’s well-being, and emphasises the need to ensure that effective strategies are in place, enabling individual learners to enjoy that access (robeyns, 2006; mccowan, 2011). in this way, it offers “a deeper ethical basis of justice and freedom in relation to development” (tikly & barrett, 2009: 6). critiques and expansions of the capabilities approach ca has been critiqued from a number of angles, and responses to such criticisms have expanded the approach in various ways. some critics maintain that the ca is too abstract, academic, and complex, leaving much room for misunderstanding and making it difficult to operationalise (smith & seward, 2009). its terminology (‘capabilities’, ‘functionings’, ‘conversion factors’, and ‘agency’) is somewhat counter-intuitive, not immediately easy for practising teachers and ‘the man in the street’ to relate to. another problematic aspect of the approach is that operationalisation involves a number of interrelated factors such as capabilities, valued functionings, agency, human diversity, and a variety of different conversion factors. despite this complexity, a number of researchers and institutions have used the ca as a tool for assessing education quality, utilising various different methods. they have worked, for instance, with teachers and learners (weis, 2012), whole school improvement (tao, 2010), and explored the value of education in relation to health functioning (wigley & akkoyunlu-wigley, 2006). critics also contend that the ca is too individualistic, and numerous responses attempt to show that capabilities are socially embedded and contextualised (tikly & barrett, 2009). robeyns (in smith & seward, 2009: 219) claims that “there is no problem incorporating social ontology into the framework”. smith and seward (2009), drawing on martins, provide a framework which incorporates the social dimension into ca by means of conversion factors, suggesting that the ca be combined with literature on collective action and situated within critical studies which give appropriate prominence to power relations (smith & seward, 2009). some, like saito (2003) and lanzi (2007), contend that sen’s approach does provide ethical or moral guidance for making good choices. while supportive of ca, they stress the need for education to inculcate values and develop learners’ judgement regarding the use of the capabilities they have at their disposal. it is clear that, in order to realise the full potential of ca’s contribution to education quality discourse, there is a need for more engagement with its core perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 100 tenets from an education quality perspective, both at theoretical and empirical levels. current prominent gaps include the lack of a conceptual framework outlining the key dimensions of education quality within this approach and how they relate to each other to produce educational outcomes; how capabilities relate to the teaching and learning processes, key in driving quality, and identification of suitable indicators or core capabilities whereby quality within this approach can be analysed and monitored. sen has refused to specify particular capabilities as desirable, but supports unterhalter, vaughan and walker’s (2007) view that parents, teachers and members of the society should support learners in making choices regarding capabilities that are likely to improve their current and future life opportunities. several researchers have begun grappling with the issue of appropriate capabilities for learners, asserting that, once such capabilities are identified, strategies targeted towards their enhancement can be put into place. this work is still in its infancy, however, and the authors insist that their lists are exploratory and open-ended rather than prescriptive. based on her research on gender equality at south african secondary schools, walker (2006) proposed a list of educational capabilities bearing immediate relevance to the south african educational context. working with mclean (2013), walker also researched a list of capabilities and functionings for incorporation into the training of professionals at tertiary institutions. distinctive features of ca education quality by promoting an integrated approach to education quality and widening the scope of its meaning, the ca helps raise questions that are often ignored or side-lined by more traditional approaches. for example, it does not only ask questions such as: what was the learners’ performance in mathematics? what percentage of the learners’ completed grade 12? are there enough resources and qualified teachers? it urges us to also ask, for instance: to what types of opportunities do learners have access? what are learners’ valued functionings? to what extent does the content of the curriculum empower and support learners in actively pursuing these functionings? how free are they to exercise agency in pursuing them? what factors influence the ability of education participants to convert educational resources into capabilities? to effectively deal with such questions, a type of thinking is called for that looks beyond a focus on educational inputs and outputs towards a focus on human wellbeing, when conceptualising and monitoring educational quality. the next section considers an example of what this might mean in practice, in one institution. a capabilities perspective on education quality: implications for foundation phase teacher education programme design jean baxen, yvonne nsubuga & liz johanson botha 101 designing a teacher education programme underpinned by ca principles rhodes university is one of the participants in a research and development consortium2 which seeks to identify and understand teaching and teacher education practices that can raise education quality at fp level in south african schools. an outcome of the programme’s research has been a decision to draw strongly on the ca in designing the rhodes teacher education programme and materials. in the ‘theoretical under-labouring’ of the programme, teacher flourishing and well-being are specified as primary end-goals. developers state that, in striving to achieve the intersection of quality education, epistemological access, identity (being and becoming) and practices, they will draw on the social justice and capabilities approaches, specifically the concepts of capabilities and functionings (ru, 2012). some of the initial thinking of the programme developers is now presented as an example of how the ca can impact on practice. this is done by attempting to line up the six components of ca education quality and the questions presented earlier with initial thinking on the bed (fp). the focus on producing well teachers (ru, 2013) places upfront the focus on the person as an end, rather than a means, moving the programme beyond a narrow pursuit of teacher education outcomes. apart from a course involving observation in a school, the entire first year of the programme focuses on supporting well-being, nourishment and growth for the individual students in the context of the collective, rather than moving straight into subjects relating directly to their future teaching practice. all first-year courses are compulsory, but two have electives within them, enabling students to identify what is of value to them and exercise agency in making choices. a language course gives students the choice of enriching their command of their home language or developing their skills in another national language. the second offers sociology, journalism, anthropology, politics and psychology as options. all of these highlight the students’ context, drawing attention to conversion factors, both in the students’ own lives and in those of possible future learners. the first year also incorporates two foundational courses: understanding the whole child and holistic development of the teacher. these give students the opportunity to identify their valued functionings, and expand their capabilities and their identity in a number of largely self-directed ways. the courses focus on a broader set of capabilities than those conventionally dealt with in te programmes, for example autonomy, creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, informed decision-making, management of new situations (saito, 2003: 29). they give space for developing emotional and spiritual intelligence, as well as capabilities which help them contribute to a peaceful and democratic society, exercise their political rights, perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 102 and participate fully in civil and economic activities. students are also assisted in overcoming obstacles, either individual or sociocultural, which prevent them from achieving their aspirations. it is hoped that student teachers who have experienced such a year’s study will be moved to offer similar kinds of opportunities to their learners. in designing the programme, the development team has identified certain “capabilities and functionings [which] point to what it is that professionals ought to be and do” (walker & maclean, 2013: 14). at present, the following capabilities have been specified for the b.ed. (fp): ‘caring, competent’ (both in educational content and professional knowledge), ‘able to make deliberative decisions’, ‘responsive’, having an ‘understanding of the broader picture’ (cape consortium, 2011: 1). in this instance, one can detect an emphasis on agency (‘decisions’) and awareness of conversion factors (‘the broader picture’). there is no doubt that some of walker and maclean’s (2013: 19) ‘public-good professional capabilities’ such as informed vision, affiliation, resilience, social and collective struggle, emotional reflexivity and integrity will also feature. the development of this programme is still in its infancy, and it remains to be seen exactly how ca principles will be realised as materials are finalised and programme implementation begins. however, the programme does represent a significant attempt to develop a programme based on an alternative view of education quality. conclusion we would argue that the capabilities approach to education and education quality has great potential to enrich and deepen thinking and practice, and the use of this approach by rhodes university has been offered as evidence of this. we contend that the ca’s complexity is a strong point rather than a weak one, even though the framework still needs to be made more ‘user-friendly’, and full operationalisation may be some time in coming. the concepts of ‘capabilities’ and ‘functionings’ broaden the possible scope of educational opportunities and benefits, and transform the existing concept of rights, so that it refers to real opportunities rather than guaranteed entitlements (tikly & barrett, 2009). unlike the other two approaches discussed earlier, it pays careful attention to inhibiting or enabling contextual factors and acknowledges the intricate interdependence of the individual and the social. in the south african context, in particular, the lens of capabilities highlights a crucial role of the foundation phase, that of facilitating the building of capabilities which every citizen needs in order to achieve desired functioning in the world, rather than reinforcing the present limited view that the fp lays a foundation for good performance in the grade 12 examination and beyond. perhaps the ca’s most important strength is that it views persons as ends rather than as means, and is less interested in educational resources and rights in themselves than in what people do with them. a capabilities perspective on education quality: implications for foundation phase teacher education programme design jean baxen, yvonne nsubuga & liz johanson botha 103 endnotes 1. it is currently very popular in economic and development discourses. 2. the nelson mandela metropolitan university (nmmu), rhodes university (ru), walter sisulu university (wsu) and the university of the western cape (uwc) form the cape consortium which has been funded by the eu for a 3-year period (2010-2013) to assist with the development and implementation of the “quality teaching and teacher education research programme” in the eastern and western cape. this programme focuses on three objectives for strengthening the fp in south africa: • research into teaching practices and teacher education practices. • programme design of initial teacher education courses. • materials development for teacher education. (cape consortium, 2010). references alexander, r. 2008. education for all. the quality imperative and the problem of pedagogy. retrieved on 7 june 2012 from http://www.create-rpc.org/pdf_ documents/pta20.pdf. alkire, s. 2005. capability and functioning: definition and justification. retrieved on 18 february 2012 from http://www.capabilityapproach.com/pu. bakhish, p., hoffman, a.m. & van ravens, j. 2004. monitoring efa from a capabilities perspective: a life skills approach to quality education. retrieved on 18 february 2012 from https://www.docs.google.com barrett, a m , chaula-duggan, r., lowe, j., nikel, j. & ukpo, e. 2006. the concept of quality in education: a review of ‘international’ literature on the concept of quality in education. retrieved on 17 october 2013 from http://edqaul.org/ publications/working paper/edqualwp3.pdf cape consortium, the. 2011. quality teaching and teacher education practice: the cape foundation phase research programme, rhodes university. clark, d.a. 2005. the capability approach: its development, critiques and recent advances. retrieved on 17 december 2012 from www.gprg.org. department of basic education (dbe). 2010. education for all country report: south africa 2010. retrieved on 2 february 2012 from www.educ.gov.za. lanzi, d. 2007. capabilities, human capital and education. journal of socioeconomics, 36(3): 424-435. maarman, r. 2009. manifestations of ‘capabilities poverty’ with learners attending informal settlement schools. south african journal of education, 29(3): 317332. mccowan, t. 2011. human rights, capability and the normative basis of education for all. theory and research in education, 9(3): 283-298. nussbaum, m. 2000. women and human development: the capability approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 104 nussbaum, m. 2003. capabilities as fundamental entitlements: sen and social justice. feminist economics, 9(2/3):33-59. otto, h. & ziegler, h. 2006. the capabilities approach in education, social work and society. retrieved on 22 january 2012 from www.socwork.net/sws/article/ view/158/549 pennington, s. 2011. global competitiveness 2011-south africa’s ranking improves. retrieved on 10 july 2012 from http://www.sagoodnews.co.za/newsletter_ archive/global_competitiveness. rhodes university (ru). 2012. b.ed. (foundation phase) programme design. education department, rhodes university. robeyns, i. 2003. sen’s capability approach and gender inequality: selecting relevant capabilities. feminist economics, 9(2/3): 61-91. robeyns, i. 2006. three models of education: rights, capabilities and human capital. theory and research in education, 4(1): 69-84. robeyns, i. 2011. the capability approach. retrieved on 12 july 2012 from http:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/capability-approach/ saito, m. 2003. amartya sen’s capability approach to education: a critical exploration. journal of philosophy of education, 37: 17-33. sen, a.k. 1992. inequality re-examined. oxford: oxford university press. sen, a.k. 1999. development as freedom. oxford: oxford university press. tao, s. 2010. applying the capability approach to school improvement interventions in tanzania. retrieved on 14 december 2011from http://ioe.academia.educ/ sharontao/papers/173394. terzi, l. 2007. capability and education quality: the just distribution of resources to students with disabilities and special education needs. journal of philosophy of education, 41(4): 757-774. tikly, l. 2011. towards a framework for researching the quality of education in lowincome countries. comparative education, 47(1): 1-23. tikly, l. & barrett, a.m. 2009. social justice, capabilities and the quality of education in low-income countries. retrieved on 23 june 2011 from http://edqaul.org/ publications/working paper/edqualwp18.pdf. tikly, l. & barrett, a.m. 2011. social justice, capabilities and the quality of education in low-income countries. international journal of education development, 31(1): 3-14. unesco. 2004. education for all: the quality imperative. efa global monitoring report. paris: unesco. unterhalter, e. 2003. the capabilities approach and gendered education: an examination of south african complexities. theory and research in education, 1(1): 7-27. unterhalter, e., vaughan, r. & walker, m. 2007. the capabilities approach and education. retrieved on 16 february 2012 from www.nottingham.ac.uk/ educationresearchprojects/documents. a capabilities perspective on education quality: implications for foundation phase teacher education programme design jean baxen, yvonne nsubuga & liz johanson botha 105 walker, m. 2003. framing social justice in education: what does the capabilities approach have to offer. british journal of educational studies, 51(2): 168-187. walker, m. 2006. towards a capability-based theory of social justice for education policy-making. journal of education policy, 21(2): 163-185. walker, m. & maclean, m. 2013. operationalising higher education and human development: a capabilities-based ethic for professional education. journal of education, 57: 11-29. wigley, s. & akkoyunlu-wigley, a. 2006. human capabilities versus human capital: gauging the value of education in developing countries. social indicators research, 78(2): 287-304. 128 research article 2021 39(2): 128-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 knowledge and specialism in curricula of professional and sectoral fields of practices in south africa: the case of universities of technology abstract although differentiation and specialism have become hallmarks of the modern economy, the degree and the efficacy of such differentiation, specialisation and the domains of knowledge in curricula offered in universities of technology (uots) persist in the context of the changing nature of jobs and occupations. this article examines the domains of specialist knowledge in curricula of selected professional and sectoral fields offered by universities of technology in south africa. purposive sampling was used to select the fields of practice. these fields were chosen because of differentiated knowledge bases on which these fields draw. the paper argues that the dual-facing interdisciplinary nature of knowledge of professional and sectoral fields of practice offered in uots, relative to their conceptuality, contextuality and professional coherence are central in the curriculum design process to enhance the quality of offerings. keywords: coherence; differentiation and specialism; dual facing; interdisciplinary; regions; professional and sectoral. 1. background and introduction the analysis of policies and practices on differentiation and the domains of knowledge and specialism in curricula of fields of practices intersect the broader global debates of total or partial abolition of the binary between the different institutional types in higher education. these changes are reflective of changing economic conditions of the twentyfirst century through differentiation and diversification that permeated the higher education sector globally (clark, 1983; huisman, 2015; neve, 1996; ng’ethe, subotzky & afeti, 2009; reichert, 2009; rhoades, 1990; van vught, 2007). in south africa, policies and practices on the domain and structure of knowledge of the different institutional author: prof isaac ntshoe1 dr ntsoaki joyce malebo1 affiliation: 1central university of technology, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i2.10 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(2): 128-142 published: 11 june 2021 received: 13 may 2020 accepted: 03 august 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 ntshoe & malebo knowledge and specialism in curricula of professional and sectoral fields 1292021 39(2): 129-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 types are located within the broader context of transformational agenda of the changing higher education landscape in the post-apartheid setting (human science research council, 1996; council on higher education, 2000; department of education [doe], 1997; doe, 2001). one of the features of the transformational policies affecting the higher education landscape in the post-apartheid setting is the creation of a differentiated and diversified single coordinated higher education within the global changing knowledge economies and markets (castells, 1993; che, 2000; department of education, 1997; doe, 2001; badat, 2015). specific contexts of policies on differentiation and diversity are the creation of new qualification structures created by the national qualifications framework (nqf) act 67 of 2008 (doe, 2007; che, 2013) and the context for qualification standards of the nqf level descriptors developed by the south african qualifications authority (saqa) (republic of south africa, 1995). accordingly, the domain and structure of knowledge of curricula of professions and sectoral fields in the uot sub-sector of higher education in this article are analysed within the contexts of specific policy frameworks and practices of differentiated and diversified higher education outlined above. the discussions are predicated on the sociological nature of knowledge (bernstein, 2000), the social realist perspective (muller, 2009; young & muller, 2016) and on differentiated and diversified higher education policies in post-apartheid (badat, 2015; che, 2000; doe, 1997; 2001; department of higher education & training [dhet], 2013). 2. methodology purposeful sampling was used to select curricula of medical laboratory science, radiography, engineering, accounting, business studies, hospitality, retail and tourism offered by uots as a sector to analyse knowledge differentiation and specialisation. these programmes were chosen because first, even though some uots do offer programmes that address specific regional and local needs in line with the mandate of the sector, generally uots have a specific niche and mandate that are distinct from the mandates of other higher education institutional types. in particular, the knowledge of these fields first faces two ways – towards specialist disciplines (which may be one or more disciplines) and towards an occupational and sectoral field of practice. second, the structure of knowledge in the programmes is distinctive with some drawing their knowledge base on “older” regions (bernstein’s term) while some comprise “newer” regions drawing on procedural knowledge codified from practice (wheelahan, 2007; muller, 2009, young & muller, 2016). third, whereas some of the programmes such as engineering, radiography and medical laboratory science have established professional bodies (engineering council of south africa; health professional council respectively), hospitality, retail, business studies and tourism have somewhat less established professional bodies. themes and issues derived from literature on sociology of knowledge, policies and frameworks on institutional differentiation and specialisation are: • domains of knowledge in the fields of professional and sectoral fields of practice of uots in south africa; • curriculum content and sequencing; http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 1302021 39(2): 130-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 • roles of professional bodies and induction into the profession; and • conceptual, contextual and professional/occupational coherence of curricula of fields of practice. 3. differentiated and diversified higher education differentiation and diversity in the higher education sector globally signal a deviation from the rigid binary lines between a university and the other institutional types, including but not limited to polytechnics, technical vocational education and training (tvet), universities of applied sciences and the erstwhile technikon sector in south africa. differentiation and diversification have varied from rigid differentiation between university sector and other institutions, to less rigid differentiation of roles and functions of the different institutions. globally, differentiation has assumed different definitions and descriptions. differentiation could be described as emergence of new entities where social units change into two or more units as proposed by smeler (1959, as paraphrased by van vaught, 2007). furthermore, differentiation resulted in new functions emerging in a system where institutions in the system are assigned different roles and functions including the development of the graduate schools that are differentiated from undergraduate colleges, research-based institutions differentiated from teaching institutions and from other tvet and universities of technology or universities of applied sciences (van vaught, 2007:7). thus, differentiation forms part of the increasing complexity of higher education systems that has “an outcome of three forces comprising a variety of the student population, the development of the labour market for graduates and the development of new disciplines” (van vaught, 2007:7). binary policies through which institutions have been rigidly differentiated in terms of their purposes in different contexts are akin to conceptions of differentiation of the division of labour in economic production through specialisation. for example, the binary policy of norwegian higher education epitomised an implicit division of labour, because while one comprehensive law governed the system, there was explicit division of labour between research-based universities and other institutional types (reichert, 2009). in contrast, there has been a growing move towards the blurring of the differences and boundaries between institutions. this process involves horizontal differentiation involving the expansion of multiand transdisciplinary programmes permitting students to take a variety of subjects across disciplines on the one hand, and vertical differentiation where colleges of advanced technology offer university programmes (powell & solga, 2010; young, 2012). the advent of institutional differentiation has been a contested issue in higher education in south africa because of the historical inequalities and inequities in the higher education sector and the increasing demands for massification, globalisation and the knowledge economy (human sciences research council [hsrc], 1996). the assumption underpinning differentiation is that the acquisition and application of novel knowledge are dependent on continuous technological improvement and innovation, driven by the training capacity of higher education as well as the needs of industry and social reconstruction (doe, 1997). more importantly, there has been and still is some disagreement regarding the form that institutional differentiation was and is taking, with arguments in support of differentiation based on institutional types and institutional missions and programmes. the other view has been the differentiated institutional landscape in terms of institutional identities, “missions, social http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 ntshoe & malebo knowledge and specialism in curricula of professional and sectoral fields 1312021 39(2): 131-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 and educational roles, academic qualification and programme mixes, institutional cultures and organisational forms and structures and practices of all institutions” (badat, 2015:86–87). however, the ongoing discussions on institutional differentiation have been guided by the notion of purposeful differentiation proposed in the white paper (doe, 1997) that recommends differentiation of the university sector in terms of institutional missions (department of higher education and training [dhet], 2014). this proposal has been justified in order to meet a variety of social, economic and educational student and employer needs (dhet, 2014). significantly, discussions on the probable shapes of institutional differentiation dates back to the policy of differentiation and diversity in higher education initially proposed by the council for higher education (che, 2000) and endorsed by the national plan on higher education (nphe) (doe, 2001). while the nphe section 421, 50 endorsed the che’s differentiation of social and educational mandates of institutions, it did not however support wholesale the che’s proposal of differentiation and “diversity achieved through structural differentiation between different institutional types based on a distinction between teaching and research institutions” (doe, 2001:51). the reservation has been on the potential danger of “introducing some elements of rigidity that would scupper institutions from capitalising on their strengths and reacting to needs of social, economic needs, labour market needs, in a changing regional, national and global context” (ibid:51). rather, institutional differentiation is currently predicated on a “recognition that higher education has to fulfil many functions and that no single institution can serve all of society’s needs” (dhet, 2014:82). in terms of this recognition, institutions have been encouraged to establish their own distinctive features, their unique visions and mission statements that distinguish them from other institutions in the higher education sector (dhet 2014).the policy makes opportunities for specialisation in the higher education sector possible to “enhance excellence and ensure the greatest returns on the use of limited resources” (dhet, 2014:87). specifically, the policy of purposeful differentiation saw the creation of a new university type, uots, the purpose of which was to prepare graduates, technologists and technicians for specific occupations and specific fields of practice (che, 2006). this has been captured in the higher education qualifications framework (heqf) (doe, 2007) that pioneered knowledge types generated by the universities as distinct from those by universities of technology (doe, 2010). according to this classification, uots would offer mainly knowledge for different occupations and the applied side of knowledge and qualifications, while universities would advance disciplines predominantly as sources of knowledge and therefore award researchbased qualifications (doe, 2007). in terms of this proposal, distinction is made between curricula and qualifications that aim to produce disciplinary knowledge and curricula and qualifications that produce applied knowledge and production of professional technologists for specific occupations demanded in the workplace (doe, 2007; muller, 2009). 4. theoretical and conceptual frameworks differentiation and specialisation common in social sciences have become hallmark of social and economic development globally. in particular, the first study of differentiation is of course durkheim’s classic the division of labour in society (1893). extending smith’s theorem, durkheim (1983) argues that implicitly, all societies reflect some division of labour that positively correlates with societal advancement because it increases as a society progresses (young, 2012). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 1322021 39(2): 132-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 similarly, conversations about institutional differentiation and specialisation in terms of which institutions are assigned specific mandates, roles and functions in south africa and elsewhere are akin to differentiation and specialisation that characterised division of labour in industry (ntshoe, 2014). this description of differentiated institutional roles and functions could be better explained in terms of bernstein’s knowledge differentiation that built on the work of emile durkheim (1983). within this frame, a difference is made between the sacred and profane areas of esoteric knowledge, which provides a useful starting point in analysing knowledge of professional fields. inside this context, two forms of disciplinary organisation, termed singulars and regions, are identified (bernstein, 2000), to advance the idea of the nature of knowledge of fields of practices offered by uots as a starting point in the curriculum design process. singulars refer to knowledge structures that are specialised into discrete discourse within their unique intellectual fields and practices such as physics, chemistry and history, which therefore are the bearers of knowledge (bernstein, 1996). regions emerge from a process of “recontextualisation” (bernstein’s, 2000 term), describing the process of de-locating a discipline such as physics from its original source and relocating it in an educational setting as a region called physical science. regions denote the process of selection of the disciplines (and parts of disciplines) and how they are applied to particular fields of practice (bernstein, 2000). regions border academic disciplines (singulars) and fields of practice preparing students for specific occupation such as medicine (bernstein, 2000). as fields or practice, regions are interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary and dual facing, pointing inwardly towards underpinning disciplines and outwardly to the world of practice. inherent in the dual-facing nature of professional knowledge is that it is both theoretical and practical, purposive and contextual (bernstein, 2000). young and muller (2016) on the other hand argue that because professional practice is always in a context with a purpose outside itself, professional knowledge practice always relates to specific occupational sectors such as radiography, engineering technology, retail and human resources and therefore dissimilar to the knowledge of traditional disciplines. thus, the knowledge of the fourth generation (newer) regions is more long-winded, less structured, controlled, sometime ambiguous and often contradictory about requirements of the profession to the academy (muller, 2009). bernstein differentiates between the “traditional” regions such as engineering, medicine and architecture and the “new” (fourth generation) regions (muller, 2009) including “cognitive science, management, business studies, communication and media” (bernstein, 2000:) and hospitality and tourism in the human resource curriculum of universities (muller, 2009; wheelahan, 2007: young & muller, 2016). ‘older’ regions have a stronger orientation to knowledge than do the ‘newer’ regions, in part because the communities of practice underpinning the ‘newer’ regions are more diffuse” (wheelahan, 2007:54). furthermore, fourth generation “regions are generally less organised, more ambiguous, often with contradictory hints about professional requirements to the academy” (muller, 2009:214). additionally, “traditional” professions such as medicine and law, have established professional identity for their professionals embracing rigorous initiation into the “principles of the profession, standards, professional integrity, judgement and loyalty” (beck & young, 2005:188). alongside the differences of “traditional” and “newer” regions, curriculum design policy and practice of higher education, including those of uots in south africa, are fundamentally shaped by generic modes including outcomes, emphasis on soft skills, core skills, graduate attributes http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 ntshoe & malebo knowledge and specialism in curricula of professional and sectoral fields 1332021 39(2): 133-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 and employability skills. this perspective distinguishes the different units of competence, the outcome, into critical cross-field and specific outcomes. specific outcomes involve skills that a graduate must be able to do and these pertain to specific levels (unit standards), specific learning areas and specific learning programmes (muller, 2009). critical outcomes, on the other hand, refer to generic transdisciplinary competencies that underlie all integrative skills (ibid). in particular, critical outcomes, now replaced by graduate attributes, have recently also influenced curriculum design in higher education in traditional universities and uots. these attributes underscore generic skills (bennett, dunne & carré, 1999), transferable skills, soft skills or key skills (mayer, 1992), core skills and employability skills (preece, 1999). in the south african context, emphasis on an outcomes-based approach, originally intended to reform school education, has shifted somewhat to graduate attributes in curriculum design in higher education (allais, 2003). another theoretical dimension in the conversations about the structure of knowledge is social and real aspects of knowledge. building on the concept of structure of knowledge, young (2008) draws on social realist perspectives, arguing that knowledge has both social and real dimensions: “social because it recognizes the role of human agents in the production of knowledge, and realist in that it is context independent” (young, 2008:12). viewed from this perspective: social realist dimension supersedes ‘constructivism’ and therefore signals a shift from viewing knowledge in terms of construction – especially when this implies that we can construct the world as we see it, free of the consequences of how the world will react back on that construction. it signals a shift from viewing knowledge in terms of construction. (maton & moore, 2010:6) social realism underscores the significance of recognising the nature of knowledge and knowledge differentiation in the curriculum design process and how this knowledge differentiation influences educational experiences and results (maton & moore, 2010; young, 2009). this perspective creates a suitable framework to appreciate how some knowledge leans more towards specialisation while other knowledge leans more towards divergence (young & muller, 2010). specialisation raises questions about sequence, pace and hierarchical organisation, while divergence relates to choice in terms of what to include in the curriculum or the absence of any objective criteria at all as another extreme (young & muller, 2010). lastly, three useful terms (yet generally unnuanced within the structure of knowledge framework when analysing the domains of knowledge into specific disciplinary areas in professional and sectoral fields of practice and the quality of programmes and curricula in higher education) are conceptual, contextual and professional or occupational coherence. muller observes that conceptual coherence is similar to what parry (2007) portrays as the fundamentals of the discipline (muller, 2009). similarly, conceptual coherence is analogous to what merton (1973) describes as high codification, presuming a ladder of constructs and theoretical difficulty. conceptual coherence portrays processes of “selection, sequence and pacing of the discipline-based knowledge that is an integral component of a degree and assumes a ladder of extraction and conceptual complexity” (muller, 2009:216). contextual coherence, on the other hand, denotes the type of coherence appropriate to the region, illustrating in the curricula of uots the extent to which the degree programmes consider the context that students face when they go on work integrated learning (wil) and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 1342021 39(2): 134-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 what they encounter in the workplace. thus, contextual coherence describes “curricula that are segmentally connected where each segment is adequate to a context and sufficient to the purpose” (muller, 2009:217). professional coherence/workplace describes the extent to which theory informs practice. in this regard, emphasis is placed on professional coherence, where occupations of a particular field depend on specialist knowledge that is regulated by professional councils. conversely, less emphasis will be placed on disciplinary knowledge in occupations with no autonomous professional association or council (muller, 2009). notably, although conceptual and contextual coherence are critical in the curricula of professional and sectoral fields of practice, more conceptuality will be more critical where a curriculum has rigid and formal entry requirements and rigid curriculum specifications and requirements for wil. contextuality on the other hand will be more prominent where there is less emphasis on entry requirements to enter a programme and where apprenticeship, on the job practise and learning by doing are underscored (young, 2006; muller, 2009). the third dimension in the discussion of coherence is professional/occupational coherence denoting the extent to which professional bodies lay down the criteria for specific professions. as in the case of conceptual and contextual dimensions, occupational coherence is likely to be more prominent where such occupations depend on specialist knowledge certified by a professional body/council/association that prescribe the requirements for professional status. conversely, occupations that rely largely on procedural knowledge collated from practice are less likely to have autonomous professional bodies (young, 2011). however, muller warns of the temptation to attribute conceptual coherence to fields of sciences and contextual coherence to humanities, arguing that “conceptual denotes a quality analogous to verticality (from ‘hard’ to ‘soft’ in becher’s [1989] terms); contextual dimension involves ensuring quality (from ‘pure’ to ‘applied’ in becher’s terms)” (muller, 2009: 217). 5. discussions and implications for policy and practice 5.1 distinctiveness of domains of knowledge in curricula of uots despite some overlaps between uots and other university types in producing and transmitting specialist knowledge, the distinctive feature of medical laboratory science, radiography, engineering, accounting, business studies, hospitality, retail and tourism offered in uots face towards the field of practice of particular occupations or sectors, not just their knowledge base. furthermore, what distinguishes the curriculum of a university of technology is that its degrees are based on applied specialist knowledge related to the range of occupations offered by different faculties. in this paper, a social realist approach has been employed as it provides a fresh angle acknowledging the sociological nature of knowledge of professional and sectoral fields of practice. the dual-facing nature of knowledge in the curricula of uots has recently generated some debates in the academic circle. this raises curriculum issues that are not faced by those teaching academic degrees in traditional universities – which only have one focus – the organisation of knowledge itself. regarding curriculum and pedagogy of the selected programmes above, a distinction between official regulative field (orf) and pedagogic regulative discourses (prd) (bernsteinian terms) is critical. the orf includes the “specialised departments and sub-agencies of the state and local educational authorities together with their research and system of inspectors” (bernstein, 1990:192). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 ntshoe & malebo knowledge and specialism in curricula of professional and sectoral fields 1352021 39(2): 135-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 accordingly, academics designing curricula of the selected professional and sectoral fields of practice need to able to decode “official regulative discourses” referring to the basic concepts, theories, principles, rules and values of a discipline. similarly, such academics should be able to decipher “pedagogic regulative discourses” of their respective disciplines involving sound knowledge and curriculum choices, sequencing, ways of transmitting subject knowledge, enacting the curriculum and how learning is assessed (bernstein, 2000). following the comparison between the division of domains of knowledge in disciplines of traditional regions and specific disciplinary specialist knowledge of areas in professional and sectoral fields of practice, some observations are made. first, the curriculum of medical laboratory science, engineering, radiography, tourism and hospitality and business studies offered by uots are dual facing towards specialist disciplines and towards field of practice. thus, their curricula prepare students for specific careers as technologists in specific professions and sectors and not general occupations. second, even though the domain of knowledge of medical laboratory science, engineering, radiography, tourism and hospitality and business studies is distinct from the domains of knowledge in universities, the knowledge of medical laboratory science and radiography tend to draw on “older” regions including medicine and specifically, anatomy, pathophysiology and physiology. therefore, the curricula of these fields tend to display a strong disciplinary knowledge base and gravitate more to strong “paradigmicity” (muller, 2009:210), more rigidly structured with very clear conditions for specific professions. conversely, the knowledge domain of the fourth generation “region”, retail, business studies, hospitality and tourism tend to have a weaker disciplinary knowledge. their knowledge is less structured and controlled and more equivocal and often ambiguous about requirements of the profession. furthermore, the fields of practice in medical laboratory science, radiography, engineering, accounting, business studies, hospitality, retail and tourism in uots in south africa are interdisciplinary regions depicting the process of selection of the disciplines (and parts of disciplines) and how they are applied to particular fields of practice. these regions draw on both “older” and “newer” regions as recognised by the participants when describing curricula and content of their fields. the notion of regions ensures that decisions on what should be included in curricula of fields of practice are not made arbitrarily but are informed rather by the nature of knowledge of original disciplines from which they are derived. the inward-looking, outward-facing nature of knowledge in curricula ensures exposure of technologists to specialised disciplinary knowledge of radiography, medical laboratory science, engineering, hospitality and tourism on the one hand, and to an outward-looking dimension by endowing students with knowledge essential for specific careers in partnership with professional bodies that in the main discharge regulatory roles and accreditation. one of the issues in these debates has been the seeming conflation of theoretical knowledge and generic modes including core skills, competence and outcomes in the curricula of the fields of practice offered in uots. however, this conflation is specifically common but understandable in the curriculum design process of uots whose curriculum knowledge still reflects the mandate and roles of former technikons in terms of the knowledge they produce. it is argued further that generic pedagogical modes such as critical cross-field outcomes and other soft skills that characterise curriculum design in south africa have some limitations. these modes are in some cases not only conflated with theoretical knowledge of fields, but http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 1362021 39(2): 136-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 also tend to replace knowledge with the competence and skills that graduates require to be able to function in the workplace upon completion of their studies. 5.2 curriculum content and careers in selected fields the curriculum content of uots is interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary and intentionally designed to prepare students for particular professions and occupations. the content therefore targets what students should know and what they should be able to do in specific professions and sectors. for example, the curriculum content and knowledge of radiography programmes exposes students to physiology, chemistry, physics, radiation therapy, nuclear medicine and ultrasound technology. medical laboratory science on the other hand, exposes students to pharmacology, virology, pathophysiology, anatomy and physiology, chemical pathology, cellular pathology, haematology and microbiology. the common denominator in the content of the two programmes is that they both draw on medicine as one of the “older” regions and both deal with humans. engineering curriculum content on the other hand is made up of mathematics, science, core engineering modules, computer applications, communication and branch-specific engineering and practical activities. this content is equally interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary but deals with materials rather than humans. while theoretical knowledge is indispensable in the content of business studies, hospitality and tourism, emphasis is on how students would behave when they meet customers and clients in the different careers. careers in hospitality include ownership and management of hotels, front offices, banqueting, food and beverage outlets, restaurants, guesthouses and coffee shops. thus, given the differentiated and specialised applied knowledge of the different fields of practice however, the content of curricula of knowledge of radiography, medical laboratory science and engineering are generally more rigidly structured, selected, sequenced and paced compared with the content of business studies, hospitality, retail and tourism. this is because the domains of knowledge of radiography and medical laboratory science that draw on traditional regions lean more to strong disciplinary knowledge and strong “paradigmicity” (see muller, 2009). similarly, pedagogy of electrical engineering is strongly sequenced, ensuring that such students understand what comes before in order to understand what comes after. conversely, the content and curricula of “fourth” generation technology comprising business studies, hospitality, retail and tourism regions are likely to be less sequenced and paced. thus, the pedagogic regulative discourses of these fields of practice will therefore be very different in terms of curriculum choices, sequencing and ways of transmitting subject knowledge. professional knowledge in the fields is selected and sequenced by lecturers and aligned with the skills students need to develop during work placement for wil. 5.3 the role of professional bodies and induction into profession drawing on elements of medicine, namely anatomy, pathophysiology, physiology as a traditional region, the domains of knowledge in curricula and the training of medical laboratory science and radiography are strictly regulated by the health professional council of south africa (hpcsa). medical laboratory science students are also expected to write the board examination administered by the society of medical laboratory technologists of south africa (smltsa). accordingly, the smltsa (representing the profession), hpcsa, uots (curriculum practices from previous technikons) all make inputs into curricula. this is true of the current recurriculation process from national diploma and btech, to a professional http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 ntshoe & malebo knowledge and specialism in curricula of professional and sectoral fields 1372021 39(2): 137-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 degree in medical laboratory sciences. wheelahan (2007) observes that fields whose domain of knowledge draw from “older” regions, display sound procedures of inner allegiance in professional character because of the historical relations between the professions and their knowledge bases (the singulars). stress is also placed on collegiate autonomy, collegiate control over training, and admission to the profession, through defining the boundaries of their knowledge base (wheelahan, 2007:54). furthermore, students specialising in radiography and medical laboratory science drawing largely on regions of medicine including anatomy, are usually inducted into professional identity by exposing them to real clinical practice environments in hospitals under the mentorship of qualified practitioners, not only to experience the theory they have learnt, but also to expose them to the values, ethics, integrity and professional standards expected of them when they complete their studies. the introduction of radiography students to the real clinical environment introduces them to theoretical aspects of professional practice and ethics as well as radiation protection. they also undertake guided tours of radiology practices where they will be placed for the workplace learning part of wil. engineering has forms of specialised knowledge that have a long history (e.g. electrical engineering) and is thus based on well-established bodies of knowledge. more importantly, the professional curricula of engineering rely on the specialist professional communities (e.g. ecsa) to decide what to include in curricula. external regulators ensure that the programmes are compatible with others, nationally and internationally. conversely, the fourth-generation regions such as business studies, hospitality, tourism and retail have generally less developed professional bodies with weak historical links between the professions they serve and somewhat less rigid entrance requirements. however, the south african institute of chartered accountant (saica) is probably the established professional body that dictates what core skills and knowledge are to be covered in the subject matter for students to be accepted into the accounting professions as technologists. recently also, there has been some attempts to establish a professional body to develop guidelines governing occupations in business studies including hospitality, tourism and retail. however, this body is largely semi-professional in that programmes such as hospitality, tourism and retail for example do not have the kind of direct links with professional bodies compared to professions in radiography, medical laboratory science and accounting. 5.4 conceptual, contextual and professional coherence in curricula of fields of practice conceptual and contextual coherence are two terms currently inadequately nuanced when discussing the domains of knowledge of specialist disciplines of professional and sectoral fields of practice offered in uots especially in relation to quality and relevance of such programmes. despite the importance of conceptual and contextual coherence in the curricula of professional and sectoral fields, these terms are generally underdeveloped and seldom if ever taken into account when analysing the curricula of professional and sectoral fields of practice. the seeming inadequate account of conceptual and contextual/occupational coherence in curricula of professional and sectoral fields includes first, as part of pedagogic regulative discourse when designing curricula of professional and sectoral fields, conceptual coherence, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 1382021 39(2): 138-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 which ensures the selection, sequence and pacing of the discipline-based knowledge in a particular region offered in uots (cf. muller, 2009). however, contextual coherence of curricula of business studies on the other hand ensure that the degree programmes take into account the context that students will encounter in the workplace (muller, 2009). despite the distinction above, conceptual and contextual coherence are critical in enhancing the quality of curricula of professional and sectoral practice to ensure sufficient exposure of graduates to specialist disciplines, while ensuring that such curricula are relevant to the context. however, conceptuality and contextuality need to be understood in relative terms. accordingly, relative conceptuality will be more prominent in the curricula of radiography and medical laboratory science as their curricula are more structured, more formal and their entry requirements more rigid. conversely relative contextuality will be applicable in curricula of hospitality, tourism, retail and business studies whose curricula are less formal, have less rigid entry requirement and where prominence is largely given to on the job training and learning by doing. as in the case of conceptual and contextual dimensions, occupational coherence is likely to be more prominent in radiography, medical laboratory science, engineering and accounting where such occupations depend on specialist knowledge certified by a professional body such as the hpcsa, ecsa and saica that prescribe the requirements to be a professional. conversely, occupations in business studies, hospitality, retail and tourism that rely mostly on procedural knowledge collated from practice are less likely to have autonomous “professional” bodies (young, 2011). 6. conclusion we argue that policies and practices on differentiation and specialisation in higher education institutions globally is analogous to the division of labour in industry as coined by adam smith and built on by durkheim. in terms of this analogy, institutions are differentiated in terms of roles and functions to distribute different types of knowledge and skills for diverse professions and occupations. the global trend towards partial or total abolition of the binary between the different institutional types was a response to economic conditions of the twenty-first century. in south africa, ongoing differentiation and specialisation are an integral part of the transformational agenda of creating a differentiated and diversified single coordinated higher education system that responds to the historical inequities in the country, in order to respond to the changing global economies and markets. accordingly, in comparison with other trends elsewhere, institutional differentiation in south africa is described as purposefully governed by a number of legislations, policy regimes and frameworks in the post-apartheid setting. thus, our paper locates the analysis of domains of knowledge differentiation and specialisation of curricula of the selected professional and sectoral fields of practice within the broader institutional differentiation in terms of institutional identities and cultures, missions, qualifications offered and programme mixes. we argue that social realist theory and recontextualisation of regions from original disciplines to fields of practice in universities ensures that knowledge in curricula is not selected arbitrarily but with due consideration of the relevant disciplines on which the regions draw. these frameworks provide new lenses to appreciate the distinctive features of the curricula of radiography, medical laboratory science, engineering, retail, business studies, hospitality and tourism offered by uots in south africa. in particular, bernsteinian work on the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 ntshoe & malebo knowledge and specialism in curricula of professional and sectoral fields 1392021 39(2): 139-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.10 relationship between singulars and regions as well as the inherent interdisciplinary regions of fields of professional and sectoral fields of practice and especially the implications for curriculum design, selection of the disciplines or, parts of disciplines and their application in particular fields, are useful in the discourses of curriculum design. we argue that the dual-facing nature of knowledge in the curriculum of fields of practice offered by uots is a useful concept to differentiate knowledge types and mandates of the latter sector from knowledge and mandates of traditional universities. this assumption enhances the relevance and quality of curricula of the fields of practice by ensuring that knowledge selected advances knowledge of specific disciplines on the one hand, while preparing technologists and technicians to do specific tasks and solve problems and challenges in specific occupations. we conclude that the curricula of the fields of medical laboratory science, radiography and engineering exhibit deep disciplinary knowledge bases and drift more to intense “paradigmicity” and to more inflexible curricular design with well-defined conditions for specific professions. in contrast, curricula of the fields of retail, business studies, hospitality and tourism tend to be less defined, organised and ambivalent about the requirements of professions. furthermore, students specialising in radiography, medical laboratory science, engineering and accounting that have established professional bodies are necessarily inducted into professional identity, including values, ethics, integrity and professional standards expected of them on completion of their studies. this is more so in the case of radiography and medical laboratory science as they deal with humans. lastly, despite their strong and weak knowledge bases respectively, the quality of curricula of fields study offered in uots in south africa needs to be ascertained to the extent to which they guarantee relative conceptuality, contextuality and professional coherences. 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(bourdieu 2007: 1). this is a complex question with no clear-cut answer. on the one hand, bourdieu argues that all ‘truths’ and knowledge are located in specific historical and spatial conditions, and he calls on marxist philosophers to pay attention to ‘the history and historicity of the concepts that we use to think about history’ (bourdieu 1990:17) and to ‘historicisation of their concepts or their theoretical inheritance’ (bourdieu 1990:16). on the other hand, bourdieu believes in the possibility of the social scientist producing truths ‘if he fulfils the demands of the field’ (bourdieu 2008:116). in his theory and practice of research bourdieu provides a range of ways to fulfil the demands of the field. this article explores aspects of pierre bourdieu’s theory of social science research practice and relates each to enhancing validity when researching the ‘other’. the relational way of thinking, a key attribute of bourdieu’s theory, entails both an epistemology and a methodology. epistemologically, a relational approach requires researchers to grasp the object of their research in its interrelation across subjective dispositions and objective conditions. methodologically, a relational method requires the systematic and multi-stepped investigation of the field of power in which the object of research lies. the object of research ought to be constructed as a theoretical problematic rather than as ‘given’ or on the basis of common sense. while reflexivity as relating to the researcher has been much written about epistemic reflexivity is also advocated (bourdieu, 2003: 281). bourdieu ‘turns the tools of science back onto science itself’ with the spotlight on the scientist and the scientific habitus necessary to fulfil the demands of science. this paper arises from the experience of teaching research methodology and methods courses and of engaging in research in a faculty of education in a researchintensive university. the challenge that researchers face range from the banal to the more complex. a hurdle for researchers of ‘others’ and research in general is formulating the research problem, deriving the research question/s and constructing the object of research in ways that are valid. there is a tendency often to construct the object of the research in common-sense terms that may include stereotypical ways of thinking of the ‘other’. then the uncritical deployment of dominant theories and intellectual orthodoxies might obscure empirical realities of the ‘other’. often, the spatial context and background of the study is conflated with its theoretical context, leading to weaker understanding and justification of claims made on the basis of scientific authorities in the field. the question that is most vexing is the epistemological assumptions that underpin selected methods. this might be due to research method courses that pay cursory attention to relating research methods to the epistemological and ontological assumptions which inform them. there is difficulty in shifting to a reflexive way of thinking whichis essential in research. the more complex skills such as ‘thinking relationally’ and reflexively to be able to produce more valid accounts of the ‘other’ are much more difficult to achieve. the purpose of this article is to highlight aspects of bourdieu’s theory and practice perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 108 of research that provide guidance or tools to think about the above difficulties. the paper draws on bourdieu’s original works as well as secondary publications on bourdieu and argues that bourdieu’s theory of research practice provides invaluable insights for enhancing validity when researching the ‘other’. a relational way of thinking bourdieu’s relational way of thinking that requires a ‘total science’ approach includes the analysis of the research problem within the totality of social structures within which it lies. thus, according to mauss cited by wacquant (2007: 7), ‘total social facts are facts that set into motion in some cases the totality of society and its institutions ...and in others a very large number of institutions...’.while the concept is useful for the need to ‘shed narrow, rigidly compartmentalised observational approaches’ it ‘can become dangerous when it fosters a kind of loose holism’ (maus, ibid) in guise of a relational approach. loose holism could be checked by the rigorous construction of the object of research.the task of the researcher is ‘to uncover the … structures of the various social worlds’ and the ‘mechanisms which tend to ensure their reproduction or their transformation’ (bourdieu, ) cited by wacquant (2007: 7). wacquant (2007: 7) explains that these structures ‘exist twice’ in the ‘objectivity of the first order’ and ‘the objectivity of the second order’. the objectivity of the first order refers to the ‘distribution of material resources and means of appropriation of socially scarce goods and values’ (iibid.). the objectivity of the second order refers to systems of classifications, the mental structures and bodily schemata that inform practical activities – conduct, thoughts, feelings and judgments of social agents’ (ibid.). relating existing practices and dispositions to the objective social structures that shape them will enable more valid explanations for them. a relational epistemology and a double focus analytic lens which complements each reading are necessary to develop more truthful accounts. a relational epistemology across the epistemological dichotomy of objectivism and subjectivism would enhance the validity of research accounts of the ‘other’ as it would enable relating perceptions, representations and actions of social agents to the objective conditions that generate them. bourdieu argues that objectivism and subjectivism offer oneside of an epistemology necessary to understand the social world(grenfell, 2009). thus bourdieu says: the knowledge we shall call phenomenological…sets out to make explicit the truth of the primary experience of the social world…the knowledge we shall term objectivist…constructs the objective relations…which structure practice and representations of practice (bourdieu, 1977:3). objectivism attempts to explain the social world by bracketing individual experience and subjectivity and focusing on the objective conditions which structure practice. it sees social phenomena as things and ignores that they are objects of cognition. subjectivism represents a form of knowledge about the social world based on the primary experience and perceptions of individuals. from this side of the enhancing validity when researching the ‘other’: insights from pierre bourdieu’s theory of social science research practice devika naidoo 109 epistemological spectrum, the social world might be reduced to the representations that agents make of it. thus, subjectivist theories are based on what participants perceive or think about the social phenomenon being investigated and not how they really are while objectivism fails to recognise that social reality is, to some extent, shaped by the conceptions and representations of individuals. a foundational principle of bourdieu’s sociology(wacquant: 2007, 7) is the dialectic of social and mental structures: there exists a correspondence between social structures and mental structures, between the objective dimensions of the social world and the principles ...that agents apply to it. applying wacquant’s (2007: 12) elucidation of bourdieus theory of practice to researching the ‘other’, the social analyst ‘must elucidate the perceptual and evaluative schemata that agents invest in their everyday life. the question is: where do they come from and how do they relate to the external structures of society? (wacquant, 2007: 12). a relational epistemology requires participants experiences, representations and practices to be related to the objective social and economic conditions that shape them. a one-sided epistemology might perpetuate myths about innate ability and natural causes for participants representations and actions rather than external social and economic structures. bourdieu advocated a relational approach that would transcend conceptual dichotomies. he sought to develop useful concepts that would enable a relational form of analysis. in this regard, his key relational thinking tools, habitus and field designate bundles of relations (wacquant 2007: 16). one of his key relational thinking tools, habitus refers to social actors conventional way of thinking, feeling, acting, being and making sense. bourdieu analyses the habitus as arising from both conditioning and construction: on one side it is a relation of conditioning: the field structures the habitus… on the other side, it is a relation of knowledge or cognitive construction. habitus contributes to constituting the field as a meaningful world (bourdieu &wacquant 1992a: 127) the analytical significance of the concept of ‘habitus’ is that it relates the dichotomy of structure and agency. since the habitus is a product of both field structures and of cognitive construction, investigating the individual agent’s habitus requires that both aspects be included and related in its analysis. this kind of relational investigation is achievable through a relational methodology that includes an analysis of capital positions and relations in the field as well as the habitus of participants in the field. bourdieu suggested three steps in the investigation of the research object (bourdieu & wacquant, 1992): first,‘analyse the position of the field vis-à-vis the field of power’; secondly, ‘map out the objective structures of relations between the positions occupied by the social agents and institutions in the field’ or capital relations in the field; and, thirdly, analyse the habitus of social agents, the different systems of dispositions they have acquired by internalizing…economic and perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 110 social conditions...’(bourdieu &wacquant, 1992: 104). with reference to the first, it is necessary to analyse the field that forms the context of the object of research in relation to the field of power (both social and intellectual). this includes locating the object of research in its local, national, and international field and interrogating the ways in which ‘previous knowledge about the object has been generated, by whom, and whose interest was served by that knowledge’(thomson, 2008: 67). a relational rather than an essentialist way of thinking is privileged. an essentialist way of thinking ‘is inclined to treat the activities and preferences specific to “other” individuals or groups in society at a certain moment as if they were substantial properties, inscribed once and for all in a sort of biological or cultural essence’ (bourdieu, 1998:4). for example, racism is based on stigmatising other races ‘by imprisoning them in a negative essence’ (bourdieu, 1990: 28). even taste that appears to be a personal attribute is according to bourdieu socially constructed and relational. thus,wacquant (2007: 11) advises that,firstly, the social scientist must ‘…construct the objective structures (positions)...the distribution of ...resources that define the external constraints bearing on interactions and representations’ and,secondly, ‘introduce the immediate lived experience of agents in order to explicate the categories of perception and appreciation (dispositions) that structure their action from inside’ (wacquant, 2007: 11). the relational approach requires that the relationship between subjective representations and practices and the objective external conditions that shape it be researched so as to uncover the underlying generating mechanisms that structure representations, perceptions and actions of participants. in the south african context, researchers often focus on teachers’ perceptions of educational policy changes or on the implementation of such policies in different socio-economic school contexts. while the local context of the school is outlined, the relationship between the context and the perceptions and practices of participants is often not established. relating the perceptions and practices to each other and to the social structures, which are operative in the specific context and which,in turn, are related to historical and political structures would enhance validity of such accounts. the objective conditions are often ignored when researching the perceptions and subjectivities of the ‘other’, with profound ethical and representational consequences. a consequence of ignoring the objective social conditions that shape representations, actions and perceptions elides an understanding of a sociological explanation for them the views and practices of the ‘other’might then be seen as arising from natural sources rather than the social conditions and ‘lack of cultural gifts’ (bourdieu, 1974) that characterise them. representing the ‘other’ of relevance to enhancing validity when researching the other in bourdieu’s work is his advice to represent the plural or multiple nature of social practices and enhancing validity when researching the ‘other’: insights from pierre bourdieu’s theory of social science research practice devika naidoo 111 phenomena. bourdieu (1990: 20) developed the theory of fields which according to him could be called: ‘the plurality of worlds’ based on a ‘plurality of logics corresponding to different worlds, that is, to different fields as places in which different kinds of common sense, different commonplace ideas and different systems of topics, all irreducible to each other, are constructed’ (1990:20). thus, bourdieu (2002: 3) encourages researchers to ‘work with the multiple perspectives that correspond to the multiplicity of coexisting, and sometimes directly competing, points of view’. bourdieu’s epistemological position of the plurality of worlds, fields and accounts enables the ‘other’ to be more validly represented. of great significance when researching the ‘other’ is bourdieu’s deeply humanistic relation to research participants, characterised by an attitude of compassion, respect and empathy, but not patronising, nor prejudicial. this is evident in his relation and representation of the kabyle peasants (the other) that arose from his perception and experience with bearn peasants (his own kind). neither a ‘cavalier point of view’ nor an attitude of ‘superiority’ is appropriate. thus he says: it is clear that all this [field theory] was rooted in a particular social experience: a relationship, which was not experienced as either natural or self-evident, with the theoretical position. this difficulty in adopting a cavalier point of view, from a position of superiority, on kabyle peasants, their marriage or their rituals, doubtless stemmed from the fact that i had known very similar peasants, who had similar ways of talking about honour and shame, etc., and that i could sense the artificiality both of the vision that i sometimes had by observing things from a strictly objectivist point of view – and indeed of the vision informants proposed to me when, in their concern to play the game, to be equal to the situation created by theoretical questioning, they turned themselves into spontaneous theoreticians of their practice (bourdieu, 1990:22). enhancing validity when researching the ‘other’, also requires attention to be paid to the agency of participants in highly constraining conditions. bourdieu’s view that structure and agency are implicit in each other arose from his observations of peasants in rural france and algeria. bourdieu (1990: 6) proposed the concept of ‘strategies’ used by participants in the face of severely constraining structures. according to bourdieu (1990: 59),‘individual action emerged from an unconscious calculation of profit and a strategic positioning within social space to maximise individual holdings’. he needed a ‘theoretical approach to account for this hybrid activity of socially shaped strategic, but individually constituted personal practice’(bourdieu,1990: 68). bourdieu’s contribution of the concept of ‘strategies’ relates structure and agency and shows their interplay in practice. he proposed the concept of ‘strategies’ used by participants in the face of constraining structures, and explained this with the example: the outcome of the social issue …was dependent on a series of personal and contextual conditions, and the best way to think about it was not in terms of structure or personal choice (agency), but in terms of strategy (bourdieu, 1990: 6). perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 112 by adopting a relational approach across an objectivist epistemology and paying attention to informants ‘vision’ or explanations – the subjectivist element he was able to infer the operation of ‘strategies’ rather than ‘rules, model or structure’(bourdieu 1990, 9) and represent the hybridity of practice – socially shaped, but individually constituted practice. a relational approach would enable the agency of the ‘other’ as it emanates from the structures that enable or constrain it to be uncovered and represented. the concepts of a total science approach, a relational epistemology, hybrid activity and strategy are invaluable for research of the ‘other’. for example, when researching sa schools and classrooms, objectivism requires the researcher to represent the objectivity of the first order explicitly. the objective of the first order includes: the social and economic class context of the school, the distribution of material resources, and the opportunities and means available for acquiring scarce goods and values. secondly, subjectivism requires that the researcher represent the objectivity of the second order – the systems of classifications, the mental and perceptual structures, including the conduct, thoughts, feelings and judgments of social agents that inform practical activities. thirdly, the relational approach requires that the researcher make explicit the relations between the first and second order. fourthly, the concept of hybrid activity enables the conceptualisation of the practices of participants as creative but constrained by the objectivity of social and economic structures. fifthly, the broader historical perspective within which the object of research lies ought to be analysed and represented. concepts as open thinking tools bourdieu’s view of how conceptual tools should be employed in research would enhance validity. first, according to bourdieu, concepts are thinking tools that must remain open and provisional to new empirical realities. he also points out that this does not mean ‘vague, approximate or confused’. in this regard, he writes: ‘concepts can and to some extent must remain open and provisional which does not mean vague, approximate or confused’ (bourdieu, 1990: 40). for bourdieu (1990: 41), ‘openness of concepts gives them their “suggestive” character and thus their capacity to produce scientific effects (by showing things that have never been seen before)’. secondly, bourdieu notes the use of concepts that function as signposts which guide research. in his words, bourdieu (1990: 40) notes the value of concepts ‘that function as signposts pointing to phenomena that are worth examining’. thirdly, concepts ought to be objects rather than instruments of research. this means deploying concepts but at the same time, subjecting them to ‘testing’. wacquant(2007: 23) explains: the peculiar difficulty of sociology... is to produce a precise science of an imprecise, fuzzy, wooly reality. for this it is better that its conceptsbe polymorphic, supple, and adaptable, rather than defined, calibrated and used rigidly. enhancing validity when researching the ‘other’: insights from pierre bourdieu’s theory of social science research practice devika naidoo 113 bourdieu was also concerned about the use of social dichotomies in social research that filter observation and perception of the researcher; thus, hindering or imprisoning thought.he claimed: i could give hundreds of examples of social dichotomies relayed by the educational system which, becoming categories of perception, hinder or imprison thought (bourdieu,1990:16). the danger is that conceptions and conceptual categories might become perceptual categories whichfilter out empirical practices that lie outside the conceptual framework. thusbourdieu, cited by maton (2009) cautions to not confuse ‘the model of reality for the reality of the model’. a vicious cycle might develop in which the concept such as habitus is ‘seen everywhere’ (maton, 2009) or simply superimposed on the reality. to counteract this tunneled vision, bourdieu proposes first-degree monitoring which requires the ‘empiricist mind’ to not only ‘wait for the expected’, but also be alert to the unexpected (bourdieu,1991:87). when researching the ‘other’, extra vigilance is necessary to ensure that the theoretical lens illuminate and not obscure the practices and actions of the ‘other’. from the perspective of late modernity beck, bonss and lau (2003) make a similar point about epistemological binaries and conceptual dichotomies: the old certainties, distinctions and dichotomies are fading away, but through close investigation of that process we can discover what is taking their place. this approach couldn’t be more foreign to the ‘farewell to science’ view found in some quarters of postmodernism. rather it is a call for the strengthening of social science. social science can no longer aspire to take a gods-eye point of view and the control that goes with it, but it can find another way to know. construction of the object of research bourdieu contributes further key insights about the construction of the object of research. from the bourdieusian perspective, firstly the object of research is not ‘given’ nor defined in terms of everyday experiences. the object of research can only be defined and ‘constructed in terms of a theoretical problematicwhich makes it possible to conduct a systematic questioning of the aspects of reality that appear obvious when defining the problem in our everyday experience’ (bourdieu, camborredon & passeron, 1991: 35). there is a significant difference between common-sense constructions of the object of research and the object of research ‘as a system of expressly constructed relations’ that theory enables. constructing the object of research requires conceptual construction, and conceptual construction, in turn, requires rupture with ordinary perception.this would require breaking free ‘from the representations, questions and problem formulations of common sense understanding’ (ibid.). secondly, the use of theoretical language and classifications – not everyday language and classifications – represents an important dimension of sound research practice. in this regard, the use of technical/theoretical language should not be perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 114 confused with jargon; it should be seen as part of a taxonomy of concepts that enables one to analyse, know, construct and understand what is known about the research problem. in distinctions, bourdieu (1984: 509) suggests that ‘the language used [in research] must signal a break with ordinary experience, which is …necessary to appropriate…the knowledge produced and to produce it’. thirdly, bourdieu advocates a kind of pre-reflexive reflexivity as early as the construction of the object of research. this requires researchers to be critical of the intellectual orthodoxies that are dominating the field, and to work towards ‘a genuine object’ (bourdieu,1998: 4). reflexivity reflexivity ought to be a key attribute of the scientific habitus of the researcher of the ‘other’ throughout the research process. wacquant (2007: 36) argues that bourdieu’s reflexivity differs from other conceptualisations in three ways: first, its primary target is not the individual but the social and intellectual unconscious embedded in analytic tools and operations; second, it must be a collective enterprise rather than the burden of the lone academic; and third it seeks to …buttress the epistemological security of sociology. notwithstanding the significance of epistemic reflexivity, the personal reflexivity of the researcher is essential whenresearching the ‘other’. scott andmorrison (2007) relate reflexivity as fundamental for producing ‘truthful accounts of the world’. thus: …the insertion of the notion of reflexivity into research is a statement about what research is, and therefore it implies that research that is not reflexive offers less truthful accounts of the world (scott &morrison, 2007: 202). according to bowen (2009: 31), reflexivity requires an awareness by researchers of their own contribution to the construction of meanings and acknowledgement of the possibility of their subjective influence on research.the personal attributes of the researcher are fundamental to the knowledge that is eventually produced, a point underscored by morrison: personal reflexivity foregrounds the personal characteristics and values of the researcher both in the conduct of research and in the way it is written up. thus if the researcher is white, middle class and university educated, these characteristics are considered to be fundamental to the type of knowledge that is eventually produced (morrison,2007: 202) reflexivity refers to the necessary disposition of the researcher, to a guiding principle of their research practice, to be conscious of their own position and disposition, such that it becomes part of their scientific habitus. the influence of the researcher’s biography, race, class, gender, sexual identity, educational trajectory, social background, historical background and intellectual affiliations to orthodoxies/ traditions, whichare potential sources of bias or what bourdieu calls ‘unconscious determinisms’, require constant checking. this type of reflexivity, participant objectivation, ought enhancing validity when researching the ‘other’: insights from pierre bourdieu’s theory of social science research practice devika naidoo 115 to become a part of the researcher’s scientific habitus. it refers to a necessary disposition of the researcher, to a guiding principle of her research practice, and to be conscious of her own position and disposition, such that it becomes part of her scientific habitus. this type of reflexivity, classified as participant objectivation by bourdieu (2003: 282), refers to‘the objectivation of the subject of objectivation, … of the researcher herself’ that refers to self-analysis of the researcher’s own position and trajectory or biography. a reflexive way of thinking calls on researchers to be aware that their habitusor predispositions and capital or position arean essential part of the knowledge they produce. therefore, researchers ought to objectivate their habitus, including their own conscious or unconscious bias so that their effect as obstacles to scientific knowledge is systematically monitored. in this regard, bourdieu recalls his own ‘cleft habitus’ or his ambivalent attitude to formal education institutions whichshaped his habitus and research practice and which might have biased his grasp of the research object. participant objectivation can be carried through objectifying the position of the researcher in the field of specialists and objectifying the illusion of the scholastic universe including the objective, pure and disinterested view. bourdieu criticises observers and analysts who project their own vision of the world and their point of view onto the understanding of the social practices which constitute the object of their study, or unconsciously attribute to the object of their observations characteristics which are inherently theirs, of their own perception and comprehension of the world (bourdieu, 1990). with reference to objectifying the illusion of the scholastic universe – the illusion of the pure, absolute and disinterested point of view bourdieu advises: by expressing the social determinants of different forms of practice, especially intellectual practice (e.g. membership and commitment to social and religious groups, free time, symbolic structures and dispositions), bourdieu (1990: 15)argues, the researcher gets the chance of acquiring a certain freedom from these determinants. reflexivity, according to lash (lash, 200: ix-x) is a quality of reflexive modernization, whereas reflection is a characteristic of first modernity. reflection presumes a dualism of subject and object of knowledge between time and space whereas reflexivity requires the holding of the subject and object of knowledge in a space and time. reflexivity assumes uncertainty whereas reflection presumes certainty. reflexivity replaces the objectivity and certainty of knowledge by intentionality and uncertainty. it is precisely this intentionality and uncertainty that leads to unintended sideeffects and consequences, that are to be welcomed by the reflexive researcher. that reflexivity does not mean non-knowledge and irrationality but capacity to be open to unintended side-effects that arise in the process. the relevance of reflexivity when researching the ‘other’ is of paramount importance as it enables openess to alternate forms of knowledge to come into being. perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 116 for bourdieu, it is not just the lived experience or ‘the biographical peculiarities’ of the researcher that needs to be objectivated, but (bourdieu, 2003: 282) also the social world that has produced the researcher including the intellectual field in which the researcher operates. this refers to the social origins of the researcher, her position and trajectory in social space, her social and religious membership and beliefs, her gender, age, nationalityandher position within the microcosm of social researchers. thus, the researcher’s choices of topic, method, theory, etc., depend very closely on the location she occupies within her professional universe or intellectual field(bourdieu, 2003: 283).for bourdieu, the unanalysed element in any theoretical analysis is the theorist’s relation to the social world and the objective social conditions on which it is founded. left unanalysed, it leads to ‘intellectual-centricism’. it is, therefore, necessary to subject one’s scientific practice to ‘critical knowledge of the limits to all theoretical knowledge, both subjectivist and objectivist’(grenfell, 2009:46). bourdieu’s extends reflexivity to epistemic reflexivity that has three key attributes: firstly, targets the fields concepts, instruments of analysis and practical operations of research; secondly, is collective rather than individual and thirdly, foregrounds concrete problems to be solved rather than a preoccupation with theoretical logic. the first requires that the biases or presuppositions built into concepts, instruments of analysis, and practical operations of research be subjected to reflexive thinking. epistemic reflexivity stands opposed to the intellectual field itself and the scholastic dispositions and biases it fosters and rewards in its members (bourdieu, 2003: 281). as maton (2003: 58) noted, the aim is ‘to uncover not the individual researchers’ biases but the collective scientific biases embedded in intellectual practices by the field’s objectifying relations’. thus wacquant (2007: 40) argues ‘that what has to be neutralized is the collective scientific unconscious embedded in theories, problems and categories of scholarly judgment’. secondly, epistemic reflexivity ‘must be a collective enterprise rather than the burden of the lone academic’wacquant (2007: 36). bourdieu’s epistemic reflexivity is collective and fundamentally anti narcissistic (bourdieu and wacquant, 1992: 72). the requirement of collective reflexivity would subject concepts, instruments of analysis and practical operations of research such as coding and interpretations to be interrogated by the collective. furthermore, the ‘self-referentiality of an introspective and socially distinct epistemological community’ (robbins, 2009: 37) also needs to be subjected to reflexive thinking. when researching the ‘other’ collective reflexivity is indispensable. ideally, the collective ought to be made up of reviewers who represent the ‘other’ as well. wacquant (2007) describes the intellectual bias ‘which entices us to construe the world as a spectacle, as a set of significations to be interpreted, rather than as concrete problems to be solved practically’ (39). keeping in mind the concrete problem and possible solutions to it would enable a grounded analysis that is not fixated on theoretical issues. reflexivity as a methodological concept, stems from the extent to which a researcher is able to grasp the object of the study in its essence (grenfell, enhancing validity when researching the ‘other’: insights from pierre bourdieu’s theory of social science research practice devika naidoo 117 2008). as a scientific method, reflexivity is defined as a critical epistemological process, i.e.being aware of obstacles to scientific knowledge. bourdieu provides an example of his own ‘third-degree’ monitoring. in writing about algerian society and algerian social movements, during the 50s and 60s when algeria was struggling for its independence from its coloniser france, bourdieu realised that developing a scientific analysis and representation ‘meant trying to understand and explain the real foundations and objectives of the struggle...that were socially differentiated and even antagonistic...’ (1990: 2 ). in that context when ‘the problem of racism arose at every moment’ bourdieu’s concern was not to ‘reinforce racist representations’ thus bourdieu regards much of the work as a ‘particularly scandalous form of ethnocentricism...which tending to justify the colonial order, described practices ...as unjustifiable’ (ibid. 3). bourdieu was mindful of ‘expressions of a colonial gaze’. in 1972 he revisited his early algerian research to go beyond second degree monitoring to effect third-degree monitoring which would take note of the eurocentricism of his analyses (robbins, 2009: 37). this example illustrates the salience of subjecting one’s gaze to third-degree monitoring that requires researchers to check whether their claims, descriptions and explanations are not biased by dominant ways of being. in order to enhance validity, methodological reflexivity ought to be practised throughout the research process. for example, with reference to data collection, while all methods give us partial views, the methods chosen need rational justification. further, different methods increase the validity of the data gathered. thus, bourdieu acknowledges that his data collection method of a survey by closed questionnaire for his work, distinctions, was ‘a second best’ because it left‘out the modality of practices’. however, it was ‘imposed by the need to obtain a large amount of … data on a sample large enough to be treated statistically’(bourdieu, 1984: 506). however, to counteract the limitations imposed by the survey technique, ‘observations and questionings in real situations’ were done whenever difficulties arose. in addition, researchers ought to ensure the efficacy of their data collection instrument/s by subjecting them to scrutiny. given the habitus of researchers, the items in questionnaires and interview schedules might reflect the habitus and position of the researcher. bourdieu (1984:505) indicates that it was possible through systematic reflexion to discover that, in one of his survey questionnaires, farmers and farm workers were excluded due to their social marginalisation from ‘legitimate culture’ and that the ‘questionnaire was completely inappropriate’ because ‘quite other methods were required to identify the dispositions of a population totally excluded from legitimate culture’. thus, bourdieu highlights the problem of ‘the almost universal recognition of the dominant culture’ in research practices,which makes reflexivity essential when researching the ‘other’. the items included in questionnaires might coerce participants to select responses that are not truthful. for example, in the item of which qualities participants would prefer in their friends, ‘subjects were asked to choose, from a list of adjectives’. bourdieu reflects that the respondents were ‘forced’ to choose the least unacceptable option (bourdieu, 1998: 506) and, as such,the question yielded ‘an attenuated image’ of choice of friends or colleagues(bourdieu, 1984: 506). perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 118 furthermore, during the coding of the data, a critical point is the extent to which the codes emanate from subliminal influences on the coder instead of from the empirical data. thus, bourdieu reflected that the ‘judgments formulated by a teacher to justify his marks and classifications’ in the study of the ‘categories of professional understanding’ came from the coder’s social conditions rather than from the data. this led bourdieu to relate the categories or classification systems used to the persons who developed them and their educational training. bourdieu (1984) noted practices when coding data that lead to invalidity. he cites the garfinkel and sachs (1986) study of two student coders who used ‘ad hoc considerations’ in order to fit the content of the files to the coding schedule bourdieu (1984). this practice of ad hoc coding produces single and simple results, whereas the aim ought to be to present the many-sidedness of the phenomena being studied. thus bourdieu declares: science can’t do anything by paying lip-service to the rich inexhaustibility of life…. this acute feeling for the many-sidedness of social reality, its resistence to the venture of knowledge, was the basis of the thinking that i have been constantly engaged in on the limits of scientific knowledge (bourdieu 1990 21). with reference to data analysis, bourdieu was concerned about the relationship between induction and deduction. bourdieu et al. cited in bourdieu (1984) questioned whether their findings were disclosing causal relations between phenomena or just expressing pre-dispositional, a priori logical connections. bourdieu (1984: 510) argues that the ‘concrete’ analyses are there to assist the return into experience of the product of scientific description and to make distancing and neutralisation more difficult. lastly, with reference to the reporting of findings, bourdieu required that the findings be reported with sufficient detail to provide the reader all the documents (facsimiles of books or articles, photographs, extracts from interviews, etc.) which have been inserted in the text in order to discourage absent-minded readings.in this regard, bourdieu (1984: 10) advises writers to break with ‘genteel abstraction’ and ‘to show …things and even people, make them palpable’. conclusion bourdieu’s theory of research practice provides invaluable insights when researching the other: first, that a relational approach across both objectivist and subjectivist epistemologies and methodology are necessary to develop valid accounts of the social world; secondly,that conceptual tools be used as signposts and as ‘open’ tentative structures which could, in turn, lead to reframing, modification and extension of such conceptual structures in specific contexts; thirdly, a relational analysis of the research object in its field of power would expose the political, social and economic structures that are pertinent ; fourthly, reflexive awareness of how one’s own field, habitus and capital might introduce bias in representations of the ‘other’ and fifthly, epistemic reflexivity that requires a critical understanding and approach to hegemonic forms of knowledge and research processes. a reflexive approach across theoretical structures and empirical realities, together with personal, epistemic and disciplinary reflexivity, would also help guard enhancing validity when researching the ‘other’: insights from pierre bourdieu’s theory of social science research practice devika naidoo 119 against a technical approach to conceptual tools. this opens further possibility for the development of counter discourses, truthful forms of understanding and theory that mightrepresent the ‘other’ more validly. a fitting conclusion to this article then is bourdieu’s hope that ‘if we grant that symbolic systems are social products that contribute to making the world, that they do not simply mirror social relations but help constitute them, then one can, within limits transform the world by transforming its representation (bourdieu 1980, 1981) cited by wacquant (2007: 14). references beck ubonss w & lau c 2003. the theory of reflexive modernisation: problematic, hypotheses and research programme. theory, culture and society.20(2): 1-33. bourdieu p1974. the school as a conservative force: scholastic and cultural inequalities. in j eggleston(ed.), contemporary research in the sociology of education. london: methuen. bourdieu p 1984. distinction – a social critique of the judgment of taste. london: routledge. bourdieu p 1987/1994. in other words: essays towards a reflexive sociology (rev. ed.). cambridge: polity press. bourdieu p1990. in other words:essays towards a reflexive sociology. california: stanford university press. bourdieu p 1991. language and symbolic power(ed. jb thompson). uk: polity press. bourdieu p 1998.practical reason: on the theory of action. california: polity press. bourdieu, p et al. 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crisis; learning; south africa; teacher educators; teaching. 1. introduction higher education institutions (heis) in south africa, and elsewhere, had to adapt and adjust their programme delivery at the onset of the pandemic to accommodate pandemic protocols of social distancing and the prohibition of large gatherings. heis needed to be innovative in the manner in author: dr taryn williams1 prof yusuf sayed2 dr marcina singh1 affiliation: 1cape peninsula university of technology 2cape peninsula university of technology, university of sussex doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i2.6 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(2): 69-83 published: 08 june 2022 received: 24 december 2021 accepted: 08 february 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5503-0459 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2534-8420 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2721-7555 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 702022 40(2): 70-83 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) which they delivered content, how they would manage practical elements of programmes as well as how students are assessed (hedding et al., 2020). this shift presented multiple challenges to academic staff in higher education, particularly those with little or no experience around the pedagogy or delivery of what is known as “emergency remote modes” of teaching and learning (rapanta et al., 2020). this rapid shift in the delivery of higher education courses and programmes, including those with a strong practical component such as initial teacher education, raises serious questions about the needs of lecturers, their socio-emotional needs, their relationships with students and their ability to deliver practical based learning which is key to initial teacher preparation and equity in access and achievement (unesco, 2020). these non-traditional methods of teaching and learning have resulted in increased anxiety for teacher educators and the students that they teach. the anxieties are more evident in contexts where these cohorts have home environments unsuitable for teaching and learning, which includes limited access to technology and the internet (ali, 2020; bao, 2020; lischer, safi & dickson, 2021; zhang et al., 2020). in particular, academic staff struggled to manage multiple demands associated with the new methods of teaching and learning and often found it difficult to establish an acceptable work-life balance (rapanta et al., 2020). in the context of closure and lockdowns, this paper critically examines how teacher educators responded to the covid-19 crisis between 2020 and 2021 and the implications of “emergency remote modes” of teaching for the future of higher education pedagogy. we look specifically at the impact of covid-19 on teacher educators’ sense of self and wellbeing at one institution in south africa preparing foundation phase student teachers. we examine the way in which teacher educators at a university supported the learning needs of student teachers and their pedagogic approaches. this is important as teacher educators are key frontline agents responsible for initial teacher education (ite) programmes and for producing good quality teachers. drawing on de sousa santo’s theory of “absences” (2018), we seek to investigate what becomes manifest, rendered invisible and sublimated in initial teacher education in a crisis. 2. literature review and framework after the world health organization’s declaration of a global pandemic, south africa, as was the case in most countries, a national state of emergency was declared in march 2020 that resulted in a countrywide lockdown. this meant that all citizens, businesses as well as education institutions follow strict emergency protocol. more specifically, schools and institutions of higher education close immediately for extended periods, necessitating alternative ways of ensuring access to education (landa, zhou & marongwe, 2021). education in emergencies, as in the case of the covid-19 pandemic, generally relies on basic technological access (landa et al., 2021) that posed significant challenges for higher education institutions (heis) in the context of initial teacher education (ite) and inhibited teacher educators from physically observing pre-service teachers’ lessons on school placement (grádaigh et al., 2021). in response, teacher educators had to prepare and deliver their classes from home (hodges et al., 2020), with the support of various learning management systems (lmss), course management systems (cmss) and virtual learning environments, depending on the requirements of their institutions (landa et al., 2021). this also meant that teacher educators http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 712022 40(2): 71-83 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 williams, sayed & singh the experiences of teacher educators managing teaching and learning had to act as constructors and actors and had to design the tasks, environments and resources that help students learn (rapanta et al., 2020). furthermore, they had to consider the modality, pacing, student-instructor ratio, pedagogy, online instructor role, online student role, online communication synchrony, role of online assessments, source of feedback of their programmes and the delivery of their courses all within a social justice framework (hodges et al., 2020). teaching and learning is an exchange of knowledge, thus research on teachers has been driven by the assumption that knowledge is at the heart of their professional competence (kleickmann et al., 2012; hoy, davis & pape, 2016; shulman, 1986). sayed et al. (2018: 9) suggest that, while the idea of knowledge sets help to understand the conceptual framing of ite programmes, in the end, it is how this translates into programme designs that determine their usefulness. nonetheless, online teaching and learning implies a certain pedagogical content knowledge (pck), an ability to navigate online technologies (rapanta et al., 2020) and hybrid modalities for teaching and learning (unesco, 2020). institutions and staff faced practical and technical challenges in implementing online learning and struggled with technical support (hodges et al., 2020), so institutions and staff frequently retained a focus on old procedures (dhawan, 2020). hodges et al. (2020) suggest that, although moving instruction online can enable flexibility for teaching and learning anywhere and at any time, the speed with which this move occurred under covid-19, coupled with technical problems, such as installation and login problems, proved daunting (dhawan, 2020). under covid-19, this included challenges relating to: a lack of electricity, infrastructure, connectivity, devices and technology; a lack of learning materials and curriculum; and a lack of professional development and teacher training (elearning africa, 2020). mpungose (2020) contends that, as access to online teaching and learning platforms and resources for students from poor, rural communities in south africa is challenging, gross inequalities abound in educational outcomes for learners from different socio-economic backgrounds in relation to online teaching. similarly, cutri, mena and whiting (2020) suggest that equitable access to online learning and managing the demands of scholarship, universitybased and academic community service duties are in need of attention. in addition, according to dhawan (2020), clear stipulation by government in educational policies about e-learning programmes, standards for quality, quality control, development of e-resources and e-content delivery are largely absent. uninterrupted periods of digital use can have positive and negative effects on the wellbeing, productivity and social interactions of others (strydom et al., 2020). rapanta et al. (2020) highlight that several universities’ faculties and staff have struggled with workload, teaching and work-life balance due to the above challenges. a recent survey on the “verge of burnout: covid-19’s impact on faulty well-being and career plans” conducted by the chronicle of higher education (2020) found that faculty members reported elevated levels of frustration, anxiety and stress; difficulty managing increased workload; and a deterioration of work-life balance during the pandemic. this was particularly evident amongst female faculty members. some faculty members even considered retiring or changing careers, with certain faculty members more likely to retire than others (the chronicle of higher education, 2020). in particular, van niekerk and van gent (2020) found that 27.6% of the staff members in their study reported psychological distress during lockdown. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 722022 40(2): 72-83 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) bartusevičienė, pazaver and kitada (2021) argue that, despite these disruptions, universities have had to preserve their mission to educate young people. the results of their study suggest that, to ensure academic continuity and build resilience, a university should develop anticipation, coping and adaptation capabilities and act on lessons learned. their findings reveal that the capability of a university coping with unexpected challenges shows the potential of a university to be resilient. similarly, nandy, lodh and tang (2020) recommend that higher institutions employ an all-inclusive resilience model at the beginning of the recovery period to withstand the shock of the pandemic and demonstrate how an hei can apply an “antifragile” model for the betterment of experiences of individuals associated with it. this is particularly crucial in a context such as south africa where crises and disruptions are consistent in their occurrence and often interlock. the work of de sousa santos (2018) anchors this present study. his sociology of emergences and absences enables researchers to examine what becomes manifest and what is rendered marginal or invisible during this pandemic. in particular, attention is directed to understanding what is actively produced as well as what is non-existent, revealing how ideologically driven alternatives are formulated (cf. klein and the shock doctrine). de sousa santos’ work uses what he refers to as the five logics or modes of production of non-existence. in particular, we are interested in his first logic, the monoculture of knowledge, where all that is not recognised or legitimated is perceived as non-existent, stemming from ignorance or a lack of culture, his fourth logic, the monoculture of the universal and the global that refers to embedded structures of power and privilege, and his fifth logic, the monoculture of criteria of capitalist productivity and efficiency. this logic, drawing on privileges growing through market forces, applies to nature and human labour. non-existence in this logic is produced in the form of non-productiveness such as discardable populations, professional disqualifications and a lack of skills (de sousa santos, 2018: 239). 3. methodology this study provides a snapshot of how teacher educators have responded to the covid-19 crisis and how their approaches to this crisis will shape their future work. the research was driven by the following research questions: 1) what is the impact of covid-19 on teacher educators’ sense of self, wellbeing and teaching? 2) what support was provided by and to teacher educators at the university during times of crisis? 3) what are the future implications of the covid-19 pandemic on the foundation phase programme? the sample consisted of eight foundation phase teacher educators, seven females and one male (ages ranging between 29–63, mean age of 46.37), purposively selected on the basis of the researchers’ judgement and respondents representativeness (babbie, 2016), from one initial teacher education provider in south africa. the lecturing experience of the eight teacher educators ranged from one year to 28 years and lecturing in foundation phase ranged from one year to 25. in addition, several of the teacher educators lecture across foundation and intermediate phases. we conducted virtual in-depth semi-structured interviews posing questions that address how teacher educators have responded to the covid-19 crisis and how the crisis impacts their future work. the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on the teacher educators’ sense of self, wellbeing and teaching were also addressed. questions were based on the teacher educator’s experiences of teaching, student learning and institutional support during the pandemic. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 732022 40(2): 73-83 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 williams, sayed & singh the experiences of teacher educators managing teaching and learning as a qualitative endeavour, data analysis included immersion followed by searching for, reviewing and defining themes (cf. braun & clarke, 2006). several themes emerged of which five are illuminated in this paper. these are teacher educator pedagogy; the sociality of teaching and learning; equity and pedagogy; effects of the pandemic on teacher educators’ wellbeing; and institution and context. 4. results findings revealed several interrelated themes regarding teacher educator preparedness to deal with conflict and crisis. themes relate to how the context and institutional rules and regulations shaped their pedagogic response to the pandemic, their sense of wellbeing during the pandemic, and the pedagogic enactment they were able to realise in the context of the pandemic. 4.1 theme 1: teacher educator pedagogy the first emergent theme relates to the pedagogy of teaching. this challenge affected teacher educators and the delivery of the pedagogy of teaching. three sub-themes characterised the visible and the non-existent in pedagogy forms of teacher educators: strategies to deliver the teaching practicum component of the ite programme; the sociality of teaching and learning and equity and pedagogy. 4.1.1 strategies to deliver the teaching practicum component of the ite programme teacher educators faced several challenges with strategies for delivering the teaching practicum component of the ite programme and preparing teachers for the profession. practicum requires a physical location and a placement in time and space to assess the preparedness of prospective teachers and their abilities to render visible their learning from the programme, but lockdown made this difficult, if not impossible. what emerged is a sense of loss and a sense of the absence of the practical. as one teacher educator noted, training teachers is something that is very practical. you can give them all the theory you want, but unless you teach, you’re not a teacher – you cannot teach without practical knowledge (lecturer 1, foundation phase, university of technology, uot). this sense of learning to teach as inherently and fundamentally requiring practise was a recurrent theme, with several teacher educators insisting that certain subjects they teach are “more practical” and that students “should be in a classroom getting experience”. one teacher educator expressed that the pandemic affected their subject “massively” arguing, i couldn’t do what i wanted to do. i’ve got a practical subject. i need to be with my students. i need to correct them if they do something incorrectly (lecturer 2, foundation phase and intermediate phase, uot). the loss of the practical becomes, in the words of an educator, a “disembodiment” and the non-existence of the physicality of presence of the teacher educator and the student teachers as the teaching practicum relationship prohibits them “from being there in person. especially from the practical, with the practical components”. the acknowledgement of the lack of the practical placement saw a flurry of different approaches for online teaching and learning: from student teachers required to model the practicum in a virtual space, to developing pedagogic responses to scenarios set by the lecturer. typical alternatives included the following: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 742022 40(2): 74-83 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) for practicum, what i was doing was things like how you would prepare a lesson plan, and how would you structure it. [student teachers had to] work around analysing where the students had to interview a learner and they had to look at the learner’s answers (lecturer 3, foundation phase, uot). the range of responses to the delivery of the teaching practicum by teacher educators reveals not only diversity (mutton, 2020) but also the absence of a shared, common discourse of alternatives to delivering the key component of initial teacher education during times of crisis. further to this, there is an overwhelming sense that the practicum requires physical, spatial and temporal embodiment, as this defines the nature of the activity of teaching and that social interaction plays an important role in learning (okita, 2012). it is thus “absence” that the pandemic most reveals and for which the institutions found themselves unprepared and underprepared. 4.1.2 the sociality of teaching and learning the lack of face-to-face interaction and practicum time and space carried over for most teacher educators into their teaching, noting a non-existent and non-credible alternative to what previously existed (de sousa santos, 2018). researchers, such as okita (2012) as well as rizvi et al. (2020) contend that the pandemic displaced and rendered marginal the relational element and the “sociality of pedagogy”. learning and knowledge engagement, as discursive engagement in time and space, was difficult for most teacher educators to realise as the following excerpts reveal: i couldn’t get that level of interaction [with online classes] … i am still locked into the idea that we are social beings, we need to interact, we need collaboration, we need to be talking (lecturer 3, foundation phase, uot). you cannot throw away the face-to-face training because that is where you motivate the ones that are falling behind (lecturer 4, foundation phase, uot). i’m still part of the old school where i believe face-to-face interaction is really, really important – especially in the foundation phase and especially with the little ones – because, when we are teaching, they need to see our mouth, they need to see our interactions and sounds (lecturer 5, foundation phase, uot). the self-deprecating description of “knowledge of the past”, of being “old school”, and not “throwing way face-to-face” reveals what de sousa santos calls the monoculture of linear time with the sociality of learning rendered as “backward” (pre-modern, under-developed) and online learning as “forward” (de sousa santos, 2018: 238–239). the pandemic and the mainly “emergency mode” of teaching is rendered universal and general, making what is key to learning specific and marginal. this dialectic of rendering a particular pedagogy as “past” and “local”, and the present, which is driven by exigent circumstances as “global” and “universal”, share ways in which, post-pandemic, the specific becomes the new norm. in so norming, the particularity is stripped of its specificity and granted a universal in the same way that the idea of “northern knowledge” as modern and “southern knowledge” as backwards suffuses approaches to decolonisation. in the pandemic, the relationality of pedagogy was mediated by the flourishing of approaches called blended, mixed, hybrid and multi-modal. the following quote from a teacher educator articulates the bridging of teaching and learning approaches: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 752022 40(2): 75-83 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 williams, sayed & singh the experiences of teacher educators managing teaching and learning i think the blend of having things like, these things, like being able to go over the notes and having the lecturer explain -i would make slides and the voice-over, and then i would say to the one half of the class this week you don’t come, and the other half – you come. and then sit with them and probe them and talk to them and say, okay, now what is going on here? (lecturer 3, foundation phase, uot). on the one hand, data reveal teacher educators feeling a sense of loss and seeing faceto-face learning as important given the sociality of pedagogy. in contrast are those positing a bridge between virtual pedagogies and face-to-face learning. whatever the approach, the ideas of communication, discursive engagement (dios & charlo, 2021) and social interaction are valued by teacher educators in relation to student learning (hurst, wallace & nixon, 2013). 4.1.3 equity and pedagogy the shift to pedagogy or delivery of online learning revealed inequities in physical and epistemic access and achievement (unesco, 2020). teacher educators reported difficulty being fully inclusive in their pedagogy due to inequities in access to technologies and resources: we also have, socio-economically, a massive variation. so, there were some students that had things at home that were able to log in, up they go and off we go. and there were equally if not more, those who literally ... were trying to do the assignment and trying to take pictures and send it to you (lecturer 3, foundation phase, uot). in terms of equity, i think that is very difficult, and i think this thing has just exacerbated it, definitely, between universities that have and universities that have not, and the schools haves and have nots (lecturer 6, foundation phase, uot). i tried the best that i could and once again, the unfairness came through because those students at home who had wi-fi, who were living like that, it was okay, and then the other half, so i tried to take that into consideration … with assessments, i would give them extra time, and also struggling because … there wasn’t a library, they couldn’t access the library to find information and those at home who had wi-fi could go onto the internet and the others struggled … for research and for different purposes (lecturer 6, foundation phase, uot). inequities are largely a result of resources that reflected bifurcated education systems in general, and inequities in higher education, in particular (see motala, vally & maharajh, 2016). this inability of student teachers to navigate teaching and learning in an online setting, as noted by teacher educators, speaks to the monoculture of the criteria of capitalist productivity and efficiency (de sousa santos, 2018) in which those whose structural positioning in society render them marginal are then blamed for not keeping up. to mitigate these inequities, teacher educators sought to provide the necessary support and resources as acts of individual volition, as noted in the following excerpt: i gave every student data, i bought phones for them, just to eliminate the excuses. and they would be too ashamed to come to class because ... and i said: i’m watching you. i gave you data now so what is the complaint now? purposes (lecturer 1, foundation phase, uot). despite concerns of student teacher welfare and mitigating inequities in access, there is, as de sousa santos (2018) suggests, a blaming of the individual and not the system or the structures. the failure of the monoculture of capitalist efficiency, in this instance, becomes a failure of the individual. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/salim-vally?_sg%5b0%5d=fnrr7w8rrta3cpsvpipwbipccoregh6rlpaikl53kkr75fm_lyavqksfumi6isez-r3umle.f2ghwuuk6bvz92zq5gwwtdm7bhn_9uagrkvfcu1r9b-nrmlicri-dhfklt_93afbu1igu1oov-2sbe9yua0bhw&_sg%5b1%5d=lw5fuh4ralwn-w5tvbio2uwxfudsjr4rpc1bvutqyrjhxjukowk1im1plcg-q5cckwnp78i.df2r5mrgbol2sfopv_zi6_jkptfshzzj7psjtgbnvq3uru2-5wxrij70lzpfk8lylfc64hrr6ynxwyq_cotxng https://www.researchgate.net/profile/rasigan-maharajh?_sg%5b0%5d=fnrr7w8rrta3cpsvpipwbipccoregh6rlpaikl53kkr75fm_lyavqksfumi6isez-r3umle.f2ghwuuk6bvz92zq5gwwtdm7bhn_9uagrkvfcu1r9b-nrmlicri-dhfklt_93afbu1igu1oov-2sbe9yua0bhw&_sg%5b1%5d=lw5fuh4ralwn-w5tvbio2uwxfudsjr4rpc1bvutqyrjhxjukowk1im1plcg-q5cckwnp78i.df2r5mrgbol2sfopv_zi6_jkptfshzzj7psjtgbnvq3uru2-5wxrij70lzpfk8lylfc64hrr6ynxwyq_cotxng 762022 40(2): 76-83 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) according to teacher educators, mitigating inequities of physical access to resources that promote learning also entailed finding low-tech, asynchronous forms of virtual learning such as whatsapp as noted in the following excerpt: so, when i started with the whatsapp, i did that because i thought that would be the cheapest and they had the data. so, we started with that, then they said to me no, please, other lecturers are moving to the blackboard collaborate, can you go to that? so, i went to the blackboard collaborate, i put the powerpoints – so, if you opened up blackboard, everything that i was doing was there ... on top of that, because some couldn’t get into blackboard, i then loaded that also onto whatsapp (lecturer 3, foundation phase, uot). it is apparent from teacher educator responses that online teaching and learning platforms and the lack of resources bring inequalities into educational outcomes for students from different socio-economic backgrounds (mpungose, 2020). according to the monoculture of criteria of capitalist productivity and efficiency (de sousa santos, 2018), this is the “have” and “have nots” or varying “privileges” between students that either promote or prevent students from accessing learning during a time of crisis and disruption. covid-19 has exacerbated that which already existed but was “non-existent”. the temporality of the pedagogic response during the pandemic was accompanied by a futuristic view of pedagogy of the “new normal”, the “different normal” as reflected by teacher educators. the data suggests that all teacher educators felt that, whilst the practical and the practicum is unlikely to be virtual or simulated in future, much of what would count as learning would be “e-learning” and “blending with more technology in the classroom, using it as a teaching aid”. teacher educators who were most open to the possibility of new ways of teaching and learning also confirm much loss of learning, making up, and filling in gaps. the following excerpt succinctly captures this idea: i think when and if we do get back, it’s going to be a time that we have to catch up everything. there is going to be such gaps that are going to have to be filled. so, there is going to be a lot of work and a lot of, i don’t know, if the students are going to be able to cope because it’s not just my subject, it’s a whole lot of subjects so i think they are going to be overwhelmed (lecturer 5, foundation phase, uot). the idea of learning loss infuses much of the discussion surrounding the pandemic (burgess & sievertsen, 2020; niazi, 2021). yet the real loss is, as this educator notes, we really need to just prepare them and give them our skills that they can use when it comes to online teaching and learning and also how to stress with their own or how to deal with their own stress when another pandemic hits us (lecturer 7, foundation phase, uot). de sousa santos’ (2018) monoculture of linear time points to the old struggle with the new in which the notion of curriculum loss is not extended to issues of the affective and the psychosocial. eloff (2021) notes that the crisis pedagogically requires adaptation and modifications but to the affective, as the educators point out. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 https://www.universityworldnews.com/fullsearch.php?mode=search&writer=shuriah+niazi 772022 40(2): 77-83 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 williams, sayed & singh the experiences of teacher educators managing teaching and learning 4.2 theme 2: effects of the pandemic on teacher educators’ wellbeing the disruptive nature of the pandemic resulted in many academic staff reporting high levels of frustration, anxiety and stress (the chronicle of higher education, 2020; van niekerk & van gent, 2020). the pwc (2020) reports that, although we have all been impacted socially, culturally, psychologically, emotionally and financially, teachers, in particular, have faced uncertainty in navigating the demands for learner support, their own wellbeing, and their multiple roles as family members and carers in a context of tremendous adjustment to new modalities of pedagogic delivery in diverse and unequal contexts impacting resource availability and diverse technologies for themselves and their students. in this study, teacher educators reflected on the impact of covid-19 pandemic on their individual wellbeing and their work. one constant refrain from the data was the feeling of stress and feeling overwhelmed as teacher educators, captured succinctly by the following excerpt: at the beginning i felt i was stressed, at first because i didn’t know how to work online, but i was in survival mode, if i can put it that way (lecturer 8, foundation phase, uot). the stress and survival mode of many teacher educators resulted from the rapid, unplanned and uncoordinated transition to “emergency remote’]” teaching, as the following excerpt notes: i’ve had to learn to adjust … but i find it very stressful because i feel that i’m not teaching the quality that i have in the past, and i’ve been doing it for so many years and i know there are so many things lacking … i’ve had to see my doctor, my stress levels, my anxiety, i’ve been on medication, i’m not sleeping because i’m worried about this and what and how do i deal with all that kind of stuff. so, ja, it has definitely affected my wellbeing … it’s been traumatic, i find not being on campus, not interacting with my colleagues, with the students, the support – i find it’s really hard (lecturer 5, foundation phase, uot). the lack of sociality coupled with only remittent and disjointed interaction with colleagues is responsible for some stress of teacher educators, as we note below, from institutional procedures and policies: i’ve always had stress but, this year, stress was much more because we had parents banging, sending you e-mails ... we had very short d-dates, for instance, ensuring that the 1st year batches of selections have been approved or whatever ... i did find that the stress was getting to me ... i started having stomach pains and whatever, and that’s why i decided, i asked them to release me of my contract and not go on with it anymore (lecturer 4, foundation phase, uot). the stress, whilst experienced individually, reflects the intensification of labour because of institutional practices, as the following teacher educator notes: there was a time when they said: “but we need to go online” ... i think they gave us two weeks to have everything, the whole years’ work on a memory stick. so, i was like, this is getting too much. i can’t deal with this … that was impossible. when it comes to impossible things like that, that is when the stress kicked in (lecturer 2, foundation phase and intermediate phase, uot). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 782022 40(2): 78-83 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) setting unmanageable targets without adequate support makes the working environment stressful, but even more so during times of crisis. an intensification of labour also resulted from new technologies that teacher educators were expected to adopt with only a modicum of support and guidance: student teachers whatsapped you like all hours of the day … which was also not good for you and for, like, as an academic for your wellbeing. because you literally have so many jobs, and people that you need to answer to and that, i think that, with covid, that was extremely hard (lecturer 8, foundation phase, uot). the intensification of labour transcended time and space as working in a virtual environment and working from home blurred boundaries between institutional and home life, with institutional imperatives shaping the realities of home: well, i find i’ve never worked as hard in my life, because, when you are at home, i’ve made my lounge into my office and so i never leave, i’m always at the office (lecturer 5, foundation phase, uot). this sense of always working, and always needing to work, is what various writers have denoted as an “intensification of academic labour” (hedding et al., 2020; rapanta et al., 2020), a process exacerbated by crises such as the covid-19 pandemic. a small albeit unintended benefit from the intensification of labour was that work commutes were reduced as teacher educators did not have “to drive all the way to campus every time” which was then converted to more home working time. the future post-covid-19 unsurprisingly identified institutional policies, procedures and administrative burdens as key to managing crises, enhanced work productivity and wellbeing, as noted in the following excerpts: if the administrative burden from the institution were lifted from teachers [and] if we trusted teachers more and we gave them autonomy (lecturer 6, foundation phase, uot). i really hope that we leave teachers alone who are doing their jobs well and not burden them with admin ... i think we’ve underestimated how big of a role could management and leadership and clear decisions – how big of a role that plays in a teacher’s wellbeing (lecturer 6, foundation phase, uot). here, the fourth logic, monoculture of the universal and the global, sheds light onto the non-existence (i.e., institutional leadership and teacher educator autonomy) and the realities (i.e., multiple roles and responsibilities of teacher educators) that are produced under the disruption of the covid-19 pandemic. teacher educators’ work has intensified and, although they have adapted, their wellbeing has been adversely impacted by institutional policies, practices and leadership. leadership emerges as a key aspect of the experiences of teacher educators during the pandemic: autonomy-thwarting leadership (collie, 2021) emerges as a stressor associated with emotional exhaustion. the key absence (de sousa santos, 2018) in the pandemic was leadership that supported teacher educators and teachers to give them necessary autonomy, treating them as reflexive professionals able to adapt to and manage teaching and learning. 4.3 theme 3: institution and context in south africa, a large proportion of students are dependent on financial assistance to make ends meet, where data costs are high and where mobile connection is not always readily http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 792022 40(2): 79-83 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 williams, sayed & singh the experiences of teacher educators managing teaching and learning available (hedding et al., 2020). external inequities in the south african context link to the quality of institutional leadership and policies during the pandemic. in respect of the latter, teacher educators noted that covid-19 exacerbated frailties and weaknesses in the way the university managed its teaching and learning programme for student teachers, as captured in the excerpts below: that [problem] is not due to covid. this is due to that there is no hod, no support (lecturer 4, foundation phase, uot). we haven’t got a dean. i don’t know whether there is one being appointed. we’ve got an acting dean, but there is not an hod for foundation phase at one of our campuses (lecturer 4, foundation phase, uot). it’s a very deurmekaar kampus [i.e., confused campus] – you don’t know where what is, where who is, then we have no hods, we have no dean, people just resign left right and centre (lecturer 1, foundation phase, uot). ineffective and poor communication characterised the relationship between the institution and teacher educators: communication could have been better. not only to us as lecturers but maybe to the students, could have been a bit clearer, especially the finance staff and the exam staff – you really battle to get any answers from them, because everybody is suddenly working from home and then you don’t get anything back from them, no matter how many e-mails you send… nobody (lecturer 4, foundation phase, uot). whilst some teacher educators did identify positive measures – such as receiving data and modems from the institution, and some counselling – the common refrain was that, i think the university needs to provide more support for, also technical support for the students … who are struggling. so, if they can’t get online or they don’t have data, there is one number they can call. they phone, nobody replies to them, their data doesn’t arrive, so i think the university really needs to get there, the support for the students and for staff … i’m using all my own stuff – i have paid for all my own stuff over here, so it’s quite difficult to produce when you don’t have the scanning, the printing, all those, i don’t have a dongle so i can only work here if wi-fi … i think the university needs to provide more support emotionally, physically, administratively … it’s just been very rough (lecturer 5, foundation phase, uot). the monoculture of knowledge informs that all that is not recognised or legitimised is regarded as non-existent. as is evident from the responses, this stems from a lack of institutional leadership and support for students and teachers based on the context and infrastructure of the institution. a lack of consistent leadership, guidance, communication and support adversely affects teaching and learning at the university. 5. discussion of findings the work of de sousa santos (2018) reveals that, in moments of crises, what in initial teacher education becomes manifest, can be rendered invisible and sublimated (de sousa santos, 2018). with the rapid closures of higher education institutions and the need for ite courses specific to foundation phase to move online, all that was not recognised or legitimated was perceived as non-existent. the research for this study reveals several keys aspects about this process in relation to how teacher educators navigate teaching and learning during a crisis and disruption such as covid-19. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 802022 40(2): 80-83 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) first, many teacher educators reported that they struggled to navigate online learning and, in particular, the teaching practicum component of the initial teacher preparation programme. this suggests that teacher educators find that the online emergency remote mode of teaching provides a disembodied practical experience for student teachers. this is particularly the case when it come to the teaching of a practicum component of ite which requires immersive pedagogic encounters in real schooling contexts. dhawan (2020) suggests that online teaching and learning does not necessarily hone the ability to practise their craft in the context of a real-life situation. second, teacher educators argue that, in displacing the traditional face-to-face classroom lectures, online teaching removes the sociality of pedagogy which they perceive as crucial to their work (dhawan, 2020). in this study, teacher educators defined this relational absence as limiting meaningful and robust epistemic engagement with their student teachers. according to okita (2012), the important social aspect of providing meaningful epistemic engagement in learning was not possible in this context. third, meaningful epistemic engagement relies on material, physical access to resources and tools to engage in online learning. in this study, teacher educators pointed to the multiple ways in which inequities manifest in online teaching, including weak online teaching infrastructures (ali, 2020); a lack of hardware and unstable networks (bao, 2020; lischer et al., 2021; zhang et al., 2020); limited data access; a lack of finance to purchase data and tools and distance constraints (rapanta et al., 2020). the covid-19 pandemic not only reveals existing inequities but, in the context of this institution under study, further intensifies inequities in access to learning due to the structural context and socio-economic background that marginalises working class student teachers enrolled in this university (mpungose, 2020). fourth, the research revealed a lack of attention to the psychosocial wellbeing of teacher educators. the participants in this study spoke alarmingly of their mental and physical wellbeing which they felt was ignored by the institution. fifth, as de sousa santos (2018) notes, there are multiple ways in which the institution delegitimated and misrecognised the nature and scale of the problem. this was evident, as an example, with the intensification of labour. this intensification was difficult to manage given the lack of support from the institution for the transition to emergency remote online teaching, an entirely new experience for many. in this respect, they called for greater support but also clearer leadership. it was also evident in the increased administrative burden placed on teacher educators coupled with a lack of support for students and teacher educators, particularly in relation to access to the necessary tools for online teaching. 6. conclusion the institutional responses to the delivery of professional education and training to prospective student teachers during the covid-19 pandemic illuminates the ways in which a particular narrow monoculture of knowledge and response is reproduced within heis. a more resilient teacher education system would envision affirming and empowering forms of leadership in a conducive environment to be prepared for future crises. furthermore, such responses would legitimate the experience of the lecturers involved in the delivery of teacher education and call attention to their material and well-being needs as well as those they teach. in so doing, a more authentic response to crises and disruptions can be rendered possible in higher education. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 812022 40(2): 81-83 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.6 williams, sayed & singh the experiences of teacher educators managing teaching and learning disclosure statement no potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. references ali, w. 2020. online and remote learning in higher education institutes: a necessity in light of covid-19 pandemic. higher education, 10(3): 16-25. https://doi.org/10.5539/hes.v10n3p16 bao, w. 2020. covid-19 and online teaching in higher education: a case study of peking university. human behavior and emerging technologies, 2(2): 113-115. 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https://connect.chronicle.com/rs/931-eka-218/images/covid%26facultycareerpaths_fidelity_researchbrief_v3%20%281%29.pdf https://connect.chronicle.com/rs/931-eka-218/images/covid%26facultycareerpaths_fidelity_researchbrief_v3%20%281%29.pdf https://doi.org/10.4102/sajpsychiatry.v27i0.1589 https://doi.org/10.4102/sajpsychiatry.v27i0.1589 https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm13030055 _hlk83826415 _hlk62463402 _hlk62469291 _hlk62461064 _hlk81841278 _hlk81558111 _hlk81565085 _hlk83809917 _hlk81839721 _hlk83812443 _hlk83800732 _hlk81552776 _hlk81552824 _hlk83813091 _hlk81567049 _hlk81839261 _hlk81832144 _hlk83809710 _hlk81568705 _hlk81567378 _hlk80863927 _hlk89430776 _hlk81843417 _hlk71132631 _hlk81843505 _hlk71133220 _hlk81551856 _hlk83795958 _hlk81846432 _hlk81551878 _hlk81839167 _hlk103719886 _hlk103719928 _hlk103720791 _hlk103720437 _hlk103720453 _hlk103720842 _hlk103722192 _hlk83829176 _hlk103722458 _hlk83122671 2582023 41(2): 258-274 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 early childhood care and education policy intentions and the realities in rural areas abstract early childhood development (ecd) policies are primary determinants in the provision of quality early childhood development outcomes. healthy and safe environments play a critical role in enhancing children’s care and development. this is even more critical for children living in marginalised communities to develop foundational knowledge and thrive beyond their primary years. however, ecd practitioners in rural areas are faced with a severe lack of basic health facilities, care and learning resources. regardless of this, education and care at these rural ecd centres are expected to continue. young children are progressed from these inadequate ecd centres to formal schooling for enrolment in grade r with limited foundational knowledge. the study intended to look into ecd policies and challenges faced by the under-resourced ecd centres whose mandate is to provide quality learning opportunities for young children. the research applied a qualitative approach within an interpretivist paradigm. data were obtained through semi-structured interviews, writing field notes, observations and photographs. three (3) education officials, two (2) ecd managers and four (4) practitioners were purposefully sampled. the study found that unregistered ecd centres in rural areas do not have the basic resources required to provide children with foundational knowledge. the findings recommend that ecd practitioners at these centres should be empowered and upskilled in the registration processes to access quality programmes, infrastructure, water and sanitation facilities. this will ensure that young children are provided with a safe and secure learning environment to enhance development opportunities. keywords: early childhood care and education, early childhood policies, infrastructure, registration 1. introduction 1.1 background early childhood development (ecd) policies are primary determinants in the development outcome of young children. davids et al. (2015) highlight that young children in south africa, especially in disadvantaged communities where there is inadequate infrastructure, water, sanitation author: tuelo nelly maita matjokana1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i2.6741 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(2): 258-274 published: 30 june 2023 received: 19 september 2022 accepted: 12 june 2023 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6109-4926 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 2592023 41(2): 259-274 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 matjokana and trained practitioners have limited access to quality early care and learning opportunities. currently, there is a significant gap between policy vision to ensure equitable access to ecd services and the realities at disadvantaged rural ecd centres with poor resources. accordingly, viviers, biersteker & moruane (2013) cites gauge who confirms that the transformation agenda of these centres should entail a well-designed, funded and implemented system. similarly, the united nations convention on the rights of the child (uncrc) advocates that governments should develop properly resourced, coherent and managed systems to ensure access to essential ecd services, particularly for disadvantaged children (vargasbarón & diehl, 2018; mbarathi, mthembu & diga, 2016). the south african constitution of 1996, the children’s act (rsa, 2005) and ecd policies and frameworks are also aligned with the uncrc on equitable access to quality, comprehensive ecd programmes and services, especially for low-income families. the national development plan (ndp) of south africa further accentuates the need for an effective integrated approach to ensure that essential services are accessible to all children, especially those whose development is at risk (dsd, 2015). unfortunately, ecd programmes are still fragmented, particularly in disadvantaged communities. young children in vulnerable communities have limited access to quality care and education (viviers et al. 2013; hoadley, 2013). 1.2 problem of the study rural, unregistered ecd centres continuously lack a safe and secure environment, water and sanitation facilities and learning material required for the development of foundational knowledge for young children. too often ecd practitioners indicate that they lack support from the department of social development (dsd) and the department of basic education (dbe) due to not meeting the registration requirements (matjokana, 2021). van der walt, de beer and swart (2014) explain that access to ecd programmes is inequitable in south africa due to the dsd registration requirements. most ecd centres in rural communities are established in the backyards of private homes. van der walt, de beer and swart (2014) state that ecd centres on private land are required to be zoned appropriately. this can be costly and time-consuming and creates further barriers to registration, hindering access to funds. most parents in rural communities are unemployed and cannot afford to pay for formally established ecd centres. as a result, ecd centres in rural areas generate very little income because they depend on parents paying school fees, which is not enough to manage these centres and pay practitioners’ stipends. the situation has been exacerbated by the advent of the coronavirus pandemic in 2019 (covid-19) (spaull & van der berg, 2020). given what has been said, practitioners are not retained at the ecd centres due to minimal income. as a result, young children’s development in rural communities is further compromised. despite the substandard care and education provided, children still proceed to formal schooling without adequate social, emotional, physical and cognitive development. they enter formal schooling with minimal foundational knowledge and skills. this often leads to them having to repeat grades, and in a worst-case scenario, dropping out of school. this reality contrasts sharply with the support that semi-urban ecd centres receive from the dsd and the dbe (mbarathi et al. (2016). in these areas, practitioners’ salaries are consistently paid and the ecd centres have learning resources. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 2602023 41(2): 260-274 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) 1.3 state of the art situation given that the government has identified ecd as a national priority, the challenge is to ensure that the key focus of policies and frameworks is translated into practical implementation at all levels − national, provincial, district offices and ecd centres. the legislative basis of ecd finds expression in the south african constitution of 1996, the children’s act (rsa, 2005) and several policies and plans that make various provisions for children to live in a safe and secure environment. the national integrated early childhood development policy (rsa, 2015) aims to provide a multi-sectoral enabling framework for access to comprehensive, quality ecd programmes (hall et al., 2017). 1.4 research gap study and objectives the aim of this article is to discuss and analyse the intention of ecd policies to ensure that essential services and quality ecd programmes are made accessible to all children, especially those in rural areas. the focus will be on whether these policy intentions are realised, and to understand the factors that impact the realisation of the policies or lack thereof. it is argued that despite intentions for the policies to grant access to quality ecd services and programmes for all children, these noble ideas are undermined by the rigid registration conditions which disqualify many poor ecd centres in rural areas from access to the available resources. in developing this argument the following issues will be explored: (i) funding norms and standards of ecd centres and challenges of access to funding; (ii) norms and standards regarding infrastructure and the state of infrastructure of many ecd centres in rural areas; (iii) norms and standards concerning quality learning programmes and the state of learning programmes at rural ecd centres; and (iv) resourcing of ecd centres in terms of practitioner’ training, leadership and management of ecd programmes. 1.5 literature the environment plays a critical role in enhancing quality teaching and learning. according to jamieson, berry and lake (2017) and sayre et al. (2015) structured learning activities as well as a healthy and safe environment promote quality learning environment. the researchers, mbarathi et al. (2016), and dsd (2015) mention that many ecd centres, especially in rural areas, do not have resources for quality teaching and learning. in addition, makhubele and baloyi (2018) contend that the under-resourced ecd centres lack government support because they do not meet the required department of social development (dsd) registration standards. for example, there is inadequate infrastructure, water, sanitation, electricity and nutrition at most rural ecd centres. moreover, ecd managers and practitioners are not provided with quality training and adequate resources by the government to teach and care for young children. as a result, young children are at risk of not reaching their full potential at the unregistered ecd centres. 1.6 state of leadership in implementing ecd policies the sustainable development goals (sdg) echoes that no child should be left behind in accessing quality education (jamieson et al., 2017). south africa has taken an initiative for every child to access quality learning environment through the development of the national integrated plan for ecd (niecd) (dsd, 2015) since 2005 (davids et al., 2015). the intended purpose of niecd policy framework was to bring a synergy of different programmes amongst https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 2612023 41(2): 261-274 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 matjokana the dbe, department of health (doh) and dsd (dsd, 2015). hall et al. (2017) assert that a multi-sectoral framework was established to cater for the diverse socio-economic context to provide a comprehensive ecd services especially in the under sourced areas. it is evident that there is a political commitment from the south african government to prioritise ecd from the national ecd policy plans and mitigate the challenges of children living in poverty. recently, since april 2022, there was a function shift in the roles of ecd-responsible departments where the oversight of early childhood development has been transferred from the dsd to the dbe (dbe, 2021). the aforementioned migration of ecd has been a welcome move since it resonates with the dbe action plan of 2019, priority goal number eleven (11) to improve access to quality ecd (dbe, 2015). 1.7 realities on registration and access to quality ecd service the rigid ecd legislative framework on ecd infrastructure and inadequate distribution of funds across the south african provinces show an impact on ecd centres in the disadvantaged south african communities. access to quality learning environments for young children seem almost impossible to achieve due to regulations and high standards set by the dsd and the south african building regulation (dti, 2008) (van der walt et al., 2014). the act requires that the proposed ecd facilities should be rezoned for that use and have fireproof, approved building plans, which further prejudices the ecd centres in the disadvantaged communities (van der walt et al., 2014). furthermore, the children’s act (rsa, 2005) also put stringent regulatory measures in place to protect children by regulating the registration of ecd facilities. the regulation of the act is laid out in section 78(2)(b)(ii), which prescribes that ecd facilities must comply with safety health and safety regulation of the local municipalities. regrettably, the requirements of the acts seem impossible for the under-sourced communities who do not have basic services (van der walt et al., 2014). the compliance with regulations and municipal bylaws requires higher infrastructural standards for registration of ecd centres, which is beyond the realities of impoverished ecd centres (madyibi & bayat, 2021). lack of funding for infrastructural and start-up costs hampers the establishment of quality ecd programmes in the disadvantaged communities in south africa (mbarathi et al., 2016; viviers et al. 2013). additionally, madyibi and bayat (2021) highlight the various responsibilities within the dsd, noting that the member of the executive council (mec) is in charge of carrying out the ecd strategy while the national minister of dsd is in charge of establishing the norms and standards. in this regard, the act enables the minister to set compliance standards for ecd registration and to assist a facility that does not comply with the requirements towards compliance (van der walt et al., 2014). however, the policy intention is not realised due to high regulatory standards set for impoverished ecd centres with no basic facilities or proper infrastructure. the rigid compliance for ecd centres registration is noted in the national building regulations and building standard act, no. 103 of 1977 (van der walt et al., 2014). the act requires that the proposed ecd facilities should be rezoned for that use and have fireproofapproved building plans, which further prejudices the ecd centres in the marginalised communities (van der walt et al., 2014). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 2622023 41(2): 262-274 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) unfortunately, this firm stance of policies and frameworks has an impact on ecd centres in poor communities that cannot access funding to secure adequate facilities. most ecd centres are not registered due to not meeting the infrastructural requirements from dsd to qualify for funding (dsd, 2015). young children continue to be deprived of a conducive learning environment to prepare them for formal schooling. 1.8 theoretical framework a theoretical framework provides an overview of a perspective of the research results (imenda, 2014). this research was underpinned by britto, yoshikawa and boller’s (2011) conceptual framework to provide an in-depth understanding and implementation of ecd policies aimed at improving the learning environment. according to the researchers, quality is a critical ingredient in strengthening the implementation of ecd policies and requires an understanding of the concept in the delivery of ecd services by ecd stakeholders (britto et al., 2011). the aforesaid researchers reiterate that the implementation of ecd policies is determined by the social setting and level of stakeholders’ interaction and dialogue in improving the development of young children. the researchers argue that since young children in south africa live in diverse socio-economic settings there is a need for ecd role-players to understand the different contexts for the delivery of quality ecd programmes. parasuraman, zeithaml and berry (1985) perceive that the social setting where ecd centres are located requires resources such as infrastructure, finances, human resources, and the registration of ecd centres. 2. method 2.1 type and design this study adopted a qualitative interpretative approach. participants’ beliefs and daily practices that influence the care and education provided to young children were explored (creswell & poth, 2017; maree, 2015). in addition, people’s experiences are socially constructed and influenced by their environmental factors (frohlich, 2012). for this reason, this study explored the in-depth views and lived experiences of participants from national, provincial and district offices as well as ecd managers and practitioners. they provided an insight into the challenges they faced in implementing the ecd policies. 2.2 sampling table 1: participants’ demographics participant ecd age category gender occupational position qualifications code national official 0-4 years female chief education specialist bed honours; master’s degree in public administration no provincial official 0-4 years female deputy education specialist bed; med psychology po department official 0-4 years female deputy education specialist ptc; bed in education do em 1 0-4 years female ecd manager grade 11/nqf level 1 & 4 em 1 em 2 0-4 years female ecd manager nqf level 5 em 2 at 1 2-3 years female practitioner nqf ecd level 4 at 1 at2 4-5 years female practitioner nqf level 4 & 5 at2 bt 1 3-4 years female practitioner nqf ecd level 4 bt 1 bt 2 2-3 years female practitioner nqf ecd level 4 bt 2 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 2632023 41(2): 263-274 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 matjokana the researcher used purposive sampling. participants who are knowledgeable and experienced in the care and development of young children were selected (eitikan, musa & alkassim, 2016; creswell, 2013). the participants at the ecd centres were conveniently chosen based on their geographic location in the hammanskraal area, mandela village in the rural areas. 3. data collection 3.1 data collection technique semi-structured, open-ended interviews were conducted to explore and describe the participants’ experiences. face-to-face interviews were conducted with the national, provincial and district officials and the ecd managers to obtain their honest views and opinions on implementing ecd policies. further investigation of participants’ perceptions regarding the challenges faced when implementing ecd policies was made using focus-group interviews with ecd practitioners at their respective ecd centres. the interviews provided rich and detailed information from participants’ perspectives (creswell & poth, 2017; mayo, 2013). 3.2 data analysis for analysis, multiple data sources were relied upon, such as reading the notes and grouping words into categories to help in generating a description of the setting (creswell & poth, 2017; mayo, 2013). data analysis was inductive and mainly acquired from reading interview transcripts (maree, 2017). themes and categories were generated from the verbatim quotes of participants’ experiences. the researcher further identified common themes from coding and finally interpreted the meaning of data across the research sites (stenfors-hayes, hult & dahlgren, 2013). 3.3 ethical considerations to meet the ethical code of conduct, participation was voluntary. participants were assured of anonymity and confidentiality. consent forms compiled according to the university of pretoria’s ethical standards were clearly articulated to the participants. all participants completed and signed the consent forms (mcnabb, 2015). prior to the data collection, participants were also informed that all interviews would be recorded through observations, note taking and photographs to ensure consistency and reliability of the findings. the results of the collected data were portrayed anonymously using pseudonyms (creswell, 2014). ethics approval was also sought from the university of pretoria. 4. results 4.1 analytical strategy the following themes emerged: • funding norms and standards of ecd centres and challenges of access to funding; • ecd infrastructural norms and standards; • practitioners’ training and learning programmes; and • leadership and management of ecd programmes. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 2642023 41(2): 264-274 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) 4.2 funding norms and standards of ecd centres and challenges of access to funding as indicated, funding norms and standards are a crucial element in determining the intended policy outcomes for children to access ecd services. to elicit participants’ views about access to funding, the experiences of doe officials and ecd managers and practitioners were explored in semi-structured interviews. these interviews revealed an inadequate distribution of funds at the unregistered ecd centres. the rural ecd centres’ chances of getting adequate facilities to implement ecd policies seemed unachievable due to a lack of funds. this has resulted in a poor quality of infrastructure (atmore, van niekerk & ashley-cooper, 2012). most participants interviewed shared the same frustrations about access to funding. the officials explained as follows: the department of public works train practitioners but they leave and open their own preschool due to poverty … the department must pay them to retain them. (no) we give training, but implementation is difficult, trained practitioners go open their own ecd centres. (po) from the views of participants, no and po, poor remuneration affects the retention of practitioners. trained practitioners open their own ecd centres for a better income. in this regard, young children at under-resourced ecd centres are provided with poor standards of care and development. one of the participants, an ecd manager (em 1), seemed despondent and said the following: parents do pay school fees. half pay, and some parents are not working, some depend on the grandparents, the toys are not enough, the child-teacher ratio has to be 1:6 and one assistant, but teachers don’t stay because of money. (em1) similarly, the ecd manager from the rural ecd centre explained the challenges of financial limitations. she added: we fundraise mo (from) batsading (parents), monthly income ya bana (children’s monthly income), we buy toys outdoors and stationary, sometimes parents ga ba pay regularly (parents don’t pay regularly), sometime ke ba le problem ya go patella staff (sometimes i have a problem of paying the staff), money is not enough. (em 2) the same challenges were shared by another ecd manager as follows: the staff is not enough, for 0–2 we are supposed to have 1 teacher per 6 children and 1 assistant, for the 2–3-year-old 12 children per 1 teacher and 1 assistant, the stipend from dsd doesn’t pay the assistant and they leave. (em1) the responses from ecd practitioners also revealed access to funding as a challenge by saying: sometimes there are no salaries because parents are not paying. (bt 1) one of the participants showed concern for children by saying: parents sometimes don’t pay, and there is no food for children; we think of children first before we can think of our salaries. (bt 2) https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 2652023 41(2): 265-274 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 matjokana data revealed that provision of funds is limited at all the ecd centres. all the participants responded by stating that they received an irregular income from parents’ school fees to buy teaching and learning resources. ecd managers’ experiences demonstrate discrepancies in receiving funding. participant em 1 is funded and supported by the dsd, whereas participant em 2 from an unregistered ecd centre completely depends on parents’ fees to pay stipends and for buying learning material. the responses of participants show that most families live in poverty and cannot afford to pay for ecd services at unregistered ecd centres (mbarathi, mthembu & diga, 2016; atmore, 2013). it can be argued that the effects of extreme poverty on children might have life-long consequences, including the possibility of stunted growth. conversely, the south african policies and legislative framework such as the south african children’s act (rsa, 2005) and the niecd recognise the importance of inclusive and quality ecd programmes to optimise child development (dsd,2015; vorster et al., 2016) given the legal and developmental imperative, the south african government has particularly prioritised funding and implementation of quality ecd programmes for disadvantaged young children to address the barriers of inequitable early learning opportunities (dsd, 2015). however, according to the participants’ responses, the lack of adequate funding hinders the fullscale roll-out of ecd services due to low income (richter et al., 2019). thus, children at the unregistered ecd centres might be at risk of inadequate cognitive, emotional, social and physical development to prepare them for formal schooling. 4.3 ecd infrastructural norms and standards the second key theme of this study was to establish the infrastructural requirements as a determining factor for registering ecd centres. the ecd manager (em 2) shared her experiences of having to care for young children at the back of her yard in a corrugated iron structure. she expressed her frustration of not being able to access funds due to the homebased ecd facility as follows: financially we need a sponsor, now re na le problem ya go kereya sponsor (we have a problem of getting a sponsor), re berekela ka mo jarateng… (we work from the yard…), we are busy looking for a stand re kgone go applayela di funds … if we can get the funds re godise mmereko and more training (we are busy looking for a place to work so that we can apply for funds, work will grow). (em 2) she added: i will apply to dsd. (em 2) the participants’ responses revealed the challenges they faced at rural ecd centres in acquiring adequate infrastructure for young children to be cared for and learn in a safe and healthy environment. the field notes and photographs taken during the onsite visit support the participants’ views of infrastructure challenges. structures are built directly on the ground from corrugated iron with limited space and ventilation. most children sleep on the floor and are exposed to dust and infectious diseases. data revealed that inadequate infrastructural registration requirements are a hindrance to providing young children in marginalised areas with a quality environment. mathwasa and shumba (2020) note that substandard shelter, sanitation, safe drinking water at unregistered ecd facilities is a national crisis. however, funding the delivery of the essential components of the comprehensive early childhood development programmes, especially for children living in poverty, is underpinned in the national integrated plan for ecd (nipecd) as well as niecd policies (dsd, 2015; davids et https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 2662023 41(2): 266-274 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) al., 2015). the aforesaid policies have provided a unifying framework for delivery and design of ecd services and dictates alignment of all sectoral policies, by-laws and strategies with it (dsd, 2015). nevertheless, the care and development of young children attending underresourced ecd facilities are compromised. 4.4 practitioners’ training and learning programmes the third key theme was used to explore the quality of training acquired by participants and learning programmes used at the ecd centres. the participants (do; em 1; at 1) agree that there is an uneven distribution of resources to provide quality ecd programmes in disadvantaged areas, which currently limits young children from reaching their full potential in south africa (mbarathi et al., 2016). most participants agree that ecd programmes are not standardised. an official from the district office (do) explained that ecd programmes at the centres are fragmented. teachers lack training and guidance, particularly in rural areas. participant do state: officials should be trained on what to look for at the centres … we don’t have guidelines, an instrument for monitoring 0-4 years for these centres … no guidelines on caring for them, feeding them or changing nappies. we just check how they take care of them. (do) he added: the challenge is that they don’t have a policy, they have their own structure, no one trained them … they are following their own program, each have its own program ... have two levels,0–4 age group and 4–6 age group at one centre … the ones taking care of the 4–6 group follow caps, they are trained. (do) the participant further expressed that lack of access to standardised ecd programmes and practitioners’ training affects quality care and education. what structure do you follow as a practitioner to say this one is ok is well-fed, this one is not eating today, this one needs some extra medication … it’s got many challenges health side … practitioners need training by someone well vested with thorough knowledge, someone experienced. (do) in agreement with this view of the district official (do), the ecd practitioner from the rural ecd center (at 2) reported on the lack of access to ecd programmes and training: workshops are done by the doe they don’t include us, we must pay for our development, dsd provide minimal support unlike doe. (at 2) em 1 agreed that: some are using curriculum some are not … you find that when the kids go to school at the school there is no foundation and the same level of teaching, some are just teaching they don’t follow the curriculum. so, if we can be combined. (em 1) she further added: when i see the news, i can see that somewhere somehow, the black person kids are suffering. they can come up with a strategy to help us to say this is the curriculum because we get it from the doe, some are not getting it.’ (em 1) https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 2672023 41(2): 267-274 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 matjokana the views of the participants revealed that children at the poor and unregistered ecd centres are deprived of quality care and learning and are faced with the challenge of missing the early learning opportunities needed for formal schooling. the review of south african legislation, the national early learning development standards (nelds) (dbe, 2009) and the national curriculum framework for children from birth to four years (caps) (dbe, 2015) clarify that practitioners should be provided with information and knowledge to ensure developmentally appropriate children’s early experiences (dbe, 2009). however, the participants expressed limited knowledge of ecd programmes in the disadvantaged areas. 4.5 leadership and management of ecd programmes a key theme for this research was to determine the quality of leadership and management of ecd programmes. the official from the national office’s (no) response indicated that there is some level of collaboration between ecd stakeholders, the department of basic education (dbe), the department of health (doh) and the department of social development (dsd). participant no explained: niecd policy is used to work with various departments through national interdepartmental committee (nidc) where several departments meet quarterly. dbe, doh, dsd meet quarterly … the national curriculum framework (ncf) from 0-4 years is used in collaboration with national integrated early childhood development (niecd) policy, which was developed together with other departments. working with ecd, doh and dsd show responsibilities of the department. (no) the participant continued: we share ideas on how to move the ecd forward for instance, doh’s role is immunization or nutrition, dsd registers all ecd centres … make sure that children receive food and give practitioners a stipend. (no) the participant from the provincial office (po) further expressed the importance of dialogue between stakeholders to implement ecd policies. participant po said: there are challenges in integrating services partly. sometimes officials go to ecd centre a, today i go there as an official from doe, tomorrow, so and so go as an official from dsd, tomorrow or the other date off from doh. i think if possible, go there as one if possible, talk in one language, go with one thing in common. problem is when going there differently at one ecd centre. how about going there collaboratively? practitioners get confused but they say they are from the government; they do not have a platform to tell even anything about salaries. whoever go there is they accepted him and welcome. communication is not strengthened; we should go there collaboratively. for example, when given funding, ecd centres, become difficult for all the departments to monitor how funding was used. (po) the responses from the participants reveal a lack of interaction and common vision amongst ecd stakeholders to create an enabling environment as required by the niecd policies (vargas-barón & diehl, 2018). 5. discussion according to britto et al. (2011), quality implementation of ecd policies takes different forms across different levels and dimensions. the quality of implementing care and education for young children is an important feature across all levels (national, provincial and district offices and ecd centres) and dimensions to generate the intended ecd policy outcomes. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 2682023 41(2): 268-274 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) the researchers emphasise that registration and access to ecd services do not ensure that quality care and education take place, particularly for vulnerable children (britto et al., 2011). ecd centres need quality training for practitioners, sustainable remuneration, quality learning programmes, infrastructure facilities and accountable leaders. the primary determinant of quality caregiving is determined by the immediate environment where children grow up; that is, at home and at ecd centres. previous study show that investing in social infrastructures, such as adequate physical structure, water, sanitation and electricity is essential for the welfare, protection and economic prosperity of communities (dsd, 2015). quality caregiving and infrastructure are critical drivers for the early socioemotional, physical and cognitive development of children. biersteker (2012) explains that young children deprived of a conducive environment are exposed to long-term deficits that can be difficult and costly to address when they are older, especially at school-going age. moreover, the potential embedded in young children to perform maximally and achieve the desired learning outcome will be affected due to a lack of quality ecd facilities (hoadley, 2013; biersteker, 2012). it is considered that at early learning centres the infrastructure should not merely be designed as spaces for playing, but should also develop the child cognitively, physically, socially and emotionally (jamieson et al., 2017; madyibi & bayat, 2021). under current realities, the findings revealed that most home-based ecd centres in marginalised communities are unsafe and limit the development opportunities and quality care of children. data as posited by jamieson et al. (2017) underpin this finding. researchers mbarathi et al. (2016) agree that under-resourced ecd centres’ lack of basic facilities such as running water, access to electricity or suitable sanitation facilities compromises the full potential of children’s development. the context of rural ecd centres is aggravated by not meeting the registration requirements to get funding from the dsd. the south african government developed ecd policies and frameworks by prioritising ecd in the national development plan 2030: our future − make it work, to improve quality education by providing adequate public funding and infrastructure for ecd services (dsd, 2015). however, research and the response from participants do and em 2 revealed that quality provision of adequate infrastructure in poor areas is of a low standard or even nonexistent, mainly due to not meeting the registration requirements (dsd, 2015; melariri et al., 2019; hall et al., 2017). the government’s white paper on the new housing policy and strategy in south africa aims to provide the society with access to private, permanent, safe and secure residential structures to ensure protection against the elements (dbe, 2015). however, it was evident from the responses of the em 2 that ecd structures are established in private homes where the health and well-being of children are of low quality. the niecd policy makes provision for national norms and standards for the distribution of resources; however, data showed discrepancies and inequality in the provision of resources (dsd, 2015). the rural unregistered ecd centres remain the same, where the quality of preschool care is deteriorating (atmore et al., 2012; jamieson et al., 2017). researchers such as mbarathi et al. (2017), atmore et al. (2012) and britto et al. (2012) also affirm that quality care and education for young children cannot be achieved without addressing inadequate education, healthcare and social services to maximise holistic development and lifelong learning. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 2692023 41(2): 269-274 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 matjokana the infrastructural development of ecd in poor communities in south africa could be funded by local governments through municipal infrastructural grants (viviers et al., 2013). however, compliance with regulations and municipal bylaws requires higher infrastructural standards for the registration of ecd centres, which is beyond the realities of impoverished ecd centres (madyibi & bayat, 2021). lack of funding for infrastructural and start-up costs as expressed by em2 hampers the establishment of quality ecd programmes in disadvantaged communities in south africa (mbarathi et al., 2016; viviers et al., 2013). inadequate provision of infrastructure at the ecd centres impedes the ecd practitioners’ capacity to provide care and meet the educational needs of young children, particularly in rural areas (mbarathi et al., 2016). the rigid ecd legislative framework on ecd infrastructure and the inadequate distribution of funds across the south african provinces show an impact on ecd centres in impoverished south african communities (atmore et al., 2012). access to quality learning environments for young children seems almost impossible to achieve due to the regulations and high standards set by the dsd and the south african building regulations (van der walt et al., 2014). the findings from the response of em2, re berekela ka mo jarateng … (we work from the yard …), we are busy looking for a stand re kgone go applayela di funds … if we can get the funds re godise mmereko and more training (we are busy looking for a place to work so that we can apply for funds, work will grow), revealed the restrained experienced by the manager. the act requires that the proposed ecd facilities should be rezoned for that use and have fireproof-approved building plans which are not currently in place and further disadvantage the ecd centres in the marginalised communities (van der walt et al., 2014). furthermore, the children’s act (rsa, 2005) also have stringent regulatory measures to protect children by regulating the registration of ecd facilities. the regulation of the act is laid out in section 78(2)(b)(ii) which prescribes that ecd facilities must comply with the health and safety regulations of the local municipalities (van der walt et al., 2014). regrettably, the requirements of the act seem impossible for the undersourced communities that do not have basic services (van der walt et al., 2014). the findings are in line with madyibi and bayat (2021), who state that higher infrastructural compliance standards set by regulations and municipal bylaws for registering ecd centres are beyond the realities of impoverished ecd centres. lack of funding for infrastructural and start-up costs hampers the establishment of quality ecd programmes in most disadvantaged communities in south africa (mbarathi et al., 2016; viviers et al., 2013). furthermore, madyibi and bayat (2021) note that the roles within the dsd, where the national minister of the social development is responsible for setting the norms and standards, while the delivery of ecd strategy is the provincial responsibility under the department of social development’s mec, create challenges of articulation between the setting up of policy and implementation. in this regard, the act enables the minister to set up regulations dealing with standards of ecd registration, whereas the provincial department is responsible for the delivery of ecd services and providing support in meeting the required standards (van der walt et al., 2014). data showed that policy intention is undermined by high regulatory standards set for impoverished ecd centres with no basic facilities or proper infrastructure. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 2702023 41(2): 270-274 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) currently, according to participant at2 and do, the curriculum is not implemented by all ecd centres because of lack of training. these findings indicate that there is an uneven distribution of resources to provide quality ecd programmes in disadvantaged areas which limits young children from reaching their full potential in south africa (ashley-cooper, niekerk & atmore, 2019; mbarathi et al., 2016). in order to mitigate these challenges, there is a need for ecd stakeholders to collaborate and have a dialogue with the aim to unblock factors hindering the provision of quality infrastructure in disadvantaged communities. teaching and learning require the retention of ecd practitioners who are adequately trained and remunerated to provide young children with sustainable quality education. the dsd provides training and pays a stipend to practitioners employed at registered ecd centres (davids et al., 2015). most rural ecd centres are not registered and therefore remain disadvantaged in providing resources for quality teaching and caring for young children. remuneration and training pose a challenge in retaining disadvantaged practitioners in rural areas, as conveyed by the no and po participants. as such, young children continue to receive inadequate foundational knowledge (biersteker, 2012; atmore et al., 2012). the sustainable development goal (sdg) number 4’s call, i.e. that no child should be left behind in accessing quality education in south africa, has taken the initiative since 2005 for every child to access a quality learning environment through the development of the national integrated plan for ecd (niecd) (dsd, 2015; davids et al., 2015). the intended purpose of the niecd policy framework was to bring a synergy of different programmes between the dbe, the doh and the dsd (dsd, 2015). hall et al. (2017) assert that a multi-sectoral framework was established to cater for the diverse socio-economic context to provide comprehensive ecd services, especially in underresourced areas. there is evidence from the national ecd policy plans that there is a political commitment to prioritise ecd and mitigate the challenges of children living in poverty. recently, since april 2022, there has been a function shift in the roles of departments responsible for ecd where the oversight of early childhood development has been transferred from the dsd to the department of basic education (dbe, 2021). the aforementioned migration of ecd has been a welcomed move, since it resonates with priority goal eleven (11) of the dbe action plan 2019 to improve access to quality ecd (dbe, 2015). the extent to which south africa is investing in the education and development of young children is the determining factor of their learning outcome and the success of the ecd policy’s intention, particularly in underresourced communities. according to jamieson et al. (2017) and sayre et al. (2015), structured learning activities as well as a conducive environment that is developmentally supportive to enhance the caregiving environment are required to strengthen the implementation of ecd policies. currently, the different settings and contexts where children in south africa grow up have birthed disparities in the provision of funding for quality ecd services and the level of training and infrastructural development of ecd varies provincially (vorster et al., 2016). the challenge is aggravated by ecd key stakeholders, i.e. the dsd, doe and doh, working in silos due to the multi-sectoral nature of the ecd sector in south africa (viviers et al., 2013; atmore et al., 2012). the disintegrated provision of ecd services has been an obstacle derived by the dsd, dbe and the doh, that are key stakeholders responsible for https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 2712023 41(2): 271-274 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 matjokana ecd policies and services. these government departments often have competing priorities, hence the fragmented delivery of ecd services (mahlangu, goudge & vearey 2019; sayre, devercelli, neuman & wodon, 2015). in this regard, children in vulnerable communities have limited access to quality education and learning environments due to inadequate ecd programmes, monitoring, management and leadership, infrastructure and funding (jamieson et al., 2017; vorster et al., 2016; atmore et al., 2012). 6. conclusion 6.1 novelty and contribution given the fact that there is inequity in the financial management and funding between the semi-urban and rural ecd centres to provide adequate ecd services, funding of ecd services should be reviewed. firstly, it is recommended that the doe should have data on ecd centres, especially those in the rural areas and implement a plan to empower and upskill the ecd centres regarding the registration processes so that the disadvantaged ecd centres will be able to get registered and have access to funds. in this way, they will acquire a quality infrastructure and young children will have access to basic health services such as water and sanitation facilities. furthermore, the social setting where young children will grow up will be a safe and healthy environment. the study also recommends that the ecd centres that are near primary schools should be merged with these schools. in this way, they will be in a wellresourced environment where they can be managed better. in addition, this approach can enable the ecd centres and schools to have a succession of young children based at the schools moving from grade r to higher grades. consequently, the foundational knowledge that young children acquire will be strengthened. furthermore, the failure and dropout rates at the schools will be reduced. the dbe should remunerate the ecd practitioners adequately to retain them. in this way, the training provided to teachers will benefit young children and strengthen quality caregiving and education at the ecd centres. 6.2 limitations of the study the present study was conducted only with department of education officials, ecd centre managers and practitioners from the gauteng province, south africa. the findings in other provinces could be different. in that sense, it is recommended that further research be conducted in other districts across south africa to compare results. 6.3 implications and suggestions ecd managers and practitioners need to be knowledgeable about ecd policies and the registration processes of ecd centres. the findings of this study can be taken forward focusing on the following: • the development of incubation programmes to upskill ecd managers and practitioners. • the doe has to develop monitoring tools for the provincial and district officials to collaborate with and provide continuous guidance and support to ecd managers and practitioners in executing the ecd policies. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6741 2722023 41(2): 272-274 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http://www.ci.uct.ac.za/sites/default/files/image_tool/images/367/child_gauge/south_african_child_gauge_2013/gauge2013systems.pdf https://doi.org/10.4102/sajce.v6i1.257 _hlk110067997 _hlk120362612 _hlk120362678 _hlk107752443 _hlk41039135 _hlk109503572 _hlk110422871 _hlk110420115 pie 32 (2) book.indb perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 89 corinne knowles extended studies unit, rhodes university e-mail: c.knowles@ru.ac.za telephone: 046 603 8946 vulnerability: self-study’s contribution to social justice education corinne knowles teaching, as a social justice project, seeks to undo and re-imagine oppressive pedagogies in order to transform teachers, their students, and the knowledge with which they work. in this article, i argue that self-study can contribute to social justice in a number of ways by, for instance, making the sometimes limiting norms that frame teaching and learning visible; inviting my own vulnerability through peer and student reflections and feedback, and noticing the important relationship between ontology and epistemology in teaching and learning. one means to avoid the narrow way in which self-study might apply to only one person’s practice is to use theory to legitimise it and make it more broadly applicable. in this study, i use judith butler’s ideas relating to vulnerability in order to explain the way in which my teaching and learning is framed and to show how normative frameworks that define teaching can be expanded to be more inclusive. i use excerpts of peer and student feedback in order to demonstrate how vulnerability, reconfigured, can lead to powerful new knowledge. keywords: vulnerability, social justice education, judith butler, self-study introduction post-apartheid universities are challenged by the opportunities and responsibilities associated with the power they have to influence how people understand and perform their humanity. how i experience and make sense of teaching is partly related to how the university, the discipline and the departments, in which i work, facilitate and frame teaching and learning, and how students, particularly first-year students, come to know themselves is also related to these frames. i argue that how we work with these frames is affected by how we think about vulnerability. i am interested in conversations that disrupt and transform enduring legacies of oppression and perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 90 authority. to this end, this article works with some ideas and practices of social justice education. through a self-study of my teaching, and using a theoretical lens adapted from the work of judith butler, i developed two themes that emerged from this engagement: the connection between the ontology and epistemology of teaching and learning in self-study as praxis, and vulnerability, and the violence and possibilities of non-convergence. i conclude the article with examples that engage these themes. context i teach mainly in the humanities extended studies programme at rhodes university, and this shapes my imagination regarding the notions and practices of social justice, inclusion and transformation. part of the discourse concerning the students who attend this programme is that they are at risk, and vulnerable, especially in the small, elite, colonially conceived rhodes university. boughey (2010: 11) described the programme as “a vital part of the university’s goal of widening access to include learners with potential, from a more diverse range of educational, cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds, whose disadvantaged backgrounds may have hindered their school leaving performance”. the recent important council on higher education (che) report of the task team on undergraduate curriculum structure (2013) claims that extended programmes are “the only intervention thus far that has been designed to offer a systemic solution to the systemic problem of the articulation gap” between schooling and university in south africa, and “[t]heir purpose is thus similar to that of the broader structural reform. thus, experience gained from the extended programmes is a key consideration in the case for modifying the curriculum structure” (che, 2013: 71, 72). the programme in which i teach is specifically designed to expand the frames of what it is to be a student in order to transform not only the student, but also the university that houses them. i also base my claims on experiences in teaching a module on feminism for sociology i students. as i claim to be working towards social justice education, then one possibility of self-study is to liberate myself, the students i teach, and the knowledge with which we work from norms that might limit and oppress, or ‘alienate’. as mann (2001: 8) argues, “critical work must be done in order to examine the conditions which might promote alienation; and that any changes towards eliminating the student’s experience of alienation within higher education would be radical and not cosmetic”. this resonates with bell hooks’s (1994: 11) famous proclamation that “[t]he class room remains the most radical space of possibility” – not only for students, but for teachers too. in south africa, where assimilation or alienation continues to be framed in ways that evoke previous systems of privilege (che, 2013: 39-53), a key aspect of self-study as a contribution to social justice is to recognise norms and make them visible in order to expand and transform them to be more inclusive. vulnerability: self-study’s contribution to social justice education corinne knowles 91 why self-study and praxis? relevance and tensions self-study has been described as a way to improve teaching practices and develop professionally (cardetti & orgnero, 2013: 252). this study uses my own practice, not only as descriptive data, but also as challenging normalised teaching practices, “working toward greater congruence between intent and action” (berry & russell, 2013: 201). as a social justice educator, my self-study aligns my intentions for social justice with my practice that “always exists in a space between the self and the others engaged in our practice, between history and autobiography, between teaching and research” (pinnegar, hamilton & fitzgerald, 2010: 5). the complicated challenge is to be present in the teaching encounter, while finding the distance from it in order to reflect on it and transform it where necessary. pinnegar et al. (2010: 5) explain that the purpose of self-study “is to develop understanding of practice that then turns back on itself to be useful to both the self-engaged in the practice and others who are practitioners”. self-study is an important tool for noticing and disrupting classroom norms that render some students, lecturers, or knowledge invisible or marginal. it informs how i should adapt or expand the norms to become more inclusive and, in so doing, contribute to social justice pedagogy. this engagement with my own practice is a way to connect the ontology and epistemology of pedagogy, in that i scrutinise my own ‘being’ as a teacher in order to transform what and how i know, and vice versa. i strive to access these perspectives using qualitative methods of interviews, auto-ethnography, as well as peer and student observations and feedback – to illuminate unvoiced individual experience in order to recognise and clarify ways of being, doing, and acting (ontology) that generate or inhibit knowing and knowledge (epistemology). as pinnegar et al. (2010: 1) argue, self-study’s “claims for trustworthiness are based in ontology rather than epistemology”, choosing dialogue [between teacher, peers, students and knowledge] over scientific method as its empirical grounding. not everyone agrees with the validity of using these kinds of research methods. for instance, alvesson (2003) warns that users of these methods sometimes naively claim to capture experience, while, in fact, they might merely allude to a reality which is constructed by the researcher and researched, following guidelines established by research traditions. he suggests a number of ways to overcome this, particularly where the researcher is an insider (as i am in self-study research). alvesson (2003: 189) emphasises that “the researcher needs to engage in an ambitious struggle with his/her personal and cultural framework”, and arguably this is part of my challenge as a teacher who was educated under apartheid frames, and is also oriented towards social justice. louie, drevdahl, purdy and stackman (2003: 165) claim that, when self-study is undertaken to “advance theoretical knowledge, they [faculty members] connect their work with existing knowledge and theory in the field, engaging in ‘praxis’ that is the core of knowledge creation”. furman (2012: 203) argues that praxis is central to social justice leadership in education, and defines praxis as involving “the continual, dynamic, interaction among knowledge acquisition, deep reflection, and action … perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 92 with the purpose of transformation and liberation”. freire (cited in furman, 2012: 202) aptly describes praxis as “learning to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality”. as alvesson (2003: 189) suggested though, the “ambitious struggle” that is necessary in this endeavour includes noticing my own biases, and working with my own vulnerability as i expose particular moments for particular ends. knowledge creation that is oriented towards new understandings and experiences of social justice, rather than the reproduction of ‘unjust’, selective knowledge, involves shifts in how i think and know, as a teacher, a learner and writer of this article. applebaum (2004: 65) argues that “change is possible because of the instability of symbolic and discursive norms”, suggesting that the ideas and practices of both social justice and teaching and learning can and should be expanding as we perform and think them. this expansion is arguably a fraught process that involves the potential loss of sometimes dearly held beliefs about me or my environment. however, i do research into my own practice, because i want to learn from it in order to improve how i think and perform my teaching. self-study as praxis, then, is where epistemology and ontology meet, unfold and inform each other. an aspect of self-study that i use in this article is soliciting feedback from peers and students in order to evaluate, affirm and transform my ongoing practice. the methodology of using my own practice and of choosing which aspects to emphasise for which ends makes me potentially vulnerable to both the scrutiny of my peers and my own self-protection and bias – which is possibly a ‘melancholic’ response to vulnerability (as will be explained). the article demonstrates how this potential vulnerability, and loss of self, can be a “resource for politics” (butler, 2004 a: 30). vulnerability in self-study self-study’s tools of peer and student feedback necessarily induce vulnerability. it is a way of recognising the effects of the relationship between my ontology and epistemology as a teacher, in relation to other teachers, students, structures and theory and, in so doing, i expose myself in a process of theorising my practice and practising my theory. how i relate to ‘vulnerability’ will determine what i choose to expose for what ends. in the process of writing this article, i have grappled with the defences i put up in order to protect my vulnerability. this has meant that i also need to be aware of my power and how i use it. mann (2001: 17) argues that “we need to be alert to our own positional power, and the complex relations of power that exist within the educational and teaching/learning processes”. in researching my own practice, i am encouraged to explore how others are affected by my teaching in order to understand it and change it, if necessary. i am also compelled to explore my own reactions to vulnerability and to find its transformative value. vulnerability: self-study’s contribution to social justice education corinne knowles 93 berry (2010: 23) insists that, for engaged pedagogy (through the practice of critical race feminism), vulnerability must be mutually experienced by teachers and students, and it needs to encourage “the integration of students’ lived experiences in the curriculum”. keet, zinn and porteus (2009: 110) agree, claiming that “[c]entral to ‘mutual vulnerability’ is the pedagogical process that allows teachers and other authority figures to open up and render their frames vulnerable for learners and students to risk their full participation in the pedagogical transaction”. one way to ensure that i and my students, and peers, continue to learn from each other is by opening up my practice to the honest feedback of others. this is a risky process that can not only destabilise how i know myself, but also disrupt the balance of power inherent in how teaching and learning are framed, and how i relate to other teachers and my students. this vulnerability, i argue, is a powerful possibility for transformation and re-imagining a just pedagogy – not only to the teacher engaged in self-study, but also for teachers and students as they navigate the knowledge project of the university. berry (2010: 19) speaks of ways in which students and teachers are sometimes “smashed” by their educational contexts, in the clash between who they are, and what is recognised as legitimate in the institution. butler (2004 b: 224) argues that our “established conventions” are not ever broad enough to nurture all versions of individual within any one culture, let alone between cultures, and they should be “expanded to become more inclusive and more responsive to the full range of cultural populations”. soliciting peer and student feedback is thus a way to make myself vulnerable in order to expand how i think and act about teaching and learning, and social justice. judith butler: non-convergence, vulnerability, melancholy and mourning being a teacher who uses self-study and praxis to further the aims of social justice, part of my mission is to respond to where there is a clash of cultures, and the spaces of ‘smashing’. butler (butler, laclau & žižek 2000: 37) argues that “the task of the postcolonial translator … is precisely to bring into relief the non-convergence of discourses so that one might know the very ruptures of narrativity, the founding violence of an episteme”. this idea has become a kind of leitmotif or principle of my teaching and thinking. when there is a clash of cultures, for instance when students or teachers imagine themselves to be marginal to the prevailing norms, there is the opportunity to create new knowledge as one carefully considers the reasons for the clash. as i teach in a programme that aims to be more inclusive of students who were previously excluded from university access, i need to be aware of ways in which the legitimate intention of social justice in this sector is undermined by practices that entrench the marginality of some. as a lecturer in this unit for extended studies, i also navigate my own marginality: i teach only first years, in a university that seems to value research and postgraduate supervision more highly than undergraduate teaching. there is also a ‘non-convergence’, in that i am a late-entry academic, having perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 94 obtained my masters and access to academic career as lecturer at the age of 50. i have gaps in my theory, compared to the apparently seamless paths of colleagues who have immersed themselves in their fields from an early stage. these aspects of non-convergence make me feel vulnerable and marginal, and i seek to transform this vulnerability into productive knowledge which will transform my sense of self and legitimise my teaching practices. vulnerability is a lens through which to transform knowledge frames – for instance, the frames, norms and knowledge concerning teaching and learning – by bringing together ontology and epistemology. dall’alba and barnacle (2007: 682) claim that “knowing is inhabited; we cannot step outside it. but it is also transformative – it can change who we are”. so, when i engage ontologically with my students and peers – by opening up my practice for their honest feedback, and by engaging with this feedback theoretically and in practice – we are able to transform how we relate to each other, to the university, to theory, and how we understand vulnerability. where vulnerability is constructed as weak, where it is not valued and nurtured, risking it requires a level of courage or abandon. arguably though, when it happens, vulnerability is that moment of recognition when transformation is possible, and it provides access to powerful knowledge. as i open myself to the critique of peers and students, i not only develop the capacity to employ vulnerability in order to learn new things about myself and my students, but i also develop ways to facilitate this kind of important learning to my students. butler’s engagement with vulnerability is particularly useful as an analytical tool in self-study. it provides a way to reconfigure vulnerability into strength, by recognising it differently. i consider the knowledge project of universities as one that inevitably involves loss. in order to know new knowledge, we are sometimes required to let go of knowledge we already have. this loss, which is part of an epistemological process, has ontological effects – we experience the loss of who we were, or of who we might have been without knowing – and it can be violent, especially when deeply held and fundamental ideas about ourselves or the world are challenged. melancholy, as explained by butler, is a refusal to face the vulnerability and loss and deal with it, but instead this potential ‘loss’ is incorporated into the idea of self where it remains unchanged, and infuses our lives with its presence as a fear of vulnerability. butler (2004 c: 159) describes this as “the suppressed alternative to mourning”. in this scenario, i could experience my own marginality and vulnerability with fear. i would be hesitant to open myself to the critique of students and peers, and unable to learn new things about myself. i would retain my marginality defensively, and reproduce it. similarly, if my students were not encouraged to experience, own and work with their vulnerability, they might also retain their sense of marginality and merely reproduce what they think is expected of them. they would be unable to experience transformation from being vulnerable students ‘at risk’, to emerging scholars with important insights. vulnerability: self-study’s contribution to social justice education corinne knowles 95 mourning, the other response to loss, is that destabilising process whereby we acknowledge loss, and are not certain who we are because of it. the vulnerability that comes with this knowledge is perhaps always with us; however, in mourning, vulnerability is recognised, and arguably, in social justice education, this vulnerability is protected and legitimised. reflection is one way to mediate loss and vulnerability, and in the instances illustrated below it can be viewed as a kind of mourning. mourning acknowledges loss, and it also acknowledges that we do not know who we are without that which is lost; thus we proceed with a level of uncertainty. butler (2004 a: 30) asks us to consider the possibility of turning loss, vulnerability, and grief into a “resource for politics”. in the mourning/melancholy matrix, melancholy occurs when loss (or vulnerability) is ‘solved’ rapidly in order to restore former order. but this entrenches a fear of, and a refusal to accept it, so that the power which emerges from this configuration is always a melancholic fear of vulnerability. if mourning takes place, it means the loss is given up, and vulnerability is recognised. this, argues butler (2004 a: 30), “is not to be resigned to inaction, but it may be understood as the slow process by which we develop a point of identification with suffering itself”, leading to that fruitful place where we “might critically evaluate and oppose the conditions under which certain human lives are more vulnerable than others … from where might a principle emerge by which we vow to protect others from the kind of violence we have suffered”. a way forward through the colonial and apartheid legacies, which continue to inform the statistics and demographics concerning who is admitted and who succeeds at universities, and how success is measured, is to consider those moments where those who suffer the violence of non-recognition aspire to be recognised. these moments provide the opportunity to destabilise the centricity of the norms which limit them, and legitimise vulnerability as the possibility for new epistemology. practising vulnerability through peer and student feedback soliciting peer feedback for the purpose of self-study is a way to make oneself vulnerable in relation to the other. with the theoretical orientation used earlier, this vulnerability can be reconfigured to become a useful way to transform self. selfstudy is a way of engaging pedagogy and, as berry (2010: 23) explains, it “provides spaces for my vulnerability to be present and able in the context of curriculum. by understanding this, i also understand that my students bring all of their experiences and knowledge into the classroom”. if i am willing to open my practices to peers, with a clear understanding of what i am seeking, i am also willing to risk vulnerability in order to know myself and my students in new ways. to illustrate: i teach a feminism course to sociology i students, and i asked a peer (an academic colleague whose politics i classes i attend with my students) to observe my teaching and to provide feedback on whether and how i worked with vulnerability in the class. ironically, in the light of this testament to working with my own vulnerability, i selected this peer, because i know, like and respect her, and we share many pedagogic values. thus, i perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 96 acknowledge the way in which i protect myself from critique and vulnerability by selecting a peer with similar values. i seek aspects of non-convergence in order to find the new knowledge that can transform my sense of marginality as a teacher. i consider this peer to be smarter than me, more intellectually engaged than i am, with a younger, stronger and more immersed political philosophy. i have attended her course on international relations with my extended studies students, and every lecture she gives has the structure and engagement of an excellent journal article. i solicited her feedback in order to work with aspects of my vulnerability, because i trust her perspectives. as the peer noted in the introduction to her feedback report, feminism, which works with ways in which our lives are historically and systemically structured by patriarchy and the ongoing oppression of women, is one of those knowledge spaces where non-convergence is necessary and where transformation and social justice are possible. she commented: i was also glad to attend [these] classes because i’ve found that the one or two lectures that i’m able to dedicate to feminist theory of international relations to be one of the most daunting as students appear more resistant towards feminist theory than other theories i introduce them to (siphokazi magadla, 2013). because the peer was oriented towards what i was trying to achieve with my class, her insights are valuable not only for what i already know, but also to facilitate the process of mourning, and letting go of ideas that limit me. pinnegar et al. (2010: 4) argue that “[w]hen we are clear about our purpose it gives us strength in attending to matters of trustworthiness and merit in conducting the research and writing it up for publication”. in the first instance, the peer noticed a prevailing norm in our classrooms, and articulated this in a way that resonated with my own sense: i am often simply enraged at the thoughtlessness of some of my academic colleagues in the classroom especially in terms of being aware that the examples we use in class determine our own racial, sexual and class orientations. in this university those examples often reflect a white, male, middle class, heterosexual view of the world (siphokazi magadla, 2013). our shared ideas of gendered, classed and raced norms that operate in many classrooms are thus made visible. she goes on to notice ways in which my teaching circumvented this norm: it was a positive experience to see that corinne thought deeply about the examples used in class, which were provocative moving from examining the politics of the masculinities that shaped the marikana massacre1, to the slutwalk2 national debate of 2011 which shaped much of our student debate here at rhodes, to even examining the lack of women professors at rhodes which really helped students to recognise the workings of gender at our university today (siphokazi magadla, 2013). in this instance, siphokazi notices the non-convergence of norms between what is usually done and what was done in this particular class – disrupting the status quo and challenging established comfort zones. i already knew this about my teaching, vulnerability: self-study’s contribution to social justice education corinne knowles 97 but she helped me understand the value of this method. this non-convergence, using provocative examples which locate my own politics, can induce vulnerability, in that it goes against the grain of what students are used to, and what colleagues might legitimise. siphokazi provides insight into how working in this way can be transformative: this level of engagement with students requires a high level of vulnerability on the lecturer which is why i suspect most academics choose the easier less involved examples, but corinne’s ability to locate herself honestly as a feminist at rhodes was both a provocative and a vulnerable move i would argue. it was provocative in the sense that often especially at the undergraduate level there is pressure for lecturers not to put pressure on students to choose a particular worldview meaning that our job then is simply to give our students the ‘menu’ of knowledge making as shaped by different theories without making suggestions on which ‘item’ in the menu we would actually prefer for ourselves. it was thus provocative for corinne to choose to challenge this order of business and locate herself as a feminist theorist and activist. it was also a vulnerable move because it allowed students to challenge her on how she makes the transition from the theoretical to the empirical. for me it is exactly this provocativeness and vulnerability that made this course most enjoyable for the students. right in front of them was a woman ‘doing’ the work of feminism while at once making sense of the discourses that shape feminism today! (siphokazi magadla, 2013). siphokazi’s reflection on my teaching provides me with the means to notice my own vulnerability in ways i had not considered, and to reconfigure vulnerability as powerful. the opportunities presented to me to expand my frames of how i think about my teaching, by the endorsement of someone, whose pedagogic and political ideas i value and respect, are far greater than perpetuating ideas about my marginality. a further example of peer feedback was solicited to legitimate my teaching methods and philosophy. this involved a process that began with student feedback. student feedback is not only an opportunity to critique a course or lecturing style, but also a way to provide insight into who they are – which, i argue, is also a contribution to social justice education. student feedback highlights the tension inherent in vulnerability, and encouraging students to make themselves vulnerable is a task with enormous risk. if students do not feel sheltered, their feedback will be self-protective. arguably, every time a student writes a test or assignment, s/he makes him-/herself vulnerable, but this vulnerability is not necessarily recognised, leading to a melancholic fear which inhibits learning. modelling vulnerability and demonstrating to students that openness is one way to keep learning new things can encourage students to take similar risks. i tend to regard student feedback as a process of inverting the norms in the classroom, creating a scenario where students have power over me as a teacher; this could increase my vulnerability. by encouraging students to be honest in their critique of my teaching, i am inviting new knowledge about who i am in a way that can disrupt the power i have. however, when my own vulnerability has been demonstrated openly in class, feedback can also demonstrate ways in which students could viably use the opportunity to make perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 98 themselves vulnerable too. student feedback can reveal the struggles that students are experiencing. for example, this student’s feedback to me revealed her aspirations at the start of the year: “if only i could understand whatever is being taught to me and the way things are done here and also adapt easily then things would be great” (student 1). this articulation shows perhaps a desire to be assimilated into the epistemological project of the university, and it was a clear indication to me to ensure that i make learning visible in class. spelling out the steps that are required in order to reveal the hidden norms that frame teaching and learning in this institution would allow students epistemological access, and it might also involve noticing where normative frameworks (of the course or of the student) clash. i solicited student feedback at least twice a term for exactly this purpose. however, i was concerned as to how i could make sure that the methods i used in response to student feedback were pedagogically sound. i could, melancholically, refuse to accept that my methods might not align to my social justice intentions, always fearing that vulnerability. or, i could face my vulnerability, by inviting peers, who are immersed in the theory of teaching and learning, to critique my teaching methods. i invited esteemed colleagues from the centre for higher education research, teaching and learning (chertl) to seek ways in which i engaged students actively in class, and whether i was addressing their learning needs. they provided the following generous feedback, affirming that i am working towards accepting the challenge from the student above: your stance as a teacher is developmental as well as socially critical. you taught in a way that not only made students aware of how to engage with the subject matter, but also how what you were teaching related to the field of sociology. we have not often sat in on a class where developing students’ metacognitive abilities and their awareness of how their discipline ‘worked’, was taught so deliberately and expertly (prof. lyn quinn and dr jo vorster). once again, i invited my own vulnerability and found that this was an affirming and productive space for learning something new about myself. this opportunity to let go of previous doubts about myself opened up a way to renegotiate my own vulnerability and marginality. working in this way with vulnerability does not necessarily sit well with everybody. i asked students in an extended studies class (which has between 25 and 40 students), in which we were unpacking an aspect of their sociology i module on socialisation, to write an honest reflection on what had socialised them to be who they are at present. the task had a twofold intention: to apply the theory of socialisation to their own experiences, and for me to get to know them better. student 2 concluded her reflection as follows: “i have revealed enough – too much actually. please don’t remind me of this note. i am only telling you this because you and i have something in common. i just wish i could be as brave as you about it”. this very personal reflection was illuminating for me: it showed that my own modelling of vulnerability (by perhaps over-sharing my own experiences, noticing vulnerability: self-study’s contribution to social justice education corinne knowles 99 and articulating my bias as well as demonstrating ways in which power can be shared in the classroom) can become a tool for students’ self-reflection. however, not all students are comfortable with, or ready for this experience. in a follow-up interview, the student concerned was able to experience how i worked with her vulnerability – by “identifying with suffering itself” (butler, 2004 a: 30) – allowing her to adhere to her story, but recognising that we all have stories, and that this knowledge can and should affect the respectful and empathic way in which we relate to each other. another example helps to illustrate further the variety of student responses to a teaching activity that induced vulnerability. i facilitated a class discussion/debate in the extended studies class. it was an opportunity for me to reach those dearly held beliefs that sometimes work against transformation (in me, and my students). it was a way to engage with these in the more sheltered environment of a class that i see daily and work with in different ways to the sociology i class (which is a bigger group of up to 500 students). after a particularly heated debate, in which students had argued with each other about the role of women (triggered by the feminism lectures in sociology), i asked students to write a reflection on the class as a way to resolve the volatility of the debate and to mediate the vulnerability which, i thought, they had experienced during their heated discussions. i present selected aspects of three of these reflections for discussion: “i was outraged, but because i didn’t want to be emotional i chose not to be that involved” (student 1). this response shows perhaps a melancholic version of dealing with vulnerability: outrage, but disengagement. this could be considered to be a lost opportunity. however, it taught me something: i could be more careful when having these kinds of evocative discussions in class, that some students might need more or different kinds of mediation during these debates in future. the two other reflections show that students risked their own vulnerability in order to learn new things, to let go of loss or fear of loss, and to expand their knowledge frameworks: the discussion was tricky, heated and sticky. it made me understand different aspects of the discussion and through that, it expanded my way of seeing things (student 2). we have different backgrounds that influence our beliefs at some point we are challenged by our personal thought and emotions that make it difficult to accept other views. i’ve learnt that it is important to listen to what people have to say and try reflect on it in our contemporary lives and in some way or another decide what is best to base your life on. learnt a lot thanks (student 3). the intense classroom debate provided me with the opportunity to deal not only with the specific topic, but also with how we learn new things. inviting students to write reflections on the class was an important way for them to mediate their own vulnerability, and for me to work with it in class in order to transform it. perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 100 conclusion when self-study works with vulnerability to one’s peers, to students, to new knowledge, to loss of dearly held beliefs and to stories, it has the potential to continuously inform teaching practice and expand the norms that frame them. when social justice is the end to which we teach, feedback from students and peers on a regular basis is an important and meaningful aspect of our practice. achieving social justice is about making the norms visible, and expanding the possibilities for teachers and learners. as i have shown, this normative expansion is an ongoing possibility when the relationship between a teacher, her peers and students encourages vulnerability, and, “[it] is to solicit a becoming, to petition the future always in relation to the other” (butler, 2004 a: 44). endnotes 1. from 11 to 16 august 2012, a wild-cat strike at the lonmin mine in marikana, south africa, led to the deaths of 44 people, including 34 protesting miners shot by police on 16 august. the tragic event was called the ‘marikana massacre’ and led to a commission of inquiry which is still in progress. 2. the ‘slutwalk’ became an international protest that started in canada in april 2011. the protest was provoked by an address by a policeman at a york university, where women were told not to dress like sluts, to avoid being raped. a ‘slutwalk’, attended by a number of rhodes students, was held in grahamstown, south africa, in november 2011. references alvesson m 2003. methodology for close up studies: 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education: a journal of self-study of teacher education practices, 9(3): 251-266. council on higher education, south africa (che), task team on undergraduate curriculum structure 2013. a proposal for undergraduate curriculum reform in south africa: a case for a flexible curriculum structure. pretoria: council on higher education. dall’alba g & barnacle r 2007. an ontological turn for higher education. studies in higher education, 32(6): 679-691. furman g 2012. social justice leadership as praxis: developing capacities through preparation programmes. education administration quarterly, 48(2): 191229. hooks bell 1994. teaching to transgress. new york: routledge. keet a, zinn d & porteus k 2009. mutual vulnerability: a key principle in a humanising pedagogy in post-conflict societies. perspectives in education, 27(2): 109. louie by, drevdahl dj, purdy jm & stackman rw 2003. advancing the scholarship of teaching through collaborative self-study. the journal of higher education, 74(2): 150-171. mann s 2001. alternative perspectives on the student experience: alienation and engagement. studies in higher education, 26(1): 7-19. pinnegar s, hamilton ml & fitzgerald l 2010. guidance in being and becoming selfstudy of practice researchers. in l erickson, j young & s pinnegar, proceedings of the eighth international conference on self-studies of teacher education practices. uk: self-study of teacher education practices sig. 1042023 41(2): 104-119 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6837 it gives me anxiety! black academics’ experiences of teaching large classes during the covid-19 pandemic in a south african university abstract the covid-19 pandemic continues to disrupt the teaching and learning in international higher education. those of us in the global south have particularly been hard hit, struggling to balance working/ functioning economies, a struggling healthcare system, education, commerce, trade, transport, and the community spread of what was later found to be a very infectious disease (porter et al., 2021; rogerson & rogerson, 2020; shamasunder et al., 2020). in this paper, we explored and theorised the experiences of academics who taught large classes at a research-intensive university in south africa. we purposely recruited and interviewed eight academics for this case study. we drew on chela sandoval’s (2013) philosophical notion of “decolonial love” to theorise what an inclusive, democratic and ubuntu-orientated teaching of large classes could look like for us in the global south, beyond the pandemic. the findings revealed that academics continue to be frustrated/challenged/made anxious with teaching large classes due to inadequate infrastructure (digital), lack of resources, and general unpreparedness with the virtual/online teaching and learning. the findings also revealed that large classes were problematic as academics struggled to provide critical engagements and discussions during the hard covid-19 lockdown, and with some lamenting the frustrations of “teaching to themselves” due to the lack of student engagement. we conclude this paper by proposing a decolonial love approach to the online teaching and learning of large classes, underpinned by the ethics of care, compassion and understanding in curriculum imaginations. keywords: decolonial love, higher education, large classes, massification, teaching and learning 1. introduction the global community continues to struggle to respond to the covid-19 pandemic, with significant parts of the global south still lagging behind in vaccination rates, vaccine creation, trademark patents, and other epidemiological innovations compared to our counterparts in the global north (aboagye, yawson & appiah, 2021; cooper, van rooyen & wiysonge, 2021; loembé & nkengasong, 2021). this structural inequality reflects what decolonial scholars author: mlamuli hlatshwayo1 thabile zondi2 thabang mokoena3 affiliation: 1university of johannesburg, south africa 2university of kwazulu-natal, south africa 3university of zululand, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i2.6837 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(2): 104-119 published: 30 june 2023 received: 24 february 2023 accepted: 19 june 2023 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6837 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9180-8803 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1714-5516 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9417-9990 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6837 1052023 41(2): 105-119 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6837 hlatshwayo, zondi & mokoena it gives me anxiety! black academics’ experiences of teaching refer to as the coloniality (quijano, 2007); that is, the deeply entrenched and institutionalised epistemic and ontological inequality in our global village. this coloniality reflects the underside of western modernity in its attempt at socially constructing the “global cosmopolitan village” whose very foundations are premised on inequality, underdevelopment, epistemic/ontological racism, cognitive harm, brutal and neoliberal forms of capitalist accumulations, ownership, control and management. one of the global sectors that continue to be affected by the pandemic is the field of education, with many students and academics struggling to make sense of what has later been called a “pandemic teaching” and its “covid curriculum” (littlejohn, 2022; pokhrel & chhetri, 2021; toquero, 2020). while a significant amount of literature that focuses on teaching and learning during this pandemic has emerged (see pham & ho, 2020; devlin & samarawickrema, 2021; aboagye et al., 2021; means & neisler, 2021; pokhrel & chhetri, 2021), it largely misses black academics’ narratives on grappling and engaging with online teaching and learning in large classes during the covid-19 pandemic. in this paper, we aim to explore and theorise the experiences of academics who taught large classes in a researchintensive university and to propose a decolonial love approach to the online teaching and learning of large classes. 2. teaching large classes there is little consensus as to what constitutes a large class. some scholars define a large class based on numerical terms (hornsby et al., 2013; jennifer, 2014), while other scholars define a large class based on environmental factors like classroom size or pedagogical needs (chikoko, 2015; allais, 2016). in this study, we define a large class as any class that has 150 or more students in one seating. this numerical threshold was taken from an average number of students per participant’s class. in fact, some of the participants had classes as big as 600–1000 students per seating. all these numbers are because of massification in higher education. as higher education institutions continue to experience massification (see mok, 2012), the struggle for academics to grapple with complex large classes continues, more so during online learning. in his 1973 seminal work, trow describes massification as a massive enrolment increase in higher education. this trend has continued and accelerated in the last few decades, resulting in the rapid expansion of students’ enrolment in higher education due to massive democratisation of institutions of higher learning (mohamedbhai, 2011; allais, 2016). in south africa, the demand for higher education continues to be greater, as the state sees the sector as important in seeking to redress past injustices. as a result of the massive enrolment increase in higher education, its effects are felt well beyond the classroom to physical infrastructure, staffing, educational quality, graduate employability and academics having to deal with large classes. for exeter et al. (2010), the teaching of large classes needs the same skills and commitment as when one is teaching smaller classes. these include the need to motivate students; to be systematic, organised and develop stimulating assessment tasks; and to use innovative ways like peer assessment in assessing students (msiza, zondi & couch, 2020). these challenges have been exacerbated by the devastating impact of covid-19 that has forced, and continues to force, many institutions of higher learning to switch from traditional face-to-face teaching and learning to virtual classrooms. this sudden transition has exposed socio-economic inequalities that have long existed within the higher education system. prior to the pandemic, the south african higher education sector was already inundated with many challenges of transformation, access with success and enabling epistemic justice (hlatshwayo, 2019). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6837 1062023 41(2): 106-119 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6837 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) the 2015–2016 national student protests demanded institutional reforms, changes in governance structures, sound funding mechanisms, and education relevant to contextual and societal needs (mbembe, 2016). when the pandemic hit the south african shores, higher education institutions were made to choose between responsiveness and accessibility. we observe that higher education institutions chose responsiveness over accessibility. this was because academics and students were left with no choice but to continue with the businessas-usual approach to teaching and learning, except that this time, business was to happen online, regardless of the cost (dube, 2020; guangul et al., 2020; motala & menon, 2020). higher education became more interested in how best to respond to the pandemic, deliver course content, and conduct assessments online, ensuring that in the midst of all the chaos brought about by covid-19, access to quality education remained a priority. ndzinisa and dlamini (2022) concludes that responsiveness in south african higher education came at the cost of accessibility, and this inevitably further entrenched the vicious cycle of epistemic injustice and inequity. this is because the majority of the south african students come from poor backgrounds that make it extremely difficult to truly participate in virtual classrooms without computers, reliable wireless connectivity, quiet spaces, and free time away from taking care of family members (hodges et al., 2020). lack of access to fast, affordable, and reliable internet connection hinders the process of online learning, especially for those living in rural as well as marginalised communities (ndzinisa et al., 2022). unequal access to digital capital creates a split of the “haves” and “have nots”; thus, aggravating epistemic injustice and digital inequity. in a society devoid of adequate infrastructure and equality, social justice and epistemic justice should be the cornerstone of any educational policy decision. in all likelihood, covid-19 had negative effects for all involved (university management, academics and students alike). universities tried to save the academic year by switching to emergence remote teaching, regardless of its pitfalls within the south african context. this was made possible by the universities who tried to achieve epistemic justice to a largely underprivileged student population by providing data and laptops to facilitate a seamless transition to emergence remote teaching and learning (motala & menon, 2020). however, this shift was overnight and caught many institutions unprepared, with little or no room or time to plan a phased introduction. the scale and complexity of the process included familiarising staff and students with the tools of online teaching and learning, revising the academic calendar, revising course modules, developing appropriate online assessment tools and ensuring that the changes to academic programmes were approved by the relevant academic structures (motala & menon, 2020: 87-88). furthermore, the success of this emerging remote teaching transition was not equal amongst south african higher education institutions. south african higher education system is largely a bifurcated system consisting of historically white universities that are more resourced and privileged, and historically black universities characterised by paucity of resources. as a result, historically black universities have been and are in definite need of more support than historically white institutions, owing to their historical legacies. these challenges within the system were blatantly exposed by the responses of each institution to the disruptions brought on by the covid-19 pandemic (badat, 2020). the pre-existing structural challenges that were already confronting the sector, together with the racialised inequality, institutional differentiation and fragmentation ensured that the response to the pandemic was largely skewed and tended to reflect the painful dichotomous reality between historically white and black universities (motala, sayed & de kock, 2021). badat (2020) argues that historically white universities tended to cope and responded better to the pandemic due to their financial and infrastructural muscle than their historically black https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6837 1072023 41(2): 107-119 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6837 hlatshwayo, zondi & mokoena it gives me anxiety! black academics’ experiences of teaching counterparts. thus, this unplanned transition to emergence remote teaching meant to facilitate academic justice for all invariably left and/or excluded many of its intended beneficiaries. moving teaching and learning online enabled flexibility of teaching and learning anywhere, anytime, but the speed at which this move to online teaching and learning was expected to happen was abrupt. hence, this transition process left many academics and students behind. for students, online learning had its own challenges like (a) a sense of isolation due to lack of interaction between peers (moore, 2020); (b) difficulties with hands-on learning activities (matoti et al., 2018); (c) academics’ limited presence (maringe, 2020); and (d) timely support (trust & whalen, 2020). a sudden move from traditional face to face learning to online resulted in a big shock to academics and students, regardless of whether these stakeholders were ready for it or not. for many academics and students, online learning was unsought for and therefore unplanned. they became unwilling participants in this abrupt transition from face-to-face settings to virtual classrooms. the current virtual classroom was the inevitable platform, academics and students had to figure out, in real-time, how to make the best of an unprecedented situation. in a small class characterised by active learning, students’ misunderstandings are revealed and given attention, whereas in a large class, it is difficult to monitor learners’ gaps in knowledge (ndzinisa et al., 2022). this is because, in a large class setting, learning is lecture centred, often resorting to traditional forms of teaching and learning, with minimal student engagement. the poor engagement and performance of students are exacerbated by the fact that, in many large class settings, students are usually heterogeneous in terms of language and aptitude, making it difficult for those who cannot express their opinions and raise their concerns in class (maringe, 2020) this argument is further supported by a study conducted by (matoti et al., 2018), which found that 60% of the students who participated in their study reported that the presence of many people in class deterred them from asking questions. in a face-to-face class, interaction is often restricted to students on the front rows. in an online class, engagement and interaction is reserved for those with high self-confidence and the ability to engage. the sad reality is that not all students have that confidence to engage in front of many people. at the same time, academics are usually unable to pay adequate attention to all students; hence the material used or taught becomes easy for some students, but difficult for others (matoti et al., 2018). as a result, students’ opportunities to learn are lessened, and only a few good students improve their learning, while many average or weak ones make little progress and fall further behind. having briefly commented on the challenges of teaching and learning in large classes brought by the increasing massification of the higher education sector. the section that follows discusses the theoretical insights of this paper. 3. on decolonial love as an emancipatory ethic sandoval (2000) states that decolonial love refers to the kind of love that looks at, and demands, affirmation/recognition/respect of humanity in its totality, despite all our differences (see also maluleka, 2021). for sandoval (2013), maldonado-torres (2007), and maluleka (2021), decolonial love is the ethical imperative that responds to coloniality, and epistemic and cognitive harm. put differently, it is the much-needed oto-epistemic panacea to the prevailing structural challenges confronted in the global south. according to ureña (2017), the relationship between love and decolonisation is a crucial one, in that it reminds us that the “revolutionary https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6837 1082023 41(2): 108-119 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6837 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) possibility of love requires identifying and deconstructing historical alliances between love and reason and between benevolence and imperialism; otherwise, we collaborate with a violent legacy” (davis, 2002: 146). maluleka (2021) opines that decolonial love is fundamentally important in that it shapes/influences pedagogical choices for academics through recognising historical injustices, alienating pedagogical practices, and attempting to rethink what inclusive and democratic teaching could look like for our students. overall, decolonial love “demands [of] lecturers and students to work towards a transformative future that transcends coloniality and its power matrix” (maluleka, 2021: 84). decolonial love in its constitution is an ethical response to colonial and colonising cartesian reasoning/rationality that seeks to separate the being (ontology) from the knowledge (epistemology), through the now famous assertion cogito, ergo sum (“i think, therefore i am”) (le grange, 2019). the “i” in the now famous western philosophical tradition symbolises the colonising, heterosexual white man who, because he is white and straight, has recognised/ recognisable access to reason, culture, spirituality, theology, understanding and rationality. those who are not men, or white or straight then fall into what fanon (1963) and santos (2007) call the zone of non-being. they are seen to lack culture, knowledge, and thought; and their lived experiences are characterised by mythologies and superstitions. in the book, methodology of the oppressed, sandoval (2013) introduces what she calls “academic apartheid”, to offer a critique of the segmented/differentiated and non-cumulative manner in which knowledge building has occurred in western epistemic traditions (ureña, 2017: 87). drawing on barthes and derrida, she aims to “[construct] an alternative and dissident globalisation in place of the neo-colonising forces of postmodernism” and attempts to map out for us, the common goals of those who have “developed separate terminologies for a theory and method of oppositional consciousness” (sandoval, 2000: 3). in this paper, we draw on sandoval’s decolonial love to think through and reimagine what an inclusive, democratic and emancipatory pedagogy could look like for academics struggling to navigate and negotiate teaching and learning during/post the covid-19 pandemic. we now turn to outlining the methodological decisions we made, and where we attempted to make an intervention. 4. methodological decisions in this paper, we explored and theorised the experiences of black academics who teach large classes at a research-intensive university in the province of kwazulu-natal in south africa. studying black academics allows us to understand their experiences, achievements, and challenges that they face as an underrepresented group at higher education institutions better. therefore, researching black academics can contribute to addressing historic and systemic inequities in south african higher education. the university has ±52 000 registered students. a higher percentage of the students are funded by the national student financial scheme (nsfas), which is a government student bursary targeted at those students from low-income households, where the average total combined household income is not more than r350 000,00 per annum (matukane & bronkhorst, 2017; pillay, bhorat & asmal, 2021). our selected methodological approach was a qualitative case study (babey, 2013; yin, 2019). eight black academics were purposely selected and took part in the study, from diverse discipline backgrounds such as geography, curriculum studies, history, and english. we generated data through semi-structured interviews and a focus group discussion (creswell & creswell, 2017). the interview questions and focus-group discussions were open-ended to allow the academics to share their experiences of teaching large classes during the covid-19 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6837 1092023 41(2): 109-119 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6837 hlatshwayo, zondi & mokoena it gives me anxiety! black academics’ experiences of teaching pandemic. both interviews and focus groups were conducted on zoom and microsoft teams, given the covid-19 social distance restrictions, as well as the university ethical clearance regulations regarding all research conducted virtually. the interviews and focus-group discussions were audio-taped with consent from the participants. each interview session lasted for approximately 60 minutes. we then transcribed the interviews and analysed the findings thematically. this involved coding all the data to identify themes and patterns, and reviewing key themes (clarke, clarke, rance, 2014). each theme was analysed to gain an understanding of participants’ experiences. these themes are presented in the next section. each theme consists of a matrix of quotes that leeds-hurwitz (2019) refer to as “thick description” of academics’ experiences. before conducting this study, we applied for approval from the university’s ethics committee. it should also be noted that for this research project, we did get the necessary gatekeeper permissions and informed consent before the study could commence, both from the university itself as well as the research participants. to ensure participants’ anonymity we used pseudonyms to report the findings. in the following section we discuss the finding of this research paper; 5. on technology, frustrations and anxieties writing in a paper titled, “in search of the ‘new normal’: reflections on teaching and learning during covid-19 in a south african university”, motala and menon (2020) argue that the response to the covid-19 pandemic in south african higher education is characterised by what they term as “business unusual”; that is, forging full steam ahead despite all the students/academics’ wellbeing and the need to ensure that the university is better prepared for the digital curricula/teaching and learning/assessment. for the black academics who took part in the study, there was a growing sense that the “business unusual” mentality socially constructed an environment where the university prioritised continuity and salvaging of the academic year over adequate academic preparedness or students’ and academics’ own wellbeing. there was lack of adequate infrastructure for this online teaching and learning. the infrastructure … was a little limited compared to xxx where i am now. there was a shortage of resources, and the university was not well funded. we did not get professional support as young lecturers. as a result there were so many challenges … there are so many gaps that have not been filled. for example, many students have not been provided with laptops, or with enough data for proper learning. i cannot reach majority of my students that i want (zandi). with the large numbers in class, we cannot have the synchronous class like we are doing right now because the university licence only allows 300 students. so, in my class, i have 600 students; meaning i cannot have a live class or live session with all my students. the most troubling thing about this scenario is that while teaching and learning continues with other students, most are left behind (rozina). for zandi and rozina above, the infrastructural challenges during covid teaching and learning had implications for student access and success at university. this is seen in how the lack of access to laptops, data provision, connectivity and others all affected the ability of students to have access to curricula and to participate successfully in the modules/courses/ programmes. this not only made their jobs difficult in teaching and learning, but reproduced new forms of marginality in how some students were left behind. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6837 1102023 41(2): 110-119 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6837 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) one of the authors lamented the acceptance of this “new normal”, and suggested the need to have a comprehensive and compassionate conception of teaching and learning that reject the ”emergent assumption that students (and academic staff) will be able to cope and adjust to this new reality without due consideration as to whether they have access to a safe shelter, working computer/laptop, data, internet access, food, and other factors that greatly influence and shape learning” (hlatshwayo, 2020: 134). for kudzi below, online learning could potentially be beneficial to secondor third-year students who would have acculturated and adjusted to the demands of higher education, and would be able to navigate and negotiate their marginality (vincent & hlatshwayo, 2015). according to kudzi, greater emphasis and focus should be on the first-year experience, as students largely come from township and rural areas, and lack proper access to electricity water/wifi connectivity. he commented: what i can say about online learning or online teaching maybe it would be sort of beneficial and easier to handle when you are working with second years, third years and fourth years. but when it comes to first year students who are coming from high school it could be a challenge, like the second years have been on campus, they have interacted with lecturers, they know how to go about the assignments and conduct themselves. when these kids are coming from high school could pose to be tricky … they have never seen a laptop, they have never had their personal piece. that technical expects to logon online or even if they from rural areas no connections and the network is bad. those are challenges that as a lecturer you are beyond your control, how do you handle that? (kudzi) scholars such as dube (2020), lembani et al. (2020), and oyedemi and mogano (2018) concur and suggest that students from predominantly rural areas tend to struggle with online teaching and learning due to the peripheral nature of their geographical location, lack of digital/technical connectivity, and class marginality in their lives. for dube (2020), this was compounded by students’ educational and family backgrounds that created a complex lifeworld which rendered them unable to access/compete/ participate successfully in curricula. for academics and current study participants such as nomsa, it was not only students who had difficulties with technology and other online learning management systems, but also she as the lecturer who struggled with technology, in terms of how to pedagogically use it for teaching and learning. she often relied on students to support her in her classes. what nomsa was grappling with below, and martins et al. (2021) found in their own research, was the sense that academics themselves continue to be “underprepared” for the online teaching and learning large classes, i still now and then encounter some challenges especially with the use of technology. for example, in my discipline we teach language, so we normally use videos to engage students in discussions when i want to play a video to teach literature and short storis. i find that my inability to efficiently use technology compromises my teaching strategy because sometimes i will … fiddle with technology to find that i cannot play want i wanted to play. sometimes my students will help me. i find that it is still a challenge for me to mauve across technology and to use technology efficiently … i still struggle here and there – emphasis added (nomsa). what is perhaps most surprising and deeply concerning about teaching large classes during the covid-19 pandemic, was the growing feeling(s) amongst academics that they were not only struggling with the large numbers in their (virtual) classrooms, but their increasing use of words like “anxiety”, “overwhelming”, “tiring”, “boredom” and “cumbersome” to express their frustrations with teaching large classes. this indicates some growing alienation amongst https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6837 1112023 41(2): 111-119 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6837 hlatshwayo, zondi & mokoena it gives me anxiety! black academics’ experiences of teaching academics, who were feeling invisible, unsupported and alone in the online teaching of large classes. knowles (2020), and to some extent maringe (2020), reflect on academics’ challenges in pedagogically responding to the covid-19 pandemic, and suggest that what ought to be done in this unchartered territory, is an existential appreciation/recognition/acceptance that we cannot do everything; that we need to breathe, take our time and apply the ethics of care and compassionate understanding, not only to our students, but also to ourselves (see knowles, 2020). smangele provided painful reflections on the difficulties teaching large classes virtually: with teaching large classes, i will say i’m not comfortable with it, it’s very overwhelming, its stressful, it gives me anxiety because i’m a perfectionist in the sense that when i teach it gives me pleasure to get each and every student’s attention and vice versa so that i am aware that student a has indeed heard what i am talking about unlike in a class of 423 students. the most difficult part is that they don’t understand … teaching large classes is tiring and cumbersome … the other thing is that you do not get to use a variety of methods compared to say in smaller classes where you can simply walk around, giving group activities and also following individuals to check whether they are indeed doing the work. in a large class environment, this is impossible rather you get tired emotionally and irritated by time wasters … this upsetting, tiring and also a time waster because you have to stop teaching and call students to order, it also takes out of your teaching mood hence i’m saying there are number of challenges with teaching large classes. its physically draining to tell the truth – emphasis added (smangele). for smangele above, teaching large classes online induced anxiety, fear and desperation as she felt curtailed and limited about what she could possibly do or achieve in her classroom. she felt overwhelmed, and at times defeated by the demands of teaching a massive class with very few online pedagogical, epistemic or institutional tools and resources. for smangale, she was at best frustrated by both, what she called the “time wasters” and students’ inability to understand or access the curriculum material transmitted online. in a paper titled, “the covid-19 pandemic, online teaching/learning, the digital divide, and epistemological access”, du preez and le grange (2020) reflect on the pitfalls and challenges of implementing the emergency remote teaching in a country such as south africa, ravaged by socio-economic and racialised inequality, with millions of black people still struggling to access a viable and working technological device, connectivity, food, shelter and a conducive environment (david et al., 2018; francis & webster, 2019; group, 2018). echoing smangele’s remarks above, du preez and le grange problematise this pandemic teaching and its obsession with dumping curriculum material online as insufficient and designed to frustrate and deprive students’ epistemological access to the curricula. maluleka (2021) proposes “decolonial love” for teaching and learning to resolve some of the challenges, complexities and frustrations that smangele, and to some extent, du preez and le grange articulate. for maluleka (2021: 84), this decolonial love entails the “humanising task of building a world in which genuine ethical relations become the norm and not the exception”, thus, demanding that academics and students work together to confront/ resolve the historical injustices to achieve true and meaningful social justice in educational engagements/outcomes. it should be noted that smangele was not alone in her frustrations with this pandemic teaching. mbali below, another academic who took part in the study, commented on how she was “bored” and “frustrated” by the lack of critical engagement with online/digital/virtual spaces, and that she felt like she was talking alone, staring at the laptop: for me, i am so bored because i like the engagement in class so now having to engage through a laptop by myself in really frustrating. with the large numbers we cannot have the synchronous class like we are doing right now because the university licence it is only https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6837 1122023 41(2): 112-119 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6837 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) allowing 300 students. so, in my class i have 450 students so i cannot have a live class you know a live session with them so i usually record sessions with them, even some time i would in the middle of the recording i would say i am so bored and i will be thinking that oh they will hear me. it is really frustrating for – emphasis added (mbali). overall, academics who took part in the study demonstrated great frustration, challenges and “growing pains” with teaching large classes virtually during the covid-19 pandemic. as mentioned, the intersectional challenges of lack of (functional) technological devices, lack of connectivity, lack of a conducive environment, lack of support, no emancipatory pedagogy, and the inherent structural challenges in the country deprived students and caused many to be left behind by this current climate in the south african higher education system. maphalala, khumalo, and khumalo (2021) reveal that some students were indeed left behind in the abrupt shift to the emergency remote teaching. the latter reveals how the higher education institutions struggled to respond adequately to the digital divide; as some academics used limited pedagogic strategies and had inadequate proficiency in the use of the learning management systems (both in training and in its application). tshepo, one of the research participants, concedes that online learning in these large classes did not have any engagement at all; and that the pedagogy was largely characterised by the recording of slides, uploading them, and hoping that students ask questions at some point: there is no engagement when [students] maybe they are lazy or maybe they find the slides easily to understand i don’t know. but that engagement is the one that is lacking and it is the key to understand if your students] understand what you are saying. we do give them the platforms to say guys’ here is the platform for you to send us the engagements, debate and questions on what you do not understand. you will find only one student responding to that call whilst others do not want to ask questions. it is not like in the actual class where you say something and some students that do not understand ask questions (tshepo). it should be noted that academics’ anxieties, fear and frustrations in teaching large classes during the covid-19 pandemic need to be located to the growing literature on the chaotic and unplanned nature of this health crisis in higher education (see, for example, aboagye et al., 2021; bolisani et al., 2020; corbera et al., 2020). in a paper titled, “teaching in a pandemic: an exploratory study into university instructors’ perceptions of work-from-home opportunities and challenges during the covid-19 lockdown in south africa”, badaru et al. (2022) remind us that academics had to contend with working from home while balancing their personal lives, social isolation, fatigue, teaching and learning and an unstable connectivity. for boncori (2020), this is a broader reflection of the “never-ending shift” where the personal space has become the professional space, resulting in academics perpetually working, and never “clocking off”. in another publication, we have reflected on our experiences in responding to what we called the “pandemic teaching” in a research intensive university in south africa, struggling to balance our own health, teaching and learning, assessments and making sure that students were not left behind in the curricula (hlatshwayo, 2020). as demonstrated in this article, we have been foregrounding and exploring the narratives/ voices/ reflections of academics as they grapple with they negotiate online teaching large classes. what we have not done yet, is to bring to the fore, the philosophical and theoretical lenses from sandoval’s (2013) decolonial love so as to help theorise and propose what is to be done regarding teaching large classes during the covid-19 pandemic. we now turn to explicating this perspective more closely. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6837 1132023 41(2): 113-119 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6837 hlatshwayo, zondi & mokoena it gives me anxiety! black academics’ experiences of teaching 6. decolonial love in the covid-19 classrooms according to our research, we see and read decolonial love as an ethical commitment to this existential/ontological/epistemic restitution and integrity; one that takes seriously the relationship between the teacher and students. building on the work of sandoval (2013), maldonado-torres (2016) and maluleka (2021), we argue that teaching and learning in large classes during the covid-19 pandemic moment need to be shaped and underpinned by the ethics of care, compassion and understanding. the emergence of the covid-19 pandemic is a global healthcare crisis, one that continues to disrupt and change people’s lives, with some even paying the ultimate cost (bai et al., 2020; friedman, 2021; landa, zhou & marongwe, 2021). thus, our thinking around higher education interventions needs to be located within this deeper and troubling context. decolonial love in relation to the crippling challenges/frustrations/anxieties that black academics are struggling with at the moment demands that universities re-think/reconsider/reimagine the obsession with the “business unusual” operational discourse, as this mentality seeks to suggest that the academic calendar is more important and more valuable than academics and students’ wellbeing. decolonial love as an emancipatory ethic could help us with potential solutions during this challenge. firstly, the humanity of the academics (and students) needs to be recognised. instead of pursuing the business-asusual approach and salvaging the academic year at all costs, the wellbeing and health of the academics and students need to be prioritised. secondly, the implementation of the emergency remote teaching with large classes need better preparation, planning and implementation. while we acknowledge that the very idea and social construction of the ert are inherently unplanned, disruptive and at times chaotic, better planning is still required so as to ensure that real and meaningful pedagogy is still happening in large classes. this means that genuine commitment to decolonial love demands that we seriously reconsider the importance of monthly workshops/forums/spaces that academics can have access to when feeling overwhelmed, defeated and frustrated. these spaces should largely be informal and unstructured, to give voice and support to academics on what is to be done and could potentially constitute the “communities of practice” (ching, 2021) for helping/ supporting/working with academics as they navigate and negotiate large class teaching during the covid-19 period. thirdly, the council on higher education needs to come to the party through prescribing national guidelines and frameworks on what well-funded, viable/ progressive/inclusive teaching looks like; one that does not leave any student behind. failure to do so results in what is increasingly becoming a skewed and unequal higher education system in south africa. this is because different universities have their own institutional policies/approaches/strategies how they cope and respond to large class teaching in the pandemic period, potentially creating a bifurcated and largely unequal sector. another potential way to enact decolonial love in our teaching and learning practices in large classes would be heading freire’s (2018) advice on the need to reimagine the pedagogic relations between the teacher/student. this would demand that teachers (in this case academics) accept and understand their own fallibility and technological limitations. they would see students as co-constructors of knowledge and employ an emancipatory pedagogy to understand the different and endless possibilities of technology for facilitating critical engagements online. it should be noted that this is not a naïve call for a horisontal conception of curriculum/knowledge/pedagogy where the teacher/student is equal in knowledge/expertise/ experience. rather, it is a decolonial recognition and appreciation that academics are not the https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6837 1142023 41(2): 114-119 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6837 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) paramount and supreme holders of knowledge/curricula/pedagogy. students can, and should be, allowed to access, critique, enhance and support all forms of curriculum imaginations in the classroom. this demands that we recognise that although academics come to the curricula with recognised specialised knowledge, students themselves have the capacity to enrich the curricula experience through drawing on their own life worlds, languages, perspectives and narratives. we suggest that will strengthen both the curriculum and the pedagogy. 7. conclusion the long-lasting effects of the covid-19 pandemic continue to reverberate across the global south, with the higher education system being one of the most critically affected sectors that are still struggling to respond to this pandemic. in this paper, we shine a spotlight on the south african context through exploring and theorising the experiences of black academics struggling to navigate and negotiate the teaching of large classes during the pandemic period. the experiences of these academics were largely negative, with a large number of them using words such as “overwhelmed”, “bored”, “anxious” and “frustrated” to describe their complex challenges associated with teaching large classes. we drew on and proposed sandoval’s emancipatory ethic of decolonial love, to reimagine what inclusive and compassionate teaching and learning could look like in practice. in this paper, we make several arguments. firstly, we suggest that the business-as-usual approach that characterised the response to the covid-19 pandemic in south african higher education was unsustainable and only prioritised the academic calendar at the expense of the academics and students’ wellbeing. this includes seeing, recognising and valuing the existential humanity of the academics and students themselves. secondly, we argue that we need better emergency teaching responses and preparation when it comes to large classes. comprehensive preparation, planning, and implementation are required in ensuring that no student is left behind. thirdly, we also argue that the che, together with the national department of higher education and training, needs to come up with more system wide emergency remote teaching proposals that respond to the differentiated and unequal higher education sector in south africa. failure to recognise and appreciate these differentiates will only reinforce and entrench the inequalities in the sector, with historical black universities continuing to lag behind when it comes to the quality of teaching, research, funding and infrastructure, amongst others. finally, we see the pandemic as a portal (roy, 2020) to how it could enable us to reimagine the pedagogic relations between the academics and students, with students being given a chance to play an active role in the social construction, design and development of the curriculum itself. at the moment, curriculum is often presented as a priori to students (du preez & le grange, 2020; 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mgwangqa & lawrence, 2008; reyneke, 2013). if the focus of education is only on teaching the curriculum, and the individual needs and personal development of learners are ignored, especially of those learners who experience some of the abovementioned challenges, it could contribute to high dropout (department of basic education [dbe], 2011:3). this would lead to challenging behaviour in the classroom (anthony, alter & jensen, 2009:46; mestry & khumalo, author: prof rp reyneke1 affiliation: 1department of social work, university of the free state email: reynrp@ufs.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v38i1.11 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(1): 144-162 published: 11 june 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6534-0175 mailto:1reynrp@ufs.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 145 reyneke increasing resilience, lowering risk: teachers’ use of the circle of courage 2020 38(1): 145-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 2012:98; ward, makusha, & bray 2015:69). when these children experience emotional pain, they tend to react with troubling behaviour and self-destructive acts. this, in turn, angers adults who then tend to react by increasing punishment and rejection. evidently, there is a need to investigate alternative strategies for dealing with the challenging behaviour of learners. teachers could play a vital role in the development of resilience, primarily through creating a caring educational environment and providing support to learners, especially when they establish good respectful relationships with them (liebenberg et al., 2016:150). however, some teachers do not always know how to increase resilience and foster positive behaviour in learners. unfortunately, in some schools, vulnerable learners are oppressed by abusive teachers, making them unruly. although these experiences with teachers contribute to the development of learners’ resilience, the consequences on the school environment and the broader community are quite negative (motsa, 2017:164–167). the circle of courage provides a resilience framework for understanding acting out behaviour and developing classroom and school-wide strategies to decrease such behaviour and increase resilience and self-worth in children. this model consists of four universal values that include the need for belonging, mastery, independence and generosity (van wyk, 2020:255–257). thus, there is a need to explore, through the lens of the circle of courage model, what teachers do, to positively develop resilience in children. the overall pass rate of the national senior certificate was 72.5% in 2016 and 75.1% in 2017. although this does not sound too bad, the bigger picture is dismal. these results do not show the large number of learners who had started school 12 years ago but who did not write the final matric exam and dropped out of school, in many instances because of failing grades (dbe, 2017:44; child, 2018; spaull, 2015:36). the fact that learners also have to achieve only 30% to pass, does not indicate a very high standard. additional support will improve learners’ mastery of subject content, keeping them motivated to continue their schooling. this study is important when seen against the background of the high dropout levels and increasing behavioural problems and uncontrollable behaviour in schools (burton & leoschut, 2013). research has indicated that the improvement of resilience in learners could help to decrease behavioural problems (bernard, 2004:65). it is, thus, critical that teachers be made aware of effective strategies to manage uncontrollable behaviour and improve the climate in the classroom. this study will contribute in this regard by determining where teachers can improve. the circle of courage has been used to determine the therapeutic use of a value-based level system that makes it “healing” or “curing” for learners with emotional disturbances (harper, 2005), using it as a model to change the culture of a school (espiner & guild, 2010) and as a decolonisation model of youth development in an environmental stewardship programme (wenger-schulman & hoffman, 2018). although resilience research is more common, it is not clear how teachers use the circle of courage principles in their daily encounters with learners. the first aim of this quantitative study was to fill a gap in the literature and determine whether teachers use the circle of courage principles of belonging, mastery, independence and generosity in the classroom. the second aim was then to make recommendations to further improve resilience in the classroom. it is argued that the circle of courage resilience model is suitable for developing resilience in children and, in doing so, could help prevent behavioural problems in school communities and decrease dropout. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 146 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 146-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 2. theoretical framework this article is embedded in the philosophy of restorative justice and argues that, to effectively discipline children, a restorative approach should be used. restorative practices involve a process of restoration in which connection among role-players in the school environment is cultivated, communication improved, affect explored, collaboration and understanding enhanced and relationships improved or restored after misconduct (carter, 2013:36). this restorative approach emphasises good relationships among people in the school environment, that contributes to the development of resilience in learners (thorsborne & blood, 2013; liebenberg et al., 2016:142). when learners present with behavioural problems, relationships are damaged for different reasons. for example, poor behaviour in the classroom makes teaching difficult, sometimes impossible, and conflict is not only created between learner and teacher, but also among learners. the circle of courage explains why learners misbehave and how their social functioning can be improved. furthermore, it plays a vital role in the prevention of behavioural problems and provides guidelines for changing the school culture on the prevention level of the restorative discipline model (figure 1). the restorative discipline model thus provides a larger framework in which the circle of courage could be used to improve resilience and create a positive school climate. figure 1: restorative discipline model (reyneke & reyneke, 2020:123) strengths-based research indicates that children have an inborn need for attachment, achievement, autonomy and altruism (brendtro, brokenleg & van bockern, 2005:133). the circle of courage uses strengths-based techniques to improve resilience in children. this is achieved through the enhancement of belonging, mastery, independence and generosity (guild & espiner, 2014:39). these universal growth needs are essential to learning, socialising and positive youth development (brendtro, brokenleg & van bockern, 2014:10). schools that do not develop these fundamental needs of children are not fulfilling article 29(1) a of the convention of the rights of the child which states that the development of children’s http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 147 reyneke increasing resilience, lowering risk: teachers’ use of the circle of courage 2020 38(1): 147-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 personality, talents and mental and physical abilities to their fullest potential is one of the aims of education (un committee on the rights of the child, 2001). this model also transcends different cultures and aims to develop cultures of respect (peterson & taylor, n.d.:26, brendtro et al., 2014:10–16). in the next part of the discussion, attention will be paid to these principles as brendtro and brokenleg originally described them in their work with native american philosophies of child rearing (brendtro, brokenleg & van bockern, 2019). 2.1 belonging children who do not experience belonging feel rejected and look for artificial methods to compensate. gang affiliation, attention-seeking, hypervigilance, being unattached, loneliness and distrustfulness are all ways in which children attempt to fill the need for belonging (brendtro et al., 2019:29). in order for children to experience a sense of belonging, feeling loved and accepted, they need to build trusting relationships with caring adults and positive peers (brendtro et al., 2014:12). developments in the field of neuroscience indicate that children who do not experience belonging could develop deficits in the development of the limbic system, which regulates emotions, as well as in the pre-frontal cortex. in turn, this could negatively influence the development of ethical and moral behaviour, leading to dysfunctional social behaviour. also, children with no sense of belonging struggle to manage their impulses, maintain intimate relationships with others, show empathy, accept differences in others and show respect to people they encounter (brown, 2005:2). this, again, could lead to challenging behaviour and disciplinary problems in the school environment. 2.2 mastery learners who feel unsuccessful could become unmotivated, feel like giving up, experience feelings of inadequacy, are unmotivated, are manipulative and develop delinquent skills (brendtro et al., 2019:29). the high dropout levels in south african schools and poor academic results seem to indicate that many children do not experience mastery. the general household survey of 2015 showed that some of the main reasons learners drop out of school are because of poor academic performance (17.1%) and seeing education as not being useful (9.4%) (statistics south africa, 2016:2). for mastery to develop, learners need opportunities to explore, develop their abilities and talents and learn things that would help them lead a successful adult life (brendtro et al., 2014:12). according to brendtro et al. (2019:28), the best way to remedy this problem is to ensure that children have abundant opportunities to excel. 2.3 independence learners who do not experience independence could become bullies themselves or victims of bullying. these learners get into power struggles with teachers, become rebellious and aggressive, defy authority, are undisciplined and are easily led by negative peer groups (brendtro et al., 2019:29). when children have developed self-regulation and the ability to cope effectively with life challenges – and in the process of problem solving make responsible decisions – they develop independence. when they experience power over their environment, they develop self-efficacy (brendtro et al., 2014:12). when classroom practices emphasise self-efficacy, independence, confidence and self-understanding, learners’ self-concept will improve (larson, 2007:326). an improved self-concept also leads to more ethical and positive behaviour in one’s environment (van zyl & boshoff, 2010:40). when adults are confronted http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 148 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 148-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 with learners with behavioural problems, they try to control them using punitive measures. the ensuing power struggle only fuels the conflict and makes them even more rebellious, which in turn, fuels the adults’ aggression (seita & brendtro, 2005:77). this cycle of conflict cannot be good for the learner nor the teacher and should be broken (long, 2015). 2.4 generosity a generous person is altruistic, caring and loyal, shows empathy towards others and demonstrates supportive and prosocial behaviour in the classroom. however, when generosity is absent, behaviour is characterised by selfishness, no affection, disloyalty, antisocial, hardened behaviour and the exploitation of others (brendtro et al., 2014:12; brendtro et al., 2019:29). generosity is developed by providing opportunities in which learners could experience the joy of helping others. 3. research methodology the research question that directed this study was to determine teachers’ usage of the circle of courage principles to improve and prevent challenging behaviour in the classroom. a quantitative research approach in the form of a survey was followed in this descriptive study (creswell, 2014). the target population consisted of available teachers from primary and secondary schools of any age, race or gender in the mangaung and setsoto municipal areas in the free state, south africa. teachers were recruited that participated in the free state restorative practices pilot project in the motheo and setsoto districts. to increase the number of participants, teachers from schools in the mangaung district where fourth-year social-work students provide services as part of their practical work also took part in the study. none of these teachers received any training in the circle of courage model before completing the questionnaires. the population consisted of 20 schools and between four and 18 participants from each school. non-probability sampling in the form of purposive sampling was applied, since these respondents were easily available and willing to participate in the study (alston & bowles, 2009:89). in total 211 teachers participated (table 1). the questionnaires were handed to the principals of the schools who distributed them to teachers. they were asked to complete the questionnaire during break or outside of school hours. table 1: information on participating schools number of schools district percent participants percent min max restorative practices pilot schools 8 mangaung – 2 setsotho – 6 40 104 49.30 7 18 other schools 12 mangaung – 12 60 107 50.70 4 15 total 20 100 211 100 the data were collected through the self-administered questionnaire, which consisted of two parts, namely biographical information and the four elements of the circle of courage. this questionnaire had to be self-constructed, since no questionnaire was available that could measure the use of the circle of courage in the classroom. the questionnaire was developed with a five-point likert scale and consisted of 13 items for each of the four elements of the circle of courage. the responses were coded as never = 1; seldom = 2; about half the time = 3; usually = 4; and always = 5. for construct validity an expert from an overseas university http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 149 reyneke increasing resilience, lowering risk: teachers’ use of the circle of courage 2020 38(1): 149-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 evaluated the items and made some suggestions. these recommendations had been included in the questionnaire before a pilot study was performed to ensure that the questionnaire was user friendly. using spss, a statistician determined the cronbach coefficient alpha. this was used to determine the questionnaire’s reliability and internal consistency of the four circle of courage elements. this coefficient ranges between 0 and 1, where 0 signifies minimum and 1 maximum. the cronbach alpha scores were: belonging = 0.83; mastery = 0.74; independence = 0.84 and generosity = 0.85. acceptable ranges for the cronbach alpha are seen as between 0.70 and 0.95 (see tables 4–7) (pietersen & maree, 2016b:239; tavakol & dennick, 2011:54). since all the scores for the subscales were in this range, it was concluded that the instrument is reliable. the primary method of analysis of the research was descriptive. distributions of the sample across a wide range of variables are reported on in the article. descriptive statistics was applied to organise, summarise and interpret the sample data (pietersen & maree, 2016a). the free state department of basic education (dbe) and the principals from participating schools permitted the study. questionnaires were delivered to these schools and the principals requested volunteers to take part in the study. informed and voluntary consent was attained from all potential participants. participants received a copy of the informed consent form with an explanation of the study and the contact details of the researcher for enquiries. the principals did not coerce any person to take part in the study. participation in the study did not pose any risks to the participants or their schools. confidentiality was maintained by completing the survey anonymously and omitting the names of the schools in the results. participants knew that the results of the study would be published and made available to the dbe. lastly, no participant received any compensation for participating in the research (rubin & babbie, 2011:75–84). the ethics committee of the faculty of humanities at the university of the free state provided the required ethical clearance (clearance number: ufs-hsd2016/0709). 4. results and discussion 4.1 biographical information the participants consisted of 64 male and 146 female teachers. one teacher did not indicate his/her gender. the median age was 40 years, with the youngest respondent being 20 and the oldest 64 years. most of the respondents represented the black population group (67.3%), followed by white (20.85%), coloured (11.37%) and asian (0.47%). this study was done in the free state province, where the dominant languages are sesotho (64.2%) and afrikaans (12.7%) (statistics south africa, 2014:32). as expected, the home language of most of the participants was sesotho (52.61%), followed by afrikaans (28.86%). on average, the teachers had 12 years’ teaching experience. most of the participants had a bed degree (36.10%), followed by 28.29% with an educational diploma. twentyeight participants (13.66%) had qualifications other than in education, such as bsc and ba degrees, and nine participants (4.39%) had no formal higher qualification (table 2). many of the participants (18.05%) had not received formal training in methods of child development. however, the department of basic education (dbe) does provide continuous training for teachers, meaning that there was a high possibility that they had been exposed to training regarding classroom management, discipline, school safety etc. (department of basic education & centre for justice and crime prevention. 2015:4). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 150 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 150-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 table 2: highest education levels of participants frequency (n=205) per cent cumulative frequency cumulative per cent grade 12 9 4.39 9 4.39 education diploma 58 28.29 67 32.68 bed degree 74 36.10 141 68.78 honours degree in education 31 15.12 172 83.90 master’s degree in education 3 1.46 175 85.37 phd in education 2 0.98 177 86.34 other 28 13.66 205 100 table 3 indicates a good distribution of respondents among all the phases. most of the participants represented the fet phase (31.71%), followed by the intermediate phase (25.37%). the average number of learners in a class was 45 learners with a minimum of three and a maximum of 60 learners. table 3: phases taught by respondents frequency (n=205) per cent cumulative frequency cumulative percent foundation phase 40 19.51 40 19.51 intermediate phase 52 25.37 92 44.88 senior phase 41 20.00 133 64.88 fet phase 65 31.71 198 96.59 intermediate and senior phase 3 1.46 201 98.05 senior and fet phase 4 1.95 205 100 4.2 belonging the elements of the belonging scale (table 4) that measured the lowest included teachers using shouting and yelling to discipline learners (3.20); not making a specific effort to help learners to get to know one another (4.12); not encouraging relationship building in the classroom (4.21); not using values to regulate behaviour (4.42), and not modelling sensitivity towards others’ feelings in the classroom (4.44). it, thus, seems that teachers could help to develop belonging by changing some of their practices. shouting may stop some misbehaviour in the short term, but it does not change negative behaviour in the long term (tate, 2007:102). teachers need to be calm when disciplining learners and show respect to learners and themselves. shouting does not show respect to others, nor does it help to develop and strengthen relationships, one of the core ways in which people can achieve a sense of belonging. community building and school connectedness is, therefore, important in order to cultivate belonging and a positive school climate (glynn et al., 2011:46; kumari & dhull, 2017:134). to create a sense of community and belonging in the classroom, a concerted effort is needed to ensure that learners get to know one another. the possible reason why teachers have difficulty in providing belonging in the classroom might be that they are so focused on getting through the curriculum that they do not realise the importance of ensuring belonging in the classroom. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 151 reyneke increasing resilience, lowering risk: teachers’ use of the circle of courage 2020 38(1): 151-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 table 4: belonging scores of respondents variable n mean std dev min max cronbach alpha i greet my learners as they enter the classroom 210 4.52 0.83 1.00 5.00 0.834835 i encourage learners to come to me when they need help 211 4.70 0.60 2.00 5.00 0.826615 i demonstrate acceptance towards learners in my classroom 207 4.60 0.60 2.00 5.00 0.834737 i model sensitivity towards learners’ feelings in the classroom 209 4.44 0.77 1.00 5.00 0.811707 i create a safe environment in my classroom 211 4.80 0.43 3.00 5.00 0.820301 i encourage learners in my classroom to be non-judgmental towards one another 209 4.65 0.65 2.00 5.00 0.821946 i allow interaction of learners in the classroom 206 4.44 0.80 2.00 5.00 0.817875 i use values for regulation of behaviour in the classroom 207 4.42 0.83 1.00 5.00 0.818019 i help learners to get to know one another 207 4.12 1.04 1.00 5.00 0.814082 i encourage learners to form relationships within the classroom 209 4.21 1.06 1.00 5.00 0.811192 i create an environment where each learner can feel important 210 4.62 0.61 2.00 5.00 0.807947 i have a caring relationship with my learners 211 4.72 0.49 3.00 5.00 0.814203 i discipline my learners in the class by screaming/yelling at them* 211 3.20 1.26 1.00 5.00 0.843797 overall belonging score 211 4.42 0.43 2.77 5.00 0.833163 *negative questions scores reversed values are universal principles that should be part of a responsible school culture. in the learning environment, values such as respect for others, valuing relationships and individuals, ubuntu, democracy and social justice could be beneficial (macready, 2009:219; du preez & roux, 2010:16). the federation for school governing bodies (fedsas) has launched a successful project to guide schools in becoming value driven (northern news, 2014). values represent how we think about things and what is important to us in how we live our lives (deacon, 2016). they are seen as our ethical compass that determines how we interact with the environment and the people in our environment. thus, when teachers manage discipline in the classroom through a set of agreed-upon values, they do not fall back on rules that are easily broken, but instead connect to and develop the ethical compass of the learners. creating a sense of belonging could ensure that this compass indicates true north. learners with a sense of belonging to the school will also be more willing to conform to the school culture and support the school values (kumari & dhull, 2017:132). the last element to be improved is the emotional intelligence (eq) of teachers. teachers with high eq have positive relationships with others, they lead others with empathy, are mentally more stable and can manage conflict effectively (miller, 2014). not only will they be positive role models, but they will have the ability to manage their own emotions when learners with behavioural problems provoke them (bloom, 2015:60). when learners effectively master their emotions and relationships, they become better learners (lantieri & coleman, 2008:3). teachers should model sensitivity towards the feelings of others because this will teach http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 152 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 152-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 learners the critical eq skills for social and emotional competency. furthermore, being sensitive towards others’ feelings could improve their social and emotional development. this is vital because learners are becoming more violent, aggressive, disobedient, impulsive, lonely and sadder than ever before (mersky, topitzes & reynolds, 2013:919; sciaraffa, zeanah & zeanah, 2018:344). when learners are connected positively, chances for positive social interactions improve, which in turn calm them down. lower levels of negative feelings such as anxiety and fear correlate positively with improved learning (lantieri & coleman, 2008:12, 17). teachers who connect with their learners and have good relationships with them will find that they do better academically and behaviourally in their classes (baker, 2006:223). 4.3 mastery table 5: mastery scores of respondents variable n mean std dev min max cronbach alpha (standardised) i set high expectations for my learners in the classroom to excel academically 211 4.44 0.80 1.00 5.00 0.745021 except for teaching in the classroom i provide support classes to help my learners excel academically 211 3.93 1.01 1.00 5.00 0.714644 i reward good behaviour 210 4.20 0.94 1.00 5.00 0.714505 i help my learners to be cognitively competent 208 4.37 0.68 2.00 5.00 0.712574 i allocate seats according to learners’ grades* 203 2.98 1.57 1.00 5.00 0.708561 i make sure each learner experiences success in the classroom 208 4.42 0.71 2.00 5.00 0.697372 i help my learners to be emotionally competent 206 4.15 0.98 1.00 5.00 0.717527 i believe that learners who do not excel in the classroom should be restricted from taking part in sports, or any other extra-mural activities* 206 3.95 1.46 1.00 5.00 0.736381 i help learners set realistic goals 206 4.26 0.79 2.00 5.00 0.713268 i help my learners to be spiritually competent 201 4.12 0.91 1.00 5.00 0.702828 competition amongst learners in the classroom is not encouraged 203 2.87 1.51 1.00 5.00 0.753284 i believe that learners who do not excel in the classroom should be punished* 204 4.29 1.13 1.00 5.00 0.732682 i help my learners to be physically competent 206 3.77 1.21 1.00 5.00 0.720467 overall mastery score 211 3.98 0.38 2.46 4.85 0.737198 *negative questions scores reversed when it comes to the development of mastery in the classroom (table 5), the element that scored the lowest was the belief of teachers that competition in the classroom should http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 153 reyneke increasing resilience, lowering risk: teachers’ use of the circle of courage 2020 38(1): 153-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 be encouraged (2.87). competition is supposed to motivate learners to do better. however, when learners do not have the capability to achieve good results, this could have the opposite effect. learners without a sense of mastery will avoid risks, feel inadequate and give up easily. lacking mastery could also lead to behavioural problems such as cheating or being arrogant (brendtro et al., 2019:19). competition could, in fact, stimulate unruly behaviour, as the learner attempts to draw away the attention of the teacher and other learners from his/her incompetence. when learners are allocated seats according to their grades (2.98), those who have not mastered the content and do poorly in tests will be labelled. they will not receive positive social recognition and will also not experience inner satisfaction, but frustration and shame instead. furthermore, children who expect failure will try to escape further embarrassment by doing their best to avoid work, to challenge the teacher, to endure punishment and to even drop out of school or not attend class because they feel incompetent (brendtro et al., 2019:11, 33). however, this practice only exacerbates their feelings of failure and intensify feelings of shame. additional academic support is not regularly provided to learners (3.93) yet additional support will improve learners’ mastery of subject content, keeping them motivated to continue their schooling. in turn, this might help to improve the general matric results and keep learners in school for a longer period (dbe, 2017:44). many participants indicated that learners who do not excel academically should be excluded from extra-mural activities (3.95), and they also do not help learners to be physically competent (3.77). learners who do not experience mastery tend to rebel and become riskseekers (brendtro et al., 2019:19, 42). risk-seeking behaviour could lead to substance abuse and other behavioural problems. extra-mural activities do not only have the benefit of providing mastery in other areas of life, but they also help to prevent alcohol and drug abuse, especially when included in prevention programmes (dbe, 2013:21). furthermore, a lack of extra-mural activities could contribute to school dropout. learners who are not good in academics need other environments where they can achieve (mgwangqa & lawrence, 2008:26). preventing them from taking part in other activities where they may experience mastery will demotivate them and increase behavioural problems and their chances of dropping out. 4.4 independence the element that scored the lowest on the independence scale (table 6) is having methods in place where learners could make suggestions or give their opinions (3.39). this is followed by the belief that learners could not make responsible decisions (4.01), not seeing it as important to involve learners in decision making (4.11), not involving them in the creation of classroom rules and (4.15), lastly, not encouraging them to be assertive (4.19). these results seem to indicate that the participants wanted to control learners (punitive approach) and did not want to empower learners to make responsible decisions, giving them responsibility and providing opportunities to take initiative and solve problems (positive discipline) (oosthuizen, wolhuter & du toit, 2003). it may be that teachers are afraid that learners with behavioural problems would use such opportunities to make the school even more unruly and that they as teachers would lose control of the classroom. no research could be found to corroborate this idea, but what we do know is that power struggles fuel conflict and lead to even more rebellion and behavioural problems, and that excessive control and punitive measures do not decrease behavioural problems in the long term (seita & brendtro, 2005). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 154 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 154-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 table 6: independence scores of respondents variable n mean std dev min max cronbach alpha (standardised) it is important to me to involve learners in decision making in the classroom 209 4.11 0.94 1.00 5.00 0.829409 it is important for me to have a method in place that learners can use if they feel the need to give opinions or suggestions (e.g., suggestion boxes or out-ofclass meetings) 208 3.39 1.38 1.00 5.00 0.841226 i involve learners in the development of the classroom rules 209 4.15 1.10 1.00 5.00 0.833841 i encourage the learners in my classroom to be leaders 209 4.47 0.75 2.00 5.00 0.830292 i reinforce the value of taking responsibility in my classroom 209 4.60 0.65 2.00 5.00 0.840313 when a learner has wronged someone else, i motivate him/her to make things right 209 4.65 0.65 2.00 5.00 0.839342 when a learner did something that is not acceptable, i calmly make them aware of the consequences of the behaviour 210 4.32 0.87 1.00 5.00 0.836734 i give learners certain responsibilities in the class (e.g., tidying the classroom, cleaning the blackboard, being class leader for the day) 210 4.50 0.81 1.00 5.00 0.839082 i provide opportunities where learners can contribute to the learning environment 209 4.33 0.83 2.00 5.00 0.824803 i encourage my learners to believe in their ability to do their schoolwork 210 4.72 0.49 3.00 5.00 0.828667 i believe that my learners can make responsible decisions 210 4.01 0.98 1.00 5.00 0.837194 i encourage the learners in my classroom to be assertive 208 4.19 0.81 2.00 5.00 0.830066 i motivate learners to voluntarily engage in class activities 210 4.64 0.60 2.00 5.00 0.828784 overall independence score 211 4.31 0.49 2.85 5.00 0.844724 a safe school is one whose climate allows teachers, learners and other stakeholders to talk and listen to one another in a non-threatening manner (barnes, brynard & de wet, 2012:72). the results of the study, however, indicate that many teachers still believe that learners should not have a voice and cannot fully participate in decision making when it comes to matters that directly or indirectly impact them. the south african schools act (republic of south africa, 2011) recognises the voice of learners in that they should be represented both in the school governing body (section 23(1)(d)) and by a representative council of learners (section 11). this article also argues for their voices to be heard in the classroom. teachers cannot expect learners to acquire the skill of responsible decision making when they never get the opportunity to practise it. it is not that learners would want to rule, rather that they have the inherent need to be recognised. independence is about creating opportunities for learners to take part in http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 155 reyneke increasing resilience, lowering risk: teachers’ use of the circle of courage 2020 38(1): 155-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 decision making; even primary school learners should experience an age-appropriate sense of power over their lives (brendtro & larson, 2006:108; brendtro et al., 2019:22). learners who are not heard and feel powerless will rebel and assert themselves in aggressive ways, leading to unsafe schools, for example, when learners from pretoria girls high protested against what they saw as an unfair school hair policy (deacon, 2016; henderson, 2016). to prevent these types of unruly behaviour, teachers should proactively ensure that learners have the opportunity to assert themselves in a respectful manner. the only way teachers could teach learners to make responsible decisions is to provide opportunities where they could take responsibility for their actions and to make things right. using restorative practices to discipline learners would be a good start, since these practices ensure that learners actively take part in decisions regarding misconduct. these practices also ensure that learners make responsible choices about personal and social behaviour (ashley & burke, 2009; thorsborne & blood, 2013). 4.5 generosity although generosity scores (table 7) were, in general, the highest, there were elements that stood out. these include not encouraging learners to help one another outside the classroom (4.07), not using a positive, warm tone of voice in the classroom (4.21), not teaching learners about the value of people in the community (4.32) and not teaching learners to understand what others are feeling and experiencing (eq) (4.39). a generous person is loyal and caring (brendtro et al., 2014:12). to teach children the value of caring, learners need to be encouraged to help others, not just in the classroom, but also outside in the larger community. people need to care for one another, and showing care and concern is something that needs to be taught and modelled to learners. a negative tone of voice does not show respect or caring. a positive tone, on the other hand, shows caring and helps to build awareness of behaviour that will in turn help learners improve their eq (kanoy, 2013). this result also relates to teachers who scream and yell in the classroom (belonging). frustration or low eq might be the leading reasons for this behaviour (miller, 2014; bloom, 2015:59). helping teachers to improve their self-awareness could help them to better control their emotions and to improve their connection with learners. this could, then, improve learners’ ability to understand the concept of generosity. teachers need to make learners aware of the valuable contributions that people in their community make since these selfless contributions show generosity. these community members could become their role models and ensure that they also start contributing to the growth of their school and the larger community (phaswana, 2010:116). this, again, emphasises the need for teachers to be good role models to the learners. lastly, it is important to help learners to understand what others are feeling and experiencing, which links directly to the development of eq. the development of eq can enhance learners’ ability to recognise, use and manage emotions in a positive manner. this enhances communication, empathy with others and defuse conflict (miller, 2014). when people have the ability to empathise with others, they excel in developing others and have a stronger service orientation (miller, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 156 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 156-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 table 7: generosity scores of respondents variable n mean std dev min max cronbach alpha (standar-dised) i provide children in my class with opportunities to help one another 210 4.44 0.70 2.00 5.00 0.840964 i motivate learners to share their resources 210 4.44 0.80 2.00 5.00 0.850559 i have a classroom environment that encourages helping others outside of the classroom 210 4.07 0.95 1.00 5.00 0.845841 i teach learners how valuable people in the community are 210 4.32 0.85 1.00 5.00 0.843586 i teach learners insight into what others are feeling and experiencing 211 4.39 0.79 2.00 5.00 0.844958 i teach children to be empathetic to others 209 4.60 0.68 1.00 5.00 0.849291 the teaching and development of high morals are important in my class 211 4.69 0.60 1.00 5.00 0.841240 it is easy for me to forgive learners when they did something wrong 208 4.55 0.74 1.00 5.00 0.847790 i create hope for the future in my class 209 4.72 0.48 3.00 5.00 0.839350 i try to ensure that my learners understand that they can contribute positively to the lives of others 207 4.63 0.60 2.00 5.00 0.835786 i use a positive warm tone of voice in my classroom 210 4.21 0.82 1.00 5.00 0.849895 i show respect to the feelings of learners 211 4.62 0.59 2.00 5.00 0.837634 i model positive values in the classroom 211 4.71 0.56 2.00 5.00 0.836173 overall generosity score 211 4.49 0.42 2.69 5.00 0.853697 looking at the overall average scores, generosity (4.49) is the strongest, followed by belonging (4.42), independence (4.31) and, lastly, mastery (3.98) (out of a possible 5). these scores are generally high, but it does indicate the elements that need work in the education sector when it comes to building resilience in learners. what is worrying is that mastery measures the lowest where one would have expected it to be the highest. this could also contribute to low-quality education and the understanding of the high dropout levels in our schools (spaull, 2015:36). learners seem to not only fail at mastering the academic content, but their other intelligences are not developed adequately. this leads to feelings of hopelessness which make it much easier to give up. 5. recommendations all teachers, but especially younger teachers, need to be made aware of the importance of improving learner resilience. the circle of courage model could be useful to explain the strengthening of resilience and to create an understanding of why certain learners present with behavioural problems. in table 8, recommendations on how to further strengthen the circle of courage within the context of the restorative philosophy are made. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 157 reyneke increasing resilience, lowering risk: teachers’ use of the circle of courage 2020 38(1): 157-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 table 8: recommendations for the strengthening of the circle of courage principles in the classroom circle of courage value recommendations for improvement belonging introduce community building circles into the classroom where role-players could get to know and respect one another ensure connection with learners, e.g., know their names and use them respectfully, greet them at the door, compliment them, show appreciation, establish predictable rules, incorporate fun in activities establish caring classroom practices that model sensitivity towards one another, e.g., honour diversity, use positive language change to a value-driven school to create a safe school environment give learners responsibilities in the classroom, e.g., cleaning of the classroom develop eq in order to help with the mastery of emotions mastery provide opportunities to excel, not just academically, e.g., training of peer mediators, ensuring opportunities for the development of cultural, sports and other skills provide additional support for learners outside normal class hours, could also use peer mentors and peer mediators challenge learners, set high but reasonable expectations beware of teaching that is boring or overwhelming use class activities that will relate to multiple intelligences be careful when using competition, it can be counterproductive when it comes to learners who struggle academically do not label learners when they do not do well academically independence provide opportunities for problem solving and making responsible decisions; solve problems with them, not for them use a restorative approach to discipline that does not lead to power struggles ensure full participation of learners in decision-making processes, e.g., school values and matters that directly influence them encourage respectful assertiveness introduce ways in which learners could voice their opinions generosity develop the eq of learners and staff provide opportunities to help others in the classroom and in the form of community outreach programmes introduce school values that emphasise generosity improve relationships among learners and between learners and teachers be aware of the role model that you are, ensure that you show empathy and generosity towards learners concerning further research, it is recommended that the same study be conducted, but from the perspective of the learners. it would be interesting to determine how they rate the teachers on the use of the circle of courage. a qualitative study on techniques that teachers use to improve resilience could also be useful. lastly, it is recommended that factor analysis be done on the different questions in order to improve the questionnaire that was used. 6. limitations of the study this study shows the perceptions of the teachers when it comes to the use of the circle of courage. to determine whether this is a true reflection of what occurs in the classroom, have the learners complete a similar questionnaire evaluating their teachers and then making comparisons. alternatively, to measure the resilience of the learners and compare that with the teachers’ scores. furthermore, it seemed that some of the participants might not have http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 158 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 158-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 understood the scale since some answers were sometimes omitted. improving the scale should be considered through further research. this study was also limited to a small number of participants in a restricted area of two municipal districts and a small sample of schools. additionally, non-probability sampling in the form of a purposive sample was used, making it difficult to generalise the results. 7. conclusion teachers do contribute to the development of resilience in the classroom. however, it seems that they could do more to develop the mastery of learners. this could be done by focusing not only on academic outcomes but also on other activities such as culture and sport. it also seems that teachers use teaching and class management strategies that are not conducive to a safe learning environment. training in the circle of courage and the restorative discipline model could contribute to lower levels of dropout among learners, less behavioural problems and the creation of schools where learners and teachers feel at home. references alston, m, and w. bowles. 2009. research for social workers. second ed. london: 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http://nicspaull.com/research/ http://nicspaull.com/research/ http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/tbsearch.aspx?treatyid=5anddoctypeid=11 http://tbinternet.ohchr.org/_layouts/treatybodyexternal/tbsearch.aspx?treatyid=5anddoctypeid=11 162 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 162-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 s swartz, l lake, and c smith. cape town: children’s institute, university of cape town. available at: http://nicspaull.com/research/ [accessed 16 october 2016]. wenger-schulman, a. r. s. & hoffman, l. 2018. seed balls and the circle of courage. a decolonization model of youth development in an environmental stewardship program. afterschool matters, 27:19–24. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.11 http://nicspaull.com/research/ mendeley_bookmark_gjmp2rovwb mendeley_bookmark_9jv5nswo9s mendeley_bookmark_efhxb0jkig mendeley_bookmark_cwe17seaux mendeley_bookmark_6cheh7nbpl mendeley_bookmark_cy0z4qtykz mendeley_bookmark_exkdfjitgn mendeley_bookmark_g5qoqrrfbd mendeley_bookmark_eansdofrij mendeley_bookmark_p1946fg1kv mendeley_bookmark_ahxlrllixg mendeley_bookmark_5icctym9zd mendeley_bookmark_dt9vnqwkyc mendeley_bookmark_28aycf0xuz mendeley_bookmark_dlnl9mb2pz mendeley_bookmark_kwujnluba5 mendeley_bookmark_tqdcruuvqd mendeley_bookmark_erfrxfcmer mendeley_bookmark_5lr2fdflz7 mendeley_bookmark_093brdyokk mendeley_bookmark_upfjmchg2l mendeley_bookmark_j56ibj3mxy mendeley_bookmark_cf22igfpyr mendeley_bookmark_nlrqustgww mendeley_bookmark_xc6albamur mendeley_bookmark_u9qfwee6a7 mendeley_bookmark_bzhff0ngdh mendeley_bookmark_h6qrjwkjqz mendeley_bookmark_zdtuaqpvxc mendeley_bookmark_ug6ho53rc5 mendeley_bookmark_5svjqiids7 mendeley_bookmark_llssonjzye mendeley_bookmark_xrsvazygwh mendeley_bookmark_beujiw0jkj mendeley_bookmark_f3taip3clu mendeley_bookmark_igx3mxcllr mendeley_bookmark_els2bkml11 mendeley_bookmark_q04plrik6n mendeley_bookmark_fzwaeqmnd9 mendeley_bookmark_p6pdwlmnvf mendeley_bookmark_yqdzxxm75w mendeley_bookmark_lftt8nfh8e mendeley_bookmark_imfz2hmzvo mendeley_bookmark_kziumfo4i9 mendeley_bookmark_hqa6munrys mendeley_bookmark_s2hxf9ijrd mendeley_bookmark_oiq7ve3tmy mendeley_bookmark_nkcek0mdpj mendeley_bookmark_gslrpqdijw mendeley_bookmark_zlobahglwe mendeley_bookmark_q30amsdivl mendeley_bookmark_lcno0bohot mendeley_bookmark_zycempxwmi mendeley_bookmark_tfpxwabbmj mendeley_bookmark_wsiid2fnpo mendeley_bookmark_d6gum4ffg3 mendeley_bookmark_rrzhzuapos _goback 2382022 40(2): 238-250 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.17 parental level of education and career decision-making among grade 12 learners in south africa abstract this study examined the relationship between parental level of education and career decision-making among grade 12 learners in south africa. the study was guided by super’s life span theory. the ex-post facto research was used to determine if there is a relationship between learner’s career decision-making and parental level of education. the sample comprised 204 grade 12 learners from six township secondary schools in ekurhuleni east district, gauteng, south africa. the career decision scale (cds) was used to collect data. the responses were indicated on a 5-point likert scale that measured learners’ career decisionmaking and parental level of education. reliability of the cds was ascertained using cronbach’s alpha and a co-efficient value of .842 was reported. in addition, construct validity was ensured by kaisermeyer-oklin measure (kmo index) and bartlett’s test of sphericity. the inferential statistics with the support of the analysis of variance (anova) and tukey hsd as post hoc tests were used to analyse data. the finding of the study shows that there is a significant relationship between parental level of education and learners’ career decision-making. the career decision-making mean score for the learners whose parental education is university level was significantly higher than the learners whose parents had secondary education (m. diff. =.19, p=.02) and primary education (m. diff. =.64, p<.01).equally, a significant difference in the level of career decision-making was established between learners whose parents had college education and primary education, and between learners whose parents had secondary education and primary education. the study recommends that school principals should develop career talk programmes to facilitate learners’ career opportunities to better understand their career options, to encourage and support learners towards accomplishing career success. keywords: parent, level of education, career decision-making, grade 12, learners, south africa 1. introduction a career is a part of every process that occurs before, during and after the decision to pursue a career, including the determination to achieve and the implementation of various actions during these times (baltacı et al., 2020). a person’s career is a lifelong process that begins throughout their developmental years and continues throughout their author: ms oluwakemi ajayi1 dr moeniera moosa1 dr peter aloka1 affiliation: 1university of the witwatersrand doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i2.17 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(2): 238-250 published: 08 june 2022 received: 29 october 2021 accepted: 07 january 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.17 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1446-2906 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6231 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4298-9211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.17 2392022 40(2): 239-250 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.17 ajayi, moosa & aloka parental level of education and career decision-making among grade 12 learners lives (kazi & akhlaq, 2017). at various times in life, people may be confronted with the task of making a professional decision. it is seen in secondary school learners who are attempting to decide on their future career by selecting their subject combination, as well as university students who may struggle with career decisions even after beginning an undergraduate programme (gati & levin, 2014). in today’s modern civilisations, choosing a career is a fact of life that necessitates multifaceted thinking. career opportunities today are much broader and more dependent upon education than those that existed 100 years ago (kazi & akhlaq, 2017). due to this expanded career choice, the current situation for secondary school learners lies in their ability to make accurate career decisions. career decision-making is a complicated process that occurs between the ages of secondary school and university, producing psychosocial stress (pappas & kounenou, 2011). career decision-making is related to an individual’s lifestyle as well as personal and professional satisfaction (hegna & smette, 2016). making a career selection is a difficult process that requires the decision maker to assimilate information about themselves as well as information about the workplace (martincin & stead, 2015). secondary school learners face a challenging problem in making career options in an atmosphere where change is the only constant (martincin & stead, 2015). because occupations in the twenty-first century are so fluid, advancement in career development necessitates flexibility, a commitment to engage in lifelong learning, and the idea that hard work pays off. because choosing a career is such an important component of one’s life, it is regarded as a difficult procedure (jedidah & duffy, 2012). learners are encouraged to go through a process of demonstrating comprehension, which includes attempting to clarify what they want to do and considering various career alternatives with support (porfeli & lee, 2012). a person’s daily pursuits, style of living, and social aspects of their existence are all shaped by their profession (wang & wanberg, 2017). according to tagay (2014), there is growing evidence that secondary school pupils have difficulty making vocational decisions. many black south african matriculants who had previously been refused admittance to higher education have received access to educational opportunities and hence have been exposed to a varied range of vocations after the first democratic elections in 1994 (halim et al., 2018). according to halim et al. (2018), young individuals leaving school and entering university education may lack the knowledge and insight to seek out suitable educational opportunities. the prevalence of career change among south africa’s higher education institutions may indicate poor or improper career choices as a result of incorrect subject selection in grade 10. the socioeconomic situation of learners is one of the aspects that can influence their career choices, and one component that the current study looked into was the level of education of their parents. it could be argued that learners from township secondary schools are more likely to make poor career choices because they lack adequate career guidance and counselling from professional counsellors who could guide them in subject selection and combination for an appropriate career path before they make decisions (maree, 2013). it is now necessary to not only plan correctly for future occupations, but also to do a thorough career exploration prior to making a professional decision in order to adapt to changing socioeconomic conditions (kunnen, 2013). in order to provide proper counselling to grade 12 learners in township schools who are in the process of making career decisions, understanding of crucial aspects that play a role in learners’ career decision-making must be investigated. according to kusumawati (2013), educational institutions have a significant role in the development of learners’ abilities to choose the proper professional path. as a result, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.17 2402022 40(2): 240-250 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.17 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) career counselling and support should be provided in schools, which could act as a means of supporting township learners’ unique needs and concerns when making career decisions. 2. theoretical framework super’s life-span theory (1957) influenced this research. this theory considers career development at several phases and emphasises the importance of making deliberate attempts to advance one’s career. life phases, occupational tasks and self-concept are at the heart of super’s philosophy (patton & mcmahon, 2006). according to super’s thesis, persons go through five stages in their job development: growth, exploration, establishing, maintenance and disengagement (super et al., 1996). super believes that moving throughout the five phases is a flexible process in which people cycle through different stages at different times in their lives. according to super (1957), the growth stage happens when children and teenagers are exposed to a wide range of activities and begin to develop their vocations or vocational self-concepts. individuals are exposed to occupations from a range of sources during their growing years, including family, school, community, and the media, and acquire a sense of occupational self-concept. learners in grade 12 are in the exploration stage (ages 14 to 24). this stage is known as the explorer stage, in which learners seek professional direction, which must then be turned into action through study/training and job search. young adults at this age are capable of considering their goals and values when deciding on a career path (stead & watson, 2016). as a result of these experiences, young people develop a sense of autonomy and industry, and they begin to develop work-related skills and habits, as well as find suitable role models. they also gain a better grasp of their own interests and abilities (patton & mcmahon, 2006). the theory that underpins the current study claims that each person’s job growth is unique, and that factors such as socioeconomic position can influence how one’s professional path develops. 3. literature review although there is literature on parental education and career choices, most studies have not focused on learners in grade 12. parents with a higher degree of education, according to domenico and jones (2006), provide more opportunity for logical stimulation in their homes, which correlates with treasured intellectual capital. according to faisal (2014), a parent’s level of education makes them more at ease and confident in their ability to intervene in their children’s educational system. they have enough knowledge of the educational system to make educational queries on behalf of their children. in another study, obot et al. (2020) claimed that parents with a low level of education background have a greater impact on their children’s career decision worth than those with a higher educational background, followed by first-degree holders. furthermore, aya and kaiser (2005) discovered that parental education and personal career are powerful motivators for their children’s job choices. ginevra et al. (2015) go on to say that adolescent’s career choices are influenced by their parents’ educational levels, and that adolescents begin to carefully examine their future plans, frequently seeking their parents’ guidance or counsel. according to a study conducted in nigeria by nwoke (2007), parents’ educational backgrounds appear to impact and accelerate the kind of courses children study in higher institutions, as well as their eventual professional choice. in a similar vein, hewitt (2010) demonstrated that parental educational background is one of the external factors that influence students’ profession choices. according to the survey, teenagers whose parents have high educational backgrounds and those with low http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.17 2412022 40(2): 241-250 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.17 ajayi, moosa & aloka parental level of education and career decision-making among grade 12 learners educational backgrounds had different career decisions. parents with a higher educational background have a greater influence over their children’s career choices than parents with a lower educational background (hewitt, 2010). mbagwu and ajaegbu (2016) discovered that children whose parents have a strong educational background are more consistent, and had fewer difficulties, in making professional decisions than those whose parents have a low educational history. guardians choose professional options for their children based on their characteristics and scholastic abilities in school (kohout & wicherski, 2011). ginevra et al. (2015) also discovered that in industrialised countries, parents will generally enrol their children in schools that expose them to skills they want them to acquire, as well as exposing them to people and places that mould their future career objectives. huesmann (2009) goes on to explain that a parent’s educational level has an impact on their children’s future career ambitions and decisions, and that guardians’ education was the most consistent of the family financial status markers of instructional and professional success in adulthood. according to the findings, parental education predicted instructional and word-related desires as well as educational achievement in late childhood (huesmann, 2009). according to mudibo (2014), educated parents are supposed to establish an environment that fosters or stimulates learning, as well as to participate in their children’s school interactions and conditions. according to udoh and sanni (2012), the level of formal education of guardians has a substantial impact on high school students’ career choices in nigeria. this means that a parent’s educational level has a considerable impact on their children’s future professions. aswani (2012) adds that parental educational attainment has a significant beneficial impact on students’ educational and vocational goals, and that the mother’s educational attainment contributes significantly to young women’s ambitions for advanced education compared to young males. parents with higher education levels, according to hsieh and huang (2014), are more likely to be supportive and encouraging of their children’s career exploration, as well as providing information and tools for career planning and decision-making. metheny and mcwhirter (2013), on the other hand, claim that adolescents from low-education homes are often pressured to participate financially in the family and exhibit goals to accomplish higher financial stability and prestige than their family of origin. according to mathatha and ndhlovu (2018), parental education promotes youths’ career development by encouraging them to do their best in school, coaching them to value education, highlighting the importance of education, and reminding them of the necessity to take school seriously. in a separate study, faisal (2014) discovered that parents are interested in their children’s education, with the goal of assisting their children in receiving a better education through various tactics. in addition, the study indicated that parents were active in identifying their children’s learning patterns, as well as identifying homework assigned to them when they were in school. similarly, independent of the mother’s educational degree, pappas and kounenou (2011) discovered a link between students’ career decision self-efficacy and career decision making. parental interconnectivity and preferences, the bond between children and their parents, the creation of parental interest in their children, and the fact that children choose certain careers to please their parents are all factors that can influence high school students to pursue certain careers (mtemeri 2019). furthermore, pfingst (2015) discovered that parental background had a major impact on female students’ goals in a variety of ways. learners whose mothers had completed either grade 10 or 12 were more likely to aspire to attend university after completing their secondary education, while those whose fathers had http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.17 2422022 40(2): 242-250 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.17 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) completed grade 10 or 12 were more likely to want to go to university rather than go straight into working part-time or full-time. parental values, on the other hand, were not a significant predictor for chinese american youths’ career aspirations, plans or expectations of vocational results (ma & yeh, 2010). even though black south africans make up 79.2% of the population, studies have found that less than 8% of south african career development research studies have focused on this group (maila & ross, 2018). in order to promote career development and academic achievement, it is essential to conduct research with this disadvantaged demographic, particularly in the field of career decision-making among young adults. the decision is influenced by different facets of their existence, which may be psychological or social in origin, making it a challenging and overwhelming mission for grade 12 learners in township schools (kunnen, 2013). the aforementioned criteria highlight the importance of selecting the best career decision in grade 12. if learners receive enough guidance and assistance before making professional options in grade 12, they may discover happiness and fulfilment, allowing them to contribute to their community’s and country’s development. career indecision and, as a result, discontent among many university first-year students has resulted from the poor implementation of career guidance and counselling in township schools (maree, 2013). according to maree (2013), a lack of proper supervision in secondary school has resulted in career transition among university first-year students, with the majority of first-year students changing courses. however, there is a paucity of research on job decision-making among south african learners. 4. the present study the present research examined the relationship between parental level of education and career decision-making of grade 12 learners in township secondary schools in ekurhuleni east district, gauteng province, south africa. 5. research hypothesis the following research hypothesis was proposed and tested: there is no significant relationship between parental level of education and career decision-making of grade 12 learners in township secondary schools. 6. methods 6.1 research design in this study, a positivist research paradigm was used. ex-post facto research was used in this case to examine the relationship between parental level of education and career decisionmaking of learners in a disadvantaged community. ex-post facto research is a type of study in which the researcher speculates on the possible reasons of a previously observed result. the researcher cannot influence or change the already occurred acts or behaviour since ex-post research is a type of study that tries to forecast causes based on activities that have already occurred (landman, 1988). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.17 2432022 40(2): 243-250 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.17 ajayi, moosa & aloka parental level of education and career decision-making among grade 12 learners 6.2 research participants a total of 204 grade 12 learners from six township secondary schools in the ekurhuleni east division of gauteng, south africa, were included in the study. the respondents were chosen from a study population of 720 learners in the ekurhuleni east district using stratified and simple random sampling approaches. according to the findings, females made up a considerable majority (70.6%) of the respondents, compared to males (29.5%), indicating a gender divide among the grade 12 students. the study’s findings revealed that the modal (77.9%) age of the learners polled was between 17 and 18 years. this was followed by the age group of 19 and up, which accounted for 18.6% of the total. only 3.4% of the respondents were under the age of sixteen. as a result of this discovery, it may be deduced that the vast majority of the grade 12 students were between the ages of 17 and 19. this is warranted because the majority of students at this age are expected to be nearing the end of their secondary schooling. 6.3 research instruments the career decision scale (cds) (osipow et al., 1987) was initially created for high school female students to identify their standing in the career decision-making process. it has been widely used since its establishment in 1976. this questionnaire contains some statements that learners commonly make about their educational and occupational plans. the cds has 18 items and some statements read; “i need more information about what different occupations are like before i can make a career decision”, “i have decided on a career, but i’m not certain how to go about implementing my choice”. “what do i need to do to become certain anyway, i know what i’d like to be but i will be going against the wishes of someone who is important to me if i did so, because of this, it’s difficult for me to make a career decision right now”. “i hope i can find a way to please them and myself’”. each of the items had a five-point likert scale where the participants indicated whether they strongly agree (5), agree (4), undecided (3), disagree (2) and strongly disagree (1) likewise, career decision making sub-scale had excellent internal consistent reliability, as interpreted from cronbach’s alpha values of .842. the survey data was subjected to appropriateness tests utilising the kaiser-meyer-oklin measure (kmo index) and the bartlett’s test of sphericity in this study to determine construct validity (gravetter & wallnau, 2000). in respect to the current study, all sub-scales have kmo values above 0.5 and bartlett’s tests for sphericity are highly significant (p< 0.05) for all the sub-scales of the questionnaire, implying an adequate internal validity. 6.4 procedure for ethical permission, the university of the witwatersrand human research ethics committee was consulted first. in order to secure access to the sampled secondary schools, the researchers then obtained ethical clearance from the gauteng department of education. the researchers informed the principals of the six secondary schools of the study’s objective after receiving approval from the gauteng department of education. the study was carried out in conformity with ethical guidelines. to begin, the researchers gave potential participants and their parents a written consent form and assent form, for participants below the age of 18, which included all pertinent information regarding the study so that they could make an informed decision before participation. the participants’ identities were preserved to guarantee anonymity, and their names were not included in the surveys. the researchers notified participants that they had the right to refuse or withdraw from the study at any time, and that there was no undue pressure to participate. all participants were given a structured http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.17 2442022 40(2): 244-250 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.17 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) questionnaire that comprised demographic information as well as a professional decisionmaking scale in the study’s first phase. the survey employed 5-point likert scale responses to acquire quantitative data. participants’ age, gender, grade and socio-cultural group are all included in the demographic questionnaire. the characteristics that the study’s questionnaires would measure, as well as the required response formats, were described to the grade 12 learners who were chosen. after a detailed explanation of the questionnaire over the phone to the teacher in charge, the completed questionnaire was given over to the life orientation instructor in charge of grade 12 learners to ensure its return and immediate collection of the questionnaires from school was arranged to maintain confidentiality and protect the participants’ privacy. with suitable covid-19 protocols followed, the questionnaire took between 30 and 45 minutes to complete. 6.5 data analysis quantitative data obtained from the closed ended items were analysed using descriptive statistical tools such as frequency tables and percentages. moreover, inferential statistics with the aid of the analysis of variance (anova) and post hoc tests was used to establish the relationship between variables at a significance level of 0.05, an index was created for the scores. in an anova, the higher the f-value, the greater the variation between sample means compared to variation within the samples. the related p-value is lower when the f-value is higher. we can reject the null hypothesis of the anova and conclude that there is a statistically significant difference between group means if the p-value is less than a particular threshold (e.g. =.05). statistical package for social sciences version 24 was used to analyse the data. 7. results this study examined the influence of parental level of education on career decision-making among grade 12 learners. the parental level of education was measured in categorical data: university level, college level, secondary level, primary level and no formal schooling. table 1 shows the group description for career decision-making scores for each parental level of education. table 1: career decision-making based on parental level of education group descriptions (n=204) n mean std. deviation std. error 95% confidence interval for mean lower bound upper bound university level 14 2.8624 .20870 .05578 2.7419 2.9829 college level 39 2.7651 .23790 .03809 2.6880 2.8422 secondary level 144 2.6725 .22025 .01835 2.6362 2.7088 primary level 4 2.2240 .17677 .08838 1.9427 2.5052 no formal schooling 3 2.5823 .18945 .10938 2.1116 3.0529 total 204 2.6931 .23698 .01659 2.6604 2.7258 the results show that learners whose parents had university education had the highest mean (m=2.86, sd=.21 and se =.06) in career decision-making index compared to the other groups of learners. on the contrary, the learners whose parents had primary level education had the lowest career decision-making scores (m=2.22, sd=.18 and se =.09), while the other groups of learners had intermediate scores. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.17 2452022 40(2): 245-250 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.17 ajayi, moosa & aloka parental level of education and career decision-making among grade 12 learners this difference was subjected to inferential statistics to establish whether the differences were statistically significant. this was done by testing the null hypothesis using the anova model in the form; table 5.37 shows the spss one-way analysis of variance (anova) output. table 2: anova output, career decision-making by parental education sum of squares df mean square f sig. between groups 1.582 4 .395 8.014 .000 within groups 9.819 199 .049 total 11.401 203 the anova results reveal that there is a statistically significant difference [f (4, 199) = 8.014, p <.01]. therefore, the null hypothesis that: “there is no statistically significant difference in career decision-making given parental education of the grade 12 learners in township secondary schools” was rejected. consequently, the alternative hypothesis was upheld. in this regard, it was concluded that there is a statistically significant influence of learners’ parental education on career decision-making among grade 12 learners in township secondary schools. furthermore, multiple comparisons using a post-hoc test, the turkey hsd test, was used to establish which parental education group was significantly different from which other parental education group. 7.1 tukey hsd test in the table of multiple comparisons, which contains the results of the post-hoc tests, the statistical significance of the differences between each pair of parental education groups is reported (table 3). table 3: tukey hsd test by parental education group(n=204) (i) parental level of education (j) parental level of education mean difference (i-j) std. error sig. 95% confidence interval lower bound upper bound university level college level .09735 .06921 .624 -.0932 .2879 secondary level .18990* .06219 .021 .0187 .3611 primary level .63847* .12594 .000 .2918 .9852 no formal schooling .28015 .14132 .278 -.1089 .6692 college level university level -.09735 .06921 .624 -.2879 .0932 secondary level .09255 .04010 .147 -.0178 .2029 primary level .54112* .11662 .000 .2201 .8622 no formal schooling .18281 .13309 .645 -.1836 .5492 secondary level university level -.18990* .06219 .021 -.3611 -.0187 college level -.09255 .04010 .147 -.2029 .0178 primary level .44857* .11260 .001 .1386 .7585 no formal schooling .09025 .12958 .957 -.2665 .4470 �̅�𝑥� ≠ �̅�𝑥� ≠ �̅�𝑥� = �̅�𝑥� ≠ �̅�𝑥�. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.17 2462022 40(2): 246-250 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.17 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) (i) parental level of education (j) parental level of education mean difference (i-j) std. error sig. 95% confidence interval lower bound upper bound primary level university level -.63847* .12594 .000 -.9852 -.2918 college level -.54112* .11662 .000 -.8622 -.2201 secondary level -.44857* .11260 .001 -.7585 -.1386 no formal schooling -.35832 .16966 .219 -.8254 .1087 no formal schooling university level -.28015 .14132 .278 -.6692 .1089 college level -.18281 .13309 .645 -.5492 .1836 secondary level -.09025 .12958 .957 -.4470 .2665 primary level .35832 .16966 .219 -.1087 .8254 the finding of the study shows that career decision-making mean score for the learners whose parental education is university level was significantly higher than the learners whose parents had secondary education (m. diff. =.19, p=.02) and primary education (m. diff. =.64, p<.01).equally, a significant difference in the level of career decision-making was established between learners whose parents had college education and primary education, and between learners whose parents had secondary education and primary education. the level of career decision-making among the learners whose parents had primary education was significantly lower than the other four parental education groups. however, it was surprising that a significant difference in the level of career decision-making was not established between the learners whose parents had no formal education and the other learners whose parents had any other level of education. similarly, the study established that there was no significant difference in career decision making between the learners whose parental education was university and those of college [m. diff. =.09, p=.15 (ns)] and, between those whose parental education was secondary and college [m. diff. =.09, p=.15 (ns)]. 7.2 evaluation of the effect size given that a significant difference was established, the importance of the finding was sought. effect size was calculated to indicate the relative magnitude of the differences between the means. the eta squared measuring the effect size in anova was calculated using the formula: eta squared = was 0.138. this calculated eta squared (.138) shows that a fairly large proportion (13.8%) of variance in the level of career decision-making was explained by parental education of the respondents. this suggests that 13.8% of the variance in the level of career decision-making among the grade 12 learners in secondary schools was attributed to the learners’ parental education level, with learners whose parents had higher education likely to be more effective in making career choices than their counterparts whose parents had lower education. 8. discussion in this regard, it was found that there is a statistically significant influence of learners’ parental education on career decision-making among grade 12 learners in township secondary schools. the finding of the study shows that career decision-making mean score for the learners whose parental education is university level was significantly higher than the learners whose parents had secondary and primary education. similarly, learners whose parents had a college degree, learners whose parents had a secondary education, and learners whose �̅�𝑥� ≠ �̅�𝑥� ≠ �̅�𝑥� = �̅�𝑥� ≠ �̅�𝑥�. ��� �� ������� ������� ������ ����� ��� �� ������� , http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.17 2472022 40(2): 247-250 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.17 ajayi, moosa & aloka parental level of education and career decision-making among grade 12 learners parents had a primary education had a significant difference in the quantity of professional decision-making. learners whose parents had only a primary education made much fewer career decisions than those whose parents had a secondary degree. this study backs up mbagwu and ajaegbu’s (2016) results that teenagers whose parents had a solid educational background are more consistent and have fewer difficulties deciding on a career path. equally, udoh and sanni (2012) concur that the level of formal education of guardians has a significant impact on high school children’s profession choices. furthermore, aswani (2012) claims that a parent’s level of education has a significant favourable impact on their children’s educational and occupational goals. parents with a higher degree of education are also more likely to be supportive and encouraging of their children’s self-exploration, as well as to provide knowledge and tools for their children’s career planning and decision-making (hsieh &huang, 2014). parental education, according to mathatha and ndhlovu (2018), influences youths’ career development by encouraging them to work hard in school, counselling them to respect education, emphasising the importance of education, and alerting them about the need to be serious about school. moreover, aya and kaiser (2005) discovered that parental education and personal careers are powerful motivators for their children’s job choices. ginevra et al. (2015) go on to say that young people’s professional choices are influenced by their parents’ educational levels, and that teenagers begin to seriously ponder their futures, using their parents as role models or for career advice. according to nwoke (2007), the educational background of parents appears to impact and propel the kind of courses children study at higher education institutions and their future career choice. ma and yeh (2010) on the other hand, found that parental values were not a considerable predictor of chinese american youths’ professional goals, plans or occupational result expectations. 9. conclusion and recommendation the study concludes that parental level of education is a vital factor in the career decision making among learners. therefore, parental level of education influences career decisionmaking among grade 12 learners in township secondary schools in south africa. when comparing learners whose parents had a university education to those who had secondary and primary schooling, there was a higher level of professional decision making among those whose parents had a university education. the study also found a difference in the level of career decision-making between learners whose parents had a college education and learners whose parents had a secondary education and learners whose parents had a primary education. in addition, the level of career decision-making among the learners whose parents had primary education was significantly lower than the other four parental education groups. however, there is no significant difference in the level of career decision-making between the learners whose parents had no formal education and the other learners whose parents had any other level of education. the limitation of the study is that other socioeconomic factors were not included as possible predictors of career decision-making among learners. however, from the regression model, the study has reported that there could be other variables that affect career decision-making among learners apart from the parental level of education. this is because the parental level of education models only account for 13.8% (eta squared of .138), therefore, other factors could contribute to 86.2% of career decision making among learners. the findings from this study have implications for teachers, parents,school principals and teachercounsellors on career decision-making for learners. the study recommends that school principals should develop career talk programmes to facilitate learners’ career opportunities to better understand their career options, to encourage and support learners http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.17 2482022 40(2): 248-250 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.17 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) towards accomplishing career success. future studies could explore home related dynamics influencing career decision making among learners in secondary schools. references aswani, j.s. 2012. some 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kwazulu-natal e-mail: vanlarenl@ukzn.ac.za telephone: 031 260 3488 beyond metaphor drawings to envisage integration of hiv & aids education: a self-study in primary mathematics teacher education linda van laren researchers using participatory methods that are engaging, purposeful and facilitate social change may need further pragmatic strategies to encourage the required change. using pencil-and-paper drawings to introduce hiv & aids integration in a discipline such as mathematics education is an innovative participatory strategy to initiate change. however, following up on such innovations to encourage take-up of hiv & aids integration would benefit the initiative. the following research question guides this study: what pragmatic strategy could i use in pre-service mathematics education to further take-up of hiv & aids education integration in school disciplines? i explore hiv & aids integration in a pre-service primary mathematics education module that i taught at a higher education institution in kwazulu-natal, south africa, by studying the drawings and experiences of eight final-year pre-service teachers. i use a metaphor-drawing activity to disrupt the ‘comfort zone’ of teaching mathematics, following up by providing the pre-service teachers with learner activities suitable for primary school classrooms. when asked if they were able to integrate hiv & aids in mathematics classrooms, these generalist pre-service teachers appeared to rely on phase-specific teaching material in order to take up the initiative. there is a need to use innovative participatory methods to initiate change and to provide pragmatic support for this envisaged change. keywords: hiv & aids education integration, primary mathematics, self-study, metaphor drawings, pre-service teachers perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 22 introduction it is particularly important to explore hiv & aids education integration possibilities in school subjects in primary pre-service teacher education, since these teachers are generalists who are often expected to teach topics across disciplines in schools. generalist teachers usually teach the majority of the curriculum to their allocated group of young learners for an entire year. these teachers thus spend the best part of the teaching day, which could amount to 25 hours per week, with the same learners. the large amount of interaction time affords these teachers opportunities to gain deep knowledge of particular learners’ circumstances. this means that time spent with the learners allows for establishment of deep relationships with them, so that teachers gain a more holistic view of particular learners. generalist teachers will be more likely to know how to motivate and sustain integration across disciplines in an age-appropriate manner. furthermore, the teachers’ expertise in primary pedagogy enables learning which, in turn, permits embedding and integration of disciplines (sevik, 2011). the benefits of using drawings to initiate reflexivity are well documented in the literature (see, for example, mitchell, theron, smith & stuart, 2011), but there does not appear to be documented research that explores extending or following up on drawing activities in a particular discipline, such as mathematics education. published research reports on following-up activities for social changes initiated by drawing activities in mathematics education do not appear to be available. this study thus serves to fill this gap, by investigating following up of an initiative to facilitate social change, using a visual method in mathematics teacher education. i noticed the need to follow up on a metaphor-drawing activity and to explore a pragmatic strategy that is suitable and appropriate in generalist primary school teacher development. it was possible to guide pre-service teachers to believe in the need to integrate hiv & aids education in mathematics using the drawing activity, because the drawing allowed them to relate to the initiative through imagining involvement by reflecting on their own life experiences. i sought additional supporting pedagogical knowledge, so that generalist teachers could be assisted in taking up the initiative to include hiv & aids education in school disciplines. wilke and losh (2008: 64) point out that there are limitations to employing beliefs to infer instructional intentions. i, therefore, wanted to use a pragmatic strategy to assist preservice teachers in taking up an interdisciplinary approach to hiv & aids integration in mathematics. this study describes how i, a mathematics teacher educator, started to improve and extend my own pedagogical practice to further integration in a core primary mathematics education (pme) module at a higher education institution (hei) situated at the centre of the hiv & aids pandemic. i explore the follow-up to a metaphordrawing activity that i devised, coupled with a pragmatic strategy that i prepared beyond metaphor drawings to envisage integration of hiv & aids education: a self-study in primary mathematics teacher education | linda van laren 23 and provided during lecture presentations to encourage take-up of the intervention (adler & reed, 2002). there are six sections to this article. first, i locate the study by reviewing literature relating to metaphor drawing as a research method and hiv & aids education integration. secondly, i provide the theoretical underpinnings of this study, and then explain the research design and methods chosen for this self-study. the next two sections present the findings and discussion of findings. finally i draw conclusions based on the findings of the study. locating the study in order to locate the study, i describe the use of metaphor drawings to picture hiv & aids education in mathematics education, and the importance of integration of hiv & aids education, and provide a short explanation of meanings associated with integration and interdisciplinarity. to fully appreciate the potential within the use of imaginative and visual research methods such as drawn metaphors, it is important to explore building on, and extending the benefits of using a visual method for social change. metaphors as research method according to nikitina and furuoka (2008), numerous studies in education and pedagogy have made use of metaphors as a research strategy. these studies usually focus on “preand in-service teachers’ attitudes towards the classroom practices, teacher-student classroom interaction, and the evolution of the teacher beliefs about teaching and learning” (nikitina & furuoka, 2008: 161). for example, leavy, mcsorley and boté (2007) assessed pre-service teachers’ drawn metaphor images to explore shifts in beliefs about instruction methods after completing a particular teacher education programme. however, if generalist pre-service teachers are willing to take up initiatives expressed in their metaphors, how can they be supported with pragmatic pedagogical strategies to realise the changes required? wilke and losh (2008: 71) point out that it is important to build on positive beliefs expressed by pre-service teachers, and that the focus should be on “helping pre-service teachers acquire a larger repertoire of strategies, understand the link between instruction goals and strategies, and learn to effectively implement various strategies”. metaphor drawings are mediums for thought expression which frequently depict personal experiences and realities. a metaphor may be described as a “creative linguistic and conceptual device that enables us to describe a way of being, feeling or doing in terms of another image” (mcshane, 2005: 6). if a metaphor is drawn, then the drawing may be regarded as a further route to understanding the metaphor description. the drawing becomes a more ‘concrete’ form of the metaphor image. van laren (2011: 144) describes how metaphor drawings in pre-service teacher education “served as the relatively small, yet important, first step towards achieving perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 24 the vision of integration of hiv & aids education into mathematics”. this step addresses the pre-service teachers’ creative imagination about how hiv & aids education may be integrated in mathematics, but does not provide what golding (2009: 3) points out as explicit information on how to learn “meta-disciplinary skills, attitudes and understandings if they are to make these interdisciplinary moves and produce the integrative structures”. in other words, golding (2009) contends that metaphor drawings attend to the interdisciplinary move or cognitive operation, but do not address the integrative structure. the integrative structure, according to golding (2009: 3), is considered to be the “intended result of the interdisciplinary operation”. integrative structures are, however, exactly what pre-service teachers will be required to utilise in their own classroom teaching. the interdisciplinary move requires exploring the two disciplines in relation to one another, but the integrative structure is to make reasonable teaching decisions and judgements that ultimately shape classroom practice. this means that, in addition to beliefs about the possibility of integration of hiv & aids education, i as a mathematics teacher educator need to ensure that pre-service teachers acquire subject content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge (pck) in order to translate the concepts and beliefs depicted in their metaphor drawings into a pragmatic school classroom initiative. hiv & aids education integration primary education has an important role to play in addressing issues relating to hiv & aids, since all south african children are required to attend primary school and are usually taught by generalist teachers. in primary schools, mathematics is taught for between four and a half and seven hours per week, depending on the grade (department of basic education, 2012). in addition, there are annual national assessments for mathematics in the foundation and intermediate phases in south africa. these tests are managed and set by the national department of basic education. thus, mathematics (and languages) is perceived as having a higher status than other subjects. furthermore, generalist teachers are likely to influence the knowledge, skills and attitudes of their young learners. these teachers spend a great deal of time with their learners, thus providing opportunities to “embed and integrate” (sevik, 2011: 3). although there is literature to suggest that knowledge about hiv & aids does not necessarily translate into prevention behaviours (bennell, hyde & swainson, 2002), it is imprudent to ignore education’s potential influencing of behaviour. in addition to influencing knowledge, generalist teachers have the potential to shape learners’ attitudes to particular real-world experiences because of their “rich relationships with pupils to underpin motivation and learning” (sevik, 2011: 3). hiv & aids issues have already been totally integrated into the lives and work experiences of many south africans, since the prevalence rate in the country is over beyond metaphor drawings to envisage integration of hiv & aids education: a self-study in primary mathematics teacher education | linda van laren 25 10%, and many lives have been and are being lost as a result of the pandemic (avert, 2012). furthermore, media reports and constant awareness of the illness and loss of students, colleagues, friends and/or family members permeate the lives of millions of south africans. integration of hiv & aids education into disciplines is, therefore, not a foreign concept in a country where hiv & aids affects the lives of many people. in academic literature, there appears to be a clear understanding of the notion of a ‘discipline’ in terms of scientific-epistemological, social and/or organisational considerations (chettiparamb, 2007). however, the understanding of ‘interdisciplinary’ or integration may be confusing because of the variety of nomenclature, definitions and ranking criteria. for this study, i selected the meaning of integration proposed by mathison and freeman (1997: 12), who summarise an integrated approach as transcending: disciplinary-bound knowledge in the exploration of a more unified and realistic view of knowledge. it is inquiry oriented and usually thematically based, and the themes and activities are teacher [/teacher educator] picked and directed. theoretical underpinning this study was informed by two theoretical frameworks, the first being the notion that addressing hiv & aids should be the responsibility of every higher education teacher and school teacher. some higher education and school teachers consider mathematics to be devoid of political and/or the social lived experiences of learners. according to de freitas and zolkower (2009: 189), “it is in part the practice of neutralizing mathematics as a decontextualized domain of knowledge, which allows teachers to avoid responsibility for its social impact”. furthermore, hiv & aids is identified as a barrier to learning, and one cannot ignore the increase in economic, social and emotional hardships of learners at teaching institutions in south africa. this means that all university and school teachers need to acknowledge and take into account the incidence and impact of the spread of hiv (department of education, 2001: 23). in addition, appropriate action needs to be taken to provide education and training that is responsive and sensitive to the pandemic. this self-study aims to address how i, as a mathematics teacher educator, went about improving my teaching by encouraging primary school pre-service teachers to integrate hiv & aids content in their mathematics classrooms. the second theoretical framework selected for this study is that offered by golding (2009), which focuses on interdisciplinarity, and it was chosen because he provides suggestions as to what is required for the successful integration of disciplines. golding (2009: 4) points out that an integrative structure such as hiv & aids curriculum integration requires “interdisciplinary moves, skills and understandings that are needed in an interdisciplinary subject”. by integrating hiv & aids in mathematics education, the interdisciplinary moves would thus involve adapting aspects of both perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 26 hiv & aids education and mathematics education. according to golding (2009), interdisciplinary subjects allow for exploration and integration through the views of separate disciplines; by combining these views, interdisciplinarity can result in a synthesis that permits analysis of a phenomenon in a unique manner. research has shown that some teacher educators initiate hiv & aids education integration in disciplines, and that their planning for interdisciplinarity ranges from being incidental and unplanned to deliberate and thoroughly planned (van laren, mitchell, mudaly, pithouse-morgan & singh, 2012). these initiatives are, however, seldom fully documented and do not include what golding (2009: 3) describes as interdisciplinary moves and integrative structures, which he identifies as defining features of interdisciplinary subjects; interdisciplinary being described as “cognitive operations” and integrative structures as the “intended result of the interdisciplinary operation”. in addition, golding (2009) points out that it is necessary to explicitly teach these moves and structures, as interdisciplinary teaching is not the norm at heis and at schools. he gives a number of examples of integrative structures that result from interdisciplinary operation, including preparing a metaphor or model. interdisciplinary understanding (boix mansilla & duraising, 2007) is not likely to be learnt incidentally. therefore, students need to develop “meta-disciplinary skills, attitudes, and understandings if they are to make these interdisciplinary moves and produce integrative structures” (golding, 2009: 3). golding (2009) also considers it possible to measure the success of interdisciplinary subjects using formative and summative assessments. research design and methodology i used a qualitative approach to explore how i could change and improve my practice as a teacher educator who considers it important to influence take-up of integration of hiv & aids education in mathematics classrooms. i wanted to improve on my own pck to teach the necessary moves and structures (golding, 2009) in order to facilitate interdisciplinary teaching. to develop my own personal and professional learning and bring about change (mitchell, weber & o’reilly-scanlon, 2005), i studied my own practice as a mathematics teacher educator. after using metaphor drawings as a participatory research method to introduce the initiative, i sought pragmatic strategies for increasing take-up of hiv & aids education integration by generalist pre-service teachers. self-study i selected a self-study approach to explore my interdisciplinary initiative in order to improve my teaching. i initiated hiv & aids education integration in a core mathematics education module for pre-service primary school teachers by means of an innovative visual method using metaphor drawings. however, follow-up of such beyond metaphor drawings to envisage integration of hiv & aids education: a self-study in primary mathematics teacher education | linda van laren 27 innovations is needed to encourage take-up of hiv & aids integration. hence, the following research question guided this study: what pragmatic strategy could i use in pre-service mathematics education to further take-up of hiv & aids education integration in school disciplines? as this question relates to both pedagogy and teaching, self-study research allowed for generation of specific pck at the hei where i teach and allowed me to build on my existing research expertise (louie, drevdahl, purdy & stackman, 2003). i also wanted to extend insight into integration of hiv & aids education by focusing on pragmatic knowledge that would lead to a change in my practice. according to loughran (2011: 285), “[s]elf-study is initially rooted in an individual’s concerns for, and issues in, teaching about teaching, so the crucible of practice is the site for inquiry”. my individual concern was to seek ways and means of furthering take-up of integration of hiv & aids education. furthermore, loughran (2004) points out that self-study methodology signals the study focus and not any specific method of conducting research. therefore, i selected research methods that ‘best’ suited my research and teaching experiences in the field of pme in which i have been a teacher educator since 1975. however, i acknowledge my subjectivity in this study as my research has, without doubt, been shaped by my viewpoints, observations and interpretations as well as personal and professional experiences as a ‘seasoned’ mathematics teacher educator. until i experienced the loss of a pre-service mathematics teacher to hiv & aids in 2000, i was content to focus mainly on teaching and learning of mathematics using context-free problems where social issues could be avoided. through selfinterrogation (de freitas & zolkower, 2009), i came to realise that my task as a mathematics teacher educator in south africa is to prepare teachers for the hiv & aids context in which they will be teaching mathematics. furthermore, by using decontextualised problems devoid of the pre-service teachers’ world of lived experiences, i was focusing too much on the mathematics discipline and sidestepping the importance of recognising inherent social issues in mathematics. in 2006, i started using self-study methodology to seek ways of integrating hiv & aids in my teacher education curriculum. i have come to acknowledge that there is a need to connect school mathematics and social issues, and now actively seek ways of improving the manner in which i prepare mathematics teachers for teaching in the context of hiv & aids. the validity of self-study is often challenged because of the underlying epistemological question that concerns being simultaneously the researcher and the researched. validation of this research was enhanced by working with (not on) final-year bachelor of education (b.ed.) students (setati, 2000). i enhanced selfreflexivity by interacting with these students to challenge possible assumptions or preconceived ideas. interactions are an important feature of self-study; laboskey (2004) emphasises that one of the essential characteristics of self-study methodology is interactions with others during the research process. i thus wanted to explore my perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 28 self-initiated, self-focused, self-improvement qualitative research (laboskey, 2004) by interacting with the student participants in order to balance my focus on self, using both inward and outward perspectives (mitchell & weber, 2005). in this selfstudy research, the ‘self’ was the “focus of the study with the goal of leading to a reframed understanding of [my] role in order to impact students’ learning” in the context of the south african hiv & aids pandemic (samaras, 2011: 57). the student participants were fourth-year foundation (grades r-3), intermediate (grades 4-6) or senior phase (grades7-9) b.ed. pre-service teachers. fourth-year preservice teachers were selected since, at the time of this study, they had over three and a half years’ experience of teacher education at my hei and were registered for a compulsory pme module that i taught. i assumed that their knowledge and experience were sufficient for them to be able to reflect, in an informed manner, on knowledge gained during the module about integrating hiv & aids education. data selection and analysis i introduced integration of hiv & aids education to a group of b.ed. pre-service teachers using metaphor drawings. the pre-service teachers drew their own metaphors. each pre-service teacher gave his/her drawing a caption and recorded who or what represented the teacher, the learner, mathematics and hiv & aids education (van laren, 2011). the drawing did not illustrate a lesson, as the metaphor activity was aimed at disrupting the status quo in mathematics and gave them opportunities to consider and reflect on possibilities for integrating hiv & aids education. the metaphor-drawing activity was followed up by providing the pre-service teachers with a collection of learner activities suitable for primary school classroom use, where hiv & aids education was integrated (van laren & ismail, 2009). these activities were provided, because teachers often find it difficult to transfer what they learn about in hiv & aids training programmes into action (wood & goba, 2011). the activities did not focus on aspects related to medical issues, but explored social issues of hiv & aids. the exemplars given to the pre-service teachers were activities suitable for grades 4-8 learners. the activities focused on integration of the symbolic meaning of the red ribbon with problem-solving, measurement and geometry mathematics activities or making use of authentic hiv & aids statistics for datahandling investigation that allowed for reflection on the implications of the statistics. i collected the metaphor drawings from the entire group of pre-service teachers who attended the pme module, but did not mark the activity for assessment purposes. however, i included questions relating to hiv & aids integration in a test that formed part of the continuous assessment of the module. in assessing their work on integration in a test, i wanted to drive home the importance of the initiative. golding (2009) points out that it is possible to measure the success of interdisciplinary subjects, using formative and summative assessments. the following test question was directly linked to take-up: would you be able to integrate hiv & aids education beyond metaphor drawings to envisage integration of hiv & aids education: a self-study in primary mathematics teacher education | linda van laren 29 when teaching mathematics in a primary school? give a full explanation with reasons for your answer. the metaphor drawings of 11 of the pre-service teachers were selected on the basis of the drawings being clear and carefully thought out illustrations of how integration of hiv & aids education may occur. before i invited these 11 pre-service teachers to make appointments with me to discuss their drawings, i complied with all of the university’s ethical clearance requirements. only eight of the 11 pre-service teachers chose to discuss their drawings with me individually and became the student participants in this study. written consent was requested from eight female participants, who made an appointment to speak with me about their drawings. they willingly signed ethical clearance forms that clearly stated that their responses were to be used for research purposes. the discussions were not related to sensitive issues but, where necessary, pseudonyms were used to protect their identities. while discussing their drawings, i asked the participants the following question: do you see yourself as the teacher in the drawing? in asking this, i tried to ascertain possible take-up of the ideas expressed in their personalised metaphor drawing. the test responses of these participants were also analysed to gain insight into possible take-up of the initiative. however, i realised that these responses were ‘for marks’, so this would influence their written responses. nonetheless, i was interested in their responses to attempt to ascertain the take-up of the interdisciplinary initiative. the participants’ responses to the test question and metaphor discussion question were transcribed and tabulated to analyse connections. analysis of the test question responses was linked to what was offered to the participants as a collection of grades 4-8 integrated learner activities during the module lecture presentation. all responses of the participants were used to answer the research question. this would, in turn, help me improve my practice as a mathematics teacher educator who prepares teachers for their profession in the context of hiv & aids. findings the findings are discussed in two sections: the first summarises the use of metaphor drawings as a visual method, and the second explains how possible take-up of hiv & aids curriculum integration was assessed. introducing integration using a visual method to illustrate the manner in which the student participants personalised the metaphors, i have selected the drawings by ashlyn and lisa. these participants are registered for different tracks in the b.ed. programme: ashlyn is an intermediate/senior phase pre-service teacher and lisa is a foundation/intermediate phase specialist. these metaphors were selected from participants in different teaching phases to show that using drawings served as a participatory method across mathematics teacher preparation phases. their drawings clearly indicate that the participants had reflected perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 30 on the hiv & aids integration initiative and completed the activity according to the specified requirements. ashlyn chose to draw a fish tank (figure 1), because she is responsible for looking after the fish at home, and the concept of sustaining life through feeding and caring for the fish in the enclosed tank influenced her thinking about integration of hiv & aids education in mathematics. when she described her metaphor drawing, she pointed out that hiv & aids is part of life, as is the air required for life in the fish tank. she also saw mathematics as being a “way of life”, because there are many instances in everyday life where mathematics knowledge is required. figure 1: ‘fish tank’: metaphor drawn by ashlyn, with her handwritten explanation of what each part of the drawing represents. lisa wanted to draw something that related to the school learning situation, so she drew a school bus (figure 2). she pointed out that many learners know about buses and the song ‘the wheels on the bus go round and round’. she considered mathematics to be a “carrier subject” but noted that hiv & aids education should not be “brushed off”, as it is an important aspect. she emphasised that both hiv & aids education and mathematics need to work together. beyond metaphor drawings to envisage integration of hiv & aids education: a self-study in primary mathematics teacher education | linda van laren 31 figure 2: ‘the wheels on the bus’: metaphor drawn by lisa, with her handwritten explanation of what each part of the drawing represents. all participants selected and depicted aspects that were familiar to them and within their own lived experiences. the familiar, everyday experiences that were drawn in addition to the two examples above included making tea; baking and eating cake; painting a picture; imagining a spaceship; attending a wedding, and eating ice cream on the beach. despite the wide-ranging variety of aspects selected for drawing the metaphor, each participant was able to connect hiv & aids education in mathematics to it and to identify the teacher and learner in his/her picture. in the discussions on individual metaphor drawing with the participants, seven of them confirmed that they saw themselves as the teacher in their picture. one of the participants indicated that she did not see herself as the teacher in her metaphor drawing, as she did not feel confident enough to integrate hiv & aids education in a classroom (van laren, 2011). she pointed out that she did not have enough subject content knowledge or pck in the field of hiv & aids education. assessing take-up of the integration initiative in the written responses to the test question, all of the pre-service teachers who completed the pme continuous assessment test wrote that they would be able to integrate hiv & aids education when teaching in a primary school. the participants explained why they would be able to take up the initiative, by providing examples of particular activities that they could use in the classroom. in their written explanations and reasons, four participants indicated that they would make use of what the red ribbon symbolises (care, concern, hope and perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 32 support), in conjunction with a variety of measurement (length, area, money and time) mathematics problems. denise, for instance, explained making use of the red ribbon as follows: by teaching the learners about the red ribbon symbol, such as what it stands for, etc., and then getting the learners to make and create posters about how to have empathy for people living with hiv and aids. the requirement would be to make a border on the poster of the red ribbon symbol. learners would have to draw [these] themselves, measure using a ruler [and find] an appropriate thickness [for] the border ... furthermore, three participants described how they would link the red ribbon to geometry (symmetry) concepts in order to encourage empathy. to illustrate, lisa wrote: you could use the ribbon as a point of discussion, what it means, and in turn what hiv and aids means. with respect to the mathematics knowledge you could use lines of symmetry within the red ribbon … half of the participants’ test responses indicated that teaching and creating awareness about hiv & aids is possible by making use of data-handling activities such as using graphs to show the number of people infected with hiv & aids in a pictorial form that is easier to understand. for example, may wrote: integration of hiv/aids is vital, as children need to be aware of the current epidemic/crisis. the disease has a damaging impact on the youth, and learners can be involved in conducting surveys and recording findings, as to raise awareness. from these responses it is clear that nearly all of the participants see themselves as the teacher in their metaphor drawing. furthermore, the collection of grades 3-8 integrated learner activities received during the module lecture presentation provided pragmatic strategies that would further take-up of the integration initiative in schools. discussion golding (2009: 22) points out that it is possible to measure the general success of interdisciplinary subjects by means of formative and summative evaluations that determine the extent of “meta-disciplinary understanding, and interdisciplinary skills”. the take-up of any initiative in teacher education is, however, difficult to assess by means of the normal formative and summative evaluations as have been used in this research, as their classroom practice was not observed. however, the pre-service teachers may communicate that they are willing and able to take up the beyond metaphor drawings to envisage integration of hiv & aids education: a self-study in primary mathematics teacher education | linda van laren 33 integration initiative during module evaluations and assessments, but only when they are teaching in their own classrooms may the actual take-up be evaluated. when the pre-service teachers gave details in their test responses of why they would be able to integrate hiv & aids education, they did not provide any noteworthy, novel, additional explanations and reasons that were significantly different to what was offered in exemplars provided during the pme module. it was, however, interesting to note that they focused on being able to integrate hiv & aids education, because they were able to use the learner activities provided to facilitate the integration. this indicates that the generalist pre-service teachers appear to rely on phase-specific practical classroom teaching material for take-up of the integration initiative. the integrated learner activities that i provided during lectures appear to have served as an interdisciplinary move (cognitive operation) for the integrative structure (intended result of the interdisciplinary operation) (golding, 2009). although the pre-service teachers gave reasons and explanations that were similar to those provided during lectures, asking this question in a test required them to interrogate and reflect on the materials provided. in other words, they indicated that they would make use of the suggested activities; they thus considered the activities acceptable for classroom teaching. this suggests that providing phasespecific materials may lead to classroom take-up actions in hiv & aids education integration. conclusion in this study, i sought a pragmatic strategy that i could use in mathematics education to further take-up of hiv & aids curriculum integration in schools. the impact that my research has had on my learning is that i have come to realise that using metaphor drawings is an appropriate way to introduce hiv & aids curriculum integration and attend to beliefs about the need to integrate hiv & aids in mathematics (leavy et al., 2007). the metaphor-drawing activity was a way of engaging the pre-service teachers in the integration concept. however, it is important to take cognisance of the fact that, in south african primary schools, there is a policy that requires teachers to teach all subjects. in other words, the primary school teachers are not mathematics specialists who can easily translate their integration visions into appropriate integrated learner activities. in order to answer my research question, i needed to simultaneously explore “outwards” (mitchell & weber, 2005: 4) and “gaze inward” (pithouse, mitchell & weber, 2009: 47) to seek the specific requirements to assist generalist pre-service teachers in taking up the integration initiative in mathematics. i explored outwards by collecting information offered by the pre-service teachers during interactions and responses to assessment, and inwards by reflecting on how these interactions and assessment responses can be used to effect changes in my practice. perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 34 from interactions with generalist pre-service teachers, take-up of the integration initiative appears to require further pck to assist with the ‘how’ for classroom practice. if pre-service teachers are required to take up the initiative in south african classrooms, then it appears that they will rely on the availability of phase-specific practical teaching material. these learner activities would need to include a variety focusing on hiv & aids social issues across primary school subjects. the activities should, however, be appropriate for young learners as there may be traumatic, emotional feelings associated with hiv & aids. if age-appropriate materials are provided in learner textbooks, then generalist primary school teachers and south african learners will be able to explore hiv & aids issues of discrimination, stigma, gender and poverty from a different disciplinary 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development initiatives to work more towards developing and strengthening a repertoire of sound instructional practices. findings indicate that current teacher induction practices offered by the selected district are somewhat misaligned with this imperative. the teaching form and foci of the districts’ induction programme reveals serious contestation as pressure to perform is exerted rather than supporting teachers early in their careers. the activities therein are evidently more focused on familiarising beginner teachers with legal frameworks that govern and regulate their duties as members of the public service. although the district induction programme has an overarching aim of developing beginner teachers’ pedagogical practices, upon implementation, the emphasis is on accountability and pressure at the expense of developmental support and capacity building. keywords: induction; beginner teachers; district; pressure; support; teacher professional development. 1. introduction there is consensus in the literature that amongst many others, poor teacher quality is one of the most significant factors contributing to poor educational quality in the south african public schooling system (christie, harley & penny, 2004; de clercq, 2008; maistry, 2008). the concerns with teacher quality include poor comprehension of subject matter knowledge, limited pedagogical content knowledge and ineffective instructional practices (declercq & shalem, 2014). more so, challenges with various teacher knowledges are pronounced among beginning teachers due to lack author: dr emure kadenge1 affiliation: 1university of johannesburg, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i3.16 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(3): 214-227 published: 16 september 2021 received: 03 march 2021 accepted: 20 april 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6348-4442 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 2152021 39(3): 215-227 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 kadenge a district beginner teacher induction initiative of experience. largely from a deficit approach, there is substantial literature indicating that beginning teachers face many challenges as they begin their careers (feiman-nemser, 2010; ingersoll & smith, 2004; ingersoll & strong, 2011; steyn, 2004). there is also consensus in the literature that initial teacher education does not fully prepare beginner teachers for classroom realities and other school demands (kelchtermans & ballet, 2002; wong, 2002). induction, therefore, is mainly conceived as a way of providing guidance and support for new entrants to the profession. in other education systems, it is a fully-fledged support structure that stretches up to three years (feiman-nemser, 2001; ingersoll & smith, 2004; ingersoll & strong, 2011). while multiple programmes are being pursued to develop south african teachers to enact effective pedagogies, another dialogue running parallel to these teacher professional development initiatives is taking centre-stage: beginner teacher induction. there is growing concern for inducting and professionally developing beginning teachers as they enter the profession. a recent bridge (2016) resource indicated that government, in addition to the plans outlined in the integrated strategic planning framework for teacher education and development in south africa 2011–2025, is commissioning several research institutions to chart ways for context-appropriate and cost-effective induction frameworks for young teacher graduates. in this paper, i analyse the nature of induction support made available for beginner teachers within a selected south african local education district’s induction programme. literature indicates that, traditionally, local education district officials, instead of providing teachers with developmental support, tend to exert pressure on teachers by focusing on monitoring and evaluating teacher’s work (batwini & diko, 2011; chinsamy, 2002; narsee, 2006). in view of this conundrum, this paper interrogates how the idea of beginning teacher induction is understood as enacted by four district officials coordinating and facilitating this programme in the selected district. although vast literature is available on the role of local education districts in supporting instructional improvement (anderson, 2003; batwini & diko, 2011; chinsamy, 2002), less, however, is known about their role in the south african education context, particularly their role regarding supporting beginner teachers. i have, thus, selected a south african district that has begun implementing a beginner teacher induction initiative with the aim of inquiring into the organisational form of this induction programme as well as the nature of teacher knowledge being foregrounded. the main rationale for conducting this inquiry is that little is known about the practice of formally inducting beginner teachers in the south african public schooling context. as a new phenomenon, understanding the district’s role in beginner teacher induction in south africa is of utmost importance. understanding how this new practice of beginner teacher induction is being conceptualised by the selected local education district is also important for several reasons. firstly, it is somewhat worrisome that multiple potentially transformative teacher development ideas in the past have failed to yield gainful results at the hands of local education district officials (bantwini & diko, 2011; chinsamy, 2002). this paper, therefore, will provide the much-needed insights about the role of districts in as far as beginner teacher induction is concerned, especially given that it is a new phenomenon in the south african public schooling context. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 2162021 39(3): 216-227 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) secondly, insights from this paper will provide stakeholders a lens from which to view beginner teacher induction in the south african context at its formative stage. induction programme design, coordination and implementation pitfalls could be identified and muchneeded intervention strategies can be built into current and ongoing discussions among stakeholders about the formulation of a context-specific induction framework for the south african public schooling context. thirdly, while utilising barber and phillip’s (2000) concepts of pressure and support, this study will interrogate current practices with the view to better understand the role as well as the limitations of district-driven beginner teacher induction and possibly develop insights for in-service early career teacher professional development at large. 2. research questions with the overall aim of understanding early initiatives of beginner teacher induction in south africa, this paper seeks to address the following questions: • how is the selected district conceptualising the idea of beginner teacher induction? what are the districts’ key purposes in inducting beginner teachers? • what is the form and content of their induction programme? the following section of this paper presents the theoretical lens underpinning this study and the methodological approaches that were followed in data generation and analysis. i then discuss international and local approaches to beginner teacher induction as well as illuminate on the role of local education district officials and literature that forms the basis for this study. i conclude with a discussion of the findings. 3. theoretical and methodological approach existing literature broadly identifies three key purposes of beginning teacher induction, namely: (i) to enhance beginner teachers’ effectiveness by strengthening their pedagogical practices; (ii) to socialise beginner teachers into the profession and (iii) to combat the problem of early attrition and retain beginner teachers into the profession (ingersoll & smith, 2004; maringe & prew, 2015; wong, 2002). this paper analyses the selected district’s induction programme’s key purposes in terms of its form and content. this analysis largely drew from barber and phillips’ (2000) perspective of combining developmental support and accountability pressure to effect rapid progress and high performance in an education system. they argue that “gentle pressure relentlessly applied and serious support intentionally delivered” (barber & phillips, 2000: 280) creates opportunities for improving teaching and learning in schools. the fusion of a pressure and support framework was useful in exploring how the selected district is approaching induction. in addition, it allowed for a consideration of the implications on beginning teachers in the absence of a balanced fusion of pressure and support. a case study of a johannesburg local education district was selected where four district officials directly involved in the coordination and facilitation of the district’s beginner teacher induction programme were interviewed using semi-structured interviews. data from the transcripts of these interviews formed the basis for analysing how induction is being conceptualised. the raw empirical data was analysed using miles, huberman and suldana’s (2013) interactive model to data analysis which facilitated the selection, abstraction and sorting of chunks from the data that related to the study’s guiding questions. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 2172021 39(3): 217-227 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 kadenge a district beginner teacher induction initiative 4. review of related literature 4.1 purposes of beginner teacher induction a general finding, and in some cases a hypothesis, in induction literature is that the aim of a well-conceived and well-implemented induction programme is to improve the way new teachers teach, to ease them into the school system, to attain early job satisfaction and consequently influence their decision to stay in the profession (wong, 2002). in their summary of induction literature, maringe and prew (2015) identify four main purposes of teacher induction namely: to enhance teacher effectiveness and learner results; to strengthen pedagogical practices and particularly their pedagogical content knowledge (pck); to socialise new entrants into the profession and finally induction serves to retain teachers into the profession. literature convincingly shows that among many other purposes, induction is used to enhance the effectiveness of new teachers who are generally conceived to be less effective in the practical delivery of content knowledge, classroom management and the promotion of effective learning. substantial evidence (darling-hammond & youngs, 2002; wong, 2002) indicates that effective teachers are those who are able to create meaningful learning experiences for learners and produce good learner outcomes, irrespective of the challenging contextual circumstances such as large class sizes, anomalous learner diversity and inadequate learner and teacher support material (ltsm). in order to facilitate development of new teachers into effective new practitioners, induction has been used as a process to train and support new teachers’ improvement into more capable effective practitioners (wong, 2002). regarding the focus of induction, it is well established in the literature that the majority of beginner teachers need support to strengthen their pedagogical and instructional strategies and techniques. many beginner teachers have little understanding of the structures of the subject matter and the different ways of representing this subject matter to learners in comprehensible and appropriately paced and sequenced ways as well as a nuanced understanding of what makes the learning of specific content knowledge easy or difficult (shulman, 1986). limited pedagogical content knowledge has considerable and enduring negative effects on the quality of teaching and learning. this position is perhaps the most elaborate in literature as there is agreement that what teachers do in the classroom to deliver school knowledge has the greatest impact on student learning (ingersoll & smith, 2004; wong, britton & ganser, 2005). the ultimate purpose of a teacher professional development initiative is to get teachers to teach more effectively with better pedagogical content knowledge to ensure learner success and achievement. this may explain why many educational systems have ascribed to induction programmes that target the improvement of new teachers’ instructional practices, particularly helping them to link theory and practice in order to achieve better learning experiences and outcomes for learners (wong et al., 2005). induction programmes have also considered the emotional and affective elements of beginner teachers’ experiences and much has been done to ensure that beginner teachers are smoothly socialised into the new working environment (feiman-nemser, 2010; kelchtermans & ballet, 2002). socialisation, as a key focus of an induction programme, ensures that beginner teachers are integrated into the school community where they are able to access meaningful interactions that contribute to their well-being as people in an organisation. in other words, the socialisation of beginner teachers into the organisational framework is equally important as supporting their actual teaching practice (kelchtermans & ballet, 2002). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 2182021 39(3): 218-227 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) 4.2 approaches to beginner teacher induction there is a wide spectrum of teacher induction models depending on the circumstances under which the different models are adopted as well as the form(s) of knowledge they foreground. circumstances and factors such as context, culture, organisational systems and the needs and capacities of the participants and administers involved greatly influence the substance and form of induction approaches (ingersoll & smith, 2004; breaux & wong, 2003). although there are great variances in the form and features of beginner teacher induction, commonalities on the nature, content, duration and the mode of administration and organisation of programmes can be identified. most induction programmes are formalised in structure and about a year in duration (ingersoll & smith, 2004). they are mostly in-service programmes, administered by the district or school and cover content regarding pedagogical knowledge and practice (breaux & wong, 2003; cde, 2017). programmes generally include orientation, workshops, seminars, conferences and frequent new teacher meetings with opportunities to relay and relate experiences (wong et al., 2005; ingersoll & strong, 2011; cde, 2017). a variety of methods are used, most commonly: mentorship from external and internal mentors where observation, supervision, assessment and feedback on practice are foregrounded. in contrast, many programmes, especially in the african context, are ad hoc in nature where the support and guidance provided is less structured often leading to beginner teachers devising their own survival strategies (indoshi, 2003; cde, 2017). 4.3 the role of school districts the role of the district is widely debated in the literature (anderson, 2003; bantwini & diko, 2011; murphy & hallinger, 2001; spillane, 2002). the debates are particularly on the role of the district in as far as improving the quality of teaching and learning in schools. many scholars share the view that districts are largely political and organisational structures that were invented to support the implementation of specific government programmes (corcoran, fuhrman & belcher, 2001). according to anderson (2003), some critics argue that districts serve bureaucratic and compliance purposes and are less effective when it comes to facilitating the implementation of programmes that are designed to improve teaching and learning in schools. other scholars, however, argue that districts play a pivotal and active policy-shaping role of interpreting and mediating government policy interventions for implementation in schools (spillane, 2002; roberts, 2012). a study of the role of district officials in canada reported a major paradigm shift in learner achievement as soon as districts that were previously emphasising governance and leadership redirected their focus to improving instruction and learner achievement by mobilising themselves and their resources to support instructionally-focused professional learning for teachers (anderson, 2003) in other words, districts serve a mediating role between the state and the schools and rather than using that role to regulate the work of teachers, schools benefit more if more efforts were directed towards activities that support and improve teachers’ instructional practices. to date, the role of the district in influencing classroom instructional decisions and practices, which are at the heart of teaching and learning, remains controversial and yet to be affirmed (anderson, 2003). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 2192021 39(3): 219-227 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 kadenge a district beginner teacher induction initiative 4.4 teacher professional development and the role of the district in south africa while the south african teacher development policy landscape foregrounds mentoring and visible support for beginning teachers, the implementation of such policy mandates remain patchy and obscure as many new entrants are barely supported and left to devise their own survival strategies (steyn, 2004; deacon, 2015). the doe, as is articulated in the national policy framework for teacher education and development (npfted), acknowledges the need for beginning teacher induction and condemns “the practice of launching novice teachers into employment without explicit on-site induction” (doe, 2005:10). in its “teachers for the future” (2006), the doe mandated that “practical internship” through participating in a formal induction and/or mentoring programmes at the local district or school site should be a prerequisite for all new teachers. according to chinsamy (2002), provincial departments of education (pdes), through their local district offices, supported by circuit offices, have, among others, the responsibility of assisting teachers to improve the quality of teaching and learning in their institutions mainly through their district teacher development unit (tdu). the tdu is in direct contact with schools and provides ongoing teacher professional development and capacity building by conducting training workshops and seminars on various curriculum issues, on-site classroom visits and lesson observation. at the same time, however, the pde exerts pressure on local districts to ensure that schools deliver quality teaching and learning. local districts, in turn, discharge accountability pressure on school management and teachers to ensure they achieve the standards and expectations set by the pde. the effectiveness of the local district has, therefore, been questioned and considered controversial due to its conflicting roles of being the same instrument that offers pressure and support. traditionally, south african districts are known to effect bureaucratic teacher accountability that is compliance orientated, judgemental, intimidating and threatening to most teachers and often resulting in no positive impact on teachers’ practices (de clercq, 2008). according to bush and glover (2014), this constitutes managerialist values characterised by rigid planning set on competence and compliance. 5. findings the findings presented in this section address the research questions: how is the idea of beginning teacher induction conceptualised in the selected district? what is the district’s key purpose in inducting beginning teachers? what is the form and content of the district’s induction programme? the beginner teacher induction programme is run by the curriculum implementation section which has the responsibility and accountability of the induction deliverables and execute these functions through its tdu, formerly known as human resource development (hrd). as is depicted by its former name and its current name, the tdu’s primary role is to coordinate the professional development of human resources, i.e., the teachers in the district schools. as part of the capacity building, the district came up with an initiative to induct beginner teachers http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 2202021 39(3): 220-227 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) with a particular focus on funza lushaka1 bursary recipients. tdu organised elements to be covered in the induction plan, drove the alignment of all other departments to the key focus areas in the induction and determined its implementation. while tdu focused on aspects related the role of the teacher in the teaching and learning imperative, they called on the input of the transversal human resource services (thrs) and dispute management department to cover aspects that govern the work of teachers as public service (ps)2 employees. the participating district officials explained their approach to induction as follows: we identify the new teachers via the hr and then we invite those teachers for induction workshops. we also normally target the funza lushakas at the beginning of the year in january, the weekend after schools open. for now, its only workshops for all recently hired teachers in the district (tdu official 1). we start with a 2-hour session where we take them through the conditions of service in the office. here we have an hr person present what is due to them in terms of hr and finance and then as the tdu, we take them through the work ethics as stipulated in the sace document. we then allow discussion and where they are not clear they ask questions. we also take them through what we call the predictability framework, a curriculum management framework where we look at what is the role of the teacher in curriculum delivery and the role of the hod 3 because they report to the hod (tdu official 2). according to the tdu officials, the induction sessions were held in the form of workshops where they take new teachers through the conditions of service as well as spell out what is required of them as teachers. it also appears from the above statements that the district specifically targeted new teacher graduates who were beneficiaries of the funza lushaka bursary scheme. it also appears that these teachers were coerced to attend and in explaining this, one official mentioned that: we place funza lushaka teachers in our schools and so it is our mandate that we follow them up and provide this induction support. besides, funza lushaka is government funding and those new teacher graduates are simply obliged to undergo this training and development because we basically oversee their welfare in the district (thrs official). in further explaining their approach to induction, other officials elaborated saying: …we support in terms of capacitating them with the do’s and don’ts in the teaching profession because we’ve realised that since they only have theory and no experience in the workplace, they find themselves in difficult situations. most end up being the most vulnerable in terms of being charged so we are there to take them through the legislative framework, that is the act that they are appointed under and then we give them their rights 1 funza lushaka is a bursary allocation launched in 2007 for south african students who desire a career in teaching. the bursary covers full cost to complete a full teaching qualification in an area of national priority e.g., maths, sciences, technology etc. recipients of these bursaries are required to teach at a public school for the same number of years that they have received the bursary. qualified recipients of the bursary can request placement in a province of their choice, but it is the pde concerned that will determine whether a suitable post is available (dbe, http://www.funzalushaka.doe.gov.za/). 2 public service employees are persons who are employed (a) in posts on the establishment of departments; and (b) additional to the establishment of departments (section 8 of the public service act 103 of 1994 as amended). 3 district officials refer to school heads of departments as hods and this was quoted verbatim. elsewhere in the text i refer to these hods as heads of departments as they are referred to in the personnel administrative measures (rsa, 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 http://www.funzalushaka.doe.gov.za/ 2212021 39(3): 221-227 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 kadenge a district beginner teacher induction initiative in the workplace and then also we give them the disciplinary code and procedures so that they can know what types of misconduct they are not supposed to commit (dm official). the emphasis in the above quotes, however, is evidently on ensuring that beginning teachers understand the statutes of being a public servant. issues to do with curriculum management and classroom instruction are raised but seem to be underplayed and another district official corroborated this saying: we have seen that we have to spend more time explaining to new teachers our expectations and the dire consequences that follow if those expectations are not met (thrs official). when asked about how they came to structure their induction sessions, it was clear that district officials understood teacher induction as a procedure to prevent new teachers from becoming problematic teachers and ensure that they perform accordingly. the following extracts illustrate how the district officials came to select content covered in the induction sessions and their general understanding of the key purpose of induction: most of our activities are informed by what the principals say. we pay attention to the problems raised by the principals and we address them in our sessions with the new teachers (tdu official 2). we get cases from the principals, issues that are reported to us by the principals and the main challenges are issues of sexual assault and then corporal punishment. new teachers find themselves in a fix where they cannot engage with the learners. many teachers are appearing on our database, male teachers especially are the ones who are experiencing problems in terms of having relationships with the learners. having them on our database, we decided as labour relations that we need to train them and capacitate them…it’s not even a question of corporal punishment, it is assault simply because of the rage that is happening in the classroom they end up slapping the learner. so, theirs is more of assault than corporal punishment so that is why we saw it fit that we need to take them through what is considered acts of misconduct and how they will be charged accordingly (dm official). district officials perceived induction as an intervention strategy to deal with unacceptable conduct of beginner teachers in schools. thus, the induction workshops were conducted to curb the risks that beginner teachers could potentially pose to the learners, heads of departments and principals as well as many other stakeholders in the schooling community. as a result, the induction sessions were inundated by legal framework documents used as points of reference when discussing different issues of how teachers are expected to conduct themselves. this explains the incorporation of the dm unit into the programme with the mandate to cover aspects such as grievance procedures, acts of misconduct and disciplinary code and procedures and all labour relations legislative frameworks that teachers are employed under. one official explained: the grievance procedures component explains the steps that beginning teachers can take in cases where there is conflict in the workplace especially where they have been violated. this was deemed necessary because most new educators do not know that there are structures in place to protect them. i refer them to chapter g of the pam document when i discuss the grievance procedures. i also explain in much detail all acts of misconduct according to section 17 and 18 of the employment of educators act 76 of 1998. acts of serious misconduct such as corruption in examinations, sexual relationships with learners, possession of illegal intoxicating substances and serious assault result in immediate dismissal and acts of less serious misconduct such as http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 2222021 39(3): 222-227 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) negligently mismanaging finances or accepting compensation in cash or otherwise from learners or the public result in the issuing of written warnings. all these acts of misconduct are included in the induction as it was important to alert new educators of the possible pitfalls in the profession as well as the procedures that we take as dm in charging them (dm official). while the grievance procedures session provided beginner teachers with important information on how to raise their concerns with the authorities, emphasis was placed on how they are charged in the event of violating stipulated codes of conduct. the dm official further explained: the management of employee discipline by supervisors, principals and managers circular 01/2016 is the main reference legislative framework to explain the disciplinary code and procedures but we employ a number of legislative frameworks to execute our role. when we charge educators, we don’t solely use the employment of educators act, the sace code of conduct comes into play, so does the pam document, circular 65…all of these. it was necessary for us to bring various legislative frameworks to their attention so that they can be on the know so that whatever they are doing they do it knowing what the consequences are… they will be dismissed and scrapped out of the profession (dm official). to further highlight the concern regarding beginner teachers’ conduct in schools, the labour relations discussions were complemented by tdu sessions on classroom management. as was indicated by the dm official earlier, most principals in the district schools indicated that one of the major challenges identified was beginner teachers failing to effectively manage their classrooms. challenges cited included struggling with creating conducive learning environments, developing clear rules and instructions and especially, devising and implementing consistent strategies to deal with learner misbehaviour. district officials specifically expressed their concern about beginner teachers’ classroom management skills: funza lushaka teachers are facing serious difficulties with respect to handling their classrooms. many end up administering corporal punishment which is not permissible in any south african school… we take teachers through the sace code of professional ethics and the seven roles of the educator as outlined in the norms and standards for educators (tdu official 1). in addition to classroom management, the professional ethics discussion extended to discussing the seven roles and responsibilities of the teacher and these were explained with reference to the pam document as well as the norms and standards for educators. the seven roles include being a learning area/subject/discipline/phase specialist, interpreter and designer of learning programmes and materials, learning mediator, assessor of learning and of learners, leader, administrator and manager, scholar, researcher and life-long learner, and performing community, citizenship and pastoral roles. it is important to note that the district official in the above quote emphasises district expectations over how a discussion of these roles and responsibilities would be helpful to the beginner teachers’ practice. additionally, district officials demonstrate their focus on compliance by emphasising the regulations on working hours as outlined in the pam document and the teacher appraisal integrated quality management system (iqms) process. one district official said: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 2232021 39(3): 223-227 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 kadenge a district beginner teacher induction initiative we also go into details about the working hours, that is 7 hours/day4 which translates to 1800 hours per annum so that they don’t fight with their hods or supervisors in schools when they are told to leave the school at 3:00pm. we also have expectations outside the formal school day, 80 hours of pd per annum so we also make that clear… we also realised that when we talk about working hours, we should briefly explain the iqms process because it’s often misunderstood by new educators. our facilitators explain all the documents i.e., what is the collective agreement, lesson observation, self-evaluation, pre-evaluation, post-evaluation and a personal growth plan (thrs official). the findings from the districts’ approach show that beginner teacher induction is conceived as a capacity building programme and the district officials believe that their offering launches beginner teachers into the profession with more ease. a more careful analysis of the data, however, shows that what is enacted reveals that beginner teachers are perceived to be troublesome and lack practical understanding of the legal frameworks of the profession. their support, thus, leans more towards corrective procedures meant to prevent the recurrence of various problems caused by beginner teachers in schools as well as ensuring understanding the frameworks that govern the work of teachers. the findings also reveal that the role of the district regarding teacher professional development in the south african context is contentious. according to the south african schools act no. 84 of 1996 (rsa, 1996) sub-section 16(3), the principal of a school is responsible for the professional management of a school, which includes professional development of teachers. in addition, the personnel administrative measures (rsa, 2016) explicitly indicate that support to beginner teachers is one of the principals’ functions together with the deputyprincipals, departmental heads, master teachers and senior teachers. thus, a district’s direct involvement in the introduction of teacher professional development programmes for beginner teachers may be viewed as interference with the functions of the school principal and his or her management team. these findings point towards one important factor that needs to be thoroughly explicated if ever there is going to be meaningful district-driven beginner teacher induction in south africa, namely, the capability and suitability of district officials to provide developmental support to beginning teachers, or any other teacher at whatever stage of their career, aimed at improving teaching and learning. 6. discussion drawing from the perspectives and practices of the four district officials, this study reveals three conceptions that will continue to pose enduring challenges to any district-driven teacher induction and development programme in south africa. firstly, the district used the training model where workshops were the main vehicle for beginner teachers’ induction. these workshops were conducted at a district venue outside of the school and the district officials assumed the role of the experts. such off-site teacher development activities have been hailed for strengths such as being effective platforms for the dissemination of information and creating opportunities for teachers to develop intellectual communities for sharing practice outside of their schools (maistry, 2008). however, context-removed teacher professional development activities have been seriously critiqued for failing to prioritise the knowledge areas teachers needed for effective professional practice and failing to situate knowledge in the context of practice (christie et al., 2005; de clercq & shalem, 2014). 4 over and above the 7 hours, teachers are required to be at school and work an additional 2 hours per day, thus, 9 hours/day. the additional 2 hours is for preparation of lessons, marking and assessments and extramural activities (rsa, 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 2242021 39(3): 224-227 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) secondly, the district seemed to have a limited understanding of beginner teacher’s needs; hence, derived their induction focus from complaints raised about beginner teachers. such a limited conceptualisation resulted in an approach that prioritised governance and ensuring compliance with legal statutes thereby backgrounding the important role of influencing classroom instructional decisions and practices (anderson, 2003). this is consistent with managerialism that bush and glover (2014) describe as an approach that places emphasis on competence in functions, tasks and behaviours thereby underplaying activities that improve teaching and learning. thirdly, the structure and role of the district as an instrument for pressure and support, unless resolved, will constantly create contestation where teacher development in south africa is concerned. the local education districts in south africa operate within confines of the mandates stipulated in their roles and responsibilities as stated in the policy on the organisation, roles and responsibilities of education districts (rsa, 2013). according to section 20.2 of this policy, the district, among many other duties, has the responsibility of supporting schools through “providing an enabling environment and organising provision and support for the professional development of managers, educators and administrative staff members”. the following section (20.3) articulates the districts’ oversight and accountability roles, which include “accounting to the pde for the performance of education institutions in the district”. in other words, while the district must support schools by building their capacity through various professional development activities, it exerts accountability pressure on schools to ensure they perform to the satisfaction of the pde. this duality has been an enduring tension that conflates the effectiveness of the district as it struggles to establish a balance between supporting and ensuring accountability in schools (bantwini & diko, 2011; narsee, 2006). this study highlights existing doubts about the capability and suitability of the district to provide teachers with developmental support. although there were activities that focused on developing beginner teachers’ teaching related practices, the evidence overwhelmingly show that the induction programmes were emphasising compliance. because of this monitoring and supervisory aptitude, most district related interventions have not been previously well received in schools (bantwini & diko, 2011; narsee, 2006). there is, however, sufficient evidence in the literature showing how pressure and support by the district are necessary for continuous school improvement (chinsamy, 2002). what is essential is establishing and maintaining a balance between the amounts of support provided and pressure applied in order to ensure rapid progress and high performance (barber & phillips, 2000). education districts in south africa have, unfortunately, been found wanting in respect of well proportioning these two as they tend to filter any task assigned to them through its roles and responsibilities filter, especially the oversight and accountability one. 7. conclusion while it may be popular for district officials to be key instruments in teacher professional development initiatives, this may be a time to seriously question whether they are the best agents for effective beginning teacher induction implementation in south african public schools. the programmatic induction offerings of the district discussed in this paper largely shows that the dual responsibility to support and monitor teachers creates serious contestation within the district. this challenge is exacerbated by little understanding of new teachers’ needs and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 2252021 39(3): 225-227 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.16 kadenge a district beginner teacher induction initiative what teacher development is all about for new teachers. as a result, developmental support is limited and induction sessions are reduced to information sharing sessions that further demonstrate the districts’ accountability mandate. if new teacher induction at the district level is going to meaningfully contribute to beginner teachers’ skill set of what they can use within their respective classrooms, careful consideration of the role of the district is something that should be tabled for intense discussion. briefly, where induction is driven by monitoring, supervisory and pressure exerting imperatives, beginner teachers are less likely to grow their professional skills. references anderson, s.e. 2003. the school district role in educational change: a review of the literature. international centre for educational change, 34(2): 25–45. bantwini, b.d. & diko, n. 2011. factors affecting south african district officials’ capacity to provide effective teacher support. creative education, 2(3): 226–235. https://doi.org/10.4236/ ce.2011.23031 barber, m. & phillips, v. 2000. big change questions: 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emergency remote teaching and learning in developing countries abstract with the operationalisation of lockdowns and restrictions on public gatherings, education systems across the entire globe were confronted with an urgent need to reconsider alternative forms of teaching, learning and assessment. some institutions in developing countries were especially hard-hit by the shift owing to inadequacies in training and infrastructure because unlike their more developed counterparts who had already made inroads into adopting online technologies, some institutions in the developing world had no such technologies in place. as such, the shift to online learning was rushed and somewhat a “learning on the job” experience for students and educators. while remote online teaching, learning and assessment are novel experiences for many higher education institutions, developing countries are incessantly presented with many challenges, particularly when safeguarding academic integrity. invigilated assessments, which are often considered more secure, are not an option given the current situation, thus detecting any cheating would be significantly challenging. as a result, this study examined assessment security in the digital domain and critically evaluated the practices to safeguard academic integrity in developing countries across three southern african universities, including associated challenges. underpinned by the pragmatist paradigm, the study employed a mixed-methods research approach that utilised in-depth qualitative and quantitative data from university managers, lecturers and students to investigate how academic integrity is safeguarded in the advent of online learning. our findings revealed that although the transition to online learning and assessment was abrupt, higher education institutions have generated creative strategies to secure and ensure the continuity of learning and assessment. such strategies include administering several versions of the same examination, as well as the use of “text-matching” software to detect the originality of work done by students. based on the findings of the study, it was recommended that to guarantee the authenticity of online assessment, institutions must ensure that assessment practices relate to real-world needs and the context in which students can apply acquired knowledge. keywords: academic dishonesty; academic integrity; covid-19; higher education institutions; online assessment; online learning. author: mr bonginkosi hardy mutongoza1 dr babawande emmanuel olawale1 affiliation: 1university of fort hare, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i1.14 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(1): 234-249 published: 04 march 2022 received: 10 august 2021 accepted: 19 october 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2939-1274 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5265-1583 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 2352022 40(1): 235-249 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 mutongoza & olawale safeguarding academic integrity in the face of emergency remote teaching 1. introduction the covid-19 outbreak posed a serious threat to several sectors, including the higher education sector. as such, most educational institutions were forced to choose between closing their doors or going online due to the new constraints imposed by the covid-19 pandemic. investigating the higher education sector’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances is more important than ever to handle the uncertainty and developing scenarios connected with the pressing problem of the covid-19 pandemic and consequent lockdowns, especially in developing countries. while the majority of institutions in the developed world had already made advances into embracing internet technologies before the covid-19 pandemic, most institutions in developing countries continue to struggle due to a lack of digital expertise and infrastructure. the pandemic, therefore, necessitated an abrupt shift in teaching, learning as well as assessment practices, prompted by concerns about the efficacy, validity and adaptability of internal quality assurance procedures in the developing world (cirlan & loukkola, 2021). while studies comparing academic misconduct in face-to-face and online classes consistently reveal that conventional face-to-face classes had higher rates of self-reported misconduct (kidwell & kent, 2008; hart & morgan, 2010; eaton, 2020), such studies reveal students’ maturity levels as an important factor that puts them at risk of academic misconduct (bertram et al., 2015). therefore, given that emergency remote learning in the case of the covid-19 outbreak is not the same as online learning, although the technology resources for content delivery may be similar (eaton, 2020; hodges et al., 2020), thousands of students and educators were suddenly found working in online environments with little to no training, expertise, and motivation (eaton, 2020). educators who had never taught online before had little or no opportunity to think about how assessment in e-learning contexts differs from how students are assessed in face-to-face settings (eaton & turner, 2020). accordingly, many educators had little or no opportunity to examine the implications of these decisions in terms of academic integrity and how it could be safeguarded in the face of emergency remote teaching and learning. 2. problem statement while the adoption of online technologies was lauded as the solution to educational challenges that confronted higher education in the face of the covid-19 pandemic, the developing world continues to struggle in the adoption of technologies in learning and assessment (daniels, geogan & parker, 2021; muhuro & kang’ethe, 2021). it is contended that teaching, learning and assessment have been difficult to adapt in the developing world and poor communities owing to challenges such as lack of resources, lack of training, lack of adequate infrastructure and many other factors (mncube, mutongoza & olawale, 2021; guangul et al., 2020). effective online assessment, therefore, became difficult to deliver as evidenced in increases in cheating (chala, 2021). institutions in the developing world were therefore thrust into a precarious position where they had to rethink assessment practices to effectively measure the progression of students in higher education institutions (korkmaz & toraman, 2020; muhuro & kang’ethe, 2021). this study, therefore, sought to examine assessment security in the digital domain and to critically evaluate the effectiveness of assessment practices in developing countries across three southern african universities. one university was selected from each of the countries, namely botswana, zimbabwe and south africa. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 2362022 40(1): 236-249 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 3. research questions i. what strategies have been used to enhance assessment security in the digital domain? ii. to what extent do these assessment practices safeguard academic integrity? 4. literature review 4.1 an overview of academic integrity the concept of academic integrity relies on five values namely: responsibility, respect, honesty, fairness and trust (bretag, 2016; mccabe, 2016). it is argued that these five values are critical in addressing academic conduct in institutions of learning (eaton & turner, 2020). bretag (2016) argues that academic integrity is the code of conduct in academia. ultimately, academic integrity lays the foundation for students for a vibrant academic life and responsible citizenship (international center for academic integrity [icai], 2021). cheating in academic circles contradicts the very principles upon which academic integrity is founded (mccabe, 2016). cheating is defined as any action or attempt aimed at gaining an unfair advantage over other students by undermining the values of academic integrity (vučković et al., 2020). cheating typically happens in four ways: (i) information transfer between individuals, (ii) the use of assisting tools, (iii) exploitation of weakness and (iv) copying answers or information (chala, 2021). this, therefore, raises the critical question of how much is actually being learnt, which has implications for professional careers beyond university. while learning happens in three domains, namely the cognitive domain, affective domain and psychomotor domain, this study focuses on assessment in the cognitive domain. learning in this domain is typically measured through class discussions, tutorials, quizzes and problembased learning amongst many others (kasilingam & chinnavan, 2014). the cognitive domain involves the development of mental skills and the acquisition of knowledge as measured by six categories. the categories involve students’ ability to recall information (knowledge), the ability to understand the meaning of what is known (comprehension), ability to utilise knowledge in a new situation (application), ability to differentiate between fact and opinion (analysis), ability to integrate different concepts in order to establish a new meaning (synthesis) and the ability to judge the importance of concepts (evaluation) (bloom et al., 1956; hoque, 2016). 4.2 assessment in developing countries while debates on academic integrity have been ongoing, the abrupt adoption of online learning in the developing world makes it more critical for a review of assessment practices. alin (2020) contends that the emergency adoption of online learning in developing countries resulted in a continuation of face-to-face assessment practices by faculty members. as a result, students began to attain higher grades than they would generally do in face-to-face assessments (fontaine, frenette & herbert, 2020). the three main purposes for conducting assessment in higher education institutions are summed up in three main agendas: (i) provide support for learning through appropriate feedback systems in conjunction with formative and summative assessment; (ii) to entrench accountability by providing evidence of learning and (iii) to provide certification for intended outcomes, progress and transfer (guangul et al., 2020). the covid-19 stringency has forced institutions to adopt remote assessment and learning methodologies, albeit with relatively limited preparation of institutions, students and educators (mncube et al., 2021; reedy et al., 2021). remote assessment can be classified into two broad categories namely proctored exams and open-ended assessments. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 2372022 40(1): 237-249 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 mutongoza & olawale safeguarding academic integrity in the face of emergency remote teaching proctored exams are time-bound and invigilated in a classroom setup; this can be done remotely through digital learning management systems (guangul et al., 2020). in most cases, institutions in developing countries were caught off-guard, this meant that effectively invigilating examinations was out of their reach and some had to forego exams (mncube et al., 2021). remote assessments have been criticised for some problems, chief of which is that such assessments are more stressful for students than contact-based ones, thus significantly affecting performance (clark et al., 2020). furthermore, proctored exams require well-established infrastructural setups (software and hardware), but this is usually a problem for students at some institutions who bemoan the lack of internet access and the digital divide between them and their more urban counterparts (gamage, de silva & gunawardhana, 2020). stable internet connections are a problem in such communities owing to developmental deficits in most developing countries (muhuro & kang’ethe, 2021). it is also argued that some students may in some cases be uncomfortable to undertake examinations under camera supervision due to personal or cultural reasons (guangul et al., 2020). open-ended assessments on the other hand use assessments such as quizzes, openbook/take-home assessments, presentations/demonstrations and portfolios of evidence (guangul et al., 2020; daniels, et al., 2021). it is contended that open-book/take-home assessments are highly vulnerable to cheating, and they ultimately disadvantage the cheater and other hardworking students in the same class whose hard work is not rewarded accordingly (fontaine et al., 2020). this would potentially harm student morale and in some cases influence students to engage in academic dishonesty (alin, 2020). quizzes have been criticised for offering low stakes for students to demonstrate their understanding of taught content, but the randomisation of questions makes it more difficult for cheating to happen (dicks, morra & quinlan, 2020). presentations as a remote assessment during the pandemic have been conducted using web-based online conference systems such as microsoft teams, skype, zoom, etc. (gamage et al., 2020). regarding portfolios of evidence, students are expected to compile their best work from a given learning period and to critically reflect on what has been taught. this is done so that students can demonstrate what has been learnt through critical reflection (daniels et al., 2021). 4.3 assessment security in the digital domain the notion that digital technology may aid the transformation of education, particularly assessment, is not new. this is because of its potentially positive features or affordances such as delivering more customised, immediate or engaging assessment experiences (oldfield et al., 2013). however, assessment reform and security are becoming increasingly evident, especially if such reforms and security are to keep up with other theoretical, cultural and technical advancements that influence teaching and learning. in the subject of digital security, the term “security” is rarely adequately defined on a conceptual level, this is because, issues of security sometimes fall into dichotomous, binary conceptions, where anything is either judged “secure” or “insecure” (organisation for economic co-operation and development [oecd], 2019). however, when it comes to online learning, security implies that all authorised users have access to learning materials when they are needed (adams & blandford, 2003). as hostile actors in recent times continue to take advantage of the covid-19 pandemic, the danger of digital insecurity continues to grow, as evidenced by the rise in scams, academic cheating and phishing efforts connected to the covid-19 pandemic (riskiq, 2020). various sectors such as education and businesses, as well as their different value chain partners, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 2382022 40(1): 238-249 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) relevant stakeholders and other external parties, remain exposed to danger. given that online learning takes place over the internet, every component of an online learning system can be hacked or attacked which might result in illegal changes to educational assets and/or their destruction (adams & blandford, 2003; chen & he, 2013; riskiq, 2020). in terms of online assessment, for students to complete their university education and show that they have attained the essential learning outcomes, both academic integrity and assessment security are required. gamage et al. (2020) therefore argue that assessment security focuses more on preventing cheating in assessments and discovering any cheating that has happened, while academic integrity aims to provide students with the skills and beliefs needed to engage in ethical scholarship. while the two main purposes of assessment are to provide certification of achievement and to facilitate learning, assessment techniques, such as benchmark exams, online tests, and assignments run the danger of contract cheating (gamage et al., 2020). alin (2020) defines contract cheating as a form of academic dishonesty in which a student pays someone to do their work. this has increased ghost-written assignments, theses and other learning outputs (chala, 2021). similarly, while formal written tests may minimise contract cheating, they do not allow for the assessment of all forms of learning. to ensure assessment security across several universities, vivas were used to prevent academic cheating and ensure assessment security (gamage et al., 2020; korkmaz & toraman, 2020). universities have begun to devise ways of ensuring assessment security, for example, annual university reviews aimed at improving the learning experience for everyone involved, including students, faculty and programme directors (gamage et al., 2020; clark et al., 2020). similarly, while some universities maintain assessment security through adherence to strict deadlines, there is considerable evidence that deadlines are no longer effective in preventing students from cheating (gamage et al., 2020; eaton, 2020). in addition, academics might use “checkpoints” or advanced drafts, in maintaining assessment security. according to gamage et al. (2020), checkpoints may be used to see if students are genuinely engaged in their academic work. it may also be used to keep track of research findings and conversations, as well as to perform online testing and evaluate group work in the face of emergency remote teaching and learning. 5. theoretical framework this study is underpinned by the hexagonal e-learning assessment model (helam) that was developed by ozkan and koseler (2009). helam is a conceptual assessment model used to evaluate learner satisfaction in online learning and blended modes of learning (ozkan, koseler & baykal, 2008). in this framework, the effectiveness of online learning is assessed in line with six dimensions: (i) technical issues: system quality; (ii) technical issues: service quality; (iii) technical issues: content quality; (iv) social issues: learner perspective; (v) social issues: instructor attitudes and (vi) supporting issues (see figure 1 below). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 2392022 40(1): 239-249 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 mutongoza & olawale safeguarding academic integrity in the face of emergency remote teaching figure 1: ozkan and koseler’s (2009: 117) hexagonal e-learning assessment model this study has only focused on sections e and f of helam and in particular f6 which relates to security. security in online learning and assessment platforms aim to proof users from unauthorised access, secure learning-related data and other such aspects (ozkan, koseler & baykal, 2008). adopting this part of the framework was beneficial for this study because, in many ways, online learning systems are consumer-oriented, but their protection mechanisms focus on the organisational end, which is not necessarily consumer-oriented. as such, organisations safeguard their learning resources through firewalls and antimalware, yet most online security issues are attributed to a user’s poor knowledge of security procedures and lack of education. this often has the consequence of information manipulation and loss of confidentiality. 6. research methodology 6.1 research paradigm the present study is underpinned by a pragmatist paradigm. pragmatism as a research paradigm has its philosophical foundation in the historical contributions of the pragmatism philosophy (maxcy, 2003), and as a result, it embraces a wide range of methods (kaushik & walsh, 2019). pragmatism is founded on an inter-subjective ontological attitude that gives room to the existence of one and multiple realities (kaushik & walsh, 2019). according to creswell and plano clark (2011), pragmatism recognises that there may be a single or http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 2402022 40(1): 240-249 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) numerous realities that may be investigated empirically. this means that pragmatism is not bound by any particular philosophical system or reality (kaushik & walsh, 2019). the pragmatist paradigm was found suitable for this study because it encourages researchers to concentrate on the two methods of inquiry (morgan, 2014; kaushik & walsh, 2019) to solve practical issues in the actual world rather than categorise post-positivism and constructivism as two distinct ontological and epistemological groups. 6.2 research approach to capture the widest range of data, a mixed-method research approach was chosen. a mixed-method research approach was possible because of the adoption of a pragmatic research paradigm. according to creswell (2014), a mixed-method research approach is the combination of quantitative and qualitative approaches. the mixed-method approach was found suitable because it allowed the researchers to critically investigate the assessment practices in universities in developing countries and to examine how these universities have responded towards safeguarding academic integrity in the face of the emergency remote teaching and learning. 6.3 research design based on the use of the mixed methods research approach, the present study employed a sequential exploratory mixed methods study design. in line with berman (2017), we began with a qualitative data collection and analysis, followed by a quantitative data collection and analysis, after which the researchers entered a final phase of integrating the data from the two phases. the development of the quantitative survey questionnaire used was informed by the themes that emerged from the qualitative data analysis. this design proved useful in answering the research questions and drawing larger inferences from the findings. 6.4 population, sample, and sampling technique the population for our study comprised university managers, lecturers and students in the three (3) southern african universities. the participating universities were from botswana, zimbabwe and south africa. we utilised the convenience sampling technique for the qualitative phase and a simple random sampling technique for the quantitative phase of our study. this was informed by creamer (2018) who argues that the main benefit of combining probabilistic and non-probability sampling techniques is that it easily supports the argument that results are generalisable to different contexts and populations. the sample for the qualitative phase comprised ten (10) students, three (3) lecturers and two (2) managers from each institution making a cumulative total of forty-five (45) participants who were conveniently sampled. in the quantitative phase, participants were selected using a simple random sampling technique through which thirty-five (35) students, five (5) lecturers and three (3) managers were selected for participation from each of the three institutions, making a collective total of one hundred and twenty-nine (129) participants. 6.5 data collection instrument in the qualitative phase, we utilised semi-structured online interviews because they offered rich in-depth explanations of the phenomenon under investigation while the quantitative phase utilised a survey questionnaire. according to neuman (2014), a survey may be used for explanatory, descriptive and exploratory research. these data collection tools were essential http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 2412022 40(1): 241-249 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 mutongoza & olawale safeguarding academic integrity in the face of emergency remote teaching in offering insights into assessment practices in southern african universities and how they safeguard academic integrity in the face of emergency remote teaching and learning. 6.6 data analysis and trustworthiness for this study, data collected in the qualitative phase of the study was analysed thematically while data collected in the quantitative phase was analysed using descriptive statistics. during data analysis, qualitative and quantitative data were integrated to get deeper insights into the state of academic integrity in developing countries. to ensure data trustworthiness, triangulation was achieved using more than one unit of analysis. as such, responses from students, staff and faculty managers across the three (3) selected universities were triangulated to ensure the credibility of the research findings. 6.7 ethical considerations ensuring anonymity and informed consent were the primary ethical concerns for this study. this was discussed and agreed upon before the commencement of data collection. permission was also obtained from the respective university gatekeepers before the commencement of data collection. before the participants’ consent was requested, they were given information about the research’s aims, procedure and data usage. as such, the participants were also given the option of withdrawing from the study at any time, with the data from that respondent not being used. 7. results and discussion we set out to investigate assessment security in the digital domain and to critically evaluate the assessment practices employed to safeguard academic integrity across three southern african universities. in this section, results and discussions are presented under the following themes: • strategies used to enhance assessment security in the digital domain • the effectiveness of assessment practices 7.1 strategies used to enhance assessment security in the digital domain to gather data on strategies used to enhance assessment security in the digital domain, we asked participants, “what strategies have been used at your institution to enhance security in online assessment?” findings from the qualitative phase revealed that although the transition to online learning and assessment was abrupt, higher education institutions have generated creative strategies to ensure the continuity of learning and assessment. these strategies include the administering of several versions of the same examination, presenting students with case studies to apply theories learned, changing variables in examination papers to create uncertainty among the students and using “text-matching” software to detect plagiarism and check for originality of work done by students. a case in point can be drawn from a lecturer who opined, to ensure that students do not cheat in online assessments, i usually give out questions that cannot bring immediate answers using search engines such as google and the like. so, what i do is that before giving an online assessment, i google the questions to see what comes up then i fine-tune the questions if google provides an immediate answer. i do not like questioning that does not require knowledge application (lecturer 3, university z). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 2422022 40(1): 242-249 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) similar innovative strategies were also unearthed in the responses of students who noted that lecturers have managed to reduce the incidence of online cheating using diverse strategies where the same component is tested in different ways in the same class. for instance, a student stated, our lecturer is very clever, we never know what is coming unless after the exams have been written. he sometimes uses the same examination, only changing the numbers, names of things, or rearranges the exam questions in the paper to create uncertainty among the students…even if we wanted to copy, trying to figure out if we have the same thing takes too much time and you can end up exceeding the time limits. i think this has helped reduce cheating (student 3, university x). in support of the above, a lecturer also noted that, we are encouraged by the faculty to create several versions of the same exam and to randomly distribute these different versions of the same exam to different groups of students. so, they often will not know who has a similar question paper with them… remember these are timed assessments so they cannot spend time trying to get the other students they have been grouped with (lecturer 1, university x). responses from the university managers across the universities also echoed similar sentiments, albeit acknowledging the complexity of assessment in the context of developing countries. a case in point can be drawn from a manager who said, it is very difficult to ensure assessment security with very limited resources…we can never guarantee that our assessments are hundred per cent secure. however, because we know that there are upright students who are principled, we usually provide platforms where reporting of collusion amongst students can be reported anonymously. we want to protect those reporting incidents of cheating so that they do not suffer any backlash (manager 2, university y). similarly, another participating manager in one of the universities stated that, we encourage lecturers to employ a system in which students write their exams after receiving a password-protected paper (pdf or word) and after answering the questions by hand, they upload their scanned answer scripts for online marking. another strategy that we employed for assessment security is to divide a long paper into smaller parts which are administered over smaller time frames (manager 1, university z). research findings from participants across the three universities further revealed that assessment security is ensured by setting high cognitive level questions that are not solely based on students’ ability to recall information but premised on students’ ability to apply theories learned. this could include asking students to provide a detailed explanation of processes followed to answer questions as opposed to merely providing answers without justifications. our findings further revealed that universities use online platforms such as blackboard collaborate for oral presentations for smaller student groups, as well as asking students to sign and subscribe to the ideals of honour codes which holds them morally responsible to the values of academic integrity. research findings from the quantitative phase of the study in table 1 below shows the different strategies that have been used across the participating institutions to deliver assessment and the frequency at which these strategies were employed to enhance security in online assessment. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 2432022 40(1): 243-249 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 mutongoza & olawale safeguarding academic integrity in the face of emergency remote teaching table 1: strategies employed to enhance assessment security variables frequency percentages (%) 1 the use of “text-matching” software e.g. turnitin, safeassign, wcopyfind, moss, etc. 72 61 2 using moral codes to ensure students’ accountability 15 12 3 encouraging students to report cheating and collusion 113 88 4 online invigilation e.g. the use of software such as speedexam, mercer | mettl, etc. 18 14 5 adjusting questioning techniques 93 72 in the table above, research findings revealed that 88% of the participants believed that assessment security is enhanced in their institution by encouraging students to report any form of academic misconduct. this strategy was the most frequently identified followed by the adjusting of questioning techniques which was identified by 72% of the respondents. furthermore, 61% of the participants acknowledged that their institutions were utilising textmatching software to detect plagiarism. the least acknowledged strategies were the use of online invigilation which stood at 14%, as well as students’ adherence to moral codes which dissuades academic dishonesty, acknowledged by 12% of the participants. research findings from the qualitative and quantitative phase of the study revealed that institutions in developing countries rely more on strategies that do not involve novel technologies, this could be as a result of a lack of resources in the abrupt transition to online learning. as a result, these institutions often resort to the use of non-technological strategies of improving assessment security such as adjusting questioning techniques and setting of high cognitive level questions that do not merely rely on students’ ability to recall information. these findings can be corroborated by mncube et al. (2021) who found that because higher education institutions in developing countries were caught off guard by the covid-19 pandemic, effective administration of online examinations remains an arduous task. this position can be explained by helam, which argues that for effective online teaching and assessment, institutions must ensure that security is effective. this means that systems must be easy to use, stable, user friendly, fast, well organised, support educational tools and must be secured (ozkan & koseler, 2009). furthermore, given that online invigilated examinations require well-established infrastructural setups (software and hardware), this is usually a problem for students at institutions in developing countries who bemoan the lack of internet access and the digital divide between them and their more urban counterparts (gamage et al., 2020). this has led to problems such as a high incidence of psychosocial challenges in higher education (clark et al., 2020). 7.2 the effectiveness of assessment practices used to safeguard academic integrity to elicit evidence on the effectiveness of assessment practices in the digital domain, participants were asked, “how effective are the assessment practices employed at your institution to safeguard academic integrity?” findings from the qualitative study revealed that while assessment is used to provide learning support, entrench accountability and provide certification for intended outcomes, institutions in developing countries find it difficult to deliver secure assessment because students still find innovative ways of cheating. participants revealed that students in developing countries sometimes resort to contract cheating, use http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 2442022 40(1): 244-249 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) online paraphrasing tools to evade detection by text-matching software and search for answers through the internet which undermines the effectiveness of assessment practices. an example can be drawn from a lecturer who opined, while the university has tried to capacitate lecturers on the use of online assessment, the institution fell short when it came to the issue of capacitating students…i can say that online assessment is not effective because we just do not have the resources to enable its effectiveness. an example is that some months ago, the institution’s subscription to turnitin expired and we could not check for issues like plagiarism…the blackboard licence usually expires, and we can go for days or weeks without access to online teaching platform these are some of the challenges we are facing (lecturer 1, university y). these sentiments were corroborated by a student who explained why the online assessment was almost impossible to implement successfully considering the challenges bedevilling developing countries. the student lamented, online assessment is not effective at all. it disadvantages students who are from poor rural areas where access to internet connectivity is limited. sometimes i feel like online assessment is just an assessment of how accessible online technologies are. why am i saying so? students just copy and copy and copy – this has become the new way of life, so anyone who has access to mobile data and network connectivity is almost guaranteed of passing (student 10, university z). participants also revealed that there was a lack of willingness to transition into online learning which impinged on the effectiveness of online learning. a case in point can be drawn from a lecturer who posited, online assessment is not effective in our institution…people like me are too old to suddenly be asked to teach online. i have been working for the university for more than thirty years now, and overnight you ask me to teach and assess students online. these platforms of theirs are very confusing, they require intensive workshops for older staff and those whose technological skills are a bit behind…we, therefore, cannot effectively assess these students’ work (lecturer 5, university x). in addition, students also highlighted that cheating was more rampant among their peers because of the unplanned transition to online learning. an example can be drawn from a student who said, i have seen increases in the rate of cheating and academic misconduct, many students cheat nowadays as compared to when we were having invigilated assessments. we are not receiving adequate teaching, and some of these exams are just too difficult – some of our lecturers like seeing us failing…to survive, one decides to cheat. it is a matter of cheat or be cheated by the system. the authorities are the last people who can talk about academic integrity, there is no integrity to talk about when adequate teaching has not happened. so, students engage in contract cheating and sometimes you just pay someone – maybe a senior who is well-versed – to write for you. (student 7, university y). a manager also lamented that despite the efforts put in place to reduce cheating, cheating was fast becoming a pandemic in higher education. the manager complained, there is almost an arms race between students who are forever engineering new ways of cheating…being a rural institution it is difficult to invigilate students online. when we institute for example the use of text-matching software like turnitin, students will try new strategies…a common tool is paraphrasing tools online. we cannot really say that online assessment is effective – we are just doing what can work in our context (manager 3, university x). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 2452022 40(1): 245-249 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 mutongoza & olawale safeguarding academic integrity in the face of emergency remote teaching research findings from the quantitative phase of the study in figure 2 below show the rate at which academic dishonesty happens in different online assessment practices according to respondent beliefs. figure 2: perceived effectiveness of assessment practices used to safeguard academic integrity participants revealed that when assessment is undertaken using graded blogs, graded discussions and graded journals, 72% of the participants believed that a lot of cheating happens, while 22% noted that academic dishonesty was medium and a meagre 6% noted it as low. furthermore, when it came to invigilated online assessments, a majority of 57% of the participants acknowledged that this form of assessment was not in use at their institution. twenty-six per cent believed that academic dishonesty was low in invigilated online assessments, while 9% posited that it was low and 8% noted it to be high. when asked to rate the frequency of academic dishonesty in open-book online assessments, 77% of the participants noted that it was high, while 14% noted that it was medium and 9% believed it was low. concerning the rate of cheating in un-invigilated online tests and examinations, 68% of the participants noted that it was high, while 17% said it was medium and 15% said that it was low. findings from both phases of the study reveal that although online assessment was introduced as a panacea to the discontinuity of learning amid the covid-19 pandemic, the ineffectiveness of online assessment can be noted in the high rates of academic misconduct which has been reported in developing countries. these findings substantiate the view that assessment in developing countries in the wake of covid-19 is highly susceptible to cheating and academic misconduct because in most cases, the transition to online pedagogies was abrupt and under-resourced (suryaman et al., 2020). in fact, ozkan and koseler’s (2009) helam (f6) is concisely based on the view that online learning systems are consumeroriented, but their protection mechanisms focus on the institution. this has potentially harmed students’ morale and, in some cases, influenced students to engage in academic dishonesty (alin, 2020). as such, it is argued that students are increasingly engaging in cheating in online assessments because of the lack of invigilation, pressures associated with trying to catch up http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 2462022 40(1): 246-249 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.14 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) with delayed academic schedules and resource inadequacies, among many others (fontaine et al., 2020; korkmaz & toraman, 2020; chala, 2021). 8. conclusion and recommendations we set out to examine assessment security in the digital domain and to critically evaluate the effectiveness of assessment practices employed to safeguard academic integrity in the context of three southern african universities. our results revealed that while higher education institutions endeavour to deliver quality assessment in the context of covid-19, there exist challenges that impinge on the effectiveness of assessment in the digital domain. our study established that institutions in developing countries rely majorly on strategies that do not involve novel technologies as a result of a lack of resources in the abrupt transition to online learning. as a result, institutions in developing countries often resort to the use of nontechnological strategies for improving assessment security. based on the findings of the study, we recommend that to ensure the effectiveness of online assessments, faculty members must strive to ensure authentic assessment which seeks to replicate real-world experiences as closely as possible. we further recommend that struggling institutions collaborate with those institutions with suitable infrastructure and knowledge regarding online assessment to allow for the transfer of technological skills, knowledge and competencies. finally, institutions must also consider focusing on formative forms of assessment and constant feedback mechanisms which can help students to 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creative commons with attribution (cc-by) technology-mediated advising for student success: exploring selfmediated academic support for undergraduate students using autoscholar advisor system abstract this article explores the use of the autoscholar advisor system (auto-ad) to provide useful learning support analytics for selfmediated student academic support. the study is part of a pilot project for enhancing student success in a four-year undergraduate degree (bed) programme. adopting students’ self-authorship as an organising framework and using the auto-ad implemented on the learning management platform, the study involved 200 highperforming undergraduate students (cum laude or summa cum laude trajectory) in a school of education at one university. a mixed-methods approach was used to collect and analyse the data. quantitative data were analysed based on the students’ interaction with the auto-ad as academic learning support tool to enhance their performance through automated advising. qualitative open-ended comments allowing in-depth insight into the students’ perceptions of their performance were also analysed. the students considered knowledge, self, and relationship to be important for achieving high performance and success. the strongest correlated factors were choice of degree, motivation, study habits, family, and relationships. implications of these findings within the current student support systems at south african universities are discussed. 1. introduction digital technology applications create possibilities for supporting students beyond traditional learning support boundaries. learning support involves using resources and appropriate strategies to aid student learning. support practices, including academic support, can shift to acknowledge increasingly students’ active agency in their learning. academic support refers broadly to strategies educational institutions use to increase student academic achievement, particularly for those who are at risk of poor performance (peterson, o’connor & strawhun, 2014). to inform this shift in learning support and to understand and author: samukelisiwe khumalo1 randhir rawatlal1 victor nnadozie1 ashnie mahadew1 cedric bheki mpungose1 phakamile mazibuko1 affiliation: 1university of kwazulu-natal, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i2.7088 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(2): 211-232 published: 30 june 2023 received: 19 may 2022 accepted: 18 may 2023 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1568-2652 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8866-9678 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8707-8403 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5014-7890 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9828-8599 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0393-5448 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 2122023 41(2): 212-232 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) enhance student success better, there is a need for the adoption of multi-modal (blikstein & worsley, 2016) and academic (schumacher & ifenthaler, 2018; ifenthaler, 2017; 2015; siemens & long, 2011) learning analytics by the university. however, there is a need for caution in implementing learning analytics data in higher education (larrabee sønderlund, hughes & smith, 2019). the notion of student success in higher education is complex (kuh et al., 2006; scott, 2018; tinto, 2012; tiroyabone & strydom, 2021; kahu & nelson, 2018), and therefore context-nuanced academic support strategies are needed to target outcomes in student success metrics better, namely self-efficacy, academic performance, persistence, retention, and completion (soika, 2021). in south africa, universities face significant shortfalls in achieving student success (mabokela & mlambo, 2017). there is, therefore, a growing emphasis nationally (bokana & tewari, 2014) and within individual institutions on understanding the context and complexity of the student success problem, to support student experiences, and to enhance student success in their programmes of study (tiroyabone & strydom, 2021; fataar, 2018; usaf, 2018; dhunpath & subbaye, 2018; strydom, kuh & mentz, 2010). in addition, the issues of inclusion (kruss, 2017) and equity gaps in students’ education, experiences, and outcomes need to be addressed (cosser, 2018; notshulwana, 2011). the view of student success in the current study is informed by the position of the council on higher education (che) as it involves enhancement of student learning to increase the “number of graduates that are personally, professionally, and socially valuable” (che, 2014: 1). in this article, we approach student success from the perspective of academic support and aim to assess in order to understand how students engage and the positive outcomes of such engagement (soika, 2021). two definitions were proposed for the study. initially, cum laude and summa cum laude students were identified. these are students in the programme who have completed at least their first year and have not failed any examination or failed to achieve progression requirements, while maintaining a cumulative aggregate of at least 75% in all registered modules. then, because this definition delimits a relatively small group of students, it evolved to include improvement in the credit weighted average (crw) of students’ module results. the first section of this article reviews student success in higher education to problematise approaches to supporting student success at south african universities. further, it identifies reasons why a new lens for exploring success is needed and the usefulness of technologymediated advising to evidence-informed learning support within the context of the study. next, self-authorship (baxter magolda, 2008; perez, 2019), the underpinning theoretical framework guiding the research, is discussed. the following section describes the methodology, explaining how the participants were identified by means of performance tracking using the autoscholar advisor system (auto-ad.). the auto-ad was used in this study since it is a system “designed to automate and optimise … higher education process toward increased graduation rate” (modern scholarship, 2023). the next section illustrates the data generated using the auto-ad, which is specifically designed around the project methods to analyse the quantitative research survey, and then analyses qualitative comments on success factors. the last section elaborates on the implications of the findings, reflects on the limitations, offers recommendations for further research, and concludes with a summary of the key findings. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 2132023 41(2): 213-232 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 khumalo, et al. technology-mediated advising for student success 2. student success in higher education globally, student success continues to interest higher education researchers, practitioners, and institutions. this is because of its importance to the student experience (raaper, brown & llewellyn 2022), student outcomes (guo et al., 2022), and institutional sustainability (sanches et al., 2022), among other considerations. wood and breyer (2017: 3) identify three stakeholders for success in higher education, namely the individual, the institution, and national and global stakeholders. these are attributed success factors and tend to overlap (wood & breyer, 2017). attempts to define student success have recently emphasised a greater need for positioning the students as an important stakeholder at the centre of their learning (bloch et al., 2022). there is a shift from a fundamental definition viewing student success as access to and completion of higher education qualifications (wood & breyer, 2017) to looking beyond graduation. in addition to completion of the qualification requirements (kuh et al., 2006), other facets of student success have been emphasised, including career aspirations (atkins & ebdon, 2014), quality of student experiences and engagement (kinzie & kuh, 2017). the role that context plays in shaping students’ educational experiences matters (henderson & cunningham, 2023). therefore, an expanded definition of student success does not only account for qualification attainment, but also includes other outcomes and aspects of educational experiences (alyahyan & düştegör, 2020). an expanded definition of student success is necessary to provide insight into what contributes to graduation or completion and into the actions that can improve student performance, progression, and success. hence, a measure of student success in higher education includes a combination of engagement, retention, progression, attainment, and completion indicators (alyahyan & düştegör, 2020). in the present study, we operationalise student success in terms of student academic support as indicated in the measure of how students engage, and the positive outcomes of that engagement (soika, 2021). discussion on student success in higher education needs to consider the students’ backgrounds. it must address equity issues as well as other imperatives influencing the desired students’ educational outcomes (mcnair et al., 2022). in south africa, a sizeable population of university students come from educational and social environments that are still marginalised (mcghie, 2012). even though some of these students receive government funding for their education, primarily through the national students financial aid scheme (nsfas), their socio-economic circumstances limit the effectiveness of this support in promoting retention, persistence, and success, and in preventing dropouts (masutha, 2022). students experience university differently (fataar, 2018), and for some, vulnerabilities may be supported by the deficit model of student support and reinforced by speculative rather than insightful guided academic advising (nacada, 2003). there is a risk of downplaying intersecting exclusionary structures (masutha, 2022) and cultural factors that block opportunities for student learning. lemmens and henn (2016) suggest that data analytics are necessary to support evidenceinformed practices in south african higher education. one use of data analytics could be to enable insight into students’ perceptions of the positive factors that influence their success and enable a better understanding of their mindsets (pride, 2014). data analytics can also lead to positioning students as crucial agents in their learning, motivating them to aim for high performance and success (talbi & ouared, 2022; ifenthaler & yau, 2020). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 2142023 41(2): 214-232 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) 3. a critical overview of the approach to supporting student success within a south african university context students at south african universities have differing educational experiences (fataar, 2018). coming from stratified social, economic and schooling backgrounds, they continue along different pathways in higher education (cosser, 2018). the academic support system tends to be normative, prioritising pre-1997 student deficit concepts of academic development (volbrecht & boughey, 2004). this undermines the development of student agency (nnadozie & khumalo, 2023). while various approaches have been implemented to improve student success (scott, 2018), what these have in common is the pursuit of helping students to pass by dealing with disadvantages through financial and remedial support. perhaps what is lacking is an approach to support that focuses on students’ experiences of normalising success in ‘being’ and ‘doing’ by themselves. an approach to understanding and supporting students’ success needs to be empowering, allowing them to recognise and draw on their strengths, to understand their support needs, and to enact agency for meeting such needs. various scholars (blair, campbell & duffy, 2017; menkor et al., 2021; strayhorn, 2018) suggest that multi-pronged strategies allow for a holistic view of success, including experiences of academic success, student well-being, and a sense of belonging. such strategies require data-driven methods to inform an understanding of the influences on students’ success and supporting student success. 4. reimagining the approach to supporting student success there is a call for a change in the discourse on improving student success in higher education. thus, for example, wood and breyer (2017) see the move to discussing success and retention rather than failure and attrition as an aspect of this change. van den bogaard and zijlstra (2016: 7) advocate applying meaningful ways by developing “new methods and a new discourse to understand the complex issues of student success”. they argue that there is a need to look beyond one-size-fits-all ‘best practices’ to adopt a solution for specific situations using emergent practices that emphasise co-creative solutions (van den bogaard & zijlstra, 2016). citing dorst (2015), they also suggest that a new discourse of student success in higher education should allow for reframing to study “‘student success’ and the related concepts such as … what does ‘success’ mean, … what other solutions and approaches can we think of when we do not consider our fixed ideas …” (van den bogaard & zijlstra, 2016: 7). such calls for reframing the discourse of student success have prompted the use of the lens of performance and strength in the present study, as opposed to the dominant approach focusing on failure and deficit. 5. technology-mediated learning support for student success increasingly, it has been shown that the integration of technology with innovation in the educational process involves the student taking on a central role in learning (jokhan et al., 2022). research in south africa (cele, 2021) highlights the relevance of data-driven student support mechanisms at universities. data-driven student academic support using automated advising mediation can elicit active engagement of the student. in exploring meditation as a pedagogical practice, riofrío-calderón and ramírez-montoya (2022: 2) cite tobon et al. (2018) to explain mediation as a “process of supporting another person, team, or community https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 2152023 41(2): 215-232 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 khumalo, et al. technology-mediated advising for student success to solve problems … through continuous feedback”. the auto-ad facilitates student optimal performance and success through mediation within the social learning environment in engagements with peers, advisors and lecturers. 6. students’ role and enhancing their success at university the ability of individual students to navigate their learning at university is critical for success. yang and li (2020) note that students play a greater role in their success than any other stakeholders. korobova and starobin (2015) explain that students contribute to their success through engagement. students’ ability to navigate their learning as major role players can change their educational outcomes. support that recognises the student’s active agency as an important contributor to success entails drawing on their strengths and their positive attitudes regarding their own success and that of peers. according to pizzolato and ozaki (2007: 197), self-authorship can be useful as a lens to explore student success, because it allows for an understanding consistent with the socially constructed nature of knowledge (cognitive), own beliefs, values, and goals (intrapersonal), and the belief of others (interpersonal). 7. theoretical framework: self-authorship self-authorship enables the use of social, emotional, and cognitive dimensions for understanding students’ agency. citing magolda (1998), johnson (2013: 4) defines selfauthorship as “the ability to collect, interpret, and analyse information and reflect on one’s own beliefs in order to form judgments”. baxter magolda (2004) further expounds on the cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal dimensions of self-authorship in terms of the stages of its development. thus, the student’s agency in balancing social factors with a strong sense of self-knowledge underpins their positive attitude. the cognitive, intrapersonal, and interpersonal stages of the development of student selfauthorship start first with the cognitive dissonance that occurs as students find themselves beginning to seek acceptance while at the same time trying to balance their own beliefs with societal expectations (strayhorn, 2014). in the second stage, students begin to develop as the authors of their lives (pizzolato & ozaki, 2007), moving away from normative ways of thinking and doing. the last stage involves the acquisition of the internal foundations (baxter magolda, 2008) which guide individual actions through an established set of internally derived principles. self-authorship implies that the student develops a certain agency to act. there is recognition of self, strength, and capability of action. self-authorship also entails learning to become the author of one’s own life, enabling change through the development of a strong internal foundation to guide actions (baxter magolda, 2008). students make informed choices and decisions in relation to academic performance. hence self-authorship enables the student to navigate their identity, own beliefs, and external influences in the negotiation of their academic success. it is possible in higher education to use context-relevant support initiatives to enhance the student self-authorship, allowing them to enable the development of a strong internal foundation to guide their actions. at south african universities, with high attrition and low completion rates (cosser, 2018), support initiatives can be most important means to encourage students to draw on their experiences and strengths to self-motivate engagement (kinzie & kuh, 2017), improve performance, and aim for a positive outcome (soika, 2021). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 2162023 41(2): 216-232 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) 8. study site/project background the study was conducted in the school of education at a public university in south africa as a project entitled ‘student academic success: enhancing potential cum laude and summa cum laude students’ self-authorship’, a sub-project of the main project, “what are the factors that influence student success with the university?” khoza (2020) suggests that student poor academic performance and disengagement from programme of study at south african universities is linked to a lack of adequate academic support. however, even where support is available, deficit discourses, diminishing a meaningful focus on students’ strengths, still permeate institutionally structured support systems. to improve the students’ support experiences and enhance their success, the autoad predictive (yang et al., 2020) and visualisation analytics features (ifenthaler & yau, 2020) include online curriculum mapping, academic progress tracking, and automated advising. 9. methodology online invitations to participate in the study were sent to 842 potential cum laude and summa cum laude undergraduate students in the bed programme. the students were identified by means of analysis of students’ records from the university’s institutional intelligence and comprised 382 students in their second year of study, 265 in the third year, and 191 in the fourth year. the representative population had completed their first year of study. this means that they would have developed attributes in their learning and would also have understood the nature of success enablers and barriers. because the population came from differing levels of study and diverse backgrounds, the heterogenous purposive sampling method (etikan, musa & alkassim, 2016) was utilised to select the 200 respondents in the study. this is appropriate for ensuring that participants represent the diverse composition for maximal variation (creswell & clark, 2017) and data variability. the data were collected via the auto-ad (see figure 5 below). the questionnaire yielded a response rate of 23.7% of the distributed questionnaire population. the results were analysed using the auto-ad (see figures 6 and 7 below). the pollster analysis feature of the auto-ad was used to correlate the student performance data (student average pass rate, mean) with each of the questionnaire responses. the data analysis is based on the pearson r coefficient value, where the r-value was calculated between the extent of agreement for a given statement and the student crw. a value closer to 1 or -1 indicates a relatively high correlation between the agreement with a statement and student performance. all information relating to the participant identity was anonymised in compliance with the ethical approval for the study. 10. data analysis and interpretation of results 10.1 tracking and advising cum laude trajectory students in the tracking process, the auto-ad enabled four views represented here as views a-d in figures 1, 2, 3 and 4 below. the auto-ad automated advising view, shown in figure 4, was embedded within the university student central portal. in a, the specifications view, as figure 1 shows, a user may specify the criteria for cum laude and summa cum laude, with respect to the broader institution policy as well as the individual programme-specific rules, for example, performance in capstone modules. once the specification is complete, it becomes possible for the system to determine whether students are on track for a particular class of degree. in the figures below, student names and numbers are encrypted by applying anonymisation hashing in compliance with the privacy of information protocols. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 2172023 41(2): 217-232 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 khumalo, et al. technology-mediated advising for student success figure 1: cum laude specifications view: a https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 2182023 41(2): 218-232 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) in b, the cum laude identification view, illustrated in figure 2, the auto-ad provides a report that shows the number of students in the categories summa/cum laude/completed/not completed. it also shows each semester’s crw for each student and compliance with cum laude criteria, with specific reasons for the classification. the class of pass is also shown. figure 2: cum laude identification view: b https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 2192023 41(2): 219-232 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 khumalo, et al. technology-mediated advising for student success in c, the student potential view, the auto-ad focuses on the class of degree for students who have already missed the cum laude classification. in contrast to the cum laude requirements, the class of degree (e.g. first class, upper second class) can improve when student performance improves. for example, a student who underperforms in an earlier year of study is on track to graduate with a third-class degree; if the student’s performance improves in subsequent years, this may improve to second or even first class. the student potential view indicates which class of degree the student will currently earn and what crw should be achieved to attain a better class at the final graduation. unfortunately, most students are not aware of their current class of graduation and would not easily calculate what is required to improve on this. by making students aware at each stage of the current status and the requirements for improving, the auto-ad motivates them to make stronger efforts. figure 3: cum laude student potential view: c the student nudging view (view d) coordinates with the student potential view (view c) to give a student more specific advice. although view c gives broad performance improvement advice, it may not be specific enough to direct student activity. in view d, however, the autoad calculates the requirement in each of the student’s current modules to determine what https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 2202023 41(2): 220-232 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) performance must be achieved in the remaining assessments. since certain assessments in the modules in the current semester have already been completed, the remaining assessments will have to earn above a certain minimum level if the student wants to graduate with a higher class of degree. this level will differ from module to module, based on what the student has achieved in the assessments. figure 4: student nudging view; view d the student nudging view, as shown in figure 4 above, gives the student a clearer view of what is needed to achieve a higher class of pass. to further understand what supports their high performance and success, and with a view to enhancing their performance at full potential, an online survey questionnaire was administered to the students at the end of semester one of 2022. the questionnaire instrument included close and open-ended questions as figure 5 below shows (see link to questionnaire: https:// modernscholarship.org/cumlaudequestionnaire/). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 https://modernscholarship.org/cumlaudequestionnaire/ https://modernscholarship.org/cumlaudequestionnaire/ 2212023 41(2): 221-232 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 khumalo, et al. technology-mediated advising for student success figure 5: cum laude and summa cum laude trajectory questionnaire https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 2222023 41(2): 222-232 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) 11. results and findings figure 6 below shows the strongest most positively correlated factors are (a) choice of study and degree of motivation (b) study habits. figure 6: most positively correlated factors to cum laude and summa cum laude students’ high performance and success the open-ended questions further interrogated the students’ responses regarding influencing factors. the most positively correlated comments are presented verbatim in examples shown in figure 7 below. figure 7: most positively correlated comments on cum laude and summa cum laude students’ high performance and success https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 2232023 41(2): 223-232 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 khumalo, et al. technology-mediated advising for student success as illustrated in figure 8 below, the strongest most negatively correlated factors are shown as home environment and relationship. what did not appear include (a) institution-related factors, (b) financial stress, (c) involvement in extra-mural activities, and (d) friends. figure 8: most negatively correlated factors to cum laude and summa cum laude students’ high performance and success the most negatively correlated comments on cum laude and summa cum laude students’ high performance and success are presented verbatim in the examples shown in figure 9 below. figure 9: most negatively correlated comments on cum laude and summa cum laude students’ high performance and success https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 2242023 41(2): 224-232 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) 12. discussion the narrative comments correlate the students’ performance and reflect their experiences in terms of the way in which they tend to see themselves, their role in their learning, and their sense of agency in engaging. in showing agency, the students demonstrated a tendency to self-authoring abilities (van der lecq, 2016) and reliance on their own ability to selfregulate (henderson & cunningham, 2023) and make important decisions, which the auto-ad encourages and reinforces. drawing on the experiences of the students, as the correlated comments (see figures 7 and 9 above) show, the assumptions about what they considered as important to high performance and success can be summed up as knowledge, self, and relationship, as figure 10 below shows. figure 10: the meld of cognitive, intrapersonal, interpersonal dimensions in high performing students’ assumptions of their self-authoring abilities luo, yang and zuo (2019) aver that students affirm their agency in the ways they self-regulate in mediating their own academic progress. the comments by the students (see figures 7 and 9) suggest that they have a strong sense of self and self-belief in their ability to self-motivate for high performance. while mintz (2019) observes that data-informed proactive advising is one of the eight steps institutions must take to improve their students’ success, it should also be recognised that students themselves have knowledge of the factors they perceive as affecting their success at university. students could mediate support experiences on an interactive platform to improve performance. consolidated support views (see figures 1-4) could allow students broader interactions in the support experience to develop their role in enhancing their success. in this way, the students optimise their development of the student self-authorship and the associated behavioural competencies (baxter magolda, 2008; perez, 2019) needed for self-directed learning (olivier & wentworth, 2021). the strongest factors influencing the study participants’ success were choice of degree, motivation, study habits, family, and relationships. mondisa and adams (2022) and tomlinson and jackson (2021) affirm the link between high performance and better motivation and https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 2252023 41(2): 225-232 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 khumalo, et al. technology-mediated advising for student success self-authorship. the current study suggests that the high-performing students’ sense of self-direction could be reinforced using automated advising. by the provision of timely and useful analytics information with feedback that prompts them to set goals and keep on track, students could be motivated to perform at optimal potential (ifenthaler & yau, 2020; talbi & ouared, 2022). 13. reflective statistics can be used for student nudging the auto-ad made it possible to use student data analytics to support students’ decisionmaking in their learning, enabling a view of the performance trajectory each semester for each student, namely the semester crw and compliance with cum laude criteria. importantly, it also specified reasons and proffered the advising necessary for each student’s success. advising support staff had access to the automated mediation, resulting in the integration of support experiences. the auto-ad facilitated this in following ways. 1. cum laude specifications the auto-ad identified students on track to graduate cum laude by facilitating the capture of the class (“class of pass”) that a student was on track to graduate with. importantly, by evaluating the performance of the students in each semester, it provided each of them with the incentives and advice they needed to make important decisions on their performance. 2. cum laude student reporting in typical cum-laude student reports generated by the auto-ad, the summary view specified the number of students on track to graduate in the cum laude category. it further specified, for each semester, the reasons for the student still being on track to graduate cum laude or summa cum laude. furthermore, it showed the student what crw value was necessary to retain the status of cum laude or summa cum laude. 3. class of graduation if the criterion for the cum-laude classification is not achieved in any semester, it is then no longer possible for the student to graduate cum laude. for example, where a crw of 80% is required for cum laude graduation and, if a crw of 75% is achieved in any semester, the student cannot graduate cum laude. to counteract potential demotivation in this situation, the auto-ad reported on the student’s potential to increase the class of pass. for instance, when the overall crw is used to calculate the “class of pass”, a student may be able to raise this in subsequent semesters (see figure 2 above). this information was provided in addition to the anticipated class of pass at graduation. it is evident in figure 4 above that, while the student was on track to graduate with just a third-class pass, a better class could be achieved by increasing the outcomes in the remaining credits. the auto-ad not only indicated the crw needed for the remaining credits, but also considered the modules the student was currently enrolled in and the exams already passed in those modules. it then determined the outcomes necessary for the forthcoming exams to obtain the crw required for a higher class. a link labelled “improve my results” was integrated into the user interface to allow students to assess their own performance, identify their own reasons for underperformance, and take action to improve their performance either by working with academic advisors or other student support services or by engaging in https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 2262023 41(2): 226-232 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) self-directed learning. the examiners for the entire academic programme could access this report. students could also access a report of this sort via the student central section of the auto-ad (see figure 5). 4. integration the auto-ad supported integration with student results, using its poll method to integrate with student records. it also allowed the use of questionnaire response mapping to compute the student pass rate, mean and standard deviation in order to correlate the questionnaire response against the mean. by enabling a prompt clearer understanding of the student performance trend for student and staff, the auto-ad proved useful to the academic support mechanism. it is significant that even basic reflective statistics can be used for nudging students in ways that validate their performance and indicate their full potential. 14. implications of the study furthermore, in contrast to being fixated on underperformance, the auto-ad-mediated student academic support process opens up the student to the potential they can draw on to make a change. it supports the student to develop as self-directed learner (tekkol & demirel, 2018; van der lecq, 2016), improve performance and achieve positive outcomes through engaging (soika, 2021). we recommend scaling up the project to a university-wide intervention involving students in other programmes and from other colleges. given the higher education inequalities in south africa (wilson-strydom, 2017) that affect access to success capacities, we also recommend the development of a corpus of studies on how students at other south african universities invest in their personal capacities, draw on their strengths to motivate performance. 15. limitations of the study limitations include the study design, which originally focused on cum laude and summa cum laude trajectory students. this flaw was mitigated as the project evolved and a way was developed also to motivate those students who had already fallen out of this bracket. another limitation could be the assumption that all students have the competencies necessary to use technology-mediated learning support systems. scholars, including reddy moonasamy and naidoo (2022) and nnadozie et al. (2020), highlight the challenges in using technology to support learning at south african universities. 16. conclusion this study demonstrated a way of academic advising at south african universities to make undergraduate students aware of their current graduation class and specifically how to improve it. the auto-ad analytics increase students’ awareness of the potential to improve their performance by means of encouraging self-reflection on barriers and gaps and the advising to boost their crw. self-mediated academic support experiences in this context can position students to develop self-authorship (baxter magolda, 1998) in asserting responsibility for and, importantly, self-directing their learning (olivier & wentworth, 2021). the students can optimise their development of self-authorship and the associated behavioural competencies (baxter magolda, 2008; perez, 2019) to improve engagement and positive outcomes (soika, 2021). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 2272023 41(2): 227-232 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7088 khumalo, et al. technology-mediated advising for student success the findings affirm ifenthaler’s (2020) assertion that data analytics contribute towards successful learning. while there is a need for caution in implementing interventions based on evidence drawn from data analytics (larrabee sønderlund et al., 2019), the researchers believe that institutional student academic support mechanisms cannot draw from notional premises either. academic support systems need to leverage what van der lecq (2016: 84), citing baxter magolda and king (2004), described as learning to dance in the “space between guidance and empowerment”, to champion strategies that position students in strength and to enhance their success at university. this project was supported by the ukzn access and success advisory forum (asaf) project kresge foundation grant. references alyahyan, e. & düştegör, d. 2020. predicting academic success in higher education: literature 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_hlk108412609 _hlk108419007 _hlk126060009 _hlk110332218 _hlk131762511 _hlk131916508 _hlk126063878 _hlk126064938 _hlk126065267 _hlk126305067 _hlk126066080 _hlk126065883 _hlk126066602 _hlk126076979 _hlk126076768 _hlk126266132 _hlk126078046 _hlk126123225 _hlk126078160 _hlk126079270 _hlk127015090 _hlk127013978 _hlk127021228 _hlk127040985 _hlk132310100 _hlk131937005 _hlk138689111 _hlk132470834 _hlk132483928 _hlk132307436 pie32(3) book.indb perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 36 mogamat noor davids faculty of education and social sciences, cape peninsula university of technology e-mail: davidsno@cput.ac.za telephone: 021 680 1525 using foucauldian ‘discursive practices’ as conceptual framework for the study of teachers’ discourses of hiv and sexuality. mogamat noor davids educational research conducted in the context of the hiv and aids pandemic in southern africa has produced diverse knowledge claims. a review of extant literature espoused elements of ambiguity and contradictions which have become challenging to explain, given the growing instrumentality of educational policy and institutional cultures. the research question addressed in this article is: what is the content and nature of the dominant literature strands informing teachers’ hiv and aids discourses? educational policy’s preoccupation with efficacy and uniformity underplays the complexities in teachers’ discourses. this article proposes foucault’s notion of ‘discursive practices’ as a conceptual lens to analyse the diversity of teachers’ hiv and sexuality discourses. discursive practices encompass social, structural and subjective elements that constitute the wide scope of discourse formation. these elements create possibilities of uncertainty and indeterminacy in educational outcomes of hiv prevention, which often counteract intended policy’s expectations of uniformity and consistency. this article presents a perspective stating that a discursive practices approach offers an innovative way in broadening an understanding of the subjective nature of teachers’ hiv and sexuality, arguably a weakness in policy. keywords: discursive practices, education policy, foucault, hiv and aids, subjectivity. introduction the confounding and challenging impact of the aids pandemic on the educational sector requires a re-examination of teachers’ understanding of hiv and aids prevention education. since the introduction of hiv and sexuality education into the school curriculum (department of education, 1997), parents have expressed anxiety using foucauldian ‘discursive practices’ as conceptual framework for the study of teachers’ discourses of hiv and sexuality mogamat noor davids. 37 and apprehension about the content and values that inform sexuality education. the role of the teacher is clearly stated in educational policy: …educators should be specifically trained and supported by the support staff responsible for skills and hiv and aids education…the educator should feel at ease with the content and should be a role-model with whom learners and students can easily identify (rsa, 1996:16). after more than a decade since these official promulgations, teacher education is still grappling to train teachers to engage learners meaningfully in hiv and sexuality education. reports of school-going children’s risky sexual behaviour often cause shockwaves in schools and communities and pose serious questions about learner knowledge and awareness of hiv infection and prevention of teenage pregnancies. recently, the national health insurance (nhi) launched the “integrated school health policy” as a pilot project in kwazulu-natal, making condoms and other contraceptive services available to high school learners (the times, 2012). at the launch of this project, the president of south africa, jacob zuma, announced; “we don’t need to shy away from talking about sex”. however, allaying the fears of a possible national backlash against the president’s statement – and in contradiction to this view – deputy minister of education, mohamed enver surty, announced that “there was ‘no way’ that condoms would be placed in dispensers in schools” (the times, 2012). talking about sexuality in public is often riddled with these tensions and contradictions, and teachers’ hiv and sexuality discourses are not immune. contradictions appear to characterise the contested nature of the hiv and sexuality education discursive landscape. this article argues that educational policies display shortcomings and are far removed from the reality of what teachers are teaching with regard to hiv and sexuality. the article proposes foucault’s (1978) notion of discursive practices as an approach to explain the contradictory tendencies in public and educational discourse on sexuality education. discursive practices account for social, structural and subjective contexts in which teachers’ understanding of hiv and sexuality education is shaped. studies by baxen (2006) and jewkes (2004) support the need to explore alternative approaches to the study of hiv and sexuality education, while recent research indicates new trends in gender power relations (singh, 2012). first, an exposition is given of the main knowledge strands that emerged from a literature review. secondly, foucault’s (1978) notion of discourse as practice referred to as “discursive practices” is expounded. the article concludes with a summary, arguing for the relevance of discursive practices as a viable approach to understanding the nature of teachers’ hiv and sexuality discourses – a departure from the instrumental and camouflaging generalisations which are outcomes of dominant research approaches. perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 38 dominant knowledge strands in hiv and aids literature a literature review dealing with hiv and aids education reveals three broad areas of research: socio-cultural studies, pedagogical research, and the role of power – an emerging strand in the literature. these literature strands concomitantly suggest three broad hiv and sexuality discourses in education. socio-cultural studies during the early stages of the pandemic, people living with hiv and aids had to endure hardship and rejection before their rights to treatment and care were recognised. early attitudes and perceptions of hiv and aids were influenced by sexually related pandemics of the past. stigmatisation resulted in experiences of prejudice and discrimination which created major stumbling blocks in addressing hiv prevention, diagnosis, treatment and care (francis, 2003: 125). stigma associated with sexually related diseases was transposed to hiv and aids which negatively influenced the future of the disease. stigmatisation caused delays in testing, poor treatment adherence and greater numbers of new infections (goudge, ngoma & maderson, 2009). the subsequent destigmatisation of hiv resulted in infected people’s becoming an explicit educational objective for teachers to pursue (education labour relations council, 2003: 19). the physical effects of the hi-virus on the human body resulted in the development of social attitudes and myths about the pandemic. people living with hiv and aids were believed to be receiving god’s “punishment”, which was consistent with past experiences when sicknesses were ascribed to the will of god (baxen, 2006: 95). images of diseases and sin have long been linked in the popular imagination (sontag, 1988). stigma associated with sexually related diseases of the past were inter-generationally transmitted and influenced the way in which communities made sense of the pandemic. contradictory explanations of hiv and aids began to appear which were based on different experiences. different religious, historical and epidemiological experiences provided the ingredients for these ambivalent and confusing responses to the pandemic. while society appropriated social memory to provide (dis)information of the new disease, the need for scientific knowledge about society’s experiences became vital. the social and subjective contexts of hiv and aids needed investigation (hsrc, 2010). notwithstanding efforts to find a medical cure, stakeholder partnerships began to recognize the inherent role of culture in how people were trying to make sense of health issues. the establishment of the organisation social aspects of hiv and aids research alliance (sahara) by the human sciences research council of south africa (hsrc) (shisana, 2004: 17) not only attested to the importance of the social and cultural contexts of hiv and aids, but also accentuated the need to respond to the lack of socio-cultural studies including educational research (hsrc, 2005; baxen & breidlid, 2004). using foucauldian ‘discursive practices’ as conceptual framework for the study of teachers’ discourses of hiv and sexuality mogamat noor davids. 39 given the paucity in knowledge about the relationship between culture and the hiv pandemic, research with a socio-cultural focus began to emerge. ahmed (2003) and amod (2004) investigated hiv and aids in the muslim communities. despite their different approaches, these two cultural studies, albeit limited to one culture, underlined the diverse meaning of hiv and aids. ahmed’s (2003) study is an ethnographic demonstration of the need to explore beneath the “surface of appearance” experiences, while amod’s (2004) presents an islamic doctrinal perspective of hiv and aids that reinforces notions of punishment for “sinful” behaviour. a positive lesson learnt was that the pandemic affects all levels of society. the dominance of early discourses based on myth and selective memories were gradually challenged by a counter discourse based on empirical investigation and reason. in the quest to explain the link between society and hiv and aids, vaughn and rule (2006: 165-186) researched socio-historical conditions as a context of hiv and aids in a kwazulu-natal community. the study identified barriers to hiv and aids awareness lodged in the structure of the local community. some of the structural features in the community were displaced families, alcohol abuse, commercial sex workers, drugs and poverty. the study revealed the social and economic context in which the pandemic finds expression. human sexuality intersects with socioeconomic conditions when a causal explanation is explored for the increased rate of infection among people living in poverty. notwithstanding the need for a medical cure and amelioration of socio-economic conditions of vulnerable communities, the need to increase prevention education to curtail the further spread of the hi-virus was realised. vaughn and rule’s study constructed an understanding of the social structural context in which hiv and aids occurred. the study highlighted the importance of “context” as a factor in explaining human behaviour. because teachers are part of society, they are also infected and affected by the pandemic (hsrc, 2010). their understanding and experiences of hiv and aids and sexuality become part of the content that they teach at school. the literature shifted from an understanding of the pandemic based on mythical memories of disease to socio-cultural findings based on people’s experiences of the pandemic on the ground. the socio-cultural discourses that emerged were by no means homogenous and uncomplicated. they presented a generalised view of the hiv and aids phenomenon experienced in diverse social contexts. indubitably, these discourses initiated an outpour of compassion and concern that marked a significant shift from the early days of condemnation, rejection and neglect. pedagogical research in hiv and aids the literature concerning hiv and aids in the educational domain expounded various aspects of pedagogy. the exploration of teachers’ knowledge, attitudes and perspectives of hiv and aids dominated early research (baxen & breidlid, 2004); perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 40 however, the studies of emotions were also receiving attention. de lange et al. (2006) explored teachers’ emotional experiences associated with the pandemic, reiterating that the meaning of words without considering the contexts and subjectivities of teachers might be misleading. on the other hand, bhana et al. (2006) demonstrated the importance of emotional reactions to the pandemic and how trauma associated with hiv and aids influenced teachers’ perspectives on the pandemic. the interaction between the external environment and emotionality of the teacher foregrounds the role of individual subjectivity as an important dimension, one that needs to be recognised in the understanding of hiv and sexuality education. the recognition of discourse as highly emotional and sensitive is a positive shift from the broad structural generalisations of people’s experiences. while bhana’s study recognises the emotional nature of teachers’ experiences, it does not go so far as to offer a methodology that would make the understanding of the subjective meaning of emotional experiences possible. although teachers might be guided by a common professional code of conduct and curriculum policies (south african schools act 1997), as a social group they have different cultural and historical backgrounds and they are diversely qualified and trained to deliver a common curriculum. the south african educational sector is defined by its rich diversity which is constantly being challenged at different levels of society and by policies of inclusivity (muthukrishna & sader, 2004). researchers explored teachers’ professional knowledge and training levels and revealed different shades of meaning of teachers’ “lack of knowledge” and “confidence to teach” hiv and aids education (mabece, 2002). teachers were often described as being selective when they teach sexuality (james-taera et al., 2004). hiv and sexuality was often referred to as a “sensitive topic” that requires specialised teachers. this view contradicts the assumption that all teachers should be able to implement the curriculum based on their common training (boler & carrol, 2003). teaching hiv and sexuality has also been described as being teacher-centred, which is a contradiction of the learner-centred outcome-based curriculum (c2005) introduced in 1997 (louw, 2000). teachers were reported to be knowledgeable about hiv and aids, but poor attitudes persisted (oyeyeni, 2009). thus, the efforts made by educational authorities to deliver a common curriculum message would be challenged by the diversity in knowledge and background of teachers. educational objectives do not simply translate into practice. they are mediated by teachers with different knowledge and understanding of a subject. these differences lead to often occurring contradictions between what teachers are expected to teach and what they actually teach. in this article, the argument is mooted that an understanding of the contradictions between policy and practice requires knowledge of how educational policy is mediated by the teacher in practice. as in the case of the socio-cultural discourses on hiv and sexuality, the pedagogical discourses share similar diversity, contradictions and ambivalence. using foucauldian ‘discursive practices’ as conceptual framework for the study of teachers’ discourses of hiv and sexuality mogamat noor davids. 41 the role of power – an emerging strand a third knowledge strand in the literature on teachers’ hiv and sexuality discourses deals with power and power relations in discourse formation. in the context of the school, both genders have been exerting their personal power in different ways. jewkes (2004) argues that sexual abuse of school girls by boys and male teachers indicates gendered power relations that are socially entrenched and reproduced. dominant male stereotypes represent power, sex and violence, which often confuse and contradict the way some learners perceive male teachers (chege, 2006). notwithstanding these findings, issues of teachers’ sexual abuse of female learners have been neglected as a significant factor in the implementation of sexuality education (human rights watch, 2001). the acceptance of male teachers as part of the normal gender composition of the school community often conceals their potentially exploitative role as sexual perpetrators. on the other hand, to generalise that all male learners and teachers might potentially abuse their power would be inaccurate, as recent research findings recorded. the unfairness of gender expectations, for example, prompts young women to undertake risky sexual behaviour similar to that taken by males (singh, 2012). changing gender imbalance with regard to sexual exploitation of the female by the male has been questioned in a school-based study in nigeria. this has led to the notion that “two can play that game” and challenges the reasons as to why society expects girls to remain virgins until marriage and not boys (singh, 2012). ojedokun and balogun (2008) cited by singh (2012: 28) reported that the traditional male-female difference in early sexual experience has disappeared and that females were at least as likely as males to initiate premarital sex. these recent dynamics in “unequal” gender power relations require research approaches that would focus on the specificity of context in which subjective decision making becomes available for analysis. power is manifested beyond social relationships. it is vested on the micro-level of the human body, which foucault refers to as “bio-power” – a conception of the body as a central component in the operation of power relations (smart, 2002: 75). the role of power as vested in the subjectivity of teachers appears as a conceptual lens in the work of baxen (2006) who explores the role of power in shaping the nature and content of hiv and aids discourses of teachers. baxen questions the view of teaching as an objective, rational act. she suggests that teachers are active rather than responsive subjects in the teaching process. she asserts that the problems associated with hiv and aids education are based on the assumption that teachers act as “rational, intellectual professionals who ‘mindfully’ educate the ‘minds’ of learners”. this perspective on teaching ignores the impact of the human body when it is invoked – that is, when it goes into “action” (teaching). consequently, baxen (2006) challenges the dominant research approaches which identify either the structure of the school or the curriculum as being in need of reform and not the teacher. teachers play an active role in education and their discursive practices provide reference perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 42 frames and possibilities which have an impact on learners in indeterminate and unpredictable ways. given the multiple interpretations of discursive statements and the possibilities of contradictory and inconsistent meanings that might be attached to teachers’ hiv and sexuality discourses, educational outcomes are often experienced as confounding and unanticipated (amin, 2011). as an approach to unravel these perplexities and contradictions in teachers’ discourses, i suggest that foucault’s notion of discursive practices be used. as an analytical framework, discursive practices accommodate structure and agency without ignoring the active but subtle role of power and its effect on discourse. it swerves away from grand narratives and focuses on the particular. i will now explain key concepts that constitute a plausible conceptual framework to study the elusive and diverse nature of teachers’ discourses as argued above. theorising contradictions – (re)positioning and (re)inventing “self” social research conducted in the field of hiv and aids education falls mainly within the approach of structuralism and explains the impact of external social forces on teachers’ experiences and perceptions. i referred to vaughn and rule (2006) in the literature as an example of a structural analysis. these studies often underplay the role of human subjectivity, the locus of meaning making. dominant knowledge claims about sexuality education tend to seek generalised explanations which, when applied to some local situations, are often meaningless. there is a tendency to treat human subjectivity in a superficial manner in dominant discourses that are grounded in a socio-cultural context, pedagogical frameworks and interpersonal relations. according to foucault, the human subject is produced in a range of discursive practices – economic, political and social – the meanings of which are a constant site of struggle over power and subjectivity (weedon, 1987). meanings are multiple and context specific and become discourse when the individual exerts him/ her “self” to give vent to expressions. when teachers articulate their discourses on hiv and sexuality, they do so from the position of personal contexts. while there might be similarities in teachers’ understandings and expressions, their discourses are not homogenous or premeditated statements which convey uniform messages as policy prescribes. they are socially constructed statements produced under specific social conditions expressed heterogeneously, often unintended, diverse and contradictory. the literature under pedagogical research illustrated some examples of contradictions, namely the “level of knowledge” and “lack of knowledge”. a discursive practice approach problematises the usage of language as a representation of a textual or verbal form of social reality. when language becomes discourse, external meaning of words and phrases are employed to represent social reality. language plays a signifying function as it opens the possibilities of different using foucauldian ‘discursive practices’ as conceptual framework for the study of teachers’ discourses of hiv and sexuality mogamat noor davids. 43 interpretations, contradictions and ambivalence. while representation constitutes a notion of an absolute and essentialist account of what is described (parker et al., 1999: 5), signification creates more space for different explanations. an illustration of language as representation and language as signification might be understood in the following fictitious example of teacher john: if teacher john expresses his willingness to speak openly about condom use in the classroom, he might be representing his willingness to conform to policy expectations. however, on another level, john might have completely different reasons for teaching condom use. he might be contravening his personal values but out of fear of losing his job, he agrees to conform to policy. this interpretation represents one possible construction of john’s willingness to address condom use while there could be others. however, to perceive teacher john’s current position as fixed and permanent might be a mistake. under different social conditions, his willingness to speak about condom use could change. in the same way, when president zuma supported that learners should “not shy away from talking about sex” his choice of words might have opened different interpretations. for example, it might be interpreted that learners should not be shy to talk about sex but be shy of sex! we might even ask whether the president was inciting talk about sex or inciting sex. an obvious meaning could be that sexuality should be a matter of public discourse but that sexuality should also be suppressed, as the bret murray portrait of the president has shown. thus, language is a representation of thought and, as such, will be open to different interpretations. foucault sets out to understand the social effects of language rather than an essentialist meaning of its everyday usage (dreyfus & rabinow, 1982: xxv11). in the research process, language is inevitably reduced to a textual form, which is then subjected to vigorous analysis (parker et al., 1999: 4). as such, a textual reduction of discourse contains elements of ambiguity – the possibility of multiple interpretations. our fictitious john might have been prepared to express himself positively on condom use because a pro-condom use curriculum adviser might have been in his classroom. perhaps if his own children were present, he might have used different words which might have relayed a different meaning. thus, according to foucault, for discourse to be understood, it needs to be exposed to its power relations and connections. john would express different views on condom use in a different social context. in a similar way, president zuma’s expressions of sexuality talk to learners might have been enunciated differently had he been in a province outside kwazulu-natal. his sexual discourse might resonate with the people of kwazulu-natal, which has one of the highest national rates of hiv infection and which is his home province. the president might have felt comfortable with the subject of sexuality as he could relate to “his” people whom he was addressing in his home province. the selection of words employed in discourse to convey meaning is invariably a choice to make. words, expressions and symbolic meanings are acquired under specific conditions during the period of socialisation, which stretches from the time of birth and is continuous. to establish causal reasons between what teachers say perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 44 and what they mean requires vigorous interrogation. according to popkewitz, the individual plays an active role in creating the perceptions that people form about the world. in this regard, popkewitz (1987: 27) asserts that: our world is continually offered as one of ready-made customs, traditions, and order in the things of daily life. yet the natural order is not natural or inevitable, but constructed historically, socially and politically. enquiry should enable us to consider the possibilities of our social conditions by exposing the fragility, to some extent, of the causality in which we live. to make our social situation problematic – not a foreordained order of things but the outcome of collective actions of men and women – is to make these situations potentially alterable and amenable to human agency. foucault’s notion of discursive practices takes a critical view of language and its social effects. he argues that meaning of discourse does not flow from objective analysis but rather within social and subjective environments. to establish causality between discourse and meaning goes beyond the mere inductive and deductive approaches of meaning making. what follows below is my understanding of foucault’s explanation of the nature of teachers’ hiv and sexuality discourses, which have been identified as emotional, contradictory and ambivalent. discourse as pre-discursive, discursive and non-discursive: explaining contradictions in a discursive analysis to understand teachers’ hiv and sexuality discourses, foucault positions the “self” as central to meaning making. according to howarth (2000), foucault places “self” as the key relational denominator in giving meaning to discourse. other than the linguistic, the non-linguistic (social and relational) and the situational context, discourse analysis involves the “self” as follows: 1. the space between the self and self-reflection; 2. the self and the discursive environment; and 3. self as part of a social structure and economic processes external to self. to simplify the above, the reader should imagine a picture of a balancing “self” in the middle of three circles that converge around “self”. each circle represents a layer of discursivity with a double-side arrow pointing to and from “self” in all directions. such are the inter-relational networks linked to the “self” in the process of discourse formation. diagrammatically, i propose the following illustration, positioning the “self” as dynamic and fluid with the influences of the discursive and non-discursive practices present but not fixed. using foucauldian ‘discursive practices’ as conceptual framework for the study of teachers’ discourses of hiv and sexuality mogamat noor davids. 45 figure 1: discursive practices: self -in-relation taking the above diagram as a guide, discourse analysis seeks to explore the complex interplay between the subjective (or internal) production of discourse and its external (or objective) environment. our fictitious teacher john’s expression on condom use, for example, might have been prompted by his internal fears of job insecurity because teaching condom use might have been regarded as a compulsory measure to prevent the spread of hiv. john might also have been influenced by emotions of anxiety, which is subjective, and teaching condom use might be totally against his values. however, he might prefer to conform rather than to rebel against the expectations of policy. according to foucault’s discursive lens, john’s emotions of anxiety and fear would be regarded as “pre-discursive practice” because the discourse precedes its enunciation but is nevertheless influential. john’s “discursive environment” would refer to all textual and verbal influences to which john might have been exposed during his life. this would include all possible formal and informal educational exposures in which “words” made some impression on his mind. john’s “non-discursive practices” refer to the relationship between discourse and those social and economic processes outside (external) of the teacher which are influential on his discourse (howarth, 2000: 64-66). in other words, the non-discursive practices refer to the non-verbal power in society which has an impact on the individual’s social practice. these would include the power of traditions, institutions, conventions, economic processes and practices (smart, 2002: 41). the “non-discursive” practices would refer to the cultural, psychological and non-verbal processes during his socialisation that might have been perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 46 influential in shaping his values and subjectivities. according to foucault, the scope of causality is now broadened, which creates possibilities for endless interpretations. the question now arises: given the multiple possibilities of discourse formations about sexuality, how do teachers produce their different discourses on hiv and sexuality and what organising principles are employed to understand their nature and content? after arguing that teachers’ discourses are subjective and diverse, the enunciation of diversity could be explained by using the concept of subject positioning and multiple views on truth (wetherell, 1998: 9). the creative power of the body to produce discourse is explained by foucault’s notion of bio-power, which recognises the body as “discourse” capable of bringing an extra dimension of complexity to the meaning of discourse (dreyfus & rabinow, 1982). baxen (2006), for example, discussed the unexpected power of the body when it evokes discourse – when the teacher becomes an active creator of knowledge and teacher in the classroom. taking the example of the fictitious teacher john, “self” could become potentially expressive of different identities through discourse. thus, the “self” has the power to produce different meanings when discourse is enunciated. our fictitious john’s discursive practices would be influenced by his subject position in relation to the social power relations in which he might find himself. he might assume multiple positions that are different moments of truths. these might provide him different facades of identities which he appears to assume under changing social relations. what emerges is a notion of a teacher as a (re)producing and (re)inventing discursive subject balancing contradictions and ambivalences in a fluid social environment. (refer to figure 1 above.) conclusion in this article, i gave an exposition of the connection between dominant research literature strands and hiv and sexuality discourses in education. these discourses are often employed to describe the complex hiv and sexuality landscape expressed in generalised and essentialist terms. however, if applied to local settings, these generalisations are often found lacking and superfluous. dominant educational research approaches have arguably fallen short in exploring the contradictory and elusive nature of teachers’ hiv and sexuality discourses. as an alternative, i suggest an innovative approach by using foucault’s notion of discursive practices. i explained above how foucault’s notion of discursive practices, as an overarching conceptual framework, connects discourses of the teacher with social structure by foregrounding the complex dimensions of the subjective “self”. i offered an explanation for the indeterminate and uncertain nature of teacher discourses (baxen, 2006), but i argued that they are analysable by placing the “self-inrelation” to its discursive environment. foucault’s notion of discursive practices could, thus, explain the contradictory and unanticipatory discourse practices in a reasoned way. using foucauldian ‘discursive practices’ as conceptual framework for the study of teachers’ discourses of hiv and sexuality mogamat noor davids. 47 discursive practices as conceptual lenses do not seek to generate grand narratives and develop generalisable theoretical explanations of teacher practice. its purpose is to discover different kinds of rationalities operating in the production of discourse. wetherell’s (1998) notion of subject positioning explains the occurrence of multiple discourses and how teachers’ discourses could change from time to time. the way in which power operates on a micro-level offers possibilities for new understanding of teachers’ hiv and sexuality discourses. while president zuma might appear to have expressed himself unambiguously when he said, “we don’t need to shy away from talking about sex” he was publicly contradicted by his deputy minister of education who saw the ambiguities in what was said. explaining the fluidity of discourse would demand a dynamic analytical approach. using foucault’s notion of discourse as practice ensures a constant dimension of movement and change, albeit in contradictory ways. during this time of the hiv pandemic and the public campaign to establish an hiv-free generation, teacher education will constantly face the challenge of being relevant and meaningful when engaging sexuality education. teacher education might consider narrowing the gap between policy and practice by recognising the complex nature of teacher sexuality discourses. shifting perspectives from promoting uniformity and homogeneity to embracing heterogeneity and diversity might go a long way in changing the course and nature of sexuality education. the official notion of the instrumentalist teacher as a “role-model” for learners’ sexual behaviour is contradicted in practice. a discursive practice approach to sexuality education would bring to the classroom possibilities for new learning moments – a reprieve from the “hiv fatigue” that has paralysed sexuality education. acknowledgement the author would like to thank rishi hansrajh from the university of kwazulu-natal for assisting with the conceptual diagram used in this article. references ahmed ak 2003. positive muslims: a critical analysis of muslim aids activism in relation to women living with hiv/aids in cape town. unpublished ma thesis. university of the western cape, cape town. amin n 2011. critique and care in higher education assessment: from binary opposition to mobius congruity. alternation, 18(2): 593-599. amod f 2004. islam and the aids pandemic. unpublished dphil thesis. university of kwazulu-natal, durban, south africa. baxen j 2006. an analysis of the factors shaping teachers’ understanding 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london: penguin. the times. zuma leads schools’ sex-education drive. 12 october 2012. vaughn j & rule p 2006. shifting ground: making sense of context in examining hiv and aids and schooling. journal of education, 38: 165-186. weedon c 1987. feminist practice and poststructuralist theory. london: blackwell. wetherell m 1998. positioning and interpretive repertoire: conversation analysis and post-structuralism in dialogue. discourse in society, 9(3): 457-460. 151 research article 2023 41(2): 151-165 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6224 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) towards flexible learning and teaching: lessons learned for blended learning and teaching post covid-19 pandemic abstract this discussion explores student and educator academic experiences of online learning and teaching (olt) at the university of the western cape, south africa during the covid-19 pandemic. the purpose was to report on lessons learned during the pandemic, and how this may contribute to a flexible blended learning and teaching (blt) approach within higher education post the pandemic. while most south african higher education institutions (heis) used a blt approach prior to the pandemic, the face-to-face component was used as the primary method of learning and teaching, with the online component used as a support or ‘add-on’ to face-to-face practices. we reflected on student social workers and their educators’ academic experiences during the pandemic, and how these experiences may guide the planning and implementation of a stronger combination of online and face-to-face learning and teaching in higher education settings going forward. the findings describe study environments that influenced olt, academic participation and performance during the pandemic when no face-to-face learning and teaching took place, olt resources and support for olt during the pandemic, and suggestions for blt that could support flexible learning and teaching practices at heis post the pandemic. the discussion concludes with some recommendations for aspects to consider when planning and implementing a blt at heis post the pandemic. keywords: blended learning and teaching, covid-19, flexible learning and teaching, online learning and teaching, social work education. 1. introduction the severe nature of covid-19 virus-related illnesses, and the aggressive way in which it spread affected the way in which learning and teaching could be continued at heis globally. academic and administrative staff had to develop flexible strategies to ensure the sustainability of education during the pandemic, including making use of olt (du plessis et al., 2022). prior to the pandemic, most south african residential universities made use of blt methods where online platforms and traditional classroom methods author: marichen van der westhuizen1 lindokuhle hlatshwayo1 affiliation: 1university of the western cape, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i2.6224 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(2): 151-165 published: 30 june 2023 received: 25 april 2022 accepted: 18 may 2023 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6224 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3252-8112 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0249-1136 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6224 1522023 41(2): 152-165 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6224 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) are combined (bosch, mentz & reitsma, 2020). however, most heis depended more on the physical (face-to-face) learning and teaching component than the olt component of blt (ubah, spangenberg & ramdhany, 2019). the migration from blt to olt occurred within a short space of time, which did not allow time to heis to prepare the needed infrastructure, staff and students (visser & law-van wyk, 2021). although olt was not an unfamiliar approach in south african heis, for the very first time, the pandemic propelled heis to adjust and deliver curriculums utilising olt methods solely without students and educators having extensive experience and training in olt practices (olawale & mutongoza, 2021). coman et al. (2020), however, report that exposure to, and experience in blt prior to the pandemic enabled and supported students and educators to adjust to olt. this discussion reports on a study that explored the experiences of student social workers and their educators concerning olt during the pandemic. a background discussion outlines the rationale and the theoretical framework on which the mentioned study was based, followed by a summary of the research methodology that was used and the research findings. the discussion is concluded with recommendations for the planning and implementation of blt post the pandemic. 2. background and rationale social work education and training in south africa are well established and have been evolving in the last 30 years (noyoo, 2022). the bachelor of social work (bsw) is offered by 16 south african heis (potgieter & pitse, 2022). social work is a human-centred academic discipline, and therefore its education and training consist of both theoretical and practice modules, as outlined by the south african council for higher education (che, 2015). due to the emphasis on the interrelatedness of theory and practice (che, 2015), on the one hand, face-to-face learning and teaching practices have been viewed as a preferred way of education and training (hlatshwayo, 2021). on the other hand, van der westhuizen, gawulayo and lukelelo (2021) report on the potential value of blt in fieldwork education, and found that blt provides for the different learning and teaching styles of students. the authors, however, recommend that training is required to use online platforms effectively when implementing blt. the conversion to olt during the pandemic required that learning and teaching centred around learning through technology to support the development of knowledge, understanding and skills (al-fraihat, joy & sinclair, 2020; aparicio, bacao & oliveira., 2016). for olt to be effective, information and communication technology (ict) is used to provide for a variety of online learning systems and tools (aparicio et al., 2016) to enhance learning and teaching processes and experiences (al-fraihat et al., 2020; pham et al., 2019). as a potential longterm advantage of the inclusion of olt in traditional face-to-face learning and teaching practices, pham et al. (2019) assert that olt may improve educational access as students and educators can access the online system at any time and from any place, provided access to a device and an internet connection to access course content is possible. as such, various authors ask for a reflection on how the emergency olt practices during the pandemic can inform the future development of learning and teaching practices in higher education, and report on how such development will also be responsive to the technological advances in society. arguing for the inclusion of technology in learning and teaching post the pandemic, safodien (2021) asserts that disciplines such as social work are not immune to the fast-paced https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6224 1532023 41(2): 153-165 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6224 van der westhuizen & hlatshwayo towards flexible learning and teaching evolution of technology, while tan (2023) asks that higher education learning and teaching practices embrace technology and innovation to thrive post the pandemic. acknowledging the value of face-to-face education and training for fieldwork in higher education, gad (2022) recommends that the ability to use technology effectively be included in practice modules to ensure that graduates can operate within virtual spaces to deliver services during times such as the pandemic, pointing to the inclusion of blt practices. the challenges experienced by students to access and engage with course content during the pandemic, however, posed a threat to the mentioned potential advantages of olt. tanga, ndlovu and tanga (2020) discuss the challenges with connectivity due to a lack of devices, data and technical training experienced by students. supporting the previously mentioned requirement for training to use technology in learning and teaching effectively, badaru and adu (2022) and chinengundu (2021) agree that continuous technical training for students and educators is a prerequisite for effective blt post the pandemic. mhlanga (2021) suggests that the digital divide, inequality to access technological resources, and a lack of digital skills experienced by students and educators that were highlighted during the pandemic require of heis to develop and prioritise policies that seek to address such challenges through a blt approach post the pandemic. hrastinski (2019) explains that the blt concept accentuates that students get to experience aspects of online learning as well as face-to-face instruction. this description is expanded on by chinengundu (2021), who identifies four priority areas for the development of blt practices in heis, namely (1) planning, (2) preparation, (3) adaptation, (4) and conducive spaces for learning and teaching. the covid-19 pandemic unmasked the potential of the inclusion of olt in learning and teaching practices at residential universities, pointing to a renewed interest in how blt can be planned for and implemented (maree, 2022). the findings of the research reported on in this discussion are aimed at making some recommendations for the development of blt at heis post the pandemic. blt supports flexible learning and teaching (flt), and was used as the theoretical framework for the study reported on as well at the recommendations made in this discussion. south african post-school education and training are aimed at a transformative flt approach to obtain an education and training system that is diverse, user-friendly, and accessible (republic of south africa, 2013). this requires learning and teaching practices that provide educators and students with options where, when, and how they learn and teach (huang et al., 2020). however, socio-economic inequality has been identified as a threat to such an approach, as not all students will have the same access to the resources and skills required for effective olt as a form of flt (kaminer & shabalala, 2019; webb & cotton, 2018) this inequality between students, then, became apparent during the pandemic, and informed this discussion. 3. research methodology looking at flt post the pandemic, huang et al. (2020) argue for flt that supports learning and teaching, and that is personalised or contextualised according to the unique needs of students within a particular higher education setting. this discussion was therefore aimed at exploring the academic experiences of student social workers and their educators during the pandemic, and how these experiences may guide the planning and implementation of a stronger combination of online and face-to-face learning and teaching in higher education settings going forward. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6224 1542023 41(2): 154-165 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6224 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) a qualitative research approach was followed and supported by the contextual, explorative and descriptive research designs. it was envisaged that, while the findings are reporting on student social workers and their educator’s experiences, these experiences may be used to contribute to the development of blt in higher education in south africa in general. participants representing the south african social work education and training context were purposefully selected using non-probability purposive sampling. the sampling criteria for inclusion of student social workers were full-time, registered third-year bsw students at a south african university, and full-time social work educators in the undergraduate programme of the bsw programme at the university. data saturation determined the sample size of 25 student social workers and four educators. primary data were collected from students through semi-structured interviews and through focus groups with educators. thematic analysis was used to analyse the data to identify main themes, sub-themes and categories, using the framework proposed by creswell (2014). the data were verified focusing on credibility, dependability and confirmability (cf. anney, 2014), supported by the method of data analysis, the transcripts and fieldnotes of the interviews, triangulation of data collection sources and methods, a comprehensive audit trail of the implementation of the research methodology, and the use of an independent coder. ethical clearance was obtained from the university where the study was conducted, and focused on avoidance of harm, debriefing opportunities, voluntary participation and informed consent, anonymity, confidentiality and privacy, and data storage and management protocols. 4. student and educator experiences during the pandemic three main themes emanated from the analysis of the data, namely 1) the academic experiences of the participating students during the pandemic, 2) olt resources available or lacking, and 3) suggestions for blt post the pandemic. 4.1 academic experiences during the pandemic the way in which the covid-19 pandemic affected student’s attitude and motivation towards their studies has been acknowledged by hermanto, rai and fahmi (2021). the findings support this statement, focusing on the impact of study environments on participation and academic performances during the pandemic. kapasia et al. (2020) mention a lack of internet access at home that impacted on academic experiences. similarly, de haas, faber and hamersma (2020) report on student dissatisfaction during the pandemic regarding not having access to the campuses and a lack of interactions with peers and educators. in reflecting on the lack of access to campus, a participant shared the following, “i must say that being on campus does make a big difference. because you break away from all these destructions and you can focus there on your academics”. another participant concluded that the campus provided a more conducive environment, “honestly, being on campus is the best environment for you to learn. also, when it comes to online learning to have internet”. although south african universities did provide devices and data to some extent, a lack of internet connectivity and data remained a challenge for students (cf. chisadza et al., 2021; mpungose, 2020). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6224 1552023 41(2): 155-165 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6224 van der westhuizen & hlatshwayo towards flexible learning and teaching a lack of access to campus also meant a lack of access to academic resources, which was particularly true for students from low-income backgrounds (di pietro et al., 2020). the participants referred to a lack of direct access to educators and the library: before i could physically run to a lecturer’s room, ask my question, got the answers and left. you can’t even get access to library, now you have to google everything, just everything is online. the latter statement indicates that some students struggled to access online resources, which are contributed to existing issues among students from disadvantaged communities, such as limited social support, non-conducive living conditions, psychosocial factors, and high costs to access devices and data (motala & menon, 2020; wangenge-ouma & kupe, 2020). wilczewski, gorbaniuk and giuri (2021). oluka, musaigwa and nomlala (2021) conclude that the importance of conducive learning and teaching environments that are supported through access to campus infrastructure was highlighted during the pandemic. typical academic challenges experienced by university students include not managing time and distractions effectively and a reduced focus on studies (maqableh & alia, 2021). the following statement describes similar experiences: it kinda made me lazy. cause of the data and the not having wi-fi… i ended up not feeling like doing the assignments. due to economic challenges during the pandemic, some participants explained that they started to work, and that this further challenged their engagement with and participation in learning and teaching activities: so, then i would work a 12-hour shift, come home and i’d be tired. sometimes i didn’t even attend classes or tutorials. if i’m at work, i didn’t have time to engage with other students for that certain time. within a flt approach, the diverse learning and personal needs of students are acknowledged and catered for (joan, 2013). the socio-economic circumstances of the participating students, however, limited their ability to make use of the choices available to them (cf. veletsianos & houlden, 2019). the participants referred to being unmotivated, which lead to poor time management and procrastination, “i was unmotivated, and i procrastinated like a lot”. procrastination, then, led to stress, “like i’d always end up leaving things to the very last minute and in turn get even more stressed”. considering the self-paced nature of flt (hodges et al., 2020), procrastination and the inability to manage time effectively has a negative impact on academic performance (batbaatar & amin, 2021). low academic performance during the pandemic may be contributed to the difficulties experienced to transition to olt (chisadza et al., 2021), as confirmed by the participants: “if i compare my marks for last year and the start of this year it’s been going down slightly”. a student explained that she did not realise at first that her performance decreased: “so, in my head i wasn’t really failing, but i was failing”. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6224 1562023 41(2): 156-165 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6224 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) notably, a participant described how performance was linked to using feedback effectively, “i just feel like if i had maybe gone through the feedback that my marks and my performance would’ve been better”. this statement is supported by yuan et al. (2021), who suggest that students need guidance and encouragements to review feedback to prevent that they remain ignorant of areas they need to improve in. 4.2 learning and teaching resources while the previous theme reports on challenges that were experienced, this second theme presents resources that assisted the participating students to engage effectively in olt. pather, brown and lawack (2021) and abenes and caballes (2020) confirm olt tools as important for the implementation of flt, but add that such tools require of students to have the needed devices and to have access to a stable internet connection. salubi (2021) argues that this form of support during the pandemic assisted to prevent a digital divide among students. student participants confirmed how university support to access to mobile data and devices assisted them: one thing that really helped was the data that we received. i received the laptop from the university data for every month. reference was also made to cell phones to support contact with supervisors and peers: because when we were still on campus, i would attend lectures and supervision. but now i had to like go online [referring to having contact with supervisors and peers on her cell phone]. the phone became very important to me. although blt includes olt practices, printed textbooks have been used primarily as a learning and teaching resource (baragash & al-samarraie, 2018). similarly, the participating students identified textbooks as a valued learning resource: i still have textbooks from the first year and very few from second year, and i think they were also able to give me more information. other valuable online material was described as follows: we could access tutorials, videos on youtube, and go to other sites to get more books and more readings on whatever subject we were doing. this statement highlights how online resources contributed to a positive learning experience. the educators added that they used narrated powerpoints as online learning material to provide students with a further online resource. “initially, we used predominantly narrated powerpoints so that the students could read and listen.” the online platform was also described as a way to engage with students to become aware what resources are working, and what not. so, i made a little video of my narrated powerpoint. it took me an hour or more, and then the students alerted me that they could not hear anything. but it was nice that we could pick this up in the online chatroom. i felt it was more interactive than i expected. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6224 1572023 41(2): 157-165 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6224 van der westhuizen & hlatshwayo towards flexible learning and teaching learning and teaching platforms that were used with success to foster olt during the pandemic were indicated as the university’s official zero-rated data learning and teaching online site (ikamva, whatsapp, and google meet.) focusing on the official site, petersen (2020) mentions that the platform provides 1) access to learning and teaching material and content; 2) an online platform to interactively connect with fellow students, educators and tutors; and 3) a central platform to upload assignments and to receive feedback. in this way, the institution promotes inclusive learning and teaching practices that supports participation (lawrie et al., 2017). the benefit of the university’s official platform was described through the following statement: we know that ikamva is zero-rated. so, there isn’t data that a person needs to access it and you do not have to worry if you have enough data. confirming this viewpoint, and educator added that the sharing of information and structuring of module plans as another benefit: i think ikamva was a big help. i enjoyed the lesson plans to structure the module. whatsapp was identified as an accessible platform that supported communication between a variety of role-players: i would say whatsapp definitely worked well for me, because it’s very convenient. because tutorials were held there, lectures were held there. and there were also the group discussions. and another thing is whatsapp doesn’t really consume a lot of data. prior to the pandemic, whatsapp was described as a valuable communication platform that could be accessed at any time during disruptions in higher education, such as the student protests in south africa (mabaso & meda, 2019). during the pandemic, this was confirmed by nyembe (2021) who suggests that increased collaboration on whatsapp supports flt in that students have access to an easily accessible platform that may can improve learning and teaching outcomes. despite the advantages of the official online platform of the university (cf. petersen, 2020), the participating educators reported that the meeting option did not work well: what didn’t work well was the blue button [on the ikamva site]. it was often not working, disrupting the class. the google meet platform for online classes was valued by the participating educators: i tried a number of platforms. later on, i discovered that i felt like google meet lectures became a better suited option. not only did lecturers facilitate classes on google meet, but students valued the interaction with lecturers and peers and also arranged meetings among each other on this platform: and then google meet of course made things very easy for us because now we were able see each other. and in the class, the lecturers were able to teach and explain things using google meet. to have a positive impact on the methods of communication between students and educators through olt, panergayo and almanza (2020) explain that participants need to be familiar with and able to use the technology. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6224 1582023 41(2): 158-165 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6224 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) academic support has been accentuated as a resource to assist students to address and overcome challenges and to achieve academic success by authors such as brubacher and silinda (2021) and eloff, o’neil and kanengoni (2021). the role of academic staff to provide students with academic and personal support is stressed by uleanya (2021), who explains that such support must be available throughout the course of their academics. student participants reported on not only support from educators, but also on how they were supported by tutors and supervisors as a part of the academic team: the lecturers and tutors and our supervisors were very supportive. whenever you need to ask a question, you just e-mail, and they will respond. referring to the use of whatsapp, a student also explained that support from peers became valuable on this platform. 4.3 suggestions for blt post the pandemic the participants expressed the need to have face-to-face classes, as described by the following statement: i would love the live class again; this will make learning so much easier. they further reflected on the use of blt post the pandemic, and made suggestions regarding how this approach should be planned and implemented post the pandemic, as discussed next. as highlighted in the previous themes, the participating students again referred to devices and data needed to include olt in future learning and teaching activities: the university will have to provide the necessary devices that students may need. and the data … the lecturers sometimes give us videos to watch, that also costs data. definitely, the university needs to add more data because the data we get now is too little for everything that we have to do online. an educator participant expressed frustration regarding the fact that student data was primarily for nighttime use: so, if the students receive night owl data, it means that they need to work in the night, and the lecturer cannot be available day and night. going forward, a better structure is needed to ensure all students can be active at the same time. reflecting on the option of continued online learning and teaching activities as a part of blt, a student raised a concern that the provision of data would not be continued post the pandemic: but my only concern is if the university would still provide everyone with that data. and i feel like in order to learn online, you need that data. the participating students acknowledged that the online library could contribute to effective blt, but added that this should be in addition to access to the campus library: we could get some articles and books online, but it was difficult to figure out how to find the right material online. i would love for them to open the library again. textbooks are very, very expensive. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6224 1592023 41(2): 159-165 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6224 van der westhuizen & hlatshwayo towards flexible learning and teaching while walsh and rana (2020) suggest that libraries should digitalise material, the findings in this study point to students wanting to have access to the hardcopies in the campus library. referring to the online library being experienced as taxing during the pandemic, a participant suggested: you could have a tutorial of that as well, how to use the online library. technology to be used in the classroom as an important aspect of blt was highlighted by the student participants: the option of using the technology more … even if we are going back to class, our university should consider buying good material ... mics and cameras that will record a lecture while it’s happening so that some of the students that cannot be there can attend the class online. people have different issues. one might be sick, for example. this statement accentuates the need to consider flt that ensures accessibility that considers different circumstances of students (cf. van der westhuizen et al., 2021). a participating educator echoed the importance of upgrading venues: the problem is for that to happen our building needs to be revamped, we need ventilated rooms and proper equipment for hybrid teaching. blt require that academic staff and students develop digital skills (evans et al., 2019). participating students suggested that educators should increase their knowledge of online platforms, and students should be offered tutorial training: our lecturers should upgrade their knowledge when it comes to these different platforms and the technological devices that we are using. and also, there should be training that are done also for students so that we can work online better. definitely tutorial videos on how to use these platforms. because sometimes you need to see what he (the person doing the tutorial) was doing visually and follow all the steps that he is doing. the importance to use the experiences and skills obtained during the pandemic in future learning and teaching practices was described by an educator: so, i’m thinking blended learning in the future … we are in a digital world. we are much better equipped now to use these tools. we should really reflect. i think we’ve learned to do blended learning in a much more creative and pedagogical sound manner for the future. as a conclusion to the findings, another educator accentuated the value of flexibility in support of blt post the pandemic: some students learn differently, and some lecturers teach differently. and so, i would like to see more flexibility. i’d like to see elements of face-to-face and online being infused in future modules. i don’t think we now can go back. we’ve learnt a lot along the way. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6224 1602023 41(2): 160-165 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6224 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) 5. recommendations for flexible blended learning and teaching the promotion of blt in higher education may be based on 1) an acknowledgement of and accommodating socioeconomic challenges of students; 2) accommodating different learning styles; 3) ensuring the availability and accessibility of resources required for blt; and 4) skills development for students and staff to engage effectively with blt. students challenged by socio-economic realities and who need to find employment to support themselves and their families (baglow & gair, 2018) should be considered post the pandemic. flt practices, which include online learning and teaching to support the inclusion of students who are not able to attend on-campus learning and teaching full-time may be considered, while interactive participation is not compromised. this will require that employers are encouraged to provide student employees with time and space to access resources and classes during work hours. in addition, to support students challenged by socio-economic circumstances, work-study positions at heis can provide opportunities for them to work on campus to have access to academic infrastructure and resources, while also sustaining themselves. to accommodate different learning styles, it is recommended that online tools be utilised to provide students with a wider range of options to engage with their studies (truong, 2016). to respond to student needs during future academic disruptions that require offcampus learning and teaching, heis may reflect on how these students can be identified, accommodated and supported to be able to engage with olt effectively. while blt practices can provide students with exposure to the use of technologies and online resources to prepare them for such incidents, conducive learning environments are needed for them to participate successfully in olt. the flexible nature of blt may present a challenge to students to manage time in such a way that they participate and engage successfully in blt. time management skills development can be included in curricula, and student support services could further provide students with guidance and support to manage time through webinars or face-to-face sessions. effective communication between educators, tutors, supervisors and students require guidelines for engagements on online platforms. importantly, a protocol for communication and tutorials for the use of technology in blt can contribute to the effective transfer of knowledge and the provision of support. in conclusion, for flt to become effective, and to respond better to academic disruptions in future, a blt approach must consider resources, skills development, and an active integration of technology going forward. learning technologies and learning with technologies should be integrated. learning with technologies involves a pedagogical focus where the functions and operations of the tools enable learning and teaching. learning technologies has to do with learning about the effective use of digital devices (kifoil, 2015). importantly, while an institutional approach to flt is needed to plan and implement blt, discipline specific requirements should be considered for further flexibility to ensure relevant discipline-specific 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fact that visualisation is a very im portant com ponent of critical thinking. in this paper i investigate visualisation for the purpose of exam ining its role in developing critical thinking for a better understanding of m athematics by g rade 9 learners. in order to achieve this, i provide a qualitative exam ination from a m a ster’s dissertation of som e thought processes used during visualisation w hen g rade 9 pupils engage in mathem atics tasks. in order to support the derived thought processes data, audio taped interviews were conducted with the students. a fram ework of four stages of visualisation was adapted for the collection and analysis of data. several roles of visualisation w ere identified, which revealed that visualisation encourages critical thinking which further leads to a better understanding of data handling. k eyw ords: critical thinking; mathematical understanding; mathematics; mental processes; visualisation introduction educators should teach learners how to think, but instead they frequently teach them what to think (clement & lochhead, 1980). educators usually succeed in teaching learners the content of respective academic disciplines, but teaching learners how to think effectively about subject matter is often not achieved. u nderstanding how learners think during problem solving, in order to help them think effectively about mathematics, is complex and requires special training. m athematical visualisation is the process of forming images or constructing mental representations and using such images effectively for mathematical discovery and understanding, whereas critical thinking is a mode of thinking about any subject content or problem in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skilfully taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and imposing intellectual standards upon them (scriven & paul, 2005:2). campbell, w atson and collis (1995:177) suggest that the development of mathem atically competent and critical learners involves not only the traditional focus on computational and logical problem solving abilities, but also the development of associated visual images and intuitive skills at all stages in the developmental process. learners are not born with the power to think critically, nor do they develop this ability naturally. it is a learned ability, the development of which needs to be facilitated. m uch of our thinking, left to itself is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed or downright prejudiced (scriven, 2005). t he quality of our life and what we produce, make or build, depends precisely on the quality of our thoughts. since critical thinking should be prominent in the learning of mathematics, any strategy used to develop and encourage it is considered useful. in this paper i argue that all mathematics teaching should focus on “teaching for understanding”, with visualisation as the important cornerstone. t he key research question addressed here is: how do the processes of visualisation promote critical thinking? t herefore my aim is to determine how the process of forming images or constructing mental representations through visualisation enriches the quality of critical thinking by taking charge of the structures responsible for thinking. i discuss some of the findings from a dissertation (m akina, 2005), the aim of which was to determine the nature of the mental processes involved in problem solving during visualisation. t he development of critical thinking through visualisation in the learning of mathematics was identified through these processes. 25perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 all the tasks were chosen from the authors fischbein (1987) and r eading (1996), whose significant articles focused on improving visualisation in mathematics. visualisation t here is increasing recognition that visualisation plays a role in the learning of mathematics (b en chaim, lappan & houang, 1 989; d avis, 1984; presmeg, 1992; thornton, 2000; w heatley, 1991). as a result, researchers have contributed several useful ideas about visualisation. kosslyn (1994:1 23) describes visualisation as a cognitive process involving visual imagery in which images are either generated, inspected, transformed or used for mathematical understanding (see t able 1). v isualisation incorporates those mental processes that make use of, or are characterised by, visual imagery, visual memory, visual processing, visual relationships, visual attention and visual imagination. presmeg (1 992:40) describes visualisation as an aid to understanding, and one can therefore speak about visualising a concept or a problem. t o visualise a problem means to under stand the problem in terms of a visual (mental) image hence the visualisation process is one that involves visual imagery, with or without a diagram, as an essential part of the method of solution (presmeg 1992:298). t he term “visual” here refers to the manner in which mathematical information is presented and processed during or before problem solution. presmeg (in t hornton, 2000:254) lists five different kinds of visual imagery she identified in her learners: concrete, pictorial imagery (pictures in the mind); pattern imagery (pure relationships depicted in a visual spatial scheme); memory images of formulae; kinaesthetic imagery (involving muscular activity); and dynamic (moving) imagery. t he range of visualisations generated by individuals is therefore an important factor to keep in mind when considering mathematics teaching. on the other hand, cobb, yackel and w ood (1988:26 27) regard visualisation as a dualism created between mathematics in learners’ minds and mathematics in their environment, present in what they call “the representational view of mind”, which they find to be prevalent in mathematics education today. in the representational view of mind, the overall goal of instruction is to help learners construct mental representations that correctly or accurately mirror mathematical relationships located outside the mind in instructional representations. t he descriptions offered by kosslyn (1994) and presmeg (in t hornton, 2000) are central to this pap er. t hey all characterise visualisation as mental processes or schemas that can result in a recognised product (visual image). as learners gain experience of life in general, and mathematics in particular, the constraints on their mental activity change. t hey can develop and become more versatile, they can decay, or they can change by conscious and unconscious reformulations of ideas as the learner attempts to make a coherent pattern out of the universe in which he or she lives. u nderstanding that comes about through this search for coherence is termed “relational under standing” (t all, 2008). t hese schemas or mental processes and images are in the mind and cannot be seen, but have to be understood through the study of the mind. v isualisation offers a method of seeing the unseen and we are encouraged and should aspire to ‘see’ not only what comes ‘within sight’, but also what we are unable to see (arcavi, 2003:2 15). t his stands as the starting point in describing visualisation as an important aspect of mathematical understanding, insight and rea soning, which, in turn, enhances the learner’s critical thinking. t he findings of the different authors cited above have very important implications for mathe matics education and serve as integral parts of teaching. t hey serve as important aspects of mathe matical understanding, insight and reasoning. visualisation helps teachers to m ake instructional decisions about how to teach, the content and the nature of tasks. furthermore, it aids teachers with the facilitation of lessons and with the ability to engage learners in realistic situations. for example, an understanding of the precise limitations of children’s imagery could indicate how to use imagery in teaching. if learners’ images are static, in that learners cannot transform their images (see them being moulded into a new shape), they may still be able to make use of “blink” transformations, i.e. erasing the first image and imaging the object anew in some altered way (b ishop, 1989:8). if so, it makes sense to shift from trying to teach learners the rules of transformation to teaching them the rules of formation. learners need guidance in order to engage in reflective and independent thinking so as to justify and reflect on their values and decisions. 26 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 for the last century, teachers of mathematics have been attempting to replace the teaching of critical thinking in favour of establishing environments that allow for critical thinking that is possible through discussion and interaction. t he n ational council of t eachers of m athematics (n ct m ) in the u sa echoed a call for classrooms that place critical thinking at the heart of instruction and sig nalled that a pervasive emphasis on reasoning would be an essential aspect of all mathematical activity (n ational council of teachers of m athematics, 1989). t his takes us one step further in questioning our assumptions about the meaning of critical thinking. students, as human beings, are critical thinkers, and they would display these skills if the classroom allowed such behaviour (skovsmose, 1994), i.e. the behaviour promoted through visualisation. teaching for understanding primarily, visualisation should be the key to successful learning and understanding. m athematical thinking and understanding, according to d uval’s framework (2000), requires the co ordination of at least two registers, one is multi functional (open to multiple interpretations in verbal and geometric registers) and the other is mono functional (open to one interpretation in symbolic and graphical registers). t all (2008) analyses how the development of the understanding of objects and processes interact. m athematical understanding is achieved as learners learn to discriminate between and coordinate semiotic systems of representation. t he semiotic systems of representation, or regis ters, refer to four classifications of systems of representation: generation, inspection, transformation and use (kosslyn, 1994). some learners' difficulties in the construction of concepts are linked to the restriction of representations in their learning experiences. t eachers of mathematics have been searching for ways to describe and enact critical thinking in their classrooms for a very long time. o n the one hand, mathematics itself is often held up as the model of a discipline based on rational thought, clear concise language and attention to the assumptions and decision making techniques that are used to draw conclusions. students, however, learn mathematics through experiences of critical thinking (fawcett, 1995). visualisation is one way in which experiences of critical thinking are gained. w e should take advantage of the critical thinking skills that students bring with them to school mathematics in order to learn mathematics. fawcett suggests ways that students could demonstrate that they are, in fact, thinking critically as they participate in the experiences of mathematics in the classroom: selecting significant words and phrases in any important statement and defining them; supplying evidence to support conclusions they are pressed to accept; analysing that evidence and distinguishing fact from assumption; recognising stated and unstated assumptions essential to the conclusion; evaluating these assumptions, accepting some and rejecting others; evaluating the argument, accepting or rejecting the conclusion; and constantly re examining the assumptions that are behind their beliefs and actions (fawcett, 1995). critical thinking critical thinking is a very powerful way of thinking in every sector of one’s life. van den b erg (2004:279) comments that in an increasingly complex and specialised society, it is imperative that individuals think critically. t his kind of thinking is required to achieve the critical outcomes stated in the n ational curriculum statement for south africa (d epartment of education, 2004). g enerally, critical thinking means thinking in pursuit of relevant and reliable knowledge about a subject or the world (schafersman, 1991:3). it is reasonable, reflective, responsible and skilful thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do. c ritical thinking is a mode of thinking about any subject content or p roblem in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skilfully taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and imposing intellectual standards upon them (scriven & paul, 2005:2). t o arrive at a creative solution to a problem involves not just having new ideas, but that the newly generated ideas should be useful and relevant to the task at hand. critical thinking plays a crucial role in evaluating new ideas, selecting the best ones and modifying them, if necessary, by providing the tools for the process of self evaluation. t his means having the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking. in this way critical thinking emphasises the skills of analysis, teaches learners how to understand, follow or create a logical argument, work out the answer, eliminate the incorrect paths and focus on the correct one (h arris, 2002:1). 27perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 in mathematics, critical thinking is thinking about what is being asked in a given problem, determining what operations and procedures are used in a mathematics problem, with help from a mathematics teacher, and sharpening the analytical skills of learners to improve their mathematics (chang in appelbaum, 2004). someone with critical thinking skills in mathematics is able to understand the logical connections between ideas; identify, construct and evaluate arguments; detect inconsistencies and com m on mistakes in reasoning; solve problems systematically; identify the relevance and importance of ideas; and reflect on the justification of his or her own beliefs and values (clement & lochhead, 1980). scriven and paul (20 05:2) comment that a well cultivated critical thinker raises vital questions and problems, formulates them clearly and precisely; gathers and assesses relevant information and uses abstract ideas to interpret them effectively; comes to well reasoned conclusions and solutions and tests them against relevant criteria and standards; thinks open mindedly within alternative systems of thought and recognises and assesses as need be, their assumptions, and communicates effectively with o thers to find solutions to complex problems. critical thinkers gather information from all senses: verbal and/or written expressions, reflection, observation, experience and reasoning. it is therefore important to enable one to analyse, evaluate, explain and restructure one’s thinking, thereby decreasing the risk of acting on or thinking with a false premise. nickerson (1987) characterises a good critical thinker in terms of knowledge, abili ties, attitudes and habitual ways of behaving. a person who thinks critically can ask appropriate questions, gather relevant information efficiently, sort through this information creatively and come to reliable and trustworthy conclusions. according to schafersman (1991), the key to appreciating the significance of critical thinking in the mathematics classroom can be found in two phases. t he first one occurs when learners (for the first time) construct in their minds the basic ideas, principles and theories that are inherent in the content during visualisation. t his is a process of internalisation. t he second occurs when learners use those ideas, principles and theories effectively as they become relevant in learners’ minds during the process of application. g ood critical thinking can therefore be seen as the foundation of mathematics since it enhances general thinking skills, promotes creativity and is crucial for self reflection. t he key issue here is that the teacher who fosters critical thinking fosters reflectivity and visualisation in learners by asking questions that stimulate thinking, which is essential to the construction of knowledge. t he above discussion implies that good critical thinking in mathematics will not occur unless learners are engaged in activities that deliberately promote this kind of thinking. t hese results can be achieved when visualisation is utilised in the learning of mathematics and the correct motivation and attitude prevail throughout persistent practice,. methodology t welve grade 9 learners were purposefully selected using a non probability sampling procedure in collaboration with the mathematics teacher at a secondary school (m akina, 2005). t he distribution of the 12 learners was as follows: four above average learners; four average learners; and four below average learners, selected on the basis of previous class performance. all data were collected during organised one hour sessions in which learners gave written responses based on the tasks (see appendix a), followed by individual audio taped interviews to support data from the written responses. t he tasks chosen were selected because they had been used previously in other research (fischbein, 1987; reading, 1996) to improve visualisation and could be easily adapted for use in mathematics classrooms. kosslyn (1994) suggests four stages and processes in the tasks that prove that visualisation has taken place. t he analysis of both the written responses and the interviews were aided by kosslyn’s (1994) four stages of visualisation: image generation, image inspection, image transformation and image use, as illustrated in t able 1. data analysis, results and discussions t he investigation revealed some major processes, namely, reflection, self regulation, divergent thinking, meta cognition, mathematical generalisation, transformation, the use of metaphors, similes, and animation (m akina, 2005), which could result in critical thinking. all these mental processes are interrelated and emerged as a result of the fact that learners described what they were thinking 28 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 table 1. d escription of kosslyn’s (1994) categories of mental processes used for analysing data process description of process image generation image inspection image transformation image use • occurs when a person recalls a picture or visual mental representation from long term memory and places that image in a central location within working memory. • makes multiple use of materials (incorporating new experiences). • involves a focused mental scanning of the qualities of the image within working memory. • results when one examines an image in order to answer questions about it (classify, scrutinise). • entails noticing similarities and differences in shapes (connection). • selectively attending to input and feedback from existing schemata (heuristic processes); establishing meaning of the problem developing tactics and self monitoring. • occurs when a person changes or operates upon an image: rotating, zooming, translating, scanning. • involves the movement of images of shapes into related shapes (e.g. square to hexagon). • occurs when an image is employed in the service of some mental operation. • it is the mental involvement in making the shape (refinement). • involves making, using, changing and storing images, concepts, understandings and schemata. about while working through mathematics tasks. in accordance with the literature, learners were able to ‘see the unseen’ (mental images) in their minds where all the visualisation processes took place. for example, one learner gave the following answer regarding t ask 1: “i am trying to m ake a shape and i am thinking of a shape in m y head. i am thinking of the dice”. t he images that resulted from the ‘seeing’ were only partly presented o n p ap er. t he conclusion is that the whole process of visualisation can never be fully illustrated on paper and the teacher has to probe orally to ascertain most processes. t he earlier section on critical thinking clarified the characteristics and expectations of a critical thinker. t he mental processes identified during visualisation while problem solving were in accord ance with critical thinking as described in the literature study. t hese expectations were related to problem solving processes, which, in turn, were also related to k osslyn’s (1994) processes of visualisation. in this research, most processes that were dominant during visualisation while problem solving, are related to most of the processes expected of a critical thinker (alsorour in harris, 2002:227; harris, 2002:226). example 1 and figure 1 show evidence of generation, inspection and, finally, the transformation that occurred during the execution of t ask 1. a geo m etric body was described in the way that each learner understood it from previous knowledge, as shown in example 1. t his is divergent thinking and it derives from learners’ higher order thinking skills. example 1 le arn er i: “a geometric body has air in it, so i m ade a box”. learner a: “a geometric body has got sides all equal like it can form som ething … ” learner c: “i discovered that a geom etric body has a … should have space inside … ” learner b ’s written work, depicted in figure 1, shows a learner progressing from one shape to another, and is evidence of an original image that was generated and then went through a number of transform ations after inspection. in some cases, the cube was named a toy box or a box for a jack in the box. 29perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 self monitoring is identified in the above figure by means of the draft plans/trial diagrams of the box. t here are also several descriptions of what the student thought was an appropriate name/ label for this figure. t he self monitoring process on the part of the learners seems to play a role in their successful completion of the tasks. visualisation therefore appears to allow self monitoring during the problem solving processes. van den b erg (2004:292) states that self assessment or self monitoring facilitates critical thinking processes by influencing learners’ responsiveness and thus plays a key role in determining how learners selectively paid attention during problem solving. d uring visualisation, creativity, metaphors, similes and animation are used to guide the reasoning process (presmeg, 1992:599). t ask 1 required the learner to draw on paper the shape that could be made from the net shape that was given. learner i made an actual cube out of paper, glue and sello tape to clarify for herself the shape that was m ade from the net shape. during the interview, she explained the following: in t erview er: “y ou made a box with the sides 2cm each”? le arn er i: “i thought m aybe i was just supposed to identify what this thing could m ake”. in t e rv ie w e r: “so you didn’t want to draw anything on paper? it’s like the problem says: ‘o n the plain piece of paper provided, draw the image obtained by unfolding or folding the geometric body”. le arn er i: “ja. it’s like to m e it was obvious that i needed to m ake it. when i looked at the paper i could see that in this thing we could do som ething like this box which can be six sides which is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. so i thought maybe i could make this box” (showing the researcher the box she had physically made from paper, glue and sellotape ). t he above conversation provides evidence that learners at times were not always able to draw or write what they could mentally imagine. in substantiating this, w heatley (1998:10) maintains that care m ust be exercised in inferring imaging from children’s drawings, as learners cannot always draw what they can imagine. it is therefo re true that the mental images of some learners have to work hand in hand with physical visual images if the learners are to b e b etter critical thinkers. v isualisation facilitates the use of concrete objects as mental visual aids during problem solving. figure 1. learner b’s written response to t ask 1 30 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 it must, however, be noted that concrete materials are not used to transmit visual images or spatial concepts to learners, but are vehicles to encourage problem solving, knowledge construction and the development and use of different kinds of imagery (v inner in o wens & clements, 1998: 215). learner e’s response shows the learner trying to make sense of the numbers as well as the pattern by inserting extra numbers, some calculations and an explanation. in figure 2 , learner e developed her understanding of the problem, demonstrated increasingly abstract solution activity so that she could anticipate its results, and was able to use the results to make future predictions through generalisation. visualisation generated guided tactics, manipulations and decisions during problem solving. t herefore, it plays a central role in inspiring a whole solution beyond the merely procedural, towards a more organised structure (arcavi, 2003:216 233). t ask 2 allowed the learners to use the results of their answers to part one to make predictions in parts 2 and 3. learners approximated the number of accidents after 1991 by studying the relationships that were identified in the first part of the question. example 2 research er: “h ow did you predict the number of accidents that occurred in 1992”? lear n er f: “i could see it by looking at these num bers. there was a pattern that i recognised and if this pattern is to continue, 1991 will get about 10 accidents … ” in example 2, learner f recognised the need to use the word “about” to provide an answer to the number of accidents that occurred in 1991. visualisation through higher order thinking skills offers a method of estimation and therefore enables prediction of results in data handling. critical thinking during visualisation reduces the learner’s mental limitations in thinking, learning and figure 2. learner e’s written response to t ask 2 31perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 problem solving activities. t his was seen in this study when the learners were involved in solving problems that involved patterns that were too long to determine the nth term, or when they needed to make future or previous predictions. v isualisation in the service of problem solving may also play a central role in inspiring a whole solution. for example, when required to make a generalisation from a pattern of numbers or shapes, visualisation identifies gnomes as substructures of the whole in which a clear pattern can be established (b en chaim et al., 1989). conclusion arcavi (2003), reading (2005), fischbein (1987), b en chaim, lappan & houang (1989), w heatley (1991), davis (1984), p resmeg (1992) and t hornton (2000) have all, at one point, highlighted the important processes involved in visualisation when learning mathematics. t here has, however, not been a study of the important relationship that exists between visualisation and critical thinking, and more research should b e done in this area. visualisation is a very important component of un derstanding, and critical thinking determines the quality of the understanding. regrettably, most learners do not develop appropriate thinking skills that enable them to make meaningful theoretical distinctions, because some teachers tend to focus only on the task of transmitting basic knowledge. it is counterproductive in mathematics education simply to require learners to memorise information and to learn new and isolated facts without understanding why they think the way they do. w ithout critical thinking, which is self directed, self corrective thinking the learning of mathematics is difficult, as it relies on the memorisation of knowledge. v isualisation processes must occur for a person to be able to think critically. w ith visualisation, the overall goal of instruction is to help lear ners construct mental representations that correctly or accurately mirror mathematical relationships in instructional representations located outside the mind. t he challenge in mathematics teaching is how to help learners to construct appropriately linked cognitive units that are flexible and precise, to help them build mathematics as a coherent and mea ningful structure. t his can be achieved by engaging learners in problem solving, where problems and ideas are discussed while probing learners’ thinking through q uestions and conflicting situ ations. learners also need to analyse their own thinking while fostering the gradual emergence of all their mental processes. e ncouraging learners to reveal their mental processes can be successful if educators have a clear understanding of the role of visualisation. t he following suggestions by t hornton (2000:255) are a starting point for teachers to help learners become more effective visual thinkers and more sensitive to the possibility of finding visual solutions or representations of a given result, while encouraging concrete pictorial imagery by asking learners to picture themselves as part of the situation. t his promotes the discussion of alternative ways of thinking, particularly of the transition from visual to symbolic thinking, and encourages learners to view problems holistically, instead of breaking them into parts. finally, the investigation in this paper, which resulted from a larger study (m akina, 2005), has revealed a number of major processes, namely reflection, self regulation, divergent thinking, meta cognition, mathematical generalisation, transformation and the use of metaphors, similes and ani mation. t hese are some of the main processes that enrich the quality of thinking when learners learn, hence promoting critical thinking. complex ideas, which are a result of critical thinking, are among the potential products of visualisation. v isualisation is therefore central to the development of cri tical thinking processes and the construction of meaning and understanding. understanding the learners’ thinking d uring problem solving (visualisation) can enhance the way teachers develop critical thinking in learners. it can be concluded from this paper that learners are likely to improve their performance in mathematics if teachers remain aware of visualisation, which is one of the important processes through which to encourage critical thinking in the classroom. 32 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 references appelbaum p 1995. popular culture, educational discourse and mathematics. albany, ny: state university of new york press. appelbaum p 2004. critical thinking and learning: an encyclopaedia for parents and teachers. j kincheloe & d weil (eds). greenwood press, mathematics education 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w.w. norton. makina a 2005. an investigation of the role of visualisation in data handling in grade 9 within a problem centred context. unpublished dissertation, university of south africa. mgqwashu em 2009. rethinking academic literacy for educators: towards a relevant pedagogy. perspectives in education, 27:215 227. mudaly v 2009. iterative processes in mathematics education. perspectives in education, 27:302 310. national council of teachers of mathematics (nctm) 2000. principles and standards for school mathematics. reston, va. retrieved from: http://standards.nctm.org/ on 7 february 2009. national council of teachers of mathematics (nctm) 1989. curriculum and evaluation standards for school mathematics. reston, va: national council of teachers of mathematics. owens kd & clements mak 1998. representations in spatial problem solving in the classroom. journal of mathematical behaviour, 17:97 218. presmeg nc 1992. prototypes, metaphors, metonymies and imaginative rationality in high school mathematics. educational studies in mathematics, 23:595 610. presmeg nc 1997. generalization using imagery in mathematics, in mathematical reasoning, analogies, metaphors and images. l english (ed.). mahwah: erlbaum ramranthan p & amin n 2009. preparing students to teach in and for diverse contexts: a learning to teach approach. perspectives in education, 27:69 77. reading c 1996. an investigation of students’ understanding of statistics. unpublished thesis, university of new england, armidale, australia. schafersman sd 1991. an introduction to critical thinking. retrieved from http://www.freeinquiry.com/ critical thinking.html on 16 january 2008. scriven m & paul r 2005. the critical thinking community. retrieved from: http://www. critical thinking.org.about ct/define critical thinking.cfm on 15 january 2008. 33perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 skovsmose o 2000. aphorism and critical mathematical education. for the learning of mathematics, 20:2 8. skovsmose o 1994. toward a philosophy of critical mathematics education. dordrecht, the netherlands: d. reidel. tall d 2008. the dynamics of understanding mathematics. warwick: university of warwick. thornton s 2000. a picture is worth a thousand words. university of canberra. retrieved from http://www .amt.canberra.edu.au/ sjt/dva.htm on 7 february 2003. wheatley gh 1991. enhancing mathematics learning through imagery. retrieved from www.aare.edu.au/92pap/collk92019.txt 27k on 2 april 2004. van den berg g 2004. the use of assessment in the development of higher order thinking skills. africa education review, 1:279 294. appendix a task 1 perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2013 university of the free state 5 karin cattell centre for teaching and learning stellenbosch university e-mail: kcattell@sun.ac.za telephone: 021 808 3074 ‘fit for change’: a preliminary exploration of the relationship between academic literacy practitioners and disciplinary specialists as a complex system karin cattell at tertiary institutions in south africa and internationally, academic literacy practitioners and disciplinary specialists have traditionally functioned as separate communities of practice. however, research indicates that academic literacy is most successfully acquired when it is integrated into and taught within the contexts of specific academic disciplines. this article explores the transgression of the boundaries between academic literacy teaching and study disciplines, in general, and the subsequent broadening of the social structures within which academic disciplines function at tertiary institutions. the relationship between academic literacy practitioners and disciplinary specialists at stellenbosch university is correspondingly investigated as a complex system, focusing on the variable and non-linear interaction among the co-evolving components of the system and its environment, the emergent structure of the resultant transdisciplinary community of practice, and the ‘fitness’ of this community – its ability to cope with the challenges and opportunities brought on by constant change. the article will demonstrate the contribution that a complex systems approach could make to the collaboration between academic literacy practitioners and disciplinary specialists at tertiary institutions, in general, and at stellenbosch university, in particular, and subsequently, to an understanding of the collective focus on student success in these two communities of practice. keywords: academic literacy practitioners, disciplinary specialists, complex system, relationality, change, fitness if things were simple, word would have gotten round” (derrida, 1988: 119). perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 6 as an educational developer situated in the centre for teaching and learning at stellenbosch university (su), the author participates in a range of growth opportunities to facilitate the “professional learning” (brew, 2004: 5) of both academics and academic literacy practitioners. she also provides academic literacy support for the teaching function of academics. from her dual position in centralised educational development and in academic disciplines, she has observed and experienced the contested nature of the relationship between academic literacy practitioners and disciplinary specialists, and the benefits and challenges that collaboration across the boundaries between these terrains and agents could hold. this article, therefore, aims to provide a reconciliatory approach to the investigation of academic literacy at tertiary institutions, in general, and at su, in particular, based on the transgression of boundaries between the contexts of academic literacy practitioners and disciplinary specialists, and linked to that, the relation between academic literacies and mainstream disciplines. the discussion includes the opportunities and challenges this change in approach would hold. the article is situated in the context of complexity theory which foregrounds the transdisciplinarity of relationships in particular environments, their accompanying co-evolution, and their ‘fitness’ or ability to cope with change. academic literacy: “radical relationality” dillon (2000: 8) defines the natural and the social world in terms of “radical” relationality, stating that “nothing is without being in relation”. this relationality entails that components from different systems can be combined to create new systems, implying change in the connected systems. relationality is, therefore, by proxy, transformative. however, at the opposite end of the spectrum, the relationality of systems can be diminished, leading to autonomous systems which display limited transformation. the shifts in the growth of academic development from a skills-based, deficit model, for students identified as ‘weak’, to academic literacy, where the norms and expectations of the discipline are viewed as social practices and are taught in the mainstream, are well documented (henderson & hirst, 2007; mckenna, 2004; street, 2003; lea & street, 1998, among other authors). in terms of these shifts, academic literacy practitioners and disciplinary specialists traditionally functioned as separate, autonomous systems at technikons and universities, in south africa and internationally. jacobs (2005: 476) ascribes this partly to the way in which the academy is structured – each discipline of study forms a separate academic department – and partly to a notion that the academic disciplines constitute the mainstream curriculum, and academic literacy is a service course that only exists at the entry level of the curriculum. as a result, most academic literacy courses followed an ‘add-on’ approach, providing students with generic and decontextualised support beyond the curriculum. cattell ‘fit for change’: a preliminary exploration of the relationship between academic literacy practitioners and disciplinary specialists as a complex system 7 the new literacy studies’ late-20th century view of academic literacy as located in specific cultural and social contexts – therefore often referred to as academic literacies – holds that the acquisition of these sets of practices is dependent on acquiring the underpinning values (gee, 1990; street, 2003; lea & street, 2006; mckenna, 2010, among other authors). street (2003: 78) points out that academic literacy, in this sense, is always contested, both its meanings and its practices, and that literacies are thus ideological – they are rooted in a particular world view and its power relations, specifically in “a desire for that view of literacy to dominate and to marginalize others”. this ideological view of academic literacy imbues its relationality with new importance. in essence, academic literacy demonstrates dillon’s (2000: 8) “radical relationality” with regard to the social practices in which it is situated. the above redefined relationship between academic literacy and context is closely linked to student success. research (gee, 1999; jacobs, 2005; van schalkwyk, 2010; gunn, hearne & sibthorpe, 2011, among other authors) has shown that academic literacy is most successfully acquired when it is integrated into, and taught within the contexts of specific academic disciplines. a separation between academic literacy and disciplinary content does not advance effective learning and, thus, student success – it is within an open, transdisciplinary academic system, formed by academic literacy practitioners and disciplinary specialists across the boundaries of the two communities of practice, that student learning and success can be transformed into ‘becoming’: [u]niversity teachers do not consider these aspects of learning [academic literacy] to be part of their responsibility, and qualifications from disciplines other than education may leave them ill equipped to address them. collaborative relationships with specialist staff from academic support units offer significant opportunities to overcome these hurdles (gunn et al., 2011: 2-3). the teaching and learning of both the academic literacies related to a particular discipline and the content of that discipline are thus contextualised within an adapted and expanded set of social practices and related broadened discourse. this expanded context holds that the traditional social structures within which academic discourse functions at tertiary institutions are widened (jacobs, 2005: 479). growing towards “radical relationality”: academic literacy and disciplines at stellenbosch university in the past, the traditional lack of relationality between academic literacy practitioners and disciplinary specialists at su was reflected in the often disparate and inconsistent inclusion of academic literacy in curricula. not all members of the su academic community recognised the potentially transformative role of academic literacy in their particular disciplines or subjects. in some numerically oriented subjects, for example, academic literacy was generally viewed as generic reading and writing skills only and, hence, as secondary to the modes of knowledge acquisition and production which define those disciplines. in these subjects, academic literacy – where it was perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 8 granted a position in the curriculum – functioned primarily in the form of generic or stand-alone modules. there were few examples of the curricular integration of the academic competencies students need to be successful in their discipline. however, in recent years, increasing attempts have been made to integrate, and a measure of success has been achieved. in the department of biology, for example, information literacy – taught by the library and information service – forms an integral part of the firstand third-year curricula; in the department of psychology, academic writing skills are taught in the third-year curriculum and, in the law faculty, instruction in academic writing – with assistance from the centre for teaching and learning and the language centre – is being embedded in writing-intensive modules across the llb programme. the gradual change in the inclusion of academic literacy in disciplines at su is due to a number of factors, among which is the focus on language and academic literacy in the university’s strategic priorities and language planning. according to leibowitz (2010: 1), the national emphasis on graduate attributes, thus on “graduating with the necessary reflective, analytic, as well as presentational skills”, would fall under the general ambit of “academic literacy”. there is an additional emphasis on increasing access to tertiary institutions as well as enhancing student throughput. in this regard leibowitz (2010: 1) refers to a related acknowledgement that various approaches that might encourage academic success at school and, hence, facilitate the acquisition of academic literacy in tertiary education, are not always a reality. within this context – and within the context of its relations to other institutional systems in the su environment – the centre for teaching and learning at the university has headed an initiative to integrate academic literacy into the curricula across the institution. a colloquium was held in may 2010 as a university-wide discussion on the approach to the teaching of academic literacy at the institution. subsequently, a multidisciplinary task team was set up to investigate the relationship between academic literacy and disciplines, and to compile a framework for the fostering of academic literacy in the institution’s teaching and learning programmes. a guideline document was accepted by the university in august 2012, detailing an approach in which learner-centredness, flexibility, collaboration, and the systematic incorporation of academic literacy into curricula are key concepts (guideline document for academic literacy at su, 2012: 3-4). in considering collaborative practices at su and their relations to their respective disciplinary and institutional communities of practice, the contested nature of the relationship between academic literacy practitioners and disciplinary specialists has become clear. the above-mentioned guideline document recommends multidisciplinary collaboration between different role players for the design of new programmes, the evaluation of existing programmes, and the design or delivery of academic literacy interventions. these role players would include academics, the library and information service, the language centre, the centre for teaching and learning, and ict specialists e(guideline document for academic literacy at su, 2012: 4). cattell ‘fit for change’: a preliminary exploration of the relationship between academic literacy practitioners and disciplinary specialists as a complex system 9 with reference to wenger’s (1998: 45) interpretation of a community of practice as “the sustained pursuit of a shared enterprise”, the aim of increased student success at su could be achieved by, inter alia, an improved relationality between academics and academic literacy practitioners, and consequently an intensified collective pursuit of this aim. however, this would necessitate both academic literacy practitioners and disciplinary specialists changing their conceptualisations of academic literacies as “an autonomous body of knowledge”, thereby releasing one another from the perceived need to protect their domain (jacobs, 2007: 871). insight into this transformation process can be provided by complexity theory – a tool with which to explore the desired ‘becoming’ of an improved relationality between these terrains and agents. complexity theory: relationality in transformation complexity science emerged in the 1980s as a new approach to the study of systems which defy definitions of order. it is applied to a wide variety of environments, and is credited with enlarging researchers’ vision and enhancing their ability to describe and explain interactive systems. the diverse origins of this theory have led to an equally diverse and continuously developing body of thinking and research that can, therefore, only be defined partially and provisionally. this article ascribes to the definition of a complex system as a “‘system of systems’” which are interdependent (heylighen, cilliers & gershenson, 2007: 1) and characterised by change (byrne, 2005: 97): the interaction – and thus the relationality – among the components of the system, and between the system and its environment, is not fixed, but shifts and changes (cilliers, 1998: viii). a change in any component may affect virtually any other component, in a mostly unpredictable way (heylighen et al., 2007: 1). complex systems are characterised by openness, in other words, they have to interact with their environment in order to stay alive or active. their behaviour is thus unpredictable in a linear fashion. the resultant constant change in these systems necessitates the properties of adaptability and self-organisation or emergence (the spontaneous development of collective properties that do not appear to be present in individual components (urry, 2005: 5)). heylighen et al. (2007: 13) argue that all complex systems created through self-organisation and evolution are “intrinsically adaptive”, since they do not have a blueprint telling them “how they should behave”. however, despite its adaptability, each complex or “self-making” system (urry, 2005: 7) develops boundaries which separate it from its environment, giving it its identity as distinct from other systems (heylighen et al., 2007: 6). the basic components of a complex system are agents, “autonomous individuals who try to achieve some personal goal or value ... by acting upon their environment – which includes other agents” (heylighen et al., 2007: 11). agents fulfil a certain function in the system, and complement one another’s functions. their goals are intrinsically independent, however, and therefore often in conflict. cilliers (1998: 6) points out that agents can only act on the information available to them, and are not aware of the functions of all the other agents in the system. as a result of perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 10 the transformational nature of complex systems and their accompanying lack of equilibrium, agents co-evolve: they constantly adapt to the changes made by other agents. however, in this way, they also modify the others’ environment, forcing them to also adapt. changes to the environment include adjustments to structures and activities: agents interpret and respond to issues of practice differently, as their sense of agency is aligned with that of others in a new relational dispensation. the constant change in complex systems necessitates that agents are able to process information about, and deal with many variables in order to survive challenges and make the most of opportunities (clemens, 2002). a system that demonstrates this ability is described as ‘fit’. according to clemens (2002), the key to fitness is self-organisation that results from the agents’ actions: together, agents can generate structures and activities that cope well with complexity and are, therefore, adaptable to change. however, challenges may be experienced during the process of agents’ mutual adaptation, caused for example by conflicting goals or threats to expertise and identity. these challenges may lead to a temporary or permanent reduction or loss of fitness; in other words, the agents temporarily or permanently lack the capacity to deal with a specific change (clemens, 2002). when fitness is reduced or lost, a new adaptation process takes place in the area of the problem, enlarging itself as far as necessary to absorb all the negative effects (heylighen et al., 2007: 13). from separate ‘being’ to relational ‘becoming’: academic literacy practitioners and disciplinary specialists as a complex system traditionally, the functioning of academic literacy practitioners and disciplinary specialists as separate systems at su was contrary to the “radical relationality” which dillon (2000: 8) ascribes to the natural and social world. these two communities of practice maintained their ‘being’ by protecting their respective terrains and autonomy, and sustaining a relative equilibrium. despite their collective goal of student success, the objectives of the agents in the two systems were, to a large extent, independent, resulting in the protection of their respective domains, reduced relationality, and resistance to a change of the status quo. the transformative capacity of these two separate systems was, therefore, limited. in some numerically oriented disciplines, for example, academic literacy was reduced to generic reading and writing skills for students in need of remedial language support, thus foregrounding the value of the importance of numbers and, simultaneously, propagating the related underlying values of the lesser importance of both communication and academic literacy in those disciplines. introducing academic literacy interventions into the practices of these disciplines, and hence into their world views, led to the meaning as well as the practices of academic literacy being contested, as street (2003: 78) points out. a change in this view of academic literacy to literacies, which would, for example, include numerical and information literacies, and the incorporation of these literacies into the mainstream curricula cattell ‘fit for change’: a preliminary exploration of the relationship between academic literacy practitioners and disciplinary specialists as a complex system 11 would have increased the collaboration between the agents in the two systems. working together across the boundaries of the systems could have involved structural adjustments such as jointly designing interventions and developing new curricula, and team-teaching, as well as collaborating in adapting related activities: planning, teaching, assessment, reflection, and so on. the aligning of the diverse senses of agency would have entailed several challenges. in their discussion of the multidimensionality of change in teaching, walton and lloyd (2012: 67) highlight three dimensions: the use of new materials, the use of new teaching approaches, and the alteration of beliefs. these three dimensions, together with academics and academic literacy practitioners possibly experiencing a sense of losing control of the teaching/learning process, having to learn how to teach dialogically, and how to reconcile different perceptions of curriculum, instruction and assessment (walton & lloyd, 2012: 67), would have led to a reduction and possibly a loss of fitness in the new transdisciplinary system. however, increased interaction between the agents, working together towards realising their common goal of improved student success, could alternatively have resulted in the gradual creation of relationality across systemic boundaries. the initial reduction or loss of fitness could have been addressed by a focus on the opportunities offered by the collaboration, rather than the challenges: for the academics, a sharing of workload and responsibility for the performance of their students, for example, and for the academic literacy practitioners, contributing towards student success as an invited disciplinary ‘insider’ instead of an ‘added-on’ ‘outsider’. until recently, though, this transformation was resisted, due mainly to the understandable response from the disciplinary agents and structures to hold on to their domains and thus their positions of power. mckenna (2004: 150) correspondingly states that “the discourses of the mainstream lecturers are the most powerful and have been the slowest to change”, resulting in an unsystematic – and still contentious – move towards integrating academic literacy. this holds true for su. increased recognition of the “radical” relationality of academic literacy practitioners and disciplinary specialists and, therefore, of the interdependence among the agents of the two systems could contribute to the growing of the transdisciplinary academic community of practice. jacobs (2005: 484) recommends that the basis for such a complex system should be issues of teaching and learning, rather than the academic discipline (as at present). this would entail a change from the traditional, separate roles of academic literacy practitioners and disciplinary specialists to a combined role as tertiary educators, and would simultaneously facilitate the integration of academic literacies into the disciplines. jacobs (2005: 484) states that the creation of such a transdisciplinary community of practice “could serve a transformative purpose in he”. the academic literacy agents in this complex system would contribute an understanding of the teaching and learning of literacies as well as experience in supporting students in discourses new to them, while the disciplinary professionals would bring both “insider knowledge” and an understanding of their respective disciplinary discursive practices to the system (jacobs, 2005: perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 12 484-485). mckenna (2004: 275) takes this potential shift further, recommending that literacy development should become “the primary task of staff development”, so that academics are made aware of the role academic literacy acquisition plays in student success, and are supported in “their own ongoing acquisition and critique of academic literacies”. according to jacobs (2007: 871), the need for academic literacy practitioners and disciplinary specialists to change their conceptualisation of academic literacy as an autonomous body of knowledge also underlies this shift. this change would improve the collaboration between the two systems, reducing their perceived need to protect their domains and assert their disciplinary expertise over the “other” (jacobs, 2007: 871). however, this transformation requires fitness, with agents who are able to cope with the variables related to the challenges and opportunities that accompany the change to a transdisciplinary system. the adaptability of academic literacy practitioners and disciplinary professionals at su – needed to acquire fitness – has already been demonstrated by the degree of co-evolving and integration of the agents, structures and activities achieved thus far. in addition, the capacity of the agents for self-organisation, also required for a fit system, has already been displayed in their ability to spontaneously structure their respective systems and start a trajectory of growth in collaborating across their systemic boundaries. the guideline document produced by the task team on academic literacy at su should enhance this self-organisation, potentially leading to an increased will among the agents in the two communities of practice to align their objectives, structures and activities, and pursue their common goal of student success across the boundaries of their respective systems. their collaboration in realising this goal could prove to be the key factor in the ‘fitness for change’ of the new transdisciplinary system. navigating between fitness and the reduction or loss thereof in the above complex system will be one of the main challenges in the trajectory of change towards “radical” relationality for academic literacy practitioners and disciplinary specialists at su as well as at other tertiary institutions. however, to return to the words of derrida (1988: 119): [o]ne should ... never simplify or pretend to be sure of ... simplicity where there is none. if things were simple, word would have gotten round. references brew a 2004. the scope of academic development. international journal for academic development, 9(1): 5-7. byrne d 2005. complexity, configurations and cases. theory, culture & society, 22(5): 95-111. cilliers p 1998. complexity and postmodernism: understanding complex systems. london: routledge. cattell ‘fit for change’: a preliminary exploration of the relationship between academic literacy practitioners and disciplinary specialists as a complex system 13 clemens wc jr 2002. complexity theory as a tool for understanding and coping with ethnic conflict and development issues in post-soviet russia. the international journal of peace studies, 7(2). retrieved on 9 july 2010 from http://www.gmu.edu/programs/icar/ijps/vol7_2/clemens.htm. derrida j 1988. limited inc. evanston, ill: northwestern university press. dillon m 2000. post-structuralism, complexity and poetics. theory, culture & society, 17(5): 1-26. gee j 1990. social linguistics and literacies: ideology in discourse. london: falmer press. gee j 1999. the new literacy studies and the “social turn”. requested from the us department of education, july 2010. guideline document for academic literacy at su 2012. stellenbosch university. gunn c, hearne s & sibthorpe j 2011. right from the start: a rationale for embedding academic literacy skills in university courses. journal of university teaching & learning practice, 8(1): 1-10. henderson r & hirst e 2007. reframing academic literacy: re-examining a shortcourse for “disadvantaged” tertiary students. english teaching: practice and critique, 6(2): 25-38. heylighen f, cilliers p & gershenson c 2007. complexity and philosophy. in j bogg & r geyer (eds), complexity, science and society. oxford: radcliffe publishing. jacobs c 2005. on being an insider on the outside: new spaces for integrating academic literacies. teaching in higher education, 10(4): 475-487. jacobs c 2007. mainstreaming academic literacy teaching: implications for how academic development understands its work in higher education. south african journal of higher education, 21(7): 868-879. lea mr 2004. academic literacies: a pedagogy for course design. studies in higher education, 29(6): 739-756. lea mr & street bv 1998. student writing in higher education: an academic literacies approach. studies in higher education, 23(2): 157-172. lea mr & street bv 2006. the “academic literacies” model: theory and applications. theory into practice, 45(4): 368-377. leibowitz b 2010. academic literacy and the curriculum: current trends and approaches. consultative session: academic literacy for student success. stellenbosch university, 13 may. mckenna s 2004. a critical investigation into discourses that construct academic literacy at the durban institute of technology. unpublished phd thesis. grahamstown: rhodes university. mckenna s 2010. cracking the code of academic literacy: an ideological task. in c hutchings & j garraway (eds), beyond the university gates: provision of extended curriculum programmes in south africa. proceedings of the january 2009 rhodes university foundation seminar. street b 2003. what’s “new” in new literacy studies? critical approaches to literacy in theory and practice. current issues in comparative education, 5(2): 77-91. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 14 urry j 2005. the complexity turn. theory, culture & society, 22(5): 1-14. van schalkwyk s 2010. when the teacher becomes the student: the acquisition of academic literacy revisited. acta academica supplementum, 2010(1): 201222. walton e & lloyd g 2012. from clinic to classroom: a model of teacher education for inclusion. perspectives in education, 30(2): 62-70. wenger e 1998. communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. cambridge: cambridge university press. endnotes 1. an overview of the educational development opportunities offered by the centre for teaching and learning at stellenbosch university is contained in s van schalkwyk, f cilliers, h adendorff, k cattell & n herman 2013. journeys of growth towards the professional learning of academics: understanding the role of educational development. international journal for academic development, 18(2): 139-151. 2. a forthcoming article will examine the degree to which this challenge has been met and related opportunities for change have been utilised. perspectives in education 31(3) perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2013 university of the free state 34 jaamia galant spade project, university of cape town e-mail: j.galant@uct.ac.za telephone: 021 6502951 selecting and sequencing mathematics tasks: seeking mathematical knowledge for teaching jaamia galant in this article, i present an initial analysis of an empirical study that was undertaken in an attempt to elicit what subject-matter knowledge, pedagogic content knowledge and curriculum knowledge teachers bring to bear on decisions for teaching. the analysis is based on interview data with 46 grade 3 teachers, who were presented with two mathematical tasks taken from the 2010 ndbe grade 2 and grade 3 numeracy workbooks. teachers were required to justify the selection and sequencing of the two mathematical tasks for teaching multiplication. in so doing, they provide some indication of what they know or do not know about the mathematical concepts in the tasks; about the connections between mathematical concepts; about the representations of those concepts, and about how learners learn those concepts. teachers’ responses varied from an articulation of the pedagogic and mathematical intentions of the tasks, to the use and consequences of pictorial representations in the tasks and how learners would respond to the tasks. the variation in responses reflected different criteria that teachers used to justify the selection and sequencing of the tasks. the analysis raises critical questions regarding the interplay between teachers’ subject-matter knowledge, their pedagogic content knowledge and curricular knowledge, which they bring to bear on pedagogic decisions. the analysis raises further critical questions concerning the pedagogic and mathematical explicitness of tasks in the ndbe numeracy workbooks. the analysis suggests that careful consideration must be given to the construction of mathematical tasks in grade 3, and probably the foundation phase, to ensure that the mathematical purpose of tasks is explicit, and that ‘contextual noise’ is not introduced that distracts from the pedagogic and mathematical intent of the tasks. keywords: subject-matter knowledge, pedagogic content knowledge, curricular knowledge, mathematical tasks, numeracy workbooks 35 selecting and sequencing mathematics tasks: seeking mathematical knowledge for teaching jaamia galant introduction in south africa, the long and winding road of curriculum development has seen policy initiatives first veer away from, and then more recently back to, prescription and specification of contents and coverage. the ‘milestones’ curriculum of the foundations for learning (2008) started the path back to specification of contents, and most recently, the curriculum and assessment policy statements (caps) (2011) extended this specification with prescriptions for weekly planning. these prescriptions specify the content to be covered, the sequence in which they are to be covered, and the time to be spent on each content area (pace) per week. in addition, caps provides some ‘teaching guidelines’ as to how to cover some of the content areas. to support these policy initiatives, the national department of basic education (ndbe) went even further by producing prescribed workbooks for foundation phase learners, providing teachers with ready-made materials and exemplars of the contents to be covered in each grade. the collection of studies in taylor and vinjevold (1999), which reviewed the implementation of curriculum 2005 through a range of empirical contexts, showed the disastrous consequences of having unspecified curriculum statements that leave the interpretation of contents, sequencing and pacing, entirely over to teachers. hence, all of this recent curricular specification and prescription can be regarded as a means to circumvent the teacher from having to make these decisions of content, sequencing and pacing, based on their interpretation of more general curriculum statements. given the greater specification of curricular contents that makes progression in mathematics more visible, are teachers in a better position to select and sequence mathematics tasks for use in classrooms? has the shift in curriculum policy regimes changed the discourses with which teachers engage in the construction of mathematics and mathematics tasks? have the teaching guidelines and exemplars provided teachers with more insight into the mathematics they need to know for teaching? this article reflects on these and presents a brief empirical analysis of how teachers talk about the selection and sequencing of mathematics tasks for use in classrooms. the analysis is based on interview data with 46 grade 3 teachers in 2012, in which they were asked to comment on the selection and sequencing of two mathematics tasks related to multiplication. the tasks were taken from the 2010 ndbe grade 2 and grade 3 numeracy workbooks. research contexts the analysis presented in this article may be located within a mathematics education research context in which teachers’ ‘pedagogic content knowledge’ and ‘mathematical knowledge for/in teaching’ have been soundly interrogated (adler & davis, 2006; askew, venkat & mathews, 2012; ball, hill & bass, 2005; ball, thames & phelps, 2008; brodie, 2004; goulding, rowland & barber, 2002; ma, 1999; marks, 1990; perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 36 petrou & goulding, 2011; rowland & ruthven (eds), 2011; shulman, 1987). using various theoretical models and empirical settings, these studies collectively identify different ‘categories’ of knowledge that teachers need for effective mathematics teaching. these include specialised subject-matter knowledge, knowledge of the student, curricular knowledge and knowledge of teaching. they demonstrate that a combination of these ‘knowledge categories’ enables teachers, for example, to make decisions about the selection and sequencing of mathematics tasks; to respond appropriately to students’ misconceptions; to notice the advantages or disadvantages of using different representations of mathematics in their teaching, and to be aware of the progression and development of mathematical topics across grades. a further research context in which the empirical analysis in this article may be located are those studies that consider the teaching and learning of mathematics in terms of making interconnections within mathematics and using and interpreting different modes of representation in mathematics (barmby, harries, higgins & suggate, 2009; businskas, 2008; hodgson, 1995; mhlolo, venkat & shafer, 2012; stylianou, 2010). these studies suggest that the ability to recognise interconnections between mathematical topics or different representations of the same mathematical concepts, demonstrates a deeper level of understanding of mathematics than those who cannot make these connections. most of the studies referred to earlier have investigated these issues through observation of teachers’ classroom practices. however, the empirical analysis in this article is based on interviews with teachers. the analysis thus also contrasts with ball et al.’s approach (2008). they developed a bank of structured multiple choice assessment items to measure what they call teachers’ ‘common and specialized mathematical knowledge for teaching’. the assessment items were used in largescale surveys to test teachers’ subject-matter knowledge. the aim of ball et al.’s (2008) study was to identify the content knowledge needed for effective practice and to develop measures for that knowledge. the empirical study in this article is much less ambitious, but it is also an attempt to elicit what subject-matter knowledge and pedagogic content knowledge teachers bring to bear on decisions for teaching. we draw on both ball et al.’s (2008) and petrou & goulding’s (2011) models of mathematical knowledge for teaching, which recognises an essential interplay between teachers’ subject-matter knowledge, pedagogic content knowledge and curriculum knowledge. this interplay between these domains of knowledge enables teachers to make decisions about what topics in mathematics to teach, in what order and how to teach them. in this model of mathematical knowledge for teaching, pedagogic content knowledge includes teachers’ knowledge of students. teachers were required to justify the selection and sequencing of two mathematical tasks. in so doing, they provide some indication of what they know or do not know about the mathematical concepts in the tasks; about the connections between mathematical concepts; about the representations of those concepts, and about how learners learn those concepts. in particular, this small-scale empirical 37 selecting and sequencing mathematics tasks: seeking mathematical knowledge for teaching jaamia galant study sought to explore first, on what basis do teachers sequence mathematical tasks in the classroom (for example, choose to do a particular task before another) and, secondly, what connections between mathematical topics do teachers make when selecting tasks for teaching multiplication? description of empirical study the analysis is based on data collected within the context of the broader spade research project concerned with schools in poor neighbourhoods performing above demographic expectations. six schools, four that performed above average in systemic tests and two comparator schools that performed just below average form the sample. the data was collected as part of the spade project, which focuses on schools in poor communities in the western cape. schools were selected on the basis of performance on systemic grade 3 numeracy and literacy tests. test scores were measured over four cycles of the western cape education department (wced) numeracy and literacy systemic tests between 2004 and 2008. there are 14 schools in the study sample, nine of which are above average performing and five below average performing. schools were matched according to socio-economic and demographic profiles. data collection comprised classroom observations as well as interviews with school leaders and teachers. the analysis in this article is based on individual interviews of one hour, with a total of 46 grade 3 teachers at all the schools. the interviews were conducted during the second term of 2012. all the schools in the sample had ndbe numeracy workbooks in use in the foundation phase. teachers were not asked explicitly about whether they had received training from the wced on caps in 2011, but they all reported that their teaching and planning for 2012 was based on caps curriculum policy documents. the two tasks below were shown to 46 grade 3 teachers during individual interviews. teachers were only told that these tasks were taken from the ndbe workbooks, but not from which grades. they were given time to peruse both tasks before the interview questions were posed. the first task was taken from the 2010 grade 2 numeracy workbook, book 1, on page 33, which was labelled ‘term 2, week 1’. the second task was taken from the 2010 grade 3 numeracy workbook, book 1, on page 57, which was labelled, ‘term 2, week 7’. there was thus a clear sequencing of the two tasks in the workbooks, in that one appears in the grade 2 workbook and the other in the grade 3 workbook. however, this sequencing was not made explicit to teachers. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 38 task 1: multiplication: x2 task 2: counting in 3s and 4s only two interview questions relating to the tasks were posed: (1) how would you explain to a new teacher what the difference between these two tasks is for teaching multiplication in grade 3? (2) in which order would you suggest they be taught and why? these were open response questions, and interviewers were instructed to probe for sequencing of tasks and the reasons for sequencing. before presenting the analysis of teachers’ responses, i briefly examine how multiplication is mentioned in the fp caps document and consider features of the workbook tasks that were given to teachers. multiplication in fp caps in the fp caps documents, under the topic number, operations and relationships, multiplication is referred to explicitly under the sub-topic repeated addition leading to multiplication. the overview for grade 3 number, operations and relationships also includes problem types for grade 3 under two topics: (i) repeated addition and (ii) grids, with some examples of each. in the grade 3 clarification notes for number, operations and relationships, there are additional references to arrays, groups, and order of multiplication as well some illustrations. it is interesting to note that the problem types for arrays are given in words only, without illustrations. the term ‘arrays’ is first used in the clarification notes for grade 2, 1.14, where the notes are more explicit about what is meant by arrays and counting equal rows, and includes illustrations. the notes also specify that by grade 2 learners must understand repeated addition, and must ‘relate skip counting and repeated addition to an understanding of multiplication’. the clarification notes for grade 2, 1.14 term 2, includes pictures of ‘four fingers’ and tricycles to illustrate ‘groups of 3’ and ‘groups of 4’ as well as circles with 3 balloons in them to illustrate ‘repeated images of repeated addition’. the grade 2 notes thus give more clarification than the grade 3 notes. however, these notes appear in one 39 selecting and sequencing mathematics tasks: seeking mathematical knowledge for teaching jaamia galant document: foundation phase grades 1-3. the caps foundation phase document thus assumes that a grade 3 teacher will read the clarification notes for every grade per topic, i.e. grade 1 terms 1-4; grade 2 terms 1-4, and grade 3 terms 1-4. features of the workbook tasks rather than provide an in-depth analysis of these two tasks at this point, i merely wish to highlight features of the tasks that are clearly noticeable at first glance, as teachers might have done before answering the interview questions. both tasks clearly signify multiplication, with the use of the multiplication signs in the number sentences which learners have to complete. however, the titles are very different – task 1 is explicit about it being multiplication, i.e. ‘multiplication: x2’, while task 2 is titled ‘count in 3s and 4s’. from the illustration and questions asked, it is unclear why task 2 is labelled ‘count in 3s and 4s’, as there is no obvious grouping of 4s in the task. task 1 requires only completion of number sentences, whereas task 2 also requires answering written questions. the illustrations in the two tasks are also very different. the first illustration in task 1 is ambiguous; it appears that it could be about ‘equal sharing’, with 18 sweets shared among 9 children, where each child gets 2 sweets. the illustrated circles in the second part of task 1 suggest repeated addition of groups of 2. the illustration of pots in task 2 suggests an array, in that there are 3 rows, with 7 pots in each row. in both tasks, the illustrations may be viewed as a pedagogic resource to help learners complete the task. both tasks may be considered to be ‘structured’ tasks: it appears that questions have been posed and sequenced in a purposeful manner. analysis teachers’ responses to the tasks varied from an articulation of the pedagogic and mathematical intentions of the tasks, to the use and significance of pictorial representations in the tasks. teachers suggested a sequencing of the tasks based on their assessments of mathematical and cognitive demands of the tasks and how grade 3 learners would respond to the tasks. the actual criteria for selection and sequencing varied across the teachers. in the analysis that follows, i grouped teachers’ responses in terms of differences and similarities, i.e. noting what some teachers were saying that was similar to the others, and what some teachers were saying that was different to the others. in this way, the analysis begins to tease out the responses in terms of different aspects of teachers’ pedagogic content knowledge that emerge from the interviews. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 40 justifying the sequencing eight out of the 46 teachers chose task 2 as the first task to be done. teacher reasons for first choice are i would use the one with the pots first, because it is more concrete, and especially if it is a new concept that you’re starting with, it’s to take them back to the concrete; if i look at this one, then the learner sees the pot and he sees the three legs. har i will definitely start with the one with the pots, because it has the context and they can physically see the legs of pots in there. they’re using the different forms of multiplication problems in a sense, because they’re using the grid and grouping which is the legs of the pots. mbe i would recommend this [pots] as the first technique to use, because it’s word sums and like problem-solving; it has pictures so they can count, so learners can count the first one. gor i would actually do the grouping pots first before i go to the multiplication; counting in 3s and 4s, this is grouping, this is good. in these responses, we notice a kind of fetishizing of the ‘physical representation’ within the task – a representation that allows learners ‘to look, see and count’. for these teachers, the selection of this task as the first task seems to be based on a ‘cognitive sequencing’ where: • ‘concrete’ and ‘contextual’ comes before ‘abstract’ or ‘non-contextual’; • ‘grouping’ and ‘counting’ comes before ‘multiplication’ this ‘cognitive sequencing’ is, in fact, consistent with the way in which the curriculum statements are organised in the foundation phase caps document in which ‘solve problems in context’ comes before ‘context-free calculations’, and ‘counting’ and ‘grouping’ comes before ‘multiplication’. in this sense, the title of task 2 as ‘counting in 3s and 4s’ may have contributed to this interpretation of what the task is about, and hence it’s sequencing before task 1 for these teachers. only one teacher, har, identifies this task as involving ‘different forms of multiplication problems’, which she identifies as ‘grids and grouping’, although the teacher does not elaborate on this. the reasons given by these teachers for selecting task 2 as the first task suggest that they have used the title and illustrations in the task to make their choice, rather than consider what the learning objects of the tasks might be following the way they have been structured or designed. 41 selecting and sequencing mathematics tasks: seeking mathematical knowledge for teaching jaamia galant expressing ambivalence about the sequencing two out of the 46 teachers, were ambivalent about which task should be done first. teacher reasons for ambivalence ste (1) [task 1] multiplication of two, i will do this first, because i teach them multiplication of two before i teach them multiplication of three and four; it’s easier, they count in 2s; [...] and there are counters, he can count, he can count everything, he can see the groups, he doesn’t even need to know it’s a multiplication sum. ste (2) [task 2] child can count how many pots in three rows, how many rows are there and how many threes in a row, so this also a multiplication sum, and both are multiplication and addition; there he will not see the pots in a row, here he sees it’s in a row, i will do this one first, then i will do that one, but i don’t know about these sentences here at the bottom, now it gets difficult. mbe this one [pots], because it has a lot of counting on it, because they need to have a sense of numbers, even this one [sweets], because it has equal sharing you know; and also [sweets] has repeated addition so it makes it easier for them to do the multiplication, because repeated addition is in, so i can also give them this one [sweets] and then come to this one [pots] the ambivalence about sequencing for these two teachers seems to stem from their recognition of counting and their interpretation of what can be counted in each activity, i.e. they view counting as the primary activity in both tasks. however, teacher ste also recognises that both tasks involve ‘multiplication and addition’. she first selects task 1 on the basis of the smaller number range, then changes her mind about the sequencing and selects task 2 as the first task on the basis of the physical representation of pots in rows: ‘there he will not see the pots in a row, here he sees the pots in a row’. this again suggests an apparent fetishizing of the ‘physical representation’ in the task. teacher mbe describes task 2 as having ‘lots of counting’, but recognises ‘repeated addition’ only in task 1, and uses this to change her mind about the sequencing, suggesting that ‘repeated addition makes it easier for them to do multiplication’. teacher mbe also responds to the ambiguity of the illustration in task 1, by describing it as having ‘equal sharing’. responding to ambiguity in illustrations in addition to teacher mbe, at least 3 other teachers also responded to the ambiguity of the illustration in task 1. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 42 teacher equal sharing/division/grouping/ addition/multiplication? mva the first one has got the learners, you can see each learner how many he gets, he gets two sweets so that is division, division is involved here, and then grouping them altogether, and addition, and a short method for addition is four times two, then you will be able to get the answer; nqo here [sweets] you are having two groups of four which make eight, here they have to divide first, they have to divide the balls like make the circles nga you are adding there sweets to each learner and multiplying; you can make some story around this so that learners can picture more in numbers, even there’s sharing and also adding, addition is also in part here and multiplication is also in there; i would prefer to go with this one so that they can group it, group, group, group. while these teachers all recognise ‘grouping’ of some form in the task, the illustration elicits an ambiguity with respect to whether this ‘grouping’ is about ‘equal sharing’ or ‘repeated addition’. choosing the smaller number range some teachers chose task 1 as the first task primarily on the basis of the smaller number used for multiplication in task 1. in both tasks, of course, they are single digit numbers. teacher counting in 2s comes before counting in 3s or 4s zim i start at the small number first, then the numbers become bigger; you will start at multiplying two and then later on you will multiply three and then later on by four, because you start at the familiar first. eim will use the first one first, because it is easier for the child to see the picture together with the sum; child can count much easier in 2s. child has been counting much longer in 2s. gar i will obviously start with multiplication of 2, then three and multiplication of four comes later. ste multiplication of two, i will do this first, because i teach them multiplication of two before i teach them multiplication of three and four. 43 selecting and sequencing mathematics tasks: seeking mathematical knowledge for teaching jaamia galant in basing their choice simply on the smaller number used in the task, these teachers do not really engage with the structure or cognitive demands of either task. so, for example, if the number range for task 1 had been 8, these teachers might have selected task 2 as the first task instead, because it has a smaller number range; yet the structure and cognitive demands of task 1 would have been simpler than those of task 2. making task 1 concrete earlier i showed that some of those teachers, who chose task 2 first, motivated their choice by describing task 2 as more ‘concrete’ and ‘contextual’ than task 1. yet several teachers, who chose task 1 as the first task, similarly argued that task 1 is more ‘concrete’ and ‘contextual’ or rather, can be made more concrete and contextual. teacher how to make task 1 concrete? ske here is sweets it is also addition, i think for some of them it is easier to do addition, instead if i don’t have sweets i can use beans to show them or demonstrate for them. dam i will do the first task first, children can use body parts, it is easier to count; it can be done practically and can be integrated with doubling. tho first do repeated addition, must be packed out concretely in groups, children must learn to count in twos. sma i would teach this one first, because they use counters, they’re familiar with counters in school; they must pack it out; you can’t just pack it out, you maybe say there’s four girls, how many eyes, ok? now pack out the four girls and then you do the eyes, so it’s two eyes for the girls, two, two, two, so let’s count. even though this is, in fact, a written task given in a workbook, these teachers conceive of task 1 only as something to be done ‘with the help of counters’ or ‘beans’ or ‘body parts’, thereby making it a more ‘concrete’ activity for learners than task 2. the use of pots in task 2 appears to mitigate against teachers conceiving how ‘counters’ or ‘beans’ may be used for task 2. these teachers’ responses again suggest a ‘fetishizing’ of the concrete. making connections between ‘equal groups’, ‘repeated addition’ and ‘multiplication’ surprisingly, in their descriptions of task 1, only seven teachers out of the 46 make explicit reference to ‘repeated addition that leads to multiplication’ or ‘multiplication as a short way of writing repeated addition’, or using ‘multiplication for finding how many equal groups there are’. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 44 teacher repeated addition leading to multiplication fre they must know multiplication is the short method for adding or addition; they must be able to count before they can get to multiplication and then see it’s grouping; here they must still know it is adding but multiplication is the short way to get the answer; pau if you have taught a child to count in 2s then he will tell you immediately four 2s is eight; he will be able to see immediately groups of 2, 4, 6; then you will learn to double, then i will say two times table; nti this one is simpler because you can add two plus two plus two plus two, it’s like four times two; she can easily see four times two is the same like two plus two plus two plus two. kal so multiplication is a short cut for addition; for instance, you say two plus two plus two plus two is eight where you can just say two times four is eight; in these descriptions, the teachers display some recognition of the ‘structure’ and learning objective of task 1, i.e. that ‘repeated addition leads to multiplication’ or ‘multiplication as a short way of writing repeated addition’. the remaining 39 teachers merely mention that the task involves ‘addition and multiplication’ or ‘grouping, addition and multiplication’, without being explicit about why they are being done together in one task. making connections between ‘arrays’ and ‘multiplication’ some of the teachers show some recognition of the arrangement of the pots in an array, i.e. equal rows of objects arranged in rows and columns, and make some connection between this arrangement and multiplication. teacher multiply equal rows? pie this multiplication is actually very confusing; there are three rows, there are seven groups in each row, isn’t it something like that? i plant three rows of onions, in each row there are seven onions, how many are there? it’s a multiplication sum, there are three rows, there are seven in each row; this is multiplication and act 1 is grouping. rem count how many pots in this row, repeated addition, how many times do you see three, then you do the addition sum first that which you see every time, then you multiply the number let’s say the three with the number of pots there are in a row. ste child can count how many pots in the rows, how many rows are there and how many threes in a row, so this also a multiplication sum, and both are multiplication and addition. dup in the second activity, the child would have to count the number of pots and then times by three, they would have to know that they have to do a times sum in order to know how many legs are in the room 45 selecting and sequencing mathematics tasks: seeking mathematical knowledge for teaching jaamia galant even these few teachers weakly state the connection between the array and multiplication, and only teacher pie explicitly mentions the numerical relationship in the array, i.e. 3 rows and 7 pots in a row. the majority of these teachers recognise the arrangement of rows, but few pick up on the idea of ‘equal rows’, and hence repeated addition of equal groups, or multiplying by the number of rows. in other words, there is very little recognition of the representation of ‘arrays’ as a pedagogic resource for teaching multiplication. (mis)recognising arrays teachers expressed at least three forms of misrecognition of arrays. the first form of ‘(mis) recognition’ of the array, shown in task 2, is regarding task 2 as simply a counting activity. teacher more counting? sma here they can use the picture to come to the answer. how many pots in a row? so they count 1-7. then how many legs in a row 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21. how many rows of pots? three rows. how many legs altogether? i am thinking now, ok so it’s just a counting thing. kle this one is almost like a graph; they ask questions about it, but it comes down to the same thing … how many? then you count how many legs in a row, then you count in 3s; this is what we call data handling. dam counting in 3s, it’s more difficult to count uneven numbers. eim if the child sees the picture with pots, he will get scared and not want to do it; we don’t count in sevens. ske they have to count the legs, count the legs how many pots, how many pots altogether. some of these teachers recognise that the counting includes ‘counting in 3s’ for the legs, but few recognise the arrangement as ‘three equal groups of 7’. the second form of ‘(mis)recognition’ of the array is perceiving task 2 as a problem that requires learners to make their own decisions about how to group and count the objects. teacher making your own groups? gab when doing this activity, the child must discover on his own how much and what he must add; it is like a comprehension, it is more difficult to get; with this activity you can integrate mathematics and literacy. hen the second one you must use more your imagination; you must demarcate the pots on your own or group them to do your multiplication. mbet this one, the bottom one, you choose yourself how to do it [grouping]. nqo here [pots] she has to make the groups herself; she has to make the groups then count them. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 46 in other words, these teachers do not recognise the array as already an arrangement of equal groups. the third form of (mis)recognition of arrays is similar to what teacher gab describes above, namely perceiving task 2 as primarily a ‘comprehension’ exercise that requires reading and interpretation from learners. teacher a reading exercise? jon it is very complicated for grade 3; it’s about reasoning and thinking. the second task must be guessed, because i am not sure how they will work it out. mbe this one it’s a wording, because if you say you ask how many pots in a row, maybe a child can’t even read, so how is she or he going to answer the question. nti this one will take a long time to explain, you have to have enough time, it’s a long method. mgw you see it’s word sums, because you have to read first, there’s lots of reading in here. in these responses, there is again very little recognition of what the learning objective might be of the ‘reading and interpretation’ within the task. it is interesting to note that these teachers view only task 2 as a task that requires reasoning and thinking, and task 1 as merely an exercise in grouping and multiplication. reflections and conclusion the responses from teachers to how they would select and sequence two tasks in these interviews highlights weaknesses in teachers’ subject-matter knowledge, their pedagogic content knowledge and curricular knowledge that are brought to bear upon them when making decisions about what to teach and how. in deciding on the sequencing of the two tasks, several teachers demonstrate an obsession with the ‘concrete’ in mathematics and ‘physical representations’ that ‘show’ the mathematics to be done. this basis for selection would appear to be based on teachers’ knowledge of how children learn mathematics, i.e. that ‘concrete’ learning comes before ‘abstract’ learning. the teachers’ obsession with the ‘concrete’ leads to little recognition or engagement with the structure or learning objects of the tasks, i.e. teachers’ recognition of tasks as a series of questions that are sequenced in a way that provides opportunities for learners to see patterns and reason logically. the analysis suggests that of the two components of pedagogic content knowledge identified in ball et al.’s (2008) model, namely knowledge of content and students (kcs) and knowledge of content and teaching (kct), kcs predominates at the expense of kct. several teachers also show a lack of engagement with, or understanding of progression and development of mathematical concepts and processes, in this instance, multiplication. the analysis suggests, again following ball et al.’s 47 selecting and sequencing mathematics tasks: seeking mathematical knowledge for teaching jaamia galant (2008) model, that teachers display weak ‘specialized content knowledge’ and weak ‘mathematical knowledge at the horizons’. only some of the teachers make mathematical connections across different ‘numeracy topics’, for example in this instance, between counting, repeated addition, and multiplication, and show an awareness of how one develops the other. in addition, the teachers appear to lack exposure to a range of cognitive and pedagogic resources and strategies to teach the same mathematical concept or ‘topic’, in this instance, multiplication. this suggests both weak pedagogic content knowledge and weak curricular knowledge. while the analysis in this article examined all 46 grade 3 teachers across the sample schools, the design of the spade project opens up the possibility to investigate in more detail the relationship between teachers’ subject-matter knowledge, pedagogic content knowledge, curricular knowledge and learner outcomes. this initial analysis also raises critical questions concerning the pedagogic and mathematical explicitness of tasks in the ndbe numeracy workbooks. it raises questions about how teachers select and use the tasks from the workbooks in classrooms without a ‘user guide’ that makes explicit the learning objects of the task, i.e. the intended pedagogic and mathematical outcomes of the tasks. it also raises questions about how teachers are engaging with curriculum documents, in particular, the 512-page-document fp caps, which assumes, or requires that teachers read clarification notes and assessment exemplars for each grade per term, in order to get a sense of progression from grade to grade and for explanatory notes on concepts and terms that are introduced in earlier grades and extended in later grades. there are connections between topics in caps, but they are buried in the clarification notes. caps has the correct language, but how explicit this is made to teachers is questionable. the analysis further suggests that careful consideration must be given to the construction of mathematical tasks in grade 3, and probably the foundation phase, to ensure that the mathematical purpose and learning objectives of the tasks are explicit, and that ‘contextual noise’ is not introduced that distracts from the pedagogic and mathematical intent of the tasks. furthermore, in engaging with both curriculum policy documents and teaching materials, teachers must be made aware of honing both their subject-matter knowledge and pedagogic content knowledge. this includes their ‘specialized mathematical content knowledge’, ‘knowledge at the mathematical horizon’, ‘knowledge of content and students’, ‘knowledge of content and teaching’, and ‘knowledge of curriculum’. references adler j & davis z 2006. opening another black box: researching mathematics for teaching in mathematics teacher education. journal for research in mathematics education, 37(4): 270-296. askew m, venkat h & mathews c 2012. coherence and consistency in south african primary mathematics lessons. philosophy of mathematics education (pme) 36:1-8. ball d, bass h & hill h 2005. knowing mathematics for teaching: who knows perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 48 mathematics well enough to teach third grade, and how can we decide? american educator, 29(1): 14-46. ball d, thames m & phelps g 2008. content knowledge for teaching: what makes it special? journal of teacher education, 59(5): 389-407. barmby p, harries t, higgins s & suggate j 2009. the array representation and primary children’s understanding and reasoning in multiplication. educational studies in mathematics, 70(3): 217-241. brodie k 2004. re-thinking teachers’ mathematical knowledge: a focus on thinking practices. perspectives in education, 22(1): 65-80. businskas a 2008. conversations about connections: how secondary mathematics teachers conceptualise and contend with mathematical connections. unpublished doctoral dissertation. simon fraser university, burnaby, canada. available fromhttp://ir.lib.sfu.ca/handle/1892/10579. goulding m, rowland t & barbar p 2002. does it matter? primary teacher trainers’ subject knowledge in mathematics. british educational research journal, 28(5): 689-704. hodgson t 1995. connections as problem-solving tools. in pa house & af coxford (eds), connecting mathematics across the curriculum (pp. 13-21). reston, vi: national council of teachers of mathematics. ma l 1999. knowing and teaching elementary mathematics: teachers’ understanding of fundamental mathematics in china and the united states. nj lawrence erlbaum. marks r 1992. pedagogic content knowledge: from a mathematics case to a modified conception. journal of teacher education, 4(3): 3-11. mhlolo m, venkat h & schäfer m 2012. the nature and quality of the mathematical connections teachers make. pythagoras, 33(1), art.#22, pages. http://dx.doi. org/10.4102/ pythagoras.v33i1.22 petrou m & goulding m 2011. conceptualising teachers’ mathematical knowledge in teaching. in t rowland & k ruthven (eds), mathematical knowledge for teaching (pp. 9-25). london: springer. rowland t & ruthven k 2011. mathematical knowledge for teaching. london: springer. taylor n & vinjevold p 1999. getting learning right. report of the president’s education initiative research project. johannesburg: joint education trust. shulman l 1987. knowledge and teaching: foundations of new reforms. harvard educational review, 57: 1-22. stylianou d 2010. teachers’ conceptions of representation in middle school mathematics. journal of mathematics teacher education, 13: 325-343. 3 research article 2023 41(1): 3-17 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6292 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) beckoning a new postcovid higher education engagement agenda: lessons from nelson mandela university covid-19 responses abstract the covid-19 pandemic set higher education institutions on an unprecedented path requiring of them to identify alternative strategies and implement various initiatives to sustain their academic projects. with the widespread devastation of the pandemic, the purpose of universities within their communities were again in the spotlight. a sensibility of the intertwinement between the local university and the community was also reemphasised in the pandemic’s wake, with the recognition of covid-19 as a crosscutting problem. this paper examines nelson mandela university’s engagement initiatives during the pandemic to underline its fundamental strategic undertakings within its positioning as a “transformative, responsive university in service of society”. through an interpretive paradigm, the paper presents lessons from a qualitative, explorative case study inquiry of nelson mandela university reports during the pandemic. the findings indicate that the initiatives deployed by the university during the pandemic strengthened its overall community engagement strategy. keywords: covid-19, engagement, hubs of convergence, nelson mandela university 1. 1. introduction the covid-19 pandemic set higher education institutions in south africa, including nelson mandela university,1 on an unprecedented path, requiring of them to identify and implement various initiatives to sustain the academic project (landa, zhou & marongwe, 2021; kamvalethu & mzileni, 2021). these initiatives included leading convergences with communities through broad-based health, finance, food systems, and community recovery initiatives (kamvalethu & mzileni, 2021; muthwa, 2021a; schalkwyk, 2020). this, all while institutions grappled with the ‘where to now?’ 1 nelson mandela university is located in the coastal city of gqeberha in south africa. it is a comprehensive university that offers both theoretical and vocational-orientated qualifications. author: dr joseph besigye bazirake1, 2 dr hashali hamukuaya1 dr tinyiko chauke3 anele mngadi1 amy de raedt1 affiliation: 1nelson mandela university, south africa 2ubuntu higher education research centre, uganda 3university of south africa, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i1.6292 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(1): 3-17 published: 31 march 2023 received: 18 may 2022 accepted: 13 march 2023 research article https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6292 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1720-999x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6672-6803 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4215-1064 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7339-7748 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1850-8000 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6292 42023 41(1): 4-17 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6292 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) question after the #feesmustfall movement and while considering the broader socioeconomic, politico-cultural and environmental south african challenges (black, speen & vally, 2020; habib, 2019; muthwa, 2018; jansen, 2017). within this context, in auguring the purpose and future of higher education, these ‘emergencies’ do not bode well for higher education scholars and practitioners, for whom the question of ‘what are universities for?’ remains elusive. (ohmer et al., 2022; benhayoun, 2020; hedding et al., 2020; phakeng, kupe & habib, 2020; schalkwyk, 2020; witze, 2020; muthwa, 2018). this paper conceptualises nelson mandela university’s positioning as a “transformative, responsive university; in service of society” (hoc, 2022: 6). the paper follows with a background to the university’s commitment to community engagement through the creation of the hubs of convergence under the newly constituted engagement and transformation portfolio (etp) in 2019. the paper further reflects on the interruption of the university’s ‘physical’ engagement strategy owing to the covid-19 pandemic and how new governing and intervention structures emerged to keep the university’s engagement strategy on track. the paper then discusses the lessons learned from this process. this paper’s qualitative methodology supported reflections on nelson mandela university’s covid-19 responses. this sense-making approach, following from yin (1984), aimed at responding to the question of how nelson mandela university’s community engagement relations were strengthened through the pandemic. for this purpose, the reports published by the university, accessible from its website, and the contents on its social media accounts were reviewed together with the reflections of the authors’ professional experiences within the university.2 2. literature review 2.1 community engagement at south african universities higher education institutions have a community engagement mandate derived from national policy documents that set broad national objectives for higher education. these policy documents include the green paper on higher education and transformation (dhe, 1996), the white paper for the transformation of higher education (doe, 1997), the national plan for higher education (doe, 2001), the founding document of the higher education quality committee (2001), the higher education quality committee criteria for institutional audits (2004), the higher education quality committee criteria for programme accreditation (2004),and the white paper for post-school education and training (doe, 2013). the white paper reconceptualises community engagement not as a discrete entity, but as a core concept that must be rooted within the structures of the university when facilitating teaching and research activities. it further notes that while community engagement is a core mission of institutions and is part of the work of universities in south africa, it remains fragmented and not linked to the universities’ academic projects (wood, 2016). an observation is that there has been a paucity of policy developments on community engagement since 2013. we contend that this privation in policy developments aggregates the non-linkage of community engagements by institutions to measurable outcomes. this results in multiple approaches to community engagement by different universities and by different entities within each university. the fragmented approach to community engagement was acknowledged at nelson mandela university, which is explained later in the article. 2 the authors were employed at nelson mandela university during the covid-19 pandemic. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6292 52023 41(1): 5-17 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6292 bazirake, et al. beckoning a new post-covid higher education engagement agenda 2.2 situating the community engagement dilemma for universities in south africa despite the national call for community engagement within the above-mentioned policy documents, the department of higher education and training does not clarify its meaning and how it is to be achieved (van schalkwyk & de lange, 2015). the existing scholarship does not do any better (albertyn & daniels, 2009; maistry, 2012). hall (2010) suggests that this could be due to the term ‘community’ having multiple meanings, depending on the context. as such, starke, shenouda and smith-howell (2017) correctly point out that the development of community engagement in south africa is hampered by the absence of a precise definition and frameworks that provide a universally accepted standard to measure its impact. from our observations, even though it is apparent that higher education institutions are mandated to engage communities, the government does not provide funding to implement community engagement activities (paphitis & kelland, 2016; van schalkwyk & de lange, 2015; erasmus, 2014). therefore, academics have often led community engagement initiatives with limited institutional and financial support. this suggests that there is a need for community engagement to be rigorously interwoven into the core business of teaching and learning and, more importantly, integrated into the culture of the university (bhagwan, 2020; mtawa, fongwa & wangenge-ouma, 2016; favish, 2010; boyer, 1996). regardless of the challenges, paphitis and kelland (2015) suggest that it is essential to advance a genuine engagement with the local context to contribute to developing a uniquely south african philosophical identity. community engagement denotes interactions with the world outside the academy (sachs & clark, 2017; schuetze, 2010; hall, 2010), in a mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources, within a context of partnership and reciprocity (benhayoun, 2020; kliewer, 2013). we concur with o’meara (2005) that universities must move past the ‘expert model’, as it often hinders constructive university-community engagement and calls on faculty to concentrate more on ‘outreach’ and for scholars to go beyond service. this is because the participation of community members in their advancement is critical in sustainable social change as they are ‘experts’ in their lives and what works in their environments (francis et al., 2010; bringle & hatcher, 2002). within the above context, we propose that community engagement should encompass meaningful partnerships between higher education institutions and its community considering shared interests and geographical locations for the mutual exchange of knowledge and resources. this is similar to hall’s (2010) description that community engagement should involve a shared vision among stakeholders such as local, provincial, and national government, ngos, higher education institutions, businesses, and donors, including the local community the university aims to serve. 2.3 covid-19 and emergency community engagement responses covid-19 has been described as a novel, invisible enemy (shaw, 2020). the first reported case in south africa occurred on 5 march 2020 (national institute for communicable diseases, 2020). since then, over four million people have tested positive, with over 100 000 deaths (department of health, 2022). during these trialling times, various initiatives were instituted by the government to curb the effects of the virus. owing to the high infection rate in the country, the government implemented a national lockdown, hampering communities and institutions already experiencing resource constraints. the consequences of the pandemic and the initiatives to ‘defeat’ the invisible enemy radically impeded societies’ ways of life, https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6292 62023 41(1): 6-17 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6292 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) as individuals and institutions had to change their modus operandi. while some universities in south africa initially suspended all academic programs when the government declared a national state of disaster in march 2020, all campuses were eventually closed to students and staff when the declaration of a national lockdown took effect on 27 march 2020 (van schalkwyk, 2021; ccc, 2021). the lockdowns created new impeding ‘emergencies’ with domino repercussions while exacerbating existing social ills and inequalities for universities worldwide (lópez-valenciano et al., 2021; martinez-juarez et al., 2020). the panic that resulted from the pandemic compelled many institutions to focus primarily on identifying and implementing strategies to sustain their academic projects through remote learning, working and finding alternative ways for student support (du plessis et al., 2022). there was an increased focus on pedagogical interventions through concerted efforts towards digitalisation and e-learning to continue with academic programs (motala & menon, 2020). there is little evidence of community engagement in the context of covid-19 due to universities’ inward-looking strategy centred on redeeming their academic projects. in some cases, however, community engagement surfaced within student programs that would initially have required completing a community project, providing an example of how community engagement can be integrated into the academic project (jordaan & mennega, 2021). the following sections discuss the metamorphosis of nelson mandela university’s structures to respond to covid-19 within its positioning as a transformative responsive university. 3. findings and discussion 3.1 nurturing a transformative, responsive university nelson mandela university’s vice-chancellor, professor sibongile muthwa, acknowledged the impeding factors of universities’ engagement activities with the community similar to those provided for in the above literature. at her inaugural address, professor muthwa proposed the establishment of a hubs of convergence (hoc) (keet & muthwa, 2021; muthwa, 2018). the hoc was established to create a dedicated ‘physical’ space promoting meaningful community engagement linked with academic, teaching, research, and engagement projects. therefore, the hoc was to act as the platform and programme/project that ensure active, meaningful engagement with communities, thus, mining new knowledge and practices to understand the complexities of transformative engagement and what it means to be a transformative responsive university. the place of the hoc was affirmed by creating the office of a deputy vice-chancellor for engagement and transformation portfolio (etp) in 2019. this office was tasked with transforming the university’s institutional culture and, among other things, supporting community engagement for its commitment to actualising its vision to become a transformative responsive university inclusive of the community (sathorar & geduld, 2021). the etp interweaves community engagement within the core activities of nelson mandela university, which aligns with bhagwan’s (2020) approach to strengthening community engagement by rigorously interweaving it into the university’s culture and its core business activities. muthwa (2021b) suggests that the transformative, responsive university would need to emerge at the interface of engagement and transformation and would entail undoing the university as we know it. as such, she suggests that an engaged, transformative university would be https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6292 72023 41(1): 7-17 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6292 bazirake, et al. beckoning a new post-covid higher education engagement agenda driven by the pursuit of social justice and the deliberate receptiveness and openness to the education contributions offered by community knowledge. muthwa (2021a) further argues that an engaged university seeks to encourage and liberate human agency, and as the covid-19 pandemic demonstrated, the broader societal challenges cannot be solved without the ability to co-create, cooperate and collaborate. 3.2 the hubs of convergence in the pre-covid-19 period prior to the pandemic, the hoc initiative endeavoured to co-create ‘physical spaces’ where ‘the university’ met ‘the community’ to engage on common platforms to find solutions to problems that affect its communities by leveraging the university’s assets as a transformative and responsive institution (muthwa, 2018; keet & muthwa, 2021). the ‘physical space’ idea was launched as the indibano ngezimvo in may 2019 at the missionvale community hall in gqeberha as the first meeting between the university and the community. the hoc embarked on its community engagement journey with various iterative engagement initiatives with internal and external stakeholders to assess the community needs and expectations of the university (hoc, 2022). this initiative helped to form and solidify a partnership with the community built on trust. the precariousness of the approach of the hoc as an ongoing discovery and reimagining of itself is worth noting. the exploratory work done in 2019 resulted in the conceptualisation of the beehive model 1.0, which exhibited how the hoc could find expression in the nelson mandela university vision 2030 strategic framework. the beehive model 1.0 was fluid, with no clear structure. it then organically evolved as a transformative process to create a programmatic approach to community engagement. figure 1: the hoc beehive model 1.0 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6292 82023 41(1): 8-17 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6292 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) the intention behind the ‘convergences’ described in the beehive model 1.0 above was to draw internal and external stakeholders together in strengthening community engagement on grander issues that affect society, such as poverty, hunger and deprivation. the assemblage of these stakeholders recognised “the voice and agency of all those involved in the engagement, which forms a vital element of a humanising pedagogy” (hoc, 2022: 13). muthwa’s (2021a; 2021b) aspirations for modes of engagement through the creation of physical hubs of convergence are consistent with hall’s (2010) description of community engagement within the south african context that seeks a shared vision among stakeholders, including the local, provincial, and national government, ngos, higher education institutions, businesses, and donors as well as the local community. nelson mandela university’s earlier community engagement initiatives through the hoc underpinned the core values of engagement, including social justice, integrity, inclusivity, trust, respect, and care, as bhagwan (2017) identified. similarly, the university’s aspirations for the community and various stakeholders that focused on change, mutuality and reciprocity, co-designing solutions with communities, co-creation of knowledge and understanding indigenous knowledge were also in line with bhagwan’s classification of community engagement qualities. steadfast to say that the aim of the hoc “is to strengthen the positioning of engagement and transformation as a strategic priority for the university to respond to the grand challenges of society by complementing, facilitating, supporting, and developing engagement-related work, research and learning and teaching” (hoc, 2022: 3). therefore, the approach adopted by nelson mandela university demonstrates progressiveness regarding strengthening community engagement initiatives by higher education institutions. it counters the general perception that institutions only want to use communities in the guise of community engagement to mine knowledge which seldom benefits these communities. this perversive trend is noted by sathorar and geduld (2021), who argue that higher education institutions have traditionally positioned themselves in engagement projects as the only partner with the knowledge to offer, and with the community as a receiving partner with very little input, as o’meara (2005) also argues. the hoc provides space for “inter and transdisciplinary collaboration, enabling the university to give effect to its vision, mission, and strategic priorities and re-create itself in service of society” (hoc, 2022: 5). considering our observation that there is no clear national or institutional framework for community engagement, it is our understanding that nelson mandela university followed an experimental approach to converge the university and various communities. while this was a progressive initiation of a community–university convergence through the hoc, it could not have been predicted that the idea of ‘physical spaces’ for engagement would be soon interrupted by covid-19’s physical isolation requirements. in this context, the vision of the hoc and ‘transformative [community] engagement’ were tested before it had gained substantial traction. this is discussed in the following section, which introduces covid-19 in the south african context and the new ways that nelson mandela university’s community engagement strategy was transfigured. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6292 92023 41(1): 9-17 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6292 bazirake, et al. beckoning a new post-covid higher education engagement agenda 3.3 covid-19 and redefining community engagement as an emergency response in response to the pandemic, the initial mandate and engagement strategy of the hoc was expanded. the extended mandate included leading and managing the work of the community convergence workstream (ccw) as an institutional response to covid-19 while, at the same time, prioritising research on how the university’s community engagement mandate would be taken forward (etp, 2022). the ccw was established to draw on the expertise of those within the etp to spearhead work in service to society (ccc, 2021). during the nationwide lockdown, nelson mandela university was compelled to reconfigure the concepts of “community” and “engagement” and the modes of its community engagement. as a result, it contextualised engagement according to the urgent needs that required rapid responses at the time. information sourced by the ccw team from local ngos active in the nelson mandela bay metropolitan municipality of the eastern cape identified the need for immediate responses to cater for individuals and groups considered adversely affected by the pandemic and those identified as susceptible to covid-19. these groups mainly included black south africans living in under-resourced areas and women and children in abusive homes. this category also included individuals that reported experiencing food insecurity and a lack of access to clean water to practise handwashing as a preventative measure. the university further set up a convergence fund to allow staff and students to make voluntary monetary contributions to covid-19 response initiatives. the ccw was used to distribute these and externally sourced funds through food parcels and other material relief to the university’s community. by 2022, the fund was being reconceptualised in relation to the university’s broader mandate to serve society through its other projects such as its food systems initiative. additionally, funds that were earmarked for engagement/convergence activities were diverted to support the work of the ccw and hoc (ccc, 2021). to further augment the university’s emergency community responses during the pandemic, the management committee of nelson mandela university established a covid-19 coordinating committee (ccc) on 31 march 2020. the ccc was set up to coordinate community responses from nelson mandela university within the context of requirements for rapid responses in the face of the pandemic. the ccc’s role was to oversee the university’s covid-19 community response to support the government and other local, provincial and national efforts. the ccc sought “to re-position and reimagine engagement in co-creative and socially just ways to make a meaningful contribution to overcoming societal challenges” (ccc, 2021). the establishment of the ccc also demonstrated the university’s effort towards upholding its engagement work to remain on track for its vision 2030. their work was informed by its community needs and the socio-demographics of the eastern cape province and gqeberha. it aimed to direct the university’s interventions to respond to the communities’ socioeconomic realities and limited access to healthcare services. the projects that emerged included tele-counselling, sustainable food systems, food and material relief, archiving and citizen journalism, and anti-gender-based violence training for first responders, as well as drawing together a webinar series and research projects related to covid-19 from the portfolio (ccc, 2021). these projects transitioned into the thematic hubs of the hoc by the ccw. they created spaces where the hoc could participate in “co-constructing programmes in collaboration with communities, centres, and faculties across the university, as well as stakeholders across civil society at large” (hoc, 2022: 14). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6292 102023 41(1): 10-17 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6292 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) the hoc’s expanded mandate was reconfigured in the hoc beehive model 2.0 shown below. figure 2: the hoc beehive model 2.0 within the beehive model 2.0 configurations, the ccw played an essential role in securing funds developing project proposals, deepening conceptual design, and exposing projects to other organisations. meetings and workshops were conducted to report to the thematic hubs (dark blue areas) through the ccc (hoc, 2022). the sustainability of these efforts is demonstrated by ongoing relationships arising from the projects initiated during the pandemic. for example, as of 2022, the mandela university food systems programme had become a fully-fledged partnership with the nelson mandela foundation that focused on upscaling and coordinating interventions on food and food systems-related issues with stakeholder communities. the engagement work demonstrates how the university’s key strategic focus areas (vision 2030) can interface with the hoc in service of society (nmu, 2021; hoc, 2022). the approach adopted by nelson mandela university during the pandemic is consistent with schuetze’s (2010) understanding of community engagement as a partnership with national and global players. the ccc, in the wake of the pandemic, brought together various communities of experts in academia, local ngos, the local government, local businesses and the eastern cape department of health. this community shared a common goal and interest in mitigating the devastating effects of covid-19 in their province. the university entered into various memoranda of agreement with multiple stakeholders, including the office of the premier of the eastern cape, “the private sector, through the business chamber; and civil society, through community organisations, npos and ngos, and civil society forums” (ccc, 2021: 1). the rationale of the agreements was to ensure a well-coordinated collaboration to https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6292 112023 41(1): 11-17 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6292 bazirake, et al. beckoning a new post-covid higher education engagement agenda combat the pandemic. to implement the agreements, teams were constituted that included the top management of the university and the deputy vice-chancellor for engagement and transformation as the chairperson of ccc. these teams were supported by relevant university associates and members of provincial government structures (ccc, 2021). however, the emergency nature of covid-19 and the response it required rendered it difficult for the university-community partnerships to proceed as had been envisioned toward sustainable and long-term outcomes. the disadvantaged communities were especially unable to partner with the university on their terms, owing to the limitations of the pandemic. the hoc’s aspiration of reciprocity in their partnerships with the local communities in the nelson mandela bay metropolitan area through physical hubs was intended to challenge the notion that engaging with communities only occurs with disadvantaged groups where the university is the dominant partner, with the perception of communities being the beneficiaries. however, covid-19 forced the university, through the hoc, to reconfigure its vision to serve the communities’ urgent needs at the cost of mutual knowledge exchange. 4. lessons from nelson mandela university’s covid-19 responses nelson mandela university’s continuous commitment to community engagement and openness to learning and readjustment, even in times of crisis, attests to its effort to stay connected with its communities even in emergencies. the shift between hoc beehive models 1.0 and 2.0 demonstrates that while the structures in place may not be perfect, they need to be capable of adjusting in response to the community’s needs. key to the university’s engagement strategy during the pandemic can be interpreted as an attempt towards a holistic engagement approach with a view of serving the community. this was ensured by creating structures comprising community members, including experts, members outside of academia, and members from various faculties, fields and disciplines. we observe that the university followed a transdisciplinary approach, strengthening its overall community engagement initiatives. the questions posed by the covid-19 period point to the absence of appropriate models of community engagement at institutions of higher learning to support mutually beneficial and inclusive university-community partnerships. this predicament is compounded by the absence of a clear definition of community engagement, what it entails and its measurables. therefore, we propose that institutions explore defining community engagement within their respective contexts, considering factors such as location and what it should entail. further, creating key performance indicators to ensure accountability and enhance transparency would streamline community engagement activities. in doing so, organisational structures can be developed to strengthen meaningful community engagement. herein lie the lessons from nelson mandela university’s approach through reconfiguring the hoc and creating ad hoc structures such as the ccw and ccc to facilitate its covid-19 emergency community responses. the ccc played an essential role in providing, inter alia, effective strategic leadership to implement nelson mandela university’s community responses during the pandemic. we observe that relations between the university and various stakeholders post-covid-19 continue to be strengthened. for example, the provincial government human settlements, water and sanitation sectors sought to find synergies in post-covid-19 sector priorities where the government could explore utilising the university’s capabilities. a workstream group was created to use a hybrid of short-term interventions in https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6292 122023 41(1): 12-17 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6292 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) vulnerable communities alongside a post-covid-19 innovative strategy in informal settlements to upgrade infrastructure and sustainably provide clean water and sanitation services in the eastern cape province. community engagement strategies can thus be implemented more effectively when a university’s top management is involved at the core of planning and implementation, as learned from the nelson mandela university case. nelson mandela university was proactive during the pandemic in coordinating support for its community alongside its vision as a transformative, responsive university. the university emerged as a focal point for community support through coordinating resources from community entities and university contributions for a more holistic support framework. noting that the university’s expanded understanding of the community during the pandemic extended to ngos, cbos, hospitals and schools and private businesses, it was possible to coordinate support more effectively. through partnerships with sasol, for instance, it was possible to produce and distribute hand sanitiser throughout the community to minimise the spread of covid-19 infections and improve community health and safety. the positionality of the university during the pandemic demonstrates the essential role that higher education institutions can occupy as rallying points for communities, not only during emergencies. in addition, the already existing community partnerships that the university had before the pandemic provided entry points for its emergency covid-19 response. for instance, the establishment of the mandela university food systems programme aligned with the university’s vision regarding food security, climate change, and community service. with a vision that explicitly focuses on the university’s community, it can be seen that the university was better prepared to respond to the pandemic without leaving the community behind. this demonstrates the need for community engagement to be reflected in the institutional cultures of universities and within their strategic goals to remain a priority even in emergencies. nelson mandela university leveraged the skills available within its space by providing free mental health support for those infected and affected by covid-19 through its school of behavioural and lifestyle sciences. in addition, bachelor and master of psychology students were deployed to offer online counselling for distressed members of the gqeberha communities. similarly, social work students were placed at rural area schools to counsel learners. with the community access that the university enjoyed during the pandemic, it conducted a needs analysis to determine the mental health interventions required by the community. this resulted in numerous workshops on equipping the community with the skills to cope with the pandemic. through these actions, the university demonstrated its strength in identifying with the community, despite the extra hardships and internal challenges that the pandemic posed. the university, therefore, prepared the ground for mutually beneficial relationships built on trust and reliability during the pandemic that could further strengthen its community engagement initiatives in the post-pandemic period. community funding is an effective way of supporting innovation within the university. nelson mandela university’s engineering team received funding from the mandela bay development agency to produce face shields, design and develop incubation units, and scale production. these were distributed through the hoc to the community to create a loop of community funding utilised by the university to produce community consumables. innovativeness directed towards the community was also fostered through the university’s centre for community technologies and partnership with industry players. the university developed technological solutions to assist with accurate records and reliable data for emergency requirements, such https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6292 132023 41(1): 13-17 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6292 bazirake, et al. beckoning a new post-covid higher education engagement agenda as contact tracing and information monitoring. the centre further played a crucial role in developing and rolling out a digitised screening tool, carebuddy, for use at 5 142 schools in the eastern cape province. the data for 1.8 million learners were uploaded into the database, and all learners were screened daily using the tool. as such, using community funding to drive innovation and create a cycle of community benefits is a lesson from nelson mandela’s pandemic response. 5. conclusion this paper reflects on nelson mandela university’s response to covid-19 with a focus on community engagement. we have advanced an understanding of community engagement from existing literature to include meaningful, mutually beneficial initiatives. the paper contextualises nelson mandela university within its stated identity as a ‘transformative, responsive university in service of society’, which, in essence, is a university that sees itself as an active community member. therefore, to answer this article’s central question of how nelson mandela university’s community engagement relations were strengthened through the pandemic, we submit 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https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsv068 witze, a. 2020. universities will never be the same after the coronavirus crisis. available at https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01518-y [accessed on 11 march 2023]. yin, r.k. 1984. case study research: design and methods. beverly hills, calif: sage publications. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6292 https://doi.org/10.1093/cdj/bsv068 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01518-y _hlk129758965 perspectives in education 31(3) perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2013 university of the free state 106 opportunities to develop mathematical proficiency in grade 6 mathematics classrooms in kwazulu-natal noor ally & iben maj christiansen in this article, we propose a rubric for assessing the teacher’s provision of opportunities to develop mathematical proficiency in classrooms. the rubric is applied to data from 30 video recordings of mathematics lessons taught in grade 6 in one district of kwazulu-natal. the results suggest that opportunities to develop procedural fluency are common, but generally of a low quality; that opportunities to develop conceptual understanding are present in about half the lessons, but also are not of a high quality; and that overall opportunities to develop mathematical proficiency are limited, because learners are not engaging in adaptive reasoning, hardly have any opportunities to develop a productive disposition, and seldom are given the opportunity to engage in problem-solving which could develop their strategic competence. keywords: mathematical proficiency, opportunities to learn, mathematics teaching, south africa, conceptual understanding, procedural fluency introduction: mathematical proficiency in learning and teaching kilpatrick, swafford & findell (2001: 116) contend that the term mathematical proficiency (mp) was chosen to “capture what we believe is necessary for anyone to learn mathematics successfully”. proficiency in school mathematics was characterised in terms of five strands: • conceptual understanding • procedural fluency • adaptive reasoning • productive disposition • strategic competency noor ally durban university of technology e-mail: noora@dut.ac.za telephone: 031 3732281 iben maj christiansen university of kwazulu-natal e-mail: christianseni@ukzn.ac.za telephone: 033 2606092 107 opportunities to develop mathematical proficiency in grade 6 mathematics classrooms in kwazulu-natal | noor ally and iben maj christiansen the expectation is that a successful mathematics learner is proficient in mathematics if s/he ‘possesses’ the five component strands in such a way that they can be brought to bear on different situations. these strands are interwoven and interdependent. while many teacher educators may regard conceptual understanding as superior and in contrast to procedural fluency (bossé & bahr, 2008), we stress kilpatrick et al.’s point that the strands support rather than limit each other (2001). this particular explication of mp was a result of the national research council of the usa convening a group of experts to review research on effective mathematics learning, in 1999. since then, questions have been asked about how to assess for mp, and the strands of mp have been used as a framework for assessing the impact of teaching approaches (langa & setati, 2007; moodley, 2008; pillay, 2006; samuelsson, 2010; suh, 2007; takahashi, watanabe & yoshida, 2006), or have informed classroom practice (suh, 2007). in south africa, the mp notion has been used to analyse the curriculum (sanni, 2009) and inform initiatives for teachers (government gazette of 14th march 2008). while “designing classroom environments and teaching pedagogies that effectively promote this vision, has proven more elusive” (pape, bell & yetkin, 2003: 180), the five strands of proficiency are not useful descriptors of teaching or instructional situations. if the aforementioned attributes of proficient learners are to be developed over time, classroom teaching needs to be constructed so that each strand is promoted. this is in line with the notion of mathematical knowledge for teaching (mkt) as defined by ball, hill and bass (2005), who regard mkt to be about disciplinary knowledge with a view to assisting learners and students in their development of mp. when kilpatrick and his team wrote about developing proficiency in teaching mathematics (kilpatrick et al., 2001: chapter 10), they did not engage indicators of teaching for each strand of mp. instead, they discussed the knowledge base for teaching mathematics including three types, namely mathematical knowledge, knowledge of students, and knowledge of instructional practice. (this is in line with the typologies for mathematics teacher knowledge proposed by others. see, for instance, adler & patahuddin, 2012; ball, thames & phelps, 2008; christiansen & bertram, 2012; krauss & blum, 2012; shulman, 1986). kilpatrick et al. (2001: 380) then went on to list five components of proficient teaching of mathematics, which are, however, not linked directly to the strands of mp. thus, they do not serve as indicators of the extent to which teaching promotes mp. some years later, schoenfeld and kilpatrick (2008: 322) produced a different list of requirements for proficiency in teaching mathematics, but also not directly linked to the strands of mp. it included general competencies such as crafting and managing learning environments, developing classroom norms, and supporting classroom discourse as part of “teaching for understanding”, and so on. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 108 they also mentioned that proficient mathematics teachers have both deep and broad knowledge of school mathematics, including representations (cf. suh, 2007) and conceptual connections (cf. hattie, 2003). a recent case study in south africa took up the latter, finding that high school teachers displayed faulty or superficial mathematical connections (mhlolo, venkat & schäfer, 2012). the notion of deep and broad knowledge has several similarities with the notion of profound understanding of fundamental mathematics proposed by ma (1999). however, this notion was not explicitly connected to the specifics of the strands of mathematical proficiency. a recent large-scale study in southern africa (to which the study reported on, in this article, was linked) used a range of different frameworks to code the teaching, under the notion of strands of mathematical proficiency (carnoy, chisholm & chilisa, 2012). however, video recordings of lessons were coded for the presence of the strands of mathematical proficiency without making an analytical or methodological distinction between the strands as learning outcomes and the opportunities to develop these strands as reflected in the instructional situation. it is within this frame of reference that we propose the notion of opportunity to develop mathematical proficiency (otdmp) as ‘the existence of an opportunity to develop, promote or advance mathematical proficiency via one or a combination of its component strands’. the notion of otdmp is composed of five categories matching the five strands of mp on a one-to-one basis: opportunity to develop conceptual understanding (otdcu), opportunity to develop procedural fluency (otdpf), opportunity to develop productive disposition (otdpd), opportunity to develop adaptive reasoning (otdar), and opportunity to develop strategic competence (otdsc). the presence of an opportunity does not imply that the opportunity is realised in learning; it simply means that there is the prospect of learners engaging mathematically in such a way that one or more strands of mathematical proficiency could be furthered. obviously, there may be circumstances or learner attributes which act as barriers to learning (christiansen & aungamuthu, 2012; hattie, 2003; moloi & strauss, 2005; sacmeq ii, 2010; spaull, 2011; van der berg et al., 2011). yet making a distinction between mp and otdmp allows us to distinguish between the opportunities presented through teaching and the extent to which such opportunities are realised in learning, thus expanding our possibilities of researching links between teaching and learning. proposing the otdmp notion is based on the assumption that opportunities to develop the strands must be present in a mathematics lesson for learners to become mathematically proficient. while the presence of instructional materials and so on may contribute to opportunities to develop mathematical proficiency, teaching is still the most important in-school factor in promoting learning (hattie, 2003). the five strands of otdmp provide a conceptual language in which to discuss learning and teaching, and as such they form an internal language of description, 109 opportunities to develop mathematical proficiency in grade 6 mathematics classrooms in kwazulu-natal | noor ally and iben maj christiansen in bernstein’s sense (bernstein, 1996). however, in order to utilise this in describing classroom practices, an external language of description – or analytical framework – must be created. we postulate three necessary conditions of otdmp that inform such a framework: the opportunities must exist, occur regularly, and occur with a degree of strength – of course, influenced by the learners’ personal attributes, circumstances and their current understanding of the topic being dealt with (cf. christiansen & aungamuthu, 2012). five strands of otdmp opportunity to develop conceptual understanding according to kilpatrick et al. (2001: 116), conceptual understanding refers to the “grasp of mathematical ideas, its comprehension of mathematical concepts, operations and relations”. without it, many of the other strands are significantly weakened – reasoning relies on understanding (gilbert, 2008), and some studies indicate that the procedurally focused instruction without conceptual support plays a role in the development of mathematics anxiety (rayner, pitsolantis & osana, 2009: 63). zandieh (1997: 105), referring to thompson (1994), makes the point that it is our subjective sense of invariance that makes us perceive one underlying structure across a number of contexts, which we then perceive to be representations of that structure. thus, conceptual understanding is intrinsically linked to representations (graphical, tabular, algebraic, narrative, manipulative, and so on). lesh, post and behr (1987) even equated understanding to the ability to recognise, manipulate and translate an idea/concept in and between different representations, thus also stressing the point of connections. in his general discussion, hugo (2013) emphasises that disciplinary knowledge means both understanding the ideas and how they connect. this is reflected in discussions about teaching for understanding. ‘using connected representations’ is one of three characteristics of excellent teachers, if the work of hattie and colleagues is to be accepted (hattie, 2003). being able to make links between concepts and representations is a key skill of competent teachers (ma, 1999). suh (2007) stressed the use of representations to foster conceptual understanding, and mhlolo et al. (2012) drew on barmby, harries, higgins and suggate’s (2009) perspectives to characterise deep understanding of mathematics through connections between mathematical ideas, representations, and reasoning between mathematical ideas. the latter is supported by the finding from the usa that conceptual understanding develops when connected pieces of ideas are merged by reasoning and justifying (richland, zur & holyoak, 2007). (see the discussion of otdar.) the authors of a well-known professional development book (stein, smith, henningsen & silver, 2000) also use the notion of connections to distinguish between procedures taught with or without conceptual understanding. thus, we are in good company when focusing on connections as indicators of opportunities to develop conceptual understanding. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 110 opportunity to develop productive disposition productive disposition refers to the “habitual inclination to see mathematics as sensible, useful, and worthwhile, coupled with a belief in diligence and one’s own efficacy” (kilpatrick et al., 2001: 131). thus, one aspect refers to the perceptions of the discipline, and one refers to perceptions of self, each of which has additional aspects. all of these aspects have been engaged by siegfried (2012), who also presents a rubric for evaluating the productive disposition of learners. perceiving ‘mathematics as sensible’ could be related to personal sense-making, which some have found increases when engaged in structured inquiry-based learning (see, for instance, smith & klein, 2010). it links to the connectedness of mathematical ideas discussed earlier. in a realistic mathematics education context, middleton, leavy, leader and valdosta (2013: 1) found that “with curriculum designed to emphasize utility and interest, students forged a high degree of motivation”. the issue of ‘usefulness’, referring out of mathematics to its applications, is a complex and loaded one, and requires discussion of the extent to which the applications are mere sugar coating, distractors actually increasing extrinsic cognitive load (artino, 2008), social positioning strategies limiting access to disciplinary knowledge (dowling, 1998), or motivation for learning mathematics. for that reason, our analysis of the empirical data clearly separated out this aspect. without going into detail concerning self-efficacy theories (see, for instance, bobis, anderson, martin & way, 2011), these are concerned with existing levels of anxiety, past performance experiences on similar tasks, experiences of peers’ performance, experiences of fruitful persistence, experiences of learning from difficulties/failures, and suggestions by others on how one may perform (bandura, 1977, in this instance from siegfried, 2012). thus, in the classroom situation it relates to the general atmosphere of the classroom, including encouraging the learning and doing of mathematics (boaler, 2002), conducive socio-mathematical norms (yackel & cobb, 1996), and perseverance or a ‘growth mindset’ (dweck, 2006). in our empirical analysis, we sought signs that the teacher showed sensitivity towards learners’ previous difficulties, encouraged persistence, and accepting mistakes as part of learning. opportunity to develop procedural fluency by ‘procedural fluency’, kilpatrick et al. (2001: 121) referred to the “knowledge of procedures, knowledge of when and how to use them appropriately, and skill in performing them accurately, flexibly and efficiently”. wong and evans (2007: 825), citing rittle-johnson, siegler and alibali (2001), state that “developing students’ procedural knowledge had positive effects on their conceptual understanding, and conceptual understanding was a prerequisite for the students’ ability to generate and select appropriate procedures”. this follows the distinction made between 111 opportunities to develop mathematical proficiency in grade 6 mathematics classrooms in kwazulu-natal | noor ally and iben maj christiansen procedures taught with and without connections (stein et al., 2000). thus, we rated ‘unpacking’ of procedures, which reflects the structure of the discipline, higher than less conceptually founded explanations or demonstration, whether this was done by the teacher – ‘task controlled’ (stigler, gallimore & hiebert, 2000) – or learners were guided to do so – ‘solver controlled’ (stigler, gallimore & hiebert, 2000). fluency in choosing appropriate procedures relies on knowing more than one and in understanding which one to use when and why (ma, 1999), and was used as another indicator. opportunity to develop adaptive reasoning ‘adaptive reasoning’ refers to the “capacity for logical thought, reflection, explanation, and justification” (kilpatrick et al., 2001: 129). “in mathematics, adaptive reasoning is the glue that holds everything together, the lodestar that guides learning” (kilpatrick et al., 2001: 129). the centrality of proof, conjecturing, refuting, reasoning in mathematics learning is widely argued (niss & jensen, 2002; powell, francisco & maher, 2003; stigler & hiebert, 1997; stylianides & stylianides, 2008). however, adaptive reasoning also includes creating and understanding appropriate analogies; intuitive and deductive reasoning based on patterns, analogy and metaphor, and preformal reasoning such as reasoning from representation (blum & kirsch, 1991). thus, we took all instances of justification as indicative of facilitating adaptive reasoning, but when learners were encouraged to actively engage in justification, it was rated highly, whereas using inappropriate analogies (cf. christiansen, forthcoming) was given a low rating. opportunity to develop strategic competence strategic competence is “the ability to formulate, represent and solve mathematical problems. […] students need to encounter situations in which they need to formulate the problem so that they can use mathematics to solve it” (kilpatrick et al., 2001: 124). engaging in problem-solving may further enhance conceptual understanding and adaptive reasoning (samuelsson, 2010). problem-solving has been widely discussed, including developing models for, and engaging the heuristics involved in problem-solving (de corte, verschaffel & masui, 2004; higgins, 1997; polya, 2008; schoenfeld, 1992). any problem-solving or problem-posing activity whether using pictures, flow charts, lists or other was considered indicative of the opportunity to develop strategic competency, but in formulating rating criteria, we distinguished between more and less appropriate heuristics, whether the teacher reduced the problem to something solvable by standard procedures (cf. taylor & taylor, 2013), and the extent to which choosing appropriate problem-solving strategies was engaged. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 112 a rubric for otdmp table 1 shows the rubric capturing the external language of description for otdmp. table 1: descriptors for rating the opportunity to develop each strand of mp components of otdmp rating 1 (low) rating 2 (medium) rating 3 (high) otdcu no link between concepts or representations. representations do not ‘capture’ central aspects of concepts. some links between concepts and/or representations. clear explanations of concepts. connections to other concepts indicated. at least two representations explicitly connected. otdpd inconsistent messages of ability, effort or performance. realworld situations described, but not explicitly related to mathematics. occasional positive reinforcement of effort, performance or ability. encouragement of interest. some attempts to stress sense-making. realworld situations mentioned and used to motivate mathematics, but connections are only partially explicit. demonstrated sensitivity, respect and interest in learners’ responses and questions. learners encouraged to persevere and learn. opportunities fostered to develop links between realworld situations and mathematics. otdpf only one procedure shown, with no justification. procedures may not be performed fluently by teacher. opportunities offered to perform procedures appropriately and fluently. some reasons for the procedure given. alternate procedures not explored. why, when and how a procedure is applied is clear. coherent sequencing in development of a procedure. different procedures may be compared. otdar justifications given, but invalid, with reference to authority or through inappropriate analogies. reasoning explicit and valid. justifications sometimes given by teacher. justifications occur frequently. learners encouraged to justify. otdsc inappropriate heuristics; problemsolving reduced to algorithm. a single heuristic appropriate to the topic. multiple heuristics to solve problems. opportunities to choose flexibly among these engaged. 113 opportunities to develop mathematical proficiency in grade 6 mathematics classrooms in kwazulu-natal | noor ally and iben maj christiansen method the project was started in 2009 as part of the kwazulu-natal provincial treasury project, and linked with a project overseen by carnoy and chisholm (carnoy et al., 2012). forty primary schools were sampled from one education district in kwazulunatal, using stratified (according to doe quintile) random sampling to comprise 75% less-resourced schools and 25% better resourced schools. the final number of schools was 39. all grade six teachers in the sampled schools participated in the study. research assistants were trained in data collection and were often paired with experienced researchers. the original project had a post-positivist orientation, assuming measurability of several variables such as the teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge. however, the part of the project reported on in this article engaged the data from an interpretivist orientation. one lesson with each teacher was video recorded, mostly in the beginning of grade 6 though some later in the year. other data were collected from teachers, learners and principals. in this article, we focus on the videos. some teachers did not want to have lessons recorded and, as a result, only 30 lessons were recorded, which must be borne in mind when considering the findings. each lesson was viewed in intervals of 5 minutes, with each segment being assessed for the five strands of otdmp. this gave rise to a total of 242 five-minute segments coded. besides assigning a rating for the strength of the strand, it was indicated whether the otdcu was through the teacher stating the concept or developed in other ways; whether the otdpf was through a procedure given or developed by learners, and whether the otdpd concerned perseverance, confidence or applications. other aspects were also coded for, but are not engaged in this article. findings table 2 shows the frequencies of the ratings for each strand. there were no instances in any of the recorded lessons that warranted a rating of 3 for any of the strands. table 2: frequency of the ratings of the strands of otdmp in the sample otdmp otdcu otdpf otdsc otdar otdpd rating 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 frequency 24 17 0 142 81 0 3 1 0 10 9 0 27 22 0 presence 41 223 4 19 49 perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 114 figure 1 illustrates how many of the lessons analysed were coded for each of the opportunities. this is similar to the presence of the strands of mp found in the northwest province and botswana (carnoy et al., 2012: 108), which gives us reason to believe that this is a fairly representative picture. it gives the impression that otdmp is frequent, but this disguises the generally low rating of these occurrences. such rating cannot be determined for the carnoy et al. study. figure 1: percentage of lessons coded for each of the five strands of otdmp, compared to the data from botswana and north-west province, as read from the graph in carnoy et al. (2012: 108) it appears that there are more opportunities to develop productive disposition in the kwazulu-natal classrooms. perhaps this is due to the inclusion of both opportunities to develop confidence and opportunities to appreciate the applicability of mathematics, which could have been given a different weighting in the two studies. overall, opportunities to develop operations with numbers, calculate areas or perimeter of regular 2-dimensional figures, find averages in statistical data, draw bar charts from given data, and other procedural work was dominant in lessons. it was only in slightly more than over half of the observed lessons that the opportunity to develop conceptual understanding was present, and the other strands were scarcer. the connectedness and intertwined nature of the strands of mathematical proficiency makes it relevant to consider to what extent the opportunity to develop strands were present in the same lesson. just over half of the lessons observed showed three opportunity strands present, whereas five of the thirty lessons exhibited a single strand only. two lessons contained the opportunity to develop all five strands of proficiency. otdcu was noted in 16 of the sampled lessons in a total of 41 five-minute segments. in 32 of the instances, the teacher simply stated or directed learners’ attention to a concept. in the remaining 9 segments, a concept was formulated through discussion or demonstration. all of these instances occurred in three lessons. 115 opportunities to develop mathematical proficiency in grade 6 mathematics classrooms in kwazulu-natal | noor ally and iben maj christiansen in one lesson, learners were introduced to the concept of decimal fractions. learners counted in tenths from 1.0 to 1.9. there was no link made to other representations, and the counting procedure could reinforce the common misconception that real and rational numbers have successors the same way integers do (roche, 2005). this is in line with mhlolo et al.’s (2012: abstract) finding that the “teachers’ representations of mathematical connections were either faulty or superficial in most cases” (abstract). a rating of 2 was given to a lesson where learners constructed various 3-dimensional shapes. use of these figures was made to connect the shapes with corresponding concepts (faces, edges and vertices). four of the total 13 otdcu with a rating of 2 appeared in this particular lesson. this reflects the peculiar situation in south africa where the variation between schools is much greater than the variation within schools (ie., between learners), compared to other sacmeq countries (sacmeq ii, 2010). otdpf dominated the mathematics lessons. sixty-nine per cent of coded opportunities were opportunities to develop procedural fluency. in all but one of these lessons, a procedure was demonstrated by the teacher . generally, the lessons unfolded with first presenting examples and then assigning similar problems for the learners to complete. only four instances of otdsc were identified. one each of the following heuristic strategies was recorded: pictures, lists, trial and error, consulting similar problems. there was some indication that there is a correlation between learner achievement gains and otdar, yet this is not a reliable correlation due to the infrequency of the strand: 19 incidences of reasoning, justification and proving occurred across 9 lessons. forty-one instances of otdpd occurred. the majority, 31 of these, considered real-world examples. however, approximately half of these had a rating of 1, because the links to mathematics were not made explicit. this is likely to lessen the impact of the opportunity to develop productive disposition, as well as provide entry into mathematics (hoadley, 2007; maton, 2013). encouraging learners to persevere, praising learners’ efforts, or instilling confidence in the mathematics with which they are working was seldom recorded. many lessons showed episodes in which chorus answers were expected, with teachers acknowledging correct or incorrect answers to the class as a whole. instances in which teachers coaxed learners to correct their own mistakes or praised a novel solution were not observed. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 116 conclusion we have found the external language of description presented in this article useful in our analysis of classroom teaching. our findings using this instrument were compatible with those from the study of teaching in north-west province and botswana, but the rubric allows us to interrogate the quality of the otdmp in more depth and detail. one concern is how to code for the ways in which the various strands of otdmp relate; this requires further attention. applying the external language of description to the data from 30 grade 6 mathematics lessons in kwazulu-natal showed that, while opportunities to develop mp exist, they are limited both in range and in quality. the quality was apparent in the ratings, and in the subsequent coding within the strands of otdmp, where concepts and procedures were stated, not explored, and where the ‘glue’ of mathematical proficiency – adaptive reasoning – was given little room to develop. during mathematics lessons, the strand of procedural fluency was clearly prevalent in the grade 6 kwazulu-natal teachers’ current practice. however, without otdcu, it likely remains procedures without connections (stein et al., 2000), and thus its impact on the development of mathematical proficiency is likely to be limited. when given narrow procedural questions all the time, students do not get the opportunity to work on a level that is right for them, where they can contribute and be challenged. incidentally, this not only reduces opportunities to learn, but also likely leads to lack of germane cognitive load, thus limiting schemata construction (artino, 2008). finally, it means that the teaching methods are not appropriate for un-streaming or un-tracking learners, and as such is likely to continue to reproduce inequalities both within schools and after (cf. boaler, 2011). acknowledgements data collection for this research was funded by the kwazulu-natal provincial treasury. the views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of the funders or the authors of the full report accessible at https://www.dropbox.com/ sh/lfbew0p2sqrhpd5/5kfkj7desw. dr n. mthiyane, university of kwazulu-natal, oversaw data collection. thank you to the other participants, and to the teachers who allowed researchers to video record lessons. 117 opportunities to develop mathematical proficiency in grade 6 mathematics classrooms in kwazulu-natal | noor ally and iben maj christiansen references adler j & patahuddin sm 2012. quantitative tools with qualitative methods in investigating mathematical knowledge for teaching. journal of education, (56): 17-43. artino ar jr 2008. cognitive load theory and the role of learner experience: an abbreviated 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chapter of the international group for the psychology of mathematics education (pp. 136-141). columbus, oh: eric clearinghouse for science, mathematics and environmental education. 143 research article 2022 40(1): 143-163 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) teaching and learning first-year engineering mathematics at a distance: a critical view over two consecutive years abstract this article reports on the empirical results and practical aspects concerning the teaching and learning of first-year engineering mathematics at a distance. the investigation over two consecutive years (2020 and 2021) is meant to yield prospects and contribute to the development of suitable pedagogies for online mathematics teaching and learning for engineering students in south africa in the future. in 2020, lecturers were faced with a “sudden” shift from face-to-face to online teaching and the focus was to save the academic year and leave no student behind; in 2021 the situation was unchanged. lecturers had to consider key aspects (such as the module structure, teaching theory and practice, and perspectives on “what can work”) in the transition and continuation from face-toface to fully online and developing a suitable teaching and learning approach. approximately 1000 first-year engineering students at the university of johannesburg, south africa, were exposed to the newly developed online teaching and learning approach in both years. the approach includes the following key elements: an evaluation of prior knowledge by a diagnostic test; an investigation of students’ attitudes towards mathematics by means of the satm questionnaire; weekly virtual lecture and tutorial sessions; weekly homework tasks; additional online resources; discussion forums between all role players (students, tutors and lecturers); online tutor support; the use of e-textbooks and online assessments via the university learning management system and an external platform (such as webwork). both years followed a similar approach, although slight changes were implemented in 2021. descriptive statistics from key elements were used to monitor the students’ involvement and progress in both years. results show the teaching and learning approach is effective but has room for improvement. particularly, the results encourage addressing the needs of the students and lecturers when implementing pedagogical aspects in learning mathematics at a distance. keywords: covid-19; distance education; engineering mathematics; first-year students; learning management system; teaching and learning online. 1. introduction in march 2020, lecturers and students globally and in south africa experienced a “sudden” shift from teaching author: dr rina durandt1 dr sheldon herbst1 mr majane seloane1 affiliation: 1university of johannesburg, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i1.9 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(1): 143-163 published: 04 march 2022 received: 16 august 2021 accepted: 09 december 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1530-9433 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0207-9889 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 1442022 40(1): 144-163 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) and learning in a traditional (face-to-face) approach, to teaching and learning at a distance (online), as restrictions caused by the covid-19 pandemic affected the tertiary education sector. locally and globally, universities were expected to shift unprecedentedly in all their sectors (see parekh, 2021). one sector is in the classroom, and particularly the teaching and learning of engineering mathematics. “business as usual” could not be continued and the lecturers and students had to depend largely on the university’s learning management system (lms) and other educational technologies. during this time, at the university of johannesburg (uj), the focus was to save the academic year and leave no student behind (see qa report on the transition to remote teaching and learning, 2020; parekh, 2021). with this focus in mind, the lecturers (including the authors in this article) responsible for a large engineering mathematics module made innovative changes despite disruptions. in the first semester of 2021 the situation remained unchanged and teaching and learning at a distance became the “new” normal. one difference between the 2020 and 2021 academic years, particularly in the first semester for first-year students, is the initial experiences at university. in 2020, first-year students could experience the learning culture at university physically on campus, which is very different from the secondary educational environment (compare rach & heinze, 2017); meet lecturers and fellow students in person and experience the situational context (e.g., university systems and support structures). whereas in 2021, all these experiences were at a distance from the beginning. another difference is the teaching and learning approach students were exposed to in the pre-tertiary year; the 2020 first-year cohort was exposed to a traditional face-to-face teaching and learning approach while the 2021 first-year cohort was exposed to a blended learning, or an online, approach. in constructing a classroom for engineering mathematics at a distance, lecturers reflected on these differences and expected the 2021 first-year cohort to be more prepared for this “new” approach. it is well documented that first-year students at university, locally and internationally, are often under-prepared for tertiary education, particularly in the science and engineering fields, and underperform academically. du plessis and gerber (2012) conducted a study on the academic achievement of two cohorts of first-year students at a public university in south africa and concluded that a combination of aspects is related to students’ under-preparedness in the academic domain. these aspects include english reading or writing ability, mathematical ability and effective study habits. will these aspects also be relevant in 2020 and in 2021 in a first-year engineering mathematics online classroom? will some aspects become more prominent? others, such as leong et al. (2021) view student preparedness as an essential component of transitioning to university; they describe this idea by using a combination of aspects such as academic aptitude, prior knowledge, self-efficacy, self-confidence and a complex assortment of study and life skills. additionally, the formal education of engineering students requires the development of mathematical competency, in particular, with a focus on higher cognitive skills such as arguing or problem solving. according to the latest timss1 findings (reddy et al., 2020), south african school learners at the grade 9 level are not well prepared and lack basic knowledge of mathematics and science. it seems reasonable to expect gaps in prior knowledge in mathematics at first-year level; thus, it is necessary to determine these gaps to have a more effective approach in developing further mathematical competency and higher-order skills. 1 timss stands for the trends in international mathematics and science study. this is a comparative study in educational achievement in mathematics and science and involves approximately 50 countries and thousands of students in each participating country. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 1452022 40(1): 145-163 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 durandt, herbst & seloane teaching and learning first-year engineering mathematics at a distance the online classroom has different aspects related to the cognitive and affective domain and different role players, such as the university structure, systems and processes, the module structure, lecturers, students and tutors. in 2020 and 2021, the authors aimed to develop and implement a new pedagogy for teaching a large first-year engineering mathematics module at a distance. the initiative was guided by the following research questions: i. how can a first-year engineering mathematics classroom be structured for teaching at a distance? ii. what elements are fundamental in this “new” classroom environment? iii. how can students’ involvement and progress be monitored? in the present, practice-oriented article, we attempt to answer the second and third research questions (see section 4). in the methodology section (sub-section 3.2) we introduce the online classroom design and its contents (e.g., weekly virtual lecture and tutorial sessions; discussion forums between all role players [students, tutors, and lecturers] and online tutor support) to give the reader a view of the “new” teaching approach and we further discuss key elements of this approach (see sub-section 3.3). then, we report on the empirical results from key elements (see section 4); students’ engagement in online activities and the online assessments via an external platform, webwork. 2. conceptual framework the authors followed a pragmatic approach (see creswell, 2013) in developing a “new” pedagogy for teaching and learning engineering mathematics at a distance. the idea was also to align the workable pedagogy with the university of johannesburg’s primary perspective, “learning to be” (originally from bruner, 1959). for example, to expose first-year engineering mathematics students to learning about the facts, concepts and procedures of the knowledge domain (particularly engineering mathematics), and learning to be the practices of the knowledge domain (in this context the new online approach and some application to the real-world context of engineers). two underlying theoretical perspectives are relevant: (i) the teaching and learning of mathematics at tertiary level and (ii) the key characteristics of distance education. 2.1 teaching and learning mathematics at tertiary level learning opportunities are largely dependent on what happens in the classroom and the theory describing by the criteria for quality teaching (compare blum, 2015) seems important for mathematics learning in general, but also for learning in authentic situations. these criteria refer to the necessary conditions (applicable to the secondary and tertiary environment) that must be fulfilled if teaching ought to have visible effects on students’ knowledge, skills and abilities. the five criteria for quality teaching (blum, 2015) that directly influence our online classroom practice are: i) effective classroom management, which refers to aspects largely independent of a specific subject (e.g., structuring a lesson, or using time effectively, incorporating technology); (ii) student orientation, which considers the unique and specific circumstance of students (e.g., level of prior knowledge, or strategic support to a student or a group); (iii) cognitive activation of students, which refers to the mental stimulation of students (e.g., the types of questions asked, or the balance between adaptive teacher interventions and students working on their own); (iv) meta-cognitive activation of students, which refers to advancing learning and working strategies (e.g., by the use of strategic http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 1462022 40(1): 146-163 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) aids or steps or technology sources) and (v) demanding orchestration of topics, which refers to often creating opportunities for students to develop practice, and apply the desired competencies as well as linking between mathematical topics and a variety of subject areas, and the real world (e.g., by solving real-life open-ended tasks). the authors of this article considered the criteria for quality teaching in designing an online classroom for learning engineering mathematics at a distance. learning mathematics includes not only cognitive aims but also non-cognitive aims and these relate to the affective domain that influences students and teachers. the theory of the affective domain (chamberlin, 2019) plays a role in the development of critical and creative minds and more so in dealing with authentic activities or unfamiliar situations (see, for example, jacobs & durandt, 2016). moreover, attitudinal aspects seem important for students in the transition between school and university (leong et al., 2021). the attitudinal domain is multidimensional and relates to beliefs, attitudes and emotions. attitudes are generally regarded as less cognitive than beliefs, but more cognitive than emotions, and may involve positive or negative feelings. attitudes are more generally manners of acting, feeling or thinking. for an overview of the literature, see hannula (2002). the individual dimensions of this domain that particularly influenced our teaching pedagogy were the students’ view on: (i) the estimated difficulty of mathematical activities, (ii) the subjective value (including usefulness and relevance in personal/professional life), (iii) the level of personal interest in studying mathematics, (iv) the effort (related to motivation) that s/he is willing to invest in learning mathematics and (v) his/her level of cognitive competence of intellectual skills and abilities. 2.2 characteristics of distance education engelbrecht, llinares and borba (2020) reflect on different perspectives, developed in the last decade, in the domains of (i) principles of design of new settings; (ii) social interactions and construction of knowledge and (iii) tools and resources. their work provided evidence of the advances in theoretical frameworks and support in the generation of new meanings for old constructs such as “tool”, “resources” or “learning setting”, which were used by the lecturers in this study as a guideline for making changes to the new online classroom. the work from engelbrecht et al. (2020) regarding the transformation of the mathematics classroom with the growing use of the internet in educational contexts, and the work from quinn and aaräo (2020) focusing on blended learning environments in first-year engineering mathematics, largely informed the design of the “new” teaching and learning approach reported on in this article. this “new” approach was also informed by the initiatives from the centre for academic technologies at the university of johannesburg. for the last few years, academics were prepared for a modern context in teaching, learning and assessment; covid-19 pushed all role players towards implementation. this modern context, which the internet has mostly transformed, includes aspects of socio-economic adaptability, familiarity with social media, happenings in the twittersphere, availability of massive open online courses (moocs), the use of learning management systems (e.g., blackboard), instant knowledge application and gratification from google and youtube, immediate feedback from computer processes to the user and more (see louw, 2021). for many students the shift to online teaching and learning could have been easy, provided they had the technology and infrastructure available; however, for lecturers, this might have been very challenging. in building a learning environment for distance education three main strands should be addressed (see borba et al., 2016; engelbrecht et al., 2020: 827): http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 1472022 40(1): 147-163 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 durandt, herbst & seloane teaching and learning first-year engineering mathematics at a distance i. principles of design: how mathematics educators enact the principles of design in moocs and blended approaches to designing professional development opportunities and mathematics teaching contexts. a variety of conceptual frameworks can influence the design and implementation of moocs (e.g., hollebrands & lee, 2020; taranto & arzarello, 2020). in this intervention the authors were influenced by the criteria for quality teaching (see sub-section 2.1). ii. social interaction and construction of knowledge: how technologies in online contexts support social interaction among participants as a medium to support mathematical knowledge construction and teaching competencies. vygotsky developed the idea of the social constructivist learning theory and is widely supported in the literature (e.g., schmidt, 2013). in this intervention social interaction was purposefully addressed (see sub-section 3.3) although the overarching view from the researchers in this intervention was pragmatic. iii. tools and resources: different meanings associated with the idea of online resources and how their use is conceptualised in different mathematics teaching contexts, given the emergence of new online mathematics resources and ways of teaching (e.g., oechsler & borba, 2020). in this intervention, the lecturers used tools available on the uj lms (blackboard) and other platforms (see sub-section 3.3). the initial idea with the introduction of blended learning environments was to enrich and improve efficiency in traditional face-to-face teaching by making minor changes to pedagogy. this was usually done by adding resources and supplementary materials (compare graham, 2006). also, the change between environments is challenging, specifically if the intention is to create a rich and effective domain. covid-19 forced lecturers at universities to make a sudden change from a traditional environment to a fully online environment; this was specifically challenging for lecturers of large class groups (see the qa report on the transition to remote teaching and learning, 2020). quinn and aaräo (2020) emphasise the teaching and learning approach for first-year engineering mathematics students should encourage self-regulation of learning. the latter idea includes an investigation of the characteristics of the student, his/her perceptions of the learning context and approaches to learning. quinn and aaräo (2020) experimented with online quizzes on two different first-year engineering mathematics classes in an australian context. they investigated changing attitudes of students, refreshing assumed knowledge and teaching foundational concepts, archiving online lecture options in addition to face-to-face lectures, adopting board tutorials supported by a problem-solving approach for more complex engineering modelling problems and scaffolding with online interactive problems. furthermore, shared websites for online and face-to-face cohorts allowed the amount of blending to be determined by the individual student. the study by quinn and aaräo (2020) was conducted before the covid-19 pandemic and the focus at the time was to provide more flexible study options and more active learning opportunities. 3. study context and design the authors followed a pragmatic approach (creswell, 2013), namely considering the criteria for quality teaching and characteristics of distance education, to establish “what works” in developing and implementing a new pedagogy for teaching a large first-year engineering mathematics module at a distance. the pragmatic approach aligns with the quantitative nature of the data that were collected from key elements in the learning approach, in 2020 and 2021, from the lms and webwork platforms. a limitation of the study is the differences in the sample size from the different platforms. we address this aspect later (see section 4) and, as a result, direct comparisons through standardised statistical tests were not possible. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 1482022 40(1): 148-163 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 3.1 characteristics of participants and module structure the teaching and learning approach was developed for two cohorts of first-year engineering mathematics students from a large public university in south africa. in both years, 2020 and 2021, the representatives were enrolled for the same engineering mathematics module that is offered by the faculty of science. approximately 1000 students (998 students in 2020 and 988 students in 2021) per year are enrolled in the module. in both years, the students speak mostly african languages (e.g., isizulu or northern sotho) as their home language, and the language of instruction in the engineering mathematics module is english. the group is divided into five sub-groups according to qualification: (i) mechanical and industrial engineering, (ii) construction and civil engineering, (iii) extraction and physical metallurgy and chemical engineering, (iv) electrical engineering and (v) mining engineering and mineral surveying; consequently, the student numbers per sub-group are not equal. in this article the data are not presented per sub-group. in a traditional face-to-face environment, each sub-group had a lecturer (following his/her own teaching approach) and two tutors (managed by the sub-group lecturer); however, with the change to online teaching the entire cohort shared one electronic learning environment, with all lecturers (5) and tutors (10) sharing the same classroom. all lecturers, in both years, in the first-year engineering mathematics module are qualified and experienced in teaching at tertiary level. all tutors are selected through a departmental system and are competent in the module content. traditionally lecturers have large autonomy in most teaching activities, including learning material, in-class arrangements and continuous assessments. formal assessments and the examination are aligned between all sub-groups and follow standard departmental moderation procedures. traditionally all assessments are completed pen-on-paper and sit down, and online/electronic assessments have not been used in this module prior to 2020. the lecturers have very little experience in online assessments. before covid-19, the module had one electronic learning environment via blackboard, but this space was only used in a limited way by some lecturers and mainly for communication purposes. although the university has a strong and reliable electronic learning environment and the idea of a blended learning approach was encouraged during the last few years, lecturers used this approach by choice, infrequently and in different ways. each of the sub-groups has a unique timetable according to the university’s structure, which only overlaps sometimes during an academic week. each sub-group has six periods per week (either four periods for lectures and two periods for tutorials, or five periods for lectures and one tutorial period, all depending on the lecturer’s individual approach and preference). in both years the modules had one coordinator, who is also a lecturer and the first author of this article. the content of the module includes precalculus and calculus components and is structured over 13 academic weeks. the precalculus components include functions, conic sections, complex numbers, the binomial theorem and cramer’s rule. the calculus components include limits, differentiation rules, basic integration and some applications related to differentiation (such as curve sketching) and integration (such as area problems). due to low pass rates in previous years and the prerequisite role of this first-year engineering mathematics module for other engineering modules, it was highlighted as “high-risk”. the academic development centre of the university supported the lecturers and students regularly and monitored the students’ progress. with the sudden change to online teaching, not all lecturers or students had reliable devices and infrastructure (e.g., connectivity and data) to work from home and to work during convenient times of the day (see section 4 for some empirical data). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 1492022 40(1): 149-163 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 durandt, herbst & seloane teaching and learning first-year engineering mathematics at a distance 3.2 design of the “new” teaching and learning strategy the “new” teaching and learning approach was designed for and implemented on the university’s lms (blackboard) in the first semesters of 2020 and 2021. although all lecturers provided input, the module coordinator was responsible for designing the new online classroom. the first idea was to change the traditional face-to-face approach, presented as five sub-groups in an individual approach with an inconsistent “look & feel”, to a fully online approach presented as “one” with a combined approach and a consistent “look & feel”. table 1 shows the different elements included in the teaching and learning approach, as well as a short description of how these elements were implemented and used in both years. table 1: elements included in the “new” teaching and learning approach in 2020 and 2021 elements instruments and/or tools 2020/2021 implementation prior knowledge diagnostic test week 1 (2020 sit down, 2021 online) attitudes towards mathematics satm week 1 (online in 2020 & 2021; in 2020 only some sub-groups participated and in 2021 all sub-groups participated) communication announcements weekly (in both years; the layout of the information was improved in 2021) administrative information module schedule, learning guide, policy documents, lecturer/tutor information available from week 1 (in both years; in 2021 more information was added) tutor support discussion forum weekly and aligned with content (in both years; in 2021 the support was more structured with a lecturer monitoring the forum regularly and tutors working according to a predetermined schedule) content step-by-step instructions, lecture slides, homework, virtual lectures/tutorials, online resources, e-textbook arranged by week (in both years; in 2021 the structure was improved, and archived options were available from the beginning) assessments written tasks (submitted via blackboard) and electronic tasks (submitted via webwork) continuous assessment (in 2020 only halfway through the semester, in 2021 from the beginning); several opportunities (almost weekly in both years; in 2021 the structure was improved) in 2020, students were exposed to the new online approach from weeks seven to 13 (since the covid-19 restrictions changed the tertiary education sector) and the 2021 cohort were exposed to the new approach from the first academic week up to the end of the first semester. one of the ideas was to use a diagnostic test, which was already developed before covid-19, to determine students’ prior knowledge in certain content areas. 3.3 some key elements of the ‘new’ teaching and learning approach a) diagnostic test the test was designed by durandt and blum in 2019 based on guidelines from stewart (2016) and included the content areas algebra, analytical geometry, functions, trigonometry, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 1502022 40(1): 150-163 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) elementary calculus, and modelling. the test consisted of 25 tasks (with 32 items altogether, and a maximum of 38 marks) of which the format and level of difficulty ought to be mostly familiar to high school students in south africa. the only unfamiliar task was the second of two modelling (real-life) tasks in the final section of the test. the idea behind the modelling question was to expose first-year engineering students to a real-life problem-solving task. table 2 provides an overview of the key aspects of the test. table 2: features of the diagnostic test with example items used in 2020 and 2021 knowledge component number of items/marks example items algebra 9/12 factor the expression analytical geometry 6/7 find an equation for the line that passes through the point and is parallel to the line functions 8/8 find the domain of the function with trigonometry 3/3 find all value(s) of such that and calculus 2/2 calculate modelling 4/6 calculate how much air, approximately, is in the hot-air balloon on the photo (the photo shows a balloon and a man on top of it). in both years the test was administered in the first week of the academic semester. in 2020, it was administered during an official 45-minute lecture period (sit down, pen-on-paper environment) and participants were not informed of the test ahead of time. in 2021, it was administered on the online platform (via blackboard) and participants knew about the test beforehand. in both years scientific calculators were only allowed in the final test section (on modelling), although this restriction could not be controlled in 2021. additionally, in 2021, students had more time to plan for technical difficulties. they were expected to download the test paper, complete the test by writing their solutions on paper, scan and save their work, and finally upload the document onto the blackboard environment. numerous problems were reported relating to where to find or submit the paper on the online platform; scanning and saving their work as a pdf file; how to upload documents; uploading a wrong file; computer illiteracy; how to work from a phone; a slow pc; load shedding; network problems and more. to accommodate the numerous problems reported, the test was extended for a further 24-hour period to allow students to master the online environment. furthermore, they had three attempts and only the last attempt was marked. the differences in the implementation conditions are a limitation and the recorded data cannot be compared. b) survey of attitudes towards mathematics (satm) in 2020 and 2021 we measured the participants’ attitudes towards mathematics at the beginning of the semester using an internationally well-established instrument, the survey of attitudes towards statistics (sats-36, schau et al., 1995; schau, 2003), adapted for mathematics. analogous to the original instrument, six dimensions are differentiated: affect (6 items, e.g., “i am scared of mathematics”), cognitive competence (6 items, e.g., “i can learn mathematics”), value (9 items, e.g., “mathematics should be a required part of my professional training”), difficulty (7 items, e.g., “mathematics is highly technical”), interest (4 𝑥𝑥 � − 3𝑥𝑥 � − 4𝑥𝑥 + 12. (2, −5) 2𝑥𝑥 − 4𝑦𝑦 = 3. ℎ(𝑥𝑥) = �𝑥𝑥 � − 1. 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠2𝑥𝑥 = 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑥𝑥 0 ≤ 𝑥𝑥 ≤ 360°. 𝑥𝑥 ℎ lim�→�� � ������ ��� 𝑥𝑥 � − 3𝑥𝑥 � − 4𝑥𝑥 + 12. (2, −5) 2𝑥𝑥 − 4𝑦𝑦 = 3. ℎ(𝑥𝑥) = �𝑥𝑥 � − 1. 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠2𝑥𝑥 = 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑥𝑥 0 ≤ 𝑥𝑥 ≤ 360°. 𝑥𝑥 ℎ lim�→�� � ������ ��� 𝑥𝑥 � − 3𝑥𝑥 � − 4𝑥𝑥 + 12. (2, −5) 2𝑥𝑥 − 4𝑦𝑦 = 3. ℎ(𝑥𝑥) = �𝑥𝑥 � − 1. 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠2𝑥𝑥 = 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑥𝑥 0 ≤ 𝑥𝑥 ≤ 360°. 𝑥𝑥 ℎ lim�→�� � ������ ��� 𝑥𝑥 � − 3𝑥𝑥 � − 4𝑥𝑥 + 12. (2, −5) 2𝑥𝑥 − 4𝑦𝑦 = 3. ℎ(𝑥𝑥) = �𝑥𝑥 � − 1. 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠2𝑥𝑥 = 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑥𝑥 0 ≤ 𝑥𝑥 ≤ 360°. 𝑥𝑥 ℎ lim�→�� � ������ ��� 𝑥𝑥 � − 3𝑥𝑥 � − 4𝑥𝑥 + 12. (2, −5) 2𝑥𝑥 − 4𝑦𝑦 = 3. ℎ(𝑥𝑥) = �𝑥𝑥 � − 1. 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠2𝑥𝑥 = 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑥𝑥 0 ≤ 𝑥𝑥 ≤ 360°. 𝑥𝑥 ℎ lim�→�� � ������ ��� 𝑥𝑥 � − 3𝑥𝑥 � − 4𝑥𝑥 + 12. (2, −5) 2𝑥𝑥 − 4𝑦𝑦 = 3. ℎ(𝑥𝑥) = �𝑥𝑥 � − 1. 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠2𝑥𝑥 = 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑥𝑥 0 ≤ 𝑥𝑥 ≤ 360°. 𝑥𝑥 ℎ lim�→�� � ������ ��� 𝑥𝑥 � − 3𝑥𝑥 � − 4𝑥𝑥 + 12. (2, −5) 2𝑥𝑥 − 4𝑦𝑦 = 3. ℎ(𝑥𝑥) = �𝑥𝑥 � − 1. 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠2𝑥𝑥 = 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑥𝑥 0 ≤ 𝑥𝑥 ≤ 360°. 𝑥𝑥 ℎ lim�→�� � ������ ��� 𝑥𝑥 � − 3𝑥𝑥 � − 4𝑥𝑥 + 12. (2, −5) 2𝑥𝑥 − 4𝑦𝑦 = 3. ℎ(𝑥𝑥) = �𝑥𝑥 � − 1. 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠2𝑥𝑥 = 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑥𝑥 0 ≤ 𝑥𝑥 ≤ 360°. 𝑥𝑥 ℎ lim�→�� � ������ ��� 𝑥𝑥 � − 3𝑥𝑥 � − 4𝑥𝑥 + 12. (2, −5) 2𝑥𝑥 − 4𝑦𝑦 = 3. ℎ(𝑥𝑥) = �𝑥𝑥 � − 1. 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠2𝑥𝑥 = 𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑠𝑥𝑥 0 ≤ 𝑥𝑥 ≤ 360°. 𝑥𝑥 ℎ lim�→�� � ������� ��� . http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 1512022 40(1): 151-163 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 durandt, herbst & seloane teaching and learning first-year engineering mathematics at a distance items, e.g., “i am interested in using mathematics”), and effort (4 items, e.g., “i plan to, or i did, attend every mathematics class session”). the instrument was administered on the online platform (via blackboard). c) electronic assessments (via webwork) developed at the university of rochester, webwork is an online-based system for the delivery of homework. it introduces an element of blended learning by providing students with a first-hand look at how computer programs read typed commands. while this is not the focus of the program it teaches the importance of syntax. as a teaching tool, webwork offers an extensive library of questions organised per topic, automated manipulation of task settings (e.g., number of attempts, duration of task availability) and most importantly and conveniently, automated marking. the last point has played a crucial role given the large number of students in the first-year engineering mathematics module. not only could markers save time, but students received immediate feedback and could learn from their mistakes. the study of hauk and segalla (2005) revealed that the use of webwork was at least as useful as pen and paper. however, in the context of south africa, the issue of internet access and other technical difficulties remain a greatly debated topic (see mathipa & mukhari, 2014). see figure 1 for an example task from a calculus section showing the question, student answer and correct answer. figure 1. example item from a webwork task in 2021 showing the question, student answer, correct answer and syntax http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 1522022 40(1): 152-163 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 3.4 ethical considerations standard ethical practices were implemented according to creswell (2013) and the procedures at the university. the initiative reported on in this article forms part of a larger study that seeks the ongoing development of first-year mathematics students’ mathematical and modelling competencies. participation in the diagnostic test and satm instrument was voluntary, and participants were informed of their respective purposes. the authors of this article were also lecturers in the first-year engineering mathematics modules in 2020 and 2021. this is a limitation and was purposefully addressed by balancing the roles. due to technical reasons data collected from some teaching elements could not be reported on, nor compared, which is another limitation of this study. 4. discussion and results most of the empirical data reported in this section of this article were collected from the 2021 cohort. some data from the 2020 cohort have already been published (see durandt, blum & lindl, 2021a). this section of the paper provides an answer for the second and third research questions. all data processing and analyses were conducted using the statistical software r (r core team, 2020), excel or the statistical analysis tool in blackboard. 4.1 engineering students’ prior knowledge and attitudes towards mathematics some elements fundamental in the “new” online classroom is to determine students’ priorknowledge and attitudes towards mathematics. the results from the diagnostic test in 2020 are reported elsewhere (see durandt et al., 2021a), but it is worth mentioning here that, on average, the participants achieved only about one-third of all possible marks in the overall test. previously, researchers reported one reason for this result could have been a too strict time frame. the 2021 results show that students performed better, on average, achieving almost half of all possible marks (including all test items). a direct comparison between results over the two years is not possible due to the different implementation conditions (see sub-section 3.3). table 3 below shows the descriptive statistics and the mark distribution per interval from the 2021 cohort. it is interesting to note the large number of students (approximately 65%) in the intervals less than 50% and the small number of students (approximately 2%) in the intervals above 70%. one reason might be that students did not take the diagnostic test seriously. table 3: the descriptive statistics and mark distribution of the 2021 cohort in the diagnostic test descriptive statistics mark distribution (interval/number) count (n) 738 90–100 0 minimum value 0.00 80–89 1 maximum value 31.00 70–79 14 range 31.00 60–69 68 average 16.03 50–59 169 median 16.00 40–49 155 standard deviation 5.48 30–39 189 variance 29.89 20–29 98 10–19 28 1–9 16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 1532022 40(1): 153-163 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 durandt, herbst & seloane teaching and learning first-year engineering mathematics at a distance table 4 shows the descriptive statistics of the satm collected from the 2021 cohort. a 7-point rating scale was used (1 = strongly disagree, …., 7 = strongly agree). variations of this survey (sats and satmm) have been used in the south african context (compare durandt, blum & lindl, 2021b; van appel & durandt, 2018). as can be seen in figure 2 below, positive attitudes exist for first-year students in 2021 in terms of affect, cognitive competence and value, while strong positive attitudes exist in interest and effort. more negative attitudes are shown for difficulty. it is interesting to note the number of outliers shown in all six dimensions. table 4: the descriptive statistics of the survey of attitudes towards mathematics (satm) results from the 2021 cohort n mean sd median trimmed min max range skew kurtosis aff 525 5.65 1.09 5.83 5.75 1.5 7 5.5 -0.81 0.28 cog 522 5.72 0.89 5.83 5.78 2.83 7 4.17 -0.6 -0.21 val 523 5.97 0.74 6.11 6.04 2.89 7 4.11 -0.89 0.85 diff 523 3.19 0.74 3.14 3.18 1.29 6 4.71 0.21 0.19 int 525 6.55 0.74 7 6.7 1.5 7 5.5 -2.56 9.4 eff 526 6.51 0.75 7 6.66 2.5 7 4.5 -1.85 3.56 figure 2: attitudes towards mathematical modelling with six dimensions (7-point rating scale: 1 = strongly disagree, …, 7 = strongly agree) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 1542022 40(1): 154-163 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) both aspects, namely prior knowledge and attitude, are indicators for academic success (quinn & aaräo, 2020) and it is advisable for educators to collect information on these elements early in the academic semester. 4.2 engineering students’ engagement in online activities the student engagement in online activities, in 2021, were monitored and are reported here. due to technical reasons the data from the 2020 cohort could not be analysed which is a limitation. figure 3a shows the percentage of hits comparing continuous and formal assessments (diagnostic test, semester test 1 and 2, sick tests and deferred examination), support elements (tutor support and discussion forum) and standard university documents (module evaluation and policies). 0,00 10,00 20,00 30,00 40,00 percentage hits: comparing assessments, support elements and standard university documents figure 3a: comparing percentage hits according to expectations, much more hits are reported for assessments than for standard university documents. the assessments shown here were written on paper and submitted online on the lms (blackboard). for each assessment students were allowed three submissions to allow for technical difficulties. it seems that students became more comfortable with the environment throughout the semester (comparing test 2 hits with the diagnostic and test 1 hits). the support element accounts for approximately 14% of hits. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 1552022 40(1): 155-163 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 durandt, herbst & seloane teaching and learning first-year engineering mathematics at a distance figure 3b shows the number of students attending the virtual classroom per week divided into three categories: less than 30 minutes, between 30 and 60 minutes and longer than 60 minutes. 0 500 1000 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 number of students and duration of attendance of the weekly virtual classroom 0<30 min 30<60 min more than 60 min figure 3b: attendance and duration of the virtual classroom three live sessions (90 minutes each) were available to students each week and according to their timetables they could attend one or more sessions. it is noticeable that some students attended more than one session per week especially during the first two weeks. we report 1529 and 1095 attendees for the first and second week, respectively. these numbers exceed the official number of students registered on the lms. more students attended less than 30 minutes during the first three weeks. this pattern was reversed from week four, with many students attending more than 60 minutes. one reason might be that students attended longer as the content became more challenging. overall, student attendance decreased over 13 weeks whilst the duration and percentage of those students who attended more than 60 minutes increased. the average attendance duration increased from approximately 24 minutes in the first three weeks of the semester to approximately 39 minutes during the last three weeks of the semester. on average approximately 33% of students attended for more than 60 minutes in the first three weeks of the semester (week 1 – 29%; week 2 – 37%; week 3 – 32%) compared to an average attendance of approximately 56% during the last three weeks of the semester (week 11 – 60%; week 12 – 56%; week 13 – 51%). one reason for this pattern might be that a large portion of students became more comfortable studying on their own and relying mainly on online material and archived lectures. however, there was a surge http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 1562022 40(1): 156-163 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) around scheduled semester test weeks (weeks 4 and 9). for these two weeks in particular, students’ typical attendance was approximately 31 minutes with an average attendance of more than 60 minutes of 50%. figure 3c shows the user activity per week in content areas on the lms (blackboard). the data also includes uploads per week. 0,00 2,00 4,00 6,00 8,00 10,00 12,00 14,00 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 percentage user activity for content areas figure 3c: user activity per content area per week an increase in activity can be seen in weeks four and nine, which corresponds with the scheduled semester tests. the average of these two weeks is approximately 10% compared to the overall average of approximately 8%. the overall range is calculated at approximately 10%, with a median of approximately 8%. overall, from week four the user activity decreased. this is slightly unexpected but can indicate that the students became more familiar with the environment. they could find online material with greater ease later in the semester. figure 3d shows the number of messages posted per week on the tutor support and discussion forum platform. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 1572022 40(1): 157-163 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 durandt, herbst & seloane teaching and learning first-year engineering mathematics at a distance 0,00 5,00 10,00 15,00 20,00 25,00 30,00 35,00 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9…13 messages posted per week on the tutor support & discussion forum figure 3d: messages on the tutor support and discussion forum overall, a low number of messages were posted, which was rather disappointing. surprisingly, unlike shown in figures 3b and 3c, not much activity is recorded in weeks four and nine (week 4 – approximately 5% messages compared to an average of approximately 8% per week). one reason might be that students are unfamiliar with asking questions and discussing mathematical content on a public forum. the user activity also decreased towards the end of the semester, which corresponds with data reported in figures 3a, 3b and 3c. 4.3 monitoring engineering students’ progress on webwork in this section, we report on data generated from the webwork platform over two years (2020 & 2021), in order to investigate its usefulness as a tool for online teaching and learning. webwork makes two forms of statistical information available. first, information provided directly by the platform that is purely related to the performance of active students and lacks the more traditional statistics such as participation and pass rates. second, information by the marksheet that webwork allows for export as a .csv file. the latter of these data provided the basis for some useful statistical information which is displayed in table 5 below, while the former is presented in scatter plots (see figures 4a and 4b). data extracted over the two years provide some insight into how students perceive the use of webwork and its value as a tool for learning at a distance. the main idea was to utilise the tool for continuous assessments, although in both years the tool was also used for a formal assessment near the end of the semester. we note three differences over two years: (i) in http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 1582022 40(1): 158-163 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 2021, continuous assessment tasks were given from the beginning of the semester, whereas the migration to online teaching and learning forced the class of 2020 into it. (ii) in 2021, the tasks took on a weekly structure, whereas a more sectional approach with variable task sizes was followed in 2020, and lastly, (iii) in 2021, the tasks carried a larger contribution of marks (therefore the need to fix the task size and settings), whereas in 2020, the number of tasks, and questions per task, varied. the webwork platform is entirely disconnected from the university’s learning management system meaning that students are added to webwork manually. this has implications on the data because students who later deregister are not necessarily manually removed from the platform’s list of students. to this end, data presented in table 5 required some refinement in which students who did not participate in any task were removed from the list. in both cases, this reduced the number of students on the class list from 1017 to 876 for the 2020 class, and from 1417 to 958 for the 2021 class. table 5: statistical data for webwork activities over the two-year period; 2020 and 2021 descriptor year 2020 year 2021 number of active students 876 958 total number of continuous assessment (ca) tasks 8 7 minimum number of questions per ca task 10 15 maximum number of questions per ca task 15 15 average percentage across ca tasks 70.22% 80.93% average pass rate across ca tasks 78.06% 92.67% formal test total 45 40 formal test number of questions 45 18 formal test average 80.05% 80.98% formal test pass rate 89.38% 89.68% formal test highest pass rate 88.93% 93.84% formal test lowest pass rate 35.50% 66.84% highest scoring section introduction to complex numbers functions worst scoring section polar form of complex numbers prior knowledge components focusing on algebra from table 5 the following observations are noticeable: • the number of active students on the webwork platform in 2021 was slightly larger than the number of active students in 2020, this is likely due to the acclimatisation to lockdown conditions. • the class average and pass rate were significantly higher for the 2021 cohort which was likely due to the class starting the webwork tasks from the beginning of the semester. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 1592022 40(1): 159-163 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 durandt, herbst & seloane teaching and learning first-year engineering mathematics at a distance • the performance on the webwork formal test was almost identical across both years with 2021, again, taking the lead by a very small margin. this is despite the test structure being dramatically different across the two years: the 2020 formal test was given over three days and had 45 individual items (with a mark each) and the 2021 formal test was more conventional with only 18 items carrying a total of 40 marks. this test was only open for a day. • the 2021 cohort saw higher, best and worst averages for the continuous assessment tasks (with the lowest averages corresponding to the first task). one reason might be the slow start to the 2021 academic year with many students joining the platform well after the first task was closed. this contrasts with the 2020 group that experienced its lowest average toward the end of the first term, with the sudden shift from face-to-face to online teaching. figures 4a and 4b show a relationship between the percentage of active students with correct answers and the number of attempts. we notice a similar and obvious trend emerging from both years that the average number of attempts decrease with the percentage of active students with correct answers. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 7 0 7 5 8 0 8 5 9 0 9 5 1 0 0 1 0 5 a v er a g e n u m be r o f a tt em pt s percentage of students with correct answers 2021 2020 figure 4a: a plot of the percentage of students with correct answers versus the average number of attempts per question for continuous assessment tasks with an unlimited number of attempts offered (2020 & 2021) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 1602022 40(1): 160-163 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 6 5 7 0 7 5 8 0 8 5 9 0 9 5 1 0 0 1 0 5 a v er a g e n u m be r o f a tt em pt s percentage of students with correct answers 2021 2020 figure 4b: a plot of the percentage of students with correct answers versus the average number of attempts for the formal test on webwork (2020 & 2021) in figure 4a, students had an unlimited number of attempts available for the continuous assessment tasks, while for the formal tests (see figure 4b) the maximum number of attempts was limited to five. a greater spreading of the 2020 data is noticed in the latter figure owing to the large number of questions in the formal test. it is interesting to note that, from the idea that the slope of a linear regression line through the data is indicative of the perceived difficulty of the task. 5. conclusion this article reported on empirical results collected from the online teaching and learning environment of a large group of first-year engineering mathematics students when learning at a distance, after the “sudden” shift from face-to-face to fully online teaching early in 2020. the investigation took place over two consecutive years (2020 and 2021). the main aim was to identify fundamental elements in this “new” classroom environment, and to monitor students’ involvement and progress over the period, and on different platforms (blackboard and webwork). one of the fundamental elements is to determine students’ level of prior knowledge that seems low, as expected, and another element is to determine students’ attitudes. in this study students showed an interest in studying mathematics and a willingness to try, although they view mathematics as a difficult subject. quinn and aaräo (2020) reported that firstyear students do not have the correct attitude to be successful when dealing with first-year engineering mathematics and that the online environment (through quizzes) can be used to catch up on assumed knowledge for students transitioning to university. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 1612022 40(1): 161-163 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 durandt, herbst & seloane teaching and learning first-year engineering mathematics at a distance furthermore, results indicate that students became more familiar with online learning as the semester progressed. this result supports the growth in mathematics students’ organisational maturity towards the end of the academic semester as reported in the study by yani, harding and engelbrecht (2019). learning conversations can be automated through the discussion forum on blackboard, between students, tutors and lecturers, although it seems that students need to develop more confidence in using this tool. students accessed the environment more often in the time of formal assessments. in a survey of over 2000 students, roth, ivanchenko and record (2008) found that the use of webwork resulted in a reduction in calculation error. the major complaint from students, as mentioned in this work, was related to syntactic difficulties. however, in our study, the main complaint came from login difficulties. nevertheless, regular continuous assessment tasks on webwork appear to be valuable. in this study, improvement in student performance is demonstrated in the overall high marks. more in-depth analysis of student participation and performance related to all teaching and learning elements could add further insight. we argue teaching over a distance requires a well-organised environment with a variety of tools and assessment opportunities to keep students interested and connected. references blum, w. 2015. quality teaching of mathematical modelling: what do we know, what can we do? in s.j. cho (ed.). the proceedings of the 12th international congress on mathematical education – intellectual and attitudinal challenges (pp. 73-96). new york: springer. https:// 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evaluating student response to webwork, a webbased homework delivery and grading system. computers & education, 50(4): 1462-1482. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2007.01.005 schau, c. 2003. students’ attitudes: the ‘other’ important outcomes in statistics education. in h. pan, q. chen, e. stern & d.a. silbersweig (eds.). proceedings of the joint statistical meeting (pp. 3673-3683). san francisco, ca: american statistical association. schau, c., stevens, j., dauphinee, t.l. & del vecchio, a. 1995. the development and validation of the survey of attitudes toward statistics. educational and psychological measurement, 55: 868-875. https://doi.org/10.1177/0013164495055005022 schmidt, j. 2013. blended learning in k-12 mathematics and science instruction—an exploratory study. unpublished ma thesis. usa: university of nebraska. taranto, e. & arzarello, f. 2020. math mooc unito: an italian project on moocs for mathematics teacher education, and the development of a new theoretical framework. zdm mathematics education, 52: 843-858. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-019-01116-x van appel, v. & durandt, r. 2018. dissimilarities in attitudes between students in service and mainstream courses toward statistics: an analysis conducted in a developing country. eurasia journal of mathematics, science and technology education, 14(8): 1-11. https://doi. org/10.29333/ejmste/91912 yani, b., harding, a. & engelbrecht, j. 2019. academic maturity of students in an extended programme in mathematics. international journal of mathematical education in science and technology, 50(7): 1037-1049. https://doi.org/10.1080/0020739x.2019.1650305 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.9 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-016-9744-8 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2007.01.005 https://doi.org/10.1177/0013164495055005022 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-019-01116-x https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/91912 https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/91912 https://doi.org/10.1080/0020739x.2019.1650305 _hlk87362762 _hlk24459732 _hlk85233255 _hlk46950239 _hlk85233145 _hlk79792738 _hlk85233364 _hlk77937598 _hlk79787286 _hlk79767464 _hlk79741196 _hlk44168249 3 research article 2021 39(4): 3-26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) twenty years into the new millennium: how integrated is mathematics, physics and computer science at secondary school level? abstract twenty years into the millennium, the world has been confronted with a pandemic that has had an immeasurable impact on the workplace, learning environment and related technologies. technology and technological advancements are founded on three disciplines, namely physics, mathematics and computer science. internationally, an integration of the curricula of these disciplines are promoted in the education space, as an effective way to achieve 21st century capabilities that lately includes computational thinking. this study explores the changes in the content and alignment of the three subjects in the south african secondary school system from an interdisciplinary framework perspective. textbooks, curriculum documents and planning calendars provided the information for the content analysis. the content in physics and mathematics have remained basically the same, with a few topics removed from physics and some added to mathematics. information technology has replaced computer science, with significant changes in content in alignment with developments in computing technology. no clear indication of an alignment between the disciplines could be found, which, to a certain extent, puts south africa outside the international frame. the basic education system appears to run an assessment-driven curriculum in mathematics, physical sciences and information technology. this system produces poor results and seemingly does not allow for interdisciplinary skills development. keywords: physics and mathematics education, computing integration, curriculum alignment, fet phase. 1. introduction science, technology, engineering and mathematics (stem), as a collective framework, focuses on issues and explores epistemological questions on generic skills and the curriculum structure that would support or underpin interdisciplinarity (millar, 2020). to date, however, there seems to be real difficulties with such curricula, including issues about theoretical frameworks, specified content knowledge and multiple interpretations of what the acronym author: prof ilsa basson1 affiliation: 1university of south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i4.2 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(4): 3-26 published: 6 december 2021 received: 13 august 2021 accepted: 27 september 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4578-4625 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 42021 39(4): 4-26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) actually represents (martín-páez et al., 2019). one example is from wells (2019), who emphasised that the stem acronym does not promote solidarity but perpetuates the traditional approaches to the individual disciplines comprising this grouping. he specifically pointed to the “t” in stem, opining that, since inception, it was understood to be represented by a discipline in itself, aiming at technological literacy for all and not just instructional technologies, as commonly reported on by stem researchers. the acronym has even been extended to steam with the inclusion of the arts in korea (drake & reid, 2018). moving away from stem as being a grouping of separate subjects or merely a collective name, it is instead increasingly seen as a solution for a range of purposes and directed by a discourse of interdisciplinarity, common or generic skills development and lately the employability of a person (millar, 2020). when thinking about developing integrated skills and preparing for the world of work, the digital nature of study and work came to the fore. the two decades prior and the two following the advent of the new millennium, took us through developments and events that had major impacts on the learning and working environments (figure 1). by 1980 we have seen the birth of modern computing, with the production of the world’s first commercial microprocessor, the intel 4004 (guadin, 2011). it caused a digital revolution that resulted in a multitude of new applications such as the pocket calculator, the home or personal computer (pc), new operating systems, programming languages, as well as the founding of internetworking. the next twenty years, leading to the year 2000 (y2k), saw the introduction of a multitude of applications, including fax machines, cell phones, laptops and the world wide web (www). y2k ignited commercial and technical activities due to the fear of the impact that the digits, “2000”, could have had on computing systems all over the world (uenuma, 2019). by 2020, we all knew of cloud computing (griffith, 2020), the internet of things (evans, 2011) and a new industrial revolution (schwab, 2015). the work environment and the learning landscape became digital and increasingly complex, which has been further fuelled by the covid-19 (c19) pandemic. figure 1: four decades influenced by major developments and events. computing developed rapidly over four decades and the fields of computer science and information technology matured. although computational thinking (ct) received increased attention as a basic skill (wing, 2006; nouri et al., 2020) and stem research has grown substantially over the past two decades, we have not seen the inclusion of computer science or information technology in the stem grouping. lately, there have at least been endeavours to integrate ct, specifically into k-12 stem education, as illustrated by a recent special issue of the journal of science education and technology (lee et al., 2020). how integrated is mathematics, physics and computer science? theoretical frameworks, specified content knowledge and multiple interpretations of what the acronym actually represents (martín-páez et al., 2019). one example is from wells (2019), who emphasised that the stem acronym does not promote solidarity but perpetuates the traditional approaches to the individual disciplines comprising this grouping. he specifically pointed to the “t” in stem, opining that, since inception, it was understood to be represented by a discipline in itself, aiming at technological literacy for all and not just instructional technologies, as commonly reported on by stem researchers. the acronym has even been extended to steam with the inclusion of the arts in korea (drake & reid, 2018). moving away from stem as being a grouping of separate subjects or merely a collective name, it is instead increasingly seen as a solution for a range of purposes and directed by a discourse of interdisciplinarity, common or generic skills development and lately the employability of a person (millar, 2020). when thinking about developing integrated skills and preparing for the world of work, the digital nature of study and work came to the fore. the two decades prior and the two following the advent of the new millennium, took us through developments and events that had major impacts on the learning and working environments (figure 1). by 1980 we have seen the birth of modern computing, with the production of the world’s first commercial microprocessor, the intel 4004 (guadin, 2011). it caused a digital revolution that resulted in a multitude of new applications such as the pocket calculator, the home or personal computer (pc), new operating systems, programming languages, as well as the founding of internetworking. the next twenty years, leading to the year 2000 (y2k), saw the introduction of a multitude of applications, including fax machines, cell phones, laptops and the world wide web (www). y2k ignited commercial and technical activities due to the fear of the impact that the digits, “2000”, could have had on computing systems all over the world (uenuma, 2019). by 2020, we all knew of cloud computing (griffith, 2020), the internet of things (evans, 2011) and a new industrial revolution (schwab, 2015). the work environment and the learning landscape became digital and increasingly complex, which has been further fuelled by the covid-19 (c19) pandemic. figure 1: four decades influenced by major developments and events. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 52021 39(4): 5-26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 basson how integrated is mathematics, physics and computer science the focus of the international push towards stem education in recent years has been on the curriculum being interdisciplinary, but it has different implications at the various education levels (millar, 2020). secondary schooling as the gateway to employment and further education has been selected as the level of attention for the purpose of this paper. in south africa the further education and training (fet) phase is specifically important as it represents the final three years of formal schooling (grades 10 to 12). it seems as if stem refers to collectiveness rather than integration locally (kahn, 2013; tikly et al., 2018). fet content, alignment and possible integration will be probed in this paper to comment on preparedness for the post school environment. 2. conceptual framing three disciplines, physics, mathematics and computer science, constitute the base of the technological advancements that we experienced during the 1980–2020 era. by 1980, computer science was established as a discipline for university and technical studies and as an additional subject at the secondary school level. typical of the time, the three disciplines, physics, mathematics and computer science, existed independently (figure 2), with some interaction among scholars and practitioners in these fields. this was particularly notable when curricula were designed to teach school learners and university students for studies in these disciplines and to prepare them for the work environment. figure 2: mathematics, physics and computer science presented as independent disciplines at the university and secondary school levels during the twenty years leading to y2k, physicists and mathematicians teaching mainly at the university level, realised the shortcomings and challenges confronting students when studying in these areas. we experienced an exponential growth in physics and mathematics educational research (per-central, 2021) that contributed to our understanding of how students could learn better and how curricula could be structured to facilitate improved learning (van den akker, 2004). experiences and ideas developed that mathematics and physics (or science) could be presented as part of a continuum (figure 3), as opposed to stand-alone subjects (figure 2). figure 3: illustration of the mathematics–physics integration continuum (basson, 2002) how integrated is mathematics, physics and computer science? computing developed rapidly over four decades and the fields of computer science and information technology matured. although computational thinking (ct) received increased attention as a basic skill (wing, 2006; nouri et al., 2020) and stem research has grown substantially over the past two decades, we have not seen the inclusion of computer science or information technology in the stem grouping. lately, there have at least been endeavours to integrate ct, specifically into k-12 stem education, as illustrated by a recent special issue of the journal of science education and technology (lee et al., 2020). the focus of the international push towards stem education in recent years has been on the curriculum being interdisciplinary, but it has different implications at the various education levels (millar, 2020). secondary schooling as the gateway to employment and further education has been selected as the level of attention for the purpose of this paper. in south africa the further education and training (fet) phase is specifically important as it represents the final three years of formal schooling (grades 10 to 12). it seems as if stem refers to collectiveness rather than integration locally (kahn, 2013; tikly et al., 2018). fet content, alignment and possible integration will be probed in this paper to comment on preparedness for the post school environment. 2. conceptual framing three disciplines, physics, mathematics and computer science, constitute the base of the technological advancements that we experienced during the 1980–2020 era. by 1980, computer science was established as a discipline for university and technical studies and as an additional subject at the secondary school level. typical of the time, the three disciplines, physics, mathematics and computer science, existed independently (figure 2), with some interaction among scholars and practitioners in these fields. this was particularly notable when curricula were designed to teach school learners and university students for studies in these disciplines and to prepare them for the work environment. figure 2: mathematics, physics and computer science presented as independent disciplines at the university and secondary school levels during the twenty years leading to y2k, physicists and mathematicians teaching mainly at the university level, realised the shortcomings and challenges confronting students when studying in these areas. we experienced an exponential growth in physics and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 62021 39(4): 6-26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) interaction improved between mathematics and physics educators, but this did not extend to computer science educators, although the association for computing machinery’s (acm) special interest group on computer science education have been in existence for more than 50 years (sigcse, 2021). examples of the integration of mathematics and physics with computer science are limited, with exceptions mostly found in very specific courses designed to provide certain pedagogical benefits. an example of such a course is presented by pruski and friedman (2014), who reported on a course for first level students, where they integrated calculus-based physics with computing using mathematical modelling. the objective was for seamless integration of the three areas: the course should neither be a mathematics course, with components of physics and computing, nor a physics or computing one, with elements of the other two. they used matlab as the computing environment and introduced some basic concepts of computer programming. the course did not replace existing courses in any of the disciplines. it was aimed at developing critical thinking and enhancing conceptual understanding, while also providing experiences that illustrated that the subjects are not separate and disjointed entities. physicists promoted their discipline as the foundation of nature and the physical world, added mathematics as the vehicle or “language” to describe it in numbers and symbols, and used computers and programming to speed up calculations, analyse data, simulate systems, etc. the teaching/learning landscape became more complex (figure 4) and more challenging to navigate as the boundaries between these disciplines blurred. then came 2006, when jeanette wing (2006) reminded us of the riddle of machine intelligence, “what can humans do better than computers?” and “what can computers do better than humans?”. she re-introduced the concept “computational thinking” (ct) and emphasised that it “is a fundamental skill for everyone” and that we should add it – as we do for reading, writing and arithmetic – “to every child’s analytical ability” (nouri et al., 2020: 3). by 2010, there were already examples of the integration of ct at all levels of formal education: primary, secondary and tertiary (qualls & sherrell, 2010). one year later, barr and stephenson (2011) reported on a process to establish an operational definition for ct and the meaning for k-12. they published a table of the core ct concepts and capabilities, with examples of how to embed it in activities of various disciplines such as computer science, mathematics, science, social studies, languages and arts. most of the nine capabilities, such as data collection, analysis and representation, problem decomposition, abstraction and simulation, could also be associated with “mathematical thinking” or “physics thinking”. these capabilities stretched across disciplines and have opened up the space for collaboration. figure 4: complexity of a physics-mathematics-computer science teaching/learning landscape. 3. frameworks there are various ways or forms to represent curricula (van den akker, 2004). curriculum development and planning encompasses various levels. in curriculum design a distinction is made between the macro (system/society/nation), meso (school/institution), micro (classroom) and nano (individual/personal) levels. van den akker (2004) opines that a distinction should be made between curricula as “intended” (ideal, formal), “implemented” (perceived, operational) and “attained” (experiential, learned). for this paper, the focus will be on the macro and micro http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 72021 39(4): 7-26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 basson how integrated is mathematics, physics and computer science levels, in conjunction with the intended and implemented forms associated with the curriculum. in south africa, we identify the macro level as the national department of basic education (dbe), with the current curriculum and assessment policy statement (dbe, 2011) as the intended curriculum. at the micro level, the focus is on the implemented curriculum, here represented by the content presented in textbooks and in the annual planning documents forwarded from national or provincial levels to teachers for classroom implementation. emphasising the development of 21st century capabilities and an integrated curriculum as an effective way of achieving these capabilities, drake and reid (2018) offered a continuum for constructing such a curriculum. the span includes transdisciplinary, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary and fusion as ways for integration. they proposed the know, do, be (kdb) framework for constructing an integrated curricula. “know” takes the focus away from memorising facts to conceptual thinking, “do” shifts from lower-order skills to more complex interdisciplinary capabilities such as critical thinking, and “be” adds character building that includes aspects such as mental health, values and attitudes. michelsen (2015) proposed a didactical framework for interdisciplinary teaching between mathematics and physics, based on two aspects. the first is a didactical model for coordination and interaction between mathematics and natural science subjects, consisting of two phases. the model starts with a phase of horizontal linking, when concepts and process skills from the two disciplines are connected by thematic integration, utilising modelling activities. next, conceptual anchoring of the concepts that constitute a vertical structuring phase. this phase allows learners to move about analytically and logically within mathematics and the natural science subject(s) in the interacting or an interdisciplinary context. the second aspect of the framework is the conception of modelling as an interdisciplinary competency. it stems from an interpretation that modelling is a mathematics as well as a science competence: “competency development can be seen as a lynchpin for interdisciplinary activities” (michelsen, 2015: 493). here, computing could be included based on modelling as a vehicle for development of skills. in addition to the above, weintrop et al. (2016) proposed a taxonomy comprising four categories as a possible definition of ct for science and mathematics. the taxonomy describes the categories as “practices as opposed to skills or concepts in order to emphasise that engaging in scientific investigation requires not only skill but also knowledge that is specific to each practice” (weintrop et al., 2016: 134). the four categories are data, modelling and simulation, computational problem solving and systems thinking practices, with each category consisting of five to seven ct subsets. an overview of the frameworks is provided to offer a window to the international landscape, with a view of considering the south african context. 4. research questions given international trends and efforts to promote 21st century skills with stem education and incorporating computational thinking (ct) in curricula, certain concerns have come to the fore regarding the south african secondary school system. to explore this, the following three questions have been formulated: 1. what were the changes in the content of the syllabi of mathematics, physics and computer science (information technology) over four decades at the fet level? http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 82021 39(4): 8-26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) 2. is there alignment and/or integration between mathematics, physics and computer science content in the current fet curriculum? 3. would the alignment or integration equip a learner at the grade 12 exit level to utilise 21st century ct skills when navigating the complex world of work or future study? 5. method in this study an exploratory research design was adopted to examine whether there has been any meaningful changes in what has been taught in south african schools in the three disciplines, over the past four decades, using content analysis of representative current textbooks, and of the years around 1980, to detect changes over time. this would depict the implemented curriculum at the meso-micro levels (van den akker, 2004). alignment of the three disciplines was explored by comparing the sequencing of topics in the current syllabi of mathematics, information technology and the physics part of physical sciences. it was done to check for interdisciplinary horizontal linking and vertical structuring (michelson, 2015) of the final three years of school, namely grades 10, 11 and 12. in addition, the 2020 “suggested planning of teaching and assessment” documents of one of the provinces in south africa (wced, 2020) was consulted. it provided an additional window to the current interpretation of the intended curriculum as it plays out at the classroom level. the syllabi cover large numbers of topics in all three subjects. for this paper it was not possible to investigate all topics in detail, something that could follow in future. a topic from physics was selected as an example of alignment. physics as application domain relies on mathematics as a “language” and computer science or information technology as a “tool” (figure 4). after 40 years “motion” in physics still is the first topic encountered by learners in mechanics (table 1). it is a topic that poses serious learning challenges (hake, 1987; halloun & hestenes, 1985; mcdermott et al., 1987) and relies on crucial pre-knowledge in physics and mathematics (basson, 2002) with computer science included here. curriculum and syllabi documents were scanned to reveal possible ct integration or a similar ct integrated taxonomy (weintrop, 2016). 6. results and discussion 6.1 subject content spanning forty years prior to y2k, learners in south africa received focused tuition in two languages and a minimum of four subjects of choice in their final two school years (grades 11 and 12). since then, they have to study two languages, life orientation and mathematics or mathematical literacy as compulsory subjects, in conjunction with a minimum of three subjects of choice over the final three years of school (grades 10, 11 and 12) (dbe, 2021). this is a significant difference in approach and regarding what is expected of learners. the second major difference is that physics and chemistry used to be combined as science in grade 10, and separated for grades 11 and 12, presenting physics only in grade 11 and chemistry only in grade 12. currently, the physics and chemistry content is presented in all three grades as physical sciences (dbe, 2011). table 1 shows the content of the physical sciences textbooks, representative of the early and latter parts of the forty-year period. the basic physics content stayed the same over this period. a couple of topics were removed – these relate to aspects of “heat” (heat capacity, latent heat and thermionic emission), http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 92021 39(4): 9-26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 basson how integrated is mathematics, physics and computer science “two-dimensional projectile and circular motion” and “nuclear reactions”. the “doppler effect” seems to be the topic expanded on in the current syllabus, including “frequency calculations”, while having only descriptions about shock waves before. similar to physics, the basic content of mathematics remained the same (table 2). the difference being that some content was added and seemingly nothing removed. the new content covers aspects of “financial mathematics”, “statistics” and “probability” in all three grades, as well as “linear programming” in grade 11, and “differential calculus” in grade 12. linear programming was introduced a couple of years ago and in the meantime removed, but it still appears in some textbooks as a topic. during the same time, the implemented computer science curriculum changed substantially, with the introduction of information technology (it) at the school level as a replacement for computer science. the topics changed from the “classification of numbers”, “arithmetic operations”, “boole algebra”, “data handling” and “fortran as programming language”, to the inclusion of aspects related to the “internet”, “world wide web”, “algorithms” and “data base design”, among a spectrum of topics with a wide choice of tools to navigate the digital space (table 3). computing hardware advanced phenomenally and, with that, the development of applications and software. the introduction of “coding”, even at primary school level, also receives attention (khoza, 2021). the value adding objective seems to be questioned and under consideration and discussion (van der velden, 2019). 6.2 sequence of topics related to “motion” to ascertain the level of alignment, requires that there be a closer look at the sequencing of topics, as prescribed or presented. table 4 shows the details pertaining to “motion”, as the selected critical topic. it was taught previously as continuous arrangement of subtopics in grade 11 only. currently, the subtopics are intertwined with other physics topics, as well as chemistry topics, which are spread over grades 10–12 (table 1). apart from the concepts related to “circular and parabolic motion”, which have been removed (green in table 4), all the subtopics seem to be presented in a similar sequence, although it spans over three years, compared to one year previously. tables 2 and 3 provide an overview of the content in mathematics and information technology (marked with a hash) that supports the topic, “motion”. when compared with the results of a previous study (basson, 2002), the mathematics content is adequate and appropriate. the concern is the alignment of topics that span over the three years. an example is that aspects of “functions”, “analytical geometry” and “trigonometry”, studied in grade 11 mathematics, would be required for grade 10 physics topics related to vectors, when studying “motion”. “functions” in grade 10 mathematics provides an introduction to the linear function showing the effect of varying the gradient and y-intercept and to the quadratic function dealing with shape, vertical shift and the turning point. in grade 11 the linear function is part of analytical geometry when the concepts of inclination and parallel and perpendicular lines are discussed. the quadratic function though remains a “functions” topic and learners are introduced to a different form of this function as well as the average gradient concept. learners studying motion in grade 10 could benefit from all of these grade 11 mathematics topics. in trigonometry, trigonometric ratios, special angles and the cartesian plane are introduced to assist with determining lengths in grade 10. but grade 11 trigonometric identities and some of the reduction formulae and the area rule would be useful tools when motion is introduced. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 102021 39(4): 10-26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) other examples are the introduction of “calculus” and “pythagoras’ theorem”, towards the end of grade 12. these are indispensable for physics, but at this point, it is too late to contribute towards the initial learning of complex concepts, for example, velocity, acceleration and projectile movement in a unit about “motion”. it is more difficult to observe the relation with it. the concepts that would be appropriate to encounter before or along with the teaching of motion deal with programming. these, together with the necessary skills, appear in the “practical” units of it. the advantage would only be meaningful in grade 12, after completion of all these units. table 1. content of physical sciences textbooks, representative of the years, 1980 (myburgh et al., 1978; pienaar & walters, 1975; prinsloo, et al., 1976) and 2020 (siyavula, 2020). the focus is on the physics part, indicated by the colour, yellow. the red text shows the topics that have been removed. 1980 physics and chemistry textbooks 2020 physical sciences textbooks grade 10 science (physics and chemistry) grade 10 physical sciences 1 light (sources, energy, speed, reflection, refraction, colour) 1 skills for science 2 sound (sources, waves, speed, reflection, refraction, intensity, shock waves) 2 classification of matter 3 heat, work and energy (phases of matter, heat transfer, heat capacity, latent heat) 3 states of matter and kinetic molecular theory 4 electricity (current, resistance, heat & magnetic effects of current, induction, transformer) 4 the atom 5 structure of the atom 5 periodic table 6 atomic models 6 chemical bonding 7 model of electron arrangement 7 transverse pulses and waves 8 chemical bonding 8 longitudinal waves and sound 9 chemical reactions 9 electromagnetic radiation 10 acids, bases and salts 10 particles that atoms are made of 11 chemical reactions and electricity 11 physical and chemical change 12 ionic reactions 12 representing chemical change grade 11 physics 13 magnetism 1 mathematical relationships 14 electrostatics 2 motion and vectors 15 electric circuits 3 uniform and accelerated motion 16 reactions in aqueous solution 4 free fall and equations of motion (projectile motion) 17 quantitative aspects of chemical change 5 force and motion (newton i, acceleration, momentum, weight) 18 vectors and scalars (applications mainly forces) 6 forces in equilibrium 19 motion in one dimension (speed, velocity, acceleration, equations of motion) 7 newton’s law of gravitation (gravitational force, circular motion, orbits) 20 mechanical energy (potential and kinetic energy, conservation of mechanical energy) 8 conservation of momentum (impulse, momentum, newton iii, action and reaction) 21 the hydrosphere http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 112021 39(4): 11-26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 basson how integrated is mathematics, physics and computer science 1980 physics and chemistry textbooks 2020 physical sciences textbooks 9 work, energy, power (potential, kinetic, energy conservation) grade 11 physical sciences 10 electrostatics 1 vectors in two dimensions (context of forces) 11 electric field and potential difference 2 newton’s laws ( newton i, ii, iii, gravitation, weight) 12 electrical current and electromagnetism 3 atomic combinations 13 force between electrical currents, magnetic induction 4 intermolecular forces 14 resistance in electrical circuits 5 geometrical optics 15 electrical energy and power 6 2d and 3d wave fronts 16 alternating current and the transformer 7 ideal gases 17 thermionic emission 8 quantitative aspects of chemical change 18 waves and their properties 9 electrostatics 19 wave nature of light 10 electromagnetism (field, current, faraday’s law) 20 electromagnetic waves 11 electric circuits (ohm’s law, power, energy) 21 electrons & positive current (deflection, photoelectric effect) 12 energy and chemical change 22 wave particle duality 13 types of reaction 23 atomic nucleus 14 the lithosphere 24 nuclear reactions grade 12 physical sciences grade 12 chemistry 1 momentum and impulse 1 periodic table and electron configuration 2 verticle projectile motion in one dimension 2 chemical bonding 3 organic molecules 3 chemical calculations 4 work, energy and power (conservation of energy) 4 gases, liquids and solids 5 doppler effect 5 speed of chemical reactions 6 rate and extent of reaction 6 electrolytes 7 chemical equilibrium 7 redox reactions 8 acids and bases 8 hydrogen, oxygen and water 9 electric circuits (series, parallel, internal resistance) 9 alkali and earth metals 10 electrodynamics (motors, generators, alternating current) 10 halogens and transition elements 11 optical phenomena and properties of matter (photoelectric effect, spectra) 11 elements of groups 4-6 12 electrochemical reactions 12 organic chemistry 13 chemical industry http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 122021 39(4): 12-26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) table 2. content of mathematics textbooks, representative of the years 1980 (dekker et al., 1984; kruger & ahlers, 1975; van der schyf et al., 1975) and 2020 (siyavula, 2020). the blue shows algebra and the green new content. content supporting the topic, “motion”, in physics is marked with a hash #. 1980 mathematics textbooks 2020 mathematics textbooks grade 10 algebra grade 10 mathematics 1 products 1 algebraic expressions: real, rational and irrational numbers, rounding off, estimating surds, products, factorisation, simplification of fractions# 2 decomposition in factors 2 exponents: revision of exponent laws, rational exponents, exponential equation# 3 algebraic fractions 3 number patterns: describing sequences 4 equations and inequalities: linear and quadratic 4 equations and inequalities -solving linear, quadratic equations & simultaneous equations, word problems, literal equations, solving linear inequalities# 5 formulas: prisms, cylinders 5 trigonometry: similarity of triangles, trigonometric and reciprocal ratios, special angles, trigonometric equations, ratios in cartesian plane# 6 functions: linear, half circle, hyperbola, parabola with b=0 6 functions: linear, quadratic, hyperbolic, exponential and trigonometric functions, interpretation of graphs# 7 systems of linear equations 7 euclidean geometry: triangles, quadrilaterals, mid-point theorem 8 exponents 8 analytical geometry: cartesian plane, distance between two points, gradient & mid-point of a line# grade 10 geometry 9 finance and growth 9 euclidian geometry: quadrilaterals, parallelograms, triangles 10 statistics 10 trigonometry: angles, cartesian plane, six trig functions, right-angled triangle 11 measurements: polygon, right prisms, cylinders, right pyramids, right cones & spheres grade 11 algebra 12 probability (union, intersection, venn diagrams) 1 factors, biggest common denominator, least common multiple and fractions 2 union and intersections grade 11 mathematics 3 real number system 1 exponents and surds: rational exponents and surds, solving surd equations, applications of exponentials 4 venn diagrams 2 equations and inequalities: completing the square, quadratic formula, substitution, finding the equation, nature of roots, quadratic inequalities, simultaneous equations# 5 relations and functions 3 number patterns: quadratic sequences 6 the rest statement (cubic polynomials) 4 analytical geometry: equation and inclination of a line, parallel and perpendicular lines# http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 132021 39(4): 13-26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 basson how integrated is mathematics, physics and computer science 1980 mathematics textbooks 2020 mathematics textbooks 7 linear functions, equations and inequalities 5 functions: quadratic, hyperbolic & exponential functions, sine, cosine & tangent 8 hyperbola and circle 6 trigonometry: trigonometric identities, reduction formula, trigonometric equations, area, sine & cosine rules# 9 exponents, powers and square roots 7 measurement: area of a polygon, right prisms, cylinders pyramids, and cones, spheres 8 hyperbola and circle 8 euclidean geometry: circle geometry 9 exponents, powers and square roots 9 finance, growth and decay grade 11 geometry 10 probability 10 locus 11 statistics 11 circle and cords of the circle 12 linear programming introduction 12 angles in a circle 13 tangent to a circle grade 12 mathematics 14 intersection 1 sequences and series 15 relations and proportionality 2 functions: functions & relations, inverse, linear, quadratic & exponential functions# 16 analytical geometry 3 finance grade 12 algebra 4 trigonometry: compound & double angle identities, solving equations, applications of trigonometric functions# 1 exponential and logarithmic functions 5 polynomials: cubic polynomials, remainder theorem, factor theorem, solving cubic 2 logarithms 6 differential calculus: limits, differentiation, differentiation rules, equation of tangent to curve, second derivative, sketching graphs, applications# 3 quadratic equations with one unknown 7 analytical geometry: equation of a circle and of a tangent to a circle 4 quadratic functions, quadratic inequalities and the nature of the roots 8 euclidean geometry: ratio and proportion, polygons, triangles, similarity, pythagorean theorem# 5 two equations with two unknowns, quadratic and linear 9 statistics 6 interpretation of graphs 10 probability 7 relations and proportionality 8 sequences and series 9 real number system ii grade 12 geometry and trigonometry 10 naming triangles, positive & negative angles 11 trigonometric functions 12 natural & logarithmic tables of trig relations 13 trigonometric relations of angles in any quadrant 14 relations of sides and angles of any triangle http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 142021 39(4): 14-26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) 1980 mathematics textbooks 2020 mathematics textbooks 15 function values of specific angles 16 relations between trigonometric ratios 17 trigonometric formulas compound angles 18 graphs of trigonometric functions 19 identities and trigonometric equations table 3. content of computer science books, representative of the years 1980 (computer science notes, no textbook prescribed at the time) and 2020 (dbe, 2020a). content supporting the topic, “motion”, in physics is marked with a hash #. 1980 computer science notes 2020 information technology textbooks grade 11 and 12 computer science grade 10 information technology 1 computer science history and careers 1 basic concepts of computing# 2 classification of decimal numbers 2 data representation storage and social implications 3 conversion of number systems 3 practical: algorithms, delphi, variables, components, solving basic mathematical problems using delphi# 4 arithmetic operations, binary system and alpha numeric characters 4 basic concepts of hardware 5 arithmetic calculations and the binary system 5 basic concepts of system software 6 data 6 networks 7 flow charts 7 electronic communications 8 flow charts and fortran 8 practical: decision making, algorithms, boolean expressions & operators, if-then & nested if-then statements# 9 boole algebra 9 computer management 10 input, output and storage media 10 the internet and world-wide web 11 program storage computers 11 practicall repetition, do loop, string manipulation# 12 samos machine 12 internet services 13 fortran programming language 13 practical: practical assessment task – assignment statement grade 11 information technology – input and output 1 hardware cache, memory – program execution and development 2 software operating systems, compilers – do statement 3 networks and social implications – subscripted variables 4 practical: functions and nested loops# – functions and subroutines 5 computer management – case studies 6 electronic communications 7 database management and design 8 practical: arrays, string and date manipulation# 9 database management and design 10 internet and www 11 internet services technologies 12 practical: text files, procedures, functions, user interfaces, databases# http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 152021 39(4): 15-26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 basson how integrated is mathematics, physics and computer science 1980 computer science notes 2020 information technology textbooks grade 12 information technology 1 database management collection, warehousing, mining 2 database design concepts 3 practical: programming fundamentals, procedures and function in delphi libraries, user-interface, databases# 4 hardware mobile technologies, performance of computers 5 software cloud computing, viral and augmented reality 6 practical: oo-oriented programming, 2-dim arrays# 7 internet services, networks 8 e-communication 9 social implications 10 practical databases and sql table 4. details and sequence of the topic, “motion” (green shows subtopics removed). 1980 physics topic motion 2020 physics topic motion grade 11 grade 10 1 motion and vectors 1 vectors and scalars (note: applications mainly forces) – path length,distance and displacement, direction – introduction – speed and velocity – properties of vectors – scalars and vectors – techniques of vector addition – adding of displacements and velocities 2 motion in one dimension – decomposition of vectors – reference frame 2 uniform and accelerated motion – speed and velocity – uniform motion in a straight line – acceleration – uniform velocity & acceleration, displacement and velocity time graphs – instantaneous velocity and speed – description of motion 3 free fall and equations of motion – equations of motion – free fall and air resistance mechanical energy – gravitational acceleration 3 – potential energy – equations of motion and calculations – kinetic energy – acceleration at an angle with the direction of motion – mechanical energy – horizontal and upward projection (two dimensions) – conservation of mechanical energy 4 force and motion – nature of force grade 11 – uniform motion without force 4 vectors in two dimensions (note: context of forces) – newton’s first law – resultant and perpendicular vectors – inertia and mass – components of vectors – force and acceleration 5 newton’s laws http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 162021 39(4): 16-26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) – momentum – force – weight and measurement of mass – newton’s laws 5 forces in equilibrium – forces between masses – vector nature of force (newton’s law of universal gravitation, weight and mass) – equilibrant and resultant of forces – parallelogram, triangle, polygon of forces grade 12 – decomposition of forces 6 momentum and impulse 6 newton’s law of gravitation – momentum – the moon in free fall – newton’s second law revisited – gravitational force at a distance and on a mass – conservation of momentum – law of gravitation and constant – impulse – centripetal force and acceleration – physics in action: impulse – circular motion 7 vertical projectile motion in one dimension – effects of centripetal force, mass, radius on speed of object – introduction – orbit and period of a satellite – vertical projectile motion 7 conservation of momentum 8 work, energy and power – impulse and momentum – work – changes in and total momentum – work-energy theorem – conservation of momentum during a collision – conservation of energy – newton’s third law, action and reaction – power 8 work, energy and power – work – potential, kinetic and forms of energy – power – conservation of mechanical energy 6.3 physics, mathematics and computer science alignment the “suggested planning of teaching and assessment” documents for grades 10–12 (wced, 2020), of the 2020 secondary school year (tables 5 to 7, respectively), show that the planning calendar provided for 42 weeks of learning and assessment activities. in these tables, it is notable that the content is split into chunks of alternating subtopics, in relation to all three disciplines. in mathematics, bits of “algebra” alternate with bits of “geometry” and “trigonometry”, with the new content, “statistics” and “finance”, presented towards the end of the school year. in physical sciences, bits of “physics” and “chemistry” alternate, but even within “physics”, some “mechanics”, “electricity”, “magnetism” and “optics” alternate through the grades. within the topic of “motion”, for example in grade 10, “energy” ideas go hand in hand with “speed” and “velocity”. coherence is lost when these subtopics are detached and presented with six weeks of “chemistry” in between. information technology shows less fragmentation, but it appears that theoretical aspects are separated from practical programming tasks. the national curriculum statement (ncs) emphasises progression of content and context as one of the guiding principles (dbe, 2021). it seems to be achieved in the lower to higher grades, but none of the curriculum documents referenced provided an explanation or justification for the chunking of the content and for the specific sequencing of the bits, as described above and shown in the tables. further exploration of these aspects would http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 172021 39(4): 17-26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 basson how integrated is mathematics, physics and computer science be required to get a better understanding of how it could benefit or affect the learning of fet learners. it should also be explored in light of the reality that learners write separate physics and chemistry papers in grade 12, and that “algebra”, “functions”, “finance” and “differential calculus” form part of mathematics paper 1, which is separate from “geometry”, “trigonometry” and “statistics”, assessed in mathematics paper 2. the topic of “motion” is revisited to ascertain alignment of the topic across the three disciplines. tables 5 to 7 show the subtopics in green for physics and the supporting mathematics topics in blue and for information technology in orange. the mathematics required comes in the first half of the year for grade 10 and in this way supports the introduction of “motion”, presented in the second half. information technology subtopics run parallel with mathematics and could be useful by the time “loops” are introduced later. inspection of the details of the planning calendar for grade 11 does not bode well for grade 11 learners. “analytical geometry”, “trigonometry” and aspects of “euclidian geometry” follow on “vectors” in two dimensions, “force and free body diagrams” and “newton’s laws” in physics. ideally, these mathematics subtopics should be pre-knowledge for the topics covered in physics. similarly for grade 12, “functions” and “differential calculus” should come before “momentum”, “projectile motion”, “work” and “energy”, or these subtopics should even rather be taught in grade 11. the first reference to computational thinking was found in grade 11 information technology within seven weeks of “application development” and “event driven programming”. it appears with specific reference to dataset handling and therefore no immediate link to physics. the same applies to grade 12 information technology, where the focus and context is “sql” and the “internet”. the ncs (dbe, 2021) aims to “produce learners that are able to demonstrate an understanding of the world as a set of related systems by recognising that problem solving contexts do not exist in isolation”. neither the macro nor the meso/micro levels seem to support this aim of achieving alignment across the disciplines, or with aspects of interdisciplinarity as a possible framework or objective. 6.4 assessment driven system the intension of this study at the onset was not to consider assessment per se. while analysing the sequencing of the weekly learning activities (tables 5 to 7), it became inevitable to observe and comment on the emphasis on formal assessment (tests and examinations as per the planning calendars) in grades 10 to 12. the south african secondary school system at the fet level seems to be driven by a rigid, prescribed assessment scheme, as shown by an analysis (table 8) of the activities indicated in tables 5 to 7. in 2020, learners spent, on average, about 30% of the 42-week school year in grades 10 and 11 on formal assessments. this number increases astoundingly to about 50% in grade 12. to put it explicitly, learners devote only half of their time learning and developing new concepts and skills in their final year of school. in spite of the focus on assessments, especially in grade 12, the results are not in support of the tremendous effort spent to prepare for tests and examinations. figure 5 shows the grade 12 final examination results for mathematics and physical sciences. over the five-year period 2016–2020, on average, only 22% of candidates obtained 50% or more in mathematics and 28% in physical sciences. it is alarming to note that about half of the learners do not even reach the 30% mark in mathematics and only a fifth gets above 50%! there is unfortunately no data in the diagnostic reports of the dbe for information technology. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 182021 39(4): 18-26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) table 5. grade 10 planning calendar (grey shows assessment activities). week no. grade 10 planning calender 2020 mathematics physical sciences information technology 1 alg: rational/irrational numbers, surds, rounding, multiply biwith trinomial revise matter and classification basic concepts of computing 2 alg: factorisation (grouping, quadratic, sum & difference of cubes), simpl fract states of matter and kinetic molecular theory experiment 1 basic concepts of computing: algorithms 3 alg: exponents (laws, simplify, solve equations) the atom basic building block data representation: bits, bytes, number systems, data types 4 equations and inequalities: quadratic periodic table algorithms: flow charts, trace tables 5 equations and ineq: quadratic, simultaneous linear equations chemical bonding data representation: file naming and types 6 eq and ineq: word problems, literal eq’s, linear inequalities transverse pulses on a string or spring variables: naming, assigning values, data types 7 euclidean geometry: kite, parallelogram, rectangle, rhombus, square, trapesium longitudianal waves functions: random, round, sq root, calculations 8 eucl geo: line segements joining midpoints of two sides of triangle sound social implications; licence, copyright, ethics, legal 9 trigonometry: trig ratios, reciprocals, special ratios electromagnetic radiation applying algorithms, swapping values, isolate digits 10 trigonometry: solve simple eq’s, use diagrams to determine ratios indiginous knowledge systems folklore event handling 11 analytical geom: distance formula, gradient of line, coordinates midpoints magnetism extend use of variables, nested if’s, relational operators 12 applications of week 11 electrostatics boolean logic, operators 13 number patterns: linear electric circuits strings: methods and operations 14 functions: concept of a func, basic graphs x^2, 1/x, b^x electric circuits string operations, system software 15 functions: sketching of x^2, 1/x, b^x particles substances are made of events and validation 16 functions: finding eq of the form x^2, 1/x, b^x physical and chemical change debugging and networks 17 functions: trigonometry graphs representing chemical change e-communication and implications 18 examination revision problem solving 19 examination examination examination 20 examination examination examination 21 examination examination examination 22 trigonometry graphs problems in 2 dim vectors and scalars iteration constructs: loops http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 192021 39(4): 19-26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 basson how integrated is mathematics, physics and computer science week no. grade 10 planning calender 2020 mathematics physical sciences information technology 23 trigonometry graphs problems in 2 dim motion in one dimension loops and computer management 24 statistics motion in one dimension computer management 25 statistics instantaneous speed and velocity string handling 26 probability equations of motion experiment 2 internet and www, implement algorithms 27 probability reaction in acqueous solution internet and www, application development 28 finance growth reaction in acqueous solution application development 29 finance growth reaction in acqueous solution application development 30 measurement: volume and surface areas quantitative aspects of chemical change solution development 31 measurement: volume and surface area spheres, pyramids, cones quantitative aspects of chemical change practical assessment task (pat) 32 measurement: volume and surface area spheres, pyramids, cones quantitative aspects of chemical change pat 33 eucl geo: appl quadrilateral theorems energy internet services technology 34 eucl geo: appl quadrilateral theorems energy potential and kinetic solution development 35 revision energy potential and kinetic pat 36 revision the hydrosphere pat 37 revision revision revision 38 examination examination revision 39 examination examination examination 40 examination examination examination 41 examination examination examination 42 examination examination examination table 6. grade 11 planning calendar (grey shows assessment activities). week no. grade 11 planning calender 2020 mathematics physical sciences information technology 1 exponents and surds vectors in 2 dimensions hardware 2 exponents and surds newtons laws, kinds of forces loops: nested 3 equations and inequalities: quadratic, factors newtons laws, force diagrams and free body arrays as data structure 1d 4 equations and inequalities: quadratic inequalities newtons laws, applications 1,2,3 arrays basic operations 5 equations and inequalities: simultaneous eq’s, nature of roots newtons laws, applications 1,2,3 arrays searching and sorting 6 euclidian geometry: circle newtons laws, applications 1,2,3 experiment 1 arrays parallel and nested loops http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 202021 39(4): 20-26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) week no. grade 11 planning calender 2020 mathematics physical sciences information technology 7 eucl geom: apply theorems to geometry sketches with angles given as variables newtons laws, universal gravitation string manipulation 8 eucl geom: apply theorems to geometry sketches with angles numerical molecular structure computer management 9 trig: tan, square identities, reduction formulae intermolecular forces methods string manipulation 10 trig: neg angles, values for which identities hold control test problem solving: algorithms for string manipulation 11 anal geometry: equation of line geometrical optics: refraction input and output text and file 12 anal geometry: inclination of line geometrical optics: snell’s law electronic communication 13 number patterns geometrical optics: critical angle functions, arguments vs parameters 14 number patterns wave fronts 2d and 3d: diffraction social implications 15 functions: parabola ideal gases, thermal properties software engineering principles 16 functions: a/(x+p), ab^(x+p) ideal gas law practical assessment task (pat) 17 functions: exam questions integrating weeks 15 and 16 quantitative aspects of chemical change practical assessment task (pat) 18 examination quantitative aspects of chemical change examination 19 examination examination examination 20 examination examination examination 21 examination examination examination 22 functions: effect of parameters in sin, cos, tan coulomb’s law pat database management 23 measurement: revise grade 10 electric field, electromagnetism pat database design 24 trigonometry: sin and cos rules magnetic field and faraday’s law database design 25 trigonometry: area rules ohm’s law experiment 2 database design, social implications 26 trigonometry: problems in 2d applying weeks 24 and 25 ohm’s law power and energy application development 27 statistics energy and chemical change pat application development 28 statistics types of reaction: acid-base appl dev: computational thinking & software eng 29 probability types of reaction: acid-base appl dev: computational thinking & software eng 30 probability types of reaction: redox appl dev: computational thinking & software eng 31 finance growth and decay control test appl dev: use of algorithms http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 212021 39(4): 21-26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 basson how integrated is mathematics, physics and computer science week no. grade 11 planning calender 2020 mathematics physical sciences information technology 32 finance growth and decay control test practical assessment task (pat) 33 finance growth and decay oxidation number database design 34 finance growth and decay exploiting lithosphere or earth’s crust database design and gui 35 revision exploiting lithosphere or earth’s crust internet and www and gui 36 revision revision internet solutions and gui 37 revision examination social implications and pat 38 examination examination practical assessment task (pat) 39 examination examination examination 40 examination examination examination 41 examination examination examination 42 examination examination examination table 7. grade 12 planning calendar (grey shows assessment activities). week no. grade 12 planning calender 2020 mathematics physical sciences information technology 1 number patterns, sequences & series skills for practical investigations database design and concept 2 number patterns, sequences & series newton law 2 and momentum oop and hardware 3 number patterns, sequences & series impuls oop and software 4 euclidian geometry: ratio, proportionality theorem & appl conservation of momentum sql 5 euclidian geometry: similarity theorem & appl vertical projectile motion practical assessment task (pat) 6 trig: compound angle, double angle organic molecular structure sql and networks 7 trig: identities involving week 6 iupac naming and formulae sql and e-communication 8 trig: eqs involving week 6 applications of organic chemistry sql and social implications 9 trig: graphs and solutions of triangles in 3d involving week 6 plastics and polymers sotware engineering principles 10 anal geom: circle with centre (a,b) control test sotware engineering principles 11 anal geom: eq. of tangent to circle work def & work-energy theorem practical assessment task 12 functions: definition and inverse of linear, x^2 and b^x conservation of energy nonconserv forces computer management and pat 13 func: def of log, inverse of exp and log doppler effect arrays 2d as datastructure 14 func: polynomials 3rd degree rates of reaction arrays 2d as datastructure http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 222021 39(4): 22-26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) week no. grade 12 planning calender 2020 mathematics physical sciences information technology 15 differential calculus: limit, gradiet, find derivative chemical equilibrium softw eng: algorithmic thinking 16 diff calc: stas points & concavity, sketch func’s & its deriv, eq. of func equilibrium constant practical assessment task (pat) 17 differential calculus: applications acid-base reactions practical assessment task (pat) 18 examination acid-base reactions examination 19 examination examination examination 20 examination examination examination 21 examination examination examination 22 finance growth & decay gr 11 elec and magn revision pat and software engineering 23 finance growth & decay electrical machines motors and generators pat and software engineering 24 statistics electrical machines alternating current pat and internet and www 25 statistics electrolytic and galvanic cells internet services and social implications 26 counting & probability electrode potentials and oxidatiton numbers database design concepts 27 counting & probability fertiliser industry pat and appl development 28 revision photoelectric effect application development 29 internal examination internal examination application development 30 internal examination internal examination internal examination 31 internal examination internal examination internal examination 32 internal examination internal examination internal examination 33 revision revision assessment tasks 34 revision revision assessment tasks 35 revision revision examination 36 examination revision examination 37 examination examination examination 38 examination examination examination 39 examination examination examination 40 examination examination examination 41 examination examination examination 42 examination examination examination table 8. percentage of time spent on assessment activities for the 2020 school year. subject grade 10 grade 11 grade 12 mathematics 29 29 45 physical sciences 24 31 43 information technology 31 29 55 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 232021 39(4): 23-26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 basson how integrated is mathematics, physics and computer science figure 5. grade 12 mathematics and physical sciences examination results 2016–2020 (dbe, 2020b). 7. conclusions twenty years into the millennium, the basic physics and mathematics content of the fet phase remained the same, while that of information technology has changed completely. when analysing syllabi, textbooks and planning schedules, there was no clear indication of whether there has been any consideration given to the alignment of the content of the three disciplines or how this will be realised. without alignment and no integration of disciplines including aspects of computing, stem could locally still be viewed as a collective term for the four subject areas represented by the acronym. it puts south africa, to an extent, on the outside of the international frame regarding multior interdisciplinarity given stem frameworks. chunking of content, as observed in this study, indicates neither alignment nor integration. at least two aspects should be clarified when further studies are pursued, preceding integration: (1) the impact and/or benefit of chunked content presented as alternating physics and chemistry topics in physical sciences, and alternating algebra with geometry-trigonometry in mathematics, given that no clear motive was found for it; (2) the need for spreading the content of critical topics over three years, compared to continuously per year, could shed light on the nature of vertical anchoring. the south african basic education system appears to run an assessment-driven fet curriculum in mathematics, physics and information technology, with poor results as outcome. such a system, seemingly, does not allow space for proper, integrated, interdisciplinary, 21st century skills development. 8. acknowledgement dr vreda pieterse is thanked for discussion and presentation of the complexity of a physicsmathematics-computer science teaching/learning landscape (figure 4). references barr, v. & stephenson, c. 2011. bringing computational thinking to k-12: what is involved and what is the role of the computer science education community? association for computing machinery (acm) inroads, 2(1): 48–54. https://doi.org/10.1145/1929887.1929905 how integrated is mathematics, physics and computer science? table 8. percentage of time spent on assessment activities for the 2020 school year. subject grade 10 grade 11 grade 12 mathematics 29 29 45 physical sciences 24 31 43 information technology 31 29 55 figure 5. grade 12 mathematics and physical sciences examination results 2016–2020 (dbe, 2020b). 7. conclusions twenty years into the millennium, the basic physics and mathematics content of the fet phase remained the same, while that of information technology has changed completely. when analysing syllabi, textbooks and planning schedules, there was no clear indication of whether there has been any consideration given to the alignment of the content of the three disciplines or how this will be realised. without alignment and no integration of disciplines including aspects of computing, stem could locally still be viewed as a collective term for the four subject areas represented by the acronym. it puts south africa, to an extent, on the outside of the international frame regarding multior interdisciplinarity given stem frameworks. chunking of content, as observed in this study, indicates neither alignment nor integration. at least two aspects should be clarified when further studies are pursued, preceding integration: (1) the impact and/or benefit of chunked content presented as alternating physics and chemistry topics in physical sciences, and alternating algebra with http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 https://doi.org/10.1145/1929887.1929905 242021 39(4): 24-26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) basson, i. 2002. physics and mathematics as interrelated fields of thought development using acceleration as example. international journal of mathematical education in science and technology, 33(5): 679–690. https://doi.org/10.1080/00207390210146023 department of basic education (dbe). 2011. curriculum and assessment policy statement grades 10-12 physical sciences. available at https://www.education.gov.za/curriculum/ curriculumassessmentpolicystatements(caps)/capsfet.aspx [assessed 4 april 2021]. department of basic education (dbe). 2020a. information technology theory and practical books grades 10, 11 & 12. available at 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https://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2021-02-25-draft-curriculum-including-coding-and-robotics-to-be-gazetted-ramaphosa/ 252021 39(4): 25-26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 basson how integrated is mathematics, physics and computer science engineering, and mathematics education. journal of science education and technology, 29(1): 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-019-09803-w martín-páez, t., aguilera, d., perales-palacios, f.j. & josé vílchez-gonzález, j.m. 2019. what are we talking about when we talk about stem education? a review of literature. science education, 103: 799–822. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21522 mcdermott, l.c., rosenquist, m.l. & van zee, e.h. 1987. student difficulties in connecting graphs and physics: examples from kinematics. american journal of physics, 55(6): 503– 513. https://doi.org/10.1119/1.15104 michelsen, c. 2015. mathematical modelling is also physics – interdisciplinary teaching between mathematics and physics in danish upper secondary education. physics education, 50(4): 489–494. https://doi.org/10.1088/0031-9120/50/4/489 millar, v. 2020. trends, issues and possibilities for an interdisciplinary stem curriculum. science and education, 29: 929–948. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-020-00144-4 myburgh, m.c., muller, g.j. & oosthuizen, m.j. 1978. new science for standard 8. cape town: nasou. nouri, j., zhang, l., mannila, l. & norén, e. 2020. development of computational thinking, digital competence and 21st century skills when learning programming in k-9. education inquiry, 11(1): 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/20004508.2019.1627844 per-central. 2021. american association of physics teachers (appt) compadre resources. available at https://www.compadre.org/per/ [assessed 30 march 2021]. pienaar, h.n. & walters, s.w. 1975. senior basic science 9. cape town: maskew miller. prinsloo, l.a., koen, j.g., arndt, r.r. & van berge, p.c. 1976. the young scientist 9 and 10. pretoria: perskor. pruski, l. & friedman, j. 2014. an integrative approach to teaching mathematics, computer science, and physics with matlab. mathematics and computer education, 48(1): 6–18. qualls, j.a. & sherrell, l.b. 2010. why computational thinking should be integrated into the curriculum. the journal of computing sciences in colleges, 25(5): 66–71. schwab, k. 2015. the fourth industrial revolution – what it means and how to respond. available at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2015-12-12/fourth-industrial-revolution [assessed 30 march 2021]. sigcse. 2021. special interest group on computer science education. available at https:// www.acm.org/special-interest-groups/sigs/sigcse [assessed 30 march 2021]. siyavula. 2020. grade 10/11/12 physical sciences and mathematics version 1 caps. available at https://intl.siyavula.com/read [assessed 8 october 2020]. tikly, l., joubert, m., barrett, a.m., bainton, d., cameron, l. & doyle, h. 2018. supporting secondary school stem education for sustainable development in africa. available 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https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1205-7_1 van der schyf, p.j., kruger, a.j.p. & ahlers, h.j. 1975. senior geometry, analytical geometry and trigonometry. cape town: nasou. van der velden, w. 2019. say no to educating children as computer programmers. available at http://www.cfce.org.za/cfce/index.php/say-no-to-coding-and-robotics [assessed 30 march 2021]. western cape education department (wced). 2020. planning documents. available at https://wcedeportal.co.za/ [assessed 8 october 2020]. weintrop, d., beheshti, e., horn, m., orton, k., jona, k., trouille, l. & wilensky, u. 2016. defining computational thinking for mathematics and science classrooms. journal of science education and technology, 25(1): 27–147. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-015-9581-5 wells, j.g. 2019. stem education: the potential of technology education. available at http:// ctete.org/yearbooks/ [assessed 30 march 2021]. wing, j. m. 2006. computational thinking. communications of the association for computing machinery (acm), 49(3): 33–35. https://doi.org/10.1145/1118178.1118215 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.2 https://time.com/5752129/y2k-bug-history/ https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1205-7_1 http://www.cfce.org.za/cfce/index.php/say-no-to-coding-and-robotics https://wcedeportal.co.za/ https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-015-9581-5 http://ctete.org/yearbooks/ http://ctete.org/yearbooks/ https://doi.org/10.1145/1118178.1118215 ole_link5 learning about the effectiveness of teacher education: a chilean study beatrice avalos associate researcher centre for advanced studies in education, university of chile. alsacia 150, depto. 33 las condes santiago chile bavalos@terra.cl francisco téllez escuela de educación, universidad andrés bello fernández concha 700 las condes santiago chile ftellezt@yahoo.com silvia navarro member of the felix klein centre for research and experimentation in mathematics and science, faculty of science, university of santiago, avda. libertador bernardo o’higgins 3363 estación central santiago chile silvianavarroa@gmail.com the article reviews some of the problems faced by teacher education in general and in chile specifically, and on this basis, presents the results of a study focused on the effects of six teacher education programmes on future primary level teachers’ learning of mathematics and mathematics pedagogy. the study describes the programmes and presents the results of a questionnaire and content knowledge test administered to future teachers in their first, third and final year of studies. the article considers as possible explanations for unsatisfactory effects of teacher preparation on future teacher learning, the relatively poor entry levels of student teachers and the generalist structure of the programmes. differences among programmes between time allocation to mathematics and mathematics pedagogy learning did not appear to have an effect. specific courses, however, did appear to make a difference among institutions. keywords: teacher education, mathematics and mathematics pedagogy content knowledge, curriculum, teaching-learning strategies, programme effectiveness introduction in many countries over the last twenty years different policies have been directed towards improving teacher preparation and performance(rego & namo de mello, 2004; kruss, 2008). some policies have targeted the connection between teacher education and teaching in schools, as in the case of the “professional perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201012 development schools” in the usa (the holmes group, 1995), the preparation of reflective and critical educational practitioners exemplified in the bed teacher preparation programme in namibia (zeichner & dahlström, 1999), the creation in uruguay of new types of institutions to widen the coverage and focus of teacher preparation (vaillant & wettstein, 1999), and the upgrading of teacher education to university status in south africa (kruss, 2008). despite these efforts, there continues to be dissatisfaction with the achievements of teacher education, not so much because they have been proven to be ineffective, but because of the belief in a direct causal relationship between teacher preparation and unsatisfactory learner results as measured by national and international assessments. in chile the unregulated growth of teacher education programmes in private universities and the mushrooming of distance programmes of doubtful quality have raised concerns about the quality and effectiveness of these programmes. the reaction of the government has been to press for the closure of distance programmes and to set a content-knowledge examination for future teachers in their last year of study. recognising these conflicting views about teacher education and the lack of recent evidence about how teacher education programmes are performing in chile, we decided to examine six programmes in the context of the iea teds-m1 (international association for the evaluation of educational achievement teacher education development study –mathematics) in which chile participates. this paper is centred on examining the effect of teacher education programmes by capturing the extent to which these programmes improve the knowledge base of future teachers as they progress to completion. to this end the paper presents the results of research conducted in the six sites, focusing on the preparation of basic or primary school teachers (grades 1 to 8). it describes the programmes and measures differences in knowledge of both mathematics content and mathematics pedagogy among three future teacher groups in the first, third and final years of teacher education. we selected these years as they indicate the entry conditions for future teachers, what they gain when teaching methodology courses are offered in the third year of study, as well as the status of the future teachers prior to graduation. teacher education in chile universities and a few tertiary-level professional institutes prepare teachers for all the levels of the education system: pre-school, basic (grade1 to 8) and secondary (grade 9 to 12). during the period of the military government (1973-1990) these programmes suffered severe institutional changes, staff dismissals, and a gradual lowering of numbers and qualifications of applicants, which affected their quality. in the mid 1990s, recognising this situation, the government funded improvement projects for 17 universities through the programme for the strengthening of initial teacher education (fortalecimiento de la formación inicial docente: ffid). the ffid initiative resulted in changes to the curricula of all participating institutions, improvements in teacher educator capacity, and increased opportunities for practicum and field experiences as part of the programme (avalos, 2005). entry numbers and their qualifications increased, assisted by scholarships for applicants with good secondary and university entrance examination results. this greater demand for teacher preparation admissions, however, produced what is now regarded as a problem: an increase in the number of new teacher education programmes in private universities. there is currently an influx of new suppliers and teacher education students, a consequent lowering of entry qualifications and, in addition, uncertainty about the process of improving teacher education quality. as a result stakeholders are questioning the quality of teacher education. the preparation of teachers for the basic school level has unique problems due to its “generalist” structure and the pressures of having to prepare teachers to be competent in all nine subjects of the basic school curriculum over a four year period have undoubtedly affected the quality of teacher education. conceptual framework and literature review the study upon which this paper is based centres on the “opportunity to learn to teach” offered by the teacher education programmes under perusal and its effect on the knowledge base of future teachers. the concept is borrowed from the international iea teds-m study (tatto, schwille, senk, ingvarson, peck & rowley 2008) referred to earlier. the “opportunity to learn” is provided by the teacher education avalos, et al. — learning about the effectiveness of teacher education 13 curriculum, how its subjects are taught, the early field experiences and the quality of the practicum offered towards the end of the programme. in assessing the effects of teacher education we take “opportunity to learn” to be influenced by two kinds of factors: (a) entry characteristics of future teachers such as their socio-economic and educational background, including beliefs about education and teaching, and (b) by the organisational and institutional characteristics of the preparation programme (in turn marked by the policy context), together with the capacity of teacher educators and their beliefs about teaching and learning (tatto et al., 2008). while in the study underlying this paper, we consider the effectiveness of a teacher education programme in terms of how the “opportunity to learn” contributes to the quality of content and pedagogic knowledge and to changes in beliefs about teaching, for the purposes of this paper we focus only on the effects of “opportunity to learn” mathematics and mathematics pedagogic content knowledge. mathematics knowledge is understood to refer primarily to what is needed to teach the school curriculum from 1st to 8th grade. mathematics pedagogic content knowledge is understood in the sense described by shulman (1987) and further developed regarding its importance by brodie (2004). figure 1 below illustrates the conceptual framework that underlies the study and this article: figure 1: conceptual framework the effectiveness of teacher education has been the subject of many studies in different contexts, including south africa (sibaya & sibaya, 2008) although the difficulty of isolating and capturing its effects or of agreeing on the key issues to be examined (graduate numbers, retention in the field, learner results), has resulted in research with “mixed and contradictory” findings (ingersoll, 2007). this is further confounded when there is a diversity of suppliers such as in chile. or when teacher education is limited through “alternative paths” as sanctioned in countries like the united states of america and england (humphrey & wechsler, 2007; zeichner & conklin, 2005). interesting approaches are, however, used to consider the impact of teacher education reported in the literature. in separate studies and under the assumption that teacher preparation affects the quality of teaching and therefore also influences learning results, ingersoll (2007) and wang, coleman, coley & phelps (2003) examined teacher education structures and programmes in countries with above average and perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201014 below average scores in international assessments. the key finding of these studies was that differences in the duration of studies and type of teacher education institution (college or university) were not key factors in explaining the differences. according to ingersoll (2007) and wang, et al. (2003) rigour in the selection of teacher education candidates is the deciding factor, which in turn is linked to adequate salary and working conditions for teachers, as in the case of countries with good learning results, e.g. singapore, hong kong, china and korea. as far as methodology is concerned, case studies of teacher education programmes considered to be effective, such as those reviewed by zeichner & conklin (2005), offer promising insights. one of the studies reviewed by these authors concludes that effective programmes embody: (a) a clear set of ideas and values about schooling and teaching; (b) a distinctive identity shared by all staff; (c) greater collegiality among teacher educators as a result of shared identities; (d) clear, explicit and reasonable programme goals; (e) rigour and academic challenge; (f) appropriate balance between general and pedagogical knowledge; and (g) an integrated or interdisciplinary approach to the curriculum, as well as strong integration between campus-based and school-based learning activities (zimpher in zeichner & conklin, 2005, p. 696). changes over time, as future teachers move through their teacher education programme could be focused upon as another way of looking at the effectiveness of teacher education programmes. thus, swars, smith, smith & hart’s (2008) in the usa observed changes in future teachers’ mathematical knowledge in the expected direction over two academic years and were able to trace these changes to activities within the preparatory programme, such as mathematics methodology courses and field practice experiences. akyeampong & lewin (2002) also studied changes in beliefs and attitudes among future teachers in ghana at the beginning of their preparation, the end of their studies, and two years into teaching in schools. despite evidence of changes that did not necessarily occur in the expected direction (possibly due to the research methodology employed or through misinterpretation by respondents) the authors suggest that this kind of research serves to orient and monitor the role of preparation processes in teacher education. as far as the chilean situation is concerned, it would appear that while the effects of teacher education are a central policy concern, the processes by which teacher education effects are produced, and how they interact with policy and structural conditions, are not well known or give rise to a series of questions that should be tackled by research. the research reported in this article is a first step in this direction. method this research comprises case studies of six teacher education programmes in three geographical regions of chile, which prepare generalist teachers for the basic school. although the original study on which this paper is based had a broad set of objectives we focus in this article on changes in future teachers’ knowledge of mathematics and mathematics pedagogy, possible links between these two dimensions and the “opportunity to learn” offered by these programmes. we do this, by a cross-sectional examination of the knowledge base of future teachers in their first, third and final year of study. the original study as a whole was oriented by the following questions: (1) to what extent is there an effect of initial teacher education on future teachers’ knowledge of mathematics and mathematics pedagogy as they progress through their studies, and do programmes differ in this respect? (2) how is the curricular “opportunity to learn” offered by the programmes studied related to the learning of mathematics and mathematics pedagogy observed in the knowledge of future teachers? the study was designed as a descriptive-exploratory set of case studies to identify trends and possible explanations for results, rather than an attempt to establish causality. to this end it uses a complementary methods approach (green, camilli & elmore 2006), which combines descriptive statistical analysis and focus group qualitative analysis. the significance of differences in mathematics and mathematics pedagogy by group and programme were calculated using t-tests. our main source of evidence was provided by a comprehensive questionnaire administered to the three groups of future teachers who agreed to participate through signing a letter of informed consent; a review of the curricula in each programme; data from a questionnaire completed by educators in the avalos, et al. — learning about the effectiveness of teacher education 15 institutions, also agreed in a letter of informed consent; and focus group discussions with educators and students based on study results. all instruments, except the focus group protocol, are the same, or slightly adapted instruments used in the iea teds-m study for the primary level, all of which were piloted and validated for the international study, among others by chile. the focus group protocol included openended questions centred on three areas: (a) general views on their teacher education programme and their own intention to be teachers; (b) specific views on their opportunity to learn mathematics and mathematics pedagogy; (c) beliefs about mathematics and mathematics teaching. the future teachers’ and educators’ questionnaires shared the same type of questions and included information on personal and education background, opportunities to learn offered by the curriculum, and the teaching-learning strategies used by educators, as well as ratings of their beliefs about the teaching of mathematics. the future teacher questionnaire in turn included a section on mathematics and mathematics pedagogy knowledge with fixedresponse and open-ended items, which were identical to the international test for the primary level. the responses to these items were corrected in line with international scoring criteria. coders of open-ended questions were appropriately trained, and the coding agreement was verified by the double coding of a percentage of questionnaires. to facilitate the analysis a number of scale items on the “opportunity to learn” gathered the information in indexes consistent with the underlying conceptual basis according to which they were formulated and factor analysed for the international study. the programmes and future teachers studied the six teacher preparation programmes were taught at 5 public universities that differ in location, size and length of programmes. two of the programmes (la serena and ovalle) are separate campuses of one university in the north of the country. the third is located in the capital city of santiago. the rest are in the city of concepción, which is the third largest in the country, the city of temuco, in one of the poorest regions of chile, and the city of punta arenas, in the extreme south. we refer to them in this paper by their location. all programmes have a duration of eight semesters, except the one offered at temuco, which covers nine semesters and the one at santiago, which runs over ten semesters. total enrolment (2008) ranged from a low of 129 in punta arenas to a high of 612 students in santiago. around 90% of the future teachers were female, although the proportion in temuco was lower (70%). most had attended public/municipal schools with parents who mostly had only secondary or basic education. their university entrance examination scores were lower than those required for other degree courses such as medicine or engineering, but were higher than those required by equivalent private universities. becoming a basic education teacher can take between eight to ten semesters depending on the institution. besides generalist preparation, two of the programmes include options to specialise in grade 5 to 8subject teaching (mathematics, science, language and social studies). main findings curriculum and opportunity to learn factors the curricula in all the programmes studied cover four main areas, general education, professional or pedagogic preparation and school curriculum subjects, including special teaching methods, as well as field experiences and a final year practicum. the proportion of time allocated to each area differs somewhat per programme as seen in table 1 below, with greater differences observed in the punta arenas programme, probably due to its inclusion of field experiences in the “professional” area rather than in the “practicum” area as in the other programmes. perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201016 table 1: percentage of time (credit hours) allocated to the main areas of the curriculum by university content areas serena-ovalle santiago concepción temuco punta arenas general ed. 9 % 2 % 7 % 3 % 2 % professional 22 % 27 % 37 % 29 % 47 % school curriculum 43 % 50 % 30 % 39 % 42 % practicum 25 % 20 % 26 % 29 % 9 % total credit hours 254 255 164 360 274 source: curriculum maps of each institution available in their web sites mathematics content and mathematics pedagogy in relation to school curriculum subjects, all programmes devote more time to language skills and mathematics than they do to the other nine subject areas, with mathematics taking 14% to 20% of the total time. the programmes differ in the way they distribute time for mathematics content knowledge and mathematics pedagogy. three of the programmes use slightly more time to focus on mathematics content knowledge over mathematics pedagogy, while the other two differ in opposite directions. thus the serena and ovalle programmes take more time to teach mathematics content than mathematics pedagogy, while the reverse is true of the punta arenas programme. in relation to mathematics content, over 90% of all those surveyed (educators, future teachers and programme heads) agreed that their curriculum covered number topics, such as whole numbers, fractions, integer and real numbers. also, 90% of final year students agreed their curriculum had covered geometry and measurement topics, such as one or two-dimensional coordinate geometry, analytic geometry, congruence and similarity, constructions with straight edge and compass, measurement units, computations and properties of length. data and probability topics such as data representation, probability and statistics were covered to a lesser extent, as only half of the future teachers in all groups (slightly higher in the final year) had seen these topics in the curricula. of all the groups only 10% had covered some topics in algebra. regarding mathematics pedagogy content, third and final year future teachers agreed that topics related to the teaching of mathematics and the preparation of lesson plans had greater coverage in their programmes. exposure to mathematics teaching was measured through frequency ratings of having experienced activities that helped future teachers plan lessons, teach according to constructivist approaches, distinguish between procedures and concepts, prepare teaching materials, use assessment, focus on individual differences and teach cross-curricular themes. as seen in table 2 below, future teachers at best rated the frequency of their exposure to these competences as “occasional” rather than “frequent”, lowest among the first year and highest among the final year, but generally not significantly different from the third year group. also, all groups were clearly more negative about experiencing how to handle learner differences, such as learning and emotional or behavioural problems. avalos, et al. — learning about the effectiveness of teacher education 17 table 2: acquiring learning competences (mean frequency ratings*) competences first year third year final year n mn sd mn sd mn sd lesson planning ** 2.4 0.8 2.8 0.6 2.9 0.6 486 teaching for understanding*** 2.4 0.8 3.0 0.7 3.2 0.6 551 constructivist teaching** 2.0 0.8 2.9 0.7 3.0 0.7 506 distinguish procedures and concepts** 2.1 0.9 3.0 0.8 3.1 0.8 559 prepare teaching materials** 2.6 1.1 3.0 0.9 3.0 0.8 562 use assessment for learning** 2.0 0.8 2.4 0.8 2.7 0.8 539 cross-curricular teaching*** 2.1 0.9 2.9 0.7 3.0 0.7 510 focusing on individual differences** 2.1 0.7 2.7 0.6 2.4 0.7 270 * 1= never; 2= rarely; 3= occasionally; 4= frequently ** significance at 1% level between first and third/final years *** significance at 1% level between first, third and final year source: future teacher questionnaire field experiences and practicum final year students (90%) were more positive in their ratings of practical learning experiences, compared to just over half of first and third year future teachers. they were also significantly more positive about the opportunity to “observe models”, “analyse pupil work”, “apply methods learned”, “try out research results” and “innovate in methods and practices”, than their fellow students in first and third year. on the quality of the final year practicum supervision, future teachers views oscillated between being “somewhat in agreement” and “in agreement” with supervisors contributing to “improve my teaching methods”, or valuing “the ideas and approaches i offered on the basis of what i had learned at the university”. future teachers’ content knowledge of mathematics and mathematics pedagogy all future teachers in their first, third and final year of studies were tested for their knowledge of numbers, algebra, geometry and data topics, using the same test. they were also tested on knowledge of the mathematics school curriculum, planning for teaching and learning and on interactive teaching in the classroom, such as explaining concepts and procedures, generating fruitful questions, or diagnosing typical learner responses and misconceptions. all items were classified according to difficulty level as “novice”, “intermediate” or “advanced”, and looked for evidence of knowledge, application and reasoning. while the same content was covered for all three groups of future teachers, the number of items was lower for the first and third year ones. the test for final year students was applied in exactly the same conditions as in the international teds-m study. results showed that between 62% and 67% of future teachers in all years were able to handle novice level items correctly. a smaller proportion in all years responded correctly to intermediate level items, although there was an increase from first (33%) to final year (38%). as for advanced level items, a higher proportion of first year students responded correctly (37%) compared to the third (33%) and final year groups (35%). from the perspective of the content area covered, data items had the highest overall rate of correct responses, increasing significantly from first to final year (51% to 59%) and also the lowest rate of “non responses” (15% to 17%). numbers was next, with correct responses increasing slightly but significantly avalos, et al. — learning about the effectiveness of teacher education 19 punta arenas temuco concepción santiago ovalle la serena final year 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 third year first year should know, all but one of the institutions in this study offer upgrading courses in mathematics content, generally in their first year of study. yet, as some future teachers told us during focus group meetings, these courses tended to be “boring” restatements of school knowledge, disconnected from their perceived teaching needs. in a number of cases, we learned that the course that really made a difference to future teachers’ conceptual understanding of mathematics was the methodology course, usually offered in their fifth and sixth semester of studies, but too limited in time to deal adequately with their mathematics knowledge needs. besides the uncertain impact of generalist preparation to improve conceptual knowledge of mathematics, there were differences among programmes as to when future teachers showed a better level of knowledge. thus, as figure 3 shows, only two programmes show improved mathematics content knowledge in the final year compared to the first year (punta arenas & la serena). two programmes show a reverse situation with better results in first than in the final year. to complicate matters further, third year future teachers in the santiago and concepción programmes have better results than those in the other years. with the exception of concepción, none of the differences are statistically significant on the basis of the sidak t-test used. results in mathematics pedagogy also reveal programme differences, with two programmes showing improvements in the final year compared to the first, and two others show better results among the third year group. the last two programmes reverse the situation with students in final year performing below those in first year. figure 3: percentage of mathematics correct responses by teacher education programme source: future teacher questionnaire these differences have possible explanations related to the characteristics of each programme. for example, the better results in mathematics knowledge of first year students in two programmes may be due to there being a first year course to upgrade and strengthen mathematics secondary school knowledge. the better results in mathematics pedagogy of third year future teachers in santiago and concepción, shown in the figure 3, may be related to the quality of the teaching methods course they attended that year, as we learned from focus group discussions. on the other hand, differences in time allocation to mathematics content knowledge and mathematics pedagogy between the institutions are not consistently related to the knowledge exhibited by future teachers. for example, compared to other programmes santiago has the highest number of hours allocated to mathematic knowledge and pedagogy, but its future teachers were less able to respond correctly to these items than those in the concepción programme, which allocates less time to mathematics content knowledge. these results illustrate that time-allocations do not necessarily perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201020 coincide with expected learning results, and confirm the suggestions of ingersoll, (2007), wang et al. (2003) and zeichner and conklin (2005), that we must look at both the quality of those who are recruited into teacher education programmes and at the overall coherence of the programmes. regarding quality of intake, as indicated earlier, we know that these programmes (particularly in the case of temuco and punta arenas) recruit students at lower entry levels compared to those of other professions. on the other hand, coherence expressed as sequence of courses, content, topics and linkages among them, according to students, decreases as they become more aware of the totality of the programme, that is, coherence is rated as decreasing from the first, through the third, to the final year of studies. all in all, in relation to our initial questions we have found some effect on the mathematics and mathematics pedagogy learning of teacher education programmes, but these effects differ in terms of programmes and the opportunity to learn provided by the offering. the opportunity to learn effects are further decreased by the generalist structure of the programmes and the weak school knowledge base of future teachers when they begin their studies. conclusion in what way does this study help to understand and encourage reflection about research and policy for countries similar to chile? first, the study offers further evidence for developing conditions that may help to attract good secondary school leavers into the profession. with little time available and often limited capacity of teacher educators to build on unsatisfactory prior knowledge it is important to recruit the best possible candidates, which in turn requires making the teaching profession an attractive one, especially in terms of working conditions. second, institutions and educators need to review their programmes periodically to check for coherence. they need to operate good assessment systems that follow and monitor a student’s development throughout the programme, check for problems encountered in learning (subject and pedagogical contents), and provide compensatory learning opportunities when needed. case study research can serve to illuminate both positive and problematic aspects in the programmes as a whole. finally, as indicated by zeichner and conklin’s (2005) review of the effectiveness of teacher education, teacher educators need to follow new teachers into schools and study how they deal with different demands and contexts. this means that although accountability policies such as accreditation and certification provide valuable safety nets, they are not of themselves able and should not be expected to act as sole levers for improvement. notes 1we refer to the teacher education and development study in mathematics (teds-m) conducted by the international association for the evaluation of educational achievement (iea) of which final results will be published at the end of 2010. the study is one of the first to look broadly at the teacher education processes in different country contexts (17 countries) and to examine its effect on mathematics content and pedagogic knowledge as well as beliefs about teaching. references akyeampong, k. & lewin, k. 2002. from student teachers to newly qualified teachers in ghana: insights into becoming a teacher. international journal of educational development, 22 (3-4), 339-352. avalos, b. 2005. how to affect the quality of teacher education: a four-year policy-driven project implemented at university level. in pm denicolo & m kompf (eds), connecting policy and practice: challenges for teaching and learning in schools and universities. london: routledge. brodie, k. 2004. re-thinking teachers’ mathematical knowledge: a focus on thinking practices. perspectives in education, 22 (1): 65-80. green, j.l., camilli g & elmore pb (eds) 2007. handbook of complementary methods in education research. nj: lawrence erlbaum. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0016/001610/161045e.pdf avalos, et al. — learning about the effectiveness of teacher education 21 humphrey, d.c. & wechsler, m.e.2007. insights into alternative certification: initial findings from a national study. teachers college record, 109 (3): 483-530. ingersoll, r.m. 2007. a comparative study of teacher preparation and qualifications in six nations. philadelphia: graduate school of education, university of pennsylvania. kruss, g. 2008. trajectories of restructuring: the changing context for initial teacher education in south africa. south african review of education, 14(1-2): 77-94. kruss, g. 2002. more, better, different? understanding private higher education in south africa. perspectives in education, 20(4): 15-28. lewin, k.m. & stuart, j.s. 2002. teacher education under challenge: the findings of the muster project. london: department for international development. rego, t.c. & namo de mello, g.n. 2004. la formación docente en américa latina y el caribe: en busca de innovación y efectividad. in preal (ed.), maestros en américa latina: nuevas perspectivas sobre su formación y desempeño (pp. 165-212). preal & bid, santiago. shulman, l.s. 1987. knowledge and teaching: foundations of the new reform. harvard educational review, 57(1): 1-22. sibaya, d. & sibaya, p. 2008. novice educators’ perceptions of the teacher education programme proposed by the norms and standards for educators. perspectives in education, 26(4): 86-96. swars, s.l., smith, s.z., smith, m.e. & hart, l.c. 2009. a longitudinal study of effects of a developmental teacher preparation program on elementary prospective teachers’ mathematics beliefs. journal of mathematics teacher education, 12(1), 47-66. tatto, m.t., schwille, j., senk, s.l., ingvarson, l., peck, r. & rowley, g. 2008. teacher education and development study in mathematics teds-m). policy, practice and readiness to teach in primary and secondary mathematics. conceptual framework. teacher education and development international study center, college of education, michigan state university, east lansing, mi. the holmes group. 1995. tomorrow’s schools of education. east lansing, mi: the holmes group. vaillant, d. & wettstein, g. (eds) 1999. centros regionales de profesores: una apuesta al uruguay del siglo xxi. montevideo: editorial fin de siglo. wang, a.h., coleman, a.b., coley, r.j. & phelps, r.p. 2003. preparing teachers around the world. princeton, nj: educational testing service. zeichner, k. & dahlström, l. 1999. democratic teacher education reform in africa: the case of namibia. boulder, colorado: westview press. zeichner, k.m. & conklin, h.c. 2005. teacher education programs. in m cochrane-smith & km zeichner (eds). studying teacher education. washington, dc: aera & lawrence erlbaum. acknowledgment the authors wish to thank the national fund for science and technology in chile (fondecyt 1070176) for funding of the research underlying this article. 3902021 39(1): 390-409 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.24 managing higher education institutions in the context of covid-19 stringency: experiences of stakeholders at a rural south african university abstract the covid-19 pandemic poses unparalleled challenges to education systems around the world, all of which have devastating effects. while these effects have been troubling in developing and developed countries, rural education systems in developing countries have particularly been most susceptible to collapse. the unique context of rural universities makes it difficult to implement approaches similar to those implemented in the developed world and/or more urban-based institutions. underpinned by von bertalanffy’s systems theory, which argues that organisations are composed of systems that have goals to achieve, this paper thus sought to explore the coping mechanisms instituted at a rural south african university in the face of the covid-19 pandemic. it further sought to establish how the university has managed to cope with the challenges that are unique to rural universities as exacerbated by the onset of the pandemic. underpinned by a post-positivist paradigm, the study employed a mixed methods approach through which data was collected using online questionnaires and interviews. the findings of the study revealed that although the institution had put some measures in place to ensure that the university is efficiently managed in the context of covid-19 stringencies, university stakeholders are still faced with insurmountable challenges that range from campus safety, cancellation and postponement of examinations, as well as weakened research and international collaborations. based on the findings of the study, it is recommended that south african institutions and the government need to invest more on safety infrastructural facilities that will ensure that rural university stakeholders are safe. furthermore, there is a need for technical infrastructural facilities that enable the shift from conventional assessment, teaching and learning approaches to a more blended educational model. keywords: rural universities; covid-19; education; learning; pandemic; remote learning. author: prof v.s. mncube1 mr b.h. mutongoza1 mr b.e. olawale1 affiliation: 1university of fort hare, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i1.24 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 390-409 published: 12 march 2021 received: 17 november 2020 accepted: 20 january 2021 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2103-2530 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2939-1274 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5265-1583 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.24 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.24 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.24 3912021 39(1): 391-409 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.24 mncube, mutongoza & olawale managing higher education institutions in the context of covid-19 1. introduction and background the coronavirus pandemic has triggered widespread detrimental effects across all sectors of society, including the higher education sector (hedding et al., 2020; fay et al., 2020). south african higher education institutions have been similarly affected, yet the impact has been most pronounced in rural institutions (dube, 2020; ogunkola et al., 2020; phillipson et al., 2020; unesco, 2020a). while it is difficult to forecast the impact of the covid-19 pandemic, it is clear that the effects of the pandemic will continue to reverberate for a long time to come (zahra et al., 2020; moodley et al., 2020; mhlanga & moloi, 2020). in times of crises, it is not uncommon for governments to speedily formulate and enact policies as a strategy of reducing losses (clary, 1985). as such, the hasty implementation of lockdowns around the world was proof of the attempts at formulating policies and saving lives (hedding et al., 2020; zahra etal., 2020). in march 2020, an unexpected nation-wide lockdown was instituted in line with world health organization (who) recommendations that dissuade physical meetings as a way of curtailing the pandemic in south africa (omodan, 2020). similar to other parts of the world, education institutions in south africa were forced into an induced lockdown in which all operations, including teaching and learning, were halted abruptly. the effect was compounded for rural institutions that did not ordinarily possess the capacity to provide alternative teaching and learning systems (ebrahim et al., 2020; hedding et al., 2020; roy et al., 2020). prior to the onset of the pandemic, there had already been calls for the education system in south africa to adopt online technologies as a response to the fourth industrial revolution (4ir) (mncube, olawale & hendricks, 2019). thus, stakeholders (namely university managers, academic staff and students) in the education sector in south africa were prompted to adopt online options of learning, thus prompting the evident need to speed up efforts towards the 4ir (mhlanga & moloi, 2020; carvalho et al., 2020). yet the right to education has been heavily skewed owing to the lack of equitable access to learning due to the lack of online learning options into which institutions were rushed without adequately planning (moodley et al., 2020; carvalho et al., 2020; dube, 2020; elearning africa, 2020). the disparity between rural and urban institutions has also been exacerbated by the limited educational resources in rural south africa and increased vulnerabilities that are extant in rural communities (omodan, 2020; dube, 2020; mhlanga & moloi, 2020). as such, this paper sought to explore the coping mechanisms instituted at a rural south african university in the face of the covid-19 pandemic. 2. literature 2.1 exploring the nature of covid-19 in education after the first infections in china at the end of 2019, the coronavirus disease (covid-19) continues to spread across the world. the spread of covid-19, among several disruptions to normal life, led to the temporary closure of schools in over 172 countries and was thus declared a pandemic by the world health organization (who, 2020; sahu, 2020; mhlanga & moloi, 2020). as of 29 march 2020, the virus had spread to more than 177 countries and infected more than 722 435 people, resulting in more than 33 997 deaths (sahu, 2020; khachfe et al., 2020). regions severely affected by major outbreaks include china, europe, iran, south korea and the united states (khachfe et al., 2020). on 13 march 2020, the who stated that europe had become the new epicentre of the pandemic. thus, china took 3922021 39(1): 392-409 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.24 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) aggressive action and succeeded in reducing new cases. unfortunately, this reduction was not the case in other parts of the world, including iran, italy, the us and other european countries (remuzzi & remuzzi, 2020). by mid-april 2020, approximately 1.725 billion students globally had been affected by the closure of schools and higher-education institutions in response to the covid-19 pandemic (reddy, soudien & winnaar, 2020). in south africa, the first confirmed case of covid-19 was recorded on 5 march 2020 (mhlanga & moloi, 2020). the fear of the predicted rate at which the pandemic was to infect people motivated the south african government to declare this pandemic a national state of disaster in terms of the disaster management act (south african government, 2020), which instituted a national lockdown. the lockdowns in response to covid-19 in several countries have interrupted conventional schooling with nationwide school closures, the majority lasting at least 10 weeks (schleicher, 2020). while the educational sectors have made concerted efforts to maintain the continuity of teaching and learning during this stringent time, the majority of students have had to rely solely on their own resources to continue learning remotely through the internet, television and other social media platforms. educators have also had to adapt to new pedagogical concepts and modes of lecture delivery in which many have not been trained. in particular, learners in the most marginalised groups, who do not have access to digital learning resources or lack the resilience and engagement to learn on their own, are at risk of falling behind (schleicher, 2020). however, before the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, the world was dealing with a learning crisis, evidenced by high levels of learning poverty (the world bank education global practice, 2020). this crisis caused by the covid-19 pandemic further exposes the many inadequacies and inequities in the education systems that ranges from access to the broadband and computers needed for online education and the supportive environments needed to focus on learning, up to the misalignment between resources and needs (schleicher, 2020; mcdonald, 2020). 2.2 impact of covid-19 on higher education institutions the outbreak of covid-19 has caused a huge negative impact on higher education institutions because the closure of colleges and universities not only interrupts the teaching for students but the closure also coincides with many exams being postponed. as a coping mechanism, some universities are replacing traditional exams with online assessment tools (weeden & benjamin, 2020). there have been sudden changes in lesson delivery and school activities due to social distance measures to prevent explosive transmission of the virus, as such, the learning system has shifted from a face-to-face learning system to an online learning system. thus, the use of the most important pandemic precaution called “social distancing” or “physical distancing” has attempted to reduce interpersonal contact and thereby minimise the kind of community transmission that could develop quickly in dense social networks like the university campus (weeden & benjamin, 2020). according to mittal (2020), higher education institutes (heis) are struggling with the timely completion of the semester and conducting examinations. similarly, planning for the next academic session while dealing with financial constraints due to reduced tuition fee payment, school safety, partially due to a potential drop in student enrolment and placements and the sudden shift to online pedagogy were among the biggest concerns emanating from the covid-19 pandemic (mittal, 2020). for some universities, the online mode of delivery was not new, unlike others, which were encountering such forms of teaching for the first time. the transition was quick and 3932021 39(1): 393-409 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.24 mncube, mutongoza & olawale managing higher education institutions in the context of covid-19 not much time was available to properly consider the organisation of the new forms, noting that the quality of teaching and learning in these new circumstances needs proper attention (aristovnik et al., 2020; sahu, 2020). on the other hand, students from undeveloped, remote and rural areas had problems with poor internet connectivity or even a lack of electricity (aristovnik et al., 2020). thus, sahu (2020) posit that the covid-19 pandemic may have a serious impact on the careers of 2020 university graduates because of the major interruptions in teaching and assessment in the final part of their studies. similarly, they may likely graduate late due to the postponement of the final examination and/or face severe challenges of the global recession caused by the covid-19 crisis (sahu, 2020). according to al-rabiaahab et al. (2020), the covid-19 outbreak has disrupted the lives of many people across the world and it has also caused a tremendous level of stress among the university fraternity, inclusive of students. this stress may lead to unfavourable effects on the learning and psychological health of students (al-rabiaahab et al., 2020; sahu, 2020). similarly, international students staying far from home are not only worried about their health, safety and education, but they also have numerous concerns for the wellbeing of their families (zhai & du, 2020). thus, the covid-19 pandemic has revealed the deficiencies of the current system in higher education institutions and the necessity for more educators training in digital technology in order to fit into the rapidly changing education system of the world. in the post-pandemic situation, the use of elearning and virtual education may become an integral part of the higher education system (rashid & yadav, 2020). 2.3 challenges faced by rural universities in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic the educational institutions are facing a challenge to adapt to this change brought about by covid-19 and trying to choose the right approaches, strategies, methods and technologies for educating and involving their students. the closure of campuses and the sudden switch from face-to-face education to disconnected instructions was an immature experiment in a lengthy process to offering online education that includes effective student engagement tools and teacher training (nedelcu, 2020). rural universities face the twin-challenge of rolling out online learning for thousands of students and finding money to pay salaries and meet their financial obligations at a time when major revenue flows are closed (nganga, waruru & nakweya, 2020). the universities rely more on students’ tuition fees to fund their operations because the financial support received from the government is not sufficient to meet their needs (nganga, waruru & nakweya, 2020; mittal, 2020). due to the pandemic, universities were shutdown and all methods of conveying knowledge were shifted towards online teaching in an unprecedented effort to ensure the continuity of education (nedelcu, 2020). thus, leading to a forced break from the established principles in organisation of the educational activities, from its usual routines and structures. the pandemic has uncovered the weaknesses and deficiencies of the present education systems and has also emphasised the need for digital literacy development, particularly in times like these, for developed and developing countries (rashid & yadav, 2020). the present condition has challenged deep-rooted notions about the role of higher education institutions in the mode of delivery, providing quality education, the importance of lifelong 3942021 39(1): 394-409 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.24 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) learning, accessibility and teacher’s views about the type of learners (rashid & yadav, 2020). this present condition may provide insight to the policymakers and teachers for general improvement of educational systems worldwide. adapting and relying on elearning during the covid-19 pandemic may be a reason of slight change in adopting more online elements in the teaching by the teachers. this, however, has many practical problems and limitations, in terms of availability of digital technologies for education because a vast “digital inequality” exists in the societies (rashid & yadav, 2020: 2). therefore, one cannot assume that all students, as well as teachers, would have access to internet connectivity and associated powerful devices outside of their university, to be able to communicate. according to sahu (2020), although many teachers and students were excited by the move to the online delivery mode, there is always a chance that some faculty members who are not techno-savvy will not be able to cope with this mode. thus, the transition to the online mode has raised several questions for universities about their capability to deal with the existing technology at a time when working at home is increasingly becoming a difficult task. even though higher institutions welcome the shift to online learning, dill, fischer, mcmurtrie and supiano (2020) highlighted the challenges for higher institutions, which include inadequate infrastructure or resources to facilitate teaching and learning with immediate effect, unequal access of students to laptops and internet facilities, impossibilities in teaching practical and labs, music and art courses online. nonetheless, while teaching and learning moved online, several universities have already suspended the semester-end final examinations and continuous assessment moved on along with the online classes. thus, applying assessments online on those courses designed for face-to-face learning becomes a challenging task (sahu, 2020). affordability is another factor that limits the access to elearning with students from economically weaker sections facing a greater burden (aristovnik et al., 2020; sahu, 2020; mittal, 2020). the impact of accessibility and affordability can have serious implications on students in the higher education system unless student-friendly government policies are in place that can ensure affordability and accessibility of the internet to students (haleem et al., 2020). the students face major hurdles with remote learning as face-to-face communication is more conducive for the learning process, presenting a better opportunity of sharing knowledge and asking for help, “easier” and more interactive (miliszewska, 2007). contrarily, in virtual classes, the camaraderie and sense of belonging are limited. thus, students who have less ability to self-regulate or study autonomously struggle with no teacher providing in-person support. as a result, online videos, digital content and discussion forums may not provide a holistic teaching-learning outcome (miliszewska, 2007). in addition, the career plans of many research students and postdoctoral researchers are at risk due to this sudden interruption in their research plan by the pandemic. the universities and funding bodies will be under financial strain in the coming months and the non-covid projects may lose importance and focus from these agencies (rashid & yadav, 2020). the recruitment of international staff and the exchange of skilled researchers is a huge challenge that may continue to exist for the coming months due to travel restrictions (rashid & yadav, 2020). conclusively, sahu (2020) posited that as the outbreak continues to unfold, the safety and well-being of students and staff members should be the highest priority. universities should emphasise mental health support by updating the health guidelines and providing online 3952021 39(1): 395-409 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.24 mncube, mutongoza & olawale managing higher education institutions in the context of covid-19 guidance and lectures to offer strategies for managing stress when coping with the pandemic (sahu, 2020). any student experiencing feelings of heightened anxiety about covid-19 should be provided with proper psychological support well in time (al-rabiaahab et al., 2020). 2.4 coping strategies employed by rural universities in the context of covid-19 stringency given the prolonged and massive closure of schools, universities and other learning institutions, and a shift to remote learning in many countries in the world, a key question posed to policyand decision-makers is how to manage timetabled assessments and exams. in particular, those related to end-of key levels, school leaving, university entrance exams and gateways for job, and how to end the school year smoothly are frequently asked questions (unesco, 2020b). thus, based on the analysis of data collected by unesco (2020b) from 73 countries worldwide that reacted to high-stakes exams during this time of school, university and other learning institution closures, six policy recommendations were highlighted. these recommendations regarding coping strategies include a whole-of-government approach, broad consultation and public communication, assessment options to ensure fairness, highstakes examinations, online examinations and differentiated approaches for technical and vocational education training (tvet) (unesco, 2020b). similarly, nedelcu (2020) posited that the covid-19 pandemic had forced higher education institutions and universities to adapt to the rapidly changing situation in a way that was unimaginable. as such, universities have adopted different strategies to reach out to students efficiently, which include: • elaboration of support documents, like methodologies, guides, resource packages for moving teaching to the online environment; • using specialised platforms for online learning and official websites that centralise the initiatives in this field; • supporting students and parents through frequent messages, explanations, questions and answers (the use of email and social networks); • instating specific measures meant to achieve equality in education, mostly because the vulnerable groups, during crisis situations, become even more vulnerable (acquiring computers and telecommunication packages by the authorities, for families in difficulty); • reorganising assessment procedures (adjusting, annulling or reprograming exams); and • promoting decentralised solutions, based on procedural decisions of local authorities. according to rashid and yadav (2020), many universities have adopted distance learning as a means of pacifying for loss of time in school. therefore, the development of e-content and assessment and reporting that is not properly planned and forethought are used in the higher education institutions (rashid & yadav, 2020). as such, in order to achieve focused learning outcomes and develop effective elearning methods, educators should be provided with professional autonomy and trusted with their judgement, and ensure clear and compassionate communication with all the stakeholders of the higher education (rashid & yadav, 2020). 3. theory underpinning the study von bertalanffy’s systems theory (1968) underpins this study. this theory argues that organisations are composed of systems that have goals to achieve (mele, pels & polese, 2010; katz & kahn, 1978; von bertalanffy, 1968). the theory argues that a system has four 3962021 39(1): 396-409 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.24 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) main features, namely inputs, transformation processes, outputs and feedback, and these four features are interdependent (mele et al., 2010; katz & kahn, 1966). “inputs “connote the capital and human resources that are essential to run an organisation, and that have to be carefully planned, organised, motivated and controlled if goals are to be realised (von bertalanffy, 1962; von foerster, 1981). “transformation processes” are the guidelines and directions that regulate the use of resources (katz & kahn, 1978). these are essential because they provide clear guidelines and expectations of how activities need to be carried out and they also give structure to an organisation, without which the organisation may collapse due to abuse of resources, chaos and mismanagement (mele et al., 2010; ashby, 1958; von bertalanffy, 1962). “outputs” in the systems theory denotes the end products and services that are offered by an organisation that justify the worth of resources that are invested into a system (katz & kahn, 1966). outputs are measured in line with objectives that are set by the organisation (mele et al., 2010; ashby, 1958; von bertalanffy, 1962). lastly, “feedback” comes from the human resources carrying out the processes and other areas affected by the organisation (katz & kahn, 1978). this is mainly done through research that measures improvements in different aspects of the system (mele et al., 2010; von bertalanffy, 1968; von foerster, 1981). the systems theory is important for this study because it acknowledges the interrelations of different stakeholder subsystems that are operational at universities as opposed to viewing them as isolated individual components in the pursuit of the education agenda. the theory also assisted in tracking the inputs and transformation processes implemented by the rural university in comparison with the concomitant outputs and feedback in the context of managing the rural university in the face of the covid-19 stringency. 4. statement of the problem the covid-19 pandemic has significantly impacted education institutions around the world and south african higher education institutions have not been spared (dube, 2020; mhlanga & moloi, 2020). this is because critical higher education operations were abruptly shifted from face-to-face interaction to remote interaction with very little planning for this shift (dube, 2020; omodan, 2020). these rushed attempts to transition have resulted in several challenges to the operations of higher eduaction institutions for staff, students and administrators. as such, the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on university operations has been seismic, especially in light of the specific need for contact-based teaching and learning that is required by some practical subject areas (guangul et al., 2020; cooper & tschobotko, 2020). this impact has been especially pronounced in rural institutions whose catchment area is predominantly the rural and poor communities of south africa where access to online resources is scant (mhlanga & moloi, 2020; carvalho et al., 2020). for students who originate from these rural areas and institutions in rural south africa, remote learning during the height of the lockdown revealed the deep-seated inequalities that they grapple with compared to their urban counterparts (mhlanga & moloi, 2020; moodley et al., 2020). this study therefore seeks to explore the experiences of stakeholders at a rural south african university regarding the management of their institution in the wake of the covid-19 stringency. 5. research question what are the experiences of rural south african university stakeholders in managing education enterprise in the context of covid-19 stringency? 3972021 39(1): 397-409 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.24 mncube, mutongoza & olawale managing higher education institutions in the context of covid-19 6. purpose of the study the purpose of the study is to examine the experiences of rural south african university managers, academic staff and students in managing education enterprise in the context of covid-19 stringency. 7. research design and methods employed 7.1 research paradigm this study was underpinned by the post-positivism paradigm because the paradigm opens the door to multiple methods and different worldviews as well as to different forms of data collection and analysis (kivunja & kuyini, 2017). the paradigm thus enables the researchers to get a broad overview and in-depth picture on the experiences of rural south african university stakeholders in managing education enterprise in the context of covid-19 stringency. 7.2 research approach a mixed method approach was employed to gain a deeper understanding of the phenomenon under investigation. mixed methods consist of a combination of quantitative and qualitative research approaches (creswell, 2014). the use of the mixed methods approach for this study is to allow the researchers to accumulate as much information as possible on the experiences of stakeholders in managing education enterprise in the context of covid-19 stringency in a rural south african university. 7.3 research design based on the use of the mixed method approach, this study adopted a concurrent triangulation mixed methods design in order to get expedient information on the experiences of rural south african university stakeholders in managing education enterprise in the context of the covid-19 pandemic. concurrent triangulation mixed methods design uses quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection concurrently to best understand the phenomenon of interest (creswell & plano, 2011). 7.4 population, sample and sampling techniques from the selected university, participants included students, staff and university managers. in gathering qualitative and quantitative data, convenience sampling technique was used to elicit participants’ experiences and information about how the institution was being managed in the face of the covid-19 stringency. as such, the population for this study was composed of university stakeholders at a rural university in the eastern cape province, south africa from which ten (10) managers, ten (10) lecturers and eighty (80) students were conveniently sampled, thus making a hundred (100) respondents. however, only four (4) managers, four (4) lecturers and sixty-nine (69) students participated, making seventy-seven (77) respondents in the quantitative and qualitative phase of the study. 7.5 data collection instruments the quantitative and qualitative data collection methods were used since data collection in mixed methods involves using multiple strategies, approaches and methods of soliciting information from the respondents (creswell & plano, 2011). the research instruments used for this study were online questionnaires and interviews for all the respondents. the 3982021 39(1): 398-409 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.24 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) quantitative data was collected using a likert scale questionnaire that was distributed electronically using survey-monkey while the qualitative data include one-on-one interviews using microsoft teams. 7.6 data analysis for this study, participants in the qualitative study were encouraged to also participate in the qualitative phase for proper synthesis of data. thus, only the data from participants who participated in the qualitative and quantitative phases were used for data analysis and as such, the participants who satisfied this criteria was a total of four (4) managers, four (4) lecturers, and sixty-nine (69) students out of the initial sample, making a total of seventy seven (77) participants . thus, quantitative data were analysed descriptively. according to trochim (2020), descriptive statistics are used to describe the basic features of the data in a study because they provide simple summaries about the sample and the measures. qualitative data from this study were analysed thematically. the data were summarised and organised based on the emerging themes, general ideas and related features of interviewees’ responses. 7.7 ethical considerations the ethical consideration for this study mainly focused on confidentiality of the participants and informed consent. thus, the researchers observed the following ethical considerations in order to uphold research ethics in this study: i. confidentiality, anonymity and privacy were respected with the exception of information that alluded to harm being done to an individual. this proviso was communicated and agreed to before the start of data collection; and ii. consent of all participants was sought. information was provided on research aims, process and use of data before consent was sought from the respondents. the right to withdraw from the research at any point with data from that respondent not used was also specified to the respondents. 8. results and discussion the study sought to investigate the experiences of stakeholders at a rural south african university in managing higher education institutions in the context of covid-19 stringency. as such, results and discussions are presented under the following sub-headings: • functionality of rural institutions during covid-19 • research, teaching and learning during covid-19 8.1 functionality of rural institutions during covid-19 to elicit information regarding the functionality of rural institutions during the covid-19 pandemic, participants were asked questions on school safety, communication infrastructures, partnership and international collaborations. research findings concerning the impact of covid-19 on the functionality of rural institutions revealed that although institutions of higher learning were reopened amidst the crisis, there were minimal containment measures put in place to curb its spread. for instance, a lecturer stated that: 3992021 39(1): 399-409 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.24 mncube, mutongoza & olawale managing higher education institutions in the context of covid-19 our institution is partially open, but there are major disruptions. although the university management promised to provide personal protective equipment (ppe), we still manage to come to work scared with our own protective equipment. for instance, in some shared spaces whereby you need to use a general printer at work, there are no sanitisers and yet we are promised that all will be put in place to ensure that university operations runs smoothly (lecturer 4). similarly, a student reiterated the above views regarding containment measures at the university. the student stated that we only got a sanitiser once when we came back to the university and yet the university management had promised to provide sanitisers and masks. we do not feel safe as students, for example, some lecturers require us to submit hardcopies of our assignment in which we have to join a very long queue, which most students do not observe social distancing. it is worsened by the fact that sanitiser stands are empty; the management do not take us seriously (student 62). in the same vein, another student spoke about security measures put in place to curb the spread of the covid-19 pandemic. the student posited that for a very long time, we have been complaining about security issues at the university. unlike before where the non-university community members have easy access to the university, at least now security has been improved. however, issues like social distancing, wearing of masks and sanitising of hands are not being enforced at all. also, you could see different visitors getting in and out of the residences; parties day in and out; and the rate at which students drink on campus is disheartening. it is like the securities do not even care at all (student 49). on the contrary, the faculty manager stated that: the university is trying its best and it has put in place measures to ensure stakeholders safety. our staffs only come to work on occasional basis, and personal protective equipment (ppes) were provided to both staffs and students. for example, each staff members of the faculty was given two face mask, and hand sanitisers were mounted within and outside the faculty building, however, students continue to vandalise the sanitising stations (manager 3). research findings revealed that although the institution has put in place measures to ensure smooth operation of the university amidst the pandemic, there exist several challenges that range from student vandalism, ineffective security measures, inadequate resources, and negligence on the part of students. this finding resonates with dill et al. (2020) who highlighted that the challenges of higher institutions during the covid-19 pandemic include inadequate infrastructure or resources to facilitate teaching and learning with immediate effect, unequal access of students to laptops and internet facilities, impossibilities in teaching practical and labs, music and art courses online. similarly, the pandemic negatively affected institutional partnerships in terms of international engagement and collaboration. a manager from the university stated: the pandemic hit our partnerships very hard, we have had to redirect resources in order to satisfy more localised and immediate goals. student exchange programmes had to be halted and you can imagine the effect, resources have dwindled and all our efforts are directed at trying to ensure that the university continues to run in these uncertain times (manager 2). 4002021 39(1): 400-409 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.24 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) despite the negative influence of the pandemic on the functionality of institutions, there were encouraging signs when it came to how the institutions communicate with stakeholders. stakeholders were largely appreciative of the effectiveness of communication infrastructure with the university as it pertains to the running of the institution. an example can be drawn from a student who stated that: i can say because of the pandemic, communication infrastructure has been strengthened at our university. the university managed to secure modems, laptops and data for all registered students, although these laptops came late. i think that the university has done well in communication given the circumstances we are in (student 27). similar views were also noted from a lecturer at the university who said: we have had to be creative in making sure that we communicate effectively with students and other staff. the times we are in have made us more aware of the diversity of our student population; some came from deeply rural areas where access to internet is almost a luxury. as such, we were requested to compile all learning material for the first semester, and we sent it to the faculty office. from there, the material was loaded into usb drives and it was disbursed to all our students (lecturer 1). a manager at the university also praised the improvements in the communication infrastructure at the university. the manager stated: like every other institution, the pandemic caught us off-guard, when we closed for lockdown; most of us just thought that it was going to be for a few days. we had to make plans to ensure that the university sustained its operations during the difficult lockdown period. students and staff managed to get 30 gigs of data provisioned by the university. students also managed to get learning material, which was sent to them to ensure that learning continued even remotely (manager 1). from the above responses, research findings revealed that the university strengthened communication infrastructure through the provision of free data, laptops and modems to students and staff to ensure that teaching and learning continues under the auspices of the new normal. the provision of these online resources made it possible for the university to remain operational when its stakeholders were forced to abruptly halt their usual contactbased operations. thus, one could conclude that for rural institutions of learning to be functional within the context of covid-19 stringency and other such unforeseen crises, there is need for universities to strengthen containment measures, engagement and collaboration with partners nationally and internationally as well as the provision of continued support for its stakeholders in the face of the “new normal”. according to nedelcu (2020), for the university to support and efficiently reach out to its stakeholders, there is a need for elaboration of support documents such as methodologies, guides and resource packages for moving teaching to the online environment. this is in line with von bertalanffy’s systems theory of 1968 that argues that organisations are composed of systems that have goals to achieve through “transformation processes”. these transformation processes are essential because they provide clear guidelines and expectations of how activities need to be carried out and they also give structure to an organisation, without which the organisation may collapse due to abuse of resources, chaos and mismanagement (mele et al., 2010; ashby, 1958; von bertalanffy, 1962). similarly, sahu (2020) posited that the health and safety of students and staff should be the top priority. thus, universities should place more emphasis on mental health support, provide online guidance to its stakeholders on managing stress when coping with the pandemic and prioritise the health and safety of students and staff (sahu, 2020). 4012021 39(1): 401-409 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.24 mncube, mutongoza & olawale managing higher education institutions in the context of covid-19 data from the quantitative study in figure 1 below shows stakeholders’ feedback on the functionality of the institution during the covid-19 pandemic with special consideration to school safety, communication infrastructures and partnerships and international collaborations. figure 1: functionality of a rural institution during the covid-19 pandemic research findings revealed that 90.9% of the participants indicated that the covid-19 pandemic had negatively impacted their safety at the institution of learning, while 6.5% of the participants revealed that the pandemic had positively affected safety and 2.6% participants were unsure. this implies that the covid-19 pandemic has severely affected school safety. in terms of communication infrastructure put in place for the management of the institutions in the context of covid-19 stringency, findings revealed that 68.8% of the participants were of the opinion that the pandemic had positively affected the institution. on the other hand, 22.1% of the participants were of the view that the pandemic has negatively affected communication infrastructure, while a further 9.1% were neutral. this implies that the pandemic has fostered the improvement of access to online technology by the rural institution. however, this improvement is not reflected in partnerships and international collaborations as 80.5% of the participants noted that the pandemic had a negative impact while 9.1% were of the view that it had a positive impact. a little more than ten per cent (10.4%) of the participants however remained neutral. this implies that covid-19 has negatively affected international collaborations and partnerships. findings from the qualitative and quantitative study revealed that although communication infrastructure has significantly improved at the university, international collaboration and partnership as well as the safety of stakeholders in the institution is worrisome. thus, mittal (2020) posited that heis continue to struggle with the timely completion of the semester and conducting examinations. similarly, planning for the next academic session while dealing with financial constraints due to reduced tuition fee payment, school safety, partially due to a potential drop in student enrolment and placements and the sudden shift to online pedagogy were among the biggest concerns emanating from the covid-19 pandemic (mittal, 2020). 4022021 39(1): 402-409 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.24 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) 8.2 research, teaching and learning during covid-19 pandemic to elicit information on research, teaching and learning during the covid-19 pandemic, participants were asked questions on students mobility, stimulation of alternatives to teaching, examination process, research activities and collaboration with international institutions. research findings revealed that the higher education institution faces a wide range of challenges associated with the sudden outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic. regarding how the pandemic has affected research, teaching and learning, major responses include, decrease in international student mobility, sudden shifts to online learning platforms, the cancellation of student exchange programmes as well as the postponement and cancellation of examination, scientific research conferences and scientific research projects. for instance, manager 3 stated: …although the university management is doing its best to ensure the continuation of teaching and learning, we have had to postpone most examinations for alternative measures. this is because, it is simply impossible for us to continue our operations as we used to before the pandemic. for our postgraduate students and academic staff, there has been a lot of cancellation of international and local conferences due to social distancing measures which has negatively affected networking amongst academics and students (manager 3). similarly, lecturer 4 lamented on the issues of international conferences being cancelled. the lecturer explained that: in fact, i was supposed to attend a conference in france. i have been so optimistic to get out of the country and see how things are done in the international realm. this could have been a big opportunity for me to meet different academics in order to foster international research collaborations (lecturer 2). another lecturer from the university also highlighted the complication that comes with the shift from contact-based assessment and teaching and learning to an online platform. the lecturer stated that: it is very difficult to assess students remotely. for instance, i gave students a test using the online platform, although they passed with flying colours, one will never know if it is a genuine reflection of what the student had learn or what has been copied, given that students were given ample time and opportunity to work on their test before submission. as a result, one may question the quality of online assessment…hence, the need to plan with academic dishonesty in mind (lecturer 1). in support of what lecturer 1 had stated, a student also reiterated the notion of online assessment by stating that: …i enjoy online test because i do not need to stress myself in studying beforehand. the information needed to answer the questions are already made available either online or in the module outlines given by the university. since i got to the university two years ago, my results this semester has been the best (student 14). another student stated that: i am afraid of what will happen when i finally get into the job market, as you may be aware, this semester has been so short and many topics has been left untouched by the lecturer. the university already has a notorious reputation in the job market and i am afraid this might worsen the situation (student 58). 4032021 39(1): 403-409 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.24 mncube, mutongoza & olawale managing higher education institutions in the context of covid-19 from the above findings, one can deduce that research, teaching, learning and assessment has been heavily affected by the covid-19 pandemic. this impact has been more severe for rural universities that do not have sufficient resources to facilitate online pedagogy. as such, sahu (2020) posit that the covid-19 pandemic may have a serious impact on the careers of 2020 university graduates because of the major interruptions in teaching and assessment in the final part of their studies. similarly, they may likely graduate late due to the postponement of the final examination and/or face severe challenges of the global recession caused by the covid-19 crisis (sahu, 2020). research findings on how the institution has managed to sever the negative impact of covid-19 on research, teaching and learning, revealed that the university increased virtual mobility and collaborative online learning as well as the provision of alternatives to examination using new measures. manager 4 stated that: due to pandemic, there has been a shift from the usual contact-based conferences to online platform, which has resulted in cost cutting measures because the university no longer need to pay for international travels and accommodation for its academics. for online teaching and learning, zoom, microsoft teams and blackboard platforms has been very helpful in ensuring that teaching, learning and assessment continues without putting both staff and students at risk (manager 4) research findings generally revealed that rural institutions have been hard hit by the covid-19 pandemic as they were forced into uncharted territory where they were forced to experiment with online pedagogy on the go. however, university management managed to put some measures in place to ensure the smooth running of the institution so that the academic year is not compromised. this finding corroborates the views of rashid and yadav (2020) who stated that many universities have adopted distance learning as a means of pacifying for loss of time in school. thus, the development of e-content and assessment and reporting that is not properly planned and forethought were mostly used in the higher education institutions (rashid & yadav, 2020). it is therefore important for institutions to provide educators with professional autonomy and trusted with their judgement as well as ensure clear and compassionate communication with all the stakeholders of the higher education (rashid & yadav, 2020). data from the quantitative study in figure 2 below depicts stakeholders’ feedback on the state of research, teaching and learning during the covid-19 pandemic. 4042021 39(1): 404-409 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.24 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) figure 2: research, teaching and learning during covid-19 research findings indicated that 93.5% of the participants were of the view that the pandemic negatively impacted student mobility while 6.5% thought it had a positive impact. this implies that student mobility has significantly been affected in the rural institution during the pandemic. regarding stimulation of alternatives to teaching and learning, 88.3% of the participants were of the view that the pandemic had a positive impact, while 5.2% thought that it had a negative impact and 6.5% were neutral. from the statistics, one can infer that the pandemic stimulated rural institutions to produce alternative methods of teaching and learning. furthermore, in relation to examinations processes and research during the pandemic, findings revealed that 98.7% and 52.7% of the participants were of the view that the pandemic negatively affected their institution respectively, while 1.3% and 39% thought it had a positive impact. as such, it can be concluded that the pandemic negatively affected examination processes and research matters in rural institutions. similarly, the negative impact of the pandemic is visible in the institutions’ collaborations with other international institutions as 45.5% of the participants were of the view that the pandemic had negatively impacted them, while 39% believed that the pandemic had a positive impact and 15% were not sure. this implies that international collaborations in rural universities have been negatively affected in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic stringencies. findings from the quantitative and qualitative study revealed that although the institution had put some measures in place to ensure that the university is efficiently managed in the context of the covid-19 pandemic, stakeholders’ experiences revealed that the institution faced insurmountable challenges that range from limited student mobility, cancellation and postponement of examinations as well as weakened research and international collaborations. this corroborates the views of rashid and yadav (2020) who argue that the pandemic has uncovered the deep-seated weaknesses and deficiencies of the present education systems and has also emphasised the need for digital literacy development, particularly in times like these, for developed and developing countries. similarly, nganga, waruru and nakweya (2020) stated that rural universities face the twin-challenge of rolling out online learning for 4052021 39(1): 405-409 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.24 mncube, mutongoza & olawale managing higher education institutions in the context of covid-19 thousands of students and finding money to pay salaries and meet their financial obligations at a time when major revenue flows are closed. therefore, this present condition challenges the deep-rooted notions about the role of higher education institutions in mode of delivery, providing quality education, the importance of lifelong learning, accessibility and teachers’ views about the type of learners (rashid & yadav, 2020). an interrogation of the systems theory reveals that the inputs invested into an organisation are essential for success – these include the capital and human resources that are essential to run an organisation and that have to be carefully planned, organised, motivated and controlled if goals are to be realised (von bertalanffy, 1962; von foerster, 1981). for universities to circumvent the challenges that threaten their operationality, it is therefore essential for universities to acknowledge the interrelations of different stakeholder subsystems that are operational at universities as opposed to viewing them as isolated individual components in the pursuit of the education agenda. 9. conclusion and recommendation as schools enter into the covid-19 recovery phase, it is vital to reflect on the role of educational systems, and particularly rural higher education institutions in managing education enterprise and fostering resilient societies. although, south african higher education institutions have taken significant steps to curb the spread of covid-19 after reopening, there is a need for institutions and the government to invest more in safety infrastructural facilities that will ensure that rural university stakeholders are safe and technical infrastructural facilities that enable the shift from a conventional teaching and learning approach to a more blended educational model. this is because the shift to online modes of conducting university operations has significantly resulted in pressure to adjust to the “new normal”. as a result, institutions need to significantly invest in mental health support for stakeholders. similarly, assessment and examination approaches should be reviewed in order to comply with online teaching and learning pedagogy. furthermore, university stakeholders should be capacitated for online teaching and learning pedagogy through the organisation of various capacity building programmes that are capable of assisting them to handle challenges faced with the use 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& olawale managing higher education institutions in the context of covid-19 zahra, f., gul, a., iqbal, a., ghafoor, t. & ambreen, a., 2020. the impact of covid-19 on rural areas students of pakistan: moderating role of hec policy and internet service. asian journal of contemporary education, 4(2): 69–79. https://doi.org/10.18488/journal.137.2020.42.69.79 zhai, y. & du, x. 2020. mental health care for international chinese students affected by the covid-19 outbreak. lancent psychiatry, 7: 22. https://doi.org/10.1016/s2215-0366(20)30089-4 https://doi.org/10.18488/journal.137.2020.42.69.79 https://doi.org/10.1016/s2215-0366%2820%2930089-4 _hlk55392972 _hlk55729075 _hlk55814992 _goback 2422021 39(3): 242-256 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 the challenges of transitioning from teacher to departmental head in seven primary schools abstract the aim of this study was to identify key challenges of practice that departmental heads (dhs) face during their transition from a teacher to their dh role. the study was based on bridges’ transition theory. the researcher employed a qualitative research methodology and interviewed 15 dhs working in the department of basic education’s tshwane south district. a thematic analysis of the collected data showed that the dhs experienced four main challenges during the transition process: negative change in teachers’ attitudes and behaviours, a lack of management/ leadership skills, a lack of subject knowledge and heavy workloads and time constraints. based on the above findings, the researcher concluded that transitioning from teacher to dh is more difficult than meets the eye. these findings imply that policymakers, researchers, school principals and teachers should work together to minimise challenges and ensure a smooth transition to the dh role for newly appointed dhs. keywords: departmental head; primary schools; transition, bridges’ transition theory; departmental chairs; subject heads. 1. introduction and background the government and society in general place schools under huge pressure to deliver excellent results by producing fully equipped and well-rounded learners. in order to meet these expectations, schools not only need effective school principals, but also effective departmental heads (dhs). dhs are teachers who have been promoted to the middle level of the school hierarchy; in other words, between senior management and teachers in traditional bureaucratic structures (chetty, 2007). dhs are known by different names in different countries. for example, in the united kingdom (uk), dhs are called subject leaders, middle leaders or middle managers, while in the united states they are called departmental chairs (busher, 2005; turner, 2006; zepeda & kruskamp, 2007). in kenya and tanzania, they are called heads of department (hods) (atebe, 2009; urio, 2012). in this study, the term dh is used to refer to those teachers author: dr nosipho immaculate jaca1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i3.18 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(3): 242-256 published: 16 september 2021 received: 24 august 2020 accepted: 30 october 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 2432021 39(3): 243-256 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 jaca the challenges of transitioning from teacher to departmental head promoted to the level above other teachers but below senior management in schools, and are responsible for the management of various departments or phases (pam, 2016). the role of dhs in today’s world of education has become crucial and increasing demands are made on dhs to lead and manage performance in their departments. according to beam, claxton and smit (2016), they are expected to be superheroes in their departments or phases. various researchers have conducted studies on dhs and their role. for instance, yong (2006) found that dhs in singapore performed their roles in four contexts: classrooms, departments, whole schools and clusters. the classroom role involved teaching only, while the departmental role was concerned with leading teams, planning, monitoring, evaluation, developing staff, administrative affairs and advising principals on professional matters. the latter role linked school and departmental goals to ensure the integration of departmental and whole-school beliefs, values and priorities. the dhs’ whole-school role involved working with senior management on decision-making matters such as developing the school’s vision, setting the school’s tone and direction, strategic planning, implementation of school policies as well as performance appraisal and grading. the cluster role involved collaborating with dhs from other cluster schools in respect of subject support groups and cluster committees to raise the standard of performance in their schools through professional sharing and training activities (yong, 2006). ghavifekr and ibrahim (2014) reported that dhs in malaysia were expected to improve teachers’ job performance by developing their teaching practice and providing increased motivation. dhs were also made responsible for enhancing the professional competency of teachers. when reporting on the roles and responsibilities of school management teams (smts) – which included dhs, deputy principals and principals – nigerian researchers nwangwa and ometere (2013) discovered that dhs were expected to monitor the performance of teachers and learners in schools. their role furthermore involved providing continuous professional development (cpd) for teachers and non-teaching staff, as well as implementing the curriculum in a manner that met the goals of the nigerian ministry of education. in south africa the core duties and responsibilities of dhs are regulated in the personnel administrative measures (pam) document and involve teaching (extracurricular and co-curricular), personnel matters, general/administrative duties and communication (pam, 2016). south african researchers have also conducted studies on the role of dhs. the common challenges that emerged from these studies were the dhs’ heavy workload and their struggle to strike a balance between teaching duties and management duties (borole, 2010; nkabinde, 2012; du plessis, 2014; malloy, 2017; tapala, van niekerk & mentz, 2020). malloy (2017) also found that all the dhs lacked relevant expertise in the subject. consequently, teachers were not developed effectively in those schools for positive learner performance. they also struggled to balance their own teaching and management duties. malinga (2016) found that the district was supportive to dhs however, the benefits of such support related more to their teaching role rather than the dh duties. malloy (2017) discovered that school-based support was minimal. numerous studies (zepeda & kruskamp, 2007; bennet, 2008; stephenson, 2010; nkabinde, 2012; du plessis, 2014) suggest that dhs are not properly prepared for the tasks they are expected to carry out. although many researchers around the world have acknowledged the importance of dhs in the success of schools, there is still a dearth of research into the challenges that dhs face during their transition from teacher to the dh role in south african schools. further research is essential to determine the challenges that dhs experience – from their own perspective – in a south african context. as a result, the current http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 2442021 39(3): 244-256 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) paper deals with the challenges that dhs in seven primary schools in south africa faced during their transition from the teacher role to the dh role. it is hoped that the results of this study will serve as a guide to policymakers, researchers, school principals and teachers in south africa. they may inform the development of preparation and support programmes that will help newly appointed dhs to make a smooth transition into their new role. the findings should be of interest to prospective and current dhs, school principals and subject advisors. the main research question that was asked in this study was: what types of challenges do dhs experience during their transition from teacher to the position of a dh? 2. an empirical view of the challenges faced when transitioning from subject teacher to departmental head literature on transitioning to the dh role is limited. however, the different challenges that people face during their transition to a leadership role seemed relevant for this study. one of these challenges was changes in relationships. various new zealand studies, such as those by bennet (2008) on first-time subject leaders in secondary schools and by hesketh (2014) on the continuous professional development (cpd) of middle leaders in primary schools, revealed that dhs experienced a change in their relationships with teaching colleagues. stephenson (2010) found that some dhs who were promoted internally had to change the way in which they interacted with fellow teachers who had been their peers prior to their appointment to the dh role. furthermore, beam et al. (2016) conducted a study that focused on the perceptions of novice and experienced school administrators during their first three years in school leadership positions and how pre-service programmes better prepared them for the challenges they might face in such positions. the study also revealed that the novice leaders had trouble navigating their relationships with colleagues, parents and students. in fact, they felt that their colleagues did not perceive them as credible. novice leaders also felt that their qualifications, background and ability to lead were questioned by fellow teachers. this suggests that when teachers are promoted to the dh role, their relationships with former colleagues are affected negatively. the lack of role clarity emerged as another challenge during transition to the leadership position. in new zealand, a study of the issues facing first-time dhs discovered that, after their appointment, dhs started to realise that the role they were expected to play was bigger than what they had anticipated. similar findings emerged from a study by armstrong (2012) who focused on transition from vice-principalship in north america and found that, despite the vice-principals taking a principal’s training course and having experience as curriculum leaders, they still experienced surprises during the first year in their management role. the vice-principals only became aware of the differences between teaching and administration in terms of their responsibilities as teachers and as upper-level administrators once they were already in the role. davidson (2016) conducted a study in australia on the early experiences of 12 south australian novice primary school principals and found that these new principals were overwhelmed when they realised the extent of their new responsibilities. all of the new principals agreed that even though they had been deputy principals and acting principals in other schools before they were appointed as principals, being in a principal position was not what they had anticipated. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 2452021 39(3): 245-256 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 jaca the challenges of transitioning from teacher to departmental head another challenge involved heavy workloads and time constraints. studies conducted in singapore and new zealand suggested that the additional responsibilities of a teacher moving to the dh role caused an increase in their workloads (yong, 2006; chetty, 2007; bennet, 2008). a study by nwangwa and ometere (2013) in nigeria reported that school managers, including dhs, found it difficult to meet their new managerial expectations. yong (2006) reported that time constraints had an impact on other functions of dhs, as they were still allocated the same amount of time for their teaching, management and leadership duties as teachers whose main task is only to teach. this implies that during transition, dhs found it difficult to assume responsibility for a dual role, as they were given no extra time to allow them to fulfil both roles effectively. a lack of management and leadership skills was found in studies by other researchers. in the us, zepeda and kruskamp (2007) explored the perspectives of high school departmental chairs concerning their task as instructional supervisors for teachers. they discovered that departmental chairs were not well prepared for instructional supervision. an australian study by rosenfeld, ehrich and cranston (2008) that examined the changing nature of the dhs and the skills they required in their new role, found that the development of those skills did not take place in a formalised manner. according to this study, some dhs were learning on the job and they basically used what they had learnt from dhs who were their role models and mentors. others simply developed an understanding of the role through personal experience. shunwing and tsan-ming (2014) examined the situation of middle managers in schools in hong kong, their cpd needs and the requirements for quality school management. they observed that there were insufficient training opportunities for middle leaders in primary schools and concluded that owing to restricted training opportunities, there was a strong demand for training on interpersonal skills, crisis and resource management, and an understanding of education rules in the cpd curriculum for middle leaders. in tanzania, urio (2012) investigated how dhs performed their task of enhancing the quality of education and found that they not only lacked the ability to influence the cpd of teachers, but also were unable to conduct classroom observations and motivate teachers. this could have been because of a lack of preparation for the dh role. on the other hand, a kenyan study by atebe (2009) found that dhs were only inducted in information and communication technology skills. he also found that professional training was offered through consultative meetings when the need arose. additionally, various south african studies conducted on the role of dhs revealed little or no induction for newly appointed dhs (ali & botha, 2006; nkabinde, 2012; du plessis, 2014). in another south african study, malinga (2016) found that some dhs did not have the subject matter knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge or the credibility to lead subjects under their supervision. all these studies provided evidence of challenges, yet very few (if any) south african studies examined challenges experienced by dhs in their transitioning to the dh role. the current study therefore focused specifically on the transitioning of primary school teachers to the dh role. 3. theoretical framework bridges’ (1991) transition theory, which had been developed to assist organisations in supporting people who are going through a transition of any kind, was used in this study. bridges’ theory describes the stages that people go through when they experience change. it also suggests strategies for helping people move through each stage. dhs, for instance, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 2462021 39(3): 246-256 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) must come to terms with and adjust to the changes that are associated with promotion, such as being responsible for managing other teachers. bridges’ theory seemed appropriate for understanding how dhs deal with all the changes they experience as they transition to middle management, as it suggests support strategies that may apply in the transition from teacher to middle management. the theory states that transition occurs in three stages – the ending state, neutral zone and new beginning. in the ending state, people must leave behind their old identities and create new ones. during this stage, they experience disorientation, confusion, frustration, uncertainty, a sense of loss and anxiety, and they require role clarity. in the context of the current study, dhs who are promoted are expected to leave behind the teacher identity and create a manager identity. in preparing the interview guide, the ending stage of the theory was used to determine whether the dhs were able to leave behind their teacher identity and create a new one. the interview questions were framed to find out what dhs used to do in their previous role and if there was a difference between their old and new roles. according to bridges’ theory, the second stage of transition is a neutral zone in which transitioning people face new responsibilities and new relationships. having experienced confusion, uncertainty, loneliness and isolation, they now require reorientation, support and encouragement. this neutral zone could also be seen as a period of learning opportunities, but when the necessary support, encouragement and reorientation do not materialise, transitioning people start embracing their previous role. bridges’ theory states that people should spend more time in the neutral zone to learn about new responsibilities; it is only then that they can move on to the third stage of transition, the new beginning. the current study examined this second stage to find out what dhs experience once they have left behind their teacher identity and whether they were receiving the necessary support (e.g. induction, mentorship and/or any other developmental activities) to settle successfully into the new middle management position. the third and last stage of transition, according to bridges’ theory, is the new beginning. in the new beginning, people start realising that their old identity has ended; some start doubting their competence, their old anxieties resurface and they even freeze. others, however, accept their new responsibilities and eventually succeed. in the new beginning stage, people need guidance so as not to regress. dhs in this study were almost new in the dh position and therefore it was assumed that they still needed time to learn about the role. therefore, the interview questions focused on the two stages of transition from classroom teaching to the dh position (ending and the neutral zone). 4. research methodology 4.1 approach this study, which employed a qualitative approach grounded in the constructivist-interpretivist paradigm (creswell, 2012), was conducted in seven public primary schools in the tshwane south district. a qualitative approach seemed appropriate for collecting rich data in the form of words about the challenges that dhs faced during their transition from teacher to their new role as dhs (mcmillan & schumacher, 2010). this approach also made it possible for the researcher to interact with participants in their natural setting – that is, in the selected seven primary schools – during the data collection process (creswell, 2012; mcmillan & schumacher, 2010). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 2472021 39(3): 247-256 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 jaca the challenges of transitioning from teacher to departmental head 4.2 research design a qualitative case study design was adopted for this study because it enabled the researcher to explore the challenges that dhs faced during their transition from teacher to dh in their natural settings which were schools (creswell, 2012). a case study seemed appropriate because it requires that a study be conducted in a bounded context (creswell, 2012). in the present study, the researcher was able to focus on dhs in seven primary schools in the tshwane south district. this design posed limitations regarding the number of people to be interviewed, but also provided the researcher with rich and reliable data (mcmillan & schumacher, 2010). 4.3 sampling the sites and participants were sampled using a non-probability purposive approach. only participants who were perceived to be knowledgeable about and experienced in the phenomenon under study, namely dhs, were sampled (creswell, 2012). the selected participants were also those who were willing to provide information about their experiences. the sampled dhs came from seven public primary schools – six from a township and one from an urban area. it was the researcher’s intention to involve three township and three urban schools in order to study the experiences from different socio-economic environments. however, access was granted in only one school in an urban area. others were not interested, and since participation had to be voluntary, schools were not obligated to participate. six township schools granted the researcher access before the urban area school did. south african primary schools are divided into foundation, intermediate and senior phases. however, in small schools, some dhs are simultaneously responsible for two phases, for instance, intermediate and senior phase (intersen). the selected dhs in this study were those responsible for the foundation and intermediate-senior (intersen) phase in seven schools. the school in the urban area had two foundation phase dhs and both volunteered to participate in the study. eight foundation phase dhs (two from the school in the urban area and one per school in the township), as well as seven intersen phase dhs (one dh per school) participated in the study. the experience in a dh position of the fifteen selected dhs ranged from one to five years. the researcher assumed that the selected participants would still be able to remember their experiences of transitioning from teacher to leader. 4.4 data collection one-on-one semi-structured interviews were conducted to collect data from the fifteen participants at a time convenient for each. the researcher’s reason for using one-on-one interviews was that these enabled her to establish a relationship with the participants through interaction (maree, 2012; thomas, 2011). by using semi-structured interviews, the researcher was able to collect data directly from the participating dhs on their thoughts, beliefs, knowledge, reasoning, motivations and feelings about the challenges they experienced during their transition (johnson & christensen, 2000). the interviews also made it possible for the researcher to ask probing questions as the need arose. permission was sought to audio record all interviews. the researcher used an interview protocol for guidance during the interviews. the questions in the interview protocol were generated based on the research question, which involved the first two stages of bridges’ transition theory (ending and neutral zone). the reason for this was that the dhs in the study were almost new in the dh position and therefore it was assumed that they still needed time to learn about the role. examples http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 2482021 39(3): 248-256 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) of interview questions were: how would you describe your experiences when you started in this dh role? how would you describe your current experiences in this position? on average, each interview took approximately 45 minutes to complete. 4.5 data analysis data were analysed according to the thematic analysis technique because it was compatible with the constructivist/interpretivist paradigm within which this study was conducted (braun & clarke, 2006). data analysis continued throughout the collection process and hence the researcher was able to make follow-ups wherever this seemed necessary. the steps followed were those proposed by braun and clark (2006). as stated earlier, the researcher was guided by the research question that focused on the ending and neutral zone. the dhs were new in their position and were assumed to be still navigating through the transition process. the researcher transcribed all verbal data herself and immersed herself in the written data until she was familiar with the depth and breadth of its content (braun & clarke, 2006). the researcher subsequently broke down and coded the data according to the interview questions. she then sorted the different codes into potential themes and assembled all related codes within identified themes. afterwards, the researcher went back to the assembled data extracts for each theme and organised them into a clear and consistent interpretation accompanied by quotations. 5. ethical considerations ethical approval to conduct research was obtained from the university of pretoria. permission to conduct research in the seven public primary schools was obtained from the gauteng department of education. the researcher requested potential participants at the selected schools in writing to participate in the study. all participants were informed of the purpose of the study and what was expected of them. they were asked to sign a consent form to confirm that they were voluntarily participating in the study but were also informed of their right to withdraw from the study at any time. participants were assured of confidentiality and their identities as well as those of the schools in the study were protected by using pseudonyms. 6. trustworthiness of the findings trustworthiness was enhanced by adhering to four criteria as advised by lincoln and guba (1989). to enhance credibility, a detailed account of the research design, methodology and theoretical framework for the study was provided. data source triangulation was employed to develop themes based on the various perspectives of participants (creswell, 2012). dependability of the findings was enhanced through using the interview schedule to ensure that all participants were asked the same questions. the perspectives of the participants were equally presented to enable readers of the study report to develop a thorough understanding of the methods used and their effectiveness (creswell, 2012). to ensure transferability of the findings, details of all the processes followed in the investigation and the context of the fieldwork were recorded to facilitate the possibility of replication of the study (shenton, 2004; bloomberg & volpe, 2008). 7. findings participants were asked how they experienced the move from their role as teacher to that of manager, which according to the transition theory constituted the ending of the old identity. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 2492021 39(3): 249-256 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 jaca the challenges of transitioning from teacher to departmental head the themes that emerged from their responses were as follows: negative change in teachers’ attitudes and behaviours, lack of leadership and management skills, lack of subject knowledge as well as heavy workload and time constraints. 7.1 negative change in teachers’ attitudes and behaviours the researcher discovered that dhs who had been internally promoted – whether to a vacant or temporarily occupied position – were deeply affected by the negative attitudes of former peers (teachers) who seemed to question their credibility. it seems that the ending stage does not affect only those promoted, but also former peers. this was evident in what some of the dhs who were appointed internally had to say (quoted verbatim): there were other people who applied but i got the post. other people apply for the post not because they know the job but they want the money. if you get the job, they start to hate you… you can see that people hate you because of the job (dh 6). when the post was advertised, many of us applied but during the interviews, i was the only one shortlisted from my school. all of a sudden, there was tension, particularly with those who thought they were more qualified than me and maybe they were better than me in terms of speaking and presentation (dh 14). the following verbatim quote shows the words of a participant who was internally appointed to the post where there had been an acting dh: when i was promoted, it was tough, more especially because the position i am in, one of my colleagues was acting. she was an acting hod but looking at the advertisement, i also thought i was a suitable candidate. oh! it was not easy; there was that negative influence; hence, she was somehow cross with me but ultimately at times there were some delays with submissions. in contrast, the perspective of a dh who had been externally appointed revealed feelings of isolation that frustrated her. the participant seemed to be struggling with the ending stage of transition where she had to leave behind her previous life of being in the staffroom with teachers. she remarked: i just wanted to be hod; it’s not as nice as i thought. my biggest challenge is i am now isolated from others. i have my own office. it’s not as nice as i thought. 7.2 lack of management and leadership skills most participants indicated that they had not been prepared for and equipped with leadership and management skills. they seemed to be in the neutral zone and uncertain about how to perform leadership and management duties. they also required support in the form of mentorship. the verbatim comments from some participants are quoted below: as dhs, we need thorough training in terms of time management and management skills (dh 2). becoming the dh is a challenge if, like myself, you are not trained. i was just taken because of my long service as a teacher. if you have not been trained it is very tough and stressful to manage people. what can i tell them? (dh 5). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 2502021 39(3): 250-256 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) 7.3 lack of subject knowledge some dhs also indicated that they sometimes lacked the necessary subject knowledge, which made it difficult for them to monitor the teaching and learning of other subjects under their supervision. these participants seemed to be in the neutral zone where they were expected to monitor the teaching of other teachers, yet they did not always have the required content knowledge. they also required subject-related support. this was what some participants said: when it comes to problems of learners’ performance, the dh cannot even confront the educator because the dh has more knowledge in other subjects but in others he is lacking. there is a gap which makes it difficult to assist the educator (dh 14). what is happening to the dhs is not fair. we are assigned to supervise even the subjects we have no knowledge of. i say it is not fair because you cannot develop a teacher on something that you yourself do not know. every dh should be a specialist in subjects that s/he is supposed to supervise in order to be able to help teachers; it is very frustrating to lead what you don’t know because it takes away your confidence (dh 15). 7.4 heavy workload and time constraints most of the participants reported that their workload had become heavier – the addition of management and leadership duties to their teaching load made it difficult to attend adequately to all tasks. apparently, their old and new identities were simply combined, because they had to continue to teach after having been promoted to the dh position. the added workload called for more support in terms of management skills to enable the newly appointed dhs to give equal attention to both roles. some of their comments in this regard are quoted below: the workload and responsibility have increased tremendously…the administration has also increased as i now have to monitor the administration for all teachers in addition to mine. i have now been a grade head as all dhs have been allocated in different phases (dh 4). the workload has now increased. even though i teach, i have other subjects that i have to oversee and the admin work is too much (dh 2). even those participants who reported that their teaching load had decreased, still indicated that their administrative duties had increased. now that i am a dh, the periods are lesser… you know, there is too much paperwork but it is caused by the department. one other thing that i have realised there is a lot of marking. they bring papers with half marks which some of the teachers cannot do because of lack of maths knowledge. they give that work to me as the dh to fix it (dh 6). the workload in terms of classes has decreased but the administration and management duties have tremendously increased because now it is for the whole department and it takes my time with the learners (dh 12). 8. discussion the study revealed that when dhs moved from the role of teacher to the dh role in the same schools where they had been teachers, they were affected by the negative attitudes and behaviours of former teacher colleagues. a possible explanation is that bruised egos made it http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 2512021 39(3): 251-256 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 jaca the challenges of transitioning from teacher to departmental head difficult for these teachers to accept that even though they could all apply for the promotion, there could only be one successful candidate. in contrast, there was no indication of such experience from participants who came from other schools. however, my study found that the dh who had been appointed from another institution experienced isolation. this could be because the appointed dh had no previous relationship with teachers in the new school. the feelings of loneliness could also have resulted from the newly appointed dh struggling to cope with the change in routine – from being in the classroom with learners to being “isolated” in an office environment. the finding of the negative attitudes and behaviours of former teacher colleagues is consistent with the findings of hesketh (2014), who found that some subject leaders who were internally appointed experienced a negative change in their relationships with other departmental members. it also supports the finding of beam et al. (2016), namely that leaders who had worked in the school as a former teacher experienced a lack of credibility in the eyes of their colleagues and they were often not granted respect in their new role. this study found that most participants lacked management and leadership skills. this resulted in frustration and insufficient confidence to perform their management and leadership duties. most participants seemed to be aware of the importance of having management and leadership skills in order to perform their duties effectively. this included the ability to deal with difficult teachers. this lack of management and leadership skills also emerged from the studies conducted by chetty (2007), bennet (2008) and murphy (2011). they found that middle managers lacked adequate management knowledge and skills, which made it impossible for them to do the job effectively. the teachers in their studies were promoted to a leadership role without being equipped with the training they needed to be effective. it was also found that most dhs lacked subject knowledge of some of the subjects they were expected to supervise. the lack of subject knowledge by many dhs may well be blamed on the nature of the system, which does not consider subject knowledge of all the subjects a teacher will supervise once promoted to the dh position. this lack of subject knowledge is consistent with the findings from a south african study by malinga (2016) who found that some dhs did not have the subject matter knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge or the credibility to lead the subject teachers under their supervision. as a result of their limited competency, they could not have meaningful discussions on curriculum issues with their teachers. it also supports malloy’s (2017) findings that all the dhs lacked relevant expertise in the subject. consequently, teachers were not developed effectively in those schools for positive learner performance. the participants agreed that they now had a much heavier workload due to their additional responsibilities and the increased number of duties that they were expected to perform (i.e. management and leadership duties in addition to their teaching responsibilities). this was especially the case because being the dh often required the promoted teacher to continue with teaching – making it challenging to fulfil both tasks effectively. bennet (2008) found that dhs experience a heavy workload and time constraints, whereas barole (2010) and malloy (2017) also identified the problem of heavy workloads and indicated that dhs had difficulty balancing their teaching and management duties. this ultimately supports what bridges’ theory suggests, namely that in the neutral zone, people need to be supported in terms of what their new role requires in order for them to successfully perform their new responsibilities. in this case, dhs need to be empowered with time management skills in order to be able to balance both teaching and management duties. if they are not given the necessary support, they will http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 2522021 39(3): 252-256 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) focus more on the familiar teaching role, rather than learn responsibilities of the new role. that could delay their movement to the last stage of transition, which is the new beginning. 9. conclusion in seeking to understand the challenges that dhs in seven primary schools faced during their transition from teacher to dh, the researcher found that the challenges included a negative change in fellow teachers’ attitudes and behaviours, dhs’ inadequate management and leadership skills, their lack of subject knowledge and heavy workloads and time constraints. the researcher therefore concluded that the transition from the role of teacher to that of dh is more challenging than it appears. relevant support should be provided to newly appointed dhs throughout all stages of the transition process to enable them to make a smooth transition and be effective in their new role. in conclusion, policymakers should develop policies to guide schools regarding the subject knowledge requirements that should be considered in the appointment of dhs. district officials – and subject advisors in particular – should provide subject-related support to dhs to ensure that the latter have the required subject knowledge to monitor the teaching of subjects they supervise. school principals should mentor newly appointed dhs to develop their leadership and management skills. further research is needed to explore the support needs of the dhs and to help them overcome the challenges they face. since this study was based on a small non-probability sample, the results cannot be generalised to all dhs going through a transition process. a larger study with larger datasets should be conducted in future, in primary as well as secondary schools. references ali, f. & botha, n. 2006. 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design and methods, fourth edition. thousand oaks, california: sage. yong, g.l.c.c. 2006. the role of heads of department in cluster secondary schools in singapore. unpublished doctoral thesis. united kingdom: university of leicester. zepeda, s.j. & kruskamp, b. 2007. perspectives on instructional supervision. the high school journal, 90(4): 44-54. https://doi.org/10.1353/hsj.2007.0018 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.18 https://doi.org/10.1177/0892020614529808 https://doi.org/10.1080/13632430601007774 https://doi.org/10.1353/hsj.2007.0018 151 research article 2021 39(3): 151-168 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) directiveness in tutor talk abstract the reigning orthodoxy in writing centres has been to avoid directive approaches and embrace non-directive approaches to tutoring. although since the late 1990s various writing centre scholars have debunked this myth, many guidebooks on tutoring still adhere to it. we believe that theory-led empirical research on tutor approaches and actions is necessary to demonstrate the situation-dependent efficacy of directive approaches and thereby dispel the myth that a peer role is preferred to a teacherly role. this paper starts addressing the need for theory-led empirical research on directiveness by applying theories of linguistic pragmatics to analyse writing centre consultations and assist writing centre tutors to develop a critical awareness of both their actions and students’ responses. first, a synopsis is given of how directiveness is portrayed in the writing centre literature. this is followed by an overview of microand macro-pragmatic theories on speech acts in linguistics and suggestions on how they may be applied to better understand the role of directiveness in writing centre consultations. finally, the present research project is described and an analysis of two excerpts (speech events) from a particular consultation is offered as an illustration of the insight offered by pragmatic theories. keywords: directiveness; non-directiveness; macro-pragmatics; micro-pragmatics; writing centres; writing consultations; writing tutors. 1. introduction advice typically given to novice tutors in a writing centre is to avoid a directive (teacherly) stance and rather assume a non-directive (peer-centred) stance (reigstad & mcandrew, 1984; brooks, 1991). however, this advice is largely based on lore1, which has its roots in fictionalised scenarios termed “the methodology as mythology of tutoring” by plummer and thonus (1999: 9). this methodology is based on “what not to do,” or rather “how to be a peer and not to be a teacher when in the role of writing tutor” (thonus, 2001: 61). since the late 1990s, scholars have started advocating a flexible view regarding directiveness (blau, hall & strauss, 1998; shamoon & burns, 1995; lunsford, 1991; plummer & thonus, 1999). however, there is little theory-led empirical 1 lore, sometimes referred to as “orthodoxy” in writing centre discourse, can be defined as “statements that come more from a range of assumed values rather than from researched findings” (shamoon & burns, 1995: 136). author: prof adelia carstens1 dr avasha rambiritch1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i3.12 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(3): 151-168 published: 16 september 2021 received: 04 may 2021 accepted: 09 june 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1518-6170 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6182-0905 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 1522021 39(3): 152-168 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) research on directive approaches and the variables that may influence their efficacy, as voiced by morrison: if writing center researchers are to better represent the efficacy of our practices and if we are to influence the way that we teach and talk about writing across the disciplines, we must speak a common research language, one that allows others from both within and outside of our field to retrace our steps and to test our claims (2008: 4–5). this paper attempts to start filling the research gaps related to directiveness as a graded strategy by responding to the following question: how can microand macro-pragmatic analyses of writing centre consultations inform our appraisal of the notion of directiveness in tutor talk? the results of this explorative research will serve to indicate how an empirically based pedagogy of directiveness may assist writing centre scholars in testing their claims and underpinning tutor training. first, we discuss directiveness and non-directiveness as the notions appear in the writing centre literature. this is followed by an overview of speech act theories in linguistics and suggestions on how stakeholders could use microand macro-speech act theories in analyses of directiveness in writing centre consultations. the next section comprises a description of the method and findings of different cycles of research in a project aimed at analysing a corpus of video-recorded tutorials at a large residential university in south africa. we conclude the article by a reflection on the contribution of our research to the theoretical and empirical underpinning of writing centre work as well as an application to tutor training. 2. directive and non-directive tutoring 2.1 restrictive views of directiveness the reigning orthodoxy in writing centres, influenced by the theoretical perspectives offered by experts between the 1950s and the 1980s (see boquet, 1999), was boldly non-directive. early experts explain non-directive tutoring as a strategy that encourages students to formulate their own solutions based on listening to and questioning the advice of the tutor (vitae, n.d.), “thus encouraging his students to discover truths through their own thinking” (reigstad & mcandrew, 1984: 31). proponents of non-directive tutoring highlighted the value of this approach as one that reduced “teacher-talk” by forcing students to play an active role in their learning (carino, 2003: 105). tutors “drew out” knowledge (see lunsford, 1991) from students by asking a range of questions, mainly open-ended, to encourage students to talk about their writing and their writing problems. tutor roles following the non-directive approach are most clearly defined in early tutor training manuals. tutors are warned against holding a pen or pencil, interpreting texts, making suggestions, pointing out or correcting errors, talking about their own writing and using socratic questioning (greller & kalteissen, 2008). this literature is largely recognised as the foundation of writing centre practices although no empirical studies validate the claims put forward. non-directive tutoring was simply accepted as dogma (carino, 2003). directive tutoring, often referred to as teacher-centred tutoring, was defined as an approach that saw the tutor do most, if not all, the talking and much of the work for the student, by silently reading students’ papers and identifying defects as well as issuing tutorial “commands” (reigstad & mcandrew, 1984). the most frequently used strategies included responding, explaining, exemplifying, telling and suggesting (morrison, 2008; mackiewicz http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 1532021 39(3): 153-168 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 carstens & rambiritch directiveness in tutor talk & thompson, 2014). the directive tutor was vilified (corbett, 2015) as a “shaman, guru or mentor” (hawkins, 1984: 31). yet, despite these very strong remonstrations against directive tutoring, there are no clear theoretical guidelines to help one understand directiveness (clark, 2001). furthermore, directive tutoring is also always presented as an either/or dichotomy – a tutor is directive or non-directive. early experts, however, did point to the suitability for particular writing concerns (lower order concerns), with a particular type of student (novice, multilingual) (reigstad & mcandrew, 1984; harris, 1986). 2.2 flexible views of directiveness since the late 1980s, leading experts began to comment on the anti-directive orthodoxy of writing centre literature. questions were raised about the “honesty” of tutors who withheld information because they feared providing too much assistance and about the belief that writing was essentially a solitary, process-based and disciplinary task, using socratic methods of eliciting what the students tacitly know ( lunsford, 1991; shamoon & burns, 1995). a close analysis of audioand video-recorded consultations also showed, contrary to traditional views, that tutors function as a combination of peers and teachers (davis et al., 1988). tutors often fulfil a teacherly role more than a peer role (thonus, 2001) by evaluating tutees’ writing, suggesting solutions and talking more than the student does; however, this does not negatively impact on the success of a tutorial (henning, 2001). the converse is often true: directive tutoring is often far less frustrating (blau, hall & strauss, 1998) and more enriching than non-directive tutoring, especially for novice writers (shamoon & burns, 1995), students from non-western cultures (moussu, 2013) and multilingual writers (appleby-ostroff, 2017). sadly, writing centre lore and dogma have been so entrenched in the minds of those working in writing centres that tutors who use directive approaches feel guilt and frustration, even when they know that it may be the most effective way to help the tutee (nicklay, 2012). despite the years of admonitions against directive tutoring and the voices in favour of more flexible approaches, very little research has been conducted on directiveness as a tutoring strategy – or rather, on the various directive strategies that are available to tutors. none of the writing centre scholars quoted thus far provide indications of what exactly they understand under tutor strategies such as responding, instructing, telling, explaining, exemplifying and suggesting, and at which discursive level these strategies are enacted. we are of the opinion that the domain of pragmatics, specifically speech act theories and theories of situated pragmatic action, may provide us with the tools to describe and appraise seemingly directive tutor strategies more flexibly. 2.3 using speech act theory to underpin analyses of directiveness speech act theory developed from the work of two philosophers, john austin and john searle, in the 1960s and 1970s (schiffrin, 1994: 49). they held the belief that the central function of a language is not merely to describe how things are, but to perform actions. in canonical terms a speech act is an act a speaker performs by uttering certain words, such as “i promise to do x and y” under the right conditions, termed “felicity conditions” by searle (1976: 6). however, soon it was realised that the speaker does not always use a verb that corresponds to what s/he intends to say (e.g. promise, request, command, etc.) and thus many speech acts are implicit (geis, 1995). furthermore, the purposes of actions performed by means http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 1542021 39(3): 154-168 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) of utterances do not necessarily align with the grammatical form of the sentence type that is used; for instance, an interrogative sentence does not necessarily imply that the speaker means to ask a question. in other words, speech acts may be indirect (geis, 1995). during the years when first-generation speech act theory (“micro-speech act theory”) was developed (approximately 1960–1980) various taxonomies or typologies saw the light. the first one was that of austin, who distinguished between verdictives (give a verdict, e.g. grade, assess, rule), expositives (explain how utterances fit in the context, e.g. reply, argue, illustrate), exercitives (exercise powers, rights or influence, e.g. appoint, advise, warn), behabitatives (relate to social behaviour, e.g. apologize, congratulate, challenge) and commissives (commit one to doing something, e.g. declare, promise, agree) (austin, 1961: 51). searle (1976) criticised austin’s classification on various grounds. these grounds included focusing on english speech act verbs and not on illocutionary acts (what speakers do with language); not all verbs are illocutionary verbs; the categories overlap and are heterogeneous; many of the verbs listed in a category do not fit the definition of the category and there is no consistent principle of categorisation. searle lays the foundations for a taxonomy underpinned by an elegant theory on the conditions necessary for the realisation of the various acts. this theory is underpinned by 12 criteria; however, he applied only four of his own criteria: (1) illocutionary point or force, (2) direction of fit between words and the world, (3) expressed psychological state of the speaker and (4) propositional content (what the speech act is about). searle’s categories overlap with those of austin but are somewhat less heterogeneous. the taxonomy comprises representatives (e.g. assert; conclude, deduce, explain), directives (e.g. ask, order, command, request, invite, permit, advise, suggest), commissives (e.g. promise, offer), expressives (e.g. thank, congratulate, apologize, condole, deplore and welcome) and declarations (e.g. declare, nominate) (searle, 1976: 10–14). although searle acknowledges that “differences in illocutionary verbs are a good guide”, he contends that it is “by no means a sure guide to differences in illocutionary acts (1977: 28). the “directive” actions mentioned by writing centre scholars fall primarily into two categories, representatives/constatives and directives. telling is clearly a representative, while asking leading questions, advising and instructing are directives. explain and exemplify do not fit neatly into any of searle’s main categories. austin’s expositives seem to be a more appropriate superordinate category. although attempts at classification are helpful in getting us to think deeply and critically about our practices, classification ambiguities demonstrate that a strict taxonomy can never account for all situated pragmatic actions. table 1 below is an attempt to show similarities and differences between austin’s and searle’s taxonomies. in essence, we used searle’s (1976) taxonomy, to which we added two of austin’s criteria that we found useful to characterise the actions regularly manifested in tutor talk: verdictives and expositives. declaratives/exercitives is a largely redundant category as far as tutor-tutee conversations are concerned. however, we included it for the sake of comprehensiveness. the main criteria we used for the categorisation were the speaker’s psychological state expressed through the speech act (a belief or a desire) and the illocutionary point of the speech act (see column 1 below). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 1552021 39(3): 155-168 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 carstens & rambiritch directiveness in tutor talk table 1: comparison between austin and searle’s micro-speech act taxonomies characterisation (cap 2010; bach & harnish 1979) austin (1961) searle (1976) examples assertions of the speaker’s belief regarding a state of affairs in the world representatives assert, conclude, claim, appraise, attribute, conclude an expression of the speaker’s desire to elaborate on how utterances fit into the verbal context expositives explain, argue, illustrate an expression of the speaker reflecting his/her desire to get the hearer to do something directives ask, order, command, request; invite, advise, suggest an expression of the speaker’s judgement about something (his/her belief about the quality of an entity) verdictives grade, assess, evaluate acts whereby the speaker exercises powers/rights to bring about change in the world exercitives declaratives appoint, declare, nominate, name expression of the speaker’s own intention or desire to do something commissives promise, offer, invite, volunteer, bid expression of the speaker’s desire to vent his/her attitude or psychological state behabitatives expressives thank, congratulate, apologise, welcome, deplore, praise what is still lacking in these micro-pragmatic theories (expressed as taxonomies), is an explicit account of the situatedness of practices in institutional settings, such as writing centres. we found support for this perceived hiatus in a range of theories that are broadly characterised as “socio-cognitive” and “macro-pragmatic”. proponents of such theories are, among others, mey (1995; 2001; 2009), geis (1995), kecskes (2010) and cap (2010). geis (1995: 18) concludes that “illocutionary acts must be seen as communicative actions, rather than linguistic acts with a social dimension”. mey (2001; 2009) offers a “pragmatic act” approach, according to which (micro-) speech acts are always accompanied by other acts that contribute to conversational success. these may include extralinguistic aspects of communication, such as gestures, intonation, facial mimics, posture, head movements and laughter (2009). mey also emphasises the role of the physical environment in understanding communicative actions. according to this author, it is crucial that speech acts are placed in a context and a situation, especially when conversations are analysed (2001; 2009). the acting of the interlocutors is influenced by the “affordances” of the scene (mey, 2009: 751). kecskes (2010: 2890) describes this approach as “a dialectical socio-cognitive perspective on communication and pragmatics”. for him, “[c]ommunication is the result of interplay of intention and attention motivated by socio-cultural background that is privatized by the individuals” (ibid). the socio-cultural background consists of dynamic knowledge of interlocutors, which derives from both their prior experience encoded in the linguistic expressions they use and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 1562021 39(3): 156-168 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) their current experience in which those expressions make meaning (ibid). current experience includes the use of the body, and this interaction between speech and bodily action cannot be captured by the simplistic notion of the “speech act” (mey, 2009: 751). mey’s notion of a “pragmatic act” encompasses a complex multimodal interaction realised in a given situation. analogous to familiar linguistic terminology, such as “lexeme” and “phoneme”, mey terms this unit a “pragmeme”. he says “adopting familiar linguistic terminology (cf. terms such as phoneme, morpheme, etc.) i call this (proto-)type of act a ‘pragmeme’. individual pragmatic acts realize a particular pragmeme (e.g. ‘inciting to declare war’); we may call these ‘practs’” (mey, 2009: 751). the manifestation of the pragmeme “inciting to declare war” (ibid). consists of the following two components: • an activity part: speech acts, psychological acts (emotions), prosody (intonation, stress) and physical acts (gestures, facial expressions, and bodily expression of emotions) • a textual part (the co[n]text): inferencing, establishing reference, relevance, voice, shared situational knowledge, metaphor and “metapragmatic joker” – any element that directs the attention of the interlocutors to something happening on the metapragmatic level, e.g. word order, etc. a problem with this distinction is, however, that macro-features of analysis are contained in both components. speech acts can be analysed as “activities” and as text, and speech events or practs are to be analysed as linguistic utterances in context and activities embedded in bodily actions. another approach (cap, 2010; 2011) is to distinguish between micropragmatics and macropragmatics in a dichotomous way: micropragmatics is the study of illocutionary force at an utterance level (ibid). macropragmatics (ibid), in turn, focuses on the series or sequences of utterances that form discourses, and which are the carriers of the speaker’s global intentionality (i.e. the intentionality resulting from different speech act configurations, referred to as “speech events” – which roughly coincide with mey’s “practs”). an example of a speech event is “assigning homework” (cap 2011: 65). this event may include an expressive (reprimanding students for submitting poor work in the previous assignment), a commissive (threatening to fail students if they again submit unedited assignments), a directive (instructing students to do a particular task) and an assertive or representative (describing a rationale for the task). next, an overview is given of the research project on which we report in this article, with an emphasis on the complementary relationship between microand macropragmatic analyses of two purposively selected speech events from a writing consultation. 3. the research project 3.1 research design and method the research approach underlying the design of this study is qualitative. first, we undertook a thorough review of canonised writing centre literature to identify salient themes that may guide the analysis of the empirical data. the project could be regarded as a case study (merriam, 1998). the broader “case” is a tutorial programme housed in a particular setting (its “real-life context”, as described by yin (2003: 13), where specific social actions (tutorial sessions) take place and that the researchers were interested to explore. at a more specific level, we were interested in the cases of our writing centre consultants and the strategies they use to improve http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 1572021 39(3): 157-168 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 carstens & rambiritch directiveness in tutor talk the writing abilities of students at the institution under scrutiny. at this level, it is a multiple case study (hood, 2009). this article draws the boundaries of the case even narrower and, through the analysis of two speech events (practs), it becomes an “instrumental case study” (hood, 2009: 70). the ultimate goal is to illuminate a particular issue: a tutoring style that is directive at the utterance level but facilitates self-discovery and independent meaning construction at the level of situated action. 3.2 data collection, analysis and findings the reason for conflating data collection, analysis and findings is that these phases were iterative, and analyses and findings of one phase served as data for another. we gathered data for the larger project through videorecording 10 writing centre consultations with linguistically diverse first-year, first-time visitors to the centre between march and september 2018. a professional transcription company then transcribed the video data using jefferson’s (1984) transcription symbols as adapted by seedhouse (2005). first-order analysis of the data (all 10 consultations) focused on the transcribed video recordings. we started by reading through the transcriptions a few times to get a sense of salient broad themes. three main themes precipitated, which also resonated with pertinent topics in the writing centre literature: tutoring strategy (coded as directive or non-directive), text level (higher-order or lower-order concerns) and appeal (cognitive or affective). all 10 transcriptions were then coded for these themes using atlas.ti 7; a computerised qualitative data analysis program. codes were assigned per utterance and not per turn, as turns often comprised more than one speech act. “directive talk” – tutor talk giving the student no options for autonomous decisionmaking and cognitive elaboration – was found to be the most frequently occurring firstorder code, generating 1430 quotations. all quotations bearing the code “directive”, were then subjected to another round of coding, which started with the suggested list of directive actions mentioned in the writing centre literature (reigstad & mcandrew, 1984; morrison, 2008; mackiewicz & thompson, 2014; corbett, 2015): asking leading (closed) questions, commanding (instructing), telling, explaining, exemplifying and suggesting. each of these actions was classified according to our own, customised taxonomy of writing centre speech acts, distilled from austin (1961) and searle (1976) and defined in the codebook. codes that emerged during the second round of coding were defined and categorised in the codebook, and retrospectively applied to the already coded transcriptions. table 1 represents the final codebook, with examples from the corpus. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 1582021 39(3): 158-168 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) table 2: codebook for utterances classified as “directive” in writing centre parlance pragmatic act description (psychological state and illocutionary point) examples from the corpus directives instructing expressing the tutor’s belief that it is necessary to provide clear and specific direction that would assist the student in producing an effective assignment or improve his/ her academic writing • okay. so just work on that. • okay, so in the concluding statement, reflect on what you’ve been arguing. • just end the sentence there. • just work on the format of your in-text references, né? advising expressing the tutor’s belief that there is sufficient reason for the student to perform a specified action in order to improve the assignment or his/her academic writing • you just, literally (.) i think you needed to say ‘argue’. alright? this essay will argue the issue of (.) or ‘will argue that’. • okay. um. then i would make a stronger thesis statement • and then, (.) it is very important that your essay, from your introduction (.) to your conclusion, (4s) it flows, (.) it hangs together (.) well. representatives telling expressing the tutor’s belief that the hearer needs to take note of a certain fact about the task or about academic writing • we call that a refutation. • so your main points were those main ideas you’re building on. • we call that a refutation. • this is a very long sentence. *confirming checking or confirming whether the student, tutor or both understand(s/ believe[s]) something • okay. (.) so, just looking at this checklist, there is a clear introduction, body and conclusion. • ok so this is your argumentative essay, right? • so you’re just filling this side, né? **responding expressing the tutor’s belief that it is necessary to say something in reply to a question asked or a statement made by the hearer • student: what do you mean by ‘left align’? • tutor: left aligned, it’s when: (2s). okay, you’ll see it on: (2s) microsoft word. just (.) just (.) look at those tabs. so one is ‘left align’, one is ‘centred’, one is (.) ‘right-hand side’ and (.) the one you used is the last one, the justified. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 1592021 39(3): 159-168 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 carstens & rambiritch directiveness in tutor talk pragmatic act description (psychological state and illocutionary point) examples from the corpus ***verdictives *evaluating expressing the speaker’s belief about the quality of an aspect of the student’s assignment under consideration • okay, so this sentence is very long, okay this is a long sentence. • and then, i see that you’ve… you’ve summarised your main points here, which is very good • i don’t think that’s (.) a strong enough refutation – • okay. here i think this sentence is a bit too short: ‘children should be exposed (.) to violent stories to learn about the reality and cruelty of life.’ (writes in the document) ‘… and that (2s) and that they should know that they will face such situations.’ ***expositives (searle) explaining expressing the tutor’s belief that the student could benefit from his/ her exposition of an aspect of the student’s writing or of academic writing in general • (.) so: (.) when you summarise, you’re not just going to tell me the point that you made, like saying that: ‘this essay just discusses the causes and consequences of obesity and highlighted, you know, whether the state should intervene.’ you wanna tell me the point that you made. • okay. so just (.) include one. just add a refutation here (.) so that you’re not contradicting yourself, né? • another way we can link our paragraphs is using connectors, (2s) okay. • so that (.) you unfold the rest of your argument and we know what side you’re on otherwise we’re on the fence, you know? exemplifying expressing the tutor’s belief that the student could benefit from examples that illustrate a particular explanation, rule, guideline or principle. • and then, the next paragraph should discuss, say, for example, families and what they need to do. (.) okay? • but (.) some essays (.) you can, for example, use a statistic. *these entries are our own additions based on experience in writing centres. **responding is usually combined with another pragmatic act, such as explaining or exemplifying. ***verdictives and expositives have been taken from austin’s (1961) taxonomy, since none of searle’s (1976) categories adequately cater for the considerable number of utterances in tutor talk that express a judgement of students’ verbal utterances or their written work and a verbal elaboration on something that has been asserted. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 1602021 39(3): 160-168 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) a micropragmatic analysis of directiveness in a particular speech event (transcript from video 00064) is included below. the turn numbers and the dialogue are captured in the lefthand column and the speech act categories for each turn regarded as “directive” in writing centre terms are categorised, first in terms of their micropragmatic speech act “category” and then in terms of a specific type of directive action listed in the writing centre literature and defined in our codebook: excerpt 1: (video 0064, turns 237–250) turns and dialogue speech act categories and codes turn 237 tutor: • okay, now. one (.) another very important thing, i think one of the most important things is (.) if we look at (.) thesis statement. you’ll hear that word a lot (.) at a university. • you’ll hear thesis statement, you’ll hear he’s writing a thesis, um then you’ll hear um antithesis (touches her left hand with her right forefinger when uttering each of the stressed words). constative: telling constative: telling turn 238 student: (laughter) turn 239 tutor: you’ll hear syn(.) synthesis (completes the series of emphatic hand gestures) constative: telling turn 240 student: oh my goodness. turn 241 tutor: you must synthesise, (clears throat) sorry, you’ll hear hypothesis. but (.) if you just remember (.) when you go to a shisa nyama… constative: telling turn 242 student: (laughter) turn 243 tutor: and you eat a (.) sosatie. constative: telling turn 244 student: ja? turn 245 tutor: kebab. there’s a stick in there. (lifts her right hand holding the pen in a vertical position) constative: telling turn 246 student: (laughter) turn 247 tutor: okay? and that stick (.) is your thesis {statement.} (draws a stick on the erasable sheet in front of her). constative: confirming constative: telling turn 248 student: {oh:} it holds everything together. turn 249 tutor: you’re brilliant. verdictive: evaluating turn 250 student: (laughter) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 1612021 39(3): 161-168 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 carstens & rambiritch directiveness in tutor talk in this excerpt, the tutor facilitates the tutee’s understanding of the notion of a thesis statement. separately, the utterances are directive acts: telling, confirming and evaluating; however, together they form an interactively scaffolded explanation of a speech event. the explanation is accompanied by hand gestures that emphasise the members of the lexical category with -thesisas the stem. the information conveyed by the tutor elicits laughter from the student and the student’s interjection “oh my goodness” seems to mark surprise or amazement. in attempting to render a vivid explanation of a concept with which a first-year student may not be familiar, the tutor resorts to the use of a verbal metaphor. the source domain is that of a sosatie (afrikaans for a kebab), made of cubes of curried or spiced meat held together by a skewer or stick and often enjoyed at barbecues (the zulu word for a barbecue is shisa nyama, meaning “hot meat”). the word stick is used as the vehicle for the notion of a thesis in an essay. just as the stick (skewer) of a kebab holds together the pieces of meat, the thesis holds together the parts of an argument (reasons and evidence). the gesture of holding a pen vertically, as shown in figure 1, adds another modality to the verbal metaphor “stick”: figure 1: turn 245 “there’s a stick in there.” the tutor’s drawing of a stick on an erasable plastic sheet adds another layer to the “modal ensemble” (kress, 2010), while she repeats the verbal metaphor “that stick”. this multimodal ensemble that draws on shared cultural knowledge clearly helps the student to understand the notion of a thesis statement. the student’s response “ja?”, pronounced with rising intonation in turn 244, serves to indicate interest in hearing more. her confirmation that she has understood, by confirming the metaphorical meaning in turn 248, “{oh:} it holds everything together”, indicates that she has given her full attention throughout the explanation and has understood the tutor’s message perfectly well. furthermore, the fact that the student is smiling broadly during the entire exposition may indicate that she is entertained by the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 1622021 39(3): 162-168 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) tutor’s creative use of imagery and her playful teacherly “voice”, as well as pleased with her own understanding of a crucial concept in essay-writing. excerpt 2 is another example of a speech event, which is predominantly directive according to a micro-pragmatic analysis: excerpt 2: facilitating understanding of background information in an essay introduction (video 0064 and 0065, turns 195-208) turn numbers and dialogue speech act categories and codes turn 195 tutor: • so that includes sometimes important definitions. • it may include a timeline. • it may include a specific field of research (draws a circle with both hands in the upper centre space). • so it’s like (.) laying the table (moves both hands, palms down, outwards in an expansive gesture just above the surface of the table). • you understand? constative: telling constative: telling constative: telling constative: telling directive: asking a closed question turn 196 student: ja. (nods) turn 197 tutor: • there’s a plate, but there’s no food. • there’s a knife and fork (indicates the position of the knife and fork on the table in front of her). • everything is there, but the food is to follow. constative: telling constative: telling constative: telling turn 198 student: ja. (nods) turn 199 tutor: • but your background is your table (draws a rectangle just above the surface of the table with both hands). • it grounds (.) your constative: telling constative: telling turn 200 student: what you’re going to talk about. (cont.) constative: telling turn 201 tutor: • yes. • do you understand? constative: responding directive: asking a closed question turn 202 student: ja. turn 203 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 1632021 39(3): 163-168 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 carstens & rambiritch directiveness in tutor talk turn numbers and dialogue speech act categories and codes tutor: • what i’m saying? • all right. so please highlight your background. asking a closed question instructing turn 204 student: (student highlights on the page) uh from what i’m seeing here, my background really is minimal. it’s really not saying a lot. and (.) ja (.) this work (inaudible). turn 205 tutor: but that’s wonderful. (laughter; performs an expansive gesture with both hands) verdictive: evaluation turn 206 student: (laughter) turn 207 tutor: because now you know what you need to work on. (laughter) (cont.) constative: confirmation turn 208 student: ja, my background, it’s, it’s not saying whether i’m going to be discussing only in south africa? in africa? in the world? or what? and ja. in this example, the tutor is demonstrating the relevance of background information in an introduction (the speech event). in turn 195, using a sequence of four instances of telling, the tutor enumerates the possible ingredients of the background section of an essay introduction. she ends the turn with a question aimed at confirming the student’s understanding. in turn 197, the tutor uses three additional descriptive sentences (telling) with metaphorical meanings to stress the fact that a background section is a preparation for what is to follow in the body of the essay. metaphorical co-speech gestures2 strengthen the multimodal explanation: a circle drawn in the central space in front of the tutor with both hands portrays an academic field as a bounded object (turn 195) and an expansive sideways gesture with both hands indicates complete satisfaction with the student’s level of understanding (turn 205). iconic gestures3 are used to represent objects such as a table (drawing a rectangle with both hands in the central space), the position of cutlery on a table, as well as the movement of the hands when spreading a tablecloth to lay a table (turns 197 and 199). 2 metaphoric gestures are embodied representations of abstract objects, spatial relations or movements (mcneil, 1992). 3 iconic gestures bear a perceptual relation with concrete entities, spatial relations and actions. they depict objects and/or movements (mcneil, 1992). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 1642021 39(3): 164-168 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) figure 2: turn 199 “but your background is your table”. the student signals understanding through head nods (turns 196 and 198) and confirms understanding by completing the tutor’s metaphorical statement “but your background is your table. it grounds (.) your…” with the literal phrase “what you’re going to talk about” (turn 200). once the tutor is sure that the student has understood, she instructs the student to highlight the relevant background section in the text. however, the instruction does not close down opportunities for meaning creation; it leads the student to discovering the deficit in her own writing. while reading the highlighted section, the student acknowledges that her background information is “minimal” and not sufficiently comprehensive. the tutor’s exclamation of a positive appraisal, “but that’s wonderful”, accompanied by spontaneous laughter and an expansive gesture (indicating abundance) during which the palms are turned upwards (metaphorically, “up” means “good”). this embodied metaphorical expression of complete satisfaction with the student’s self-discovery of what is lacking in her introduction serves as motivation to the student to use her newfound knowledge to improve the background section of her essay. the student’s non-verbal response (audible laughter) indicates recognition of the praise. in turn 207, the tutor then confirms their shared understanding of what is still lacking in the student’s background and, in turn 208, the student justifies the faith that the tutor has in her ability to augment the background, by specifying exactly what, in her opinion, is still lacking: she confidently looks the tutor in the eye and says: “ja, my background. it’s not saying whether i’m going to be discussing only in south africa? in africa? in the world? or what? and ja”. she also demonstrates that she is beginning to discover her own voice. 4. conclusion we believe that this article makes distinct contributions to knowledge in the field of writing centre research. by drawing on five decades of linguistic research on speech acts we demonstrate that analysis at the level of the linguistic utterance combined with analysis at http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 1652021 39(3): 165-168 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 carstens & rambiritch directiveness in tutor talk the level of the speech event leads us to viewing directiveness in writing centre consultations differently. until recently, much of the writing centre literature fairly uncritically defined directiveness in terms of a number of actions, such as instructing, telling, explaining, exemplifying, suggesting and asking leading questions. however, to date no criteria have been offered for such a categorisation and no indication has been given of the level of the analysis (e.g. sentence, utterance, turn, etc.). through a review of the theoretical literature on speech acts we showed the value of older taxonomic speech act models (austin, 1961; searle, 1976) as well as more recent models that focus on the speech event (pract) (mey, 2001; 2009; kecskes, 2010; cap, 2010; 2011). on the one hand, coding tutor talk in the transcriptions of video-recorded consultations at the utterance level assisted us in establishing the most frequently occurring (micropragmatic) directive speech acts in tutor talk. on the other hand, analysing (macropragmatic) speech events on topics such as “explaining the notion of a thesis statement” assisted us in demonstrating that situational information about the ongoing conversation modifies our views of the actions that take place and that the meaning is constructed dialogically. we, for instance, found that a series of directive speech acts comprising telling and asking closed questions may compositionally become a speech event of creating spaces for co-construction of meaning. “mitigating” situational factors include the enactment of multimodal (often embodied) metaphors drawn from the cultural life-worlds of the tutor and the student; word stress, humour and laughter influence the student’s verbal and non-verbal behaviour: being entertained, becoming animated (physically) and demonstrating eagerness to find solutions to writing problems. we conclude that directive tutoring can and does stimulate learning and interactive discussion with undergraduate, first-time visitors to a writing centre. contrary to early writing centre literature that “vilified” directive tutoring, the excerpts show that directive tutoring does not take ownership of the text out of the hands of the student. the two excerpts above, though largely directive, saw student engagement in numerous ways, from responding nonverbally with a simple nod and/or laughter to longer responses sharing their views and ideas with tutors. despite the seemingly directive actions of the tutor, a close analysis of the talk revealed that she was not doing the work for the student but, through a series of actions, explained concepts and equipped the student with the knowledge and skills necessary to complete the task. directive tutoring was previously described as hierarchical, authoritarian, teacher-centred, undemocratic, didactic and prescriptive (duke, 1975). the directive tutor was an expert who knew the rules and controlled the direction of the session (reigstad, 1980) and yet the excerpts above, though they are largely directive, do not exhibit evidence of authoritarianism and inflexible prescriptiveness. despite the teacherly role assumed by the tutor, she appears to succeed in stimulating the student’s thinking about writing, and there is no indication that the student is voiceless and powerless, as would be the case if the tutor had been undemocratic or prescriptive. in quoting north (1982: 434), we believe that our exploratory findings using a pragmatic framework to analyse tutor talk is still “not necessarily a dependable body of data for use in supporting generalizations about tutoring”. our methodology has just started to align practices with theory and vice versa. our work merely begins to provide the evidence-based research (cf. denny, 2014) that has recently been called for by writing centre scholars. however, we believe that our methodology can help train tutors so that they understand not only the characteristics that make a tutorial successful but also “how to use and analyse a variety of tutoring methods http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 1662021 39(3): 166-168 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) and techniques (both directive and non-directive) to achieve these characteristics” (henning, 2001: 10). references appleby-ostroff, s. 2017. designing effective training programs for discipline-specific peer writing tutors. canadian journal for studies in discourse and writing, 27: 69–94. https://doi. org/10.31468/cjsdwr.604 austin, j.l. 1961. how to do things with words. oxford: oxford university press. bach, k. & harnish, r.m. 1979. linguistic communication and speech acts. cambridge, massachusetts: mit press. blau, s.r., hall, j. & strauss, t. 1998. exploring the 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i. & mackiewicz, j. 2014. questioning in writing center conferences. the writing center journal, 33(2): 37–70. thonus, t. 2001. triangulation in the writing centre: tutor, tutee, and instructor perceptions of the tutor’s role. the writing center journal, 22(1): 59–82. vitae. n.d. approaches to coaching and mentoring. available at https://www.vitae.ac.uk/ doing-research/leadership-development-for-principal-investigators-pis/developing-individualresearchers/mentoring-and-coaching-researchers/approaches-to-coaching-and-mentoring [accessed 10 july 2019]. yin, r.k. 2003. case study research: design and methods 3rd ed. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.12 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0261444805003010 https://www.vitae.ac.uk/doing-research/leadership-development-for-principal-investigators-pis/developing-individual-researchers/mentoring-and-coaching-researchers/approaches-to-coaching-and-mentoring https://www.vitae.ac.uk/doing-research/leadership-development-for-principal-investigators-pis/developing-individual-researchers/mentoring-and-coaching-researchers/approaches-to-coaching-and-mentoring https://www.vitae.ac.uk/doing-research/leadership-development-for-principal-investigators-pis/developing-individual-researchers/mentoring-and-coaching-researchers/approaches-to-coaching-and-mentoring 114 towards an africanisation of community engagement and service learning julia preece university of kwazulu-natal this article argues that the south african research community could benefit by engaging in more collaborative partnerships within the african continent in relation to community engagement. this argument relates to literature in south africa concerning an africanised notion of service learning (sl) and community engagement (ce), university contributions to sustainable development, and recent discussions which suggest that south africa is ready to explore local solutions to local problems in africa. the article briefly introduces the global interest in universities and engagement, followed by a reflection on the historical context for african universities in this regard. the south african context is highlighted as a major player in advancing research and scholarship in relation to ce and sl. the article then refers to concerns within the south african research community that reflect the need for greater theorisation, a deepening of our understanding of how to africanise an agenda, which has been, to a large extent, imported from the west, and how to address community perspectives and sustainable development in relation to ce and sl. the article concludes that one way forward is to explore the potential for intra-continental collaborations and comparative studies in order to expand our understanding of some of the above issues. some examples of initiatives, studies and publications from other african countries are cited to illustrate ways in which mutual learning might take place across the continent. key themes from these studies include the use of multi-partner collaborations, networking, a focus on community relationships, interdisciplinary approaches to community-identified concerns, and the application and elaboration of context-specific indigenous knowledge. it is suggested that one of the strengths of country initiatives outside of south africa is their focus on ce which informs sl, rather than the other way around. conversely, south african theoretical and pedagogical perspectives on sl can contribute to a broader understanding of this aspect within higher education institutions on the continent. keywords: collaborative partnerships; community engagement; sustainable development; interdisciplinary approaches; indigenous knowledge the global context for universities and engagement there are growing expectations that universities should be more proactive in contributing to development. two examples on a global scale, which have explored these issues, are a study organised by the organisation for economic cooperation and development (oecd, 2007) and one organised by the pascal international observatory (n.d.). the oecd study took place between 2004 and 2007 and focused on the contributions of higher education institutions in 12 oecd countries to regional economic development. the pascal project, between 2009 and 2011, and under the acronym pure (pascal universities and regional engagement), took a broader social purpose perspective and focused, to a large extent, on australia, europe and the usa, although some african universities also took part. there is now an increasing amount of literature from advanced industrialised countries which explores how the university’s traditional mission of community service can be a resource for regional and community engagement. in other words, it is argued that community ‘engagement’ is the new interpretation of the traditional third mission of community ‘service’ that binds the university’s three missions together for the public good (inman & schuetze, 2010). 115preece — towards an africanisation of community engagement and service learning the african context for university engagement the historical context for ce in many african universities emanates from the establishment in the 1940s and 1950s of extramural departments to service their wider communities. these were initiated, in the first instance, as a result of two british commissions, namely asquith and elliot in 1943 and 1944, respectively, and the oxford delegacy for extra-mural studies in 1945 (amedzro, 2004). extramural departments that started in west africa and uganda throughout the 1940s and 1950s were later extended to other nations on the continent, as evidenced by lesotho’s extra-mural institute which started in 1960. these initiatives were supported by various independence governments such as those by nkrumah in ghana and nyerere in tanzania. amedzro (2004) highlights, for example, how the people’s education association was established in ghana, with a number of community improvement programmes running throughout the 1950s, followed by other community development initiatives during the decolonisation era of the 1960s and 1970s. however, a second context for african universities is that they have never been as autonomous as their european or north american counterparts. they have been subject to the development agendas of international aid, government responses to aid conditionalities and government control over university administration. as ade-ajayi, lameck and ampah johnson (1996) and others have highlighted, african universities have experienced a rise of and decline in fortunes. while the 1970s demonstrated support for university contribution to rural development and social transformation, the 1980s witnessed a change in aid thinking, primarily influenced by the world bank (wb) which began to view higher education as less an investment for the public good but more a ‘private good’ (sawyerr, 2004:22). in addition to the economic crises of the 1980s and 1990s, a subsequent decline in support resulted in severe funding cuts for african universities by their governments and many other agencies, especially for extramural work (sawyerr, 2004). the neo-liberal ideology of the 1980s exerted pressure on universities to become market driven, and the majority of extramural departments transformed into open and distance learning centres with feepaying students. recent trends, however, supported by a changed wb philosophy (wb, 2009), have shown a revival of interest in the contribution of universities to national development, the search for relevance and the purpose of innovation (aau, 2004). the african university’s third mission of community service is being reviewed in this new context for ce (oyewole, 2010). in addition, increasing emphasis is placed on lifelong learning and the role of higher education institutions in educating their students to respond to a rapidly changing world (wb, 2000; unesco, 2009). in this respect it is advocated that academic work should be interdisciplinary and promote critical thinking, including a focus on active citizenship, human rights and ethics. it is argued that universities should seek common solutions through international networks, partnerships and knowledge transfer, particularly in sub-saharan africa (unesco, 2009). this includes engagement with their local communities, as stated as follows: “higher education should create mutually beneficial partnerships with communities and civil societies to facilitate the sharing and transmission of appropriate knowledge” (unesco, 2009:6). the interest in the way universities contribute to regional and national development needs is reflected in higher education policy recommendations (wb, 2009), international initiatives to stimulate ‘engagement’ (oecd, 2007; pure, 2010) and academic literature (e.g. waghid, 2002; hatcher & erasmus, 2008). south africa has enshrined the notion of ce within higher education policy, with a particular focus on sl as a strategy for engendering responsible citizenship in the context of the country’s post-apartheid agenda with the aim to address issues of social justice and nurture a more inclusive and integrated nation (e.g. doe, 1997; 2001; heqc, 2004; 2004a). this has resulted since 1997 in a proliferation of national initiatives such as the community higher education service partnerships (che, 2008; bender, 2008a; kruss, visser, aphane & haupt, 2011), national debates (e.g. saardhe, 2007; heqc, 2007; smithtolken & williams, 2011), and academic literature. 116 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 community engagement and service learning in south africa south african debates concerning the evolution of discourses on the concept of ce (e.g. lazarus, erasmus, hendricks, nduna, & slamat, 2008) have been well documented. the focus has been, to a large extent, on community, rather than regional, engagement, although walters (2009) is a notable exception. there are indications of emerging interest in this direction in some provinces. for instance, the ethekwini municipality in durban, south africa, is positioning itself as a learning city with the recent launch of the municipal institute of learning (mile.org, 2010). most academic discussions centre on the concept of sl as a particular feature of ce which aims to integrate the university’s three core functions of teaching, research and community service, and which has been borrowed from the united states. in this respect, a number of universities have adopted their own definition of sl to reflect the south african context. stellenbosch university, for example, describes sl as: … an educational approach involving curriculum-based, credit-bearing learning experiences in which students (a) participate in contextualised, well-structured and organised service activities aimed at addressing identified service needs in a community, and (b) reflect on the service experiences in order to gain a deeper understanding of the linkage between curriculum content and community dynamics, as well as achieve personal growth and a sense of social responsibility. it requires a collaborative partnership context that enhances mutual, reciprocal teaching and learning among all members of the partnership (lecturers and students, members of the communities and representatives of the service sector) (su, 2009:2). the extent to which notions of collaboration and reciprocity in sl are a reality, rather than aspirational goals, however, has been questioned (kruss et al., 2011). a great deal of the south african academic literature focuses on sl as a pedagogy (e.g. erasmus, 2007) and its contribution to curriculum development (e.g. hlengwa, 2010; and albertyn & daniels, 2009, in relation to mode 2 knowledge). theoretical perspectives include osman and castle’s (2006) use of a critical theory lens to examine their work, and bender’s (2008a) use of curriculum theory and (2008b) conceptual modelling of ce. hlengwa (2010) applies bernstein’s theory of vertical and horizontal discourses in relation to infusing sl into the curriculum. le grange (2007) argues for rhizomatic thinking in relation to viewing knowledge as an organic construct in an effort to de-colonise the process of knowledge production that is dominated by the west. doctoral studies include that of petersen (2007), which uses social justice theory to examine sl in teacher education, while o’brien’s study (2010) adopts a grounded theory approach to conceptualise a typology of sl. practical studies mostly concentrate on exploring the benefits of community sl for students. these include, for example, petersen and henning’s study (2010) which explores pre-service teacher education designs to bring practice closer to theory, and ebersöhn, bender and carvalho-malekane’s (2010) who evaluate students’ experiences of ce in an educational psychology practicum. however, this dominance of attention to student benefits has been criticised by, among others, alperstein (2007) in her article getting closer to the community voice. recently, researchers have begun to explore participatory approaches to address community perspectives (van der merwe & albertyn, 2009; van schalkwyck & erasmus, 2011). erasmus (2011), in particular, challenges the value of uncritical international transfer of sl conceptual frameworks. she highlights growing concerns in the literature regarding issues of reciprocity, unequal power relations in community sl projects, the lack of multisectoral approaches, and dominance of single disciplinary engagement endeavours which are not necessarily appropriate for sustainable community development: “where is the sustainability after the service learning aspect is finished?” (erasmus, 2011a:357). in an earlier work (hatcher & erasmus, 2008) she emphasised the need to pay more attention to indigenous ways of knowing. she cites flagship sites at the university of the free state which are endeavouring to promote a two-way flow of multidisciplinary knowledge in recognition of the contribution of local knowledge to curriculum development and community empowerment (erasmus, 2011a; 2011b). kotecha and vosesa (2011:16) also examine the goal of “creating southern african knowledge that provides solutions to southern african problems” by interrogating dominant western paradigms. they expand this vision to initiate a discussion on the role of higher education for regional development and 117preece — towards an africanisation of community engagement and service learning more collaboration with a wider range of partners, although kruss et al. (2011:11) argue that this aspect remains “a strand of engagement with largely unrealised potential”. in a recent study of sl and ce across five universities in south africa, kruss et al. (2011) summarise many of the above concerns. they highlight the ‘thin’ resource of theoretical frameworks for ce and sl, the ongoing conceptual confusion in relation to current discourses of engagement, the discrepancy between rhetoric and reality in relation to the claims for sl, and community benefit. these issues were reinforced in a recent conference held at stellenbosch university (smith-tolken & williams, 2011) where the possibility of more comparative consideration in relation to african contexts was raised. there is a tendency among south african universities to look inward, or communicate primarily with the usa, the originator of the sl concept, for their deliberations. of particular interest for this article is the way in which some writers in south africa raise the issue of africanising the sl-ce debate (lazarus, 2007), but there is little evidence of linking with other african countries in this respect. kruss et al. (2011) highlight a number of issues that, it is argued, would benefit from more panafrican interactions. they include concerns that there is a need for a wider range of partners, and more links to africa and global development imperatives. regional development is underdeveloped and interdisciplinarity is still new for south african contexts. finally, they ask what are the community gains, especially with regard to knowledge development. there is evidence that these aspects are being addressed differently in other parts of the continent. community engagement in other parts of africa university mission statements and strategic goals across african universities generally tend to refer to ‘service’ rather than ‘engagement’, but often within wider policy contexts of commitment to national development (e.g. the national university of lesotho, 2007). in comparison with south africa, however, the majority of these countries have a weaker civil society sector (carbone, 2005). this means that universities are more likely to link directly with community residents and act as mediators for the involvement of other parties such as ngos, health authorities, police, and so on. this contrasts with erasmus’ (2011) observation that many south african universities are more likely to access communities through other agencies, rather than directly link with communities themselves. in addition, the lack of national imperative in other african countries to include an sl component in engagement activities has meant that this has been a secondary focus for their universities (nampota, 2011). these differences create new relationship dynamics that need to be factored in when considering engagement partnerships. a further consideration is that the research base in most african countries is much weaker than that of south africa, and this factor is a stimulus for cross-country partnerships. publications are often still speculative in their analyses (ishuma & mwaikokesya, 2011), or descriptive – for example, openjuru and odongo’s (2011) model village that bears similarities to the project discussed by erasmus (2011) – rather than reporting on empirical studies or analysing theoretical positions. nevertheless, there are indications in recent literature that universities, which are less constrained by national policy frameworks for curriculum design, have access to opportunities for experimentation that can open up new avenues of thinking. two examples are cited in this instance. the first example is a pan-african action research project, funded by the association of african universities (aau), which consisted of a partnership between four universities from nigeria, lesotho, malawi and botswana, respectively. two projects in each university involved a range of partner agencies where the university coordinated multidisciplinary responses to community-identified concerns. the outcomes highlighted mutual and reciprocal learning benefits among all participants – community residents, staff, students and other contributing agencies such as police and health officers (preece, 2011). some projects involved service learning components while others contributed to developing indigenous knowledge systems, such as the improvement of organic fertilizer for impoverished farmers (biao, akpama, tawo & inyang, 2011). 118 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 the second example is a learning city initiative in botswana which resulted in a memorandum of understanding between the university of botswana and its host city of gaborone. extensive consultation across university departments and city stakeholders (council departments, businesses and civil society) resulted in a partnership approach to addressing specific themes related to culture, enterprise, urban planning and environmental sustainability (ntseane, 2010). although in its early stages of development, this initiative is producing conceptual considerations regarding collaboration and recognition of indigenous knowledge as a contribution to sustainable development (dube, 2012). dube, for instance, discusses the dynamics and tension between modernisation demands for commercialising resources with resultant over-exploitation of those resources in the face of competitive western demands to produce at undervalued rates. she cites examples of weaving and basketry enterprises in this respect. she positions universities as potential think tanks with resources for research that can address sustainability issues in context. however, dube elaborates on this notion, emphasising the co-production of knowledge through collaborative learning that uses the social capital of traditional community ties. she also highlights the challenges to environmental awareness when we fail to interface conventional and local knowledge systems. such recent observations and experiences talk directly to wider debates on the africanisation of universities. africanising knowledge and scholarship the notion of ‘africanisation’ in the 1960s and 1970s essentially embraced two concepts – the transfer of ownership of curriculum and management of higher education institutions, and the re-direction of mission to address national and regional development needs (ade-ajayi et al., 1996). however, the africanisation process is an ongoing project, mainly because african nations have never really been in charge of their own development mission. as mentioned earlier, government initiatives in the 1960s and 1970s attempted to steer universities towards nation-building. one of the most famous examples is that of julius nyerere in tanzania whose socialist approach insisted on direct links between the university and village communities. students contributed to community service during long vacations, and village leaders would contribute to their academic assessment. further international efforts within africa promoted a home-grown version of the african university. yesufu, for instance, published the aau’s conference proceedings in 1973 on creating the african university. he formulated what came to be known as the ‘yesufu model’ mission for the african university: it follows that an emergent african university must henceforth, be much more than an institution for teaching, research and dissemination of higher learning. it must be accountable to, and serve, the vast majority of the people who live in the rural areas. the african university must be committed to active participation in social transformation, economic modernization, and the training and upgrading of the total human resources of the nation, not just of a small elite (yesufu 1973:41, cited in ade ajayi et al., 1996:112). not much has changed with this aspirational mission. the africanisation of ce now reflects two aspects of concern. on the one hand, there is a need to recognise the positioning of african universities in their specific development contexts. kruss et al. (2011:8), for example, stress that the resource base of african environments is distinct and affects the university focus for development: a key difference is that the economies in many low and middle income countries remain strongly resource based, particularly focused on small-scale and peasant-based agriculture. this means that there is a relatively small industrial base, and that the significance of university interaction with firms differs from developed economies. in a middle income country like south africa, with a great socioeconomic divide and high rates of unemployment, the large informal and ‘survivalist’ sector, and community development initiatives, are significant features of the conditions within which universities interact. that is, the range of social partners with which universities should engage 119preece — towards an africanisation of community engagement and service learning to play a role in development is wider than, and not restricted to, firms in industrial sectors ... [a] holistic focus on the university’s role in social and economic development … is required. these sentiments echo earlier concerns regarding the africanisation of universities: an african university must not only pursue knowledge for its own sake, but also for the … amelioration of conditions of life and work of the ordinary man and woman. it must be fully committed to active participation in the social transformation, economic modernization, and the … upgrading of the total human resources of the nation (wandira, 1977:22, cited in seepe, 2004:21). this statement reflects the ongoing thread of ce philosophies – that of the need for universities to be relevant and connected to their societies, albeit recognising that connection must also include connecting to an increasingly complex world. seepe highlights the need for scholarship to address, among others, issues of hunger, disease, poverty, crime and racial divisions. the pursuit of truth, he argues (seepe, 2004:27), must be “imbued with a sense of social responsibility”. he also stresses that this pursuit must be from african perspectives grounded in african experiences “so that the african experience should be a source of ideas leading to public policy” (seepe, 2004:31). on the other hand, the extent to which ce can be africanised, as seepe (2004) highlights, depends partly on its relationship to knowledge production and the concept of knowledge itself. waghid (2002) draws extensively on gibbons, limoges, nowotney, schwartzman, scott and trow (1994) to distinguish between the more conventional notion of mode 1 knowledge as scientific, disciplinebased knowledge, which is more commonly associated with university knowledge production, and that of mode 2 knowledge. mode 2 knowledge is differentiated by its context-specific, rather than disciplinary framework. it is associated with transdisciplinary production – or socially distributed knowledge. that is, the knowledge is problem-based, and develops as a result of reflexivity and interaction with reallife situations. the knowledge producers may be teams of actors across a variety of social groups and organisations to focus on addressing a specific problem and whose solutions or products are accountable to the broader range of actors. mode 2 knowledge thus steps out of its discipline and is socially produced as an outcome of dialogue and meaning making. it is presented, in african contexts, as a more culturally sensitive route to knowledge production. brock-utne (2003:49) draws attention to some local knowledge that could broaden university teaching: village women are great science teachers in the fields of agriculture, medicine and food technology … [they] will even explain about the different soils suitable for different crops. [they] will also talk about food processing and food preservation, for instance, through drying or smoking meat. o’brien (2008) associates these activities with a ‘scholarship of engagement’. this means that all partners collaborate to produce increased access to indigenous and/or mode 2 knowledge. at the same time, she argues that such scholarship increases human capital and the community voice in knowledge construction. dube’s (2012) earlier references to the co-production of knowledge in the context of botswana and sustainable development are relevant to these discussions. these debates deserve wider, comparative analysis. conclusion research has shown that the nature and practice of ce and sl across south africa is uneven. although research into ce and sl is increasing globally, there are still limited examples of in-depth research within the african continent, particularly on a pan-african, comparative basis. in addition, the contextual nature of such work remains a challenge for the africanisation of the scholarship of engagement. nevertheless, examples are emerging in different african contexts of experiments that may inform debate within south africa. however, in order to maximise this potential, there is a need for comparative research and southsouth exchanges to explore what works where, how and why. such studies would help us explore some of the concerns raised by kruss et al. 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reflexivity in university teaching, research and community service. higher education, 43 (4): 457-488. walters s 2009. learning regions in lifelong learning. in: p jarvis (ed.). the routledge international handbook of lifelong learning. london: routledge. world bank (wb) 2000. higher education in developing countries: peril and promise. washington dc: wb. world bank (wb) 2009. accelerating catch-up: tertiary education for growth in sub-saharan africa. washington dc: wb. dominant discourses of teachers in early childhood education associate professor hb ebrahim faculty of education university of free state p o box 339 bloemfontein 9300 republic of south africa (+27(0)51 4019281 fax/ faks 0865461113) ebrahimh1@ukzn.ac.za cell no. 0847832071 /0721829667 this article examines the dominant discourses teachers in early childhood education (ece) used to produce understandings of children and educational practice for them. seven teachers from two early childhood centres in urban kwazulu-natal participated in this qualitative study. data were produced through semi-structured interviews and conversations. the shared discourses of biology, development and difference are discussed. the findings show that teachers unproblematically use dominant discourses which narrow possibilities for them to understand children. this in turn limits their capacity for shaping contextually relevant practice. the article concludes with a brief discussion on worthy areas to focus on in order to map a way forward for developing the skills and capacity of teachers in ece. keywords: early childhood education, teachers, discourses, young children, centre-based provision introduction in south africa the field of early childhood development (ecd) involving children from 0 to four years has inserted itself into public debates on education. ecd is “an umbrella term which applies to the processes by which children (0 to nine) grow and thrive, physically, mentally, emotionally, morally and socially” (department of education, 1995:33). early childhood education (ece) traditionally refers to the education processes which aim at effecting developmental changes in young children in early childhood centres (gordon & browne, 2004). the shift of early care and education before schooling into public service is creating debate on quality provisioning (ebrahim, 2010). achieving the best outcomes for young children is closely linked to the training of teachers. irvine (2009) and bloch (2010) both stress the need to begin serious action for teacher development in the early years. taking into account the need to work from a south african evidence base for teacher development, the critical position of teachers in making a difference in the lives of young children, and the gap in literature on the education of children from 0 to 4 years, this article examines the dominant discourses teachers used in order to shape ece. broadening the theoretical landscape in ece in order to understand the dominant discourses teachers use in ece it is necessary to briefly review the theoretical shifts as initiated by the reconceptualist movement in the usa and the childhood studies group in europe. reconceptualists for ece have been in the forefront of troubling the dominant body of knowledge informing teachers’ thinking and practice in ece (cannella, 1997; grieshaber & cannella 2001; viruru, 2001). in the main, reconceptualists question the overpowering application of ideas of growth and ebrahim — dominant discourses of teachers 81 maturation from biology, mental constructs from developmental psychology and theories about child development in ece. they argue that these perspectives are based on a positivist world view which subscribe to modernist assumptions of truth and certainty especially in relation to who children are, how they grow, develop and learn (soto & swadener, 2002). reconceptualists argue that scientific facts which are accepted as universally valid are used to regulate teachers, children and their families. regulation results from the acceptance of scientific knowledge as a true way to shape practice for ece. goffin (1996) argues that this approach to ece is appealing as it provides credibility to teachers’ work and helps them to indicate what matters in their work. however, the dominant theoretical perspectives in ece downplay the importance of diversity and situated complexities that characterise ecd in the developing world (penn, 2008). childhood studies, which grew out of the sociology of childhood, have challenged the foundations of child development knowledge for child-related professions (james, jenks & prout, 1998; mayall, 2002; prout & james 1997). critiques argue that the dominant knowledge base casts children as weak, needy, incompetent and irrational in relation to adults (lee, 2001). when teachers use this source of information about children, the focus is on the becoming child. uprichard (2008) contends that this is a future-oriented view of what children will be rather than what children are in their present state of being. through continued critique, use of marginalised theoretical perspectives and qualitative research both the reconceptualist and the childhood studies group – are broadening knowledge for ece. macnaughton (2000) used feminist poststructural tools to explore how biological and child development knowledge held by teachers impacted on practice and worked against gender equity. viruru (2000) used a postcolonial lens to challenge traditional western preschool ideas on play-based and child-centred education. in africa cultural historical ideas are being used to develop indigenous knowledge to shape policy and practice in ece. soudee (2009) produced case studies in gambia, mali and senegal to show how indigenous knowledge and practices are used in early childhood to promote whole child development. recently, childhood studies have provided child professionals with alternate approaches to thinking about young children and shaping practice with and for them. young children in ece are given voice and are accepted as agents. according to puffall and unsworth (2004: 8) voice refers to “that cluster of intentions, hopes, grievances, and expectations that children guard as their own” and agency refers to “the fact that children are much more self-determining actors than we generally think”. agency is how children express their voice – verbally, bodily and graphically. there is a small body of research in south africa which shows young children under five as agents whose competence needs a rethink on how teachers understand children and shape practice with and for them (ebrahim, 2007; ebrahim & francis, 2008). theoretical framework the term “discourse” comes from the ideas of foucault. foucault (1974: 49) argues that knowledge is constituted through discourses which he defines as “practices that systematically stand for the objects of which they speak”. discourses are very powerful in creating reality. foucault (1974) notes that discourses operate through language. in making sense of reality particular discourses which are highly dominant will provide words and conceptual frameworks that are easily accepted. this guides how people think, feel and act in relation to the self, others and social practice (macnaughton, 2003). particular fields such as early childhood have specific discourses that will dominate and point to what is considered to be true or the right way of acting. foucault (1980: 131) refers to this as “regimes of truth”. earlier on we saw how ideas from child development and developmental psychology promoted the discovery of the scientific child as the true child. this knowledge is frequently used to shape best practice. discourses are not static. there will always be alternative discourses that coexist and operate at the margins. these types of discourses contest the dominant ones. the socio-cultural and socio-political contexts bring about changes in discourses. for example, in apartheid south africa, early childhood was a space for engineering separate and unequal childhoods (ebrahim, 2010). in democratic south africa, early perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201082 childhood is regarded as an ideal space to inculcate democratic principles and human rights values such as anti-racism and anti-sexism (department of education, 2001). this article sets out to examine the shared discourses of teachers in two early childhood centres. my aim is to shed light on the truth regimes used by teachers as participants in this study. research design and methodology a qualitative research approach was deemed suitable for this study. mcmillan and schmacher (2001) state that this approach is valuable to researchers seeking to understand what is real to people and what directs their thoughts, feelings and actions. two early childhood centres in urban kwazulu-natal in residential areas were selected for the study. both centres were privately owned and offered half and full day care for children from 0 to five years. they catered for children of working parents who were in need of child care. the centres were chosen purposively based on the age of the children they catered for, their location, and their multiracial composition. seven teachers were involved in the study. at centre 1 four teachers participated in the study. they are referred to as mrs a, mrs b, mrs c and mrs d. three teachers from centre 2 participated in the study, namely, mrs x, miss y and miss z. semi-structured interviews were used to produce data. broad themes such as teachers’ understanding of children, the nature of practice and the configuration of the centres were developed. in order to stimulate a free flow of data a story starter was used, namely, a day in the life of …. these narrations were valuable in identifying how teachers were thinking about young children and shaping appropriate practice for them. responses were audio-taped. in the natural course of observation there were snatching conversations which focused on children’s activities and teachers’ understandings. these were captured as field notes. the ethical clearance for this study was obtained via university procedures before the study commenced. consent for the study was obtained from the directors of the centres and teachers by means of direct appointments and consent letters. the letters outlined the nature and aims of the study, confidentiality, anonymity, voluntary participation, data collection procedures and dissemination of information. teachers were given opportunities to clarify their understanding, ask questions related to procedures and research activities. various stages of data analysis were followed. parker (1992, 1994) notes that the first stage in identifying discourses is the transformation of research material into text. the data produced through semi-structured interviews and conversations were transcribed. this was followed by a careful reading of the data to identify particular statements. this reading helped to gain a descriptive understanding of the discourses in which the teachers had been positioned. parker suggests that the second stage is characterised by free association with the text. this stage allows for a deliberation on the meanings, associations and connotations. during this stage several units of meaning were clustered to make connections to dominant discourses. in the third stage strong units of meaning were clustered in relation to the dominant discourses that were shared by teachers in both centres. three dominant and shared discourses were identified and are presented in the next section. findings and discussions biological discourse casting young children as biologically different from older children and adults is a primary means through which teachers make sense of who children are and what they are capable of. when teachers use the biological discourse to shape practice, ideas of growth and maturity are strong (macnaughton, 2000). the concept of growth affords ideas on physical and related psychological changes that the body experiences with age (papalia, olds & feldman, 2006). this is supported by the idea of maturity which is tied up with the influence of heredity. both concepts imply a natural sequence of physical changes and behaviour patterns which is part of the “universal experience of being a child” (james et al., 1998: 17). teachers in ebrahim — dominant discourses of teachers 83 the study related the age of young children to natural tendencies, for example, two-year olds and tantrums; three-year-olds and selfishness. the articulations that follow show how teachers used the biological discourse to construct the children in their care. mrs d: they are tiny and don’t know anything. miss y: learning is a bit of a problem because they are small … small children are like that. mrs c: each child is the limit of their abilities. with the little ones their abilities are limited to start off with. mrs x: you can’t just tell a child don’t do something. kids are not equipped to think that way. the danger of working with naturalised assumptions of biological discourses lies in the fact that teachers can easily slip into saying “that’s the way children naturally are”. children’s behaviour is viewed as something that is inborn and therefore inevitable and inconvertible. however, critiques of the biological perspective on child development argue that whilst children’s immaturity is a biological fact, the way in which it is understood and made meaningful is incumbent upon forming relationships with real children in specific contexts (penn, 2005; prout & james, 1997). the naturalisation of children shuts down possibilities for this to happen as it creates images of weak, needy and dependent children. in this context it is highly possible that teacher-centred approaches will be dominant, hence the possibilities of relational pedagogies where children and teachers construct learning experiences together are lost. developmental discourse in conversations with teachers in the study it was not surprising that they used common sense understandings of children based on ideas from developmental psychology. they spoke about stages of development as sequential building blocks that guided their understanding of children and practice for them. as expected, chronological age was the officially sanctioned way in which the teachers learnt about children’s competence. they used the age categories to compare children. the excerpts below illustrate this. mrs b: adrian and shaun are the same age. you know, adrian talks better than shaun. shaun is only starting now to name everything. the main thing is that each child is so different. they develop at different rates. mrs c: you know sheria will only be two next month. if you compare her to the rest, she can do more. if you look at her and butsi there is a one month age gap. mrs x: she will be four soon. if you look at other children within her age group, she is more advanced. even when they play games she feels it is too babyish. she is more like a lady. from the above it is evident that the teachers were drawing on the data which provided them with standards for normal development. cannella (1997) is critical of this practice. she notes that often the taken-for-granted standards are used to determine if something is wrong or abnormal. children’s ways of being that are coloured by the historical, political, social, cultural, and economic contexts that bring multiple constructions of child development, run the risk of being categorised as abnormal if they challenge the norms. given the fact that teachers in the study relied heavily on the age-related norms, it was not surprising that they scheduled activities for totalising practices. they used the age groups and age-related norms to homogenise practice. this is a common way in which good teachers who know the necessary truths of best practice tend to govern and regulate normal children. the excerpt below shows how children are cast in the image of a universal child as an undifferentiated collective for practical activities. mrs b: they all do the same thing. they all sing the same song. they are not going to say that it is too easy for me. you see they don’t choose… at this age (two and older) i don’t think for them there is much of a difference. so they don’t mind what you are actually doing with them as long as you are doing something. you can do some colour stimulation and that’s fine. perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201084 in my discussion with miss y on planning for children from different cultural backgrounds, she had the following to say: they all do the same work. they actually cope quite well at this level. penn (2005, 38) notes that when a developmental discourse is used by professionals, it is sometimes taken to mean that children are “worth less than adults and their views and concerns are of less importance”. the notion of development becomes synonymous with being a minor. hence, children in early childhood are constituted as too young to engage in or understand practices or the workings of adult power. they are commonly viewed as passive recipients of adults’ actions. discourse of difference since teachers in the study focused on the sameness of children in ages and stages, they did not engage with categories of difference such as gender and race. macnaughton (1995) argues that the invisibility of categories of difference in ece can be attributed to the way the child development domains are used. teachers at both centres used the physical, social, cognitive, and emotional domains of development as key to their assessment of children. within this frame of reference, gender and race are not organisational categories. they are viewed as part of social development rather than something that constitutes children. the excerpt below shows how teachers’ reliance on the naturally developing child discounted the focus on boys and girls and children of colour. mrs a: they don’t realise so much at this age… for the other young ones gender doesn’t bother them. i mean you see them in the toddler groups especially. i don’t think they actually realise it. it’s the same with them. like race it doesn’t bother them. even in this big age, even in the readiness class, it’s not a thing. i think that they see everyone as one… mrs c: they all play together nicely whether they are boy or girl. see patsy and crain… she runs after crain all the time and calls him. they sitting together now. she calls him to come and sit next to her. it doesn’t really matter. girls just don’t play with girls and boys just don’t play with boys. they intermingle culturally as well. yah, so it (gender) doesn’t matter at this age. miss y: in my age group (two to four years) boys and girls are the same. the boys worry the girls. the girls worry the boys. in normalising boys and girls, teachers accessed categorisations that worked through binary gender divisions. boys and girls were placed in mutually exclusive categories. when this happens, it becomes natural to stimulate gender learning through modelling and reinforcing behaviours that are viewed as sexappropriate. thinking and acting within this limiting frame of reference works against gender equity in the early years. multiple femininities and masculinities are not taken into account. furthermore, connell (1995) notes that the dominant form of being a boy could be naturalised and violence could be seen as part of boy culture. the examples below show how gender categories were essentialised by teachers. mrs x viewed parents as upholding the gender stereotypes. mrs c: i find that girls can basically amuse themselves a lot easier. sometimes boys are a lot more aggressive than girls, you know. they tend to fight and you know a lot more than the girls… girls do have a better way. mrs d: the girls you know will listen. the boys like to fidget and won’t sit still. mrs x: you notice if the children go to buy something it is always the parents that choose. the child says what he likes. then the mummy says that’s not for a boy. it’s for a girl. in the study the children who posed the greatest challenge to teachers were those who could not speak english. robinson and diaz (2006) note that in ece the preoccupation with developmental frameworks legtimised narrow monolingual approaches which often resulted in teachers adopting a deficit and dismissive approach to children’s linguistic and cognitive capabilities. in both centre 1 and centre 2 english was used as the language of learning and teaching. teachers in centre 1 used a subtractive ebrahim — dominant discourses of teachers 85 approach to isizulu (i.e. english replaced isizulu). the excerpt below shows how centre 1 dealt with home language in an english-only centre. mrs a: there are more black (african) kids coming in just because they need to learn. a lot of them are in our readiness class and that’s when we have problems. i try to say to them (the parents) bring them in this class because they don’t talk english. you have got to teach them. it takes three to four months to get them to learn english and by then they are behind with their work. miss p has a mission trying to get them there. she can’t wait because she is with other kids. they are learning with them. they can’t get through the programme because the programme is intense… centre 2 developed a broader approach to dealing with the home language issue. staff were conversant in both english and isizulu. they were able to use code-switching to help children learn. the excerpt below shows how miss y used isizulu as her home language to make connections with the children. miss y: you know my nation, that one mpumi, the first day she did not talk at all. you know in my group, she looks at the children or looks at something… for the black (african) children first i teach them in zulu because she understands what i said. most of them i teach it in english. then i talk it in zulu. they don’t know what i said. they look at my face and me. then i tell it in zulu and change it to english. now it’s okay. not like the first time. centre 1 worked on several strategies to create synergy between the language environments of the home and school. parents were under pressure to abandon their home language in favour of english. in a study on south african parents’ perceptions of african home languages it was noted that parents were well aware of the economic value of english and did not want their children to be disadvantaged by speaking an african home language (de klerk, 2002). in this context it is easy for the english culture to function as a natural proxy for quality, merit, and advantage. the excerpt illustrates how parents were influenced by the centre to support their children in an english-only centre. mrs a: we don’t allow them to speak zulu here. we encourage them to speak english. we write letters to the parents to tell them that they must watch english tv at home. they must read english stories… parents are sending the children to an english centre. some of them are even changing their languages at home for their kids… parents are lovely. they make a big effort to try and help their children. concluding remarks and moving forward whilst by no means exhausting the complex ways in which the shared dominant discourses function to produce knowledge of young children and shape practice for them, i have shown how the discourses work to mitigate against ece as a space where teachers work in a dynamic environment with children as social actors who come from diverse circumstances which shape their identities and how they learn. i have tried to show how the discourses privilege particular ways of knowing, thinking and acting in ece. the dominant discourses construct children as ignorant, needy, passive and as lacking in voice and agency. teachers positioned in the dominant discourses present themselves as deliverers of natural educational and child outcomes. early childhood centres are portrayed as neutral places where teachers unproblematically socialise children in the formative years, preparing them for school and adulthood. this may partially explain why research in early childhood centres for 0 to four has been neglected. in moving forward the following are worthy areas to focus on in order to shape new thinking in ece. embracing diversity the dominance of biological and developmental discourses in ece needs to be reconsidered in light of embracing diversity. these discourses promote sameness as the goal. ece programmes are assumed to be effective when children behave, play and act in similar ways. the anti-bias approach which is embedded in the qualification for ece teachers needs to be reworked to include broader theoretical understandings which celebrate diversity. there needs to be acknowledgement of the fact that there are many ways of perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201086 being a young child in the south african context. teachers need to be developed as reflective practitioners who are able to think about their ways of knowing children and appropriate practice with and for them. focusing on children as becomings, beings and having a sense of belonging papatheodora’s (2008) analysis of world views of children in early childhood curricula is helpful in shaping thinking on how children are thought of and acted upon in ece. in this study it was obvious that the biological and developmental discourses favoured the view of the child as becoming. it must be emphasised that this view is essential when focusing on the future individual, the societal economic prosperity and the well-being of the future citizenry. but we need to move beyond this. children as beings and having a sense of belonging need a stronger focus. the former respects young children as people in their own right. ece programmes need to be designed to harness their participation as constructors and coconstructors of ece. in order to create cultural pride young children must experience a sense of belonging in the immediate and wider community in which they participate. teacher training needs to focus on preparing teachers to teach in african languages and in culturally sensitive and responsive ways. reflection on pedagogy this study has provided insight into critical reflection on pedagogy. the latter is not just limited to teaching children in a particular age group. blatchford et al. (2002) present a definition that is pertinent to early childhood. pedagogy is described as a set of instructional techniques and strategies which help learning to take place. opportunities are created for knowledge, skills, attitudes and dispositions to be acquired in particular social and material contexts. how teachers shape their learning environment, construct interactions with children and establish links with families and communities for ece are partly dependent on the discourses they use to shape pedagogy. it would make sense for teacher training organisations/ institutions to create space for teachers to articulate their ways of knowing. such exercises will allow pedagogies to become a source of challenge and debate. this could assist teachers in developing alternate and more socially just practices for ece. references bloch g 2010. discussion on ecd training. ecd national training forum. south african congress for ecd. pretoria. 14 april 2010. blatchford is, sylva k, muttock s, gilden r & bell d 2002. researching effective pedagogy in the early years. institute of education, university of london, department of educational studies, university of oxford. queens printers. cannella gs 1997. deconstructing early childhood education: social justice and revolution. new york: peter lang. connell rw 1995. masculinities. berkeley, ca: university of california press. department of education. 1995. white paper on education and training. pretoria: government printers. department of education. 2001. the nationwide audit of ecd provisioning in south africa. pretoria: government printers. de klerk v 2002. language issues in our schools: whose voice counts? part 1: the parents speak. perspectives in education, 20,1:1-14. mayall b 2002. towards sociology for childhood: thinking from children’s lives. buckingham: open university press. ebrahim hb 2007. constructions of early childhood for and by children in two early childhood centres in kwazulu-natal: an ethnographic approach. unpublished doctoral thesis. durban: university of kwazulu-natal. ebrahim hb 2010. tracing historical shifts in early care and education in south africa. journal of education, 48:119-136. ebrahim — dominant discourses of teachers 87 ebrahim hb 2010. considerations for mapping quality for non-centre-based ecd programmes (0-4). pan african ecd conference. africa’s future, africa’s challenge. 27-29 september 2010. cape town. ebrahim hb & francis d 2008. “you said, ‘black girl’: doing difference in early childhood.” africa education review, 5, 2: 274-285. foucault m 1974. truth and judicial forms (1974), excerpt from power: essential works of foucault, 1954-1984: volume three. translated by robert hurley. the new press. foucault m 1980. power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977. london: routledge. goffin sg 1996. child development knowledge and early childhood teacher preparation: assessing the relationship – a special collection. early childhood research quarterly, 11: 117-133. gordon am & brown kw 2004. beginnings & beyond. foundations in early childhood education. new york: thomson/delmar. grieshaber s & cannella c 2001. from identity to identities: increasing possibilities in early childhood education. in s. grieshaber & c. cannella (eds). embracing identities in early ehildhood education: diversity and possibilities. new york and london: teachers college press. irvine m 2009. an in-service ecd career path at rhodes university, south africa from ‘school leaving’ certificate to post graduate level. 4th african international ecd conference, dakar, senegal november. james a, jenks c & prout a 1998. theorising childhood. london: polity press. kerry h & robinson cjd 2006. diversity and difference in early childhood education: issues for theory and practice. berkshire, england: open university press. lee n 2000. childhood and society: growing up in an age of uncertainty. buckingham: open university. mcmillan jh & schumacher s 2001. research in education. a conceptual introduction. new york: longman. macnaughton, g. 1995. the gender factor. in creaser, b. & dau, e. 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(eds.). rethinking childhood. new brunswick, canada: rutgers university press. soto ld. & swadener bb 2002. liberatory early childhood theory, research and praxis: decolonising a field. contemporary issues in early childhood, 3, 1: 38-66. perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201088 soudee ar 2009 incorporating indigenous knowledge and practice in ecce: a comparison of programmes in the gambia, senegal and mali. current issues in comparative education, 11: 15-23. uprichard e 2008. children as ‘being and becomings’: children, childhood and temporality. children & society, 22: 303-313. viruru r 2000. early childhood education. postcolonial perspectives from india. new dehli: sage. 155 research article 2023 41(1): 155-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) perceptions of pre-service teachers on breakout room micro-teaching with zoom abstract due to the emergence of covid-19, many educators moved from a face-to-face teaching environment to an online microteaching setting using zoom. this study explores pre-service teachers’ perspectives on microteaching within zoom’s breakout rooms. the authors approached this study from a positivist-postpositivist perspective employing a mixed-methods methodology. the exploratory sequential mixed-method design employed here combines qualitative and quantitative data. analysis entailed open coding of data from zoom recordings and statistical analysis of a post-course survey. convenience sampling of pre-service teachers (psts) from a teacher education teaching method course provided the data sets. findings indicate that microteaching activities within breakout rooms facilitated an environment where pre-service teachers engaged and conversed with peers while developing teaching skills. psts valued breakout room interactions, though males and females valued different aspects. finally, although the findings suggest that microteaching in zoom’s breakout rooms is effective, the findings indicate that the pre-service teachers desired a return to the classroom. this research extends previous research on online microteaching student experiences by providing recommendations regarding microteaching via video conferences. keywords: breakout rooms; gender; microteaching; online teaching; teacher education; zoom 1. introduction covid-19 sparked a wave of online teaching and learning as a quarter of all canadian post-secondary face-toface courses were postponed or cancelled (doreleyers & knighton, 2020). the pandemic caused a wide range of educational impacts (karakose, polat & papadakist, 2021), including the online transition, where educators demonstrated pedagogical agility (kidd & murray, 2020). all courses at the canadian university where this study occurred moved online. as a result, a videoconferencing platform distributed the course content for the teacher education course described here, and zoom’s breakout rooms became the site for student microteaching activities. while the migration online is intriguing, the impetus for the current investigation came when the instructor reorganised the breakout room student groups. when the professor author: dr tim buttler1 jacob scheurer1 affiliation: 1burman university, canada doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i1.6176 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(1): 155-179 published: 31 march 2023 received: 8 september 2022 accepted: 6 march 2022 research article https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9152-0823 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 1562023 41(1): 156-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) announced the change, the students instantly objected, saying, “these are our friends!” and “don’t change our groups!” had these previously unconnected students developed friendships in a virtual classroom? although students forced online because of covid-19 frequently experienced social isolation (joia & lorenzo, 2021), the professor of this course observed what appeared to be friendship formation – the dissonance between the researcher’s expectations and the experiences of the psts’ stimulated this study. the authors began speculating about students’ perceptions of education and microteaching via videoconferencing. face-to-face teacher education method courses employ microteaching practices to facilitate pre-service teacher pedagogical development. microteaching requires psts to plan, practice, and reflect on their teaching practices. the value of this teaching practice has been long established; microteaching effectively facilitates psts’ mastery of several basic teaching skills (arifmiboy, 2019). during the pandemic, microteaching continued, despite the significant difficulties of moving online (bodis, reed & kharchenko, 2020; helda & zaim, 2021). previous studies have investigated online learning and microteaching (bodis et al., 2020; kelleci, kuaksiz & pala, 2018; ledger & fischetti, 2020; pham, 2022), and pertinent to this paper, the use of breakout rooms for microteaching has been examined (ng, 2022; zalavra & makri, 2022). often examined are the challenges and implications of relocating microteaching practices online (moralista et al., 2022; zalavra & makri, 2022). the challenges include technology issues (aboagye, yawson & appiah, 2021), technology and class process logistics (mseleku, 2020), isolation of students (song, 2022), and the emotional impact of moving online (aguilera-hermida, 2020). post-pandemic educators in general (ewing, 2021; xie, siau & nah, 2020) and specifically teacher educators (assunção flores & gago, 2020; la velle et al., 2020) are grappling with the long-term impacts of altered teaching practices during the pandemic. is covid-19 a watershed moment in initial teacher education (ite) and for pre-service teachers? although the pandemic “shook the very fabric of education” (harris & jones, 2020: 243), answering this question largely depends on how ite reacts post-pandemic. many education researchers contend that covid-19 accelerated academic changes (kaur & bhatt, 2020; lee & han, 2021; zhu & liu, 2020), while others view covid-19 as a short-term crisis (zhao, 2020) and are working to return to the status quo (kaur & bhatt, 2020). although some individuals and educational institutions resist, the majority of research suggests that the face of education has undergone a seismic transformation (united nations, 2020). covid-19 stimulated extremely rapid changes in ite, the implications of which might persist long beyond the present decade. despite the speed of the lockdowns, virtualisation occurred quickly in ite programmes. educators quickly adopted a rich repertoire of teaching practices (zalavra & makri, 2022) that continue to impact ite programmes post-pandemic (la velle et al., 2020). current trends indicate that online transition will continue in many academic domains post-pandemic (palvia et al., 2018; xie et al., 2020). however, ite faces various institutional, teacher, and student-related issues that block online programmes’ effective introduction and growth. examples include a lack of understanding of online pedagogy and online learning styles (kentnor, 2015), faculty resistance to change (gratz & looney, 2020), student isolation from peers and professors (palvia et al., 2018), and increased inequality (gillis & krull, 2020; irwin et al., 2021). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 1572023 41(1): 157-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 buttler & scheurer perceptions of pre-service teachers on breakout room micro-teaching with zoom while there is a growing demand for more online programmes (irwin et al., 2021), given the obstacles, appropriate planning and execution of best practices and innovative solutions are required for post-secondary programmes to launch and grow effectively (johnston, 2021). if ite programmes offer courses online, they must leverage new technology to boost student learning beyond face-to-face sessions rather than dilute the content. therefore, we argue that examining online teaching and learning is critical for quality ite in the future. zhao (2020: 1) makes an audacious proposal for schools to “reimagine and recreate human institutions”. covid-19 provided a critical opportunity for education scholars to pause, analyse, and envision disruptive innovation in education (kaur & bhatt, 2020). in this space, zhao and watterston (2021) suggest rethinking teaching and learning in education. examining all aspects of education goes beyond the scope of this paper. this project focuses on how microteaching via videoconferencing can impact teacher education. traditionally, ite occurs face-to-face in a classroom, but teacher education became open to new perspectives, including videoconferencing, when forced online during the pandemic. as online courses continue to increase, ite must ensure the quality of these courses meets the needs of psts. this study is unique, because it used a mixed-methods research design to investigate microteaching in zoom’s breakout rooms within a canadian context. we chose this design to broaden and deepen our investigation and improve the study’s potential to inform ite of positive pedagogical options. in what follows, the literature review examines online learning before, during, and after the covid-19 pandemic. a methodology section describes the mixed-methods research design, followed by the data analysis sections and the findings regarding psts’ interaction and perception of microteaching in zoom’s breakout rooms. finally, the discussion examines how covid-19 has presented an opportunity to change initial teacher education in response to psts’ perceptions and the changing educational environment. 2. literature review online learning pre-covid-19 pandemic distance learning has a documented history of almost 300 years; however, in the late 1990s, distance learning proliferated along with the development of online technology (kentnor, 2015). clark and mayer (2016) define online learning as education offered on a digital device designed to aid learning. despite the early conviction that the internet would displace conventional in-person education (o’donoghue et al., 2001; platt, amber & yu, 2014), online courses have not replaced in-person education. instead, the acceptance that physical and online courses can coexist evolved (fuller, 2021). however, online courses are frequently structured to mirror in-person courses (gierdowski, 2019; hodges et al., 2020; pomerantz & brooks, 2020). under the banner of blended learning, several forms of teaching developed (horn & staker, 2014). blended learning systems merge face-to-face classroom learning experiences with computer-mediated (online) learning experiences (garrison & kanuka, 2004; graham, 2006). self-paced learning activities and customised learning paths for individual students are two benefits offered online, supporting out-of-class activities and individualised feedback (castro, 2019). significantly, müller and mildenberger’s (2021) meta-analysis suggests that only minor differences appear in learning outcomes between blended and traditional classroom learning. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 1582023 41(1): 158-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) the well-established practices of blended teaching and learning have acted as a guide for many virtual learning instructional delivery combinations (alammary et al., 2014). yet, during the covid-19 pandemic, a new form of blended learning arose (fuller, 2021). this form of blended learning is entirely online and combines online synchronous (real-time interactions) and online asynchronous (independent self-paced) activities using videoconferencing and learning management systems. videoconferencing is a synchronous technology that has expanded inside and outside education during the last fifteen years due to increased online visual and nonverbal communication (pearl, 1992). videoconferencing supports various settings, ranging from large-audience live video lectures to point-to-point individual-to-individual discussions (coventry, 1995). online learning during the covid-19 pandemic prior to covid-19, online teaching and learning were integral to higher education (rahayu, 2020); yet the pandemic triggered an outbreak of distance teaching and learning. schools quickly adopted diverse educational delivery methods, including television, radio, internet, and traditional postal office services (schleicher, 2020). teachers and students’ routines were disrupted, causing them to flock to online learning platforms and instant messaging apps (grooms & childs, 2021). this move put students in new territory, especially those consistently avoiding independent and self-directed learning (kaur & bhatt, 2020). the idea of attending courses through videoconferencing and completing work without the physical supervision of lecturers did not appeal to many pupils (goldstein, popescu & hannah-jones, 2020). nevertheless, some students were ready for virtual learning (hung et al., 2010). many educational scholars use the phrase emergency remote teaching (buttler, george & bruggemann, 2021; cheng, fu & druckenmiller, 2016; ferri, grifoni & guzzo, 2020) to capture the nature of change in the early phases of the pandemic. unsurprisingly, the emergency shift in education delivery produced challenges – teaching online during the pandemic was not a panacea. studies addressed the technical obstacles, particularly in the context of students who experienced network instability and constraints (xie et al., 2020) or lacked the technological aptitude for navigating the online world (aboagye et al., 2021; eun, shim & lee, 2020; gillis & krull, 2020; mseleku, 2020; trust & whalen, 2020). students from remote areas and low-income households experienced significant difficulties (mseleku, 2020), while those with strong technical skills benefited substantially in an online environment (aguilerahermida, 2020). regardless of the barriers created due to covid-19, online learning allowed for teaching and learning to continue (ferri et al., 2020). in light of the covid-19 outbreak and possible future crises, many educational institutions are investigating replacing part or all of their in-person courses with online alternatives (peters et al., 2022). for example, during the pandemic, the united nations educational scientific and cultural organization (unesco) worked to aid educational systems with a forwardlooking focus. by looking to the future, “actions now being taken to ensure the effectiveness of distance learning will lay a solid foundation for more technology-enhanced pedagogical innovations, more open and flexible learning environments, and a more vibrant education system” (unesco, 2020: 6). thus, the emergency shift online provided a path for continued online education post-pandemic (fuller, 2021). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 1592023 41(1): 159-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 buttler & scheurer perceptions of pre-service teachers on breakout room micro-teaching with zoom post-pandemic education as noted earlier, teachers altered their pedagogy during the pandemic to some degree. one change of note is how they assessed student progress; removing assignments, changing evaluation procedures, providing flexibility in assessment (johnston, 2021), extending assignment completion deadlines (vaughan, cleveland-innes & garrison, 2013), and creating alternative assessment methods (almossa, 2021). many educators provided increased student choice in learning assessments while delivering experiences involving meaningful application of newly learned skills and knowledge (conrad & openo, 2018). some of these pedagogical adjustments will outlive the pandemic. as a result of the pandemic, numerous distribution technologies will continue to be employed in education (lockee, 2020); for example, videoconferencing. with these new technologies, a new suite of issues has entered education (oducado et al., 2022), including videoconferencing exhaustion, which some have termed zoom fatigue (fauville et al., 2021; nadler, 2020). nevertheless, mindful of future educational crises, many institutions have investigated replacing part or all of their classroom education with an online learning environment (peters et al., 2022; saichaie, 2020). while many pandemic education changes were forced, luthra and mackenzie (2020) contend that as a result, a worldwide fundamental cascading shift in how teaching and learning are performed is occurring. in this space, this paper responds to zhao’s (2020) challenge to reimagine education by investigating moving microteaching in ite online. zoom and breakout rooms during the pandemic, educators quickly accepted zoom as an online educational tool of choice, for it is simple and trustworthy. zoom’s internet software links and engages individuals through videoconferencing technology. among the features and services available via zoom are audio and video recording, annotation, closed caption, polling, private rooms, and screen sharing. the ite programme where this research occurred chose to use a videoconferencing service that facilitates students’ and instructors’ real-time online communication. zoom met this need. this decision was critical, as synchronous interactions improve human exchanges during online learning (rahayu, 2020). zoom frees time to focus on forming relationships with students, devising novel ways to illustrate the subject’s relevance, and inspiring students to produce their best work (sutterlin, 2018). breakout rooms are a critical aspect of the zoom software platform. these virtual spaces enable instructors to place students in private rooms where they may engage in distinct group interactions before returning to the primary classroom. some educators found that breakout rooms encouraged students to participate in “more in-depth conversations than they had before [using breakout rooms]” (álvarez, 2020: 113). zalavra (2022) concludes that breakout rooms supported standard teaching practices (lectures and assessments) while supporting pedagogy such as cooperation and collaboration. in this research, psts populated seven breakout rooms (three to four per room), where each student conducted 10-minute lessons utilising teaching approaches explored earlier in the semester. in addition to pedagogical development, the designers of this course hoped that the use of breakout rooms would encourage positive interactions. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 1602023 41(1): 160-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) online microteaching microteaching, a well-established ite practice, combines situated learning (lave & wenger, 1991) and reflective practice (schön, 1983). microteaching requires psts to plan, “practise, rehearse and reflect on action…often delivered within a role-play context for real-time feedback and reflection” (ledger & fischetti, 2020: 37). while some education scholars lament that “the forced online transition heavily compromised the vividness of microteaching – a technique inherently connected to face-toface interaction” (zalavra & makri, 2022: 270), many researchers identified positive aspects of online microteaching (bodis et al., 2020; kelleci et al., 2018; ledger & fischetti, 2020; pham, 2022). for example, the essential features of microteaching, self-reflective and critical thinking, are facilitated online (kusmawan, 2017). also, other educators found that relocating the course “online did not influence the ‘essence’ of the course and its main goal, which was to immerse in microteaching, under the strong effect of roleplay” (zalavra & makri 2022: 281). microteaching in breakout rooms while multiple researchers assert that online microteaching is effective (zalavra & makri, 2022), others examine using zoom for microteaching activities (maguire, 2021; roza, 2021), yet few explore the impact of microteaching in breakout rooms. literature on breakout room microteaching includes the challenges faced (hodges et al., 2020; zalavra & makri, 2022), psts’ successful use of breakout rooms (ng, 2022), and specific learning contexts, including an english communication course (lee, 2021) and peer mentoring (tutyandari, anandari & ardi, 2022). significantly, budin et al. (2021) assert that breakout room microteaching is a high-leverage practice. the current literature examining microteaching in breakout rooms suggests that psts are satisfied with learning to teach in this learning environment. this study aims to add depth to understanding this positive perception in psts. theoretical perspective and framework the authors of this study employed a positivist-interpretivism perspective, combining qualitative and quantitative approaches. the interpretivist paradigm facilitates depth development through seeking experiences and perceptions of a particular social context. in contrast, the positivist paradigm focuses on the search for facts and causes, developing general findings through statistical analysis. research focused on either qualitative or quantitative approaches has strengths and weaknesses. a third option, a mixed-methods methodology, aims to take advantage of the strengths of both methods. choy (2014) argues that complementary studies may provide superior results than either research methodology. this multifaceted research approach is reflected in creswell and plano-clark’s (2017) description of mixed-methods approaches, which generally favour using multiple paradigms. nevertheless, pragmatism is the most commonly reflected paradigmatic stance in mixed-methods literature (alise & teddlie, 2010). a pragmatic perspective is also evident in this paper, as the concluding sections suggest the practical application of the findings. our pragmatic stance brought the authors to northrup’s (2009) framework. northrup identified four attributes of online learning that students perceive to be essential. these attributes are “content interaction, conversation and collaboration, intrapersonal/metacognitive skills, and https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 1612023 41(1): 161-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 buttler & scheurer perceptions of pre-service teachers on breakout room micro-teaching with zoom need for support” (northrup, 2009: 465). northrup defines the attribute of content interaction as a mixture of individualised activities, guided activities, and learning from presentations. the conversations and collaborations attribute includes peer discussions, sharing ideas with peers, and teaming with partners. the third attribute, intrapersonal/metacognitive, includes students monitoring their progress, structuring online time, employing advanced organisers, and using notetaking guides. the final attribute, support, includes timeliness of response, corresponding with the instructor, and peer advice. northrup (2009) suggests that further studies should investigate learners’ perceptions of the online learning environment and instructional strategies. our study responds to this guidance by examining the learning environment of zoom’s breakout rooms and the instructional strategy of microteaching. 3. research question against the covid-19 pandemic backdrop, this study seeks to answer the question: what are pre-service teachers’ perceptions of microteaching in zoom’s breakout rooms? 4. research design and methodology the setting for this research is an education course that introduces psts to the curriculum and teaching methods of primary mathematics. this course examines and applies pedagogical concepts and strategies for effective mathematics education. during and after this course, qualitative and quantitative data for the current project were collected and analysed using a mixed-methods exploratory sequential design (creswell, 2012; creswell & creswell, 2017; harrison, reilly & creswell, 2020). the collection and analysis of qualitative data initiate this style of mixed-method research. the data collected during the qualitative phase inform the development and analysis of data from a quantitative instrument (creswell, 2012). this two-phase design enhances and deepens the understanding of the researcher. typically, this form of mixed-methods research concludes with interpreting the quantitative data. additional data collection occurred in this study as three psts consented to interviews following the university semester. convenience sampling of these students occurred; these three remained on campus after their final examinations. this accessory step deepened our study by allowing the participants to validate the findings through a “member checking process” (creswell, 2012: 259). the ptss confirmed the results of our study and added comments during a non-structured interview. following the above description, figure 1 illustrates the methodology employed. figure 1: exploratory sequential mixed-methods design (modified from sources: creswell, 2012; harrison et al., 2020) https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 1622023 41(1): 162-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) human interactions are complex; thus, researchers are frequently compelled to analyse interactions in breadth and depth, a problem to which mixed-methods research is well suited (creswell, 2012). one advantage of the exploratory sequential design is that the survey is based on the information gathered from psts. instead of addressing the research questions with pre-set survey items, this study observed the microteaching activities and then designed a questionnaire to better understand breakout room efficiency during a crisis. research setting and participants this study was conducted at a small western canadian university using convenience sampling of third-year psts in a curriculum and instruction mathematics course. the course comprised one semester, 26 virtual sessions (23 involving breakout rooms) of 80 minutes. all zoom video recordings were analysed. interactions of students who did not consent to the study were ignored, and pseudonyms were used for participants throughout the research process. of the 26 psts in this course, 93% participated in the research. the psts varied in age from 19 to 40 years old. data collection and analysis process first, all zoom recordings for this course were collected and reviewed. the 80-minute class periods were recorded, as well as 15 minutes prior to and after the class period. identifying and categorising interactions became the focus of the qualitative data analysis. additionally, representative and meaningful participant quotes were recorded at this time. next, the categorisations and quotes facilitated the creation of a 30-item questionnaire (twentyeight closed-response, likert-like items, and two open-response items). survey monkey® distributed the questionnaire and collected the responses. the survey of participants was designed to examine psts’ perceptions of their online experience. qualitative data collection and analysis process the first phase of this study included gathering and interpreting data from zoom digital recordings (observed interactions). the analysis established the types and frequencies of psts interactions. each interaction’s length and frequency were recorded (rounded to the minute). both authors completed the coding process, analysed the inconsistencies, and reached a consensus. northrup’s (2009) components of online student interactions became the initial lens for data analysis. after reviewing three recordings, the authors agreed on the codes used to analyse all zoom recordings. the codes included casual conversation (non-content discussion), support requests (between peers or between psts and the professor), collaboration (peer and instructor discussion and feedback), and content interaction (e.g. microteaching). bogdan and biklen’s (2007) coding methodologies were used for data analysis and interpretation. their guidance helped construct the preassigned coding categories from northup’s (2009) critical online interactions. table 1 shows one example for each code. student questions and peer and/or instructor responses were also identified. nonetheless, only significant interactions (those lasting more than 30 seconds) were examined. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 1632023 41(1): 163-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 buttler & scheurer perceptions of pre-service teachers on breakout room micro-teaching with zoom table 1: coding examples of observational data from video recordings date & time of recording code description of interaction 2-2-2021 0:00 – 2:55 minutes casual conversation conversations between the instructor and the psts began before class and continued into the class session. 2-2-2021 2:55 – 6:35 minutes request for support multiple psts asked for assistance regarding lesson plan requirements. 2-2-2021 6:35 – 9:55 minutes collaboration pst collaborated to select the materials and organise the presentation style for their upcoming microteaching assignments. 2-2-2021 25:25 – 37:20 minutes content interaction microteaching. a psts instructed their small group (counting to 10 with visual representations) quantitative data collection and analysis process the second phase of this study addressed the research question by collecting data via an online survey. although the microteaching occurred in the breakout rooms, aligning qualitative and quantitative data required questionnaire items that addressed the general interactions within zoom. these questions examining interactions outside the breakout rooms added to the richness of the data collected. thus, the survey questions probe students’ perceptions of 1) interaction within zoom between psts and the professor (table 4), 2) general interaction among psts (table 5), and 3) microteaching interactions within breakout rooms (table 6). in addition, psts’ perceptions regarding face-to-face vs zoom interactions were collected. table 2 contains the questionnaire items that probed the psts’ perceptions of their interactions in breakout rooms. for the complete questionnaire, see buttler and scheurer (2022). the first part of the quantitative analysis examined the percentage of respondents who agreed or disagreed with each survey item statement. further analysis involved ibm’s statistical package for the social sciences (spss) software. two analyses were conducted; cronbach’s alpha measured the internal consistency of the breakout room survey items, and pearson correlations (measurement of the covariance) examined the correlation between psts’ breakout room items responses and all other survey items. member check of findings the final step of data collection occurred post-course. three psts consented to interviews regarding their microteaching experiences via zoom. the primary purpose of these interviews was to check the validity of our findings. the findings were presented to the psts, and nonstructured questions were asked, encouraging the psts to evaluate the study’s findings. the 10-15 minute interviews occurred in the student lounge, a room for casual student interactions within this university’s school of education building. 5. findings the current work focuses on psts’ perceptions of microteaching via zoom’s breakout rooms. what follows is a summary of qualitative data (video recordings and ptss interviews) organised by the codes developed from northrup’s (2009) components of online interactions, followed by an account of quantitative data (questionnaire results). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 1642023 41(1): 164-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) a significant portion of the video data and transcripts of video recordings occurred in the general zoom meeting area. overall, psts passively interacted in the general area. that is, they watched what occurred on the main zoom screen. in contrast, breakout room interactions revealed active, engaged psts. each recorded session revealed psts participating in casual conversations and collaboration before and after microteaching activities. nevertheless, the psts spent the most time conducting microteaching and providing feedback to peers (81% of the recorded time). casual conversations at the beginning of the term, the professor predominately initiated non-content, casual conversations. the first pre-service teacher interviewed (pst1) summarises their reluctance, “in a classroom, we can move around and talk to different groups. this [freedom to move] is not the case with virtual meetings, especially in terms of breakout rooms where people are virtually separated” (pst1, spring 2021). nevertheless, pst1 described a change in interactions halfway through the semester, “later on, there was a desire to communicate… and we even managed to form bonds that we were reluctant to part with once new [breakout room] groups were assigned” (pst1, spring 2021). requests for support requests for support were the least common interaction. students rarely sought assistance with a problem that would take more than a minute to resolve. almost two-thirds of these conversations involved the clarification of class topics, while the remaining third dealt with technological concerns. nevertheless, several psts reported internet outages and bandwidth issues, especially those who lived in rural areas or households where multiple individuals participated in online education. collaborations the video recordings showed collaboration occurring following each microteaching session lasting an average of five minutes. pst3 reported that online collaboration reflected in-person collaboration, stating, “[in-person] collaboration normally only happens in the classroom, or in allotted times groups decide to meet outside of class to get work done together. very little has changed between face-to-face meetings and zoom in that regard” (pst3, spring 2021). nevertheless, pst3 pointed out that the breakout room groups often became silent once the assigned tasks and collaboration were completed; the “dead time” was awkward. content interactions two types of content interaction occurred in the breakout rooms: professor-led and studentled. the professor-led interactions involved discussion-based activities that probed psts’ opinions and reasoning. the time-intensive microteaching lessons dominated the studentled psts content interactions revealing prepared, passionate presenters. although the video data showed compliant presenters and “students,” pst2 described a unique issue experienced in breakout rooms during microteaching. “speaking from personal experience … engagement can be far more difficult in an online-only setting than a face-to-face one. there are potentially far fewer distractions in a classroom, and the ‘teacher’ can usually clearly see what their ‘students” attention is focused on. this is not the case in an onlineonly environment” (pst2, spring 2021). pst2 admitted to surfing the web while their peers presented a microteaching lesson. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 1652023 41(1): 165-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 buttler & scheurer perceptions of pre-service teachers on breakout room micro-teaching with zoom as noted earlier, the questionnaire contains items examining video conferencing aspects beyond microteaching. table 1 includes the questionnaire items specific to the current research. table 2: questionnaire data on interactions in zoom’s breakout room item questionnaire item sd/d sa/a 19 in bors, i could easily converse with my classmates. 5% 84% 20 i was comfortable meeting with my peers in bors. 16% 84% 21 i regularly engaged with my peers in our bors. 5% 90% 22 i believe the time spent with my peers using bors was valuable. 0% 100% 25 i collaborated with my classmates by doing group work in bors. 16% 84% 26 i participated in lessons [in bors] that used zoom’s whiteboard/ shared screen. 5% 79% 27 during the bor conversations, my classmates and i discussed aspects of teaching practices. 0% 100% 28 i became effective using zoom’s bors. 11% 84% note. table 1 data are rounded to the nearest whole number (bors = breakout rooms, sd/d = aggregate percent of strongly disagree and disagree responses, and sa/a = aggregate percent of strongly agree and agree responses. neutral responses are not noted. overall, psts perceived breakout rooms positively; 84% of respondents felt comfortable and could easily communicate with peers in breakout rooms. in addition, 90% of the psts engaged with their peers in breakout rooms regularly, while 84% collaborated with classmates during group work. finally, 100% of the respondents discussed their teaching practices and believed the time spent with peers in breakout rooms was valuable. the subsequent data analysis used ibm’s spss software. first, the reliability of the breakout room items was determined. cronbach’s alpha (α) measures the internal consistency of parallel instrument items developed to measure a target. cronbach’s alpha is regarded as a scale dependability metric. a generally accepted rule is that an α of 0.6–0.7 indicates an acceptable level of reliability, and 0.8 or greater is very good. cronbach’s alpha for the breakout room interaction items (#19, #20, #21, #22, #25, #26, #27, and #28) is .789. questionnaire items #23 and #24 did not examine breakout room interactions. an α of .789 suggests that the eight questionnaire items measure the same thing—in this case, psts breakout room perceptions. table 2 illustrates that these items demonstrate internal consistency and that removing an item does not improve the alpha significantly. table 3: reliability analysis item 19 item 20 item 21 item 22 item 25 item 26 item 27 item 28 alpha, if this item is deleted .743 .757 .759 .782 .795 .839 .839 .783 further analysis of the questionnaire data was conducted using spss to explore the correlation between psts’ breakout room responses and their perceptions of online interaction. table 3 shows the eight breakout room item correlations with ten professor communication items. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 1662023 41(1): 166-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) table 4: psts’ breakout room perceptions and professor interactions professor interaction item 1 item 2 item 3 item 4 item 5 item 6 item 7 item 8 item 9 item 10 p s ts b re ak ou t r oo m p er ce pt io ns item 19 .292 .510 * .222 .671** .529* -.440 .701** -.287 .300 .388 item 20 .386 .504* .224 .613** .522* -.349 .650** -.282 .408 .327 item 21 .183 .292 .101 .423 .388 -.487* .494* -.096 .530* .281 item 22 .217 .416 -.182 .254 .306 -.098 .213 .151 .201 .236 item 25 .219 .348 .056 .151 .127 -.564* -.068 .390 .207 .339 item 26 .270 -.039 .269 -.068 .102 .130 .183 .031 -.116 .513* item 27 .338 .410 .542* .257 .383 -.565* .015 .036 .084 .269 item 28 .497* .450 .190 .513* .480* -.107 .615** -.147 .156 .691** note: table 3 contains pearson correlation data, **correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed), and *correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). all but one psts breakout room perception items correlate with one or multiple professor interaction items (table 3), suggesting the professor’s interaction with the psts impacted breakout room perceptions. three professor interaction items (4, 7 & 10) demonstrate highly significant positive correlations with three breakout room items (19, 20 & 28). psts felt at ease meeting and conversing with their peers in breakout rooms (items 19 and 20), highly correlated with comprehension of lessons, and feely corresponded with the professor via text (items 4 and 7). item 28 (my use of breakout rooms was effective) also demonstrated a highly significant correlation with item 7 and item 9 (i readily communicated with the professor via written correspondence, and technical difficulties did not impede my understanding of the material or the professor). item 6 (in face-to-face lessons, access to course material is more manageable than via zoom) negatively correlated with three items (21, 25, & 27). these breakout room items examined comfortable peer interactions, peer collaborations, and peer discussion of teaching practices. item 8 (face-to-face meetings facilitated more efficient and effective student-professor interactions compared to online meetings) is the one non-significant professor interaction item. this lack of correlation suggests that the psts found breakout room interactions with peers more impactful than interactions with their professors. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 1672023 41(1): 167-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 buttler & scheurer perceptions of pre-service teachers on breakout room micro-teaching with zoom table 5: psts’ perceptions and general peer interactions in zoom zoom peer interactions item 11 item 12 item 13 item 14 item 15 item 16 item 17 item 18 p s ts b re ak ou t r oo m p er ce pt io n item 19 .341 .561* .396 -.332 .277 .299 .019 -.533* item 20 .267 .362 .341 -.334 .313 .350 .142 -.520* item 21 .499* .485* .232 -.184 .508* .460* .113 -.402 item 22 .413 .416 -.038 .396 .319 .321 .149 -.352 item 25 .212 .421 -.066 .459* .392 .307 .174 -.248 item 26 -.532* -.082 .067 .067 .144 -.004 .283 -.209 item 27 .070 .429 .368 -.043 .281 .365 .218 -.421 item 28 -.240 .656** .149 .000 .222 .139 .198 -.394 note: table 4 contains pearson correlation data, **correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed), and *correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). psts’ perception of general zoom interactions with their peers (table 4) impacted their perception of breakout rooms. highly significant positive correlations suggest that zoom interactions allowed them to develop teaching skills, connect with peers, and build friendships. the significant negative correlations reflected technical aspects of zoom: the digital whiteboard and chat format. the data suggest that many psts did not perceive zoom’s digital whiteboard as practical. this perception may have resulted from the timing of when instruction was provided. halfway through the course, the professor demonstrated zoom’s digital whiteboard. the second negative correlation occurred with psts’ chat preference (text chat is more comfortable than video chat) and comfortable, accessible peer communication. these respondents perceived video chat as the preferred communication medium over text chat. table 6: psts’ perceptions – peer interactions within breakout rooms breakout room peer interaction item 19 item 20 item 21 item 22 item 23 item 25 item 26 item 27 item 28 p s ts b re ak ou t r oo m p er ce pt io n item 19 1 .856** .661** .527* .533* .343 -.095 .340 .467* item 20 .856** 1 .597** .413 .404 .172 .138 .398 .325 item 21 .661** .597** 1 .460* .453 .423 -.034 .404 .240 item 22 .527* .413 .460* 1 .483* .491* -.214 .108 .418 item 25 .343 .172 .423 .491* .304 1 -.127 .349 .126 item 26 -.095 .138 -.034 -.214 -.085 -.127 1 .182 .288 item 27 .340 .398 .404 .108 .167 .349 .182 1 .264 item 28 .467* .325 .240 .418 .459* .126 .288 .264 1 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 1682023 41(1): 168-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) note: table 5 contains pearson correlation data, **correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed), and *correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). the psts’ perception of interactions between peers within breakout rooms (table 5) significantly impacted their perceptions of microteaching in breakout rooms. the highly significant correlated items suggest that psts regularly engaged with peers in breakout rooms, could easily converse with classmates, were comfortable meeting peers, and became effective using breakout rooms. two breakout room peer interaction items did not correlate with any other breakout room interaction item. the data suggest that zoom’s whiteboard/shared screen did not impact psts’ breakout room experiences. also, peer conversations that specifically focused on aspects of teaching practices did not affect any interaction items. this response is interesting because 100% of the psts indicated that they discussed aspects of teaching within breakout rooms. breakout rooms vs in-person setting the questionnaire data suggest that psts prefer in-person classes to lessons delivered via zoom. five questionnaire items investigate this perception (#6, #8, #14, #17, and #24). delving deeper, an aggregate of the results for these questions was created, allowing for the investigation of the factors influencing psts’ perceptions of course delivery. spss identified significant correlations between this aggregated variable and the remaining questionnaire items. table 6 displays these correlations separated by male and female responses (gender identified via course registration). table 7: course delivery impact (online vs in-person) ite m 2 ite m 4 ite m 7 ite m 9 ite m 1 0 ite m 1 1 ite m 1 2 ite m 1 9 ite m 2 0 ite m 2 1 ite m 2 2 ite m 2 5 ite m 2 8 fe m al e .6 24 * .4 59 .5 85 * .1 18 .8 87 ** -.1 40 .6 73 * .7 77 ** .7 77 ** .7 77 ** .6 53 * .6 44 * .7 67 * m al e .4 61 .9 71 ** .5 04 .9 03 * -.7 33 .8 93 * .5 42 .9 71 ** .8 85 * .8 72 .8 07 .7 21 .6 77 note: table 6 contains pearson correlation data, **correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed), and *correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). for female psts, multiple items significantly correlate with the course delivery aggregate. although these include effective communication with the professor and minor technical issues, most items involve peer interaction. the course delivery aggregate correlates strongly with five interaction items for male psts. the significant correlations included understanding the course content, a sense that their efforts were valued, brief conversations prior to class, and comfortable interactions in breakout rooms. the male response suggests the desire for agency, or as trede and jackson (2021) explain, a desire for self-efficacy or the belief that one can do something and make a difference. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 1692023 41(1): 169-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 buttler & scheurer perceptions of pre-service teachers on breakout room micro-teaching with zoom 6. discussion distance learning (kentnor, 2015), online education (soon, 2011), and blended learning (fuller, 2021) have a significant documented history. prior to the covid-19 pandemic, literature described blended learning as a combination of computer-mediated (often online) and in-person education (graham, 2006). the new form of blended learning examined in this research occurred entirely online. psts used an asynchronous learning management system to access learning materials and submit assignments while interacting synchronously during microteaching activities. recent technological innovations made online educational delivery available for blended learning within this study. nevertheless, various technologies have enabled schools to provide online education for quite some time, resulting in a continual increase in students enrolled in online courses (palvia et al., 2018). this increased demand for online education has impacted ite in several ways, including increased course offerings (irwin et al., 2021) and increased challenges relating to meeting psts’ needs (zalavra & makri, 2022). as a result of the increased online presence in ite, we argue that examining multiple online education experiences will provide a deeper understanding and enhance future ite programmes. for example, moorhouse and wong (2022) suggest that ite programmes should provide opportunities for psts to develop online teaching practices to prepare future teachers for online teaching. the course reported on here facilitated asynchronous and synchronous online experiences. some literature suggests synchronous classes cause students distress and reduce studentteacher time (dorn et al., 2020). nevertheless, each participant in this study reported that time spent in zoom’s breakout rooms was valuable, and most reported that they were happy with their interactions with the professor. additionally, psts in this study reported developing teaching practices as they collaborated with classmates and formed personal connections. these positive results also seem at odds with other literature which report significant dropout numbers in online courses (bañeres et al., 2023); all psts who began the course reported here completed the course. when examining relationship building, the participant responses in this study reflect the findings in the literature, i.e. relationship building is vital to successful online education experiences (jenney, straka & walsh, 2021). these results confirm the importance ite programmes should place on building positive instructor-student and student-student relationships within an online course. this study’s use of zoom’s breakout rooms appeared to encourage positive interactions, perhaps because the virtual rooms facilitated instructorstudent interactions not present in the general zoom room where the entire class met (vyas et al., 2022). peer relationships also developed while psts worked together in breakout rooms. “as we became comfortable in breakout rooms, we began to open up to each other ... it is natural in human interaction, regardless of whether it is virtual or not” (pst3, spring 2021). breakout rooms also provided a space where psts reported they conducted necessary activities, including preparing lessons, practising teaching, conducting self-reflection, and engaging in peer feedback. it is possible that the positive feedback from the psts occurred because the breakout rooms provided a more personal student-teacher and student-student interaction. after all, the professor interacted with groups of four students instead of the entire class. rather than passively experiencing a lecture and listening to general comments https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 1702023 41(1): 170-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) regarding projects, the psts received customised counsel, advice, and assistance within a small-group setting. the breakout rooms also encouraged psts to participate actively in making decisions about their education process. within this study, the data revealed that the psts appreciated the opportunities to make pedagogical decisions. psts valued the freedom to engage in microteaching and design their own collaboration processes inside breakout rooms. although this was important for both genders, this aspect was especially significant for the males in this study. overall, they appreciated the agency provided within the breakout room environment. this response is consistent with billett’s (2011) assertion that student agency is necessary for effective learning experiences. psts used their agency as the breakout room microteaching experience began. they were given a general framework for guidance, yet each group developed group-specific processes and procedures. the decisions made by the psts reflect those required by in-service teachers, thus promoting the development of tacit teaching knowledge (bodis et al., 2020; boz & belge-can, 2020). although the participants received the breakout microteaching positively, the psts’ desire to return to in-person education settings should not be overlooked. was this a response to the pandemic and forced isolation, or was it a response to the medium, a form of zoom fatigue (nadler, 2020)? examining microteaching using this new form of blended learning without the influence of covid-19 would be enlightening. will ite make use of this delivery option in the future? the teacher certification body where this research occurred allowed for online curriculum and instruction (lived curriculum) courses during the covid-19 pandemic. however, currently, purely online teacher education degrees are not accredited. 7. conclusion the final data analysis reveals positive and significant correlations between breakout room items and psts’ interaction with their professor and peers. highly significant positive correlations suggest that zoom interactions allowed psts to develop teaching skills, connect with peers, and build friendships despite interacting only online. within breakout rooms, where microteaching activities occurred, psts regularly engaged with peers, easily conversed with classmates, were comfortable meeting peers, and became effective using breakout rooms. gender impacted the perception of microteaching in zoom. both genders were comfortable meeting peers and could easily converse in breakout rooms. nevertheless, females prioritised connections with the professor and peers, whereas males focused more on course content and a desire to contribute during lessons. these findings suggest a significant distinction in perception between the genders. while the data reflect positively on microteaching in zoom’s breakout rooms, individuals designing online courses should note that our findings suggest that the psts desired to return to the classroom. for example, although psts viewed online interactions with the professor positively, they found it more manageable and effective to access lesson materials and resources in face-to-face learning settings. furthermore, although most psts indicated that they formed friendships while taking this course, a third of the psts indicated that they could not form strong friendships. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 1712023 41(1): 171-179 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6176 buttler & scheurer perceptions of pre-service teachers on breakout room micro-teaching with zoom in a rapidly evolving educational environment, covid-19 has accelerated change and will continue to impact the next decade of online course delivery. as online education continues to increase, the quality of online courses must be enhanced. as a result of the covid-19 pandemic experiences, a fruitful model of a blend of online and face-to-face learning alternatives (zhao & watterston, 2021) has developed. based on the findings above, zoom breakout rooms provide an effective site for microteaching activities. online education presents challenges yet to be overcome (palvia et al., 2018). on the other hand, innovative solutions have evolved to give students and families the facilities and resources required to participate in and complete a curriculum when education is inaccessible (darling-hammond, schachner & edgerton, 2020). concerning the focus of this paper, zoom’s synchronous meeting platform increased accessibility to microteaching. the pandemic was the impetus; will we use this as a catalyst for lasting change? the ability to serve learners online has increased, and ite programmes and teacher educators have an opportunity to listen to psts to incorporate relationship-building opportunities, facilitate student agency, and adjust for online gender preferences. students will benefit from ite programmes that reflect these online needs. although this group of psts expressed a desire for in-person education, the financial benefits to post-secondary institutions and the increased demand for online courses revealed in education literature suggest that a complete return to the status quo is improbable. while online ite is unlikely to become the norm soon, online ite courses must continue to improve. as the movement toward online teacher education classrooms continues to grow, so should the knowledge base that supports the development of such courses and programmes. given the challenges, effective online post-secondary programme launch and growth require significant planning and implementation of best practices and new solutions. continued research is required to understand how online teacher education methods courses might effectively prepare psts to enter the profession. many questions remain unanswered and significant research must occur before the impact of online teacher education programmes is fully understood. 8. study limitation response bias may have occurred 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z.f. mgcwawu; pixley ka seme; namakwa; and j.t. gaetsewe). through husserl’s phenomenological theoretical framework, complemented with gibbs’ reflective cycle and colaizzi’s seven steps of data analysis, participants were found to have had both good and bad experiences when conducting school support visits. experiences included positive attitudes from educators and schools in general, and good curriculum implementation and teaching and learning practices. however, participants were sometimes received with hostility, and observed poor curriculum implementation and teaching and learning practices. noteworthy is some negative union influence, lack of specialisation in mathematics by foundation phase departmental heads, lack of coherence in communication, and lack of cooperation and collaboration amongst district officials. if the concerns raised by mathematics subject advisors in this paper are not addressed, these may have a negative impact on the experiences of subject advisors and, by implication, on learner performance as well as education in general. keywords: class visits, curriculum support, northern cape education, rural education, teacher unions 1. introduction and background south africa is currently experiencing low learner outcomes (taylor, 2021), which may be manifested inter alia in learners’ inability to read with meaning (spaull & hoadley, 2017), and low learner performance in mathematics (ncdoe, author: hamilton shushu1 affiliation: 1university of the free state, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i2.6937 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(2): 49-61 published: 30 june 2023 received: 31 january 2023 accepted: 25 may 2023 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6937 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2457-743x https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6937 502023 41(2): 50-61 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6937 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) 2020; govender, 2018). the foregoing may be ascribed to, amongst others, poor curriculum implementation (jansen & christie, 2000, in de clerq, 2020) and unsatisfactory teaching and learning practices. one way to address the aforementioned challenges in schools is through school support visits (deliwe & seabe, 2022; dbe, 2018), within the context of supporting curriculum implementation, and teaching and learning practices. deliwe and seabe (2022: 17) assert that “[d]istrict (school) visits are an important aspect of support and oversight in the schooling system in many countries, including south africa”. amongst the district officials entrusted with the responsibility to conduct school support visits are subject advisors (deliwe & seabe, 2022; dbe, 2018). subject advisors’ core role is to support curriculum implementation and ensure that quality teaching and learning takes place in schools (dbe, 2020: 24), and this role can be realised through school support visits. whilst noting the importance of school support visits by subject advisors, deliwe and seabe (2022: 17) found that principals in primary schools are less likely to be satisfied if the purpose of a district official’s visit is to conduct an emis validation, perhaps because validation discussions involve robust conversations about adherence to the information processing and records management standards. the authors also noted that [t]he probability of secondary schools being satisfied is high when they receive teaching, principal and school assessment support, but less so if the purpose of the visit by district officials provides some insight into the dynamics of dual accountability at the boundary between the school and district. from the foregoing, a number of implications arise. the support for curriculum implementation and learning and teaching practices, the effectiveness of school support visits by subject advisors, as well as the experiences of subject advisors may be impacted upon, depending on what the focus will be during the school support visit. noting that the perspectives and experiences of schools and principals regarding school support visits by district officials (subject advisors) were highlighted, a need to explore the experiences of subject advisors also became necessary. whilst a few good experiences were reported (sithole, 2020; stephen, 2018; de grauwe & lugaz, 2011), the literature also highlights some negative experiences by subject advisors. these experiences include having been received by school officials who were demotivated and demoralised (sithole, 2020; shozi, 2014), who displayed unwillingness and non-commitment, and negative attitudes and behaviours (tjozongoro, 2019; stephen, 2018; tatana, 2014). subject advisors were also faced with negative attitudes from the more experienced educators, who believed that support from subject advisors was not necessary (shozi, 2014). in some cases, subject advisors purported to have felt undermined by some principals (tjozongoro, 2019; shozi, 2014). at times, they alleged even to have been refused permission to do classroom observations or provide academic or curriculum support (dbe, 2019). in most cases where educators and schools refused subject advisors access to their classrooms, union influence was suggested as the reason (sithole, 2020; stephen, 2018). subject advisors noted that this phenomenon seemed to be more prevalent at township schools than at former model-c schools1 (stephen, 2018). 1 the township schools are predominantly for black learners and are less resourced, compared to the comparatively well-resourced schools that were predominantly for white learners before democracy (sayed et al., 2020: 5). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6937 512023 41(2): 51-61 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6937 shushu the experiences of mathematics subject advisors when conducting school support visits furthermore, some subject advisors claimed that they had observed educator absenteeism (sithole, 2020), bunking of classes by educators, educators not teaching learners all sections of the curriculum (stephen, 2018), not marking or signing learners’ books (sithole, 2020), not preparing lessons (tjozongoro, 2019; stephen, 2018), or not being able to control and foster class discipline (sithole, 2020). subject advisors observed that some educators did not seem to be comfortable with pedagogical and content knowledge (sithole, 2020), and lacked accountability and responsibility (stephen, 2018). they found that some “educators and learners were not committed to their duties” (tatana, 2014: 67). sometimes some subject advisors observed that the wrong corrections were done (stephen, 2018) and that proper continuous assessment processes were not followed (tjozongoro, 2019). similarly, some subject advisors indicated that lesson preparations were only done when educators were aware that subject advisors were scheduling school visits (tjozongoro, 2019). in addition, most subject advisors complained of work overload (stephen, 2018; tatana, 2014; de grauwe & lugaz, 2011) and that they were expected to fulfil more of an administrative role (sithole, 2020; stephen, 2018; de grauwe & lugaz, 2011). subject advisors claimed that the lack of effective communication amongst the department of education, educator unions and subject advisors (tatana, 2014), lack of vehicles to travel to the schools (malumbete, 2021; sithole, 2020; tjozongoro, 2019; shozi, 2014; tatana, 2014), and shortages of computers and related resources (malumbete, 2021; sithole, 2020; tjozongoro, 2019; shozi, 2014) to support educators and curriculum implementation limited their effectiveness of school support visits. several subject advisors alleged that they did not receive support from their school management team (smt) members in monitoring educators’ work (shozi, 2014); neither did some principals provide curriculum support (stephen, 2018). at some schools, principals seemed “not to be really aware what is [was] happening in the classroom”, and “teachers do [did] as they please[d]” (stephen, 2018: 176). there were complaints about the presence and impact of unqualified educators, and some subject advisors were frustrated by the policy regarding progressed learners, which they claimed took much of their time, to the detriment of the rest of the other learners (stephen, 2018). stephen (2018) also notes that subject advisors sometimes found that notional time was affected as learners were busy with extramural activities or attended sporting activities during school hours. in a few instances, a number of subject advisors alluded to the lack of cooperation amongst district officials regarding plans to visit and support schools (stephen, 2018). tjozongoro (2019) found that some educators in namibia and kenya did not implement the findings and recommendations offered by subject advisors. de grauwe (2011: 61-62) notes that in kenya, lesotho and uganda, subject advisors (supervisors) alleged that “they did not receive any comments from their” seniors, and this had an impact on their follow-up visits. from the description above, the factors that can promote and “the factors that hinder their [subject advisors’] capacity to provide effective support to schools and teachers” (bantwini & diko 2011: 228) are noted. however, the aforementioned authors argue that there is still a need for further reflection regarding the experiences of subject advisors when providing school support. nkambule and amsterdam (2018: 8), for instance, recommend that “[g]reater insight into this topic can be achieved through the solicitation of views of … subject advisors”, while deliwe and seabe (2022) assert that a reflection on the visits by subject advisors could inter alia improve learner outcomes which, in essence, is the objective of school support visits. besides the foregoing, i noted that the experiences from the subject advisors discussed in literature were derived from studies focusing on other themes and did not specifically focus on https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6937 522023 41(2): 52-61 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6937 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) the experiences when conducting school support visits per se. these experiences were more general, and not all necessarily focused on mathematics. in addition, studies from the northern cape province or similar vast rural areas could not be found in the literature consulted. hence, the purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of northern cape (nc) province mathematics subject advisors when conducting school support visits (bevan, 2014) within the context of supporting curriculum implementation and teaching and learning practices. in order to provide a fair sense of the experiences of mathematics subject advisors in the nc province in all five districts (frances baard, z.f. mgcwawu, pixley ka seme, namakwa, and j.t. gaetsewe), all four phases (foundation, intermediate, senior, and further education and training) were included in the study. the focus on mathematics subject advisors was because mathematics is regarded as one of the priority subjects in south africa (spaull & hoadley, 2017), with many challenges noted. in light of the above, the broad research question that this study pursued was, “what are the experiences of mathematics subject advisors when conducting school support visits?” 2. theoretical framework i adopted husserl’s (1983, in giorgi, 2007) method of providing an understanding of the experiences of mathematics subject advisors when conducting school support visits as a guide to my theoretical framework (qutoshi, 2018). husserl (1983, in giorgi, 2007) asserts that in order to understand the essence of how participants experience school support visits, it is imperative that one assumes the phenomenological attitude, which is applying the epoché. in this regard, i applied the epoché by bracketing out or suspending my prior knowledge, suppositions, or theories related to school support visits (neubauer, witkop & varpio, 2019; bliss, 2016; giorgi, 2007). also drawing from husserl’s phenomenological framework, i applied imaginative variation, which i did by sifting through the generated data, only considering those aspects that were relevant to the experiences of school support visits (giorgi, 2007). as gibbs’ (2013) reflective cycle also deals with the experiences of phenomena, i complemented husserl’s (1983) theory with gibbs’ reflective cycle (2013). gibbs (2013: 49-50) posits that in order to reflect or describe effectively how phenomena (school support visits) have been experienced, five principles may be employed. these principles include a description of what happened, descriptions of the reactions and feelings elicited, an evaluation of whether the experience was good or bad, an analysis of “what sense you can make of the situation”, and a general sense of what can be concluded. due to the role and focus on essence, as advocated by both frameworks, i provided the essence of school support visits by mathematics subject advisors. the process outlined above was consistently done in both the data generation and analysis stages of the study. 3. research methodology following a qualitative research approach, i purposively selected and invited six mathematics subject advisors (four females; two males) from all four phases (cf. 1) to participate in this study. as mathematics subject advisors, they engage with similar duties, responsibilities and activities, which amongst others include curriculum support to educators, observing educators engaged in teaching and learning practices, checking lesson preparation and assessments, https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6937 532023 41(2): 53-61 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6937 shushu the experiences of mathematics subject advisors when conducting school support visits and providing overall support towards learner outcomes (creswell, 2013). therefore, i deemed them to be best suited and relevant to be participants in this study, as they are involved in and have experience in the phenomenon under study. the study was conducted in all five education districts of the northern cape province (cf. 1). since each district has only one mathematics subject advisor per phase, identifying them by a specific district, gender, or age could compromise confidentiality, thus i removed references to their names and gender, as well as any association with a specific district or phase to protect their identities. instead of using the full pseudonyms chosen by the participants (p), the first letters of their pseudonyms were used: pl, pj, pa, pt, pm, and pp. other ethical considerations included ethical clearance from the university of the free state, permission from the northern cape department of education (ncdoe), permission and informed consent from the participants, as well as the permission and assistance regarding their contact details from the various education district offices. at the time of data collection, south africa was at alert level 1 with regard to the covid-19 protocols; hence, in-depth, semi-structured interviews lasting between 45 and 60 minutes each were held virtually, using the google meet platform. i used an approach of questioning that is consistent with gibbs’ (2013) reflective cycle and husserl’s (1983) framework, which demands the consistent assumption of a phenomenological attitude (cf. 2). therefore, questions that could provide information to such questions were posed. depending on the need, responses were further probed for more clarity. the interviews were video recorded, and are accessible on a google drive virtual storage platform for ease of access for the participants for member checking (bliss, 2016). i shared the transcriptions/findings relevant to the article with each participant concerned for member checking. none provided any further inputs or made changes. i adopted colaizzi’s (1978, in abalos et al., 2016) seven-step process of data analysis which, according to abalos et al. (2016: 21), “is consistent with descriptive phenomenology”. colaizzi (1978, in abalos et al., 2016: 20-21) asserts that to provide a description that is close to what participants have experienced, a phenomenological data analysis method is proposed. since this is a phenomenological study, i have used colaizzis’ seven-step process, which are evident through its application herein. i read through each transcript several times to ensure that i understood what was shared with me, and identified and delineated the significant statements, phrases or sentences that i regarded as significant and related directly to school support visits. i noted the meaning of each significant statement (e.g. formulated meanings) and then organised these into a cluster of themes. the cluster of themes were such that they responded to the overarching research question. these clusters were referred back to the original individual transcriptions to be validated. i checked for discrepancies among or between the various clusters and ensured that i did not leave out any relevant data, thereafter, i checked for commonalities and/or differences amongst the cluster of themes, and grouped them into general themes. the results were integrated to provide a thick, clear and detailed description of school support visits as conducted by mathematics subject advisors. lastly, the findings were validated with the participants, and none of them registered any objections. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6937 542023 41(2): 54-61 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6937 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) 4. findings five general themes emerged: attitudes and human relations; curriculum implementation and teaching and learning practices; perceived educator union influence; leadership, management and support; and the impact of external factors on school support visits. 4.1 attitudes and human relations most participants in the study indicated that they were happy and felt good with regard to having been warmly received by educators at the schools where and when they conducted school support visits. some participants claimed that some educators could communicate with them freely. pa, for instance, shared that “when teachers are aware that you are coming”, it is a good experience in general. some educators had their educator files and learner books ready for the participants to check their work. participants noted their satisfaction when they found that some educators displayed good attitudes when executing their duties. pj appreciated that “there are some teachers out there with nice visions of what they want to achieve with learners”. pp indicated that it felt good “when a teacher does his work and try [tries] his best to do the best for the kids that makes me feel good”. according to pp, pj and pm, some educators seemed to cooperate well with other educators, especially through orientation, induction and collaboration. pj also indicated that “you get some educators who go above and beyond what is expected, midday classes, classes in the afternoon, saturdays, and sundays, without any remuneration from the department. that to me is very positive”. participants appreciated it when they observed that some educators implemented the ideas and recommendations provided during their previous school support visits. some educators were appreciative of their contributions. hence, pp commented that “it’s nice for me to work with the people than sit in my office. i rather go to a school where i can see, ok, i help and i support”. he further indicated that he enjoyed supporting schools, because he felt he made a difference. despite the good experiences, a few participants were not satisfied with some of the negative attitudes and practices displayed by a number of the educators and schools. both pl and pt shared their frustration when they had to wait to be attended to. pt indicated that “[y]ou can wait for more than 3-4 hours for them to bring their things” and purported that “some of the teachers are coming with this negative thing (attitude)”, and she felt “very frustrated”. pm indicated that some “teachers are under tremendous stress, personal issues, that impact on their work”. pa and pt noted that several educators were uncooperative and refused to submit documents. pp and pj observed that educators allegedly showed no commitment, and some educators were defiant towards the departmental heads. whilst pm noted that various educators did not feel free to share their challenges with subject advisors, other participants experienced a few educators to be simply lazy, and blame the learners for their underperformance. pp commented that some educators were just not doing the work. he mentioned that “i didn’t feel good, it [makes me] feel sad, maybe angry, maybe disappointed”. pm claimed that several educators were not prepared to learn new ways of doing things, like planning. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6937 552023 41(2): 55-61 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6937 shushu the experiences of mathematics subject advisors when conducting school support visits 4.2 curriculum implementation and teaching and learning practices participants welcomed the opportunity for having been given access to educators’ classrooms to either observe what educators were doing or to present demonstration lessons. pa felt “very good to observe teachers in the classroom” and pp shared that “sometimes i sit in a class and observe teachers, especially my novice teachers. it’s good to see what they did and then i can give them some support in where they can do better”. pa remarked, “i really feel like i serve my purpose if a teacher can said [say] to me come to my class and look at this and look at that”, and sometimes she used that opportunity in the class “to share good practices and do a demonstration lesson”. furthermore, pj observed that educator files were indeed moderated. some participants stated that some educators taught the learners mathematics topics on a daily basis. pt indicated that some educators tried to implement the school based assessment (sba) guidelines when setting tests and tasks. pt also mentioned that some departmental heads moderated the tests and memoranda, and that educators followed the annual teaching plan (atp) when teaching mathematics in schools. both pt and pj noted that some educators developed monthly and annual lesson plans. apart from the good experiences, participants also had bad experiences. pm complained that some educators refused to submit departmental and school policy documents to be checked, while other educators who wanted to submit their documents were intimidated by union members because they were perceived to be ‘selling out’. pl remarked, “[w]hat i’m not happy about is the teacher file is there, but not all that documents will be in the file”. participants explained that some educators either did not plan their lessons well or at all. pm, for instance, expressed her frustration: i’ve trained them in our empowerment professional development, we have provided professional development sessions every day. i’ve trained them about it. if i visit a school … i don’t see a well-structured planning, like that is now the main concern in most of our schools. both pl and pm indicated that some educators neither taught all required cognitive levels, nor followed school-based assessment (sba) guidelines. they also mentioned that some educators did not follow the annual teaching plan (atp). while pm observed that some “teachers are not using manipulatives” that they were apparently provided with, pl claimed that some educators just used “textbook and chalk”. participants alleged that several educators did not implement the recommendations that emanated from their previous reports, and pp added that it “frustrates the hell out of me”. pj complained that “[t]hey make you feel as a subject advisor, whatever you have done, it doesn’t really impact [the] school”. pa and pj mentioned that some educators were absent from school whenever they conducted school support visits. pa remarked that “there is a certain school that forever when you get to that school, that teachers are absent”. pj commented: “i don’t even know how [the mathematics teacher] looks. i have been to that school four times, but i have never met him.” pt stated that her “only worry is that they sometimes teach [only] what they are comfortable with”, for example, “[i]n mathematics it’s one of the challenges where problem-solving is not done as expected”. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6937 562023 41(2): 56-61 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6937 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) pt and pm indicated that some educators did not mark learners’ books; hence, pt lamented: it breaks my heart to see a learner who has put so much effort in whatever that they doing and nothing is done to the learner’s work, so it simply means that the teacher does not care, i can say it you don’t care about the learners that are in your class. whilst pa claimed that novice educators lacked “that specific subject knowledge” in mathematics, pm reported that even some experienced teachers at face value lack mathematics “subject content knowledge”. as a result, pt purported that: in foundation phase, truly speaking, most of the teachers are challenged; they don’t like mathematics. so, that’s why at grade 12 we have fewer learners because the foundation was not laid. both pa and pm noted that some educators used inappropriate teaching strategies, and pj observed that some educators lacked skills to instil discipline in the classroom. pj indicated that some educators “don’t teach the processes of mathematics”, and despite that “learners have 40 sums in his books but he cannot do any one of them because he don’t [does not] know how to do the sums”. whilst there were those educators who underperformed while being at school and in class, pj indicated that his worst experience is to “go to a school but you don’t see any evidence of teaching happening”, or “teachers being in class but not teaching”. pa alleged that learners “in the foundation phase are still struggling a lot with maths”, and pl noted that some learners at some schools could not read or count. pj argued that schools should “stop passing learners on who is [are] not ready for the next grade. that to me is also a systemic problem, and it’s very huge and has a large impact on the mathematics”. the advice was with regard to the south african policy on progression, where learners may be promoted to the next grade if they have already failed once in that phase. 4.3 perceived educator union influence at times, participants were not allowed into classes for observation or to provide support. for example, pj noted that some educators would be adamant and state, “no, don’t come to my class”. pl complained that “it is not good, because for me it’s like we are not supporting them thoroughly”. participants claimed that educators used the name of unions as the reason for refusing subject advisors entry into their classes. pm was of the view that “individuals use the union to hide their laziness and they will tell you it’s a union rule that you must give notice one week in advance”. with regard to the submission of documents, pm noted that educators would say: ‘[m]’am, we want to submit but we are afraid of a, b, c, d, [and] e.” the foregoing suggests intimidation from union shop stewards or representatives indicating to the educators not to submit documents, or not to cooperate with subject advisors. pm and pj indicated that despite the name of the union being used, no written proof was ever provided. another hurdle subject advisors experienced was a lack of effective and clear channels of communication between them and union representatives. pj mentioned that “usually they don’t engage with me, they engage with my bosses”. hence, pm stated that: on the day of my visit … the shop steward came to me and said i’m the shop steward … teachers were not notified; they are not prepared to submit [their] books. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6937 572023 41(2): 57-61 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6937 shushu the experiences of mathematics subject advisors when conducting school support visits 4.4 leadership, management and support though not prominent, lack of leadership, management and support from some smt members in schools were raised. pm shared that infights amongst educators were prevalent and indicated that these “infights are usually about positions”. pm also observed conflict amongst educators and smt members, which impacts negatively on learner performance. furthermore, pm indicated that some educators claimed that departmental heads did not inform them about impending school visits and they were therefore not ready to receive the subject advisers. pa observed that at some schools, some principals and smt members did not seem to support school support visits. pa also noted that at one school which she visited later in the year, a principal had by then not procured learner support material (ltsm), despite her request for the school to do so earlier in the year. 4.5 the impact of external factors on school support visits from the participants’ responses, it emerged that some of their experiences were also affected by external factors, such as educator subject specialisation knowledge, heavy workload, afterschool training sessions, lack of adequate transport for both subject advisors and learners at schools, perceived lack of cooperation between subject advisors and circuit managers, and issues of communication. pp and pt hinted that the lack of specialisation knowledge in mathematics by educators was perceived to be a challenge with regard to learner performance, as well as made educators uncomfortable when teaching mathematics in schools. in addition, pt suggested that, “in [the] foundation phase most of our teachers did not do mathematics”; hence, pt thought that “our department can now start thinking of really making teachers to become subject specialists especially even though in foundation phase”. it seems it is for this reason that pt observed that subject advisors who were stronger in home language, for example, would “definitely support the home language and neglect the mathematics”. in addition, pt also claimed that “we have many schools, we cannot only focus on one school forever”. pa concurred with pt regarding the workload of most of the subject advisors. she stated: “i’m stressed, i had a very few white hair, i have 64 primary schools with roughly i don’t know roughly how many teachers.” pt also noted that having after-school cluster sessions for educators were not helpful, as “the teachers are already tired”. pa claimed that after having prepared to go and support schools, “when you get to the office and then you will hear that there is no transport”, which impacts on their ability to conduct school support visits at all or most of the schools in their district. hence, pj alleged that he found that some faraway schools seemed not be supported regularly. he referred to a school that is “about 438 km from where i am from the district office”. regarding scholar transport, pj alleged that learners “are two hours late every morning”, and then the buses “are in a hurry in the afternoon when learners should leave”. as a result, learners miss teaching and learning time and this caused some conflict between educators and those learners. pa indicated that sometimes disagreements also seemed to exist between some circuit managers and district managers who were accused of not intervening timeously in addressing educators’ challenges. some circuit managers cautioned that participants “mustn’t come and put their schools in a bad light” (pa). furthermore, according to pj, “circuit managers and the two units (other managers) does [do] not work together”. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6937 582023 41(2): 58-61 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6937 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) despite pj’s observation that there “is a challenge with the ‘older people’ because they are not good with the technology” (ict), the support from the department regarding training on the use of social media platforms was appreciated. participants shared that they developed whatsapp groups, or used google meet, or developed mathematics websites, which also became handy during the covid-19 period. pj indicated: i’m grateful when i get to a school and see … more experienced teacher[s] also uses [using] the website, and to me, it’s very positive, it makes me feel as if what i’m doing is essential at schools. whilst cognisant of the foregoing, participants stated that, due to miscommunication between the district office and the school, schools were unaware of district visits. both pt and pp noted how this impacts on the effectiveness of school support visits, and by implication, on the experiences of participants. 5. discussion this study sought to explore the experiences of northern cape province mathematics subject advisors when conducting school support visits in the context of supporting curriculum implementation and teaching and learning practices. five main themes emerged, i.e. attitudes and human relations, curriculum implementation and teaching and learning practices, perceived educator union influence, leadership, management and support, and the impact of external factors on school support visits. whilst some participants experienced good attitudes and human relations when they visited schools (sithole, 2020; stephen, 2018; de grauwe & lugaz, 2011), others encountered a hostile reception. these negative attitudes and human relations from educators and schools are consistent with other studies (sithole, 2020; tjozongoro, 2019; stephen, 2018). negative attitudes and human relations may impact on the motivation of subject advisors as well as a conducive environment; hence, impact negatively on envisaged support. weak curriculum implementation and inadequate teaching and learning practices that were observed resonate with reports by sithole (2020), tjozongoro (2019), and stephen, (2018). the foregoing may divert focus and attention from what subject advisors initially prepared to support the educators with. in cases where subject advisors were granted the opportunity to visit schools, to do classroom observations, and provide curriculum support (dbe, 2019; stephen, 2018; shozi, 2014), it seems this was ascribed to minimal union influence (sithole, 2020). in this study, a common perception of union influence on school support visits was observed. perceived union influence has the potential to limit subject advisors’ access to schools or classrooms to provide the necessary support. this phenomenon is consistent with previous studies (sithole, 2020; stephen, 2018). consistent with previous studies (sithole, 2020; dbe, 2019; stephen, 2018; tatana, 2014; de grauwe & lugaz, 2011), cases of weak or lack of satisfactory leadership, management and support from some smt members and districts were noted. for example, in cases where the management of the schools were unable to solve challenges, or when educators were not fulfilling their duties, the subject advisors would be asked to intervene. not only would this be in conflict with subject advisors’ roles (dbe, 2020:24), but it would also be perceived to be interfering with issues that do not affect them. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6937 592023 41(2): 59-61 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6937 shushu the experiences of mathematics subject advisors when conducting school support visits school support visits were also impacted upon by external factors. in this study, these external factors included the lack of specialisation knowledge of foundation phase educators in mathematics, apparent lack of cooperation or collaboration between mathematics subject advisors and circuit managers, as well as human and physical resources. the foregoing challenges were also reported in previous studies (malumbete, 2021; sithole, 2020; tjozongoro, 2019; shozi, 2014; tatana, 2014; de grauwe & lugaz, 2011). these external factors either make it difficult for subject advisors to conduct school support visits or frustrate them when foundation phase departmental heads were not knowledgeable in mathematics. these negative experiences of subject advisors mentioned in the study, affect the quality and effectiveness of school support visits negatively. though this study focused on the experiences of mathematics subject advisors, i believe that this study has the potential to contribute towards highlighting the experiences of other subject advisors, give them a voice, and consider the concerns of both the educators and those of the subject advisors. in addition, it may implore policy makers and those in authority to consider working on both the identified challenges as experienced by educators, as well as subject advisors so that the quality of education and learner competencies may be improved. the study elicited a few areas of concern that seemed to impact profoundly on both the experiences of participants and the effectiveness of school support visits. these include the alleged resolution by educator union(s) of not allowing subject advisors to conduct classroom visits, the extent to which communication amongst education stakeholders impacts on school support visits, as well as the extent to which cooperation or collaboration between circuit managers and subject advisors impact on school support visits. in this regard, it is recommended that the mentioned areas be investigated further. 6. conclusion this article provides an opportunity for reflection. this article found that the lack of foundation phase mathematics educators’ specialisation knowledge was a constraint, the minimal collaboration between circuit managers and mathematics subject advisors was not helpful, and that learner scholar transport failures were to the detriment of learners’ contact time. despite these negative experiences, the mathematics subject advisors still felt that school support visits had value and were enjoyable. areas of contention and non-compliance that crystallised in this study should be noted and addressed. it should contribute towards informing policy and practice regarding school support visits by mathematics subject advisors in particular and beyond. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6937 602023 41(2): 60-61 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6937 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) references abalos, e.e., rivera, r.y., locsin, r.c. & schoenhofer, s.o. 2016. husserlian phenomenology and collaizzi’s method of data analysis: exemplar in qualitative nursing inquiry using nursing as caring theory. international journal for human caring, 20(1): 19-23. https://doi. org/10.20467/1091-5710-20.1.19 bantwini, b.d. & diko, n. 2011. factors affecting south african 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https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v40n4a2045 shozi, j. 2014. the role of subject advisors in supporting instructional leadership practices in schools: the case of one educational district in kwazulu-natal. unpublished master’s thesis. edgewood campus: university of kwazulu-natal. sithole, t.f. 2020. curriculum leadership role of subject advisors for mathematics improvement in south africa. unpublished phd thesis. bloemfontein: university of the free state. spaull, n. & hoadley, u. 2017. getting reading right: building firm foundations. in l. jamieson, l. berry & l. lake (eds.), south african child gauge 2017, pp. 77-83. cape town: children’s institute, university of cape town. stephen, m.m. 2018. the role of physical science subject advisors in enhancing the quality of the teaching of physical science in the fet phase (grade 10-12). unpublished doctoral degree. pretoria: university of south africa. tatana, s. 2014. the role of subject advisors in enhancing instructional leadership practices in schools: the case of one education district in kwazulu-natal. unpublished master’s thesis. south africa: university of kwazulu-natal. taylor, n. 2021. the dream of sisyphus: mathematics education in south africa. south african journal of childhood education, 11: 1-12. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajce.v11i1.911 tjozongoro, a.t. 2019. perceptions of selected namibian subject advisers on their role in supporting teaching and learning. unpublished master’s thesis. pretoria: university of south africa. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6937 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40037-019-0509-2 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40037-019-0509-2 https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v38n1a1433 https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v38n1a1433 https://doi.org/10.22555/joeed.v5i1.2154 https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v40n4a2045 https://doi.org/10.4102/sajce.v11i1.911 _hlk120781552 _hlk124406724 137 research article 2023 41(1): 137-154 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) flexible curriculum design for quantitative skills development: building on the insights gained during covid-19 abstract before the covid-19 pandemic, technology-enhanced learning and its relation to student engagement, and the necessity of good student-staff relationships for creating a successful education environment were evident. the covid-19 pandemic forced higher education to adapt to a challenging technology-led learning environment that demanded, inter alia, high levels of flexibility and human-centredness. valuable lessons were learned that highlighted new perspectives on curriculum design and delivery in a normalised, technology-driven environment. against the background of covid-19-related literature on teaching and learning, the authors reflect on their insights regarding curriculum design and delivery of two quantitative skills modules during the covid-19 pandemic, and its impact on further curriculum planning. the focus of the article is on the intentional flexibility built into curriculum offerings during 2020-2022. the study reviewed flexibility on three levels, namely student, facilitator (staff) and delivery levels, through a multi-method research methodology. quantitative data related to the academic performance of 2 949 students enrolled for the two quantitative skills modules from 2020 to 2022. qualitative data related to themes through thematic analysis of student and facilitator surveys, focusgroup discussions and semi-structured interviews. the improved student academic performance reported by the study could be attributed to, amongst other factors, 1) flexibility of the selected delivery option, 2) positive staff and student experiences and engagement, and 3) intentional inclusion of activities promoting student-staff relationships. the good academic results obtained during the pandemic led to important curriculum decisions for a normalised future for these modules, which will be built on flexibility and human-centredness. among these decisions is to continue presenting the modules in an online environment, even though traditional face-to-face teaching options are available. keywords: flexibility, quantitative skills development; student engagement; staff-student relationships author: prof corlia janse van vuuren1 annari muller1 prof francois strydom1 affiliation: 1university of the free state, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i1.6337 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(1): 137-154 published: 31 march 2023 received: 5 august 2022 accepted: 17 march 2023 research article https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4146-6937 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4154-8633 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4338-8127 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 1382023 41(1): 138-154 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) 1. introduction technology-enhanced learning was present in higher education settings long before covid-19 broke out, with different levels of integration between online and face-to-face learning and teaching interactions. such blended interactions include a wide range of activities (e.g. inclass quizzes, discussion forums/boards, open educational resources, podcasts, and self/peer assessment) on a continuum of asynchronous to synchronous learning (serrano et al., 2019). bond, bedenlier et al. (2020) found, in a systematic review of education technology in the field of education, that two applications of education technology in higher education are prominent, namely 1) “using technology to enhance communication and social exchange” and 2) “using technology for self-directed learning”. from these findings of the review of bond, bedenlier et al., it is evident that, before the covid-19 pandemic, the use of technology in education was seen as an adjunct to face-to-face learning. however, the move to online learning as the only mode of delivery during the covid-19 pandemic rapidly changed the perception of technology in education from it being adjunct to it being central, which demands changes to the normal way of thinking and doing by both staff and students. currently, higher education teachers are faced with the challenge of moving beyond covid-19-related (emergency) online teaching, towards a high-quality, human-centred, post-covid-19 learning environment. the literature, as discussed below, provides valuable insights, but should be integrated with evidence from the pre-covid-19 and covid-19 periods for specific courses (or modules as used in this article), to create directives for the anticipated future. the aim of this article was to provide insights into curriculum design and delivery in two quantitative skills modules for business students presented at a south african university. during the review period of 2020-2022, these quantitative skills modules had to be adapted continuously to adjust to the varying restrictions of covid-19, and to accommodate the implementation of the carnegie math pathways (hereafter called pathways) at the university (see figure 1). figure 1: curriculum design and delivery of two quantitative skills courses from 2020 to 2022 as portrayed in figure 1, the traditional module was presented as a large-class face-to-face module pre-covid-19. with the implementation of the covid-19 lockdown in march 2020, the traditional module was moved to an asynchronous, online environment. opportunity for engagement with tutors and other students enrolled in the module, was facilitated through asynchronous, online discussion forums. in 2021, the carnegie math pathways modules (i.e. quantway in the first semester and statway in the second semester) were implemented. due to the continuing covid-19 restrictions, it was presented in an online environment. engagement with module content included both synchronous and asynchronous learning activities. individual class preparation activities and exercises are completed by students individually and asynchronously. four hours per week were dedicated to online, synchronous activities. these included full-class as well as small-group collaborations. during the full-class collaboration, groups of 50-60 students met in an online classroom, where the facilitators introduced the unit concept and context. thereafter, students moved into smaller online classrooms with 3-5 students, where they collaboratively completed the class activities. facilitators moved between these small groups to assist with discussions and questions, as necessary. all these asynchronous and synchronous learning activities are assessed online and contribute to the final module mark. with the easing of covid-19 restrictions, all students could return to campus from the beginning of 2022. although all students returned to campus, which provided the option to revert to a face-to-face delivery, the benefits of small-group collaborations in a large class context (i.e. with more than 500 students registered for module/s) the decision was made to retain the • traditional quantitative skills course; face-to-face large-class mode of delivery1st quarter 2020 • traditional quantitative skills course; emergency remote online teaching2nd quarter to end of 2020 • online pathways programme (quantway); three-step pedagogy1st semester 2021 • online pathways programme (statway); three-step pedagogy; access to university resources2nd semester 2021 • continuation with online pathways programme (quantway); three-step pedagogy; access to university resources1st semester 2022 figure 1: curriculum design and delivery of two quantitative skills courses from 2020 to 2022 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 1392023 41(1): 139-154 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 janse van vuuren, muller & strydom flexible curriculum design for quantitative skills development as portrayed in figure 1, the traditional module was presented as a large-class face-to-face module pre-covid-19. with the implementation of the covid-19 lockdown in march 2020, the traditional module was moved to an asynchronous, online environment. opportunity for engagement with tutors and other students enrolled in the module, was facilitated through asynchronous, online discussion forums. in 2021, the carnegie math pathways modules (i.e. quantway in the first semester and statway in the second semester) were implemented. due to the continuing covid-19 restrictions, it was presented in an online environment. engagement with module content included both synchronous and asynchronous learning activities. individual class preparation activities and exercises are completed by students individually and asynchronously. four hours per week were dedicated to online, synchronous activities. these included full-class as well as small-group collaborations. during the full-class collaboration, groups of 50-60 students met in an online classroom, where the facilitators introduced the unit concept and context. thereafter, students moved into smaller online classrooms with 3-5 students, where they collaboratively completed the class activities. facilitators moved between these small groups to assist with discussions and questions, as necessary. all these asynchronous and synchronous learning activities are assessed online and contribute to the final module mark. with the easing of covid-19 restrictions, all students could return to campus from the beginning of 2022. although all students returned to campus, which provided the option to revert to a face-to-face delivery, the benefits of small-group collaborations in a large class context (i.e. with more than 500 students registered for module/s) the decision was made to retain the online delivery, utilising the asynchronous and synchronous activities, as explained above. students who had challenges with access to electronic devices and/or data could now utilise university resources to access their online module/s. further flexibility was embedded in the design through allowing students to complete and submit their small-group collaboration activities synchronously outside of the dedicated class time (i.e. as arranged amongst themselves), due to external challenges such as loadshedding. the pathways programme was launched in the united states in 2010 to transform the quantitative skills learning experience of students in the international higher education environment. the aim of pathways is to accelerate students’ academic progress, improve student success, while improving the content and pedagogy of quantitative modules (wested, 2022). the programme focuses on, among others, on relevant and innovative curricula, socio-emotional student support, providing a variety of instructional materials, and continuous professional development of staff. ultimately, pathways develops quantitative reasoning and problem-solving skills supporting everyday decision-making (wested, n.d). towards the end of the article, the data of our study will be integrated with relevant literature (as described in the next section) to provide directives for future curriculum design and delivery of quantitative skills modules in a post-covid-19 environment. 2. perspectives from covid-19-related teaching and learning literature for moving beyond covid-19, authors propose an integration of strategies to optimally leverage the strengths of the face-to-face, blended, and online environments, and to create a high-quality, human-centred higher education environment. these strategies focus strongly on student engagement and education technology (brown, 2021; hill & fitzgerald, 2020; neuwirth, jović & mukherji 2021), student-staff relationships (snijders et al., 2020; whelehan, 2020), flexibility in curriculum design and delivery (hill & fitzgerald, 2020), equitable resourcing and educational technology (mac domhnaill, mohan & mccoy, 2021; salas-pilco, https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 1402023 41(1): 140-154 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) yang & zhang, 2022), and continuous student and staff development in an adapted learning environment (bond, buntins et al., 2020; ghani & taylor, 2021; neuwirth et al., 2021; salaspilco et al, 2022). figure 2 presents a summary of the strategies proposed in covid-19-related teaching and learning literature and used as the theoretical basis of this article. these strategies include student engagement, student-staff relationships, flexibility in curriculum design and delivery, staff and student development and equitable resourcing. each strategy will be unpacked in more detail in the rest of this section. – figure 2: strategies for a high-quality, human-centred higher education learning environment when moving beyond covid-19 several authors explored student engagement and education technology during the covid-19 pandemic. most of the authors reviewed student engagement in three domains, namely cognitive student engagement, behavioural student engagement and affective student engagement (bond, bedenlier et al., 2020; bond, buntins et al., 2020; el-sayad, saad & thurasamy, 2021). behavioural student engagement is the dimension of student engagement reported on most often, and includes facets such as participation, achievement, confidence, study habits and attention/focus (bond, buntins et al., 2020). regarding cognitive student engagement, bond, buntins et al. (2020) include learning from peers, deep learning, self-regulation, positive self-perception, and critical thinking, whilst affective student engagement includes positive interaction with teachers and peers, enjoyment, positive attitude relating to learning interest, motivation, and enthusiasm (bond, buntins et al., 2020). disengagement factors, on the other hand, include anxiety, frustration, pressure, feeling overwhelmed, disinterest, and being distracted (bond, buntins et al., 2020), which can easily be linked to emotions possibly experienced by students (and staff) during the covid-19 pandemic. in moving towards a high-quality post-covid-19 educational environment, the following strategies could enhance student engagement: post-covid higher education environment student engagement student-staff relationships flexibility in curriculum design & delivery staff & student development equitable resourcing figure 2: strategies for a high-quality, human-centred higher education learning environment when moving beyond covid-19 several authors explored student engagement and education technology during the covid-19 pandemic. most of the authors reviewed student engagement in three domains, namely cognitive student engagement, behavioural student engagement and affective student engagement (bond, bedenlier et al., 2020; bond, buntins et al., 2020; el-sayad, saad & thurasamy, 2021). behavioural student engagement is the dimension of student engagement https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 1412023 41(1): 141-154 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 janse van vuuren, muller & strydom flexible curriculum design for quantitative skills development reported on most often, and includes facets such as participation, achievement, confidence, study habits and attention/focus (bond, buntins et al., 2020). regarding cognitive student engagement, bond, buntins et al. (2020) include learning from peers, deep learning, selfregulation, positive self-perception, and critical thinking, whilst affective student engagement includes positive interaction with teachers and peers, enjoyment, positive attitude relating to learning interest, motivation, and enthusiasm (bond, buntins et al., 2020). disengagement factors, on the other hand, include anxiety, frustration, pressure, feeling overwhelmed, disinterest, and being distracted (bond, buntins et al., 2020), which can easily be linked to emotions possibly experienced by students (and staff) during the covid-19 pandemic. in moving towards a high-quality post-covid-19 educational environment, the following strategies could enhance student engagement: • learning should be a social endeavour, supporting more positive interactions with peers and teachers, and increasing enjoyment of learning (bond, bedenlier et al., 2020). • students’ knowledge and skills in relation to technology should be taken into consideration, and students should be provided with adequate support and development in this area to prevent frustration, which could lead to disengagement (bond, bedenlier et al., 2020). • collaborations, in the form of communities of practice, lead to better engagement and improve feelings of connectedness, confidence and enjoyment (bond, bedenlier et al., 2020). • academic self-efficacy can be linked to better behavioural and emotional engagement (elsayad et al., 2021), and should, thus, be promoted by teachers. • perceived usefulness of learning content influences emotional and cognitive student engagement (el-sayad et al., 2021) and should be considered by teachers in both curriculum development and delivery. • teacher presence influences all domains of student engagement (el-sayad et al., 2021) and should be included purposefully in teaching and learning. • student partnerships should be created (whelehan, 2020), as it could lead to positively engaged and loyal students (snijders et al., 2020). • resource equality supports the use of technology in learning and may create positive attitudes towards learning (baloran, hernan & taoy, 2021). student-staff relationships were another important aspect explored in literature published during the covid-19 pandemic. wester et al. (2021:9) fittingly report the following: despite these logistic and pedagogical difficulties, when asked to describe a memorable moment of teaching online during the pandemic, faculty [teacher]) often recalled getting to know their students on a more personal level, as well as purposeful acts of kindness and empathy, either by students or by the faculty themselves. this view is supported by hall (2020), who argues that the covid pandemic forced teachers (and students) to re-evaluate their positions within the academe, as involving a focus on work, rather than on themselves, and that this new focus could influence student-staff relationships moving forward. this focus shift might also provide some clarification why gourlay et al. (2021) found that students valued live (or synchronous) learning during the pandemic, as it provided a feeling of connectedness, and an opportunity to socially construct their (deep) learning with others. students in this study furthermore reported feeling that they became https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 1422023 41(1): 142-154 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) “members” of the learning experience, rather than being “spectators” (gourlay et al., 2021). research on online teaching and learning during the covid pandemic highlighted the notion of avogogy previously described by cheney and bronack (2011) as a dimension of presence pedagogy. according to these authors avogogy describes the creation of formal structures and approaches to combine “presence-rich environments and appropriate online instructional facilitation toward supporting growth, development, and learning” (cheney & bronack, 2011:3 of 7). some practices that might enhance presence pedagogy in the online environments, and that can be linked directly to our study, include that both peers and “experts” (facilitators in our case) serve as catalysts to learning, students share personal and/or professional experience (when completing the collaborative learning activities in our case), students engage in a “community of practice” (or small-groups in our case), activities that utilise “distributed cognition” (when completing the collaborative learning activities in our case), and utilising learning materials that have relevance for the learners (through a mix of international and contextualised content in our case) (cheney & bronack, 2011:2-3 of 7). this deliberate focus on presence pedagogy could be significant for teachers when they move beyond covid-19, as the previous, more transactional (or traditional) nature of learning could have influenced student engagement negatively as seen in poor face-to-face class attendance (reported precovid), or limited online participation (in blended learning environments pre-covid). the improvement in engagement, through embedding the principles and suggested practices of presence pedagogy into the post-covid online/blended classroom, could then ultimately inform more flexibility regarding curriculum design and delivery. zhao and watterston (2021) suggest three important changes to be made post-covid to ensure more flexible curriculum design and delivery, namely 1) curricula that evolve and are personalised; 2) pedagogy that is student-centred and purposeful; and 3) delivery that incorporates the advantages of both synchronous and asynchronous learning. these suggestions link to positive student engagement factors and student-staff relationship factors (as mentioned above) and include, amongst others, improving the perceived usefulness of learning material, and ensuring students become members of the learning process. to create more flexible curricula, as suggested by zhao and watterston, additional student and staff development is required. brown (2021) warns against staff trying to replicate face-to-face teaching in an online environment, which is an important consideration moving forward, and highlights the importance of staff development for moving to a high-quality, human-centred learning environment. even though support was provided to staff during the initial transition phase to an online mode during the pandemic, some concerns were raised regarding the support provided to students in the initial transition stage to help them navigate their learning in an online environment (neuwirth et al. 2021). this failure could have caused some of the frustrations raised by students during the pandemic, as alluded to by bond, bedenlier et al. (2020). in addition to frustration about technology-enhanced learning due to students’ varying levels of knowledge and skills in relation to technology, frustration was also evident amongst students in relation to (in)equitable access to resources. baker et al. (2022) explored the possibilities for engaged pedagogy post-covid in a culturally and linguistically diverse population. they acknowledge the positive aspects of online teaching during the pandemic, such as the flexibility of expectations of students (regarding assessment, for example) and deep concern of teachers for the well-being of their students. however, the study also found that the online teaching mode highlighted the difficulties of some students regarding certain https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 1432023 41(1): 143-154 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 janse van vuuren, muller & strydom flexible curriculum design for quantitative skills development aspects, such as problems with internet connectivity, disengagement, poor time management and personal difficulties related to studying in their home environments (baker et al., 2022). these authors argue that, through careful curriculum design, the flexibility linked to blended learning could provide greater opportunities for students to engage in their learning in accordance with their unique needs (and challenges), which has not been the case in the more rigid system known before the pandemic. 3. research context the lessons shared in this article are related to two quantitative business skills modules presented at a south african university. as portrayed in figure 1, the first set of data originates from the traditional pre-covid-19 modules presented in a face-to-face mode (more than 500 students registered). with the implementation of the hard lockdown in south africa towards the end of march 2020 (i.e. end of the first quarter of 2020), the traditional module was moved to an online environment. in this online environment, teaching and learning were mostly facilitated through large-class discussion sessions with tutors, peers and/or teachers (according to the lecture timetable of the pre-covid-19 time), self-study of learning material made available on the learning management system, voluntary online consultations with teachers (when needed), and online assessment. due to challenges related to access to data reported by students, virtual private network (vpn) (global) access to university systems was provided to students, which gave them free access to data on particular urls. in the first semester of 2021, the pathways quantway core (hereafter called quantway) module was introduced in an online environment to replace the traditional module. students still had access to the vpn (global), allowing them to access the online platform(s) through which the new quantway module was presented. the pedagogy of the pathways programme was significantly different to that of the traditional module (as mentioned above). in the pathways quantway module, students followed a three-step pedagogy that is: 1) preparation exercises that had to be completed individually before; 2) the collaboration (or synchronous small group contact session); 3) followed by exercises to monitor each student’s understanding of the unit. formative and/or summative module assessments, like those included in the traditional module, were maintained to determine student performance in the module. the pedagogy employed in the pathways programme allowed for small-group discussions in a large-class setting, though online, which differed from the large-class discussion opportunities afforded in the traditional module (see figure 1). in semester 2 of 2021, the second module of the pathways programme (i.e. statway college, hereafter statway), which applied the same three-step pedagogy described above, was introduced in an online learning environment, to replace the traditional quantitative skills module previously (before covid-19) presented to business students. during this semester, first-year students in the faculty were allowed to visit the campus to use on-campus resources such as computer laboratories and the university wi-fi network. students who did not return to campus still had the vpn (global) access to the online learning platforms and/or urls. in 2022, the faculty of economic and management sciences continued with the pathways programme in an online learning mode, even though all students had the opportunity to return to campus and make use of the university resources (see figure 1). the research methodology employed to reflect on the curriculum design and delivery in these two quantitative skills modules are described in more detail below. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 1442023 41(1): 144-154 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) 4. research methodology to review the curriculum design and delivery of the two quantitative skills modules from 2020 to 2022, mixed methodologies which included quantitative and qualitative data were employed. quantitative data focused on the academic performance of the 2 949 students who were enrolled for the two quantitative skills modules from 2020 to 2022 (see tables 1 and 2). quantitative analyses of data included correlation analysis, bivariate regressions, and analysis of variance to determine the impact of a flexible, online curriculum on student academic performance within a large class context. proximity and related researcher bias are acknowledged as possible limitations of this study with qualitative data analysis. to limit such possible biases several strategies were employed. firstly, qualitative data were obtained through voluntary participation in surveys and semi-structured telephonic interviews, and anonymous verbal feedback (in the form of whatsapp® voice notes) by students. further, all telephonic interviews were conducted by an independent interviewer to limit bias in responses, as the researchers are involved in the implementation and management of the quantitative skills modules. surveys were conducted online to ensure that responses were anonymous and could not be linked to any specific student and/or teacher (facilitator). thirdly, qualitative data were analysed using a process of thematic analysis to identify themes. the analysis was performed independently by the researchers, whereafter it was discussed to ensure rigour in the process of identifying the themes. lastly, qualitative data in this study were triangulated with the objective, quantitative data to provide a more in-depth understanding of the trends noted in the quantitative data. the findings are evaluated at the end of each semester through a validation meeting between the researchers and the pathways stakeholders in the united states. during this meeting, the researchers’ quantitative findings are compared with the independent quantitative analysis performed by pathways. before commencement of the study, ethical approval for the study was obtained from the university’s general and human research ethics committee (ghrec) with ethical clearance number ufs-hsd2020/1111/144/21. participants agreed to participate voluntarily in the study and written or verbal consent was obtained from each participant prior to data collection. participants could withdraw from the study at any time without penalty. 5. results and discussion the study included all students who were enrolled in the two quantitative skills modules mentioned in this article (n=2 949). the 2020 content, pedagogical approach and results served as a baseline for the results of the following years – after implementation of the pathways programmes in 2021 (see figure 1). table 1 provides the numbers of participants who enrolled for the two quantitative modules included in our study. at the time of writing this paper, data for the second semester of 2022 were not available yet, and are not included. it should also be noted that some students enrolled for both quantitative skills modules, as they are presented as sequential modules of the business programmes. as the data portrayed in table 1 are linked to enrolments, and not individual students, those students are included in the demographic data for both modules. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 1452023 41(1): 145-154 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 janse van vuuren, muller & strydom flexible curriculum design for quantitative skills development table 1: module enrolments for two quantitative skills modules 2020-2022 year quantway (1st semester) statway (2nd semester) 2020 497 528 2021 583 614 2022 727 not available the academic performance of participants in the first-semester module had steadily increased since 2020 in terms of the average final mark obtained (see figure 3). although the success rate of students passing the module remained the same, at 87%, in the year of pathways implementation (i.e. 2021), it increased to 93% in 2022. the most evident change in academic performance of participants in the study is the proportion of students who passed the module with distinction (see table 3). for the review period, the percentage of students who passed the first-semester module with distinction increased from 42% in 2020 to 60% in 2022. this may be indicative of a deeper understanding of the quantitative concepts by students after the implementation of the pedagogical changes accompanying the implementation of the pathways programme from 2021 (see figure 1). sequential modules of the business programmes. as the data portrayed in table 1 are linked to enrolments, and not individual students, those students are included in the demographic data for both modules. table 1: module enrolments for two quantitative skills modules 2020-2022 year quantway (1st semester) statway (2nd semester) 2020 497 528 2021 583 614 2022 727 not available the academic performance of participants in the first-semester module had steadily increased since 2020 in terms of the average final mark obtained (see figure 3). although the success rate of students passing the module remained the same, at 87%, in the year of pathways implementation (i.e. 2021), it increased to 93% in 2022. the most evident change in academic performance of participants in the study is the proportion of students who passed the module with distinction (see table 3). for the review period, the percentage of students who passed the firstsemester module with distinction increased from 42% in 2020 to 60% in 2022. this may be indicative of a deeper understanding of the quantitative concepts by students after the implementation of the pedagogical changes accompanying the implementation of the pathways programme from 2021 (see figure 1). figure 3: overall academic performance in the first-semester quantitative skills module 2020–2022 0 20 40 60 80 100 average final mark success rate pass with distinction pe rc en ta ge 2020 2021 2022 figure 3: overall academic performance in the first-semester quantitative skills module 2020-2022 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 1462023 41(1): 146-154 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) figure 4: overall academic performance in the second-semester quantitative skills module 2020– 2022 similar improvements in participants’ academic performance were observed in the secondsemester module. figure 4 illustrates that all three data points showed improvement, with the average final mark, the success rate, and the proportion of participants with distinctions increasing by 5%, 6% and 8% respectively from 2020 to 2021. this improvement in academic performance is noteworthy given that, for most participants enrolled, this second-semester module would have been their first exposure to statistics/statistical concepts. an analysis of variance on the three cohorts enrolled in eqmb1514/quantway for the period 2020–2022 was conducted to determine whether a statistically significant difference in academic performance, measured through the final mark, was evident. the analysis of variance to compare the performance over three cohorts in the second-semester module (eqmb1524) is not included in this study, as the final marks for the 2022 cohort were not available at the time of writing. the shapiro-wilk normality test was applied and indicates that the distribution of the final mark for the three cohorts is skewed. further, levene’s test indicated a violation of homogeneity (p≤0.01). therefore, the non-parametric kruskal-wallis test was applied to compare the academic performance across the three cohorts. the results are presented in table 2. the kruskal-wallis test indicates statistically significant results for the cohorts (p < 0.05, 0.000000131). to understand the differences between group pairs, the dunn’s test of multiple comparisons, which served as a post-hoc test to the kruskal-wallis, was applied. table 2: results for the comparison of final marks across cohorts 2020–2022 0 20 40 60 80 100 average final mark success rate pass with distinction pe rc en ta ge 2020 2021 figure 4: overall academic performance in the second-semester quantitative skills module 2020-2022 similar improvements in participants’ academic performance were observed in the secondsemester module. figure 4 illustrates that all three data points showed improvement, with the average final mark, the success rate, and the proportion of participants with distinctions increasing by 5%, 6% and 8% respectively from 2020 to 2021. this improvement in academic performance is noteworthy given that, for most participants enrolled, this second-semester module would have been their first exposure to statistics/statistical concepts. an analysis of variance on the three cohorts enrolled in eqmb1514/quantway for the period 2020-2022 was conducted to determine whether a statistically significant difference in academic performance, measured through the final mark, was evident. the analysis of variance to compare the performance over three cohorts in the second-semester module (eqmb1524) is not included in this study, as the final marks for the 2022 cohort were not available at the time of writing. the shapiro-wilk normality test was applied and indicates that the distribution of the final mark for the three cohorts is skewed. further, levene’s test indicated a violation of homogeneity (p≤0.01). therefore, the non-parametric kruskal-wallis test was applied to compare the academic performance across the three cohorts. the results are presented in table 2. the kruskal-wallis test indicates statistically significant results for the cohorts (p < 0.05, 0.000000131). to understand the differences between group pairs, the dunn’s test of multiple comparisons, which served as a post-hoc test to the kruskal-wallis, was applied. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 1472023 41(1): 147-154 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 janse van vuuren, muller & strydom flexible curriculum design for quantitative skills development table 2: results for the comparison of final marks across cohorts 2020-2022 post-hoc: dunn test variable group1 group2 n1 n2 test statistic p-value final mark 2020 cohort 2021 cohort 495 577 4.4450920 0.0000088 final mark 2020 cohort 2022 cohort 495 727 5.3644361 0.0000001 final mark 2021 cohort 2022 cohort 577 727 0.7223671 0.4700688 there are statistically significant differences in academic performance between the 2020 (pre-pathways) cohort, the 2021 (pathways) cohort (p < 0.001, 0.0000176) and the 2022 (pathways continued) cohort (p <0.001, 0.0000002). interestingly, there is no statistically significant difference between the 2021 cohort and 2022 cohort (p< 0.001, 0.4700688) when comparing the academic performance of the two years where pathways was offered. when reviewing the positive findings regarding academic achievement reported in this study – achieved during the covid-19 pandemic – behavioural engagement might provide some insights. bond, buntins et al. (2020) link achievement to other behavioural constructs, such as confidence and attention/focus. confidence, especially within the context of quantitative skills (or mathematics) development, plays a crucial role and should be considered by this study. the three-step pedagogy employed in the pathways programme is based on a clear set of drivers that focus on supporting students to develop skills and maintain positive mindsets, and to ensure that students see material as interesting and relevant, amongst other factors (mckay, 2016). through these drivers, student confidence is built, which translates into students being willing to share their learning more openly with their peers and/or teachers (facilitators), in turn, building greater confidence and leading to a positive snowball effect. through these learning collaborations, students remain attentive and focused, and link further to increased engagement, as alluded to by bond, buntins et al. (2020). student comments support the increase in their confidence and its link with increased academic performance, as reported below. the biggest benefit from this module is the confidence that i gained from working in a group and being comfortable telling my thoughts and input to the group. another benefit is that my general quantitative reasoning skills have developed more and improved. (participant 47) i have gained confidence to work in groups when it comes to the math. it makes it easier learning some concepts because if you do not understand your group members can help. (participant 49) the group work gave me confidence and when is [i] started engaging more and more in collaborations, my math improved and i can confidently say that my quantitative skills are https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 1482023 41(1): 148-154 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) on another level. i even apply them in everyday life, now i know why math is so useful. (participant 112) based on the discussion above, the importance of including small-group collaborations in curriculum design for quantitative skills development (even in large classes, as in our study) is evident. however, within the south african context, with varying challenges regarding data and/or device availability, and as also alluded to by baker et al. (2022), curriculum flexibility should be considered within this reality. in our study, from the second semester of 2021 (see figure 1), students who faced challenges relating to data and/or devices, were provided with access to university resources – computer laboratories and the university wi-fi network. this enabled students to engage in small-group discussions, even if it was on campus and not from home. this type of flexibility in the curriculum delivery enabled more students to engage actively, and should be considered in post-covid blended and/or online offerings. in addition to data and/or device challenges, technical difficulties, and even the technical knowledge and skills of students (as referred to by bond, bedenlier et al. 2020), should be considered in future blended and/or online offerings. such difficulties could lead to frustration in students, and even disengagement from the learning process, as mentioned earlier. some comments in this regard by students in our study are shared below. when students were asked to describe the challenges they experienced in the module, they responded as follows: module 1 and 2 because i was[n]’t able to attend it because of technical changes. (participant 107) accessing the units frequently was a problem as sometimes i would be thrown out of the unit to start again. it was probably more of a technical issue than anything. (participant 120) with the implementation of the pathways programme, students who were enrolled in the modules included in our study had access to technical support by both the pathways and the university technical teams. this was especially important at the beginning of the module (see the comment above referring to modules 1 and 2) and should be an important consideration for future blended and/or online programmes. even though the provision of technical support in a module might seem cumbersome, the data from our study indicate the importance of affording students the opportunity to participate in small-group discussions (or collaborations); there is a statistically significant correlation between the completion of (i.e. participation in) collaborations and the academic performance of participants in our study (r = 0.41, p< .001 in 2021 and r = 0.60, p< .000 in 2022). in the case of students who could not participate in a synchronous collaboration session, students were allowed to submit their groupwork (or collaboration) assignments individually to include another layer of flexibility in the curriculum design and delivery. this approach provided the pathway to an alternative asynchronous scenario, where self-regulated learning promoted the completion of the task by the participant. such options could also be considered when moving beyond covid-19 into a more humancentred blended and/or online environment. with continuous changes to the national and university covid-19 regulations during the study period, and the resulting changes in the two quantitative skills modules (see figure 1), student and staff (facilitator) experiences were measured throughout by means of surveys, whatsapp® voice notes, semi-structured interviews, and module evaluations. a survey on the student experience was administered to participants after they had completed the first-semester module, quantway, in 2021 and 2022; response rates of 47% (n=273) and https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 1492023 41(1): 149-154 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 janse van vuuren, muller & strydom flexible curriculum design for quantitative skills development 31% (n=223) respectively were achieved. table 3 provides an overview of some of the responses that were considered in the directives suggested for quantitative skills modules beyond covid-19 (see figure 5), and which are relevant to student engagement literature. note that the responses generally exclude responses linked to aspects discussed earlier in the article, namely technical difficulties, availability of data and/or devices, confidence and attention/focus. table 3: student experiences in the first semesters of 2021 and 2022 which experiences in this module were valuable and would you like to see in other modules that require similar quantitative skills? the groupwork was helpful and mind opening as it opens one up to different ways of solving problems and it enhances one’s creativity. (participant 91) the collaborations and preparations, the preparations prepare you on what to expect in the collaboration, which makes the collaboration go smoothly. the collaborations push you to engage and participate, thus boosting one’s confidence and furthermore improving one’s quantitative skills. (participant 111) the module review questions, and memo was very helpful especially in preparation for tests. (participant 139) the 5-minute video summaries are quite reflective on the lessons and helps one think of the challenges they had in the lesson so that they can improve themselves. (participant 158) using real-life situations everytime in an exercise. (participant 175) this module has units that are broken down into sections that build on to each other, the preparation builds your background knowledge, the collaborations were extremely helpful in terms of having us draw ideas from one another to getting more confidence to work alone in the exercises. this is very important and i think it should be implemented in other modules. (participant 187) is to connect what we are learning with what happening in the real world. (participant 272) describe the biggest benefits you have seen from using the learning approaches required for this module. to make friends who will help through the academic, learning different study skills from them. (participant 166) i learned to break down work into different sections that work together, this is a very important skill in making it less overwhelming. groupwork was good as i learned a great deal in terms of how to approach a question and skills in working with teams. (participant 187) the biggest benefit i have seen was the fact that my reasoning, explaining, people skills and even speaking english had improved a lot since i had to work in a group for this module. (participant 207) firstly, the biggest benefit from group work is seeing each individual’s approach or technique in solving a difficult question. this has helped me solve similar questions and understand difficult questions. secondly, the learning approaches used in this module are extremely helpful as they allow a lot of practice before you can submit your answers to the questions provided. (participant 241) i got to understand a lot of things from a wide variety on how to approach certain questions. my marks improved a lot when i was doing the exercises and tests. (participant 274) https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 1502023 41(1): 150-154 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) describe the biggest challenges you have had using the learning approaches required for this module. i did not [have] any serious challenges the biggest was probably finishing the work on time. (participant 138) not being able to share my screen as i use my phone to learn and that we lack tutorials on how to share. (participant 161) i think that the american context and setting was definitely the biggest challenge. i believe that if the content was more orientated on south african or african context (it) would have deminished [sic] the impact of the challenges. (participant 206) the biggest challenge i had was being a group leader because i was a shy individual. (participant 227) i had trouble adapting to the fact that i have to do a preparation before class and working in a group everyday. (participant 271) what was missing from this module that you would like to be included in future? i would have liked consistency in the group members that we were allocated to work with. it makes doing the work harder when one constantly has to adjust to working with a new group of people every few lessons. i felt that it was unnecessary and frustrating at times. (participant 47) more south african concepts. (participant 85) more difficult or engaging work, i know it is an unpopular opinion but it is true if we as students do want to grow. (i hope if this is the case in the following semester, i am not held liable as that student who made it harder for others.) (participant 152) a session dedicated to the learners to get to know each other in their groups before continuing with work. (participant 274) the feedback provided in table 3 reports that the importance of a human-centred approach to teaching and learning was repeatedly emphasised by students in our study. feedback is mostly based on graduate attributes and/or skills learned, rather than the specific disciplinary content. however, the academic performance of participants in our study (see figures 3 & 4) confirm that disciplinary content was understood well, and that deep learning might even have taken place. much of the learning and skills development that took place in the modules, as reported on in this article, could be attributed to teacher (facilitator) presence in the module. continuous communication with the teacher (facilitator) was identified as valuable by some of the study participants (see quotes below). having a good communication with my facilitator and also working hand in hand with different kind of people.it was quite a good experience. (participant 184) having collaboration with my facilitator and being able to ask questions. (participant 213) however, several participants in the study also alluded to the absence of a teacher (facilitator) to explain the content to them, indicating their “connectedness” with more traditional, transactional ways of teaching. when considering moving beyond covid-19, and as included in the directives going forward (see figure 5), explaining the pedagogy to students is an important aspect related to the study findings reported here. some comments by participants in this regard are the following: https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 1512023 41(1): 151-154 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 janse van vuuren, muller & strydom flexible curriculum design for quantitative skills development more help from the facilitator during collaborations, i think more facilitators should be added because the facilitator only enters the collaboration and for only 2 minutes at most 5 minutes. (participant 112) maybe the facilitator can give us class and explain the work, rather than when we must do groupwork. (participant 124) this section of the article focused on the results obtained for students enrolled in two quantitative skills modules from 2020 to 2022 at a south african university. from these results, important directives are proposed for quantitative skills development modules when moving beyond covid-19 to a sustainable, futuristic teaching and learning environment that integrate the best practices from pre-covid-19 and covid-19 experiences. 6. limitations and recommendations for further research proximity and researcher bias as possible limitations of this study are addressed earlier in the methodology section. generalisability of results could be a further limitation of this study, as it was only researched at one institution and in particular modules and contexts. however, the findings could provide valuable insights into the utilisation of a flexible curriculum structure, especially within a large context. future research could focus on implementing similar teaching and learning approaches in different modules and different contexts to enhance generalisability of findings. other focus areas for further research could include the social emotional learning facets within student-staff relationships, student experiences and engagement, especially within a technology-enhanced environment. 7. conclusion moving beyond covid-19 is an exciting, but challenging time for the higher education sector. two key themes emerged from the literature published on covid-19 teaching and learning experiences, and were confirmed by our study, namely the importance of flexibility within curriculum design and delivery, and a human-centred focus of the teaching and learning space (including student and staff experiences/engagement as well as student-staff relationships). in moving towards a high-quality, human-centred post-covid-19 space, the importance of integrating strategies directly linked to these key themes cannot be ignored. figure 5 provides directives to create a flexible, human-centred quantitative skills development environment, based on the results of our study. interestingly, in 2014 (pre-covid-19), barnett, through the higher education academy, had already alluded to a set of conditions for flexibility to secure a more responsive higher education system. the conditions proposed by barnett (2014) that are linked to the directives suggested in this article are: 1) offering students access to suitable materials and experiences; 2) offering academic interaction with other students; 3) offering access to tutors in real-time interaction (i.e. small-group collaboration in the context of our study); 4) enabling students to provide feedback on their total (learning) experience; 5) providing a pedagogical openness; 6) exhibiting academic and educational structure; and 7) offering sufficient challenge to “stretch” students, yet being critically appropriate for each stage of learning. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 1522023 41(1): 152-154 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) and experiences; 2) offering academic interaction with other students; 3) offering access to tutors in real-time interaction (i.e. small-group collaboration in the context of our study); 4) enabling students to provide feedback on their total (learning) experience; 5) providing a pedagogical openness; 6) exhibiting academic and educational structure; and 7) offering sufficient challenge to “stretch” students, yet being critically appropriate for each stage of learning. s tu de nt -s ta ff re la tio ns hi ps fl ex ib ili ty in c ur ri cu lu m de si gn & m od e of de liv er y creating an environment with equitable resources (e.g. allowing access to university resources to participate in online activities) allowing for the use of multiple devices (e.g. mobile, laptop, tablet), and ensuring appropriate support for all device types allowing flexibility in learning material (e.g. additional resources for varying circumstances) understanding group-work dynamics and allowing flexibility (when appropriate) allowing students to work at different paces, and to submit work in a more flexible way (with/without penalties) allowing individual submissions of groupwork assignments (with/without penalties) s tu de nt & s ta ff ex pe ri en ce s/ en ga ge m en t creating clear scaffolding of learning for students creating online, synchronous small-group collaborative learning spaces in a large-class setting providing technical support, especially at the beginning of a module, and technical skills development (for students and staff) explaining the pedagogy and importance of different teaching and learning activities in developing skills creating content that is linked to the real world, which ensures relatedness and relevance of content to students focused curriculum design that focuses on preparation, collaboration, exercises, and assessment ensuring the continuous “presence” of teachers (facilitators) in the module, to answer questions including short videos/podcasts as summaries and/or explanations to increase teacher (facilitator) “presence” being humancentric in all teaching and learning activities (e.g. allowing for some flexibility, building connections, etc.) figure 5: directives for creating a flexible, human-centred quantitative skills development environment the positive results obtained during the covid-19 pandemic led to important curriculum decisions for a normalised future in these modules, which are built on flexibility and a human-centred view (and linked to the directives provided in figure 5). these decisions included, for example, the continuation of the modules in an online environment, even when students returned to campus. the main reason for this decision was to create an opportunity for students to engage in small groups, even within a large-class setting (see table 1 for enrolment numbers), whilst having access to university resources to facilitate online learning. such intentional flexibility could, thus, provide a basis for a more human-centred approach to teaching and learning in a normalised post-covid-19 educational space. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 1532023 41(1): 153-154 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 janse van vuuren, muller & strydom flexible curriculum design for quantitative skills development acknowledgements the authors would like to acknowledge the continuous support and mentoring provided by the wested carnegie math pathways programme team for the implementation of the pathways programme at a south african university. without the wested carnegie maths team’s input on multiple levels, the implementation would not have been successful, especially during the covid-19 pandemic, during which many adaptations had to be made to accommodate the changing national and university covid-19 restrictions. references baker, s., anderson, j., burke, r., de fazio, t., due, c., hartley, l., molla, t., morison, c. mude, 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teaching and learning. frontiers in communication, 12(3). zhao, y. & watterston, j. 2021. the changes we need: education post covid-19. journal of educational change, 22:3-12. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-021-09417-3 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6337 https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00118-3 https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2021.1986372 https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2021.1986372 https://www.carnegiefoundation.org/blog/what-living-improvement-really-looks-like/ https://www.carnegiefoundation.org/blog/what-living-improvement-really-looks-like/ https://doi.org/10.1177/1477971420947738 https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.13190 https://doi.org/10.1111/ejed.12330 https://doi.org/10.1111/ejed.12330 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2020.101538 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2020.101538 https://www.wested.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/cmp-brochure-508.pdf https://www.wested.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/cmp-brochure-508.pdf https://www.wested.org/project/carnegie-math-pathways-improving-student-learning-and-success-in-mathematics-and-dramatically-increasing-college-completion/# https://www.wested.org/project/carnegie-math-pathways-improving-student-learning-and-success-in-mathematics-and-dramatically-increasing-college-completion/# https://www.wested.org/project/carnegie-math-pathways-improving-student-learning-and-success-in-mathematics-and-dramatically-increasing-college-completion/# https://doi.org/10.1128/jmbe.v22i1.2385 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-021-09417-3 702022 40(4): 70-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 academic burnout among open distance e-learning students during the covid-19 pandemic abstract the transition to online learning at a time of intensive efforts to ensure that the academic project continued under the trying conditions brought on by the covid-19 pandemic placed intense pressure on both staff and students, increasing their workload. the increased workload placed students at a risk of burnout. while most burnout research focuses on the workplace, there is growing recognition that study activities can have a similar impact on students. the study drew on the conceptualisation of various authors on burnout which is conceived as three subdomains, namely, emotional exhaustion, cynicism and feelings of low accomplishment or inefficacy. this study made use of a cross-sectional survey design. the sample for the study was drawn from students at an open distance e-learning (odel) institution in south africa using a census sampling approach. the findings of this study show relatively low levels of burnout and high levels of study engagement among respondents. this is despite most respondents reporting being employed while studying. furthermore, the relationship between dropout intention and burnout was weak but significant. further areas of research in this field could include students from contact institutions, or a focus on postgraduate students who are employed while studying or explore gender differences among students in different fields of study. keywords: academic burnout, study engagement, online distance education, covid-19 teaching transitions, utrecht work engagement scale for students, oldenburg burnout inventory for students. 1. introduction the transition to online learning at various institutions marked a time of intensive efforts to ensure that the academic project continued under the trying conditions brought on by the covid-19 pandemic (mishra, sahoo & pandey, 2021). prior to covid-19, at the institution under study, the conditions for online learning were in place but not widely used and assessment was primarily conducted in brick and mortar facilities. a swift transition to fully online examinations had to take place as the regulations governing the state of lockdown made physical examinations unfeasible. this transition disrupted the academic year and author: dr angelo fynn1 affiliation: 1university of south africa, south africa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v40i4.6298 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(4): 70-88 published: 23 december 2022 received: 18 may 2021 accepted: 24 october 2022 research article http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0480-8926 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 712022 40(4): 71-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 fynn academic burnout among open distance e-learning students during the covid-19 pandemic required academics to develop new examinations, assessment plans and tuition plans to accommodate the changes in circumstances. one of the changes made at the institution was a mass shift to continuous online assessment. this change resulted in an increased assessment workload for students where those taking a full academic workload faced the possibility of completing up to 100 assessments (10 per module) over the course of a year (fynn & mashile, 2022). distance and e-learning (odel. the institution under study consists of a large proportion of students who work fulltime (40%) and a further 46% who are classified as unemployed, which means that while they are not employed they may still be engaged in seeking income generating opportunities. this trend is not exclusive to the institution under study as the number of students who combine work and study have increased worldwide (creed et al., 2022). these students not only carry the burden of their academic workload but also have to manage maintaining paid work and the responsibilities of family life ( jones, samra & lucassen, 2021). developing effective coping mechanisms to manage these multiple, demanding roles can mitigate the impact of burnout among students. these coping mechanisms can be developed through effective and consistent support from the institution. however, makoe and nsamba (2019) point out that distance education students, typically considered non-traditional students as is the case in this paper, often receive inadequate support which may cause them to abandon their studies. online distance education students at the institution under study faced several factors that could put them at risk of academic burnout. as mentioned below, burnout can have detrimental effects on students’ academic performance. therefore, it was necessary to determine not only the prevalence of burnout symptoms among this population but also their levels of study engagement during the teaching transitions brought on by the covid-19 pandemic. 2. burnout maslach, schaufeli and leiter (2001) stated that burnout is a prolonged response to chronic emotional and physical stressors on the job. burnout is a chronic ongoing reaction to one’s work, which is typically a negatively affective state that is not immediately reversible by taking rest or changing activity (demerouti et al., 2002) at the same time contributing to the understanding of the development of burnout as a long-term effect of impairing work and job design. demerouti et al. (2002) further argue that burnout is a chronic mental health impairment characterised by enduring physical, cognitive and emotional deterioration. burnout has three components, namely emotional exhaustion, cynicism and feelings of low accomplishment or inefficacy (cheng et al., 2020; jackson et al., 1998; leiter & maslach, 2017; maslach et al., 2001; taris, schreurs & van iersel-van silfhout, 2001). the exhaustion component represents the individual experience of being overextended and depleted physically and emotionally (maslach et al., 2001; maslach & leiter, 2017). in this phase individuals feel drained, used up without any source of replenishment, and lack the energy to face another day or problem (maslach & leiter, 2017; robins, roberts & sarris, 2018). the exhaustion component is the most frequently reported symptom of burnout and is often the first sign that people are having a problem (maslach & leiter, 2017). exhaustion is seen to prompt individuals to distance themselves from the workplace cognitively and emotionally. cynicism refers to the development of negative tendencies toward work, creating a pessimistic attitude resulting in negative behaviours toward work activities (tajeri moghadam, abbasi & khoshnodifar, 2020). depersonalisation, as part of cynicism, is seen as an attempt http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 722022 40(4): 72-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) to put distance between the self and service recipients by ignoring qualities that make them unique individuals and rather perceive recipients as objects of one’s work (aguayo et al., 2019) as students must cope with a variety of academic, social and personal challenges. if these demands persist, and if there are insufficient resources with which to address them, they will eventually provoke stress. when stress is present for long periods of time, it can lead to academic burnout syndrome, the signs of which are emotional exhaustion, depersonalisation and inadequate personal accomplishment. this paper considers certain sociodemographic factors (age, sex, children, marital status, employment status, degree subject, faculty, academic year). distancing is such a common and immediate reaction to exhaustion that research has established consistent links between cynicism and exhaustion (byrne et al., 2013; maslach et al., 2001; watts & robertson, 2011) which is particularly prominent for staff in human service sectors. burnout reactions have been characterised as the depletion of emotional reserves (emotional exhaustion). the inefficiency or lack of accomplishment component refers to feelings of incompetence and a lack of productivity at work (maslach et al., 2001; schwarzer, schmitz & tang, 2000). according to maslach et al. (2001), a workplace with chronic, overwhelming demands is likely to erode an individual’s sense of effectiveness relative to his or her job function. this component may arise as a result of exhaustion, cynicism or both or may develop in parallel, particularly in working conditions where there is a chronic lack of resources. 3. academic burnout while there is a substantial amount of research into burnout among working populations, there has been relatively little study of the burnout phenomenon among student populations although there has been an increase in attention on the issue more recently (asikainen et al., 2020a; stoeber et al., 2011; tajeri moghadam et al., 2020; vizoso, arias-gundín & rodríguez, 2019) few studies have investigated passion for studying and the role passion for studying plays in student engagement and well-being. the present study investigated the relationships between harmonious and obsessive passion for studying and academic engagement (vigour, dedication and absorption. studies on burnout among students focus heavily on medical students (aghajari et al., 2018; cheng et al., 2020; chong et al., 2020; lee, choi, & chae lee, 2017) and there have been relatively fewer studies that focus on general student populations. there is growing recognition, that while students may not typically be formally employed, their studies include mandatory activities, such as submitting assignments, class attendance, etc., that can be considered work (stoeber et al., 2011; wei, wang, & macdonald, 2015). research on academic burnout among university students shows that burnout is associated with poor academic performance (aghajari et al., 2018; asikainen et al., 2020a; stoeber et al., 2011). academic burnout is defined as an experience characterised by feelings of emotional, physical and cognitive exhaustion and an attitude of withdrawal and detachment from one’s studies (reis, xanthopoulou & tsaousis, 2015). in this definition, the demands that students face are likely to produce feelings of exhaustion when they exceed the resources that the student has available to address these demands (bakker & demerouti, 2007; reis et al., 2015; xanthopoulou et al., 2007). the cynicism sub-domain, in particular, is viewed as detrimental to study engagement and worsens poor study performance. cynicism is believed to lead to feelings disinterested toward academic work such as assignments, class attendance and assessments (pouratashi & zamani, 2018). wei et al. (2015) stated that cynicism, one of the academic burnout symptoms, is caused by frustration and negative beliefs due to unmet expectations. in other words, cynical attitude among students is a negative belief caused by http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 732022 40(4): 73-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 fynn academic burnout among open distance e-learning students during the covid-19 pandemic mismatched expectations between what the student expected from college/university life and what they are experiencing (asikainen et al., 2020a; wei et al., 2015). cynicism can hold both positive and negative aspects and, as such, can be viewed as a positive coping mechanism against a world that is less than it should be (wei et al., 2015). the negative outcomes of cynicism include poor performance and deliberate physical and psychological withdrawal from studies (wei et al., 2015). another factor that can influence the prevalence or impact of academic burnout is boundary flexibility where students, particularly working students, are able to shift the boundaries of their work, family and study lives to adapt to changing conditions (creed et al., 2022). creed et al. (2022) stated that students who can control the organisation of their work and study activities experience less stress and reduce the potential for burnout. 4. study engagement engagement is viewed as a positive, work/study-related, persistent cognitive-affective state that is not focused on a single situation or object (schaufeli et al., 2002). engagement, more broadly, consists of three key areas, namely vigour, dedication and absorption (bakker, albrecht & leiter, 2011; schaufeli et al., 2002; vizoso et al., 2018). vigour is characterised by high levels of energy and resilience despite challenges or obstacles and the willingness to invest in one’s work (bakker et al., 2011; schaufeli et al., 2002). dedication is characterised by “a sense of significance, enthusiasm, inspiration, pride, and challenge” (schaufeli et al., 2002: 456), while absorption is characterised by concentrating fully and being engrossed in one’s work so that time passes by swiftly (vizoso et al., 2018). employees with higher levels of engagement are physically healthier, experience more satisfaction of their psychological needs and are more committed than those with low engagement (borst, kruyen, & lako, 2019). given that study engagement and work engagement are premised on the same construct, namely engagement, it stands to reason that these findings would extend to students as well. research on study engagement has included examining the role of psychological capital, which refers to the self-efficacy, optimism, hope and resilience of students (barratt & duran, 2021; vîrgă, pattusamy & kumar, 2020), student motives for attending university (hyytinen et al., 2022), the impact of covid-19 (salmela-aro et al., 2022), learning styles (asikainen et al., 2020b), work-study boundary flexibility (creed et al., 2022). there is a paucity of research on burnout among students which could inform academic workloads and student wellness initiatives. given the negative impact that academic burnout could have on performance and health, it is therefore imperative to develop a fuller understanding of the prevalence of academic burnout. 5. research questions to address the issues raised in the last paragraph above, the following research questions were raised: 1. what is the prevalence of burnout symptoms among distance education students during the transition to fully online learning? 2. do burnout symptoms predict the level of student engagement? 3. does burnout predict the likelihood of future dropout as measured by dropout intention? 4. does study engagement predict the likelihood of future dropout as measured by dropout intention? http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 742022 40(4): 74-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) in the pursuit of answering the above questions, the following hypotheses will be tested: 1. hypothesis 1: there is a negative relationship between study engagement and dropout intention 2. hypothesis 2: study engagement negatively predicts dropout intention 3. hypothesis 3: there is a positive relationship between burnout and dropout intention 4. hypothesis 4: burnout positively predicts dropout intention 6. method this study adopted a cross-sectional, survey design as it aimed to draw on a cross-section of students from the institution to ascertain the impact of the shift to online learning during the transition to online learning. cross sectional surveys are flexible, relatively quick to implement, inexpensive, lend themselves to hypothesis testing and allow researchers to conduct studies where information is needed about what is happening currently (connelly, 2016). 6.1 sample the population for this study were all undergraduate and honours students at the unit of study. the objective of this study is to ascertain the impact of the transition to online learning among students. while it should be acknowledged that master’s and doctoral students may also have been exposed to conditions that could lead to burnout, the purpose of this paper was to focus on undergraduate and honours students. the institution from which the participants were recruited had enrolled approximately 360 971 undergraduate and honours students in 2020. the sample for this study is 10% of the population, which equates to 36 000 students. 6.2 data collection data collection was conducted online through anonymous surveys. students were sent an anonymous e-mail invitation to participate in the study. the e-mails were sent by the ict department on behalf of the researcher to preserve anonymity. the platform used for data collection, qualtrics, has been used in numerous studies based at the institution and meets the security and privacy requirements of the institution. 6.3 instrument the instruments used in this study are the demographics inventory, oldenburg burnout inventory for students (olbi-s) and the utrecht work engagement scale for students (uwes-s). the demographics inventory is self-developed and gathers information related to the age, race, gender, qualification, college, year of study, employment status. the aforementioned variables are known to play a role in burnout and engagement. the olbi-s was developed in response to conceptual and measurement deficiencies in the maslach burnout inventory (mbi). the mbi is the most widely used instrument for studying burnout. however, the mbi has been criticised for not including impaired cognitive functioning as a symptom of burnout. furthermore, the depersonalisation and personal accomplishment domain of the mbi was determined to be debatable in the diagnosis of burnout (sakakibara et al., 2020). bakker et al. (2004) argued that personal accomplishment shows a weak relationship with the exhaustion and cynicism components of burnout. the olbi-s, like its http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 752022 40(4): 75-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 fynn academic burnout among open distance e-learning students during the covid-19 pandemic parent instrument the olbi, has sixteen items, eight items measuring exhaustion and eight items measuring disengagement (reis et al., 2015). each subscale contains four negatively worded items and four positively worded items to provide a balanced outlook for respondents (reis et al., 2015). burnout level score ranges are represented in table 1. low levels of burnout score less than 44 on the olbi-s, moderate levels of burnout score between 44-59 and high levels of burnout score greater than 59. table 1: burnout score ranges level range scores low <44 moderate 44-59 high >59 (oana tipa, tudose & pucarea, 2019) in terms of the olbi-s subscales, the score ranges are represented in table 2. for the exhaustion component low level scores are less than 21, moderate scores are between 21-29 and high is greater than 29. table 2: burnout score ranges per component burnout component level range scores exhaustion low <21 moderate 21-29 high >29 disengagement low <24 moderate 24-31 high >31 (oana tipa et al., 2019) the disengagement scale low level scores are less than 24, moderate scores are between 24-31 and high scores are greater than 31. these norm scores will be used to interpret the findings of this study. the uwes-s operationalises the concept of work engagement into three domains. the first ̶ vigour ̶ refers to high levels of energy, willingness to exert effort and mental resilience in your line of work (lekutle & nel, 2012). dedication refers to strong involvement in your work, a sense of significance about your work and pride in your work (lekutle & nel, 2012; van den broeck et al., 2008) the presence of job demands (e.g., work pressure, while absorption refers to difficulty tearing oneself away from work and being unaware of time lapsing due to concentration on your work (lesener, gusy & wolter, 2019) this meta-analytic review uses longitudinal evidence to validate the essential assumptions within the jd-r model. burnout is generally viewed as the erosion of engagement (lekutle & nel, 2012). the instrument consists of fourteen items divided across the three domains described above. the instrument has been tested for validity and reliability in a sample of the south african university population (mostert et al., 2007) construct equivalence and reliability of adapted versions of the maslach burnout inventory student survey (mbi ss). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 762022 40(4): 76-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) in table 3 the norm scores for the uwes -9s are provided. the scores are categorised based on the mean score of the scale or subscale and are categorised into five categories. vigour is classified as very low when it has a score below 2.00, low when it has a score between 2.01-3.25, average when it has a score between 3.26-4.80, high when it has a score between 4.81-5.65 and very high when it has a score above 5.66. table 3: uwes-s norm scores vigour dedication absorption total score very low ≤2.00 ≤1.33 ≤1.17 ≤1.77 low 2.01-3.25 1.34-2.90 1.18-2.33 1.78-2.88 average 3.26-4.80 2.91-4.70 2.34-4.20 2.89-4.66 high 4.81-5.65 4.71-5.69 4.21-5.33 4.67-5.50 very high ≥5.66 ≥5.70 ≥5.34 ≥5.51 m 4.01 3.88 3.35 3.74 sd 1.13 1.38 1.32 1.17 se .01 .01 .01 .01 range .00-6.00 .00-6.00 .00-6.00 .00-6.00 (schaufeli & bakker, 2004) dedication is classified as very low when it has a score below 1.33, low when it has a score between 1.34 and 2.90, average when it has a score between 2.91 and 4.70, high when it has a score between 4.71 and 5.69 and very high when it has a score above 5.70. absorption is classified as very low when it has a score below 1.17, low when it has a score between 1.18 and 2.33, average when it has a score between 2.34 and 4.20, high when it has a score between 4.21 and 5.33 and very high when it has a score above 5.34. the total score is classified as very low when it has a score below 1.77, low when it has a score between 1.78 and 2.88, average when it has a score between 2.89 and 4.66, high when it has a score between 4.67 and 5.50 and very high when it has a score above 5.51. these norms will be used to interpret the findings of this study. 6.4 data analysis descriptive statistics and measures of central tendency were used to analyse demographic items such as race, age, gender and position. the scores for the uwes-s were calculated by adding the items and dividing by the number of items (schaufeli & bakker, 2004). the olbi-s scores were calculated by adding up the items that result in a total score of between 16 and 64. scores for the olbi-s and the uwes-s were analysed using the cut-off values specified by the relevant literature and elaborated on above. this was followed by exploratory factor analysis to determine whether the underlying factor structure fits that of international samples. linear regression was conducted to establish whether the variables under study predicted dropout intention among students. 6.5 ethical considerations the study received ethical approval from the institutional college of human sciences research ethics workgroup with reference number 90169298_crec_chs_2021. respondent anonymity was guaranteed in the invitation e-mail and implemented by collecting no identifiable information and making use of automated e-mail distribution software run by another department within the same university. the researcher therefore had no access to 3𝑥𝑥 = 12 𝑥𝑥 2𝑦𝑦(𝑥𝑥 + 2𝑦𝑦 − 3𝑥𝑥 + 4𝑦𝑦�) − 3 1. 2𝑦𝑦 × 𝑥𝑥 = 2𝑥𝑥𝑦𝑦 2. 2𝑦𝑦 × 2𝑦𝑦 = 4𝑦𝑦� 3. 2𝑦𝑦 × (−3𝑥𝑥) = −6𝑥𝑥𝑦𝑦 … (teacher l, second interview, 2021) http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 772022 40(4): 77-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 fynn academic burnout among open distance e-learning students during the covid-19 pandemic respondent contact information at any point in the study. respondents were informed of their rights to informed consent and it was emphasised that no negative outcomes would result from withdrawal from the study. 7. results this section details the results of the survey. the results’ section is divided into demographics, a discussion on the olbi-s, a discussion on the uwes-s and a section on the hypothesis testing for the study. as mentioned earlier, the sample for the study was 36000 students. a total of 7400 students responded, of which 5400 responses were complete and thus usable for analysis as the instruments are sensitive to missing data. this realises a response rate of 15% which was determined to be sufficient as it was greater than 10% of the sample. 7.1 demographics of the respondents approximately 70% of the respondents were african, followed by 18% of respondents who were white, 8% of respondents were coloured, while 6% were indian. the majority of respondents (73.4%) were female and 26.1% were male. the mean age of the respondents was 30 years with a minimum of 18 and a maximum of 82. the standard deviation was 8.688. in terms of whether or not they were first generation students, the respondents were almost equally split. the majority of respondents (53%) were not first-generation students (students who are the first in their family to attend university) while 47% were. approximately 21% of respondents were from the college of law, followed by 20% who were from the college of human sciences. the third largest group (19%) they were from the college of education and were followed by the college of economic and management sciences at 16%. the college of accounting sciences stood at 9.9% and the college of science, engineering and technology at 9% followed by the college of agricultural and environmental sciences at 5%. the majority (54%) of respondents were full-time employed, working 8 hours or more a day. this was followed by 18% who were unemployed but still engaged in job-seeking. approximately 15% were studying full-time and did not engage in any income generating activities, while 7% were working part-time. those in occasional employment (5%) were the second smallest group and the smallest group (1%) was registered at two institutions simultaneously. most respondents (75%) had a module workload of more than five courses. 7.2 dropout intention of respondents the majority of respondents (45%) indicated that they were unlikely to discontinue their studies in the coming 12 months. approximately 17% were undecided about whether they would discontinue their studies, while 14% indicated that it was somewhat unlikely that they would discontinue their studies. approximately 13% indicated that it was somewhat likely that they would discontinue their studies while 11% indicated that this outcome was extremely likely. 7.3 oldenburg burnout inventory for students 7.3.1 reliability statistics overall the olbi-s had a cronbach alpha of 0.864, suggesting that the items have relatively high internal consistency. disengagement is calculated by adding the scores of the items indicated in table 4 with items 3, 6, 8, 9 and 11 reverse scored. the disengagement subscale had a cronbach alpha score of 0.761, which indicates acceptable levels of internal consistency. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 782022 40(4): 78-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) table 4: disengagement items question number item description 1 i always find new and interesting aspects in my studies. 3 it happens more and more often that i talk about my studies in a negative way. 6 lately, i tend to think less about my academic tasks and do them almost mechanically. 7 i find my studies to be a positive challenge. 9 over time, one can become disconnected from this type of study. 11 sometimes i feel sickened by my studies. 13 this is the only field of study that i can imagine myself doing. 15 i feel more and more engaged in my studies. the exhaustion subscale also consisted of eight items and was calculated by adding up the scores of the items in table 5 with items 2, 4, 8 and 12 reverse scored. the exhaustion subscale had a cronbach alpha of 0.822, indicating a relatively high level of internal consistency. table 5: exhaustion items question number item description 2 there are days when i feel tired before i arrive in class or start studying. 4 after a class or after studying, i tend to need more time than in the past to relax and feel better. 5 i can tolerate the pressure of my studies very well. 8 while studying, i often feel emotionally drained. 10 after a class or after studying, i have enough energy for my leisure activities. 12 after a class or after studying, i usually feel worn out and weary. 14 i can usually manage my study-related workload well. 16 when i study, i usually feel energised 7.4 oldenburg burnout inventory for students results the olbi-s burnout score had a mean of 41.88 with a standard deviation of 7.5, a minimum of 16 and a maximum of 64 out of 64. the disengagement score had a mean of 19.28 with a standard deviation of 4.14, a minimum of 8 and a maximum of 32 out of 32. the exhaustion scale had a mean of 22.59 with a standard deviation of 4.16, a minimum of 8 and a maximum of 32 out of 32. in terms of the prevalence of burnout among students, 51% of students could be classified as having low levels of burnout, while 38% were moderately burned out. only 1% of students presented high levels of burnout. in terms of the levels of disengagement, 57% of respondents showed low levels of disengagement, 35.1% showed moderate levels and 1% showed high levels. in terms of exhaustion symptoms, 54% of respondents showed low levels of exhaustion, 38% showed moderate levels and 1% showed high levels of exhaustion. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 792022 40(4): 79-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 fynn academic burnout among open distance e-learning students during the covid-19 pandemic 7.5 utrecht work engagement scale for students results 7.5.1 reliability statistics the uwes-s had a cronbach alpha of .927, which indicates a very high level of internal consistency. the uwes-s consists of three subscales, each made up of three items. these subscales are vigour, dedication and absorption. vigour is constructed of the items in table 6, which are added and then divided by the number of items. the vigour subscale had a cronbach alpha of .826, which indicates a relatively high level of internal consistency. table 6: vigour items question number item description 1 when i’m doing my work as a student, i feel bursting with energy. 2 i feel energetic and capable when i’m studying or going to class. 5 when i get up in the morning, i feel like going to class. the dedication subscale is constructed of items in table 7. the dedication scale had a cronbach alpha of .809, which indicates a relatively high level of internal consistency. table 7: dedication items question number item description 3 i am enthusiastic about my studies. 4 my studies inspire me. 7 i am proud of my studies. the absorption subscale is constructed of items in table 8. the absorption scale had a cronbach alpha of .800, which indicates a relatively high level of internal consistency. table 8: absorption items question number item description 6 i feel happy when i am studying intensely. 8 i am immersed in my studies. 9 i get carried away when i am studying. 7.5.2 uwes-s results the vigour subscale had a mean of 12.73, with a minimum of 3, a maximum of 21 and a standard deviation of 5.05. the dedication subscale had a mean of 15.33, with a minimum of 3, a maximum of 21 and a standard deviation of 4.66. the absorption subscale had a mean of 13.61, with a minimum of 3, a maximum of 21 and a standard deviation of 4.95. respondents were categorised into five categories ranging from very low to very high for the vigour, dedication, absorption and study engagement variables. this enabled analysis of the trends and distribution of these variables among the population. for vigour, 14% showed very low levels of vigour, 14% showed low levels, 28% showed average levels, 11% showed high levels and 28% showed very high levels of vigour. for dedication, 1% indicated very low levels of dedication, 8% reported low levels, 28% reported average levels, 17% reported high levels and 40% reported very high levels of dedication. in terms of absorption levels, 3% reported http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 802022 40(4): 80-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) very low levels, 8% reported low levels, 25% reported average levels, 18% reported high levels and 33% reported very high levels of absorption. in terms of study engagement as an overall construct, 3% reported very low levels of study engagement, 10% reported low levels, 28% reported average levels, 14% reported high levels and 32% reported very high levels of study engagement. 7.6 factor analysis prior to conducting inferential testing of the study hypotheses, it wass necessary to determine whether the factor structures of the instruments align with findings in international studies. both the olbi-s and uwes-s met all of the assumptions for factor analysis to take place. 7.6.1 olbi-s assumption testing showed that bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant (χ2 (66) = 19436.792, p < .01) and the kaiser-meyer-olkin measure of sampling adequacy was 0.9, which is above the recommendation of 0.7. five items had communalities below 0.5, which is considered ideal, and were removed from the factor equation. the factor analysis component matrix shows that the exhaustion and disengagement subscales loaded onto a single factor, burnout, with loadings of .909 each. the factor structure for the olbi-s therefore corroborates findings from other studies which indicated that the exhaustion and disengagement subscales loaded onto a single factor (oana tipa et al., 2019). 7.6.2 uwes-s assumption testing showed that bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant (χ2 (28) = 26251.02, p < .01) and the kaiser-meyer-olkin measure of sampling adequacy was 0.9, which is above the recommendation of 0.7. only one item showed communalities below 0.5 and was removed from the factor analysis equation. the vigour, dedication and absorption scales load onto a single factor, namely study engagement. vigour had a loading of .926, dedication had a loading of .924 and absorption one of .924. 7.7 hypothesis testing in this section the outcomes of the hypothesis testing are reported. the section is structured around the four hypotheses. hypothesis 1: there is a negative relationship between study engagement and dropout intention table 9 shows the results of the pearson correlation for the relationship between study engagement and dropout intention. the results show a significant but small negative correlation between study engagement and dropout intention r(5432)= -.229, p<.001. this hypothesis can therefore be retained and the null hypothesis rejected. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 812022 40(4): 81-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 fynn academic burnout among open distance e-learning students during the covid-19 pandemic table 9: study engagement and dropout intention correlation how likely are you to discontinue your studies in the coming 12 months? study engagement how likely are you to discontinue your studies in the coming 12 months? pearson correlation 1 -.229** sig. (1-tailed) .000 n 5434 4962 study engagement pearson correlation -.229** 1 sig. (1-tailed) .000 n 4962 4977 **. correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (1-tailed). hypothesis 2: study engagement negatively predicts dropout intention in table 10 we have the model summary for the regression equation predicting whether study engagement predicts dropout intention. the r is the correlation between the observed and predicted values of the dependent variable. table 10 shows a significant but weak correlation (r=0.229, p<.000). the r square indicates the proportion of variance which can be predicted by the independent variable. in this case r2=0.053, which indicates that the model explains 5% of the variance in dropout intention. table 10: model summary for regression equation model r r square adjusted r square std. error of the estimate change statistics r square change f change df1 df2 sig. f change 1 .229 0.053 0.052 1.381 0.053 275.032 1 4960 0.000 looking at the regression coefficients we see that β=-0.024, t=-16.584, p=0.000, which means that, for every one point increase in study engagement, there is a 2% drop in dropout intention as shown in table 11. this supports the alternative hypothesis and the null hypothesis is therefore rejected. table 11: regression coefficients model b unstandardised coefficients standardised coefficients t sig. std. error beta 1 (constant) 3.297 0.063 52.044 0.000 study engagement -0.024 0.001 -0.229 -16.584 0.000 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 822022 40(4): 82-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) hypothesis 3: there is a positive relationship between burnout and dropout intention in table 12 we have the correlation coefficients for the relationship between burnout and dropout intention. it is apparent that there is a significant but small correlation between the two variables r(5432)=0.259, p<0.05, which means we can reject the null hypothesis and the alternative hypothesis is supported. table 12: burnout and dropout intention correlation correlations how likely are you to discontinue your studies in the coming 12 months? burnout how likely are you to discontinue your studies in the coming 12 months? pearson correlation 1 .259** sig. (1-tailed) .000 n 5434 4914 burnout pearson correlation .259** 1 sig. (1-tailed) .000 n 4914 4929 **. correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (1-tailed). hypothesis 4: burnout positively predicts dropout intention in table 13 the model summary for the regression equation between burnout and dropout intention is represented. it is evident that there is a weak correlation between the observed and predicted values of the dependent variable (r=0.259) and only a small amount of variance is explained r2=.067, f(1)=352.16, p<.000, which equates to 6.7% of the variance in dropout intention explained by burnout scores. table 13: model summary of regression model r r square adjusted r square std. error of the estimate change statistics r square change f change df1 df2 sig. f change 1 .259 .067 .067 1.362 0.067 352.156 1 4912 0.000 the regression coefficients show that there is significant but small relationship β=.048, t=2.399, p=.000 between burnout and dropout intention where a one point increase in burnout leads to a 0.048 increase in dropout intention as shown in table 14. the alternative hypothesis is therefore supported and the null hypothesis rejected. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 832022 40(4): 83-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 fynn academic burnout among open distance e-learning students during the covid-19 pandemic table 14: regression coefficients model b unstandardised coefficients standardised coefficients t sig. std. error beta 1 (constant) .263 0.110 2.399 0.016 burnout .048 0.003 0.259 18.766 0.000 8. discussion this study aimed to investigate the prevalence of burnout symptoms and the level of study engagement among odel students during the covid-19 pandemic. a secondary aim was to establish what relationship, if any, existed between burnout, study engagement and dropout intention. the purpose of this investigation was to proactively identify and support students who were at risk of burnout or study disengagement. the findings of this study provide insights into the roles of burnout and study engagement in dropout intention among a diverse student population. the findings of the study show that there are relatively low levels of burnout within the student population with 51.4% of respondents indicating low levels of burnout. a point of concern is the 37.7% who report moderate symptoms of burnout as these symptoms could develop into more severe symptoms. the low levels of burnout symptoms among the respondents are quite surprising given the fact that the majority (54.2%) of respondents are working full-time and are simultaneously engaged in study. when looking at student study loads, the overwhelming majority of respondents (75%) were registered for more than five courses, where five courses would equate to half of the years’ study load , the low levels of burnout symptoms are even more surprising considering that perceived workload is associated with exhaustion (maslach et al., 2001; salmela-aro et al., 2022).this finding contrasts those of salmela-aro et al. (2022) who found that distance-studyrelated demands were associated with lower study engagement and higher burnout earlier in the pandemic. however, they found that as time went on students were more able to manage their daily lives, distance study challenges and the role of these demands in their study demands reduced (salmela-aro et al., 2022). a possible explanation for these findings is that the students surveyed in this study are existing online, distance education students who may have developed strategies to effectively manage study, work and family responsibilities. other factors that may have contributed to this finding is the level of support, whether financial or social and motivation for learning (hyytinen et al., 2022; stoeber et al., 2011). the work by creed et al. (2022) suggests that students who have flexibility in their work or study environments are better off psychologically and are better placed in terms of their studies. these findings suggest that flexible assessment policies, such as continuous assessments or portfolios as opposed to timed examinations at fixed dates, at institutions may play a key role in mediating burnout among students as these elements increase study flexibility. furthermore, vizoso, arias-gundin and rodriguez (2019) dispositional optimism, academic burnout and academic performance using structural equation modelling. data were collected from a sample of 532 spanish undergraduate students. participants completed a battery of questionnaires including the lot-r to assess optimism, csi for the measurement of (adaptive and maladaptive a coping strategies also highlight the role of adaptive coping skills such as problem solving, adjusting the significance of the demanding situation, social support and expressing emotion in mitigating burnout. these findings are supported by alves http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 842022 40(4): 84-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) et al. (2022) who stated that the higher the maladaptive coping mechanisms, the higher the dropout intention. these skills are seen as malleable and can be influenced with training and support and therefore could be developed in students through appropriate training. burnout only explained 6.7% of the variance in dropout intention. this finding suggests that, while burnout plays a role in dropout intention, there are other factors that have a greater impact on student persistence. this is corroborated by earlier research into the factors that impact on student attrition (howie, 2003; kuh et al., 2006; mayet, 2016). among these factors is the mode of learning, in this case online learning, which typically have higher dropout rates than their contact counterparts (mishra, et al., 2021). engagement is viewed as the positive antithesis of burnout and may provide an indicator of student disengagement from study (maslach et al., 2001). in this study, study engagement levels were also shown to be very high, with 46.3% of respondents indicating either high or very high levels of engagement. this corroborates the finding of the low levels of dropout intention among respondents, with 45% of respondents indicating that it was extremely unlikely that they would discontinue their studies in the next twelve months. these findings corroborate the results from the burnout dimension of the study and the general theory regarding engagement as a protective factor against burnout and as a mediating factor in future success (abreu alves et al., 2022; salanova et al., 2009) this is not the whole story. the current study investigated the additional impact of psychosocial factors (i.e., performance obstacles and facilitators). the high levels of study engagement may be related to the number of interventions and increased engagement with academic staff and peers through online platforms. study-related resources such as support from peers and instructors support study engagement (salmela-aro et al., 2022). salmela-aro et al. (2022) also highlighted the relevance of competence, autonomy and relatedness in developing study engagement among distance education students. support programmes focusing on these key concepts could prove to be decisive in improving and maintaining high levels of study engagement among students. 9. conclusion while the pandemic, and its concomitant pressures, continues, burnout risk will persist among the student population. studies like this one are therefore important monitoring tools to ensure that students receive the necessary and timely support from institutions in time. nevertheless, the findings of this study showed low levels of burnout among odel students and significant but weak relationships between burnout and dropout intention. future studies could extend this research to include students from contact institutions to ascertain whether the mode of learning influences the prevalence of burnout symptoms. the role of social capital was also not examined in this study which may explain the relatively low rates of burnout among respondents. furthermore, future students could also integrate burnout resilience factors to determine the levels of resilience student populations have. there are several limitations to the study. firstly, the study sample mostly comprised of working students, which represent a third of the student population at the institution under study. relatively few unemployed and full-time students responded to the call for participation in this study. the findings of this study therefore cannot be directly generalised to these other groups within the student population as they have a different profile. finally, the study did not include other factors that have been shown to effect dropout intention in students. this was due to the study focusing exclusively on the impact of burnout and study engagement on dropout intention. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 852022 40(4): 85-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6298 fynn academic 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development in a marginalised community in port elizabeth abstract this article draws on a long-term ethnographic study that explored the way the home based practices experienced by children in a marginalised community in a large south african city, port elizabeth, prepared them for, and supported them in, schooling. the study was informed by the field known as ‘new literacy studies’ and which draws extensively on the likes of heath (1983) and street (1984). it acknowledges that individuals have the power to exercise agency in the context of structural and cultural constraints but shows how, in this particular community, poverty and geography and the educational backgrounds of caregivers impacted on their best efforts to contribute to their children’s development. keywords: literacy, language, preparation for schooling, support for schooling 1. introduction international tests of literacy such as the progress in reading literacy study (pirls) consistently identify the poor reading performance of learners in south african schools. the outcome of the 2016 study, for example, positioned south africa as last amongst the fifty countries taking part (howie, combrinck, roux, tshele, mokoena, & palane, 2016) and showed that a staggering 78% of south african learners were unable to read for meaning in any language, including their home language, by the end of their fourth year of formal schooling (howie, combrinck, roux, tshele, mokoena, mcleod & palane, 2017). although popular discourses tend to locate such low levels of performance in the poor quality of schooling available to the majority of south african learners (economist, 2017), a wealth of literature identifies the way in which children’s home environments influence the development of literacy. heath’s seminal (1983) ethnographic study, for example, authors: m. armstrong1 c. boughey1 affiliation: 1rhodes university doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38. i2.13 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(2): 201-212 published: 04 december 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.13 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4240-5439 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.13 2022020 38(2): 202-212 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.13 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) shows how influences such as the educational background of parents and the kinds of access to reading materials experienced in the home affect what young learners do with, and around, printed text. by drawing on ethnographic research, street (1984) was able to make a distinction between understandings of literacy: the autonomous model and the ideological model. the autonomous model sees literacy as a set of technical skills involving the decoding and encoding of print. successful reading and writing are dependent on mastering the “technology” of decoding and encoding and, thus, on schooling in which these processes are mostly taught. the ideological model takes literacy a step further. although it acknowledges the importance of the ability to decode and encode, it sees literacy as a multiple phenomenon involving socially embedded ways of relating to text. different social groups will engage with different kinds of texts and will engage with these texts in different ways. literacy is thus related to social disposition and emerges as a set of socially embedded practices involving a set of values about the role of printed text in the lives of individuals and what it is appropriate to do in relation to it. from here it is possible to come to understand literacy as a multiple, rather than a unitary, phenomenon. it is also possible to see that literacy does not necessarily involve a relationship with printed text since some social groups choose to set print aside altogether or engage with it in minimal ways (see, for example, breier, 1996). some literacies, typically those associated with formal schooling, are privileged over others, however. what all the studies that draw on the ideological model have in common is the acknowledgement that socio-cultural context matters as reading and writing are developed (see, for example, street, 1985; baynham, 1995; prinsloo & breier, 1996). although textbased literacies require the ability to encode and decode, mastering these processes in order to read and write fluently is dependent on practice and, thus, on whether or not learners are supported and encouraged to rehearse the skills to which they have been introduced. the socio-cultural context will also impact on the kinds of texts to which readers are exposed and will shape the way they engage with them effectively creating their reading “identities” (o’shea et al., 2019). all this means that, depending on their home contexts, some children will be introduced to, and supported in, mastering literacies privileged in schooling whilst others will not (gee, 2015; stroud & prinsloo, 2015). as a result, access to literacies is uneven regardless of the quality of schooling available as the development of different literacies extends beyond formal educational contexts. pirls researchers in south africa consider the relationship of access to early childhood development facilities, conditions in schools (including overcrowding) and the involvement of parents with their children to results of the tests (howie et al., 2017; mullis, martin, foy & hooper, 2017). they go on to argue that the quality of learning experiences available to children is related to the literacies they will go on to master that may not be the same as those tested by pirls. research (see, for example, gee 2015) shows that many children arrive in school having been exposed to literacies that do not match those that are valued in formal educational settings. for these children, learning to read and write involves much more than the technicalities involved in reading and writing since they also need to begin to understand values attached to certain kinds of texts and ways of engaging with them. a point that is not made so markedly by the pirls researchers, however, is that the vast majority of learners tested will not have been exposed to, and have thus acquired, the dominant literacies http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.13 2032020 38(2): 203-212 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.13 armstrong & boughey learning to learn associated with the tests since this will correlate with social standing particularly in countries where low levels of educational attainment pertain. in south africa, twenty-five years after the first democratic election, socio-economic class still tends to mirror the old race-based groupings of apartheid. pirls reports do not correlate reading performance with skin colour but it is possible to use other proxies for this, including language. thus, howie et al. (2016) note that 93% of learners tested in sepedi could not read for meaning. percentages for isixhosa were 88% and isizulu 87%. other indigenous languages show similar results. what all this suggests is that it is black children who are still bearing the brunt of poor reading scores. if street’s (1984) ideological model of literacy is called upon, this can be explained by the fact that the majority of black children in the country come from homes where, thanks to apartheid, parents have not been afforded the kind of education that will have exposed them to the kinds of literacies valued in formal schooling. the differences in income that continue to divide the country along old lines of skin colour then exacerbates the situation in ways we will demonstrate in our analysis below. the relationship of language to socio-economic class in south africa has just been noted. language is also implicated in literacy development. it has long been acknowledged (cummins & swain, 1983) that children should be introduced to reading in their home language. this is because their knowledge of the home language allows them to engage in processes related to prediction (goodman, 1967; smith, 1971) which are part of reading. unfortunately, attitudes towards language that privilege english, along with the multi-lingual nature of society that results in english being used as a lingua franca in areas where multiple indigenous languages are spoken, mean that many children are denied the right to learn to read in their home language (casale & posel, 2011; van der walt & evans, 2017). the 2013 annual national assessment (dbe, 2013), for example, showed that 77% of children enrolled in grades 13 in south african schools were using english as a medium of learning. by grade 4, 90% of children were using english (pretorius & spaull, 2016). this by no means mirrors the use of language in their home environments. in addition, the 2014 annual national assessment (dbe, 2014:19) notes that “english is the main language in which exams are being conducted”, an observation that is indicative of the dominance of english in the schooling system. discourses dominant in south africa construct proficiency in what might be termed the “code” of the language (syntax, vocabulary and so on) as key to learning (boughey, 2002; mckenna, 2004). however, understandings of language (see, for example, halliday 1973, 1978) increasingly identify the importance of context in the way language is used. one such model (cummins, 1983) is particularly illuminative in understanding the way children may be prepared for schooling using a four-quadrant plane. the horizontal axis of the plane depicts the extent to which language is embedded in a context and can thus draw on more than the language for meaning making. the vertical axis describes the cognitive demand on language users. on the plane, cummins then describes two kinds of language use: basic interpersonal communication skills (bics) and cognitive academic language proficiency (calp). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.13 2042020 38(2): 204-212 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.13 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) cognitively undemanding cognitively demanding calp context reduced context embedded bics figure 1: range of contextual support and cognitive involvement in communicative activities (cummins, 1983) basic interpersonal language skills (bics) involves the use of language for “everyday” purposes in specific settings. an example might be the conversation between two friends taking place in a kitchen. gesturing at the kettle and containers of tea and sugar on the counter, one might ask “do you want a cup of tea?” in this example the language use takes place in a context which itself constrains what might be discussed. language use is face-toface, so gesture and facial expression are also available to support meaning making. on the plane depicted above, we could locate this conversation in the upper left-hand corner of the upper left-hand quadrant. another form of language use might involve reading something from a textbook with few illustrations or other forms of support for meaning making. in this example, meaning has to be made from the symbols on the page. in addition, the topic is likely to be relatively abstract and complex. engaging with language in this way is an example of what cummins (1983) terms cognitive academic language proficiency (calp). on the plane above, it would be located in the bottom right-hand corner of the bottom right-hand quadrant. acknowledging the importance of context in language use allows us to see the limitations of focusing on the “form” of language by insisting that, for example, mastery of grammar is not alone sufficient for meanings to be understood or communicated. most language users are familiar with using language for everyday purposes in contexts rich in support for meaning making, i.e. with bics. the extent to which they may be exposed to calp before they are immersed in formal schooling is related to the way language is used in the home and, thus, to the educational levels and literacy practices of caregivers regardless of which language is used. as a result of this brief overview, it not difficult to see that there are considerable impediments to black south african working-class children learning to read and write in ways tested by international measures of literacy and, given the role of reading and writing in formal schooling, to “learn to learn” itself. although a great deal of research has been conducted into learners’ performance in schools, there is little, if any, in-depth work that draws on some of the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.13 2052020 38(2): 205-212 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.13 armstrong & boughey learning to learn ideas noted above to explore what happens in learners’ homes as they are prepared for, and supported in, schooling. it is this gap that this paper seeks to address. 2. the study this paper is based on a study conducted amongst residents of a group of nine houses, owned by the city council, in an impoverished area of port elizabeth known as “south end”. the houses had been left standing as apartheid planners moved residents of an entire district to the outskirts of the city in order to allow for prime residential land to be made available to white social groups. the area immediately surrounding the houses, consisting of disused factories and workshops, had been left undeveloped for many years but was now subject to “gentrification”. as a result, residents of the houses lived in fear that they would eventually be forced to move because of the “development” taking place around them. all this meant that the community existed in a sea of poverty surrounded by wealth. many of the old factories and workshops had been changed into businesses focused on design or marketing or had become recreational venues such as bars and restaurants. the only schools nearby were former “model c” state schools charging fees beyond the means of parents and caregivers. demographically, six of the households constructed themselves as coloured and the remaining three as white. household income tended to be dependent on adults securing temporary, low paid jobs, many lasting only a few hours. some of the women produced additional income by running home-based “spaza”1 shops serving local businesses. many of the households consisted of more than the immediate family members of the council tenant. 2.1 ethnographic approach the study itself was ethnographic in nature and consisted of long-term engagement over a period of many months. this engagement involved visiting the households during the day, assisting with chores, playing with children and generally passing the time with their members. all participants in the study were aware of the nature of the study and provided informed consent for all data collection. extensive field notes were collected and formed the data for the study itself. studies drawing on street’s (1984) “ideological” model of literacy (see, for example, baynham, 1995; prinsloo & brier, 1996) rely on ethnography as it is only through long term engagement with communities that literacy practices can be identified and explored. other work including heath’s (1983) seminal piece of work on the literacy practices of three communities in the united states also draws on ethnography. there is thus a long and established tradition of using this approach in the field in which this study is located because of the way it allows researchers to explore sets of social practices in depth. ethnography relies on the observations, and the interpretations of those observations, made by researchers (see, for example, angrosino, 2007). those doing ethnographic work are therefore at risk of allegations of bias. as the study on which this article is based was conducted by a white middle-class woman from a privileged background, issues of positionality were obviously relevant. in order to try to manage this, the study commenced with the development of a reflective piece of writing that attempted to surface assumptions about literacy, education, 1 in south africa, a “spaza” shop is an informal convenience store selling groceries and other essential goods from the owner’s home to supplement the household’s income. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.13 2062020 38(2): 206-212 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.13 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) the role of parents and caregivers and so on. this piece then provided a means of attempting to control for bias as insights from the study were developed. extensive field notes were made in the course of the study and observations, and the tentative conclusions derived from them, were shared with members of the community as they emerged. sharing in this way thus served as a form of member checking. as the study was conducted for the purposes of a doctoral degree, ethical clearance was obtained at proposal stage. members of the community were informed of its goals, the methods that would be used to study their practices, their right to withdraw at any time and so on. overwhelmingly, community members expressed their hopes that the study would lead to an improvement in the education available to their children. this article, along with presentations made at conferences, is intended to contribute to this goal by making the insights derived from it more widely available than the doctoral thesis itself. the study was informed by theory noted above and sought to answer the question: how do the home practices of a marginalised community in port elizabeth initiate and build learning for the children within it? this question was underpinned by a firm understanding of the way socio-economic structures influenced those practices. for this reason, the study embodied a particular focus on the way phenomena such as poverty and geography impinged on the lives of participants. the study also acknowledged the role of parents and caregivers, as well as the children themselves, as agents interacting with socio-economic structures in order to pursue personal projects and goals (archer, 2003). 3. insights from the study 3.1 access to schooling one of the most overwhelming insights resulting from the study related to the value placed on education by parents and caregivers as a means of succeeding in life. the need to provide early childhood education is prioritised in south africa’s national plan 2030 (rsa, 2012). this has been followed through with the development of the national integrated early childhood development policy (rsa, 2015) which outlines a comprehensive early childhood development programme encompassing, inter alia, health care and nutrition, caregiver support programmes as well as the provision of opportunities for learning, including play. for most of the members of the community, the costs incurred for attendance at early childhood development facilities were prohibitive. one mother, for example, described her desire to send her young son to a pre-school nearby noting that the fees were r400 per month. this cost needs to be seen in relation to the minimum wage in south africa which, for 2019, was set at r20 per hour. given that the majority of the community members would be working for the minimum wage or less, this would mean that the mother would have needed to work for 20 hours to pay the fee even had she been able to find work. it was not only the payment of fees that was a problem, however, as attendance at the pre-school would have required her to walk up a steep hill with her young child before catching a communal taxi, which would have added to cost of attendance. poverty and geographical location both functioned as structural impediments to the child accessing the sort of early childhood educational experiences that, following the sort of thinking outlined earlier in this paper, could have stood him in good stead for the rest of his life. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.13 2072020 38(2): 207-212 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.13 armstrong & boughey learning to learn when caregivers were employed, their employment sometimes constrained school attendance as individuals would need to absent themselves from work to travel to schools to try to enrol their children. as a result, attempts to register children were made late with the result that preferred schools were often full by the time this happened (see also mail and guardian, 2019). most children attended low fee schools in the northern areas of the city and this meant that they had to travel long distances on a daily basis. because of taxi costs, many families chose to locate their children with members of extended families living in the areas near the schools they attended during the week and sometimes for longer. as a result, children experienced disruption in their living arrangements over the course of the school year. children attending school generally travelled together so that older children could care for their younger siblings. if an older child was sick, siblings were often kept at home for the duration of the period of ill health. children might also not attend school when money for taxi fares was not available. numerous south african studies (see, for example, hunter & may, 2011; spaull, 2013) have examined the impact of poverty on school achievement and support the observations made in this study regarding difficulties related to access to schooling. 3.2 stability schooling was not the only area in which a lack of stability was demonstrated. the lack of permanent employment for community members, as well as other factors sometimes related to behavioural issues, meant that the presence of caregivers was not always stable. caregivers might travel for work and thus be forced to absent themselves from their children’s lives for periods of time. alcohol abuse was fairly common and, in some instances, family members were forced to bring charges against their kin in order to protect the younger members of the family, as well as their own wellbeing. in these cases, children were often sent to live with relatives in other parts of port elizabeth, or even with grandparents in other towns, for varied periods of time until the host family could no longer support them or the problems had been resolved. also evident was instability in the material resources available to households; a phenomenon resulting from the complex interplay of social and economic factors. for example, only two homes owned a computer over the course of the study and one of these was sold in order to purchase a dysfunctional car. the family that purchased the car had originally sold a television to buy the computer. not only was the car not in working condition but no one in the household held a driving license. one of the women residents in the house explained that the car was needed because it would provide a physical sanctuary in cases of domestic violence. over the course of visits to homes in the community, items would appear and disappear. one household had links with a municipal employee working at the city dump who would often offer items he found there to family members for sale. if the price asked was too high, another item from their home might be exchanged for what was now being offered. household items were also often exchanged in order to obtain items necessary for school. on one occasion, a fish tank and angel fish, given to one of the households by a member of the church they attended, was exchanged for a hockey stick at the local second-hand shop. children, therefore, were likely to experience a constant state of flux in relation to those who provided care for them and to the material circumstances in which they lived. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.13 2082020 38(2): 208-212 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.13 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) 3.3 language all the households in the community identified themselves as afrikaans speaking although the majority of adults spoke english and some isixhosa. the majority of children were enrolled in schools using afrikaans as the language of teaching and learning. the dominant position in the community was that it was the responsibility of schools to teach english, which was regarded as the “language of employment”. although adults tended not to use english when speaking to children, watching television programmes and videos, many of which were in english, occupied a major portion of free time. however, as the study showed, it was not access to a specific language (for example, english rather than afrikaans) that affected the children’s ability to engage with the forms of language that would be used in the classrooms in which they would finally sit. over the course of the study, instances of cummins’ (1983) “cognitive academic language proficiency” (calp) were rare with participants largely drawing on bics and regardless of whether afrikaans or english was being used. as a result of the context in which they were being raised, the forms of language mastered by the children in the community meant that they were more likely to be comfortable using language for “everyday” purposes than those required in formal educational settings. what quickly became evident was the way poverty in the physical environment impacted on language use. an example from the data will serve to illustrate this point. on one occasion, an aunt providing care for children in the family, asked a two-year old child to fetch her “purple jersey from the cupboard in the bedroom”. this was an unusual request, not least because family groups would often only occupy one room in a house occupied by a much large group of people with the result that all belongings were kept in one small area. the ability to direct a child to fetch a “purple jersey from the cupboard in the bedroom” was therefore indicative of a relatively privileged situation in which i) the individual owned more than one jersey ii) had more than one room available to them and iii) had access to storage for belongings. on this particular occasion, the child returned with a jersey other than the one the aunt had wanted. she then took the child to the bedroom to find the correct item of clothing pointing out that it had been moved from the cupboard to the bed without her knowledge. this example is an instance of relatively rich linguistic description. the child was asked to fetch the purple (not the red) jersey, from the cupboard (not the bed) in the bedroom (a room different to the one the language users were currently occupying). observation during the study showed that in many households with fewer belongings the language of description did not need to be so detailed. the extensive use of gesture, rather than language, was also noticeable. gesture would be used to indicate location and facial expression would be used to replace verbal language altogether. a caregiver wanting to convey to a child that something was bad might screw up their face, turn down the corners of their mouth and shake their heads. 3.4 access to written text noticeable in the majority of the households in the community was the absence of printed text. one family collected old books from the city dumpsite. another owned two bibles, collected a http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.13 2092020 38(2): 209-212 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.13 armstrong & boughey learning to learn free daily newspaper and received hand-me-down schoolbooks. generally, children did not have access to story books or, even, textbooks. possessions in the community were generally closely guarded. this impacted on the few instances where engagement around a written text was witnessed. on one occasion, one of the smaller children had gained possession of a picture book belonging to a neighbour’s daughter. about five children gathered around the child’s grandmother who sat turning the pages of the book using english to ask the names of animals depicted within it. the children responded in english with the names of some of the animals, a phenomenon probably indicative of their association of the language and activities involving engagement around print with formal schooling. an older child, absent from school on the day in question, eventually took over from the grandmother. this interaction around printed text was interrupted when the owner of the book demanded that it should be returned to her. in this example, a limited opportunity to engage around printed text was halted because of concerns about ownership. once again, it is possible to see how poverty influenced the development of a literacy practice associated with formal schooling from which all children could have benefited. 3.5 technology although printed text was rare in the community, access to technology was abundant and prized. most households owned a television set and adults would sit together watching television in the late afternoons. although the provision of a quiet environment in which older children could complete homework was not privileged, children were expected to be quiet while their caregivers watched their favourite programmes. in advertisement breaks, adults would discuss the show and what they thought of the plot and the behaviour of protagonists. engagement was thus around a visual, and not a written text. cell phones were prized in the community not only as a means of communicating with others but also as a way of accessing information, if the owner had access to data. they were also used extensively as a means of entertaining children who were often provided with access to a phone to amuse themselves by listening to music. observation revealed the existence of literacies focused on the phone screen. on one occasion, for example, a seven year old child, who claimed she was not able to read, was able to demonstrate how she accessed music on the phone by pointing to the music icon on the main screen and then identifying particular songs by their order in the list that appeared. the child was able to explain how, when new songs were added to the playlist, she would need to listen to a few bars of each song until she could remember the new ordering. she also explained that, in some cases, she was able to identify songs by the length of their title and the shape of some of the words. many caregivers chose to instruct even very young children in the use of the cell phone for emergency purposes. one mother of a five-year-old child had taught her daughter to memorise her own and her grandmother’s cell numbers in case of emergencies. the young child not only knew how to make a call using a cell phone but also how to use the “please call me” function. on another occasion, a mother produced her cell phone to share a picture of her eldest daughter, taken a few weeks beforehand. the sight of the device excited her younger child, a three-year-old, and her mother demonstrated how photographs could be accessed saying “swipe soft, swipe soft”. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.13 2102020 38(2): 210-212 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.13 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) all the homes in the community had access to electricity using a pre-paid meter. funds to buy electricity were scarce, however, and, on more than one occasion, adults were observed warning children not to charge phones otherwise there would be no electricity to cook the evening meal. access to screen-based texts was therefore not a given because of the impact of poverty. 3.6 play and games as with all children, play formed an important part of the lives of young community members although poverty meant that any toys available had usually been retrieved from the dump. where adults engaged in play with children, it was usually unemployed men who did so as women claimed they were too busy with household chores to entertain young ones. nonetheless, opportunities did exist for teaching to take place around many of the activities in households. many households ran spaza shops and children were often asked to fetch items requested. it would have been possible to use these simple tasks as a form of literacy development and opportunities also existed for engagement with numeracy. without support and encouragement, adults did not take advantage of these opportunities, however, to the detriment of children. 4. conclusion engagement with the community that was the focus of this study showed how its location in a city still divided along the old lines of apartheid, now being re-emphasised thanks to “development”, impacted on the best efforts of caregivers to prepare their children for, and support them in, formal education. it was not only location that influenced these efforts, however, but also the poverty that structured their lives in an ongoing fashion. the ethnographic nature of the study meant that it was possible to obtain insights into the way practices within children’s homes impacted on their potential to learn. these practices encompassed language use and the use of technology as well as those related to everyday living arrangements that were often in a constant state of flux. the paper began by outlining understandings of literacy as a social phenomenon and not simply as cognitive processes related to the encoding and decoding of text. understandings of reading and writing as sets of social practices have profound implications for policy and initiatives intended to enhance literacy. above all, and as illustrated in this study, they mean that attempts at improvement need to consider the conditions in children’s homes and include parents and caregivers. the homes in the study on which this article reports had few reading materials and adults did not read to children or otherwise engage widely with them in other learning activities. researchers (see, for example, heath, 1982) have long pointed out that simple activities such as reading bedtime stories enable language and literacy development. in addition, studies (see, for example, ishengoma, 1988) have shown how oral activities such as telling riddles can build vocabulary and teach cognitive functions such as comparing and contrasting. without support and encouragement, it is unlikely that parents and caregivers such as those in this study will understand the importance of engaging with their children and planning for early childhood development initiatives needs to take this into account. however, even if this were to happen, geography and poverty would be likely to affect the ability of parents and caregivers to interact with formal educational initiatives in ways that would support their http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.13 2112020 38(2): 211-212 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.13 armstrong & boughey learning to learn children’s learning. nonetheless, this does not mean that policy makers and others charged with the responsibility of improving education should not take account of insights emerging from studies such as that on which this paper is based. although studies such as pirls acknowledge phenomena such as parental involvement and access to early childhood development facilities in accounting for the poor results of south african children on standardised tests, it is difficult to find published studies that explore the challenges faced by marginalised communities as they endeavour to support their children for education. this paper attempts to address this gap and to encourage others to attempt the sort of work that will provide more in-depth understandings of the learning practices in homes other than those of the educated middle class. references angrosino, m. 2007. doing ethnographic and observational 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https://doi.org/10.1007/s11159-005-1841-9 https://doi.org/10.4314/sajhe.v18i2.25468 https://doi.org/10.4314/sajhe.v18i2.25468 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2018.11.001 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2018.11.001 https://doi.org/10.1075/swll.4 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2012.09.009 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2012.09.009 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203576953 learning to learn 19 research article 2022 40(4): 19-37 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) investigating the challenges faced by female students in stem courses: case study of a traditional south african university abstract the paper investigated the challenges faced by female students enrolled in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (stem) field of study. the social cognitive theory (scct) was employed to examine the role played by the environment, goals, behaviour, and self-efficacy factors of female students studying towards engineering and information technology degrees at a traditional south african university. the study examined the interdependencies between these four factors and their role in female students’ success in stem courses at the university. the finding revealed that female students possess the selfefficacy required to excel in their studies, despite overt or covert hostilities and other challenges they face during their study. the data analysis indicate that female students need the support of their families in achieving their goals. the fear of disappointing parents or family members if they fail to obtain their qualifications seem to be a key motivation to female students in stem courses. it is recommended that all stakeholders be positively involved in ensuring that female students in the stem fields get the needed support. such support, in tandem with their self-efficacy, outcome expectations and goal setting, will ensure that they overcome obstacles and are adequately equipped to realise their dream of achieving qualifications in this critical segment of the economy. keywords: social cognitive career theory, female students in stem, university education, outcome expectancy 1. introduction the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (stem) field is acknowledged as one of the key drivers of sustainable development worldwide. stem is crucial in promoting global competitiveness and innovative capacity. unfortunately, despite attempts to bridge the gender gap, women remain underrepresented in stem careers (ceci & williams, 2011; fernández valdez et al., 2022). an untapped opportunity to increase stem employment in developing countries such as south africa exists. skilled human capital is one of the significant resources for global development; therefore, more attention should be given to author: dr olutoyin olaitan1 ms nosipho mavuso1 affiliation: 1walter sisulu university, south africa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v40i4.6638 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(4): 19-37 published: 23 december 2022 received: 3 august 2021 accepted: 25 november 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5350-4136 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5602-8008 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 202022 40(4): 20-37 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) this phenomenon (jabbah & imran, 2013). the challenges faced by women in stem careers and in the academic field are well documented in literature (kanny, sax & riggers-piehl, 2014; avolio, chávez & vilchez-román, 2020). personal resilience, goal setting and an affirming environment have been found to assist female students in achieving their academic goals despite the hurdles they need to overcome. although unesco (2007) states that the development of the modern world is hinged on equal opportunity and access to science for both genders, the metaphor of the glass ceiling is a real threat to women in stem careers worldwide (smith, caputi & crittenden, 2012). glass ceiling in this context is described as a blockage in the progression of competent and proficient women in organisations due to gender bias or racism (aranha, aquinas & saldanha, 2019). researchers have argued that the factors influencing the challenges faced by women are myriad (kanny et al., 2014). with the aid of the social cognitive career theory (scct), this paper examines the role played by the environment, goals, behaviour, and self-efficacy factors of female students studying engineering and information technology degrees at a traditional south african university in achieving their learning outcomes. quantitative data was analysed statistically, and the results are presented, followed by recommendations on how to alleviate the students’ challenges. the paper is structured as follows; a review of relevant, extant literature is conducted, followed by a discussion of the method and research design. findings from the empirical data is thereafter presented, followed by the conclusion and recommendations for further studies. 2. methodology the scct, originally by bandura (1999), and further extended by lent, brown, and hackett (2000) was employed to investigate the influence exerted by the student’s self-efficacy, personal goal setting, environment, and behaviour on women’s performance in stem courses at a traditional south african university. an investigation of how the four elements of the scct influence learning outcomes for women in engineering and information technology, and how this could be applied in a way that encourages more women to venture into the stem fields was conducted. a quantitative questionnaire instrument was designed to investigate the research problem. the paper investigates the impact of personal attributes, the environmental context and female students’ behaviour on their academic performance in the stem fields. lent et al. (2000) translated bandura’s social cognition theory into the three concepts of selfefficacy, outcome expectations and personal goal setting. they posit that the three concepts are key in understanding how students achieve desired academic outcomes. for this study, we added the environmental factor, as discussed by bandura (1999) as it is considered a vital element for the study’s context. an ethical clearance certificate (reference no: fsetfrec0110-21mnc) was obtained from the university research committee before data was collected from the students. data is available on request from the corresponding author. 3. literature review the dependence of all sectors of the economy on technology has lent credence to the urgent call for an improvement in stem courses, as well as an improvement in women’s rate of participation across the broad spectrum of academic pursuit (moss-racusin et al., 2012). according to he et al. (2020), the academic opportunities available to a student at higher education/tertiary level are hugely dependent on the choice of subjects chosen at high school level. research shows that socialised gender norms, cultural values and the impersonal http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 212022 40(4): 21-37 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 olaitan & mavuso investigating the challenges faced by female students in stem courses nature of the sciences are some of the factors that discourage female students from pursuing careers in the stem fields (blackburn, 2017). studies also suggest that women find the stem environment intimidating, competitive and lacking in empathy; hence the tendency for more women to show interest in the social sciences where they are of direct service to people (norgbey, 2017; guy & boards, 2019). the personal traits of conformance, nurturing and family commitment are some of the reasons advanced for the paucity of women in the stem fields (cech & blair-loy, 2019). additional issues such as the lack of female role models, hostility from male colleagues, gender-based exclusionary behaviour in the classroom, and the difficulty of linking theory to practice were also identified (blackburn, 2017). myriad studies have confirmed the existence of a glass ceiling based on numerous constructs such as individual barriers, cultural barriers and social barriers (smith et al., 2012). some of the hindrances are the organisational culture, prejudices, biases and the attitude of male colleagues (aranha et al., 2019; rottinghaus, falk & park, 2018). research suggests that females in the stem fields still require support and affirmation (ceci, williams & barnett, 2009; blackburn, 2017). women in science are paid less than their male colleagues, get promoted less often and win fewer grants (nimmesgern, 2016). women with stem degrees are less likely to work in a stem occupation than men and are more likely to go to the healthcare or education fields (ceci et al., 2009). as the complex, continually evolving occupational landscape in stem fields dictates the futuristic career paths, research shows that women are still underrepresented in this sphere globally (blackburn, 2017). there is a gender imbalance ratio in the sciences. statistics for universities show that male students dominate in most popular majors in stem-related courses (gupta, 2017). enrolment for male students account for more than 80% student population in stem, while females tend to cluster around majors in the social sciences, such as art, education, psychology, and sociology (he et al., 2020). although women have made impressive accomplishments in tertiary education over the past decade, participation and enrolment in stem subjects have been lagging compared to the high numbers of males (he et al., 2020). gender and gender identity are built because of social interactions and affected by an individual’s social environment, including other people’s behaviours and attitudes in a social context; hence the perception, attitude and disposition of others towards women in the stem fields can significantly impact their ability to perform optimally in the field. 3.1 the influence of societal norms on women’s underrepresentation in sub-saharan africa parental, institutional, and societal factors were found to be key contributors to gender inequality in sub-saharan african countries. parents’ perceptions of their children’s academic abilities affect the level of confidence the children develop in their own abilities. the home environment also influences a child’s perception of the field (blackburn, 2017). the culturally inclined stereotype that females are less talented in mathematics for instance than males also play a role. parents tend to overemphasise their sons’ abilities and underate their daughters’ abilities in mathematics (gomez et al., 2020). such parentals’ influence on their children’s career choices is important and should be considered since they give advice, emotional support, and financial provision to their children with mothers especially playing a critical role in their daughters’ career choices (norgbey, 2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 222022 40(4): 22-37 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) additionally, due to women’s virtues being linked to labels such as “wise mothers and good wives” as prejudiced by confucian philosophy, most parents prefer to invest more in the education of male children. it is projected that they are likely to get a ‘return’ on their investment, unlike a girl who belong to in-laws in the future (he et al., 2020). there are many biases within stem; among the intellectual and physical hindrances are gender and race, labelled as having distinct advantages and privileges (farinde & lewis, 2012). in another vein, the global development divide is widening, thus hindering global competitiveness and economic advancement (norgbey, 2017). there is a limited number of women who enrol for stem programmes as compared to a high number of females in humanities and social science specialisations. globally, insubstantial progress has been made in addressing the gender gap and inequality as the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization records indicate that only 28% of research and development employees are women (ceci et al., 2009). science is a critical determinant in innovation, and a country cannot afford to lose any individual who can contribute vastly with skills and talent because of their gender (cech & blair-loy, 2019). work environment despite women making up half of the world’s population, they are underrepresented in the stem workforce (kanny et al., 2014). individual, institutional and policy-related factors are the main contributors to the underrepresentation of women in science. science, technology & innovation initiatives have been introduced in sub-saharan african countries’ policies to encourage women to participate more actively in science. however, these are often not applied (ceci et al., 2009). additionally, the gender gap has widened due to the absence of gender-friendly policy frameworks that can prevent women from abandoning the science profession (guy & boards, 2019). ). the lack of solid gender-sensitive promotion policies allowing women to advance their careers results in most women discouraged from pursuing long-term careers in stem (ceci et al., 2009) and pursuing other professions. research shows that women are not disposed towards vocalising the discrimination and unfairness they experience because they are less cognisant of it, are unwilling to put their careers at risk or being labelled as problematic (nimmesgern, 2016). traditional gender roles have added to the socialisation of african girls, as women have been portrayed as being driven by emotions and irrational yet cooperative, dependable, and loyal followers (blackburn, 2017). males, on the other hand, are considered the most suited for the science fields as they are deemed competitive, logical, analytical people and producers (farinde & lewis, 2012). additionally, lack of professional mentors and networks, and societal expectations, like choosing between raising a family and developing their career, are some of the factors that demotivate many women from pursuing future in stem careers (cech & blair-loy, 2019). patriarchy and culture negatively affect the stem curriculum and teaching and learning styles and reinforce the gender gap in higher education and stem programmes (norgbey, 2017; matete, 2022). suggested strategies to combat gender inequality are gender mainstreaming, gender affirmative action, capabilities-based policies and practices, and awareness. several other contributing factors were also identified in literature including: influence of teachers, influence of the labour market, parent’s influence and, peers’ influence (he et al., 2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 232022 40(4): 23-37 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 olaitan & mavuso investigating the challenges faced by female students in stem courses a sparse number of female researchers are unexpectedly recorded in high-income countries. in germany, france and the netherlands, the ratio of one in four researchers is recorded in favour of men (ceci et al., 2009; moss-racusin et al., 2012). an even lower number is found in japan (15%) and the republic of korea (18%) (ceci et al., 2009). africa faces the greatest challenge in the underrepresentation of scientists; specifically, recruiting and retaining local talent is a significant challenge. the lack of resources and adequate stem skills can be insufficient for trainee scientists to interact and compete with peers worldwide (okeke et al., 2017). to meaningfully contribute to global development in stem fields, gender inequality must be resolved in african universities as well as in the global community at large (norgbey, 2017). the exclusion of africa in global participation due to the shortage of leading scientists contributes to an even greater gap in the underrepresentation of women in stem (okeke et al., 2017). educational context the shortages of trained stem professionals may prospectively lead to a decline in the innovation potential of a society (ngila et at., 2017). empirical studies have demonstrated that countries tend to develop faster if there is a high proportion of science and engineering (stem) graduates than countries with a high percentage of graduates in other disciplines outside (tacsir, grazzi & castillo, 2014). the move between high school and tertiary education has been identified as the crucial transition point where most students leave the science and technology field (shober, 2014) to other disciplines. the next section discusses the scct, which forms the theoretical underpinning of the study. 4. theoretical background the social cognitive career theory bandura (1999) states that three factors, including the person, the environment, and behaviour, are intertwined in the process of learning, and the positive development of all the factors is more likely to ensure a successful outcome in the achievement of academic goals. lent et al. (two thousand) further extended bandura’s theory by translating the aforementioned three factors into self-efficacy, outcome expectations and personal goal setting. for this paper, self-efficacy is described as the personal beliefs of female undergraduates about their ability to perform well in their chosen field of study. although bandura (1999) states four primary sources of learning experiences as responsible for self-efficacy beliefs, research has confirmed that personal performance accomplishments are the strongest motivation for raising self-efficacy beliefs. outcome expectations are students’ personal beliefs about the consequences of their performance (or non-performance) of certain actions regarding their studies. self-efficacy speaks to the intrinsic ‘can i’ quality, while outcome expectations speak to the concept of what outcomes can result in the performance of certain actions in female undergraduates. outcome expectation beliefs are based on extrinsic reinforcements such as expected rewards for performance and self-directed consequences hinged on the sense of personal achievement students may feel at accomplishing a perceived challenging task. the two are intricately linked as it may be argued that the same primary sources apply to influence both self-efficacy beliefs and outcome expectation beliefs. the third concept is goals, which is described as a student’s determination to engage in specific behaviour to achieve a particular future outcome. personal goal setting is the main element that influences the students’ behaviour without external reinforcement (yusoff, mahfar & saud, 2019). four sources of http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 242022 40(4): 24-37 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) information are considered to influence goal attainment namely: performance attainment, shared experiences, verbal persuasion, and coping mechanisms. the fourth factor investigated is the influence of students’ studying environment on their performance and successful completion of their courses. the paper focuses on self-efficacy as an important investigator of how women in stem courses at the university overcome social and personal hurdles and achieve their education goals despite negative institutional, peer or environmental factors. online quantitative questionnaires were distributed to seventy female undergraduates in b. tech information technology (it) and engineering courses. the respondents’ year of study ranged from first to third year (advanced diploma). the representative population was selected based on the research problem under investigation. additionally, all students had just completed a year in their respective courses and could relate to the roles played by scct attributes in the performance of their academic achievements for at least one year. the number of registered female students was estimated to be about 1693 across two campuses in the 2021 academic year. however, we only collected data from students in it and engineering across two sites, with an estimated number of six hundred students in the category, a heterogeneous purposive sampling method was employed to select the study’s respondents. this method was considered as most appropriate as it is believed that selecting participants with diverse characteristics will ensure maximum variability within the primary data. the data was collected via an online survey hosted on google forms. the response rate for the questionnaire was 71 % of the distributed questionnaire population, which is an acceptable ratio for research of this nature. the results were exported from an excel format into the spss package for analysis. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 252022 40(4): 25-37 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 olaitan & mavuso investigating the challenges faced by female students in stem courses 5. data analysis and interpretation of the findings figure 1: likert scale plot for self-efficacy where se01 = it is easy for me to stick to my aims and accomplish my goals se02 = i am confident that i could deal efficiently with unexpected events se03 = i have a good understanding of my own emotions se04 = i am strong enough to overcome life’s struggles se05 = i am sensitive to the opinion of my peers, lecturers and family se06 = i usually take rational decisions and keep my emotions in check se07 = i feel weak and helpless most of the time se08 = i have never considered the possibility of failing in life se09 = i can remain calm when facing difficulties because i can rely on my coping abilities se10 = when i am confronted with a problem, i can usually find several solutions the likert scale plot for self-efficacy shows that female students in stem fields are ambivalent with respect to their self-efficacy and how this affects their ability to perform well in their chosen field of study (figure 1). the results are considered positive as research has shown that students with strong self-efficacy beliefs are more likely to persevere, overcome adverse situations, and achieve their goals (bandura, 2001; sabouripour et al., 2021). approximately 88 % of female students in the study’s stem fields claimed to have the ability to stick to their http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 262022 40(4): 26-37 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) aims and accomplish their goals (se01), while 84 % could deal efficiently with unexpected events (se02). however, more than half (58 %) of the respondents claimed to feel weak and helpless most of the time (se07). additionally, 74 % of the students affirmed that they care about the opinions of their peers, lecturers, and family members (se05). this seems to suggest that female students believe in their abilities to succeed but are also affected by the opinion of the stakeholders in their lives. it, therefore, makes sense that the students desire the support of their peers, lecturers and family members as they pursue the goal of obtaining qualifications in the stem fields. the density plot for self-efficacy (figure 2) reveals that the probability of agreement with the opinions se01, se03, se04 and se07 is high among advanced diploma and third-year students. it is moderate in se02, se05, se06, se09 and se10. the advanced diploma students do not agree so much with the opinion in se09. figure 2: density plots for self-efficacy by level http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 272022 40(4): 27-37 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 olaitan & mavuso investigating the challenges faced by female students in stem courses figure 3: likert scale plot for personal goal setting where gs01 = i have always been interested in the science field gs02 = i have definite plans for my post-school career path gs03 = i can handle the pressures that come with my chosen career field gs04 = i feel anxious about passing my courses gs05 = i am not confident of my ability to do well in my chosen field of study gs06 = i sometimes feel like i am wasting my time in my area of study gs07 = the major concepts in my field are difficult for me to understand gs08 = my role models have always been in the science field gs09 = i feel like i am an average student most of the time gs10 = many of the adults i admire have strong academic skills this section sought to investigate the impact of personal goal setting on female students in stem disciplines. as displayed in figure 3, results obtained revealed that a keen admiration for people with strong academic skills and personal interest were the most crucial factors for these sampled students (gs10 and gs01). despite this interest, the confidence level of the students regarding their ability to excel in their chosen field of study is incredibly low (gs05, gs06 and gs07). the findings imply that students have a keen interest in the stem field but encounter difficulties grasping the concepts. interestingly, 86 % of the students expressed http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 282022 40(4): 28-37 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) confidence that they can manage the pressure that comes with the field of study. it is, therefore, asserted that most of the students will excel in their courses with the proper support as they have the right attitude and can withstand the pressure of the field of study. if faculty members, male peers and tutors offer support to female students, they are likely to excel and remain in stem careers after graduation. the density plot for the levels of education reveals the probability of agreement with the opinions gs10, gs02, gs03 and gs01 high among advanced diploma and third-year students as shown in figure 4. there is strong disagreement with gs05 and gs06 among most respondents, suggesting that most students believe there is value in studying towards these stem degrees. figure 4: density plot for personal goal setting by level http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 292022 40(4): 29-37 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 olaitan & mavuso investigating the challenges faced by female students in stem courses figure 5: likert scale plot for outcome expectations where oe01 = my career field is an important part of who i am oe02 = this career field has a great deal of personal meaning to me oe03 = i do not feel “emotionally attached” to this career field oe04 = i have created a plan for my development in this career field oe05 = i do not have a strategy for achieving my goals in this career field oe06 = i do not identify specific career goals for my development in this career field oe07 = the costs associated with my career field sometimes seem too great oe08 = given the problems i encounter in the career field; i sometimes wonder if i will get anything out of it oe09 = the science career field is highly recognised in our society, oe10 = i chose my current course due to my parents’ recommendation oe11 = in the future, i plan to mentor others in my field as shown in figure 5, female students regard their study area as important to them, with 89% stating that the career field held a personal meaning for them (oe02). this is considered an affirmation of the result in personal efficacy where students contend that they have the resilience and determination required to obtaining these qualifications. respondents who chose the career path due to pressure from their parents (oe10) were in the minority (12 %), http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 302022 40(4): 30-37 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) reinforcing the belief that most students are studying in their career path due to strong personal goal setting and not compulsion from parents. therefore, it could be extrapolated that female students have a strong attachment to their career fields and should be offered the necessary support to complement their determination to succeed. the density plot shown in figure 6 for outcome expectations reveals that the probability of strong agreement on oe01, oe02 and oe11 is greatest among advanced diploma, third and second-year students. this trend may be because these students have more experience of the challenges encountered in their fields while first-year students are still primarily engaged in foundational courses. figure 6: density plot for outcome expectation by level http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 312022 40(4): 31-37 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 olaitan & mavuso investigating the challenges faced by female students in stem courses figure 7: likert scale plot for environmental factors where ef01 = there is no strong support for me as a female student in a male-dominated field ef02 = i feel a sense of hostility from my male colleagues when in a group setting ef03 = i am sometimes hesitant to seek help with difficult topics as i feel it proves that i am incompetent ef04 = i often consider changing from my course to a less difficult/technical course ef05 = most of my female peers/course mates are not sure if they will succeed in their studies ef06 = i sometimes get degrading remarks from my lecturers when trying to seek help with difficult topics ef07 = i believe there are invisible obstacles on my way to success as a female science major ef08 = my parents/family are very supportive of my career goals ef09 = i am worried that i may fail and disappoint my family ef10 = there are female faculty members available to assist me if i need help the likert scale plot for environmental factors shows a variation/disjunction in the results as displayed in figure 7. 88% of the respondents stated that their family members are supportive of their study (ef08), which concurs with 74 % of students who are afraid of failing their courses and disappointing their families (ef09). eight-two per cent of respondents strongly http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 322022 40(4): 32-37 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) agreed that there are invisible obstacles on their path to success in their chosen courses (ef07), while only 18 % disagreed with the statement. it is believed that there is need for a qualitative study to understand further what these students perceive as “invisible” obstacles and how they could be addressed and alleviated. contrary to the literature reviewed, only 31 % of respondents strongly agreed with their peers, while 20 % agreed that they get degrading remarks from their lecturers when they sought help with difficult topics (ef06). the results also show that 55% of respondents hesitate to ask for help when facing challenges as they are afraid of being seen as incompetent (ef03). the results thus show environmental factors in a positive light as students are likely to revert to their self-efficacy beliefs when there are challenges, as they would not want to disappoint their support system. the density plot on environmental factors as indicated in figure 8 reveals that advanced diploma students, third and second-year students have a higher probability of strongly agreeing with the statements. figure 8: density plot for environmental factors by level bold items in table 1 signify the most significant factors in the survey. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 332022 40(4): 33-37 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 olaitan & mavuso investigating the challenges faced by female students in stem courses table 1: major determinants in the factors item opinion/response sd d a sa % agree % disagree 1 se01 8 0 39 18 88 12 2 se02 2 8 46 9 85 15 3 se03 3 9 26 27 82 18 4 se04 3 9 23 30 82 18 5 se05 1 16 42 6 74 26 6 se06 1 14 38 12 77 23 7 se07 7 31 19 8 42 58 8 se08 7 19 28 11 60 40 9 se09 3 16 29 17 71 29 10 se10 2 10 41 12 82 18 11 gs01 3 8 27 27 83 17 12 gs02 1 6 37 21 89 11 13 gs03 0 9 36 20 86 14 14 gs04 2 12 31 20 78 22 15 gs05 16 31 12 6 28 72 16 gs06 27 23 8 7 23 77 17 gs07 8 35 18 4 34 66 18 gs08 9 26 20 10 46 54 19 gs09 1 16 36 12 74 26 20 gs10 0 6 26 33 91 9 21 oe01 2 3 26 34 92 8 22 oe02 0 7 33 25 89 11 23 oe03 7 35 15 8 35 65 24 oe04 0 19 32 14 71 29 25 oe05 13 35 16 1 26 74 26 oe06 7 40 16 2 28 72 27 oe07 0 14 40 11 78 22 28 oe08 4 12 43 6 75 25 29 oe09 3 13 23 26 75 25 30 oe10 32 25 5 3 12 88 31 oe11 3 9 21 32 82 18 32 ef01 8 29 19 9 43 57 33 ef02 16 29 9 11 31 69 34 ef03 8 21 22 14 55 45 35 ef04 18 26 9 12 32 68 36 ef05 12 25 21 7 43 57 37 ef06 20 32 12 1 20 80 38 ef07 3 9 35 18 82 18 39 ef08 3 5 29 28 88 12 40 ef09 6 11 20 28 74 26 41 ef10 8 17 23 17 62 38 the test of two means was conducted to for the significance of the difference of two means between the number of respondents in favour of the factors and those who were not: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 342022 40(4): 34-37 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) t d s nd = 1 where: is the mean difference, sd is the sample standard deviation of the differences, and n is the sample size. hypothesis: there are significant differences in the percentages of those who gave positive and negative responses h0 1 2:µ µ= vs h1 1 2:µ µ≠ the results obtained using stata version 15 are presented in table 2. table 2: difference of two means test result variable obs. mean std. err. std. dev. [95% conf. interval] agree 40 40.7 2.542006 16.07706 35.55831 45.84169 disagree 40 24.3 2.542006 16.07706 19.15831 29.44169 diff. 40 16.4 5.084012 32.15412 6.116615 26.68339 mean(diff.) = mean (agree – disagree) t = 3.2258 ho: mean(diff.) = 0 degrees of freedom = 39 ha: mean(diff.) < 0 ha: mean(diff.)! = 0 ha: mean(diff.) > 0 pr(t < t) = 0.9987 pr(|t| > |t|) = 0.0025 pr(t > t) = 0.0013 since the p-value of 0.0001 is less than the significance level of 0.05, the null hypothesis is rejected. therefore, the difference in the means is statistically significant. 6. summary of findings the data analysis revealed that the sampled female students in the stem fields in the traditional university have the self-efficacy, personal goals, and outcome expectations that they need for them to succeed in their chosen fields of study, despite mitigating factors such as societal stereotyping, hostility from male colleagues and a lack of female role models. however, the analysis also reveals that female students do fear disappointing their families and significant others. sometimes they hesitate to ask for help even when struggling as they do not want to appear incompetent or incapable. additionally, about 82 % of them alluded to obstacles on their path to success, but the quantitative nature of the investigation precluded further probing as to the nature of these obstacles. there is evidence that female students’ self-efficacy beliefs are major determinant factors in their ability to succeed in their studies. the major determinants in goal setting and outcome expectations also affirm these as they allude to how important the stem fields of study are to the students. the most significant environmental factors are the support and affirmation of parents and families, and there are unknown obstacles that female students believe are impeding their progress. therefore, based on the results of this analysis, students at this university have the ability, self-efficacy, and goal setting factors to complete their studies successfully. however, we find that a crucial factor for the students is the support of their t d s nd = 1 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 352022 40(4): 35-37 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 olaitan & mavuso investigating the challenges faced by female students in stem courses significant others, and we recommend that students are assured and supported as they pursue their studies in a stem field. it is also important that female students do not feel a sense of foreboding or limitation preventing them from asking for help whenever needed. faculty, peers, and the university must do more to assure female students that the playing field for both male and female students is equal and that there are no obstacles on their paths due to their gender. 7. conclusion the paper investigated the interdependencies between self-efficacy, outcome expectations, goal setting and environmental factors and their role in female students becoming successful in stem courses. the results reveal that female students are highly conscious of how important their area of study is to them and are usually focused on getting their degrees despite some challenges they face in their educational context. the study also revealed that students are anxious about the possibility of disappointing their families if they do not obtain their qualifications. we recommend that all stakeholders be positively involved in ensuring that female students in the stem fields get the support they need. such support, in tandem with their self-efficacy, outcome expectations and goal setting, will ensure that they overcome any hidden obstacles and are equipped to tackle environmental factors effectively. references ceci, s.j. & williams, w.m. 2011. the mathematics of sex: how biology and society conspire to limit talented women and girls. psychological and cognitive sciences, 108(8): 3157-3162. fernández valdez, j., puente hevia, d.m., economides, a. e., 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students. frontiers in psychology, 12: article 675645. https://doi.org/10.3389/ fpsyg.2021.675645 [accessed 7 march 2022]. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6638 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-019-00441-0 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-019-00441-0 https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.15-12-0265 https://doi.org/10.17159/sajs.2017/20170050 https://publications.iadb.org/en/women-science-and-technology-what-does-literature-say https://publications.iadb.org/en/women-science-and-technology-what-does-literature-say http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/s1529-212620140000019014 https://doi.org/10.35940/ijeat.e1114.0585c19 http://dx.doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.1 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.675645 https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.675645 section _ref100126857 _hlk116527363 _hlk116446742 _hlk116432542 _hlk116520830 _hlk116430974 3 research article 2023 41(2): 3-15 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6847 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) interaction between teachers’ emotional intelligence and classroom management abstract since recent years, emotional intelligence (eq) has gained prominence in the field of science education and has been widely regarded as an important element in classroom management (cm). it is known that educators with eq have a positive effect on academic achievement and that these teachers also increase their cm. this is also reflected in school success. in addition, teachers with eq have better cm skills. thus, anyone with good cm skills can create a positive learning environment. in a classroom where a culture of eq is adopted, it is important to support student motivation, make students feel valued, and focus on success. this study examines how teachers manage classrooms using eq. therefore, the reason for this study was to investigate whether there is a difference between teachers’ eq levels and cm skills according to their demographic characteristics (gender, age, professional experience and educational level). the sample of this research consists of 341 teachers working at trnc primary education institutions in the 2021–2022 academic year and determined by random method. within the scope of the research, aturkish version of the “rotterdam eq scale” was used to measure the eq levels of the teachers, the “cm scale” was used to measure the effectiveness of the cm and the personal information form prepared by the researchers was used. study findings suggest that teachers’ eq and cm skills have a positive, moderately significant relationship. this situation reveals that teachers who are aware of their own emotions and those of others, who can put themselves in others’ shoes, and who have a developed sense of empathy have better cm skills. research results indicated that the eq level of the teachers as well as their cm skills did not vary according to their gender, age, and seniority according to demographic variables. however, when the educational status variable is examined, although the eq levels of postgraduate graduates are higher than those of undergraduate students, this difference was not significant. keywords: classroom management, emotional intelligence, relationships, science education, teachers 1. introduction many researchers have considered teachers’ major role in shaping the futures of communities in every country (akbaşlı & durnali, 2020; demir & durnali, 2022; limon & durnalı, 2017). especially in today’s changing and developing author: ozlem kanbur1 nurdan ozrecberoglu kirikkaleli2 affiliation: 1karaoglanoglu primary school, northern cyprus, turkey 2european university of lefke, northern cyprus, turkey doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i2.6847 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(2): 3-15 published: 30 june 2023 received: 23 october 2022 accepted: 14 june 2023 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6847 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0009-0004-2848-9853 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3509-9317 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6847 42023 41(2): 4-15 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6847 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) education system, the importance of the contribution of teachers’ eq competencies to success is increasing day by day. it should not be limited to focusing only on academic achievement within the classroom environment, but it should also be given importance to developing students’ socio-emotional skills. a teacher’s emotional state affects the effectiveness of his or her teaching skills, not only a teacher’s teaching skills (schermerhorn & bachrach, 2015). similarly, research by kara and sığırtmaç (2021) shows that teachers’ productivity and performance correlate with their ability to regulate their emotions and manage classrooms. classroom management and management of emotions in the teaching profession, where emotions are intensely experienced, teachers need to cooperate with their colleagues and be able to control their emotions in the management of the classroom. teachers must be able to manage and communicate effectively with learners in order to create efficient cm, using newly developed teaching methods and applying them constantly (önay,2023). this attitude affects the teacher’s positive interaction in the classroom as well as having a positive classroom climate (ulutaş & ömeroğlu, 2020). this situation makes it necessary for teachers to exhibit their eq skills effectively both at school and in the classroom. it is known that students who grow up in such an environment exhibit positive behaviours, and there is an increase in their performance (sekreter, 2019). within this context, the concept of eq, pioneered by goleman (1995) and discussed in this study, is defined as the degree to which an individual controls his/her desires and impulses, and defines and expresses these emotions (mayer & geher, 1996). the concept of emotions emerges as a way to reach the mind and to produce (demirtaş, 2020). emotions play a huge role in a child’s development. compared to children who cannot manage their emotions, children who are aware of their emotions are more successful (denham, 2007). the concept of intelligence, alternatively, it is possible to define as thinking and making sense, and it can also be defined as skills that enable reaching the desired result. as a result of combining emotion and intelligence, we obtain eq, which is characterised by being aware of emotions and gaining experience. researchers found that eq predicted entrepreneurial and creative behaviour positively. this explains why entrepreneurship and creative thinking increase as eq (durali, oarkçı & khalili, 2023). with reference to the work of salovey and mayer (1990), psychologist and author daniel goleman (2000) coined the concept of eq in 1995, which was first used in the early 1990s by yale university psychologist peter salowey and university of new hampshire psychologist john mayer. the concept of cognitive intelligence (iq), known as the intelligence coefficient until the 20th century, has been classified in different ways in the last 20 years as social intelligence, success intelligence, practical intelligence, multiple intelligence, spatial intelligence, kinaesthetic intelligence, personal intelligence, group intelligence and eq (karslı, gündüz & ural, 2000). the concept of intelligence has begun to deal with emotional abilities, with alternative theories that include common features in cases where test approaches that measure intelligence, such as iq, cannot measure human intelligence adequately (sarısoy, 2017). eq skills can be defined as a complement to iq or cognitive skills. individuals with eq are capable of recognising and expressing their own emotions, as well as developing skills through experience. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6847 52023 41(2): 5-15 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6847 kanbur & kirikkaleli interaction between teachers’ emotional intelligence and classroom management emotional intelligence a concept known as emotional intelligence (eq) is an acronym for cognitive intelligence (iq). unlike iq, which cannot be developed genetically, eq can be developed in the primary education period of the individual. briefly, intelligence can be summarised as intelligence trying to understand “what”, and trying to understand “how” (mishra & pimri, 2022). when the research is examined, it shows that an individual with a high eq level and who is technically successful is more successful in solving problems, can reveal any needs more easily and solve the problem. in addition, it was stated that they could understand the hidden connections or interactions that could be useful in revealing the issues that should not be emphasised more simply than other people (cooper & sawaf, 2000). for this reason, it can be said that the education system, which only focuses on the success of children and, therefore, schools, ignores the success of students in social life. considering all these, in classrooms where life-long development is observed, transformation into units with high eq can only be realised by teachers who are classroom managers. the functional sustainability of the arrangements required by the planned transformations should be provided by teachers with eq skills (titrek, 2013). in this context, teachers who are role models for students are expected to have or develop eq skills that are aimed to be developed in students (sarısoy, 2017). emotional intelligence and classroom management teachers with high eq have the skills to cope with the negative emotions created by the difficulties they encounter in the classroom, to show positive and emotionally constructive reactions to these problems, to overcome stressful situations that may arise outside the classroom more easily, and to establish more effective relationships with students (pickering, 2003). classroom management (cm) is not the only factor that affects effective learning; the emotional state of the teacher also plays an important role. for effective teaching, cm and instructional approaches are crucial skills (zaky, 2022). in a classroom, the teacher’s emotional state can vary throughout the day. our emotions affect our relationships positively or negatively. this effect is therefore passed down to children in either a positive or a negative way. it is therefore, crucial that students and teachers communicate (önay, 2023). when the teacher thinks about student interaction, cm with the class leader is a feature of the teacher who can regulate his emotions. it can be said that he is successful in his field and can communicate correctly with his learners. thus, the development of learners will be affected positively and the quality of learning will increase (ocak, 2022). within this context, teachers are expected to, who are the managers of the classroom, should have three characteristics, namely philosophical, psychological, and technical, in order to manage the classroom successfully. thus, the values adopted with the philosophy dimension, the personal characteristics with the psychology dimension, and the knowledge and skills possessed with the technical dimension will be represented (bursalıoğlu, 1994). considering that these dimensions are developed along with eq levels, the aim is to determine how the eq levels of teachers working in primary schools, which form the basis of formal education, affect their cm skills. the following questions were asked in order to answer this purpose: https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6847 62023 41(2): 6-15 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6847 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) • in turkish republic of northern cyprus (trnc) primary schools affiliated with the education ministry of trnc, what are teachers’ views on eq and cm? • do teachers at primary schools affiliated with the education ministry of trnc differ significantly in terms of eq levels and cm skills based on demographic variables (gender, age, seniority, and educational level)? • in primary schools affiliated with the education ministry of trnc, are teachers’ eq levels and cm skills significantly correlated? 2. method 2.1 the research model the study based on a thesis, investigated, the researchers used a quantitative method called a relational survey. the purpose of relational screening is to determine whether two variables are changing simultaneously. the aim of this model is to determine what happens when variables change; if any change occurs, and why it happens (bekman, 2022). 2.2 universe and sample the study universe contains 1684 teachers from the education ministry of trnc working in schools in the 2021–2022 semester. a random sample of 341 teachers from this universe was selected for the study. in random sampling, which is also called simple random sampling, the probability of being included in the sample is equal to the people in the universe (kerlinger & lee, 1999). the majority of the teachers (32,9%) constituting the sample are female individuals and individuals between the ages of 22 and 30. it can be seen from the seniority that they typically have after 1–5 years’ (30,9%) experience. among the teachers, only 23.5% had postgraduate degrees. 2.3 data collection tools research was conducted using a personal information form developed by the researchers, the turkish version of the `rotterdam eq scale`, and the `cm scale`. the personal information form was developed with the approval of three different experts in the field to define the sociodemographic characteristics of the teachers and was applied before the scales. in order to determine the eq levels of the teachers, the turkish version of the rotterdam eq scale prepared by abdurrahman tanrıöğen and yusuf türker (2019) was used. the internal consistency value of the scale is 0.84. the scale is examined under four headings as “assessment of emotions”, “assessment of emotions of others”, “controlling emotions” and “controlling emotions of others”. the scale consists of 28 items, 7 for each dimension. the items of the scale, which is formed as a 5-point likert-type rating, are: “i do not agree at all (1)”, “i agree somewhat (2)”, “i agree moderately (3)”, “i agree a lot (4)”, and “i completely agree (5)” (peekar et al., 2017).” teachers’ cm skills were assessed using the cm scale developed by i̇dris şahin and uğur altunay (2011). this scale offers the following answer options: 1) i totally disagree, 2) i disagree, 3) i am undecided, 4) i agree, and 5) i totally agree. the scale consists of 7 sub-dimensions and a total of 40 items. scale dimensions are divided into initiating and attracting attention, punishing behaviour, interaction behaviour, maintaining attention and problem-solving behaviour, warning behaviour, democratic behaviour, expectations, and compliance with rules. the total variance explained by the entire scale is a 50.05% cronbachalpha reliability coefficient of 0.90 (şahin & altunay, 2011). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6847 72023 41(2): 7-15 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6847 kanbur & kirikkaleli interaction between teachers’ emotional intelligence and classroom management 2.4 analysis of data the data collected from the teachers in the research was analysed using the spss 24.0 program. the number of participants was taken as a basis for the normality test. since the number of participants was greater than 50 (n>50), normality analysis was evaluated according to the kolmogorov-smirnov test statistical value. results were found to be normally disturbed for the eq scale test, but not for the cm test when the data were analysed. therefore, both parametric and non-parametric test techniques were used for difference and correlation tests. 3. findings using the mean and standard deviation values, table 1 explains the teachers’ levels of eq and views on cm skills. table 1 scale types x ss total eq 3.76 0.680 total cm 3.22 0.566 the average of the responses given to the eq scale items was found to be 3.76 and a standard deviation value of 0.680. therefore, it was determined that the opinions of the teachers working in primary schools about the eq levels were in the direction of “i strongly agree”. in this context, it can be said that teachers are individuals who are aware of their own and others’ emotions, can manage them, and have developed empathy skills. it is seen that the general total average of the cm skills scale items is 3.22 and the standard deviation value is 0.566. therefore, it can be said that the cm skills of the teachers who contributed to the research are at a moderate level. in order to identify whether there was a significant difference in eq levels among teachers based on their genders, an independent samples t-test was conducted using the normal distribution of the data. however, welch statistics were also used because the variances were not equal. due to the non-normal distribution of the data, the mann withney-u test was used to determine the difference between the cm skills of primary school teachers. table 2: comparison of the eq levels of the teachers working at primary education institutions and the scores they obtained from the cm skills scale according to the gender variable gender n x ss sd t p male 124 3.79 .737 230.112 0.594 0.553 female 216 3.75 .647 gender n avr. rank sum of ranking u z p male 124 175.93 21815.50 12718.500 -0.774 0.439 female 216 167.38 36154.50 when table 2 is examined, it is seen that while the average score of male teachers’ eq levels is 3.79, it is 3.75 for female teachers. as a result of the welch test, it was seen that the average scores of the eq levels of male teachers were higher than those of female teachers. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6847 82023 41(2): 8-15 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6847 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) on the other hand, it was concluded that the eq levels of the teachers do not differ according to the gender variable [t(230,112)=0.594, p>.05]. in the study of turan (2015), in parallel with this research, accordingly gender variables and eq levels did not show significant differences. similarly, according to yavuz’s (2018) study, although female teachers’ eq levels were higher than that of male teachers, no significant difference was found. it is thought that this difference may be due to the fact that the research was conducted in different places, times, and samples. with the changing time, the roles of men and women in society have begun to converge. this situation coincides with the fact that there is no significant difference in the eq levels of male and female teachers. as shown in table 2, there is no significant difference found between the scores of teachers in primary schools with regard to cm skills according to their gender, according to the mannwithney u test [p>0.05]. as a result of the test, it was determined that the general point averages of male teachers’ cm skills in primary education were similar to female teachers’ cm skills. ergün (2021) reached a conclusion parallel with this study in her study and revealed that cm skills did not differ significantly based on gender. sağlam (2018) also concluded in her study that the gender variable did not make a significant difference in cm skills. thus, teachers do not differ based on their gender in their ability to manage a classroom. when comparing the eq levels of the teachers from the perspective of the age variable, the kruskal wallis h test was used because the number of groups dropped below 30 and there was a difference in the number of groups, in the comparison of cm skills, the same test was applied, because the data did not provide a normal distribution. table 3: from the perspectives of the age variable, the kruskal wallis h-test result regarding teachers’ eq levels and cm skills age n avg. rank sd x2 p teachers’ eq levels 22-30 112 155.58 5 4.746 0.448 31-35 72 180.50 36-40 49 167.92 41-45 61 180.52 46-50 14 169.43 51 and over 32 185.53 cm skills 22-30 112 165.46 5 2.905 0.715 31-35 72 169.72 36-40 49 162.27 41-45 61 183.30 46-50 14 153.00 51 and over 32 185.77 table 3 indicates that the kruskal wallis-h test did not indicate any significant differences among teachers’ eq levels based on their age (p>.05). in other words, it can be said that teachers’ eq levels are the same, regardless of age groups. similarly, adsız (2016) concluded in her study that, in parallel with this research, the age variable did not make a significant difference in the level of eq. on the other hand, in the study of korkmazer (2021), in the analysis made by considering the age variable, there was a significant difference in favour of the age group whose eq level is 41–50. accordingly, teachers’ cm skills did not differ significantly by age (p>.05). this means that cm skills are the same for all teachers, no matter the age group. the findings of olçun (2020) suggest a significant relationship between age https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6847 92023 41(2): 9-15 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6847 kanbur & kirikkaleli interaction between teachers’ emotional intelligence and classroom management variables and cm skills, with this relationship being more pronounced among teachers aged 41-48 years and 49-56 years. in the study of kaplan (2020), in parallel with this research, it was concluded that the age variable did not make a significant difference in cm skills. it is thought that as the age increases, the experience of the teachers increases and their patience decreases. because the age variable may impact cm skills in both positive and negative ways, the fact that it does not reveal a significant difference can be explained in light of this. due to the difference in the number of groups and non-normal distribution of the data, the kruskal wallis h test was applied to compare eq levels and cm skills in primary education institutions based on the seniority variable. table 4: from the perspectives of the variable of seniority, kruskal wallis h-test result regarding teachers’ eq levels and cm skills seniority years n avg. rank sd x2 p teachers’ eq levels 1-5 105 160.81 5 6.363 0.272 6-10 47 151.32 11-15 65 177.87 16-20 38 168.09 21-25 45 182.96 26 years and over 40 194.76 cm skills 1-5 105 165.48 5 3.664 0.599 6-10 47 165.10 11-15 65 164.30 16-20 38 184.72 21-25 45 165.07 26 years and over 40 192.70 based on the kruskal wallis-h test, table 4 displays the results of the comparison of teachers’ answers to the eq scale and cm skills, in accordance with their seniority. the results revealed that there was no significant difference between teachers’ seniority levels, eq levels and cm skill scores (p>.05). in other words, it can be said that the eq levels of the teachers are the same, regardless of their seniority group. in the study of toytok (2013), unlike this research, it was concluded that the variable of seniority makes a significant difference in the level of eq. according to toytok’ s research, as teachers’ professional seniority increases, their eq levels also increase. the results of the studies conducted by kabar (2017) and karaahmetoğlu (2017) are similar to the results of this study and it is seen that the variable of seniority does not make a significant difference in the level of eq. on the other hand, it can be said that the cm skills of the teachers are the same regardless of their seniority groups. the results of yalçın’s (2020) research show parallelism with the results of this research. in this study, it was concluded that the variable of seniority did not make a significant difference in cm skills. in addition, nergiz (2014) and yüksel (2013) also found that seniority did not significantly affect cm skills. considering that the age variable and the seniority variable increase in parallel, it can be said that it is an expected result that similar results occur in both. in the comparison of the ability to handle the levels of emotion of the teachers working at primary education institutions according to the variable of educational status, the independent samples t-test was used because the data were normally distributed, but the welch statistics https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6847 102023 41(2): 10-15 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6847 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) were taken into account because the variances were not equal. on the other hand, the mannwhitney u test was used to compare the overall scope of the assessment, since it was not distributed normally. table 5: an analysis of the eq levels of teachers in primary schools and the cm skills scores they obtained based on their educational status. education status n x ss sd t p degree of bachelor 260 3.74 .631 109.337 -1.031 0.305 degrees in master’s level 80 3.84 .820 education status n avg. rank sum of rankings u z p degree of bachelor 260 171.54 44600.000 10130.000 -.352 .725 degrees in master’s level 80 167.13 13370.00 as can be seen in table 5, the average score of the eq levels of the teachers working at primary education institutions is 3.74 for the teachers with a bachelor’s degree and 3.84 for the teachers with a master’s degree. as a result of the welch test, it was seen that the average scores of the teachers with a master’s degree in eq levels were higher than those of the teachers with a bachelor’s degree. according to the results of the analysis, the eq levels of primary school teachers [t(109.337)=-1.031, p>.05] did not show a significant difference according to the variable of educational status. similar to this study, korkmazer (2021) concluded that the variable of teachers’ educational status did not make a significant difference in eq levels. durdu (2015) also reached results in parallel with this research in her study and did not find a significant relationship between educational status and eq. although there was no significant difference in this study, the fact that postgraduate teachers had a more comprehensive education enabled them to control their emotions more successfully and to have relatively higher eq levels. it can be said that this situation is an important reason for encouraging teachers to do graduate studies. when the cm skills scores of the teachers working at primary education institutions were examined according to their educational status, no significant difference was found as a result of the mann-whitney u-test [p>0.05]. in other words, it was determined that the cm skills scores of undergraduate teachers in primary education were similar to the cm skills of graduate teachers. in the study conducted by yılmaz (2021), similar to this research, it was concluded that educational status did not make a significant difference in cm skills. güneş (2016) also supports this research by reaching the conclusion that there is no significant relationship between skills for managing the classroom and the variable of educational status. table 6 examines the relationship between the teacher’s eq level and their ability to manage classrooms. a spearman correlation test was used as an analysis method because the cm skills data were not normally distributed. tablo 6: the relationship between teachers’ eq levels and cm skills n r p eq levels 340 .621 .001 cm skills https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6847 112023 41(2): 11-15 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6847 kanbur & kirikkaleli interaction between teachers’ emotional intelligence and classroom management according to table 6, r=0.621, p=0.05, as a result of the spearman correlation test, which was conducted to determine the relationship between the eq levels of classroom teachers and their cm skills, a significant relationship was revealed. this situation shows that there is a positive and moderately significant relationship between the eq levels of primary school teachers and their cm skills. this situation revealed that a positive or negative change that may occur in primary school teachers’ eq levels and cm skills would affect each other. consequently a parallel study conducted by tunca (2010), it was found that cm skills and eq levels differ significantly. in doğan (2020)’s research, it is seen that there is a positive, moderate relationship between teachers’ cm skills and eq levels. these results are also similar to the results of this study. depending on these results, it can be said that teachers who have developed eq are aware of the feelings of others and themselves, and can manage them are more successfully in cm. considering that eq and cm have some common points such as empathy, understanding the other person, and approaching all students equally without showing their feelings, the result obtained is an expected result. 4. conclusion and suggestions conclusion when the results of the research are analysed according to demographic variables, it is seen that although male teachers’ eq levels are relatively higher than female teachers, this difference is not at a significant level. on the other hand, when cm skills were considered, it was determined that the gender variable did not make a significant difference. therefore, the gender variable has no effect on the eq of teachers or their ability to manage their classrooms. the other results indicated that neither eq nor cm skills were significantly affected by the age variable. accordingly, teachers’ abilities to manage classrooms and their eq levels do not differ based on the age variable. considering that eq acting according to emotions is related to the personal characteristics of the individual, it is seen that the result reached is normal. another result obtained from the study is that the variable of seniority does not make a significant difference in the level of eq and cm skills. in this context, the results show that the time spent by teachers in the profession does not have any effect on teachers’ eq and cm skills. when the educational status variable was examined, it was concluded that the eq levels of master’s degree graduates were higher than those of bachelor graduates, but this difference was not at a significant level. likewise, it was determined that there was no significant difference in cm skills and that the cm skills of bachelor’s degree and master’s degree teachers were similar. the study results concluded that eq levels of primary school teachers are moderately related to their cm skills, as expected. this situation revealed that a positive or negative change that may occur in primary school teachers’ eq levels and cm skills would affect each other. from this point of view, it can be said that teachers who are aware of their own feelings and those of others, who can put themselves in the shoes of others, and who have a developed sense of empathy have better cm skills. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6847 122023 41(2): 12-15 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6847 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) suggestions based on these results, the following suggestions can be listed to increase a teacher’s level of eq and his or her ability to manage a classroom: • it has been confirmed by studies that eq and cm skills can be developed. in-service training can be organised in order to improve teachers’ eq levels and cm skills, and students can also participate in this training. • school administrators can organise in-school activities to develop these skills when necessary by encouraging teachers to participate in in-service training. • in order to improve pre-service teachers’ eq and cm skills, theoretical and applied courses on these subjects can be added to undergraduate programs. • a discussion environment should be created for teachers about the solutions of possible undesirable behaviours that may occur in the classroom and it can be provided that different opinions that may arise can be a light for teachers. • as a result of the research, the conclusion that the eq levels of postgraduate teachers are higher may encourage teachers to graduate and increase their education levels. • administrators should organise necessary activities in order to increase both their own eq levels and the eq levels of their teachers and to create a school environment where interpersonal relationships are well established. • although there are separate studies on skills in cm and eq in the trnc, there is no study that deals with the two issues together. in future research, these two issues can be contributed to the literature by considering them together with the addition of a qualitative dimension. • in this study, demographic factors were examined in order to assess eq and cm skills. however, since there are many factors affecting these two skills, other factors that have an effect on eq and cm can be examined in future research. • in this study, which was carried out by considering the teacher dimension, a new study can be carried out by determining a positive and moderate relationship between teachers’ eq levels and cm skills and then adding the student dimension. thus, since teachers with high eq also have high cm skills, it can be investigated how this situation affects student success. references adsız, e. 2016. yöneticilerin duygusal zekâ düzeylerinin karar verme stillerine etkisini belirlemeye yönelik bir araştırma. unpublished master›s thesis, hitit üniversitesi sosyal bilimler enstitüsü. akbaşli, s. & durnali, m. 2020. the relationship between mobbing 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(2022). quality of life (qol): role of iq, eq and sq. international journal of multidisciplinary educational research, 11(1), 18-24. http://ijmer.in.doi./2022/11.01.64 nergiz, v. 2014. sınıf öğretmenlerinin sınıf yönetim becerilerinin çeşitli değişkenler açısından incelenmesi (yüksek lisans tezi). yök tez merkezi veri tabanından erişildi (tez no: 394662). ocak, b. 2022. çocukluk çağı travmaları ile aleksitimi arasındaki ilişkide duygu düzenleme becerisinin biçimlendirici rolünün incelenmesi (yayın no. 724477) (yüksek lisans tezi, i̇stanbul kent üniversitesi). available at https://tez.yok.gov.tr/ulusaltezmerkezi/tezsorgusonucyeni. jsp [accessed 19.8.2022]. olçun, h. 2020. fen bilgisi öğretmenlerinin sınıf yönetimi yeterliklerinin bazı değişkenlere göre incelenmesi . unpublished master’s thesis, fen bilimleri enstitüsü. önay, d. 2023. okul öncesi öğretmenlerinin sınıf yönetimi becerileri ile duygu düzenleme becerileri arasındaki ilişki. unpublished master›s thesis, tc maltepe üniversitesi lisansüstü eğitim enstitüsü. peekar, k.a., bakker, a.b., linden, d. & born, m. 2017. selfand other-focused emotional intelligence: development and validation of the rotterdam emotional intelligence scale (reis). personality and individual differences, 12 (2018): 222-233. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. paid.2017.08.045 salovey, p. & mayer, j.d. 1990. emotional intelligence. imagination, cognition and personality, 9(3): 185-211. https://doi.org/10.2190/dugg-p24e-52wk-6cdg sarısoy, b. (2017). öğretmenler için duygusal zekâ becerileri eğitim programının tasarlanması, uygulanması ve değerlendirilmesi (doctoral dissertation). schermerhorn, j. & bachrach, d.g. 2015. introduction to management. new york: john wiley & sons inc. sekreter, g. 019). emotional intelligence as a vital indicator of teacher effectiveness. international journal of social sciences & educational studies, 5(3): 286-302. şahin, i., & altunay, u. (2011). primary school teachers’ classroom management behaviors. elementary education online, 10(3), 905-918. tanriöğen, a., & türker, y. (2019). rotterdam duygusal zekâ ölçeği türkçe formunun faktör yapısı, geçerlik ve güvenirlik çalışması. pamukkale üniversitesi eğitim fakültesi dergisi, 1-18. titrek, o. (2013). iq’dan eq’ya: duyguları zekice yönetme, geliştirilmiş 4. baskı, ankara: pegem akademi. tunca, ö. 2010. duygusal zeka düzeylerinin sınıf yönetimi becerilerine etkisi ve bir araştırma. unpublihed master’s thesis, i̇stanbul üniversitesi, i̇stanbul. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6847 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0160-2896(96)90011-2 http://ijmer.in.doi./2022/11.01.64 https://tez.yok.gov.tr/ulusaltezmerkezi/tezsorgusonucyeni.jsp https://tez.yok.gov.tr/ulusaltezmerkezi/tezsorgusonucyeni.jsp https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.08.045 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2017.08.045 https://doi.org/10.2190/dugg-p24e-52wk-6cdg 152023 41(2): 15-15 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6847 kanbur & kirikkaleli interaction between teachers’ emotional intelligence and classroom management turan, m. 2015. öğretmenlerin duygusal zekâ ve tükenmişlik düzeyleri arasındaki ilişkinin incelenmesi. unpublihed master’s thesis, i̇stanbul gelişim üniversitesi sosyal bilimler enstitüsü. ulutaş, i̇.l.k.a.y. & ömeroğlu, e.s.r.a. 2020. erken çocukluk döneminde duygusal zeka kuramdan uygulama ve değerlendirmincomplete entry. yalçın, b.y. 2020. sınıf öğretmenlerinin benimsedikleri sınıf yönetimi stilleri ile olumlu sınıf iklimi oluşturma yeterlikleri arasındaki ilişki. unpublished master’s thesis, i̇stanbul sabahattin zaim üniversitesi, lisansüstü eğitim enstitüsü, eğitim bilimleri anabilim dalı. yavuz, s. 2018. meslek lisesi öğretmenlerinin duygusal zekâlarının çeşitli değişkenler açısından incelenmesi. unpublished master’s thesis, i̇stanbul sabahattin zaim üniversitesi, sosyal bilimler enstitüsü, eğitim bilimleri anabilim dalı. yılmaz, h.b. 2021. okul öncesi öğretmenlerinin sinif yönetimi becerilerini yordayan değişkenlerin i̇ncelenmesi. unpublished doctoral dissertation, ahi evran universitesi, kırşehir. yüksel, a. 2013. sınıf öğretmenlerinin sınıf yönetimi becerilerinin değerlendirilmesi (afyonkarahisar ili örneği). unpublished master’s thesis, gazi üniversitesi, ankara. zaky, h. 2022. emotional intelligence and professional development: the impact of affective competence on teacher performance. in (first ed.), implementing diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in educational management practices, pp. 174-202. igi global. https://doi. org/10.4018/978-1-6684-4803-8.ch009 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6847 https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-6684-4803-8.ch009 https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-6684-4803-8.ch009 2282021 39(3): 228-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 lecturers’ accounts of their curriculum practices at a university of technology abstract this article focuses on lectures’ accounts of their curriculum practices at a university of technology (uot). based on semistructured interviews with lecturers, it examines their engagement with the curriculum and the practices they adopt to ensure student learning. i draw on bourdieu’s (1990) concepts of field, reflexivity, illusio and doxa to highlight the lecturers’ ability to negotiate the university’s field and the reflexive stances they adopt to change and adapt their teaching practices. the article highlights the importance of cultivating reflexivity in academic staff development programmes and the need to strengthen lecturers’ reflexivity at uots. the article’s findings show the tension lecturers experience between teaching and research and the subordinate role of research in their curriculum practices. the article discusses the lecturers’ commitment to the curriculum’s values and shows that these factors were crucial in developing lecturer agency and reflexivity. the lecturers’ beliefs about their teaching and pedagogical strategies they utilised are discussed as a part of their curriculum practices. these were critical in establishing their agency and in producing innovative curriculum practices. my research shows the significance of utilising information communication technologies (icts) by the lecturers as a pedagogical strategy in the enactment of the curriculum. keywords: curriculum practices; lecturer agency; reflexivity; teaching and research. 1. introduction lecturers at the university of technology (uot) have an important role in preparing students for professions and vocations; their beliefs and values are central to the curriculum. this article explores the curriculum practices of lecturers and the strategies and positions they embarked on to enact the curriculum. it is based on a case study of lecturers in the faculty of business management sciences (fbms), which explores how lecturers adapt and enrich their curriculum and teaching and learning approaches to strengthen their curriculum practices. this article builds on the extant literature on curriculum development in higher education institutions. in this respect, soudien (2010) focuses on the politics of the curriculum and the external author: dr najwa norodien-fataar1 affiliation: 1cape peninsula university of technology, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i3.17 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(3): 228-241 published: 16 september 2021 received: 08 march 2021 accepted: 06 may 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8286-8089 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 2292021 39(3): 229-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 norodien-fataar lecturers’ accounts of their curriculum practices political dimensions of knowledge of the curriculum by analysing the history of curriculum development. he highlights how the south african curriculum emerged from the apartheid context into the post-apartheid context, signalling the importance of the social-political contexts in understanding curriculum development. shay (2016), in turn, spotlights the curriculum’s knowledge bases and argues that there are different forms of knowledge embedded in the curriculum; theoretical, practical and a combination of theoretical and practical knowledge. shay (2016) suggests that paying closer attention to the curriculum’s knowledge logics would give us insight into what should be privileged in the curriculum. at the same time, debates about the fourth industrial revolution and its influence on curriculum and pedagogical practices at institutions indicate the need for curriculum relevance in higher education institutions (fataar, 2020, marwala, 2020). debates on curriculum development at uots focus on recurriculation processes and lecturers’ crucial role in developing diploma and postgraduate diploma courses (scholtz, 2019). scholtz (2019) draws attention to lecturers’ agency while participating in recurriculation. she focuses on lecturers’ consultation with industry stakeholders and how they developed a situational analysis and benchmarking of their programmes. she discusses how they participated in selecting and classifying knowledge for the intended postgraduate diplomas. luckett (2001) and quinn (2019) identify lecturers’ agents in curriculum processes, specifically their role in conceptualising, planning and enacting the curriculum. the integration of information communication technology (ict) in the curriculum has been a vital part of the higher education landscape. ng’ambi et al. (2016) discuss staff development initiatives at higher education institutions that focused on ict use for teaching and learning. tshuma (2019) illustrates the close link between lecturers’ curriculum values and integrating technology in their teaching. she argues that lecturer agency was key to understanding ict use among lecturers at higher education institutions. quinn and vorster (2019) remind us of the crucial role of lecturers’ beliefs about the nature of their discipline in curriculum decision making. this article focuses on the lecturers’ perspectives on their curriculum and the practices they produce to ensure student learning. it concentrates on selected lecturers’ interpretations of their curriculum as they negotiate and mediate the university “field”. drawing on bourdieu (1990), “field” is used in this article to refer to the social spaces that make an institution environment wherein situations, power relations and people’s practices converge. the lecturers’ deliberations about their curriculum practices are based on: (1) their views about their role as academics at a uot in terms of research and teaching; (2) their values and objectives of their curriculum (3) their beliefs about their teaching and the pedagogical strategies they employ to enhance their teaching. curriculum practices are defined in this article as the systematic organisation of teaching and learning based on practices to improve student learning (morrow, 2007). this article’s focus on lecturers’ curriculum practices should be understood in the context of curriculum renewal and staff development in higher education institutions. 2. context and participants of the study the university of technology (uot) that forms the study’s context is in the western cape province of south africa and offers diploma and degree courses and work-integrated learning. the university attracts mainly black1 and coloured students and offers professional 1 black and coloured refers to apartheid designated categories. these categories are congruent with university statistics. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 2302021 39(3): 230-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) programmes and a work-integrated learning focus. the university has lower entry-level requirements compared to those required for university degree programmes. the university has six faculties and a number of support centres such as the teaching and learning centre, the education technology centre, the student support centre and a community engagement centre to support lecturers and students in their teaching and learning programmes. six lecturers who are part of the fbms at the uot were purposely selected for this study based on their active engagement with the academic support programmes such as the tutorial support programmes and academic literacy programmes. the fbms is the largest faculty at the uot. it offers a range of business courses such as accounting, marketing, hospitality and paralegal courses. all the participants teach at first-year level. participant a, the internal auditing lecturer, qualified as a chartered accountant and worked in the private sector for seventeen years before being appointed as a lecturer at the uot. participant b, the marketing lecturer, has as his highest qualification a btech degree and worked for a short period at the university in a marketing capacity. he has been working at the university for seven years as a marketing lecturer for the extended curriculum programme (ecp). the ecp is supported by the department of higher education and training and aims to improve students’ graduation and throughput rates in south african universities. students in the ecp receive support with augmented lectures and tutorials. participant c, a lecturer in human resource management, has three years of teaching experience, a master’s degree in industrial relations and worked at another university before coming to the uot. participant d, the economics lecturer, was part of the old technikon before the uot was established and has a long history of working at the uot. her highest qualification is a master’s degree in commerce, and she is pursuing her phd in economics. participant e, the consumer behaviour lecturer, has a master’s degree, worked in the private sector for nine years and is currently registered for his phd in education. participant f, the computer literacy lecturer, has a phd in engineering and worked in the private sector for two and a half years. this brief profile provides a background to locate the lecturers’ position in the field of the university. 3. field analysis and reflexivity this article uses field theory and the concept of reflexivity to explain the lecturers’ responsiveness to their curriculum and the practices they employ to ensure effective teaching and learning. studies by kloot (2009; 2014) explore the value of bourdieu’s (1990) framework in higher education, suggesting that such a framework provides insight into universities’ reform trajectories. bourdieu (1990) regards university education as a field with a high degree of autonomy. according to bourdieu (1990), its values and behaviours are relatively independent of broader economic and political forces. maton (2005) elaborates on the notion of autonomy by distinguishing between positional and relational autonomy to explain the degree of autonomy in the higher education field. “positional autonomy” refers to the extent to which lecturers in higher education look inwards towards their positions as autonomous academic professionals to develop their research and academic identities. in contrast, according to maton (2005:699), relational autonomy refers to relations with fields outside of higher education such as the economy and the employment sector and the extent to which these relations impact the control that lecturers have in determining their academic roles. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 2312021 39(3): 231-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 norodien-fataar lecturers’ accounts of their curriculum practices bourdieu and wacquant (1992: 97) define the concept of “field” as: a network, or configuration, of objective relations between positions. these positions are objectively defined, in their existence and in the determinations they impose upon their occupants, agents or institutions, by their present and potential situation (situs) in the structure of the distribution of species of power (or capital) whose possession commands access to the specific profits that are at stake in the field, as well as by their objective relation to other positions. “field” refers to the social space as made up of institutions, situations, power relations and people’s practices. bourdieu (1990) regards field as a social space rather than merely a physical geographic entity (lingard, 2013:9). the “field” in this article refers to the functions and operations of the university’s educational support programme, including the courses that the selected lecturers teach, their relationship with students, the teaching and learning support services and the policies that constitute the university’s activities. bourdieu and wacquant (1992) compare a field in this sense to a game guided by rules and field positions specific to their context. bourdieu (1990) suggests that people use various strategies to maintain or improve their position in the field. comparing the field and the field positions of players is useful as it allows me to understand lecturers’ perspectives on their curriculum practices at the uot. jenkins (2002:53) points out that “the field is the crucial mediating context wherein external factors – changing circumstances – are brought to bear upon individual practice and institutions”. bourdieu and wacquant (1992: 19) states that: a field is not simply a dead structure, a set of “empty spaces” as in althusserian marxism, but a space of play which exists as such only to the extent that players enter into it who believe in and actively pursue the prizes it offers. “field” is thus a dynamic space in which individuals can advance their interests and concerns, allowing them to contribute to shaping the field. bourdieu (1990) suggests that individuals have an “interest” in their game. grenfell (2014: 152) explains that the concepts of “interest” and later the concept of “illusio” were used by bourdieu (1990) to signify the circumstances individuals find themselves in to “define and improve their position”. bourdieu (1998: 76–77) suggests that “illusio is the fact of being caught up in and by the game, of believing the game is ‘worth the candle’, or, more simply, that playing is worth the effort”. bourdieu’s (1990) concept of field and illusio allows me to understand the lecturers’ mediation of their curriculum practices to enable effective teaching. i discuss below how the lecturers are “taken in by the game” (bourdieu & wacquant, 1992:8) and invest their time and energy in shaping the field of higher education. the relation between individuals and the field of higher education is thus relevant to focus on curriculum practices. i employ the notion of reflexivity to explain how the lecturers mediate the academic field of the university. the concept of reflexivity is a core dimension of bourdieu’s (1990) theory and refers to the ability: to make explicit the two-way relationship between the objective structures of the intellectual, academic, and social-scientific fields and the incorporated practices (i.e. habitus) of those operating in the field (deer, 2012: 202). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 2322021 39(3): 232-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) reflexivity refers to the dynamic interaction between individuals and the social structures with which they engage. in this light, reflexivity emphasises that individuals are acutely aware of and recognise their position and agency in relation to a social context. reflexivity serves as a vital function in higher education institutions and illuminates the practices that individuals establish and their actions in a particular context and field. however, bourdieu cautions that reflexivity cannot be an exercise carried out solely on an individual basis. it has to be a common and shared effort aimed at making explicit the “unthought categories, perceptions, theories, and structures that underpin any pre-reflexive grasp of the social environment” (deer, 2012: 198). belluigi (2012) suggests that reflexivity is distinct from “reflection-in-action”. she means that the latter focuses on a separation between the subject and the object and the decontextualised knower. however, reflexivity refers to the relation between the individuals’ (subjects) active engagement with the social contexts (objects). individuals are regarded as integral to the social phenomena rather than objective participants. schirato and webb (2002: 255) distinguish between practical knowledge (le sens pratique), which refers to a “feel for the game” while reflexivity – or reflexive knowledge – is an extension and development of this practical sense away from automatic or habituated practice to a more aware and evaluative relation to oneself and one’s contexts. distinguishing practical knowledge from reflexivity indicates that reflexivity is more than just everyday strategies that individuals would take in the field of higher education. reflexivity refers to individuals’ subjective engagement and practices in relation to the field of higher education. the lecturers’ pedagogical practices and interventions “can ultimately result in the change of the habitus and to “a more competent navigation of a particular context” (schirato & webb, 2002: 256). bourdieu (1990: 86) defines habitus as “ways of standing, speaking, walking, and thereby of feeling and thinking, refers to something historical, it is linked to individual history”. habitus is a concept developed by bourdieu (1990) to understand human actions in relation to their social contexts. schirato and webb (2002: 256) make the crucial point that “agency is always the result of a coming together of the habitus and the specific cultural fields and contexts in which agents “find themselves, in both senses of the expression”. the lecturers’ curriculum practices in the field of the uot allow me to examine how they engage and interact with the university field and the reflexive deliberations they draw on to establish transformative practices. their transformative practices refer to the practices lecturers establish that leads to change and shifts in the university field. another concept i employ to explain the lecturers’ responsiveness at the uot is the concept of doxa. bourdieu (1990) refers to doxa as the “pre-reflexive, shared, but unquestioned opinions and perceptions conveyed within and by relatively autonomous entities – fields – which determine ‘natural’ practices and attitudes via internalised ‘sense of limits’ and habitus of the agents in those fields” (deer, 2014: 115). bourdieu (1990) suggests that doxa is the “natural beliefs” and opinions linked to a field and habitus. deer (2014:117) states that “doxa is embedded in the field while helping to define and characterise that field”. similarly, kloot (2009: 472.) suggests that doxa is individuals’ beliefs of “how things should be”. fillies and fataar (2015) show in their study of rural learners that “doxa” was instrumental in shaping their attitudes to learning practices and motivating them to stay in school. the concept of doxa is significant as it allows one to understand the common sense beliefs and perceptions that lecturers hold about their university work. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 2332021 39(3): 233-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 norodien-fataar lecturers’ accounts of their curriculum practices 4. research design and methodology the study is based on a qualitative, interpretive methodological approach concerned with understanding social phenomena through people’s meanings (babbie & mouton, 2001). a qualitative approach was suitable as it allowed me to engage extensively with participants to gain an in-depth understanding of lecturers’ curriculum practices (cohen, manion & morrison, 2017). the study endeavoured to understand lecturers’ curriculum practices by considering the “thick descriptions” and perspectives of the participants’ constructions. this allowed me to capture and interpret the constructions that they provided, which, in turn, enabled me to generate particular insights about their practices. the article is based on a qualitative study that focused on lecturers’ interpretations and responsiveness to their curriculum practices at a uot. a case study approach (yin, 2018) was applied to capture the lecturers’ current curriculum practices. yin (2018: 15) suggests that a case study relies on multiple sources of evidence especially when the boundaries between the phenomenon and the context are not clearly evident. lecturers in the fbms who sought regular academic support from the university’s centre for higher education development (ched) were invited via email to participate in the study. the email communication described the research project and included the sample interview questions. six lecturers were purposively selected to participate in semi-structured interviews of one and a half to two hours. the purposive selection was based on the lecturers’ regular engagement with ched. lecturers were asked permission to record the interviews and were assured of confidentiality. the semi-structured interviews enabled me to ask for clarifications and elicit deeper responses about their curriculum practices. participation in the study was voluntary and lecturers could withdraw at any stage. each participant was requested to sign a consent form to acknowledge their participation in the project. the purpose of the interviews was to understand the lecturers’ perceptions of their curriculum and the pedagogical processes they embark on to ensure student success. these lecturers provided information-rich data that enabled me to gain an in-depth understanding of how they mediated the institution’s academic field to improve students’ learning (patton, 2015). data were analysed using atlas.ti. information was coded and categorised into themes. i followed a process of analytical induction, which involved correlating the data with bourdieu’s theoretical framework of field and concepts of reflexivity. the themes that emerged from the data were (1) the tension between teaching and research at a uot (2) lecturers’ deliberations of the values and objectives of their curriculum and (3) lecturers’ beliefs about their teaching and the pedagogical strategies they employ to enhance their teaching this study was supported by an institutional research initiative called the research and innovation for teaching and learning (riftal) fund. all ethics protocols were maintained during the study. my position as a senior lecturer and head of department in the teaching and learning centre’s student learning section was significant. i am an academic practitioner in the ched, which is located outside of the interviewees’ faculty. i offer curriculum development support to faculty lecturers. i was aware that my position could influence the type of responses lecturers gave. i, therefore, took time to probe their answers, asking them for explanations when they were giving formulaic responses. to provide rich and detailed descriptions, i used the participants own words extensively in the article and provided extensive quotations to indicate their point of view. this was done to reduce the bias and subjectivity that i might have during the interviewing and interpretation of the data (patton, 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 2342021 39(3): 234-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) 5. findings 5.1 the tension between research and teaching in relation to the curriculum this section focuses on the lecturers’ views of their role as academics in a uot, including their responsibilities with respect to teaching and learning, research and publication as well as community engagement. according to garraway and winberg (2019), unlike in the past, academic staff are pressured to conduct research and be responsive to the fourth industrial revolution at the university of technology. my data show the difficulty the lecturers’ experienced performing their roles as academics at the uot in relation to research. all the selected participants acknowledged the crucial role of industry and the professional bodies in their curriculum. however, the data show that the lecturers expressed a tension between their teaching and research roles at the uot. participant a emphasised her teaching role and commented that it was “difficult to do both research and teaching, with the load you have”. participant b felt that: as a teacher, i do engage in reflective practice and action research. i wouldn’t, therefore, consider myself a researcher. i struggle to get into research because there are real needs on the ground all the time that i have to deal with. participant c, however, referred to research and teaching as an ideal and commented that it was “not practical” because “the teaching and the admin behind teaching take up much of your time”. similarly, participant d commented that, i think teaching is a must. i think even our higher staff members, our hods and that, should be teaching, or involved in some kind of education thing like developing a qualification or something to do with teaching and learning, put it that way. i do believe that research is essential and that we all should be striving towards that. conducting research was thus seen by participant d, as something lecturers should try to do. participant e, on the other hand, made the critical point: so for me, i see researching problems in the field of marketing as being what then informs what i teach. he was actively engaged in supervising master’s students in his department and served on the research committee in the fbms. participant f also believed that teaching and research were significant aspects of the uot, but felt that he could not balance the demands of teaching and research and commented: you find that at one point maybe your class is suffering, then when you try and do more again and you focus too much on your classes, and then the research is sort of affected as well. so there is always – one needs to find that balance. most participants in this study intended to complete higher qualifications and were willing to engage in professional staff development programmes. the data show that the lecturers struggle to mediate between conducting research and teaching. the lecturers’ statements http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 2352021 39(3): 235-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 norodien-fataar lecturers’ accounts of their curriculum practices show that they believe in the ideal of conducting research; however, they struggled to strike a balance between the demands that the teaching and research dimensions of their work made on their work identities. the selected lecturers’ comments indicate that they realise that they need to participate in research and teaching as a strategy to “play the game” in the university’s field. the data clearly show that the participants struggle to include research as part of their role at the university. they regard research as secondary to their curriculum practices. the data illustrate that their aspiration to do research remains high (white, carvalho & riordan, 2011). 5.2 lecturers’ deliberations of the values and objectives of their curriculum this section focuses on the lecturers’ perspectives on the objectives and values that are an important part of their teaching. quinn (2019) points out that what academics value in a field is significant, as it underscores the curriculum choices they make at the university. participant a, the internal auditing lecturer, felt that values such as honesty, integrity and independence were “codes” that internal auditors needed to live by. she emphasised the importance of teaching students about “the structures and the processes” of the organisation and “how the organisation is managed and directed and controlled”. the data show that the lecturers made concerted attempts to gain a better understanding of their students. participant a felt that understanding the students were crucial. she thought that some lecturers could do more to connect with the students they teach. she commented: so, it is really about, do we actually, bottom line, understand our students and their context? i am not saying solve all their problems because that’s not what we are here for. participant b, the marketing lecturer, considered “taking the initiative” as significant in marketing and suggested that, as a marketing person, you are the one that comes up with the ideas, and you’re the one that kind of pull the teams together because you’re the one that understands the consumer. he also suggested that creativity and innovation were key elements and added that students need to have a problem-solving type of personality “with a creative spin”. he described marketers’ role as “we create campaigns, get customers on board, and build new relationships”. participant b recognised students’ poor socio-economic status, the poor schooling contexts, and that some lecturers were culturally distinct from students and struggled to establish connections with them. he commented that: students have changed over the years. most of my students are xhosa speaking, some of them from cape town, many of them from the eastern cape. some of them are afrikaans and english speaking as well. so culturally, my students are different from me; most of them are different from me, which is at times challenging because i don’t know how to engage – but i’m trying to grow in that area so that i’m able to get to know them on kind of, yes, to know their culture. he also commented on the university and said that, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 2362021 39(3): 236-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) our structures don’t – the way our education or curriculum is set out doesn’t match with the way they’ve learned how to study and do things, or we don’t have the resources or the understanding that is required in order to help them kind of effectively bridge that divide. so maybe we have the deficit and not them. participant c, the human resources lecturer, suggested that critical thinking, good researchers and data collection are crucial in human resources courses for her students. she regarded “being more perceptive” as a vital attribute for human resource management students. participant c also made the essential point that training students to use online technological systems is imperative. she commented that “now everything is online. so, you would direct an employee to say go and apply online for leave. so, we want them also to be computer literate to understand these new dynamics”. participant d suggested that in economics, values such as “ethics” are crucial for students. she commented that the idea is always to teach the student, let’s do what is right for society. it is about just informing students about our responsibility to the greater society, not just to ourselves, and we need to look after the poor, and that’s part of a big module in economics. we need to act ethically in those endeavours. so, it is a lot of ethics; it is a lot of helping them make the right decision. that is why i don’t believe that any qualification that comes out of the faculty of business should not have economics. participant f commented that efficiency and accuracy were vital for the computer literacy class he taught. he suggested that students needed to be “accurate and have good typing skills”. he stressed the importance of this subject for all students entering the uot. he commented that “all students must be able to do this in order to go on to make your studies more efficient, and you have to be able to be computer literate”. the data above show the values identified by each lecturer in their respective subjects. the participants of the study identified values such as fairness and honesty as crucial to their respective courses. they describe their students as initiative takers, problem solvers, and technologically savvy. they show an interest in their students’ socio-economic backgrounds and the challenges they face with their courses. according to bourdieu, such views would be characterised as their “illusio”, referring to their interest and aspirations in getting involved in and playing the academic game. this “illusio” keeps the lecturers motivated to hold on to their academic beliefs while actively pursuing their university work. bourdieu suggests that the “illusio” in the field keeps individuals interested in pursuing the projects and forms the basis of agents’ practice in a field. however, bourdieu and waquant (1992: 39) alert us to the “tendency for subjects [the lecturers] from certain fields to abstract practices from their contexts, and see them as ideas to be contemplated, rather than problems to be addressed or solved”. in other words, lecturers might hold strong theoretical views about the values of their curriculum; however, they might not give practical expression to their ideas. the curriculum’s values and objectives need to be explicit to engage with the uot, many of whom are first-generation students. in the next section, i focus on the lecturers’ beliefs about their teaching at the uot and the pedagogical strategies they employ to enhance their teaching. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 2372021 39(3): 237-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 norodien-fataar lecturers’ accounts of their curriculum practices 5.3 lecturers’ beliefs about their teaching and the pedagogical strategies they employ to enhance their teaching the lecturers’ beliefs about their teaching reflect their aspirations about their teaching at a uot. participant a, the internal auditing lecturer, attributes the internal auditing course to the embodiment of skills and practices as a crucial aspect of her teaching. she regards the university as a technikon that provides technical and practical skills as well as theoretical knowledge. participant a identified three main areas in her lectures as essential in internal auditing: process, principles and skills critical for auditing students. she saw her role as “enabling, facilitating” and expressed the need to “tap into understanding your [students] to get your [students] to become better than what you are”. she commented that many of her students will be entering the public sector and will be expected to “manage an internal audit function”. her pedagogical strategies focused extensively on group work. she learnt about group work dynamics from her students. she suggested that “you cannot force relationships, and you cannot force people to put in the effort”. her comment shows her commitment to fostering relationships among students and managing group work strategies among diverse students. besides group work, participant a regularly used information communication technologies (icts) such as blackboard and added five-minute video clips to her blackboard platform. she also used cell phones and google in her classroom as a strategy to engage with her students. participant b taught marketing to first-year students on the extended curriculum programme. he stated that he adopted action research and reflective approaches and stressed the importance of “student-centric teaching-oriented learning” in his teaching. he regarded marketing as an “abstract, creative and scientific subject”. he used innovative pedagogical strategies such as video-recorded screencasts as a teaching tool and commented: a screencast is when you just see my computer screen and my powerpoint presentation, for example, and you hear my voice. so, all my concepts from the textbook that students need to know have been screencasts in that way, and it is available to the students. participant b utilised blogs to encourage writing skills among the marketing students. he also used social media platforms such as whatsapp, facebook and youtube to get the students to engage with the curriculum content. participant d regards economics as a crucial science in which all fbms students need a good grounding before graduation. she created online videos for her students. she commented that the videos are designed to encourage students to self-study and take responsibility for their learning. participant e was concerned about decoloniality and what that would mean for consumer behaviour as one of her teaching subjects. he stated that he was busy with a multilingual project to address those concerns. participant e felt that he needed to provide his students with additional learning materials, which he made available on blackboard. he also refers his students to youtube to augment his teaching. he explained that: they [there] are videos that demonstrate the concepts of learning pavlov’s theories, or it is about pavlov himself. so i get things from operant conditioning, skinner, i get something from the big bang theory, so i got a little clip of two or three minutes long where the actors are using operant conditioning. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 2382021 39(3): 238-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) some of the lecturer interviewees’ use of short videos shows that the lecturers were using augmenting strategies to enhance their curriculum delivery. their approaches to teaching went beyond the traditional talk and chalk methods in favour of technology-enhanced learning. these lecturers felt that they had a better chance of improving student learning by supplementing their curriculum with icts. they consulted with educational technology support lecturers in the university’s centre for educational technology about using digital technology to enhance their teaching. participant c links her teaching to industry. she stressed the importance of providing tutorial support to students. she believed that her teaching approaches should enable students to be more curious and more knowledgeable about labour law and policies. participant f taught computer literacy to all first year fbms students and emphasised that practise and consistency are vital to student learning in his curriculum. he relied on peer tutors and peer support as a strategy to improve students’ computer literacy competence. participant c and participant f used tutorial support as a teaching strategy and accessed the tutorial support training at the ched to employ the tutors. the lecturers’ beliefs about their teaching and the pedagogical strategies indicate their reflexive capacity as they had to connect with structures within the university field to enhance their teaching. the lecturers’ discourses about their student-centric approaches to curriculum delivery indicate their commitment to improving their teaching approaches. these discourses demonstrate what bourdieu refers to as the “doxa” of lecturers. bourdieu suggests that doxa is the “natural beliefs” and opinions linked to a field and habitus. deer (2014) asserts that doxa is embedded in the field by defining and characterising it. the “doxa” of the participants in this study was significant as it influenced their teaching approaches and motivated them to develop innovative pedagogies. the lecturers’ pedagogical strategies illustrate their attempt to make the curriculum more accessible to students through various innovative pedagogical practices. their strategies also show that there are conditions for reflexivity necessary before lecturers can effect change. bourdieu and wacquant (1992: 41) make the crucial point that, [t]hose fields [institutions] which tend to encourage and reward a reflexive habitus through the institutionalising of a reflexive disposition in mechanisms of training, dialogue, and critical evaluation have the potential to produce reflexive knowledge and reflexive subjects. institutional structures such as academic staff development programmes are thus crucial in cultivating and developing reflexive lecturers at the uot. simultaneously, the lecturers’ assertions about their beliefs signal their capacity to establish their agency in the university field and their willingness to transform their curriculum and introduce new practices. strengthening lecturers’ beliefs about their teaching through dialogue, discussion, training and debate are vital in developing the type of reflexive capacity to engage in curriculum transformation. 6. conclusion this article focused on the lecturers’ accounts of their curriculum practices at a uot. bourdieu’s (1990) concepts of field, reflexivity, illusio and doxa were used to spotlight the lecturers’ agency and capacity to adopt reflexive dispositions as they enact the curriculum. the article examined the tension lecturers experienced between teaching and research. it showed that research was less important to the curriculum practices of lecturers at the uot. this has implications http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 2392021 39(3): 239-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 norodien-fataar lecturers’ accounts of their curriculum practices for the development of the curriculum at the uot and the curriculum choices lecturers make concerning research and the undergraduate curriculum. the challenge for lecturers at the uot would be to uphold their autonomy within higher education institutions by actively engaging in disciplinary research. their research would inform the higher education academy and the professional bodies who play a crucial role in contributing to the curriculum at uots. the article highlighted the lecturers’ beliefs about their teaching, such as the studentcentric approaches, action research methodologies and creation of multilingual glossaries. it argued that these teaching beliefs were an essential part of lecturers’ agency and their ability to introduce new and innovative teaching practices. the article also focused on the pedagogical strategies lecturers adopted as part of their curriculum practices. i showed that the use of icts was primarily used as an innovative pedagogical strategy. i suggest a need for critical engagement in the use of icts and the pedagogical strategies lecturers employ in their teaching. structures and policies need to be created within the uot to enable more robust discussions and debates on icts in the context of decolonisation and the transformation of higher education practices. critical questions need to be asked about the accessibility of the ict tools to all students and how effective they are for learning. uots, i suggest, should create the conditions for dialogue and engagement among the lecturers to enable discussions about the pedagogical strategies lecturers use to address the students who mostly come from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds. my data show that lecturers’ reflexive capacity is crucial in curriculum development processes. it is therefore important that universities actively cultivate reflexivity among their lecturers as part of their professional development. references babbie, e. & mouton, j. 2001. the practice of social research. cape town: oxford university press. belluigi, d.z. 2012. provoking ethical relationships. in l. 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present circumstances (pp. 19–50.). new york: palgrave macmillan. https://doi. org/10.1057/9780230105508_2 thomson, p. 2014. field. in m. grenfell (ed.). pierre bourdieu key concepts, second edition (pp. 65–80). london: routledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 https://doi.org/10.14426/cristal.v7isi.194 https://doi.org/10.4314/sajhe.v15i2.25354 https://doi.org/10.1111/bjet.12485 https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2019.1689430 https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330216373 https://doi.org/10.1080/13562517.2015.1023287 2412021 39(3): 241-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 norodien-fataar lecturers’ accounts of their curriculum practices tshuma, n. 2019. “i’ve got a deep complicated relationship with technology”. towards an understanding of the interplay of barriers and agency in academics’ educational technology practices. reimagining curriculum development spaces for disruption (pp. 217–234). stellenbosch: african sun media. white, k. carvalho, t. & riordan, s. 2011. gender, power and managerialism in universities. journal of higher education policy and management, 33(2): 179–188. doi: 10.1080/1360080x.2011.559631. winberg, c. 2019. defending the diploma: academic developers as curriculum collaborators in a technical context. reimagining curriculum development spaces for disruption (pp. 283– 306). stellenbosch: african sun media. yin, r.k. 2018. case study research and applications: design and methods. los angeles: sage publications. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.17 722021 39(4): 72-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 school and the community: managing disruptive learner behaviour in rural learning ecologies abstract managing disruptive learner behaviour has for many years been a matter of concern to school administrators, teachers and parents. in zimbabwe, teaching and learning processes have been affected by serious interference that has adversely affected the learners and the teachers. the research question addressed in this study relates to the strategies that can be utilised by communities and schools with a view of managing disruptive learner behaviour in rural learning ecologies. to answer the research question, we used a participatory action research design. this community-based qualitative study was underpinned by the critical consciousness concept that can be described as central to the application of critical thinking. data were generated utilising focus-group discussions and reflective narratives with teachers and parents and analysed following fairclough’s (1992) critical discourse analysis. the findings suggest that disruptive learner behaviour in rural schools could potentially be managed through parental involvement, the use of problem-solving approaches, learner participation in all school programmes and the antecedent-behaviour-consequence approach. the study concluded that disruptive learner behaviour should be properly managed within and out of school to achieve meaningful teaching and learning. keywords: disruptive learner behaviour; rural school; critical consciousness; community; participatory action research. 1. introductory background the management of learner behaviour that disrupts school activities and causes unsettlement in teaching and learning processes has for many years been a cause for concern to school administrators, teachers and parents (anuradha & pushkala, 2020). marais and meier (2010) explain that the roots of such factors lie in social systems in which learners are directly influenced by the acts of significant others such as the school, the family, the media, their peers and the community at large. this is in line with bandura’s triadic reciprocal determinism in terms of which the individual, the environment and behaviour all influence one another (santrock, 2010). author: dr prosper lunga1 prof mariëtte koen1 dr ncamisile mthiyane2 affiliation: 1north-west university 2university of kwazulu-natal doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i4.6 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(4): 72-88 published: 6 december 2021 received: 05 july 2021 accepted: 25 august 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5659-4766 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3393-6724 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0965-9683 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 732021 39(4): 73-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 lunga, koen & mthiyane managing disruptive learner behaviour in rural learning ecologies disruptive learner behaviour is a multifaceted, multidimensional challenge that results from several factors (belle, 2017; gutuza & mapolisa, 2015). disruptive behaviour such as fighting, disrespect, bullying, theft, the use of foul language, the disturbance of classroom activities and vandalism may be a barrier to effective teaching and learning and such behaviour have increasingly been observed in some schools in southern african countries following the abolition of corporal punishment as a strategy with which to manage the disruptive behaviour of learners (banda & mweemba, 2016; marais & meier, 2010; sun & shek, 2012). as a result, one of the challenges faced by educational institutions is the inability of most teachers to deal effectively with learners who have behavioural problems. poor behaviour exhibited by learners induces stress and requires teachers to spend much of their time and energy trying to manage the classes they teach (sun & shek, 2012). researchers argue that initial teacher education does not prepare the many prospective rural teachers to deal with disruptive learner behaviour (anuradha & pushkala, 2020). in rural learning ecologies, we observed (informally) that teachers and other learners spend a disproportionate amount of teaching time addressing disturbing behaviour, thereby losing time for teaching and learning. informal discussions with teachers in different zimbabwean rural learning ecologies have revealed that similar learner behavioural challenges are experienced that negatively affect the teaching and learning processes. the following section focuses on a deeper exploration of disruptive learner behaviour. 2. disruptive learner behaviour disruptive learner behaviour is defined as disorders in the environment that departs or deviates from normal or expected behaviour and brings about disharmony (sibanda & mpofu, 2017; mckevitt et al., 2012) and does not permit learning to proceed smoothly and productively (kerr & nelson, 2010; bulotsky-shearer et al., 2011). in this regard, disruptive learner behaviour can be said to be a state or condition (not limited to the classroom) that prevents the teacher and the learners from freely engaging in teaching and learning. mafa et al. (2013) construe that it (disruptive behaviour) is conduct in teaching spaces and outside the classroom; hence, it causes teaching and learning to become ineffective. on the other hand, etonge (2014) fittingly enlightened that disruptive learner behaviour helps teachers to identify approaches to deal with such behaviour in the classroom. therefore, we argue that, disruptive learner behaviour is also a catalyst for appropriate methods to promote sustainable learning for all learners. considering the above, severe disciplinary problems have been observed in african countries. south african schools, for example observed disruptive learner behaviour since the abolition of corporal punishment (marais & meier, 2010). banda and mweemba (2016) found that in zambia considerable time meant for teaching and learning was largely wasted because disruptive behaviour had to be addressed. in the zimbabwean context, high levels of disruptive learner behaviour were reported in secondary schools in the gweru district (gudyanga, matamba & gudyanga, 2014), such include bullying, physical fights, lying and truancy. the incidence of behavioural challenges among adolescent learners is difficult to establish since many of the incidents are not reported, especially in rural schools (gudyanga, nyamande & wadesango, 2013). furthermore, there is a paucity of evidence as to what measures have been adopted to address such behaviour, and the means adopted to empower learners with a view to improving the teaching and learning outcomes. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 742021 39(4): 74-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) in zimbabwe, director’s circular p35 (2018) issued by the ministry of education emphasises the use of expulsion, suspension and exclusion as the chosen strategy for managing disruptive learner behaviour in schools. however, expulsion, suspension or exclusion of learners from school and the use of other forms of punishment are not viewed as lasting solutions to curbing disruptive behaviour. they can rather perpetuate incidents and practices of social injustice. the circular further explains that learners who misbehave in school should not be subjected to corporal punishment but should be expelled from school. however, as welch and payne (2011) observe, learners who are expelled remain a danger to others in society. expelling learners from schools based on their unrestrained behaviour is an act that perpetuates exclusion, oppression and constitutes a violation of the right to education for all. this is confirmed in save the children (2017), in which it is noted that most countries emphasise that children’s rights are human rights. this has led to the abolition of corporal punishment in schools. the school community comprising teachers, classroom managers, other learners, the administration, the school development committee (sdc), the disciplinary committee and the non-teaching staff has a significant role to play in the causes or manifestation of learners’ behaviour (belle, 2017). belle (2017) as well as gutuza and mapolisa (2015) identify disruptive learner behaviour as resulting from the following: (i) the physical environment of the classroom, that is, the type of furniture, how it is arranged and the size of the classroom itself; (ii) problems relating to teachers and teaching methods, for example, when the teacher does not effectively communicate his/her expectations for appropriate behaviour and fails to execute his/her duties appropriately; (iii) the existence of health issues, such as problems of an auditory or visual nature and other physical barriers to learning; (iv) the psychological environment in the classroom, which ranges from cultural diversity to learners’ levels of maturity and learners who enjoy diverting the teacher’s attention as well as emotional issues such as superiority, hostility and laziness. gutuza and mapolisa (2015) maintain that one of the causes of disruptive learner behaviour may be attributable to neglect by parents or caregivers. when parents fail to spend time with their children, this neglect results in moral laxity. such children do not recognise authority at home and display the same attitude at school where they tend to be disruptive in the classroom and in the community (santrock, 2010). allowing children too much leeway to make their own decisions or neglecting them can inculcate lawlessness and antisocial behaviour (garcia & santiago, 2017). in this context, antisocial behaviour refers to actions that harm others or that lack consideration for the wellbeing of others (gudyanga et al., 2014), and which thus violates the rights of others. temitayo, nayaya and lukman (2013) advance the view that antisocial behaviour falls into three main categories, each depending on who is affected by it. these categories include personal antisocial behaviour when an individual targets a specific person or people; nuisance antisocial behaviour entails causing trouble or great suffering or annoyance to the entire school or neighbourhood community and environmental antisocial behaviour where a learner’s actions affect the environment at large as in public spaces and buildings. magwa and ngara (2014) cite domestic violence, the use of weapons and drugs at home, divorce and remarriage as being additional to the major causes of disruptive behaviour among learners. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 752021 39(4): 75-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 lunga, koen & mthiyane managing disruptive learner behaviour in rural learning ecologies secondary school learners are adolescents, a stage of life that is often stressful (santrock, 2010). this compounds the necessity for people to work together in managing the behaviour of secondary school learners. against this background, the next section focuses on approaches to manage disruptive learner behaviour. 3. approaches to managing disruptive learner behaviour parent-family-community involvement is needed (mathegka, 2016), which is crucial to address unruly behaviour among primary and secondary school learners. parent-familycommunity involvement includes the following approaches to managing disruptive learner behaviour namely the antecedent-behaviour-consequence model, the problem-solving approach and learner participation. the antecedent-behaviour-consequence sequence is known as the three-term contingency or abc model (simovska, 2008). it is a tool that can help people to examine the behaviour they want to change, the triggers behind such behaviour and the impact these have on the maladaptive patterns. this means that the abc model generates the information required by observing the events that occur within a learner’s local environment. this involves tracing what happened before the behaviour occurred (mathews, holt & arrambide, 2014), then observing the behaviour itself and its results. mathews et al. (2014) described the problem-solving approach (psa) as a non-prescriptive strategy that helps the individual to understand and manage his/her own behaviour. a series of specific questions are posed to foster understanding of the nature, causes and consequences of the behaviour (hart, 2013). in the current study, a combination of abc and psa was employed to empower all the participants to enable them to manage disruptive learner behaviour in rural learning ecologies. silo (2011) and simovska (2008) duly noted that learner participation is one of the methods that can be useful in managing disruptive learner behaviour. coupled with genuine participation, this is an active process that positively influences learning outcomes (hart, 2013). this means that genuine participation allows learners to initiate and participate in decision making with adults such as teachers and parents, which encourages collaboration between learners, parents, teachers and other stakeholders in learning ecologies. real participation enables learners to become more aware of their responsibilities through engagement in collaborative activities with people, including teachers and parents (simovska, 2008). in this study, genuine participation among learners, parents and other stakeholders was promoted by identifying approaches relevant to the study and to the chosen methods of data generation. participating in teaching and learning practices creates awareness among learners of the causes of a particular problem (hart, 2013) and of whom, how and what are affected by it. in this case, the research team carefully analysed sociocultural factors around learner participation to find solutions to the problem of learners with disruptive behaviour in a rural school context to enhance effective teaching and learning. 4. conceptual framing of the study this study is underpinned by the concept of critical consciousness (cc), which we regard as a tradition of critical thinking. cc refers to the process by means of which individuals apply critical thinking skills to examine their current situations, develop a deeper understanding of their concrete reality, and to devise, implement and evaluate solutions to their problems (fuchs & mosco, 2012; luter, mitchell & taylor, 2017). according to dheram (2017), cc has http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 762021 39(4): 76-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) three levels of consciousness, namely intransitive, semi-transitive and critically transitive. furthermore, mthiyane (2015) maintain that the sole task of cc is to uncover certain interests that work within particular circumstances and then to cross-examine the acceptability and extent to which these interests are authentic in the service of equal opportunity and democracy. in view of this, we considered cc to be the best concept for exposing the emancipatory and empowering capabilities that teachers, parents and learners have at their disposal to devise varied strategies to benefit rural communities in their endeavours to manage disruptive behaviour in rural learning ecologies. the lowest level of cc is the intransitive level. here people agree to take their lives as they are, and the adjustments that may possibly occur in their lives give the impression of having resulted from magic or miracles (luter et al., 2017). it appears as if communities in rural ecologies, including the learners displaying disruptive behaviour, often make no effort either to transform their situation or to find effective ways of dealing with disruptive learner behaviour. at this level, stakeholders tend to accept things as they are and do not address issues that directly or indirectly affect their communities. this study used cc to stimulate awareness of possible ways in which communities could collaboratively engage to enhance sustainable education. according to fuchs and mosco (2012), semi-transitive, as the second level of consciousness, is regarded to be more innovative than the intransitive level. at the semitransitive level, all stakeholders have power to change their circumstances rather than simply ignore them. we engaged all stakeholders interested in the education of learners to agree to identifying ways that could possibly assist in the positive management of disruptive learner behaviour in rural schools. critical transitive is the third level of consciousness. individuals at this level of consciousness are considered to have capabilities to be aware of and to own their problems, and to view them as structural challenges (luter et al., 2017). they can make meaningful connections between their problems and the social context. notably, the people with this level of consciousness accept responsibility and reject the passive position. this, in its turn, leads to the good practice of engaging in dialogue rather than in polemics (fuchs & mosco, 2012). critical consciousness does not however occur automatically (freire, 1973). it requires collaborative action and plays an important role in creating a safe and conducive platform for conversations in which a school should be seen as part of the community and the community should be seen as having a voice in what happens in their families and in schools regarding disruptive learner behaviour. 5. research design and methodology in this study, we adopted participatory action research (par) as a design. its relevance to the study is because par focuses on collective research and facilitates the full and equal participation of participants (chidakwa; 2020), in the production and diffusion of new knowledge through open communication (mencke, 2013). moreso, wood and zuber-skerritt (2013) testify that par may challenge inequality, lead to social change to the promotion of democracy. with the understanding of this, the cycles of par will be discussed under data generation methods and procedures. this community-based research (cbr) qualitative study was underpropped by the critical emancipatory research (cer) paradigm. this was of great importance as it allowed us to http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 772021 39(4): 77-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 lunga, koen & mthiyane managing disruptive learner behaviour in rural learning ecologies initiate action towards disruptive learner behaviour. myende (2014) and mthiyane (2015) affirm that cer aims to facilitate social transformation by empowering and emancipating members of society. the combination of par and cer made it easy to create good relationships with the participants, hence, we valued their views throughout the research process. we acknowledge that cbr is context specific and it allows the research team to examine, in depth, the holistic nature of the contemporary phenomenon with the goals of educating and bringing about social change. since the emphasis in cbr is that it provides educational outcomes that change the perceptions of people through a critical reflection on the research process, we engaged the community in this study (noel, 2016; wood, 2020; wood & zuberskerritt, 2013). the foundational principles of par and cbr ensured collaboration between community members and researchers. in our understanding of the aforementioned views, we acknowledge that this community-based project proposes freedom and transformation of the society in question through an interactive link between the research team members. 6. context of the study the study was conducted in one rural secondary school in the bulilima district of matabeleland, in the south province of zimbabwe. saunders, lewis and thornhill (2012) suggest that researchers may use their own judgement when choosing people to participate in a qualitative study, therefore, nine participants were purposively selected. two meetings of thirty minutes each were devoted to completing the selection process. the selection criteria included participants who either have been knowledgeable about or had to have experienced the phenomenon under scrutiny. the participants included two class teachers, one senior teacher and six parents (three being the parents of some of the learners who had exhibited disruptive behaviour and three were volunteers). in table 1 below, the biographical details of the research team are presented. table 1: biographical details of the research team pseudonyms gender age group ethnic group designation level of education tom m 35–45 shona researcher phd sophie f 45+ zulu supervisor phd jenny f 45+ afrikaans supervisor phd participants mafa m 25–35 shona class teacher bed student sango m 45+ kalanga class teacher diploma in education matsu f 25-35 ndebele senior teacher med student siwe m 35-45 ndebele parent o-level wayo f 45+ ndebele parent form 2 ndlela f 35-45 kalanga parent o-level mathe f 35-45 kalanga parent grade 7 gozo m 45+ shona parent diploma in education mave m 25-35 ndebele parent o-level the next section details the data generation techniques employed in the study. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 782021 39(4): 78-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) 7. data gathering techniques the data generation methods used for this study were focus-group discussions (fgds) and reflective narratives. 7.1 focus-group discussions a focus-group discussion (fgd) is a rapid-assessment, semi-structured data generation technique in which a purposively selected team of participants gather to discuss issues and reach consensus based on a list of key themes drawn up by the researcher (goodall & barnards, 2015). mosavel and oakar (2012) state that fgds provide rich descriptions of processes, people’s opinions and attitudes, and when combined with other data they offer a holistic picture of a particular phenomenon. six different fgds were conducted with parents and teachers (in separate groups) to promote free discussion and eliminate the influence of existing power relations (escalada & heong, 2014). the times of discussions, the venues for the meetings and permissions for audio-recording of the said meetings were confirmed in advance. parents were comfortable to converse in isindebele during the discussions and the data were later transcribed and translated into english. tom conducted all the discussions. the focus-group process evolved in two cycles that followed the four steps of par, namely problem identification, investigation, action and making meaning (chevalier & buckles, 2013). the first cycle comprised four sessions and the second cycle had two sessions. the duration of all the sessions was between thirty and forty-five minutes each. this was to make sure that participants’ attention span was not stretched, since mthiyane (2015) indicates that for the fgds to be meaningful, they should not be too long. cycle 1 this cycle involved problem identification and the investigation steps. in the first meeting, we commenced with the assumption that disruptive behaviour was a challenge that needed to be dealt with in schools in general. in the problem-identification phase, all participants identified the challenges they wanted to resolve and also the consequences of the identified problems (goodall & barnard, 2015). during the second step, the research participants were divided into two groups (one consisting of teachers and the other of parents) to enable them to delve deeper into the identified problems while also providing them the flexibility to talk about their own problems in confidence. this step enabled participants to understand the needs of all stakeholders and the methods that could be used to discover more about the identified problems and to address the risks related to them. cycle 2 this cycle combined steps 3 and 4. all the participants came together to analyse data so that they could devise collaborative solutions and plan a way forward for dealing with the phenomenon. step three was very important since action was taken. goodall and barnard (2015) state that, in this phase, the participants identify appropriate action to address the problem and reflect carefully on the whole process. the fourth step involves making meaning. this refers to the process whereby the research participants capture, interpret and understand the group’s experiences (creswell, 2012). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 792021 39(4): 79-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 lunga, koen & mthiyane managing disruptive learner behaviour in rural learning ecologies 7.2 narratives according to ferrah (2012), a reflective narrative facilitates critical and analytical thinking. in this study, reflective narratives were used to enable the participants to reflect critically on the issue of managing disruptive learner behaviour in rural ecologies, to analyse the progress made during the fgds and to establish how the participants felt about the views expressed during those meetings. all the participants kept prepared booklets where they wrote reflective narratives throughout the research process to assist in validating the data from the fgds. mthiyane (2015: 158) maintains that “keeping a reflective narrative is useful in searching out evidence, reflecting on it while trying to find out meanings”. this was achieved by drawing conclusions based on the evidence. keeping a record of one’s experiences can also facilitate personal development (ferrah, 2012). he further states that one does not know what one knows until one has written it down. therefore, an opportunity to record textually the reflections of what the participants learned promoted a deeper understanding of the views raised in the meetings and the discussions and provided an opportunity for introspection. 8. ethical considerations the ethics committee of the university of kwazulu-natal approved the study. permission for ethical clearance was also obtained from the zimbabwean ministry of primary and secondary education (mopse) and written consent was obtained from all participants. participation was voluntary and participants were assured of confidentiality, anonymity and adherence to nonmaleficence principles (gunawan, 2015). issues of trustworthiness were ensured through credibility through the triangulation of data generation methods. aspects of dependability, confirmability and transferability were also addressed. as researchers, we were aware that there was a potential for bias on our part that could have affected the outcome of the study. we thus ensured that we were objective and broad-minded in our thoughts and actions, and that we were sensitive to difficulties that we would encounter during the study. 9. data analysis as already mentioned, data were generated by conducting fgds with a group of teachers and with a group of parents, respectively. each group also generated reflective narratives. our discursive practice followed from par steps and mainly focused on the strategies that could be used to manage disruptive learner behaviour in rural learning ecologies. notably, all the participants were involved in the practical analysis of the data. thereafter, the main author and supervisors followed the three levels of critical discourse analysis (cda) as identified by fairclough (1992), namely (a) actual text, (b) discursive practice and (c) social context to analyse data from reflective narratives and that from transcribed and translated fgds. in the analysis of actual spoken and written texts, we considered various aspects of textual analysis, for example, syntactical analysis and the use of metaphor and rhetorical devices (wodak & meyer, 2009). mthiyane (2015) maintains that discursive practice involves the interpretation of and the connection between the interaction and the text. in this study, textual analysis was applied to the reflective narratives and the transcripts of the fgds. we applied the discursive practice to analyse texts from reflective narratives. myende (2014: 92) states that, “…it is concerned with how text is produced and interpreted by participants, to interpret http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 802021 39(4): 80-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) the configuration of discourse practice”. at the social-context level, the analyst is concerned with intertextual and interdiscursive elements and considers the broad societal currents within the specific setting of this study. during this stage, social issues (such as gender, power, culture, religion and politics) were discussed, described and explained including the influences regarding disruptive behaviour that people perceived as knowledge (myende, 2014). we further deliberated on how these issues affected the constructions of and shifts in attitudes, and the manifestations of new knowledge. all these were helpful in terms of comprehending the norms, rules and beliefs followed in managing disruptive learner behaviour in rural school contexts. in the focus-group discussions (fgds) and reflective narratives, we discussed the possible ways that could be used to manage disruptive learner behaviour in rural schools. these are detailed in table 2 below. table 2: emerging themes theme theme discription 1 parental involvement is useful in managing disruptive learner behaviour in rural learning ecologies. 2 utilising the problem-solving approach to manage disruptive learner behaviour 3 employing learner participation to manage disruptive learner behaviour in schools 4 utilising the antecedent-behaviour-consequence model may be beneficial in rural learning ecologies. 10. discussion of findings theme 1: parental involvement is useful in managing disruptive learner behaviour in rural schools most of the participants mentioned parental involvement as the basis for sound disruptivelearner behaviour-management in rural schools. according to mathegka (2016), full participation of parents in school activities is important because it enables them to understand how their children behave and participate in teaching and learning processes. teachers suggested some ways to be utilised to encourage parental involvement. matsu stressed that … the first port of call is to make sure that the parents are involved in all the school activities so that they are aware of the challenges that the school is facing. the teachers supported this view held by the parents: parents have a great influence on the management of disruptive learner behaviour. parental involvement is very critical in initiating good learner behaviour … so i think if parents can be fully involved in the learning of the learners, then it can be easy to monitor the way in which learners behave at school and out of school (mafa). while acknowledging some parents’ participation, sango felt it was not enough and said: some parents, yes, are involved as they participate by assisting their children to do homework. however, i feel there is [a] need for them to take part in addressing the way their children behave. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 812021 39(4): 81-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 lunga, koen & mthiyane managing disruptive learner behaviour in rural learning ecologies additionally, one parent (mathe) uttered these sentiments: …kumele kubelendlela yokuthi abazali bafinyelele lokuphatheka emisebenzini yesikolweni kuqala, njengesibonelo kungasetshenziswa imidlalo … [… there must be ways that encourage parents to be reached and be involved in the school activities first, for example use of drama …] both teachers and parents acknowledged that managing disruptive learner behaviour in rural schools would be possible through parental involvement. the parents’ responses demonstrate how committed they are to managing the behaviour of learners, which may lead to proper and effective teaching and learning in rural schools. one of the parents wrote the following in the reflective journal: …umphathisikolo kumele asebenzisane labaphathi bezigaba ukuze kukuthazwe abazali ukuba bahlanganele ekuhlolisiseni indlela abafundi abaziphatha ngayo esikolweni lasemakhaya… [… the school head should work closely with the village heads so that parents can be encouraged to be involved in monitoring the way learners behave at school and at home …] the participants proposed that the parents be involved and work as a single entity in monitoring the learners’ behaviour within and outside of school. in this way engaging parents, teachers, learners and other stakeholders in the community was perceived as a strategy that would change the way in which all perceive disruptive learner behaviour only if empowered to do so. this is confirmed in the cc concept that suggests that people gain an in-depth understanding of education when they are ensured autonomy from oppression (fuchs & mosco, 2012) and become part of the school community. findings from the parents endorsed the importance of parental involvement in settings where the community is regarded as part of the particular school ecology and therefore given access in terms of managing and monitoring disruptive learner behaviour. this resonates with the principles of cbr and is key to the enhancement of sustainable learning. the same view is supported by mathegka (2016) who argues that parents need to participate constructively in the school activities, which might lead to enhanced parent-family-community involvement. importantly, the school should play a leading role in making parents understand the need for cooperation with the teachers and the school administration to manage the disruptive learner behaviour. this is in line with the par approach that emphasises collective research, in which the production of new knowledge is made possible by accessible communication (mencke, 2013). in this way, the management of disruptive learner behaviour has the potential to improve relationships if it is initiated in rural learning ecologies. theme 2: utilising a problem-solving approach to manage disruptive learner behaviour in their reflective journals the teacher participants highlighted the need to utilise a problemsolving approach in managing disruptive learner behaviour in rural schools. the following are some of their suggestions and ideas: i believe [the] problem-solving method is … practical oriented … problem solving follow up the learner in the after learning … and works to solve existing problems (mafa). … problem solving enhances critical thinking because by solving one problem the ability to solve a problem of a different nature is sustained (sango). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 822021 39(4): 82-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) … problem solving is very significant to learners because it makes them to be able to self-direct themselves to learning …without any push from teacher neither from parent (matsu). the teachers suggested problem solving as a viable approach, viewing it as a practicebased approach that equips the learners with that knowledge and those skills that are useful in their lifetime. additionally, the phrases: “… follow up the learner in the after learning …”, “… enhances critical thinking … the ability to solve a problem of a different nature …” are in support of matsu who indicates that “… [this] encourages learners to think independently”. all these phrases serve to emphasise how important the problem-solving method is in managing disruptive learner behaviour. therefore, we regarded problem solving to be one of the empowerment strategies that could be utilised in the rural schools because it was seen as leading learners to become independent critical thinkers. this is congruent with the conceptual framework used in this study (luter et al., 2017). participants also considered the use of the problem-solving approach to be important because it gives learners autonomy and lessens micromanaging by the teachers and parents. literature confirms that most teachers spend more time engaged in the demanding task of talking to learners at the expense of watching learners solve their own challenges (hart, 2013; lentfer & franks, 2015). it is therefore believed that if a problem-solving approach is implemented effectively, it is sure to assist the monitoring and management of disruptive learner behaviour and will lead to a reduced “dependency syndrome”, which will serve to help learners become independent. this view is consistent with the par design and with cc, which recommend that individuals in marginalised communities should be empowered so that they can free themselves of oppressive practices. this will result in self-development and sovereignty, and ultimately, ensure transformation and emancipation (mthiyane, 2015). we therefore regard psa to be the bridge between the consciousness levels as deliberated in cc (dheram, 2017: luter et al., 2017) and moreover crucial for the management of disruptive learner behaviour in rural school contexts. theme 3: employing learner participation to manage disruptive learner behaviour in schools during the focus-group discussions, most participants expressed the opinion that learners should be allowed to participate in the decision-making activities in the school as a way of managing their disruptive behaviour. participants further explained that learner participation in decision-making activities may be useful in the following ways: … if learners can participate in planning … they can respect the rules…; … learners can be involved … and refrain from misbehaving; [and] … their participation might … ease the monitoring … we understood these participants’ suggestions to mean that learners should not be isolated during the formulation of strategies. decisions should not be taken “for” them or “about” them, but all endeavours aimed at managing disruptive behaviour should be planned “with” them. the teachers’ reflective journals highlighted the following: … disruptive learner behaviour can be dealt with in schools and at their homes, however adults ought to guide the learners’ decisions … (matsu) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 832021 39(4): 83-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 lunga, koen & mthiyane managing disruptive learner behaviour in rural learning ecologies in contrast, mafa added: the issue of discipline is guided by certain policies from the government … i suggest learners should be involved in decision making at [the] national level. the reflections from teachers indicate that they are aware of policies that guide teachers when effecting rules and regulations at school. thus, their suggestion to allow learners to participate in decision making constitutes one of the ways to empower learners regarding these policies. we find this an innovative way to allow learners to become involved in drafting the policies regarding how disruptive learner behaviour may be addressed in schools and then in rural schools in particular. this resonates with silo (2011) and simovska’s (2008) observation that genuine participation has proved to be helpful in maintaining good learner behaviour observed in secondary schools in botswana. this endorsement of the importance of learner participation proved to be among the effective ways that can be employed in the management of disruptive learner behaviour in rural ecologies. according to hart (2013), teachers and parents should monitor and guide the learners’ decisions when the learners participate. we also felt that while implementing learner participation as a means of managing disruptive learner behaviour, clear guidelines should be considered and discussed openly. theme 4: the utilisation of the antecedent-behaviour-consequence model may prove beneficial in rural schools. in their responses, participants identified the utilisation of the antecedent-behaviourconsequence (abc) model as one of the effective methods with which to manage disruptive learner behaviour. one teacher had the following to say: … to understand what causes learners to violate the school rules, they should be aware of the effects … [so] that they can work positively to manage their disruptive behaviour … (matsu) we understood the expression to mean that in order to manage disruptive learner behaviour, some investigations should be made so that the causes of the behaviour are revealed. once the causes of such behaviour have been revealed, the learners should be made aware of the consequences of the disruptive behaviour. teachers believed this to be one of the positive ways to manage behaviour. gozo expressed this view: … utsho kahle sibili nxa sifuna ukusuphuna isifo lesi kasibulaleni impande yakhona kuqala. […you are very right, if we want to uproot this disease, let’s kill the roots first.] the above views from parents were corroborated by the teachers. their responses, “… kill the roots first”; and “… show the learners the consequences …” reflect the importance of knowing the causes of disruptive learner behaviour. the emphasis falls on raising learners’ awareness of the consequences of their behaviour. drawing from the presented data, we deduce that it is fundamental to use the abc model in managing disruptive learner behaviour in rural schools. these findings confirm what simovska (2008) state about the usefulness of the abc approach because of its focus on the recognition of the environment while assisting people to understand learners’ behaviour and generating the required information concerning how certain behaviour occurs within learners’ local environment. in this regard, participants emphasised that all stakeholders in rural http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 842021 39(4): 84-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) learning ecologies should identify the causes in these diverse contexts to provide learners with a thorough knowledge of the consequences of disruptive behaviour (mathews et al., 2014). 11. emerged lessons through this community-based study, we learnt the applicability in research and in learning of the african proverb, “it takes a village to raise a child”. this is because the participatory collaboration between teachers and parents in the management of disruptive learner behaviour in rural learning ecologies seems to have yielded good results because it points to the different practical strategies that can be utilised to manage disruptive learner behaviour. the study moreover proved to be of value to all involved. it alerted us to the danger of viewing disruptive behaviour as being only distractive when indeed it also has positive elements in education. this is so because having had to deal with the problem of disruptive behaviour, we were motivated to find proper strategies in collaboration with participants to be used in schools, strategies that do not harm teachers, parents, learners or the community at large and that can prove to be sustainable. 12. limitations of the study this having been a qualitative study and its selection size having been small, findings cannot be generalised to a larger population. although the data were generated from a community where participants were directly involved, we acknowledge that the devised strategies need to be evaluated by a larger and probably different population. although the findings of the study may seem to be very useful in managing disruptive learner behaviour in schools, there is a need to practically utilise the strategies to be able to test their effectiveness. 13. conclusion the findings of this study emphasise the use of four methods in attempting to manage disruptive learner behaviour, particularly in rural schools. these methods are parental involvement, a problem-solving approach, learner participation and the antecedent-behaviour-consequence (abc) model. these strategies may assist in curbing incidences of disruptive behaviour among learners to enhance meaningful teaching and learning particularly in rural school settings. further suggested as one of the strategies to manage disruptive learner behaviour were collaborations in rural communities that are based on mutual respect. however, also flagged as one important factor to consider at the outset, is the creation or development of good relationships between the community members in implementing the identified strategies for managing disruptive learner behaviour. the study concludes that disruptive learner behaviour should be properly managed and ways to do so should be encouraged and learned. the other conclusion we made in this study is that the use of par in community-based research is crucial in bringing about “emancipation” from both sides (the community and the school). this is because par and cbr prompted participants to be hands on in the current study thus getting empowered and recognised as individuals who matter. furthermore, the study concludes that equal participation leads to improved relationships between the school and parents resulting in improved academic performance from learners while sustainable education is enhanced and valued in rural communities. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 852021 39(4): 85-88 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.6 lunga, koen & mthiyane managing disruptive learner behaviour in rural learning ecologies based on the findings and conclusions above we recommend that all stakeholders should be given an opportunity to think critically about challenging issues, sharing knowledge and to be listened to while their opinions are valued. this means that communities are empowered to collaboratively develop initiatives for what they love and protect 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https://doi.org/10.15700/201412171322 _hlk78826945 _hlk79435233 _hlk79502218 _hlk86761332 339 book review 2021 39(2): 339-355 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) meaningful teaching of sexuality education framed by culture: xhosa secondary school teachers’ views abstract african women in the xhosa culture used to hold powerful positions in the sexuality arena. that has since changed and in contemporary xhosa culture, they take up submissive roles. this is especially so in the teaching of certain aspects of sexuality, as xhosa women are not supposed to give guidance in the sexuality of their male learners. in this study, curriculum posters were created to explore xhosa life orientation (lo), life sciences (lfsc) and natural sciences (ns) teachers’ views of the meaningful teaching of sexuality education to xhosa learners. the research study is located within a critical paradigm, using a participatory visual methodology. cultural-historical activity theory (chat) was used as a theoretical lens and the findings were contextualised in existing literature. two themes were identified: 1) shifting teacher positionality by revisiting pedagogical assumptions and taking ownership in the teaching of sexuality education and 2) contextualising sexuality education in xhosa culture through reconnecting to xhosa values and appreciating cultural roots and practices. the findings indicated that xhosa women teachers could reclaim their powerful position regarding sexuality when teaching sexuality education and that reflexivity is a critical attribute of a sexuality education teacher. the study has implications for teachers and curriculum developers to contextualise the curriculum in terms of learners’ biographies and to engage local and relevant knowledges critically in dealing with issues of sexuality, gender inequality as well as hiv and aids. keywords: adolescent learners; hiv and aids; participatory visual methods; sexuality education; sexuality education teachers; xhosa culture. 1. introduction the socio-culturally held silences that surround sexuality, as well as gender inequalities in african cultures, need to be challenged. unesco (2018) acknowledges that every culture has prescripts for sexual behaviour. this holds true for the many indigenous south african cultures of which the xhosa culture is one. in sub-saharan africa, initiation schools were spaces where sexuality education used to happen (de haas & hutter, 2019). research shows that the author: dr nomawonga veronica msutwana1 affiliation: 1nelson mandela university, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i2.23 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(2): 339-355 published: 11 june 2021 received: 13 may 2020 accepted: 03 august 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 3402021 39(2): 340-355 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) cultural rules do not always facilitate healthy and safe sexuality. lately, sexuality education has been offered in formal schools. a previous study in south africa found that teachers fail to equip adolescent learners (possibly also true for xhosa adolescents) with meaningful knowledge to navigate their sexuality successfully, contributing to high levels of sexually transmitted infections (including hiv) and unintended pregnancies. in this regard, i quote one researcher who notes that indeed in spite of some laudable policy initiatives by the ministry of education, some of the policies themselves, and the interpretation and implementation thereof at school level, have done little to advance gender equality in schools and particularly to address unintended pregnancies and other sexual and reproductive health issues as barriers to girls’ education in south africa (moletsane, 2014: 13). it is no secret that when it comes to sexuality education, the teacher’s personal background affects teaching practice (swanepoel, beyers & de wet, 2017). this personal background is informed by the norms and cultural prescripts embodied in a society. thus, sexuality education teachers need to undergo a process of “self-study” (roy, 2018) where they interrogate their own beliefs, values and biases regarding sexuality matters to find out how they influence what and how they teach. could this self-reflexivity contribute to a more responsive equipping of learners with the relevant content and skills for a healthy and safe navigation of sexuality in adolescence? in any practice, it is necessary to pause and reflect on how one conducts “business” and adapt in line with set objectives. in addition, one needs to determine how one could use this understanding of one’s analysis to forge ahead in meaningful teaching of sexuality education to adolescent learners. in this article i address the following question: what are xhosa lo, lfsc and ns secondary school teachers’ views of meaningful teaching of sexuality education to xhosa learners? lo, lfsc and ns isixhosa speaking teachers are chosen for the study as they are subjects that included anything to do with sexuality and are from xhosa culture. 2. literature review culture exerts a profound influence on the behaviour of individuals, even regarding sexuality. depalma and francis (2014) note that culture as an institution is difficult to challenge. it, however, is not inflexible nor should be looked at as what was and what should forever be. each culture has its own range of practices and values, some related to sexuality. for example, males are seen as being powerful with regard to sexuality in the xhosa culture (cain, schensul & mlobeli, 2011). nevertheless, culture can be adapted to suit present-day demands without it necessarily losing its essence. important regarding african sexuality, “… african communities recognised the power and centrality of sexuality in human experience …” (delius & glaser, 2002: 31). thus, sexuality was regulated through formally developed structures within these communities. in their 2004 work, delius and glaser claim that women and girls had been commanding in african communities and had asserted themselves in intimate sexual relationships. research studies show that this is no longer the case with black africans in south africa, as men and boys are generally more open, aggressive and suggestive about sexuality than women and girls who are censored (morrell et al., 2009). however, it is difficult to trace early sexuality as it was experienced in indigenous african cultures perhaps due to the illiteracy of the time or what dlamini (2006) attributes to be a lack of proper documentation. worth noting is that african culture is characterised by phenomena such as polygamy and the acceptance of men having multiple sexual partners (delius & glaser, 2004; hunting, 2012; http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 3412021 39(2): 341-355 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 msutwana meaningful teaching of sexuality education framed by culture stern & buikema, 2013) that spread the hiv virus and render women more susceptible to hiv infection (wood, 2013). contemporary xhosa culture is patriarchal with patriarchal values remaining strong in rural and urban areas alike (morrell et al., 2009). in contemporary xhosa culture, sexuality is viewed as a private and taboo affair. there is a palpable silence when talking about sexual matters, yet it was managed with openness in the era before colonisation and christianity in south africa (delius & glaser, 2002). christianity and urbanisation have influenced african people’s beliefs about sexuality, contributing to the loss of openness with which it used to be handled (delius & glaser, 2002; 2004; dickinson, 2014; mudhovozi, ramarumo & sodi, 2012). one will find that in the african society today, it is generally forbidden (and is put forward as “having become culture”) for adults to speak openly about sexuality matters with children (jearey-graham & macleod, 2015). today, it is often heard that it is “unafrican” that older people talk about sexuality matters with children (wood, 2009). yet, that was the case before, as sexuality talk occurred when necessary in african culture. post-colonisation, sexuality regulation was weakened and as a result, the negative consequences of unregulated sexuality surfaced in urban areas, with “illegitimate” children being born, gang rapes occurring and divorce becoming common as promiscuity rose (delius & glaser, 2002). what mostly remains regulated is male initiation and customary marriages. in fact, the status of sexuality in xhosa culture seems to have affected what happens in formal schools regarding sexuality education too. mbananga’s study reveals the disintegration and abandonment in xhosa teachers’ “wearing masks” (2004:153) when it comes to educating adolescent learners about sexuality. she notes that xhosa teachers take up a technical and flimsy approach (see also macleod, 2016; morrell et al., 2009). moreover, sexuality education in the curriculum in south africa is generally neglected or brushed over by sexuality education teachers (depalma & francis, 2014; francis, 2011; macleod, 2016; morrell et al., 2009; mthatyana & vincent, 2015). this is problematic as sexuality education is a prescribed component of the life orientation, life sciences and natural sciences curricula. it is also important to teach sexuality education in a meaningful way. in a qualitative study with free state province lo teachers, depalma and francis found that indeed there are cultural taboos to talking about sex (depalma & francis, 2014). xhosa teachers do not talk about sex, while they could be talking about the other stuff in sexuality education, such as relationships, sexual orientations, reproduction, gender identities, roles and others. sexuality education has evolved from following a biomedical approach when it was first implemented to an emphasis on critical social aspects in the recent past, and now the debate is about attending to cultural aspects (moletsane, 2014). teachers grapple with the sexuality education curriculum, citing their own cultural norms, personal values and attitudes as being contradictory to the objectives of the curriculum (helleve et al., 2011). it is unsurprising that teachers would grapple with the curriculum, as south african teachers have not been adequately “trained” to teach sexuality education (francis, 2013). these teachers, more specifically lo teachers, are drawn from a wide range of subjects depending on their teaching workloads and they tend to be women (moletsane, 2014). notwithstanding these negative aspects, it has become more apparent that the focus in the teaching of sexuality education should be addressing the cultural assumptions that lead teachers to overlook the sexuality component of the curriculum or lends them to being moralistic. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 3422021 39(2): 342-355 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) macleod (2016) sees the cultural assumptions that teachers hold about sexualities and gender as worthy of being deeply reflected upon in the teaching of sexuality education in schools. reflection makes it possible to reach a deeper level of understanding actions (dore, 2019). when sexuality education teachers do the self-reflexive exercise analysing their socially and culturally held biases regarding sexuality, they can be better able to understand their teaching practice. they become aware of the influences and interpretations of the curriculum they teach adolescents, leading to innovative and effective teaching strategies. a reflexive practice is lauded by south african researchers, such as van laren, mudaly, pithouse-morgan and singh (2013), for providing insights to enhancing teaching. 3. theoretical framework i use cultural-historical activity theory (chat), a name coined by michael cole in 1996, which incorporates culture, society and history as dimensions into the mental functioning of humans (roth & lee, 2007), to frame the study and make meaning of the findings. chat fits in with a critical paradigm, the paradigm suited to the research question of this study. with chat, it is understood that “schooling occurs as teachers and learners negotiate complex social interactions, interactions often informed by differing sets of norms and conventions” (nasir & hand, 2006: 452). these, however, are not static and can change to ensure the achievement of the object (goal). chat evolved through three generations of theory development. the theory was developed by a.n. leont’ev and aleksandr luria, who were students of lev vygotsky, and further developed by engeström (roth & lee, 2007). vygotsky, the developer of the first generation theory acknowledged that there is a crucial connection between an individual’s mind and his/ her histo-cultural and institutional settings (yamagata-lynch, 2010). the second generation theory was spearheaded by leont’ev and luria who identified their work as activity theory, introducing analysis for looking at the interplay between the individual and the environment. thus, the theory widened the scope of vygotsky’s mediated action through an analysis that recognises activity between various social others and objects in the environment. the third generation theory led by engeström extended what leont’ev and luria had already developed, introducing activity systems analysis. this analysis is used to delineate the mutually inclusive interaction between social other(s) and the environment and how they affect one another (van vlaenderen & neves, 2004). chat theory purports to aid the understanding of complex learning situations and holds that there are six elements in activity systems that interact together towards a goal or motive (object of an activity) (yamagata-lynch, 2010). the first two elements of the activity system are the subject, which is the individual engaged in the activity and the mediating tool, which is the prior knowledge and resources that contribute to the subject’s action experiences within the activity. another element is the rules that are formal or informal regulations, norms and values that can liberate or constrain the activity providing the subject guidance on correct procedures and acceptable interactions to take with other community members. the community, which is the stakeholders or social groups with which the subject identifies while participating in the activity, is the fourth element. then follows the division of labour, which is the roles and responsibilities of those in the activity. lastly, there is the object, which is the goal or motive of engaging in an activity that is transformed into an outcome, the desired effect of the activity. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 3432021 39(2): 343-355 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 msutwana meaningful teaching of sexuality education framed by culture figure 1: second generation chat (from nussbaumer, 2012:39) in the study i drew from the second generation chat as illustrated in figure 1, and i have identified the subject as xhosa lo, lfsc and ns teachers from township secondary schools in port elizabeth in the eastern cape as they all teach aspects of sexuality education. the instrument or mediating tool is the caps, the teachers’ teaching pedagogies and their cultural viewpoints. the object and outcome are meaningful sexuality education. the rules are xhosa cultural norms from the community and school norms including the code of conduct for teachers. the community is the department of basic education, parents of the learners, as well as learners themselves. the division of labour is the role-players: the department of basic education as policy developer and curriculum developer as well as the teachers as fellow curriculum developers, policy implementers and facilitators of learning. 4. research design and methodology the study followed a qualitative design within a critical paradigm, employing a participatory visual methodology. a qualitative design concerns itself with understanding and exploring reality rather than explaining and controlling it (fouchѐ & schurink, 2011). it is subjective as it seeks an insider perspective, constructing the participant’s meaning of his or her life world (creswell, 2013). a critical paradigm holds that social reality is socially constructed through society, media and institutions (mack, 2010). kivunja and kuyini posit that a critical paradigm “assumes a transactional epistemology, (in which the researcher interacts with the participants), an ontology of historical realism, especially as it relates to oppression; a methodology that is dialogic, and an axiology that respects cultural norms” (2017: 35). black et al. (2018) point out that a participatory visual methodology allows for methods where participants take their own artefacts. mitchell, de lange and moletsane (2017) maintain that participatory visual methods seek to bring change or transformation to a situation. using a participatory visual methodology could enable participants to express ideas that they might find difficult to put in words. the study adhered to trustworthiness and authenticity criteria looking at whether an account of the participants’ worldviews, perspectives and experiences has been rendered as honestly and fully as possible (schurink, fouché & de vos, 2011). ethical clearance (h15-edu-ere-026) was sought and considerations such as voluntary participation, informed consent and confidentiality were made. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 3442021 39(2): 344-355 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 4.1 participant selection and setting participants were selected purposively in order to explore the phenomenon. inclusion criteria were: lo, lfsc and ns teachers; male and female teachers; teachers who come from xhosa culture; teachers of lo grade 8 to grade 12; teachers of lfsc grade 10 to 12; teachers of ns grade 8 and 9 and teachers in a secondary school in a black port elizabeth township. the final sample of participants was nine female xhosa lo, lfsc and ns teachers from four port elizabeth township secondary schools as the male teachers did not take up the offer to participate in the research study. they were between the ages of 42 and 55 years and all had grown up as children in townships. table 1: biographical data of the participants pseudonym subject qualification years of experience age cikky life orientation std & bed hons 27yrs 51yrs sikelelwa life sciences b paed 16yrs 44yrs nolwazi natural sciences bsc & hde 23yrs 47yrs phaphama life sciences std & bed hons 26yrs 50yrs khuthala natural sciences bsc & pgce 15yrs 41yrs khethiwe life orientation ba & hde 17yrs 44yrs ntombemsulwa natural sciences n.dip 8yrs 45yrs ntandokazi life orientation ba & hde 17yrs 45yrs gcobisa life sciences std & bed hons 28yrs 51yrs 4.2 data generation method – curriculum posters posters are colourful and attractive media that stimulate interest in a topic by illustrating a concept and giving guidance on the use of its contents (osa & musser, 2004). posters are also eye-catching and informative and serve as effective tools for raising awareness of an issue. they are similar to the visual method of photovoice. i wanted the teachers to explore their agency to effectively teach sexuality education by mapping out their views on the meaningful teaching of sexuality education to xhosa adolescents. they responded to the following prompt: create curriculum posters depicting meaningful teaching of sexuality education to xhosa adolescent learners. the nine xhosa women teachers were placed in 3 groups and were provided with poster paper, magazines, newspapers and portable printers, and they used their cell phones to take the photos that they planned to use. they had two hours to complete their curriculum http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 3452021 39(2): 345-355 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 msutwana meaningful teaching of sexuality education framed by culture posters. in their curriculum posters, they could include a photograph, drawing, slogans and whatever visual artefact they could include. the xhosa women teachers needed to take into consideration who the primary audience was. they resolved that their audience was other teachers. de lange, mitchell and moletsane (2015) sketch six steps that may be followed in creating such posters, to which the participants adhered. the participants first went back to the issue for which they had to find a solution, discussed how to present the issue and its solution in a poster. they then planned and created the first draft and presented it to the whole group. next, they welcomed feedback given to them and refined the poster considering the feedback given. the final step was to present the revised poster to the whole group. as each group presented its curriculum poster, the presentations were video recorded for later transcription and analysis. first, the teachers analysed their own posters through participatory analysis following de lange et al. (2015), which i later analysed thematically (braun & clarke, 2006). the xhosa women teachers reflected that they appreciated their xhosa culture and that it should, together with participatory visual methodologies, inform the teaching of sexuality education in their township schools. 5. findings two themes were identified from the data, i.e., 1) shifting teacher positionality through revisiting pedagogical assumptions and taking ownership in teaching sexuality education and 2) contextualising sexuality education in xhosa culture by reconnecting to xhosa values and the appreciation of cultural roots and practices. i provide the curriculum posters that were produced by the 3 subgroups and then present each theme by beginning with a brief conceptualisation of the theme with supporting quotations, and lastly, meaning making of the theme. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 3462021 39(2): 346-355 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) figure 2: ns subgroup curriculum poster, “take back the power” http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 3472021 39(2): 347-355 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 msutwana meaningful teaching of sexuality education framed by culture figure 3: lo subgroup curriculum poster 1, “our roots… our pride” figure 4: lo subgroup curriculum poster 2, “winds of change” http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 3482021 39(2): 348-355 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) figure 5: lfsc subgroup curriculum poster: wathint’abafazi! wathint’imbokotho! (you strike a woman! you strike a rock!) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 3492021 39(2): 349-355 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 msutwana meaningful teaching of sexuality education framed by culture 5.1 theme one: shifting teacher positionality teacher positionality refers to the teachers’ positioning in teaching sexuality education in township secondary schools. their values and views on sexuality were revisited and modified in response to the needs of adolescent learners in the classes they teach. they were eager to position themselves differently than was the case before to teach sexuality education meaningfully and to see the accomplishment of its educational goals. the convictions that the xhosa women teachers now held about the curriculum content, the teaching method, the learners and themselves as teachers teaching sexuality education showed that they were revisiting pedagogical assumptions. these teachers’ curriculum posters demonstrated that they felt they could take back ownership of and lead in the teaching of sexuality education, as shown in the title and content of the curriculum posters figure 2 and figure 5. boys tended to be unwilling to be taught certain aspects of sexuality education by female teachers. some of these aspects included the male reproductive system. the taking back of ownership by the women teachers meant that it was up to teachers in the field to be proactive and push boundaries of what might be outdated. teachers of sexuality education should not wait for the department of basic education officials to provide what was needed to support effective teaching and learning of sexuality education. it could be very easy to detach oneself from the responsibility especially when one knows there is some superior who was supposed to be held accountable. when no one takes ownership, the necessary change and impactful teaching that is needed will not happen. the following are quotations that act as evidence to these statements: in our poster we’ve got a picture which is showing that in the olden days men thought women should be discriminated in terms of what happens with ulwaluko [initiation] or circumcision. we see here on the poster the females who are in power because nowadays women become part of initiation schools committees ensuring proper and safer circumcision. the whole community becomes aware of what’s important when their boys are about to go to initiation schools. i also have got a picture here which is showing the men, they are together, and they are making sure that no one is hearing what they are saying, they have got their secrets. that is why we wrote secrets of men. there were no go areas when it came to some aspects of ulwaluko. this had an effect on the boys we teach in class as female teachers; they would shy away when us female teachers try to teach the male reproductive system. when your mind is muddled up your heart feels turbulent. we expect the boys to keep their minds limber to brace themselves for things as they are today. we say gone are those days when it was thought that the females’ place is in the kitchen. today we see black females in power, for example there are now many female doctors and politicians, and this says to us “wathint’abafazi wathint’imbokotho” [you strike a woman! you strike a rock!] (phaphama reporting for the lfsc subgroup). communication really has to be the driver of the whole system of taking back the power…. we can play a vital and positive role with regards to that… but we need to go beyond that as teachers; we need to call a spade a spade, we need to encourage communication, communication with elders in the community, anyone the child is comfortable speaking with, not only the parents (nolwazi reporting for the ns subgroup). the xhosa women teachers claimed ownership for teaching sexuality education, thereby taking responsibility for the learners. they also communicated that they needed to be approachable so that the learners can relate to them, pointing to a possible disrupting of the silence that surrounds sexuality matters at present. in addition, they were forthcoming when they sought to involve the parents and the community, trying to guarantee that learning would http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 3502021 39(2): 350-355 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) be reinforced at home. in doing this, they were positioning themselves aptly for the meaningful teaching of sexuality education to occur. further, they envisaged that through their teaching, adolescent sexual behaviour could lead to positive outcomes. this means that adolescent learners might not have to be victims of not fully understanding sexuality matters. with the women teachers having looked at their own positionality, next was to consider the context. 5.2 theme two: contextualising sexuality education in xhosa culture the xhosa women teachers, in their curriculum posters, promulgated their realisation that sexuality education needs to be taught in context and especially in a cultural context. they recognised that sexuality education would be more comprehensible and meaningful to xhosa learners if they contextualised it, as depicted in figures 3, 4 and 5. although there seemed to be a sense of longing for “things” to be done the way they had been done in the past, they believed that some of the teachings could be critiqued and needed fine-tuning for this particular era and context. these teachers considered that certain xhosa values needed to be re-established in their teaching of sexuality education. they saw these as relevant and crucial for xhosa adolescents today. according to the xhosa women teachers, the sexuality education offered in xhosa cultural institutions in the past could be useful to instil values relevant to boys and girls. the kind of values that they could instil was taking responsibility, respect and self-assurance. the curriculum posters also pointed to other values such as assertiveness, self-confidence, self-awareness and identity, which too could contribute to meaningful teaching of sexuality education today. the following quotations serve as evidence to support these statements: our poster here is titled “our roots… our pride”. so where does this title come from? as a group we thought in the olden days things used to be done in a totally different manner. there were different ways that were used to instil values, respect and all the other things in the kids when they were brought up. we first thought of the different gender roles; there we were thinking about the parents specifically the women, will be teaching the young ones about being responsible women. here we have a picture of intonjane, it is a cultural activity that is done whereby the young women or girls are kind of taken aside and are taught how to handle themselves as women and tomorrow’s mothers, and all the different roles that they need to play. they are also taught to have a sense of pride of themselves; they need to be proud of their bodies understanding that men cannot do as they please with their bodies. for instance if a young men goes up the thighs of a young woman during fondling, the family of that young man will be forced to pay a penalty giving a cow to the girl’s family. so they were taught to act responsibly. men are also taught about their different cultures and how to act responsibly, understanding the consequences of acting irresponsibly; whilst girls went to intonjane, the males are taken to initiation schools where they would be taught everything about manhood, how to handle themselves, and how to respect the opposite gender (cikky reporting for the lo subgroup). … as educators that our responsibility is not only to talk about the content, as much as the content is important we also need to be conscious of the fact that when we teach this subject a lot of our culture comes into play (nolwazi reporting for the ns subgroup). the xhosa women teachers spoke appreciatively of teachings on sexuality that used to characterise xhosa culture. they seemed quite nostalgic in that they not only reminisced about their roots but presented xhosa practices as being all-good and made no substantive mention of any xhosa practices that might have been undesirable. cultural practices were intended to transmit unique knowledge traditionally and values from one generation to the other. the purpose of cultural practices is to uphold cultural norms that would set standards http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 3512021 39(2): 351-355 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 msutwana meaningful teaching of sexuality education framed by culture for acceptable behaviour and to clarify how to interact within the culture. taking pride in their cultural roots assumed an obligation on the part of the women teachers to inform their xhosa learners of how things used to be done in their xhosa culture, clearly wanting to pass the cultural knowledge on to the next generation. this knowledge was seen to be able to instil a sense of pride in the learners and that they might own for themselves what their culture has to offer. in all this, there remains the need to be critical of the xhosa culture, as there is a possibility that what is passed on to the younger generation might not be useful in the age of hiv and aids. when contextualising sexuality education in the xhosa culture, it is necessary to be vigilant of its relevance for today’s adolescents and possible contradictions that might exist. 6. discussion the exercise of creating curriculum posters enabled reflexivity on the part of the xhosa women teachers. they could examine their teaching practice and xhosa culture and determine what they thought would be meaningful teaching of sexuality education. this process meant a modification of teaching sexuality education to xhosa adolescent learners. a “starting with ourselves” approach (van laren et al., 2013), which is a deeply reflexive approach, enabling awareness of own influence on teaching sexuality education and of how that might intentionally break the silence seemingly imposed by culture. identified in chat, a mismatch and sometimes a strengthening of cultural values that are the various elements in an activity system of sexuality education occurred. nasir and hand (2006) state that these contradictions may occur in learning and teaching. however, it is interesting how sexuality education teachers in sub-saharan africa resolve such contradictions (de haas & hutter, 2019). further research needs to explore how teachers resolve such contradictions in xhosa culture. these teachers saw themselves as taking responsibility to lead such a situation, thereby, putting themselves at the forefront of the task of teaching sexuality education to xhosa adolescents. they demonstrated that culture was relevant for the meaningful teaching of sexuality education, as without the latter, adolescents, especially girls, are more exposed to disheartening reproductive and sexual health practices (moletsane, 2014). unesco (2018) also notes the importance of cultural values in the understanding of sexuality. baxen and breidlid (2004) call for the examination of cultural practices and their use in a meaningful way in terms of interventions in sexuality education. the xhosa women teachers in this study might have observed what ahlberg (1994) advocates, an education system that focuses positively on peoples’ historical backgrounds. moreover, and only when an education system is able to mobilise peoples’ meanings can there be the possibility to empower people to deal with issues of sexuality, including hiv and aids meaningfully. the participatory nature of the research enabled the teachers to revisit their pedagogical assumptions and to facilitate a shift in their teacher positionality, to cultivate a conducive atmosphere for the teaching of sexuality education. the xhosa women teachers reconsidered the expectation that xhosa female teachers should not educate boys about sex and sexuality, as it would be opportunities missed if they did not teach the boys too. xhosa male learners are guarded when they are taught sexuality education by female teachers; they do not expect them to do this because male sexuality is handled by males only in the culture. i could not locate literature on this other than that which says it is usually women who teach subjects that have the sexuality education component (moletsane, 2014). there is a need to disrupt the notion of the male learners as the family structure has been changing in the country. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 3522021 39(2): 352-355 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) there are now more homes that are headed by single women in south africa (mudau, ncube & mukansi, 2018), which flags the need to call upon teachers of both sexes to be engaged with learners regarding sexuality at school. sexuality education cannot continue to be a task of women teachers only and they should not give in to pressure about what content they as xhosa women teachers should and should not teach to boys. further, the xhosa women teachers broke the mould by closing the generational gap between themselves and the adolescent learners to whom they teach sexuality education. the xhosa teachers encouraged communication, which required them to think about their positionality as they sought to challenge the taboos that surround sexuality in xhosa culture (wood, 2013). over and above that, they took responsibility for teaching sexuality education, not waiting on other role-players to lead it. considering that sexuality education should not be taught in an a-contextual way, this meant that they could look at the xhosa cultural values and practices and their relevance in teaching today’s adolescent learners and yet be critical of it. in their posters and the discussions that ensued, there was a clear indication that the xhosa women teachers’ thinking was in synchrony with the views of sani et al. (2018) who advocate for the provision of sexuality education not only in the context of culture, but also culture made relevant for today’s adolescents. 7. conclusion i conclude that xhosa women teachers can break the power dynamics that are eminent in teaching sexuality education in their township schools. the meaningful teaching of sexuality education to xhosa learners should involve putting the sexuality education they engage with at school, within the xhosa cultural context, thus making congruent the teaching and subsequent learning from the ecologies of school and home (culture). although contradictions and tensions become evident, there is potential for synergy between the xhosa culture and what is taught in sexuality education at school, which would mean a working towards the full attainment of the curriculum goals. the department of basic education and educational institutions should promote a pedagogy that encourages sexuality education teachers to “start with themselves” and to be reflexive in their teaching practice. as some sexuality education researchers recommend, when teachers understand their own positionality, they will proactively equip their learners with the life and decision-making skills necessary for negotiating their sexuality and for meaningful learning of sexuality education. references ahlberg, b.m. 1994. is there a distinct african sexuality? 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(ed.) 2013. dealing with hiv and aids in the classroom. somerset west: juta. yamagata-lynch, l.c. 2010. activity systems analysis methods: understanding complex learning environments. new york: springer. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.23 https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2017.1414040 https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2017.1414040 https://doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2013.805817 https://doi.org/10.4102/td.v13i1.405 2682022 40(1): 268-287 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 south african teachers’ engagement in teach online: a case study about short course design abstract in the developing world numerous barriers hinder teachers’ uptake of the pedagogical and technological skills needed to teach online. this study sought to contribute to an understanding of effective programme design for developing such skills in such contexts by exploring the engagement of a cohort of south african teachers (n=97 initially, decreasing to n=25 across the programme) in a pedagogically and technologically moderately advanced 80‑hour short learning programme (slp). the research is guided by research questions regarding the retention and engagement across the slp and design elements that affected these. a description of the slp is given in terms of the teaching, social and cognitive presences included, as well as chickering and gamson’s seven principles of good practice. data were collected regarding the numbers of participants engaging in activities across the duration of the slp. in addition, 20 of the participants who completed the slp volunteered to answer a questionnaire with 31 likert‑scale items regarding engagement levels, and 3 open‑ended items concerning their experiences with the slp. content analysis was performed, and findings were interpreted using collaborative cognitive load theory. the findings show high attrition levels, particularly during the registration and orientation processes. high engagement levels were found for those who managed to complete the slp successfully, with approximately equal representation of these teachers from schools serving richer and poorer communities. the design description and derived recommendations are likely to be of value to designers of online slps, particularly within the developing world context, and particularly while the covid‑19 pandemic necessitates use of online teaching. recommendations are inclusion of (1) participation marks to promote engagement in collaboration; (2) short videos to clarify (a) the nature of the slp up‑front and (b) engagement instructions. keywords: collaborative cognitive load theory; course design; in‑service teacher development; online learning; online teaching; technological pedagogical and content knowledge. 1. introduction rapid deployment of emergency remote teaching in response to the covid-19 pandemic, has fuelled the general perception – unsupported by research – that online courses are inferior to face-to-face courses (hodges et al., author: dr angela stott1 affiliation: 1university of the free state, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i1.16 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(1): 268-287 published: 04 march 2022 received: 06 august 2021 accepted: 05 october 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2663-0812 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 2692022 40(1): 269-287 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 stott south african teachers’ engagement in teach online 2020). research does, however, suggest a need to (a) adjust course design relative to faceto-face instruction, (b) develop online-appropriate technological pedagogical and content knowledge (tpack) to ensure effective online teaching (mishra & koehler, 2006), and (c) address the higher attrition rates characteristic of online relative to face-to-face courses (anyatasia, santoso & junus, 2020). chickering and gamson’s (1987) seminal seven principles of good practice have been shown to be an effective tool for evaluating the quality of online courses (hathaway, 2014), and one of these principles, the promotion of student engagement, has been shown to improve course retention rates to a moderate degree (tirrell & quick, 2012). the feasibility of teachers being able to develop and apply the tpack required to develop and implement quality online courses is highly dependent on context. relevant contextual factors include teachers’ initial tpack, learners’ access to technology and the extent to which teachers are supported by parents and guided by school leadership and other relevant role-players, including universities (ehren et al., 2021). particularly for south african teachers teaching in contexts of poverty, contextual constraints to effective online teaching are considerable. even before the pandemic struck, south african student engagement and course retention levels were known to be low in the basic (sing & maringe, 2020) and higher (strydom, kuh & mentz, 2010) education sectors. the low quality of the basic education sector highlighted the need for teacher professional development (van der berg et al., 2016), including in the area of integration of information and communication technologies (icts), where uptake levels were known to be low, particularly in schools serving poor communities (padayachee, 2017). to facilitate south african teachers’ development of the tpack needed for effective online teaching, despite these constraints, the university of the free state (ufs) developed two university-accredited short learning programmes (slps) in the months immediately following the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic: teach online and harnessing social media for distance teaching. the aim of these slps is to guide teachers of any grade and subject to design and deliver quality online or distance lessons. the slps differ in the level of tpack targeted, in order to cater for the broad spectrum of needs and initial competencies present in the south african teaching force. this arrangement allowed for participants in the more advanced teach online course, to change to the more basic harnessing social media for distance teaching course, rather than dropping out. ufs secured funding for 120 teachers to engage in these two slps during the second semester of 2020. in this research the focus is placed on the participants’ engagement in the more advanced slp, namely teach online, which may therefore be referred to as the slp, in this article. 2. purpose and research questions research regarding the effective design of online courses, and of the engagement of participants in such courses, has largely been confined to the global north (bond et al., 2020). those studies situated in africa have generally focused on undergraduate university education, rather than in-service teacher education (bond et al., 2020). the purpose of this research is to attempt to understand design and implementation features of online slps for in-service teacher professional development that are appropriate for the south african, and, possibly, the broader developing-world, context. to this end, i provide a rich description of the ufs teach online short learning programme and investigate how the participants engaged in this slp and the issues and suggestions that arose. from this it is hoped that the reader http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 2702022 40(1): 270-287 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) will be able to extract principles relevant to guiding the effective design of online courses in their context. therefore, in reference to the first implementation of the slp described in this article, the research is guided by the following research questions: (1) what were the levels of retention across the duration of the programme? (2) what were the completing participants’ levels of skill-, emotional-, participationand performance-engagement in the programme? (3) how should the design of the programme be changed for future implementations? 3. conceptual framework collaborative cognitive load theory (kirschner et al., 2018) is used as a framework for making sense of the data and is built on the premise that the small size of working memory is the greatest limitation to learning (sweller, 2011). this small space can be occupied by three types of cognitive load: harmful extraneous, necessary intrinsic and productive germane. extraneous cognitive load results from paying attention to details that are not directly relevant to the learning at hand (sweller, 2011). this may be particularly problematic in online learning due to the multiple opportunities for exploration that the internet affords, as well as the teacher’s inability to control the learners’ environments, relative to face-to-face instruction (kirschner et al., 2018). intrinsic cognitive load is associated with the difficulty a person experiences with selecting key items in the learning material to aid its comprehension. this is partly inherent to the degree of complexity of the subject matter but is also influenced by the clarity with which the learning material is presented and the prior knowledge of the learner (sweller, 2011). germane cognitive load is experienced during sense-making and arises as the learner forms links between knowledge elements, including between new and prior knowledge, as they make sense of the learning material (sweller, 2011). according to cognitive load theory there are two main types of knowledge, which offer different degrees of cognitive load (sweller, 2011): biologically primary knowledge is learnt intuitively through social interaction and offers little cognitive load, whereas acquisition of the more cognitively taxing secondary knowledge requires more formal and explicit learning experiences. primary knowledge includes non-verbal communication, such as the meanings of facial expressions and body language, as well as everyday verbal communication, particularly in one’s home language. during teaching and learning, primary knowledge is used to facilitate the acquisition of secondary knowledge, such as subject matter knowledge and knowledge of how to use technology (kirschner et al., 2018). collaborative cognitive load theory extends this theory to collaborative settings where collaborators can potentially benefit from the added cognitive space afforded by thinking together with collaborators. this potential benefit is, however, traded against the added cognitive load associated with the collaboration process, called transactional cost (kirschner et al., 2018). during face-to-face interactions, people can leverage primary knowledge to reduce transactional costs to a greater extent than during online interactions (costley et al., 2021). this is because online interactions often happen asynchronously or with technologyinduced delays, and body language and facial expressions are often not observable, even during synchronous interactions, due to the need to switch video cameras off to conserve bandwidth. these features disrupt the communication rhythms and cues by which primary knowledge is used to leverage learning of secondary knowledge in face-to-face learning by reducing intrinsic, and promoting generative, cognitive load (jiang, kalyuga & sweller, 2021). furthermore, online collaborative interaction and individual engagement with material may suffer from the addition of extraneous cognitive load due to the split attention effect http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 2712022 40(1): 271-287 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 stott south african teachers’ engagement in teach online (schmidt-weigand, kohnert & glowalla, 2010); for example, as learners need to move their eyes between posts on a discussion board, or try to figure out ways to navigate between parts of a website. 4. method this is a pragmatically conducted (plowright, 2011) instrumental case study (stake, 1994) that was conducted during the first cycle within a larger action research project (mcniff, 2013). an instrumental case study facilitates the understanding of an issue; in this case the effectiveness of a programme designed to develop the ability of south african in-service teachers to effectively teach online. as explained below, the three items of the 3p (presageprocess-product) model of student learning (han & ellis, 2020) are used to structure the analysis of the components of the course that should be presented so that a reader can form a reasonable understanding of aspects relevant to its success. the presage to student learning consists of two aspects, namely attributes of: (1) the programme, discussed in the section about the intervention, and (2) the students, discussed in the section about the sample. data were collected from the process and product aspects of the teach online slp to understand the appropriateness of the course attributes for the participants and their contexts. this is explained in the data collection section. the process of a programme refers to the students’: (1) perceptions of the learning environment, which was measured by means of closedand openquestionnaire items; and (2) their approach to learning, which was operationalised as the students’ engagement in the formative activities of the teach online slp and their responses to self-report engagement questionnaire items. the product refers to the students’ learning outcomes, which was operationalised as the students’ engagement in the summative assessments of the slp. there are multiple definitions, methods of operationalisation, and questionnaires for evaluating student engagement (bond et al., 2020). in this study, kuh’s (2003:25) definition of student engagement is used: “the time and energy students devote to educationally sound activities” and handelsman et al.’s (2005) four categories of engagement, namely skill, emotional, participation and performance engagement, were used as a framework to guide data collection and analysis. 4.1 intervention this research investigated a group of south african teachers’ experiences in a pedagogically and technologically moderately advanced 80-hour online slp, teach online, which was conducted over a 6-month period. it aimed at developing the tpack needed to teach the participants’ chosen content online. the slp was created according to research-based literature, consistent with the requirement for the first cycle of an action research approach (mcniff, 2013). table 1 describes the characteristics of this slp based on means, bakia and murphy’s (2014) nine dimensions of online learning. table 1: characteristics of the teach online short learning programme dimension description of the teach online slp modality fully online pacing deadlines, at 2-week intervals, provided for each of the 8 modules student-instructor ratio <35 to 1 pedagogy participants explore online resources that they are provided links to role of assessments provide student with information about learning state http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 2722022 40(1): 272-287 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) dimension description of the teach online slp instructor role online support and feedback, not active instruction student role online explore and make sense of resources synchrony asynchronous, with a few voluntary synchronous sessions source of feedback instructors the teach online slp comprises eight modules, with two weeks assigned for each module. the learning material is presented on a website (www.ufs.ac.za/teachonline). participants are expected to engage with this material individually, as well as to participate in formative collaborative discussion forums and to submit individual summative activities. the two facilitators for the slp engaged in group and individual discussions with the participants and provided written individual feedback in response to participants’ activities. in addition, a few voluntary synchronous virtual meetings were held. table 2 indicates features of the slp that are considered relevant to each of chickering and gamson’s (1987) seven principles of good practice. these are organised according to the three elements of the community of inquiry (coi) framework. according to this framework, three interrelated types of presence are needed for learning to be successful: social, cognitive and teaching presence (dixson, 2015). for simplicity, interactions between these elements are excluded from table 2 below. table 2: description of features of the teach online short learning programme relative to principles of good design component chickering and gamson’s (1987) principle example(s) of how this was done in teach online social presence encourage contacts between student and faculty the instructors sent at least one message to the group per week, and at least one individual message to each participant per month. during the first month, participants who did not respond were contacted telephonically. participants were invited to contact the instructors at any time via email, whatsapp or google classroom. develop reciprocity and cooperation among students the course material on the website directed participants to 7 padlets, 1 collaborative google doc, 1 youtube video and its comments space and 1 flipgrid. participants were required to respond to specific questions in these discussion spaces and were encouraged to share anything relevant to online teaching on any of the platforms used, and to respond to their peers’ posts. cognitive presence use active learning techniques participants were guided to apply what they learnt in each module to incrementally compile an online lesson that they implemented and reflected on in the final module. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 http://www.ufs.ac.za/teachonline 2732022 40(1): 273-287 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 stott south african teachers’ engagement in teach online component chickering and gamson’s (1987) principle example(s) of how this was done in teach online teaching presence give prompt feedback the instructors gave individualised feedback, generally within 72 hours, to each participant as they submitted assignments, as well as in response to their discussion and messaging posts. emphasise time on task the course content was divided into eight modules, each having formative, and six having summative, assessments. fortnightly deadlines were provided for successive modules. communicate high expectations each of the summative assessment tasks was accompanied by a rubric that described the characteristics of quality work. in addition, the facilitators gave detailed individualised written feedback for each task. cognitive presence respect diverse talents and ways of learning participants were given considerable freedom in how they applied the principles taught in the programme to create a lesson using their choice of topic, target learners, and applications. 4.2 sample working within a pragmatic paradigm, it is not necessary for the various sources of data to be collected from the same sample (plowright, 2011). to answer the first research question, regarding the levels of retention across the programme’s duration, the sample comprised the 140 participants who voluntarily began the registration and orientation processes for either of the short learning programmes (teach online and harnessing social media for distance teaching). they did this in response to an invitation that was spread through teachers’ whatsapp groups and addressed to teachers of all grades and subjects throughout the free state province of south africa. however, very little data was collected from these initial participants, and therefore the term sample is reserved rather for the subgroup used to answer the second and third research questions. this sample comprised only the 20 participants, all who indicated having completed the slp, who participated in a questionnaire that was sent at the end of the programme, to all participants who had completed the registration process for this slp (n=48). the response rate was therefore 42% relative to the number of people the questionnaire was sent to, or 80% relative to the number of people who completed the slp. the lack of questionnaire data from participants who dropped out of the slp limits claims made from this data. furthermore, the low absolute numbers and non-representability of the sample of those who answered the questionnaire relative to the population of south african teachers, limits generalisation from this case. care is therefore taken not to overreach the claims that might validly be made from the data available. to help the reader judge the extent to which the findings presented here might be applicable to their own context, some of the biographical characteristics of the sample are given in table 3 below, and information regarding their access to information and communication technologies (icts) is presented in table 4. the questionnaires were answered anonymously for enhanced validity. participants gave informed consent for the inclusion of this data in this research, and ethical clearance was obtained from the university’s general human research ethics committee (ufs-hsd2020/1790/163). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 2742022 40(1): 274-287 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) table 3: biographical characteristics of the sample school type* gender average age n quintile 1-3 male 41 4 female 45 2 quintile 4 female 36.5 4 quintile 5 female 37.3 6 independent male 43 1 female 26.5 2 district official male 49 1 total male n=6 female n=14 38.5 20 *the quintile rating of south african schools refers to the socio-economic status of the community served, with 1 being the poorest table 4: characteristics of the sample’s access to information and communication technologies level of access number of teachers who answered this (/20) for smart phone tablet computer internet (at home) internet (at school) i don’t have access 5 1 i have access, but i don’t use it 1 2 18 i own this and use it 19 9 1 my school gives me access at school 3 1 i have access to someone else’s and use it 1 excellent: data and speed enough 11 5 data is enough, but speed is limited 3 8 speed is enough, but data is limited 5 4 very little to none due to poor coverage in area 1 3 figure 1 below shows the teachers’ estimates of the access their learners have to various icts. the responses are consistent with what is known about south african learners’ access to icts (oyedemi & mogano, 2018), i.e. (1) greater access to smartphones than computers, particularly in poorer communities; (2) little access to the internet for learners from poorer communities. additional observations of interest are that: (1) responses are varied within a type of school; (2) few learners have access to tablets; (3) access to icts may be low even at some high quintile schools and, particularly, independent schools, despite the general understanding that such schools serve richer communities. the validity of these observations should, however, be considered in the light of their emanating from the estimates made by a small number of teachers. this information is particularly relevant to this study in that teachers’ perceptions of the access that their learners have to appropriate technology affect their perceptions of the agency they can exert regarding online teaching (ehren et al., 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 2752022 40(1): 275-287 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 stott south african teachers’ engagement in teach online figure 1: the sample teachers’ estimation of their learners’ access to information and communication technologies 4.3 data collection and analysis to answer the first research question regarding course retention, the changes in the numbers of participants enrolled in, and engaging in, the teach online slp across its duration, are presented. this includes the number of participants who submitted assignments for each of the 6 modules for which summative assessment was provided, observations made by the facilitators regarding participation in the various discussion forums and data regarding participation in, and use of recordings from zoom sessions across the duration of the slp. these data were collected from the administrative records for the slp, such as registration forms, records in google classroom, pre-zoom questionnaires and the analytics from the youtube platform where the zoom sessions were uploaded with the unlisted permission setting. these data were analysed through descriptive statistics. relevant to answering the second and third research questions, data were collected from the 20 participants, referred to as the sample, who completed the final questionnaire, composed of 31 likert-scale items regarding engagement levels and 3 open-ended items of their positive and negative experiences with the teach online slp, and their suggestions for improvement. this questionnaire was taken, with minor adjustment for the context, from handelsman et al. (2005). content analysis was performed, with descriptive statistics provided where appropriate. 5. results the following assertions, in reference to the teach online slp, answer the research questions. each assertion is then argued for, after which explanations will be suggested in terms of the conceptual framework. (1) there was a low retention rate (41%) between the start of the registration process and submission of the first assignment, and moderate retention (62%) from then to successful completion. there was approximately equal representation of teachers who completed the course from schools serving richer and poorer communities. (2) the completing participants showed high levels of skill-, emotionaland performance engagement levels, and moderate participation engagement levels. the lower participation http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 2762022 40(1): 276-287 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) engagement levels resulted from lower motivation to engage in formative, rather than summative, tasks. (3) future implementations should include marks for participation in discussion forums and short videos to present the purpose and demands of the programme up-front, and to clarify the instructions for each module. 5.1 retention across the duration of the course as can be seen in figure 2, the greatest attrition (49/97 = 48%) occurred between the start and completion of the registration and orientation processes. these processes occurred during the month prior to the official commencement of the slps and required teach online participants to complete two registration forms, submit certified documents, send the facilitators a screenshot of the teach online website and enter the teach online google classroom. it should be noted that only 25 (51%) of the teachers who exited teach online across this period were lost to the jointly funded pair of slps, since the other 24 moved to the more basic slp, which itself lost 11 participants across this period. it is relevant to report the attrition (36/140=26%) across this registration and orientation period for both the slps because funding was dependent on the joint number of participants who completed the registration process for the two slps. the next greatest attrition (n=8) occurred between completion of registration and the submission of the first assignment. this means that attrition from start of registration to submission of the first task for teach online was 57/97 = 59%, i.e. 41% retention. these observations might suggest the need to allow approximately a third more participants to enter the registration and orientation processes for such slps, than what the funders have indicated they will pay for, to compensate for the attrition that will occur during this phase. such a guideline would be invalid, however, if attrition across this stage was unique to this case or could be manipulated in future implementations. the likelihood of these possibilities is now discussed. the high initial attrition seems likely to have arisen from poor initial understanding of the course requirements relative to the participants’ abilities to meet these. if these arose from poor initial communication of these requirements and/or from the unpredictable environment which covid-19 created for teachers during this time, then lower initial attrition rates could be expected in cases where such communication were clarified and/ or the environment were more predictable. further research would be needed to evaluate this prediction, but its likelihood is enhanced by the fact that this was the first iteration of this slp and so communication was likely to be suboptimal, and participation was done in the teachers’ free time between september 2020 and february 2021, overlapping the period when they had to cope with preparing their learners for the final examinations, despite the school year having been greatly disrupted by covid-19 lockdowns. figure 2: retention across the teach online short learning programme http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 2772022 40(1): 277-287 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 stott south african teachers’ engagement in teach online 5.2 completing participants’ engagement levels as shown in figure 3, the sample of completing participants self-reported high engagement levels for the skill-, emotionaland engagement(for summative tasks) dimensions. however, the participants’ engagement was considerably lower for the formatively assessed tasks. figure 3: the sample’s self-reported engagement in the teach online short learning programme during the first two modules, the instructors noticed low participation levels in the formative discussion forums, coupled with poor performance in the summative assessment tasks. for the first modules, the instructors addressed this by appealing to the participants to engage thoroughly with all the formative tasks before attempting the summative task for each module. from the fourth module, participation marks were awarded for engagement in the formative discussion forums, incentivising participation with some success. from the third module, the instructors introduced voluntary zoom sessions. these were intended to allow for interactive question-and-answer sessions; however, as indicated in table 5, few specific questions were asked, with several participants indicating, in the pre-zoom questionnaire, that they did not know what they were meant to do in the module. consequently, the instructor spoke for most of the time, largely repeating information given in written format on the programme’s website, rather than the session being as interactive as initially hoped. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 2782022 40(1): 278-287 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) table 5: engagement data for the voluntary zoom session of the teach online short learning programme date, time and duration of session pre-session questionnaire synchronous session attendees asynchronous video views responses indication of not knowing what to do in module specific questions asked number of views average view duration (% of total time) 06/10, 10am, 50’ 14 3 1 3 27 12 06/10, 7pm, 40’ 3 17 7 24/10, 7pm, 40’ 14 3 3 5 14 22 31/10, 7pm, 40’ 8 3 2 2 15 34 5.3 improvement for future implementations the sample’s answers to likert-scale items about the strengths and weaknesses of the programme were analysed to inform an understanding of which features should, or should not, be changed in future implementations of this programme. this was further informed by the sample’s answers to open-ended questions about these features and suggestions for improvement. as can be seen from figures 4 and 5, there were high satisfaction levels regarding the helpfulness of the various features of the programme. this satisfaction is echoed in the numerous positive statements recorded in the open-ended section of the questionnaire (see table 6). the least utilised features were the voluntary zoom sessions and the whatsapp group. since it was impossible to complete the course without using the website and google classroom, and only online material was provided, the fact that one participant indicated no use of these features and two indicated that “no offline material” was not characteristic of this course, undermines the reliability of these participants’ data. perhaps instead of responding to the wording of these options, these participants had intended to indicate the lowest possible degree of helpfulness of these features. besides this possibility, the feedback was very positive with the only option chosen besides “very helpful”, “helpful” and “not applicable” being “slightly helpful”. this option was chosen most (n=5) for the discussion forums. this finding seems consistent with the observation that fewer open-ended comments were made regarding the role of social presence, such as afforded by the discussion forums, than regarding teacher and cognitive presences in the course (see table 6, which summarises the themes that emerged from the qualitative analysis). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 2792022 40(1): 279-287 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 stott south african teachers’ engagement in teach online figure 4: perceptions of the helpfulness of various features of the teach online short learning programme figure 5: opinions regarding various characteristics of the teach online short learning programme http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 2802022 40(1): 280-287 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) table 6: summary of the open-ended responses regarding the strengths, weaknesses and suggestions for improvement, of the teach online short learning programme component theme number of comments examples teaching presence need to clarify instructions, e.g. through inclusion of instruction videos 11 “have a short video clip of how to access everything on the link so we don’t miss any information.” instructor feedback and support was helpful 9 “i had no previous experience in most of the features and through regular contacts and communication from the presenters and colleagues, i was able to acquire a lot of information which helped me a lot.” changes to pacing and structure suggested 6 “give more time for assessments.” flexibility in deadlines was appreciated 3 “i am very thankful for the leniency on the submission dates all of us are teachers and you do get some days (or weeks) where you really plan on doing the assignment and then school (and life) happens. i was scared that i would get penalised, but the administrators understood and gave the extension.” spaced deadlines were helpful 1 “the deadlines for tasks was [sic] also spaced in such a way that it gave you enough time to complete it, even when you are working until 4 at school.” social presence discussions with colleagues were helpful 3 “the amount of help received from other people taking the slp course was positive.” course climate was conducive to learning 3 “the general atmosphere of the course that inspired learning.” need for more interaction 2 “i think i had to ask questions when i wasn’t sure what i need to do. but that was a problem on my side. trying to do all on my own.” http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 2812022 40(1): 281-287 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 stott south african teachers’ engagement in teach online component theme number of comments examples cognitive presence difficulty was experienced with acquiring particular knowledge and skills 7 “conversion of files and compressing them was sometimes challenging.” “classroom can be confusing if you aren’t computer literate. it is not chronologic.” “it was challenging to learn how to record lessons.” exposure to a wide variety of applications was beneficial 5 “i learned about many different websites and apps to aid and further my online teachings.” motivation to learn and enjoyment of learning 5 “i think it helped me to extend my knowledge. when you use a new app it create questions and then you seek for answers.” a more prescriptive, step-by-step approach would have been appreciated 3 “i would have liked to have selected apps go in detail about how to use them step for step, where a focus on how to use all the functions could be done and not just a self-study on them.” course resources were useful 2 “i still use some of the material.” need for change in mindset from face-toface pedagogy 1 “i had to make a mind shift to look away from the traditional way of teaching when doing these tasks. i had to be open minded to new things to learn and to have learned to implement these new ways of teaching.” course was challenging and time-consuming 1 “usage of a high volume of internet data. if you want to benefit in full with this course you need lots of time to watch all the video’s and sometimes even more video’s and lots of data. you could not really work for short periods on the slp especially when creating activities etc. in the different apps. then you need to sit and finish what you were busy with and sometimes there were some problems that you had to fix first because you did not know how to use the app.” 6. discussion it appears that the teach online short-course’s design was generally effective. this is suggested by the high self-reported engagement levels (figure 3), the high satisfaction levels regarding the components of the slp (figure 5) and the positive open-ended responses (table 6). this finding lends support to the view that course designers should pay explicit attention to the three elements of the community of inquiry (coi) framework (dixson, 2015) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 2822022 40(1): 282-287 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) as well as to chickering and gamson’s (1987) principles of good design, as was the case for this slp (table 2). the description of this slp could serve as an example of how this theory can be enacted in an online short course within the south african context. these claims are, however, limited by the high attrition rate observed and by the fact that the data referred to was collected only from participants who had managed to complete the programme. for these participants, the fully online nature of the programme appeared not to be problematic (see figure 5). they displayed high levels of access to the internet as well as to information and communication technology (ict) devices (see table 4). this is inconsistent with jacobs’s (2018) finding that south african teachers tend to have fairly high access to ict devices at school, but show limited usage, due to low confidence levels, and tend to have limited access to the internet. this inconsistency is unsurprising since the teachers who managed to complete this course are not representative of the population of south african teachers (see table 3), since teachers from quintile 5 (6/20) and independent (3/20) schools, which likely serve richer communities, were overrepresented compared to the general south african population. since the opportunity to participate in this slp was publicly open to all teachers in the free state province, it is probable that the characteristics of the teachers who originally signed up for this slp were closer to the population of south african teachers. this suggests that teachers from higher quintile schools were more likely to complete this slp than their counterparts in lower quintile schools. this is unsurprising, given the greater level of challenges teachers from lower quintile schools tend to experience in their teaching practice and in their everyday lives, which tends to limit the time and energy they can devote to professional development (johnson, monk & hodges, 2000). moreover, teachers teaching poorer learners would likely be less motivated to engage in a course about teaching online, given the low internet access of their learners (see figure 1). considering this, the course completion by teachers from quintile 1–4 schools, who made up 50% of the sample, can be seen as exemplary and suggestive of an anticipation of the possibility that learner internet access is a potential for which they should prepare themselves. in fact, the low access that learners, even from richer communities, seem, from figure 1, to have to the internet, may be expected to have undermined the motivation of any of the teachers to engage in this course. although the covid-19 pandemic had necessitated some form of distance teaching, which likely provided motivation for learning to teach online, it was clear from the participants’ introductory remarks in the course, that they had mainly been doing this via whatsapp. use of whatsapp was discouraged in the teach online course, since it formed the focus of the more basic alternative course, harnessing social media for distance teaching. these issues may partially explain the finding that many participants chose to move to the more basic course, or to drop out completely. however, high dropout rates are unfortunately characteristic of south african education trends, even in face-to-face programmes. as strydom, kuh and mentz (2010) point out, it is necessary to find ways to enhance the engagement of south africans, particularly from disadvantaged communities, in educational opportunities. to this end, the discussion below attempts to explain the findings, in terms of collaborative cognitive load theory, in a manner that may help inform changes that could be made to improve engagement levels, particularly of teachers from disadvantaged communities, in the future. this slp was designed such that the formative tasks were somewhat collaborative, in that participants were meant to engage in discussion forums with their peers, whereas the summatively assessed tasks were all individual tasks. this design favoured individual work http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 2832022 40(1): 283-287 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 stott south african teachers’ engagement in teach online over collaboration, since there is obviously greater motivation to engage in summatively, rather than formatively, assessed tasks, particularly in cultures characteristic of developing world contexts, which strongly emphasise high-stakes examinations (okitowamba, julie & mbekwa, 2018), downplaying knowledge and activities that are not summatively assessed (brodie & sanni, 2014). the poor performance of those participants who skipped the formative tasks completely in the early modules suggests that the formative assessment was needed to succeed in the summative assessment. this might be understood in terms of the greater collective working memory space that collaboration can afford if engaged in effectively (kirschner et al., 2018). this said, it is not possible to establish to what extent this explanation is relevant, since those who skipped the formative tasks might not have engaged with any of the learning material, even individually. indications, in the pre-zoom questionnaires, that participants did not know what they were meant to do, despite the presence of written instructions on the website and in google classroom, as well as suggestions by more than half (11 out of 20) of the sample for short instructional videos to clarify the written instructions, may be understood as follows. written instructions in online courses are known to provide more cognitive load than verbal instructions would, particularly if given face-to-face where non-verbal cues can harness biologically primary knowledge to leverage learning of biologically secondary knowledge (jiang, kalyuga & sweller, 2021). this occurs particularly in cases where the language of learning and teaching is not the home language (kirschner et al., 2018), and for which even teachers’ language proficiency is low, as tends to be the case in developing world contexts (krugel & fourie, 2014). the 40-minute zoom sessions were intended to provide the missing verbal instructions and simulate a degree of face-to-face interaction. the low synchronous attendance and percentages of asynchronous watch times for these sessions support findings that the imposition of face-to-face pedagogy, such as long synchronous lectures, onto online learning, has limited effectiveness (hodges et al., 2020). 7. significance and limitations of the study table 7 summarises the challenges experienced in this study and suggested mitigating measures. except for the call to improve internet access, particularly to poor learners, which is beyond a programme designer’s sphere of influence, the suggested mitigation measures are being implemented in an improved version of this slp, and the value of these measures is being investigated, forming the second action-research cycle within the broader project. it is hoped that these suggestions, as well as the description of how design principles from the literature were applied in this case, may be relevant to helping others in their design and implementation of similar programmes. since this is a case study, its purpose was not to produce grand generalisations, but rather what stake (1994) calls naturalistic generalisations, which a reader can abstract and apply to their own context. as the reader does this, they should take into consideration the fact that the sample was not representative of south african teachers, was small (n=20), included only participants who completed the course, and that most of the data displayed here was self-reported, with associated limitations, such as limited knowledge of self and the possibility of misunderstanding questions. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 2842022 40(1): 284-287 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) table 7: identified difficulties and suggested mitigation measures issue explanation suggested mitigation high attrition, particularly during the registration and orientation phase before the course began some potential participants had a poor understanding of the demands of the programme creation of orientation and overview videos to communicate course demands more clearly couple programmes of different levels of difficulty to allow participants to move between programmes rather than drop out high attrition is a norm within this context admit significantly more participants into the registration process than stipulated by the funding agreement. this inflation should be about 30% if funding is determined by the number of registrations. those participants who managed to complete the course over-represented schools serving richer learners teachers who teach richer learners are more likely to consider online teaching a feasible option, and may be more likely to meet the prior requirements for success in such a course improvement of internet access to poor learners, e.g. at governmental level; provision of incentives for teachers to equip themselves to prepare to capitalise on such access lower participation than skill, emotion and performance, engagement levels higher motivation to engage in summatively assessed rather than formatively assessed tasks, and poor understanding of the value of the formatively assessed tasks inclusion of marks for participation in the formative discussion forums, and clearer communication of the value of engagement in these forums some difficulty in knowing what to do, suggested by questionnaire comments and requests in pre-zoom-session questionnaires written instructions offered high cognitive load due to text being unable to harness primary knowledge to leverage the learning of secondary knowledge creation of short instruction videos for each module in a manner that allows for use of facial expressions and body language to clarify the communication 8. conclusion in developing-world contexts there are considerable hindrances that prevent teachers from developing the technological pedagogical and content knowledge needed to effectively teach online. these include low proficiencies with icts (padayachee, 2017), low motivation levels to learn these skills due to their learners’ limited access to the relevant technologies (oyedemi & mogano, 2018) and challenges that plague all levels of education, including teacher professional development programmes. these challenges include low proficiency levels in the language of learning and teaching (krugel & fourie, 2014), a culture of examination preparation (okitowamba, julie & mbekwa, 2018), often at the expense of engagement in deep learning (brodie & sanni, 2014), and high dropout rates (strydom, kuh & mentz, 2010). however, unless teachers overcome these hindrances and develop skills that enable them to harness the educational benefits of icts, there will be little incentive for funders to provide http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 2852022 40(1): 285-287 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.16 stott south african teachers’ engagement in teach online icts for education (gyamfi, 2017). breaking this vicious cycle is difficult, but imperative, as has been demonstrated by the differential ability of different socio-economic groups to use icts to mitigate the educational impact of the covid-19 pandemic (ehren et al., 2021). this article has described the design of a programme that showed some operational success within the developing-world context. alterations to programme design have also been suggested for enhanced retention and engagement across the programme. this information should assist and guide designers and implementers of similar programmes to make successful inroads into addressing low ict-integration into education, including low usage of online learning opportunities, in developing-world contexts. references anyatasia, 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http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) the use of interactive whiteboards in urban gauteng classrooms abstract there are teachers that have technology in their classrooms that is underutilised or not used at all because of factors like technical problems, lack of training or support or teachers’ negative attitudes. this study wanted to determine the impact of the use of interactive whiteboards (iwbs) in primary and secondary urban classrooms in pretoria, gauteng. interactive whiteboards are one of the technologies that are most commonly used in education worldwide. technology has taken over our lives and it is becoming more necessary for upcoming generations to become technologically proficient. the overall purpose of the study was to determine the external factors, perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, the attitudes of educators and learners towards technology, the behavioural intention to use the technology and the actual use of the technology according to the technology acceptance model (tam). this was a qualitative case study and the researcher collected data from three secondary and six primary schools in gauteng. she sent questionnaires to the schools and obtained answers from 30 secondary school and 99 primary school teachers. it was determined that more primary school teachers use the iwbs than secondary school teachers and they also use it more effectively. most of the teachers find the iwbs easy to use and integrate the technology in their lessons. teachers also indicated that the iwbs are very useful for saving their work, it helps them make lessons more interactive, visual and interesting and that the use of the technology motivates learners to participate. key words: attitudes, interactive whiteboards, external factors, perceived ease of use and usefulness, technology acceptance model, urban gauteng classrooms 1. introduction many teachers have technology in their classrooms that is underutilised or not used because of technical problems, lack of training or support or teachers’ negative attitudes. the study wanted to determine the impact of the use of interactive whiteboards (iwbs) in primary and secondary urban classrooms in pretoria, gauteng. the topic was chosen because of the researchers’ interest in iwb technology. she undertook a previous study in rural classrooms in mpumalanga and also evaluated the iwb authors: dr ma mihai1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38. i2.21 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(2): 318-336 published: 04 december 2020 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0254-6122 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 3192020 38(2): 319-336 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 mihai the use of interactive whiteboards in urban gauteng classrooms situation in england. there are also very few recent articles about the use of iwbs in south africa. an iwb is a touch-sensitive board connected to a computer and digital projector (salem, salem & kassim, 2015). the iwb enables users to gain access to any file or software saved on the computer by tapping on the board. the projector displays the computer screen on the board (coyle, yañez & verdú, 2010). teachers can access information from around the world with a computer connected to the internet. a wealth of resources is at the teacher’s fingertips (donnellon mccarthy enterprises, 2018). iwbs are widely invested in, used and researched, in education and business, especially in australia (erikson & grant, 2007; bennet & lokyer, 2008; kearney & schuck, 2008; verenikina, wrona, jones & kervin, 2010; shi, yang, yang & liu, 2012; maritz, stephenson & carter, 2017) europe and specifically in the united kingdom (hall & higgins, 2005; kennewell, 2006; morgan, 2010; bidaki & mobasheri, 2013; kneen, 2015). businesswire (2016) predicts that the use of the iwb in europe will grow by 15% until 2020. the factors contributing to this growth are mainly as a result of the use of the iwb in online learning and the increasing demand for interactive learning. in south africa, this technology is underutilised in schools. this study wanted to find answers to the following research questions: main research question: what contributes to teachers’ acceptance and use of interactive white boards in their teaching practice? sub research questions: 1. how are teachers using interactive white boards? 2. what challenges do teachers face when using interactive white boards? 3. what advantages do teachers experience when using interactive white boards? 4. what training have teachers received on interactive whiteboard usage and how effective was the training? 5. how easy or useful is it for teachers to use interactive whiteboards? 6. what are the attitudes of teachers when using the interactive white board? 7. what support are teachers using iwbs receiving from the school management? 2. literature review 2.1 introduction in this literature review, the researcher will describe what an iwb is as well as how it can be used, then the advantages and disadvantages of iwbs will be discussed. to find the impact on the use and acceptance of the iwb in classrooms, this section will conclude with the technology acceptance model (tam) as theoretical framework. 2.2 uses of iwbs from the teachers that have access to an iwb, most use iwbs for presentations, watching movies, animations and videos and playing educational games. learners prefer using the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 3202020 38(2): 320-336 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) iwb for entertainment purposes, some use it for their own presentations or for visual activities (saville, beswick & callingham, 2014). connection to the internet gives teachers access to a wealth of various resources. for example, teachers can use google or youtube. teachers can create lessons by using photos, graphs, illustrations, maps or videos. interactive whiteboard technology allows for the integration of various other technologies such as computers, microscopes, cameras and video cameras (platinum copier solutions team, 2017). the teacher can centre the class on problem solving. s/he can present the class with a problem and then pass it to the students to solve. with the iwb technology, learners can better collaborate in the classroom (donnellon mccarthy enterprises, 2018). 2.3 advantages of iwbs according to greiffenhagen (2000), the iwb is used as a presentation, interactive and communicative ict tool. for example, the teacher can present a quiz on the iwb and learners must select the correct answer. thereafter, the results are stored on the teacher’s computer. teachers find the iwb a flexible and versatile teaching tool. it is increasing their pedagogical skills as it is offering another teaching method. according to betcher and lee (2009) the use of the iwb improves learning processes and enables meaningful instruction especially with the integration between the teachers’ pedagogy and the iwb’s potential. the iwb indicates a pedagogy that is still focused on the teacher. gillen, kleine-staarman, littleton, mercer and twiner (2007) noted that the teacher can prepare material ahead of time and then retrieve it immediately to be presented as needed. during the presentation items can be changed directly so that multi-faceted instruction can be created. teaching from the front of the class is a preferred pedagogic stance for most teachers. with the iwb teachers can continue using this position or also move to the back while the learners go to the front and interact with the contents and questions on the board. iwbs promote interactivity and facilitate more interactive lessons. the iwb enhances teacherlearner interaction and learner participation. the teacher is the mediator between the iwb and the learners’ learning experience (bidaki & mobasheri, 2013). they can use open-ended questions and give learners time to think and as a result, learners can produce a higher quality discourse (murcia & sheffield, 2010). teachers like the feature of the iwb that can help to link lessons to each other. this saves class time and helps learners to remember the previous lessons. another time saving feature is that teachers can save any page and use it again. the facility to move back and forth between pages on an iwb screen is a useful technique in supporting learner needs (bidaki & mobasheri, 2013). teachers noted that the use of the iwb allows them to prepare lesson plans with variety, contributing to meaningful changes from the traditional instructional methods (bennett & lockyer, 2008). as a presentation tool, the iwb suggests a varied and expressive type of instruction. the workloads of teachers are reduced because information can be saved and retrieved in a simple manner (glover & miller, 2001). once a teacher creates many lessons, it is a good practice to organise them in courses. the teacher can organise lessons on a yearto-year or topic basis. the learners can then play back or review a lesson whenever they want 3212020 38(2): 321-336 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 mihai the use of interactive whiteboards in urban gauteng classrooms (sznigir, 2019). teachers can prepare lessons for more advanced learners or for those who need extra explanation (sznigir, 2019). teachers claim that iwbs motivate learners; lessons are more stimulating, resulting in improved attention. studies have shown that learners who learn with the iwb are more attentive, participate more actively and interact more with their teachers, classmates and the iwb (higgins, beauchamp & miller, 2007). learners like having fun using the iwbs and are interested in the multimedia and versatility associated with the iwbs (smith, higgins, wall & miller, 2005). iwbs allow learners to develop 21st century skills such as higher order thinking, communication, cooperation, problem solving and technology usage skills (manny-ikan, dagan, berger-tikochinski & zorman, 2011). the iwb serves as the centre of attention, enhances cooperative learning and contributes to the development of autonomous learning and higher order thinking skills (manny-ikan et al., 2011). iwbs are equipped with different functions and therefore support different teaching and learning styles (beauchamp & parkinson, 2005). iwbs integrate various learning styles into one experience. learners can learn by seeing, hearing and interacting with the board through touch (platinum copier solutions team, 2017). for learners of the digital age, who use technology 24/7, having an iwb in classrooms provides continuity. it gives them immediacy and they find the large colourful displays stimulating. they can find and structure information in new and creative ways (smart, 2009). one of the biggest benefits of introducing educational technology in the classroom, is the impact it can have on the environment. switching to digital solutions reduces the amount of paper and improves the way study materials are reusable (sznigir, 2019). 2.4 disadvantages of using iwbs using an iwb demands some ict skills and therefore proper training needs to be given before it can be used (sznigir, 2019). through the iwb, teachers have access to a huge amount of resources that may create confusion and it may be difficult for a teacher to choose the best resources in a short time. another disadvantage is that it initially takes a lot of time to develop lesson plans with the use of the iwb in mind (thomas & schmid, 2010). teachers complain about technical problems (such as freezing and crashing), monitor brightness and sunlight when iwbs are used in the classrooms. they also need support with technical difficulties such as networking problems, no response from electronic pens, unresponsive images and a lack of signal immediately prior to and during lessons. many teachers also report difficulties in the movement of the board or projector, especially when the board is not permanently fixed. this causes the calibration to be disturbed requiring realignment (levy, 2002). many teachers are inexperienced in setting up the equipment and in manipulating features on the board, leading to lesson disruption (greiffenhagen, 2000). a school may not have enough funds to provide an iwb for each classroom or there may be iwbs in classrooms that are not used or used as a normal whiteboard due to a lack of time to design teaching materials, limited software or due to frequent unsolved problems (schmid, 2008). when an iwb is utilised for teaching, problems will occur if teachers cannot manage the interactivity required by this approach. training and personal development are therefore imperative to successful integration of the iwb into the curriculum (glover & miller, 2001). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 3222020 38(2): 322-336 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) intensive teacher professional development to achieve high quality iwb usage is costly (ferriter, 2010). teenagers are not as eager to leave their seats as younger learners (thomas, 2003). the study by gillen et al. (2007) suggests that learners lose attention when only one student in the classroom uses the iwb. teachers also mentioned discipline problems when more than one learner wanted to use the iwb at the same time, or when learners accessed unauthorised materials at break time or listened to loud music (alparslan & ve gcbay, 2017). there is also a danger that the introduction of this expensive equipment is introduced because it is available, rather than because it is known to meet the professional needs of teachers and the educational needs of learners more effectively than other existing educational tools (gillen et al., 2007). earlier research on iwbs in schools has shown that a technologyled mode of instruction will create problems regarding teachers’ take-up of the technology as a pedagogic tool (dawes & selwyn, 1999). the use of the iwb cannot claim to transform teaching if teachers use it to support a traditional style of teaching (gillen et al., 2007). moss, jewitt, levacic, armstrong, cardini and castle (2007) note that, although iwbs symbolise a significant development that allows teachers to teach more effectively, it does not automatically provide instructional quality or an improved learning experience. although teachers and learners generally are positive in their views of iwbs, this is not supported by evidence of increased student achievement (smith et al., 2005). 2.5 theoretical framework: the technology acceptance model the original technology acceptance model (tam) was introduced by davis (1989). the version that the researcher used in this study, is the first modified version (davis, bagozzi & warshaw, 1989). it is a model that tries to explain and predict factors of an individual’s behaviour towards a new system of technology (liu, liao & pratt, 2009). the tam model’s main influence is on the use of computers and it technology (gong, xu & yu, 2004). the model is made up of two main beliefs for the use of technology namely; perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use (liu, liao & pratt, 2009). perceived usefulness can be defined as people who may or may not use technology in their belief that it may or may not help improve their job performance (davis, 1989). perceived ease of use, according to davis (1989), is when people believe that the system can be used effortlessly. if the technology is easy to use, people will use it, while if it is not easy to use, they will not have a positive attitude towards using it. even if people believe that the new technology presented to them may be useful, it may be too difficult to use and effort levels outweigh performance benefits. tam proposes a link between the external variables, users’ perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, attitude towards technology use, behavioural intention and actual use of technology. the main idea is that perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use together affect the users’ behaviour towards the technology (davis, 1989). this framework was suitable for this study because it focused on all its components in the interview questions that were asked. the researcher found that the components had a direct effect on the teaching and learning process with iwbs. 3232020 38(2): 323-336 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 mihai the use of interactive whiteboards in urban gauteng classrooms figure 1: technology acceptance model (davis, 1989:985) oriji and amadi (2016) also found in their research that it is necessary for teachers’ attitudes towards the use of technology to change before it is implemented. many teachers still believe that doing their job in the old way, is the best. teo (2011) stated that teachers need to accept technology before they will implement it and before learners will benefit from it. studies have found that the success of technology acceptance relies heavily on the attitudes of educators towards technology (mahat, jamsandekar & nalavade, 2012). according to mahat et al. (2012), a teacher’s attitude and beliefs are important human factors that have a significant impact on the implementation of the technology in the classroom. 3. methodology this study aims at using qualitative methodology. de vos (2011:36) states: “qualitative research refers to inductive, holistic, emic, subjective and process-oriented methods used to understand, interpret, describe or develop a theory on a phenomenon or setting. in addition, it is a systematic, subjective approach used to describe life experiences and give them meaning”. the researcher interacted with the participants; in the process, the participants unravelled their worlds and interpretations were made using qualitative procedures. furthermore, bogdan and biklen (1992) explain that a qualitative data collection method as a researcher paying attention to how things in a society have been naturally created or made, the deeper relations between content matter and what shapes the inquiry. they seek to respond to issues that relate to how social experience is created and given meaning (denzin & lincoln, 2011). the researcher visited the teachers in their natural settings and used qualitative research to “look through their eyes” (nieuwenhuis, 2007:51) to gain an understanding of and description of their attitudes, views and beliefs regarding the use of iwbs in their teaching. golafshani (2003) states that, it is a kind of research that produces findings from the real world setting where a phenomenon of “interests unfolds naturally”. humans are natural story tellers and are socialised in societies surrounded by stories that give narrations of who we are and where we belong, beliefs and codes of ethics and principles (bolton, 2006). golafshani (2003), moreover states that in qualitative research, findings are arrived at without using statistics. “qualitative research basically works towards the interpretation of meanings, emotions, behaviours and/or perceptions by analysing concrete cases in their temporal and local particularity and starting from people’s expressions and activities in their local contexts” http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 3242020 38(2): 324-336 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) (flick, 2009:30). this study collected data using a qualitative research approach. the study considered the qualitative approach as it was more concerned with the meanings the teachers have constructed, the way in which they make sense of their worlds and the experiences they have (mcmillan & schumacher, 2010). case studies involve systematically gathering enough information about a person, social setting, event or group to allow the researcher to understand how it functions (berg, 2001). case study research is descriptive research that involves describing circumstances that occur in the present (thomas, 2010). in this case study, the researcher described the use of the iwbs by the teachers involved. six primary schools (99 participants) and three secondary schools (30 participants) in pretoria, gauteng, were chosen conveniently (the researcher stays in pretoria), purposefully (the teachers had to use iwbs) and voluntarily. the researcher asked permission from the principals to give paper-based questionnaires with open-ended questions to the teachers utilising this technology. questionnaires were selected to be able to find more participants. if interviews were conducted, the number of participants would be a lot less. the researcher found one primary school and one secondary school that were fully equipped with interactive whiteboards. a capital outlay like this reveals the level of commitment of the school governing body. the data were described verbatim. the researcher read the whole data set several times to obtain a whole picture of the teachers’ use of, and attitudes revealed by, the data through the eyes of the participants. she omitted obvious redundancies and repetitions. thereafter the data were divided into meaningful units. a manual content analysis was employed and the data were analysed according to the themes derived from the tam and the literature review (elliott & timulak, 2005). the first set of questions focused on external factors. here the researcher concentrated on challenges and advantages of the iwb. the second theme was perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. the third theme focused on the attitudes of the teachers and the learners. the fourth theme focused on the behavioural intention to use the technology and theme five on the actual use of the technology. 4. quality criteria to ensure the trustworthiness of this study, credibility, transferability, confirmability, and dependability were implemented. credibility can be defined as whether the research findings are a correct interpretation of the participants’ original views (moser & korstjens, 2018). to ensure credibility in this study, the researcher used the participants’ words in the exact way they were written down. transferability explains the degree to which the results of qualitative research “can be transferred to other contexts or settings with different respondents” (moser & korstjens, 2018:121). in order to increase transferability in this study, the researcher described the participants’ context and experiences in order to become meaningful to an outsider. confirmability is the degree to which the findings of the research study could be confirmed by other researchers (moser & korstjens, 2018). the findings in this research study are already confirmed by more than one author. dependability is “demonstrated through the participants’ evaluation of the findings, interpretation and recommendations of the study that 3252020 38(2): 325-336 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 mihai the use of interactive whiteboards in urban gauteng classrooms are all supported by the data as received from participants of the study” (moser & korstjens, 2018:122). to ensure the dependability for this study, an audit trail was kept with complete sets of notes on judgements made during the inquiry process that will be shared with interested participants. 5. ethical considerations for this research, permission from the gauteng department of education was obtained. in addition, ethical clearance from the university of pretoria was obtained for the researcher to proceed with this study. as part of the ethical considerations, the principals and teachers were fully informed of the questions, how the data will be used and the results thereof. participants were provided with a consent letter stating their rights as well as the right to withdraw at any point from the research. the questionnaires were filled in anonymously. the researcher referred to the participants as p to protect their identity during this study and the schools as p (primary) and s (secondary) school. 6. findings 6.1 introduction the teachers’ use of the iwbs varied between one and eleven years, averaging approximately five years. most of them do not use any other technology. those that do use other technology, use cameras, tv projectors, laptops, tablets, ipads, smart phones, visualisers, cd or dvd players or radios. software used are hot potatoes, youtube, prezi, quizlet, mimio, geogebra, free class, easitech, classdojo, etc.. some teachers also use moodle as a learning management system. 6.2 external factors 6.2.1 biggest challenges1 time most teachers are used to the blackboard and it takes time to get used to the iwb. according to two secondary school teachers and six primary school teachers it takes a lot of time to set up the board and the computer. it also takes time to get to know the program to be able to use it more effectively. it takes a lot of time to prepare a lesson, specifically interactive lessons. p2-p6: “to set it up can take time.” p4-p8: “sometimes technical glitches occur and it can waste a lot of time.” limited knowledge some participants are of the opinion that their lack of knowledge causes them not to use the iwb to its full potential. it is difficult to remember how everything works. one teacher acknowledged that she sometimes forgets some of the functions of the board. s1p6: “i am still getting used to some features.” p3-p5: “my personal lack of knowledge.” p6-p23: “i am not a techno boffin, learning slowly”. p6-p1: “getting to know the program thoroughly to use it more effectively.” 1 the first p stands for primary school and the second for participant. the s stands for secondary school http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 3262020 38(2): 326-336 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) preparation it takes a lot of time to prepare a lesson, specifically interactive lessons. some teachers do not have enough expertise. s2-p4: “it is taking time and effort to plan interactive lessons”. problems with the board fourteen secondary school teachers and 39 primary school teachers mention problems with the iwb. p6-p22: “the alignment of the screen is often reset daily which is frustrating”. p4-p11: “if something does not work – struggling to log in, the light bulb not working.” p4-p5: “the pen writes too thick”. “the battery in the pen goes flat”. p3-p2: “the pen does not write where you want it to write, even after you calibrated the board”. p2-p9: “sometimes the projector’s volume is not of a good quality”. s1-p1: “navigating, acquiring and updating the relevant software, to renew the licence for the software”. s1-p3: “the blinds in my class do not block out the sun, so learners find it difficult to see on the board”. s3-p2: “some learners with visual problems battle to see words on the board’’. challenges with learners only one learner at a time can come forward and use the board while the rest of the class just observe. five secondary school teachers and three primary school teachers said that many learners are not paying attention when the teacher is busy on the board. internet connection and electricity interruptions two secondary school teachers and 19 primary school teachers have problems with the internet connection. one secondary and 27 primary school teachers report problems with electricity interruptions. this is unfortunately a reality in south africa and most teachers do not have a plan b ready if load shedding is implemented. training teachers need training to use the iwb, but five secondary school teachers and 22 primary school teachers reported that they had not received any training. three secondary school teachers and 44 primary school teachers indicated that they received basic training and that the training was not enough; it was very quick; a beginner’s course or just a handout. most teachers ask for help from colleagues or the hod if it is needed. support from school management many teachers did not give any comments when asked what support they received from school management. three secondary school teachers and 12 primary school teachers reported that they had not received any support. some also commented that the management has no idea about what is happening in their classes. 3272020 38(2): 327-336 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 mihai the use of interactive whiteboards in urban gauteng classrooms 6.2.2 advantages advantages concerning the iwb thirteen secondary school teachers and 31 primary school teachers describe the iwb as user friendly. the iwb is clean when you use it, unlike chalk that makes everything dirty. it saves paper and lots of interesting software exists. p5-p7: “the board is interactive and the displays colourful and visually stimulating.” advantages concerning learners this type of learning is imperative for the current young generation. learners like the pictures and real-life videos. this is the type of technology that they grow up with. three secondary school teachers and 15 primary school teachers are very impressed with the visual learning. demonstrations are very effective. learners find it interesting and fun. they are much more observant when they learn interactively. they are excited when the teacher allows them to write on the board. learners understand much better and they participate fully. the learning process is enhanced and it helps to make lessons interactive and makes lesson delivery easy and effective. it keeps the learners entertained and is more interesting than a textbook. they can leave their textbooks at home, their school bags are lighter and there is more space in class. learners concentrate better in class. learners get a modern education with unlimited resources. according to two secondary teachers and 13 primary school teachers, learners are more active, interested and they concentrate better. p2-p8: “visual learning for visual learners.” p6-p34: “technology that kids can identify with.” advantages concerning teachers the teacher gets immediate feedback if the learners understand or not. the teacher can save changes that he / she made and continue where the previous lesson ended. it is easier to clear the board for the next lesson and easy to adjust the lesson to classes. it saves time and there is an electronic record of your lessons. lessons take a very long time to prepare, but then it can be stored for further use. teachers are able to present more creative lessons. if they want to re-explain, it is easy to go back, pause and in this way ensure that learners grasp the content. there is less pressure on the teacher if he / she does proper initial preparation. teachers are of the opinion that powerpoints, videos, pictures and demonstrations are good resources. the presentation is the same for all classes. content can be sourced from the internet and the possibilities are numerous. teaching is moving into the technological era. training six secondary school teachers and 48 primary school teachers are satisfied with the training they received and indicate that it was in-depth. support from management three secondary school teachers and 14 primary school teachers commented that they receive 100% support from school management. sixteen primary school teachers indicate that it was enough or that they received the equipment. two secondary school teachers mention that a technical team is available for support. three secondary school teachers and 15 primary school teachers mention that the management motivates them. seven primary http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 3282020 38(2): 328-336 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) school teachers mention funds that are available for anything needed. others mention that their more technologically inclined colleagues are always available if they need help. 6.3 perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use teachers’ attitudes are affected by how easy and useful they find the iwbs to use. 6.3.1 perceived usefulness eleven secondary school teachers and 65 primary school teachers find the iwb very useful or effective, mainly because they can save their work and do not have to rewrite it as opposed to when they used the blackboard. teachers are of the opinion that the iwb ensures that their classes are creative and interesting. they find the iwb effective for enriching work and useful to do group discussions. six secondary school teachers and 27 primary school teachers commented that they cannot function without an iwb. they use the iwb daily for all subjects. teachers are of the opinion that the iwb reduces their workload. learners are visually inclined and follow better if the work is displayed on the iwb. they are more interested in the work. for most of the teachers, the iwb changed the way that they work. 6.3.2 perceived ease of use teachers have different opinions about the perceived ease of use. thirteen secondary school and 77 primary school teachers agree that it is easy if you know how to use it and if you received training in its use. it is initially challenging until you get used to it. teachers’ main problems are the calibration, the pen, internet access and electricity interruptions. conversely, is the presentation, motivation, and learners’ enjoyment in learning this way. p2-p3: “i struggled in the beginning, but i have been on two training sessions which were very beneficial.” s1-p7: “i am fortunate to be tech savvy and enjoy enhancing my lesson through the use of technology.” 6.4 teachers’ and learners’ attitudes towards the iwb 6.4.1 teachers’ attitudes forty-two per cent of secondary school teachers and 65% of primary school teachers indicate that they are very positive. other comments include: “i am mad about it”, “i like it a lot”, “user friendly”, “i use it daily”, “i cannot survive without it”, “i appreciate it”, “it makes my teaching easier”, “we have to adapt with the time”. p6-p34: “i am inclined towards using new technology to improve.” p5-p11: “it is a major part of my teaching and i love it!” p3-p9: “it helps to make lessons creative and fun.” p2-p14: “it makes teaching my subject easier and creates room for interaction.” s2-p6: “it was daunting at first, but now i love it.” s3-p4: “it has a place in teaching and learning, but it does not replace hard work and good teaching practices.” 3292020 38(2): 329-336 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 mihai the use of interactive whiteboards in urban gauteng classrooms twenty-three per cent of secondary teachers and 12% of primary school teachers indicate that they feel negative towards the technology. some see it as time consuming. for some it is challenging and even inconvenient. many of these teachers prefer old school teaching. 6.4.2 learners’ attitudes three secondary school teachers and 27 primary school teachers indicated that the learners enjoy the iwb classes, while eight secondary school teachers and 29 primary school teachers said that learners are very positive. other comments are: “excited”, “love it”, “mad about it”, “fun”, “more focused”, “impressed”, “motivated”, “understand the work better”. some teachers said that it differs from learner to learner. learners are mostly positive, but some misuse it and some are indifferent. 6.5 behavioural intention to use technology 6.5.1 factors that will influence you to use the iwb or not positive attitudes lead to the behavioural intention to use the technology. teachers were asked which factors will influence them to use the iwb. examples of positive comments are as follows: s1-p1, p5-p10, p5-p16: “nothing will keep me from using it.” p6-p5, p6-p6, p6-p9, p6-p10, p6-p12, p6-p13: “more prepared lessons.” p5-p22, p6-p50: “if it was not user friendly”. s3-p6, p2-p1, p5-p14, p6-p32, p6-p44: “it saves a lot of time”. p2, p6-p28: “learners are more visually inclined”. p5-p1: “it makes my teaching interesting”. p6-p29: “if you have to use the same lesson over and over, you can just save it”. p5-p13: “good software is needed”. p6-p40: “learners can see easily because the image can be expanded”. some negative comments were also found. the teachers were mostly worried about the lack of internet, electricity interruptions, technical problems, too little time for teaching, training and software that needs to be updated. 6.5.2 how lesson planning and preparation changed since the use of the iwb only five teachers stated that nothing changed. eight primary school teachers said it became easier. one secondary school teacher and two primary school teachers are of the opinion that you need less preparation, because lessons can be saved. lessons are more user friendly. one secondary school teacher and six primary school teachers are using more powerpoints. ten primary school teachers are of the opinion that lessons are more effective, interactive and creative. nine primary school teachers say that lessons are more visual, three say it is more fun and two say that their lessons are becoming better each year. only four teachers mentioned negative aspects: s2-p6: “planning takes longer.” p1-p2: “it is a lot more work.” p4-p42: “i had to update my lessons, some i had to redo.” p6-p6: “i just wish i had more time”. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 3302020 38(2): 330-336 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) 6.6 actual system use when asked what teachers allow the learners to do with the iwb, different opinions came to the fore. they can answer questions, complete diagrams, write on the board during lessons, do examples of exercises, do calculations, do presentations, play interactive spelling and maths games and make mind maps for study purposes. p1-p29: “if i do not understand something, i ask them to show me”. unfortunately, some teachers also reacted by saying: s1-p3: “there is no time for them to use it.” s2-p7: “nothing. in grade 12 there is no time to play.” p6-p20: “minimal, due to fear of breaking or scratching the board as repair or replacement is very expensive.” p6-p43: “they are not allowed to touch / write on it.” when asked how they use iwbs in their classes, teachers replied: “to show powerpoint presentations (5s, 15p), showing videos (4s, 30p), pictures (1s, 12p), mind maps (2s, 5p), explanations (11p), games (9p) showing graphs, recording lessons, complete quizzes, mind mapping, cross word building, projects, highlighting, marking, and writing on the board, introducing and consolidation of new topics, providing visuals, enhancing teaching and understanding through the use of multi-media”. p6-p19: “for visuals so that kids can see what they hear and understand it better”. p5-p11: “on a daily basis as a main teaching medium”. s2-p3: “to encourage learners to participate in lessons. i also use it with i-pads, then learners’ answers show on the board”. 7. results many teachers find the iwb technology extremely useful and cannot imagine teaching without it. it seems to reduce their workload. it seems as if the technology, after initial hard work, lowers the teacher’s workload. the lessons can be stored and reused. teachers are of the opinion that teaching is now more creative and interesting, and that traditional teaching changed (bennet & lockyer, 2008). most find the technology easy to use. some struggled in the beginning or are still struggling and are merely using the iwb as a whiteboard (šumak, pušnik, heričko & šorgo, 2017; chen, gamble, lee & fu, 2020). most use the iwb for powerpoint presentations, videos, mind maps, project worksheets or interactive games. the main challenges encountered are the calibration of the iwb, the light bulb not working, the internet being offline, electricity interruptions, the pen that does not work, it is time consuming to set up, updating of the software, the sun shining on the screen and teachers’ personal lack of knowledge and lack of training (levy, 2002). from the responses, benefits for visual leaners are clear. because the iwb is connected to the internet, teachers use youtube videos, pictures in their lessons, graphs, mind maps, etc. this stimulates learning for the visual learners. therefore, teachers see the iwb as an advantage for today’s learners as they are technology literate and appreciate visual material (bakadam & asiri, 2012) 3312020 38(2): 331-336 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 mihai the use of interactive whiteboards in urban gauteng classrooms learners’ attitudes are generally very positive and they are excited and amazed about the technology. the teachers enjoy using it, are excited or just love it. they are eager to learn more. regarding attitudes, various studies such as lai (2010), matthews-aydinli and elaziz (2010), xu and moloney (2011), bakadam and asiri (2012) and alshaikhi (2017) have found positive teachers’ attitudes towards working with iwbs. in the same line, the results of a study by morgan (2008), duran and cruz (2011) and zengin, kırılmazkaya and keçeci (2011) showed that learners were more motivated and enjoyed lessons in which iwbs were employed as these lessons were more interesting and exciting. most teachers allow the learners to write on the board, do examples of exercises or calculations, play interactive games, use mind maps or do group presentations. some do not allow learners to use the board at all, because of a lack of time or because they are afraid that the learners will scratch the board or break something. many teachers think that they had adequate training, but others indicated that it was brief and basic without any follow up. training is definitely a matter that needs more attention (ferriter, 2010; šumak, pušnik, heričko & šorgo, 2017). although many indicated adequate support by management, this differs from school to school. teachers also indicated that they learn most form their fellow educators. it would appear from the number of questionnaires that have been returned, and the relevant comments made, that primary school teachers use iwbs more often and more efficiently than high school teachers. primary school learners are also keener to write on the iwb than high school learners, who are reluctant to leave their desks. 8. limitations of the study this study only employed questionnaires as a data analysis method, thus results cannot be triangulated. only urban schools in pretoria, gauteng, were considered and only teachers that already use iwbs were asked to participate. results cannot be generalised to other contexts. 9. recommendations the research indicated that iwbs offer many benefits to teachers and schools and whether it is worthwhile investing in the technology. 1) suppliers of iwbs should do demonstrations at schools to showcase the usefulness of the technology. 2) principals of schools should appoint teams to do research to determine the schools’ specific needs, as the types of technology and prices differ hugely. 3) the school governing bodies need to budget for the expense at the beginning of the financial year. 4) the use of the technology can be phased in, starting at grade twelve in secondary schools and grade seven in primary schools. if schools do not have a lot of money available, it would be worthwhile buying one iwb that can be used by different classes. schools need to approach the community and large companies for contributions. 5) suppliers should provide in-depth training and teachers should also know how to use the board interactively. schools need to appoint at least one technical assistant that can help with daily challenges such as the calibration of the board, pens and globes not working. the board must be installed at a height accessible to most children. the school governing http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 3322020 38(2): 332-336 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.21 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) body also needs to budget for window shades in classes that have iwbs to prevent the sunlight from blinding the image. 6) other items that must be budgeted for, are the correct software as well as licences for software and the necessary upgrades and maintenance. when you listen to teachers being proud of this technology in their schools and using it to its utmost potential, it can be regarded as an asset that would enrich more schools. 10. conclusion the research indicated the benefits of using iwb and therefore, more teachers should be encouraged to use the iwb regularly. for instance, the use of the iwb, when accompanied by adequate training on how to use the board interactively, will have positive impacts on learners. learners must also be invited to work with the technology. however, for successful implementation of iwbs, schools need to rethink technical support strategies for teachers. the true success of iwbs lies in how teachers learn to incorporate it in their learning content and if they use the iwb interactively. this research indicated that teachers who participated in this study have positive 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https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.972 the use of interactive whiteboards 34 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 parents’ perceptions of home reading activities: comparing children with and without learning disability en sa jo h n so n , ju a n b o r n m a n a nd er n a ala n t c entre for augmentative and alternative communication, university of pretoria, south a frica juan.bornman@ up.ac.za the early reading process can be viewed as triadic, encom passing the child, the parents and the environm ent. we exam ine the im pact of each of these three com ponents on children’s participation in hom e reading activities as perceived by their parents. the results obtained from a questionnaire completed by parents of g rade 1 children, with and without learning disability, support findings of previous studies that hom e reading environm ents of both groups and their parents’ role in story book reading are not significantly different. the main finding was that children’s responses during story book reading and their engagem ent in independent reading differ. children without learning disability are m ore involved in the reading process and independent reading than children w ith learning disability. this implies that teachers need to encourage parents of grade 1 children to continue to actively engage in reading activities with their children despite their children becom ing independent readers, and to also assist them in the selection of appropriate reading material. k eyw ords: book reading; emerging literacy; home reading; independent reading; learning dis abilities; parent perspectives; participation introduction reading to children is a requisite for building early reading skills and should be used as a scaffold to build instruction once children start school (faires, n icols & rickelman, 2000; dick, 2001). w ith the discussions that spontaneously take place during story book reading, often including interactive language and reference to shared real life experiences, parents help their children to understand the meaning of what is being read (b loch, 1999). a s children become more advanced in listening to story reading, parents’ reading styles change as larger sections can be read without interruption (sulzby, 1985). t hese opportunities to observe and participate in home reading activities thus acquaint children with the nature and functions of written language (v an steensel, 2006). t he reading process can be viewed as triadic, and encompasses not only the child and the parents, but also the environment (cook cottone 2004). although these three elements have been outlined as a platform for discussing reading in the home context, they are not distinct, e.g. children from literate homes with a variety of printed materials (environment), and parents who frequently read to them (parental role) may result in greater enjoyment of reading and good reading skills (child’s role). a discussion of these three elements follows. t he environmental element includes aspects such as library visits and the type of reading material children are exposed to at home (sénéchal & cornell, 1993; stanthorp & h uges, 2000; prinsloo & stein, 2004; v an steensel, 2006). it is well documented that the availability of reading materials in the home provides a positive reading environment (g reaney & hegarty, 1987). re search has also shown that parents who expect their children to do well at school, are more likely to provide books and academic games for their children and take them to the library (anderson, 2000). o nce children start reading books independently, the types of book that parents read to them, change. w hile the children can read books with large print and lots of pictures independently, the books that parents read become the ones with more complex grammar, fewer pictures, smaller print and more involved plots, as these are the books that the children enjoy, but are as yet unable to read independently. w hen comparing the environmental aspects pertaining to reading development in children with and without learning disability, conflicting views exist. some researchers claim that the home environment of both groups are similar in terms of frequency and type of reading material (hughes, 35perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 schumm & vaughn, 1999), while others emphasize their uniqueness (rashid et al., 2005; stain thorpe & hughes, 2000). t his uniqueness is firstly ascribed to an under emphasis of home reading activities by parents due to their children’s reading problems (rashid, m orris & sevcik, 2005), and secondly to less frequent parental participation in home reading activities because of the children’s restricted reading ability (stainthorpe & hughes, 2000). t he second element in the triad refers to the parental role in reading, and includes the fre quency of their own reading (thus the model that they provide), the frequency with which they read aloud to their children, and their perceptions of their roles during reading. parental reading patterns provide a positive reading environment and when parents read in different contexts, children learn about literacy in an incidental manner and acquire a positive attitude towards reading (greaney & h egarty, 1987; stainthorpe & h ughes, 2000; w ood & h ood, 2004 ). parents who are thus aware of the importance of encouraging their children to read at home, often structure home reading activities in ways which allows active participation (h ughes et al., 1999). seeing parents reading magazines, books o r newspapers provide a positive stimulus for children’s reading (anderson, 2000). t hese parents are usually also able to provide supportive reading experiences to their children (k openhaver, e vans & y oder, 1991) and are able to convey that reading is pleasurable and worthwhile (b aker, 2003). p arents who view reading as a source of entertainment, are more likely to have children who also enjoy reading and are skilled readers (anderson, 2000; baker & scher, 2002). in addition, researchers agree that the frequency of this exposure contributes to successful early reading development as children with above average read ing ability are exposed to more frequent storybook reading and word games than children who are below average (w ood, 2002). in this reading triad, the parental role is possibly the aspect that changes most significantly when children enter g rade 1. d uring the pre school years the parents’ role is to act as m ediators between the child and written language, by providing structure, order and the necessary scaffolding to ensure the development of word knowledge, the understanding of meaning and also to promote an awareness of the printed words or letters (cook cottone, 2004; sénéchal, lefevre, t homas & d aley, 1998). h owever, once children enter school and become readers themselves, the parental role changes significantly and parents become unsure of their new role in fostering their children’s cognitive and academic growth (m cm ackin 1993). t heir feelings of uncertainty regarding their role during reading and what is expected from them, is likely to influence their participation in this activity. t ypically, parents tend to provide either more informal/implicit reading activities (when children are exposed to print during reading, without print being the focus) or more formal/explicit activities (when parents teach about reading words and letters). b oth of these activities could happen within the same activity, e.g. when parents read and focus on both the story and on identifying print (senechal et al., 1998). h owever, it seems that for pre schoolers parents tend to focus on the in formal activities, while the more formal activities tend to take preference once children start reading independently. w hen comparing the specific strategies that parents of children with and without learning dis ability use, interesting differences are noted. parents of fluent and competent readers use creative procedures such as scaffolding to assist children to comprehend stories and to make predictions, read the same book multiple times, talk less and assist the child to become more active in reading or telling the story (saracho, 2002). in contrast, parents of struggling readers apply uncreative strategies such as decoding and concealing pictures to keep the child from guessing the words. t he third element of the reading triad relates to the child, and includes the child’s enjoyment of listening to stories, their response to different reading activities, independent reading and reading ability. since reading is a developmental task, the more children read, the better they becom e at it. b eginner readers need a great deal of encouragement from those around them and their enjoyment of reading is enhanced when they experience a shared intimacy with their parents during this activity (anderson, 2000; m cm ackin, 1993). as children are read to, they acquire new knowledge, improve their vocabulary (leseman & de jong, 1998), learn that words can form imaginary worlds away from the immediate here and now, and discover that written language has its own conventions and 36 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 rhythms (b loch 1999). w ith their newly acquired interest in the act of reading, grade 1 children will probably not be willing to listen to the story or look at pictures only and would choose to rather focus on the printed words and to read some of it independently (m cm ackin, 1993). hence, once beginner readers start reading some words independently, the parental role changes from active reader to active reader listener, or to active listener. w hen comparing children with and without learning disability, certain trends prevail. children without learning disability who enjoy reading, are more likely to devote time to it, resulting in in creased reading proficiency which in turn develops more favourable reading attitudes resulting in a greater likelihood of reading for sheer enjoyment (greaney & hegarty, 1987; fiala & sheridan, 2003). struggling readers on the other hand who do not enjoy reading, spend less time on it, which maintains the continuation of poorer reading skills “the poor get poorer” in contrast to “the rich get richer” also known as the m atthew effect (stanovich, 1986). furthermore, children, who ex perience reading difficulties, tend to label themselves as poor readers and as unable to learn to read, resulting in declined reading motivation (b aker, 2003). children who acq uire successful initial reading skills tend to remain good readers, while struggling readers tend to continue experiencing difficulties throughout their school years (adams, 1990). children’s reading skills also contribute to their out of school reading. competent readers read more books and magazines than less com petent readers. children, who already know the basics of reading at the beginning of grade 1, begin to increase their reading of comics and magazines, which would in turn strengthen their reading skills. children who are at the point of acquiring basic reading skills, are unable to become involved in the kind of leisure reading that would benefit their reading competence later. children who experience difficulties in reading comprehension and word identification start developing problems in early reading. t herefore they read less and fall behind in reading skill development (leppänen, aunola, & nurmi, 2005). it is against this background that we endeavour to describe children with and without learning disability exposure to book reading at home as perceived by their parents. t his study is relevant not only as a basis to assist teachers in helping parents to provide optimal read ing environments for beginner readers, but also to highlight the triadic association between environment, parent and child participation during this process. t o address this, the environmental aspects related to two groups of children (children with and without learning disability) are described, followed by a description of parental roles during book reading and specific aspects related to the child. method research design a quantitative, non experimental comparative research design, involving two groups (parents of g rade 1 children with and without learning disability) was used to address the aim of the study. a purposeful sample in a specific geographical area was taken, and data were collected by means of a self administered questionnaire. d ue to the focus of the research, and the specific participant selection criteria, purposeful sampling was used as this ensured that the population was represen tative and informative about the topic under investigation (m cm illan, & schumacher, 2001). in addition, a specific geographical area was selected, as it contained a school for children with learning disabilities as well as a mainstream primary school, which also increased the comparability of the two participant groups. participants parents of two group s o f grade 1 children were included as participants: 30 parents of children without learning disability, who attended a mainstream primary school in an urban middle class area and 10 parents of children who attended a neighbouring special school for learners with learning disability. children in the m ainstream school had no previous diagnosis of learning disability. class teachers also completed the screening checklist for learning d isability (johnson, 2008) to ensure that the children had no possible risk characteristics, e.g. problems with attention, concentration, 37perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 reading, comprehension, writing, spelling, visual and auditory discrimination, gross and fine motor skills, visual motor integration, spatial orientation, obeying rules, understanding mathematics and planning skills (d owdy, 1992). t he children in the school for learning disability had previously been identified as having special educational needs and as children who could not keep up with the tempo of mainstream education, hence their attendance of the special school. t hese children’s intel lectual ability was within the normal range, but displayed learning disability such as attention deficit disorders, problems with visual and auditory discrimination, gross and fine motor skills, visual motor integration, spatial orientation and planning skills. children with dyslexia were excluded from the study. t he two groups were compared and a m ann w hitney test confirmed that there were no signi ficant differences between the two groups regarding their age. furthermore, fisher’s exact test showed no significant difference according to the following variables: marital status, qualifications and employment status of parents. t he majority of respondents were older married mothers (35 to 45 years), with tertiary qualifications. either they or their spouses were in full time employment, indicating that the groups were part of the middle to higher socio economic group. t he languages spoken at home were either afrikaans or both afrikaans and english. measuring instrument a self administered questionnaire was developed, based on the questionnaires of light and k elford smith (1993) and sénéchal et al., (1998). it consisted of four sections, section a (b iographic information of parents), section b (biographic information of the child), section c (parent’s and child’s literacy activities) and section d (checklist of exposure to specific books). t able 1 provides detail in relation to the latter two sections as this was the focus of the study. the draft questionnaire was pilot tested and recommendations implemented. after final editing, the questionnaire was distributed to the participants. story book exposure was measured by using a checklist with foils to verify the authenticity of answers and to account for possib le socially acceptable answers (h awthorne effect)(sénéchal et al., 1998). t he h awthorne effect is the tendency for people increase the desirable responses (i.e. by marking more book titles than the ones they actually read) because they know they are involved in research (m cm illan & schumacher, 2001). data collection procedures prior to the commencement of the study, permission was obtained from the relevant authorities. t he study complied with the strict code of ethics proposed by the u niversity of pretoria. a pilot study was conducted to explore the usability of the survey instrument within the context, after which adaptations were made for use in the main study. t he researcher then visited both participating schools (mainstream school and special school) and identified all the children who met the selection criteria. letters of informed consent were sent to parents or legal guardians to obtain permission for their participation. t hereafter, questionnaires were sent via the teacher and the children to the participants for completion within a week. empty envelopes with the details of the researcher were included with the questionnaire for return p urposes. t he class teachers assisted the researcher to ensure that all the questionnaires were returned. forty questionnaires were distributed to parents of children without learning disability, and the first 30 returned were used. all of the ten parents of children with learning disability returned their questionnaires. data analysis d escriptive statistics for each of the questions were calculated for the two groups, including fre quencies and proportions of responses. fisher’s exact t est was used to determine relationships between categorical variables and because of the low frequencies in some of the cells in the two way tables (m cm illan & schumacher, 2001). t he m ann w hitney t est was used to determine whether the means of the two group were equal. t his is a non parametric technique and was used because 38 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 table 1. m easurement instrument: family and child’s literacy activities and exposure to books question area no. of questions type of question reason for inclusion family reading; time of day for story reading (3) child’s interest in books (3) child’s participation (1) type of books (1) reaction to story reading (1) parents’ role in story reading (1) independent reading of printed material and reading ability(1) parents’ views on story reading (2) recognition of storybook titles (2) q1 4 option checklist q2 5 option checklist q3 9 option checklist q4 likert scale q5 5 options q6 open ended q7 likert scale q8 11 option checklist q9 checklist items with 3 point likert scale q10 likert scale q11 checklist items with 3 point likert scale q12 checklist items q13 open ended q1 checklist items q2 open ended to describe exposure to home reading activities, e.g. frequency of parental example of participation in reading activities, and frequency in the time of day parent reads to child. to determine whether the child has a desire to read independently. to determine how many story books the child possesses and which are favourites. open ended questions were used to ensure that relevant information would not be overlooked. to determine frequency of participation in story book reading, listening to story book reading, paging through books or magazines, retelling a story, reading books on their own, requesting favourite books, lending or buying books. to determine the variety of story books child listens to during home reading activities. to determine child’s reactions when listening to stories. to determine if parents understand the importance of their roles as mediators between the child and the written language. to determine the type of printed material the child reads independently and what his/her reading ability is. to determine whether parents are aware that their perceptions influence story book reading activities with their children. to verify that parents answered the questionnaire honestly. if parents frequently read to their children, they would be able to recognize titles on the list and not tick the foils. a list of 42 titles was provided containing six foils distributed evenly among the real titles. if more than two foils were ticked, the questionnaire was excluded from the study. of the relatively small sample size and the fact that the variables were not norm ally distributed (m cm illan & schumacher, 2001). for each of the open ended questions, possible responses were reviewed by the researcher and the statistical adviser and sub categories of possible responses were determ ined and operationally defined by means of a content analysis. for closed questions and multiple choice questions, responses were coded according to pre arranged codes. comparisons were made between the responses of the group of children without learning disability and those of the children with learning disability. t his coding procedure was also used for the follow up ques tions, which formed part of the dichotomous type questions. results and discussion results are described and discussed according to the three aims. firstly the environmental aspects 39perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 are described, followed by a discussion of the parental roles. finally, children’s responses during book reading as well as their reading ability, are shown. environmental aspects environmental aspects are described in terms of two variables, namely the frequency of library visits and the types of books children are exposed to. according to their parents, 80% of children with learning disability have never visited a library. fisher’s exact test (p # 0.0001) indicates a highly significant relationship between this group and the frequency of library visits. o n the other hand, similarities exists regarding the type of books children are exposed to. t he majority of parents in both groups tend to read undemanding storybooks (with large print and many pictures) and picture books. m oreover, parents of children without learning disability often read non fiction and rhyme books to their children whereas parents of children with learning disability tend to read more alphabet books. t his might be due to the fact that alphabet books introduce children to the p rocess of reading (dixon, 2006), and hence parents might feel that they are “teaching” their children by doing so. fisher’s exact t est could not be applied to the data as the parents could choose more than one option and, apart from some cells being too small in relation to the number of responses, the observations are not independent. in summary, both of these environmental aspects support those of rashid et al. (2005) who reported that more than half of the children with learning disability in their research had never visited a library, but that the home reading environment of children with and witho ut learning disability are similar in terms of the type of books children are exposed to. parental roles t he second sub aim relates to the parental roles, including variables such as the frequency of the parents’ own reading, the frequency with which they read aloud to their children, and finally, how they perceive their roles during book reading. results showed that parents of children with and without learning disability often read at home (50% and 67% , respectively), and fisher’s exact t est indicated no significance between the two groups. in the same way, hughes et al. (1999) also reported similarities between b oth groups in terms of the frequency of exposure to home reading activities. m oreover, fisher’s exact test indicated no significant difference between parents of both groups with regards to reading stories aloud to their children (p 0.0575). in both groups parents frequently read to their children (i.e. more than 5 times per week), (50% and 63% , respectively). finally, parent’s perceptions of their roles during reading were explored. nine different roles were mentioned but fisher’s e xact t est showed no significant differences between these two groups for any of the roles: reading words in book; paging through a book with the child; showing words in a book and reading them; pointing to pictures and telling own story; asking the child to name pictures; asking the child to guess what would happen next; asking the child to explain why some thing happened in story; asking the child to look for certain words on a page and finally, asking the child to read certain words alone. in brief, it was clear that children in both groups were exposed to the same input by their parents and parents in both groups perceived the roles similarly. children’s responses to book reading t he third aim of the research was to investigate children’s responses to book reading, and involves four variables, namely, enjoyment of listening to stories, responses to reading activities, independent reading and paging through books, and finally, reading ability. regarding children’s enjoyment of listening to stories read by their parents fisher’s exact t est indicates no significant difference between the two groups. in contrast, t able 2 shows that three of the eight aspects related to the children’s responses to reading activities, showed significant dif ferences between the two groups. 40 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 t able 2 shows that 80% of children without learning disability listened attentively to stories in contrast to only 50% of children with learning disability. h alf of the parents of children with learning disability also indicated that their children found it difficult to concentrate and to sit still during story book reading. forty six percent of children without learning disability tried to read words independently during story book reading in relation to 30% of children with learning dis ability who did not. table 2. children’s responses during story book reading activities responses never seldom often p children without ld children with ld children without ld children with ld children without ld children with ld do not listen, look around listen attentively turn pages look at, point to pictures ask questions about pictures ask about words ask the meaning of words read some words on their own 77% 27% 3% 3% 3% 3% 40% 30% 20% 40% 17% 17% 53% 40% 47% 43% 53% 47% 50% 40% 50% 40% 40% 60% 20% ** 83% 13%** 57% 43%** 53% 40%* 47%** * 60% 10%* 90%* 50%* 40% 40% 30%* 0.1903 0.0408 1.0000 0.0460 1.0000 0.2652 1.0000 0.0038 ( * 1 parent did not answer this question) (** 2 parents did not answer this question) (significant p values are highlighted in bold) it is interesting, however, to note that the majority of children without learning disability often or seldom try to read some of the words in the story independently in relation to children with learning disability who never or seldom tried to read words independently. a highly significant relationship (p 0.0038) between the children of both groups and reading of certain words inde pendently, was noted. it is thus clear that children without learning disability tend to be more in volved spontaneously in reading along with their parents in relation to those with learning disability. t heir engagement in more reading activities results in children without learning disability getting “richer” according to the m atthew effect (stanovich 1986). t he third aspect which related to the children’s independent reading, was similar. although 40% of children without learning disability often read books independently and none of the children with learning disability did, results only indicated a statistical significant relationship on the 10% level of confidence with fisher’s exact t est (p 0.0648), and thus it does not warrant further discussion of the two groups regarding their independent reading. t he fourth aspect related to the children’s reading ability, but it is important to caution that these ratings are based on the perceptions of the parents and no norm based reading test was ad ministered to test the children’s reading ability. h owever, d ickinson and d etemple (1998) are of the opinion that parental reports in the area of literacy development are valuable, as parents play a central part in their children’s literacy development and are therefore aware of their children’s reading ability. t hey also reported that parents’ perceptions of their children’s reading ability were generally consistent and that highly educated mothers (similar to the majority of participants in the current study) provided accurate information because they were attuned to indications of literacy in their children (d ickinson & det emple, 1998). t able 3 presents parents’ perceptions of their children’s reading ability according to how the 41perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 children read different types of printed material. fisher’s exact t est was implemented to determine the significance of the relationship between the two groups. table 3. parental perception of their children’s reading ability printed material children are exposed to and read on their own fluent and competent average poor pchildren without ld children with ld children without ld children with ld children without ld children with ld labels names of shops flash cards picture books with no print picture books with 1 or 2 words per page picture books, large print, single words picture books with large print, short sentences story books with large print, hardly any pictures story books with small print, many pictures story books with small print, hardly any pictures books with very small print, hardly any pictures non fiction books magazines 50% 70% 90% 70% 90% 90% 80% 57% 50% 17% 10% 20% 10% 40% 10% 50% 20% 20% 20% 10% 50% 30% 10% 17% 10% 10% 20% 40% 43% 60% 50% 43% 47% 60% 40% 80% 40% 80% 50% 50% 40% 20% 10% 10% 10% 20% 7%** 3% 7% 23% 40% 30%** 40%* 40% 20% 10% * 20%* 30% 50%* 70% 80%* 80%* 70%** 60%** 0.0002 0.0479 <.0001 0.2239 <.0001 0.0001 0.0004 0.0002 0.0002 0.0023 0.0383 0.0292 0.3107 ( * 1 parent did not answer this question) (** 2 parents did not answer this question) (significant p values are highlighted in bold) fisher’s exact t est indicates significant differences in the reading ability of children with and without learning disability for 11 of the 13 variables included. no significance is noted between the reading ability of the two groups regarding easy reading material, namely, picture books without the printed word nor the reading of magazines. t he above results clearly show that children without learning disability are more fluent and efficient readers of printed materials in relation to those with learning disability. t o determine the relationship between the children’s learning ability/disability and their reading ability, fisher’s exact t est was implemented, with results displayed in t able 4. table 4. reading ability of children with and without learning disability frequency row % fluent or competent reader average reader struggling or poor reader children without ld (n 30) children with ld (n 10) total 67% 10% 53% 33% 60% 40% 0% 30% 70% (p < 0.0001) 42 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 children with learning disability fall into the group of average to struggling readers while child ren without learning disability fall into the group of fluent and competent to average readers. fisher’s exact test indicates a significant relation between the two groups. conclusions although children in both groups may be exposed to similar home reading environments and their parents may perceive their roles similarly, it is clear that children without learning disability are more engaged in independent reading activities than children with learning disability. t hese findings are similar to those of rashid et al. (2005), who reported that children with learning disability en gage in fewer home reading activities because of their reading problems. in contrast, children with out learning disability develop into better readers, as they are more exposed to reading activities, enabling them to develop their reading skills. results also indicated that children without learning disability are better readers of almost all printed matter presented in the questionnaire, including labels, school reading cards, books with large or small print and non fiction books. t his research also supports findings of previous studies that home reading environments of children without learning disability and children with learning disability and their parents’ role in story book reading are similar. t he main finding of the current research is that children’s responses during story book reading, as well as their engagement in independent reading differ. children without learning disability are more involved in the reading process and independent reading than children with learning disability. t eachers need to encourage parents of grade 1 children to not only actively engage in reading activities with their children, but also to be aware of the type of responses elicited from the child. as children with learning disabilities may be less interested in printed matter, parents need to be alert in selecting books of high interest, representing different types of print material to encourage the children to participate in all types of reading material. t o engage in these activities, parents may need more support in selecting appropriate books to encourage better participation from their child ren on different reading levels. d ue to the relatively small sample size, this study should be regarded as a p ilot study with encouraging results. interesting trends were noted. future research therefore needs to replicate this study using larger and more diverse samples and should employ a wider variety of 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home and school. journal of research in reading, 19:14 24. wood c 2002. parent child pre school activities can affect the development of literacy skills. journal of research in reading, 25:241 258. wood l & hood e 2004. shared storybook readings with children who have little or no functional speech: a language intervention tool for students who use augmentative and alternative communication. perspectives in education, 22:101 113. yaden db, smolkin lb & conlon a 1989. preschooler's questions about pictures, print conventions, and story text during reading aloud at home. reading research quarterly, 24:188 214. perspectives in education 31(3) perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2013 university of the free state 122 nithi muthukrishna university of kwazulu-natal e-mail: muthukri@ukzn.ac.za telephone: 031 260 2494 raising the quality of primary level mathematics teaching and learning in schools in american samoa: a model for south africa nithi muthukrishna against the background of concerns around teaching and learning outcomes in primary school mathematics in south africa, this article presents two studies conducted in american samoa and seeks to draw implications for the teaching and learning of mathematics in south africa. american samoa has a very similar educational context to south africa. the purpose of the two empirical studies was to evaluate the effectiveness of a mathematics intervention with grade 3 learners, connecting math concepts comprehensive edition level c (cmcce) curriculum which is framed by a structured and explicit pedagogy. the findings in the two studies indicate that providing teachers who have limited content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge with explicit and fully developed instructional plans can have an almost immediate and positive effect on children’s mathematics proficiency. keywords: mathematics learning; explicit pedagogy; teaching mathematics; american samoa introduction in the past three decades, economically unequal countries, including countries in sub-saharan africa, have prioritised improving access to education and quality educational outcomes. many governments highlighted mathematics and science as key areas of knowledge and competence (reddy, van der berg, van rensburg & taylor, 2012). the focus has also been on ensuring that children achieve basic minimum competences of literacy and numeracy so that they are able to benefit from and contribute to society. although there have been major gains in access to education in sub-saharan africa, huge concerns have been voiced over the poor achievement outcomes in mathematics, science and literacy (akyeampong, pryor & ampiah, 123 raising the quality of primary level mathematics teaching and learning in schools in american samoa: a model for south africa | nithi muthukrishna 2006; carnoy, chisholm & chilisa, 2012; fleisch, 2008; pontefract & hardman, 2005; unesco, 2012; vavrus, thomas & bartlett, 2011). this research has shown that the poor achievement outcomes of children are associated strongly with poor quality of teaching. more specifically, it has been found that quality learning and achievement is hindered by poor content knowledge and poor pedagogical content knowledge of the teachers. in south africa, despite massive curriculum reform since 1994, similar trends in poor achievement outcomes have been documented. south african’s poor performance in the southern and eastern africa consortium for monitoring educational quality (sacmeq) assessments undertaken in fifteen school systems is a serious concern. south african grade 6 learners underperformed in reading and mathematics when compared to the sacmeq average in both the 2000 and 2007 assessments (moloi & chetty, 2011; moloi & strauss, 2005). in 2007, 35% of learners were situated at level 2 – the emergent numeracy level. the results for south africa’s standardised annual national assessments (ana) conducted in 2012 in mathematics are alarming despite a slight increase from 2011. this assessment involved more than 7 million learners. learner performance in grade 3 mathematics was recorded at 41%. the grade 4 result was recorded at 37%; grade 5 at 30%; grade 6 at 27% and grade 9 at 13% (department of education, 2012). these are national average percentage marks at the different grades. thus, one can gauge that providing educational opportunity to children in economically unequal countries is wrought with many challenges. the dominant model of educational delivery expects that teachers, when provided with a list of objectives or outcomes and a collection of instructional materials, will be able to develop lesson plans that result in successful learning, as the obe model did in south africa (echevarria, short & powers, 2006). however, the dearth of content knowledge of indigenous teachers results in very poor teacher-created instructional activities (e.g., carnoy, chisholm & chilisa, 2011; pacific regional advisory committee [rac], 2011). the aim of this article is to present two studies conducted in american samoa that evaluated the effectiveness of providing fully developed, scripted lesson plans to poorly educated, indigenous teachers of mathematics in american samoa, and to draw implications for the south african context. research methodology and design the research context american samoa is a context very similar to south africa. the children in american samoa come to school speaking a language other than english, namely samoan. the medium of instruction is english. the teachers come from the same educational background as the children they teach, so their educational foundation is very weak. there is no university on the island. those who go off-island to obtain a college degree perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 124 usually do not return to the south pacific, where the teacher salary is about one-third of that offered on the mainland of america. consequently, 63% of the teachers on the island have not completed any kind of college degree (pacific rac, 2011). two quasi-experimental studies with matched comparison groups were conducted to evaluate the effects on grade 3 mathematics learning when poorly educated, indigenous teachers were taught to deliver a structured mathematics intervention through the use of fully developed, scripted lesson plans. a structured mathematics learning and teaching intervention coyne, kame’enui and carnine (2011) and gersten, beckman, clarke, foegen, marsh, star and witzel (2009) summarise the research on the design of effective lessons in mathematics. effective mathematics lessons provide explicit, systematic instruction that makes broadly applicable strategies conspicuous and provides adequate practice for students to achieve mastery. cumulative, distributed review ensures retention. component skills are taught to mastery and integrated into complex procedural knowledge. most importantly, lessons are designed to teach the ‘big ideas’ of a content area. in mathematics, an important big idea for young children is the algebraic thinking involved in understanding and solving word problems, with missing values occurring in any location in the problem structure. research has found that instruction on solving word problems that is based on underlying problem structure (or big ideas) leads to statistically significant positive effects on measures of word-problem solving (xim, jitendra & deatlinebuchman, 2005; darch, carnine & gersten, 1989). the connecting math concepts comprehensive edition level c (cmcce) curriculum (engelmann, kelly & carnine, 2012) for grades 2 or 3 is designed to teach children explicitly and systematically an algebraic mapping strategy for solving all forms of the three categories of word problems: classification, comparison, and change problems. the mapping strategy is based on an analysis of the underlying structure of these word problem categories. • comparison problem: fred has x more/less than wilma. wilma has y. fred has z. • change problem: dennis had x eggs. he used y eggs in his recipe. he has z eggs left over. • classification problem: there were x trucks and y cars on the ferry. the total number of vehicles on the ferry was z. to solve any of these problems, any two values must be given in order to solve for the third value. typically, young children are taught that ‘get more’ means add, and ‘lose or get rid of’ means subtract. for this keyword strategy to work, the missing value must always be the one that the problem scenario ends up with. children who learn this keyword strategy have difficulty when they move into algebra, where the missing number may be any of the 3 values. if the value the student is to solve for is the one that the word problem scenario started with, then we must subtract if the scenario 125 raising the quality of primary level mathematics teaching and learning in schools in american samoa: a model for south africa | nithi muthukrishna ‘got more’ and must add if the scenario ‘got rid of’, contrary to what the popular keyword strategy would advise. for example, after dennis made his cake, he had 8 eggs left. he used 4 eggs in his recipe. how many eggs did he start with? one must add 8 plus 4 to find the number of eggs dennis had before he used some in his recipe. the cmcce algebraic mapping strategy uses a ‘number family’ analysis as the big idea children learn to use to solve all word problems. the number family strategy derives from the number line that children learn first. if you start at 4 and go right, you get bigger numbers. on the number line, as in a number family, the big number is also always on the right. a number family: these are the first rules children are taught about number families: the biggest number is always at the end of the arrow. the other two smaller numbers are always on top of the arrow. if the big number is missing, you add the smaller numbers. if a smaller number is missing, you subtract from the big number. for the above number family, children would write: 4 + 6 = □ but for this number family 12 the children would write the problem: 12 7 = □ children learn their initial facts as number families that represent all the basic facts for addition and subtraction (see figure 1). later, children also learn a similar set of basic facts for multiplication and division. the most immediate value from learning facts as number families is the economy in the amount of material to be learned. only 55 families express all the basic 220 addition/subtraction facts. the number family strategy for solving addition–subtraction word problems extends beyond the basic fact families to include eventually any set of 3 numbers. as children become facile in using number families, they develop a deep understanding of the commutative property. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 4 6 7 perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 126 figure 1. number family table for learning fact families for addition and subtraction mapping comparison problems. in the fully developed lesson plans of the cmcce, children learn step by step how to map word problems onto the number family, mastering each component skill before learning the next level of complexity. the first step in the comparison problem strategy is simply to identify the big number in a sentence. for example, ‘jane has more than frank’, maps like this: these sentences use the same map: ‘jane is taller than frank’, ‘jane is smarter than frank’, ‘jane is richer than frank’, ‘jane built a longer fence than frank’, ‘jane eats more samosas than frank’, and so on. these sentences require the reverse mapping: ‘jane is shorter than frank’, ‘jane scored lower than frank’, ‘jane has less money than frank’, ‘jane lives in a smaller house than frank’, ‘jane eats fewer hamburgers than frank’ or ‘jane has fewer pets than frank’. translating these sentences, without any numbers, onto a number family map is for many students, especially english language learners, perhaps the most challenging task in correctly mapping a comparison word problem. the teacher provides the children with extensive practice in this component skill until they have mastered it, by reading a script to present one item after the other and to give correction feedback and models until children master the skill. frank jane frankjane 127 raising the quality of primary level mathematics teaching and learning in schools in american samoa: a model for south africa | nithi muthukrishna mastery of this component skill simplifies mapping later comparison statements with numbers in them. for example, ‘jane has 12 more crayons than frank has’ becomes: and ‘jane is 12 inches shorter than frank’ becomes: the difference number is the other small number. once children can map the comparison sentence, moving on to mapping the entire problem and solving it is a cinch, no matter where the missing value is. 1. jane is 12 inches shorter than frank. jane is 60 inches tall. how tall is frank? 2. jane is 12 inches shorter than frank. frank is 48 inches tall. how tall is jane? 3. jane is 48 inches tall. frank is 60 inches tall. how much taller is jane than frank? in problem 3, where the missing number is the difference, children learn to label the difference number ‘dif.’ once a problem is mapped on the number family, the procedure for solving for the missing value is always the same: if the big number is missing, you add. if a small number is missing, you start with the big number and subtract. in problem 1, the big number is missing, so you add. in problems 2 and 3, a small number is missing, so you start with the big number and subtract. the mapping strategy they learn about sentences that compare quantities applies to virtually all statements that express comparative numerical values (e.g., ‘the pole is 311 feet shorter than the tower’). mapping change problems. the number family mapping strategy also works with change problems. here is a change problem: ‘tina had some berries. she gave away 40 berries. she ended up with 312 berries. how many did she start out with?’ in mapping change problems, the first component skill children learn is to place either the start (s) or the end (e) number at the end of the arrow, as the big number, depending on whether the problem scenario ends up with more or starts with more. you start with more when 12 f j 12 60 j f 12 j f 48 48 jdif f 60 f12 j perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 128 you lose things, so s goes at the end of the arrow. if you get more in the scenario, then you end up with more, so e goes at the end of the arrow. in the above change problem, tina gave away berries, so she started with more: as with the comparison problems, children get a great deal of practice interpreting core statements. these persons either started with more or ended with more: mark broke eggs; mark gathered eggs; jan ate fish; jan caught fish; etta picked berries; etta ate berries; dan spent money; dan earned money. when the children are firmly at mastery interpreting the core statement, they map sentences with numbers in them, placing them on the number family arrow. here is the number family for the tina’s berries problem: the cmcce lesson plans include mastery tests every 10 lessons with provisions for re-teaching specific sub-skills if the class did not reach this criterion: 80% of the children must score at least 80% correct to move on in the lesson sequence. study 1 subjects the subjects were 188 grade 3 children of american samoa who came from homes and communities where english was rarely spoken. even their news media provided little experience of english. however, the official language of instruction at school is english. because the children do not speak english and the teachers are more fluent in their indigenous language, english is not used very much in the lower grades. by grade 3 the teachers still communicate mostly in samoan to the children, and translate occasionally into english. subjects were selected from only those schools on the samoan islands that had at least three tracks. american samoa used a tracking system for creating classes when there was more than one class per grade level. the tracking decision was based on the evaluation of the teacher of the previous grade. the following criteria were used to select tracks for inclusion in the study: if the school had five tracked grade 3 classes, the lowest two tracks were included, namely tracks 1 and 2. if the school had three grade 3 classes, only the lowest performing track, track 1, was included. the lowest track in a four-track school and the lowest track in a five-track school were selected to be the experimental groups. the second track in both these schools was included as a control group. table 1 displays these selection decisions. five schools were included in study 1. e s s e40 312 129 raising the quality of primary level mathematics teaching and learning in schools in american samoa: a model for south africa | nithi muthukrishna the teachers had no college degree, but had been educated in the same island community in which they were now teaching. they were more fluent in samoan than in english. these characteristics are analogous to south africa. table 1: descriptive information regarding subject selection process school no. of students in gr. 3 no. of gr.3 tracks in school tracks selected for the study n treatment group no. 1 92 4 track 1 22 experimental no. 1 92 4 track 2 18 control no. 2 118 5 track 1 26 experimental no. 2 118 5 track 2 21 control no. 3 72 3 track 1 20 control no. 4 105 5 track 1 and 2 44 control no. 5 101 5 track 1 and 2 37 control method the experimental teachers implemented the cmcce fully developed lessons. programme specialists skilled in the implementation of the programme coached and monitored the teachers. the programme specialists provided initial training in the use of the programme materials in after-school practice sessions and through in-class modelling, and observed the teacher once a month to gather implementation fidelity data. the implementation fidelity scores the teachers achieved were either 14 or 15 each time. (a perfect score was 16.) the teachers in the control groups used the harcourt brace math advantage textbook (harcourt brace, 1998) and resource materials to teach to the territory mathematics standards for grade 3. the district provided considerable professional development island-wide using consultants from the pacific regional education laboratory and local experts. this professional development focused on teaching teachers to develop lesson plans to align with the standards and how to use resource materials in teaching those lessons. the programme also gave considerable focus to developing teacher content knowledge through a daily after-school programme at the local community college. district-level and school-level monitors made monthly classroom visits. measures the american samoa department of education standards-based assessment (sba) was used to evaluate grade 3 mathematics performance island-wide. the sba is a criterion-referenced test based on american samoa’s academic content standards in math. the test was locally developed with input provided by teachers, administrators, pacific regional education laboratory consultants, curriculum coordinators, specialists and other asdoe staff. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 130 the grade 3 test evaluated 31 standards using one item for each standard. the test required two hours for administration. the district administered the sbas near the end of the school year (april). teachers were reassigned to classes to administer the tests, so that no teacher administered the test to her/his own class. grade 3 is the earliest grade level that sits for the sba tests in american samoa, so no pre-test scores were available from end of grade 2. results only the tracking system, based on grade 2 teachers’ evaluation of each child’s ability and the consequent placement of the child into a track for grade 3, gave a measure of student knowledge prior to the treatment. in this analysis, we assume the children in the lowest tracks are equivalent in performance across the larger schools that were included in this study. this is a fair assumption, because (a) all the schools had been using the same instructional model, and (b) the island population is so homogeneous. note that the experimental group represented the lowest 1/4th and the lowest 1/5th of their respective grade 3 school populations, while the control groups included a larger proportion, 1/3 to 2/5, of their respective grade 3 school populations. the larger proportion in the sample for the control groups presents a bias in favour of the control schools, because the sample was likely to include initially higher performing students than in the experimental group. this selection bias increases the possibility of a false negative finding and decreases the possibility of a false positive. given these assumptions, an analysis of variance (anova) is an appropriate statistic. to control for type 1 error with multiple groups, an omnibus test was applied. to evaluate the end-of-year mathematics performance of the grade 3 children included in the evaluation, we compared the mean of the total scores on the sba tests for each group. table 2 displays the descriptive statistics. an omnibus anova indicated a significant difference in the mean total scores of the groups (df=6, f=8.77, p< .0001). subsequent post-hoc analyses are presented in table 3. because the two experimental groups achieved such similar scores, they were combined to simplify the post-hoc analyses. 131 raising the quality of primary level mathematics teaching and learning in schools in american samoa: a model for south africa | nithi muthukrishna table 2: descriptive statistics *adequate yearly progress measure n total school population mean ayp* mean total score sd of mean total score experimental class school 1 22 92 25% 54.36 8.82 experimental class school 2 26 118 31% 54.85 17.02 control class school 1 18 92 14% 38.56 9.71 control class school 2 21 118 13% 40.95 8.68 control school 3 20 72 14% 37.40 13.88 control school 4 (2 classes) 44 105 16% 43.36 10.33 control school 5 (2 classes) 37 101 15% 42.43 10.47 table 3: post-hoc analyses of the difference in the means between the combined experimental groups and each of the control groups n ayp score sd f ratio p value effect size* experimental groups 48 28% 54.63 13.74 control class school 1 18 14% 38.56 9.71 20.65 < .0001 0.75 control class school 2 21 13% 40.95 8.68 17.65 < .0001 0.76 control school 3 20 14% 37.40 13.88 22.07 < .0001 1.22 control school 4 (2 classes) 4 16% 43.36 10.33 19.49 < .0001 0.91 control school 5 (2 classes) 37 15% 42.43 10.47 20.14 < .0001 0.92 *effect size (cohen’s d) equals the difference in the mean of the scores of the experimental and the control group divided by the pooled standard deviation of 12.92. the post-hoc analyses showed consistent significant large positive differences across all comparisons favouring the combined experimental group. an effect size of .2 is considered small, .5 is medium, and .8 is a large effect (cohen, 1988). this positive finding is bolstered by the subject selection bias against a positive finding. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 132 study 2 in the following school year, we evaluated the same treatment and control group variables in a second study using a new cohort of grade 3 students and a new measure. measures we used the test of early primary mathematics skills/common core standards (tepms, center for applied research in education, 2012) to evaluate the mathematics abilities of children in grade 3. the tepms subscales are listed below with their respective reliability coefficients (cronbach’s alpha). 1. solve word problems. (cronbach’s α= .68) 2. write multiples of 9 and 4. (cronbach’s α= .92) 3. place value: add hundreds, tens, and ones. (cronbach’s α= .83) a. f is 12 more than b. b is 77. what number is f? b. p is 22 less than t. p is 53. what number is t? c. a bus started out with some people. then 12 more people got on the bus. 35 people ended up on the bus. how many people did the bus start out with? d. a truck started out with some boxes on it. then the driver took 67 boxes off the truck. the truck ended up with 21 boxes on it. how many did the truck start out with? a. ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____27 36 b. ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____ ____16 20 a. 10 + 6 = b. 300 + 0 + 8 = c. 90 + 0 = d. 500 + 10 + 2 = e. 800 + 40 + 0 = f. 200 + 0 + 7 = 133 raising the quality of primary level mathematics teaching and learning in schools in american samoa: a model for south africa | nithi muthukrishna 4. count money. (4 items, α= .89) 5. multiply 1and 2-digit numbers. (cronbach’s α= .86) 6. add or subtract numbers less than 10. (cronbach’s α= .83) 7. add and subtract 2and 3-digit numbers in columns. (cronbach’s α= .89) 8. indicate greater than or less than for 2and 3-digit numbers. (cronbach’s, α= .92) the first subscale measured the ability to solve comparison and change word problems. the remaining seven subscales measured basic mathematics skills. subjects the children in the experimental group consisted of the lowest performing track of four grade 3 tracks in one school. the control groups were selected from another school. we selected the lowest track and the middle track of that school as control groups for comparison to the performance of the subjects in the experimental treatment. all the 82 subjects were again grade 3 children, who came from homes and communities where samoan is spoken. the experimental teacher had not completed a college degree; the control teachers had both completed a college degree. all teachers were educated in the same island community in which they were now teaching. they were all more fluent in samoan than in english, which was limited. the teacher quality bias of a college degree favoured the control group, a false negative, as did the selection bias of initially lower-performing children in the control group. method the experimental and control treatments were the same as in study 1. research assistants administered the measures. teachers were present to help invigilate. results we first evaluated the overall effect using a manova statistic on the total score. the difference across the three groups was significant (df=2, f=57.0, p< .0001). having found a very significant overall effect (effect size = 1.59, 1.79), we proceeded with the post-hoc subscale analyses (see table 4). perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 134 table 4. descriptive statistics and results of post-hoc analyses for each subscale n mean sd effect size f value p value pooled sd word problems (subscale 1) 33.52 <.0001 1.73 exp 23 2.74 2.12 control 1 28 0.36 1.10 1.38 control 2 31 0 0 1.58 multiplication facts (subscale 2) 81.86 <.0001 4.42 exp 23 9.04 2.16 control 1 28 1.04 2.76 1.81 control 2 31 0.97 2.63 1.83 place value (subscale 3) 32.15 <.0001 2.00 exp 23 5.39 1.23 control 1 28 2.61 1.57 1.39 control 2 31 2.29 1.62 1.55 count money (subscale 4) 23.8 <.0001 1.74 exp 23 3.39 0.99 control 1 28 1.57 1.71 1.05 control 2 31 0.77 1.33 1.51 multiply 1and 2-digit numbers (subscale 5) 9.48 <.001 1.46 exp 23 3.96 0.21 control 1 28 2.36 1.66 1.10 control 2 31 2.84 1.46 0.77 add/subtract nos. < 10 (subscale 6) 7.03 <.01 1.94 exp 23 7.7 0.76 control 1 28 5.79 2.44 0.98 control 2 31 6.61 1.69 0.56 column addition and subtraction (subscale 7) 5.41 <.01 5.45 exp 23 17.39 3.43 control 1 28 12.61 6.06 0.88 control 2 31 14.52 5.37 0.53 greater than, less than, equals (subscale 8) 4.38 0.016 2.28 exp 23 5.35 1.43 control 1 28 3.75 2.3 0.70 control 2 31 3.77 2.51 0.69 135 raising the quality of primary level mathematics teaching and learning in schools in american samoa: a model for south africa | nithi muthukrishna the post-hoc analyses again showed very large and significant differences favouring the experimental group on all subscales, except for subscale 8 (indicating <, >, or =). on subscale 8 the effect sizes of the differences were large (.70, .69), but because of greater variability within groups, the differences only approached statistical significance (p = .016). discussion and conclusion two studies using two different cohorts of grade 3 children and two different sets of measures showed that indigenous teachers with limited content and pedagogical knowledge consistently had an immediate and strong positive effect on grade 3 children’s mathematical proficiency. neither study used random assignment of subjects to treatment, which would have ensured the comparison groups started as statistically equivalent. however, the selection of the classes for the treatment was not random. the classes that used the fully developed lesson plans were selected to do so because the classes were especially unproductive. the skill level of the children was low: in general, many of the children could not count in english or write numbers. in addition, the experimental teachers were especially weak in their content knowledge and english proficiency, such that teaching was very difficult for them and their own school attendance was extremely poor. as the intervention began, the experimental teachers with poor attendance started coming to school regularly. two years later, the one teacher who had the poorest attendance, now had nearly perfect attendance. she became keenly interested in her children’s progress, eager to obtain test results and, generally, displayed confidence that she did not seem to have before. she loves teaching from a scripted, well-designed programme. and anecdotally, people comment that her english has improved as well as her own knowledge of basic mathematics. the cmcce programme used in the present studies is a later edition of the same mathematics programme used in an earlier study in south africa (grossen & kelly, 1992). in that study, rural indigenous grade 2 (tsonga-speaking) children taught by indigenous teachers outperformed grade 2 english-speaking children taught by english-speaking teachers in a private urban school in south africa, with an effect size greater than 1 standard deviation. the children in that study who learned from the early version of the cmcce programme completed two years of the highly structured, fully developed sequence of lessons taught by their indigenous teachers. the qualifications of the indigenous south african teachers were similar to those in american samoa, having no college degree and limited english-speaking ability. they also taught well-behaved children, large classroom groups with limited teaching materials, similar to american samoa. designing a sequence of excellent lessons is an intricate and difficult task. a developing science undergirds the design of better lessons. here are some highlights of this emerging science as it was used in engineering the cmcce lessons. they have perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 136 important implications for curriculum design in economically unequal countries, including south africa: • lessons should be carefully sequenced, and learning carefully scaffolded. new concepts should be linked to known concepts. • analytic skills need to be developed in learners from the early years of mathematics learning (glick & sahn, 2010; lewin, 2009). the use of the number family strategy to teach algebraic thinking is an example of how cmcce provides a strong foundation in analytic skills. • pedagogical content knowledge should not be not divorced from content knowledge. in the cmcce the ability to draw linkages with other elements of mathematics, the explanations and questions teachers use to ensure deep understanding of concepts, all merge pedagogical and content knowledge together, both of which are significantly and positively correlated with student achievement, according to carnoy et al. (2011). • content coverage and its differentiation, appropriate pacing, and higher levels of time on task are all more easily achieved with a carefully prepared plan. carnoy et al. (2011) highlight the critical importance of these elements. • demonstration, modelling, independent practice of new skills, and cumulative review are all planful activities that are carefully laid out for the teacher to follow in cmcce. carnoy et al. (2011) found these elements correlated with better achievement. • curriculum coherence, cognitive demand of content and pacing, and the adjustment of pace to learner ability are important principles of instructional design. reeves and muller (2005), in the context of their study in the western cape province, use these principles to define the concept ‘opportunity to learn’. • teacher proficiency in the language of instruction is critical to good educational outcomes (hoadley, 2012; setati & adler, 2000; taylor, 2007; 2008). the cmcce-provided scripts enable teachers who are only semiproficient in english to act as very proficient teachers. • teacher feedback on student responses and systematic on-going assessment of learning and teaching are also critical elements of ‘opportunity to learn’ (hoadley, 2012; reeves & miller, 2005; taylor, 2007; 2008). the cmcce has built-in mastery checks through ‘individual (oral) turns’ and 10-lesson written tests of mastery and optional lessons with remedies for problems. many of the features of effective pedagogy and content knowledge can be built into the curriculum, eliminating the prerequisite that every teacher must be an effective curriculum designer before effective instruction can be delivered to the children in the classrooms. 137 raising the quality of primary level mathematics teaching and learning in schools in american samoa: a model for south africa | nithi muthukrishna acknowledgement the author gratefully acknowledges the input and critique of this paper by dr bonnie grossen, centre for applied research in education (care), hillsboro, oregon, usa. list of references akyeampong ak, pryor j, ampiah jg 2006. a vision of successful schooling: ghanaian teachers’ understandings of learning, teaching and assessment. comparative education, 42: 155–176. carnoy m, chisholm l & chilisa b 2011. the low achievement trap in middle income countries: comparing botswana and south africa. draft report. stanford school of education, human sciences research council and the university of botswana. carnoy m, chisholm l & chilisa b 2012. the low achievement trap: comparing schooling in botswana and south africa. cape town: hsrc press. cohen j 1988. statistical power analysis for the behavioral sciences. 2nd edition. hillsdale, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. coyne md, kame’enui ej & carnine dw 2011. effective teaching strategies that accommodate diverse learners. 4th edition. upper saddle river, nj: prentice hall. darch c, carnine dc & gersten r 1989. explicit instruction in mathematics problem solving. journal of educational research, 77(6): 351–358. department of education 2012. report on the national annual assessments 2012, grades 1, 6 and 9. pretoria: department of education. echevarria j, short d & powers k 2006. school reform and standards-based education: a model for english-language learners. journal of educational research, 99(4): 195–210. engelmann s, kelly bf & carnine d 2012. connecting math concepts comprehensive edition level c. columbus, oh: mcgraw-hill. fleisch b 2008. primary education in crisis – why south african school children underachieve in reading and mathematics. cape town: juta & co. gersten r, beckman s, clarke b, foegen a, marsh l , star j & witzel b 2009. assisting students struggling with mathematics: response to intervention (rti) for elementary and middle schools (ncee 2009-4060). washington dc: national center for education evaluation and regional services, institute of education sciences. glick p & sahn d 2010. early academic performance, grade repetition and school attainment in senegal: a panel data analysis. world bank economic review, 24(1): 93–120. grossen b & kelly b 1992. using direct instruction to improve the effectiveness of teachers in south africa. south african journal of education, 12(2): 143–148. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 138 hoadley u 2012. what do we know about teaching and learning in south african primary schools? paper presented at the conference towards carnegie111: strategies to overcome poverty and inequality, 3-7 september. lewin k 2009. access to education in sub-saharan africa: patterns, problems and possibilities, comparative education, 45 (2): 151–174. moloi m & strauss j 2005. the sacmeq ii project in south africa: a study of the conditions of schooling and the quality of education. retrieved 5 june 2012 from www.sacmeq.org. moloi mq & chetty m 2011. trends in achievement levels of grade 6 pupils in south africa. retrieved on 12 july 2012 from www.sacmeq.org. pacific regional advisory committee 2011. pacific region: a report identifying and addressing the educational needs. washington dc: united states department of education. pontefract c & hardman f 2005. the discourse of classroom interaction in kenyan primary schools. comparative education, 41: 87–106. reddy v, van der berg s, van rensburg dj & taylor s 2012. educational outcomes: pathways and performance in south african high schools. south african journal of science, 108(3/4): 1–8. reeves c & muller j 2005. picking up the pace: variation in the structure and organisation of learning school mathematics. journal of education, 37: 103–129. setati m & adler j 2000. between language and discourses: language practices in primary multilingual mathematics classrooms in south africa. education studies in mathematics, 43: 243–268. taylor n 2007. equity, efficiency and the development of south african schools. in t townsend (ed.), international handbook of school effectiveness and improvement. dordrecht: springer. taylor n 2008. what’s wrong with south african schools? retrieved on 11 august 2009 from www.jet.org.za. unesco 2012. global education for all: sub-saharan africa 2012 efa report. paris: unesco. vavrus f, thomas m & bartlett l 2011. ensuring quality by attending to inquiry: learner-centered pedagogy in sub-saharan africa. paris: unesco. xim yp, jitendra ak & deatline-buchman a 2005. effects of mathematical wordproblem-solving instruction on middle school students with learning problems. journal of special education, 39(3): 181–192. 2362021 39(4): 236-238 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.16 book review the changing face of colonial education in africa a book review by prof corene de wet the author of this work is peter kallaway, emeritus professor, university of the western cape, and research associate, school of education, university of cape town. kallaway is one of the foremost authorities on history of education in south africa. he is a prolific writer of many books and academic articles about the history of education under apartheid in south africa and british colonial africa. his highly valued edited works include apartheid and education: the education of black south africans (johannesburg: raven, 1984), the history of education under apartheid, 1948–1995 (new york: peter lang publishers, 2002), and education after apartheid (cape town: university of cape town press, 1997). the publication of a new book by kallaway always creates interest among academics, because he is known for his accurate research and deep understanding of the african colonial world and education in south africa. in his “acknowledgments” kallaway gives the reader a glimpse into factors that played an important role in his development as an academic and human being. he pays homage to his parents for their support for his education. he mentions the impact of his father’s respect for his fellow human beings on his own humanness. mention is also made of the impact of academics such as prof winnie maxwell from the history department at rhodes university, colleagues in south africa and abroad in his development as a lifelong student and academic. kallaway acknowledges the important influence of the interdisciplinary nature of revisionist studies prevailing at the university of the witwatersrand during his tenure on his understanding of the history of education in africa. this allowed him to distinguish “between the context of policy formulation and the context of policy realization – between what people said (discourse) and what people actually did in the practice of educational policy development in colonial context” (kallaway, 2021:4). in the first five chapters of the collection kallaway (2021:4) explores how “particular interpretations of policy emerged as part of an intertextual and institutional context that made the texts ‘reasonable’” for those in power. in the last two chapters, kallaway focuses on the south african context. author: prof corene de wet1 affiliation: 1university of the free state doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i4.16 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(4): 236-238 published: 6 december 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.16 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5208-2963 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.16 2372021 39(4): 237-238 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.16 de wet the changing face of colonial education in africa in chapter 1 the author focuses on the worldwide protestant mission church’s response to the changing political, social and economic environment of the interwar years. he explores how mission initiatives helped to shape thinking about education in asia, africa, north america, oceania and latin america by the 1930s in the political framework established by the covenant of the league of nations. chapter 2 expands the discussion of the reframing of the nature and purpose of missionary education in colonial education. this chapter highlights the changing emphasis of conferences of the new education fellowship (nef) during the depression and the rise of totalitarianism in germany, italy, japan and the ussr. through his critical analysis of the leading discourses of the different conferences, especially the nef conference in south africa (1934), kallaway sheds light on the complex debates on how to link the propagation of christianity to the economic, social, medical and educational needs of colonised people, and how to work within the political framework of colonialism. in chapter 3 kallaway interrogates the ambiguities and contradictions of education policy and practice in british colonial africa (1918–1945). this chapter highlights the link between the emerging international politics of welfare and the provision of education in the colonial context. kallaway concludes that the lack of resources in colonial africa restricted greater access to schooling in these colonies. kallaway furthermore critically explores the influence of the emergent science of social anthropology (chapter 4) and linguistics (chapter 5) in shaping debates on education policy in africa. chapter 4 makes for interesting reading. kallaway (2021:160) argues that bronislaw malinowski’s notion of “cultural contact”, as promoted by him during the 1934-new education fellowship conferences held in cape town and johannesburg, provided “a near perfect rationale for what was later to become ‘bantu education’, the blueprint for apartheid education in south africa after 1948”. in chapter 5 kallaway draws attention to diedrich westerman’s (1875–1956) contribution to the field of african languages and the promotion of african studies on the international stage. kallaway demonstrates the african response to colonial education in two case studies from south africa that highlights the careers of two african leaders in the field of education. in chapter 7 kallaway contributes to the limited body of knowledge related to the intellectual history of black south africans in the pre-apartheid era. in his discussion of the life and career of donald m’timkulu (1907–2000) kallaway (2021:194) highlights “the complexities of these colonial lives”. he pays tribute to “a committed educator who defended the rights of africans to a schooling equal to that of their white colleagues, and to an education that allowed blacks to achieve their potential in the modern world” (kallaway, 2021:244). in chapter 8 kallaway reviews cultural activist samuel e.k. mqhayi’s (1875–1945) historical writings and presentations in relation to the field of academic history and evaluates the impact of his literary works on the education of children schooled in the isixhosa language since the mid-1930s. despite a scarcity of resources, kallaway was able to give a voice to two leading pre-apartheid south african intellectuals who sought to defend the rights of colonial people to have a say in the nature of their education. the concluding section of the book renders an excellent reflection by the author on the following: (1) difficulties researchers encounter while researching colonial education due to a lack of credible resources and the absence of the voices of the colonised. (2) the part christian missionaries, the new education fellowship and american philanthropic foundations played in the construction of colonial education policy network. (3) the complex part individuals such http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.16 2382021 39(4): 238-238 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.16 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) as j.h. oldman and c.t. loram played in the development of welfare and education policy for the african policies. (4) african’s response to pre-apartheid education. the book makes a valuable contribution to the body of knowledge on education in colonial africa despite the fact that the first five chapters were previously published in academic journals, edited books and/or presented at academic conferences. making previously published research available in a south african edition of the changing face of education in colonial africa, gives students and researchers of the history of education insight into how the discourses of missionaries, members of philanthropic movements, academics and to a lesser extent members of the colonial bureaucracy, changed over a period of fifty years. the author should be lauded for the inclusion of two never before published case studies in the publication. these two chapters give voice to the colonised and explain why the colonised often supported colonial education (chapter 6 and 7). the book is a critical narration of the changing face of education policy in late colonial africa against the background of broad social and economic trends. this highlights the importance of contextualisation. the book is however more than a critical account of colonial education in africa; it contributes to the historiography of history of education. the author makes for example no claim of so-called objectivity. in the “acknowledgements”, kallaway sets the tone of a personalised approach to history writing. in his narrations kallaway often enters into, albeit one-sided, conversations with the readers in his endeavours to make sense of a complex research venture hampered by a scarcity of primary sources. the changing face of education in colonial africa is a well-written book, based on sound research that contributes to our understanding of the roots of apartheid education in south africa. students and academics with an interest in history of education, policymakers, as well as historiography should read the book. full publishing details and information on where to purchase the book are given below. publisher: african sun media imprint: sun press isbn: 978-1-928314-91-2: r425 e-isbn: 978-1-928314-92-9: r340 doi: https://doi.org/10.52779/9781928314929 google books: https://bit.ly/3lhzbif takealot: https://bit.ly/3awrknz itsi: https://bit.ly/3752ljt amazon kindle: https://amzn.to/3yyie7f amazon paperback: https://amzn.to/2u8ndmv jstor, ebsco host, lightning source & proquest african sun media: orders@africansunmedia.co.za / +27 21 201 0071 on request from bookshops http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.16 https://doi.org/10.52779/9781928314929 https://bit.ly/3lhzbif https://bit.ly/3awrknz https://bit.ly/3752ljt https://amzn.to/3yyie7f https://amzn.to/2u8ndmv mailto:orders@africansunmedia.co.za 189 research article 2022 40(2): 189-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) insights into community engagement at a university of technology in south africa abstract community engagement (ce) has been identified as an important pillar alongside teaching and research in higher education. despite this it has emerged slowly within the south african landscape due to a lack of understanding regarding engagement. drawing on in-depth interviews, this study sought to explore how academics (n=14), at a university of technology in kwazulu-natal, south africa understood ce and the processes involved in engagement. the study found that ce was a symbiotic relationship that involved collaboration with communities in order to understand community needs, nurture community partnerships, and ensure sustainable engagement initiatives. finally, the data reflected that in order to enable social change, the community should be honoured as a source of knowledge and the university should recognise the benefits of engagement. keywords: higher education, community engagement, social change, partnerships, curriculum, students 1. introduction community engagement (ce) has been defined as the partnership of university knowledge and resources, with the partnership and knowledge of the public and private sector to enrich scholarship, research and creative activity; strengthen curriculum, teaching and learning; produce educated and engaged citizens; enhance democratic values and civic responsibility; attend to critical societal issues and make a contribution that is in the best interests of society (fitzgerald et al., 2016). the carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching provided a more comprehensive understanding of ce saying it was “the collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity” (soria, mitchell & nobbe, 2016: 4). it is within this context that higher education organisations, such as the association of american colleges and campus compact, stated that if ce is to be embedded within the core of teaching, research and service missions of academic institutions, it must be distinguished by four foundational characteristics, namely: author: dr sandhya chandramohan1 prof raisuyah bhagwan2 affiliation: 1kwazulu-natal college of nursing 2durban university of technology doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i2.14 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(2): 189-206 published: 08 june 2022 received: 27 december 2021 accepted: 19 march 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9710-6930 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1584-9432 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 1902022 40(2): 190-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) it must be scholarly; it must cut across the missions of teaching, research and service; it must be reciprocal and mutually beneficial; and it must embrace the processes and values of a civil democracy (fitzgerald et al., 2016). in south africa ce emerged within the context of the white paper on the transformation of higher education (department of education, 1997) which led to the community higher education service partnerships (chesp) initiative in 1999 (lazarus et al., 2008). this was intended to help south african universities conceptualise and implement ce as a core function of academic institutions (lazarus et al., 2008). prior to this, pedagogical approaches to build relationships between universities and society (such as work camps, student volunteerism and community activities) were not as relevant, as academic service delivery in south africa. gradually shifts in conceptualising community service to ce to “a scholarship of engagement” began to mirror itself in local literature (higher education quality committee [heqc], in bhagwan, 2018: 33). local writers have emphasised that ce activities should have an intentional public purpose that undergirds the social responsiveness mandate of universities (favish et al., 2013). favish, mcmillan and ngcelwane (2012) commented that there was some consensus amongst south african universities regarding the common elements that characterise ce. to this end favish et al., (2013) advocated strategies such as service learning, clinical service, continuing education courses, and the collaborative production of popular educational material as salient engagement activities. whilst south african scholars have affirmed that ce, alongside teaching and research, are one of the three core responsibilities of a university (naidu, 2019; preece, 2017), many have not yet discussed how it may be integrated into the academic programme. some of the reasons for this are as bidandi, ambe and mukong (2021: 5) have said, that ce, although productive, can be “complex, difficult and challenging”. these challenges appear to be linked to the conceptualisation and theorisation of ce in south africa (pienaar-steyn, 2012; bhagwan, 2017a), which has made it difficult to integrate into the academic landscape. johnson (2020) rightly affirmed that whilst there remains a substantive conceptualisation of ce, it has been exacerbated by the contradictory placement of ce within community and university structures. he argued the need to strengthen the efforts of the south african higher education community engagement forum to advance the ce mandate across local universities. the lack of a homogenous measurement tool to investigate the impact of ce, has further challenged understanding its impact in the local context (hart, 2010; nkoana & dichaba, 2017). in this vein daniels and adonis (2020) commented that the quality assurance of engagement was a cause for concern in the last cycle of audits of south african universities by the heqc. despite the challenges related to understanding ce, empirical work has grown related to this third pillar of higher education. bhagwan (2017a) reported that the core values underpinning engagement at south african universities included social justice, integrity, inclusivity, trust, respect, and care. although musesengwa, chimbari and mukaratirwa (2017) indicated that there has been no published study that demonstrates what ce strategy is most effective, bhagwan’s (2017b) study found that engagement should focus on engaging for change, mutuality and reciprocity, co-designing solutions with communities, co-creation of knowledge and understanding indigenous knowledge. it is against this backdrop of research that this exploratory study was undertaken to gain further insight into how academics understand ce, the processes involved, and the role of the university in catalysing change. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1746197907086719 http://journals.sagepub.com/author/lazarus%2c+josef 1912022 40(2): 191-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 chandramohan & bhagwan insights into community engagement at a university of technology 2. literature review boyer’s (1996) model of community engagement was the theoretical framework that guided this study. the four key dimensions that underpin his model, namely discovery, integration, application and teaching, are seen as interdependent and interrelated aspects of advancing knowledge and wisdom (collins & stockton, 2018). discovery aims to discern and share new knowledge or extend existing knowledge in novel ways through traditional research (wilson, 2014). this allows for the transformation of societal problems and questions into useable knowledge using scientific methods (steinert, 2017). in health science education, the scholarship of discovery includes original research that can create a deeper understanding of community health problems and community-based solutions to such problems. the scholarship of discovery promotes collaborative research between communities and universities in novel ways that elevate research to produce new knowledge for the community and the university (mtawa, fongwa & wangenge-ouma, 2016). scholarship of discovery is closely related to the scholarship of integration (boyer, 1990). the scholarship of integration interprets and engages knowledge across disciplines in health education which includes knowledge syntheses or integrating concepts from other fields as well as allied health science education (steinert, 2017). transdisciplinary integration allows for collective intelligence to approach and solve problems thereby addressing contextual issues of concern for the scholarship of integration capacity building, creating sustainable systems (steinert, 2017). the rapid pace of societal change with the increasing burden of disease together with a global pandemic has elevated the importance of this form of scholarship to involve members from different disciplinary homes, to form collaborations to address social and health challenges and encompasses a wide variety of activities and strategies (adhikari, pell d centre for social science and global health, university of amsterdam, amsterdam, the netherlands;e amsterdam institute for global health and development, amsterdam, the netherlands & cheah, 2020). these strategies include meetings with community members, working with community boards or involving members of the community in designing and implementing research activities (adhikari, et al., 2020). the third element of boyer’s model, namely the scholarship of application, explores ways in which knowledge can solve health issues and serve the community and academia (adhikari, et al., 2020). this form of scholarship has gained momentum, as greater priority has been given to creating contextually relevant knowledge that is useful to society. boyer’s (1996) theoretical framework is relevant to community engagement, as it enables creativity to generate new contextual knowledge that is relevant in the day-to-day lives of communities. holland (2005) argued that universities must become participants where discovery, learning and engagement are integrated activities that involve many sources of knowledge generated in diverse settings by a variety of contributors of ce activities. this will lead students to become reflective practitioners by integrating theory with practice. furthermore, students should be placed and have lived experiences in communities to enhance in-person interactions where they can apply academic knowledge and learn from communities with diverse patient populations (mtawa, fongwa & wangenge-ouma, 2016). the scholarship of teaching is regarded as the fourth pillar of boyer’s model. the emphasis on teaching culminates into a learning community that includes community members, students, academics and service providers (mccaslin & scott, 2012). in an engaged context teaching enables the creation of environments within which students, staff and community members http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 https://www.tandfonline.com/author/pell%2c+christopher https://www.tandfonline.com/author/cheah%2c+phaik+yeong 1922022 40(2): 192-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) equally engage in teaching and learning processes. teaching with an engaged focus allows all parties involved in ce to be more active, encouraging critical thinking and lifelong learners (boyer, 1990). the scholarship of teaching provides students with skills to meet the needs of society (mccaslin & scott, 2012). in summary, boyer’s model guides ce practice in a context of knowledge exchange. academic collaboration with communities should enrich the hei’s core functions whilst addressing challenges of communities (gefter et al., 2019; steinert, 2017). this consequently promotes community development and civic responsibility (steinert, 2017), making his model relevant to the objective of this study. while higher education has traditionally focused on research and teaching, a third function that has emerged is community development and civic responsibility (bowers, 2018). scholars have advocated that universities must engage with their communities by being responsive to community needs, by being willing to increase community accessibility, and by integrating their service mission with other responsibilities (adamuti-trache & hyle, 2015). engagement brings together community, industry and public service inputs, and solidifies them with the intellectual horsepower of the university (bartkowiak-theron & anderson, 2014). ce nurtures the development of a symbiotic relationship where communities form the human resources needed by universities to enable their purpose (bowers, 2018). in this way, universities are not seen as isolated agents of knowledge generating and transforming information, but as co-agents working in collaboration with their community partners toward economic and social development (lozano et al., 2017). engagement occurs through various teaching and learning initiatives such as student placements or workplace internships (lozano et al., 2017). these initiatives are envisioned to assist students with obtaining future employment, developing a sense of social responsibility, becoming knowledgeable and more active citizens of their local environment, their nation, and the global world (bartkowiak-theron & anderson, 2014). such engagement and community service learning initiatives reflect an inclusive educational paradigm that marries thought and action, reason and emotion, education and life; and does not separate students from their social and natural context (barry, 2014). a qualitative study by bidandi et al., (2021: 09) at the university of the western cape, south africa, explored how twelve academics understood community engagement using semistructured interviews. these participants believed that the university benefits tremendously through its engagement with the community, as the community provides a platform for academics and students to conduct research and outreach, which not only benefits academia but the community as a whole (bidandi et al., 2021: 10). academics further expressed that working with the communities, allowed universities to strengthen their dedication and mission to community engagement (bidandi, et al., 2021: 9). moreover, indigenous knowledge is distilled through such engagement and students are given the opportunity to practise clinical skills training and gain relevant experience (bidandi, et al., 2021: 9). this consequently benefits the university and enables the learning outcomes of students, whilst enriching curricula that are relevant to community issues. bhagwan (2017: 171a), in her study, sought to understand how community engagement was understood by academics and community engagement administrators, at six selected south african universities. this was also done through interviews and focus group discussions with thirty-three academics and administrative officials who were directly involved with community engagement projects (bhagwan, 2017a). these participants expressed that http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 1932022 40(2): 193-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 chandramohan & bhagwan insights into community engagement at a university of technology academics were of the view that community engagement is about engaging for change, mutuality and reciprocity, co-designing solutions with communities, the co-creation of knowledge and strengthening an understanding of indigenous knowledge (bhagwan, 2017a). one of the easiest pathways to promoting engagement is through service learning. beere, votruba and wells (2011) described service learning as a course-based, credit bearing educational experience in which students participate in an organised service activity that meets needs identified by the community and provides reflection on the service activity, in order to gain a better understanding of the course content, a broader appreciation of the discipline, and an elevated sense of personal value and civic responsibility. it has been defined as a “teaching and learning pedagogy that engages faculty, students and community members in a partnership to achieve academic learning objectives, meet community needs, and promote civic responsibility” (barry, 2014: 5). barry (2014: 5) added that it was “a form of experiential education where learning occurs through a cycle of action and reflection as students seek to achieve real objectives for the community and deeper understanding and skills for themselves”. this process enables students to link personal and social development with academic and cognitive development experiences, which enhance their understanding (barry, 2014). as university-society relationships strengthen, so does service learning as it links students and communities with specific educational and civic goals for both (singh, 2020). internationally, jacob et al. (2015) noted that asia’s university programmes include the community-based research and social responsibility in higher education projects, which were developed for knowledge generation and sharing. a study conducted by nicholas at the new zealand institute of technology in 2017, explored the perceptions of academics that utilised ce and work-integrated learning (wil). the study found that the academics all advocated greater access to such networks and expertise, which they believed would further enhance student development and community empowerment wil. another study by fisher et al., at newcastle university in 2018, investigated the impact of ce on students’ rural health placement experiences. forty-seven per cent of the students “strongly agreed” that they obtained valuable professional experience, and 65% “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that these placements positively influenced their professional practice. seventy per cent of the students reported an improved ability to communicate and sixtytwo per cent stated experiencing an improvement regarding improving vulnerable community groups which contributed to augmenting their knowledge and skills concerning health issues. a total of 75% of students either “agreed” or “strongly agreed” that their participation in ce programmes had increased their knowledge of the social determinants of health. the researchers concluded that students gained an appreciation of the health care needs and priorities of the community; and their perspectives concerning how they could contribute to the health and well-being of the community was broadened (fisher et al., 2018). in addition, academics from this study reported that their students gained generic knowledge about the context in which health care is delivered to specific societal groups. they also reported that half of the student sample found that engagement had contributed to them becoming more confident in their health professional roles, expanding their new professional practice capabilities and by enhancing their understanding of the nature of rural practice (fisher et al., 2018). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 1942022 40(2): 194-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) student volunteerism is recognised as part of service learning but does not necessarily involve academic learning (sherraden, lough & bopp, 2013). a study by ling and chui (2016) found that students who participate in volunteer projects develop civil responsibility, life skills and academic skills. johnston, acker and macquarrie (2018) argued that exposing students to real people in real life settings, offers students opportunities to interact with community members in an authentic setting. holsapple (2012) researched the effects of volunteerism by reviewing 55 studies in the united states that explored the effects of volunteerism on students. he found that it led to students volunteering to serve communities after they graduated. it also enabled them to socialise with persons from different racial or ethnic groups. johnston et al. (2018) also explored the effect of volunteerism on paramedic students who were working in an underprivileged rural community. they were found to demonstrate improved social and communication skills post volunteering. in another study of 191 emergency care students from charles sturt university, participants had to complete 50 hours of health screening volunteering and wil with local communities (johnston et al., 2018: 6). a total of 77.3% who participated in the study expressed that they developed a sense of civic duty and felt that they had made a positive contribution to the community. ce has thus become a key element in the strategic direction of many universities, providing a bridge between students’ academic work and their professional future (singh, 2020). moreover, it engenders in students a sense of community connection and consciousness (johnston et al., 2018). consequently, students gain in aspects of commitment to their communities, leadership skills and social values (allen, 2014). the aim of this paper is to explore how ce was understood, what processes underpinned engagement and the role of the university in catalysing change. 3. methodology 3.1 study design and setting the study used a qualitative research approach as it endeavoured to place the researcher in a real-world context by focusing on the whole human experience, and the meanings ascribed by individuals living the experience (polit & beck, 2012). qualitative research is a form of social inquiry that focuses on the way people interpret and make sense of their experiences and the world in which they live (elmusharaf, 2012). in this study the views and experiences of academics from a university of technology, in ethekwini, kwazulu-natal, were sought to understand how they understood ce and what processes underpinned their engagement activities. the research questions were: how do academics in the faculty of health sciences conceptualise ce? and, what were the processes underpinning ce and its benefits? interviews with academics took place at the university, in all instances, in the office of each of the academics. focus group interviews with health science students were held at the university, in the faculty board room. 3.2 sample following qualitative inquiries, a non-probability sampling method, specifically purposive sampling, was used to recruit the participants. purposive sampling involves identifying and selecting individuals or groups of individuals that are knowledgeable about or experienced with a phenomenon of interest (polit & beck, 2012). there were two samples, namely academics and students. both samples were purposefully selected from the departments of http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 1952022 40(2): 195-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 chandramohan & bhagwan insights into community engagement at a university of technology nursing, environmental health, and homeopathy in the faculty of health sciences. these departments were chosen because their courses had extensive community placements, which required them to work within local communities. these academics from these departments were chosen because of their knowledge regarding community health and their experience in clinical and theoretical teaching and facilitation of service learning or other community engagement projects. in total, 14 academics participated in the study and 24 students participated in the focus group discussions. students who were recruited were also those who had been involved in ce projects. the academics can be identified as “a” for academics, followed by the corresponding interview number e.g. (a 1 interview). students can be identified as “s” followed by the student number and the focus group discussion number e.g. (s3 fgd 1). given that there were two focus groups, they were identified as “fgd 1” or “fgd 2.” 3.3 ethical considerations ethical clearance was obtained from the institutional research ethics committee at the university of technology where the study was conducted (irec 013/18). written permission from the gatekeepers at the university was obtained prior to accessing any participants. additionally, permission from heads of departments was sought prior to any interviews or focus group discussions. all participants were required to complete an informed consent form prior to the commencement of any interview or focus group discussion. 3.4 data collection process data collection commenced in october 2018 and was completed in march 2019. semistructured in-depth interviews, using an interview schedule with predetermined questions were used to collect the data from the academics (greeff, 2011). data were collected as follows: • interviews with academics (sample one) phase one began with interviews that lasted between 45 to 90 minutes. fourteen academics were interviewed. questions focused on how they conceptualise community engagement, the role of the university in promoting community engagement and how faculty members from health sciences could advance the community engagement mandate. • focus group discussions with students (sample two) a total of 10 and 14 undergraduate students were included in each of the two group discussions respectively. the focus group discussions were guided by a focus group schedule and lasted approximately 90 minutes. these focus group discussions were conducted in february 2019 and july 2019. the participants were asked about their understanding of community engagement, its processes and what they thought the university’s role was in promoting community engagement. 3.5 data analysis the data were analysed using the six phases of thematic data analysis as proposed by braun and clarke (in javadi & zarea, 2016). phase 1, which involved familiarisation with the data, was implemented by digitally recording and transcribing the interviews and group discussion verbatim. this was followed by reading and re-reading the data to obtain a richer understanding of the data. phase 2, focused on coding and the generation of a preliminary http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 1962022 40(2): 196-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) coding scheme that served as a template for the data analysis. all the data were then coded, collated and the relevant data extracted. it was then organised into significant groups and given labels. phase 3 entailed a search for themes, related to community engagement from the codes/labels that were identified. similar themes and recurring patterns in the data were linked together and the contrasts and differences identified. phase 4 focused on reviewing themes, which meant that each theme was checked to determine that the data reflected a correct narrative, and that the themes answered the research questions correctly. phase 5 led to defining and naming themes, where the researcher summarised the scope and contents of each theme and then gave each theme a name that was clear and accurate. in the final phase, the themes created were written up and used to develop insights into community engagement. the literature reviewed on community engagement was used to substantiate the findings made. more importantly the findings were appraised by an expert committee that validated them. 3.6 trustworthiness the four criteria of guba’s model related to trustworthiness, namely, credibility, dependability, conformability and transferability, were used to ensure the rigour of the study (bezuidenhout & cronje, 2014). credibility or confidence in the truth involves conducting the study in a way that enhances the believability of its findings, and, taking steps to demonstrate credibility in the research report (polit & beck, 2012; fouche & schurink, 2011). the researcher read and re-read the transcriptions to ensure they were accurately transcribed. there was also prolonged engagement to ensure authenticity coupled with data triangulation. the latter occurred by using academics and students. an expert validation committee was set up to validate findings made. transferability, according to polit and beck (2012), indicates the degree to which findings can be transferred to or be applied in other settings or groups. the researcher provided sufficient thick descriptive data and used the expressions or voices of the participants to get a sense of “being there” and decide whether the study findings could be transferred to another setting (fouche & schurink, 2011). the researcher was also able to provide a thick description of the study context, the selection and characteristics of participants, the data collection process and the process of analysis to enable transferability of the study to another context. confirmability refers to how well the collected data can support the research findings (fouche & schurink, 2011). the collected data will need to be representative of what the participants actually stated without manipulation; thus, maintaining accuracy and objectivity (polit & beck, 2012). data in this study was recorded and transcribed verbatim with no adjustments or omissions. the researcher recorded the participants’ actual words and noted the participant’s emotions without bias and the interpretation. hence, the data was honest and not invented or swayed. a cross-check of quotations in the study allowed for checking of the accuracy and context of the quotes in their original context (bezuidenhout & cronje, 2014). 4. discussion of findings three broad themes and eight subthemes emerged from the data. they focused on conceptualising ce (theme 1); the process of ce (theme 2) and the university as a catalyst for effecting societal change (theme 3). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 1972022 40(2): 197-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 chandramohan & bhagwan insights into community engagement at a university of technology 4.1 theme 1: conceptualising ce there were two sub-themes that emerged under theme 1, namely: ce as a symbiotic partnership and engagement as a collaborative partnership. 4.1.1 sub-theme 1.1: ce as a symbiotic partnership ce was conceptualised as a symbiotic relationship between the community and the university. participants described it as a “shared partnership” (a12) that was “interactive, a two-way process as both entities should benefit” (a4). the most important aspect emphasised however was that “it should not be unequally balanced. the community should get out as much as the university person actually doing it” (a10). another academic said that “ce should be symbiotic; it should work for the community” (a1). the notion of it being a symbiotic relationship was exemplified further as engaging with the community to solve the problems facing the community; passing knowledge to the community about ways of improving the health and well-being of the community; getting knowledge from the community about what they need and ways to solve them; and providing resources to the community that will help improve their health (a5). another participant described it as “a relationship between the educational institution and communities. it is founded on a notion of partnership and service” (a9). jacob et al. (2015) support this notion of ce as a process that brings together academic institutions and stakeholders to build symbiotic relationships with the goal of improving their collective well-being . it was ahmed and palermo (2010: 1383) who described this symbiotic partnership as “a process of inclusive participation that supports mutual respect of values, strategies and actions for authentic partnership”. 4.1.2 sub-theme 1.2: a collaborative partnership building a collaborative partnership was also emphasised in the data as a key element of ce. one participant emphasised the importance of the university “working together, [saying] we cannot work in isolation; we have to work in collaboration with each other” (a1). another said, “you got to work with key leaders first. it is a principle of working together” (a12). another affirmed that “all leaders and stakeholders must be involved right from the outset. they must be involved in decision making” (a13). groark and mccall (2018) also emphasised the importance of collaborative processes that bring the university together with stakeholders such as religious organisations, businesses and community institutions, in order to build relationships and work together with the goal of improving community well-being and health. musesengwa et al. (2017) added that such partnerships can contribute to developing and sustaining successful ce projects that ultimately uplift communities. 4.2 theme 2: process of ce three subthemes emerged under the process of engagement, namely focusing on community needs, nurturing community partnerships and salience of sustainable engagement initiatives. 4.2.1 sub-theme 2.1: focusing on community needs participants indicated that ce should focus on community needs. this process was described as “consultation with the people, and to identify the needs of the people around http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 1982022 40(2): 198-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) specific issues and they also need to contribute and be part of that process” (a13). another participant clarified that “once needs are identified we are better able to understand the needs of the community, the gaps, the deficits and then able to structure health care models that will cover those particular needs” (a3). hewitt and colleagues (2017: 586) similarly described ce as “the process of working collaboratively with and through groups of people affiliated by geographic proximity, special interest, or similar situations to address issues affecting the well-being of those people”. while miller et al. (2019) suggested it is important that each community be assessed for its own unique culture, social structure, needs and assets. an assessment of community needs is paramount to helping the university gain a deeper understanding of the community and to prioritising engagement initiatives relevant to that community (miller et al., 2019). sachs and clark (2017) also emphasised that by engaging with the community, academics can develop a better understanding of community problems and can enable community members to develop skills and capabilities that can be used for the improvement of their community. this engagement enables community needs, resources and strengths to be uncovered and utilised (miller et al., 2019). the data also mirrors sandmann and jones’ (2019: 8) description of ce as “engagement processes and practices in which a wide range of people work together to achieve a shared goal by a commitment to a common set of values, principles and criteria”. open and transparent communication between academic and community members also emerged as being important. although kelly et al. (2017) noted that meaningful collaboration between universities and communities could be difficult, it would be helpful to involve communities in advisory committees and participatory research in order to achieve meaningful engagement through good facilitation and communication skills. another participant said that ce encompasses the involvement of health care professionals in a community of marginalised individuals who previously did not have access to health care, medication or other services; and there is an exchange and a transfer of information that takes place by way of consultation with members of the community (a3). higher education experts and social activists have also begun to challenge universities to assume leadership roles in addressing the problems that face societies globally (jacob et al., 2015). muhammad, wallerstein and sussman (2014) asserted that community-based research is the systematic creation of knowledge that is done with the purpose of addressing identified community needs. this means that community organisations will gain information as part of their efforts to make the necessary changes, improve their programmes, promote their interests, attract new resources, understand their target populations, or in other ways contribute to a social action agenda aimed at improving the lives of people in their communities (macqueen et al., 2015). as eminent scholars beere et al. (2011) and sachs and clark (2017) asserted, for engagement to benefit the community, it should lead to positive social change, social justice and civic agency. 4.2.2 sub-theme 2.2: nurturing university-community partnerships the second sub-theme related to building university-community partnerships as a core process of engagement. one participant said that “universities should have affiliations with community development organisations so students can do community work with these organisations to http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 1992022 40(2): 199-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 chandramohan & bhagwan insights into community engagement at a university of technology gain experience” (a5). this is tied up with singh’s (2020) argument that professionals need to develop civic responsibility, and by enabling an understanding of community needs, students can understand real world problems and develop competencies to address complex social problems. another participant said that community connection is a major thread … engagement means really going out there and not just talking, but really engaging with them and understanding what their problem is, their needs and strengths (a7). townson (2018) lamented that academic institutions have distanced themselves from society, which has consequently resulted in a failure to respond to the knowledge needs of developing communities. research universities are resource rich as they have a large amount of intellectual and human capital; structural support mechanisms; laboratories; academic support facilities and the capital to generate more resources with their prestige (soria et al., 2016). jacquez, ward and goguen (2016) believed that community relationships are built when time is invested in communities and when communities participate in research or community projects. engaged relationships however should achieve equitable and meaningful community participation and should acknowledge and utilise community strengths to accelerate health promotion (matthews et al., 2018: 8). 4.2.3 sub-theme 2.3: salience of sustainable engagement initiatives participants agreed on the importance of sustainable engagement initiatives, saying “it must be that the community is left better off after a ce project” (a11). another participant said, “it needs to have continuity” (a4), whilst another affirmed “under no circumstances would we go into a community and establish a facility if we could not guarantee that that facility would be able to continue into the foreseeable future” (a12). trust and genuineness were seen as important to sustainable partnerships. one participant said, when you are offering a service and you are building a relationship on trust … you do not have the right to break that trust, to withdraw the service. yes, it is a learning opportunity, but you cannot use the learning opportunity as such; it must ultimately be an act of service (a1). rooney (2018) concurred, saying that the ongoing participation and empowerment of community members through progressive community development strategies will enable systems, structures, culture and traditions to be sustained for generations to come. 4.3 theme 3: the university as a catalyst for effecting societal change the third theme focused on the university as a catalyst for effecting societal change. the three sub-themes that emerged under this theme included: the community as a source of knowledge; catalysing change and benefits of ce in a university context. 4.3.1 sub-theme 3.1: the community as a source of knowledge the participants believed that communities were a source of knowledge and consequently a context for education. referring to the community as a source of indigenous knowledge, a participant said, a rural community … they know so much about vegetation planting and things like that … they have the knowledge. if we go to them, we can learn from each other (a5). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 2002022 40(2): 200-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) similarly, writers have said that the knowledge that is obtained from communities can inform many academic programmes and curricula (luescher-mamashela, favish & ngcelwane, 2015). beere et al. (2011) asserted that whilst academics must accept that their own knowledge is valuable, it is not the only source. this is antithetical to traditional norms, that scientific knowledge can only be generated by specialist scientists or theorists (zuber-skerritt, 2012) and resides solely within the elite spaces of academia (bhagwan, 2018: 9). beere et al. (2011) added that the community wants us to recognise that “they have the capacity to teach us as well as learn from us and should therefore be seen in terms of their strengths, wisdom, and knowledge and experience assets”. this is tied up with engaged scholarship, which refocuses the traditional norms of academic life towards participatory epistemology and the co-creation of knowledge that changes academic roles to knowledge producer and shifts community members from being research participants to active collaborators in knowledge generation and problem-solving (rendon, 2012). 4.3.2 sub-theme 3.2: catalysing change the participants also believed that academic institutions should act as catalysts for positive change within communities. they said, “we have a purpose in that we serve the community in an attempt to transform our society” (a1). hartley, saltmarsh and clayton (2010: 4) added that “ce focuses on social change and social justice and the building of social, economic and cultural capital within and between communities and the academy”. other participants said that “ce means universities should be involved, or mobilise communities to participate in community issues that are affecting their rights” (a13). correspondingly, another participant remarked: “the university is a facilitator, to mobilise community, to be a catalyst to bring about change” (a12). the centre for higher education transformation (chet) similarly defined ce as “a systematic relationship between higher education and [their] environment [communities] that is characterised by mutually beneficial interaction in the sense that it enriches learning, teaching and research and simultaneously addresses societal problems, issues and challenges” (chet, 2003: 4). this definition views ce as being embedded within the knowledge exchange between universities and communities through co-inquiry, joint research initiatives, co-learning, interdisciplinary and use of knowledge that benefits academia whilst endeavouring to solve real world problems (bender, 2008). social justice change initiatives, which are driven through ce, not only result in increasing academics and students’ empathy towards vulnerable and marginalised communities, but also creates the chance to catalyse social change through a collective and mutually empowering experience (plummer, allen & lemieux, 2011). 4.3.3 sub-theme 3.3: benefits of ce in a university context the participants reported that community-university partnerships should not only benefit the community but should also strengthen the academic agenda. participants emphasised the importance of strengthening the mutually beneficial relationships between universities and communities, saying that the more the university engages with the communities we can have a reciprocal system, where we give to the community and the community gives back to us in terms of teaching, learning, research and experience (a1). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 2012022 40(2): 201-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 chandramohan & bhagwan insights into community engagement at a university of technology other participants emphasised that ce creates the opportunity for students and academics to acquire important knowledge, practical skills, and experience. daniels (2020) referred to this as the opportunity for both the university and community to actively discover knowledge, as well as teach and learn from one another in a mutually beneficial way. community-based teaching has been defined as the use of a variety of institutional methods and programmes that academics can use to connect what is taught at universities to local communities, and to share such knowledge with communities (guerrero, 2018). jacob et al. (2015) affirm that engagement provides community members with the opportunity to work collaboratively with universities to develop community-managed projects, such as community gardens, and to facilitate research and steer health promotion activity. another participant reported that there is a training component, that students have the opportunity to exercise their skills within communities; there is a service that is provided that communities have access to knowledge, skills and facilities that they might otherwise not have had access to (a9). this suggests that the community context acts as a space for learning that can benefit teaching and learning. an engagement initiative by an irish university who began sharing knowledge, skills and resources with local communities found that not only had students gained skills and knowledge, but the community was empowered and developed as a result of this initiative (wynne, 2014). woolf et al. (2016) argued that universities should work collaboratively with the community so that there is a felt sense of ownership and commitment when moving from research to action. in this way there was shared power and members could provide input into the process. this shifts the university as expert creator and transmitter of knowledge to a co-creator of knowledge with the community. 5. conclusion this study added to the growing body of local literature on the conceptualisations of ce by highlighting the importance of a mutually beneficial symbiotic and collaborative partnership between universities and communities. it highlighted the processes involved in engagement, namely: prioritising the needs of the community; nurturing university community partnerships and ensuring the sustainability of engagement initiatives. the notion of the university as a catalyst for social change and the importance of honouring the community as a source of knowledge also emerged in the data. to conclude, the value of community-based teaching and research was recognised by academics as an important pedagogic tool that enhances academic learning and fosters social responsibility. ce brings with it the opportunity to educate graduates to become more socially responsive and to be able to critically analyse societal problems and partner with communities to develop solutions to the problems they face. to achieve this requires sustainable partnerships between universities and community members that are based on reciprocity, mutual respect, shared authority and the co-creation of goals and outcomes (tieken, 2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 2022022 40(2): 202-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.14 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) references adamuti-trache, m. & hyle, a.e. 2015. building university-community partnerships. in w.j. jacob, s.e. sutin, j.c. weidman & j.l. yeager (eds.). community engagement in higher education: policy reforms and practices. boston: sense publishers. ahmed, s.m. & palermo, a.g. 2010. community engagement in research: frameworks for education and peer review. american journal of public health, 100(8): 1380-1387. doi:10.2105/ajph.2009.1.178137. allen, k.r. 2014. a comprehensive volunteer manual for volunteer managers of the associated students. master’s thesis. usa: california state university. barry, m. 2014. community engagement through service-learning. strategic library, 4: 5-7. bartkowiak-theron, i. & anderson, k. 2014. knowledge in action. university engagement in australia. newcastle: cambridge scholars publishing. beere, c.a., votruba, j.c. & wells, g.w. 2011. becoming an engaged campus: a practical guide for institutionalizing public engagement. san francisco: jossey-bass publishers. bender, c.j.g. 2008. curriculum enquiry about community engagement at a research university. south african journal of higher education, 22(6): 1154-1171. https://doi. org/10.4314/sajhe.v22i6.44248 bezuidenhout, r.m. & cronje, f. 2014. research matters. cape town. juta and company. bhagwan, r. 2017a. towards a conceptual understanding of community engagement in higher education in south africa. perspectives in education, 35(1): 171-185. https://doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v35i1.13 bhagwan, r. 2017b. community engagement within a social work programme in rural india. social work, 53(3): 572. https://doi.org/10.15270/53-3-572 bhagwan, r. 2018. university-community partnerships: demystifying the process of engagement. south african review of sociology, 49(3-4): 32-54. https://doi.org/10.1080/21 528586.2019.1570324 bidandi, f., ambe, a.n. & mukong, c.h. 2021. insights and current debates on community engagement in higher education institutions: perspectives on the university of the western cape. sage open, april-june 2021: 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1177/21582440211011467 boyer, e.l. 1996. the scholarship of engagement. bulletin of the american academy of arts and sciences, 49(7): 18-33. https://doi.org/10.2307/3824459 boyer, e.l. 1990. scholarship reconsidered: priorities of the professoriate. princeton, nj: the carnegie foundation for the advancement of teaching. bowers, c.a. 2018. ideological, cultural, and linguistic roots of educational reforms to address the ecological crisis book. the selected work of c.a. 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https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-0999-0_6 https://www.tandfonline.com/author/singh%2c+rajesh https://doi.org/10.1080/24750158.2020.1777635 https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55312-6 https://doi.org/10.18060/21508 https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2015.1512 622023 41(2): 62-76 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 social constructivist pedagogy in business studies classrooms – teachers’ experiences and practices abstract social constructivism is the dominant pedagogical theory endorsed in educational discourse today. this study set out to examine teaching and learning in grade 11 business studies classrooms from a social constructivist perspective. the data were obtained through document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and classroom observations. while the teachers were positive towards social constructivist pedagogy, they were not familiar with the epistemology that underpinned its emergence. the learning of multiple perspectives through discussion, a key tenet of the social constructivist theory of learning, was not evident. teachers indicated that they preferred direct instruction, as it enabled curriculum coverage and better control over learners. teachers viewed social constructivist approaches as slowing down syllabus coverage and leading to loss of control in overcrowded classrooms. limited time and higher workload due to larger classes were common deterrents. keywords: business studies, cognitive constructivism, dualism, epistemology, multiplism, social constructivism 1. introduction social constructivism founder, lev vygotsky, held that people learn best by engaging in conversation and cooperating with others. vygotsky (1978: 88) argues that “human learning presupposes a specific social nature and a process by which children grow into the intellectual life of those around them”. social constructivism postulates that comprehension, relevance, and meaning are constructed in collaboration with other humans. social constructivism has been referred to as a sociocultural revolution (voss, wiley & carretero, 1995), as a paradigm shift (kozulin, 2012), and as one of the theories of education that have had the most impact in the twenty-first century (krahenbuhl, 2016). this theory originates from one of the influential learning theories called ‘constructivist theory’ which advocates active learning. the constructivist theory posits that meaningful learning occurs when learners actively create foundational knowledge through investigation and reflection. author: devika naidoo1 mbali mabaso1 affiliation: 1university of johannesburg, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i2.7151 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(2): 62-76 published: 30 june 2023 received: 24 march 2023 accepted: 14 june 2023 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7725-0540 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7305-9199 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 632023 41(2): 63-76 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 naidoo & mabaso social constructivist pedagogy in business studies classrooms vygotsky, brunner and john dewey, the pioneers of constructivism, believed that learners should actively create information rather than passively acquire it, and that cognition plays an active role in the organisation of the world they experience (joseph, 2021). constructivist theory is divided into cognitive constructivism and social constructivism. unlike social constructivism, cognitive constructivism subordinates the individual and the social meaningmaking process to objective knowledge. from a cognitive constructivist’s perspective, the lesson’s goal is for learners to develop mental models that correspond with or reflect the reality of expert knowledge. the textbook and the instructor’s expertise serve as the basis for determining whether a learner’s assumptions are correct or erroneous. there is a strict dichotomy between right and wrong, and the teacher’s job is to help learners understand the truth (hofer, 2001). however, social constructivist learning strategies assume that learners have full prior knowledge, are eager to share their partial understanding with others, and are at ease with uncertainty. inadequate prior knowledge of learners, the shame of revealing ambiguous understanding to others, and the requirement for assurance (moskal, loke & hung, 2016) pose unique challenges for educators. the business studies curriculum is one of the subjects in the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) that learners in the further education and training (fet) phase may choose to study together with six other subjects. the caps is the third major curriculum reform in south africa since the commencement of democratic rule. however, curriculum reform implementation is fraught with many challenges. constant curriculum changes put a strain on schoolteachers (du plessis & letshwene, 2020). results from several case studies revealed challenges such as curriculum change, medium of instruction, overcrowded classrooms, discipline, and lack of resources. much research on the caps reveals grave challenges in its implementation. taole (2015) researched the factors that hinder or facilitate curriculum implementation in south african schools and found that support and resources remain central to the curriculum implementation process. the lack of parental involvement, the unavailability of follow-up visits from subject specialists, and school leadership affect the implementation of the curriculum. the study advocates pre-implementation training and a concerted effort from all stakeholders to ensure successful curriculum implementation. according to the department of basic education (dbe), the subject business studies deals with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values critical for informed, productive, ethical and responsible participation in the formal and informal economic sectors. the subject encompasses business principles, theory, and practice that underpin the development of entrepreneurial initiatives, sustainable enterprises, and economic growth (dbe, 2011:8). the primary objectives of business education encompass comprehending the worldwide business environment and integrating theory, practice, and experience with it (avolio, benzaquen & pretell, 2015). chinomona and maziriri (2015) assert that the gauteng province is widely recognised for its vibrant commercial environment and financial activities, which provide a conducive setting for the implementation of social constructivist principles. by fostering collaborative learning settings that involve groupwork, discussions, and problemsolving activities, learners can construct their understanding of essential business concepts and principles effectively. edokpolor (2018) recommends that business studies teachers integrate field trips into their teaching methodology to familiarise learners with their potential environments, such as workplaces, and/or invite successful entrepreneurs to motivate learners https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 642023 41(2): 64-76 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) about the business world. the effectiveness of the notion that learners ought to be viewed as information users is contingent upon educators adopting pedagogical methodologies that involve the evaluation and utilisation of information by learners. because of this shift, the teachers of business studies can no longer count on learners to rely simply on memorisation and recall of material for evaluation purposes. novel pedagogical approaches that require active learning are suitable for the discipline. the way business studies ought to be taught to learners in high school has undergone a significant change (majola, 2020). the incorporation of active learning strategies in a simulated business classroom setting is a beneficial approach for primary and secondary school-level learners (meintjes, henrico & kroon, 2015). various pedagogical approaches, such as verbal presentations, the interaction between the educator and the learner, and the involvement of learners in the creation of educational materials are suitable. the utilisation of the question-and-answer technique, group deliberations, the resolution of complex issues, project-oriented learning, the use of case studies, and simulation have been recommended by (majola, 2020). however, business studies teachers encountered challenges in complying with the syllabus mandate of incorporating action-oriented pedagogical approaches, such as project-based learning, commercial enterprise visits, simulations, case studies, and class presentations (sithole & lumadi, 2012). despite the endorsement of active and critical learning methodologies in the curriculum, various impediments exist that hinder their implementation in the classroom. the key limitations include the extensive length of the syllabus, the need for customised instructional materials, and the time-consuming nature of implementing experiential teaching methodologies. the syllabus for business studies is excessively protracted, rendering it unfeasible to address the content comprehensively while implementing learner-centred pedagogical methods, which teachers regarded as being demanding in terms of time (sithole, 2010). according to kaka (2021), in a recent study conducted in south africa, teachers who took part in the research suggested that the attainment of effective and productive teaching of business studies is contingent upon the resolution of challenges such as the lack of in-service courses, restricted mentorship opportunities, inadequate financial resources, insufficient support from colleagues and the educational institution, a paucity of supplementary educational materials, and a lack of qualified teachers to teach business studies. in this study, a social constructivist lens is used to investigate the instructional strategies that grade 11 business studies teachers utilise in their classrooms. the study is framed by the social constructivism learning theory that is based on constructivism from the standpoint of vygotsky’s theory (vygotsky, 1978). the theory highlights knowledge construction and how learners build new representations and insights through social interaction and comparison with expert sources of knowledge. business studies lessons were analysed according to processes in the social construction of knowledge, such as learners discussing their prior knowledge and experiences in response to a problem; learners discussing the resources provided by the teacher for the task; and learners comparing their responses to expert sources such as the textbook, the teacher, and other specialist sources. we also examined the issues that make some teachers wary of adopting social constructivist strategies in the classroom. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 652023 41(2): 65-76 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 naidoo & mabaso social constructivist pedagogy in business studies classrooms 2. literature review and framework 2.1 social constructivism vygotsky (1978) believes that the social nature of humans and the social process by which infants integrate into the intellectual activity of those around them are necessary conditions for learning. vygotsky argues that adults in the immediate social environment help children learn and grow when they provide them with opportunities to tackle complex tasks that have realworld relevance. the adults in a child’s life impart to them their culture’s perspective on and in reaction to the world through the use of “language”, which is the most significant cultural tool that significantly affects children’s learning (vygotsky & cole, 2018). in other words, the presumption of this theory is that comprehension, importance, and meaning are generated in conjunction with the efforts of other human beings. according to liu and matthews (2005), misunderstandings of vygotsky’s social constructivism theory stem from people taking his conceptions at face value, failing to recognise the overarching philosophical stance that guides his writings. kalina and powell (2009) emphasise that collaboration and other forms of social contact are fundamental components of the social constructivist instructional approach, contributing to the method’s high efficacy and universal applicability. in this context, it is essential to differentiate between knowledge and learning anything new. knowledge is said to be interpsychologically produced in the environment through collaborative efforts with other people, as proposed by the social constructivist theory (vygotsky, 1978). even while learning can take place through collaboration, the learning process is still internal and occurs within the individual intra-psychologically. as a result, learning takes place on an individual level and is the product of the production of knowledge through collaboration, whereas the environment is responsible for the co-creation of knowledge. therefore, the process of information internalisation is both an individual and a social one (churcher, downs & tewksbury, 2014). social constructivist teaching is challenging to implement when teachers are not familiar with the epistemological basis of social constructivism. although teachers are familiar with social constructivism, davis and sumara (2003) discovered that teachers frequently lack knowledge of the epistemological advancements that have sparked the fast growth of this vocabulary. the theoretical basis of social constructivism outlined by doolittle and hicks (2003) emphasises knowledge construction by the learner. concerning tests for truth claims, social constructivism accommodates variations in learners’ understanding of external reality. it is vital to note that the truth is not superficial, fixed, or individual, but adaptive and socially determined. teachers should act as facilitators and co-explorers in their learners’ quest for knowledge, prompting them to engage in in-depth critical thinking and ultimately draw their conclusions (ciot, 2009). social constructivism emphasises the construction of knowledge and progression toward new understanding and awareness of many knowledge perspectives. social constructivism foregrounds the active creation and modification of thoughts, ideas, and understandings as the result of experiences that occur within socio-cultural contexts. central issues in this creation of understanding include (a) what counts as valid knowledge (epistemology) and (b) what counts as existence and reality (ontology) (doolittle & hicks, 2003: 77). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 662023 41(2): 66-76 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) in terms of personal epistemology, learners move from dualism, which is a right-and-wrong and absolutist view, to multiplism when they start to see that there are different points of view and that uncertainty is possible (hofer, 2001). concerning subject knowledge, the teacher goes further than textbook-defined facts and concepts. more significant for learning is that learners interact and strive to reach consensus. this group consensus is then subjected to greater scrutiny as learners need to compare their agreement to expert knowledge. people at this stage are prone to accept opposing viewpoints as equally valid (hofer, 2001). a social constructivist educational approach would emphasise the importance of social interaction, investigation, and negotiation. thus, the social constructivist teacher might use a cooperative inquiry method in education. from the point of view of social constructivism, the teachers concern is not only that learners understand a certain set of facts and ideas that are in the textbook. the teacher is also concerned about how well the learners will be able to get along with one another, as well as learn new things. when learners are asked to compare their consensus with that of experts as a way to prove that they are right and to help them learn more, the circle of people they know grows, thus serving the socialisation goal. social constructivist pedagogies are advocated for the productive learning of business studies. mohammad (2015) advocates a shift towards the use of constructive pedagogies, which will make it possible for learners of business studies to be active participants in the process of learning, cultivate their creativity, and simultaneously experience what it will be like to work in an office in the 21st century. the development of core abilities like critical thinking and problem-solving, communication and collaboration occurs due to learning in communities through collaborative groupwork (mohammad, 2015). the role-playing method is a contemporary instructional strategy that allows learners to internalise the content by assuming the roles of various characters. the use of direct instruction is not advised, since it does not develop higher levels of thinking abilities and it does not transfer information to a new setting, as stated (doolittle & hicks, 2003). direct instruction is a method of education that involves a great deal of structure, and is also referred to as teacher-led instruction (adams & carnine, 2003). while it is true that direct instruction is highly effective at imparting knowledge of realworld material, there is less proof that it imparts higher-order cognitive skills like reasoning and problem-solving, or fosters the adaptability that is necessary for learners to apply the learned strategies in unfamiliar settings (peterson & walberg, 1979). research of social constructivist pedagogic approaches outlines the challenges associated with it. the influences of social constructivist approaches on history teachers’ opinions of social science education were investigated by muhammed (2021). it was found that many challenges were identified in implementing social constructivist approaches in social science education such as the environment of fear, the shortage of proper public infrastructure, resources, and ack of care. the study also revealed several barriers such as the absence of sufficient well-designed teaching guidelines, lack of adequate clear instructions, inadequacy of classroom teachers’ autonomy, and constrained freedom. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 672023 41(2): 67-76 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 naidoo & mabaso social constructivist pedagogy in business studies classrooms 3. methodology the qualitative research methodology was deemed appropriate for gathering detailed and comprehensive data to answer the research questions. bowen (2009) asserts that the qualitative approach enables research participants to express their opinions and experiences in their original words. according to aspers and corte (2019), qualitative research is regarded as interpretive research, since it depends on the interpretations of the researchers to identify meanings concealed within the data. the research sites in this study were two schools in the johannesburg north district of the gauteng province of south africa. the lower socioeconomic status school (lsess) is a fully government-funded, non-fee-paying school that mostly serves black learners and a small number of coloured learners. this school had greater teacher-learner ratios ranging from 1 to 50 to 1 to 65. the middle socio-economic status school (msess) is a fee-paying, former model c school that now serves learners of various races. the teacher-learner ratios at this well-equipped school range from 1 to 30 to 1 to 35. table 1: summary of biographical data school teacher gender qualification subject specialization teaching experience less ta f advanced certificate in actuarial science maths & science 12 years tb f bcom accounting pgce economics & accounting 8 years mess tc f bed hons: leadership & management economics & business studies 4 years td m bed accounting & business studies 8 years the teacher participants were chosen using a purposeful convenience sampling method. the teachers ranged from 4 to 12 years of experience in teaching business studies. according to minott and willet (2011), individuals with a substantial amount of knowledge possess the capacity to offer valuable insights and perspectives on the key topics that are pertinent to a specific inquiry. data were collected through observations of eight lessons in each school and semi-structured interviews with the teachers. this observations of lessons served to corroborate the data from semi-structured interviews and document analysis. an interview schedule was developed by the researchers with open-ended questions and the participants were interviewed face-to-face once and consulted via telephone for clarification where the need arose. the audio records of the data were transcribed and analysed into codes, categories, and patterns. the thematic analysis approach (braun & clarke, 2012: 57), of systematically identifying, organising, and offering insight into patterns of meaning (themes) across the data set was also followed. standard ethical measures were employed in this study. an ethical clearance certificate from the university ethics committee and a permission letter to gather school data from the department of basic education were obtained. permission to collect data in the schools was also obtained from the school principals. the teacher participants were assured of confidentiality, anonymity, and voluntary participation. they were informed that they were free to withdraw at any time if they needed to. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 682023 41(2): 68-76 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) 4. findings 4.1 document analysis standardised lesson plans and the caps curriculum for grade 11 were among the documents examined. to reduce the teachers’ workload, the dbe subject advisors have created lesson plans and activities for all of the subjects included in the caps policy. according to the dbe (2011:4), one of the primary goals of caps is to encourage the adoption of an “active and critical approach to learning, rather than rote and uncritical learning of given truths”. the active approaches promoted are examples of social constructivism pedagogies. taking an active and critical stance, as outlined in the caps curriculum, ensures that learners acquire the skills they need to solve problems they may face in the real world. the caps policy does not outline types of active learning strategies teachers can employ in their classrooms. instead, the description of the annual teaching plan (atp) for grade 11 found in section three of the caps document only outlines the topic, duration, content, and resources that are suggested for the teacher. the teachers in the study relied on standardised, ready-made lesson plans provided by the subject advisors at the beginning of each year. none of the teachers prepared their own plans and activities for a particular classroom. teachers were quite open about not preparing lesson plans themselves, we no longer prepare individual lesson plans; we implement the ones provided to us, even teaching methods are suggested inside the standardised lesson plans. the lesson plans for grade 11 business studies contained extensive knowledge linked to the topic. the learning objectives, skills, and questions teachers ought to ask when teaching were clearly stated in the lesson plan. thus, the lesson plans depicted the key concepts linked to the topic. however, the connection between content and concepts was not shown. when compared to the caps, the lesson plans did contain a list of hands-on methodologies such as “(i) explaining, (ii) question and answer sessions, (iii) demonstration, (iv) independent practice, and (v) group work” (dbe, 2020: 1). during the analysis of the standardised lesson plans, we identified a shortcoming linked to the absence of a detailed description of each suggested teaching method. the dbe lesson plans did not detail how teachers were to employ each teaching strategy in a real-life classroom situation. according to shah (2019), teachers are more likely to resort to the lecture method when there is not a clear emphasis on different pedagogical approaches in the standardised lesson plans. 4.2 observation findings 4.2.1 teachers’ views of social constructivist pedagogy although teachers were aware of the value of a social constructivist pedagogy, and that learner participation increased, classroom observation showed that they predominantly employed direct instruction methods. ta’s words below show a positive attitude toward collaborative learning: yes, i employ this teaching method but less frequently as i have mentioned above. many studies have proved that learners become alive when they work in group activities and enjoy presenting their findings. i have seen that with my learners. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 692023 41(2): 69-76 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 naidoo & mabaso social constructivist pedagogy in business studies classrooms tb disclosed that she hardly sets group-based projects or tasks because high-flying learners outshine struggling learners. despite teachers being positively disposed toward social constructivist methodology, direct instruction was the most dominant pedagogy. this aspect is analysed in the next section. 4.3 direct instruction in business studies classrooms the direct instruction method dominated most lessons observed, followed by the lecture method and question-and-answer methods. we observed the following lesson on “entrepreneurial qualities” a starting topic in the term 3 grade 11 business studies syllabus. the classroom dialogue between tc and her learners below was analysed to highlight the dominant pedagogic practices: tc: on friday, we looked at an introduction to entrepreneurial qualities in businesses … what is the meaning of entrepreneur? learner 1: an entrepreneur is someone who seizes an opportunity to start and runs his own business and can either introduce a new product or services or upgrade an existing idea. tc: excellent. what entrepreneurial qualities do they need to have? learner 2: perseverance. tc: excellent; what is the meaning of perseverance? learner 3: a new business takes time to become established and generate enough income to pay all its expenses. so, during that period, they must not give up. tc: yes. sometimes you may have to pay salaries from your pocket. what are other qualities? look atyour notes. learner 4: creativity, responsibility, risk-taking –taking calculated risks. tc: good. it would help if you always took calculated risks; otherwise, the business idea might not generate the desired income. now let us proceed to today’s topic. tc continued the lesson by writing on the board the unique entrepreneurial attributes such as: • organizational and management skills; • confident and ambitious; • need for achievement; • hardworking and energetic the question-and-answer technique dominated the pedagogy to provide opportunities for learners to learn about entrepreneurial skills. in tcs’ classroom learners’ responses were validated as “correct” or “incorrect” based primarily on the teacher as a source of truth. this attribute is characteristic of cognitive constructivism in which either the teacher or the textbook adjudicates the validity of the responses. much lesson time was allocated to learners copying notes in their books. the primary roles learners played were copying notes from the board, listening to the teacher’s explanations, and answering questions that required short answers. in social constructivism, learners are encouraged to compare their consensus to expert knowledge as a form of validation and further learning. contrary to the social constructivist perspective, tc was concerned with whether the learners memorised a set of textbook definitions and teacher-validated facts and concepts. in addition, the circle https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 702023 41(2): 70-76 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) of socialisation was not enlarged beyond the teacher, textbook, and learner. ta on the other hand, attempted to employ the groupwork technique in one of the lessons observed. ta’s lesson is analysed below. during observation, we noticed ta had already divided learners into groups of eight. three learners from different groups presented to their peers the business roles they play as individuals in their communities. it appeared that the learners had received the topic the previous day. below are presentation extracts: learner 1 as an individual, i have a responsibility to make sure that the environment i live in is protected. during school holidays, my friends and i make sure that we clean local parks by collecting bottles and tins that people litter on the grounds. we place plastic bags around the park and show people where they need to litter the waste. learner 2 the role i play in my community involves helping the kids in my community with school projects. most of the time, i help grade 7s with technology projects. the last project i helped them with was building a bridge. i went to local shops and asked for unused boxes and plastics for the children’s projects. learners’ presentations were characterised by common-sense responses to the task. it appears ta did not teach the learners about community business roles as stipulated in the syllabus. without text-based references, learners used common sense and experiential knowledge only to respond to the task. there was no evidence of knowledge being socially constructed. using direct instruction, ta elaborated on the following business roles: social responsibility; environmental sustainability; economic prosperity; product stewardship; procurement; product access; and dualistic economy. table 2: summary of lesson observations data social constructivism analysis lesson number direct instruction group discussion sources provided validation of knowledge epistemology – dualist/multiplism 1 dominant absent textbook teacher dualist 2 dominant absent textbook teacher practical/ individual perspective 3 dominant present handouts teacher dualist 4 dominant absent powerpoint slides teacher dualist 5 dominant absent textbook teacher dualist 6 dominant absent handouts teacher dualist 7 dominant absent textbook teacher dualist 8 dominant absent powerpoint slides teacher dualist table 2 above shows that direct instruction dominated the lessons; group discussion was absent in all the lessons; the teacher validated knowledge as right or wrong and dualist, right or wrong assessment prevailed. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 712023 41(2): 71-76 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 naidoo & mabaso social constructivist pedagogy in business studies classrooms 4.4 interview findings table 3: summary of attitude and reasons for non-implementation of social constructivism pedagogy teacher a b c d total attitude to social constructivism positive positive positive positive 4 reasons for nonimplementation: slows down syllabus coverage √ √ √ √ 4 loss of classroom control and discipline √ √ 2 limited time √ √ √ √ 4 inadequate conceptual development of learners √ 1 shortage of resources √ √ 2 overcrowded classrooms √ √ 2 high workload √ √ √ √ 4 4.5 reasons for dominance of direct instruction analysis of interview data revealed the following reasons for the dominance of direct instruction: syllabus coverage; inadequate conceptual preparedness of learners; shortage of teaching resources; overcrowded classrooms; and high workload which are analysed below. 4.6 syllabus coverage teacher participants justified direct instruction as it can “fast-track” syllabus coverage within the allotted time while keeping learners engaged in the teaching-learning process: ta stated: ideally (umm), i prefer to use the lecture method; this is when i’m in charge of the classroom while pushing the content. during the delivery of the lesson, i pause and ask questions; then, learners give answers. this method keeps the learners disciplined, especially in overcrowded classes we teach in. tc stated: i use role-plays sometimes. if i use role plays in every topic as suggested in some studies, i will not finish the syllabus; i’ll be behind with the atp and will have to account. 4.7 inadequate prior conceptual development ta indicated that offering business studies only in grade 10 disadvantaged the learners in their conceptual development. ta stated: the business content covered in the ems syllabus is just not enough and cannot be regarded as a foundation to grade 10’s business studies syllabus. the first term of grade 10 is the most difficult as learners find it challenging to grasp the new concepts because they lack a solid background. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 722023 41(2): 72-76 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) 4.8 shortage of teaching resources the lsess teachers also lamented the lack of technological resources in the classroom. while msess learners use computer tablets preloaded with a variety of textbooks, school y still placed heavy emphasis on traditional textbooks. tb mentioned that: the number of learners doing business studies over the years has increased and has led to a shortage of textbooks in all grades. some teachers don’t fully retrieve textbooks at the end of the year, and the number of available business studies textbooks decreases each year. also, we struggle to share online materials with the learners, as they do not have the devices. 4.9 overcrowded classrooms ta and tb stated that there are currently more than 45 learners in their business studies classes, making management and control difficult. as a result, it is difficult for teachers and learners to move around, and occasionally disturbances occur that hamper instruction. teachers end up opting to abandon social constructivist teaching and learning techniques that, in their opinion, could have improved instruction and learning. participants expressed their opinions about their current circumstances in crowded classrooms. ta stated, the current major problem we are facing in teaching the subject is the ever-increasing number of learners we teach. more and more learners are choosing the subject. controlling the books has become a nightmare, as more than 50 learners are in one classroom. sometimes we can’t even do remedial work. during observations, the researchers noticed that several learners shared a single desk and that there was not enough space between the rows in ta’s classroom. as a result, it was impossible to organise learners for collaborative tasks due to a lack of space. the overcrowded classrooms results in greater control issues which have an adverse effect on teachers’ pedagogical approaches. the present research lends credence to the claim made by akar and yildirun (2005) that constructivist pedagogy may work better in smaller class sizes. additionally, owuor (2010) pointed out that certain learners in large courses exhibit behavioural issues that interfere with the teaching-learning process. 4.10 high workload teachers have long complained about the mounting administrative tasks associated with working in packed classrooms. all four of the teacher participants stated that their high workload forced them to work long hours, causing stress and a detrimental effect on family time. the teachers’ responses on how their ever-growing workload was affecting them are as follows. ta stated: at home, i hardly rest because of the marking i bring from school. sometimes, i even ask my husband to help with the house chores. there’s no quality time for us as a married couple, as i’m always working under pressure. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 732023 41(2): 73-76 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 naidoo & mabaso social constructivist pedagogy in business studies classrooms similarly, tb stated: marking and creating a question paper at school is impossible, as learners are always consulting during break time. so, i’m left with no choice but to take the work home and sacrifice the time i spend with my children. participants also remarked that, in addition to the short time allotted for instruction, they had other responsibilities, such as overseeing instructional activities and resolving conflicts that often emerge in large classrooms between learners. data analysis of observation and interview data show that business studies teachers intentionally rely on direct instruction to ‘cover’ the syllabus. thus, learners are most likely to acquire a dualistic epistemology rather than the endorsed multiplistic epistemology that acknowledges different perspectives. teachers hardly use constructivist strategies, even though many scholars, including mohammad (2015), stress the importance of doing so to help learners better understand and apply business concepts in a variety of settings. the teachers set research-based group projects for school-based assessment (sba) tasks only. furthermore, they ignored the requirement of the practical application aspect of the business studies topics. 4.11 limitations of this study the findings of this study are constrained to the experiences of four business studies teachers in grade 11, who teach at conventional high schools within a single district. as a result, it is not possible to extrapolate the conclusions to a broader population. the study could potentially have included multiple schools within the province, however, due to financial and time constraints, the researchers were unable to include additional schools. 5. discussion and conclusion while social constructivism is one of the most influential philosophies in education in the 21st century (krahenbuhl, 2016), direct instruction dominated classroom practices in these classrooms. factual and conceptual knowledge was presented and validated by teacher and textual sources. in spite of pervasive research findings that social constructivist methods are conducive to higher thinking and understanding, direct instruction dominated the lessons that were observed. these results corroborate those of mkala and wanjau (2013), who conclude that teachers habitually employ relatively unproductive teacher-centred pedagogies and assessment approaches to deliver business education, intentionally avoiding the more effective ones. the teacher participants were aware of the value of social constructivist pedagogy but were more concerned about completing the syllabus, keeping order in the classroom, and preparing learners for examinations than facilitating active and deep learning. the participants saw social constructivist learner-centred pedagogy as incompatible with syllabus completion, keeping order, and preparing learners for examinations. contrary to social constructivist goals of learning from multiple perspectives, the pedagogy in these classrooms trend towards dualism where objective, universal knowledge is validated by the teacher or textbook as valid knowledge. teachers raised concerns about delivering the extensive business studies content. structural barriers such as limited time, the ever-increasing workload, shortage of teaching resources, and teaching in overcrowded classrooms, were cited as major constraints in the teaching of the subject in socially constructivist ways. the lack of proper exposure to important business studies concepts in grades 8 and 9 also affects their teaching practices. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 742023 41(2): 74-76 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) the following recommendations are made to improve the teaching of business studies. in-service teacher education on the epistemological basis of social constructivism and 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international journal of scientific research in education, 3: 21-28. sithole, b.m. & lumadi, m.w. 2012. pedagogical challenges besetting business studies teachers in secondary schools: a botswana perspective. journal of social sciences, 32(1): 71-80. https://doi.org/10.1080/09718923.2012.11893053 voss, j.f., wiley, j. & carretero, m. 1995. acquiring intellectual skills. annual review of psychology, 46(1): 155-181. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ps.46.020195.001103 vygotsky, l. s. 1978. mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes. cole, m., v. john-steiner, s. scribner, and e. souberman, eds. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. vygotsky, l. & cole, m. 2018. lev vygotsky: learning and social constructivism. learning theories for early years practice, 66: 58. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7151 https://doi.org/10.1080/09718923.2012.11893053 https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.ps.46.020195.001103 _hlk80528620 _hlk137446002 _hlk137456371 _goback perspectives in education 31(3) perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2013 university of the free state 49 assessing early number learning: how useful is the annual national assessment in numeracy? maria weitz & hamsa venkat annual national assessment (ana) performance in mathematics across the primary grades in south africa indicates a decrease in mean performance across grades 1–6. in this paper, we explore the apparently high performance in grade 1 through a comparative investigation of learner responses on two assessments: the grade 1 ana taken in february 2011 by grade 2 learners and a diagnostic oral interview test drawn from the work of wright et al. (2006), administered at the same time. our findings point to a predominant pattern of high performance on the ana and low performance on wright et al.’s tests. in-depth analysis of the responses of two learners in this group indicates that this discrepancy is due to acceptance in the ana of correct answers produced through highly rudimentary counting strategies. the diagnostic test, in contrast, awards lower marks when correct answers are produced in inefficient ways. we conclude with concerns that acceptance of low-level counting strategies in the ana may well work against persuading grade 1 and 2 teachers to work towards more sophisticated strategies. keywords: ana, early number learning, south africa, numeracy, assessment introduction while the 2012 grade 3 annual national assessment (ana) results showed a welcome increase to 41% in the national mean score (dbe, 2011, 2012), concerns remain about the levels and nature of early number learning in south african primary schools. concerns relate also to the declining mean scores in mathematics across the primary grades. in the national policy context, the ana tests were part of a raft of measures aimed at supporting improvements in coverage, sequencing and pacing of the enacted curriculum. the ana was explicitly focused on providing nationwide information on learner performance for purposes of both formative (providing class teachers with information on what learners were able to do) and summative maria weitz university of the witwatersrand e-mail: maria.weitz@wits.ac.za telephone: 011 717 3407 hamsa venkat university of the witwatersrand e-mail: hamsa.venkatakrishnan@wits.ac.za telephone: 011 717 3742 perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 50 (providing progress information to parents and allowing for comparisons between schools, districts and provinces) (dbe, 2011). the research question driving this paper is: what information does the ana provide for purposive follow up? we answer this question through analysing learner responses on number-related items in the february 2011 grade 1 ana paper taken by grade 2 learners. we compare these responses and performance with the responses and strategies seen in an oral interview-based diagnostic test that is discussed later in the paper. the following sections detail the problem context leading to this focus, the literature and theory on progression in early number learning, the comparative methodology used to gather information on learners’ responses, and the findings and analyses. we conclude with a discussion of possible ways to improve foundation phase assessment of early number learning. the problem context several researchers have described the low performance of south african students in mathematics as ‘a crisis’ (e.g. fleisch, 2008; schollar, 2008). mathematics education literature points to early number learning as the ‘bedrock’ upon which later mathematical learning is built. in south africa, specific problems have been identified within primary learners’ work with number. schollar’s (2008) findings indicated that the majority of learners were performing well below grade-level expectations, with number problems often solved by unit counting in which learners reduced all numbers to single tallies. almost 40% of grade 5 and 11.5% of grade 7 learners relied entirely on unit counting even with problems involving higher number ranges. schollar also found that multiplication and division problems were reduced to repeated addition and subtraction. ensor, hoadley, jacklin, kuhne, schmitt, lombard and van den heuvel-panhuizen (2009) western cape study provided confirmatory evidence for schollar’s findings. in tracking unit counting strategies back to pedagogy, the authors noted the ‘permissibility’ of concrete counting methods across foundation phase as part of the failure of many learners to work more abstractly with number. hoadley (2007: 700) noted the ‘inability to abstract, to work with mathematics in the symbolic as opposed to concrete form’, describing unit count strategies as ‘a very rudimentary form of counting’. overall, significant proportions of south african learners find difficulty with moving from highly concrete strategies relying on unit counting to more abstract strategies relying on reified notions of number, which are disassociated to varying degrees from counting processes. we thus began this study (drawn from the first author’s master’s study) with an interest in looking at what learner responses on different tests could tell us in relation to the use of more concrete/more abstract strategies. we focused on comparing learner responses on two tests – the february 2011 grade 1 ana and wright, martland and stafford’s (2006) oral interview diagnostic early number tests. 51 assessing early number learning: how useful is the annual national assessment in numeracy? maria weitz and hamsa venkat below follows a literature review on shifts in early number learning towards the more abstract strategies described as necessary for flexible and efficient working with number. literature on progression in early number gelman and gallistel (1986) propose five principles that underlie a mastery of counting. the first is internalisation of the one-to-one principle, which relies on two sub-processes: differentiating between items that have been counted and those still needing to be counted; and presenting separate items one at a time. counting depends on connecting these processes with the number words. secondly, they emphasise the stable order principle – that counting proceeds in an organised, repeatable and stable order. third is the cardinal principle – understanding that the last ‘tag’ in a counting process stands for the sum of objects in a set. the fourth principle, the abstraction principle, indicates understanding that counting can be applied to any collection of objects. the last principle is the order irrelevance principle involving understanding that the order in which a set of objects is counted does not influence the result. cobb and steffe (1983) note that counting relates to the coordination of a sequence of number words with the production of unit items. their investigations show that the items that children are able to enact counts upon undergoes a ‘developmental change’ from motor unit items to abstract numbers that support a ‘flexible, adaptive counting scheme that [can be used] to solve a variety of problems’ (1983: 89, 91). reified images of numbers support a flexibility and efficiency that cannot be provided when acting with concrete objects. carpenter, fennema, france, levi and empson (1999: 3) view children’s progress in terms of an evolution from counting concrete objects in the context of direct problem-modeling strategies to doing mental calculation – a development from ‘direct modeling strategies’ to ‘more sufficient counting strategies, which are generally more abstract’. gray (2008: 89) suggests that numerical symbols do not singularly signify either processes or concepts; rather, they embody both simultaneously as procepts: ‘as a process and as a concept, both of which are represented by the same symbol’. thus, 4 + 3 can be viewed in two ways: as an operation with the numbers shown (process) or as an expression of a holistic entity (object). the holistic entity is a mental object that emerges from the operational process over time. the emergence of this mental object requires the compression of operations into objects. askew and brown (2003: 6) describe the sequence of development from counting into mental methods for addition and subtraction up to 20 in terms of: ‘count all, count on from the first number, count on from the larger number, use known facts and derive number facts’. they argue that children should develop mental methods to work in this low number range to prepare for effective and efficient working with number in higher ranges. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 52 with ‘counting-all’, this most basic strategy for 2 + 3 involves counting out two items, then three items, and then putting them together and recounting to get 5. this strategy involves three separate counts from 1. counting-on involves proceeding from the first number presented in the sum. here, the child acts on the 2 directly in concept rather than process terms, reducing the triple count to a single counting process, making it a more advanced strategy. counting-on from the bigger number involves recognising that the counting-on process can be further compressed by starting from 3. immediate recall of 5 as the answer to 2 + 3 lies at the most sophisticated level for early addition/subtraction. here, no operational working is required. both 2 + 3 and 5 have achieved the status of an object. thompson (2008) adds detail relating to subtraction within this trajectory, incorporating a selection of the most appropriate strategy for use in problems such as 11–9 (counting down to nine, rather than taking away nine). while many researchers have suggested progressions in strategies for working with early number problems, wright et al. (2006) have devised a nuanced model of this progression that cuts across early counting, addition and subtraction. this model provides the analytical framework for this study. theorising the concrete to abstract shift in early number learning much of the work on early number learning rests on the seminal work of piaget. number concepts for piaget (1964) rest on a combination of social knowledge, physical knowledge and logico-mathematical knowledge. social knowledge is based on conventions of language and culture. within number, the number words are key examples of social knowledge. physical knowledge is knowledge based on an object’s external existence, coming into being through observation. in early number, this can refer to gaining understanding of quantity through concrete counting. logico-mathematical knowledge is related to actions on objects without the physical presence of the objects. while piaget views gradual shifts to the abstract understandings underlying logico-mathematical knowledge as a stage, the writing in early number detailed above suggests much more fluid and partial shifts to abstract understandings of number. sfard’s (1991; 2008) writings, in particular, view mathematics as produced through successive discursive layers of reification of processes into abstract objects. in sfard’s (1991) earlier work, she notes ‘the dual nature of mathematics’ in which mathematical objects can be worked with as both operational processes and structural objects – as in the number example above. sfard’s (1991) theory of reification describes the movement of operational processes into abstract objects. for sfard, progression is worked into this reification, with operational processes necessarily preceding the possibilities for the creation of structural objects that encapsulate these processes. in her later work, sfard (2008) describes reification processes in communicational terms, with nouns standing in for processes as though 53 assessing early number learning: how useful is the annual national assessment in numeracy? maria weitz and hamsa venkat they signified objects. she views the compressions in the counting process noted by gray (2008) as more broadly critical for communicative effectiveness. reification can be linked to the progression: count all, count on, and mentally calculate. a wholly operational understanding refers to ‘count all’ – unit counting a set of objects or triple counting in early addition and subtraction tasks. a partially structural number concept can be seen in count-on strategies where one number figures as a reified object. recalled or derived facts usually involve structural number concepts across multiple quantities in a numerical expression. the early number assessment framework devised by wright et al. (2006) centres on a staged progression towards more reified number concepts across counting, addition and subtraction. central to their model are the stages of early arithmetical learning (seal) summarised in table 1: table 1: stages of early arithmetical learning stage name of stage explanation stage stage 0 emergent counting cannot count visible items 0 stage 1 perceptual counting can count perceived items, either through seeing or feeling items 1 stage 2 figurative counting can count screened items, but when faced with combining sets, counts from one – does not count on 2 stage 3 initial number sequence count on to solve addition/countdown-from, but not count-down-to in order to solve relevant subtraction tasks 3 stage 4 intermediate number sequence count-down-to in order to solve subtraction/missing subtrahend problems; child can choose the more efficient count-down-to or countdown-from strategies 4 stage 5 facile number sequence use strategies that involve partitions of 5 or 10, combined with compensation and other non-count-by-ones methods 5 possible score 5 the authors identify a range of further aspects – each subdivided into levels of sophistication – that feed into the seal in table 2: perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 54 table 2: additional features additional features sub-levels and associated descriptions level range forward number word sequence (fnws) 0 – cannot produce fnws 1–10 0–5 1 – can produce fnws 1–10 but cannot say number after 2 – can produce fnws 1–10 and say number after 1–10, but drops back to 1 when doing so. cannot give number after beyond 10 3 – can produce fnws 1–10 and say number after 1–10 without dropping back to 1 4 – can produce fnws 1–30 and number after 1–30 without dropping back to 1 5 – can produce fnws 1–100 and number after 1–100 without dropping back to 1 backward number word sequence (bnws) 0 – cannot produce bnws for numbers 1–10 0–5 1 – can produce bnws 1–10, but cannot say number before 1–10 2 – can produce bnws 1–10 and say number before 1–10, but drops back to 1. difficulties producing number before beyond 10 3 – can produce bnws 1–10 and say number before 1–10 without dropping back to 1. difficulties with number before beyond 10 4 – can produce bnws 1–30 and say number before 1–30 without dropping back 5 – can produce bnws 1–100 and say number before 1–100 without dropping back numeral identification 0 – cannot identify some or all the numerals in the range 1–10 0–4 1 – can identify numerals 1–10 2 – can identify numerals 1–20 3 – can identify numerals 1–100 4 – can identify numerals 1–1 000 tens and ones knowledge 1 – one ten and ten ones do not exist for child simultaneously 1–3 2 – can see ten as a unit composed of ten ones 3 – can solve addition/subtraction tasks involving tens and ones without using re-presentations of materials. can solve written number sentences involving tens and ones by adding/subtracting units of tens and ones total possible score including seal stages 22 55 assessing early number learning: how useful is the annual national assessment in numeracy? maria weitz and hamsa venkat wright et al. (2006) have used this combined framework to devise a series of diagnostic oral interview-based tests, administered individually, to qualitatively assess the sophistication of learners’ early number strategies. our aims in this study were to understand similarities and differences in the overviews of performance drawn from the grade 1 ana responses and the videotaped interviews using wright et al.’s tests. the seal framework with its sub-aspects viewed through sfard’s theory of reification provided an analytical framework for this study. the sub-aspects were combined with the seal framework to produce an overall score for each of the learners tested with wright et al.’s tests in the focal school. this score was then compared with the scores gained by the same learners on the grade 1 ana – with both tests taken within three weeks of each other in february 2011. while the broader study (weitz, 2013) focused on overviews of performance across key groups based on overlaps and contrasts in their test scores, our focus in this paper is on the single largest group that emerged from this analysis – those with ‘high’ scores on the ana contrasting with ‘low’ scores on wright et al.’s tests. specifically, we used learner response data from both tests to understand the different ways in which learner strategies moving from the concrete to the abstract were assessed. methodology we begin with a brief description of the school that the data were drawn from, followed by a discussion on the two assessment instruments. we then outline the scoring methodology that allowed us to identify the sub-sample of two learners whose strategies on early number were analysed, forming the basis for the arguments in this paper. ana – background the ana tests are standard national tests that are distributed to all government schools. there is an annual test for grades 1–6, with grade 9 included in the 2012 ana administration. teachers mark the tests internally using a rubric provided by the national department, and aggregate summaries are sent to district and provincial levels. on the grade 1 tests – which are the focus of this paper – the national mean scores in 2011 and 2012 were 63% and 68% respectively (dbe, 2012: 3). the declining mean scores across grades 1–6 (grade 6 mean scores were 30% and 27% across the two years) indicate decreasing proportions of learners meeting grade-appropriate curriculum requirements through primary school. in grades 1 and 2, the ana tests are orally administered, with learners writing answers down on their scripts. in 2011, following rescheduling of the school year around the 2010 soccer world cup, the grade 1 ana was administered to grade 2 learners in february. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 56 the focal school the school from which the data was drawn is a township/informal settlement school with six grade 2 classes. the school is part of the broader wits maths connect – primary (wmc-p) project that has been working over five years (2011–2015) to improve primary mathematics teaching and learning. as part of baseline data collected in the project, wright et al.’s tests were administered to six learners drawn from across the attainment range based on teacher reports in each of the grade 2 classes in all ten schools in the wmc-p early in 2011. ana results were also collected, and photocopies of the ana scripts of the learners in the test sample were re-marked by the wmc-p project team. learners in this school were allocated to classes based on the lolt coinciding with their home language (one tsonga class, two zulu, two sepedi and one xhosa) and wrote the ana in this language. due to learner absence, we ended up with matched data across both assessments for 29 of the 36 learners drawn from the six grade 2 classes. the 2011 ana grade 1 assessment in the 2011 grade 1 numeracy ana, there were 19 questions on the paper with a total allocation of 20 marks. a total of 17 from 19 questions (carrying 18/20 marks) related to number. given our focus on number strategies, we restricted our analysis to these 17 questions (see table 3): table 3: grade 1 numeracy ana number questions topic question score 1.1 & 1.2 forward counting fill in the missing numbers. 1.1. table shows 3–11 in unit increments with 5, 8 and 10 missing; 1.2. table shows 20–100 in increments of 10, with 30, 70, 80, and 100 missing 2 2 identify/ produce number words complete this table by filling in the blank spaces ‘shapes’ ‘total number’ ‘number in words’ ∆ ∆ ∆ ∆ ∆ ∆ ∆ 9 7 seven 2 3 ordinality of number ‘what is the position of these pictures on the number line?’ a number line is given with shapes drawn at different positions. there are 3 boxes: with a heart, an aids sign and scissors. box with heart is in the 6th position. 3.1 the scissors are in position _____________ 3.2 tick the box below the picture that is in position 6 on the number line. 2 57 assessing early number learning: how useful is the annual national assessment in numeracy? maria weitz and hamsa venkat 5.1 & 5.2 addition/ subtraction 5.1 20 + 3 = ? 5.2 18 – 4 = ? 2 6.1 & 6.2 doubling/ halving 6.1 double of 5 6.2 half of 20 2 7.1 & 7.2 addition/ subtraction 7.1 10 + 10 + 10 = ? 7.2 10 – 2 – 2 = ? 2 9.1 & 9.2 coinage and quantity two 5c coins and two 10c coins shown 9.1 the total amount of money is ______________ five 10c coins and five 5c coins shown 9.2 i have 4 coins in my pocket. tick the 4 coins that i have in my pocket. 2 10 division twelve sweets are presented in two rows 10. busi and her two friends ate 12 sweets. they each ate an equal number of sweets. how many sweets did each one eat? 2 11 cardinality of number one row with seven apples, another row with five bananas 11. thabo bought apples and bananas at the shop. write the correct number of each kind of fruit thabo bought. 11.1 ____________ apples 11.2 ____________ bananas 2 total possible score for number-related items 18 wright et al.’s assessment instrument wright et al.’s (2006) suite of tests focuses on the early number topics discussed above and the relative sophistication of learner strategies. of the six tests available, we used the two assessments focused on early counting, addition and subtraction. the tests took approximately an hour to administer with each learner. all test administrations included the presence of an interpreter who translated questions into the child’s home language. these tests were conducted in the form of videotaped oral interviews in order to see children’s counting strategies, with consent granted from schools, teachers, learners and parents. an explicit feature of wright et al.’s tests is their concern with not only the answers themselves but also how answers are produced. the questions on the two sub-tests are detailed in table 4: perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 58 table 4: wright et al.’s (2006) early number items used question number/task focus specific sub-questions test 1.1 q1 – fnws start to count from: 1-32, 48-61, 76-84, and 93-112 i will tell you when to stop q2 – number word after (nwa) say the nwa: entry task14, 11, 19, 12, 23, 29, 20. less advanced task: 5, 9, 7, 3, 6. more advanced task: 59, 65, 32, 70, 99 q3 – numeral identification what numbers are these: entry task: 10, 15, 47, 13, 21, 80, 12, 17, 99, 20, 66. more advanced task: 100, 123, 206, 341, 820. less advanced task that is 8, 3, 5, 7, 9, 6, 2, 4, and 1 q4 – numeral recognition 1–10 cards placed randomly which number is: 6, 4, 7, 9, 8? q5 – bnws count backwards from: 10–1, 15–10, 23–16, 34–27, and 72–67 q6 – number word before (nwb) say the nwb: entry task: 24, 17, 20, 11, 13, 21, 14, 30 more advanced task: 67, 50, 38, 100, 83, 41, 99 less advanced task: 7, 10 4, 8, 3 q7 – sequencing numerals cards 46–55 placed on table in mixed order. child asked to state each number as card is placed, then order from smallest to biggest less advanced task: 1–10 q8 (a-e) – additive tasks introductory task: 3 + 1 screened: red (3), yellow (1). how many altogether? entry task: 5 + 4 and 9 + 6 (all counters screened) supplementary additive tasks: 8 + 5, 9 + 3 (all counters screened). if successful, interviewer moves to q8f less advanced task, one group of counters is screened: 5 + 4, 7 + 3, 9 + 4 further less advanced task: both groups of counters unscreened: 5 + 2, 7 + 3, 9 + 4 further less advanced task: 13 counters placed. how many? then 18 counters 59 assessing early number learning: how useful is the annual national assessment in numeracy? maria weitz and hamsa venkat q8 (f) – missing addend four red counters screened. two blue counters added without child seeing. ‘now there are 6 counters, how many more did i put under the paper?’ then 7 + ? = 10 and 12 + ? = 15 q9 (a) – subtractive sentences entry task: card with 16 – 12. child asked to read sum, work out answer supplementary task: 17 – 14 q9 (b) – missing subtrahend introductory task: interviewer shows child 5 counters beneath a screen, removes 2 without child seeing. ‘there are 3 now, how many did i take away?’ entry task: 10 – ? = 6; 12 – ? = 9 more advanced task: 15 – ? = 11 q9 (c) – removed items introductory task: interviewer shows child 3 counters, takes away 1 counter. the total left is screened. how many are left? entry task: 6 – 2, 9 – 4, 15 – 3 advanced task: 27 – 4 test 2.1 q1 – subsitizing and spatial patterns dot cards with random and patterned dot arrangements. how many dots can you see as cards are flashed? random and patterned arrangements: 4, 3, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8 dots domino cards with patterned dot arrangements flashed. how many altogether? 5 + 3, 6 + 4, 4 + 4, 5 + 4 q2 – finger patterns 1–5 show 3, 2, 5, 1 4 on fingers show 3, 2, 5, 4 fingers with two hands q3 – finger patterns 6–10 show 6 on their fingers: show 6 on your fingers in a different way show 9 and 10 on fingers. show 8 on fingers; show 8 in a different way q4 – five-frame pattern five-frame cards with different numbers of dots flashed. how many dots do you see? 3, 2, 5, 1, 4 q5 – five-wise patterns on a ten frame ten-frame card with different numbers of dots flashed. how many dots do you see? 7, 10, 8, 6, 9 q6 – pair patterns on a ten frame pair-based patterns on a ten-frame flashed. how many dots do you see? 4, 2, 5, 1, 3, 7, 10, 8, 6, 9 q7 – combining to make five i’ll say a number. you tell me what goes with this number to make 5: 4, 2, 1, 3, 5 q8 – combining to make ten give me pairs of numbers that give 10 i have 8 apples, how many do i need to get 10 apples? repeated with 4 apples, 7 apples perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 60 sample our quantitative score on these assessments for each child, based on the seal and sub-aspect scores, was derived from looking across learner responses and assessing the predominant strategy used. scores were then converted to percentages allowing for comparison with the child’s ana score on number-related items. comparisons indicated that, in general, ana scores were higher than scores gained on wright et al.’s tests. using 60% as a cut-off point to distinguish between ‘high’ and ‘low’ performance in these tests and 65% as the cut-off in the ana test, we created the following summary: groups no. in each group high ana/high wright tests 2 low ana/high wright tests 1 high ana/low wright tests 14 low ana/low wright tests 12 this summary confirmed that most learners (26/29) performed at low levels on wright et al.’s tests – where high scores depended on the use of more sophisticated strategies. the single biggest group in this categorisation was the high ana/low wright tests group (14 learners). in this paper, we analyse the counting and early addition/subtraction strategies seen in the ana and wright et al.’s test responses of two learners in this group – happy and james (pseudonyms). these learners were selected on the basis of rich evidence of their methods – methods that were not ‘visible’ on most ana scripts, we believe, due to the use of fingers or tally counting on other working paper. this belief is based on widespread evidence of these strategies seen in our administration of wright et al.’s tests. findings and analysis we deal with each learner in turn, and structure our analysis according to the information gained from assessing each child’s counting strategies in relation to seal and the other sub-aspects. happy happy scored 72,2% in the ana number items but 18,2% on wright et al.’s tests. in terms of awareness of the number sequence, happy was able to state the number sequence to 30, but struggled to do so beyond this. when asked to count from 48, his response was: ‘forty-nine, forty-ten, forty-eleven ...’. a lack of fluency with ordering of number was also apparent in his inability to state the number word after a given number beyond the 1–10 range, without reverting to counting from 1. with counting backwards, happy was able to produce this sequence in the 1–10 range, but not 61 assessing early number learning: how useful is the annual national assessment in numeracy? maria weitz and hamsa venkat beyond this. within the 1–10 range, he was not always able to state what number came before a given number. correct answers were produced through forward counting from 1. happy was able to state the number of dots seen in dice and fivebased arrangements, and to show these quantities on his fingers, although in some instances, he counted out the number of fingers rather than immediately opening the number asked for. he was unable to state the number of dots in paired and fivebased pattern arrangements in the 1–10 range, and was also unable to say how many more were needed to make 5 given between 0–5 items. happy’s working on the early addition and subtraction items in wright et al.’s tests suggested that, while he could count perceived items, he was unable to proceed when one quantity was screened, or when the sum was presented in symbolic form (e.g. 16 – 12). he was able to attempt this question and other similar questions once counters were given to him, but sometimes made mistakes during the count (e.g. he gave 14 as the answer for 9 + 6). overall, happy showed a weak understanding of the relationship between parts and the whole in the context of addition and subtraction problems because he was unable to solve anything other than ‘join’or ‘separate’type tasks (carpenter et al., 1999) even with counters available. this placed him at a relatively low seal stage (1) due to his inability to handle the abstraction of number implied within count on strategies. predictably, on the remaining aspects feeding into seal, lower levels were attained due to his inability to give the number word after a given number, etc., with scores attained as follows: fnws (2), bnws (1), numeral identification (1), and tens and ones knowledge (0). happy’s ana responses largely aligned with his interview responses, but the written response format meant that we frequently only saw his answers, rather than the strategies used to produce the answers. fourteen of the nineteen numberrelated questions on the ana required identification and counting in the 1–10 range and, as seen in wright et al.’s tests, happy was able to answer these correctly. correct answers on ana q1.2 and 7.1 suggest that happy was able to count in tens, but does not seem aware of how the structuring of numbers in the decimal system might support, e.g. calculating 16 – 12 using the answer to 6 – 2. addition and subtraction problems with lower number ranges were usually answered correctly on the ana (q7.1 and 7.2), but addition/subtraction tasks in higher number ranges (q5.1 and 5.2) were answered incorrectly. while working methods were not shown on the ana, the video data suggest that unit counting based strategies (on fingers or on paper) may have been used to work out answers in the lower number ranges, with these becoming more error-prone in increased number range problems. happy shows that he can group count in some contexts, e.g. in tens and in the context of coins, but video data indicate that this skill may be localised to particular counting contexts, rather than being used as a tool in calculation tasks. while in wright et al.’s tests more concrete counting based strategies are ‘penalised’ with lower scores, this is not the case in the ana where the right answer, however derived, is ‘awarded’. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 62 james james scored 66,7% on the ana test number items and 18,2% on wright et al.’s tests. as with happy’s responses, there was overlap between the responses on the two tests. james’ video data indicated that, while he was able to identify most numbers in the 1–100 range, he was unable to say the number word sequence beyond 29 and unable to state the number word after a given number beyond the 1–10 range, reverting to 1 to solve all problems. he also struggled with counting backwards and saying the number word before a given number within and beyond this range. wright et al. (2006) note this reverting to 1 as prevalent among low attainers. in reverting to counting from 1, the absence of an objectified sense of subsequent numbers is revealed (sfard, 2008). while able to show 1–10 fingers on his hands, james was unable to show partitions of either 5 or 10 on his fingers. on addition and subtraction tasks, james was able to answer questions such as 5 + 4 and 9 + 6 when counters were available with unit counting used. on missing addend/subtrahend questions, james could not give the correct answer without using counters. james’ response on the ana items mirrored these responses, with additional evidence on the script of unit-counting strategies using tally marks, as shown below in his response to q7: thus, in james’ case, too, while concrete counting strategies resulted in low scores on wright et al.’s tests (seal stage – 1, fnws – 2, bnws – 0, numeral identification – 1, tens and ones knowledge – 0), the rudimentary nature of these strategies remained invisible in the ana’s awarding of marks for correct answers rather than for sophistication of strategies. conclusion while 16/29 children in our sample attained over 65% on the 2011 grade 1 ana, our data suggest the need for caution in interpreting these scores. two features of the grade 1 ana may tend to work against the development of the more abstract number concepts needed for success with higher number range problems – the low number range that is a feature of the grade 1 ana (less than 25 for operation and less than 100 for counting), combined with the focus wholly on answers rather than how these are produced. these two features in combination make it perfectly possible for 63 assessing early number learning: how useful is the annual national assessment in numeracy? maria weitz and hamsa venkat learners to use highly concrete strategies for answering questions successfully in low number ranges. in turn, the high scores that can be attained through use of these strategies may well work against persuading grade 1 and grade 2 teachers to work towards more sophisticated strategies. as noted already, national ana performance in grades 1 and 2 is relatively high. our data suggest that this high performance is predominately linked to concrete counting strategies, which starts to explain the drop-offs in mean performance seen in grade 3 and beyond. given widespread evidence of high-stakes assessment driving teaching (resnick & resnick, 1992), we believe it is imperative to incorporate features into the ana that focus attention towards the need for more abstract conceptions of number in the early grades. we recognise that large-scale assessment cannot be performed in the interview format of wright et al.’s tests, but suggest examples of task formats and questions that can be incorporated into the ana written answer format that direct attention towards the progressions in number concepts that we believe are desirable. we conclude this paper with two examples of these: • encouraging visibility of strategy as well as answers, and awarding scaled marks for the relative sophistication of strategy used. this might be done through formatting answer scripts thus: 19 + 3 = ? working out answer • inclusion of questions that require more abstract understanding of number. in this example, we direct attention to the efficiency of working ‘through 10’, and the usefulness of knowing these partitions: add these three numbers. put a circle round the two numbers you would add first. 6 7 3 total = ________ perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 64 acknowledgements this paper forms part of the work in progress within the sa numeracy chair project, entitled the wits maths connect – primary project. it is generously funded by the firstrand foundation, anglo american, rand merchant bank, and the department of science and technology, and is administered by the national research foundation. list of references askew m & brown m 2003. how do we teach children to be numerate? a professional user review of uk research. london: bera. carpenter tp, fennema e, france ml, levi l & empson, sb 1999. children’s mathematics: cognitively guided instruction. portsmouth: heinemann. cobb p & steffe lp 1983. the constructivist researcher as teacher and model builder. journal of research in mathematics, 14(2): 83–94. dbe 2011. report on the annual national assesment of 2011. pretoria: department of basic education. dbe 2012. report on the annual national assessments 2012 – grades 1–6 and 9. pretoria: government printers. ensor p, hoadley u, jacklin h, kuhne c, schmitt e, lombard a & van den heuvel panhuizen m 2009. specialising pedagogic text and time in foundation phase numeracy classrooms. journal of education, 23(1): 5–29. fleisch b 2008. primary education in crisis – why south african school children underachieve in reading and mathematics. cape town: juta & co. gelman r & gallistel cr 1986. the child’s understanding of number. cambridge, massachusetts: harvard university press. gray e 2008. compressing the counting process: strength from the flexible interpretation of symbols. in i thompson (ed.), teaching and learning early number. new york: mcgraw-hill/open university press. hoadley u 2007. the reproduction of social class inequalities through mathematics pedagogies in south african primary schools. curriculum studies, 39(6): 670– 706. piaget j (ed.) 1964. development and learning. ithaca: cornel university press. resnick lb & resnick dp 1992. assesing the thinking curriculum: new tolls for education reform. in br gifford & mc o’connor (eds), changing assesments: alternative views aptitude, achievements and instruction. boston: kluwer. schollar e 2008. final report: the primary mathematics research project 2004– 2007 – towards evidence-based educational development in south africa. johannesburg: eric schollar & associates. sfard a 1991. on the dual nature of mathematical conceptions: reflections on processes and objects as different sides of the same coin. educational studies in mathematics, 22: 1–36. sfard a 2008. thinking as communicating. cambridge: cambridge university press. thompson i 2008. from counting to deriving number facts. in i thompson (ed.), teaching and learning early number. new york: mcgraw-hill/open university press. 65 assessing early number learning: how useful is the annual national assessment in numeracy? maria weitz and hamsa venkat weitz ms 2013. number strategies of grade 2 leaners: learning from performance on the learning framework in number test and the grade 1 annual national assesments. unpublished research report, university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg. wright rj, martland j & stafford ak 2006. early numeracy: assessment for teaching and intervention. london: sage publications. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2013 university of the free state 15 research politics: some issues in conducting research for government as a client nolutho diko & bongani d. bantwini researchers are guided by their ideological and ethical viewpoints when conducting research. doing research for government challenges them to confront these ideals head-on. this article explores the uncertain terrain researchers sometimes have to negotiate when conducting research for government, and discusses relations between researchers and government officials. it considers the authors’ approach in conducting research for a south african provincial government department in 2008/2009 and, based on that experience, analyses the politics underlying the research process. despite the clear brief directing the research, they found that the study was never separated from the political environment in which it was conducted. the study goals shifted according to the shifting perspectives of the commissioning authority, causing tension between the researchers and the project management. keywords: research, educational research, government research, research politics, south africa introduction historical and political background the strong relationship between government and the national research councils – the human sciences research council (hsrc), in particular – is not new (fleisch, 1995; chisholm, 2002; chisholm & morrow, 2007). prior to 1994, the relationship between government and research councils was strong and, according to webster (1991), the councils’ social research provided the apartheid regime with the necessary support. the hsrc had a particularly strong relationship with the government, cooperating with it and the universities in devising research agendas (fleisch, 1995; chisholm, 2002; chisholm & morrow, 2007). one of the hsrc’s key functions was to distribute nolutho diko human sciences research council (hsrc) education skills development unit and north west university, school for educational leadership development e-mail: ndiko@hsrc.ac.za telephone: 012 302 2311 bongani d. bantwini human sciences research council (hsrc) research use and impact assessment unit e-mail: bbantwini@hsrc.ac.za telephone: 012 3022740 perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 16 research funding. some institutions resented this role and associated the hsrc with their difficulties in securing government research funds. this resentment persisted, and white (1992), for example, questioned the role of the hsrc in a non-racial, nonsexist, democratic south africa and doubted whether it could adapt to a changed research environment. in his critical analysis of dr gideon malherbe’s speech at the inaugural meeting of the national research council in 1939, fleisch (1995) illuminates the conceptual and historical foundations of the relationship between the hsrc and government. malherbe was president of the south african association of sciences, director of the national bureau of educational and social research (nbesr) – the predecessor of the hsrc – and author of the definitive history of south african education and of numerous other publications. when the hsrc was officially established in 1969, the government expected its researchers to produce research that would support its policies and influence social and economic change in the country. chisholm (2002) concludes that, to all intents and purposes, social science research took place within the policymaking arena and that policy experts served state intentions. she argues that this happened because state power requires that policy be legitimated by research. policy context south africa’s democratic government has reformed the research agenda to reflect changing national and international research perspectives. under apartheid, research information from the science councils tended to support the apartheid policy. noticing the shifts, chisholm (2002) and jansen (2003) argue that post-apartheid research has changed fundamentally. not only has the research process changed by involving more institutions and people than previously was the case, but the areas being researched and the methodologies used have also changed. research councils such as the hsrc have adapted to the changes and now play a pivotal role in supporting policymakers with relevant research (kruss, 2005; letseka, 2005). the department of science and technology (dst) has also increased national investment in research and development (r&d) to reflect the new orientations (dst, 2002). the white paper on science and technology (1996) explicitly recognises human sciences in technology. to meet the national research objectives, the hsrc had to transform and reorient its own objectives. instead of blindly supporting the government agenda, the new institution committed itself to the production and dissemination of cutting-edge research that supports national and international development and has a measurable impact. the vision and mission of the hsrc portrays the organisation as seeking to serve as a bridge between research, policy and action. in addition, relationships with other research organisations and universities are now of paramount importance. the organisation seeks maximum collaboration with them in terms of competing for research opportunities, deployment of the country’s researchers, development of memorandum of understanding (mou’s), diko & bantwini research politics: some issues in conducting research for government as a client 17 training of young research scientists as well as producing research that impacts on policy. the article began by introducing the historical and political background of the study, and the contemporary political context. this is followed by an exploration of the institutional changes that took place at the hsrc from the mid-1990s to the time of the inquiry and discussion of the context of inquiry. then there is a discussion of the process of research planning, the project start-up, the methodology and the findings of the inquiry. all this is important, because the research process provides data for exploring how researchers and government officials negotiate their positions and research identities. the findings are followed by a discussion of what happened as the study proceeded and how the report was generated. lastly, we draw some conclusions. reforming and redefining the post-apartheid hsrc this article focuses on research in education, a major theme in the work of the hsrc and, indeed, in south african social research generally. south african education research has been subjected to two major forces, namely the global trend towards the marketisation of education and the redefinition of the role of public education. we discussed earlier how the hsrc found a new identity in the altered political context. this redefinition happened within the constraining environment of economic policy and fiscal austerity measures. consequently, by the mid-1990s, the hsrc budget allocations had declined from those of the 1980s (hsrc, 2003; chisholm & morrow, 2007). instead of disbursing funds to universities (chisholm & morrow, 2007: 55), the hsrc was forced to compete with them for research funding. the organisation experienced an extremely harsh phase and seems to have barely escaped threats of closure (white, 1992). to avoid this fate and become relevant and viable, the hsrc had to adapt to the new political and financial context, develop new research priorities, and establish a new research ethos under professional academic control (cloete & muller, 1991). the hsrc retrenched some of the apartheid-era researchers and employed new personnel, most of whom were critics of the old hsrc (chisholm & morrow, 2007). the changes influenced every aspect of the hsrc. management changed, with each new ceo introducing alterations intended to build a better institution. the current ceo was appointed soon after the hsrc review of 2003. the organisational focus involved improving the quality of research, improving the research management system, encouraging partnership research, increasing stakeholder involvement, and improving staff diversity. the education programme, for which the authors work, is one of the most significant in the organisation, and educational research remains an important dimension of the hsrc’s activities, even following the period of transformation. the 2003 institutional review described the relationship between government and the new hsrc as close, professional and cordial. undeniably, the organisation has perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 18 made great strides in instituting change. according to chisholm and morrow (2007), the challenge for researchers is how to interpret, manage and balance serving the state and market interests, while maintaining independence and the ability to conduct creative research. the changes are positive and create space for conducting independent research. however, according to chisholm and morrow (2007), researchers need to claim it. researchers are indeed doing so diligently. many researchers have displayed impeccable integrity. for example, the research on hiv/aids by shisana and simbayi (2002) openly challenged government policy. despite the report being harshly criticised, the researchers maintained their integrity and independence. sadly, government does not always encourage and appreciate researchers who speak the truth and, despite changes, the past continues to shape the new hsrc research agenda and influence how researchers perform their work. this unfortunate tendency has been strengthened by the lack of debates on, or research into how researchers claim or assert their research independence. this is the background to this inquiry. the authors of this article have participated in both governmentand market-funded studies, and have drawn on personal experience. we also used secondary sources. this article specifically focuses on a study commissioned by a provincial government department, which we refer to as the ‘government department’. we explore the tensions that arose between the client (the officials of the commissioning government department) and the researchers who found themselves resisting client pressure on the formulation of the findings. we use this example to discuss how noble intentions of breaking from the past and conducting quality, independent and value free research can sometimes collide with the desire for research that can support officials in their political and bureaucratic practices. this conflict is not unique to the hsrc. it constantly confronts researchers both locally and internationally. however, this fraught process is frequently ignored and attention focused solely on the final research product. this tension is not surprising, because research and policymaking have moved closer together (nisbet, 1981). globally, there is an increased demand for accessible, policy-relevant educational research (crossley & holmes, 2001). we view the discussion of these issues as critical for researchers, users of research and other relevant stakeholders. this inquiry drew from the experiences of three hsrc researchers, two of whom are the authors of this article and the third was interviewed to establish whether his experience corroborated that of the authors. we reflected on how we worked with the same client, the government, on various projects. we focused on the negotiations that go on during the process, how the government tries to influence research findings, and the lessons we learned from these experiences. we concluded that it is imperative for researchers and their clients to understand how relationships can make or break a study/project. in this particular instance, relationships were strained, with potentially major problems if these relationships were not properly managed. diko & bantwini research politics: some issues in conducting research for government as a client 19 context of the inquiry in october 2008, a provincial department of education tendered for provision of expertise in the development of a research agenda and research management framework. on winning the tender, the hsrc team had four months to conduct the study and present the report to the client. the brief upon which both parties agreed was to help the department develop a research agenda to inform its research priorities and a research framework to manage research and research-related information in the department. prior to this study, commissioning research was the responsibility of various directorates within the department. research funds were controlled within directorates. immediately after being awarded the tender, we began consultations with the client. a research steering committee consisting of two researchers from the hsrc and four government officials was established. in conjunction with the government team, the research proposal was revised to reflect the research brief, and consensus was reached on the research terms. it was decided that we should formally meet three times during the period of the study (prior to implementation; to present the draft report, and to present the final report). other meetings were informal and held during the interviews that formed part of the research methodology. methodology the study used an interpretive and qualitative framework design. according to mertens (1998), the basic assumption of the interpretive paradigm is that knowledge is socially constructed by people who are active in the research process. thus researchers, as mertens cites schwandt (1994), should attempt to understand the complex world of lived experience from the point of view of those who live it. in addition, smit (2003) argues that qualitative research for education policy offers substance and deeper nuanced understandings of the complexities at policy-implementation level. to obtain the required information, semi-structured interview questions, developed after the research team had met to discuss their content, were used for data collection. these questions focused on the key areas identified as requiring resolution and discussion in order to generate answers and recommendations for improvement; the main requirements for a research agenda and framework. approximately 35 senior departmental officials, ranging from directors to deputy director general, were interviewed in their offices, with each interview lasting from 40 minutes to one hour. during the interviews, notes were taken and later analysed thematically. the advantage of using thematic analysis is that data collection and analysis can occur simultaneously. focus group interviews were also conducted with 15 directors from various districts within the province. the questions focused on their understanding of the department’s research agenda. field notes were taken during the focus group sessions. the interviews were conducted on the assumption that existing national, provincial and departmental priorities were not likely to change and that the perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 20 responses would assist in defining the specific research agenda of the directorates on the basis of their existing work, priorities and requirements. the interview questions were, accordingly, designed to elicit responses from the interviewees on the research agenda as well as on how research should be managed and organised. the questions provided the situational analysis on the basis of which the report was prepared. to supplement the interview data, a review of departmental documents was conducted, primarily to identify the presence of any documented information about their research agenda and to learn more about the research agenda and the policies relevant to the commissioned research. key findings the completed report was divided into two sections, each responding to the two questions we had set out to answer, namely how to set a research agenda and how to create a research management strategy. for each question, we specified who was to be responsible for the activities involved and how each activity would impact on the department. from the interviews we learned that there was no problem with regard to the research priorities set by the department and the provincial government, or with broader national and international agendas such as the millennium development goals, nor was there a need for more firmly expressed research priorities. rather, the need was for a formal process of coordination of existing priorities. the interviewees agreed that research within the department needed to be centrally controlled. they also decided that a research committee should be established and that the research unit should act as a secretariat to the committee and facilitate the research process. this should result in an annual research plan indicating who would be commissioning what kind of research. the hsrc researchers recommended that, in order to facilitate the introduction of the new processes, staff in the research unit should receive further training, their numbers should be increased, and they should be repositioned to support the new functions assigned to them. in addition, the research committee should manage, assure quality, and account for all the research commissioned by the department. the research participants favoured a research management system wherein the research unit would initiate the research process by calling for proposals from the various directorates for consideration by the research committee. as the secretariat of the research committee, the research unit would assess the abstracts and forward those that might deserve further consideration to the research committee for review. once the abstracts had been assessed by the committee, deserving proposals would be returned to the directorates via the research unit for development into fully fledged proposals. it was proposed that the research unit should review proposals before passing them on for final scrutiny by the research committee at its second meeting. based on the report findings, it was proposed that research committee meetings be held quarterly, unless there was an ad hoc research proposal to be considered. diko & bantwini research politics: some issues in conducting research for government as a client 21 after approval of research proposals, meetings should be held to review progress reports, ensure that projects are on track, and consider ad hoc requests. existing channels of dissemination, which consisted of distributing material in hard copy, were to continue in an improved form. the research unit was asked to produce quarterly reports and a quarterly research bulletin that would include abstracts and research findings for wider dissemination. to support the system, an electronic research management system was to be created. this was to interface with the department’s web portal and with other information sources on the internet. in addition, the report recommended that possibilities for access to research within higher education institutions should be explored, in order to maximise the impact of the department’s research. analysis of the processes leading to research report generation communication there was extensive consultation between the researchers and the client. communication was initially cordial, as attested by one of the authors of this article who was the hsrc contact person with the government department. throughout the planning and preparatory stages, the government official responsible for managing research was the main official with whom we communicated, electronically or telephonically. during the research phase, the acting chief director for information and knowledge management, who was also the research manager’s immediate supervisor, emerged as the major driver of communications and the project on the government department’s side. we were challenged by poor preparation for meetings or a concealed form of contestation of certain sections of our reports. this manifested itself in the acting chief director insisting that in meetings we read out every document line by line, although the documents had been sent to them for reading prior to the meetings. this slowed progress, resulting in more meetings than initially planned and budgeted for. consequently, as researchers, we spent more time on the project than envisaged. this was a major source of strain. project meetings we engaged and negotiated with the client throughout. in the first meeting, the discussion involved decisions about sampling, and it was proposed that interviews be conducted with a sample of deputy director generals (ddgs), chief directors and directors at head office and at the district offices. a random sample was drawn from these three categories in such a manner as to cover all the main areas of interest. at the second meeting, we presented the draft report to the client as planned and discussed its contents. no problem was experienced with the proposed management of non-commissioned research, but there was a problem with the strategy we proposed for the management of commissioned research. the source of perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 22 disagreement was the management of research funds, but this did not impede the progress. at the third meeting, which should have been our last, the atmosphere was tense and hostile. the government team were still not happy with the research management framework presented to them. the acting chief director for information and knowledge management spoke throughout the meeting, while other officials were guarded to the point of near-total silence in the meetings. they wanted the hsrc team to provide a non-pdf version of the report so that they could prepare a report to present to their management meeting. in their terms, this would make the report ‘their own’. we could not agree to this arrangement and reminded them about hsrc policies and research ethics. we insisted that it would be unethical for the department to change the report for its own purpose. if they insisted, we suggested, they should proceed and we would retain our final pdf report version. discussion and conclusion the findings show that, with regard to research priorities set by the departmental research unit and the provincial department of education, there was neither a problem with nor a need for more firmly expressed priorities. we believe that the client had every intention of responding to the government call for sound research leading to research-based policy development, acknowledging that, at present, research-based policymaking possesses more value and conviction for various stakeholders. in addition, they wanted to make the research unit vibrant, innovative and respected. the government departmental unit, as it was then, was not sustaining or commissioning research that impacted on decision-making in the department, as conditions were not conducive for that to occur. several factors including unfilled vacancies, underfunding, and the inadequate research skills of some officials aggravated the situation. furthermore, the acting chief director was anxious to make changes, as she knew that her position was subject to confirmation. her position was, in fact, confirmed during the course of the study. she asserted that the report delivered information justifying the changes she intended to implement in the research unit and the research process. she understood the power of using research to bring about the desired change in how research is conducted and used in policy and decision-making and was anxious about senior management buy-in. in this instance, weiss’s (1979) observation that research can be used as ammunition for the side that finds its conclusions congenial and supportive, with partisans flourishing the evidence in an attempt to neutralise opponents, convince waverers, and bolster supporters is pertinent. even if conclusions have to be ripped out of context with the suppression of qualifications and evidence, research becomes grist to the mill. it is indisputable that the study intentions were good, but the underlying motivation was problematic, creating a tension between what the officials desired as the ideal and the reality. the study was fated to be a mere tool of the unit and the chief directorate, as it appeared that the officials were intent on legitimising a diko & bantwini research politics: some issues in conducting research for government as a client 23 predetermined course of action. discouraging this unethical use of research, jansen (2003) argues that it needs to maintain critical distance and space which enables the researcher to speak the truth. he argues, and we concur, that the complexity of educational change begins to reveal itself where policy, politics, and research meet and informed dialogue, which requires capable leadership that recognises the power of information in decision-making, becomes a necessity, moderating and mediating political pressures for quick action to satisfy particular demands. to be influential in shaping policies, jansen proposes that research units need highly skilled staff members who are eloquent advocates for the power of information in education policy, planning, and provisioning. again, we agree that highly skilled personnel who can assist clients to reconsider questionable research intentions and perceive the benefits of research even when it does not speak to their immediate interests are crucial. in addition, it is clear that researchers are constantly challenged to reflect on the political, ideological and ethical issues involved in the research process. this reflective engagement is crucial, as it enables insights into who exactly the clients are, why they commissioned the research, what the commissioned research means to them, and what they expect from the researcher. soobrayan (2003: 107) observes that, when dealing with the ethics and politics of research, one takes risks, makes choices and takes responsibility. this shows that research is never neutral or free from context: researchers and clients impose their fears and anxieties on research. as researchers, faced with protecting the new and perhaps fragile cordiality between the new government and the hsrc, we were faced with the option of yielding to the pressure of government officials. however, as members of the wider research community bound by research ethics, we chose to defend our research and stand by the hsrc research ethics. this dynamic, as waardenburg (2001) notes, shows that one cannot take for granted that making research results more widely known or clearer to the potential users will automatically mean they will be utilised to a greater extent. as weiss (1979) observes, an understanding of diverse perspectives on the uses of research may help overcome the disenchantment with the usefulness of social science research that has afflicted those who search for utility only in problem-solving contexts. a less utilitarian approach and a more subtle sociocultural and methodological understanding may arm the researcher in confronting problems of this kind. clearly, the challenge in conducting research for government may not only be issues of coordination but also relate to the setting of research priorities. we believe that, in this instance, the study was never separated from the political environment in which it was conducted. goals shifted according to the changing landscape of the commissioning authority, causing tension between researchers and project management. such conflicts have been cited by other researchers, and they can often be beneficial, revealing critical issues not initially understood or addressed. however, they can also retard progress, especially if they result from one party not having done what was required of them, for example, reading the report prior to the perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 24 meeting to discuss it. this can strain the researcher’s budget and thus the relationship. trostle, bronfman and langer (1999) describe the complex relationships and multiple factors that influence research and policy formation. they argue that some decisionmakers do not consider knowledge of research necessary for policy and programme development, while some researchers are of the opinion that decision-makers will not recognise their work or will not be able to put recommendations derived from research into practice. this leads to a kind of “mutual intellectual disdain” when both researchers and decision-makers want to be recognised as the greatest contributors to the solution of the problem. it is evident that policymakers and researchers are likely to view research findings in different ways, and the same could be said about how they analyse them and formulate policy decisions. weiss (1979) contends that the use of social science research in public policy is extraordinarily complex, hence the many meanings of research utilisation. gibbons, zammit, youngentob, possingham, lindenmayer, bekessy, burgman, colyvan, considine, felton, hobbs, hurley, mcalpine, mccarthy, moore, robinson, salt and wintle (2008) remind us that researchers and policymakers operate under different demands, constraints, and reward systems. it is said that, in modern governments, power flows from the top downwards and the careers of many policymakers are, therefore, dependent on advancing policies and programmes that reflect the philosophy of government and its constituency. similarly, brownson, royer, ewing and mcbride (2006) note that policymakers face complex challenges of analysis and implementation. nevertheless, if government departments want to promote research values and integrity, it is imperative that they consider their biases and be aware of the relevance and utility of research-based information to planning and policy decisions. we conclude that the political climate plays a critical role in influencing how research for government should be conducted and the results be produced, placing intense pressure on researchers as they continuously question their values to ensure that they comply with research ethics and their institutional research policies. the pressure is likely to seriously constrain the dialogue between government as client and the researchers. jansen (2003) notes the complexity of conducting such research, which may become a reactionary force sustaining the status quo rather than having a reforming influence. thus, it is essential that closer linkages between researchers and government policymakers be developed, as this may also facilitate researchers’ understanding of the broader social and political systems and the legitimacy and interdependence of various interests involved. as nisbet (1981: 104) contends, “the prime task for researchers is to make sure that the work of research, its nature and function, its potential and its inevitable limitation, is better understood by those who have the responsibility of decision and action”. it is also significant, as weiss (1979) aptly mentions, that social scientists should pay attention to the imperatives of policymaking systems and consider soberly what they can do, not necessarily to increase the use of research in absolute terms, but to improve the contribution that it makes to the wisdom of social policy. lastly, we concur with waardenburg (2001) that there is no one simple answer as to what exactly constitutes the utilisation of research results. it is diko & bantwini research politics: some issues in conducting research for government as a client 25 not a logical linear process leading from fundamental research, through fundamentalstrategic and applied research to the dissemination of results. references brownson rc, royer c, ewing r & mcbride td 2006. researchers and policymakers travel in parallel universes. american journal of preventive medicine, 30(2) 164-172. chisholm l 2002. continuity and change in education policy research and borrowing in south africa. in p kallaway (ed), the history of education under apartheid 1948-1994. new york: peter lang. chisholm l & morrow s 2007. government, universities and the hsrc: a perspective on the past and present. transformation, critical perspectives on southern africa 63, 45-67. cloete n & muller j 1991. human sciences research council incorporated (pty) ltd: social science research, markets and accountability in south africa. in j jansen (ed), knowledge and power in south africa: critical perspectives across the disciplines. johannesburg: skotaville. crossley m & holmes k 2001. challenges for educational research: international development, partnerships and capacity building in small states. oxford review of education, 27(3): 395-409. department of science and technology (dst) 2002. south africa’s national research and development strategy. pretoria: government of the republic of south africa fleisch b 1995. social scientists as policy makers: e.g. malherbe and the national bureau for educational and social research, 1929-1943. journal of southern african studies, 21(3): 349-372. gibbons p, zammit c, youngentob k, possingham hp, lindenmayer db, bekessy s, burgman m, colyvan m, considine m, felton a, hobbs rj, hurley k, mcalpine c, mccarthy ma, moore j, robinson d, salt d & wintle b 2008. some practical suggestions for improving engagement between researchers and policy-makers in natural resource management. ecological management & restoration, 9(3), 182-186. human sciences research council (hsrc) 2003. institutional review. cape town: hsrc press. jansen j 2003. can research inform education policy in developing countries? a south african experience. international journal of education development, 23, 85-95. kruss g 2005. harnessing innovation potential? industry and higher education, 19(2): 131-142. letseka m 2005. government incentivization of partnerships in south africa. industry and higher education, 9(2): 161-168. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 26 mertens dm 1998. research methods in education and psychology: integrating diversity with quantitative and qualitative approaches. thousand oaks, ca: sage publications. nisbet j 1981. the impact of research on policy and practice in education. international review of education, 27(2): 101-104. shisana o & simbayi l 2002. nelson mandela/hsrc study of hiv/aids: south african national hiv prevalence, behavioural risks and mass media. household survey. cape town: hsrc press. smit b 2003. can qualitative research inform policy implementation? evidence and argument from a developing country context. forum: qualitative social research, 4: art. 6. retrieved from http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0114fqs030363 on 6 june 2010. soobrayan v 2003. ethics, truth and politics in constructivist qualitative research. westminster studies in education, 26(2): 107-123. trostle j, bronfman m & langer a 1999. how do researchers influence decisionmakers? case studies of mexican policies. health policy and planning, 14(2): 103-114. waardenburg g 2001. the utilization of research results at the ministry of foreign affairs: point of departure. in netherlands development assistance research council (ed), utilization of research for development cooperation: linking knowledge production to development policy and practice. rawoo: netherlands development assistance research council. the hague. webster e 1991. servants of apartheid. in j rex (ed), apartheid and social research. paris: unesco. weiss ch 1979. the many meanings of research utilization. public administration review, 39(5): 426-431. white c 1992. can the hsrc join in the future? transformation, 18: 22-34. pie32(3) book.indb perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 50 successful students’ negotiation of township schooling in contemporary south africa rochelle kapp; elmi badenhorst; bongi bangeni; tracy s. craig; viki janse van rensburg; kate le roux; robert prince; june pym & ermien van pletzen. this article draws on data from a larger longitudinal qualitative case study which is tracking the progress of students over the course of their undergraduate degrees at a south african university. for this paper, we used background questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with 62 first-year students from working-class, township schools who were first registered for extended degree programmes in 2009. the article draws on post-structuralist theory on learning and identity to describe and analyse the participants’ perspectives on how they negotiated their high school contexts. we analyse the subject positions in which participants invested, as well as how they negotiated their way through social networks and used resources. our data illustrate the ways in which students had to carry the burden of negotiating rochelle kapp school of education, university of cape town e-mail: rochelle.kapp@uct. ac.za tel: 021 650 4891 elmi badenhorst human biology, university of cape town e-mail: elmi.badenhorst@ uct.ac.za tel: 021 406 6336 bongi bangeni academic development programme, university of cape town e-mail: abongwe.bangeni@ uct.ac.za tel: 021 650 5040 tracy s. craig academic development programme, university of cape town e-mail: tracy.craig@uct.ac.za tel: 021 650 5973 viki janse van rensburg education development unit, health sciences, university of cape town e-mail: viki. jansevanrensburg@uct.ac.za tel: 021 406 6241 kate le roux academic development programme, university of cape town e-mail: kate.leroux@uct. ac.za tel: 021 650 3707 robert prince academic development programme, university of cape town e-mail: robert.prince@uct. ac.za tel: 021 650 5833 june pym academic development programme, university of cape town e-mail: june.pym@uct.ac.za tel: 021 650 3866 ermien van pletzen academic development programme, university of cape town e-mail: ermien.vanpletzen@ uct.ac.za tel: 021 650 5054 successful students’ negotiation of township schooling in contemporary south africa 51 their way through home, school and neighbourhood spaces that were generally not conducive to learning. nevertheless, participants consciously positioned themselves as agents. they were resilient, motivated and took highly strategic adult decisions about their learning. we argue that a focus on how successful students negotiate their environments challenges the pathologising paradigm of “disadvantage” that characterises research and debates in higher education. it also offers an additional lens for admissions processes and for providing appropriate intervention strategies in the tertiary setting. keywords: working-class township schooling; disadvantage; agency; identity; schooluniversity transition. introduction this article analyses black,1 first-year university students’ perspectives on how they negotiated their working-class, township school contexts. education commentators agree that south africa effectively has two school systems with educational outcomes which still correspond to racial outcomes (soudien, 2007). spaull (2013: 6) illustrates that “the smaller, better performing system accommodates the wealthiest 20-25 per cent of pupils who achieve much higher scores than the larger system which caters to the poorest 75-80 per cent of pupils”. his report shows that 50 out of every 100 pupils that start grade 1, will drop out before grade 12, 40 will pass the national senior certificate examination and 12 will qualify for university. research by che (2013: 41) indicates that the participation rates for “african” and “coloured” students are “persistently very low” (14% in 2011), and generally under a quarter of that of white students. while there has been a great deal of theorisation about education in south africa, recent studies of working-class township youth have pointed out that there has been relatively little attention paid to how young people interpret their school and home contexts and take decisions or action (bray, gooskens, moses, kahn & seekings, 2010). luckett and luckett (2009: 469) argue that individual agency tends to be “dissolved” in learning theories that prioritise cognition, as well as theories on situated learning. in post-apartheid south africa, black youth are often described as failures or victims, characterised in terms of their disadvantage as the “lost generation”, “disadvantaged” and “marginalised” (see swartz, 2009: 13). swartz (2009) and a number of recent researchers (see marshall & case, 2010; fataar, 2010; janse van rensburg, 2011) have pointed out that labels such as these have the effect of stereotyping and thereby reifying identity. while there is consensus that students’ social backgrounds heavily influence success in school and their access to necessary resources, recent post-structuralist theory has emphasised the complex interplay of structure and agency in the educational process and has shown that the discursive practices of schooling are perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 52 powerful, but not necessarily overdetermining. theorists such as thomson (2009: 154) argue that individual lives are both “constrained” and “agentic”. here, agency is understood as an individual’s capacity to make conscious choices and to act and improvise in response to particular situations (giddens, 1993; holland, lachicotte, skinner & cain, 1998). in this reasoning, educational success and failure are influenced by “structures of opportunity” as well as individual motivation, effort and ability to reflect at a meta-level (christie, 2008: 8; mann, 2008; luckett & luckett, 2009). this paper argues that south african higher education institutions have tended to conceptualise students’ backgrounds in fairly unnuanced, homogenised and often deficit ways, thus overlooking individuals and the psycho-social resources that play a role in enabling them to obtain entry into higher education. the limited pool of black, working-class students who do gain access to higher education comprise the top achievers in township schools and are generally the first generation at university. we need to ask ourselves how it is that these students persist and succeed at school despite coming from social backgrounds that do not seem to be conducive to learning. we need to understand how young people interpret their social worlds by trying to understand the subject positions in which they have invested, as well as how they negotiate their way through social networks and how they use “socially and discursively available resources” (thomson, 2009: 160). we make this argument based on data from a study of the school to university transition at a relatively elite south african university. in doing so, we are continuing a conversation started by reay, crozier and clayton (2009) and marshall and case (2010) who argue that the coping strategies developed in a “disadvantaged” social background could form useful resources for succeeding in higher education. we do not wish to romanticise working-class experience; our research attempts to look beyond a documentation of what resources are available to students from workingclass backgrounds. we argue that a focus on how successful students negotiate their environments challenges the pathologising paradigm of disadvantage and failure. it also offers an additional lens for analysing potential in admissions processes and for providing appropriate intervention strategies in the tertiary setting. methodology this article draws on data from a larger longitudinal qualitative case study which is tracking the progress of 100 students over the course of their undergraduate degrees. for this article, we analysed background questionnaires and semi-structured interviews with 62 first-year students who were registered for extended degree programmes2 in the faculties of commerce, engineering and the built environment, health sciences, humanities and science. the data were collected in students’ first semester of study in 2009. although our data include students who have attended well-resourced schools outside of working-class townships, for the purposes of this paper, we have focused on students who were raised and schooled in township successful students’ negotiation of township schooling in contemporary south africa 53 schools. they formed part of the first cohort of grade 12 learners who wrote the new national senior certificate (nsc) based on the principles of outcomes-based education. importantly, they form part of a generation who have grown up and been educated in post-apartheid south africa. this is significant in terms of how they constructed their learning identities. the data on which this article is based were collected in the participants’ first year of university. students were asked to describe their home, neighbourhood and school backgrounds, how they used resources and how they positioned themselves within these contexts. although the students’ trajectories are individual, nuanced and sometimes contradictory, for the purpose of this paper, we have focused on content analysis of general patterns, and have signalled instances where we discuss exceptional or extreme cases. analytical induction was used to uncover categories and themes within the set of interview data. we assigned categories by clustering similar ideas and then assigning themes to the data. themes can be described as unifying concepts that emerge from the data to provide general insights (boyatzis, 1998; ryan & bernard, 2003). the background questionnaires were used to compare and crosscheck information in the interviews. our research does not assume that we can read off participants’ identities from the interviews or establish an essential truth. alongside other post-structuralist theorists, we are mindful of the positions from which students construct their pasts in the interviews: their present contexts as first-year students exist because they have had successful pasts (see herrington & curtis, 2000; sfard & prusak, 2005). the students were recognised by others as successful within the discourse of schooling in a particular time and place. they were also accepted into a relatively elite university. their acceptance turned out to be conditional, however, in that they were placed on extended degree programmes. one expects that in the interview process they would be engaged in composing and narrating as they reviewed their pasts in the light of their present contexts and their projection of their possible futures. we are interested in the meanings that the participants attributed to their contexts; how they conceptualise their negotiation of structural constraints; how they wished to be viewed and how they positioned themselves. in the words of holland et al. (1998: 3): “people tell others who they are, but even more importantly, they tell themselves...” we are interested in the “activity of identifying [within participants’ narratives] rather than its end product” (sfard & prusak, 2005: 17). perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 54 students’ perceptions of their home, neighbourhood and school contexts the participants in our study were generally raised in single-income, single-parent contexts by women (63%), usually their mothers and/or their grandmothers. there is a pattern of fluidity as participants moved between a parent and a relative’s home as family circumstances changed, often resulting in a change of schools and neighbourhood. interestingly, students seldom foregrounded their family situations as unusual. michela,3 whose father passed away when she was five years old, said: “i had a normal childhood, happy, no problems really”. indeed, in the national context, nuclear family households are not the norm. a study by holborn and eddy (2011) reports that, in 2008, 40% of children were living with their mother only; 2.8% with their father only, and 22.6% with neither of their biological parents. bray et al. (2010) describe the ways in which the children in their study of two working-class communities are made vulnerable by domestic fluidity and living without parents for extended periods. the implication of their household circumstances meant that parents and caregivers were relatively uninvolved in the participants’ schooling, and the decision to apply to university was often serendipitous, taken independently from their parents (see also lubben, davidowitz, buffler, allie & scott, 2010). roshni, who grew up 23 km from the university, had never heard of the place until grade 12 when a friend invited her to visit on an open day for prospective students. like most participants, there was no expectation that she would do more than obtain a high school education: ... the norm is after school you go work in a factory, after school you go work in a shop. participants tended to describe their neighbourhood environments as violent and frequently mentioned that they were glad to be in the relatively safe environment of the university. for example, luvuyo said: ... you will find that there are taverns around and ... people are passing by the streets, they are drunk … so the environment is not actually quiet to study … you have to switch the lights off because you may hear a gunshot and then you will never know what will happen. while many participants articulated the fear associated with their neighbourhoods, they also expressed a strong sense of affinity and belonging in relation to their home environments, often compared to their feelings of alienation within the university and its neighbourhood. this is expressed in the “us” and “they” pronouns in mark’s description of his neighbourhood: ja, it’s one of the roughest townships, there is a lot of violence in there, but it depends on how you look at it. for example, if you take someone from a suburb and you put them in umlazi, they will feel like they are in hell but for us who successful students’ negotiation of township schooling in contemporary south africa 55 grew up in umlazi, we got used to it ... but besides the violence and crime, it’s a good place to be because like you interact with most people there, you know almost all your neighbours and you have a lot of friends there, so it’s quite a good place and a bad place at the same time. schools varied quite widely in terms of physical resources. students frequently reported that basic resources had been allocated, but were subsequently broken or stolen.4 resources such as libraries and computers were underor not utilised and, in one case, textbooks and resources were allocated based on teachers’ assessment of students’ abilities. vuyokazi’s description of his school was typical: ... we would go [to computer class] once a month because there were few computers … we had to share the textbook and the classes were so overcrowded that sometimes if you come in late in class, you don’t have a desk and a chair to sit on … the windows were broken … some classes did not have doors and sometimes there were no boards … in like 2007 … there was a break-in, so … when we came in the following day there were no computers in our school. students’ descriptions of their teachers were complex and contradictory. their repeated refrain was that their teachers had “tried”. teachers were often positioned as victims of their circumstances, who had worked in solidarity with their students to enable them to overcome the barriers to learning in the environment, as in the following examples: teachers, ja, teachers, ja, they were trying, some of them they were trying but … there was nothing that they can do because there were no facilities (phila). they were good, they were good, they were trying to support, giving us work, allowing us to think critically, ja, by giving us researches and programmes ... (zinhle) while her descriptions of her teachers indicated that she had felt supported by them in the school setting, zinhle also described how her teachers had actively discouraged her from applying to the university: “they just told me that you are not going to make it”. like most other participants, her descriptions of the differences between how she was taught at school compared to university suggested significant problems that go well beyond a lack of resources. it seemed that whole sections of curricula were not taught or taught very partially (in the case of chemistry, mostly without laboratories). students such as zinhle, who spoke of teachers’ attempts to teach critical engagement, also spoke of the impossibility of applying outcomes-based education in a context with large classes and without appropriate resources such as access to the internet. in two cases, students took on the role of teachers – one student tutored his fellow students in mathematics on saturdays and another taught chemistry for four months at his high school (while in grade 12) as there was no qualified person in that post. despite outcomes-based curricula, for the most part, teaching and learning still seemed to centre on rote learning. tebogo provided a telling characterisation of school mathematics as selecting and substituting into a formula: perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 56 in school you just put in the formula, you just choose the right formula and put in the values, you got the answer ... so i was used to that school mentality, that if i study, if i memorise most of the things then i’ll pass … all participants described how they learnt in a test-driven, superficial manner which focused on getting the gist. fuad spoke of how “you didn’t really have to understand what you are reading because they didn’t expect that of you actually”. it is significant that participants’ descriptions of learning at school were nearly always framed in terms of “passing”. students often made a distinction between learning to understand at university and high school where “i was learning to pass” (zinhle). in tebogo’s words, “i was used to that school mentality, that if i study, if i memorise most of the things then i’ll pass”. this notion of a school culture which emphasised surface learning and “passing” contrasted to students’ own expressions of passion and excitement about their subject areas. for example, a number of students spoke of their “love” for mathematics or their enjoyment of literature and drama. students’ negotiation of schooling one of the most striking features in the data is the extent to which participants described their learning environments as dysfunctional, in isaac’s words “out of order” and in luvuyo’s “negative”. luvuyo described how many students would drop out of school because of pregnancy or because of involvement in crime. he painted a vivid picture of the apathy, insecurity, ill-discipline and violence that characterised his school experiences: they [fellow students] want to finish grade 12, it doesn’t matter if they fail or pass as long as they are done with high school. ja, so the majority is ... just going to school for the sake of going to school, so it is actually negative in some way because you will find out they are not well disciplined … they doubt their abilities in terms of passing, for example, when i used to ask … fellow learners “how do you think you are going to pass this year?”, in march, and then they will say “no, i don’t know, we’ll see”. with that kind of an attitude it’s more or less certain that you won’t pass because you are not sure about yourself … the meta-level discourse about self-efficiency and personal growth in this quotation is evident in many students’ narratives. the “can do” attitude it reflects has been described in a number of recent studies on youth identity (thompson, 2009: 1; see also herrington & curtis, 2000; marshall & case, 2010). it is significant that, throughout his interview, luvuyo made a clear distinction between the general mindset (“they”) and his own sense of the value of self-belief and the need to be an agent of one’s success. in the south african context, bray et al. (2010: 252) write that: … in contexts where education is highly venerated, there is considerable symbolic, social and emotional value in adolescents maintaining a discourse that divides the world between those who are ‘on the right track’ and those who are not. successful students’ negotiation of township schooling in contemporary south africa 57 they argue that young people can often achieve a sense of fulfilment and bolstering of self-esteem by investing in such discourses. while a number of participants described themselves as “popular” at school, there are many examples where students appeared to distance themselves from their peers. in senzo’s words: i didn’t mind whatever people were saying about me as long as i know who i am … i just forget everything they are saying and focus on my life. philile was covert in his approach: ... when they are disruptive, ja, i may just laugh there in the background but i know that what i’m being taught is in my brain, i’m going to learn it ... the participants generally constructed themselves as hard workers, as people who do not give up. sibabalwe said: “i’m a fighter, i can say i’m a fighter, fighting student”. some students seemed to have worked to the exclusion of a social life, sport and dating. participants deliberately sought out peers who were similarly serious students and often formed study groups. some spoke of placing themselves near the front of the classroom, where, in the words of josephine, other students would not be “in your face” and where it would be quieter and easier to connect to teachers who would otherwise not notice them. in phiwe’s words: ... in my school it was like if you determined, if you have courage, teachers were like helping you to like pass, pass and you would pass with flying colours … if you were like discouraged and de-motivated and not feeling like studying and you were not understanding the work and like you were failing your subjects you would go down the drain, it was like they moving with the movers. if you left behind, then you left behind, no one is going to care for you, no one is going to come and ask. this notion of teachers “moving with the movers” is a common refrain in the townships alongside the refrain that “teachers go with the students who are going”. kapp (2004) describes how the township teachers in her study coped with large, undisciplined classes by connecting to the students who were willing to learn, usually situated at the front of the classrooms. the notion seems to be that teachers will work with students who are self-driven and/or talented and have the potential for mobility beyond the confines of the township. this approach meant that many participants achieved validation from their teachers. walker (2006: 7) writes, “processes of learning and agentic identity formation are intrinsically connected with the process of recognition. by receiving recognition from (significant) others, one achieves a confident and positive identity”. at the same time, participants such as mdudusi had worked out at an early stage that they could not rely on teachers: perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 58 i never depended on the teacher or what the teacher does because sometimes our teachers never came to classes so at the end of the day they are not the ones going to write the exams … the overwhelming trope in the data is that the classroom was not a place for joint construction of knowledge. serious learning took place outside of the classroom. the students consciously sought out safe spaces to concentrate, in one case, by staying at home during school time to study (with the knowledge of teachers), in another, by regularly staying at a friend’s house overnight. participants’ strong sense of taking control and directing their own futures was often fostered by a source outside of schooling. in the wake of difficulty, many students had turned to religion as an enabling framework that allowed them to “stay positive”. religion seemed to act as a “sponsor” for their actions by offering a social identity which facilitated security, connection and agency, as well as a discourse of personal growth (herrington & curtis, 2000: 369; see also swartz, 2009; fataar, 2010; bray et al., 2010). students also found community organisations with specialised programmes; extra classes at other schools and fellow students from “multi-racial” schools. these sources provided them with alternative, generative ways of “sayingdoing-being-valuing-believing” (gee, 1990: 142) that countered the “negative” discourses that often characterised their schooling. together with the fact that they had achieved at school, these discourses seemed to be the source of their sense of constructing future roles, careers and identities for themselves outside of the township. luvuyo’s case illustrates this point very well. despite being a leader figure (president of the student representative council) at his school, luvuyo described how he had to distance himself (both mentally and physically) from school and from township culture in order to succeed. his particular coping mechanism was to seek “positive” stimulation and to find resources outside of the township through a range of workshops organised by community organisations: …i didn’t consider myself as a person who was living in this environment, although physically i was living there but my mind was not in that level of that environment because i related to outside things, to outside environments, so that’s why i coped, because i didn’t associate myself with the certain people that had this kind of behaviour and i always associated myself with people who would think positive … i will go to school, then maybe go to a workshop or go to a meeting in some place, so my attitude was always, even though i lived there physically but mentally i’m not there, i don’t live in that environment. even though luvuyo was struggling within media studies at university, he expressed confidence in a future career as a film maker and attributed his confidence to the skills, connections and meta-knowledge he had built up in these organisations: it helped me a lot because when you are living in a place and then you go out, you meet new people, then your mind will be opened with a lot of things ... your mind will absorb more things that you can apply in your subjects because ... it helped me in terms of my english, which is the english that i didn’t actually learn from school, but i learnt it from the outside, how to speak it by networking with the different people ... successful students’ negotiation of township schooling in contemporary south africa 59 conclusion this article has attempted to illustrate the ways in which a group of successful students from working-class backgrounds made sense of their environments, positioned themselves and used resources. our data illustrate the ways in which students consciously positioned themselves as agents. the students had to carry the burden of negotiating their way through spaces that were not necessarily conducive to learning. they were resilient, took strategic adult decisions and were excited about their learning. they (literally) placed themselves in learning positions, invested in subject positions as hard workers and overtly and covertly distanced themselves from places and people that they perceived to be “out of order”. their interview comments reflect perspicuity and insight into their contexts and relatively high degrees of self-awareness and reflection. despite the harshness of their living and learning environments, growing up in the “new” south africa with its promise of opportunity, together with their local status as high achievers, gave them a confident sense of their futures. they were critical of dominant discourses and when their environments did not provide appropriate support and resources, they sought “sponsoring” discourses which would provide enabling frameworks. these are all qualities and dispositions which are valued within the higher education context. nevertheless, as many studies have shown, the superficial learning practices (e.g. rote learning or reading superficially) within such contexts are inappropriate for the higher education context (see for example slonimsky & shalem, 2004; van schalkwyk, 2007). rather than constructing students in pathologising, deficit terms, the challenge for higher education institutions is to work out how to harness students’ agency, reflexivity and motivation in appropriate ways. understanding students’ explanations of experiences and self provides a starting point for facilitating situated academic practices and providing alternative learning models in order to facilitate the academic, linguistic and social transition from school to university in appropriate ways. endnotes the authors are all involved in educational development work at the university of cape town. they are also members of the longitudinal research project described in the article. acknowledgements funding from the andrew w. mellon foundation is gratefully acknowledged. we wish to thank bonani dube, zulpha geyer and judy sacks for conducting the interviews and for research assistance. perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 60 references bray r, gooskens i, moses s, kahn l & seekings j 2010. growing up in the new south africa: childhood and adolescence in post-apartheid cape town. cape town: human sciences research council press. boyatzis r 1998. transforming qualitative information. thousand oaks, ca: sage. christie p 2008. changing schools in south africa: opening the doors of learning. south africa: heinemann. council on higher education 2013. a proposal for undergraduate curriculum reform in south africa: the case for a flexible curriculum structure. retrieved on 28 november 2013 from http://www.che.ac.za/sites/default/files/publications/. fataar a 2010. youth self-formation and the ‘capacity to aspire’: the itinerant ‘schooled career’ of fuzile ali across post-apartheid space. perspectives in education, 28: 34-45. gee j 1990. social linguistics and literacies: ideology in discourses. london: falmer press. giddens a 1993. new rules of sociological method. stanford: stanford university press. herrington a & curtis m 2000. persons in process: four stories of writing and personal development in college. urbana: national council of teachers of english. holborn l & eddy g 2011. first steps to healing the south african family. south african institute of race relations. retrieved on 11 august 2012 from http:// cloud1.gdnet.org. holland d, lachicotte w, skinner d & cain c 1998. identity and agency in cultural worlds. cambridge, mass.: harvard university press. janse van rensburg v 2011. doing, being and becoming a first year occupational therapy student. south african journal of occupational therapy, 41: 8-12. kapp r 2004. ‘reading on the line’: an analysis of literacy practices in esl classes in a south african township school. language and education, 8: 246-263. lubben f, davidowitz b, buffler a, allie s & scott i 2010. factors influencing access students’ persistence in an undergraduate programme: a south african case study. international journal of educational development, 30: 351-358. luckett k & luckett t 2009. the development of agency in first generation learners in higher education: a social realist analysis. teaching in higher education, 14: 469-481. mann s 2008. study, power and the university. maidenhead: open university press. marshall d & case j 2010. rethinking ‘disadvantage’ in higher education: a paradigmatic case study using narrative analysis. studies in higher education, 35: 491-504. reay d, crozier g & clayton j 2009. strangers in paradise? working-class students in elite universities. sociology, 43: 1103-1112. ryan g & bernard h 2003. techniques to identify themes. field methods, 15: 85-109. sfard a & prusak a 2005. telling identities: in search of an analytic tool for investigating learning as a culturally shaped activity. educational researcher, 34: 14-22. successful students’ negotiation of township schooling in contemporary south africa 61 slonimsky l & shalem y 2004. pedagogic responsiveness for academic depth. in h griesel (ed). curriculum responsiveness: case studies in higher education. pretoria: sauvca. soudien c 2007. the ‘a’ factor: coming to terms with the question of legacy in south african education. international journal of educational development, 27: 182193. spaull n 2013. south africa’s education crisis: the quality of education in south africa 1994-201. report commissioned by centre for development enterprise. retrieved on 15 november 2013 from http://www.section27.org.za/wp-content/ uploads/2013/10/spaull-2013-cde-report-south-africas-education-crisis. swartz s 2009. ikasi: the moral ecology of south africa’s township youth. johannesburg: wits university press. thomson r 2009. unfolding lives: youth, gender and change. bristol: the polity press. van schalkwyk sc 2007. crossing discourse boundaries – students’ diverse realities when negotiating entry into knowledge communities. south african journal of higher education, 21: 954-968. walker m 2006. identity, learning and agency in higher education. paper presented in the interdisciplinary colloquium identity and learning, university of stellenbosch and university of cape town. (endnotes) 1 in this paper we use the category “black” inclusively to refer to “african”, “coloured” and “indian” students. 2 these are specialised, disciplinary-based degree programmes designed for students who do not qualify for admission to mainstream degrees. the programmes typically take one year longer than mainstream programmes. 3 all names used are pseudonyms. 4 in a minority of cases, female students had attended relatively well-resourced church schools with computers, laboratories and libraries, but those resources were hardly utilised because of a lack of expertise among the teachers, or they were locked away, putatively, for safety reasons. in two cases, the internet and cellphones were forbidden which, ironically, restricted students’ ability to fulfil the research requirements of the new outcomes-based curriculum. 39 research article 2022 40(1): 39-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) across continents: a comparison of african and australian academics’ online preparedness abstract the covid-19 pandemic has disrupted higher education across the globe, in particular the shift from face-to-face teaching and assessment, as well as interaction with students. in 2020, an online survey was distributed to african and australian higher education academics to gather insights into academics’ transformation of educational practices during the early stages of the covid-19 pandemic. in particular it focused on the effects on the quality of teaching, learning and assessment. the survey questions investigated the comparison of the use of teaching and assessment technologies prior to, and during the covid-19 pandemic; academics’ experiences with the sudden shift to workfrom-home (wfh) arrangements and quality assurance measures for digital technologies. the sample included 71 academics across 12 australian universities/tertiary institutions and 278 academics across 21 african higher education institutions. this study identified that while many australian academics had prior experience and training in online/blended delivery, african academics, despite not having formal training in digital pedagogy, rated themselves as more than average in their ability to adopt technology for the online environment, just as the australian cohort had. the most effective online tools adopted during the crisis in the african region were zoom and whatsapp while in the australian region the learning management system (lms) was the most popular. the major factors that affected african and australian students’ ability to engage online included lack of access to connectivity and devices, technological competency and emotional and social factors. the results suggest that the predominant challenges faced by students as reported by academics across both continents in the “forced” remote work environment other than general anxiety about covid-19 were social isolation (aguilera-hermida, 2020), connectivity for their students and the lack of a balanced work life (kotteeswari & sharief, 2014; oliveira et al., 2021). this study has implications on institutions’ readiness in terms of capacity building for academic staff, infrastructure and support during digital delivery of courses. keywords: academic readiness, digital capital, transition, worklife-balance, online teaching 1. introduction the academic world has undergone significant upheaval during the global pandemic known as covid-19. with this author: dr upasana g singh1 prof rashmi watson2 prof chenicheri sid nair3 affiliation: 1university of kwazulu-natal, south africa 2university of western australia, australia 3victorian institute of technology, australia & university of kwazulu-natal, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i1.3 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(1): 39-61 published: 04 march 2022 received: 10 august 2021 accepted: 01 december 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9943-011x http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2775-0701 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 402022 40(1): 40-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) upheaval, universities have had to change the way they deliver their teaching and learning. regulators, policymakers and even students are now focused on digital deliveries. this suggests that the emphasis may be pivoting more towards digital teaching and learning because of the outcome of the covid-19 pandemic. the global phenomenon raises numerous questions in terms of higher education adaptability and the readiness of the sector to deliver online teaching and learning in such a crisis. the rapid changes have, without doubt, influenced the way that education is delivered and the pedagogical readiness of academics in the delivery and design of lessons including the assessments that are administered to gauge understanding (pokhrel & chhetri, 2021). in addition, technological readiness of institutions and staff skills to deal with the “tools of the digital trade” to handle this change are critical factors for effective delivery and to ensure effective learning continues through monitoring of student participation and patterns of their engagement to inform academics how to scaffold learning effectively (vonderwell & zachariah, 2014). higher education institutions (heis) implement e-learning in various configurations, which are influenced by several factors. one of the most important factors is the “training of staff” at these heis. an example of this is where an institution of one of the authors of this paper recognised this shortfall in their staff and implemented a series of teaching and learning workshops in online tools to enable efficient delivery of their unit. “while institutions, academics and students are trying to wade through unfamiliar waters, the initiatives undertaken … to support both academics and students are commendable. within a short period of just five weeks, the foundations for the transition from face-to-face to online remote teaching, learning, and assessment, have been laid” (singh, 2020). to ensure quality assurance and success of e-learning programmes, it is essential to determine the digital capital afforded by individuals and by the higher education institution. according to ragnedda 2018:1) “digital capital is the accumulation of digital competencies and technologies” and includes a range of components including equipment, connectivity, time spent online, support and training, information and literacy, communication and collaboration, content-creation, safety and problem-solving. ragnedda (2018) asserts that the digital capital influences the digital divide and that a number of factors will affect an individual’s digital capital including gender, income, educational level and urban versus rural users (townsend et al., 2013). the focus of the research inquiry is around the level of preparedness of academics to this change in order to support online teaching and learning in full or partial blended models due to the covid-19 pandemic forcing social isolation. moving to online teaching and learning requires an understanding of the differences in pedagogical approaches of quality. pedagogy defined by daniela (2019) refers to a branch of science on how to provide learning. the pedagogy in teaching face-to-face, blended or fully online needs to be adapted accordingly, however, key elements remain unchanged such as learning as acquisition, participation and as knowledge creation (hong & sullivan, 2009). this particular study looks at the preparedness of academics in terms of adapting to different approaches to quality online teaching and infrastructure readiness in a developed and developing continent to ascertain similarities of factors or differences that were faced during this period of delivery. in particular, the research looked at understanding the first-hand experiences, as well as adaptation and reworking of teaching policies that occurred in australia and south africa, during the early stages of the covid-pandemic. through this comparison we highlight the journey of academics in a developed region such as australia and a developing region such as africa. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2347631120983481 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2347631120983481 412022 40(1): 41-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 singh, watson & nair a comparison of african and australian academics’ online preparedness 2. literature review 2.1 adapting to online learning and teaching since 2020, higher education institutions, along with other educational sectors, have had to pivot quickly to online learning, teaching and assessment practices, regardless of readiness and preparedness. the research literature since 2020 on the broad topic of the “covid-19 impact on higher education” has been growing rapidly in the past two years identifying close to 26 thousand results via a search engine (i.e. google scholar). the full quality of the papers is not known or reported in this paper. early literature highlights the main challenge being faced by students as their own mental attitude and mindset towards working from home during the self-isolation period (bao, 2020). an extensive literature review on the transition to e-learning includes strategies for successful implementation, such as: supporting academics through training, creating online learning communities and an incorporation of extending more blended components to didactic models of face-to-face teaching (turnbull, chugh & luck, 2021). jang and tsai (2013) refer to interrelated teaching knowledge: pedagogy, content and technology as a powerful tool for contemporary educators. the literature pre-covid-19 was supportive of the need for the higher education sector to rapidly adapt to technology even though they may have been viewed as challenging and expensive (glasby, 2015), and that many faculty members may not feel ready to teach online (downing & dyment, 2013; lichoro, 2015). prior to the covid-19 pandemic, few higher education institutions offered online delivery, and many were not prepared for the transition (archibald et al., 2019; leung & sharma, 2020). four areas are seen as critical to academic readiness for online learning including: knowledge, importance (attitude), readiness and confidence (ability) (martin, budhrani & wang, 2019). the rapid move meant that there was an immediate response financially and physically to adopt and adapt to technology, including new pedagogical challenges (blewett 2016), and infrastructure capacity and capabilities. many universities did not have online capabilities, resources or academic capacity to transition to the sudden online delivery. usual adaptations to online learning modes require academics to prepare well in advance and up to six to nine months prior to delivery (hodges et al., 2020). badrul khan’s e-learning framework (singh & nair, 2021; khan, 2021) offers eight dimensions for consideration when embedding digital technology, namely: institutional, pedagogical, technological, interface design, evaluation, management, resource support and ethics. each of these dimensions in the framework represents a category of issues that need to be addressed in order to create a meaningful learning experience. as the world moves forward with the covid-19 pandemic, higher education institutions will need to continue to support staff appropriately for online teaching with quality professional development, resourcing and technical support, and at the institutional level with leadership, infrastructure and evaluation (stone & springer, 2019). a combination of regular and timely communication between academics and students, along with an interactive and actively engaging course design, online students can be more effectively engaged, supported and encouraged to persist within the online learning environment (stone & springer, 2019). 2.2 technologies utilised in online teaching and assessment transitioning to teaching in the online space rather than the traditional face-to-face model requires a high level of effort in the design and delivery to ensure motivation, engagement http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 422022 40(1): 42-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) and an effective change to learner achievement (oliver et al., 2014). there is no one technological tool or approach that can be applied to an entire cohort of students as students also need to be capable and open to the new digital engagement and uptake (bennett, maton & kevin, 2008). the rapid changes in the pedagogical approaches will have varying effects on students’ abilities to interact at the most effective and efficient level. a number of learning management systems (lms) such as blackboard and moodle are readily used in australia and can be designed to inculcate students into what is referred to as “transmissive” pedagogies that do not necessarily allow for creativity, critical thinking and social interactivity (oliver et al., 2014). however, a skilled academic proficient in online teaching can create teaching and learning opportunities that are creative, innovative, interactive and engaging (pokhrel and chhetry, 2021). the importance of maintaining interpersonal communication and interaction between academics and their students has been an important criterion in maintaining quality teaching, learning and assessment (martin et al., 2019; radu et al., 2020; rapanta et al., 2020). as such, a number of other digital technologies using video conferencing tools such as zoom, microsoft teams, whatsapp, blackboard, and moodle to name a few, have been extensively used as a method of synchronous, web-based conferencing to keep students engaged through virtual communication (radu et al., 2020). some noted advantages of using zoom have been identified as rapport, convenience, simplicity and user-friendliness (archibald et al., 2019; radu et al., 2020). the zoom platform had reached 200 million users per day (up 1,900%) by early 2020 (valet, 2020). in one study of the mobile instant messaging application known as “whatsapp” whereby it is free to users to download, send unlimited messages, pictures and videos and any cost is associated with the user’s own data plan and internet access, students reported a high agreement with the app in learning whatever/wherever/whenever and in their own style. overall, it was seen as a useful learning platform (rahmadi, 2020). however, regardless of the technologies used, the research on learner performance outcomes shows that the instructor’s design efforts that address learners’ cognitive and social needs rather than simply the technology itself (oliver et al., 2015) make a positive difference in learning outcomes (rapanta et al., 2020). a meta-analysis of comparative research reported that, on average, students in the online mode performed modestly better than those receiving face-to-face instruction and that a blended approach also included additional learning and pedagogical aspects not received by students in a face-to-face mode (oliver et al., 2014). it also highlights the high level of effort required by academics to ensure quality online pedagogy that the rapid changeover in practice may not have allowed in most higher education institutions in such a short period of adaptation. 2.3 accessibility to the internet digital inequalities existed pre-covid-19 and have been highlighted and exemplified in the covid-19 pandemic period with billions of people in isolation having to access online education (beaunoyer et al., 2020; ragnedda et al., 2018). having online access to technology has become a privileged channel as beaunoyer and colleagues have reported (beaunoyer et al., 2020) for governments, health organisations and major national organisations to communicate messages and recommendations. the digital infrastructure is a key factor in a country’s economy and ability for workflow, imports and exports, and efficient delivery of services to its population (zachreson et al., 2021). the covid-19 pandemic has highlighted the differences between continents, countries and social groups in their accessibility to technology, capacity http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 432022 40(1): 43-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 singh, watson & nair a comparison of african and australian academics’ online preparedness to utilise technologies, digital literacy and competence and engagement across cultural and global contexts (beaunoyer et al., 2020). digital inequality places those who are digitally disadvantaged at greater risk. the ongoing inequalities will only grow with greater and longer remote learning and work practices as covid-19 continues and needs to be addressed and supported by governments globally. digital coverage of 5g networks in sub-saharan africa is at zero per cent whereas in australia it is 75% (telstra, 2021); 4g networks is 53% and internet adoption at 38% (katz, 2020). whilst australians have good access to the internet, the digital divide can also exist depending on income, internet availability and the ability to self-isolate during covid-19. financial security in australia is geographically clustered and concentrated, and occupations with greater income security such as higher education academics were and are able to work from home successfully (zachreson et al., 2021). the implications for educators will depend on their location and their own digital capital to work remotely and in their academic preparedness to manage the transition to online teaching in such a short timeframe. the implications for higher education institutions are in the education and support of their academic workforce in effective online teaching and learning practices that support students and optimise remote learning (martin, 2020). 2.4 working from home working from home (wfh) has become a normalised act across the globe as people are unable to leave home. many academics have worked and are still working most or a portion of their time from home, which has brought with it many adjustments to wfh arrangements. a number of challenges, benefits, sustainability and impact on relationships were reported in the australian wfh context (singh, nair & watson, 2021), outlining the importance of future adaptations to the future of academic work. numerous challenges were outlined including: an increased workload, having to learn new technological skills and managing families at home. australian academics have been generally more negative in the covid-19 pandemic period about wfh. isolation has been identified as a key source of distress, as well as in causing difficulties in communication (westar et al., 2020). in the african context, the key challenge faced by academics was internet access by students, followed by general anxiety (singh & nair, 2021). some of the benefits have been the cost of workspaces and equipment, reduced commuting time and related expenses, and an increased flexibility in working hours. most academics stated they could sustain wfh “indefinitely” with 65% in australia (singh, nair & watson, 2021) and 48% in the african context (singh & nair, 2021). the ongoing wfh arrangements mean that higher education institutions must continue to grow with many new technological investments made by universities to manage wfh and as staff gain proficiency in utilising the technologies (pennington, 2020). 3. theoretical framework the need for a carefully thought-out process for successfully transitioning to online learning is emphasised by badrul khan (2001) who proposes eight dimensions and sub-dimensions in his e-learning framework, see figure 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 442022 40(1): 44-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) figure 1: eight-dimensional e-learning framework (khan, 2001) according to lightfoot (2016), the khan framework considered the factors that affect the successful delivery of e-learning at 3 levels: learner, academic staff and institution. this framework urges institutions to answer the question: “what does it take to provide the best and most meaningful flexible learning environments for learners worldwide?” the institutional dimension is concerned with issues of administrative affairs, academic affairs and student services. the pedagogical dimension of e-learning refers to teaching and learning. the technological dimension of the framework examines issues of technology infrastructure in e-learning environments. the interface design refers to the overall look and feel of e-learning programmes. the management of e-learning refers to the maintenance of the e-learning environment and distribution of related information. the resource support dimension of the framework examines the online support and resources provided in the learning environment. the evaluation dimension explores the assessment of learners and the evaluation of the instruction and learning environment. the ethical considerations of e-learning relate to social and cultural diversity. the study draws mainly on the technology and pedagogical pillars of the e-learning framework by khan (2001) to investigate academics’ preparedness for the involuntary shift to the online space. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 452022 40(1): 45-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 singh, watson & nair a comparison of african and australian academics’ online preparedness 4. methodology this research falls within a larger study on the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on academics at higher education institutions in a number of countries. ethics approval for this overall study was received from the university of kwazulu-natal, south africa, as per protocol reference number hssrec/00001284/2020. an online questionnaire, using a google form, combining qualitative and quantitative questions was developed by aligning the questions to five pillars of the octagonal e-learning framework by khan (2001). the pillars explored in this study were the technology, pedagogy, institution, resource support and ethics pillars. quantitative questions were designed to investigate the usage and adoption of technology for teaching, prior to and during the covid-19 pandemic; while the qualitative questions were designed to capture academics’ perceptions, feedback and experiences with the transition to online teaching and assessment. the focus of this paper is comparing african and australian academics’ readiness for the online space. hence the dataset includes academics from both continents – africa and australia. in the african study, selective sampling was adopted to ensure a sufficient range of private and public based institutions, while in the australian study, a combination of selective and random sampling methods helped the researchers achieve this balance of representation. while 45 contact based heis (whom the researchers had access to/were referred to by colleagues) in the african region were invited to participate in this study, gatekeeper consent was received from 21 institutions. thus, in the african study, the online questionnaire was electronically distributed to 9,229 academics at 21 contact-based (7 private and 14 public) higher education institutions in seven african countries, namely: ghana, liberia, mauritius, nigeria, namibia, south africa and zambia. in the australian study, the survey was disseminated through numerous methods including: direct email invitation to academic staff within the universities/institutions, postings on academic forums such as the higher educational research society for australia (herdsa) mailing list and on the researchers’ own linkedin pages, to over 2,500 academics. the final sample achieved in the african study was 278 academics from 21 heis. similarly, the australian sample achieved was 71 academics across 12 australian universities/tertiary institutions. as per the required ethical procedures in south africa, gatekeeper consent was obtained prior to the distribution of the questionnaires in africa and australia. data collection commenced during the early stages of the initial lockdowns experienced on both continents in 2020, at the start of the covid-19 pandemic, and was open for a period of six weeks. the online survey took approximately 15 minutes to complete and was anonymous. while the demographic data were collected identifying the university, role and years of experience, all reporting was anonymous. quantitative data were analysed through statistical analysis using spss, while qualitative data were analysed through thematic analysis. this paper presents the quantitative results. the calculations and interpretation of the statistics in this paper have been verified by a professional statistician. the qualitative aspects will be presented in a subsequent publication. 5. results the current paper focuses on a comparison of africa and australia regarding: • academics’ preferences of technology to support online teaching; • academics’ experiences with the shift to a forced “work-from-home” situation; http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 462022 40(1): 46-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) • quality assurance measures in place during the sudden shift to online teaching and assessment; and • the general impact of the covid-19 pandemic on academics. results of these individual studies have been extracted from the authors’ two publications that emerged from this project (singh & nair, 2021; singh, nair & watson, 2021). 5.1 demographics a total of 349 valid responses were received cumulatively (278: africa, 71: australia) from public (61.9%: africa; 71.9%: australia) and private (38.1%: africa, 28.1%: australia) institutions. the demographic distribution of the respondents is summarised in table 1 below. in the african dataset the majority of the participants (86.3%) were between the ages 31 to 60, while the majority of the participants (59.2%) in the australian dataset were between the ages of 41 to 60. females (58.6%: africa, 64.4%: australia) dominated both studies, with most of the respondents in both studies (95.3%: africa, 97.2%: australia) holding a postgraduate degree. with respect to the academic hierarchy, lecturers (51.4%: africa, 40.8%: australia) held the highest participation rate in both studies, with many (37.4%: africa, 43.7%: australia) participants having experience in academia for more than 16 years. the majority (82.0%: africa, 57.7%: australia) had permanent tenure. table 1: demographics summary variable/categories frequency (percent): africa frequency (percent): australia variable/categories frequency (percent): africa frequency (percent): australia age experience 20-30 19 (6.8%) 4 (5.6%) 1 5 68 (24.5%) 13 (18.3%) 31-40 81 (29.1%) 12 (16.9%) 6 10 62 (22.3%) 12 (16.9%) 41-50 77 (27.7%) 20 (28.2%) 11 15 44 (15.8%) 15 (21.1%) 51-60 82 (29.5%) 22 (31.0%) 16+ 104 (37.4%) 31 (43.7%) >60 19 (6.8%) 13 (18.3%) institution type gender private 8 (38.1) 20 (28.1%) female 163 (58.6%) 45 (63.4%) public 13 (61.9) 51 (71.9%) male 115 (41.4%) 24 (33.8%) rather not say 0 (0%) 2 (2.8%) academic role qualification tutor 4 (1.4%) 4 (5.6%) undergraduate degree 12 (4.3%) 2 (2.8%) lecturer 143 (51.4%) 29 (40.8%) postgraduate degree 265 (95.3%) 69 (97.2%) senior lecturer 57 (20.5%) 17 (23.9%) tenure associate professor 43 (15.5%) 14 (19.7%) permanent 228 (82.0%) 41 (57.7%) full professor 17 (6.1%) 6 (8.5%) contract 50 (18.0%) 30 (42.3%) other 14 (5.0%) 1 (1.4%) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 472022 40(1): 47-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 singh, watson & nair a comparison of african and australian academics’ online preparedness 5.2 adapting to online teaching the study focused on determining the impact that the covid-19 pandemic had on the primary teaching method at each of the institutions – outlining the three dominant types, that is contact based (face-to-face), online learning (no face-to-face), and blended learning. figure 2 shows that there was a clear shift from face-to-face learning (91.7%: africa, 87.3%: australia) and blended learning prior to the covid-19 pandemic (30.2%: africa, 33.8%: australia), to online learning during the covid-19 pandemic (83.5%: africa, 91.5%: australia). figure 2: comparison of primary teaching method adopted results from fisher’s exact test revealed no significant relationship between the type of institution and the use of any of the three teaching approaches investigated prior to or during the covid-19 pandemic. in the australian dataset there is a significant relationship between the type of institution and the use of a blended approach prior to and during the covid-19 pandemic (p<.0005). in australia, a significant proportion of the private institutions did not use a blended approach (preand intra-covid); while, in africa, a significant proportion of public institutions adopted a blended approach prior to the covid-19 pandemic. 5.3 technology adopted to support online teaching and online assessment the study explored the technology and pedagogical pillars of the e-learning framework by badrul khan (2001) through a series of questions that aimed at ascertaining academics’ proficiency in the implementation of technology to support online teaching, learning and assessment. the first section of the questionnaire focused on understanding the difference in technology adoption methods prior to and during the covid-19 pandemic. respondents were asked to rate their proficiency in adopting online teaching methods and online http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 482022 40(1): 48-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) assessment methods using the scale from 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent). a one-sample t-test was applied to test if the average proficiency rating was significantly above or below an average rating of “3”. results showed that proficiency ratings were significantly above average for both teaching methods (mean rating = 3.74, p<.0005: africa, mean rating = 4.15, p<.0005: australia) and assessment methods (mean rating = 3.36, p<.0005: africa, mean rating = 3.85, p<.0005: australia). this indicates that the respondents rated themselves as better than average, tending towards excellent, in their proficiency in adopting technology for teaching and assessment in both studies. respondents also rated themselves as better than average, tending towards excellence (mean rating = 3.32, p<.0005) in their students’ responsiveness to online support. significantly more respondents indicated that they would most likely continue with online learning post the covid-19 pandemic (mean rating = 3.22, p=.001). an independent samples test indicates that in africa, proficiency ratings for adopting online assessment methods in private institutions (mean = 3.96) is significantly higher than in public institutions (mean = 3.30), p=.001. no significant results were identified in the australian dataset when comparing the private and public institutions. the tools adopted by academics to support online teaching, prior to and during the covid-19 pandemic are compared in figure 3 below. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 492022 40(1): 49-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 singh, watson & nair a comparison of african and australian academics’ online preparedness figure 3: comparison of teaching tools adopted as illustrated in figure 3 above, the top five teaching tools adopted by african academics prior to the covid-19 pandemic were moodle tools (51.4%), whatsapp (46%), google tools (28.8%), blackboard tools (28.4%) and skype (27%). in australia, the top five teaching tools adopted prior to the covid-19 pandemic were recorded video lectures (45.1%), moodle tools (42.3%), blackboard tools (36.6%), google tools (29.6%) and recorded audio lectures (28.2%). during the covid-19 pandemic, in africa, zoom topped the list (64.7%), followed by whatsapp (58.3%), recorded video lectures (58.3%), recorded audio lectures (52.9%) and followed finally by moodle tools (50.7%). in australia, during the covid-19 pandemic, zoom topped the list (85.5%), followed by recorded video lectures (69%), microsoft teams (52.1%), blackboard tools (42.3%) and moodle tools (40.8%). a binomial test was conducted to identify if a significant proportion of the sample responded “yes” or “no” to the usage of each of these tools prior to or during the covid-19 pandemic. results suggest that the only tools significantly selected for use in australia were zoom (85%, p<.0005), and recorded video lectures (69%, p=.002). among african academics zoom (65%, p<.0005), recorded video lectures (58%, p=.007) and whatsapp (58%, p=.007) were significantly adopted during the covid-19 pandemic. no significant results were observed for any of the teaching tools prior to the covid-19 pandemic by academics on either continent. other tools adopted on both continents to support their online teaching included ms whiteboard, kahoot, padlet, mentimeter, slido, thinglink, dropbox, polling and youtube private videos. in order to assess if there is a relationship between the type of institution (public or private) and the usage of these teaching tools, pearson’s chi-square test was used. results showed http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 502022 40(1): 50-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) that in australia and africa a significant number of private institutions used moodle for teaching prior to and during the covid-19 pandemic, p<.0005 in both cases. 5.4 communication with, and support for, students during online teaching the study then proceeded to understand how academics were communicating with students during the move to online teaching from figure 4 below, it is noted that african academics perceived that technological factors were the major challenges that students faced – “access to connectivity” (88.5%), “access to devices” (71.9%), and “technology competence” (46.0%). this was followed by the social and emotional factors – “lack of interaction” (52.5%), “fear of the unknown” (41.4%), and “demotivation” (32.4%). in australia, after “access to connectivity” (57.7%), the australian academics highlighted that they perceived the major challenges their students faced were the social and emotional factors – “lack of interaction” (56.3%), “demotivation” (38%), and “fear of the unknown” (35.2%). this was followed by technological factors – “access to devices” (33.8%), “technology competence” (33.8%) and “resistance to change” (23.9%). figure 4: comparison of academic perceptions of challenges faced by students in moving online further statistical analysis through a binomial test showed that a significant number of respondents indicated that african students faced the hurdles of access to connectivity (88%, p<.0005) as well as access to devices (72%, p<.0005). in australia, a significant proportion of the respondents did not select these hurdles. the methods that were adopted by academics to support their students during the covid-19 pandemic are compared in figure 5 below. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 512022 40(1): 51-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 singh, watson & nair a comparison of african and australian academics’ online preparedness 0 20 40 60 80 100 emails online lectures online assessment online tutorials emails through your learning management system (lms) phone no support provided australia africa figure 5: comparison of methods to support students during the covid-19 pandemic in africa, online lectures (76%, p<.0005), online assessment (58%, p=.002) and emails (78%, p<.0005) were all indicated by a significant proportion of the respondents as ways they supported their students. in australia, online lectures (92%, p<.0005), direct emails (90%, p<.0005), online tutorials (87%, p<.0005), online assessment (87%, p<.0005) and emails through lms (70%, p<.0005) were the methods adopted to support students. when academics were asked to rate the students’ responsiveness to the support on a scale from 1 (unresponsive) to 5 (very responsive), the mean rating was 3.83 (africa) and 3.32 (australia) which is significantly higher than the central score of “3” (p<.0005), indicating that academics on both continents believed that their students were more responsive than average. in the same way, the mean rating of the effectiveness of african academics working with their students online, when using a scale of 1 (not at all effective) to 5 (very effective), was 3.04 (africa) and 3.65 (australia), which is also significantly higher than the average score of “3”, indicating a better than average effectiveness, p<.0005. there was a significant indication (mean = 3.22, p =.35) that african academics would continue with online learning post the covid-19 pandemic, while there was no significant indication that australian academics would continue with online learning post the covid-19 pandemic. 5.5 experiences with the shift to a forced “work-from-home” situation the next section of the study investigated the infrastructure and resource support pillars of the khan framework, with particular emphasis on the “forced” work-from-home arrangements adopted during the covid-19 pandemic. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 522022 40(1): 52-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 internet connection for students general anxiety about covid-19 keeping a regular schedule my own internet connectivity disturbance from family members my physical workspace access to technology-based tools to teach effectively social isolation communication with colleagues my own health issues lack of knowledge australia africa figure 6: comparing the challenges faced in the “forced” work-from-home arrangements the predominant challenges faced by african academics in the “forced” work-from-home arrangements during the covid-19 pandemic were “internet connection for students” (69.4%), “general anxiety about covid-19” (40.6%), “keeping a regular schedule” (37.8%), “my own internet connectivity” (36,7%) and “disturbance from family members” (31.7%), as presented in figure 6 above. likewise, the predominant challenges faced by australian academics in the “forced” work-from-home arrangements during the covid-19 pandemic were “general anxiety about covid-19” (32.4%), “communication with colleagues” (32.4%), “internet connection for students” (31.0%), “social isolation” (29.6%) and “disturbance from family members” (29.6%). the results of a binomial test indicated that a significant proportion of african academics experienced the challenge of “internet connection for students” (69.4%, p<.0005). in australia, a significant proportion of the respondents did not indicate any of these challenges. the type of work-from-home (wfh) arrangements that academics adopted for communicating with students and colleagues during the covid-19 pandemic are summarised in figure 7 below. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 532022 40(1): 53-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 singh, watson & nair a comparison of african and australian academics’ online preparedness figure 7: comparison of the wfh communication methods adopted the results of a binomial test indicated that in africa, email (84%) and whatsapp (79%) were significantly adopted for communication with students, p<.0005, while zoom (61%), email (89%) and whatsapp (87%) were significantly adopted for communication with colleagues, p<.0005. in australia, student communication tools were zoom (85.9%), email (84.5%), lms (moodle) (45.1%), lms (blackboard) (39.4%) and microsoft teams (31%). for colleagues, email (85.9%) was the most predominant, followed by zoom (83.1%), microsoft teams (54.9%), moodle (18.3%) and blackboard (11.3%). colleagues and students used zoom and email the most for communication purposes (p<.0005 in each case). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 542022 40(1): 54-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 1 8 8 16 48 8 12 1 3 6 10 63 6 11 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 one week a few weeks a month two months indefinitely not sustainable now other africa australia figure 8: comparing the duration that respondents could sustain their current wfh arrangements results from a chi-square goodness of fit test showed that in africa, a significant number of respondents (n=134, 48.2%) are able to sustain their current wfh arrangements indefinitely, also a significant number of respondents (n=45, 16.2%) are able to sustain their current wfh arrangements for two months, as illustrated in figure 8. in australia, a significant number of respondents (n=45, 63%) are able to sustain their current wfh arrangements indefinitely. while the above section of the study focused on the infrastructure, resource support pillars of the khan framework (khan et al., 2021), the responses also alluded to aspects that need to be addressed in the technology pillar. 5.6 quality assurance during online teaching and assessment the investigation of the ethics pillar was conducted in the third section of this study, which particularly focused on the quality assurance (qa) procedures that were adopted by heis prior to and during the covid-19 pandemic. these are summarised in figure 9. african academics identified the following qa procedures as being adopted more frequently prior to the covid-19 pandemic – “student feedback on delivery” (75.9%), “provide technical support” (67.6%), “provide training in the adoption of tools of lms” (54.0%), “observe lectures” (51.4%) and “provide pedagogical training on delivery” (51.1%). during the covid-19 pandemic the qa procedures shifted to “provide training in the adoption of tools of lms” (73.4%), “provide technical support” (69.4%), “provide pedagogical training on assessment” (50.0%), “student feedback on delivery” (47.5%), “provide pedagogical training on delivery” (45.0%). in australia, the same top three qa procedures were used by a significant proportion of the respondents prior to and during the covid-19 pandemic. these included “provide training in the adoption of tools of lms”, “student feedback on delivery” and “provide technical support”. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 552022 40(1): 55-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 singh, watson & nair a comparison of african and australian academics’ online preparedness 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 content is prepared by a professional… expose students to the pedagogy of the… expose students to the pedagogy of the… observe lectures provide pedagogical training on assessment provide pedagogical training on delivery provide technical support provide training in the adoption of tools of… student feedback on delivery weekly meeting with academics on delivery prior to covid-19 prior to covid-19 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 content is prepared by a professional… expose students to the pedagogy of the… expose students to the pedagogy of the… observe lectures provide pedagogical training on assessment provide pedagogical training on delivery provide technical support provide training in the adoption of tools of… student feedback on delivery weekly meeting with academics on delivery during covid-19 during covid-19 figure 9: comparison of institutional quality assurance procedures while the above section of the study focused on the ethics pillar of the khan framework, the responses also alluded to aspects in the infrastructure, resource support, technology and pedagogy pillars that need to be addressed. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 562022 40(1): 56-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 5.7 perceptions on the future shape of heis the chi-square analysis showed that a significant number of respondents in africa and australia (n=209, 75%: africa), (n=45, 63%: australia) perceive that their institution will adopt blended learning post the covid-19 pandemic, as shown in figure 10 below. 10,4 75,2 10,1 4,3 9,9 63,4 15,5 9,9 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 possibly return to pre-covid format adoption of blendid learning maintain online presence other africa australia figure 10: comparing perceptions of the future shape of the institution 6. discussion the study looks at academic’s online preparedness for teaching and learning during the covid-19 pandemic. the study pivots around the quality assurance framework, khan’s (2001) framework, looking at infrastructure, resource support, technology and pedagogy. these domains are critical for effective online delivery. the study shows similarity and differences with differing preparedness of higher institutions on two different continents. africa has numerous challenges, but it is apparent from the results that both continents used a number of digital tools to enhance teaching and learning during the covid-19 pandemic. the difference was the predominant tool used. in australia there was a greater dependence on zoom whereas in africa it was moodle. turnbull et al., (2021) identify two key technology tools that are described as in real time or synchronous (such as using zoom) and asynchronous learning where the learning can be done in one’s own time though the lms or other means. the difference noted here is understandable due to cost factors. in the african context, there was a large dependence on whatsapp for teaching (singh, 2021) which reflects research that a limiting factor in delivering digital teaching and learning is the availability and capability of internet infrastructure (beaunoyer et al., 2020). there is no one size fits all for online learning (pokhrel & chhetri, 2021). the results further reveal that although there was a rapid change from face-to-face or blended learning to a totally online teaching environment, teaching staff in both the developing http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 572022 40(1): 57-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 singh, watson & nair a comparison of african and australian academics’ online preparedness and developed regions were confident in their proficiency in using the necessary digital tools to deliver their classes whether it was teaching or in assessments. this suggests that teaching staff were utilising such features prior to the covid-19 pandemic and the move to a fully online platform was not too difficult. contrasting this finding was the learning difficulties faced mainly by african students, especially in terms of wi-fi connectivity and access to relevant devices such as computers and internet tools. in addition, african students had a challenging time in terms of their technological competence. however, in australia students also had difficulties with connectivity and this could be due to the higher level of usage which is costly, and most students have limited budgets. in developing regions, accessibility of internet bandwidth and affordability are real concerns that require higher-level policy (pokhrel & chhetri, 2021) and reform structures to meet the ongoing needs for sustained ongoing remote education throughout a covid-19 pandemic that continues to cause disruption almost two years since its initial outbreak. one significant difference between australian and african students was that in africa the mental health of students, especially the lack of social interaction is of great concern. mthetwa (2021) stated that online learning in the african he context had an adverse effect on the mental health of students, in particular, that the journey had been a lonely one. in one study in australia, in the first period of covid-19, the levels of clinically significant symptoms of depression and anxiety among adults were reported suggesting a widespread change in the mental health of the australian adult population (fisher et al., 2020). academics on both continents had general concerns about covid-19 when working at home, and reported that there was a tendency for family matters to come in between work. one factor that seems to distinguish between academics was that in australia there was greater concern about social isolation, and in particular communication with fellow colleagues. the investigation of the ethics pillar in this study on the quality assurance (qa) procedures that were adopted by heis prior to and during the covid-19 pandemic suggest that higher education providers had ensured the quality of delivery was maintained to ensure quality of programmes. the commonality of the top three qa processes of providing technical support, pedagogical training in the tools of the learning management tools and student feedback, demonstrates that higher education providers were on the same page to ensure quality of programmes. 7. conclusion the study provides a perspective of two vastly different geographic locations in terms of the preparedness of teaching and learning in the covid-19 pandemic. although there were similarities, the differences were clearly in delivery limitations faced in developing regions in terms of access to the necessary tools for the learners to achieve the best advantages of digital delivery. the study also suggests that in developing regions the move to rapid digital delivery also highlighted concerns of accessibility to digital tools for students, although staff were dedicated to ensuring that delivery progressed as effectively as possible. the findings in this study have a number of implications for higher education and fall into three broad areas: policy, teaching and learning and capacity building. policy wise, the study provides global confidence that higher education providers have maintained quality assurance processes as they moved and sustained digital delivery in the covid-19 pandemic environment. the case studies in this paper from both continents –africa and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 582022 40(1): 58-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) australia – have seen strong policy development and workshops in key pedagogical areas to ensure sustained delivery for their online programmes. examples of policies include the engaged digital delivery policy and procedure that was utilised for example in the victorian institute of technology (australia), and workshops on using various tools and enhancing engagement in the digital world. secondly, in teaching and learning, the study suggests the readiness of academics in the higher education sector to adapt a different delivery mode to ensure their main stakeholders, the students, have been able to complete their studies during a time of upheaval. thirdly, an important implication in this study is that whether teaching and learning is delivered in a developed or developing nation, the key to any readiness of the academic workforce lies in the ability of institutions as a whole to ensure their staff are trained. this study provides support that capacity building prior to and during the covid-19 pandemic was the critical element that ensured teaching and learning took place effectively. finally, an important contribution this study makes is the need for higher education to plan strategically for the future of their stakeholders through effective leadership. the results suggest that infrastructure, resource support, technology and pedagogy are key elements in ensuring quality delivery as espoused by khan’s (2001) framework. a possible route to ensure the planning is effective could be a dedicated committee that analyses and recommends future needs of the institution to address possible scenarios to the leadership for effective digital delivery. clearly such risk assessments are built in the operating model of any institution, but the covid-19 pandemic has shown that these steps were not sufficiently in place for many institutions for such drastic changes. an example of this lack of readiness that has been shown in this current study is the need to ensure there is appropriate and applicable infrastructure to support such eventful and ongoing changes in the teaching and learning space. digital learning and teaching are here for the long haul and such changes observed over the last 18 months suggest that the academics of the future must be digitally ready to deliver effective programmes that are pedagogically sound, engage students through remote learning experiences and with the right infrastructure to service the new education environment. references aguilera-hermida, a.p. 2020. college students’ use and acceptance of emergency online learning due to covid-19. international journal of educational 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http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.7004 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) opinion piece why we should continue to ask critical questions about internationalisation at home long before the covid pandemic, we had already realised that traditional forms of internationalisation had their limitations. mobility of students had remained limited to a small minority of students, a ‘cultural elite’. we had also become aware that student mobility was mostly from the global north to the south and that some of its effects were unwanted, and could lead to ‘white saviourism’. finally, before the covid pandemic we were already discussing the co2 imprint of mobility and considering ‘greener’ forms of mobility of students and staff. more than twenty years ago, around 2000, attempts had already emerged to bring the benefits of internationalisation to all students through internationalisation at home. at the time, this was defined as “any internationally related activity with the exception of outbound student and staff mobility”1. this definition did not mention explicitly that all students were targeted and also omitted the purpose of these activities. 1. the easy popularity of internationalisation at home while internationalisation at home and the related concept of internationalisation of the curriculum made their way into the policies of many universities, mobility of students remained the key focus. european countries such as sweden, norway and the netherlands continue to prioritise student mobility in their higher education policies. at the same time, implementation of internationalisation at home was impeded by a lack of strategies to develop internationalised curricula within disciplines and by the lack of support of academics in internationalising learning outcomes. confusion about terminology and concepts continued to cripple the discussion about internationalisation and the continuous coining of presumably new ‘concepts’, such as ‘intelligent internationalisation’, ‘resilient internationalisation, or ‘deep internationalisation’ only served to add to the ‘terminological fog’. 1 crowther, p., et al. (2001) internationalisation at home; a position paper. european association for international education author: prof jos beelen1 affiliation: 1the hague university of applied sciences doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v40i4.7004 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(4): 325-327 published: 23 december 2022 received: 25 july 2022 accepted: 19 november 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.7004 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9410-9784 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.7004 3262022 40(4): 326-327 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.7004 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) in order to stress the importance of outcomes versus activities and reaching all students versus a small section, elspeth jones and i in 20152 redefined internationalisation at home as “the purposeful integration of international and intercultural dimensions into the formal and informal curriculum for all students, within domestic learning environments”. the key words in this definition are ‘purposeful’ and ‘all students’ and these key words should be kept in mind when looking at initiatives that claim that they can be labelled as ‘internationalisation at home’. 2. internationalisation during the covid pandemic during the pandemic, internationalisation at home started to receive more attention, but misconceptions continued. foremost among these is the notion that internationalisation at home is an alternative for those students unfortunate enough not to be able to enjoy the benefits of international mobility. this is an estimated 80-95% of students and it is therefore remarkable to consider mobility of a small minority of students as the norm and an internationalised home curriculum for nearly all students as an alternative. an example is a report by universities uk international, published in the summer of 2021. the report is titled internationalisation at home – developing global citizens without travel; international activities delivered at home: showcasing impactful programmes, benefits and good practice3. the report contains examples from three anglophone countries: the uk, the us and australia. it presents examples of initiatives of virtual exchange as an alternative to student mobility. these are electives and therefore fall short of one of the key characteristics of internationalisation at home: that they are included in the core curriculum for all students. another issue is that global citizenship is mentioned in the report but not made explicit. 3. the potential of an internationalised curriculum internationalisation of home curricula serves as instrument to develop transversal skills of graduates for employment, such as complex problem solving, critical thinking and intercultural communication. this could be considered the ‘hard side’ of internationalisation of home curricula. but an internationalised curriculum should also contribute to the development of students’ awareness of societal issues and their skills to engage with these. in global citizenship education, the global dimension often dominates the local, national or regional (e.g. european or african) dimensions. a successful internationalised curriculum integrates how global, regional, national and local dimensions interact. this dimension is represented in the current drive for international higher education for society (ihes), the sustainable development goals and education for sustainable development. 4. internationalisation at home and inclusion internationalisation at home, with its focus on all students, has been considered an inclusive form of internationalisation. yet it may not be as inclusive as it looks at first glance. some students have a more international mindset than others, may have a benefit by being bicultural or may have engaged with internationalisation in secondary education. 2 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-20877-0_5 3 www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/universities-uk-international/insights-and-publications/uuki-publications/ internationalisation-home-developing http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.7004 https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-20877-0_5 http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/universities-uk-international/insights-and-publications/uuki-publications/internationalisation-home-developing http://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/universities-uk-international/insights-and-publications/uuki-publications/internationalisation-home-developing 3272022 40(4): 327-327 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.7004 beelen why we should continue to ask critical questions about internationalisation at home virtual exchange, a key component of internationalisation at home, is also not inclusive by default. not all students have equal access to connectivity and devices. there are various other exclusion mechanisms that can play a role in on-line collaboration, such as pedagogies and assessment that favour some students over others. proficiency in foreign language is also an aspect that can generate inequalities. many of these aspects we know from physical international classrooms, but we need yet to find out more about how processes of inclusion and exclusion work in virtual settings. 5. collaborative online international learning (coil) virtual exchange and particularly its most intensive form: collaborative online international learning (coil) can provide unique opportunities for authentic learning with others around the globe. however, it is not the only instrument in the toolbox of internationalisation at home. local engagement with cultural diversity and interdisciplinary work are just as important and should complement on-line practices. this requires thinking about the ‘purposeful’ aspect of virtual exchange which implies that teaching and learning should be outcomes oriented and not just activity based. it means that there are learning outcomes, assessment and reflection of the learning process by students and that there is alignment across a programme of studies. interdisciplinary work, for example can be done both ‘at home’ and on-line and it is good to determine how each of these activities contribute to an internationalised curriculum. the ‘purposeful’ also relates to the skills of academics to design virtual exchange together with a partner abroad. in the scramble to switch from physical to virtual mobility, many virtual exhange practices remain activity or experience oriented with academics indicating that they need support in design and delivery of virtual exchange. in 2021, a step forward was the condition that an educational developer or advisor is involved in grants for virtual exchange that the dutch ministry of education made available to individual lecturers. internationalisation at home puts a strong focus on reaching all students. however, many practices in virtual exchange still tend to be electives for a limited group of students. indeed, ‘upscaling’ such practices to include all students requires considerable effort. 6. questions about purpose the drive to make internationalisation purposeful is why we should continue to ask critical questions about internationalisation at home. the current initiative for critical internationalisation4 represents a meaningful platform for the discussion of such questions. such a platform is much needed in a situation in which many universities seem unable to move beyond the original definition of internationalisation at home from 2001 and continue to focus on just components of internationalisation at home such as integrating international students into the receiving university or preparing students for mobility. unless we overcome these mobility related notions of internationalisation, we will not be able to move forward to meaningful development of education for sustainable development for all students, embedded in in learning outcomes and therefore purposeful. jos beelen is professor of global learning at the hague university of applied sciences, the netherlands and visiting professor at the centre for global learning at coventry university, united kingdom 4 https://criticalinternationalization.net http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.7004 https://criticalinternationalization.net 324 research article 2021 39(2): 324-338 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 teachers’ instructional strategies and their impact on learner performance in grade 9 mathematics: findings from timss 2015 in south africa abstract teachers use a variety of instructional strategies when they teach various mathematical topics and concepts. some of these strategies have been found to positively affect the performance of learners while others do not. this study analysed the teacher questionnaire data from the trends in international mathematics and science studies (timss) 2015 study in which the teachers indicated the instructional strategies that they used in the mathematics classrooms. the five instructional strategies that were determined from the groupings of the questions were teacherteacher interaction, teacher-learner interaction, teacher explanation of the content, problem solving with direct teacher guidance and problem solving without direct teacher guidance. the results indicate that the two instructional strategies of problem solving with direct teacher guidance and teacher-teacher interaction were found to be significantly associated with learner performance across the four content domains of algebra, numbers, geometry and data and chance. keywords: instructional strategies; learner performance; factor analysis; linear regression; timss. 1. introduction one of the main aims of teaching and the activities undertaken in the classroom by teachers is to provide learners with the fundamental content knowledge required to enhance what they already know (lu, 2019; tebabal & kahssay, 2011). to ensure that learners understand what is taught by the teacher, different instructional strategies are applied in the classroom. these instructional strategies are usually selected according to the content to be presented. education has evolved from traditional teacher-centred methods to methods that are more interactive and learnercentred (lu, 2019); however, to this day the effectiveness author: prof mogege mosimege1 dr lolita winnaar2 affiliation: 1university of the free state, south africa 2human sciences research council, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i2.22 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(2): 324-338 published: 11 june 2021 received: 25 may 2020 accepted: 14 august 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4685-3423 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 mosimege & winnaar teachers’ instructional strategies and their impact on learner performance 3252021 39(2): 325-338 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 of the student-centred approach for learner performance is questioned by many (zhao et al., 2017). most research conducted to date has investigated the effect that teaching methods have on learners’ academic achievement (adunola, 2011; ganyaupfu, 2013), with studies showing in cases where the majority of learners perform poorly in the same class setting, it is inevitably linked to the utilisation of ineffective instructional strategies (ganyaupfu, 2013). since learners’ academic achievement is often used as an indicator of the quality of teaching provided, this study explored the effect of instructional strategies on the performance of learners. 2. problem statement the purpose of this study was to examine academic achievement in the various grade 9 mathematics content domains in the 2015 trends in international mathematics and science studies (timss) in relation to the instructional strategies and practices employed by teachers. the intention was to determine whether the instructional strategies and practices that the teachers identified in the timss 2015 differed depending on the content domain taught. with the move from the traditional teacher centred methods to those more focused on the learner it stands to reason that a one size fits approach to instructional practices is not possible as was shown by ganyaupfu in 2013 (ganyaupfu, 2013). thus as an extension to the work done by ganyaupfu, the article attempts to identify the various forms of instructional practices and determine if these practices vary dependent on the mathematics content domain being taught. 3. instructional strategies and practices numerous instructional strategies and practices have been identified as characteristic of effective teaching or have been recognised as characterising effective teachers. such instructional strategies and practices have become the focus of initial teacher education and continuing professional development training programmes. even though the use of identified instructional strategies and practices does not guarantee an effective teacher (hoge, 2016), they are used by teachers in mathematics classrooms. instructional strategies and practices should only be regarded as characteristic of quality teaching if there is evidence (eriksson, helenius & ryve, 2018) that they generally have a positive effect on student achievement. emphasising the importance of instructional strategies, gregory and chapman (2013) argue that teachers need a wide variety and vast amount of these strategies in order to teach information in a variety of ways. they indicate that this is necessary in order to address the uniqueness of the learners in the classroom. a wide variety of instructional strategies and practices not only addresses the uniqueness of the learners, but also enables the teachers to develop meaning and understanding for the benefit of the learners (levine, 1994). the california department of education (cde, 2015) places greater responsibility on the role of the teacher in relation to instructional strategies. the cde (2015) indicates that since a wide range of instructional strategies is available to teachers, effective teachers are those who look for a fit between the material to be taught and strategies for teaching that material. instructional strategies and practices are everything that teachers use to aid learners in their learning process and are the means to bring about effective teaching and learning (amos, folasayo & oluwatoyin, 2015). obara and okoh (2005) explain instructional strategies as everything teachers utilise to interactively enhance, motivate and facilitate teaching and learning for the achievement of set objectives. instructional strategies are part of classroom practices (arends, winnaar & mosimege, 2017) that are intended to improve learning and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 3262021 39(2): 326-338 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 student achievement. nichols (2015) regards instructional strategies as a subset and one of the components of instructional practices. she defines instructional strategies as techniques that teachers use throughout instruction to support comprehension of the concepts being taught. nichols (2015) also explains that instructional practices include programmes, strategies and other factors related to instruction as identified by school personnel. gregory and chapman (2013) do not define instructional strategies and practices or explain what they are; however, they allude to their importance by indicating that teachers are constantly seeking innovative ways to teach important information. when the information has been taught, it is followed by assessment of what the learners have learnt. the effectiveness of the strategies employed by teachers has a bearing on how the learners perform. the relationship between instructional strategies and practices is discussed later in this article. however, it is important to highlight that the activities that teachers engage in have a bearing on the extent of the knowledge gained by the learners in classroom interaction. whether teachers use a list of identified instructional strategies and practices or use those that they identify as their own that are not on the list of identified or documented strategies by other scholars, teachers tend to use a variety of such strategies and practices in their daily classroom activities. these strategies are employed in the classroom for the purpose of improving the learning experiences and performance of the learners in various assessment activities. the main question (which is also the focus of this study) is the extent to which the use of such strategies and practices translate into increased and improved learner performance in mathematics. stated differently, this question explores whether the choice of strategies by teachers makes any significant contribution to the performance of learners in the assessment activities they are subjected to. arguing for the use of instructional strategies, carr and bertrando (2012) state that we must imagine a set of researchor evidence-based instructional strategies and tools that all teachers could use to help struggling students learn vocabulary, discourse, content and skills in science classes or comprehend complex text in any academic content area. in order to illustrate this view, carr and bertrando suggest that we should envision two students with learning disabilities who are learning english in two secondary schools. the student at one school struggles to learn and adapt each hour to the different ways the different teachers teach, as well as the different content. the student in the other school focuses only on the different content, because one set of strategies is known and habitually used by all teachers (2012:24). carr and bertrando (2012) further suggest that the student struggles as a result of being exposed to different teaching strategies; whereas the other student, who is exposed to different teachers who use the same or standard strategies, is able to focus on and master the content. other effects of instructional strategies are that they ensure the effective achievement of stated instructional objectives (nafees et al., 2012) and increase student achievement (dean et al., 2012). lipton (1995: 183–184) recommends the following general instructional strategies, which are characteristic of elementary and secondary communicative-based language classrooms: • keep the use of english to a minimum, with most instructions, directions and explanations given in the target language. • use real objects, gestures, pictures and other visuals to convey meaning. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 mosimege & winnaar teachers’ instructional strategies and their impact on learner performance 3272021 39(2): 327-338 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 • focus on language that is concerned with functional situations and authentic utterances. • do not always insist on complete sentences but mirror natural speech patterns. • adopt a conversational approach that replicates “real” situations that are likely to occur. • teach vocabulary in context, including all kinds of idiomatic phrases. • use paired activities and small-group learning. • use technology. • use a variety of print and non-print materials. • strive to develop cultural awareness using authentic cultural realia as a springboard for communication in the language. • emphasise acceptable communication, rather than near-native pronunciation. • ensure a match between the learner and the language in terms of relevance and learning styles. even though the instructional strategies recommended by lipton (1995) are more specific to language classrooms, they are equally important in other classrooms. the use of technology is not only a necessity given fourth industrial revolution developments, but it is an essential component to help learners in a variety of classrooms, including mathematics classrooms. killian (2016) argues that evidence-based teaching strategies are regarded as those strategies that are likely to have the largest impact on student results. among the strategies that he identifies are questioning to check for understanding, summarising new learning in a graphical way, plenty of practise, providing the students with feedback and getting students to work together in productive ways. harris, phillips and penuel (2012) investigated the following instructional strategies to help students develop their ideas and questions in a science classroom: • discuss students’ ideas written in journals and posted in public charts. • discuss students’ questions about the lesson. • revise students’ ideas about the lesson. • discuss students’ research questions and plans for investigations. • reflect with students on what they have learnt and how they came to know. the three main instructional strategies that harris et al. (2012) identified and explored are discuss, revise and reflect. they report that the three teachers who participated in their study differed in the way they applied the three instructional strategies. the different mathematics sections and topics in the senior phase and further education and training phase require different teaching strategies to be employed by the teachers as they make an effort to assist the learners to have a better understanding of mathematical concepts and content. some of these strategies are based on what the teachers were trained on when they were in pre-service education, whereas some strategies have been gained in teacher professional development programmes. this article reports on an analysis of instructional strategies and practices that teachers indicated they used to help learners with various mathematical concepts. this study analysed http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 3282021 39(2): 328-338 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 the data from the timss 2015 in south africa to determine the strategies that teachers identified in the teaching of mathematics in grade 9. 4. instructional strategies and learner performance even though timss studies have been undertaken since 1995, not all of them have specifically considered the relationship between classroom practices and learner performance (mullis et al., 2012). mullis et al. (2012) indicate that the only timss studies that considered this relationship were the 2003 and 2007 studies. it is for this reason that all internationally available evidence on the effect of teaching practice is mostly drawn from the data of these two years. the 2015 timss study (from which the data for this study were drawn) therefore contributes to research that explores this relationship. studies on the effect of instructional strategies and learner or student performance in mathematics and other subjects have provided differing results. eze (2011) found that instructional strategies that included differentiated instruction, flexible grouping and teaching for higher-order thinking skills had the most significant relationship with student achievement in mathematics, whereas administrative supervision did not have a significant relationship with student achievement. onweh and akpan (2014) investigated the effect of the following strategies on students’ performance in electrical installations in technical colleges: discussion, lecture and demonstration. they found that the demonstration strategy had the most significant effect on student academic performance in electrical installations. jepketer (2017) differentiates between student-centred instructional strategies, teachercentred instructional strategies and assessment strategies, and examined the impact of each of these strategies on student performance. following her research, jepketer (2017) developed a model in which she indicates that when teaching strategies are strengthened through targeted in-service training, student performance is influenced. 5. theoretical framework the theoretical framework used in this study is the theory of didactical situations (tds) developed by brousseau (1997). sriraman and english (2010) describe the tds as a threeway schema in which the complexity of the interaction between the teacher, the student and the content is studied. the theory of didactical situations seeks to offer a model, inspired by the mathematical theory of games, to investigate, in a scientific way, the problems related to the teaching of mathematics and the means to enhance it (radford, 2008; yuliani, 2016). mangiante-orsola, perrin-glorian and stromskag (2018) contend that tds represents a didactical situation in which the focus is on the teacher with the perspective of understanding how the students learn and how the teacher helps them learn some mathematical content. in this way, the teacher acts as a facilitator in a learning environment. in tds (selman & tapan-broutin, 2018), the emphasis is to create a class environment in which students act like scientists and/or researchers in which they discover and produce. the environment for these discoveries is facilitated and enhanced by the teacher. tds also provides an opportunity to isolate moments of instruction, action, formulation, validation and institutionalisation in the mathematics teaching and learning process (wisdom, 2014). this study followed the tds framework to explore the instructional strategies that were identified by the teachers in order to assist the learners to solve mathematics problems. the study specifically looked at the role http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 mosimege & winnaar teachers’ instructional strategies and their impact on learner performance 3292021 39(2): 329-338 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 of the teacher within tds to determine how they created an appropriate environment and facilitated problem solving for the learners. 6. research approach and method this section provides the details pertaining to the timss 2015 sample, the variables used and derived from the teacher contextual questionnaire and the analytical techniques employed to answer the research questions. 6.1 the timss 2015 data and sample the data that served this analysis were obtained from the timss 2015 database. timss is a trend study administered every four years and conducted by the international association for the evaluation of educational achievement (iea). the main purpose of the timss study is to measure the overall health of a country’s education system. this is measured by administering contextual questionnaires to school principals and mathematics and science teachers, as well as learners. in addition to the contextual data, a mathematics and science assessment is administered to learners. the analysis for this research included data extracted from the teacher mathematics questionnaires, as well as learner scores for each of the content domains. the 2015 timss in south africa was conducted by the human sciences research council (hsrc). the hsrc has conducted all the timss studies that the country has participated in since 1995, when the first round of these studies was undertaken. the timss sample was selected using a two-stage stratified sampling procedure where a representative sample of schools was selected in the first stage and a random intact grade 9 class was randomly selected within each sampled school in the second stage. the south african sample included approximately 12 000 students, 300 principals, 300 mathematics teachers and 300 science teachers. in responding to the research question, which focused on instructional strategies teachers use when teaching the four mathematical content domains, questions from the teacher contextual data were extracted. since the sample of teachers is not representative of the population of teachers in south africa, the teacher data were merged with the student data and the analyses were interpreted in relation to the students taught by mathematics teachers. 6.2 measures the following sections provide details pertaining to the outcome (dependent) variables and the independent variables/measures. 6.2.1 outcome/dependent variables the timss curriculum and assessment framework for grade 9 study is organised around the mathematics content domains of numbers, algebra, geometry, data and chance, and the percentage share of items in the timss test was 30%, 30%, 20% and 20%, respectively. in addition to estimates of student scores, the iea also provides scores per student for each of the four content domains. in this analysis, each of these content domain scores served as a dependent variable to determine whether the instructional strategies teachers employed differed depending on the content domain taught. the timss follows a matrix sampling approach to divide mathematics items into 14 different booklets. each learner must complete only one of the 14 booklets, which means http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 3302021 39(2): 330-338 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 that a learner is not expected to complete all items that exist in the timss study. in order to calculate an overall score, the iea uses item response theory and multiple imputations to calculate five possible score estimates called plausible values. these plausible values are standardised to a mean of 500 and standard deviation of 100 to allow for cross-country comparisons. 6.2.2 teacher instructional strategies identified in the study (independent variables) twenty-four variables were found to relate to instructional strategies and the principal component analysis (pca) was used to reduce these variables into scales that measure the same constructs (see tables 1 and 2). the pca is a dimension reduction tool that focuses on the contribution that each variable makes to explain the variance in a particular construct. it creates various linear combinations of the variables and eventually selects a combination where the maximum amount of variance is explained. table 1: total variance explained component initial eigenvalues extraction sums of squared loadings rotation sums of squared loadings total % of variance cumulative % total % of variance cumulative % total % of variance cumulative % teacher interaction 6.415 26.7 26.7 6.4 26.7 26.7 4.4 18.4 18.4 teacherlearner interaction 3.072 12.8 39.5 3.1 12.8 39.5 3.2 13.4 31.8 problem solving without direct teacher guidance 1.826 7.6 47.1 1.8 7.6 47.1 2.8 11.6 43.4 teacher explanation of content 1.608 6.7 53.8 1.6 6.7 53.8 2.2 9.3 52.7 problem solving with teacher guidance 1.253 5.2 59.1 1.3 5.2 59.1 1.5 6.3 59.1 extraction method: pca. table 2: rotated component matrixa component 1 2 3 4 5 discussed how to teach a particular topic with other teachers 0.729 collaborated in planning and preparing instructional material 0.826 shared their teaching experiences 0.775 visited another class 0.686 worked together to try out new ideas 0.826 worked as a group to implement the curriculum 0.803 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 mosimege & winnaar teachers’ instructional strategies and their impact on learner performance 3312021 39(2): 331-338 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 component 1 2 3 4 5 worked with teachers from other grades to ensure continuity of learning 0.728 related lessons to the students’ daily lives 0.417 asked students to explain their answers 0.699 asked students to complete challenging exercises that go beyond instruction 0.517 encouraged classroom discussion among students 0.668 linked content to prior knowledge 0.579 let students decide their own problem-solving procedures 0.706 encouraged learners to express their ideas in class 0.753 listened to the teachers’ explanation of new mathematics content 0.860 how to solve problems 0.877 memorised rules, procedures and facts 0.725 worked on problems individually with the teacher’s guidance 0.653 worked on problems as a whole class 0.751 worked on problems while the teacher is occupied with other tasks 0.726 worked on problems for which there is no direct method of solution 0.718 took a written test or quiz 0.695 worked in mixed-ability groups 0.488 worked in same-ability groups 0.708 extraction method: pca. rotation method: varimax with kaiser normalisation. a. rotation converged in five iterations. for this analysis, the results of the pca provided five broad constructs that explained aspects of instructional practices. the variances explained by each of the constructs are provided in table 3, with teacher-teacher interactions explaining the most variance (26.7%) and the factor related to problem solving with direct teacher guidance explaining the least variance (5.2%). table 3 indicates the percentage of the variance as well as the cumulative percentage of the total variance for each of the constructs. table 3: total variance explained by each of the constructs of instructional practices construct initial eigenvalues extraction sums of squared loadings rotation sums of squared loadings total % of variance cumulative % total % of variance cumulative % total % of variance cumulative % teacherteacher interaction 6,415 26,7 26,7 6,4 26,7 26,7 4,4 18,4 18,4 teacherlearner interaction 3,072 12,8 39,5 3,1 12,8 39,5 3,2 13,4 31,8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 3322021 39(2): 332-338 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 construct initial eigenvalues extraction sums of squared loadings rotation sums of squared loadings total % of variance cumulative % total % of variance cumulative % total % of variance cumulative % problem solving without direct teacher guidance 1,826 7,6 47,1 1,8 7,6 47,1 2,8 11,6 43,4 teacher explanation of content 1,608 6,7 53,8 1,6 6,7 53,8 2,2 9,3 52,7 problem solving with direct teacher guidance 1,253 5,2 59,1 1,3 5,2 59,1 1,5 6,3 59,1 details pertaining to each of the five constructs are as follows: i. teacher-teacher interaction, with a reliability score of 0.896, was the first component and consisted of seven variables that explained 26.7% of the variance in the sample. in this construct, teachers were asked questions that related to instructional strategies and practices that involved interaction between teachers. the questions covered the following aspects: how often they discussed how to teach a particular topic with other teachers, collaboration with other teachers in planning and preparing instructional material, sharing their teaching experiences with other teachers, visiting another teacher’s class, working together with other teachers to try out new ideas, working as a group with other teachers to implement the curriculum and working with teachers from other grades to ensure continuity of learning. ii. teacher-learner interaction, with a reliability score of 0.802, consisted of seven statements and explained 12.8% of the variance. in this construct, the teachers were asked questions that related to the instructional strategies and practices between teachers and students. the questions asked in this construct were as follows: when teaching the timss class, teachers were asked how often they related lessons to the students’ daily lives, whether they asked the students to explain their answers, whether they asked the students to complete challenging exercises that go beyond instruction, whether they encouraged classroom discussion among students, whether they linked content to prior knowledge, whether they let the students decide their own problem-solving procedures and whether they encouraged learners to express their ideas in class. iii. problem solving with direct teacher guidance: the reliability score for this component was 0.645 and explained 7.6% of the variance. the component included two statements covering the following: how often teachers asked learners to work on problems individually with the teacher’s guidance and how often they asked learners to work on problems as a whole class. iv. teacher explanation of the content included three variables. the variables included the following questions: how often the teachers asked the students to listen to the teachers’ explanation of new mathematics content and how to solve problems and memorise rules, procedures and facts. the reliability score for this component was 0.791 and explained 6.7% of the variance. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 mosimege & winnaar teachers’ instructional strategies and their impact on learner performance 3332021 39(2): 333-338 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 v. problem solving without direct teacher guidance, with a reliability score of 0.740, consisted of seven statements and explained 5.2% of the variance in the sample. the statements included in this component related to problem-solving ability without direct guidance from the teacher. the teachers were asked how often they asked learners to work on problems while the teacher is occupied with other tasks, whether they asked learners to work on problems for which there is no direct method or solution, whether they asked the learners to take a written test or quiz, whether they asked the learners to work in mixed-ability groups and whether they asked the learners to work in same-ability groups. 6.2.3 data analyses multiple regressions were used to analyse the data. multiple regressions model the relationship between a dependent variable and two or more independent variables. the aim of each of the regression models is to ascertain associations between the five components of teacher instructional strategies and student performance in each of the four content domains. as previously mentioned, five dependent variables were included in the analyses and for this reason five multiple regressions were run using an analysis package created by the iea called international database (idb) analyzer. the idb analyzer is a statistical analysis package specifically designed to analyse data from iea large-scale projects and takes studies’ methodological intricacies into account. the idb analyzer creates syntax files (or programme files) of a particular selected analysis and, using the statistical package for the social sciences (spss), runs the files and creates output results. 7. results this section first provides the results of the descriptive analysis, followed by the multiple regression assumption tests as well as the regression analysis. 7.1 descriptive analysis learners obtained the highest mean score in algebra (394), followed by numbers (368.87), geometry (364.19) and lastly data and chance with a mean score of 357.02 (see table 4). the dependent variables ranged from a minimum of 1 to a maximum of 4, with higher values indicative of positive responses on the scale. all the dependent variables, with the exception of “problem solving without direct teacher guidance”, scored on average closer to the maximum value of the scale. teachers were less likely to use classroom practices where learners were expected to work out mathematics questions without the teachers’ direct involvement. table 4: descriptive analyses variable sample size mean standard deviation algebra 12 074 394,01 87,01 data and chance 12 074 357,02 95,89 geometry 12 074 364,19 88,34 numbers 12 074 368,87 91,61 problem solving without direct teacher guidance 12 074 2,42 0,66 problem solving with direct teacher guidance 12 074 3,27 0,63 teacher explanation of the content 12 074 3,25 0,69 teacher-teacher interaction 12 074 2,78 0,68 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 3342021 39(2): 334-338 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 variable sample size mean standard deviation teacher-learner interaction 12 074 3,24 0,53 7.2 multiple regression the regression results for each of the four content domain models are provided in table 5. the first model explained 7% of the variance in algebra achievement scores, with only two of the five instructional strategies being associated with achievement in algebra. learners who were taught by teachers who spent more time explaining content obtained 16 points more on average (β = 16, p < 0.05) than learners taught by teachers who performed this task less often. a significant but negative association is observed between achievement and problem solving without direct teacher guidance. learners who were taught by teachers who spent more time allowing learners to solve problems without direct teacher guidance obtained on average 38 points fewer (β = -38, p <0.01) than their counterparts. the second model explained 9% of the variance in learner performance in the numbers content domain. as with algebra, only two of the five independent variables were significant. a score difference of 20 points (β =20, p < 0.05) on average was observed between learners taught by teachers who spent more time explaining the content and those who did not. a negative relationship exists between achievement in the numbers domain and learners taught by teachers who expected learners to solve problems without teacher guidance (β = -43, p < 0.01). the third model explained 8% of the variance in achievement scores in relation to the geometry content domain. in relation to the geometry content domain, a score difference of 18 points (β = 18.4, p < 0.01) was observed with learners taught by teachers who spent more time explaining the content obtaining higher scores than their counterparts. a significant but negative association exists between the average score in the geometry content domain and “problem solving without direct teacher guidance” strategy (β = -40, p < 0.01). the fourth model focused on the association between the data and chance content domain and the instructional strategies, of which two were found to be significant. the model explains 9% of the variance in achievement. a 21-point difference in score on average is observed between learners taught by teachers who focused more attention on ensuring that the content was adequately explained (β = 21, p < 0.05). as with the other models, a significant but negative relationship exists between achievement in data and chance and the strategy where a teacher expects learners to solve problems without direct assistance from the teacher (β = 43.9, p < 0.01). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 mosimege & winnaar teachers’ instructional strategies and their impact on learner performance 3352021 39(2): 335-338 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 table 5: multiple linear regression results algebra (model 1) numbers (model 2) geometry (model 3) data and chance (model 4) β β (s.e) β β (s.e) β β (s.e) β β (s.e) constant 395 28 375.8 29.9 368.3 29.2 370.4 30.9 problem solving without direct teacher guidance -38** 7 -43** 7.5 -40** 7.1 -43.9** 7.8 problem solving with direct teacher guidance 1 8.5 0.3 8.8 1.5 8.5 1.3 9.2 teacher explanation of the content 16* 6.3 20.3* 6.5 18.4* 6.3 21.1* 6.7 teacher-teacher interaction 9 8.5 10.2 8.8 9.1 8.4 9.9 9.4 teacher-learner interaction 3 8.5 0.7 9 0.8 8.7 -2.2 9.7 ** p-value < 0.01, * p-value < 0.05 8. discussion and conclusion the main aim of the study was to identify the various instructional strategies available in the timss 2015 data and to model all these with each of the mathematics content areas available in the grade 9 curriculum. this was done to determine the relationship between the instructional strategies and student performance in each of the mathematics content domains. the study revealed the following five instructional strategies: teacher-teacher interaction, teacher-learner interaction, teacher explanation of the content, problem solving without direct teacher guidance and problem solving with direct teacher guidance. the results showed that two of the five instructional strategies were significantly associated with student performance, regardless of the mathematics content domain modelled. the first of these were problem solving without direct teacher guidance and the second was teacher explanation of the content; however, the direction of association of these two constructs differed considerably. students who were taught by teachers who explained the content to them obtained scores ranging between 10 and 21 points more on average than students taught by teachers who did not explain the content. explanation of content is therefore necessary and critical, especially for mathematical content that learners are unfamiliar with. ganyaupfu (2013) concurs with this result because he found in his research that teacher-learner interaction is the most effective teaching method (ganyaupfu, 2013). problem solving is an important activity in enhancing the understanding of mathematical concepts by learners. the role that teachers play in problem solving is therefore very important for learners. two constructs (instructional practices) related to problem solving in this study, namely (i) problem solving with direct teacher guidance and (ii) problem solving without direct teacher guidance. even though not significant, the results for the construct of problem solving with direct teacher guidance showed a positive association with academic achievement; meaning that learners taught by teachers who provided guidance when problem solving obtained higher scores than their counterparts. the role that teachers play during the period when learners are involved in problem solving is vital (alsawaie, 2003) and can only become more significant if they do it thoroughly and intentionally, with a specific purpose. in order to help students to perform better in problem solving, teachers are required to make a shift from the traditional role of lecturer-demonstrator to a role that demands new skills in planning http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 3362021 39(2): 336-338 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 and facilitating students’ work (simon, 1986). further emphasising the role of teachers, schoenfeld (1992) states that teachers must perceive the implications of students’ different approaches and must decide when to intervene and what suggestions will help the student to be successful in problem solving. the guidance of the teacher is therefore crucial in problem solving and will certainly contribute, not only to the ability to solve problems successfully, but will also positively affect learners’ performance. the opposite was, however, true when examining the problem solving without direct teacher guidance construct. problem solving without teacher assistance was negatively associated with academic achievement, regardless of the content domain being analysed. learners taught by teachers who employed this instructional practice scored an average of between 38 and 44 points fewer than learners taught by teachers who did not employ this strategy. reif (1995) found that content learning is vital when teaching mathematics; however, it is not sufficient when a learner is faced with solving problems in a textbook. he found that even though learners knew the facts and principles, they were unable to apply that knowledge when problem solving. what learners are doing is memorising solutions of previously completed problems and examples, without understanding how to apply existing knowledge in problem solving. 9. acknowledgements this study is based on data contained in timss 2015, conducted as part of the education and skills development programme of the hsrc. the timss 2015 study was funded by the department of basic education. 10. declaration the authors declare that all calculations and interpretations of statistics are correct. references adunola, o. 2011. the impact of local teachers’ teaching methods on the academic performance of primary school pupils in ijebu-ode government area of ogun state. nigeria: ego booster books. alsawaie, o.n. 2003. what roles do mathematics teachers play when their students solve problems? in proceedings of the mathematics education into the 21st century project, brno, czech republic, september 2003, 38-42. amos, a.a. folasayo, o.a. & oluwatoyin, a.e. 2015. instructional strategies for effective teaching and learning in nigeria 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li, d., liu, x. & zhou, j. 2017. tide and shock: the influential modern teaching methods on chinese education reform. in proceedings of the acm turing 50th celebration conference. new york: association for computing machinery. https://doi. org/10.1145/3063955.3063970 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.22 https://doi.org/10.5897/ijeaps2014.0347 https://doi.org/10.1007/bf02211259 https://doi.org/10.11114/jets.v6i11a.3811 https://doi.org/10.11114/jets.v6i11a.3811 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-00742-2 https://doi.org/10.1145/3063955.3063970 https://doi.org/10.1145/3063955.3063970 195 research article 2023 41(1): 195-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) using whatsappbased mobile learning environments during abrupt switches to online learning: a duoethnographic account abstract abrupt switches to online learning without face-to-face contact between facilitators and students can cause distress and have a negative impact on student success. as students use instant messaging applications (imas) to communicate with one another, we have integrated whatsapp-based mobile learning environments (mles) in two disparate higher education settings to facilitate learning. christa used an mle pre-pandemic in a postgraduate distance education context, while liezel used several mles during the pandemic in an undergraduate contact education context. in this duoethnographic1 account, we share our stories about using these mles during times of distress. duoethnography is a collaborative methodology that allowed us to juxtapose our life histories to create multiple understandings of the phenomenon to learn from one another. with currere as theoretical framework, we employed storytelling to compare our life histories, educational contexts and beliefs while we illustrate a sense of personal change. in addition to sharing our insights regarding the affordances and challenges related to whatsapp-based mles, we illustrate how this dialogic methodology facilitated dialogue and reflection – affording two educational researchers in disparate higher education contexts deeper insights regarding their own practices. keywords: contact education, distance education, duoethnography, emergency remote education, higher education, instant messaging applications, whatsapp, south africa. 1. setting the stage an urgent need for change. following disruptive events in our two disparate south african higher education settings, we were concerned that abrupt switches to online learning without face-to-face contact between our students and us could cause distress and have a negative impact on student success. therefore, we needed to find a way to keep in contact with our students. due to the popularity of the whatsapp instant messaging 1 please note: as duoethnographers tell their stories, this methodology is not characterised by an extensive list of references. however, we do believe that the methodology needs to be well referenced. author: dr christa van staden1 prof liezel nel1 affiliation: 1university of the free state, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i1.6294 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(1): 195-210 published: 31 march 2023 received: 5 august 2022 accepted: 17 march 2023 research article https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6490-9334 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6739-9285 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 1962023 41(1): 196-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) application (ima) amongst our students, we opted for whatsapp-based mobile learning environments (mles) to facilitate learning during the abrupt switches to online learning. since its introduction in 2009, lecturers globally have used whatsapp to create mles for their students (bouhnik & deshen, 2014; güler, 2017; sari, 2018; sayan, 2016; zulkanain, miskon & abdullah, 2020). it is therefore not surprising that whatsapp was used before and during the covid-19 pandemic to support teaching, learning and assessment when lecturers were separated from their students (jabbar et al., 2021; misaghi et al., 2021; susilo & sofiarini, 2021). in this duoethnograhic account we discuss the affordances and frustrations of using whatsapp-based mles pre-pandemic in a postgraduate distance education context (christa) and during the pandemic in an undergraduate contact education context (liezel). although much has been written about the affordances of whatsapp-based mles, less is known regarding the educational challenges presented by the limited functionalities of whatsapp. therefore, the purpose of this research was to share our stories about using whatsappbased mles during times of distress. we juxtapose our life histories to create multiple understandings to learn from one another. we also revisit our practices within two disparate higher education contexts to gain deeper insights regarding our whatsapp-based mles to learn from one another to imagine a better future. our duoethnographical account was guided by the following questions: • how did we (two educationalists) use whatsapp-based mles during abrupt switches to online learning in two disparate higher education settings? • how did duoethnography facilitate reflection and insight into the integration of whatsappbased mles? • what are the implications for our future teaching practices? 2. a peek behind the scenes pre-production operations. duoethnography is a collaborative methodology that requires at least two researchers who differ in important ways to juxtapose their life histories in order to create multiple understandings of a specific phenomenon (norris & sawyer, 2016). this methodology is based on the idea that openness to others’ stories offers the potential for reconceptualising one’s own beliefs (sawyer & norris, 2012). we and our educational contexts (christa’s postgraduate distance education versus liezel’s undergraduate contact education) differed in important ways. therefore, we assumed that duoethnography would provide us with opportunities to learn from each other while we cross-examined and reconceptualised our existing beliefs (green, 2008; krammer & mangiardi, 2016; norris, 2008). sawyer and norris (2013) postulate that duoethnography is useful to emphasise complex, reflexive, and aesthetic aspects of both works in process and in products (sawyer & norris, 2013). through this methodology, we could explore our different identities to understand how our teaching practices have been influenced culturally and socially (sawyer & norris, 2013). we could use our own biographies as research sites to allow us to open ourselves to learning from each other’s stories and opinions (sawyer & norris, 2013). this allowed us to perform experiments on ourselves to better understand the efficiency of our practices during abrupt switches to online learning. we have used duoethnography to create dialogic narratives regarding our perspectives on mles, and we invite our readers to enter our conversations (norris et al., 2016). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 1972023 41(1): 197-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 van staden & nel using whatsapp-based mobile learning environments duoethnography is embedded in two narrative traditions, namely currere (or critical selfreflection) and storytelling (green, 2008) both of which are scientifically recognised (krammer & mangiardi, 2016; norris et al., 2016; sawyer & norris, 2013). for the purpose of this research, we employed currere as a theoretical framework and used storytelling to convey our stories in such a way that our readers might feel as if they are eavesdropping. currere emphasises the importance of personal experience and subjectivity within educational contexts and originated in the work of william pinar during the 1970’s. the latin term currere means “to run” through one’s own experiences, feelings, and values to develop a sense of self-understanding and personal identity. it focuses on reflection and selfexamination rather than transmission of pre-determined knowledge and skills (pinar, 1975). it is a continuous process consisting of four steps, namely regression, progression, analysis, and synthesis (see figure 1) and aims at mobilising engaged pedagogical action (pinar, 1975). figure 1: the currere method (adapted from pinar, 1975). since each step builds on the previous one, it allowed us to juxtapose our life histories and educational contexts, reflect on our individual experiences, and ultimately develop a deeper self-understanding. the regressive step required reflection on current experiences, thoughts, and beliefs. it was useful to capture our histories and to explore our beliefs and values as well as the cultural, historical, and social forces that shaped our identities. we explored our attitudes and beliefs, took note of our lives in-universities, as-lecturers, with-books, and with other university-related artifacts. we also investigated our interests in some of the subjects and lecturers, disinterests https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 1982023 41(1): 198-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) in others, and we reminded ourselves of how we overcame struggles in the past – often through trial and error. the progressive step allowed us to imagine alternative futures and possibilities for ourselves and the world around us. we explored new ideas and perspectives, and considered how these might challenge our existing beliefs and values to gain a better understanding of ourselves, and the world around us. the analytic step required a focus on the here and the now. we engaged in critical analysis of our current experiences and explored the new ideas and perspectives we have encountered. we explored contradictions and tensions between our current beliefs and values. we also explored the new ideas we have encountered to develop a more nuanced and sophisticated understanding of the world to freely imagine our futures. during the synthetic step, we synthesised our new learning with existing beliefs and values. we explored how we could integrate new perspectives into our worldviews and how we could modify our beliefs and values as a result of our learning. we reflected on how our different experiences in different contexts contributed to a broader educational drive towards social justice while we developed our unique perspectives and ideas. then, we needed a way to convey our experiences to a wider audience. breault (2015) recommends that ways should be explored to make conversations transparent enough to witness the transformative process that is central to duoethnography. we brainstormed several possibilities, but traditional methods were too restrictive. subsequently, we selected storytelling as means to convey our findings (norris et al., 2016). storytelling allowed us to share our experiences in such a way that we could – as mead (2014) recommends – convey values and emotions, while we reveal similarities and differences between our experiences. we were also attracted to storytelling as it fitted the dialogic nature of duoethnographic research (sawyer & norris, 2012). some authors write their duoethnographies from a third-person perspective and only quote their discussions. others use screenplay format, with sections of dialogue to support their understandings. we have followed a novel approach, namely to write the remainder of this paper in dialogue format to allow our readers to listen in on our conversations so that they can come to their own conclusions. as we are telling our stories, we opted for non-traditional headings to structure this paper. 3. once upon a time2 our stories about how our pasts shaped our teaching practices. christa: i was raised on a farm with no exposure to formal teaching until grade 1. i adored mrs sarie van der walt and taught my four younger siblings in the storeroom of my parents’ butchery where i copycatted her practice – rewarding good behaviour and punishing bad behaviour. mr hoek, my geography teacher at ermelo hoërskool, shaped my idea of being a teacher. so, i also dedicated the first minutes of a lesson to teaching new concepts, and then required of my learners and students to apply the new knowledge while i facilitated learning. 2 due to the conversational nature of our dialogues, as presented in sections 2–7, we do not use in-text references. instead, we use footnotes and add references to the list of references. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 1992023 41(1): 199-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 van staden & nel using whatsapp-based mobile learning environments liezel: i also knew from an early stage that i wanted to be a teacher. as the oldest daughter of two passionate mathematics and science teachers/academics, i spent many hours at the back of a classroom while they trained teachers in the former south african homelands of qwaqwa and gazankulu. both left the academic world for the business world while i was at primary school, but my mother later re-joined the university. i unofficially assisted her as a tutor during the extra mathematics classes she presented over weekends for learners from local township schools. i did not receive any formal training in this regard. christa: i’m intrigued by the fact that lecturers do not need formal training as educators, especially as my teacher training introduced me to theories about teaching, learning, and assessment, as well as practical teaching experiences, before i was allowed to enter my own classroom. after school, i have obtained a ba(ed) at the university of pretoria with education, geography and afrikaans as majors. i did not enjoy my classes as most of my lecturers were sages on stages – a phenomenon referring to lecturing from podiums without involving students3 – while i needed to learn from own experience. therefore, i have enjoyed my zulu classes the most. professor wilson taught us the basics, and then we had to chat on a weekly basis during one-on-one sessions with a native zulu speaker where we had to apply our new knowledge. liezel: unfortunately, most of my teachers and lecturers were also sages. my only inspiration (except my parents) came from professor arlys van wyk, who was a teacher at the bloemfontein onderwyssentrum where i attended an enrichment programme from grade 6 to 12. she used the most innovative activities to engage learners in the teaching of creative thinking and writing skills. that was the kind of teacher i wanted to be! after school, i enrolled at the university of the free state (ufs) where i obtained a bsc degree in 1995 (majoring in computer science [cs] and physics), followed by an honours degree in cs in 1996. i was appointed as junior lecturer in the department of information technology (it) at the central university of technology, free state4 (cut) and found it quite daunting at first due to a lack of training as educator. surely, you were better prepared for your first teaching job? christa: theoretically, yes. but i have experienced the well-known practice shock5 as my degree did not equip me with the skills and techniques to teach effectively. however, i regard myself as better prepared than colleagues with one year teaching diplomas. i furthered my studies when my daughter was identified as a gifted learner by enrolling for a bed (gifted child education) at unisa. this landed me a teaching post at vista university (welkom campus) where i taught education at underand postgraduate level, subject didactics of afrikaans and geography, research methodology and statistics. during this time, i obtained my med degree (self-concept of the underachieving gifted boy) from unisa. i resigned when we moved to gauteng, where i returned to teaching. there i encountered two large changes in education, namely (a) outcome-based education, and (b) a drive towards the continuing professional development (cpd) of teachers. 3 king (1993). 4 formerly known as the technikon free state. 5 delamarter (2015). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 2002023 41(1): 200-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) outcome-based education opened new doors, as i could develop my own lessons, but i despised the groupwork sessions, maybe because i did not know how to facilitate groupwork. during this time, i enrolled for a phd at the university of johannesburg under supervision of professor duan van der westhuizen.6 as my schoolwork suddenly overloaded me, i resigned to complete my research. duan encouraged me to write an academic paper and a new first love was born, which lead to appointments as postdoctoral fellow and research fellow. during our first meeting, i knew that i could relate to you as we share a passion for teaching and integrating technologies in our practices to improve teaching and learning. liezel: for me, it was quite tricky to teach without formal training as educator. although cut provided detailed manuals on compiling and marking assessment tasks, they provided no guidance on teaching. i devised my own teaching philosophy on the fly with my own experiences as a university student as a point of reference. similar to your experiences, most of my lecturers also read from scripts, while we took notes. it was not effective – especially in the case of practical modules. i recall a specific informal discussion i had with my mother in early 1997, during which she encouraged me to diarise my teaching experiences. in hindsight, i regret not taking this journaling exercise more seriously at the time. however, the intermittent diary entries i did make put me on the path of reflecting on what i was doing in the classroom. another pivotal point in my career came in 2000 when i was selected to attend a series of training sessions in preparation for the cut’s envisioned transition to online learning. the opportunities provided by web 1.0 technologies for teaching it subjects fascinated me. i was specifically interested in how these technologies could be incorporated to enhance not only my own teaching experiences but also the learning experiences of my students in a contact environment. consequently, i became actively involved in research on teaching and learning, and registered for a phd in higher education studies at the ufs in 2003, shortly before being appointed as lecturer in the department of computer science and informatics (csi) at the ufs. my phd research comprised an action inquiry aimed at establishing guidelines for creating meaningful blended learning experiences in a south african higher education classroom at undergraduate level. the goal was to find the ideal blend between online and face-to-face modes of delivery. my final set of proposed guidelines7 dealt with aspects such as cultural diversity, student attitudes, academic dishonesty, communication, and interaction, as well as assessment in large classrooms. the long-term goal of this ongoing action inquiry – with more than 20 completed cycles to date – is not only to advance my own practice, but also to expand the use of applicable teaching and learning strategies within the cs discipline. the focus remains on finding an ideal blend, and not on an abrupt switch to online learning. consequently, i started using a flipped classroom approach8 for one of my undergraduate modules in 2013. 6 i learned recently that he had passed away in november 2020; therefore, i dedicate this research to him. 7 nel (2005). 8 bergmann and sams (2012). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 2012023 41(1): 201-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 van staden & nel using whatsapp-based mobile learning environments christa: i also flipped my classrooms and followed a blended approach to teaching. by using technologies, i could bring experiences to my learners which i took for granted (such as being able to view the earth from an aeroplane). sharing the videos i took helped learners to understand aerial photographs and mapwork better. without any formal training, you have identified the best approaches to learning. however, i am not surprised; it proves my research findings, namely that teachers learn on the job to improve their practices. 4. prince charming an imagination of alternative futures and possibilities for ourselves, our teaching practices, and the world around us. christa: coming from a school education background, i needed to facilitate learning when i took over as lecturer of a postgraduate module in distance education midyear 2014. by then, half of the class have dropped out, many failed the first two assignments, and some submitted only the compulsory assignment. i invited the students via email and smss to join arend9 where i wanted to facilitate learning. however, only one student asked a question, and nobody replied. in september of that year, the module was earmarked for e-portfolios, which would require an abrupt switch to online learning. i was thrilled to spearhead this alternative method for assessment as i embrace new technologies. however, i also realised that it would require an almost impossible learning curve as some of my students still submitted written assignments via the postal system.10 therefore, i required of the 2015-class to use arend to establish cooperative base groups (cbgs). this technique requires of small groups of students to take up three tasks, namely to assist one another during the completion of assignments, to motivate one another to submit their assignments, and to assist one another on a personal level as well.11 when i left unisa, midyear of 2015 (after completion of my post-doctoral fellowship), a new lecturer took over and instructed the class no longer to use arend. it left the weaker students suddenly without their support system, so they contacted one of the top students for assistance. as it was no longer a requirement so support others, she created a whatsapp group, and added them and me, to the group as i have designed their learning tasks. it provided an opportunity to investigate my own practice. since ethical clearance was already granted, i used this mle to facilitate cooperative learning. instead of providing answers, i rather asked: “do you agree?” or “who can assist?” to encourage them to take the responsibility for their own learning. liezel: i understand the need to use technologies to facilitate learning when my students cannot attend classes. therefore, i also needed an mle for my students when it became apparent in 2020 that the second-semester modules would have to be offered online as a result of the covid-19 pandemic. i was desperately looking for a way to replicate the face-to-face component of the module where i have 9 a social networking site developed for research purposes to support teacher learning. unfortunately, i have closed it down due to the costs of keeping it in the cloud. 10 van staden (2016). 11 van staden (2019). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 2022023 41(1): 202-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) traditionally flipped the classroom. following the numerous discussions we had regarding your experiences with whatsapp, i was inspired to integrate a whatsappbased mle during emergency remote education where i could present the weekly contact sessions. the csis1664 module (introduction to the internet and web page development), is a compulsory first-year module for all students enrolled for the bsc (it) degree at ufs. this module aims at providing students with basic knowledge on the working of the internet as well as the creation of static websites. as i flip the classroom, students must watch a series of short videos as part of their preparation for the face-to-face contact sessions. under normal circumstances, i dedicate the first few minutes of each contact session to answering questions and addressing misconceptions regarding the content. for the remainder of the session, students work in groups to complete tasks collaboratively, as this had proven to be successful during contact sessions. this approach to teaching is based on students’ inputs over the years; therefore, it had to be incorporated in some way during transition of the csis1664 learning process and experience12 to online learning. as the collaborative group activities were central to face-to-face sessions, i wanted to continue with this, but the students were not allowed on campus during emergency remote education.13 therefore, i created multiple mles for my students. the main mle was used to facilitate the session, answer content-related questions, and share details regarding the class activities. i also created small mles for groupwork. the 77 students were randomly allocated to nine smaller groups (consisting of no more than nine students per group), with an mle for each of the groups. in these small groups, students were required to discuss course content, post answers to the class activities, and learn from one another. before the pandemic, i allocated six students to a group, as this was the maximum number of students who could easily work together, given the fixed seating arrangements in the lecture venue. if the majority of a group’s members failed to show up for a session, i could ask students to join a different group for that day’s collaborative activity. as such a quick switch would not be possible in an online environment, i decided to increase the maximum group size slightly to nine; thereby increasing the likelihood that the majority of each group’s members would be present during a session. christa: interesting! i have also increased the size of my groups. cbg-groups are normally very small, two or three students maximum. but i have created larger groups (seven members) as i assumed that it would be problematic if one or more members of such a small cbg drop out. i have noticed that our practices differ in important ways: distance versus a contact education context, postgraduate versus first-year students, and a year module versus a semester module. 12 nel (2017). 13 we prefer the term ‘emergency remote education’ as it includes learning, assessment, and all aspects related to teaching. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 2032023 41(1): 203-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 van staden & nel using whatsapp-based mobile learning environments liezel: that is true, but i have also identified similarities. both modules were compulsory, and both offered themselves for practical application. also, in both our contexts, student success could have been impacted negatively by abrupt switches to online learning. 5. the magic kingdom developing a sense of hope and possibilities for the future. christa: being a distance education student previously, i envisioned that postgraduate students would need assistance after hours as they juggled work and studies. an mle could afford me to keep my finger on the pulse while facilitating learning. liezel: i was nervous about the idea of using whatsapp as my colleagues reported that some of their students posted inappropriate and even offensive messages during late hours when lecturers went to bed. silencing notifications would not solve the problem; therefore, i locked the main group and opened it for limited periods of time – such as mondays until 20:00 – to allow for questions following the mle sessions. as the semester progressed, i kept the main group open for longer periods, but locked it over weekends. during weekends, students could contact me via email. i never locked the small groups and never encountered inappropriate messages in my groups. in retrospect, i am wondering if participation in the mle would have been better if i had not locked the group. christa: i did not even give that a thought! maybe because using mles was still a novel idea in distance education at the time? but the students did not post offending messages even though the groups were available 24/7/365. one student complained once about irrelevant videos and jokes as mobile data was expensive and he was jobless. the peers understood and did not share jokes again. liezel: coming from contact education, i followed a different approach. i had to meet the students as a group (as dictated by the university timetable). therefore i required of them to meet me in the main mle once a week during the time slots allocated to csis1664. i also expected from them to be present (online) during this time slot, as they would have been under normal circumstances. christa: it makes sense. you did not know when you would return to face-to-face education, and then it would be easy to return to contact education. i found the mle useful, as i could correct a mistake made in the study material. if one of the students did not ask a question about it, i would not have known about it. the mle provided a learning space, as many students were overwhelmed by the switch to e-portfolios. it also reduced my workload. i was not overloaded with similar emails, as the problems were solved in the mle. it helped me to understand how quickly postgraduate students stress, and that they need constant assurance that they are on the right track. i also found that the mle provided them with ample opportunities to learn from their peers. liezel: i had a similar experience when a student posted on whatsapp that he experienced trouble accessing a certain section of the course material on the blackboard learning management system (lms). i quickly corrected the mistake i had made and could immediately inform all students on the whatsapp group. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 2042023 41(1): 204-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) the way in which i utilised the smaller groups during each session also provided my first-year students with opportunities to learn from their peers. after posting the details of a class activity in the main group, the students had to complete the activity on their own and share their answers in the smaller groups. for this purpose, the students typed text responses or uploaded photos of the answers they either wrote on paper or typed on their computers. i also encouraged the students to point out mistakes or errors in the answers of their group members so that they could learn from one another. these cooperative learning activities replaced the collaborative activities i had previously used during the face-to-face component of my flipped classroom approach. christa: i found cbgs an effective technique as the students motivated and supported one another, which had a positive impact on student success. many students wrote that they considered dropping out, but they did not, as they were supported by their peers. one student considered suicide due to the stress levels, but his fellow students supported him through this difficult time. he lived in a rural area, was jobless, and did not have access to electricity, the internet, or a computer. his peers motivated and supported him until he submitted successfully, and they celebrated his pass14 more than their own! liezel: wow, what an inspiring story! this is an excellent example of how cooperation in an mle was used to establish an inclusive learning environment.15 i also noted that your students developed a sense of community that supported both their academic and social needs. they felt comfortable because of their respect for and connectedness with one another. from my experience, students (who were used to contact education) placed more value on cooperative learning in a face-to-face environment. although i did find evidence in some of the groups that students used the mle to help one another to correct mistakes and successfully submit the activities, this only happened in groups where most of the members were present during the scheduled time slot. i also found it much more difficult to assess the development of cooperative learning skills in the mle (when compared to contact education). christa: me too! but what was my alternative? the students did not attend classes. as already mentioned, the mle had a positive impact on student success. when compared, the group of active students performed better on average than the group of inactive students. it was also interesting to note that ten of the eleven students who passed with distinction were active in the mles.16 one of the distinction candidates who did not want to join the mle dropped out. when asked why, she told me that the weaker students asked “stupid” questions. i cannot help but to wonder if she would have been successful if she had experienced their support when she considered dropping out. 14 sadly, he was killed during a raid of the police station where he worked in order to be able to look after his mother. 15 wlodkowski and ginsberg (2010). 16 van staden (2018). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 2052023 41(1): 205-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 van staden & nel using whatsapp-based mobile learning environments liezel: i had a similar experience with my students. the distinction students had an average participation rate of 74.5%, while the few students who failed only participated (on average) in 21.9% of the learning activities. interestingly, those students who participated in 100% of the learning activities all passed the module with a distinction, which illustrates the importance of active participation in mles during emergency remote education. 6. a storm is brewing the magic kingdom also posed many frustrations. christa: although the mle was effective, i had to find ways to overcome difficulties due to limited functions. one of the biggest limitations of whatsapp is that messages cannot be edited. although the reply function could be used to correct typing errors, it was not desirable, as it created chaos during discussions. another limitation was the one-hour time limit to delete messages. i do not understand why whatsapp does not allow users to delete messages. liezel: both the issues frustrated me as well. my biggest frustration was that students posted irrelevant messages (e.g. “when is the next assignment due?”) while i was busy explaining a concept in the main group, thereby ‘interrupting’ my carefully planned sequence of information sharing. i partially solved the problem by closing comments for a while and then re-opening it at the end of my explanations. christa: i have also experienced that. i did not create the whatsapp group, so i could not close discussions. another frustration was that i could not hide my personal contact details. i used a second smartphone, but it was inconvenient to carry two phones with me. the limited size of documents and media (100 megabytes) was also frustrating, as larger files had to be shared via wetransfer, which was problematic for the technologically disadvantaged students, as they had to use a variety of technologies to get access to information. liezel: i could use the lms for sharing large documents. the lack of statistics on student participation and/or attendance frustrated me. i had no idea if the students who did not participate in the group discussions understood the work or were experiencing problems. since some students never posted anything, i also had no idea which students were actually ‘present’ in the mle during the scheduled sessions. consequently, i started each session by asking students to post a single emoji to indicate how they were feeling at that moment. afterwards, i could use these responses to compile a more accurate attendance register. christa: whatsapp is no longer the only popular ima within the south african context, as many south africans have switched to signal and telegram since we used whatsapp. as whatsapp frustrated us, i conducted a comparative study and found telegram a better platform for creating mles.17 17 van staden (2022). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 2062023 41(1): 206-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) 7. a reality check learning from our new ideas about teaching in two disparate educational contexts. liezel: based on our experiences, i believe south african educators and students are not yet ready for an abrupt switch to online learning. christa: i agree. too many students reside in rural areas where access to electricity, computers and the internet is limited. on top of that, all students (and lecturers) must plan online activities around severe levels of loadshedding schedules enforced by the national electricity provider, eskom. liezel: for me, emergency remote education actually highlighted many of the pre-pandemic challenges experienced by our students. unfortunately, these challenges are still a reality in the post-pandemic world and should be taken into consideration when planning our future teaching and learning practices. five years after your switch to online learning, my students still had to deal with restricted electricity supply due to regular loadshedding. currently, the impact of loadshedding is even more severe than during the pandemic. in both of our online learning experiences we had to deal with students who lived in rural areas – as some of mine were forced to move back to their rural family homes because of the pandemic. in 2023, many of the students who stay off-campus can still only get reliable access to the internet and computers while they are on campus during weekdays. after hours or in the event of disruptions or protests (which often prevent students from accessing the campus) they are again deprived of free access to crucial educational resources. with disruptions and protests now becoming an annual occurrence, mles still remain a viable alternative to create low-cost online learning environments. i am also worried about the impact of the disparities in the south african school system which causes many first-year students to lack basic digital literacy skills. this already has a negative impact on attempts at blended learning. christa: i agree, it can also hamper transitions to online learning. what frustrated you the most during the sudden switch to online learning? liezel: one of my biggest frustrations was that the students did not take responsibility for their own learning, which had a negative impact on success rates. the majority of the first years had a long way to go before they could be regarded as self-directed learners. they lacked time management skills and were unable to divide study time equally between all modules. i believe the unfamiliar emergency remote education learning environment played a significant role. christa: that is something that needs to be addressed at school level. even at postgraduate level, many of my students lacked self-directed learning skills. they wanted to be spoon-fed! liezel: another frustration was that i struggled to find a balance between working from home and attending to the needs of my family. many students regarded me (their lecturer) as the only resource at their disposal to assist them in reaching their goals – possibly due to a lack of confidence to ask peers for assistance in the whatsapp https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 2072023 41(1): 207-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 van staden & nel using whatsapp-based mobile learning environments groups. many students also started with assignments the night before the due date. in one instance, a student sent an email asking for clarification the night before the assignment was due. i had to assist him via emails as it was too late for a discussion on the whatsapp groups. therefore, i recommend that lecturers (especially at undergraduate level) must make conscious efforts to empower students to take control of and responsibility for their own learning experiences as these skills are important in the work environment as well. christa: some of my students also followed the easy road: contacting me for assistance. i even had to explain via a telephonic conversation how to drag-and-drop a file, although the student could have watched instructional videos on youtube. i constantly reminded the students about upcoming assignments when they did not discuss them in the mle, as i knew they would not be able to submit in time if they had not started yet. the night that the e-portfolios were due, i went to bed by 22:00 as the students were quiet. minutes before midnight, one of the weaker students phoned me: please help! i can’t submit my e-portfolio. the others had gone to bed. i assisted him to submit successfully, but this could have been prevented if he did not wait until the deadline to submit. as self-directed learning skills are regarded as an important employability skill, we must develop these skills, even at postgraduate level. different from your findings, my students relied heavily on one another. therefore, i can recommend cbgs as technique to develop cooperative learning skills. liezel: another factor to keep in mind is a lack of statistics. i was suddenly left in the dark regarding student involvement. the mle did not provide any statistics regarding student participation. i did not know if posts were read when students did not participate. even blackboard (the lms) did not provide detailed statistics for individual students, such as if all content had been accessed, if announcements had been read, or if a student had stopped accessing the material. it is extremely time-consuming to collect the data myself – especially when dealing with a large group of students. therefore, i recommend that lmss and imas provide better statistics to enable lecturers to make conscious efforts to identify and contact atrisk students as early as possible. christa: i second your recommendation. myunisa (the lms at unisa) also provided limited statistics. as i measure my own success against the success of my students, i need to contact those at risk before they fail or drop out. if they failed to ask questions in the mle, i would not know that they did not understand the learning tasks. i found that my students seldom checked their institutional email accounts; yet it was the only email address i could use to reach out to them. another problem is that they switched contact numbers during discussions, which made it difficult to identify students. liezel: i think it is a universal problem, regardless of the mode of teaching. i have monitored and recorded participation in the mle and knew exactly (on a weekly basis) which students were not participating. however, it was impossible to determine why they were absent if they did not respond to emails i sent to their student email accounts. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 2082023 41(1): 208-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) although i did have alternative contact details, i was uncomfortable phoning missing students, as i did not want to intrude on their private lives. however, i believe that i should be able to contact the students as i do discuss problems with them in face-to-face education; therefore, i second your recommendation that students – especially those at risk – be contacted. 8. light at the end of the tunnel whereto from here? we have used whatsapp to develop mles during abrupt switches to online learning. this was the only way (at the time) to provide our students with equal learning opportunities. as imas are the preferred communication channel for many south african students, we plan to integrate the valuable lessons we have learned into our future educational endeavours. as whatsapp’s limited functionalities frustrated us, we plan to investigate the usability of telegram in future research. we hope that our readers found this paper insightful. to us, this research provided an outlet during a time when face-to-face contact with colleagues was prohibited. under normal circumstances, we would have had such conversations over a cup of coffee in the staffroom during the lunch break. duoethnography allowed us to share experiences, discuss frustrations, ask for advice, and get numerous ideas based on our experiences in similar, but also very different learning contexts. we also picked up on key aspects that we did not necessarily regard as vital or problematic during our original verbal conversations. curerre, our theoretical framework, provided us with ample opportunities to reflect in depth on our teaching experiences, to identify sections of our pedagogies that can be improved, and to formulate strategies to be incorporated in a post-pandemic future. through these reflections, we (re-)discovered some of the theoretical underpinnings of our teaching philosophies and practices, and we have developed a better understanding of how our future practices can be improved. we realised how our past experiences instilled a strong social justice orientation within us. as academics from a developing country, we remain dedicated to enhancing our students’ learning experiences, regardless of their diverse backgrounds, experiences, viewpoints, and unequal access to online learning experiences. statements on ethics and conflict of interest ethical clearance for this project was granted by the general/human research ethics committee of the university of the free state (ethical clearance number: ufs-hsd2020/1505/261). to the knowledge of the authors, the information and experiences portrayed in this paper do not present any conflict of interest. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 2092023 41(1): 209-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6294 van staden & nel using whatsapp-based mobile learning environments references bergmann, j. & sams, a. 2012. flip your classroom: reach every student in every class every day. eugene, or: international society for technology in education. bouhnik, d. & deshen, m. 2014. whatsapp goes to school: mobile instant messaging between teachers and students. journal of information technology education: research, 13: 217-231. available at https://doi.org/10.28945/2051 [accessed on 28 march 2023]. breault, r.a. 2014. emerging issues in duoethnography. international journal of qualitative studies in education, 29(6): 777-794. available at 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https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315430058 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315430058 https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199757404.001.0001 https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:osobl/9780199757404.001.0001 https://doi.org/10.51276/edu.v2i2.139 https://doi.org/10.56273/1995-5928/2022/j19n2d2 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10639-019-10096-0 _hlk107902374 _hlk108278193 _hlk108277794 89 research article 2023 41(2): 89-103 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) crisis leadership: reflecting on the complex role of academic (middle) leaders during the covid-19 pandemic abstract this article examines the experiences and coping strategies of four university middle-managers during the unprecedented time of disruption caused by the covid-19 pandemic. we use the research approach of autoethnography to reflect on our experiences and decision-making processes. to reflect on how we managed the rapid change and moved from survivalist actions to more systemic responses in a new and uncertain reality, we draw on concepts which highlight the importance of connectedness, distributive leadership and communicating clearly. intuitively following these principles, and being decisive and pragmatic are what enabled all four departments to stabilise and move out of a survivalist reactive mode. two clear patterns emerged from our reflections. firstly, it is evident that the pandemic exacerbated pre-existing challenges and shone a bright light on existing shortcomings. a second pattern was that there was simply no other option but to improve systems and processes. we conclude that it is vital to continue asking difficult questions about the long-term implications of the profound changes delivered by the covid-19 pandemic. this includes the move to hybrid teaching and how we can regain a proactive stance, facilitating inclusive long-term change. keywords: academic leaders, blended learning, covid-19 pandemic, crisis leadership, historically disadvantaged university, online environment. 1. introduction the higher educational landscape was not spared the dramatic impact of covid-19. in fact, it would be reasonable to say that the education system in south africa was dealt some of the harshest blows due to the pandemic. covid-19 lockdowns had massive implications for tertiary institutions. after south africa’s president cyril ramaphosa had declared a national state of disaster and put the country on a strict lockdown level in march 2020, tertiary institutions around the country were required to follow suit by imposing campus lockdowns. this necessitated a switch to a purely online learning and teaching mode for a sustained period. from the second half of 2020, some institutions offered author: cherrel africa1 derek yu1 abdulrazak karriem1 bonita raymond1 affiliation: 1university of the western cape, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i2.6265 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(2): 89-103 published: 30 june 2023 received: 12 may 2022 accepted: 18 may 2023 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6851-2438 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9813-7897 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1528-3619 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 902023 41(2): 90-103 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) limited face-to-face contact on campus (supplemented by live streaming of lectures) adopting the so-called hybrid mode, while other institutions remained purely online. these practices continued in 2021 until more institutions gradually reverted to more face-to-face teaching (albeit primarily in small classes with constraints on venue capacity) in 2022, especially with the vaccination rollout around the country. overseeing these rapid changes were departmental chairs (middle managers). the role of middle managers in higher education is a complex role at the best of times. the pandemic and campus lockdowns drastically changed how academic departments operate. this article aims to contribute to the body of knowledge on the impact of covid-19 on the higher education landscape by examining the experiences and coping strategies of four university middle managers based at a south african historically disadvantaged university (hdi) during the unprecedented disruptions caused by the covid-19 pandemic. more specifically, in terms of the autoethnographic approach, this article aims to i) reflect on our lived experiences as middle managers, and ii) situate our experience within the literature using relevant theoretical concepts. ultimately, it aims to provide a rich sense of the challenges that managers had to face in balancing the competing interests of various stakeholders, including students, staff and the university as a whole. 2. research approach and research question for this article we followed an autoethnographic approach. according to adams, ellis and jones (2017), ellis and bochner (2000) and mendez (2013), autoethnography is a research method that uses personal experience (“auto”) to describe and interpret (“graphy”) cultural texts, experiences, beliefs, and practices (“ethno”). they indicate that auto-ethnographers engage in rigorous self-reflection – typically referred to as “reflexivity” – in order to identify and interrogate the intersections between the self and social life. in this article we write about the self, calling on memory and hindsight to reflect on our past experiences and then we collectively reflect on these to provide deeper insights into those experiences. as adams et al. (2017: 2) indicate, the purpose of this approach is to articulate insider knowledge of a particular experience and to provide information that would not otherwise be known. given the focus on personal experience, auto-ethnographers describe moments of everyday experience that cannot be captured through more traditional research methods. the research questions addressed in this article (and answered through the narrative that follows) are: • how did middle managers in academia adjust to and cope with profound changes delivered by the covid-19 pandemic? • what processes assisted academic departments in continuing their academic programme during the covid-19 pandemic? • what lessons emerge from reflecting on the process of adapting academic activities during the covid-19 period? 3. challenges in higher education caused by the covid-19 pandemic there are many interrelated economic and social factors that could have an impact on how academic departments coped with the disruption caused by the covid-19 crisis. students and academics in particular faced numerous challenges in an environment characterised by an abrupt move to purely online or blended teaching mode in the 2020–2022 period. the south https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 912023 41(2): 91-103 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 africa et al. crisis leadership: reflecting on the complex role of academic (middle) leaders african socio-economic context meant that many students did not have access to personal computers and laptops, which forced many to rely on their mobile phones (khan et al., 2020; khoza, khoza & mukona, 2021; neuwirth, jovic & mukherji, 2020; patrick, abiolu & abiolu, 2021; khan, 2022). this finding is not surprising, especially within the south african context, given the extent of poverty in the country. according to the 2020 general household survey data (statistics south africa, 2021), only 8.3% of south african households had an internet connection at their residences, whereas 64.1% of households reported they had access to the internet via their mobile devices. students reported that they could not afford the cost of an internet connection or mobile data. thus, some tertiary institutions partnered with the south african government and internet providers by negotiating zero-rated access to the university’s e-teaching website (armoed, 2021). even as access and affordability issues were resolved in some instances, there were students that still experienced connectivity and reliability problems, especially students based in rural provinces (maatuk et al., 2021). furthermore, even when provided with data and devices, some were simply unable to adapt to a non-conventional mode. these are students who found it difficult to cope with online classes, feeling lost and worried, because suddenly they needed to adopt something unfamiliar, without social interaction with classmates, while simultaneously dealing with challenging home environments that were not conducive to study (neuwirth et al., 2020; treve, 2021). additionally, some students had to deal with extra household responsibilities as their parents had lost their jobs (neuwirth et al., 2020). postgraduate students faced particular difficulties in conducting their fieldwork. for example, it was a challenge to ensure that research subjects felt safe to share confidential information in an online interview or survey. lecturers, like students, faced numerous challenges posed by the pandemic. this included the challenge of transitioning to an online-based teaching environment (dison et al., 2022). in fact, some felt they had less control over online classes (na & jung, 2021). concerns about academic dishonesty committed by students doing online assessments is another issue that emerged (landa et al., 2021; nasution, 2021). moreover, as paudel (2021) argues, efficient time management and the provision of speedy online feedback were challenging for instructors. sahoo, gulati and ui haq (2021) also argue that some academics found it difficult to transition to the work-from-home environment. dawood and van wyk (2021) highlight another key difficulty, the challenge of conducting supervision activities virtually. lastly, numerous studies mention the importance of providing adequate support and training to students and staff (ali, 2020; chedrawi, 2021) because they have different digital skills, resulting in a struggle to adapt to “the new normal” of online learning, teaching and assessment. 4. the role of departmental chairs in managing the covid-19 crisis as outlined, students and staff were vulnerable and affected negatively because of various issues relating to the pandemic. within this context, it is useful to ask how departmental chairs managed the rapid change. more importantly, were they able to move from survivalist actions to more systemic adjustments in a new and uncertain reality? if this is the case, what did they do to turn the corner to create stability for staff and students under their watch? while there is a growing body of literature on the impact of the pandemic on teaching and learning and how the pandemic changed the way academics operate, there is limited literature on the challenges facing middle managers overseeing these drastic changes and how they https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 922023 41(2): 92-103 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) dealt with the crisis at departmental levels. some of the challenges that middle managers faced were not experienced by higher-level managers. for example, middle managers are “trapped in the middle”, overseeing and liaising with lower-level departmental staff and students, and simultaneously providing information and reporting to higher-level staff. middle managers are ultimately the engine of any institution. it is, therefore, useful to explicitly reflect on the challenges faced by middle-level managers (namely departmental chairpersons) in academia as a result of the pandemic. two exceptions are studies conducted by menon and motala (2021) and gigliotti (2021). menon and motala (2021) investigated the leadership challenges and changes that took place at the university of johannesburg (uj) since the start of the pandemic. the study found that whilst rapid decisions were made by senior management at the start of the lockdown, distributed leadership gradually takes place over time, as responsibility is diffused through numerous organisational channels. this happens by ensuring continuous communication and clarity of purpose with key stakeholders and securing the necessary buy-in to deliver the university’s mandate. also, students should be placed at the centre of all activities, ranging from academic to support services. in gigliotti’s (2021) study in the united states of america, 172 departmental chairs participated in a survey to discuss their challenges under the pandemic. they found complexities in academic leadership, as ‘virtual’ leadership is very different from physical leadership. ongoing communication was essential despite the lack of certainty. moreover, some chairs faced the dilemma of spending an excessive amount of time conducting individual check-ins with department staff members, while simultaneously needing to provide support for and address the needs of higher-level managers. in other words, they need to deal simultaneously with micro(personal communication) and macro(moving curriculum, teaching and assessment online) issues. as a result, some chairs expressed pessimism, while others adopted a favourable view, which they saw as the reinvention of higher education. 5. the context: university of the western cape it is important to preface our reflections by considering the background of our university and the challenges and circumstances of our students, since it has direct bearing on our experiences as middle-managers. the university of the western cape (uwc) was founded in 1960 and is what is known as a historically disadvantaged institution (hdi). historically disadvantaged institutions were established by the apartheid system where historically white institutions were elevated while historically black institutions faced a set of deep challenges emanating from their roots in apartheid. to a large extent, the university has overcome the shackles of its past (africa & mitizwa-mangiza, 2018). the uwc has grown to establish itself firmly as one of the top south african universities and a producer of world-class teaching and research. indeed, it is a dynamic institution committed to excellence in learning, teaching, research and innovation in a globally competitive environment while remaining true to the values and spirit that have shaped its identity as a university rooted in serving the public good. it is recognised as an institution of access, affording people the opportunity to change their lives and positively impact their families and communities, thus contributing to the building of a more equitable society. the university’s motto, respice, prospice, translated from latin means ‘looking back, looking forward’ and reminds staff and students that they are the architects of a significantly greater potential future. the sense of community is palpable at the institution. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 932023 41(2): 93-103 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 africa et al. crisis leadership: reflecting on the complex role of academic (middle) leaders at the uwc the pandemic came with many additional challenges due to the financial constraints facing the students and their families. following the hard lockdown, the uwc management and academic staff were left with the gargantuan task of making swift, sound and responsible choices that would result in the best outcome for its student community. to save the academic year, a number of compromises and quick decisions had to be made. this was the same for other tertiary institutions. however, as the saying goes, all were facing the same storm, but all were not in the same boat. du plessis et al. (2022) and mtshweni (2022) argue that the journey was not smooth and easy for all institutions, as the pandemic exposed the stark inequalities within and amongst universities. some institutions rapidly switched to online teaching without major problems, while others encountered numerous obstacles relating to resource constraints and learners’ difficult socio-economic circumstances. as an institution, we faced the enormous task of making it through the year with a student body dealing with very difficult realities, given their precarious working-class living circumstances. when the pandemic forced the physical closure of the campus, numerous mechanisms were put in place to provide additional support to students and staff. for the former group, all registered students were provided monthly data support of up to 30gb for academic purposes only. some students were permitted to stay at a campus residence, subject to sticking to the maximum capacity and social distancing rules. all students were given virtual private network (vpn) access to access off-campus, internal digital university services. by april 2020, the uwc had adopted the “#nostudentleftbehind” slogan, which meant that, given the challenges our students were enduring, the institution would endeavour to afford every student the best chance of success. last but not the least, in addition to tutors, graduate assistants (gas) were introduced to support teaching staff. the gas assisted in tutor coordination, administration, communication and the electronic management of teaching materials (for example, providing study guides and pre-recorded videos). in terms of additional support to staff, the above-mentioned monthly data, vpn and a ‘wizzpass’ quick response (qr) code for campus access were also provided. the uwc launched its own vaccination centre for students and staff (and their spouses and parents). at the start of 2022, fully vaccinated students were allowed to return to campus, while those who were not vaccinated were eligible to apply for exemptions based on human or religious grounds. students who were granted permission to enter campus were also given a ‘wizzpass’ qr code. the chairpersons of the four units writing this article are from the department of accounting, department of economics, department of political studies and the institute for social development (isd). all four departments are located in the faculty of economic and management sciences (ems). the ems is the largest faculty, with 4 216 undergraduate and 1 252 postgraduate registered students in the 2022 academic year. moreover, the faculty consists of 11 academic units in total, with two research units offering postgraduate programmes and nine academic units offering both undergraduate and postgraduate courses. the accounting department is governed not only by university governance processes, but also by the south african institute of professional accountants (saipa) and the south african institute of chartered accountants (saica), which oversee the accreditation of its degrees. at postgraduate level, the postgraduate diploma in accounting (pgda) is a saica-accredited qualification. some undergraduate programmes are named degrees relating specifically to accounting (e.g. bcom accounting and bcom financial accounting). economics is a highly https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 942023 41(2): 94-103 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) popular major subject in the bcom general programme. political studies modules are a compulsory component of the badmin programmes and are offered as an elective in the law faculty and a major in the arts faculty. lastly, isd only offers postgraduate programmes and courses. we believe that reflecting on what happened to these four academic units provides a balanced and well-rounded picture of how middle-level managers coped with the lockdown. at postgraduate levels, economics, political studies and the isd offer honours programmes that involve coursework modules, research methodology modules as well as the year-long research essay modules; accounting only offers the coursework programmes. lastly, at master’s level, economics offers only the full-thesis programme, while political studies and the isd offer both structured coursework and full-thesis programmes. before the pandemic and campus lockdown took place, face-to-face lectures took place for approximately 65 days or 13 weeks per semester, and it is typical that tutorials (that involve the tutors having face-to-face contact with students in small groups) support the lectures at undergraduate courses. during the pandemic these were either synchronous (live online classes) or asynchronous (pre-recorded videos are created and uploaded before classes commence). since the lockdown in march 2020, the ems faculty offered lectures and tutorials purely online for the balance of 2020 and even 2021. in addition, students wrote both formative and summative assessments online, with the aid of the university’s learning management platform, ikamva, which provides a wide range of learning, teaching, assessment, grading and even consultation tools. at both institutional and faculty levels, numerous online webinars took place to provide workshops to staff on how to use advanced ikamva teaching and assessment tools and other online teaching tools (e.g. pre-recorded video websites). at the ems faculty, one staff member per academic unit was nominated as the ‘online teaching champion’ to provide additional support to colleagues in their respective home units. furthermore, a drastically revamped ems learning and teaching website was set up by the ems teaching specialist team. 6. leadership theory as a theoretical lens it is necessary to consider theory on leadership styles to think through and reflect on how we managed the rapid change and moved from survivalist actions to more systemic adjustments in a new and uncertain reality. fernandez and shaw (2020) argue that to support the campus collective in pivoting to remote learning, academic leaders must use a new toolbox of intellectual stimulation, idealised influence and inspiration while providing essential training, support and resources to faculty suddenly immersed in online teaching. in particular, fernandez and shaw (2020) emphasise three characteristics leaders require to cope well with rapid and unpredictable changes in academia. these characteristics clearly connect with people, distributing leadership and communicating. the first aspect, which can also be described as servant leadership, emphasises empowerment, involvement and collaboration, and placing the interests of others above the leadership’s own interests. this view is reinforced by lawton-misra and pretorius (2021: 208) who emphasise relinquishing control and collective leadership, along with caring, empathy and compassion, as important for leadership during crisis conditions. these views speak to the importance of emotional intelligence in academic leaders. building relationships and establishing mutual trust in a crisis is not easy and requires of academic leaders to be https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 952023 41(2): 95-103 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 africa et al. crisis leadership: reflecting on the complex role of academic (middle) leaders authentic and engage in active listening without judgement, accept advice and criticism, and communicate their views transparently by speaking from the heart while promoting psychological safety. nugroho et al. (2021) emphasise that once empathy is developed, it leads to more conducive work environments and improved productivity. secondly, academic leaders should distribute leadership responsibilities to a network of teams to improve the quality of decisions made. this aspect is crucial in a crisis situation. kerr and jermier (1978) concur that a distributed leadership style promotes collaboration and inclusivity and works particularly well in academia where followers are motivated, knowledgeable and experienced. moreover, john and srivastava (1999) argue that when it comes to building teams, selecting team or task force members and delegating responsibilities to these members, five important traits are considered, namely openness, conscientiousness, agreeableness, diversity and cultural differences. thirdly, leaders should communicate regularly and clearly through various communication channels to all stakeholders, such as colleagues, students and parents. leadership should also consider stakeholder preferences; thus, communication with employees and students may utilise different channels. effective communication is linked to the integrity and credibility of the leader; if the leader is not credible, the message communicated will not be perceived as credible. thus, empathy, devolution of responsibilities and clear regular communication emerged as important leadership traits during the covid-19 pandemic. as we were coping with the unfolding crisis, we did not have time to consult theory. however, now that we are moving towards a “new normal”, and with the benefit of hindsight, we can pose questions to ourselves and think critically about our decisions. 7. our experiences of running departments under the covid-19 crisis we now explore how we managed the rapid change and moved from survivalist actions to more systemic adjustments in a new and uncertain reality. we examine the complexity behind some of the processes and reflect both on our experiences and decision-making processes, including the importance of lobbying and networking, given the realisation that many futures were at risk. we also draw out the key principles that guided these decisions, such as pragmatism, empathy and simplicity. our challenges included dealing with large classes in an online environment where students needed to be taught practical content according to the standards of professional bodies, teaching research methodology and ensuring that continued quality supervision was provided to postgraduate students. this needed to be done within a context of significant difficulties, given the profile of the student population and compromised staff well-being. many students had to leave their residences to return home which, in many cases, were in rural areas or informal settlements. the issues facing other institutions, such as unstable internet connections, home environments not being conducive to learning, and a high proportion of undergraduate students not having their personal computers or laptops, also affected our students. tutors reported that they struggled to get hold of students in their groups. additionally, some students (and staff) struggled to use ikamva, especially the more advanced teaching and assessment tools. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 962023 41(2): 96-103 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) all four writers had a physical open-door policy prior to the onset of the covid-19 crisis. students knew that they could walk into our offices, which provided a particular benefit for postgraduate students. supervision requires an ongoing relationship with students. this ended abruptly with the onset of the hard lockdown. additionally, primary data collection in the traditional sense became problematic. this affected master’s and doctoral students who needed to collect data via fieldwork. teaching research methodology required innovation and some difficult decisions. we had to face the realities that our students faced far more directly than we had before. the teaching of research methodology was another area that was affected. for example, the teaching of stata (a quantitative statistics software package) was removed from the isd’s teaching programme after careful consideration relating to the fact that students would not have access to a computer laboratory and that attempting to take students through a complex quantitative project would be extremely difficult and unfair to students from working communities who lack access to computers and reliable internet access. we found that our students need face-to-face engagement where they can interact with their lecturers and tutors in a physical space. the switch to a virtual mode of delivery was extremely hard for the numerous reasons outlined above. students who enjoyed being in class suddenly had to be off-campus for more than a year and they felt the isolation. students with patchy and unreliable connectivity ended up cutting in and out of the class and had to contend with noisy environments. in one instance, a student in class indicated that he was walking around in an informal settlement, having borrowed a phone to log in. in terms of teaching and learning, more regular use was made of social media tools to facilitate small-group contact with students, for example, each tutor created a whatsapp group along with google meet and zoom to consult and supervise students. lecturers also created pre-recorded lecture videos and audio files. all module coordinators and students were now required to use the university’s learning management platform, ikamva. we relied on ikamva’s visit statistics tool to determine whether students needed additional support. we all realised that we had been underutilising ikamva teaching tools and quickly upskilled ourselves and arranged additional staff training. where some staff had difficulty adapting, they were provided with support from colleagues who were more adept in using e-tools. a benefit of this was that where pre-recorded videos were used, students could return to the content and refresh their knowledge. collecting data for decision-making purposes and communicating was a massive challenge for us. as part of making evidence-based decisions, we were asked by our executive management to provide data on the circumstances and needs of our students. we collected the data from students and various colleagues and felt it was essential to report back to colleagues (to the extent that we could). in addition to requests for data, we were inundated with queries and emails from students who shared with us what they were facing and how difficult it was for them. furthermore, we needed to receive and make sense of constant communication received via various channels. we also needed to translate and communicate this information to staff and students clearly. this was time consuming, because the messages required to be well-thought through. the scale of communication also increased. we needed more tools to provide regular contact with the aid of a wide range of communication and online tools. as middle managers, we felt pressure, because we needed to communicate with staff and students from our home units, but also have frequent contact with faculty-level staff (that is, the management committee [manco], deans, deputy deans and faculty managers) https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 972023 41(2): 97-103 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 africa et al. crisis leadership: reflecting on the complex role of academic (middle) leaders and institutional level (e.g. deputy vice-chancellors) leadership. whatsapp played a critical role in this regard. each department had its own staff whatsapp group to communicate with staff. additionally, a number of additional whatsapp groups were created to deal with specific issues such as postgraduate management, module management and tutorial groups. middle managers were not only delegated crucial leadership tasks from the upper level but also needed to delegate tasks to the home unit’s staff as leaders. we had to make decisions and account for those decisions, but we also had to wait for institutional direction and directives. extensive strategic and operational meetings and discussions preceded communications. whereas in the pre-covid era, we would give lecturers autonomy to manage their modules and systems were well known to all, under covid-19 this changed. we were no longer primarily accountable for oversight – we were accountable for everything. this meant instantly dealing with a myriad of issues and challenges while operating in a bizarre and frightening space. we had our own anxieties and personal challenges, but needed to rethink all operations urgently, put feasible plans in place and get them up and running. to do so, we had to make decisions about where to cut back and what remained critical. one of us developed a “to don’t list”, declining all speaking engagements and was unable to publish since the beginning of the pandemic. another cut back on her teaching to focus solely on administration and running the department. of course, the situation enabled some lecturing staff to increase their research output, and the scholarly study of the impact of covid-19 contributed to this. shared drives were used to create repositories of valuable documents and facilitate collective work that would ordinarily have been done in person. departmental chairs had to engage intensively with all lecturers about every module to develop contingency plans. this then needed to be fed back to departmental staff to ensure consistency between modules, particularly at the year levels. the need for strong administrative systems and contingency plans became very clear. we continuously addressed problems as they emerged and tried to find solutions to issues we did not always have answers to. designing an entirely new mode of delivery for all levels of study would, under normal circumstances, be a challenging endeavour requiring months of planning, testing and refinement. indeed, it requires out-of-the-box thinking – the kind of thinking, creativity and reflection that occurs through face-to-face brainstorming and workshopping. the complete reimagining of all modules without the benefit of time and under virtual conditions while replicating the same educational outcomes was a colossal challenge. this was exacerbated by the fact that we operate in a very participative way – engagement with and between students is key to student learning. we also had to reimagine the governance of our departments by revising workflow processes, administrative systems and reworking roles and responsibilities with stressed and overstretched staff. these are the more technical aspects; however, we have to acknowledge our own personal shock and trauma of being custodians of the lives of our students and staff, who tried to cope with isolation, illness, sorrow, fear and instability. we, and our colleagues, were exhausted. given the dire socio-economic situation most of our students faced, staff made tremendous sacrifices which came at a cost. for example, many students could only access data at night due to lowered costs, resulting in them sending their queries after hours. staff responded to these queries because they understood the situation of their students. this exacerbated the already blurred boundaries between home and work life. the seemingly never-ending cycle of adapting to the changing environment took a toll on staff’s mental and emotional wellness. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 982023 41(2): 98-103 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) 8. key issues and learning that emerge we now examine some of the processes and reflect both on our experiences and decisionmaking processes and the key learnings that emerge from these. as indicated by fernandez and shaw (2020), leaders need three key characteristics to deal with the unpredictable changes in academia – connecting with people, distributing leadership and communicating clearly. by implicitly drawing on these, our departments emerged from the crisis with some of our systems enhanced. this, and being decisive and pragmatic, is what enabled all four departments to stabilise and move out of a survivalist mode. connectedness is something that none of us struggles with. certainly, we regard ourselves as empathetic leaders. in fact, this strength led us to lean on one another despite our disciplinary differences. we assisted one another with the barrage of requests for data, documentation and operational advice. that connectedness has led to us collaborating in the writing of this article. while there is no downside to clear distributed leadership and clear regular communication, there is undoubtedly a downside to being too connected and empathetic. there is a need for healthy boundaries to prevent burnout. nevertheless, given the extraordinary situation, we feel our sacrifices were warranted, and we are not sorry for having walked the path we did. we operated under the realisation that many futures were at risk. an essential finding is that peer support between middle managers is also important. here four chairpersons from very different backgrounds provided one another with support. this shows that different academic units can collaborate. is it possible that ‘multidisciplinary’ communication and cooperation could continue even after the pandemic is over? in terms of distributing leadership, we hold the view that everyone is a leader in some way. they do not need a title or an explicit leadership role to lead and take responsibility. we tried to create structure and opportunities for leadership. this links to role clarity. each role is vital, and there must be clarity around who needs to do what, because we depend on one another for tasks to be accomplished. while roles were previously either fully documented or understood, rather than documented, covid-19 brought to the fore the importance of all staff having a clear understanding of their roles. there have been instances where staff either went beyond the scope of their role or did not fully embrace their role. this led to situations where others feel slighted because their “territory” has been stepped on. at the same time, initiative is needed when work “falls through the cracks”. as middle managers, we needed to ensure that there is clarity around tasks and responsibilities. we also needed to remind our teams about the importance of having synergy, accepting help and not being overly sensitive. the middle manager is the central person that links students, lecturing staff, tutors, administrative staff, various divisions and units in the university, and executive management. therefore, they must not only communicate regularly and with clarity to all these stakeholders but also oversee communication between them. a break in communication can have major repercussions. it is essential for all staff to be collegial in the way they speak to one another. abruptness, which becomes distasteful, is a matter that we tried to eliminate because of the negative consequences it produces. when there was a communication breakdown between staff, we intervened as middle managers to remedy situations, so it did not degenerate. the reason for doing this was to avoid seemingly simple matters from escalating into an unnecessary crisis. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 992023 41(2): 99-103 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 africa et al. crisis leadership: reflecting on the complex role of academic (middle) leaders in south africa, communication is made all the more challenging due to the issues around data and connectivity described above and the ongoing energy crisis characterised by loadshedding, where electrical power is switched off for hours at a time. in fact, not only is it switched off for hours at a time, but different geographic zones are switched off at different times; therefore it is impossible to find a time when everybody has their power on. it is therefore typical to have our cameras switched off during virtual meetings. furthermore, while vaccinated staff have been permitted to return to campus, the exorbitant fuel and transport costs create a disincentive for face-to-face meetings. we recognise that people with different personalities have different communication styles for engaging with people. however, we have consensus that there must be professionalism and respect underlying all communication – this is imperative so that even if we disagree with one another, it is done in a safe and respected space. this includes written communication. middle managers take strain when communication between staff is tainted by power dynamics and/or disrespect because then we need to take on (an unnecessary) mediation role. typically, the issue is not around the content being communicated, but the manner in which the communication occurs. it is for this reason that rules of engagement around communication become paramount. two clear patterns emerged from our reflections. firstly, it is evident that the covid-19 pandemic exacerbated pre-existing challenges and highlighted operational gaps and shortcomings. an example of this is how the impact of staff resignations was a challenge in the accounting department before the onset of covid-19. during the lockdown, the impact of resignations was felt far more intensely. to begin with, the accounting department had challenges around retaining staff, because staff members are easily attracted to industry and/ or other institutions offering more lucrative career options. the isd had very limited staff and had its director seconded to a critical role elsewhere. the political studies department has a small staff complement relative to the size of its student population, and several staff (including the chairperson) were involved in demanding institutional roles. additionally, two of the departments also had a challenge with a reluctance from staff in taking on the role of departmental chairperson. these staffing constraints were a challenge under normal circumstances. for a well-functioning department, it is critical to have a leader at professorial level offering clear direction where systems and processes are in place, and each member of staff has clarity about their role and responsibilities. the challenges outlined above had to be dealt with within the context of staffing constraints, which made the transition all the more difficult. a second pattern was that there was simply no other option but to improve systems and processes. as lawton-misra and pretorius (2021: 206) indicate, the pandemic required of us to “unlearn old behaviours, teaching, and philosophies, and relearn skills and attitudes from scratch”. the fundamental principles that emerge are the need for pragmatism, innovation and simplicity in guiding our decisions. the situation with the pdga in accounting provides useful lessons. the diploma is governed by saica. the first virtual exam had a very poor pass rate. as a result, interventions were implemented in collaboration with the e-learning team. this included appealing to university structures for additional assessments, providing students with additional support and devices and the use of specialised proctoring software. the university’s information and communication services (ics) division assisted with laboratory space while laptops were couriered to students off-campus. the pass rate improved as a result of these https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 1002023 41(2): 100-103 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) interventions, but it was clear that physical engagement and sit-down exams were important. as soon as it was possible, hybrid teaching was introduced and embraced by the accounting students. overseeing these interventions within the parameters of the university’s governance processes and structures was a full-time task. in this regard, the department was forced to make quick but carefully calculated practical decisions to maintain its accreditation and the credibility of the degree. the chairperson had to lobby numerous stakeholders, locate resources and ensure that students were fully supported. new technology was harnessed, and students and staff had to be upskilled quickly. 9. conclusion we must continue asking difficult questions about the long-term implications of the profound changes, including the move to hybrid teaching, and how we can regain a proactive stance, facilitating directed, inclusive, long-term change where not only a select few benefit. as rashid and yadav (2020) assert, campus closures and the abrupt switch from face-to-face contact on campus to remote learning and teaching is only a small step in the long journey for tertiary institutions to offer online or hybrid education, with the aid of various student engagement tools and instructors’ training. in fact, they argue that improved digitisation of education most likely will become a norm post-pandemic. it is undeniable that both academics and students need to engage more with technology in this fourth industrial revolution (4ir). therefore, we should not passively react to changes, but be prepared to be part of and drive these changes and proactively adapt our work manners and leadership styles to be more effective and efficient in executing work duties. however, we need to go far beyond embracing the 4ir. more empirical research on the challenges of middle-level managers in academia is necessary, as this is clearly a research gap in the existing literature on scholarship of teaching and learning. the role of the middle managers cannot be overlooked because they have been delegated new responsibilities and will play a more prominent leadership role. at the same time, middle managers must groom the lower-level staff and transform them into the next generation of leaders. finally, while the ‘new normal’ will become long-term normal in the years ahead, we can rest assured that as a nation and as academia, we will be dealing with the repercussions of covid-19 over the next few years. ethics statement the participation of all contributors to this research article was voluntary. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 1012023 41(2): 101-103 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 africa et al. crisis leadership: reflecting on the complex role of academic (middle) leaders references adams, t.e., ellis, c. & jones, s.h. 2017. autoethnography. in the international encyclopedia of communication research methods. hoboken, nj: john wiley & sons: 1-11. https://doi. org/10.1002/9781118901731.iecrm0011 africa, c. & mutizwa-mangiza, s. 2018. the need for a new language? how historically disadvantaged institutions grapple with the effects of labelling in higher education: the case of the university of the western cape. 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& ul haq, i. 2022. covid 19 and challenges in higher education: an empirical analysis. international journal of emerging technologies in learning, 16(15): 210-225. https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v16i15.23005 statistics south africa. 2021. general household survey 2020. pretoria: statistics south africa. treve, m. 2021. what covid-19 has introduced into education: challenges facing higher education institutions. higher education pedagogies, 6(1): 212-227. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 23752696.2021.1951616 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6265 https://doi.org/10.1177/0973703020946700 https://doi.org/10.1177/0973703020946700 https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v16i15.23005 https://doi.org/10.1080/23752696.2021.1951616 https://doi.org/10.1080/23752696.2021.1951616 _heading=h.1fob9te pie 32 (2) book.indb perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 102 nkosinathi sotshangane research resource centre, walter sisulu university e-mail: nsotshangane@wsu.ac.za telephone: 047 502 2958 thenjiwe meyiwa human sciences research council (hsrc) & durban university of technology e-mail: thenjiwemeyiwa@ yahoo.com telephone: 031 242 5415 sizakele makhanya community extension, mangosuthu university of technology e-mail: siza@mut.ac.za telephone: 031 907 7639 theresa chisanga humanities education, walter sisulu university e-mail: tchisanga@wsu.ac.za telephone: 047 502 2287 paul mokhele technical education, walter sisulu university e-mail: pmokhele@wsu.ac.za telephone: 047 502 2287 complex journeys and methodological responses to engaging in self-study in a rural comprehensive university thenjiwe meyiwa, theresa chisanga, paul mokhele, nkosinathi sotshangane & sizakele makhanya the context in which self-study research is conducted is sometimes complex, affecting the manner in which related data is gathered and interpreted. this article comprises collaboration between three students and two supervisors. it shares methodological choices made by graduate students and supervisors of a rural university at which, selfstudy research was introduced in 2010. as individuals, and as a collective, we reflect on the reasons and decisions for adopting certain research approaches towards selfstudy: the ways in which such decisions are negotiated in conceptualising, conducting, transcribing, and supervising graduate research. while self-reflexive data-collection approaches (mainly journal writing and storytelling) guide our research, the manner in which data is analysed and presented to the wider university community is influenced by expectations and by the context of the university. we, therefore, use innovative approaches differing from self-study research, speaking more to the challenges and expectations of a rural context. we further reflect on the implications such choices have for our research and the work produced – where knowledge shifts are executed, methodologies are re-defined and social change is desired. keywords: rural university, self-study, social transformation, reflexive ubuntu complex journeys and methodological responses to engaging in self-study in a rural comprehensive university meyiwa et al. 103 introduction: collective alongside individual reflections, processes at crossroads scholars have documented and theorised the reciprocity between self-study research and forms of knowing, knowledge being used to generate social transformation (laboskey, 2004; kirk, 2005; samaras, 2011; pithouse-morgan & van laren, 2012). following mitchell’s (2011) bold claim that sensitive researchers reflect on reasons for conducting research intending to respond to concerns of the broader society, we examine reasons and decisions for adopting certain research approaches, using a selfstudy practitioner inquiry. research being about generating data, we investigate such knowledge production within the context of our university, a rural comprehensive institution whose campuses and authors of this article are widely dispersed. throughout the article, we use the third-person form of reporting, presenting our reflections verbatim. we embark on the task of ‘producing’ this article, reflecting first as individuals, and later as a collective. we briefly explain processes leading to the writing up of this article, as a form of data generation of benefit to the self, to us as individuals, and to the broader social context of our university. following erikson’s (1964; 1982) as well as mcadams and de st. aubin’s (1992) notion of generativity, we subscribe to the concept that the performance of generativity, i.e. the act of producing, is not only limited to the domain of parenting. at our university, we form part of a group of people who “may be expressed as having given birth to and raised children … in that, as parents, [we] are actively involved in providing for the next generation” (mcadams & de st. aubin, 1992: 1003). we, the authors, include two supervisors and three graduate staff-students. our research subject fields range from language and literature to ethics, education technology, clothing technology, and gender studies. three authors are lecturers, while the other two are solely involved in research and research-capacity development. the common thread for us is the use of self-study research approaches encompassing and allowing the various interpretations. this has helped us better clarify the essence of self-study within ourselves as a group, and to outside colleagues. although completing this exercise was not easy, given our diverse views, the varied understandings of self-study led to vigorous debates proving acts of data-generation, enhancing our role of ‘providing for the next generation’. such a debate, for example, once took place via email. having just written up his doctoral thesis, paul declared suddenly to the two supervisors that researchers should not place undue emphasis on differences between self-study and action research. this demonstrates that the student had learnt the value of critical engagement, a skill taught in self-study research approaches (i.e., confidently and honestly expressing personal views). such debates and sharing of the self-study experience in the transformative education/al studies (tes)1 project forms the bulk of the data mostly embedded into this discussion and into the article. we also chronicled the shared experiences of supervision in writing and recording them; we held face-to-face meetings as well as virtual meetings. these perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 104 were refreshing experiences, if sometimes challenging. data includes our encounters, what we have learned together, and the transformation provided by the experiences. we tread a fine line between the ‘self’ as individuals and the ‘self’ as a group, the former contributing greatly to the construction of the group experience. in the next section, we briefly interrogate reflexivity and its significance and impact on our study. collective reflexive action according to coghlan and brannick (2005: 35), reflexivity is the process of stepping back from an experience, processing its meaning in order to plan further action. we believe that conducting this type of research in a rural university has provided an opportunity to extend one’s development, pointing meaningfully to the development of our context and our on-the-job practice. our context, the university, and some staff members, in particular, have benefited from: “my realization that, since embarking on self-study research i have consciously become more caring, and i am more motivated to develop others. i now conduct self-evaluation sessions after each workshop”, as shared by nkosinathi, who develops applied research skills in university personnel. the process of writing this article included reflecting on the meaning of assessing ourselves as individuals, following our work in the classroom and elsewhere. demonstrating such reflexive research engagements can contribute towards developing self-study research. when this practice is consciously understood as a means of generating the epistemological base, opportunities for an enhanced transformation of an active research culture at our university will be more readily enabled. whitehead (1989) holds that it is through self-evaluation that an enhanced research culture can emerge. quality of research could be improved, leading, in turn, legitimately to research capacity development, an approach speaking distinctly to the self, forcing intense and emotional episodes of change way beyond the self. the context of our research and learning african rural communities tend to espouse communality, discouraging individualism. while self-study is not an egotistical, self-centred approach, the terminology, focusing on the ‘i’, not ‘we’, has posed challenges for a community championing communality. patience is required in explaining self-study as a conscious effort to begin with oneself in making a difference. it aims at purposefully fostering social change, through research centrally positioning the individual, by employing measures such as reflexivity and journal writing, later shared by the group. we joined the tes project at various stages between 2010 and 2011 at a rural university for the so-called ‘historically disadvantaged’. our university embraces communality, loosely defined as significant communal networks, where projects are conducted collectively, with little or no focus on individuals. self-reflexivity and forms of transformation appear in the rural context, prioritising communal activity, complex journeys and methodological responses to engaging in self-study in a rural comprehensive university meyiwa et al. 105 shunning the word ‘self’. thenjiwe, who introduced self-study to the university, states that, as a research concept, self-study was new to me, but as part of a research reflective exercise, having been a feminist researcher for some time, it was an approach to which i could easily relate. this provided some comfort in that there was bound to be some resonance between these fields of study, from a conceptual to a methodological point of view.2 with the university espousing communality over self, it was crucial to present the field of study in an acceptable way. the emphasis on ‘self’ in self-study was to be reduced, emphasising instead the research approach, embracing reflecting and improving teaching, learning, and research – the latter being the university’s main concern. we had to consciously ‘dress-up’ self-study, while ‘watering down’ our methodological approach. concerned about local context, paul had to “pretend to be confining my methodology to a case study, and not living-theory methodology”, which emphasises the ‘self’. the context of the supervision engagement is a south african rural and disadvantaged university within a former bantustan, a ‘homeland’ set up by the apartheid government. in 2005, a former traditional university and two former technikons merged to form this comprehensive university, offering university and technikon qualifications. the province in which our university is based ranks among the poorest, and the university among the least-resourced in the country. the majority of both undergraduate and postgraduate students are from the same catchment area; they would have attended the same poorly resourced rural schools. they, therefore, enter the university mostly underequipped for higher education; especially since the official language of teaching and learning is english – at best a second language and at worst a foreign language, for the majority of university students in this area. for this reason, our collective experience as supervisors and graduate students before joining tes was often unhappy. many university supervisors complain that graduate marks averaging below 60% are accepted in order to admit sufficient students. many students admitted to the postgraduate programme find the programme difficult as they do not meet the national minimum requirements. they often drop out of the programme because of the research component, which requires conducting empirical research and writing up the dissertation to the required standard. this proves to be a bottleneck and frustrating to both supervisors and students. reflecting on her journey as a supervisor, theresa observes: one of the problems of traditional supervision for both supervisor and student, is that the supervisor is assumed to be the all-knowing “container” of knowledge, which he/she then has the responsibility of “pouring” out into the more or less “empty vessel” in the form of the student. i had been brought up in this tradition and it was always an extra challenge with students who even at this level were not independent; it was easy to ignore the situation, as you could always blame it on the students or on the under-resourced system. perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 106 an impoverished set-up providing few resources encourages neither the supervisor nor the student to make hasty progress, too often abruptly ending the studies when students leave, and admitting defeat. teachers may easily become set in a mould, excluding freedom of innovation and creativity. the assumption of the ‘empty vessel’ strains both parties, the student appearing to believe that s/he has nothing to contribute, coming to lectures and consultations not having read or prepared anything, ready simply to ‘receive’ the knowledge. the supervisor, however, insists on rigid ‘standard procedures’. this discourages the student from digging into his/her inner depths, thus offering embodied knowledge, letting this blend with the new, in creating new synergies, resulting in new understanding and possibly new knowledge. upon joining the tes classroom as novice supervisors and students, we formed a cohort of ‘students’ of self-study research methodologies, finding ourselves in a learning laboratory. several workshops in self-study with colleagues from sister universities introduced us to self-study, as well as to aspects of action research. interacting with more experienced supervisors of self-study research and joining in collaborative academic activities, we clearly required a new attitude and approach to the entire supervision process from within. notwithstanding the conditions of our university, we have embraced lessons learnt from our context which, coupled with the tes classroom, make us appreciate all allowance for innovation and creativity. in turn, we draw from mcadams and de st. aubin’s (1992: 1010) position that generativity is bred from cultural demand …; inner desire …; concern for the care and development of the next generation; a belief in the goodness and worthiness of the human species …; and the personal narration of generativity as a key feature of an adult’s evolving and self-defining life story. we concur with this sentiment, each author acknowledging a transformation, indicated by the following brief extracts: “with self-study, i have had to learn patience with my students and acceptance of myself as a student of this discipline, open to the two-way processes of supervising and learning from them …” (theresa); “as a beginner self-study supervisor i learnt to be open with my students and express the fact that i am just a novice as they are. it has been a humbling experience” (thenjiwe). collective transformation and methodological complexities we contend that the reason for experiencing a change in our outlook through our affiliation with tes is a transformation intensified by the nature of self-study research. initially, the challenge was a lack of understanding of a complete account of all aspects of self-study as a methodological research approach. later, we began interpreting self-study as an approach that, while speaking distinctly to the self, forces intense and emotional episodes of change, demanding that researchers creatively engage with their contexts. this has compelled us to appreciate mcadams and de st. aubin’s (1992: 1003) account of the need for researchers to “make a commitment to the larger sphere of society as a whole and its continuation, even improvement”. complex journeys and methodological responses to engaging in self-study in a rural comprehensive university meyiwa et al. 107 recollecting episodes of change, thenjiwe declares that, with the tes project, she regarded herself as a novice self-study researcher. she also had to remain a learnersupervisor, despite having supervised graduate students in other disciplines for nearly two decades, as she “had to learn new ways of providing guidance to graduate students, while at the same time learning new related methodological approaches”. academics may become hidebound, often operating within the confines and expectations of their subject fields when conducting research (schell & black, 1997; loughran, hamilton, laboskey & russell, 2004). for us, the challenge was greater: while new to self-study, we had to be advocates of a kind of research outside the subject field of most colleagues. we had to present self-study in a manner that ‘sounded most convincing’ to colleagues, and to which they could easily relate; hence, the methodological approach of storytelling was devised, familiar concepts being used to explain characteristics of self-study. we discovered that, notwithstanding the university and its daunting contextual challenges, an alternative way of dealing with such challenges is introspection (pithouse-morgan & van laren, 2012), intending to find creative solutions working first for an individual towards which a collective can contribute. with this conceptual underpinning, we withstood the most common challenge encountered at seminar presentations – people questioning the use of the personal pronouns ‘i’ and/or ‘we’ instead of the description ‘researcher’. we realise that formulating our research using storytelling allows readers, though with less intensity, to relate to self-study research. clandinin and rosiek (2007, cited in clandinin, 2013: 11) observe that “lived and told stories and the talk about the stories are one of the ways that we fill our world with meaning and enlist one another’s assistance in building lives and communities”. indeed, lawrence and moyo (2006) and lawrence and zinn (2007), in their work on transforming education in the eastern cape, clearly demonstrate this with the stories of their co-workers and teachers. paul, finding the term ‘researcher’ unassuming and too neutral, mentions that he grew to interpret it as a term with limitations to my study, which is a documentation of changes in “me” as an individual, and also how my teaching and learning procedures have changed, and how that change has affected my students, hence writing in the first-person active voice makes sense to me. choices made: innovation adopted in our research while we were all attracted to self-study, which would improve our research, teaching, and learning, it has skilled us in the varied forms of data-collecting and interpreting of research data. initially, the methodology used by the majority of researchers was the writing up of reflections, using journals and portfolios. later, within portfolios, rural-related stories were incorporated in concretising and better contextualising the stories with appropriate metaphors and symbolism. emphasising the importance of perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 108 using methods requiring the researcher to be creative, samaras and freese (2009: 9) advocate the use of a “self-study method which incorporates other methods, such as personal history, narrative inquiry, reflective portfolios, memory work, or arts-based methods”. sizakele credits these authors with her preference for using visual methodology in her work, explaining: “i use photos to capture incidents when teaching and learning, which allow for creativity in my research”. nkosinathi, however, states that, “in order for me to choose an appropriate methodology, it becomes essential to start by asking the following important questions: (1) will the methodology that i choose assist effective change, and (2) are data interpretations adequately assured by the methodology?” for laboskey (2004), the methodology is important: it must align with what is being asked. many scholars (sherman & webb, 1990; zuber-skerrit, 1992; manke, 2004; whitehead, 2010), therefore, assert that research methodology should emerge alongside the practitioner’s practice, urging him/her to reflect and act, addressing needs of the given practice. coupled with the use of multiple-data sources and methodologies, self-study inquiry allows individuals to study themselves in their practice as well as in their belief systems, assumptions, and environment. this approach suits a rural context, linked to the researcher being required to locate research conducted within a changing understanding of the historical, social, economic and political contexts (zuber-skerrit, 1992). the self-study of research practice compels practitioners to be relevant and to align their research with the realities of their environment, thereby being creative, thinking ‘outside the box’. its practitioners and researchers are always eager to better understand self-study, including its value for education. zeichner (1999: 8) observes that “the birth of the self-study in the teacher-education movement of the 1990s was probably the single most significant development ever in the field of teachereducation research”; this champions innovation and knowledge creation. knowledge generated from our differing experiences at our university and gleaned from our research contributes to the professional development and improvement of our practices as teachers, researchers and supervisors. we are confident that our varied and improved practices will add to the knowledge base by enhancing the quality of learning, when sharing these experiences with others, whether or not they subscribe to self-study. whitehead (2011) comments on the experiences of teachers in the uk who were recently subjected to oppressive statutory regulations unsupportive of their creativity in improving their practices. he promotes the need for flexibility and the accommodation of creativity in research. having had the privilege of attending many tes workshops, we have been exposed to various practical ways of conducting research, such as the use of poetic inquiry, artefacts, journal writing, the use of audio and video records as evidence, and so complex journeys and methodological responses to engaging in self-study in a rural comprehensive university meyiwa et al. 109 on. relational issues between supervisors and students can themselves be defining factors in the success or failure of one’s practice. whitehead (1993) contends that a great deal is lost in capturing what really works in the teaching and learning process, because the ‘magic’ of the participant interactions cannot always be articulated, being appropriately recorded as evidence of contribution to educational knowledge, because, traditionally, this is not part of the practice. he adds that the total experience of a teaching and learning session should be considered legitimate, part of the ‘living theory of educational practice’ in the world of academia. from interactions with colleagues within and outside the tes project, we have learnt that there are as many correct ways of conducting self-study research as there are workable possibilities, if one keeps an open mind, releasing the options. there are many ways of presenting research findings (clandinin & connelly, 2000). lastly, ways of achieving a generative point, where both “establishment and guidance of the next generation” (macadams & de st. aubin, 1992: 1011) may be understood and seen to be “successfully” taking place, have been experienced as refreshing in the tes projects and the tes meetings within our university, resulting in collaborative research activities and an open sharing of information. we are also more relaxed with the idea and use of the concept of ‘critical friends’, all parties’ ideas being valued and critically engaged with. tes workshops have also taught us practical ways of demonstrating, for example, that there is always more than one view to a story or an event, using poetry, visual arts, and self-reflection, even as one thinks about an image or one’s own understanding of a ‘critical friend’. these methodologies all demonstrate that, if we give back the power to the student/ mentees by recognising them as knowledge generators, sharing the learning process, a great deal more may be achieved. the process may become a two-way journey of discovery. the tes project has provided alternative ways of supervision, assuming a challenging position, minutely examining one’s ways of conducting research and of relating to others. self-study empowers, because it recognises that no one comes to learning as an empty slate. the embodied knowledge of one’s origin and background (culture, language, religion, and so on) is important and relevant in every situation, thus contributing to one’s overall being, one’s attitude, one’s world view and the way in which one deals with other people (samaras & freese, 2006; 2009). all relate to teaching and learning. reasons and decisions for adopting specific methodological approaches while our chosen research methodologies at best relate to the university and its rural context, we as a group have discovered that discussing self-study and having to convince our colleagues of its value takes its toll on us. the knowledge that perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 110 we are not alone is encouraging; other tes project team members could be in a similar position; they become our support system. having experienced rejection and resistance at times, we have had to ‘dress-up’ self-study as a kind of action research which, although well-known, is not fully accepted at the university. the self-study conceptual approach we most favour relates to the living theory, which emphasises the importance of examining whether one is living up to the best of one’s values, in conducting research and in on-the-job practice (whitehead, 1993). prioritising this approach has helped transfer these values to our teaching and learning. we adopt samaras and freese’s (2006) notion that their method, while it traces their personal histories, narrative inquiry, reflective portfolios, memory work, and so on, requires a confrontation with their personal values. we are persuaded by kurt lewin (1951), who stresses that people do change, subsequently taking action in order to realise that change when they experience the need for change, adopting new behaviours (new action) based on their values. some of our choices, for example, closely aligning self-study with action research, have had negative effects. some colleagues insist on adhering to action research (that which they have read about, know and/or find acceptable as a research approach). arguments advanced include that numerous self-study scholars came to self-study research from action research. this dilutes the efforts of advancing the ‘self-study movement’. however, there is an appreciation and acknowledgement that self-study, although related to action research, has distinguishing differences and distinctive methodological components. insistence on advocating that in both self-study and action research the researcher investigates problems related to one’s practice so as to improve one’s work, though ingenuous, indicates that some self-study colleagues fear change, the very concept and behaviour they profess to promulgate. being true to self-study to the best of one’s ability is crucial; we believe that self-study researchers should be “true” to themselves by keeping their studies “real”, be it “negatively or positively” (masinga, 2012: 129). the purpose of this article is, therefore, more an offer of professional renewal. implications of choices made in our research and broadly self-study scholarship in this section, we reflect on how we have revisited our practice and research, influenced by self-study scholarship. evidently, decisions taken have greatly affected the conducting of our research, the supervision of our students, and the suggestions they ultimately choose to perform. although paralleling self-study with action research has created some confusion, it has equally provided an opportunity for exploring adapted approaches of conducting self-study. our research journeys have certainly contributed to generating information, partially serving to introduce the self-study subject field at our university. we regard this as a step towards harnessing complex journeys and methodological responses to engaging in self-study in a rural comprehensive university meyiwa et al. 111 the broader values of tes as a multi-institutional and multidisciplinary project, in bringing about positive change. we are determined imminently to produce exemplary self-study master projects associated with tes, thereby demonstrating the value of self-study. this achievement must be realised and broadcasted. since we joined tes, some transformation has been ‘imposed’ on us all, first as individual researchers, as well as co-researchers and/or co-supervisors of self-study graduate research. we, therefore, appreciate that differing points of view enhance knowledge fields, with researchers not being set on a particular research approach. while we treasure the tes project as connecting us at our university and beyond, we have wondered about the ultimate outcome of our approach to self-study research, the objectives of the tes project, and our responsibilities and expectations at our university. we also know that, since the inception of tes and our introduction to self-study, our main areas of research and scholarship, our collective experiences, and future research will always be affected by this exposure. whatever practical implications exist for our university may be learnt from the said challenges and the manner in which we have attempted to overcome these challenges. transformation is evidenced in our engagement with our students and mentees and in the regard now held for their prior knowledge. tes values influence us in drawing from our embodied knowledge, encouraging our students to do likewise at the start of research and teaching practices. theresa and thenjiwe both accede that, since joining tes, such an approach has formed the backbone transforming students’ teaching, supervision, and conducting of their research, crucial for a rural disadvantaged institution. mentees are now re-imagined as ‘knowers and carriers’ of types of knowledge vital for their own learning. their diverse experiences provide a great deal of information, all of which is brought to the teaching and learning experience, significantly affecting the work produced such as written essays, analyses and theses. sizakele, with a master’s degree in self-study and currently enrolled for a subsequent doctoral degree, mentions that engaging and fully embracing self-study has been the best tool in improving issues encountered in her professional and personal life. she has learned the importance of reflection, using it for both her professional practice and her everyday life. she concludes: since embracing self-study i do things differently; my graduate studies have led to improved personal writing skills, strategies of improving my students’ writing skills and appreciation that it is with constant honest reflection that this has come about. i now understand my practice as a teacher of students from disadvantaged backgrounds differently. it is also true that the self-study genre employs a broad range of qualitative methods (graig, 2009), including action research and narrative inquiry; leaning on narrativeenquiry logic is preferred. according to czarniawska (2004, cited in whitehead, 2009: 2), narrative enquiry is a specific type of qualitative design in which “narrative is understood as a spoken or written text giving an account of an event/action or series of events/actions, chronologically connected”. with this method, some research perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 112 shows the ability to ‘tell’ our actions and data-gathering, generating these through lived experiences as they emerge sporadically. paul, a recent self-study doctoral graduate, tapped into what was familiar with his students, including the use of family and life stories, encouraging participation in his study, which examined strategies for improving his teaching skills, incorporating the investigation of students’ learning and study skills. the narrative inquiry research approach introduced self-study to the students; its nature of researching ‘with’ others and not ‘on’ them was found to be aligned with the concept of ubuntu to which his students were accustomed. nkosinathi claimed that his earlier fears of possible effects of “exposing myself to the danger of being judged by my students and making a mockery of myself” were thus minimised. in narrative inquiry, constant reflection produces benefits beyond tes-related research activities; however, as theresa and sizakele share below, this practice encourages ‘unlearning’ former traditional ways of engaging with their students. theresa notes: asking myself an unending range of questions at every point of my teaching almost like looking at my soul and trying to understand why i do the things that i do and say the things that i say in my practice. the more whys i pose to myself, the deeper i get into my being and the more honest my views, the more sensitive to the other and the more refined my ideas seem to me. this kind of awareness is shared by sizakele’s reference to a new practice in her teaching, requiring students to: write reflections after each lesson involves them in a process of improving their own learning. through the reflective exercises i have also learned how to observe ideas that emerge from my practice and from which i use my students’ creativity to improve teaching and learning. transformation has created space, encouraging students to interrogate their university-related work while allowing them to talk freely about who they are, and how they feel about processes related to their own learning. embodied in the above defined transformative classroom practices and attitudes is the “conceptual underpinning of reflexive ubuntu, which demands a consciousness of our developing ‘selves’ as researchers and supervisors and of our interrelationships with other people” (harrison, pithouse-morgan, conolly & meyiwa, 2012: 12). transformation at our university should, therefore, not only be geared towards adding to the students’ knowledge base, skills and potential, but also empower those students involved in higher education to develop the critical ability of becoming self-determined (waghid, 2002: 459). although the context in which our institution operates may potentially push us further away from doing work that is only “tangentially related to true self-study research” (lassonde, 2009: xii), it is prudent to acknowledge that such generative modelling is necessary for the transformation process. self-study should be a valuable contribution to the field of teacher education and skills’ development. samaras and freese (2009: 8) state that “[s]elf-study research requires openness and vulnerability since the focus is on the self”. we concur that conducting self-study research can initiate a painful but complex journeys and methodological responses to engaging in self-study in a rural comprehensive university meyiwa et al. 113 exciting, life-affirming, academic journey. paul alludes to this, saying: “it is not an easy thing to dig into my past; the past that made me think and do things the way i do them today”. an individual’s achievement in his/her daily work, albeit on a small scale, does make a difference. should colleagues embark on similar research – by striving to work with them, cultivating hope in the face of a challenged environment – we can certainly “make a real and important difference in terms of affecting the work and life of each self-study researcher and the broader environment within which the university is located” (nkosinathi). a major goal of self-study research of practice is for researchers to examine and gain knowledge of their context, while assessing and improving their environment, its impact on their learning, and that of their students and colleagues, thus contributing to the knowledge base of solving problems peculiar to the rural context. this important work, according to samaras (2011: 21), may be accomplished with the support and critique of colleagues. at our rural university, some of us are teachers who regard the classroom as the laboratory for change; others, however, could be regarded as educational and research reformers, whose task is to contribute towards rebuilding the culture of research within the university. according to samaras (2011: 56), it is essential to continually question our own practice as people involved in the development of others. we have had to grapple with working together as critical friends among graduate students, and as supervisors, especially through collaborative self-study. this process has provided encouragement not only to examine our own responses, thus gaining a more empathetic and social understanding of our rural contexts, but also to be cognisant of the effect that these facets have on one another. we have embarked on these research practices influenced by whitehead’s (1989) living educational theory (let), which he defines as personal theory-making produced from practitioners’ accounts of their learning and practice. like research, teaching is based not on propositional theories, but on teachers’ reconceptualisation of practice, and with practical implications. owing to these practical implications, pithouse-morgan and van laren (2012: 416-427) state that “generativity”, which implies creativity, is essentially a call to contribute to the well-being of others, particularly those who are ‘novices’ in their work and in life, as are young people. indeed, for us, as researchers at a rural university, the idea of academic generativity is more wholly inspiring than academic productivity. therefore, self-study begins with us as researchers initiating our exploration into possibilities for generativity or productivity in our educational research. as a team of students and supervisors of self-study, we differ greatly, and thus have learnt a great deal from each of our supervision processes. theresa states: in some instances, i found myself gaining insights i had not thought of; and learning from the students. in other instances, i found that i had to dig deeper into my inner recesses and bring out not only the professional teacher in me, perspectives in education 2014: 32(2) 114 but also, at times, the chaplain, in order to reach out and meet my students at their point of need. such sentiments relate more to listening to personal stories and challenges, not always directly related to the studies under investigation. concluding remarks for many years, practitioners within varied fields have been conducting processes related to reflecting on their work, mainly in attempting to improve the results of their practice. in this article, we reflected on the value of self-study, discussing the manner in which this field of study has contributed towards bringing about personal and collective change to the authors. teachers must ascertain whether their teaching approaches, philosophies, values, and beliefs assist or hinder students’ learning. they must constantly ask themselves questions such as: in what way can i contribute towards removing barriers to my students’ learning? we believe that encouraging teacher-educators and other practitioners seeking change demands that they ask themselves these questions. we maintain that self-study inquiry should be encouraged as a research-supported way of improving our teaching, while promoting profound and lasting learning, allowing it to contribute to one’s own development, and that of others. this flexibility makes the scholarship appealing and applicable to a number of disciplines that superficially seem to be unrelated. as demonstrated earlier, students become active in their own learning, mentor-mentee and teacherstudent interactions, thus significantly contributing towards shaping their work during their active production of knowledge. at most, they remain interested in their studies. self-study inquiry is an essential tool for transformative education especially for research, teaching, and learning in a poor, rural, and under-resourced institution such as ours. endnotes 1. we all participate in this self-study project, which incorporates researchers from three universities and a research organisation. the project seeks to develop selfcritique pedagogy, research and supervision (cf. editor’s introductory chapter). 2. the italicised quotes are verbatim voices of the authors mainly derived from teleconference and submissions made by the authors during sessions in developing the article. acknowledgements we acknowledge funding and support for the project by the department of science and technology, the national research foundation, tes colleagues, walter sisulu university and the human sciences research council. complex journeys and methodological responses to engaging in self-study in a rural comprehensive university meyiwa et al. 115 references clandinin jd 2013. engaging in narrative inquiry. walnut creek, ca: left coast press inc. clandinin jd & conelly mf 2000. narrative enquiry: experience and story in qualitative research. san francisco: jossey-bass 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http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 grade 1 teachers’ experiences of supporting learners living with attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder (adhd) abstract south africa’s policy on screening, identification, assessment and support (sias) stipulates that teachers support learners with barriers to learning and development in their mainstream classrooms. this includes learners living with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (adhd). yet, little research has been conducted regarding grade 1 teachers’ utilisation of support strategies for learners living with adhd in mainstream classrooms. this study focused on grade 1 teachers’ support for learners living with adhd. an exploratory, interpretive, interactive, qualitative case study was employed. twelve purposefully selected grade 1 teachers, representing five public schools (varying from quintile 1-5) and one private school from the west coast education district, south africa, participated in an unstructured open-ended focus group interview resulting in an interview framework being developed. this interview framework directed the field observations of classroom visits and semi-structured individual interview questions of six purposefully selected grade 1 teachers. qualitative content analysis was used to analyse the transcriptions of the individual interviews, as well as the field notes. the study found that teachers were innovative in developing effective support strategies to support grade 1 learners living with adhd in their classrooms. keywords: adhd, grade 1, teachers, experiences, support, strategies 1. introduction attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (adhd), a neurological condition of childhood, affects 8% of south african children (van dyk et al., 2015). braude and dwarika (2020) point out that south africa’s inclusive education policies, such as the education white paper 6: special education: building an inclusive education and training system (south africa. department of education [doe], 2001), as well as the screening, identification, assessment and support [sias] guidelines (south africa. department of basic education [dbe], 2014), make it imperative that author: ms zandra de villiers1 dr elna barnard1 affiliation: 1cape peninsula university of technology, south africa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v40i4.6743 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(4): 196-214 published: 23 december 2022 received: 27 october 2021 accepted: 18 may 2022 research article http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9732-1764 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5914-4736 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 1972022 40(4): 197-214 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 de villiers & barnard grade 1 teachers’ experiences of supporting learners learners with special educational needs are accommodated and supported in mainstream schools. not all learners displaying adhd symptoms are officially diagnosed with adhd but may be at various stages of the referral process. however, all these learners, whether officially diagnosed or not, can be difficult and frustrating to teach. therefore, in this paper, learners diagnosed with adhd or displaying adhd symptoms are referred to as learners living with adhd. 2. research problem and question this research study was triggered by one of the researchers, who is also a grade 1 teacher who struggled in supporting and addressing the needs of learners living with adhd in her classroom. loedolff (2019) points out that the sias (dbe, 2014) guides teachers on integrating inclusive education in mainstream schools, but that it does not provide clear or precise guidelines regarding classroom management and support to learners living with adhd. the aforementioned researcher, as a grade 1 teacher, felt lost as very limited research in south africa has been done on how a grade 1 teacher can support a learner living with adhd (de sousa, 2020; kern et al., 2015; etchells, 2015; perold, louw & kleynhans, 2010). although the department of basic education (doe, 2001; dbe, 2014) acknowledges the pivotal role parents and guardians play in supporting not only their learners, but also interacting with the teacher, the researcher endeavoured to gain an understanding of what strategies she should consider in her grade 1 classroom to ensure that the learning of learners living with adhd in her classroom are enhanced and supported. this study, then, examined how grade 1 teachers support learners living with adhd in their classes by investigating the following: what are the experiences of grade 1 teachers implementing support strategies to learners living with adhd? 3. conceptual framework bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems model (1979), as well as feuerstein’s model of mediated learning (mle) (todor, 2015), underpin this study. the integration of both models provides a conceptual framework for understanding the influences of the environment on teacher-learner interactions and ultimately on the performance of learners living with adhd. bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems model (1994) views both internal and external challenges within the microsystem (direct interactions with individuals) and the mesosystem (teacher to learner; teacher to parents; learner to peers). by understanding how the environment affects learners living with adhd, teachers develop innovative teaching and learning strategies to meet the needs of each learner (swart & pettipher, 2019). feuerstein’s model (1991) of mediated learning experience (mle) compliments bronfenbrenner’s model. feuerstein and feuerstein (1991: 3) describe mediated learning experience (mle) as “an interaction of the organism with its environment via a human mediator”. thus, mle highlights a teacher’s role as a mediator displaying preferences of specific intervention strategies when addressing the specific needs of a learner with barriers to learning. according to tzuriel (2013), mle encompasses the cognitive strengths and insufficiencies of children. mle comprehends the emotional needs of learners such as impulsiveness and energetic behavioural inclinations. feuerstein’s model (1991) synthesises with this research study in regard to cognitive, behavioural and social support strategies for grade 1 learners living with adhd. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 1982022 40(4): 198-214 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) 4. literature review the conceptual framework grounds the literature review whereby the researchers endeavours to obtain an in-depth understanding of the research topic, concepts and strategies in supporting learners living with adhd. 4.1 inclusive education in south africa the salamanca statement (1994), which emphasises the right of all children to education, is the basis for south africa’s inclusive education policies (de sousa, 2020). amod, vorster and lazarus (2013: 217) view white paper 6 (doe, 2001) from a social-ecological perspective whereby “disorders as located within the individual” are transferred to a “broader [inclusive] system”. in the white paper 6 (doe, 2001) it is specified that children with learning difficulties such adhd can attend mainstream schools. 4.2 adhd as a barrier to learning inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity are adhd symptoms (american psychiatric association [apa], 2013). according to ciuluvica, mitrofan and grilli (2013), adhd may impair the development of executive functions. adhd is an internal obstacle to learning, influenced by biological and genetic factors (schellack & meyer, 2016; pascual, muoz & robres, 2019). the national curriculum statement (dbe, 2011) emphasises reading, writing and arithmetic as foundational abilities for later learning (gardner, 2021). the impaired cognitive and emotional abilities of grade 1 learners living with adhd affect their future growth (colomer et al., 2017). therefore, grade 1 teachers play a key role in early adhd identification and diagnosis (doe, 2001), as well as in providing support and guidance to these learners. 4.3 support strategies behavioural management strategies include antecedent-, consequentand self-management strategies (gaastra et al., 2020). rief (2016) considers physical and schedule structures as antecedent strategies. consequent-based strategies entail augmenting the environment in such a way that the prevalence of specific behaviours is either limited or encouraged (dupaul, weyandt & janusis, 2011). behavioural management strategies, such as daily report cards, response cost and behavioural contracts, are deemed effective for enhancing the behaviour of learners living with adhd (curtis et al., 2013; rief, 2016). self-management strategies include self-monitoring, goal-setting, self-reinforcement and self-instruction. dupaul et al. (2011) advocate empowering learners living with adhd to regulate, monitor, record or assess their behaviour or academic performances. academic support strategies are used to assist learners living with adhd who experience academic difficulties. computer-assisted instruction (cai) involves using computers to teach and instruct (botsas & grouios, 2017). peer tutoring is when a learner instructs, supports or responds to another during collaboration and academic work completion (dupaul & stoner, 2014). peer tutoring improves the social skills of learners living with adhd. rief (2016) explains that social skills training (sst) teaches learners interpersonal skills. these strategies improve the classroom performance of learners living with adhd (corkum, corbin & pike, 2010; jijina & sinha, 2016; beets, 2019). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 1992022 40(4): 199-214 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 de villiers & barnard grade 1 teachers’ experiences of supporting learners 5. research methodology the qualitative research methodology pointed the researchers in utilizing a qualitative research design which clarified the type of case study and sampling that was deemed to be appropriate in collecting rich and in-depth data. the qualitative research methodology rendered an opportunity for the participants to voice and explain their understanding knowledge, perspectives and actions in supporting grade 1 learners living with adhd. 5.1 research design an exploratory, interpretative, interactive, qualitative case study design was employed to investigate teachers’ experiences, knowledge and beliefs in terms of supporting grade 1 learners living with adhd (merriam & tisdell, 2015; nieuwenhuis, 2016; khaldi, 2017). an unstructured focus group interview, field notes and semi-structured interviews were used to obtain rich qualitative data. the researchers explored the strategies grade 1 teachers use in supporting learners living with adhd in their classrooms. the 12 participants in the unstructured open-ended focus group interview interacted with the research statements when they engaged in a brainstorming activity to shed light on their understanding, knowledge, experiences and perceptions of rendering support to grade 1 learners living with adhd. in their engagement, they simultaneously embarked with interpreting their knowledge, beliefs and classroom support actions. the classroom visits and interviews with the purposefully selected six participants from the original twelve (one participant from each of the six schools) interacted and interpreted the interview framework, which was designed by the focus group interview participants. this qualitative research design was embedded in a case study as all the participants were grade 1 teachers supporting learners living with adhd in their classroom. thus, the support to the said learners were rendered in a natural setting, namely the classroom as a “bounded system” (hancock & algozzin, 2016: 30). 5.2 sample a non-probability purposive convenience criterion case sample was used (merriam & tisdell, 2015; lumadi, 2015). ten participants, from seven public schools were purposively chosen to participate in an unstructured open-ended focus group interview as they were teaching grade 1 learners living with adhd in the west coast education district. these seven schools were representative of the various socio-economic status, varying from quintile 1-5. two private schools in the said district, sent one grade 1 teacher each, to participate in the unstructured open-ended focus group interview. subsequently, the researchers purposefully chose five participants from the public schools, representing each quintile and one participant from the private schools, which she deemed to have comprehensive understanding and experiences teaching grade 1 learners living with adhd, to participate in the semi-structured individual interviews and field visits to their classrooms. 5.3 ethical considerations the cape peninsula university of technology and the western cape education department granted ethical approval. principals, teachers and parents of grade 1 learners gave informed consent prior to this study. informed consent was obtained by presenting the participants with descriptive information of the research, including the title of the research study, the procedures, the benefits expected to come from it, and that there were no anticipated risks and no compensation offered to the participants. the informed consent also addressed the http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 2002022 40(4): 200-214 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) guarantee of confidentiality and the possibility of withdrawing from the study at any time without repercussions (cohen et al., 2018). the confidentiality and identity of the participants and their schools were safeguarded by not disclosing their actual identities in any publication or report linked to this study. this was ensured by the use of special identifying codes, called pseudonyms, to protect participants and schools, for example, participant 1 and school 1. the obtained data are treated as confidential and were only viewed by the researchers. the collected data will be saved on a password-protected computer to minimise the risk of unauthorised access, and the original data (hard copy) will be destroyed once the study is complete. 5.4 data collection and analysis the interactive qualitative analysis: a systems method for qualitative research [iqa] (northcutt & mccoy, 2004) guided data collection during the unstructured open-ended focus group interview and the semi-structured individual interviews. ananth and maistry (2020) emphasise the relevance of iqa as a research design as it highlights that human (grade 1 teachers’) expertise is grounded in their social experience. however, northcutt and mccoy (2004) focus on system relationships, whereas this research study concentrated on understanding, explaining and clarifying participants’ experiences, beliefs and knowledge. thus, four alterations to northcutt and mccoy’s iqa (2004) were made, namely, abandoning the theoretical coding steps; replacing these with field observations of classroom visits (northcutt & mccoy, 2004); utilising a scientific software programme computer-aided qualitative analysis software (caqdas) called atlas.ti9, to organise and manage the data collected during the iqa steps; and implementing zhang and wildemuth’s (2017) qualitative content analysis method to analyse the data generated from individual interviews and portrayed by the field notes of the field observations. during the focus group interview, data were collected when the teachers generated each their own understanding, beliefs and experiences of supporting learners living with adhd and subsequently writing it on flashcards. these flashcards were randomly placed on the venue’s walls. the teachers then proceeded to analyse the data collected (information on the flashcards) when they grouped these written ideas into themes. northcutt and mccoy (2004) regarded this grouping activity as inductive coding. deductive coding commenced when the teachers labelled the themes. the themes were then arranged into categories (northcutt & mccoy, 2004). the categories and themes formed an interview framework which guided the data collection process during the subsequent field visits of the researchers to the six purposively chosen teachers. the interview framework also acted as a tool when the researchers met with each of the six teachers, following the field visits to their classrooms, to conduct semi-structured individual interviews. the teachers’ involvement with data analysis were restricted to the data collected from the focus group interview. the researchers utilized the eight steps of zhang and wildemuth’s (2017) qualitative content analysis method to analyse the field notes of the field visits and the individual interviews. the said eight steps entailed transcribing the data; reading and rerereading the data until certain thoughts, activities and collaborations came to the fore; the progressing to themes and coding the said themes into categories; re-reading the data to ensure coding consistency; making inferences and conclusions; and conveying the results. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 2012022 40(4): 201-214 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 de villiers & barnard grade 1 teachers’ experiences of supporting learners 6. findings and discussion this article’s findings and discussion focus on strategies that were used by grade 1 teachers to support learners living with adhd in the mainstream classrooms. the data analysis showed that grade 1 teachers consider themselves experienced mediators in providing a quality mediated learning experience (mle) to learners living with adhd (feuerstein, feuerstein & falik, 2010). quality mle is attained when teachers alternate curriculum and assessment procedures (differentiation) for learners with learning difficulties in mainstream classrooms (topkin, roman & mwaba, 2015). the mle model suggests that teachers recognise a learner’s specific behavioural tendencies, emotional and social needs, intellectual capabilities and weaknesses, and then choose and modify support strategies to accommodate each learner (feuerstein & feuerstein, 1991). according to their knowledge, experiences and beliefs, grade 1 teachers identified and implemented support strategies that were most effective in addressing the various needs of learners living with adhd. bronfenbrenner’s bioecological systems model (1979) shows the relationship between learner characteristics (microsystem) and teacher support (mesosystem). trustworthiness was realized by triangulation (different data collection tools were utilized), member checking of the interview framework by the six teachers in their individual interviews, and intensive engagement with the data during the collection and analysis thereof (merriam & tisdell, 2015). validity of this research article was enhanced by the utilisation of the interview framework from the focus group interview. by implementing northcutt and mccoy’s iqa systems method framework (2004) the researchers ensured that participants did not influence one another in generating data nor did the researchers influenced them. the validity of each category of the interview framework was strengthened when the participants in the semistructured individual interviews changed, added, approved, or differed with the content of the interview framework (northcutt & mccoy, 2004). the researchers avoided making personal interpretations when comparing individual interview and classroom observation transcripts. they relied on the transcripts, which comprised both the spoken and nonverbal interactions of the participants. as the researchers utilized a non-probability sample method, the aim of the study was not to generalise the findings to a larger population (pascoe, 2014). thus, it was found that grade 1 teachers used differentiated teaching resources and classroom management methods to support learners living with adhd in mainstream classrooms. the following discussion shed light on how grade 1 teachers were innovative in managing and using various support strategies. 6.1 teaching resources teaching resources are resources that can be used for individual learners in the classroom. although medication is deemed beneficial in supporting learners living with adhd, it is not a quick fix. one teacher believes it is beneficial to investigate the causes of the behaviours, taking each learner’s background and socio-economic circumstances into account. she also believes in making use of natural remedies. one always thinks quick-fix with a pill but there is actually so much more … omega oils … believe in natural things (t11). whilst königs and kiliaan (2016) confirm the positive effect of omega-3 supplements on the treatment of adhd symptoms, little supporting evidence was found by abdullah et al. (2019) to confirm the positive impact of omega-3 supplements on the symptoms that learners living http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 2022022 40(4): 202-214 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) with adhd may experience. likewise, händel et al. (2021) agree that polyunsaturated fatty acids, such as omega-3, do not yield a positive effect on behavioural difficulties and the main symptoms of adhd in children. some grade 1 teachers regard headphones as vital for boosting concentration and limiting distractions. he only uses them while he works … so that he can…have … silence (t9). trampolines, soft cushions and elastic bands can be used to prevent needless movement and increase focus. rief (2016:103) suggests a therapeutic ball to address a learner’s need to wiggle and squirm. moreover, elastic bands can be used to reduce unwanted movements. it … has to … give a little resistance. he must put [his feet] behind [the elastic band] so that he can always push his feet forward [while the elastic band tied to his chair’s feet] (t11). fidget toys, including pipe-cleaners and modelling clay, enhance the attention span of a learner living with adhd: … give pipe-cleaners to him, then he can fold [it] around the stick while he listens … something in his hands to hold his attention and then he concentrates (t1). i would rather give them ... clay (t9). the research found that grade 1 teachers built their own learner support apparatus when none or only minimal resources were available. one grade 1 teacher supplemented her teaching and learning resources by placing thick, durable cardboard rolls of plastic wrapping under the feet of learners living with adhd. it’s probably the ways in which you get him to sit still, like how i gave d the little pipe. … then i said: “you know, he taps his feet. that’s why he gets it, so that he can keep his feet still” (t1). another approach to lessen fidgeting and movement is using a sensory box. those sensory boxes work quite well. because it keeps them still. it keeps them busy. i had the boxes … sand ... soup stuff … corn ... candles ... dinosaurs [coloured] beans, rice, and pasta (t11). a manual wall clock with graphics indicates when an activity begins and ends. as directed, learners move the clock hand to the next activity picture. a timer clock can motivate a learner to finish tasks on time. i tell him that he has to beat the clock. so, i only set the timer for him (t11). teachers give learners educational games and puzzles after they finish their work to reinforce concepts. 6.2 classroom management methods classroom management methods entail various classroom approaches and techniques. you can use different methods for different children… like brain breaks (t3). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 2032022 40(4): 203-214 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 de villiers & barnard grade 1 teachers’ experiences of supporting learners classroom management methods include classroom structures, management of discipline, classroom support strategies and physical intervention strategies. classroom structures consist of physical and schedule structures (reiber & mclaughlin, 2004; rief, 2016). a physical structure indicates learner seating. most grade 1 teachers agree with alanazi and al turki’s (2021) advice to seat learners living with adhd in rows, and place them in front of the classroom, close to the teacher, to avoid distractions (lawrence, estrada & mccormick, 2017). one grade 1 teacher prefers that learners decide for themselves where they wish to be seated. i asked him where he would like to sit … so, he sits here [in the middle of the classroom] … then he can kind of see what’s going on around him (t3). the physical classroom structure integrates interactive learning and teaching elements. interactive whiteboards and television sets are popular in grade 1 classrooms (south africa, 2004), enhancing the learning and teaching of learners living with adhd via e-learning. electronic whiteboards can highlight a day’s schedule or day programme. instead, several teachers prefer to remind grade 1 learners of the day’s flow verbally. visual indications, such as classroom rules and step-by-step guidance cards in completing an activity, play a key part in the management of grade 1 classrooms: i paste the visual stuff there. now … do what is shown on the board (t11). peer tutoring is an alternative to visual clues for regulating classroom time-to-task. i sometimes put [learner’s name] when she’s done with a. then she mustn’t give her answers but only say what she must do like paste ... it can also help with an adhd child who doesn’t finish (t11). according to moeyaert et al. (2021), peer tutoring has a considerable impact on both academic and social-behavioural outcomes. classroom discipline requires a shared understanding (trytsman & chabangu, 2020). de jager (2013) stresses the role of parents in supporting learners living with adhd to demonstrate positive behaviour, since their value system must complement school values. but it starts with the parents (t11). reiterating directions and directives, face-to-face dialogues with learners, and directing the focus of learners living with adhd were employed to lessen unwanted behaviour. accepting and loving a learner living with adhd unconditionally improves learning outcomes. if you show a bit of love, then she listens (t5). enhancing self-images were found to benefit self-regulatory behaviour. what a difference it made to that child. just to be a leader (t11). lakkala et al. (2020) verify that enhancing learners’ self-perception as capable learners motivates them to set new goals. in addition to the above methods of reinforcing positive discipline and outcomes, it was found that teachers encourage positive discipline. visual picture cards, in addition to http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 2042022 40(4): 204-214 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) face-to-face encounters, were used to remind learners of classroom rules. learners were often rewarded for demonstrating acceptable classroom behaviour. token reinforcement and response cost are other classroom disciplinary approaches. token reinforcement is utilised to encourage positive behaviour. a sticker is handed for desired or expected behaviour. when the sticker card is full (ten stickers), it is exchanged for a bean. at the end of each week, the learner with the most beans is honoured with classroom privileges (t11). in contrast to token reinforcement, response cost focuses on resolving undesirable behaviour. one teacher describes her reaction cost strategy this way: if the child talks [for the first time] then his name comes on the yellow [robot light] … if he talks again, then he comes [on the red light] in trouble (t11). in the sticker and bean example, the learner would lose a bean or a privilege for misbehaving. despite the foregoing management approaches for classroom discipline, grade 1 teachers agree that discipline begins with themselves. you have to be prepared and your planning needs to be right, or you must at least know what you are going to do with the children on the day (t7). in summary, classroom management and support practises for grade 1 teachers focus on helping learners living with adhd. brain break activities are one way to help learners with adhd. we do a lot of stand-up … line crossing (t3). grade 1 teachers in this study altered the classroom environment (e.g., seating arrangements) to enhance the learning of learners with adhd (yoro, fourie & van der merwe, 2020: 3), giving clear directions and granting extra time. teachers utilise various learning styles to support learners with adhd. you can use different methods for different children (t3). differentiation was understood by grade 1 teachers as choosing the best support strategies for learners living with adhd, not only preparing a variety of activities. grade 1 teachers support learners by emphasising a healthy diet and regular water intake. one teacher links learner diet to classroom behaviour. i notice a slight improvement in his behaviour if he eats the porridge before he comes to class (t3). this finding supports kozyra et al. (2020) that nutrition affects the behaviour of learners living with adhd. alanazi and al turki (2021: 1215) suggest that learners living with adhd benefit from physical activities to convey content. grade 1 teachers combine hands-on activities. maths … are very practical. and when we do sounds, they have sound cards with which we build words (t1). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 2052022 40(4): 205-214 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 de villiers & barnard grade 1 teachers’ experiences of supporting learners i had … beanbags .... i give the command to put it on [their] heads and to do middle-line crossing, take him with your right hand, put him on your left foot … in the mornings … i do math games with them. i throw the dice … and then i ask where it landed on. say it lands on 5, then i ask them to double it (t11). according to teachers, physical intervention strategies must consider differentiated apparatus. you will differentiate with the apparatus. the one sits on the chair, this one has an elastic band, this one has a ball (t11). 7. support strategies to grade 1 learners living with adhd based on the findings and discussion, the following recommendations are offered to help grade 1 teachers support learners living with adhd. some support strategies can be utilised for multiple characteristics and are marked with an asterisk (*) in the table below. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 2062022 40(4): 206-214 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) ta bl e 1: r ec om m en da tio ns to a ss is t g ra de 1 te ac he rs in s up po rti ng le ar ne rs li vi ng w ith a d h d in th ei r c la ss ro om s s u p p o r t s tr a te g ie s f o r g r a d e 1 l e a r n e r s l iv in g w it h a d h d c ha ra ct er is tic s s up po rt s tr at eg ie s r ec om m en da tio ns 1. l ea rn er is u nf oc us ed , da yd re am in g an d ha s a sh or t a tte nt io n sp an . h e/ sh e st ru gg le s to c om pl et e de ta ile d ta sk s. t he le ar ne r i s di so rie nt ed a nd fo rg et s ve rb al an d vi su al in st ru ct io ns . v is ua lau di to ry p ro ce ss in g is p oo r. m ed ic at io n (p re sc rib ed o r n at ur al ) fo llo w p hy si ci an re co m m en da tio ns fo r d is pe ns in g m ed ic at io n. p ee r t ut or in g e m po w er a p ee r w ith p re ci se d ire ct io ns to d ire ct a tte nt io n. e ar ph on es d is tri bu te e ar pi ec es o r h ea ds et s to re du ce n oi se a nd d is tra ct io ns . le ar ne r c la ss ro om s ea tin g p la ce th e le ar ne r a t a w or ks ta tio n aw ay fr om v is ua l a nd a ud ib le d is tra ct io ns , n ea r th e te ac he r. m ul tis en so ry in st ru ct io ns o r co nt en t t hr ou gh e -le ar ni ng p la ce c on te nt a nd in st ru ct io ns o n in te ra ct iv e w hi te bo ar ds a nd c om pu te rs ; u se m us ic , p ic tu re s an d ac tio ns . l ea rn er s us e an in te ra ct iv e pe n or c om pu te r o r fo llo w c om pu te rdi re ct ed in st ru ct io ns . v is ua l c lu es v is ua lis e au di to ry in st ru ct io ns w ith p ic tu re s or o bj ec ts . d ur in g a w or dbu ild in g pr ac tis e in w hi ch th e le ar ne r c ut s an d pa st es le tte rs to c on st ru ct w or ds , t he te ac he r p as te s pi ct ur es o f s ci ss or s, g lu e an d a pe nc il be lo w e ac h ot he r. r ep ea tin g th e in st ru ct io ns r ep ea tin g in st ru ct io ns h el ps le ar ne rs w ho d id n ot h ea r t he m th e fir st ti m e. b ra in b re ak s b ra in b re ak s in cl ud e br ea th in g an d ph ys ic al e xe rc is es . f in ge r r hy m es , s ta nd in g up rig ht , s tre tc hi ng a nd m id lin ecr os si ng e xe rc is es a re s am pl e ph ys ic al a ct iv iti es . b e ad ap ta bl e in th e cl as sr oo m p re pa re th e le ar ne r’s b oo k so th e le ar ne r c an a cc om pl is h a ta sk fa st er a nd m ai nt ai n fo cu s; o ffe r t he le ar ne r m or e tim e to c om pl et e th e w or k; o r s ep ar at e th e ac tiv ity in to s ec tio ns a nd g iv e br ai n br ea ks b et w ee n pa rts . s ho rte r i ns tru ct io ns o r t as ks s ho rte r a ct iv iti es a llo w s pe ed ie r c om pl et io n, w hi ch k ee ps le ar ne rs fo cu se d. a tte nt io n gr ab be rs a tte nt io n gr ab be rs a re u se d to c ap tu re a tte nt io n. t he se a ct iv iti es in vo lv e vo ic in g ex pr es si on s w ith th e te ac he r, su ch a s ‘z ip it , l oc k it, p ut it in y ou r p oc ke t’, ‘s to p, lo ok , l is te n’ , a nd ‘e ye s on m e’ a nd ‘e ye s on y ou ’. p hy si ca l a ct iv iti es in cl ud e ph ys ic al a ct iv iti es to te ac h co nt en t a nd s ki lls in g ra de 1 ’s fo ur s ub je ct s to m ai nt ai n a d h d le ar ne rs ’ a tte nt io n. t hi s ca n in cl ud e m at he m at ic al g am es , s uc h as u si ng d ic e fo r a dd iti on a nd s ub tra ct io n, a nd h om e la ng ua ge o r a dd iti on al la ng ua ge a ct iv iti es , w he re th e le ar ne r c on st ru ct s w or ds w ith s ou nd ca rd s an d si ng s so ng s. s en so ry b ox es s en so ry b ox es c om pr is e an yt hi ng th at s tim ul at es a le ar ne r’s s en se s. ti m er c lo ck th e cl oc k te lls th e le ar ne r t im e pa ss es . t he ti m er is s et fo r t he d ur at io n of th e ac tiv ity . r ew ar d le ar ne rs w ho c om pl et e th e ac tiv ity in ti m e. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 2072022 40(4): 207-214 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 de villiers & barnard grade 1 teachers’ experiences of supporting learners s u p p o r t s tr a te g ie s f o r g r a d e 1 l e a r n e r s l iv in g w it h a d h d c ha ra ct er is tic s s up po rt s tr at eg ie s r ec om m en da tio ns m ot iv at io ns a le ar ne r i s re w ar de d w ith p riv ile ge s or p hy si ca l o bj ec ts to e nc ou ra ge g oo d be ha vi ou r a nd d is co ur ag e un w an te d be ha vi ou r. p riv ile ge s en ta il be in g re w ar de d as a c la ss c ap ta in o r a ct in g as a m es se ng er , a dd iti on al re ce ss , p la yt im e or to ke n re in fo rc em en t. c lo ck w ith im ag es im ag es o f t he d ai ly s ch ed ul e ar e pu t o n th e an al og ue c lo ck to re m in d a d h d le ar ne rs w he n an a ct iv ity b eg in s an d en ds . r ou tin e d is pl ay a v is ua l d ai ly ro ut in e of th e da y’ s ac tiv iti es . b od y pe rc us si on b od y ac tiv iti es li ke rh yt hm ic c la pp in g im pr ov e co nc en tra tio n an d w or ki ng m em or y. 2. l ea rn er is u no rg an is ed , w or k be co m es m es sy , l ea rn er st ru gg le s w ith p oo r h an dw rit in g sk ill s *p ee r t ut or in g *p ee r t ut or in g 3. l ea rn er is h yp er ac tiv e an d ca n’ t s it st ill fo r l en gt hy du ra tio ns . t hi s ca us es fid ge tin g an d fre qu en t co nv er sa tio ns . l ea rn er s en jo y ha nd son a ct iv iti es . l ea rn er s w ith a d h d c an a pp ea r u nr ul y. *p ee r t ut or in g *p ee r t ut or in g *s en so ry b ox es *s en so ry b ox es a tra m po lin e tr am po lin es c an b e us ed to re du ce e ne rg y. c ha irs w ith s of t c us hi on s th is s up po rts th e le ar ne r’s b ac k an d he lp s to s ta y se at ed . th er ap eu tic b al l a dd re ss es th e le ar ne r’s c ra vi ng fo r p hy si ca lly a ct iv ity . t he b al l s ho ul d on ly b e gi ve n at c er ta in ti m es d ur in g th e da y. e la st ic b an d th e el as tic b an d he lp s le ar ne rs s ta y st ill w hi le w or ki ng . i t i s w ra pp ed a ro un d a ch ai r’s fr on t l eg s so th e le ar ne r c an k ic k fo rw ar d ag ai ns t i t. c la y g iv e cl ay a s a fid ge t t oy . e du ca tio na l g am e or p uz zl e a fte r c om pl et in g a ta sk , p la y an e du ca tio na l g am e or d o a pu zz le . ti m er c lo ck th e tim er c lo ck in di ca te s w he n le ar ne rs m ay c ar ry o ut p hy si ca l a ct iv iti es , s uc h as te n ju m pi ng ja ck s. r ol lin g eq ui pm en t b en ea th th e fe et r ol lin g fe et o n th e ro lli ng a pp ar at us (c ar db oa rd ro ll) c on tro ls th e le ar ne r’s hy pe ra ct iv ity . h ea lth y di et ar y pr ac tic es a nd re gu la r w at er c on su m pt io n a di et w ith v ita l n ut rie nt s an d no s ug ar s w ill im pr ov e be ha vi ou r b y re du ci ng th e le ar ne r’s e ne rg y. im pl em en t r eg ul ar w at er b re ak s. p er m it fin is hi ng ta sk s w hi le ly in g do w n le ar ne rs la y on th ei r s to m ac h an d w or k or la y un de r t he ta bl e w hi le w rit in g. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 2082022 40(4): 208-214 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) s u p p o r t s tr a te g ie s f o r g r a d e 1 l e a r n e r s l iv in g w it h a d h d c ha ra ct er is tic s s up po rt s tr at eg ie s r ec om m en da tio ns p ra ct ic al a ct iv iti es a nd g am es p ra ct ic al e xe rc is es o r g am es in cl ud e ov em en t a nd b ur n up e ne rg y. o ut si de p hy si ca l a ct iv iti es th e te ac he r a nd /o r a ss is ta nt ta ke th e en tir e cl as s ou t. fi dg et to ys to fo cu s a le ar ne r’s a tte nt io n, g iv e th e le ar ne r a fi dg et to y lik e a pi pe -c le an er to w ra p ar ou nd a c ra yo n. 4. l ea rn er is im pu ls iv e an d ac ts in ap pr op ria te ly . c la ss ro om ru le s d is pl ay c la ss ro om ru le s vi su al ly . r ep ea t i ns tru ct io ns . *m ot iv at io ns *m ot iv at io ns 5. t he le ar ne r h as a lo w s el fim ag e, fe el s al on e an d se em s in de ci si ve . h e/ sh e ex pr es se s bo th a d es ire a nd in ab ili ty to ac hi ev e. in di vi du al is ed a tte nt io n li st en s to th e le ar ne r a nd m ak es h im /h er fe el c he ris he d. g ui de s th e le ar ne r t o fin is h th e as si gn m en t, bo os tin g se lfes te em . *v is ua l c lu es *v is ua l c lu es 6. t he le ar ne r d is pl ay s m oo di ne ss . t he le ar ne r i s di so be di en t a nd is th e “c la ss cl ow n” . *e du ca tio na l g am e or p uz zl e *e du ca tio na l g am e or p uz zl e *c la ss ro om ru le s *c la ss ro om ru le s *i nd iv id ua lis ed a tte nt io n *i nd iv id ua lis ed a tte nt io n d is ci pl in e c on si st en cy a nd re pe tit io n ar e ke y to m ai nt ai ni ng c la ss ro om d is ci pl in e. d is cu ss th e ex pe ct ed c la ss ro om b eh av io ur s. *m ot iv at io ns *m ot iv at io ns r es po ns e co st a ro bo t s ys te m c an b e ut ili ze d to s ig ni fy g oo d be ha vi ou r. w he n a le ar ne r m is be ha ve s, h is /h er n am e is m ov ed fr om th e gr ee n lig ht to th e ye llo w li gh t. th e le ar ne r i s re pr im an de d at th e re d lig ht . *h ea lth y di et ar y pr ac tic es a nd re gu la r w at er c on su m pt io n *h ea lth y di et ar y pr ac tic es a nd re gu la r w at er c on su m pt io n http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 2092022 40(4): 209-214 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 de villiers & barnard grade 1 teachers’ experiences of supporting learners in closing the above discussion on findings and recommendations, grade 1 teachers need to take cognisance that there is not a “one size fits all” strategy to address the individual needs of a learner living with adhd (nombuso, 2016). nevertheless, as grade 1 teachers may find it challenging to support learners with adhd in their classrooms, the above support strategy summary for grade 1 mainstream classrooms may be beneficial, despite limitations experienced in this research study. 8. limitations this study did not identify emotional and social support strategies, or more specifically, social skills and self-management strategies. another limitation is that the research was limited in scope to the west coast education district of the western cape province. therefore, the findings are not representative nor generalisable to all grade 1 teachers. nevertheless, as grade 1 teachers may find it challenging to support learners living with adhd in their classrooms, the support strategy summary for grade 1 mainstream classrooms may be beneficial to all grade 1 teachers. 9. conclusion it is evident that grade 1 teachers are knowledgeable about diversity and types of teaching resources available to support learners with living adhd. however, they lack knowledge of specific behavioural support strategies (daily report cards and behavioural contracts), social skills training and self-management techniques (dupaul & stoner, 2014; rief, 2016). teachers intuitively apply support strategies that they believe will augment the teaching and learning of grade 1 learners living with adhd. grade 1 teachers adhere to bronfenbrenner’s bioecological (1979) model of human development that proximal processes should be guided by the characteristics of the person, context and time factor to augment the teaching and learning of a learner living with adhd (bronfenbrenner & morris, 2006; swart & pettipher, 2019). teachers acknowledge their role as competent mediator, as outlined in feuerstein’s (1991) mle model, by selecting, devising and implementing techniques that help individual learners living with adhd in their specific context. by researching support strategies, a summary is presented to aid grade 1 teachers in the west coast district in the western cape to enhance the teaching and learning of learners living with adhd. references abdullah, m., jowett, b., whittaker, p.j. & patterson, l. 2019. the effectiveness of omega-3 supplementation in reducing adhd associated symptoms in children as measured by the conners’ rating scales: a systematic review of randomized controlled trials. journal of psychiatric research, 110: 64-73. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2018.12.002 alanazi, f. & al turki, y. 2021. knowledge and attitude of attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder (adhd) among male primary school teachers, in riyadh city, saudi arabia. journal of family medicine and primary care, 10(3): 1218-1226. https://doi.org/10.4103/jfmpc. jfmpc_2194_20 american psychiatric association. 2013. diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: dsm-v. washington, dc: american psychiatric association. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi. books.9780890425596 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2018.12.002 https://doi.org/10.4103/jfmpc.jfmpc_2194_20 https://doi.org/10.4103/jfmpc.jfmpc_2194_20 https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425596 https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.books.9780890425596 2102022 40(4): 210-214 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) amod, z., vorster, a. & lazarus, k. 2013. attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (adhd) as a barrier to learning and development within the south african context: the perspective of teachers. in: s. banerjee (ed.). attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children and adolescents, rijeka: intech: 215-241. available at https://bit.ly/3umjsji [accessed 8 march 2020]. https://doi.org/10.5772/53784 ananth, a. & maistry, s. 2020. invoking interactive qualitative analysis as a methodology in statistics education research. the journal for transdisciplinary research in southern africa, 16(1): 1-12. available ag 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(eds.). mediated learning experience (mle): theoretical, psychosocial and learning implications. london: freund. available at https://bit. ly/3w6w99r [accessed 12 january 2020]. feuerstein, r., feuerstein, r.s. & falik. l.h. 2010. beyond smarter: mediated learning and the brain’s capacity for change. new york: teachers college press. gaastra, g.f., groen, y., tucha, l. & tucha, o. 2020. unknown, unloved? teachers’ reported use and effectiveness of classroom management strategies for students with symptoms of adhd. child and youth care forum, 49(1): 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10566-019-09515-7 gardner, h., 2021. disciplined mind: what all students should understand. new york: simon & schuster. hancock, d.r. & algozzine, b. 2016. doing case study research: a practical guide for beginner researchers. 3rd ed. new york, ny: teachers college press. händel, m.n., rohde, j.f., rimestad, m.l., bandak, e., birkefoss, k., tendal, b., lemcke, s. & callesen, h.e. 2021. efficacy and safety of polyunsaturated fatty acids supplementation in the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd) in children and adolescents: a systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trials. nutrients, 13(4): 1-16. https://doi. org/10.3390/nu13041226 jijina, p. & sinha, u.k. 2016. parent assisted social skills training for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. journal of the indian academy of applied psychology, 42(2): 299-309. königs, a. & kiliaan, a.j. 2016. critical appraisal of omega-3 fatty acids in attention-deficit/ hyperactivity disorder treatment. neuropsychiatric disease and treatment, 12: 1869-1882. https://doi.org/10.2147/ndt.s68652 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 https://doi.org/10.1080/13603116.2011.580465 https://www.proquest.com/openview/197a29736245877685262b7cdd9b2b4d/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y https://www.proquest.com/openview/197a29736245877685262b7cdd9b2b4d/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750&diss=y https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2011.534935 https://doi.org/10.1080/00405841.2011.534935 https://ukzn-dspace.ukzn.ac.za/handle/10413/13002 https://ukzn-dspace.ukzn.ac.za/handle/10413/13002 https://bit.ly/3w6w99r https://bit.ly/3w6w99r https://doi.org/10.1007/s10566-019-09515-7 https://doi.org/10.3390/nu13041226 https://doi.org/10.3390/nu13041226 https://doi.org/10.2147/ndt.s68652 2122022 40(4): 212-214 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) kern, a., amod, z., seabi, j. & vorster, a. 2015. south african foundation phase teachers’ perceptions of adhd at private and public schools. international journal of environmental research and public health, 12(3): 3042-3059. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph120303042 khaldi, k. 2017. quantitative, qualitative or mixed research: which research paradigm to use? journal of educational and social research, 7(2):15-24. https://doi.org/10.5901/jesr.2017. v7n2p15 kozyra, m., zimnicki, p., kaczerska, j., śmiech, n., nowińska, m. & milanowska, j. 2020. relationship between the diet and psychiatric diseases such as depression, anxiety and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (adhd). journal of education, health and sport, 10(8): 93-104. https://doi.org/10.12775/jehs.2020.10.08.011 lakkala, s., uusiautti, s., kyrö-ämmälä, o. & grönfors, p. 2020. students’ social self-image and engagement with studies within the classroom: a qualitative multimethod research on teachers’ pedagogical activities in inclusive education. international journal of whole schooling, 16(1): 35-60. lawrence, k., estrada, r.d. & mccormick, j. 2017. teachers’ experiences with and perceptions of students with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder. journal of pediatric nursing, 36: 141-148. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pedn.2017.06.010 loedolff, s. 2019. attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: towards an inclusive approach in the management of adhd in south african classrooms. unpublished m.ed. thesis, university of cape town: cape town. available at http://137.158.155.148/bitstream/handle/11427/31466/ thesis_hum_2019_loedolff_simone.pdf?sequence=1&isallowed=y [accessed 8 january 2021]. lumadi, m.w. 2015. the logic of sampling. in c. okeke & m. van wyk. 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(ed.). application of social research methods to questions in information and library sciences. 2nd ed. westport, ct: libraries unlimited: 318-329. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6743 https://doi.org/10.1891/1945-8959.12.1.59 https://doi.org/10.1177/0883073814560630 https://doi.org/10.1177/0883073814560630 https://hdl.handle.net/10520/ejc-1d3a532ab8 https://doi.org/10.4102/ajod.v9i0.561 https://doi.org/10.4102/ajod.v9i0.561 _hlk113913010 _hlk113913136 _hlk113913152 _hlk113913185 _hlk113913269 _hlk113913281 _hlk113913315 _hlk113913327 _hlk113913367 _hlk113913399 _hlk113913443 _hlk113913467 _hlk113913482 _hlk113913501 _hlk113913530 _hlk113913543 _hlk113913566 _hlk113913608 _hlk113913686 _hlk113913751 _hlk113913790 _hlk113913806 _hlk113913819 _hlk113914915 _hlk113914950 _hlk113915385 _hlk113915542 _hlk113915563 _hlk113915583 _hlk113915690 _hlk113915782 _hlk113915829 19 research article 2021 39(2): 19-32 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) post-school youths’ schooling experiences and aspirations abstract while three million youth in south africa are not in education, employment or training (neets), not much is known about their schooling experiences nor their aspirations for the future. eighty-seven post-school youth (psy) were enrolled at a youth development and organisation (iydo) centre in a black township to the south-east of johannesburg. this paper analyses the perspectives of these post-school youths of their formal schooling experiences and their aspirations for the future. the paper is framed by willis’s (2000) theory of the basic educational paradigm at the heart of the teaching relationship and intentional resistance from working class boys. analysis of data showed the failure of the schools attended by the participants in providing a reasonable standard and quality of education as the main cause of dropping out of school. in spite of challenging structural constraints both historical and current, these post-school youth are not disaffected nor disengaged from quality education. contrary to the literature, they aspire for a better life and for educational opportunities that would enable them to access professional and managerial jobs and upward social mobility. appadurai’s (2004) theory of culture of aspiration enabled making sense of participants’ aspirations. the issue of post school youth requires not only alternative post school programmes but also attention to schooling practices within formal secondary school education. keywords: schooling experiences; post-school youth; basic educational paradigm; aspirations; neets (not in education, employment, training). 1. introduction three million youth between 18 and 24 in sa are not in education, employment or training (neets) (cloete, 2009). such youth have been described as “excluded youth” (cloete, 2009:1) and a “youth time bomb” (perold, 2012). there are two approaches to this problem. on the one hand there are concerns that arise from the economic sphere about “threats to the country’s future sustainability and prosperity” or from the social sphere of “the social instability that arises when there are too many young people without work” (cooper, 2014). on the other hand there are concerns from a social justice and human rights perspective. the white paper notes that post-school eduction and training author: a/professor devika naidoo1 affiliation: 1university of johannesburg doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i2.3 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(2): 19-32 published: 11 june 2021 received: 02 september 2020 accepted: 30 october 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 202021 39(2): 20-32 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) should also contribute to developing thinking citizens, who can function effectively, creatively and ethically as part of a democratic society. they should have an understanding of their society, and be able to participate fully in its political, social and cultural life (dhet, 2013: 2). this paper analyses the perspectives of these post-school youths of their formal schooling experiences and their reasons for dropping out of school. psy are not a homogenous group – there are those who are “fine”, those who are “at risk” and those who are “lost” (perold, 2012). perold identified poverty, personal reasons such as pregnancy and lack of funds as the single largest obstacle for sa youth not in education, employment or training (neet). in the sa context, youth neet are isolated, out of touch with networks that can guide them into post-school education opportunities or employment options (perold, 2012). their work experience is piecemeal, insecure and survivalist. further, poor health, interrupted education, involvement in criminal activity and discouragement and depression are endemic to youth neet. improved quality of schooling, financial assistance and strengthened post-school education and training provision is required to provide youth neet access to oportunities for advancement (perold, 2012). the findings show that these psy’s schooling experience showed gross neglect that worked mainly to exclude youth who aspire to professional and managerial careers. they are not disaffected from quality education that abides by the basic paradigm of teaching and socially just schooling. to the contrary, they desire education that would provide them with the opportunities to access higher education qualifications and professional and managerial jobs. to this end, they engage in informal educational programmes provided at the youth centre. 2. literature review and theoretical underpinnings internalist sociological explanations focus on the processes associated with the “organisation of the education system” (moore, 2004:18) such as regulating control over movement, timetable specifications and interpersonal conflict that contribute to some youth dropping out of school. the failure of schools to acknowledge and include diverse cultural identities lead to youth disengagement and dropping out of school (moore, 2004:18). the alienating nature of “doing” high school…large class sizes, rigid timetables, hierarchical structures, didactic pedagogies, punitive behaviour management regimes, poor facilities, measurement and testing, standardisation, lack of creativity, labelling, streaming, irrelevant curriculum, vocationalisation and poor relations with teachers has been noted (robinson et al., 2012: 11). disengaged youth “need space and freedom to pursue their own interests and aspirations” and find traditional schooling constraining and limiting (smyth & robinson, 2014: 18). various facets of school disaffection such as perceived injustice or actual victimisation at school can lead to substance abuse (jonson et al., 2012). contrary to common sense, smyth and robinson note that leaving school “often has little to do with their academic capacity” (2015: 225). robinson et al. found that the catalyst in the case of their informants was the enactment of the policy on behaviour management in schools, specifically the uniform policy. taylor (2012: 37) argues that “a lack of sense of school belonging can be a destabilising aspect in disaffected students’ lives”. curriculum related factors include social biases in the formal curriculum (moore, 2004: 18) and curricula not related to student’s lives (kirby & gardner, 2010). teacher related factors include low expectations resulting in a self-fulfilling prophecy of success of some groups and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 212021 39(2): 21-32 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 naidoo post-school youths’ schooling experiences and aspirations failure of others (moore, 2004:18) and ineffective pedagogical practices (kirby & gardner, 2010). according to (smyth & robinson, 2014: 221), the factors that lead to disengagement are achievement related such as poor prior learning experiences, absences from school and poor language and literacy skills and linked to aspiration such as an absence of career plans, poor knowledge of labour market opportunities and how to educationally access them and limited networks. willis’s (2000) explanation for disengagement from education focuses on the teaching relationship. willis argues that: within the institution of the school operates the basic educational paradigm at the heart of the teaching relationship. teaching is seen as fair exchange – most basically of knowledge for respect and of guidance for control (2000: 69–70). it is knowledge that the teacher trades that gives the teacher moral superiority. the most important chain of exchanges is of knowledge for qualifications, qualified activity for high pay and pay for goods and services (2000: 64). the teachers authority is based in moral, not coercive grounds, in being knowledgeable and in being able to teach socially valued knowledge to students. socially, the “right attitude”, “respect and politeness” is expected of students. a loss of legitimacy of pre-given institutional expectations leads to differentiation: differentiation is experienced by those concerned as …a process of learning whereby the self and its future are critically separated from the pre-given institutional definitions (willis, 2000:3). willis argues that there is an element of self-damnation in how working class youth get working class jobs. this damnation is experienced as “true learning, affirmation, appropriation and as a form of resistence” (2000: 3). while ineffective or dysfunctional schools might produce disengagement, willis shows that it could also arise in good schools. the site of willis’s (2000) main case study – hammerton boys – “had the reputation of being a good school…it had reasonable standards of behavior and dress enforced by an interested and competent senior staff” (willis, 2000: 4). the careers classes were taught by dedicated and experienced teachers (willis, 2000: 5). during his research the school was experimenting with new techniques – “streaming was replaced by mixed-ability groupings, a resource centre was introduced, experiments were made in team teaching and curriculum development programmes…” (willis, 2000: 4). it was within this context of a “good school” that a group of 12 non-academic white working class boys, studied by willis, developed a counter-culture in the school characterised by opposition to authority, rejection of conformists, disrespecting teachers, sleeping in class, swearing, drinking and smoking openly in the school, rejection of the timetable and moving about at their own will, truancy, being out of class, being in the wrong class, roaming the corridors looking for excitement, laughing and being able to produce it, pulling pranks, making jokes, symbolic and physical violence, paki-bashing and delibeately disturbing general assembly. in attempting to provide an explanation for anti-school attitudes amongst white working class boys, willis argues that such attitudes have their roots in working class culture, that it is the working class boys’ own culture that prepares them for “the manual giving of their labour power” (willis, 2000: 3). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 222021 39(2): 22-32 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) in the initial “youth dialogue” at the centre, the participants condemned their teachers for sabotaging their education and revealed their plans and aspirations for the future unabashedly. appadurai’s (2004) concept of aspirations was useful in making sense of the psy aspirations. he has developed a revitalised toolkit that gives due regard to developing and strengthening the capacity to aspire amongst the poor. appadurai argues that the capacity to aspire, conceived as a cultural capacity must be strengthened especially among the poor. aspirations are never individual (appadurai, 2004), but formed in social interactions. the capacity to aspire is nurtured by real-world conjectures and refutations as they are formed in interaction in social life. they are not equally distributed in society as the middle class have more aspirations due to being exposed to situations that generate aspirations. appadurai argues for the need to strengthen the capacity of the poor to exercise “voice,” to debate, contest and oppose vital directions for collective social life. 3. the research context the site of this study is a youth organisation and development centre (iydo) in a black township to the south of johannesburg. i was invited to a youth dialogue facilitated by the centre for education rights and transformation (cert) at the university. cert had been working at the youth centre and in the community for a while. despite the institution of a democratic government and political system in 1994, the township is reminiscent of apartheid regulation of racial groups. the group areas act made it illegal for black races to live where they chose. blacks were allocated residential areas much further away from urban centres. these were called townships or locations and are locally known as “kasies” today. the township, in which the youth centre is located, is exclusively populated by the black population group. it is approximately 60km from central johannesburg. heavy industries such as chemical, iron and steel, fertiliser and power stations are within 10km of the residential area. the township has tarred and dirt roads. it has a mixture of standard small council homes, constructed during apartheid for blacks as well as individually designed homes. four schools in the area have closed down. this is due to students attending schools in other areas. this township appears to be socially, politically and geographically outside of the hegemonic power structure of the city of johannesburg. a journalist for the saturday star, kabelo khumalo, entitled his article “youths initiated into a life of crime” outlined gangs being attached to each initiation school. the violence that gangs use was highlighted: the use of knives, pangas (machetes) and axes when breaking into houses and stealing. the isitemba youth development organisation (iydo) is sponsored by the netherlands based philanthropic organisation, eindhoven and by one of the industries in the area: arcello mittal. it is also supported by the department of health and social development. the services offered at the centre include: • advice referral, service referral system, internet access, cv development and upload; • social programme: teenage pregnancy support group, substance abuse workshops, career exhibition; • skills development: computer training, life skills training, welding, sewing, entrepreneurship, and • smme workshops from monday to friday. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 232021 39(2): 23-32 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 naidoo post-school youths’ schooling experiences and aspirations the mission of iydo: to provide economic sustainability and eradicate poverty in the community through the implementation of sustainable livelihoods programmes. the vision is to empower youth and hold up high moral values amongst youth and to implement youth economic development programmes. youth who use the services and enrol in the programmes come not only from the surrounding area but also from up to 30km away. at the time of data collection 87 students were registered at the centre. with the exception of sewing classes where students pay r700 once off for a 3-month course, all other classes are free. around 12–15 students attend the sewing programme. the computer literacy facilitator runs 6 classes a day for 12 students at a time. the youth interviewed range from 18 to 35 years old. most originate from challenging social and economic backgrounds. most of their parents are employed in semi-skilled working-class jobs such as: dressmaking, shop assistants and clerks. most of the females interviewed already had children of their own and were being supported by the state grant for their children. some of the youth were being supported by their parents’ old age grant. in spite of economic impoverishment, the youth are generally very optimistic about learning capabilities for work and contemptuous of mass protests where property such as schools and libraries are destroyed. 4. methodology this qualitative study sought to understand why the psy at the iydo centre disengaged from formal schooling. informed by case study methodology, data were collected through nonparticipant observations of activities and lessons at the youth centre, in-depth interviews with students and analysis of documents and records filed at the centre. although observations of computer literacy, sewing, life skills lessons and workshops activities and music centre activities were also done this article is based on data collected during interviews with the students. i was invited to a “youth dialogue” at the youth centre, convened by a cert facilitator. around 50 male and female black students participated in the “youth dialogue”. the participants at the dialogue were robustly critical of their teachers and schooling experiences. participants spoke in english or their mother tongue and were very forthright and informative about their own experiences to improve their capabilities/skills and gain employment. this dialogue was audio recorded and transcribed in english by the convenor of the dialogue and sent out to all researchers invited to the dialogue. i read and analysed this transcript in-depth and identified key issues to be followed up in the individual interviews with students at the centre pertaining to their schooling experiences. in-depth interviews were conducted and followed up by informal conversations with students. an interview guide with open-ended questions enabled participants to speak about issues upper most in their minds. the interviews were audio recorded and transcribed. an initial transcript was chosen randomly and analysed to identify the initial codes. all the responses were read and assigned codes that captured their essence. for example, the codes of not being able to conform to school demands; being stuck and poor quality schooling were identified. all other transcripts were analysed according to the initial codes as well as for different codes specific to them. the key findings that arose from the data were presented to facilitators and students for verification and feedback. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 242021 39(2): 24-32 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) ethical approval was given for the study by the university ethics committee and the research was guided by the committee’s guidelines for ethical research practices such as full disclosure of the purpose of the study, upholding anonymity and confidentiality as well as liberty to withdraw from the study if necessary. all participants engaged fully in the study. all youth were conventionally dressed, were respectful and spoke without the use of profanities/ vulgarities as used by the “lads” (willis, 2000). 5. findings a typical day at the centre involves starting at 8am with life skills (ls) lessons followed by workshops on substance abuse; computer literacy (cl) classes and sewing classes. rose facilitated the ls class of 13 students. the topic was conflict, what it is, is it good, how to deal with it, etc. a guide was referred to, to open the topic and to let the questions structure the discussion and thereafter to read from with the facilitator reading out aloud. the cl class took the form of students practicing their presentation skills using powerpoint on a topic decided on by individual students such as “being a human being”, “a healthy body”, “stress”, “technology”. students had their topics and points on their computer screens. after each presentation, students asked questions and a discussion took place. the teacher informed me that students write tests and get a certificate when they complete the course. data analysis resulted in the following main themes: dissatisfaction with rigidity of school regulations; dissatisfaction with curriculum and pedagogy; financial constraints; feelings of alienation in a good school and strong aspirations. 5.1 dissatisfaction with rigidity of school regulations in the most damning comment on their schooling, students likened their schools to prisons, their teachers to policemen and themselves to prisoners. they noted the locked gates, the barbed wire at the gates and the guards at the gates. the siren sounding regularly every 45 minutes, the tone of voice used by the principal and teachers were seen as prison like regulations of prisoners. these participants experienced schooling as an incarceration rather than liberating. they described the rules and regulations of the school pertaining to uniform wearing, time usage, lining up at assembly and other places, homework, respect demanded by teachers, as stifling. most spoke about needing an “outlet from the schooling system”. tsepo, who had access to better quality conventional schooling needed an “outlet” from its stifling rules and practices. in commenting on what the schooling system did to students, tsepo explained: it instils fear in learners, when it ought to teach confidence, it teaches them not to make mistakes! to not write in their maths books… the requirement “to not write in their maths books” refers to the practice of teachers not allowing learners to write notes as they needed to. they could only write what the teachers told them to and in the way they required. participants found teachers’ subordinating demeanour towards them inappropriate. these participants found that they were not encouraged by their teachers but were always told that they are going to fail and that they are doing badly. they dropped out of formal schooling to escape the oppressive disciplinary practices and procedures. one of the post-school youth recounted his embarrassment when “results were put up on the notice board” that caused embarrassment and led to him excluding himself. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 252021 39(2): 25-32 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 naidoo post-school youths’ schooling experiences and aspirations khaya: our results were put on the notice board, i felt embarrassed. i didn’t do well and it was on public display… many complained about the attitude of their teachers. khaya for example noted that the “teacher hated me, always picked on me”. mfondo, a very capable girl, found that one of her teachers who wanted her to “give personal information about her friend” led to very abusive confrontations when she refused to do so. this teacher then discussed the matter with other teachers and tainted mfondo’s relationship with other teachers. this led to mfondo dropping out of school. 5.2 dissatisfaction with curriculum and pedagogy many of the interviewees experienced the school curriculum as narrow, irrelevant, boring and meaningless for their lives in their communities and an imposition that disregarded their own life-worlds and talents. the view that the subjects that were taught to them did not connect with their individual lives was pervasive. a criticism of their education in khaya’s words is that they “learn everything about everything and nothing about themselves’”. khaya: the problem with this current model is that we are taught everything about everything and nothing about ourselves. going inside of ourselves and taking that out and using it to learn something is what we need… what the curriculum should be is bringing out what is inside them and relating it to the knowledge in the curriculum is what they desire. students also bemoaned that their own talents were not recognised. one of the participants (khaya) recounted his primary school days when he was “more into sports” and received gauteng colours (provincial award) for athletics. but the high school he moved into, did not offer athletics or other sports activities – it only provided soccer. khaya: in primary school i was more into sports…i was very good in athletics…i got gauteng colours for athletics but then i moved to high school…there was no sports only soccer. the majority were highly contemptuous of the pedagogy practiced by teachers that cast them as “empty vessels”. some subjects like business studies were condemned as: a complete waste: only copy and paste, no thinking whatsoever. the participants were aware that they were taught “what to think not how to think, not how to reason”. a further criticism of formal schooling was it aimed at conformity at the expense of uniqueness and creativity. one of the participants noted: we are expected to respond to a task in a uniform way, whereas i like to do it differently contrary to the literature that disaffected youth find the curriculum challenging these youth found the dominant expectation of regurgitation or “copy and paste” in subjects such as business studies demeaning and boring. students further spoke about being asked to regurgitate the teacher’s notes in their tests and exams. these students found the routine http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 262021 39(2): 26-32 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) classroom activities such as listening to the teacher, copying notes, groupwork and feedback in lessons as performances that meant little except “killing time”. all students interviewed did not have the benefit of career guidance and possible career paths. this resulted in students trying out many options. for example, lerato first enrolled for boiler-making, then law at unisa, leadership studies at the mathew goniwe school of leadership and eventually computer literacy, life skills lessons and the leadership workshops at the iydo centre. the majority of the interviewees were openly critical of their teachers “who didn’t come to school” and those “who did not teach in the classroom”. one of the participants (lerato) declared that “on payday the teachers didn’t come to school”. another participant (comfort) brought up the issue of “lazy teachers”: comfort: if a teacher is lazy you won’t be educated since you are there to learn from the teachers, we can’t teach ourselves. yet another student, ayanda, declared that many of them have been sabotaged by their teachers for “choosing” not to expose them to grade level curriculum content and making full use of available resources. in her own words: ayanda: many of us are sabotaged by our teachers not making full use of available resources in black schools. we are talking about one learner reading a particular book in grade 10 and another only reading it in grade 12 but what we must consider is the fact that that particular book is available in all schools. the difference is that our teachers choose not to expose us to these materials earlier. they are sabotaging us. lerato attended a public high school where the teachers “sometimes don’t come to school”, “come to the classroom, but don’t teach”, “don’t come to school on payday” and did not “make available past exam papers to students”. students revealed that they failed subjects such as maths and science because they were not taught subject knowledge by their subject teachers but were expected to learn from the textbook on their own. helen recalled her science teacher who come to class with thick textbooks that five students had to share. the teacher would then “not explain” but tell them to do the activities in the textbook. the next day the teacher would want them to correct the work when they did not “know the work”. as students they had to “agree with all his corrections since they didn’t understand the work”. helen: i recall my science teacher from school. he would arrive to class with thick textbooks to be shared between at least five learners (due to shortage of textbooks) with the activities already ticked and accompanied by the class work. he would not explain the work but we would be expected to complete the activities. the next day he wants us to do corrections and we don’t know the work. therefore, we agreed with all his corrections since we did not understand the work. “i failed science” as a result. the participants recounted that their lessons were further impoverished by limited resources such as laboratories, libraries, textbooks and basic furniture. one of the students said that during practical lessons in science, the equipment was so short that only two learners actually conducted the experiment whilst the rest of them agreed with everything without engagement and understanding. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 272021 39(2): 27-32 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 naidoo post-school youths’ schooling experiences and aspirations the post-school youth are aware of the inequalities between public and private schools. for example, themba started his high school education in a “white” school but after grade 10 had to move to a public school due to financial constraints and found that “there was a huge difference”. amongst the differences were studying shakespeare much earlier than grade 12, access to the handbook “student companion”, varied and richer extramural activities such as photography. such extramural activities provide non-academic students with alternatives. in temba’s own words: temba: a grade ten student (in the white high school) already knows about four books of shakespeare but public school learners encounter them in matric, with macbeth. we received “student companions” which are provided by the school for free. they contain a variety of broad factual information and learners use it to refer. kasi learners are not familiar with it (student companion). it’s not that i undermine kasi but white schools enjoy various privileges which set their education apart from “kasi schools”. even their extramural activities are richer than what is available in “kasi schools”. this gives them options in case a learner is not strong academically, then the learner can take photography as an alternative because it was introduced in school. yet another reason given for their perception of private schools being better than public schools is that “they guarantee the necessary attention to struggling learners”. thus, phillip notes that: phillip: private schools are much better in comparison to public schools because they guarantee the necessary attention to struggling learners. why are our educators taking their kids to private schools instead of public schools? why not equipped them with more cultural or extramural programmes? we have the facilities and the space to resource our schools with sport courts and music lessons. we only find these things in private schools. the current system exacerbates inequality by maintaining the status quo between those who have and those who don’t have means. 5.3 financial constraints a common reason for dropping out of school is lack of finances to pay school fees or buy specialised equipment for the different subjects. linda was able to pay r200 registration fees but unable to buy the equipment for her mechanical and graphical engineering subjects. she enjoyed school and subjects such as mechanical and graphical engineering, physics, maths. the “no fees” school provided an opportunity for linda to access high school education, but the non-discretionary application of the rule of provision of equipment for orphans only, excluded her from getting the free equipment the school was providing only for orphans. 5.4 alienation in a “good” school tsepo revealed the sense of alienation he experienced in a good roman catholic school that “took him away from his community”. tsepo went to a roman catholic primary school that he describes as “the best school”. furthermore, the students at the school were given many opportunities “to do things on their own and to control things as well”. they were given leadership training at a young age. a very confident and well-spoken student, he described the formal curriculum at the school as alienating him from his community. in his words: formal education leads to “removing me from social issues affecting our community”. when he was in grade 11 the education at the school became “shaky” as he began to question its value to him and he tried to “break away from the system”. he tried to figure out “why am i doing this?” amidst the serious problems that fellow students and youth in his http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 282021 39(2): 28-32 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) township community faced, he felt he was “doing nothing good” and “was self-centred”. in matric (his final year at school) he got a chance to interact with other schools. this changed his life…he saw that in poorer schools there were geniuses for whom “maths was second nature”. he participated in the youth camp initiative that changed him further. he felt the need to do something for those around him who were in so much need. he found himself depressed and felt that he needed to “do something to assist those in need”. he joined the iydo centre and found his life becoming meaningful. he spends r250 a day to travel to the centre. he found a “way out” from meaninglessness at the centre where he sees it as his “duty” to “facilitate the genius of fellow students”. unlike traditional pedagogy the first thing we ask is “what can you do?” tsepo asked the question: what should schools do? his response: allow them to see if their ideas are true, facilitate their true genius, recognise what they good in, teach them and then give them the opportunity to “showcase what they know”. we don’t need to standardise them. tsepo spoke about needing an “outlet from the schooling system” it instils fear in learners, when it ought to teach confidence, it teaches them to be afraid to make mistakes! to the extent of not writing in their maths books. he started studying chartered accounting at nwu. he found auditing and checking financial records very boring – his own genius was not recognised. further, he found the attitude of the teachers: “expect something to be wrong” very strange. 5.5 aspirations of psy in the initial “youth dialogue” and individual interviews the participants condemned their teachers for sabotaging their education and revealed their own initiatives in alternate education and plans and aspirations for the future robustly. the participants aspire for a better life and for educational opportunities that would enable them to access professional and managerial jobs and upward social mobility. for example, lerato is 26 years old and enrolled in the ls and cl classes at the centre. she hopes that the cl certificate she gets will assist her in her application for administrative and secretarial jobs. she applied for a part-time job at mathew goniwe school of leadership where she is employed to facilitate workshops on topics such as gangersterism, sexual abuse and safe sex. she also speaks to parents about the annual national assessments (ana) and about how to help their children prepare for assessments. she attends the leadership programme at the centre on tuesdays for one and half hours and says “it’s the best”. 6. interpretation/discussion the findings of this study concur with those of smyth and robinson (2012; 2014), johnson (2012), taylor (2012) and moore (2004) as well as kirby and gardner (2010). the schools from which these psy dropped out had rigid school rules that failed to acknowledge and include diverse identities (moore, 2004:18). these psy also found traditional schooling constraining and limiting without space and freedom to pursue their own interests and aspirations (smyth & robinson, 2014). furthermore the alienating nature of “doing” high school, rigid timetables, authoritarian and hierarchical social relations, unproductive pedagogies, punitive behaviour management regimes, lack of creativity, an intellectually impoverished curriculum and poor relations with teachers have also been identified by robinson et al. (2012). this study concurs with smyth and robinson (2015) that leaving school had little to do with their academic capacity. the lack of a sense of school belonging (taylor 2012) was a destabilising aspect in http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 292021 39(2): 29-32 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 naidoo post-school youths’ schooling experiences and aspirations these students’ lives. the ineffective pedagogical practices as found by kirby and gardner (2010) were also derided by these psy. smyth and robinson (2014) highlighted the absence of career guidance, information on labour market opportunities and how to educationally access them as well as limited networks. the absence of the fundamental components of the basic paradigm of teaching (willis, 2000) creates an ambivalent attitude to education amongst the youth. the non-academic and narrow curriculum did not enable the cognitive objective that is the basic fundamental objective of education. accompanying the non-academic curriculum was a pedagogy of neglect – even where academic subjects such as science was being offered, teachers were not providing students with systematic instruction. then the lack of textbooks and other resources visited further exclusion from subject-based knowledge. without academic knowledge to exchange, the moral authority of the teacher was denuded to become coercive and that of the prison guard. with the lack of this essential core, it is not surprising that the participants experienced schooling like a prison. a comparison with the “lads” would highlight the stark differences between sa youth and the “lads”. whereas the lads teachers were “dedicated, honest and forthright” (willis,2000: 67) these post-school youth think that their teachers “sabotaged” their education by not teaching them, relating to them as if they were “prisoners” and “not using resources provided in the school” to teach them. while willis holds that “it would be quite wrong to attribute to them [teachers] any kind of sinister motive such as miseducating or oppressing working class kids” these students’ teachers inferiorised these students by saying “this school is not fit for my children” and then bragging that their own children were being educated in advantaged former white schools. such comments indicates gross negligence and lack of empathy. similar to willis’s case “where the teachers authority becomes increasingly the one of the prison guard” these students rejected the “hollowness” of their teachers authority. within this atmosphere, the teachers authority was coercive and not pedagogic. according to willis what the student strives for becomes, not knowledge and the promise of qualification, but somehow deference and politeness (willis, 2000:69). these youth were aware of the lack of guidance from their teachers but afforded them politeness and respect. in spite of weak knowledge and lack of guidance these participants aspire for academic knowledge and professional qualifications. the lads attended a good school that had reasonable standards of behavior and dress enforeced by an interested and competent senior staff (willis, 2000: 4). unlike the lads who reject what could be described as a reasonable quality of education these psy desire high quality learning and an academic curriuclum that will give them access to universities and higher qualifications. amongst all the participants the capacity to aspire and focus on opportunities, such as that provided by the youth centre, was common. unlike willis’s “lads” who attained “partial penetration” of the determinants and constraints of their own and social class circumstances, these participants are fully aware of the difference in quality of education in post-apartheid historically advantaged white and disadvantaged black schools and the labour stratification that ensues from it. in this regard, the act of rejecting their schooling is an act of self affirmation and resistance. the participants exemplify the lads “omnipresent feeling that they know better” (willis, 2000: 56) that their eventual position will be in manual work. these participants knew the destination of their schooling and rejected it and the working class future it portends. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 302021 39(2): 30-32 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) in stark contrast to the lads who defy being controlled these participants subject themselves to social control for the time they are in school. their main response to taunts from teachers was not attending their classes and eventually being pushed out of school. unlike willis’s lads, these psy were respectful towards their teachers and could be described as showing the “right attitude”, being polite and respectful. the findings confirm those of smyth and robinson (2015: 225) who note that leaving school “often has little to do with their academic capacity”. these youth found the curriculum offered in their schools boring. contrary to the literature, the psy had aspirations and plans to study towards professional and managerial jobs. the youth dialogue and the youth centre provided opportunity for the participants to exercise voice, to debate, to plan and aspire for a better future. the iydo centre developed and strengthened the capacity to aspire amongst the psy. none of the participants could be described as “lost” (perold, 2012). all found support and purpose at the youth development centre. many could be described as more than “fine” as they had recognised demeaning education and rejected it and were well on the way of self-affirmation and “becoming somebody” (wexler, 1992) and living their lives by their own design. those that are “more than fine” (perold, 1990) display resilience, resourcefulness and courage as well as an understanding and concern for their peers (perold, 1990) who are struggling with depression and who engage in substance abuse. they speak with conviction about assisting them to “get unstuck” and “get ahead”. a few could be described as “at risk” as their experiences are typical of post school youth lives of piecemeal, insecure employment of various kinds. the youth centre, however, provides stability and lasting connection and support for them. the training opportunities at the iydo centre align with robinson et al.’s (2014) principles of socially just schooling: more personalised symmetrical relationships with facilitators; student-centred programmes such as the advisory centre, internet access, life skills coaching; the centre being in the community and in touch with community issues; learning capabilities for the world of work such as computer literacy and sewing and a pedagogy that begins with student issues. 7. conclusion the findings indicate that post-school youth not in education, employment or training have been deeply disadvantaged by their mainstream schooling experiences. the lack of socially valued knowledge being the core issue – knowledge that would create the opportunity for professional and managerial jobs and to break free from structural determination. these psy rejected the impoverished curriculum and pedagogy that limits them to manual and menial labour. the post-school youth differentiate themselves from their schools’ instituional practices and the future it imposes. the lack of knowledge that would enable entry to higher education meant denial of professional and managerial qualifications that they aspire to would reproduce social and racial stratification. the work done by the centre for education rights and training (cert) agents contributed to an aspirational culture developing amongst the participants at this youth centre. the strong presence of voice, opinions, discussion and future plans to advance was evident. while the argument that in the current neoliberal climate such provisions obstruct the development of a policy driven socially just system might be made, the role of the youth centre in the everyday life of post-school youth in a black township should not be underestimated. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 312021 39(2): 31-32 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 naidoo post-school youths’ schooling experiences and aspirations the youth development centre provides crucial support to post-school youth to experience being valued by their facilitators and peers. instead of “loitering” and what bernstein in the british context called “the wastage of working-class talent” the centre provides youth with advice for re-entry into the education system. on an existential level the support at the centre helps them to “recover integrity in their everyday life and reconstruct legitimacy …from power and structure” (de certeau, 1984). the youth development centre provided a community for the youth there to aspire. in addition to the department of higher education and training policy for post-school education and training to build an expanded, effective and integrated post-school system, mainstream schooling in previously disadvantaged schools ought to be radically reformed to prevent legitimate resistance to it and as smyth and robinson (2015: 232) say “to prevent the haemorrhaging of young people into reengagement programmes”. reva klein (1999) advocates a total rethink about the nature of schools that would include breakfast clubs, extracurricular activities for parents and pupils and support for the health of students so that the school is at the heart of the community. the case of the academic curriculum in a good school with committed teachers being alienating as experienced by tsepo requires further investigation. for youth for whom it is too late to repeat their secondary schooling youth development centres would provide crucial support. it also shows an alternative way that would be less punitive and flexible enough to accommodate psy’s individual demands. such centres would also develop and nurture the capacity of psy to aspire. as a conclusion one could only applaud the courageous efforts, in spite of severe deprivation, of the participants to acquire capabilities and skills that would facilitate employability. references appadurai, a. 2004. the capacity to aspire: culture and the terms of recognition. in v. rao & m. walton (eds.). culture and public action (pp. 59–84. california: stanford university press. cloete, n. 2009. synthesis. in n. cloete (ed.). responding to the education needs of postschool youth. determining the scope of the problem and developing a capacity building model (pp. 1–17). wynberg: chet. department of higher education and training (dhet). 2013. white paper for post-school education and training. building an expanded, effective and integrated post-school system. pretoria: dhet. de certeau, m. 1984. the practice of everyday life. berkeley: california university press. deuchar, r. & graham. l 2012. re-engaging the disengaged: challenging the dominant policies and school culture that exclude and marginalise young people. internationaljjournal of school disaffection, 9: 3–5. https://doi.org/10.18546/ijsd.09.2.01 jonson, c.l. mcarthur, r. cullen, f. & wilcox, p. 2015. unravelling the sources of adolescent substance abuse: a test of rival theories. international journal of school disaffection, 9: 53– 90. https://doi.org/10.18546/ijsd.09.2.05 kirby, d. & gardner, m. 2010. the schooling they need: voicing student perspectives on their fourth year in senior high school. canadian journal of education, 33: 108–139. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 https://doi.org/10.18546/ijsd.09.2.01 https://doi.org/10.18546/ijsd.09.2.05 322021 39(2): 32-32 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) klein, r. 1999. defying disaffection: how schools are winning the hearts and minds of reluctant students. stoke-on-trent: trentham books. perold, h. 2012. viewing post-school youth education from a youth perspective. in h. perold, n. cloete & j. papier (eds.). shaping the future of sa’s youth: rethinking post-school education and skills training. south africa: chet. robinson, j., smyth, j., down, b. & mcinerney, p. 2012. pushed out, shut out: addressing unjust geographies of schooling and work. international journal of school disaffection, 9: 7–24. https://doi.org/10.18546/ijsd.09.2.02 smyth, j. & robinson, j. 2015. give me air not shelter: critical tales of a policy case of student re-engagement from beyond school. journal of educational policy, 30: 220–236. https://doi.or g/10.1080/02680939.2014.945965 taylor, m.f. 2012. as long as you’re resilient you’ll succeed: school disaffected adolescents’ perspectives on their willingness to engage in high injury-risk graffiti-writing activities. international journal of school disaffection, 9: 37–52. https://doi.org/10.18546/ijsd.09.2.04 willis, p. 2000. learning to labour. why working class kids get working class jobs. surrey england: ashgate. wexler, p. 1992. becoming somebody. toward a social psychology of school. london: the falmer press. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.3 https://doi.org/10.18546/ijsd.09.2.02 https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2014.945965 https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2014.945965 https://doi.org/10.18546/ijsd.09.2.04 52 research article 2021 39(2): 52-66 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.5 the link between career outcomes expectancy and career decisionmaking self-efficacy of stem students in a south african university abstract the social cognitive career theory (scct), one of the highly researched career theories, suggested that outcomes expectance and self-efficacy are crucial factors in the career selection process. the result of career outcomes expectancy (coe) and career decision-making self-efficacy (cdse) may be pivotal in an individual’s shunning or being more inspired in their career behaviour. both factors together are important in career decisionmaking. the aim of this study was to investigate the association among coe and cdse of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (stem) students at a south african university. the article is based on a quantitative study conducted among a sample of 322 stem students, of which 203 responses were received. the career outcomes expectancy scale (coes) and career decision self-efficacy scale (cdses) were used in the collection of data. data were analysed with the ibm spss version 26 software and descriptive statistics, pearson’s correlation, linear regression and multivariate analytical tools were engaged. findings show that age and race significantly associated with cdse. additionally, coe was found to have a statistically significant relationship with cdse and that cdse positively predicted coe. the environment of upbringing was also found to be influential in participants’ cdse and coe. in line with extant literature, the discussion of the findings is made to proffer recommendations that have implications for practice, policy and further studies. keywords: stem education; career selection; career outcomes expectancy; career decision-making; self-efficacy; career development. 1. introduction owing to the shortfall in the skills associated with science, technology, engineering and mathematics (stem), educators and stakeholders in south africa are seeking ways to improve enrolment as well as reduce attrition and poor performance among students. achieving these could develop careers that should fill existing skill gaps and meet author: dr ethel abe1 prof vitallis chikoko1 dr stella n lubinga2 affiliation: 1university of kwazulu-natal, south africa 2university of pretoria, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i2.5 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(2): 52-66 published: 11 june 2021 received: 07 august 2020 accepted: 28 september 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.5 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1670-6801 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6135-6172 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.5 abe, chikoko & lubinga the link between career outcomes expectancy and career decision-making 532021 39(2): 53-66 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.5 the skills demand of the fourth industrial revolution (4ir). career development, perceived as a lifetime process, is an essential part of individual development and is a particularly vital aspect of psychosocial growth (eryılmaz & mutlu, 2017). the term “career” describes a fusion of task roles individuals encounter in a lifetime (super, 1980). it is a growth process that involves the totality of a person’s tasks prior to their engagement in a profession, while in the profession and post exit from the profession (kuzgun, 2000). career growth involves every action that happens during a career (baruch, szűcs & gunz, 2015). throughout the process of career development, several variables play significant roles (owusu et al., 2019). the coe and cdse are two of the variables that play fundamental roles. self-efficacy convictions involve mental processes that play influential roles in the acquisition or modification of behaviours. these processes demonstrate efficacy in individual competence expectations (bandura, 1986). individual competence expectation is concerned with convictions of fulfilling a behaviour and accomplishing results. self-efficacy convictions could be associated with previous experiences and expectations for future learning achievement. people with strong degrees of self-efficacy convictions can determine consistent goals, show confidence in their ability to achieve the goals and activate the achievement of a given career task. conversely, weak self-efficacy convictions may hinder an individual’s ability to achieve goals (komarraju & nadler, 2013). coe refers to the actual, accessible ideas and career goals that a person wishes to achieve (metz, fouad & ihle-helledy, 2009). several career approaches have been propositioned to explain the career growth process and individual career behaviours. since the 1980s, cognitive theories have been increasingly used in understanding behaviours associated with careers. these cognitive theories highlight a person’s dynamic role in their career growth (heslin, keating & minbashian, 2019). 2. theoretical framework the social cognitive career theory (scct) is one of the contemporary theories engaged to understand individual career behaviour. lent, brown and hackett (1994) initially proposed the scct for the explanation of developmental processes and career behaviours from a cognitive viewpoint. it was proposed by lent et al. (1994) as a framework to explain three features of career growth, namely career interest development, career choice and achievement, and sustenance in learning and employment. the theory stems from the general social cognitive theory (sct) propounded by bandura (1986) to understand the complicated relationship between individuals, environment and behaviours. the scct also focuses on three distinct constructs, namely self-efficacy convictions, individual goals and outcome expectancies. it contends that the achievement of goals is largely influenced by a person’s outcome expectancy and self-efficacy convictions. lent (2005) reports that effectively concentrating on goals could enhance outcome expectancy and self-efficacy convictions in a constructive sequence. the extant literature discusses outcome expectancy and self-efficacy convictions generally as constructs in research that use scct in the explanation of career growth (lent et al., 2017; gushue et al., 2006). when appraising career growth from the scct perspective, cdse is considered a vital element in a person’s objectives, career interests, options, achievements and experiences (jo et al., 2016). career decision refers to the act of selecting an option for a learning programme, profession, employment or academic institution (doğan, 2014). hence, cdse denotes the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.5 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 542021 39(2): 54-66 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.5 confidence that an individual exhibits in making a successful career decision and achieving positive results in their career growth tasks. these tasks comprise capabilities in respect to correct self-assessment, gathering data about professions, planning, setting targets and problem solving (betz, 2000). on the other hand, coe describes the convictions about long run results of an accomplishment (betz & voyten, 1997). it refers to people’s expectations associated with the results of their chosen career. coe, according to isik (2013), could be considered as an individual’s convictions concerning the probabilities of experiencing main career attributes, for instance, earnings, status, efficiency and fame. some of the items on the career outcome expectancy measure are: “the career that i choose will provide the income which i need” and “the career that i choose will support me to lead the life which i want to live” (betz & voyten, 1997) regarding scct, coe and cdse are vital parts of career growth, selection, and decisionmaking. tertiary institution periods are significant growth years when several modifications are encountered in learning, individual, social and employment areas (newman & newman, 2017). the period of transition experienced by students in tertiary institutions exposes them to decision-making regarding their perceived coe (donald, ashleigh & baruch, 2018). previous research conducted within south africa and elsewhere globally, suggests that issues experienced by students regarding career decision-making is similar among several cultures. studies have been conducted in north cyprus (caliskan & ozcan, 2017), turkey (kondakci, 2011) and among korean and french learners (sovet & metz, 2014). shumba and naong (2012) found in a south african study that family background and teachers’ influence significantly affected student career decision-making. in this study, stem students refer to undergraduate learners of a four-year study in stem. in south africa there is a growing need to grow the stem career portfolio, especially in light of the shortage of skills in stem as the world launches into the 4ir. stem graduates are expected to be skilled and competent in their career (odera et al., 2015). from the scct viewpoint, coe and cdse are crucial for a positive future career among stem students. this study mainly investigated the link between coe and cdse of stem students. the review of extant literature shows that the number of studies investigating this link among stem students is limited. hence, there is a gap in this field especially in the province where this study is conducted. the findings of this study will be meaningful in designing career counselling initiatives, policy formulation as well as the research and practice of the associated fields of career education, which are important concepts to career growth (enache & matei, 2017). this is because coe and cdse are crucial factors for a positive professional life. it is essential to understand the significance of these factors to grow and assist students in their career decisions. to achieve the aim of this study, the following research questions were asked: 1. is there a significant link between coe and cdse of stem students? 2. are cdse convictions of stem students significant predictors of their coe? 3a. does gender significantly influence the coe and cdse of stem students? 3b. does the environment of upbringing significantly influence the coe and cdse of stem students? http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.5 abe, chikoko & lubinga the link between career outcomes expectancy and career decision-making 552021 39(2): 55-66 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.5 4. do age, race and funding influence the cdse convictions of stem students? 5. does coe of stem students differ because of age, race, and funding? 3. method a descriptive survey model was used in this research, which purposed to investigate the link between coe and cdse of stem students at a university in south africa. the descriptive survey model is a research technique that seeks to uncover and describe a phenomenon (alisinanoğlu, kesicioğlu & mart, 2013). 3.1 participants a sample of 322 was drawn from a target population of 2000 undergraduate stem students based on krejcie and morgan’s (1970) table for determining sample sizes. study participants were conveniently enlisted from undergraduate students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (stem) at the university investigated in 2019 and were in their 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year of study, respectively. a total of 203 participants (63% response rate) responded to the survey. data were collected within six months from undergraduate stem students at a university in south africa. a simple random sampling method was used in selecting participants. table 1 below presents the demographic features of the respondents. table 1: demographics of participating stem students demographic characteristics description f % age 19–24 150 73.9 25–30 38 18.7 31–36 10 5 37–41 2 1.0 42–above 3 1.5 gender male 88 43.3 female female 115 56.7 race black 146 71.9 coloured 3 1.5 indian 46 22.7 white 6 3.0 other 2 1.0 funding yes 128 63.1 no 75 36.9 environment of upbringing rural 73 36.0 semi-urban 46 22.7 urban 84 41.4 3.2 measures demographic information: a demographic data form was used in collecting this information from participants. questions asked comprised information regarding age, gender, race, environment of upbringing and parental level of education. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.5 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 562021 39(2): 56-66 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.5 career outcome expectancy scale (coes): betz and voyten (1997) designed this scale to measure coe. it is a nine (9) item scale comprising statements such as: “i will make great progress toward being an expert in my career” and “i will make my family proud by my career decision”. the items are each rated on a 4-point likert scale ranging from (4) “strongly agree” to (1) “strongly disagree”. higher score indicates stronger degrees of expectancy with respect to career outcome. the cronbach’s alpha and test-retest reliability reported by mcwhirter, crothers and rasheed (2000) was .83 and .59, respectively. additionally, the turkish version of the scale, as reported by isik (2013), demonstrated a test-retest reliability of .79 and internal coefficient reliability cronbach’s alpha of .87. this study confirms the scale’s high reliability of cronbach’s alpha of .86. career decision self-efficacy scale (cdses): taylor and betz (1983) originally designed the cdses to evaluate cdse. the cdse shorter version (cdse-sf) designed by betz, klein and taylor (1996), is used for this study. it is a 25-item measure that assesses an individual’s belief in completing requisite tasks to make successful career decisions (betz & taylor, 2006). this scale is made up of five subscales that associate with self-evaluation, collecting career information, selecting career goals, planning and problem solving. it is rated on a 5-point likert scale ranging from (1) “no confidence” to (5) “complete confidence”. some examples of the statements captured in the scale are: “i can select one occupation from a list of potential occupations i am considering” and “i am able to determine the steps i need to take to successfully complete my chosen major”. the cronbach’s alpha for this scale as found in this study is an excellent reliability of.93. 3.3 ethical consideration this study was conducted at a university where the main author was conducting postdoctoral research. authorisation to conduct the study was granted by the registrar’s office to access the stem students via the university’s website. ethical clearance was granted by the university’s research ethics committee. 3.4 procedure upon obtaining the ethical certificate of clearance to commence the study, the questionnaire, consent form and copy of the gatekeeper’s letter from the university’s registrar were posted online on the university’s website for stem students to access. the consent form offered the study’s overview to the respondents, stating also that involvement in the study was voluntary and confidential. only enrolled undergraduate stem students at the university in south africa were eligible to participate in this study. participants needed thirty (30) minutes to complete the questionnaire. 3.5 data analysis collected data was analysed using the ibm spss version 26. the statistical level of significance selected for this study was p<.05. frequencies, anova, correlation and regression analysis were conducted in analysing the data. before conducting the multivariate analysis to test the influence of age, race, gender, environment of upbringing and funding on the cdse convictions and coe of stem students, pearson correlations were performed between the two dependent variables. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.5 abe, chikoko & lubinga the link between career outcomes expectancy and career decision-making 572021 39(2): 57-66 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.5 4. findings the findings of this study, which aligned to its main aim and objectives, are showcased in this section. the findings show that the correlation between cdse and coe of the stem students are statistically significant at p = 000 i.e. p < .001. the pearson correlation analysis tests the manova assumption that the dependent variables would be correlated with each other in the moderate range (gampst, meyer & guarino, 2006). the descriptive statistics found that cdse had m = 92.10, sd = 15.03, and coe had m = 20.9, sd = 2.80. table 2 shows a meaningful correlation pattern between the two dependent variables, thus presenting the answer to research question one (1) of this paper. table 2: pearson correlations, means and standard deviations associated with the cdse and cdoes 1 2 m sd t df 1. cdse 1.0 .382** 92.10 15.03 -71.30 2. coe .382** 1.0 20.87 2.80 note: n = 203, correlations are statistically significant at the .0.01 level (2-tailed). furthermore, a simple linear regression was conducted to evaluate the influence of participants’ cdse on their coe. preliminary analyses were performed to ensure there was no violation of the assumption of normality and linearity. a significant regression equation was found (f (1,200) = 34.24, p = .000) with an r2 of .146 (about 15%) (see table 3). this means that cdse was a significant predictor of coe. hence, an increase in cdse of stem students influences a positive increase in their coe (baglama & uzunboylu, 2017). this finding provides the answer to question (2) in this paper. table 3: career decision-making self-efficacy predicts career outcome expectancy variable r r-square adjusted r-square anova f (1,200) p se b β t constant 34.240 .000 .012 14.310 12.582 cdse .382** .146 .142 .000 2.596 .071 .382 5.851 note: p is significant at p <.001, two tailed (**) to answer research question (3a), data was further analysed to ascertain whether the gender of the participants had significant influence on cdse and coe using multivariate analysis. in the analysis, box’s m value of 9.85 which associated with a p value of .021 was found. based on huberty and petoskey’s (2000) guideline (i.e. p < .005), this finding was nonsignificant. thus, the covariance matric between the groups were assumed to be equal for the purposes of manova. prior to conducting a series of follow-up anovas, the homogeneity of variance assumption was tested for the dependent variables. based on levene’s f tests, the homogeneity of variance assumption was satisfied because the p values are preferably acceptable when the test results are not significant (p > .05), and this study found (p > .05). hence the levene’s assumption of equality of variances was not violated. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.5 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 582021 39(2): 58-66 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.5 a one-way multivariate analysis of variance (manova) was conducted to test the hypothesis that there would be mean differences between cdse and coe among male and female stem students. the manova result (table 4) shows that there was not a significant difference between males and females when the two variables were considered jointly; wilk’s lambda (ʌ) = .972, f (2, 199) = 2.9, p = .060, partial ɳ2 = .028 (where ɳ2 represents the univariate effect size). a separate anova was conducted for each dependent variable, with each anova evaluated at alpha level of .025. there was a significant difference between males and females on cdse, f (1,200) = 5.46, p = .020, partial ɳ2 = .027, with males (m = 94.84) scoring higher than females (m = 89.91). the multivariate effect size (ɳ2) was .027, which implies that 2.7% of the variance in the canonically derived dependent variable was accounted for by cdse. however, there was not a significant difference between males and females on coe, f (1, 200) = .172, p = .679, partial ɳ2 =.001. table 4: one-way anovas with career decision self-efficacy and career decision outcome expectancy as dependent variables and gender as independent variable levene’s anova’s male female f (1,200) p f (1,200) p ɳ2 m sd m sd cdse 3.23 .074 5.46 .020 .027 94.84 13.33 89.91 15.9 coe .947 .332 .172 .679 .001 20.95 3.08 20.79 2.58 note: n = 203, ɳ2 = partial eta squared to answer the question whether the environment of upbringing (rural, semi-urban and urban) had effects on cdse and coe of stem students, a between-groups anova was conducted. the descriptive statistics across the three “environment of upbringing” groups are reported in table 5 to answer question 3b. participants in the “urban environment of upbringing” group were associated with the numerically smallest mean of student cdse (m = 89.06) and coe (m = 20.45). on the other hand, the participants from the “rural environment of upbringing” group were associated with the numerically highest mean level of cdse (m = 96.16) and coe (m = 21.62). prior to performing the anova, the assumption of normality was evaluated and determined to be satisfied as the three environmental groups’ distributions were associated with skewness and kurtosis less than (2.0) and (9.0) respectively (schmider et al, 2010), however the kurtosis for the semi-urban group in the coe was greater than (9.0). additionally, the assumption of homogeneity of variance was tested and satisfied based on levene’s f test, f (2, 200) = 3.68, p = .027 for cdse, and f (2,200) = 4.27, p = .015 for coe (see table 5). the independent between-groups anova yielded statistically significant effect, f (2,200) = 4.67, p = .010, ɳ2 = .045 for cdse, and f (2,200) = 4.16, p = 0.17, ɳ2 = .040 for coe. thus, the null hypothesis of no difference between the means was rejected, and 4.5% and 4% of the variance of the participant cdse and coe respectively was accounted for by the participants’ environment of upbringing. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.5 abe, chikoko & lubinga the link between career outcomes expectancy and career decision-making 592021 39(2): 59-66 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.5 table 5: one-way anovas with career decision self-efficacy and career decision outcome expectancy as dependent variables and environment of upbringing as independent variable levene’s anova’s rural semi-urban urban f (2,200) p f (2,200) p ɳ2 m sd m sd m sd cdse 3.68 .027 4.67 .010 .045 96.16 12.40 90.96 16.73 89.06 15.50 coe 4.27 .015 4.16 .017 .040 21.62 2.19 20.46 3.28 20.45 2.88 to evaluate the nature of the differences between the three means further, the statistically significant anova was followed with tukey hsd post-hoc tests. the result (see table 5) revealed that there was a statistically significant difference at p < .05 level in coe scores for the three “environment of upbringing” areas: f (2,200) = 4.3, p = .02. despite reaching statistical significance, the actual difference in mean scores between the groups was quite small. the effect size calculated using eta squared was .040 (see table 5). post-hoc comparisons using the tukey hsd test indicated that the mean score for group coe (rural) (m =21.62, sd = 2.19) was significantly different from group urban (m = 20.45, sd = 2.88) at p <.05. group semi-urban (m = 20.46, sd = 3.28) did not differ significantly from either group 1 or 3 at p >.05. research question 4 was answered using multiple linear regression to determine whether the independent variables (race, age and funding) predict participants’ cdse. a significant regression equation was found f (3, 198) = 6.46, p = .000., with an r2 of .089 (see table 6). this means that the model predicted 9% of the variance and that the model was a significant predictor of cdse. while race and age contributed significantly to the model (b = -3.403, p = -002; b = 3.223, p = .028) respectively, race made a greater contribution, but funding did not contribute to the model. the final predictive model was: cdse = 94.837 + (-3.403* race) + (3.225* age). table 6: race, age and funding as predictors of career decision-making self-efficacy variable r r2 adjusted r2 anova f (3,198) p b se β t p constant .299** .089 .075 6.464 .000 94.837 3.400 27.895 .000 race -3.403 1.092 -.226 -3.115 .002 age 3.225 1.461 .163 2.208 .028 funding -1.294 2.362 -.042 -.548 .584 to ascertain whether race, age and funding were significantly contributory in the coe of the participants and provide an answer for question 5, a linear multiple regression was calculated. although a significant regression equation emerged f (3, 199) = 2.297, p = 000, with an r2 of .033, the model predicted just 3.3% of coe (see table 7). among race, age and funding, only race made a significant contribution to the model (b = -.479, p = .023). the final predictive model was: coe = 22.032 + (--.479 race) + (-.100 age) + (-.189). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.5 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 602021 39(2): 60-66 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.5 table 7: race, age and funding as predictors of career outcome expectancy variable r r-square adjusted r-square anova f (3,199) p b se β t p constant .183 .033 .019 2.297 .079 22.032 .650 33.889 .000 race -479 .209 -.171 -2.285 .023 age -.100 .280 -.027 -.355 .723 funding -.189 .453 -.033 -.418 .677 note: p is significant at p <.001, two tailed (**) 5. discussion of findings the main goal of this study was to investigate the association between cdse and coe of stem students at a south african university. the study investigated the variables based on the demographic factors presented by the participants to ascertain whether differences exist among them. a review of extant literature showed that several studies had concentrated on various facets of cdse. scholars have examined the association among cdse and career indecision (vasoula & loucia, 2020), career exploration (rumalutur & salim, 2020), vocational outcome expectations (baglama & uzunboylu, 2017) and socio-economic status (shin & lee, 2018). other studies investigated the link between cdse and career options (park et al., 2019). middleton (2017) examined the mediating influence of career aspirations and cdse on self-differentiation, career identity and career indecision. additionally, career salience and locus of control (taylor & popma, 1990) were investigated. the present study examined the link between cdse and coe to ascertain whether cdse predicted coe among stem students at a university. the findings show that a positively strong level of correlation exists among the two variables and that cdse had predictive implication on coe. woo et al. (2017) and baglama and uzunboylu (2017) obtained a similar result. this predictive implication of cdse on coe means that when stem students believe that they can skilfully make career decisions, their expectation of success in their chosen professional life will be increased. in their study, taylor and popma (1990) found that only cdse was statistically significant in its association with career indecision among other variables such as locus of control and career salience. this study also investigated gender. numerous studies that examined the influence of gender on cdse reported different results. although choi et al. (2012) found that gender was significantly influential on cdse, middleton (2017) confirmed that female participants showed higher cdse scores when compared to their male counterparts. conversely, shin, lee and seo (2019) reported that the males scored higher on the cdse scale used in their study. however, other scholars stated that no gender difference was found among male and female participants concerning cdse (shin & lee, 2018; baglama & uzunboylu, 2017). the findings of shin et al. (2019) are validated by the present study, showcasing that male stem students at a south african university demonstrated higher levels of cdse than their female counterparts. with respect to coe, the present study results offer some support to the findings of baglama and uzunboylu (2017), buldur and bursal (2015) and gushue et al. (2006), that gender, among other demographic variables, was statistically not significant in determining the coe of participants. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.5 abe, chikoko & lubinga the link between career outcomes expectancy and career decision-making 612021 39(2): 61-66 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.5 this study also examined the environment of upbringing for its effect on cdse and coe of stem students at a university in south africa. although the influence of the environment of upbringing on both variables was statistically significant, the effect size was quite small. cdse explained most of the variance. a review of the literature on the influence of the environment of upbringing on cdse and coe yielded little or no results. incidentally, environment of upbringing is notably not examined as a demographic variable in most research in this area. furthermore, cdse and coe of stem participants were examined for the effect of age, race and funding. scholars have confirmed participants’ gender and age significantly influence career choice behaviour ((agarwala, 2008; ferry, fouad & smith, 2000). it is also reported that age was a determinant of career aspirations of learners in a south china college (guan et al., 2016) and bacanli (2012) confirmed that cdse was significantly influenced by age among students in a turkish university. the present study found that the results regarding coe did not follow closely with the assumptions as cdse did. the examination of the demographic factors viz, age, gender, race and funding showed no statistical significance with respect to coe. this result offers support to findings by scholars (buldur & bursal, 2015; gushue et al., 2006). race, age and gender contributed significantly to cdse. the finding supports reports that race was influential in career behaviours (mau, perkins & mau, 2016). according to baglama and uzunboylu (2017), studies investigating the link between age and cdse are few. hence, it is envisaged that the findings of the present study will offer new insights for the stem field of study with respect to theory and practice. several studies examined coe, cdse and career growth among students in universities. mccabe, lubinski and benbow (2019) examined whether individual differences evaluated at the beginning of students’ graduate school career were linked with becoming a stem leader 25 years later. minor to significant gender disparities in abilities, interests and lifestyle preferences were reported. van tuijl and van der molen (2016) investigated study choice and career development in stem fields and found that career choice was rooted in early childhood but did not report on any effect of gender in their review of the literature. however, taylor and popma’s (1990) study examining the association between cdse, career importance, locus of control and career indecision among tertiary students found that cdse only had a statistically significant association with career indecision. scholars have found that students who have challenges with making career decisions and pessimistic coe are prone to seeking assistance in the process of selecting a career (vertsberger & gati, 2016). furthermore, stem students need assistance in getting to understand the world of work, adjusting from learning life into career work, planning and stress management (güneri, aydın & skovholt, 2003). for instance, studies that investigated students to understand the way they felt about finding gainful employment after graduation, found that most students were fearful, hopeless, anxious, depressed, stressed and uncertain (yasar & turgut, 2020; yanik et al., 2016). this suggests that stem students need career counselling. when stem graduates are confident in what to expect and how to handle the world of work post-graduation, they will be productive and loyal organisational citizens committed to their profession and employer (hendri, 2019). therefore, these findings have implications for the design and implementation of career guidance and counselling interventions/initiatives to support incoming and/or graduating students. also, they should be beneficial in aiding stem students in south africa with their career decision-making. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.5 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 622021 39(2): 62-66 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.5 furthermore, ascertaining the variables that affect thoughts and behaviours associated with careers of stem students can result in the controlling of these variables and aiding the learners. since it is important to offer career aid, it implies that the present study will be of value-adding benefit to address the need for support. as stated previously, many studies have examined the processes of learners’ career decision-making elsewhere globally, but it is expected that the present research will offer a distinct cultural viewpoint from results obtained elsewhere globally. scholars from other parts of africa and the world such as turkey, cyprus, france and korea, could find the results from this study useful (shumba & naong, 2012; sovet & metz, 2014). 6. conclusion this study aimed to investigate the link between cdse and coe of stem students in a south african university. there is a vital need to comprehend and unveil the perceptions of stem students since they define the potential approach and behaviours of stem students in their forthcoming professional endeavours. the findings of this study offer adequate information regarding stem students’ perceptions about these variables. generally, this study confirmed that stem students possess strong degrees of cdse and coe. stakeholders in stem education need to be more perceptive of the individual dissimilarities that accompany new developments and practices in stem education to supply the educational needs of learners. stem students would be more prepared for their study and productive for their employers once their cdse and coe is strong. 7. recommendations for future research and limitations because of the scarcity of empirical studies on the career growth of stem students in south african universities, this primary exploratory research purposely examined a simple model. therefore, it is possible that other higher-up factors not incorporated in this study’s design could account for the variation reported earlier. further research is required to collect more data concerning the variables examined in the present study (i.e. precursors to self-efficacy, differences in individual expectations) and other variables influencing the career growth of stem students in south africa. additional inquiry is necessary to explore the complexities of south african students’ career development, for example, one of the limitations of this study is that within-group dissimilarities by races was not investigated. since the south african population comprises a variety of racial subgroups, it should be imperative for further research to examine the dissimilarities among these subgroups and the way in which these dissimilarities may affect career development of undergraduates. this is because dissimilarities in racial identity might possibly have significant implications on career growth. lastly, the present study did not take into consideration the role that real-world challenges such as poverty, gender bias and racism could have on the career development of the participants. some of the students’ career choice could have been influenced more by factors such as marginalisation or financial necessity rather than self-efficacy or career expectation. this study was conducted among stem students in one university in south africa, hence the findings cannot be generalised to every student in all universities in south africa. 8. acknowledgements this study was supported by a grant from the national research foundation of south africa (nrf). the authors have no conflict of interest 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https://doi.org/10.33422/ejte.v2i1.183 https://doi.org/10.1177/0894845315584162 https://doi.org/10.1177/0894845315584162 https://doi.org/10.18401/2017.7.1.7 https://doi.org/10.18844/cjes.v15i1.4588 1 research article 2022 40(1): 1-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) shaping open, distance and e-learning in post school education and training: a call for a revised agenda abstract the impact of the covid-19 pandemic has brought the attention of distance education issues to the fore in a way not seen before. all forms of educational provision and sectors were affected by the pandemic. the aim of this conceptual leading article is to highlight three pertinent issues that need to be taken into account in open, distance and e-learning (odel) to ensure the relevance of the post school education and training (pset) sector in the fourth industrial revolution (4ir) and beyond. based on a review of the literature, the article highlights three pillars of successful use of technology to enhance quality in pset, especially in the wake of the worldwide transition to remote teaching and learning. the revised agenda comprises the questioning of previously held beliefs about learning and teaching; the responsiveness of curricula and ensuring the quality of odel offerings. it argues that unless traditional beliefs about teaching and learning are questioned and curricula are streamlined to align with the demands of the knowledge society, the value of pset may be trivialised in a context that is so rapidly changing. it also argues that sound quality assurance mechanisms should be put in place to ensure sufficient depth in student learning experiences, rigour in assessment processes and confidence in graduates by employers and society at large. using the theory of connectivism as a lens, the authors provide a framework with some recommendations for sound odel teaching and learning practices that are relevant for the demands of the 4ir and beyond. the framework focuses on five pillars, which are foregrounding a student-centred approach; embracing appropriate technologies to support teaching and learning; strengthening the capacity to support success; ensuring appropriate assessment processes and regular curriculum revision and renewal. keywords: open, distance and e-learning; post school education and training; remote teaching and learning; quality, connectivism, curriculum. 1. introduction the advent of new information and communication technologies (icts) associated with the fourth industrial revolution (4ir) has the potential to influence teaching and learning in the post school education and training (pset) sector in a profound manner. in many countries, educators have capitalised on the affordances of icts to author: dr ruth aluko1 dr greig krull2 dr ephraim mhlanga3 affiliation: 1university of pretoria 2university of the witwatersrand 3saide doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i1.1 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(1): 1-17 published: 04 march 2022 received: 14 august 2021 accepted: 17 december 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0499-042x http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0690-5869 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 22022 40(1): 2-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) digitise content, to provide more flexible learning opportunities and to improve the quality of student learning. while these trends were slowly taking place, the onset of covid-19 forced institutions to shut down campuses and limit person-to-person physical contact for the greater part of 2020. under these conditions, all pset institutions had no option but to resort to emergency remote teaching and learning (ertl). this transition was facilitated through icts. thus, the resistance that has stalled the integration of icts in education for the past two decades has started thawing. in countries such as south africa, the presence of technologies is now conspicuous in all pset institutions, albeit to varying degrees. the transition echoes similar changes in other parts of the world (jordan, 2020). in the south african context, pset includes higher education and technical and vocational education and training (tvet) colleges (department of higher education and training [dhet], 2013). knowledge and societies advance with each industrial revolution. according to jung (2020: 136), 4ir is used “to describe recent rapid changes in technology, industry and society in general”, thus making it an important aspect of many countries’ national agendas. the 4ir is “based on the confluence of multiple digital, physical, and biological technologies” (dhet, 2020: 8). the core aspect of 4ir for educational institutions is an educational outlook that should be guided by the dynamism of production, work and global values (prensky, 2019). this outlook advocates a lifelong learning approach that comprises multiple sites and times for learning (plunkett et al., 2008). a form of learning is required that promotes skills of adaptation, innovativeness, creativity and lifelong learning. pset, together with the public and private sectors, will need “to repurpose and reconfigure curricula considering lifelong learning and the need for a broader and more agile pset system to respond to skills needs as they arise” (dhet, 2020: 8). covid-19 has severely disrupted current education provision, which provides an opportunity for reflection and recalibration in the pset sector as part of building a more resilient education system (kanwar & daniel, 2020). the aim of this position article is to call for a revised agenda for odel in the pset sector to be ready for the anticipated 4ir and beyond. three pillars for the successful use of technology to enhance quality in the pset sector are proposed: the questioning of previously held beliefs about learning and teaching; the responsiveness of curricula development to align with changing trends and ensuring the credibility and quality of education offerings. using the theory of connectivism, we interrogate beliefs underpinning traditional teaching and learning practices in pset as well as approaches to curriculum development. the article argues that unless traditional beliefs about teaching and learning are questioned and the curriculum is streamlined enough to align with the demands of the knowledge society and of the workplace, the value of pset may be trivialised in a context that is so rapidly changing. it also argues that sound quality assurance mechanisms, as highlighted in section 3 of this article, should be put in place to ensure sufficient depth in student learning experiences, rigour in assessment processes and confidence in graduates by employers and society at large. in other words, the curricula and pedagogy of odel should be so designed that pset protects what teichler (2015) refers to as the horizontal diversification of higher education. this article is a conceptual article that draws on extant literature in the field, as well as the researchers’ experiences of working in odel in the pset sector. the article provides a critical reflection of trends and opportunities for the sector. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 https://www.researchgate.net/profile/ulrich_teichler 32022 40(1): 3-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 aluko, krull & mhlanga shaping open, distance and e-learning in post school education and training 2. theoretical framework literature is replete with the factors required for the successful implementation of icts in teaching and learning, particularly in higher education (salmon, 2004; bates, 2015; commonwealth of learning, 2020). according to shrivastava (2018), the unabating prevalence of the internet demands that everyone learn how to utilise technology effectively. still in its embryonic stage, connectivism is a learning theory propounded by siemens (2004; 2005) and downes (2012) due to the ubiquity of technology and its influence on teaching and learning. according to siemens (2005), the major learning theories (behaviourism, cognitivism and constructivism) have failed to pay attention to learning that occurs outside of people (i.e., learning that is stored and manipulated by technology). duke, harper and johnston (2013: 7) define connectivism as “actionable knowledge, where an understanding of where to find knowledge may be more important than answering how or what that knowledge encompasses”. therefore, siemens (2005: 7) asserts “connectivism provides insight into learning skills and tasks that are needed for learners to flourish in a digital era”. related to this, huezo (2017) sees technology as altering what, how and where we learn. some authors claim there is a link between the new theory and the older three major theories (huezo, 2017), while others indicate that the theory is inadequate to address learning in an interactive networked space (bell, 2011). regarding the latter group, clarà and barberà (2014: 197), for instance, identify “three important psychological and epistemological problems with the theory, namely the lack of a solution to the learning paradox, the under-conceptualization of interaction and the inability to explain concept development”. the argument of whether connectivism is a theory of learning and its possible inadequacies in this regard goes beyond the scope of this article. rather, given the pervasiveness of technology in the 21st century and the potential wide-ranging impact of the 4ir, our guiding question is: how should pset respond to teaching and learning in order to prepare its stakeholders for the world they have to live and work in? according to siemens (2004), connectivism is relevant to all facets of life, stressing its implications for educational management and leadership and the design of learning environments. when new tools are used, this changes how people work, operate and learn. bell (2011:100) emphasises that “those concerned with education, such as policymakers, researchers, managers, teachers, and learning technologists, want to understand learning in this evolving technological context and to think about how education might be affected as a result”. one of the tenets of connectivism is that it places learners at the centre of learning experiences (hendricks, 2019). our discussion in this paper regarding the pillars of a revised agenda for pset will revolve around the principles of connectivism (siemens, 2004): • learning and knowledge rest in a diversity of opinions. • learning is a process of connecting specialised nodes or information sources. • learning may reside in non-human devices. • the capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known. • nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning. • the ability to see connections among fields, ideas and concepts is a core skill. • currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities. • decision-making in itself is a learning process. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 42022 40(1): 4-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 3. a rising agenda for shaping odel in pset we have outlined the theory of connectivism as a basis for questioning previously held beliefs about learning and teaching; the responsiveness of curricula to the current education landscape and the need for appropriate quality assurance mechanisms to ensure favourable student learning outcomes. 3.1 questioning of traditional values and beliefs of teaching and learning in pset the covid-19 pandemic resulted in disruption to all educational sectors (bozkurt & sharma, 2020; kanwar & daniel, 2020). similar to the schooling sector, the pset sector had to grapple with finding ways to continue teaching and learning while campuses were shut down during national lockdowns. while universities in south africa have been encouraged to expand online and blended learning offerings (dhet, 2013), very few universities had substantial offerings in these areas before the covid-19 pandemic. pre-pandemic, the pset sector focused mainly on in-person educational experiences that limited the numbers of people able to participate (dhet, 2020). one of the objectives in the south african white paper for post-school education and training (dhet, 2013) was to expand access, improve quality and increase the diversity of educational provision. however, improved student access, success and throughput rates remain challenges to overcome. the pset sector has to deal with low participation, high attrition and “the historical, geospatial, economic inequalities of the country and the world students live in” (czerniewicz et al., 2020: 949). the use of technologies enabled the continuation of teaching and learning during covid-19. in preparation for ertl, pset institutions were required to assess their existing practices and identify alternative and diverse ways of teaching and learning. traditional contact institutions looked to distance education methods of provision. “institutions that despised remote and distance education, and looked down on online learning suddenly embraced online, remote and distance learning as if they were long lost cousins, albeit from the poorer side of the family” (czerniewicz et al., 2020: 949). while most institutions swiftly pivoted to an online mode, some institutions initially decided to postpone teaching and learning on the assumption that only classroom teaching could enable quality learning experiences (salmi, 2020). as seen in the paragraph above, odel is often stigmatised as being lower quality than in-person learning (hodges et al., 2020). yet research shows that online teaching and learning done well can generally be considered as effective as traditional classroom teaching and learning (nguyen, 2015). more importantly, practitioners and researchers should move beyond comparing educational modalities, and rather focus on the design of courses and how students learn in different settings (nguyen, 2015). while ertl cannot be considered the same as online learning (hodges et al., 2020), the pivot to ertl required educational institutions to re-evaluate some of their assumptions about teaching and learning, and critically interrogate long-established teaching practices. the effect of the pandemic has pushed educators to reconsider questions such as: how do teachers teach? how do students learn? what does a blurring of boundaries between the physical and digital mean for student learning? (motala & menon, 2020). odel, including distance education and online learning, are well-established forms of educational provision (holmberg, 1995; wong, zeng & ho, 2016). during covid-19, these http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 52022 40(1): 5-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 aluko, krull & mhlanga shaping open, distance and e-learning in post school education and training modes of provision were utilised where contact classes could not easily respond to disruptions that resulted in their closure (commonwealth of learning, 2020). for contact-mode institutions, where synchronous activities (such as lectures and tutorials) are the dominant form of teaching and learning, asynchronous approaches needed to be adopted to better respond to the learning needs and connectivity challenges of students (czerniewicz et al., 2020). this challenged a common belief for many lecturers and students that learning only happens in the classroom. the role of traditional lectures and the need for lectures to ensure student learning was questioned. during the pandemic, many academics raised concerns about the lack of human interaction in online learning (salmi, 2020), yet perhaps not realising that interactivity is often not a feature of large-class lectures (wolhuter & jacobs, 2021). during and before ertl, many pset students were disadvantaged by not having access to digital devices, were unable to afford data costs and lived in environments unconducive to studying (dhet, 2020: mhlanga & moloi, 2020; motala & menon, 2020). while the move to ertl was associated with many challenges for staff and students (salmi, 2020), it did provide an opportunity to consider alternative forms of teaching and learning. a greater focus was put onto active and interactive learning, such as problem-based learning, selfdirected learning, peer learning and the flipped classroom (salmi, 2020). to address student connectivity challenges, data-light practices had to be adopted instead of data-heavy virtual classes (czerniewicz et al., 2020). it also highlighted the need to align assessment approaches with curricula and pedagogical practices (biggs, 1999; salmi, 2020). in addition to teaching practices, assessment practices had to be interrogated. previously held beliefs have been challenged, such as a skewness toward summative assessment, particularly around recall (wolhuter & jacobs, 2021) or that summative assessments should be in the form of invigilated examinations (salmi, 2020). institutions were forced to adopt alternative assessment practices, such as more continuous assessments, a greater focus on formative assessments or the use of alternative summative assessments such as portfolios or openbook exams (salmi, 2020). however, pokhrel and chhetri (2021: 138) noted that authentic assessments and timely feedback were challenging for educators and education systems during ertl. the move to ertl highlighted certain poor pre-pandemic pedagogical practices, such as a lack of well-designed learning interactions and suboptimal assessment practices (czerniewicz et al., 2020). although the pandemic has forced pset institutions to adopt odel methods, unfortunately, “the content and design is pretty much the same” as before (ashour, 2021: 9). for teaching and learning to be effective, institutions need to be conscious of not just the “what” to be taught, but also its “how” (jung, 2020). this has resulted in the need for educational institutions to focus more on the contextual realities of their students, the resources they have available and opportunities for learning (czerniewicz et al., 2020). institutions also needed to reconsider their support systems for students (salmi, 2020). additionally, okebiorun (2020: 261) decries “the rigid structure of time periods, methods and grade-level progression” still being used by pset systems that do not prepare students with the right skills for the future of work. katola (2014) also laments the reliance on rote-learning, which is not geared towards professional competencies, but just aims at passing examinations. ashour (2021: 9) asserts that “universities need to customise curricula and course delivery for online delivery. more creative assessment tools should also be created”. there is also forecasted impact on the pset sector due to the 4ir, artificial intelligence and increased digitisation (motala & menon, 2020). the effect of the pandemic has sped up http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 62022 40(1): 6-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) the digital transformation of education (mhlanga & moloi, 2020). looking forward, technologies can be seen to help address many of the challenges facing the pset sector, such as increasing student enrolment numbers without an associated increase in staff and infrastructure, and supporting the needs of students from diverse backgrounds (nguyen, 2015; universities south africa, 2020). students leaving the pset sector and entering the workforce are likely to encounter future shifts and challenges. therefore, teaching and learning strategies are required that “create well-educated, socially conscious citizens equipped with the knowledge, skills and attributes for a rapidly changing era” (motala & menon, 2020: 82). 3.2 the responsiveness of the curriculum although the term “curriculum” has different meanings, mulenga (2020: 21) highlights that it “embodies the intentions of education; it is the programme of education. a curriculum therefore carries the beliefs, values, attitudes, skills, knowledge and all that education is about”. nonetheless, curricula should also be flexible, to match the needs of a society. in its theory and approaches, curriculum entails curriculum as product, process, context and praxis (mgqwashu, 2016), which khan and law (2015) advise should be integrated. yet often curricula are not responsive. a dhet (2020: 9) report regarding the pset sector notes that “[c]urrent curricula, programmes, and courses are misaligned with labour market demands, while mechanisms to review and update programmes and curricula are highly bureaucratic and operate in long, slow cycles”. the challenge of curriculum and societal needs misalignment gained greater international focus around 2015 “amid growing global debate on globalisation and migration, climate change, and technological advancements such as artificial intelligence” (oecd, 2020: 2). according to the series of thematic reports from the oecd education 2030 project, “countries began to revisit questions on the kinds of competencies students would need for the future and how these could best be fostered through curriculum” (oecd, 2020: 2). according to mulenga (2020: 22), by satisfying the needs of a changing society, “the conceptualisation of a curriculum will continue to slowly accommodate itself with the present educational needs so as to suit the arising needs”. the world is witnessing social and economic changes “driven by advances in knowledge and rapidly advancing technologies… knowledge is increasingly becoming a key element of economic production in any society, with innovation, research, and science representing important components of knowledge” (ashour, 2021: 3). mulenga (2020: 26) asserts “there is evidence of an increased need for individuals to develop capabilities to flexibly adapt to rapidly changing globalised social and economic models”, indicating an emphasis on metacognitive knowledge. the pset sector is not exempted from this change, especially with the covid-19 pandemic and the 4ir accelerating the need for innovation. there is a huge need for a “growth mindset” in the sector, with a call for overhauling the outdated curricula inherited from previous colonial masters, which is still being used for teaching and learning on the african continent, coupled with archaic methods and approaches (okebiorun, 2020: 260). the pset curriculum needs to address 21st century skills in their entirety. in addition to personal development in the cognitive, interpersonal and intrapersonal realms, 21st century skills include critical thinking, communication, collaboration, creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship (ashour, 2021). additional competencies include “those related to local, global, and digital citizenship that enhance individuals’ ability to respond constructively in challenging situations. the cognitive skills of the population, not just school completion, are strongly related to the country’s http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 72022 40(1): 7-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 aluko, krull & mhlanga shaping open, distance and e-learning in post school education and training economic development” (ashour, 2021: 4). these imply the pset sector needs to change to match societal needs. there are concerns regarding the preparedness of graduates for the demands of the world of work, indicating a gap between qualifications and labour market demands (dhet, 2020; oecd, 2020). to support this, terblanche and bitzer (2018) observed that the tvet college curriculum in south africa needs restructuring in order for it to support more innovative responses to industry requirements. several scholars (ashour, 2021; kraak & paterson, 2016) have recommended the elimination of redundant courses, a focus on lifelong learning, the promotion of research and innovation and industry involvement in curriculum development. to ensure relevance, khoza and mpungose (2020) assert that it is time for higher education to start embracing digitalised curricula. they define a digitalised curriculum “as a plan for teaching, learning, and research, driven by specific hardware, software, and theories/ pedagogies” (2020: 1). a digitalised curriculum enables institutions to move away from a performance curriculum (that answers the “what” question) to a competency-based curriculum that answers the “how” question. this is because the key principles of the “competence-based curriculum are learning activities, outcomes, facilitation, learning community, and distance learning” (khoza & mpungose, 2020: 5). yet many academics remain resistant, showing that “they have not been convinced of the importance of a digitalised curriculum” (2020: 2) although this can be overcome through encouraging creativity, reflection and inspiration. breaking the curriculum down into more manageable chunks, which can be recognised through microcredentials, is also a way in which increasing numbers of institutions around the world are seeking to be more responsive (brown et al., 2021). curricula should also be thought of in the ways that they are mediated. ashour (2021: 9) states that “universities need to customise curricula and course delivery for online delivery. more creative assessment tools should also be created”. lastly, okebiorun (2020: 269) calls on the pset sector to periodically review its curricula, focus on the professional learning of its workforce and introduce “compulsory general courses on icts for all students in various faculties and departments”. 3.3 the need for adaptable quality assurance mechanisms this section focuses on how quality should be enhanced in technology-supported teaching and learning. the section draws mainly on the latest developments that have been ushered in by the advent of covid-19 challenges, which forced institutions to resort to ertl. it argues that under these conditions, quality assurance in higher education should be used as an instrument that ensures sufficient depth in student learning experiences. quality assurance “is also accepted as a daily reality at individual institutions. the problem is that there’s no evidence to show any widespread qualitative change in classroom practices or students’ learning experiences” (tadesse, 2016: 2). yet, the investment in quality assurance in universities is aimed at enriching students’ learning experiences to ensure maximum learning gains. institutional quality assurance mechanisms need to ensure that students engage with content in ways that promote the development of problem solving and critical thinking skills (mohee, 2019), innovativeness, and ability to apply what is learnt to solve real life problems. quality assurance is meant to demonstrate to internal and external stakeholders that the university practices are professional and credible, such as the quality of graduates that are produced. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 82022 40(1): 8-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) “quality” and “quality assurance” are elusive terms, especially when used within education contexts. in a university context, some consensus has to be reached in terms of what constitutes quality in order to work towards a common purpose and build a desired culture. as barnett (1994: 171) argues, universities carry particular social and cultural identities. these identities influence not only public perceptions of institutions, but also of the graduates that come out of the institutions. while quality assurance practices were common in higher education institutions before covid-19, with an emphasis on colleagues supporting one another in a shared commitment to continuous improvement (mohee, 2019), the sudden closure of campuses at the beginning of 2020 forced institutions to resort to ertl, which meant that the quality assurance processes that were in place, could not serve such a rapid transition. the covid-19 pandemic fast-tracked the use of educational technology to support teaching and learning. whilst this has positive implications in terms of greater flexibility in learning, it has posed potential threats to the integrity of learning as many quality assurance measures were not setup for this form of educational mediation. owing to the rapid transition to ertl, many institutions did not have time to put in place mechanisms to ensure that content was appropriately curated for online mediation, sufficient support for remote learning was planned, effective communication between students and the university would happen and credible assessment processes would take place. quality assurance, as used in this article, is a proactive process that entails putting in place mechanisms to ensure that desired educational goals will be achieved. a lack of such robust quality assurance measures in ertl therefore poses serious threats to the credibility of higher education. while many universities had a learning management system (lms) in place before the pandemic, the move to ertl emphasised the importance of this technology for continued teaching and learning. an lms is a software application for the administration, documentation, tracking, delivering and reporting of educational courses (gupta, 2019). it provides a lecturer with a way to create and deliver content, monitor student participation and access student performance. at the same time, an lms provides a good opportunity for quality assurance of processes by peers at a distance. it makes peer reviewing of processes easier, faster and cheaper than in conventional in-person environments, especially in areas of programme design, materials development and student assessment. quality assurance in odel needs to address the following mechanisms: programme design, learner support, materials development, student assessment, supporting infrastructure and facilities and staff complement and staffing (number and competence) (mohee, 2019). in addition to the quality assurance mechanisms described by mohee (2019), in the south african context, the national association of distance education and open learning in south africa (nadeosa) quality criteria for distance education (nadeosa, 2021) provide quality assurance guidelines for odel settings. a critical quality aspect of odel is how the learning pathway is designed for learners to navigate their way through the learning process with ease and achieve the planned learning outcomes. the careful design of high-quality online learning is not about the provision of textual materials or video clips for students to go through (oer africa, 2021). however, in practice, this was what was often put in place during ertl. therefore, essential guidelines on course layout, learning and teaching strategies, learning activities and assessment, and on technological aspects of the virtual environment are needed. designing an online learning pathway requires the designer to think seriously about what the student should achieve and how best that can be achieved in a virtual environment. the following key questions need http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 92022 40(1): 9-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 aluko, krull & mhlanga shaping open, distance and e-learning in post school education and training to be asked when designing learning experiences: where does the learning start? what are students going to learn? how will they learn? how will i know they have learnt this? how will i ensure good quality learning? (saide, 2012). it is important to note that quality issues are thought about throughout the design process, and not as an afterthought. high-quality learning design is underpinned by sound learning theory. in this regard, connectivism and other theories of learning can support learning design processes. this was a major gap at the start of ertl, where learning resources were often digitised without much consideration for how they would be used. in using technology in teaching and learning, it is the chosen pedagogy and not the technology that comes first (cowling & birt, 2018). a good learning designer brings in technology to support the preferred pedagogical approach. for example, social interaction and learning collaboration is possible in odel. utilising technological tools to promote cognitive, social and teacher presence can address a sense of isolation in odel and enhance the quality of learning (garrison, anderson & archer, 2001). 4. discussion now that we have considered the need to question previously held beliefs about learning and teaching; the responsiveness of curricula to the current education landscape and the need for good quality assurance mechanisms, we will interrogate some of the implications of these pillars using the lens of connectivism. we will also provide some recommendations for relevant odel practices in the pset sector. 4.1 foregrounding a student-centred approach the basic tenet of connectivism is that “knowledge is distributed across a network of connections, and therefore learning consists of the ability to construct and traverse those networks” (downes, 2012: 85). the networks are made up of nodes (learning communities), which could refer to any source of information, including journals, databases and websites (goldie, 2016). downes (2012) asserts the following characteristics of successful networks, which the authors deem necessary for any learning that is student-centred: • diversity – entities in a network have distinct and unique states. • autonomy – entities within networks govern themselves. • openness – membership of a network is fluid. • interactivity – knowledge is derived through interactions. commenting on the above, goldie (2016) asserts that regardless of distance, students have the opportunity to learn from one another, knowledgeable others and various systems due to the affordances of technology. therefore, the theory places learners at the centre of the learning experience (hendricks, 2019). in connectivism, learning starts “when knowledge is actuated by learners connecting to and participating in a learning community” (goldie, 2016: 1064). pozzi (2011) describes this as the “crucial importance of meaning’s constructing and making connections among specialized communities; and the enhancement of “collaborative and cooperative aspects of learning” (section 3, para. 1). the questioning of traditional values and beliefs of teaching and learning means shifting attention from lecturer-centred approaches to student-centred ones in which the focus is now on what students need to learn, why they need to learn it, and how they are going to do so (jon m. huntsman school of business, 2021). an approach that is student-centred, rather than lecturer-centred, must http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 102022 40(1): 10-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) enable students to develop self-directed learning (commonwealth of learning, 2020). in this way, the lecturer enables student learning through a process of connecting specialised nodes or information sources (siemens, 2004). muganga and ssenkusu (2019: 16) claim there has been a gradual shift from teachercentred approaches to student-centred approaches, yet “western countries have begun to adopt these methods at all levels of education, while much of the developing world continues to rely mainly upon teacher-centred learning”. keiler (2018) argues that the move towards student-centredness faces challenges such as teachers’ concerns about classroom management, the pace of curriculum, how students would fare in external examinations, and the reluctance of teachers to transition from traditional methods. however, utilising the principles of connectivism can help educators to transition from lecturer-centredness to student-centredness. 4.2 embracing appropriate technologies to support teaching and learning the prevalence of technology in teaching and learning confirms that learning and knowledge rest in a diversity of opinions and may reside in non-human appliances or technology (siemens, 2004). technology should be embraced as integral to any plan for reshaping pset in the future to ensure students have access to high-quality educational opportunities that address the growing demand for “digital skills” in the labour market (dhet, 2020). in order to continue using odel methods, pset institutions need to customise their curricula and course delivery in alignment to online education models and theories (ashour, 2021: 15). a multimodal approach considers formats that are conducive for learning within particular contexts, which may include printed and digital resources that enable flexible and equitable forms of teaching and assessment (czerniewicz et al., 2020). appropriate tools and technologies are required that support dialogue and communication, as well as interactions between students and teachers, students and other students, and students and materials (commonwealth of learning, 2020). moving towards greater technology-mediated education enables opportunities to transform the learning experience for students to succeed in an increasingly digital world. connectivism suggests that the process of learning focuses on connecting specialised information sets (siemens, 2005). it is therefore important to direct students to a variety of sources of information and help them make connections between the different pieces of information they get from these different sources. students need to be equipped to critically evaluate information from diverse sources. thus, presenting sizable amounts or chunks of information and structuring reflection activities around that information is essential in designing for online learning (shank, 2018). 4.3 strengthening the capacity to support success a major requirement for succeeding in technology-mediated learning is equipping staff and students with the skills required for digital fluency (czerniewicz et al., 2020; universities south africa, 2020). furthermore, general capacity-building opportunities for academics around blended and online learning, teaching and assessment approaches are required. “pedagogy and course design are the most important challenges in adopting innovative uses of technology in distance education” (ashour, 2021: 9), necessitating the further training of faculty members. digital inequalities and digital divides remain a concern in south africa (stats http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 112022 40(1): 11-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 aluko, krull & mhlanga shaping open, distance and e-learning in post school education and training sa, 2019) and in many other countries, which is an impediment to successfully preparing for the 4ir. globally, many young people (25 years and below) do not yet have internet access at home (unicef, 2020). therefore, teaching and learning approaches that are suitable for local contexts and focus on “low-bandwidth” technologies will ensure wide student participation beyond the pandemic. government interventions and public-private partnerships must ensure that affordable devices and connectivity are equitably available to pset students going forward (dhet, 2020). educational providers can work in partnership with service providers to offer zero-based access for education courses, providing data bundles as part of the course package or having physically-distanced contact sessions in spaces offering free wi-fi hotspots (unicef, 2020). another area to support student success is to provide appropriate academic, technological and emotional support to students (commonwealth of learning, 2020). these support mechanisms are an integral part of the design process and constitute a key quality component in online learning. students need to know where to access support as and when they need it. online support should also aim to give students autonomy and create awareness of their responsibility to shape how learning happens. the role of the teacher is to guide and support learning. thus, in designing learning, one should be clear on how students will be supported. 4.4 ensuring appropriate assessment processes ertl has posed tremendous challenges to student assessment processes. in fact, the experience has challenged traditional forms of assessment in universities. in many instances, either assessment has been watered down or its credibility has been severely undermined. many people, including students, have expressed concern about virtual assessment processes (guangul et al., 2020). there is a need to rethink assessment so that more rigorous and authentic forms of assessment are used in universities (villarroel et al., 2020). whilst this concern has been linked to ertl, it is equally relevant for traditional teaching and learning settings. the integrity of assessment systems and processes is a key aspect affecting the academic standing of an institution. bearman et al. (2020) suggest three questions that should be considered in designing an online assessment: • is this assessment particularly critical? • does the assessment focus on knowledge recall or application? • how will you communicate changes (for example new content, revised assessment deadlines) with students and help them prepare? the first question above suggests that if the assessment that was originally administered under contact conditions is not critical, then alternative forms that do not require online invigilation should be administered. these alternatives could be coursework-related assessment tasks that require students to demonstrate mastery of key course concepts or skills. as bearman et al. (2020) rightly point out, knowledge recall assessments easily lend themselves to cheating. open-book examinations, which test higher-level skills, are a better option. the last question reminds institutions of the need to make students aware of how they will be assessed timely enough for them to prepare. enabling students to practise before they do an actual assessment will go a long a way in preparing students adequately for the new format assessment. it is important to make the assessment questions authentic and to give students rubrics so that they know what the expectations are (bearman et al., 2020; villarroel et al., 2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 122022 40(1): 12-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 perspectives in education 2022: 40(1) 4.5 regular curriculum revision and renewal regarding the responsiveness of the curriculum, mulenga (2020) asserts that a clear measure of the quality of a curriculum for pset is how the process of curriculum development keeps on accommodating itself with the fluidity of societal changes. there is an increasing need to prepare people to deal with accelerating social and economic change and for curricula that is responsive to the pace of technological change (dhet, 2020). in order to prepare students, institutions will have to consider “a paradigm shift in attitude towards curricula, teaching pedagogies, and how to provide students with the highly flexible, mobile mindset that they will need in the 21st century workplace” (motala & menon, 2020: 93). in relation to students acquiring 21st century skills, “quality assurance for higher education should focus on competencies acquired by students on the different programmes rather than the document descriptions of degrees and diplomas in curriculum documents” (mulenga, 2020: 23). makumane and khoza (2020: 95) advocate for curricula to “encompass societal needs (social reasoning), facts as representative of a specific discipline (professional reasoning) and the unique strategies adopted by the educator to attain desired goals (personal reasoning)” without neglecting one for the other. lastly, none of the above areas discussed can take place without high-quality educational management and leadership. mulenga (2020) rightly laments poor management due to lack of focus on institutional visions and missions, but rather serving political agendas. according to terblanche and bitzer (2018: 108), “educational leaders and managers are needed who keep abreast of emerging trends”. seasoned leaders are needed to manage the pset sector: those who see decision-making in itself as a learning process and who are constantly dissatisfied with the status quo, will know that knowing “more is more critical than what is currently known” (siemens, 2004). 5. conclusion the current covid-19 pandemic has brought to the fore the teaching and learning challenges with which the pset sector has been struggling. however, despite the additional challenges caused by the covid-19 pandemic, the experiences in 2020 and 2021 could be an opportunity to reimagine and reshape a different future for odel in the pset sector. caution must be taken not to simply revert to suboptimal pre-pandemic teaching and learning practices after the pandemic is over. as discussed in the annual conference of the national association of distance education and open learning in south africa (nadeosa) held 11–13 may 2021, that led to the conceptualisation of this special issue, the pset sector must reflect on current practices and perhaps emerge with better practices that are aligned with 21st century skills needs, to better contribute to the socio-economic development of the country and the continent. the authors believe that a focus on the following areas discussed in this article, will help establish improved learning and teaching practices to address the needs of the pset sector in future: a) foregrounding a student-centred approach to teaching and learning, b) embracing appropriate technologies for learning and teaching, c) strengthening the capacity to support staff and student success, d) ensuring appropriate assessment practices and e) regular curriculum revision and renewal. they are also areas for further research. we trust that the call for a revised agenda for odel in the pset sector will help the sector move forward to meet the challenges that lie ahead. additionally, aside from this lead article, authors in this special issue have lent their voice to this same sentiment through their thought-provoking articles. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 132022 40(1): 13-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.1 aluko, krull & mhlanga shaping open, distance and e-learning in post school education and training references ashour, s. 2021. how covid-19 is reshaping the role and modes of higher education whilst moving towards a knowledge society: the case of the uae. open learning: the journal of 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http://saruna.mnu.edu.mv/jspui/bitstream/123456789/8093/1/how%20many%20children%20and%20young%20people%20have%20internet%20access%20at%20home%3f%20%3a%20estimating%20digital%20connectivity%20during%20the%20covid-19%20pandemic.pdf https://www.newssite.co.za/usaf/online-learning.html https://www.newssite.co.za/usaf/online-learning.html https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2018.1564882 https://doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.18 https://doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.18 https://doi.org/10.1108/aaouj-09-2016-0035 https://doi.org/10.1108/aaouj-09-2016-0035 _hlk79577272 _hlk79577297 _hlk79577331 _hlk79530035 _hlk79530128 _hlk79530218 155 research article 2020 38(2): 155-167 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) leading curriculum changes in schools: the role of school principals as perceived by teachers abstract the purpose of this article was to determine the views of teachers regarding the leading role of principals during curriculum changes in schools. the research was quantitative in nature, with one qualitative section and was based on a post-positivist worldview. the qualitative section serves to inform the reader explicitly on leadership issues that are important during curriculum changes. eight hundred and eighty-four teachers from 67 schools formed the sample. any change initiative always has an element of resistance to it that should be considered by principals, also when changes in the curriculum are being created. bearing in mind the views of teachers, the effect of resistance to curriculum changes could be minimised. principals could be in a better position to steer the curriculum changes in schools in the right direction. teachers will, as a result, be in a better position to do their work properly to the benefit of the learners and, eventually, to the benefit of society. keywords: change, curriculum, leadership, principals, readiness for change, resistance, schools, teachers 1. introduction since the inception of the democratic education system in south africa in 1994, many curriculum changes have taken place to rectify the disparities that existed in the education departments prior to 1994 (van wyk & van der westhuizen, 2015). the aim was to create a single, uniform curriculum for all schools. as change is a global phenomenon that constantly takes place in organisations, one can assume that another reason for the changes in the curriculum was to create work environments that are more competitive (specht, kuonath, pachler, weisweiler & frey, 2017). change agents often face difficulties in leading curriculum changes successfully. it has been maintained that in the south african schooling context, notwithstanding interventions of various institutions and the government, the curriculum changes in the schooling system do not seem to come to fruition. it seems that most of the old challenges regarding the curriculum still remain, while new challenges pertaining to the curriculum have come to the fore (van wyk author: dr a van wyk1 affiliation: 1school for professional studies in education: education management and leadership, north-west university doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38. i2.10 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(2): 155-167 published: 04 december 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6221-8951 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 1562020 38(2): 156-167 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) & van der westhuizen, 2015). in this regard, one can refer to the rapid curriculum changes that have taken place, such as outcomes-based education (obe), the national curriculum statement, the revised curriculum statement and, presently, the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) (gumede & biyase, 2016). 2. statement of the problem gigliotti, vardaman, marshall and gonzalez (2018) are of the view that almost 70% of change initiatives in organisations fail, although the survival of organisations relies on the successful implementation of change. in the school environment, the reasons for such failure can be classroom-related, school-related and related to external factors (holborn, 2013). the challenges of the successful implementation of curriculum changes could be anything from the content and pedagogical knowledge and behaviour of teachers, to learner poverty and a lack of resources (equal education, 2015; phakahti, 2013). according to gigliotti et al. (2018), other aspects in the schooling system such as participation of and support for teachers and the knowledge of the content of the curriculum change, can also facilitate or hinder the buy-in of teachers. other aspects relate to school environments that are plagued by drugs, gangs and weapons, all of which threaten the culture of teaching and learning (mncube & madikizelamadiya, 2014). in the south african context, leadership and management issues in the schooling system also prevent change initiatives from being successful (van der westhuizen & van vuuren, 2007). van der westhuizen and van vuuren (2007) maintain that some principals are appointed, for example, based on their learners’ good results. this criterion does not guarantee that principals will be good at leading curriculum changes in a school. the minimum requirements of seven years’ teaching experience, as prescribed in the personnel administrative measures (pam) (2016), to be appointed in a principal post can be an advantage for the principal as well as the school. however, it is the view of van der westhuizen (2015) that the management and leading of a school require an individual with specialised skills and knowledge that must be modernised repeatedly and employed in a practical manner. it thus implies that teaching experience alone is not sufficient to be a successful principal, but training in educational management and leadership issues becomes another criterion. according to zuze and juan (2020), this criterion is crucial for principals to acquire as they have been tasked over the past 20 years with implementing policies and programmes as well as raising the academic standards in schools. furthermore, the pam sets out the fundamental duties of school principals, which include among others, policy enactment and the management of teachers, learners, information, infrastructure and school discipline (zuze & juan, 2020). these roles have been refined in the policy on the south african standard for principalship (rsa, 2016), which sets out eight interdependent areas of which the management of the curriculum forms one of the core activities of the principal. in addition, in order to respond to the new curriculum in the classroom and the management and leadership challenges in schools, training opportunities for teachers and principals have also been made available (gaza, 2012). notwithstanding these interventions, most schools, especially schools in poor communities, are not performing at a satisfactory level and the envisaged curriculum changes have not yet been realised. however, there is evidence that some schools in poor communities nevertheless excel, implying that not all schools in these areas perform poorly (ngcobo & tikly, 2010). in view of the latter, there must be other missing aspects in the south african schooling system that have not yet been accounted for that http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 1572020 38(2): 157-167 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 van wyk leading curriculum changes in schools impede on the readiness of schools for the envisaged curriculum changes. based on the aforementioned observations and remarks regarding leadership and frequent curriculum changes in the schooling system, the research reported in the remainder of this article was guided by the following question: what are the perceptions of teachers regarding the leading role of principals in curriculum changes in schools? the research was based on the following conceptual and theoretical framework. 3. conceptual and theoretical framework this section covers the conceptual and theoretical framework on which the empirical research regarding the perceptions of teachers pertaining to the leading role of principals in curriculum changes in schools was based. 3.1 change and resistance to change change is an ever-present phenomenon in organisations. it happens to renew organisations and should be dealt with skilfully for it to be successful (mohamed & abdel-ghany, 2014). the element of resistance is always present during change (van wyk & van der westhuizen, 2015). resistance takes place when there is change, but also when there is no change in organisations (van wyk & van der westhuizen, 2015). the skilful handling of change minimises the possibility of resistance. however, employees seldom exhibit change-resistant behaviour from the onset without first considering the negative consequences for themselves (mohamed & abdel-ghany, 2014). choi and ruona (2011) hold similar views, stating that individuals are not naturally inclined to resist change but, instead, are annoyed with the consequences that the change might bring and the way change is forced upon them. change or non-change in organisations each has the potential to manifest in revolutionary or reactionary resistance (van der westhuizen & theron, 2014). both views of resistance have relevancy for education and serve as aids to let change happen in schools (zimmerman, 2006). this phenomenon can best be described by kurt lewin’s force-field theory, which deals with driving forces on the one side and restraining forces on the other (lewin, 1947a; lewin, 1947b). choi and ruona (2011) maintain, referencing lewin (1947a), that driving forces, for instance stakeholders in schools, mostly occur when an organisation fails to effect a change. parents and teachers as driving forces have the interest of the school at heart and one assumes that they will do anything positive to let changes happen in the school. however, they could also be hampering the change process as restraining forces, especially when they believe that the change process is to the detriment of the school. 3.2 readiness for change readiness for change refers to the perceptions, beliefs, attitudes and intentions of the members of organisations regarding the extent to which changes are needed and the capacity of the organisation to effect the changes (armenakis & bedeian, 1999; eby, adams, russell & gaby, 2000; jansen, 2000; jones, jimmieson & griffiths, 2005). readiness is all about employees’ perceptions of their competencies to implement the change (combe, 2014; holt, armenakis, feild & harris, 2007). being prepared for change implies that the individual needs to be transformed physically and cognitively so that he or she will have control over, and the capacity to, respond to a challenge (weiner, 2009). during a time of change readiness, organisational members are more likely to initiate change, utilise greater effort in support of change and display greater determination in the face of obstacles during the enactment of the change. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 1582020 38(2): 158-167 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) the systems and the management of organisations as well as the relationships within the organisation should be conducive for individuals to embrace the change process. organisational readiness can also be measured by the organisation’s financial, material, human and informational resources that can be applied to the change, as well as by the psychological willingness of affected people to cooperate in bringing the change to fruition (wallinga, 2008). the consequence of being ready will be the effective implementation of new ideas, programme processes or technology. organisational members whose commitment to change is based on “want to” motives rather than “need to” motives exhibit cooperative and supportive behaviour (weiner, 2009). by contrast, when organisational readiness for change is low or non-existent, staff will resist initiating change, put less effort into the implementation thereof and exhibit less compliant behaviour. in an effort to integrate the concepts discussed above, the next section deals with the formulation of a theoretical framework. kotter’s eight-step change model served as the backbone on which the research of the perceptions of teachers regarding the leading role of the principal in curriculum change was based. 3.3 kotter’s eight-step change model 3.3.1 increase urgency during this phase, teachers want principals to give reasons for the change and an explanation of how it will affect them. the crisis with the curriculum and the opportunities that can be established should be emphasised. aspects that can be emphasised as reasons for change in the curriculum revolve around teachers’ uncertainties of how to implement the curriculum, their negative reactions and resistance, as they find it difficult to maintain a balance between teaching and assessment time. other reasons are, for instance, the fact that south african learners score poorly in literacy and numeracy tests compared to learners from other african countries (mouton, louw & strydom, 2012). in addition, reports showed that the literacy and numeracy rates of learners in south africa are among the lowest of their peers, despite the huge amount spent on education each year (mouton et al., 2012). to intensify the need for curriculum change, principals could use examples of opportunities, such as the envisaged coding and robotics that will be part of a new curriculum to prepare learners for the fourth industrial revolution in south africa. it can also be emphasised that the new curriculum will prepare learners to apply their digital and ict skills to work from their homes to solve a problem such as the current covid-19 crisis (business tech, 2019). principals should enable teachers to talk about and participate in discussions about changes in the curriculum. 3.3.2 guide the team putting together a team that shares the same goal and vision, communicates effectively and is trustworthy is crucial for effecting the curriculum change (webster & webster, 2018). further qualities of the team are the display of expertise, positive power, credibility and proven leadership skills (mento, jones & dirndorfer, 2010). in this regard, one can think of experienced teachers, head of departments, subject advisors, the deputy principal and the principal of the school. the team, under the leadership of the principal, has the responsibility to execute the curriculum changes that include the following step, getting the vision right. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/2103177870_nelda_mouton?_sg%5b0%5d=onk8vpolhz8mvlnoiwhqumkydejww4q5qjyeglle0qgcoh6wa6wg0vz_r8jmoi-ia3rprt4.9yczczqkxf3rwooie66f1oegsx99urtf9-6i84wpgeoul7j2zefspcgp6y1et_elrhoc_6dpgn0rjceo0zxalw&_sg%5b1%5d=q9eiwhzmfzz2pghuxig9lsmsd5uigrsj4sqefqj7cegkphar9jsxlmnms5dmyglx7adflbg.wo35f70sqozg0b1glhwanwvzvzbxnvhn9kf1cn6smtkny-4avvfhopyobcwlojhiia137bx7sh-luqjxcvu28g https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/2103180340_gert_l_strydom?_sg%5b0%5d=onk8vpolhz8mvlnoiwhqumkydejww4q5qjyeglle0qgcoh6wa6wg0vz_r8jmoi-ia3rprt4.9yczczqkxf3rwooie66f1oegsx99urtf9-6i84wpgeoul7j2zefspcgp6y1et_elrhoc_6dpgn0rjceo0zxalw&_sg%5b1%5d=q9eiwhzmfzz2pghuxig9lsmsd5uigrsj4sqefqj7cegkphar9jsxlmnms5dmyglx7adflbg.wo35f70sqozg0b1glhwanwvzvzbxnvhn9kf1cn6smtkny-4avvfhopyobcwlojhiia137bx7sh-luqjxcvu28g https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/2103177870_nelda_mouton?_sg%5b0%5d=onk8vpolhz8mvlnoiwhqumkydejww4q5qjyeglle0qgcoh6wa6wg0vz_r8jmoi-ia3rprt4.9yczczqkxf3rwooie66f1oegsx99urtf9-6i84wpgeoul7j2zefspcgp6y1et_elrhoc_6dpgn0rjceo0zxalw&_sg%5b1%5d=q9eiwhzmfzz2pghuxig9lsmsd5uigrsj4sqefqj7cegkphar9jsxlmnms5dmyglx7adflbg.wo35f70sqozg0b1glhwanwvzvzbxnvhn9kf1cn6smtkny-4avvfhopyobcwlojhiia137bx7sh-luqjxcvu28g 1592020 38(2): 159-167 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 van wyk leading curriculum changes in schools 3.3.3 get the vision right a clear vision is vital to teachers for understanding what needs to be achieved in a particular timeframe (anson, 2011; goldberg, williams & paul-brown, 2002). to convey the correct vision to other teachers, it is, as previously indicated, important to include persons who have experience in curriculum matters. in this sense, it should enable other teachers to visualise a picture of what the end result of the curriculum change would look like (anson, 2011; goldberg et al., 2002). the next phase would be to communicate the vision to teachers for them to embrace the curriculum change. 3.3.4 communicate for buy-in the message of the team to teachers should be clear and understandable (mento et al., 2010). it is not sufficient for the leader to hold one or two meetings to sell the vision to other teachers; the vision should continuously be part of the agenda points in all meetings (anson, 2011). the team, led by the principal, should talk about it in e-mails and presentations and during staff meetings, school gatherings, school governing body meetings, subject meetings and meetings with learners and parents. people want leaders to be ethical and to “walk the talk” to inspire them to do the same. it is counterproductive if the team and its leader say one thing but do something different (goldberg et al., 2002). the next phase is about the actions the team should take. 3.3.5 empower empowering teachers by giving them training removes the obstacles that are hindering them from doing their best (webster & webster, 2018), as the way the different structures at schools are driven can be either detrimental or advantageous to the curriculum change (sharma, upadhyaya, schober & williams, 2014). krummaker and vogel (2012), in turn, are of the view that a team that is highly competent to drive the curriculum change seems to be successful in transferring their readiness for change to other teachers. these teachers could display the same behaviour as a team whose readiness for change is contagious and elicits high levels of drive for the curriculum change (krummaker & vogel, 2012). on the other hand, undesirable conditions in schools do not contribute to the empowerment of teachers (mentz, 2002; van wyk, ogina & mampane, 2016). teachers will most likely resist these conditions. the next phase is to create short-term gains for teachers. 3.3.6 create short-term gains as change takes time to come to fruition, teachers may lose interest and revert to their old ways of doing things (webster & webster, 2018). it is advisable that the leader creates opportunities for teachers to experience success with the change in the short term (friesen, 2016). the team should, in view of the new dispensation, look for evidence that suggests that teachers have achieved in one way or the other, for instance learner results, good teaching practices and building good relationships with colleagues and learners. these wins should be recognised and rewarded (friesen, 2016). recognising and rewarding impart credibility and enhance the urgency levels of the curriculum change to teachers (friesen, 2016). 3.3.7 keep the momentum of the change it is tempting to celebrate efforts at this stage when it becomes clear that a school is out of its comfort domains and starts performing (kotter, 1995). teachers who, for instance, still resist the change should be persuaded and retrained to accept the new culture more easily (anson, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 1602020 38(2): 160-167 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) 2011). the principal should recognise and celebrate the perceived success with the teachers without resting on their laurels, which may result in losing focus (friesen, 2016; mento et al., 2010). the last phase is to make sure that the new curriculum is sustained. 3.3.8 sustainable change during the last stage, the principal and the team should ensure that the policies, procedures and practices of the new curriculum are followed (mento et al., 2010). cultural change, institutionalising and connections should be established and articulated as it must be visible that the old curriculum is no longer relevant (goldberg et al., 2002). attempts should be made to indicate how the new approaches, behaviours and attitudes contribute to the new curriculum change that has helped performance in schools. every effort should be made by principals and their teams to explain why the performance of schools has improved (mento et al., 2010). new teachers should complete a comprehensive training programme to familiarise themselves with how the curriculum works (anson, 2011; goldberg et al., 2002). the following empirical investigation was based on the conceptual and theoretical framework outlined in the previous section. 4. empirical investigation the purpose of the investigation was to determine the perceptions of teachers regarding the leading role of principals in curriculum changes in schools. 5. research orientation and design a quantitative research approach, coupled with one qualitative section, was used. the research was based on a post-positivist paradigm. the post-positivist paradigm lies on a continuum between the quantitative and qualitative research methods. it is concerned with the subjectivity of reality and so doing, moves away from the solely objective standpoint embraced by the logical positivists (creswell, 2012). 5.1 study population and sampling the study population consisted of teachers at primary and secondary schools from the five regions of a province in south africa. only schools with 500 and more learners formed part of the population as these schools had enough teachers to provide meaningful data for the research. every second school was selected from the emis system of the department of basic education in the province. questionnaires were sent to all teachers at the selected schools. the bibliographical section of the questionnaire comprised the profile of the teachers, such as teaching experience, post level and age. from the population mentioned, 67 schools with 884 teachers took part in the research. 5.2 instrument the survey was posted and hand-delivered to schools. as a result, 884 questionnaires were distributed to teachers in the province. the questionnaires were either sent back by post or collected when officials from the department of education visited these schools. the principal of each school was asked to distribute the questionnaires to the teachers. the instructions were printed clearly on the front page of the questionnaire; thus, it was not necessary for someone to help the teachers with the completion of the questionnaire. eighty-three per cent of the questionnaires were received back due to the fact that the researcher was in constant http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 1612020 38(2): 161-167 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 van wyk leading curriculum changes in schools contact with the principals and the departmental officials assisting with the collection of the questionnaires. an open-ended question formed part of the survey to cater for the views of respondents who wanted to elaborate on the answers they gave in the survey. 5.3 validity and reliability the soundness of the questions was constructed from the literature on aspects regarding the leading role of principals in curriculum changes. in order to validate the information further, a colleague was asked to peer examine the information on the questionnaire (cf. creswell, 2012). a pilot study was also undertaken, where teachers were asked to complete the questionnaire and make notes when a specific question was not clear enough. these notes of the teachers on the questionnaire were considered when the questionnaire was finalised. furthermore, the validity of the questionnaire was also discussed with the person who handled the data capturing at the independent statistical services of the university. for the questionnaire to be reliable, the alpha coefficient should be one (1) or near one (1) (ellis & steyn, 2003). in the case of the research, the different categories of the questionnaire were near one (1), for instance 0.86, 0.70, 0.76, 0.74 and 0.86. 5.4 ethical issues ethical approval was granted by the south african university under the authority of which the research was done. permission to commence with the research in schools was obtained from the department of basic education. privacy, integrity, professional dignity, the trustworthiness of the information and the anonymity of the participants were all part of the ethical aspects explicated on the front page of the questionnaire (cf. maree & pietersen, 2014). the participants could also withdraw from the investigation at any time. 5.5 data collection the head of basic education in the province consented to distribute the questionnaires to the respondents. all the instructions regarding the completion of the survey were indicated on the front page. 5.6 data processing procedures the completed questionnaires, consisting of 60 questions and divided into four categories, were sent to the statistical services for processing. this research was part of a larger study and only those sections that were applicable to this research were considered. only questions with d-values of 0.5 and larger were taken into account, as these numbers were regarded as practical and significant to report on. as indicated earlier, one qualitative question was included in the survey. this question was analysed and interpreted by the researcher for similarities and differences to substantiate or refute the information given by the respondents on the survey. the next section deals with the analysis, interpretation and discussion of the results. 6. results, analysis, interpretation and discussion the following section contains the results, analysis and discussion of the perceptions of teachers regarding the leading role of the principal in curriculum changes. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 1622020 38(2): 162-167 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) table 1: categories and related questions of the quantitative section item no. category description and questions average d-value principal teacher category a: systemic 11 do you receive support from your principal? 3.61 3.22 0.67** 22 how were previous curriculum changes dealt with? 2.94 2.62 0.53** category b: personality 30 do you deal with your emotions when curriculum change is introduced? 1.94 2.45 0.51** 32 are you sceptical about the curriculum change? 1.42 1.95 0.56** 35 are you afraid of the unknown when curriculum change is introduced? 1.60 1.98 0.52** category c: process 47 are you sure that the skills you have are sufficient to cope with the curriculum change? 3.27 2.91 0.54** category d: management/leadership 16 are the communication channels in the school sufficient? 3.24 2.82 0.57** 65 is there a hidden agenda with the curriculum change? 1.31 1.76 0.68** 66 are teachers allowed to take part in the curriculum change? 3.32 2.71 0.66** 68 does your principal listen to teachers when they propose something about the curriculum change? 3.49 2.95 0.69** 0.2 ~ practically non-significant or small significance * 0.5 ~ practically significant or medium significance ** 0.8 ~ practically significant or large significance *** table 2 accounts for the responses of the participants from the open-ended question. not all the teachers answered the question and quotations of a similar nature are only from a third of the participants. table 2: open-ended question of the qualitative section are there any other aspects regarding the curriculum changes that could be seen as frustrations for you? category responses of participants a. systemic aspects • “there is no sufficient staff”; “a lack of parental involvement” b. personality aspects • “the people are not open to change”; “low tolerance levels of teachers”; “when you speak your mind, you are taken as a sell-out”; “when you speak, you are taken as [if] you are nothing in the school” http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 1632020 38(2): 163-167 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 van wyk leading curriculum changes in schools c. process aspects • “shortage of resources” d. management/leadership aspects • “the lack of consistency in the management style is of a great concern”; “autocratic management style”; “lack of participation”; “sgb participation not good”; “the principal say[s] there must be change, but he and the school governing body (sgb) hold on to old views” 6.1 category a • support for teachers there was a practical significance (d – 0.67) (see table 1) regarding the nature of the support that principals should grant teachers. it is inferred from the data that the teachers held the view that principals did not give them sufficient support during curriculum changes. support for teachers comes in various forms, for instance encouraging, giving advice and supplying the necessary resources. however, this perception of teachers has been clarified by the open-ended question that revealed that “there is no sufficient staff” and there is “a lack of parental involvement” (table 2). sufficient staff and parental involvement should be advocated by principals all the time, as it will help to ease the workload of teachers. parents, on the other hand, can assist with homework or at least see to it that their children do their homework. some of the supporting aspects may not be under the direct auspices of principals, but the type of leadership that principals and their teams display to rectify these issues will determine whether teachers perceive their leading as supportive or not. this view concurs with the statement made by holt et al. (2007) that teachers should be prepared for curriculum changes (mouton, louw & strydom, 2012). in this sense, it will create buy-in from the relevant stakeholders, including teachers (anson, 2011). • previous change initiatives and the agenda with new change the data showed a practical significance (d – 0.53) regarding the way principals led previous change initiatives. it is an indication that the teachers were of the opinion that the way previous curriculum changes had been led created a negative perception of how the leaders would lead the change in future. the teachers’ suspicion developed over time. this suspicion was confirmed by the data in the open-ended question, where some teachers stated that “the principal say[s] there must be change, but he and the school governing body (sgb) hold on to old views” (see the response under management and leadership aspects). this response is indicative that teachers have developed an integrity problem towards their principals. the readiness of a school to change can be measured by the psychological willingness of the teachers affected by the change (wallinga, 2008). it is maintained that the leaders and their teams should be credible, be trusted and be able to “walk the talk” (mento et al., 2010; theron, 2014; van der westhuizen & theron, 2014)). it is clear that in this instance, some teachers view their principals as untrustworthy to support the curriculum changes. 6.2 category b • emotions, scepticism and afraid of the unknown the data showed a practical significance regarding the emotions of the teachers (d – 0.51), the fact that the teachers were sceptical about the change (d – 0.56) and the fact that the teachers were afraid of the unknown (d – 0.52). these aspects were explained by the views of some teachers in the open-ended question. they stated that there was a general “intolerance http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/2103177870_nelda_mouton?_sg%5b0%5d=onk8vpolhz8mvlnoiwhqumkydejww4q5qjyeglle0qgcoh6wa6wg0vz_r8jmoi-ia3rprt4.9yczczqkxf3rwooie66f1oegsx99urtf9-6i84wpgeoul7j2zefspcgp6y1et_elrhoc_6dpgn0rjceo0zxalw&_sg%5b1%5d=q9eiwhzmfzz2pghuxig9lsmsd5uigrsj4sqefqj7cegkphar9jsxlmnms5dmyglx7adflbg.wo35f70sqozg0b1glhwanwvzvzbxnvhn9kf1cn6smtkny-4avvfhopyobcwlojhiia137bx7sh-luqjxcvu28g https://www.researchgate.net/scientific-contributions/2103180340_gert_l_strydom?_sg%5b0%5d=onk8vpolhz8mvlnoiwhqumkydejww4q5qjyeglle0qgcoh6wa6wg0vz_r8jmoi-ia3rprt4.9yczczqkxf3rwooie66f1oegsx99urtf9-6i84wpgeoul7j2zefspcgp6y1et_elrhoc_6dpgn0rjceo0zxalw&_sg%5b1%5d=q9eiwhzmfzz2pghuxig9lsmsd5uigrsj4sqefqj7cegkphar9jsxlmnms5dmyglx7adflbg.wo35f70sqozg0b1glhwanwvzvzbxnvhn9kf1cn6smtkny-4avvfhopyobcwlojhiia137bx7sh-luqjxcvu28g 1642020 38(2): 164-167 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) and insensitivity towards the views, opinions and actions of others” and that some colleagues had “fixed mind-sets” and “they do not want to change and prefer their comfort zones”. it can be deduced from the data that there was a general negative atmosphere among the teachers. this gloomy mood of the teachers is to be expected as it was said earlier that the principals had not been very supportive and communicative towards the teachers regarding the curriculum change. in order to oust teachers from their comfort domains, true urgency for the curriculum change should be created and embedded in the teachers’ minds (combe, 2014) 6.3 category c • skills the data revealed that the teachers were concerned about their skills and, thus, their capability (d – 0.54) to cope with curriculum changes. this concern was complemented by the teachers’ views stated in the qualitative part of the questionnaire and mainly revolved around “shortages of resources”. training opportunities to handle the new challenges brought about by the curriculum change are essential (wallinga, 2008). in addition, friesen (2016) advised that short-term opportunities to experience success with the change should be created for teachers. 6.4 category d • communication and participation a practical significance existed around the kind of communication (d – 0.57), participation (d – 0.66) and listening (d – 0.69) the principals provided to the teachers. the importance of communication was stated by the data in the open-ended question as follows: the principals displayed an “autocratic leadership style” and there was a “lack of participation” that made “collective decision making” impossible. one can thus assume that the teachers were unable to give sufficient input about the curriculum changes as participatory decision making was not possible. a communication gap emanated from the lack of communication between the principals and the teachers. step 4 of the kotter model states that change and the effect thereof should be clearly articulated by principals. in view of this, it can be postulated that the teachers viewed the leadership espoused by the principals as inappropriate for successful curriculum change. the teachers’ view concurs with anson’s (2011) view, which states that successful change necessitates effective communication of principals with teachers. 7. recommendations the teachers see principals as the custodians of curriculum changes. therefore, it is important for them to be at the front – communicating and providing the necessary resources to implement the curriculum changes successfully. in order to avoid making the same mistakes of the past, the input of teachers is crucial. in so doing, their fears and scepticism regarding the curriculum changes can be laid to rest. the curriculum change should constantly be placed as an item on the agenda of meetings, and curriculum training should be provided on a continuous basis for as long as it is necessary. the teachers participating in this research were not sure whether their skills were sufficient for the curriculum changes. thus, mentoring is important for teachers, especially those who are unsure and new in the system. better measures should be put in place by the employer to strengthen the type of candidates who are being appointed as principals. interviews alone are insufficient. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 1652020 38(2): 165-167 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 van wyk leading curriculum changes in schools 8. conclusion resistance to change is the most commonly encountered response to an advocated change. however, it is given less attention than it deserves. it is in this regard that principals should take the views of teachers, as the implementers of curriculum changes, seriously. teachers need a great deal of support from credible school leaders to make schools places of excellence. references anson, m.j.h. 2011. leaders are the critical element in the network: applying the kotter change model in shaping future 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zimmerman, j. 2006. why some teachers resist change and what principals can do about it. nassp bulletin, 90(3): 238–249. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192636506291521. zuze, t.l. & juan, a. 2020. school leadership and local learning contexts in south africa. educational management administration and leadership, 48(3): 459–477. https://doi. org/10.1177/1741143218814006. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.10 https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143209356359 https://doi.org/10.5888/pcd11.140166 https://doi.org/10.5888/pcd11.140166 https://doi.org/10.1080/14697017.2017.1378696 https://doi.org/10.1080/14697017.2017.1378696 https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886308318967 https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886308318967 https://www.leadershipthoughts.com/kotters-8-step-change-model/ https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-4-67 https://doi.org/10.1177/0192636506291521 https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143218814006 https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143218814006 leading curriculum changes in schools 404 not found 12022 40(4): 1-3 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.7003 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) editorial during a meeting of the south african parliament’s portfolio committee on higher education, science and technology, held on 1 december 2021, professor ahmed bawa, in his position of chief executive officer of universities south africa (usaf), identified eight challenges facing south african universities: the continued impact of covid-19 on higher education; the sustainability of the national student financial aid scheme funding (nsfas); the so-called ‘missing middle’ students, i.e. students who do not qualify for financial aid, but cannot afford fees outright; unpaid student debt; insufficient affordable student accommodation; electrical power instability and loadshedding; social unrest and gender-based violence; and lastly the impact of the faltering south african economy on higher education. in this edition of perspectives in education (pie), the first nine articles focus on challenges faced by students and academic in higher education in south africa. in the opening article, ruswa and gore use the capabilities approach to explore the extent of poverty, as well as the way various dimensions of deprivation interplay to effect the wellbeing and success of students in universities. the study highlights the complex relationship between the dimensions of deprivations that affect students and the destructive consequence of the lack of finances. the authors argue that providing funding not only addresses student poverty insufficiently; they also recommend that universities should consider devising robust measures to identify those financially deprived and provide them with adequate funding. a reading of subsequent articles on higher education reveals that students need more than adequate financing to be successful. olaitan, nosipho and mavuso’s investigation into the challenges faced by female students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (stem) focuses on the role the environment, goals, behaviour and selfefficacy factors play in the success of these students. the study found that female students possess the self-efficacy to excel in their studies, despite overt and covert hostilities. the study furthermore found that family support is key in female stem students’ success. die importance of applying systems principles to improve student support is central in sithaldeen and van pletzen’s case study. they found that the four support functions used by students within the faculty author: prof c de wet1 affiliation: 1 acting editor-in chief, university of the free state, south africa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v40i4.7003 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(4): 1-3 published: 23 december 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.7003 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5208-2963 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.7003 22022 40(4): 2-3 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.7003 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) under investigation lack cohesion. this creates challenges in communication, continuity and efficacy of student support. ontong, bruwer and schonken’s article on the effectiveness of a first-year module presented as an accelerated learning programme to repeating students for subsequent learning contributes to the debate on whether or not accelerated learning programmes only lead to surface learning. the next two articles focus on the possible effect of covid-19 on students and academics. angelo finn’s cross-sectional survey on academic burnout among open distance e-learning (odel) students during the covid-19 pandemic revealed relatively low levels of burnout and high levels of student engagement among the respondents. this despite the fact that most respondents reported being employed while studying. the qualitative narrative approach, supported by a feminist lens, provides juliet ramohai and somarie holtzhausen with a critical, in-depth understanding of the real-life stories of academic women in leadership positions when making sense of their challenges in working in a virtual environment. applying the capabilities approach as an analytical tool, they found that functioning and freedoms are inextricably intertwined with institutional ethnographies. according to them, these ethnographies might support or hamper the coping capabilities of women leaders in academic institutions, especially during the covid-19 pandemic. whereas the above articles focused on higher education within a south african context, oparinde, govender and moyo’s article is an attempt to locate the role of internationalisation at african higher education institutions. they argue that comprehensive international, intercultural and global dimensions in the affairs of african tertiary institutions provide for a more nuanced and diversified higher education landscape. the next group of articles explore several perspectives on initial teacher training and teacher professional development. du preez and west explored 155 student-teachers’ experiences of blended learning at a south african institution for higher education, by using the community of inquiry as theoretical framework. whereas nel reports on mathematics teachers professional learning prospects through video-simulated recall, verster reports on the development of future teachers’ mathematics knowledge in an initial teacher education programme. four articles in this issue of pie focus on important role-players within the south african education dispensation, namely learners, teachers and parents. utilising the theoretical framework of power and theory of performativity, vandeyar explored how learners exercise agency in the construction of their identity in school discourses. the study focused on how disciplinary power functions in the disciplinary space of the school. findings from semi structured interviews were twofold: (1) schools used foucault’s mechanisms and instruments of constructing learner identity. (2) learners became agentic in schools and asserted their own identities. de villiers and barnard write on south african grade 1 teachers’ experiences of supporting learners living with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (adhd). the study found that teachers were innovative in developing effective support strategies to support grade 1 learners with adhd in their classrooms. the purpose of gloria marsay’s grounded theory study was to investigate how teachers view the efficacy of social and emotional learning (sel) in the learning environment. marsay’s study found that the majority of participating teachers believe sel skills would have a positive impact on the learning environment, would be essential for learners to become future ready, and would be beneficial to themselves as teachers both personally and professionally. the last article in this section explored perceptions of parents in supporting learning during covid-19 at a south african school. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.7003 32022 40(4): 3-3 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.7003 de wet editorial the last four articles in this issue of pie explore issues in education policy, leadership and law. rené terhoven’s article focuses on the prevailing discourses in the enactment of governmental curriculum policy via the leadership practices of school management teams. fourie and naidoo’s article reports on a study on middle leaders and managers’ perspectives of disruptive leadership during covid-19. the impetus for clark and trichardt’s study was the digital divide and the low socio-economic status of many south african school communities. they emphasise the importance of technology and digitisation in building ‘future-ready’ schools lead by neuro-leaders as future-fit leaders. in the last paper of this issue of pie, kruger, beckman and du plessis discuss the changing role and functions of school principals with the introduction of the participatory decision-making process in south african schools from an education law perspective. they highlight the tension between school governing bodies (sgb) and school principals because of the perceived encroachment on the profession management function of the principal and sgb and vice versa. a golden threat that links most of the articles in this issue is the importance of educational, psychological and/or financial support for students, academics, school leaders, teachers, learners and parents. this support may be as heart-breaking and covert as a university providing 24/7 access to its library for students who have nowhere else to spend the night or as hands-on as providing research-based findings on leadership, technological and subjectspecific training to, amongst others, school principals, parents and mathematics teachers. it is thus important that researchers move beyond the identification of problems in the south african education system, but to act as advocates for the use of research-based solutions for what may sometimes seem to be irresolvable problems. we hope that you will find this volume of pie insightful and inspiring. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.7003 882023 41(1): 88-102 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6300 flexible work arrangements and gender differences in research during the covid-19 period in zimbabwean higher learning institutions abstract this study sought to investigate the impact of covid-19-induced flexible work arrangements (fwas) on gender differences in research outputs during covid-19. a mixed research methodology was used, focusing on higher learning institutions in zimbabwe. purposive sampling was applied to select 250 researchers from the 21 registered universities in zimbabwe. the study’s findings revealed that institutions of higher learning in zimbabwe did not provide the necessary affordances to enable both male and female academics to work from home effectively. the study also established that fwas were preferred and appreciated by both male and female academics. however, whilst both male and female academics performed their teaching responsibilities without incident, unlike males, females struggled to find time for research, thus affecting professional growth and development negatively for female academics. cultural traditions were found to subordinate females to domestic and caregiving responsibilities unrelated to their professions. the findings raise questions on the feasibility of the much-recommended fwas for future work on female academics’ research careers. thus, without the necessary systems and processes to support female researchers, fwas can only widen the gender gap in research outputs. this study contributes to the zimbabwean higher learning institutions’ perspective on how fwas’ policies and practices could be re-configured to assist female researchers in enhancing their research outputs as well as their career growth. keywords: gender, covid-19, flexible work arrangements, higher education institutions, zimbabwe 1. introduction flexible work arrangements (fwas) are currently a dominant subject during conversations by human resources practitioners, policymakers, and researchers globally because of covid-19 and other pandemics (bieńkowska et al., 2022). this unprecedented catastrophe has threatened the survival of higher learning institutions across the globe. author: dr promise zvavahera1 ngonidzashe elizabeth chirima2 affiliation: 1ibs university, papua new guinea 2africa university, zimbabwe doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i1.6300 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(1): 88-102 published: 31 march 2023 received: 15 september 2022 accepted: 13 march 2023 research article https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6300 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6984-6475 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0293-7780 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6300 892023 41(1): 89-102 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6300 zvavahera & chirima flexible work arrangements and gender differences in research to combat the effects of covid-19, portugal, the netherlands, and belgium successfully migrated to flexible work arrangements (johanson, 2021; mendez & carvalho, 2021). in europe, flexible work is regarded as a standard employment entitlement and employees are not required to give reasons when requesting a flexible work arrangement (glaude, o’hearn & erickson, 2020). in line with fwas, employers are expected to respect the wishes of their employees (mendez & carvalho, 2021). although the discourse on fwas continues to dominate conversations as organisations strive to create modern ways of managing the workplace, there is a dearth of literature that focuses on the impact of fwas on gender differences in research outputs in institutions of higher learning in africa in general, and zimbabwe in particular (conradie & de klerk, 2019). this is because cultural values and norms exert a mediating influence on the roles played by men and women in society and workplaces (hunter, 2019; zvavahera et al., 2021). gender differences in the effectiveness of fwas are impacted by traditions and the framing of gender roles. in the spirit of advancing female researchers’ interests, slaughter (2012) advises women to discontinue tolerating male attitudes, behaviours, and choices as the ideal and default for shaping their careers. women are encouraged to create a society that works for them. the study’s main objective was to investigate the impact of covid-19-related flexible work arrangements on gender differences in research outputs. the specific objectives of the study were to: • assess the desirability of fwas by male and female academics; • investigate the effect of fwas on research outputs by gender; • explore support systems aimed at enhancing research outputs by gender; and • in the light of the study’s findings, make recommendations on how female researchers can exploit fwas to enhance research outputs. 2. conceptual framework the theoretical framework of this study draws from two schools of thought: the hybrid work model and structural functionalism. the hybrid work model (see figure 1) provides staff with more flexibility and the option to work from home or any location as long as productivity is maintained (gratton, 2021). the model does not confine the workspace to physical offices, but considers the workspace an ecosystem of professionals using the cloud-based system to conduct business. it further assists in understanding and appreciating the experiences of working from home or any suitable location using ict affordances, whilst the latter assists in appreciating gender roles and how they affect female academics’ research outputs in higher learning institutions (shirmohammadi, au & beigi, 2022). the hybrid model is analysed based on two axes: time and place. due to the physical work area constraints arising from covid-19, attention has dramatically shifted to the place axis, moving from the traditional office to the anywhere quadrant. progressively, there is also a shift along the time axis to the unconstrained zone resulting in most institutions of higher learning moving towards the anywhere-anytime zone. academics are no longer bound to work in physical spaces, but can work from anywhere within the confines of ict affordances (shirmohammadi et al., 2022). institutions of higher learning are embracing the hybrid work model by moving towards the upper-right quadrant, which represents an anywhere, anytime model of teaching and learning. those that may decide to remain in the lower left quadrant will https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6300 902023 41(1): 90-102 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6300 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) remain in the traditional ways of doing business, which is no longer compatible with managing modern organisations in the prevailing environment (leighton, 2011). 3 system to conduct business. it further assists in understanding and appreciating the experiences of working from home or any suitable location using ict affordances, whilst the latter assists in appreciating gender roles and how they affect female academics' research outputs in higher learning institutions (shirmohammadi, au & beigi, 2022). the hybrid model is analysed based on two axes: time and place. due to the physical work area constraints arising from covid-19, attention has dramatically shifted to the place axis, moving from the traditional office to the anywhere quadrant. progressively, there is also a shift along the time axis to the unconstrained zone resulting in most institutions of higher learning moving towards the anywhere-anytime zone. academics are no longer bound to work in physical spaces, but can work from anywhere within the confines of ict affordances (shirmohammadi et al., 2022). institutions of higher learning are embracing the hybrid work model by moving towards the upper-right quadrant, which represents an anywhere, anytime model of teaching and learning. those that may decide to remain in the lower left quadrant will remain in the traditional ways of doing business, which is no longer compatible with managing modern organisations in the prevailing environment (leighton, 2011). figure 1: conceptual framework of the hybrid work model structural functionalism views the family as a fundamental part of society, where norms and values on gender presuppose the role of women and men (vineeta, 2022; airini et al., 2011; davidson & burke, 2004). the role of women in society is regarded as superior to any other role, including those assumed in the workplace (oláh, kotowska & richter, 2018; o'connor et al., 2015; ellemers, 2014; stamarski & hing, 2015;). functionalists claim that gender roles have roots in the tradition where men used to be responsible for activities outside the home figure 1: conceptual framework of the hybrid work model structural functionalism views the family as a fundamental part of society, where norms and values on gender presuppose the role of women and men (vineeta, 2022; airini et al., 2011; davidson & burke, 2004). the role of women in society is regarded as superior to any other role, including those assumed in the workplace (oláh, kotowska & richter, 2018; o’connor et al., 2015; ellemers, 2014; stamarski & hing, 2015;). functionalists claim that gender roles have roots in the tradition where men used to be responsible for activities outside the home (providing for the family) whilst women were responsible for domestic roles (primarily looking after the family) (o’connor et al., 2015). these patriarchal norms and values are transferred from one generation to another and are still persistent in today’s society, including institutions of higher learning (hawke, 2007; zvavahera et al., 2021). this has affected how women transition into the world of work and contribute meaningfully to research (oláh et al., 2018). farrington and ely (1993) note that men create rules that influence opportunities and benchmark success in society, resulting in a severe impediment to fulfilling female researchers’ desires. however, contemporary conflict theories assume that when women are educated, employed, and empowered, they can also have the power to influence equal domestic responsibilities (zvavahera et al., 2021). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6300 912023 41(1): 91-102 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6300 zvavahera & chirima flexible work arrangements and gender differences in research 2.1 a global perspective fwas have their origins in germany around the 1970s, and they rapidly spread across northern europe, the united states of america, and the west (kossek & mitchel, 2011; mutahaba, 2013; swanberg, watson & eastman, 2014; timus et al., 2014). fwas are currently trending in the developed world because it is the modern way of managing work environments. in canada, codes exist for employees with six months or more of service that enable them to request flexible entitlements. however, the employer should approve such arrangements (atiku, jeremiah & boateng, 2020; conradie & de klerk, 2019; hunter, 2019). in most parts of africa, particularly zimbabwe, fwas are less successful (chirenda, 2018). hoobler et al. (2018) emphasise the greater responsibility women bear in african social systems compared to their male counterparts: noting that fwas should be considered in african countries, taking cognisance of sociocultural factors, especially gender norms, values, and shifts in work environments. these traditional societal norms and values have led to undesirable outcomes for female academics at institutions of higher learning in some parts of the world, though the environment is somewhat flexible (prozesky & mouton, 2019). these unintended and unrecognised consequences affect values, morals, religious beliefs, customs, fashions, rituals, and the cultural rules that govern work and social life. the lack of adopting fwas in higher learning institutions may also be attributed to the exerted mediating traditional influences across countries (peretz, fried & levi, 2017). 2.2 the zimbabwean context between 2010 and 2013, the food-processing industry in zimbabwe tried to implement fwas, driven by the need to reduce labour costs and circumvent challenges related to worker protection and customers’ needs (mudzi, 2013). the initiative was abandoned, because there was a lack of policies to guide its implementation. this shows a desire for fwas, but inadequate institutional and home support systems were lacking. the same is supported by chirenda (2018), who notes that fwas are problematic in zimbabwe, since this practice has not been applied effectively and constantly across various sectors. no institution of higher learning has been identified as having established adequate support systems in the country. mudzi’s (2018) research corroborates findings by nkala (2020) based on a study carried out in zimbabwe at the parirenyatwa group of hospitals, where it was noted that flexible working hours for nursing staff remained an effective tool in helping staff to handle and cope with demands from critical stakeholders, especially patients, at the peak of covid-19. the major setback was the lack of guidelines on its implementation, reflecting the identified need for fwas. of interest was that female nurses were more prone to work-related mistakes compared to their male counterparts. these mistakes were attributed to gender roles and inequalities, where female nurses had to continue with domestic care work because of a lack of home support systems from their partners. in a similar study by shenje and wushe (2019), it was found that there was a positive relationship between a decrease in flexible work hours and job performance, especially concerning female employees, who attributed this to competing work and home responsibilities. these findings also concur with those by zvavahera et al. (2021), who found that african traditions perpetuated male superiority above women. mapedzahama (2014: 5) conducted a comparative study on working mothers in adelaideaustralia and harare-zimbabwe on their experiences in the two diverse environments. based on the comparison, the study concluded that zimbabwean women faced a “complex work-family interface”, which affected their response to different work situations. the study https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6300 922023 41(1): 92-102 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6300 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) revealed a lack of home support systems for working women due to culture, traditions, and beliefs in zimbabwe. zaranyika (2019) also noted that employers perceived requests to change work patterns negatively by employees preferring the traditional physical eight-hourbased conditions that give management greater perceived control. atiku et al. (2020) found employers’ support to be a significant factor in the effective implementation of fwas. fwas require stringent time management to balance work and home responsibilities (khairunesa & palpanadan, 2020). there is no clear dividing line between home and workingfrom-home circumstances, as workers may switch roles. multi-tasking, to take care of domestic responsibilities, mostly on the part of the females, may mislead loved ones about their availability. since it is difficult to work from home, some employees may not work efficiently without supervision. some feelings of unfairness may creep in when some employees feel only certain employees have work that can be done remotely. it may also become difficult for office-based staff to work effectively with telecommuting staff (madziwanyika, 2021). thus, although desirable, most of the literature available shows a lack of support systems in zimbabwean higher learning institutions. there is also limited literature on academic institutions and knowledge generation concerning fwas, particularly in zimbabwe. therefore, this contributes to the zimbabwean higher learning institutions’ perspective on how fwas’ policies and practices could be reconfigured to assist female researchers in enhancing their research outputs as well as their career growth. 3. methodology this study covered the period from november 2021 to july 2022. in this study, institutions of higher learning are contextualised to mean universities. the study used the mixed-method approach strengthening the results from one method with the other, thus enhancing the credibility of the findings and expanding the evidence (hafsa, 2017; bryman, 2006). even though the study was conducted when covid-19 conditions were relaxed, most participants were reluctant to engage in physical interactions. a cross-sectional online survey using google forms was employed. the electronic questionnaire comprised open-ended and close-ended questions. the close-ended questions required participants to choose one response, whilst open-ended questions required them to insert responses in the spaces provided. follow-up interviews were conducted to validate responses from the questionnaires. a survey link was sent to a network of 250 researchers across universities in zimbabwe. the network was a voluntary group with interests in research across various disciplines. the group consisted of ten research directors, six of whom were female, and 240 academics. to ensure anonymity of all the participants, a link for the survey was provided, and anonymised data were collected in excel format. no information that disclosed the respondents’ or their institutions’ identity was collected. 150 forms were completed, representing a 60% response rate. data were analysed using the convergent design, where qualitative and quantitative data were collected concurrently. the two data sets were analysed separately and merged during interpretation (and sometimes during analysis). a convergent parallel design allowed the researchers to concurrently include the qualitative and quantitative fundamentals in the same part of the study process, weighing the methods equally, analysing the two components independently, and interpreting the results together. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6300 932023 41(1): 93-102 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6300 zvavahera & chirima flexible work arrangements and gender differences in research 4. findings and discussion this section presents and discusses the findings of the study by addressing the first three objectives of the study, namely: • assess the desirability of fwas by male and female academics; • investigate the effect of fwas on research outputs by gender; and • explore support systems aimed at enhancing research outputs by gender. 4.1 gender distribution and work experience background information showed that most respondents were male (65%), compared to 35% of females. 55% of the participants were phd holders, whilst 45% were holders of a master’s degree. 12% of the phd holders were female, whilst 43% were male academics. of interest was that none of the respondents were holders of a bachelor’s degree as their highest qualification, meaning that all the respondents could carry out independent research in their areas of expertise. due to the high number of male respondents, the findings could be skewed towards male academics. levels of experience for both male and female academics stretched from zero to over 11 years. the majority of the respondents (65%) had more than 11 years of academic experience, 25% had between 6 and 10 years of work experience, and 10% had between 0–5 years of experience. more male academics (55%) had more than 11 years as academics compared to 45% of female respondents. of those with less than five years of experience, 67% were female, whilst 33% were male. the statistics revealed that the respondents were a mixture of novice and seasoned researchers. in such circumstances, mentorship and support from peers and institutions become critical. this was more important for novice academics, who represented 10% of the respondents, of which most were women. 4.2 desirability of fwas by gender figure 2 shows the levels of desirability to embrace fwas by gender. the majority of the respondents, 35% male and 32% female (67% of the sample), favoured fwas. 14% of male and 13% of female respondents indicated that they did not support fwas. 4% of male and 2% of female respondents indicated that fwas did not affect their work and were indifferent. interviews with directors of research revealed that fwas were the most ideal in the covid-19 environment, and that it was the best way of managing modern organisations. however, interviews with some respondents revealed that they were not even aware that such arrangements existed in zimbabwean universities. one of the female participants, fp1, responded, “i do not desire such arrangements because the competing work and home responsibilities are taking a toll on me.’’ https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6300 942023 41(1): 94-102 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6300 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) figure 2: the level of desirability to fwas by gender another respondent, fp3, said: i do not have the prerequisite tools from my employer to enable me to work from home. even though my husband is unemployed, he does not care much about assisting me with home responsibilities. i now feel drained to the extent that i cannot even think of engaging in research further interviews with other female academics revealed that it was not her (fp3), experience alone; most female academics were in a similar predicament. mp1 commented: women should understand that they are there to complement men’s efforts. this, of course, can be given an impetus if men are convinced that they will not lose their partners to some of the women’s male colleagues at the workplace one male participant, mp5, weighed in by saying: power outages are also affecting our workflow since we have to look for alternative sources of power. the cost of data for the internet is also beyond the reach of many it was a good sign that both female and male academics supported fwas. however, it was worrisome to note that gender-related challenges were not only limited to home set-ups, but even at the workplace. female respondents aired that home responsibilities demanded more of them than of men. the findings of this study corroborate the findings by nkala (2020), who noted that female nurses’ mistakes at work were attributed to gender roles and inequalities whereby they had to continue with domestic care work because of a lack of home support systems. in the case of power outages, women indicated that they had to look for alternative energy sources, such as firewood or gas. it was also noted by the respondents that when one is in a romantic relationship, some male partners might demand a lot of attention, resulting in less time reserved for research and related activities. the fact that some academics did not have the affordances to work from home is a sign that most higher learning institutions were still operating in the lower left quadrant, which means they were not approaching adopting hybrid work environments (gratton, 2021; leighton, 2011). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6300 952023 41(1): 95-102 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6300 zvavahera & chirima flexible work arrangements and gender differences in research the responses by both male and female participants were mostly favourable towards the adoption of fwas. this finding confirms previous findings by mudzi (2018), who found that the initiative was abandoned because there was a lack of policies to guide its implementation, not the support of employees. fwas portray modern organisations’ readiness to embrace change that motivates staff and improves productivity. if proper systems and structures were in place, more time to attend to family and work-related needs could be created. when covid-19 struck, everyone was required to work from home without proper planning and supporting tools, and the status quo remained. it was also sad to note that some academics were unaware of fwas, especially how they could improve their productivity and motivation. this could mean that when fwas were introduced, no explicit information was provided on what it meant and entailed to work from home. the environment was not flexible enough to deal with the dynamics prevailing in institutions of higher learning in zimbabwe. thus, mapedzahama (2014) concludes that zimbabwean women face a complex work-family interface that, in turn, affect their efforts towards research. institutions of higher learning with greater gender equality are more connected and thus easily meet their expected outcomes. this leads to the elimination of barriers leading to an increased appetite for research by female academics. nkala (2020) concurs with the findings of this study that fwas in zimbabwe lack consistency, purpose, and policy guidelines, despite employees’ readiness to embrace fwas. leadership in institutions of higher learning preferred the traditional work arrangements where they had better-perceived control over their employees. it is also important to note that employees no longer believe in rigid traditional work environments. the cost of data and power cuts also affected the effective implementation of fwas. in some cases, female respondents explained that they had to look for alternative energy sources, such as firewood or gas. at the same time, men used the same time for research and career development by attending online webinars/conferences. it is crucial to address gender challenges in societies so that everyone is given an equal opportunity to contribute to the socio-economic development of their respective countries. addressing flexible work arrangements without addressing the gender gaps would be uninformed (zvavahera et al., 2021). women are vulnerable and are likely to continue engaging in domestic work at home. the disadvantages associated with working from home counter-balanced those of the fixed workplace, as indicated in figure 2 above. 4.3 impact of fwas on research outputs by gender figure 3 refers to the levels of engagement in research by gender: 40% of female and 30% of male respondents (70% of the sample) indicated that research was moderate; 15% of female and 10% of male respondents indicated that research was very low; 40% of males and 30% of females indicated high research engagement; and 20% of females and 5% of males indicated that no research was conducted. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6300 962023 41(1): 96-102 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6300 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) figure 3: level of engagement in research by gender 35% of female and 10% of male academics indicated low research outputs. follow-up interviews with directors of research revealed that female academics produced fewer research outputs during this period owing to conflicting work and family commitments and movement restrictions posed by covid-19. female academics concurred that even though they were working from home at their convenience, they still did not have time for research due to competing home and work needs. they further revealed that the work environment was not flexible enough owing to a lack of ict affordances, internet, and backup power. both male and female respondents complained about heavy workloads, which they felt compromised their research efforts. inasmuch as work continued during the covid-19 period, female researchers found it more difficult than males to engage in research due to home and work commitments. the findings of this study concur with o’connor et al. (2015), who found that the gender roles of women in society are regarded as superior to any other roles they may hold, including those roles assumed at the workplace. the problem is rooted in african tradition, where men used to fend for the family whilst women were responsible for domestic chores, primarily looking after the family. the same belief is supported by hoobler et al. (2021), who emphasise the greater responsibility women bear in african social systems compared to their male counterparts. the findings also revealed that academics did not regard research as one of their key deliverables and their heavy workloads mainly involved teaching. it was also sad to note that this weighed more on female academics. another reason for this finding could be the lack of mentorship by senior researchers/academics who, in most cases, were burdened with administrative and academic responsibilities. institutions of higher learning must give their staff reasonable workloads so that senior academics have more time for research and mentoring upcoming researchers. institutions of higher learning should put in place systems that support research, especially by female academics, since their role is undermined, making it difficult for women to achieve a sustainable future. denying women equal and equitable access to resources denies half of the world’s population a chance to contribute to the socio-economic development of the global economy. hawke (2007) echoes that patriarchal norms and beliefs are transferred from one generation to another and are still persistent in today’s society, including institutions of higher learning. this also means that the academics were constrained in terms of time and place of work (see figure 1). the following section discusses institutional and home support systems in enhancing knowledge generation by gender during covid-19. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6300 972023 41(1): 97-102 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6300 zvavahera & chirima flexible work arrangements and gender differences in research 4.4 institutional and home support systems in enhancing knowledge generation by gender figure 4 below shows institutional and home support systems in enhancing knowledge generation by gender. 40% of male and 50% of female respondents (90% of the sample) indicated that they got moral support from either home or colleagues; 25% of male and 15% of female respondents indicated that they received professional guidance. very few males (5%), and 3% of female respondents indicated that they got data and access to the internet from their institutions. male respondent, mp4, had this to say: “i managed to collaborate with my peers at the peak of the pandemic and we published two papers.” interviews with three directors of research revealed that collaborative research was helpful during the covid-19 period fp10 had this to say: what i mostly got was emotional support from my colleagues and family, as we had to talk about the different challenges we were facing. this kept us going. my colleagues also pointed out my potential research areas and whom to collaborate with mp5 said: i got data to work from home. i was also trained to conduct online lectures. we also got training on how to upload materials on moodle and conduct examinations online. however, we did not get covid-19 allowances. at one point we were requested to come to campus, and this was like sacrificing our lives both male and female respondents indicated that lack of internet connectivity, cost of data, and power outages made it very difficult for them to embrace fwas. only 8% of the academics managed to get support in the form of data and training for online teaching from their institutions. resources were limited, since everyone worked from home, including schoolgoing children. thus, parents and children shared scarce resources like data, laptops, and study space. it was sad to note that 45% of the respondents did not get any form of support. interestingly, 20% of the respondents who indicated that they did not conduct research during the period were female academics. they further revealed that they had disruptions from children and neighbours. most female academics revealed that they did not get support from their husbands in performing domestic responsibilities, such as parenting and house chores. research directors highlighted moral, psychological, academic, and intellectual support as critical in times of uncertainty. it was evident that male academics did not assist much with home responsibilities during the pandemic. this corroborates the findings by zvavahera et al. (2021) that african traditions perpetuate male dominance against women, and this is further entrenched in roles played by women and men in society, leading to patriarchy. these attitudes, norms, and values are evident in institutions of higher learning where female researchers lag behind in research outputs (refer to figure 3). housework and childcare work tend to be more of the mother’s responsibility leading to unbalanced gender roles. multi-tasking of domestic chores and work, as well as the delicate balance between the two, can make the situation of female academics even worse. it was challenging to create a favourable work environment at home due to distractions and limited space, power cuts, and limited ict affordances. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6300 982023 41(1): 98-102 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6300 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) figure 4: institutional and home support systems the playing field between male and female academics was not level. therefore, leadership in higher learning institutions and families must shift their focus towards giving women more space to grow and contribute meaningfully to the national and global economies. it was worrisome that male researchers deliberately chose not to support their female counterparts because of stereotypes. with reference to the hybrid work model, academics operated on constrained time and places where the home office was not easy to create and operate from. female academics struggled to balance home and work responsibilities. 5. conclusions structural functionalism thus enabled this study to identify the embedded gender differences that result in different perceptions of flexible work arrangements and their impact on research outputs in higher education institutions. this study contributes to the shortage of literature on fwas in zimbabwe and the developing world, especially during pandemics and disasters where people cannot access traditional offices. the provision of empirical evidence on how fwas can improve the levels of research by gender in developing economies through engendering the research agenda supported by ict affordances is more critical now than before. even though institutions of higher learning in the global north adopted fwas, this was found to be different from the zimbabwean higher education institutions, which continued to operate in the lower left quadrant of the hybrid work model (see figure 1). this is because the government and other key stakeholders were not up to speed in putting proper systems and structures in place, including the legal framework to regulate the workplace. fwas are the most ideal, especially in times of uncertainties such as the one presented by covid-19. therefore, it can be concluded that both male and female academics view fwas as desirable. furthermore, institutions of higher learning should engender all their programmes and projects so that fwas can influence research outputs by both men and women positively, provided adequate institutional and home support systems are in place. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6300 992023 41(1): 99-102 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6300 zvavahera & chirima flexible work arrangements and gender differences in research recommendations this section addresses the last objective of the study, which is to proffer recommendations to leadership in institutions of higher learning and key stakeholders on how male and female researchers can exploit fwas to enhance research outputs. to address challenges hindering the adoption of fwas highlighted in zimbabwe and beyond, institutions of higher learning should embrace the hybrid work environments by moving towards the upper-right quadrant, which represents an anywhere, anytime work environment. such arrangements allow academics to work from anywhere at any time, provided electricity and the internet are easily accessible. this is only possible when supporting mechanisms are in place. there is a need to draw attention to traditional values and norms which perpetuate the dominance of males in society, specifically in higher learning institutions, and deal with them. both male and female academics need to be educated on the importance of supporting each other through the academic journey. this will assist male academics to understand the importance of giving female researchers the space to grow professionally. however, female researchers need to support one another, since they are in a better position to understand the demands they face regarding the roles they are expected to play at home and work. female academics also need to adopt non-belligerent ways of engaging men so that they get on board and understand their position and the professional agenda. both male and female researchers need more exposure to the changing societal roles and extend these to the workplace. organising workshops and conferences on gender equality and equity will go a long way towards reducing the research gaps between male and female academics in higher education institutions. this study’s literature and findings concur that fwas are a new concept in zimbabwe and other developing countries, especially in higher education institutions. carrying out extensive research on the impact of fwas on research outputs in higher education institutions is critical in informing policy, which is currently the primary missing link. embracing the digital wave is fundamental in advancing fwas in institutions of higher education in the pertaining environment, considering what is happening in the developed world. key stakeholders such as internet providers and mobile phones dealers should assist by providing subsidised data and mobile phones and related gadgets to students and academic staff. availing resources to support flexible work arrangements will go a long way in promoting fwas in higher education institutions. providing academics with data and alternative power sources, such as generators and 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https://doi.org/10.4102/sajhrm.v17i0.1079 https://doi.org/10.1080/13678868.2022.2047380 https://doi.org/10.1080/13678868.2022.2047380 http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-stillcant-have-it-all/309020/ http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/07/why-women-stillcant-have-it-all/309020/ https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01400 https://doi.org/10.1080/13668803.2014.931837 https://doi.org/10.1080/13668803.2014.931837 https://doi.org/10.1111/1744-7941.12030 https://bit.ly/440dfft https://doi.org/10.5871/jba/009s1.217 _hlk127951197 _hlk110521858 _hlk133437306 _hlk127560321 _hlk127608765 _hlk127887131 239 book review 2021 39(4): 239-242 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.17 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) understanding higher education: alternative perspectives a book review by dr felicity coughlan and daniel coughlan the authors of this book, chrissie boughey and sioux mckenna, enjoy a hard-earned reputation for their contribution to higher education and for the lucidity with which they make that contribution. this book however is a frustrating read. perhaps that is because their reputation raises expectations as do the dust jacket reviews of the book. the book argues for respect of context and thus i chose a partner for this review who is at a different point in their own academic career from mine to test the value of the book from at least two contexts. my fellow reviewer has a perspective on higher education recently informed by his own postgraduate studies and his perspective as a new lecturer, while mine, it must be declared, is probably more accurately currently described as managerial. our debate about the book was rich and that is precisely where the book will contribute to understanding higher education in south africa. one expects to develop greater understanding of higher education (in south africa at least) from reading the book. for someone not familiar with the extensive literature on what the problems are in higher education and where they came from, the book does not disappoint as it deals with all the standard concerns from massification to managerialism. this book has reflexive value for postgraduate students who want a sense of the field/lay of the land and how to use theory in research and it has the same value for academics in fields other than higher education that wish to enter the debate on where we are and where we need to go without only drawing on their untested assumptions. for these reasons alone it is an important contribution. what it does not necessarily achieve is furthering an understanding of why the problems, articulated so well for so long now in this book and in other spaces, are not being solved. if higher education cannot heal itself what social author: dr felicity coughlan1 daniel coughlan1 affiliation: 1the independent institute of education doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i4.17 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(4): 239-242 published: 6 december 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.17 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.17 2402021 39(4): 240-242 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.17 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) system can? is it possible to understand higher education if systemic solutions cannot be imagined or described? in chapter 7 the book offers a short insight into why we have made so little progress. it posits that changes in the management of teaching and learning and attempts to drive new behaviours that would foreground the contextual needs of students did not alter the domain of culture in institutions and we assume, the sector. those placed in positions that were intended to make the changes that we needed to create an inclusive system were drawn from the very personal and theoretical positions that precluded it. perhaps the most powerful contribution of the book is in this last chapter where the authors are explicit that a deeply respectful acknowledgement of the experience of students is needed so that, as they say, “the call for epistemological access must be held alongside the call of epistemological justice” (p.139). this is however, where the frustration is as there is little offered in terms of how this is to be achieved and only room for inference that what is in place is not working as evidenced by graduation rate patterns. an understanding of higher education would offer solutions for consideration or at least some calls to action. on the other hand, perhaps that is exactly the problem we face and the frustration in reading it comes from a sense of powerlessness about access to any of the levers that would result in real change – at the level of each lecturer, each committee and each management, let alone the state. here the authors’ use of the empirical, actual and real is useful to describe the resistance to change and the inertia. higher education in south africa is still bedevilled by too many of the problems that were baked into it by the apartheid government. that makes it infinitely more complex and multi-layered than many other systems in the world. the book does call out these structural inequities but does not suggest ways of dismantling them other than reference to culture. it suggests, but does not say so explicitly, that attempts to date have failed. as a description of most of the themes of concern the book does the expected work but as a roadmap to understanding what needs to happen next or how the parts of the system are holding each other up, back or down, the reader is left with too many questions for the book to claim to have resulted in understanding. the authors hint towards but do not address what they take the ultimate purpose of higher education to be and as one reads the book one keeps wondering what they think a “better” higher education would be. it does a good job of looking at some of the issues such as decontextualising students and it speaks about identity and the disjuncture between education systems in our country. none of this is new and while we have understood this to be true for so long now, we do not seem able to do much about this. the book ascribes some of this failure to the rise of managerialism and the disconnection of the professoriate from power in institutions but does not account for the lack of agency of academics in this scenario. it touches on the inability of some academics and even some disciplines and fields to really honour and respond to the context of students, but it goes no further. what does the book achieve? as a reminder of the core teaching and learning challenges in institutions it provides, as these authors always do, a clear and coherent synopsis of why we are not seeing sufficiently improved graduation rates and positive student outcomes as we widen access to achieve some form of justice. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.17 2412021 39(4): 241-242 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.17 coughlan & coughlan understanding higher education: alternative perspectives we accept that the book touches on what contributes to the challenges in teaching and learning (and thus student success) and that it attempts to place these in a context beyond each institution. unfortunately, the book does not address what can and must change beyond its calls for institutional shifts. its focus on teaching and learning is to be expected, given the authors, but it does feel like a missed opportunity given the title of the book. there are references to the tension between private and public good, the private sector and the social and economic pressures on students but these are tangential to the overall contribution of the book (and in the case of the private higher education sector generalised, superficial and barely accurate). by such a light touch on these topics, the authors miss an opportunity to leverage ideas that exist for deepening understanding. for instance, if it is true that the private sector has grown to about 15% of student enrolments because of a pursuit of private over public good is there an understanding of how successful this sector is in delivering on this expressed need? in a positioning of private good as “lesser” does the public higher education sector not continue to decontextualise students and their needs and aspirations? why did managerialism emerge? what is meant by this term that is used so loosely? is there a possibility that it emerged as an attempt to protect the university as much or even more than trying to control it? if that is even possible, how has it become so separated from the academy? these are questions that the book does not cover and perhaps should not be expected to, but if the objective is to understand then they cannot be glossed over and simplified the way they are. higher education is an interesting microcosm of the challenges we face as a country. the apartheid regime deliberately manipulated the notion of higher education as an intellectual agent capable of driving social change and development to try instead to achieve training spaces for reinforcing their lack of ethics and legitimacy. restructuring of the landscape as the authors point out did not remove this inherently corrupt history and it is thus not that surprising that the outputs continue to mirror too closely the history of each institution and perhaps even, institutional type. placed within a context of international social inequity such as outlined in chapter 3 of the book, the problems in sa higher education make sense but are no less depressing because other systems in the world also do not graduate the rich and the not rich at the same rate. the book spends time considering how the international higher education system has been moulded by globalisation, the new economy, reduction in meaningful state support, new public management models and high skill production alongside the pressure for access. it sees all these as moving the university (or higher education) away from its public good mandate towards a focus on the private good. it nods in the direction of student agency in the pursuit of private benefit but does so in a manner that could be read as slightly critical or the pursuit of economic success. while there is probably a general agreement that higher education should do more than enable the achievement of private ambitions it is also true that for most south africans, achieving certification that enables employment is the primary reason for studying. whether or not one considers that problematic does not make it less real and thus it is disappointing that the book, which uses a social realism framework, does not explore the ways in which higher education enables that ambition to be achieved. it does not matter whether higher education sees that as a core purpose if it is what students, particularly in south africa, are pursuing and that must be understood as part of their context. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.17 2422021 39(4): 242-242 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.17 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) the “correct” purpose of higher education is not directly addressed by the authors although there is frequent reference to what has changed and a suggestion that some of what has been lost or replaced is regrettable or damaging. if they are correct that higher education has been instrumentalised and commodified and that this has been at the expense of the “lost” elements and that this in turn is something that should be reversed or reclaimed, then this is the reality from which we need to work to regain that which we take to be missing. it would have assisted the readers had the authors spent more time explicating their understanding of what has been lost and needs restoring, what the ultimate purpose of higher education in our world now is, and once clear on this, how we can work with the social reality (that is aptly described by them) so that higher education can be understood and move toward its purpose. that being said, there are many important contributions that one does not always find foregrounded in the literature. for instance the reminder to academics and other higher education leaders alike of the need to recognise the contextual realities of students is important. the chapter that begins to touch on how academics are caught between their disciplines or fields (chapter 6) and the imperative to be able to teach in a way that grants genuine epistemological access to that discipline or field serves its purpose to highlight the complexity of being an academic in a modern university. read together with the failure of achieving genuine change in the way that academics teach and the way that decontextualisation can be addressed, but is not, there is insufficient responsibility placed at the door of academics to change their practice. the critique of traditional development and training is well made but no alternative is provided to address the disconnect between academics and students. there is some attention (again) to managerialism and institutional decision-making being dislocated from the professoriate and it can be inferred that this is seen as part of the problem. what is not addressed though is whether, under the pressure of numbers and research targets, the academics generally can or want to be involved in the pragmatism of decision making about institutional functioning. if one views the agency of academics, one must ask why there has not been an assertion of this agency with good effect in any institution in sa? it is therefore a book that should be read and then spoken about. it is not a book that provides answers perhaps as there simply are not any. thus if understanding is to be defined as knowing more about what questions to ask perhaps the book succeeds, and learning, then unfortunately does not. authors: chrissie boughey and sioux mckenna isbn (paper): 978-1-928502-21-0 ebook edition: 978-1-928502-22-7 epub edition: 978-1-928502-23-4 copies of this book are available for free download at: www.africanminds.org.za orders: african minds email: info@africanminds.org.za to order printed books from outside africa, please contact: african books collective po box 721, oxford ox1 9en, uk email: orders@africanbookscollective.com http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.17 http://www.africanminds.org.za mailto:info@africanminds.org.za mailto:orders@africanbookscollective.com 123 student levels of engagement in learning: a case study of cape peninsula university of technology (cput) eunice ivala cape peninsula university of technology joseph kioko cape peninsula university of technology south africa is currently faced with the challenge of undesirably low throughput rates in higher education. the need to keep students interested and motivated to succeed are key objectives of many lecturers and institutions. empirical studies have shown that one of the factors influencing student success at university is student engagement. this paper presents lecturers’ and students’ perspectives on levels of student engagement in four (engineering, business, applied sciences, and informatics and design) of the six faculties at cput as well as factors that contribute to and constrain these levels of engagement in learning. finally, the paper offers some practical strategies for promoting student engagement and success in learning. keywords: student engagement, engagement construct, an engaged university, south african survey of student engagement introduction while empirical research (scott, yeld & hendry, 2007; swanepoel, de beer & müller, 2009) has revealed undesirably low throughput rates at south african universities, a consideration of the specific situation at cput demonstrates that low throughput rates are evident in all faculties. in the faculties of engineering and applied sciences, only 14.6% and 33.2%, respectively, of diploma students admitted between 2002 and 2006 completed their qualifications in the time prescribed for the qualifications (data obtained from cput’s management information system). for the many students who do not finish their studies in minimum time, their lengthened studies constitute a prolonged financial burden to the university (which continues to outlay resources for the students) and the state (which subsidises the university). furthermore, students who take longer than the prescribed time represent delayed income for the university (the department of education gives universities subsidies based on the number of graduates); while nongraduating students constitute subsidy forfeiture by the university (cross & carpentier, 2009; swanepoel et al., 2009). at a community and national level, low completion rates add to the continued shortage of skills in the country, especially in science and engineering. if the low throughput rates are to be improved, institutions/lecturers need to keep students interested and motivated to succeed in higher education. one of the factors shown empirically to influence student success at university is student engagement. this study focuses on lecturers’ and students’ perspectives on levels of student engagement in four (engineering, business, applied sciences and informatics and design) of the six faculties at cput as well as the factors that contributed to and constrained students’ interests and levels of engagement in learning. the study also offers some practical strategies for promoting student engagement and success in learning. theoretical framework the study was guided by the ‘engagement’ construct, the meaning of which has evolved over time (kuh, 2009b). the earliest use of the engagement construct was by ralph tyler, who showed the positive effects of time-on-task (how much time students spend on activities related to their schoolwork) on learning 124 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 (merwin, 1969). in the 1970s, pace developed the college student experiences questionnaire (cseq), based on what he termed quality of efforts. he showed that students gained more from their studies and other aspects of the college experience when they invested more time and energy in educationally purposeful tasks such as studying, interacting with their peers and teachers about substantive matters, and applying what they learn to concrete situations and tasks (pace, 1990). alexander astin (1984) fleshed out and popularised the quality of effort concept with his theory of involvement in which he emphasised the importance of involvement in student achievement. since then, different scholars have made contributions towards addressing different dimensions of student effort and time-on-task, and their relationship to various desired outcomes of education (tinto, 1987, 1993; pike, 2006). currently, engagement is conceptualised as the time and effort students invest in educational activities that are linked to desired college outcomes (kuh, cruce, shoup, kinzie & gonyea, 2008). engagement encompasses various factors, namely investment in the academic experience of college; interactions with lecturers; involvement in co-curricular activities; and interaction with peers (kuh, 2009b). the factors that influence students’ levels of engagement are either student based or institution linked (strydom & mentz, 2010). the former includes study habits, time-on-task, interaction with staff, peer involvement, and motivation (eccles & wigfield, 2002). however, student-based factors are not sufficient, on their own, to fully account for engagement, and the institution itself, as well as the lecturers, are pivotal contributors to student engagement (pike, 2000; pike & killian, 2001). certain institutional practices such as prompt feedback, high expectations and clear communication of these, respect for diverse talents and ways of learning, and institutional environments that are perceived by students as inclusive and affirming, are known to lead to high levels of student engagement (pascarella & terenzini, 1991; chickering & reisser, 1993; kuh, 2001). in this study, a broad understanding of student engagement, which goes beyond students’ attitudes and institutional factors, is adopted. we believe that other factors such as the students’ socio-economic background and language barriers play an important role in students’ engagement in their studies. thus, student engagement should encompass the historically situated individual within his or her contextual variables such as personal and familial circumstances which, at every moment, influence how engaged an individual is in learning (koljatic & kuh, 2001). while various studies on student engagement have found that students’ background characteristics generally account for only 1-5% of the variance in levels of engagement (pike, 2000; pike & killian, 2001), we argue that student backgrounds in the south african context play a major role in students’ levels of engagement in learning. this view is supported by a number of studies (e.g. sternberg, 2007; du preez, steyn & owen, 2008; mqwashu, 2009). in addition, although the engagement construct does not include the effects of language on student levels of engagement in learning, various researchers (e.g. ayliff, 2010; müller, swanepoel & de beer, 2010) have shown that language barriers play a vital role in predicting academic performance. this is particularly important in the south african context because many english second language (esl) students entering university may not have fully acquired and grasped the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing in english, which are important areas of language competence (ayliff &wang, 2006; cross & carpentier, 2009; mqwashu, 2009). furthermore, most studies carried out nationally and internationally on student levels of engagement are silent on lecturers’ perspectives (chapman, 2003). we believe that lecturers’ perspectives are important since teachers deal with students daily in the classroom and lecturers’ results can therefore be used to confirm students’ reported levels of engagement in the learning tasks. to this end, we investigated both lecturers’ and students’ perspectives on student levels of engagement at cput, together with factors that contribute or constrain students’ interests and levels of engagement in their learning. student engagement internationally and in south african higher education institutions research indicates that high levels of student engagement are linked with improved performance; a conclusion which holds true regardless of a student’s socioeconomic background (mounts & steinberg, 125ivala & kioko — student levels of engagement in learning 1995; voelkl, 1995). students who are engaged perform better in general (willingham, pollack & lewis, 2002), have lower drop-out rates, pay more attention, look more interested and are more persistent in the face of challenges than disengaged students (skinner & belmont, 1993). conversely, students with low levels of engagement are susceptible to a wide range of long-term adverse consequences, including disruptive behaviour in class, absenteeism, impaired concentration and dropping out of their studies (lee, smith & croninger, 1995; steinberg, brown & dornbusch, 1996). as a result of the influence that the level of student engagement has on student success in higher education, there are efforts around the world to gauge student engagement levels in universities and colleges, using, for example, the national survey of student engagement (nsse), first introduced in 2000 in the usa (kuh, 2000). the nsse seeks to measure the quality of an undergraduate education by assessing how actively students are involved with their studies, lecturers and the campus community. it assesses the level of academic challenge, student-faculty interaction, the extent to which a college offers an active and collaborative learning environment, opportunities to take advantage of cultural or extracurricular experiences, and whether the college creates a supportive environment for different groups on campus (kuh, 2001). instruments with similar benchmarks are now widely utilised in australasia and, to a lesser extent, in europe (trowler & trowler, 2010) and south africa (strydom & mentz, 2010). in south africa, the council on higher education (che) ran the south african survey of student engagement (sasse – adapted from nsse) in 2009. this involved seven universities in the country, among them cput. the study was aimed at understanding the conditions and drivers of success rates in the south african context. among the elements assessed were five benchmarks for effective educational practice: level of academic challenge; active and collaborative learning; student-staff interaction; enriching educational experiences; and supportive campus environment (strydom & mentz, 2010). against these benchmarks, cput performed significantly better than the mean score for the ‘level of academic challenge’, ‘active and collaborative learning’, and ‘staff-student interaction’, but significantly lower than the mean score for ‘supportive campus environment’. the score for cput in the benchmark ‘enriching educational experience’ was similar to the mean score of the other participating universities. overall, all participating universities scored lowest for the benchmarks measuring ‘student-staff interaction’ and ‘enriching educational experiences’. for cput, the scores for these two benchmarks were 22 and 26 out of 100, respectively. while the sasse report indicated that cput had very low scores for two benchmarks, it is also possible that, for the benchmarks with higher scores (generally between 40 and 50 out of 100), there was wide variation among individual students or among specific groups of students. thus, this study responds to recent analyses (pascarella, 2006; umbach, kinzie, thomas, palmer & kuh, 2007) that have proposed the investigation of student engagement at levels that are finer than the five sasse benchmarks. to enrich the cput sasse results, which were highly quantitative, we felt that a more qualitative investigation of lecturers’ and students’ perspectives on student levels of engagement at cput was necessary. furthermore, factors that promote or hinder students’ levels of engagement in learning may be of benefit to the institution in designing interventions for enhancing throughput rates. thus, the study was guided by the following questions: • what are lecturers’ and students’ perceptions of students’ levels of engagement in their studies at cput? • what factors contribute to and hinder students’ interests and levels of engagement in their studies at cput? • what are some of the strategies for enhancing students’ engagement in their studies that can be applied at cput? methodology qualitative methods were used in this study because, in this context, they are superior to other approaches for identifying values, assumptions, expectations and behaviour (goetz & lecompte, 1984). 126 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 participants and context the sample of this study was drawn from the following faculties, who were willing to participate in the study: engineering, applied sciences, business, and informatics and design. students who participated in this study were enrolled for national diploma courses in construction, nature conservation, accountancy and graphic design, and the student sample was drawn from students in their first and second year of study. the study was carried out in the second semester (october 2009) which would have given firstyear students sufficient time to settle in at the university so that they could give informed answers to the questions posed. lecturers of the sampled students were interviewed, using the same questions as the students, to determine where gaps existed in lecturers’ expectations and assumptions about student levels of engagement, and factors that enhanced and hindered students’ levels of engagement with their studies. data collection for students, five focus group interviews were carried out, each comprising five to six students taking the same course. in total, between 25 and 30 focus group participants from four different diploma courses were interviewed. interviewees for the focus groups were drawn from students considered by their lecturers to have either high or low levels of engagement. for the lecturers, in-depth individual interviews were conducted. an unstructured interview guide (appendix 1) was designed based on this study’s research questions and was used to guide the focus group and interview discussions. data analysis data analysis of the interviews was done using analytical induction strategy (mitchell, 1984), which involves scanning the data for categories of phenomena and for relationships among such categories, developing working typologies and hypotheses upon an examination of initial cases, then modifying and refining typologies and hypotheses on the basis of subsequent cases (znaniecki, 1934; robinson, 1951). through the use of this approach, insights and evidence of differences and similarities between lecturers’ and students’ perceptions on student levels of engagement at cput, and factors that contribute to and hinder students’ interests and levels of engagement in learning, were uncovered. trustworthiness of data the trustworthiness/authenticity of information gathered in this study was ensured using member checks and all the interview and focus-group transcripts were sent to the lecturers and students who took part in this study for verification. ethical considerations during this study, all participants were treated with respect and sensitivity. activities carried out during the study were negotiated with the participants and informed consent was sought from every lecturer and student who participated. the anonymity of participants was also assured. it is noteworthy that, at the time of the study, the fundani centre for higher education development (where the study was conducted from) did not have an ethics committee. however, the director of the centre granted permission for the study to be conducted based on the ethical considerations discussed above. results and discussion the following four themes were identified through the analysis of the data which was done using analytical induction strategy (mitchell, 1984): student behaviour/attitudes; institutional factors; students’ background characteristics; and language barriers. 127ivala & kioko — student levels of engagement in learning student behaviour/attitudes a few lecturers (four out of 12) reported that students at cput were engaged in their studies while, in contrast, the majority of the students (20 out of 30) indicated that they had high levels of engagement in their learning. these engaged students, according to the lecturers and students interviewed, liked studying at cput, attended all their lectures and participated fully in the activities carried out during their lectures. the majority of lecturers (eight out of 12), who responded that students had low levels of engagement in learning, felt that the students lacked dedication, knowledge of what is required of them in tertiary education, the skills to study and to apply knowledge, focus, and time management skills. the nonengaged students were seen as immature and as having been forced to take up a course of study by parents. the latter point is illustrated by the following quote from a lecturer: a third of the first-years have no idea of what they were coming to study and what it involved. it is a curriculum mandate to them instead of interest. a few students (10 of 30) reported that they did not fully engage in their learning because of laziness, tiredness, being shy, falling asleep during lectures, not understanding the subject because they did different subjects at high school, or simply a lack of interest. the latter point corroborates results from lecturers that some of the students were taking courses they were not interested in. thus, student attributes such as attitudes, skills, academic potential, intellectual development, efforts and interests affect levels of engagement in learning in cput. institutional factors the institutional factors cited by some lecturers (four out 12) as contributing to high levels of engagement included the university being well resourced, the environment and lecturers being friendly, lecturers making the subject matter interesting, putting materials on blackboard, creating an environment where students are not afraid of asking for more explanation, using visual aids, scaffolding and group work, being empathetic and understanding of students’ needs and always motivating and giving good feedback to students on their work, the library, information technology centre, mentors, tutors and the writing centre. institutional factors raised by the majority of the lecturers (10 of 12) which impede student engagement included ad hoc changes to the lecture programme and a lack of lecture venues; heavy workload; students not having easy access to lecturers because they teach on two campuses; lecturers’ fast pace of teaching; students’ nonattendance at lectures; exposure to drugs; poor library resources; a lack of a culture of reading; use of degrading words on students, which lowers their morale; a lack of financial resources for students from poor backgrounds; and a perceived loophole in the university access policy. the latter response is captured well in the following quotes: the access policy of the institution needs to be overhauled because lots of the people come in who will never succeed in tertiary institutions. ... the selection process for students, students come in the system with very low marks, some of them cannot perform well. some of the institutional factors which were identified by students as aiding engagement were similar to those mentioned by the lecturers. in addition, students highlighted the following: a free environment where students’ opinions are valued; extra notes; guest lecturers; extra classes provided for those who need them; a cafeteria; the extended curriculum programme; discounted fees if you have a sibling studying at cput; and student loans and bursaries. these results support kuh’s (2001) argument that institutional environments that are perceived by students as inclusive and affirming may lead to high levels of student engagement in their studies. institutional factors considered by the students as hindering engagement included not being able to access the lecturers due to multi-campus teaching; a tight timetable whereby lectures are not properly spaced, leading to tiredness and a lack of concentration; struggling to adjust to writing assignments at tertiary level; not being allowed into the lectures after arriving five minutes late; not understanding 128 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 instructions from lecturers; skipping lectures to finish assignments; the fast pace of teaching by lecturers; use of difficult terms and concepts; a poor registration process; and unsatisfactory library and financial aid services. on the latter point, some of the students commented: assistance in the library sometimes is not helpful; they look confused and laid-back … financial aid people chase you and tell you they cannot serve you. it’s june and there is no answer for whether you received financial aid. it makes it easy to cope if administration is done early. the above results confirm the importance of institutional policies and practices in influencing student levels of engagement in learning (astin, 1984; chickering & reisser, 1993; pascarella & terenzini, 1991). students’ background characteristics a few (four of 12) lecturers raised the point that family support played a key role in promoting high levels of student engagement in learning. the majority of lecturers (eight of 12), who felt that students had low levels of engagement, gave varied background factors which account for this, with poverty considered as a major factor in students’ disengagement. for example, it was posited that students from poor backgrounds lack finances for fees, textbooks, accommodation and transport and therefore have to work to support themselves. the other major point raised was poor educational readiness as the majority of disengaged students came from schools which were disadvantaged with regard to resources and qualified teachers. as a result, these students were ill-prepared to cope with their university studies. the following quote illustrates this point: we get students in higher education that don’t know how to study and what it means to study and do the bare minimum to pass and they cannot do application of knowledge. other background factors considered as leading to low levels of student engagement are parents forcing students to study certain courses, a lack of motivation to study from home, and sickness and funerals in the family. from the students’ responses, family support was echoed as a key factor in encouraging high levels of student engagement in learning. poverty-related issues were reasons given by most students for their low levels of engagement in learning. one illustrated it thus: at home you have no time to read, you cook, clean the house, iron and at the end you are tired. another student commented: i am a bread winner at home. my siblings will ask for help. i am always thinking of getting a job to help my family, but i worry if i will cope. these results corroborate that poor educational readiness, a lack of family support and poverty are key background characteristics which affect student levels of engagement in learning (sternberg, 2007; du preez et al., 2008; mqwashu, 2009). language barrier findings from a few of the lecturers (5 of 12) and students (10 of 30) indicated limited competence in english and the language of the discipline by esl students as a factor which led to low levels of student engagement in learning. one lecture stated: the language being used to teach [english] the subject is a problem. students don’t understand the language of the discipline and needs conceptual understanding and using mother tongue helps them learn those concepts”. a student commented: “lecturers do notes the way they understand, but we don’t understand english. english is not our mother tongue so we struggle. we have to deal with … biological terms. the above results support the argument that english language competence may be seen as a serious factor which affects english second language speakers’ level of engagement in learning (ayliff, 2010; cross & carpentier, 2009:15; mqwashu, 2009). 129ivala & kioko — student levels of engagement in learning enhancing student engagement at cput: suggested strategies for improving student levels of engagement in learning based on the findings of this study, the researchers’ experiences and research in this field, strategies for enhancing student levels of engagement in teaching and learning in cput are provided below. these strategies will be presented using the themes identified above. student behaviour/attitudes student behaviours which are linked to engagement include study habits, time-on-task, interaction with staff, peer involvement, and motivation (eccles & wigfield, 2002). engaged students pay more attention, look more interested and are more persistent in the face of challenges than disengaged students (skinner & belmont, 1993). on the other hand, students with low levels of engagement are at risk of a wide range of long-term adverse consequences, including disruptive behaviour in class, absenteeism, impaired concentration and dropping out (lee et al., 1995; steinberg et al., 1996). based on the above arguments, the researchers propose that parents, cput orientation programmes and lecturers should emphasise to students that, while the university can provide all the favourable conditions to enhance high levels of student engagement, students are ultimately responsible for the effort they put into their studies. institutional factors students raised several institutional factors which led to their disengagement, as described above. to help address these, the researchers suggest that cput’s orientation programme needs to be improved. current practice confirms jama, mapesela and beylefeld’s (2008) findings that university orientation programmes for the social and academic integration of all new students are often very hurried and students are bombarded with a great amount of information which they are expected to assimilate. furthermore, the quality of these programmes is poor (cuseo, 2003), resulting in limited impact on the preparedness of students for higher education. for example, findings in this study indicated that some students are doing courses or programmes not because of their own interest and passion, but because they were not well advised on what the course involved to enable them to make informed choices. therefore, improved orientation programmes need to be designed. there is no doubt that many factors contribute to students’ interest and level of engagement in learning, and teachers have little control over many of those factors (lumsden, 1994). however, research has shown that teachers can influence student motivation; that certain practices do work to increase time spent on task; and that there are ways to make assigned work more engaging and more effective for students at all levels (anderman & midgley, 1998; skinner & belmont, 1991). also, research confirms that, to a large extent, students expect to learn if their teachers expect them to learn (stipek, quoted in lumsden, 1994). in the cput context, it is recommended that lecturers motivate students by ensuring that classroom expectations for performance and behaviour are clear and consistent; help students understand the criteria for individual assignments by giving them examples of high, average and low level work; make students feel welcomed, supported, cared for and listened to (zhang, 2006; jones, 2008) and respond positively to student questions and praise students verbally for work well done. regarding instructional practices, lecturers should give students work that develops their sense of competency, allows them to develop connections with others (jones, 2008), gives them some degree of autonomy, and provides opportunities for originality and self-expression (anderman & midgley, 1998). it is unquestionable that well-designed and well-maintained classroom facilities have a positive impact on student engagement (jones, 2008). at cput, some of the lecture rooms are stuffy with no air conditioning, too small for the number of students they accommodate, and sometimes there are no lecture rooms available for lecturers to conduct their lectures. it is proposed in this paper that cput revise the booking schedule of lecture rooms and improves the lecture room facilities to be able to cater for needs of the lecturers and students. 130 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 it was evident that some of the students who joined cput are ill-prepared for tertiary education. as a result of differing levels of academic preparation and in the interest of properly integrating these students into university life, cput should design a developmental education course as part of the undergraduate curriculum in addition to the existing extended curriculum programme (ecp). the ecp should also be further strengthened, as many interviewees felt that the university does not give adequate support to this programme. according to the interviewees, existing student learning services such as tutoring and mentoring are not known to all the students and the university should put measures in place to ensure that these services are accessed by students from all faculties. currently, these services seem to benefit only ecp students and those living in the campus residences. administrators and faculty members must recognise that virtually every institutional policy and practice (e.g. class schedule, regulations on class attendance, student orientation and financial aid policies) can significantly affect the way students spent their time and the amount of effort they devote to academic pursuits (astin, 1984). given the highlighted weaknesses in the aspects such as class schedules, the registration process, and the delay of feedback on financial aid, cput needs to improve on policies and practices affecting these and other institutional factors that affect levels of student engagement in learning. several studies have also shown that living on campus, as opposed to commuting to college, is positively related to engagement (chickering, 1975). the gains associated with on-campus living are further enhanced by participating in learning communities, which substantially increases student engagement, self-reported gains in learning, and persistence (zhao & kuh, 2004). in the cput context, only 20 percent of the student population lives in the university residences, and the university needs to find ways of accommodating more students in the residences in order to reap the benefits of on-campus living. language barrier consistent with research in the social psychology of achievement motivation, students who begin class with weaker reading and writing skills are less likely to be engaged, setting the stage for a cycle of reduced achievement growth (kelly, 2007). these results corroborate findings of this study where some of the cput students reported to be struggling to cope with writing assignment at tertiary level and understanding of english. it is proposed that the existing academic literacy and the multilingual projects (implemented in some of the faculties) be integrated into the curriculum of all faculties in order to enhance levels of engagement of the students who are struggling with language, reading and writing. student background characteristics findings in this study indicated that poverty leads to students taking up part-time jobs to pay their fees and support their families, which affects some students’ levels of engagement in learning at cput. although working while attending college takes time and energy away from academic pursuits, part-time employment on campus actually facilitates retention (kuh, kinzie, buckley, bridges & hayek, 2007), since, by spending time on the campus, the student is likely to gainfully interact with other students or staff. on a more subtle psychological level, relying on the college as a source of income can result in a greater sense of attachment to the college (astin, 1984). it is acknowledged here that cput provides part-time jobs to students. however, this paper proposes that cput should ensure that these jobs go to the neediest students as it may help raise their levels of engagement in learning. conclusion this study highlights that students behaviour/attitudes, institutional factors, background characteristics and language barriers influence students’ levels of engagement in learning at 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lecturers’ and students’ interview guide 1. do you think all the students you teach enjoy studying at cput? yes/no if yes, what makes them like studying at cput? if no, what makes them not like studying at cput? 2. do you think all the students you teach like the subjects you teach? yes/no if yes, what do you think makes them like the subjects? if no, what factors do you think makes the students not like the subjects? 3. do all your students participate fully in the activities during the lecture? yes/no if yes, what motivates them to fully participate? if no, what factors impede your students from fully participating? 4. do your students understand what you teach during your lectures? yes/no if yes, what makes them understand fully? if no, what factors impede their understanding? 5. do you have a problem of students missing lectures? yes/no if yes, what motivates the students to attend their lectures? if no, what factors lead to students not attending their lectures? 6. do you have instances of students causing disruptions or not concentrating during lectures? yes/no if yes, what factors affect their concentration? 7. do all your students complete assignments given and submit them on time? yes/no if yes, what motivates them to fully engage with their assignments? 134 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 if no, what makes students not fully engage with their assignments? 8. how do you encourage and develop your students to fully like and get involved in their studies? 9. what factors enhance students’ performance in your subject? 10. what factors impede your students’ performance in your subject? 11. what support is the university providing to your students to enable them to perform well in their studies? 12. what help should the university provide to your students to help them fully participate in their studies? 13. what factors enhance students’ success in their studies at cput? 14. what factors impede students’ success in their studies at cput? note that the same interview guide was used for lecturers and students with questions being framed differently for the students. 1042022 40(4): 104-116 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6849 entrenching internationalisation in african higher education institutions abstract in this paper, an attempt was made to locate the role of internationalisation in african higher education institutions (heis). it is argued that comprehensive international, intercultural, and global dimensions in the affairs of african tertiary institutions provide for a more nuanced and diversified higher education landscape. through a desk study approach, dwelling mainly on existing literature, the paper examines the issues of internationalisation from the perspectives of diversity and inclusion, as well as the roles of the relevant key players within those institutions to practically deliver internationalisation strategies that will put the institution on a global pedestal while remaining locally and regionally relevant. more importantly, strategies for achieving comprehensive internationalisation are discussed drawing inferences from literature and documentary sources. the interrogation of these sources in relation to the expectations of the current and future heis to remain socially relevant and sustainable is carried out. heis in africa must contribute to socio-economic change and engage with their quad-helix and eco-system partners to ensure that high end skills training, knowledge production, entrepreneurship and innovation are accelerated. in so doing, african heis must embrace diversity in its fullness including welcoming differences in gender, race, culture, nationality and providing platforms of engagement that allow for inclusion, and breaking silos to allow for a nuanced agenda of internationalisation. keywords: african, education, higher education institution, diversity, inclusion, internationalisation 1. introduction internationalisation has evolved in higher education in the past years especially given the high demand for mobility and diversity in the world. “internationalisation of higher education is the intentional process of integrating an international, intercultural, or global dimension into the purpose, functions, or delivery of post-secondary education, in order to enhance the quality of education and research for all students and staff, and to make a meaningful contribution to society” (de wit et al., 2015: 29). according to brajkovic and helms (2018), there is plenty of evidence that not only universities, but also the economy and society, reap author: dr kunle m. oparinde1 dr vaneshree govender1 prof sibusiso moyo2 affiliation: 1durban university of technology, south africa 2stellenbosch university, south africa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v40i4.6849 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(4): 104-116 published: 23 december 2022 received: 24 october 2022 accepted: 21 november 2022 research article http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6849 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2387-1258 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0756-424x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5613-7290 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6849 1052022 40(4): 105-116 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6849 oparinde, govender & moyo entrenching internationalisation in african higher education institutions long-term benefits from internationalisation. in their study probing campuses in the united states, they found that there is an articulated commitment to internationalisation in mission statements and strategic plans which have become increasingly supported by specific policies and programming that operationalise the broad ideals of internationalisation. higher education continues to experience an increase in international student enrolment and according to the institute of international education (2022), 43% of institutions report an increase in their international student applications for the 2021/22 academic year, which is almost double the increases reported by institutions a year ago. in many parts of the world, it has become germane to advance diversity and comprehensive internationalisation by embedding its ideals into the core practical affairs of higher education institutions (heis). previous studies on internalisation have mostly addressed the concept from a generic and broad perspective with limited attention paid to how to entrench the concept within individual institutions. for instance, in their book, the fifth wave: the evolution of american higher education, crow and dabars (2008) propose the idea of “fifth wave” universities that must position themselves to respond to the needs of students “focused on access, embedded in their regions, and committed to solving global problems”. it is argued in there that universities need to be “comprehensively redesigned to allow for greater access”. diversity and internationalisation play a big role in creating a high performing teaching and learning as well as research and innovation culture as can be seen in a few highly ranked and impactful higher education institutions (moyo, 2018) across the entire world. it is against the existing notion that this study forges further to argue that the future of education would naturally be more diverse and inclusive and, as such, each institution of higher learning must begin to prepare its own students for this changing world by incorporating diverse views into their career development and learning. attempts to provide a universal definition for the term ‘internationalisation’ have been met with academic bottlenecks. nonetheless, knight (2004), who is one of the landmark authors on internationalisation in the paper, titled internationalization remodeled: definitions, rationales, and approaches, advocates for a definition that may not be universal but that can however be applied in a broad range of contexts regarding internationalisation across many countries and regions of the world. the author sways away from a definition that standardises or homogenises the concept to one which provided rationales/activities for practitioners of internationalisation. knight (2004) perceives internationalisation as the process of integrating an international, intercultural, or global dimension into the purpose, functions (primarily teaching/learning, research, service), or delivery of higher education. knight’s perception of internationalisation is comprised of interdependent streams constituting a diversity of activities including curriculum and programmes, teaching/learning processes, extra-curricular activities, liaisons with local cultural/ethnic groups, and research or scholarly activity. as rich as the definition is, the author also recognises weaknesses in the core values associated with the definition as concepts such as partnership, collaboration, mutual benefit, exchange, are not stated but only assumed. it is worth noting at this juncture that the understanding of diversity and inclusion in heis is still under significant academic scrutiny. for instance, tienda (2013) perceives the concepts as prerequisites to promoting integration in heis by focusing on ethnic programmes and students’ social interaction patterns. scott (2020) addresses the incorporation of equality values and objectives in institutional strategy by stating that the matters of equality, diversity, and inclusion should be central to the management of higher institutions. as such, scott http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6849 1062022 40(4): 106-116 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6849 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) challenges heis, nationally and internationally, to develop and implement equality, diversity, and inclusion policies in their pursuit to become outstanding places of knowledge acquisition and creation. for this study, diversity and inclusion are the key factors in the strategy of internationalisation. in fact, these concepts are interwoven and all interplay to create a diverse community of students and staff in heis through different activities. most higher education institutions attempt, as part of their mission, to increase their staff and students’ training in diversity and inclusion, and include the concepts in their strategic plans. noteworthy is that as a strategic response to ensuring internationalisation in heis, specific attempts adopted by some institutions include increasing international student enrolments, increased opportunities for student and staff academic exchange programmes, internationalisation of the curriculum, joint degree programmes and joint appointments. in fact, many institutions have also established institutional units to cater for internationalisation needs and the management of strategic international partnerships. usually, the goals of these units vary, and in some cases, they are tasked with improving the enrolment of international students and students from different cultures or under-represented groups depending on the context in order to achieve a more diverse and inclusive university community. in many institutions, especially in africa, the imbibement of internationalisation is restricted to student enrolment. in contrast, developing diversity in higher education extends beyond the enrolment of students but also deals with the recruitment of administrative and academic staff. rationally, if the aim is to increase diverse student population, there is the respective need for diverse representations in staff composition as well. in the south african context for instance, diverse representation of staff includes the need to ensure staff from previously disadvantaged groups are included as part of the demographic shifts in the higher education landscape. coupled with this responsibility is also the need to ensure there is a component of international scholars, researchers, and students to help with the concept of “internationalisation at home”, so that local students and staff who may not be able to physically participate in an academic exchange programme or immerse themselves in a cultural exchange programme can do that at home, within the university environment. 2. diversity and inclusion as indices of internationalisation in general knowledge, the concepts of diversity and inclusion are perceived as an avenue to advance personal and societal growth in that they challenge stereotypical biases and promote relations between people of different backgrounds. although the concepts of diversity and inclusion are often used together, they are fundamentally different in their core meanings. nevertheless, the two terms can be combined to provide heis with a motivation to design a comprehensive internationalisation model. just as diversity implies variation, the definition has also received varying thoughts from scholars who have addressed the phenomenon through different social groups such as race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, religion, among others. from an hei perspective, diversity often connotes the bringing together of individuals with differences, and sometimes unexpected similarities (sanger, 2020). in the educational setting, diversity deals emphatically with pedagogy and people (students and staff). it is in this respect that sanger (2020) argues that a diverse curriculum and identities help enable critical thinking, communication, and the problem-solving competencies required to impart impactful learning for present day students. there is a remarkable distinction between diversity and inclusion. in brief, diversity precedes inclusion, or put differently, inclusion is an extension of diversity. diversity on its http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6849 1072022 40(4): 107-116 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6849 oparinde, govender & moyo entrenching internationalisation in african higher education institutions own does not imply inclusion. while diversity does recognise the differences, inclusion is the intentional act of incorporating the differences. in the view of sanger (2020), for diversity to enhance learning for all, it needs to go together with deliberate and enthusiastic inclusion. for adams, bell and griffin (2007), an all-inclusive pedagogy and curriculum promotes access to learning and belonging for all, which one could even conceive as seeking to dismantle the privilege certain differences or identities hold over others. in the view of tienda (2013), inclusion requires intention as it involves institutional and instructor-level strategies and practices that promote meaningful social and academic interactions among students who differ in their experiences, views, and traits. the fusion of both diversity and inclusion then creates a solid case for the concept of internationalisation, seeing that internationalisation on the one hand focuses on differences just like diversity, and on the other hand on implementation just like inclusion. a blended understanding of diversity and inclusion is a prerequisite to internationalisation as each on its own cannot fulfil the natural objectives of internationalisation. 3. internationalisation: the conceptual model according to the american council of education (2013), internationalisation is a strategic, coordinated process that seeks to align and integrate policies, programs, and initiatives to position colleges and universities as more globally oriented and internationally connected institutions. in what scholars such as beelen and jones (2018) refer to as ‘internationalisation at home’, internationalisation begins at home, and in the case of heis, begins with the daily affairs, composition, and the activities of such heis. the researchers traced the concept of ‘internationalisation at home’ back to the 1990s where the term arose as an alternative to ‘studying abroad’, which was being widely promoted at the time through the erasmus mobility programme. they also identify the significant progression in the definition of the concept as “any internationally related activity with the exception of outbound student and staff mobility” (crowther et al., 2001: 8); and further, as “the purposeful integration of international and intercultural dimensions into the formal and informal curriculum for all students within domestic learning environments” (beelen & jones, 2015: 76). the general notion of this concept has been commended for offering international and intercultural dimensions to the teaching and learning processes regardless of whether every individual is able to study abroad or not. this is a fundamental departure from the common knowledge of the concept as one which favours only students who have the opportunity of travelling abroad. as an extension of this argument, the paper posits that with the concept well applied, even students and university staff who have no opportunities for travel can be internationalised. the poor application of the concept by many universities has seen scholars such as whitsed and green (2013) criticise the concept as a mere activity and does not result as an indicator of quality or as de wit and beelen, (2014) put it, “pretending to be guided by high moral principles while not actively pursuing them”. this interpretation or popular understanding is that internationalisation revolves around the notion that international students create internationalisation, and by making this assumption, internationalisation and the strengths of local students are restricted; or it implies that internationalisation prepares students for mobility; or that internationalisation means the reception of international students. a more holistic and balanced perspective to the often-neglected areas of internationalisation is offered in this paper. the enhancing discussion in the paper centres on the american council of education’s (ace) model for comprehensive internationalisation: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6849 1082022 40(4): 108-116 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6849 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) figure 1: ace model for comprehensive education (american council of education 2013) the ace model for comprehensive internationalisation clarifies the genuine role of heis in fostering the concept of internationalisation using three lenses. the lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion addresses the role of institutions, individuals, and internationalisation in racial, economic, and social justice, agility and transformation, and data-informed decision-making. this advocates for an extension beyond numerical diversity to ensuring that there is a culture of internationalisation embedded in students and employees. the agility and transformation lens highlights the willingness of an hei to evolve and support structures in response to internationalisation. the data-informed decision-making lens ensures that internationalisation goals, progress, and outcomes are developed from a foundation of institutional self-study, measurement, and ongoing assessment. the first lens is further sub-divided into institutional commitment and policy, and leadership and structure. the sub-divisions for the second lens are partnerships and mobility. for the last lens, the curriculum and co-curriculum as well as faculty and staff support are the sub-divisions. the ambition of this study is not to fully explicate the ace model but employ the model in the discussion of how to entrench internationalisation in african heis which need to transform themselves into locally and nationally relevant institutions while pursuing their global identity. the framework assists particularly in systematically sectionalising internationalisation in heis in their bid to respond to the growing current changes in society. gregersen-hermans and lauridsen (2021) also note that hels across the globe are confronted with increasingly varied and sometimes contradicting expectations from the societies in which they are situated. these expectations partly involve their primary role in general knowledge and delivering graduates that can provide solutions to problems in their respective societies or communities. concurrently, heis are obliged by the authorities to serve national agendas and contribute to their countries’ global economic competitiveness and human capital resources http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6849 1092022 40(4): 109-116 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6849 oparinde, govender & moyo entrenching internationalisation in african higher education institutions (ilieva et al., 2014). this is where the concept of internationalisation takes a stronghold. gregersen-hermans and lauridsen (2021) contend that internationally informed research and collaborative partnerships can support not only the teaching and learning processes which will help develop skills relevant for the global contexts our students will face in the future, but also those which are equally important for living and working in diverse multicultural societies. in their words, internationalisation, thus, has both global and more local intercultural interests at heart. 4. strengthening internationalisation in higher education it has been the practice of heis to emphasise on internationalisation by focusing on international cooperation and exchange. in fact, most universities across the african continent now subscribe to the ideals of internationalisation by providing opportunities for international students, and in some cases supporting these students with scholarships. internationalisation in heis has, however, extended beyond the mobility of students, staff, and faculty through international affiliations and global partnerships. it now does majorly include an intra-campus internationalisation agenda. such focus on intra-campus internationalisation generally promotes peace and cultural understanding across borders while also contributing to nuanced knowledge production. it is within this context that robson and monne (2019) state that universities globally are seeking to develop more inclusive approaches that enable all students and staff – and particularly the non-mobile majority – to experience the underlying social, academic, and intercultural learning benefits of an internationalised university experience. as a first step to developing internationalisation in african heis, it is important to diversify topics, disciplines, and curriculum. brendan (2022) notes first the immediate necessary expansion or refinement of the syllabus to broaden the use of examples and case studies to embed the content in international experience and contexts. this diversification of curriculum can attract the interests of students from different cultures and races. to achieve this, there is a need to infuse internationalisation into learning through a global learning spectrum where related issues in other cultures/societies are brought into learning as a way of comparison and knowledge widening. vaughan (2019) states that a curriculum which is diverse acts as an agent for liberal and democratic values and encourages a mutual understanding of different viewpoints thus having the potential to make students reflect on their identity and their place in society and leads to a better well-being for those students and improved attainment. he states that by not making the curriculum diverse, there is the risk that heis are simply reproducing and reinforcing the inequalities that already exist in society. drawing from the notions of vaughan, critical questions pertaining to the diversification of curriculum revolve around the topics of the curricula, how we approach the topics, and how these topics shape the development of students in terms of internationalisation. put more simply, how the formal knowledge imparted in heis promotes the nuances of internationalisation should be at the centre of a diversified curriculum. by diversifying the curriculum, the hei creates a more culturally responsive and equity focussed experience and training (mbaki, todorova & hagan, 2021). internationalisation of the curriculum is the incorporation of international, intercultural, and/ or global dimensions into the content of the curriculum as well as the learning outcomes, assessment tasks, teaching methods, and support services of a program of study (leask, 2015). as a way of addressing the diversification of the curriculum from a wider perspective, mbaki et al. (2021) recommend that the curriculum could become diverse by positioning marginalised and underrepresented students and staff communities within the recircularisation http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6849 1102022 40(4): 110-116 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6849 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) plans. frank (2014) reveals that a focus limited to student mobility and international student and staff recruitment, with defined targets for the numbers of students and staff engaged in international programs or research representing structural top-down approaches, can impede a comprehensive understanding of internationalisation. hence, there is a need for a broader approach, including improvement in programme content and delivery. this is necessary to provide the benefits of an international educational programme to a diverse international group of students. thus, leask and bridge (2013) recommend that universities adopt specific approaches in teaching a broad range of students, including principles, such as the ability to respect and adjust for diversity, the provision of context-specific information and support, and the facilitation of meaningful intercultural dialogue and engagement. a second giant step in the internationalisation of heis is the diversification of the people – diverse students and diverse staff members. scholars affirm that the diversity of the student and staff bodies can be deployed as a tool to encourage learning and innovation through intercultural interactions. wiers-jenssen (2019) admits that the number of students undertaking higher education beyond national borders is increasing. citing norway as a specific instance, wiers-jenssen (2019) investigates how in the aim to achieve internationalisation in their heis, the country prepared an active national policy for internationalisation and student mobility, and quite rapid implementation of this policy at an institutional level. at the heart of this policy lies the reasons why international students have been increasing in norway with factors such as english taught programs, absence of tuition fees, and improving career opportunities. although this study does not make norway’s approach a blanket representation of how internationalisation can be supported at the governmental level, it is worth noting that african institutions can also derive befitting and suitable approaches for internationalisation. for instance, the complete absence of tuition is one which many african institutions cannot afford due to their own financial sustainability and over reliance on state funding. nonetheless, internationalisation, viewing it from the perspective of international students, provides an invaluable benefit for heis and the national economy. as wiers-jenssen (2019) puts it, international students contribute to the economy in several ways, part of which is their tuition and money spent on housing and other forms of consumption. also, international students, upon graduation, can also contribute greatly to the national economy through skilled migration. the direct result of this is growth in diversity not only on campuses, but also in the larger society1. just as the student demographic changes to a more diversified and inclusive one, the diversified composition of staff is equally important to cater for an increased diverse group of students. for heis, the human composition is mainly students and the workforce. as such, to achieve internationalisation, both human compositions should be affected in policies and formation since they will both collaborate in making the education process more innovative and practical. heis should understand the need to hire employees from varying backgrounds, both in terms of disciplines and types of institutional training, if internationalisation is expected to be at the forefront of their teaching and learning, research and innovation. promoting a diverse student community while ignoring the workforce will be counter-intuitive in the journey towards internationalisation. this is arguably so as the workforce will impart students with the agenda of internationalisation, and they will also elongate the culture since they outlive the students time within the institution. often noticeable, even in many institutions where internationalisation is 1 it is worth mentioning that issues around “brain gain” or “brain drain” and their negative/positive impact have not been dealt with in the current paper as they have been left for a current research project being worked on by the researchers. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6849 1112022 40(4): 111-116 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6849 oparinde, govender & moyo entrenching internationalisation in african higher education institutions perceived to be an agenda, is that the diversity of staff is often marginalised (stockfelt, 2018) while the diversity of students is prioritised. this is a fundamental error in the stride towards internationalisation considering that it is in the cross-pollination and collaboration of these two human components that heis can use to promote the exploration of new ideas promulgated through interactions with a wider range of international policy experiences and case studies (brendan, 2022). it was further discovered by brendan (2022) that expanding international cohorts brings greater dynamism to the class experience. in a bid to ensure a diverse employee composition, heis also need to be strategic in their recruitment. for instance, hiring advertisements must include statements that foreground international engagement and inclusive pedagogies. importantly, hiring committees must be equipped with the necessary skills that can examine inclusive and cross-cultural competencies in prospective employees. there is also a need for heis to recruit strong advisors who can guide and counsel students on the need for inter-cultural emersion, internationalisation and designing co-curriculum that re-enforces graduate attributes. also, alongside the international office units often created by heis to mainly oversee admissions of international students, heis also need to recruit diversity and inclusion officers (dios) whose roles can also include internationalisation on campuses. the responsibilities of the dios can include providing initiatives on how to get the heis comprehensively internationalised. such officers can also be tasked with the responsibility of developing creative ways of internationalising the curriculum and also coming up with curriculum in collaboration with relevant faculty that promotes learning other attributes outside the classroom. for williams and wade-golden (2013), dios or chief diversity officers (cdos) as they are sometimes referred to, serve as powerful integrating forces for diversity issues, collaborating and working through the lateral networks of the institution no matter how large or small their staff compliments. this is a point also conceded by martinez (2018) who argues that cdos must utilise multiple strategies to build relationships, secure allies, and convince higher education constituents that diversity benefits higher education in multiple ways. as the student body diversification gathers more attention in higher education, staffing in heis should also reflect the local and national demographics with a component of international staff, not just for the sake of rankings but really impactful “internationalisation at home” and “comprehensive internationalisation” with mutual benefits for both students and staff. a dedicated diversity and inclusion officer can, thus, greatly engineer educational and social reforms within heis. the argument of this study is further entrenched within the notion that internationalisation, when applied correctly, contributes significantly to the human economy as well as knowledge economy in heis. it is, therefore, through the advancement of these economies that the national economy can derive its own development. if these are to be achieved, it is not enough to stop at the hiring stage when considering internationalisation. students and staff must be equipped and supported to deliver the internationalisation agenda. to develop a strong and practical sense of internationalisation in heis, it is necessary for the universities and campuses to develop an internationalisation policy specifically tailored to the needs and demographics of the university. such internationalisation policies should constantly be reviewed to ensure that the diversity and inclusion nucleus is readily present and implemented. the policy must address how units responsible for internationalisation will contribute to achieving institutional goals on diversity, inclusion, and internationalisation. as a matter of importance, the establishment of an advisory committee to ensure progressive work in the area of internationalisation and its direct impact is needed. the advisory committee can then http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6849 1122022 40(4): 112-116 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6849 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) be saddled with the responsibilities of reviewing the policies to constantly ensure that diversity and inclusion are catered for in the curriculum and in the daily campus activities. in essence, a working policy on internationalisation will help identify and define shared goals within the institution. the advisory committee, alongside the dios, can thus collaborate to provide clear diversity and inclusion by infusing salient factors of internationalisation. 5. internationalisation and policy implications: taking south africa as a case in the policy framework for internationalisation of higher education in south africa (2019), it was admitted that the south african higher education institutions cater for growing numbers of international students, particularly at a postgraduate level, which in return necessitated the need for the policy. while the framework addresses internationalisation, the approach is met with some frailties. first, the framework perceived the notion of internationalisation heavily from the perspective of student and staff mobility with little attention paid to how heis can begin the internationalisation process at home. in the 65-page document, the concept of ‘internationalisation at home’ was mentioned thirteen times and with little attention given to the concept from an actionable point of view. thus, the framework was evasive in addressing the matter from an active point of view. also, on page 24, the policy states that “the focus of internationalisation of higher education must be more on the quality of the initiatives, activities, and programme content than on the quantity thereof”. while this is arguably right, it can also be logically argued with the earlier assertion that since there is a growing number of international students in south africa, the policy needed to address the growth in the diversity of students with what internationalisation also means in terms of growth in the diversity of staff and why diversity and transformation are important for human, social and economic development. covid-19 and its impact has also demonstrated to various heis that collaboration across borders can help build interdisciplinary research and innovation teams that are able to address both national and global challenges affecting health and climate change. there is still a greater tension though globally in the “universal nature and embeddedness in the national and local contexts as a feature of tertiary education” (de wit & altbach, 2021). given that heis in south africa need to now premise their own policies on the one provided by the department of higher education and training, it is important that germane areas relating to internationalisation are adequately covered in order to assist heis to develop a nuanced policy. at current, vaccarino and li (2018) note that there is little evidence that heis are taking on the developmental challenge of internationalisation. to build a university’s internationalisation capability, a strong, culturally aware, culturally literate, and culturally sensitive workforce is essential (vaccarino & li, 2018). they further note that to develop staff intercultural competencies and sustain an internationally competitive advantage, it is imperative for staff at tertiary institutions to be appropriately and systematically trained. to this end, the south african department of higher education and training have also invested in staff capacity building by funding international staff exchange and mobility as part of the university capacity building programmes. what is more important is to also encourage africa engagement initiatives through various networks to get other players within the continent to contribute resources to mobility programmes for both staff and students across countries. noteworthy is the african research universities alliance (arua) which has been driving collaboration and setting a research and innovation agenda to address common continental and global challenges through partnerships. in the current african higher education landscape, http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6849 1132022 40(4): 113-116 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6849 oparinde, govender & moyo entrenching internationalisation in african higher education institutions it is important to bring regional heis together to collaborate – otherwise the impact on regional development and fulfilling africa agenda 2063 and the sdgs will not be realised. vaccarino and li (2018) stipulate that internationalisation is an important part of a university’s economic, academic, and cultural vitality, and as such, many universities are increasingly investing in their human capital by training employees to meet the demands of organisational diversity, to become culturally flexible and adaptable in multicultural contexts. having developed a working institutional policy on internationalisation, a major area in need of the attention for heis is to invest in education and training on the concept of internationalisation. internationalisation, as rightly posited by knight (2013), is a process through which university role-players need adequate periods to learn, internalise, and begin to exhibit their knowledge of internationalisation. the design, content, and delivery of this training is also the responsibility of the dio who is meant to ensure that the university is internationally diverse, inclusive, and more welcoming for students of different communities and cultures. it is in the provision of relevant training that students and staff of institutions will harness the extensive benefits of internationalisation. vaccarino and li (2018) further pontificate that diversity has become a reality and being culturally competent is a vital skill required to work effectively with culturally diverse individuals. therefore, equipping staff with cultural proficiencies has become sacrosanct and undeniable. the achievement of the above stages, although in the right direction, do not signal the end of the internationalisation process. there is a need for constant assessment and evaluation to ensure that students and staff members transfer their knowledge of the training to classrooms, interactions with various quad-helix partners, and the workplace. this can be achieved using surveys and questionnaires where students and employees express their views on the practicality of internationalisation within the campus or respective environments. through these assessments, the level of understanding as well as deficiencies of the students and staff and potential benefits for immediate communities that are part of the institutions’ eco-system will be determined while they can also provide feedback and suggestions. in fact, the concept of internationalisation and its practicalities can be subjects of academic research where new findings are empirically produced to cater for the advancement of internationalisation as a critical cross cutting theme for diversity, transformation, and access to higher education. the results of the surveys can assist the responsible units, officers, and advisory committees to make important decisions when it comes to the notion of internationalisation and its impact on socio-economic development. 6. conclusion internationalisation has a key role in learning and teaching by contributing to both graduate and staff attributes that prepare the human resource to work in and with culturally diverse teams and hence should continue to be a core focus of the internationalisation strategy of any hei. through diversifying students, staff, and the curriculum, academia can derive a more multipronged, creative, innovative, and theoretical perspective in education and research. for a modern-day hei, the development of strategies for a genuine international learning environment within their campuses is inimitable. the internationalisation of higher education has many positive impacts on teaching, learning, research, and innovation, and on socioeconomic transformation. from an academic perspective, internationalisation also leads to improved academic quality through the cross-pollination and collaboration of international students and staff. viewing it from a social lens, it provides opportunities for minorities and http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6849 1142022 40(4): 114-116 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6849 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) marginalised groups as well as under-privileged people to access education in any part of the world. it is worth noting that as much as the internationalisation and globalisation of higher education has its positives, there are also a variety of negatives that future research should take cognisance of. one such negative is the danger of commercialising the internationalisation of education while lagging in the offering of quality education. what is advocated for in this paper is the internationalisation and globalisation of education for the purpose of promoting knowledge economy and socio-academic factors and not primarily for commercialisation purposes. it is, thus, the conclusion of this study that advancing diversity and inclusion in higher education will ultimately lead to an educational system devoid of colour, racial, and ethnicity issues for all nations while also helping to provide a bedrock for scholars to get their teaching and research done in more nuanced environments where solutions to problems are sought from socio-cultural grounds. for heis to remain especially relevant to the needs of the current world, the internationalisation and globalisation agenda must be rooted within the educational process. there is a need for constant re-imagination around the dispositions of heis to issues of diversity and inclusion from a holistic point of view without neglecting the training of the local 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https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x13516164 http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3392248 https://www.universityworldnews.com/post.php?story=20130123121225469 https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315318786449 https://doi.org/10.1177/1028315318786449 _hlk119928862 _hlk117449365 211 research article 2023 41(1): 211-227 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) optimising students’ participation during emergency remote teaching in the covid-19 pandemic abstract this study examined issues related to students’ participation and online absenteeism among students at zimbabwe’s universities during covid-19 induced online teaching and learning. more specifically, the study examined some of the ethical issues related to students’ participation and assessment during online learning in selected universities in zimbabwe. the study also examined some of the strategies that can be adopted to optimize students’ participation during online learning to make online learning a more honest and interactive endeavour. to fully understand the challenges related to participation and online absenteeism, the study extrapolated the perspectives of students and academic staff who had adopted online learning since the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic. the research was a mixed-methods study, employing a descriptive-analytical approach which utilised three main methods of data collection. firstly, semi-structured questionnaires distributed electronically among participants in the selected universities were used to collect research data. secondly, follow-up online focus-group discussions (fgds) were conducted to elicit participants’ views on some of the ethical challenges posed by online learning and possible strategies for dealing with the challenges. finally, follow-up telephone interviews were also conducted with lecturers with the same objective as the fgds. the study’s population consisted of 110 students and 77 academic staff randomly selected from six universities in zimbabwe. two of the selected universities were privately owned and four were public universities. the study showed some of the technological and pedagogical issues regarding students’ participation and strategies for optimising students’ participation during online learning. the study also shared some of the ethical challenges that arose from the adoption of online teaching and assessment systems and the policy, resource and training interventions needed to make online learning more interactive, while at the same time safeguarding academic integrity. the findings of this study, therefore, have implications for universities, learners and academic staff if online learning programmes are to be successful. firstly, universities for instance, need to ensure that students and academic staff have the prerequisite technological resources to ensure that optimal active learning takes place. secondly, to address the shortage of resources, universities should ensure that their libraries migrate from physical to digital libraries. universities should also ensure that both academic staff and students receive the necessary training to access these digital libraries and the services they offer. keywords: academic integrity, covid-19, ethics, online absenteeism, participation author: dr paul svongoro1 fennie mudzi2 affiliation: 1university of the western cape, south africa 2university of johannesburg, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i1.6182 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(1): 211-227 published: 31 march 2023 received: 12 august 2022 accepted: 14 march 2023 research article https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3186-339x https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0483-4200 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 2122023 41(1): 212-227 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) 1. introduction the covid-19 pandemic rapidly spread around the world in the last quarter of 2019 which prompted the world health organization (who) to declare a public health emergency and then declared covid-19 a global pandemic (who, 2019). to reduce the impact of the pandemic, many countries, including zimbabwe, adopted interventions based on social distancing rules and on stay-at-home lockdowns. these interventions had severe disruptive consequences which, in the education sector, for example, resulted in traditional face-to-face teaching being replaced with online teaching and learning. according to leung and sharma (2020), online learning (also referred to as e-learning) is a type of distance learning that takes place at a distance over the internet and not in the traditional classroom. while online learning was a necessary intervention, it posed some academic integrity challenges related to genuine student’ engagement both in terms of class participation and completion of formative and summative assessment tasks. put differently, when students are part of online classes, it becomes difficult to tell whether they are truly online and engaging with the class. when using zoom or google meet as video-conferencing tools, for instance, students may not be obligated to unmute their audio and video tools during classes, which may result in some students joining the class call just for the sake of class attendance while attending to some other activities unrelated to the class. in addition, when tests and examinations, for instance, are administered and completed online, it is also difficult to tell whether a student has honestly completed the work or if third parties were involved. in the light of the above background, the study aimed to identify and explore issues related to students’ participation during online learning at selected universities in zimbabwe. secondly, the study aimed to propose some strategies that could be adopted to optimize students’ participation during online learning so as to make online learning a more honest and engaged endeavour. in education, a strategy or strategies refer to multidimensional and context-specific methods, practices, techniques, procedures and processes that a teacher uses during instruction (stone & springer, 2019). borrowing from stone and springer’s view, this study proposes technological and methodological strategies which academic staff at universities can adopt to optimise students’ participation during online learning. 2. research objectives this study sought to explore some of the issues related to students’ class participation and completion of assigned work during covid-19-induced teaching and learning at selected universities in zimbabwe. to achieve this aim, the study sought to: a. examine staff and students’ perceptions regarding class participation during online teaching and learning; b. examine staff and students’ perceptions regarding the completion of formative and summative assessments during online teaching and learning; and c. elicit staff and students’ views on strategies that could be adopted to optimise students’ class participation and completion of assessment tasks without compromising honest as one key aspect of academic integrity. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 2132023 41(1): 213-227 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 svongoro & mudzi 3. literature review to situate the research into its proper context, the researchers reviewed the available literature in terms of four themes as detailed below. 3.1 the covid-19 pandemic and its impact on universities the covid-19 pandemic caused huge disruptions in higher education across the globe since its outbreak in the last quarter of 2019. of note was the demand that universities shift from face-to-face teaching, learning and assessment to virtual modes. however, virtual modes of study rely on the use of information communication technology (ict), online access and devices. in order for online teaching and learning to be successful, universities must put in place the necessary policies, infrastructure, facilities and strategies to support this (pillay & erasmus, 2017). relevant literature on the covid-19 pandemic and the disruptions it caused in universities can be grouped into three broad categories. the first is literature prior to the covid-19 outbreak (glasby, 2015; leung & sharma, 2020). the literature was supportive of the need for heis to embrace technology rapidly in teaching practices. however, most heis may have viewed this endeavour as expensive (glasby, 2015). as a result, prior to the outbreak of the pandemic, few universities offered online teaching and learning and many heis were not ready to transform their pedagogy practices. the second is the literature after the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic. such literature explores how universities adapted to online teaching and learning (bao, 2020; singh, watson & nair, 2022). the available literatures highlight how universities and other levels of education have had to migrate rapidly to online teaching, learning and assessment practices, whether they were prepared or not. under this category, early literature reveals the challenges related to the preparedness of universities in terms of ict infrastructure, data support and access for learners and academics and issues related to attitudes towards working from home during lock-down periods (bao, 2020). thirdly, as the world accepts the covid-19 pandemic as the new normal, available literature concurs that universities will need to continue to support staff in ways appropriate for online teaching practices. such efforts will, among other things, require quality professional development, adequate resourcing, and provision of technical support. apart from this, regular communication between academics and students alongside interactive and engaging course design can also support students within the online learning environment (stone & springer, 2019). albeit to varying extents, universities across the globe that have gone virtual still face challenges regarding the availability of ict infrastructure, facilities and financing, thus depriving students of equal access to quality education (mgaiwa & poncian, 2016). ict preparedness is generally very low in african universities (pillay & erasmus, 2017) including zimbabwe (zvavahera & masimba, 2019). these challenges have been further exacerbated by the widespread and wholesome adoption of virtual teaching and learning by universities in response to the covid-19 pandemic as a way of observing physical distancing requirements. apart from the challenge of adequate ict infrastructure indicated above, the transformation of education practices from the traditional face-to-face mode to an online mode faced the challenge of prior training and experience in using online teaching tools among instructors in https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 2142023 41(1): 214-227 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) the developing world. in relation to this challenge among heis in africa, singh et al. (2022) point out that, while academics in australia and other parts of the developed world had prior experience and training in online/blended delivery, african academics did not have adequate formal training in digital pedagogy. singh et al.’s (2022) study thus established that, while academics in the australian region used the learning management system (lms), academics in africa mainly relied on zoom and whatsapp. 3.2 students’ participation and absenteeism during online classes the literature available on learning during the covid-19 pandemic generally concurs that the covid-19 pandemic forced universities around the world to close physical campuses and shift to distance learning (bao, 2020; leung & sharma, 2020). studies further concur that the shift from the traditional face-to-face classroom to the virtual classroom exposed inequalities between low-income universities and well-resourced universities (pokhrel & chhetri, 2021; bao, 2020). students from well-resourced universities were able to shift to online teaching and learning faster and more effectively than their counterparts at poorly resourced universities. as resources for online teaching and learning were readily available at well-funded universities, students at such universities were able to participate in online classes without major hindrances. however, the situation was different for students from poor universities, as they lacked the necessary resources for online learning (zvavahera & masimba, 2019). this situation is an indication that the socioeconomic divide is wider than just the university resources, but student access varies significantly at each institution. given the considerable disruptions to face-to-face teaching and learning caused by the covid-19 pandemic and the deep inequalities that exist in the education system across many countries, the available literature confirms that students from poor families enrolled at universities missed their online classes, which resulted in a new pattern of absenteeism (pokhrel & chhetri, 2021). according to pokhrel and chhetri (2021), when viewed in terms of social class, students from low-income families had the most absences compared to middleclass and upper-class families. even those students from low-income families who attempted to attend online classes, could not participate fully in online classes, as they could not activate all video-conferencing functions of zoom and google meet due to unaffordable data costs. students often turned off the video function of the video-conferencing tools used for their classes to save data for the next classes. apart from this, students from low-income families chose to follow their classes asynchronously rather than synchronously. again, this was a way to save on data costs. 3.3 academic integrity and ethics during face-to-face and online teaching and learning situations integrity and ethics play a pivotal role in prescribing the set of values and rules that define right and wrong behaviour. from an ethical standpoint, values and rules indicate what behaviour is acceptable or unacceptable. today, academic integrity and ethics scholars (fishman, 2016; batane, 2010; blum, 2009), regard the two as central concepts in academia. more specifically, fishman (2016) and batane (2010), concur that academic ethics and integrity encompass many issues to do with associations between individuals, universities and other institutions, and the need to maintain a culture of honesty in all aspects of teaching, learning, assessment, writing and research. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 2152023 41(1): 215-227 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 svongoro & mudzi although a complex term to define, the international center for academic integrity (icai, 2014: 102), defines academic integrity as a commitment, even in the face of adversity, to six fundamental values: honesty, trust, fairness, respect, responsibility, and courage. within the context it is necessary to examine academic integrity and ethics in the face of adversity caused by the covid-19 pandemic. how have students remained committed to the fundamental values of academic integrity during online teaching, learning and assessment? universities make every effort to dissuade dishonesty and ethical conduct is seen as essential in academic life. as such, integrity is particularly critical in academia, and should prevail in all aspects of teaching, curriculum and research (fishman, 2016). while ethics emphasise a set of values and rules that distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable behaviour, academic integrity focuses on the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles, moral uprightness, fairness and respect. central to academic integrity is honest and responsible scholarship. university policies, regulations and expectation globally encourages and demands academic integrity and ethics. emergency remote teaching and learning during covid-19 resulted in new challenges to academic integrity and ethics with the proliferation of online delivery and quick shifts in teaching and learning, presenting numerous challenges for most higher education institutions (see for example, gamage, de silva & gunawardhana, 2020; oxford university, 2020). most universities have found it extremely difficult to safeguard academic integrity. for example, most universities have not been able to conduct invigilated assessments, which are often considered more secure than non-invigilated assessment. most universities also do not have the costly mechanisms to check for cheating and fraudulent activities in an online environment. in short, the above research studies concur that most universities lack the capacity, infrastructure and tools to safeguard assessment security during online assessment, face the challenge of enforcing assessment regulations. this may result in academic dishonesty such as third parties taking the examination, using search engines, textbooks and cheat sheets during examinations (gamage et al., 2020). 3.4 strategies for optimising students’ participation during online learning situations the literature available on online teaching during the covid-19 period confirms that universities that are transitioning to online teaching and learning practices rather than the traditional face-to-face model require various strategies to ensure the success of their e-learning programmes. as alluded to before in the introduction of the study, strategies broadly refer to the various methods, practices, techniques, procedures and processes that academic staff in universities can utilise during online teaching. academic staff, therefore, need to focus much of their effort on the design and delivery of their curriculum to ensure motivation, engagement and an effective change to learner achievement (bennett, maton & kevin, 2008; oliver et al., 2014). the literature further confirms that such transition not only relies on institutional infrastructure, tools and digital literacy. students also require the resources, motivation and digital literacy to engage with online learning in a meaningful manner (bennett et al., 2008). strategies and approaches to online teaching, learning and assessment are multidimensional and context-specific and should therefore not be used in the same way for different students, disciplines and situations (stone & springer, 2019). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 2162023 41(1): 216-227 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) the rapid changes in the pedagogical approaches will have varying effects on students’ abilities to interact with learning in an effective and efficient manner. a number of learning management systems (lms) such as blackboard and moodle are readily used in australia and can be designed to inculcate in students what is referred to as “transmissive” pedagogies that do not necessarily allow for creativity, critical thinking and social interactivity (oliver et al., 2014). however, a skilled academic, proficient in online teaching can create teaching and learning opportunities that are creative, innovative, interactive and engaging even in the absence of a fully developed and appropriate lms system (pokhrel & chhetri, 2021). the importance of maintaining interpersonal communication and interaction between academics and their students has been an important criterion in maintaining quality teaching, learning and assessment, particularly in online delivery (martin, budhrani & wang, 2019; radu et al., 2020; rapanta et al., 2020). as such, a number of other digital technologies using video conferencing tools such as zoom, microsoft teams, whatsapp, blackboard, and moodle to name a few, have been used extensively as a method of synchronous, webbased conferencing to keep students engaged through virtual communication (radu et al., 2020). some noted advantages of using zoom have been identified as rapport, convenience, simplicity and user-friendliness (archibald et al., 2019; radu et al., 2020; valet, 2020). however, regardless of the technologies used, research on learner performance outcomes shows that the instructor’s design efforts that address learners’ cognitive and social needs rather than simply the technology itself (oliver et al., 2015) make a positive difference in learning outcomes (rapanta et al., 2020). 4. theoretical framework this study adopted khan’s (2001) e-learning framework to analyse the data collected for this study. the framework also recently used by singh et al. (2022) is appropriate for this study. khan’s eight-dimension e-learning framework provides a comprehensive process which can assist heis to successfully migrate to online learning. khan’s framework is based on eight dimensions and sub-dimensions for successful e-learning. in his framework, khan demands introspection of heis pertaining to the question “what does it take to provide the best and most meaningful flexible learning environment for leaners worldwide?” to answer this question, khan urges heis to consider factors that affect the successful delivery of e-learning at three levels. these levels are the learner level, the academic staff level and institution level (lightfoot, 2016). as regards the institutional dimension, khan (2001) focuses on issues of administrative affairs, academic affairs and student services. the pedagogical dimension of e-learning refers to teaching and learning. the technological dimension of the framework examines issues of technology infrastructure in e-learning environments. the interface design refers to the overall look and feel of e-learning programmes. the management of e-learning refers to the maintenance of the e-learning environment and distribution of related information. the resource-support dimension of the framework examines the online support and resources provided in the learning environment. the evaluation dimension explores the assessment of learners and the evaluation of the instruction and learning environment. the ethical considerations of e-learning relate to social and cultural diversity. in figure 1 below, the researchers present khan’s eight-dimensional e-learning framework in diagrammatic form. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 2172023 41(1): 217-227 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 svongoro & mudzi figure 1: badrul khan’s eight-dimensional e-learning framework while khan proposes the above eight dimensions that higher education institutions need to consider when evaluating their e-learning environments, for the purposes of this study, the researchers only considered four of khan’s dimensions. the four that were considered were the pedagogical, technological, resource support, evaluation, and ethical dimensions of the framework. by so doing, the researchers were able to delve into an in-depth examination regarding how online programmes were conducted in heis in zimbabwe in view of issues related to learners’ participation on the various online teaching and learning platforms and learners’ adherence to academic integrity and ethical issues during online teaching and learning. 5. research methodology this interpretive study (i) elicited the views of university students and academic staff regarding issues related to students’ participation during covid-19 induced online learning in zimbabwe, and (ii) elicited students and academic staff’s views on strategies for optimising students’ participation during online learning. the period investigated stretched from the period the government of zimbabwe announced the total lockdown in may 2020 until the partial reopening of schools and universities in november 2020. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 2182023 41(1): 218-227 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) a qualitative approach was adopted to generate data from participants who were (i) undergraduate and postgraduate university students, and (ii) academic staff during the period of the study. due to the covid-19 environment in zimbabwe at the time of conducting the research, characterised by stay-at-home measures, the researchers collected data remotely. first, self-constructed questionnaires (one for students and another for staff) with open and closed-ended items were distributed electronically using google forms. the online questionnaire was initially electronically distributed using academic staff and students’ social networks. academic staff and students would in turn further circulate the questionnaire in their networks using the whatsapp platform and direct emails. a total of 77 academics and 110 students at the six universities who volunteered to participate in the study completed and returned the semi-structured online questionnaire. the online questionnaire took approximately 20 minutes to complete and was anonymous. while the demographic data collected identified the university in terms of its category (private/private), the participant’s position (student/academic), and years of experience (in the case of academic staff), all reporting was done anonymously. the researchers also used two follow-up online focus-group discussions (fgds) with students and lecturers to further elicit students and lecturers’ views on some of the ethical challenges posed by online learning and possible strategies for dealing with the challenges. the fgds were conducted using google meet. the fgd for students comprised 43 students who volunteered to participate in the fgd and lasted about one 60 minutes. the fgd for academic staff had 21 academics drawn from the private and public universities that participated in the study and also lasted for about 90 minutes. in a similar way, seven followup telephone interviews were also conducted with lecturers with the same objective. it is important to note that the both fgds and the telephone interviews with students and academic staff were conducted a few weeks after the initial thematic analysis and coding of responses from the semi-structured questionnaires for both students and academic staff had begun. this enabled the researchers to develop follow-up questions which then guided the fgds and the telephone interviews. the questions were based on recurring responses in the semi-structured questionnaires and therefore allowed the researcher to further probe the initial responses in the questionnaires. 6. findings and discussion 6.1 the demographics a total of 187 valid questionnaires were returned. of the valid responses returned, 77 were returned by academic staff and 110 by students. of the valid questionnaires returned by students, 19% were returned by postgraduate students and 81% by undergraduate students. a total of 37% of these responses were from academic staff and students from private universities and 63% from public universities. females accounted for 58.6% of the respondents and the remainder were males. this is perhaps because of the increasing number of female students enrolled at zimbabwean universities compared to male students enrolled at the same institutions. as regards academic staff hierarchy, academic staff from the lecturer’s grade had the highest participation rate, had more than five years’ teaching experience in universities, and were permanently employed. other academic staff who participated in the study included teaching assistants (tutors) and part-time lecturers. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 2192023 41(1): 219-227 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 svongoro & mudzi 6.2 participants’ perceptions regarding class participation firstly, in respect of students and academic staff’s general perceptions regarding online learning, the analysis of the data collected showed that due to data resource constraints in zimbabwe’s heis, the most common online platform was whatsapp, followed by google meet, and then zoom in that order. one private university also used moodle as a course management system (cms). during the time the study was conducted, no institution had yet adopted microsoft teams and blackboard as online teaching and learning management system, respectively. apart from whatsapp, google meet and zoom, three public universities whose students and academic staff participated in the study also relied on locally developed course management systems namely tsime (which loosely means the well where one can go and drink “academic” water) and changamire (which loosely means champion in learning). while both students and academic staff acknowledged the disruptions caused by covid-19 to traditional face-to-face teaching and learning and agreed that online learning was a necessary and useful intervention, they concurred that online teaching and learning were less effective, especially considering that most students, heis and academics were not prepared and were inadequately resourced. while this finding confirms the findings by zvavahera and masimba (2019) about heis in zimbabwe, studies by rapanta et al. (2020) and oliver et al. (2020) reported opposite results. for this reason, academics at both private and public universities agreed that, due to lack of resources (financial and technological), online learning was a useful temporary intervention during the covid-19 period which, however, cannot currently function as a replacement of face-to-face learning. further, as previously reported by radu et al. (2020), academics also agreed that blended learning is a better alternative to 100% online learning. although the above views emerged as the dominant views shared by the respondents who participated in this study, a few students from one private university acknowledged the advantages of online learning. student#47’s response was: online teaching and learning has the advantage that one can learn at their own time and pace, is associated with lower costs on transport, food and accommodation. i see it as more convenient and flexible. from the students’ responses in the semi-structured questionnaire and also confirmed by their views during their fgd, students across universities and disciplines found online learning a useful means to learn and compensate for time lost when heis were closed during the lockdown. most concurred that, despite the resource constraints they faced, the wide range of online learning platforms provided by their universities were adequate to meet their needs for synchronous and asynchronous learning. students who lacked resources for synchronous learning would catch up with their learning as material was made available on their whatsapp platforms, by email and on course management systems such as moodle, tsime and changamire. students also confirmed that their class participation, which was initially very low during the initial phase of the implementation of online learning, improved after their institutions began offering training on the use of the relevant online teaching platforms. this finding corroborates findings from the study by singh et al. (2022), who emphasize the need for continuous training on digital pedagogy for both staff and students. after the various training programmes offered in their institutions, students started to realise that the learning platforms were not as daunting to use as imagined. one student, student#73’s view was that: https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 2202023 41(1): 220-227 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) at first, we were so sceptical about google meet. yes, our scepticism was worsened when our participation on the platform was affected by frequent power outages and loss of connectivity that zimbabwe faces as a whole. but after some time using the platform, our confidence in using the platform grew and our participating during online discussions on the platform improved. i can now make good presentations and share my powerpoint slides with others without any hesitations. however, students lamented the time limitations for further interactions with other students and their lecturers. students reported that because online learning platforms depend on data availability and usage, every student’s primary concern becomes that of saving data for critical classes only. instead of having one-on-one meetings with their lecturers or with other students for follow-up discussions, they would rather listen to the class recordings asynchronously after the class has taken place. academic staff also confirmed the above response by students during follow-up telephone interviews. one lecturer, interviewlecturer#3, reported: our students really miss student to student interactions typical of face-to-face classroom activities and this hurts their learning experience. as lecturers, we know the value of peer interactions as they support optimal active learning among students. it is unfortunate that we do not have adequate for such collaborative activities during our online classes. however, to address the above interaction gap between students, bennett et al. (2008) and oliver et al. (2014) urge academics to put in an extra effort in the design and delivery of online curriculum to ensure motivation and engagement of learners. one question that both the questionnaire for academic staff and students asked regarded whether the students honestly joined class calls and genuinely participated. most academic staff indicated that they could not dismiss cases of online absenteeism. by this, they meant students who joined the class call for the sake of being marked present; yet they would be busy with something else. they indicated that heis do not have the right to police class attendance and participation by demanding that students’ videos be turned on, for instance. to minimize on this student behaviour, some lecturers indicated that they sometimes randomly called out students’ names to check on attendance and participation but conceded that this strategy only works to some extent. during the fgd for staff, one lecturer, lecturer#11 responded as follows: due to personal privacy and data protection issues, and when universities like ours have not provided students with data or gargets to use for online learning, we as lecturers cannot dictate how the learning will proceed. during the same fgd for lecturers, one lecturer reported on an incident where student privacy was unintentionally invaded. a student turned on his video by mistake, and the whole class laughed when they noticed he was sleeping on his bed barely dressed and not following the class at all. even the students themselves confirmed the challenges related to enforcing class attendance and participation during online learning. during the fgd for students, one student, student#17’s, though being honest about herself, said that: i was following most of my online classes from the boutique i was working when the economy was slowly re-opening to raise income for my upkeep. when the boutique was not busy, i would make an effort to follow the class. but when busy, i would focus on customers. however, when i got home, i would then make an effort to listen to the day’s recordings and catch up. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 2212023 41(1): 221-227 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 svongoro & mudzi lecturers and students alike also agreed that living conditions at home for most families are not always suitable for engagement in online learning activities. being a developing country, most families in zimbabwe live in overcrowded homes in townships, slums and rural areas. such living conditions are not ideal for effective online learning as the environment is prone to distractions from family members and neighbours. this partly explains why most students were not keen on turning on their video buttons. regarding the issue of environmental distractions at home which affected class participation during online learning, lecturers confirmed that quite a number of times they had to ask their students to mute their microphones because of excessive noise in the background. this is perhaps the reason why radu et al. (2020) posit that continuous communication between lecturers and students is very critical for the success of online learning programmes. in the case of distractions, lecturers constantly need to remind their learners about the importance of their learning environment. finally, data collected for the study also confirmed class participation challenges by students with special needs. such students who would normally receive some kind of assistance from the institutions’ disability resources centres (drcs) during face-to-face teaching contexts, could not receive the assistance they needed during online learning at home. 6.3 participants’ perceptions regarding completion of assessment tasks academic staff generally agreed that, in order to make online learning more effective, students were expected to complete more assignments than in face-to-face teaching contexts. they viewed those assessment tasks as an opportunity for students’ interaction and engagement, as confirmed in a previous study by pokhrel and chhetri (2021). these tasks were meant to allow students more time to practise and interact with their subject matter. when asked about their views regarding students and completion of assigned assignments, academicstaff#56’s response was: in remote teaching contexts, we expect students to complete more assignments than in traditional face-to-face teaching. the assignments fill in the gap for lost contact hours with tutors. however, i’m not sure whether the students complete the students on their own or not. i’ve wondered how some weak students have all of a sudden started to submit very good pieces of work in some of my courses. the doubt lecturers had regarding whether students completed assigned work on their own or not was generally shared by most academic staff across universities and study disciplines, including those in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines. this finding is also reported in more studies (gamage et al, 2020; oxford university, 2020). one lecturer, academicstaff#83’s response was: we will see how smart our students have become during the covid-19 period when we revert to normal face-to-face learning. i have doubts in tests and exams completed at home online. while academic staff emphasised the importance of online assignments or tasks, albeit with reservations, as indicated in their views above, students across universities and disciplines viewed online assignments as a flexible and a useful source of individual learning. student#33 had this to say: online assignments are flexible and a rich source of learning for students. we have all the time to access and research them. when one is not sure about how to tackle an assignment he/she can check with friends and there is nothing wrong about that. as students, we learn better from each other and from how we manage our work and time … https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 2222023 41(1): 222-227 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) what the response above points at are some of the advantages of online assignments. first, the students can collaborate with other students (teamwork), they plan which assignment to work on first (time management) and ensure that they meet deadlines for their assignments (self-discipline). also, students have more time to access their assignments asynchronously at any time during the day. they can also collaborate with friends. as long as that collaboration is done within the confines of what is acceptable in terms of academic integrity and ethics, assignments completed online present advantages for students. however, if the collaboration amounts to copying, giving undue assistance, paid assistance and any other forms of dishonesty (gamage et al., 2020), academic staff are justified when they doubt the usefulness of online assignments. 6.4 participants’ views regarding academic integrity and ethics the study established that universities in zimbabwe have very clear codes of conduct for students. although the codes vary from one university to another, all the codes emphasise the most fundamental values, which include honesty, trust, fairness, respect and responsibility, among others. apart from the codes of conduct, universities that participated in the study also have in place ethics committees that enforce students’ code of conduct when conducting research and during assessments. libraries at the universities that participated in the study also offer support to students pertaining to issues of plagiarism. students have access to plagiarism detection software and have training on how to use and interpret results from the software. from the study’s findings, the commonly used plagiarism detection software in the universities that participated in the study were turnitin, ephorus and urkund. lecturers concurred that during conventional face-to-face teaching and learning, they constantly reminded students about the importance of adhering to academic integrity and rules of ethical conduct and about the penalties for breaching the rules. students’ submissions were often checked for plagiarism and the necessary actions were taken. tests and examinations were taken down under strict examination conditions to curb instances of cheating. however, all this was difficult to enforce in online practice situations. as also reported in the studies by oxford university (2020) and the university of greenwich (2020), lecturers further agree that online teaching and learning pose serious challenges regarding safeguarding academic integrity concerns. the reasons they proffer for this varied from academic staff to another. however, the reasons which emerged the most common were: (1) difficulties associated with invigilation of online examinations; (2) difficulties associated with confirming the identity of the students taking the examination or test; (3) difficulties in determining the levels of collaboration that are acceptable; and (4) difficulties associated with enforcing assessment restrictions. regarding these challenges, lecturer#19’s view during the fgd with academic staff was: there are higher chances that students will cheat during online assessments than when assessments are classroom or campus-based. i’m sure students have very good chances of referring to their notes and sources during an online examination or test unless they take their assessment under camera. unfortunately, none of our institutions can afford such technology. the above view was shared by the majority of academic staff who participated in the fgd. they concurred that when an assessment is administered online, students are likely to cheat on their assessments. however, lecturers were left baffled when one academic staff seemed to support perceived online cheating by students. he said: https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 2232023 41(1): 223-227 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 svongoro & mudzi if i were a student, and in the absence of remote invigilation technology, i wouldn’t see myself failing even the most difficult examination. nevertheless, students had different views regarding academic integrity issues. some of the students’ concerns sounded legitimate and were genuine calls on heis to seriously consider ensuring that resources for online learning are made more readily available. this view revolves around the challenge of infrastructure and financing and how they impact equal access and quality of education such as mgaiwa and poncian (2016) raise for heis that have gone virtual. during the fgd for students, students from public universities generally raised the issue of inadequate library support for online learning. for instance, one student bemoaned restrictions related to access to information during online learning. in the case of zimbabwe, only one or two libraries at privately run universities have accessible online library services for students. under such circumstances, students relied on free digital libraries, but again data constraints meant that only a few students from wealthy families could access such resources. students from poor backgrounds attending public universities reported that the information deficit caused by lack of support with online resources and inaccessible university libraries put them under pressure and lead them to engage in unethical conduct such as cheating to avoid failing their courses. these acts of unethical conduct by students subsequently raise questions concerning issues related to students’ assessment and academics ethics and integrity. in addition, during discussions with students, different categories of students reported how they were approached by fellow students to do assignments and tests for them. usually, higher-stream students reported how they were approached by lower-stream students to complete assessments for them. at one private university that has a significant number of international students from non-english speaking countries, local students reported how they were approached by international students to help them complete assessments in such courses as intensive english, english as second language and communication skills. international students from the same university also claimed to have assisted local students to complete assessments in their french and portuguese courses. finally, postgraduate students reported that in some of their programmes, they were expected to submit project reports, long essays or dissertations. these were supposed to be accompanied by plagiarism detection reports. the students boasted about how they engaged some information communication technology (ict) experts (some of whom were ict students at the same university) to manipulate some plagiarism detection software to extract reports with lower percentages of plagiarism for submission alongside their work. 6.5 participants’ views on strategies to optimise students’ class participation and adherence to academic integrity and ethics based on the study’s findings, both academic staff and students agreed that, for optimal active learning to take place, there was a need to make online classes more interactive so that students could be self-motivated to attend and participate during class activities. there was also general agreement on measures that could be taken to ensure that students adhered to the values of academic integrity even in the face of the challenges posed by covid-19. some of the issues that emerged from the study included the use of more student-centred interactive teaching methodologies rather than the traditional lecturer method, the use of more interactive assessment methods, the use of teaching methods that not only address the learners’ technological needs but also their social and cognitive needs, the use of more https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 2242023 41(1): 224-227 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) interactive technologies, resource support for students, and the introduction of mechanism that could reduce cases of students’ cheating, plagiarism, academic fraud and dishonest. from the students’ constituency, the majority of students indicated that they enjoyed classes where lecturers used a variety of teaching methods and activities. they reported how some of their lecturers used weekly quizzes and presentations (as opposed to midterm or final examinations). to increase student-to-student and student-to-lecturer engagement, students also reported how some of their lecturers used breakout rooms (note how breakout rooms meant to increase student-to-student and student-to-lecturer engagement address khan’s pedagogical and technological dimensions, for instance). the class would initially begin as one big class, but then students would break up into smaller group for more intimate interactions on a particular task and perhaps get back together to report their findings to the whole class. furthermore, during the students’ fgd conducted in terms of the explanation presented in the methodology section above, students from one private university also reported how their lecturers had adopted application-type questions rather than memory questions for their tests and examinations. they said application questions demanded critical thinking from students rather than mere memorisation. students found the application-type questions and exams to be intellectually provoking and could even be written under open-book conditions; yet they minimised students’ cheating. however, some postgraduate students felt that the applicationtype of questions were more appropriate for higher-level students, as these types of questions demanded higher-order skills that first-year, first-semester undergraduate students may not have developed sufficiently. finally, students challenged their institutions to assist students with ict tools, schemes for the purchase of broadband and use for e-resources in the libraries for better accessibility, as also raised by pillay and erasmus (2017). this view was raised within the context of the shortage of online literature for students studying in various programmes. they reported that, if universities did not address this concern, then cases of students’ cheating or unethical conduct would be difficult to minimize. students also called upon their institutions to offer training programmes related to how they could access materials from data bases or digital libraries so that students could navigate the digital information terrain with more ease. the concerns raised by students as presented in this paragraph address khan’s resource support dimension. khan’s e-learning framework (2001) calls upon institutions to provide resources needed for the successful implementation of e-learning programmes. although lecturers agreed with most of the views raised by their students, their biggest bone of contention concerned how they could safeguard academic integrity during online teaching and assessment, but without affecting students’ morale. with regard to tests and examinations, most lecturers indicated that their wish was to have candidates supervised remotely by online supervisors through the use of advanced security technology. unfortunately, most of the lecturers agreed that their institutions were too poor to afford the required technology. lecturers expressed their worries concerning how they could check the student’s environment to see if it was properly set for an online examination, how they could authenticate that bona fide students were taking the examination and how they could verify that there were no materials in the student’s environment which students could refer to for information. they also raised similar concerns with take-home assignments and projects completed while at home and submitted online. they expressed the dilemma they had when https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 2252023 41(1): 225-227 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6182 svongoro & mudzi they doubted some of their students’ work (fairly or unfairly); yet they could not prove it was done with the help of possible third parties. in view of the challenges regarding the issue of safeguarding academic integrity, lecturers agreed that all their universities could do was to constantly remind students about the values of academic integrity, offer continuous training on academic integrity and ethics and foster a culture of responsibility and honesty among their students. 7. conclusion the study showed that although academic staff were committed to ensuring that online learning during the covid-19 pandemic progressed well, there were concerns regarding access to the digital resources that would have made the learning more interactive and motivate students’ participation, while at the same time safeguarding academic integrity concerns. through the analysis of participants’ views, the study showed some of the technological and pedagogical issues regarding participation during online learning and strategies for optimising students’ participation during online learning. the study also shared some of the ethical challenges that arose from the adoption of online teaching and assessment systems and the policy, resource and training interventions needed to make online learning more interactive while at the same time safeguarding academic integrity. in terms of the four chosen dimensions from khan’s (2001) e-learning framework, the findings of this study have implications for heis, learners and academic staff if e-learning programmes are to be successful. firstly, heis need to ensure that learners and academic staff have the prerequisite technological resources to ensure that optimal active learning takes place. one issue that emerged as a huge concern among students was that of digital libraries (khan’s resource support dimension). heis should therefore ensure that their libraries migrate from physical to digital libraries. heis should also ensure that both academic staff and students receive the necessary training (khan’s technological dimension) to be able to access these digital libraries and the resources and services they offer. for academic staff, technological and pedagogical implications are clear (khan’s pedagogical and technological dimensions). there is a need that academic staff pay due care when designing online learning curricula, ensuring that the platforms they use and the curricula are as innovative, interactive and engaging as possible and take into consideration the needs of different learners, including those with special needs. due care should also be taken when it comes to formative and summative assessment. the assessment should limit chances of students’ cheating without making demands for expensive online invigilation tools on the already cash-strapped heis. finally, in terms of khan’s technological and resource support dimensions, learners should be capacitated 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https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-020-00155-y https://doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i1.3 http://www.gre.ac.uk/learning-teaching/assessment/assessment/design/formative-vs-summative http://www.gre.ac.uk/learning-teaching/assessment/assessment/design/formative-vs-summative https://www.forbes.com/sites/vickyvalet/2020/03/12/working-from-home-during%20the-coronavirus-pandemic-what-you-need-to-know/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/vickyvalet/2020/03/12/working-from-home-during%20the-coronavirus-pandemic-what-you-need-to-know/ https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/when-and-how-to-use-masks https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public/when-and-how-to-use-masks https://doi.org/10.32919/uesit.2019.03.04 207 research article 2022 40(2): 207-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) “i decided…”: agency in black women professors abstract literature predominantly portrays black women academics as individuals who usually lack a sense of belonging, unable to manage their workload and struggle with career progression in higher education. the oversaturation of this kind of literature can (over time) perpetuate a stereotypical idea that black women academics are incapable of coping and succeeding in higher education institutions. therefore, this article aims to explore how black women professors can take responsibility for their successful academic outcomes. bandura’s agentic theory of the self was used to frame this paper. a qualitative research design, using nine semistructured interviews was adopted for the study. thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. collectively, the black women portrayed themselves as non-apologetic for being in the academic space, making time for writing and having a “go-getter” mentality. the findings present a line of thought that can help in challenging the stereotype about black women academics. keywords: agency; black women academics; professors; higher education institutions 1. introduction the intersectionality of racism and sexism have marked the experiences of many black1 women academics in south african higher education institutions (mokhele, 2013; naicker, 2013; divala, 2014; schulze, 2015; khunou et al., 2019; crenshaw, 1994). abbamonte asserts that intersectionality is a concept often used in critical theories to describe the ways in which oppressive institutions (such as racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, xenophobia, and classism) are interconnected and cannot be examined separately from one another (2018: 108). put another way, both race and gender are prime indicators of some black women’s identities. naturally, for anyone the acknowledgement of one’s race and gender is a form of identity; however, what makes the black women’s intersectional is the fact that their gender and racial identities 1 although statistics south africa (stats sa) (2019) refer to people of african ancestry as black africans, this paper will refer to people who are of sub-saharan african ancestry or who are perceived to be “dark-skinned” in relation to other racial groups as black. this is because the everyday term that the researcher and others within her communal context uses to refer to herself and themselves is black. author: dr ncamisile thumile zulu1 affiliation: 1university of kwazulu-natal doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i2.15 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(2): 207-223 published: 08 june 2022 received: 29 november 2021 accepted: 01 april 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 2082022 40(2): 208-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) merge to make their experience of suppression different from that of other groups (crenshaw, 1994) such as black males or white women because they only have one suppressive and one privileged identity that they occupied. literature has shown that black women are marginalised in terms of power, control and influence in university spaces (baxley, 2012; obers, 2014) and as a result usually lack a sense of belonging, are unable to manage their workload and struggle with career progression in higher education (baxley, 2012; mokhele, 2013; obers, 2014; maseti, 2018). for example, mandleco (2010); zulu (2013); jones, hwang and bustamante (2015); subbaye and vithal (2017) as well as mahabeer, nzimande and shoba (2018) assert that black women are often given heavy teaching and administrative workloads, are forced to carry out research and teaching activities in hostile environments, and experience feelings of isolation within the academic space which lead some of them to quit in the early stages of their academic careers, before even reaching the professorial level. mandleco (2010) adds that other black women academics never reach the professoriate, even if they do continue their careers in institutions of higher education. a report of the ministerial task team on the recruitment, retention and progression of black south african academics shows that the population race and gender profiles of staff still reveal apartheid-era patterns (dhet, 2019). the report indicates that black academics are in the majority in lower-level posts such as junior lecturer and lecturer, while white academics are in the widely held senior posts such as senior lecturer and professor (dhet, 2019). male academics are dominant in senior posts and female academics are dominant in junior posts (dhet, 2019). academic leadership at universities is still dominated by white and male academics (dhet, 2019). popular literature illustrates black women academics as defeated and hampered by the racist and patriarchal framework (collins, 2001; zulu, 2013; dlamini & adams, 2014; divala, 2014; maseti, 2018) and while this literature is valid and necessary, the oversaturation of it can (over time) perpetuate a stereotypical idea that black women academics are incapable of coping and succeeding in higher education institutions. in contrast with what seems to be mostly non-progress for black women academics in higher education institutions, subbaye and vithal (2017) indicate there has also been some progress made in the inclusion and number of black women who have become academics and made progress within academia, since the introduction of democracy in 1994. as a result of the south african government instituting initiatives for the improvement of the representation of black women in higher education (such as developing policies, research grants and mentoring projects), black women have made some advancement in higher education institutions (maodzwa-taruvinga & divala, 2014; mzwanga, 2018). for instance, zulu’s (2020) study showcases south african black women academics who have made it to professorship, and jones et al. (2015) further assert that some black women academics continue to prevail over workplace adversities. the article therefore aims to explore how black women academics can take responsibility for their successful academic outcomes and intends to present a line of thought that can help in challenging the negative perceptions about black women academics. this article forms part of a contribution towards closing the gap in literature on the academic triumphs and achievements of black women in higher education institutions. particularly, the article asks (1) how do black women academics adapt in higher education institutions? (2) how do black women academics manage their workloads in higher education institutions? and (3) how do black women academics make career progress in higher education institutions? http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 2092022 40(2): 209-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 zulu agency in black women professors 2. black women in higher education academics’ professional identities develop through the interaction of an inward and an outward journey (schulze, 2015). the inward journey necessitates reflection during which the academic makes sense of themselves as an academic (haamer, lepp & reva, 2012). the outward journey occurs when the academic engages with the academic world (sutherland & markauskaite 2012). the professional identities develop from the individuals’ engagement with relevant communities of practice during which they can develop the knowledge, skills, values and culture of academics (schulze, 2015). the result of them suffering dual oppression – the oppression of being black in the racially segregated political system and the oppression from the patriarchal culture (henry & glenn, 2009; mans & lauwrens, 2013) can also play a role in their professional identity formation. mabokela (2001) and lewin (2019), however, contest that black women are much more likely to experience racism than sexism, or at least are more likely to experience exclusion or marginalisation primarily because of racism rather than sexism. supporting this argument, mokhele (2013) asserts that white women were privileged by legal prescriptions during the pre-1994 historical phase, which put them above black women in the hierarchical ordering of the peoples of south africa at the time. black women in the south african university space endure disparities across the intersectionality of race and gender lines (maseti, 2018; ramohai, 2019; crenshaw, 1994) such as involvement in heavy teaching workloads, administrative work (zulu, 2013; jones et al., 2015) and being treated with a lack of respect and given little opportunities to be part of communities that could support them to develop identities as productive academic members such as mentors (bertrand jones & osborne-lampkin, 2013; vandeyar, 2010). the consequence of marginalisation is that black women academics cannot benefit from higher education institutions as much as other races and genders can and have been doing (ramohai, 2019), especially in terms of belonging, the ability to manage workloads and making career progress. 3. belonging belonging is the feeling of security and support when there is a sense of acceptance, inclusion and identity for a member of a certain group or place. it is the basic fundamental drive to form and maintain lasting, positive and significant relationships with others (baumeister & leary, 2017). at the workplace, these relationships can be extended to the organisation and its values (skaalvik & skaalvik, 2011) and to work itself. filstad, traavik and gorli (2019) further elaborate that belonging is also influenced by social interactions, materiality, emotions and aesthetics. according to mokhele (2013) as well as patton and harper (2003), studies reveal co-occurring discrimination related to race and gender, including lack of support systems and networks as well as an unwelcoming, insensitive and isolative environment (watt, 2003). maseti (2018) indicates that the experiences of discrimination and marginalisation of black women often lead to their alienating feelings of unbelonging within academia. as a result, black women can become outsiders from within and do not successfully participate in their institutions (lloyd-jones, 2009; ramohai, 2019). some black academics also encounter feelings of having lowered beliefs in their own competency and a reduced sense of belonging (ponjuan, conley & trower, 2011) because of not being supported in higher education institutions (mokhele, 2013). for instance, in her study maseti (2018) found that the burden of constantly needing to prove black women’s worth and intellectual capability became an artificial barrier to their belonging in academic spaces. additionally, in her study, mokhele http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 2102022 40(2): 210-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) (2013) found that being black and new in a higher education institution created suspicion, not only around her as a person but also around her qualifications and competence. perumal (2003) and portnoi (2015) have described south african universities as conservative, maledominated environments in which women, particularly black women, are socialised into silence. the stereotypes that communities use to construct gender roles (mollaeva, 2017) make it difficult for women to survive in male-oriented spaces that reinforce the constructed roles. sadly, scholars have found that institutional cultures are still predominantly masculine (tsikata, 2007; kele & pietersen, 2015) and, in terms of staff component, are still white. these above findings illustrate clearly how racial and sexist discrimination works in practice to conspire against the belonging of black women academics in the south african higher education institutions. jones et al. (2015) however identify external supports that especially african american women sometimes utilise that could help them in feeling more a part of their institutions and departments. such external supports can include having supportive leadership and formal or informal mentors who could provide helpful resources communication, information and introduction to professional associations etc. this paper is important as it highlights and expands on the necessity of black women academics knowing how to adapt and belong in higher education institutions amid the racist and sexist oppression that may exist within these spaces. 4. workload management universities are confronted with the challenge of increased workloads and a growing number of faculties and as a result have developed workload allocation models to improve the management of workloads (botha & swanepoel, 2015). the performance agreement of academic staff is based on the strategic objectives of the faculty and entails four categories of critical performance indicators: (1) teaching and learning; (2) administration and management; (3) research and postgraduate supervision; and (4) community engagement and services to the scholarly community (botha & swanepoel, 2015). barrett and barrett (2008) identified three main approaches in the allocation of academic workloads at universities based on their level of complexity, namely informal, partial and comprehensive approaches. the informal approach is one where the head of a department typically divides work between staff, based on their competencies and areas of specialisation, and upon consultation with them. partial approaches are more complex, but exclude some academic tasks, such as research while comprehensive approaches are even more complex, using weightings and covering most academic tasks and also weightings for administration work. misra et al. (2021) postulate that faculty workload inequities have important consequences for faculty diversity and inclusion. on average, women faculty spend more time engaging in service, teaching and mentoring, while men, on average, spend more time on research, with black women facing particularly high workload burdens. research was felt by many to be the element that differentiated loads and was the area that suffered most when loads rose (barrett & barrett, 2008). lewin (2019) postulates that gender is implicated in the way institutions are structured and how they operate. for example, in their study misra et al. (2021) found that white women perceive that their departments have less equitable workloads and are less committed to workload equity than white men. women of colour perceive that their departments are less likely to credit their important work through departmental reward http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 2112022 40(2): 211-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 zulu agency in black women professors systems compared to white men. in a study conducted by botha and swanepoel (2015) it was indicated that although there were no statistically significant differences in the total working hours per week of academics holding different positions, there were statistically significant differences in terms of time spent on the various academic activities. male academics appeared to spend more time on research and postgraduate supervision while female staff members spent more time on administration and management. with women still expected to fulfil their domestic responsibilities, an increase in workload disadvantages them in terms of pursuing their scholarly work (sader, 2014). heavy teaching workloads make it difficult for south african and black women academics to thrive in doing research and they convey being “tired” or “exhausted” (portnoi, 2015; lewin, 2019). several women academics also indicate how their families question their choice of profession due to the workload and time involved (portnoi, 2015). additionally, women academic staff report competing demands of work and family obligations as a key push factor however, there are a few academics who believe the workload is manageable (portnoi, 2015). research also shows that negotiating workloads and tasks can allow academics to develop and grow towards their career aspirations (lewin, 2019). this requires a focus on developing new ways of managing workloads, along with attempts to foster different institutional cultures (lewin, 2019). this article will therefore explore the strategies that south african black women academics use to manage their workloads. 5. career progression south african universities have set out promotion criteria (although not uniform) which blends four elements – research; teaching and supervision; community-orientated activity (academy of science of south africa, 2018). excellence on these elements is supposed to yield promotion and progression. academic promotion can however be a mechanism that creates or reflects inequalities, with certain groups rising to the top more readily than others (sadiq et al., 2019). a critique of promotion criteria often focuses on the undue weight given to research achievement (often held to advantage men) rather than teaching, perhaps because research output can be more easily measured (sadiq et al., 2019). building a research profile is arguably the most essential element for achieving success as an academic in a higher education environment, not only for the purpose of intellectual prestige, but also for reasons of economic survival (mokhele, 2013). however, black women still face numerous challenges pertaining to upward mobility, research success and overcoming gender-based epistemological stereotypes (ramohai, 2019; joubert & guenther, 2017). research also shows that it seems childbearing and rearing may lead to interrupted career paths that can affect women’s self-confidence (obers, 2014). additionally, research indicates that black women in academia do not succeed as expected (herman, 2011) – with success in this regard being measured by the ability to conduct research, engage in quality teaching and learning, and involvement in engaged scholarship (dhet, 2013; hesa, 2014; ramohai, 2019). a large-scale survey conducted by blake and la valle (2000) confirmed the observation that women’s research careers are less developed than those of men. they also found that a woman’s professional profile is less likely to include a high publication record or involve a set of high-profile academic activities, and sometimes they are also less likely to be holding a phd (mokhele, 2013). women are also said to tend to gravitate towards teaching, thereby inhibiting their career advancement and the concomitant growth of professional http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 2122022 40(2): 212-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) self-esteem (obers, 2014). women, and black women in particular, are significantly underrepresented in the professoriate (lewin, 2019). a lack of women role models in the higher education institutions, especially black women, might be a constraining factor for many women as it can limit aspirations (lewin, 2019). some women, however, have managed to succeed despite the gendered and racist higher education space, and a few black women have succeeded in establishing a research career in south africa (mokhele, 2013). raw courage seems to have played a pivotal role for these women academics. instead of feeling pity for themselves because of the situation they found themselves in, these black women academics were very clear about what they wanted to achieve (mokhele, 2013) and were therefore agents of their own academic careers. 6. the agentic theory of the self as noted in the previous section, life for a black person in south africa can be hard, and disappointments and challenges are to be expected. the agentic theory of the self (bandura, 2008) framework may assist in explaining how black women academics navigate the trials of the workplace more effectively and become empowered despite the challenges. human agency is the ability “to influence intentionally one’s functioning and life circumstances” (bandura, 2008:16). “agency embodies the endowments, belief systems, self-regulatory capabilities and distributed structures and functions through which personal influence is exercised, rather than residing as a discrete entity in a particular place” (bandura, 2001:2). human agency is exercised through three different modes: personal, proxy, and collective (bandura, 2001:13). personal agency is exercised individually, and it is the process by which an individual affects what they can control directly. in some cases, however, direct influence is not possible. the exercise of agency through proxy is the indirect influence that a person can exert on circumstances beyond their immediate control, by acting through others. in many spheres of functioning, people may not have direct control over conditions that affect their lives. they then can exercise proxy agency by influencing others who have the resources, knowledge, and means to act on their behalf to secure the outcomes they desire. collective agency is an interdependence of human functioning that is enacted when people who share common beliefs act as a group to produce effects by collective action. this paper intends on exploring the adaption, management of workloads and career progression of black women academics in higher education institutions. the core features of agency enable people to take responsibility for their self-development, adaptation and self-renewal in changing times (bandura, 2001). agency embraces the practice of personal influence in self-regulation capabilities, belief systems and endowments (bandura, 2001). this study is useful as black women professors’ voices will come through and therefore provide other aspiring black women professors with assistance in navigating the process towards the promotion to professorship. there are four core components of human agency that are described by bandura (2001), which are: intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness and self-reflection. intentionality deals with the forming of intentions that “include action plans and strategies for realizing them” (bandura, 2001:6). individuals can choose to behave accommodatively or, through the exercise of self-influence, to behave otherwise. an intention is a representation of a future course of action to be performed. it is not simply an expectation or prediction of http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 2132022 40(2): 213-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 zulu agency in black women professors future actions but a proactive commitment to bringing them about. intentions centre on plans of action, and future-directed plans are rarely specified in full detail at the outset. forethought involves “the temporal extension of agency” (bandura, 2001:7) by setting goals and anticipating future events. forethought includes more than future-directed plans. people set goals for themselves and foresee likely outcomes of prospective actions to guide and motivate their efforts anticipatorily. when projected over a long-term course on matters of value, a forethoughtful perspective provides direction, coherence and meaning to one’s life. (bandura, 2001:7). self-reactiveness is the processes of self-management and self-motivation. it is the conversion of plans into fruitful courses of action that entail the self-management of thought processes; motivation to continue with chosen courses in the face of difficulties, delays and uncertainties; and emotional states that can challenge self-regulatory efforts (bandura, 2001). in addition to being a planner and fore thinker, an agent must be a motivator and selfregulator as well (bandura, 1986; 1991). agency thus encompasses the ability to give shape to appropriate courses of action and to motivate and regulate their execution. self-reflection refers to the self-examining nature of human agents. through selfawareness, they reflect on their personal efficacy, the soundness of their thoughts and actions, the meaning of their pursuits, and… (if needed) change existing life course patterns (bandura, 2001). besides being agents of action, people can also be self-examiners of their own functioning. the cognitive capability to reflect upon oneself is another distinctly core human feature of agency. through reflective self-consciousness, individuals assess their motivation, principles, and the meaning of their life pursuits. efficacy beliefs are the foundation of human agency because people need to believe that they can produce desired outcomes otherwise they have little incentive to act or persevere as they encounter difficulties. 7. research methods and design the aim of this article was to explore how black women academics can take responsibility for their adaptation, managing their workload and making career progression in their academic endeavours. a qualitative research design was selected to collect and analyse the data. a qualitative approach was fitting as it allowed for a rich understanding of black women professors, with a specific focus on their agency. 7.1 setting and study participants nine black women professors from two public south african universities participated in the study. one university was historically a white institution while the other was a recently merged university. these institutions were selected because they are among the top researchproducing universities in south africa, while also making notable efforts to be equitable in terms of race, compared to their counterparts. the participants were from several faculties including health sciences, humanities and science. a limitation was that there were faculties that were not represented in the sample and as a result the scope of black women academics’ agentic identity was limited. the interviews were conducted in english and isizulu. one-on-one semi-structured interviews were conducted with black women professors. semi-structured interviews facilitated the participants’ thinking about their own constructions, meanings and understandings (burr, 2003) of being a black woman in the higher education space. this type of interviewing was appropriate for this study because it allowed reflection and in-depth discussions to be achieved through probing the participants to expand on their responses http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 2142022 40(2): 214-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) while keeping some structure in the interview (alshenqeeti, 2014). the interviews revealed the manner in which black women professors talked about how they were able to adapt and triumph as academics in south african universities. the interviews yielded thick data (based on depth and contextual particularity), which was made possible by the participants doing most of the talking during the interviews (silverman, 2013). 7.2 data collection permission from gatekeepers at both the universities was granted to recruit prospective participants. after ethical clearance was granted by the large public university, suitable participants were identified. specifically, the researcher searched (e.g., by executive structure/ college/faculty/discipline) through the two institutions’ websites systematically and identified black women professors. the researcher thereafter invited ten suitable potential participants from each university using an initial email invitation. attached to this email was an information sheet that provided further details on the purpose and nature of the study. nine participants responded to the email invitation and participated in the study. the semi-structured interviews took between 45 and 90 minutes. the researcher engrossed herself in the audio-recorded data, transcribed the interviews and analysed the data. 7.3 ethical considerations ethical clearance was granted by the university of kwazulu-natal human and social sciences research ethics committee (protocol reference number: hss/2053/017m). prior to commencement of the interviews, the researcher ensured informed consent of the participants. informed consent implies that the participants are supplied with adequate and clear knowledge about the study so that they can make an educated choice about involving themselves in it or not (orb, eisenhauer & wynaden, 2001; gray, 2014). the participants were also given an information sheet that provided ethical information about their rights as participants, such as their right to confidentiality, volunteering and that they could discontinue at any stage if they felt uncomfortable during the research process. other ethics that guided this research were ensuring that no harm was caused to the participants in the study and that the sampling, data collection and analysis processes were fair and equitable. 7.4 data analysis thematic analysis was used to analyse the interviews. braun and clarke’s (2012) six steps of thematic analysis were appropriate to use as these steps sought to describe the data in rich detail by identifying, analysing, and reporting the patterns emergent in the data. the researcher familiarised herself with the interviews by reading the transcripts and listening to the audio-recorded data. the codes (features that appeared interesting and meaningful) were generated thereafter. the common key codes were extracted from all five interviews. the overarching themes were identified from the common codes. the three themes identified were then refined and defined. finally, the researcher interpreted the extracts that related to each of the themes from the study (braun & clarke, 2006). the findings and discussion will be presented from the emergent themes. 8. findings and discussion bandura’s human agency is the human “capability to exercise control over one’s own thought processes, motivation, and action is a distinctively human characteristic” (1989: 1175). this http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 2152022 40(2): 215-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 zulu agency in black women professors section will illustrate how the participants (using pseudonyms) constructed themselves as taking responsibility for their adaptation, managing their workload, and making career progression in their academic endeavours. particularly, this article asked (1) how did black women academics adapt in higher education institutions? (2) how did black women academics manage their workloads in higher education institutions? and (3) how did black women academics make career progress in higher education institutions? the emerging themes were “no apologies”, “making time to read and write” and “go-getter mentality”. 8.1 theme 1: no apologies mokhele (2013) indicates that studies reveal co-occurring discrimination related to intersection of race and gender, including lack of support systems and networks (patton & harper, 2003; crenshaw, 1994) as well as an unwelcoming, insensitive and isolative academic environment (watt, 2003). the discrimination, according to lloyd-jones (2009) and ramohai (2019), can often lead black women academics to become outsiders from within and not participate successfully in their institutions. the interactions with the participants, however, suggested that despite being excluded by whites, indians and males within their workplace, they were mentally tough and outspoken. most of the participants of this study portrayed themselves as individuals who felt that they belonged and they did not apologise for being in the academic space as black women. for example, gabi indicates that she believed that she also belonged in the university space and was therefore able to adjust well, “i never struggled to adjust to the [university] space because i believe that the space belongs to all of us, and i must make it with what i have”. sbahle shows that she was vocal in the different academic spaces and as a result her voice was eventually heard and accepted within the academia, “i’m very outspoken so they know exactly how i think, and they have accepted that – like you know what – she does have something to contribute”. thobile highlights that having a thick skin to take various forms of criticism well was what helped her in the academic space. she also indicates that being direct and not hiding anything while still being respectful as a leader also played a role. “i have a thick skin. and i think in terms of my leadership, what you see is what you get. whilst i do that, respect is always at the forefront in everything that i do”. bandura (2008) argues that agency involves intentionally influencing one’s functioning and life circumstances. the findings showed that the participants exercised personal agency where they directly controlled their academic life outcomes by being vocal, feeling confident and self-regulating within the academic space. the participants showed themselves to be proactive in committing to their actions in order to adjust well in higher education. literature indicates that some black academics also encounter feelings of having lowered beliefs in their own competency and a reduced sense of belonging (ponjuan, conley & trower, 2011), because of not being supported in higher education institutions (mokhele, 2013). the findings suggested that while the participants did experience discrimination and being overlooked and unsupported, as suggested in literature, they were however able to take responsibility for their cognitive well-being and maintained their own sense of direction, coherence, and meaning in their academic life. this finding concurred with bandura (2001) when he suggested that through self-guidance, people can envision futures and then act on the present to evaluate http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 2162022 40(2): 216-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) and adjust alternate courses of action to obtain valued results and supersede environmental impacts. the findings implied that it is possible for black women to adapt successfully in the academic space despite the challenges that they might encounter. another implication of the findings was that higher education institutions need to be more intentional in ensuring that black women are and feel supported and included in order to adapt well within the different academic spaces. it is also recommended that more research focus is given to black women and their adaptability in higher education institutions. 8.2 theme 2: making time to read and write research shows that plenty of black women academics’ involvement in heavy teaching and supervision workloads, administrative work, and household responsibilities revolves around the issue of the time that is consumed by these activities, which results in a lack of time for research (zulu, 2013; jones et al., 2015) which is paramount for an academic’s career success. most of the participants in this study indicated that they navigated the academic space by sacrificing attending to their household duties and family time in order to read and write for publications and therefore be able to compete with their academic peers. for instance, gabi stated: i wake up at 4 and i sit and i read, and i read and i read. when the students are gone or you are done with the teaching, you now need to read and write. you can do that until 12 midnight because you need the uninterrupted time. it’s difficult to read and write in the course of teaching. portnoi (2015) and lewin (2019) argue that having high teaching workloads can make it difficult for south african and black women academics to thrive in doing research and they relayed being “tired” or “exhausted”. gabi (and some of the other participants) indicated that they navigated through their workloads by sacrificing a lot of their (personal) time towards their research endeavours. this finding corresponded with bandura’s intentionality component of the agentic theory of the self which argues that intentional individuals (through self-influence) centre themselves around plans of action and strategies for bringing them about (bandura, 2001). in the above quote, gabi mentioned how she had to work outside of normal working hours in order to accommodate reading and writing without interruptions by teaching and student consultation. jones et al. (2015) also talk about how black american women professors stressed the importance of excellent time management and prioritising their work commitments in the midst of juggling multiple obligations such as teaching, publishing and supervising (jones et al., 2015). while discussing how she managed her research work, sbahle indicated: when i came back to take the post, my family did not come with me, which was hard… but… i really did not have family responsibility, so i was able to do the work during the day in the home. nobody is waiting for me for supper or anything then i could flat-out work all the time and i believe that’s why i was able to submit my thesis within three years…. so, it was important for me to accept that… that this is what i’ve decided to do. thobile also mentioned: i personally have three people who are helping me in different spaces. someone helping me at home; it helps so that you as a woman who is in the academia can have enough time to do your work and be able to compete with your peers. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 2172022 40(2): 217-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 zulu agency in black women professors the above extracts suggested how gender was implicated in the way that institutions were structured and how they operated. for example, their job structures, expectations and workloads were gendered (lewin, 2019). as previously mentioned, male academics appeared to spend more time on research and postgraduate supervision while female staff members spent more time on administration and management (botha & swanepoel, 2015). research is felt by many to be the element that differentiates loads and was the area that suffered most when loads rose (barrett & barrett, 2008). with women still expected to fulfil their domestic responsibilities, an increase in workload disadvantaged them in terms of pursuing their scholarly work (sader, 2014). some of the women in this study (for example as illustrated in the quotes above), however, indicated how they decided to step away from household and family responsibilities for a while in order to focus on their research work, and that eventually led to attainment of their phd and/or professorship. these findings are congruent with bandura (2001) who asserted that as agentic individuals advanced in their life course they continued to plan ahead, rearranged their priorities, and structured their lives accordingly. furthermore, other participants indicated that they decided to get assistance with managing their household and family duties so that they could have time to write for publications, and they were therefore able to compete with their academic peers. by taking these decisions in order to make time for their research endeavours, the participants were showing themselves to have bandura’s (2001) forethought component as they motivated themselves and guided their actions in anticipation of future events (for example attaining their doctorate or professorship). people set goals for themselves and foresee likely outcomes of prospective actions to guide and motivate their efforts anticipatorily (bandura, 2001). by sacrificing their personal, household and family time, the participants were also showing themselves to be self-managing and self-regulating in order to manage their workloads and be able to compete with their academic peers successfully. bandura (2001) also emphasises the processes of self-management and self-motivation under the component of self-reactiveness. agency encompasses the ability to give shape to appropriate courses of action and to motivate and regulate their execution (bandura, 2001). actions (such as deciding to get assistance in running the home) gave rise to self-reactive influence through performance comparison with personal goals and standards. goals, such as competing with peers, motivated these individuals as they started employing self-evaluative engagement in activities. similar to the participants, bandura (2001) claims that agentic individuals participate in actions that give them self-satisfaction and a sense of pride and self-worth, and they refrain from behaving in ways that inflict self-dissatisfaction, self-devaluation, and self-criticism. these findings imply that the ability to negotiate workloads and tasks can allow academics to develop and grow towards their career aspirations (lewin, 2019). the findings also have implications for higher education to help create more space and time for women academics to be more productive in their research, especially since the participants indicated that they were affected by space and time constraints. furthermore, these outcomes imply the importance of further developing the agentic components (such as forethought and self-reactiveness) in young, black and women academics through mentorship, coaching, seminars and workshops. this study suggests that workload transparency and clarity as well as consistent approaches to assigning classes, advising and service, can reduce women’s perceptions of inequitable and unfair workloads. this research suggests that departments can identify and put in place a number of key practices around workload that will improve gendered and racialised perceptions of workload. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 2182022 40(2): 218-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) 8.3 theme 3: go-getter mentality as mentioned before, excellence on the elements of research, teaching and supervision as well as community service yields promotion and progression for south african academics (academy of science of south africa, 2018). therefore, building a research profile is arguably the most essential element for achieving success as an academic in a higher education environment, not only for the purpose of intellectual prestige, but also for reasons of economic survival (mokhele, 2013). throughout the interviews, the participants portrayed themselves as individuals who, despite many challenges, went to great lengths to obtain the resources that eventually led them to succeed to professorship. bandura’s (2001) intentionality component came out strongly when the participants were talking about their career progression. the participants seemed to show a proactive commitment to bringing out their visions to action. for example, in the quote below, mercy shows how she applied for funding for several years before she succeeded in securing it, and once she obtained it, she used her research to publish and build her research portfolio, which then led to her becoming a full professor. i got nrf funding for three years, this was post doc. i was able to travel, i was able to research. i built my research portfolio and also obviously my teaching portfolio. that is how i climbed. you really have to work hard. the following quote shows how thobile displayed courage by applying and succeeding k a management post when she was the youngest in the department. this gave her skills, expertise and experience that played a role in her progression in the academic space. there was an advert sent around for the head and nobody wanted to apply because people were fighting. you know what, i applied. at that time as i am applying, i am the youngest in the entire team in the three campuses. so, i became the first head of department in the merged institution. in the quote below, mbalenhle talks about how she took the initiative of sourcing her own phd supervisors and mentors abroad and was not discouraged to leave academia because of not being supported in her own institution. she eventually became a professor. for my phd i had to look for mentors outside of south africa, in america and in europe, because people here were not supportive. these supervisors guided me, critiqued my work and supported me…. i’ve got like 60 publications… and i became a professor. literature indicates that as a result of the oppression that a lot of black women encounter in academia, they still face numerous challenges pertaining to upward mobility and research success (joubert & guenther, 2017; ramohai, 2019). specifically, mokhele (2013) found that a woman’s professional profile was less likely to include a high publication record or involve a set of high-profile academic activities, and sometimes they were also less likely to hold a phd. from the quotes above, however, it was evident that some black women academics were able to successfully progress in higher education institutions through their decisiveness to work hard, have courage and be innovative. bandura’s (2001) forethought seems to be in line with the findings from the participants who set goals for themselves and anticipated future events. these findings were also in line with mokhele’s (2013) study that suggested that raw courage seemed to play a pivotal role for some women academics. instead of feeling pity for themselves in the situation that they found themselves in, some http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 2192022 40(2): 219-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 zulu agency in black women professors black women academics were clear about what they wanted to achieve (mokhele, 2013). the findings suggested that most of the participants rejected succumbing to the victim mentally amid the challenges and chose to empower themselves. these findings were congruent with bandura’s (2001) intentionality component of the agency theory which deals with the proactive commitment to bring future expectations about. for example, in the extracts above, the participants illustrated themselves to be “go-getters” and intentional about making strides in their academic endeavours. additionally, the participants also set goals, self-managed and self-motivated while anticipating future events amid challenges. the findings implied that while there were various trials experienced by black women in higher education, intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness and self-reflection were among the resources that could enable successful academic practices and productivity. perhaps, the provision of humanistic self-development-oriented psychotherapy amongst black and women academics would be useful for their career progression. it was also implied that their supervisors had to make substantial efforts (such as approving of and providing their employees with opportunities) to contribute to their promotions. 9. conclusion collectively, the findings from the paper could be linked to bandura’s theory as the participants showed themselves to be examples of human agency as they were able to adapt (where they talked about being non-apologetic about being in the academic space), self-renew (where they discussed being proactive in making time for their academic endeavours) and selfdevelop (where they portrayed their go-getter mentality) in institutions of higher education. it is important to highlight that the social environment of the individual can also play a role in how they interpret reality, and in their attitudes, beliefs and ideas. specifically, what people and what support systems are present (or absent) in an academic’s life can influence how they adapt, manage their workloads and progress in their careers. acknowledgements this work is based on the research supported by the national institute for the humanities and social science (nihss). references abbamonte, l. 2018. black lives matter: cross-media resonance and the iconic turn of language. cambridge: cambridge scholars publishing. academy of science of south africa. 2018. annual performance plan for 2018/19. available at https://www.assaf.org.za/files/2018/assaf%20app_%202018_2019.pdf alshenqeeti, h. 2014. interviewing as a data collection method: a critical review. english linguistics research, 3(1): 39-45. https://doi.org/10.5430/elr.v3n1p39 bandura, a. 1986. social foundations of thought and action: a 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dominant discourses. south african journal of higher education, 27(3): 750-767. zulu, n.t. 2020. discourses of black women professors in two south african universities. doctoral dissertation. durban: university of kwazulu-natal. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.15 https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.58 https://doi.org/10.4102/the.v4i0.58 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-018-0350-2 https://doi.org/10.1080/10615806.2010.544300 https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2016.1184237 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-012-9522-7 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10767-010-9098-0 https://doi.org/10.1002/ss.105 _hlk85814376 _hlk83492762 _hlk67581969 _hlk84743912 _hlk84927517 _hlk84842883 _hlk65853997 _hlk84960219 _hlk84960130 _hlk84959998 _hlk67047198 _hlk69189974 _hlk84705950 _hlk84929816 _hlk103244035 _hlk103182116 _hlk87891750 _hlk87776884 vulnerability and belonging in the history classroom: a teacher’s positioning in “volatile conversations” on racism and xenophobia sofie m.m.a. geschier school of education, graduate school of humanities, university of cape town s.geschier@uct.ac.za this article is explorative in its attempt to define vulnerability within transformative pedagogy by analysing excerpts from two “volatile conversations” on racism and xenophobia between a teacher and her grade nine class in a well-resourced jewish school. the two conversations differed in regard to the teacher’s use of vulnerability, even though the underlying rationale remained the same, namely to question and deconstruct prejudiced thinking. during the first interaction, the teacher struggled to invite learners to join in the conversation when she attempted to situate racism solely in their heads. during the second interaction, in contrast, instead of focusing on the learners’ thinking, the teacher placed her own xenophobic thinking in the centre and talked reflectively about what fear might say about one’s society and one’s position in that society. while this second interaction was difficult, the learners felt safe enough to take up the teacher’s attempt to render racism and xenophobia strange. the article argues that more discussion is needed in regard to the potential role of vulnerability in pedagogical interactions, particularly taking into account teachers’ and learners’ complex, ever-changing narratives and positions in a fast changing, and still very much divided, yet hopeful country. keywords: pedagogy, vulnerability, history education, primary narratives, racism, xenophobia, positioning theory the june 2009 special issue on “the pedagogical transaction in post-conflict societies” of perspectives in education raises important questions regarding which pedagogies are appropriate in post-conflict societies, and how learners and teachers deal with contested knowledge in the classroom (jansen & weldon, 2009:107). several articles refer to the potential role of vulnerability in dislodging and questioning power relations and the central, yet challenging, role of teachers in this regard (keet, zinn & porteus, 2009; jansen, 2009b; murphy & gallagher, 2009). what exactly do we mean by vulnerability within a transformative pedagogy? what does it look like in classroom interaction? i am of the opinion that we are only at the beginning of the discussion around these questions, especially when the primary narratives teachers and learners share about their past and present experiences of, and the ever-changing positions they take in, a fast changing and still very much divided, yet hopeful country are considered. in this article i wish to contribute to the discussion by reflecting on the meaning and possible contribution of vulnerability in the light of excerpts from two interactions a history teacher had with her learners at a well-resourced jewish independent school in 2005. the first interaction focused on racism and interracial relationships, while the second focused on xenophobia and electric fences, central icons of present-day south africa. during these two interactions, the teacher engaged with her own vulnerability and that of her learners in very different ways. it is important to note that the two interactions took place in a particular setting, one that is not representative of history classrooms in south africa. the article indeed does not have as aim to be representative of the overall practice of the teacher involved, nor of other teachers in south africa or elsewhere. this is a case study which aims to understand the complex meaning making processes in specific pedagogical interactions (yin, 2009:4). it aims for “analytic generalization” (yin, 2009:15), i.e. generate questions which, as mentioned above, would contribute to the discussion regarding the presence perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201024 and role of vulnerability in history teaching and whether and how this relates to teachers’ and learners’ sense of identity and belonging in their country. site and participants i visited the classroom of geraldine bridgeton (pseudonym) in 2005, during may and june and again in the period july-september. bridgeton, a ‘white’1 woman in her forties, with a higher diploma in education (hde) from the university of cape town (uct), had just joined a well-resourced, independent school, primarily serving the jewish community in cape town, as an interim teacher. the majority of teachers and learners at the school were members of the dominant ‘white’, well-off group in cape town society. the school’s learner population (a total of 340 in 2005) comprised a majority of ‘white’ learners and a few ‘coloured’ and ‘black’ learners — most lived in the upperand middle-class suburbs of the city. while the majority of the teachers at the school were jewish, geraldine bridgeton and a few others were from other religious and cultural communities. in contrast to the average south african under-resourced public school, the school had spacious sports facilities and a library with specialised sections. the annual school fee per learner in 2005 was r26 800-00 (2331.6 gbp) for those whose parents could afford to pay the full amount. bridgeton and her learners were part of a larger qualitative research project in which i investigated the role of primary narratives in south african history teaching in high school grade nine history classrooms and in two history museums in cape town (geschier, 2008). how do educators in these different pedagogical contexts, use and construct first-hand accounts? how does this impact on their interaction with learners? these questions are qualitative in nature and allow for a case study analysis of people’s meaning making processes in both speech and action (yin, 2009). to this end, i undertook semi-structured interviews with 12 museum facilitators working at the cape town holocaust centre and the district six museum, and with 26 grade nine history teachers from 19 high schools in broader cape town. seven of these 26 teachers, coming from different backgrounds and working across the wide spectrum of cape town schools, agreed to be observed in their respective classes, albeit for varying lengths of time. despite teachers’ initial plans, only one of the seven observed teachers, namely bridgeton, visited the museums and allowed me to observe the visits. following the ethical expectations of a qualitative study, i sought the permission of the institution and individuals involved. in addition, i signed an ethics form, which is congruent with the uct code for research involving human subjects. in accordance with these agreements, i use pseudonyms to protect the identity of the teacher and learners. the principal allowed me to mention the school’s religion and the school is, therefore identifiable by deduction. i agreed with the school that i would describe the school as a ‘jewish independent school’ and that i would provide the teacher with drafts of the analysis. bridgeton seemed to feel comfortable with an observer present, despite the fact that she had just started at the school as an interim teacher. in comparison with other teachers participating in the project, there were fewer language issues and more commonalities between her and the researcher and it seemed easier to establish a relationship of trust. the (perceived) identity of the researcher might have something to do with this: a non-south african, non-jewish (though often thought by several informants and readers to be jewish), ‘white’, educated, female and relatively young, historian and teacher, compared to the teachers and museum facilitators participating in the project. after some time the teacher allowed me to audiotape the interactions, which complemented the hand-written observation notes. i eventually observed more than twenty history lessons over two terms and joined the teacher and her learners on 1 many south africans still use ‘race’ as a basis of differentiation in their discourses despite its historical roots in colonialism and apartheid. i indicate the discursive origin of these labels by using single quotation marks for ‘whites’, ‘coloureds’ and ‘blacks’. i ask the reader to be aware of the fact that the complexity of the various identities of a person nevertheless defies classification. geschier — vulnerability and belonging in the history classroom 25 their visit to the district six museum and the cape town holocaust centre.2 this seeming ease, however, did not render the observations and analysis easy or straightforward. analytic lenses i analysed audiotape recordings and observation notes of the classroom interactions, looking at the presence and form of primary narratives and less organised forms of positioning self and others in history.3 starting from the premise that individuals and groups recruit language, in the words of discourse analyst gee, “to ‘pull off’ specific social activities and social identities” (1999:1), i used discourse analysis and positioning theory as methodological tools. the latter developed out of discursive psychology in response to the rather static assumptions of role theory, and aims to study people’s complex, multiple and contradictory agency (harré & van langenhove, 1999). in addition, as the mere presence and construction of primary narratives and less organised forms of positioning self and others in history does not say much about their import in a pedagogical interaction, i analysed the teacher’s approach to history and her pedagogical mode of practice, using categories developed by seixas (2000) and jacklin (2004) respectively. it is beyond the scope of this article to spell out all these categories; instead, the description of relevant concepts is embedded in the analysis of the observations below. vulnerability: what is at stake in a pedagogical interaction traditional definitions associate vulnerability (latin, vulnerabilis, wounding) with the military and the medical realm, defining it, literally and metaphorically, as a breach in one’s defence — a state which one should avoid or overcome (e.g. thomson, 1998; the free dictionary, 2009). alternative interpretations emphasise the strengths that underlie this breach, associating it with being human, an openness and willingness to risk moving beyond the self and engaging with ‘the other’, and an awareness and reflectivity around making difficult and easy choices each day, having parts of our selves mapped, others unknown or feared (dale & frye, 2009; garrison, 2004; keet et al., 2009; lasky, 2005). several authors emphasise that using this kind of vulnerability in the pedagogical relationship, requires that we do not shy away from conflict and discomfort as, paradoxically, hope and possibility lie in facing them. conflict and discomfort, in other words, can be conducive to growth in and beyond the pedagogical relationship (boler, 2004; dale & frye, 2009). yet, how exactly do we use the latter kind of vulnerability in our teaching? this question is particularly pertinent regarding ways in which teachers use primary narratives, their own and those of others. we 2 more specifically, i observed and partly audiotaped bridgeton during eight teaching periods of grade nine history on nazi germany and the holocaust (with cross-reference to apartheid) over a total of five days in may and june 2005. audiotaping was allowed from the third day onwards. during this period, i also observed and audiotaped a half-day visit to the cape town holocaust centre. over a total of six days in the period july-september 2005, i observed and audiotaped 13 history periods on apartheid (with cross reference to nazi germany) and one assembly in which a ‘coloured’, muslim teacher told about his experiences of the forced removals from district six. i also observed and partly audio-taped the learners’ half-day visit to the district six museum. 3 in the transcripts included in this article, i put informants’ quotes in italics, in order to distinguish between the informant’s and the author’s voice. according to international transcription standards, the informants’ speech has been reproduced as closely as possible. this means that the researcher has not ‘corrected’ vernacular (yow 1994). i use the following transcription conventions: • ‘(pause)’ and ‘(long pause)’ stand for short and somewhat longer pauses taken by the interviewee/speaker. • words in capital letters indicate that the interviewee/speaker raised his/her voice. • underlining indicates the author’s emphasis. • the author’s editing and cutting interventions are of two kinds: • cutting out the ‘um’s’ and ‘uh’s’ when this is not of discursive relevance is not indicated. • cutting out long pieces of talk, due to repetition or irrelevance to the issue focused on, is indicated by ‘[…]’. in situations where the speakers’ words are unclear or not discernable, i indicate this by placing the words or phrases between straight brackets. perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201026 perceive the sharing of especially our own history as potentially disruptive or, when delivered in the form of a confession, inappropriate, as it arouses discomforting feelings such as guilt, blame and shame. some even argue that sharing a personal narrative, especially about the apartheid era, is per definition a confession, and therefore to be avoided (history lecturer, personal communication, may 2007). we tend to argue that, instead, emotional distance is needed to create a safe space in which we can discuss issues regarding democracy and citizenship (murphy & gallagher, 2009: 163). do we get to the core of human reality though, when we merely talk in terms of commonly understood, seemingly safe, all-around-agreedupon-moral lessons? jansen (2009a:93-94) suggests the power of personal narrative indirectly, in contrast to mental reasoning, preaching and blaming. the question remains however: how does this work? what is the (potential) added value of taking a vulnerable position as a teacher while sharing personal narratives? what requires our attention is the specific form vulnerability needs to take in a pedagogical setting, as learners, given their pedagogical, indeed vulnerable, position, are not equal to the teacher. reciprocity and mutual self-consciousness — characteristics kwenda (2003) mentions in his definition of ‘mutual vulnerability’ — only go a certain distance within a pedagogical relationship. more specifically, the teacher has the responsibility to take more risks in taking and role-modelling a vulnerable position. this is, as we know, no easy task (garrison, 2004; jansen, 2009a). the fact that in the south african context, teachers have experienced the apartheid régime first hand, makes the task seem even more daunting. narrative researchers tell us that humans have the tendency to construct narratives with clear-cut roles and stereotypes and, in anticipation of and response to (imaginative) audiences, struggle to describe painful experiences or experiences they cannot defend on current moral grounds (portelli, 1991:52-53; samuel & thompson, 1990:38). in classrooms, therefore, teachers might share personal narratives, but not necessarily from a vulnerable position. narratives of admirable heroism or acknowledged victim-hood are easier to share. one does not need to be an unreflective teacher to invest highly in these kinds of positions that are safe because they tend to go unquestioned and are easily perceived as contributing to individual and collective feelings of belonging. similarly, learners, as most audiences of potentially painful primary narratives, might build an emotional wall and normalize the undiscussable and indescribable in an attempt to find closure (bar-on, 1999). given the high stakes, how did vulnerability play out in bridgeton’s construction and use of first-hand accounts in her history classroom? in the following sections, i first describe the teacher’s general pedagogical practice and then present and analyse two excerpts of discussions held in june and october 2005 in which bridgeton engaged with her own vulnerability and that of her learners in very different ways. bridgeton’s pedagogical practice using the language of jacklin (2004), one could say that bridgeton’s mode of pedagogical practice was discourse led: she talked explicitly about the discourse of history, not just its activities, but also its way of thinking, comparing it to law, journalism and medicine. she made the bigger picture clear to the learners through regular cross-disciplinary and cross-period references. she referred to higher grades, the learners’ future careers and other sources of knowledge, such as the media, other disciplines and the learners’ (jewish) religion. she repeatedly positioned herself as a professional historian by referring to her activities outside school, such as doing research and furthering her education. throughout her interactions with the learners, the teacher made statements such as: “you’re trained as a historian”, explaining that history is about substantiating your arguments and using sources. she also emphasized that becoming a historian is a process by saying: “you’ll get better in it”; “it takes time”. the teacher mobilised primary narratives regularly. she used narratives about her own experiences and narratives from a facing history and ourselves4 course, the cape town holocaust centre (which the learners visited during the term), a visiting teacher who had been forcibly removed from district six during the apartheid era, and the learners’ grandparents. even though bridgeton presented herself, but 4 facing history and ourselves is an international education program that offers teachers support in creating classrooms in which learners link the past to the present as morally aware, active, citizens. geschier — vulnerability and belonging in the history classroom 27 also primary witnesses, as an authority, she regularly pointed out her positioned, or in the words of seixas (2000) ‘post-modern’, approach to history, emphasizing the constructed and ever-changing character of knowledge, and inviting the learners to be critical, even of their own teacher. at the same time, however, bridgeton had a clear moral stance, a desire to teach for change, involving her learners in what she calls “volatile conversations”, in which she challenged them to reflect upon the links between past and present and the teacher’s and learners’ responsibilities as advantaged, ‘white’ south africans. bridgeton was, as she stated in a reflective interview, “on a mission” to question racism and thoughts of superiority (interview, october 2005). she seemed to attempt to uncover and deconstruct power relations in past and present south africa by “interrogat[ing] the basis for [the] intelligibility” of racism and the dominant narrative of ‘superiority’ current amongst learners and teachers (simon, 2005:21). this was not easy, as bridgeton struggled with how to use first hand accounts in an attempt to change the learners’ thinking. the reason for this is that the use and construction of primary narratives went together with potentially undesirable and uncomfortable explicit and implicit positioning of self and others. in her construction and use of primary narratives, bridgeton worked with her vulnerability, and that of learners’, in different, seemingly contradictory ways which, as the following two extracts show, had markedly different outcomes. i might have chosen a black man — a conversation in june 2005 the day after the grade nines visited the cape town holocaust centre, bridgeton told them that she did not think they had learnt from the visit. a heated discussion ensued, in which one of the learners brought up the following argument: richard: i think that the majority of the world is racist. because, not, not like, say ok, coloured people, black people [away with them] and all that kind of thing. because — honestly — do you have any children? t: no, you, you are my children. ok. yes? richard gives hypothetical situation: if, if, if somebody’s child comes home with a black boyfriend, i don’t care what anybody says, no one, no parent, can honestly say they never thought twice, sort of ‘well, she could have done better’. everyone/ if you see. t interrupts and reformulates: so you are saying if my daughter would come home with a black boyfriend, i’m gonna think ‘she could have done better’? richard: no, no, not necessarily, [but] i bet you will, you will, you will think twice. learners talk at same time. t: you don’t know if my husband is black or not. a learner: is he? richard: i don’t think so. t: you don’t. (silence. learners seem to be taken aback here!) t: so i might choose a black man. i might have chosen a black man. learners talk at the same time. richard continues his argument: i bet you, if you saw two people, walking on the street. t interrupts: do you understand what i’m saying? perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201028 richard: (dismissively yet respectfully) ja, i know … and continues his argument: if you see two white people on the street, you won’t look twice, if they’re black, like a nigerian person and an english person, — like live — you’ll look. t: but i think you don’t see the point of what i’m saying: i might have chosen a person who’s black because i love him. richard: ja maybe, i don’t know. this conversation was one of many in which the teacher repeatedly attempted to make the learners question their own thinking. again and again, the learners resisted this attempt. it is possible that richard appealed for racism to be seen as a universally shared characteristic (yet clearly speaking as ‘white’ and positioning the teacher as such), because throughout the previous interactions the teacher positioned herself implicitly as ‘not racist’. richard tried to convince the teacher by appealing to her personal life by using an imaginative scenario. bridgeton, however, did not share personal, autobiographical information and rather questioned the learners’ assumptions, implying that her personal life could be different from what they assumed it to be. she did this by using modality to move from real to imagined possibility, increasingly lowering her truth claim, yet finishing the discussion with a strong moral truth: “you don’t know if my husband is black or not … i might choose a black man, i might have chosen a black man … because i love him.” in reality, the teacher is single. as she explained in the reflective interview, bridgeton tried to pre-empt the learners’ stereotyping of ‘we whites all think the same’ by positioning herself as ‘the other’, namely as having married a ‘black’ man, or as (potentially) wanting to marry a ‘black’ man. this positioning as ‘the other within’ seemed to unbalance the learners and deflected richard’s attempt to create an inclusive ‘we’-group. it is likely that because of this positioning the teacher challenged their assumption that ‘we, whites think and act the same’, but at the same time, she closed the door to potential honesty about being racist, in the conversation. during the reflective interview, bridgeton explained her choice not to disclose certain aspects of her personal identity by referring to the impediments in post-apartheid interactions stating that because of the apartheid past, people easily box someone, and she did not want to be boxed (in, for example, the christian faith). at the same time, she referred to an idea in the jewish faith, namely that ‘within every person is a whole universe’ — an idea that is not yet internalised: if you teach that, then how does that relate to you calling someone (long pause) a derogatory term? how does that rate/relate to your racism? this reflection contrasted with the teacher’s performance: ‘being racist’, a positioning which is part of the world (as being outside the self) and of the world enveloped within the self, was othered (bar-on, 1999). the teacher’s thinking and actions were complex and contradictory, not yet integrated. instead of taking a vulnerable position herself, she seemed to expect the learners to take on such a position as she located racist thinking solely in their heads. according to jansen (2009a) and garrison (2004) learners struggle to take on such a position unless the teacher takes the first step. the learners in bridgeton’s class strongly resisted this pedagogical positioning. while the interaction was clearly a teaching-and-learning moment, bridgeton seemed to have succeeded in making the learners doubt their assumptions, it was limited, because the teacher’s positioning cut the discussion short. (note richard’s seemingly deflated response: “yes, maybe, i don’t know”.) what could the learner have said without showing disrespect towards the teacher? even i did it the other day — a conversation in september 2005 there was, however, later on in the term, one observed interaction where the teacher started to integrate her self-reflections and actions. during a discussion on nationalism and belonging, bridgeton took on a vulnerable position in which she located prejudiced thinking within herself. it took place during one of the many volatile conversations. the conversation was triggered in a particular way: the teacher left the room to pick up a memo. i switched off the tape recorder and the learners started singing the national anthem spontaneously. they geschier — vulnerability and belonging in the history classroom 29 increased the volume while looking at the door as if hoping for a teacher to hear them. when the teacher arrived, they started anew and the teacher joined them. some learners stood up and, while still singing, placed their right hand on their heart; bridgeton did the same. while this might seem melodramatic to the reader, the learners’ performance was impressive at the time. they sang the anthem fully, without faltering. their spontaneous act, and the passion and confidence with which they sang challenged my own assumptions in regards to these learners’ sense of belonging and patriotism (compare with nkomo & vandeyar, 2008:14). it seemed to surprise the teacher as well, as she acknowledged and complimented their skills, comparing them to learners in other independent schools at which she had taught, commenting “you are better than anybody else.” (the learners cheered at this point.) the teacher then opened a discussion on nationalism (“the idea […] to acknowledge our oneness as a nation”) and the different ways in which people perceive it. one of the learners, henk, linked it to the previous discussions on racism by asking if “nationalism also fall[s] under the same criteria as racism and all the other discriminations”. in her response, bridgeton took on a vulnerable position by sharing and analyzing her own xenophobic feelings: t: i think, it’s an interesting thing, henk, i had a history teacher at school, and he, he refused to accept that there was any positive form of nationalism. i myself am not persuaded on that point of view. i think that we as humans, it’s like having, it’s a sense of identity, that doesn’t necessarily have to be negative. now, i mean nationalism, if you use it as [inaudible] as, as a historic term, it doesn’t necess/it’s a/it’s a pride in one’s nation, it’s a sense of belonging. you know, it doesn’t necessarily have to be [shoot] the exclusion of — which is what you’re saying. and i think when we, like for instance xenophobia. people coming from zimbabwe, people coming from (pause) other countries here, and they get beaten up, because, even i did it the other day. some friends of mine have zimbabweans living next door to them. (pause) ok? and those of you who/that might come from zimbabwe, pardon me for what i am gonna say now, but those friends of mine live in the southern suburbs, they got a really nice house, they haven’t got an electric fence or whatever. none of the neighbours, some of them even don’t have fences, you know, high fences, with security gates or whatever. these zimbabweans pitch up, they put up a fence, they put electric wire around it, and they got this massive flash light that’s on permanently right through the night. so i was very rude. and i was loudly rude outside. it was quite childish actually. (learners chuckle) considering i teach history and do say things about not being, um, prejudiced towards others. but i just started chirping, we’re having a braai, so i started chirping loudly about the neighbours from zimbabwe, and if they want to have an electric fence they can go back to zimbabwe. (girl gasps) ’cause that’s not what we want in south africa. which i believe/ you know what my view is/ and other neighbours don’t even have a high wall, they’ve got low walls, and these guys are putting up a flipping armed factory! i don’t what they’re do/i would put out a gun outside! (learners chuckle) ok, now! henk: you’re intolerant. an armed factory (chuckles). t: it’s totally intolerant of me/ what i’m saying is ‘zimbabweans pack your goods, and trek’, you get? […] they feel, they have felt insecure, maybe. […] look, i’m not saying, i am not proud of my behaviour. i’m just saying: it was an easy, it was an easy sort of a prejudicial response […] they might have very well had a bad experience or something. i was exhibiting xenophobia, in this/ shsh (learners talking at the same time). sarah: what’s xenophobia? does that mean? t: xenophobia is an intolerance/ (simon is talking at same time, inaudible) — simon! sh! — is an intolerance of people from other nations. (learners are talking at the same time, inaudible.) t: ok, i’ll take your points now. i am not justifying my behaviour. it was childish. (pause) but the point is, it was quite fun at that moment because i don’t wanna live in a south africa where we perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201030 have electric fences, i don’t/ what is that? when you as people in a country, have to separate your fellow country-people by an electric fence, what sort of country is that? now, some of you might have electric fences, so you better give me feedback. […] simon: […] you’ve got no right at all. i know it sounds horrible but you’ve got no right to judge them. t: exactly my point that i just made. that’s exactly the point. (girl laughs.) simon: so what’s the point of the story? t: the point of the story is about nationalism — i come back to your point. ok. […] (marta says she disagrees with the teacher and explains how her family put up electric fencing on their wall the year before, and the emotions of feeling unsafe having people breaking in on a regular basis that lay at the root of that decision). […] t: it does/ it does make me/ it makes/ shshsh (to talking learners)/ it does make me think a little bit, about our society. all i’m, i think your point, martha, listen i, i understand that people want to feel safe, and that’s, that’s a natural need. martha: we, we didn’t do it viciously, we just did it for our own safety. t: i know that, i’m not, i am sorry, martha, i wasn’t implying, i’m just saying, what always strikes me is to, is to think about, is to think about the broader picture; if we feel, shshsh, (pause) if we feel the need to put up fences and putting electric gates, and put up barbed wire; it says something about our society. i am not making a comment about the need to feel safe. that’s a natural need. everyone wants to feel safe. but that we need to do that to protect ourselves is a comment on our society, and we need to ask deeper questions about that. what does this say about our society? what does this say about my position in this society? you know things like that. we need to think about it. we don’t necessarily have solutions. but i do think that it’s important that we think about that. during this conversation the teacher positioned herself explicitly as xenophobic towards zimbabweans who put up electric fences. of note is that bridgeton stayed with her own positioning; she did not explicitly position the learners as xenophobic. because she stayed with her own position, and, at the same time, allowed the learners to take and hold their own positioning, it seems, the discussion was less heated, yet in-depth and honest (lasky, 2005:901 & 907). the learners reacted in diverse ways, simultaneously expressing discomfort and ease around the risk the teacher took in exposing herself in such manner by chuckling, gasping and laughing. at the same time, however, they also seemed to feel safe enough to question her, and in this way to deepen their understanding around the challenges of nationalism and belonging. there was an almost audible release of tension in the classroom, as bridgeton had been working on her mission persistently for quite a while, and the learners had resisted this in equal measures of persistence. the release was not gory or sensational in character (“what a bad a person you are teacher”), nor was it vindictive or self-righteous (“you see, i told you all along that everybody is prejudiced”). there seemed to be recognition and a relief that this ‘dark’ (unaccepted) side, this side that needs to be changed and healed, is shared with the teacher, a sense that the learners are not alone in this. the teacher modelled self-awareness and honesty about the persistence and daily-ness of stereotypes, while seemingly lightening the atmosphere by using humour in her hyperbolic expressions (garrison, 2004:102; lasky, 2005:907). importantly, the teacher took the authority and final responsibility for the interaction by focusing on and being aware of the learners’ position, without, however, disregarding her own position and the awareness that that position is different from that of the learners. while allowing this difference to be, she also modelled contemplation, wondering about, and opening one’s worldview, inviting the learners geschier — vulnerability and belonging in the history classroom 31 to join in this process of asking difficult, uncomfortable questions about one’s society and one’s position in that society, questions which may not be answered or solved. fascinatingly, while there is openness in this interaction, the moral parameters are still clearly present. bridgeton indirectly indicated desirable behaviour by lowering the power-claim (and threat?) of her own behaviour by labelling it as childish (antaki & widdicombe, 1998). yet, at the same time, bridgeton indicated that there is truth in her childish behaviour too; it brings out the critical question: “what does this [putting up fences] say about this society [and] [one’s] position in this society?” this critical question, however, draws the attention away from bridgeton’s xenophobic thoughts, feelings and actions. this possibly indicates a boundary the teacher reaches here in making herself vulnerable as she places herself again in a strong(er), acceptable, ‘belonging’ position, namely the position of one who has the interests of society at heart. yet, it is still an uncomfortable position. it does not have the same quality as the statement, “i am not racist but …”.5 while it is not a (radical) shift in which the advantaged, ‘white’, ‘we’ group is decentred (boler, 2004), bridgeton’s layered and complex positioning unbalances her learners’ thinking in an honest and productive way. conclusion this article looked at the ways in which a teacher used vulnerability during two interactions in a grade nine-history classroom. in both interactions the crossing of boundaries is central; the boundaries of ‘us’ and ‘them’ in terms of the racialised bodies and the fences that we construct and that divide and define our lives. these were discomforting topics and, for both teacher and learners, a (desire for a) sense of belonging seemed to drive their positioning. while in both conversations the teacher aimed to invite the learners to question their thinking, the way in which she did this, and the learners’ responses to her attempts, differed. during the first interaction, the teacher resisted the learners’ idea that people are racist, by positioning herself as an ‘other within’. the learners, in turn, resisted this strongly, possibly because of “the hatred or fear of one’s own implication in what’s being taught” (ellsworth, 1997:57): how do i deal with racism inside me; racism that the teacher ‘others’? this fear or hatred seemed to be less unbearable during the second interaction where the teacher, instead of focusing on the learners’ thinking, made her own xenophobic thinking central, rendering it strange, and talking reflectively about what fear might say about one’s positioning in life and in society. what is so particular about these two interactions, especially the difference between them? we need to develop a language of description for, and a deeper understanding around, the ways in which teachers use different forms of vulnerability and how learners react to that. something profound happened in especially the second interaction, where the teacher took the lead in risking opening herself up and reflecting on the human desire for closure and openness (friedlander, 1994:260-2), and on the interrelatedness of the self and the world. this is not therapy or confession; that would be too easy a way to box this attempt to work on transforming personal and social identities in the setting of a classroom. there is something hopeful and promising in this interaction. it reminds me of the feeling of relief and the attentive state i was/am in as a child/student, when adults/teachers spoke/speak from this level instead of from a higher moral ground. the latter often calls up a tiredness, because it requests the listener to behave, to ‘be’ in particular ways, while the former requests merely listening, and in that listening lies potential learning, and also, importantly, a sense of belonging. yet, at the same time, the relationship between taking a vulnerable position and wanting to belong, within pedagogical relationships, needs to be investigated further: do dialogues take place in other, similar and different, south african high schools? if so, what form does this interaction take? how do teachers and learners position themselves and others in regards to the past, present and future of their country and their respective responsibilities herein? does vulnerability play a role and how does this relate to their sense of belonging? moreover, more research is needed in relation to transformative teaching, especially 5 i express my gratitude to carolyn mckinney for these insights. she also raised the question as to how this interaction, or a reflection on this interaction, would have been different after the xenophobic attacks in south africa in 2008. perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201032 the forms it could, or maybe even should, take. for example, what would a dialogue look like in which ‘the others’ are, instead of only talked about, part of the interaction? how would individuals and groups across the spectrum of south african education position themselves and others historically, personally and pedagogically in such a joined dialogue, and how would this contribute to co-creating a better future? acknowledgments i wish to thank the teacher, learners and principal of the jewish independent school for allowing me to sit in during history lessons, and the principal in particular, for allowing me to mention the school’s religion. without them this study would not have been possible. i express gratitude also to carolyn mckinney for her in-depth, critical and editorial comments on earlier drafts of this article and to nigel 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the facilitation of learning by tutors is a worldwide phenomenon that is supported by most open and distance learning (odl) institutions. it is a strategy employed to achieve academic success. this qualitative intrinsic case study explored the views of tutors at the university of south africa (unisa) about the implementation of the integrated tutor model (itm) which supports student learning. the successes, challenges and impact of the itm on the tutors’ delivery of tutorials are not fully known. therefore, the findings of this study will highlight the successes, challenges and impact of the itm which unisa can use to improve the model. data were gathered through face-to-face interviews with six tutors who were purposively selected from unisa’s gauteng region. the findings revealed successes and challenges of the itm that affect the support that is due to the students via tutorage. these findings explain the application of the itm that can assist unisa in strengthening or reviewing both the tutor system and the model. keywords: face-to-face, integrated tutor model, interaction, online, tutor 1. introduction an effective student support system is at the heart of an odl institution (tait, 2003). to provide the necessary assistance, universities around the world have developed tutor support as part of their student support programmes. tutor support aims to guide students in their studies. since odl universities offer their academic services online, they vie to deliver exceptional online support to differentiate their offerings from those of other universities. this is in line with rapid developments in information and communication technologies (icts) and greater internet access, which drive teaching and learning in these environments. depending on their student profile, universities may either choose face-toface (f2f) or online tutor support, or even a blend of these to supplement their students’ self-instructional materials. unisa prefers to provide online tutor support. in 2012, unisa introduced the integrated tutor model (itm) to support its students. prior to that, unisa supported its students through the traditional face-to-face tutorial programme. students attended classes on saturdays and sometimes during the week. with the introduction of technology, unisa changed to integrating technology and tutorial support. itm provides ntuli, chs university of south africa e-mail: ntulichs@unisa.ac.za gumbo, mishack t university of south africa e-mail: gumbomt@unisa.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v37i2.4 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 37(2): 53-66 date published: 27 november 2019 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:ntulichs@unisa.ac.za mailto:gumbomt@unisa.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.4 http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie 54 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) students with online tutorial support parallel to f2f support. as a result, students have a choice to use the online, f2f support or both. in the light of the itm, unisa is determined to transition from odl to an open distance and e-learning (odel) model. odl is described as a multi-dimensional concept aimed at bridging the time, geographical, economic, social, educational and communication distance between the students and the institution, the academics, the courseware and their peers (unisa, 2008). odel, however is about removing barriers to access learning, providing flexible learning, student-centredness, supporting students and constructing learning programmes to assist students to succeed in their academic studies (unisa, 2008). the student profile and their circumstances, which arise from the context of a developing south africa, dictate that the itm be used to offer both f2f and online tutor support. the inception of this model was guided, not only by the unisa student profile, but also by the principles of equal opportunities and high academic quality (peters, 2001). the aim of the study on which this article is based was to explore the viability of the itm by gathering tutors’ views on the subject. since tutors implement the model when servicing the students, their views can contribute towards improving the student support system to enable students to benefit optimally, as intended by unisa. all tutors apply online through i-recruitment. they go through the process of selection by module lecturers and the human resource unit based in the college. tutors are required to have honours’ degrees (or higher) in a particular discipline and at least three years’ experience in the facilitation of learning or teaching. for the purpose of training and development, all tutors are required to go through an annual training and development workshop where they are trained in facilitation skills in an odel environment. they are also introduced to the latest developments at unisa and current trends within tutoring. in order to follow up and monitor the implementation of what was learnt in the training and development workshop, formative evaluations are conducted by the regional academic coordinators who manage the f2f programme. tutors are monitored online to check the quality of their facilitation. with the introduction of technology, students enrolled at unisa are assigned an online tutor. they have the option to receive f2f tutorial support by enrolling for this at any unisa regional service centre within south africa and in ethiopia (unisa also services ethiopian students as a special arrangement entered into via a memorandum of agreement with the ethiopia ministry of education). students are divided into tutorial groups, each serviced by a tutor who is contracted to unisa on a part-time basis. the f2f tutorial sessions are mainly conducted on saturdays, although some are scheduled for weekday afternoons and evenings, once a week, for 12 weeks, during a semester. fifteen tutorial sessions are provided for this purpose. the schedule has been designed in such a way that it also meets the needs of employed students. participation in these sessions is optional, but students are encouraged to benefit from the tutor support and to use these opportunities to access the tutors’ knowledge in the subject they are studying. online tutorials do not have a fixed tutorial schedule but are conducted as and when students need support in an area of their studies that is proving challenging. the next section reviews the extant literature on the itm. 2. tutor models used in open distance learning models of tutoring were introduced to support students who entered distance learning through correspondence. these models assisted students who, at the time, studied alone with no support except their own study material. the introduction of individualised tutor support gave 55 ntuli & gumbo tutors’ views on the integrated tutor model in open distance learning the student the full attention of the tutor. according to nonyongo (1998), tutors met with students to support them in their academic journey and helped them to succeed. this model had a gap as tutors expressed the need for students to meet, share their knowledge and assist one another. this need resulted in the f2f tutor model which was established to drive a learnercentred approach to teaching and learning under the guidance of a qualified tutor. according to cervero and wilson (1999), the learner-centred approach calls for the full involvement of students and allows them to identify their needs. this tutorial model had certain weaknesses that included barriers to distance, time and space as students had to travel from their locations to meet at a venue at specified times. this suggested a need for alternative models, such as itm, which used technology to offer flexible learning. f2f and online tutors were employed by unisa to respond to the needs of students in terms of bridging the gap and facilitating learning for students. unisa could not avoid this dual mode, i.e. online and f2f tutoring, due to its student profile – a considerable number of students still live in rural areas which do not have internet or wi-fi access. 3. facilitation of learning through the itm the commonwealth of learning (2003, 62) defines “facilitation of learning” as the way in which students develop their own learning path or resolve obstacles to their learning with tutors or facilitators to assist students in developing their learning skills. according to ntuli (2016, 24), when tutors facilitate learning, they provide students with skills on how to link their existing knowledge to new knowledge in order to explain what they are learning and to solve problems in the most effective way. furthermore, tutors or facilitators should be equipped to facilitate learning in different odl environments. therefore, baran, correira and thompson (2013) note that online tutors need to acquire a different set of skills to enable them to facilitate online while jaques and salmon (2007) explain that diverse human skills are crucial for online and blended learning environments to provide effective tutorial support. facilitation needs a well-resourced environment to stimulate the participants to be motivated and proactive. such facilitation should include collaborative efforts and continuous communication under the support and guidance of tutors who help students to develop the skills needed to learn independently and collaboratively within this environment. online tutorage is however not problemor challenge-free (lisewski & joyce, 2003) which strengthens the need to research the tutors’ views about the use of the itm. odl-based tutoring can bring an interpersonal complexity in the learning process and also heighten learning that is based on physical materials. it can do this through varied practical and iterative activities while promoting collaborative learning among the students and the lecturer or tutor. moore and kearsley (2012) believe that students who learn successfully enjoy learning, and that this is a sign of motivation. we assert that the enjoyment of learning happens through the tutor support that students receive that motivates them to learn. 4. tutors’ evaluation of models of tutoring tutors enhance student learning (hassan, 2017) and their roles and responsibilities are complex and varied (abbot & graf, 2018). despite this, a gap exists in the literature about researching the tutors’ views about the role that they play. abbot and graf (2018, 245) confirm this gap by stating that “[n]umerous studies have shown the benefits of peer tutoring for students through a range of tutoring practices and roles. far fewer have asked tutors directly 56 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) about their experiences”. we confirm this because our literature search did not yield many studies on this aspect. tutors are placed between faculty and students, thus doing what can be termed “supplemental teaching” and, as a result, they have to navigate, as part of their tutoring roles, the relationships which are tied to power and authority. molotsi and goosen (2019) conducted a qualitative case study in which they explored the collaborative learning approach in computer integration in the classroom in an odl institution. they interviewed seven tutors and found that there was limited interaction between students and e-tutors. in another study, hassan (2017) investigated tutors’ movement downward and upwards along the semantic scale during tutorials. the study found that the pedagogical strategies that tutors adopted enabled them to strengthen and weaken semantic gravity and semantic density for semantic construction and cumulative knowledge building. in yet another study, mills (2015) explored the experiences of two tutors. the findings of the study were that tutors experience challenges pertaining to students’ indiscipline, short attention spans, lesson preparation and classroom management. as a way of responding to the challenges, the tutors used a variety of professional, personal and institutional coping mechanisms to deal with their classes and gained support from the teaching and administrative staff. as much as there are benefits of tutoring, such as improved academic performance, greater satisfaction with the faculty experience, deepening of the tutors’ own academic learning and development of the tutors’ own identities as leaders and teachers (abbot & graf, 2018), there are also challenges that they face. abbot and graf (2018) enumerate challenges related to tutors finding time to prepare and refresh their knowledge of the course material, role clarity, maintaining boundaries between formal tutoring and personal advice (students may be confused by tutors’ roles and engage them on noncourse-related matters) and developing student-tutor relationships. hence, it is important to clarify the interactions that are packaged in the itm. 5. interaction in the implementation of the itm interaction is one of the pillars of the facilitation of learning within the odl environment (hillman, willis & gunawardena, 1994; sher, 2009; moore & kearsley, 2012; zhou & xu, 2015). interactions can be synchronous (in real time) or asynchronous (not in real time), paralleling f2f or online tutor support. moore’s (1993) transactional distance theory is instrumental in closing the transactional gap in distance education. according to moore (1993, 22), transactional distance is a “psychological and communication space” which can give rise to misunderstandings between students and tutors in a distance education context. should this space be left unattended, the learning outcomes will not be attained. for interaction to be successful and meet the learning outcomes, it should take place at three levels, i.e., student-content interaction, student-tutor interaction and student-student interaction (moore & kearsley, 2012). anderson and dron (2011) add a fourth dimension, namely, student-interface interaction. this study focuses on student-tutor interaction as we opine that the tutor plays a role in facilitating the other interactions as well. tutor-student interaction, according to zimmerman (2012), involves communication between the tutor and the student. zimmerman, schmidt, becker, peterson, nyland and surdick (2014) explain that improved communication between the tutor and the student clarifies their roles and responsibilities and leads to a better working relationship. in this way, the tutor and student engage in discussions about the content guided by each other’s role expectation to improve the student’s learning and communication. according to vaughan (2010), online 57 ntuli & gumbo tutors’ views on the integrated tutor model in open distance learning contact between students and tutors heightens interaction and gives students a better understanding of tutors. student-content interaction occurs when students study the subject matter by themselves and that involves their unique knowledge, skills and attitudes (swan, 2010). according to moore (1989, 2), student-content interaction is “a defining characteristic of education where students are expected to interact with the study material or content”. moore (1989) further argues that, without such interaction, it would be impossible for learning to occur, while zimmerman (2012) notes that this type of interaction is characterised by the amount of time the student spends with the content. xiao (2017, 129) indicates that student-content interaction plays a crucial role in distance learning, as it is the foundation upon which all other interactions are built. hence, student-tutor interaction should not be underestimated in a distance learning environment. in student-student interactions, students communicate with each other about the content (moore, 1989) as they work on group projects, assignments or have discussions (sher, 2009). murray, perez, geist and hedrick (2012) refer to such student interaction as “a collaborative exchange of information and ideas”. tutors need to create spaces which facilitate studentstudent interactions as gap-filling agents between primary lectures and students. researching their experiences can inform distance learning institutions so that improved student support can be realised. student-interface interaction engages students in online tasks, such as discussions, downloading study materials, completing online assignments and reading the online material about the subject content. according to gosling (2008), institutions of higher learning advocate for a student-centred approach to teaching and learning which tutors should adopt. ntuli and gumbo (2018, 387) argue that “all types of interactions call for unisa tutors and students to interact at various levels with students through the itm in order for learning to take place”. the role of tutors is therefore crucial for itm-based tutorage especially in odl contexts. their roles can enhance the understanding of their views and experiences about the itm. 6. tutors’ role in the implementation of itm in an odl environment, the tutor performs various roles in the facilitation of learning which include pedagogical, organisational, social and technical roles. the pedagogical role requires the tutor to guide and support students in the process of learning. it includes the facilitation of online and/or f2f discussions, learning according to the schedule provided by the faculty and empowering students to develop their own learning skills (commonwealth of learning, 2003). all pedagogical activities that the tutor performs require him/her to plan thoroughly. these include organising, setting the objectives and following procedures regarding the online or f2f tutorial classes. this is supported by the fact that teaching requires the teacher to choose and construct educational interventions and provide direct instruction when required (anderson & dron, 2011). segoe (2017, 161) suggests that consistent and well-planned tutoring activities help distance education students to feel as if they are in a safe learning environment where they can ask questions, reveal their uncertainties and explore new dimensions in their studies. the tutor performs a social function by communicating with students and making them feel welcomed in the course. this role requires the tutor to create a friendly and comfortable social environment in which students feel that learning is possible (mcpherson & nunes, 2004). hence, one of the important activities a tutor can undertake is to provide students with positive comments to encourage and motivate them throughout their learning journey. holmberg (2005) refers to 58 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) this as an empathetic approach to teaching and learning, also known as the tutor’s affective or counselling role (tait, 2003; unisa, 2012). bernath and vidal (2007) indicate that such an environment is created by offering suggestions to encourage and motivate learners throughout the learning process. as the tutor performs a social role in the facilitation of learning, active participation is promoted through group work and reflective activities. according to aksal (2009), these activities prevent or break down social barriers in the construction of knowledge. mtsweni and abdullah (2014) state that tutors also perform a technical role in the facilitation of learning, since students need technical skills. this role is mostly performed when tutors facilitate online. during the facilitation of learning, a tutor can help students to access the course material and help students to navigate in an online environment before they begin with the actual course. as a result, tutors should be conversant with ict systems if they are to assist and guide online students in this respect. baghdadi (2011) indicates that tutors should allow a certain level of flexibility in their online tutorials to accommodate any unforeseen circumstances (e.g. technical problems and/or emergencies). such flexibility will also address the needs of technologically challenged students who might require digital literacy training before engaging in a formal online class. unisa tutors also perform pedagogical, administrative and affective roles (unisa, 2012), similar to those described by tait (2003). 7. theoretical framework the theoretical framework chosen for the study is salmon’s (2000) five-stage model of e-learning due to the blurred boundary between online and e-learning. a combined definition is that it is a structured learning activity which relies on technology – especially a computer (e-learning) and the intranet with its tools and resources (online learning) – to provide the necessary delivery modes to suit a particular academic purpose, which is effective teaching, learning, assessment and research (gumbo, 2016). the first stage of the model is access and motivation, where the tutor welcomes students online, guides them on how to access some of the materials, and motivates them to engage with him/her and with one another. online socialisation is the second stage which, according to westbrook (2012), is where the tutor is expected to create an environment that is conducive for learning and interaction to take place. here, students are encouraged to engage with one another online as guided by the interaction framework developed by the tutor. information exchange is the third stage where students are expected to discuss a particular topic or activity using discussion boards and chat rooms. a tutor intervenes and contacts those students who are not participating in the discussion, encouraging them to take part and contribute (westbrook, 2012). the fourth stage involves knowledge construction, which requires students to handle complex activities, while working collaboratively and contributing to discussions (salmon, nie & edirisigha, 2010). development is the last stage of the framework, where students reflect on the goals set versus those that have been achieved, and how they can apply the acquired knowledge in their own lives. the framework explains the tutor-student activities as they pertain to the context of the itm in this study. salmon’s five stage e-learning model is relevant for this study because it synchronises the support that the tutors give students right from access and motivation to the development of their learning. it explains students’ learning in five stages of online tutor support. the tutors welcome, encourage and motivate the students in the first stage. during the second stage, students are expected to socialise and introduce themselves on the 59 ntuli & gumbo tutors’ views on the integrated tutor model in open distance learning platform by providing a short biography. this is the first tutor-student interaction and studentstudent interaction on the platform. in the third stage, the students enjoy the tutor support as they engage with the material content and exchange information about their assignments and the challenges that they encounter in the course. they are given the liberty to solve problems by themselves and, at the same time, construct new knowledge. the fourth stage is when the tutors facilitate the process of learning for the students. supporting and responding culminates in the fifth stage in the framework, which is about the development of students as they gain new knowledge in the course. according to this framework, students should be supported through a structured developmental process if online learning is to be successful. it scaffolds a structured and paced programme of what salmon (2000) calls “e-tivities” (online-based activities). support and development are offered to students at each stage as explained above, enabling them to realise their online learning expertise incrementally. the weaknesses of the framework may be reduced flexibility caused by timetabling (lisewski & joyce, 2003). 8. problem statement for many years, unisa has supported students using f2f tutorials as a strategy to increase participation and improve throughput rates. recently, unisa decided to change the strategy of supporting students by implementing a new tutor model known as the itm. this change meant that the tutors had now to support students online. the tutors’ views of the itm are however not known yet. this creates a need for a study that explores the tutors’ views of the itm as they attempt to support the students in an odl. consequently, the present study addressed the following question: what are the tutors’ views of the itm for student support at unisa? this main question gave rise to the following sub-questions: • what are the tutors’ views regarding the success of the itm in tutorial classes? • what are the tutors’ views regarding the challenges of the itm in tutorial classes? • how does the itm impact the tutors’ delivery of tutorials? 9. methodology this study followed a multiple case study design to get an in-depth analysis of the tutors’ views in a single odl institution. an intrinsic case study involves the investigation of one unique case (mcmillan & schumacher, 2010). according to punch (2009) and mcmillan and schumacher (2010), a case is a design which helps the researcher to study a problem or issue in depth within a bounded context. we entered the participants’ life worlds to study their views as tutors involved with unisa’s tutoring systems and to understand the meaning that they ascribe to their practice as tutors. the study was conducted at the five unisa regional service centres that are geographically dispersed in the gauteng region. semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from six purposively selected participants who tutored in both the f2f and online platforms. according to laforest (2009, 1), “semi-structured interviews can be used to gather qualitative information”. laforest (2009) claims that semi-structured interviews are suitable for working with small samples hence we applied them in interviewing the six participants who were selected in the study. salmon’s framework helped with the design of the interview guide that solicited the participants’ views about the itm. the interview guide covered these aspects which helped to gather the tutors’ views on tutors’ 60 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) understanding of the itm, effects of the itm on their facilitation of learning and support, support that they need in order to support students effectively in turn, students’ access and participation, success factors about the itm and challenges they experienced in the itm. the interview instrument was pre-tested on two tutors whose tasks resembled those of the participants selected for the study. this accounted for the trustworthiness of the study. according to turner (2010), a pre-test should be done with participants who have similar characteristics as those selected for the actual study. no change was made to the interview guide as the pretest did not reveal any problems with the tool. appointments for the interviews were negotiated with the participants. each interview lasted about 30 minutes and was conducted face-to-face. the interviews were recorded as that “ensures completeness of the verbal interaction and provides material for reliability checks” (mcmillan & schumacher, 2010, 360). mcmillan and schumacher (2010, 367) define qualitative data analysis as “primarily an inductive process of organizing data into categories and identifying patterns and relationships among the categories”. guided by this assertion, data analysis in this study followed a thematic analysis. we adopted braun and clarke’s (2006) six-phase framework of analysis. following these phases, we familiarised ourselves with the data, generated initial codes, searched for themes, reviewed themes, defined themes (guided by the research questions) and carried out the write-up. thematic analysis was suited to this study due to the flexibility that it can offer; it is not rigid, rather, it enables the research to move back and forth during analysis in an attempt to make sense of the data (braun & clarke, 2006). its flexibility is thus suited for analysing the data which involves a complex phenomenon, such as teaching and learning. the goal of thematic analysis is to identify themes which are important and which address the issue at hand (maguire & delahunt, 2017). the analysis yielded the following themes: tutors’ knowledge and understanding of the itm and its importance in the odl environment, success factors in the implementation of the itm for student support, challenges in the implementation of the itm in facilitating learning and the impact of itm on tutors’ delivery of tutorials. ethical clearance for the study was obtained in 2015. permission was also obtained to use unisa employees as study participants. the participants were promised absolute confidentiality once the aims of the study had been explained to them, and they were assured that they could withdraw their participation at any time. all interviews were recorded after obtaining their consent. 10. findings the success factors of the itm all the tutors who participated in the interviews had three years of f2f and online tutoring experience. according to them, the appointment of qualified tutors to facilitate tutoring through itm is the first success factor in the programme. the success of their tutoring roles lies more in the institutional support that they receive. they thus expressed their appreciation for the support received from unisa as follows: regional administrative support staff [are] quite helpful, such as tutorial officers who provide scheduling and constant communication on the changes in the programme. as they represent the primary lecturers, they expressed opinions about support that they received from them: 61 ntuli & gumbo tutors’ views on the integrated tutor model in open distance learning academic staff insisted that all face-to-face tutors should have activities for students, at least two questions. the questions would be sent to the lecturer for quality purpose[s] and [would] be sent back to the tutor to give to students and work it out with students to assess them. these efforts close the gap between the tutor and the academic staff, which is really essential. one needs to be proactive and start the conversation. every time i send an e-mail to them, the lecturers do come back to me, however if you don’t start the communication, the lecturer will never [do so]. another aspect regarding the success of their tutorage lies in the training about the itm accompanied by the supply of computers for learning and internet access, training in basic computer skills and the use of tutorial equipment to facilitate effective learning. the participants claimed that they were also orientated on how to use the myunisa platform for f2f and e-tutoring. however, they needed a practical experience of working with the technology online: a power point presentation … [we] would like to see trainings being done practically, where tutors will go to a computer lab and navigate on myunisa, and [we] wanted the training to be done continuously, so that [we] would not forget. the support that the tutors got from the lecturers would, in turn, make them offer learning support to their students in accordance with salmon’s model. there is therefore a need to give support to tutors so that the four interactions, identified by hillman et al. (1994), sher (2009), moore and kearsley (2012), vaughan (2010) and zhou and xu (2015), can be realised. the challenging factors of the itm once tutors have been appointed and “activated” on myunisa for the task of f2f or online tutoring, they are expected to start working with students. however, not all of them had access to the tutoring materials on the myunisa learning management system (lms). they were allocated the passwords but they were unable to log in, as one tutor explained: … twice already i found that the password does not work, i used the student’s password to download the material. they found out that, for f2f tutorials, they do not have access to materials that are loaded on myunisa until the lecturer gives them permission to do so. sometimes the lecturers granted permission late in the semester, which prevented the tutors from assisting the students. the tutors were also frustrated by the non-participation of students in online tutorials. they stated that participation happened more readily in a f2f tutorial class where it was easier to manage and engage. when students worked in groups, it was easy to notice whether someone participated or not. the non-participation of students left the tutors unsure of whether the students understood the content. students logged in online to: open the material […] i suppose they read [it], but they do not respond. very few of them interact with the tutor. role clarification is crucial in any interaction where certain tasks should be performed. tutors felt that the students did not understand the students’ role and that of a tutor. some students expected the tutors to teach them. although the literature makes the role of tutors and students explicit (commonwealth of learning, 2003; tait, 2003; anderson & dron, 2011; unisa, 2012), the tutors felt that most students did not grasp what their role entails and waited to be “spoonfed” by their tutors. the tutors felt that student orientation should be considered soon after 62 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) student registration. a lack of internet access for students, feedback from the module lecturers, and tutor guidance by the module lecturer were enumerated as further challenges. the tutors felt that unisa has a role to play in terms of alerting students about their expectations when studying in an odl context. a tutor stated: students need to receive information from the institution about the role of an e-tutor, so that they are able to interact with her and get help at all times. the most important hindrance to tutorage via the itm involved access for both the tutors and the students. while access is hailed as a special feature of distance education (moore & kearsley, 2012), the findings of this study showed that not enough is being done to ensure access, thus the itm is not working as expected when it comes to the tutor-student interaction. this finding does not support the literature in terms of the four interactions that should happen in tutorage (anderson & dron, 2011; moore & kearsley, 2012). furthermore, the finding does not support salmon’s model fully; in terms of this finding, the tutors cannot give the expected support if students are passive. the impact of itm on tutors’ delivery of tutorials the tutors acknowledged that the itm had changed the way they facilitated as it required them to be creative and to explore best practices for tutoring online as well as f2f. the varied groups of students that they engaged created this need for creativity. one participant explained: the support that i get from the administrative staff assisted me to cope and understand that i am dealing with a different kind of group, compared to [the] face-to-face group. the tutors indicated that dealing with students online, rather than f2f, is challenging since they are required to prepare with students in mind in order to be able to assist them to achieve their learning objectives. however, one tutor held a different view: i get to imagine students’ existence even if they are not there and that helps me a lot, although it is a challenge, but this is one of the strategies that help me to cope with the changes as a tutor involved in both offerings. tutors are expected to integrate technology even in the delivery of f2f tutorials which requires creative thinking, research and learning from others, for instance, in terms of the need for enhanced communication using myunisa, as one participant noted: when you have posted something online, you need to make an announcement so that even those who did not visit the site should be able to see that there is something new on the platform. overall, the findings reflect some success and tutors’ positive views about working online with students within the itm. however, based on the challenges revealed above, the itm seems not to realise the developmental goals stated in salmon’s (2000) framework. the basic challenge lies at the baseline of salmon’s model, which is access. it, in turn, affects everything that follows during the developmental stages. based on the students’ passivity and their limited online participation, information exchange, knowledge co-construction and student development cannot be realised optimally. student passivity runs counter to the tutors’ provision of support. while the tutors seem to be happy with the support that they get, the support that that they give to the students, in turn, is compromised due to this passivity. this means that, in the light of students’ need for blended teaching and learning (online 63 ntuli & gumbo tutors’ views on the integrated tutor model in open distance learning and f2f) at unisa, salmon’s framework cannot be implemented. oscillating between online and f2f is an unavoidable truth in the context of a distance education university such as unisa. hence, the standards and rigidity which are imposed by salmon’s framework, i.e. the “dangers” (lisewski & joyce, 2003), do not allow the itm to fit comfortably into the mould of the framework. 11. conclusion in exploring the views of tutors regarding the use of the itm for tutor support at unisa, the findings revealed three main aspects: the successes, challenges and impact of the itm on tutors’ delivery of tutorials. the success of the itm can therefore be adjudged partly in terms of what these findings reveal within the context of salmon’s five-stage e-learning model. while it benefits students to a certain extent, as reflected in the tutors’ views, tutorage (especially online) revealed a number of challenges which require attention. in addition to tutor training, unisa should orientate students into the itm, especially in respect of the tutor-student roles. salmon’s model provides a basis for implementing the itm. however, issues of access compromise its envisaged realisation. without access to computers and internet, there will be no interaction between the tutors and students, or among students themselves, an aspect on which salmon’s model places a high premium. this calls for unisa to improve computer and internet access for students wherever they are. the mobile station service should be extended to tutorage. unisa could also consider collaboration with other universities to facilitate student and tutor access. this study contributes knowledge about tutors’ views as they relate to the use of tutor models to support student learning. the tutors’ views highlight the successes and challenges of the itm. the complexities of the itm are evident when it is juxtaposed against salmon’s framework. the limitations of this research lies in the absence of the students’ voices which future studies should investigate. references abbot, s. & graf, a.j. 2018. listening to undergraduate peer tutors: roles, relationships and challenges. international journal of teaching and learning in higher education, 30(2), 245–261. aksal, f. 2009. action plan on communication practices: roles of tutors at emu distance education institute to 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http://www.unisa.ac.za/cmsys/staff/contents/departments/tutservices/docs/unisa_tutor_model.pdf http://www.unisa.ac.za/cmsys/staff/contents/departments/tutservices/docs/unisa_tutor_model.pdf http://staffcmsys.unisa.ac.za/cmsys/staff/contents/departments/tuition_policies/docs/opendistancelearning_council3oct08.pdf http://staffcmsys.unisa.ac.za/cmsys/staff/contents/departments/tuition_policies/docs/opendistancelearning_council3oct08.pdf https://doi.org/10.1080/01587919.2017.1298982 https://doi.org/10.5539/ies.v8n10p158 _hlk522070810 _goback _hlk2528826 _hlk19665464 _hlk3254072 _hlk516793069 _hlk516793151 562023 41(1): 56-73 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 students’ sense of belonging at a south african university during covid-19 abstract the research on students’ sense of belonging in higher education has evolved into a prominent theme worldwide. institutional research focuses on the institution understanding itself and helps leaders to rethink improvement initiatives. moreover, the covid-19 pandemic has required of institutions to revise student support programmes and approaches to maintain a strong sense of belonging. the theories of belonging by strayhorn (2012) and dumford et al. (2019) were adopted to analyse student responses. the aim of the study was to understand students’ sense of belonging and how the university responded to the challenges presented by the covid-19 pandemic to ensure a strong sense of belonging. data were generated through in-depth interviews with 45 undergraduate students from all seven faculties. the findings highlight notable prevention measures intended to limit the spread of the virus on campus and student support in the form of study devices and data. the post-lockdown changes included a return to face-to-face mental health support, drafting covid-19 catchup plans for first year orientation of 2020 and 2021 cohorts, improving the student voice. finally, notable principles for responding to a future higher education crisis are highlighted. these initiatives contributed towards establishing and maintaining a strong students’ sense of belonging. keywords: covid-19 lockdown; sense of belonging; south africa; students; university. 1. introduction the study of students’ sense of belonging has evolved into a prominent research theme at higher education institutions worldwide (terenzini, 2013). institutional research at a university refers to studies that focus on understanding the university (terenzini, 1993; lange, 2014). hence, research findings contribute to institutional improvement through suggesting new initiatives towards a better campus experience, which has explicit and implicit implications for the wellbeing and academic success of students (terenzini, 1993 & 2013). south african higher education institutions have had to evolve and adapt to the post-1994 democratic dispensation. in the case of a historically white institution, post-1994 has involved an emphasis on admitting black students who were excluded historically (swartz et al., author: taabo mugume1, 2 affiliation: 1university of the free state, south africa 2ubuntu higher education research centre, uganda doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i1.6649 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(1): 56-73 published: 31 march 2023 received: 6 august 2022 accepted: 13 march 2022 research article https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6033-4198 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 572023 41(1): 57-73 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 mugume students’ sense of belonging at a south african university during covid-19 2018). this has had implications for the sense of belonging among all students. moreover, within the context of historically white institutions, black students have been vocal in raising their disapproval of university culture(s), which they consider as alienating in terms of race, religion, class, etc. (swartz et al. 2018). therefore, while a great deal has been achieved in relation to higher education access and success, students (black students in particular) still find universities to be alienating for various reasons. this paper will attempt to shed light on the sense of belonging among undergraduate students at a historically white south african university during the pandemic. the covid-19 pandemic led to a national shutdown, including university campuses, in march 2020 (van schalkwyk, 2021). however, in 2021, the case university slowly started to re-open for senior undergraduate students (students who have gone through their first year at the institution) to return. the process of re-opening the university gained momentum in 2022, since the majority of the south african population had been vaccinated. it is important to note that while cohorts of senior undergraduate students (returning students) were allowed back on campus, first-year students (joining the university for the first time) had been studying online since joining the institution. this had the potential to have a negative impact their sense of belonging, since they had never had physical access to the university. the paper has sections on students’ sense of belonging literature, a conceptual framework, research methodology, data presentation, analysis and discussion, and conclusion. 2. students’ sense of belonging students’ sense of belonging refers to a sense of connectedness. it is when students feel that they matter and that their presence is valued (strayhorn, 2012). it is also seen as a student’s sense of identification or positioning in relation to the campus community that reflects upon the student’s mood, emotions, and attitude (hurtado & carter, 1997; mwangi, 2016). in support of the above definition, strayhorn (2012) refers to students’ perceived social support on campus, which implies a student feeling connected, and the “experience of mattering or feeling cared about, respected, valued by, and important”. all these definitions refer to factors which support a conducive campus climate to support academic success as a core-student endeavour in a university environment. tinto’s (1987) model of student retention has hugely influenced the research on the topic (hurtado & carter, 1997; strayhorn, 2012). tinto argues that “students leave universities if they fail to become integrated into social and academic life”. however, this model of integration has been criticised for placing a great deal of emphasis on the student, instead of the institution taking responsibility for student adaptation. additionally, russell and jarvis (2019: 498) argue that “the students’ sense of belonging should illustrate the interplay between the individual and the institution” towards the necessary level of connectedness for a student to feel that they belong. the research further emphasises the effect of students’ sense of belonging on retention and persistence (hurtado & carter, 1997; mwangi, 2016; strayhorn, 2012). a “strong sense of belonging improves student retention and supports degree completion because students feel cared about within their campus community” (allen et al., 2018: 9). in other words, if students experience a strong sense of belonging they are most likely to feel valued, but also to integrate easily into the campus community and succeed academically. in consideration of campus integration, tinto (1993: 50) argues that “students’ level of integration into a university’s academic and social systems, perceived shared values with the institution, and commitment to the institution reflect a sense of belonging and ‘fit’ within the https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 582023 41(1): 58-73 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) campus environment”. if students experience or perceive themselves as not ‘fitting’ into the social and intellectual fabric of an institution, they are exposed to a higher risk of attrition, while a strong sense of belonging or perceived ‘fitting’ into the institution increases the possibility for satisfaction and persistence. this means that the relationships and engagements that students have with their peers and staff influence how they perceive the campus experience. (hoffman et al., 2003; strayhorn, 2008). therefore, having “meaningful interpersonal relationships, systems of support and resources, and feelings of being accepted and valued… [are] instrumental to a sense of belonging” (mwangi, 2016: 1017). allen et al. (2018) refer to the work of strayhorn (2012) to argue that a sense of belonging is more important for students from marginalised communities. these may include “racial and ethnic minorities, low-income, women, first-generation students, and students who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender”. for example, it has been argued that african americans in the united states (us) often go to historically black colleges (hbcs), believing that they will experience a strong sense of belonging (allen et al., 2018). the resentment towards white institutions in the us may also apply to black students in south africa who join historically white universities. these experiences are influenced by the campus climate of a higher education institution. students’ sense of belonging and campus climate campus climate is defined by amodeo, esposito and bacchini (2020) as the way that groups or individual members of the campus community experience their campus environment. these experiences can vary from substantive inclusion to extreme exclusion, reflecting the dynamics of the institution in the process. in addition, amodeo et al. (2020) highlight that campus climate can be measured in relation to instances of harassment and bias, interaction between individuals and groups, and overall perceptions. furthermore, a welcoming and inclusive campus climate is noted to contribute towards a strong sense of belonging, and has the potential to have a significant impact student academic success in a positive way, while the opposite is also argued to be true (amodeo et al, 2020; rankin & reason, 2008). in the case of south african higher education, transformation-related themes for understanding students’ sense of belonging may include accommodation facilities, race relations, relationships between and among international students, etc. rucks-ahidiana and bork (2020) analyse the role of relationships in the college integration of first-year students, particularly how they use relationships to adapt to and integrate into this new education setting. they borrow from tinto’s (1994) work, which argues that oncampus relationships support students with information provisioning, and therefore initiatives should focus on improving these relationships across campus. while general off-campus relationships provide moral support and motivation, on-campus relationships provide detailed information about the university. this knowledge helps the student to navigate the university’s bureaucracy. these relationships complement each other; therefore universities should try to support their existence (rucks-ahidiana & bork, 2020). fernandes et al. (2017) show that student engagement influences a sense of belonging. highly engaged university students are those who invest a significant amount of their time and energy in the academic experience, but they also engage with their fellow students and university academics. according to fernandes et al. (2017), most commuter students do not get involved in on-campus activities that are not primarily academic, while resident students take advantage of such activities. in the end, commuting students end up with limited support networks on campus due to their limited social interactions with peers and faculty. residences https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 592023 41(1): 59-73 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 mugume students’ sense of belonging at a south african university during covid-19 also form sub-academic communities on university campuses. residences are therefore now designed not only as social spaces, but also as academic communities (dumford et al., 2019). however, in most cases, universities have limited accommodation space, and most of the students end up in privately owned off-campus residences. this has implications for students’ safety, access to sports facilities, building peer relationships on campus, etc. since student accommodation plays an important role in students’ sense of belonging, which is influenced by campus climate, universities should initiate projects targeting commuting students to encourage them to be part of on-campus social life. this increases campus engagement, and fosters a sense of belonging among commuting students. this, in turn, may lead to a more positive university experience and a stronger sense of belonging. social and formal student gatherings are important for students to foster a sense of belonging. the amount of time that commuting students spend on campus after attending class highlights their ability to be part of other social networks or activities, and therefore building social support for belonging on campus. the time spent on campus therefore has implications for students’ sense of belonging (fernandes et al., 2017). considering the above, the fact that covid-19 forced students away from university campuses for over two years should have a negative effect on students’ sense of belonging. the campus climate can be influenced by certain variables, for example race (mwangi, 2016) in south africa, when one considers discrimination and other alienating experiences of black students at historically white universities (swartz et al., 2018). this may also apply when one considers international students who come with different values and life experiences (le, lacost & wismer, 2016). furthermore, gender, language, diversity of the campus community, etc., are additional variables that may influence the climate on campus, and therefore influence students’ sense of belonging (wells & horn, 2015). the “lack of peer support could be detrimental to students’ college adjustment, especially for those from ethnically diverse backgrounds ... peer support can serve as a buffer against these negative effects, and thus living with other students may serve in part as that buffer” (dumford et al., 2019:22). this has been affected negatively by the covid-19 pandemic and thus impacted students’ sense of belonging. sense of belonging and student transition to university environment the transition period from high school to a higher education institution is critical for students, as they are introduced to a new academic and social framework requiring more responsibility and accountability. dumford et al. (2019) argue that a sense of belonging can be critical during a student’s transition period from high school to university life. the feeling that a student fits in with other students may not just create a smooth transition, but has the potential to influence how students prefer to select certain institutions and decide to stay at institutions (strayhorn, 2012). according to dumford et al. (2019), early peer involvement in student life or activities at the university strengthen several factors related to student belonging, including strengthening a student’s perception of the institution, and also availing social support (to deal with emotional issues such as feeling isolated). this may even be more critical for first-generation students. first-generation students are typically defined as those whose parents or guardians have not achieved university education (katrevich & aruguete, 2017; vincent & hlatshwayo, 2018). research shows that black students constitute the majority of first-generation students in south africa; they often struggle to fit into alienating university cultures, they struggle with english and are the most likely to drop out (vincent & hlatshwayo, 2018). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 602023 41(1): 60-73 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) living arrangements should be organised on and off campus in such a way that allows students to do certain activities together, especially those in their first year (wells & horn, 2015; wilcox, winn & fyvie-gauld, 2005). this may have been impacted negatively by the covid-19 pandemic, since it resulted into more student isolation. students’ sense of belonging at south african universities the above discussion highlights how critical it is to pay attention to students’ sense of belonging at south african higher education institutions, given their history. over time, the south african higher education landscape has become a “space of student protest, activism and urgency”, due to social and economic insecurities and inequality on university campuses (le roux & groenewald, 2021; swartz et al., 2018). the 2015 mustfall student protests are a typical example of this activism, which started with a concern over increasing student fees and ended with a demand to change universities radically through decolonisation (le roux & groenewald, 2021; amoateng, 2016; allen et al., 2018). this was also an outcry to improve students’ sense of belonging. according to le roux and groenewald (2021), the south african higher education system was built on exclusion over decades. the transition to democracy in 1994 was supported with many initiatives nationally and within institutions, such as the foundation programmes, the national student financial aid scheme (nsfas), etc., meant to increase the participation of historically marginalised communities (bitzer & wilkinson, 2009). it is important to note that while these interventions resulted in increasing numbers of black students at higher education institutions in the country, particularly first-generation students, institutional cultures remain a major challenge (kruger & le roux, 2017; nyamnjoh, 2015; swartz et al., 2018). these cultures of exclusion lead to victims not feeling that they belong to their institutions of study. (johnson et al., 2007). strayhorn (2012) notes that social identities such as “race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and religion, and the cross-cutting thereof play a crucial role in developing a sense of belonging”. moreover, the way that students “navigate and negotiate their narrative identities indicates the inclusion and exclusion of social identities and a subsequent experience of either belonging or alienation” (le roux & groenewald, 2021: 856). therefore, analysing narratives of students’ experiences as suggested in this paper can help to expose experiences of inclusion and exclusion; hence, contribute to a critical understanding of continuing student activism in south african universities. 3. conceptual framework dumford et al. (2019) share two approaches which have historically been used to analyse students’ sense of belonging. firstly, there is sense of belonging regarded through a single measure, defined as the “psychological dimension of student integration” (hurtado, alvarado & guillermo-wann, 2015: 62). secondly, the first dimension has been expanded by several scholars towards utilising a multidimensional approach (freeman, anderman & jensen, 2007; hoffman et al., 2002; ribera, miller & dumford 2017). as a result, in the multidimensional approach, researchers can focus on a specific campus environment theme(s), which may need improvement, such as housing, race, gender, security, sports, spaces, naming of buildings and streets, etc., without being restricted only to the psychological dimension as a single angle for analysis. taking a multidimensional approach, this paper focuses on student accommodation and the covid-19 experience for undergraduate students, including first years and first-generation students. strayhorn (2012) highlights several relevant elements for analysing a sense of belonging: https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 612023 41(1): 61-73 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 mugume students’ sense of belonging at a south african university during covid-19 • sense of belonging as a basic human need, in other words, every human being has a desire for belonging. • sense of belonging as a fundamental motive. it influences a student to, for example, have a positive attitude towards their academic work in the university and be open to engagements in social spaces for their development at the university. • the heightened importance of sense of belonging in certain contexts at certain times in certain populations, for example, among minority student groups at a university or firstyear students transitioning from the high school experience. • sense of belonging as a consequence of mattering. the need for connectedness in relation to a sense of belonging, implying that everyone feels that they are valued and therefore matter. • sense of belonging and the intersection of social identities. the social identities that students may carry influence how they experience the campus climate, and therefore affect students’ sense of belonging. universities should work towards supporting students to enjoy a strong sense of belonging. it improves student retention, but also supports degree completion, as students feel cared for within the university community (allen et al., 2018). two dimensions suggested by dumford et al. (2019) are relevant when attempting to analyse students’ sense of belonging: 1) peer belonging, which refers to the students’ connections with peers; and 2) institutional acceptance, which refers to the feelings of acceptance from members of the institution such as academics, administrators, and student affairs professionals. within the covid-19 context, the above framing of students’ sense of belonging can provide a way towards understanding how students experienced the case university and its response. 4. research methodology the data were generated and analysed to present an overview of students’ sense of belonging during the covid-19 pandemic. a qualitative research design was considered appropriate for this study, because of its descriptive and exploratory abilities, specifically when relying on individuals as a unit of analysis (creswell, 2009). the total number of undergraduate students at the case university was 30 741, and out of this number 25 207 students were black (african, indian, coloured) and 8 790 were firstyear students (thus 21 951 were senior undergraduate students). an e-mail was sent out to all undergraduate students. the e-mail addresses were obtained from the institutional information system department. 138 students responded to the e-mail and all were black students. attempts to send out more e-mails for more students did not yield positive responses. after arranging interviews with all 138 students, 45 were able to avail themselves for the actual interviews. the university has a total of seven faculties and all were represented among the study participants. out of the 45 study participants, six (6) students were from each of the four (4) faculties and the other three (3) faculties each had seven (7) undergraduate student participants. in-depth interviews were conducted with undergraduate students at this historically white urban south african university using the blackboard online learning management system between june and august 2021. at this time of the year, most undergraduate students were still writing their exams, which presented a challenge in arranging interviews. the focus on undergraduate students was because they are the majority at the institution, and also because https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 622023 41(1): 62-73 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) first-year students struggle the most in relation to belonging, since they are transitioning. the in-depth interviews covered different themes of the study for breadth and depth (babbie & mouton, 2001; yeo et al., 2003). the study was ethically approved by the university research ethics committee to ensure that study participants would be protected from harm (babbie & mouton, 2001). the study analysed 45 interviews with undergraduate students. students from all faculties were contacted via e-mail as indicated above, requesting their participation, and those who responded had to give formal consent to be interviewed (babbie & mouton, 2001; creswell, 2009). to ensure anonymity, student respondents are referred to in the analysis using the letter (s) for student, while each student respondent was given a number from one (1) to 45. the data were transcribed and thematically analysed by carefully crosschecking each transcript before categorising it into main themes and coding it. this helped to make sense of the data findings after analysis (neuman, 1997). it is important to note that the data set was generated only from undergraduate students, since the intention of the study was to analyse experiences of undergraduate students to understand their sense of belonging during the pandemic. the research question guiding this study was: what was the effect of the covid-19 pandemic on undergraduate students’ sense of belonging at the case study university? the study objective was to understand the students’ sense of belonging and how the university responded to the challenges presented by the covid-19 pandemic to ensure a strong sense of belonging. 5. data presentation the student responses in relation to their sense of belonging during the covid-19 pandemic can be categorised into the themes highlighted below. theme 1: student mental health the mental health of students is critical to their wellbeing and academic success. s-1 and s-18 noted that isolation and a lack of physical social gatherings had a negative effect on their wellbeing, and therefore their sense of belonging. s-5 received support from the university just after being quarantined; the university has been really supportive, after we came out of quarantine, they organised sessions for each of us with a counsellor and we were able to talk about the quarantine experience. the university task team also kept reminding us that our mental health matters and there are resources within the university to support us. the student counselling and development programme was the most popular in providing support. additionally, s-1, who stayed on campus, highlighted the mental health challenges and acknowledged the support provided. however, the student indicated that since counselling support was provided telephonically and through online sessions due to isolation, it did not feel like the pre-covid-19 face-to-face sessions. s-2, who stayed in an off-campus residence, narrated that they had a counsellor who could visit the residence. students preferred this approach, because they could physically talk to the professional in person. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 632023 41(1): 63-73 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 mugume students’ sense of belonging at a south african university during covid-19 theme 2: academic support and funding in relation to academic support, s-8 noted that tutorial sessions conducted on the learning management platform blackboard were very helpful. it is important to note that not all modules had tutors. students who had tutors, however, indicated that tutors provided more than academic support. tutors would make time to talk to the students during online consultations, and this included personal challenges faced by students (s-13; s-10; s-11; s-24; s-32). in addition, engagements between tutors, facilitators and students during the pandemic helped students to share their challenges with someone, given the level of isolation, especially in the case of first-year students. in relation to online classes, most students indicated that they used the university computer labs to attend class and write tests because they did not have laptops. conversely, s-5 and s-6 acknowledged the funding support provided by the government through nsfas. students also noted the support provided by the university’s covid-19 task team, in particular, making laptops available to students and putting in place the globalprotect application. this allowed students to access the internet at a very low cost. they could access the learning management system, the university library, the university website, submit assignments, and access all reading material using the application without being charged. in relation to staff engagement with students online, s-7 and s-8 claimed that staff did not respond to emails promptly. as a result, they would wait for weeks to get a response. theme 3: first-year students students admitted to the first year go through an orientation phase to expose them to basic information and institutional processes. this is meant to help with their integration into the new learning environment and to help them feel a sense of belonging. s-6 indicated that the faculty of education at the university continued to provide extra support to students during the pandemic. this included prompt response (mostly via email) to student challenges with the modules, tests, assignments, etc. on the other hand, s-19 complained about online orientation during the pandemic, and indicated that they would have preferred the orientation activities to take place face to face. s-20, s-36 and s-38 indicated they did not feel that they belonged because they had not anticipated studying from home. the pandemic had deprived them of the entire first-year experience in terms of the fun activities usually hosted by the university for first-year students. friendships are very important, especially among first-year students. opportunities are usually created during orientation to forge new friendships. s-8 explained that joining the university during the pandemic made it very difficult to make friends, which led to further isolation. however, s-13 and s-15 were able to befriend senior students through their older siblings, who were already senior students. it is clear that friendships are very important for students to feel part of the university community, in other words, a sense of belonging, as noted further here: friendships among students were very helpful in terms of catching up on academic work through constantly chatting to one another but also sharing personal challenges in the process. (s-13) the pandemic had a negative impact on this growth, especially for first-year students who joined the university during the pandemic. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 642023 41(1): 64-73 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) theme 4: first-generation students orientation programmes are very important to first-generation students, as highlighted by s-7 in the comment below. it is very fulfilling knowing people who can comfort you when you need them, having someone you can just go up to when you have a problem and then they try to help you. during orientation they try to bring us together to know each other and feel at home. in addition, s-17 shared that, during the pandemic, orientation involved two training sessions on how to use blackboard and the globalprotect application. emphasis was also placed on how to navigate the university website, university regulations in relation to covid-19, and how to participate in campus activities. first-generation students also faced family challenges, with implications for their sense of belonging as they mostly stayed home during the pandemic. s-5 explained the high expectations faced by first-generation students from their families. i mean everybody wants you to get that degree. they expect you to be at your best every day, they really want positive results. at the same time, this student also highlighted support from family members and how this has had a positive effect during the pandemic. this included extra financial support, motivation, and creating a conducive environment to talk about personal education challenges. on the other hand, s-7 complained that, the pressure is too much sometimes because you know when you fail a certain test, some of the family members will be looking at you as if your failing the whole family. i am under that kind of pressure. even though the work is too much, i know, i must do it for my family. as a first-generation student, it is challenging because everyone at home is looking up to you, you need to be perfect, when you make mistakes … you put them under stress and you are under stress too. (s-18) additionally, s-6 and s-7, as first-generation students, emphasised the same pressure and support provided by family. therefore, the challenges posed by covid-19 amplified the fear of failure when considering the high stakes for these students. a first-generation student noted a positive experience which seemed to have contributed positively to her sense of belonging: i am currently living on campus, the experience is quite positive, i mean at my residence, there is just so much of sisterly love among us, everybody is just there for each other. it is really a home away from home for me. (s-5) additionally, s-19 noted that the university has invested heavily in preventing the spread of the virus, and this was clear from the posters and hand-sanitizing stations around the campus. information about covid-19 cases was also regularly communicated to students. in relation to socialising during the pandemic, s-30 indicated that, “because of covid-19, it was hard to socialise with other students, just because of the regulations set so that we can prevent the spread”. in addition, late nsfas allowances seemed to be a serious challenge for students: https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 652023 41(1): 65-73 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 mugume students’ sense of belonging at a south african university during covid-19 the only problems i encountered during my first year, while i was staying at residences were late allowance payments and sometimes, i have had to call home and ask for money for food. and they would just think that i am scamming them since i am already on nsfas. (s-16) in terms of family support, first-year students with graduated parents shared how their parents were their role models in terms of education. these parents support their children in terms of academic choices and schoolwork. they also seemed to be more financially stable and did not make use of nsfas. these experiences were shared by some of the senior students (s-22), and collaborates the literature on first-generation students and students with graduated parents. s-3, a first-year and first-generation student, narrated the challenges of living at home with family members who did not understand university processes. they could not, for example, understand sitting in the house for a full day while studying at home, and they wanted the student to contribute to the house chores. some students faced serious challenges at home due to unemployment in their households. s-3, for example, had to use some of her nsfas funds to support her family to cover basic expenses such as food and electricity. theme 5: senior students in most cases senior undergraduate students (students who have gone through their first year at the institution) have a better understanding of the institution in comparison to first-year students. senior undergraduate students at the institution seem more productive through participating in available institutional programmes. it allows them to feel productive and live a meaningful student life. as highlighted in the quote by s-5, this can be tutoring, mentoring new students, etc. i am currently a mentor and as a result i have been having quite an experience. i have been engaging with first years, helping them in their academic journey, it has been an honour for me to be a mentor and i have grown so much in the process. even at my residence, we went through a phase whereby we were quarantined due to covid-19 and most of us were quarantined off-campus, as mentors, we had to take on the responsibility of making sure that the residence ran well. the student did not only feel cared for, but through these additional responsibilities she felt that she had grown through these meaningful experiences. s-6 further added, i honestly never saw myself as somebody who would actually take the responsibility of trying to be a leader, so that is one area of my life that i have to say that i have really grown, before, i would never put myself out there. senior students (s-14 and s-30) shared their experiences, highlighting the unique challenges faced by first-generation students. s-14 indicated receiving a great deal of support from parents after leaving home during the pandemic. the parents ensured that all the necessary study materials were purchased, and investigated off-campus accommodation to determine if it would be appropriate. they regularly checked on the student’s wellbeing and ensured that he had enough data or access to wi-fi to continue studying. s-30’s parents called him every day to find out how he was and to enquire about his academic progress. even though students receive meal allowances from nsfas, students’ parents and guardians provided additional financial support. furthermore, s-8 and s-9 indicated that they received more support from https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 662023 41(1): 66-73 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) their graduated parents, who understood the university environment and its demands. this further exposed the need for the institution to understand the challenges experienced by firstgeneration students in order to tailor their support accordingly. theme 6: student accommodation the effect of the pandemic on access to accommodation has been enormous, resulting in limited spaces with a need for additional supervision given the necessity for isolation, especially during the period of contact tracing. s-17 shared his personal experience: as a student who is doing practical-based modules, i received a permit earlier in the year to come to campus and when i got here i was welcomed, the residence head welcomed me and they showed me to my room, everything seems to be at a pretty good standard so far, i really can’t complain. regarding off-campus accommodation, s-14 was concerned about safety, noting that he felt safe on campus and experienced a strong sense of belonging. once he left the campus, however, safety became a major concern. s-1 and s-2 highlighted the huge difference in support provided to on-campus students, compared to off-campus students. they indicated that off-campus students who tested positively for covid-19 locked themselves into their rooms and had to take care of themselves. in some instances, friends would check on them. the on-campus experience was much more positive, as university staff would check on students who had tested positive and were recovering in their rooms. the respondents who lived at home, such as s-11 and s-15, shared negative experiences, as for some, their homes were just not conducive to studying online. s-7, s-11, s-12, s-19, s-20, s-21, s-23, s-24, s-28, s-29, s-34, s-35, s-38 and s-40 were appreciative of the work done by the university task teams on covid-19 to create a conducive environment during the lockdown, such as widely placing information posters and sanitizer containers around campus. 6. analysis and discussion the implications of covid-19 to students’ sense of belonging are illustrated in the student narratives above. this section focuses on discussing the findings from those narratives. first-year students and first-generation students the friendships developed among first-year students can be helpful in the process of building a sense of belonging. it is important to note that during the pandemic this was a challenge for first-year students. according to dumford et al. (2019), this limited peer belonging among first-year students. this is clearly one of the reasons why first-year students who joined the university during the pandemic and during the lockdown period did not express experiencing a strong sense of belonging to the institution. first-generation students faced additional problems in their homes. however, if those students had been in residences onor off-campus, their experiences would have been different. their challenges included living with family members who did not understand the context of studying online. often these students were not assisted by their families to create a conducive environment for studying. in many cases they were expected to do house chores without https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 672023 41(1): 67-73 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 mugume students’ sense of belonging at a south african university during covid-19 the family taking into consideration the academic workload. students’ nsfas allowances were often used to cover family expenses in the household due to unemployment during lockdown. even though these experiences do not directly reflect the on-campus students’ experience, or the effect on students’ sense of belonging, they highlighted that appropriate student accommodation is the only way many students can access a conducive learning environment, given their challenging family circumstances. in other words, by considering strayhorn’s (2012) elements for such first-year students, a sense of belonging can be seen as a human need. it will assist in creating conducive conditions for studying, which might be better than the conditions at home. a sense of belonging therefore takes on heightened importance in this context of transitioning to university life. to promote a strong sense of belonging, there is a clear need for universities to give first-generation students preference regarding on-campus student accommodation, in particular first-generation students in their first year of study. senior undergraduate students senior students indicated that being exposed to responsibilities such as the tutoring and mentoring of other students contributed to living a meaningful life, as they contribute to the university community, and assist their fellow junior students. these students believe that they matter, which also informs their positive attitude and becomes a motive to further engage socially and academically (strayhorn, 2012). all of these elements contribute to a strong sense of belonging. hence, universities should continuously evaluate available development opportunities senior undergraduate students have such as tutoring, leadership, etc., since they contribute positively towards a strong sense of belonging. student accommodation wilcox et al. (2005) argue that in general, student accommodation is critical to the development of important relationships among students, since a sense of belonging contributes positively to student resilience and persistence in the institution. student respondents praised the professionalism with which on campus accommodation staff provided them with support, especially those diagnosed with covid-19 who were isolating in their rooms. students appreciated daily visits and the provision of basic necessities. therefore, it can be argued that on-campus student accommodation contributed positively towards building a strong sense of belonging in students during the covid-19 pandemic. this also adds on the discussion above highlighting accommodation challenges of first-generation students, making university accommodation onor off-campus a huge contributor to a strong sense of belonging in the case of first-generation students. student mental health student mental health support is highlighted as one of the services which require urgent attention. the shift from face-to-face support to telephonic and online support during the pandemic had a negative effect. there is a need to return to face-to-face mental health support as soon as possible. students prefer face-to-face support sessions, as these provide the human contact element, in comparison to telephonic and online support sessions necessitated by the pandemic. therefore, universities should always be cautious of the need for human contact, even in extreme circumstances such as pandemic times, especially when it comes to student well-being such as how universities respond to mental health. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 682023 41(1): 68-73 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) students who joined universities in 2020 and 2021 missed out on face-to-face orientation sessions. the departments of student affairs have to assess the necessity to conduct reflective open-group engagements with these students in order to find ways of initiating responsive programmes that can reintroduce them to the university physically. while these students have been part of the institution, this has mostly been happening online. clearly, initiating responsive programmes has the potential to have a positive impact on students’ sense of belonging. students’ sense of belonging and campus experience strayhorn (2012) affirms a sense of belonging as a consequence of mattering. in other words, it refers to the sense of connectedness that people feel when they know or perceive that they are valued, and therefore it matters. one such example is that the university made study devices available to students who did not have laptops during the lockdown. student respondents experienced this gesture by the university as a sign of caring for their wellbeing. in addition, even though students highlighted challenges with the use of the globalprotect application, which allowed them to access the internet at a very low cost, they acknowledged that that was a clear attempt by the university to support them. it was an indication of care from the side of the institution. these two initiatives clearly relate to strayhorn’s (2012) element of mattering, which strengthens one’s sense of belonging, and dumford et al.’s (2019) dimension of institutional acceptance. hence, the dialogue between these two leads to a strong sense of belonging among students. this discussion highlights the importance of universities being responsive to student needs, in other words, the more responsive the university are, the greater are the chances of contributing positively to a strong student sense of belonging. students indicated that academics should have been more patient with them, specifically regarding online learning. however, they understood that academic staff needed to comply with the annual academic schedule, so there was little time to accommodate struggling students. the students still felt, however, that the transition from face-to-face to online learning happened very fast. they would have liked academic staff to be more patient with them, since they also needed to adjust to the new teaching and learning environment. any support provided to academic staff to be more understanding of the students’ circumstances would have contributed positively to the students’ sense of belonging. a strong sense of belonging contributes positively to student resilience or persistence in the institution (see wilcox et al., 2005). these findings show a need to manage staff members working from home better in order to provide quality services to students, but also to respond institutionally to the challenges caused by the pandemic, such as a flexible (home and office) working model for staff. the findings from the student narratives also point to the importance of including students into university activities. this may amplify their voice in university spaces, and meaning to their campus life. the student voice and responsiveness to that voice is a theme with serious implications for students’ sense of belonging. the need for a more responsive university in providing timely communication may have been amplified by the pandemic, further exposing institutional challenges. the student voice as a theme should be part of departmental agendas and discussions, both in the academic and support/administration environment throughout the university to contribute to a strong students’ sense of belonging. the race dynamic and the challenges it presents in a context of a historically white institution are clear in the literature. however, while all students interviewed for this study were black, there was no reference to their race when they discussed experiences related to their sense of belonging during the pandemic and even how the university responded https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 692023 41(1): 69-73 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 mugume students’ sense of belonging at a south african university during covid-19 to the pandemic. therefore, the pandemic seems to have forced students to focus on their individual challenges and also to present struggles to every individual in somewhat equal form, even though the responses and each student’s circumstances varied. for example, students from middle-class families could afford study devices and data, unlike students from poor households. the pace of change imposed by the pandemic appears to have forced all students to be creative and express their personal urgency to survive the pandemic storm as they responded to the challenges it presented to them and the support the university was able to provide. hence, race was not amplified in the student responses to their sense of belonging. finally, it is important to note that even though the pace of vaccination did improve in south africa and around the world, the effects of the pandemic will stay with us in the near and long-term future. this paper therefore does not simply consider student experiences during the pandemic and what they mean for sense of belonging, but also highlights lessons we can take into the future to improve students’ sense of belonging, and how a university may respond to a future crisis. in this regard, a number of principles can be highlighted: 1. managing drastic change through task teams: crises such as covid-19 lead to drastic change within the organisation, and this change process requires careful guidance. the use of a task team/s framework on specific change initiatives has proven successful at the case university during the pandemic. 2. prioritising the health and wellbeing of the university community: the health and wellbeing of staff and students take priority in any response to a crisis. this allows the university to galvanise the necessary support and substantive participation of staff and students towards a unified institutional response. 3. making funds available for new initiatives: in times of crisis, resources must be prioritised towards managing the crisis. if the necessary initiatives are not deliberately and adequately resourced, the university cannot respond appropriately. 4. a flexible human resources model: the covid-19 pandemic forced the majority of staff members to work from home, which had negative implications on services offered to students. the need to support staff to work from home and to provide them with the necessary resources such as internet connectivity, agreements on conducive home working spaces, etc., can allow the university to be better prepared for the next crisis. 5. the student voice: a university should keep an eye on the student voice during crisis times, as was evidenced during covid-19. this allows the university to respond to student concerns in a timely manner, but also to craft the necessary policy changes without resentment from the student population. 7. possible limitations the findings are from data generated from 45 student participants, and therefore broad generalisations cannot be made from these findings. additionally, the study focuses on experiences of black students, even though black students are the majority in the case university, triangulating with white students’ experiences could potentially have provided a nuanced framing of undergraduate students’ sense of belonging during the pandemic. finally, future research could cover a larger sample across institutions to provide comparisons in south africa and beyond. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 702023 41(1): 70-73 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) 8. conclusion this paper investigated undergraduate students’ sense of belonging during covid-19 and how the university responded to the pandemic. the findings highlight experiences of a strong sense of belonging among undergraduate students in relation to university support programmes and initiatives implemented during the pandemic. these included efforts to stop the 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(30): 707-722. available at https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070500340036 [accessed on 10 july 2022]. yeo, a., legard, r., keegan, j., ward, k., nicholls, c.m. & lewis, j. 2003. in-depth interviews. in j. ritchie & j. lewis (eds). qualitative research practice: a guide for social science students and researchers, 177-208. london: sage publication. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6649 http://dx.doi.org/10.20853/32-3-2538 http://dx.doi.org/10.20853/32-3-2538 https://doi.org/10.1080/19496591.2015.1041867 https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070500340036 _hlk102141301 _hlk102144670 _hlk102144769 _hlk63926560 _hlk63926746 _hlk102144881 _hlk102145043 _hlk102145184 _hlk88034564 _hlk102110681 _hlk88029145 _hlk88147305 _hlk88148217 _hlk88086496 _hlk88149048 _hlk88028935 _hlk88085292 _hlk102134322 _hlk63973102 _hlk63924039 124 teachers’ use of verbal language to evoke visualizations in multilingual mathematics classes abstract research into the importance of teachers’ use of verbal language in multilingual classes where teaching and learning is done in a language other than the learners’ first, is crucial. such research aimed at improving multilingual learners’ access to conceptual understanding of mathematical concepts is becoming increasingly urgent. in this paper, we specifically report on a study that inter alia focused on how three purposively selected south african (eastern cape) grade 11 multilingual mathematics teachers used learners’ first language, through code switching, to evoke visualizations for promoting conceptual understanding during the teaching of geometry and trigonometry. the study found that conceptual understanding was enhanced when teachers spoke in their learners’ first language using mostly everyday familiar words to evoke visualizations of some geometry and trigonometry concepts. teachers also used isixhosa terminology, the dominant language of the eastern cape province in south africa, to describe some mathematical constructs. a number of instances were noted in which teachers used pictorial illustrations from the learners’ environment when words or phrases were not immediately available to them, to promote conceptual teaching of mathematics. however, none of the strategies used were planned for; they were used spontaneously and on an ad hoc basis. we concluded that in multilingual mathematics classes, teachers should choose their verbal language carefully and purposefully to precisely demonstrate and make visible the intended mathematical ideas. such use of verbal language is particularly important in situations where teachers cannot bring the actual or physical artefact of the mathematical idea to class. the underpinning theory that framed this paper was situated-sociocultural theory. keywords: language, multilingual, code switching, visuali za tion, mathematics 1. introduction in south africa, the importance of using verbal language in multilingual mathematics classes to improve learners’ access to conceptual understanding has been a subject of research and is becoming increasingly urgent. teachers’ verbal language is crucial, as it is used among other things to evoke relevant mental images necessary for understanding mathematics concepts (mesarosova & mesaros, 2011). clemence chikiwa education department, rhodes university e-mail: c.chikiwa@ru.ac.za marc schäfer education department, rhodes university e-mail: m.schafer@ru.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v37i2.9 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 37(2): 124-140 date published: 27 november 2019 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:c.chikiwa@ru.ac.za mailto:m.schafer@ru.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.9 http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie 125 chikiwa & schäfer teachers’ use of verbal language to evoke visualizations... during teaching, verbal language is paramount and often indispensable in triggering mental images necessary for constructing meaning when actual representations are not immediately available (marentette, 2018). sadoski and paivio (2013) aptly assert that without the use or activation of mental representations in the teaching and learning of mathematics, no meaning can be achieved. teachers’ choice of words both in the language of learning and teaching (lolt) and the learners’ home language should ideally be used to create meaning, thereby making learning possible. we assert that the teachers’ language should activate appropriate mental images and other representations to support and mediate conceptual learning in multilingual classes (smith, bill & raith, 2018). in this study, we define multilinguals as those individuals who participate in multiple-language communities (moschkovich, 2002) and we specifically looked at teachers’ choice of words and visualizations in the learners’ home language when teaching mathematics to english second language learners. we adopt arcavi (2003: 217)’s definition of visualizations as … the ability, the process and the product of creation, interpretation, use of and reflection upon pictures, images, diagrams, in our minds, on paper or with technological tools, with the purpose of depicting and communicating information, thinking about and developing previously unknown ideas and advancing understandings. our interest was to understand how selected secondary school teachers use words and visualizations in the learners’ first language to stimulate visual thinking in their learners and to enhance meaning making during teaching. an adoption of “a situated view of the meaning of words…, that words have multiple and ever-changing meanings created for and adapted to specific contexts of use” (gee, 1999: 40) was made in this study. we were inspired by our own observations and experiences that when teaching, the language used to describe a particular concept may actually result in different and often unanticipated understandings of the same concept. for example, the word ‘seven’ may suggest a quantity aspect (how many), a spatial aspect (seven units above, seven units below), equivalence, distance (seven units from), time (seven days in a week) combinations and units of measurement, among others. in situations where teaching is done in a language that is neither the teachers’ nor the learners’ first language, research has repeatedly encouraged the use of learners’ first language as a linguistic resource during teaching (barwell, 2018) and in the context of this paper, a visual-generating mechanism to illustrate a mathematical idea. in south africa’s many rural and township schools, mathematics teaching occurs predominantly through code switching which adler (2001) refers to as the alternate use of two or more languages in one conversation. this is because learners in many rural and township schools are lolt learners (setati, 2008), hence teachers resort to code switching when teaching multilingual classes. while research has shown that code-switching is crucial and has benefits (barwell, 2018; probyn, 2006), the use of learners’ first language through code switching needs to help create appropriate meaning and foster conceptual understanding. the teacher’s use of preferably the learners’ first language to help them visualize mathematical ideas, is thus important. it facilitates not only connection-making processes to everyday life situations, but also within mathematics, and between different disciplines. it enhances conceptual understanding and meaning making at many levels. there is thus a need for research on how language can be used to specifically enhance visualization in mathematics classes where the lolt is not the pupils’ first language. one of the reasons why borrowing code switching is a prevalent mode of teaching in classrooms where the learners’ home language is not the lolt (chikiwa & schäfer, 2016; mokgwathi & webb, 2013) is 126 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) because there is no formal mathematics register in that home language. it is thus prudent to explore how a language whose mathematics register is not formally developed, can be more effectively used to enhance visualization in mathematics pedagogy. research by kasmer and billings (2017) and kersaint, thompson and petkov (2009) has shown that learners whose language is not sufficiently developed to function as the lolt may benefit positively from teaching and learning that uses other means of communication such as code switching and non-verbal information – i.e. using visualization in this case. it is against this backdrop that we view teachers’ incorporation of learners’ first language through code switching as a potential resource available for multilingual teachers and their learners to use to enhance conceptual understanding during the teaching and learning (specifically visualizing) of mathematics. hence, this study seeks to answer the following questions: how do mathematics teachers use learners’ first language through code switching to evoke visualizations to promote conceptual understanding? what verbal illustrations for promoting conceptual understanding in learners’ second language do teachers use to enhance visualization of mathematical concepts during teaching? 2. literature review 2.1 language and visualization in the teaching and learning environment, language is pivotal. south africa’s department of basic education (dbe) (2011: 8) defines mathematics as “…a language that makes use of symbols and notations for describing numerical, geometric and graphical relationships.” mathematics is considered a “universal language” that transcends cultural, political, geographical, linguistic and any socially oriented differences. thus, in any language, whether a mathematics register is formally developed in that language or not, there exist mathematical concepts derived or awaiting to be derived from local people’s ways of living. when mathematics concepts resonate with people’s knowledge and livelihoods, mathematics becomes meaningful and alive to those people (mokgwathi & webb, 2013). we argue that any lack of connection-making between school mathematics and the day-to-day lives of its recipients detaches mathematics from reality, thus making it an abstract and detached subject that is mainly learnt for its own sake. one way to make connections between mathematical ideas and the real world is to visualize these ideas in a real life context. teachers generally make use of words to awaken curiosity and stimulate the imagination in the minds of learners. these imaginings often translate to specific images or visualizations as the learners’ attempt to make concepts visible (boaler, chen, williams & cordero, 2017). it follows that the mental images that learners create, then form the basis of how they visualize mathematical concepts and ideas. for the purpose of this paper, emphasis is placed on visualization as an act or process of putting or representing mathematical concepts in a visible form internally in the mind, externally on paper or through other technological tools. mathematics teachers, especially in multilingual classes, need to be sensitive to the idea that their use of verbal language helps learners generate their own appropriate images of mathematical concepts. in speech, words often cause listeners to retrieve specific visualizations of targeted objects. in this regard, mesarosova and mesaros (2011) assert that a verbally evoked image is a fictive image or representation of a mathematical concept that is induced by the teacher in the learner´s conscience mostly by means of verbal impulses. 127 chikiwa & schäfer teachers’ use of verbal language to evoke visualizations... naturally, such teacher language practices take advantage of learners´ prior knowledge or experience of the concept taken from their day-to-day lives and contexts. while some researchers in mathematics education argue that not every learner is a visualizer (presmeg, 1986, 2006), cognitive psychology posits that everyone uses visual pathways when working on mathematical tasks (boaler et al., 2017). thus, teaching should take advantage of these visual pathways in the minds of learners when helping them to understand and make abstractions of various mathematical concepts. as judson (2016) so aptly articulates, to achieve meaningful conceptual teaching and understanding for all, imaginative mathematics teachers identify and stimulate with words those visualizations embedded in mathematical concepts in the curriculum. visual images used to create visual language are inherent in mathematical concepts whether they are verbally or pictorially represented. visual language in mathematics is a process of communicating a mathematical concept through the concurrent use of images and text. it involves a very close, careful integration and symbiosis of words and images. when one is removed, the remaining communication can become unclear. thus, as argued by murphy (2009: 5), “visual images underlie the language of mathematics at every turn.” studies have shown that the integration of verbal and visual elements yields better results than when text is presented separately from visual elements (mayer, 2003). the use of only text or visuals may not achieve the intended results. we thus argue that when teachers use illustrations from the pupils’ first language (that is from their immediate home context) for mathematical purposes, this authenticates, legitimizes and concretizes learners’ learning. the importance of using visual representations in mathematics education needs to be seen against the contribution it makes to the development of understanding and intuitional perspectives (mesarosova & mesaros, 2011). using or evoking correct visuals in learners’ minds allows them to see and understand mathematical relationships. teachers’ use of appropriate language that draws on pupils’ familiar images enables connection making. sadoski and paivio (2013) agree that when concepts are verbally stated, they come with visualizations or representations attached that help explain, interpret, or clarify them. ideally, such visualizations, when awakened do not conflict with the words or concepts — they are instead an inherent part of the concept. when images or visualizations, numbers and words concurrently participate in the same system of communication, effective teaching of mathematics can take place. murphy (2009) argues that the use of all three parts of the system — words, numbers and visualizations — results in better comprehension of mathematical concepts during teaching. this model inextricably suggests that visualizations are the embodiment of language. when language and visualization co-emerge, effective learning can take place. we argue that this enactivist notion (li, clark & winchester, 2010) suggests that without language no visualization can take place and vice versa. research has shown that language that is intertwined with visual learning and thinking approaches is beneficial to learners who are taught mathematics in a language other than their first language (judson, 2016; marentette, 2018). in addition, marentette (2018) for example asserts that creating visual explanations improves retention of information and deeper understanding of complex concepts. in light of this, students thus benefit from learning through visual forms of communication. when the visual, verbal and the numerical coemerge, conceptual understanding is achieved. in order for teachers to capitalize on learners’ experiences and prior knowledge where teaching takes place in the second language, there 128 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) are moments when teachers should use learners’ first language to help them remember and relate to these experiences and thus make connections to the taught concepts. in such instances, the choice of words and phrases that evoke interesting and relevant images that resonate with a given concept is thus crucial. the presentation of mathematical information verbally, numerically and visually helps children to comprehend complex mathematical information (murphy, 2009). murphy (2009) also observes that when teachers express mathematical ideas so that their words, associated images and numbers seamlessly work together, then true communication results. in a situation where learners are taught in their second language it is particularly important that teachers provide visual cues, graphic representations, gestures, regalia, and pictures during their teaching. it is argued that such practices offer learners the required opportunities to manipulate objects and images to master mathematical concepts and vocabulary. 2.2 conceptual understanding conceptual understanding is one of the key goals of school learning. kilpatrick, swafford, & findel (2001: 120) define conceptual understanding as an integrated and functional grasp of mathematical ideas and argue that “conceptual understanding frequently results in students having less to learn because they can see the deeper similarities between superficially unrelated situations”. using words, connections are made between seemingly unrelated mathematical ideas. according to kilpatrick et al. (2001), there are four key indicators of conceptual understanding from the both the teachers’ and learners’ perspectives. first, a teacher who focusses on developing conceptual understanding in learners has the ability to build on learners’ prior knowledge. this prior knowledge includes what learners learnt in previous lessons as well as what they can visually recall and use from their home environments. second, such a teacher is able to help learners make connections because “the degree of students’ conceptual understanding is related to the richness and extent of the connections they have made” (kilpatrick et al., 2001: 119) among different mathematical concepts. the third indicator is the ability to relate mathematical concepts to the real world. lastly, a teacher who is able to visually and verbally represent mathematical situations in different ways, knowing how different representations can be useful for different purposes, encourages conceptual understanding. we adapted kilpatrick et al., (2001)’s indicators of conceptual understanding to analyse teachers’ language practices in our analysis of data in this study. 3. theoretical framework the challenge for today’s mathematics teacher to make learning a meaningful and worthwhile experience for the learner is complex, especially where children of diverse linguistic and socio-cultural backgrounds and cognitive abilities are taught in multilingual classes. as this paper sought to understand teachers’ use of learners’ first language through code switching in order to stimulate and support visual thinking, the socio-cultural backdrop of the study can thus not be ignored. consequently, the study was informed by the situated-sociocultural theory as envisaged by moschkovich (2002), specifically with regard to the role of language in multilingual classroom communication and cognitive development. the situated perspective in this study describes teaching and learning mathematics as using multiple material, linguistic and social resources (edu-buandoh, 2012). this study refers to and suggests that language used for teaching should be “local, grounded in actual practices and experiences” (gee, 1999: 40). teaching and learning are inherently social and cultural 129 chikiwa & schäfer teachers’ use of verbal language to evoke visualizations... and participants in the process bring multiple views and representations to the situation, resulting in multiple meanings that are then negotiated by conversations (moschkovich, 2002). knowledge in this case is understood to be embedded in and connected to the social and cultural context in which it is developed. teachers’ use of words in learners’ first language is situated within specific contexts in a society to convey situated meanings. while embarking on globally accepted mathematics concepts, teaching should happen as a function of its surroundings and the social and cultural experiences of people in which teaching takes place. collins (1988) refers to situated learning as the notion of learning skills and knowledge in contexts that reflect the way they will be used in real life. in south africa’s township and rural schools, code switching is a norm and prevalently practiced in and outside school life. in classes where code switching occurs, meaning is regarded as an ongoing social process enacted by the use of language and is appropriated by teachers and learners for enhancing understanding (edu-buandoh, 2012). moschkovich’s combination of gee’s situated meaning and elements of the sociocultural theory is in this paper regarded as a framework that helps to understand teachers’ use of learners’ first language, to evoke visual thinking in multilingual classes where the majority of learners learn in their second or third language. central to moschkovich’s situated-sociocultural theory is the recognition of the pivotal role played by two or more languages in each situation as a resource to communicate mathematically. the theory describes languages used in communities as a resource for teaching, and multilingualism as a competency in mathematical communication. the situatedsociocultural theory views teaching mathematics as a social activity that employs multiple materials, linguistic and social resources to enhance instruction (moschkovich, 2002). the theory assumes that mathematics teachers’ language practices should be grounded in practice while at the same time connected to mathematical concepts. the theory also views mathematics learning as participation in a community where learners are taught to mathematize situations, to communicate about these situations and to use resources available to them for mathematizing and communicating (moschkovich, 2002). the major resources learners bring to their learning environment are their home language and everyday life experiences. again, moschkovich (2002: 207) asserts that “some of the resources [multilingual] students use to communicate mathematically are gestures, objects, everyday experiences, their first language, code switching, and mathematical representations.” second, using a situated-sociocultural perspective permitted us to ask what teacher mathematical language practices were relevant to visual teaching and learning of mathematics, trigonometry and geometry in this case. the situated-sociocultural perspective was suitable because first, it made it possible for us to consider the teachers’ use of non-language resources, which includes visuals drawn from the learners’ experiences and environment. third, this theory enabled us to carefully consider the situational context of teacher language. in mathematics, some of the words and phrases have multiple meanings that may only be differentiated by considering context. during teaching, the use of such words and phrases occur within given social contexts and as explained by moschkovich (2002: 195), “… much of the meaning of an utterance [teacher language] is derived from the situation.” thus, in considering teacher language in this study, we considered how resources from the teachers’ different contextual situations were used to evoke visual thinking and promote meaning making. 130 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) fourthly, a situated-sociocultural perspective helped in opening the way to see language practice as a competence. analyzing teachers’ language use from a situated-sociocultural perspective enabled us to view the teachers’ language use as a resource that connected it to the learners’ environment, to communicate mathematics during teaching. the teachers’ connection-making of everyday scenarios to mathematical language practices helped the study to widen what counts as competence (moschkovich, 2002). teachers’ reference to and use of everyday scenarios in learners’ first language to evoke visual thinking for mathematical purposes was considered a competence. as moschkovich (2002) suggested, a situated-sociocultural perspective enabled us to avoid a deficiency model of multilingualism, developing detailed descriptions of the linguistic and visual resources that teachers used to communicate mathematically. 4. sample and research process this study sought to gain a detailed view of three selected teachers’ verbal and visual language practices. their teaching of multilingual mathematics grade 11 classes was analysed for conceptual understanding. three grade 11 mathematics teachers from three districts in the eastern cape province of south africa participated in this study. the study followed a case study design with each teacher and his/her class constituting a case. the three teachers identified as teacher a, teacher b and teacher c were purposively selected. we specifically identified teachers who were willing to participate, were fluent in isixhosa, taught at schools where code switching was prevalent and had a rich code-switching practice. we also identified teachers with at least five years’ experience of teaching mathematics at secondary level, and were therefore well experienced. this was to rule out the possibility that their language practices might be due to a lack of teaching experience or recognized qualifications. this we did by visiting schools and talking to teachers for three weeks prior to the commencement of data collection process. we also relied on the first author’s experience whose work involved interacting with schools in the eastern cape and their teachers. data were obtained through observing five consecutive geometry (parallel lines and triangles, circle geometry and cyclic quadrilaterals) or trigonometry (sine, cosine and area rule, trigonometric graphs) lessons per teacher. lesson observations were used to identify language practices of these teachers. at the end of each lesson, each teacher was interviewed. the interviews focused on language practices that the participating teachers demonstrated during the lesson. lesson observations were video recorded while interviews were audio recorded. having sought ethical clearing, together with the consent and approval by the department of basic education, school principals and the teachers, five lessons of each teacher were video recorded. a professional transcriber who is an isixhosa first language speaker transcribed all the lesson observation videos and the interview audio recordings. 5. data analysis each recorded video was analyzed qualitatively using the four conceptual understanding indicators adapted from kilpatrick et al., (2001). first, we looked at how teachers were building on learners’ prior knowledge. that is, when teachers, through code switching, used verbal language and visualizations that were already familiar to learners. secondly, we looked for evidence of teachers’ use of mathematical connections within the subject. we looked at the teachers’ use of verbal language and visualizations to establish connections between 131 chikiwa & schäfer teachers’ use of verbal language to evoke visualizations... different mathematical concepts and relationships. the third indicator looked at mathematical connections to the real world. our focus was on the teachers use of everyday isixhosa verbal language and visualizations to connect mathematics to the real world when explaining mathematical concepts. lastly, we looked for the use of multiple representations where teachers used verbal language to represent mathematical concepts in multiple visual ways. during the lesson observations, we focused on isixhosa words and phrases that the teachers used for each of these four indicators. we then identified those words and phrases that were used to evoke visualizations to enhance conceptual understanding during teaching. for example, teacher c said “jonga for ucalane okwisangqa, all corners should touch i-circumference.” (look for the cyclic quadrilateral, all corners should touch the circumference). here we considered use of ucalane okwisangqa as drawing on prior knowledge of the learners. they already know ucalane (four-sided) and isangqa (circle). teacher c combined those two familiar isixhosa terms to describe the cyclic quadrilateral. in this study we considered such teacher language use as promoting conceptual understanding. we also focused on verbal scenarios, descriptions and illustrations that teachers took from their learners’ local environment such as the railway line and fencing poles, and how they used them to promote conceptual understanding during their teaching. a situated-sociocultural perspective provided us with lenses to look at words and phrases teachers used, situations/ contexts in which the language was used, situated meanings of teacher language and nonlanguage resources that teachers used during teaching. trends and patterns of words, phrases, descriptions and illustrations that emerged during the lesson observations were then followed up during the interviews. the three participating teachers were interviewed five times each, that is, after every lesson observation. the situated-sociocultural perspective thus allowed us to see and understand some of the complexities and competences (moschkovich, 2002) exhibited by the participating teachers’ language use to enhance visual thinking. 6. validity and ethics validity was ensured by using multiple sources of evidence such as lesson observations and interviews. in order to ensure the integrity of the language used in the lessons, transcriptions were done by an experienced transcriber and were verified by two university academics who are isixhosa first language speakers. all ethical protocols as prescribed by the ethics committee of our university were adhered to. 7. findings and discussion in this section, the findings are presented under the four indicators for conceptual understanding discussed above. these are: building on prior knowledge, connection making within mathematics, connecting mathematics to the real world and use of multiple representations. 7.1 building on prior knowledge in this section, we focused on some of the everyday words the teachers used to promote conceptual understanding of concepts through building on learners’ prior knowledge. the words we focused on were key and relevant for solving given tasks. we focused on the words fumana and ayifumaneki, as examples of words that were used to enhance visualization. 132 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) 7.1.1. fumana find we observed that all three teachers extensively used fumana in this study to ask questions. fumana is used in everyday life when someone is asked to find something, whether it is hidden or can be easily found. in mathematics, fumana (find) means using mathematical methods to obtain, locate, solve, detect or gather the values, quantities or any mathematical construct in question. thus, in situations that needed learners to calculate or simply to observe and state required answers, fumana was used. table 1 shows extracts from their lessons: table 1: excerpt 1 the everyday use of fumana retains the same meaning as when used for mathematical purposes. thus teachers capitalized on learners’ prior knowledge and understanding of this consistent and precise meaning of fumana. in this study, all observed teachers used fumana frequently to mean ‘calculate’, ‘find’ or ‘what we get.’ hence fumana has multiple meanings both in everyday use and when used for mathematical purposes. the ability to use everyday words in a mathematical way has advantages of visually bringing learners’ prior familiar mental pictures into the formal teaching context of the classroom. because fumana carries the same meaning in both everyday life and the mathematical realm, it helped the teacher to make mathematical connections. during the interview, teacher c said “everyday terms that have the same meaning when used to teach maths helps link learners’ life outside school with mathematics.” home language terms with multiple meanings are also important because they can be used in various contexts for conceptual understanding during teaching. moschkovich (2002: 194) asserts “because there are multiple meanings for the same term, students who are learning mathematics can be described as learning to use these multiple meanings appropriately.” viewed from such a perspective, the use of these familiar isixhosa terms offered more advantages than limitations. in the south african education system, fumana is also used throughout school from the foundation phase onwards – hence the advancement of connections within and across school grades. considering the social context in which fumana was used, learners were appropriately prompted to seek solutions to given tasks. 7.1.2 ayifumanekiundefined another mathematical concept we observed that utilized learners’ prior knowledge and experiences was that of an ‘undefined’ situation. teachers used it when they were teaching and during the interviews. teacher b explained that ‘undefined’ was translated to in isixhosa (table 2). the term ‘undefined’ was code switched as ayifumaneki by teacher b, meaning ‘that which we cannot find or get.’ 133 chikiwa & schäfer teachers’ use of verbal language to evoke visualizations... table 2: excerpt 2 the use of ayifumaneki helped to enlighten the concept of an undefined situation. additionally, ayifumaneki was intended to help learners visualize that some situations, like the gradient of a vertical line, are undefined. this can also be applied to other cases in mathematics that are undefined or where a solution cannot be calculated or found. the use of familiar everyday words in the learners’ home language for mathematical purposes may promote conceptual understanding as learners are prompted and assisted to visualize situations that may not be otherwise easy to understand. teachers chose words that were from their daily use, familiar to learners and relating to their life outside school. 7.2 connection-making within mathematics this section focuses on one example of an isixhosa word that the participating teachers used to make connections within mathematics. this is the word zoba/krweladraw/sketch. 7.2.1. zoba/krwela draw/sketch one of the terms that was used during our observations was the word zoba (table 3), the translation for ‘draw’ or ‘sketch’. in everyday life, zoba is used when referring specifically to drawing a sketch or a diagram. the term zoba has no other meaning, unlike the english translation ‘draw’, which has various meanings depending on the context and thus can be ambiguous. once zoba has been uttered however, learners who are isixhosa first language speakers immediately feel compelled to produce a picture or diagram because there is no ambiguity. because zoba does not have other meanings or representations it may assist the listener to directly connect it to actual mathematical processes. table 3: excerpt 3 teacher a used the phrase krwela umgca to refer specifically to the drawing of a straight line and not any other form of drawing (see table 3). this phrase requires one to draw only 134 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) a straight line. the words umgca and komgca visually suggest and encapsulate a ‘line’. teacher a in the fourth extract in table 3 required learners to draw a straight line and she ended by saying ‘engekho goso’ meaning ‘that is not bent or crooked.’ that last part explicitly directs learners to envision and draw a straight line (and not a crooked line). this was done to connect and emphasize the mathematical idea of a straight line. presented here are examples of precise terms in isixhosa that connect mathematical concepts. we argue that their use through relating to real life and learners’ prior knowledge facilitates conceptual understanding. in this study, we contend that the use of such isixhosa terms helps learners to visualize the concepts and make connections because of the immediacy and familiarity of the terms to isixhosa first language speakers. this in turn is considered in this study as having a higher prospect of promoting conceptual understanding. while teachers used some precise isixhosa terms that enhanced visualization opportunities, such terms were not used extensively in the lessons during the teaching of geometry and trigonometry. we observed that teachers used everyday terms precisely for mathematical purposes. technical terms such as ‘perpendicular’, ‘parallel’, ‘intersection’, ‘colinear’, ‘period’, ‘asymptote’ and ‘quadrant’ were all borrowed. we posit that the use of borrowing still presents terms that may not be familiar to learners as they are not in a familiar language — thus creating fewer opportunities for connection-making. during interviews, teachers b said “some terms needs one to think carefully before translating like ‘asymptote’ that i used in my lesson. i never translate it to umgca owe-function osondela kufuphi kodwa ungade uthinte ndawo (a line that the function keeps getting close to but never actually touches). but this translation makes more sense.” when the majority of learners are being taught in the lolt that they are less proficient in, the use of familiar isixhosa terms through code switching stimulating visual elements of a concept, should be especially encouraged. this should be done for both everyday terms used for mathematical purposes as well as geometrically and trigonometrically specialized terms. 7.3 multiple representations observed teachers reiterated the paucity of isixhosa terms for some mathematical concepts in the teaching of geometry and trigonometry (table 4). they concurred that some mathematical terms were not easy to translate into their home language. in such situations where the mathematical concept lacked an equivalent word or phrase in isixhosa, teachers said they employ either borrowing, descriptions of those words, representations or illustrations from the learners’ environment. such language practices where teachers used multiple representations were perceived as efforts to help learners visualize and understand mathematical concepts. 135 chikiwa & schäfer teachers’ use of verbal language to evoke visualizations... table 4: excerpt 4 table 5: excerpt 5 136 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) a trend that emerged with all participating teachers was their use of code switching for illustrating a point by using everyday scenarios (see tables 4 and 5). in the interviews, we followed up on this tendency with teachers b and c when they were dealing with parallel lines. two everyday examples to illustrate parallel lines were given – railway lines and lines on a freeway (table 5). during interviews teachers reiterated the need to tap into locally available everyday visual illustrations that are able to facilitate visualizations of mathematical concepts. learners in these classes were familiar with railway lines and highways, multiple representations teachers used for parallel lines. the teachers thus suggested that these would be appropriate phrases to use to stimulate the visualization of the parallel lines concept. both teachers agreed that any scenario where two lines do not meet would be suitable to illustrate parallel lines. the use of such illustrations that shows a multiplicity of representations from everyday life assists learners to internally visualize embedded mathematics concepts. in tables 4 and 6, teachers a and c respectively concurred that certain concepts like ‘perpendicular’ were not easy to explain in the home language, except if the teacher used indigenously developed visual illustrations such as games, songs in isixhosa or some day-today experiences familiar to learners, to help them understand the concepts. they argued that the indigenous equivalent translations of some of these mathematical terms are not readily available, and if they are, the isixhosa translation is not familiar to learners. teacher c cited a song that learners sing outside school that may be used to make the concept of ‘perpendicular’ more understandable and real to learners. teacher c agreed that picking scenarios from everyday life would help learners to understand better. table 6: excerpt 6 137 chikiwa & schäfer teachers’ use of verbal language to evoke visualizations... teacher c indicated that find a perfect translation for ‘perpendicular’ in isixhosa that would visually represent the concept. teacher b explained that “imigca ethe nkqo iya nqamlezana at right angles (straight lines intersecting at right-angles)” describes perpendicular lines. thus teachers a and c agreed that various illustrations stimulating visual representations would make the concept clearer and assist learners, especially if these were taken from their immediate environment. this emphasis on inherently socially negotiated examples and illustrations aids conceptual learning, thinking and knowing, as learners engage in activities arising from the socially and culturally immediate world (lave & wanger, 1991). the lack of precise mathematical terms and the lack of a mathematics register in isixhosa encouraged and forced the teachers to use illustrations that would evoke visual impressions of concepts in the learners. these illustrations were taken from learners’ everyday environments familiar to learners. the teachers used mostly isixhosa when giving these illustrations. for this study, it was important to understand how mathematics teachers’ everyday illustrations were used to provide linguistic resources for mathematical communication and conceptual understanding. 8. summary and conclusion participating teachers in this study used everyday vocabulary to promote visualization of mathematical concepts in the learners’ first language to stimulate visual thinking, for conceptual understanding of trigonometry and geometric concepts. learners’ first language was used as a way of building on prior knowledge — it was used to make connections within mathematics and with the real world. teachers also used terms that promoted multiple representations of mathematical concepts. it was found in this study that while teachers did not make extensive use of the learners’ first language to help promote visualizations, they used everyday words which were familiar to their learners, thereby building on their prior knowledge. use of such terms is said to result in effective learning because the learners can see the connections between situations that may seem unrelated, resulting in rich conceptual understanding (kilpatrick et al., 2001). we argue that teachers’ use of borrowed words, especially of technical trigonometric and geometric terms, presented fewer opportunities for their learners to make visualizations, build on their prior knowledge and to make connections. interviews in this study revealed that the observed teachers did not plan on how and when to use the learners’ first language – it occurred spontaneously. we contend though, that the use of language to promote visualizations of mathematical ideas during teaching should be strategic, well planned and prepared. what this observation means is that when teachers are planning lessons for english second language learners of mathematics, careful selection of words and phrases that are familiar to learners, used in their everyday lives and have the potential to evoke appropriate visualizations of concepts, should be carefully considered. teachers of mathematics who understand how words can be used to visually stimulate conceptual teaching, should be conscious of choosing words that utilise imagery to enhance learning. the upshot of all this is illuminated by horn (2001: 1) who posits that “when words and visual elements are closely entwined, we create something new and we augment our communal intelligence... visual language has the potential for increasing ‘human bandwidth’ — the capacity to take in, comprehend, and more efficiently synthesize large amounts of new information.” teachers also used descriptions of mathematical concepts in their home language in those situations where they could not find an immediate suitable isixhosa word for some geometric and trigonometric concepts. these illustrations were mainly from learners’ prior 138 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) knowledge. teachers should utilize visual resources existing in their locality, especially those familiar to their learners, to develop conceptual understanding, enable these learners to grasp underlying concepts and learn more effectively. teachers of mathematics should carefully choose their language and visualizations to demonstrate precisely intended mathematical ideas if they cannot bring the actual artefacts into class. the teachers’ use of visualizations in their teaching enhancing conceptual understanding of geometry and trigonometry concepts is commendable and should be encouraged. in multilingual mathematics classes, making connections between different representations is critical in developing conceptual understanding (smith, bill & raith, 2018). however, these should be well planned in order for such practices to yield the best results. ad hoc illustrations may be more harmful if not properly planned and well thought out. a well-reasoned, sentient and astutely designed visual illustration mixed with verbal descriptions can yield a much more powerful and memorable learning experience than only verbal or textual descriptions. while the use of everyday words, phrases and visualizations has many socio-cultural advantages, teachers should ensure that mathematization is prioritized and achieved through such efforts, especially at higher grades of school learning. pre-service and in-service teachers should be taught to use language strategically so that learners of mathematics will not see it as a ‘foreign language’ that has nothing to do with the day-to-day lives of those learning it. this is possible when teachers deliberately invest time and effort in finding appropriate and suitable words as well as illustrations taken from everyday life that clearly and vividly represent the relevant mathematical concepts. as may be the case in other learning environments in south africa and elsewhere, teachers of the grade 11 classes used in this study tended to avoid bringing actual concrete visual aids during teaching and favoured verbal and abstract approaches. thus, the ability to use verbal language that evokes visual images appropriate to a given task is necessary. we argue that there is thus a need for providing adequate and appropriate academic language support to teachers of all learners learning mathematics in a language that is not their first. teachers would need to be trained to harness linguistic resources that evoke mathematically related images from their environment for the improvement of mathematical teaching. such support mechanisms should include topic-specific language demands, since each mathematics domain has its own subregister. until a mathematics register in isixhosa is developed and 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the transition from a not-profit governance approach to a for-profit governance approach after a change of ownership. section 29(3) of the constitution of south africa provides that “everyone has the right to establish and maintain, at their own expense, independent educational institutions” subject to certain requirements to ensure quality education (rsa, 1996a). such schools have become an integral part of the south african education system. however, some independent schools represent the notions of investment and profitable business and companies listed on the johannesburg stock exchange (jse) have started to invest in the independent school sector. the requirements of good governance, as stipulated in the king iii report on corporate governance for south africa 2009, were used as the conceptual framework for this study. two independent schools that transitioned from a not-for-profit approach to a profit-driven governance approach were sampled. it was found that the experiences of the principals and management teams of the participating schools differed significantly from the experiences of the teachers and parents at these schools. a school is part of a community and when a company takes over a school, they need to make sure the communication to all stakeholders is clear and transparent. keywords: independent schools; not-for-profit governance; profitdriven governance; south african school system. 1. introduction education in south africa has changed drastically in the past twenty years. one of the changes that happened after 1994 was the right given to everyone to establish and maintain an independent school that expanded the choice of schools available to parents and learners. another change was to include representatives from parents as part of the school governing bodies in public schools to allow parents to participate in decision-making. author: me ilze breedt1 prof johan beckmann2 dr andré du plessis1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria 2university of pretoria and university of the free state doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i4.14 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(4): 202-217 published: 6 december 2021 received: 20 july 2021 accepted: 27 september 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0068-8808 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7252-8483 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0068-8808 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 2032021 39(4): 203-217 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 breedt, beckmann & du plessis from not-for-profit to profit-driven independent schools according to whitake (2017) parents expect from their child’s school “… committed, happy and effective teachers; a safe school environment; intellectual and emotional growth …; strong home-school communication; a fun and supportive school environment; and to be involved and ‘kept in the loop”. these comments indicate that the environment at a school and the communication between a school and parents are very important and that parents would like to be informed of what is happening at their child’s school. nelson mandela (1990), former south african president, said: “education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world”. it was words like these that inspired south africa to change its educational system to attempt to provide the best possible education to all the children in the country. in a similar vein, in the united states of america, the supreme court has recognised the importance of education and emphasised the fact that the potential of any child will be jeopardised if that child’s opportunity to education is denied (thro, 2005). 2. problem statement in recent years, some independent schools have become part of corporate organisations that invest in small, sometimes poor, independent schools, including them as part of a larger corporate enterprise. one of the concerns about such a shift from school governance with a primary educational focus on a more corporate and profit-driven governance approach is that the emphasis could shift to profit making at the cost of educational principles. however, if a large corporate organisation buys a school, it could also result in a school having better resources and facilities. as education started to become part of the business world, corporate governance approaches in independent schools have become more prominent. independent schools have increasingly become businesses and shareholders of corporate companies that own schools and expect returns on their investments. the question arises whether corporate governance approaches are appropriate for the educational environment and whether a corporate governance approach would be compatible with the educational environment in a school. the expectations of parents who enrol their children in independent schools also need to be considered. finding an appropriate balance between business-orientated and education-orientated governance approaches could be a skill that is not necessarily appreciated by corporate organisations who buy not-for-profit independent schools. the purpose of this research was therefore to explore how stakeholders at two independent schools experienced a change from a not-for-profit governance approach to a profit-driven governance approach to shed light on the notion of education as a profitable business by companies listed on the johannesburg stock exchange (jse). a crucial issue was whether profit motives and education could be used to the benefit of learners with the expectations of the shareholders in mind. 3. literature review 3.1 independent school governance versus public school governance in south africa section 29 (1) (a) of the constitution of south africa 1996 stipulates that everyone has the right to a basic education. the regulations and laws governing education include public and independent schools unless the context indicates otherwise. in terms of section 29 (3) of the constitution of south africa, everyone has the right to establish an independent school that http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 mailto:parenthub.co.uk)%20/hello@parenthub.pleasecheck.me 2042021 39(4): 204-217 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) a. does not discriminate based on race; b. is registered with the state; and c. maintains standards that are not inferior to standards at comparable public educational institutions. independent schools therefore need to contribute to the fulfilment of the constitutional imperatives of the country, including access to education. although they can be distinguished from public schools, they are an integral and inseparable part of the south african school system. generally, the provisions of the south african schools act 84 of 1996 (hereafter referred to as sasa) apply to public and independent schools. south african public schools are funded according to different categories referred to as quintiles. the poorest schools are quintile one schools whereas the schools in the least poor communities are quintile five schools (van rooyen, 2012.) however, van rooyen (2012:16) explains that “[t]he assumption that more funding should lead to better quality education has not been proven conclusively. this is a continuing international debate”. this also applies to independent schools and the perception that independent schools all offer better education than public schools is not always valid. certain independent schools out-perform public schools, but there are public schools that are highly performing and can offer what certain independent schools cannot (din, 2017). even though there are not specific regulations pertaining to the governance of independent schools, they have access to the guidelines of the king commission (king iii report on governance, 2009) which provides guidelines for good governance, including governance in public schools and independent schools. however, although governance structures of profitdriven independent schools are likely to use corporate governance approaches, they also need to govern in the interests of the school and learners. the federation of south african school governing bodies (fedsas) explains this principle as follows: corporate governance is concerned with holding the balance between economic and social goals and between individual and communal goals. the aim is to align as closely as possible the interests of individuals, corporation, and society (fedsas, 2015:4). this principle suggests that, even though there are no specific regulations regarding the governing bodies of independent schools, they need to communicate effectively with stakeholders on matters of common interest. independent schools need to be registered with the department of basic education (dbe). however, the present understanding of the government’s involvement as a stakeholder in independent schools is limited. the controversial question that has not been answered is whether independent schools can or should be allowed to be governed independently from government interference and whether specific guidance needs to be provided regarding the interaction between the governance structures of independent schools and the south african government. although independent schools are proud to announce that they operate independently from the dbe, chapter 5 of sasa is clear that they do not have carte blanche. walton et al. (2009:110) describe this autonomy of independent schools as follows: unlike state [public] schools which are bound by departmental policy, independent schools enjoy relative freedom and are well placed to respond innovatively to the challenges for inclusive education. they are not lock-stepped into departmental timetables for change, have relative freedom in recruitment and are accountable primarily to their boards and owners. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 2052021 39(4): 205-217 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 breedt, beckmann & du plessis from not-for-profit to profit-driven independent schools educational progression in any country will influence the economy of the country. in this regard, hanushek and woessmann (2020:171) contend that “[e]ducation has long been viewed as an important determinant of economic well-being”. debates regarding decentralisation and how independent schools can alleviate the financial burden of a country regarding education underlines the interrelatedness of a country’s economy and its education system. if the education of a country is of a high standard, the economy of the country will also improve. hanushek and woessmann (2020) refer to some growth theories in terms of how education can influence the economy of a country. • firstly, high-quality education will contribute to a more educated community. better educated learners could lead to an increase in skilled and knowledgeable members of the labour force. because the demand for higher qualified workers could increase, labour productivity could also rise (mankiw, romer & weil, 1992). • secondly, new developments and technology will also start to develop, as mentioned in theories of endogenous growth (lucas, 1988; romer, 1990; aghion & howitt, 1998). in terms of the theory of endogenous growth, systems that are directly linked to the economy could influence economic growth. this also links to the first influence on economic growth, namely quality education. • thirdly, the diffusion of knowledge in a country will also contribute to the economic growth of a country if it contributes to the labour force and the technological development in a country (nelson & phelps, 1966; benhabib & spiegel, 1994). education enhances a nation’s human capital, and these three influences could all contribute to a better developed country. for these reasons, education and economy cannot be separated. there is, however, still considerable disagreement about whether education should be a money-making/profit-driven business, or whether the main motivator for education should be to serve as a vehicle for uplifting a country’s economy. even though the government is not directly involved in the governance of independent schools, independent schools still need to contribute to high quality education, in line with the constitution of 1996 (rsa, 1996a). in 2017 it was predicted that “[t]here is going to be a listing boom in private education, it is obvious unfortunately, the state isn’t getting it’s (sic) game together. these [public] schools aren’t going to get better any time soon, so it is a good opportunity for the private sector” (theron, 2017). if businesspeople talk about the stock exchange, investment and education at the same time, one can speculate that, for businesspeople, the focus of education is a profit-driven business. the impact of higher school fees and the influence of profit-driven governance are not easy to determine in relation to quality education. the controversial question of whether the corporate world will be compliant with the demands of the educational world remains unanswered. the fact that sasa (rsa, 1996b) is not prescriptive regarding governance structures of independent schools gives independent schools a great deal of freedom to employ corporate governance principles to ensure that schools function optimally. according to gayathri (2015), the key elements of good corporate governance include honesty, trust, transparency, responsibility, accountability and mutual respect. sir adrian cadbury (1992:14), chairman of the cadbury committee, explains corporate governance as follows: corporate governance is defined as holding the balance between economic and social goals and between individual and communal goals. the governance framework is there to encourage the efficient use of resources and equally to require accountability for the stewardship of those resources. the aim is to align as closely as possible the interests of individuals, corporations, and society. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 2062021 39(4): 206-217 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) gayathri (2015) therefore suggests that there needs to be disclosures to help stakeholders come close to the company and to reduce the gap between management and stakeholders. such disclosures will also help reduce the gap between the governors and those responsible for the professional management of a school. in public schools this dilemma is generally avoided by the clear distinction in section 16 of sasa between the governance of a school, which is the responsibility of the school governing body (sgb), and the professional management of the school, which is the responsibility of the principal and the school management team (smt) under the authority of the provincial head of department. 4. conceptual framework the characteristics of good governance, as contained in the king iii report (2009), were used as the conceptual framework. this report highlights four elements of good governance namely: • responsibility, which implies taking correct and appropriate decisions; • accountability, which involves a willingness and an ability to justify decisions; • fairness, which implies fair consideration of the legitimate interests and expectations of all stakeholders; and • transparency, which entails the disclosure of information in a manner that enables stakeholders to make an informed analysis of school performance and sustainability. how these four elements of good governance guided this research is illustrated in figure 1. figure 1: conceptual framework for this study sdgbedn dfnfd stakeholders' views of governance after changes in ownership responsibility accountability fairness transparency http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 2072021 39(4): 207-217 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 breedt, beckmann & du plessis from not-for-profit to profit-driven independent schools by applying these principles of good governance, an organisation such as an independent school will more likely be able to achieve sustainability and long-term continuity because governors act in the best interests of the stakeholders and serve the organisation’s mission. the temptation does exist for governors to co-manage and get involved in the day-to-day management of the organisation, but this may lead to severe negative consequences (bader, 2008). from a business point of view, certain decisions could be regarded as good decisions that will benefit the organisation. these decisions, however, could have negative results from an educational point of view and not contribute to quality education and the best interest of the learners in the school. according to the king iv report (2015), ethical aspects are very important. if the governance of a school is corporateor business-orientated, one can assume that the decisions made are with the best interests of the business in mind. even in an educational institution, decisions would primarily be based on business principles, not necessarily advancing educational principles. governors of for-profit-schools would therefore have to find a balance by advancing the business and educational principles. school governance is a complex environment with many different aspects that need to be taken into consideration to provide quality education. quality education is a very important goal and must be viewed against the backdrop of the inequalities that were created by the discriminatory policies of the apartheid era. 5. research methodology and design this was a qualitative study. according to hammarberg, kirkman and de lacey (2016: 498), ”[q]ualitative methods are used to answer questions about experiences, meaning and perspectives, most often from the standpoint of the participant”. in our research, a multiple case study focused on the views of stakeholders of two different independent schools that had recently changed ownership and transitioned from a not-for-profit governance approach to a profit-driven governance approach. according to mark (1996), such studies have the potential to produce theory and new knowledge that may inform policy development. a multiple case study contributes to a better understanding of a specific phenomenon (such as the views of stakeholders in the case of a transition from a not-for-profit school to a for-profit school) (gustaffson, 2017). 6. sampling the research sites for this study were two independent, previously not-for-profit schools that had experienced a change of ownership in the last five years and are now part of a group of schools owned by an independent company that is listed on the johannesburg stock exchange (jse). the sampling strategy was therefore purposive (silverman, 2000). the individual participants were selected to represent principals, heads of department, teachers and parents as different stakeholders in the participating schools. as indicated in table 1 below, the principal, three heads of department, four teachers and four parents from school a participated in this study. the participants from school b consisted of the principal, two heads of department, four teachers and three parents. therefore, there were twelve participants from school a and ten participants from school b. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 2082021 39(4): 208-217 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) table 1: codes assigned to participants school a school b principals principal p-a principal p-b heads of department hd-1a hd-2a hd-3a hd-1b hd-2b teachers t-1a t-2a t-3a t-4a t-1b t-2b t-3b t-4b parents pa -1a pa-2a pa-3a pa-4a pa-1b pa-2b pa-3b number of participants 12 10 7. data collection strategy semi-structured interviews were used as the main strategy to collect data. this method of data collection created the possibility for flexibility during the interviews and provided opportunities to probe the interviewees for additional information (de vos et al., 2014). 8. presentation of the data although some of the sub-themes are also applicable to more than one theme, the data is presented according to the structure depicted in figure 2 below. theme 1 responsibilities of governors sub-theme 1 responsibilities for infrastructure and equipment sub-theme 2 responsibilities towards educators, learners and parents theme 2 accountability sub-theme 1 accountability for the emotional state of stakeholders sub-theme 2 accountability for the development of staff and learners theme 3 fairness sub-theme 1 workload and a healthy environment sub-theme 2 academic standards theme 4 trustworthiness sub-theme 1 communication sub-theme 2 deliver what was promised and value for money figure 2: themes and sub-themes http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 2092021 39(4): 209-217 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 breedt, beckmann & du plessis from not-for-profit to profit-driven independent schools 8.1 responsibilities of governors the data suggest that the participants expected their governors to accept responsibility for the development and maintenance of their schools’ infrastructure and to support teachers to provide quality education. however, teacher and parent participants perceived their new profitdriven governors as lacking in this regard and that there was a general non-involvement by the new governors in the well-being of their schools. one parent (pa-1b) voiced this sentiment as follows: they [the previous not-for-profit governors] looked after the whole family. each class had a parent representative, and together with the teacher, we supported the family. the governors [the previous not-for-profit governors] knew the family and supported when things were tough. now no one cares. 8.1.1 responsibility for infrastructure and equipment participants generally expressed their disappointment with the amount of money the governors of the profit-driven company invested in the buildings and other infrastructure of their schools. according to the participants, the governors of the not-for-profit schools invested more and maintained the terrain and infrastructure better. one of the participating heads of department (hd-b2) explained as follows: at this stage, when we were part of the not-for-profit company, it was really the case that they looked after the buildings and after the terrain and everything. but at this stage, nothing happens. it really looks like a school in an extremely poor community and not like an independent school. to some participants, such as even (hd-b3), poor government schools look better than their profit-driven independent school. these participants expected more from their new profitdriven governors in terms of improved facilities and better equipment than what they received under the previous owners. the assumption that responsibility, from a business perspective, would include accepting responsibility for the maintenance and development of the physical infrastructure does not seem to hold true in the two schools studied. the general disillusionment with the new for-profit governors extends to the provision of teaching resources, which participant t-b3 articulated as follows: if i think about the resources of the school – they [the new profit-driven governors] are not putting anything into the school. there is no support from their side. we are even struggling to get textbooks from them. one of the parent participants (pa-a2) shared this concern: are there enough beakers in the lab for your child to be able to do the experiments? are there enough cricket bats to play cricket, rugby balls to play rugby? this parent (pa-a2) explained this line of questioning as follows: i know of public schools which run like independent schools. it sounds terrible to say but we are paying a premium; so, we need a privilege of sorts, and we find it difficult when we get asked to bring an extra of this or that. so, it hits our pockets, and a lot of people can afford to send their children to a private school, without even blinking. we really must work hard to keep our kids in this school. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 2102021 39(4): 210-217 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) parents could justifiably ask why there is a shortage of equipment at an independent school charging relatively high school fees. pa-a2 also referred to the fact that some public schools (with lower school fees) were managed as if they were independents schools. in other words, some of the public schools provide enough of the required equipment and resources. 8.1.2 responsibility towards educators, learners and parents. teacher participants experienced significant increases in their workloads after the change in to profit-driven ownership, particularly in terms of increased numbers of learners in their classes. t-a1 explained as follows: i think they know the numbers in our classes because now i am teaching a lot more and i feel personally, in the position that i am now, they misuse me because i don’t have a lot of off periods. i will have two off per week, which is not enough. i think i am overloaded a bit now, in comparison with the previous set-up where i had enough time during the day to go and have some tea and have a break. t-a2 held a similar view: … it wasn’t bums on seats kind of driven. if you had a smaller group, it was fine, now it is you must have a bigger class. if we lose learners, they need to be replaced immediately. similarly, in school b the profit-driven governors expected the teachers to provide the same kind of experience and quality education with fewer staff members and more learners in each class. t-b1 explained: it is just to get numbers and not about the quality of education. so that is why i would never recommend this school to anyone. significantly parents raised the same concern in terms of class sizes, albeit for different reasons than the teacher participants. pa-a1’s opinion is representative of the views of the parent participants: i think the school having to accommodate more children, with discipline is a big, big problem. teachers would walk out of the class because the class was disruptive, and nobody could do any work, so the teacher would go outside. i feel for the money that we pay; it was better when it was smaller. the “bums on seats” approach of the profit-driven approach therefore affects teacher and parent stakeholders differently. teachers experience a significant increase in workload, whereas parent stakeholders are questioning whether their children are receiving value for the money that they are paying. 8.2 accountability according to the participants, there is reluctance from the new profit-driven governors to be accountable to stakeholders for the well-being of teachers and learners and to develop the teaching staff. 8.2.1 accountability for the well-being of stakeholders participants indicated that they felt neglected and less appreciated after the transfer of ownership occurred. for example, hd-b1 from school b experienced the new governance approach as purely business driven: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 2112021 39(4): 211-217 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 breedt, beckmann & du plessis from not-for-profit to profit-driven independent schools they run the school as a business, which is fair, but we aren’t a business. we are a school. they don’t care what is happening here. it is interesting that, if you ask them if their children are in one of our schools, they will answer no. hd-b1 expanded on this point: they don’t worry about us, no, no, no! if we tell them we are going to lose teachers, it is not a problem. they will be able to fill a post. so, what do we get at the end? this sentiment was echoed by hd-b2: no, they don’t even know what we are doing. with the previous owners, there was more interaction with the governors, but nowadays there is no interaction with the governors at all – just a money-making business. a parent participant (pa-a4) felt betrayed and explained that there was no partnership between the parents and the new governors and that the parents were being excluded in governance decisions. the not-for-profit school was taken over by a private company and that was discussed with us before we had a meeting with the new governors of the private company. we had an input there and then a public company bought us over during december. whoops, we are now part of the public company. there was no discussion, there was one meeting but it was after everything was done. so, no we immediately felt excluded... they sold their souls. pa-b1 from school b had similar reservations: when it was still the not-for-profit school the parents were involved quite a lot. with the new governors, it is a big change, we lost our voice. you don’t know whether you are coming or going. luckily, the teachers are still the same and try to reassure us about things, but then you see certain things and you know it is not the same. the above responses indicate that a profit-driven approach could have a negative impact on the emotional state and general well-being of stakeholders at a school, particularly if profit motives are placed ahead of stakeholders’ best interests. 8.2.2 accountability for the development of staff the data suggest that the new profit-driven governors have delegated the responsibility and accountability for the professional development of teachers to the school principal. this is evident in that the participating principals indicated that they have a dedicated budget item for staff professional development. the principal of school a explained how his role changed: the church was the leader and there you just had to manage their decisions. now you are the leader. again, it comes down to the bottom line the profit. however, the principal of school b experienced no involvement in the budgeting process. the governors controlled the budget of the school. in his opinion the budget process was not open, and they are only informed about whether money is available or not: i never saw the budget. there was never communication whatsoever about finances except that the learners who are not paying, are not allowed to receive their reports, that kind of thing. so, financial management changed completely. of course, the new company had a plan, but it was not an open plan as i was used to with the previous governors. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 2122021 39(4): 212-217 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) although the inputs into the budget seem to be limited under a profit-driven governance approach, there seems to more development opportunities for teachers. according to hd-a2: in the budget, there is money to train staff. i think [more] than with the previous ones, because the profit went to the church institution. we did not have any money for that training. thus, under a profit-driven approach there seems to be a reliance on the principal to professionally develop his or her staff as part of their leadership and management function. 8.3 fairness although it is reasonable to assume that a profit-driven governance approach would result in an increase in the workload of teachers and academic standards, this must be achieved in a fair manner. 8.3.1 workload and a healthy working environment participants experienced an increase in workload and stress levels after the transition to a profit-driven school. the principal of school a explained: i think the stress level is much higher because of the demands from the governors. at principals’ conferences, you can hear the stress. many principals say they can’t do this for longer than five years. the stress is too much. previously it was not so much pressure or stress; you just had to do whatever, so everyone is happy, but now it is much more stress. school b’s principal had a similar experience: i think i hoped for a signature on paper and change for the good, but i think what i experience is like that goo that the children play with. for me personally it was to juggle it from one hand to another and the goo going through your fingers and trying not to let it fall, because if it fell it would be damaged. the standard of academics fully laid on the teaching staff was difficult. it was an extremely emotional time for them, and it was complicated by a huge staff turnover. the views of the two principals were supported by the teacher participants. for example, t-a1 said: the governors were a bit more relaxed in a sense. the stress levels were a bit lower... we perceive that they are more stressed now because of all the different things that need to be in place according to the new governance system. t-a3 added: for them, it is more about numbers, and they don’t care about the academics. it is more about how many children can we allow into the school so that they can probably make a profit. it is not about the academic standard of the school and what the children can do. generally, the participants voiced their disappointment with the change. it seems as if the governors do not value the important role teachers play in the school. this places an additional responsibility on the school principals to lead and manage their schools effectively by ensuring an inequitable distribution of workload. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 2132021 39(4): 213-217 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 breedt, beckmann & du plessis from not-for-profit to profit-driven independent schools 8.3.2 academic standards there was an expectation from the governors and the parents that the transition to a profitdriven governance approach would result in a rise in academic standards. the principal of school a explained as follows: … the standards of your school will draw more students and more students will bring in more money. this expectation of an increase in academic standards was articulated as follows by hda3 and hd-b1 respectively: the governors will keep us accountable for the academic standard. we need to make sure that all subjects across the school are improving as far as testing is concerned. a change in format and visiting classes on a regular basis is required. it feels as if people look up to me and say: “but why? why aren’t the children performing as they are supposed to?” the teachers also supported this view. for example, t-a3 stated as follows: yes, previously i was also accountable, but not as intensely as now. … now there are questions: “why didn’t that happen? why did this one get those results and why did this one not get an a?” parents expected academic standards to be higher because that is what they paid for. pa-a2 explained as follows: we must have the best because we pay a premium. and it is fine to make a profit, but it must never be at the expense of the child’s education. it is fair that investors in a jse-listed company should expect high standards in schools owned by them. it is also fair that parents who pay high school fees have the same expectation. however, these expectations must be managed in a fair way and teachers need to be protected against unfair expectations and labour practices. 8.4 trustworthiness this element of good governance produced two sub-themes, namely “lack of communication” and “delivering what was promised in terms of value for money”. 8.4.1 lack of communication it seems that profit-driven governors are far removed from the realities at their schools. this is undermining the trust relationship between the different stakeholders on one hand and the profit-driven governors on the other hand. communication seems to be top-down and there is little evidence of stakeholder participation. according to the principal of school a, he was the intermediary between the governors and the other stakeholders. he explained that the company appointed a general manager over schools through whom he communicated with the governors. he explained as follows: sometimes the governors make decisions that you do not understand where this comes from. we have the open door to ask. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 2142021 39(4): 214-217 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) however, the principal of school b was less positive: i was informed about the things that were appropriate for me. there was an openness that i could ask any time previously which i did not experience with the new governance, but it could also be due to a relationship thing. i did not have the openness to ask – it was never there. that the profit-driven governors are far removed from the teachers is supported by statements such as: we don’t know. nothing is given to us. nothing is said to us. there is nothing. if we ask, they say: but your school is not growing, parents are not paying. so how can we give you an increase?” they don’t worry about us (hd-b1). hd-a1 stated: i have the names of the governors, knowing them on a one-on-one basis is not always possible because there is a distance between the school and the company. but then again, we need to follow the line managers to be able to communicate to the right people. teachers and parents, as important stakeholders, also criticised the communication with the profit-driven governors. t-a3 said: i don’t think there is always great transparency in decisions that are made and maybe it is because we are from the not-for-profit school where everything was discussed, and everything was a family thing. now it is more a top-down approach, and we are not used to it. parent pa-a1 felt that the teachers were the first and most reliable source of information and that the communication from the governors was lacking: teachers normally give thorough information – we don’t get information from the governors’ side on a regular basis. we do get some, but not on a regular basis. for about six or seven months we did not receive any statements. when we received the statements, they were incorrect. 8.4.2 delivering what was promised in terms of value for money there were misgivings among participants whether the expectations created by the new profitdriven owners were being met. the principal of school b articulated his experience as follows: we had parents to manage, who had their own expectations and did not get what they expected with the increase of the school fees. those were expectations that i had to explain. because of the change in culture, we lost a lot of kids, and they were the children of the parents who helped build the school. i experienced two years of exceedingly difficult times and i did not experience the governors’ support. because the schools became more inclusive after the change in ownership, their learner populations became more diverse. this resulted in changes to the ethos of the schools and the schools experiencing previously unknown disciplinary problems. hd-b1 explained as follows: it happened, not only because of the ethos, but also the children coming to the school. the parents of the children were informed that this is a christian school, and we do christ-centred education, but they are not there for that. some are here for that reason, but others are only here because it is a private school http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 2152021 39(4): 215-217 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 breedt, beckmann & du plessis from not-for-profit to profit-driven independent schools parent participants held similar views. for example, pa-a1 said the following: there is just a different feel. i can’t put my finger on it. the school grew in numbers. with the old system, it was smaller. we experienced a closeness, more involvement. it felt like a small cell group. it was sad when we grew this big. it became a business. it was not the christian school that we enrolled in in the first place, to have a haven for our children. financially it just feels more like a business and not like the school at which we signed up in the first place. 9. conclusion independent schools can increase the capacity of the system education and provide quality education to learners of different economic statuses if they focus on providing quality education in an environment where learners have the necessary equipment and facilities to learn. section 29(1) of the constitution of south africa (rsa, 1996a) clearly states that everybody has the right to a basic education, and independent schools can contribute to the fulfilment of these rights by providing quality education in areas where there are no adequate facilities and opportunities. one way of doing this is by adopting an under-resourced school and supporting it with facilities and expertise. however, governors of independent schools, particularly profit-driven independent schools, need to mindful of their stakeholders’ needs and expectations. good governance includes responsibility, accountability, fairness and trustworthiness according to the king iii report (2009). these characteristics need to be projected by the governors, but in the two schools that participated in the study it seemed to be lacking. teaching staff should be included in the compiling of a budget. they need to explain their needs and challenges and they need to feel that the management and the governors care about them as persons. parents as valuable stakeholders need to trust the governors of the school and need to feel that they receive value (quality education) for their money. mutual respect is one of the most important values in education. it includes respecting the learners who have the right to quality education, and parents who pay a great deal of money to enrol their children in independent schools. respect should also be shown to all role players in the school to promote an environment in which quality education can take place. references aghion, p. & howitt, p. 1998. endogenous growth theory. cambridge, ma: mit press bader, b.s. 2008. distinguishing governance from management. great boards, 8(3): 1–5. benhabib, j. & spiegel, m.m. 1994. the role of human capital in economic development: evidence from aggregate cross-country data. journal of monetary economics, 34(2): 143-174. https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-3932(94)90047-7 cadbury, a. 1992. report of the committee on the financial aspects of the corporate governance. london: gee & co. ltd. de vos, a.s., strydom, fouche, c.b. & deport, c.s.l. 2014. research at grass roots. pretoria: van schaik publishers. din, b. 2017. growing affordable private school industry raises questions. the star. june 2017 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-3932(94)90047-7 2162021 39(4): 216-217 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) federation of governing bodies of south african schools (fedsas). 2015. governance in public schools. a guide to the application of the king principles in public schools. available at www.fedsas.org.za [accessed 20 august 2019]. gayathri, s. 2015. a comparative study of the corporate governance practices of selected public and private sector commercial banks in india. international journal of business and administration research review, 1(12): 114–119. gustafsson, j. 2017. single case studies vs. multiple case studies: a comparative study. academy of business, engineering and science. halmstad sweden: halmstad university. hammarberg, k., kirkman, m. & de lacey, s. 2016. qualitative research methods: when to use them and how to judge them. human reproduction. 31(3): 498–501. https://doi.org/10.1093/ humrep/dev334 hanushek, e.a. & woessmann, l. 2020. education, knowledge capital, and economic growth. in s. bradley & c. green (eds.). the economics of education: a comprehensive overview, second edition. elsevier: academic press. https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-815391-8.00014-8 institute of directors in south africa npc. 2009. king iii report on governance in south africa. sandton: institute of directors in south africa. institute of directors in south africa npc. 2015. king iv report on governance in south africa. sandton: institute of directors in south africa. lucas, r.e., jr. 1988. on the mechanics of economic development. journal of monetary economics, 22(1): 3–42. https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-3932(88)90168-7 mandela, n. 1990. speech of president nelson mandela, madison park high school, boston. 23 june 1990. available at https://libquotes.com/nelson-mandela/quote/lbl8m7d [accessed 23 june 2021]. mankiw, n.g., romer, d. & weil, d. 1992. a contribution to the empirics of economic growth. quarterly journal of economics. 107(2): 407–437. https://doi.org/10.2307/2118477 mark, r. 1996. research made simple: a handbook for social workers. london: sage. nelson, r.r. & phelps, e. 1966. investment in humans, technology diffusion and economic growth. the american economic review, 56(2): 69–75. romer, p. 1990. endogenous technology change. journal of political economy, 99(5): 71-102. https://doi.org/10.1086/261725 republic of south africa (rsa). 1996a. the constitution of south africa. government gazette no.108 of 1996. republic of south africa (rsa). 1996b. south african schools act 1996. act no.84 of 1996. government gazette, 377(17579). cape town. government printer. silverman, d. 2000. doing qualitative research: a practical handbook. london. sage. teherani, a., martimianakis, t., stenfors-hays, t., wadhwa, a. & varpio, l. 2015. choosing a qualitative research approach. journal of graduate medical education, 7(4): 669–670. https:// doi.org/10.4300/jgme-d-15-00414.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 http://www.fedsas.org.za https://doi.org/10.1093/humrep/dev334 https://doi.org/10.1093/humrep/dev334 https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-0-12-815391-8.00014-8 https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-3932(88)90168-7 https://libquotes.com/nelson-mandela/quote/lbl8m7d https://doi.org/10.2307/2118477 https://doi.org/10.1086/261725 https://doi.org/10.4300/jgme-d-15-00414.1 https://doi.org/10.4300/jgme-d-15-00414.1 2172021 39(4): 217-217 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 breedt, beckmann & du plessis from not-for-profit to profit-driven independent schools theron, p. 2017. why private schools are excellent investment opportunity in sa. available at https://businesstech.co.za/news/business/189369/why-private-schools-are-an excellent-investment-opportunity-in-sa/20/04/2020 [accessed 20 april 2020] thro, w.e. 2006. juridical enforcement of educational safety & security: the american experience. perspectives in education, 24(1): 65–72. van rooyen. j.w. 2012. the relationship between funding in education and quality education. unpublished phd thesis. pretoria: university of pretoria. walton, e., nel, n., hugo, a. & muller, h. 2009. the extent and practice of inclusion in independent schools in south africa. south african journal of education, 29:105-126. https:// doi.org/10.15700/saje.v29n1a234 whitake, j. 2017. what do parents expect from schools? available at parenthub.co.uk/hello@ parenthub.pleasecheck.me. [accessed 24 may 2021]. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.14 https://businesstech.co.za/news/business/189369/why-private-schools-are-an-excellent-investment-opportunity-in-sa/20/04/2020 https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v29n1a234 https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v29n1a234 http://parenthub.co.uk/hello@parenthub.pleasecheck.me. http://parenthub.co.uk/hello@parenthub.pleasecheck.me. _hlk75333895 _hlk81988616 _hlk76022044 perspectives in education 31(3) 1 editorial primary mathematics: addressing the crisis primary mathematics in south africa continues to be described as being in a state of crisis (fleisch 2008). performance on standardised assessments – in the annual national assessments (ana), and other regional or international comparative tests – shows patterns of performance in which the majority of learners find it difficult to achieve even basic levels of competence. in recent years, policy attention has shifted back to the primary years, with the introduction of the foundations for learning (ffl) campaign in 2008, with its associated termly ‘milestones’ based curriculum, and the introduction of the anas linked to this curriculum specification. the new curriculum and assessment policy statements (caps) entrench this prescription of coverage with the provision of work schedules detailing content, sequence and pacing on a weekly basis. a key argument for the need for increased prescription of content is evidence of poor mathematical content knowledge and pedagogic content knowledge among primary teachers (taylor & vinjevold, 1999; adler & reed, 2002; carnoy et al., 2011). evidence continues to point to a lack of articulation between the levels of content advocated in the curriculum and learner performance, and between the images of pedagogy presented in policy and research, and teaching on the ground. such mismatches lead to the need for methodological and theoretical developments, as well as interventions that are better tailored to contextual conditions. in this context, a range of policy as well as research and development initiatives with the focus on primary mathematics are underway in south africa. the department of higher education and training has instigated a programme of capacity development for foundation phase teacher education under the auspices of the strengthening foundation phase teacher education programme, involving projects at twenty south african universities. in addition, there are two numeracy chair projects focused on research and development in primary mathematics. provincial departments of education are supporting a range of projects focused on improving primary mathematics performance – the gauteng primary literacy and numeracy strategy being one example. the combined effect of these multiple initiatives is significant research work within the primary mathematics terrain. it needs to be noted that the ‘crisis’ in performance in south africa is by no means an isolated one, with ‘flat learning profiles’ across grades noted in other developing countries (pritchett & beatty, 2012). in their work, pritchett and beatty raise concerns about curriculum formulations in these contexts, arguing that content-laden curricula may push towards a coverage orientation that pays inadequate attention to learning within the pressure for completion. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 2 articles in this special issue on primary mathematics range across a variety of issues flagged in our opening sections, drawing on prior work in the south african and international terrain. curricular content for well-connected primary mathematics learning is the focus of mike askew’s article, drawing on literature dealing with the content that links to both ‘big’ conceptual ideas in mathematics, and the nature of cognition, bringing in considerations related to learning. commentary on caps, in relation to ideas about what might constitute deep and coherent mathematics learning, figures within askew’s chapter. curriculum analysis focused on shifts in the teacher identities promoted in caps foundation and intermediate phase formulations, drawing on bernsteinian tools and comparisons with prior rounds of reform in south africa is presented in peter pausigere and mellony graven’s article. jaamia galant’s paper continues the focus on caps and probes whether the shift to a more tightly specified curriculum with greater exemplification and guidelines for teachers has enhanced teachers’ ability to select and sequence mathematical tasks for the classroom. attention shifts to assessment in the national policy landscape in maria weitz and hamsa venkat’s article. comparing learner responses on a grade 1 ana paper with their responses on an oral-feedback diagnostic early number test, they analyse reasons for discrepancies in performance, providing insights into the national pattern of declining performance across the primary years in mathematics. several articles in this issue focus on primary mathematics teaching and learning. cheryl bleeker, gerrit stols and sonja van putten focus on the teaching of geometry in one primary school. they analyse the ways in which snapshots of teaching across grades provide insights into patterns of learner performance. the reintroduction of geometry into the further education and training phase within caps implementation makes this study timely – as fundamental geometry understandings need to be in place by the end of primary schooling to support the more formal geometric reasoning involving definitions and proofs in high-school geometry. debbie stott and mellony graven examine the assessment of fluency in early numbers with young learners – and deal not only with the pictures of performance that they are able to track, but also with ways in which their assessments are experienced by young children. a holistic concern with assessment formats that support learning, rather than summatively reporting on performance, lies at the heart of their analyses. fluency is also the focus in sarah bansilal’s article, with multiplication in this instance. in her study, a theory-driven approach is used to understand the ways in which a child’s encapsulations, or lack thereof, of prerequisite skills, hinder progress with current learning. noor ally and iben christiansen survey grade 6 mathematics teaching in 30 lessons, examining how teaching supports openings for learning associated with kilpatrick, swafford and findell’s (2001) strands of mathematical proficiency. their findings, linked to broader literature on mathematics teaching in south africa, point to broad prevalence, but relatively low-level teaching for procedural fluency, 3 editorial | primary mathematics: addressing the crisis combined with fewer occurrences of teaching that provides opportunities for learning related to the other strands. nithi muthukrishna presents evidence of teaching and learning in american samoa in the context of an intervention that is framed by a highly structured pedagogy. she notes ‘quick successes’ at the level of improving learner performance in a context where significant gaps in content knowledge and pedagogic content knowledge have been identified, and points to the potential of highly prescriptive instructional plans for the south african context. a final group of articles are concerned with issues relating to primary mathematics teacher knowledge and understandings, and teacher development. drawing on data from a teacher development project, elizabeth henning focused on understanding the underpinning model of cognitive development that underlies an early number diagnostic test. she notes that initial teacher comments about foundation phase mathematics teaching are saturated with reference to curriculum rhetoric underpinned by rhetoric associated with constructivist ideas at a general level. she also points to the absence of attention to learner cognition. using literature to argue the case that ‘content’ in foundation phase teacher education ought to centre on teacher knowledge of learner cognition in mathematics, data is presented that indicates fledgling shifts towards these understandings. her data points to the fact that supporting such shifts is not straightforward. sharon mcauliffe and fred lubben, and ulla runesson both present data with a more central focus on teachers’ ways of handling specific mathematical content in lessons, as part of their participation in mathematics teacher development activity. in the mcauliffe and lubben article, the empirical focus is on a pre-service bed teacher’s handling of a task focused on early algebra in grade 3. the paper’s emphasis is theoretical – and points to the ways in which different theories focused on primary mathematics teacher knowledge illuminate different aspects of the pedagogic practice seen in the focal lesson. runesson shares analysis of teacher learning in the context of a teacher development model that is referred to in the swedish tradition as ‘learning study’. borrowing the format of japanese lesson study and adding variation theory as an explicit theoretical underpinning to this work, runesson describes the shifts in teachers’ identification of critical features of the ‘object of learning’ – related to moving between word problems and algebraic expressions – in this study. the potential of this kind of collaborative model of learning driven by paying close attention to teaching is discussed in her study. a concern with the importance of teaching for mathematical learning permeates the articles in this special issue. curriculum and assessment, teacher beliefs, teacher education models and the conditions in which teaching occurs all figure within the possibilities for teaching for learning. these articles work across some of this tapestry, and provide a range of interesting insights into a shifting primary mathematics terrain – but one that is shifting now not merely on the basis of curriculum reform, but also on the basis of a broad range of initiatives directed at multiple levels of the education system – learning directly, via the introduction of national workbook perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 4 schemes, teaching via a network of interventions focused on curriculum, assessment and supporting pedagogy directly through training and development, and inand pre-service teacher development programmes. we have enjoyed reading the submissions for this special issue, and interacting with the authors. the articles have provided insights into, and tools for reflecting on our own work in primary mathematics teacher development and research. we have worked hard to make the submission process a supportive and constructive one. our thanks to all reviewers of articles and to the editorial team at perspectives for their support. above all, we look forward to further engagement in the field with practitioners, policymakers and academics with interests in the field of primary mathematics. references adler j & reed y (eds) 2002. challenges of teacher development: an investigation of take-up in south africa. pretoria: van schaik. carnoy m, chisholm l & chilisa b (eds) 2011. the low achievement trap in middleincome countries: comparing botswana and south africa. draft report, stanford school of education, human sciences research council and the university of botswana. fleisch b 2008. primary education in crisis why south african schoolchildren underachieve in reading and mathematics. cape town: juta. kilpatrick j, swafford j & findell b 2001. adding it up: helping children learn mathematics. washington, dc: national academy press. pritchett l & beatty a 2012. the negative consequences of overambitious curricula in developing countries. washington dc: centre for global development. taylor n & vinjevold p 1999. getting learning right. report of the president’s education initiative research project. johannesburg: joint education trust. june 2013 hamsa venkat & lynn bowie (guest editors) 2722020 38(2): 272-284 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.18 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mentoring and preparing primary school mathematics teachers abstract this article reports on the mentoring of foundation phase teachers and their development of disciplinary-specific knowledge, particularly how the practicum provides a space for mathematics content knowledge (mck) and mathematics pedagogical content knowledge (mpck) for student teachers, given the generalist knowledge base of many primary school teacher mentors. data were collected through semi-structured interviews with two grade 2 mentors and focus group interviews with 12 third-year student teachers in an urban university setting. a two-step process of analysis comprising open-ended coding, followed by a form of deductive coding, within a framework derived from literature on the development of mck and mpck, led to two main findings. firstly, mentors might have hindered student teachers’ development of mck and mpck, thus affecting the building of comprehensive conceptual models of good mathematics teaching practice. secondly, the efficacy of the university-led training for mentors did not seem to have been successful for preparing them to work effectively with student teachers. we therefore recommend that greater emphasis be placed on the development of subject-specific mentoring practices, especially in scarce-skills areas such as mathematics and argue for a set of standards for mathematicsspecific mentoring practices in south african primary school teacher education. keywords: mentoring practices, student teachers, mentor teachers, mathematics teaching, mathematical pedagogical content knowledge. 1. introduction the practicum, also referred to as “practice teaching” or “fieldwork”, is an integral component of the curriculum of teacher preparation programmes, as it is a space in which prospective teachers integrate university coursework (theory) with their practical experience (gravett & ramsaroop, 2015). we were interested in how the practicum also provides a space for the development of disciplinary-specific mathematics content knowledge (mck) and mathematics pedagogical content knowledge (mpck) for student teachers of mathematics. in the large scale international teacher education development study – mathematics (teds-m), results showed that the quality of opportunities to learn and the practicum experience were authors: mrs m.n. msimango1 dr k. fonseca1 prof n.f. petersen1 affiliation: 1university of johannesburg doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38. i2.18 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(2): 272-284 published: 04 december 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.18 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6031-5037 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3863-3538 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5283-1074 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.18 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.18 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.18 2732020 38(2): 273-284 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.18 msimango, fonseca & petersen mentoring and preparing primary school mathematics teachers key contributors to increased levels of student teachers’ mck and mpck (tatto et al., 2008). drawing on the work of ball, lubienski and mewborn (2001) as well as grossman (2008), baumert et al. (2010:139) argue that mck and mpck are not picked up incidentally but rather developed through university courses, mentoring received during practice teaching and “reflection on classroom experience”. this research aligns with the contention of hudson (2013) and livy, vale and herbert (2016) that in pre-service teacher education there is a growing need for greater focus on mentoring during practice teaching, specifically in the development of student teachers’ pedagogical content knowledge. however, quality practicum experiences are dependent on two key components, namely the expertise of the mentor teacher(s) and the suitability of the sites in which the experience is gained (graham, 2006). we agree with the view that mentor teachers shape students’ mathematics teaching practice in particular ways (hudson & hudson, 2011) and thus play a significant role in influencing the type of mathematics teachers students will become (rhoad, radu & weber, 2011). we were keen to investigate how the mentoring practices of teachers in the setting of a teaching or laboratory school in which they are appointed and trained as mentors for student teachers of mathematics, using a specific model for the development of numerical concepts was realised (fritz, ehlert & balzer, 2013). in our view, the teaching school is an ideal environment for the creation of cognitive apprenticeships (collins, brown & hollum, 1991) as the mentors and student teachers are being apprenticed, the teachers into mentors of student teachers and the student teachers into teachers. mentoring informed by cognitive apprenticeship is guided by six methods, namely modelling, coaching, scaffolding, articulation, reflection and control. we focused primarily on the following three in this study: modelling, coaching and scaffolding. according to collins et al. (1991:13), these three are designed to help student teachers to “acquire an integrated set” of teaching skills through observing mentors’ teaching and guided practice. 2. mentoring to create equitable mathematics learning environments teacher mentors are expected to assist students in blending the mathematics content and underpinning theories studied in university courses in order to understand how to teach mathematics effectively. however, this is not an easy task but requires mentor teachers having a profound understanding of mathematics content (ma, 1999; schoenfeld & kilpatrick, 2008) and mathematics-specific theoretical frameworks (asikainen, pehkonen & hirvonen, 2013). the former is described by ma (1999) as the ability to make connections between concepts and topics, and to demonstrate conceptual understanding that goes beyond the “what” to the “how” and “why” of mathematical concepts. a combination of a deep understanding of the mathematics content knowledge and theories of teacher knowledge required to teach mathematics plays a key role in mentor teachers’ “modelling of quality teaching and helping student teachers in their professional development” (asikainen, pehkonen & hirvonen 2013:80). in addition, mentors should provide student teachers with developmental feedback, including reflection on lessons taught and effective pedagogies that have been identified as successful mentoring strategies (hudson, 2006, 2009). however, mentoring of mathematics teaching practice is complicated by a tendency for primary school teachers to be generalists, that is, as hudson and peard (2006:229) argue, they may “not be experts in all subjects in primary school and some may not have adequate content knowledge, skills or confidence for teaching primary mathematics”. student teachers http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.18 2742020 38(2): 274-284 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.18 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) may therefore not receive “equitable mentoring or mathematics-specific mentoring” (hudson, 2006:13) and, as lin and acosta-tello (2017) found, the lesson planning discussion between mentors and student teachers will focus on the structural aspects of lessons, with a lack of emphasis on the development of mpck. student learning and creating mathematical learning environments are core aspects of mpck. in this study, we have adopted chick, baker, pham and cheng’s (2006) framework that combines categories of mpck and mck and comprises three sections,1 specifically clearly pck to describe student and mentor teachers’ views of knowledge needed to teach mathematics and mentoring practices. the clearly pck consists of nine aspects, listed in table 1. table 1: clearly pck (chick et al., 2006:299). pck category evident when the teacher … clearly pck teaching strategies discusses or uses strategies or approaches for teaching mathematical concept student thinking discusses or addresses student ways of thinking about a concept or typical levels of understanding student thinking – misconceptions discusses or addresses student misconceptions about a concept explanations explains a topic, concept or procedure cognitive demands of tasks identifies aspects of the task that affect its complexity appropriate and detailed representations of concepts describes or demonstrates ways to model or illustrate a concept (can include materials or diagrams) knowledge of resources discusses/uses resources available to support teaching curriculum knowledge discusses how topics fit into the curriculum purpose of content knowledge discusses reasons for content being included in the curriculum or how it might be used student teachers’ knowledge gains from equitable mentoring numerous in-depth studies of interactions between mentors and their mentees (hudson & hudson, 2011; i̇mre & akkoç, 2012) have shown that when the mentoring practices of mathematics teachers are centred on creating equitable learning environments, the student teachers’ mck and mpck develop. for instance, wolf (2003) found a student teacher, through the lesson plan discussion with her mentor, gained deeper conceptual understanding of the mathematics to be taught. development of the student teacher’s mck enabled her to make better decisions about selecting appropriate cognitively demanding tasks that would allow learners to engage in productive struggle. in a post-lesson observation discussion the student teacher reported learning in two key areas, firstly, eliciting pupils’ mathematical thinking and “looking for patterns in pupils’ ideas and mistakes and their thinking behind these patterns” (wolf, 2003:100); secondly, how to orchestrate productive classroom discussions by listening 1 clearly pck, content knowledge in a pedagogical context, and pedagogical knowledge in a content context http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.18 2752020 38(2): 275-284 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.18 msimango, fonseca & petersen mentoring and preparing primary school mathematics teachers to pupils’ thinking. similarly, in a study by peterson and williams (2008), a student reported that collaboratively planning lessons with the mentor teacher enabled her to advance her understanding of mck and mpck, including multiplication, division and fractions, viewing the mathematics content from the perspective of the learners and understanding that they learn best through active participation. as a result, the student teacher’s learning was greatly influenced by the mentor teacher’s beliefs of mathematics and its teaching. developing knowledge of students’ misconceptions is a key component of mpck (chick et al., 2006), as is developing knowledge of their ideas and mathematical thinking (ball, thames & phelps, 2008). mentor teachers therefore need to use various mentoring strategies to develop student teachers’ mpck, including aspects such as asking them to read and interpret their performance on a pre-test to gain an understanding of their prior knowledge before teaching a lesson (lin & acosta-tello, 2017). this is particularly useful for anticipating learners’ solutions in future lessons and as a guide to asking questions to elicit their thinking. another important aspect for mentors is the ability to articulate the expert mathematical knowledge underpinning their classroom practices from a theoretical perspective, so that student teachers can link what they learn at university with classroom practice and so grasp its relevance (asikainen et al., 2013). this is a great challenge for most mentors and, as research in finland has shown, while the mentor teachers were knowledgeable about the mathematics knowledge needed for teaching they could not articulate it from a theoretical perspective because some of the “theoretical terms seemed ambiguous” (asikainen et al., 2013:88). our overarching view is that equitable mentoring is dependent on a strong link between mentor teachers’ profound understanding of mathematics, beliefs of mathematics, views of teacher knowledge and actual mathematics teaching and mentoring practices. working in a teacher education environment, comprising a university programme that operates in conjunction with a teaching school, we wished to investigate student teachers’ views on the mentoring received and mentor teachers’ views of their mentoring practices. in this context, with mentor teachers having a prominent role in guiding student teacher development, it was important when assessing the uptake of previous developmental opportunities to determine the focus of further mentor training. 3. research methodology in this qualitative study, we sought an in-depth understanding of the mentoring process from the perspective of the participants. we used purposeful sampling to identify two grade 2 mentor teachers and twelve third-year student teachers in a foundation phase teacher education programme. the following research question guided the investigation: what are student teachers and their mentors’ views of the process of mentoring for mathematics teaching in the foundation phase? in this laboratory-type school, educational researchers spend considerable time studying teachers’ and students’ learning and enactment with a view to distilling successful practices that can be fed into the greater school system for further study. as mathematics teaching is so important in the foundation phase and because we are aware of the more generalist nature of the teaching in this phase, we focused on the grade 2 classroom as an important transition between the first year of formal mathematics teaching (grade 1) and the last year of the foundation phase (grade 3). third-year student teachers were selected as they were in the penultimate year of a four-year degree programme and we reasoned that they had gained http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.18 2762020 38(2): 276-284 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.18 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) a substantial theoretical knowledge of mathematics and exposure to mentoring that would enable them to respond appropriately to our questions. we used a combination of focus group interviews for the student teachers and individual semi-structured interviews for the mentors (creswell, 2007; danielson, 2002). questions for both sets of participants focused on obtaining an understanding of the input of the mentor teachers in the students’ teaching of mathematics and the development of their mck and mpck. the transcribed data were subjected to a two-step process of analysis. in the first, the primary author used methods associated with an inductive process associated with constant comparison (glaser & strauss, 1967) to search for recurring ideas and views (rowley, 2014), eventually arriving at a number of themes. in the second round of analysis, the second author used the findings (themes) as a basis for identifying specific discourse markers (fraser, 1999) associated with the main aspects of the clearly pck section. in this respect, the components from the literature served as a framework for scrutinising the themes from the first round and the original raw data for evidence of: a) knowledge of mck; b) knowledge of aspects of mpck as described in table 1; and c) knowledge of theoretical frameworks. the third author provided critical oversight of the two-phase analysis process and the three authors sought consensus in finalising the themes. approval for the research was obtained first from the overarching committee governing research at the teaching school and then followed by the granting of a second application to the faculty’s research ethics committee (number: 2018-024). in order to preserve the anonymity of the participants the letter s and a number were used to denote the particular student being quoted and the two mentors were named mentor a and mentor b. students 1–6 were in one group and students 7–13 in the second group. 4. findings in line with the aims of the investigation, we report on the student teachers and their mentors’ views of the process of mentoring for mathematics teaching in the foundation phase. student teachers’ mentoring experiences using the clearly pck framework to frame student responses we report on the differences between the two student groups in the development of pck. student teachers mentored by mentor a reported that while the mentoring practices were helpful they were overwhelmingly characterised by confusion, conflicting statements and inconsistencies, whereas those mentored by mentor b found the mentoring practices helpful for their development, particularly for certain aspects of pck. the expertise of the mentor teacher is a clear differentiator. curriculum knowledge and purpose of content knowledge the student teachers found both mentors’ input in the initial stages of lesson planning mentoring useful for their development as teachers of mathematics in that the teachers provided them with the topics to teach and made suggestions on how to present the lesson. however, they were of the view that mentor a’s guidance on the actual teaching of the lesson contradicted what they had learnt in their university methods courses, as evidenced by the following: s2: the mentoring sessions were all helpful as in guiding us on what to do with the lesson. giving us the topic, giving us pointers. but when it comes to actually producing the actual lesson, sometimes the advice given to us by the mentor teacher will contradict what we are learning at the university. then we are left confused. (students all sigh in agreement). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.18 2772020 38(2): 277-284 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.18 msimango, fonseca & petersen mentoring and preparing primary school mathematics teachers in following up on the dissonance between what they were learning at university and what mentor a was advising, the student responded as follows: s2: yes, and which i actually do not understand because it is one. so you would expect what we are learning to be similar to what the mentor teachers want. it confuses us as groups and that is how we lose marks because we will do a lesson a certain way and then when our lesson plan is reflected on, then we have to change things. so then it makes it difficult for us because what are we changing it to next because we just know what we have been learning, what we have been taught at the university. the students experienced the inconsistencies between university coursework and mentor a’s guidance as extremely challenging. however, they did not explicitly state what they meant by their tertiary learning and it seems both mentor teachers, despite having access to the university coursework and lecturers, did not draw on these as resources when instructing students. particular areas in which the student teachers experienced confusion and conflicting guidance were during the lesson planning process, specifically regarding curriculum knowledge and the purpose of content knowledge: s6: like when we were doing our lesson on sharing and the dividing [division]. they said we must bring in the word division but then when we put it in our lesson plan the mentor teacher said we must not use the word “division”. they said we can also teach the remainder, then when we put it in our lesson plan they told us we’re not allowed to do that. so [we] were confused. it seems a thorough understanding of the curriculum and purpose of mathematics content knowledge did not inform the lesson planning guidance received from mentor a. the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps, 2011:21) for the foundation phase stipulates that learners in grade 2 should “solve and explain solutions to practical problems that involve equally sharing and grouping up to 50 with answers that may include remainders”. it also indicates that the division of whole numbers up to 100 by 2, 3, 4, 5 and 10, and the use of the division symbol is only introduced in grade 3 and not in grade 2. we understand curriculum knowledge to include knowledge of when or by which grade the concept and symbol of division should be introduced. moreover, the ability to explain to student teachers why the concept and symbol of division are only introduced in grade 3 illustrates an understanding of the purpose of content knowledge. instead, the two mentor teachers confused the students as one counselled them to introduce division to grade 2 learners while the other said not to. students were then confused in bringing together what they had learnt from their coursework about the age-appropriate conceptual development of mathematics in young children with what was happening in the classroom. student teachers who worked with mentor b highlighted the usefulness of lesson planning guidance, specifically on what to teach: s7: before we do our actual lesson we first observe the teacher doing the lesson before we’re going to do our lesson. so that we can know this is what we’re going to do and what she has already done. so we have to add on it. the student teachers found the guidance on what to teach, with specific attention to the content and concepts, beneficial to their learning. then, by having the opportunity to observe the mentor teacher’s lessons they gained an understanding of the content taught and how http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.18 2782020 38(2): 278-284 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.18 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) they could build on it. an omission for them in the mentoring process was discussions on how the content fits into the curriculum and why it is included. teaching strategies and knowledge of resources secondly, student teachers were of the view that both mentors restricted their pedagogical strategies and use of resources in lesson planning and they felt powerless to object: s1: i feel like in most cases, a mentor teacher will stay in their comfort zone and is the direction that they will steer you in. so if they like a certain something they will advise you do that and shy away from using different methods or using different resources and what not. so sometimes it does become difficult to expand our lessons because it’s just like we feel restricted in a sense and not able to tell this to the teacher. s4: like she said, i feel that they (the mentor teachers) are not allowing us to do things in a way that we would like to do them. we are mostly limited to doing things in the method they would want us to use. like what we do is always going to be criticised as to say that our methods are always going to be criticised, that our learners are used to so and so. we can never get the opportunity to say that “ma’am, since you did it this way how about we take a different direction or a different approach?” to see if learners will understand it better or not. the responses indicate that students felt mentor teachers were more comfortable with well-known teaching approaches and resources and reluctant to explore different and/or new ways of teaching mathematics concepts. it also appeared that student teachers were not given clear reasons why the alternative methods and resources they proposed would be unsuitable. most importantly, there was little or no discussion about why certain teaching strategies and resources were applicable for the teaching of particular concepts but not for others. for instance, student teachers placed with mentor b indicated that the teacher corrected them on their teaching strategies and emphasised use of the correct mathematical language and teaching strategies to foster conceptual understanding. their expression of this was, however, vague: s12: she does correct us on how we teach, like your teaching method. teaching skills, she also puts more emphasis on conceptual understanding of mathematics. like the use of language for mathematics. so she does [place] emphasis on that. other than this generic explanation, the students were unable to name or describe specific teaching strategies or examples of how to foster conceptual understanding of mathematics. the only benefit we could infer was that it seemed to increase their confidence to teach, as expressed by a student teacher: s10: i think the mentoring here at the teaching school has helped a lot because when we go to the outside schools we are not scared. we are confident when we are standing in front of the learners because we are used to it here at teaching school. a third aspect evident was the disjuncture between the teaching approaches the teachers told the students to use and what they themselves modelled in their teaching: s3: i find that they emphasise on how we should include the learners in our lessons but i find that most times they do not. it is like they just tell the learners what to do and then the learners must just do it. … not always but it happens. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.18 2792020 38(2): 279-284 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.18 msimango, fonseca & petersen mentoring and preparing primary school mathematics teachers in university coursework, students are taught ways of selecting appropriate cognitively demanding tasks and the ability to elicit learners’ thinking, including their misconceptions. from their responses it appeared that these two key aspects of mpck were either absent or inconsistently illustrated or modelled in the mentoring processes. mentor teachers’ views on their mentoring practices on the other hand, mentor teachers believed they were developing student teachers’ teaching strategies, content knowledge and reflection practices, with evidence of general and mathematics-specific teaching strategies being given. teaching strategies mentor a’s descriptions, although responding to the question of teaching strategies, tended to the generic, such as encouraging student teachers to use interactive teaching methods that promoted maximum learner participation: mentor a: i encourage them to use different methods. however, i always encourage them to use a particular method for a particular topic because not all of them are relevant for each topic. for example, even group work is also important but not all the time. so they can use a variety of methods. on the other hand, mentor b’s responses showed more evidence of mathematics-specific knowledge and use of a particular model and theoretical framework, namely number sense, for developing conceptual understanding of mathematics: mentor b: like i said, it’s more of looking into the conceptual knowledge when teaching mathematics. if they plan, yes the facts and the procedures will always be there. but it’s more of assisting learners in understanding those numbers and understanding mathematics. we all know that mathematics is just a language that we use in our everyday life. so i normally say to them they need to critically look at their lessons. they need to critically look at the activities that they give to the learners and see the opportunity of teaching at that particular point in time. so we’ve been using the model by fritz of number sense. i also try and assist them in building their conceptual knowledge of using the number sense, so that then they can be able to assist their learners in the classroom. mentor b explained how she used the fritz et al. (2013) model for the development of numerical concepts from the ages of four to eight years to aid in the development of student teachers’ understanding of number sense. there is thus some evidence of conceptual development being underpinned by a theoretical framework and the implementation of development opportunities provided by the university. mentor teachers’ reflection practices in responding to the question on the nature of the post-lesson reflection discussion between the mentor teachers and student teachers, both mentors indicated that they focused on certain aspects of pck, such as the effectiveness of the teaching methods, reasons for selecting activities and resources and whether learning took place. mentor a indicated that her discussions with students focussed on the effectiveness of the teaching strategies for reaching lesson objectives and to see if they could recognise flaws in the lesson planning. mentor b critiqued the university’s post-lesson reflection instrument, saying that its generic nature promoted formulaic answers from students. she indicated that instead she constructed her own questions based on what transpired during the lesson, such http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.18 2802020 38(2): 280-284 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.18 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) as why students used particular activities and resources and how they could tell whether learning was taking place. 5. discussion in analysing the data, the authors were interested in understanding how the student teachers’ views on the guidance they received from mentor teachers aimed at the development of their mpck correlated with those of their mentors. the findings showed that not only were there significant differences between the views of student teachers and the two mentors but there was also a great disjuncture with what the mentor teachers seemed to know and what they actually did when they were supposed to be providing mathematics-specific mentoring in a cognitive apprenticeship environment. we surmise the disjuncture had two possible causes. firstly, the mentor teachers had a superficial rather than profound understanding of the mathematics content regarded by ma (1999) as essential for the development of students’ pck and mpck, and, secondly, the mentoring training provided by the university was flawed and/or insufficiently focused on the development of subject-specific strategies. in mathematics, teachers with a profound understanding of mathematics demonstrate conceptual understanding that goes beyond the “what” to the “how” and “why” of mathematical concepts, and they are able to make connections between concepts and topics (ma, 1999). thus, by observing good mathematics teaching practices student teachers are able to build conceptual models of what comprises good teaching (collins et al., 1991). from the student teachers’ responses it was evident that as a result of the mentoring they received they built only fragmented conceptual models of good mathematics teaching practice or development of mpck, exposing inconsistencies between what teachers instructed them to do and what they actually did. student teachers had built conceptual models of “the what to teach” rather than “the how to teach”. from the data it appeared that mentor a was too uncertain or too inexperienced to provide mathematics-specific mentoring, therefore tending to focus on student teachers’ compliance with content (the what to teach), probably to work towards curriculum coverage, rather than their learning or development of mpck. student teachers’ curriculum knowledge development was then also neglected, which puzzled us. the south african curriculum (caps) is highly structured and provides teachers with the latitude to enter into discussion with the students about the reasons and means for selecting cognitively demanding tasks that will allow for the eliciting of learners’ mathematical thinking. although mentor a indicated she encouraged topic specific pck, this was not evident from the student teachers’ responses. there is some evidence of knowledge of mathematics-specific mentoring in mentor b’s own responses as she spoke about teaching mathematics for conceptual understanding, using the correct mathematical language and linking theory to practice. this was also evident in one of the student mentee’s responses but from the others it was evident that mentor b’s knowledge of mathematics-specific mentoring remained at the level of “espoused theory” and did not translate into “theory-in-use” (schon, 1983). we were unsure whether she genuinely did not know how to make this transition or was telling the interviewer what she wanted to hear. we are hopeful that evidence of positive aspects of her mathematics-specific mentoring, for example, linking theory to practice, was attributable to the mentoring development workshops conducted by the university staff. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.18 2812020 38(2): 281-284 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.18 msimango, fonseca & petersen mentoring and preparing primary school mathematics teachers the findings did indicate that the mentor teachers provided coaching in the teaching strategies, but these were not explicitly articulated. nor did the mentors articulate their thinking and reasoning about the (in)appropriateness of certain teaching strategies. articulation as one of six mentoring practices (collins et al., 1991) and is the ability of mentor teachers to articulate their knowledge and reasoning of the various aspects constituting mpck. however, the ability to do so about teaching strategies is not restricted to mentor teachers but rather student teachers should also be given the opportunity to make their thinking explicit. the findings showed that the mentor teachers did not explicitly articulate their knowledge and reasoning, nor did they create opportunities for the student teachers to make their knowledge of teaching explicit. consequently, student teachers were prevented from exercising the autonomy developed over the previous two-and-a-half years of teaching experience. teacher autonomy is the freedom teachers have to make their own decisions while they carry out their teaching (tehrani & masor, 2012), when they have freedom to select their own cognitive demanding tasks, select their own teaching strategies focused on learners’ mathematical thinking and eliciting of misconceptions as well as decide on appropriate and clear representations to develop conceptual understanding. as pointed out by fung (2006:45), the practicum is for “student teachers to experiment, reflect on, learn, and reconstruct their teaching and learning, not to follow or emulate others’ practice”. we take this to mean that student teachers should engage in various teaching explorations under the guidance of the mentor teachers, something that did not happen optimally with the participants in our study. the findings suggest the mentoring training provided by the university was flawed and insufficiently focused on subject-specific practices. it focused on mentor teachers creating cognitive apprenticeships with student teachers, but the teachers’ inability to do so made us question whether the mentor teachers had themselves been provided with the context in which they could learn through modelling and examples. furthermore, we remain unsure whether the mentor teachers were supported in ways that enabled them to articulate their knowledge and reasoning about mathematics-specific mentoring, to reflect and to express their autonomy. we were concerned specifically about whether the training focused on the development of a profound understanding of mathematics, as such a deficit of this in foundation phase teachers is well documented (carnoy, chisholm & chilisa, 2012; taylor & taylor, 2013; venkat & spaull, 2015). if mentor teachers do not receive sufficient training to address it, then teacher education programmes such as the one reported on in this paper, are perpetuating poor mathematics teaching in south african primary schools. from the perspective of teacher educators, who are also responsible for ensuring that mentors are sufficiently well trained to work with student teachers, we needed to ensure that mentoring programmes focused on generic and subject-specific processes. in the case of mathematics, teachers would develop not only mentoring practices but also a profound understanding of mathematics and mentors’ teaching practices. furthermore, a wellstructured mentoring programme needs to include a partnership between the university and the (teaching) school, a coaching relationship between mentor teachers and teacher educators and a sound mentorship between mentors and student teachers (cheng, cheng & tang, 2010). we agree with hudson and hudson (2011) that just as there are standards for teaching and assessing so there is a need for a set of standards for mathematics-specific mentoring practices. we believe a set of standards and sufficient mentor training will alleviate inconsistent and confusing mentoring practices. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.18 2822020 38(2): 282-284 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.18 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) 6. conclusion while the data set for the study on which this paper is based was a small sample of student teachers and mentors’ views on mentoring, they did reveal a clear disjuncture between what teachers espouse and what they practice as well as how mentors and students differ in their perceptions of the usefulness of mentoring practices in their learning. lacking in the study were observations of the mentor teachers’ mentoring practices that might have provided a full picture of the depth and breadth of their mpck and their understanding of providing mathematics-specific mentoring. despite this, however, the results were useful in pointing out gaps in the promotion of mentoring for mpck and highlighting the importance of a mentoring model within a structured practicum curriculum that provides clear guidelines for mentors and student teachers. we agree with many of the publications on mentoring that while there is no formula to provide mentoring informed by cognitive apprenticeship practices, if teacher educators and mentors have a shared understanding of what mathematics-specific mentoring entails and the aspects needed to develop mpck they will work better with mentors to operationalise this. ultimately, what we learnt from the study is that we underestimated the type and nature of training mentors require as well as the kind of scaffolding necessary to develop competencies that would enable them to meet the subject-specific mentoring needs of student teachers. references asikainen, m.a., pehkonen, e. & hirvonen, p.e. 2013. finnish mentor mathematics teachers’ views of the teacher knowledge required 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https://doi.org/10.1163/9789087905460_016 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.11.299 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.11.299 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2015.02.002 https://doi.org/10.1080/13540600309370 mentoring and preparing primary school mentoring and preparing primary school mathematics teachers 1202023 41(2): 120-133 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 emergency remote education in higher education institutions during covid-19: students’ voices abstract the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic was declared a public health emergency of international concern. in south africa (sa), institutions had to adopt emergency remote education, thus resulting in significant challenges for both students and lecturers. this article investigated students’ views and perceptions towards emergency remote education. the diffusion of innovations (doi) model was used as a lens to understand students’ views regarding emergency remote education. the researchers applied a qualitative research approach within the interpretivist paradigm since it offered an opportunity to explore and understand participants’ lived experiences. purposive sampling was used. the participants included nine undergraduate students from a public university in gauteng province. findings highlighted students’ ambivalent views towards online teaching and learning. some participants support emergency remote education, while some believed that they did not acquire the depth and scope of the content of the module in comparison to contact lectures. participants indicated that it was challenging to follow lecturers due to unstable network connectivity. they highlighted socio-economic conditions, lack of resources and an unconducive learning environment affected their education. for effective online teaching and learning, appropriate planning and infrastructure were recommended to be available and accessible to all students. keywords: covid-19; emergency remote education; technology; diffusion of innovations; higher education; 1. introduction the outbreak and spread of covid-19 in 2020 have significantly impacted the lives of students at higher education institutions (heis) globally (aristovnik et al., 2020; schleicher, 2020). the covid-19 pandemic has resulted in the transformation of the social society and the delivery of higher education curriculum (schleicher, 2020). heis were suddenly experiencing challenges to conduct traditional face-to-face teaching and learning and therefore opted for online teaching and learning to ensure the safety of students and staff, at the same time attempting to complete the curriculum (paideya, 2020; schleicher, 2020). both mpungose (2020) and schleicher (2020) highlight author: zijing hu1 affiliation: 1university of johannesburg, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i2.5923 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(2): 120-133 published: 30 june 2023 received: 21 december 2021 accepted: 25 november 2022 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9752-4163 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 1212023 41(2): 121-133 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 hu emergency remote education in higher education institutions during covid-19 that education in heis has been transformed to accommodate emergency remote education (ere) due to the impact of the pandemic. this paper explored students’ views and experiences of ere at an hei. emergency remote education is defined as the urgent but temporary adjustment to an alternative mode of delivery in education (hodges et al., 2020). in this paper, the authors presented the voices of the undergraduate students of a south african hei in the gauteng province. emergency remote education refers to the rapid shift to online teaching and learning due to the influence of the covid-19 pandemic. the authors formulated the primary research question: what are students’ views and experiences of ere during covid-19 at the hei? the ere challenged students at heis who were not familiar with online teaching and learning. similar sentiments have been reported by paideya (2020), who stated that most students at heis are not as competent with technology as academic staff believe them to be. o’sullivan (2017) also found that most students lacked the appropriate skills and knowledge to adequately use technology for online learning. a qualitative case study design was adopted to explore students’ experiences with online teaching and learning. the theoretical framework anchored in this study was the diffusion of innovations (doi) model proposed by rogers (2003). the findings in this paper presented the participants’ voices and recommendations for future improvement of ere. 2. literature review 2.1 impact of covid-19 on higher education the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic has significantly impacted numerous perspectives in human social activities, including education in heis. sahu (2020) reveals that the pandemic has affected more than three-quarters of the world’s student population. this view concurs with rashid and yadav (2020), who state that both developed and developing countries were significantly affected by the pandemic. since the announcement of the global pandemic in march 2020, many actions have been implemented to reduce the spread of the virus worldwide. these actions included the shutdown of schools and universities, which led to the adoption of ere (salmi, 2020). evidence in support of this view can be found in the works by the european university association (eua) (2020) and the ministry of education, culture, sports, science and technology (2020), which report that more than 90% of heis have shifted to ere. many heis have tried to implement online learning programmes; however, most programmes are still face-to-face (eua, 2020). the sudden adoption of ere places challenges on both academic staff and students. this view concurs with paideya (2020), who reported that more than half of academic staff had never taught online before the pandemic, from studies conducted in the united kingdom, the united states, and the irish. this challenge is particularly critical among african universities. salmi (2020) articulates that most african universities have poor infrastructure and lack appropriate resources due to the high poverty rate. therefore, few african universities are well equipped to conduct academic activities online. this view agrees with marinoni, van’t land and jensen (2020), who indicate that 61% of african universities could not conduct online examinations due to insufficient infrastructure and competencies to use the limited available technology. for this reason, students in sa, ghana and zimbabwe have attempted to request https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 1222023 41(2): 122-133 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) the government to stop online learning as some students neither have the device nor access to the internet (marinoni et al., 2020). in sa, the president announced a national lockdown on 23 march 2020, a few days after the declaration of ‘national state of disaster’ [national institute for communicable diseases (nicd), 2020]. the lockdown regulation has compelled heis to adopt ere. this transformation required urgent and rapid implementation of a system that was not fully equipped to migrate to a new mode of delivery. salmi (2020) reported that most programmes at south african heis are still offered face to face. therefore, the adoption of ere is new and novel to students. despite the challenges with ere, the researchers believe that this is an opportunity for african universities to adapt to the digital world and become technologically knowledgeable and advanced. this agrees with the association for the development of education in africa (2020), which affirms that the covid-19 crisis can accelerate education in africa’s move to the digital era. 2.2 challenges on emergency remote education at heis due to the impact of covid-19, the urgent adoption of ere has significantly influenced how heis approach teaching and learning during the pandemic. for instance, many countries have instituted the cancellation of contact classes in heis to prevent the further spread of the pandemic (aristovnik et al., 2020; paideya, 2020). marinoni et al. (2020) point out that the rapid transition to ere limits the contact between students and lecturers. aristovnik et al. (2020) further reported that 86.7% of contact academic activities were cancelled which forced the implementation of ere among heis. according to rashid and yadav (2020), the mode of online teaching and learning encouraged heis to select appropriate technologies to enhance ere. however, there are numerous practical problems after implementing ere in heis (rashid& yadav, 2020). for example, south african heis are faced with digital inequality. many students and lecturers, especially in rural sa, do not have access to the internet and devices such as laptops, ipads and smartphones (hedding et al., 2020; thaba-nkadimene, 2020). some heis cannot transform to online teaching and learning due to the inherited disadvantages from the previous apartheid era (thaba-nkadimene, 2020). according to world bank (2020) and thaba-nkadimene (2020), this challenge is still eminent in most universities. although some heis have provided students with laptops and data, students face a lack of internet signals in their rural areas in sa. the researchers agree with thaba-nkadimene (2020) that the financial burden for technological devices and data and poor internet connectivity have negatively affected the implementation of ere. different forms of online learning have been proposed to adapt to the changes due to the pandemic (aristovnik et al., 2020). literature reveals that some students support online learning being more convenient in terms of accessibility and flexibility, while others argue that online learning disadvantages students from low-income families (thaba-nkadimene, 2020). many students still experience difficulties in ere because they are not familiar with technology and learning software (world bank, 2020). rashid and yadav (2020) believe that before implementing ere, all students and lecturers need to be trained on the effective use of technology and the different platforms. furthermore, some programmes require practical work; these are difficult to be taught virtually (eua, 2020), especially laboratory experience and clinical exposure for medical training. this view concurs https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 1232023 41(2): 123-133 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 hu emergency remote education in higher education institutions during covid-19 with hedding et al. (2020), who specifies that ere gives access to those modules that do not need access to laboratory or clinical practices. access to the provision of technology is crucial in developing countries like sa, as many students do not have a digital device and lack technological skills (chau, 2010; thabankadimene, 2020). similar sentiment has been reported by aristovnik (2020), who state that poverty, internet connectivity and a lack of electricity negatively affected teaching and learning in developing countries, especially in rural areas. evidence can be obtained from aristovnik’s (2020) study, which reports that students from african countries are mostly unsatisfied with online teaching and learning. due to the impact of the financial burden and poor infrastructure, accessibility and affordability may negatively affect students’ performance at heis (cloete, 2017; rashid & yadav, 2020). 2.3 role of technology in emergency remote education modern technology has changed the world significantly by removing barriers of distance and time. this view concurs with cloete (2017), who states that the internet has become an essential technology in heis worldwide. remote education, which is ensured by the utilisation of the internet, has been developed and implemented for decades to aid traditional face-toface teaching and learning to improve the outcomes of education (tejedor et al., 2021). this view is further strengthened by budhwar (2017), who asserts that students’ performance and achievement can be improved by using technology. both chau (2010) and cloete (2017) agree that ere offers flexibility in education based on modern technology. chau (2010) states that the barrier of access to education can be eliminated by using technology, which also reduces the financial costs of education. budhwar (2017) specifies some advantages of applying technology in education, such as convenient access, distance learning, and sharing knowledge and experience worldwide. the researchers concur with chau (2010) and budhwar (2017) that the use of technology will significantly promote the development of africa, especially in the field of education. however, other impact factors need to be considered, such as accommodating students from poor socio-economic backgrounds. 2.4 influence on students’ learning experience the use of modern technology in education at heis has significantly eliminated the risk of covid-19 infection by means of maintaining social distancing. however, students still face challenges with ere, especially for students who are more comfortable and confident with face-to-face lectures (marinoni et al., 2020). paideya (2020) agrees with scott (2020) that the shift to ere may be overwhelming, resulting in anxiety and uncertainty among students. as stated in the previous section, aristovnik et al. (2020) found that students have expressed negative experiences on ere despite the advantages of technology. for example, a lack of computer skills and focus during online learning. according to mpungose (2020), most universities in sa conduct face-to-face teaching and learning with minimal online or virtual teaching and learning. while many students prefer technology for texting more than physical face-to-face communication, he believes that online teaching and learning without physical communication will negatively affect students’ performance. the lack of contact communication also reduces the opportunity for students to study in a physical group. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 1242023 41(2): 124-133 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) aigbavboa and thawala (2016) point out that the lack of physical group study will negatively influence students’ learning. the ere limits the opportunity for students to learn in groups physically, and it seems to be a cultural practice among african students that they prefer learning in groups physically (aigbavboa & thawala, 2016). students will tend to experience isolation and frustration due to the lack of engagement and participation with peer groups even online. this view concurs with a study by aristovnik et al. (2020), who reported that studying at home may result in stress, anxiety and frustration. paideya (2020) states that the isolation due to lockdown may adversely affect students’ performance, mental health, and well-being. according to o’sullivan (2017) and scott (2020), the rapid adaption and implementation of ere potentially increase the stress and workload of students. one of the reasons for the uncertainty and stress expressed by students is supported in a study by cloete (2017), who ascertain that online degrees are less likely to be accepted by institutions. according to aristovnik et al. (2020) and rashid and yadav (2020), studying alone requires greater self-discipline and motivation. they agree that a lack of motivation and self-discipline will negatively affect students’ performance. aristovnik et al. (2020) and schleicher (2020) reveal that students from a poor financial background, who do not have access and or the skills of using technology, including devices and knowledge of technology, are at the risk of failing their modules or the degree programme. another study conducted by aristovnik et al. (2020) revealed that most students do not have a conducive environment at home to study. 3. theoretical framework in this study, the diffusion of innovation (doi) model by rogers (2003) was used to explore university students’ experiences of ere during the covid-19 pandemic. rogers developed the doi model to investigate the adoption of technology (bakkabulindi, 2014). both sahin (2006) and bakkabulindi (2014) agree that the doi model is the most influenced model to explore the use of technology in heis. there are four main elements in the doi model, namely innovation, communication channels, time and social system (bakkabulindi, 2014; rogers, 2003). innovation refers to “an idea, practice or object that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption” (rogers, 2003:12). in his book, rogers used the terms technology and innovation interchangeably. he pointed out that uncertainty is a critical obstacle in adopting innovation or technology (rogers, 2003; rogers, singhal, & quinlan, 2019). to promote the adoption and implementation of technology, the advantages and disadvantages of technology should be explained in detail to individuals (students) (bakkabulindi, 2014). in this study, innovation refers to the use of technology in the identified programme. the focus is on how innovative and creative higher education institutions prepared technology to accommodate students during the covid-19 pandemic. the element of communication, according to rogers (2003:5), is “a process in which participants create and share information in order to reach a mutual understanding.” the communication channels refer to the approaches where communication takes place, such as television, radio, the internet, and other platforms. bakkabulindi (2014) agrees with rogers (2003), who points out that media is more useful at the introductory stage of technology, while interpersonal channels are more suitable to promote the adoption of technology. due to the covid-19 lockdown, higher education institutions had to find novel ways of introducing technology and technological applications for teaching and learning. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 1252023 41(2): 125-133 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 hu emergency remote education in higher education institutions during covid-19 rogers (2003) states that the adoption of technology includes a time dimension. the social system is defined as “a set of interrelated units engaged in joint problem solving to accomplish a common goal” (rogers, 2003:23). the social system will influence the doi since the process of doi takes place in the social system (rogers et al., 2019); this was evident in the hei where this study was conducted. the adoption of innovation goes through five stages: knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation and confirmation (rogers et al., 2019; sahin, 2006). according to rogers et al. (2019), the knowledge stage refers to the awareness of the technology. in the persuasion stage, an individual develops an attitude toward the technology, either positive or negative. sahin (2006) explained that the persuasion stage would be influenced by the uncertainty of the advantages and disadvantages of technology. in the decision stage, individuals will accept or reject the technology. once the decision is made, the use of technology will be implemented. in the last stage, individuals seek support for their decisions which is significantly influenced by attitudes developed in the persuasion stage. in this study, it was evident that the various stages were prevalent among lecturers and students alike. the findings of the study revealed that some of the participants lacked the knowledge had to be persuaded to make a concerted decision to engage in technology for teaching and learning. 4. research methodology in this study, the researchers agreed that a qualitative research method of a descriptive nature was most appropriate; since it provided an in-depth study of the phenomenon using an interpretivist paradigm (maree, 2020). the descriptive design allowed the researcher to explore the lived experience of participants regarding ere during the covid-19 pandemic. the interpretive paradigm was appropriate because it is a subjectivist epistemology that relies on the researcher’s understanding and comprehension when making sense of participants’ experiences (creswell, 2014). 4.1 sampling technique a single case study design was selected for this study. this method offered an opportunity to explore and make meaning of participants’ experiences. yin (2018) agrees that studying a single case will provide a particular in-depth investigation of significant factors of the phenomenon. the population consisted of 150 students who were registered for the bachelor of health science in complementary medicine (bhscm) at an identified public university in gauteng province. the purposive sampling technique was used since it was an appropriate approach to recruit participants (cohen, manion & morrison, 2018). a sample of nine (9) bhscm students were purposively selected. the inclusion criteria were specified during the selection process. only a) students studying at a recognised hei in gauteng were invited to participate; b) students had to be registered as full-time students on campus; c) students who were affected by the lockdown; d) students had to be willing and voluntarily consent to participate in this study. to invite participants, the researchers displayed an invitation for participation in this study on the notice board on campus, where all students had access to information. the poster was displayed for two months. nine (9) students consented to participate in the study (table 1). the researchers, after that, sent out consent forms to each of the 9 participants to confirm their participation. pseudonyms were used during the reporting phase of the study. the table below illustrates the codes used for each participant to ensure anonymity and confidentiality. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 1262023 41(2): 126-133 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) table 1: participants information participants gender age p1 male 21 p2 female 20 p3 female 24 p4 female 20 p5 male 22 p6 male 23 p7 male 22 p8 female 24 p9 male 25 4.2 data collection and analysis data collection is a systematic process of gathering information to answer the research questions and evaluate the outcomes (creswell, 2014). for this purpose, semi-structured interviews with an open-ended questionnaire (google forms) were used. this approach assisted in achieving anonymity and confidentiality since there was no personal information requested on the questionnaire. this approach also reduced any form of contact with the participants, thus preventing the spread of the covid-19 pandemic (cohen et al., 2018). the interviews were conducted for two months, from october 2021 to november 2021. for this study, thematic analysis was used. creswell (2014) states that it identifies similar and dissimilar opinions with qualitative data. this approach assisted the researchers in making sense of the data transcripts and identifying critical themes. the authors followed creswell’s (2014) six-step framework of thematic analysis and inductively analysed the data. the six steps include familiar with data, coding, generating thems, reviewing themes, defining themes and writing up (creswell, 2014). qualitative validity criteria, including credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability, were ensured in this study by a second coder’s member checking and auditing techniques. the research ethics committee approved ethical clearance at a public university (reference: edu137/21). 5. findings and discussion findings from this study highlighted students’ ambivalent views and experiences towards online teaching and learning during the covid-19 pandemic. two major themes emerged from the data during the coding process, namely: a. factors affecting online teaching and learning; and b. advantages of online teaching and learning. 5.1 theme 1: factors affecting online teaching and learning within theme 1, the following subthemes emanated: the lack of appropriate technological skills; financial constraints on students; lack of conducive environment; the importance of proper infrastructure and influence of isolation and uncertainty. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 1272023 41(2): 127-133 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 hu emergency remote education in higher education institutions during covid-19 5.1.1 sub-theme 1: lack of appropriate technological skills although some participants perceived that technology enhanced their studies, other not so positive voices were brought to the authors’ attention. some participants expressed that they were quite reluctant to online teaching and learning for various reasons. they indicated lecturers’ lack of technological skills in delivering ere efficiently often frustrated students. p3 and p6 both stated that some of their lecturers did not know how to use blackboard, blackboard collaborate and other media. most lecturers merely upload information without sufficient guidance or explanation to students—this frustrated students; since they had no opportunity of engaging with the lecturer on the content. p3 mentioned: i remembered that in one live online collaboration, we had been waiting for more than 10 minutes for the lecturer to share the presentation. when he came online, i could not hear his voice and he was not well articulated. due to ere, many lecturers were not familiar with online teaching because they lacked the knowledge and skills since they were entrenched in the traditional lecturing mode. this affected students’ attitudes towards online teaching and learning because they felt that the lecturers they looked up to were not appropriately skilled and qualified to use technology. this view concurs with rashid and yadav (2020) and world bank (2020), who agree that most lecturers lacked the knowledge and understanding of using online technology. according to the doi model, individuals tend to be reluctant to accept technology if they do not possess knowledge of technogy (bakkabulindi, 2014). apart from lecturers lacking the appropriate knowledge and skills of using technology, there was evidence of students who did not possess the necessary knowledge and skills to use technology. as a result, most students were challenged to participate in online teaching and learning. this is evident in the response of p1, who indicated: i am familiar with face to face teaching and learning. my lack of skills in using the “blackboard” was a significant challenge to me. i did not know how to manipulate the programme, which caused considerable distress. it was the first time i had to contend with ‘blackboard’. this was shown to us on campus during the orientation, but we were not participating in the programme”. other participants also experienced this lack of knowledge and understanding. p3 stated, “most of my online learning time was spent trying to figure out which keys and functions i had to use to engage with the lecturer.” p5 wrote, “not only i did not know how to use the programme, but i also did not know how to access the programme from start to finish”. according to p7, she penned that she could only use her cellphone to access the programme. these challenges are genuine to students and lecturers who were compelled to use technology for teaching and learning. rashid & yadav (2020) agree with world bank (2020) that all students and lecturers must be appropriately knowledgeable in using technology. the lack of knowledge will lead to a high rate of failure among students and a lack of respect for lecturers if they are not competent (aristovnik et al. 2020). the researchers agree that all heis should ensure that technical skills are well-grounded and taught to all students and lecturers before being implemented, although this may be a challenge due to the urgent implementation of ere. however, the researchers believed both lecturers and students should be introduced to technology to support their adoption and use of technology. this view concurs with rogers’ https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 1282023 41(2): 128-133 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) doi model, which reveals that technology should be introduced to individuals since this process can assist in promoting the adoption of technology (rogers et al., 2019). the absence of uncertainty on technology will positively influence the positive of individuals’ attitudes to technology (bakkabulindi, 2014; sahin, 2006). 5.1.2 sub-theme 2: financial constraints on students and conducive environment the current recession in sa has placed much strain on the economy. many families are living below or within the breadline. many students attending heis are from low-income families, and these students are dependent on government subsidies for their studies (aristovnik et al., 2020). since teaching and learning at heis has shifted to online, this move has placed financial constraints on students. to ensure students complete the academic year, heis supported online teaching and learning by using the following: ict connectivity, internet; cellphone technology; laptops and ipads (tejedor et al., 2021). some students could not afford this technological equipment. when the availability of resources was asked, most students highlighted the financial impact and constraints they experienced. p5 wrote: “i cannot afford a laptop, ipad or a smartphone. it’s too expensive; therefore, this means that i am excluded from the higher education learning during the pandemic.” p6 stated, “i cannot afford data. it is too expensive and unaffordable. i am unable to watch lecture videos or attend live collaboration classes.” p7 indicated, “due to my family’s financial situation, we do not have many rooms. i have to study in my living room while all my family members are present, which is disturbing. living space is a big problem in my house.” the findings above revealed that most of these participants could not afford the essential technological equipment to participate or engage in online teaching and learning. furthermore, it was found that students did not have a conducive learning environment to study. this finding concurred with schleicher (2020) and aristovnik et al. (2020), who highlighted that students from financially low-income families might be experiencing a higher risk of failure due to not having the appropriate learning technologies and a conducive environment due to financial challenges. 5.1.3 sub-theme 3: importance of appropriate infrastructure infrastructure plays a crucial role in implementing online teaching and learning. appropriate infrastructure can either enhance or hamper online teaching and learning. according to the doi model, the access and use of proper technologies would improve the effectiveness of teaching and learning. sahu (2020) states that many universities do not have the appropriate infrastructure or resources to facilitate online teaching. the poor infrastructure in some areas in south africa has significantly affected this mode of delivery. according to p3’s actual response, “i live in a rural area with no electricity and cellphone signal. it is challenging for me to get access to the internet and participate in my online studies.”. p8 mentioned, “although i have the internet at home, the connection is not stable”. aristovnik et al. (2020) say that poor infrastructure is a critical problem in implementing online teaching and learning in the african continent. students’ performance and achievement at heis is dependent on access to appropriate infrastructure. cloete (2017) states that these infrastructures are readily available on the campuses but are non-existent in students’ domicile. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 1292023 41(2): 129-133 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 hu emergency remote education in higher education institutions during covid-19 although universities granted most students free data and devices after a few months of migrating to online teaching and learning, some participants were experiencing challenges due to network failure and lack of internet facilities in remote areas. students complained that the internet connection was unstable and affected their studies. the constant load shedding also negatively affected students’ learning, and this was evident in p3 and p8 agreeing that their learning was disrupted due to connectivity and load shedding. 5.1.4 sub-theme 4: influence of isolation and uncertainty aristovnik et al. (2020) agree that group learning seems prevalent among african students. therefore, working in isolation impacts students’ stress and anxiety levels. this study also found that students who had to study online experienced high levels of stress and anxiety due to isolation and studying alone. the findings also revealed that participants expressed their unwillingness to learn independently at home in front of a computer or cellphone. p7 stated in his response:” i love to study in a group with my classmates where we can ask questions and support each other during the study. i can learn and engage with others in a group, and studying alone at home does not allow me to know and share knowledge with my peers.” this study also found that the closure of campuses and cancellation of contact classes had caused much uncertainty and anxiety amongst students. some participants expressed that they did not acquire the depth and scope of the content knowledge of the programme due to the lack of integration during lectures and practice. p4 indicated, “i also miss contact classes as i would like to ask questions during lectures. studying on my own does not allow me to ask questions, and sometimes the lecturer does not have time to take questions during classes.” participants were also concerned about the quality of the education they received. p6 said: “i am not sure if i will be competent to implement what i have studied online in my future work.” cloete (2017) stated that online degrees are less likely to be accepted on a similar note. the researchers agree with cloete (2017) that online qualifications are less valuable than full-time studies since there is no proper assessment and physical practice supervision. 5.2 theme 2: advantages of online teaching and learning critical challenges were presented in education due to the reduction in in-person exposure to different study aspects (click et al., 2020). thaba-nkadimene (2020) and rashid & yadav (2020) believe that the quality of higher education will be strengthened with the use of technologies in the 21st century. the findings of our study also highlighted that some students welcomed the migration to online teaching and learning, despite being rapidly implemented. p1 wrote, “i prefer online teaching and learning. it allows me to watch pre-recorded lecture videos more than once and whenever i would like. i am not bound by a specific time. this kind of learning also allows me to plan my study programme.” another student, p9, stated, “online learning is much safer and less expensive for me. i don’t have to travel to campus daily and expose myself to the virus.” p7 responded, “for me, the online learning helped because i can study during my own time. i still have time to assist my younger brothers and sisters with their schoolwork since i am at home the whole day.” it was also revealed that most students felt safer when studying at home and they believed that the fewer people they contacted, the safer they were. sahu (2020) found that most lecturers and staff members at heis embraced and appreciated the use of technology during the pandemic. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 1302023 41(2): 130-133 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) this study also found that some students were eager to migrate to online learning. researchers agreed that the internet had eliminated the barrier of distance and time. similar sentiments were reported by raja and nagasubramani (2018), who stated that their engagement with technologies would enhance students’ knowledge and interactivities. this study highlighted that some students were confident that they could study effectively using technology rather than face-to-face contact classes. this finding concurred with budhwar (2017), who found that technology would improve students’ performance and achievement. chau (2010) and cloete (2017) both agree that online teaching and learning and the use of different technologies allow for and provide opportunities for flexibility in learning. it further allows students to become responsible and accountable for their studies, and it gives them a chance to plan and engage with their studies during their flexible time management plan. according to the doi model, individuals who develop positive attitudes to technology will make decisions to implement it in actions. positive attitudes also will be strengthened from the feedback of the decision. the findings of this study concur with scholars such as aristovnik et al. (2020) and rashid & yadav (2020), who found that many heis were unprepared for shifting to online teaching and learning. this was due to a lack of technological skills, isolation, financial constraints and appropriate infrastructure. 6. recommendations and conclusions: this paper aimed to explore students’ views and experience of online teaching and learning during the closure of universities in gauteng. despite the rapid implementation of online teaching and learning, this study revealed some pertinent findings which provided the opportunity to make valuable recommendations for the future. the interpretive approach and semi-structured interviews allowed participants to share their experience and understanding of the current phenomena. from the findings, the authors proposed the following recommendations: • strengthening digital technology skills for both students and lecturers – although most students and lecturers commonly use technology, computer skills should be introduced to students and lecturers for specific purposes. focused training should be provided to use online learning platforms, software engagement and the accessing and utilising of different learning programmes (rashid & yadav, 2020; world bank, 2020). • lecturers should use various communication strategies to engage students in a participatory learning model. it is proposed that lecturers use live video presentations, video conferencing, whatsapp messaging and email communications to ensure that students participate in their learning. according to aristovnik et al. (2020), they agree that these communication strategies may minimise students’ anxiety and stress and help them engage in their studies. • it is recommended that government, together with heis, should improve infrastructure and resources to ensure that all students have access to online facilities to promote teaching and learning. this infrastructure and resources should include internet facilities, network connectivity, availability of data and all students should be provided with appropriate devices. policymakers are advised to consider the need for online education and its implement it in future. in conclusion, the ere during the covid-19 pandemic has significantly impacted students’ studies in the hei environment. during the pandemic, teaching and learning were delivered through technologies to support students’ learning continuously. universities provided students with sufficient free data and devices for online study to facilitate students’ learning. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 1312023 41(2): 131-133 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 hu emergency remote education in higher education institutions during covid-19 however, there were still challenges in implementing online teaching and learning since some students who study at urban universities reside in rural or informal settlements in sa. the findings presented in this study can assist heis in how restructuring their policies to support online teaching and learning in the future. further research should be conducted across other hei’s to elicit the experiences of their students. references aigbavboa, c. & thwala, w.d. 2016. contributory factors of students satisfaction when undertaking group work, a south africa higher institution case study. in nuninger, w. & châtelet, j. 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[accessed 28 november 2022] https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.5923 https://doi.org/10.3390/joitmc7010043 https://doi.org/10.3390/joitmc7010043 https://doi.org/10.31920/2633-2930/2020/1n2a0 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-020-0824-5 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/531681585957264427/pdf http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/531681585957264427/pdf _hlk120368675 _hlk120368654 _hlk79932266 _hlk79779200 bau0002 _hlk79776478 _hlk79778248 using cultural capital as a resource for negotiating participation in a teacher community of practice: a case study suriamurthee maistry school of social science education, university of kwazulu-natal maistrys@ukzn.ac.za continuing professional development (cpd) initiatives for teachers in south africa take on various forms, ranging from formalised, structured, credit-bearing certification programmes to informal, relatively unstructured, situated learning programmes. while many formal programmes can claim success by measuring throughput rates, there is still much to learn about how and why teachers participate in cpd programmes in the way they do. in fact, cpd planners seldom take into consideration teacher biographies and the socio-economic contexts within which teachers work. this article examines the influence of biography and context on the nature of participation and learning in a teacher community of practice. it uses data from the teaching economic and management sciences (tems) teacher development programme and focuses on the experiences of a novice ems teacher as he engages with the challenge of curriculum development. drawing on the work of wenger (1998), bourdieu (1992) and yosso (2005), it is argued that cultural capital has a significant influence on a teacher’s ability to negotiate participation in a community of practice. this interpretative case study draws on tenets of symbolic interactionist ethnography (woods, 1996) to guide the research process. keywords: continuing professional development, social capital, cultural capital, linguistic capital, community of practice introduction day and sachs (2004:29) contend that “… cpd [continuing professional development] is becoming understood to have a range of forms, locations and practices appropriate to its many purposes”. while they note this optimistic view of a new understanding of the purposes and forms of cpd, they assert that internationally there still is a substantial dearth of understanding with regard to outcomes of teacher professional development as it occurs in its various forms, and that cpd “is alive, but not thriving” (day & sachs, 2004:29). this is particularly the case in a south african context that is struggling to deal with the legacy of a fragmented and inequitable apartheid education, characterised by teacher professional development that is diverse in terms of its service providers, contexts and clients — and as such presents unique challenges. jita and ndlanane (2009) argue that alternative approaches to teacher professional development, such as teacher clusters, are beginning to emerge as powerful vehicles for teacher professional development in south africa. they argue that this type of configuration provides opportunities for teachers to interact with one another and to develop relationships of trust and respect. this article draws on data generated from a larger study that had as its focus the examination of teacher learning in a community of practice. the study focused on a group of economic and management sciences (ems) teacher learners in primary schools who, out of need, had constituted a support group to make sense of and develop the new ems curriculum for learners in grades 4 to 7. this was an ill-defined group of teachers who were socio-economically, ethnically and academically diverse, and who taught in starkly contrasting contexts. the thread that appeared to bind these teachers was the novel challenge they experienced in having to teach ems, a learning area in which they had had no formal training. as teacher educator, economic maistry — using cultural capital as a resource for negotiating participation 47 education specialist and researcher, i undertook to work with this group of teachers, and subsequently launched the teaching economic and management sciences (tems) teacher development project. wenger’s (1988) social practice theory of learning informed the way in which the tems teacher development project was set up as well as the way the data were analysed. the tems project was based on the assumption that stimulating participation in a community of practice would enhance teacher learning. the tems community as the empirical field the tems community constituted a constantly changing group of ems teachers. invitations to the tems workshop sessions were sent to 19 schools in the pinetown-mariannhill region and emphasised that attendance was voluntary — an important principle of a community of practice. eleven teachers initially committed themselves to the research project as research participants, and received a formal letter outlining ethical issues related to their participation. the actual number of tems research participants, however, eventually constituted a core group of seven teachers (four cited work pressures and personal reasons for withdrawal from the project). four other teachers were regular attendees at workshop sessions but elected not to be part of the research project as research participants. -six teachers attended alternate sessions — they came from schools that had a policy of alternating their representatives. the arrival of new teachers was a feature of every session — as was the non-appearance of previous attendees. three teachers made a regular habit of arriving for a session, signing the register, waiting for 15 minutes, then quietly exiting the venue. this kind of erratic attendance was acceptable, as wenger (1988) reminds us that the existence of a community of practice does not depend on fixed membership. participants in this community of teacher learners fitted into several categories and assumed various roles within the communities of practice, such as a coordinator, who organised events and linked community members; a core group of active participants who assumed leadership roles; an active group of frequent but not regular participants; peripheral participants, members who occasionally took part, and ‘lurkers’ who made little or no contribution, but appeared to learn from observation (wenger, mcdermott & snyder, 2002). a comprehensive explication of the nature of teacher learning for the group as a whole and a rigorous engagement with and critique of wenger’s social practice theory of learning in a community of practice has been documented elsewhere (see graven, 2004; graven & lerman, 2003; maistry, 2008a; 2008b; 2008c). this article engages with the data set of a single teacher who, despite having endured personal adversity and strife, was able to successfully negotiate participation in the programme. it attempts to employ the concept of “capital” as espoused by bourdieu (1992) and yosso (2005) to analyse the participation of the selected teacher. a brief overview of the literature the many reasons teachers often find formal professional development disappointing include the fact that teachers are positioned as clients needing “fixing”, rather than as owners and managers of programmes that supposedly aim to support their learning (clark, 2001; sayed, 2004). clark (2001) notes that many teacher professional development initiatives are often superficial, short-term and insufficiently sensitive to complex local conditions. he accordingly maintains that teachers must become agents of their own and each other’s learning, and that teachers’ perspectives on their work should be carefully considered: “a conversation group, in the best of circumstances, becomes a social context for doing the work of reflective practice” (clark, 2001:180). in evaluating the usefulness of a socio-cultural approach for analysing teachers’ responses to the professional learning of standards-based reform policies in the united states through a case study of six elementary teachers, gallucci (2003) asserts that communities of practice are sites for teacher learning and mediators of teachers’ responses to institutional reform. characteristics of such communities of practice influence the degree to which teachers work out negotiated and thoughtful responses to policy demands. these findings confirm the value of teacher learning communities as sites for teacher learning. perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201048 there appears to be no universal definition of a professional learning community (hord, 1997). although little evidence exists of the impact of cpd on policy and practice, teacher development programmes continue to be introduced throughout the world (bolam & mcmahon, 2004). while the notion of teachers collaborating to improve practice is not new, the study of collaborative processes engaged in by teachers and other professionals has recently attracted the interest of researchers. much more research is needed to determine the potential of communities of practice for learning systematically (wideman & owston, 2003). learning in general, and teacher learning in particular, can have different meanings depending on one’s conceptual perspective (spillane, 2000). while research scholars and policy makers have cast their work primarily in terms of learners, little attention has been paid to teachers and how they learn new ways of teaching (putman & borko, 2000). in recent years there has been a proliferation of research on schools as learning communities, in which learning by teachers is connected to school improvement (see dufour & eaker, 1998; reyes, scribner & paredes-scribner, 1999; smylie & hart, 1999; thiessen & anderson, 1999). drawing on the work of hutchins, lave, pea, resnick and vygotsky, spillane (2000:3) provide the following description of the situative perspective on learning: the situative perspective regards individuals as inseparable from their communities and environments. this perspective views knowledge as distributed in the social, material, and cultural artefacts of the environment. knowing is the ability of individuals to participate in the practices of the community. learning involves developing practices and abilities valued in specific communities and situations. this view is supported by putman and borko (2000:5), who posit that learning is situated in particular physical and social contexts. how learning takes place, and the situation in which it takes place, becomes an essential part of what is learned. situative perspectives focus on interactive systems that include individuals as participants interacting with each other and with materials, as opposed to traditional cognitive perspectives that focus on the individual as the basic unit of analysis (greeno, 1997; wenger, 1998). it is important to recognise that the situative perspective entails a fundamental redefinition of learning and knowing (lave & wenger, 1991; putman & borko, 2000; wenger, 1998; wenger, mcdermott & snyder, 2002). this perspective attempts to recast the relationship between what people know and the settings in which they know. the contexts in which people learn, and in which they are assessed, are inextricable parts of their knowledge. “from the teacher’s perspective, one of the peculiarities of the workplace is that learning aimed at deepening knowledge of the subject matters of instruction must be done outside of the school, during so-called free time …” (grossman, wineburg & woolworth, 2001:947). engaging an analytical approach for situating teachers’ practices within schools and districts by working with a group of teachers in an urban school district, cobb, mcclain, de silva lamberg and dean (2003) assert that such an approach is useful in that it allows for valuable feedback that could guide and inform ongoing collaboration with teachers and administrators. their approach focuses on the functions of teaching and delineates the communities of practice whose members contribute to the accomplishment of these functions. they argue that teaching is an activity that is distributed across a configuration of communities of practice within a school or district. it becomes evident that teacher learning communities have much potential as vehicles for teacher learning. in south africa, however, we are still plagued by the absence of substantive racial integration across society and in south african schools in particular (carter, caruthers & foster, 2009; naidoo, 2010). so, while teacher learning communities offer spaces for teacher professional development, substantive racial integration remains largely an elusive goal in south africa. research methodology as stated above, this study set out to explore teachers’ learning in a community of practice, and sought to understand how issues of context and biography influenced their learning and participation in a teacher development programme. in order to obtain deep insights into these issues, a qualitative case study was deemed most appropriate. this interpretive study adopted the tenets of symbolic inter-actionist ethnography (woods, 1996) to inform and guide the research endeavour. maistry — using cultural capital as a resource for negotiating participation 49 initially, three semi-structured interviews were scheduled with participating teachers over the 16-month duration of the project: an initial interview, a mid-term review and a final interview. my close interaction with teachers over this period, however, resulted in much valuable data being constructed through informal conversations and interaction with teachers. this obviated the need for a mid-term interview. detailed field notes were written throughout the project. two classroom observations were conducted with each participating teacher. as a qualitative, interpretative researcher i maintained a reflective journal in which i carefully documented critical incidents and reflections as the project progressed. a data set of one participant was used to develop the argument in this article. in the section that follows, i extract and present key aspects of this data set for analysis and review. ben’s story: a narrative vignette ben is an isizulu-speaking african teacher in his mid-forties. he has taught at eight different schools during his teaching career. ben described his childhood as a happy experience. although the man who had raised him was not his biological father, he had taken good care of him. ben appeared grateful for what his guardians had provided for him, given the poor conditions under which they lived. he had been moved to several schools during his school career because his guardians had moved house several times. ben had a disrupted academic career. he had to repeat a year, having had to restart his senior secondary schooling with a new set of subjects because he struggled to pass the subjects initially chosen. without having finished matric (grade 12), he was admitted to a teachers’ college, where he spent two years. ben then joined the teaching profession and studied privately to obtain a matric certificate. he proceeded to study towards a senior teaching certificate, but this was interrupted because he had a severe stroke. he was forced to abandon his studies at that point. (ben was still undergoing medical treatment at the time of this research study.) after seven years, he obtained his senior teaching certificate and taught for 17 years before leaving teaching to pursue business interests. he returned to teaching after three years, as he had been unsuccessful in his business endeavours. his status at his school was that of a temporary teacher, and he was determined to be reinstated as a permanent educator. he was always seen to be keen to please his principal and always addressed him with respect and humility. he presented himself as an enthusiastic person who was keen to develop himself. the following extract from my journal (30 july 2003) reflects some of the difficulties ben experienced: over the months that i had come to know ben, i learned that he was employed in a temporary capacity. he was one of the many teachers who had not been receiving regular monthly salary payments from the state. at one point, ben had not been paid for a period of five months. it was a particularly difficult time for him since his family had to rely entirely on his wife’s income, and assistance from other extended family members. i was amazed that during this period of time, ben’s enthusiasm and optimism never waned. he was always regular at school, very actively involved in leading the establishment of the school library, training the school choir and overseeing school functions. later in the week, ben would be the master of ceremonies at a joint schools’ function at which the mayor of durban was the guest of honour. ben appeared to be a very obliging person, always careful to appear congenial and enthusiastic, especially in the presence of the principal. his tenure at the school was not secure and depended on how strongly the principal motivated for him to remain there. ben’s current school, pecan primary, had previously been controlled by the then department of education and training (det) administration. the school was located in a semi-rural setting just outside the greater durban area. high razor-wire fencing surrounded the school. using wenger’s (1998) framework to analyse teacher learning the focus of wenger’s (1998) theory of learning is on ‘learning as participation’; that is, being active participants in the practices of social communities and constructing identities in relation to these perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201050 communities. he posits the following ‘deeply interconnected and mutually defining’ elements of a social theory of learning: meaning: a way of talking about our (changing) ability – individually and collectively – to experience • our life and the world as meaningful. practice: a way of talking about the shared historical and social resources, frameworks, and perspectives • that can sustain mutual engagement in action. community: a way of talking about social configurations in which our enterprises are defined as worth • pursuing and our participation is recognisable as competence. identity: a way of talking about how learning changes who we are and creates personal histories of • becoming in the context of our communities (1998:5). in applying wenger’s (1998) framework to analyse teacher learning in the tems community of practice, it was noted that teacher learning had occurred for all participants but to varying degrees. with regard to ben, despite the somewhat daunting and discouraging picture presented above (see vignette), he had engaged in active participation and had experienced change in all four of wenger’s (1998) categories of learning. it is, however, beyond the scope of this paper to address this aspect of the research findings. elsewhere (see maistry, 2008a; 2008b; 2008c), i provide a full description and analysis of the workings of the tems teacher development programme and a detailed critical analysis of wenger’s (1998) framework and its application to all the participating teachers in the tems project. attention is also drawn to the limitations of wenger’s (1998) work. for the purposes of this article ben’s case has been singled out for analysis, since he represented a participant that despite a troubled background and difficult working conditions, appeared to be an aspiring individual who moved from being a peripheral member of the tems community to becoming an integral and core member of the community of practice (wenger, 1998). in the discussion that follows, i extend the analysis beyond simply identifying that learning occurred in terms of wenger’s (1998) elements of learning, and proceed to engage bourdieu’s (1992) theory of social practice and yosso’s (2005) theory of community cultural capital to analyse ben’s participation and learning in the tems community. while wenger’s theory provided a useful conceptual framework to analyse teacher learning, it is somewhat benign in its ability to explain why ben was able to participate and engage in the tems community. an analysis of ben’s participation in extracts from interviews with ben before and after the tems project, we see that ben’s perception of his competence changed significantly. extract from initial interview: ben: ja, i’m new at this. i’m just an old teacher who got into obe [outcomes-based education] just now. and i think as i go on, the studies of ems, i will just try to cope because i think it is a good subject … obe is different with us. i don’t know whether we belong to the old school of thought. i don’t know, it seems different with us. really we need a lot of workshops … it was clear that while ben regarded ems as a “good subject”, he was very unsure about how to proceed with curriculum development in ems. ben went on to mention that he knew very little about the ems learning area and how to teach ems. he had not read the policy document and therefore knew nothing of the nature and scope of the learning area or the outcomes applicable to ems. in the final interview, ben explained what changed for him: mm: how would you compare your current knowledge of ems to your knowledge at the beginning of the year, has there been any difference? ben: a lot of difference, a lot of difference, because you know at first i took this learning area, knowing nothing, but since i’ve attended these workshops, a lot of knowledge, i’ve gained a lot of knowledge. i know most of the things now. maistry — using cultural capital as a resource for negotiating participation 51 mm: do you use the materials developed at the workshops in your teaching? ben: yes i do, yes i do. especially the ones that we made there. the graphs and the information on imports and exports were very much useful. they were very impressive, very informative. in response to whether his classroom practice had changed, ben had the following to say: ben: ja, as i said earlier, when i took this learning area, i knew nothing about it, but as time goes, i became unfolded, i’m now teaching freely, meaning that the documents that we work with are helpful in giving us knowledge, so there is a lot of change i can say. i’m feeling more confident now. here ben referred to his changed “knowledge” of ems from knowing “nothing” to feeling “more confident” and “teaching freely”. in the next extract, ben referred to the “market days” that he had organised at his school and the interest it had aroused among pupils: mm: can you describe the ems activities that you’ve been involved in at your school? ben: yes, a lot, a lot. we came here from the first workshop, we, we know we practised marketing. we had three market days and we made a lot of money. there’s three monies, three market days and the kids were so impressed, they bought our items and we made money. and we have now gardens from this project, that’s why we sell spinach; we sell carrots and all that. the children are learning entrepreneurial skills. and we want to involve them. now we want to involve more classes in market days, but the time is always a problem. the time is very short. here ben had created an interest in the ems learning area through the market days. in the above extracts from ben’s final interview, ben asserted that his knowledge of ems had changed, laying claim to there being “a lot of difference”. what, then, was the system of dispositions that ben possessed that allowed him to develop the kind of habitus (bourdieu, 1992) for survival and success in the tems programme in response to the conditions and contexts that he experienced? the social arena or field (bourdieu, 1992) in which ben found himself was structured in terms of power relations within which he had to manoeuvre and struggle in his pursuit of desirable resources. it was clear that ben appeared to be at the mercy of his principal. his tenure at his school was uncertain and depended on his principal’s perception of him. ben had returned to the teaching profession after a failed business venture. he had not secured a permanent position at the school and had weak affiliations to established networks of teachers. ben was in an unenviable position in that in order to retain a post at his school he had to accept any teaching subject that was thrust upon him. yet, he projected an image of commitment and dedication to the school by involving himself in numerous school activities that would enhance his reputation at the school. ben received little real support from his principal, who appeared to take no personal interest in ben’s development. ben’s motivation for learning and membership of the tems community stemmed from his need to make himself valuable as an ems teacher in his school. drawing on his knowledge, skills and disposition that is, his embodied capital, a constituent of cultural capital (bourdieu, 1992) — ben was able to negotiate and transcend his vulnerable position. bourdieu (1992) suggests that an individual’s ability to participate is influenced by the economic, cultural and social capital that he or she possesses. economic capital refers to the material goods and resources that an individual may possess, while social capital constitutes the sum of actual or virtual resources that accrue to an individual as a result of having a network of relationships. while ben may have been short on economic capital, he certainly was not lacking in terms of social and cultural capital. in fact, in an attempt to steer away from a deficit lens by asserting that some individuals are culturally rich and others are culturally poor, yosso’s (2005) model of community cultural wealth has currency. yosso (2005) argues that an individual’s cultural capital is a function of that individual’s community cultural capital and that community cultural capital is shaped by various other forms of capital, including linguistic capital, resistant capital, aspirational capital, familial capital and navigational capital. aspirational capital refers to the ability to develop resilience, that is, to maintain hopes and dreams even perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201052 in the face of real or perceived barriers. in ben’s case (see vignette), we see that despite having failed in business and having to return to school to work under onerous conditions, he did not despair. he continued to aspire to prove his worth in an attempt to be reinstated as a permanent member of the teaching personnel at his school. ben’s resilience can be traced back to his early days as a school pupil and his training to become a teacher. he was determined to obtain a matric certificate and appeared to seize opportunities for development when they presented themselves. ben’s involvement in and commitment to the tems programme was indeed admirable. despite not having received a regular salary cheque, he continued to maintain regular attendance at school and the tems programme. during the period when ben’s economic capital (bourdieu, 1992) was at an all-time low, he was able to access what yosso (2005) describes as familial capital, knowledge that develops a broader understanding of kinship and a sense of community history, memory and support. he was able to rely on the support of his immediate and extended family to carry him through the difficult period. ben’s value and contribution to the tems community was particularly evident when he put his well-developed linguistic skills to use. his linguistic capital (yosso, 2005), a product of his intellectual and social skills, attained through communication experiences in multiple languages, enabled him to move, manoeuvre and mediate the complex workings of the diverse tems community. ben facilitated and stimulated discussion in the tems sessions by regularly moving between english and isizulu and offering or suggesting isizulu translations or equivalents of new economic concepts introduced in the tems programme. yosso’s (2005) notion of navigational capital refers to an individual’s skills of manoeuvring through hostile social institutions, to reflect and refine navigational skills and to exercise agency within institutional constraints. while ben’s official status was that of ‘temporary unprotected teacher’ (one whose term of employment was uncertain), he refused to be saddled with this label and actively sought ways of integrating into the life of the school, by being actively involved in establishing the school library and engaging fully with the cultural activities of the school. even in the context of working under a manipulative and authoritarian principal, ben developed what yosso (2005) refers to as resistant capital, capital that is grounded in the legacy of resistance to subordination. this refers to knowledge acquired through oppositional behaviour that challenges inequality and teaches individuals to value themselves within structures of inequality. while ben may not have been openly confrontational with his principal, he adopted a positive and spirited demeanour that did not go unnoticed. of significance was that ben always maintained a sense of personal pride and dignity which was very evident, even in his interaction with other participants in the tems programme. perhaps the most significant manifestation of how ben accessed and applied his resistant capital occurred during the discussion of historic social and economic inequality as a content topic in tems programme. ben, having been an anti-apartheid activist as a student and teacher, often offered useful insights into how the economic legacy of apartheid could be integrated into the teaching of ems. this proved to be a valuable learning experience for many teachers in the tems programme who may not have had this kind of life experience. here ben was able to explore with the tems grouping the notion of pedagogies of reconciliation (keet, zinn & porteus, 2009). this was a particularly powerful interaction, since historically apartheid structures did not allow for teachers to attend and participate in inter-racial teacher development programmes. jansen (2009) draws our attention to the need to develop post-conflict pedagogies, in a manner that would facilitate genuine interaction among participants in the pedagogical initiative. so, while ben may not have been as economically powerful as his counterparts in the tems programme, he was certainly powerful in terms of his lived experience and his ability to see the pedagogical potential of its application. in a context where all participating teachers were struggling to manage the diversity that existed in their own classrooms, ben’s contributions to the learning of the group and his willingness to engage with issues that the group had struggled with were recognised and acknowledged by his peers. as the tems maistry — using cultural capital as a resource for negotiating participation 53 programme progressed, ben’s interactions with the group intensified so much that he shifted from being a peripheral member to becoming a core member of the tems community. concluding comments this article draws attention to the complex and challenging contexts that teachers have to traverse in order to do the work they do. it suggests that in the face of despair and adversity, individual teachers can exercise individual initiative and agency to transcend the constraints that they encounter. it argues that teachers have various forms of capital that they constantly draw on to negotiate the different facets of their lives as teachers. cpd initiatives in south africa can certainly benefit from the richness of experience that teachers bring to the programmes, if they are sufficiently alert and sensitive to the clientele they service (ferreira & janks, 2009). references bolam r & mcmahon a 2004. literature, definitions and models: towards a conceptual map. in: c day & j sachs (eds). international handbook on continuing professional development of teachers. maidenhead: open university press, 33-63. bourdieu p 1992. thinking about limits. theory, culture and society, 9:37-92. carter p, caruthers j & foster j 2009. knowing their lines: how social boundaries undermine equitybased integration policies in united states and south african schools. perspectives in education, 27(2):351-364. clark cm (ed.) 2001. talking shop: authentic conversation and teacher learning. new york: teachers college press. cobb p, mcclain k, de silva lamberg t & dean c 2003. situating teachers’ instructional practices in the institutional setting of the school and district. educational researcher, 32(6):13-24. day c & sachs j 2004. professionalism, performativity and empowerment: discourses in the politics, policies and purposes of continuing professional development. in: c day & j sachs (eds), international handbook on continuing professional development of teachers. maidenhead: open university press, 3-32. dufour r & eaker r 1998. professional learning communities at work: best practices for enhancing student achievement. bloomington, in: national education service. ferreira a & janks h 2009. doves, rainbows and an uneasy peace: student images of reconciliation in a post-conflict society. perspectives in education, 27(2):133-146. gallucci c 2003. communities of practice and mediation of teachers’ responses to standards-based reform. education policy analysis archives, 11(35). graven m 2004. investigating mathematics teacher learning within an in-service community of practice: the centrality of confidence. educational studies in mathematics, 57:117-211. graven m & lerman s 2003. book review of e wenger (1998) communities of practice: learning, meaning and identity. journal of mathematics teacher education, 6:185-194. greeno jg 1997. on claims that answer the wrong questions. educational researcher, 26(1):5-17. grossman p, wineburg s & woolworth s 2001. toward a theory of teacher community. teachers college record, 103(6):942-1012. hord s.m. 1997. professional learning communities: communities of continuous inquiry and improvement. austin: southwest educational development laboratory. p carter, j caruthers & j foster (2009). knowing their lines: how social boundaries undermine equity-based integration policies in united states and south african schools. perspectives in education, 27(2):351-364. keet a, zinn d. & porteus k. (2009). mutual vulnerability: a key principle in a humanising pedagogy in post-conflict societies. perspectives in education, 27(2):109-119. lave j & wenger e 1991. situated learning: legitimate peripheral participation. cambridge: cambridge university press. perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201054 maistry sm 2008a. transcending traditional boundaries for teacher professional development: exploring a community of practice approach to cpd. journal of education, 43:127-153. maistry sm 2008b. towards collaboration rather than co-operation for effective teacher professional development in south africa: insights from social practice theory. southern african review of education, 14(1):19-142. maistry sm 2008c. school-university cpd partnerships: fertile ground for cultivating teacher communities of practice. south african journal of higher education, 23(2):329-339. naidoo d 2010. a discursive formation that undermined integration at a historicallyadvantaged school in south 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community cultural wealth. race ethnicity and education, 8(1):69-91. perspectives in education 31(3) perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2013 university of the free state 66 the relationship between teachers’ instructional practices and their learners’ level of geometrical thinking cheryl bleeker, gerrit stols & sonja van putten this case study describes and investigates the instructional practices of grades 1 to 5 teachers and the levels of geometry thinking of the learners, according to the van hiele model, with a view to determining whether there is a match between the instructional practice and the learners’ level of thinking. the instructional practices of the teachers were observed and analysed, and their learners’ levels of geometry thinking were accessed through a van hiele test. the results suggest that there is not a simple relationship between the phases of learning, as described by crowley in 1987, and geometric development in terms of the van hiele levels. it is, however, possible to explain the geometric development to a limited extent in terms of the van hiele levels of the observed teaching activities. although the presence of activities on an appropriate level does not guarantee growth in terms of the van hiele model, the absence thereof results in stagnation. the instructional practices in primary schools in all grades should span geometry experiences on all the levels, because the previsualisation level and van hiele level 1 thinking are still evident up to grade 5. keywords: geometry, van hiele theory, instructional practice, level of thinking, mathematics introduction from 2014, euclidean geometry will once again be made compulsory in the final examination of south african high schooling, having been made voluntary in 2008. however, according to the curriculum and assessment policy statement, the foundation of geometric knowledge and understanding starts in primary school (department of basic education, 2011). the question is: what is the nature of the teaching and learning of geometry in primary school? the purpose of this exploratory case study was to plot the educational landscape of an independent, co-educational, primary school in pretoria in terms of the geometry that is being taught and learnt in the foundation and intermediate phases. cheryl bleeker university of pretoria cbleeker@hatfieldcs.co.za telephone: 073 112 3342 gerrit stols university of pretoria gerrit.stols@up.ac.za telephone: 012 420 5750 sonja van putten university of pretoria sonja.vanputten@up.ac.za. telephone: 012 420 5657 67 the relationship between teachers’ instructional practices and their learners’ level of geometrical thinking | cheryl bleeker, gerrit stols, sonja van putten research suggests that mathematical knowledge is constructed relationally (bransford, brown & cocking, 2000), re-enforcing the notion of building on learners’ prior knowledge. it is essential that the learner’s prior knowledge and prior experience are recognised and used as a foundation upon which to build new knowledge and skills (van de walle, 2007; arzarello, robutti & bazzini, 2005). a model that recognised this principle was developed by pierre and dina van hiele, who proposed that geometry understanding develops in five sequential levels of thought. the van hiele model of geometry thinking was used as a framework for this study. this study is limited contextually, but carries implications in terms of policy and practice for other primary schools. literature review and theoretical framework we integrate literature and theory in this section in order to provide readers with a sense of both the van hiele framework and its associated teaching activity models in relation to some of the aspects of geometry teaching that have been reported as problematic in previous studies. battista (2007: 846) explains that “[a] considerable amount of research has established the van hiele theory as a generally accurate description of the development of students’ geometry thinking”. the van hiele model has five sequential and discrete levels of thought. each level is characterised not only by qualitatively different levels of thinking, but also by different internal knowledge and processing (battista, 2007). most significantly, the van hieles asserted that these levels of thinking are related to the types of geometry activities the learners have experienced rather than to the learners’ physical development or maturity. the levels, as described by mason (1998: 4-5), are as follows: • level 1 (visualisation): students recognise figures by appearance alone, often by comparing them to a known prototype. the properties of a figure are not perceived. at this level, students make decisions based on perception,not reasoning. • level 2 (analysis): students see figures as collections of properties. they can recognise and name properties of geometric figures, but they do not see relationships between these properties. • level 3 (abstraction): students perceive relationships between properties and between figures. at this level, students can create meaningful definitions and give informal arguments to justify their reasoning. logical implications and class inclusions, such as squares being a type of rectangle, are understood. • level 4 (deduction): at this level, students should be able to construct proofs such as those typically found in a high school geometry class. • level 5 (rigour): students at this level understand the formal aspects of deduction, such as establishing and comparing mathematical systems. they can understand the use of indirect proof and proof by contrapositive, as well as non-euclidean systems. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 68 there are five characteristics of the van hiele theory which have significant implications for instructional practice. the extrinsic/intrinsic characteristic explains that the inherent objects at one level become the objects of study at the next; thus, a curriculum to promote progression through the levels needs to exhibit a logical development in its content and processes. arguably, the most significant of the properties is the sequential nature of the model. this characteristic, as explained by usiskin (1982), implies that a student cannot be at van hiele level n without having gone through level n-1. although the levels were considered by the van hieles to be discrete, other researchers have found these levels to be dynamic and continuous (gutiérrez, jaime & fortuny, 1991). in the case of mismatch, instructional practices fall beyond the learners’ level of understanding. for all intents and purposes, the teacher may just as well be speaking a foreign language (atebe & schäfer, 2008b). this may imply that students imitate the language used by their teachers who reason at a different level to them, with no real understanding. the resulting lack of understanding has been shown to be difficult to uproot and is widespread (atebe & schäfer, 2008b; gerace, 1992), impeding further growth. the van hieles (crowley, 1987; van hiele, 1996) also proposed five sequential phases of learning or types of geometry experiences, which enable the learner to progress to a next level: • phase 1 (inquiry/information): the teacher gains insight into the prior knowledge that the learners have about the topic, and the learners get an idea of the direction further study will take. discussion and observations are characteristic of any activity in this phase. at this phase, questions are raised on observations, and level-specific language is introduced (rudd, lambert,satterwhite & zaier, 2008; webb, franke, tondra, chan, freund, shein & melkonian, 2009). • phase 2 (directed orientation): the teacher uses a variety of carefully sequenced short tasks to help the learners explore the structures characteristic of the level and to elicit specific responses (chard, baker, clarke, jungjohann,davis & smolkowski, 2008). • phase 3 (explication): the teacher assists the learners in using appropriate and accurate language. at this phase, the learners verbalise and express their thinking and observations about the topic (webb et al., 2009). in this instance, the level’s system of relations starts to become apparent. • phase 4 (free orientation): learners explore relations within the level or ‘field of investigation’ so that the relations between the objects of study become explicit to them. the teacher facilitates this process by presenting the learners with multi-step tasks, tasks with several means of solving them, and open-ended tasks (cobb, wood, yackel, nicholls, wheatley, trigatti & perlwitz,1991). 69 the relationship between teachers’ instructional practices and their learners’ level of geometrical thinking | cheryl bleeker, gerrit stols, sonja van putten • phase 5 (integration): in this phase, it is important that no new information be presented, but that the learners summarise and review what they have learnt in order to form an overview of the objects and relations they have investigated. the teacher’s role in this phase is to ensure that a complete (relevant to the level) summary is formulated and the origin of this summary is reviewed (gerace, 1992). research methodology this study may be classified as an exploratory case study that seeks to chart the ‘geometry terrain’ within a private primary school in pretoria. learners’ levels of geometry thinking were assessed halfway through the academic year in 2010 and all the other relevant data were collected within a six-month period. the study population spanned grades 1 to 5. in order to determine the instructional practices of the teachers, their lesson plans were examined in conjunction with an observed lesson. the teachers in each grade plan the tasks of their lessons together; therefore, a random selection of one teacher per grade for observation was deemed acceptable. the cognitive development and achievement in secondary school geometry van hiele geometry test, developed by usiskin (1982), was used to determine the learners’ levels of thinking. during administration of the van hiele tests in the foundation phase, the questions were read aloud to the learners so that neither the mathematical language nor their reading ability inhibited their understanding of the questions. the assessment was introduced to the learners as an activity, not as a test, and they were encouraged to ask questions if they were unsure of what to do. the van hiele geometry test consists of twenty-five multiple-choice test questions (five questions per level). the criterion that was applied in this study worked on a 60% pass rate per level. classroom observations were video recorded and deductively analysed using crowley and van hiele thematic categories as per the theoretical framework. results the learners’ levels of thinking are presented first, followed by a juxtaposition of the observed geometry experiences and phases of learning per grade. from table 1 and figure 1, it seems that progression through the levels of thinking from grade 1 to grade 3 is limited. the number of learners thinking at the visualisation level increases from grades 1 to 2 and from 2 to 3 by 6.2% and 4.9%, respectively. we notice a more drastic progression through the levels in grades 4 and 5. pre-visualisation is a term used in literature to describe learners who are not yet thinking at van hiele level 1. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 70 table 1: learners per grade on each van hiele level tvht 60% level 0: pre-visualisation van hiele level 1 van hiele level 2 van hiele level 3 gr. 1 (n = 47) 25 (53.2%) 22 (46.8%) 0 0 gr. 2 (n = 49) 23 (46.9%) 26 (53.1%) 0 0 gr. 3 (n = 50) 21 (42.0% 9 (58.0%) 0 0 gr. 4 (n = 58) 10 (17.2%) 33 (56.9%) 15 (25.9%) 0 gr. 5 (n = 46) 7 (15.2%) 20 (43.5%) 13 (28.3%) 6 (13.0%) figure 1: the percentage of learners’ levels of geometry thinking per grade there were some anomalies in the results: three learners in grade 4 and two in grade 5 scored below 60% on level 1, but then scored 60% or higher on level 2; however, the findings provided sufficient data of the predominant levels of geometry thought of the learners in these grades. in the light of this study, the results indicate that instructional practices for the development of geometry reasoning should predominantly focus on the activities of van hiele levels 1 and 2. grade 1 results table 1 and figure 1 show that, in grade 1, at least two van hiele levels of thinking are evident. whilst 22 of the 47 learners in grade 1 operated on van hiele level 1, 25 of them were not yet there. the observed lesson started with a class discussion about the three different cutout shapes the teacher was holding. she asked the learners if they could remember what it meant to compare things. there was consensus that it meant to look at ‘what was the same’ and ‘what was different’. the teacher held brightly coloured cut-outs of a triangle, a circle and a rectangle. without naming the shapes, she asked the learners to compare them. the learners commented on the number of sides and the 71 the relationship between teachers’ instructional practices and their learners’ level of geometrical thinking | cheryl bleeker, gerrit stols, sonja van putten number of corners. this type of activity is appropriate for level 1 at which thinking focuses on appearance of shapes and not reasoning. it also aligns with the first phase of learning (crowley, 1987; van hiele, 1996) in that it allows the teacher to gain insight into learners’ prior knowledge and the learners get an idea of the direction of further learning. the following excerpt seems to indicate the third phase of learning in which the teacher’s role is to assist learners in using appropriate and accurate language; however, the five phases are sequential and the second phase, in which short tasks are used to direct learning, was not observed in this lesson and thus the excerpt indicates phase 1 learning. teacher: when you’re talking about sides, do you mean these things here? (teacher indicated the edge of the shape with her finger). why don’t you think a circle has any sides? learner: a circle has no sides because it is not straight. teacher: so does a circle have sides? yes, a circle has one side but it is curved. what are these? (teacher touched the three angles of the triangle) learner: corner is sharp pointy. teacher: what happens at a corner? learner: two sides join! the teacher then produced a model of a cylinder, a cuboid and a triangular prism and repeated the discussion. the learners then had to compare the two-dimensional shape with its corresponding three-dimensional object and record their findings. this task profiles the fourth phase of learning in which learners are to explore relations within the field of investigation. learners were not given the opportunity to review and summarise their learning, hence there was no opportunity for the fifth phase of learning. grade 2 results of the forty nine learners, twenty three were unable to recognize a square when presented in a different orientation or identify a triangle accurately or distinguish a square from a rectangle. this is an indication that these specific learners were not yet functioning on the visualization level at which a figure is identified by what it looks like. table 1 and figure 1 show that 26 learners were, however, able to do this and therefore seemed to operate at van hiele level 1. the grade 2 lesson started with the teacher asking the learners to draw a house using only two shapes on their whiteboards. the teacher prompted discussion by asking what shapes could be seen in each learner’s picture and how the pictures were similar or different. the recognition of shapes by appearance alone represents a level 1 activity but was only used as an introduction. after the introduction, the teacher produced a model of a regular polygon and used it to prompt the next drawing task. throughout the drawing activity, the teacher would use the learners’ responses to perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 72 draw attention to the properties of the various shapes being used, which presents level 2 thinking. the following excerpt is from the class discussion: teacher: what are the rules for a square? learner1: it has to have four sides. learner 2: the sides have to be the same. teacher: what are the rules for a triangle? learner 3: it has to have three sides. (showed his picture of what looked like a scalene triangle to which another learner said that a triangle has to have sides that were the same) learner 4: no! they don’t have to be the same size, it can have two long and one short. teacher: but can they all be the same size? … yes. what are the rules for a rectangle? learner 5: it must be two long and two short. this activity allowed the teacher to gain insight into the learners’ prior knowledge and gave direction to the learning to come and so falls within the description of the first phase of learning. she also gave short tasks designed to elicit specific responses aimed at making explicit certain properties of the shapes used, indicative of the second phase, directed orientation. the teacher ended the class discussion by assigning different tasks to the three differentiated groups. two groups had to complete a worksheet at their desks, while the third built objects with geo-structa pieces at the back of the classroom. the worksheets required the learners to operate on van hiele level 2. the learners observed and recorded the different properties of shapes either by counting the number of sides/corners or by drawing. the group tasks gave opportunity to free orientation, phase 4, but neither the third nor the fifth phase of learning, explication and integration, were included in this lesson. grade 3 results table 1 and figure 1 show that 21 of the fifty grade 3 learners were not yet operating on van hiele level 1. twenty-nine learners were able to consistently and accurately recognise a shape based on its physical properties. the grade 3 lesson was the third in a three-day rotation in which 3 groups were given one of three tasks on van hiele levels 1 and 2 to complete each day. the lesson started with a discussion directed by the teacher about what had been learnt during the previous days. this enabled the learners to reflect on what they had learnt and how they had gone about each of their three tasks: • learners had to construct a three-dimensional object, in this case a house with a square base and a triangular prism for a roof, with straws and prestik. the learners were given a task sheet with the written 73 the relationship between teachers’ instructional practices and their learners’ level of geometrical thinking | cheryl bleeker, gerrit stols, sonja van putten objective and dimensions clearly typed. there was no diagram on the task sheet. • the learners were given a task sheet asking them to design a floor tile of given dimensions using cuisenaire pattern blocks. they were asked to ensure that their design had at least two lines of symmetry and they had to repeat the pattern three times. • the learners worked together in pairs against the clock to complete a tangram puzzle. the teacher moved from group to group checking on progress and prompting learners. there was consistent interaction among the learners concerning their tasks. the opportunity for the learners to explore shape, albeit implicitly, is appropriate for learners acquiring and consolidating van hiele level 1 thinking these activities are multi-step tasks with more than one solution, allowing the learners to explore relationships between shapes and, therefore, developing vanhiele level 2 thinking. these are the kind of tasks identified in the fourth phase of learning. grade 4 results table 1 and figure 1 show that of the 58 learners, 10 did not yet consistently operate on van hiele level 1. thirty-three learners could be described as operating on van hiele level 1 (visualisation) and 15 learners seemed to be able to operate on van hiele level 2 (analysis). the grade 4 lesson started with a multiple-choice-type group quiz. the teacher then presented a worksheet to each group and asked them to match the shape with its name; this is a typical van hiele level 1 activity. the teacher asked the learners to make a right angle using their arms and then asked them similarly to show an 180˚ angle. the teacher then called on a volunteer to help her demonstrate the meaning of a revolution and half a revolution. the teacher drew a circle on the board to represent a 360˚ protractor and defined an angle as ‘the space between two lines that meet’. whilst repeating this statement, the teacher traced the line between the markings on the circumference of the circle she had drawn on the board. discussion, characteristic of phase 1, among the learners during the quiz allowed the teacher to assess learners’ prior knowledge as were the actions she got the learners to perform. there was no significant evidence of any other learning phase. since the learners were required to name the shapes according to their appearance, this lesson was at an appropriate van hiele level for these learners. grade 5 results table 1 and figure 1 show that of the 46 grade 5 learners, 7 were not able to consistently and accurately identify a triangle or differentiate between a square and a rectangle, implying that they were yet to operate on van hiele level 1. twenty perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 74 learners seemed to operate on van hiele level 1 and 13 were able to successfully answer three or more of the five questions posed at van hiele level 2. six learners were also able to answer three of the five questions posed at van hiele level 3. the two weeks of geometry teaching reflected in the planning began with a discussion to revise names of known shapes and introduce new shapes. textbook exercises on angles and tessellations as well as basic calculations of area and perimeter were also included during this time. the teacher started the grade 5 lesson with a van hiele level 1 activity by asking the learners to write down in three minutes all the shapes they knew with straight lines. the learners counted the names of figures they had listed and, after some discussion, the learner with the longest list was congratulated as the winner. this activity is indicative of phase 1: inquiry/ information. the teacher then produced colourful posters of various unnamed polygons and asked the learners to name the shape, giving a reason for their answer (van hiele level 2 activity). during this activity, the teacher guided the learners to use the correct terminology, sometimes explaining unfamiliar words. the teacher also interrupted the activity to probe the learners’ understanding in terms of the differences between a square and a ‘diamond’ (rhombus). this probing of relationship between different figures develops van hiele level 3 thinking. the teacher’s actions exemplify the role of the teacher in phase 3 in which s/he is responsible to help the learners use relevant and accurate language. the class session ended when the teacher explained the group project which was to be done and handed task cards to groups of five learners. each group was commissioned to produce an informative poster and a mobile focusing on a particular shape and a three-dimensional prism. the learners were permitted to use any resource at their disposal, including their dictionaries and textbooks. discussion centred on the technicalities of the task or the definitions of the figures and prisms. in this task, learners were required to review their knowledge and present a summary. discussion table 1 and figure 1 show that, in grade 1, at least two van hiele levels of thinking were evident. by implication, instructional practices to develop geometry understanding should encompass the range of learners’ levels in that grade. this means that the learners require multiple and diverse activities to enable them to progress through the levels of abstraction (battista, 2007) and hence identify the characteristics of certain shapes for them to begin to conceptualise classes of shapes. learners need the opportunity to progress through all five phases of learning in order for the inherent characteristics of these shapes to become explicit and hence become the objects of study in the next van hiele level. the lesson observed at this grade level presumed a level of understanding which was not uniformly the case. for example, in linking the two-dimensional shapes with three-dimensional objects, the teachers presume that the learners are able to identify a triangle and a square in any orientation (van hiele level 1). in making this assumption, their instructional 75 the relationship between teachers’ instructional practices and their learners’ level of geometrical thinking | cheryl bleeker, gerrit stols, sonja van putten practices fall beyond 53.2% of the learners’ levels of understanding. in neglecting the sequential nature of the phases of learning, in the same lesson, the teacher did not give the learners the opportunity to construct their own meaning through directed short tasks (phase 2), nor was there an opportunity for the learners to review and locate this understanding in a conceptual schema (phase 5). thus, the probability of mismatch increases as the teacher is likely to presume that the learners have gained understanding which is unlikely, even though the teachers made use of examples of shapes and objects that were familiar to the learners. the van hiele level at which the grade 2 lesson was presented did not match the learners’ thinking level. all the activities, except for the introduction, centred round the properties of shapes (van hiele level 2), although 46.9% of the learners had not yet reached level 1, thus indicative of mismatch. the activities in the grade 2 lesson were in alignment with the second phase that crowley calls directed orientation. the frequent use of group work and the indication of specific vocabulary to focus on in that particular lesson suggest that crowley’s third phase of learning, explication, was also included in grade 2 geometry lessons. there is, however, no indication of the fourth phase of learning being accommodated. free orientation, where the learners are provided with open-ended, multi-step tasks was not observed. this type of activity is the kind of task that enables learners to think geometrically. the grade 3 teachers developed van hiele levels 1 and 2 thinking which is appropriate, because 58% of the learners are functioning on van hiele level 1 and the remainder on van hiele level 2. these teachers also seemed to use differentiated group work regularly. placing the learners into smaller groups of like ability allows for a greater opportunity to teach within each group’s particular level of understanding. the structure of the classes and the appropriate level of the lessons in grade 3 provided opportunity for the development of geometry insight, as may be deduced from the significant number of learners that move up a van hiele level from grade 3 to grade 4. this happens despite the fact that only the first two phases of learning, as described by crowley (1987), were observed. in limiting the activities in grade 4 to only some of the phases of learning, this planning inhibits the learners from integrating the ideas presented to them with their existing schema and from developing greater insight into geometry concepts. although there were some learners yet to function at the van hiele level 1, the predominant levels of learners’ geometry thinking are visualisation and analysis, meaning that the instructional practices at this grade level should accommodate a wide range of understanding. the activities only partly reflect those suggested in research for level 1. evident in the classroom observations were the use of different teaching strategies and the use of manipulatives. the grade 5 lesson demonstrated activities on van hiele levels 1, 2 and 3, which is appropriate for the majority of the learners, according to table 1. there was, however, no evidence of activities that require justification and develop the ability to prove for the 13.0% of the learners who already function on level 2. the first three perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 76 phases of learning suggested by crowley (1987) for the development of geometry reasoning were evident. there was no convincing evidence of the last two phases of free orientation and integration being included in the instructional practices at this grade level. the property of fixed sequence becomes relevant. during the class visit, manipulatives were used, learners were actively engaged in the learning process and the group work observed afforded the opportunity for learners to negotiate meaning and for teacher-learner dialogue. conclusion the purpose of the study was to describe the geometry teaching and learning at a specific school in relation to the van hiele model. the van hiele test results (obtained half way through the year) in grades 1 to 3 show very little movement in numbers from a pre-visualisation level to level 1. the test scores report 24.7% more learners in grade 4 on level 1 thinking or higher than those in grade 3, whereas 13% of the grade 4 learners developed and managed to operate on van hiele level 2 in grade 5. however, the teaching in terms of the sequential phases of learning, as described by crowley (1987), was limited in all the grades. this includes grades 3 and 4 where the shift in the van hiele levels occurred. it is, therefore, not possible to state a simple relationship between the phases of learning, as described by crowley (1987), as observed in the classroom, and geometric development in terms of the van hiele levels. it is also not always possible to explain the geometric thought development or the lack thereof in terms of the level of the teaching and learning activities of the observed lesson. although the level of the activities in the grade 1 classroom was well aligned with the learners’ level of thinking, there was almost no improvement in terms of the levels. it may be possible that the development of van hiele level 1 requires more time than the other levels. gutiérrez et al. (1991) argue that the acquisition of a specific level can take months and even years, but do not explain which levels may take more time. the small improvement from grade 2 to grade 3 is understandable, because in grade 2 the teaching created a mismatch for 23 of the 49 (46.9%) learners’ levels of thinking. the grade 3 teaching activities covered both van hiele levels 1 and 2, which is appropriate for all the learners. this might be a reason for the improvement in the van hiele test scores from grades 3 to 4. furthermore, the grade 4 teaching involved van hiele level 2 and higher activities, although 17.2% of these learners were not even operational on level 1. this may be a reason why 15.2% of the grade 5 learners had not progressed beyond van hiele level 0. although the presence of activities on an appropriate level does not guarantee growth in terms of the van hiele model, the absence thereof will result in stagnation. the instructional practices should span the range of these levels and be relevant to the varying degrees of acquisition of those learners being taught. if we do not meet the learners on their level of thinking, the learners may imitate the reasoning and language of a van hiele level presented to them, but may not be able to successfully 77 the relationship between teachers’ instructional practices and their learners’ level of geometrical thinking | cheryl bleeker, gerrit stols, sonja van putten appropriate or apply this reasoning to new contexts (atebe & schäfer, 2008a). once again, these learners are at risk of stagnating at a particular level with each academic cycle in which the geometry curriculum is presented at a level incongruent to their level of understanding. references arzarello a, robutti o & bazzini l 2005. acting is learning: focus on the construction of mathematical concepts. cambridge journal of education, 35(2): 55-67. atebe hu & schäfer m 2008a. van hiele levels of geometry thinking of nigerian and south african mathematics learners. proceedings of the 15th annual conference of the southern african association for research in mathematics, science and technology education, grahamstown, south africa, 19-22 january 2009. atebe hu & schäfer m 2008b. as soon as the four sides are all equal, then the angles must be 90° each. children’s misconceptions in geometry. african journal of research in mathematics, science and technology education, 12(2): 47-66. battista mt 2007. the development of geometric and spatial thinking. in fk lester (ed), second handbook of research on mathematics teaching and learning, a project of the national council of teachers of mathematics (pp. 843-908). new york: macmillan. bransford jd, brown al & cocking rr 2000. how people learn. washington, dc:national academy press. chard dj, baker sk, clarke b, jungjohann k, davis k & smolkowski k 2008. prevening early mathematics difficulties: the feasibility of a rigorous kindergarten mathematics curriculum. learning disability quarterly, 31(1): 11-20. cobb p, wood t, yackel e, nicholls j, wheatley g, trigatti b & perlwitz m 1991. assessment of a problem-centered second-grade mathematics project. journal for research in mathematics education, 21(1): 3-29. crowley ml 1987. the van hiele model of the development of geometry thought. in m montgomery lindquist (ed), learning and teaching geometry, k-12: 1987 yearbook of the national council of teachers of mathematics (pp. 1-16). reston, va: national council of teachers of mathematics. department of basic education (dbe) 2011. curriculum and assessment policy statement (mathematics): intermediate phase. retrieved on 28 november 1012 from http://www.education.gov.za/linkclick.aspx?fileticket=%2f4nndpxj cma%3d&tabid=421&mid=1883. gerace wj 1992. contributions from cognitive research to mathematics and science education. paper presented at the workshop on research in science and mathematics education, cathedral peak, south africa, 20-24 january 1992. gutiérrez a, jaime a & fortuny jm 1991. an alternative paradigm to evaluate the acquisition of the van hiele levels. journal for research in mathematics education, 22(3): 237-252. mason m 1998. the van hiele levels of geometric understanding. professional handbook for teachers: geometry: explorations and applications, mcdougal littell inc. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 78 rudd lc, lambert mc, satterwhite m & zaier a 2008. mathematical language in early childhood settings: what really counts? early childhood education journal, 36: 75-80. doi: 10.1007/s10643-008-0246-3. usiskin z 1982. van hiele levels and achievement in secondary school geometry. (final report of the cognitive development and achievement in secondary school geometry project.) chicago, ill: university of chicago.van de walle ja 2007. elementary and middle school mathematics: teaching developmentally. boston: pearson education. van hiele pm 1996. south african visit 1996, lecture notes. unisa webb n, franke m, tondra d, chan a, freund d, shein p & melkonian d 2009. explain to your partner: teachers’ instructional practices and students’ dialogue in small groups. cambridge journal of education, 39(1): 49-70. 77 research article 2023 41(2): 77-88 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6272 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) exploring south african university academics’ level of preparedness for emergency multimodal remote teaching during the covid-19 pandemic abstract the advent of coronavirus disease, covid-19, in late december 2019 has wreaked havoc on the economic and educational sectors. as a result of the covid-19 pandemic, educational institutions were forced to switch from face-to-face to virtual classroom contact. the result was that many academics, particularly university lecturers, turned to remote teaching as a means to continue with academic responsibilities under lockdown regulations. the researchers opted to investigate the level of preparedness of academics for remote teaching in the faculties of education because there was a paucity of literature on the subject. this study used a phenomenological case study research design with a sample of 28 academics from the faculties of education. the universities in south africa were located in the provinces of gauteng, the free state, and the eastern cape. the researchers used a validated interview schedule to collect qualitative data. the trustworthiness of the interview guide was ensured by giving it to experts to provide constructive criticism. the data were examined using thematic analysis. the findings demonstrated that the majority of the academics in the education faculties lacked the necessary preparation for distant teaching and learning, because neither academics nor students received any support as they transitioned from routine to unusual working conditions. it was also discovered that the necessary infrastructure was initially not prepared to facilitate remote teaching and learning. since they expected the lockdown to only last a few months, some academics indicated they were unprepared and found the situation to be extremely stressful. this suggests that during the covid-19 pandemic, the majority of university academics were ineffective at implementing emergency multimodal remote instruction. for the efficient implementation of remote teaching, university academics must receive suitable and thorough in-service training. keywords: covid-19 pandemic, emergency multimodal remote teaching, level of preparedness, south african university academics author: christian s ugwuanyi1 chinedu i o okeke1 jogymol k alex2 affiliation: 1university of the free state, south africa 2walter sisulu university, mthatha, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i2.6272 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(2): 77-88 published: 30 june 2023 received: 12 may 2022 accepted: 18 may 2023 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6272 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2174-3674 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9959-8019 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0118-760x https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6272 782023 41(2): 78-88 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6272 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) 1. introduction covid-19, a global pandemic, disrupted the world population, significantly affecting the academic year of 2020. the pandemic, according to azionya and nhedizi (2021), altered how higher education institutions give instruction. institutions had to change their methods of teaching and learning because they could no longer use traditional methods (hu, 2022). due to the pandemic’s effective implementation of a global shutdown of many activities, including educational activities, universities have been compelled to move to an online learning platform due to a severe academic crisis (adedoyin & soykan, 2020). the covid-19 epidemic has exacerbated educational disparities, further marginalizing people with limited access to education, especially in environments of conflict, weakness, and insecurity (sayed et al., 2021). universities were unprepared for the abrupt shift from in-person instruction to online learning that the covid-19 pandemic caused (maphalala, khumalo & khumalo, 2021). people’s views towards labour and employment were anticipated to change as a result of covid-19 and the shocks it brought about in the economic and educational sectors (kramer & kramer, 2020). the quality of teaching and learning in educational institutions will be impacted by this new working condition, according to realyvásquez-vargas et al. (2020). the epidemic has destroyed the educational system and brought up a number of new problems for higher education around the world (gonzalez et al., 2020). in the same vein, universities have also been impacted, and are currently engaged in protracted disputes over how to respond to the pandemic while sustaining teaching and learning, research, and community involvement (hlatshwayo, khumalo & nzimande, 2021). putri et al. (2020) found that many lecturers are not adept in instructing through technologies nor utilising internet technologies for teaching and learning (putri et al., 2020). as the covid-19 pandemic disrupted the 2019–2020 school year, there was little or no research on how school disruptions might affect learning (kuhfeld et al., 2020). according to matarirano, gqokonqana and yeboah (2021), the covid-19 pandemic led some universities to use synchronous and asynchronous instruction to conduct emergency remote teaching. while some academics worked from home during the pandemic, primarily for research objectives, most instruction was done in loco (walker et al., 2020). furthermore, covid-19 preventive control procedures resulted in a situation in which multimodal remote teaching became necessary with immediate effect. as a result, there was little or no planning to meet the demands of remote teaching and learning in many institutions (walker et al., 2020). mittal et al. (2022) opine that the only option to deal with the situation orchestrated by covid-19 is to convert physical classrooms to virtual ones and promote online teaching and learning through emergency remote teaching (ert). according to mohmmed et al. (2020), emergency remote teaching implies utilizing all of the remote teaching methods available in an emergency situation, entailing sending educational materials that would often be taught physically or through hybrid courses. emergency remote teaching (ert) allows lecturers to be more creative and imaginative while providing temporary access to instruction (songca, ndebele & mbodila, 2021). however, ert implementation in several countries, including south africa, poses difficulties for both students and academics (songca, ndebele & mbodila, 2021). the ability to operate a learning management system (lms) and the stability of those systems are also important factors in the success of remote teaching and learning. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6272 792023 41(2): 79-88 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6272 ugwuanyi, okeke & alex exploring south african university academics’ level of preparedness based on the aforementioned, the researchers intended to explore academics’ level of preparedness of academics multimodal remote teaching in the south african university context using law et al. (1996) person-environment-occupation theory (peot). 2. theoretical background the three components that make up peot are person (p), environment (e), and occupation (o). occupational performance is the result of the interaction between these three components. this method stresses how a person’s environment, job, and other factors interact to affect how well they perform in their jobs. role, self-concept, cultural background, personality, health, cognition, physical performance, and sensory capacities are all part of the person’s domain. in this sense, the individual is a unique being with numerous obligations that are inextricably linked to contextual forces. a set of traits, abilities, knowledge, and experiences are brought to the workplace by the individual. the person brings a variety of characteristics, skills, knowhow, and experiences to the teaching and learning environment. the environmental domain comprises physical, cultural, institutional, social, and socio-economic environments, while the occupation aspect refers to the array of activities that a person performs in order to maintain, express, and complete himself or herself. the three domains are interdependent and have an impact on one another. the three domains overlap in this model, which dynamically shapes occupational performance and illustrates the degree of connection between the individual, environment, and occupation. this theory is relevant to this study since it allowed the researchers to comprehend lecturers’ academic commitments during the emergency multimodal remote teaching during the covid-19 pandemic. within the context of this research, the academics are the “persons”; the environment is the “work from home”; while the occupation is the “remote teaching”. thus, the person aspect (academic) is dependent on the environment while the environment (work from home) determines the effectiveness of the occupation (remote teaching). these findings have corroborated the tenets of poet in the sense that the covid-19 pandemic impacted negatively on the academic effectiveness in teaching and learning engagement. 3. available empirical studies dhawan’s study is supported by adnan (2020) surveyed 126 pakistani participants’ perceptions on multimodal remote teaching, which reveals that the great majority of students lack the basic facilities to access internet technology. the absence of direct communication between the academics and their professors and peers raised additional worries among them (adnan, 2020). additionally, watermeyer et al. (2021) found that disturbance of confidence and trust, increased workload, and decreased working conditions are parts of the various difficulties academics faced during the urgent online migration of their practice. according to watermeyer et al., academics’ reactions to the pandemic represent a story of trauma, and they contend that academics were wounded by their experiences with the emergency online transition. seetal, gunness and teeroovengadum (2021) indicate that many university academics had received no proper training in using technology in the classroom, limiting their readiness to adopt emergency remote teaching. adedoyin and soykan (2020) reveal that contrary to a war or a natural disaster, the covid-19 pandemic problem has not harmed the physical infrastructure of educational institutions, but resulted in an unforeseen international disruption of traditional teaching and a migration of learning methodologies. due to inadequate planning and design of remote teaching programs, the migration process of higher education institutions https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6272 802023 41(2): 80-88 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6272 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) to such program is now in doubt (adedoyin & soykan, 2020). it is crucial to distinguish between successful online training that is used regularly and that which is carried out quickly with few resources and little time otherwise, known as emergency remote teaching. according to lassoued, alhendawi and bashitialshaaer (2020), under the covid-19 pandemic, the major barriers to achieving quality in emergency remote teaching could be divided into four categories: (a) personal, which relates to self-imposed barriers that signify students’ rejection and resistance; (b) pedagogical, which concerns barriers to administering tests, evaluating electronic exams, or obtaining feedback from students; and (c) technical barrier, which concerns slow internet speeds, inadequate data security and confidentiality among others. additionally, impediments to efficient remote teaching included instructors’ negative attitudes and experiences with switching from face-to-face to emergency remote teaching during the pandemic, such as preparedness, confidence, institutional support, access, workload impact, ailments, and affordances (watermeyer et al., 2021). according to bao (2020), academics’ high-quality instructional design, proper instructional delivery, prompt feedback and direction and high-quality student participation in instructional activities are the five criteria that determine effective online learning experiences. bao further states that in order to support all of the aforementioned criteria, a backup plan for any unforeseen technological challenges must be created. for successful online teaching, rapanta et al. (2020) explored the opinions of online education experts on the global online transition during the pandemic and emphasize the significance of the effective design of online learning activities, which increases teacher presence, and an assessment and feedback mechanism. in the situation when universities were forced to go online, it was noted that the weaknesses of online teaching include the problems of technology, time management and lack of online learning acceptance (dhawan, 2020). these issues, according to dhawan, may come with a variety of difficulties, including the digital divide, inequality among different groups, and a lack of personal support. sayed et al. (2021)reveal that academics did not receive appropriate professional development (pd) and psychosocial support to help them negotiate the covid-19 pandemic’s uncertainty and pedagogical expectations. academics were forced to shift from traditional teaching methods to remote instruction, with minimal expertise (hlatshwayo, et al., 2021). almpanis and joseph-richard (2022) found that academics were not prepared to become familiar with digital technology and related pedagogies within a short period for classes to migrate online. lee et al. (2021) note that since academics were forced to learn to use technologies within a short space of time, there were significant differences between more established online teaching methods. the foregoing has shown that there is a gap in literature, as there is a dearth of literature on the readiness of the university academics in the adoption of emergency remote teaching. based on this premise, the researchers explored the south african university academics’ level of preparedness for the emergency multimodal remote teaching during covid-19 pandemic using faculty of education academics at various south african universities. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6272 812023 41(2): 81-88 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6272 ugwuanyi, okeke & alex exploring south african university academics’ level of preparedness 4. methods 4.1 research approach and design a qualitative research approach with a phenomenological qualitative case study research design was used by the researchers. phenomenological research aims to comprehend and characterize a phenomenon’s fundamental elements. the method examines human experiences in daily life while suspending the researchers’ previous notions regarding the issue. on the other hand, a case study is a thorough examination of a person, family, group, organization, or event. consequently, phenomenological qualitative case study examines people’s perceptions and actual experiences in relation to specific phenomena. the researchers used this methodology because they wanted to get to the heart of what the faculty of education scholars had to say about emergency multimodal remote teaching during the covid-19 outbreak. this methodology has recently been used by ugwuanyi, okeke and shawe (2021), gqoli, okeke and ugwuanyi (2022), gqoli, okeke and ugwuanyi (2023), baloyi-mothibeli, okeke and ugwuanyi (2023). 4.2 participants the south african provinces of gauteng, free state, and the eastern cape provided participants for this study. the majority of the participants were from different universities in these provinces. the study’s target population comprised all academic staff members in the faculties of education at all eight (8) universities in the three provinces of south africa. the survey was completed by 28 academics from the faculties of education at eight (8) different universities located throughout the provinces. the eight institutions were selected by means of purposive sampling, which made sure that each province’s universities were fairly represented. the participants were chosen using a convenience sampling technique. this gave the researchers the opportunity to choose academics who were enthusiastic about taking part in the study. 4.3 instrument data were gathered utilising a semi-structured interview schedule that included questions about academics’ level of preparedness for the emergency multimodal remote teaching. experts in instrument development conducted the face validation of the semi-structured interview to guarantee that it measures what it claims to measure. the validity of the interview schedule was confirmed by exposing it to a similar sample on two separate occasions. 4.4 data collection procedures the semi-structured interview schedule in the form of google forms was emailed to participants whose email addresses indicated they would reply to the interview schedule to gather the qualitative data. this situation arose because face-to-face interviews were challenging due to the covid-19 restrictions. the interviewees had ample time to respond to the questions. 4.5 ethical considerations each university gave the researchers ethical approval prior to data collection. as a result, the request for ethical clearance was granted. additionally, the researchers followed the pertinent ethical guidelines for qualitative research. in other words, before the interview, participants had to fill out and sign written informed consent. the chosen people have the option to deny participation right away, or to withdraw at any time for any reason. however, none of the https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6272 822023 41(2): 82-88 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6272 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) contestants withdrew from the event. to protect the participants’ privacy and confidentiality, pseudonyms were utilized. during the reporting phase of this study, the authors were mindful of protecting the participants and their institutions. 4.6 data analysis the researchers used thematic analysis to analyse the qualitative data. thematic analysis examines patterns of meaning in a data set, such as a collection of transcripts from focus groups or interviews. a thematic analysis, on the other hand, classifies sets of data (which are frequently rather big) into categories based on commonalities, or themes. these themes assist us in understanding and interpreting the information. the participants’ interview responses were coded, sorted, categorised, and transcribed using this method. to ensure accurate data analysis, the participants’ responses were read numerous times to extract key information. member-checking allowed for verification of the data. 5. results the presentation of the results was based on the analysis of the interview response of each of the participants. 5.1 theme: academic preparedness to work from home 5.1.1 subtheme 1: academics’ level of preparedness for the emergency multimodal remote teaching. this subtheme focused on the level of preparedness of academics. to elicit responses from the participants during the interview the academics were asked individually whether they were sufficiently prepared for the emergency multimodal remote teaching. below are the findings in subtheme 1. academics lacked proper planning and preparedness to accommodate emergencies such as covid-19 in terms of teaching and learning as no adequate assistance was provided to assist academics as well as students to transit from normal to abnormal working situations. moreover, infrastructure was initially not ready to support them, despite that they were willing to engage in multimodal remote teaching. since the covid situation happened without prior preparedness, many colleagues were not sufficiently trained to learning platforms like ethuto and personally could not complete many tasks such as moderation of exam documents via ethuto from other universities. thus, the academics found themselves in the unexpected circumstance of having to make sure they comprehend the teaching and learning approach through remote mode. understanding internet platforms and other instructional strategies that can benefit students were necessary for the remote mode of teaching. that meant that the academics had to receive training on how to use the different online tools at their disposal. 5.1.2 subtheme 2: technological skills to work in the multimodal remote space. based on this subtheme, academics were asked about their level of technological skills to work in this multimodal remote space. the findings are shown below. some of the academics did not have enough technological skills to work in the multimodal sphere, but could only use blackboard uploading activities, presenting on bbc which they only learned during covid19. for academics, those were not enough as there are other technological skills such as microsoft teams to interact with students however, due to lack of https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6272 832023 41(2): 83-88 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6272 ugwuanyi, okeke & alex exploring south african university academics’ level of preparedness skills, the academics were dependent on the few available skills they had then. only few of the academics knew how to set tests and assignments online and mark online and present lessons on blackboard. some of the academics responded that they needed advanced computer skills to be effective in the use of remote mode of teaching. it was also found that despite the challenges experienced by the academics during the work from home, some of the academics had to learn fast to cope with remote teaching and learning due to the fact that some institutions organised training to develop technology skills and capacities of the academics to work online teaching remotely. 6. discussion using the qualitative research methodology with a phenomenological case-study research design, this study was required to determine the level of preparedness of academics for emergency multimodal remote teaching. according to mohmmed et al. (2020), emergency remote teaching implies utilizing all of the remote teaching methods available in an emergency situation entails sending curriculum or educational materials that would often be taught physically or through hybrid or blended courses. the majority of academics in the faculties of education in the eight different universities in the gauteng, free state, and eastern cape provinces were not ready for emergency multimodal remote teaching. it was also found that a significant number of the academics who participated in the research lacked adequate technological skills for emergency multimodal remote teaching. during the interview with the participants, several issues that affected their level of preparedness for emergency multimodal remote teaching were raised. such issues included the lack of available internet facilities, insufficient data, lack of appropriate computer literacy skills, and lack of a conducive environment for emergency multimodal remote teaching among others. those challenges affected the level of teaching and learning at various learning institutions in south africa. buttressing these findings, almpanis and joseph-richard (2022) found that academics were not prepared to become familiar with digital technology and related pedagogies in a short period for classes to migrate online from the traditional face-to-face. lee et al. (2021) noted that, since academics were forced to learn to use online technologies within a short space of time, they showed signs of discomfort and anxiety. as a result, their enthusiasm to implement remote emergency education was compromised. when lee et al. (2021) compared these findings with those academics who engaged with technologies in a more relaxed condition, the results differed significantly from those who had to learn in an emergency. motseki, maluleke and barkhuizen (2021) found that technophobia, travel restrictions inside and outside of provincial and national borders, accessibility of devices for teaching and learning, online assessment, connectivity to the internet, the cost of data, and the continuation of contact classes were some of the difficulties faced by academics and students. seetal et al. (2021) agree that most educators (university academics and school-based educators) had not received proper training in using technology in the classroom, limiting their readiness to adopt emergency remote teaching. as a result of this, there were high levels of apathy toward using technology for teaching and learning during the lockdown. besides, it was noted that the weaknesses of online teaching include technological challenges, time management issues, and a lack of readiness for online learning (dhawan, 2020). these issues, according to dhawan, may come with a variety of difficulties, including the digital divide, inequality among different groups, and a lack of personal support. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6272 842023 41(2): 84-88 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6272 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) watermeyer et al. (2021) found that the various difficulties that academics faced during the urgent online migration of their practice include increased workload, decreased working conditions, and disturbance of confidence and trust. according to watermeyer et al. (2021), academics’ reactions to the pandemic represent a story of trauma, and they contend that academics were wounded by their experiences with the emergency online transition. lassoued et al. (2020) found that under the covid-19 pandemic, the major barriers and obstacles to achieving quality in emergency remote teaching could be divided into four categories: (a) personal, which relates to self-imposed barriers that signify students’ rejection and resistance; (b) pedagogical, which concerns barriers to administering tests, evaluating electronic exams, or obtaining feedback from students; (c) technical barrier, which concerns slow internet speeds, inadequate data security and confidentiality; and (d) organisational and financing problems such as lack of capabilities to communicate remotely and the difficulty of obtaining computers by some students. additionally, impediments to efficient remote teaching include instructors’ negative attitudes and experiences with switching from face-to-face to emergency remote teaching during the pandemic, such as preparedness, confidence, institutional support, access, workload impact, ailments, and affordances (watermeyer et al., 2021). due to inadequate planning, design, and development of online instructional programs as a result of the pandemic, the migration process of higher education institutions to online learning is now in doubt (adedoyin & soykan, 2020). digital technology has undergone a significant change as a result of the covid-19 pandemic, moving from “an ongoing digitalisation process” to “digitalise now or stop operating”, thereby impacting the whole system of higher education significantly (rof, bikfalvi & marques, 2022). academics were forced to shift from traditional teaching methods to remote instruction, with minimal expertise, as a result of the pandemic (hlatshwayo et al., 2021). the emergency remote education context had conflicting effects on the educational process, with the majority of the consequences being detrimental to personal adaptability (oliveira et al., 2021). sayed et al. (2021) reveal that academics did not receive appropriate professional development and psychosocial support to help them negotiate the covid-19 pandemic’s uncertainty and pedagogical expectations. 7. strength of the research this research provides a significant contribution to the development of higher education in south africa, since it has empirically studied the academics’ level of preparedness for emergency multimodal remote teaching. theoretically, the findings of this research have strengthened the tenets of person-environment-occupation theory which indicate how a person’s environment, job, and other factors interact to affect his or her performance. the person domain also encompasses roles, self-concepts, cultural backgrounds, personalities, health, cognition, physical performance, and sensory abilities. in this perspective, the person is a special entity, with a variety of responsibilities that are intimately connected to external influences. the person brings a variety of characteristics, skills, know-how, and experiences to the teaching and learning environment. the environmental domain comprises physical, cultural, institutional, social, and socio-economic environments, while the occupation aspect refers to the array of activities that a person performs in order to maintain, express, and complete himself or herself. the three domains are interdependent and have an impact on one another. the three domains overlap in this model, which dynamically shapes occupational performance and illustrates the degree of connection between the individual, environment, https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6272 852023 41(2): 85-88 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6272 ugwuanyi, okeke & alex exploring south african university academics’ level of preparedness and occupation. within the context of this research, the academics are the “persons”; the environment is the “work from home”; while the occupation is the “remote teaching”. thus, the person aspect (academic) is dependent on the environment, while the environment (work from home) determines the effectiveness of the occupation (remote teaching). these findings have corroborated the tenets of poet in the sense that the wfh that was caused by the covid-19 pandemic impacted negatively on the academic effectiveness in the teaching and learning engagement. the practical implication of these findings is that academics will need to be better equipped in the use of multimodal remote teaching in case of a similar pandemic in the future. on the other hand, the policy implication of these findings is that the relevant policymakers will discern from the findings of this research that academics need special training on the use of multimodal remote teaching. this will provide them with an opportunity to map out achievable policies on in-service training of academics for effective use of multimodal remote teaching. 8. limitations of the findings the findings of this research may have some limitations in that the google form mode of the interview was adopted during data collection as a result of covid-19 restriction on face-toface contact. the emailed google form mode of interview adopted in this study may limit the generalisability of the findings of the research to the entire population of faculties of education academics at the sampled universities. thus, the researchers suggest that further research can be undertaken to replicate this research through the adoption of the face-to-face mode of interview. 9. conclusion and recommendation this study explored the level of preparedness of academics for remote teaching in the faculties of education at some sampled south african universities and found that most of the academics at various universities located in the gauteng, free state and eastern cape provinces who participated in the study were not adequately prepared for the emergency multimodal remote teaching during the covid-19 pandemic. thus, the researchers concluded that academics’ lack of adequate preparation for the remote teaching during the covid-19 pandemic had a negative impact on their effective teaching and learning. this implies that the teaching responsibility of the academics was not effectively carried out during the covid-19 pandemic, especially at the start of the pandemic. this research has revealed the need to conduct proper training for university academics in the use of emergency multimodal remote teaching to face similar pandemics in the future. thus, it is recommended that the department of higher education and training (dhet) should design in-service training on the use of emergency multimodal remote teaching for academics specifically those in the faculty of education. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6272 862023 41(2): 86-88 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6272 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) references adedoyin, o.b. & soykan, e. 2020. covid-19 pandemic and online learning: the challenges and opportunities. interactive learning 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impact of work from home (wfh) on effective teaching and learning in universities. library philosophy and practice, pp.1-14 walker, j.t., fontinha, r., haak-saheem, w. and brewster, c., 2020. the effects of the covid-19 lockdown on teaching and engagement in uk business schools. available at ssrn 3717423 watermeyer, r., crick, t., knight, c. & goodall, j. 2021. covid-19 and digital disruption in uk universities: afflictions and affordances of emergency online migration. higher education, 81(3): 623-641. doi:10.1007/s10734-020-00561-y https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6272 _hlk103277974 _hlk126398700 _hlk126395101 perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2013 university of the free state 27 tracey morton mckay department of geography, environmental management and energy studies, university of johannesburg e-mail: traceymc@uj.ac.za telephone: 011 559 3302 zachary simpson department of civil engineering science, university of johannesburg e-mail: zsimpson@uj.ac.za telephone: 011 559 3683 the space between: pedagogic collaboration between a writing centre and an academic department tracey morton mckay & zachary simpson the expectations placed on students with respect to appropriate academic writing may hinder successful participation in higher education. full participation is further complicated by the fact that each discipline within the university constitutes its own community of practice, with its own set of literacy practices. while writing centres aim to help students navigate their apprenticeship into these practices, their location on the periphery of academic activity may undermine these efforts. this article reports on an intervention aimed at initiating a more integrated approach to the provision of writing development services. it was undertaken within a qualitative, interpretive design-based research framework. the results suggest that writing centres can add significant value by leveraging their unique location within universities, that is, in the spaces between academic disciplines, to assist students to achieve epistemological access to a discipline. writing consultants (the focus of this study) need to interact with different academic discourses. the result is that they engage, to an extent, in disciplinary ‘boundary-hopping’. we argue that writing centres should facilitate this by fostering a space for engagement between disciplines. the article concludes by arguing that further research on using the interstices between disciplines as a resource for developing student academic writing is required. keywords: academic literacy; writing centre; teaching intervention; access; participation introduction and background the expectations placed on students with respect to writing in ways that are appropriate for academia can unintentionally limit, rather than widen, real access to higher education (lillis, 2001; hutchings, 2005; mgqwashu, 2009). in this article, real access is defined as that which promotes not only physical access, perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 28 but also epistemological access into the cultural knowledge-making practices that are dominant in institutions of higher education (starfield, 1994; daweti, 2002). thus, access is more than simply participation or enrolment; it must also involve throughput (slonimsky & shalem, 2004). one dominant knowledge-making practice is academic writing, in general, and essayist literacy, in particular (lillis, 2001; daweti, 2002; scollon & scollon, 2001). however, students’ acquisition of essayist literacy is fraught with challenges. this article begins from the assumption that one of the roles of writing centres (and, crucially, academics) is to assist students to navigate their apprenticeship into academic communities of practice. writing centre consultants can play a crucial role in helping students acquire essayist literacy (archer, 2008). however, as writing centres are often marginalised from mainstream university curricula, this can hamper their ability to do so (archer, 2010). the university of johannesburg’s (uj) writing centre was, both figuratively and physically, situated apart from academic departments and so, at best, on the periphery of academic disciplines. as hutchings (2005: 731-732) notes, this peripheral status renders writing centres “weak agencies for departmental intervention, support and organisational learning” as they are “outside students’ respective disciplinary practices”. this marginalised position has prompted scholars such as mgqwashu (2001) to question the ability of writing centres to meaningfully contribute to the development of student academic literacy. according to mgqwashu (2001), initiatives such as the writing place, or writing centre, should work across programmes with the aim of improving teaching and assessment of writing in specific fields of study. for writing centres to contribute meaningfully to the promotion of real student learning and success, they will have to engage in strategic, pedagogic collaborations with academic departments (jacobs, 2007). this article reports on a design-based research intervention undertaken by the writing centre co-ordinator and a geography lecturer. the aim was to initiate an integrated approach to the development of student academic writing. this article explores, in particular, the role of the writing consultant in this process rather than that of students. we were informed by the notion that each academic discipline constitutes its own discourse community and we thus premised our intervention on the notion that students must learn essayist literacy conventions within the domain of a specific academic community (elbow, 1991; lillis, 2001; daweti, 2002). this article adds to the literature in two ways. first, the ‘intervention’ undertaken contributes to a bouquet of options available to writing centres and offers insights into the advantages and shortcomings of the process, in particular, by documenting the “voices” of the writing consultants involved. secondly, we argue that writing centres can transcend the teaching of isolated ‘skills’ and become involved in fostering engagement between and within disciplines if they engage collaboratively with professionals located within specific academic disciplines. in the next section, a brief account of design-based research is provided. thereafter, the intervention is described in detail. due to the design-based nature mckay & simpson the space between: pedagogic collaboration between a writing centre and an academic department 29 of the study, the literature within which the intervention is located is integrated into the discussion of the intervention itself as well as into the discussion of the results thereof. in this respect, the article reflects the complex engagement between theory and pedagogy that characterises design-based research (design based research collective, 2003; collins, joseph & bielazcyc, 2004). design-based research design-based research, used primarily in educational settings, is often criticised by both positivist and interpretivist researchers. this is because it does not rely either on conducting empirical tests, or on ‘objective’ observation of phenomena. instead, it involves the researcher implementing innovations, evaluating these innovations during implementation and making changes to the implemented innovation while the implementation is ongoing; in other words, it involves deriving “research findings from formative evaluations” (collins et al., 2004: 16). in such research, the actions of the researcher/s are integral to the outcomes not only of the planned intervention, but also of the research project undertaken. as collins et al. (2004) argue, it is unlikely that planned interventions will specify what to do in all possible scenarios and it is thus inevitably necessary, if the end goal is to be achieved, that researchers make various decisions during the implementation process. in this research, it was apt to adopt such a research paradigm, because we were concerned with “how, when and why educational innovations work in practice” (design-based research collective, 2003: 5) and because, although we had a plan and a clear idea of what we wanted to achieve, we could not adequately control all of the factors at play. kelly (2004) names three distinct ‘types’ of design-based research projects, one of which is the collaborative teaching experiment. this study falls within this subtype in that it is a collaborative attempt at fostering integrated student academic writing development (informed by established theory) through a broad initial plan which allowed for flexibility during implementation, in order to facilitate significant epistemic access on the part of students. the intervention the problem established in 2002, the uj writing centre is a fully funded student resource centre. services are free and readily available. the centre’s philosophy is four pronged: it is process-oriented, non-evaluative, people-centred and non-remedial. writing centre consultants are postgraduate students with above average writing skills, hailing from an array of disciplines. they all undergo an induction process that involves an initial training course and ongoing development throughout the year, the purpose of which is to induct them into the debates and issues in respect of student academic literacy development. this is similar to the university of cape town (uct) system (archer, 2008, 2010), as well as those of other writing centres locally and internationally. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 30 the goal of the writing centre is to impact positively on the quality of student writing and, to this end, it employs pedagogical tools such as collaboration, peer learning and individualised instruction. it seeks to assist students to navigate (or make sense of) their literacy apprenticeship. the location of the writing centre, however, both physically and figuratively, on the periphery of academic practice proved to hinder the realisation of this goal. operating from this peripheral ‘space’, it was evident that the contribution of the writing centre to the development of geography students’ academic writing was ad hoc, limited and often superficial. this was despite the geography lecturer and writing centre coordinator actively encouraging students to make use of the services of the centre. take up of writing centre services was low and, when students did approach the centre, they did so too close to the due date for submission to allow for any meaningful intervention. therefore, a collaborative pedagogic intervention was designed and implemented to try and overcome these hurdles. that said, all participants gave full informed consent and participation was completely voluntary. the plan from the outset, the focus of the intervention was the writing consultants, rather than the students. the aim was to establish whether or not drawing writing consultants closer to the academic discipline of geography could enable them to better facilitate epistemological access for geography students or not. this was based on the premise that, if the mediators (the writing consultants) were more capacitated, they would be better placed to assist the students. to this end, however, the intervention itself must be regarded as an outcome of the massification of physical access to university. that is, the lecturer-to-student ratio was high and precluded direct intervention between the students and the lecturer, in part due to high student numbers, but also because of timetabling constraints. however, it is important to note that the intervention reflects the philosophy of both the authors, that is, that academic literacy should be explicitly taught, embedded into the curriculum and elevated by foregrounding it in assessment opportunities (mgqwashu, 2001). the intervention was structured around a specific task, namely the writing of a geography essay, based on a topic covered in the first-year curriculum. in this regard, we were informed by the work of ballard and clanchy (1988, 1991) which calls for overt enabling of students to read (and use) the essential features (its rituals, values, language styles and behaviour) of the academic culture. academic essays are one such feature of geography. in addition, some of the writing rituals embedded in essayist literacy include stating opinions supported by scientific evidence; using specific language styles and registers; using the passive voice, and in-text citations and referencing. the intervention was launched with the geography lecturer joining the writing consultants in their weekly developmental sessions. during these sessions, the assessment task and tools, namely the essay question, the academic sources and the mckay & simpson the space between: pedagogic collaboration between a writing centre and an academic department 31 assessment rubric were shared with the writing consultants. lively discussion sessions ensued to develop a common understanding in terms of how the academic essay was to be written, what it should ‘look like’ within the boundaries of the geography academic discipline, and what sort of feedback writing consultants should give to the students. it is important to note that these sessions were collaborative in nature and all parties contributed to the discussion. the sessions served to reveal what is often referred to as the ‘hidden curriculum’ or the hidden ‘rituals of the academic tribe of geography’. that is, to academic outsiders (like the writing consultants or first-year students), what a geography essay should ‘look like’ is not obvious, whereas to insiders it is. those who lack this cultural capital often experience university life as disempowering (hutchings, 2005; mgqwashu, 2009). to this end, we found value in the notion that universities (and academic disciplines) have particular sociocultural histories and a range of particular practices or shared values and conventions that have evolved over time, most of which are embedded and hidden from outsiders (lillis, 2001). thus, access to these practices requires access to the particular academic society (or tribe) that both builds and defends the practices. it is hoped that explicit teaching of these rituals by an insider will unveil the “institutional mystery” (lillis, 2001: 20) that shrouds academic (and discipline-specific) ways of thinking, valuing, interacting, speaking and, indeed, writing (gee, 1996). the result should be improved epistemological access to the university. we found that the manner in which an insider (the geography lecturer) can engage with outsiders (in our instance, writing consultants) can facilitate this process. the students were then given the essay task; the academic resources to be used, and the rubric. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 32 table 1: geography assessment rubric: criteria not achieved partly achieved almost achieved achieved achieved with distinction introduction very poor – language needs work, ineffective, unsuitable = 0 weak introduction, needs a great deal of revision = 0.5 partly effective, but language and logic needs revision = 1 clear, effective and logical = 1.5 to 2 excellent, sets the scene well, logical and effective = 2.5 to 3 headings no headings at all = 0 headings of a very poor standard or very few headings = 0.5 headings given, but weak = 1 to 1.5 headings are partly effective = 2 to 2.5 appropriate, effective, headings = 3 to 3.5 excellent use of headings, effective, appropriate and interesting = 4 addressing the question not addressed at all = 0 addressed superficially = 0.5 to 1 to 1.5 addressed part of the time = 2 to 2.5 to 3 to 3.5 to 4 to 4.5 to 5 addressed much to most of the time = 5.5 to 6 to 6.5 to 7 to 7.5 to 8 to 8.5 to 9 fully addressed = 9.5 to 10 to 10.5 to 11 logical argument no logical argument, essay is almost impossible to read = 0 to 0.5 to 1 to 1.5 to 2 essay is readable, but needs a great deal of revision and editing = 2.5 to 3 to 3.5 to 4 to 4.5 argument can be followed, needs some editing = 5 to 5.5 to 6 to 6.5 to 7 easy to read, logical and coherent = 7.5 to 8 to 8.5 a pleasure to read, beautiful, logical, coherent argument = 9 to 9.5 to 10 correct information that is supported with evidence no or very little evidence provided = 0 to 0.5 some evidence provided = 1 to 1.5 part of the necessary evidence required was provided = 2 to 2.5 a great deal of evidence provided = 3 sound argument was backed by strong evidence = 4 conclusion very poor – language needs work, ineffective, unsuitable = 0 weak conclusion, needs a great deal of revision = 0.5 partly effective, but language and logic need revision = 1 clear, effective and logical = 1.5 to 2 excellent, wraps up the essay very well, logical and effective = 2.5 to 3 mckay & simpson the space between: pedagogic collaboration between a writing centre and an academic department 33 written language skills (academic english) many spelling mistakes = 0 ineffective, incorrect use of punctuation = 0 weak sentence construction = 0 poor, weak vocabulary = 0 lack of cohesion = 0 few spelling mistakes = 0.5 good use of punctuation = 0.5 okay sentence construction = 0.5 okay vocabulary, turn of phrase, register = 0.5 partly coherent = 0.5 no spelling mistakes = 1 excellent use of punctuation = 1 good sentence construction = 1 good vocabulary, turn of phrase, register = 1 coherent = 1 references cited in text no references cited in the text = 0 some references cited, partly correct = 0.5 to 1 many references cited, mostly correct = 1.5 to 2 many references, but not all, and system used is correct (most of the time) = 2.5 to 3 all references cited, correct system used throughout = 3.5 to 4 reference list no references list = 0 some references in the list, partly correct format = 0.5 to 1 many references listed, mostly correct format= 1.5 to 2 many references listed, but not all, and system used is correct (most of the time) = 2.5 to 3 all references listed, correct system used throughout, cited references match list completely = 3.5 to 4 evidence of planning (mind map) no evidence of planning = 0 totally ineffective mind map = 0.5 partly effective mind map, lacks detail = 1 effective, sufficient detail, outline of argument = 1.5 good, effective mind map, a great deal of detail, argument is clear and content well thought out = 2 they then had to generate a first draft which was informally assessed (using the rubric) by the lecturer and the writing consultants. the majority of the students did submit a first draft. the informal assessment served to provide students with an opportunity to get meaningful and constructive feedback on their writing, so as to enhance their writing practices and increase their chances of academic success. it was perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 34 clear that, in order to reach a common understanding of what essayist literacy within the discipline of geography means, a process of engagement between the lecturer and the writing consultants was required, in order to bring these outsiders closer to the geography community of practice. regular engagements took place once every week (or every second week) over the course of a semester, allowing the writing consultants to meaningfully engage with the essay topic and its broader relevance within the pedagogic aims of the geography course; critically engage with the various perspectives on the given topic which the academic source material elucidated, and deconstruct the assessment rubric to fully understand the pedagogic expectations revealed within it. this was a response to a need for the writing consultants to be capacitated to give the students as much meaningful feedback as possible. the first drafts were returned to the students via one-on-one feedback sessions with the writing consultants, leveraging the particular advantage of writing centres, namely one-to-one pedagogy, which is not always possible in other contexts. the students received both written and oral feedback in line with the strategy promoted by murtagh and baker (2009). the students then had to re-draft the essay using the feedback. this second draft was also informally assessed. this labour-intensive process of drafting and re-drafting can facilitate deep learning and meaningful engagement, and is a crucial component of situated learning (choi & hannafin, 1995). the data the writing consultants reflected on the intervention as it was being carried out. however, upon completion, they also engaged in a final, written reflection on the entire process. this was partly because it is difficult to appreciate the value of such a labour-intensive intervention while immersed in it. reflection after the fact also enabled consultants to establish the value of the intervention in a more holistic manner. specific questions were reflected upon, namely: has the intervention increased your confidence in dealing with geography students? do you think that you are now better equipped to help geography students than before? what value was there for you in terms of accessing the assessment criteria, the reading material and the essay topics? do you think this process has had a knock-on effect in terms of how you help other (non-geography) students? for the lecturer: what part(s) of this process and the tools (for example, readings, assessment rubric) could be improved? for the writing centre: how can the training and induction of consultants be improved? in total, seven of the nine writing consultants submitted reflections. in addition to this, the writing centre co-ordinator and geography lecturer also engaged in reflection on the intervention. the data collected was analysed using qualitative thematic analysis. this involves coding data to allow for the identification of recurrent themes emerging from qualitative data, and grouping these together in order to generate findings, conclusions and theory (gibson & brown, 2009). in the analysis, a mckay & simpson the space between: pedagogic collaboration between a writing centre and an academic department 35 number of themes emerged. however, due to spatial constraints, only three of the more prevalent and significant themes are explored in this article. final comment on the intervention in summary, archer (2010) identifies a number of means whereby writing centres can facilitate writing within disciplines, such as interdisciplinary writers’ circles and embedding ‘writing-to-learn’ workshops into specific courses. this intervention contributes to that bouquet of strategies and presents a model for writing centre work involving accessing a space between academic disciplines to enable consultants, students and lecturers to work together to facilitate students’ apprenticeship into academic communities of practice. an important principle of the intervention was dialogue between all of the participants in the project, as illustrated in the following diagram. however, in this article, we focus our attention only on the interaction between lecturer and writing consultants. consultant lecturer student results enhanced writing centre practice one of the significant themes emerging was that of improved writing centre practice. some consultants indicated that the intervention improved their practice as writing consultants. for example, one stated: “the process that i took on the geography students to a large extent was applied to others”; another stated: “i can at least say i now understand the general problems students have with assignments”. others reported more ‘productive’ one-on-one feedback sessions than previously. importantly, the data suggests that interaction with the academic insider (lecturer) is crucial to fostering improved practice on the part of writing consultants. two of the consultants stated that “without an hour (sic) from the department ... it is difficult to help ... students” and “this entirely depends on the subject and the lecturer concerned”. the bulk of the writing consultants labelled the intervention as “very beneficial”, suggesting that “lecturers from other departments should make use of the weekly training sessions”. in addition, many were of the opinion that the process had boosted their confidence in that they were able to advise the geography students better. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 36 however, not all felt that way, with a few stating that the intervention had only a “limited” effect or did “not really” impact on their practice. the writing centre co-ordinator, however, was of the opinion that the intervention was an important consultant development opportunity and that the potential of the writing centre was more meaningfully realised through the intervention. in addition, although not formally analysed as part of this particular study, the geography lecturer opined that the student essays were significantly better than in previous years. specifically, academic arguments presented were more logical, more coherent and more structured. one writing consultant concurred, stating that “re-draft ... was much more coherent and had more content”. the intervention thus appears to have served to increase the success of the writing centre in assisting students navigate their apprenticeship into the literacy practices of their chosen academic discipline. if, as north (2003) argues, the primary purpose of a writing centre is to ‘talk’ with writers, it was evident in the data that the intervention helped the writing consultants to become more aware of the various nuances across academic discourses and so enabled them to facilitate such awareness among students, that is, to ‘talk’ more meaningfully with students. in particular, the often opaque rules and conventions of academic reading and writing were made more transparent to the writing consultants, the coordinator and the lecturer. meeting in a ‘space between’ a second theme that emerged was that of disciplinary boundary crossing. it became clear that the writing centre (via the coordinator) and the academic department (via the lecturer) need to facilitate meeting ‘in a space between’ the centre and the department. the intervention described in this article helped us realise this. for example, access to the entire assessment task (academic sources, rubric and essay question) and opportunities to dialogue with the academic insider gave the writing consultants insight into the community of practice of geography. the consultants commented as follows: “the reading materials broadened my horizons in geography”; “i got a better understanding of the topic”; “access to these materials enables me to understand the requirements from the lecturer”, and the materials “helped me understand the topic more clearly”. the intervention thus supports elbow’s (1991) contention that universities are not one homogeneous academic community, but are rather a conglomeration of different discourse communities (daweti, 2002; archer, 2010). most university students (with perhaps the exception of those enrolled for engineering and medicine) are not apprenticed into one particular academic community. in particular, undergraduate students have to engage with multiple academic disciplines, each with its own culture and discourse. as archer (2010: 251) argues “to be literate does not simply mean having acquired the technical skills to decode and encode signs and symbols, but having mastered a set of social practices”. the need to access multiple academic discourses offers serious challenges to epistemic access. writing centres, then, have a crucial role to play in conveying the principle of discourse variation to students mckay & simpson the space between: pedagogic collaboration between a writing centre and an academic department 37 (elbow, 1991) and in assisting students to explore the numerous ‘possibilities for selfhood’ that exist within the university (ivanic, 1998). in other words, writing centres need to facilitate simultaneous exploration of various ‘academic tribes’ by helping students realise that they hold multiple communal group memberships. academics play a crucial role in assisting writing centres do all of this. what the intervention clarified, however, was that writing consultants are placed in the invidious position of having to assist students across numerous disciplines, without themselves necessarily being insiders to those disciplines. thus, writing consultants may need to locate themselves in the interstices of disciplines, the spaces between academic disciplines, where a commonality of academic practices prevails, yet which also allow a view of the differences. when consultants take up occupancy of such an interstitial position, and academic insiders work with them to do this, the writing centre itself is able to move from the periphery of academic disciplines towards being located at the nexus of the academic enterprise. this has the potential to unleash a considerable force for academic change, allowing for more rapid epistemological access to both the university and the disciplines that engage with writing centres in this way. a potential pitfall: usurping the content tutor however, the intervention was not without its pitfalls. it was found that the intervention may have unintentionally given the writing consultants a false sense of kinship with the discipline of geography. some of the consultants developed a (false) sense of geographical competency, with one reflecting that “after the whole programme with the geography department, i feel better equipped to help their students, not just in their writing skills, but also with the content” and another mentioned: “i should familiarize myself more with the topic and geographical concepts”. clearly, such misconceptions of the role they play in helping students acquire epistemic access to the discipline needs to be managed. writing consultants cannot replace tutors and lecturers. fortunately, one consultant agreed, commenting that “[i]t can be dangerous at times since we are not content tutors but writing consultants”. the intervention did not enable the writing consultants to become full participants in the geography community of practice. however, what is revealed, in this instance, is an inherent tension between facilitating students’ access to discoursal expectations and ‘teaching’ content. the role of writing consultants is to ‘talk’ to students dialogically about writing in geography but not to teach geographical content. this distinction is crucial: whereas the former requires an interstitial vantage point, the latter presupposes a location firmly within the discipline. put more simply, it is only through the former (talking to students about writing in geography) that the ‘space between’ disciplines can be harnessed as a pedagogical resource. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 38 discussion: pedagogic collaboration between the writing centre and the geography department we suggest that interventions such as this have the potential to bridge the gap between ‘traditional students’ (those with english as a home language and who come from resourced homes and/or had access to a good quality secondary school education) and ‘non-traditional students’ (cross & carpentier, 2009; archer, 2010). throughput rates suggest that ‘traditional students’, because of their cultural capital, manage to acquire academic literacy faster than most (hutchings, 2005; mgqwashu, 2009). lillis (2001) argues that the conventions implicit in essayist literacy represent a pervasive, taken-for-granted epistemological orientation in academia. without scaffolding or ‘socialisation’ into an academic tribe, students do not enjoy legitimate peripheral participant status, making learning difficult, which results in a lack of epistemological access and high failure rates (young, 1993; choi & hannafin, 1995; cottrell, 2001; barrass, 2002). it, therefore, behoves insiders to seek possibilities for acculturation and mediated participation into academic communities of practice (archer, 2008). thus, by enabling the writing consultants, perhaps in the manner described in this article, they can better enable ‘non-traditional’ students. that said, we acknowledge that academic practices are seldom anyone’s ‘mother tongue’ and usually all students need help in acquiring certain academic practices (bourdieu, passeron & de saint martin, 1994: 8). we posit, therefore, that one means of facilitating epistemological access is for academic insiders to engage in strategic and collaborative partnerships with organisational units such as the writing centre. thus, we agree with jacobs’ (2007) argument that higher education institutions need to create discursive spaces for such collaborations to flourish. in particular, both the academic department and the writing centre have to change. the writing centre has to actively seek out collaborative opportunities, and the academics have to embed the teaching of academic literacy into academic disciplines. this will also enrich the academic discipline. as gibbs (1992) argues, when more knowledgeable insiders mediate discipline-specific writing, they also mediate (deeper) discipline engagement. jacobs (2007) further argues that collaborations need to be sustained. cummins (1996) and zamel (1998) further reinforce this point, maintaining that the entire academic community must assume responsibility for facilitating their students’ process of acquiring academic literacy. if this is so, then the current positioning of the writing centre as outside of mainstream academic practice should be revisited. logistically, however, the intervention designed and implemented in this study was labour and time intensive. both the writing consultants and the students required high levels of ‘management’ to ensure that all aspects of the project were completed. students needed a lot of ‘reminding’ of the various steps the process required, and had to be checked upon to ensure that instructions were followed. in addition, as writing consultants are appointed in part-time positions at uj (we are aware that, at mckay & simpson the space between: pedagogic collaboration between a writing centre and an academic department 39 other institutions, such as nelson mandela metropolitan university, for example, this is not so), not all consultants attended all of the sessions. some consultants returned the essays late, hampering the smooth flow of the drafting and re-drafting process. in addition, we encountered challenges with the use of the assessment rubric. despite this not being the focus of the research, we concluded that rubrics (despite efforts to the contrary) are highly contested social artefacts open to multiple interpretations. the intervention, albeit small in scale, illustrates the potential benefits of collaboration between writing centres and academic departments. it represents a move away from ‘use’ of the writing centre on an ad hoc basis (involving having to cajole students to initiate and maintain contact with writing consultants) to a more sustained, informed and meaningful engagement. it demonstrates practically how academics can de-mystify the ‘institutional mystery’ that surrounds academic discourse, generally, and essayist literacy, in particular (lillis, 2001). as such, the intervention could be viewed as a first step in a progression towards an academic socialisation approach and, ultimately, an academic literacies approach (lea & street, 1998). that said, we are aware of the challenges surrounding the academic socialisation approach; in particular, problems of acculturation and reproduction of the status quo (kress, 2003; archer, 2010). there are also limitations to this study. not all the writing consultants participated fully in the intervention. the sample size is small. this has meant that the findings of this study should be regarded as indicative rather than conclusive. the study also did not examine the student experience of the intervention. future research in this regard will have to include the student experience as a focus of inquiry, and analyse student texts in order to ascertain the extent to which demonstrable improvement in student writing is evident. conclusion: a beginning, rather than an end in conclusion, archer (2010) argues that the unique positioning of writing centres grants them enormous potential for advancing institutional change. by bridging disciplines, writing centres can turn the tensions between generic and disciplinespecific writing practices into a productive resource (archer, 2010). our intervention suggests one possible way in which writing centres can leverage this position. in so doing, it contributes to the development of writing centre practice in south africa. thus, we agree with archer (2010) that writing centres should establish collaborative partnerships with discipline-specific academics in order for students to understand the multiple ways-of-being in academia: “writing within disciplines is vital in order to acquire discipline specific conventions” (archer, 2010: 496). however, this relies on writing consultants being introduced (during the course of their work) to different academic ‘tribal’ discourses. for writing consultants, this may mean that some degree of disciplinary ‘boundary-hopping’ is essential. as such, writing centres may need to develop consultants’ ability to ‘boundary-hop’ so as to create spaces for engagement between disciplines. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 40 this article constitutes a beginning, rather than an end. in line with the principle of progressive refinement (collins et al., 2004), which characterises design-based research, this article represents a first version of a ‘design’ for the development of writing centre practice. however, this ‘design’ needs to be further developed in future research. we believe that such further writing centre research should be undertaken into how the space between disciplines is manifested and how it can be used to improve student academic writing. this will require a different kind of study than that conducted in this instance, one in which the interaction between consultant and student is analysed, in order to establish how the ‘space between’ is created, maintained and employed as a pedagogical resource. acknowledgements we are most grateful to the participants in the study. the critical readers and anonymous referees who assisted in the reviewing of this article are appreciated. errors and omissions are our own. references archer a 2008. investigating the effect of writing centre interventions on student writing. south african journal of higher education, 22(2): 248-264. archer a 2010. challenges and potentials for writing centres in south african tertiary institutions. south african journal of higher education, 24(2): 495510. ballard b & clanchy j 1988. literacy in the university: an ‘anthropological’ approach. in b ballard & j clanchy (eds), literacy by degrees. milton keynes: open university press. ballard b & clanchy j 1991. assessment by misconception: cultural influences and intellectual traditions. in: l hamp-lyons (ed), assessing second language writing in academic contexts. norwood: ablex publishing. barrass r 2002. scientists must write. london: routledge. bourdieu p, passeron j & de saint martin m 1994. academic discourse: linguistic misunderstanding and professor power. cambridge: polity press. choi j-i & hannafin m 1995. situated cognition and learning environments: roles, structures, and implications for design. 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shalem y 2004. pedagogic responsiveness for academic depth. in h griesel (ed), curriculum responsiveness: case studies in higher education. pretoria: sauvca. starfield s 1994. multicultural classrooms in higher education. english quarterly, 26(3): 16-21. young mf 1993. instructional design for situated learning. educational technology research and development, 41(1): 43-58. perspectives in education 2013: 31(4) 42 zamel v 1998. questioning academic discourse. in v zamel & r spack (eds), negotiating academic literacies: teaching and learning across languages and cultures. new york: lawrence erlbaum and associates. perspectives in education 31(3) perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2013 university of the free state 139 teachers’ understanding of mathematical cognition in childhood: towards a shift in pedagogical content knowledge? elizabeth henning this article about the discourse of pedagogy as related to child cognition in mathematics addresses the issue of what constitutes the main disciplinary content and the pedagogical content knowledge (pck) of foundation-phase teachers. i argue that, unless child cognition itself is the primary disciplinary content of foundationphase teachers’ knowledge, it is likely that they will couch their pedagogical knowledge in teaching methods and materials more than in knowledge of conceptual development of learners and how such knowledge relates to teaching. in this first of a series of case studies, workshop-generated conversational and interview data were analysed qualitatively for discourse. the topics for the workshops were mathematical cognition and training in standardised test administration. the analysis showed that the discourse of teachers’ expressed knowledge about their practice was embedded in the language of policy, curriculum, teaching methods of mathematics, and the omniscience of the annual national assessments (anas) in south africa, with very few discourse markers representing knowledge of child cognition. during the course of the intervention, teachers gradually shifted their talk, expressing some understanding of trends in contemporary developmental cognitive psychology and neuroscience of mathematical cognition. the article recommends a stronger cognitive science focus in teacher professional development initiatives. keywords: educational neuroscience, pedagogical content knowledge, mathematical cognition, childhood education, teacher education, elementary school education, foundation-phase education, conceptual change, teacher development, constructivism. elizabeth henning uj institute for childhood education, university of johannesburg e-mail: ehenning@uj.ac.za telephone: 011 559 5104/2 perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 140 background: teachers learning about mathematical cognition this study of teacher development forms part of a longitudinal programme of research of children’s mathematical and arithmetical competence in the foundation phase (elementary school). the participating teachers learn to administer a mathematical competence test and are also introduced to the conceptual model that informs the test (fritz, ricken, balzer, willmes & leutner, under review; ricken, fritz & balzer, 2011). at the same time, they learn relevant aspects of cognitive developmental psychology and educational neuroscience. this diagnostic instrument is used to assess 4to 8-year-old children and is a local version of a european standardised test that is currently being translated, piloted and standardised in four south african languages with over 800 children participating. in the data from 249 tests administered over the first two years of the pilot project in 2011 and 2012, some trends have been identified that relate to the administrators/testers themselves (dampier & mawila, 2012; henning, 2012a). nine administrators are also teachers in a university teaching school, where their development as mathematics educators includes this training. the article focuses on these teachers and how they responded to the training in test administration and related topics that emanated from the training, asking the question: how does teachers’ discourse on their professional practice and knowledge shift during test administration training and related professional development workshops on the mathematical cognition of children? the study is a descriptive case study that portrays what may be regarded as teachers’ emergent conceptual change as evident in their discourse change. the genesis of the case study was teachers’ participation in training for test administration. to understand the thinking of testers, their assumptions about mathematical cognition were recorded prior to the first training session in which they learned how to administer the 45-minute diagnostic interview. in addition to nine administrator trainees who are foundation-phase teachers, 27 are senior foundationphase education undergraduate students at a university, and 10 are fieldworkers from an educational research agency. upon closer examination of the administrators’ conceptions of child cognition, we found that they gave scant attention to ideas about learning in childhood. we regarded the teachers’ discourse with concern and thus investigated the issue with pre-existing data from teacher development workshops on child cognition, which i had been running for a few months as part of the larger research and development project. shulman (1986) proposed that, in addition to subject (disciplinary) content and general pedagogy and educational knowledge, teachers should develop an integrated epistemology and concomitant practice that exemplify specific ways to communicate subject content knowledge. foundation-phase teachers, however, are teachers of all subjects in the curriculum and are thus not subject teachers of one subject (merseth, 2012). their pedagogical content knowledge (pck) is thus different to that of subject specialists, because it is more general, incorporating the whole curriculum. i argue that their speciality is the developing child, specifically the child who is developing cognitivelyemotionally in the areas of language, literacy, science and mathematics. they are 141 teachers’ understanding of mathematical cognition in childhood: towards a shift in pedagogical content knowledge? | elizabeth henning thus, on this view, specialists of child development/learning itself, and their practice of teaching should mirror an understanding of the developing/learning child (across the curriculum). for the topic of this article, this means that they are specialists in knowledge about the child learning and forming concepts of numeracy and of other components of mathematics in the first instance. hence, i would argue that foundation-phase teachers need more content knowledge about child cognition than about pedagogy. inserted in their learning of mathematics, language, literacy, science and art for foundation-phase teaching, should be the latest research on children’s learning. in our research group, we work with the longer term hypothesis that their teaching will increasingly become more learning-centred as they understand more about mathematical cognition as researched in both the behavioural and the educational neuroscience fields (posner, 2010; sousa, 2010). unfortunately, textbooks for teacher development are not always the sources of such knowledge. (see the textbook by montague-smith & price [2012] as an example and very different one by schwartz [2008].) in the remainder of this article, i shall first set out the analytical framework for investigating teachers’ change of epistemological position with regard to pck. i used conceptual change theory, following carey (2009), as an analytical lens to capture teachers’ shifting understanding of children’s mathematical cognition and how this shift may begin to feature in their discourse on classroom practice. i shall refer only briefly to the conceptual model of mathematical cognition (fritz et al., in press; ricken et al., 2011)) that the test designers used to inform the instrument which the teachers were learning to use. the methods of the inquiry and the discussion of the findings will follow, concluding that learning to use a test such as the marko-d, accompanied by professional development training in some introductory aspects of the cognitive developmental psychology (and some educational neuroscience) of mathematics learning, may be a fruitful avenue for changing the knowledge and the epistemological position of teachers and that this will be observable in their discourse. to offset the article, i shall briefly discuss what i regard as the dominant pedagogical discourse in foundation-phase education in south africa, namely constructivism. constructivist pedagogy as the dominant discourse although teachers are generally aware of constructivism as an epistemology, this knowledge is often directly, and i would argue, somewhat thoughtlessly, recontextualised (bernstein, 1996) as a specific type of pedagogy with defining characteristics. at the turn of the century, phillips (2000: 1) warned: ‘constructivism’ is a currently fashionable word in the western intellectual firmament, one which has beguiled a great many educational researchers, curriculum developers, trainers of teachers and teachers themselves … the philosopher, michael devitt, nominates constructivism as a candidate or the ‘most dangerous contemporary intellectual tendency’ … while renders duit regards it as ‘a fashionable and fruitful paradigm’. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 142 in the wake of what became known as ‘constructivist pedagogies’, deployed in ‘the constructivist classroom’, the recontextualisation (bernstein, 1996) of the epistemology in the empirical world of educational practice took on a whole new life form. what is essentially a philosophy of knowledge (piaget & garcia, 1991) and of knowing (von glasersfeld, 1995) became an empirical workhorse and, if i may play with the metaphor, also a clothes horse for teaching methods and techniques. critical discourse analyst norman fairclough (2003) shows how a dominant discourse (such as the philosophy of constructivism) feeds off its wide adoption and creates a new social reality (such as constructivist pedagogies), from which the discourse then feeds in a cycle of repetition until the idea becomes so prevalent that it is regarded as a characteristic of empirical reality instead of a lens through which to gaze upon reality. i am of the opinion that this is what happened to the work of piaget in some areas of education. for general consumption in nonspecialised courses and in popular workshops, his massive oeuvre of 88 books and hundreds of articles was reduced to textbook simplicity of how to teach according to his theories. the generic texts contained mostly only his ideas about stages of cognitive development, reference to assimilation and accommodation of knowledge, and some reference to disequilibrium. the context of his work as epistemology was replaced by such textbook generalisations that often failed to distinguish between empirical behaviour and ideas about behaviour. teacher education programmes are just too cluttered to allow for in-depth studies of such a proliferous scholar and so a simplified and reduced version of this huge body of knowledge was shrunk to byte sizes to fit teacher education curricula. von glasersfeld (1995: 53) writes: those who venture to summarise piaget’s ideas on the basis of two or three of his books have a limited perspective … at best they provide an incomplete view of piaget’s theory, at worst they perpetuate distortions of his key concepts. furthermore, piaget’s work has been (and i would say, wrongly) juxtaposed with the ideas of his contemporary, lev vygotsky (kozulin, 1990), who published much less in his short life. many teachers in south africa, as elsewhere, were educated to offset piagetian constructivism against the presumed counter-discourse developed from the early harvesting of english translations of vygotsky’s two books, written in the 1930s (vygotsky, 1962; 1978). the first english translations of his work became totems of matters ‘social’ and ‘cultural’ in learning and were recontextualised in matters of teaching. more or less similar discourse events ensued, as was the case with piaget’s work. vygotsky’s ideas were reduced and made palatable, divorced from the context of stalinist russia. what is more, the two scholars were placed on opposing sides of the epistemological and pedagogical spectra. this brings me to the question of how teachers of young children, educated with the type of general integration of epistemology and pedagogy, as described in this section of the article, form what carey (2009) refers to as a ‘conceptual system’ of knowledge for teaching. i reason that, if teachers are introduced to this type 143 teachers’ understanding of mathematical cognition in childhood: towards a shift in pedagogical content knowledge? | elizabeth henning of epistemological thinking, it may have a persistent influence on how they view pedagogy. easy-to-use textbook ideas of constructivism may form the foundation for their tacit theories of learning, thinking, for example, that young children are able to learn concepts only in specific (piagetian) stages, not realising that evolution has given us some innate knowledge of number (carey, 2009; wynn, 1992; dehaene, 2011). they may also, for example, not know that mathematics is a recent cultural artefact, developed by human beings, and relying heavily on language and other symbols for its initial mastery. they may not know that they have to teach very systematically and use language very deliberately and selectively as main instructional medium. they may not know how to create what venkat (2013) describes as ‘connections’ in lessons. i believe that contemporary psychology and neuroscience research give us some of the information that may help teachers to build what i will refer to as ‘a pck conceptual system’, which is aligned with scientific knowledge of the past two decades and not with the constructivist pedagogies of (often outdated) textbooks. teachers’ ‘conceptual systems’ of pck to clarify what is meant by a conceptual system, i refer to susan carey’s model of conceptual systems (carey, 2009). i use it not to refer to children’s systems of concepts, but to teachers’ thinking about teaching and learning. on this model, a conceptual system is a collection of concepts that form a framework or a blueprint for understanding phenomena and directing action. in such a conceptual system, the knowledge referents, the discourse and the broader semiotics are intertwined and, although not cemented, they do remain somewhat closed (figure 1 presents two such hypothetical systems that illustrate conceptual change). figure1: the discourse of two hypothetical conceptual systems of pck perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 144 the ideas comprising a new conceptual system are, furthermore, not commensurable with ideas and discourse of an antecedent system. such systems contain not only different concepts, but also concepts that “are incoherent from the point of view from the other” (carey, 2009: 359). in explaining this, carey (2009: 371-376) refers to the history of physical theories such as thermal theory and oxygen theory. once science had progressed beyond the original theories, it was no longer possible to think of the subsequent theories (lodged in conceptual systems) in terms of the first ones. for instance, i argue that, if a teacher knows what neuroimaging tells us about learning (even though it may still be only a little), s/he will think differently about how to teach, although, agreeing with coch (2010: 139), this does not mean that there are “easy-to-follow recipes for classroom practice”, based on educational neuroscience. for example, if one knows that time, space and number areas of the brain are physically proximal (gallistel, 2012), one will understand more fully why prepositions are such gremlins in word problems. such a realisation may have a direct impact on the way in which we wish to teach sequencing of numbers and how we will teach prepositions as well as the adverbs of time and place. in a (hypothetical) pck conceptual system that is embedded in this type of knowledge, it would be difficult for a teacher not to be very careful with the way she expresses concepts in language. in other words, a teacher will be more aware of his/her communication and other discourse strategies. s/he will not necessarily change his/her method or strategy itself. changing a concept about learning/teaching requires not only new information, although information is vital to form concepts to constitute a conceptual system (cs). it is also not about changing a belief system only. changing a conceptual system within which one’s knowledge is lodged is no easy task, especially if it can impact something as personal as teaching, where experience and habit together have created a personal belief of what works in a classroom. it is unlikely that any teacher will set out to deliberately change a conceptual system within which s/he conducts his/her work. if one agrees with snow, griffin and burns’s (2005) notion of the development of professional teacher knowledge(s) through stages of learning and practice as a teacher, there is little doubt that change does not come easily to teachers’ personal belief and conceptual systems of pedagogy. south african teachers have been subjected to three curriculum revisions in little over a decade. in each of those three transitions, they were expected to adapt their practice in some way. i am not sure if teachers managed the conceptual changes required for these three educational curriculum shifts, not because they do not have the ability, but because they do not have sufficient knowledge content to inform their change and shake their beliefs. it was expected of teachers to develop a ‘pck conceptual system’ for which they did not have the tools. some of these tools can be found in recent research on learning. 145 teachers’ understanding of mathematical cognition in childhood: towards a shift in pedagogical content knowledge? | elizabeth henning a teacher development intervention: conceptual development in mathematics based on current knowledge the topics for the workshops and the training session, from which data for this inquiry were sourced, were introduced with the aim of ‘bootstrapping’ (carey, 2009) or supporting teachers’ change of concepts of what constitutes mathematics pedagogy by changing their views of learning. the workshops were organised to include the following topics: • core knowledge of number. • an overview of the history of mathematics as cultural artefact. • hierarchical development of mathematical concepts in early childhood (the marko-d conceptual model). • conceptual development and linguistic representation. • educational neuroscience and behavioural learning mathematics. • the marko-d test and the constructs that each of the 55 items measures. in all five meetings, the emphasis was on current developmental cognitive psychology and educational neuroscience. the reasoning was that this type of knowledge may achieve what curriculum directives find difficult to do, namely change teacher thinking. the interesting scientific facts in themselves can appeal to teachers’ epistemological and pedagogical beliefs. as early as 1983, hart argued that “teaching without an awareness of how the brain learns is like designing a glove without a sense of what a hand looks like” (sousa, 2010: 13). with current interest in the work of scholars such as gallistel and gelman (1978), wynn (1992), dehaene (2011), butterworth (1999; 2005), goswami (2008), sousa (2010), posner (2010) and other prominent developmental cognitive psychologists and linguists, hart’s assertion may be a sign of what will inform education in future. in his recent books on the neuroscience of reading and on mathematics learning, dehaene (2009: 228; dehaene, 2011: 275) sets out what some of the implications of new neurological research may be for education. for example, he argues that, if knowledge of the structure of dna could change our understanding in many areas of medical science and change practice, knowledge of the physiology of the brain may have a role to play in our conceptions of literacy education and mathematics teaching. i would add that, combined with results from three decades of cognitive developmental psychology in this field, change in the teaching of foundation-phase mathematics may come about more easily through knowledge of child cognition (and its biology) than through endless workshops on methods of teaching. teachers can be shown a landscape of psychology and neuroscience portrayed by researchers such as le corre, van de walle, brannon and carey (2006), wynn (1992), dehaene and brannon (2011) and xu, spelke and goddard (2005) and examine their own practice perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 146 with a different lens. the type of lens is captured in the international educational organisation, mind brain and education (sousa, 2010; fischer, 2010), which strives to bring scientific knowledge of the brain to the classroom, while critiquing the ‘neuromyths’ that abounded in the popular literature in the 1990s. when i set out to capture teachers’ discourse on their practice and their thinking, i was hoping to find some indication of emergent conceptual change about their practice (and thus what feeds their practice, which, i argue, is their pck). i aimed to do this through the exemplar of mathematics teaching, my reasoning having been that this specific form of pedagogy requires a very specific understanding of learning. the inquiry the inquiry is a descriptive case study of teachers’ discourse within the bounded system of their conversation in four workshops, a training session and four individual interviews within a five-month period, with a follow-up group interview after eight months. the boundaries of the case (stake, 2005; henning, van rensburg & smit, 2004) were thus very specific. the ethical clearance for this research was obtained in the programme of research of the education faculty of the university, in which teachers agreed to the research on condition that they and their place of work will remain anonymous. they signed an agreement with the university upon their appointment as teachers at the school, in which they made themselves available for research. methods data sourced from workshop discussions and interviews the process of the inquiry is represented in figure 2, showing the sequence of activities that led to the final themes that were extracted from the data. figure 2: the process of data collection and analysis 147 teachers’ understanding of mathematical cognition in childhood: towards a shift in pedagogical content knowledge? | elizabeth henning in the teacher development workshops, the discussions took place in three formats: • the conceptual model for the marko-d was introduced along with introductory ideas of psychology and neuroscience, with a demonstration and discussions of a computer game, the number race, designed by stanislas dehaene and anna wilson (dehaene, 2011: 281). • the teachers watched brief extracts of video recordings of their teaching in their school, after which the extracts were discussed from the perspective of the theoretical knowledge to which the teachers had been introduced. • the development work culminated in the training to use the marko-d test. i made notes during and after the workshop sessions and audio recorded only pertinent and ethically permissible sections of the first and the last one, amounting to 95 minutes of audio recordings. i also recorded interviews with four of the teachers on their views of teaching prior to the workshops and the training. during the revision of this article, i conducted a focus group interview with eight teachers and the school principal. the data sources constitute a descriptive collage of teacher discourse over a period of eight months, captured in five conversations and four individual and one group interview(s). discourse markers for data analysis the different data sets were collated and analysed in two phases, both of which were aimed at identifying discourse markers (figure 2). in this process i marked/ labelled utterances with descriptors such as “specific teaching method”, “education department quality assurance”, “curriculum compliance”, “the brain”, “annual assessments”, and so forth. i first used only field notes and audio recordings (without transcriptions, in order to pick up on paralinguistic phenomena, such as tone and volume, and also in the interest of time). upon the recommendation of reviewers of the work, i employed the services of a transcriber for all the audio data and repeated the labelling of discourse markers, selecting utterances (beyond single words) that occurred repeatedly. the dominant discourse markers (45 in total) were then grouped in the following categories: initial discourse 1. teaching mathematics consists of the use of methods (believed to have been derived from constructivism). 2. teaching/instruction of mathematics is minimised by classroom management needs. 3. compliance to the national curriculum is the object of teaching perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 148 mathematics. 4. expectations of the provincial education department regarding administration in the classroom are high. 5. ‘caps and ana training’ (national curriculum and annual assessments) are important components of their work duties as teachers of mathematics. 6. teachers find it difficult to provide support for children who struggle with number. 7. issues concerning language in the classroom, referring mostly to the school’s policy of translation and dual language education in mathematics lessons. emergent discourse 8. language is the mediator of learning mathematics. 9. children learn mathematics by forming numerical and other mathematical concepts. 10. children learn mathematics by repetition, feedback and practice. from these categories, i deduced the following overall themes of the teachers’ discourse: teaching has become a bureaucratic function for the teachers; they are keen to learn about learning, as was evident in the emergent discourse to which i refer briefly in the findings; they are somewhat fixated on methods as beacons of expertise, a theme i identified from the grounded analysis of the data, and they are finding it difficult to linguistically explain the concepts that they try to teach. categories 8-10 were marked by lexical items that were prominent in the training workshops, including the use of terms such as “neurons”, “language areas”, “prefrontal cortex”, “symbolic representation”, and “number sense”. findings: a keen interest and some change bearing in mind the categories and the themes, i composed two “conceptual systems”. the first one, conceptual system 1, has the qualifier “pck with curriculum compliance in mind”. from a much less frequent set of utterances from only 11 original discourse markers out of a total of 45, i composed conceptual system 2, with the qualifier “emergent pck with learning in mind”. the majority of the markers used as indicators for conceptual system 1 contained terms and phrases such as “rhythmic counting”, “doing the bonds”, “using group-work”, “counting in twos/threes”, “they must count every day to warm up”, “we use the number charts for everything”, “no fingers!”, “sharing is fractions”, “estimate is how many there are”, “they must write the numbers neatly”, “they must know their number line”, “i explain everything with writing on the board”, “how are they going to do this on the anas”, “i assess to see 149 teachers’ understanding of mathematical cognition in childhood: towards a shift in pedagogical content knowledge? | elizabeth henning if they do it right”, “it’s what we learned in caps training”, “i have not read the caps completely”. figure 3: emergent epistemological shift in teachers’ discourse in the interest of space, instead of citing selected verbatim utterances, i shall summarise the main trends in the data. by far the most dominant theme was the teachers’ continuous conversation about the national curriculum, with policy issues and administrative tasks and assessment comprising most of the talk. throughout the conversation, the curriculum manifested consistently, even though it was not at all the direct object of conversation at every new conversational turn. references to specific aspects, including page numbers of the document of the curriculum and assessment policy statement were more frequent than any other reference, with the discussion of the anas a close second. another dominant theme was the teachers’ reference to the use of material resources and different methods and techniques that they had learned and of which their classrooms exhibited ample evidence. they were also concerned about the language of instruction, about code-switching and in which language the learners were to be tested in the anas. their talk about child cognition was minimal and vague at the outset and, as expected, comprised the need to practise a constructivist pedagogy and to “use cooperative” learning techniques, especially when they noticed a learner who struggled. they also noted that rote perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 150 learning was not beneficial. they emphasised group work and related various techniques of “doing group work”, ensuring that “social learning takes place, because children learn from each other”. however, after the second workshop, the teachers started to ask questions about mathematical cognition. i noted that the neuroscience information awakened more interest than the psychology and asked them why the brain was of more interest to them than the psychological experiments of conceptual development which we had discussed. only two teachers volunteered to respond. they admitted to being attracted to the fact that one could see the products of the fmri scans and the other scans. one teacher mentioned that she now thinks that she will understand how her children speak and act, regarding them as people “with a fast moving brain”, instead of learners who struggle to calculate. they were surprised to learn that brain activity can be viewed in milliseconds and that areas of activity can be pinpointed. the brief discussion we had on core cognition/knowledge of mathematics also became a focus. i had the sense that the teachers had never really thought of the physiology of learning or of evolution as theoretical context for studying learning. the leading converser in the group said as much: i always thought learning was a bit magic. we as teachers have to let them do the work and then the rest is just magic. if they do the work they will learn … sometimes the magic does not happen and then we have to do more work, and they have to do more work until they get it right. if they don’t get it right second time i know they are just a slow learner. another teacher, who had been reluctant to speak, said: i just think of me and how i must finish this teaching and mark the books and be a good teacher. i knew that some children struggle and that some others are fast, and i try to help them, but i never ever thought of the detail. there is an ironical twist in these findings, as the teachers’ discourse during the training and development sessions was recognisably camouflaged by a ‘learnercentred’ lexicon with a strong emphasis on constructivism as pedagogy. yet, they hardly mentioned child cognition itself. the most talked about social issues related to the pupils and how children “learn together”. it perturbed me that they did not refer to children’s talk or questions. talk about this was, to a large extent, absent. the object of their pedagogy discourse was not the learning child. discussion and conclusions: child cognition as core of pck for foundation-phase teachers? what is evident from this brief foray into the participating teachers’ talk about young children’s conceptual development in mathematics is that it had never been an object of much reflection for them and, if it had been, they did not refer to it. their epistemological-pedagogical position, which i wished to describe, remains, at best, adrift. the data show clearly that they view themselves, with their methods and 151 teachers’ understanding of mathematical cognition in childhood: towards a shift in pedagogical content knowledge? | elizabeth henning techniques, and leaning on the school curriculum, as somewhat mechanical conduits for child learning, gleaning skills and knowledge from whatever source comes their way. however, they do not appear to know themselves as professionals – what makes them good teachers of mathematics for young children, as described by thames and ball (2010). judging by some of the comments, they have no shortage of workshops, meetings and newsletters to inform them as to how to be a good teacher. two of them served as “caps trainers” for the local education department. by and large, i am of the opinion that they are regarded as good, effective teachers. there is no question that they work very hard. i have no single way of interpreting the findings, even though i make the effort to regard the findings as a manifestation of (if only barely emergent) conceptual change (figures 1 and 3). in this instance, i need to emphasise that the work is exploratory and that it is an exercise in getting to know the field of teacher talk (and behaviour) concerning foundation-phase mathematics teaching. the article can claim no more than that. the encouraging signs about conceptual change in a series of ongoing workshops beg for more research. at least the teachers have some information about recent research and it did set them onto some new discussions. towards the end of the workshop series, there was an indication that they are beginning to wonder about mathematical cognition and about the model that we had presented to them. thinking from the perspective of shulman’s (1986) notion of different teacher knowledge(s), i do draw one conclusion: in this case study, the teachers’ pck, as expressed in their talk, comprises mostly general pedagogical knowledge, with only glimpses of subject-specific pedagogical knowing, as a way of knowing – “fachspezifisch-pädagogischen wissen” (lange et al., 2011). the content knowledge of childhood mathematical cognition is still foreign to the teachers in this research sample. their response to the introduction of the topic was, however, very positive. based on the participants’ observable interest in the model and the underlying knowledge bases of cognitive developmental psychology and neuroscience, i make a case for pck of foundation-phase teachers to include as much knowledge as possible of recent research on mathematical cognition of young children. i agree with ball et al. (2008) that shulman’s pck model is not a fixed model. perhaps it is time to consider a different variant of it for teacher education and development in the foundation phase. thames and ball (2010) conclude that, besides knowledge and skill, there also needs to be fluency in knowing mathematics for teaching. i argue that such a fluency (coherence) may be found in an understanding of the developing mind of the child, coupled with what mathematics, as a cultural phenomenon, has to offer young children (dehaene, 2011; dehaene & brannon, 2011; brannon, 2002; butterworth, 2005). acknowledgement funding for the programme of research, in which this article was developed, was obtained from the south african national research foundation (nrf grant no. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 152 78827) and from the zenex foundation. the views expressed in this article are the author’s only. endnotes i) in referring to cognition, the role of emotion and motivation is included. ii) marko-d is an acronym, translated from german as “mathematical and arithmetical competence diagnostic”. the test (fritz et al., 2013) is available from the publisher, hogrefe verlag, göttingen. iii) his work on children’s development of number is an exception, because the users are usually mathematics education scholars who refer to his work in a more specific fashion (piaget, 1965, for example). references ball dl, thames mh & phelps g 2008. content knowledge for teaching: what makes it special? journal of teacher education, 59(5): 389-407. bernstein, b 1996. pedagogy, symbolic control and identity. london: taylor & francis. butterworth b 1999. the mathematical brain. london: macmillan. butterworth b 2005. the development of arithmetical abilities. journal of child psychology and psychiatry, 46: 3-18. coch d 2010. constructing a reading brain. in a sousa (ed), mind, brain and education. neuroscience implications for the classroom (pp.139-162). bloomington, in: solution tree press. dampier ga & mawila d 2012. test items and translation: testing mathematical concepts reliably? south african journal of childhood education, 2(2): 35-57. dehaene s 2009. reading in the brain. the new science of how we read. london: penguin. dehaene s 2011. the number sense. how the mind creates mathematics. 2nd ed. cambridge: oxford university press. fairclough n 2003. analysing discourse. textual analysis for social research. new york: routledge. fennema e, franke m & carpenter tp 1993. using children’s knowledge in mathematical instruction. american educational research journal, 30(3): 555583. fritz a, ehlert a & balzer l (in press). development of mathematical concepts as basis for an elaborated mathematical understanding. south african journal of childhood education, 3(1). fritz a, ehlert a, ricken g & balzer l 2013. mathematikund rechenkonzepte für die 1. klasse diagnose. 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in south africa, 1995-2006 roger deacon school of education, university of kwazulu-natal deacon@ukzn.ac.za ruksana osman school of education, university of the witwatersrand michelle buchler centre for education policy development, johannesburg this article reports on findings pertaining to scholarship in teacher education drawn from a wider study on all education research in south africa from 1995 to 2006. the study, which defined education research as broadly pertaining to teaching and/or learning, obtained extensive data from a wide range of sources: universities, non-government organisations (ngos), education and training authorities and electronic databases. the levels, scale, educational sectors and disciplinary areas of each entry in the resulting 10 315-strong database were identified, and on the basis of a random sample of 600 texts seven primary research themes in teacher education were identified and are detailed here: the re-conceptualisation of teachers as facilitators, the problems and possibilities of cooperative learning or group work, the use of educational support materials and resources, the idea of ‘teaching for learning’, the importance of context, the nature of continuous assessment, and debates on teacher evaluation. keywords: education research, teacher education, south africa introduction during 2008 the centre for education policy development (cepd), commissioned by the national research foundation (nrf), constructed and analysed a database of education research in south africa from 1995 to 2006, inclusive, with the aim of determining the gaps, strengths and general research trends over that twelve-year period (deacon, osman & buchler, 2009a). after briefly outlining the main aspects of this wider study of education research, the article focuses mainly on issues pertinent to research in teacher education. in particular, it summarises seven primary research themes being addressed under the rubric of teacher education, including the re-conceptualisation of teachers as facilitators, the problems and possibilities of cooperative learning or group work, the use of educational support materials and resources, the idea of ‘teaching for learning’, the importance of context, the nature of continuous assessment, and debates over teacher evaluation. methodology the cepd/nrf study (deacon, osman & buchler, 2009a) defined education research very broadly, as pertaining to teaching and/or learning, in order to capture the widest possible range of research endeavours and education (and training) contexts and sub-sectors. research and publications data was obtained from a wide range of overlapping sources, including all 23 south african universities, the national department of education, 15 other government departments, public institutions and councils, 15 education ngos and research units, 27 sector education and training authorities, 8 museums, 18 publishers of education books, 24 donor agencies, 7 education sector trade unions and an education labour service ngo, 7 sets of annual education conference proceedings, 10 south africa-based education journals and the education resources information center (eric), nexus, african higher education research online (ahero), blackwell, perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 20102 informaworld, ingenta, sage and taylor and francis electronic databases. this data was categorised in terms of a multi-dimensional matrix (identifying the level/s, scale, educational sector/s and disciplinary area/s of each database entry), of which only the scale categories (large scale, case study and small scale) are exclusive and do not overlap; all other categories (level, educational sector and disciplinary area) are not mutually exclusive and many texts can and do fall under more than one area, level or sector. categorisation was facilitated by obtaining, and extracting the aims and findings from, a total of 2100 texts (20% of the database, which for ease of access, were primarily journal articles). the vast majority of texts listed in the database were drawn from peer-reviewed sources, and even those texts that could be classed as ‘grey’ literature (i.e., unpublished or undisseminated research) had nevertheless been subjected to some degree of review or oversight. the bulk of the database was categorised on the basis of bibliographical references rather than on the perusal of the actual texts. while the final database contains a near-comprehensive list of education research in south africa from 1995 to 2006, it is not yet complete in that a small number of institutions were unable to provide complete data; more importantly, most masters and doctoral thesis data is accumulated separately and has not yet been incorporated. primary research themes were identified on the basis of a close textual and comparative analysis of 600 randomly sampled texts. while numerous themes are addressed in the literature, only those which were most frequently iterated in these texts were deemed to constitute major and sustained foci, and are discussed here. hence, neither these texts nor their themes can be said to be representative of the final database as a whole; in comparison to the final database, sampled books, chapters in books and journal articles were over-represented, while reports, conference papers and proceedings were under-represented, to the order of 5%. nevertheless, when silhouetted against the background of the 20% of the database that is replete with aims and findings, they offer a glimpse of some of the more important issues that have been addressed by education scholars in south africa since 1995. findings: education research in south africa the wider study revealed that education scholarship is energetic and growing, producing an average of about 900 research outputs of all types per annum and by 2006 having almost doubled the total output of 1995. however, in the main this scholarship is diffuse, individualized and on a small scale, with a dearth of large scale research projects that could consolidate knowledge about issues of national and global importance. of the 10 315 texts in the database, 45% are journal articles, 25% are conference papers and proceedings, 14% are reports, 7% are chapters in books, 6% are theses, and 3% are books. more than one person authors some 35% of all research. of the journal articles, approximately 49% were published in one of ten south africa-based journals of education, 24% in other south africa-based journals and 27% in non-south africa-based journals. while it is significant that over a quarter of south african education research, published in the form of journal articles, is directly reaching a global readership, this is not in itself an indication of quality. many non-south africa-based journals are not thomson scientific indexed, while some south africa-based journals are. nevertheless, most local education journals cater primarily for a local audience and have little international visibility, with even those south africa-based education journals with thomson scientific accreditation (all of them accredited within the past five years, and including the south african journal of education, perspectives in education, and education as change), being poorly cited internationally (see tijssen, mouton, van leeuwen & boshoff, 2006:170, 172; academy of science of south africa (assaf) 2006:54-58; and, for a fuller analysis, deacon, osman & buchler, 2010:96). in terms of the database as a whole, 48% of education research in south africa focuses on the classroom level, 38% on the systemic (i.e., regional, provincial, national or international) level, and 11% on the institutional level (with a tiny remainder (3%) concerned with out-of-school situations, including adult education and training, vocational training and home schooling, but not including formal higher education). the formal schooling sector is, at 48% of the database, by far the greatest single focus of education research, followed by the higher education sector at 32%. deacon et al — scholarship in teacher education in south africa, 1995-2006 3 a mammoth 94% of all education research is small scale and often qualitative, ranging from experiential micro-studies through textual exegesis to small scale surveys. only 5% of research consists of (clearly bounded and focused) case studies, and barely 1% could be classified as large-scale research (defined as research involving 450 or more subjects, 40 or more schools, one or more educational sectors in their entirety, a province, the country or several countries). the overwhelmingly small scale nature of education research in the country can be attributed to a number of factors: foreign donor funding for existing community-oriented broad-based research dried up after the 1994 democratic election or was redirected through government channels; the relatively substantial amount of macro-policy research of the midto late-1990s was nevertheless often quickly absorbed into official white papers; increasing ‘publish or perish’ pressures on academics and researchers can be satisfied more easily, more quickly and more cheaply by small scale research than by sustained, long-term and in-depth research projects; many progressive researchers have continued to associate empirical research with positivism, capitalism and apartheid, and consequently remain ideologically suspicious of the more quantitative and empirical methods often present in large scale research; and small scale studies are encouraged under the current intellectual hegemony of constructivism in education research (see mouton, 2006; taylor, muller & vinjevold, 2003; diphofa, vinjevold and taylor, 1999; muller, 1996; and, for a fuller analysis, deacon, osman & buchler, 2010). research in teacher education (including all research, practice, policy and programmes, formal and informal, involved in teaching, training and/or developing teachers at all levels of the education system, except, specifically, teaching in higher education), constitutes the fifth largest disciplinary area in education research from 1995 to 2006, accounting for 5% of the entire database (or 1006 texts). 33% of all education research from 1995 to 2006 inclusive is concentrated in four disciplinary areas: educational theory (or sociology and philosophy of education) (12% of the database); education management (including governance, leadership and discipline as well as whole school development and school efficiency) (9%); education policy (including education planning, policy development and policy implementation) (6%); and higher education studies (referring to all aspects of teaching, learning, curriculum development, institutional change and management at the tertiary level, both public and private) (6%). the areas of language studies (including linguistics and literature), educational psychology (including guidance, counselling, career education and life orientation) and academic development (treated as distinct from higher education studies, albeit pertaining largely to this sector, and including academic support, academic literacy, tutoring, mentoring, supervision, schooluniversity transitions, and issues of access and admissions) are equivalent in quantity to teacher education in that each of them makes up 5% of the database. the comparatively large amount of research in the area of teacher education reflects the significance ascribed to the development of new policies and practices, such as outcomes-based education and continuous assessment, as well as to a context in which south african teachers are currently held in low esteem, not least because their learners fare poorly in international comparative achievement rankings. teacher education research consists overwhelmingly of small-scale studies, and most of it (69%) is located at the classroom level. findings: primary themes in teacher education research this section focuses on the primary research themes identified in the disciplinary area of teacher education only. however, to place these themes in the context of education research in south africa as a whole, brief mention can be made of the primary themes identified in the seven other largest disciplinary areas. primary themes in educational theory include the critical application and assessment of constructivism, the relationships between disciplinary and applied knowledge and between theory and practice, and reflections on power relations, key educational concepts and ‘asset’ models of education. in education management, primary themes include the effects of educational decentralisation and devolution of power, the changing nature of leadership, discipline, and institutional and organisational cultures. much education policy research tracks what is seen as overly idealistic policy-making in south africa, exacerbated by implementation difficulties, and also undertakes a large amount of sectorand discipline-specific studies, perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 20104 such as higher education policy and language in education policy (see also deacon, osman & buchler, 2010). research under the rubric of higher education studies explores the political and institutional implications of higher education transformation, the dual focus on both equity and excellence, the emphasis on performance and productivity, assessment, accountability and autonomy (see also (deacon, osman & buchler, 2009b). among the primary themes in educational psychology are the precise roles and functions of critical thinking and meta-cognition, the impact of stress on teaching and learning in changing educational environments, and the nature of individual identity formation. poor language proficiency, especially in english, and the close connections between language, cognition and academic achievement are the primary concerns of language studies, along with debates over the use in education of indigenous languages, or mother tongue. finally, academic development focuses mainly on the transition from school to university, the ‘under-preparedness’ of incoming students and/or accepting institutions, the recognition of prior learning, and the acquisition of academic literacies. the seven primary themes that emerged from an examination of relevant texts in the area of teacher education included: the re-conceptualisation of teachers as facilitators;• the problems and possibilities of cooperative learning or group work;• the use of educational support materials and resources;• the idea of ‘teaching for learning’;• the importance ascribed to context;• the nature of continuous assessment; and• debates on teacher evaluation.• teachers as facilitators to a distant observer, it might have appeared over the last decade that “the words ‘teacher’ and ‘teaching’ were virtually banned” in south african education policy discourse, because of their supposedly authoritarian connotations (nykiel-herbert, 2004:254). indeed, education research in general abounds in the use of the alternative terms “educator”, “facilitator” or “mediator”. the primary factor behind this phenomenon is the constructivist (and, before that, freirean) idea that knowledge and meaning can, and should be, actively and reflexively constructed through the practical, collective and cooperative participation of those who are learning, with the teacher facilitating but not determining this process, and continuously and formatively assessing the extent to which new meanings are arrived at. hence, “[i]nstead of a teacher standing in front of learners transferring content to passive listeners, there is a facilitator organising groups of learners who are actively involved in the learning process” (messerschmidt, 2003:107) or, put differently, “[t]he teacher must move away from the blackboard and from a role as dispenser of wisdom to one of organising the learners’ discussions and managing group work and feedback” (johnson, scholtz, botha & hodges, 2003:87). despite this prevailing view, many researchers do not accept, and resist, this apparent demotion of the teacher, and do not consider it sufficient that teachers nevertheless remain important as “experts”, “observers” and “creators of learning situations” (macdonald, 2002:123). some issues of particular concern to these critics of constructivism include the teacher’s potential loss of authority, the practical difficulties of continuous assessment, and the extent to which mastering the vast accumulated corpus of global knowledge may no longer be pertinent to a school curriculum (berkhout, 2006:921-922; van der walt, 1997:11; van renen, 2005:114; enslin, pendlebury, & tjiattas, 2001:124; young, 2004:10; higgs, 2002:174; shalem, 1999:54). cooperative learning or group work cooperative learning, or group work in common outcomes-based education parlance, is extolled by many as the ideal vehicle for bringing about the transformation of south african education. strongly associated with constructivism, it involves learning through the medium of small groups, whose individuals share deacon et al — scholarship in teacher education in south africa, 1995-2006 5 skills, assist each other in constructing knowledge and collaborate in order to solve problems; it has been applied in educational settings from primary school to university, and across a range of learning areas (messerschmidt, 2003; de villiers & grobler, 1995; bitzer, kapp & engelbrecht, 1999; bornman, 1997; henning, mamiane & pheme, 2001; de jager & ferreira, 2003). south african teachers, bombarded with but insufficiently trained in new policies and curricula, have tended to equate the simple practice of dividing learners into groups with transformative education (brodie, lelliott & davis, 2002; harley & wedekind, 2004; see also department of education, 2000). supporters of cooperative learning point out, however, that merely “using small discussion groups in teaching” is insufficient; only “effective groups” — planned, guided, supported and accountable — promote learning (bitzer, 2004:41-43, 47-48). cooperative learning exponents draw on vygotsky to argue that learning potential is “realised during interaction with more knowledgeable others” (bitzer, 2004:47, emphasis in the original; bertram, 2003:224) — who need not be formal teachers, but could as well be fellow pupils — to lead the way towards “deep learning” or the development of high levels of “reflexive competence” or “epistemic knowledge” (luckett, 2001:33). it follows, moreover, that a teacher is still required to structure group activities, motivate pupils, appoint or organise the appointment of a group leader, intervene in appropriate ways and manage feedback (bitzer, 2004:51-54; park, 1995:42-43; steyn & killen, 2001:66), and this fact will encourage those who feel that the teacher still has a central role to play. lacking an expert other, learners, especially those with limited english language proficiency and a didactic academic background, often display a surface rather than a deep approach to learning, and such superficial cooperative “learning”, marred by “group think” (“that the majority view will prevail … even if … wrong”), may not be learning at all, even “hindering students from becoming independent and self reliant learners”: “in a worst case scenario, students are simply sharing their ignorance” (bertram, 2003:220-224). there are other aspects to the debates associated with cooperative learning. as is the case with any approach to teaching and learning, a sense of safety, and also of familiarity, both within groups and in their immediate environment, can make it possible for pupils to excel (bodenstein, 1998:286; luckett, 2001:33; roux, 2003:131). it thus pays to remember that “skills of autonomous learning do not come automatically” (schulze, 2003:7), but require a supportive milieu, and that group participation techniques in themselves may need to be explicitly taught and fostered. whereas one study of grade 4 pupils found that, despite unfavourable classroom circumstances, “learners coped with co-operative learning” (messerschmidt, 2003:111), this stands in sharp contrast to a similar exercise in a well-resourced university context, which showed that ineffective groups were those that either did not prepare, or did not exploit expert resources, or simply chatted too much (de villiers & grobler, 1995:131). a common critical finding in the literature is that outcomes-based education has become almost synonymous with group work, with the large majority of teachers taking up the form and not the substance of group work (brodie et al., 2002:541; see also de jager & ferreira, 2003:195). far too often, group work may in fact involve little interaction, and may even be dominated by a few learners. others point out that, in some instances, the traditional lecture format can achieve what some supporters of cooperative learning claim as their own: “it is [also] possible for learners to construct meaning in a lecture situation if the learner is actively engaged and if the teacher frames and scaffolds the knowledge appropriately in the lecture” (brodie, lelliott and davis, 2002:100-101). educational support materials and resources in an educational context, emphasising that learners should construct knowledge for themselves, traditional resources like the textbook and the chalkboard have fallen somewhat out of favour. nevertheless, it has been found that textbooks remain an important structuring resource, especially for mathematics and science teachers, while the chalkboard, too, can be a useful and productive learning device, albeit that teachers’ ingenuity in this regard has tended to be “uneven, partial and contextual” (adler, reed, lelliott and setati, in adler and reed, 2002:62-4; strauss, 2000). disadvantaged schools are often found to have other experiential, contextual and practical resources (jita, 1998:21); nevertheless, these and existing teaching resources tend to be under-utilised (engelbrecht et al., 2006:124). the current obsession with perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 20106 additional and alternative teaching materials, to the virtual exclusion of useful material at hand, may merely impose more demands on teachers without being more helpful: “resources that are brought into the classroom do not necessarily have educational meanings built into them” (adler, reed, lelliott & setati, in adler & reed, 2002:69). ‘teaching for learning’ many teacher education programmes, particularly but not only in mathematics and science education, are said to involve little unpacking or decompression, and much compression and abbreviation of ideas (adler & davis, 2006:270-271). among the reasons are the poor quality of existing teachers, who simply “do not know enough mathematics [or science]” and thus need opportunities to practice and rehearse their basic disciplinary knowledge; the perceived academic inferiority of decompressed reasoning (the know-how) vis-à-vis the ‘pure’ disciplines of mathematics or science (the know-what) (adler & davis, 2006:290-292); and the provision of insufficient epistemological and pragmatic space in which knowledge can be critically engaged and applied (waghid, 2000:259). in being taught how to teach their particular disciplines better, teachers must also learn how learners learn, in order to teach accordingly. hence the idea of “teaching for learning”: we must “teach so that learners will learn” (craig, 1996:48, emphasis in the original). teaching for learning is said to require “consolidation work” (craig, 1996:49), or unpacking, modelling or making explicit the relationship between disciplinary content and the manner in which it should be learned, along with the rules and operations associated with learning it (pearce, 2000:n.p.; craig, 1996:53; adler, 1997:n.p.). while researchers continue to debate the relative value, and alternative modes of transmission, of disciplinary or expert knowledge vis-à-vis practical, applied or user-oriented knowledge (scott, in cloete, muller, makgoba & ekong, 1997:34-37), the curricular and pedagogical consolidation of knowledge implicit in teaching for learning may assist in widening epistemic access for all. this will be rendered more likely if the path to higher or meta-cognitive knowledge processes can be more clearly demarcated, as it winds through foundational or disciplinary knowledge, practical or applied knowledge and experiential or intuitive knowledge (luckett, 2001:31; lillejord & mkabela, 2004:259; brijlall, maharaj, jojo & mybert, 2006: 38; fakudze, 2004:271). the importance of context do teachers who know more teach better (adler, in adler & reed, 2002:1)? researchers are divided on the matter, but the sampled research suggests that both knowing more and teaching better depend on several types of knowledge: disciplinary content knowledge, pedagogic knowledge (or teaching for learning, as described above), and also and in particular, upon contextual knowledge, or being able to locate both content and pedagogic knowledge within a wider spectrum of knowledge drawn from, for example, the sociology, philosophy, psychology and history of education (adler, in adler & reed, 2002:2-3; see also enslin et al., 2001:129). context is understood here as being simultaneously cognitive, epistemological, spatial, temporal and relational, such that learning and problem solving are seen not as processes taking place solely ‘inside an individual’s head’ (alant, 2004:32; adler, 1997 n.p.), but within a definable context or environment which, moreover, needs to be understood holistically if the conditions for sustainable development are to be realised (kirsten & viljoen, 2001:219). debates continue between advocates of “objective knowledge”, on the one hand, and those who argue that knowledge is “constructed”, on the other, and while some prefer to bracket out the contextual or “situated” nature of knowledge (horsthemke, 2006:16; macdonald, 2002:120), others argue that the intricate connection between knowledge, particular perspectives and political positions need not detract from its truth or utility (young, 2004:18). in these terms, there is a definite push within the literature towards establishing a clearer and firmer disciplinary basis for teacher education, in which “pedagogic knowledge” is much more than “teaching methods” and includes “the theoretical basis for various approaches to teaching” (welch, in adler & reed, 2002:28; see also adler, slonimsky & reed, in adler & reed, 2002:136, and brodie, 2004:65). deacon et al — scholarship in teacher education in south africa, 1995-2006 7 continuous assessment the integral connection between continuous assessment and outcomes-based education looms large in the literature (le grange & reddy, 1998). researchers point to its constructivist features, and particularly to the fact that “learners are not compared with others, rather they are assessed in terms of their prior accomplishments and how they have developed as active ‘meaning makers’” (archer & rossouw, 1999:104). some add that assessment is not only about tracking learners’ abilities to engage with tasks (craig, 1996:48), for it is equally important to assess whether the teaching itself was appropriate, i.e., whether it did actually “teach for learning” (craig, 1996:54). assessment is generally expected to be motivational and more formative than summative, and it should also be criterionrather than normreferenced (bitzer, 2004:60-63) and “accommodate nuance, insight, growth and other things that signal the quality of learning” (van renen, 2005:116). the difficulties involved in achieving such nuanced forms of assessment remain, however, with some researchers pointing out that it still appears to be necessary to translate criterion-referenced assessments into percentages (thomen & barnes, 2005:960). in the context of numerous possible forms of assessment — observation, questioning, group assessment, peer assessment, self-assessment, portfolio assessment, dynamic assessment, project assessment and gathering information from parents and others (archer & rossouw 1999; bitzer 2004; du plessis & koen 2005; van der westhuizen & smith 2000; wilmot 1999), the actual process of assessing tends to be negatively characterised as the keeping of a set of “stiplyste [checklists]” (van der walt, 1997:11; thomen and barnes, 2005:960). a major problem is the time-consuming nature of recording these multiple and continuous assessments — a problem also associated with processes intended to recognise prior learning (castle, 2001:28) — coupled with the fact that curriculum 2005 failed to suggest any record-keeping frameworks. teachers are advised to try to avoid “too much mind-numbing record-keeping” by developing their own “simple, succinct modes of recording”, “their own ‘short-hand’” (archer & rossouw, 1999:122-3). teacher evaluation debates over teacher evaluation exhibit strong political nuances, with teachers resisting anything that hints at even the slightest dilution of their professional autonomy. for some, resistance to evaluation is only resistance to a particular kind of evaluation, one that is hierarchical, non-enabling, non-self-reflective, nondialogical and non-developmental (jantjies, 1996:50; quinn & mckellar, 2002:74; pretorius, 2003:133; enslin et al., 2003:76). for others, however, who have found that teachers are suspicious even of clearly developmental styles of evaluation, teachers resist evaluation per se, because it is invariably statedriven surveillance (jansen, 2004). the politically discredited apartheid-era system of school inspections (young, 2004:12) has tarred all subsequent efforts, from standards-based accountability measures (taylor, 2006:524) to whole school evaluations, as anti-autonomy, “nothing more than the inspection system in another guise” (jansen, 2004:57). holding individuals or institutions accountable, for all its democratic connotations when viewed from below, can just as easily be seen as control (barasa & mattson, 1998:5961; coetzee, 2006:10). given that the assessment of learners’ achievements is also an assessment of teachers’ accountability (archer & rossouw, 1999:101), it might appear that the most effective instrument available to the state for regulating teachers is “direct pressure via matriculation results” (jansen, 2004:62) — if only the quality and generalisability of matriculation results were less open to question. the bulk of research in this area thus concurs with the need for a “teacher-friendly appraisal system” (jantjies, 1996:52-3; see also mashile, 1998:88-90, and jansen, 2004:64), and not only must teachers’ competence be deliberately fostered by education managers (bisschoff & grobler, 1998), but learners, too, must take the responsibility to “critically reflect on their own performance and … make a contribution to their own learning” (herselman, hay & fourie 2001:11). conclusion the disciplinary area of teacher education is vital to and overlaps substantially with almost all other areas of the field of education. in an educational context beset with poverty, the legacy of apartheid and the perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 20108 impact of hiv/aids, and where the quality of teaching is universally described as poor, research in the area of teacher education is of paramount importance. in terms of the seven themes deriving from post-apartheid scholarship in teacher education as described above, teachers are expected to act as facilitators, overseeing the mutual construction of knowledge via carefully structured small groups, but in this new guise they must nevertheless maintain their authority, impart the curriculum, teach participation skills and make better use of existing educational support materials and resources. above all, they must teach for learning and widen epistemic access, and in order to do this they need to be better trained, so as to become better versed in disciplinary, pedagogic and contextual knowledge, particularly if they are to be able to assess learners formatively and on their own terms, rather than in comparison with others – and manage the resulting increased paperwork. in the process teachers must also be held accountable, albeit in cooperative, enabling and developmental ways. the seven primary themes identified here with regard to research in teacher education in south africa are for the most part aligned with trends apparent in recent international work. international handbooks on research in the field, emanating largely from the united states of america (usa) and the united kingdom, chart a shift, beginning in the 1980s, from “structural determinants of norms and expectations to the agency of individual actors in constructing their destinies” (lecompte, 2009:41). within this shift, issues of social justice, diversity, dialogue and context loom large, with traditional subject and content analysis being both back-grounded and supplemented with new areas like physical education, arts education and second language studies. above all, qualitative studies – broadly understood to range from case studies and life histories to ethnographies and textual analyses – are clearly the methodological mainstream the world over, to such an extent that some in the usa consider them to constitute a “glut”, giving other forms of research a bad name (lecompte, 2009:42-3; see also borko, whitcomb, & byrnes, 2008:1024-1029, and craig, 2009:64). on the other hand, a recent debate in british circles warns of a counter-trend, in the form of a new attempt to impose methodological orthodoxy on educational research, one that is empiricist in character and privileges quantitative methods (hodkinson, 2004). nevertheless, this shift away from functionalism and behaviourism and in the direction of interpretivism, critical theory and ultimately constructivism, suggests that, internationally as in south africa, the “post-modern turn” is still very much in evidence in teacher education research (craig, 2009:63). in addition, south african research in certain ways may be at the forefront of the growing international trend to look “beyond the classroom and schoolyard” (lecompte, 2009:47) to understand why schools still fail learners, with the international literature finding some answers in broader socio-economic inequalities, funding limitations, the way more costs are being passed on to parents and individual learners, and in the de-professionalisation of teachers (lecompte, 2009:47-48). the international literature, however, also offers indications of embryonic and potential future themes, some but not all of which are already being addressed in south africa. those themes which are being addressed include a focus on rendering classroom learning more effective, ensuring that educational development is sustainable, and examining new kinds of literacies, including those induced by new information and communication technologies (icts); those which do not yet stand out prominently in south africa include an emphasis on new kinds of incentives for teachers and on more “high stakes” testing of learners (lecompte, 2009:45). the overlaps and interconnections among the seven themes in teacher education research in south africa are a lesson in themselves. teacher education research is the fifth largest disciplinary area in the field, but consists mostly of small scale, classroom-based studies. if these diverse, yet related studies could be brought into closer and more critical interconnection, ideally under the auspices of more large scale, simultaneously qualitative and quantitative, projects, the impact of teacher education research on education policy and practice would be immeasurably magnified. acknowledgement this article is based upon research supported by 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challenges for an internationalization of higher education from and for the global south one of the recent developments in the field of internationalization of higher education (ihe) is a greater recognition that, alongside the opportunities offered by this process, there are several political and ethical issues that are complex, contradictory, and contestable (stein, 2017; leal, 2020). in this regard, chiappa and finardi (2021) claim that even though the process of ihe is usually portrayed as an intrinsically beneficial process, its “darker side” (e.g. archanjo & barbosa, 2019) – a reference to walter mignolo’s thought on coloniality – hides mechanisms that maintain and reinforce power asymmetries and hierarchies between knowledges and people (vavrus & pekol, 2015), accordingly with their positioning within the historical worldsystem (wallerstein, 2006). some of the criticism raised against current views and practices of ihe refer to the understanding that internationalization is “losing its way” (knight, 2014: 76); that competition advances to the detriment of cooperation (de wit, 2020; finardi, mendes & silva, in press); that internationalization should be more inclusive and less elitist (finardi & guimarães, 2020); that the link between internationalization and neoliberalism has narrowed (bamberger, morris & yemini, 2019) and that international collaboration has become complex: “did anyone really anticipate just how complicated internationalization of higher education was going to be?” (reisberg, 2019: 1). given this recognition, several researchers – both in the global north and south – have advocated for internationalization to be guided by values that transcend the market logic and offer more direct contributions to the society. for example, jones and de wit (2014: 28), referring to how globalization affects ihe, argue that internationalization should no longer be immersed in a westernized, largely anglo-saxon, and predominantly english-speaking paradigm. de wit, gacel-ávila and jones (2017) reaffirm that the traditionally adopted concept of internationalization author: dr fernanda leal1 prof kyria finardi2 prof julieta abba3 affiliation: 1universidade federal de santa catarina (ufsc) 2federal university of espirito santo (ufes) 3unisinos university doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i3.16 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(3): 241-250 published: 30 september 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.16 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1716-2060 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7983-2165 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1248-6805 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.16 2422022 40(3): 242-250 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.16 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) is the result of a dominant paradigm originating in western europe and english-speaking countries. streitwieser et al. (2019), in turn, propose the inclusion of the humanistic rationale as a category of motivation/interest to internationalize, given the barriers of access that refugees face in north america and europe’s higher education. in the global north, an evident conceptualization aligned with the mentioned concerns is the one of “internationalization of higher education for society (ihes)”, which, by claiming that this process should bring a meaningful contribution to society (de wit, 2019), assumes that work on internationalization must be linked to work on social engagement, with a focus on “global issues” such as xenophobia, populism, climate change, and preservation of democracy (brandenburg, 2020; de wit, leal & unangst, 2020). in the global south, decolonial perspectives claim that, instead of suppressing, ihe should promote an “ecology of knowledges” – as proposed by de sousa santos (2010) – resulting in what de sousa santos, guilherme and dietz (2015) call a movement from university to pluriversity. referring to the case of brazil, de wit et al. (2020) denounce current ihe practices, contesting the idea of internationalization as an unconditional good and calling for more cooperative forms to engage internationally and interculturally. in their view, internationalization should be explicitly aligned with broader social justice efforts and aimed at shaping more inclusive, sustainable, or alternative futures. still in brazil, leal (2020) observes the predominance of a reductionist and hegemonic approach in ihe national and institutional policies, which consents with the perspectives and interests of the core of the world system. reaffirming this perception, finardi et al. (in press) conclude that ihe in brazil is still veering more towards competition than to cooperation. finardi et al. (2020), analysing a cooperation agreement between a hei in brazil and in the united states, argue that this process is still very imbalanced and dictated by instrumental, neoliberal, reductionist approaches. recognizing the relevance of these and other arguments that make the dilemmas and contradictions of ihe visible, we understand that any critical efforts to address the contemporary university institution and the international relations established in this domain are enriched when explicitly situated within colonial history and contrasted with the colonial heritage that impact on it. in other words, and as put forward by chiappa and finardi (2021), it is necessary to make explicit the non-neutrality of the ihe process as well as its connection with the reproduction of hierarchical power asymmetries. especially for those located on the side of the “abyssal line” – a metaphorical and invisible division that separates metropolitan societies from colonial territories (de sousa santos, 2010) – who are relegated to a status of invisibility (e.g. piccin & finardi, 2021), looking towards the future of ihe, requires a look towards its past (leal, 2021). it demands a recognition that what we understand of internationalization today results from relations that were unevenly constituted throughout history (leal, 2021; abba & streck, 2021). given these considerations, the following reflections dialogue with the idea of promoting a perspective of ihe “from and for the global south”: one that, instead of suppressing, recognizes the epistemic plurality of the world (leal, 2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.16 2432022 40(3): 243-250 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.16 leal, finardi & abba challenges for an internationalization of higher education 1. recognizing the university as a historical producer and reproducer of colonial hierarchies in the absence of questions about the role that the university institution has played and continues to play in capitalism as a historical world system and the solutions the university has given to the ecological, economic and health crises developed in the 21st century, it would be difficult to conceive perspectives of ihe otherwise, that is: perspectives that propose other ways to understand internationalization and that truly transcend the dominant modern/ colonial rationality. the university is a privileged space not only for the production, but also for the consecration of a unique and hegemonic knowledge, as it enjoys an epistemological authority that gives it the power to decide which stories and intellectual contributions are valid and worthy of attention and dissemination (leal, 2020). historically, it was closely associated with the formation of capitalist elites and, during the colonial period, it was a key place for the institutionalization and naturalization of relations of appropriation and exploitation, in addition to having benefited directly from such relations. bhambra, gebrial and nisancioglu (2018: 5, own translation) summarize this understanding: it was at the university that colonial intellectuals developed theories of racism, popularized discourses that bolstered support for colonial endeavours and provided ethical and intellectual grounds for the dispossession, oppression, and domination of colonized subjects. in the colonial metropolis, universities provided would-be colonial administrators with knowledge of the peoples they would rule over, as well as lessons in techniques of domination and exploitation. the dominant academic model remains largely immersed in a modern/colonial power pattern. the criteria that define aspects such as the curriculum and the faculty and students tend to be based on the ideology that reinforces the superiority of a specific culture, so that disciplinary divisions, theoretical models and eurocentric histories continue to provide intellectual materials that reproduce and justify hierarchies (de sousa santos, 2018). furthermore, the producers of theories accepted as universal are almost always european or euro-american white men, which induces the traditional academic narrative to remain highly selective and exclusive (de sousa santos, 2018). by suppressing or subjugating local epistemologies in favour of eurocentrism, the content of university knowledge remains governed ‘by the west’ and ‘for the west’, while non-westernized forms of knowledge are celebrated as ‘local cultures’; commodified and appropriated for the benefit of the west; or simply, based on the colonial hierarchical relationship, recognized as something of little or no value. 2. conceiving the global south as a field of epistemic challenges the concept of the global south or south should be detached from its geographical character. in most interpretations. it concerns the “grouping that brings together the so-called ‘developing countries’ (middle-income countries and low-income countries)” (leite, 2012: 4, own translation): a large number of countries in the africa, asia and central and latin america – around 160 out of a total of 195 recognized independent states – face significant economic and developmental challenges (robertson & komljenovic, 2016). as chisholm (2009) observes, notions of north and south have become a metaphor for rich and poor, developed and underdeveloped, first and third worlds, donors and recipients of international http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.16 2442022 40(3): 244-250 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.16 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) aid. in essence, it is a relational concept, which invariably refers to a relationship of inequality, since the level of development is contrasted with the parts of the world that constitute the global north. also in relational terms, the recognition of inequality and diversity within nations suggests that every state in the south can have its own north and south; that the east can exist within the west; and that the south can exist within the north (chisholm, 2009). it is possible, then, to point to the existence of a global south within the global north; that is, the communities of the central countries whose economic, cultural, political and technological circumstances are precarious compared to the rest of the population. this group includes those living at or below the poverty line, asylum seekers with limited access to social welfare, and marginalized ethnic groups. it is also possible to see a global north within the global south: in this case, the political and economic elites evidenced in dominant coalitions of countries such as south africa and brazil (robertson & komljenovic, 2016). for de sousa santos and meneses (2010: 19, own translation), the south is “metaphorically conceived as a field of epistemic challenges, which seek to repair the damage and impacts historically caused by capitalism in its colonial relationship with the world”. de sousa santos (2018), in a more recent interpretation, refers to the south from an epistemological conception, since the term assumes a metaphorical character, and expresses the knowledge built in the struggles of oppressed and excluded subjects against the injustices caused by capitalism, colonialism and patriarchy. with regard to the production, circulation and reverberation of knowledge in the global south, finardi, frança and guimarães (2022), explain the epistemic invisibility and lack of an ecology of knowledges and languages in latin america. based on that, finardi (2022) calls for a more critical internationalization in, from, and for the south, which requires the creation and acknowledgement of epistemologies of the south (de sousa santos & meneses, 2010: 19, own translation): “a set of epistemological interventions that denounce this suppression, value the knowledge that successfully resisted and investigate the conditions of a horizontal dialogue between knowledge”. 3. having a non-myopic view of south-south cooperation the idea of south-south cooperation (ssc) gains relevance from a scenario of discontent with the existing asymmetries in the international arena; questioning the effectiveness of the western model of development and criticizing the welfare bias commonly observed in the links between the north and the south. much of the political argument that supports ssc is based on the assumption that the south can and must cooperate with the north to solve the its political, economic and social problems. discourses on ssc in the specific domain of the ihe gain notoriety with a general recognition that links partners (national systems, university institutions, researchers, etc.) unequally positioned in the world economic system tend to be exacerbated asymmetrically through processes that strengthen the already strong and weaken the already weak. in this sense, such discourses tend to associate css with the presence of principles such as equity, autonomy, horizontality, solidarity, and mutual participation. however, by placing national interests and power at the centre of the analysis of international relations, it is possible to shed light on the political nature of ssc, associating it with a diversity http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.16 2452022 40(3): 245-250 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.16 leal, finardi & abba challenges for an internationalization of higher education of meanings for the dynamics between peripheral and semi-peripheral countries. this means that ssc agreements are not necessarily free from colonial legacies and vices, as reported, for example, by piccin and finardi (2019) in the case of a partnership between a hei in brazil and a hei in benin, in which the second one expected the first to dictate “the term of the conversation”, placing it in a passive, recipient role. thus, despite the feeling that ssc may represent a path for international relations to develop in more egalitarian conditions, it is unrealistic to conceive that it is depoliticized or that it does not include material or immaterial rewards, direct or indirect, nor colonial legacies and vices. sscs seem to have the potential to promote more horizontal relations in higher education; however, classifying any exchange relationship as colonial or cooperative is an empirical question that requires going beyond the promises and discourses emphasized about it (leal, 2020). therefore, south-south relations (with all the associated complexity) are an important topic of interest for empirical research on internationalization of higher education. 4. spreading the epistemological horizon of internationalization given the perception that the oppressive logic of coloniality itself produces an energy of discontent and detachment that translates into questioning, fissures and contradictions in the dominant paradigm, in order to internationalize differently in the global south, there is a need to broaden the epistemological horizon in which this phenomenon is immersed. it is therefore important to question the partial stories of “progress, happiness and salvation” that are traditionally associated with the phenomenon, shedding light on its complexity and opening the way for stories of internationalization to be told not only from within the ‘modern’ world, but also from within its borders. denaturalizing the dominant idea of ihe – in the sense of enabling the conception of other ways of doing, thinking, experiencing and being in the international and intercultural relations in the global south – implies distancing from contemporary political and academic discourses that are emphasized on the phenomenon and widely adopted by institutions and actors involved with higher education. it also means seeing oneself as the centre of references and “inhabiting the frontier”: not resisting, but subjectifying oneself, resurrecting, re-emerge and re-exist. aware that the proposition of specific models carries the risk of reproducing a universalist, dichotomous conceptual genealogy, linked to global projects, and that there is no single way to re-imagine ihe, we point to some theoretical and practical initiatives that might serve as an inspiration and provide epistemological ground for detachment from the modern/colonial logic when designing policies and practising internationalization from and for the global south. 5. the postcolonial concepts of epistemologies of the south and sociological reduction the epistemologies of the south (de santos & meneses, 2010) assume that the dominant epistemology of the last two centuries excluded from its scope the cultural and political context of the production and reproduction of knowledge. from this perspective, differences are suppressed and provide ground to the dominant culture, reducing the epistemological, cultural and political diversity of the world. in the specific context of higher education, the recognition of the epistemological plurality constitutes a source of significant enrichment for http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.16 2462022 40(3): 246-250 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.16 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) policies and practices of internationalization. this requires a deep exercise of critical review of the concepts hegemonically defined by modern/colonial rationality in historical, ontological and epistemic terms. the sociological reduction (ramos, 1996) emerges from a concern with the production of committed and engaged knowledge, with pragmatic value, as opposed to an alienated and ideological knowledge, which treats social facts as stable and isolated in time and space. it refers to a critical-assimilative procedure of the foreign experience, opposed to the uncritical transposition of external determinations. within the context of internationalization, the concept can be associated with the demand for a more realistic view of international university/ academic relations, which apprehends the “dynamic and situated character of reality” (lynch, 2015: 30, own translation), without disregarding the centrality of the power and national interest (morganthau, 1962) and the complex articulations and interests involved. in summary, the concept of sociological reduction might shed slight on the limitations of the “ethnocentric illusion” (ramos, 1996: 159) that has defined the expectations related to the phenomenon. according to abba and streck (2021), the córdoba movement of 1918 is presented as a relevant historical antecedent of the ihe process in latin america. more than a hundred years ago, the students of córdoba rejected the exclusionary and elitist character of higher education, as well as denounced the growing distance between the university institution and society. the pressure of the students resulted in the outbreak of the córdoba reform of 1918, which was characterized by a series of measures that contemplated democracy, autonomy and university extension. the reformist airs of córdoba spread throughout latin america and the students became true internationalists of this movement, which is remembered as one of the most important in the region in terms of education. the legacy of the córdoba movement is part of a historical process of internationalization of education and regional integration that is being built in latin america with its own characteristics. some experiences of university institutions that collaborate to reflect on ssc and internationalization practices from a critical perspective are, for example: the universidade federal da integração latino-americana (unila), universidade da integração internacional da lusofonia afro-brasileira (unilab), and escuela latinoamericana de medicina (elam). the first two are located in brazil and the last in cuba. since their creation, these institutions have been conceived with an international sense, prioritizing union and solidarity among the countries of the global south (abba, 2018). currently, they resist the attacks of the modern/ colonial logic in higher education and show that the perspective of ihe otherwise are possible. 6. final considerations: questioning the imperative with other questionings to a large extent, the growing recognition of contradictions and dilemmas associated with ihe does not seem to challenge widespread beliefs around this process. nor does it seem to question assumptions related to structural issues of power, inequality and coloniality that accompany the institutionalization of internationalization or the centrality of the university institution in the very consolidation of such structure. expectations, objectives, practices, and solutions attached to internationalization remain largely immersed in a eurocentric agenda that projects itself universally. such agenda not only defines what is valid, desirable and possible when it comes to internationalize, but it also obscures the colonial past (and present) of the university institution. as a result, there is http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.16 2472022 40(3): 247-250 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.16 leal, finardi & abba challenges for an internationalization of higher education still little space for debates on ethical responsibilities; on what internationalization is and can actually be; and on how internationalization can actively work as a tool of transformation of a highly hierarchical world. to a large extent, the critique of the ihe is a eurocentric critique of modernity. to internationalize to and from the global south, there is a need to understand the university as an institution historically managed by actors susceptible to western beliefs and the effects of the totality of knowledge. it is equally important to understand the south as a field of epistemic challenges, where knowledge is built in the struggles of oppressed and excluded subjects against the injustices caused by capitalism, colonialism, and patriarchy. from these recognitions, several other questions can integrate the reflection to ihe in the global south. some of them are outlined: • there is, in fact, a tense relationship between the values of university internationalization and globalization, or despite the discourses that distance them, internationalization refers to an agent of globalization and to a phenomenon of interest to capital. • how to guarantee a democratic ihe in an institution like the university, which privileges one type of knowledge and culture, as if they were the only ones that circulate in a single and homogeneous society? • what does inclusion and diversity mean in this context? who has the power to ‘include’ and ‘diversify’? what type of university fits the idea of internationalization as an imperative? • what do concepts such as ‘comprehensive internationalization’, ‘intelligent internationalization’, ‘internationalization at home’, and ‘inclusive internationalization’, among others, means when thinking of internationalization from and for the global south? in the global south, we understand that internationalization is not ‘losing its way’, as most academic discourses on the subject claim. after all, for those located “on the side of the abyssal line” that disappears as a reality (de sousa santos, 2010), international relations in higher education, either objective or subjective, have never been equal (leal, 2020). without questioning the broader structure within which the university operates, it is likely that inclusion and diversity in the context of the internationalization remains conditioned by the same global imaginary that produces and reproduces colonial hierarchies. crises like the one resulting from the covid-19 pandemic pointed out the inability of institutions exclusively linked to academic mobility (finardi & guimarães, 2020) and/or subjected to the instrumental/productivist logic of the capital to respond to societal needs. this moment is, therefore, an opportunity for reflexivity not only on current concepts and practices of internationalization, but also on the roles played by the university institution itself (leal, 2021). the agenda for the future of internationalization in the global south should include a collective effort of detachment from the dominant rationality, which requires intentionality. there is need to truly move away from the idea of internationalization as an unconditional good or as a phenomenon that should take place at any cost (leal, 2021). only then it will be possible to envision new horizons for international relations in higher education, contributing to the existence of a world in which different worlds can exist. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.16 2482022 40(3): 248-250 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.16 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) references abba, m.j. 2018. límites y potencialidades para el desarrollo de una internacionalización de la educación superior necesaria: estudio de caso de la unila (brasil) y 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41(2): 16-32 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 leadership competencies for teacher professional development: perspectives of namibian principals, heads of departments and teachers abstract using a blend of functional, distributed, and instructional leadership theories as a theoretical lens, this article presents the perspectives of namibian principals, heads of departments (hods) and teachers on the various leadership competencies that are required in their role of enabling school leaders to support their teachers’ professional development. the study was approached from a pragmatist perspective employing a mixed-methods methodology. the sequential explanatory design employed combined quantitative and qualitative data obtained from school principals, hods and teachers. analysis entailed the generation of descriptive statistics using spss and open coding of qualitative data to generate themes. it was found that school leaders require multiple competencies, such as accountability, effective communication, good interpersonal relations, subject-matter competencies, administrative competencies, digital competencies and listening skills to be able to support their teachers’ professional development efforts. this study provides insights into how school leadership competencies enable principals’ and hods to support teacher professional development within a namibian context. the study also provides a new knowledge base for namibian policy makers, political office bearers and administrators to avail human and financial resources to capacitate school leaders with muchneeded competencies to be able support teachers’ professional development through training. keywords: distributed leadership, functional leadership, heads of department, instructional leadership, leadership competencies, school leadership, school principals, teacher professional development. 1. introduction and background owan and agunwa (2019) define leadership competence as the ability of leaders to work together with their followers. there is a large volume of published studies describing the importance of competency in ensuring effective school leadership for enhanced teacher efficacy (arman, syamsul author: josef so-oabeb1 andre du plessis1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i2.7097 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(2): 16-32 published: 30 june 2023 received: 18 february 2023 accepted: 22 may 2023 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4454-2824 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2561-5138 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 172023 41(2): 17-32 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 so-oabeb & du plessis leadership competencies for teacher professional development & darman, 2016; owan & agunwa, 2019; podgórska & pichlak, 2019; yasin & mustafa, 2020). similarly, some literature from south africa reveal that the apparent lack of appropriate skills among school principals affects their leadership roles (evans, 2014; manaseh, 2016). it is also argued that, despite being recipients of professional qualifications, school leaders should acquire certain competencies to influence much-needed educational change (mehdinezhad and mansouri, 2016). hence, yen et al. (2021) assert that the extent of school leadership cannot be measured by achieving successful appointment into the positions, but rather the application of knowledge and skills to achieve whole-school success. therefore, competent school leaders are prerequisites of school success. several researchers have also established that the relationship between the competencies of school leaders and teacher professional development needs to be strengthened (nghaamwa, 2017; mehdinezhad & mansouri, 2016; calik et al., 2012; tehseen & hadi, 2015). this emphasises competence among school leaders as one of the prerequisites in aiding their efforts to guide teachers effectively, as incompetence is coupled with ineffective guidance to develop teachers’ efficacy. leadership competence plays a significant role in the much-needed development of teachers, as leaders who lack relevant competencies are constantly challenged when carrying out their functions. kin et al. (2019) conclude that principals’ competencies enable them to influence much-needed change in schools. within the namibian context, school leadership teams comprise the principals who are the overall accounting officers and the heads of departments (hods) who play a pivotal role in providing meaningful leadership and management support to teachers (iipinge and likando, 2012). the recruitment criteria for these school leaders are simply based on their years of teaching experience and their successful presentation of knowledge of namibian education policies and processes, which are assessed through written tests and oral interviews. the preliminary short-listing of candidates for hod posts requires of a teacher to have at least a three-year teaching qualification and a minimum of six (6) years’ teaching experience (iipinge and likando, 2012) in the field that he/she is qualified. similarly, candidates for principalship should also have at least three years’ teacher training and seven (7) years of teaching experience, including being an hod (ministry of education, 2020). as school leaders, namibian principals and their hods have the core mandate of providing “in-service development, inspection and guidance of staff members at their school” (ministry of education, 2020: 1). however, this study sought to understand the competencies principals and hods need to have and the roles that such competencies play in supporting the professional development of their teachers. 2. problem statement poor teacher professional development efforts by the ministry of education, arts and culture, as well as the national institute of educational development (nied) present a burden to school principals and hods, as they have to assume full responsibilities for the growth of their teachers’ ever-changing professional needs. this raises a concern about their competencies and their role in addressing teachers’ professional development. consequently, the leadership competencies of school leaders become areas of concern. this study was also motivated by my personal experience as a teacher when i taught at a school where the link between teachers’ efforts and subsequent support from school leadership members was weak, compared to my experience at a previous school. therefore, the competencies school leaders possess to devise and implement support mechanisms for effective professional development https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 182023 41(2): 18-32 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) of teachers are questioned. whether school principals and hods are competent enough to support their teachers’ professional growth and help them overcome challenges they experience professionally in their pedagogy and subject knowledge understanding is an area of concern. the central research questions that guided the findings reported in this article was: • what is the relationship between leadership competencies and the professional development of teachers? • how do teachers perceive the competencies of their school leaders in the promotion of their professional development needs? 3. literature review a number of researchers have sought to determine the competencies that are needed by school leaders for the effective functioning of schools and teacher professional development. in those studies, principals’ competencies were intensively studied (bafadal et al., 2019; kartini, kristiawan & fitria, 2020; may et al., 2020; mustamin & al muz-zammil bin yasin, 2012; wagithunu, muthee & thinguri, 2014; yasin & mustafa, 2020), while other school leadership ranks have not enjoyed the same level of research interest. it also became evident from the literature that authors have identified an exhaustive list of such leadership competencies for successful school leaders (bafadal et al., 2019; goden et al., 2016; may et al., 2020; oluremi, 2013; owan & agunwa, 2019; vlok, 2012; wagithunu et al., 2014; yasin & mustafa, 2020). this literature review discusses leadership competencies under four (4) broad categories as they emerged dominant in the literature. 4. interpersonal competence numerous studies have reported both in their results and conclusions that school leaders need to be competent in building and maintaining good interpersonal relations with their followers (bafadal et al., 2019; komalasari, arafat & mulyadi, 2020; may et al., 2020; oluremi, 2013; vlok, 2012). for example, in a study among nigerian principals, oluremi (2013) reports that principals must have the ability to work amicably with school staff. oluremi (2013) emphasises that 21st-century schools need principals that are intelligent and self-reliant. similarly, may et al. (2020) conclude that principals’ roles in the betterment of teachers’ work output require competency in working cohesively with such teachers. other authors, for example goden et al. (2016) and bafadal et al. (2019), found that principals must be able to provide encouragement to teachers and guidance on how teaching practice can be improved. 5. administrative competence researchers are also adamant that school leaders need to have administrative competencies (goden et al., 2016; may et al., 2020; owan & agunwa, 2019; wagithunu et al., 2014). owan and agunwa (2019) accentuate administrative competency, which include planning, organising, directing and collaborating. also linked to this discussion, some authors affirm that principals must at least have a basic understanding of educational administration and management processes (may et al., 2020; oluremi, 2013). recent research by owan and agunwa (2019) reveals significant results that reported on the correlation between principals’ administrative competency and teachers improved teaching and subject administration. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 192023 41(2): 19-32 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 so-oabeb & du plessis leadership competencies for teacher professional development 6. communication competencies a variety of authors support the idea that school leaders need to be competent in effective communication (bafadal et al., 2019; flauto, 1999; may et al., 2020; owan & agunwa, 2019; wilhite et al., 2018). these authors connect communication competency to school leaders who are able to socialise effectively with teachers (may et al., 2020) as it directly affects teachers’ work output (owan & agunwa, 2019). additionally, bafadal et al. (2019) argue that beginner principals must be able to socialise with key stakeholders of the school to seek ways to improve the functioning of their schools. in a study aimed at profiling core competencies of school superintendents, effective communication was valued by most participants and had a higher mean score than other competencies (wilhite et al., 2018). 7. instructional and professional competencies instructional and professional competencies are vital for school leaders (bafadal et al., 2019; goden et al., 2016; komalasari et al., 2020; yasin & mustafa, 2020). goden et al. (2016) define professional competence as school leaders’ ability to monitor and evaluate teachers’ performance and facilitate programs aimed at improving teaching practice. according to goden and colleagues (2016), instructional and professional competencies enable school leaders to manage teachers. similarly, yasin and mustafa (2020) maintain that school principals with instructional competence have the ability to help their teachers to develop basic teaching documents in respect of subject planning and administration. in the next section, i discuss the theoretical underpinnings of this study. 8. theoretical framework this study was framed by a blend of functional, instructional and distributed leadership theories, something that may be referred to as ‘functional-distributed-instructional leadership’. this blended model of school leadership, underlining the dynamic nature of leadership roles in schools, provides a theoretical framework to explore school leaders’ competencies and their roles in teacher professional development. functional-distributed-instructional leadership acknowledges that principals and hods are tasked with the functions of facilitating teacher professional development (makgato & mudzanani, 2019), but such functions require multiple actors (spillane, 2005); hence, the distribution of leadership to provide instructional leadership for improved teaching practice (costello, 2015; day & sammons, 2016). the functional leadership theory is a relevant ingredient to the blend of leadership theories underpinning this study, as it helps to explain that specific leadership competencies enable school leaders to perform their function of supporting teachers in their professional development processes. as the name of the theoretical blend suggests, the study is also partly framed by the distributed leadership framework. this theory is argued to contribute to teacher efficacy when aligned with teacher professional development (crespo, 2016). distributed leadership assumes that all members of an organisation have unique skills and expertise and therefore they have influential abilities for the success of organisational processes (gumus et al., 2018). based on that assumption, this study attempted to gain insight into the various leadership competencies that principals and hods should have and the role of these competencies in enabling them to provide or facilitate professional development activities in schools. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 202023 41(2): 20-32 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) the adopted blend of theories also includes the instructional leadership theory. the theory is of the perspective that instructional leaders should concern themselves with managing and supervising teaching and learning processes (bhengu & mkhize, 2013; mestry, 2013). therefore, they are expected to take action to promote excellence in teaching and learning (heaven & bourne, 2016). based on this understanding, the study attempted to understand the role played by functional, instructional and distributed leadership competencies in enabling school principals and hods to carry out their instructional supervisory responsibilities. 4c} 9. research methodology and design the study used a mixed-method approach with a sequential explanatory design. data were collected in two phases using questionnaires and interviews. the study was carried out in the otjiwarongo education circuit within the otjozondjupa region in namibia, which consists of twelve (12) primary schools and seven (7) secondary schools. permission to conduct the survey was obtained from ten (10) schools, which excluded the two (2) schools of my professional practice. participating schools were purposely selected based on spatial proximity and accessibility through convenience sampling. in addition, the principals’ willingness to allow research at their school was another determining factor. quantitative data were collected from 103 respondents. simple random sampling was used to randomly obtain the respondents from the schools in the circuit, inclusive of the teachers, hods and principals. this sampling strategy ensured equal opportunity for all teachers and school leaders to be selected (leavy, 2017). the survey data were analysed using spss with the assistance of a university statistician. the results of this analysis were used to inform the interview questions during the second phase of the study during which semi-structured, face-to-face interviews were conducted with six principals, eight hods and nine teachers that were more in the form of dialogues, as opposed to question and answer (johnson and christensen, 2013). the duration of the interviews ranged between 30 and 60 minutes. these interviews were aimed at mining the viewpoints and lived experiences of participants related to the phenomenon being studied (kivunja and kuyini, 2017). interviews therefore provided more descriptive data that consist of in-depth answers to the research questions from a relatively small sample (morgan, 2014). purposeful convenience sampling was used to select participants for the interview and the sample size was determined by the achievement of data saturation and no predetermined sample size existed (morgan, 2014). this sampling mode is used by researchers who are guided by the participants’ availability and willingness (morgan, 2014, kivunja and kuyini, 2017, bryman and bell, 2014), meaning the selection of individual participants for the interviews was based on the question, ”who is willingly available?” another inclusion criterion was for participants to at least have three (3) teaching years of teaching experience at the school as a measure of their insightfulness. all the interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed and thematically analysed. i used inductive data analysis as individual ideas in the collected data were combined to generate a broader and more comprehensive description of the research topic (bryman and bell, 2014). the inductive data analysis followed the steps identified by akinyode and khan (2018), which include data transcription, anecdotes, coding, and themes generation. the blend of functional-distributed-instructional leadership theory was applied as a theoretical lens through which to conceptualise and connect the findings as discussed earlier. the theories’ key assumptions and dimensions guided the analysis aimed at gaining and in-depth understanding of the participants’ views on the research question. it also focused on extracting participants’ narratives that were more of an explanatory nature to the findings of the survey. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 212023 41(2): 21-32 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 so-oabeb & du plessis leadership competencies for teacher professional development 10. profiles of the participants the majority of the participants were females between the ages of 27 and 56. at the time of the interviews, the participating principals and hods had between 2 and 23 years’ experience in their current positions. furthermore, of the 23 participants, 12 (52%) indicated that they had completed an honours degree, 5 (22%) a diploma and 4 (17%) a master’s degree. hence, the assumption is that the participants have a relatively high intellectual capacity and extensive experiential knowledge. the profiles of the participants are indicated in table 1.1. table 1.1: profiles of the participants category of participants: principals code gender age years’ experience in the position qualification principal 1 male 41 2 master’s principal 2 male 46 3 master’s principal 3 female 43 6 bachelor principal 4 male 41 3 bachelor principal 5 female 56 16 honours principal 6 male 54 23 honours category of participants: hods code gender age years’ experience in the position qualification hod 1 female 28 2 honours hod 2 female 36 4 diploma hod 3 male 33 6 honours hod 4 female 35 6 masters hod 5 female 41 8 diploma hod 6 male 48 2 diploma hod 7 female 52 12 honours hod 8 female 48 8 honours category of participants: teachers code gender age years’ experience in the position qualification teacher 1 female 32 10 honours teacher 2 female 28 8 honours teacher 3 male 26 4 diploma teacher 4 female 32 9 honours teacher 5 female 34 9 honours teacher 6 female 31 4 honours teacher 7 female 27 7 honours teacher 8 female 46 3 diploma teacher 9 male 31 9 master’s 11. ethical considerations firstly, an application was submitted to the ethics committee of the faculty of education at the university of pretoria for ethical clearance and it was successfully granted. secondly, a request was submitted to the director of the otjozondjupa regional directorate of education, arts and culture in namibia to obtain permission to collect data at the selected schools https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 222023 41(2): 22-32 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) within the otjiwarongo circuit. all the prospective respondents and participants were provided with letters in which their rights and responsibilities were explained. they were required to sign a consent form in which they acknowledged that they were informed of their rights and responsibilities and possible consequences of their participation. 12. trustworthiness of the qualitative phase the trustworthiness of the textual data obtained from the face-to-face interviews and the findings were enhanced through member checking (morgan, 2014, johnson and christensen, 2013) and triangulation (johnson and christensen, 2013, creswell, 2014b), respectively. triangulation in the study was possible, as both the questionnaires and the interviews served as sources of information to answer the research question; therefore convergence of multiple data sources was possible (creswell and clark, 2017, johnson and christensen, 2013). 13. findings and discussion according to the survey results, the principals and hods are perceived by the respondents to be competent in being visionary, creative thinkers, problem solvers, good listeners, relationship builders, socially aware, good communicators, change agents and resultsoriented leaders. the interview participants are also of the perception that school leaders possess other competencies related to accountability, effective communication, listening skills, digital literacy, administrative skills, interpersonal skills and subject matter skills. these competencies are discussed in the following sub-sections. 14. the competency relating to accountability the quantitative data indicated that 78.33% of the respondents agreed to strongly agreed that school principals and hods take ownership of teacher and learner performance. similarly, the qualitative data revealed that school leaders must have the competency of accountability and that the participants indicated that they should accept responsibility for the envisioned achievements of their schools; most importantly, for the quality of teaching provided by teachers at their schools. this is demonstrated by some of the participants’ responses: i must say they are accountable because they don’t leave us alone. like my principal always says: “colleagues, your success is my success, and your struggles are my struggles”. (teacher 7) my teachers’ performance is partly my responsibility that why i do not only do class visits or moderate their work for formality purpose but this class visits reports informs me of where they struggle and need assistance. (hod 4) confirming the views of teacher 5, her principal had this to say: i am the head of my people, so i am responsible for what happens to my teachers professionally. i need to think ahead, think smart to help them. i must say: “i am the accounting officer”. (principal 3) this responses affirm the literature from previous studies that school leaders with high levels of accountability are able to improve classroom practices as they assume full responsibility for the quality and outcomes of teaching (bell and bryman, 2015, johnson and christensen, 2013). bambi (2013) argues that hods with high accountability are able to assess the quality of classroom activities and are zealous towards providing appropriate support to teachers. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 232023 41(2): 23-32 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 so-oabeb & du plessis leadership competencies for teacher professional development this study also established that the competency of accountability enables hods to take ownership of individual teachers’ performances and to support such teachers by analysing and reflecting on their classroom practices (creswell and clark, 2017). additionally, the competency of accountability also help hods to be innovative to improve teachers’ practices after successful classroom observations. 15. the competency of effective communication during the survey, 81.67% of the teacher respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that their school leaders had good general communication skills. the majority of the teacher participants were quick to point out that good school leaders are effective communicators. similarly, some of interviews with principals and hods also confirmed the importance of the ability to communicate effectively. this finding supports evidence from studies by jaca (2013), blase and blase (2017), van wyk (2020) and giese et al. (2009), who established that good communication is essential for school leaders who are focused on change. according to the qualitative data, principals and hods who are good communicators are able to consult teachers on their intended support programs and create a clear understanding on how instructional practices may be improved. this is illustrated by the following comments of some of the participants: i have created a whatsapp group where i can post agenda points of meetings and in that way, they internalise planned discussions and that’s why i always feel our meetings are really productive ... the teachers’ debate and share ideas in such meetings … i mostly play the facilitator role. (hod 7) our management hands out annual and termly plans when meetings and upcoming workshops are. using that, i know there are workshops and i talk to them if i can be considered for a workshop or what i can ask or discuss during the meetings. (teacher 1) the above comments are consistent with the study of van wyk (2020) ,who established that principals need to have the ability to communicate the intended outcomes of professional development clearly so that it can be agreed upon and implemented without any rejection. 16. the competency of good interpersonal relations prior studies have noted the importance of school leaders being able to establish and nurture good interpersonal relations with their followers (bendikson, robinson & hattie, 2012; blase & blase, 2017; jaca, 2013; yen et al., 2021; yunus, abdullah & jusoh, 2019). this study also established that some of the namibian principals and hods seem to be competent in forming healthy interpersonal relations with their teachers. according to the survey results, 81.67% of teacher respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that their principals and hods were competent at relationship building. this is also illustrated by the following comments of some of the participants: our school management, especially my hod, has a good relationship with us and not only that, but he also encourages us to get to know other teachers that we can learn from and share resources. (teacher 4) i have good interpersonal skills. when my colleagues have problems with their work, they are able to reach out to my office and discuss their problems and we solve it amicably. i have an open-door policy. (principal 2) https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 242023 41(2): 24-32 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) implied in the above quotations is the fact that the importance of the competency of forming and maintaining good interpersonal relations is evident among the namibian principals and hods. it is also evident that this competency enables school leaders to support the professional development efforts of teachers through stimulating staff collaboration, teamwork and the creation of an enabling environment that promotes teachers’ learning. this finding lends support to the findings of a study by onn and bak (2010), affirming that interpersonal skills enable school leaders to form and nurture staff collaborations effectively. also, blase and blase (2017) report that principals’ ability to form collaborative networks with teachers encourage co-teaching and sharing of best practices among teachers. it is also argued that leaders with good interpersonal skills encourage teamwork where followers seek solutions to their problems as a team (kumar, 2018). 17. subject matter competencies the survey results showed that only 38.33% of teacher respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that their school leaders are knowledgeable on school subject content. similarly, during interviews with nine (9) teacher participants, only two (2) of them could agree that their hods are competent in the subjects they teach, while none of the teacher participants could narrate that their principals have subject matter knowledge. these were their sentiments: my head of department is an excellent chemistry teacher. (teacher 1) i would probably say my hod has great knowledge of biology. when it comes to that subject, she knows a lot and as someone that teach life science, i like her class visits or her moderating my exam papers because every time i learn something new from her. (teacher 2) the above may be attributed to the fact that principals have an indirect role to play in terms of instructional supervision, by only creating conditions needed for quality teaching and learning (creswell and clark, 2017, kumar, 2018). hence, van wyk (2020) argues that principals rely on hods to provide instructional supervision and these hods should therefore be competent in subject content. underpinning this concern is the fact that hods are expected to provide instructional supervision and support to multiple teachers who are teaching multiple subjects in which hods are not necessarily competent. however, some hods indicated that they are indeed competent in the subjects they teach and could explain how that equips them to provide better instructional supervision to support tpd efforts. their comments were as follows: i am good in languages, especially english, so i co-teach with a novice teacher … i sit and discuss how to teach the subject and the type of correct activities. (hod 4) my major is mathematics, my minor is sciences, and for all my life, i have been a mathematics teacher. maybe i can say i am [a] competent maths teacher and with my vast experience, i can mentor other mathematics teachers. (hod 8) the above seem to indicate that although participating hods have subject matter knowledge in the subjects they teach, it is not the case in all the subjects that are offered in their departments. this contributes to their inability to provide meaningful support to all the teachers in their departments. this finding is supported by research which suggested that hods should be knowledgeable in various pedagogies and subject fields (leavy, 2017). this is because their instructional supervision can be crippled if they are not competent in a variety of subject matters (kumar, 2018). goden and colleagues (2016) also argue that subject matter skills https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 252023 41(2): 25-32 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 so-oabeb & du plessis leadership competencies for teacher professional development which are part of professional competencies enhance and qualify school leaders to be effective instructional supervisors that are able to evaluate teachers’ classroom performances and generate relevant feedback that will contribute to the professional development of teachers. 18. administrative competencies studies on effective school leadership have suggested the need for school leaders to have administrative competencies to facilitate processes geared towards improved teaching and subject knowledge management (leavy, 2017, creswell, 2014a, maree and pietersen, 2014). earlier studies also reported that administrative competencies equip school leaders to monitor and evaluate teachers’ lesson plans, work schemes and moderate assessment activities effectively (creswell, 2014a). in line with this literature, this study established that principals and hods were considered by their teachers and themselves as being competent in administrative skills. below are some extracts from the interviews that validate these findings: being able to plan in advance, do proper planning and the ability to monitor the plans. i must brag and say i have a good monitoring system in place for teachers. (hod 8) another thing about her is i think she has very good monitoring skills because she makes time to monitor everything from files to lessons plans, to learners activities and there are always comment papers attached after she is done ... yes, mostly when there are bad comments we sometimes discuss them in our department meetings. (teacher 5) furthermore, some participants indicated that administratively competent principals and hods use their ability to monitor and evaluate teachers’ performances to devise intervention strategies to improve teachers’ pedagogical practices as illustrated in the extracts below: my administration is always done on time, and i am able to evaluate and help my hods and teachers with the challenges they have with good administration. sometimes it does not have to be a big training exercise but guiding the teacher or hod on how to do it correctly. (principal 2) i am good at planning, ask my teachers … this way i am very clear on how i will source funds and experts for pd activities. with that i end up having a program that needs to run in so far as capacity building of teachers is concerned. (principal 3) some researchers cautioned that incompetency in administrative skills is coupled with the inability to support teachers’ instructional processes (tian et al., 2016, kumar, 2018). hence we can argue that it leads to poor support towards the professional development of teachers by their leader. additionally, findings by ali and botha (2006) reveal that there is a lack of administrative competencies among hods in public secondary schools in the gauteng province in south africa and subsequently they have a shallow understanding of how to support their teachers. similarly, a study by onn and bak (2010) also shows that hods are not competent administrators and hence struggle to execute instructional supervision and mentoring. these literature findings contradict the current study’s empirical findings and this may be attributed to the situational context of the studies. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 262023 41(2): 26-32 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) 19. digital competence technology plays a significant role in the quality of professional development of teachers (karakose, polat & papadakis, 2021). hence, the 21st-century teacher development efforts require competencies in information technology (it) (leavy, 2017). this then necessitates school leaders to elevate their digital competencies to enable them to create a school climate that promote life-long learning (kumar, 2018). consistent with this literature, this study revealed that teacher participants agree that their school leaders should be competent in digital skills. the participants emphasised that this competency plays a significant role in them embracing the benefits of new technological advancements for improved pedagogical practices. the data further revealed that principals and hods with digital competencies are able to cascade their skills through school-based teacher trainings. this is evident in the following extracts: our principal is a technology guy. somewhere last year he gave us training on how to use notes [and] master and access online question papers ... obviously, it contributed to my professional development. (teacher 3) i am computer literate, so where i am, everything is done on the computers. we have school write and school link programs, so when we get novice teachers that are coming in with that skill that i have, i am able to train my teachers how they are supposed to do their work. (hod 5) this finding supports evidence from studies by karakose et al. (2021), who found that school leaders can support teacher professional development through digital innovations. the researchers further established that principals provided such support through in-service training and workshops on the use of technology for improved teacher efficacy (kumar, 2018). the data further revealed that by using their digital competencies, principals and hods are able to encourage teachers to embrace digital teaching and to apply the benefits of modern technology. this is demonstrated by the following comments by participants: i think they have good skills with technology. during covid-19 they spearheaded the creation and use of google classrooms, something i never knew, but try me now. i can teach through google classroom, he [hod] taught us a lot in that. (teacher 6) she is good with computers; your question papers will not be approved until you improve on some technical things. you will be called in and she will show you step-by-step how to do it better. (teacher 2) i completed my icdl training, so i think i have better computer skills and i usually assist my teachers by guiding them, like on how to do marksheets using excel, using powerpoint … some of them i see are now using powerpoint. (principal 3) similar to the above, karakose and colleagues (2021) also found that teachers in their study perceived their principals as competent in digital literacy and that their skills became relevant during the covid-19 pandemic. these researchers conclude that school principals use their digital competencies to support technology-based professional development as part of promoting effective teaching practices (kumar, 2018) this is because digital competencies of school leaders are associated with life-long learning focused on providing solutions to everyday teaching challenges (leavy, 2017). within this context, the necessity of principals and hods to have digital competencies became clear during the covid-19 pandemic when the need to change from the more conventional pedagogy could no longer be ignored. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 272023 41(2): 27-32 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 so-oabeb & du plessis leadership competencies for teacher professional development 20. listening skills the interview data revealed that school leaders should have good listening skills. 81.97% of the teacher respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that their principals and hods have good listening skills that contribute their professional development. these findings demonstrate that principals and hods are able to gather vital information about teachers, for example their subject knowledge and classroom teaching practices, which in turn helps them to make sound decisions. this was articulated by some of the participants as follows: … being ready to listen and being ready to learn about their challenges or strengths to make improvements. (principal1) so, it really helps that you are able to listen to people and understand their problems. (hod 5) he is a good listener that leads with his ears. once a teachers’ need is communicated, he caters to that need. (teacher 1) the above views are supported by other studies (creswell, 2014a, johnson and christensen, 2013). this finding is corroborated by a study conducted by giese and colleagues (2009), who identified good listening skills as being vital for school principals to develop teachers’ abilities and skills. tate (2003) also established that school leaders need to apply good listening skills to understand individual teacher’s concerns, motivations and frustrations. this will enable them to understand and appreciate different viewpoints of teachers before deciding on a course of action (kumar, 2018). therefore, it is argued that principals and hods with good listening skills are effective leaders that can affect change through implementing tpd activities and plans that have contextual and situational relevance. these activities and plans emanate from varied views of teachers that are informed by their strengths and weaknesses. 21. limitations and suggestions for future research i could include the broader namibian context by sampling respondents from across all 13 (thirteen) education regions of the country, but logistically it was not feasible. hence, i only gathered data from respondents and participants in the otjiwarongo education circuit. additionally, as the study aimed to explore school leaders’ abilities to influence change among the teaching staff, there was reluctance from some principals and hods in providing factual information. therefore, i used a mixed-method approach with sequential explanatory design to help counterbalance such limitations. further research into each of the leadership competencies for teacher professional development as identified in this study is required, for example, how school leaders acquire and use these individual competencies in promoting teacher professional development. this will be particularly valuable within the namibian context. 22. recommendation and practical implication according to the results, it is evident that namibian school principals and hods have certain leadership competencies that aid their efforts in supporting teachers’ professional development. therefore, it is recommended that the ministry of education, arts and culture in collaboration with the institutions of higher learning develop a mandatory insert program or short courses focused on further enhancing and/or imparting new essential leadership competencies except https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 282023 41(2): 28-32 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.7097 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) those identified in this study and that are needed for effective instructional supervision and support. this will help ensure that the principals and hods have a boarder competency-base to initiate and support tpd activities. through that, leadership competencies such as digital competencies can be further developed and enhanced through mandatory attendance of principals and hods into the international computer driving licence (icdl) courses provided within the region. the programs and quality assurance (pqa) division within the ministry should facilitate this type of capacity development programs. 23. conclusion as part of the blend of functional, distributed and instructional leadership theory that framed this study, the functional leadership theory supports these findings. according to the functional leadership theorists, leaders who subscribe to functional leadership focuses on specific actions that will have significant impact on the effectiveness of the team (kumar, 2018, cohen et al., 2007). thus, their competencies play a major role in their leadership functions. furthermore, the distributed leadership theory argues that all members of an organisation has unique skills and expertise and therefore has influential abilities for the success of organisational processes (johnson and christensen, 2013). as is evident in the above-discussed findings, the namibian principals and hods who participated in this study have a variety of competencies that enable them to provide a wide range of support towards teacher professional development through distributed leadership. this study provided valuable insights into the roles of leadership competencies for teacher professional development. it was established that school leadership competencies are significant towards enabling principals and hods to support the professional development of teachers. these competencies include accountability, effective communication, good interpersonal relations, subject matter skills, administrative competencies, digital competency and good listening skills. generally, the absence or presence of certain leadership competencies among school leaders affects the quality of support they provide towards the professional development of their teachers. this is because competent principals and hods are more active and practically involved in the teaching and learning activities of teachers and are able to respond to the 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https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143214558576 https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143214558576 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2012.04.025 https://doi.org/10.22437/irje.v4i1.9093 https://doi.org/10.22437/irje.v4i1.9093 https://doi.org/10.6007/ijarped/v8-i4/6432 pie32(3) book.indb perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 172 surette van staden department science, mathematics and technology education, university of pretoria e-mail: surette.vanstaden@up.ac.za telephone: 012 420 5159 reflections on creemers’ comprehensive model of educational effectiveness for reading literacy: south african evidence from pirls 2006 surette van staden sarah howie this study reports on a doctoral investigation (van staden, 2010) to identify and explain relationships between some major learnerand school-level factors associated with successful reading in grade 5. south african classrooms are characterised by large variation, with linguistically and socio-economically heterogeneous groups of learners. however, there is a paucity of theoretical frameworks that could explain reading effectiveness in a developing context. for purposes of this study, the south african grade 5 data from the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) 2006 were analysed. hierarchical linear modelling (hlm) was applied to determine the effect of a number of explanatory variables at learnerand school-level on reading achievement as outcome variable, while controlling for language. in the absence of a reading effectiveness framework, creemers’ comprehensive model of educational effectiveness was used as theoretical point of departure. the framework left the differences in reading scores largely unexplained and could not capture the south african pirls 2006 data adequately. the study concludes with reflections on whether creemers’ model could guide an analysis to explain reading performance and on what further modifications to the model might be required to suit a developing south african context more adequately. keywords: pirls 2006, theoretical framework, reading literacy, creemers’ comprehensive model of educational effectiveness sarah howie department science, mathematics and technology education, university of pretoria e-mail: sarah.howie@up.ac.za telephone: 012 420 4175 reflections on creemers’ comprehensive model of educational effectiveness for reading literacy: south african evidence from pirls 2006 surette van staden & sarah howie 173 introduction this study aimed to identify and explain relationships between some major factors associated with successful reading at grade 5 level in south african primary schools. in the absence of a reading effectiveness framework to serve as a conceptual guide to the investigation, creemers’ comprehensive model of educational effectiveness was used as conceptual framework, thereby using school effectiveness as theoretical point of departure. this study took the form of a secondary analysis, and utilised the south african grade 5 data from the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) 2006. south africa’s first participation in this international comparative study of reading literacy was during the 2006 cycle, with repeat participation in the 2011 cycle. the current study reports on a secondary analysis of pirls 2006 data that formed part of a larger doctoral study which was conducted prior to the availability of south african pirls 2011 data. in south africa, grave concerns with regard to low levels of learner achievement pervade research initiatives and educational debates. despite considerable investment in educational input (such as policy and resources) and processes (such as curriculum provision and teacher support), outcomes (in the form of learner achievement) remain disappointingly low. south african classrooms are characterised by large variation, with linguistically and socio-economically heterogeneous groups of learners. in south africa, official status is given to 11 languages. mesthrie (2002) clusters the predominant languages around a set of varieties that are closely related along linguistic lines, namely (1) nguni, consisting of isizulu, isixhosa, siswati, xitsonga and isindebele; and (2) sotho, made up of sepedi (northern sotho), sesotho (south sotho) and setswana. along with these clusters, (3) afrikaans, (4) english and (5) tshivenda constitute the set of officially recognised languages in south africa. table 1 indicates the achievement by language grouping in pirls 2006 and illustrates the severe underperformance of learners from nguni, sotho and tshivenda backgrounds: table 1: average grade 5 achievement score per language grouping language grouping n % of the pirls 2006 sample average achievement score se afrikaans 1 678 11.5 415.7 12.0 english 2 793 19.1 398.0 17.1 nguni 6 039 41.2 243.3 4.4 sotho 3 363 22.9 267.1 5.2 tshivenda 784 5.3 262.1 15.0 background to pirls 2006 a total of 40 countries (including south africa) and 45 education systems (e.g. belgium – flemish and belgium – french) participated in pirls 2006 (mullis, martin, kennedy & foy, 2007). pirls 2006 required the assessment of learners who have had perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 174 four years of schooling, and for most countries this requirement translated to grade 4 learners. pirls 2006 aimed to describe trends and international comparison for the reading achievement of grade 4 learners. it also focused on learners’ competencies in relation to goals and standards for reading curricula; the impact of the home environment and how parents foster reading literacy; the organisation, time and reading materials for learning to read in schools; and curriculum and classroom approaches to reading instruction (mullis, kennedy, martin & sainsbury, 2004). pirls 2006 was run under the auspices of the international association for the evaluation of educational achievement (iea). as an organisation, the iea undertakes international studies that benchmark performance of school-going children in mathematics, science, civic education, information, communication, technology and reading, to name several. in naming its 1991 study, the iea decided to join the terms “literacy” and “reading” to convey the notion that literacy includes the ability to reflect on what has been read and to use reading as a tool to achieve personal and societal goals. thus, according to campbell, kelly, mullis, martin and sainsbury (2001:3), the framework for literacy that applies to pirls is as follows: ... the ability to understand and use those written language forms required by society and (or) valued by the individual. young readers can construct meaning from a variety of texts. they read to learn, to participate in communities of readers and for enjoyment. with this definition, the pirls 2006 framework took the stance that reading literacy is a constructive and interactive process. according to brinkley and kelly (2003), the reader is now regarded as actively constructing meaning and as knowing effective reading strategies. such readers have positive attitudes towards reading and read for the purposes of recreation and information acquisition. meaning is constructed in the interaction between reader and text in the context of a particular reading experience. reading implies that readers bring with them a repertoire of knowledge, skills, cognitive and metacognitive strategies. the south african pirls 2006 study not only assessed a first population of grade 4 learners, but also included a second population of grade 5 learners as a national option within the study (howie, venter, van staden, zimmerman, long, scherman & archer, 2009). only the grade 5 learner achievement is reported in the pirls 2006 international report (mullis et al., 2007). south african grade 5 learners achieved the lowest score of the 45 participating education systems. grade 4 learners achieved on average 253 points (se=4.6), while grade 5 learners achieved on average 302 (se=5.6). average achievement for both these grades is well below the fixed international reference average of 500 points. conceptual framework in order to not only understand the reasons for poor reading achievement, but to also identify those factors that could be associated with successful readers and those associated with readers at risk of failure, three contextual levels seem to be of major influence in reading achievement, namely the school, the home and the learners themselves. however, there is a paucity of theoretical frameworks that could explain reflections on creemers’ comprehensive model of educational effectiveness for reading literacy: south african evidence from pirls 2006 surette van staden & sarah howie 175 reading effectiveness in a developing context. creemers’ comprehensive model of educational effectiveness (creemers & kyriakides, 2008; kyriakides, campbell & gagatsis, 2000) for schools was used as a point of departure for this study, because this model bore relevance to already existing reading achievement literature in international comparative assessments (leino, linnakyla & malin, 2004; fuchs & woessmann, 2004; chapman & tunmer, 2003; d’angiulli, siegel & maggi, 2004) and those contextual levels that are of major influence in reading achievement, namely the school, the classroom and the learner. creemers’ model provided the framework according to which the south african pirls 2006 data were analysed to identify and explain relationships between some major learnerand school-level factors associated with successful reading in grade 5. for the study, the original comprehensive model of educational effectiveness as proposed by creemers was used, instead of the revised dynamic model. the dynamic model makes provision for investigation across time with multiple times for data collection, but for the purposes of this study, the available cross-sectional data were collected at one particular time with no follow-up or repeat measures. creemers’ model is well established and has been reviewed critically for its validity in studies of educational effectiveness. creemers and kyriakides (2008) state that, although a dynamic model of educational effectiveness is proposed, the original model could provide a starting point for developing a dynamic model of educational effectiveness research. creemers’ original model shows an association with the pirls conceptual framework in that the pirls conceptualisation of reading literacy also seeks to understand reading performance against learner, teacher, school and community contexts, levels that are all present in creemers’ original work. creemers’ work provides an extensive analytical model for this study in its attempt to evaluate achievement across language groupings in south africa. this study, therefore, sought to answer the following research questions: 1. in the absence of identifiable reading effectiveness models, could creemers’ comprehensive model of educational effectiveness be used to guide an analysis to explain learners’ reading performance? 2. to what extent does creemers’ model capture the pirls 2006 south african data adequately? 3. in light of unexplained differences in reading achievement using creemers’ model as conceptual framework for this study, what further modifications are required to suit a developing south african landscape more adequately? creemers’ model aims to explain learner outcomes by alterable educational factors through discerning the contrasting but connected levels of structure for effectiveness in education (creemers & reezigt, 1999). higher levels provide conditions for learner achievement, and educational outcomes are induced by the combined effects of levels. the original model has four levels, namely the learner, classroom, the school and the context (or country). figure 1 provides an illustration of creemers’ model and the factors at work at context, school, classroom and learner level. perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 176 figure 1: creemers’ comprehensive model of educational effectiveness creemers based his model on four assumptions. first, the time-on-task and the opportunity used at the learner level are related directly to learner achievement. secondly, the context, school and classroom levels permeate time-on-task and opportunities used at the learner level. thirdly, the higher-level factors dominate levels: characteristics of quality, time and opportunity: formal criteria: reflections on creemers’ comprehensive model of educational effectiveness for reading literacy: south african evidence from pirls 2006 surette van staden & sarah howie 177 conditions and have a partial causal effect on the lower levels; thus, factors at the context (or country) level partly determine factors at the school level which, in turn, partly determine what occurs in the classroom, and classroom factors, then, partly affect learner factors. fourthly, all the factors influence learner achievement (kyriakides & creemers, 2006). creemers also introduced the formal criteria of consistency, cohesion, constancy and control to the model (creemers & reezigt, 1999). consistency occurs when the factors associated with the effectiveness of classrooms, schools and contexts support one another.. cohesion requires a suitable constancy of school-level factors from year to year, for example, schools should not regularly change their rules and policies. lastly, control includes not only the evaluation of learners, but also the practice of teachers who hold themselves and others responsible for effectiveness. these formal criteria emphasise the importance of factors over time and of mechanisms of ensuring effectiveness (creemers & reezigt, 1999). kyriakides et al. (2000) regard creemers’ model as an extension of carroll’s model of school learning (1963) which asserts that the degree of mastery is a function of the ratio of the amount of time learners actually spend on learning tasks to the total amount of time they need. according to the carroll model, time spent on learning is defined as equal to the minimum value of three variables, namely opportunity or time allowed for learning; perseverance or the time learners are willing to spend actively engaging in reading activities; and aptitude, understood as the amount of time needed to learn under optimal instructional conditions. according to kyriakides et al. (2000), creemers added to carroll’s model of learning, specifically in respect to the general concept of “opportunity to learn”. thus, in creemers’ model, time and opportunity are discerned at the classroom and school level and distinguishes between actually-used time and available opportunity. bos (2002) explains that creemers, therefore, emphasised the availability of time and opportunity at the classroom level while, at the learner level, he referred to actual time used and opportunity to learn. with regard to quality of instruction, creemers identified three components at the classroom level, namely curricular materials, grouping procedures and teacher behaviour. according to bos (2002), by using each of these three components, several combinations of characteristics could constitute an effective scenario. isolated characteristics are not effective in themselves, because influences on learner achievement are multilevel in nature (kyriakides & creemers, 2006. kyriakides and creemers (2006) re-worked the original model of educational effectiveness and tested what they refer to as the dynamic model of educational effectiveness. creemers’ original model is based on the assumptions that the influence of learner achievement is multileveled, thereby referring to factors at different levels, including the context (or country), the school, classroom and the learner (creemers & kyriakides, 2006. the original model makes provision for direct and indirect relations between the levels which might not be linear in nature but which are envisaging somewhat static or simultaneous set of relationships. in the dynamic model, however, the same assumptions are still held true, but creemers added a provision that the classroom, school and context (or country) factors could perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 178 also be contrasted or measured across time by taking into account additional five dimensions, namely frequency, focus, stage, quality and differentiation (creemers & kyriakides, 2006). bos (2002), in his timss (trends in mathematics and science study) investigation into the benefits and limitations of large-scale international comparative achievement studies, adopted creemers’ model. he employed the same four structural levels suggested by creemers, but revised the components of quality, time and opportunity to suit the needs of his investigation. a similar approach was followed for the purposes of the current study, where creemers’ model of educational effectiveness was used as grounds for a model of reading effectiveness based on south african grade 5 data provided by pirls 2006. creemers’ model was adapted to reflect reading effectiveness in contrast with creemers’ original use of the model for school effectiveness. table 2 shows the adaptation of creemers’ model to serve as a south african model of reading effectiveness, using variables from the pirls 2006 school, teacher, learner and parent contextual questionnaires as source: table 2: factors of reading effectiveness as adapted from creemers’ model of educational effectiveness levels components of quality, time and opportunity pirls 2006 factors school quality (educational): quality: (organisational) time: opportunities used: instructional activities and strategies governance and organisation of educational system curriculum characteristics and policies home-school connection classroom quality: time: opportunities used: instructional activities and strategies demographics and resources instructional activities and strategies classroom environment and structure instructional activities and strategies learner quality: time: opportunities used: motivation: social background: basic skills/higherorder skills: activities fostering reading literacy learners’ out-of-school activities home-school connection learners’ and parents’ reading attitudes and self-concept demographics and resources home resources language in the home reflections on creemers’ comprehensive model of educational effectiveness for reading literacy: south african evidence from pirls 2006 surette van staden & sarah howie 179 the objective of this study was, therefore, to establish the extent to which creemers’ comprehensive model of educational effectiveness could provide a framework for reading performance in a developing context in the absence of established reading education frameworks and their ability to capture the pirls 2006 data adequately. method participants while the current study took the form of a secondary analysis of south african pirls 2006 data, the participants, data collection instruments and procedure as applicable to the primary study are explained in the following sections. the decision to use the south african pirls 2006 data set was mainly because of its adherence to strict quality control measures as expected from the iea. also, pirls 2006 was the first study to make data of these grade levels available in south africa in all 11 official languages. the intended south african sample for pirls 2006 consisted of 441 schools, all of which offer schooling at least at grade 4 level. the south african pirls 2006 study assessed a population of grade 4 learners, but also included a second population of grade 5 learners as a national option within the study (howie et al., 2009). reporting of results for purposes of this study was based only on grade 5 data, since grade 4 data were neither statistically stable nor included in the international report. the sample was selected on the basis of probabilities proportional to size, first by province and then by language of teaching within the province. the pirls 2006 study resulted in the collection of achievement data from a realised sample of 434 schools comprising 14 657 grade 5 learners from intact1 classrooms. contextual background information was collected from grade 5 learners, their parents, teachers and school principals. this information yielded data for 14 657 grade 5 learners, 14 657 parents, 403 grade 5 teachers and 397 school principals. data collection instruments achievement tests: the pirls 2006 assessment consisted of a reading literacy test in the form of two types of texts, namely reading for literary experience (or literary texts) and reading to acquire and use information (or informational texts). reading texts were followed by a range of multiple-choice questions and open-response questions to a maximum of three points. all questions corresponded to any one of the four types of reading comprehension process, namely (1) focusing on and retrieving explicitly stated information, (2) making straightforward inferences, (3) interpreting and integrating ideas and information, and (4) examining and evaluating content, language and textual elements (mullis et al., 2004). reporting of reading perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 180 achievement results in pirls 2006 are presented in terms of achievement above or below the fixed international average of 500 by means of five overall plausible values as derived from item response analyses. background questionnaires: grade 5 learners, their parents, grade 5 teachers and school principals responded to contextual background questionnaires that addressed a wide range of topics on aspects such as reading behaviour, attitudes, teaching reading and school organisation. learner and parent questionnaires were administered in all 11 official languages to suit the language preference of learners and parents optimally, while teachers and school questionnaires were administered in english. questions in the pirls questionnaires took the form of likert-scale items. for purposes of building the learner-level model, items from the learner and parent questionnaire were used. table 3 provides information on the variables as taken from these questionnaires and in relation to creemers’ factors of time, opportunity used and social background. table 3: model variables included at the learner level factor as measured by creemers’ model pirls 2006 variable name variable description pirls 2006 questionnaire source time asbgtoc1-7 frequency of readingrelated activities outside of school learner questionnaire asbgrto1-10 frequency of specific reading activities outside of school learner questionnaire asbgtsp1-5 time spent engaging in activities outside of school on a normal school day learner questionnaire asbhtsoh time spent on reading homework as reported by parents parent questionnaire asbhread parents’ time spent on reading-related activities parent questionnaire opportunity used asbgthc1-6 frequency of reading-related activities in school learner questionnaire asbgafr1-4 types of reading activities learners are afforded after reading learner questionnaire asbhha1-11 opportunities used by parents/ caregivers to engage the child in preliteracy activities parent questionnaire asbhdot1-10 opportunities used by parents/ caregivers to engage the child in reading-related activities parent questionnaire asbhrre opportunities parents use to read for their own enjoyment parent questionnaire reflections on creemers’ comprehensive model of educational effectiveness for reading literacy: south african evidence from pirls 2006 surette van staden & sarah howie 181 social background asbgbook number of books in the home learner questionnaire asbgta1-17 resources in the home e.g. running water, electricity, television learner questionnaire asbhchbk number of children’s books in the home parent questionnaire asbhledf the highest level of education completed by the child’s father parent questionnaire asbhledm the highest level of education completed by the child’s mother parent questionnaire the school-level model consisted of items taken from the school and teacher questionnaires. table 4 shows the variables taken from the questionnaires in relation to creemers’ factors of educational quality, time and opportunity used. table 4: model variables included at the school level factor as measured by creemers’ model pirls 2006 variable name variable description pirls 2006 questionnaire source educational quality acbgacu1-3 emphasis that the school places on teaching specific language and literacy skills to learners in grades 1-4 school questionnaire acbgme1-12 grade at which specific reading skills and strategies first receive major emphasis in instruction in the school school questionnaire atbgbhr1-8 teacher strategies when a learner begins to fall behind in reading teacher questionnaire atbgmsr1-4 emphasis that is placed on specific sources to monitor learners’ progress in reading teacher questionnaire atbgasp1-7 frequency of using specific tools to assess learners’ performance in reading teacher questionnaire perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 182 time acbgidy (acbgz003) the number of days per year that the school is open for instruction school questionnaire acbgrii informal initiatives to encourage learners to read school questionnaire atbgacth the amount of time per week spent on english language instruction and/ or activities with the learners teacher questionnaire atbgfrdh the amount of time that is explicitly allocated for formal reading instruction teacher questionnaire atbghwr 2 the amount of time that learners are expected to spend on homework involving reading (for any subject) teacher questionnaire opportunity used acbgma1-6 school’s use of the specific materials in reading instructional programme for learners in grades 1-4 school questionnaire atbgria1-9 frequency of using specific resources when doing reading activities/ instruction teacher questionnaire atbgra1-10 frequency of doing specific activities when doing reading activities/ instruction teacher questionnaire atbgdev1-7 frequency with which teacher requires learners to engage in specific activities to help develop reading comprehension skills or strategies teacher questionnaire reflections on creemers’ comprehensive model of educational effectiveness for reading literacy: south african evidence from pirls 2006 surette van staden & sarah howie 183 procedure this study used the pirls data to examine the relationship between selected background factors and reading literacy achievement for an overall south african model and per language grouping on two levels, namely the learner level and the school level. hierarchical linear modelling (hlm), also known as multilevel modelling (snijders & bosker, 1999), was used from observations and measurements obtained from the pirls 2006 study. factors emanating from contextual questionnaires of grade 5 learners, their home environment, their schools and classrooms were identified by means of factor analyses in conjunction with learners’ test scores on the pirls 2006 achievement tests. the aim of these analyses was to establish the relationships between one or more explanatory variables (see tables 3 and 4), in this case obtained from items in the contextual questionnaires at learner and school level, and the outcome variables, i.e. reading achievement scores for the different language groupings (namely afrikaans, english, nguni, sotho and tshivenda). a twolevel model was followed, with learner-level variables nested within school-level variables. schooland classroom-level variables were grouped together in one level, and not separated into school level and class level. the pirls 2006 sample was drawn so that one intact classroom was chosen from each selected school, thereby making classrooms inextricably part of the school. the analysis of the pirls 2006 achievement and questionnaire data followed a confirmatory approach. therefore, instead of using all variables from the different questionnaires, only a selection of variables based on creemers’ framework, which were expected to be related to reading literacy achievement, was used for analysis purposes. in this way, the study was not guided by the available data alone, but by existing research into what is known about those factors that are likely to influence learner achievement. in doing so, the theoretical framework in the form of creemers’ model guided the data analysis in a confirmatory, not exploratory, way. results table 5 illustrates how components of quality, time and opportunity, as taken from creemers’ model, were populated with variables from the pirls 2006 contextual questionnaires. table 5 further summarises the statistically significant effects found in this study for the overall model and per language grouping separately. entries in the table were characterised by statistical significance at p=0.01 or 1% cut-off. perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 184 table 5: factors of reading effectiveness and statistically significant effects (adapted from creemers, 1999) le ve ls co m po ne nt s of q ua lit y, ti m e an d op po rt un it y pirls 2006 explanatory variables statistically significant effects o ve ra ll (i nt rc pt =5 24 .3 3) a fr ik aa ns (i nt rc pt =3 79 .1 0) en gl is h (i nt rc pt =4 05 .3 3) n gu ni (i nt rc pt =3 64 .2 9) so th o (i nt rc pt =4 87 .0 2) ts hi ve nd a (i nt rc pt =2 59 .3 7) co nt ex t q ua lit y (e du ca tio na l): demographics and resources (school ses) 69.10 87.60 71.05 q ua lit y: (o rg an is ati on al ) governance and organisation of educational system ti m e: curriculum characteristics and policies o pp or tu ni ty : home-school connection reflections on creemers’ comprehensive model of educational effectiveness for reading literacy: south african evidence from pirls 2006 surette van staden & sarah howie 185 sc ho ol q ua lit y (e du ca tio na l): school environment and resources instructional activities and strategies q ua lit y: (o rg an iz ati on al ) governance and organization of educational system ti m e: teacher training and preparation o pp or tu ni ty : home-school connection curriculum characteristics and policies cl as sr oo m q ua lit y: demographics and resources instructional materials and technology ti m e: teacher training and preparation o pp or tu ni ty : classroom environment and structure instructional strategies and activities home-school connection –14.12 perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 186 le ar ne r q ua lit y: learners’ out-ofschool activities –9.55 –11.40 –8.15 o pp or tu ni tie s us ed : home-school connection 10.50 14.50 12.95 16.32 activities fostering reading literacy –8.32 10.05 –11.44 –8.08 m oti va tio n: demographics: learner age –8.76 –31.70 –31.70 –11.37 –26.21 demographics: learner sex –27.50 –23.53 –23.53 –30.98 –24.52 so ci al ba ck gr ou nd : home resources 6.30 11.82 11.82 ba si c sk ill s/ h ig he r o rd er sk ill s: language in the home table 5 confirms the statistically significant effects found in the overall afrikaans and english2 models for school socio-economic status. we could expect reading literacy achievement to be positively affected by as much as 87.60 score points in the afrikaans language model and as much as 71.05 in the english language model. school socio-economic status had no statistically significant effect for the african language groupings, which might be due to a lack of variation in the sample of african schools. none of the african language schools in the sample could be described as affluent or of high socio-economic status. as indicated by table 5, a single statistically significant effect was found in the overall model for classroom environment and structure, referred to by creemers as opportunity used at classroom level. no other factors were, however, found to be of statistical significance in affecting reading literacy scores at school-level for aspects of quality (educational and organisational), time and opportunity in the theoretical framework. at learner-level, a number of significant factors for the overall model and per language grouping are indicated. with regard to learners’ out-of-school reading activities (which were reflected as a quality factor in creemers’ framework), reading achievement scores are predicted to be lower by as much as 9.553 points in the reflections on creemers’ comprehensive model of educational effectiveness for reading literacy: south african evidence from pirls 2006 surette van staden & sarah howie 187 overall south african model, 11.40 points for the nguni learners and 8.15 points for the sotho learners, where out-of-school activities do not involve frequent reading or exposure to reading materials. the presence of a solid home-school connection (as linked to opportunities used in creemers’ framework) positively affect reading achievement scores, with a predicted 10.50 points higher reading achievement score in the overall model, 14.50 points higher in the nguni model, 12.95 points higher in the sotho model and 16.32 points higher in the tshivenda model. where activities in the home are present that foster reading literacy (e.g. talking about reading, opportunities used by parents or caregivers to engage the child in preliteracy and reading-related activities), reading achievement scores in the afrikaans model are predicted to be positively affected by 10.05 points. however, in the absence of such activities, reading is lower by 8.32 in the overall model, 11.44 points in the english model and 8.08 points in the sotho model (see table 5). learner demographics (as measured in age and gender, with girls outperforming boys, and poorer achievement as the learners grow older while remaining in grade 5) showed the strongest prediction of reading literacy achievement scores. all models (with exception of the nguni model) showed significant decreases in reading achievement by as much as 31.70 points for the english model, 26.21 points for the tshivenda model, 16.49 points for the afrikaans model, 11.37 points for the sotho model and 8.76 for the overall model with every year increase in age for a learner who remains at grade 5 level. in all the models, higher reading literacy achievement scores were predicted for girls than boys by as much as 30.98 points for the nguni model and 27.50 points for the overall model. similarly to patterns found for the effects of school socio-economic status, the presence of home resources (as measured by a number of possessions in the home, parental education and parental employment status) showed statistically significant effects in the overall model (6.30 points predictive increase in reading achievement scores), the afrikaans model (10.02 points predictive increase in reading achievement scores) and the english model (11.82 points predictive increase in reading achievement scores). table 5 indicates that, with most of the statistically significant factors found at learner level, most of the differences at school level in reading achievement scores across five language groupings could not be explained using the conceptual framework for this study. the adapted framework did not fit patterns found for the african language groupings (nguni, sotho and tshivenda) for school socio-economic status specifically and could, therefore, suggest changes to the framework to suit the south african landscape more adequately. while creemers’ model provided an extensive analytical framework, the inability of the model to capture significant factors at work in african language schools might warrant further adaptations to the framework. the results point to a two-fold situation where adaptations to the framework and more adequate data might still be needed to identify the most prominent factors at work in a developing, multilingual educational system. on the one hand, perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 188 creemers’ framework was insufficient in explaining the performance at school level of children using afrikaans, english and african languages as language of learning and teaching (lolt). little evidence could be found for factors where statistically significant effects were expected at school level. the conceptual framework was more appropriate in explaining significant effects of school socio-economic status for the afrikaans and english groupings, corroborating the literature that infers the influence of socio-economic status on learner achievement. on the other hand, the lack of evidence from the pirls 2006 data suggests that the current contextual data for a developing context such as south africa might be insufficient to provide evidence about associations among variables. stronger associations and more data might be required for the model to be tested more effectively. discussion the aim of this study was to establish the extent to which creemers’ comprehensive model of educational effectiveness could provide a framework for reading performance in a developing context in the absence of established reading education frameworks and their ability to capture the pirls 2006 data adequately. this study offered a theoretical reflection of an empirical study of learner assessment in south african schools in an attempt to uncover factors that affect reading literacy achievement. in the absence of identifiable reading effectiveness models, a school effectiveness model (in the form of creemers’ model) was adopted for purposes of this study. in summary, results point to significant socio-economic factors at school level found for the afrikaans and english groupings. however, little similarity could be found for significant associations between creemers’ components and average reading scores for african language groupings. based on findings as presented in table 5, some results emanated contrary to expectation. one such outcome was the statistical non-significance of school socio-economic status for the african language groupings. these results, however, should not be interpreted as suggesting that there is no socio-economic association with average reading performances for african language groupings at school level. instead, there might be a number of direct relationships that could not be found or tested given this study’s data source and conceptual framework. for a number of creemers’ factors, no appropriate variables could be identified under the relevant components in the conceptual framework (e.g. basic skills, variables that measure resources rather than opportunity). although several of the predicted creemers’ components did not exhibit associations for socio-economic status, this outcome does not mean that the associations do not exist. it merely suggests that the predicted components were not directly affecting achievement in the current study. similarly, significant factors associated with reading literacy were found mostly at learner level, but this does not mean that the existence of teacherand school-level reflections on creemers’ comprehensive model of educational effectiveness for reading literacy: south african evidence from pirls 2006 surette van staden & sarah howie 189 factors is not of importance. while some explanatory factors at learner level could more easily become the target of reading interventions, the higher-level effect of the classroom and school is not diminished by this study. the pirls 2006 data did not necessarily capture educationally and statistically significant factors, as conceptualised by creemers, which are at play at learner and school level in order to explain reading achievement scores sufficiently in a south african context. while more statistically significant factors were found for the afrikaans and english language groupings, this significance might be reflective of the european (or predominantly western) background of these learners who took part in a conceptualised and designed study that is also based on european (or western) ideals. with regard to an african school context, the southern and eastern african consortium for the monitoring of educational quality (sacmeq) study makes provision for such a context (e.g. asking teachers to comment on the availability of resources such as mud walls and thatched roofs typically found in many african communities). multilevel modelling of data could prove useful with the use of a data source which takes these unique contextual aspects into account, thereby improving cross-national and regional validity in studies of this nature. while pirls is highly regarded for its methodological rigour and quality assurance procedures in its attempt to assure accurate and reliable estimates, the south african study might benefit from improved indicators in its questionnaires which takes account of the developing nature of many schools and social and linguistic complexities that are different from developed and often highly functional systems. in the absence of discernible reading effectiveness models that could explain reading achievement in a developing context adequately in relation to associated background factors, an adapted model suited to a south african schooling context is still needed. such a model should take large variation between schools, as characteristically found in developing contexts, into account by following a holistic systems approach that would allow for complex relationships within and between learner and school levels. a systems theory approach could provide valuable theoretical insights, considering the nested structure of data of this nature. more specifically, at macro (or school) level, individual differences might become discernible when data are not handled at an aggregated (or pooled) level. improved indicators of context are perhaps needed for a developing context such as south africa. it seems as if the current contextual data for african learners are insufficient and the recommendation is made that more variation is required for the model to be tested effectively, specifically because the variation for the african language groupings were limited within and across language groupings. improved indicators could take the form of additional national-option questions to become part of the contextual questionnaires responded to by learners, parents, teachers and school principals. national-option questions allow for individual countries to pose questions to respondents that are of national interest and the development of contextual questionnaires are included in addition to international questions asked perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 190 across all participating countries. additional indicators of time spent on reading might be needed, where current indicators only provide evidence of reported time spent on reading, but not of how the time is productively spent. similarly, indicators exist on whether teachers create opportunities for learners to read, but evidence for how these opportunities are used is lacking. lastly, future national-option questions for the south african pirls study might have to include more detailed aspects of the socio-economic state with regard to the rising prevalence of hiv and aids, child-headed households and dependence on social grants as a means of economic survival, as these not only serve as proxy for socio-economic status, but could also be mediators of learners’ educational experiences and exposure to quality education. reflections on the conceptual framework used in this study and the study of pirls 2006 data to adequately mimic the components as specified by creemers, invite the following question: how should the model change to suit the south african landscape more adequately? perhaps modifications should be explored rather than confirmed, since use of the south african pirls 2006 data source to capture the essence of creemers’ components has often resulted in the elimination of or adaptation to factors that did not show high factor loadings. therefore, an exploratory approach might be warranted when dealing with contextual data and south africa’s 11 official languages. such an approach might be more appropriate when working with african languages. african languages might have to be treated separately in future research, since aggregation could lead to the identification and significance of some factors becoming hidden from the framework. the conceptual reflections in this study are made against a stark reality that has since been confirmed by the results of the south african pirls 2011 study. grade 5 learners in south african primary schools who participated in pirls 2006 were not able to achieve satisfactory levels of reading competence. the gravity of this finding was exacerbated by the fact that these learners were tested in the language in which they had been receiving instruction during the foundation phase of schooling. the cultivation of a passion for reading, a culture of reading in south african households, classrooms and schools, and the continual monitoring of reading achievement remain imperatives for the south african schooling system in years to come. the importance of a reading literate country is emphasised by mullis et al. (2007:15) in the introduction of the pirls 2006 international report: in today’s information society, the ability to read is essential for maximizing success in the endeavours of daily life, continuing intellectual growth, and realizing personal potential. similarly, a literate citizen is vital to a nation’s social growth and economic prosperity. the ultimate cost of an illiterate population for whom reading is inaccessible and unvalued includes dire life-long economic and social consequences, both for the individual and communities. reflections on creemers’ comprehensive model of educational effectiveness for reading literacy: south african evidence from pirls 2006 surette van staden & sarah howie 191 references bos ktj 2002. benefits and limitations of large-scale international comparative achievement studies: the case of iea’s timss study. den haag: cip-gegevens koninklijke bibliotheek. brinkley m & kelly dl 2003. a comparison of the naep and pirls fourth grade reading assessments. 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thesis. pretoria: university of pretoria. 72 understanding the nature of learning and opportunities to learn created by workintegrated learning: a perspective in vocational education abstract increasing concern about the work readiness of graduates of higher education institutions, including technical and vocational education and training (tvet) colleges, has led to a greater focus on workplace learning as a means of preparing students for the world of work. research suggests that work-integrated learning (wil), as a form of experiential learning, is characterised by certain elements that give students the opportunity to acquire skills and competencies and develop aptitudes that could enhance their ability to fit into the workplace. this paper presents the findings of a focus group study that explored the perceptions of tvet business studies students regarding their experiences of the learning that takes place during wil and the opportunity to learn presented to them by the wil. results from the study show that the wil curriculum implemented in tvet business studies is characterised by the elements identified by the literature, namely, application of theory, hands-on practice, integration of theory into practice and authentic real-life experience. the tvet business studies students reported that the learning going on during wil makes greater cognitive demands and is deeper in nature than college-based theoretical learning. the discussion section argues that experiencing a “high” and “deeper” form of learning at the workplace, even though there is a shift of focus, from the students to the organisational objective, suggests that the experience of learning may be key to learning. this idea contrasts with a focus on the student, as is prevalent in traditional, classroom-based learning. the paper concludes by advocating that the focus of learning at the workplace should be redefined and articulated, to balance the multiplicity of expectations of wil. this process should involve multiple stakeholders. keywords: opportunity to learn, work integrated learning, authentic experience, workplace learning 1. introduction technical and vocational education and training, as a means of achieving sustainable development, employability and improvements to individual capabilities, continues to receive global attention (eichorst, rodriguez-planas, schmidtl & zimmerman, 2015). the south african government has also adopted the global trend, which has led to an intensified dr olugbenga adeniyi olumuyiwa aderibigbe university of the free state dr moeketsi simon mosia centre for teaching, learning, and programme development, university of the free state & sol plaatje university moeketsi.mosia@spu.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v37i1.6 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 37(1): 72-86 date published: february 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:moeketsi.mosia@spu.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.6 http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 73 aderibigbe & mosia understanding the nature of learning and opportunities ... focus on vocational education by policymakers (dhet, 2013: xii). the upsurge in interest in vocational education is largely due to the benefits that are deemed to derive from vocational education. the desirability of vocational education has been attributed, specifically, to its impact on skills acquisition by individuals and the benefits it offers to employers to recruit and deploy work-ready individuals within a relatively short time and with minimum capital outlay (dickson & ladefoged, 2017). work-integrated learning (wil), as an experiential learning strategy, is one way of achieving the goals of providing students with exposure to the world of work and enhancing their learning outcomes (che, 2011: 4). measuring and exploring the effectiveness of wil is well documented by literature. for instance, whelan (2017) measured the perceptions of students, their hostsupervisors and teachers on the importance of, and students’ skill levels of graduate attributes developed during wil. ibrahim and jaaffar (2017:13) investigated student attributes developed through wil; however, their work examined “the relationship between self-management and interpersonal skills, self-confidence, and motivation”. henderson and trede’s (2017) study aimed to develop a wil collaborative governance framework. reinhard and pogrzeba (2016) conducted a comparative study between thailand and germany, on how wil was implemented in the two countries. whereas the german model emphasises an active collaboration between the state and the industry, the thailand model emphasises collaboration between educational institutions and the industry (reinhard & pogrzeba, 2016). despite the increase in documented evidence of research on wil, including the studies referred to above, and others, little is known about the opportunities to learn (otl) created by wil as a pedagogical strategy to facilitate students’ experiential learning. this may be partly attributable to the limited empirical research into the interrelationship between curriculum and knowledge within the tvet sector (wedekind, 2008), and the over-emphasis on the structure of the tvet sector, the college system and the economy, to the detriment of students and staff within the tvet system (powell, 2013). thus, this paper aims to examine how tvet business studies students perceive the nature of learning that goes on during their participation in wil. the paper, furthermore, examines how the process construct of otl can be used to understand and explain the students’ experience of learning during wil. 2. background the primary purposes of tvet education in south africa has been reported to include providing education that has “direct application to the workplace“ (dna economics, 2015:1); providing students with practical skills and competencies in vocational and occupational disciplines (rsa, 2006); and broadly developing the skills base of the economy (roopnarain & akoobhai, 2014). teaching and learning in the tvet sector is premised on the application of technical knowledge and skills in the contexts of workplaces and communities. the business discipline curricula of national diplomas awarded at national qualifications framework (nqf) level 6 by tvet colleges emphasise the integration of theory and principles and include a mandatory practical, on-the-job experience period of 18 months, without which a certificate will be issued at nqf level 5 (saqa, n.d.). the 18-month workplace-based learning experience is referred to as wil. in practice, wil takes many forms, such as internships, professional practice and work-based learning (holtzhausen & du toit, 2009). the worksite plays an important role in wil, as it serves the multiple roles of learning resource, avenue for learning and link between the formal teaching and learning experienced by students and professional practice within their fields of study (che, 2011:7, 9). 74 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) rapid changes in the economic, skills and labour landscapes of countries because of globalisation and fast-paced developments in technology have presented challenges for vocational education institutions. these challenges revolve around the ability of vocational education institutions to meet the needs of the rapidly changing skills and labour environment and to deliver on institutions’ mandate of producing individuals who possess competencies needed by employers (wallenborn, 2010). there are, equally, concerns about the ability of higher education institutions, in general, to prepare students for the world of work (holtzhausen & du toit, 2009). these concerns stem, in part, from the reported inability of tvet colleges to provide positive learning experiences for students (mmako & schultz, 2016). similarly, literature reveals that there have been challenges relating to poor vocational provision and misalignment of the tvet curriculum with industry needs and with other spheres of learning (dhet, 2013: xii; field, musset & álvarez-galván, 2014:1; mcgrath, 2011; gewer, 2010). it is the position of banicky (2000) that students needed to be given adequate “opportunities to learn” (otl) if they are to succeed in their educational pursuits. chabongora and jita (2013:175), however, note that otl are “are generated by how instruction is structured and delivered”. wil, as a pedagogical approach, is acknowledged as one of the ways to provide students in the higher education sector with otl, as wil incorporates “curricular, pedagogic and assessment practices, across a range of academic disciplines that integrate formal learning and workplace concerns” (che, 2011:4). it has, further, been reiterated that wil, as a learning strategy, offers students the opportunity to acquire competencies that could ensure “work readiness” (taylor & govender, 2013). the implementation of wil in practice may, thus, present otl for students, or constrain their abilities to achieve the intended learning outcome. mthembu (2013) notes that there is not much empirical evidence available in south africa to show that wil, as an experiential learning model, works better than other pedagogical strategies in realising educational outcomes. stols (2013) argues that the lack of otl may be one of the contributors to poor performance by students. considering that students can only be held accountable for their performance to the extent that they have been offered tools to master the content expected of them (mcdonnell, 1995), a paper of this nature may help to determine if the learning that goes on during wil offers students sufficient opportunity to acquire the skills, competencies and attitudes that lead to the attainment of learning outcomes. 3. literature review the review of literature related to this paper seeks to present what is currently known about the process construct of otl and wil. studies have revealed that there is a positive association between otl and students’ performance (see, for example, cueto, guerrero, leon, zapata & freire, 2014; cueto, ramirez & leon, 2006; ruiz-primo, shavelson, hamilton & klein, 2002; schmidt, burroughs, zoido & houang, 2015). otl, according to martinez, bailey, kerr, huang and beauregard (2009:2), may be conceptualised to include all those factors that may influence student learning such as “curriculum, resources, teacher quality, instructional practices, and remediation efforts”. this fits into the definition of otl as offered by herman and klein (1996:246) as “the range of variables likely to influence students’ performance”. otl as a concept has historically been used to determine if differences in mathematics achievement could be explained by the learning experience provided to the students by the educational system, rather than the ability of the students themselves to learn the curriculum content (schwartz, 1995). the concept of otl suggests, further, that the attainment of learning outcomes is dependent on the 75 aderibigbe & mosia understanding the nature of learning and opportunities ... content of the curriculum, the extent of coverage of the curriculum content and all related factors that make for good learning (cueto et al., 2014; kurz, talapatra & roach, 2012; schmidt et al., 2015; wang, 1998). issues concerning instructional practices and student learning, specifically, have gained prominence as the move towards greater accountability has gained momentum within the educational system (leithwood & earl, 2000). the process construct of otl may be seen as providing a way of understanding what goes on in the schooling process. this may be in terms of the student learning experiences (chabongora & jita, 2013); the quality and intensity of instruction (cawthon, beretvas, kaye & lockhart, 2012); utilisation of instructional time, instructional practices and pedagogical approaches adopted (kurz, elliott, kettler & yel, 2014); and cognitive demand of learning activities (stols, 2013). bruce-davis, gubbins, gilson, villanueva, foreman and rubenstein (2014) argue that instructional strategies and practices represent important ways to facilitate student learning through the manipulation of curriculum content, process and learning environments. cognitive demand that captures the complexity of the learning activities that the students are engaged in, has also been found to be positively associated with students’ achievement (cueto et al., 2014). literature on learning suggests that pedagogical quality influences student achievement in a similar way (polikoff & porter, 2014) and that pedagogical quality is one of the most important predictors of students’ test achievements (wang, 1998). the study thus uses the otl as a lens through which to examine the learning experience of students as it relates to the characteristics and the form of learning embedded in the wil placement. this is in line with walkowiak, pinter and berry (2017) who conceptualised otl as focusing on the student’s learning experience. it is the contention of fisher, zeligman and fairweather (2005) that the adoption of alternative instructional methods to the lecture enhances learning outcomes. suskie (2015) notes that, when out-of-classroom experiences are organised correctly and integrated with academic experiences, they help students achieve critical learning outcomes. the wil model of experiential learning is considered an instructional strategy that could facilitate the provision of the required skills for individuals (cooper, orrel & bowden, 2010:4). defining wil, according to edwards, perkins, pearce and hong (2015), is a difficult task to undertake because of the various forms it could take. blom (2014:5) defines wil as “[a] pedagogical approach adopted and integrated into curricula to enhance student learning and to enrich such learning through the incorporation of the latest practices from commerce and industry”. cooper, orrel and bowden (2010:12), on their part, provide a broader description of wil as: a complex integration of the learning that happens in the higher education and workplace contexts, not simply as a cross-fertilisation or transfer of theory and practice, but as a whole learning experience that requires conscious planning and effort on the part of all involved, from university policymakers and host organisation managers to professional accreditation bodies and students. smith (2012:247) differentiates wil from work-based learning and work experience, because the latter two do not specifically require students to, “learn, apply or integrate canonical disciplinary knowledge” during workplace experience. .wil has been credited with the capability to drive innovation in organisations and industries, and boost the attainment of learning outcomes and engagement with learning as well as motivate students to learn (cooper, orrel & bowden, 2010:4, 5). for example, teaching practice as a form of experiential learning has been found to be positively related to gains in knowledge (könig, ligtvoet, klemenz & rothland, 2017). 76 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) the importance placed on wil for the preparation of students for the world of work derives from the position that it may be difficult for students to acquire authentic learning experiences in a simulated workshop outside the actual workplace (dhet, 2013:9). to this end, students need to be immersed in the situation or circumstances where performance is required (billett, 2015:22). this is in line with the conceptualisation of wil by cooper et al. (2010:12), as involving the integration of learning at school and in the workplace. learning in wil builds on the lived experiences of the learner. experience, in the view of jernstedt (1980:12) serves “as a means of reconnecting the structure of knowledge with the process of using knowledge”. however, not all experience undergone by an individual equals learning (dewey, 1938:23). for an individual, if immersion in experience is to constitute experiential learning, the nature of the learning experience must, for example, be such that it gives the individual the opportunity to develop the skills to identify what, when and how to apply integrated knowledge when carrying out activities (smith, 2012). it should also give the individual the opportunity to engage in a practical activity or task (walter & marks, 1981:2). this paper, drawing from the literature on otl and experiential learning, argues that the nature of instructional practices experienced by students during wil may indicate the otl available to students to acquire the skills, competencies and attitudes that could make them employable. this argument may suggest, furthermore, that the ease with which students can tap into the otl presented by experiential learning will be influenced by the extent to which the implementation of workplace learning is guided by the characterisation of wil as described by the literature. 4. methodology the study employed a qualitative research method that gave consideration to the view that the perspectives of the social actors and the meaning they make is one way of understanding their world (hesse-biber, 2017:6). central to the current study is engaging critically with the social actors’ text and talk in an attempt to find out how wil is used to create otl for tvet students. the epistemological conception of knowledge constructed through understanding social actors resonates with merriam’s (2014:124) argument, that understanding social actors’ text and talk (perceptions) involves making meaning of the reality constructed by individuals concerning the phenomenon being studied. thus, this paper presents findings from an indepth case study at one university in south africa, where focus group discussions were conducted. in order to guide and focus the discussions, an interview protocol was conceptualised and developed through the conceptual lens of otl. the case study design was well suited for investigating how wil was implemented, and the nature of the otl created for a group of 12 tvet students working as interns at one university. during the focus group discussions, the participants were able to share their experiences of and perceptions about the otl embedded in the wil model of experiential learning. it is worth noting for contextual purposes that all participants had completed matric and the n6 theoretical component of their tvet diploma. moreover, at least eight participants had been in the internship programme for more than 8 months, whilst two of the eight had completed their minimum time of 18 months to obtain diplomas, as prescribed by policy. only two of the 12 had spent less than 3 months in the internship programme. 77 aderibigbe & mosia understanding the nature of learning and opportunities ... our decision to gather data by means of focus group discussions is supported by scholars, such as barbour (2010:331), who contend that focus group discussions provide opportunities for participants to consider matters beyond their usual assumptions. smithson (2008:368) supports barbour’s claim, and adds that focus group discussions lead to deepening and broadening of data, as participants are able to interrogate each other’s ideas and perspectives. data generated were audio recorded and later transcribed for analysis. drawing from szczerbinski’s (2007) work, the analysis was done by closely reading and annotating interesting sections of the transcript, and listening to the audio recording again and taking notes. the data were taken apart and re-synthesised to form categories and generate themes. furthermore, researchers situated the categories and themes generated from the data analysis within the existing body of knowledge on wil, experiential learning and otl. this was done through continuously contrasting and comparing the categories, themes and methods with relevant literature and empirical research in the areas of the study. owing to the high volume of data generated during the focus group discussion, the researchers constantly returned to the research question guiding the study. units of data were then extracted in line with the research question, in order to shed light on participants’ perceptions of the nature of learning experienced during wil (szczerbinski, 2007:75). 5. findings the findings reported in the paper are geared to respond to the questions, “how do tvet business studies students perceive the nature of learning that goes on during their participation in wil as a model to facilitate their experiential learning? and “how can the process construct of otl be used to understand and explain the students’ experience of learning during wil?” data were generated in the focus group discussion in response to these questions, and through the summaries of themes, which are presented in the form of tables. table 1 presents the general thematic analysis of how learning during wil is characterised through the perspectives of the students, and table 2 presents the thematic analysis of how otl are created for students through the learning process. table 1: students’ perception of the nature of learning in wil empirical evidence defining subthemes we learn in a high way/go deep, deep, deep/it’s very high training here higher cognitive demand the difference is only that now i’m doing practical/ there is a difference because, eh, at the college you are channelled by the book/ sometimes you see something and say hey this i have not seen before/here it is all about the company/here it is not about you shift in learning and/or focus before we went to the boardroom we went to the office of the assistant dean, so, he told us that we should not work with the marks for the students, we should not make tea for the colleagues and that we are here to have our working experience authenticity of learning experience 78 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) table 1 shows that the students’ experience of the learning going on during wil had certain characteristics. one of these characteristics is the relatively higher cognitive demand of learning that goes on during the wil, compared to the learning at the college. learning at the workplace is regarded to be of a “higher” nature, as the students are able to experience first-hand what they learnt at the college through being immersed in a setting where theoretical knowledge is applied. this realisation is captured in the words of pulane,1 when she was asked about her experience of the difference between college learning and workplace learning: we learn in a high way what we have been taught at tvet. really, we experiencing these things, we experience them. another participant, mpho, corroborated pulane’s view, that learning during wil involved higher cognitive demands. according to mpho, learning experienced at the worksite goes deeper than learning experienced at the college. this experience may be attributable, amongst other reasons, to the opportunity to engage in the practices of work, as mpho explained, us, we go deeper, we attend seminars, we attend conferences, we do all the practical, go deep, deep, deep. it’s very high and, wow, we are growing. students were also of the view that as they move from the formal college environment into the workplace the focus of learning activities shifted from being exclusively student-centred into one that emphasises the attainment of organisational objectives by the host company. buhle, another participant, had the following to say about the focus of learning at the worksite: and sometimes you see something and say, hey, this i have not seen before. you are told that, here it is all about the company, you leave yourself at home. here it is not about you, we are we, that’s what i’ve told myself about the company. the participants’ perception of the authenticity and meaningfulness of the learning experience that they were immersed in during wil also emerged strongly in the focus group discussion. the students perceived the work carried out during wil as being meaningful, because the assignments and tasks assigned to them contributed to the attainment of organisational goals of the host employer. a participant, ayanda, reflected on their contributions as follows: some of them, i do not want to say they [bursary applicants] do not understand or they don’t know how to, but they feel pressurised when filling in forms, so we have to guide them step by step. but we know that a large number of students receive funds. we know, because it starts by us first, then it goes to office, then it goes to the head of finance, so that is all. participants in the focus group discussion also revealed their perception of the alignment of their experience at the host organisation with the intended outcome of the wil programme. this alignment feeds into the authenticity and relevance of tasks and activities for future work engagement. pulane had the following to say in relation to the expectations of tasks and activities that must be engaged in during wil: before we went to the boardroom we went to the office of the assistant dean, so, he told us that we should not work with the marks for the students, we should not make tea for the colleagues and that we are here to have our working experience. participants also held the view that the tasks executed during the wil reflected what may be encountered in the real world of work. participants in the focus group discussion spoke of the 79 aderibigbe & mosia understanding the nature of learning and opportunities ... transferability of the theoretical knowledge gained at college across different organisations, because of the wil experience. as emily stated, i feel that i’m prepared, because it’s all about practices and policies. in hr [human resources] we were taught that everything is confidential, so i feel prepared. even if you can take me to another company. they taught me everything, especially personnel, but payroll, i’ll do, because i have a bit of information, but personnel, i’ll do everything. table 2: students’ perception of the otl embedded in the wil learning process empirical evidence defining subthemes experiencing these things/you are applying that theory/ yes, you are applying that theory that you learnt now application of theory putting application into it/we experience them/now i’m experiencing it/practical is very valuable/all about practices and policies/we do all the practical practical application they also guide me step by step on what i should do and what i should say or not say, because, at times, i was also a bit hard and strict on students and they told me you can be lenient on certain things on their forms, so i slowly adjusted. mentoring/coaching one of the findings of the study is that students were involved in the practical application of theoretical knowledge. practical application goes hand in hand with integration of theory into practice. the participants were of the view that the activities and tasks they were engaged in during wil are based on what they learnt at college. jabulani, responding to a question about whether the knowledge gained at college was useful in the workplace, answered as follows: it helps, because at school it was theoretical work. is it? did i say it correctly? now you are putting application into it, yes, you are applying that theory that you learnt now. further probing by the interviewer prompted emily to volunteer that the key difference between college learning and workplace learning is the practical nature of the learning that takes place at the workplace. as emily said: the difference is only that now i’m doing practical. emily’s comment confirms the practical nature of workplace learning. the emphasis participants placed on the practical nature of learning at the worksite may suggest that the learning taking place at the college is devoid of practical activity or workplace scenario simulation. the participants characterised their experience during wil as diverse in terms of the activities and tasks they were exposed to. the opportunity to engage in diverse activities has the potential to offer multiple learning experiences, broaden their exposure and enrich their learning experiences. buhle shared her experience of involvement in different activities and functions in the organisation, as follows: 80 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) in general, in marketing i do everything, eh, the clerical duties and the marketing as well. if they have the events, i am engaging with them, they include me in everything they do. the variation in duties and responsibilities serves as a reminder to students of the difference between learning at the college and the experience they are undergoing at the workplace. pulane, when asked how it feels to be working and no longer being a student, responded by referring to the scope of activities she engaged in at the worksite: uhm, it’s the different duties and responsibilities that have been assigned to us by our supervisors. the mentoring role played by the supervisor, as gleaned from the comment above, featured prominently in the students’ experience of otl afforded by participating in wil. it emerged that the supervisors contributed to student learning by providing support and guidance. the support provided by the workplace supervisors enhanced the students’ experience of learning and fuelled the perception that they learnt a great deal during the wil. sangiwe, another participant, explained the contribution of the supervisor as follows: i feel that i learnt a lot. we have such a great supervisor because she goes a great length to help us with our duties and she makes sure that we understand our duties. in addition to the mentoring support, the students equally experienced coaching support, as the supervisors assisted the students in acquiring specific skills. it emerged that the students were able to experience learning through demonstration by the supervisors of how to perform specific tasks. according to buhle, one of the participants, the supervisors actually demonstrated what needed to be done, and afterwards gave the students the opportunity to put what was demonstrated into practice. ok, in the department i’m working in they show me things step by step, and after that, they let me do it, they leave me. the results of the study as presented above suggest that the participants’ perceptions of the otl during wil placement was shaped by the nature and form of learning taking place at the worksite. 6. discussion the findings of this study indicate that the nature of learning going on at the workplace as experienced by tvet college business studies students reflect all the important characteristics of wil documented in literature. these characteristics, as found in this study and corroborated by literature and earlier studies, include integration of theory into practice (abdul hamid, islam & abd manaf, 2014); interconnectedness between theory and practice (melender, jonsén, sandvik, hilli & salmu, 2012); preparatory role of college learning for experiential learning (jackson, 2015); deeper learning (cheong, yahya, shen & yen, 2014) and exposure of students to multiple contexts or realities of the world (barends & nel, 2017). a comparative study of the wil placement in the marketing and human resources management fields further confirms the findings of this study that wil gives students the opportunity to put into practice the knowledge acquired in the classroom (govender & wait, 2017). the opportunity to put theory into practice in turn develops the skills of the students in practically applying theoretical knowledge (aldridge, callahan, chen & wade, 2015). the importance of the 81 aderibigbe & mosia understanding the nature of learning and opportunities ... emergent curriculum in the implementation of wil may be reflected in the deep learning that goes on during wil (hattinger & eriksson, 2018), and which goes beyond what is in the textbooks (cheong, yahya, shen & yen, 2014). the meaningfulness of tasks undertaken (cheong, yahya, shen & yen, 2014); variety in tasks (cheong, yahya, shen & yen, 2014); importance of the task (d’abate, youndt & wenzel, 2009) and the mentoring role played by the supervisors (d’abate, youndt & wenzel, 2009) combine to define the otl available to students during the wil learning process. the findings, thus, align broadly with the literature, that there is a link between the learning process (instructional technique and instructional quality) and the otl available to students (fisher et al., 2005; polikoff & porter, 2014). the findings of the study may have serious implications for the delivery of learning in the business field, because anecdotal evidence suggests that learning in business programmes have, generally, been largely class based. an interesting twist in the findings is the indication that workplace learning may, indeed, offer business studies students a better otl and prepare them for the workplace better than college-based theoretical learning can. this finding points to the resolution of the dilemma expressed by mthembu (2013) in relation to the efficacy of wil as a pedagogical method. the reported superiority of workplace learning may, however, be explained by the authentic and real-life tasks and activities students are involved in at the workplace. findings from the study also question the adequacy of classroom experiential learning embedded in business curricula. the fact that students who participated in this study considered workplace learning as being “deeper’’ and “high”, despite the focus of learning at the workplace shifting from the students to organisational objectives, may suggest that, contrary to the current position of the literature, that focussing on students may be key to learning, the learning experience itself may be more important to learning than the focus of learning. while classroom experiential learning may facilitate work readiness, the notion of this paper is that authentic and real-life experience, which is absent in classroom experiential learning, may be key to the pedagogical advantage of wil in offering otl to students. 7. conclusions the increased emphasis on wil as a strategy to facilitate the learning outcomes of vocational education is accompanied by a need for constant evaluation of its effectiveness as a pedagogical strategy. literature on learning suggests that otl can be created for students through the learning process and, 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(endnotes) 1 pseudonyms are used instead of participants’ real names. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2011.558072 https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2011.558072 https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v33n1a563 https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v33n1a563 https://doi.org/10.1002/ir.20111 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-3435.2010.01424.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1465-3435.2010.01424.x https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-012-9231-2 https://doi.org/10.3102/01623737020003137 http://www.feti.ac.za/docs/fet_research_report.pdf http://www.feti.ac.za/docs/fet_research_report.pdf 1 conceptualising community engagement through the lens of african indigenous education abstract the conceptualisation of “community engagement” at higher education in south africa remains a topic for debate in the transformation agenda. south african indigenous knowledge has been transmitted and perennially refreshed through educational pedagogy that are characterized by a sensitivity to african philosophy, axiology and the spirit of ubuntu. this article presents a qualitative critical review from the perspective of african indigenous education of the conceptualisation of community engagement. community engagement is explored as a contemporary pedagogical counterpart to the indigenous pedagogies that supported african epistemology and axiology and community engagement is positioned within a natural evolution of the south african indigenous education and human development framework. since children are the most vulnerable and affected community it is postulated that a student-centred framework for community engagement would offer an empowering praxis for a new south african indigenous education. community engagement conceptualised within african indigenous knowledge systems is argued as a means towards authentic transformation giving “voice” and “agency” to communities across all levels of education. within this framework, the article affirms the use of indigenous concepts and practices within a transformed education system where higher education assumes a key role-player in human development from the cradle to the grave. keywords: african indigenous education; ubuntu; indigenous axiology; indigenous pedagogy; humanizing pedagogy, child-centred 1. background community engagement – the pillar tossed on the top of the ivory tower the 1997, education white paper 3, in driving an agenda for the transformation of higher education, stated as a national goal, “to promote and develop social responsibility and awareness amongst students of the role of higher education in social and economic development through community service programmes” (south africa, 1997:10). at institutional level, higher education institutions (heis) were to demonstrate social responsibility of institutions and their commitment to the common good (south africa, 1997). furthering this agenda, dr surversperi suryakumari rajah mathematics and computer science education, edgewood campus, university of kwa-zulu natal rajahs@ukzn.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v37i1.1 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 37(1): 1-14 date published: february 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:rajahs@ukzn.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.1 http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 2 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) community engagement replaced the notion of community “service” as a move away from a hierarchical connotation and community engagement was positioned as a third pillar alongside teaching and learning and research. significantly, the higher education quality committee, established in terms of the 1997 higher education act, then included “knowledge-based community service” as a basis for programme accreditation and quality assurance. since 1997, however, universities have been struggling with implementation of the transformation agenda. by 2010 the council on higher education (che) noted that reporting on community engagement indicated “… outreach that entail engagement with a wide range of communities but these activities are uncoordinated and are the result of individual initiative, rather than of strategically planned, systematic endeavours” (kagisano, 2010: iii). a difficulty that may be recognised is that at the outset, universities were required to operationalise community engagement, before coming to grips with the concept of community engagement itself. historically, teaching and learning and research distinguished traditional universities in south africa as institutions for knowledge production, advancement and dissemination; churning out skilled labour and a proliferation of academic scholarly research. these activities, which supported the eurocentric principles of “academic freedom” in the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge sake within a positivist world view, cast universities as “ivory towers” with academic communities functioning at a distance from life in the community. the transformation agenda in effect called upon the university community to undergo an ideological shift which may be described as a transformation of the “academic soul” (kagisano, 2010: iv) of heis. the implication of the implementation of community engagement strategies was that the landscape of higher education (he) activities would broaden into the diaspora of diverse socioeconomic and knowledge systems that are prevalent within south african society. clearly, such a fundamental contradiction with the traditional university archetype necessitates transformation, which would necessarily articulate through a new set of teaching and learning frameworks and policies, as well as through the concomitant attributes, skills and competencies of graduates. in a recent study (bhagwan, 2017) on how community engagement was conceptualised by academics and administrators at six universities across south africa, four themes emerged: context, process, mutually beneficial relationship and knowledge production. it was observed that individual institutional culture continues to contribute to diverse and differing conceptualisations of community engagement. these may include volunteerism, service learning, participative action research and social entrepreneurship. evidently, universities remain challenged by the dissonance between existing institutional culture and the philosophical implications of community engagement. there seems to be the lack of a coherent vision or theoretical frame to synchronise and support the transforming trajectory of hei’s. this subverts the potential influence of community engagement to initiate transformation of he at a fundamental level as envisaged by the 1997 education white paper 3. there is instead the potential that within narrow conceptualisations, community engagement could even decline towards a means to advance personal agendas for measurable recognition and performance by both students and academia. at an international level, the notion of community engagement as a ‘third mission’ of hei’s apart from teaching and research had gained ground (laredo, 2007). transforming universities in australia had operationalized community engagement as ‘engaged citizenship’ through the nine dimensions of teaching and learning, curriculum design, policies, research, rajah conceptualising community engagement ... 3 external relations, social and cultural engagement, partnerships with school and educational providers, economic engagement and organization and participation of students (winter, wiseman and muirhead, 2006). there seems to be, however, different drivers for community engagement at universities in developing countries compared to developed countries. a study by bernado, butcher and howard (2012) compared community engagement at a university in the philippines (developing country) to that of an australian university (developed country). it was found that the socio-political conditions of marginalized communities were a significant driver for a “needs based” model in the philippines where the role of the community engagement unit was to respond to the diverse and critical needs of the community such as disaster relief as best that they could. on the other hand, the australian university conceptualised a “mission based’ model in which staff and students collaborated with the community to achieve mutually agreed goals integrating community engagement into teaching, learning and research. a significant observation by bernado et. al. (2012), is that leadership at heis played a critical role to leverage the direction of community engagement from a ‘set of practices of doing things, toward a philosophical belief of the universities reason for being’, embedding community engagement in the identity and image of a university. however, bernado et. al. (2012) also noted that trends in the literature on community engagement in developed countries such as the united states of america, united kingdom, canada and australia indicate that institutional networks have been established among universities with the aim of pursuing community engagement as an area of (engaged) scholarship, essentially an ambit of research. this assimilation of community engagement into strictly research paradigms could advance a more structured framework for community engagement but within the context of inherited institutional culture, could perpetuate the hierarchical positioning of universities as knowledge creators distinct from the community. in the united states of america fitzgerald, bruns, sonka, furco & swanson (2012) suggest a more fundamental and central role for community engagement, emphasizing that the ‘process’ of learning as well as the ‘product’ of learning are both central to education for democracy and good citizenship. this argument is relevant to the discussion to follow where it is suggested that, from an indigenous, pre-colonial educational perspective, community engagement is both a pedagogical tool and method of knowledge production, which leads to the acquisition of tacit knowledge (values, attitudes and behaviours), implicit knowledge (acquired skills) as well as to explicit knowledge (recorded, stored and accessible). from this perspective, the philosophical underpinnings of the purpose of education in the 21st century comes into focus. the central argument of this article is that a coherent conceptualisation of community engagement requires a larger framework of concepts to redefine the role of heis, locally and globally. for substantive transformation, the context in which engagement with communities occurs compels a respectful attitude towards local indigenous knowledge, philosophical systems and beliefs. in essence, the 1997 white paper has implications for the systemic transformation of higher education within the landscape of the south african education system as a whole; a shift into a new and vague paradigm for higher education which universities evidently were neither aware that they needed to make nor for which they were prepared. this background suggests that unless community engagement is conceptualised as a core functional activity within a new philosophical framework for education, it will remain metaphorically speaking a “pillar at the top of the higher education ivory tower”. it is suggested that a wider lens is needed to refocus the role of educational systems in the context of transforming realities, both local and global, where the purpose of education 4 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) itself falls under the lens. this approach foregrounds the shifting global epistemological and ontological foundations of education in the 21st century and defines a responsive and transformative role for heis. it further seeks to probe the cause of continuing dissonance between the prevailing he landscape and the societal culture of the new postapartheid generation of students. this issue surfaced amidst the student “fees must fall” protests in 2015 where student voice on the ‘decolonization’ of he stirred complacent academics towards reflections on the status of post colonial education. the critical questions guiding this review and advancement of the conceptualisation of community engagement are: • how has an africanized philosophy of education with roots in pre-colonial education paradigms and knowledge systems featured in the conceptualisation of community engagement? • what are the perspectives from an african philosophy of education that enhance the conceptualisation of community engagement within education for the 21st century? the problem of systemic assimilation of community engagement into a hegemonic paradigm and identity the function of an education system, established within colonialist rule in south africa, would naturally be in alignment with the paradigmatic principles of the hegemonic culture where also, the period of history of the colonizing nations has relevance. the colonial period in south africa, which began during the age of discovery in the 17th century, was dominated by modernity and modernization. this hegemonic paradigm was characterized by a combination of colonialist “othering” of indigenous peoples in terms of their race, knowledge systems and religious practices together with the rise of the scientific method and industrialization. the term othering, first coined by spivak (1985) and used by postcolonial scholars, refers to the process of positioning the colonizer in a hegemonic world view apart from the colonized indigenous people. breidlid (2013), in discussing economic marginalization of colonized nations, draws attention to the simultaneous rise in capitalism during the colonial era, “the hegemonic role of western epistemology from the 15th and 16th centuries has been interpreted as the bedfellow to the systematic expansion of capitalism into the world economy, which resulted in subalternization, marginalization and othering” (breidlid, 2013: 11). across the planet, the so called “voyages of discovery” led to the decimation of indigenous populations and their knowledge systems. indigenous communities with an oral tradition of transmitting knowledge and culture, as in south africa, were particularly susceptible to cultural hegemony over more than three centuries of colonialism. surveys on religious affiliation in 2015 indicate that traditional religions which embodied african philosophy, cosmology and axiology over the millennia are followed by barely 5,4% of south africa’s population (general household survey, 2015). in democratic south africa, “the education system from the missionary to the colonial era, apartheid and beyond continues to erode the values of ubuntu and the cultural context within which these values are found.” (xulu, 2010: 81) within this hegemonic paradigm, the role of universities in knowledge production and skills training for the development of capital and the growth of market economies in the 20th century occurred between two tensions; “…it is a public good – one which adds value to society by educating its people, who will then be productive citizens, or a private good – one which mainly benefits individuals, who earn more money and enjoy other advantages as a result of their education (bloom, hartley and rosovsky, 2006: 293-308). under the apartheid government however, the bantu education act of 1953 (act 47 of 1953) sought to create rajah conceptualising community engagement ... 5 “tribal” universities with curricular designed to entrench black south africans as labourers. transformation in south africa has therefore been largely about democracy and equity but within a context of capitalism and development (brennan, king and lebeau, 2004:10). these movements are characterised by a dismantling approach rather than a restorative, healing approach. what is important to note is that the systemic assimilation of community engagement into the hegemonic paradigm may find a place in the philanthropic or “public good” role of higher education, however, these conceptualisations retain the power hierarchies that exist between he and the community and instead advance a discourse of disempowerment. community engagement’s pivotal role in forging an identity in humanness, ubuntu, and in african philanthropy through relations of caring and sharing, is in-articulated. this cannot be ignored in a rapidly globalizing world where there looms an urgent imperative for an education which connects us globally to our common human identity. transformation and epistemic justice through a south african indigenous education perspective the foregoing discussion precipitates the need in the transformation of he discourse for a more profound ideological leverage that bridges all stakeholder communities within an integrated education system. it is seen that the conceptualisation of community engagement, itself occurs in the ivory towers of academia, in the absence of the ‘soul’ of the community and their perspectives of education. this form of indigenous epistemic injustice ignores, in particular, the discourse of indigenous wisdom within indigenous knowledge systems that sustained the south african socio-ecological system over the ages, protected human dignity and ensured sustainable human development. it is in this context that the lens of african indigenous education (aie) is introduced to focus the conceptualisation of community engagement within the philosophical foundations of an african philosophy of education. the impetus for this perspective is the argument that, at hei’s, the communal spirit of ubuntu embedded in aie that contrasts with the current modernistic and individualistic hegemonic paradigm continues to be eroded. ubuntu is seen to be replaced with the thinking that we can sustain ourselves and have the power to succeed in the world through technology and materialism. the discussion locates community engagement within a longitudinal perspective of south african education from indigenous to contemporary educational systems and explores the conceptualisation of community engagement within an evolution of aie that resonates with the transforming trajectory of a globalising south african education. the salient point of this discussion is that the notion of community engagement has historically been an intrinsic component of aie and human development paradigms. aie and its associated education philosophy and pedagogies, therefore, provides an appropriate lens to conceptualise community engagement within a discursive exploration of its role in education; from ancient to present day contexts. along this journey, community engagement assumes a foundational educational role as an agent for transformation that restores epistemic and social justice and a powerful pedagogy for social cohesion, human development and sustainability. towards this end, the epistemological, axiological and ontological connections between community engagement and aie are explored. the discussion to follow is prefaced with a point of departure that draws attention to the proverbial “elephant in the room” – the socio-cultural influence of the world wide web. colonization has historically been associated with geographical space. however, globalization spawned by the information age has impacted on the notion of culture, values and identity tied 6 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) to geographical space. social boundaries, in reality, have been removed and young minds that are developing identities are faced with contrasting local and global cultures and values. morley and robins (1995) remark, “what is being created is a new electronic cultural space, a ‘placeless’ geography of image and simulation …a world in which space and time horizons have become collapsed…that is profoundly transforming our apprehension of the world: it is provoking a new sense of placed and placeless identity and a challenge of elaborating a new self-interpretation”. in essence, we are experiencing the dawn of wide-scale virtual colonization of the minds of young people who through their disconnection with indigenous philosophy, culture and values are vulnerable to a confluence of conflicting cultures and values. are hei’s, as they embrace the waves of the 4th industrial revolution, inadvertently on a path to entrenching the materialistic and individualistic ideology that gave birth to colonialism by remaining tied to of euro-american paradigms of education? this article foregrounds the vital role in education which community engagement could play in socio-ecological development, with awareness and sensitivity to our inter-dependence and shared human values, amidst these conflicting and contrasting influences. against this backdrop, the article seeks to pave a new post-apartheid/postcolonial narrative for the conceptualisation of community engagement within an education system in a rapidly globalizing world. this calls for a fresh perspective, amongst academics and policy makers, of indigenous educational thought and practices as we re-contextualize them in contemporary educational systems. 2. towards a systemic transformation the valuing of indigenous education paradigms in the 21st century in these chaotic and turbulent times, the global discourse on education has moved beyond the right to education. ”it is inspired by a humanistic vision of education and development, based on respect for life and human dignity, equal rights, social justice, cultural diversity, international solidarity, and shared responsibility for a sustainable future. these are the fundamentals of our common humanity” (unesco.org, 2015: 9). it is not intended for this article to discuss this wider framework of education for the 21st century for the conceptualisation of community engagement but rather to steer the discourse away from conceptualising community engagement as an “add-on” response to the he transformation agenda and towards organically locating community engagement within the philosophical foundations of indigenous education. this position is different from a perspective that evolves from a transformation of the western paradigm and instead “affirms the use of indigenous concepts and analytical systems and cultural frames of reference” (dei, 2000: 8). this is one of valuing, affirming and reconceptualising the timeless wisdom of our human heritage that shaped and sustained former indigenous paradigms since ancient times. community engagement: a pedagogy integrating cosmology, identity and axiology literature in anthropological studies indicate that all indigenous cultures, evolved a cosmology which defines, for its members, an identity within the cosmos of where they come from, who they are, and what their personal role and meaning could be in life’s greater picture. in southern africa, the concept of ubuntu underpinned african indigenous cosmology and axiology. according to ramose (2002a: 230), ubuntu is the wellspring flowing with african unesco.org rajah conceptualising community engagement ... 7 ontology, epistemology and also the african tree of knowledge stems from ubuntu, from which it cannot be separated. the socio-anthropological influence of ubuntu on african axiology defined what was valued and desired in and by a human being. ubuntu may be expressed by the maxim “umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu” which may be translated “to be a human being is to affirm one’s humanity by recognizing the humanity of others and on that basis, establish humane relations with them” (ramose, 2002b: 230). higgs (2017: 233) argues that south african indigenous education philosophy was founded on two core principles, ubuntu and communalism. letseka and venter (2012) allude that “in traditional african life, the individual owes their existence to other people, including those of past generations and their contemporaries… hence the saying: ‘whatever happens to the individual happens to the whole group, and whatever happens to the whole group happens to the individual.’ the individual can only say: ‘i am, because we are; and since we are, therefore i am.’” (mbiti, 1969:108−109 as cited in letseka and venter, 2012). the question arises on how was indigenous philosophy transmitted? yunkaporta (2009) defined indigenous pedagogy as generalized indigenous preference for experiential learning, direct learning by seeing and doing, connectedness to local values and learning how to apply knowledge to changing circumstances. in aie, “education took place through the socialisation process which had to do with the acquisition of cultural norms, values and beliefs, and rules for interacting with others” (seroto, 2011: 7788). prior to colonisation, marah (2006) states, “the process of traditional education in africa was intimately integrated with the social, cultural, artistic, religious, and recreational life of the ethnic group. that is, ‘schooling’ and ‘education’, or the learning of skills, social and cultural values and norms were not separated from other spheres of life.” the link between african axiology and ubuntu is emphasized in the literature “…ubuntu has normative implications in that it encapsulates moral norms and values such as altruism, kindness, generosity, compassion, benevolence, courtesy, and respect and concern for others.” (letseka, 2000 as cited in letseka and venter, 2012: 1-8). an holistic or integral approach to education, which combines discipline knowledge with an appreciation of culture and values through the integration of various modalities of learning, is characteristic of african education and is therefore critical to the formation of an identity in ubuntu. the african proverb, “what you help a child to love can be more important than what you help him to learn” expresses this aspect. the triad between the formation of identity in the child, axiology and social responsibility is, therefore, inherent in aie underpinned by ubuntu. of relevance to the conceptualisation of community engagement is the connection between philosophy and practice as articulated through indigenous educational pedagogy. it is in recognizing that the type of pedagogy used is a critical element in the transmission of indigenous knowledge systems that the importance of conceptualising community engagement as an african educational pedagogy is realised. this gives recognition to indigenous african epistemology applied to the emergence of ubuntu within a person as an authentic human experience that unfolds in the context of community and rich social interactions. the “ivory tower” image inherited within the south african higher education system highlights a disjoint between the current traditional euro-american education archetype and that of african indigenous education. community engagement, as envisioned within the transformation agenda for higher education is, however, reminiscent of indigenous pedagogical methods and hence community engagement could be explored as a means to re-connect the fragmented epistemological and axiological foundations of aie. engagement between students and the wider community provides a praxis for ubuntu and space for local cultural values and norms to guide what desired attributes should be inculcated in children and young adults. 8 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) community engagement as a humanizing pedagogy humanization is the process of becoming more fully human as social, historical, thinking, communicating, transformative, creative persons who participate in and with the world (freire, 1993). it has been widely seen that the devastating legacy of invading positivistic western hegemony on indigenous cultures is disempowerment and dehumanization. “concern for humanization leads at once to the recognition of dehumanization, not only as an ontological possibility, but also as a historical reality” (freire, 1993: 43). literature on the transformation of school curriculum in democratic south africa, has been shown to indicate a continued “legacy of dehumanization which has been absorbed into relationships with educational systems which mirror and depict hierarchies of power, cultures of compliance, fear, as well as the suppression as loss of voice” (zinn and rogers, 2012: 76). this is seen to be the consequence of top-down approaches in the transformation of education which reflect the continued dehumanization process within the education transformation agenda itself. the recognition of dehumanization, however, presents the problem of how to restore and heal the disempowered? in advancing a narrative of south african education with indigenous roots and humanizing pedagogies, the focus here is on the aspects of aie which enculturated children towards the development of a social conscience and a spirit of philanthropy. it has been argued that before the introduction of western civilization into africa, the philosophical foundations of african traditional indigenous education were aimed at the five principles of “preparationism, functionalism, communalism, perennialism and holisticism” (adeyemi and adeyinka, 2002: 223). these socializing principles are key to ubuntu and human development within indigenous african social ecological systems and contrasts with south africa’s inherited western secular education. aie is seen to be synergistic with the theoretical foundations of the progressive education movements. in vygotsky’s theory of social constructivism, a key conceptual reference in the theory is the ‘zone of proximal development (zpd)’ (chaiklin, 2003). this educational perspective is mentioned in literature on african educational theory. the zpd refers to the difference between what a child can achieve unaided in problem solving and what s/he can achieve with the help of adults/ teachers or peer mentors (nsamenang and tchombe, 2011). significantly, the social settings which community engagement entails mitigates against the individualistic thinking that the current education for the job market seems to foster. a further justification may be drawn from relational cultural theory (rct) where community engagement as “field education” may be conceived of as a relational experience. “relational cultural theory focuses on the development of relational competencies that are necessary to create and sustain growth-fostering relationships, such as the capacity to recognize and attend to the needs of others.” (edwards, jarvis and harris 2013: 1) the identification of community engagement as a contemporary counterpart to african indigenous socialisation methodologies, however, promotes an ontological restoration of an indigenous people’s education in that it is recognised that the engagement process should be infused with the spirit of ubuntu. this draws impetus as well from the decolonization of education conversation through which this paper advances a narrative of the africanization or, in a global context, the humanization” of education through this conceptualisation. in this model, community engagement is not only a he imperative but also an intrinsic component of humanising pedagogies across all educational levels, from early childhood into young adulthood where community relations founded in ubuntu extend from the “cradle to the grave”. rajah conceptualising community engagement ... 9 a critical aspect that this conceptualisation brings to transformation of education is the requirement of community engagement to become a credit bearing component of educational programmes and assessment practices, thus ensuring that the implementation meets academic standards and may be subject to formal monitoring processes. in this regard, beets and le grange (2005) further argue that the influence of african philosophy and ubuntu on assessment practices has the potential to shift traditional western paradigms of assessment that is heavily focussed on knowledge transference and assessment ‘of ‘ learning to behavioural transformation and self – reflection through assessment that is designed ‘for ‘ learning. these corollaries pave the way for community engagement to become a true pillar of an education system designed to transmit and uphold the aspirations of the society that it serves. community engagement as a transformation strategy within education for a sustainable future resilience theory has demonstrated that the natural development and transformation of a social ecosystem is characterized by resilience and sustainability. resilience may be conceptualised as a measure of how far the system could be perturbed without shifting to a different regime (holling, 1996). it is assumed in this discussion that the sudden and wide-scale colonization of africa and, in particular, in south africa, followed by hegemony and segregation of cultures through apartheid, has resulted in the crossing of the threshold of resilience and sustainability of the indigenous south african educational and social ecological system. indigenous cultures hence find themselves outside of the natural temporal and spatial evolutionary regime. the shift back to equilibrium of vulnerable communities (economically deprived, aids affected orphans, marginalised rural communities, women and children), that have neither the indigenous knowledge of their ancestors nor access to resources which could aid adaptation and transformation, is particularly formidable. these challenges have been exacerbated by global chronological factors such as climate change and depleting natural resources. conversely, although reconstruction and technological advances offer greater opportunity for south africans to thrive, they also pose a greater risk for further marginalisation of the disadvantaged communities who are ill-prepared to access these opportunities. the alleviation of epistemic and economic marginalisation presents a complex undertaking in post-colonial/post-apartheid south africa. there has been ubiquitous erosion of the integrity of indigenous knowledge systems and with this loss; the spirit of ubuntu has been seen to be replaced by a competitive and individualistic mind-set. research reported by the south african institute of race relations (irr.org, 2015) has revealed wide spread high unemployment, violent crime, exploitation and abuse and poverty which is exacerbated by the aids pandemic. against this background, children continue to be the most vulnerable and severely affected where it is reported that more than 60% of children in south africa live with single parents, single grandparents or worse; child headed homes. (irr.org, 2015) a country’s education system is arguably the only social system to which all its citizens have access. this has bearing on the potential of community engagement to be a highly responsive transformative methodology which could act as a catalyst for development. with regards to the achievement of wide-scale sustainable development, international policy documents on sustainable development reiterate the need for combined effort of the roleplayers in education. the african union, in 2013, adopted a 50year plan for development which embodied “the african aspirations for 2063”. these are: irr.org irr.org 10 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) • a prosperous africa, based on inclusive growth and sustainable development. • an integrated continent, politically united, based on the ideals of pan africanism and the vision of africa’s renaissance. • an africa of good governance, democracy, respect for human rights, justice and the rule of law. • a peaceful and secure africa. • africa with a strong cultural identity, common heritage, values and ethics. • an africa whose development is people driven, relying on the potential offered by people, especially its women and youth and caring for children. • an africa as a strong, united, resilient and influential global player and partner (deghetto, gray and kiggundu, 2016). community engagement clearly embodies these imperatives. from the perspective of aie, community engagement is not an “add on” to higher education but rather it is envisioned as a core pedagogy that translates african philosophy and human development paradigms into actionable methodologies across the entire education system. this approach synergises the educational approach of all role players, these being: family and community, schools and higher education as well as business and industry. the maxim “it takes a village to raise a child”, explicates this aspect of african education. community engagement fostering acquisition of entrepreneurial, technical and vocational skills in mainstream education. another key insight from african education concerns the vocational development of children and youth. community engagement as an indigenous learning strategy is advocated with the aim to transform it into a major activity for african youth employment and development. socialisation of children in vocational activities within the family and community is, therefore, seen as having enormous advantages since they develop problemsolving skills through real life challenges (nsamenang and tchombo, 2011). in a continent blessed with abundant resources as africa, training teachers to stir up enterprise skills in the young is indispensable in human capital development strategy for the education sector and beyond. (nsamenang and tchombo, 2011) the integration into education of community engagement inducts learners into real life problem solving which integrates theory and practice. this supports the call from the african union (au) for technical and vocational educational training (tvet) to begin within the mainstream school system. community engagement resolves one of the key strategic issues on the implementation of tvet programmes stated in the au guiding document on tvet, that of the linkage between vocational and general education. the creation of separate and parallel vocational tracks tends to reinforce the perception of inferiority of the vocational track. “it is therefore important to create articulation pathways between vocational education and general education” (union, 2007). community engagement as a learner centred pedagogy: nurturing the emergence of ubuntu. in the foregoing discussion, the conceptualisation of community engagement as a contemporary counterpart to indigenous pedagogies has been argued, wherein ubuntu has been emphasized for social and human development. however, ubuntu is not an abstraction rajah conceptualising community engagement ... 11 but rather a lived experience and hence is uniquely manifest in an individual. community engagement may be explored in a learner centred model as a tool to promote the emergence of a social identity founded in ubuntu as a developmental milestone. the latin roots of the word education are two-fold: educare’ which means to “mould” and educere’ which means to “bring forth”. in giving prominence to both these connotations, the relevance for a student centred community engagement model is seen wherein the student is perceived as an agent for and of change. in promoting a shift away from the modernistic child development paradigms which view the child as being “deficit”, community engagement may draw on the “counter paradigm referred to as the sociology of childhood” which “…focuses on children as social actors with competence, agency and resilience” (naidoo and muthukrishna, 2016: 3). community engagement could provide settings for creative and innovative thinking to emerge as learners tackle real issues and come up with their own solutions. importantly, educators nurture self -reflection and selfdirected learning through pedagogical methods which are intrinsically related to how indigenous philosophy and knowledge has been preserved, transmitted and developed without textbook learning. paradoxically, this approach is synergistic with perspectives of integral or holistic education in the 21st century. recommendations and conclusion as the mechanisms of the 4th industrial revolution advance upon a disturbed and fragmented south african family, the lens of african indigenous education with its long established roots in ubuntu, shaping our common human identity and shared one-ness emerges as a vital edifice against the tide of turbulence and growing loss of identity, values and humanity. the conceptualisation of community engagement as a contemporary counterpart to indigenous educational pedagogy provides administrators and academia at he in south africa an opportune leverage for systemic transformation at a fundamental level that restores epistemic justice to african indigenous knowledge systems. the lens of aie challenges hei’s to reflect and re-assess the paradigmatic trajectory embarked upon as they decolonialise institutional culture into learning communities that embrace the eroded histories, culture and aspirations of the communities that they serve. across the education system from early childhood education to higher education, community engagement is conceptualised as an essential and powerful educational pedagogy that provides a natural praxis for the theoretical foundations of an african philosophy of education. this conceptualisation of community engagement within aie places it at a foundational position alongside teaching and learning as well as research. importantly, it encourages a shift back towards a holistic and humanistic perspective for the purpose education. for this conceptualisation of community engagement to be empowered by a policy for its enactment, a proposal of recommendations is distilled from the key insights that have emerged: • initiate dialogue around fundamental he transformation to include african philosophy of education in the conceptualisation of community engagement • integrate community engagement as a true “pillar” of education with a well -structured and coherent vision across the entire education system from basic education to higher education. • develop training pathways for educators to be skilled in community engagement as conceptualised within an african philosophy of education. 12 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) • the conceptualisation, implementation and assessment of community engagement activities should reflect the shifting pedagogical paradigm induced by an african philosophy of education with ubuntu and communalism as its core foundations, restoring humanness to the methodologies that support a holistic education. • incorporate community engagement at different levels of complexity from simple acts of kindness and service to more complex engagement that manifests and promotes multiple intelligences reflecting creativity and innovation in a spirit of ubuntu and communalism. • it is suggested that higher education and basic education sectors collaborate in identifying the needs within communities and to undertake social entrepreneurship projects where students may become imbued with a sense of communal responsibility as they become skilled to accomplish their roles as agents of change. • initiate partnerships with business and industry where community engagement could become a pathway towards skills development, enterprise and entrepreneurship for students across the education system. • community engagement as community based research incorporate principles and ethics that respects research from different epistemologies, pedagogies and knowledges, giving a voice to indigenous wisdom. “it is one of the characteristic traits of colonialism that it denied diversity, epistemic diversity, and created instead inferiority. the production of the hegemonic epistemology necessitated the other, which was characterized as uncivilized, irrational, superstitious” (breidlid, 2013: 7). this devaluing of indigenous knowledge systems through colonization and the rise of modernism, science and technology is perhaps the greatest loss to our common shared civilization and humanity on the planet. conceptualising community engagement, within a south african indigenous education model, is part of a discourse on appreciating, affirming and applying the wisdom of our ancient human heritage. it is about the sacredness of our humanness, placing community above self and spirit above body. steve bantu biko provided an insightful perspective on the disjuncture between moderncolonial and african epistemology and ontology when he wrote “… we believe that in the long run the special contribution to the world by africa will be in this field of human relationship. the great powers of the world may have done wonders in giving the world an industrial and military look, but the great gift still has to come from africa – giving the world a more human face” (biko, 1978: 46). 3. acknowledgement this work is based on the research supported wholly by the national research foundation of south africa (grant number: 105155). 4. references act, b.e. 1953. act. public law, 18, 67. adeyemi, m.b. & adeyinka, a.a. 2002. some key issues in african traditional education. mcgill journal of education, 37(2), 223. beets, p. and le grange, l., 2005. ‘africanising’ assessment practices: does the notion of ubuntu hold any promise?. south african journal of higher education, 19(special edition 1), 1197-1207. https://doi.org/10.4314/sajhe.v19i7.50216 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conceptualisation and operationalisation of gender equality in zimbabwean state universities. efiritha chauraya this article explores concerns about gender inequality in zimbabwean state universities. the researcher’s interest arose from the realisation of persistent gender inequalities despite initiatives to close gender gaps. of particular concern is the conceptualization and operationalisation of gender equality in institutions. focusing only on the student admissions sector, this paper critically surveys the experiences of the departmental chairpersons and students who enrolled through affirmative action, their vision of gender equality and the impact thereof on the inclusion of the said students in the mainstream. the study applied a gender perspective to development as well as in-depth and focus group interviews with purposively sampled stakeholders. the findings of the study shed light on the adopted tailoring model of gender equality by the institutions and how the model blinkered the other qualitative gender dimensions of the mainstream, rendering the envisaged goal of gender equality elusive due to the exclusion of the students from the mainstream. based on the findings, useful recommendations are made to resuscitate the almost paralysed gender equality agenda of the institutions. key words: gender equality, model of equality, tailoring approach, sustainable development, gender dimensions, social change, social inclusion. introduction discussion of gender inequality in zimbabwean universities is not new (nziramasanga commission, 1999) and has been on the agenda for quite some time (thabethe, 2009). although zimbabwe discourages and renounces it, gender inequality is persistent in zimbabwean educational institutions, (thabethe, 2009). the study is derived from the implemented gender initiatives in zimbabwean state universities against a background of persistent gender inequality. in 2000, the country adopted access or inclusion? conceptualisation and operationalisation of gender equality in zimbabwean state universities 5 its national gender policy – a document that commits the nation to attainment of gender equality in all its sectors of the economy (zimbabwe national gender policy (zngp), 2000). universities, as autonomous institutions, were mandated to devise own strategies to eradicate gender inequality within the organisations. gender equality is, however one of those concepts that take different meanings with different situations, and as such, different conceptions/visions of gender equality abound. the australian agency for international development (ausaid), for example, defines gender equality as the equal valuing of the roles of women and men, as well as overcoming barriers of stereotypes so that males and females equally benefit from development, (ausaid, 2007). the canadian international development agency (cida) takes the same concept to mean equal participation of men and women in making decisions and removing the gap between women’s and men’s access to and control of resources and benefit of development (cida, 2007). the different visions of gender equality have directed organisational efforts in attaining the goal of gender equality in different directions. against a backdrop of persistent gender inequalities, and despite implementation of gender interventions, this article sets out to establish the models/visions of gender equality that the zimbabwean state universities have adopted. the study also assessed the effectiveness of the model/approach in attaining gender equality. the study’s sought to answer the following question: how is the concept of gender equality understood and worked out in student admissions in zimbabwean state universities? theoretical framework the theoretical approach underpinning this study is the gender perspective to development (morgan, heeks & arun, 2004). according to this perspective, while approaches to research in gender aspects in development could vary, research in gender inequality requires a wide scope that incorporates the culture and society in which men and women work and live (morgan et al, 2004). the gender perspective to development incorporates ideas from the feminist theories of gender inequalities as well, (morgan et al, 2004,). for this reason the food and agriculture organization (fao) (2004) calls the approach a “connectionist perspective on development”. the gender connectionist approach argues that gender inequalities, as social constructs, are not fixed bipartite divisions, are not immune to human re-examination, and can thus be changed to achieve equality and equity for men and women, (connell, 2002). this theory was also chosen for its emphasis on the impact of gender on people’s opportunities and interactions, as well as for its premise that successful implementation of any policy, programme or project is affected directly by the impact of gender, which, in turn, influences the process of social development (gender mainstreaming manual, 2008). perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 6 gender equality in the global debate three perspectives in the gender equality debate have been identified and have given rise to “contested visions of and routes to gender equality” (walby, 2004:6). these three perspectives and the routes and the visions of gender equality are discussed below. 1. the sameness perspective according to the growing body of literature, (jahan, 1995; walby, 2004), the sameness model of gender equality is the first and oldest model for promoting equality between men and women. this model is based on a moral principle of justice i.e. treat like cases as like (squires, 1999). this is achieved by identifying areas of unequal treatment and eliminating them via the legal route. treating males and females in the same way is taken as law by this model. this is why liebenberg (1997) calls the model “formal equality” while squires (1999) calls it “strict equality” and freire (1992) calls the it “egalitarian equality.” the underlying idea of this model is that relevantly similar cases should be treated identically. clearly then, in this perspective, gender is marked as an attribute that is not significant in distribution of social value (pilcher & whelehan, 2004). prohibiting discrimination is in essence taken as a matter of changing policy or enacting and enforcing new gender-inclusive laws. the approach expresses a liberal feminist idea that removing discrimination in the legal framework gives women and men the same status (status of women canada, 2005). but is this really true? is this not why rees (2004) calls the model “tinkering with gender inequality”? in dealing with gender inequality in education in south africa, (coetzee, 2001), it was established that legislation on its own, though vital, is not sufficient to remove gender inequalities. the weakness of this model is that the goal of gender equality is achieved by means of assimilating the disadvantaged sex group into the values and lifestyles of the dominant group (stevens & van lamoen, 2001). 2. the tailoring model with this approach, gender equality is achieved by tailoring situations to fit the needs of the disadvantaged sex group. thus measures and facilities are sought only for the disadvantaged sex group. the underlying thinking is that: equal rights cannot always be used by all citizens to the same extent because of persistent gender inequalities that exist at the level of societies. … (therefore there is need) to counter balance the unequal starting positions of men and women in most societies” (verloo, 2001:3). the model, thus, pursues material equality by promoting equality of outcome which is in turn achieved by equalizing the starting positions (stevens & van lamoen, 2001). in most gender circles, this is “gender affirmative action” because the model targets a particular sex group. the council of europe (1998) calls the strategy access or inclusion? conceptualisation and operationalisation of gender equality in zimbabwean state universities 7 “targeted projects”, while the african development bank calls the same “stand-alone initiatives”. the main weakness of this model is that it stimulates the disadvantaged sex group to enter the systems as they are, in other words the disadvantaged sex group is assimilated into the status quo that in itself is not under discussion (stevens & van lamoen, 2001). the other weakness of this model is that, in rectifying the inequality, violations are made to the principle of gender equality which the programs are supposed to uphold. 3. the diversity model the diversity model was born out of current gender analysis revelations that suggest that both men and women are vulnerable to the way in which gender relations are at play within their contexts. so the target is not men or women, but, the gendered contexts. because of this focus, walby (2004) calls the model a “transformation of gender relations” she views the approach as replacing the segregated contexts and standards associated with masculinity and femininity. the approach, therefore, aims for a social change of the status quo towards the gender equality agenda. this model addresses the problem of gender inequalities at a more structural level than the other two. the focus of the approach thus pursues a situation in which all policies and programmes are informed by the diverse needs of their beneficiaries, whether male or female. the diversity model extends beyond the dichotomy that is represented by the first two perspectives (squires, 1999). while the concern of the two perspectives is for men and women to gain equal access, the focus of the third model is acceptability and inclusion of men and women in the systems (wilson, 2004). “inclusion” in this study refers to a process by which the universities have developed their cultures, and practices to include all students into the mainstream, namely. philosophies and practices that allow all students to feel respected, confident, belonging and safe, (pillay & di terlizzi, 2009) in this study specifically, inclusion implies a total blurring of boundaries between students who would have enrolled through affirmative action and those who are in the mainstream. the diversity model requires fundamental changes in institutional and individual behaviour, whereas the first two perspectives require institutional action in the form of reviewing and changing the policies, rules and regulations which discriminate against students who enrolled through gender initiatives. while these two approaches involve matters of quantifiable mechanical politics, the diversity model involvesis qualitative politics. qualitative politics require fundamental changes in values of the constituency. the focus of the first two approaches is attaining gender parity, while the focus of the third approach is social change, in fact change of attitudes, and behaviors, (unterhalter, 2004; walby, 2004; world bank, 2001). thus while the first two approaches target numerical equilibrium, the third targets the underlying causes of the critical social problems that gave rise to the inequalities, (verloo, 2001). perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 8 methodology the research design alhough it employed elements of both quantitative and qualitative research, this study adopted a qualitative focus mainly, which was consistent with its aim of exploring an in-depth understanding of the chairpersons’ conception and application of gender equality and also students’ experiences of the implemented gender initiatives. (at the two institutions that were studied, chairpersons of departments were involved both in the actual selection of students into their departments and in the actual teaching of the selected students). the chosen design was an exploratory descriptive survey within a case study and was necessitated by the need to study the phenomena in their natural settings. two state universities in zimbabwe took part in the study and for the sake of protecting the rights and welfare of the universities (bryman, 2001), the two institutions are referred to as site a and site b. the research sites both site a and site b were established during the era in which the country had joined the international community in pushing for gender equality in the various economic sectors. with regard to the numbers of enrolled student and diversity of programmes offered, site a was a relatively bigger institution than site b. the two institutions were purposively sampled in order to gain insights into gender initiatives from both large and small institutions. the study sample the sample for this study comprised chairpersons of selecting departments and students who enrolled through gender equality initiatives. only departments that enrolled students through affirmative action were involved. the departments were, therefore, sampled purposively because they were chosen based on their relevance and relationship to the topic under study, (leedy, 1997; bryman, 2001; holloway & todres 2003). there were 10 chairpersons from the faculty of natural resource management and agriculture (six from site a and four from site b) and 12 from the faculty of science (seven from site a and five from site b). concerning these chairpersons, first, stratified random sampling was employed which divided the chairpersons into groups as per their faculties and their sites of operation. secondly, using the hat system, only three were selected from each faculty, each site. in all, twelve chairpersons were interviewed. to gain insights into how students framed their experiences of gender equality initiatives, i chose a cohort of successful students in their final year final semester. these students, i felt have had a fuller experience of university life. i selected only those who were beneficiaries of the gender initiatives. eight of them were randomly selected from the faculty of science per each institution and six from faculty of access or inclusion? conceptualisation and operationalisation of gender equality in zimbabwean state universities 9 natural resource management and agriculture per each institution. in all 28 students took part in the study. data gathering the interview was the sole instrument used to gather data for the study. with the chairpersons, the one–on-one interview was semi-structured and each session lasted at least 45 minutes. all the interviews were audio-taped. the interview was chosen, not withstanding its disadvantages (deem, 2002) because it enabled the researcher to acquire information that respondents would not have given by means of written communication. flexibility was the prime advantage of this instrument (thomas & nelson, 2001), because i could pursue leads and further clarify questions that were not understood well. this eliminated gaps from the data. another advantage of this instrument was that feedback was instant. interviews were conducted from november to december 2010 at both sites. all interviews were conducted in the participants’ offices, all face to face, and only by the researcher. the advantage of this was consistency in the data-gathering process. concerning the 28 students, data were gathered by means of four (two at each site) focus group interviews. a focus group interviews, as holloway and todres (2003) advocate is a useful method of collecting data on perceptions and experiences. i brought the students together in a room to engage on the discussion. my face-to-face involvement as the moderator ensured that the discussion stayed on track that none of the participants felt under pressure to agree with the dominant group and also that none of them dominated the discussion. notwithstanding the disadvantages of this method, the greatest advantage was that the results were generated quickly in a relatively cost effective way. also, contrary to my initial fears that students would be reluctant to share information publicly, the dynamism and flexibility of the instrument allowed for free and open discussions. moreover, the instrument provided shared experiences that individuals would not have provided otherwise. data analysis in this study data analysis and interpretation as tools of research (wolcott, 1994) did not operate exclusively. in line with the gender perspective to development: data were subjected to a level of scrutiny that revealed both the explicit and implicit gender dimensions. while there are no hard and fast rules on how to analyze qualitative data, the analysis in this study was guided mainly by strauss & corbin (1998)’s stages of thematic data analysis. this involved the inductive coding of data from the oneto-one interviews and from the focus group interviews to find common themes. the following five stages were identified: first, data were read, and frames of analysis were analysed. secondly, these frames of analysis were labeled with a code, i.e phrases suggesting how they informed the research question. thirdly, the coding led to the formation of categories/groups perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 10 of similar issues. the fourth stage saw the formation of relationships between categories, leading to broad themes consistent with the research questions. the themes emerged from the data. finally, from these themes, conclusions were drawn. these themes are the sub-headings under “research findings”. throughout the process of data gathering and analysis, rigour was maintained to ensure trustworthiness of the data (shenton, 2004; lincoln & guba, 1985, mcmillan & schumacher, 2006). research findings and discussion the chairpersons’ conception of gender equality was found to be deriving from their understanding of gender as a concept. to these chairpersons, “gender” was taken as a synonym for “women” and “gender inequality” as the disadvantages that female students are facing. the following two interview extracts illustrate the ways in which gender and gender equality were conceived. “eh-eh-eh, we look at gender, gender actually gender equality, is synonymous with promotion of women or advantaging women. the idea is men are already up there” (chair b) “i have heard workshops on gender here on campus. these were workshops that only wanted ladies… they call the ladies. i haven’t seen any man go there. so gender is woman! woman! woman! (laughs, slightly shaking head). we are in trouble with gender i tell you. even in politics there, i hear they are saying woman! woman! i think it’s the women era.” (chair f responding to a question on whether he had received any gender awareness training). these responses were reflective of the views of 10/12 (83.33%) chairpersons. the responses reflected a narrow framing of “gender”, if not a misconception of the word. “gender” is not “women”. the misconception of the word “gender” geared the chairpersons towards “an exclusive female-student” target. no wonder why all the students selected for focus group interviews happened to be females only. rather than targeting gender (a social construct with inequalities shaped by the social relations), the institutions targeted female students and, to them, achieving gender equality implies increasing female students’ enrolments in the academic departments. model of gender equality pursued the chairpersons’ vision of gender and gender equality dictated and directed the institutional approach to gender equality. the study established that the institutions pursued the ‘tailoring model of gender equality’ (tailoring the programs to fit the needs of the disadvantaged sex group) (walby, 2004). the underprivileged sex group, according to the role players in student admissions, were female students; hence all the gender programmes were efforts to accommodate female students in the university degree programs. the sole focus of the programmes was to achieve gender parity in the various fields where female students were underrepresented, notably in access or inclusion? conceptualisation and operationalisation of gender equality in zimbabwean state universities 11 science and in natural resource management and agriculture. the institution aimed to achieve this parity by means of affirmative action, making it very explicit that all roads have led to an increase in female student numbers in the departments (be it by lowering of points, bridging or quota reservations). the calculated growth rates of female students at site b were 2006 4%; 2007 17%; 2008 25%; 2009 12% and 2010 33%. the year 2008 proved to be very difficult year, with political upheavals and hyperinflation. during that year most universities closed, lecturers left for greener pastures and some departments were forced to close due to a shortage of teaching staff and unsustainable numbers in student enrolments with many students not being able to pay the fees. the calculated growth rates of female students at site a are: 2006 13%; 2007 28%; 2008 13%; 2009 38% and 2010 41%. (statistics obtained from the offices of student admissions). the increase in student enrolments seemed to be the situation in most zimbabwe universities. mashinga (2012), university world news, acknowledged the sharp increase in the number of female students at institutions of higher learning. this is understandable, at least, in the context of the history of zimbabwean higher education systems which had females as their most disadvantaged learners. clearly then, accessibility and availability of female students as a goal was achieved. however, gleaning insights from unterhalter (2004) and from wilson (2004), there is nothing wrong with equalising numbers, but instead of stopping there, gender equality demands that targets view numbers as a means to a bigger purpose. wilson (2004) and de wall (2006) argue that gender parity is not gender equality. an exclusive focus on numbers can present quantifiable progress in student admissions, but, this alone could hide real patterns of discrimination and disadvantage as was witnessed in this study. while gender parity is quantitative, gender equality is qualitative. in this study efforts by the institutions did not apportion significant value to the qualitative dimensions of the gender gap. both the conceptualisation and operationalisation of the institutional efforts missed this point. parity alone addresses only female students’ rights or access to education but not their rights within education and rights through education (wilson, 2004). gender equality is right to education, in education and through education, which was revealed by the results from the focus group interviews. the majority of students felt stigmatised, negatively and inequitably treated, and marginalised by some of their lecturers and fellow students. the focus group interviews revealed that students felt regarded as: less fitting and proficient for the academic mill. my experience is that the stigma faded as we got to level 4 (the final year) but during our first and second years it was quite clear that there was a difference, an academic difference between us and the other lot. it was worse off with us who got in through bridging (interjection – how did the lecturers and other students know that you had gone in through bridging?). laugh, disruption from fellow students, then continued to talk with observable screws on the face and lots of hand throws: mem(sic) ah! our own lecturers kept their selection list of first year and sometimes they would leave them on the table. sometimes they openly referred to us as affirmative action students” (student d). perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 12 interjection from student a: and others would openly say those who got in through other means would find it tough. it was very clear what the other means was – obviously affirmative action. we had invisibly but quite apparent tags and labels. whatever the labels, they were derogatory. reacting to a direct question: have you ever feel or were you ever made to feel discriminated against from the other mainstream students? student h responded: oh! yes. especially, the good part of my first year. i was kept reminded and this made me shy participation in class. even our friendship circles – we found out that we were paired more on grounds of mode of entry. we from affirmative action had our own clicks. but now i think it’s almost gone. maybe it’s because most of us through affirmative action ferry(sic) just as the other lot, because we also have failures, repeaters and carries from the other lot, sometimes worse than us. on the same question, student e said: discrimination not exactly, but non acceptance especially in group work. yet other similar feelings came from student l: we were definitely labelled, stigmatised and inferiorised. sometimes you could feel that your response is looked down upon quietly, sometimes the lecturer would brush off the response, scenically giggles, and the face would become serious when it was concerning those from the accepted lot. even the way she would respond was different. in the end we feared to try. i also asked a few group members to say a word or phrase that could describe their views of the affirmative action initiatives. students did not provide single words or phrases, they provided paragraphs despite the instruction. by and large, their views and feeling towards the initiatives were in the affirmative. this could be because they were all beneficiaries of the initiatives. it was only about the way in which they were dealt with that they seemed unhappy. the initiatives per se are effective. they are quite well thought out and purposeful. if it were not for them the vast majority of us wouldn’t have pursued a degree programme of our choice. i had always wanted to pursue a science related career and had it not be for them, i would definitely not be here doing what i am doing, (student j). the initiatives (sic) okay, but accommodation by others as equally competent needs reworking. you see, the moment you feel excluded, the moment your self esteem is crashed to zero and to pick it from zero is a problem. this is when you feel uncomfortable in the lecture room but outside (student l). i personally felt threatened by the cold feelings our lecturers and other students showed. but where i am different with others here is that the inferiority complex made me want to prove that i am not insufficient brain wise. the initiatives make us prove certain points, (student f). access or inclusion? conceptualisation and operationalisation of gender equality in zimbabwean state universities 13 i asked the group members if there was anything their institution did or was doing to make sure that they fitted into the mainstream once admitted. most just shook their hands. one of them remarked: ah! nothing. once in that’s it. they did not even come to us to see how we are getting along (student j). yet another group member said: do you think they know this. you are the first person here to ask us about our welfare as a group. i think if they wanted to know then we should have been told during enrolment that as we were irregular students then we should come back and report irregularities (student c). thus gender parity equilibrium (which is emphasised by the tailoring model of mainstreaming gender equality) is only a prima facie change (unterhalter, 2004), and, on its own, even attained cannot provide for a gender inclusive environment. yet a gender inclusive and responsive environment is a prerequisite for achievement of gender equality de facto (lombardo, 2003: 2-17). it is important that female students not only get access into university education, but that they get adapted and accepted in and through university education. the study found that the female students had access but remained excluded, unwelcome and unwanted by the mainstream. this adaptability and acceptability imply inclusion (wilson, 2004). it would appear that sufficient educational opportunities for female students are only the first step towards student inclusion into areas of study, more is needed to get them adapted and included in the mainstream. thus, though parity is a necessary ingredient of gender equality, it is however, an insufficient precondition for the realisation of real gender equality. the targets of the institutions should, then, not have been only the prohibition of discrimination de jure, but also the elimination of discrimination de facto (wilson, 2004). attitudes of chairpersons towards a gender equality agenda a reading of some of the responses from the chairperson interview transcripts revealed a somewhat negative perception of the gender initiatives from them. the chairpersons viewed the issues of gender and what they stood for as potential trouble causers. sentiments and comments such as: “we are in trouble with gender i tell you…let’s see.”(chairperson 8) are testimony to the chairpersons’ scepticism of the gender initiatives. the let’s see expresses doubt about the success of gender initiatives. such feelings about gender issues from zimbabwean men (all the interviewed chairpersons were male) are not surprising. as gaidzanwa (2012) notes, the development of gender issues have been problematic within zimbabwe as a whole. the way that issues of gender have been introduced in zimbabwe seemed to align the issues with a preference for females without adequate explanations for doing it. perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 14 this resulted in little tolerance from men, and indeed from some women, and the predominant mode of dealing with this issue, like that of women’s rights and homosexuality has been to label them to be “western” as a way of delegitimizing them, (phillips, 2009). it was not surprising when one of the chairpersons, seemingly furious, commented: i think we are shooting ourselves in the foot. very soon we will begin to see effects of this gender, bad effects for that matter. universities by their nature should focus on entry points, not whether one is male or female. that’s nonsense absolutely. get me right. i am not saying females not come to university. no, i am only saying let them be equally deserving as the males. if they deserve, they deserve but if they don’t they don’t. why should we take what we do not need? why compromise our reputation and mandate? (chairperson 12). in the same vein, another chairperson had this to say: we are taking these gender issues too far. let it remain a political thing not educational. politics and education is miles apart. you are devaluing and degrading the quality of university education, and in the process watering down our self esteem concerning the whole thing (chairperson 5). yet another remarked: gender is a modernist agenda, bent on destroying the african fabric. we have our own way of doing things. let’s stick to that. what’s wrong with that? who complained? people should not sit in beijing to decide for us here. western ideas need to be taken with pinches of salt. why do you want us to be black by skin but white by heart? (chairperson 11). these were more or less the views of 10 out of 12 chairpersons and as phillips, (2009, 350) notes about sexuality in zimbabwe, such persons find gender initiatives as a “festering finger to be eradicated, chopped off and kept separate...” there was no doubt, tension and contradiction between the spirit behind the gender initiatives and the ideals of the chairpersons. the chairpersons’ feelings poignantly illustrate the reason why some of them failed to accommodate students who had been enrolled through affirmative action, and hence made them feel alienated, non-included, if not discriminated against. the net effect established was that the beneficiaries of the gender equality initiatives felt alienated from the broader mainstream. the negativity shown by the majority of the chairpersons made me probe on how the gender initiatives had been introduced into the mainstream. the probes revealed that: what we got was word. no. a directive, from administration that this was now new university policy for our departments, in line with country drives towards gender equality, (chairperson 10). asked as to whether they had been work-shopped on the new university policy, all the chairpersons indicated that they were not work-shopped. not exactly, but alerted of new developments with immediate effect in 2006 (chairperson 2). access or inclusion? conceptualisation and operationalisation of gender equality in zimbabwean state universities 15 it would appear that the sort of imposition was the main reason why there was no “connectedness and cohesiveness” of the chairpersons with the gender initiatives. yet kelles-viitanen and shrestha, (2011) caution that for any new initiative not to be compromised, “connectedness and cohesiveness” of all stakeholders should not be an option but a priority. without engaging the whole constituency, there always is little change in power structures or “rules of the game” (kelles-viitanen & shrestha, 2011). it is its absence here, that seemingly resulted in the fact that student beneficiaries of the gender initiatives gain access to the mainstream but remained excluded from it. this finding concurs with hlalele and alexander (2012)’s study on ‘university access and social justice’. similar to the current study, the duo found that university access programmes inherently produced “segregated and stigmatised” students, (hlalele & alexander, 487). prospects and challenges the study established the tailoring model’s strength and success in its ability to increase female student enrolment in the university. however, besides achieving this huge quantitative growth in female student enrolments, the adopted model of equality blinkered the actors from attending to other qualitative gender dimensions of the mainstream because their focus remained glued to numbers as an end in itself. gender equality is not only about providing the same programmes for male and female students, but also to provide opportunities that mean the same to each gender (bloom & covington, 2001). the study further established that, beyond the gender parity venture, no other gender initiatives had been implemented.. parity was an end in itself and a reading of the responses indicated that the female students remained excluded from the mainstream. as stevens and van lamoen (2001) have observed, the tailoring approach placed the females students in a status quo (that initially excluded them) and that was not under discussion. conclusions and recommendations conclusions the following main findings were made: • the institutional conceptions of gender and gender equality (revealed by the chairpersons) were misplaced and resulted resulting in limited targets and limited achievement of the grand goal of gender equality. perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 16 • the model of gender equality which was pursued was tailoring. the model realized growing female student numbers and their improved access into university, but the challenge was the exclusion of the female students from the mainstream. female students who had entered the universities as a result of gender initiatives were made to feel that they were underprepared academically, if not deficient and had gained into the university somehow illegitimately. their environment was not in any way supportive of their plight because there were no mechanisms by the institution that supported them. hlalele and alexander (2012) warn of two issues that are detrimental to student inclusion: lack of support for both students and lecturers and ii) failure to eliminate occurrences of barriers to student inclusion. • forced regard, revolt and protest regarding the worthiness and value of the implemented gender initiatives existed among the chairpersons. yet an important indicator of sustainability of any institutional venture is how well the institutional approach supports new initiatives into its regular systems. the lack of such engagement resulted in gender change being made only as window dressing, as it remained only an issue of access but without inclusion. recommendations based on the main findings, the following recommendations are made: • there is need for a reconceptualization of the gender agenda and a paradigm shift in operationalization of the gender agenda. gender awareness-workshopping cannot be overemphasized. • the diversity model of gender equality should be adopted so as to achieve structural changes on gender equality. the disadvantaged sex group should not only be included in the mainstream but also accepted and be able to exercise a controlling presence in the mainstream. inclusion implies no discrimination of any learner on any aspect that is assigned significance by society (hlalele & alexander, 2012). the operationalisation approach should appeal to mainstream attitudes, behaviours, habits, perceptions and practices. to this end, there is need for massive gender education and conscientisation of the mainstream so that there is gender 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m 2001. another velvet revolution? gender mainstreaming and the politics of implementation. retrieved on 27 may 2009 from www.citeseerx.ist.psu. edu/viewdoc/download?do=10.1.1.114 walby s 2004. gender mainstreaming: productive tensions in theory and practice. social politics, 12:321-343. wilson, d 2004. human rights: promoting gender equality in and through education. prospects, 34(1): 11-27. wolcott h g 1994. transferring qualitative data. thousand oaks, ca: sage. world bank 2001. engendering development: through gender equality in rights, resources and voice. retrieved on 19 march 2011 from www.siteresources. worldbank.org/pglp/.../engendering development.pdf zimbabwe national gender policy: implementation strategy and work plan 20082011. harare: government printers. diverging on diversity and difference: the mask of inclusion v pillay associate professor, university of pretoria vpillay@up.ac.za ce mclellan deputy director, center for international exchanges at academy for educational development (aed). washington, dc cmclellan@aed.org in this paper we argue that the clichéd phrases, ‘dealing with difference’ and ‘dealing with diversity’, despite their commitment to accepting and appreciating difference and diversity, may be used in counterproductive ways to camouflage resistance to change and transformation. in a small sample of interviews conducted at a south african university, the appropriation of these phrases for the purpose of practicing sameness was apparent. while pointing to the possibilities of asserting diversity and difference and simultaneously practicing sameness, the paper also proposes the possibilities for the acknowledgement and embracing of the ambivalence toward diversity and difference as valuable opportunities for transformation. keywords: diversity, difference, transformation, higher education institutions, inclusion introduction despite their overuse, the clichéd phrases, ‘dealing with difference’ and ‘dealing with diversity’, carry a sense of the value and appreciation of difference and diversity. as we understand them these phrases suggest a commitment to accepting and appreciating difference and diversity and their contributions to the complex fabric of social institutions. however, in a series of interviews conducted at a south african university, the appropriation of these phrases for the purpose of practicing sameness was apparent. this paper points to the possibilities of asserting diversity and difference while practicing sameness. we argue that using the language of inclusion can effectively serve to exclude. background and methodology the data used in this paper is part of a larger study on institutional cultures conducted in five south african universities.1 the larger study identified three central research aims. the first was to develop a reliable and meaningful measure of institutional cultural change; the second was to measure the nature, degree and pace of institutional cultural change in response to the changing policy environment and the third was to explain the institutional culture change in relation to both intraand extra-institutional politics in south africa. this paper focuses on data collected with the third research aim in mind. the research team had agreed on the following visible elements and symbols as indicative of changes in institutional culture and internal and external politics at the institution: the music and organisation of university choirs, buildings, architecture and physical symbols of the institution; how is communal space used and organized; the language policy of the institution; the religious practices of the institution and the planning and organisation of residence life. the data we use here is drawn from responses to the issues identified above and relates to one of the five universities, henceforth referred to as sonneblom university. two core questions were identified to gather the data required for the third research aim described above. these were: 1 permission to use this data was obtained from the project leader. perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201014 what does your university concretely do in order to accommodate the growing diversity within the • “institutional culture” (that is, diversity of students and staff) of the institution? how is the institutional culture of your university reflected in the various cultural and sports activities • of the university? for the larger study, three deans, two advisors to the principal, the director of marketing, an executive member of the council, the president of the src and two other identifiable student leaders were interviewed. data from interviews conducted with two student leaders, three management staff and one member of the university council are included in this paper. data from the other interviewees did not directly relate to the core research questions identified in this paper. purposive sampling was used to select a white student leader on the student representative body (src) and a black student leader, a deputy chairperson of the house committee of the residence in which she lived. a student leader from the residence and from the src was selected as these structures were strongly involved with cultural and sports activities of the institution. one of the management leaders was at the time2 the dean of students, one other was an advisor to the vice chancellor and the third management member was a dean of a faculty. the sample in the study was also purposively racially diverse given that a central underpinning to the study was an effort to understand how universities responded to the new racially diverse context they have been in since 1994. while the sample used in this paper is small and no attempt is made to generalize these findings, we suggest that the data does point to at least one important issue with respect to sonneblom university, namely that, irrespective of race, there is an ambivalence to change at the institution. while this is not unexpected or new, it does contradict the intuitive expectation that the black student or staff member seeks quick and dramatic change. the research also reinforces the point that changes in institutional culture cannot be legislated and that what students and staff say and do build the institutional culture of an institution. for the purposes of this study ‘institutional culture’ was understood to be ‘the way we do things here’, and diversity refers to the racial and cultural diversity visible in the institution. this would include religious diversity. the term difference is used to encapsulate the cultural (including language and religion) and racial differences among students and how the interviewees perceive such differences. theoretical framework in framing the arguments of this study, we make use of an expansion on weiler’s (2005) theory of ambivalence as it relates to explaining the often contradictory behaviour of universities. weiler makes use of the construct of ambivalence in two ways. firstly, it relates to the contradictory attitudes of a person or institution toward another person, institution, or object. secondly, ambivalence as weiler uses it speaks of uncertainty about the appropriate approach, attitude or treatment to follow in a particular case (2005:177). he makes several inter-related arguments about the ambivalent nature of universities and how that ambivalence helps to explain university behaviour in various areas, even when that behaviour seems perplexing and sometimes inexplicable. his concluding arguments are that “at its best, ambivalence in academia provides the very space for alternative answers without which the process of inquiry would remain a rather sterile affair. at its worst, ambivalence provides a comfortable excuse to avoid asking the hard questions and finding the hard answers” (2005:190). weiler provides no fewer than ten illustrations of how the ambivalence of a university is expressed. included in those ten illustrations are “ambivalence about change” and “ambivalence about inclusion and exclusion”. although weiler uses the german higher education system as his point of departure, these two areas of ambivalence are especially relevant and useful as a framework in which to explain and understand what was found at the south african university with regards to the issues of diversity and difference. in the south african context, the issues of change, inclusion, and exclusion are inevitably linked to the history and legacy of apartheid. change in the south african case, and in the case of this study, is best expressed by talking about transformation from apartheid to democracy for the country and for higher education 2 the interviews were conducted in the mid-2000s. mclellan & pillay — diverging on diversity and difference 15 institutions. therefore in this study, weiler’s “ambivalence about change” will be read as “ambivalence about transformation”. we attempt to apply weiler’s use of ambivalence to the data collected from the described sample. in doing so, we examine illustrations of their ambivalence toward issues of diversity and difference. diversity and difference: common speak for them and us the growing diversity within the university, in terms of race, gender, culture, language, religion, ethnicity and even age was simultaneously a source of pride among senior managers of the university and an arena that required specific focus with respect to the imperative to transform the institution. the very recognition of this diversity and its implications for the challenges that faced the university was seen as something to be proud of. we understand that we should move to that direction of transforming the institution and making the institution relevant to the changing circumstances in south africa and also throughout the world. that also, i think is something to be proud of (dean x). the unavoidably obvious expression of such challenges was to increase the intake of black students. there was broad agreement among the management staff interviewed that sonneblom university had made progress in this regard. however, the focus of this paper is not about the numerical successes the institution has had with respect to racial equity but the ways in which diversity and difference have been taken up and talked about by the interviewees. the interview with the student, willem, on the src revealed that the nuance that infiltrated the issue of racial diversity was closely linked to the preservation of white afrikaner culture. he suggested that white and black students had different aspirations and that for many black students transformation was too slow while many white students felt the need to slow down the pace of transformation. at the same time he strongly iterated the need to preserve cultural practices that are associated with different groups of people. for example, he emphasised that afrikaners had their own culture and that they wanted to practice this culture. i don’t want a volksstaat or any of that type of propaganda which the freedom front3 has, but we do want to cater for an afrikaans christian high standard student. … okay, does that include anyone of any colour? if you speak afrikaans and you are a christian you are more than welcome in my organisation. and that is the thing that we do… [we have] practices which are unique to the afrikaner culture. certain traditions that we have. and that is something that i treasure. i would say we have got a get together on campus, we sing afrikaans songs. we talk in afrikaans, we speak in afrikaans, we socialise in afrikaans. and i don’t think that is being racist. no. or anything like that expressing your culture. but a lot of other students don’t understand the concept of afrikaner culture. that’s not … that is something that we do, but we are a solid people of language. we want to retain our language. while in the first instance he attempted to sublimate a racial identifier as a means to ensure the exclusivity of the group by saying that a person of any colour may join their cultural group, he went on to speak of the practices of the group that would ensure its exclusivity. at one level the expression of such culture was the use of the afrikaans language but later in the conversation he went on to explain the special role that afrikaner women were meant to play in support of their men. this he argued was part of their unique culture. a further level of exclusivity may be found in his use of “high standard student”. he did not elaborate on what he meant by high standards but the implication was that not anyone who is christian and afrikaans speaking could join the group. it was clear that a selection process, based on some standard which they saw as “high”, whether overt or covert, was in place and through which individuals were either accepted or not. it was also evident that the culture of the group he belonged to would not change in any way and whoever entered the group did so on the understanding that they would fit into an established cultural practice. 3 a conservative political party that seeks to preserve white afrikaner traditions. perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201016 willems’ views on the retention of old symbols as part of the university emblem were also telling. … don’t penalize the university for what a government did. that, that … [pointing to emblem of the university, which was hanging on the wall of his office] … but we came here, we settled in [name of city], an academic institution was built. now that [emblem] is to symbolize how the university came to be. … now changing the emblem we say, “okay, we don’t want to know how this university was started”… my personal opinion is, if you don’t like it, go somewhere else. we like the way it was created. the discourse embedded in willem’s comments suggests a clear distinction between an ‘us’ (afrikaners) and a ‘them’ (black students). there is also an effort to distance the university from the evils of apartheid while simultaneously claiming the founding of the university as a proud history. however, the most telling comment he made was that those who did not like the emblem should go elsewhere. we suggest that this is indicative of an unwillingness to negotiate alternate points of view, that it reinforces an earlier observation, that the notion of diversity is understood as different cultures existing alongside each other without an effort towards reculturation. in fact, we read willem’s view that those who did not like the emblem should go elsewhere as limiting the expressions of diversity in the university. in other words, saying that one either accepts and conforms to what is, or leaves, offers limited scope for the survival of diversity at the institution. the council member offered an alternate view and attitude. she expressed unequivocal recognition that symbols have emotional value and that the history of a symbol is fundamental to how it is received in the current context. most important was the willingness to redefine what the symbols of the university ought to be in this new political and social context. now if a symbol has so much emotional baggage that it creates a problem then one needs to change in the interest of accommodating others. also some symbols become outdated. yes. you know most big organisations are continuously involved in looking at their image… they must have appeal now. acceptance of the prevailing cultural practices through the discourses of difference is also taken up by princess, the black student leader at one of the university residences. princess expressed much enthusiasm about the christian organisation of which she was a member and when probed about it she pointed out that black and white christian students did not pray together and that they belonged to different christian organisations on the campus. the one organisation consisted of white students and the other was mainly black. she believed that they had different ways of praying and hence the racial separation was an almost natural, indeed to some extent, a divine consequence. then at the end of the day we realised that maybe at times our style of worship as black people and white people differs here and there. when we are praying together black people we are noisy and we want to pray at the same time. and our fellow white brethren would pray one by one and at the end of the day we felt that maybe god is pulling us to the other dimension. that is why we started our own outreach teams. for princess, using difference as a way into explaining and maintaining separation seemed to be a satisfactory way to accept separation, one that offered a clear conscience and a sense of rightness. willem too argued that everybody had their own way of doing things and this should be preserved. his vision was that of a number of cultures existing alongside each other, hopefully, in some form of harmony. we as the src have taken the prior step in understanding the cultural diversities that we have. and um, um accommodate other people in their… in their different cultures. what is effective to a black person? what is effective to a white person? what is effective to an indian or a … or an asian person? later he made an apparently contradictory point when he said: …what we are doing is, there is a situation being created to accommodate all cultures. integrating them into one culture. in offering an example of how the integration into one culture was being done he spoke about spring day and about getting all types of students to celebrate that day. he argued that the aim was to build a “blomme pride”. unfortunately, he seemed to be unaware that the notion of spring day is in itself culturally specific mclellan & pillay — diverging on diversity and difference 17 and may not necessarily be the best means to create “blomme pride”. more significantly, he did not interrogate the “one culture” that was meant to accommodate all. whether this was an ‘old culture’ that was simply going to include black people in its expression or whether it would take on fundamentally new culturally expressions was not spoken of. while the efforts to africanise what have been historically white activities (like rag, for example) may have social benefits, the need to develop new traditions that are rooted in a new ethos and a new cultural identity appears to remain a point of struggle. dean y made an explicit distinction between assimilation into a prevailing culture and creating a new culture: i think it would be wrong to think that the people who come in need to be assimilated into the culture. i think that you have to interrogate what it is you learn and say how can we make these people feel a part of what is going on, and of course they bring views and so on which may be different from the prevailing views in the department and those have to be given equal, no equal is the wrong word, but they have to be given serious consideration. i don’t see it as a process of assimilation at all because i mean, i think that what we need to look at is to say in what way does a diverse group of people actually enrich the activities of a department. that’s really the question that you have to be asking. despite his correct political stance, dean y’s language usage of “… how can we make these people feel a part of what is going on” gives substance to the attitude of assimilation into a prevailing culture rather than developing new cultural practices rooted in the diversity of people’s at the university. unfortunately, the notion that traditions can be as old and as young as we make them, and indeed the traditions of tomorrow are set today, appears to have escaped the logic of transformation at sonneblom university. speaking though silence: quietly resisting transformation the strong bond between language, religion and race was something that the university was consistently aware of. this was manifest in the careful way in which it has trod the middle path with respect to the language issue. sonneblom university does not claim to be an english medium institution. neither does it claim to be afrikaans medium institution. at the end of 2003, afrikaans speakers enjoyed a marginal numerical majority. since a series of mergers, this situation has shifted in favour of english speakers. however, no change in the language policy appears to be on the cards for the moment. the english/ afrikaans dualism has consequences for the way in which students position themselves on the campus. princess, a black student leader seeking to encourage other black students in her residence, ... usually say to the black students in the residences, the main thing that gives you problems is that you are so … allergic to afrikaans to an extent that even the things that involves you, when you see it’s in afrikaans you are not willing to read it. if it’s afrikaans then it’s for white students. then they feel if it’s written in afrikaans then it has nothing to do with black students. and you come and say to afrikaans student, because it’s written in english it has nothing to do with afrikaans speaking students. what princess articulated was institutional cultural schisms created through language. all notices in english were for the attention of english speaking students only and were consequently about events that english-speaking students were interested in, and the same logic applied to afrikaans notices. of course, the unspoken corollary was that since no notices were offered in any of the other nine african languages, by linguistic omission, they were not part of the cultural fabric of the institution. while the official policy with respect to language served to placate both english and afrikaans first language speakers, it did little to address those who are neither english nor afrikaans first language speakers, but who are mainly african students. although this practice may make sense in terms of the academic activities of the institution, it neglected the cultural aspects of student life. in effect the division between english and afrikaans has served to obscure other cultural differences that live on the campus. that this dual approach to language, and implicitly to race and culture, has complex nuances was highlighted by princess when she spoke of how students were allocated rooms in the hostel. she pointed out that black and white students did not perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201018 share rooms because, according to the university administration, they come from different cultures.4 yet, she argued, the simplistic equating of race, language and culture in a form of liner connectedness obscured the complexities of the relationships between cultures, race and languages. in 1999 when i went to admin looking for a room there was a double room where a white student was alone and i told them there’s a double room with one student. they told me no. i just don’t know if that is stipulated in the policy of the university or is the way the admin people see it as an easy way to do it. my argument was how can you put a pedi speaking person and a xhosa speaking person [together]? they are both black but they’ve got different cultures. the point that race cannot be simplistically equated with culture is evident in the example above. that the race often acts as a euphemism for culture serves to obscure the complexities implicit in the concepts of race and culture. according to princess in the past rooms were ‘shaded’, in other words, set aside, for black students, but this practice was taken up with the appropriate authorities and it came to an end. however, the university still will not allocate black and white students to share a room in the residence. she pointed out that she did not know whether the separation of black and white students on the grounds of ‘culture’ was university policy or not, and went on to argue that if this were so, then such policy had not been strictly adhered to. the big question that i have now which is an assignment i have to find out if this is in the university policy to say we cannot mix different cultures, therefore if that is in the university policy it has already long back been broken because we can put a coloured student and a black student in the same room. we can put a xhosa speaking and a pedi speaking person, they’ve got two different cultures. princess later went on to say how pleased she was when she saw white people in the university choir who sang in other languages. i had an opportunity this year to go watch this choral choir when they were performing the last time. when i looked at them there’s only one white guy in the choir. but then one thing i liked about it is that they didn’t only sing african songs, they sang almost all languages, including whether it was portuguese which at the end of the day it brings that thing to say, and it was not only black people there, we had white parents, we had different people who came to watch and i asked myself at the end of the day what does a white person understand in black song. only to find that there was a programme where they translated all those zulu, tsonga, venda words in english. i say it does reflect that rainbow nation one way or the other though somebody might not understand it but it does … so it’s all about being given an opportunity to learn and an opportunity to exercise it. while the diversity on the campus has been described in positive terms, there is an accompanying recognition that the acceptance and assimilation of diversity as part of the fabric of the culture at the institution is still a long way off. according to dean x, … there’s still a lot of fear and mistrust particularly between cultures … when you see how students conduct themselves in their own activities, student activities. that would be reflected by an attitude of avoidance, you avoid other racial groups, you don’t necessarily interact with other racial groups and we are trying by all means to encourage racial integration. he went on to illustrate what was being done in the hostels as well as other student structures to encourage the racial integration of students. the point was also made that all src election posters were first screened by the office of the dean of students for possible racial slurs and other potentially discriminatory comments before they could be made public. at this level integration was understood to mean being linguistically politically correct. at another it was about having black students join student representative structures and black and white students sharing living spaces. 4 the university does not have a policy that prevents black and white students from sharing a room. however, this rarely happens. mclellan & pillay — diverging on diversity and difference 19 for instance in our residences, we are trying to have all racial groups represented in all the corridors in all the residences, within a res, at corridor level, there are corridor activities, we’re hoping that through these corridor activities people will then have an opportunity to interact. but it will take time, i must admit, but i think that is a starting point and we are trying to have also the student, there are these leadership structures, being racially represented. the position is, student leadership structures as well as the placement of students in the residents should be based on the actual demographics of our student population at the university of sonneblom … (dean x). the advisor to the vice-chancellor made the point that it was not surprising that racial integration was not an easy task. i would think that there could well still be people who don’t, who have not accepted the fact that we are operating in a new environment, new political dispensation, democracy and so on. but you know this is .., anyone who tells you that is only at sonneblom university doesn’t understand south africa, so in a way it’s not helpful that there are people like that. all i’m saying is that it’s a problem that you will have in an institution such as ours but it’s a south african problem, that we are still struggling with not only finding each other but trying to figure out what the past was about and having all kinds of problems. [there are] the people who would resist change. they may not do so in ways that are demonstrably negative but people find different ways of resisting change, behaving negatively towards things that they disapprove of. so ja, i would be very surprised if there weren’t people who felt that they had good reason to do that. he made the point that resistance to change was to be expected and that there were various ways in which people choose to resist change. although the advisor speaks of the resistance towards transformation and not ambivalence towards transformation, it does not preclude ambivalence to transformation. indeed, if anything, it points to a likelihood that even in quarters where transformation is positively articulated and promoted, feelings of ambivalence may prevail. sporting and supporting difference: a note of celebration with respect to sport the notions of difference and diversity took on an overtly celebratory tone. … as far as rugby is concerned in our residence league, we have the quota system … one leader of … residence proudly said that this quota system assisted them, they have a good player, who’s very excellent and he’s a black guy, so that assists… we have to put measures in place and that also assist because there is still that notion that soccer would be for blacks, rugby for whites, but we are trying to get around that and it’s by way of encouraging students to participate in various sporting activities (dean x). it is uncertain as to whether the dean’s enthusiasm was because the student was a good player or because he was black. the advisor gave further substance to the need for an inclusive approach to diversity when he made the point that diversity needed to be “nurtured”, not simply recognized, and that such nurturing was a complex, difficult and long process. it’s about nurturing diversity, creating opportunities for it to strive and there are many things that the institution has to do in order to be able to achieve that. that means working very hard on the broad fronts of equity, employment equity, access, internationalisation particularly within the african continent, it’s already happened, i mean it’s happened very substantially so it’s not like it’s a new thing that’s going to happen … it has ultimately to worry about what happens in the laboratories, in the classrooms and so on because that really is what transformation, that word that i don’t like using because nobody knows what it means, is ultimately about. and i don’t know any south african university that has started that job, so we’re fiddling around with numbers and the complexion and the genders. but real business of learning and teaching and so on is still untouched and that’s where the real issues are hidden. the member of council gave an interesting interpretation to the notion of diversity. she observed that there was an increasing age diversity among students and that the university was no longer necessarily a place perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201020 for young people only. in recognising other forms of diversity as well she made explicit reference to the need for difference and diversity to be accorded respect. … to have room for the middle-class students. and even for the students who may not have all the intellectual challenging worth. but he has to have ambitions and dreams of his own. and students who are prepared to make an effort. i have seen people who work, probably not really students with the highest iq, but through shear perseverance achieve a wonderful success. and if we do not provide for diversity also at that level, not only races and gender and all the other things, but also on the basis of different inborn um, talents … she went on to say that the balance between difference, individuality and academic value needed to be sustained as part of the ethos of the institution. a picture that emerges is that much effort is being made to make student structures racially representative. such structures include the src, the student radio station and the numerous sporting organisations that form part of student life. these may indeed be changes that, for now, given the numeric majority of white students, do not significantly threaten the historical hegemony of white students. a question that seems to require greater attention is whether racial representation implies racial assimilation and absorption into the ethos of the institution. while students of different races are consciously included in student structures, they appear to remain separate in the informal and private associations they choose. in the hostels we do relate and we are one family. you go to the dining hall, though at times there are spots which you can identify with, there are dominantly white spots and dominantly black spots but we haven’t had fights like it happened previously, when you find a black student slapped the white student in the dining hall (princess). the assertion of being “one family” resides in the recognition of their commonalities, that they belong to a residence, that they share the goal of being a good residence, that they have a shared identity. such bonds are forged though the wearing of uniforms among first year hostel students that identifies them with a particular residence and the desire, as to be the best residence. at the same time racial signifiers of difference remain an essential part of student behaviour and the choices they make. such signifiers are also visible as one walks around the campus. it is obvious that students choose to socialise in racially homogenous groups and that only a few have ventured out of the safety of homogeneity and commonality. indeed, implicit in princess’s observation above that they do not fight is a sense of achievement that peace prevails. there was a distinct pride among other respondents as well, particularly the dean of students and the council member, that there were no significant incidents of violence at sonneblom university. there appeared to be consensus too that the conservatism coupled with the strong tradition of hierarchal control has probably contributed to the level of peace and stability that prevailed on the campus. although the wearing of uniforms for hostel students may have positive spin-offs, dean y took a different view when he made the following comment. i understand why it’s done, i understand that it’s done in order to give people a sense of belonging and being part of a particular group and so on, but on the other hand i think that what the university should be about should be about freedom and the exploration of people’s ideas and so on, and i think there’s a certain tension there that needs to be resolved. perhaps the tension that dean y speaks of gains more substance when one notes that the council member argues that a special feature of the university is the balance it achieves between individuality and the aspiration to become a world class university. yet dean y observed that individuality is stifled through such practices as first year hostel students wearing a uniform. the point that emerges here is that while on the one hand there is a common acknowledgement of the need for individuality and for international recognition, not surprisingly, there is not sufficient consensus as to what road the university takes to get to this point. it is possible that the logic of historical materiality and the logic of transformation are likely to enjoy a conflicting yet mutually beneficial relationship for some time to come. mclellan & pillay — diverging on diversity and difference 21 conclusion the data from this study shows that the words difference and diversity may be used to create a mask of inclusion while asserting sameness. this is particularly so when these words remain an act of language rather than a strong practical commitment to embracing differences. the way in which the language of difference is used to explain separateness in the religious structures of the university, the cultural and student structures or even in the residences, is apartheid speak. weiler points out that one of the examples of ambivalence to change is ambivalence towards whom and what is included and excluded. the white student leader is unequivocal about inclusion and exclusion: anyone who supports the white afrikaans way of doing things is welcome in his organisation. he can espouse a myth of inclusion because he is confident that practices of exclusion are firmly in place. that this is indeed so is what allows him to say that a student who is not happy with the way things are at sonneblom university is welcome to leave. inclusion is therefore about acceptance of what prevails and more significantly about the way things have always been. in a similar way the black student leader finds a pious explanation for exclusions and inclusions in the christian organisations at the university. the demeanour of apartheid is evident in the way in which she willingly accepts racial separation of their religious structures but feels strongly about the conflation of xhosa and pedi cultures by white administrators. yet she is pleased that black and white students can live together in the residence and present a picture of a happy family. while it may seem intuitive that princess would be more demanding and accepting of transformation, this is not necessarily the case. ambivalence towards change appears to be rooted in the apartheid past of both students. similar examples of ambivalence to transformation and change may be found in the apartheid speak, indicated in the report of the ministerial committee on transformation and social cohesion and the elimination of discrimination in public higher education institutions (doe, 2009). what was most feared about integration was the loss of ‘their hostel culture’ — long-standing traditions going back to their ‘forefathers’. the significance of this is major in a context where the afrikaner community has lost political power and has come to perceive racial integration as but the first step in an inexorable process leading to the eventual loss of culture, language and access to economic resources (2009:82). as weiler (2005) predicts, the discomfort of the losses and the fear of more losses in future could further promote and preserve ambivalence. the study suggests that it is no doubt difficult to change institutional culture (the taken-for-granted, everyday practices or ‘the way we do things here’) to reflect a commitment to meaningful integration and therefore social cohesion in terms of belonging. this finding is consistent with the observation made by vandeyar (2009) in her study of the schooling sector. while the management members interviewed, not surprisingly, seem to have engaged with issues of transformation on a deeper level, this does not seem to have filtered down to the two students interviewed. as the ministerial report (doe, 2009) points out, compliance with a focus on achieving a numerical target of inclusion would by no way guarantee sufficient transformation. becher (1988) makes a similar point when he argues that without deeper commitment, whatever change appears visible and substantial on the front stage, could easily be superficial and symbolic, engaging little change at the backor understage. on returning to weiler’s construct of ambivalence, the continuation of strategic usage of ambivalence to explain resistance to transformation, and in the case of sonneblom, to re-affirm difference, would by no way lead to true transformation, except that “at its best, ambivalence in academia provides the very space for alternative answers without which the process of inquiry would remain a rather sterile affair. at its worst, ambivalence provides a comfortable excuse to avoid asking the hard questions and finding the hard answers” (2005:190). it was argued in the co-author’s unpublished doctoral dissertation (xxx, 2008) that universities should acknowledge and embrace ambivalence as it is often such contradictions that can open up spaces for conversation and interaction among a university’s stakeholders and that might yield additional avenues of development for the university. similarly, weiler’s makes special note of bauman (1991) in concluding that “once declared to be a mortal danger to all social and political order, ambivalence is not an ‘enemy at the gate’ anymore. on the contrary, like everything else, it has been made into one of the perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201022 stage props in the play called postmodernity” (1991:279 and 2005:178). the question to be answered then is whether the acknowledgement and embracing of ambivalence toward diversity and difference at sonneblom university can present valuable opportunities for transformation? we suggest that creating such opportunity would mean building bridges between the language of transformation as articulated by the members of management and the two student leaders who were interviewed. while both sectors seem to use similar words to talk about transformation, what emerges is a language that offers a mask of inclusion at the expense of transformation at sonneblom university. references becher t 1988. principles and politics: an interpretive framework for university management. in: a westoby (ed.). culture and power in educational organizations. milton keynes, uk: open university press. department of education (doe) 2009. report on the ministerial committee on transformation and social cohesion and the elimination of discrimination in public higher education institutions. pretoria. mclellan ce 2008. internationalisation and the pursuit of a developmental settlement: the case of a south african university. unpublished doctoral thesis. university of pretoria. vandeyar s 2009. portraiture as a methodological option for studying integrating schools. in: m nkomo and s vandeyar (eds). thinking diversity while building cohesion: transnational dialogue on education. amsterdan/pretoria: rozenberg publishers/unisa press. weiler hn 2005. ambivalence and the politics of knowledge: the struggle for change in german higher education. higher education, 49:177-195. 119 an exploration of higher education teachers’ experience of decolonising the bachelor of education honours curriculum at a south african university abstract the ongoing 2015/16 student unrest (#rhodesmustfall; #feesmustfall) has displayed heightened calls for the decolonising of the curriculum in the higher education (he) sector. students have highlighted in the recent protests that the curriculum remains largely eurocentric and continues to reinforce white and western dominance. in response to the need for a decolonised curriculum, higher education lecturers at a university in south africa embarked on a bachelor of education honours writing exercise workshop with the purpose of decolonising the curriculum. this entailed rethinking ways of knowing and a deconstruction of old epistemologies, with the aim that transformation in the classroom would be reflected in what is taught and how it is taught, as a means to ripple through to grassroots classroom level. this study explores, through using foucauldian discourse as theoretical frame, the experiences of eight lecturers at a university involved in teacher induction of honours-level education students. this link serves as a fundamental basis between societal change that speaks to creating a space for the african child in challenging teacher conceptions of power and privilege and rethinking the norms of praxis that manifest when teachers enter the classroom. semi-structured interviews were transcribed and thematically analysed to gain understanding as to the prominent methods used and the dominant conceptualisation of what decolonising the curriculum entails. findings suggest a need to return to grassroots classroom level as a means to involve stakeholders, such as teachers and tertiary students, in shaping the curriculum. it is further found that lecturers lack the means to engage with a solely afrocentric theoretical basis and that western discourse remains a prominent source of knowledge due to the lack of indigenous knowledge systems and research. keywords: decolonisation; higher education; curriculum reform; foucauldian discourse; teacher induction; indigenous knowledge 1. introduction after 1994, transformation of knowledge was supposed to entail a “reorientation away from the [colonial and] apartheid knowledge system, in which curriculum was used as a tool of exclusion, to a democratic curriculum that is inclusive of all human thought” (department of education, 2008: 89). dr preya pillay university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg school of education: curriculum email: preya.pillay@wits.ac.za dr eben swanepoel university of the free state, bloemfontein faculty of education psychology of education email: swanepoeleh@ufs.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v36i2.10 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 36(2): 119-131 © uv/ufs mailto:preya.pillay@wits.ac.za mailto:swanepoeleh@ufs.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2.10 120 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) however, universities have been challenged in addressing the quality and overall transformation of the curriculum since the demise of apartheid (akoojee & nkomo, 2007; heleta, 2016). according to the department of education, in 2008 the transformational efforts have not “translated into any significant shifts in the structure and content of the curriculum” (heleta, 2016:4). the curriculum is “inextricably intertwined with the institutional culture and, given that the latter remains white and eurocentric at the historically white institutions, the institutional environment is not conducive to curriculum reform” (heleta, 2016). this is in effect representative of the link between teacher induction and ultimately teacher praxis, as south africa’s sociocultural context is still facing post-apartheid based repercussions. in this the inequalities of service delivery and resource distribution are often scant within communities in which african learners are continuously facing the need and expected standard to abide with educators taught within a western discourse (theron & theron, 2014). garuba (2015) argues that to understand students’ call for curriculum reform, we need to talk about and engage in the re-conceptualisation and decolonisation of the curriculum in south africa. we need to consider the two approaches discussed by garuba. the first approach is to “add new items to an existing curriculum”. the second approach is to “rethink how the object of study itself is constituted” and then reconstruct it and bring about fundamental change (garuba, 2015: 2). the emphasis is a critical account of knowledge production with the aim of valuing and including marginalised groups in the curriculum. this is similar to ngugi’s (1981: 87) argument, which states that decolonisation of the curriculum is about africans being seen “clearly in relationship with ourselves and other selves in the universe”. this echoes the point about re-centring africa in the curriculum, and ensuring that the curriculum speaks to, and from, the african context. ngugi (1981: 87) calls this “a quest for relevance”. this relevance can only be established if african universities succeed in decolonising the mind. kaya and seleti (2013: 33) concur in stating that a decolonised curriculum must reject the “utilisation of [a] dominant western worldview of knowing and knowledge production as the only way of knowing”. at further grassroots level, the need for an afrocentric pedagogical lens needs to be infused within the process of teacher induction, allowing the skills to be transferred to classroom practice in an effort to speak to the needs of learners inclusively. it is thus critical to examine the ways of knowing and thinking by examining the values instilled during the process of teacher induction as a means to enlarge teaching spaces that mobilise critical dialogue, connectedness, caring and collective agency. these values need to be critically evaluated when considered how western discourse shapes the ramifications thereof at a practical level and to question how these core values and knowledge systems either synchronise or regress from the afrocentric worldview (cherrington, 2017). it is important to note that decolonisation does not require removing white men and women, both foreign and local, from the curriculum. however, they cannot be seen as the all-knowing and all-important canon upon which human knowledge rests and through which white and western domination is maintained (heleta, 2016). jansen (1998:110–111) further emphasises that: content matters, and it matters a great deal when a european-centred curriculum continues to dominate and define what counts as worthwhile knowledge and legitimate authority in south african texts and teaching; it matters very much in the context of the inherited curriculum, informed by apartheid and colonialism, in which only the more readily observable, offensive racism has been skimmed off the top. this means that the call for decolonisation of the curriculum “is neither an advocacy to be anti-west, nor is it discouragement to learn from the west” and the rest of the world. rather, it 121 pillay & swanepoel an exploration of higher education teachers is a call to make higher education (he) “relevant to the material, historical and social realities of the communities in which universities operate” (letsekha, 2013: 14). they (academics) need to develop graduates and intellectuals who can address the epistemic violence of the past and present and who will go on to rewrite the “histories and humanity [of both south africa and africa] so cruelly seized and denied by europe” (zeleza, 2009: 116) throughout centuries. spivak (1994) defines as “epistemic violence” the eurocentric and western domination and subjugation of the (former) colonial subjects and misconception of their understanding and perception of the world. this is a result of the “violence of imperialistic epistemic, social and disciplinary inscription” (heleta, 2016:4). thus, the involvement of academics in the decolonisation of curriculum requires “self-reflexivity” (langdon, 2013:385), recognition of privilege, personal change and growth as well as unlearning of the old knowledge designed to subjugate and exploit “the other”. in essence, higher education needs to trouble the traditional notion of what curriculum is in light of the quest for decolonisation. the idea of curriculum is hardly new – but the way one understands and theorises it has altered over the years – and there remains considerable dispute as to its meaning (van den akker, 2006). in the same sense, we need to trouble how teachers reflect and act upon the curriculum (as well as their own identities); and thus to inform and equip teachers to be able to speak to the views and traditions of the african child. francis and le roux (2011) speak to the importance of teacher induction to respond to issues of social justice, drawing on the complexity of the myriad of identities which shape not only the perspective of the teacher, but also the connectedness of the african child and, in essence, all identities that are located within one classroom. many higher education teachers are asked to decolonise the curriculum, yet there is little agreement as to whether teachers are prepared for this task. subsequently, this paper is an attempt to articulate, through the case study of a university in south africa, what higher education teachers understand by the terms curriculum, their understanding of how curriculum should be decolonised and the process involved, their critical analysis of writing for a decolonised curriculum and their suggestions to enhance the decolonisation writing process. furthermore, as argued by le roux (2014,) it becomes increasingly important during teacher induction to challenge the subjectivities of teachers as to power and privilege, as a means to enhance restorative pedagogies that will cater to all knowledge systems. this is despite the teachers’ personal contexts and assumptions about what knowledge should and should not be taught; thus, challenging assumptions of how teachers think about their own practice and accordingly accommodating multiculturalism. while universities globally have formulated new policies and frameworks pertaining to equality, equity, transformation and change, institutional cultures and epistemological traditions have not changed considerably. the policies might be there, but the willingness to implement them is lacking (department of education, 2008:41). this is evident by students’ recent call for decolonisation of the curriculum. additionally, the 2008 report of the ministerial committee on transformation and social cohesion and the elimination of discrimination in public higher education institutions reiterated this point: “discrimination, in particular with regard to racism and sexism, is pervasive in our institutions. there is a disjuncture between institutional culture and transformation policies” (mckaiser, 2016:16). this report by the ministerial committee in turn placed urgency on many higher education institutions to (re)think how knowledge is constructed and presented; in particular, how do we teach beyond content and numbers? yet the extent of the preparedness of higher education teachers to respond 122 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) to this call remains unknown. how higher education teachers understand and conceptualise decolonisation of the curriculum is somewhat unclear. this is evident by the lack of research done in this area (hesa, 2014:7). the current research can provide a sturdier analysis of higher education teachers’ understanding of decolonisation of the curriculum and contribute towards the emerging discussion on decolonising of curriculum in higher education within the south african context. the content-cleansing process to rid curriculum of prejudicial content continues to unfold in many higher education institutions. however, there is still a dearth of knowledge as to the ideological subtexts of curriculum. as lecturers in curriculum studies, we became conscious through informal conversations of the difficulties many lecturers face in terms of writing a curriculum that responds to decolonisation. getting to grips with the lecturers’ experiences of writing for a decolonised curriculum at the faculty of education and seeking to arrive at a deeper understanding of the intricacies surrounding these curriculum issues was in itself a strong motivation for us to embark on this investigation. it is accordingly that this research article speaks to the following three research questions: research question 1: how has a writing programme for honours curriculum reform transformed lecturer perceptions about their own practice during a process of decolonising the curriculum? research question 2: what influence does power and personal knowledge have during the process of decolonising the curriculum at honours level? research questions 3: what challenges do lecturers encounter during the process of decolonising the curriculum? these questions will be answered through firstly exploring the theoretical framework that underpins the study, the work of michel foucault (foucault, 1980). thereafter, the methodology will be presented, after which the narratives of the participants will be discussed to better understand the context within which academics decolonise the curriculum. 2. problem statement and rationale we don’t want to be treated like symptoms, we want to see ourselves reflected in the curriculum, and we want to share our african experiences and knowledge (ufs student, 2016). after 21 years of democracy, when it might have been expected that curriculum matters should have been adequately addressed, student protests have ignited debates on, “what does it mean to be at a university in africa?”, with responses mostly being related to the relevance of what is taught (maserumule, 2015). student protests fuelled by anger have highlighted that curricula at african universities are not linked to african cultures and realities (molefe, 2016). students have argued that most universities still follow the hegemonic “eurocentric epistemic canon” that “attributes truth only to the western way of knowledge production” (mbembe, 2016: 32). such curricula do not develop students’ critical and analytical skills to understand and move the african continent forward. the one-sided and subjective “epistemological truth” reflected in curricula is a “reproduction of epistemological blindness that silences other knowledge’s and ways of creating knowledge” (motta, 2013:97). in response to the task of decolonising the curriculum, higher education teachers at the faculty of education of a south african university embarked on a bachelor of education (bed) 123 pillay & swanepoel an exploration of higher education teachers honours-curriculum writing workshop with the purpose of (re-)thinking ways of knowing, a deconstruction of old epistemologies and an inclusion of culturally responsive knowledge. higher education teachers at this university engaged collaboratively in a two-day-long writing workshop effectively responding to the “question of the moment”, i.e., of the decolonisation of curriculum. this study explored the experiences of eight lecturers at the faculty of education who participated in the bed honours writing exercise with the purpose of decolonising the curriculum. 3. theoretical framework the theoretical ideas of michel foucault (foucault, 1980) underpin this study. foucault theorised about interrelated concepts of regimes of truth, power and knowledge. particular disciplines have specific knowledge that will dominate and point to what is considered true. foucault (1980: 131) refers to this as “regimes of truth”. these regimes of truth guide how people think, feel and act in relation to the self, others and social practice (macnaughton, 2003). regimes of truth are represented through a specific subject knowledge. yet, “what counts as knowledge” is also an issue of “whose knowledge”, since knowledge is always “someone’s knowledge” (englund, forsberg & sundberg, 2012). therefore, regimes of truth consist of symbols that carry meaning, and a curriculum is the medium of conveying meaning, liberation, reproduction, inclusion and exclusion. foucault has also used the phrase “the politics of knowledge” and describes processes by which “knowledge functions as a form of power and disseminates the effects of power” (foucault, 1980:69). through contextualising the study, we as researchers and academics questioned who holds the power when a specific curriculum is interpreted or transformed and how academics and stakeholders specifically consider how their knowledge is imbedded in certain restrictions, bias and power systems that fail to realise the ideals of a decolonised curriculum. according to foucault (1980:369): power/knowledge is located within the “deep” regimes of discourse/practice. it is knowledge that permits statements [about expectations and practices for children and programmes] to emerge and be legitimated as truth. it is produced by power and in turn produces power. to foucault (1980), knowledge and power cannot be separated. the type of knowledge produced influences the individual’s behaviour and has a controlling effect, such that knowledge is inseparable from power. knowledge is neither universal nor is it a given, unmediated representation of the world; rather, it is a fallible product under social, cultural and historical constraints. if higher education is to re-centre itself, academics and other staff must be invited to engage with the powerful knowledges they bring in. an understanding of foucault’s regimes of truth, power and knowledge will provide a deeper understanding of lecturers’ understanding of writing for a decolonised curriculum. an understanding of how regimes of truth and power and knowledge are embedded in the curriculum could contribute towards the emerging discussion on decolonising of curriculum through a critical lens. higher education teachers need to “understand that curriculum is a powerful signifying system... so that they may have increased agency in this critical task of decolonisation” (foucault, 1980:250). this is done through investigating how academics, working in close relation with teacher induction programmes, and specifically the honours programme in education, mediate 124 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) and navigate power relations, knowledge bias and background influences when shaping their curriculum, ultimately translating into practice on the part of teachers at grassroots level. 4. methodology 4.1 research design and paradigm the interpretive paradigm was selected to underpin the assumptions of this study. in this paradigm, the aim of educational research is to understand the meaning, in this case, behind higher education teachers’ experiences, which is part of the social and cultural context in which they occur (kim, 2003). symbolically, the role of the researcher is to understand, explain and demystify social reality through multiple interpretations that vary, whereby results are created and not found (mack, 2010). studies in this field are distinctive and cannot be generalised, typical of such case study research (christiansen, bertram & land, 2010). this suggests that the interpretive paradigm together with the case study research style is the most suitable approach because it deals with personal experiences (similar to the aim of this study). as a form of qualitative research, a case study has been chosen as the research style for conducting this study. case studies are implemented when researchers intend to support their argument by a thorough analysis of a person, a group of persons, an organisation or a specific project (christiansen et al., 2010). from an interpretive perspective, case studies aim towards a deeper understanding of how participants relate and interact with each other in a contextspecific situation and the meaning that arises from the phenomena under study (maree, 2007). 4.2 data collection and ethical approval interviews represent a systematic way of talking and listening to people in order to generate data used for research purposes (cohen & crabtree, 2006). the study at hand employed a semi-structured method of interviewing eight lecturers individually over a thirty-minute session. used effectively, individual semi-structured interviews inculcate an atmosphere for participants to feel free in expressing their views in their own terms that can provide reliable, comparable qualitative data (for in-depth description). ethical approval was obtained at institutional level on part of the ethics committee for the faculty of education of the respective university where the study was conducted. furthermore, gatekeeper consent on the part of the dean of education was obtained, while all participants were fully informed and briefed about the study, with consent provided to be interviewed. 4.3 participants teddlie (2007) describes a sample as the representative selection of people, places or things from which data are gathered. the specific context in which this study took place was a higher education institution in south africa. the purposive sampling method was selected, which is frequently used in qualitative studies. purposive sampling involves selecting individuals or institutions to answer the research questions of a study (teddlie, 2007). the participants in this study included the eight most accessible lecturers (convenience sampling) who were part of the bed honours writing exercise for the semi-structured one-on-one interviews and who formed core stakeholders in shaping and teaching honours-level courses at the faculty of education of the selected university. 125 pillay & swanepoel an exploration of higher education teachers analysis of results validity and reliability are core concepts during researching either quantitative or qualitative designed studies, and specific consideration is given to the importance thereof in relation to this qualitative based paper. according to holloway and wheelers (1996: 162), “validity is the extent to which any researcher’s tool measures what is supposed to measure and reliability is the extent to which the instrument, when used more than once, will produce the same results or answers in the research”. for this qualitative case study, these two concepts are replaced by the concept trustworthiness, which is used in qualitative studies, where measurement is not important because qualitative studies deal with description. since the case study style of research was implemented in this study, the aim was to describe and not to measure (christiansen et al., 2010). in describing trustworthiness in qualitative studies, the concepts of credibility, neutrality, confirmability, dependability, applicability and transferability supplant issues of reliability and validity in evaluating the quality of the research (golafshani, 2003). therefore, to enhance trustworthiness in this study, two researchers interviewed the eight lecturers and recorded (with tape recorders) the interviews to be transcribed. data from the two researchers were compared for triangulation purposes. 5. results and discussion the introduction of the results and discussion section is best informed through a direct verbatim extract of one of the participants, participant 7, whose narrative embodies the paving of the discussion forward in relation to decolonising the curriculum: decolonisation refers to the dismantling of colonial systems and content within the curriculum that were established during the period of time when nations-maintained dominion over dependent territories. decolonising the university curriculum could happen by tapping into different indigenous knowledge systems, thus expanding the knowledge base that students can access. one major problem of europe is that content of europe is over-represented in theory, knowledge and education presented at local universities. i believe that the way forward is move towards practical actions that need to be taken. this include the thoughts and writings of african academics and to draw from african experiences (knowing, doing and being) (participant 7). through the analysis of results and the coding process, two dominant themes emerged, namely, “liberation and dismantlement of eurocentric knowledge power” and “collaboration amongst stakeholders in decolonising the curriculum”. of note, however, is that various subthemes also emerged, amongst others, “the longitudinal process of decolonising curriculum” and “ambiguity of policy and curriculum in the south african process”. in relation to the theoretical framework, however, we postulated that these themes reconstruct and organise segmented knowledge akin to western discourse through empowering the views of the researchers. as such, the discussion of results is informed mainly through the voices of the participants within a uniform non-segmented discussion, organically conveying meaning and as such removing systemic power and colonial dissemination of results on part of the researchers. we in turn needed to question our own manner of knowing and doing, and, in essence, the “being” of the discussion itself. this process mirrors that of not only the thinking that pre-service teachers should critically embody, but speaks to the practice for teachers who will need to rethink and frame to teach within an afrocentric context. participant 1: we forgot… we forgot a lot of things to say. as young as you are, you are a leader in your own making. that’s what you’re supposed to know. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/decolonization 126 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) from the onset of interviewing, the concept of collaboration and self-empowerment became a prominent part in what methods are of importance in deconstructing power and relocating curricula within a decolonised context. it is important to note that these values are core to indigenous knowledge systems of the african child. while emphasis on part of the researchers was primarily on higher education, the participants relocated the narratives back to grassroots school-based level. the idea of ubuntu enveloped these narratives, and, as proposed by swanson (2007), ubuntu provides the pivotal departure point of togetherness and human rights, especially in relation to schooling contexts, as a means to transcend past injustices and societal disharmony. participant 1 continued the narrative of forgotten knowledge by relocating power back to the self as well as shared accountability: to me, decolonising a curriculum means embracing yourself, your culture and other people’s capabilities. it means understanding, at a young age, that being a better person doesn’t mean looking down at other people. because when the young ones were groomed, trying to make them better leaders for tomorrow, something was missing there. we forgot about ubuntu. this forgotten knowledge may be attributed to the western mindset of individualistic imperialism dominating human capital movements in educational motives, while collectivist cultures are continuously growing and aiming toward the transcendence of individualistic needs toward leaders with collectivist-based skillsets (triandis, 2018). participant 2 emphasised the role of self-liberation, and rejected eurocentric knowledge systems completely: do we mean that we have to ignore other stuff from european countries, from america, from different parts of the world; does it mean that? i think it does mean that, by decolonisation; it seems as if people are thinking of being … of being liberated themselves. my, you know, decolonisation is about being emancipated cognitively. the narrative, however, strongly situates and emphasises the systemic nature of nonindigenous knowledge rooting curricula and in a sense restraining emancipation. it is, however, of note that the narrative aligns with ngugi (1981), who postulated that relevance can only be found if african universities succeed in decolonising the mind. as the interview continued, however, and after reflecting on their own knowledge and construction of decolonising the curriculum, the participant revaluated their previous statement and reconstructed their narrative to draw more freely on the limitations, as per their own perception, of current theoretical lenses underlying current indigenous knowledge systems: i must say that we, we do have indigenous theorists, uh, but they are not, uh, adequate, to me, so we need to supplement what we have here with what is already existing from other parts of the world. one of the prominent conversations we had prior to commencing the study pertains to how a lecturer can decolonise a curriculum within the balance of eurocentric and afrocentric knowledge systems. we further discussed the difficulty of drawing on indigenous knowledge systems as a primary point of departure. participants 4 and 5 mirror this discussion, and again draw on the restraints of looking through a primary afrocentric lens in shaping and constructing the curriculum, this being central to their narratives when asked what decolonising the curriculum entails: participant 4: when we’re decolonising the curriculum, it mustn’t be addressing something that is outside the south african context; it must be within, so to show an understanding, 127 pillay & swanepoel an exploration of higher education teachers and it must address all the issues that are there in that particular country; you cannot learn about england, we’re not in england, basically. participant 5: you remember, most of the curriculum, especially in african states, it’s from overseas. it was brought in during the period of colonisation by those big countries. now, the content is actually, or most of the time, is a mirror of what is happening in those countries. so with the effect that now it sort of ignores the indigenous knowledge that the country has. and, as a result, the people are saying that it’s time that now the indigenous knowledge that the country has also to be recognised to be part of the curriculum that has to be learnt. hence, decolonisation. the notion of collaboration and reconciliation of knowledge was articulated by participant 3, who acknowledged the limitations of a solely african-centred curriculum and advocated the importance of global collaboration as a means to establish rapport in common ground between teaching and what content should be taught: it is about 30% of international knowledge and 70% of local knowledges. and if you don’t adhere to that ratio of 30/70% and then you can’t tell that the indigenous knowledge is part of the content. you have to select the readers and the content to reflect on the local context. participant 6 also advocated this collaboration of incorporating western discourse and african-centred knowledge, yet simultaneously acknowledged that this is due to the academic motive of engaging with international conferences and academic collaborators as a primary means of enrichment, neglecting african stakeholders. participant 6 echoed this through the following narrative: i think it is a balance between the two … they all start with a rush on the right [western] side of the continent and i think through all this we just have to keep a balance, and maybe the yardstick would be which aspect from whichever side will serve the purpose the best without neglecting the other side, because i think for many years academics saw, uhm, let’s say, enrichment as going overseas. no one wanted to go up in africa and go and share and go and learn there. it becomes noteworthy that the dominant discourse of the initial part of the interviews located the power of what content must be taught in the hands of the lecturers; however, further conversations revealed the importance of participating at various levels. considering the induction process of teacher education and that all participants were lecturing honourslevel students at the time of the study, the information on the part of these students became of critical value to shaping curriculum. it is furthermore important to reflect again on the narrative of participant 1 of “forgotten knowledge”, and that as for higher education teachers, the continuous recycling of knowledge implies power and sustains systemic oppression, in other words, lecturers provide a specific knowledge base to students, which in turn becomes cornerstone to the knowledge taught within the classroom. thus, establishing this direct link with educators becomes a critical component in establishing rapport with student educators to be prepared to enter schooling environments with the heightened cultural intelligence that serves the needs of the multicultural contexts of south african schools (swanepoel, beyers & de wet, 2017). the following narratives are examples of this collaborative stance to shaping a decolonised curriculum: participant 5: like, i’m saying, it involves the involvement of stakeholders, be it from the student side, the private sector as well as the different faculties in an institution, so that at 128 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) least we are not accused of one faculty being advanced or effecting changes while some are still stagnant. participant 4: we need, uh, workshops, because you cannot work alone; you have to consult the stakeholders, all those who are involved. that includes the community, politicians, students, parents, all sorts of people, all the stakeholders that are expected to contribute. they have to involve the teachers, because they are the one who are implementing the curriculum. participant 1: embrace other people’s culture and take everyone as an asset. make use of all the capabilities. hmmm. be cognisant that you can never decolonise curriculum as an individual who will teach others hence, and then begin to change, to transform curriculum. the narrative extracts above reflect the basis of how the lecturers conceptualised and located their understanding of decolonising the curriculum. as noted at the commencement of the section, there is ambiguity about what content should be included. it was though seen as a process, as opposed to a once-off reimplementation of merely reconfiguring current content, as reflected through the following narratives: participant 1: how do we begin to decolonise curriculum? because it’s not going to happen in a minute. i believe it’s going to take some time, but we need to make sure that the first thing is collaborating: sitting down and talking about it. participant 4: uhm, basically, curriculum is too broad. we, we, you cannot define it in a short way. it is just a set of, uh, a set of … what can i say? uuuh, philosophies that can be combined together to create meaning, basically; for curriculum, because it’s too broad. of note is that through this process that we, the two researchers, had a chance to further reflect on our own ideas and perceptions of decolonisation. coming from two different universities and having undergone different induction programmes, we realised the manner in which we do not just hold our individual background knowledge and bias, but also a different knowledge-structure, based on our separate experiences as students and ultimately lecturers. coming together and having undergone this study, we can speak to the importance of collaboration, ubuntu and sharing knowledge as a means to broaden how we structure our curriculum. thus not seeing curriculum transformation as being within a silo, but as a collaborative approach wherein individual differences are embraced and translated into the manner in which we create and design curriculums, as well as how we approach teaching this curriculum at practical level. 6. final reflection and demarcations of the study after reflection on part of the researchers, it became indicative that the participants’ narratives contain finer nuances of what and how curriculum is perceived and produced. participants alternated between using “the curriculum” and “a curriculum” or “curriculum”. aligned with the basis of the study this reflects the distinctive conceptions that there is a fluid and non-unison formation of what curriculum is, while other participants may perceive curriculum more as a set framework. this is reiterated through participant 1 who articulates that “curriculum” is formal and informal, and that lecturers themselves may represent the current primary stakeholders: it could be lessons acquired by students in schools or in universities imparted by educators or lecturers. it could be knowledge articulated in schools. it could be knowledge that has not been articulated but, because of the environment, the student has something, i mean 129 pillay & swanepoel an exploration of higher education teachers they’ve acquired something subconsciously without having anyone who say: “this is what you’re supposed to do”. it could be knowledge that came from certain courses. it could be things that were not taught formally. as i’m saying, in a university a student might be able to acquire something from the environment without anyone saying a word. that what “curriculum” is to me. we agree that the manner in which curriculum is shaped and implemented for new teachers need to challenge existing norms of what knowledge is being taught and the manner in which it is conveyed. ultimately, as lecturers of honours level education students, we need to relocate our own perceptions of knowledge and construction of content to incorporate the views and grassroots level experiences of teachers within the system. this study focussed on lecturers, and further research will be valuable, from a systemic perspective, to gain stronger insight as to how indigenous knowledge systems in schools are currently implemented, challenged, troubled and ultimately adapted to fit the current content set out to be taught on part of all various stakeholders and to the benefit of the learners. it is only through critical examination and questioning that teachers will embody the skills to speak to the needs of the african child without the distorted lenses of western influence; and in turn critically engage with the need to develop multicultural skills and competencies to cater to the african context. references akoojee, s. & nkomo, m. 2007. access and quality in south african higher education: the 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https://doi.org/10.2979/ trs.2009.-.101.110 https://doi.org/10.1215/07402775 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.00995 https://doi.org/10.1177/1558689806292430 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2014.10.003 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429499845 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429499845 https://doi.org/10.2979/trs.2009.-.101.110 https://doi.org/10.2979/trs.2009.-.101.110 _goback _hlk518977829 257 research article 2021 39(3): 257-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) faculty familiarity with inclusive practices for students with learning disabilities at najran university abstract inclusive practices are essential determinants of academic success for students with learning disabilities (ld) in university education. the current study examined the familiarity of faculty members with inclusive practices for students with ld in a university in the kingdom of saudi arabia. a quantitative survey design was employed with 264 faculty members who had inadequate familiarity with inclusive practices for students with ld. differences were noted in the inclusive practices provided to the students as saudi faculty members were inadequately familiar with instructional, classroom and assignment practices. the study also showed that saudi faculty members were unfamiliar with examination practices provided to students with ld. demographic variables showed statistically insignificant differences in saudi university education. implications and suggestions for future research were also highlighted. keywords: inclusive practices; learning disabilities; university; students; higher education; familiarity; saudi arabia. 1. introduction the inclusive experiences of students with learning disabilities (ld) in higher education vary among universities worldwide (abed & shackelford, 2019, lombardi et al., 2015). this variation is attributed to many factors, including the effectiveness of transition planning, which the students are provided within secondary school and the familiarity of faculty members with inclusive educational practices (trainor et al., 2016). therefore, a summary of performance portfolio can help enhance transition planning programmes and faculty members› familiarity for students with learning disabilities (davis & southward, 2021). this study proposed that understanding the factors contributing to university students’ satisfaction and academic success with ld may positively contribute to enhancing their learning experiences in the university environment (stage & milne, 1996). these factors were author: dr turki alqarni1 affiliation: 1najran university, saudi arabia doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i3.19 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(3): 257-276 published: 16 september 2021 received: 11 june 2021 accepted: 28 july 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3413-7307 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 2582021 39(3): 258-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) divided into three categories: institutional, dispositional and coping strategies (stage & milne, 1996). institutional factors included facilities and services provided by the university, which can facilitate or impede the development of goals of post-secondary students with learning disabilities (stage & milne, 1996). equipping the students with beneficial strategies, such as self-accommodation and providing them with coaching programmes focused on developing organisational, time management and self-advocacy skills can positively reinforce their university experience (lightfoot et al., 2018). additionally, dispositional factors including attitudinal or behavioural traits of the students also influence their academic progress and were found to be the most significant contributors to the academic success of post-secondary students with learning disabilities (ekelman et al., 2013; greenbaum et al., 1995; perry & franklin, 2006; lightfoot et al., 2018). furthermore, coping strategies included management techniques that the students developed to deal with inadequacy in skill areas and specific subjects that were impacted by their learning disabilities (stage & milne, 1996, gustems-carnicer et al., 2019). decisionmakers in universities should stress the importance of disability service providers in educating students with learning disabilities and equipping them with an adequate understanding of their disability, which will help them identify their accommodation requirements and strengths (lightfoot et al., 2018, hadley, 2019). 2. conceptual framework 2.1 the concept of familiarity the term familiarity has different meanings depending on the contexts in which it is used. in this study, it is defined as the knowledge of someone or something or having exposure to someone or something (pozzulo et al., 2019). encouraging familiarity with inclusive practices significantly influences the academic progress of students with learning disabilities. a prime reason for increasing faculty members’ familiarity with learning disabilities is that it can help reduce the stigmatisation of students with learning disabilities in communities and schools (pelleboer-gunnink et al., 2020). in addition, it can also promote the inclusion and belonging of students with learning disabilities within their societies (pelleboer-gunnink et al., 2020). 2.2 the concept of inclusive practices inclusive practices refer to arrangements that teachers or faculty members follow to attain presence, involvement and achievement for all learners, particularly those who are at risk (marchesi et al., 2009). increasing involvement in classrooms accepts differences as a fact, including many learners participating together with various learning styles, prior information and abilities (finkelstein et al., 2021). furthermore, in order to ensure effective inclusive practices delivered to students, a series of factors has to be represented that can influence the higher education system. these factors are grouped into three classifications; including, alterations in the system, operations of inclusive schools and applications of inclusive practices in classrooms (guasp et al., 2016). 3. litreture review the majority of the students with ld expressed positive attitudes towards taking alternative courses and obtaining academic accommodations and emphasised the importance of http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 2592021 39(3): 259-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 alqarni faculty familiarity with inclusive practices for students with learning disabilities self-advocacy skills in their academic success (sigafoos, 2019, skinner, 2004). when students with ld progress to college, more focus should be on the self-disclosure process, including legal accommodations, self-determination and self-advocacy skills (newman et al., 2019). thus, the preparatory curriculum of high schools and colleges for post-secondary students with ld should help build students› self-advocacy skills and ensure competency in using academic strategies. in addition, it should reinforce the students’ social skills to help them confidently interact with their instructors and peers without learning disabilities and educate students about disability laws (skinner, 2004, barton, 2018). moreover, increasing the awareness of students with ld on the university campus may help educate students without learning disabilities about the characteristics of students with learning disabilities and promote positive attitudes towards them (hadley, 2019). students with ld are hesitant to request their academic accommodations due to the apprehension among their peers without learning disabilities (barga, 1996). students without learning disabilities often understand the academic accommodation process, but they cannot understand the reasons behind it (meyer et al., 2012, slee, 2018). therefore, alqarni et al. (2019) suggested that it is vital to educate students without learning disabilities about the types and characteristics of learning disabilities as it may help them partake in positive and non-judgemental interactions with their peers without learning disabilities. it is essential to emphasise the importance of disability service providers in raising awareness to counter misunderstandings among students without learning disabilities about the perceived “unfairness” in requesting accommodations for students with ld (meyer et al., 2012). consequently, it is essential to investigate university students’ attitudes without learning disabilities in integrating with students with learning disabilities. moreover, examining the attitudes of the faculty members towards providing accommodation services is critical to facilitate inclusive practices for students with ld in higher education (hansen et al., 2017). 3.1 faculty members› attitudes towards university students with learning disabilities generally, faculty members have positive attitudes towards the inclusion of students with learning disabilities, but they have inadequate knowledge of disability inclusion in terms of legislation and providing appropriate accommodations (abu-hamour, 2013; rao & gartin, 2003; khansa, 2015; lombardi et al., 2015; jensen et al., 2004; khouri et al., 2019). however, faculty members have recently expanded their knowledge of disability in higher education compared to past years and categorically exhibited positive perceptions of integrating individuals with learning disabilities in universities (leyser & greenberger, 2008). the level of confidence in teaching and perceptions of students with learning disabilities vary among faculty members (rao & gartin, 2003). when faculty members are confident and positive about educating students with learning disabilities in higher education, the students can be better included within the university environment and receive the most appropriate accommodations (abu-hamour, 2013). to facilitate successful inclusion of students with ld, instructors are required to change their attitudes towards students with learning disabilities and provide them with appropriate accommodations (khansa, 2015). however, prior research has shown that faculty members and staff who provide accommodating services to students are uncertain about their ability to efficiently meet accommodation requests of students with learning disabilities (murray et al., 2011; taylor et al., 2009). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 2602021 39(3): 260-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) some faculty members avoid or are hesitant to accommodate students with learning disabilities. they believe that providing accommodations might burden them with additional duties and cause them further stress. skinner (2007) pointed out that some faculty members are unwilling to use extra credit as a reasonable accommodation for students with learning disabilities because it presents an unfair advantage and should not be used for a specific group of students while excluding the others. this type of accommodation was least likely to be provided by faculty members in universities, particularly in engineering and law departments (rao & gartin, 2003). however, most faculty members are generally willing to provide accommodations for students with learning disabilities assigned by universities (murray et al., 2008; khouri et al., 2019; jensen et al., 2004; murray et al., 2011; leyser et al., 2011; abu-hamour, 2013; rao & gartin, 2003; khansa, 2015; lombardi et al., 2015; skinner, 2007; hindes & mather, 2007; bourke et al., 2000). khouri et al. (2019) mentioned that a high willingness to provide accommodations to students with ld is associated with substantial knowledge of the importance of assisting students with ld. it was presumed that such knowledge might help students with ld pursuing post-secondary education to get accepted in media (ben-yehudah & brann, 2019), along with increasing the awareness of university deans towards the necessity of educating faculty members about accommodating practices provided to students with ld (khouri et al., 2019). awareness of the characteristics of students with ld is not sufficient to exhibit a willingness to accommodate those students in the university; faculty members are required to be willing to advocate for students with ld to receive the most appropriate accommodating practices in higher education (murray et al., 2008; harris & lee, 2019). murray et al. (2008) believed that faculty members could effectively advocate for students with ld if they had opportunities to improve their skills in helping the students. these skills can be acquired through disabilityfocused training, which has a positive relationship with the faculty members› willingness to support and advocate for students with ld (murray et al., 2011). skinner (2007) conducted a study focusing on examining the faculty›s willingness to provide accommodations and alternative courses for students with ld. in a survey delivered to institutions in the south-eastern united states, 253 faculty members participated. the results indicated a variation in the faculty’s willingness to provide accommodations and alternative courses based on some variables, including schools, academic ranks and types of accommodations requested (skinner, 2007). in conclusion, faculty members were either very willing to provide four of the eight accommodations, including calculators, alternative locations, extended time and computers or laptops to accommodate students with ld (skinner, 2007; shea et al., 2019). the favourability of providing accommodation types can also vary among faculty members within universities (lipka et al., 2020). faculty members are highly willing to use accommodations for extended time on tests and extended deadlines on class assignments (khansa, 2015). the use of alternative exams and providing extended time on examinations are substantially considered by instructors because of the ease in understanding and implementing them (bourke et al., 2000). in some instances, faculty members prefer assisting in copying lecture outlines and preparing drafts of projects (leyser et al., 2011). a study conducted by rao and gartin (2003) showed that most faculty members preferred to allow students with learning disabilities extra time on examinations. as can be noted from previous http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 2612021 39(3): 261-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 alqarni faculty familiarity with inclusive practices for students with learning disabilities studies, providing extended time is a preferred accommodation (khansa, 2015; bourke et al., 2000). although students normally do their assignments with little to no assistance, faculty members are required to change their attitudes and beliefs of post-secondary students with ld by discussing their involvement in teaching those students (jensen et al., 2004; moriña díez et al., 2015; lópez gavira & moriña, 2015). similar studies that have been conducted across different cultures present varying aspects of faculty members’ practices of inclusive instructions for post-secondary students with ld in global universities (agrawal et al., 2019; shecter-lerner et al., 2019). for instance, an interesting study conducted among faculty members in the united states, canada and spain, investigated the differences in faculty members’ attitudes towards disability-related topics and inclusive instructions using the inclusive teaching strategies inventory (itsi). the itsi measures attitudes and actions across seven subscales: (a) inclusive teaching practices, (b) accommodations, (c) inclusive classrooms and lectures, (d) inclusive assessment, (e) disability laws and concepts, (f) course modifications and (g) accessible course materials (lombardi et al., 2015). a questionnaire was prepared and interactive workshops were organised in which 102 faculty members from the three countries participated. the findings of the study indicated that participants had different attitudes and actions across the seven subscales. concerning attitudes, the us faculty members’ responses were the highest across the seven subscales, except for their knowledge of disability laws and concepts. in contrast, the attitudes of spanish faculty members were consistently the lowest compared to the two other countries (lombardi et al., 2015). 3.2 learning disabilities in saudi higher education factually, saudi arabia started educating students with disabilities in 1985 with deaf and blind students in schools known as scientific institutions (al-mousa, 2010). after that special education services and support in saudi arabia improved with the development of special education programmes all over the world, especially in the united states of america (alquraini, 2013). during the years 1962 and 1992, a significant development was noticed in the field of special education in saudi arabia, which resulted in mainstreaming in the primary schools and institutions (al-mousa, 2010). this development was apparent as establishing special schools and institutions for individuals with disabilities, especially for those with visible disabilities (battal, 2016). however, these institutions were commonly built in cities more than rural areas of saudi arabia (al-jadid, 2013) the main contributor to the development of saudi special education, especially learning disabilities, was the law of individuals with disabilities education act (idea, 2014) (aldabas, 2015). after this law emerged, invisible disabilities (e.g., learning disabilities) were recognised and stated in the disability law of saudi arabia (aldabas, 2015). students with mild learning disabilities were educated in the general education classroom with resource room support, whereas students with moderate, profound and severe learning disabilities in special day schools (aldabas, 2015). however, those students were integrated in 1987 by the legislation of disability in saudi arabia (al-jadid, 2013). the legislation of disability supported the equal rights of individuals with learning disabilities by assuring access to «free and appropriate medical, psychological, social, educational, and rehabilitation services through public agencies» (al-jadid, 2013:458). consequently, students with learning disabilities have only been slightly included in saudi higher education due to many reasons. firstly, they are not engaged in effective transition http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 2622021 39(3): 262-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) planning during their high or post-secondary schools, which creates more learning challenges for them in colleges (almalki, 2017). secondly, even though faculty members were aware about the nature, characteristics and needs of students with learning disabilities within universities, they lack awareness of endorsement programmes and learning environment provided to students with ld in saudi higher education (aldhuibi, 2009). therefore, training can not only support faculty members› knowledge, but also it can change their attitudes towards the inclusion of students with ld in higher education (alhaznawi & alanazi, 2021). moreover, faculty members working in saudi emerging universities, believed that these universities had a low degree in the availability of quality standards for the programmes and services of students with learning disabilities (hijab & arab, 2017).therefore, there was a lack of appropriate special education services provided to students with learning disabilities that had to be reformed by special education departments at some universities under the united states› special education legislations including, the idea (alquraini, 2013). due to the educational inclusion of students with ld in general education schools, high numbers of students with ld graduated from secondary schools which led the policymakers in the government to take action to the education future of those students (maajeeny et al., 2009). therefore, the saudi government passed a decree in 1999, empowering students with ld and other disabilities to continue their learning at saudi universities and colleges. students with learning disabilities and other disabilities faced admittance issues at saudi universities. these issues were summarised by maajeeny et al. (2009) including (1) lack of legislations, ensuring the rights of students with learning disabilities at saudi universities and receiving the specialised care (alquraini, 2013, maajeeny et al., 2009). (2) students with learning disabilities could not reach the admittance requirements and entry of saudi universities, especially in specialisations with high requirements such as sciences and medicine. (3) admitted students with learning disabilities encountered unavailable and inappropriate accommodations due to the lack of faculty awareness about the necessary accommodations for those students (alhossein, 2016; maajeeny et al., 2009). (4) the attitudes of leaders at saudi universities and higher education increased the acceptance of students without disabilities due to the excessive numbers of those from secondary schools (almalki, 2017). (5) the inability of students with learning disabilities to adapt to the differences of instructions between the university and high schools. (6) finally, the lack of collaboration between decision-makers and faculty in providing the appropriate accommodation to students with learning disabilities at universities (maajeeny et al., 2009). increasingly, saudi universities realised the issues surrounding post-secondary students with learning disabilities and stated some suggestions to overcome them by establishing disability units directed by the deanship of student affairs in the majority of universities (almalki, 2017). these universities attempted to supply the necessary accommodations to facilitate post-secondary students with disabilities, especially for students with visible and learning disabilities. saudi universities such as king saud university, majmaah university and king faisal university were continuously contributing to the education of post-secondary students with learning disabilities (mohammed & arafa, 2015). however, king saud university was the leading university that included different resources to develop the engagement of students with disabilities on the university campus (aldabas, 2015). moreover, due to the increase in the number of students with disabilities entering the king saud university (ksu), the university administration of ksu implemented global standards of http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 2632021 39(3): 263-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 alqarni faculty familiarity with inclusive practices for students with learning disabilities all support services for students with disabilities (aldabas, 2015). therefore, a development project of services established and included programmes, adaptation of assistive technology, academic and educational development, professional development and universal access programme (mohammed & arafa, 2015). additionally, alhossein (2016) suggested that more studies need to be conducted about saudi faculty members› awareness related to accommodating practices provided to students with adhd or ld in saudi universities. the need of the current study is that few studies are focusing on the faculty attitudes of students with ld at saudi universities. however, previous studies did not investigate the faculty›s familiarity with inclusive practices for university students with ld at saudi universities. 3.3 purpose of the study although various countries have attempted to make strides in the global movement towards inclusion (macfarlane & woolfson, 2013), students with learning disabilities still face several challenges in higher education (reed et al., 2011). one such challenge is implementing inclusive practices; many teachers lack quality preparation for teaching students with learning disabilities (al-ahmadi, 2009). binmahfooz (2019) indicated that many teachers have limited or no experience working with students with learning disabilities. one way to help students with learning disabilities at the university level is to ensure that instructors have adequate capability and experience to deal with students with ld and to teach them and help integrate them into university life. while previous studies highlighted the crucial role of the skills and experiences that instructors should acquire to effectively teach students with learning disabilities, there is limited research on university faculty›s familiarity with inclusive educational practices for students with ld in saudi arabia and worldwide (alnahdi & schwab, 2020). therefore, it was vital to research the familiarity of faculty members with inclusive practices for students with learning disabilities. in essence, this study sought to contribute to the knowledge base on teacher education and inclusive practices implemented globally, especially for students with learning disabilities and countries still in the early stages of developing and implementing inclusive educational practices. 3.4 research questions given the importance of providing educational support and accessibility to post-secondary students at universities, the primary aim of the present study was to examine the familiarity of faculty members with inclusive practices for students with ld in university education. saudi faculty members at a public university addressed several significant research questions. specifically, there were three main questions that the study focused on. first, how familiar are faculty members with inclusive practices for students with ld? second, did the level of familiarity differ for different types of inclusive practices? third, was there a difference in familiarity with inclusive practices depending on academic ranks and the number of years of teaching experience? 4. method 4.1 participants a survey was sent to over 1500 faculty members from najran university (nu) in saudi arabia. a total of 264 faculty members, having different years of teaching experience and academic ranks, participated in this study. najran university is an emerging university that was previously known as the community college of king khalid university. the university http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 2642021 39(3): 264-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) includes 14 colleges, 3 research centres and supporting deanships. table 1 displays the demographic characteristics of the study participants. table 1: background information on faculty members demographic variables total (n=264) gender male female teaching experience (years) 1–3 4–7 8+ previous teaching of (students with ld) yes no academic rank professor associate professor assistant professor lecturer 191 73 12 118 134 122 142 90 98 75 1 4.2 questionnaire a descriptive research design was used to collect the data. more specifically, the researcher used a survey method to investigate participants’ familiarity with large populations. therefore, the researcher designed a study instrument that included a questionnaire that was based on the likert scale. it was created online using qualtrics, a web-based software used to conduct surveys, with a shareable link. the questionnaire also consisted of demographic questions, including gender, academic ranks, teaching experiences, previous experiences teaching students with ld and inclusive practices. the questions on inclusive practices were generated based on standards of accommodating post-secondary students with ld underlined by the do-it centre of the university of washington on their website. apart from the accommodations, this website also includes information and media related to the concept of universal design (ud), which means designing and compositing environments, products or buildings to be greatly used and accessible by all individuals regardless of their disability, age and size (burgstahler, 2008). furthermore, the study questions were divided into three aspects: instructional practices, classroom and assignment practices, and examination practices. each aspect contained multiple questions and responses. the researcher used a five-point likert-type scale ranging from 1 (very familiar) to 5 (very unfamiliar); in which, 1 = very familiar, 2 = familiar, 3 = inadequately familiar, 4 = unfamiliar, and 5 = very unfamiliar. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 2652021 39(3): 265-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 alqarni faculty familiarity with inclusive practices for students with learning disabilities 4.3 validity and reliability the questionnaire items were translated into arabic and proofread to preserve their intended meanings. the five experts who measured the validation of the questionnaire’s contents had majored in special education. several revisions were made to the questionnaire based on the reviewers’ suggestions and the approval of research ethics was then obtained from nu. thirty randomly selected participants from nu undertook a pilot study. the survey asked whether they wanted to participate in the study. thereafter, the questionnaire’s internal reliability was measured using cronbach’s alpha; all scales indicated excellent reliability (0.98). 4.4 procedure and data analysis after testing the study instrument in terms of validity and reliability and obtaining the approval of research ethics from nu, the researcher, who worked in the department of special education at nu, sent an official letter along with the survey link of the questionnaire to the dean of the college of education via the online portal of nu. next, the dean forwarded the survey link to the vice president of graduate studies and scientific research, who then issued a letter with the survey link to all deans of colleges. the deans forwarded the questionnaire to the chairs of departments at nu. lastly, the chairs of departments submitted the questionnaire to all faculty members via the university’s online portal. the responses were converted into numerical data. spss 23.0 was used to produce means and standard deviations for measuring faculty members familiarity. after that, a twoway anova was used to determine significant differences in familiarity levels of faculty members concerning types of inclusive practices, academic ranks and years of teaching experience. lastly, hierarchical regression analysis was used to reveal the best predictor of faculty members’ familiarity among the study variables. 5. findings the current study aimed to examine faculty members’ familiarity with inclusive practices for students with ld using a quantitative survey. the mean overall score of faculty members’ familiarity was 2.8 (sd = 1.2) on a five-point likert-type scale, indicating inadequate familiarity with inclusive practices for post-secondary students with ld, as shown in table 2. table 2: average familiarity of inclusive practices n minimum maximum mean std. deviation total of inclusive practices 264 1.00 5.00 2.8519 1.20012 valid n (listwise) 264 the second research question addressed the mean differences among the three types of inclusive practices. three categories were measured: instructional practices, classroom and assignment practices and examination practices. overall, the faculty members expressed inadequate familiarity with inclusive practices for post-secondary students with ld. the mean differences were as follows: instructional practices (m= 2.82), classroom and assignment practices (m= 2.86) and examination practices (m=3.63). however, it was noted that saudi faculty members have low familiarity with examination practices, as presented in table 3 below. these results suggest that most saudi faculty members are unfamiliar with examination practices for students with ld in saudi university education. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 2662021 39(3): 266-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) table 3: average familiarity for types of inclusive practices instruction assignment and classroom examination n valid 264 264 264 missing 0 0 0 mean 2.8291 2.8699 3.6390 std. deviation 1.21810 1.23314 1.48463 variance 1.484 1.521 2.204 minimum 1.00 1.00 1.17 maximum 5.00 5.00 5.83 as shown in table 4, the one-way anova results revealed that faculty’s familiarity with inclusive practices across their teaching experiences of students with ld in post-secondary education was not statistically significant, f (1.26) = 1.90, p = .169, denoting similarities in familiarity across the (yes) group (taught students with ld) (n = 122, m = 2.74, sd = 1.35) and (no) group (n = 142, m = 2.94, sd = 1.04). the one-way anova comparing faculty’s familiarity of inclusive practices across their academic rank showed that the lecturer group contained only one case and would not permit post-hoc comparisons. the results were not statistically significant, f (3.26) = .74, p = .526, indicating similarities in familiarity across professors (n = 90, m = 2.71, sd = 1.37), associate professors (n = 98, m = 2.90, sd = 1.12), and assistant professors (n = 75, m = 2.93, sd = 1.06). finally, the one-way anova comparing faculty’s familiarity of inclusive practices across the number of years of experience was not statistically significant, f (2.26) = 1.57, p = .209), denoting similarities in familiarity across the 1–3 years group (n = 12, m = 3.28, sd = 1.66), 4–7 years group (n = 118, m = 2.73, sd = 1.12), and 8+ group (n = 134, m = 2.91, sd = 1.21). overall, the one-way anova results found that teaching students with ld in post-secondary education, academic ranks and the number of years of teaching experience did not have a significant impact on the faculty’s familiarity with inclusive practices provided to students with ld in higher education. table 4: differences in faculty members’ demographics for inclusive practices n mean std. deviation std. error 95% confidence interval for mean minimum maximum lower bound upper bound yes 122 2.7421 1.35487 .12266 2.4993 2.9849 1.00 5.00 no 142 2.9462 1.04491 .08769 2.7728 3.1195 1.00 5.00 total 264 2.8519 1.20012 .07386 2.7064 2.9973 1.00 5.00 professor 90 2.7107 1.37370 .14480 2.4230 2.9984 1.00 5.00 associate professor 98 2.9074 1.12853 .11400 2.6812 3.1337 1.00 5.00 assistant professor 75 2.9386 1.06595 .12309 2.6933 3.1838 1.00 5.00 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 2672021 39(3): 267-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 alqarni faculty familiarity with inclusive practices for students with learning disabilities n mean std. deviation std. error 95% confidence interval for mean minimum maximum lower bound upper bound lecturer 1 3.6071 . . . . 3.61 3.61 total 264 2.8519 1.20012 .07386 2.7064 2.9973 1.00 5.00 1-3 years 12 3.2887 1.66009 .47923 2.2339 4.3435 1.00 5.00 4-7 years 118 2.7334 1.12758 .10380 2.5278 2.9389 1.00 5.00 8+ 134 2.9171 1.21149 .10466 2.7101 3.1241 1.00 5.00 total 264 2.8519 1.20012 .07386 2.7064 2.9973 1.00 5.00 6. discussion the findings of the current descriptive and quantitative survey study may reveal beneficial effects for the education of students with learning disabilities in saudi higher education. the first finding of this study indicates that faculty members are inadequately familiar with inclusive practices appropriate for students with ld in saudi universities. secondly, the examination practices were the least familiar among the three types of inclusive practices given to students with ld in saudi university education. in addition, faculty characteristics including teaching students with ld in post-secondary education, academic ranks and the number of years of teaching experience have no significant impact on their familiarity towards students with ld in saudi university education. to begin with, faculty members are inadequately familiar with inclusive practices given to saudi post-secondary students with ld in university education. this suggests that it is essential to increase the adequacy of faculty members in terms of their familiarity with the inclusive practices provided to students with ld in higher education. leyser et al. (2011) and slee (2018) affirm that it is vital to increase the awareness and knowledge of faculty members to benefit students with ld in university education. however, previous studies indicate that faculty members who did not receive training had inadequate familiarity and knowledge about the inclusive practices for students with ld (murray et al., 2011). similar findings were also observed in the study by leyser and greenberger (2008), that more than half of the faculty members had insufficient to minimal familiarity with the types of inclusive practices for students with learning disabilities. the current research also suggests that saudi faculty members must develop their knowledge of the three types of inclusive practices used to accommodate students with ld in higher education. this study also revealed that, among the three types of inclusive practices, faculty members were unfamiliar with the examination practices provided to students with ld. however, this is not consistent with several other studies that suggest that most faculty members understand and are familiar with the alternative examination practices provided to students with ld in university education (khansa, 2015, bourke et al., 2000). apart from examination practices, the current study’s findings also suggest that saudi faculty members are required to develop their knowledge and familiarity with other inclusive practices, as they http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 2682021 39(3): 268-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) are inadequately familiar with inclusive instructional practices and inclusive classroom and assignment practices of students with ld in university education. the present research findings agree with previous studies that the faculty’s experiences teaching university education make insignificant differences to their familiarity with inclusive practices provided to students with ld. notably, the results of leyser and greenberger (2008) indicated that the differences in the number of years of teaching were found to have no significant influence on faculty’s familiarity with accommodating practices provided to university students with ld. however, leyser et al. (2011) noticed a relationship between teaching in university education and faculty’s attitudes toward providing inclusive practices for students with ld. it was clear that faculty members with less than five years of experience displayed more positive attitudes than faculty members with more experience (leyser et al., 2011, abu-hamour, 2013). consequently, it can be assured that faculty’s experiences of teaching university students with ld may change their attitudes towards inclusive practices for students with ld, but it does not influence their familiarity with inclusive practices. the current findings are inconsistent with previous studies on how the faculty’s experiences of teaching students with ld influence their familiarity with inclusive practices. the current study suggests that teaching university students with ld makes no significant difference to their familiarity with inclusive practices for students with ld. this finding contradicts the leyser and greenberger’s (2008) study, which reported a significant increase in knowledge and influenced attitudes towards inclusive practices among faculty members who had previous experience teaching students with learning disabilities. therefore, this study raises an interesting question for educators about whether they should consider previous teaching experiences when organising training sessions for faculty members to increase their familiarity with inclusive practices for university students with ld. additionally, this current finding also suggests that having previous experiences of teaching students with ld does not necessarily make faculty members familiar with inclusive practices provided to them. lastly, the findings of this study also reveal that no differences were found in faculty’s familiarity with inclusive practices for students with ld concerning their academic ranks. the results showed that being a professor, associate professor, assistant professor or lecturer makes no difference to their familiarity with inclusive practices provided to students with ld. the current findings may result from recent trends that help integrate students with ld in university education in saudi arabia (aldabas, 2015). however, previous studies contradict these findings. for instance, studies conducted by rao and gartin (2003) as well as leyser and greenberger (2008) found a strong relationship between faculty members’ ranks and their knowledge and attitudes towards inclusive practices provided to students with ld in university education (rao & gartin, 2003). in another study conducted by abu-hamour (2013), it was found that assistant professors possessed more knowledge about inclusive practices provided to university students with learning disabilities (abu-hamour, 2013). 7. conclusion to ensure the successful provision of inclusive practices to students with ld in university campuses, increasing the familiarity of faculty members with inclusive practices is the highest priority of university decision-makers to promote the inclusion of students with ld in university programmes and specialisations. despite the present-day significance of faculty members› familiarity with inclusive practices, the current study’s findings revealed the clear lack of http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 2692021 39(3): 269-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 alqarni faculty familiarity with inclusive practices for students with learning disabilities familiarity with inclusive practices, especially in examination practices, among the saudi faculty members at najran university. in conclusion, the study proposes that given the lack of faculty members› familiarity with inclusive practices, it becomes vital to implement training programmes aimed at enhancing the familiarity and capability of faculty members concerning the use of inclusive practices for students with ld at saudi universities. 8. implications as indicated in the present study, there is an obvious requirement to improve saudi faculty’s familiarity with the inclusive practices provided to students with ld in saudi universities. faculty members and administrators can be adequately educated through in-service programmes (bourke et al., 2000). training sessions would benefit faculty members by enhancing their knowledge of inclusive practices used in classrooms and assignments, examinations and instructional practices (hindes & mather, 2007). the current findings indicate that faculty members are unfamiliar with examination practices. furthermore, as more students with ld are pursuing a university education, faculty members need to understand their requirements and traits better and increase their knowledge of the inclusive practices used in examinations. providing ongoing workshops and training with actual models of exams specifically designed for students with ld may help faculty members draw an ideal picture of instructional and examination accommodations given to students with ld (khouri et al., 2019). 9. limitations and suggestions for future research although the current study examined the familiarity of faculty members with inclusive practices provided to university students with ld in saudi arabia, the findings mostly corroborate the results of previous studies conducted on faculty members› familiarity with inclusive practices in universities globally. these findings reveal a profound requirement for better support and practices granted by saudi laws, despite the legislation mandating appropriate accommodations to university students with ld in saudi universities. institutions providing university education must do more to improve the provision of accommodations to students with ld. moreover, this research proposes the requirement for faculty members to assess their willingness to support students with ld in saudi arabia, a fact that needs to be addressed in future research. in addition, it is supposed that university students without learning disabilities may also reveal similar findings concerning their knowledge of inclusive practices compared to faculty members. this supposition is another opportunity for future research. an explicit limitation of the present study is the relatively small sample of faculty members that participated in the survey. although the current research incorporated a demographic approach, when comparing faculty›s familiarity with inclusive practices across their academic ranks, only one lecturer participated in the survey, making it difficult to compare faculty members› ranks. additionally, since the study investigated the faculty members› responses of only one public saudi university, it represents the faculty members› familiarity of only a specific area in saudi arabia and does not amount to conclusive evidence. it should be noted that the current results may not be generalised to faculty members working in different regional universities across saudi arabia. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 2702021 39(3): 270-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) 10. recommendations for practices the current findings revealed inadequate familiarity of saudi faculty members with inclusive practices, especially examination practices. therefore, providing the faculty members with practical tools would support them when dealing with university students with ld. it is essential to emphasise the importance of incorporating the principles of universal design (ud) to teach university students with ld (burgstahler, 2008). moreover, the engagement of ud in the education of students with learning disabilities in universities is beneficial because it is equitable to use, simple and intuitive, provides flexibility in use, perceptible information, tolerance for error, low physical effort and appropriate size and space for use (burgstahler & cory, 2010). another recommendation in favour of providing 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https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.1996.11780268 https://doi.org/10.1108/00400910910941291 https://doi.org/10.1177/0731948715607348 2752021 39(3): 275-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 alqarni faculty familiarity with inclusive practices for students with learning disabilities appendix a the study questionnaire participants’ characteristics femalemale gender 8+4–7 1–3 teaching experience (years) no yes previous teaching of (students with ld) lecturer assistant professor associate professor professor academic rank instructional practices very unfamiliarunfamiliar inadequately familiar familiar very familiar clearly define course requirements and announce exam dates and assignments provide printed materials ahead of time to allow students enough time to read and understand the course content use multimedia methods to present class materials to address diversity in learning styles and strengths (eg auditory, visual, kinesthetic) provide important information by oral and written formulas set goals and review and summarize previous lectures periodically use more than one method to clarify the information read aloud what i’m writing on the board use short, uncomplicated instructions and repeat them more than once allow sufficient time for students to provide directions and necessary information use written commentary videos submit study guides or review papers design distance learning materials with accessibility in mind classroom and assignment practices help the student find effective peer bloggers for lectures in class provide the student with a copy of the lecture notes or the lecture outline allow the student to record the lecture. allow the student extra time to complete assignments in class, especially written assignments provide notes and help students plan the workflow for assignments. offer assistance in correcting written work. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 2762021 39(3): 276-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) examination practices allow students with learning disabilities to have an extension in test time. perform tests in a low-dispersion room use of assistive reader, writer, or word processor technology in exams allow oral tests use assistive technology to check grammar and spelling for writing tests. use a calculator for the tests. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.19 427 research article 2021 39(1): 427-441 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.26 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) prospects and pitfalls associated with implementing blended learning in rural-based higher education institutions in southern africa abstract while blended learning is well entrenched in many developed countries as a solution towards enabling access to educational resources and managing student diversity, this may not be the same for rural based universities in developing countries. yet, blended learning is ideal for the current terrain of the covid-19 pandemic which requires learning modalities that promote social distancing to reduce the spread of the disease while ensuring that students have access to quality teaching and learning materials and to frequently stay engaged. for many rural based universities, successful blended learning implementation implies an exploration of possible ways to strengthen existing practices. this paper, using the document analysis method, sought to explore the prospects and pitfalls of implementing blended learning in ruralbased universities in southern africa. the blended learning implementation framework by graham, woodfield and harrison (2013) served as a guiding framework as it was specifically designed to determine success in blended learning adoption and implementation in education. this framework utilises the constructs of strategy, structure and support to differentiate the stages of adopting blended learning. these three stages are in a continuum and comprise awareness and exploration as stage 1, adoption or early implementation as stage 2 and mature implementation and growth as stage 3, with stages differing depending on the extent of formalisation of the institutional strategy, structure and support. findings indicated prospects of blended learning entail providing opportunities for flexible learning, enabling access to a wide range of educational resources and limiting alienation associated with purely online education delivery. for many institutions, however, implementation of blended learning is still a mirage with the majority still at the first stage of graham et al.’s (2013) blended learning adoption and implementation framework owing to technical resource constraints related to unstable or non-existent network coverage characteristic in rural locations, curricular deficit stemming from the blended learning model not aligning to context, thus lowering morale for wider implementation. this is exacerbated by weak goodwill and limited policy guidelines on a specific blended learning model. the study author: dr p. muhuro1 prof s.m. kang’ethe1 affiliation: 1university of fort hare, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i1.26 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 427-441 published: 12 march 2021 received: 17 november 2020 accepted: 6 february 2021 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8793-1462 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6397 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.26 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.26 4282021 39(1): 428-441 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.26 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) concludes that creating conducive conditions for blended learning in rural based universities necessitates a context friendly implementation model where institutional evaluation data inform strategies, support and pedagogical approaches and related resources that can be used locally. the study recommends governmental support for resourcing rural universities to acquire affordable and usable resources to offset challenges hindering blended learning. rural institutions should also strive to strengthen support to students and staff to build confidence in the potential of blended learning. keywords: blended learning; institutional goodwill; curriculum deficit; student-centredness. 1. background and introduction undeniably, pockets of institutions of higher learning in many countries of the world using blended or hybrid learning are on an upward trajectory, as the world gears up to welcome the fourth industrial revolution (mokenela, 2019; mtebe, mussa & kissaka, 2015). the fourth industrial revolution drives many functions of human activities through technology, hence, the need for students and lecturers to embrace it in order to solve contemporary problems. some scholars even argue that blended learning is a “new normal” strategy of educational delivery due to its potential to enhance teaching and learning (norberg, dziuban & moskal, 2011) in terms of autonomous learning, self-paced learning opportunities and differentiated learning provision (ossiannilsson, 2017) opportunely, blended learning is associated with improving teaching practices by enabling teachers to provide a wide variety of teaching modalities (ehrmann, 1998), thus allowing students to gain the core competencies currently required. in fact, blended learning has been found to increase students’ learning performance (lubua, 2019), which is associated with increased socially learning and engagement. this makes blended learning a promising solution to averting the spread of covid-19 as it promotes social distancing while at the same time providing access to a wide range of learning resources shared in print and as multimedia. despite many contested definitions of blended learning, a number of scholars concur that it entails thoughtful integration of face-to-face teaching in tandem with online modalities, such as, radio and web based technologies or mobile learning, with the strength of each mode mutually and reciprocally reinforcing one another (garrison & vaughan, 2008; graham et al., 2013; caird & roy, 2018). this attribute facilitates maximum learning as students have the benefit of being able to collaborate with their peers and this reduces isolation; they can share learning resources from various sources. lecturers are also able to provide a wide array of learning resources using multiple modes to address the needs of diverse students as well as provide feedback on grey areas. additionally, the lecturers have an opportunity to give personalised attention to students who may be falling behind. this can be done through face-to-face and online meetings (stein & graham, 2020). conveniently, the superiority of blended learning over other modes of educational delivery includes its ease in facilitating collaborative communication and problem solving, coupled with flexibility and personalised learning (cleverland-innes & wilton, 2018), and thus enhancing pedagogical practices. blended learning is driven by global imperatives such as globalisation, modernisation and the need to embrace the ideals of the fourth industrial revolution, particularly the proliferation of information and communication technologies (icts) (machumu, 2018). the ideals of the fourth industrial revolution are that individuals have capacity to think outside the box to find solutions to existing world problems using technological tools to support exploration, decision making and creation of products in the different fields. enhanced pedagogical practice occurs when students develop competencies to work with various contemporary technologies such 4292021 39(1): 429-441 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.26 muhuro & kang’ethe prospects and pitfalls associated with implementing blended learning as material science, biotechnology, nano technology, augmented reality, robotics, digital technologies and 3-dimensional printing technologies when they engage in projects that solve real-life problems (ally & wark, 2019; hussin, 2018; hirschi, 2018). when teachers use blended learning successfully and offer learning opportunities for augmented realities, simulations and use of project-based activities to solve authentic problems, students increase the repertoire of competencies to solve ill-defined problems and use various sources of knowledge (hussin, 2018). according to binkley et al. (2012), twenty-first century competencies can be broadly categorised as ways of thinking, tools for working and living in the world. ways of thinking entail problem solving, emotional intelligence, negotiation, creativity and cognitive judgement as well as developing ict literacies, competencies for living in the world, particularly global and local citizenship, personal and social responsibility and cultural awareness. such competencies also gear students up to embrace the needs of the fourth industrial revolution (soffel, 2016). furthermore, given the importance of preparing students for professional roles, the online component of blended learning provides students with learnability, or the ability to unlearn, learn and relearn (sungsup et al., 2019). it is therefore important that rural based universities also ensure that their different stakeholders do not fall behind by embracing blended learning. fortunately, the current generation of students is incrementally motivated to use technology in their learning and thereby prompting institutions to embark on blended learning (tshabalala, ndeya & van de merwe, 2017). 2. blended learning importance in rural universities rural universities naturally face staffing constraints, as many qualified professionals prefer to work in metropolitan universities where social amenities are readily available (ndebele, muhuro & nkonki, 2017). therefore, rural institutions benefit from using blended learning because they can hire part-time staff to offer some of the classes online and also use social media platforms, mobile learning tools and/or learning management systems to reduce the strain on staff having to repeat lessons for students who miss classes due to illness or other constraints (mascarenaz et al., 2015). students benefit from this arrangement as they are able to learn the materials at their own pace and can use other technological tools for further research to access important learning content that improves the student experience (rugube, mtetwa-kunene & maphosa, 2020). rural based universities can send students learning materials through flash disks or broadcasts to offset high data costs associated with purely online delivery, thus allowing maximum learning in different spaces. in cases of natural disasters such as storms, floods and cyclones, blended learning is the best option (castro, 2019). furthermore, blended learning has also become important during the current outbreak of diseases such as covid-19 where face-to-face teaching is prohibited as a means to combat the spread of the disease. desirably therefore, blended learning is an innovative endeavour that could benefit students in rural based universities in southern africa, bereft of different kinds of requisite infrastructure, such as those of ict. this is a huge scorecard to the desired united nations sustainable development goals (sdgs) by 2030 (united nations, 2015). however, this can only succeed when the teachers provide the appropriate learning opportunities and have the requisite resources and capacity to also facilitate such learning. ideally, the criteria for blended learning depends, inter alia, on learning goals, expected learning outcomes, context of learning, lecturer and student preferences, instructor experience and situational demands (thomas, 2010; graham et al., 2013). in fact, when implementing blended learning, institutions may find themselves falling into one of the three categories described in the next section. 4302021 39(1): 430-441 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.26 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) 3. blended learning adoption framework in their framework guiding the use of blended learning in education, graham et al. (2013) stress the need to examine three issues of institutional strategy, structure and support to differentiate the stages of adopting blended learning. when an institution is at the awareness and exploration stage, only individual staff with their own interest in blended learning informally advocate for blended learning, but there is no consensus on the definition of blended learning, nor is there a uniform policy or funding. in terms of structure, there is no blended learning model, no structured blended learning curriculum or formal evaluations to address blended learning goals. the ad hoc nature can also lead to some implementations not aligning to institutional vision and mission. further in this stage, the technical and pedagogical support mechanisms are weak owing to a lack of expertise or resources and there is no structure to incentivise those staff adopting blended learning; hence, there is minimal interest to implement blended learning among stakeholders. the second stage, called adoption or early implementation has insitutional leaders and staff beginning to have a formally conceptualised blended learning model and tentative policies to motivate for institutionalised adoption in high impact areas among the willing faculty, but there are limited mechanisms to evaluate the quality of course design and outcomes. the institution starts to develop technical and pedagogical support for students and staff, but these are still at experimental stages and the curriculum is still not fully aligned to the vision and mission. this also leads to piecemeal implementation. the third stage is called the mature implementation and growth stage. this is the most desirable stage where the funding for implementation of blended learning is available as well as policies to guide implementation processes. the institution develops widespread awareness of a uniform model of blended learning that is accepted and understood by stakeholders, and a taskforce for monitoring implementation ensures the curriculum aligns with the institutional mission, vision and goals and existing resources. the structure is such that the technical resources are robust and support is well established, intellectual and quality assurance mechanisms and incentives offered to staff for adopting blended learning are clearly established. additionally at this stage, there are adequate technical resources, and formalised pedagogical approches to implement blended learning and consistent evaluation of blended learning ensures that the curriculum aligns with the context . even though the framework above provides the conditions for successful blended learning, the implementation is still a cause for concern because of other important aspects that need to be taken into account when implementing blended learning as discussed below. on the flipside of the coin, blended learning is not necessarily a solution for all educational problems (hunt-baron et al., 2015). while it works well for self-motivated and self-regulated learners as well as those who have an interest in technology, those not sharing the attributes may find blended learning to be strenuous. thus, it is critical to also consider the conditions for successful implementation of blended learning. furthermore, blended learning demands a stringent environment that many institutions find difficult to afford. in fact, blended learning requires a high technological outlay to develop literacy professional development (machumu, 2018). more so, failure by institutions to have the requisite infrastructural learning equipment may result in negative student learning outcomes (sivakumar & selvakumar, 2019). anecdotal reports point to institutions having adopted blended learning models with limited regard to contextual needs and this has resulted in apathy among stakeholders. lecturers who are reconfiguring curriculums require essentials such as clear learning outcomes, careful design of learning activities and continuous support and learner feedback (stein & graham, 2020), all 4312021 39(1): 431-441 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.26 muhuro & kang’ethe prospects and pitfalls associated with implementing blended learning of which are difficult to put in place. for instance, teaching approaches that promote frequent active engagement through interactions, discussions and are believed to be well suited for blended learning but academics who are accustomed to traditional lecture methods may fail to support students effectively. seemingly, there is an array of possible practical challenges in implementing blended learning in rural based higher education contexts (mtebe, mussa & kissaka, 2015), particularly in sub-saharan africa, which suffers innovation deficits (abah, mashebe & denuga, 2015; hlalele, 2012a). evidence abounds that most innovations associated with blended learning fail because of misalignment to institutional goals and contexts (graham et al., 2013). further to this, blended learning requires specialised personnel to support ict literacy (patel, kadyamatimba & madzvamuse, 2017). perhaps the fact that most rural based higher education institutions (heis) are bereft of resources to institutionalise and strengthen the ict sector, makes them blended learning unfriendly or have to do with its progression taking a snail’s pace (machumu, 2018). perhaps this scenario has made blended learning implementation in a number of institutions remain utopian and a mirage. 4. problem statement ubiquitously, blended learning is a desirable phenomenon because it, inter alia, facilitates flexible learning, is cost effective, caters for diversity and enables student-centred learning (boelens et al., 2017; stein & graham, 2020). observably, these desirable qualities are critical for rural-based heis. inopportunely, implementation of blended learning exhibits a gap that this paper envisages to bring to the fore. this gap, inter alia, includes disadvantaged geographical locale that does not attract a qualified cadre of ict personnel, suffering poor infrastructural outlay, such as, electricity and poor network connectivity (mokenela, 2019). this paper aims to discuss the prospect of implementing blended learning in rural based institutions of higher learning as well as deciphering the gaps impeding such an endeavour. 5. aim the paper aims to discuss the prospects and pitfalls of implementing blended learning in higher education institutions in selected southern african countries. 6. plausible research questions: • what are the prospects of implementing blended learning in rural based heis in southern african countries? • what are the pitfalls of implementing blended learning in rural based heis in rural southern african countries? 7. methodology this is a discourse-based paper aiming to discuss the prospects and pitfalls of implementing blended learning in rural based institutions of higher learning in southern africa. the paper has drawn literature from an array of sources that include empirical monographs, global eclectic educational reports, books, theses, journal articles and secondary data. a literature search based on the main concepts resulted in several themes as discussed in the findings below. 4322021 39(1): 432-441 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.26 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) 8. findings 8.1 blended learning brings solutions universally, blended learning can be a solution in surmounting educational challenges such as managing diversity and providing access to resources (bonk & graham, 2012), all of which are glaring gaps in institutions of higher learning. opportunely, addressing this gap is also emphasised in the sdgs (unesco, 2016; ochezaffa & radinger, 2019). furthermore, many countries in southern africa have also developed their own plans in line with regional development protocols, such as the sadc protocol on higher education and training. moreover, individual countries have domesticated those plans. for instance, south africa has promulgated the national development plan as a blueprint to transform society by reducing poverty and inequality (national development plan, 2012). importantly, the plan promotes the use of open source software as well as leveraging icts in education to facilitate lifelong learning, continuous professional development, knowledge production and innovations. fortunately, blended learning in other southern african countries, is believed to enhance many benefits such as continuous professional development in the workplace in malawi (mastellos et al., 2018) as well as promote student engagement and support in namibia (johnson, abia & quest, 2016). more so, it has successfully been applied in research in fields such as agriculture, forestry and aviation with illustrious success (piano et al., 2019; kearns, 2016). moreover, evidence abounds of its breakthrough in cost effectiveness in the healthcare sector in southern africa (sissine et al., 2014). this implies that if well implemented, it has a long-term positive cost reduction. blended learning has also made some innovative achievements in providing hands-on skills in physical therapy, especially when students engage in authentic setting of professional practice (volasky, 2019). furthermore, blended learning has been found to be a strong driver in strengthening professional development of rural-based science teachers in botswana (boitshwarelo, 2009) as well as bolstering the work of health practitioners in malawi (mastellos et al., 2018). 8.2 efficiency perceptibly, blended learning is universally associated with efficiency (cocquyt et al., 2019; sissine et al., 2014) in terms of raising learning throughput in tandem with facilitating flexible learning (lubua, 2019). this is a necessary quality in rural based institutions of higher learning that are slow in adapting to innovations in the twenty-first century. however, evidence abounds that the blended learning mode is more efficient than the traditional mode in providing resources and enabling flexible learning in the rural areas (tirmizi et al., 2017). a study conducted by sissine et al. (2014) reported cost savings on decreased classroom time and travel costs when blended learning was used to train 100 000 healthcare workers in southern africa. furthermore, it was empirically validated that business concepts were easily understood and applied when blended learning was pitted against the face-to-face mode of pedagogy (cordie et al., 2018). 8.3 blended learning accommodates diversity blended learning is flexible, userand diversity-friendly (cleverland-innes & wilton, 2018). it allows students to enjoy different preferences, whether auditory, visual or kinetic (gardner 2008). this finds support in the theory of howard gardner on multiple intelligences, which argues that students are endowed with different intelligence packages or preferences. further 4332021 39(1): 433-441 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.26 muhuro & kang’ethe prospects and pitfalls associated with implementing blended learning to this, empirical evidence abounds that different students exposed to blended learning reported improved learning performance and motivation (lubua, 2019). moreover, diversity embraces multimodal teaching strategies to enable students of different learning abilities to acquire requisite knowledge packages (boelens et al., 2018). diversity is further supported by walker (2018), who emphasises the importance of applying a variety of teaching approaches and thereby satisfying the needs of different types of students. diversity is also a scorecard for the lecturers. this is because they have the option of using a combination of video, audio and texts with the effect of widening the horizons of achieving higher outputs and better student outcomes (luna, 2017). other scholars emphasise the importance of diversity through differentiation. this allows learners of different capabilities to be provided with individualised support (rasheed, kamsin & abdullar, 2019). strikingly, diversity also supports indigenisation and multicultural education (abah, mashebe & denuga, 2015). this is very pivotal in rural based universities that attract students from different cultural backgrounds (machumu, 2018) and to surmount the gap of adapting to the curriculum that students find alienating (fataar, 2018b; henderson, 2017) and multiculturally unfriendly; or one they have to navigate its understanding at a snail’s pace. henderson (2017) describes an alienating curriculum as one that makes students powerless; learning becomes meaningless in that there is no link to lived experiences and promotes social estrangement. in order to combat these gaps, blended learning then can support indigenous grounded teaching methodologies. this resonates well with the current global debate on the decolonisation of the curriculum. this is to provide a platform of different knowledge packages and their application (fataar, 2018b). commendably, rural based universities could use resourceful personalities such as chiefs and headmen to be guest lecturers to expand on local practices in relation to particular disciplines. this can be done by allowing them to have a video and thus develop students’ connection with local individuals. this would make students easily grasp locally grounded experiential knowledge (snowball & mackenna, 2017). this is a tenet of the indigenous knowledge system (abah, mashebe & denuga, 2015). 8.4 blended learning accommodates student centeredness auspiciously, blended learning expedites student-centredness (trinidad & ngo, 2019). learning becomes student-centred when it provides powerful instructional tools and sound academic content, but also allows students to use the tools to explore the content in a way that fits their strengths and interests (ossianilsson, 2017). this makes learning not only democratic, but also makes students more assertive, and confident enough to take ownership of their learning. ideally, successful student-centred learning can be a solution to aid learning science, technology, engineering and mathematics disciplines – subjects students find challenging (barabitze et al., 2019). this resonates well with a study conducted in australia whose results revealed that students in rural based institutions, in rural based education centres, performed relatively lower than those in urban and metropolis contexts, even after controlling for economic differences (sullivan, perry & mcconney, 2013). moreover, studies by yildiz and ocak (2016) reflected that the students who participated in video-based lesson analysis outperformed the traditional face-to-face mode, since they had opportunities to employ different methods to learn the content. similarly, a review of studies by kalisa and pichard (2017) reported improved appreciation and motivation among the students. 4342021 39(1): 434-441 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.26 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) 8.5 flexibility perceptibly, blended learning is flexible because it offers an opportunity to alternate different teaching strategies (boelens et al., 2017). flexibility is a scorecard to the lecturers because it offers them space to attend to different students’ needs. this is a very important departure from the traditional model where lecturers put students’ problems in one basket (lubua, 2019). this is desirable because it offers comfort when students are exposed to a repertoire of learning choices. this means that learners can own, control the time, place, space, path and setting to learn (secha rao, 2018). this is the tenet of democratisation of learning (trinidad, & ngo, 2019). opportunely, when students feel that learning is in their hands and space, they develop a higher state of motivation and morale, which can translate to higher performance (loperfido & giuseppe ritella, 2017). importantly, performance is one of the pivotal and desirable overarching educational goals in all countries of the world and is the basis of the former millennium development goals (mdg) 2 and the current sdg 4, which says education must play a pivotal role in eliminating current challenges (un, 2012). however, using international yardsticks such as the millennium development goal and sustainable development goal to measure performance of rural based higher education compared with urbanised and metropolitan based higher education institutions is not only unfair, but also utopian (sullivan, perry & mcconney, 2013). this is because rural based higher education lacks requisite resources to grow. this stark differential evidence of blended learning finds support in the work of graham et al. (2013) who elucidates three stages of blended learning, with the least performing institutions occupying the first stage, while those excelling occupying the third stage. this first stage implies that the purpose of blended learning is not yet widely accepted or valued in the institution but relies on individual efforts. 8.6 effectiveness conceptually, effectiveness has to do with how much a process or a programme is able to fulfil its goals and objectives. a very effective system achieves almost 100% of its expected outcomes (creemers, 2005). this perfectly resonates with views by stein and graham (2020), who opined that blended learning increases motivation, decision making, engagement and performance. these are desirable qualities in rural institutions where students experience a variety of deficits such as low motivation and poor throughput (hlalele, 2012a). the role of southern african national policies in increasing education outcomes, such as quality, gender parity, access and inclusion throughput, make such countries effectuate the imperatives of the sustainable development goals. in south africa, for instance, undp aspires to achieve educational effectiveness through the institutions achieving a throughput of more than 75% by 2030 and increasing professional competencies in scarce skill disciplines (national development plan, 2012). 8.7 resource deficits undeniably, blended learning faces a range of deficits that include heavy capital outlay to buy requisite infrastructure and equipment, broadband and electricity, ict skills and support (machumu, 2018). this resonates well with established rural based higher education institutions in developing countries facing dire infrastructural challenges to implement blended learning (chisango et al., 2020). in tandem, strong evidence abounds that an infrastructural deficit has a knock-on effect on student ict literacy skills, performance and throughput (mascarenaz, 2015). apparently, due to paucity of resources, students are forced to remain 4352021 39(1): 435-441 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.26 muhuro & kang’ethe prospects and pitfalls associated with implementing blended learning being digital immigrants. conceptually, digital immigrants are individuals who move at a snail’s pace to improve their ict skills because they did not learn it early in life (vugec, 2014). this finds support in a study conducted at the university of zambia on blended learning that found most exhibiting the characteristics of digital immigrants (muleya et al., 2019). with rural based universities already depicting numerous deficits associated with blended learning, this has a knock-on effect on enrolments and low staff morale (machumu, 2018). this situation in southern africa runs counter to the achievement of the educational goals, which may also translate to a lower score in the achievement of sustainable development goals (oced, 2016). 8.8 curricula policy deficit while blended learning can be considered as a solution in effecting curriculum reform (unesco, 2016), mainstreaming it has not been easy. the situation above resonates with a 2015 report indicating that blended learning is still at its emerging stages of development in sub-saharan africa (wallet, 2015; mokenela, 2019). this is validated by empirical research on blended learning implementation that found that most institutions are at stage 1 of the framework by graham et al. (2013). conceptually, this framework indicates that institutions are at different ranks, with those at the lowest rank not having a clearly identified model for implementing blended learning, nor a clear context based strategy to support implementation; rather there is a reliance on personal initiatives that are neither recognised nor incentivised (porter & graham, 2015; mokenela, 2019). lamentably, a number of scholars in the southern african region contend that the application of blended learning, as informed by graham’s blended learning implementation framework, has neither borne any dividend in literacy improvement, nor pedagogical alignment (muleya, et al., 2019). importantly, rural-based universities need to be multicultural. this validates the desire for an indigenously developed curriculum. conceptually, an indigenously grounded curriculum embraces local knowledge and practices (snowball & mackenna, 2017). this links well with the current global campaign to decolonise the curriculum (fataar, 2018b). 8.9 institutional good will deficit conceptually, institutional goodwill is achieved when the leaders inspire, motivate and support the workforce (gil, rodrigo-moya & morcillo-bellido, 2018). this is a springboard to heighten workers’ morale, motivate and support a particular plan (hlongwane, 2013). this finds support from the ict blended learning framework where excelling leaders drive and inspire their workforce (graham et al., 2013). evidence abounds that rural based universities struggle to implement blended learning due to weak leadership. for instance, studies in south africa reported serious gaps in leadership process leading to paucity of professional personnel to spearhead learning in one south african university (patel et al., 2017). perhaps the scenario above mirrors the ndp report observation on the leadership gap in failing to drive and support many educational plans such as those bolstering ict and blended learning. furthermore, this finds support from studies in southern africa where researchers found limited leadership support in implementing blended learning (tshabalala et al., 2014). misleading evidence exists that leadership gaps and goodwill deficits can be associated with workers’ resistance (lavanya & kalliath, 2015). 4362021 39(1): 436-441 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.26 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) 9. conclusions in the era of covid-19-19 where the traditional face-to-face method is proving impossible, prospects of implementing remote learning in rural based higher education institutions have many potential benefits for institutions to continue to deliver quality education, teachers to continue engaging with students and offer an enhanced learning environment and students to acquire the requisite skills required in the fourth industrial revolution, and such prospects should be further enhanced. however, the current study found that these benefits such as access to resources, allowing diverse populations to participate in education and improved motivation and learning quality as well as efficiency are currently minimally realised in rural based universities. this is partly due to infrastructural challenges, resource limitations and curriculum deficits stemming from alignment deficits with the blended learning model and pedagogy. this has been exacerbated by lack of goodwill in determining whether blended learning models that align to resources support capacity. in the light of the above, it is important that southern african governments increase budgetary allocation to rural based universities to allow them to address some of the challenges. creating conducive conditions for blended learning in rural based universities necessitates that management have good will to promote dialogue as well as develop a context friendly implementation model where institutional evaluation data inform strategies, support and pedagogical approaches and resources that can be used locally. also strengthening professional academic development using cost effective modalities may assist staff and students to gain the competencies needed to successfully implement and embrace blended learning. 10. the way forward there is a need for a context friendly implementation model where institutional evaluation data inform strategies, support and pedagogical approaches as well as resources that can be used locally. furthermore, many rural based institutions still suffer material and human resource constraints owing to historical backlogs. therefore, governmental support for resourcing rural universities to acquire affordable and usable resources is likely to offset challenges hindering blended learning. moreover, for institutions to move to higher stages of graham et al.’s guiding framework, institutional policies and plans should strive to use locally available data to decide on a feasible blended learning model commensurate with existing capacity in addition to 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http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 exploring agency in marginalised occupations: school administrative clerks’ deployment of “participatory capital” in establishing practicebased agency abstract popular conceptions of school administrative clerks and school secretaries imply that they have little agency because they are deemed as subordinate support staff. however, the literature across a range of fields suggests that these subordinates exercise agency. we set out in this article to explore the workings of subordinate agency. the article suggests that it is through their involvement and interaction in the socio-cultural context of the school that school administrative clerks are able to expand the range of their agency and thereby reposition themselves at school. we employ the analytical construct “participatory capital” to analyse how these clerks establish their agency and renegotiate their roles and places in the school. based on a qualitative research study, we interviewed and observed three purposively selected administrative clerks in three primary schools in cape town. this article argues that, while the occupational identity of administrative clerks remains one of subordination within the bureaucratic discourse and their places of work, the selected school administrative clerks were able to extend the scope of their agency through their participatory capital. keywords: school administrative clerks, participatory capital, agency, school secretaries 1. introduction although they occupy subordinate positions, school administrative clerks have been described as crucial to the functioning of public schools (casanova, 1991). sometimes called school secretaries or office managers, little has been written on their agency and professional identities. they are seldom the focus of discussion in textbooks, articles and policy documents on school operations, management and governance (conley, gould & levine, 2010). conley et al. (2010: 311) found that “[i]n particular, there appears to be a lack of written … [work] regarding the authors: dr abdullah bayat1 prof aslam fataar2 affiliations: 1school of business and finance, university of the western cape 2 department of education policy studies, stellenbosch university email: abbayat@uwc.ac.za afataar@sun.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v38i1.18 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(1): 255-268 published: 11 june 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1796-9526 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6880-9223 mailto:1abbayat@uwc.ac.za mailto:2afataar@sun.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 256 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 256-268 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 complexities (e.g. tasks encountered beyond formal job descriptions) entailed in their work”. in south africa published work on school administrative clerks is sparse (see de witt, 1990; van der linde, 1998; naicker, combrinck & bayat, 2011; bayat, 2012). this written work does not explicitly address questions of their agency and identity, except for two articles by bayat and fataar that reference their professional agency and practices in their workspaces (2018b) and their ethical contributions to their schools (2018a). thomson, ellison, byrom and bulman (2007:146) suggest that the lack of representation of administrative clerks in school management and governance discourses is in stark contrast to their actual “agency which is critical to ongoing events” in the school office. the explicit focus of this article is on how administrative clerks accumulate resources, contextual knowhow and relationships in their everyday work contexts, which they carefully deploy to enable them to expand the scope of their agency and transcend the narrow popular constructions of their identities as support workers in subordinate roles. the literature on administrative clerks situates them as peripheral, as a support to the work done by the school principal (hart, 1985; casanova, 1991; thomson et al., 2007; conley, gould & levine, 2010). the assumption is that school administrative clerks have little agency because they have a subordinate occupational identity (mann, 1980; hart, 1985). in schools, as in other organisations, the secretarial job has a subordinate work status wherein “the secretary support(s) someone who is assumed to do the ‘real’ work and who has supervisory control over her [sic]” (ames, 1996: 38). the work of the secretary is deemed to be relatively skill-less (crompton & jones, 1984; gaskell, 1991). school secretaries are generally given little recognition outside of their schools (wolcott, 1973), their job descriptions are vague (mann, 1980), they are generally poorly paid (rimer, 1984; crawford, 1995), and they feel like second class citizens in their schools (jackson, 1989). nevertheless, kidwell (2004) found that the school secretaries in his sample were satisfied with their jobs despite its subordinate status; ediger (2001) emphasised the contribution of the school secretary to positive public relations; casanova (1991), nystrom (2002), and logue (2014) highlighted some of the additional tasks undertaken by the school office managers; casanova, (1991) as well as bayat, naicker and combrinck (2015) found that they were key to the successful running of their schools, while bayat (2012) and bayat and fataar (2018a and b) have highlighted administrative clerks’ agency. in 2008, the western cape education department funded a training programme for school administrative clerks because they recognised the ongoing and potential contribution of school administrative clerks to their schools (naicker, combrinck & bayat, 2011). recently, robert (2017) investigated clerical turnover in american schools and huot and forget (2018) reported on a study in quebec that was conducted to improve primary school secretaries’ work processes. this article draws on data from a purposive sample of three public school administrative clerks who were chosen because of their range of responsibilities, experience and lengthy tenure in public primary schools. we refer to the two females and one male as p, m and f. their profiles were similar to the profiles of the administrative clerks in the western cape identified by naicker et al. (2012). p, m and f were the non-teaching staff representatives on their schools’ governing bodies (sgbs)1. in addition, p and f had been regular participants in their school management team (smt) meetings, a position not ordinarily held by administrative clerks. it is the contention of this article that their participation in the school 1 in south africa, administrative clerks can formally participate on the school governing body if elected as the non-teaching staff representative (department of education, 1996). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 257 bayat & fataar exploring agency in marginalised occupations 2020 38(1): 257-268 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 community, particularly in its smaller units such as the sgb and smt, provided them with the opportunities and resources to make a substantive contribution to their schools’ functioning, by enabling them to augment their agency in such a way as to significantly contribute to their schools’ daily operations. we employed a qualitative approach to ascertain the respondents’ subjective meanings and experiences of how they went about building and exercising their agency within the school setting. we interviewed and observed them over a period of a school term. we employed semi-structured interviews and informal interviews and engaged in participant observation, visiting each school extensively during the period. these interviews concentrated on aspects of their administrative biographies, their backgrounds, education and work experiences. we interviewed the principal of each school, more than one teacher in each school, a parent governor at each school and local members of the education department who were familiar with the schools. these interviews were conducted while the first author was spending several hours a week observing the school administrative clerks at their schools. the semi-structured interviews with the school administrative clerks were conducted over many weeks while the interviews with other respondents were around 30 minutes per interview and varied in length depending on the participants’ willingness to engage. these served as corroborative interviews to confirm and supplement the administrative clerks’ stories. after we transcribed the interviews, we analysed the data using content analysis and thematic analysis, while drawing on our observation notes. the interviews and observations provided textured depictions of the clerks’ activities, which we analysed inductively to arrive at key themes. the next section explains the theoretical framework that we used to argue that school administrative clerks’ participation within the sociocultural context of their schools provided them with resources that enhanced their agency to contribute to the functioning of their schools. 2. “participatory capital” as the theoretical framework ‘participatory capital’ refers to what individuals learn and acquire through their involvement and interaction in sociocultural contexts. we contend that discourse communities and sociocultural contexts provide opportunities for agency formation and play a crucial role in shaping the contours of the subject’s agency and identity. participatory capital can be thought of as resources generated and deployed in a particular social setting (edwards, 2011; lave & wenger, 1991; wenger, 1998; vågan, 2011). we contend that individuals who occupy subordinate occupational identities exercise agency through the deployment of participatory capital. our conception of agency draws on kabeer’s (1999) insight that, in order to widen the ambit for people to exercise agency, they need an increase in informational and interpersonal resources. for example, if a school administrative clerk concludes that the school’s poor student performance is related to students being hungry, and then decides to organise a feeding programme with other volunteer teachers, she is exercising agency because organising a feeding programme is not a practice associated with school administrative clerks. in such a case, she would be using relationships cultivated at school (her accumulated participatory capital) to recruit volunteers from among the staff and motivate for the introduction of the feeding programme. participatory capital enables an individual to realise that, even though structures and discourses constrain an individual’s action, there is space to manoeuvre within the social world beyond the restrictions that are imposed by these structures or discourses. it refers to the information and relational resources that accrue to, or are accumulated by, individuals http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 258 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 258-268 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 by virtue of their social interactions and relationships. interaction within the particular sociocultural context of a school enables a participant such as an administrative clerk to learn the discourses that circulate in that school and the subject positions that are made available through these discourses, as well as to understand the broader contextual issues facing that school (such as its financial position and student throughput) and to cultivate relationships with other participants (such as teachers, the principal and the students) (edwards, 2011; lave & wenger, 1991). thus, what this framework emphasises is that the accumulation of resources, positions and knowledge is crucial to understanding how participatory capital is cultivated and agency executed. the second element of participatory capital concerns the ways in which the subject uses the accumulated resources and positions – what may be described as the deployment of participatory capital. this occurs when those occupying marginalised positions (such as an administrative clerk, school nurse, midwife), drawing on their accumulated participative resources, exercise their agency to take up alternative and refashioned identity positions and engage in situated action. the assertion is that a given occupational identity position can be expanded, negotiated and changed (lave & wenger, 1991; weedon, 1987) by drawing on accumulated participatory capital. this section has elaborated on the theoretical lens of participatory capital, i.e. the resources that enable agency through which school administrative clerks can reposition their identities and engage in novel and productive practices. in the next section we start the data-based sections of the article with a discussion on how the selected school administrative clerks go about building and enhancing their participatory capital. 3. building participatory capital this section discusses how the three administrative clerks go about accumulating their participatory capital through their practices in their school office space (holland, lachiocotte, skinner & cain, 1998). we illustrate the practical actions that the clerks engage in to accumulate these participatory resources by accumulating knowledge, strengthening relationships and building trust. we start by illustrating how relationship building acts as a way of augmenting their interpersonal agency; for example, concerning the principal and other actors in their office space. f explained that she had formed a close working relationship with the principal at the school where she had worked previously and a past principal of her current school. both principals had mentored her. m said that she “learnt as she went along” by seeking information and knowledge from those around her, especially from the school principal with whom she had worked from the time she joined the school over a decade ago. p said that in his many years of experience at the school, he had cultivated friendships with the principals. one of these principals had moved on to a position at the education district office and p still enjoyed a close relationship with him. this relationship gave him access to informational resources about events happening in the local district. furthermore, all three administrative clerks indicated that they had built up a network of relationships and contacts that they could draw on when needed. for example, m recounted that she established multiple relationships, inside and outside the school, for the purpose of obtaining contextual information. having cultivated these relationships, m was able to position herself as an aid and assistant to teachers needing information on matters regarding their employment. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 259 bayat & fataar exploring agency in marginalised occupations 2020 38(1): 259-268 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 the acquisition of participatory capital is also facilitated by their contextualised understanding of the school. because they dealt with correspondence between the local education district office and their school, each administrative clerk was well aware of the issues affecting the school and the broader educational context, including which teachers were retiring, which teachers would be going on maternity leave, teacher disciplinary processes, annual national literacy and numeracy test scores of the school, and other information required by the local education district office. they were aware of the budgetary allocations for the schools, knew about the financial challenges faced by their schools and had an opinion about what needed to be done to deal with these challenges. m had grown up in the area where her school is located, attended it as a student, worked in the community and later became the school’s secretary. her understanding of the school and the broader community was extensive. m explained that she continued to make a concerted effort to remain informed about what was going on in and around the school. she kept abreast of happenings at school and personalised her relationships with students, parents and teachers. describing her knowledge of students’ backgrounds, m said: i know what [students’] circumstances are so i tend to be soft with them, and they will come to me, they’ll actually come into my office … but i’d say to [the teachers], but do you know what, what’s going on at home? m explained that she used this contextual information to influence the teachers’ interactions with troubled or troublesome students. this knowledge allowed her to direct teachers’ attention in ways that she could not have done otherwise. f said that she dealt with all correspondence at the school and engaged in fundraising because the school’s finances were poor. p was very aware of the socio-economic context of the parents and students, since he lived in the area and his son attended the school. the three school administrative clerks built up participatory capital through their knowledge of the school context, the economic and social status of parents and students as well as the personal circumstances of teachers and the principal. they knew the challenges that teachers faced, how their students were performing, whether the teachers and principal were studying further, complaints that students or other staff might have and teachers’ personal problems. this depth of insight was a key asset. m took care to provide the social worker with information on students who needed assistance or were at risk. not only did she identify students for social work intervention, but she also acted as an information provider: “…our social worker, she phones me, first, before she comes in for anybody else”. being in the school office meant that the administrative clerks were at the boundaries of many figured worlds (holland et al.,1998) of the principal, teachers, students and the local education department. they were thus acquainted with most issues affecting the school. p’s school was being poorly managed by the principal, who made little effort to bring about change. our observations and conversations with teachers at p’s school confirmed this. because of this, p took it upon himself to relay information between the school and the education district officials. he said that because he knew the principal did not answer emailed requests for information from the education district, he would answer emails on behalf of the school without even consulting with the principal. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 260 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 260-268 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 all three administrative clerks were participants in their schools’ sgbs. this meant not only that they forged and cultivated relationships with other school governors, but also that their experiences of the situated dynamics of their sgb enabled them to relate across domains/ figured worlds, which expanded their relational agency. they spoke of their hesitancy when they joined the sgb and how they became more confident as their participation increased. f explained: i was a bit nervous because i did not know what to expect and … i did not know the governing body members … so it was a learning curve … then you could observe and by observing you could automatically see … and then afterwards i was then quite confident because everybody was there to learn … and if i didn’t understand i would normally phone … (an)other school principal or school secretary and then i will ask for advice. here f explained how she gradually observed the inner workings of the sgb while continuing to engage and ask questions until she was confident in her ability to participate effectively in sgb deliberations. similarly, having spent many years on the sgb, p explained: “i was involved with the school governing body, then, we have to learn, so that you make informed decisions”. this indicates that p gradually absorbed the “know-how” of school governance. he was therefore gradually able to adopt the school governance perspectives and discourses. m was initially a hesitant participant in the sgb, explaining that she “didn’t say much then”. but as she became acquainted with the practices of the sgb, learning and mimicking the relevant practices and perspectives, she became an active participant. as the years went by, f cultivated a relationship with the parent members on the sgb, including the chairperson. commenting on f, the chairperson explained that, at the start of her tenure as a chairperson, f had assisted her a great deal by familiarising her with the expectations of her role, adding that she continued to be receptive to suggestions by f. p also cultivated firm relationships with sgb members during his extended tenure on the sgb: “the people i was on the governing body with, we had a relationship because we were on the governing body for the second term working together”. m said that she had “an extremely good relationship with them [parent governors], i give them a lift home after the meetings ... we’ve got a good relationship, working relationship, an informal relationship”. she commented that this relationship led to governing body members working together productively because she was able to assist parents to contribute meaningfully to the sgb’s deliberations (mncube, 2009). in addition to her current sgb involvement, f had also served on the sgb of the school that she had worked at previously. she conveyed a thorough understanding of the responsibilities of being a school governor within the school’s existing circumstances. for example, she stated that she had been actively involved in the drafting of school policies and had suggested many novel and productive practices to deal with challenges that the school faced. we have thus far been able to suggest that administrative clerks engage in practices whereby they grow their personal, interpersonal and relational agency. in the next section, we discuss the school administrative clerks’ participation in their schools’ routines, the school governing body (sgb) and the school management team (smt) in order to highlight their deployment of the participatory capital they have developed. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 261 bayat & fataar exploring agency in marginalised occupations 2020 38(1): 261-268 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 4. school administrative clerks’ deployment of participatory capital in the school governing body the previous section highlighted the administrative clerks’ accumulation of participatory capital. we now discuss the administrative clerks’ practices as participants in their schools’ sgbs to exemplify the ways in which they deploy their participatory capital. during a participant observation event at f’s school, the first author witnessed an emergency sgb meeting that was called to discuss the purchasing of office equipment. after the meeting, f explained that the principal had wanted to purchase a liquid crystal display (lcd) projector but wanted the consent of the sgb members. she said that she had drawn the sgb’s attention to the school improvement plan and the school budget that made allowances for office equipment. through her intervention, they agreed to the purchase of the lcd projector. in this situation, through her knowledge of the school improvement plan and the budgetary allocations, f deployed this participatory capital that enabled the sgb to make a procedurally justifiable decision. her action should be viewed in light of the management style of the principal, who was prone to make important procurement decisions without following proper procedures. f’s school had experienced disputes in the past because of procedural irregularities in the appointment of a principal. thus, when a deputy principal and a head of department (hod) had to be appointed, f suggested that a recently retired education district official be approached to advise the sgb on the correct practices for the selection of new management staff. f thus changed the dynamic related to the appointment process through her agency. she said: … now with this interview of these positions, i said that we must get someone who is professional … mr … so i suggested, listen i am going to phone him to give us some training on that… f could suggest this uncommon practice because she was able to use her accumulated participatory capital and so secure the integrity of the process. f approached the retired official, who agreed to participate in the selection process, which was properly and successfully finalised. at p’s school, there was also a dispute regarding the appointment of a deputy principal. p was asked to chair the selection process. p had cultivated strong enough relationships with the governors for them to feel confident that he was sufficiently well informed about the appointment processes. however, p said that he withdrew as an act of protest when the principal told him that he would not support a particular teacher’s appointment, who was deserving of the post, because of a grudge he (the principal) had against that teacher. p said: i feel that the only weapon i will use against them is for me to resign from the governing body because they rely on me to a larger extent, so if i am not there, they will suffer. p’s withdrawal from the sgb was an exercise of agency in that it was intended to indicate his displeasure with the way matters were being dealt with on the sgb. sgbs in south african working-class schools are stymied by parents’ lack of experience in matters of governance and management (mncube, 2009), which was confirmed in our discussions with the administrative clerks. according to p, “parent governors misunderstand their role on the sgb”. f concurred, asserting that “most parents are only there to sit [on the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 262 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 262-268 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 sgb]”. the parent governors tended to participate marginally and to defer to the principal, whom they deemed the educational leader. this was where p seized the opportunity to contribute substantially to governance dynamics at the school. p used his knowledge of school governance and assisted the parent treasurer on the sgb to implement legitimate practices for managing the school’s finances. p also facilitated other parent governors’ understanding of their sgb roles and what it meant to be a school governor. the deputy principal commented on p’s facilitation of issues on the sgb: he contributed a lot on the sgb … and p was the one who is always in the school premises, he knows what is happening, and he would be the one who tells the governing body what is really happening. if the governing body sometimes is resisting, you know, he will then intervene. because he is always at [school], he knows what is going on inside the school. in this statement, the deputy principal acknowledged p’s productive practices and the respect he enjoys from the parent governors. the deputy principal also highlighted p’s role inducting parent governing board members onto the sgb by explaining how p provided them with contextual information so that they could make appropriate decisions. thus, p deployed his participatory capital to act as a mentor to the parent governors, which is not normally performed by administrative clerks. the deputy principal confirmed that p exercised agency on the sgb when she said of p that “if the governing body sometimes is resisting … he [p] will then intervene”. he thus influenced the decisions of the governors. p said of himself: “i accepted that i want to be in the school governing body because i thought that i could make a difference in the governance [and] in the running of the school”. m was the secretary of her school’s sgb and had many responsibilities. for example, in addition to her secretarial role, m was responsible for the finances, which made it possible for her to contest procurement and purchasing decisions. she explains that “they try their luck, but they don’t get away with it, …. i’m the financial officer; i’m the chair of the financial committee”. in another example, m said that she would type up the school improvement plan (sip) for the sgb and needed to clarify some issues with the principal. m said that “it takes me about half a day to do it on the computer, and then they discuss it, it’s a final meeting with the governing body”. these two examples show the range of m’s agency. they demonstrate her know-how of sgb roles, practices and perspectives. m said that the school governors would approach her because she was well versed in the local education district’s interpretations of the rules and regulations pertaining to governance. her governance perspective allowed her insight into governance matters that the other less experienced governors did not have. m suggested that “being in on all the [sgb] meetings, that is my goal because i can make a contribution, i see little loopholes that the others don’t”. these examples show how the clerks’ deployment of their participatory capital allowed them to contribute to the sgb. the next section explores the school administrative clerks’ engagement with their schools’ smts. 5. deploying participatory capital in their school management team meetings attending school management team meetings is not an official requirement for school administrative clerks. however, after many years of involvement on the sgb, two of the three http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 263 bayat & fataar exploring agency in marginalised occupations 2020 38(1): 263-268 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 administrative clerks (p and f) broadened their involvement in their respective schools by becoming regular attendees at smt meetings. they asked their principals if they could attend these meetings. the request was made at a time when the local education department was providing administrative and management-related training to the three school administrative clerks (as part of a larger group who attended a school business management course). the local education department at the time also suggested that principals allow school administrative clerks who were doing this course to participate in smt meetings. unlike the sgb, this forum deals with more specific operational matters, including the managing of teaching and learning, student discipline and curriculum implementation issues (bush, joubert, kiggundu & van rooyen, 2010). the precise operation of the smts regarding their interaction with the sgbs and the principals varies from school to school (christie, 2010). for two of the three administrative clerks, the smt meetings were fertile grounds for deploying their participatory capital. p said: i asked, myself, to be part of the smt [meetings] and then the intention was that … being on the management will put me in the position to have a say on the things that i think, maybe, i can have an influence onto. p said that his experiences of how poorly the school was being run motivated him to find ways that it could be better managed. on the sgb he gained insight into the failings of the school management, including the divide between the sgb and the smt at his school. according to p, the breakdown between these two forums stemmed from the perception that teachers on the sgb used their position to garner staff promotions only for themselves and their friends, leading to feelings of mutual distrust. he used this knowledge and his involvement in the sgb and smt to make suggestions to bridge this divide. he suggested that a closer relationship be forged between the sgb and smt. he even suggested that a meeting be set up between the two forums and tried to relay information between the sgb to the smt in order to foster a positive relationship between these two important forums. the way he handled this issue indicates his professional leadership. one of the challenges that p’s school faces is the fighting among young gangs. these gangs come onto the school premises during school time and attack learners who are members of rival gangs; traumatising learners and teachers. because of his broad contextual understanding of the school, p suggested that the smt approach the local education district and request funding to reinforce the school fence. this suggestion was taken up by the smt members, the local district was approached, funding was eventually procured, and the fence was fortified. this reduced the incidence of gangs coming onto the school premises. this example not only vividly demonstrates p’s relational agency where he was able to align his concern with other stakeholders’ concerns but also reveals the depth of his contextual insights. describing f, the principal said, “she was quite clued up”. because of this, f said she was asked by the principal to shoulder greater responsibilities. commenting on the various dimensions related to running a successful smt, f said, “nobody else knows what’s going on there besides that person [i.e. the school administrative clerk]”. commenting on her contributions, f said that she reminded the principal that “this isn’t my job, this is your deputy’s job or hod’s [head of department’s] or senior teacher’s [responsibility]”. this statement indicates that f’s contribution to the management was comparable to that of a deputy principal or a senior teacher. about her contribution to other important matters in the school, f said, “i’m already doing the manager’s job”. this comment speaks volumes! http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 264 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 264-268 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 teachers on the smt were appreciative of p’s insights deriving from his involvement with the sgb. because of his daily presence, his interaction with local education district officials, parents, teachers, learners and his professional leadership, the institutional management and governance (img) official from the district assigned to the school remarked that p was “running the school”. f’s participation on the smt lasted for the entire tenure of one of the principals at her school. reflecting on f’s participation in the smt, this particular principal said that f had developed the mindset of a school manager: “i could see the growth in her … if roles … were reversed she would run a school successfully”. this statement indicates that f had enacted the agency practices associated with effective school management. however, she experienced resistance from some of the senior teaching staff. eventually, because of this resistance, she withdrew from the smt meetings when the principal resigned. m, who did not attend smt meetings, engaged informally with the principal on management issues. m said that the principal would consult her and ask about issues that he needed to raise with the teachers in the smt meetings. m said that she would make suggestions. for example, m said: “he [the principal] would ask me, what do i think”. the overall picture tells us that through their deployment of participatory capital the administrative clerks’ input into the smt meetings was substantive 6. discussion we have highlighted how the administrative clerks went about augmenting and then marshalling their agency. reflecting on the findings, we can highlight a few themes around how school administrative clerks developed expertise in skilfully accumulating common knowledge and relational agency (edwards, 2011) in their schools. in brief, the themes are building agency through contextual know-how and cultivating interpersonal relationships that allow for understanding the perspectives of others. agency amplification through occupying space and time that allows for deep contextual understanding. regarding this spatio-temporal dimension, the three administrative clerks’ accumulation of participatory capital occurred over more than a decade. it included their daily presence in the school office as well as their participation in sgb and smt meetings. they built up what edwards (2011: 38) referred to as “common knowledge”, which “includes being alert to the standpoints of others and being willing to work with them towards shared ethical goals”. having cultivated this common knowledge, they deployed it as a resource to establish an active agency in shaping their professional identity. the administrative clerks’ understanding and knowledge of the school context formed a key dimension of their participatory capital. this common knowledge (edwards, 2011) formed the basis of their relational agency. edwards (2009: 39) suggests that such agency translates into “a capacity for working with others to strengthen purposeful responses to complex problems”. it involves gaining a shared understanding of school problems and working with others to find solutions. this is something that school administrative clerks definitely excelled at, as demonstrated above. agency was augmented through cultivating interpersonal relationships. it can be said that the administrative clerks pursued productive relationships with their principals, teachers, parents, students, other school administrative clerks and local education district officials. critically, the three school administrative clerks’ cultivation of their relationships with their http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 265 bayat & fataar exploring agency in marginalised occupations 2020 38(1): 265-268 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 principals was a source of participatory capital. this dimension has been commented on by several scholars (wolcott, 1973; casanova, 1991), who have indicated that the principal is quite dependent on the secretary. this makes it easy for the school administrative clerk to ally with the principal. this mutually beneficial relationship is a key node for accumulating and deploying their participatory capital. in sum, we have made the argument that the administrative clerks had accumulated participatory capital. they then used their participatory capital as resources to expand the ambit of their agency and deploy a broad range of professional and managerial practices. in doing so, they went beyond the discursive constraints imposed upon them by the education management and bureaucratic discourses that positioned them as subordinate administrative clerks and secretaries and constructed for themselves unique professional school identities. 7. conclusion the article aimed to show how holders of subordinate occupational identities enhance their relational agency. we showed that school administrative clerks’ purposeful interaction in the sociocultural contexts of the school facilitated their accumulation of participatory capital, which they deployed in augmenting their agency and sculpting a unique professional identity for themselves. furthermore, their participatory capital enabled them to enact professional practices that went beyond the subordinate and support status of their occupational identity, to the extent that their principals, teachers and local district officials acknowledged them as valued professionals. their deployed participatory capital had tangible benefits for the school in that they were able to enhance decision-making within the schools’ governance and management forums. they were uniquely positioned to fill the informational gaps between the smt and the sgb, as highlighted by basson and mestry (2019). we suggest that schools would benefit from formalising administrative clerks’ participation in their school contexts. this participation would provide administrative clerks with opportunities to accumulate participatory capital, which would, importantly, in turn lead to potential benefits for them and their schools if they were to deploy their resources productively. we believe future research directions should combine the application of refined analytical lenses with rigorous qualitative methodologies. coming to understand the participative agency and contributions of school administrative clerks requires the use of theories and concepts that would enable recognition of the participative contributions of those deemed of lower professional status in workplaces. likewise, we propose the adoption of qualitative methodologies that are able to excavate other important constitutive dimensions of their agency such as the emotional and affective dimensions of the clerks’ work, their struggles in improving their professional qualifications and the abuse and subordination they encounter as members of a “feminised” profession. this article raises important questions about the workings of subordinate agency. clearly, discursively constructed subordinate occupational positions do not necessarily restrict or constrain the agency of their holders. through participation in the sociocultural contexts of their workplaces and organisations, participants can and do accumulate and deploy participatory capital, which forms the basis for their enhanced agency whereby they engage in productive practices and reposition their occupational identities, which endows them with greater status and influence. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 266 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 266-268 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 references ames, l. 1996. contrarieties at work: women’s resistance to bureaucracy. nwsa journal, 8(2), 37–59. retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/4316439. basson, p., & mestry, r. 2019. collaboration between school management teams and governing bodies in effectively managing public primary school finances. south african journal of education, 39(2), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v39n2a1688. bayat, a. 2012. the spatial practices of school administrative clerks: making space for contributive justice. perspectives in education, 30(4), 64–75. bayat, a., naicker, v., & combrinck, t. 2015. towards an 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activity, 18(1), 43–57. https://doi.org/10.1080/10749031003605839. van der linde, c. 1998. an appraisal of the role and training of the school secretary in south african schools. education, 119(1), 48–49. weedon, c. 1987. feminist practice and poststructuralist theory. oxford: blackwell. wenger, e. 1998. communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. cambridge: cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511803932. wolcott, h. 1973. the man in the principal’s office: an ethnography. new york: holt, rinehart and winston. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.18 https://doi.org/10.1080/09540250601165896 https://doi.org/10.1080/10749031003605839 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511803932 _goback 12023 41(1): 1-2 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.7003 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) editorial the academic world has undergone significant transformations as we navigated the challenges brought about by the covid-19 pandemic. the global pandemic has forced academic institutions to rapidly adopt new ways of teaching, learning and conducting research. in this editorial, we present a curated list of articles from various authors, highlighting different facets of the changes experienced in academic institutions. in this issue of our academic journal, we present a collection of articles exploring various aspects of higher education during and after the covid-19 pandemic. these articles provide valuable insights into the challenges students and educators face and the strategies and solutions developed to address these challenges. the articles are presented under three themes: challenges and opportunities towards an engaged university during covid-19; student wellbeing and belonging; student-staff participation, technology and praxis. the first article, “beckoning a new post-covid higher education engagement agenda: lessons from nelson mandela university covid-19 responses” considers challenges and opportunities towards an engaged university during covid-19. discussing how nelson mandela university’s community engagement initiatives were strengthened during the pandemic, highlighting the importance of community engagement as a priority for universities, even in emergencies. the second theme is student-staff wellbeing and belonging. the articles under this theme include the second article, “factors affecting students’ use of a data-free instant messenger for online peer tutoring: a large, undergraduate class at a historically disadvantaged university”. the article examines the factors that may impact student acceptance and use of a data-free instant messenger for online peer tutoring. “connection, desperation and disillusionment: exploring student wellbeing at a university in south africa during the covid-19 pandemic” explores how students experienced wellbeing during the pandemic using photovoice as methodology and highlights the importance of a sense of connection and resilience. author: prof elizabeth archer1 taabo mugume2, 3 affiliation: 1university of the western cape, south africa 2university of the free state, south africa 3ubuntu higher education research centre, uganda doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/xxx e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(1): 1-2 published: 31 march 2023 http://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.7003 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7537-4259 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6033-4198 http://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.7003 22023 41(1): 2-2 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.7003 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) “students’ sense of belonging at a south african university during covid-19” investigates the sense of belonging of undergraduate students during the pandemic and how the university responded to the crisis. the last article under this theme is “cross-cultural collaboration through virtual teaming in higher education”. the article explores the value of virtual collaborative international learning programmes and the benefits of such programmes for staff and students from different countries and cultures. student-staff participation, technology and teaching praxis is the third theme. the first article under this theme is “university students’ participation during covid-19 induced online learning in zimbabwe’s universities and strategies for optimizing students’ participation”. the article identifies technological and pedagogical issues and proposes strategies for optimising participation and assessment while ensuring academic integrity. “lessons learnt from teaching an applied drama and theatre pedagogy online in a digitally divided south africa” highlights the challenges of adapting and transforming pedagogy for online learning during the pandemic. the next article, “technology-driven proctoring: validity, social justice and ethics in higher education”, examines the impact of digital proctoring on social justice, ethics, and validity during the pandemic and the importance of ensuring valid assessments that evaluate the concepts that we wish to assess. the article, “flexible curriculum design for quantitative skills development: building on the insights gained during covid-19”, examines the impact of covid-19 on curriculum design and delivery and how flexibility can lead to positive outcomes, including improved academic performance. the “perceptions of pre-service teachers on breakout room micro-teaching with zoom” article investigates pre-service teachers’ experiences with micro-teaching in zoom’s breakout rooms. “student perspectives on the challenges of an online orientation at a large south african university during the covid-19 pandemic” sheds light on the challenges of implementing an online orientation programme for first-year students and how universities can leverage online orientation to support students’ transition into the university environment. the last article under this theme is “using whatsapp-based mobile learning environments during abrupt switches to online learning: a duoethnographic account”. the article discusses the use of whatsappbased mobile learning environments in two south african higher education settings during abrupt switches to online learning. we hope this selection of articles provides insights into the various aspects of the changing academic landscape and sparks conversations on how we can continue adapting and improving our practices. http://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.7003 113 research article 2022 40(2): 113-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) accessing resources that promote quality education for young children: experience of early childhood development centres’ principals abstract research has indicated that educational resources used at early childhood development (ecd) centres advance and enrich the developmental domains, health and wellbeing of young children. however, most ecd centres in south africa seem to lack many educational resources that enhance quality early childhood care and education (ecce). this study aimed to explore the experience of the ecd principals in accessing learning resources for their centre. a qualitative research approach that employed a multiple case study research design was utilised. data were gathered through individual semi-structured interviews with four principals and four practitioners from the four selected ecd centres. the collected data were analysed thematically. this study was guided by britto, yoshikawa and boller’s (2011) framework as a theoretical base. the findings revealed that ecd centres only access resources from the users’ fees charged and a stipend from the government, which seems insufficient to promote quality ecce. this study recommends that ecd principals become proactive regarding effective management and leadership skills by engaging with internal and external environment opportunities to access learning resources effectively. this study further recommends that ecd principals be exposed to various seminars, workshops, symposiums and training where they can network with influencers and develop their leadership and relational abilities that will assist them in being creative when accessing learning resources. keywords: learning resources, ecd centre principal, funding, management and leadership, quality ecce. 1. introduction according to research literature, early childhood care and education (ecce): improves physical and mental health and reduce reliance on the health system, enhances school readiness and related outcomes, such as improved enrolment, retention and academic performance and reduces high-risk behaviours like unsafe sex, substance abuse and criminal and violent activity (city of cape town, 2015:8). author: dr adebunmi yetunde aina1 prof keshni bipath1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i2.9 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(2): 113-128 published: 08 june 2022 received: 16 december 2021 accepted: 01 april 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9417-1510 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0588-9905 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 1142022 40(2): 114-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) to achieve the benefits of ecce, proper investment to secure appropriate learning resources in ecd programmes, and the proper use of resources are essential (biersteker, 2012; naudeau et al., 2012). hence, ecd centres need to access developmentally appropriate learning resources to enhance quality ecce. this study focused on ecd centres that provide day-care and preschool services for children from birth to four years and how the principal of the centre accesses resources used in enhancing the quality of education and care offered at the centre. for example, resources used in the playground and playroom are often reported as “essential determinants of quality early childhood education” (the polcyn & gawrysiak, 2017: 86). the term “resources” is used in this study to refer to physical, material and human resources (infrastructure, learning materials, financial and human resources). according to cooper (2015), the supply of educational resources in the ecd learning environment has received little or no attention at the national and local levels in terms of policy and guidelines. in south africa, policy such as the national integrated plan (nip) identified a crucial need to increase the required resources of an ecd service for children below five years of age (unicef, 2005). it appears as if the situation had not changed when richter et al. (2017), in their study echoed that ecd centres and services for children (birth to four years of age) lack human and material resources at regional, provincial and local/district levels due to a lack of funding. in line with the above statement, leshoele (2016) stated that the levels of government funding and total investment in the ecd sector are poor. kotzé (2015) has the same view, saying that inadequate investment in the early years of education could require more expensive and less effective intervention at a later stage of life. as a result, inadequate financial resources could impede ecd centre principals in accessing learning resources that are meant to improve the quality of education and care provided to young children. most ecd centres charge high user fees to acquire resources to offer quality education and care (atmore, 2012). due to their economic status, most parents could not afford to pay the fees charged by the ecd centres. for instance, in their study, aina and bipath (2022:10) state that “the township centres have fewer infrastructure resources that promote quality ecce because of the dire socio-economic conditions of the parents”. the authors went on to say that many parents are unable to pay the fees, putting the centres in a position where they are unable to secure the important learning resources to promote effective ecce, particularly in rural areas. the ecd centre principals in lower-income areas suffer as they cannot purchase the essential resources for quality service delivery at their centres. hence, this article aimed to bring to light the experiences of ecd centre principals in four centres situated in gauteng province, south africa (two in townships and two in rural areas) in accessing resources that would help them provide the quality education and care needed for the young children in their centres. the essence of involving the different centre locations is identifying different experiences regarding accessing resources. the main research question used to achieve this aim is “how do ecd principals access resources that promote quality ecce”? the subresearch questions to explore and answer the main research question are (1) how do ecd principals source funding to purchase resources that promote quality ecce? and (2) how do ecd principals approach parents and community members regarding accessing resources that could promote quality ecce? http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 1152022 40(2): 115-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 aina & bipath accessing resources that promote quality education for young children 2. literature review 2.1 early childhood care and education ecce, an essential aspect of ecd, is defined as “services and programmes that provide care and developmentally appropriate educational stimulation for groups of young children in centres and the community, or home-based programmes” (richter et al., 2012:5). ecce has recently gained popularity as mothers who traditionally took care of young children at home are busy working. apart from mothers’ unavailability to care for their younger children during working hours, there is a global understanding regarding the benefits of ecce to young children’s growth and development. 2.2 benefits of early childhood care and education ecce is recognised globally as contributing quality to and having a progressive impact on the lives of children and society at large in the long run. many reports in the literature from various research fields, including education, neuroscience, health and economics, show that early investment in human capital contributes meaningfully to the success of individuals and the development of the wider community (davis, 2009; kotze, 2015). this view is corroborated by the stated benefits of ecce programmes, namely: to improve physical and mental health and reduce reliance on the health system; enhance school readiness and related outcomes, such as improved enrolment, retention and academic performance; and reduce high-risk behaviours like unsafe sex, substance abuse and criminal and violent activity (city of cape town, 2015:8). heckman (2011) adds that investment in ecd for disadvantaged children below the age of five years helps reduce the achievement gap; reduces the need for special education; increases the likelihood of a healthier lifestyle, lowers the crime rate and reduces overall social costs. attending ecd centres is an opportunity for poor children to access recent learning instruments that their parents cannot afford. ecce is thus seen as the “great equaliser” for all young children in south africa. a well-resourced early childhood development centre is non-negotiable if early childhood development is to be realised to make an essential contribution to addressing poverty, inequality, and social exclusion (richter & samuels, 2018). to achieve the benefits of early childhood development education in children’s lives, the availability of developmentally appropriate resources for quality delivery at the ecd centres is most important. 2.3 quality early childhood care and education there has been scholarly debate on how to give an appropriate description of quality ecce. however, it has been found that for an ecd centre to have a permanent, positive benefit for children’s development and learning, the notion of quality is essential to ensure healthier young children with improved cognitive and socio-emotional abilities (paulsell et al., 2010). hence, quality ecce is mainly determined by the presence of the structural and process quality input such as physical infrastructure. this infrastructure includes the toilet and bathroom facilities, the academic programme, the number of children and teachers, the size of classes and the ratio of learners to educators, the availability of suitable, age-appropriate education equipment, material and resources; good governance and financial management (atmore, 2019; bonetti & brown, 2018). structural quality is an input that is easily observed and measurable in determining quality such as ecd centre facilities or resources, ecd http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 1162022 40(2): 116-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) practitioner to child ratios and ecd practitioner qualifications, training and wages (bonetti & brown, 2018; slot et al., 2015). ishimine and tayler (2014) described process quality as the nature of interactions between the children and teachers, among children, and among adults, teachers, parents, staff, and the nature of leadership and pedagogy. these identified structural and process inputs that determine quality ecce could be described as the essential resources that should be available and adequately used at ecd centres. 2.4 resources in early childhood development centres resources in ecd centres include human, material and non-material resources used to deliver learning, such as furniture, toys, equipment, space, lighting, practitioners’ skills, administrative and leadership quality (aina & bipath, 2022). relevant and appropriate resources used in the playground and playroom are often reported as an essential determinant of quality early childhood education (polcyn & gawrysiak, 2017: 86). according to tseng and seidman (2007) as well as britto et al. (2011), resources include physical, material and human capital. tseng and seidman (2007: 222) use the term physical resources as “the availability and quality of curricular materials, space, facilities, and buildings”. material resources comprise the availability of clean water, healthy meals and snacks, quality teaching and learning materials (britto et al., 2011). human resources could be referred to as the level of education provided for the teachers and staff (tseng & seidman, 2007). in this article, resources in the ecd centre include infrastructure (outdoor and indoor space, toilet and kitchen facilities); equipment and learning materials; and human resources (practitioners’ qualification and training). several authors recognised infrastructure resources at the ecd centres as the buildings, space, lighting, ventilation, learning equipment, clean drinking water access; toilets, schools with no safety hazards but with protective measures, a clean physical environment, sufficient classroom space for sitting, moving about and doing activities, and ample available outdoor playground (bonetti & brown, 2018; chopra, 2016; peisner-feinberg & yazejian, 2010). atmore (2013: 156) discovered that several ecd centres were functioning “without basic infrastructure such as running water, access to electricity or suitable sanitation. they sometimes also lacked adequate fencing of the premises and separate areas to prepare food”. similarly, in the research conducted by mbarathi et al. (2016), which focused on ecd centres within informal settlements of urban areas, it was discovered that the infrastructure in ecd centres was indigent. this finding indicates that some ecd centres had the necessary infrastructure resources to promote quality ecce. equally, in her study, de witt (2010) discovered that ecd centres in low-income communities lacked essential resources for teaching, such as storybooks, toys, clay, blocks, play dough, plastic animals, puzzles, dress-up materials and furniture. 2.5 accessing resources in ecd centres globally, early childhood development centres are challenged by a lack of funds or inappropriate funding to provide the necessary resources required for quality delivery at the early childhood development centres (atmore, 2012; leshoele, 2016). polcyn and gawrysiak (2017:88) affirm that “school resources are limited by the funds available to a given school”. funding is the medium of exchange for purchasing the resources, both material and human, needed to provide quality learning at the early childhood development centres (hearron & hildebrand, 2014). put another way, a lack of funds would prevent the centre principal from acquiring the necessary resources, such as instructional material or employing qualified personnel. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 1172022 40(2): 117-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 aina & bipath accessing resources that promote quality education for young children there are two primary funding sources for early childhood education: government and private funding (belfield, 2007). the government, through its agencies, makes provision for funding for early childhood education, while the private funding of ecd comes mostly from parents through the payment of fees. non-governmental organisations, such as churches, charities and companies, fund ecd centres through donations and community members assist with funding as a form of social responsibility. according to viviers, biersteker and moruane (2013), in south africa, there is no clear legal obligation for the government to fund ecd programmes for children below the age of five years. belfield (2007), on the one hand, note that government funding, however, can be a significant source of funds for ecd, mostly for families with low incomes who cannot afford to pay the fees charged by centres. on the other hand, atmore (2012) argues that a substantial part of ecd centre funding nationwide is from parents who pay fees. the primary means of financial provisioning at ecd centres are fees charged to parents. fees are charged to fund resources such as purchasing teaching and learning materials, employing and retaining qualified staff, and providing infrastructure that promotes quality learning at the centre. ecd centre principals charge high user fees to make needed resources available for quality service delivery at the centre. however, many families do not have the financial resources to pay for ecd services because of poverty (atmore, 2012). a lack of financial resources will invariably affect the acquisition of learning resources at the centre (aina & bipath, 2022; biersteker et al., 2016). as a result, the principal will face a big challenge due to a lack of financial means to obtain appropriate resources that enhance quality ecce. for example, the principal will have to deal with issues such as poor infrastructure, inadequate play equipment, unavailability of learning materials and toys, and the presence of unmotivated practitioners due to low wages and salaries. 2.6 roles of ecd centre principals in accessing resources britto et al. (2011) emphasise that ecd centres may not necessarily be able to provide all the quality indicators (resources) privately but should get support from the ecological system around them. this sourcing becomes the responsibility of the ecd principal, being the one who directs and controls the centre’s activities. the principal is expected to develop strategies in accessing learning resources at an affordable rate or as donations from their immediate or external environment. according to britto et al. (2011), a framework on the ecological systems level with cross-cutting quality dimensions signifies that ecd centres do not have to rely on their internally generated resources but should access resources from their immediate and external ecological environment such as parents, community members, government agencies, private organisations, ngos and international communities. for the principals to connect and access resources from their immediate and external environment, they will need practical leadership skills (britto et al., 2011). therefore, the ecd principal’s role in accessing resources can be stated as follows: to predict how resources can be accessed, to create conducive working conditions and policies on how to access resources, to create awareness of the centre to raise funds, to create and manage local support networks within their immediate environment, and to build good communication and relationships with the relevant stakeholders such as parents, community members, non-profit organisations and business owners, especially those that sell learning resources for ecd centres and international organisations. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 1182022 40(2): 118-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) 3. conceptual framework this section aims to describe the roles of ecd principals in accessing resources concerning the framework for ecological and systems-levels settings and cross-cutting quality dimensions (britto et al., 2011). this framework is appropriate because it looks into features that will enhance access and quality in ecce programmes. for example, britto et al. (2011) assert that accessibility and quality characteristics must be discussed higher than the environmental system level to facilitate sustainable and meaningful progress in ecce programmes in developing countries. the framework (see figure 1) for ecological and systems-levels settings and cross-cutting quality dimensions used by britto et al. (2011) focuses on promoting ecce programmes and the maintenance of quality. britto et al. (2011) facilitated the incorporation of ecological system rates with efficient cross-cutting dimensions. the level of ecological systems is split into two settings and systems, and five dimensions of quality that cut across and affects the system at different levels. this framework was chosen because it examines elements that will improve access and quality in ecce programmes, specifically in the south african context. for example, britto et al. (2011) argue that accessibility and quality attributes must be articulated at a higher than the environmental system to allow long-term and meaningful success in ecce programmes in underdeveloped countries. figure 1 depicts where to seek support for the resources that guided this research. figure 1: ecological settings and systems levels and cross-cutting quality dimensions (britto et al., 2011:10). 3.1 the ecological system britto et al. (2011:10) advocate the “integration of ecological systems levels with crosscutting quality dimensions” as depicted in figure 1, show five cross-cutting dimensions of quality (interaction and communication, leadership and management, physical and spatial characteristics, resource levels and distribution, and alignment with community, societal values, and principles) in conjunction with the pyramid of ecological levels and systems. the environments with adults and children on the right-hand side of the pyramid determines the delivery of the desired outcomes, that is, quality ecce, for young children. the set of levels http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 1192022 40(2): 119-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 aina & bipath accessing resources that promote quality education for young children of the ecological systems “is divided into [two] settings and systems, and five dimensions of quality which cut across and impact the system at different levels” (britto et al., 2011:10). the settings and systems are explained below. 3.2 setting and system quality is usually conceptualised at the programme or the setting level. conceptualisation settings are defined as areas of physical activity within which ecd services are executed (shinn & yoshikawa, 2008; tseng & seidman, 2007). settings are “physically and temporarily bound spaces in which groups of people or members of target populations and interventionists interact” (britto et al., 2011:10). such ecce settings could include formal or informal community-based programmes such as ecd centres. generally, quality ecce is determined by resources in terms of structure and process such as infrastructure, space, learning materials, staff-child ratios, qualifications and compensation of practitioners as well as processes such as instruction quality, and aspects of practitioner-children and childrenchildren interaction indicators in the ecce setting (bonetti & brown, 2018; excell, 2016; woodhead, 1996). britto et al. (2011) suggest that a comprehensive view of quality ecce should include ecological standards outside the environments to a broader systems level. britto et al. (2011) imply that the ecd centres should not mainly depend on the resources from their settings to promote quality ecce, but also attempt to access support from the ecological systems around them. for example, there should be active and accessible support systems from their immediate community at the regional, provincial, national and international levels. britto et al. (2011) define systems as the larger organisational and institutional structures within which there are ecd centres. three layers define the structures: “local support systems, sub-national systems, and national systems” (la paro, pianta & stuhlman, 2004). local support networks evolve from the settings level to provide direct assistance and training to each programme’s site. examples are “local supply channels for material resources (e.g., cash and food), local delivery systems (such as local health centres that provide health services to ecd programmes), and training and support structures (providing supervision and training for site-level service providers)” (britto et al., 2011: 12). support systems may be based on non-governmental organisations (ngos). the sub-national systems level is described as support from regions within the country, state, province, city or municipal levels. at the level of national structures, national agencies such as the ministries of finance, education or health, and national and international ngos or for-profit organisations may provide unique funding for ecce programmes. in relation to this section, it implies that the ecd centres should not depend primarily on the resources from their settings to promote quality ecce, but also attempt to access support from the ecological systems around them. for example, there should be active and accessible support systems from their immediate community at the regional, provincial, national and international levels. such a support system could be interpreted in terms of ongoing training to the ecd practitioners and staff as well as the provision of materials and other learning resources. 4. methodology the interpretive paradigm was chosen for this study because it makes it easier to comprehend and describe the event under exploration (thanh & thanh, 2015). the interpretive paradigm, for example, revealed a lot about the participants’ experiences with accessing resources in their centres (ferreira, 2012). a qualitative research approach was utilised to acquire firsthand knowledge in the research setting (neuman, 2011) and interpret and comprehend http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 1202022 40(2): 120-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) the participants’ experiences accessing resources to meet the study objectives. a multiple case study research design was adopted through the selected sample of four registered ecd centres, two from the township areas and two from the suburban areas of pretoria, gauteng province, south africa. multiple case studies allow selecting several cases, which is advantageous because it highlights variations between multiple cases (crowe et al., 2011). face-to-face semi-structured individual interviews were used to generate data from eight purposively selected participants from the participating registered ecd centres. purposeful sampling involves “selecting participants with fundamental knowledge or information related to the study’s purpose” (lodico, spaulding & voegtle, 2010), hence its adoption in this study. a semi-structured interview schedule was employed with pre-structured questions to elicit pertinent responses to answer the research questions. the participants comprised four ecd centre principals and four practitioners. the essence of involving practitioners in the interview sessions are to understand their experiences regarding accessing learning resources. the criteria for selecting participants were that they were expected to have at least three years job experience in their present post. their level of experience and knowledge was expected to enable effective answering of the research questions (creswell & poth, 2018). the interview sessions were audio-recorded to capture the conversation verbatim and to offer information for validity checks as suggested by mcmillan and schumacher (2014). field notes were taken to capture the body language of the participants. table 1 shows the participants’ profiles. table 1: profile of the sites and participants centre location fees per child per month participant code position age/gender years of experience township 1 r450 pt1 principal 32/female 4 – in current centre pt2 practitioner 42/female 4 – in current centre township 2 r400 pt3 principal 36/female 5 – in current centre pt4 practitioner 30/female 6 – in current centre suburban 1 r2300 ps5 principal 61/female 14 – in other centres; 25 – in current centre ps6 practitioner 61/female 18 – in another centre; 12 – in current centre suburban 2 r1350 ps7 principal 46/female 6 – in another centre; 3 – in current centre ps8 practitioner 29/female 6 – in another centre; 1 – in current centre the data analysis was done thematically through transcribing the data and familiarising ourselves with the data; codes were generated, after which sub-themes were formulated; themes were then established guided by the research questions and the theoretical framework. the purpose of analysing the data thematically was to identify significant themes and provide answers to the phenomena under study (maguire & delahunt, 2017). ethical principles were observed by initially obtaining clearance to conduct research from the relevant bodies – the university ethics committee (clearance number – ec 18/11/02) and the department of social development, gauteng province, south africa. before collecting the data, the participants were informed about the study’s purpose and their rights to withdraw from the study at any http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 1212022 40(2): 121-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 aina & bipath accessing resources that promote quality education for young children point in time (mcmillan & schumacher, 2014). member-checking (nieuwenhuis, 2016) was used to ensure the study’s trustworthiness by returning the transcribed data to the participants and asking them to indicate whether the data accurately reflected their actual responses during the interview sessions. pseudonyms/codes were used to conceal the participants’ true identities and ensure non-disclosure of information about the ecd centres and the participants (yin, 2016). 5. findings and discussion this section depicts the findings and discussion derived from the interpretative analysis of the data generated. the participants were asked questions to provide answers to the research questions, such as how they sourced funds to purchase learning resources and pay salaries, how principals related with parents and community members to access learning resources, and which tools were used in communicating and relating with the community members to seek support regarding learning resources. the sub-themes that emerged were insufficient sources of funds to acquire resources for the day to day running of the centre and relationship with the parents and community members to access resources. table 2 depicts the emerged themes. table 2: emerged themes codes and categories sub-themes themes • government funding • users fees • system for fees collection insufficient sources of funds to acquire resources for the day to day running of the centre financial challenges • communication book • whatsapp • principals’ forum • parents’ meeting relationship with the parents and community members to access resources lack of involvement from parents and community members 5.1 financial challenges financial resources are at the root of achieving any worthwhile goal, including quality ecce. the participants’ descriptions of sources of funding are discussed below. the participating registered ecd centres acquire funds mainly from the parents’ payment of school fees and some financial support from the government. whereas township centres received financial assistance from the government, the data revealed that suburban centres received no such assistance. the interview question posted to the participants to generate this data was: “describe how you access funds to purchase learning resources to improve the quality of care and education offered in your centre?” the participants responded as follows: tp1: the dsd gives stipends for food and also subsidises our salaries. tp3: government funding is usually allocated yearly. i usually submit our papers in terms of the constitution, and they give us money quarterly, which provides for salary increases, food, educational equipment and materials. tp4: the centre got funding from the dsd, but sometimes if the money comes in late it affects our salary payment. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 1222022 40(2): 122-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) the responses from the township participants indicate that they received money from the government to augment the payment of salaries, buy food, educational equipment and material. tp3, in her statement, indicates that it is the principal’s responsibility to submit paper documents to the government before funds will be allocated. it was also mentioned that when the money from the government comes in late, it causes a delay in the payment of staff salaries. this response indicates that the staff members are well aware and informed regarding the centre’s financial position. this funding from the provincial government confirms the suggestion by britto et al. (2011) that provincial departments should fund ecd centres. however, the suburban centres do not enjoy any form of financial support from the provincial departments of dsd. the suburban participants responded as follows: ps5: we do not get any form of financial support or assistance from the government. ps7: our source of income is through fee payments from the parents, no financial support from the government. the suburban centres have different experiences regarding government financial support, even though they are registered with the department of social development (dsd). it is important to know about other means of sourcing funds to access learning resources at the suburban centres. although the township registered ecd centres in this study obtain some financial assistance from the government, this is inadequate as they are still unable to acquire the necessary teaching and learning resources that promote quality ecce. refer to the township statements below: tp2: we do not have enough equipment outside. for example, like the sandpit we do not have, this also helps the young children to develop motor skills by using a spade to scoop sand into the bucket, but this we don’t have. tp1: for birth to three years children, we don’t have playing equipment for them at the playground. tp4: uh-hmm, regarding equipment and toys, if we have more, it will be better, as they improve the learning outcomes. having adequate play equipment is recognised as one of the positive structural inputs that promotes quality ecce (fenech, 2011; woodhead, 1996). the data collected revealed that the ecd centres located in the townships do not have sufficient play equipment, especially for young children from birth to three years of age (as indicated in their responses above). this finding suggests that apart from getting financial support from the government, the ecd centres’ principals should develop effective management and leadership skills to enable them to access other funding sources from their immediate and external environments. this action is described in the ecological systems framework as support from the local (organisations that support settings with learning materials, resources and training), sub-national and national levels (britto et al., 2011). the information (table 1) showed that all participating centres charged fees, although there is a considerable difference between the fees charged in the township and suburban centres. the differences in the fee structure are aligned to the parents’ socio-economic status. the gap in fee structures was reflected in the affluent suburban centres; centre c charged r 2 300.00 per month, and centre d charged r1 350.00 per month. thus, the affluent parents registered their children in well-equipped centres and paid high fees, which they find http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 1232022 40(2): 123-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 aina & bipath accessing resources that promote quality education for young children affordable since they get value for money. this further deepens the gap in access to highquality ecce because most parents cannot afford to send their young children to centres that charge fees they cannot pay. therefore, ecd centre principals/managers (especially centres in less privileged areas) need to develop other avenues of accessing resources that would enable them to offer quality care and education to young children. 5.2 involvement/lack of involvement of parents and community members the centre personnel must communicate harmoniously and interactively on an ongoing basis with parents and other community members to obtain their cooperation, thus involving them gainfully in the centre’s activities. this involvement has been recognised as a way of improving quality learning. according to woodhead (1996), the relationship among adults in early childhood settings is identified as one of the quality indicators in ecd centres. for instance, the centre’s principal must regularly connect with parents and other community members harmonically and engagingly to acquire their cooperation and involve them effectively in the centre’s activities. community involvement is also essential to access the necessary support from community members, which could lead to connecting with private organisations, ngos and international communities to upgrade facilities (and thus performances) as suggested by the ecology system of britto et al. (2011). the following are the experiences of the participants regarding tools used to create sound relationships with the parents and community members to involve them: tp1: through our communication books, we tell parents about their children and also about the needs of the centre. tp3: we use communication books, and sometime i meet one-on-one with parents to support the centre regarding particular needs. tp4: we have notice board outside the office where we put information on events on fund raising and also learning materials needed by the centre. the affluent suburban centres appear to use social media such as whatsapp, which is a quicker and easier way of passing information onto the parents. this approach was narrated as follows: spr5cc: each practitioner also has a whatsapp group with all the parents in her class, so we communicate that way and follow up with parents, particularly the parents that promised to donate used toys or learning materials. spr7cd: we have a whatsapp group for the parents per class. all my parents are on this class whatsapp group; we make general announcement on how parents can support the centre to improve the quality of services given to their children. the township centres access community engagement through the ecd principals’ forum. the following descriptions were given: tp1: the ecd principals’ forums meet to discuss the kids, policies, practitioners and how to pay them. they also help in communication with the community members on how to get support. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 1242022 40(2): 124-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) p3: the principals’ forum is a platform for principals. they deal with early childhood development education issues, and they meet to discuss a way forward on how to improve their individual centres. all the principals and centre managers attend the meetings. tp3 continued: from the principals’ forum, we do get information regarding workshops, training sessions and seminars. normally, the ecd principals’ forum comes up with information, and they communicate with the community who bring relevant information to us on how they can support us. the suburban centres have a variety of mechanisms of relating and involving their immediate community compared to the township centres. the suburban participants explained how they collaborate with their immediate environment as follows: ps5: we use our facebook page to communicate to the larger community. we do outreaches; for example, during last year’s “madiba day”, we distributed materials and cleaned the environment. during these activities, people walking around ask us questions, and we tell them who we are and what our needs are. we also involve the community by connecting with organisations around us. these organisations also sponsor us sometimes by donating food and learning materials because they feel it’s a good cause. ps7: we are on the whatsapp group of the street; they know we are here, and we invite them to our open-day programmes, and we also let them know how they can help the young children in the centre through their donations. we also organise concerts to advertise the centre and also get funds. there are businesses along the streets, and they know we are here. this theme helped to understand how the ecd centres collaborate through the relational skills of the principal with parents and community members to access resources. the data showed that the participants used message books, whatsapp, and parents’ meetings to communicate and involve adults in their learning environment. the township centres access resources from their community through ecd principals’ forums, which comprised ecd centre owners and principals. through the principals’ forum, they could communicate with the community and accessed support in terms of acquiring learning materials and training from the community. the suburban centres did not have a principals’ forum, but they had effective channels of relating to and involving their community. the suburban centres collaborated with the immediate community through community projects, outreaches, concerts, street advertising, whatsapp groups, and the businesses in the community. regrettably, none of the centres related to or involved their external environments as suggested in the ecological systems levels and cross-cutting quality dimensions of britto et al. (2011). this implies that the township and suburban participating centres only drew on resources from the immediate environment, which is inadequate to promote quality ecce. the findings revealed that the roles of the participating ecd principals regarding accessing resources were inadequate as they could not access resources from the external environment as emphasised by britto et al.’s (2011) framework. as a result, recommendations for ecd centre principals are given in the section below on how to connect and access learning materials in the immediate and external environment to improve the quality of care and education delivered in ecd centres. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 1252022 40(2): 125-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 aina & bipath accessing resources that promote quality education for young children 6. conclusion and recommendations this article aimed to describe the experiences of ecd centre principals regarding accessing resources that promote quality ecce. britto et al.’s (2011) framework on ecological levels was used to understand and describe the experiences of the ecd centre principals in accessing resources that promote quality ecce. as recommended in the framework that guided this study, to effect sustainable and meaningful change in ecce programmes in developing countries such as south africa, features of access and quality (resources) must be addressed at each level of the ecological system. for example, ecd centres should develop strategies for getting resources/support from their immediate and external environments. achieving this task (accessing learning support from immediate and external environments) would only be possible if the ecd centre principal/manager possessed effective and efficient management/leadership abilities, a strong will and displayed active emotional intelligence. their management/leadership abilities must include flexibility, creativity, social skills, problemsolving skills, integrity, maintaining a good attitude, sound communication skills and being a visionary. these attributes assist with harmonising the immediate and external environments of ecd centres. further recommendations include that ecd centre principals should also enrol for and attend national and international seminars, symposiums, conferences and workshops to meet and collaborate with their contemporaries. departments of education could create platforms for ecd centre principals to be exposed to various avenues to develop their leadership capabilities, especially the ability to connect and involve their immediate and external environment. the principals and practitioners should engage in partnerships with parents regarding the growth and development of young children. ecd centres could be proactive and collaborate with their community through other community initiative programmes such as centre concerts, centre outreach programmes and ecd centre engagement in community projects to make their needs in terms of learning resources known. references aina, a.y. & bipath, k. 2022. availability and use of infrastructural resources in promoting quality early childhood care and education in registered early childhood development centres. south african journal of childhood education, 12(1): a980. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajce. v12i1.980 atmore, e. 2012. challenges facing the early childhood development sector in south africa. south african journal of childhood education, 2(1): 120-139. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajce. v2i1.25 atmore, e. 2013. early childhood development in south africa–progress since the end of apartheid. international journal of early years education, 21(2-3): 152-162. https://doi.org/10 .1080/09669760.2013.832941 atmore, e. 2019. an interpretive analysis of the early childhood development policy trajectory in post-apartheid south africa. unpublished doctoral dissertation. stellenbosch: stellenbosch university. babbie, e. & mouton, j. 2012. the practice of social research. cape town, south africa: oxford university press. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 https://doi.org/10.4102/sajce.v12i1.980 https://doi.org/10.4102/sajce.v12i1.980 https://doi.org/10.4102/sajce.v2i1.25 https://doi.org/10.4102/sajce.v2i1.25 https://doi.org/10.1080/09669760.2013.832941 https://doi.org/10.1080/09669760.2013.832941 1262022 40(2): 126-128 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.9 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) belfield, c.r. & levin, h.m. 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and the car was part of this portfolio. the activity that was the focus of the teachers’ action research (reported on in the portfolios) was learners’ engagement in project-based learning such as, among others, ethnobotanical surveys. during the slp in june 2017, teachers were shown how learners could engage in ethnobotanical surveys. in the portfolios, teachers had to reflect on their own and learners’ experiences of engaging in such ethnobotanical surveys. these portfolios were analysed, and several emerging themes were identified from the data. individual interviews were also conducted with a sample of teachers. three of these themes are presented in this paper. the findings indicate that project-based learning holds affordances such as the realization of affective outcomes in science education. it also assists science teachers to become more critical and reflective, and enhances selfdirected learning. one of the recommendations in this paper is that car should be promoted in both pre-service and in-service teacher education programmes. keywords: classroom action research; project-based learning; ethnobotanical surveys; teacher professional development; prolepsis. 1. introduction in 2016 the north-west university (nwu) offered a short-learning programme for life sciences and natural sciences teachers, with the primary aim of assisting them to better contextualize curriculum topics through the infusion of indigenous knowledge. although the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) advocates for the inclusion of indigenous knowledge, it does not provide teachers with much guidance (or the necessary subject content) on how to facilitate such epistemological bordercrossing in the science classroom. most teachers were not trained in how to infuse indigenous knowledge into caps themes, as several researchers have pointed out josef de beer north-west university josef.debeer@nwu.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v37i2.5 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 37(2): 67-79 date published: 27 november 2019 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:josef.debeer@nwu.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.5 http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie 68 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) (mothwa, 2011; jautse, thambe & de beer, 2016; cronje, de beer & ankiewicz, 2015; de beer & petersen, 2016). the short-learning programme (slp) dealt with how to incorporate indigenous knowledge (ik) in the science classroom and how it can be aligned to the tenets of science. taylor and cameron (2016) show that there are three different perspectives on the infusion of ik into science. the first view is the inclusive perspective, i.e., that ik is part of science. the second exclusive perspective is that ik and science are separate domains of knowledge. this, among others, entail that ik cannot be subjected to the same verification processes as science. the third perspective is that ik and science should be seen as intersecting domains. zinyeka, onwu & braun (2016) show that there are aspects about which both systems agree. cronje et al. (2015) concur, and show that ik shares several similar tenets with the natural sciences. among others, both ik and the natural sciences are characterized by their empirical, tentative and inferential nature. there are, of course, also differences. science is predictable, whereas ik often includes a metaphysical component. furthermore, ik is holistic, whereas natural science follows a reductionist approach (cronje et al., 2015:324). zinyeka et al. (2016:257) show that the most important difference between science and ik, which a teacher should take note of, is that: ik systems accept aspects of the universe as mysterious, their sources and ways of knowing embrace spirituality, whereas modern or orthodox science and its useful methods and ways of knowing does away with the notion of spirituality and instead sees the universe as being knowable. in the design of the slp we highlighted the tenets that are shared between ik and science, but did not focus on the metaphysical component of ik. in the cooperative learning activity, namely, de bono’s thinking hats, teachers briefly engaged with the metaphysical nature of ik. this raises questions regarding content validity. zamanzadeh, ghahramanian, rassouli, abbaszadeh, alavi-majd and nikanfar (2015:165) define content validity as the “ability of the selected items to reflect the variables of the construct in the measure, and addresses the degree to which items of an instrument sufficiently represent the content domain”. in the design of the slp the metaphysical nature of ik was downplayed. consequently, this aspect was not included in the research instruments. odora hoppers (2004) refers to the marginalization of ik in the classroom as ‘knowledge apartheid’. where teachers do refer to ik, it is often done through an example or two, but such engagement lacks the rigor of science embedded within the syntactical nature of the subject, and without cognizance of the tenets and nature of science. in describing how ik is often dealt with in the science classroom, de beer and whitlock (2009) use the metaphor of dead biotic tissue preserved in bottles of formaldehyde. during the slp, teachers were shown how learners can engage with ik through inquiry learning. for example, teachers engage hands-on during the programme, using an adapted kirby bauer technique, to test whether muthi (medicinal) plants have antimicrobial activity. this takes teachers (and the learners) on a journey of inquiry learning, where they have to formulate hypotheses, design experiments, make careful observations, and communicate their findings. the kirby bauer laboratory protocol is a simple way of determining the susceptibility of a micro-organism to an antimicrobial substance (present in the medicinal plant). microbe-seeded agar plates are used to test for antimicrobial activity (mitchell & cater, 2000; de beer & whitlock, 2009). such inquiry-based learning opportunities enable learners to see how ik can have its place in the natural sciences. 69 de beer the affordances of project-based learning and classroom action research... figure 1: teachers engage in an adapted kirby-bauer technique apart from its focus on problem-based learning, the slp also emphasized cooperative learning. cooperative learning, according to johnson and johnson (n.d.) provides the foundation for effective self-directed learning. according to these authors, self-directed learning can be defined as a situation in which: (a) the individual is able to define his or her own goals; (b) the goals are related to his or her central needs or values; (c) the individual is able to define the paths (i.e., procedures, strategies, resources) to be taken to achieve the goals; and (d) the achievement of these goals represents a realistic level of aspiration for the individual, i.e., not too high or too low, but enough to be challenging (johnson & johnson, n.d.:3). teachers were expected to formulate learning goals for themselves during the slp, and to reflect in their portfolios on how they will pursue these goals. for example, several of the teachers indicated that they were not well-trained in laboratory techniques and microbiological protocols such as the kirby bauer technique, and that they need to improve their knowledge and skills to infuse such inquiry approaches in their teaching. teachers, for example, used de bono’s thinking hats during the slp, to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of including ik in science curriculum themes. since most classrooms are characterized by large learner diversity, with many cultural groups represented, the slp designers included a focus on self-directed learning in the programme. it was hoped 70 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) that teachers would continue learn more about the ik of other cultural groups represented in their classes, so that these may be included in future lessons. after the slp, teachers were given three months to complete an evidence-based portfolio, in which they, for example, had to provide lesson plans in which they showed how they had incorporated ik in their lessons after the slp. in the portfolios teachers also had to provide evidence of reflection on these lessons, and pointers on how they would improve the lessons in future. however, nwu researchers came to realise that the slp had limited success. although teachers expressed their enthusiasm to implement ik in their teaching after the slp, very little transfer actually took place into the classroom after the intervention (white & de beer, 2017; jacobs, 2018; mentz & de beer, 2019). classroom observations and evidence provided b y teachers’ portfolios, suggested that many teachers reverted back to transmission-mode (chalk-and-talk) teaching and learning; with only lip-service paid to ik. this is unfortunate as transfer into the classroom is ‘where the rubber hits the road’, and should be the yard stick to measure the success of teacher professional development programmes. this, of course, is not a new phenomenon. zeichner and tabachnick (1981:7) speak of the “wash out” effect, whereby newly acquired insights and teaching skills are replaced with long-standing practices and beliefs. ramnarain and schuster (2014) provide one possible explanation for this phenomenon. these authors show that systemic pressures (e.g., expectations from parents or principals), often result in ‘teaching-to-the-test’, in order to ensure good learner performance, despite the teacher’s own pedagogical orientations. although many teachers might realise that ik holds affordances for better contextualization of science topics, they might rather limit their teaching to those aspects addressed in the caps curriculum, due to systemic pressure and the limited time (and very prescriptive pace-setters). for this reason, researchers distilled (in true design-based research tradition) design principles for future slps. these are dealt with in another publication (de beer & kriek, n.d.). such design principles include taking real teacher needs into consideration when planning slps; emphasizing inquiry learning; and building these programmes on strong theoretical frameworks. one design principle, which is the focus of this paper, is to assist teachers in their reflective practices. research indicates that reflection is essential for teacher professional development. teachers’ reflective abilities can be enhanced by engaging them in classroom action research (car) (de beer, 2019). teachers who participated in a later slp in the northern cape (june 2017) were therefore exposed to a revised slp (unlike earlier programmes in limpopo and the north west province), in order to ensure more transfer into the science classroom, and enhanced reflective practice. this second slp involved teachers in action research that investigated the affordances of project-based learning in the science classroom. one of the activities that teachers engaged with during the slp was an ethnobotanical survey ( de beer & van wyk, 2011). the northern cape (hantam region) was once the home of many khoisan communities, and many of the teachers (and learners) in the district are of khoisan descent. in this, generally, socio-economically stressed region, many people still use medicines derived from plants growing in the local environment. de beer and van wyk (2011) described a survey whereby learners engage in preparing herbarium voucher specimens of plants from the region; develop a questionnaire; conduct a survey; c o m p i l e a m a t r i x , and then present their findings according to an ethnobotanical knowledge index (eki) and species popularity index (spi). teachers could plan such project-based learning using car. in this paper we present the data collected after teachers engaged in car. 71 de beer the affordances of project-based learning and classroom action research... 2. project-based learning and classroom action research teachers were requested to engage learners in project-based learning after the slp, as described above. furthermore, teachers were required to conduct classroom action research (car), and to reflect on this car in their portfolios. project-based learning: engaging in ethnobotanical surveys (amongst others) krajcik and shin (2016:276) state that project-based learning environments have six key characteristics, namely: • project-based learning should start with a driving question, or a problem to be solved; • the teacher should clearly determine the learning goals to be achieved; • learners should explore the driving question by participating in scientific practices; • learners should engage in collaborative activities to find solutions to the driving question; • learners are scaffolded with learning technologies; and • learners create a set of tangible products that address the driving question. for the ethnobotanical surveys, a suitable driving question could be: ‘ indigenous knowledge is an oral tradition. if knowledgeable elders die, this knowledge is often lost to future generations. how can we, therefore, preserve the rich ethnobotanical knowledge of the namaqua district?’ there are so many aspects to this driving question that learners need to consider. for example, issues of ethics and intellectual property should be studied. the san became the first cultural group in south africa to produce a code for research ethicsan important consideration in biology research (south african san institute, 2017). the question has the potential to engage learners with the complexity of such epistemological border-crossing, and the conundrum of research ethics in the field of ik. apart from ethnobotanical surveys, the facilitators of the slp also referred to other possible ik projects. one such ik project is soap making (in the northern cape there is a strong history of soap making). plants used traditionally for soap making contain relatively large amounts of a group of compounds known as saponins (van wyk & gericke, 2018) that dissolve fat and oily substances. historically animal fat and lye are used in soap making, a process known as saponification (van wyk & gericke, 2018). instead of using lye or caustic soda in this process, plants such as seepganna and asbos can be added. classroom action research mettetal (2002) describes car as midway between teacher reflection at the one end, and traditional educational research at the other. classroom action research is more databased and systematic than reflection, but also less formal and controlled than educational research (gravett & de beer, 2015). during the slp in the northern cape teachers were shown how car should follow steps such as: 72 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) a. identifying a research problem (and formulating a research question); b. planning an intervention (in this case, project-based learning); c. acting and collecting data or evidence (e.g., in the form of learners’ portfolios or projects); d. analysing this data; and e. evaluating the intervention and deciding on how this will inform teaching practice in future (gravett & de beer, 2015). mostly, teachers decided to focus their car on ethnobotanical surveys, although a few teachers did choose other interventions. examples of projects other than ethnobotanical surveys included a project on the water resources in drought-ridden calvinia; and a project on soap-making, that was historically an important cultural practice in the region. however, even the latter project on soap-making included ethnobotanical aspects. this teacher’s learners realized that the asbos (mesembryanthemum junceum, a karoo plant) was used traditionally to make ‘boerseep’ (traditional soap), as this plant’s lye was used instead of caustic soda. research methods and ethical considerations this paper reflects on design-based research, during which life sciences and natural sciences teachers from the northern cape (namaqua district) engaged in car. data were collected from 37 teachers who participated in the intervention. not all of these teachers submitted portfolios; of the 24 portfolios received, six of teachers misunderstood the car assignment. these teachers thus described projects in which learners engaged, without framing them in terms of car. this paper, therefore, focuses on the data obtained from 18 portfolios. individual interviews were conducted with a few (n = 5) of these teachers, and convenience sampling was used. teachers were asked to describe their lived experiences of engaging in car. these interviews were transcribed and analysed. all submitted portfolios, which included teachers’ reflections on car, were analysed. i utilized saldana’s (2009) coding technique. in-vivo codes (codes taken from the exact words spoken by the participants, or captured in the portfolios) were identified and grouped into categories, and from these categories, emergent themes were identified. open coding was applied. construct validity of the interview protocol was ensured by asking a panel of experts (including the university’s statistical consultation services) to peruse the protocol. ethical clearance was obtained from the nwu’s faculty of education ethics committee (nwu-00271-16-a2), and we adhered to all the guidelines for ethical research. teachers were assured that they could participate in the slp, even if they chose to not participate in the research. they were also assured that they could withdraw from the research at any stage, without any negative consequences. 3. findings unlike previous cycles of the slp, e.g., the interventions in limpopo province in 2016 (jacobs, 2018; white & de beer, 2017), where little transfer took place into the classroom after the slp, it was encouraging to see that there was a genuine attempt by many northern cape teachers to replace transmission-mode teaching for inquiry learning, and to attempt the car with enthusiasm and dedication. a number of themes were distilled from the data (both portfolios and personal interviews with teachers), of which three are discussed below. 73 de beer the affordances of project-based learning and classroom action research... theme 1: the affective domain took centre stage in both learners’ projectbased learning, and in teachers’ classroom action research given the difficulty of measuring conceptual change, and the complexity of showing a relationship between cognitive gains and a specific intervention, we advised teachers to rather focus on learners’ affective gains during their car. for this reason, the majority of teachers formulated research questions related to affective outcomes, such as: ‘what is the effect of learners’ engagement in an ethnobotanical survey on their attitudes and interest in life sciences?’; or ‘how did learners experience their involvement in ethnobotanical surveys?’. several teachers also researched the views that learners hold, e.g., ‘how does learners’ engagement in a project on making and packaging traditional soap change their views on ik and entrepreneurship development?’ teachers obtained data to answer their research questions through the application of questionnaires, studying artefacts (learners’ projects), and arranging focus group interviews with the learners. close to 80% of the teachers reported that there was a renewed ‘energy’ in the classroom; and that learners were very interested in, and inspired by, the project-based learning. sixteen of the 18 portfolios (90%) included photographs as evidence of learners’ engagement in the respective projects. it was encouraging to note how the facial expressions and body language of the learners indicated intense engagement with, and enjoyment of, the activities. this theme can best be illustrated through a vignette. a teacher in calvinia engaged her grade 10 learners in ethnobotanical surveys. one of the learners, henrico thys, became so interested in the plants of the hantam area that he visited the calvinia library to ask for books on the plants of the region. he was, amongst others, given a thesis on the ethnobotany of the agter-hantam by de beer (2012). in this work, photographs are shown of novice botanists in the area, who were consulted by the researchers. in the book, henrico saw a photograph of his uncle, martiens thys, and this inspired the boy to consider a career in ethnobotany, because of the “knowledge in the blood”. both the portfolios and the interviews conducted with teachers indicated that affective outcomes were achieved, and that the learners enjoyed the learning experience. several teachers also reflected on how this will encourage them to engage in action research more often. one of the teachers commented during the interview that: i did the action research with a very difficult class, and it was wonderful for me to see how the learners were all engaged, and how they got excited about the project. it gave me joy to witness the learners’ enthusiasm. this realization of affective outcomes is important, since authors such as de beer and mothwa (2014) speak of the non-attainment of affective outcomes as the “missing link” in science education. rotherham and willingham (2010) showed that teachers often disregard problemand project-based learning approaches, and rather make use of teacher-centred transmission-mode approaches. these authors state that it is often “a matter of chance rather than the deliberate design of our school system… we cannot afford a system in which receiving a high-quality education is akin to a game of bingo” (rotherham & willingham, 2010:17). i claim that the same can be said for the affective domain. so often teachers hope that such outcomes will be realized, without decisively designing learning opportunities that centre-stage the affective domain. it is, therefore, encouraging that teachers reported on the realization of affective outcomes through such project-based learning. 74 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) theme 2: classroom action research assists science teachers to become more critical reflective practitioners during previous cycles in this design-based research (e.g., in limpopo, north-west province and gauteng), on which authors such as de villiers et al. (2016); de beer and petersen (2016); and white and de beer (2017) have reported, teachers provided very superficial reflections in their portfolios. the researchers came to realize that, given the systemic pressures on teachers (e.g., the full curriculum) many teachers do not make time to reflect on their teaching (mentz & de beer, 2019). figure 2: an example of artefacts from a teachers’ portfolio, reflecting on the ethnobotanical survey the batch of northern-cape portfolios included far more nuanced reflections. one of the reasons for this was the inclusion of car. one of the teachers commented in her portfolio: i have so many times presented this section on water, water pollution and water conservation, yet i always get the idea that the learners are not really interested in this topic. however, as part of my car, i have asked the learners to use the foldscope microscopes1 to study water from different water sources, and to, based on the organisms that they identify in the water, make judgments on the levels of eutrophication. i could not believe learners’ enthusiasm, and the efforts that they have put into this project. this made me to critically think about my teaching, and whether i succeed in stimulating learners’ interest in the curriculum topics. one of the learners indicated to me that he felt like a little scientist when he studied water through the foldscope at home, and his family members were all intrigued by it, and asked him questions. i have seen the value of inquiry approachesalthough i must admit that i do not feel very confident in using 1 a paper-based microscope produced by stanford university, which is imported by the nwu and rolled out in schools, as part of the nrf and fuchs foundation funded project. 75 de beer the affordances of project-based learning and classroom action research... such approaches in the classroom. it is so much easier to go for lectures, and to follow the textbook. in a personal interview, another teacher stated: at first i was terrified by the thought that i should do research. however, i had to do it, since i wanted to submit my portfolio. the classroom action research provided me with new insights into my own teaching. i saw how excited learners became when they did the survey, and gained knowledge on the medicinal plants in the calvinia environment. and this was so gratifying, that i am dedicated to more often engage my learners in such activities. another teacher had the following to say in her portfolio: when my learners presented their projects to the rest of the class, i could not believe that these were the same kids that were so disinterested in the work a month ago. there was an electrifying energy in the air, and i could sense the pride that learners took in their projects. this is of cause the fodder that teachers live on, and i am definitely going to give my learners a similar project next year. however, i at times felt very insecure when learners came to ask questions. this project made me realise how important it is that teachers should be life-long learners. theme 3: classroom action research might enhance teachers’ selfdirected learning knowles (1975:19), generally considered as the progenitor of self-directed learning, described it as “a process by which individuals take the initiative, with or without the assistance of others, in diagnosing their learning needs, formulating learning goals, identifying human and material resources for learning, choosing and implementing appropriate learning strategies, and evaluating outcomes”. teachers mentioned in their portfolios that they felt slightly overwhelmed by having to engage in car. one of the teachers stated that: “i was anxious at first, but upon completion of the car i enjoyed a wonderful sense of accomplishment. i learnt so much!” prolepsis is a teaching technique that van lier (2004:153) describes as “assuming that students know more than they actually do”. in other words, the learning task is conceptualized in such a way that it poses a challenge to the learner. meerkotter (1980), in a classic study, has shown that learning tasks that pose a challenge, and expect behaviour such as analysis, synthesis and evaluation, lead more often to creative learner outputs (compared to learning tasks that merely depend on regurgitation). the portfolio requirement, that teachers should engage in car, could be seen as a form of prolepsis, and teachers were challenged in their professional learning across the zone of proximal teacher development (warford, 2011). several of the teachers rose to the occasion. most of the car projects focused on implementing strategies to address affective outcomes. about half of the projects focused on ethnobotanical surveys, but there were also a few notable exceptions, for example, a project requiring learners to isolate dna from bananas; and a water quality project, where foldscope microscopes were used by the learners. from teachers’ reflections, it became clear that they developed self-directed learning skills in the process. marlize (a teacher in calvinia) realized that she was not very knowledgeable on the indigenous plants of the region. she still chose to give her learners an ethnobotanical survey, and to set a learning goal for herself – to become more acquainted with the local flora. she then identified a knowledgeable person to assist her in her learning 76 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) journey – francois, an attorney who lived on one of the nearby farms, and who happened to be a keen amateur botanist. francois assisted her and the learners to identify less well-known plant species. marlize also consulted library books and the internet on how to conduct car. she submitted a very good action research project, as part of her portfolio. another teacher, who chose a soap-making project, consulted with the curator of the local museum, as well as with holders of this ik in the region, to learn more about the science of soap making. 4. conclusion and recommendations the theoretical framework that underpins these slps for teachers is social-constructivism. in the design of these slps the developers took cognizance of warford’s (2011) adaptation of the well-known vygotsky construct of the zone of proximal development (zpd) – the zone of proximal teacher development (zptd). in scaffolding teacher professional development across the zptd, the technique of prolepsis seems helpful. this paper focuses on the affordances of teacher engagement in car. the data shows that car assists in the development of teachers’ reflection skills, and that it could also enhance self-directed learning. however, our data also shows that slps have limited value, and that teacher professional development should preferably take place in longitudinal and systemic communities of practice. the intention of the project-based learning and car was to provide an opportunity for teachers to become more reflective practitioners, and to develop more nuanced understandings of the nature of science. although the slp, and car assignment, did make teachers more aware of the critical role of reflection, and they developed a better understanding of the nature of science, such a short intervention is not adequate. post-intervention classroom observations showed that some of the teachers had difficulty in addressing ik in learner-centred ways (white & de beer, 2017; mentz & de beer, 2019); and to effectively facilitate problem-based learning in the classroom. it is, therefore, important to consider such competency development, in terms of problem-based learning, in both preand in-service teacher education. one example of best practice is the ohio schools project (mackenzie, 2011) where science teachers were invited to participate in research conducted in laboratories, with scientists, in an attempt to make teachers more aware of the nature of science. mackenzie (2011) speaks of the ‘ecology of the classroom’ – a learning space created by the teacher in which the learners engage in authentic science and develop more nuanced understandings of the nature of science. to this effect, pretorius (2015), in her intervention, exposed a number of johannesburg science teachers, who were all members of a community of practice, to research at the african centre for dna barcoding (acdb). teachers worked for a week with researchers in the acdb and engaged in processes that most of them were unfamiliar with, e.g., the polymerase chain reaction (pcr). this opportunity provided teachers with more nuanced understandings of the nature of science. a similar intervention was presented to science teachers in the potchefstroom area in 2018 (sebotsa, de beer & kriek, 2019). it is difficult to provide a similar opportunity during a slp of two or three days. however, i am of the opinion that elements of this were present in the action projects that teachers and learners engaged in. 5. i conclude with two recommendations: classroom action research should receive more attention in both pre-service and inservice teacher education. i concur with john slaughter, as quoted in chmielewski and stapleton (2009:53), who said that “research is to teaching what sin is to confession. if you don’t participate in the former, you have very little to say in the latter”. unfortunately, the literature 77 de beer the affordances of project-based learning and classroom action research... shows that most teachers do not engage in educational research. chow, chu, travares and lee (2015) provide a reason for this unfortunate state – that teachers lack training in research methodology and research skills. in addition, time often does not allow for classroom research, and schools do not always value the role of the teacher as a researcher. such teacher professional development is best achieved within well-functioning communities of practice. teachers engaging in car need ‘critical friends’ with whom they can share ideas. in the namaqua district in the northern cape, schools are often 200 km or more apart, which make the establishment of communities of practice very challenging (except when it happens within the context of a specific school). however, on-line communities of practice might provide a viable alternative, if teachers have sufficient internet connectivity. olivier, van der westhuizen, laubscher and bailey (2019:4) state that e-learning can provide affordances in terms of both contextualized learning and mutual support: “technology has to be appropriate to the community that it serves and meet and satisfy the socio-cultural needs of local people”. this is an aspect that needs to be considered when presenting future slps. 6. acknowledgement the author acknowledges the funding provided by the national research foundation (nrf) and fuchs foundation, which made this research possible. views expressed are not necessarily those of the nrf or fuchs foundation. references chmielewski, j.g. & stapleton, m.g. 2009. the undergraduate research experience: it’s not for everyone, students and faculty alike. bios 80(2), 53–58. https://doi.org/10.1893/011.080.0201 chow, k.c.k., chu, s.k.w., ravares, n. & lee, c.w.y. 2015. teachers as researchers: a discovery of their emerging role and impact through a school-university collaborative research. brock education journal 24(2), 20–39. https://doi.org/10.26522/brocked.v24i2.374 cronje, a., de beer, j. & ankiewicz, p. 2015. the development and use of an instrument to investigate science teachers’ views on indigenous knowledge. african journal of research in mathematics, science and technology education, 19(3), 319–332. https://doi.org/10.1080/1 0288457.2015.1108567 de beer, j. 2012. an ethnobotanical survey of the agter-hantam, northern cape province. unpublished msc dissertation. johannesburg: university of johannesburg. de beer, j. 2019. cultural-historical activity theory as a practical lens to guide classroom action research in the biology classroom. the american biology teacher 81(6), 395 – 402. https://doi.org/10.1525/abt.2019.81.6.395 de beer, j. & kriek, j. 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science teaching. african journal of research in mathematics, science and technology education, 20(3), 256–266. https://doi.org/10.1080/18117295.2016.1239963 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165 http://trust-project.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/san-code-of-research-ethics-booklet-final.pdf http://trust-project.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/san-code-of-research-ethics-booklet-final.pdf https://doi.org/10.1080/10288457.2016.1147800 http://uccllt.ucdavis.edu/events/ulcctpp/leo.php http://uccllt.ucdavis.edu/events/ulcctpp/leo.php https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2010.08.008 https://doi.org/10.15171/jcs.2015.017 https://doi.org/10.1177/002248718103200302 https://doi.org/10.1177/002248718103200302 https://doi.org/10.1080/18117295.2016.1239963 135 research article 2022 40(4): 135-151 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) early childhood studentteachers’ experiences of blended learning using community of inquiry as theoretical framework abstract amongst the contemporary needs of societies in the fourth industrial revolution, are student-teachers who are adaptable, ethical, and literate in developing technology-mediated environments. cultivating such teachers requires engaging them experientially in blended learning practices. we explored 155 student-teachers’ experiences of blended learning, at a south african institution for higher education, by using the community of inquiry (coi) as theoretical framework. we created cognitive, social, and teaching presences within the initial teacher education module on their learning management system, blackboard learntm. utilising explanatory mixed-method as research approach enabled us to compare student-teachers’ experiences of the three presences using a likert-type questionnaire and reflective feedback. studentteachers’ online engagement reflected a good cognitive and teaching presence; whilst their social presence was maintained using disparate social media applications and consequently sidestepping this higher education institution’s learning management system. social constructivists endorse socially situated knowledge, collaborative validation of understanding, and one’s own construction of meaning. supposing that student-teachers education social studies for democratic citizenship education necessitate social presence as it precedes cognitive and teaching presences. the implication for higher education institutions is to create a sustainable online social presence within their learning management systems for prospective teacher citizens to be better prepared for technology-mediated milieus. keywords: blended learning, community of inquiry, democratic education, early childhood education, initial teacher education, learning management systems, social studies, technologymediated environment 1. introduction and rationale the present-day pandemic, coronavirus disease (covid-19), revolutionised education, especially for initial teacher education (ite) in south africa, which predominantly uses face-to-face as the mode of delivery. educators across sectors had to substitute ‘traditional pedagogies’ in a physical space for cyber environments. the events of 2020 author: dr hannelie du preez1 dr joyce west1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria, south africa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v40i4.6186 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(4): 135-151 published: 23 december 2022 received: 8 april 2022 accepted: 20 september 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1194-427x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3916-9754 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 1362022 40(4): 136-151 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) transfigured educators’ perceptions of the utility of information and communication technology (icts) and learning management systems (lms) to utilise virtual pedagogies to deliver the intended curricula. twenty-twenty is a watershed year in teaching where technology-mediated milieus had to be fashioned post-haste to sustain cognitive, social, and teaching presences across all education institutions. the ‘new normal’ demanded, from all educators, to draw on their knowledge, resources, skills, and dispositions to implement a cyber-physical environment that is conducive to effective teaching and learning (mpofu, 2020). rapid changes to technology, education, and societal patterns insist humankind’s efforts for immediate interconnectedness across time and space (rizvi & lingard, 2000), for example global citizenship, fourth industrial revolution (4ir). advancements in technology progressively transform societies and education to provide access to knowledge systems and tools across virtual, spatial, time, and social boundaries (du preez & van niekerk, 2018). education facilitates cultivating child citizens by developing, utilising, disseminating, and integrating knowledge systems into their daily lives. thus, society depends on educational institutions to equip child and teacher citizens to function in an ever-changing world and keep pace with the generational transitions (e.g., generations x, y & z) so children do not become estranged from teachers due to technological advancements (deca, 2016; du preez & van niekerk, 2018). merging face-to-face interactions with collaborative-online learning environments at higher educational institutions (hei) create and enlarges the scope for lifelong learning (king & fricker, 2002). it offers an opportunity for student-teachers to demonstrate mobility and flexibility in their learning and to exercise coping strategies and resilience amidst everchanging circumstances (king & fricker, 2002). virtual pedagogies allow student-teachers to assign new meaning to their teacher identity, promote intergenerational dialogues, and shape their social conscience across contexts (deca, 2016). we argue that first-hand experiences of blended learning environments proactively prepare student-teachers in an unpredictable world for the professional teaching context. we know that scholars contest the value of virtual pedagogies, especially in early childhood education. however, when virtual-mediated milieus are used as a ‘tool’, teachers and children’s continuous development improves (dockett & fleer, 2009). we choose not to exclude virtual pedagogies in ite. it is irresponsible to pretend technology does not impact student-teachers or that they are oblivious of its existence. a virtual pedagogy can thus support heis to attain their goal of developing well-rounded graduates who are: knowledgeable; skilled across learning environments; conscientious; innovative; and adept at teaching within technologymediated milieus. awareness of these demands on heis incites reflective questions, such as: how ‘ready’ is south african educators to adopt a ‘cybernated’ mode of delivery? how can south african heis prepare student-teachers for technology-mediated milieus in the wake of 4ir and covid-19? our research question is: what is early childhood student-teachers’ experiences of blended learning as a mode of delivery using community of inquiry (coi) as a theoretical framework within a social study for democratic education module? http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 1372022 40(4): 137-151 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 du preez & west early childhood student-teachers’ experiences of blended learning 2. literature review 2.1 social studies for democratic citizenship education social studies are a school subject that encompasses knowledge systems, tools, and environments that shape and connect citizens to their past, present, and future (du preez & van niekerk, 2018). considering the complex socio-political history of south africa, the government has raised their efforts to promote citizenship and ensure that the socio-economic and political imbalances of the past are addressed in its national school system (department of education, 2011). curriculum developers constructed credibility and quality education outcomes utilising high knowledge and high skills levels that are grounded within the principles of social transformation; active and critical learning; human rights; social justice; and valuing indigenous knowledge systems (department of education, 2011). in this national curriculum for the foundation phase, a study area life skills is dedicated to social studies for democratic citizenship education. the onus rests on heis for offering ite that equips student-teachers with adept knowledge, skills, and values to interpret the intended curriculum, appropriate early childhood pedagogies, and construct learning environments that truthfully represent social studies for democratic citizenship education (du preez & van niekerk, 2018). as insightfully described by well-known nobel peace prize laureate, kofi annan, in his address to the world conference of ministers responsible for youth in lisbon on 8 august 1998, no one is born a good citizen; no nation is born a democracy. rather, both are processes that continue to evolve over a lifetime. young people must be included from birth. a society cut off from its youth severs its lifeline. 2.2 blended learning and learning management systems blended learning is a pedagogical approach that merges face-to-face and online learning opportunities using diverse educational ict tools in a well-organised learning management system, offering engaged, flexible, and enjoyable learning (dziuban, hartman & moskal, 2004). blended learning offers flexibility because this mode of delivery benefits from both face-to-face/physical learning environments and technology-mediated/virtual milieus to serve its intended audience by offering content, resources, and competencies (manwaring et al., 2017; spring, graham & ikahihifo, 2018). the success or failure of blended learning hinges on the attainment of learning outcomes and personal learning satisfaction when face-to-face and online environments are fused (hew & cheung, 2014). blended learning is transformative by mobilising education communities to use comprehensive and cohesive software, also known as a learning management system (lms), instructional management system (ims), course management system (cms), learning content management system (lcms), virtual learning environment (vle), virtual learning system (vls), learning portal, or e-learning platform (wright et al., 2014). educational institutions utilise such lms software to enable educators to centralise topics/courses/modules to be accessed by learners/students, thereby enabling educators to plan, implement, facilitate, diversify, assess, and monitor teaching, learning and socialisation. lms are used worldwide across most heis. some examples of these lms are blackboard learn™, desire2learn™, instructure canvas™, moodle™, pearson learningstudio and sakai.3™ (adzharuddin & ling, 2013; wright et al., 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 1382022 40(4): 138-151 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) for this inquiry, we used the hei’s software licence for blackboard learn™ to centralise content, assessment, collaboration, and the management of information behind a ‘virtual wall’ that provides a measure of authentication, security, and privacy to prepare the intended curriculum. some of the features and functionalities that this lms software offers are as follows (see table 1). table 1: social studies for democratic citizenship education constructed in lms instructional design integrated with the coi framework in the blackboard learn™ environment we provided student-teachers with: s ha re d g oa l • outcomes for the module and how it aligns with the general degree using an online topic and a printable study guide. • a personalised module page to welcome student-teachers. • weekly themes are in the navigation panel. these pages are accessible in fewer than three clicks. • subject-specific content and resources for each theme, based on the structure of a lesson plan or learning experience. • online mashups for accessing link videos, images and presentations. • questionnaire to provide feedback about the social studies for democratic citizenship education module and the seminar. • weekly microsoft powerpoint presentations and any additional documents, using an online group file. in the blackboard learn™ environment we as educational researchers have access to (the): m an ag em en t a nd in fo rm at io n • class lists or rosters that contain information about enrolled students, that are linked with the heis administration platform. • attendance registers to record attendance and absenteeism. this is graded and captured in mygrades and the general grade centre. • grade centre to access, evaluate, and monitor the progress of learning. • activity reports from the retention and performance dashboard to identify and support enrolled student-teachers who are at risk. • immediate and urgent announcements that are directly linked to student-teachers email. in the blackboard learn™ environment we provided student-teachers with (the): c ol la bo ra tio n • calendar reminding student-teachers about new content and assessment deadlines. • online discussion board to post ideas on social studies for democratic citizenship education as a thread. • personalised emails and/or messages between lecturer and student-teachers about content, assessment, and the colloquium groups. • self-enrolment option into an online group where they can collaborate on group assignments using tools such as blogs, emails, files, journals, messages, and wikis. • colloquium groups participating in the seminar were allocated an additional group. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 1392022 40(4): 139-151 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 du preez & west early childhood student-teachers’ experiences of blended learning instructional design integrated with the coi framework in the blackboard learn™ environment we provided student-teachers with: a ss es sm en t • a graded discussion board on a provided topic for all to engage in. • group assignments and a public online rubric that lists the evaluation criteria. • restrict plagiarism through turnitin and empower them to take responsibility for citing all textual and visual content. inspect their own originality of the assignment on a particular given social study for democratic citizenship education topic. • weekly computer-aided assessment (graded test) on social studies for democratic citizenship education topic. the student-teachers obtained three opportunities to improve their mark. adapted from: department for education innovation (n.d.) the community of inquiry (coi) guided us, as the researchers, in designing the look-feel of the lms. the specific areas and activities in table 1 were not assigned to only cognitive, social, or teaching presences. instead, all the presences are interdependent, interwoven, and relevant for online experiences (garrison, anderson & archer, 2010). 2.3 community of inquiry (coi) as theoretical framework the coi framework developed by garrison et al. (2010) was originally intended as theoretical premises for computer conferencing but has since gained popularity among educationalists and researchers. coi offers structure when selecting ict tools for creating quality educational experiences based on three ‘presences’: cognitive, social and teaching (garrison et al., 2010). coi establishes a ‘collaborative-constructivist online learning experience’ (bryansbongey, 2016: 38), suggesting that student-teachers enrolled for social studies become a community of practice because learning is co-constructed. the blackboard learning® is set-up to cater for peer learning where the individual’s understanding of abstract concepts, theories and applications is collaboratively validated by the group and lecturer. coi is also a research-based approach with scientific methods, which enables researchers to practice rigorous and reflective processes for data construction. we have operationalised the coi’s three presences by following the descriptive categories and indicators that apply to a blended learning environment. see table 2. table 2: coi presences, categories, and indicators presences’ definition descriptive categories data set indicators cognitive presence is the ability to confirm understanding through collaboration and reflection in a community of inquiry. • triggering event • exploration • integration • resolution • knowledge building • active collaboration • interactive learning • sense of puzzlement • information exchange • connecting ideas • apply new ideas http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 1402022 40(4): 140-151 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) presences’ definition descriptive categories data set indicators social presence is the ability to project oneself and establish personal and purposeful relationships. • affective indicators • open communication • group cohesion • interaction • expressing emotions • risk-free expression • encouraging collaboration teaching presence is the ability to properly design and facilitate content in an engaging and satisfactory way to maintain a sense of community. • design and organisation • curriculum and assessment • facilitating discourse • direct instruction • goal-directed • learning platform (e.g., learning management system) • setting curriculum and methods • sharing personal meaning • focusing discussion adapted from: garrison et al. (2006) and garrison (2007) 3. methodology research designs enable researchers to transform a research question into a framework of methods and strategies to scientifically, systematically, and theoretically investigate a phenomenon (creswell & plano clark, 2017). we used an explanatory mixed-method research approach, since it aims to explain the qualitative data by building on quantitative results. furthermore, the qualitative data help one to reflect and explain significant and insignificant quantitative results (creswell & plano clark, 2017). the cornerstones of mixed-methods research are theory, mixing, timing, and weighting. the application thereof are contextualised using a description and each of the concepts in brackets. the coi (theory) shaped the research activities, analysis, and interpretation. qualitative and quantitative data were collected sequentially (mixing), lending to a multiphase investigation. quantitative data were collected prior to the quantitative data (timing) which both occurred towards the end of the second-year module to retrieve diverse perspectives and retrospective views. the quantitative and qualitative data sets were equally considered (weighting). by first collecting and quantitatively analysing the questionnaire’s data, based on the three coi presences as constructs, helped us to identify statistically significant differences and deviating results (creswell & plank clark, 2017). the in-depth reflective qualitative feedback, which was sequentially generated, enabled us to verify identified consistencies and inconsistencies detected in the quantitative results. the entire process of the explanatory mixed-method research approach can be tabulated as follow (see table 3). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 1412022 40(4): 141-151 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 du preez & west early childhood student-teachers’ experiences of blended learning table 3: coi framework integrated within the data collection quantitative items qualitative prompts data strategy questionnaire based on the three presences of the coi framework group reflections written as a narrative report output format numeric (five-point likert scale) 1 = strongly disagree; 5=strongly agree textual data collection and generation guidelines self-reporting on nine items in the questionnaire. adapted to quantify the three presences as latent constructs that are consistent with the coi framework the guidelines for their reflective narratives are informed by the areas and bulleted information as tabulated in table 3. sentence starters blackboard learn™… how did blackboard learn™ together with weekly sessions… cognitive presence • together with weekly contact sessions informed my learning. • occasioned weekly opportunities to engage in assessed learning. • and weekly assessment stimulated my thinking and reasoning. • served as a platform to monitor my learning and progress. • direct our learning/thinking/ reasoning/understanding about social studies for democratic citizenship education in the early years? social presence • assisted me in socialising with members of my group and our class. • guided my preparation for discussions in our weekly contact sessions. • enabled me to collaborate on group assignments. • facilitate our participation/ communication/ interaction/ collaboration about social studies for democratic citizenship education in the early years? teaching presence • strengthened the design of the project on democratic citizenship. • prepared me for the project on democratic citizenship. • provide structured guidance/ feedback/direction about social studies for democratic citizenship education in the early years? data analysis software spss (nie, bent & hadlai-hull, 2017) atlas.ti version 8 (muhr, 2016) data analysis • overall functioning and reliability of the coi inspired questionnaire. • exploratory factor analysis (efa) with a principal component analysis (pca) • reliability statistics • pearson’s correlation coefficients • a repeated anova with post hoc tests • custom tables • box plot • the coi has a built-in data generation and data analysis strategy (garrison et al., 2006; 2010). enables you to explore the qualitative experiences for the existence or absence of the three presences. • the guidelines for their reflective narratives are informed by the areas and bulleted information as tabulated in table 3. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 1422022 40(4): 142-151 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) 3.1 context and research site the study was conducted at one of south africa’s metropolitan hei’s that offers ite degree programmes to student-teachers on campus and experientially in a technology-mediated milieu. the early childhood student-teachers are introduced to a 14-week credit-bearing social studies module that focuses on democratic citizenship education. prior to this module, the participants at this hei enrolled for the social studies for democratic education module had only experienced limited blended learning and online teaching. for example, they predominantly used the functions offered in the “management and information” area as described in table 1. their blended learning experiences therefore included accessing the learning material online and navigating the lms. 3.2 participant sample a purposive sampling technique was utilised for selecting the research site and studentteachers as sample. the enrolled student-teachers were on average 20 years of age and predominantly female. the latter characteristic is a common phenomenon in south africa where early childhood education teachers are mainly female (petersen, 2014). the setting, actors, events, and process techniques by (creswell & plank clark, 2017) are contextualised as follows. the setting offers the teaching of social studies for democracy education in the early years, whilst the actors are students-teachers all in their second year. the event of investigation requires a physical and virtual research site, and the process indicates the evolving nature of student-teachers experience in a coi inspired blended learning environment. the quantitative sample consisted of 127 voluntary female respondents who completed a questionnaire via blackboard learn™, after completing the module. the qualitative sample consisted of 155 voluntary female participants who self-enrolled into collaborative groups via blackboard learn™ to participate in the activity. their enrolments resulted in 22 groups who completed a critical reflection activity after completing the module. all aspects related to ethical standards and scientific integrity were adhered to by offering full disclosure regarding the research design, regulation, procedures and processes; ensuring non-maleficence; obtaining informed consent; protecting participants’ anonymity; confidentiality; and proper storing of data. 4. quantitative results and discussion administering the coi inspired questionnaire to the respondents enabled us to understand how they experienced blended learning. before we elaborate on the latter, we will first discuss the overall functioning and reliability of the coi inspired questionnaire before concluding the interpretations using descriptive statistics in the form of custom tables. before data analysis was conducted, tests of normality were run to investigate the sample distribution. in these results, the null hypothesis states that the data follow a normal distribution. because the p-value is 0.001, which is smaller than the significance level of 0.05, the decision was to reject the null hypothesis. we can not conclude that the data follow a normal distribution resulting in the use of non-parametric tests. the exploratory factor analysis (efa) (see table 4) enables us to reduce the existing set of variables into more meaningful and smaller clusters. the reliability analysis enabled us to explore the internal consistency of the questionnaire. a spearman correlation followed, as well http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 1432022 40(4): 143-151 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 du preez & west early childhood student-teachers’ experiences of blended learning as a related-samples friedman’s two-way analysis of variance by ranks, and a pairwise comparisons to further delve into the three coi presences. to determine the underlying structure of the measured variables (iv = three coi presences; dv = respondents’ experiences), an efa was conducted. a principal component analysis (pca) was calculated on the nine items with varimax rotation with kaiser normalization (converged in five iterations). the varimax rotation is an orthogonal method, making it easier to interpret and the entire factor model is statistically simpler. using this technique results in high factor loadings for a smaller number of variables and low factor loadings for the rest (field, 2018). the kaiser-meyer-olkin measure verified the sampling adequacy for the analysis, kmo=0.710, which is well above the minimum requirement of 0.500 (field, 2018). table 4: exploratory factor analysis rotated component matrixa blackboard learn®… component 1 2 3 together with weekly contact sessions informed my learning .778 .160 .070 occasioned weekly opportunities to engaged in assessed learning .727 .034 .100 and weekly assessments stimulated my thinking and reasoning .675 .013 .442 served as a platform to monitor my learning and progress .613 .466 .-118 assisted me in socialising with members in our weekly contact sessions .172 .773 .109 guided my preparation for discussion in our weekly contact sessions 0.20 .731 .197 enabled me to collaborate in group assignments .107 .707 .058 strengthend the design of the sotl seminoar on democratic citizenship .133 .145 .900 prepared me for the sotl seminar on democratic citizenship .095 .163 .887 extraction method: principal component analysis rotation method: varimax with kaiser normalization a. rotation converged in 5 iterations from the pca in table 4, it is evident that three factors displayed eigenvalues over kaiser’s criterion of 1. all three of the factors which emerged aligned with the coi theoretical framework. the pca also explained 64.76% of the variance within the data. the reliability statistics of the scale based on the coi framework are tabulated in table 5 below: table 5: reliability statistics of the developed scale items factor cronbach’s alpha n of items 1,3,4,7 cognitive presence 0.694 4 2,5,6 social presence 0.644 3 8,9 teaching presence 0.834 3 the analysis of the nine-item questionnaire measured ‘adequate to moderate’ with a >.65 value, measuring the latent constructs cognitive and teaching presence and a ‘good to robust’ measurement with a >.82 for the underlying construct teaching presence (taber, 2018). pearson’s correlation coefficients were calculated to determine whether there is a statistically significant relationship between the cognitive, social, and teaching presences’ as latent constructs. the correlation between cognitive and social presence showed slightly http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 1442022 40(4): 144-151 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) stronger evidence of a relationship (0.414) in comparison to the cognitive and teaching presence (0.379), and then teaching and social presence (0.275). although a positive correlation between the constructs were found, the cognitive and teaching presence construct showed a low strength in their relationship wereas the teaching and social presence showed a neglatable low relationship (fields, 2018). a related-samples friedman’s two-way analysis of variance by ranks were performed to compare the effect of the three coi presences (iv) of the student-teachers’ experiences (dv). the pairwise comparisons analysis shows the difference between the three presences as test related groups. the results indicated strong evidence of differences in the mean of all three factors (p-value = <0.000). it was evident that there are significant differences between the cognitive presence (p-value < 0.000) and the social presence (p-value < 0.000). there is also a significant difference between social presence (p-value < 0.001) and the teaching presence (p-value < 0.000). the findings signal that the teaching presence (4.36) and the cognitive presence (4.32) manifested more in the lms than in student-teachers’ social presences (3.13). we decided to also perform custom tables (see table 6) and a box plot (figure 1) as descriptive tools. table 6: custom tables blackboard learn®… s tr on gl y d is ag re e / s om w ha t d is ag re e n ei th er d is ag re e / n or a gr ee s tr on gl y a gr ee / s om w ha t a gr ee m ea n s d c og ni tiv e p re se nc e together with weekly contact sessions informed my learning count row n % 5 3.9% 0 0.0% 122 96.1% 4.47 0.733 occasioned weekly opportunities to engaged in assessed learning count row n % 5 3.9% 4 3.1% 118 93% 4.42 0.739 and weekly assessments stimulated my thinking and reasoning count row n % 4 3.2% 4 3.1% 119 93.7% 4.49 0.744 s oc ia l p re se nc e served as a platform to monitor my learning and progress count row n % 15 11.8% 19 15.0% 93 93.2% 3.91 1.031 assisted me in socialising with members in our weekly contact sessions count row n % 71 55.9% 23 18.1% 33 26.0% 2.56 1.219 guided my preparation for discussion in our weekly contact sessions count row n % 58 45.7% 31 24.4% 38 29.9% 2.80 1.293 enabled me to collaborate in group assignments count row n % 9 7.1% 19 15.0% 99 78.0% 4.04 0.929 te ac hi ng p re se nc e strengthend the design of the sotl seminoar on democratic citizenship count row n % 2 1.6% 11 8.7% 114 89.7% 4.36 0.709 prepared me for the sotl seminar on democratic citizenship count row n % 4 3.2% 9 7.1% 114 89.7% 4.36 0.783 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 1452022 40(4): 145-151 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 du preez & west early childhood student-teachers’ experiences of blended learning derived from table 6, the respondents generally reported that they found the contact mode (i.e., face to face) of delivery and the online environment conducive to learning. the studentteachers rated their own experiences more favourably towards the cognitive and teaching presences as opposed to their social presence in blackboard learn™. the self-reported responses calculated a mean score of 3.93 out of a possible score of 5.00, indicating a high endorsement of the blended learning environment. reliability analysis was calculated for the coi questionnaire’s nine items and cronbach’s alpha showed good reliability (α = 0.766) (field, 2018). all the items appeared to be worthy of retention. of the three presences, the respondents experienced the teaching presence as most prominent (m=4.36, sd=.692), followed by the modules’ cognitive presence (m=4.32, sd=.593) and showing a lower score with the social presence (m=3.13, sd=.885). using a box plot, we depicted the differences in presences (see figure 1). cognitive presence social presence teaching presence fig. 1: box plot of the performance of the three presences within the questionnaire from the quantitative findings, we then explored the qualitative reflections to explore if the social presence is lower on the lms and why. 5. qualitative results and discussion from the student-teachers’ group reflections, it is evident that the coi as a framework provided a comprehensive perspective on the learning that took place during the social studies for democratic citizenship education module. the social, cognitive, and teaching presences contributed in varying degrees to the socio-constructivist learning experience of the studentteachers. all three presences were identifiable in the data, which provided information relating to instructional design and how to improve student-teachers’ experiences with virtual pedagogies and blended modes of delivery. four themes directly related to the coi framework were deductively identified and substantiated with textual quotations from the participants. to increase the findings’ transparency, trustworthiness, and credibility, we numbered every quotation submitted by every group in atlas.ti, which is shown in brackets. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 1462022 40(4): 146-151 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) 5.1 teaching presence depends on proper design and organisation of module content teaching presence refers to the lecturer’s ability to facilitate discourse, design whilst organising, and teach student-teachers (garrison et al., 2010). there are 86 quotations that reflect that the student-teachers experienced the blended learning module as ‘…convenient as it can be accessed from home or any place that has an internet connection’ (30). the student-teachers elaborated on how the lms helped them ‘keep up to date’ (29; 38), ‘…encourage[d] more interactions in class between the student-teachers and lecturers’ (29), ‘…stay on track with the content we learn throughout the week’ (41) and to ‘…understand the work faster’ (81). the design and organisation came to the fore as a prominent theme as the participants consistently described how the features, layout, and structure assisted their learning. for example, one explained that ‘the content that was divided in weeks was very well planned because we had to process the new information’ (44). another student-teacher stated that the use of the lms ‘…is a good way of combining technology with the classroom and we have developed the necessary technological skills which we can one day practice in our own classrooms’ (120); which shows how the use of blended learning in the lms for the social studies for democratic citizenship education module benefitted the student-teachers. considering the lms, data furthermore showed that blackboard learn™, promotes access, creates a sense of interconnectedness, and offers various collaboration and multimedia features that are not only engaging and content-rich but also visually appealing. these included discussion boards, announcements, gradebook, and multimedia integration such as videos and images (see table 1). 5.2 social presence relies on accessibility to, and confidence in, using the learning management system social presence refers to an interactive and collaborative learning community where socialemotional relationships are formed during online teaching and learning (bryans-bongey, 2016). affective interactions, open communication, and group cohesion are descriptive categories in the data of social presence as indicated by garrison et al. (2010) and in table 2. in line with bryans-bongey (2016: 39), our data showed that social presence ‘drives the climate’ of the module. most of the coded quotations (127) highlighted the student-teachers’ experiences relating to group cohesion, communication with others, and how they collaboratively participated in the cognitive presence categories (exploration, integration and resolution) in table 2 (garrison, 2007; garrison et al., 2010). the student-teachers said that ‘there is good communication in the group’ (3), ‘we made sure everyone was heard… everybody’s ideas were considered’ (79), and the ‘group work has developed our communication and social skills’ (215). although the social studies for democratic citizenship education module succeeded in establishing a social presence, the student-teachers did not display their engagement within the lms environment. the student-teachers preferred to use other platforms for communication and interaction, such as email, face-to-face meetings, and especially the whatsapp™ application (92 quotations). one student teacher elaborated: we also created a whatsapp group allocated just for the module. in this group we assigned roles and divided the topic into subsections where we then allocated them to smaller groups of members to complete. this whatsapp group helps us communicate http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 1472022 40(4): 147-151 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 du preez & west early childhood student-teachers’ experiences of blended learning and develop socially and helps us clear any miscommunication. this is the form of blended learning that we adopted (145). student-teachers preferred not to use blackboard learn® for communication, but rather used whatsapp™ as they felt it allowed them ‘to communicate more easily’ (485; 269). one participant explained why: ‘we didn’t use much of the discussion board on clickup because it took a lot of time to log in and work on it’ (270). according to lowenthal and dennen (2017), establishing one’s social presence and teacher identity in online learning environments is difficult due to limited communication channels and transactional distance. thus, establishing a social presence in an online environment depends on accessibility, user-friendly nature, convenience, and confidence which aligns with our quantitative findings in figure 1 that showed a lower score in social presence. 5.3 cognitive presence requires social presence cognitive presence refers to how student-teachers interact and engage with the content (bryans-bongey, 2016). it is associated with a triggering event, exploration, integration, and resolution, see table 1, during online teaching and learning (garrison et al., 2006). cognitive and social processes are also related to creating a socio-constructivist learning experience (bryans-bongey, 2016; lowenthal & dennen, 2017). the data showed that owing to the coi framework’s espoused socio-constructivist approach, building a cognitive presence in an online environment demands a social presence. to establish a socio-constructivist learning experience, student-teachers should develop cognitively by socially constructing knowledge and understanding through partaking in continuous and active collaboration, knowledge building, integration, and resolution. the interwoven nature of cognitive and social presences in the social studies for democratic citizenship education module was evident in studentteachers stating: ‘we have gained new knowledge that we did not have before’ (51), ‘this module positively affected everyone in our group’s cognitive growth’ (50) and ‘we thus came to the conclusion that this module has taught us a lot and that it has contributed to immense cognitive growth of our group’ (102). according to garrison et al. (2010), using pronouns that indicate collaboration and identifying with the group, such as ‘we’ and ‘our’, in studentteachers’ discourse is an indicator of group cohesion and indicative of cognitive engagement because of a socio-constructivist learning experience. in essence, we understood that student-teachers use various platforms and applications for learning and that the cognitive presence within a module largely depends on their social presence. this was also evident in our quantitative data, where a correlation between cognitive and social presence showed slightly stronger evidence of a relationship (0.414), as compared to the cognitive and teaching presence (0.379), and then teaching and social presence (0.275). the next theme was identified owing to the student-teachers’ vociferous beliefs regarding the blended learning design of the module and how it has contributed to a deeper and more meaningful understanding of what social studies for democratic citizenship education entails. 5.4 blended learning using coi framework promotes deeper understanding student-teachers held strong beliefs regarding the role blended learning played in developing a deeper understanding of social studies for democratic citizenship education. the participants explained that the coi-inspired blended learning design, ‘has helped us expand our understanding’ (411) as well as gain ‘knowledge on the subject’ (411) and ‘gave us the http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 1482022 40(4): 148-151 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) opportunity to work together as a group’ (460). another participant explained that blended learning ‘helped us understand all the work on a much deeper level’ (375). manwaring et al. (2017) and spring et al. (2018)’s argument that blended learning allows for flexibility in learning because it is influenced by the availability of technologically mediated resources, which is confirmed in our data sets. for example, one student-teacher described the benefits of blended learning in relation to the research they had to do online: blended learning proved to be invaluable in the research phase of this assignment, allowing us to draw from a wide range of resources, and conduct in-depth research using the provided study material, reference books, and academic journals, as well as online publications and media (409). another student-teacher agreed: we have reaped the benefits of blended learning during this module in that we have had the opportunity to access an incredible variety of sources and have benefitted from being able to choose not only how we obtain information, but also the formats in which it is presented (435). it is clear from the data that designing the blended learning environment using the coi framework benefitted the student-teachers by promoting a deeper understanding of the content. however, access to the blackboard learn™ was described as problematic and inconvenient. in addition, some student-teachers reported they have little confidence in using the lms and it is very time-consuming. 6. limitations since we only conducted an efa on the coi inspired questionnaire and not confirmatory factor analysis (cfa), we are unable to confirm the latent constructs we explored. however, by conducting an efa, we did show how the factors are meaningfully correlated, but unfortunately, the construct validity of the questionnaire is not as convincing without a cfa. a cfa was not necessary for this study as the focus of the study was not on the development of a questionnaire but rather on exploring the quantitative data results using our qualitative data as a supporting data generation technique. we cannot generalise the findings since it was conducted at only one hei in one country with only one group of second-year studentteachers. lastly, even though blackboard learntm offers possibilities to utilise applications to promote social involvement, this option was limited due licences and the integration thereof in a hei-controlled environment. 7. conclusion student-teachers should experience, exercise, and become competent in technologymediated milieus in the 4ir world to succeed in their future profession as teachers and be torchbearers amid unforeseen global crises like covid-19. more than ever before, heis should realise that technology-mediated milieus are not beyond the station and skills of early childhood student-teachers and should become an essential skill that should be included in ite. with this study, we argued that using coi and being exposed to blended learning, student-teachers can be equipped with skills that can be applied in the 21st century classroom to serve the needs of future children in any real-world situation. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 1492022 40(4): 149-151 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 du preez & west early childhood student-teachers’ experiences of blended learning from the explanatory mixed-method research approach, we realised that to achieve interactive and continuous social presence in technology-mediated milieus is more complex and difficult to fashion than cognitive and teaching presences. interaction between studentteachers is unfavourably affected by transactional distance and the limited possibilities the current lms platform offered during the study. the student-teachers intentionally created text-based communication platforms outside those hosted within the lms environment that was provisioned for convenience, confidence, and anonymity. we are concerned that student-teachers posture an almost superficial social presence in the lms, which opposes the fundamentals of socio-constructivism and the benefits of social interaction for learning. therefore, we advise instructional designers using blended learning modalities in lms to take the same precautions as face-to-face module designers, to address student-teachers’ real social needs. constructing and maintaining a social presence in a technology-mediated learning environment is complex and multi-faceted and has a metamorphic trait that depends on whether the milieu is interpreted as conducive and beneficial. in creating a milieu that is beneficial, we thus advise that module developers, instructional designers, lecturers, and even policymakers consider the necessity of digital, virtual, and gamified learning opportunities in developing a more authentic social presence within a technology-mediated learning environment. further research is needed on the conceptual and contextual nature of an online social presence; and the strategies and tools needed to empower student-teachers to share versions of themselves that interlace with the content and teaching presences. 8. recommendations we recommend that heis embed pedagogical tools in their lms which stimulates socioconstructivism offer and feedback. some of these tools are: edubadges, feedbackfruits, h5p, kahoot!, mentimeter, miro, nearpod, wooclap. declaration of interest statement and acknowledgements the leading author and primary investigator of this article received a scholarship of teahcing and learning (sotl) grant to conduct this research and attended a writing workshop sponsored by the department of research and innovation (dri) at the university of pretoria. the contents are the sole responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of sotl nor dri. this study has been approved by the ethics committee of the faculty of education. references adzharuddin, n.a., & ling, l.h. 2013. learning management system (lms) among university students: does it work? international journal of e-education, e-business, e-management and e-learning, 3(3): 248-252. https://doi.org/10.7763/ijeeee.2013.v3.233 bryans-bongey, s. 2016. building community in k-12 online courses: the community of inquiry. in: s. bryans-bongey & k.j. graziano (eds.). online teaching in k-12: models, methods, and best practices for teachers and administrators. new jersey, information today, inc. creswell, j.w. & plano clark, v.l. 2017. designing and conducting mixed methods research (3 ed.). new york, sage publications. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 https://doi.org/10.7763/ijeeee.2013.v3.233 1502022 40(4): 150-151 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6186 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) deca, l. 2016. beyond the stereotypes of generations, x, y and z: higher education for democratic innovation and enhancing citizens’ engagement. in: s. bergan, t. gallagher, & i. harkavy (eds.). higher education for democratic innovation (council of europe higher education series, no. 21). france: council of europe publishing. department for education innovation. 2019. providing vision and support towards optimising student learning and success. pretoria: university of pretoria. department of education. 2011. curriculum and assessment policy statement. 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https://theconversation.com/online-and-in-the-classroom-covid-19-has-put-new-demands-on-teachers-147202 http://dx.doi.org/10.15700/201412120926 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-5446.2000.00419.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-5446.2000.00419.x https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-2255-3.ch128 https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-5225-2255-3.ch128 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-016-9602-2 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11165-016-9602-2 https://er.educause.edu/articles/2014/4/selecting-a-learning-management-system-advice-from-an-academic-perspective https://er.educause.edu/articles/2014/4/selecting-a-learning-management-system-advice-from-an-academic-perspective _4synb6jom5lo _30j0zll _1fob9te 3722021 39(1): 372-389 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.23 covid-19: education policy, autonomy and alternative teacher education in israel abstract the study evaluates an alternative initial teacher education programme launched nationwide by the israeli ministry of education (moe) at the height of the covid-19 crisis. the programme aimed to attract unemployed academics to teaching, thereby providing a response to the teacher shortage. to advance the programme, the moe relaxed its strict regulations and granted the training institutions further autonomy to develop their own programmes. after three months of intensive online training, students were expected to start teaching and continue studying once a week for another year while on the job during their induction year. since teachers, unlike other hired employees, continued working from home via distance learning during this period, teaching, previously an unattractive profession, turned into a desirable one and hundreds of potential candidates applied for the programme. the research, conducted in one large teacher education college in central israel, examined the motivations of 125 student teachers to join the teaching profession, their sense of preparedness for teaching, their satisfaction with the programme and their level of commitment to teaching. findings showed that the student teachers who participated in our research displayed high levels of intrinsic and extrinsic motivations. they reported a high sense of preparedness for teaching, were satisfied with the programme and indicated their commitment to the teaching profession. the results strengthen the importance of tailor-made teacher education programmes and hence the value of greater autonomy in teacher education policy. keywords: covid-19; alternative teacher education programmes; education policy; autonomy; teacher shortage; israeli teacher education colleges. 1. introduction the covid-19 pandemic, which reached israel in midmarch 2020, caused an immediate shutdown of many workplaces, resulting in a 27.5% unemployment rate. while schools closed, teachers went on working and switched to online teaching. declaring teachers as essential workers, made teaching an alluring profession. this was a refreshing shift since the status of the teaching profession has been quite low in israel and teachers’ working conditions are less than appealing. author: r. ramot1 prof s. donitsa-schmidt1 affiliation: 1kibbutzim college of education doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i1.23 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 372-389 published: 12 march 2021 received: 9 november 2020 accepted: 2 february 2021 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5650-9581 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2477-3967 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.23 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.23 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.23 3732021 39(1): 373-389 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.23 ramot & donitsa-schmidt education policy, autonomy and alternative teacher education in israel israel’s ministry of education (moe) seized the opportunity and launched, in collaboration with the israeli employment service, a newly devised alternative initial teacher education programme for postgraduates who had lost their jobs because of the coronavirus crisis, entitling them to a teaching certificate. the programme aimed to offer accelerated online teacher training to about 450 unemployed academics nationwide and thus partially resolve the chronic massive shortage of teachers. after three months of intensive online training, students were expected to start teaching and continue studying once a week for another year while on the job during their induction year. while the programme included a rigorous screening process and its academic level was high, students did not have many opportunities to practise teaching before becoming fully fledged teachers since the schools were closed during the lockdown periods and the programme’s schedule mainly covered the summer vacation period. extensive teaching practice has been mentioned as a core feature of an effective alternative certification programme (blazer, 2012). there is, therefore, particular interest in exploring this programme, where unusual circumstances have restricted students’ exposure to schools, classrooms and pupils. to advance the programme, the moe has further flexed its requirements, granting teacher colleges the autonomy to develop programmes that deviate from the rigid uniform guidelines set by the israeli council for higher education that regulates and supervises all higher education institutions. this mandate gave rise to great flexibility, creativity and innovation in the format and structure of the programmes opened in the ten institutions that responded to the ministry’s call. this deviation from the standard outline of initial education programmes in israel also calls into question the degree of success of the programmes. the present study aimed to examine closely and assess the success of one programme with 135 participants. the research focused on the motivations of student teachers to join the teaching profession, their sense of preparedness for teaching, their satisfaction with the programme and their level of commitment to teaching. the study introduces further insights into the recent years’ debate about the pros and cons of alternative teacher education programmes. 2. alternative teacher education in recent decades, many countries worldwide have adopted alternative teacher education programmes, alongside traditional ones (kee, 2012; whitford, zhang & katsiyannis, 2018). they include developed and developing countries such as the united states, australia, south america (e.g., argentina, brazil and chile), europe (e.g., bulgaria, denmark, france, portugal and the netherlands), africa (e.g. ghana, kenya, uganda), eastern asia (e.g., china, india, japan) and middle east countries (e.g. lebanon and qatar). among these alternative programmes are teach for america (tfa); academy for urban school leadership (ausl) in chicago; american board for certification of teacher excellence (abcte); now teach, premier pathways and transition to teach (t2t) in the uk; the netherlands’ “side-entry route” and teach for all (tfa) organisation, which has branches in 59 countries. most alternative programmes target college graduates who possess prior disciplinary knowledge but have no educational background and wish to take a new career direction and become teachers. they begin working as teachers at an early stage of their teacher education studies while usually often acquiring on-the-job training and participating in courses concurrently with their teaching (haberman, 2006). as a rule, these are, therefore, short professional-oriented programmes with employment-based training (eurydice, 2018). despite this fundamental similarity, such programmes differ considerably in several aspects. while some are regular and ongoing, 3742021 39(1): 374-389 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.23 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) others are provisional and launched as emergency programmes (musett, 2010). some of them do not abide by the national standards, while others meet national requirements and keep their standards on par. other differences include length, degree of supervision and mentoring and incentives offered to the participants (blazer, 2012; carter & keiler, 2009). the participants’ backgrounds also vary. while some alternative programmes are highly selective and focus on preparing high-achieving college graduates as teachers (e.g., teach for america), other programmes are more relaxed, focusing on forming a pool of diverse candidates. such programmes are labelled in different countries as provisional, emergency, temporary, side-entry, lateral entry, non-traditional or alternative certificate (ingersoll, merrill & may, 2014; mussett, 2010). there are various reasons for the worldwide proliferation of these numerous alternative paths. among the main ones are an ongoing teacher shortage in many parts of the world (aragon, 2016; dee & goldhaber, 2017; eurydice, 2018), the desire to attract high-quality candidates who would otherwise not opt for teaching (boyd et al., 2007; johnson, birkeland & peske, 2005; shuls & trivitt, 2015) and a desire to diversify the composition of the teaching force to match the students’ diversity (whitford et al., 2018). underlying these pragmatic reasons is a general discontent with the poor performance and competence of students in many parts of the world. this dissatisfaction has become even more prominent in an era of national testing benchmarks and international comparisons of educational outcomes and attainment. under the growing demand for accountability and the increasing criticism and mistrust of traditional initial teacher education programmes, the search for alternatives has become legitimate. using neoliberal argumentations and ideology that call for decentralisation, deregulation and privatisation of education institutions, school-based programmes have gained popularity leading to more autonomy and self-governance of teacher education certification and licensure (kretchmar, sondel & ferrare, 2014). counterclaims against the proliferation of these programmes assert that a shorter certification process and that privatisation of public education will eventually lead to a de-professionalisation of teaching (baines, 2010; zeichner, 2010). alternative programmes have been attributed to a variety of policies accused of depriving teacher educators of control over education for financial considerations (henderson & hursh, 2014). extensive research has examined the effectiveness of one route against the others, investigating various aspects such as the quality of participants who choose to study in each path, their motivation to become teachers, their self-efficacy and feeling of preparedness and the retention of these programmes’ graduates. studies have found that accelerated alternative programmes attract individuals who would not have considered teaching otherwise. they appeal to males, older candidates and experienced professionals more than traditional programmes (e.g., feistritzer, 2011; zumwalt & craig, 2005a, 2005b). the motivations of alternatively certified candidates to choose teaching in the first place were found to be social, intrinsic career and personal utility values, similar to those reported by traditionally certified ones (öztürk-akar, 2019). studies have also concluded that teachers, whether certified alternatively or traditionally, enter the classroom with similar levels of content knowledge and engage in similar teaching practices (e.g., birkeland & peske, 2004; sass, 2008). however, several studies have found that alternatively certified teachers have less self-confidence and sense of preparedness than their counterparts in traditional programmes. specifically, traditionally certified teachers report that they feel better prepared to plan instruction, meet the needs of diverse learners, create a positive learning environment, manage their classrooms, 3752021 39(1): 375-389 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.23 ramot & donitsa-schmidt education policy, autonomy and alternative teacher education in israel motivate students and conduct assessments (e.g., immerwahr et al., 2007; laczko-kerr & berliner, 2002). finally, certain studies have suggested that alternatively certified teachers have equal – sometimes higher – retention rates than traditionally trained graduates (e.g., kane, rockoff & staiger, 2008). in contrast, other studies claim the exact opposite, showing that retention is higher in traditionally trained teachers while alternatively certified teachers display larger attrition rates (e.g., heilig & jez, 2014; marder, david, & hamrock, 2020; ingersoll et al., 2014). to date, none of the certification programmes, whether alternative or traditional, have proven to be the most effective in preparing candidates and guiding them into the teaching profession. yet, it has been suggested that for an alternative programme to be effective, it should include a rigorous screening process, a rich academic coursework component and ample opportunities to practise teaching (blazer, 2012). the current research has focused on one recent alternative teacher education programme launched in israel at the height of the covid-19 epidemic to deal with the resulting crisis. while the programme included a rigorous screening process and a high academic level, the students did not have the opportunity to experience teaching in schools due to the general lockdown. moreover, the special circumstances that led to the opening of the programme were also the reason why the educational policymakers loosened the strict regulation and allowed colleges a certain degree of freedom and autonomy in devising the programme and implementing it. 3. teacher education in israel initial teacher education in israel is primarily a traditional one with two main tracks. the first and most prevalent one, provided by teacher education colleges, is the four-year programme that combines a bachelor of education degree with a teaching certificate in a certain school subject for a specified age group. the second track involves a one-year programme, either at teacher education colleges or at universities, offering a teaching certificate to postgraduate who have already acquired a bachelor’s degree or even master’s degree in a certain field and now wish to switch to a teaching career (postgraduate certificate in education, pgce). a massive and chronic teacher shortage existing in the hebrew-school system in many school subjects at all levels of education, has spurred the moe to search for alternative pathways of teacher preparation in the past decade (donitsa-schmidt & weinberger, 2014). these alternative pathways have a twofold purpose: increasing the number of teachers in the education system and attracting high-quality candidates who would not have joined in had it not been for the alternative pathway. attracting high-quality candidates and retaining them in the education system is a major challenge given the low status of the teaching profession in israel (dolton et al., 2018), which results directly from teachers’ low wages and unappealing working conditions (oecd, 2018). national statistics show that only 75% of teaching programme graduates actually enter into teaching and the turnover and teacher attrition in the first years of teaching is high (donitsa-schmidt & zuzovsky, 2016). the moe launched its first alternative initial teacher education programme in 2009, following the global economic crisis of 2008 (donitsa-schmidt & weinberger, 2014). since then, it has opened a dozen additional programmes. while some of these programmes are permanent and open annually, such as teach first israel (amichai & ron, 2018) others are offered ad hoc for specific purposes. although these alternative programmes vary, most of them share the following features: they are shorter, more accelerated and more condensed than the traditional programmes. they are designed to recruit promising motivated future teachers endowed with the core competencies required to have a positive impact on the education system. most 3762021 39(1): 376-389 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.23 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) programmes offer incentives such as tuition discounts and scholarships extended by various institutes and funds. despite the contrast between the alternative and traditional paths of the programmes, they are all closely regulated by their governing bodies. teacher education programmes in israel are run in universities but mostly in colleges of education and operate under direct supervision of the council for higher education (che) or the moe. accordingly, the budgeting bodies are the planning and budgeting committee of the che or the moe. yet, regardless of the body in charge, all teacher education programmes must abide by a framework set in 2006 by a joint che and moe committee that determined the standards and guidelines for all the training of teachers in higher education institutions (dror, 2013). this framework, known as the ariav guidelines, provides a template for all the traditional and alternative teacher certification programmes, determining their structure, duration, number of teaching hours, academic content and relative weight of their various components. the moe also sets criteria for admission, appointing teaching staff members and curriculum supervision. a teaching license issued by the moe at the end of the first year of teaching, i.e. the induction year, is another mechanism to monitor and regulate the programmes. this highly centralised and regulated system with very little autonomy (iram, 1990) does not apply exclusively to the teacher training institutes. the entire education system is highly centralised, strictly controlled and closely monitored (nir et al., 2016). having almost no autonomy, colleges of education are obliged to comply with the che regulations in the programmes they offer to their students. as mentioned, the focus of this paper is a unique alternative initial teacher education programme launched at the height of the covid-19 breakout. it stands out for having received a fairly broad academic freedom in formulating its structure and content. since research studies conducted in israel on alternative programmes are scant and the degree of these programmes’ effectiveness is inconclusive (weinberger & donitsa-schmidt, 2016), this research will broaden the existing knowledge on the effectiveness of these routes. 4. an alternative initial teacher education programme during covid-19 similar to many countries around the world, thousands of workers in israel lost their jobs during the coronavirus crisis. at the end of march 2020, two weeks after the epidemic’s outbreak in israel, unemployment rose to an all-time high of almost 20 per cent. at the end of april 2020, when the crisis was at its height, the unemployment rate reached 27.5%, with more than a million jobless people. to illustrate the severity of this situation, in february 2020, a month before the crisis broke out, the unemployment rate in israel was only 3.9 per cent. although in mid-may 2020, some of the covid-19 restrictions were relaxed and businesses reopened, 25 per cent of the workforce remained unemployed (central bureau of statistics, 2020). the only ones who were permitted to continue working were those defined as “essential workers”, including teachers who, despite the closed down schools, continued working from home via distance learning (moe, 2020a). declaring teachers as essential workers turned teaching into an attractive profession. the moe seized this opportunity and launched, in collaboration with the israeli employment service, a new alternative initial teacher education programme for a postgraduate certificate of education (pgce) named “kivun-hadash” (new direction) and intended for postgraduate candidates in all the core school subjects 3772021 39(1): 377-389 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.23 ramot & donitsa-schmidt education policy, autonomy and alternative teacher education in israel (maariv daily, 2020). the aim of this accelerated programme was to train 450 academics countrywide as teachers of core school subjects in kindergartens, elementary or secondary schools. recruiting 450 committed, motivated, high-quality academics was meant to solve the shortage of teachers and elevate the quality of the teaching workforce. the prerequisites for entering the new programme were a bachelor’s degree in the relevant discipline (e.g., mathematics, biology, bible) and a screening process that included an interview and group dynamics to ensure the candidate’s suitability for the programme and the teaching profession. all the participants were entitled to monetary incentives including a scholarship and unemployment benefits. the first part of the training lasted 13 weeks, five days a week, from mid-may to the end of august. the theoretical and the pedagogical components were all online. in september 2020, students were expected to start teaching in schools. during their induction year, while on the job, they went on studying for a day and a half every week. an open call with exceptionally flexible guidelines was issued to all 21 academic teacher education colleges and nine university education faculties to take on board the programme. consequently, nine teacher education colleges and one university opened the programme (moe, 2020b). the israeli employment service identified candidates whose profile appeared suitable and sent them to the colleges for further screening. in less than two weeks, hundreds of candidates approached the colleges and the 350 best-qualified ones entered the programme. the profile of the students in this alternative teacher education programme was different from that of the students of traditional programmes including the traditional pgce one. they were generally older, more educated with many holding a master’s degree and had more occupational experience relevant to their areas of teaching than students in the traditional programmes. in contrast to the strict guidelines that characterise teacher education programmes in israel, in this case, the institutions that opened this alternative programme were allowed the autonomy to devise their programmes. this flexibility granted by the moe facilitated putting together a different, more creative and malleable training programme even within the set boundaries of the ariav training guidelines (che, 2006). first, the entire training took place on synchronous and asynchronous online platforms. this had never been done before, since one of the che restrictions determined that online learning could not exceed 30 per cent of a programme (che, 2018). second, the training institutions were instructed to complete the bulk of the training in three months, from mid-may to mid-august, so that students could be integrated into the teaching force as early as september, the beginning of the school year. since the schools were closed in may and june and a two-month summer vacation began in july, the training included very little regular school practicum. contrary to the usual outline, the moe relinquished the rule that required completing the practical experience component before beginning to teach in practice (moe, 2014). this enabled the training institutions to continue guiding their students on the job, during their first year of teaching, i.e. their internship. with online teaching and learning becoming the new norm, all regularities had dissolved, including frameworks of time, space, scope and teaching mode. although the recruitment was successful and hundreds of candidates registered, it is still unknown how many of them will succeed as teachers and remain in the education system in the next few years. this point has even greater importance considering the open criticism against 3782021 39(1): 378-389 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.23 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) the programme aired in the israeli media, accusing it of being liable of further deteriorating the professionalism of teaching and teachers (e.g., globes daily 2020). 5. purpose and research questions the purpose of the research was to evaluate the unique covid-19 alternative teacher education programme at the end of its first phase through the following three research questions: 1. to what extent did the programme succeed in attracting highly motivated students to teaching and has it succeeded in preparing students for teaching? 2. to what extent were the students satisfied with the training programme? 3. what was the level of commitment to teaching among the students at the end of the first part of the programme? 6. research context the current study focuses on one teacher education college that offered the alternative programme. as part of the moe modus operandi, each of the ten institutions that took part in the covid-19 alternative programme received a mandate to design their own curricular programme. the curriculum built in the college where the current research was conducted mainly focused on education courses and pedagogical studies in its first phase. pedagogy included general pedagogy and pedagogical content knowledge. the practical part was implemented through distance learning and peer teaching. the number of disciplinary courses taught during the first three months was limited. in addition to the pedagogical guidance, personal guidance was also given to facilitate the sharp transition from unemployment to intensive studies and entering the education system. the second part of the programme that overlapped the induction year was designed to include additional disciplinary courses in keeping with the academic background of each student and further pedagogical instruction. 7. research methodology a short anonymous self-report questionnaire was sent online via google forms to all 135 student teachers enrolled in the alternative programme in one teacher education college at the end of the first part of the programme. under the code of ethics, participation was voluntary. a total of 125 students filled in the questionnaire in two weeks, i.e., a 93% response rate. the two researchers who were involved in developing the programme at the college and screening the candidates also conducted the present study. this information was overt and explicitly written on the questionnaire. they were asked to answer the questionnaire as candidly as possible and were assured that they will remain anonymous. to avoid any ethical conflicts, the questionnaire was administered at the end of the first part of the programme and after all the students had successfully completed this chapter of their studies and received approval to find work in the education system. 7.1 participants of the 125 student teachers that responded to our questionnaire, 89 (71%) were female and 36 (29%) were male; their ages ranged from 24 to 62, average age – 42 (sd 8.5). most of them were israeli-born and native speakers of hebrew. they came from various occupational areas in the public and private sectors and had all lost their jobs following the covid-19 outbreak. 3792021 39(1): 379-389 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.23 ramot & donitsa-schmidt education policy, autonomy and alternative teacher education in israel their education varied greatly including the humanities, social sciences, mathematics, economics and exact sciences. fifty-eight per cent hold a bachelor’s degree and 41% hold a master’s degree. within the teaching education programme, 13 (10%) studied early childhood education, 59 (47%) studied teaching in the elementary school track and 53 (42%) studied teaching in the secondary school track. the disciplinary distribution of the 112 students that studied in the elementary school and high school tracks were as follows : 33 (29%) – hebrew language and literature teachers, 29 (23%) – judaic studies, 27 (24%) – math teachers, 13 (11%) – science teachers and 9 (8%) – history and social sciences teachers. one participant did not specify his/her subject matter. 7.2 research instrument the anonymous self-report questionnaire comprised several subsections of which only the ones relevant to the purpose of the current research are presented: 1. personal information and educational background 2. motivation to become a teacher: this part was taken from the third teaching and learning international survey (talis) for teachers conducted in 2018 (oecd, 2019). participants were asked to rate the importance of seven factors affecting their motivation to become a teacher on a five-point scale (“not important at all”, “low importance”, “moderate importance”, “high importance”, “very high importance”). in an exploratory factor analysis of the seven items, a two-factor solution emerged, explaining 69 per cent of the total variance (36% and 33% respectively). the first factor (4 items; cronbach’s alpha = 0.80) reflected extrinsic motivations for choosing teaching, including job security, work conditions and economic reasons. the second factor (3 items; cronbach’s alpha = 0.83) reflected intrinsic motivations including contribution to society, benefitting disadvantaged populations, and influencing young people. 3. sense of preparedness for teaching: ten items, also taken from talis 2018, explored the extent to which teachers felt prepared for teaching after receiving formal education or training (oecd, 2019). although this was not stated explicitly, the items related to the following types of knowledge suggested by shulman (1987): content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, general pedagogical knowledge, knowledge of the learner and knowledge of teaching twenty-first century skills. all ten items were rated on a 5-point likert scale, where 5 represented a high degree of self-reported readiness to teach. in addition to scrutinising each item separately, all the items underwent an exploratory factor analysis, which yielded a one factor solution explaining 65 per cent of the total variance, with all the loadings above 0.64; cronbach’s alpha = 0.94. 4. satisfaction with the teacher education programme: satisfaction was measured using a single item on a 1 to 5 likert scale, where 5 represented a high level of satisfaction. 5. commitment to the teaching profession: four items were used to determine commitment: (a) will you be teaching next year? (yes, no, maybe); (b) how many hours will you teach every week? (c) will you be a homeroom teacher? (yes, no, maybe); (d) how many years do you plan to remain in the teaching profession? 8. findings the presentation of findings corresponds with the themes of the three research questions: 3802021 39(1): 380-389 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.23 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) 8.1 motivations to become a teacher table 1 displays the percentages of teachers who attached moderate or high importance to becoming a teacher in each of the seven motivations of three groups: student teachers in the current research (n=125), national figures of israel in talis 2018 for hebrew-speaking schools (n=1,520) and the oecd average in talis 2018. table 1: motivation to become a teacher (% of moderate and high importance) factor current research talis 2018(1) israel oecd intrinsic motivation teaching allows me to influence the development of children and young people 99% (=) 97% 92% teaching allows me to provide a contribution to society 97% (=) 96% 88% teaching allows me to benefit the socially disadvantaged 95% (=/+) 91% 75% extrinsic motivation teaching offers a steady career path 92% (+) 66% 61% teaching was a secure job 90% (+) 66% 71% the teaching schedule fits with responsibilities in my personal life 86% (=/+) 71% 66% teaching provided a reliable income 45% (=/-) 42% 67% source: oecd (2019), talis 2018 database, table i.4.1 percentages are higher (+), lower (-) or similar (=) compared to the israeli average and oecd average the most important motivations reported by the teachers-to-be in the current study were the intrinsic ones (m=4.56; sd=0.62) found to be significantly higher [t(124 df)=12.35; p<.001] than the extrinsic ones (m=3.47; sd=0.82). these results seem to correspond to those found in talis 2018 among a representative sample of israeli teachers and in other oecd countries. however, the extrinsic motivations of job security and steady career path seemed to have more influence on choosing teaching as a career in the current research than in the two other groups, while income was rated as a much lower motivation by both israeli groups compared to the oecd average. 8.2 sense of preparedness for teaching table 2 presents the percentages of student teachers who reported having a high or moderate sense of preparedness for teaching in each of the knowledge components. percentages are presented for the teachers-to-be in the current research (n=125), national figures of israel in talis 2018 for hebrew-speaking schools (n=1,520) and the oecd average in talis 2018. table 2: sense of preparedness for teaching (% of those who felt “prepared” and “well prepared”) current research talis 2018 israel(2) oecd use of information and communication technology (ict) for teaching 77%(+) 41% 43% teaching cross-curricular skills (e.g. creativity, critical thinking, problem solving) 71% (+) 54% 49% 3812021 39(1): 381-389 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.23 ramot & donitsa-schmidt education policy, autonomy and alternative teacher education in israel current research talis 2018 israel(2) oecd pedagogy of the subject(s) i teach 71% (=) 78% 71% general pedagogy 71% (=) 75% 70% classroom practice in the subject(s) i teach 70% (=) 75% 71% teaching in a mixed ability setting 69% (+) 54% 44% content of the subject(s) i teach 66% (-) 84% 80% teaching in a multicultural or multilingual setting 59% (+) 28% 26% student behaviour and classroom management 54% (=) 53% 53% monitoring students’ development and learning 53%( =) 49% 53% source: oecd (2019), talis 2018 database, table i.4.20 percentages are higher (+), lower (-) or similar (=) compared to the israeli average and oecd average based on the ten items of preparedness for teaching, the overall mean in our research was 3.61 out of 5 (sd=0.81), reflecting a sense of medium to high preparedness. a comparison of the percentages of the three groups revealed that teachers-to-be in the current research felt less prepared in the contents of the subjects they teach (66% as opposed to 84% and 80%). yet they felt much more prepared in four areas: use of ict, teaching twenty-first century skills, teaching mixed ability groups and teaching in a multicultural or multilingual setting. in the other five areas – general pedagogy, pedagogy of the subjects, classroom practices, classroom management and monitoring of students’ learning – a similar sense of preparedness emerged to that of israeli teachers’ and oecd averages. 8.3 satisfaction with the programme figure 1 presents a bar graph of the frequency distribution of student teachers’ degree of satisfaction with the first part of their training programme.   1.6 2.9 20.9 41.1 32.6 0 10 20 30 40 50 very low low medium high very high figure1: satisfaction with the teacher education programme 3822021 39(1): 382-389 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.23 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) as can be seen, a high degree of satisfaction was expressed at the end of the first phase of the programme with a mean of 3.99 (sd=0.91). a significant positive correlation was found between the degree of satisfaction and sense of preparedness (r=0.33; p<.001). students who expressed low satisfaction indicated that they were disappointed about not having sufficient opportunities to practise teaching. 8.4 commitment to the teaching profession commitment was examined via four aspects: the percentage of student teachers who entered into teaching at the end of the first part of the programme; their teaching workload during the first year of teaching; additional roles they took on in school and the number of years participants planned to remain in teaching as an indication of teacher attrition. out of 125 student teachers, 103 (82%) began teaching at the end of the first phase of their teaching programme and 6 (5%) wrote that they were still looking for a teaching position. sixteen student teachers (13%) wrote that they do not plan to teach this year for various reasons such as pregnancy and maternity leave, concerns about exposure to the coronavirus, economic reasons and personal reasons. all but one wrote that they were planning to start teaching in the following year. weekly teaching hours ranged between 12 weekly hours (the minimum permitted for the induction year) and 36 or 40 hours, which is the maximum allowed in kindergarten or elementary schools and in secondary schools respectively. the average weekly teaching hours for kindergarten and elementary school teachers was 29 (sd=8) out of 36 hours (80% of full job hours) and 26 (sd=10) out of 40 (65%) for those working in secondary schools. out of the 103 who had begun teaching, 48 (47%) assumed an additional role of a homeroom teacher – 50% of the primary schoolteachers and 36% of the secondary school teachers [chi-square=4.95; p<.05]. finally, as displayed in table 3, only 21% of the student teachers in the alternative programme announced that they wished to leave the profession within the next five years. these figures resemble those found among israeli teachers in general and all oecd countries. out of those who said they intended to continue working for longer than 5 years, 29% stated they aimed to teach for six to ten years and 50% stated they aimed to teach for more than eleven years. none of the student teachers indicated that they had no intention to enter teaching at all. table 3: commitment to teaching current research talis 2018 israel(2) oecd teachers’ wanting to leave teaching within the next five years 21% (=/-) 22% 25% source: oecd (2019), talis 2018 database, table ii.2.63 percentages are higher (+), lower (-) or similar (=) compared to the israeli average and oecd average 3832021 39(1): 383-389 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.23 ramot & donitsa-schmidt education policy, autonomy and alternative teacher education in israel 9. discussion the findings of the present research revealed that students who took the alternative teacher education programme that was initiated to respond to the covid-19 crisis displayed high levels of intrinsic motivation, similar to the israeli average and higher than the oecd average. these motivations, which are altruistic in nature and have a high social utility value are to be expected in high-quality people who are committed to teaching (heinz, 2015). this sense of commitment is also reflected in the high percentage of students who see themselves continuing in the teaching profession for more than five years, of whom many are interested in pursuing this career for more than ten years. these findings are gratifying considering that teacher motivation and commitment are known to be crucial for the future success of education and school and that quality education cannot be achieved unless teachers are motivated, enthusiastic and truly committed to their students’ education and to the teaching profession (richardson & watt, 2014). yet, the findings also showed an especially high extrinsic motivation to become teachers in student teachers compared to the international average and the average of other israeli teachers. this finding is not surprising given that the programme was created during the covid-19 outbreak and the ensuing economic crisis and mass layoffs. since all students were unemployed and their chances of getting back to work in the near future were slim, they were looking for a steady position that would guarantee them job stability and economic security. these findings corroborate previous research that has shown that various intrinsic and extrinsic motivations combined usually affect people’s decision to opt for a teaching career (e.g. watt & richardson, 2008). interestingly, a reliable income was not a decisive consideration in choosing teaching as a career path, probably given the low wages of teachers in israel, particularly beginners (oecd, 2018). it is reasonable to assume that the higher percentage of students who started working in teaching immediately upon completion of the first part of their training, which was higher than usual in israel, probably results from an intrinsic orientation to become a teacher combined with pragmatic considerations. this is also true regarding the number of weekly teaching hours that the student teachers undertook in their first year of teaching, which was higher than that of other israeli teachers in their induction year. our findings also reveal that the student teachers’ sense of preparedness for teaching was rather high after three months of intensive study. in nine out of ten aspects of teaching, the sense of preparedness for teaching was either higher or similar to that of other israeli teachers and the oecd average. these findings are encouraging considering the brevity and condensed nature of the programme, particularly since most of the practical component was largely reduced to observing schoolteachers’ online teaching and online peer-teaching and micro-teaching. very few student teachers visited schools and those who managed to practise actual teaching did it mostly online via distance learning. since the entire programme of the first three months was conducted online, it is no wonder that the sense of preparedness for teaching was highest in using ict for teaching and in teaching twenty-first century skills. in this respect, what initially appeared to be a drawback of the programme and elicited extensive public criticism, turned out to be a major advantage for those student teachers since most of the school teaching remained remote in their first year of teaching. a criticism often expressed against teachers’ education is that it is detached from the actual situation in the schools, forcing beginner teachers to undergo “re-education” when they enter the schools (hoffman & nederland, 2010; wilson & tamir, 2008). in the current case, the opposite occurred, 3842021 39(1): 384-389 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.23 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) and students were effectively trained for a reality to which the education system had not yet adjusted. the study also revealed a strong sense of preparedness for the pedagogical aspects of teaching. this finding stands in contrast to previous research findings according to which practical training was essential to any teacher education programme and particularly an alternative one (blazer, 2012). we assume that this finding springs from the programme’s rigorous screening processes, which were also mentioned to be a vital element in effective alternative teacher education programmes, from extensive peer-teaching, which is known to enhance learning (sen, 2010; benson & ying, 2013), a strong self-efficacy in operating distance learning and a programme that was tailored to a specific population in a particular situation (feiman-nemser, tamir & hammerness, 2014). the only aspect where the student teachers reported a lower sense of preparedness was the content knowledge in the school subject they were preparing to teach. this finding may be explained by the structure of the programme which focused mostly on education and teaching studies at its first part. due to time constraints, some of the discipline courses were postponed to the second year of the programme, while the student teachers were already teaching. it would be worthwhile to re-examine the student teachers’ sense of preparedness regarding content knowledge at the end of the second year. the results of the study, which indicate high student satisfaction and high levels of readiness for teaching, substantiate the claim that the much criticised one-size model of traditional teacher education programmes does not fit all (feiman-nemser et al., 2014). rather, it underscores the need for putting together teacher preparation programmes that are tailored to specific populations and needs. while the field of education has warmly embraced the concepts of differential and personalised teaching and learning (patrick, kennedy & powell, 2013), teacher education programmes are somewhat lagging (baran, 2014; kommers & hooreman, 2009). if teachers are expected to provide differential and personalised teaching, teacher education programmes should “walk the talk” and alternative teacher education programmes are one way to achieve this goal. the current covid-19 teacher education programme proves this right, having deviated from deep rooted customs and regularities to match the target audience and the peculiarities of the time. it affirms that the moe’s decision to relax the strict regulations and grant more autonomy to the training institutions was the right move to make, resulting in an alternative teacher education programme whose graduates are up to par with those trained traditionally. as ball (2012) noted, this is a case where policy makers have utilised “policy windows” speedily and optimally, finding a suitable solution to an existing problem, in our case the rising unemployment problem of academics alongside a severe shortage of quality teachers. the hasty launching of the programme by the policy makers and its rapid activation and implementation by the teacher education colleges, have brought about a disruptive innovation capable of solving societal problems such as unemployment, a general teacher shortage, particularly a shortage in quality teachers. a market-oriented neoliberal explanation would define this programme as a start-up (ellis, steadman & trippestad, 2019).yet, it is too early to tell whether this new ad-hoc policy, seized by the moe’s policy makers to exploit a political momentum, would turn into a new policy trend (kingdon, 1995), one that will continue expanding the sovereignty of teacher education colleges. as any other study, the present study has limitations that call for caution. first, we conducted the study in one teacher education college while the programme was implemented 3852021 39(1): 385-389 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.23 ramot & donitsa-schmidt education policy, autonomy and alternative teacher education in israel in nine other institutions, including one university teacher education unit. we chose this specific college because it had the highest number of students enrolled in the programme compared to all the other institutions, whose student numbers ranged from 8 to 65. future studies should investigate the entire student population of this unique ad hoc alternative teacher education programme. enlarging the sample size would facilitate generalisation of the findings to other alternative certification programmes. second, despite the positive results of the current research, the situation, once the covid-19 epidemic is over, remains to be seen. it will be interesting to find out how many of the student teachers continue teaching and how many will go back to their previous professions. as koehler et al. (2013: 45) state “...recruitment is only half of the battle. retention of new teachers can be a daunting task”. follow-up studies are needed to further examine this question. the findings of this research study have multiple implications for future research but mostly for policy making. it affirms the need to allow different initial teacher education programmes to coexist simultaneously, each meeting different needs. as noted by musset (2010: 11) countries can “customize” teacher education programmes according to their specific needs and traditions, and alternative teacher education programmes should not be seen as competing, but rather as complementary. in that sense, it supports the claim that “many factors contribute to teachers’ effectiveness… the route through which certification is obtained is just one of these factors” (blazer, 2012: 7). the current study also validates the importance of granting more autonomy to teacher education institutions. it iterates the claim that the “regulation [of teacher education] serves the democratic state less well than a more autonomous form of education” (bates, 2004: 117) and that “the role of governments is not to regulate the technical details of teacher education … but, rather, to regulate the conditions of teaching and of teacher education in ways that preserve the autonomy of educators...” (bates, 2004: 128). finally, on a positive note, amidst the global crisis caused by the covid-19 virus and its countless negative ramifications, the pandemic may prove to have some positive long-term effects on the future of education and teacher education. a recent study that examined over 30,000 florida teachers and their students found that teachers who entered the profession during a labour-market downturn were significantly more effective than those who started teaching when the economy was stronger (nagler, piopiunik & west, 2020). since weaker job markets offer a window of opportunity for hiring stronger teachers, cohorts of teachers hired during recessions have been found to have a large share of exceptionally strong performers. follow-up research studies on the israeli covid-19 alternative initial teacher education programme will hopefully come up with similar conclusions. references amichai, s. & ron, s. 2018. making educational excellence in mathematics accessible to disadvantaged children: the case of teach first israel. in n. movshovitz-hadar (ed.). k-12 mathematics education in israel: issues and innovations‏. singapore: world scientific publishing co. https://doi.org/10.1142/9789813231191_0031 aragon, s. 2016. teacher shortages: what we know. denver, colorado: education commission of the states.‏ birkeland, s.e. & peske, h.g. 2004. literature review of research on alternative certification. washington, dc: national education association. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00131946.2016.1231679?casa_token=gkofeagx50maaaaa%3avuy9dm8cm5xba4ouatnptomazj0d5ibdod2-shrmqmin20uc8skfjxyfcsnixvom1ftzxorv9ywjiuk https://doi.org/10.1142/9789813231191_0031 3862021 39(1): 386-389 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.23 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) council for higher education. 2006. ariav guidelines: outline for teacher education programs in higher education institutions in israel. jerusalem: council for higher education. council for higher education. 2018. digital learning: definition and regulation. jerusalem: council for higher education. 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mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates, publishers. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203119273-1%0d https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.57.1.j463w79r56455411 https://doi.org/10.1177/0895904813510777 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2008.06.002 https://doi.org/10.1080/00131946.2016.1231679 https://doi.org/10.1080/00131946.2016.1231679 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-017-0932-0%0d https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-017-0932-0%0d https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2010.06.004 135 research article 2021 39(4): 135-155 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) pre-service accounting teachers’ confidence and motivation in doing mathematics abstract the purpose of the study was to determine pre-service accounting teachers’ perceptions of the confidence and motivation in doing mathematics in bachelor of education accounting courses at a higher education institution, with the aim of informing higher education heutagogy as it relates to teaching and learning in accounting. this study included a convenience sample of 255 preservice accounting teachers from a higher education institution in south africa and a purposive sample of 18 students was drawn. data collection was done through questionnaires and an interview schedule. a sequential explanatory design and sampling were employed. data were analysed using spss for quantitative data and the interviews were transcribed and analysed qualitatively. the mean scores are above average (positive) for the cohort, however, there were numerous students with low scores in the effectance motivation and confidence scales. a more positive attitude towards effectance motivation in doing mathematics came from indian, english and suburban respondents (p<.050). these students were not discouraged by difficult mathematical problems and are thus motivated by the challenges of mathematics. the interviews showed that parents positively influenced these students to persevere when faced with challenging mathematics problems. the results show no significant differences in the confidence in doing mathematics subscale (p >.050) in relation to gender, age, race group, mother tongue, grade 12 mathematics, accounting module or location of schools. this finding runs counter to interview responses where 10 of the participants did not believe that they had a lot of selfconfidence when it comes to mathematical accounting calculations and could not do advanced work without seeking help from others, compared with 6 participants who agreed that they had a lot of selfconfidence when it comes to mathematical accounting calculations and could do advanced work without seeking help from others. in third-year accounting, strong significant connections were found between motivation in doing mathematics, confidence in doing mathematics and achievement in accounting 420. keywords: pre-service teachers; accounting; mathematics; confidence; motivation; teaching. 1. introduction there is a limited understanding of the nature of the relationship between mathematics and accounting (yunker et al., 2009, mkhize, 2019) and the extent to which author: prof msizi mkhize1 affiliation: 1university of kwazulu-natal doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i4.10 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(4): 135-155 published: 6 december 2021 received: 14 august 2021 accepted: 07 october 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8499-9445 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 1362021 39(4): 136-155 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) mathematics influences the teaching and learning of accounting. accounting students perform a variety of calculations in accounting courses. this makes mathematics integral to the successful study of accounting. the majority of accounting definitions assert that accounting requires numerical and analytical skills, which are also integral elements of mathematics (shaftel & shaftel, 2005, fedoryshyn et al., 2010, heck & van gastel, 2006). the transition from basic education to higher education mathematics modules, which involve advanced mathematics, is a challenge for many students (rach & ufer, 2020, heck & van gastel, 2006). the new entry students who fail to master basic skills, such as solving arithmetic and algebra problems, will most likely face difficulties in their further modules (nortvedt & siqveland, 2018). undergraduate accounting students with majors in mathematics from preuniversity institutes perform better than those with arts or social sciences backgrounds (zandi, shahabi & bagheri, 2012). number and operations, patterns and algebra, and data handling and probabilities skills that can be acquired in the subject of mathematics are found to be useful in accounting courses. it is vital to have mathematics skills to complete accounting tasks or activities as they are full of basic and advanced calculations and report accurate financial information (mkhize, 2019, villamar et al., 2020). this study was driven by the need to investigate pre-service teachers’ perceptions of the confidence and motivation in doing mathematics in bachelor of education accounting courses at the higher education institution (hei), with the aim of informing higher education heutagogy as it relates to teaching and learning in accounting. the research questions of this study were formulated as follows: • what are the pre-service teachers’ perceptions of the confidence and effectance motivation in doing mathematics in bed accounting courses? this question is answered in two ways: firstly, by looking at the confidence and motivation in doing mathematics domains and reviewing questions in the interview instrument and secondly, by examining groupings and determining if one can draw some significant differences in the perceptions of students across demographic variables as they relate to mathematics confidence and effectance motivation. • how do confidence and effectance motivation in doing mathematics relate to learning and achievement in accounting? the question is answered by looking at the correlation between dimensions of motivation and confidence in doing mathematics and achievement in accounting modules. 2. literature review 2.1 confidence in learning mathematics hurst (2012) points out that confidence and positive self-efficacy can be a positive step towards success in any discipline. in his study, hurst found that one method to increase student confidence and interest in mathematics was to “humanise” it, make the history of mathematics a key aspect of the module – for example, asking the students to undertake research on the history of a concept they are learning. another study, by hoffman and schraw (2009), reported that students with higher mathematics self-efficacy persist longer with difficult mathematics problems and are more accurate in mathematics calculations than those lower in mathematics self-efficacy. in addition, wenner (2001) found that the self-efficacy beliefs of in-service teachers – in particular, science and mathematics teachers – tend to be higher than those of pre-service teachers in other non-science or mathematics disciplines and that pre-service teachers should be the targeted population for intervention. pajares and schunk http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 1372021 39(4): 137-155 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 mkhize pre-service accounting teachers doing mathematics (2001) emphasise that students with low self-efficacy beliefs tend to be less confident and consequently become more anxious and stressed when attempting tasks. canada (2011), who examined the mathematics attitudes of african-american elementary students, found that african american students in this sample enjoyed mathematics significantly more than white students and perceived themselves in mathematics at the same level, regardless of teachers underrating them and overrating their white counterparts on both measures. a study by curtis (2006) found a significant difference in enjoyment of mathematics on college students’ race. no significant differences were found in confidence in doing mathematics, motivation in doing mathematics and value of mathematics. the qualitative data showed that a change occurred in confidence in doing mathematics, motivation in doing mathematics and value of mathematics. the study also identified that cooperative learning, problem solving, discourse and graphing calculators increased students’ confidence in doing mathematics, and that students felt more competent in performing problems during examinations. similarly, farooq and shah (2008), investigating high school students’ attitudes towards mathematics, found no significant difference in confidence in doing mathematics between male and female students (t-value = 1.276; p > 0.05). 2.2 effectance motivation in learning mathematics according to self-determination theory (deci & ryan, 2000; deci & ryan, 1985), motivation can be divided into three broad categories: amotivation, extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. the three categories exist on a continuum according to the level of selfdetermination underlying the motives behind behaviours. amotivation occurs when individuals feel that an activity has no value, when individuals do not feel competent to complete a task or do not expect any desirable outcome from the activity. extrinsic motivation is the desire or drive to engage in an activity because it leads to the attainment of an unrelated outcome (eccles & wigfield, 2002; ames, 1992; deci, 1972). external regulation is caused by external imposed rewards or punishments. introjection occurs when individuals internalise the reasons for their behaviours and impose their own rewards or constraints. identification occurs when an individual identifies with reason for behaving in a particular manner and behaviour is valued by the individual and occurs because the individual chooses to do so (deci & ryan, 1985; deci & ryan, 2000). extrinsically motivated students engage in academic tasks because of rewards, such as recognition or pressures and failure (o’keefe, 2010). intrinsic motivation refers to an inner desire to accomplish a task, and pleasure is derived in the process. intrinsically motivated students engage in academic tasks because they have an interest in studying and enjoy tasks or activities. students have an intrinsic motivation to know, to accomplish tasks and to experience stimulation (deci & ryan, 2000). instruction that supports developmental students to develop a positive self-concept, selfefficacy, independence and engagement will be beneficial in increasing student motivation (hannula, 2002). the application of sound teaching and learning principles fosters an environment where students are motivated to reach for their potential (tsanwani, 2009). motivation to achieve in mathematics is not solely a product of mathematics ability nor is it so stable that intervention programmes cannot be designed to improve it (middleton & spanias, 1999). instead, achievement motivation in mathematics is strongly influenced by instructional practices, and, if appropriate practices are implemented consistently over a long period of time, students can and do learn to enjoy and value mathematics (middleton & spanias, 1999, posamentier, 2017). teaching mathematics based on action learning and natural motivation http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 1382021 39(4): 138-155 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) is effective. incorporating stimulating questions, computer analysis (internet search included), and classical famous problems are important motivating resources in mathematics, which are particularly beneficial in the framework of action learning (abramovich et al., 2019). vandecandelaere et al. (2012) posit that the learning environment is linked with the motivation that comes with enjoying the challenges in mathematics. a study by noble (2011) investigated the personal stories of african american male students who excelled in mathematics to understand the impact of their self-efficacy beliefs on their motivation and subsequent academic achievement in mathematics at the postsecondary level, and reported that enactive attainment and vicarious experience were influential sources for these students’ beliefs and were supported by family, friends and peers. the vicarious experiences seemed to be more influential than enactive attainment. this finding challenges bandura (1986), who found that enactive attainment has the most significant influence on self-efficacy. instead, noble’s finding supports claims that friends play a major role in the development of attitudes to academics for african american male students. a study by aruwa (2011) on influences on attitudes towards mathematics found that participants’ own motivational orientations, their belief about their mathematical ability, and the reasons they gave for success and failure appeared to have influenced their achievement and attitudes towards mathematics. the presence of an extrinsic achievement goal, especially in the later stages of secondary school, appeared to have motivated participants to strive for mathematical achievement. anthony (2000) found that self-motivation influenced success in mathematics subjects and that lack of effort was the most likely factor to influence failure in mathematics subjects. finally, a study by frazier-kouassi (1999) found a significant difference between highachieving and low-achieving groups (t=-3.02; p=.003). high-achieving students had a more positive mean score than low-achieving students, meaning that they agreed more strongly on the statement “challenges of mathematics motivate” me than did low-achieving students. additionally, these students may be intrinsically motivated or have a history of positive reinforcement from parents or teachers for persistence in the face of difficulty. 2.3 integration of mathematics in accounting integration is the act, process or an instance of integrating. for example, the integration of mathematics and/with accounting (merriam-webster, 1999). an integrated study is one in which students broadly explore knowledge in various subjects related to certain aspects of their environment (humphreys et al., 1981). interdisciplinary integration is when students learn concepts and skills from two or more disciplines that are tightly linked to deepen knowledge and skills. teachers arrange the curriculum around common knowledge or learnings throughout disciplines and break apart or chunk together the common knowledge or learnings embedded in the disciplines to emphasise interdisciplinary skills and concepts (drake & burns, 2004; kaufman et al., 2003), as illustrated in figure 1 below however, mwakapenda and dhlamini (2010) state that some tensions that students may face is where opportunities for making connections between mathematics and other learning areas are available but are either neglected or inappropriately used by the teachers. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 1392021 39(4): 139-155 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 mkhize pre-service accounting teachers doing mathematics figure 1. the interdisciplinary integrated approach (drake & burns, 2014). accounting activities require the use of mathematics or mathematical principles to successfully complete any introductory accounting courses or modules (babalola & abiola, 2013). the rules of debits and credits are entirely based on mathematical logic. there is a need for learning accounting from the perspective of mathematics (warsono, darmawan & ridha, 2009). selesho (2000) concurs that mathematics plays an important role in learning accounting. studies by yu (2011) and zandi, shahabi and bagheri (2012) found that mathematics proficiency is the factor that has the biggest impact on accounting students’ output performance. a study by stenberg, varua and yong (2010) suggested that tertiary institutions should recognise that high failure rates are due to inadequate mathematics exposure in secondary schooling, and corrective actions such as remedial lessons might not be sufficient. specifying a minimum mathematics entry requirement and/or providing foundation programmes to ensure students have the essential basic mathematical skills, would increase student success in quantitative courses or modules. 3. methodology 3.1 research design and sampling a pragmatic, sequential explanatory mixed methods research design and sampling were adopted for this study and included a sequential collection of quantitative and qualitative data to provide answers to the research questions. for the first phase, convenience sampling was used for the surveys, because the pre-service accounting teachers are based at the hei pre-service accounting teachers doing mathematics 6 concepts and skills from two or more disciplines that are tightly linked to deepen knowledge and skills. teachers arrange the curriculum around common knowledge or learnings throughout disciplines and break apart or chunk together the common knowledge or learnings embedded in the disciplines to emphasise interdisciplinary skills and concepts (drake & burns, 2004; kaufman et al., 2003), as illustrated in figure 1 below however, mwakapenda and dhlamini (2010) state that some tensions that students may face is where opportunities for making connections between mathematics and other learning areas are available but are either neglected or inappropriately used by the teachers. figure 1. the interdisciplinary integrated approach (drake & burns, 2014). accounting activities require the use of mathematics or mathematical principles to successfully complete any introductory accounting courses or modules (babalola & abiola, 2013). the rules of debits and credits are entirely based on mathematical logic. there is a need for learning accounting from the perspective of mathematics (warsono, darmawan & ridha, 2009). selesho (2000) concurs that mathematics plays an important role in learning accounting. studies by yu (2011) and zandi, shahabi and bagheri (2012) found that mathematics proficiency is the factor that has the biggest impact on accounting students’ output performance. a study by stenberg, varua and yong (2010) suggested that tertiary institutions should recognise that high failure rates are due to inadequate mathematics exposure in secondary schooling, and corrective mathematics accounting economics english topics concepts interdisciplinary skills (e.g. numeracy skills, reading skills, critical thinking skills) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 1402021 39(4): 140-155 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) and are easy to reach and easy to contact. the randomly selected quantitative sample size consisted of 225 pre-service teachers. for the second phase, a purposeful choice sample for interviews was randomly selected from the quantitative sample. this sampling method was relevant for the study since pre-service accounting teachers elaborated on their quantitative responses. the qualitative sample size consisted of 18 pre-service accounting teachers (6 students from each first-, secondand third-year level of study). 3.2 data collection methods the two data collection methods used to source the information were questionnaires and interviews. 3.2.1 questionnaires the questionnaires were used to collect quantitative data. the composite statement for the confidence in doing mathematics scale is “i am confident in doing mathematics”. the composite statement for the motivation in doing mathematics scale is “the challenges of mathematics motivate me”. the scales consisted of 12 statements each. the first six statements measure positive attitudes, and six measure negative attitudes, with the following possible responses: strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, and strongly disagree. each of the likert responses was given a value of 5 to 1 respectively, for the positively stated questions, and 1 to 5 respectively, for the negatively stated questions. a minimum possible score was 12 and the maximum possible score was 60. a higher score indicates a more positive attitude towards the confidence of learning mathematics and effectance motivation. a lower score indicates a more negative attitude towards the confidence of learning mathematics and effectance motivation. the questionnaires adapted from the fennema-sherman confidence and motivation of doing mathematics scales were pilot tested. the reliability test was confirmed by determining the cronbach’s alpha for the scales. the confidence in learning mathematics scale reliability coefficient of r = 0.922 was found and effectance motivation scale reliability coefficient of r = 0.847 was found. 3.2.2 interviews the interview schedule was constructed from fennema-sherman confidence and effectance motivation in doing mathematics scales and from literature identified and developed in the literature review. a number of the interview questions were posed as follows: “i have a lot of confidence when it comes to mathematical accounting calculations and could do advanced work in mathematics without seeking help from others”, “watching and listening to a teacher in an accounting class performing an algebraic equation or applying a formula on the chalkboard makes me feel happy”. do you agree with these statements? the 5-point likert scale was used and students were required to explain during the interview. open-ended questions were asked so that participants could express their views (figures 1 and 2). i have a lot of confidence when it comes to mathematical accounting calculations and could do advanced work in mathematics without seeking help from others. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 1412021 39(4): 141-155 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 mkhize pre-service accounting teachers doing mathematics figure 1: example of a likert-scale question used in a survey via interview figure 2: example of a likert-scale question used in a survey via interview the interviewer pre-tested the survey via interviews with two pre-service accounting teachers at the hei school of education to confirm whether the interviewees understood the questions. 3.2.3 procedures survey: the questionnaire was administered during the accounting class. the instructions in english were read to the participants. the participants were assured that the data was for academic research only. no identifying information was to be disclosed on the questionnaire, and for this reason the questionnaire was conducted anonymously. participants were told that pseudonyms would be used. participants were also given assurance that their participation or non-participation would not affect their marks or disadvantage them in any way, even though the researcher was the accounting lecturer. this gave respondents the assurance of confidentiality and anonymity. a consent form was distributed for the participants to complete. questionnaires were also distributed, and participants were given 45 minutes to fill it in. two research assistants assisted in collecting the questionnaires. interviews: the office was used because it is situated in a quiet area. no interruptions occurred. the individual face-to-face open-ended interviews with 18 pre-service accounting teachers were conducted. the instructions in english were read to the participants. the 18 participants were asked to indicate their perceptions of confidence in learning mathematics and effectance motivation in bachelor of education accounting courses at the higher education institution. the interviews were recorded and notes taken. permission was obtained from participants before commencing. pre-service accounting teachers doing mathematics 8 negative attitude towards the confidence of learning mathematics and effectance motivation. the questionnaires adapted from the fennema-sherman confidence and motivation of doing mathematics scales were pilot tested. the reliability test was confirmed by determining the cronbach’s alpha for the scales. the confidence in learning mathematics scale reliability coefficient of r = 0.922 was found and effectance motivation scale reliability coefficient of r = 0.847 was found. 3.2.2 interviews the interview schedule was constructed from fennema-sherman confidence and effectance motivation in doing mathematics scales and from literature identified and developed in the literature review. a number of the interview questions were posed as follows: “i have a lot of confidence when it comes to mathematical accounting calculations and could do advanced work in mathematics without seeking help from others”, “watching and listening to a teacher in an accounting class performing an algebraic equation or applying a formula on the chalkboard makes me feel happy”. do you agree with these statements? the 5-point likert scale was used and students were required to explain during the interview. open-ended questions were asked so that participants could express their views (figures 1 and 2). i have a lot of confidence when it comes to mathematical accounting calculations and could do advanced work in mathematics without seeking help from others. do you agree with the statement? strongly agree agree undecided disagree strongly disagree if agree, why? _________________explain: _______________________________________ if disagree, why not? __________________________________________________________ figure 1: example of a likert-scale question used in a survey via interview watching and listening to a teacher in an accounting class performing an algebraic equation or applying a formula on the chalkboard makes me feel happy. do you agree with the statement? strongly agree undecided disagree strongly pre-service accounting teachers doing mathematics 9 watching and listening to a teacher in an accounting class performing an algebraic equation or applying a formula on the chalkboard makes me feel happy. do you agree with the statement? strongly agree agree undecided disagree strongly disagree explain: ______________________________________________________________ figure 2: example of a likert-scale question used in a survey via interview the interviewer pre-tested the survey via interviews with two pre-service accounting teachers at the hei school of education to confirm whether the interviewees understood the questions. 3.2.3 procedures survey: the questionnaire was administered during the accounting class. the instructions in english were read to the participants. the participants were assured that the data was for academic research only. no identifying information was to be disclosed on the questionnaire, and for this reason the questionnaire was conducted anonymously. participants were told that pseudonyms would be used. participants were also given assurance that their participation or non-participation would not affect their marks or disadvantage them in any way, even though the researcher was the accounting lecturer. this gave respondents the assurance of confidentiality and anonymity. a consent form was distributed for the participants to complete. questionnaires were also distributed, and participants were given 45 minutes to fill it in. two research assistants assisted in collecting the questionnaires. interviews: the office was used because it is situated in a quiet area. no interruptions occurred. the individual face-to-face open-ended interviews with 18 pre-service accounting teachers were conducted. the instructions in english were read to the participants. the 18 participants were asked to indicate their perceptions of confidence in learning mathematics and effectance motivation in bachelor of education accounting courses at the higher education institution. the interviews were recorded and notes taken. permission was obtained from participants before commencing. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 1422021 39(4): 142-155 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) 3.3 data analysis strategy the quantitative data were analysed using spss. descriptive and inferential statistics were computed. mean scores of students falling in each category were calculated. box and whisker plotting showed the overall means to conceal the key differences between individual student responses. the t-test and analysis of variance were used to test whether there was a significant difference between demographic variables and students’ confidence in doing mathematics and effectance motivation, significance level, p < 0.05. pearson correlations computed for confidence in doing mathematics and effectance motivation and accounting mark sheets in order to investigate which of the affectance factors correlate, whether positively or negatively. statistical significance was found to be at p < 0.01 and p < 0.05. the interview data were transcribed to produce a written word document. the interview participants were emailed data to verify their responses. the responses were coded and salient items categorised into themes. to enhance the credibility of the analyses, member checks were performed by supervisors, academics with doctorate degrees at a workshop and two retired education professors. 3.4 ethical considerations the research complied with ethical considerations for dealing with human subjects. ethical clearance was obtained from human research ethics committee of the relevant higher education institution. 4. results quantitative and qualitative results are explained below. 4.1 quantitative results 4.1.1 descriptive statistics cronbach’s alpha coefficient for confidence in doing mathematics was .922 and effectance motivation in doing mathematics was .847. the mean score showed the overall effectance and motivation in doing mathematics of all 255 students. a mean equal to 36 indicated that effectance and motivation in doing mathematics is neutral, mean less than 36 (below average) indicated that students were in disagreement with the composite statement and the mean greater than 36 (above average) indicated that students agreed with the composite statement. table 3 indicates that the mean values were above average for both the factors: confidence in doing mathematics – the mean score for all 255 respondents was 41.57 (sd = 11.01) which represents moderate agreement with the composite statement, “i am confident in doing mathematics” and effectance motivation in doing mathematics – the mean score for all 255 respondents was 40.13 (sd = 9.28), which represented moderate agreement with the composite statement, “the challenges of mathematics motivate me”. table 1. mean scores and standard deviations for the personal affect factors factor (n=255) mean std. deviation cronbach alpha confidence in doing mathematics 41.57 11.013 .922 effectance motivation in doing mathematics 40.13 9.275 .847 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 1432021 39(4): 143-155 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 mkhize pre-service accounting teachers doing mathematics the overall means cited in the previous paragraph conceal the key differences between the individual student responses. as shown in figure 3, the spread of factor and mean scores for students are depicted. i – first year students: the large number of outliers indicated the diversity in the class. most of the students in the first year agreed with statement, “the challenges of mathematics motivate me” and “i am confident in doing mathematics”. despite the mean score being positive (above average) for the cohort, there were numerous students who had achieved low scores in the factors. ii – second year students: these students also had low scores in the motivation and confidence factors despite the mean being positive. iii – third year students: it was noted that from the means for third-year accounting students scored lower than the means for firstand second-year accounting students. figure 3: spread of factor and mean scores for accounting students, fennema-sherman motivation and confidence in doing mathematics scales pre-service accounting teachers doing mathematics 12 figure 3: spread of factor and mean scores for accounting students, fennema-sherman motivation and confidence in doing mathematics scales inferential statistics effectance motivation in doing mathematics table 2 shows the number of students selecting each level of agreement on effectance motivation in doing mathematics. table 3 shows the data disaggregated by gender, age, race, mother tongue, mathematics schooling background, year of study and location of schooling. table 2. number of students selecting each level of agreement on effectance motivation in doing mathematics effectance motivation in doing mathematics subscale (n = 255) s tr on gl y ag re e a gr ee u nd ec id ed d is ag re e s tr on gl y di sa gr ee n n n n n i like maths puzzles. 47 100 46 40 22 maths is enjoyable to me. 43 84 42 61 25 when a maths problem comes up that i cannot solve right away, i stick with it until i find the solution. 57 99 30 43 26 once i start working on a maths puzzle, it is hard to stop. 35 66 39 70 45 i – first year students ii – second year students iii – third year students http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 1442021 39(4): 144-155 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) inferential statistics effectance motivation in doing mathematics table 2 shows the number of students selecting each level of agreement on effectance motivation in doing mathematics. table 3 shows the data disaggregated by gender, age, race, mother tongue, mathematics schooling background, year of study and location of schooling. table 2. number of students selecting each level of agreement on effectance motivation in doing mathematics effectance motivation in doing mathematics subscale (n = 255) s tro ng ly a gr ee a gr ee u nd ec id ed d is ag re e s tro ng ly d is ag re e n n n n n i like maths puzzles. 47 100 46 40 22 maths is enjoyable to me. 43 84 42 61 25 when a maths problem comes up that i cannot solve right away, i stick with it until i find the solution. 57 99 30 43 26 once i start working on a maths puzzle, it is hard to stop. 35 66 39 70 45 when i have a question that doesn’t get answered in maths class, i keep thinking about it. 58 100 28 43 26 i am challenged by maths problems i cannot understand right away. 54 93 31 59 18 figuring out maths problems is not something i like to do. 30 48 42 97 38 the challenge of maths problems does not appeal to me. 15 41 74 85 40 maths puzzles are boring. 14 24 61 92 64 i do not understand how some people can spend so much time on maths and seem to like it. 33 42 40 85 55 i would rather have someone else figure out a tough maths problem than have to work it out myself. 32 48 44 65 66 i do as little work in maths as possible. 28 68 29 72 58 table 3. comparison: effectance motivation in doing mathematics with demographic variables using means, t-test and anova variables sub-groups n mean t-test anova t df p f p gender male female 105 150 39.52 40.55 -.872 253 .384 age (years) 18 – 20 years 21 years and above 165 90 40.50 39.44 .871 253 .385 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 1452021 39(4): 145-155 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 mkhize pre-service accounting teachers doing mathematics variables sub-groups n mean t-test anova t df p f p race group african indian 225 30 39.56 44.40 -2.718 253 .007* mother tongue english zulu 32 223 44.50 39.50 2.891 253 .004* grade 12 mathematics mathematics mathematical literacy 146 109 40.86 39.16 1.451 253 .148 accounting module first year second year third year 143 77 35 40.97 39.35 38.43 1.445 .238 areas/ location of school rural area township area suburban area 134 72 49 39.75 38.32 43.84 5.595 .004* *p<0.05 the significant differences were between african and indian, english and zulu, and rural, township and suburban students (p < 0.050). confidence in doing mathematics table 4. number of students selecting each level of agreement on confidence in doing mathematics confidence in doing mathematics domain (n = 255) s tr on gl y ag re e a gr ee u nd ec id ed d is ag re e s tr on gl y di sa gr ee n n n n n i feel confident trying maths. 95 92 27 27 14 i am sure that i could do advanced work in maths. 73 83 54 31 14 i am sure that i can learn maths. 89 113 34 10 9 i think i could handle more difficult maths. 55 77 67 26 30 i can get good marks (scores) in maths. 57 121 39 25 13 i have a lot of self-confidence when it comes to maths. 52 75 52 59 17 i am no good at maths. 31 47 35 91 51 i do not think i could do advanced maths. 21 46 42 97 49 i am not the type to do well in maths. 22 37 30 110 56 for some reason, even though i study, maths is really hard for me. 39 72 34 66 43 i do fine in most subjects, but when it comes to maths i really mess up. 62 53 21 72 47 maths is my worst subject. 47 39 36 59 73 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 1462021 39(4): 146-155 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) table 4 shows the number of students selecting each level of agreement on confidence in doing mathematics. table 5 shows the data is disaggregated by gender, age, race, mother tongue, mathematics schooling background, year of study and location of schooling. table 5. comparison: confidence in doing mathematics with demographic variables using means, t-test & anova variables sub-groups n mean t-test anova t df p f p gender male female 105 150 41.86 41.37 .349 253 .727 age (years) 18 -20 years 21 years and above 165 90 42.07 40.66 .978 253 .329 race group african indian 225 30 41.40 42.87 -.687 253 .493 mother tongue english zulu 32 223 43.47 41.30 1.044 253 .298 grade 12 mathematics mathematics mathematical literacy 146 109 42.38 40.49 1.358 253 .176 accounting module first year second year third year 143 77 35 42.91 40.31 38.86 2.656 .072 areas/ location of school rural area township area suburban area 134 72 49 40.86 41.08 44.22 1.785 .170 *p<0.05 the results of the study show no significant differences between any of the grouping variables (p > 0.050). correlation between effectance motivation and confidence in doing mathematics scores and achievement in accounting modules this section answers the question: how do personal factors (confidence in doing mathematics and motivation in doing mathematics) relate to learning and achievement in accounting? http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 1472021 39(4): 147-155 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 mkhize pre-service accounting teachers doing mathematics table 6. correlation between dimensions of motivation and confidence in doing mathematics and achievement in accounting modules motivation subscale confidence subscale first year accounting 210 pearson correlation sig. (2-tailed) n .248** .005 128 .227* .010 128 accounting 220 pearson correlation sig. (2-tailed) n .241* .010 112 .229* .015 112 second year accounting 310 pearson correlation sig. (2-tailed) n .178 .167 62 .098 .449 62 accounting 320 pearson correlation sig. (2-tailed) n .178 .203 53 .075 .591 53 third year accounting 410 pearson correlation sig. (2-tailed) n .327 .072 31 .339 .062 31 accounting 420 pearson correlation sig. (2-tailed) n .506** .007 27 .437* .023 27 ** correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed), * correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed). the correlations between factors of motivation and confidence in doing mathematics and achievement in accounting modules studied in the year of the research have been calculated. the results were tabulated in table 6 and it should be noted that six different modules of accounting were used to measure accounting achievement. this affects the comparability of the results across the year groups, the two modules in the current year of study; nevertheless, certain trends could be observed. the study revealed the following aspects: in first-year accounting, there were low positive and significant correlations between motivation in doing mathematics and confidence in doing mathematics. this indicated a marginal connection between accounting 210 and 220 achievement and motivation in doing mathematics as well as confidence in doing mathematics. in second-year accounting, no significant correlations were found between motivation and confidence in doing mathematics and achievement in accounting 310 and 320. in third-year accounting, strong significant connections were found between motivation in doing mathematics, confidence in doing mathematics and achievement in accounting 420. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 1482021 39(4): 148-155 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) 4.2 qualitative results interviews on confidence in doing mathematics figure 4 shows the responses of participants to the question “i have a lot of confidence when it comes to mathematical accounting calculations and could do advanced work in mathematics without seeking help from others. do you agree with this statement?”. the results indicated that the majority of participants disagreed with the statement. figure 4. confidence in mathematical accounting calculations. explanations given by the participants: i have self-confidence when it comes to doing calculations and i like to do advanced work so that when we are doing it in class i am already prepared. although when i find challenges i often seek help but not always (sibo). i have confidence i enjoy mathematics and challenges. i sometimes find challenging, that is when i need help (narri). mathematics is one of my favourite subjects and i do it myself most of the times. i seldom ask people for help (madu). i understand most of the calculations. occasionally i ask for help from others sisi. these are exceptional cases that were found. they were confident and enthusiastic in doing mathematical accounting calculations but were not free from anxiety as they sometimes found it challenging and sought assistance. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 1492021 39(4): 149-155 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 mkhize pre-service accounting teachers doing mathematics i find mathematics challenging so if the mathematical accounting calculation is challenging i get lost and confused and not confident in doing it … as long there is someone to assist (vender). not confident, mathematical accounting calculations are challenging. in most of the times i seek help if lost (kazi). vender and kazi indicated that mathematics anxiety affects confidence and lack of confidence affects mathematics anxiety in doing mathematical accounting calculations. i do need help most of the times because i did mathematics literacy in high school level (buthu). buthu is not confident in doing mathematics as he did mathematical literacy in high school. he always looks for assistance. interviews on effectance motivation in doing mathematics most of the participants (15) agreed with the statement, “i get motivated towards practising mathematical accounting calculations when i successfully solve the accounting problem”. only a minority of participants (3) disagreed with this statement. figure 5: motivation in doing mathematical accounting calculations the overall results indicated that most of the participants agreed with the statement, while a minority of the participants did not. pre-service accounting teachers doing mathematics 18 i find mathematics challenging so if the mathematical accounting calculation is challenging i get lost and confused and not confident in doing it … as long there is someone to assist (vender). not confident, mathematical accounting calculations are challenging. in most of the times i seek help if lost (kazi). vender and kazi indicated that mathematics anxiety affects confidence and lack of confidence affects mathematics anxiety in doing mathematical accounting calculations. i do need help most of the times because i did mathematics literacy in high school level (buthu). buthu is not confident in doing mathematics as he did mathematical literacy in high school. he always looks for assistance. interviews on effectance motivation in doing mathematics most of the participants (15) agreed with the statement, “i get motivated towards practising mathematical accounting calculations when i successfully solve the accounting problem”. only a minority of participants (3) disagreed with this statement. figure 5: motivation in doing mathematical accounting calculations the overall results indicated that most of the participants agreed with the statement, while a minority of the participants did not. the participants gave the following reasons. number of participants http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 1502021 39(4): 150-155 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) the participants gave the following reasons. makes me feel intelligent, gives me confidence and makes me feel smart (bima). i feel happy because that is when i pick up information and tips for my understanding of the calculation. i have already attempted the calculation before, when the teacher performs it i am then able to correct my mistakes (asiya). when the teacher models the process or steps, the students are likely to learn from the process and reflect on it. it gives me the motivation to go on solving other problems. i get the confidence i need to do other problems (sisi). yes, i do get motivated and feel determined to work hard in order to improve my understanding (khoba). since i like to work with numbers, i always become motivated, happy when i got the right solution because i love accounting. i sometimes assist my friends with calculations. (sibo) … get lost in the middle of the calculations … get frustrated … mathematical calculations, it is as if you are challenging the teacher … decide to keep quiet even if they do not understand (phindi). students sometimes believe that asking a teacher to explain can be misinterpreted by the teacher, as if students are challenging the teacher’s mathematics competence. however, if they want clarification and get a sense that their question is being misconstrued, they resolve to be quiet. teachers must make a distinction between questions that indicate misunderstanding and questions that are testing the teacher’s competence. 5. discussion of research results the mean scores are positive – above average – however, many students had low scores in the factors. the wide spread of scores in fennema-sherman confidence and motivation in doing mathematics scales indicate that these factors may differ in significance in influencing the learning of accounting by pre-service teachers. this assumption is discussed below, drawing on the results of fennema-sherman motivation and confidence in doing mathematics scales, the student interviews and the literature. 5.1 effectance motivation in doing mathematics domain the students were not discouraged by difficult mathematical problems, which indicate that the challenges of mathematics motivate them. as it was found during the interviews, these students were positively influenced by parents to persevere when faced with challenging mathematics problems. these students were also positively influenced by teachers who gave them tangible rewards (certificates) and intangible rewards (public acknowledgement). these students were intrinsically motivated because they have high autonomous (independent) learning. this finding is supported by frazier-kouassi (1999). the majority of the participants agreed that watching and listening to the teacher in an accounting class performing a calculation presents a space for personal reflection. one major reason given by participants was that when the teacher models the process or steps the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 1512021 39(4): 151-155 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 mkhize pre-service accounting teachers doing mathematics students are likely to learn from the process and reflect on it in their own approach. this finding corresponds with erdogan et al. (2011) that teachers should begin with problems that students understand and solve easily because this may raise the self-efficacy beliefs of students and the teachers can then solve more difficult problems with the students. only six participants were neutral in regard to the statement that “watching and listening to the teachers in an accounting class performing a calculation presents a space for personal reflection.” a reason given by participants was that when one asks a teacher to explain the process or steps the question could be misinterpreted by the teacher as challenging the teacher’s mathematics competence; a student wants clarification then gets a sense that the teacher is misinterpreting the question and decides to be quiet. the participants reflected a need for teachers to make use of the classroom environment as a resource for motivation. this result supports the findings by aruwa (2011). to alleviate mathematics anxiety and increase the motivation level of students, teachers could use top achievers in mathematics as a resource to show easier mathematical accounting calculation methods. these top students benefit by having their abilities affirmed and by learning that they can become a resource for other learners. this finding is consistent with the finding by vandecandelaere et al. (2012) that the learning environment is linked with the motivation that comes with enjoying the challenges in mathematics. one participant indicated that students in her class were uncomfortable and “not confident to ask questions in front of other learners”. this fear of asking questions lowered students’, self-esteem and personal self-belief. another participant identified a serious issue facing teaching and learning: she felt that it is essential to understand a theory and set a theoretical foundation before applying it. consequently, if the students’ theoretical knowledge is solid, there will be less anxiety in the application of theoretical knowledge. studies by anthony (2000) and aruwa (2011) found that self-motivation influenced success in mathematics subjects, that lack of effort was the most likely reason for failure in mathematics subjects and that it appeared to have influenced participants’ achievement and attitudes towards mathematics. 5.2 confidence in doing mathematics domain just two exceptional cases were found where the two participants were confident or enthusiastic in performing mathematical accounting calculations but had a negative disposition towards certain areas of mathematics that affected their learning in accounting. a total of 111 respondents (43.7%) agreed that, for one reason or another, even though they study, mathematics is really hard for them, and 115 agreed that they do fine in most subjects but mess up when it comes to mathematics. it is worrying that the majority of the participants showed lack of confidence in mathematical accounting calculations and rely on assistance from others. they indicated that they become anxious when performing mathematical accounting calculations. this finding is supported by pajares and schunk (2001) who found that students with low self-efficacy beliefs tend to be less confident and consequently become more anxious and stressed when attempting tasks. 5.3 relationship between effectance motivation and confidence in doing mathematics and achievement in accounting in first-year accounting, there were low positive and significant connections between accounting 210 and 220 achievement and motivation in doing mathematics as well as confidence in doing mathematics. in fourth-year accounting, strong positive and significant connections http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 1522021 39(4): 152-155 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.10 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) were found between motivation in doing mathematics, confidence in doing mathematics and achievement in accounting 420. when students enter their fourth year, there is a relationship between motivation and confidence in doing mathematics and achievement in accounting 420. students want to complete their accounting as this is their final year of accounting. 6. conclusions and implications for higher education the quantitative results revealed that more positive attitude towards effectance motivation in doing mathematics came from indian, english and suburban students (p<0.050). many of the interview participants agreed that watching and listening to the teacher in an accounting class performing a calculation presents a space for personal reflection. the quantitative results also showed that students have equal positive attitude to confidence in doing mathematics (p>0.050), whereas the qualitative results disclosed that the majority of the participants lack confidence in mathematical accounting calculations and rely on assistance from others. there is a relationship between motivation and confidence in doing mathematics and achievement in fourth year, accounting 420. students doing fourth year accounting want to complete their accounting studies as this is their final year of the bed accounting programme. it is suggested that students in their bed first year do the foundation courses such as mathematics for accounting before registering for an accounting major module in 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(2014) state that higher education institutions should first define what blended learning means for them to arrive at the point where the adoption and implementation phases begin. the implications of the technology part of blended learning appear synonymous with integrating technology in schools. it would, therefore, be beneficial to explain what technology is. technology is any aid that is designed and used for practical purposes through the application of systems. this article introduces blended learning involving pedagogy, the web, and instructional technology. to form an argument in the article, two conceptual frameworks are used, namely pedagogical content knowledge (pck) by shulman (1987) and technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) by mishra and koehler (2006), to emphasize that technology does not replace incompetent teaching, but serves as an aid to teaching and learning. the tpack framework draws inspiration from the pck framework by recognising the role of content and pedagogy as critical competencies of a teacher by integrating technology. next, the rise and rejection of technology in developing countries are contextualised. at least at the basic education level, the “gauteng online” project launched in 2002 by the gauteng provincial government was ultimately unsuccessful. the gauteng online project was a project that involved high schools in gauteng, where the provincial government provided resources such as laptops, desktop computers, and tablets to the schools in the province. although the project intended to digitise education and prepare learners for higher education, it failed due to a lack of teacher and learner training, stolen equipment, and teachers’ reluctance to adapt to changes (wilson, 2013). such failures can be seen even in higher education (ng’ambi et al., 2016) like most terms and theories, blended earning is a contested term. this article looks at adopting the definition of blended learning by driscoll (2002), where blended learning is a focused mode of delivery, intended to afford learners and teachers to form communities of practices and engage better with the content of a module through the use of educational technology while addressing the learning needs of learners. driscoll (2002) argues that acts of blended learning mean combining live virtual classrooms, including videos and audio uploaded on a virtual platform, while considering various pedagogical approaches such as constructivism, behaviourism, and cognitivism. 2. the international and local context of blended learning and udl the definitions of blended learning stated in the introduction are crucial, because they form an essential base for any institution (higher education or basic education) to start thinking about blended learning as an approach to teaching and learning. bernstein (1999) categorises education institutions as singulars, implying the critical role of knowledge production and differentiation that education institutions should play. young (2013) expands on the concept of singulars, regions, and generics by emphasising that universities and colleges should not drift away from this responsibility of knowledge production. he further provides arguments that support the importance of the community of scholars. it is, therefore, imperative for institutions of higher learning as singulars to distinguish themselves from regions (singulars conceptualised such as medicine and engineering) where the purpose is to be an interface between singulars and the external market (rata, 2011). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6863 1972023 41(2): 197-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6863 mnisi a case for deliberate and accommodative design for blended teaching furthermore, education institutions should distinguish themselves from generics (formed and distributed outside and independent of the formal pedagogic curriculum), such as the corporate world and edupreneuers, i.e. individuals and companies that offer education management services (lacatus &staiculescu, 2016). the above categorisation of universities as singulars implies that universities should base their blended learning approach on academic theory, experiences of both learners and academics, and appropriate contextual analysis of situational factors (dee fink, 2003). furthermore, a blended approach should be decided in relation to each institution’s unique community, ensuring that the blended approach does not exclude others due to issues of access and training. the recently updated principles and guidelines of universal design for learning (udl) by the centre for applied special technology (cast) (2020) suggest important considerations of a course/module design for equitable use, access, and quality assurance in learning and teaching. a blended learning course/module design that is universally designed, among other things, to increase student engagement transcends the technological affordances and caters for different learning needs. in support of implementing blended learning at universities, the udl principles for course design are essential components of blended learning. furthermore, to address the recent concern mentioned by academics and learners (chiu, sun & ismailov, 2022) – a concern about the lack of student engagement (strydom & loots, 2022) during the ‘emergency’ response, where institutions of higher learning immediately had to transition from offline to online learning modalities – it is important to give full consideration to situational factors. barkley (2010) defines student engagement as time and effort from the learners’ side and resources and research-based teaching from the institution’s side. a justifiable approach to the exploration, adoption, and implementation must be adequately explored and researched to ensure accessibility, engagement, inclusivity, and other factors affecting each institution. this is what this article intends to report on using the guidance of the methodology on knowledge and knowledge production and accommodative design. 3. methodology this article interconnectedly uses the pck, tpack, and udl frameworks in a blended learning course/module design. the pck provides a basis for the importance of pedagogy, competence, and subject knowledge by the teacher. the tpack framework draws from the pck a significant fact that pedagogy is still an important skill expected from the teacher, even in the information age and era of digital technologies. the udl instructional model provides an approach built on inclusivity and accessibility while connecting pck and tpack in recognising classroom learning needs. all three frameworks, when understood, have the potential to provide an accessible and engaging blended learning module. moreover, in an attempt to address a few sociological concerns concerning the use of technology in student learning, this article relies on the most prominent education sociologists, such as michael young and basil bernstein (a concern that the modern-day curriculum blurs the distinction between curriculum and pedagogy). secondly, i also refer to see et al. (2021), who argue that there is no link between technology and the enhancement of student learning. this article aims to advocate a blended learning approach focused on positive learning outcomes, increases student engagement, is grounded on core-curricular knowledge and concepts, and is inclusive and just in practice while improving the accessibility of the content. in expanding the argument for a blended learning approach that includes pck, tpack, and udl, articles and two books were reviewed by using keywords such as “blended learning”, https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6863 1982023 41(2): 198-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6863 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) “blended learning versus hybrid learning”, “blended learning in developing countries”, “technology for teaching”, “knowledge production in the 21st-century”, “curriculum crisis”, and “universal design for learning”. the reviewed articles are from different databases, including scielo, ebsco, jstor, google scholar, and scopus. the scope was then narrowed by excluding articles of the same arguments but by different authors and articles on corporate education. 4. important sociological critiques and a brief address see et al. (2020) argue that the use of technology in the classroom does not necessarily result in better learning outcomes for learners. this article deliberately uses the term ‘learners’ instead of ‘students’, and ‘teacher’ instead of ‘lecturers’ to emphasise learning. see et al. (2020) further argue that there is no evidence that learners learn better when using technology than when taught in offline modes/traditional teaching methods. with the rapid changes brought about by technology, curriculum specialists have raised concerns related to epistemology/ pedagogy, overpopulated curricula, and the blurring of the distinction between curriculum and pedagogy (bernstein, 1999; young, 2011, 2013; moore et al., 2006). the concern was that the rise in the use of technology for teaching and learning had an epistemologically incorrect basis and approach to knowledge production, knowledge constitution, and differentiation in academic disciplines. this concern also argued that there has to be a clear distinction between knowledge and pedagogy. the epistemic knowledge structure (the relationship between concepts) was almost unconsidered (young, 2013) in integrating technology into teaching and learning, and there was no knowledge differentiation. as bernstein (1999) and durkheim (1976) argue, knowledge differentiation is distinct characteristics that differentiate between everyday/common sense knowledge and scientific knowledge (usually gained through institutions of learning) and sacred vs. profane knowledge. the second concern that is particularly important to consider for blended learning and designing a disruption-proof learning environment is the loss of the curriculum object (what learners are entitled to) (young, 2013) and curriculum irrelevance (gravett, 2019) due to the assumption that we ought to teach according to the changes brought by technology. the central argument in this concern is that the use of technology may result in neglecting the core-curricula knowledge, riding on the bandwagon of technology, and seeing technology as a means in itself instead of a means to an end (knowledge acquisition through deep learning). scholars such as young (2013) argue that we should not forget the primary existence of educational institutions. the existence of education institutions/schools and the curricula thereof is not to serve as a policy to address the failures of governments. therefore, the supposed solution and innovation brought about by the use of technology in education should not serve to replace the primary existence of schools. schools exist for and by knowledge (gravett, 2019; young, 2011). 5. an address of the sociological concerns the response to both concerns should be broad in a manner that will do justice to the concerns and pave a possible way forward ,because technology and its rapid changes will happen anyway. the first concern could be addressed by setting a disclaimer that the use of technology in blended teaching and learning does not replace disciplinary knowledge or the structure of knowledge. the blended learning approach realises that disciplines and epistemic structure are central to developing learners’ intellectual commodities/faculties, are derived https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6863 1992023 41(2): 199-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6863 mnisi a case for deliberate and accommodative design for blended teaching from a community of scholars and knowledge specialists, and are essential in transitioning learners from surface to deep learning (bernstein, 1999). therefore, the content in the curriculum stays as it is unless new scientific knowledge is produced which disapproves or expands a particular theory. in blended learning, knowledge and experience are explicitly set apart; experience is used as a pedagogic resource of the teacher (young, 2011). pedagogy, in this instance, means that it is the duty of the teacher to draw on the learners’ experiences and relate those experiences to the content, if possible. experiences are not the content of the curriculum. therefore, knowledge differentiation and the curriculum/pedagogy distinction are illuminated. here, frameworks such as the tpack may guide teachers to focus on teaching and learning while technology becomes ubiquitous. at the same time, the pck serves as a guide to ensure that teachers do not get on the bandwagon of technology as a replacement for bad teaching. in an attempt to address the second concern above, it is imperative to deal with the issues of technology as a pedagogy rather than as content of the curriculum. the technology part of blended learning does not imply that the rapid technological changes give teaching and learning direction. on the contrary, the technology part of blended learning means that technology is used as a means to an end (knowledge acquisition), as alluded to above. therefore, “the use of ict in pedagogy will assist academics in the teaching and learning process while also improving their degree of professionalism” (aminatun, 2019: 1). furthermore, ict tools, guided by the tpack framework, must be exploited to work in favour of teachers and learners and to create a blended learning and teaching environment, as well as can cater for all learners should there be unforeseen disruptions such as a pandemic. 6. what do we already know about the use of technology in education? although scholars and educators need to be aware of these sociological critiques, it is vital to consider the impact of the appropriate use of technology in blended learning environments at universities, especially in the attempt to design ‘disruption-proof’ learning and teaching environments. recently, mafenya (2022) conducted a study and found that the covid-19 pandemic has presented emerging nations like south africa with several difficulties, including a lack of internet connectivity, students and teachers’ access to technological platforms, experience with online teaching and learning methodologies, and technology acceptance. the shift of students to online learning in less-developed nations is hampered by reliance on technology and a lack of consistent internet connectivity. while these findings are important for this article, it would be more helpful to briefly discuss what we already know about the ‘abilities’ of technology in learning and teaching in south africa and other developing countries. to achieve this, one will have to draw from existing theoretical frameworks and evidence of the success, limitations, and possibilities of the use of technology. technology makes learning personal, self-paced, flexible, and effortless to some degree (florin, radu & croitoru, 2011). as muhuro and kang’ethe (2021: 1) argue, the ideals of the fourth industrial revolution are that individuals have the capacity to think outside the box to find solutions to existing world problems using technological tools to support exploration, decision making and creation of products in the different fields. such ideals are important to consider, especially if our graduates are to compete globally in the place of work and research. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6863 2002023 41(2): 200-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6863 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) learners often retain more material, because technology increases their desire to be engaged. technology also provides experiential learning opportunities (such as making concepts tangible, creating communities of practice, etc.) that can be incorporated into all academic topics, such as mathematics, reading, science, and social studies. moreover, “utilising technology in teaching and learning is powerful and provides education options such as replicating the classroom practice or including guest speakers worldwide” (maree & vos, 2021: 4). because technology is an aid, it should be selected only if it has the potential to increase student engagement, create meaningful experiences, or allow learners to be creative and innovative in their approach to learning and assessment. this also emphasises that teaching using technology is not a substitute for an incompetent teacher who lacks pedagogical content knowledge (pck). technology expounds on the teacher’s abilities, meaning that technology is merely an extension of one’s ability to teach and engage learners in the classroom (ramorola, 2013). the influence of technology on every sphere of human existence is too immense, to the extent that it becomes impossible to avoid it. aminatun (2019) explicitly states the ‘abilities’ of technology in relation to traditional modes of teaching and learning. technology development helps many areas of education, including teaching, learning, and research. for example, technology digitises information, which makes it easier for accessibility and alternative representation. numerous content resources made available by technology support self-directed learning for both teachers and learners (aminatum, 2019). this suggests that technology has substantial advantages if it is selected and appropriately used and has the prospect of driving innovation (because of the affordances), expedite, enhance, and strengthen abilities, help to engage learners, better integrate school experiences to cooperate procedures, generate a financial potential for future employees, and to solidify instruction and help educational institutions transform (davis & tearle, 1999; lemke & coughlin, 1998). it is evident how technology can enhance learning and teaching positively if the information and communication technologies are used appropriately. 7. more on the role of technology in blended learning the use of technology to enhance knowledge production, differentiation, and epistemic structure is one of the most palatable benefits of ict. these benefits are made possible through the appropriate use of technology, considering that technology is a tool that needs to be selected. the recognition of the relationship between disciplines, concepts, ideas, people, and ideologies is vital in student learning, knowledge production, integration, and interdisciplinarity of knowledge. weller (2021) argues that interdisciplinarity makes it easier to find a theme that crosses disciplinary boundaries in literature, art, and history or science and mathematics. studying topics thematically is one way to bring ideas together, resulting in more meaningful learning. this can occur by allowing learners to choose their subjects, and their learning is deepened when they reflect on the connections between what they are learning in different disciplines. all this can be advanced through the appropriate use of technology featured in blended learning. bandura’s (1986) social learning theory (slt) analyses how learners learn and transition from common and everyday knowledge to scientific discourse/deep learning. according to bernstein (1999), there are two discourses (with different forms of knowledge) whose differences are important to identify and clearly distinguish to do justice to the epistemic structure of knowledge. one is called horizontal discourse, where the form of knowledge is ‘common’ and everyday knowledge to which learners already have exposure, the https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6863 2012023 41(2): 201-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6863 mnisi a case for deliberate and accommodative design for blended teaching knowledge that learners use to form relationships amongst one another, and knowledge that is multilayered, local, and context-dependent. this form of knowledge sometimes depends on the extent of cultural capital (bourdieu, 1986) – a theory by pierre bourdieu developed to expand the reach of critical theory. it is important to note that the horizontal discourse and its form of knowledge is not a focus here, as the interest is on the scientific discourse, which bernstein calls the vertical discourse. the ‘specialised’ vertical discourse is the discourse that is of interest as it contains the form of knowledge that learners do not often have access to. specialised vertical knowledge can be contrasted with relativism and social constructivism as being “systematically revisable”, “emergent”. “real”, “material” and “social” (young & muller, 2013). this discourse often closes the gap in instances where learners do not have that much cultural capital. some examples of the forms of knowledge under the vertical discourse are, for example, sociology, mathematics, psychology, physical science, chemistry, and philosophy. the bernsteinian theory also maintains that there are hierarchical and segmented structures under the vertical discourse, but this article will not expand on them as that is not the focus here. how does this relate to the use of technology? perhaps it would be helpful for one first to highlight that technology has the potential to illuminate the difference between forms of knowledge and help learners to identify the relationship between concepts (epistemic structure) within a discipline and even across multiple disciplines (interdisciplinarity) (weller, 2021). below is an example of an activity where technology can support interdisciplinarity and identify the relationship between concepts. learners are given a project based on the findings by the world health organization that fizzy drinks such as coke and other related products have too much acid in their contents than recommended (this will require them to use ph scales and other science instruments and virtual science laboratory [a combination of ict and science]). the second finding by an independent organization is that canned fizzy drinks are more preferred to plastic bottles (this will require them to know the exact dimensions, plans, and measurements of both containers). the learners must also bring 3d printouts of both containers (this will require them to use the latest technology and “design” using ict skills. engineering is also included in the design process) alongside a comprehensive scientific report of findings. the activity is inquiry-based and, therefore, will require learners to collaborate with other learners from different disciplines, and the stem (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) lesson will achieve its objectives. the above activity requires of learners to engage with three disciplines of stem, i.e. science (knowing the types of acids and contents of fizzy drinks), mathematics (measuring the dimensions), and technology (3d design in a computer). moreover, the above activity is made interactive, collaborative, and authentic, and technology does not threaten the epistemology and knowledge structures of the disciplines involved. instead, technology enhances learners’ learning by relating the content to their everyday experiences, and the disciplines fill the gap if some learners do not have the accumulated cultural capital. furthermore, learners can differentiate between the vertical and horizontal knowledge forms because the distinction thereof is made explicit in the project. this knowledge differentiation means that learners can also distinguish between the fizzy drink they drink (common knowledge) and the fizzy drink as a concern to who (world health organization) that they must investigate its contents (scientific knowledge). once more, the above activity demonstrates that in blended learning, ict strengthens the learning experience and increases student engagement. blended learning guided by tpack also promotes interdisciplinarity while not threatening the individual subject’s epistemic structure. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6863 2022023 41(2): 202-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6863 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) 8. the technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) framework having touched on the importance of 21st-century skills when addressing the sociological concerns above, it is important to introduce an existing framework that has gained global traction because of its applicability, flexibility, and theory-underpinned nature. mishra (2006) developed a framework that sought to address the complex challenges of the 21st century by foreseeing a future where almost every object (including human beings) is connected to another object. the framework he developed is called the technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge (tpack) and is shown in figure 1 below for a brief discussion. figure 1: tpack framework by mishra & koehler (2006) as seen from the tpack framework in figure 1 above, teachers ought to understand the different dimensions needed to solve the complexities of the 21st century. figure 1 above is an extension of shulman’s (1987) work (pedagogical content knowledge), and mishra and koehler (2006) added the technology aspect to the framework to cater for the challenges of https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6863 2032023 41(2): 203-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6863 mnisi a case for deliberate and accommodative design for blended teaching the 21st century and ensure that education does not suffer curriculum irrelevance (gravett, 2019). educators are different from other professions, not only because they possess scientific and theoretical content, but because they understand knowledge structures and organization. since 2006, the tpack has been critiqued and endorsed by the global education community, private organisations, the corporate sector, and other interested parties, and even featured prominently in technology and educator training studies (chai, koh & tsai, 2013; voogt et al., 2012). the tpack highlights knowledge of technology (tk) about specific tools, software, and hardware, pedagogy (pk), how to manage, instruct and guide learners, and content (ck), about the discipline or subject matter. the relationship between tpk, pck, and tck is known as tpack, and it analyses the intricate connections between all the component knowledge areas. notably, these are part of the multidimensional framework in which educators function (koehler & mishra, 2008). drawing from the tpack framework, technology equally has a vital role in blended learning. the role of technology in blended learning should be to enhance learners’ learning. however, as alluded to before, technology does not replace bad teaching/teachers. this assertion means teachers should have relevant pedagogical content knowledge (pck). according to shulman (1986), knowledge of the content most important to its flexibility to be taught is known as pedagogical content knowledge. the pedagogy, strategies, and teaching and learning techniques are influenced by the quality and quantity of the teacher’s content on the subject. regarding content knowledge, it is known how teacher expertise affects learners’ performance, and studies have already been conducted that have emphasised pedagogical or content knowledge. according to hill, rowan and ball (2005), baumert et al. (2010), and voss, kunter and baumert (2011), pedagogical content knowledge has more impact on student achievement than content knowledge only. as mentioned, an accommodative and inclusive design is needed in a course/module design; hence, the udl instructional model becomes important to consider. 9. the universal design for learning (udl) framework udl is a direct product of the center for applied special technology (cast) – an organisation founded in 1984 to “transform education design and practice until learning has no limits” (cast, 2020: n.p.). although the term udl was adopted from universal design (ud) in the field of architecture (dewi, dalimunthe & faadhil, 2018), udl was created in response to educational and neuroscience studies, as well as the expanding importance of digital technology (rose, mayer & gordon, 2014). studies show that a udl-based online course that is effective from a cognitive perspective frequently features relevant and valuable content, prompt and insightful teacher feedback, unambiguous instructions, course resources, and assignment boundaries (chiu & mok, 2017; rogers-shaw, carr-chellman & choi, 2017; chiu, jong & mok, 2020; chiu & lim, 2020). there is significant growth in neurology, particularly research that intends to broaden understanding of how the human brain operates and what measures teachers need to take to cater for learners with disabilities in the digital/information age (hartmann, 2015). hence, universal design for learning (udl) is one of the necessary frameworks that guide the implementation of blended learning at universities. learners have diverse characteristics, which might be seen from the difference in the capacity of intelligence, physical condition, senses, social status, ethnicity, culture, and gender (ormrod, 2008). the diverse characteristics of learners call for a design of a blended learning approach, courses, and modules that will https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6863 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15391523.2015.1052663?casa_token=cgxvgabxbmqaaaaa%3aa6kjcjcyxalthvtegov4ir5818nbhjr6vpbzcpg4un2xnpivdwputqivrr2av4wkechr7i7-ws5hta 2042023 41(2): 204-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6863 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) include rather than exclude – “a barrier-free design” (areekkuzhiyil, 2022:5). while using udl to address access, presentation, and expression issues, it is crucial to note that udl is not a framework only for the disabled (mckenzie & dalton, 2020). instead, it is a framework designed to cater for all learners, including those who might necessarily have learning disabilities. some prefer to listen than read; some prefer to watch than read or listen. the following section will briefly discuss the udl principles and their guidelines, which i think are essential to consider in a blended learning mode. firstly, it is significant to note that udl should not be a one-size-fits-all approach. each education institution has unique challenges ranging from administration, teaching and learning, research, institutional culture, and financial difficulties. the first udl principle is multiple means of representation. this principle and its guidelines (perception, language and symbols, and comprehension) mean that content (text, pictures, videos, and other graphics) and assessments should be provided in a manner that will be adjustable by the user (cast, 2020). secondly, this principle suggests that if, for example, a module has a video, a transcript should be provided; if a module has a pdf document, a word document should be provided. concisely, every content should have an alternative format to increase student engagement, processing, and application (cast, 2014). on the use of language and symbols, udl recommends that “an important instructional strategy is to ensure that alternative representations are provided not only for accessibility but for clarity and comprehensibility across all learners” (cast, 2020: n.p.). instead of only providing a transcript for a video/ audio and pdf or word documents, several universities have integrated accessibility tools in their learning management systems (lms), such as blackboard ally, for alternative formats (lesley university, 2023). multiple means of action and expression, the second principle of udl, means modules must provide materials with which learners can interact. furthermore, this principle suggests that a “workbook or textbook in a print format provides limited means of navigation (e.g. turning pages)” (cast, 2020: n.p.). therefore, “it is important to provide alternative modalities for expression, both to the level the playing field among learners and to allow the learner to appropriately (or easily) express knowledge, ideas, and concepts in the learning environment” (cast, 2020: n.p.; ralabate, 2011). moreover, teachers ought to use various media to communicate the content of the module to allow learners with preferences and learning difficulties an opportunity to participate equally in the learning process. furthermore, depending on the learning management system (lms) used at an institution, engagement and collaborative tools must be used for learners to share ideas, review one another’s work, and collaboratively work. in short, instructors must use different models with different approaches, skills, and strategies to demonstrate the same outcomes. the sudden drop in student engagement (strydom & loots, 2022) is not surprising, because developing countries were not ready for such an immediate and sudden change in pedagogy and approach. multiple means of engagement, as the third principle of udl, becomes very important in this regard. biney (2018: 43) argues that interest plays an essential role in student learning and ultimately in student engagement, and “if teaching is done when the learner is unwilling, this would amount to ‘intellectual rape’”. this emphasis on interest by biney correlates to engagement, meaning that learners have an intellectual ‘right’ to engage in the learning process willingly and unforced and fully convicted that the learning process is https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6863 2052023 41(2): 205-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6863 mnisi a case for deliberate and accommodative design for blended teaching worthy, has a purpose, and is valuable (fink, 2003). interest in learning should be recruited through, for example, autonomous, relevant, and authentic learning tasks. learners should know why they are engaged in learning and how it is relevant to them in the immediate future, if not in the long run. threats and consequences of failing should not be used as the basis of why it is vital for learners to do a specific task. it is crucial to briefly outline a way forward to consolidate the argument for an accommodative design in blended learning. the pck, tpack, and udl must be used connectedly by instructional designers and teachers. figure 2 below demonstrates such an interconnected module/course design focused on positive learning outcomes. important to note about the illustration below is that each framework requires to be understood for its suggestions and implications to be correctly implemented. for example, teachers need to be trained on the learning management system (lms), collaboration tools, assessment tools, etc., to be guided by the tpack. teachers also need to be trained beyond technology, i.e. to understand both the content and the pedagogy properly in order to understand how udl can be incorporated into their teaching. implications to be correctly implemented. for example, teachers need to be trained on the learning management system (lms), collaboration tools, assessment tools, etc., to be guided by the tpack. teachers also need to be trained beyond technology, i.e. to understand both the content and the pedagogy properly in order to understand how udl can be incorporated into their teaching. figure 2: complementary roles of the tpack, pck, and udl frameworks. conclusion in conclusion, it is recommended that universities deliberately explore the theory behind the selection and use of technology before developing and implementing teaching and learning policies. as mentioned in the first part of this article, universities, as singulars, are the ‘thinktanks’ of society and the developers of new knowledge (edvardsson & durst, 2017). furthermore, higher education institutions in developing countries should prioritize the training of academics, support blended learning focused on positive outcomes pck: 1. pedagogy 2. knowledge 3.knowledge differentiation 4. curriculum relevance tpack: 1. technology integrates concepts. 2. ubiquitious role while the teacher focuses on teaching. 3. supports the udl principles. 4. guides the use of learning technologies and lmss udl access through: 1. representation 2. engagement 3. expression 4. regulates the use of technology in teaching and learning. 5. just and inclusive pedagogy. figure 2: complementary roles of the tpack, pck, and udl frameworks. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6863 2062023 41(2): 206-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6863 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) 10. conclusion in conclusion, it is recommended that universities deliberately explore the theory behind the selection and use of technology before developing and implementing teaching and learning policies. as mentioned in the first part of this article, universities, as singulars, are the ‘thinktanks’ of society and the developers of new knowledge (edvardsson & durst, 2017). furthermore, higher education institutions in developing countries should prioritise the training of academics, support staff, and learners to realize the full potential of technology in learning and teaching. this training for staff and students has to range from the learning management system (lms) of the university to applications and other third-party tools for which the university might have licences (mpungose, 2020). academics should understand the theory behind the selection and use of specific technologies. it is equally essential for higher education institutions to design training focusing on curriculum and pedagogy issues, as technology does not replace a poorly designed curriculum, nor does it substitute bad teaching. to cater for all learners, including those with learning disabilities, udl should not be understood and implemented as a one-size-fits-all approach. some universities have used udl to build courses and modules that follow some of the udl principles. however, the lack of resources and skills continues to impede these attempts. therefore, universities should customize udl according to their unique needs. moreover, access has different implications in various contexts. how access is defined in developed countries, where inequality is not the biggest in the world, differs from how developing countries define it. in developed societies, access may be spoken about only when learners with learning difficulties have issues accessing certain content. however, in developing societies, access also consists of the disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds from which most learners come, as presented in the 2022 report by strydom and loots. the practical recommendations that can be given are that (1) universities should not even consider returning to some of their old teaching and learning methods (overreliance on offline-based teaching), because covid-19 demonstrated how rapidly everything can change. (2) extensive training on digital technologies for academics, support staff members, and learners should be prioritised. (3) universities should not ignore their primary reason for existing knowledge production and graduate learners who will contribute positively to the world. (4) inclusive/accommodative design is still needed at universities in developing countries. (5) inclusive and instructional pedagogy frameworks such as the universal design for learning (udl) should be thoroughly investigated by universities to customise these frameworks according to their contexts. in designing our courses and modules, we ought to understand that institutions of learning [need] to prepare learners for rapid economic, environmental, and social changes, for jobs that have not yet been created, for technologies that have not yet been invented, and to solve social problems that have not yet been anticipated (oecd, 2018). we also need to understand that the way in which our modules and courses are designed directly impacts the students’ success. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6863 2072023 41(2): 207-210 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6863 mnisi a case for deliberate and accommodative design for blended teaching references aminatun, d. 2019. ict in university: how lecturers embrace technology for teaching. journal of english language teaching and applied 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https://www.usaf.ac.za/student-and-staff-surveys-chart-a-way-for-implementing-blended-teaching-and-learning-at-public-universities/ https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2729.2012.00487.x https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/a0025125 https://www.open.edu/openlearn/education-development/what-are-the-benefits-interdisciplinary-study https://www.open.edu/openlearn/education-development/what-are-the-benefits-interdisciplinary-study https://techcentral.co.za/gauteng-online-goes-offline/188120/ https://techcentral.co.za/gauteng-online-goes-offline/188120/ https://doi.org/10.1590/s1413-24782011000300005 https://doi.org/10.1590/s1413-24782011000300005 https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2013.764505 https://doi.org/10.1002/rev3.3017 _int_tksvcr5d _int_bvm92zgi _int_y5humptg _int_dbhi5pq0 _int_hurczs90 _int_0xvvll33 _int_4ondtkvt _int_xq41ncwe _int_yzfymn18 _int_bkqtgi11 _int_v2stuvu7 _int_a09m53kj _int_rqr4heey _int_yltxxnkl _int_c46xdie7 _int_tnlwu1ka _int_8dyzawk4 _int_4yqcnfof _int_twp89bmt _int_4oqxv1yb _int_s2ppdex0 _int_3gy8qxnq _int_tvk4zo0a _int_fg8yytct _int_sg8keoph _int_spceuwa8 _int_p2d2m4hd perspectives in education 31(3) perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2013 university of the free state 5 mike askew monash university, melbourne & university of the witwatersrand e-mail: mike.askew@monash.edu telephone: +61 3 9904 4036 big ideas in primary mathematics: issues and directions mike askew this article is located within the literature arguing for attention to big ideas in teaching and learning mathematics for understanding. the focus is on surveying the literature of big ideas and clarifying what might constitute big ideas in the primary mathematics curriculum based on both theoretical and pragmatic considerations. this is complemented by an analysis of the evidence for two big ideas in south africa’s curriculum and assessment policy statements for foundationand intermediatephase mathematics. this analysis reveals that, while there is some evidence of implicit attention to big ideas in the curriculum, without more explicit attention to these, teachers and, consequently, learners are not likely to develop understanding of big ideas and how they connect aspects of mathematics together. keywords: primary mathematics, big ideas, caps, foundation, intermediate, curriculum, south africa. introduction it is accepted that learning mathematics is richer, deeper and longer lasting when children make connections between different mathematical ideas (see, for example, hiebert et al., 1997). some even argue that “the degree of understanding is determined by the number and strength of the connections” (hiebert & carpenter, 1992: 67). learners connecting different mathematical ideas could be said to be engaged in developing networks of big ideas. while writers argue for a focus on ‘big ideas’ in learning and teaching mathematics (see, for example, charles, 2005; siemon, bleckly & neal, 2012), there is no agreement about what actually constitutes a big idea. this article surveys the literature on big ideas and argues for a definition that encompasses ideas being both mathematically and conceptually ‘big’, and embraces pragmatic and pedagogical considerations. the south african curriculum assessment and policy statements for foundation phase and intermediate phase (department for basic education, 2011a; department for basic education, 2011b, henceforth perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 6 referred to as caps fp and caps ip) are examined for evidence, explicit and implicit, of two specific big ideas. on the basis of this analysis, i argue that a lack of explicit attention to big ideas in these south african curriculum documents is a limitation that could contribute to a fragmented knowledge of mathematics and, consequently, be a factor in the continued low attainment in mathematics in south africa. finally, i consider some teaching consequences for developing big ideas in mathematics in primary school. what is a big idea in mathematics education? siemon (2006) argues that without developing big ideas, students’ mathematical progress may be limited as big ideas provide organising structures that support further learning and generalisations. writing about big ideas in the australian curriculum, siemon, bleckly and neal (2012) suggest that big ideas cannot be clearly defined, but can be observed in activity. however, i am of the opinion that we, the mathematics education research community, should be able to reach agreement on defining big ideas and then describe what these might be in practice. schifter & fosnot (1993: 35) locate big ideas within the discipline of mathematics by defining them as “the central, organizing ideas of mathematics – principles that define mathematical order”. attempts to frame curricula around the big ideas of mathematics can be traced back to the 1960s, when, for example, the ‘new mathematics’ movement in the uk (and elsewhere) encouraged emphasis on set theory in school mathematics. although mathematicians may have found set theory important in their work, the evidence is that it did not engage teachers or learners in the same way (kline, 1974). similarly, locating big ideas primarily within the mathematics discipline and referring to them as “fundamental ideas in mathematics”, schweiger (2006) suggests ideas from different mathematical dimensions (history, content, difficulty and location) that include algorithm, characterisation, combining, designing, exhaustion/approximation, explaining, function, geometrisation, infinity, invariance, linearisation, locating, measuring, modelling, number/counting, optimality, playing, probability, and shaping. while it helps to have examples, the variation among these ideas is problematic in terms of teaching implications. in what sense are verbs such as ‘combining’ or ‘locating’ big ideas, and how do they compare with mathematical objects such as ‘algorithm’? how does one square off an idea such as ‘invariance’ with something equally broad but very natural such as ‘playing’? i agree with charles’ observation that while “big ideas need to be big enough that it is relatively easy to articulate several related ideas, [… they also] need to be useful to teachers, curriculum developers, test developers, and to those responsible for developing state and district standards.” (charles, 2005: 11). 7 big ideas in primary mathematics: issues and directions | mike askew charles (2005: 10) offers the definition that “a big idea is a statement of an idea that is central to the learning of mathematics, one that links numerous mathematical understandings into a coherent whole”, shifting the emphasis from the discipline of mathematics to encompass learning. he offers, as a starting point, 21 big mathematical ideas for primary and middle-school mathematics, but again, the scale of ‘big’ varies, in the sense of how encompassing a big idea might be. equivalence: any number, measure, numerical expression, algebraic expression, or equation can be represented in an infinite number of ways that have the same value. properties: for a given set of numbers there are relationships that are always true, and these are the rules that govern arithmetic and algebra. estimation: numerical calculations can be approximated by replacing numbers with other numbers that are close and easy to compute with mentally. measurements can be approximated using known referents as the unit in the measurement process. variable: mathematical situations and structures can be translated and represented abstractly using variables, expressions, and equations. (charles, 2005: 12-18) building on her work with schifter, fosnot (with dolk) argues that big ideas also mark a shift in learners’ reasoning, with shifts in learners’ reasoning being analogous to the development of the discipline of mathematics, in that shifts in the history of mathematics are “characterized by paradigmatic shifts in reasoning”, just as learners’ reasoning also shifts through big ideas (fosnot & dolk, 2001: 11). likewise, davis and simmt (2006), taking a complexity stance with respect to learning, argue for broadening our view of learning by moving from treating learning as something that only happens in the heads of individuals, to regarding the discipline of mathematics as having learned over the course of its history. through this wider view, both the individual and the discipline learning have much in common, although a key distinguishing feature is the time scale of the learning. towards a definition of big ideas drawing on this writing, i suggest the following criteria to frame whether or not something counts as a big idea in mathematics education. i agree that a big idea should be both culturally, that is mathematically, significant as well as individually and conceptually significant, as suggested by fosnot and others. however, i also suggest that, in putting together a collection of big ideas, there are pragmatic considerations that address pedagogical issues over and above theoretical ones. pragmatically, an idea must be big enough to connect together seemingly disparate aspects of mathematics, but not so big that it is unwieldy. for example, ‘mathematics is about modelling’ is a big idea and it may be helpful in broad terms for framing the curriculum. indeed, the dutch realistic mathematics education perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 8 programme of research and curriculum development is built around this big idea (gravemeijer, 1997), but it may be rather too big to be helpful in guiding pedagogy and focusing specific classroom actions. on the other hand, an idea such as ‘fractions, decimals and percentages all present different ways to represent a multiplicative relationship between two quantities’ is a big idea that links together aspects of the curriculum often treated distinctly, and it is small enough to be thought about in terms of practical actions to bring such connections into being in classrooms. a second pragmatic consideration is that the idea must have currency across all the years of primary schooling, because then children get to revisit big ideas across the year groups (small, 2012). over time, collectively and individually, the ideas will grow and develop, building on a core of similarity within and across the years. thus, all children can be engaged in thinking about the big idea at different developmental levels. working with big ideas becomes a means of dealing with classroom diversity and promoting inclusion. examples of big ideas i now examine a small number of big ideas that might form part of a core collection for primary mathematics. i owe much to charles’ (2005) work in this instance, and while these big ideas are neither exhaustive of the number of big ideas that children need to meet, nor necessarily the most important of the big ideas, they are ideas that research and my experience suggest would improve learning if explicit attention were paid to them. big idea: place value. our number system is built on ten digits, groups of ten and digits in specific places. with only 26 letters in english, our alphabet allows us to express our ideas. mathematics is more efficient – infinitely many numerical ideas can be expressed with only 10 digits – 0 to 9. mathematically, place value is a big idea: the development of the history of mathematics would have been very different if no one had come up with the idea of place value as scaling up or down by factors of ten. it is also a big idea conceptually – it helps learners come to understand mathematics as a network of interconnected ideas, not a series of separate ones. for example, decimals come to be understood as an extension of the place value system through thinking of the values of digits being successively scaled down by factors of ten: ones scaled down to one tenth of their size, giving rise to the first decimal place, that, in turn, can be scaled down by a factor of ten, giving hundredths, and so on. awareness of place value as a big idea has the potential to alter how it is taught. currently, place value is commonly treated as an additive process – exchanging 10 units for one ten, and 10 tens for one hundred (in preparation for the standard algorithms for multi-digit addition and subtraction). were learners to meet the big idea of place value as a multiplicative scaling process based on the powers of ten, 9 big ideas in primary mathematics: issues and directions | mike askew then later difficulties with ideas such as decimals and standard notation for numbers might be reduced. big idea: position on the number line. the numbers in the primary curriculum counting, fractional and negative all have a unique position on the number line. the idea that numbers are uniquely positioned is also conceptually important, as illustrated by these two problems: a bar of chocolate is cut up into four equal pieces and hamsa eats three of the pieces. how much of the chocolate does hamsa get to eat? hamsa and three friends share three bars of chocolate equally. how much of the chocolate does hamsa get to eat? the answer in each case is three quarters of a bar, but as each arises from different situations, it may not be obvious to the learner that the quantity is the same in both instances. modelling this on a number line shows that the answers are equal: the point on the line arrived at by marking three quarters of one unit turns out to be the same point reached by taking three units on the line and finding one quarter of that total length. conceptually, this big idea also introduces learners to notions of infinity: the counting numbers extend infinitely; there are an infinite number of fractions between any two numbers on the line and so forth. big idea: equivalence. there are infinitely many ways to represent numbers, measures and number sentences. mathematically, equivalence is a big idea because representations that seem different can all be linked to the same underlying idea. for example, 1/2, 50% and 0.5 are all equivalent representations of the idea of a half. which representation we choose to use is linked to the context within which it arises; for example, fractions are often used in the solution to division problems with non-whole number answers; percentages to express probabilities, and decimals in the context of measures. but the underlying mathematics does not essentially change: two people equally sharing a pizza will get 1/2 each; my coin is likely to land on heads half the number of times i toss it; one metre of fabric cut into two equal pieces results in 0.5m. conceptually, equivalence is a big idea for several reasons. first, because it means that numbers and measures can be expressed in an infinite number of equivalent ways by different partitionings and factorisings, with different representations highlighting different properties. take, for example, the number 64. we can express this as: perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 10 8 x 8 60 + 4 43 70 − 6 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 164 − 100 128 ÷ 2 100 – 36. these different representations emphasise different things. from 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2, we know that 3 is not a factor of 64, while 8 x 8 reveals that 64 is a perfect square and 43 that it is a perfect cube. listing different equivalent expressions for 63 and 65 can illustrate just how different these are from 64, making all three more interesting than simply being three consecutive numbers in the sixties. equivalence is also conceptually important as when calculating it may be easier to answer an equivalent calculation than the one actually given. figuring out, say, 49 x 4, one could reason that ‘40 times four is 160, nine times four is 36, so the answer is 160 plus 36, that’s 196’. alternatively ‘50 times four is two hundred, so the answer must be four less, that’s 196’. as equivalent equations the reasoning goes: 49 x 4 = (50 − 1) x 4 = (50 x 4) (1 x 4) = 200 − 4 = 196 big idea: meanings and symbols. the same symbols or number sentences can be used to model different realistic situations, and different symbols or number sentences can be used to model the same realistic situation. the cockcroft report’s (1982) claim that mathematics provides an unambiguous means of communication echoes a popularly held belief that there is a simple oneto-one match between a realistic situation and the mathematical sentence that can be used to model that problem. take, for example, ‘my niece was born in january 1998. how old was she on her birthday in 2013?’ one mathematical sentence to go with this is 2013 − 1998 = [ ]. but this situation can also be modelled with 1998 + [ ] = 2013, or 2013 [ ] = 1998 and, mentally, it is easier to say ‘what do i add to 1998 to make 2013?’ than it is to try and ‘take away’ 1998 from 2013. in reverse, the same number sentence can be used to model different realistic problems. as the work of carpenter and colleagues (1999) has shown, there are several distinct ‘root’ problems for each of addition and subtraction, and multiplication and division. the relationship between symbols and situations is not a simple one-to-one mapping, but a many-to-many mapping. mathematically, the many-to-many relationship between symbols and situations is a big idea, because it means a small number of symbols can be used to serve a whole host of problems. conceptually, it is a big idea, because it means that thinking about how to represent a problem can affect the ease of arriving at an answer. given 11 big ideas in primary mathematics: issues and directions | mike askew a calculation, the sort of ‘real-world’ situation learners try and link with it can make a big difference. anghileri (2000) demonstrated this when asking upper primary pupils what they thought would be the answer to 12 ÷ ½. many tried to fit the symbols to a ‘sharing’ situation, but when they could not work out what a sensible meaning for 12 ‘shared’ between a half, they interpreted the symbols as meaning ‘what is half of twelve?’. had they been able to fit the symbols to a division-as-repeated-subtraction situation – how many half pizzas can be served up from 12 pizzas? – then they might have arrived at the correct answer of 24 rather than 6. big idea: there is a distinction between quantities and numerals. visiting a classroom many years ago, i overheard a conversation between a teacher and a pupil about carrying out a subtraction, say, 264 – 178, that went along the lines of: t: can we take eight from four? p: no. t: so what do we do? p: we cross out the six and put five and put a little one by the four. t: no, we borrow ten from the sixty to leave fifty and add it to the four to make fourteen. the teacher ‘correcting’ the learner suggests that the learner was ‘wrong’, when in fact she and the teacher were talking about different things. the pupil’s explanation was at the level of what was literally done – those were the actions being carried out on the numerals. the teacher was talking about the actions that would be carried out on the actual quantities – which, in this particular instance, only existed in the teacher’s head. of course, once you have come to understand 264 as two 100s and 6 tens and 4 ones, it is easy to slip back and forth between quantity talk and numeral talk – but that ease takes some time to acquire. the distinction between quantities (amounts) and numerals (how we represent amounts) is one that teachers need to bear clearly in mind, else confusion can arise. big ideas in caps i now turn to where and how big ideas might be positioned in the caps fp and caps ip documents. it is beyond the scope of this article to examine a wide range of big ideas in these documents, so i focus on two: equivalence and meanings and symbols. i chose these two big ideas, because they are slightly different in their orientation towards either the mathematical (discipline) or the conceptual (learner). equivalence is a key big idea in mathematics as a discipline and any mathematics education not specifically attended to exploring and developing the big idea of equivalence would be lacking. meanings and symbols, while mathematically important, is pedagogically important, as teaching for understanding this big idea would mean being alert both to how situations can be mathematically modelled in different ways and to how perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 12 learners might be expected to express things mathematically in different ways rather than in one expected fashion. the overall aims for the mathematics curriculum, overarching both the fp and the ip, include the aims that learners should develop, namely, appreciation for the beauty and elegance of mathematics, and deep conceptual understanding in order to make sense of mathematics (caps fp: 62). such aims can be read as in line with teaching for big ideas. the elegance of mathematics comes, in part, from the way in which big ideas link seeming disparate content, while, as argued earlier, deep conceptual understanding is linked to the growth of big ideas. how does this play out in the details? the language of big ideas is not explicitly used in the caps documents. therefore, i am seeking evidence of an acknowledgement of the importance of big ideas permeating the curriculum in the details of the documents. equivalence as a big idea in caps the caps fp does not make explicit use of the term ‘equivalence’ at all. the word ‘equivalent’ is, however, used and related to three ideas: • equivalent fractions, for example; that 1 half and 2 quarters are equivalent (caps fp: 474). • the introduction of multiplication as repeated addition; repeated addition is often introduced to learners as groups of equivalent numbers. initially learners can be introduced to everyday equivalent groupings (caps fp: 136). • equivalent representations; during this term the focus is showing equivalent representations for the same number. twenty should be described as 2 tens (using the bundles or groups of objects) or 2 groups of tens. it is important to show learners that 20 can look different (caps fp: 217). say which number is equivalent to or the same as: • 6 tens • nine tens and three ones • five tens and nine ones (caps fp: 13) the idea of ‘equivalent representations’ is close to equivalence, but as these examples show (and there are only a small number of such examples in the document), equivalence is restricted, in this instance, to place value; learners should notice 20 as two groups of ten, but there is no suggestion of other equivalences such as four groups of five or as 19 plus one. 13 big ideas in primary mathematics: issues and directions | mike askew searching on ‘equal’ or ‘equals’ within the document brings up only references to the equals sign, for example, “can record their calculations using the plus (+), minus (-) and equals (=) sign” (caps fp: 340). there is no discussion or exemplification of the use of the equals sign to link equivalent representations. the caps ip also refers to equivalence in relation to fractions, both in terms of equivalent fractions and different representations, for example: • equivalent forms: recognize equivalence between common fraction and decimal fraction forms of the same number. recognize equivalence between common fraction, decimal fraction and percentage forms of the same number (caps ip: 17). this idea of ‘equivalent forms’ also occurs with reference to numeric patterns and how these might be expressed in different ways: • determine equivalence of different descriptions of the same relationship or rule presented • verbally • in a flow diagram • in a table • by a number sentence (caps ip: 19). there is increasing emphasis on equivalence in number sentences, although the messages concerning this are mixed. for example, in relation to grade 4, the advice is that: number sentences are also a way of showing equivalence. it seems obvious that what is written on the one side of the equal sign is equal to what is written on the other side. however but (sic) learners need to be trained to understand the equivalence. in the intermediate phase it is useful to use number sentences as statements of equivalence (caps ip: 39). the idea that learners can be ‘trained to understand’ seems to be a contradiction in terms, and there is no explanation of what such ‘training’ might constitute. in the move to grade 5, the advice includes: as before, number sentences are used to develop the concept of equivalence. but they can also relate to all aspects of number work covered during the year. during the second part of the year you can give learners practice in answering multiple choice questions, which is a common format in national systemic tests (caps ip: 100). here again, the messages are mixed. rather than emphasising equivalence as a big idea in mathematics in its own right, the reader is left with the impression that equivalence may be important because of the form of national assessments. however, the examples provided do give a sense of equivalence in number sentences: perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 14 which of the statements below is equivalent to 15 x (4 x 9)? (a) (15 x 4) x 9 (b) 15 x 2 x 2 x 3 x 3 (c) (15 x 4) + (15 x 9) (d) (10 – 1)(15 x 4) (caps ip: 205). which statement below is equivalent to: (26 x 39) + (26 x 1)? a) 26 x 27 b) 400 c) 26 x 4 d) 26 x 40 (caps ip: 286). in summary, there is some attention to equivalence as a big idea as the curriculum develops from foundation phase to the latter years of the intermediate phase, but there could be more consistency across the years. unless a teacher brings awareness of this big idea, the curriculum document is unlikely to engage teachers and, consequently, learners with the big idea of equivalence. young learners can, for example, explore equivalences such as 7 + 8 + 3 = 7 + 3 + 8, leading not only to an informal understanding of equivalence, but also to using the equivalence to seek out effective and efficient calculation strategies. meanings and symbols as a big idea in caps as argued earlier, the big idea that there is a many-to-many mapping between meanings and symbols is not only mathematically significant, but also conceptually important for learners to explore. finding evidence for attention to such an idea in the curriculum documents is subtler than seeking references to equivalence, as there are less obvious key terms to seek. the approach taken was to look for examples and advice that might help teachers address this big idea in some form or another, particularly with respect to problem-solving and how different mathematical models might be set up. in the caps foundation phase document, there are explicit references to problem types, the structure of these much in line with the typology of root problems developed by carpenter, fennema, franke, levi and empson (1999). for example, across grades 1 to 3, addition and subtraction problems are classified into change, combine and compare problems. in their analysis of such problems, carpenter and colleagues emphasise how the position of the unknown in a problem can affect the level of difficulty, a point that is noted in the caps document. for example, the advice for grade 3 includes: problems have to be posed in different ways. for example, both of these are change problems, but the “unknowns” are in different places in the problem: 15 big ideas in primary mathematics: issues and directions | mike askew the shop had packets of mealie meal and ordered 55 more. now there are 170 packets of mealie meal. how many packets were there in the beginning? the shop had 500 packets of sugar. after selling some packets, they had 324 packets of sugar left. how many packets did they sell? (caps fp: 77). the guidance falls short, however, of the analysis provided by carpenter and colleagues in two respects. first, their research shows that learners are likely to find the first of these problems – an example of a ‘start unknown’ problem – considerably harder than the second problem – a change unknown problem. secondly, with respect to the big idea of meanings and symbols, there is no discussion of the different symbolic models that could be set up. for example, the first problem can be expressed as [ ] + 55 = 170 or 170 − 55 = [ ] or 170 [ ] = 55. which of these representations the learner chooses can alter the strategy used to carry out the calculation and the learner’s likelihood of success. at the end of the caps fp classification, the reader is advised to: note that learners often use different ways of solving a problem that may not be what the teacher expects. for example, a division problem may be solved by repeated subtraction, addition or multiplication. learners’ methods will change in the course of the year as their understanding of and familiarity with the problem types grow, and as their number concept develops (caps fp: 77). whilst the spirit of this advice is laudable, the reader is left unclear as to whether or not different ways of solving a problem are to be welcomed, or whether, over time, the expectation is that learners will come to solve such problems in the way that the teacher does expect. the caps ip provides similar examples of problem types. for instance, a grade 4 ‘calculate the change’ problem given is: a salesman earned r4 328 during november. during december, the amount increased to r7 435. how much more money did he earn during december than in november? (caps ip: 120). (similar problems are provided for grades 5 and 6, but involving larger numbers). unlike the foundation phase document, no advice is given as to what to expect when learners engage with such problems, presumably on the assumption that setting up mathematical models for problems is not problematic in these grades. this suggests, in turn, that these are not really problems to solve, but simply practice calculations wrapped up in words. the caps ip comes closer to acknowledging the complexity of the relationship between meaning and symbols in its discussion of teaching fractions. for example, advice given includes the acknowledgement that: perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 16 different diagrams or apparatus develop different ways of thinking about fractions: • region or area models develop the concept of fractions as part of a whole. if used in particular ways they can also develop the concept of a fraction as a measure. … • length or measurement models can be used to develop the concept of fractions as part of a whole and if used in particular ways also fraction as a measure. … • set models develop the concept of a fraction of a collection of objects and can lay the basis for thinking about a fraction of a number e.g. 1/3 of 12. learners should not only work with one kind of model, because this can limit their understanding of fractions (caps ip: 71-72). the strong message is that no one model or symbolic system for representing fractions is best. the relationship emphasised, however, is in the direction of establishing meaning through learners encountering a range of different symbolic representations. it falls short of examining the importance of the reverse relationship: that when given a fraction in symbolic form, choice of interpretation – region, length or set – can alter the ease with which the individual makes sense of the symbolic. again, the impression is that a reader with a sensibility towards big ideas will be able to find resonances within the document. but the reader less tuned-in to big ideas is unlikely to gain a sense of them when working with these documents. conclusion i have argued that attending to big ideas in teaching and learning in primary schools can help learners develop a rich connected understanding of mathematics. on the basis of an albeit limited analysis of big ideas in the caps documents, i suggest that a lack of explicit attention to big ideas in the south african curriculum landscape could contribute to learners continuing to develop fragmented mathematical knowledge and, consequently, be a factor in the continued low attainment in mathematics. finally, i review some pedagogical considerations by returning to the work of davis, sumara and luce-kaplar and the idea that learning should not be thought of only as something that individuals do. they note that collectives can learn, raising another view on ‘big ideas’, namely that a collective may ‘have’ more sense of a big idea than any individual within a collective. as davis and simmt (2006) have demonstrated, teachers collectively exploring a topic such as ‘multiplication’ reveals a richness of understanding across a group that is more than the sum of the parts of the individual group members’ understanding. big ideas can, therefore, be worked with and developed through the collective bringing together of their individual understandings whereby “collectives of persons are capable of actions and understandings that transcend the capabilities of the individuals on their own” 17 big ideas in primary mathematics: issues and directions | mike askew (davis, sumara & luce-kaplar, 2000: 68). i suggest that this applies to learners as much as it does to teachers. this view of big ideas as collective ideas presents a challenge to the prevalent discourse, in primary mathematics education, of having to differentiate teaching to meet individual needs, which often results in pedagogies that lead to a reduction in collective activity and group sense-making. a pedagogy built around the collective understanding and how the collective could build on, extend and develop big ideas brings a different view of classroom relationships and norms into being, one that focuses on conversation patterns, relational dynamics, and collective characters. cognition, in this frame, is always collective; embedded in, enabled by, and constrained by the social phenomenon of language, caught up in layers of history and tradition and confined by well-established boundaries of acceptability (davis, sumara & luce-kaplar, 2000: 65) hence we can think of the big ideas of mathematics, as developed through history and tradition, as what mathematicians have defined and determined as acceptable. school learning is then constituted through dialogue and relationships and collective determining of what is acceptable, and meeting the needs of the individual learner comes about through that learner engaging with these ideas in dialogue and co-action with others. big ideas become collectively big. references anghileri j 2000. teaching number sense. london: continuum. carpenter t, fennema e, franke ml, levi l & empson sb 1999. children’s mathematics: cognitively guided instruction. portsmouth, nh: heinemann. charles ri 2005. big ideas and understandings as the foundation for elementary and middle school mathematics. national council of supervisors of mathematics (ncsm). journal of mathematics education leadership, 8(1): 9-24. cockcroft wh 1982. mathematics counts: report of the committee of inquiry into the teaching of mathematics in schools. london: her majesty’s stationery office. davis b & simmt e 2006. mathematics-for-teaching: an ongoing investigation of the mathematics that teachers (need to) know. educational studies in mathematics, 61: 293-319. davis b, sumara d & luce-kaplar r 2000. engaging minds: learning and teaching in a complex world. mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 18 department for basic education (dbe) 2011a. curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps): foundation phase mathematics grades r-3. pretoria: dbe. department for basic education (dbe) 2011b. curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) intermediate phase grades 4-6. pretoria: dbe. fosnot ct & dolk m 2001. young mathematicians at work: constructing number sense, addition and subtraction. portsmouth, nh: heinemann. gravemeijer k 1997. instructional design for reform in mathematics education. in m beishuizen, k gravemeijer & ecdm van lieshout (eds), the role of contexts and models in the development of mathematical strategies and procedures (pp. 1334). utrecht: freudenthal institute. hiebert j & carpenter tp 1992. learning and teaching with understanding. in d. a. grouws, (ed.), handbook of research on mathematics teaching and learning: a project of the national council of teachers of mathematics (pp. 65-97). new york: macmillan publishing co, inc. kline m 1974. why johnny can’t add: the failure of the new math. new york: random house. schifter d & fosnot ct 1993. reconstructing mathematics education: stories of teachers meeting the challenge of reform. new york: teachers college press. siemon d 2006. assessment for common misunderstandings materials. prepared for and published electronically by the victorian department of education and early childhood development. retrieved 26/04/13 from http://www. education.vic.gov.au/studentlearning/teachingresources/maths/common/ default.htm. siemon d, bleckly j & neal d 2012. working with the big ideas in number and the australian curriculum: mathematics. in b atweh, m goos, r jorgenson & d siemon (eds), engaging the australian national curriculum: mathematics – perspectives from the field (pp. 19-45). online publication: mathematics education research group of australasia. small m 2012. good questions: great ways to differentiate mathematics instruction. 2nd ed. reston, va: national council of teachers of mathematics. schweiger f 2006. fundamental ideas: a bridge between mathematics and mathematical education. in j maaß & w schlöglmann (eds), new mathematics educational research and practice (pp. 63-73). rotterdam/ taipei: sense publishers. 257 research article 2021 39(1): 257-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) environmental education using distance learning during the covid-19 lockdown in israel abstract education systems and environmental education professionals have been challenged by the covid-19 pandemic and the sharp transition to distance learning that has necessitated a rapid response. environmental education as part of a social-ecological system is dependent on the adaptability and the scope of the change with which the system responds to crisis. it is therefore important to explore the ways in which environmental educators choose to increase students’ proximity to nature under conditions of lockdown. the aim of this study, therefore, was to examine environmental educators’ perspective on and teaching methods for implementing environmental education under distance learning conditions. to this end, we conducted 16 interviews and analysed teaching methods (e.g. videos, lesson plans and written assignments) that were used by israeli environmental educators in march–april 2020. the findings highlight the creativity of the educators who used a variety of teaching methods, involving active/ passive learning and the direct/indirect experience of nature, using nature for observation, investigation and in-depth personal, social and environmental learning. the study’s contribution stems from its exploration of the crisis from the perspective of environmental education in the context of social-ecological systems. key findings present challenges (e.g. lack of direct outdoor interaction and feedback) and opportunities (e.g. public access to online lectures and the nationwide sharing of teaching materials) that were faced by environmental educators in israel and that led to the development of diverse teaching methods for contending with the crisis. the study recommends incorporating diverse activities in nature, implementing outdoor teacher training for all teachers and creating professional teacher networks. keywords: social-ecological systems; adaptation; transformation; distance learning; environmental education; outdoor learning. 1. introduction and theoretical background as this article was being written, education systems and environmental educators were being challenged – as they often are during times of crisis (kidman & chang, 2020) – by the lockdowns and uncertainty that have thus far stemmed from the covid-19 pandemic. the upheaval that was caused to education systems by the sharp transition author: n. assaf1 d. gan1 affiliation: 1the kibbutzim college of education, technology and the arts, israel doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i1.16 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 257-276 published: 12 march 2021 received: 6 november 2020 accepted: 27 january 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 2582021 39(1): 258-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) to distance learning has necessitated a rapid response. indeed, after the health system, the educational system is the sector that has been most affected by the pandemic (assunção & gago, 2020; daniel, 2020; hebebci et al., 2020; huber & helm, 2020) because of the need to teach remotely instead of through face-to-face interactions, which is one of the most important roles of social, emotional and academic learning. the shortcomings of distance learning – which include a lack of engagement in content learning, a lack of physical interaction with friends and a lack of immersion in the local environments (azorín, 2020) – were even more prominent in the context of environmental education, in which the local outdoor environment plays a fundamental role. research has found that students under lockdown conditions expressed their desire for the real learning that occurs during outdoor education (quay et al., 2020). it is therefore important to explore environmental education in this situation. the pandemic has the potential to bring change to educational approaches to environmental education. environmental education is “concerned with developing an understanding of, and care for, the environment – social, cultural, built, natural – that occurs in the environment and through it” (bonnett, 2013: 252). a complementary definition of environmental education refers to a holistic approach of four nested levels of ecologies: personal, social, environmental and cosmic. in this approach, environmental education should begin with individual health and well-being, move on to relationships with the community and ultimately address human-nature relationships (wimberley, 2009). in other words, it should consider humans and the interactions of individuals as part of nature nested in larger social and environmental systems. as such, environmental education is viewed from an ecological perspective in which interactions among individuals, other humans and the biophysical environment surrounding them are nested in a larger programme that pertains to natural resource management practices and environmental policies (tidball & krasny, 2011). on the policy level, some countries – such as in finland (sjöblom & svens, 2019), scotland (perlman et al., 2020) and australia (passy et al., 2019) – have implemented environmental education as their core standards. in israel, environmental education is not a major requirement of the public school curriculum. official policy calls for incorporating it into all subject matter, but in reality, only teachers and schools that are interested in environmental education actually employ it. as a result, few schools have implemented environmental education in an extensive manner. in many schools, the “green” remains mainly on the surface (tal, 2020), meaning that students are not systematically exposed to the ideas of environmental education and that preservice teachers are not obligated to study it (sagy & tal, 2015). for this reason, it is important to study the perspectives of environmental educators, who do implement it in this context. according to the nested-ecology approach, environmental education integrated into social-ecological frameworks should be considered as part of a larger system, contributing to the understanding of dynamic processes and feedback in the nested systems (e.g. individual ecology, social ecology and environmental ecology, which includes the non-human aspect of the system). such an analysis may contribute to environmental education, to broader system management practices and to decision making in the realm of policy (mcphearson & tidball, 2013). the pandemic sparked a global reaction that involved the influencing of policy makers, changing education systems and shifting environmental resource management practices (quay et al., 2020). these different levels of change (the local, the national and the international) make the social-ecological system approach, and environmental education as http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 2592021 39(1): 259-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 assaf & gan environmental education using distance learning part of it, well suited as a framework for this study. to understand the israeli situation regarding the implementation of environmental education during lockdown, this study examined the responses of professionals engaged in the field. environmental education using the socialecological systems approach (leal filho et al., 2018; plummer, 2013; sterling, 2010) is rarely used as an analytical framework for the education arena (colding & barthel, 2019; krasny et al., 2015; tidball & krasny, 2011; krasny & roth, 2010; krasny & tidball, 2009). however, such use stands to contribute to a broader global analysis of environmental education and its relationship with the diverse levels of nested ecologies (i.e. individual, social, environmental, and cosmic) (krasny et al., 2015). in this way, it can spark a discussion on the role of environmental education in enhancement, adaptation, resilience and process promotion in systems (krasny & tidball, 2009). social-ecological systems are complex systems with influence that varies across time and space (folke et al., 2010; krasny & tidball, 2009; tidball & krasny, 2010; walker et al., 2004). they deal with the mutual relations between humans and nature and are characterised by three primary attributes: resilience, adaptation, and transformation. these attributes provide stability to the processes that occur in the system. social-ecological systems are impacted by: pulses (one-time disruptions) and stresses (ongoing disruptions) (folke et al., 2010; löf, 2010; walker et al., 2004). the covid-19 pandemic is an example of a quick pulse that has had an extreme impact on the social-ecological system, including the field of environmental education. the social-ecological system’s response to the crisis surrounding the pandemic is related to resilience, which depends on the adaptation and the transformation with which the system responds to the disruption (folke et al., 2010). resilience is a measure of a system’s ability to contain disruptions so that the process of change results in reorganisation. resilience is measured by a system’s ability to maintain its role with regard to structure, identity and the provision of feedback – that is to say, to be maintained as a sustainable system (plummer, 2013). this raises the question of the level of resilience characterising the social-ecological system and therefore the degree to which it will be able to adapt to crises and then to return to its previous state – or, in other words, the extent to which it will perform single-loop learning. single-loop learning is a form of specific learning with minor adaptations in light of errors (plummer, 2013). for example, during the covid-19 pandemic, environmental education has been able to shift to online teaching about nature-related topics without using the outdoors (quay et al., 2020). the system’s response can also occur through double-loop learning and attempts to change organisational norms (löf, 2010). for example, the education system has been able to afford teachers greater autonomy during the covid-19 crisis than during times of normalcy and can continue doing so in the future (quay et al., 2020). research has shown that even in times of normalcy, teachers with a sense of autonomy demonstrate positive relationships with their students as well as greater adaptability, which has been found to be extremely important during the pandemic (collie & martin, 2020; reimers & schleicher, 2020). the crisis could also cause a fundamental change, or transformation, that reshapes the social-ecological system, including the education system and environmental education. this is triple-loop learning, which results in fundamental change to the model of organisational management (löf, 2010). in other words, the question is whether the crisis will serve to advance environmental education as part of the conception of social-ecological systems of assimilation within the education system. such environmental education is based on partnership in sourcecontingent and context-contingent teaching and learning; interdisciplinary systemic teaching in http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 2602021 39(1): 260-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) the environmental and social context of the learners and teaching conducted in a sustainable experiential-holistic manner, aimed at a perception and behavioural change toward society and the environment and relating to the social-ecological system on all of its levels (leal filho et al., 2018; plummer, 2013; sterling, 2010). in triple-loop learning, environmental education, as part of the conception of the social-ecological system, can serve as a primary tool for effecting change in society and in the environment, and, in this way, it can also impact the education system as a whole (leal filho et al., 2018). environmental education in the context of the social-ecological systems approach has been explored in diverse environments. for example, krasny and tidball (2009) studied urban environmental education using community gardens as a model for addressing social and ecological concerns. they found that the bio-diversity, the diversity in knowledge, and the selforganisation reflected in the planting of gardens led to eco-system services and community participation, and, as a result, contributed to a sense of social connection and the resilience of social-ecological urban systems. other examples used the frame of resilience in socialecological systems to emphasise environmental education as an instrumental process that includes problem solving to illustrate first-loop learning, and environmental education as an intrinsic process emphasising reflection to demonstrate second-loop learning (sterling, 2010). in light of these facts, this study is unique in its objective of examining the behaviour of environmental educators during the crisis period when it was almost impossible to go outside. such an inquiry can reveal if a change occurred, but it cannot tell us whether the change was the result of single-loop learning after which the situation would return to what is familiar to us or whether it created a new reality. based on the concept of social-ecological systems, environmental education incorporates the outdoors through its dependence on the context of place, environment and society (krasny & roth, 2010) and its emphasis on experiential learning (kolb, 2014) in the environment (krogh & jolly, 2012). these aspects are a meaningful part of creating social-ecological systems and developing critical thought that enables intelligent action for the environment and for society (sterling, 2010; tidball & krasny, 2011). the second objective of the study is to examine the ways in which environmental educators have chosen to empower the location of nature as part of their educational conception, in an attempt to find ways to bring people closer to nature while locked down in their homes. this is a topic that has not been addressed extensively by the literature (kidman & chang, 2020). to investigate it further, we asked the following two questions: (1) how can we characterise the teaching methods that were employed by environmental educators during the covid-19 lockdown? and (2) how, from the perspective of environmental educators, are the teaching methods they employed related to past experience, and how can they contribute to teaching in the future? 2. methodology in this interpretive qualitative study, we considered social-ecological systems on three levels: the global, the national and the local. the study examined israeli educators contending with the beginning of the pulse at a unique point in time, in march 2020, during the israeli education system’s transition to distance learning due to the covid-19 pandemic. the data was collected over a period of five weeks, from the beginning of israel’s first lockdown until the end of passover vacation (april 2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 2612021 39(1): 261-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 assaf & gan environmental education using distance learning 2.1 participants all the participants were academically educated (most hold a master’s degree), and the majority were educated in the field of environmental education, with an average of 16 years of experience in the education system. the study participants have a variety of subjects of expertise: science, art, the environmental sciences, and work with a variety of age groups (preschool, elementary school, middle school, high school and special education) (table 1). the study participants constituted a goal-oriented convenience sample, contingent on the participants’ availability to the researcher (creswell, 2012). we sent emails to approximately 30 education professionals who engaged in environmental education on a regular basis during times of normalcy and under lockdown, and who were willing to participate in the study. the resulting sample is not representative of the israeli education system but presents the unique perspective of individuals who have been educated and area experienced in the field of environmental education. we interviewed 16 educators – those who agreed to take part in the study. in the interview, they were asked questions pertaining to their personal background and to approaches to environmental education. to understand the teaching methods that were employed by the interviewees, they were asked questions such as: in what ways do you manage to incorporate aspects of environmental education during lockdown? give examples of things you have done and responses you have received from children, their parents and colleagues. what is the main thing at which you feel you succeeded during this period and what do you think will happen in the future? this article presents only some of the findings of a larger study on the subject. table 1. the study participants no. position years of seniority education 1 preschool teacher (ages 3–5) 25 master’s degree: environ. ed. 2 science coordinator and teacher, mentor (elementary school) 20 master’s degree: geology 3 preschool teacher (ages 3–6) 23 master’s degree: environ. ed. 4 preschool teacher (ages 4–6) 25 bachelor’s degree: teaching education 5 science teacher and homeroom teacher (postprimary school) 2 bachelor’s degree: teaching biology 6 nature and science teacher (elementary and postprimary schools) 3 bachelor’s degree: teaching biology 7 art and environmental education teacher (elementary school) 15 master’s degree: environ. ed. 8 preschool teacher (ages 3–5) 8 master’s degree: environ. ed. 9 preschool teacher and preschool teacher instructor (ages 3–5) 11 master’s degree: environ. ed. 10 special education science teacher (ages 6–21) 28 master’s degree: environ. ed. 11 preschool teacher (ages 3–5) 10 master’s degree: environ. ed. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 2622021 39(1): 262-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) no. position years of seniority education 13 art teacher (elementary school) 15 master’s degree: art 14 environmental science teacher 5 master’s degree: environ. ed. 15 science and special education teacher (middle and high school) 15 master’s degree: environ. ed. 16 preschool teacher, preschool teacher instructor, director of centre for science and environmental education 28 master’s degree: environ. ed. total: 7 preschool teachers; 9 teachers (6 elementary school and 3 post-primary) avg.=16 2.2 research tools and data analysis semi-structured interviews – inductive analysis: in this study, we applied inductive analysis (fereday & muir-cochrane, 2006) to semi-structured interviews (seidman, 2012) that were conducted through phone and the zoom application and that were recorded and transcribed. the interviews were conducted with 16 participants who engaged in environmental education as an integral part of their teaching in times of normalcy as well as in times of crisis – as in the case of the covid-19 pandemic that necessitated distance learning. the data analysis consisted of three stages (miles & huberman, 1994): (1) naïve reading of the interview; (2) organisation of the data through first cycle coding and second cycle coding (saldaña, 2009) and (3) the creation of categories through the aggregation of main topics. the interviews were analysed individually by each of the two researchers who are experts in the field of environmental education and a comparison was conducted to establish agreement and triangulation (denzin & lincoln, 2011). analysis of documents and teaching methods: at the same time, the teaching methods that were used by the participants were analysed based on the interviews, teaching methods (such as powerpoint presentations and videos) and documents (lesson plans, pictures, games and written assignments) that were sent by email, whatsapp and other digital means before and after the interviews. the teaching methods were counted by type, for example: lectures, films and outdoor assignments. in total, 16 teaching method types were identified with some appearing more than once (films, lectures, etc.). these types encompassed a total of 38 teaching methods. an analysis that characterised the teaching methods according to the learners’ level of activeness and to the level of direct or indirect interaction with nature led to the division of teaching methods into three groups: 1) active learning and direct experience with nature; 2) active learning and indirect experience with nature; 3) passive learning and indirect experience with nature. for each group, the prevalence among all the teaching methods was calculated (n=38). deductive analysis according to the literature: another analysis applied to the interviews and to the teaching methods that were assembled was based on deductive analysis according to the theory of social-ecological systems, which refers to three loops of learning: single-loop learning, double-loop learning and triple-loop learning. each loop was characterised on a scale of participants and space. also examined were the educational processes that occurred in each of the loops during the period in question, the challenges and opportunities that the situation posed to out-of-classroom teaching and homeroom education in particular, as viewed by the environmental educators who took part in the study. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 2632021 39(1): 263-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 assaf & gan environmental education using distance learning the study was conducted in accordance with the relevant ethical considerations. a request to conduct the research was submitted to the institutional review board (irb) and contained all the necessary information about goals, significance, methods and participants (creswell, 2012). to protect the privacy of participants and to increase the confidentiality of the research, the data were administered using encrypted secure data storage and by assigning pseudonyms to participants. limited access to this data (only the researchers had access) further enhanced privacy and confidentiality, all audiotapes were destroyed and all identifying information remained confidential. other data will be safely destroyed after the passage of a reasonable amount of time. an email was sent out to participants explaining the study and its goals and asking for cooperation and permission to conduct it. participants took part in the study voluntarily and were informed of their right to cease doing so at any time if they felt uncomfortable. additionally, no incentives were offered to participants. an informed consent form developed for the study explained the details of the study, its importance, how data would be collected, managed and stored and steps taken to ensure confidentiality, protection of privacy and the right of participants to withdraw from the study at any time. participants signed the consent form and verbally agreed to participate in the study. 3. findings the analysis of the data (documents and interviews) facilitated an examination of teaching methods (n=38) and learning environments (outdoors and at home), in accordance with the learner’s level of activeness and his or her direct or indirect experience in nature. three kinds of learning experiences were identified: (1) active learning and direct experience of nature (26%) – activity requiring that the learner be active outdoors and take advantage of the opportunities offered by nature and the environment; for example, sending children outside to photograph and collect flowers in order to learn about and observe them; listening to the sounds of birds and nature outdoors; writing with materials collected outdoors; painting natural elements such as the sky, flowers or birds after observing them and picking herbs for making tea. (2) active learning and indirect experience of nature (26%) – learning that occurs in the home, during which learners used technology or materials that can be found at home without direct engagement with nature or the environment but rather through mediation, such as: solving brainteasers about plants and animals, making things out of recycled materials, building nest boxes for birds and creating an online collection of students’ products made out of diverse materials. and (3) passive learning and indirect experience of nature (47%) – activity in which the learner is passive and views natural phenomena online, meaning that the learner is not physically present or is looking out a window at outdoor phenomena. for example, watching videos and taking part in zoom meetings on topics pertaining to nature and the environment. it was discovered that the teachers used active learning outdoors (26%) to the same extent that they used active learning indoors (26%). thus, even if there was no direct interaction with nature as part of the activity, 52% of the learning involved experience. the findings of the interviews’ analysis that are characteristic of social-ecological systems found expression in three categories on three levels: (1) single-loop learning; (2) double-loop learning and (3) triple-loop learning. 3.1 single-loop learning: small-scale and quick, locally specific this category refers to quick small-scale loop learning in which the environmental educators used diverse teaching methods that enabled them to incorporate nature and the environment http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 2642021 39(1): 264-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) into the learning process while adapting to the feedback of the learners and their parents. the single loop reflects the initial response of the system and is indicative of specific local learning (within the permitted distance of up to 100 metres from home). characteristics of the single-loop learning: in this loop, the educators mentioned the different actors that were involved in distance learning during lockdown: parents, students and the environmental educators themselves. several interactions between the actors were identified by the educators, such as greater parental involvement in students’ distance learning and the different relationships between teachers and students that required different communication strategies. this learning also involved the home environment, with its many different elements, up to a distance of 100 metres from the home. the major educational characteristics included the rapid impact of the covid-19 crisis, which included a sharp transition to online learning. these extremely quick processes were sensitive to needs on the ground and responded to developments on the ground accordingly. these characteristics influenced the categories that emerged from data analysis. the lockdown created the need to integrate nature into learning, resulting in a sense of connection to nature and generating the need to integrate technology into learning. the new situation was met with diverse feedback from students and parents and all of these experiences caused us to think seriously about continuity – that is, the use of past experience and the teaching of methods of the future. a sense of connection to nature the environmental educators were concerned about the possibilities for incorporating nature experiences into learning and into their teaching during lockdown. as explained by one preschool teacher: we succeeded in maintaining the children’s wonder, curiosity, and sense of closeness to nature in different ways…despite the fact that…we are not exactly out in nature and cannot see…the petals of [the chrysanthemum] close up because evening has fallen… we can [look outside with parental supervision], imagine, or watch short movies about it. this quote demonstrates the importance of the sense of connection to nature that all participants emphasised as well as the manner in which they used educational principles, such as the creation of wonder in students through a variety of teaching methods. another teacher, this time in elementary school, used more sophisticated methods to create a sense of connection to nature: we suggested to them [the students] to contemplate nature through the window or within the permitted distance…to choose a framework…through which they could see the sky and the trees…we asked them to photograph the special things they saw…out of… listening to and experiencing the environment. this quote illustrates the encouragement of active learning through the observance of nature and self-contemplation. all participants used creative methods to help establish a sense of connection to nature among students that helped overcome the challenges of not being together outdoors. the educators were able to generate meaningful activities grounded in the context of place, society and environment, while encouraging parents to help their children spend time outdoors in nature near their homes. all of this reflects principles of environmental education according to the social-environmental systems approach. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 2652021 39(1): 265-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 assaf & gan environmental education using distance learning integrating technology into learning the need to integrate technology into learning while under lockdown conditions changed the approach of most early childhood educators to the subject. prior to the pandemic, these educators made little to no use of technology for teaching in school and preferred being outdoors with the students and experiencing nature with all of their senses. their approach to the subject changed because of their experiences during distance learning, as one pre-school teacher explained: [today] i want to have technology, because i discovered that this is a tool that can be used… [it allows us to see] things that are not in our immediate surroundings…like a video of a glacier…or how a plant grows … [which is a phenomenon] that i cannot show in school. this quote reflects an understanding of the advantages of technology that can contribute to learning and understanding natural phenomena and not necessarily harm the learning process. another teacher emphasised the use of media and screens “because it is not always possible to go outdoors…but [we can] bring the outdoors to the screen…i used media to incorporate the principles…of sustainability and environmental education.” this was another way the teachers succeeded in maintaining environmental education under lockdown according to the social-ecological systems approach. in other words, technology facilitates environmental education that incorporates interdisciplinary systemic teaching indoors and outdoors. feedback from students and parents one of the challenges faced by all teachers was the lack of direct feedback from their students about their feelings, their learning and their understanding. the teachers were surprised from the feedback they received from their students when they asked them to take photos outdoors and to describe the nature in their immediate surroundings, as one elementary teacher emphasised: “this is one of the most amazing things that happened…many students sent photos they took, and this was excellent feedback.” the teachers wanted to connect students to nature and received reactions that helped them better understand the learning and emotional processes of students. another teacher was surprised by the observation skills of their students: [the children] asked me…about something in the video…that i sent, which i had not even noticed. that is to say, they looked … [in this way] i am able to touch them and teach them…and i am able to be with them. this pre-school teacher felt that nature experiences enabled her to feel close to her students, even though they were conducted in the context of distance learning. another preschool teacher also expressed a sense of closeness to her students: “i have been receiving photos of beetles [from the students]…when they send them to me, i know that i touched them.” this feeling of psychological touch replaces the real physical connection between students and educators. feedback also included parental involvement in the teaching and learning processes, as noted by one of the middle school teachers: “seventh graders…did mother-daughter yoga lessons for one another, and a father-son history lesson.” parents were also involved in experiencing nature with their children. all of these quotes represent the principles of environmental education according to the social-ecological systems approach in which nature can facilitate partnership in teaching and learning, even in a lockdown situation. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 2662021 39(1): 266-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) continuity: using past experience and considering future teaching methods the environmental educators created an educational process that began before the lockdown and has the potential to continue after it. all teachers used their experiences with their students. for example, one elementary school teacher pointed out, “i continued the topic we were studying [before the lockdown] – geophytes. everyone buried it in the shade of a daffodil they took home and monitored it.” this representative quote reflects the creativity and flexibility of the teachers who found ways to engage students learning about natural phenomena in an ongoing manner. the teachers tried to create a process they started in the classroom even though they did not know what would happen. another example of this continuum was described by an elementary school teacher as follows: “i sent an app of bird calls along with quizzes. they liked the activity because it was like things we’ve done…in class…they will never forget the birds from this period.” these quotes demonstrate the use of diverse senses (listening, observing and feeling touch) that teachers had encouraged their students to use. the students had experienced these types of activities before and were therefore able to repeat it without the physical presence of their teachers. as reflected in the following quote of a pre-school teacher, participants in this study understood that all their new teaching experiences, must be maintained… when we return to normalcy. it cannot… return to what used to be… learning can occur in other ways. [we] need to stop, to think outside the box, to not think about the familiar, and to venture out of our comfort zone (preschool teacher). teachers expressed their eagerness to reconnect students to nature. in the words of another pre-school teacher: the first week after we return [after lockdown]…we will be in the forest. we will not be in the kindergarten at all. because in the forest we are not concerned with materialism or with games and toys. we are concerned with being one with nature. the environmental educators emphasised the creation of meaning grounded in the context of place, nature and environment, which are part of the principles of environmental education according to the social-ecological systems approach. it was evident that the environmental educators encountered various challenges, including the difficulty of mediating outdoor learning without being able to go outdoors to observe natural phenomena as a group and the need among younger students for adult supervision. furthermore, the teachers looked for feedback from the students, which is evident in faceto-face contact but may prove challenging in distance learning. another challenge was the blurring of the boundaries between parents and teachers, especially in the younger students, but in older students as well. these challenges created opportunities for generating positive thinking about nature and the surrounding environment while incorporating nature into teaching in a creative and diverse manner. the feedback from the students facilitated an individual emotional connection with the educators due to the unique situation that enabled teachers to be in closer personal contact with the students. in addition, the educators suggested it encouraged parental learning about issues pertaining to nature and the environment stemming from the children’s interests and the diverse outdoor activities. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 2672021 39(1): 267-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 assaf & gan environmental education using distance learning 3.2 double-loop learning: medium-scale, national the double-loop learning, which can be characterised as “medium” in scale and duration, dealt with learning about the national decision-making level of the ministry of education, as perceived by the study participants. the relatively slow reaction of the ministry of education afforded autonomy to environmental educators, who viewed this development in a positive light. this autonomy resulted in creativity and the extensive use of films and lectures that were made accessible to the public by national institutions of education, culture and the environment. characteristics of the double-loop learning: in this loop, study participants mentioned national influences that related to policy makers, the ministry of education, israeli culture and environmental organisations. the educators discussed the nationwide state of being unable to go outside and explore nature reserves but at the same time developed the public understanding of what happened to nature reserves and nature in the city during a lockdown. participants mentioned a decline in air pollution and a revival among animals in israel’s natural environments due to the lockdown. double-loop learning is also characterised by educational opportunities such as public access to online lectures and the national sharing of teaching materials. on this national level, participants emphasised the slow processes in the education system; it did not keep up with the pace of activity on the ground, which occurred too late, and in some cases served to disrupt the activity on the ground. this learning loop was influenced by social media-based cooperation within and among groups in society and especially among educators. autonomy the environmental educators were pleased by the autonomy they received from the ministry of education, as one high school teacher pointed out: “the principals on the ground are completely autonomous, which is nice.” this was an abnormal situation in israel’s centralised education system with its strong evaluative trend that usually puts pressure on middle and high school teachers to teach specifically for tests. regarding herself and other teachers, one teacher said, [i] must say…thank you to the ministry of education…from teachers and principals alike…we received a policy of engaging in education. [but] they do not drop plans in on us…we are starting to create a new kind of learning. this quote reflects the highly hierarchal structure of the israeli education system in which every education minister develops new policies and changes the focus of the entire system by assigning additional tasks to teachers. israel’s ministry of education was not ready for covid-19 and as one high school teacher noted: the covid-19 situation accentuated the “holes” in the education system…such as the number of students [too many] in the classroom…it created chaos in the ministry of education…there is no leadership…no orders…they didn’t do anything. this quote illustrates the transition from an organised hierarchical education system to a chaotic situation. the environmental educators were pleased to have the opportunity to integrate environmental education whenever they liked. the autonomy they were given enabled them to be creative and flexible. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 2682021 39(1): 268-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) this chaotic situation caused participants to hope that environmental education would receive greater acknowledgment from the ministry of education. in the words of one middle school teacher: “i hope the ministry of education will appreciate environmental education… and will encourage teachers to go outdoors and to appreciate the nature and the environment that surrounds us.” this quote is reflective of the situation in israel, where environmental education is not a core subject and suffers from a lack of appreciation and support. the educators interviewed reflect a holistic approach to environmental education that facilitates a termination of the hierarchy as well as a joint effort in producing learning and teaching in the environmental and social context. this reflects the principles of environmental education according to the social-environmental systems approach. environment and nature in israel and teaching materials participants in this study acknowledged the positive impact of lockdown conditions on the environment on a nationwide level. in the words of one educator: “the sky is now bluer…i can hear birds more often than usual…people understand the effect of pollution on the environment...and the positive effect of coronavirus on the environment.” this quote reflects an understanding of the human-nature relationship that emerged under lockdown. other participants stressed the pandemic’s capacity as “a mirror for our society”. their understanding of natural phenomena under lockdown conditions encouraged the educators to teach their students about environmental education. environmental educators, in turn, used the national materials that were published by nature organisations that reflected nature in israel under lockdown. in the double-loop learning, the educators articulated challenges and opportunities regarding environmental education during the covid-19 pandemic. the transition from an orderly system to a chaotic system initially was a challenge for environmental educators, as it was for the entire system. however, this challenge also provided an opportunity for the study participants, who used the autonomy that was created by the vacuum left by the chaotic situation. they used films and presentations of natural phenomena occurring during the covid-19 period as one educational method for teaching their students about humannature relationships and presenting nature and its rehabilitation without humans. 3.3 triple-loop learning: large-scale, slow and international in the large-scale but slower triple-loop learning process, we identified learning on the global level as perceived by the environmental educators in the context of their personal learning about issues of environment and nature from elsewhere in the world. at the time the study was conducted, the full scope and nature of triple-loop learning was still not sufficiently clear. characteristics of the triple-loop learning: participants noted the global influences of the pandemic caused by diverse occurrences such as the cessation of automobile and air travel, about which they learnt from the international media and the global social media. however, they were not certain about the global impact of the covid-19 pandemic in general and on environmental education in particular, and they were unclear on what they could learn at this level and at the point in time when the study was being conducted. participants mentioned the environmental aspects attributed on a global level, such as decreased air pollution and other natural phenomena. they emphasised the new access to teaching material from around the world and the ability to learn from other countries that quickly researched and took action in the field of education. the environmental educators acknowledged the situation’s global http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 2692021 39(1): 269-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 assaf & gan environmental education using distance learning impact on the environment, as one teacher explained, “the global situation of the covid-19 pandemic creates awareness of the environment and of nature everywhere.” participants also stressed the need to “work globally… to create impact on decision makers”. although, there is some evidence related to the global phenomena, it was limited due to the time at which the study was undertaken. internationalism several participants mentioned the global influence on their own environmental engagement. according to one pre-school teacher: i went into environmentalist groups on facebook and groups on education from around the world…into unesco…to see what they were writing…we are a global village, and we can take things from there and bring them here. you may be closed up inside a room, but you have access to the entire world. this quote reflects the opportunities the educators used to protect the environment and acknowledges the diverse possibilities presented by being part of global groups. we might say that the feeling of being locked down encouraged participants to embrace a broader perspective on the world through the internet, even though it is not written in their native language. looking for materials and for global groups needs to occur in english, which is not common among educators in times of normalcy. the language barrier usually prevents israeli teachers from using educational materials that are posted on the internet. however, the global experience enhanced interdisciplinary learning on the part of the educators and then incorporated their new understanding into their teaching approach and methods. this is consistent with the principles of environmental education according to the social-environmental systems approach in that it relates to all levels of influence, from the local to the national to the global. the study’s findings suggest that environmental educators used the challenge of lockdown to engage in triple-loop learning that created opportunities such as the rediscovery of nature in the world, as opposed to focus on fear of the virus. the educators also used diverse teaching methods from around the world. indeed, it was the isolation and lockdown as well as the time they created that enabled educators to learn on a global level. these challenges and opportunities have been part of environmental education during the covid-19 pandemic as perceived by the study participants, in light of the triple learning-loop analysis of socialecological systems. 4. discussion regarding the question dealing with the characterisation of the teaching methods that were implemented by environmental educators, substantial diversity was found to exist in the online and the outdoor teaching environments as well as in the manner in which the environmental education was implemented. the environmental educators testified that the use of technology during the crisis helped them incorporate as opposed to abandon environmental content, despite the challenges. consistent with previous studies, the present study indicates that, according to environmental educators, there are also advantages to incorporating technology into learning in the context of environmental education (altomonte et al., 2016). in addition, it indicates that in contending with the situation that arose during the covid-19 crisis, educators succeeded in striking a balance between the use of technology and the limited use of nature and the environment that was possible at the time. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 2702021 39(1): 270-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) through distance learning that incorporated nature and the environment, the environmental educators demonstrated creative thinking and substantial flexibility, the latter of which, according to the literature, is a required skill for developing creativity (jauhariyah et al., 2019). the environmental educators we interviewed are also in need of flexibility and creativity when teaching outdoors in times of normalcy, due to the need to adapt their teaching to unanticipated developments (tal et al., 2014) and the need to mediate to students the changes involved in the environmental crisis (leal filho et al., 2018; sammalisto et al., 2015). in accordance with the feedback that the environmental educators received from the students and their parents, the present study attests to diverse abilities that also resulted in meaningful learning at home. in response to the research question regarding the environmental educators’ perception of the teaching methods they used in the past and their contribution to teaching in the future, we employed the theory of social-ecological systems and learning loops, which characterises response to change in these systems as part of the concept of resilience (löf, 2010). an analysis of the teaching methods that were used by the environmental educators indicates an initial response of the system through small-scale and quick single-loop learning. the environmental educators used their knowledge of nature and the environment and their capacity to guide students to engage in work at home on their own or with the assistance of their parents. analysis of the scales of loop learning suggests that processes of change relating to local, national and global educational processes occurred, as described by the environmental educators. as we can see, the educators who are part of the social-ecological system placed special emphasis on the processes related to single-loop learning (on the local level of teachers, students and parents), and less on processes of double(on the national level of policy makers and organisations) and triple-loop learning (on the global level). this occurred in part, as a result, of the quick response that was characteristic of the single-loop learning, which was local adaptations of environmental education to the radical change that had occurred (the pulse of the covid-19 pandemic). at the stage at which the study was conducted, the situation had been adapted to on the level of single-loop learning, but much less on the level of doubleand triple-loop learning. deep change requires triple-loop learning (löf, 2010), which is not reflected in this study and may occur in the future. that is to say, achieving change in the social-ecological system that impacts environmental education requires global change. for example, reducing the importance of international tests on the global level could help decrease their importance on the national level in israel (pizmony-levy, 2018), which could help educators assimilate environmental education as it was implemented during the crisis when they were afforded autonomy. this study has several limitations, including its focused and unique point in time, its relatively small sample and its occurrence in israel, which does not regard environmental education as a core subject. to overcome the limitations of the study, which was conducted during the brief initial period of coping with distance learning, an effort should be made to examine the issue over time and to increase the number of interviewees in israel and worldwide. perhaps change will occur over time, when online learning increases or decreases in strength. if this occurs, follow-up studies will be required to examine the continuation of this change in the education system as a whole on larger geographical, chronological and disciplinary scales. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 2712021 39(1): 271-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 assaf & gan environmental education using distance learning the study participants testified that in the future, use will also be made of the teaching methods they developed and the learning process they experienced in times of normalcy. they were visibly surprised by the advantages that technology facilitated in teaching environmental education and in creating an experience relating to the field that the literature describes as placeand context-contingent and implemented in a holistic manner (leal filho et al., 2018; plummer, 2013; sterling, 2010). in actuality, the technology not only did no harm but rather also contributed to the implementation of environmental education. 5. recommendations and conclusions the findings of the study resulted in various recommendations on two levels: the level of environmental educators and the level of policy makers. also apparent for environmental educators was the importance of the student’s individual capacity to learn from the situation itself and his or her flexible thinking – which needs to be developed not only in times of normalcy but also, and especially, in times of crisis. it is important to reflect on and draw specific conclusions based on personal experience and the experience of peers, especially in times of crisis. we suggest that teachers will make learning an iterative process, including ongoing awareness and discussions through a dynamic process, as opposed to a onetime activity (beery, 2020). we also suggest further research on environmental educators’ adaptation to the constant change in the educational agenda, which was characteristic of the covid-19 pandemic, and on their ability to be open to the possibility of unplanned outcomes (coleman & macdonald, 2020). the findings are indicative of adaptations of teaching methods for distance learning that did not forfeit the advantages of active learning and outdoor learning. the teachers noted the importance of teamwork, which was lacking and challenging during the study. it is therefore necessary to find means of cooperation among environmental educators during times of crisis no less than during times of normalcy. according to the literature, it is important, especially during the pandemic, to prioritise collaborative work by teachers. that may occur through partnerships, peer learning and communities of practice as well as through fostering ongoing communication among school networks for sharing information about educational approaches (azorín, 2020), particularly in the context of environmental education. in this sense, it is important to create teaching methods that incorporate nature and the environment in diverse ways through cooperative efforts among teachers from different subject areas. specifically, taking advantage of international conduits of learning, by searching for and using media from around the world that deal with nature and the environment, may contribute to better teaching. this is consistent with the literature that suggests learning from and experimenting with coteaching and collaboration, as occurred during the pandemic (ferdig et al., 2020). for policy makers, collaboration between teachers and diverse methods of implementation may be things in which school principals and ministry of education supervisors should be engaged in developing. the frameworks necessary for sharing are difficult to produce in general, let alone in times requiring distance learning. in light of the opening up of various media conduits, it is now important to create a database of information and methods to make the material accessible to education professionals. we also recommend providing tools for outdoor teaching to educators who are not environmental educators in preparation for the next crisis. these tools include a variety of diverse outdoor practices that every teacher should know. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 2722021 39(1): 272-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) for example, risk management in outdoor teaching can help teachers cope with such situations and should be acquired during training in pre-service teacher training institutions (beery, 2020; quay et al., 2020). another example relates to teaching in situations of uncertainty, which is a skill that outdoor education teaches as a tool. planning and being prepared for uncertainty have proven to be extremely important during the pandemic, emerging as a strategy for anticipating the unanticipated (quay et al., 2020). the incorporation of outdoor teaching is no less important in times of crisis than it is in times of normalcy, as attested to by the environmental educators in this study. despite the complexity of imparting outdoor teaching skills, such skills should be taught as part of the pre-service teachers training curricula and in-service teacher training, regardless of teachers’ field of expertise. it is also important to provide environmental educators with tools for online instruction that combine nature and the environment. such tools can create learning experiences and interest among learners, as also attested to by the environmental educators in this study. in our study, environmental educators were able to use online materials and had the digital competence to do so. however, they needed more ways of incorporating nature into their teaching methods. according to the literature, teachers the world over need training programmes for developing better digital competency (azorín, 2020). the environmental educators emphasised the importance of being well-orientated in nature and viewing it as a source of calm, well-being, and the fulfilment of emotional needs – aspects of nature that are familiar from the literature (bratman et al., 2019; white et al., 2019). this was even more noticeable during lockdown, when people were limited in their ability to spend time in nature (quay et al., 2020). the human inner-world needs support during times of crisis, meaning that incorporating nature and the environment has been even more valuable and significant during the pandemic than in normal times. it is also evident that protecting the environment requires incorporating personal and social well-being into the school curricula at all grade levels (iyengar, 2020). it is therefore important for policy makers to emphasise nature and the environment, especially during periods of crisis and stress like the one created by the covid-19 pandemic (collins et al., 2020; white et al., 2019). one of our main recommendations for the education system is to allow educators autonomy. educators in israel need autonomy to enable them to develop creativity and to promote meaningful education, as did the environmental educators in this study. affording autonomy to education professionals is important for facilitating creativity, incorporating nature and enabling the teacher to reach each student individually (collie & martin, 2020; reimers & schleicher, 2020). the crisis period witnessed the production of various films dealing with natural phenomena in israel. these videos served as a meaningful teaching method for environmental educators. in light of this fact, we recommend that in times of crises such as the covid-19 pandemic, environmental organisations that deal with the interface and preservation of nature use products such as videos to help students and teachers establish a tie to the place and to nature and to derive enjoyment, even if it is mediated by screens. our final recommendation is for education, culture and environmental groups to create conduits for unique learning and for facilitating a learning experience in which nature is “inserted” through the students’ screens and the application of values of environmental education. we recommend that such organisations continue to create conduits of this kind – such as the planting of cameras in http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 2732021 39(1): 273-276 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.16 assaf & gan environmental education using distance learning nesting boxes in zoos, videos from a safari and online lectures – to facilitate environmental education for all, not only in times 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https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46820-0_13%0d https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-46820-0_13%0d https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21137 https://doi.org/10.1002/tea.21137 https://doi.org/10.15365/cate.31112010 https://doi.org/10.1890/es10-00153.1%0d https://doi.org/10.5751/es-00650-090205%0d https://doi.org/10.5751/es-00650-090205%0d https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-44097-3%0d https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-44097-3%0d _goback perspectives in education 31(3) perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2013 university of the free state 79 research tensions with the use of timed numeracy fluency assessments as a research tool debbie stott & mellony graven in this paper, we describe how we came to use timed fluency activities, along with personal learner reflections on those activities, in our after-school maths club as a complementary research and developmental tool for assessing the changing levels of learners’ mathematical proficiency over time. we use data from one case-study after-school maths club. not only did the activities provide us as researchers, and mentors, with a quick way of tracking, evaluating, encouraging and valuing learner progress, but also with a mechanism for the learners to practise the fluency they were developing through other activities of the club. more importantly, the use of learner reflections assisted learner buy-in and reduced the stress related to such timed assessments. this alleviated, to some extent, our ethical unease with the use of such instruments. we have subsequently extended this research and development tool in all clubs that we run and continue to research their affect and effect in order to gain deeper understanding of the research and development opportunities enabled by such activities. keywords: fluency, elements of fluency, timed assessments, after-school maths clubs, learner reflections, research tool, developmental tool introduction the south african numeracy chair (sanc) project focuses on a dialectical relationship between research and development in the field of foundation phase numeracy education in the eastern cape. our research remit is to grow an area of research that looks towards finding sustainable solutions to the many numeracy education challenges faced in our province. developmentally, we aim to improve both the quality of teaching of in-service teachers and learner performance in schools as a result of quality teaching and learning. our teacher development programme, numeracy inquiry community of leader educators (nicle), works with a core of 43 debbie stott south african numeracy chair project rhodes university e-mail: d.stott@ru.ac.za telephone: 046 603 7358 mellony graven south african numeracy chair project rhodes university e-mail: m.graven@ru.ac.za telephone: 046 603 7268 perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 80 participants and runs alongside other learner-focused activities which foreground the importance of numeracy as well as creating a ‘maths is fun’ ethos in schools. a key strand of our development work is after-school maths clubs. in 2011, we piloted an after-school maths club in one project school and, following that, began a number of new clubs in 2012. graven (2011) has argued that after-school maths clubs hold the potential to address some of the challenges young numeracy learners face. numeracy clubs are conceptualised as communities where sense making, active mathematical engagement and participation, and mathematical confidence building are foregrounded. the conceptualisation of these clubs and the pilot findings have been elaborated in previous work (graven & stott 2012). the first author is a full-time doctoral fellow and intern (responsible for co-ordination of clubs) in the sanc project led by the second author. two grade 3 clubs form the case studies of the first author’s research which seeks to answer two questions: how do learners’ mathematical proficiency levels evolve (if at all) over the period of participation in the maths club; and what is the nature of the mediation that enables this evolving mathematical proficiency during participation in the club? this paper is based on data gathered with regard to the first question in one of the two case study clubs. while a range of tools are used to gather data for this question, here we focus on timed fluency assessments and their value for quick, on-going data collection. our development project works towards improving mathematical proficiency among learners and bases its notion of proficiency on kilpatrick, swafford and findell’s (2001) definition which comprises five intertwined and interrelated strands of conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, strategic competence, adaptive reasoning and productive disposition. in our clubs, we see many instances where learners are not working with all these proficiencies because they are constrained by their lack of basic foundational mathematical knowledge. for example, in the pilot club in 2011, we noted that the majority of the learners were weak on number bonds. the bonds of 5 and 10 were not recalled automatically and learners used counting on by ones or their fingers to work out, for example, the answers to 2 + 8 or 2 + 98. their grasp of basic number sense and basic bonds was limited severely and few of the learners seemed to have strategies other than using their fingers to solve problems. this meant that, although they were largely accurate, they were slow at arriving at an answer to a particular problem. we have observed the same issue in subsequent clubs. as many mathematics educators note (e.g. askew 2002; bobis 2007; burns 2007), children should be encouraged to use a variety of strategies for solving mathematical problems so that they learn when to apply different strategies for different problemsolving scenarios. burns (2007) notes that if learners think there is only one correct way to work out something, they will focus on learning how to apply that single method, rather than thinking about what makes sense for the numbers they are working with. in our clubs, we observed that some learners were indeed capable of 81 research tensions with the use of timed numeracy fluency assessments as a research tool debbie stott and mellony graven using a variety of mental strategies, some more sophisticated than others. however, often in subsequent sessions, they reverted to using their fingers, perhaps because they felt safer or trusted the finger method more. bobis (2007: 23–24) concurs by pointing out that “a child will use a multiplicity of strategies and that often these strategies will not be the most efficient ones a child is capable of performing”. our findings in both the pilot and subsequent clubs revealed that learners primarily use non-efficient counting strategies. we saw the need to expose the club learners to a variety of more efficient strategies for solving problems in order to shift them from using less efficient methods to more efficient ones. we also saw an urgent need to increase the learners’ fluency in terms of speed and accuracy. bobis (2007) notes that getting learners from their current strategy use to more efficient strategy use is not always simple. the focus of this paper reflects on the simultaneous use of timed fluency assessments as a data-gathering tool and on the promotion of fluency using these assessments as activities in our after-school clubs. methodology this paper is based on a longitudinal, qualitative case study of 12 grade 3 learners aged between 8 and 10 participating in one after-school maths club, which ran for 28 sessions during 2012. data collection occurred at different points over a one-year period from february to november 2012. club learners spoke english as a second or third language, but the language of learning and teaching where the club was based was english. the participating learners, who were invited by the grade 3 class teachers, included learners with a range of mathematical proficiencies. participating learners were volunteers whose parents signed consent forms and for whom afterschool transport arrangements could be made. in this sense, the learners were an opportunity sample. we specifically chose to work with a small group of 10 to 12 learners so that the needs of the individual clubs learners could be taken into account in the sessions. the research of our clubs and the nature of learning within it is informed by a sociocultural theory of learning and is largely interpretive and qualitative, drawing on a range of data collection methods. the primary data collection instrument for the first research question is a diagnostic instrument focused on collecting data on learners’ progress with regard to mathematical proficiency. for this instrument, we drew on the work of askew, brown, rhodes et al (1997). with the authors’ permission, we were able to select and adapt various items they used in assessing learners numeracy proficiency. however, the work of wright, martland and stafford (2006) on mathematics recovery also provides excellent opportunities and examples of assessment items that enable one to gauge learner progress through various stages of numeracy development. our instrument, thus, combines elements from these two research projects. the instrument was administered individually to each learner in the club in april 2012 and again in november 2012. interviews lasted between 45 to 60 minutes and took place during school hours. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 82 our second data collection tool for the first research question was the timed fluency assessments, which is the focus of this paper. other data collected include less formal data in the form of observations, journal writings, learner workings, photographs and sometimes video. ethical permission from the university and from the eastern cape department of education was obtained through the usual procedures and parental consent in the form of signed letters, written in the appropriate home language, was obtained. in addition, we received teacher, principal and district permission for our research. for confidentiality purposes, pseudonyms were used in subsequent publication of data. to this end, learner names have been changed. learners were free to withdraw from the club at any time. literature review: fluency many educators would say that fluency is about speed and accuracy (gojak 2012). others would say that fluency is the mastery or rapid recall and retrieval of basic facts and computational skills. kilpatrick et al. (2001: 121) define procedural fluency as “knowledge of procedures, knowledge of when and how to use them appropriately, and skill in performing them flexibly, accurately, and efficiently”. while kilpatrick et al.’s (2001) definition focuses on procedure and methods of calculation, both mentally and with pencil and paper, askew (2012: 54), on the other hand, talks about fluency with respect to “elements of fluency”, which includes basic facts and knowing basic methods: “the point of being fluent in them [these facts] is to free up working memory when tackling a more interesting and engaging piece of mathematics”. he argues that a lack of fluency in basic facts can impede conceptual understanding because certain processes take up too much working memory and attention is diverted from thinking about the bigger mathematical picture. while there are a range of definitions for fluency, there seems to be consensus in the literature that fluency is more than being fast and accurate, and that good practice will ensure that learning, to be fluent, should be intertwined and developed along with sense making and flexible thinking (boaler 2012; bobis 2007; burns 2007). this consensus coheres with kilpatrick et al.’s (2001) recommendation that the strands of mathematical proficiency be taught using an interwoven approach. the south african annual national assessment (ana) results for 2012 (department of basic education, 2012) reveal that, while the national mathematics anas for grade 3 and 4 show a 13 percentage point and 9 percentage point increase respectively from 2011, the average national scores are still under 50%. sitting in 5th position (out of 9 provinces), the eastern cape performs under the national average for all grades up to grade 9. data collected from our teacher development project (nicle) concurs with these results. 83 research tensions with the use of timed numeracy fluency assessments as a research tool debbie stott and mellony graven the argument for developing fluency in basic facts is strong, but many agree that it must be grounded in understanding. it seems worthwhile then that one of the many focus areas for the clubs should be on developing fluency in the club learners. fluency and timed assessments driven by these needs, we simultaneously used timed fluency assessments as both a research and development tool in our after-school clubs. during the 2011 pilot, we devised a series of timed fluency activities that allowed learners to improve their fluency in terms of the speed and accuracy of recalling the basic facts discussed above. askew’s (2009) article motivated the idea for these timed fluency activities which were intended to be part of the range of mental activities we promoted in the clubs. however, after doing these timed fluency activities with learners in the pilot club, we found that they were useful as a research data collection instrument. our primary data collection instrument (described above) was time consuming to administer. these timed fluency activities, on the other hand, were fast, took roughly six minutes to administer, gave us quick access to learners’ fluency levels in the basic facts, and allowed tracking of learners’ progress. we, thus, decided to give them to the learners on a regular basis as a supplementary data collection tool. in addition, by using the timed fluency activities regularly, we soon noticed their developmental and motivational power. over time, the learners enjoyed the challenge presented by the activities and we saw that they were able to comment on their own progress. concerns regarding timed activities timed activities are, by design, time pressured and can be stress inducing for learners. indeed, a review of literature reveals a sizable body of work that puts forward an argument against timed activities in mathematics (e.g. boaler 2012; burns 2007; gilliland 2001). we understand these arguments and the anxiety and negative attitudes they can cause in learners. both authors have heard of learners being ‘turned off’ maths because of frequent timed tests. arguments against timed tests include that learners are unlikely to be motivated by high-stress, timed tests that can cause competitiveness and a decrease in learner confidence, and engender a dislike for mathematics (gilliland 2001). burns (2007) argues that timed tests do not measure learners’ understanding, but rather emphasise memorisation as the way to mathematical power. nor do they guarantee that learners understand or will be able to use the facts in problem-solving situations. in spite of this, timed tests are used frequently as a tool to identify good or highperforming mathematics students to make decisions about the extent of a learner’s mathematical knowledge and for determining whether a learner passes a particular grade or not. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 84 however, many mathematics educators believe that fluency can be developed and improved with practice without the need for rote learning or drilling (anthony & walshaw 2009; kilpatrick et al. 2001). one dilemma facing mathematics educators is how to develop this fluency without creating the stressful situations that are associated with timed activities. askew (2009: 27) submits that thoughtful use of practice can help develop fluency and suggests that the development should encompass “practice and problem-solving, understanding and (appropriate) rapid recall”. he suggests that, by using time trial activities with a different focus, they can be motivating for the learner. in this regard, he uses a number of different strategies to ensure that these activities are not seen as stress inducing or competitive. given the dual concern for research and development in working with the learners in our clubs, tension arises between the stresses that learners experience in relation to the timed aspect of the assessments and the usefulness of the means of gathering data on a regular basis. in this paper, we exemplify how we dealt with this ethical tension by utilising these assessments as a reflective tool which enabled learner buy-in of the process and increased motivation. our assessments we introduced these assessment activities to the learners as a timed game. we took care not to allow any element of competition to creep in by not allowing learners to compare their performance with that of other learners. we made it clear that the results of the activities did not count towards anything and there were no consequences if a learner did not complete the activity. after completing the activities, whole group discussion focused on the strategies used by the learners. in this way, we linked the timed fluency activities to other research we have conducted on developing fluency strategies in the club sessions. six different individual assessments combine to make up what we call the timed fluency assessments. each individual assessment is completed in a specified amount of time. the assessments focus on basic facts, and examples are shown in table 1 below. these examples have been trimmed to save space and are shown with dotted borders. one full example is shown for the doubling activity. we use these assessments at least once a term in each of the clubs and more frequently if learners request them. 85 research tensions with the use of timed numeracy fluency assessments as a research tool debbie stott and mellony graven table 1: description of fluency activities activity type description and sample doubling full example double the shaded number add and subtract to 10 number range up to 10 add/subtract 10 add 10 to/subtract 10 from the shaded number evaluating learner progress of fluency in mathematical proficiency for research and developmental purposes, we have developed a scoring system where each activity can yield three different scores: 1. actual mark: number of answers the learners got correct out of total possible marks. 2. completion %: number of answers actually completed. this allows us to track the speed at which they are answering in the given time period (giving us a completion rate). 3. accuracy %: number of correct answers out of those completed. this allows us to track the accuracy of their work in that time (giving us an accuracy rate). thus, we can compare these scores and rates when the activity is re-administered to see where the progress is coming from. in some cases, learners may complete more or the entire activity (100% completion), but may not be accurate working at that speed. in other cases, learners do not complete the whole activity, but what they complete they get right (100% accuracy). the completion rate on its own may not give a full picture of the learner’s efficiency in working, as they may well guess at an answer, which would then give perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 86 them a low accuracy rate. it is important, then, to review both the completion and the accuracy scores or percentages together in order to obtain a meaningful picture of the learner’s progress over time. a hypothetical example is shown in table 2. table 2: example of doubling activity for a hypothetical learner activity activity out of ... number correct and % score number answered (completion %) number correct from those completed (accuracy %) 1st doubling activity 17 7 out of 17 = 41% 10 out of 17 (58%) 7 out of 10 correctly answered 70% 2nd doubling activity 17 10 out of 17 = 58% 15 out of 17 (88%) 12 out of 15 correctly answered 80% although the learner got 41% for the first doubling activity, he completed 58% of the activity in the given time, and of that 58%, got 70% correct. this gives a different perspective on the 41% overall score. in a second use of the same activity, the learner gets 58% overall. his completion rate has increased by 30 percentage points from 58% to 88% and his accuracy rate has increased by 10 percentage points from 70% to 80%. this indicates some progress in fluency in doubling. ethical tension and enabling learner buy-in as a way of dealing with the ethical tension arising through the use of these assessments, we devised and piloted a supplementary mechanism for the learners in the 2012 club to reflect on their own progress in these fluency activities. we sought to determine the extent to which this could be used with grade 3 club learners and, in this way, explored askew’s (2009) suggestion that fluency activities, which are focused on the basic facts, can help learners monitor their own progress and provide intrinsic motivation. after using the activities twice, we collated the results and created an individual booklet for each learner. the right side of the page showed the number of calculations in each fluency activity (table 3 in figure 1) and their individual results in each different activity (table 4 in figure 1). the number of calculations enabled the learners to work out how they performed in each activity and whether they had made progress. the left side of the page presented question prompts for the learner to reflect on (figure 1). in the club session, before giving the learners their individual booklets, we went through a hypothetical example using the scores shown in tables 3 and 4 in figure 1. as a group, we worked through how to make sense of the scores and how to find out whether a learner had made progress. this provided a wonderful mathematical activity for the learners in a real context. 87 research tensions with the use of timed numeracy fluency assessments as a research tool debbie stott and mellony graven left side of page: question prompts for the learner to reflect on and space to write their reflections. right side of page • which activity did you do best in? • which activity gave you your lowest marks? • which activity did you make the biggest improvement in? • did you do better in march or july? • how do you feel about your progress? • why do you think you have made progress? table 3: number of sums for each fluency activity table 4: sample of learner progress in fluency activities figure 1: example of learner booklet layout until now, the learners had no knowledge of their exact results for any of these activities because these were kept confidential as research data only. the learners were given their individual booklets and given about 15 minutes to reflect on their own scores in private and answer the questions, with support from the mentor if required. some learners asked the mentor to write down their thoughts and they dictated these to us. we then collected the written reflections. fluency activity number of sums doubling 17 halving 17 add & subtract 10 20 add & subtract 100 20 sample learner progress how many did i finish? how many did i get right? doubling march 2012 16 16 july 2012 17 17 halving march 2012 14 13 july 2012 15 15 add & subtract 10 march 2012 7 5 july 2012 15 14 add & subtract 100 march 2012 8 9 july 2012 15 14 perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 88 in order to illuminate the potential research and development opportunity that such timed activities could offer, we now share what we learnt from the use of these in one club as well as the story of one learner’s experience with the timed activities and the supplemental reflection activity. the club as a whole in the case-study club used for this article, the timed fluency assessments were first used in march 2012 and re-administered in july. while a few learners experienced some anxiety in the first use of these, the first author noted in her research journal (31 july 2012) that there was a “positive vibe” among the club learners after the activities in july. one incident stands out. after finishing the doubling activity, one learner ran around the room shouting excitedly. upon being questioned, she said she had “finished this time”. an observation in the first author’s research journal (31 july 2012) shows that she not only finished this activity, but also completed it before the allotted time. she completed 17 out of 17 and got 16 of those 17 correct. this is in stark contrast to her march effort where she only completed 8 out of 17 and got 7 correct. an analysis of the scores for all the club learners showed that they all made progress in each of the six timed fluency activities over the four-month period. in the 13 club sessions between march and july, the club as a whole increased the average completion rate by 31 percentage points and their accuracy by 16 percentage points. the biggest increase in completion was in the add/subtract 100 activity. the biggest increase in accuracy was in the add/subtract 10 activity. (in march, the learners averaged 82% on accuracy and averaged 64% on completion rate.) in spite of the relatively high accuracy rate in march, learners did make slight increases in accuracy in july (on average from 1 to 7 percentage points across the activities). the most substantial leaps were shown in the completion rates with the range of increases being on average from 15 to 23 percentage points across the activities. these results show that learners increased in speed and in accuracy over the four-month period. we could deduce from this that all the club learners had become faster in writing their basic facts and, more importantly, that increase in speed did not have a detrimental effect on the accuracy of their answers as, in fact, their accuracy also increased slightly. this reflects a positive overall progression. a week after the second use of the activities, we collated the results for research purposes and assembled the individual learner reflection booklets described above for four of the six activities that the learners had completed. only four activities were given to the learners to reflect on so as not to overwhelm them with too much information. 89 research tensions with the use of timed numeracy fluency assessments as a research tool debbie stott and mellony graven thembisa’s story thembisa was part of this 12-learner club. we have purposefully selected thembisa’s story as an exemplifier for this article because she was the learner who exhibited the most stress when using these assessments. a few other learners in the club showed varying levels of stress, but not to the same degree as thembisa. her story is enlightening as it illuminates the way in which we dealt with the ethical tension arsing from this instrument. there is no doubt that, for this one learner, the introduction of these timed activities in this club caused some of the anxiety referred to by the authors cited earlier. the first author noted in her research journal (13 march 2012) that, during the first use of these activities in march, thembisa was quietly tearful, displaying anxiety about not knowing an answer and she remained tearful for the remainder of the activity. we encouraged her to continue and to complete all the activities, and afterwards we held a group discussion about the purpose of the activities and a reminder of the club ethos. for example, we spoke about being supportive of one another and restated that mistakes are fine because they are learning opportunities. thembisa showed a less emotional attitude to the activities when they were re-done in july and was excited after the add/subtract 100 activity when she said: “just one more to go and i would have been finished”. she completed 19 out of the possible 20 and got all 19 correct as shown by her scores in table 5 (in figure 2). she showed marked progress from march when she answered 7 of the possible 20 and got 6 correct. she reflected on this as her biggest improvement (see figure 2 below). in the discussion following the completion of the activities, thembisa recalled crying in march and she said that she “was better this time” (first author’s research journal, 31 july 2012). her results show that she also increased her speed in add/subtract 10. the first author noted in her research journal (31 july 2012) that she was also the first learner to finish the halving activity, in which she achieved 100% accuracy. in addition, she, along with another learner, completed the doubling activity before the allotted time passed. her reflection response (figure 2) to “what has helped you make progress?” is revealing in that she wrote “practising and undastading” (sic). she also reflects that she has put effort into her mathematics “because i have worked very hard”. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 90 table 5: thembisa’s progress in fluency activities figure 2 – thembisa’s reflections and table 5 – thembisa’s progress in fluency activities discussion learners’ reflections thembisa’s changed attitude towards the timed activities in july is worth noting. there are various possible reasons for this: by july, the learners were more comfortable with the club ethos and thembisa perhaps had developed a degree of confidence in her mathematics as evidenced by other data (such as video and audio recordings and learner workings) collected during this particular club. thembisa’s reflection that she has made progress by practising and understanding is revealing in that it draws together the two key aspects of the argument discussed earlier in this paper. educators consider that learning, to be fluent, should be interwoven and developed alongside understanding and flexible thinking (or the strands of conceptual understanding and adaptive reasoning). it seems that, for her, she sees these strands as connected. in addition, her comment about working hard perhaps shows signs of her developing a positive productive disposition (the my progress how many did i finish? how many did i get right? thembisa c) doubling 34 33 march 2012 17 16 july 2012 17 17 d) halving 34 33 march 2012 17 16 july 2012 17 17 e) add & subtract 10 24 23 march 2012 7 7 july 2012 17 16 f) add & subtract 100 26 25 march 2012 7 6 july 2012 19 19 91 research tensions with the use of timed numeracy fluency assessments as a research tool debbie stott and mellony graven fifth strand of mathematical proficiency) towards mathematics. kilpatrick et al. (2001: 131) describe a productive disposition as “the tendency to see sense in mathematics, to perceive it as both useful and worthwhile, to believe that steady effort in learning mathematics pays off, and to see oneself as an effective learner and doer of mathematics”. her comment could reflect a belief and experience in steady effort paying off. developmental value of the timed activities on the whole, the learners seemed to have enjoyed the activity including the reflection aspect. in 2012, we completed the first round of activities in mid-march, just three sessions after the club started. the anxiety displayed by thembisa in march indicates that perhaps we should introduce the activities a little later in the first term so that learners have the opportunity to feel more comfortable with the club ethos and our approach to activities like these. we designed the reflection activity to assess its usefulness with grade 3 learners. askew (2009) believes that this competition with oneself can be motivating for the learners. out of the seven learners who undertook the reflection, we saw some noteworthy responses although we cannot make any judgements about whether they found the activities motivating. some learners perhaps said what they thought we wanted to hear, but others, like thembisa, revealed what they thought it takes to make progress in maths. in the learner reflections, the notion of ‘practise’ came up in about 50% of the responses when accounting for the reasons for their progress, whether via a direct reference to practise or an indirect one by mentioning doing homework or being in the club. the fact that the reflection process also contained mathematical content was an added bonus that we had not anticipated. we also feel that the written nature of the activities allows the learners to practise putting their thoughts into written form. as researchers and mentors we also find the activities useful for gauging the overall progress of the club learners in this specific fluency aspect. conclusion we have described how we came to use timed fluency assessments in our afterschool maths clubs as both a research and development tool. we shared how we dealt with the ethical tension that arose from using the assessments as a research tool by utilising them in a developmental way. we argue that the supplementary learner reflections made the use of these activities more holistic for the learners in the sense that they were able to reflect on their own progress in mathematics and use mathematics to do so. this is in alignment with askew’s (2009) suggestion; thus, we have reclaimed often negatively reported timed assessments as developmental perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 92 activities. we have subsequently extended this practice in all clubs we run and continue to research their affect and effect in order to gain deeper understanding of the opportunities enabled by such activities. we have, through the paper, illuminated how such activities provide researchers with a quick way of tracking and evaluating learner numeracy progress while also providing a mechanism for learners to practise and develop their numeracy fluency. acknowledgement our numeracy research and development work is supported by the firstrand foundation (with the rand merchant bank), anglo american chairman’s fund, the department of science and technology, and the national research foundation. list of references anthony g & walshaw m 2009. effective pedagogy in mathematics. brussels & geneva: international academy of education & international bureau of education. askew m 2002. time to face facts. teach primary, 162(2): 43–45. askew m 2009. do it again. teach primary, 3.3: 27–28. askew m 2012. transforming primary mathematics. abingdon: routledge. askew m, brown m, rhodes v, johnson d & william d. 1997. effective teachers of numeracy. london: king’s college/tta. boaler j 2012. timed tests and the development of math anxiety. education week. retrieved on 12th february 2013 from http://www.edweek.org/ew/ articles/2012/07/03/36boaler.h31.html. bobis j 2007. the path to computational fluency with multi-digit multiplication. in k milton, h reeves & t spencer (eds), proceedings of the 21st biennial conference of the australian association of mathematics teachers. adelaide: aamt. burns m 2007. about teaching mathematics: a k-8 resource, 3rd edition. sausalito, california: math solutions publications. department of basic education 2012. report on the annual national assessments 2012: grades 1 to 6 & 9. pretoria: government printers. gilliland k 2001. families ask: the need for speed in mathematics. mathematics teaching in the middle school, 7(4): 216–217. gojak lm 2012. fluency: simply fast and accurate? i think not! nctm summing up. retrieved on 1 february 2013 from http://www.nctm.org/about/content. aspx?id=34791. graven m 2011. creating new mathematical stories: exploring opportunities within maths clubs. in h venkat & aa essien (eds), proceedings of 17th national congress of the association for mathematical education of south africa (amesa). johannesburg: university of the witwatersrand. 93 research tensions with the use of timed numeracy fluency assessments as a research tool debbie stott and mellony graven graven m & stott d 2012. design issues for mathematics clubs for early grade learners. in d nampota & m kazima (eds), proceedings of the 20th annual meeting of the southern african association for research in mathematics, science and technology education. lilongwe: university of malawi. kilpatrick j, swafford j & findell b 2001. adding it up: helping children learn mathematics, washington dc: national academy press. wright rj, martland j & stafford ak 2006. early numeracy: assessment for teaching and intervention, london: sage publications. the phenomenon of xenophobia as experienced by immigrant learners in johannesburg inner city schools deirdré krüger associate professor, university of south africa (unisa) department further teacher education ajh van der walt building, floor 7 room 9 po box 392 unisa 0003 e-mail: kruged@unisa.ac.za telephone (w): 012 429 4520 cellular phone: 083 265 8135 fax: 0866 421 626 razia osman educational psychologist 30 protea avenue alan manor 2091 e-mail: razdaya@telkomsa.net telephone (w): 011 616 4150 cellular phone: 084 395 1607 fax: 011 622 3124 this article aims to describe how xenophobia is experienced by a small selection of immigrant participants in five inner city schools in johannesburg. the may 2008 xenophobic violence prompted the investigation. theoretically, the article is also concerned with ways to combat xenophobia in schools with a view to bringing about fundamental social change aimed at deconstructing ‘anti-xenophobia education’, as the term has been coined. the methodology for the qualitative inquiry took the form of a triple-layered case study: the layers consist of the various groups of participants: immigrant learners, south african learners and educators. sixteen semi-structured, in-depth interviews were conducted and the main method of data analysis was content analysis using tesch’s (creswell, 1994: 155) method of sorting the content of communications. the findings support the need for anti-xenophobia education in the schools under scrutiny. the immigrant participants reported very little compassion, rather humiliation and degradation in the form of unjust stereotyping, prejudice, bias and discrimination. although cosmopolitanism featured, ‘otherness’ is far from being incorporated into an all-embracing ‘us’. distrust between immigrant and south african learners emerged and both groups stereotyped the other as violent, although lack of trust and fear as pervasive issues seemed to underlie the stereotyping. introduction as in the rest of the world, xenophobia and related intolerance continue to thrive in southern africa. issues relating to educational opportunities, access to services, disparate economic status, autonomy and migration are among the manifestations of xenophobia in south africa (chakma & jensen, 2001: 90). xenophobia is generally accepted as the fear or dislike of foreigners and strangers (crush & pendleton, 2007: 66; livesey, 2006: 40; saideman & ayres, 2008: 244). if a group is xenophobic, it is less tolerant of coexisting with foreigners, e.g. members of the group do not want to work, reside near or allow intermarriage with foreigners (saideman & ayres, 2008: 39). many south africans object to having the krüger & osman — the phenomenon of xenophobia 53 children of immigrants from other african countries attend school with their children (afrobarometer in dodson, 2010: 12). in a certain sense, xenophobia is a form of racism that does not use the concept of race as a defining element (boehnke, hagan & hefler, 1998: 586) as both result in prejudice, stereotyping, bias and discrimination (vorster, 2002: 304). on a political level, xenophobia is about the denial of social rights and entitlements to various resources to strangers or perceived strangers. socially, strangers (the ‘other’) do not belong to ‘us’; subjectively, they do not share the identity of the group (neocosmos, 2006: 16) resulting in social insecurity (crush & ramachandran, 2010: 223). dodson (2010: 9) considers racialism (when certain groups become racialised), anti-cosmopolitanism, narrow identity politics and the denial of cultural freedoms as core components of xenophobia. although racism and xenophobia are often linked in the literature, their interrelation is not the focus of this article, nor is the legality of immigrants. terms such as refugees, asylum seekers, strangers, foreigners and aliens are all included under the overarching label of immigrants. south africa, land of milk and honey and xenophobia post-apartheid south africa symbolises freedom and prosperity, a safe haven from war, a sanctuary from poverty and a country with economic opportunity and promise. thus, it continues to attract millions of displaced people from africa (harris 2001: 65). since the advent of democracy in 1994, however, hostility or intolerance towards non-nationals has increased (crush in shea, 2008: 139; kihato, 2009: 27) as south africans perceive ‘illegal aliens’ to be pouring into the country, undermining the new nation and depriving citizens of scarce resources (dodson 2010: 5; mattes, taylor, mcdonald, poore & richmond in crush & ramachandran, 2010: 214; neocosmos, 2008: 590). these immigrants are seen to pose a threat and arouse fear. here xenophobia often manifests itself as afrophobia: negative stereotyping of people from other parts of the african continent (azindow, 2007: 175; motha & ramadiro, 2005: 18) on the grounds of south african exceptionalism, a perception held by south africans that south africa is superior to the rest of the african continent (dodson, 2010: 11; neocosmos, 2008: 590-591). crush and mcdonald in shea (2008: 130) point out that many apartheid-era stereotypes (pertaining to criminality, corruption and dependence on social welfare) have been transferred to african immigrants. xenophobia and education the main aim of this article is to provide an understanding of the phenomenon of xenophobia in schools, with particular reference to inner city schools in johannesburg, a popular destination of mass migration (crush & ramachandran, 2010: 213; kihato, 2009: 21-22; leggett in landau, 2007: 64; wagner in shea, 2008: 4). the phenomenon manifested in alexandra township near johannesburg in may 2008 and spread to the inner city. xenophobia is described as a social phenomenon with special attention to the detrimental impact on the targets of prejudice, stereotyping, bias and discrimination, in this case, immigrant learners. furthermore, the article is concerned with ways to combat xenophobia in schools with a view to fundamental social change aiming at deconstructing ‘anti-xenophobia education’, as the term has been coined. as no south african study at present focuses primarily on the experiences of immigrant learners at schools, this article adds an important new dimension to the discourse on xenophobia. before an attempt is made to deconstruct anti-xenophobia education, the concept is briefly expounded. in south africa apartheid education or schooling, which had been structured along racial lines (nates, 2010: s18) was abolished in the new democracy. the education system had upheld 46 years of segregated education during which unequal provision of education benefited white learners. in the post-1994 dispensation the previous curriculum, which differed according to racial classification was replaced by a national curriculum. the theme of human rights protecting human dignity based on the south african constitution and the bill of rights of south africa, which were directly influenced by the universal declaration of human rights, features strongly in the national curriculum. citizenship education, which promotes human rights, among others, is included in the compulsory subject, life orientation (referred to as social development in grades r to 9) but “ways to address alarming current realities, such as xenophobia, homophobia, femicide” still deserve attention (schoeman, 2006: 141). the perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201054 education for democratic citizenship programme in europe, which develops new models for citizenship education, stated that this subject should be “instrumental in the fight against violence, xenophobia, racism, aggressive nationalism and intolerance” (osler & starkey, 2002: 144), thus emphasising the key role of education in combating racism and xenophobia (waghid, 2004: 44). nates (2010: s21), however, argues that south african educators find it difficult to divorce themselves from the legacy of apartheid, and xenophobia is a reflection of the deeper damage done to south africans, “given the massive psychological damage done by south africans to each other – under colonial rule, segregation and apartheid, and in the violence of 1990-1994” (everatt, 2010: 8). scrutiny of citizenship education through an anti-xenophobia lens suggests that citizenship education should encourage pro-social citizenship and link with human rights issues to enable learners to “understand and respect our common humanity, diversity and differences” (burtonwood, 2002: 71). waghid (2004: 26) proposes that citizenship education should cultivate compassion – “cultivating in learners the ability to imagine the experiences of others and to participate in their sufferings” (waghid, 2004: 46). it takes a compassionate educator to teach compassionate citizenship (waghid, 2009: 88). intellectual exercises are not enough; learners must be moved in some way. to attain empathy (or compassion), citizenship education requires learners to “use their imagination to consider other people’s experiences and be able to think about, express and explain views that are not their own” (burtonwood, 2002: 73). sharing the experiences of immigrant learners who have fallen victim to xenophobia and acknowledging multiple readings of the world instead of a single dominant reading, is a move towards respecting cultural differences (waghid, 2008: 20). when learners transcend by imagining others’ hardships and respond to alleviate unjust sufferings, social justice is served (waghid, 2008: 21). in essence, hoogstad (2009: 31) proposes a shift from a culturally-exclusive attitude to a culturally-relative one, by incorporating ‘otherness’ into an all-embracing ‘us’, by openly talking about racism, ignorance and xenophobia, provided that the school has an ethos of accepting and celebrating diversity (cole & stuart, 2005: 360). if the anti-xenophobia education lens is to be widened the views of supple (in burtonwood, 2002: 71) who stresses the need to attend to whole-school ethos; that learners need an atmosphere of trust, respect and non-discrimination where they will feel safe to speak and have their contributions valued, are relevant. waghid (2009: 88-89) deliberates on cosmopolitanism in the fight against xenophobia. cosmopolitanism recognises the rights of others to be treated hospitably, and such an approach to education would entail that public schools in south africa as host country do not deny access to immigrant children. waghid (2009: 88-89) further cites the use of a different language of instruction, instead of the home language of immigrant learners, as an example of how the latter are subjected to social injustice. instead, immigrant learners should be introduced gradually to the new language of learning and teaching by south african educators and other learners. zooming the lens even wider, it would appear that xenophobia is often one of the most visible signifiers of a culture of exclusion (shea, 2008: 127), also called aversive racism marked by exclusion and cold-shouldering (cole in cole & stuart, 2005: 351). the national curriculum follows an inclusive approach, implying that all kinds of diversity should be accommodated. if educators want to practise inclusive education and teach learners about inclusivity, however, they themselves should first of all be able to embrace the diversity within the broader society. this constitutes a formidable challenge; given most educators’ own personal and painful history of apartheid (nates 2010: s19). xenophobia does not just violate human rights and social justice; it runs counter to the very heart of inclusion. immigrant learners have a right to education on a political and social level. politically, section 27(g) of the refugee act of 1998 specifies that refugees and asylum seekers have the same rights as south african citizens pertaining to education and healthcare, and section 5(1) of the south african schools act 84 of 1996 declares that “a public school must admit learners and serve their educational requirements without unfairly discriminating in any way”. socially, the cosmopolitan approach as opposed to cold-shouldering entails far more than admission to a public school – admission is just the starting point. social exclusion, however, (inability to access education) results from requirements, such as payment of school fees, transport costs, costs of books and uniforms, which semi-destitute parents cannot afford (landau, 2007: 67). krüger & osman — the phenomenon of xenophobia 55 if the lens is focused directly on xenophobia, learners “lament taunts by teachers in the classroom and by learners in the playground” (motha & ramadiro, 2005: 19). timngum (in livesey, 2006: 50-51) notes that some immigrant learners experience physical violence. in interviews conducted with congolese refugee youth in johannesburg, the latter related that they felt ostracised by south africans because they were ‘makwerekwere’, a derogatory term used by black south africans to refer to foreigners (hlobo, 2004: 60-61). the term ikwerekwere (singular of makwerekwere) represents not only a black immigrant who lacks proficiency in the local south african languages, but also one who hails from a country assumed to be economically and culturally backward in relation to south africa (azindow, 2007: 175). this is an apt example of south african exceptionalism as discussed earlier. even more disturbing is the purported practice among educators to allow learners to bully and be rude to immigrants without intervening (rulashe in livesey, 2006: 51). against this background, a qualitative investigation into the phenomenon of xenophobia as experienced by immigrant learners in johannesburg inner city schools was conducted. methods the methodology for the qualitative inquiry took the form of a triple-layered case study: the layers consisting of the various groups of participants: immigrant learners, south african learners and educators. south african learners and educators were selected as they were considered data rich and they could contribute to the inquiry and assist in getting beneath the surface to generate “thick” description (geertz in charmaz, 2006: 14). data was gathered through semi-structured, in-depth interviews (sometimes exceeding 60 minutes which, in retrospect, we regarded as too long), recorded on audiotape and supplemented by field notes. the interviews were conducted in english. all the immigrant learners had lived in the country for a minimum of seven years and their english proficiency was fairly good as opposed to our limited or lack of proficiency in their respective home languages. the gauteng department of education groups johannesburg schools according to the inner city area and the suburbs. there are eight inner city schools in this grouping. the purposeful selection of participants posed some difficulties, e.g. we initially approached the department of education for enrolment figures of immigrant learners, but the statistics did not cover all schools in the johannesburg inner city. as a result, we approached the eight inner city schools directly to establish the number of immigrant learners. five racially integrated, former model c schools with a predominantly black learner enrolment (due to the area’s demography) were willing to divulge the information and agreed to be part of the study. in addition, the department of education granted consent for us to conduct the research. the selection of participants included an immigrant learner, a south african learner and an educator in each of the five schools. both males and females were included in the selection and all the learners were between the ages of 13 and 18, the developmental stage of adolescence. immigrant learners were selected on the basis of a personal experience of xenophobia. with the school principal’s permission we explained the purpose and procedures for the research during a staff meeting in each school. participation was voluntary, and on the basis that the educators are familiar with the learners, the staff (inclusive of the school-based support team, now known as the institution-level support team) was requested to identify one immigrant learner according to the mentioned criterion and one south african learner who shared a class with immigrant learners in each school. if more than one learner per category was identified, the educators completed nomination forms and the learner who had the highest number of nominations was selected. a similar process was followed to nominate educators as participants. the following criteria applied: the educator should have knowledge of xenophobia and previous experience of working with learners who had experienced the phenomenon of xenophobia and educators did not necessarily have to be south african citizens. educators could either nominate three educators to participate in the study, including themselves, or they could unanimously nominate one person as participant. each educator nominated had to accept the nomination. if one educator was not unanimously nominated, the nominees completed a short questionnaire to establish who was regarded as the richest information source. we then selected the educator who appeared to have had the perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201056 most interaction with and experience of immigrant learners or knowledge of learners who had experienced xenophobia. although the initial idea was to interview one immigrant learner at each of the five schools, during the selection process at the second school two immigrant learners were identified and the principal informed both learners who were eager to participate. we decided to interview both learners as they both met the criterion; therefore, the number of the envisaged interviews increased to six interviews with immigrant learners: three girls and three boys. four participants were from the democratic republic of congo (drc) and two from angola. their duration of stay in south africa ranged from 1 to 13 years. thus, we conducted 16 interviews in total, which were audio taped and transcribed, including the non-verbal communications recorded in field notes. three south african educators who had accepted the nomination later withdrew, because they felt that immigrant educators would be a source of rich data and should be interviewed instead. they were consequently replaced by three immigrant educators. each school allocated a room to conduct the interviews. nominees were approached and informed of the research process and their rights as participants, and informed consent was obtained. in compliance with ethical requirements, we obtained signed letters of consent (from educators, learners who were 18 years old, parents of learners); assent (from learners younger than 18 years); or verbal permission (due to some parents’ language barriers, in certain instances one of us called at the immigrant learners’ homes to obtain verbal permission from parents). each participant chose his or her own pseudonym to ensure anonymity. as registered educational psychologists we were wary of the risk of secondary trauma. if the participant displayed any discomfort or exhaustion, we suggested a break before resuming the interview. if the participant became too emotional to continue, we suggested continuing later, or the next day. if a participant wished to terminate participation, his or her wishes were respected. despite these measures, all the interviews were conducted continuously. in addition, we furnished participants with our contact numbers should the need arise to contact us. we returned to the schools after approximately two days to conduct a short interview to ascertain the participants’ well-being, among others, by checking briefly on post trauma stress symptoms, such as nightmares, flashbacks, startled responses and concentration problems. apart from practical assistance rendered to one participant afterwards, no one else required further intervention. the main method of data analysis was content analysis using tesch’s (creswell, 1994: 155) method of sorting the content of communications. we scrutinised the recorded data independently. field notes contributed to an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon of xenophobia. discussion of the findings themes and categories that emerged during data analysis are discussed below in an effort to determine how immigrant learners experienced xenophobia. the concept of xenophobia all 16 participants were familiar with the concept of xenophobia. the immigrant participants’ explanations indicate an understanding of the meaning of the concept, as well as the connotations associated with the phenomenon. xenophobia is associated with “we are poor … we must go back to our country … we come and dirty their country,” and “people calling me ‘amakwerekwere’, ... taking their jobs away from them”. the general description of xenophobia was related to blood, violence and killings. a south african learner remarked: “this is our country, although it may sound as if i am being harsh or being insensitive, but this is our country”. language all immigrant participants stated that they experienced humiliation when using english in the classroom. they were embarrassed when classmates laughed at them because of the way they articulated words, their krüger & osman — the phenomenon of xenophobia 57 accents, or use of the wrong word. english pronunciation with a french accent was described as “weird” and led to teasing. consequently, some participants experienced feelings of loneliness, because they felt ignored and were unable to socialise: “i feel ignored, i feel bad. i feel upset … upset about classmates and i feel very alone”. all five south african learners felt uncomfortable when immigrant learners conversed in their vernacular in their presence. they felt that “it can be intimidating because you don’t know what they are saying about you”. the south african learners seemed to distrust immigrant learners and language differences exacerbated the problem. the south african learners projected their fear of ‘the other’ (or xenophobia) into language by being concerned that they were the subject of discussion. interestingly, language caused both groups of learners to feel ‘othered’ and vulnerable, although at different moments and under different circumstances. feeling different five of the six immigrant learners indicated that they felt different. one participant said: “the south africans just give you this look … that you are not part of the place where you are trying to belong. that’s why that’s the only thing that makes me feel different, that you can’t fit in.” another participant remarked that south africans view immigrant learners as if “... we have a dad who doesn’t have an arm and a mom who’s just suffering … that’s the picture the world has given … you know … of africa … we are probably dirty too and we have mosquitoes flying all over us”. learners did not experience a sense of belonging and acceptance. this is confirmed by the comments of some of the south african learners: during breaks “usually foreigners [are] amongst themselves because many people do not interact with them … they will just be sitting amongst themselves”; “most of the time we just tell them and each other where they keep their side and we keep our side and that is how it is”. it also emerged that interaction occurred only when the need arose, and if it was beneficial to south african learners: “i mainly go to [them] actually, for help [in mathematics or science]”. educators also contributed to the immigrant participants’ feeling of difference, as one immigrant learner stated: “sometimes teachers joke, but their jokes sometimes affect people. they are making fun of you in front of the class. you know, like in front of the class that ‘if the police comes by your building, your mother and father jump out from the window’ [suggesting that they are illegal immigrants] and people laugh. sometimes you are like, ‘sir, i don’t understand the question’, you pick up your hand and ask ‘i cannot understand the question’. he is like: ‘you must go back to congo and they must explain’, but as a joke, but inside it pains me, even though i laugh. but it’s painful, because i feel different. it’s not where i belong. it’s not my country”. discrimination by south african learners all immigrant learners experienced some form of discrimination at the hands of south african learners. the predominant theme that emerged from the interviews was name-calling, including terms such as ‘amakwerekwere’, ‘ingogongo’, ‘kwang’ and ‘crocodile drivers’. discrimination also occurs in classrooms in the guise of teasing, which sometimes goes unnoticed by the educators. one immigrant learner remarked: “it’s just a joke and people like … it’s just a joke, but it always hits home, it always hits somewhere and … yeah, it happens often actually”. it was evident that the name-calling and teasing were painful and difficult to accept. one educator remarked: “there are times, when i had to confront the offenders, but there are times i had to pretend that i am not hearing what i’m hearing”. another educator said that xenophobic incidents were a reality and the school should provide counselling at school or at the centre for violence and reconciliation. most south african learners understood that “derogative comments hurt”. adequacy of the education system and xenophobia in the syllabus most immigrant learners felt that the education system was adequate, but xenophobia was not covered in the syllabus: “[i]n grade 10 geography, we did immigrants and migration and things and we spoke about what are the factors that might pull people to come and why people might be pushed to leave a country … perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201058 it was very brief, very … it didn’t speak about what’s really happening … and so people are never going to understand it and they’ll never know why we’re here, they’ll never empathise with us, they’ll never sympathise.” learners from the drc felt that they were receiving “a good education in south africa”. it was evident that the principals at all the participating schools had addressed the issue of xenophobia during assembly: “[i]n assembly the principal was talking about xenophobia and was like ‘no guys, we are all the same, we are all africans, so these things should stop. here at school, i don’t want to hear that one person cried because of xenophobia, someone did this to him or that. it must not be here at school’, that is the only thing i heard”. this remark also suggested that xenophobia was not addressed adequately in the syllabus. experience of school environment the responses indicated a feeling of satisfaction among immigrant learners about inclusion in the school and its activities. in this sense they felt equally treated and were included in extra lessons and school events. they were content at their schools and felt that they had been accommodated. one south african learner maintained that the educators were harsh towards immigrant learners. some immigrant learners felt that they should be offered counselling to enable them to cope with the adjustment of settling in another country, and intensive counselling was suggested for immigrant learners who had been traumatised. five out of the six immigrant participants indicated that they felt safe at school, and the immigrant learners’ general experience of the inclusive and hospitable school environment on a macro level was juxtaposed by their experiences of discrimination and feelings of being ‘othered’, vulnerable, different and isolated on a micro level in the classroom and in their personal lives. socialisation immigrant learners preferred socialising with learners from their own countries, as they did not trust their south african peers. socialisation with south africans occurred, but on a limited scale. integration appears to be a lengthy process, as other learners do not look beyond their differences: “my friends mostly are congolese because … the way they move congolese on that side, coloureds on that side, south africans, i mean, white people on that side”. all the south african learners interacted with immigrant learners “often at school”, but there was no social contact outside school. the school space was still racialised, depicted by dodson (2010: 9) as a core component of xenophobia. race seemed subsumed; a structure that still framed ways of being and knowing. emotional experiences the immigrant participants experienced xenophobia as an emotion felt physically in their hearts, heads, stomachs, chests and even eyes. it went beyond physical violence to emotional violence that seemed longer lasting. they experienced insecurity, because they did not always know what to expect, and anger and upset feelings were common, as they could not reconcile themselves with the violent behaviour exhibited by south africans. this, in turn, triggered memories of the hardship and suffering endured in refugee camps; the pain, heartache and sadness caused by uncertainty and death also surfaced as immigrant learners relived their emotional encounters. on the other hand, three south african learners perceived immigrant learners to be “… very rough. they usually do not take jokes, so we have to watch how we speak to them. they are very violent”. thus, on the surface, the stereotyping of people as violent appeared on both sides, although lack of trust and fear as pervasive issues seemed to underlie the stereotyping. conclusion the experiences of xenophobia by a small selection of immigrant participants in johannesburg inner city schools support the need for anti-xenophobia education (at least in the schools under scrutiny, as the participants indicated that xenophobia was not covered in the syllabus). this would explain why the immigrant participants reported very little compassion and instead, humiliation and degradation in the krüger & osman — the phenomenon of xenophobia 59 form of unjust stereotyping (poor, dirty, helpless with only one arm, suffering people), prejudice (taking our jobs), bias (only fit to clean houses and scrub toilets), and discrimination (name-calling resulting from south african exceptionalism and jokes in poor taste). although cosmopolitanism featured in the sense that the participants were included in extra lessons and school activities, suggestions that immigrants return to home countries, teasing when speaking english incorrectly and social isolation, reflect the opposite of hospitable behaviour. ‘otherness’ is far from being incorporated into an all-embracing ‘us’ – an educator even strengthened the sense of the class as ‘us’ against ‘them’ when he jokingly referred an immigrant learner back to the congo to have a question answered. educators will also benefit from anti-xenophobia education, as ignorance may be at the root of this kind of insensitive ‘joke’. most immigrant participants echoed a strong sense of not belonging, social exclusion and cold-shouldering (“south africans just give you this look”). distrust between immigrant and south african learners emerged and both groups stereotyped the other as violent. on an emotional level, the immigrant learners were lonely, upset, insecure and angry – emotional states that are not conducive to learning. in order for anti-xenophobia education to be instrumental in the fight against xenophobia, it should address the deeper damage done to south africans in the past (everatt, 2010: 8) to rebuild trust in the self and others. low levels of trust between the south africans and immigrant learners were reciprocal, and mutual distrust contributes to a cycle of antagonism and exclusion (steenkamp, 2009: 445). fear is the opposite of trust, and rebuilding trust will address collective fear, which plays an important role in the process of ‘othering’ (koskela, 2009). references azindow ym 2007. insiders and outsiders: citizenship and xenophobia in 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for mathematical knowledge for teaching (mkft). the study intends to examine the differences between the inferences using each framework and to reflect on how they may help us to better understand the knowledge needed for teaching early algebra. both perspectives are used to interpret selected episodes from a videoed grade 3 patterns lesson. the findings show that the two perspectives are simultaneously complementary and distinct in both purpose and outcomes. the knowledge quartet identifies and describes ways in which the teacher’s content knowledge for teaching is enacted in the classroom including those aspects that need reinforcement. the mkft scheme identifies situations and tasks in teaching where content knowledge emerges including instances where a broader base of knowledge for teaching is required. the results of the analysis show how each perspective emphasises different aspects of teacher content knowledge and, together, provide a more holistic account of what happens in developing knowledge for teaching patterns. they highlight the difficulty for teachers in helping learners to shift from focusing solely on number pattern to a simultaneous focus on function, a transition central to the teaching of early algebra. keywords: pre-service teacher; knowledge quartet theory, framework for mathematical knowledge for teaching; early algebra introduction and rationale mathematics results at both primary and secondary level in south africa continue to reflect poorly on the system, learners and teachers. a study by carnoy and chisholm (2008), which investigates factors contributing to low levels of mathematics achievement in south african primary schools, found some evidence to suggest that high-quality mathematics teaching is related positively to learner achievement. although the sample of 40 schools is relatively small, the study results support claims sharon mcauliffe cape peninsula university of technology e-mail: mcauliffes@cput.ac.za telephone: 021 680 15828 fred lubben cape peninsula university of technology e-mail: lubbenf@cput.ac.za telephone: +44 1904411284 perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 156 that larger gains in learner achievement are related to teaching by those who know more about the subject and how to teach it. the results of this study highlight teacher knowledge as an important factor in learner achievement, in addition to the learner and curriculum-related factors focused on previously. the work of pre-service teacher education is to prepare effective teachers of mathematics with strong content knowledge, which includes both subject matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge. this research is part of a more extensive study on understanding the links between pre-service teachers’ developing mathematical content knowledge and the teaching and learning of early algebra. in this study, the expression ‘early algebra’ includes algebraic reasoning and algebrarelated instruction with learners in the primary school (carraher & schliemann, 2007). the inclusion of algebra thinking in the early grades, or early algebra as it is also called, gives learners the opportunity to experience and develop conceptual understanding of algebra from the outset. early algebra can help to prepare learners for more complex mathematics, to cultivate habits of mind that attend to the ‘deeper underlying structure of mathematics’ and to improve their algebra understanding (blanton & kaput, 2005: 412). this paper looks at one pre-service teacher’s knowledge demonstrated in teaching early algebra. teacher knowledge can be defined in different ways and this research focuses on two conceptual perspectives: the knowledge quartet (kq) (rowland & turner, 2009) and mathematical knowledge for teaching (mkft) frameworks (ball, thames & phelps, 2008). both draw from the work of shulman (1986) who identified content-specific knowledge as subject matter knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge and curriculum knowledge. the use of different perspectives to understand mathematics and the work of teaching is not new and has been elaborated in different ways (ball, charalambous, thames & lewis, 2009; even, 2009; rowland & turner, 2009). however, the purpose of this paper is to consider one lesson through these two different theoretical lenses which lead to different interpretations of the same lesson (even, 2009). thus, the study intends to examine the differences between the inferences using each framework, and to reflect on how they may help us to make better sense of the knowledge needed for teaching early algebra. theoretical perspectives the knowledge quartet (kq) turner and rowland (2008) describe the knowledge quartet as an empirically based conceptual framework for classifying ways in which pre-service student teachers’ subject matter knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge come into play in the classroom. it can be used to identify and analyse mathematical content knowledge ‘enacted’ in teaching and to provide a structure for reflection and discussions of lessons (turner & rowland, 2008). on the basis of an investigation of mathematical 157 perspectives on pre-service teacher knowledge for teaching early algebra sharon mcauliffe and fred lubben content knowledge of pre-service teachers in england and wales, rowland, thwaites, huckstep and turner (2009) suggest that mathematical content knowledge is a complex combination of different types of knowledge that interact with one another and can be seen more easily in the act of teaching. the kq model is an elaboration of the earlier work of shulman (1986) and responds and updates the work of fennema and franke (1992) by suggesting ways in which teachers’ subject matter knowledge relates to their pedagogical content knowledge, and how their actions in the classroom are informed by their knowledge (goulding & petrou, 2008). the model does not see smk and pck as unique entities, but rather as inter-related and dynamic constructs. it is a link between theory and practice through the study of the act of teaching. the framework has been used by pre-service teachers, experienced teachers, tutors, mentors and teacher educators to give constructive feedback on how content knowledge affects teaching and offer suggestions on how to develop it. the kq consists of four dimensions, each with its own distinctive nature: foundation, transformation, connection and contingency (rowland et al., 2009). foundation this member of the quadrant refers to the teacher’s theoretical background and beliefs, which constitute the teacher knowledge acquired at school and at university, including initial teacher education. there are three key components to this dimension: knowledge and understanding of mathematics; knowledge of mathematics pedagogy acquired through systematic enquiry into the teaching and learning of mathematics; and beliefs about mathematics, including beliefs about why and how mathematics is learnt. there are seven codes used to identify and describe how foundation knowledge ‘plays out’ in the classroom: overt subject knowledge; theoretical underpinning of pedagogy; awareness of purpose; identifying errors; use of terminology; use of textbook; and reliance on procedures. foundation knowledge is the basis for the other three dimensions which refer to the ways and contexts in which knowledge is used in the preparation and act of teaching: they focus on knowledge-in-action as manifested in lesson planning and actual classroom teaching (rowland et al., 2009). transformation transformation knowledge looks at how the content knowledge of the teacher is transformed to enable someone else to learn it. it is what shulman (1986) defines as the pedagogical content knowledge base for teaching and is demonstrated in the planning of the lesson and in the act of teaching through the choices of representations, illustrations and explanations given and the questions asked from learners. the codes used to classify transformation knowledge are choice and use perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 158 of examples; choice and use of representations; use of instructional materials; and teacher demonstration. connection this category concerns the coherence of the planning and teaching of the mathematics across a lesson or series of lessons. the codes include recognising the conceptual appropriateness and the cognitive demands of a task, making connections between concepts and procedures, and making decisions about the sequencing of materials for instruction. contingency the final category deals with the teacher’s response to unexpected events which occur within a lesson. it requires the teacher to take contingent action (think on one’s feet) when something unanticipated happens. the codes include deviating from the planned lesson, responding to learners’ ideas, and making use of opportunities and teacher insight during instruction. mathematical knowledge for teaching (mkft) the second perspective, the mathematical knowledge for teaching (mkft) model, interrogates the mathematical knowledge needed to carry out the work of teaching (ball et al., 2008). resulting from a decade of research, ball and colleagues developed a model of teacher knowledge from the examination of actual mathematics teaching in primary schools. it is a practice-based theory which focuses on the kind of professional knowledge of mathematics different from that demanded by other mathematically intensive occupations. furthermore, it moves beyond the limiting boundaries of knowledge to include skills, reasoning, habits of mind and sensitivities needed to teach mathematics effectively (ball et al., 2008). the framework of mkft makes use of shulman’s (1986) subject matter knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge and curriculum knowledge categories, but organises and defines them in a different way (see table 1). there are six elements to mkft: common content knowledge, specialised content knowledge, horizon content knowledge, knowledge of content and teaching, knowledge of content and learners, and knowledge of content and the curriculum. table 1: comparison of areas of teacher knowledge in the shulman and the mkft frameworks shulman mkft subject matter knowledge common content knowledge specialised content knowledge horizon content knowledge pedagogical content knowledge knowledge of content and teaching knowledge of content and students knowledge of content and curriculum curricular knowledge 159 perspectives on pre-service teacher knowledge for teaching early algebra sharon mcauliffe and fred lubben subject matter knowledge is composed of common content knowledge, the knowledge needed in other mathematically intensive professions, specialised content knowledge, and horizon content knowledge. pedagogical content knowledge requires knowledge of students, pedagogy and the curriculum. specialised content knowledge the domain of specialised content knowledge is a central concept within the mkft model and will be the focus of this study. specialised content knowledge is the mathematical knowledge and skill unique to teaching, requiring teachers to be able to do a kind of mathematical work that others do not do (ball et al., 2008). it requires unique mathematical understanding and reasoning and entails knowledge beyond that being taught to learners. it involves everyday mathematical tasks of teaching such as giving explanations, choosing examples and representations, working with learners’ questions and responses, selecting and modifying tasks, and posing questions. early algebra historically, school mathematics has been seen as a process of developing arithmetic and computational fluency, emphasising skills and procedures followed by a procedural approach to algebra. it is rarely related to the deeper, underlying structure of mathematics and has largely been unsuccessful in drawing large numbers of learners towards mathematics (blanton, schifter, inge, lofgren, willis, davis & confrey, 2007). it is disconcerting that of the total number of candidates (511 152) who wrote the national senior certificate for grade 12 in 2012, approximately 24% of learners wrote and passed mathematics at the grade 12 level (dbe, 2012). a large proportion of mathematics at grade 12 level requires knowledge and application of algebraic principles. the results indicate that learners have developed insufficient knowledge and skills, which suggests that an alternative approach to the development of mathematical understanding, especially algebraic reasoning, needs to be investigated. early algebra is a different approach to algebra teaching that highlights children’s ability to think and reason algebraically in the foundational grades and cultivates habits of mind for understanding mathematics that will prevail through to the higher grades and other areas of mathematics. lins and kaput (2004) argue for an early start to algebra education which provides a special opportunity to develop a particular kind of generality in learners’ thinking, i.e. an immersion in the ‘culture of algebra’ (lins & kaput, 2004). early algebra is not to be seen as additional work to the current curriculum requirements. it is not a topic that is taught after children acquire arithmetic skills and procedures, but it is developed parallel to the development of arithmetic knowledge instead. in this respect, schliemann, carraher and brizuela (2007) suggest a rethink perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 160 of algebra teaching based on the notion of arithmetic having an inherently algebraic character. the fundamental purpose of early algebra is to provide learners with a set of experiences that enables them to see mathematics – sometimes called the science of patterns – as something they can make sense of, and to provide them with the habits of mind that will support the use of the specific mathematical tools they will encounter when they study algebra (schoenfeld, 2008). it addresses the five competencies needed for mathematical proficiency (kilpatrick, swafford & findell, 2001): conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, strategic competence, adaptive reasoning and productive disposition. the term ‘early algebra’ is used in this study to refer to algebraic thinking and reasoning in the elementary grades and is designed to help children ‘see and describe mathematical structures and relationships for which they can construct meaning’ (blanton, 2008: 6). the structure of early algebra examples are usually conceived in two ways, i.e. iteratively and globally. the iterative approach focuses on the move from one step to the next step, while the global approach helps to establish a rule that can work for any step in the pattern. generality makes global rules more powerful, but there is evidence to suggest that learners and teachers find these harder to produce (warren, 2005). generating the global function rule is sometimes established through guessing or by providing a procedure rather than through logical reasoning. methodology the subject of this study was a third-year education student (dani) specialising in primary school mathematics education. she had a strong mathematical record, having achieved an a in mathematics (sg) at matriculation level. she had come straight from school to teacher education and performed well in mathematics during the first two years of her degree. she studied to be a foundation phase (fp) teacher and had elected to continue with further studies in mathematics education. she had completed two years of an education degree which includes mathematics education (content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge) as compulsory courses. the third-year mathematics education course (maths 2) is an elective, and the algebra module, which makes up a large part of the course, focuses on the development of algebraic thinking in the early grades to build a foundation for the study of formal algebra later. at the time of data collection, dani had completed nine weeks (with three 45-minutes lectures per week) of algebraic content knowledge and pedagogical content knowledge input and was beginning her first teaching practicum block of four weeks. the maths 2 class had been given the task to plan, prepare and teach an early algebra lesson (30–45 minutes) based on the types of activities discussed in class. 161 perspectives on pre-service teacher knowledge for teaching early algebra sharon mcauliffe and fred lubben this task was included to give the pre-service teachers an experience of designing and teaching an early algebra lesson and was used later to further develop knowledge for teaching early algebra. one of dani’s lessons on patterns in grade 3 was video-recorded, and this study uses two selected episodes from this lesson. all names in the paper, of teachers and learners, are pseudonyms. dani’s lesson: patterns and function – grade 3 lesson outcomes (as given in lesson plan) the learning outcome of the lesson requires learners to be able to recognise, describe and represent patterns and relationships, as well as to solve problems using algebraic language and skills. the assessment standard, selected by dani, requires learners to describe observed patterns, to find the relationship between the numbers (pattern), and to generate a formula to describe the relationship. lesson description the lesson starts with making sound patterns using hands and identifying different examples of patterns: number and geometric. the next part of the lesson investigates a particular pattern using a folded length of string and cuts. dani has prepared two diagrams side by side on the board: first, a vertical table with two columns with headings ‘number of cuts’ and ‘total number of pieces of string’ and, secondly, a horizontal flow diagram labelled ‘the magic box’. vertical table the magic box number of cuts total number of pieces of string 1 3 2 5 3 7 4 9 5 11 she reminds the learners that this is a similar lesson to the dog pattern lesson of the previous day in which the learners had to generalise about the relationship between the number of dogs and their total number of eyes. the pattern task in this lesson requires learners to make cuts using different pieces of the same length string generating the following data: 1 cut = 3 pieces of string; 2 cuts = 5 pieces of string, 3 cuts = 7 pieces and 4 cuts = 9 pieces. the information is recorded systematically in a vertical table and the learners are asked to describe what is happening. 1 2 3 4 5 3 5 6 7 9 1 1 perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 162 dani and her learners focus on the iterative or recursive pattern +2 generated from the dependent variables after which the learners are reminded again of the work from the previous day, which involved trying to find a magic formula to describe the change from independent variables to dependent variables. dani then moves to the other section of the chalkboard and recorded the same data in the horizontal flow diagram (‘the magic box’). the learners are required to describe the relationship between the independent and dependent variables in the form of a magic formula (function rule) using a guess and check technique. the lesson concludes with an opportunity for the learners to design their own number patterns which are discussed and evaluated by the teacher as she moves around the classroom. findings and interpretation two different theoretical frameworks were used to analyse the video recording of the grade 3 patterns lesson: the knowledge quartet (kq) and the mathematical knowledge for teaching (mkft) model. the kq model helps to identify and analyse the mathematical content knowledge (subject matter content and/or pedagogical content knowledge) that dani privileges in her teaching, while the mkft model looks at the nature of the specialised content knowledge being mobilised in dani’s lesson. two episodes have been selected for analysis based on the interactions between the pre-service teacher and learners and the mathematical intent of the segment. episode 1 this episode occurs some way into the lesson when the learners are discussing the possible patterns that emerge for the data recorded in the table below. number of cuts total number of pieces of string 1 3 2 5 3 7 dani has created a record of the independent and dependent variables and is now looking for patterns within the numbers (smith, 2008): teacher: okay, aziza what’s happening? learner: the number of pieces are all the odd numbers. teacher: ah, aziza says these are all the odd numbers, okay so 3, 5,7, 9. so, what would come next? learner: 11 163 perspectives on pre-service teacher knowledge for teaching early algebra sharon mcauliffe and fred lubben teacher: and then? learner: 13. teacher: well done aziza, you said these are all the odd numbers. teacher: who can see a different pattern? what else is happening with those numbers? learner: the one side is increasing in ones. teacher: what are we doing from this number to get to that number (pointing to two successive dependent values), to get that number, to get that number? aqeel. learner: plus two. teacher: we are plussing two each time. dani tries to move the learners towards describing how two quantities vary in relation to each other (blanton, 2008). she works with the learners to identify and analyse regularities and change in the patterns and acknowledges and works with the learner contributions. she encourages the learners to make the difference quantity between the dependent values explicit and welcomes learner responses while choosing to ignore the increase in the independent variables. knowledge quartet (kq) the kq helps us to look at the how dani’s content knowledge (subject matter content and/or pedagogical content knowledge) affects her teaching. dani uses a physical task to generate independent and dependent variables and represents the data in the form of a vertical function table. she then encourages the learners to analyse the variables and proceeds to work with learners’ responses (foundation knowledge). the learners focus on the dependent variables and the classification of the numbers while dani helps them to focus on the difference between the numbers instead (iterative approach). through guided discovery, the learners begin to identify the difference between the independent variables and then the dependent variables with the help of the teacher. dani’s knowledge of the different approaches to patterning helps her to adapt her teaching and to work with the learners’ responses, showing knowledge of connections within the teaching episode. mathematical knowledge for teaching (mkft) using the mkft perspective to interpret this teaching episode, we can begin to identify dani’s chosen specialised content knowledge for teaching patterns. dani demonstrates knowledge of different representations for teaching patterns and makes use of a piece of string and cuts to generate and represent data for the function table. she then uses the data captured in the table to analyse the independent and perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 164 1 2 3 4 5 3 5 6 7 9 11 dependent variables by following an iterative approach. she works with learners’ responses and tries to scaffold their emerging knowledge of patterns. this teaching episode highlights key teaching tasks related to the specialised knowledge needed for teaching patterns, i.e. selecting and using representations, working with learners’ responses, and posing questions that help develop relational understanding of variables within pattern activities. episode 2 the second episode, which comes after the vertical function table episode, reflects dani’s attempt to move learners from looking down the table (iterative pattern) to looking across and help learners understand how quantities change in relation to one another (global patterning). dani decides to change the representation from a function table to a magic box (flow diagram) to focus on a horizontal analysis of the quantities, i.e. the functional relationship between the independent and dependent variables. teacher: but remember what we did with the dogs. i told you. but what if i saw 700 dogs, how many eyes would there be? remember, we got a formula and a formula was like a recipe and we could use it for every number to see how many eyes we could get. do you remember? right, so now we need to do the same thing. what are we doing to these numbers to get to these numbers and how did we do it? what did we use? we used our ...? learner: a magic box. teacher: we used our magic box. so we know that when we cut once we got 3, when we cut twice we got 5, when we cut three times we got 7, when we cut four times we got 9. right, what on earth is happening inside my magic box. ryan, what’s happening in there? learner: +2 teacher: okay, so ryan says we must +2. okay, let’s see +2. what is 1 + 2? learner: 3. teacher: what is 2 + 2? learner: 4. teacher: okay, so that’s not working. let’s see the next one. what is 3 + 2? 165 perspectives on pre-service teacher knowledge for teaching early algebra sharon mcauliffe and fred lubben dani spends a long time working with learners’ ideas and realises that the guess and check method to finding the relationship between the independent and dependent variables is not productive. she decides to scaffold the learning by providing a clue while pointing at the flow diagram: teacher: we’ll stop with kim and i want you to look here [kim has suggested x2]. we’re getting 2 but we need 3. we’re getting 4 but we need 5. we’re getting 6 but we need 7. so what is the difference each time? we need to do something else. we need to keep the x2, we need to do something else. learner: +1. teacher: so what must i do? learner: x2 + 1. teacher: what do you think? learner: yes. teacher: you think it’s right? how can we test it? put it in our box. go put it in the box for us. knowledge quartet in looking at this episode from the kq perspective, it seems that dani has a number of tools available for building, analysing and representing functions. when the learners are unable to describe the relationship between the quantities, she decides to change her choice of representation (transformation knowledge). she decides to introduce ‘the magic box’ to help focus learner attention on the global or corresponding relationship between the quantities. unfortunately, this does not help learners and she is forced to scaffold the learning by highlighting the x2 suggestion given by kim. as in the previous episode, it is apparent that dani has foundation knowledge of the function concept in moving learners from iterative thinking to global thinking, but struggles to mediate this for learners. she resorts to giving the learners help in generating a numerical representation (possibly contingency) to describe the relationship between the number of cuts and the number of pieces of string. she does not attempt to link this to the physical act of cutting the string and does not create the need for generalising the pattern in the first instance (does not display connection). mathematical knowledge for teaching (mkft) as mentioned previously, the mkft framework does not focus on what the teacher accomplishes, but rather on the specialised knowledge needed for teaching through an analysis of the teaching tasks featured in the teaching episode. dani engages in several tasks, some of which involve using representations to make ideas explicit, managing multiple answers given by the learners in discussion, and assessing learners understanding and moving forward. the use of different representations provides a perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 166 helpful example of the mathematical demands confronted by dani and gives two different perspectives on this lesson episode. first, dani uses different representations of functions, moving from the function table to the flow diagram, to help learners move from looking at relationship in a sequence of values to understanding that quantities change in relation to one another (blanton, 2008). however, she does not provide a reason for the need to generalise and does not ask the learners to think about the number of pieces of string generated from a large number of cuts. the learners are forced to think about describing the pattern in general terms without providing a need for doing so. secondly, the function concept is represented in different ways, mapping between a physical model, function table to a flow diagram towards generalisation, but there is no explanation of the inter-connectedness of these models, or of the meaning of functions in different representational modes. it is difficult for learners to avoid developing a procedural approach to understanding patterns and relationships while connections remain implicit. discussion the study set out to explore how different perspectives are useful in helping us understand teacher knowledge and its role in the teaching of early algebra. the kq classifies situations in which mathematical knowledge surfaces in teaching and uses these situations to identify and analyse the subject matter knowledge and pedagogical knowledge of the teacher. the mkft model distinguishes between different kinds of knowledge needed in the work of teaching and is applied in this context to analyse the specialised content knowledge needed by this teacher in the teaching of patterns. the kq is useful in this context in helping to identify and discuss the different aspects of mathematical content knowledge observed in dani’s teaching. she demonstrates knowledge of patterns and functions, and pedagogical understanding of the teaching of patterns to young learners (foundation knowledge). she is aware of the representations available to teach patterns demonstrated in her use of the concrete manipulatives, the function table and flow diagram (transformation). however, she struggles to help learners make connections between the different representations and does not give learners enough time to work with the pattern activity and reflect on the emergent relationships between the independent and dependent variables (connections). dani recognises that learners are struggling with the pattern activity to move from iterative to global thinking and tries to scaffold learning through guided teaching (contingency). mason (2008) supports the notion of scaffolding and fading as a way to improve pedagogical effectiveness and present learners with a varied diet of rich mathematical experiences. he promotes a flexible view of patterns, which helps learners to recognise patterns that lead to algebraic generalisation and symbolisation. however, while 167 perspectives on pre-service teacher knowledge for teaching early algebra sharon mcauliffe and fred lubben dani tries to scaffold learning by helping learners to notice and verbally describe the pattern in the flow diagram, she misses the opportunity to demonstrate how patterns and structure are inherently linked to mathematical activity through the recognition of regularity and the description of the relationship through generalisation (mulligan, mitchelmore & prescott, 2006). the mkft model provides a different perspective of dani’s content knowledge through the investigation of the two teaching episodes within the patterns lesson. it focuses on the specialised content knowledge needed for the teaching patterns and provides a useful guide for teachers and teacher educators in developing an understanding of the knowledge needed for teaching patterns. the analysis of the teaching episodes provides useful insight into the specialised knowledge needed for teaching patterns in this lesson. dani needs to be able to work with learners’ responses and help them to move towards generalisations. she has to ask questions that encourage learners to recognise relationships and to make links between different variables. learners need to be helped to move beyond analysing single variable data to two (or more) quantities simultaneously and to use patterns to make connections and describe relationships (blanton, 2008). furthermore, she needs to have knowledge of representations and make decisions about the selection and appropriate use of mathematical tools for patterning. there is also the need to provide explanations that help learners to move from iterative patterning towards analysing and describing relationships that lead to generalisations. dani attempts to engage with these tasks on different levels and with varying degrees of success. the mkft model helps to focus the analysis of the teaching episodes and highlights important aspects of developing content knowledge for teaching. conclusion while the two theoretical perspectives help elaborate teacher conent knowledge and its relation to the teaching of mathematics, they also provide different and productive interpretations of the same lesson on early algebra. the kq helps to identify the content knowledge used in teaching patterns and the mkft helps to elaborate a description of the knowledge needed for teaching patterns. the two frameworks assist in highlighting some of the issues and demands that teaching algebra in the primary grades present for this pre-service teacher. they also show that, with the correct kind of tasks and instruction, children can learn to think in sophisticated ways about how quantities relate to one another. perspectives in education 2013: 31(3) 168 acknowledgements this research is kindly being funded by nrf/risa: human and institutional capacity development grant for improvement of academic qualifications (iaq20101221appo30). list of references ball dl, charalambous cy, thames m & lewis jm 2009. teacher knowledge and teaching: viewing a complex relationship from three perspectives. in m tzekaki, m kaldrimidou, & h sakonidis (eds), proceedings of the 33rd conference of psychology of mathematics 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series (seminar 5). loughborough: loughborough university. warren e 2005. young children’s ability to generalise the pattern rule for growing patterns. in hl chick & jl vincent (eds), proceedings of the 29th conference of the international group for the psychology of mathematics education. melbourne: pme. 522022 40(2): 52-68 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 a quasi-ethnographical exploration of how young learners establish their learning practices in their environmental space: the township community and their homes abstract this paper explores how two selected learners establish their learning practices in their environmental space, that is, their township community and home space. the study combines the lenses of “space” and “learning” to capture their movement in and around the township showing how they inhabit space, how they interact with networks and processes in their environment, and how they ultimately transcend their spatial positioning. methodologically, this quasi-ethnographic study, underpinned by an interpretivist metatheoretical framework, draws on my field notes, verbatim responses acquired through interviews with these children and their parents, observations of their neighbourhood and their homes, photographs and artefacts. these qualitative research tools helped to address the main research question: what is the nature of the learning practices of learners in the environmental space; that is: the space of the township community and home? the results show that these learners and their parents produce multiple and hybrid literacies and engage in rich educational practices despite the lived realities of the township space. furthermore, it shows that learners develop a productive agency to counterpoise their spatial positioning enabling them to become co-constructors of their lived space. keywords: quasi-ethnography; learning practices; spatial positioning; human agency; educational practices; township space 1. introduction the primary focus of this article is on the lived experiences of two children, lebo and shafiek (pseudonyms) in their environmental space; the township neighbourhood, and home space. i draw on the rich narrative accounts of these learners to address the question: what is the nature of the learning practices of learners in the environmental space, in other words: the space of the township community and home? these two learners find themselves in the same author: dr lucinda du plooy1 affiliation: 1the university of the western cape doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i2.5 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(2): 52-68 published: 08 june 2022 received: 03 december 2021 accepted: 28 january 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4122-3687 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 532022 40(2): 53-68 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 du plooy a quasi-ethnographical exploration of how young learners establish their learning practices grade 6 primary school where they are often labelled by their teachers in deficit ways or in negative terms. according to rodgers, thambi and shifana (2015), deficit discourses in classrooms and staffrooms are pervasive and dominant. santoro (2013) asserts that teachers who know students as the deficit other, draw upon “negative stereotypes of students’ cultures ... [and] often focus on what they think students don’t know in comparison to students from the dominant culture” (santoro, 2013: 315). this paper attempts to offer an alternative way of viewing township children, moving away from the deficit ways in which these subjects are portrayed in literature. as the lives of these two children unfold in this paper one gets to see that although they live in the same impoverished and marginalised township, a space consumed by social ills, they are involved in a myriad of real-world literacies and manage to live productive lives, which is contrary to how they are spatially positioned by their teachers. the emphasis of this paper is not about how children learn (cognitive and linguistic processes), neither is it about the practices of teachers or management. instead, it focuses on social and cultural conditions external to the learner providing clarity on the role of social context in framing and informing their learning dispositions. in other words, i argue that the way they are positioned in the environmental space can be associated with how their learning practices are framed. the paper is meant to complement an article by fataar and du plooy (2012) by extending ones understanding of how learning happens in localised settings, more specifically by focusing on the township and home space. fataar and du plooy (2012) focused on the relationship between social relations of learning constituted across multiple spatial domains including four learners’ learning navigations in various social spaces, revealing key dimensions of how children learn in compromised circumstances. these authors in their article broadly looked at key dimensions of children learning across multiple sites suggesting that “learning and literacy practices of school children are transacted across the various domains of their lives and that its insight into these multi-sited practices that allow a sharper appreciation of children’s school learning and literacy acquisition” (fataar & du plooy, 2012: 12). only focusing on one site, as i have done in this paper, allowed for greater depth. it afforded me the space to showcase these children’s lived realities by including their verbatim responses, extracts from my field notes and photographs of their home space. theoretically, i drew on nespor’s (1997) categories of embeddedness, displacement and mobility as “analytical conveniences” that connote the relationship between children and their neighbourhoods. for nespor (1997), “embedded children are embedded in neighbourhood routines and city-based activities, whereas displaced children move into an area and appear displaced thus feeling as if they belong to their former neighbourhoods. however, mobile children, move so often that they feel no real attachment to their neighbourhood” (nespor: 1997: xvii). these categories are used in this paper to show the relationship these learners have with their neighbourhood, and the impact that has on their learning dispositions. in addition, these categories emphasise the relationships between the physical and the social dimensions of “lived space”. the notion of “lived space” shows how people are positioned in their social spaces, and how they navigate and ultimately transcend their spatial positioning. fataar (2007; 2015) speaks about “lived space” as “townships on the move” when he attempts to capture a key aspect of the social dynamics of townships by emphasising the mobility of people in light of fluid and ephemeral circumstances (2007:6). he suggests that lived space throws the analytical spotlight on what people become when engaging their geographies, how they appropriate their space and invent new practice. fataar’s recent work in his book titled: engaging schooling subjectivities across post-apartheid urban spaces (fataar, 2015) as well http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 542022 40(2): 54-68 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) as blommaert et al.’s (2006) work titled: peripheral normativity. the production of locality in a south african township school, amongst others (sibanda & kajee, 2019; strauss, 2019) explores the social dynamics of townships in south africa. fataar (2007:17; 2015) alludes to the fact that people who reside in townships are transient and desperate. he further alludes to the fact that even though conditions in townships might appear dismal, marked not only by poverty and unemployment but also by high crime levels and violence, their residence normally construct viable and productive livelihoods. they do this by becoming involved in various social, economic and religious activities, which render townships exciting and viable places in which to live (fataar, 2007:13; 2015). for blommaert et al. (2006:3), townships are peripheral communities isolated from inner cities and suburbs and plagued by a variety of social and economic difficulties, allowing one to view learning not as a uniform object, but as an ecologically and economically localised one. my interest in lived space, especially relating to the focus of this paper, lies in how the environment, more specifically the socio-spatial dynamics of the township and domestic space, in which these children live influences the way their learning practices are framed, informed and positioned. methodologically, this qualitative quasi-ethnographic study, underpinned by interpretivism, formed part of a larger ethnographic study, which focused on the learning practices of grade 6 learners in an urban township school in the western cape. henning (2004) and creswell (2018), both view qualitative research as an in depth-inquiry, where the researcher builds a complex, holistic picture, analyses words, reports detailed views of informants and conducts the study in a natural setting. studying the participants in their natural setting, expressing their views about the setting in which they find themselves, ultimately places this study within an interpretivist research paradigm (merriam, 2009; creswell, 2018). the qualitative research design best suited to my study was ethnography. ethnography, according to silverman (2003:43), refers to the social scientific writing about a particular folk. there are different types of ethnography (see creswell, 2018), i gravitated towards clifford geertz’s (1988) approach to ethnography using thick descriptions to describe and analyse the learning practices of these two learners. i certainly cannot claim to have gone “native” as most ethnographers do when they study their subjects. i entered the township, moved with these learners across their living spaces, experienced their neighbourhood and homes as they would experience it but at the end of the day, i would leave the township to go back to my middle-class suburb, hence this is a quasi-ethnographic study. one of the most valuable aspects of doing ethnographic work is its depth (myers, 1999; fetterman, 2020). i partially immersed myself in this environment and its surroundings by spending 10 months in the field. through this prolonged engagement in the field, i gained an in-depth understanding of the people, different social spaces, and the context that surrounded these learners. time spent in the field enabled me to be an outsider and an insider in this research process. it enabled me to question aspects of their daily living that would normally be taken for granted. i was able to manage the hawthorne effect through prolonged time spent in the field – moving from outsider to insider one becomes part of the daily routine making it difficult for people to maintain a “change in their behaviour”. my field notes became a rich source of data; a place where i could journal my daily observations, my impressions of what i was observing, and the hunches and questions that emerged whilst collecting data. according to leedy and ormrod (2005:137) “site-based fieldwork is the sine qua non, the essence, of any ethnography”. the “unit of analysis” were two purposefully selected grade 6 learners. the investigation included various qualitative http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 552022 40(2): 55-68 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 du plooy a quasi-ethnographical exploration of how young learners establish their learning practices data collection instruments that comprised participant and non-participant observations, individual interviews with the selected learners, their parents/guardians, their teachers and school principal, including interviews with members of the broader community (police officers, community workers, social workers and church leaders). the latter gave authentic insight into the social-spatial dynamics of township living. i also took photographs and artefacts from these learners’ environmental space, especially their home space to capture how they acquired their learning practices despite the constraints of this impoverished township. the use of method and data triangulation, member checking and participant review, were strategies i drew on to ensure the trustworthiness of the research. according to krathwohl (1998) triangulation is the most common method used to ensure the validity (trustworthiness) in qualitative research. ethical procedures were observed throughout the study according to the ethical standards of the university’s senate committee. the senate research committee approved the methodology and ethics of this research project (ethical clearance number 09/1/54). data were analysed inductively using a narrative approach where stories become the outcome of the research. the “storying and re-storying” of people’s lives (connely & clandinin, 1999), or, the narrative, seemed the most appropriate means to relay the “lived experiences” of these young learners. extracts from field notes and the verbatim responses of the research participants formed an integral part of the narrative. themes that emerged that apply to understanding how these children’s learning practices are framed, positioned and informed in their environmental space are, 1) how learners inhabit space, 2) how learners interact with networks and processes in their environmental space, and 3) how and on what basis learners engage their literate worlds to transcend their spatial positioning. from these descriptive themes the findings emerged. before discussing these themes, it is perhaps fitting to speak about the township, delft, to gain insight into the social-spatial dynamics of the area, followed by descriptions of each of these learners’ lived realities in their domestic or home space. 2. social-spatial dynamics of delft, cape town it is 7.30 am and the township is abuzz with activity. it is a windy day, sections of the road are covered in white sand. delft is known for being a very desolate and sandy area. hawkers are packing out their goods for the day; the main road is lined with various container businesses owned mostly by “foreigners” from neighbouring african countries who moved to south africa in search of a better life. this minority group owns most of the container-run businesses ranging from hair salons to spaza (house) shops. people are streaming in and out of the township, mainly being transported by mini-buses or taxis, as they are known here. i notice many school-going children, either waiting at various stops to be transported out of the township to schools in more affluent areas or walking to schools in and around the township. i travel down the main road noticing the free-standing homes built on sand, with no foundation, and much smaller than the home i left this morning to get here. one cannot escape the headlines of the ‘the daily voice’, a local newspaper, displayed on cardboard posters that encircle electric poles lining the streets. it tells of rape, murders, xenophobia violence, gang violence, drug-related stories, and the many other social ills that plague this area. it takes me quite a while to reach the school because of the amount of traffic on the main road but as i am driving i notice children streaming into the high school that is completely fenced in, with three or four security guards at the entrance of the school reminding me of a prison. i pass more container businesses and a few house shops and as i take the turn into the road where the school is situated i notice a community centre, a mosque, a church and houses smaller than http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 562022 40(2): 56-68 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) the ones further up the road. the houses, which are practically built on the doorstep of the school, remind me of the container businesses, small and boxed together. at different points along the school fence are packets containing chips and sweets, hanging on the fence like washing on a washing line. i later discover that these survivalist businesses are common to the area and are normally operated by unemployed parents who are trying to make a living for the day (extract taken from my daily journal). photo 1: the boxed businesses lining the streets of delft photo 1 shows the boxed businesses that line the main street of delft. mostly nigerians or somalians own these businesses bringing their rich culture to this township. the opening extract in this section, from my field notes dated september 2008, provides insight into the socio-spatial dynamics of delft, an urban township located in the western cape, initially planned as a “coloured” residential area. after 1994 the area, “was used as a tool for racial integration” (millstein, 2007:35). this area was earmarked to accommodate 50% coloured and 50% black residents. the community of delft are faced with harsh and violent crimes, gang-related violence spiked by drug use and gang wars (children playing on school grounds are often killed or seriously wounded in crossfires of gang wars), violent crimes perpetrated mostly against women and children, poverty and high rates of unemployment. the latter often result in young people roaming the streets, taking drugs and turning to gangs as a way out of poverty. others become involved in unlawful ways of earning a living such as drug and alcohol trafficking (shebeens/taverns are lucrative businesses found on most streets). lebo’s grandmother captures the essence of living in this township: …it is really upsetting sometimes, really, because here just in this area it is mixed up, because there are coloured, black people, come together at the same time but the situation in this place is not good anyway. there is “tik” lots of drugs, lots of stuff happening. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 572022 40(2): 57-68 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 du plooy a quasi-ethnographical exploration of how young learners establish their learning practices for shafiek’s mother, living in constant fear is not a strange phenomenon given that crimes against children are rife in this area, as she puts it, i’m constantly aware of where my children are. they only allowed to play in front [a small enclosed garden close to the front door] and next door by my sister. the verbatim responses of lebo’s grandmother and shafiek’s mother, respectively, coupled with the description from my field notes tell a story of a township space that is deeply constraining and impoverished. blommaert et al. (2006) viewed townships as “peripheral normativity”; peripheral communities isolated from inner cities and suburbs and plagued by a variety of social and economic difficulties. fataar (2007), in his work “townships on the move”, captured the dual workings of township spaces. on the one hand, townships appear dismal given the harsh realities and on the other, residents mainly construct viable and productive livelihoods. fataar’s work reveals that viewing township spaces in terms of “lived space” (fataar, 2007; 2015); a means of how people live in sites or places, how they are wired into their geographies, and how they transcend their geographies. this concurs with robert helfenbein (2010), where geographical places cannot be viewed as static devoid of any activity, but they are “spaces that speak, spaces that leak and spaces of possibilities”. a description of each child’s social-spatial context follows, revealing their “lived realities” within their neighbourhood and home spaces. the data presentation section that follows provides an overview of how they inhabit space, how they navigate space and how they transcend their spatial positioning. lebo’s social-spatial context lebo is an 11-year-old black girl who moved to delft from gugulethu when she was five years. gugulethu is a black township in the western cape. her home is on a narrow street in the newest part of delft. the house is small and not more than 5x4 metres in size. there is only one entrance and a small window; thus, it is poorly ventilated. lebo’s grandmother, the only breadwinner and head of this household, refers to it as a “poppiehuis” (a doll house), since there is only one room and a small toilet, doubling as a bathroom. the room is divided into three small areas. two bedrooms are divided by suitcases stacked to the ceiling acting as a make-shift partition. some of these suitcases contain storybooks received from the grandmother’s employers, and which they mostly escape to during weekends when the weather is bad and they are forced to remain indoors. a cabinet containing neatly stacked crockery is used to further partition this small space into a kitchen, which contains kitchen zinc. they have two second-hand refrigerators received from the grandmother’s employers, and a portable television set which at the time of my visit was not working. the dressing table at the entrance, doubles as a desk for doing homework and a place to sit and eat. they normally sit on old paint buckets outside the house because of the limited space indoors. the walls are not plastered or painted, and the asbestos roofing is a health risk, especially to lebo who suffers from asthma. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 582022 40(2): 58-68 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) photo 2: lebo’s home – one way in and one way out photo 2 shows the home space, which lebo inhabits providing a visual representation of her spatial dynamics. this small yet comfortable house is home to 10 children: two older cousins, lebo and her two younger siblings who came to live with the grandmother after her mother contracted hiv and could no longer care for them. in addition, there are 5 young children, three of lebo’s cousins whose parents died in a car accident, and two muslim children from this neighbourhood, whose parents were jailed for selling drugs and they had nowhere else to live. lebo describes what it is like living in this household: we sleep and wake up at different times, starting at 5 o’clock. some wake up at 6.30 and others later. we wash ourselves in a bucket, so we must wait. we take turns, two at a time, to wash because we can’t all wash at the same time. then we all eat porridge which granny makes. we all have our own cups and bowls. my cup no one uses only me. we got this from granny’s white people, [referring to the old british employers for whom lebo’s granny has been working as a domestic worker for over 21 years]. how they live in this cramped space discloses why ownership of things would be important to lebo. besides ownership, religion also plays a big role in this extended family’s lives. this is evident from the many religious artefacts around the room (see photo 3), and the involvement of the family in the church and choir. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 592022 40(2): 59-68 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 du plooy a quasi-ethnographical exploration of how young learners establish their learning practices photo 3: religious posters in lebo’s home the muslim children are quite at home in this christian household even though they are encouraged to practice their muslim faith. the children find ways to keep busy even though space is limited. the harshness of growing up poor is evident in this household. they often take great pleasure in cutting out pictures from magazines on fashion, celebrities and fancy houses, and pasting these in books. these scrapbooks are then used as a basis for storytelling and for daydreaming about things they hope to own one day. lebo’s grandmother places great value on education. the children are not allowed to play outside after school but complete homework and keep themselves busy with schoolbased activities, which the granny monitors after her long workday. she monitors their school progress, gets up early to accompany them to school to ensure their safety, yet she needs to travel in a different direction to get to her workplace. lebo’s life is not confined to this working-class township. it is through strong friendships forged through social networks that came about because of her grandmother’s work that she occupies multiple social spaces and takes on multiple identities. these multiple worlds that she moves in and out of having a profound impact on how her learning practices are shaped. as mentioned, lebo’s grandmother has been working for the same british jewish family as a domestic worker for over 21 years. lebo did not attend crèche or preschool. she accompanied her grandmother to work where she was exposed not only to middle-class practices but also english. therefore, she spent most of her early childhood at her grandmother’s workplace, as she puts it: “lebo grew up playing with their children, and at the same time they helped with books and so on”. it is through her ties with this jewish, white family that lebo forged other friendships. her friendship with jade, a 12-year-old british girl and her friendship with emma, also 12 years old, who lives in the affluent and scenic area of hout bay in south africa. lebo’s friendship with jade gives her access to economic resources, and opportunities to travel. she disclosed during an interview that she would be visiting jade in england later that year. on one of my visits to her home, lebo showed me a package she received from jade, containing http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 602022 40(2): 60-68 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) mostly stationery, a dictionary, and a calculator, which lebo treats as her prized possession, not sharing it with the other children and packing it back into the package after she uses it (see photo 4). she receives and sends letters to jade by post or writes letters that the grandmother would take to work for her employer to send via email. photo 4: gifts from england furthermore, her friendship with emma, allows her to live a lifestyle, unlike the one she lives in the township. during our interview, lebo expressed this lifestyle as follows: i sleep in my own bedroom in my own bed. we plan to do things. we are throwing a party in the september holidays for fun. then i will meet all their friends. we designed invitations on the computer, then print it or her daddy will email it. her mommy showed us how to design invitations … i like watching movies and like to go to the video shop. we just ask for the credit card and just say: “can we have it?”, then they give it to us. when i’m there we can buy anything. owning a room and a bed thus expresses her need for ownership. the exposure to this middle-class lifestyle from a very early age came at some cost though. this is evident in the way she speaks about her mother tongue, xhosa, which appears to add very little value to her life. she boldly expressed “my language is just something; like something i don’t care about”. she does however use multiple languages to navigate the physical spaces she occupies. at home, she speaks xhosa, but only to her grandmother and with difficultly but she prefers to speak afrikaans, the dominant language spoken in the community, as she puts it: “afrikaans, the way i learnt to speak it was the happiest time for me because i can do it well and i can speak to all my friends [referring to her coloured friends at her school]”. she speaks english with a european (white) accent which is evident in the tone of voice she uses when speaking english during our interviews. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 612022 40(2): 61-68 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 du plooy a quasi-ethnographical exploration of how young learners establish their learning practices it appears that lebo’s social-spatial context, illustrates a disconnection between lebo and her environmental space. this shows in her attitude towards her home language, as well as in her movement from one social space into the next. the latter can be described as a form of class-hopping, evident from the movement between her working-class experiences in the township and her middle or upper-class experiences in more affluent social spaces. furthermore, her interactions with jade and emma respectively, show how her learning practices are acquired, positioned and negotiated in the environmental space. shafiek’s social-spatial context shafiek is a 12-year-old muslim boy who lives with his parents and four other siblings, two older brothers and two younger sisters, in the older section of delft. both parents have some formal schooling, his father a welder, and his mother a housewife. unlike lebo’s home, shafiek lives in a free-standing house that consists of a lounge, two small bedrooms, a fully equipped kitchen, and a bathroom with a bath and toilet. although the home has limited space for moving around, it is well kept and neat. the walls are covered in religious hangings such as the arabic prayers and other muslim pictures. shafiek, according to his mother, diligently attends madrassa (muslim school) every friday. he gets to share what he learns from muslim school with his christian school friend, angelo. shafiek expresses this fascinating inter-religious mix in the following quote: i was going to do my task on moses. he saved the people from the evilness and cruelness of pharaoh. i read about it from the holy qur’an. i went to the imam and asked him questions on moses. my friend angelo tells me about the christian religion. he shares with me the christian version and i tell him about the muslim version. i saw the movie of moses. we have 12 commandments, but the christian religion only has 10 commandments. we have the cartoon christian version of moses and the muslim cartoon of mohammed. one could say that shafiek and his family are not very mobile since most of their daily activities are confined to their home or interacting with the aunt and cousins who live in the house next door. their movement is therefore restricted to this neighbourhood and visiting family in another township nearby, even though the family owns a car. they certainly have acquired more material possessions than lebo and her family, noted during my visit to their home. the lounge contains a tv, two video machines, and shafiek’s most prized possessions, his playstation with games neatly displayed on a shelf (see photo 5), the family computer, and the stacks of national geographic books that his father brings from his workplace. these possessions are relevant to how shafiek acquires his learning practices in his environmental space, especially his keen interest in playing playstation from which he appears to benefit not only economically, but also educationally and socially. economically, by selling cheats to the games to older men. these cheats are vital to “clock” the game. his mother proudly relayed the following: he finishes tasks quickly; like the games i buy. there’s many a big men, they come here, and ask him: “shafiek, how do we get past this stage?”. then he must show them how. he even gets them cheats. “clocking” the game and doing it in the shortest time possible spills over into how he approaches most tasks. he states: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 622022 40(2): 62-68 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) i’m a quick learner. if i play a game it’s almost like within 20 minutes, i know everything about the game …i just read the instructions; they show it on the game. i read and sometimes there’s a word that i didn’t see before then i look in the dictionary then i know what it means and i can move forward in the game. these words benefit him educationally when engaging in classroom activities such as spelling, reading or doing assignments. furthermore, shafiek is also an avid reader. he enjoys the encarta computer programme and the national geographic second-hand magazines his father brings from work. here he acquires knowledge about insects, planets, greek and egyptian mythology, amongst other things. photo 5: shafiek’s play station games socially, the things he engages with; playing games and reading magazines or just by reading information on the family computer enable him to share what he knows with others. according to him his cousins often come to him for information, as expressed as follows: if they [referring to his cousins who live next door to him] see a lizard they come and ask me questions about it. then i can answer them so if they say “what kind of lizard is that?” then i say “a chameleon because it changes colours so that it keeps away predators”. his interest span issues on planets and global warming which he mostly gets from the national geographic magazines. furthermore, he does not only learn, and finish tasks quickly, but also learns through trial and error and by observing his older brothers. learning how to use the family computer, doing what he describes as “catching on nonsense, and then afterwards i think and try to fix it” shows how he learns. because shafiek’s movement is restricted to the township, moving from home to school or from home to madrassa, only being allowed to play in the vicinity of his home, his social interactions appear largely family based. i later discovered that his grandfather who lives next door with his aunt is often tasked to help with assignments. his mother is instrumental in acquiring games which are quite expensive. shafiek’s mother, similar to lebo’s grandmother, values education, as she puts it “my mother was also strict on us regarding our schoolwork, and i think i’m the same. i get it http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 632022 40(2): 63-68 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 du plooy a quasi-ethnographical exploration of how young learners establish their learning practices from her”. taking shafiek to the library, assisting with gathering information for assignments, and constantly “staying on” him, checking that he did his schoolwork and regularly attending parent meetings to discuss his progress, bears evidence of her commitment to his progress in school, in her words, i was very, you see i always help my children with their schoolwork, even him…i’m very much interested in what they do so if he comes and tells me he is interested in welding, then i will get books on it like i did with all the others. these forms of parent involvement, like staying on children, monitoring school progress, assisting with school activities, offering up a time to take them to school and the library, providing access to educational resources, are often not recognised as parental involvement in schools. in brief, the confinement to his environmental space means that he lives in these spaces routinely. the intensity of his engagement with this popular culture appears greater than his engagement with school-based activities. prensky (2001) observed that children who are exposed to such games and who he labelled “digital natives” receives information really fast, and like to parallel process and multi-task. they prefer graphics to text, thrive on instant gratification and frequent rewards, and in most cases, prefer games to school work (prensky, 2001:3). shafiek can be described as a “digital native”, as is evident from his mother and his descriptions of how he engages with games, especially the time he takes to “clock” a game. furthermore, his access to various commodities, as outlined in this section, feed into how he acquires his learning practices, and more importantly into how his learning practices are negotiated within his environmental space. the complexities of township living and how these two children engage within the confinements of the social spaces they occupy have been outlined. the next section discusses the themes that emanated from the analysis of the data. 3. findings and discussion 3.1 spatial positioningrelationship between children and their neighbourhoods nespor’s (1997) categories of embeddedness, displacement and mobility, describing the relationship between children and their neighbourhoods, are used here to understand how they inhabit their environmental space. lebo, for example, is seen as a mobile student, although she lives in the township, she criss-crosses the city landscape over weekends and holidays to more affluent areas. she frequently does what fataar (2010) describes as “space hopping” or as i prefer “class hopping”. in nespor’s (1997) description, lebo can be viewed as being “spatially dislocated”. the apparent detachment and disaffection that she displays towards her culture and language is a manifestation of her spatial dislocation. soudien (2007:83) terms this detachment as a form of alienation, as he puts it: “alienation often happens in young people’s quest to be normal and fit in”. lebo displays a form of alienation by adopting a middle-class persona – especially when she speaks with a “white accent” and how she speaks afrikaans when she is in the township. soudien (2007) however points out that: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 642022 40(2): 64-68 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) young people can emerge from ambivalence with a heighten sense of awareness – they take nothing for granted mainly because they are both insiders and outsiders of the multiple worlds they inhabit. (soudien, 2007:84). lebo’s exposure to the multiple worlds that she inhabits, their attitudes, beliefs and ways of doing, especially her exposure to a middle and upper-class environment, influences the way her learning practices are informed in her environmental space. shafiek, can be described as being physically embedded in the township and home space. we see this in the routine nature in which he lives in these social spaces, moving from home to school and from home to madrassa. although he is physically embedded, he appears to be conceptually mobile despite interaction with his popular culture. nespor (1997) speaks about young people’s involvement in their popular culture as “kids-based funds of knowledge” which kids draw on to make sense of their environment. for nespor (1997:122), these “kidsbased funds of knowledge” are made up of “heterogeneous networks of people (adults and peers), and things (representations and technologies)”. recent work by moje (2004) concurs by noting: it is important to acknowledge the many different funds of knowledge such as homes, peer groups and other systems and networks of relationships that shape the oral and written text young people make meaning of and produce as they move from classroom to classroom and from home to peer group, to school, or to community (moje, 2004:38). it is clear from the narratives that shafiek’s involvement in his popular culture appears to shape his learning practices in this constrained and volatile space. 3.2 navigating their spatial positioning by drawing on various social networks lebo is an insider and an outsider of the multiple worlds in which she engages. through friendships, she generates wider social networks and contacts that benefit her economically and culturally. devine (2009) advocates that friendships do not only provide a sense of inclusion but also a sense of belonging. for bourdieu (1986, in devine, 2009:528), “children accumulate social capital through unceasing effort at sociability, in which recognition is affirmed and reaffirmed”. lebo, however, needs to keep two identities in tandem to be affirmed and recognised within her friendship circles. her strategic readings of particular spaces drive her to adopt particular identities relevant to the space that she is in. this is evident when she adopts a “coloured” identity in the township, a coping strategy necessary to navigate and manoeuvre in this racially hostile environment. yosso (2005:28) uses the notion “navigational capital, – part of what he calls ‘community cultural wealth’” which is often experienced in low-income communities, where children read their physical spaces and adopt “navigational skills which help them to manoeuvre” through fragile social spaces. similarly, her adoption of a middle-class “white” persona – partaking in middle-class practices in more affluent areas, “centres on minimizing embodied aspects of cultural differences related to accent, dress or diet”, which devine (2009:528) refers to as “self-monitoring”. shafiek, through his engagement with his popular culture, using the computer and playing playstation games, forges lasting networks and interconnections that play a crucial role in the shaping of his learning practices in this confined space. nespor (1997:171) asserts that “everyday life is made up of a variety of networks” or “webs of associations”. in shafiek’s case, three social networks converge to shape his learning dispositions and inform his learning http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 652022 40(2): 65-68 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 du plooy a quasi-ethnographical exploration of how young learners establish their learning practices practices: family-based networks, peer-based networks and commodity-based networks. this proves that children are not only involved in networks composed of humans or animate entities but also connected to inanimate or non-human elements, crucial in understanding how they make sense of their complex worlds (nespor, 1997). shafiek’s keen interest in playstation and reading of the encarta computer software are examples of his interconnection with the inanimate world around him. a common factor that applies to both research subjects, and that appears fundamental to their engagement with their literate worlds, is the role of parents/guardians. parental involvement warrants a discussion since “parents from low-income families are looked down upon and therefore their voices are not heard (kralovec & buell, 2000:79; sibanda & kajee, 2019). they are often described negatively as being “uncaring, uninvolved and unconcerned” when it came to their children’s learning (crompton-lilly, 2003:60). felix et al. (2008:11) note that the deficit discourse often used to describe township parents could “powerfully position these parents in particular ways, which serve to produce and reproduce inequalities”. township parents were often described by teachers as unable to possess the material and mental resources to help their children. my research in the homes of these children provides evidence to the contrary. lebo’s grandmother provides the pathway for her to network across class and global lines by acting as the go-between, between lebo, the middle-class family, and lebo and her friendship with jade in england. her resilience to work beyond retirement age as a domestic worker so that she could provide for this family not only connects lebo to the multiple worlds she occupies but also proves that she cares. similarly, shafiek’s parents are involved in shaping his learning disposition, especially his mother who acts as an “instrumentalist” providing the space, time and resources for him to engage with his popular culture. lebo’s grandmother and shafiek’s mother do not only provide what yosso (2005:28) calls “aspirational capital” – “resilience or ability to maintain hopes and dreams for the future”. they “stay on” their children by monitoring homework, providing access to material resources and engage their children in school-based activities. even though these two children are from the same neighbourhood, how they inhabit their neighbourhood is different. the discussion thus reveals how they inhabit space and engage with multiple social networks, with the help of their parents/guardians, which in turn helps them navigate their spatial positioning. in the final section of this discussion, i turn to how lebo and shafiek manage to transcend their spatial positioning, by becoming co-constructors of space. 3.3 transcending their spatial positioning lebo and shafiek’s ability to personally, individually and agentially attract social networks contributes to how they transcend their spatial positioning. lebo’s interaction with various networks and connections enable her to engage in a variety of practices in her environmental space. she actively engages in new spatial terrains exposing her to a rich context full of interaction and stimulation. her assimilation into a middle-class culture – intercultural experiences positively create aspirations for mobility as well as provide her with a broader perspective on life. she gets to experience the city rich in recreational areas (beaches, shops, etc.) and cultural areas (museums, art, etc.), including the township, which could be a source of enrichment – being exposed to “street sweepers, shopkeepers, food stall vendors, loiterers, friends, and local personalities can be a rich source of enrichment” (karlsson, 2009:116). she uses her linguistic and communication skills (being trilingual – xhosa, afrikaans and english) or what yosso (2005:76) refers to as linguistic capital to navigate different social domains. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 662022 40(2): 66-68 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) shafiek’s interactions with various networks related to his popular culture, the way he learns, his keen observational skills shape his learning disposition. in addition, he engages conceptually and strategically with a variety of learning resources, which enhances his knowledgeability – his interest in greek and roman mythology, religion (christian and muslim), the planets, insects, amongst other things, in turn translates into hybrid social practices. even though he is physically confined to his environmental space, conceptually he manages to make sense of a global world through various interconnections and social networks. he has access to what yosso (2005) terms “familial capital” (strong kinship ties which inform emotional, moral and occupational consciousness), and “social capital” (social networks, contacts, and community resources). these forms of “community cultural wealth” as suggested by yosso (2005:28) can be used to acknowledge individual agency within constraining spaces. fataar (2010), in support of lefebvre (1991/1997), and massey’s (1994) conceptualisation of “lived space” notes that “there exists a productive relationship between ‘lived space’ and human agency”. for fataar (2010:4), “human action is constructed out of the dynamic interaction with the physical attributes of the environment”. this relationship between “lived space” and human agency is expanded on by nespor (1997:119), the notion of “bodies in space” as he explains: bodies are inscribed with complex social markers, like gender, race and social class… economic and political forces, along with organisational fields, shape the bodies, instil in them certain dispositions, and most important, situate them inflows of activities that move them physically in certain ways and connect them to distant activities spread across space and time (nespor, 1997:119). this recursive relationship between the “body and space” is crucial to the lived realities of children who inhabit impoverished and marginalised spaces and is made “visible through the body that is rendered as a visual display or text readable to an outsider gaze” (ibid). lebo and shafiek manage to position themselves parallel to their spatial positioning living their spaces incongruently, but the way this happens differs. for lebo it is by keeping two identities in tandem and by engaging in socio-cultural activities, and for shafiek it is by engaging with people (animate world) and the inanimate world. both these young people, therefore, manage to transcend their spatial positioning by becoming co-constructors of space. 4. conclusion this paper set out to investigate how young learners establish their learning practices in their environmental space: the township community and their homes. it attempted to capture the intricate sociological processes that constitute these learners’ learning approaches. the focus was on their spatial positioning within what could be described as a harsh and impoverished environmental space, how they manoeuvre through these spaces, and how they surpass their spatial positioning. the findings reveal a number of interesting facts about these children in their environmental space: 1) each of them, based on their spatial positioning and their relationship to their neighbourhood spaces create their own spaces of learning; 2) they manage to forge lasting networks and interconnections that play a crucial role in navigating their spatial positioning; 3) their parents/guardians, who are often viewed in literature as being uninvolved in their schooling, play an instrumental role in forging these social networks and interconnections allowing them to engage with their literate worlds; and 4) they individually and agentially, through their engagement with rich educational practices in their environment space, become http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 672022 40(2): 67-68 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 du plooy a quasi-ethnographical exploration of how young learners establish their learning practices co-constructors of space. in other words, the construction of their own learning spaces, which is informed by the wide range of networks, connections, and interactions with people and things, goes beyond the boundaries of formal schooling. further study is required to explore how teachers can tap into the rich educational practices these children engage with in the environmental space, drawing on what moll et al. (1992) refer to as “funds of knowledge” or what fataar and du plooy (2012) call “out-ofschool educational affordances”, which often goes unrecognised inside the classrooms they inhabit. there exists a need for teachers to “know” the learners they teach. i recommend that teachers adopt qualitative approaches to gain insight into their learners’ lives; getting to know these children, their lived realities, family dynamics, and the multiple worlds they navigate daily. “knowing” their learners will have a profound effect on the pedagogical and teaching styles they adopt inside the classroom space. reinstating home visits is one way of getting to know the socio-spatial dynamics of these children and their families and how to teach to the rich diversity of learners. it opens possibilities that there exists a link between the various social spaces children inhabit. it certainly opens new ways in which schooling for all children, regardless of race, class and gender, can be reimagined. 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‘new’ south africa. english teaching: practice and critique, 7(2): 99-112. fataar, a. 2007. educational renovation in south africa ‘township on the move’: a socialspatial analysis. international journal of educational development, 27: 599-612. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2006.10.019 fataar, a. 2010. “youth self-formation and the ‘capacity to aspire’: the iterant ‘schooled’ career of fuzzile ali across post-apartheid space”. in the american education research association conference, denver, august 2010. fataar, a. 2015. engaging school subjectivities across post-apartheid urban spaces. stellenbosch: african sun media. https://doi.org/10.18820/9781920689834 fataar, a. & du plooy, l. 2012. spatialised assemblages and suppressions: the learning ‘positioning’ of grade 6 students in a township school, journal of education, 55(1): 1-26. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.linged.2006.03.001 https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x019005002 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children. germany, schneider verlag hohengehven. leedy, p.d. & ormrod, j. 2005. practical research: planning and design, eighth edition. new jersey: pearson merrill prentice hall. millstein, m. 2014. information and mediation of power in delft, cape town. nordic journal of african studies, 23(2): 100-119. myers, m.d. 1999. investigating information systems with ethnographic research. communication of the association for information systems, 2(23): 1-120. https://doi. org/10.17705/1cais.00223 kravolec, e. & buell, j. 2000. the end of homework: how homework disrupts families, overburdens children and limits learning. boston: beacon press. moje, e.b. 2004. working towards third space in content area literacy: an examination of everyday funds of knowledge and discourses. reading research quarterly, 39(1): 38-70. https://doi.org/10.1598/rrq.39.1.4 moll, l., amanti, c., neff, d. & gonzalez, n. 1992. funds of knowledge for teaching: using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. theory into practice, 31(2): 132-141. https://doi.org/10.1080/00405849209543534 nespor, j. 1997. tangled up in school: politics, space, bodies and signs in the educational process. london: laurance erlbaum associations publishers. prensky, m. 2001. digital natives, digital immigrants on the horizon. ncb university press, 9(5): 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1108/10748120110424816 rodgers, b., thambi, m. & shifana, m. 2015. unsettling the familiar: challenging discourses of deficit through hesitation and pause of an appreciative lens. aare conference, western australia. soudien, c. 2007. youth identity in contemporary south africa: race, culture and schooling, cape town: new african books (pty) ltd. strauss, m. 2019. a historical exposition of spatial injustice and segregated urban settlement in south africa. fundamina, 25(2): 135-168. https://doi.org/10.17159/2411-7870/2019/ v25n2a6 yosso, t. 2005. whose culture has capital? a critical race theory discussion of community wealth. race, ethnicity and education, 8(1): 69-91. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 1361332052000341006 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.5 https://doi.org/10.17705/1cais.00223 https://doi.org/10.17705/1cais.00223 https://doi.org/10.1598/rrq.39.1.4 https://doi.org/10.1080/00405849209543534 https://doi.org/10.1108/10748120110424816 https://doi.org/10.17159/2411-7870/2019/v25n2a6 https://doi.org/10.17159/2411-7870/2019/v25n2a6 https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341006 https://doi.org/10.1080/1361332052000341006 _hlk93995534 _hlk93616790 _hlk93949282 _hlk505431864 165 research article 2022 40(4): 165-179 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) development of teacher knowledge in an initial teacher education programme qualifying mathematics teachers abstract south african teacher education policy expects initial teacher education programmes to introduce integrated and applied knowledge to underpin a teacher’s practice in diverse classroom contexts. this paper explores how a one-year postgraduate certificate in education responds to this expectation in terms of training prospective teachers to teach high school mathematics. exploration involves a qualitative case study of semi-structured interviews with six teacher educators and five newly qualified teachers, supplemented with document analysis. the stages of research involved a literature review, piloting the semi-structured interview questions, conducting semi-structured interviews, and analysing all accessible documents linked to the postgraduate certificate. all collected data were merged into one document which was read to identify codes, themes and categories. the paper finds that the postgraduate certificate does equip individuals with professional teacher knowledge to function in diverse contexts, albeit unevenly and highly dependent on the quality of each teacher’s past engagement with mathematics. the broad nature of policy knowledge type definitions and the lack of clarity in differentiating ‘specific specialised subject matter’ and ‘specialised pedagogical content knowledge’ are key contributing factors to uneven development in a postgraduate certificate. as a recommendation, we suggest that policy should differentiate ‘specific specialised subject matter’ and ‘specialised pedagogical content knowledge’ in more detail to promote the development of each as important types of knowledge needed by teachers. keywords: initial teacher education, mathematics, pedagogical content knowledge, specialised subject matter 1. introduction initial teacher education (ite) is tasked with producing the cohort of teachers needed now and in the future to assist countries in achieving inclusive economic growth and education quality (dhet, 2015). this paper aims to present insights into the process of training a mathematics teacher in relation to south africa’s national teacher education policy. specifically, this article focuses on the development author: dr jacques verster1 prof yusuf sayed2 affiliation: 1cape peninsula university of technology, south africa 1centre for international teacher education, cape peninsula university of technology, south africa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v40i4.6654 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(4): 165-179 published: 23 december 2022 received: 3 august 2022 accepted: 5 december 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2446-3144 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2534-8420 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 1662022 40(4): 166-179 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) of professional teacher knowledge in a postgraduate certificate in education (pgce) mathematics ite programme. in south africa, the most recent national teacher education policy notes the purpose and approach of teacher education qualifications as follows: “the approach adopted in the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications [mrteq] pays close attention to the various types of knowledge that underpin teachers’ practice, while encapsulating all of these in the notion of integrated and applied knowledge” (dhet, 2015: 9). ite is governed by national policy. but even with this national policy, there are no absolute guarantees that a quality education will be realised in university education (dbe, 2011; jansen, 2013; taylor, 2014). this paper explores how one university approaches the delivery of a postgraduate certificate in relation to policy, reviewing one ite programme and the overall approach for its delivery. the intent is to gain understanding of the holistic approach used to link policy and practice during ite. the research gap being addressed is to offer contextual insights into a postgraduate certificate. this is done with the hope to enhance understanding of what a postgraduate certificate involves as an experience. therefore, the research question is: what does a postgraduate certificate, as offered by a university of technology, involve as an experience? following a discussion to set the background and establish the context of the phenomenon under study, we present the knowledge types needed by a classroom teacher – as noted in the mrteq – as the paper’s conceptual framework. the methodology introduces the data analysis section as guided by the parameters of the mrteq knowledge types. the paper concludes with a discussion of the findings related to policy vs practice. 2. background south africa offers two routes for becoming a teacher; namely, a one-year postgraduate certificate in education (pgce) that follows a recognised diploma/degree linked to a school subject; or a bachelor’s in education (b.ed.) after completing grade 12 (upper/senior secondary). both routes are equal in status as they offer “entry-level initial professional knowledge and skills as classroom teachers in a chosen phase[s] and/or subject[s]” (dhet, 2015: 26). the key difference is that “pgce curricula are largely concentrated versions of b.ed. curricula, without subject content modules” (taylor, 2014: 10). there is international recognition that a one-year ite route has challenges, specifically as far as the development of subject content knowledge is concerned. for example, some pgce graduates struggled with subject content in the context of teaching diverse learners (che, 2010). more specifically, a major in a relevant subject at university level is unfortunately no guarantee that the desired subject matter knowledge needed to build professional teacher knowledge is in place (che, 2010). it is a potential mistake to treat subject content as “already in place” at any stage of a teacher’s career (ellis, 2007: 450-452) because subject content needs continuous updating and must be linked to professional teacher knowledge (loughran, 2010). this paper seeks to understand professional teacher knowledge within the context of “relationships between pedagogical knowledge and [disciplinary] knowledge” (reeves & robinson, 2010: 237). although broadly applied, theorised and debated (ellis, 2007), there is no one agreed-upon definition of professional teacher knowledge (burn, 2007). however, there are two ways in which existing subject content is linked to pedagogical knowledge to influence the development of http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 1672022 40(4): 167-179 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 verster & sayed development of teacher knowledge in an initial teacher education programme professional teacher knowledge: 1) “pedagogical theory and skills [are] generic and applicable within and across subject domains”; and 2) pedagogical theory and skills are anchored “within a particular subject domain” (reeves & robinson, 2010: 244). to make best use of the allocated pgce year, a common practice in south africa is to approach pedagogical knowledge as generic and applicable within all subject domains (reeves & robinson, 2010: 244). this is most likely why various pgce programmes are delivered within a view that development of desired skills and knowledge occurs “in a general (often abstract) form first” and becomes engrained into an individual as experience is gained in a classroom context (philpott, 2006: 300). treating pedagogical knowledge as applicable across subject domains assumes that prospective teachers, with little guidance, are able to link existing disciplinary knowledge with newly introduced pedagogical knowledge. this approach leads to a perception that how to teach (pedagogy) is more important than the what (subject content) (reeves & robinson, 2010). to the contrary, approaching pedagogical knowledge as anchored within a specific subject domain treats disciplinary knowledge as the core knowledge needed by a teacher, leading to the perception that what to teach is more important than the how (adler, slonimsky & reed, 2002). national policy in south africa balances approaches by focusing on both the what (disciplinary knowledge) and the how (pedagogical knowledge) as equally important (dhet, 2015). this ensures that a qualified classroom teacher is able to “organise systematic learning in … whatever the context and conditions are” (morrow, 2007: 20). to balance both approaches, national policy argues that the pgce should include eight to 12 weeks supervised and formally assessed school-based experience (nomlomo & sosibo, 2016; zeichner, 2010) to introduce prospective teachers to the “groundwork” of teaching as a profession (walkington, 2005: 57) by exposure to “classroom situations that exist in reality, and not just … with ideal situations” (dbe, 2011: 109). the practicalities of school-based experiences are governed by policy written by an ite service provider, referred to as ‘institutional policy’ in this paper, which stipulates roles and responsibilities of involved university and host-school staff to promote quality engagements and links between theory and practice. an institutional school-based experience policy, according to the findings of samuel (2009: 751-752), assumes three factors: 1) a culture of collaboration and partnership between all involved; 2) training workshops and contracts to clarify roles and responsibilities of all involved; and 3) learning and development that emphasises school-based experience as an “initial step in a lifelong journey of professional growth and development”. such a policy is essential in promoting an extensive and wellplanned school-based experience to serve as the pinnacle of learning how to teach (matoti, junqueria & odora, 2011). 3. conceptual framework we argue that learning to teach through a pgce involves tacit and explicit teacher knowledge presented in a general, often abstract manner to develop professional teacher knowledge. the introduced teacher knowledge is potentially assumed to be integrated and applied by pgce graduates as they gain experience as a classroom teacher. this might explain why there is no common national pgce curriculum in south africa beyond the mrteq knowledge types applicable to all ite programmes, as learning to teach is seemingly an individual experience. to explore this more deeply, the paper focuses on professional teacher knowledge developed http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 1682022 40(4): 168-179 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) in institutional settings in relation to national policy, specifically on the types of knowledge stipulated in policy (dhet, 2015: 10-11) that offer a “basis for a common, accepted curriculum that a program would cover in terms of knowledge and practice, leaving it up to the providers as to how to realise this in program terms” (sayed et al., 2018:33), meaning that the types of knowledge are to serve as guidelines to develop the institution offering the pgce’s specific curriculum to address these knowledge types. this paper, through an examination of pedagogical and disciplinary knowledge gained by prospective teachers, explores how types of knowledge in policy are enacted in a pgce programme. see figure 1 for the organisation of the types of knowledge associated with the acquisition, integration and application of knowledge for teaching purposes. 5 figure 1: the organisation of the types of learning associated with the acquisition, integration and application of knowledge for teaching purposes (dhet, 2015: 10-11) we argue that the above guides ite delivery by directing the core focus of engagements to involve the development of disciplinary and/or pedagogical learning. the three remaining types of knowledge are to focus on teaching in context and therefore, it is argued, are to form part and parcel of engagements influencing disciplinary and/or pedagogical knowledge. 4. empirical research this paper is based on a qualitative case study of a pgce with mathematics as one major offered in 2014 by a university of technology located in the western cape of south africa. this university is one of the larger providers of teacher education qualifications in the province. data collection involved semi-structured interviews (six teacher educators interviewed during the latter part of 2014 and five nqts during their first nqt term in 2015) and document analysis (study guides, pgce service provider policies, programme guide, faculty handbook, university website, and prospective teacher portfolios of assessment retained for moderation). all documents made available via the university website, teacher educators or from administrators teaching in context practical learning: noting “learning in and from practice” fundamental learning: highlighting “learning to converse in a second official language” and the “ability to use information and communications technologies (icts) and the acquisition of academic literacy” situational learning: involving “knowledge of the varied learning situations, contexts, and environments how to teach pedagogical learning: focusing on both general pedagogical knowledge and specialised pedagogical content knowledge what to teach disciplinary learning: involving learning of disciplinary or subject knowledge figure 1: the organisation of the types of learning associated with the acquisition, integration and application of knowledge for teaching purposes (dhet, 2015: 10-11) we argue that the above guides ite delivery by directing the core focus of engagements to involve the development of disciplinary and/or pedagogical learning. the three remaining types of knowledge are to focus on teaching in context and therefore, it is argued, are to form part and parcel of engagements influencing disciplinary and/or pedagogical knowledge. 4. empirical research this paper is based on a qualitative case study of a pgce with mathematics as one major offered in 2014 by a university of technology located in the western cape of south africa. this university is one of the larger providers of teacher education qualifications in the province. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 1692022 40(4): 169-179 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 verster & sayed development of teacher knowledge in an initial teacher education programme data collection involved semi-structured interviews (six teacher educators interviewed during the latter part of 2014 and five nqts during their first nqt term in 2015) and document analysis (study guides, pgce service provider policies, programme guide, faculty handbook, university website, and prospective teacher portfolios of assessment retained for moderation). all documents made available via the university website, teacher educators or from administrators at the campus offering the pgce were included. all documents were read keeping the interview questions presented below in mind and using the following question as an overall analysis guide: is what i am reading highlighting an insight revealing an aspect of the pgce as an experience for a prospective teacher? interview questions posed to the six teacher educators included: • is it possible to reveal your contribution in the design of the pgce programme you are involved in? • what is the department’s philosophy concerning the pgce fet programme? • how would you define and describe your teaching approach? • considering the pgce programme you are involved in, please explain how it develops a prospective trainee’s pedagogical knowledge. • based on your experience, what subject content knowledge do you believe prospective teachers acquire from participating in the pgce programme you are a part of? • is it possible to reveal specific experiences that was aimed at developing the mathematics beliefs of prospective teachers? interview questions posed to the five nqts included: • is it possible to reveal your thoughts concerning the overall design of the pgce programme you have successfully completed? • what do you believe was the department’s overall goal concerning the pgce fet programme? • how would you define and describe the teaching approaches of the teacher educators (lecturers) in the pgce? • considering the pgce programme you successfully completed, please explain how it developed your pedagogical knowledge. • based on your experience, what subject content knowledge do you believe you acquired from participating in the pgce programme you successfully completed? • is it possible to reveal specific experiences that was aimed at developing your mathematics (or potentially teaching-learning) beliefs? sampling of participants were done purposefully to explore experiences comprising a pgce which would have been experiences by a prospective teacher who registered for a pgce with mathematics as one of their majors. an interpretivist paradigm guided data analysis, examining the interrelationship between ite policy framework and institutional practices. all collected data were merged onto one document and printed. different colour highlighters were used to identify codes, themes and categories. specific codes, themes and categories were noted in pencil on the original document. linked data were then merged into tables to organise the data and serve as reference point for the presentation of data. the original http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 1702022 40(4): 170-179 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) printed document with original notes were re-read after analysis to identify any overlooked data to bring analysis to a close. ethical requirements attached to a qualitative case study were followed, and ethical clearance was granted by the relevant university ethics committee. 5. research findings key research findings focus on the relationship between what national policy expects in relation to teacher knowledge and how this is realised in the programme. the argument presented is that in the pgce programme, the studies of ‘specialised pedagogical content knowledge’ mentioned under ‘pedagogical knowledge’ and ‘specific specialised subject matter’ under ‘disciplinary knowledge’ in policy are exact duplicates. this approach to addressing policy stipulations, it is argued, overemphasises subject administration at the cost of developing ‘specific specialised subject matter’. this approach also rests on the assumption that prospective teachers in the pgce are subject content experts, primarily in need of pedagogical skills to be effective classroom teachers in south africa. to present the rationale for the above argument, the two main themes discussed are disciplinary and pedagogical knowledge. 5.1 disciplinary knowledge 5.1.1 disciplinary knowledge acquired and developed in an ite programme we begin exploring policy versus practice by presenting the way policy defines disciplinary knowledge. the mrteq policy states: disciplinary or subject matter knowledge ... can be presented in two components within a teaching curriculum. firstly, it is represented in the study of education and its foundations, including but not limited to the philosophy, psychology, politics, economics, sociology and history of education. secondly it includes the study of specific specialised subject matter relevant to the academic disciplines underpinning teaching subjects or specialisations. professional ethics and issues related to knowledge of, and relationships between the self and others are cross cutting themes that are theoretically located in the study of education and its foundations (dhet, 2015: 10). this paper explores the categories of ‘subject matter knowledge’ and ‘specific specialised subject matter’ acquired in an ite programme to guide the discussion of the first main theme, ‘disciplinary knowledge’. it is noted that ‘specific specialised subject matter’ is only mentioned by name in policy, leaving details open to individual interpretation. 5.1.2 subject matter knowledge approached as ‘already acquired’ in delivering the teaching programme the ite programme as delivered assumes that ‘subject matter knowledge’ is in place (prospective teachers having completed grade 12 and a diploma/degree) prior to prospective teachers entering the programme. during the module ‘mathematics didactics’, prospective teachers were given an opportunity to voice the specific ‘subject matter knowledge’ which they wished to include during contact sessions. if none was mentioned, none was specifically developed, as noted during the interviews: “no one had a problem with the content in maths so we didn’t do any content with maths” (mathematics didactics, teacher educator interview). this practice was confirmed by teacher educators and nqts during interviews: “[t]here is no mathematical knowledge introduced only needed to be known by a mathematics teacher” http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 1712022 40(4): 171-179 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 verster & sayed development of teacher knowledge in an initial teacher education programme (mathematics didactics, teacher educator interview) and, “the content knowledge, you can’t find it on the pgce” (nqt2 interview). these remarks suggest that ‘subject matter knowledge’ is not core to this ite programme. ‘subject matter knowledge’ is assumed to already be developed, based on the understanding that at admission, a prospective teacher has both a grade 12 certificate and a recognised “three-year diploma or four-year degree” (university website). the programme co-ordinator emphasised this: i explain to them how they got in and warn them that they are subject matter specialists. if a person stands in class and says i don’t know [how to work with data sets] then they have no right to be here (professional studies, teacher educator & programme coordinator interview). teacher educators in the pgce programme admitted they did not teach ‘subject matter knowledge’ as this was already in place: “within the first term, before [the school-based experiences component], you will be introduced to the school curriculum in its entirety. all you as a person should be able to do is say. i know that, i know that. oops. i do not know that. let me go and study” (professional studies, teacher educator & programme co-ordinator interview). in support, teacher educator for the module ‘perspectives on education’ clarified how prospective teachers were approached as ‘subject matter knowledge’ experts: there is a topic we do… we deal with differentiation. we talk about problems and learning. i try to draw examples from as many subjects as possible and of course i am not a mathematician. so, i have to believe what [prospective teachers] tell me is true. somebody will have to stand up and tell us how i would differentiate this task for a learner who is at a lower level of understanding (perspectives on education, teacher educator interview). based on the above, the pgce approaches ‘subject matter knowledge’ as essentially “already in place” (ellis, 2007: 450-452), but if inadequate, then the prospective teacher is responsible to self-study to close gaps (loughran, 2010). this process was perceived by the interviewed nqts as suitable based on the following statements: “the things you did in grade 12, grade 10 and grade 11. so, you always have to rephrase and go back on how to. but as you are somebody who did you immediately see that you will be just okay. that is how it is supposed to happen” (nqt2 interview) and, “understanding that when you open the year plan it is grade 10 then after that a new thing will start with grade 11 all the way. that is something that i did not know. i only know it when i came to pgce and that was math didactics” (nqt5 interview). in summary, the pgce was designed to make no attempt to develop ‘subject matter knowledge’, resting on the assumption that this knowledge is already in place. if ‘subject matter knowledge’ is inadequate, as discovered while perusing the prescribed school subject curriculum documents, then ostensibly the prospective teacher self-studies to close personal knowledge gaps. the level of existing ‘subject matter knowledge’ is not verified in the pgce beyond the entrance requirements linked to admission. although self-study is promoted when gaps in ‘subject matter knowledge’ are self-diagnosed, this practice could result in prospective teachers holding vastly different levels of ‘subject matter knowledge’ when entering (and hence, when leaving) the pgce. the quality of the pgce as a whole, then, is dependent on the quality of past engagements each admitted individual has had with the ‘subject matter knowledge’ expected to be delivered in the classroom. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 1722022 40(4): 172-179 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) 5.2 pedagogical knowledge 5.2.1 specific specialised subject matter influenced by linking existing ‘subject matter knowledge’ to newly introduced pedagogical knowledge linking pedagogical knowledge to existing subject matter knowledge was the primary approach in the pgce programme: “all we really do is we introduce the pedagogical knowledge skills and values which they then attach to their content knowledge” (professional studies, teacher educator & programme co-ordinator interview). the common approach followed in a pgce is to introduce pedagogy (naylor & sayed, 2014; reeves & robinson, 2010) which prospective teachers are then responsible to integrate with their existing ‘subject matter’ and ‘specific specialised subject matter’. the process followed in the studied pgce was summarised by the programme co-ordinator: “your two didactics [school curriculum modules] look specifically at the application of your subject matter expertise … so, we develop your subject specific pedagogical knowledge within the didactics” (professional studies, teacher educator & programme co-ordinator interview). more specifically, ‘mathematics didactics’ included “advanced studies of theories” (study guide) to begin the development of subject pedagogy seemingly with the assumption that ‘subject matter’ and ‘specific specialised subject matter’ was already held. the approach was summarised as follows: so, what we would do is we would focus on the theory of pedagogy. how do we teach mathematics? what is mathematics anxiety? we let them familiarise themselves with that – how do we deal with learners with mathematics anxiety. different teaching strategies of teaching mathematics. not all teaching strategies can be applied to mathematics. we look at the theoretical aspects of pedagogy: theories of learning, theories of constructivism, piaget, vygotsky. so that they could understand how do learners learn and do they actually learn. is it about teaching or is it about learning? (mathematics didactics, teacher educator interview). this highlights how the pgce approached the introduction of pedagogical knowledge which prospective teachers then linked to their existing disciplinary knowledge (‘subject matter knowledge’ and ‘specific specialised subject matter’). it seems that ‘specific specialised subject matter’ as noted in policy is interpreted as a component of pedagogic knowledge as introduced in the pgce programme. to support this argument, all interviewed nqts perceived that ‘mathematics didactics’ overemphasised subject administration and pedagogical components which were likewise covered in other pgce modules. this occurred at the cost of developing ‘specific specialised subject matter knowledge’ in the field of mathematics. the nqts noted that they felt “there was something more that needs to be taught” (nqt1 interview) in ‘mathematics didactics’ as it was “not maths, [it was] just arranging the file, all the lesson plans like, that is where [they] got the marks” (nqt2 interview). in addition, pgce contact sessions prior to the first school-based experience component for ‘mathematics didactics’ introduced theories. after and “concurrent with the [school-based experiences component] focus [was] on: subject administration; assessment; [and] lesson planning” (study guide). how ‘specific specialised subject matter’ was perceived as part of ‘pedagogical knowledge’ in the pgce context is evident by looking at the summary of “advanced studies of theories” (study guide): we would look at what is required to be taught according to the policy document and then look at how we align it. so that when a student leaves here they are familiar with the policy document. so that they don’t come there, at their school and say okay. i have just started teaching but i don’t know what to teach (mathematics didactics, teacher educator interview). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 1732022 40(4): 173-179 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 verster & sayed development of teacher knowledge in an initial teacher education programme we now understand that the studied pgce overemphasised subject administration (meaning classroom administration) while neglecting ‘specific specialised subject matter knowledge’ because this was treated as a component of ‘pedagogical knowledge’. this practice, it is argued, could have emerged because the difference between ‘disciplinary knowledge’ and ‘pedagogical knowledge’, as defined in national policy, is not adequately specific. the overemphasis on subject administration was further encouraged by the assumption that all those granted admittance into the pgce are subject matter experts (which includes ‘specific specialised subject matter knowledge’) and knowledge gaps are closed by means of self-study. building on the above argument, we explore the policy definition of ‘pedagogical knowledge’ in relation to the development that occurred in the pgce programme. 5.2.2 pedagogical knowledge acquired and developed in an ite programme within the context that ‘specific specialised subject matter’ could be interpreted as a component of ‘pedagogical knowledge’, we present the policy definition of pedagogical knowledge: pedagogical knowledge incorporates general pedagogical knowledge and refers to the study of the principles, practices and methods of teaching. pedagogical learning includes knowledge of learners, learning, curriculum and general instruction and assessment strategies and specialised pedagogical content knowledge which includes knowing how to present the concepts, methods and rules of a specific discipline in order to create appropriate learning opportunities for diverse learners, as well as how to evaluate progress. inclusive education forms an important aspect of both general and pedagogical knowledge and specialised pedagogical content knowledge (dhet, 2015:10). the concept pedagogical learning formed part of the discussion under the categories of the preceding theme disciplinary knowledge. this was because the pgce did not specifically develop disciplinary knowledge. the pgce expected prospective teachers to link their existing disciplinary knowledge to newly introduced pedagogical learning. to extend this understanding, this section explores how ‘specialised pedagogical content knowledge’ is developed in the pgce programme in relation to ‘presenting mathematical concepts, methods and rules’, evaluating learner progress and assessing programme methodology. 5.2.3 limited focus on using a ‘whiteboard/chalkboard’ in teaching mathematics in the programme concerning theory and discussions on how to present mathematical concepts, methods and rules, the module ‘professional studies’ required prospective teachers to rank the teaching media based on suitability for teaching mathematics (or any other didactics module): chalkboard/whiteboard, bulletin board/posters, flipchart/flash cards, photo copies/handouts, powerpoint presentations, textbooks/books, computer/internet, video clips/demonstrations, movies/television, multimedia/visual audio media, interactive/video camera, data projector, exam question papers, graphs/newspapers, smartboard, and mimeo classroom media kit (professional studies, portfolio of assessment). these teaching media were introduced in the pgce to teach school mathematics during the related didactics module engagements. ‘chalkboard/whiteboard’ was indicated as the most suitable to teach mathematics from the perspective of those who completed the programme, because “mathematics … requires a lot of demonstrations and calculation on the whiteboard or chalkboard [and] mathematics … requires lots of teacher learner interaction (nqt4 professional studies, portfolio of assessment). practical tips on using a ‘chalkboard/whiteboard’ also influenced its rank as the most suitable teaching media. examples of practical tips include, “write from the left to the http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 1742022 40(4): 174-179 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) right” (nqt5 interview); “utilise all available space on the whiteboard” (nqt1 mathematics didactics, portfolio of assessment); and “face the learners when you talk to them…. write keywords with definitions on the board” (nqt3 mathematics didactics, portfolio of assessment). development linked to teaching media included observing and documenting how media was applied by practicing mathematics teachers in a classroom context. observations noted that the teachers used very few extra notes beyond the prescribed textbook to present mathematical concepts, methods and rules: “it is not common for teachers to supply extra handouts as most of the required work is in the textbooks” (nqt4 professional studies, portfolio of assessment). to supplement the prescribed textbook, the observed teachers used a ‘chalkboard/whiteboard’ while learners used a scientific calculator to complete the activities and calculations in the prescribed textbook. documented observations further revealed that while a school computer laboratory was dedicated to the teaching of the school subjects – ‘computer applications technology’ (cat) and ‘information technology’ (it) – these labs do not always include software specific for the teaching of mathematics. teaching school mathematics with a computer was restricted to ‘technology rich environments’ where learners had access to tablets and laptops and the teacher had a smartboard in the mathematics classroom. in summary, although the pgce introduced a variety of teaching media used by teachers, they primarily relied on a ‘chalkboard/whiteboard’ while the learners have prescribed textbooks and calculators. 5.2.4 competence in assessing learners involves designing, delivering and reflecting on assessments given to mathematics learners in a classroom context the module ‘mathematics didactics’ developed each prospective teacher’s ability to assess learners, including a formal pgce assignment requiring prospective teachers to design a variety of assessments for learners to test their competency in school mathematics. these assessments were then used during the school-based experience component of the pgce by disseminating the assessments to learners as part of a planned lesson. this development included several activities: the [prospective teachers] in a pgce mathematics classroom were required to design a test that they will give to [learners] while they are on their [school-based experiences component]. the test that a [prospective teacher] has developed was to be handed in for evaluation and the [teacher educator] had the assessment criteria to check if the test has been designed according to assessment criteria of designing a test and marks were given to each test (nqt5 professional studies, portfolio of assessment). in addition, the following four questions were used to clarify details linked to the assessment presented as evidence in the ‘portfolio of assessment’ for the module ‘mathematics didactics’: • what were the desired outcomes the learners had to demonstrate in the assessment task? • which of the stated outcomes were met? give reasons why you say this. • which of the stated outcomes were not met? give reasons why you say this. • how could the assessment be improved? the expectation in policy as per the definition of pedagogical knowledge is to know how to evaluate learners (dhet, 2015). this policy expectation was integrated into the pgce http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 1752022 40(4): 175-179 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 verster & sayed development of teacher knowledge in an initial teacher education programme by means of designing, delivering and reflecting on specific assessments as part of the formal pgce school-based experience component process. we argue that the process followed above serves as one example of how the pgce approached the policy expectation that different types of teacher knowledge should be integrated and applied to influence teaching practice (dhet, 2015). this occurred in the designing, delivering and reflecting on assessments used for teaching mathematics to practically apply their burgeoning professional teacher knowledge. to explore additional examples of integrating and applying knowledge, understanding that the pgce focused primarily on developing pedagogical knowledge, we close this analysis by discussing the programme methodology. 5.2.5 ‘guided self-study’ methodology used in the studied programme to link existing disciplinary knowledge with newly introduced pedagogical knowledge the overall approach in the pgce can best be described as ‘guided self-study’ (study guide; professional studies, teacher educator & programme co-ordinator interview), intended to influence prospective teachers’ ability to critically reflect on introduced pedagogical theories and practices to link to their existing ‘disciplinary knowledge’. this represents the core approach in the pgce to meet the policy expectation of equipping individuals with professional teacher knowledge to influence their teaching practice in a classroom (dhet, 2015:9). in support of this argument, the programme co-ordinator clarified the ‘guided self-study’ approach as follows: it is not leaving students to do their own thing. it is providing them with the scope and parameters within which to operate. with the pgce we need to give them the scope to be able to do.... their minds flow [reflect] where it wants to go (professional studies, teacher educator and programme co-ordinator interview). to guide the delivery of the programme methodology, reflection skills influenced the integration and application of teacher knowledge in teaching practice. the ability to use reflective skills acquired during the year was formally assessed as follows: “use the reflective skills developed so far this year and reflect on each of the assignments for this subject. use the attached reflection sheet for each assignment” (professional studies, portfolio of assessment). the reflection sheet provided by the university, linked to the formal assessment programme during the school-based experience component, asked the following guiding questions: • describe which aspect(s) was/were successful and explain why. • describe which aspect(s) was/were unsuccessful and explain why. • describe how this can be improved. • explain why you feel that the stated outcomes of the lesson were achieved or not achieved. • further remarks: …. (mathematics didactics portfolio of assessment & professional studies portfolio of assessment). overall, it is argued that the depth of professional teacher knowledge is highly dependent on prospective teachers taking charge of their own preparation for becoming a classroom teacher. the willingness and ability to reflect critically on professional teacher knowledge to improve future practices is integral to pgce. this core aim is achieved by ‘guided self-study’, supported by reflection sheets to record reflections on theories and experiences, focusing on professional teacher knowledge comprising the pgce. an example of the reflection skills developed during the pgce is presented below, as noted in a formal assessment reflection: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 1762022 40(4): 176-179 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) when learning takes place in the classroom the educator needs to be aware of not just the overt curriculum that is the set objectives, outcomes. he/she needs to take into consideration the hidden messages we as educators send the learners through our comments, gestures and content covered in the class (nqt professional studies, portfolio of assessment). the depth of discussions pertaining to topics introduced in the programme with ‘guided selfstudy’ was at the discretion of teacher educators and school-based mentor teachers, as indicated during the interviews: curriculum design is very flexible in the sense that there is no blueprint that says in pgce you must… you know, like in schools… also use my discretion on how much students can process at a particular time… bring my own perspective in the [pgce] curriculum (introduction to research, teacher educator interview) the benefits of the ‘guided self-study’ methodology, from the perspective of those who completed it, is that the pgce “introduced [them] to what teaching is all about” (nqt1 interview) and was “brilliant [and] you know what is expected of you” (nqt4 interview). the following was noted by one who completed the pgce to benefit fully from the methodology of ‘guided self-study’: “pgce is not there to teach you how to teach, for me. it puts more on what you can call embedded knowledge on what you already have.... so [the pgce] kind of gives one pros and cons of being a teacher” (nqt5 interview). the perception that the pgce ‘is not there to teach you how to teach’ came from the practice of focusing on the “relationships between pedagogical knowledge and [disciplinary] knowledge” (reeves & robinson, 2010: 237) and “many pgce courses are still organised in a way that suggests that skills and knowledge are to be acquired in a general (often abstract) form first before being deployed in specific circumstances at a later date” (philpott, 2006: 300). the above perception is accentuated when prospective teachers compare their experiences during a pgce with experiences of those completing a b.ed. based on the practice that “pgce curricula are largely concentrated versions of b.ed. curricula, without subject content modules” (taylor, 2014: 10). ‘learning to teach’ is an individual journey which policy is expected to govern in a standardised format. the university relies on ‘guided self-study’ to encourage the individual journey of learning to teach within the confines of national and institutional policy stipulations. 6. discussion we now return to the issue of how a pgce programme operationalises the mrteq policy which defines the required professional teacher knowledge in a one-year period within the context of learning to teach mathematics. this paper argues that that the pgce programme is designed with limited opportunities to develop ‘subject matter knowledge’ or ‘specific specialised subject matter’. the pgce programme introduces ‘pedagogical knowledge’, which prospective teachers are to link to their existing ‘disciplinary knowledge’ to integrate into their teaching practice, approaching mathematical content knowledge (‘subject matter knowledge’ and ‘specific specialised subject matter’) as essentially ‘already in place’. and if inadequate, the prospective teacher, it is assumed, will self-study to close identified gaps while in the process of completing the pgce. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 1772022 40(4): 177-179 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 verster & sayed development of teacher knowledge in an initial teacher education programme in terms of developing ‘disciplinary knowledge’, we argue that in the examined pgce programme, ‘specialised pedagogical content knowledge’ mentioned under ‘pedagogical knowledge’ and ‘specific specialised subject matter’ under ‘disciplinary knowledge’ in policy is, by and large, considered the same thing. the rationale is the overemphasis on subject administration that occurred in the pgce at the cost of developing ‘specific specialised subject matter knowledge’ during the module ‘mathematics didactics’, which was tasked with developing competence in mathematics teaching. moreover, this indicates that the pgce focuses on how to teach as the prospective teachers are assumed to have fully developed the what to teach within the context of school mathematics. concerning pedagogical knowledge in the programme, competence in assessing learners was gained by designing and delivering assessments and reflecting on the outcomes and processes involved when assessing learner mathematics competence (purwoko, nugraheni & instanti, 2019). pedagogical knowledge linked to teaching was influenced by introducing theories, observations and practical tips on how teaching media benefits the presentation of mathematical concepts, methods and rules. the overall methodology of the pgce to meet policy expectations was ‘guided-self-study’ supported by a reflection sheet for critical reflections. this guidance involved answering questions to explore successful and unsuccessful aspects, the cause of such, and ways to improve future teaching practice. ‘guided self-study’ and critical reflection served as the programme’s core approach to equip each nqt with professional knowledge types as defined in the mrteq policy. this suggests that learning to teach mathematics in a pgce involves general (often abstract) knowledge which is assumed to be integrated and applied as nqts gain experience and conduct selfstudy as a classroom teacher. 7. conclusion this study found that the pgce programme under investigation linked practice with policy expectations by relying on ‘guided self-study’ and ‘critical reflection’ as programme methodology, albeit unevenly. moreover, the linkage was crucially contingent on the quality of each student teacher’s past engagement with mathematics and engagement with lecturers. the broad nature of policy expectations and lack of clarity in differentiating the concepts ‘specific specialised subject matter’ and ‘specialised pedagogical content knowledge’ are argued to be key contributing factors explaining the uneven development in the pgce. the analysis of this paper suggests that the policy-practice gap in ite is partly the result of how policy conceptualises knowledge, and specifically, how policy conceives specialised knowledge and its instantiation in ite programmes. this suggests, as discussed, the need to revise ite policies to ensure that ‘specific specialised subject matter’ and ‘specialised pedagogical content knowledge’ are clearly differentiated to promote the development of each as an independent type of knowledge. in so doing, the ite could better prepare future teachers to teach effectively and ensure meaningful and equitable learning for all, particularly the marginalised, supporting inclusive economic growth in resource-constrained contexts. the paper argues for an effective bridging of the policy-practice gap in ite as delivered in countries experiencing resource constrained contexts. the limitations of this paper is anchored in the nature of a qualitative study which restricts generalisation. as a suggestion, it is urged to test the level of mathematical knowledge held by all prospective teachers enrolled for a pgce with mathematics as a major. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 1782022 40(4): 178-179 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) references adler, j., slonimsky, l. & reed, y. 2002. ‘challenges of teacher development: an investigation of take-up in south africa. in: y. reed & j. adler (eds.). challenges of teacher development: an investigation of take-up in south africa. pretoria: van schaik. burn, k. 2007. professional knowledge and identity in a contested discipline: challenges for student teachers and teacher educators. oxford review of education, 33(4): 445-467. https:// doi.org/10.1080/03054980701450886 che (council on higher education). 2010. report on the national review of academic and professional programmes in education. higher education monitor 11. pretoria: council on 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(eds.). learning to teach in post-apartheid south africa: student teachers’ encounters with initial teacher education (1st ed.). cape town: african sun media. https:// doi.org/10.18820/9781928357971 taylor, n. 2014. initial teacher education research project: an examination of aspects of initial teacher education curricula at five higher education institutions. summary report. johannesburg: jet education services. walkington, j. 2005. becoming a teacher: encouraging development of teacher identity through reflective practice. asia-pacific journal of teacher education, 33(1): 53-64. https:// doi.org/10.1080/1359866052000341124 zeichner, k. 2010. rethinking the connections between campus courses and field experiences in college and university-based teacher education. journal of teacher education, 35(3): 479501. https://doi.org/10.5902/198464442362 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6654 https://doi.org/10.18820/9781928357971 https://doi.org/10.18820/9781928357971 https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866052000341124 https://doi.org/10.1080/1359866052000341124 https://doi.org/10.5902/198464442362 _hlk63771116 _hlk52598221 141 an investigation of how 7th grade and 8th grade students manipulate mathematical writing elements abstract all mathematics is comprised of three elements: symbols, nominalizations, and images, and the combination of these three elements determine the mathematical meaning. however, adolescents may not be aware of these three elements. when asked to describe mathematical language, they will often name equations and images, two of the three elements. over the course of six months, 1,276 mathematical writing samples were gathered from 7th and 8th grade students. the research question of this study is: what mathematical writing elements are 7th and 8th students using in their mathematics classes? this paper describes a preliminary analysis of a larger data set of adolescent mathematical writing. preliminary analysis focused on 7th grade and 8th grade students’ uses of mathematical writing elements during their routine instruction, and the data showed that these students used the mathematical element that was asked of them by their teacher. these kinds of responses showed that students employed audience theory, audience theory is when the writer is cognizant of his/her reader and will adapt the written work to that specific reader. in this case, the students mathematically wrote in a way that was expected by the teacher. when the teachers gave mathematical problems within a specific framework or graphic organizer, students complied with that format, using the appropriate mathematical element. both groups followed the directives of their teachers, using the mathematical elements that were asked of them. key words: mathematical writing; adolescents; writing elements; context; form 1. background of the study in 2000, the national council of teachers of mathematics (nctm) in the united states wrote mathematical principles and standards that students should know at each grade level, and for the first time, nctm adopted communication standards for all grades. these standards focus on not only mathematical knowledge but also how that knowledge is conveyed in written and oral forms. their goal is to improve mathematical knowledge and application for all students. when these standards were adopted, the focus was on the use of conventional words in explaining mathematical thinking, for students to clearly express their mathematical byung-in seo chicago state university, u.s.a. doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/ pie.v37i2.10 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 37(2): 141-159 date published: 27 november 2019 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.10 http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie 142 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) ideas and thinking processes to not only their teachers but also to people outside of the mathematics classroom, like their friends and family members. since these standards were adopted, the majority of the research in the united states on adolescent mathematical writing has focused on this communication standard. writing became a means of understanding the students’ thinking processes by improving the communication between the students and their teachers. for example, incorporating journal writing in the students’ routine instruction has allowed students a means of expressing their mathematical attitudes, confusion, and anxieties. students who normally would not speak up in class were more communicative in written conversations (baxter, woodward, & olson, 2005; mcintosh & draper, 2001; pugalee, 2001; williams, 2003). more recently, bruun, diaz, and dykes (2015), martin (2015), colonnese, amspaugh, lemay, evans, and field (2018), jao and hall (2018), focused their research on how students communicate mathematical concepts using scripted words. brozo and crain (2018) gives instructional strategies on how students can express mathematical symbolic notation into scripted words. while santos and semana (2014) included mathematical symbols and images as part of student writing, their emphasis with regards to assessment was on the scripted words. studies have shown that writing helps with the metacognitive processes of learning mathematics (bruun et al., 2015; colonnese et al., 2018). therefore, students’ mathematical writing primarily is reflective and used at a personal level. beyond the personal level, mathematics teachers understand that when students communicate a mathematical idea clearly to another individual, then the likelihood of that student understanding the mathematical concepts are high (brozo & crain, 2018; jao & hall, 2018). when reading a mathematical text, the author uses different mathematical writing elements, but current research focuses on the students’ uses of either scripted words (text) only nor symbols and text. the research problem focuses on the need to improve students’ mathematical communication beyond focusing on the students’ uses of scripted words. however, before any improvements can be made, it is necessary to understand the kinds of mathematical writing that students produce in their mathematics class. 2. aim of the research mathematical communication needs to improve. in the united states, nctm (2000) determined clear communication guidelines because they saw a need that students need to not only know procedural mathematical knowledge but also be able to convey this knowledge to different kinds of audiences. teachers of mathematics must give their students opportunities to “think through problems; formulate explanations; try out new vocabulary; experiment with forms of argumentation;’ justify conjectures; and reflect on their own understanding and on the ideas of others” (p. 272). as one can see, the focus is on the words students need to use, while the incorporation of mathematical notation is implied. however, there needs to be equal analysis of all aspects of writing in mathematics class to include symbols, nominalizations, and images. the current emphasis on analyzing scripted words disregards other aspects of mathematical writing. once this understanding has been established, then there can be a discussion about curricular and instructional changes. therefore, this paper focuses on one aspect of the collected data, how pre-secondary level students use the mathematical elements in their routine instructional lessons. the research question is: what mathematical writing elements are 7th and 8th grade students using in their mathematics classes? 143 seo an investigation of how 7th grade and 8th grade... even though this study was completed in the united states, findings can be applied to south african students. american and south african students cover the similar topics at the same grade levels. similar to the united states, south africa also wants to improve mathematical abilities, and communication is one of those abilities. with the exclusion of one or more of the writing elements, these elements are either disregarded or forgotten. for example, in the grade 10 everything maths textbook (kannemeyer, jenkin, van zyl, & scheffler, 2014), the focus is on equations and calculations. the images are used as organizational tools for clarification of the equations. this book has no lessons on the use of nominalizations, highly specialized text that is uniquely mathematical. the reality is that there needs to be an understanding of how students use all three elements as communication tools. therefore, there is a great likelihood that both sets of students may use similar mathematical writing elements but have not been investigated. 3. theoretical framework the theoretical framework for this study focuses on different perspectives of mathematical writing. morgan (1998) had earlier stated that there was no true definition of mathematical writing because mathematical writing can be seen in many forms. mathematical writing is multi-dimensional (ernest, 2008a, 2008b; seo, 2009). however, mathematical writing is no different from other genres, in that all writing is comprised of elements, and those elements are part of its discourse (gee, 2015). the conventional definition of “writing” primarily focuses on linguistic features of writing, the syntax, lexicon, and diction. mathematical writing has these linguistic features, but the elements of this kind of writing are different; they are subject specific. lemke (1995) describes scientific and mathematical languages to be highly condensed. condensation is taking a complex idea and condensing it into a few words or symbols. for example, in pre-secondary level mathematics, students may learn the concept of “slope.” while the basic definition of “slope” is “rise over run,” a sentence “slope = 1/2” conveys more than the “rise over run.” it conveys the direction, the steepness, and its xand y-intercepts. in this study of mathematical writing, it is specifically comprised of three basic elements: symbols, nominalizations, and images (seo, 2015). 3.1 symbols symbols are any mark on a surface that convey meaning, and that meaning changes according to context (harris, 1995; rotman, 2000). for example, “—“ is just a horizontal line. however, when it is typed as “mixed-methods,” it is a hyphen. while in this context, “5-2,” it denotes subtraction. keep in mind that it is the same horizontal line, only its context changed. symbols are the essence of mathematics. its combination provides the mathematical language used in its understanding (sfard, 2000). symbols delegate complex cognitive tasks to an external environment (van dyck & heefer, 2014). mathematics can be seen as a transposition of symbols. even though the format of the equations change, as each process is carried out, it is essentially the same as the previous equation. the equations may look differently, but the meanings are similar. the way students use symbols is a product of their environment. teachers model the “correct” way to use the symbols, and the students will emulate it in order to get a positive grade from the teacher. mathematics is a field of condensation where there are multiple meanings and functions within one notation (o’halloran, 2008). there are different kinds of symbols. numbers and letters are commonly recognized, and their combination shows a condensation of meanings 144 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) and activity. for example, in order the understand “3x,” one needs to first understand that “x” denotes an unknown number, and this unknown number can be of any value. also, the combination of the “3” and the “x” next to each other shows that they are being multiplied together. the multiplication sign is omitted, because there is an understanding of the multiplicative action that is taking place in this combination. [ ] and ( ) designate the order of operations within an equation. [(3-1) + (4-3)] means that the actions within the parentheses needs to be completed first. then, the answers from within the parentheses are added, to have a final product. mathematics can be seen as a transposition of symbols, where even though the format of the equations change, as each process is carried out, it is essentially the same as the previous equation. the equations may look differently, but the meanings are similar. the way students express their mathematical thinking changes as their audience changes. for example, seo (2009, 2011) learned that when adolescents were given mathematical prompts in both english and mathematics classes, even though the students wrote the same meanings, but their writing changed. writing from the mathematics classes only contained symbols in the form of equations, while the writing from the english classes contained scripted words (nominalizations) along with the symbols and equations. logograms are symbols that represents an idea. logograms, are also referred to as ideograms, even though there may not be a direct association to speech or a phonetic sound (harris, 1995). examples of ideograms are chinese characters and egyptian hieroglyphics. in both of those example, one character or one picture represents an idea. in mathematics, logograms are primarily used to represent an action or activity in the problem. for example, “+” means to add together two or more items. “=” isn’t a number or a letter, but it is still a symbol. other symbols are “-”, “%” and “=”. all of these symbols show some kinds of action or activity that needs to take place, but there is not a specific phonological identity to them. in order for the activity to take place, the student needs to understand the meanings of the logograms. in general, logograms don’t change their meanings as their context changes. “+” is still addition no matter where it may be placed in the text, and “%” still means percentage. there are mathematical symbols whose role is to keep order of the operations. brackets and parentheses are used specifically to provide order in the operations. if there are mathematical activities within parentheses and within brackets, the activity within the parentheses are always calculated first. then, once those calculations have been completed, then the calculations within the brackets are completed. it there are multiple parentheses and brackets, the calculations are completed inside-out (o’halloran, 2008). in figure 1, this 7th grade student used parenthesis to group the additive numbers prior to distributing the multiplicative value: the way mathematical symbols are written follow a certain format. with scripted words, that writing is linear. in english, the words are written and read from left to right. in mathematics, while each step it written and read left to right, the steps are written vertically, as in figure 1. this vertical structure adds to the condensation of the mathematical meaning. the writing is easier to read and discern when written vertically. each step is a line unto itself, and the logical order between steps is evident. if these equations were written in paragraph form, there would be a need for transitional words, linking one step to the next. in its vertical format, the transitions are assumed, since one step follows the other. 145 seo an investigation of how 7th grade and 8th grade... figure 1: vertical manifestation of mathematical processes from a 7th grade student symbolic writing can be seen as variations on a theme. in figure 1, the initial equation and its answers are the same values. while the used of symbols differ, the meaning stays the same. one is the numeric figure. second is multiplication. third is subtraction, and fourth is division. in this case, each process depicts a different meaning, showing how the different combination of symbols, while the same, can also be quite different. nevertheless, there is an assumption that the reader understands each of the symbolic combinations in order to discern that the meanings are the same (danielson, 2010). figure 1 shows how mathematics is condensed from an equation to a single value. mathematics is reliant on writing and its symbols. without them, the realm of mathematics would be limited because everything would need to be thought based. with writing, people can visually represent their mathematical meaning and visually show how the meanings can be manipulated to either produce new meaning or show that the meaning stayed the same. mathematical semiotics is “unambiguously encoded in ways which involve maximal economy and condensation” [author emphasis] (o’halloran, 2008, p. 97). the economical encoding allows the symbols and mathematical functions to be manipulated in a way that different orders and placements still allows the mathematical problem to be solved and the meanings to emerge. items in the inner brackets in figure 1 can be rearranged, and the meanings would stay the same. for example, (x+4) can be written as (4+x), and the meaning would stay the same. it is necessary to examine students’ uses of symbols because symbols are the most commonly used mathematical writing element at these grade levels. 146 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) 3.2 nominalizations nominalizations are highly condensed acronyms, words, and phrases to explain a more complex idea. it is a type of thematic condensation (lemke, 1995). these meaning-packed words are nominalizations. the term “nominalization” is when an activity including its participants and circumstances is put into a noun form. once in this form, the noun is used instead of describing the whole activity and/or explaining the complete process. it is seen as the shortest or easiest way to describe an action or concept. for each genre, the specific knowledge, processes and context need to be specified, in order for the nominalization to be understood (van dijk, 2008). thematic condensation works because there is a tacit agreement on the meanings of the words. this nominalization process an example of thematic condensation, where the implied activity can be qualified and related to other activities in a condensed manner. mathematics by its nature is condensed, and the economical use of symbols shows the greatest amount of meaning in as few “words” as possible (o’halloran, 2008). in 8th grade, students are taught the concept of “slope.” slope is the gradation of a line on a cartesian graph, determining its steepness and direction. commonly known as “rise over run,” 8th grade students are often not aware of its multiple meanings. when asked, “what is the slope of this line?” students need to not only explain how steep it is but also its direction and where it intersects the xand y-axis. another nominalization is “distributive property.” in mathematics, this property stated that with a group of numbers, one would get the same answer whether a number is multiplied to the whole group or whether that number is multiplied to each individual number in the group and then add them together. in both cases, students may be able to complete the procedures without understanding that these terms represent a more complex meaning. by understanding the different nominalizations that these pre-secondary level student use, teachers can obtain a better idea of their students’ mathematical communication abilities. 3.3 images images are anything that is not a symbol or a nominalization (o’halloran, 2008). they can range from diagrams, organizational tools (i.e. t-chart for geometric proofs), to tables and graphs. similar to nominalizations, images can be highly condensed, using one image to convey multiple concepts. these elements can represent mathematical ideas in succinct ways. diagrams represent the mathematics within a problem without specific surface details, and pictures can be used as placeholders of thought (pimm 1995). in addition, unlike symbols, images are static. for example, figure 2 has an image from a 7th grade student: figure 2: image from a 7th grade student in this image, it is clear that it is a number line. there is a designation of “0” in the middle of the line, and there are vertical lines to the left of the “0”, to designate negative numbers. in addition, there is a squiggly line to the right, designating that the line represents “0” and all positive numbers. as seen in figure 2, images can convey multiple meanings. when combined, these multiple meanings can give an overall significance to the image, similar to a paragraph (rotman, 2000). as previously stated, mathematics, by its nature, is a form of 147 seo an investigation of how 7th grade and 8th grade... writing that is compact and impactful. images are one kind of compaction. it is necessary to understand students’ uses of this mathematical element in order to fully comprehend their mathematical concepts and ideations. 3.4 negotiation of elements one of the difficulties of learning mathematics is the negotiation of these three elements to convey meaning. mathematics is primarily a written language as opposed to a spoken one. mathematical discourse and condensation promotes a kind of elitism (lemke, 1995). for example, when stating “sss inequality,” mathematicians can identify the postulate. it represents only one postulate, no others. individual symbols may be easier to understand, but when groups into nominalizations and other condensed vocabulary have determined meanings, and those meanings are agreed upon within the member of “the club.” any opposition to these meanings is not tolerated. similar to other non-native languages, mathematical and scientific language tends to be exclusive. those people who are not able to negotiate these three elements fluently will not be able to communicate to others in this field. there are difficulties in traditional writing analysis in mathematics. traditional analysis focuses on scripted words. in mathematics, “words” needs to be defined. if “words” are a combination of symbols that have a specific meaning (harris, 1995), then “sss” and “3x” would be considered words. however, if the definition of “words” means that they need to have morphemes, then two-thirds of the mathematical aspects would not qualify. three aspects work simultaneously: symbols, nominalizations (which includes scripted words), and images. all three aspects are needed in order to understand the full mathematical meaning. without one of them, the meaning would be incomplete (hammill, 2010). students write what they see and what they expect from their teachers. as a result, students primarily learn how to manipulate these elements based on what they are taught. based on informal interviews with three high-school mathematics teachers, the focus of high-school mathematical writing is to keep the tone objective. while there may be lexical changes, the syntax and dialect primarily stays constant. while there may be variations in pronunciation, it usage and grammar are the same. for example, an equation can be seen as a sentence. in 3x+2 = 5, “3x+2” can be seen as a compound subject, “=” is the linking verb, and “5” is the predicate nominative. in pre-secondary level mathematics, all equations are comprised of the same way. the equal sign serves as a link between the signifier and the signified (o’halloran, 2008). therefore, the grammar stays constant throughout the subject. when reading about mathematical writing methodologies, one can surmise that a mathematical sentence is primarily comprised of scripted words (huang & normandia, 2007; macgregor, 2005; pugalee, 2005). as stated earlier, nominalizations represent complex concepts and processes in a simplified form. then, nominalizations, even though they are nouns, can be representative of complete sentences. in order to understand what kind of sentence it represents, the writing analyst needs to know which nominalizations represent processes and which ones represents concepts. the two-column geometric proof (figure 3) is a visual representation can be seen as being comprised of five to 10 sentences, depending on how the proof is read. 148 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) figure 3: example of a two-column geometric proof the purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of how pre-secondary students use mathematical writing elements in their routine instruction. students are exposed to symbols, nominalizations, and images every day, from their textbooks and decorations/ posters on the classroom walls. as variables, each of these dependent variables will be used to code the data according to their frequencies and contextual uses. 4. methodology prior to any data being collected, approval was granted from chicago state university’s institutional review board and the district superintendent. 4.1 setting ljh is a school that houses 7th and 8th grade students. there are 10 teachers in the mathematics department: five teachers in 7th grade, and five teachers in 8th grade. all mathematics classes had between 20-30 students. teachers had the freedom to organize the students’ learning spaces. of the 10 teachers, five teachers had the desks in rows (six rows of five desks each), three teachers put the desks into groups (six groups of five desks each), and two teachers had students sit at round tables (five students per table). one teacher had his desk at the back of the room, behind the students. five teachers’ desks were off to the side of the students, and four teachers had their desks at the front of the room. all classrooms had a laptop connected to a projector and white boards and/or chalkboards at the front of the room. in addition, all classrooms had mathematics related decorations on the walls, and these decorations had symbols, nominalizations, and/or images on them. 149 seo an investigation of how 7th grade and 8th grade... 4.2 subjects during school year 2017-2018, this school had 696 students in 7th and 8th grades (illinois state board of education, 2018). of the 696 students, 654 students submitted both the student assent form and the parent consent form (94% return). of these 654 students, 125 7th grade students and 130 8th grade students agreed to be part of this study (39% return). in the united states, students of similar abilities are in the same class. for example, teachers can have a class of only students who have difficulty understanding and executing mathematical concepts and procedures, or they may have a class of students who are gifted in mathematics. therefore, mathematics classes at this school are homogeneous with regards to student ability levels. 4.3 instruments the goal of this preliminary study was to understand the kinds of writing 7th grade and 8th grade students produced during their routine instruction. teachers’ routine instruction procedures did not change as a result of this study. based on informal interviews, teachers stated that they chose bell-ringer activities or exit activities to submit as data. bell-ringer activities are short, 5-10 minute exercises that help students recall information from prior lessons, in order to lead into and provide continuity to the current lesson (kane, 2018). teachers will give exit activities as a review of the day’s lesson. similar to the bell-ringers, exit activities are between 5-10 minutes, given at the end of the class period (kane, 2018). one 8th grade teacher selected activities given for examination reviews. with all of the activities, none required grades from the teachers, and all were completed within the class period. no teacher gave copies of homework assignments or extracurricular mathematical activities as writing samples. 4.4 data collection process the first meeting was with the mathematics department (10 teachers). at this meeting, the teachers learned of the research project and their responsibilities. in addition, the teachers explained the school’s mathematics curriculum, the general organization of each class, and the topics that are covered over the course of each quarter. after explaining the goals of this research project, they were given assent forms to read and sign. all 10 teachers signed the assent forms. at the end of the meeting, a date was set for the primary investigator (pi) to visit the mathematics classes and to determine when to collect the student assent and parental consent forms. to obtain student assent and parental consent, the pi visited every mathematics class over the course of one school day (8 hours). during these visits, she explained the study to the students and answered their questions. also at this time, the pi conducted informal observations of the learning environment. these observations included the organization of the desks in relationship to the teacher’s planning space, the decorations on the classroom walls, and the kinds of technology used in the classroom. each classroom visit lasted 10 minutes. once student assent and parental consent forms were received, a list of students who agreed to be part of the study was given to the teachers. each student was assigned a number, and the teachers were instructed to replace the students’ names with the corresponding numbers. this method provided anonymity, because the pi did not personally know the students. when the teachers agreed to participate in this study, they also agreed to not penalize the students who chose not to be part of this study. the pi gave each teacher 150 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) seven envelopes, one for each month between november and april. over a six month period, teachers submitted copies of their students’ work. for three months (december, january, february), not all of the 8th grade teachers submitted writing sample because they took class time to prepare their students for high school entrance examinations. as a result, 1,276 pieces of writing were collected. there were students who did not submit all six writing samples because they were absent from class. the pi reached her goal of obtaining writing samples, from the use of symbols only to the use of symbols, nominalizations, and images. 4.5 analysis process these writing samples were analyzed through discourse analysis. discourse analysis looks at how language is used in order to convey meaning (seo, 2017). gee (2015) stated that there are two kinds of discourse: discourse (with an upper case “d”) and discourse (with a lower case “d”). discourse, with an upper case “d” focuses on not only what is written but also in what context, where it was written, the social interactions within the classroom, and the communication environment as a whole, while discourse, with a lower case “d” focuses only on the words that are used in the communication (gee, 2015). in educational research, discourse analysis often focuses on classroom talk, analyzing who says what, what is being said, and the interaction between the subjects, their context, and the topics. discourse is determined semantically by what will be said, and pragmatically by how it is situated (van dijk, 2008). for the purposes of this discourse analysis, the focus is on the mathematical writing elements that the students used. there is an interaction between the student, the text, and the audience, and it is within this interaction where meaning is to be conveyed (bahktin, 1981). in this case, meaning is determined by the students’ abilities to convey their mathematical knowledge through their writings. conveyed meaning is more than getting the mathematical problem solved correctly. it also includes procedural and conceptual explanations (nctm, 2000). more commonly used in analyzing oral exchanges, discourse analysis (with a small “d”) is between individuals or within classroom discussions. during these exchanges, non-verbal expressions are noted, and those notations are included with the textual data. for this study, the data is static because the focus is on what the students wrote, not their oral expressions during the writing process. as stated earlier, the focus was on what the students wrote, not where, because the settings of these students are equivalent. the most fundamental coding method in discourse analysis is identifying the number of times and where a linguistic element occurs in the writing samples. for example, a researcher may want to know how often the word “an” is used, counting every occurrence of that word. then, that same researcher will focus on where “an” is used, whether it is in a sentence, a figure or as a semantic unit. these mathematical writing samples were coded similarly, with the linguistic elements of symbols, nominalizations, and images. for each grade level, there were two levels of coding. first, i counted how many times each element was used. second, i examined in what context the element was used. for example, symbols were used in all 1,276 mathematical writing samples. out of the 708 writing samples from 7th grade students, 119 writing samples had images, and these images were only used as an organization tool when solving geometric problems. the focus of these themes was to identify similarities and differences among the 7th grade students as a whole and the 8th grade students as a whole. 151 seo an investigation of how 7th grade and 8th grade... 5. results the student writing samples were examined as two units. one unit is the 7th grade students, and the second unit is the 8th grade students. it was necessary to examine the kinds of writing as a whole before examining it into parts. for both grades, students wrote according to what was expected of them. whether it was via oral directions and/or presentation of mathematical concepts and problems, all students answered the mathematical questions. since there were no observations of teachers’ interactions with their students, the focus of this study is on the written presentation of the mathematical problems, the static data. these presentations were in the form of a problem on the chalkboard (i.e. solve for x: 2x+3=9), an assignment in a mathematics textbook (i.e. on page 24, complete problems 1, 3, and 5), or they were part of a worksheet. when students complete problems from the chalkboard and the textbooks, they do not write the question first and then solve the problem. instead, students solve the problem on loose-leaf paper and give it to the teacher to grade (see figure 4). students assume that their teacher understands what they wrote. in another study, 7th grade students have stated that when they write mathematically for their mathematics teachers, they do not need to explain the mathematical processes in detail because as one student stated, “the math teacher already knows this stuff” (seo, 2011). figure 4: seventh grade student’s work on paper on the surface, figure 4 looks like a collage of symbols and logograms: numbers, addition sign, horizontal lines, and dots. however, as lemke (1995) stated, mathematics is a highly condensed language, and only those who are familiar with the language can determine its meanings. therefore, figure 4 also shows how the 7th grade students used numbers, letters, and logograms to express the mathematical meaning. the letter “x” represented an unknown value, and the logogram “>” represented the concept of one side of the equation is less than the other side of the equation. 5.1 seventh grade students seventh grade students used symbols, nominalizations, and images in order to convey their mathematical knowledge. writing samples from the 7th grade students contained symbols, nominalizations, and images. at the beginning of the year, students wrote symbols only. however, as the year progressed and the mathematical concepts became more difficult, the students learned to incorporate nominalizations and images in their mathematical writing. 152 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) as previously stated, 7th grade students used images when solving geometric problems. geometry is considered to be a more advanced level of mathematics, and it is taught towards the end of the second term. while there may be an expectation of the use of images, it is not necessarily required. 5.1.1 use of symbols writing samples collected at the beginning of the first term consisted of only symbols. for example, figure 4 was obtained during the first data collection during the second month of the academic year. in figure 4, the student used symbols and wrote mathematical sentences, changing the format yet keeping the same meaning (van dyck & heefer, 2014). all students who submitted writing on loose-leaf paper had the same format and vertical organization. through informal observations of the teachers’ classrooms, all of the 7th grade teachers had posters and other decorations on the walls that exhibited this same organization. 5.1.2 use of nominalizations nominalizations are introduced as vocabulary words at the beginning of each unit. however, 7th grade students are not required to use these words in their mathematical writing assignments. referring to figure 4 again, the student is expressing additive property in the calculations. while the student does not write the words “additive property,” the calculations illustrate this nominalization. 5.1.3 use of images as stated earlier, images are static and are often used as an organization tool (o’halloran, 2008). images are content specific. in pre-secondary level mathematics, they are used when solving geometric problems. geometry is a topic that is covered later in the academic year. at ljh, it is at the beginning of the second term. for example, the writing sample in figure 5, which is representative of the 119 uses of images, was collected in the middle of the school year at the beginning of the second term. thus, it is not surprising that this student used symbols and images. the symbols are the numerals and mathematical notation, and the image is used as a device to organize the student’s mathematical thinking: figure 5: seventh grade student’s use of symbols and images 153 seo an investigation of how 7th grade and 8th grade... “p” designates the perimeter, and “a” designates the area. in order for the student to keep the values in place, this person used this image of the rectangle and half-circles as an organization tool. the student assigned numbers to the corresponding parts of the image. once the values have been visualized, it is easier for the student to determine the perimeter and area for this problem. an example of a 7th grade student using symbols, nominalization, and images can be seen in figure 6. this example was collected towards the end of the school year. in this case, the student used numerals, mathematical notation, nominalization, and a triangle (image). in this case, the student wrote “110” at the bottom left angle of the triangle, and “25” at the bottom right angle of the triangle. the nominalization “angle” designates what the student is trying to explain, and the symbolic notation are in the form of numbers and degree notation (i.e. 110o). the image, as a static entity, is used to illustrate and clarify what the student wrote. figure 6: seventh grade student using symbols, nominalization, and image 5.1.4 use of graphic organizers graphic organizers are learning tools for students to organize their mathematical thoughts. teachers will give specific directions when using them (kane, 2018). therefore, it is not surprising that the 7th grade students conformed their writing to the expectations of the graphic organizer because they are, in a sense, conditioned to do so. all of the answers are written within the organization’s boundaries. in addition, because the worksheet specifically asked for symbolic writing, the student complied (see figure 7). 154 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) figure 7: seventh grade student’s work with a graphic organizer out of 708 writing samples from 7th grade students, these figures are representative of what the group as a whole submitted. in terms of the research question, 7th grade students use all of the mathematical writing elements. however, based on when the writing sample was collected, it seems that the use of images and nominalizations are more advanced elements for them to employ. symbols are used throughout the six-month period, but images were used during their geometry unit, and nominalizations were introduced towards the end of their geometry unit. 5.2 eighth grade students at ljh, all 8th grade students take pre-algebra. however, the advanced students will complete the pre-algebra curriculum in one term and start an algebraic curriculum in the second term of the academic year. unlike the 7th grade students who are gradually introduced to the uses of nominalizations and images, 8th grade students will incorporate symbols, images, and nominalizations in their routine classroom work from the beginning of the year. while 7th grade students are introduced to geometric concepts at the beginning of the second term, geometry is one of the first lessons in the 8th grade curriculum. the 8th grade teachers preferred to use graphic organizers and worksheets out of a workbook that corresponded with their textbook. similar to the 7th grade students, 8th grade students wrote within the given organization of the learning tool, and they used symbols, nominalizations, and images simultaneously, when the learning tool asked for that specificity. as seen in figure 8, this 8th grade student used specific mathematical writing elements in the appropriate sections. 155 seo an investigation of how 7th grade and 8th grade... figure 8: eighth grade student example using symbols, nominalizations, and images while figure 8 is not technically a graphic organizer like figure 7, this worksheet asks students to use the mathematical writing elements in specific places. for example, question b asks the student to write a related function; functions are often written using symbols, specifically numbers and logograms. question c provides a template of a graph, which signals to the student that an image needs to be drawn in its place. instead of using the image as an organizing device, the graph is used as an instrument to clarify the symbolic writing. finally, question d asks for an interpretation of the mathematical symbols and image. in the explanation, the students uses the nominalization “slope” to designate the quality of the incline of the line. this negotiation of mathematical elements was commonly seen in the 8th grade algebra classes. these advanced students have the mathematical knowledge and acumen to use all of the mathematical elements to communicate and convey mathematical meanings. the 8th grade students submitted 568 writing samples. of these writing samples, 201 writing samples only contained symbols. figure 9 is an example of an 8th grade student only using symbols. what is important to note is that the directives stated “solve using the best method:” and the student chose to use only symbols to show the best method of solving the problem. eighth grade students, as a whole, used only symbols with the simple directive “solve.” 156 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) figure 9: eighth grade student using only symbols of the 8th grade writing samples, 185 writing samples had two of the three elements: symbols and images. similar to the 7th grade students, 8th grade students used images as an organizational tool in geometric problems. however, unlike the 7th grade students, 8th grade students solve geometric problems during the first term of the school year (see figure 10). figure 10: eighth grade student using an image as an organizational tool finally, 182 writing samples from the 8th grade students contained all three mathematical writing elements: symbols, nominalizations, and images (see figure 8). while symbols were used when solving all of the mathematical problems, nominalizations were used only when directed as in figure 8. 6. discussion in 2009, seo learned that audience theory could be applied to mathematical writing. audience theory states that writers will adapt their writing style and language according to whom they 157 seo an investigation of how 7th grade and 8th grade... are writing. even when writers can have the same content, the way this content is expressed differs (ede & lunsford, 1984). in that study, 10th grade student wrote mathematically in mathematics and english classes. results showed that students in the english class wrote scripted words to the english teacher while the same students used only symbols and images when communicating to their mathematics teachers. in other words, the students adapted their writing styles according to their audiences (seo, 2009). with these analyzed writing samples in this study, students conformed their writing according to the form that was presented to them. this characteristic is clearly seen in figures 7 and 8. in figures 7 and 8, students wrote all of their answers within the boxes that were given to them. these students did not have stray writing outside of the boxes. the student used symbols (equations), nominalizations (words) or images (graph) only in the sections that asked for it. the data also showed that mathematical writing is task dependent. as seen in figures 7 and 8, whatever elements students used depended on the mathematical activity. when instructed to simplify and solve equations, students used exclusively symbols, conveying their mathematical ideas through as pimm (1995) would say, numerical sentences. students also used scripted words and the appropriate nominalizations and/or images to express their ideas as seen in figures 6 and 8, which shows that students are able to manipulate more than one mathematical writing element in order to convey their mathematical meanings. images were also used as a means of organizing and/or clarifying the mathematical information in a way that was easier for the student to understand (see figures 5, 6, and 8). all of the mathematical elements are equitably used based on the mathematical task. as seen in figure 8, there were specific places to use the appropriate mathematical writing element. for instance, when the student is asked to draw a graph, space is made on the worksheet for this image. mathematical writing is used to convey mathematical ideas, and all of the students completed that task using mathematical writing. however, in order to understand those ideas, it is necessary for the reader, who can be a fellow student or teacher, to comprehend what lemke (1995) would identify as highly condensed language. individuals who understand the condensed language are also more likely to be able to manipulate it. unlike the 7th grade students, 8th grade students used multiple mathematics writing elements earlier in the school year. this difference in performance would make sense because 8th grade students have more mathematical knowledge than the 7th grade students. with more knowledge comes better reading and writing of mathematical language. as individual entities or as a group, the elements can convey mathematical meaning. however, when more than one element is used in combination or all three at the same time, they work to convey the overall mathematical meaning (see figure 8) for a given mathematical problem. 7. conclusion this preliminary analysis provided a generality of the kinds of mathematical writing 7th grade and 8th grade students produced. both groups of students employed audience theory in their mathematical writing assignments, and both groups used symbols, nominalizations, and images when asked by the teacher. also, they conformed their writing based on the task that was asked of them to complete according to the perceived expectations of their teachers. this information is important to know because it shows that if teachers want their students to use specific mathematical writing elements, then these teachers need to pose mathematical problems that require their students to use all of the elements in their 158 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) mathematical communication. additional analysis is necessary in order to understand if this conformity is only seen at the surface level or if it exists at the linguistic level as well. references bakhtin, mm 1981. the dialogic imagination. austin, tx: university of texas press. baxter, ja, woodward, j, & olson, d 2005. writing in mathematics: an alternative form of communication for academically low-achieving students. learning disabilities research & practice, 20: 119-135. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5826.2005.00127.x brozo, wg & crain, s 2018. writing in math: a disciplinary literacy approach. the clearing house: a journal of educational strategies, issues, and ideas, 91: 7-13. https://doi.org/10.10 80/00098655.2017.1342435 bruun, f, diaz, jm, & dykes, j 2015. the language of mathematics. teaching children mathematics, 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821-828. https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926508095897 van dyck, m & heefer, a 2014. script and symbolic writing in mathematics and natural philosophy. foundations of science, 19: 1-10. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-012-9310-y williams, km 2003. writing about the problem-solving process to improve problem-solving performance. mathematics teacher, 96: 185-187. https://doi.org/10.1111/ssm.12131 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1949-8594.2001.tb18026 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1949-8594.2009.tb17944 https://doi.org/10.5642/jhummath.201502.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781473997042 http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781473997042 https://doi.org/10.1177/0957926508095897 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699 2422020 38(1): 242-254 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.17 the views and experiences of grade 10 life sciences teachers on the compulsory practical examination abstract with the introduction of the curriculum assessment and policy statement (caps) for life sciences (ls) in 2012 in south african schools, a practical examination has become compulsory in grades 10 and 11. the ls caps policy stipulates the types of practical work that needs to be conducted to develop specific process skills in learners. this case study explored grade 10 ls teachers’ views and experiences of the practical examination. this study was underpinned by two constructs from rogan and grayson’s theory of curriculum implementation, namely the profile of implementation pertaining to practical work and the capacity to innovate. purposive sampling was used to generate data via questionnaires and individual interviews with grade 10 ls teachers at selected schools of the umtshezi ward of estcourt region. the findings highlight how physical resources, the mismatch between the medium of instruction and the learners’ home language, the culture of teaching and learning, teacher uncertainty and lack of confidence in performing practical work affect the kinds of practical work engaged in and their experiences of the practical examination. in addition, the dissonance between the intended ls caps policy document regarding types of practical work and the kinds of science process skills that ought to be developed in learners and the enacted ls caps policy document is exposed. subsequently the disjuncture between policy intention and practice emphasises the need for continuous teacher professional development and a supportive school ethos. keywords: capacity to innovate, implementation, life sciences teachers, practical examination, practical work. 1. introduction practical work is an integral part of the life sciences (ls) curriculum, and is used as an avenue to develop in learners science process skills, scientific knowledge, an understanding of the nature of science, increase motivation for learning science as well as understanding of the role of science in society (doe, 2011). to hone in on the above merits of practical work, the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) life sciences for grade 10–12 was authors: mrs. s. furiwai1 dr. a. singhpillay1* affiliation: 1university of kwazululnatal doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v38i1.17 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(1): 242-254 published: 11 june 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1540-8992 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.17 243 furiwai & singhpillay the views and experiences of grade 10 life sciences teachers 2020 38(1): 243-254 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.17 introduced in 2012 at south african schools. the policy brought with it a mandatory practical examination in grade 10 and 11. the caps ls was first introduced in grade 10 in 2012, and in 2013 and 2014 it was to be introduced at grades 11 and 12 respectively. this means that during the period of 2012 to 2014 ls teachers were involved in teaching two curricula as a result of the overlap period of phasing out one (the national curriculum statement (ncs) further education and training life sciences for grades 10–12) and introducing another curriculum (caps ls grade 10–12) (singh-pillay & samuel, 2017). the mandatory practical examination is one hour (doe, 2011). teachers of ls are expected to ensure that the necessary chemicals, specimens, equipment and invigilators are available for the practical examinations (yalcincelik, kadayifci, uner & turan-oluk, 2017). this means that the ls teacher was responsible not only for the organisation, administration and implementation of the practical examination but was also expected to cope with teaching two curricula simultaneously. with regard to the aforementioned point it is worth noting that literature is replete with studies that illuminate that the implementation of a new programme or change in curriculum is affected by teachers’ concerns regarding their teaching approaches, content knowledge (fitzgerald, danaia, & mckinnon, 2017;) and ability to access supportive professional development (singh-pillay & alant, 2015). thus, knowing teachers’ views and experiences about the mandatory practical examination is crucial, as they are the ones who must implement the gazetted curriculum change. regarding the abovementioned point, burner (2018) emphasises that any educational change depends on teachers’ views and experiences as these views and experiences reflect their pedagogic approaches and choices of materials, content and learner activities. it is also worth noting that in south africa, studies have been conducted on the compulsory practical work that physical sciences teachers have to undertake since the introduction of caps (gudyanga & jita, 2019), however there is a paucity of research on the mandatory practical examination in life sciences. therefore, determining teachers’ views and experiences about implementing the practical examination will not only help identify difficulties, deficiencies and gaps in the curriculum delivery; it might also provide valuable information about what needs to be done in order to sustain the change as well as to ensure that the ideals of the new curriculum are realised. furthermore, life sciences teachers’ experiences should inform possible curriculum changes and improvements with respect to the kind and type of training that teachers need to ensure curriculum implementation. hence, this study explored grade 10 life sciences teachers’ views and experiences of the compulsory practical examination and responded to the following research question namely, what are grade 10 life science teachers’ views and experiences of the compulsory practical examination? 2. literature review practical work in science education is acknowledged and widely accepted as a key component in teaching and learning of science concepts (kibirige & teffo, 2014; ramnarian, 2014). however, within the south african context, teachers’ views towards practical work are poor and they engage in practical work merely to satisfy the minimum curriculum requirements (kibirige & teffo, 2014). the reason for teachers’ poor views and attitudes towards practical work is suggested in onwu and stoffels’ (2005) study conducted in venda with 53 practising science teachers. they established that most of the teachers had little experience, meagre training and operated in large and poorly resourced science classrooms. furthermore, teachers in some schools reported they are not confident in teaching science using practical 244 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 244-254 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.17 work (kibirige & tsamago, 2013) as they were not groomed to do experiments and practical work when they trained as teachers. consequently, teachers who lack confidence to engage in practical work resort to chalk-and-talk lecturing and demonstrations when teaching sciences (lubben, sadeck, scholtz & braund, 2010). motlhabane (2013) in his study on physical sciences teachers’ reflections on practical work noted many teachers in rural schools lack the necessary motivation to be innovative in their teaching practice pertaining to practical work. while many schools in south africa lack appropriate equipment for teachers to conduct practical work. muwanga-zake’s (2008) study showed that in many schools the principals kept science equipment for display in their offices, hence it is never used in the science classrooms. the study highlights that many principals lack understanding of the purpose of practical work and its role in the science curriculum. muwanga-zake (2008) also draws our attention to schools that have laboratories but where the teachers lack the skills and confidence to engage in practical work. hence, these teachers who use practical work normally depend on textbooks and conduct experiments in a cookbook recipe format. such teaching strategies do not inculcate an understanding of the scientific process and, furthermore, they often fail to inculcate conceptual understanding in learners (muwanga-zake, 2008). poor resources (or the lack thereof) can limit the performance of even the best teachers and undermine learners’ efforts to focus on learning. additionally, schools in south africa lack laboratory technicians to support teachers (onwu & stoffels, 2005). laboratory technicians manage laboratories, equipment, stock, set up equipment and they ensure its proper and safe use. in the absence of laboratory technicians, science teachers have to adopt the role of technicians, and much of their time is spent on setting up for the practical work. consequently, teachers miss valuable instruction time and thus cannot teach the relevant content at the desired depth and/or provide the required guidance to learners during practical work. more importantly, technicians support teachers, which is particularly important for those teachers who may not be adept with the practical work. with training and experience, technicians become repositories of practical skills. thus, less experienced teachers can effectively benefit from such technicians. a further challenge in south africa is that the language of instruction is mainly english, which is not the home language of many learners. studies by mokiwa and msila (2013) as well as kurwa (2016) demonstrate that understanding in science is achievable through languages other than english. these studies point to the relationship between teachers’ content knowledge, their ability to bridge the gap between the language of instruction and the learners’ home language in order to make science concepts and learning more accessible to learners. many schools in south africa lack a conducive climate for teaching and learning and are in disarray or are dysfunctional. research by iileka (2017) has shown the effects of school leadership and management in promoting a positive teaching and learning climate, limiting interruptions during instructional time and holding learners accountable for their performance. she also noted the intertwined relationship among the quality of school management, quality of teaching and learner performance. 3. theoretical framework rogan and grayson’s (2003) theory of curriculum implementation undergirded this study that explored grade 10 ls teachers’ views and experiences of the compulsory practical examination. this theory was created with a developing country such as south africa in mind. 245 furiwai & singhpillay the views and experiences of grade 10 life sciences teachers 2020 38(1): 245-254 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.17 rogan and grayson’s theory of curriculum implementation foregrounds the dynamics tensions between curriculum implementation, teachers’ capacity to innovate and forms of support figure 1: framework of curriculum implementation (rogan & grayson, 2003) during curriculum reform. thus, it was used to understand the degree to which the ls caps policy goals were realised in terms of the implementation of the mandatory practical examination. the theory comprises three constructs; namely a profile of implementation, capacity to innovate and outside support. the three constructs together contribute to the ideal ecosystem for curriculum implementation. for this study the construct profile of implementation and capacity to innovate were used. as this study is concerned with the implantation of the practical examination, attention was only paid to the sub-construct on practical work for the profile of implementation. table 1 reflects what comprises each of the four levels of science practical work in terms of types of practical work in which teachers engage. as can be seen from table 1, the levels of the sub-construct for practical work recognise that teachers can enact the curriculum in multiple ways. this particular sub-construct of the profile of implementation illuminates how the practical examination occurs in practice. as such, it will be used at an analytical level to determine where the school is in terms of implementing the practical work and examination mandate of the caps ls policy documents. the practical work sub-constructs were juxtaposed with the four constructs (physical resources, teacher resources, learner factors and school ethos /management) of the capacity to innovate. these four constructs were used to code the data during content analysis. the capacity to support innovation embraces all the contextual factors that enable or hinder the implementation of the practical exam and teachers’ ability to innovate. two constructs, namely profile of implementation and capacity to support innovation were used to monitor the extent to which the practical examination was implemented at selected schools. 246 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 246-254 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.17 table 1: profile of implementation for science practical work level types of science practical work 1 • teachers use a classroom demonstration to help develop concepts. • teachers use specimens found locally to illustrate concepts 2 • teachers use demonstrations to promote some form of learner inquiry. • some learners assist in planning and performing the demonstration. • learners participate in closed (cook-book style) practical work. • learners communicate data using graphs and tables. 3 • teachers design practical work in such a way as to encourage learner discovery of information. • learners perform guided discovery type practical work in small groups, engaging in hands on activities. • learners can write a scientific report in which they can justify their conclusions based on the data collected. 4 • learners design and do their own open-ended investigations. • learners reflect on the quality of the design and data collected and make improvements when and where necessary. • learners can interpret data in support of competing theories or explanations. 4. methodology this qualitative study adopted a case study design. this case study was confined to schools in the umtshezi ward of the estcourt region; therefore, the findings of this study cannot be generalised to all south african classrooms. while a case study design is construed as a limitation, flyvbjerg (2006) uses single cases of experiments by galileo, newton, einstein, bohr, darwin, marx and freud to show that human and natural sciences could be advanced by a solitary case. he asserts that what we learn in a particular case can be transferred to similar situations, so despite its limitations, a case study can further our insight into similar situations. informed consent was sought from the university ethics committee, the kwazulunatal department of education, school principals and grade 10 life sciences teachers. participants were informed of the research protocol, assured of confidentiality and anonymity, that participation was voluntary and that they could withdraw from the study at any time. purposive sampling was used to select the 30 participants for the study, as they are people most likely to provide information in response to the research questions posed (cohen et al., 2018). two instruments were used to capture data; an open-ended questionnaire and semistructured interviews. the open-ended questionnaire was designed with the assistance of university researchers and piloted with life sciences teachers who have implemented the practical examination. the questionnaire was piloted to check the clarity of the questionnaire items and to eliminate ambiguities or difficult wording. the outcome of the piloting indicated that the questionnaire items had good content validity. according to cohen et al. (2018), a pilot study serves to increase the reliability, validity and practicability of the questionnaire. the questionnaire targeted biographical data as well as information on teachers’ views and experiences of the practical examination. a semi-structured interview was used to further probe participants’ responses to the questionnaire. the interviews were transcribed verbatim and sent to participants for member checking. according to creswell and creswell (2017), member checking involves returning the interview transcripts to participants and requesting them to verify their accuracy. thereby giving participants the opportunity to elaborate, clarify 247 furiwai & singhpillay the views and experiences of grade 10 life sciences teachers 2020 38(1): 247-254 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.17 or confirm aspects of the interview to ensure that participants’ views, experiences and perceptions had been captured accurately during the interview. thus, member checking was adopted to guarantee the credibility of the research. the research question posed in this study was used for organising the analysis. the data generated was read several times before content analysis could begin. the constructs from rogan and grayson’s theory of curriculum implementation were used during content analysis. furthermore we focused on the level at which the teacher is operating for each dimension of each construct. 5. presentation of results and discussion in this section, we present findings and discussions on grade 10 ls teachers’ views and experiences pertaining to the practical examination. teachers’ views on the practical exam all grade 10 ls teachers raised concerns about the implementation of the practical examination as is evident in the excerpts below: the practical examination stresses me… how are we expect to manage everything by yourself, set the exam, get the resources, sort out invigilators and where do you get resources if all schools in the area are expected to conduct the exam on the same day and time/ this top down approach frustrates me, we were not consult about this exam, i do what i can just to comply t11 (interview) they [policy and subject advisor] expect us to shoulder more responsibilities without the necessary support. i am one of two life sciences teachers at my school and the other teacher is a first-year teacher. i have to show she everything as the hod is a math person. it’s hard enough teaching the old and new curriculum, these are fancy ideas if you have the resources and support. in the absence of support like lab technicians, or time given or factored in to set up for the pact exams, implementation is going to be haphazard and will not happen. t19 (interview) the following excerpts from the questionnaire affirmed the above responses: this is an impossible ask of teachers, especially if we were not consulted how can it work without training, resources, buy in from schools, principals. it will turn into a tick box activity with no real learning of process skills. there is no uniformity in the reform, in physics there is no mandatory practical exams, only practical that has to be done, so what is special about life sciences? i do the minimum to tick the box. t7 questionnaire response. the above excerpts bring to the fore the deep concerns grade 10 ls teachers hold towards the implementation of the practical exams due to constraining personal factors (added work load, lack of consultation, teaching two curricula simultaneously), contextual factors (lack of support for implementation at a school level, lack of resources, time constrains) and department of education factors (lack of training for curriculum implantation and lack of uniformity in mandatory curriculum requirements regarding practical work between life and physical science subjects. these concerns reduce the practical examination into a tick box activity of compliance. the above finding concurs with of kibirige and teffo’s (2014) study that showed that many teachers engage in practical work merely to satisfy the minimum curriculum requirements. 248 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 248-254 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.17 in a subdued way the above finding illuminates ls teachers’ resistance, non-acceptance and negative view of the mandatory practical examination with that of peskova, spurna, and knecht (2019) who assert that various forms of teacher resistance may block the implementation of curriculum changes, since responding to reforms is an interpretive act that is personal, contextual and interactive. the personal, contextual and department of education constraining factors become the barriers that ls teachers use to resist the mandatory practical examination. teachers’ experiences of the practical examination in this section teachers’ experiences of the practical examination was organised as per the constructs for capacity to innovate, namely, physical resources, learner factors, teacher factors and school ethos and management. physical resources grade 10 ls teachers identified the number of learners in a classroom, lack of laboratories and lack of equipment as physical resources that alter their classroom practice and implementation of the practical examination. how these physical resources prevent the implementation of the practical work and the practical examinations are reflected in the excerpts below: the classes have more than 60 learner per class, you don’t get to know them or their needs, there is no laboratory, whatever equipment was sent to the school is locked in the store room, it is not processed so i can’t use it, this area is very poor, i can’t ask learner to bring things, i try my best to improvise. t3 (interview) it’s a challenge to run the practical exams, i have to have many sessions for the exams, there are classes from a–g and each with more than 60 learners, you can’t move freely in the class to watch learners conducting experiments, the apparatus is not enough to set many workstations, most of it is broken, you can’t get money to buy chemicals for food test, or specimens e.g. heart that are needed for the pract exam – you can’t test those types of practs wanted by caps if there are no resources .i only do demonstrations and learner complete the worksheet based on what was observed. t5 (interview) the following questionnaire excerpts affirmed the preceding responses how do you implement the practical exam in a school where [there] are not enough classrooms to accommodate the learners, equipment and chemicals for practical work are non-existent, practical’s are done theoretically as a class discussion. t23 (questionnaire response) the impact that the lack of adequate physical resources has on the implementation of practical work and the practical examination is confirmed by the above responses. most schools in this study (27) do not have functional laboratories, equipment and chemicals to engage in practical work. additionally, teachers in these schools must deal with overcrowded classrooms. the above finding resonates with onwu and stoffels’ (2005) study which elucidated the lack of resources in schools hamper teachers’ engagement in practical work. it is interesting to note that several curricular reforms have occurred in south africa, but teachers are still struggling with similar problems namely, the availability of resources for curriculum implementation. the study by grussendorffet and booysen (2014) indicates that only 5% of south african schools were sufficiently resourced for caps implementation. in effect this means that 95% of our schools are not sufficiently resourced for caps implementation and raises questions about the readiness of schools and teachers for curriculum reform and implementation. 249 furiwai & singhpillay the views and experiences of grade 10 life sciences teachers 2020 38(1): 249-254 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.17 in the above school context, teachers are forced to rely on demonstrations and practical work is also undertaken as a theoretical discussion and are consequently operating at level one on the profile of implementation for practical work. this means that physical resources (or the lack thereof) within the school context becomes a mechanism that determines the types of practical work done and the opportunities for learners to engage in the learning of science process skills as set out in the caps ls policy document. if the teacher and their school are functioning at level one, the inference is that learners are being exposed to basic science process skills and not the high level science process skills such as to investigate, reflect, analyse, design, critique and synthesise as set out in the caps ls policy document. the above finding is consistent with that of ramnarain (2014) who emphasises that many schools lack basic science equipment that influences the kinds and types of practical work done at these schools and the kinds of learning that occurs. learner factors data from the questionnaire and interview illuminate the rational interplay between language of instruction and learners’ home language and its influence on teaching, the implementation of practical work and the practical examination. the mismatch between learners’ home language and the language of instruction and its resultant impact on the implementation of practical work and the practical examination is made visible in the excerpts below: life sciences has its own language, it is difficult, my learner struggle when i teach in english, i am forced to code switch so they can grasp concepts – the reason why they perform poorly in the exams is because it’s in english and they don’t understand what is being asked or how to respond, therefore in my teaching, practical’s and practical exams i do demonstrations so they learn to recall, identify, list describe. in this way i cover exam type questions they can understand and pass. t25 (interview response) responses from the questionnaire support the above excerpt: the textbook is in english, the exam is in english for our learners, english is not their first language – it’s hard for them, it affect their understanding, and even harder for me to try and explain terms, concepts, plus the terms in ls are difficult and abstract, we don’t have words for many terms or equipment in science, therefore demonstration are best as leaners see what is happening and can describe what they see. t17 (questionnaire response) from the above excerpts, it is visible that the discourse of ls, the language of the textbook, language of instruction, the learners’ home language and the absence of vocabulary for scientific terminology in the home language of the learners affect the quality of teaching, the types of practical work engaged upon and the kinds of science process skills learnt. to facilitate learning, ls teachers use the learners’ mother tongue and english as a vehicle for learners to access scientific knowledge. this finding corresponds with that of mokiwa and msila (2013) and kurwa’s (2016) studies on the teaching of physical sciences, which reveal that understanding in science is achievable through other languages other than english and that the level of science learnt is dependant on the teachers’ ability to bridge the gap between the medium of instruction and the learners home language. it is visible from the excerpts that practical work in the form of demonstrations is used as an avenue for acquiring skills to observe, identify and list real objects/materials so that learners can gather evidence necessary to answer recall, identify and describe types of questions in the examination. in terms of rogan’s profile of implementation for practical work, 250 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 250-254 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.17 these teachers and their schools are operating at level one. this means that the ls teachers’ proficiency of bridging the gap between the language of instruction and the learners’ home language becomes a control mechanism that determines the types of practical work done and the opportunities for learners to participate actively in the learning of science process skills as set out in the caps ls policy document. school ethos and management through the questionnaire and interview, grade 10 ls teachers identified the culture of teaching and learning as an integral part of the school ethos and management. the influence that the school’s culture of teaching and learning has during the implementation of practical work and the practical examinations is illuminated in the excerpts below: with large classes it impossible to invigilate for any type of practs except demonstrations, i can’t respond to student queries, see they are not copying, and ensure all the apparatus work, other teachers who assist with invigilation are not ls teachers they can’t respond to learner queries, i have to make my own arrangements to get teachers to invigilation for the pract exams, the office don’t see this as an official exam, they say make you[r] own arrangement, have it outside the exam period. t9 (interview) similar responses were present in the questionnaire: the learners take so long to come to class after break, they behave badly after break, you can’t have tests after the break, many run away from school after break, so i’m always having to repeat lesson, learner don’t do their work, the management look the other side [way] when learners are not in class, if you scold them they break the things in the class, to cope i do demonstrations only when possible otherwise i skip the practical’s. t23 (questionnaire response) the culture of teaching and learning at these schools does not emphasise that learners need to report promptly for their lessons, adhere to the school code of conduct, complete their homework and that the existing resources are to be respected. if the management of a school does not instil discipline or the code of conduct amongst learners how does a solitary ls teacher propagate an appropriate culture of learning? the absence of a culture of learning raises several important questions. what kinds of practical work can be conducted when learners are perpetually late for classes? how does one manage to complete a lengthy ls curriculum with its stipulated practical work and practical examination as well as prepare learners for the examinations if one faces such time constraints? furthermore, the lack of school management support for the logistical organisation of the practical examination is evident in the above excerpts. if the practical examinations are to be implemented effectively and not viewed as a “tick box activity” then ls teachers need “buy in” and support from their school management for the logistical organisation of the practical examination. iileka (2017) in her study on effects of schools’ leadership on the culture of learning and teaching noted that the school management is responsible for promoting a positive teaching and learning climate, limiting interruptions during instructional time and holding learners accountable for their performance. she also noted the relationship among the quality of school management, quality of teaching and learner performance. as is evident from the excerpts above, the school management control over the teaching and learning climate (or a lack thereof) impacts the quality of teaching at these schools. in fact, it becomes a mechanism that controls the kind and form of teaching that occurs at 251 furiwai & singhpillay the views and experiences of grade 10 life sciences teachers 2020 38(1): 251-254 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.17 school. the data shows that in the absence of a conducive teaching environment ls teachers resort to doing the bare minimum and use demonstration for practical work and the practical examination, which corresponds to level one on rogan’s profile of implementation for practical work. practical activities are mainly teacher-centred and focus on the development of basic science process skills. in other words, learners are missing out on the opportunity to develop critical science process skills and teachers’ teaching is restricted. teacher factors the teacher factor that emerged from the data acquired was their confidence level to perform practical work. all the ls teachers in this study indicated that they needed help because they were uncertain, uneasy and overwhelmed by the new requirements in respect of practical work and the practical examination, as can be seen in the excerpts below: i need help, i was not trained at college for practical work, and the caps training did not cover practical work, they only focus on theory, therefore i select the easiest practs and do them as demonstrations, in the pract exams i did demonstrations and learners completed the worksheet. i informed the subject advisor and asked for help, but not heard from him as yet. t 9 (interview) there are too many changes and demands made on us, i can’t cope, i need training for practical work, i’m not confident handling apparatus, i feel unsure so i don’t like to do practs – i rely on simple demonstrations, i attended the caps workshop, it was not about how we can be help[ed] to set practs and do practs – it was about the theory, this we know and can teach. t25 (questionnaire response) from the above excerpts it is apparent that during curriculum reform, teachers’ individual histories and contextual backgrounds are ignored in the design of the training provided for curriculum implementation. the support offered to ls teachers for curriculum implementation does not focus on teachers’ pedagogical needs regarding practical work. this particular find coincides with that of singh-pillay and alant’s (2015) study that highlights the disjuncture between the one size-fits-all, just in time training provided for curriculum implementation and the pedagogical support needed by teachers for curriculum implementation. furthermore, the pedagogical uncertainty and lack of confidence that ls teachers encounter during the mandatory practical examination reform is elucidated. this uncertainty and lack of confidence restricts the kinds of practical work they engage in as well as the kinds of science process skills they develop in learners. the above finding corresponds with that of kibirige and tsamago’s ( 2013) study that reported that teachers are not confident in teaching science using practical work due to the lack of appropriate training in practical work and that they resort to chalk-and-talk, lecturing and demonstrations when teaching sciences (lubben et al., 2010) this means that teachers’ lack of confidence in engaging in practical work becomes a benchmark for the kinds of practical work they engage their learners in during class and the practical examination. these teacher factors restrict teacher to operate at level one of rogan’s profile of implementation for practical work. 6. conclusion this study explored grade 10 ls teachers’ views and experiences of the practical examinations. rogan and grayson’s (2003) model for curriculum implementation was used to frame the study. all teachers in this study displayed negative views towards the mandatory practical 252 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 252-254 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.17 examination based on their experiences of having implemented the mandatory practical examination. the findings of this study highlight the intrinsically intertwined relationship between the four constructs of the capacity to innovate (physical resources, learner factors, school ethos and management, and teacher factors) the kinds of practical work teachers engage in and their experiences of the practical examination. these factors collectively subvert the intended goals of the mandatory practical examination and restrict the practical work and the exams to demonstrations. more importantly the findings bring to the fore the dissonance between the intended caps ls policy document regarding types of practical work and the kinds of science process skills that ought to be developed in learners and the enacted caps ls policy document. secondly, it highlighted the uncertainty and lack of confidence ls teachers encountered when they were expected to engage learners in different types of practical work and the practical examination as mandated by the caps ls policy document in the absence of professional development that meets teachers’ pedagogical needs. thirdly the contextual challenges ls teachers encounter in administering the practical examinations in the absence of support from the school management were also emphasised. fourthly ls teachers’ proficiency of bridging the gap between the language of instruction and the learners’ home language becomes a control mechanism that determines the types of practical work done and the opportunities for learners to participate actively in the learning of science process skills as set out in the caps ls policy document was underlined. these finding allude to the gaps in the curriculum delivery and what needs to be done in order to ensure that the ideals of the new curriculum are realised. based on the aforementioned findings, the recommendation speaks to the need for adequate teacher professional development that suits the pedagogical needs of teachers, the need to capacitate school management teams about the requirements of the practical examination, the organisational logistics for the kind of practical examination envisaged in the caps ls policy and the dire need to ensure that resources are provided to meet the implementation needs. in addition, further research is needed into ls teachers’ proficiency to bridge the gap between the language of instruction and learners’ home language to facilitate learning of higher order skills. references burner t. 2018. 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the use of a data-free instant messenger was implemented for online tutoring in a class of 342 students. the moya application allows students to chat and send voice notes to tutors and peers without using data. sending attachments incurs data costs but the amount of data is displayed prior to downloading. the qualitative interpretivist case study used data collected from purposive sampling via an online survey. consent was received from 252 third-year information systems students at a historically disadvantaged university. qualitative data were analysed via thematic content analysis using the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 model as a theoretical basis. findings indicate that the majority of students (85.7%) did not use the data-free moya instant messenger. reasons for the low usage included a negative performance expectancy, as students did not see the benefit in using the application to engage with peers or tutors. perceived effort expectancy was low, as students did not desire to learn to use a new application. results showed that using whatsapp was a habit. moreover, social influence was a factor, as fellow students and tutors were also using whatsapp. students recommended increasing awareness of the moya application and providing training. the price value was expected to be a significant factor as this application does not require data, but this was not the case. facilitating conditions show that students had data for whatsapp. moya has the same interface design as the preferred whatsapp so learning to use the application should require minimal effort. the unexpected findings indicate that students prefer whatsapp, an instant messenger that requires data, over a datafree instant messenger. the findings leave lecturers questioning whether using whatsapp for online peer tutoring is the more viable option. keywords: data-free, large classes, mobile instant messenger, online peer tutoring, unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 author: dr fazlyn petersen1 affiliation: 1university of the western cape, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i1.6318 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(1): 18-37 published: 31 march 2023 received: 20 may 2022 accepted: 14 march 2023 research article https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4592-2861 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 192023 41(1): 19-37 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 petersen factors affecting students’ use of a data-free instant messenger 1. introduction south african higher education is plagued by inequalities due to the legacies of apartheid. student demographics reveal that more than 50% of enrolment in higher education is from black, working-class, disadvantaged households from rural areas who are dependent on the national student financial aid scheme (nsfas) (mzileni, 2020). consequently, the student population is likely affected by data costs. the historically disadvantaged institution (hdi) in this study, based in the western cape, south africa, is committed to providing access to quality education to historically marginalised population groups, predominantly students of colour (university of the western cape, 2019). to provide quality education during the covid-19 pandemic necessitated the use of online modes for tutoring. online tutoring can also be applied post-covid-19, but may exclude students from historically marginalised population groups due to the cost. the article examines two asynchronous tools implemented for online tutoring to provide insight into future use of such technologies in the post-covid-19 era. tutoring is defined as “people who are not professional teachers helping and supporting the learning of others in an interactive, purposeful and systematic way” (topping, 2000:3). this research uses peer tutoring. peer tutors are students who have completed the course previously and assist current students with their studies. tutoring is both versatile and transformative (nickow, oreopoulos & quan, 2021), providing more practice and simpler vocabulary with prompter feedback (topping, 2000). the use of peer tutoring improved students’ performance at a spanish university (arco-tirado, fernández-martín & hervástorres, 2019). research has determined that tutoring shows improvements in socio-emotional skills, well-being, aspirations and psychological skills (carlana & la ferrara, 2021). tutoring using asynchronous tools such as discussion boards and forums (turrentine & macdonald, 2006) is likely to be less data intensive. however, research indicates that the use of asynchronous cooperative learning may fail, as students feel disconnected (peterson, beymer & putnam, 2018). on the other hand, students’ use of synchronous peer learning to discuss challenging problems is evidenced to produce better outcomes and stronger morale in an online setting (coetzee et al., 2015). in addition, students feel more connected, have a greater sense of belonging and improve mental processing when using synchrony (peterson et al., 2018). in the future, students may not always be able to engage face to face. as institutions move towards more hybrid models of education, they increasingly combine traditional classroom teaching with distance education using information technology resources (misaghi et al., 2021). the need for more inclusive synchronous, real-time learning and tutoring may increase in prevalence. with that, the use of mobile instant messaging (mim) as a means of providing more inclusive synchronous tutoring should be considered. research into mims such as whatsapp has explored uses for teaching and learning (tang & hew, 2017). based on the typology of peer tutoring by topping (1996), table 1 shows the application of this research. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 202023 41(1): 20-37 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) table 1: typology of peer tutoring dimension application to this research curriculum content tutors use mim to help students understand the undergraduate information systems course content. tutors also assist with queries regarding formative assessments like quizzes and discussion forums. contact constellation due to the large class size of 342 students, two whatsapp groups and one moya group were established. there were six tutors, three lecturers and a teaching assistant. tutors were asked to join the whatsapp groups and the moya group. however, tutors preferred to use whatsapp. due the low number of students who joined the moya groups, the six tutors where allocated to whatsapp. the teaching assistant and the module coordinator remained in the moya group to assist any students. year of study tutors and students were at different levels of study. tutors were in honours and students were in their third year. ability tutors’ ability to understand and explain the course content was expected to be better as they had completed the course in the previous year. using mim also allows students to learn from their peers through collaborative learning (barhoumi, 2015). role continuity tutors in the first semester continued tutoring in the second semester. place using mims allows students to access tutoring regardless of their geographical location (johns & mills, 2021). students in metropolitan areas may have access to better network connectivity than those in rural areas (statistics south africa, 2020). time tutors were allowed to select their consultation, with some consultation during class times and some after hours. this consultation schedule allowed students to access tutoring after hours, especially helpful for students working during the day. although consultation hours were published for students, tutors indicated that consultation often extended beyond the agreed times. literature indicates that using mims may provide additional responsibilities such as the expectation to interact outside stipulated hours (poon et al., 2019) and communication overload (rosenberg & asterhan, 2018). tutee characteristics tutees were all students in the compulsory third-year information systems course: information systems strategy formulation. students were diverse, speaking several home languages and residing in various south african provinces. the majority of students were full-time, with a minority part-time. the literature from south africa indicates that mature and married students found the use of mims disruptive to family life (rambe & bere, 2013). the finding is supported by literature from india where about 20% of the student sample did not find mims convenient because they compromised their private and family time (gon & rawekar, 2017). tutor characteristics preference is given to the best-performing students in terms of grades in the information systems strategy formulation course. students with tutoring experience were preferred. the literature indicates that tutoring provides an increase in academic achievement for tutors as well (raja, low & lim, 2018). tutors are given the opportunity to gain work experience; payment can be applied to their student fee account. objectives the objective of offering online tutoring was to provide students with increased access and improved pass rates. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 212023 41(1): 21-37 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 petersen factors affecting students’ use of a data-free instant messenger using mim tools allows for spontaneous and student-centred learning instead of instructive teaching in classrooms (so, 2016). the literature indicates that using an mim such as whatsapp encourages knowledge sharing, knowledge creation, increased participation and collaboration (pimmer, lee & mwaikambo, 2018; rambe, chipunza & ng’ambi, 2020). for example, whatsapp has been used to tutor english (muhammad & annamalai, 2021). likewise, 19 tutors effectively used whatsapp in a nurse tutor programme in nigeria (ajuwon et al., 2018). the university of south africa, a distance education institution, indicates that students show a preference for gaining peer support by using whatsapp (mihalyi et al., 2016). in another study by south african researchers, the presence of tutors in educational whatsapp groups showed a positive impact on first-year computer science students (nogubha & mhlana, 2022). however, the challenges of using mim include the cost of devices such as mobile phones and laptops, device ownership, regular electricity outages and unreliable internet connectivity from mobile operators (tang & hew, 2017; nyasulu & dominic chawinga, 2019). despite the increasing number of people with access to smartphones, in lowand middle-income countries, 1gb of data costs more than 5% of people’s monthly earnings (a4ai, 2018). the inability to afford internet access is therefore a significant barrier to access. evidence also indicates that only 10.4% of the south african population has internet access at home (statistics south africa, 2018). the western cape province (25.8%) shows the highest percentage of internet access at home, with the lowest being the limpopo province (1.7%) (statistics south africa, 2018). additionally, homes in rural areas are less likely to have internet access (1.7%) compared to homes in metropolitan areas (17.3%) (statistics south africa, 2018). these figures are representative of the significant inequalities in the south african population that may have a negative impact on the lower socioeconomic student base. to provide more student inclusivity, the use of a south african data-free mim, moya, was tested (petersen, 2020). the moya application allows students to chat and send voice notes to tutors and peers without using data. sending attachments incurs data costs, but the amount of data are displayed before downloading (binu, 2020). the pilot results show that the moya mim is easily usable and accessible. consequently, the use of moya is expected to provide more inclusive student access to online tutoring. challenges to using the moya mim include reliance on network connectivity and activated wi-fi (petersen, 2020). the paper is organised as follows: the formulation of the problem statement, examination of acceptance and use models and the selection of an appropriate theoretical framework. this is followed by the research design, sampling and the method for collection of qualitative evidence. the findings are then presented in comparison with findings of existing literature. lastly, the limitations of the study are discussed and recommendations for future work are presented. 2. problem statement research on the use of mim has predominantly been undertaken in small classes of fewer than 50 students (alenazi, 2017; lim, shelley & heo, 2019). however, there is limited literature regarding the usage of mims for online peer tutoring using data-free options in large classes in the light of the south african digital divide, contextual factors and significant inequalities (petersen, 2020). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 222023 41(1): 22-37 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) therefore, this research offers deeper insight into this context, as the objective of this study is to determine the factors that affect the use of an instant data-free messenger for online peer tutoring in a large undergraduate class. the research targeted a specific student population in south africa’s western cape that is prone to technological exclusion to answer the research question: which factors affect students’ use of a data-free instant messenger for online peer tutoring? in addition, the research values student recommendations for future implementations by posing the research question: what would improve your use of the data-free instant messenger? 3. theoretical framework six prominent acceptance and use models with key constructs are summarised in figure 1. the models and their application to the acceptance and use of mims in education are discussed in turn. figure 1: summary of technology acceptance and use models (adapted from sun et al., 2013) https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 232023 41(1): 23-37 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 petersen factors affecting students’ use of a data-free instant messenger fishbein and ajzen developed the theory of reasoned action (tra), which contains three constructs that determine behaviour to use a data-free mim for online tutoring: 1. attitude refers to students’ positive or negative feelings about using the moya mim for online tutoring (hill, fishbein & ajzen, 1977). 2. subjective norms refer to student perceptions that the people the most important to them, such as peers or parents, think they should use the moya mim (hill et al., 1977). 3. behavioural intention refers to student intention to use moya mim for online tutoring (hill et al., 1977). a particular tra study at a public research university in distance learning courses, based in america, sought to determine faculty intentions to use social networking. the findings indicate that subjective norms and attitudes influence faculty members’ intentions and behaviours (jones, 2019). while the study provides insight into factors affecting the usage of social networking, it was tested within a context in a developed country and the study focused on faculty members’ intentions without examining student intentions. the theory of planned behaviour (tpb) expands tra by adding perceived behavioural control (pbc) (ajzen, 1991). pbc, in this research, describes the “perceived ease or difficulty” of using the moya mim for online tutoring (ajzen, 1991:183). tpb was utilised in a malawian study that examined university students’ use of whatsapp for learning (nyasulu & dominic chawinga, 2019). the results suggest that students could share information instantaneously, communicate with peers and lecturers, collaborate on academic work and learn outside classroom hours (nyasulu & dominic chawinga, 2019). the findings from another university in a developing country may apply to this research context, except that the cost of data in south africa is higher than the cost of data in malawi (a4ai, 2018). the technology acceptance model (tam) adapts tra with the inclusion of two key constructs: perceived usefulness (pu) and perceived ease of use (peou) (davis, 1989). according to davis (1989), pu indicates whether or not students believe that using the moya mim would improve their academic performance. peou indicates whether or not students believe that using the moya mim would be effortless (davis, 1989). tam 2 expands tam with the addition of subjective norm. therefore, as indicated in figure 1, tra is equivalent to tam 2, based on key constructs. tam was used as a theoretical framework in a study on undergraduate students’ usage of whatsapp for collaborative learning at a nigerian university (udenze & oshionebo, 2020). udenze and oshionebo’s (2020) findings confirm that pu and peou are important factors; however, there was a challenge of irrelevant content posted by students. additionally, in a study at a saudi arabian university, educators found whatsapp to have a high peou (barhoumi, 2017). pu is positive when students can simplify content and reduce misunderstanding by using mim for learning (so, 2016). a study on using mims for distance education in cyprus suggests that whatsapp is user friendly (pu), accessible and cost effective (nawaila & bicen, 2018). the use of an mim for hybrid learning also determined a 77% satisfaction index, with 90% of the sample confirming the importance of whatsapp to integrate with peers and teachers (misaghi et al., 2021). whatsapp was found to improve undergraduate learning in medical education when combined with traditional teaching in lahore, pakistan (dar et al., 2017). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 242023 41(1): 24-37 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) a study among a small sample of 25 first-year students at a south african university shows that students from disadvantaged schools prefer using an mim, such as whatsapp. the higher peou for whatsapp is due to student struggles to use their institutional electronic learning management system (elms), moodle (mpungose, 2020). the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (utaut) constructs are similar to tpb’s pbc, social norm and behavioural intention. utaut extends tam 2 with the addition of facilitating conditions (fcs), meaning whether or not students believe that organisational and technical infrastructure is available to support the use of the data-free mim (venkatesh et al., 2003). utaut was applied in a study at a university of technology in south africa with a sample size of 196 students (bere, 2014). bere’s (2014) results indicate that three of the original utaut constructs – performance expectancy, effort expectancy and social influence – are positively associated with behavioural intention to use mobile learning. the importance of social influence at university due to peer support is likewise highlighted by awotunde et al. (2020). however, fc was not considered in this study as organisational technical support is expected to be a prominent factor in this research. the importance of fc is highlighted by bere (2019), who argues that fc plays a role in contexts with geographical barriers and network connectivity costs (2019). in a study describing the challenges for students to engage in online tutoring in rural south africa, limited access to devices and network connectivity was again highlighted (motaung & dube, 2020). annese et al. (2022) highlight the importance of fc in understanding the context, technology and learning goals for implementing effective tutoring. disabling technical fc, such as using small mobile phone screens, can generate eye strain (gon & rawekar, 2017). enabling wi-fi on campus can render the use of mim cost effective (gon & rawekar, 2017). additionally, using applications that are data free will also provide cost-effective mim access (petersen, 2020). the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 (utaut2) expands the utaut model by adding the following constructs: • hedonic motivation (hm) is the “fun or pleasure derived from using a technology” (venkatesh, thong & xu, 2012:161). the literature suggests that whatsapp can be used for social activities such as relaxing with friends and family and watching videos (awotunde et al., 2020). hm may pose a challenge when students use the same mim for pleasurable activities as well as educational purposes. • price value is “consumers’ cognitive trade-off between the perceived benefits of the applications and cost for using them” (venkatesh et al., 2012:161). the price value is expected to be a factor, as students will no longer need to pay for data when using the moya mim for online peer tutoring. • habit is “the extent to which people tend to perform behaviours automatically because of learning” (venkatesh et al., 2012:161). if students frequently use whatsapp or prefer using another mim, this may impact the use of the data-free mim. based on the summary of acceptance and use models and the discussion above, utaut2 was selected as the theoretical lens for this research (refer to figure 2). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 252023 41(1): 25-37 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 petersen factors affecting students’ use of a data-free instant messenger figure 2: theoretical model (source: venkatesh et al., 2012) the overriding premise is that the factors in this model may provide insight into student acceptance and use of the data-free mim for online peer tutoring within this context. utaut2 was used in a study to predict student intention to use mobile learning systems in india. results indicate that effort expectancy and performance expectancy are significant factors (bharati & srikanth, 2018). bharati and srikanth (2018) suggest that when technologies improve student learning experience, the technologies will be used by the students. however, this was not tested within a south african context with the use of a data-free mim. 4. research design and methodology this research used a qualitative interpretivist case study as it aimed to analyse the use of an instant data-free messenger for online tutoring. based on mouton (1996), interpretivism allowed the researcher to focus on the real world of students and to gain an insider perspective into the challenges and opportunities that affect student use of a particular mim for online peer tutoring. a case study emphasises the importance of understanding the context to determine factors affecting student use of the data-free mim in a large class at the university of the western cape (uwc), a historically disadvantaged institution (yin, 2003). a qualitative study to explore a phenomenon in a single case allows a researcher to explore a deeper meaning of experiences with predominantly marginalised students (creswell & poth, 2007). as stated in the typology of peer tutoring, the class size was 342 registered third-year information systems students. qualitative data were collected using purposive sampling via an online survey designed using google forms. due to the exploratory and interpretivist nature of this research, students were asked three primary open-ended questions to answer the main research question: • which tool/s did you not use in this course? • why did you not use it? • what would improve your use of that tool? https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 262023 41(1): 26-37 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) interviews were not conducted due to covid-19 social distancing restrictions during lockdown levels one and two. due to the high cost of data for video conferencing, tools such as zoom were also not viable options. consent was received from 252 students to use their responses for research purposes. the qualitative survey data from google forms were saved onto a spreadsheet. the spreadsheet was converted into pdf format and imported into atlas.ti software. the data were analysed via thematic content analysis, using the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 (utaut2) model as a theoretical basis. student responses were coded, using the literature, and grouped according to the constructs in the utaut2 model. the groups were analysed to identify the factors that were shared amongst the students (vaismoradi, turunen & bondas, 2013). the research was conducted according to the ethical and professional guidelines as specified by the university of the western cape. consent was sought from the students to allow for the publication of responses. students reserved the right to refuse their responses to be used for this research. unique identifiers (such as student numbers) were removed before analysis. the confidentiality of the data supplied by students was respected by storing data in an access-restricted folder. 5. findings the findings commence with the analysis of students’ demographics and the identification of factors affecting students’ use of a data-free instant messenger use. the section concludes with students’ recommendations for improved usage of moya mim for online peer tutoring. according to figure 3: student demographics, most students were full-time (91.7%) and male (50.4%). students were predominantly young: in the 18–24-year age group (81.8%). the majority of students resided in the western cape (77.7%) and spoke english (51.8%), xhosa (14.7%) or afrikaans (9.2%) as their home language. the remaining students resided in the eastern cape (8.8%), gauteng (5.2%), limpopo (2.4%), the free state (1.2%) or mpumalanga provinces (1.2%). the majority of students used wi-fi (50.8%), with 21.9% using prepaid mobile data. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 272023 41(1): 27-37 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 petersen factors affecting students’ use of a data-free instant messenger figure 3: student demographics 6. factors affecting student use findings indicate that most students (85.7%) did not use the data-free moya instant messenger. the unexpected finding indicates that students prefer whatsapp, an instant messenger that requires data, over a data-free instant messenger. table 2 presents the themes in this research, based on the theoretical model. these themes identified by students contribute to the existing literature by identifying the factors responsible for the unexpected low usage of a data-free mim for online peer tutoring. table 2: atlas codes for factors code grounded density code groups future use 1 0,4% behavioural intention connectivity issues 2 0,8% disabling facilitating conditions incompatible 2 0,8% disabling facilitating conditions insufficient data 1 0,4% disabling facilitating conditions no access 1 0,4% disabling facilitating conditions no phone 2 0,8% disabling facilitating conditions no wi-fi access 1 0,4% disabling facilitating conditions space 6 2,4% disabling facilitating conditions connection 1 0,4% enabling facilitating conditions internet access 3 1,2% enabling facilitating conditions sufficient data 9 3,5% enabling facilitating conditions sufficient devices 1 0,4% enabling facilitating conditions https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 282023 41(1): 28-37 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) code grounded density code groups vpn access 3 1,2% enabling facilitating conditions wi-fi access 8 3,1% enabling facilitating conditions did not know how to use 5 2,0% effort expectancy difficult to use 1 0,4% effort expectancy effort required 4 1,6% effort expectancy unfamiliar 14 5,5% effort expectancy mim preference 75 29,5% habit not appealing 1 0,4% hedonic motivation less interactive 1 0,4% performance expectancy no benefit 1 0,4% performance expectancy no need 32 12,6% performance expectancy not useful 3 1,2% performance expectancy other options 26 10,2% performance expectancy group preference 6 2,4% social influence peers not using 4 1,6% social influence didn’t access 1 0,4% use lms preference 9 3,5% use unaware 26 10,2% use voluntary 4 1,6% use 254 100,0% factors for the low usage included a negative performance expectancy, as students did not see the need for (12.6% of responses) or benefit of using moya mim to engage with peers or tutors. data indicate that having other options (10.2% of quotations), such as whatsapp and an lms, negatively impacted the use of moya, as encapsulated in the following quotation: “i did not need the use of moya as i already have access to all information on ikamva [lms] and whatsapp”. this finding, however, is contrary to a quantitative study that indicates the influence of performance expectancy on behavioural intention when using another mim, whatsapp (fernández robin, mccoy & yáñez, 2017). a low effort expectancy (4% of responses) was evidenced by student beliefs that moya mim was difficult to use and that effort was required: “did not use it, because i did not understand how it works.” students admitted that they did not know how to use the moya mim, despite the similarities in user interface to whatsapp (petersen, 2020). in fact, moya has the same interface design as the preferred whatsapp, so learning to use the application requires minimal effort, especially from third-year information systems students. based on a zimbabwean study during the covid-19 pandemic, effort expectancy encourages the use of whatsapp (maphosa, dube & jita, 2020). habit was identified as the most prominent factor among all students (29.5% of responses). results showed that using whatsapp was a habit and therefore was the preferred mim. several comments supported this finding: “i did not use the moya because i preferred whatsapp as a communication tool” and “i stuck to something i was familiar with, whatsapp messenger”. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 292023 41(1): 29-37 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 petersen factors affecting students’ use of a data-free instant messenger however, the habit of using whatsapp and constantly checking the mim is found to affect academic activities negatively (odili, 2021). social influence was not determined to be a significant factor (4% of responses). the results indicated that as fellow students and tutors also used whatsapp, this encouraged the use of this mim. it was evident that when group members for assignments preferred a certain mim, then it would be used: “my group members and myself all had access to whatsapp and decided to make use of whatsapp for communication in regards to our assignment”. a factor influencing a negative social influence was the lack of use by peers, “more people are on whatsapp than moya”. the literature indicates that using whatsapp as the social media platform for e-tutoring is beneficial, despite tutors using whatsapp for entertainment purposes as well (nogubha & mhlana, 2022). facilitating conditions were split to identify the factors that would encourage or discourage the use of the data-free moya instant messenger for online peer tutoring. enabling facilitating conditions showed that students had data for whatsapp and devices as evidenced by, “[i] have sufficient devices and connectivity”. as 50.8% of students have access to wi-fi, this would facilitate the use of mim requiring data, such as whatsapp. a minority of students (2.4% of responses) indicated that students had insufficient space to download the moya mim. disabling facilitating conditions were only indicated by a minority of students (6% of responses). the issue of incompatibility by a small minority of students (0.8%) has been resolved. as stated previously, the moya mim now has a version available for apple users (moya app pty ltd, 2022). however, one student admitted to data insufficiency and yet still did not choose the data-free mim option. networking connectivity is indicated as a challenge for e-tutoring (motaung & dube, 2020), although this was not highlighted as a significant challenge in this particular student sample. the fun or pleasure in using moya instant messenger was not evidenced. hedonic motivation was only mentioned by one student who indicated that “moya, it is just not appealing to me”. it was anticipated that price value would be a significant factor due to this application not requiring data; however, again, this was not the case. despite the comparatively high cost of south african mobile data (healing, 2019), students’ preference for using whatsapp may be due to the purchase of less expensive dedicated whatsapp data bundles from three of south africa’s mobile operators: vodacom, mtn and cell c (staff writer, 2021). for the 21.8% of students who use prepaid mobile data, whatsapp social bundles are approximately 33% less expensive. as an example, mtn’s 1gb whatsapp social bundle costs 30 south african rand (approximately $2), whereas it costs r99 (approximately $6) for a 1gb monthly mobile data bundle (staff writer, 2021). behavioural intention was demonstrated as a student indicated they would use the moya mim in future: “i also didn’t check out the moya messenger app maybe i missing out on a good opportunity to explore different technologies so i am definitely looking forward to using it currently and in the future”. the low usage level of moya instant messenger for online peer tutoring can also be attributed to student claims of a lack of awareness of the application (10.2% of responses). there was also a preference for using uwc’s lms. students indicated that using moya instant messenger for online peer tutoring was voluntary, as there was an option to use whatsapp. the finding is corroborated by the following quotation: “i was never forced to use it”. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 302023 41(1): 30-37 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) 7. recommendations for improved usage table 3 presents codes and code groups extracted from atlas.ti software. the information was used to identify the common student recommendations to improve their low usage of the moya instant messenger for online peer tutoring. these recommendations can be used to improve the use of moya instant messenger for online tutoring in the future. table 3: atlas codes for recommendations code grounded density code groups future use 2 1,4% behavioural intention become more familiar 2 1,4% effort expectancy better functionality 4 2,8% effort expectancy easier to use 1 0,7% effort expectancy get it to work 1 0,7% effort expectancy guidance 2 1,4% effort expectancy improved skills 1 0,7% effort expectancy improved usability 1 0,7% effort expectancy instructional video 2 1,4% effort expectancy learning to use it 3 2,1% effort expectancy more understanding 3 2,1% effort expectancy need more information 18 12,5% effort expectancy same functionality 2 1,4% effort expectancy accessibility 1 0,7% facilitating conditions better device 2 1,4% facilitating conditions connectivity issues 1 0,7% facilitating conditions deleting ads 1 0,7% facilitating conditions device space 2 1,4% facilitating conditions have resources 2 1,4% facilitating conditions have limited internet access 7 4,9% facilitating conditions interoperability 2 1,4% facilitating conditions no data 8 5,6% facilitating conditions load shedding 1 0,7% facilitating conditions no mim alternative 21 14,6% facilitating conditions no vpn 1 0,7% facilitating conditions wi-fi access 1 0,7% facilitating conditions no interest 3 2,1% hedonic motivation integration into course 2 1,4% performance expectancy affordability 2 1,4% price value academics need to use 2 1,4% social influence becomes popular 3 2,1% social influence increased users 11 7,6% social influence https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 312023 41(1): 31-37 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 petersen factors affecting students’ use of a data-free instant messenger code grounded density code groups lecturer recommendation 1 0,7% social influence tutors use it 1 0,7% social influence better marketing 2 1,4% use choice 1 0,7% use compulsory usage 1 0,7% use consistent use 2 1,4% use increase awareness 4 2,8% use increased use 1 0,7% use provided different information 2 1,4% use training provided 6 4,2% use unsure 1 0,7% use voluntary 1 0,7% use won’t use it 6 4,2% use 144 100,0% facilitating conditions were identified as the most prominent theme. a prevalent recommendation was that usage would improve if students did not have another mim (14.6% of responses), such as whatsapp, available. this finding is linked to student claims that use would improve if usage was compulsory and they did not have a choice. evidence indicated, “if i do not have access to wi-fi or data then that tool could come in hand[y]”. usage would also improve if students did not have access to the internet. students remarked that they would use the moya instant messenger if they did not have data. a lack of access to the university’s virtual private network (vpn) that allows students to obtain internet access would also encourage usage. “more knowledge on how it works and learning to use it”. students indicated that effort expectancy would improve if they were provided with more information regarding the datafree mim. however, information on moya was provided in the course outline and on the lms. training for using the moya instant messenger, such as an instructional video or step-bystep instructions, was also recommended. the finding is surprising, as third-year information systems students are expected to have ample technical skills (craffert & visser, 2018), and moya has the same interface design and functionality as the preferred whatsapp (binu, 2020) so learning to use the application should require minimal effort. furthermore, the issue of a lack of compatibility with apple devices has been resolved as there is now a version available on the apple store (moya app pty ltd, 2022). students indicated that social influence would improve with an increased number of users, such as peers and tutors (7.6% of responses). however, moya instant messenger has a rapidly growly user base with more than one million active users (rajgopaul, 2019). students suggested that lecturers use and recommend the data-free mim as well: “if lecturer consultations could happen via moya messenger or an alternative instant messaging app, that could be an improvement over email”. the literature supports the recommendation that lecturers use mims to bolster meaningful student interaction (rambe & bere, 2013; rosenberg & asterhan, 2018). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 322023 41(1): 32-37 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) “i simply will not use it”. hedonic motivation indicated that students had no desire to use the moya mim and that usage was impacted by students’ refusal to use the data-free mim for online peer tutoring. this could change if whatsapp was no longer an option and all the necessary course information was provided exclusively on moya. the finding is linked to the recommendation to improve performance expectancy by integrating the use of the moya instant messenger into the course and the tool was consistently used for online peer tutoring. price value was evident as a student indicated, “i feel that for people who struggle with funds for whatsapp, this may be a very useful app”. the use of a data-free application was recommended by a student who needed to purchase data when not on campus: “being offcampus and needing a zero-rated app because i cannot afford to buy data when i am offcampus”. two students (1.4% of responses) indicated a positive behavioural intention: “yes, i would consider using moya messenger in the future” and “i will try it out in the future”. 8. conclusion this study aimed to investigate two questions: which factors affect students’ use of a datafree instant messenger for online peer tutoring? and what would improve students’ use of the data-free instant messenger? drawing on the literature for the use of another mim requiring data, whatsapp, for educational purposes, seven factors from utaut2 served as the basis for this investigation. these factors explained how students did not use a data-free mim and their negative attitudes towards the use of the moya data-free instant messenger for online peer tutoring. the results indicate that using whatsapp was habitual and therefore it remained the preferred mim. while price value was expected to be a significant factor due to this application not requiring data, this was not the case. despite the comparatively high cost of south african mobile data, student preference for using whatsapp may be due to the purchase of less expensive dedicated whatsapp data bundles. whatsapp bundles allow students to send attachments such as pictures and videos without incurring additional data charges. however, with the moya mim, sending attachments requires data. the findings may leave lecturers questioning whether using whatsapp for online tutoring is the more viable option. due to the qualitative nature of the study and the investigation of a specific mim in a specific context, study results may not be generalised to all south african tertiary institutions. the key learnings, however, may provide insights to improve the implementation of data-free mims within other contexts. future work may entail implementing the recommendations to improve the usage of the data-free moya instant messenger. a study could examine the use of moya instant messenger exclusively for online peer tutoring while not providing students with the option of an alternative, such as whatsapp. the separation of using moya exclusively for online peer tutoring or educational purposes and whatsapp for social purposes may lead to improved learning outcomes. acknowledgment the financial assistance of the national research foundation (nrf) towards this research is hereby acknowledged. opinions expressed and conclusions arrived at are those of the author and not necessarily attributable to the nrf. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 332023 41(1): 33-37 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 petersen factors affecting students’ use of a data-free instant messenger references a4ai. 2018. 2018 affordability report. available at http://1e8q3q16vyc81g8l3h3md6q5f5ewpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/a4ai-2018-affordability-report.pdf [accessed 25 august 2020]. ajuwon, a., pimmer, c., 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yin, r.k. 2003. case study research : design and methods. thousand oaks, california: sage publications inc. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6318 https://doi.org/10.32739/etkilesim.2020.5.92 https://www.uwc.ac.za/about/mission-vision-and-history/history https://www.uwc.ac.za/about/mission-vision-and-history/history _ref108430268 _ref110097764 _ref110425327 _hlk109999582 _ref110249744 _ref110249668 _ref110527847 1802023 41(1): 180-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 student perspectives on the challenges of an online orientation at a large south african university during the covid-19 pandemic abstract the covid-19 pandemic that began in march 2020 gave rise to a number of challenges for first-year experience activities at universities globally. one of the key challenges was the process of onboarding first-year students through an orientation programme that could not take place face-to-face as per the norm. in 2021, the first-year orientation at a large south african university in this study moved to an online platform, becoming a week-long programme conducted on microsoft teams and comprising a variety of live and pre-recorded videos. the programme included seven core learning sessions designed to introduce the students to key services available at the university and to lay the foundation for student success. using data from the university’s 2021 orientation week (o-week) survey, this paper seeks to explore – from the perspective of the students – the core challenges associated with an online orientation during the covid-19 pandemic. the study employs descriptive statistics to decipher the profile of the survey respondents as well as participants’ experience of various learning sessions. a thematic approach was used to analyse the open-ended questions to provide the contextual perspectives on the challenges that students experienced with online orientation. the study identified five categories of challenges, which had a negative impact on their process of transitioning into the university environment. the study’s findings will help universities to understand the drawbacks of online orientation as well as provide empirical guidance for them as to how they could leverage online orientation for student success in shaping the remote, blended, and hybrid learning discourse. the particular university under discussion subsequently used these findings as guidelines to conceptualise a new three-week blended orientation programme, gateway to success, which was introduced at the beginning of 2022. keywords: challenges of orientation, first-year orientation, new technology, online learning, online orientation, orientation programmes. author: takalani muloiwa-klenam1, 2 kristan sharpley1 mpho thahale1 neo taimo1 tshegofatso mogaladi1 jerome september1 affiliation: 1university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg, south africa 2university of johannesburg, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i1.6295 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(1): 180-194 published: 31 march 2023 received: 8 september 2022 accepted: 6 march 2022 research article https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4188-5218 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7313-0661 https://orcid.org/0009-0005-1873-7793 https://orcid.org/0009-0001-1725-2816 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8643-1981 https://orcid.org/0009-0001-8368-0552 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 1812023 41(1): 181-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 muloiwa-klenam, et al. student perspectives on the challenges of an online orientation 1. introduction first-year student orientation programmes are pivotal for laying the foundation for student success at university. research has found that students who participate in comprehensive orientation programmes are retained at higher rates and report a greater sense of belonging (hollins jr, 2009; soria, clark & koch, 2013). orientation programmes are known to help new students becoming acquainted with their learning community. they also educate students with regard to the resources and support available to ensure their academic and social success (ward-roof, 2010). therefore, it is crucial that these types of programmes are well-designed to support students in their transition to university. the covid-19 global pandemic resulted in a national state of disaster in south africa from march 2020 until april 2022, which brought about restrictions for face-to-face engagements and disrupted contact ones. this lockdown led to south african higher education institutions shifting their mode of education delivery and pedagogy to incorporate emergency remote teaching (ert). the shift to ert meant that most of the teaching, learning and student support activities within universities were delivered online. student transition programmes such as orientation and first-year experience activities also moved online, which presented challenges for both staff and students. the shift to online engagement and online learning severely disrupted education, but provided an opportunity to reimagine the way in which learning takes place, and created platforms that enabled a greater sense of agency among students. however, the shift came with various challenges which diluted the orientation experience for many students and created much anxiety about their preparedness for university. this study seeks to understand the challenges of implementing an online orientation from the perspective of first-year students. the findings will help universities to understand the drawbacks of online orientation as well as provide empirical guidance as to how online orientation could be leveraged for student success in shaping the remote, blended, and hybrid learning discourse. this paper provides a stylistic outline of online orientation at one large south african university, followed by a systematic literature review, before outlining the methodological approach adopted in the study, discussing its results and drawing conclusions. 2. online orientation the online orientation at the university in the study aimed to provide the required support for a smooth transition period for first-year students, regardless of the physical restrictions around engagement under the covid-19 pandemic. the aim of this orientation was to ensure that students still experienced the ethos and spirit of orientation at that university, even from the comfort of their homes. the orientation had multiple elements. the first aim was to introduce first-year students to the key services available at the university, both in and out of the classroom. these support services are considered pertinent for students to navigate the university landscape and are essential to enable first years’ seamless transition into the university environment. the second aim was to introduce and inform students about the academic experience and expectations at the university. these engagements were facilitated by faculty deans and faculty representatives to provide them with a sense of the academic programmes they had enrolled and registered for. this provided students with a sense of the academic culture of each faculty and, inherently, the institution. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 1822023 41(1): 182-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) the delivery of the online orientation programme was centred on seven core learning sessions, which were all pre-recorded so that students could access them as a continuous resource. the address by the dean of student affairs aimed to inform first-year students about the support services and provided an overview of the support available within the division of student affairs. this support includes the counselling and careers development unit (ccdu), campus housing and residence life office, the campus health and wellness centre, the food programme coordinated by the citizenship and community outreach unit, clubs and societies, as well as leadership opportunities. the student affairs masterclass session aimed to inform students about other support services such as sports, the opportunities provided by clubs and societies, the development and leadership unit, the counselling and careers development unit (ccdu), accommodation office, the campus health and wellness centre, and the food programme. the faculty academic programmes, guided by the student success framework, were an important component of the programme. these programmes were the students’ first introduction to the academic support that is provided by the university. these sessions were faculty specific and fully informed students on the role of academic advisors as guides through the student journey. the various faculties conducted library presentations. these were also faculty specific and included information about plagiarism and services available such as library tours, academic writing, and online resources. this aspect of the orientation aimed to give students a sense of the academic culture of the university. the digital skills session formed part of an optional short course on the subject. the purpose of this session was to assist students to develop the digital skills needed to succeed at university and served as preparation for the world of work. students were introduced to the broad overview and intent of the session, which were to provide students with the opportunity to practice using technology and to learn how to access, manage, manipulate, and create digital information. the purpose of the session is twofold: to provide students with fundamental knowledge and skills relating to the foundational concepts of both digital literacy and digital skills; and secondly, to equip them with an understanding of the importance of having these skills in the 21st century, regardless of the degree they are studying and their career aspirations. the digital skills session also provided students with an introduction to the university’s learning management system (lms) and how to navigate their lms account, how to access university announcements and their inbox, make use of the conference functionality, access their modules, chats, discussions, assignments, files where additional resources are added, and the pages where they can access their grades. students were further encouraged to complete the four-week digital skills short course to be equipped with the skillset to access, manage, integrate, evaluate, create, and clearly communicate information using digital technologies. this short course is part of the first year experience (fye) programme and is facilitated by the centre for teaching learning and development (cltd) in partnership with the development and leadership unit. the drama for life performance was a recorded production of a themed play that illustrated the different support services available to first-year students. for the 2021 orientation, the themes were support services, the fye programme, academic excellence, and fostering a sense of belonging within the institution. the play also emphasised the pride students feel about the university, through using slogans about being a student there, which were also translated from english into sesotho and isizulu. this session also provided students with some ideas about their role during their university journey, the importance of immersing themselves in https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 https://www.wits.ac.za/ccdu/ https://www.wits.ac.za/ccdu/ https://www.wits.ac.za/campushealth/ 1832023 41(1): 183-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 muloiwa-klenam, et al. student perspectives on the challenges of an online orientation the environment and taking control of their future. it communicated that students do have agencies and that their experience of the institution is determined by multiple stakeholders who have the responsibility to create spaces that are enabling for them. ultimately the online programme attempted to provide students with a holistic and reimagined orientation that was all-encompassing, and which introduced them to institutional resources, tools, and academic expectations to enable them to navigate the institution successfully and feel a strong sense of agency during their academic journey. 3. literature review and framework the study is underpinned by lizzio’s five senses of successful transition (lizzio, 2006). the theory suggests that in order for students to transition successfully into university, five senses need to be considered and developed. these include a sense of connectedness, which refers to the quality of the student’s relationship with peers, and feelings of identification or affiliation with their institution of learning that would ultimately ensure a sense of belonging and immersion within the environment; a sense of capability, which encompasses the students’ understanding of what is expected of them as students and their mastery of basic academic skills in order to encourage them to make sense of any given context; and a sense of purpose, which ensures students have clarity and commitment to their education and career choices, and are able to consider how these intersect with their broader goals beyond the university environment. complementary to the sense of purpose, a sense of resourcefulness enables the student to navigate the institutional system and receive support when experiencing challenges. this sense is cultivated by providing students with clear and accessible roles, procedures and resources alongside encouraging timely, help-seeking behaviour. lastly, a sense of academic culture is shaped by an appreciation of the core values and ethical principles of the university and how these inform approaches to academic material and relationships with staff and students, all of which largely determine a sense of belonging within the institution. lizzio (2006) argues that there is no prescribed way in which to design an orientation and transition strategy to ensure success for first-year students. rightfully so, as each university has its own context to consider to ensure a holistic orientation experience. over the last decade, literature has indicated that within the ever-growing participation agenda in higher education, there is a rising challenge in managing student transition to university as new students come to university with diverse levels of preparedness (smyth & lodge, 2012; kift, nelson & clarke, 2010; kuh et al., 2006). this challenge is critical in the preliminary stages of the new students’ experiences. these students are required to negotiate and make sense of an exuberant amount of information in order to be admitted, enrolled, and gain access to institutional resources and support structures, alongside immersing themselves in various components of student life. therefore, it has been argued that universities have an innate responsibility to create orientation programmes which address the preparedness of new students for university life while being cognisant of not subjecting them to information overload (smyth & lodge, 2012). contrary to the above, more recent literature argues a shift in the conceptualisation of how issues such as transition and “preparedness” are theorised (larsen, horvath & bridge, 2020; o’shea et al., 2016; kahu & nelson, 2018). it is argued that there is a “deficit-discourse shift” away from an edifice of considering the students themselves to be lacking in certain competencies. rather there is increasing recognition that higher education institutions cannot https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 1842023 41(1): 184-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) solely meet the diverse needs of an ever-growing student body, and that profiling certain student groups as deficient only results in perpetuating inequality and exclusion rather than acknowledging the students’ agency. it has therefore further been recognised that the responsibility for bridging gaps for students cannot solely lie with the institution. instead, there needs to be a relational engagement between the student and the university to bridge the sociocultural incongruity and to define the transitioning phase of a first year as one that is dynamic and an “educational interface” (larsen et al., 2020). the covid-19 pandemic propagated a shift to online orientation and transitioning programmes for first-year students across the globe. literature reveals that prior to the pandemic, online orientation was adopted to transition a new student gradually into the institution and avoid information overload (smyth & lodge, 2012; kift, 2008; edward, 2003). it also provided an opportunity for students to engage more intentionally with material, as it promoted self-paced learning and provided students with more agency to make sense of information (jones, 2013). in order for an online orientation to still be engaging, it needs to incorporate an interactive activity before the student can proceed from one section to the other. however, there are still challenges with online engagement, in particular for student orientation purposes: the student’s learning experience is completely self-guided, which can lead to confusion; technical barriers; and access challenges, as students are required to navigate the institution’s lms alongside processing information to familiarise themselves with regard to student services available. however, online orientation does provide an opportunity for students to familiarise themselves with their institution without academic pressure (jones, 2013). orientation itself can determine the retention, academic success and persistence of students (marshall, 2017). therefore, the flexibility of online learning, coupled with the importance of orientation makes it imperative to consider lizzio’s five senses of successful transition, as concessions need to be made in terms of what connectedness looks like in the online space when there are certain barriers to engagement; how students can develop a sense of capability when technical and computer literacy could be a hindrance; how students develop a sense of purpose in the online space, which may be largely premised on online interactive activities; the self-facilitative process of online learning that may impair resourcefulness; and developing a sense of the academic culture of the institution may be hindered due to a lack of interaction with the physical institutional space. during the time of covid-19, it can be argued that online orientation also provided an opportunity for students’ transition into the shifting paradigm of online learning as has been apparent for online students’ academic self-efficacy (abdous, 2019). the year 2020 marked the birth of a “new normal” and promulgated a new way of existing for students and staff within the higher education sphere (tesar, 2020). though it has been argued that covid-19 was a mere accelerator of the processes that had been put in motion over the last couple of years rather than a radical changemaker; essentially it was an inevitable shift of engagement and covid-19 the mere catalyst to accelerate this shift to the virtual world in all spheres of life. however, the challenge with the online teaching and learning that emerged was that ideas of digital literacy and digital pedagogies were mostly unexplored, which resulted in much online engagement simply imitating face-to face learning and engagement (tesar, 2020). subsequently, while asynchronous, self-paced online orientation programmes are not new to the field of orientation, transition and retention, covid-19 created the shift to online overnight. this led to many institutions navigating unchartered territory while having to ensure a successful transitioning programme for new first-year students (crozier, 2021). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 1852023 41(1): 185-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 muloiwa-klenam, et al. student perspectives on the challenges of an online orientation it is evident, as per crozier (2021) and tesar (2020), that the benefits of online orientation are extensive. it offers students convenience and increased access to information and resources. it can be argued that this develops the students’ sense of resourcefulness and capability (crozier, 2021; lizzio, 2006). removing the requirements to be in a designated place at a designated time reduces geographic, scheduling and financial barriers (asides from data) to participation (crozier, 2021). it further allows the programme not simply to function as an event, but as an ongoing resource, as it enables students to revisit content whenever needed. further to this, it enables a more learner-centred experience as students choose how they engage in the programme, because it promotes the concept of self-paced learning and engagement (crozier, 2021). online orientation allows more of a variety of learning activities to be incorporated and helps students engage with curated content that is customised to their interests (such as text, images, video, quizzes, interactive activities, and discussion boards). it also gives immediate feedback on their learning, which is not always possible with large-scale orientation programmes. it could be argued that this provides an opportunity for students to develop a sense of connectedness and purpose with the institution. crozier (2021) and tesar (2020) indicate that online learning is an effective format for knowledge acquisition and attitude performance, as it allows students to have more agency in their learning journey. the restrictions under covid-19 resulted in many students feeling isolated and anxious (de klerk, krull & maleswena, 2021). it was recognised more than ever that orientation provides an imperative support mechanism to address new students’ expectations as well as their preparedness for the university environment. it provides an opportunity for the students to enhance technological and self-management skills as it provided an induction into online learning itself (de klerk et al., 2021). when considering the type of media to use for learning activities, it is suggested that it is not the medium itself that influences the learning, but that the medium should be chosen for its desired pedagogical approach and the resources and expertise to design and implement the activity. aspects such as social presence (or community building), allow students to express their personal characteristics and to present themselves as “real people” to fellow participants, and build a more defined sense of community within the broader sense of the academic culture. this is imperative for the continuous development of a sense of connectedness for the student. further to this, creating peer-to-peer social connections can be built into an online programme through discussion forums and collaborative ways in which to engage (crozier, 2021). incorporating the student voice within the online orientation space creates a further opportunity for the students to develop a sense of connectedness and academic culture. incorporating the voices of senior students creates a sense of broader community across the institution. it is evident that an online orientation precipitates an engaging transitioning period for new students and enables a greater sense of agency among them. there are naturally inherent challenges such as technical literacy, the self-facilitation required and navigating the technical components of a learning management platform, as well as the fact that the online space cannot simply imitate face-to-face physical engagement. subsequently, though, the online space presents the opportunity to transcend certain barriers in terms of access and self-paced learning, and provides more opportunity for interactive engagement, particularly regarding a learning experience such as orientation. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 1862023 41(1): 186-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) 4. methodology study setting this study was conducted at one of south africa’s largest public higher education institutions. the university is structured into five faculties, namely commerce, law and management (clm), engineering and the built environment (ebe), health sciences (hs), humanities (hum) and sciences (sci). in 2021, the university enrolled 42 175 students, of which 60% were undergraduate students and 58% were female students. first-time entering first-year students comprised 13% of its student population in 2021. study participants the target population for the study was all students entering the first year of their undergraduate studies who were enrolled at the university on a full-time basis. all the study participants were recruited by email and each email contained a unique survey link. data collection and study participants data for the study were drawn from the university’s 2021 orientation week survey, which has been administered at the university on annual basis since 2018. the 2021 survey was administered online on the research electronic data capture (redcap) platform over a period of four weeks. data analysis descriptive statistics were used to profile the survey participants in terms of their gender, race, nationality, high school quintile, faculty affiliation, place of residence and the number of friends they made during o-week. descriptive statistics were also used to summarise the findings regarding the students’ overall experience of the o-week learning sessions. in order to identify the key challenges of implementing online orientation, two openended questions were analysed thematically. the questions were: “please comment on your overall experience of the 2021 o-week” and “do you have any suggestions regarding how orientation could be improved in 2022?”. the responses to these two questions were analysed thematically and the key themes are presented in a table together with the relevant illustrative quotes. ethical considerations the study has ethical clearance from the university’s human research ethics (non-medical) h18/09/17 under the project, student experience surveys. the division of student affairs and the office of the registrar at the university granted permission to conduct the study. descriptive results the survey was completed by 32% of the students who were invited to participate in the study (n=1 822). table 1 summarises the demographic characteristics of the survey respondents and reveals that 69% of the students who participated in the survey were female and african (80%). the majority of the respondents were south african students (97%). most of the students were from quintile four and five schools (44%), which refers to better-resourced public schools, followed by quintile one to three schools (39%), which are poorly resourced and have been declared as no-fee-paying schools. students who indicated they were staying https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 1872023 41(1): 187-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 muloiwa-klenam, et al. student perspectives on the challenges of an online orientation in a university residence made up 42% of the survey respondents, followed by 32% of the respondents, who reported they were staying at home. with regard to the distribution of survey respondents by faculty affiliation, the faculty of humanities reported the highest percentage of students (30%), while the faculty of science reported the lowest percentage of students (15%). table 1: distribution of the survey participants by demographic characteristic demographic characteristic n % gender female 1250 69 male 566 31 not specified 6 0 race african 1454 80 chinese 3 0 coloured 55 3 indian 158 9 white 147 8 not specified 5 0 nationality south african 1761 97 non-south african 55 3 not specified 6 0 high school quintile quintile one to three 236 39 quintile four and five 806 44 private/international 277 15 not specified 36 2 residence status at home 577 32 in a university residence 765 42 in an off-campus student residence 457 25 other 19 1 not specified 4 0 faculty clm 354 19 ebe 342 19 hs 275 15 hum 553 30 sci 293 16 not specified 5 1 table 2 presents the distribution of students by the number of friends that they made during o-week. the majority of students reported that they had made no friends by the end of o-week. very few students had made more than five friends who were also in their first year (13%) while 29% of the students had made between two and five friends. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 1882023 41(1): 188-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) table 2: distribution of students by the number of friends that they made during o-week number of friends made n % i did not make any friends who are in their first year 664 36 i made one friend who is in their first year 370 20 i made between two and five friends who are also in their first year 524 29 i made more than five friends who are in their first year 231 13 not specified 33 2 figure 1 is an illustration of the distribution of students by their experience of the seven core learning sessions. the study found that the address by the dean of faculty, the faculty academic programmes and the address by the dean of student affairs reported the highest percentage of students who said the sessions were very informative. the drama for life performance and digital skills reported the highest percentage of student who indicated that these sessions were not informative, 12% and 8%, respectively. figure 1: distribution of the survey participants by how informative they found the learning sessions figure 2 reveals that 76% of the students reported that they were proud to be members of the university community, while 24% were not proud to be members of the university community at the end of o-week. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 1892023 41(1): 189-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 muloiwa-klenam, et al. student perspectives on the challenges of an online orientation figure 2: distribution of students by whether they were proud to be called by the traditional nickname given to students at that university thematic analysis results table 3 highlights the key themes that emerged from the study regarding the challenges of online orientation. the findings were that students found the orientation to be overwhelming and confusing; lacked opportunities for engagement and making friends; lacked connection with the university; was misaligned with other activities; was too short; conflicted with their home obligations; and their data challenges and poor digital skills affected their participation, in the discussion section, these are categorised into five themes and discussed in greater detail. table 3: emerging themes from the open-ended questions regarding the challenges of online orientation theme illustrative quotes overwhelming and confusing “didn’t really enjoy it because it was overwhelming and lonely.” “i was just very confused by the whole thing of starting university and a lot of things didn’t make sense to me. i didn’t know what was expected of me most of the time it took time for me to finally understand.” lacked opportunities for engagement “have something live that will allow students to interact with other students because i still barely know anyone from my course.” “if things are still online, i think having breakout rooms on one of the days would help make engaging and getting to know others in your faculty easier.” lacked opportunities for making friends “i wasn’t able to meet other first years and collaborate. making friends was also hard.” “it was quite hard to make friends since it was online.” https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 1902023 41(1): 190-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) theme illustrative quotes lacked connection with the university “online orientation didn’t feel more like i was a (part of the university community), attending o-week from home was a very boring experience for me.” “i can say i am not fully confident in considering myself as (a part of the university community). data challenges “truth is i did not really experience the orientation week because it was online and i did not have enough data.” “provide data to the first years and prepare them in time for the orientation if it will be online to accommodate everyone.” poor digital skills “it was online and little bit difficult to find on (the online learning management system) as i was not used to using a computer device.” “teach fys about the (university’s learning management system) before attending classes. because other students do not how to use computer or even have access to internet.” misaligned with the other university activities “allow enough time for registration so that more people can participate in orientation.” “residence orientation meant we didn’t get enough chances to follow the o-week program.” short duration one-week was overwhelming and exhausting. “it should be at least 2 weeks not one week.” home obligations “no time, personal/private obligations (chores as i live at home) and scheduling conflicts with my course subjects.” 5. discussion online orientation has been applauded for being convenient, increasing accessibility to information and resources, being learner-centred and reducing the geographic, scheduling and financial barriers to participation (crozier, 2021; lizzio, 2006). there is evidence that online orientation is not new; in the past, it has been used to gradually transition new students and to avoid information overload (smyth & lodge, 2012). the covid-19 pandemic played a big role in propagating the shift to this unchartered territory of online orientation for most institutions. while designing and managing effective orientation and transition programmes has been a rising challenge, online orientation is not without its own challenges (smyth & lodge, 2012). this study identified five types of challenges of implementing online orientation, which are discussed below. programme challenges students expressed that the o-week programme was not aligned with other university programmes, for example, the university registration and the residence orientation. in 2021, the university registration dates clashed with online orientation, particularly for students who were unable to register online at home prior to o-week. running registration and orientation concurrently meant that some students were physically on campus for registration when they were supposed to be attending o-week and from the findings, it is clear that it detracted from their o-week experience. students also expressed dissatisfaction with the duration of the one-week online orientation, as it resulted in their being overwhelmed and exhausted. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 1912023 41(1): 191-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 muloiwa-klenam, et al. student perspectives on the challenges of an online orientation overwhelming and confusing for online orientation programmes to be effective, they need to be well-paced so that students have sufficient time to acquire the necessary knowledge (crozier, 2021). students said the online orientation made them feel overwhelmed, lonely and confused. the covid-19 pandemic restrictions generally made students studying online feel isolated and anxious (de klerk et al., 2021). engagement and connection students’ ability to interact during online orientation developed a sense of connectedness and academic culture (crozier, 2021). in this study, more than 30% of the students reported that they had made no friends by the end of the online orientation. as suggested by crozier (2021), students also indicated that they struggled to make friends during orientation because it was online and they did not have an opportunity to engage with other students. furthermore, all the videos were pre-recorded, which therefore meant that the speakers and students had no opportunities for engagement. students suggested that future online orientation programmes should make use of breakout rooms so that they could have an opportunity to engage with one another. students also said the online orientation did not make them feel connected to the university. this is supported by the statistics that only 76% of the students were proud to be called by the popular, colloquial nickname given to students of that university. while this figure may seem quite high, it is a decrease from 93% when the university conducted a traditional face-to-face orientation. larsen et al. (2020) suggest there needs to be a relational engagement between the student and the institution in order to bridge the social incongruity and to define the first-year transition phase as dynamic and educational. technological challenges a faculty-based study at a south african university found that one of the students’ greatest concerns about online learning was the technological challenges, as some of the students were not living in environments conducive for online learning (de klerk et al., 2021). the present study established that there were students who did not have a wi-fi connection, and experienced data challenges which served as a barrier to them accessing online orientation. although the university did make arrangements for students to get data every month, at the time of orientation there were students who had not been allocated data yet. similarly, de klerk et al. (2021) reported that more than 20% of the students who were enrolled on the orientation site did not access the programme during the orientation week. digital literacy was also a key challenge, as some of the students did not have experience of doing school work on a computer. the university’s 2021 biographical questionnaire (wits, 2021) reported that only half of the first-year students had used computers at their high school for schoolwork. the lack of digital literacy skills affected the students’ ability to access orientation material therefore delaying their processing of transition into the university. home obligations online orientation has been found to offer a learner-centred approach and to be more convenient as pre-recorded videos can be accessed from any geographical location, which reduces the financial and scheduling barriers (crozier, 2021). however, for some of the students at the university, staying at home comes with the burden of household chores, which may interfere with their university commitments. although online orientation encourages https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 1922023 41(1): 192-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) self-paced learning and engagement, falling behind on a task that is not credit bearing might result in the student not catching up and therefore missing out on critical training that was meant to aid with their transition into university. lizzio’s five senses of successful transition the online orientation activities were designed in a way that students were expected to gain all the different senses from the activities, namely connectedness, capability, purpose, resourcefulness and academic culture however, due to some of the challenges of online orientation, the students were not able to attain all of these senses. for example, while prerecorded videos like the drama for life play were aimed at helping students to feel connected to the university, the findings reveal that the lack of interactivity in the videos made the students feel that they were not connected to their classmates, lecturers and the university itself during the orientation programme. 6. conclusion the study was aimed at understanding the challenges of implementing an online orientation during the covid-19 pandemic from the perspective of first-year students. the study identified five categories of challenges that students experienced with online orientation: they found it to be overwhelming and confusing, had programme scheduling, technological, engagement and connection challenges, and clashed with their home obligations. these challenges made it difficult for the students to fully benefit from some of the advantages that online orientation offers beyond the traditional orientation. the findings from this study provide empirical guidelines for universities on how online orientation can be leveraged to support students in their transition into the university environment. the university used these findings as guidelines for the subsequent development of a three-week gateway to success programme, which was introduced at the beginning of 2022. gateway to success was delivered in a blended mode comprising both on-campus and online activities. the programme was held after the formal registration dates and allowed students to become orientated with the various university structures and also engage and interact with their classmates, academic advisors and the academics prior to the commencement of the academic programme (grayson & september, 2022). further research in this area could delve into a more in-depth approach by conducting focus-group discussions or in-depth interviews to get a better understanding of the challenges that students experienced during online orientation. in addition to this, research exploring the relationship between participating in orientation and student progression prior to covid-19 and during covid-19 could offer more insights into research on student transitions. this will also help provide insights on conducting orientation precovid-19, during covid-19 and after covid-19. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 1932023 41(1): 193-194 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 muloiwa-klenam, et al. student perspectives on the challenges of an online orientation reference list abdous, m. 2019. well begun is half done: using online orientation to foster online students’ academic self-efficacy. online learning, 23: 161-167. https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v23i3.1437 crozier, n. 2021. designing effective online orientation programs for first-year university students. college orientation, transition, and retention, 28: 1-16. https://doi.org/10.24926/ jcotr.v28i2.3739 de klerk, d., krull, g. & maleswena, t. 2021. rapid orientation of students for emergency remote learning during the covid19 lockdown. student affairs in africa, 9: 61-75. https://doi. org/10.24085/jsaa.v9i1.1428 edward, n.s. 2003. first impressions last: an innovative 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report: student background information. institutional report. johannesburg: university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6295 https://doi.org/10.5204/intjfyhe.v3i1.104 https://doi.org/10.5204/intjfyhe.v3i1.104 https://doi.org/10.24926/jcotr.v20i2.2828 https://doi.org/10.1177/1478210320935671 https://doi.org/10.1177/1478210320935671 _hlk132299740 _hlk132301074 _hlk132301064 283 book review 2020 38(1): 283-285 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.21 book review “fault lines: a primer on race, science, and society” authors: jonathan jansen and cyrill walters. 1. introduction this is a review of the book “fault lines: a primer on race, science, and society” by jonathan jansen and cyrill walters. the book was originally published in march 2020 by african sun media. the 302-page book is divided into seven sections that consider different topics and social prejudices occasioned by race and racial thinking. professor jonathan jansen is a distinguished scholar, author and leader of the academy of science of south africa. on the other hand, cyrill walters is a renowned scholar with special interests in leadership and institutional theories. the ensuing segment dissects fundamental views expressed in the book and deconstructs key themes addressed therein. 2. review of key issues in this book, the authors take on some of the most difficult questions about society, science and race in the aftermath of apartheid in south africa. the authors successfully demystify the historical background of coloured raceprejudice (which gained root in various fields including genetics, politics, sociology and theology) and highlight the ethics in racial science. there have been many fallacies about race and diseases, racial thinking in universities and the relationship between genetics and eugenics, in helping to define various groups of humankinds. the book offers a good mirror that reflects the lingering effects of race and racism in the world. the book commences by arguing that there is no biological or scientific basis for race, rather, the race is a social construct to serve a political agenda. based on the racial realist view, the authors agree that while race lacks a biological basis, people experience race daily, making it real in its consequences. sociology and realism scholars agree that humans are one race. the minor genetic variations amongst humans are caused by environmental differences within which people have lived over a long period. the authors raise a valid argument that instruments reviewer: maria marinkie madiope doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v38i1.20 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(1): 283-285 published: 11 june 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.21 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1457-4876 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.20 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.20 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.20 284 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 284-285 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.21 used to measure race have been skewed by their social and psychological bias of both their users and their developers (smith, 2005). for example, eugen fischer’s eye and hair colour charts used to measure the race of the archaeological skulls were invented and popularised by pro-nazis in germany, who were so incongruent in their racial perspective, that their instruments were meant to reinforce their philosophy and social orientations. the race was produced in the “measurement mania” period when scientists (anthropometry) began to establish various ways of measuring race and by doing so, they gave validity to the idea that “humans could be divided into different groups”. the book contends that the primary contribution of the historian to the issue of race is showing that “race” was not always there as a naturally occurring phenomenon but was created by humans and given intellectual justification by scientists. this view is backed by the 1950 unesco statement that said that “race was a social myth”. this statement has been supported by different studies that have shown that there was no cultural or biological basis for the race (chin, 2004). jansen and walters link the source of racial ideologies to the political motives of the time they were born and the scientific period that helped to reinforce those ideas. for example, during the “eugenics era”, the idea of miscegenation emerged from german scientists who argued that mixed marriages and sexual union between white and black would breed an inferior race. these scientifically flawed ideas easily integrated into the society because it gave political leaders of the time “intellectual ammunition” for propagating their social ideologies, the outcome being genocide (of the inferior race) and enactment of laws that prohibited mixed marriages. there are various social, theological and intellectual contracts upon which the idea of inferior races emerged. for example, the authors cite revelation by juliana claassens, a theologian, that the hebrew term for incest was loosely translated to mean “a child born to parents from different races”, providing theological justification for political construction of “coloured” people, who were treated as outcasts (just like the children born from incest). the extent to which a minor, theological or social “outlier” ideology could permeate the walls of the social, speaks of the social structure of the period in which it diffused to be part of the society (chin, 2004). in this regard, the authors cite the politics of disgust as the primary fault line in as far as racial and race ideologies are concerned. for example, in south africa, the “poor white problem” (where white afrikaans were considered a threat to ideas of white supremacy and purity) necessitated a legal need to prevent “degradation of the white race”. while the book makes a strong and compelling argument about the genesis of the “need to segregate”, based on the poor white problem, the authors do not address the idea of the already existing “white supremacy and purity” at the time. for the white-afrikaans to be deemed lesswhite, there was already an existing social construct that demarcated the behaviours and ways of living of the whites and what was expected from “other races” (connor, 2017). even though, the authors may have pointed the “poor white problem” as the source of the need for legally separated from coloured by the whites, instead of the catalyst of the already existing problem, they have a strong school of thought that indicates the point in time at which the already simmering disgust for coloured found a “fault line to spill over” (snowden, 2003). the authors, for example, contend that to further minimise the likelihood that the white would mix with the coloured, coloured people were cast as disgusting which led to the description of the coloured people as “aggressive, pitiful, disrespectful, drunk, unhealthy, oversexed and intelligent”. this created a strong background upon which mixed marriages were outlawed. studies carried out about the coloured people (most of which were carried out by the whites) were, therefore likely to continue with the tradition of institutional research, that was skewed against the black (katz, 2006). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.21 285 makina investigating the use of podcasts in an open, distance and e-learning environment 2020 38(1): 285-285 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.21 the tradition of institutional research on people of colour, according to the authors, has also played the primary role in stereotyping and prejudice against gender and disabled people of colour and perceived “inferior” who have substantively been regarded as objects of disgust. for example, the book cites coloured women as an example of objects for special treatment. a social image of degenerate women of colour was a historical by-product where past stories such as a khoisan woman, in the story of sarah baartman, was presented to the whites (mainly the europeans) as a freak due to her large buttocks. the book further argues that coloured women (in sport science) are affected by various oppressions and disadvantages that include gender, race, social class, sexuality, and disability, all at the same time, which over time resulted in their social identities – as coloured, poor women. historical injustices, oppression, and disadvantages faced by various groups in society (mainly the people of colour) accumulate over time to create a certain dominant lifestyle, character and personalities, which are then used to define and reinforce historical ideologies that led to the prejudices in the first place (kleg, 2003). for this reason, the authors are correct in their conclusion that research on the issue of race is not objective. the objectivity of the research is affected by the existing distorted body of knowledge (mainly created by the whites), the researchers themselves (the majority of whom are white), and historical factors (that have led to people of colour being economically and socially weaker than whites due to unequal distribution of resources). 3. conclusion jansen and walters make compelling arguments that race is not real, but a social construct that helped to further political ideologies, and that intellectual knowledge (both directly and indirectly) has been used to create, propagate, maintain and reinforce the ideas of the existence of different human races. instead of providing solutions, the studies have reinforced the idea of the human race making people of colour, particularly coloured women and disabled people of colour, experience the actual race prejudice. the book concludes that while it is important to recognise the harmful politics of race, it is challenging to “unlearn race” based on the current methods of learning, teaching and living. even with the innovative curriculum at universities, it is difficult to unlearn that race is not only learnt in school but also society in general. references chin, j. 2004. the psychology of prejudice and discrimination. westport, conn: praeger publishers. connor, a. 2017. an analysis of gordon all port’s: the nature of prejudice. london england: routledge. jansen j. & walters c. 2020. fault lines: a primer on race, science and society. african sun media. https://doi.org/10.18820/9781928480495 katz, p. 2006. towards the elimination of racism. new york: pergamon press. kleg, m. 2003. hate, prejudice, and racism. albany: state university of new york press. smith, v. 2005. ethnic pride and racial prejudice in victorian cape town: group identity and social practice, 1875–1902. cambridge new york: cambridge university press. snowden, f. 2003. before color prejudice: the ancient view of blacks. cambridge, mass: harvard university press. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.21 https://doi.org/10.18820/9781928480495 _goback 87 critical attributes of effective classrooms: insights from classroom engagement abstract student success is an international priority and various initiatives have been implemented in higher education to improve success rates, especially in the first year of study. however, few of these initiatives have focused on the classroom context even though classroom engagement is a prerequisite for success. the purpose of this study was to ascertain what classroom surveys could reveal about student engagement. in addition, it aimed to advance the notion of engagement to include what students and lecturers do in the classroom to make classroom learning more effective. an exploratory case study research design was used, which drew on tinto’s (2012) attributes of effective classrooms as the theoretical framework. the major finding is that critical reflections on classroom engagement by lecturers and students can improve engagement in the classroom by focusing on the mismatches between students’ and lecturers’ perspectives and using these to improve classroom practices. the findings thus revealed the importance of reflective practice by both students and lecturers as an attribute of effective classrooms and in doing so have contributed to theory by adding reflective practice in teaching and learning to tinto’s (2012) attributes of effective classrooms. this article concludes with a discussion of the implications of this study for improving engagement in the classroom and ultimately student success. key words: student engagement, classroom surveys, attributes of effective classrooms, reflective practice, lecturer and student perceptions, classroom experience, classroom engagement 1. introduction student success is an international priority and various initiatives have been implemented in higher education (he) to improve success rates, especially in the first year of study. student engagement represents one such initiative. kift (2004) argues that factors such as massification and reduced funding have contributed to disengagement in he. in order to improve engagement, various universities internationally have opted to participate in student engagement surveys. these surveys were customised for the south african context by the university of the free state and are used to assess how engaged students are at the institutional as well as at the course level. this study focuses specifically on engagement at the course level, rather than on students’ engagement at the institutional level. tinto (2012) maintains that few initiatives to improve raazia moosa academic support, university of the witwatersrand raazia.moosa@wits.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v37i1.7 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 37(1): 87-100 date published: february 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:raazia.moosa@wits.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.7 http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 88 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) student success have borne fruit because they have not focused on improving the classroom experience. as such, student engagement is increasingly being mooted as a prerequisite for learning (pittaway, 2012), even though it is poorly conceptualised and defined in the literature (baron & corbin, 2012). little attention is paid to the classroom context although classroom engagement could be considered a prerequisite for success. the purpose of the present study was to ascertain what classroom surveys could reveal about the attributes of effective classrooms for student engagement and to advance the notion of engagement on the basis of what students as well as lecturers do in the classroom. the central argument presented in this paper is that critical reflections on classroom engagement by lecturers and students can improve engagement in the classroom and bridge the gap between theory and practice by allowing lecturers to consider strategies to improve engagement. this study provides an aggregated view of lecturers’ and students’ perceptions of engagement in the classroom that could lead to effective classroom practices. the literature in the field of student engagement is highlighted before discussing engagement in the classroom. tinto’s (2012) attributes of effective classrooms are then used as a lens to view characteristics of engagement in the classroom. this is followed by an explanation of the methodology which is based on a qualitative exploratory case study design. the findings are then discussed using tinto’s attributes of effective classrooms. the contribution this study makes is that it will show that critical reflections by lecturers on student engagement surveys are able to highlight ways of improving student engagement and that student reflections can improve learning and provide lecturers with the feedback required to improve teaching and learning. this paper then concludes with implications for theory and practice. 2. student engagement the concept of engagement is a complex construct (zepke et al., 2012; 2013; zepke & leach, 2010) that includes the socio-cultural nature of lecturers’ and students’ experiences in the classroom (bryson & hand, 2007). student engagement in the classroom has been the focus of previous studies (strydom & hen-boisen, 2017; zepke et al., 2014; ainley, 2013; bryson & hand, 2007). the term engagement means different things in different contexts. researchers in the united kingdom, see it as a qualitative perception of patterns of engagement, whereas those in the united states see it as quantifying variables of engagement (bryson & hard, 2012). using engagement as a means to investigate the possibilities of improving student learning, bryson and hand (2007) argue that student engagement occurs on a continuum from disengagement to engagement. engagement is complex and therefore disengagement occurs. a student could thus be engaged in one course and be disengaged in another course or engaged in a course but not fully engaged in the university (bryson & hand, 2007). in their study, bryson and hand (2007) found that engagement with module tasks revealed that “some students were engaged at the start of their higher education experience and retained this and others grew more engaged as they went on” (bryson & hand, 2007: 359). engagement is thus context specific with no universal definition despite various perspectives. the manner in which students engage with learning is seen in terms of constructivist (coates, 2005) and behaviourist perspectives (strydom & hen-boisen, 2017; kahu, 2013; zepke & leach, 2010; kuh, 2009). on the one hand, the constructivist perspective stresses that “learning is influenced by how an individual participates in educationally purposeful activities” (coates, 2005: 26). on the other hand, the behaviourist perspective emphasises student satisfaction and achievement and views student engagement as an evolving construct 89 moosa critical attributes of effective classrooms: insights from classroom engagement that focuses on institutional practices and student behaviours such as time on task, teaching practices, and social and academic integration (strydom & hen-boisen, 2017; kahu, 2013; kuh, 2009). classroom surveys on student engagement are thus based on the behaviourist perspective since the aspects deemed important by this perspective are incorporated into the surveys. kahu (2013) consequently argues that the behaviourist perspective on student engagement enjoys the most support. the student-institution relationship is reciprocal where institutions provide opportunities and conditions to learn and students are responsible for learning (krause & coates, 2008). kinzie points out that “engagement is simultaneously about students’ investment in educational activities and also about the intentional structuring and facilitation of students’ involvement in enriching learning experiences” (2010: 140). student engagement is, however, only one indicator of student success. the behaviourist perspective assumes that engagement will lead to success if the right conditions prevail (zepke & leach, 2010). zepke and leach (2010) therefore focus on how to improve student success in he with the emphasis on retention, completion, and employability. student engagement is thus recognised as a key factor in promoting learning, and studies on engagement have consequently focused on learning and achievement in he (zepke et al., 2014; kahu, 2013). 3. classroom surveys on student engagement classroom surveys have been used to measure student engagement at the micro-level in the classroom, and positive outcomes such as improved learning and interaction between lecturers and students, have been noted when students are engaged through active practices in the classroom (bryson & hand, 2007). however, the massification of he has often made engagement difficult, especially in the classroom (bryson & hand, 2007), as there are fewer opportunities for students to articulate their expectations or obtain individual feedback on their assignments. lecturers are also challenged by time constraints to engage with alternative pedagogies or attend professional development courses. other challenges faced by lecturers include a diverse student body in terms of preparedness and demographics, large classes, and limited resources. resource constraints in terms of funding for tutorials is also a reality. although diversity is a reality in the classroom, kift states that “the one thing that all students have in common in all their diversity is that they come to us to learn and it is as learners that students must be primarily engaged if they are to have a successful fye” (2004: 3). nevertheless, the transition from school to the social and academic demands of university life could be facilitated by enhancing classroom effectiveness through engagement (tinto, 2012). studies on classroom engagement have been conducted internationally and, more recently, in south africa. internationally, zepke et al. (2012) examined whether student engagement could be improved through research at the sub-institutional level (at the level of a course), rather than at the institutional level. following the same line of inquiry, thomas et al. (2015) questioned whether classroom surveys could improve student success or engagement by focusing on the course level rather than on the institutional level. zepke et al. (2012) thus maintained that the best unit of study for student engagement is the “sub-institutional level such as courses” (329). low expectations are associated with disengagement, and kift (2004) states that disengagement is a reality of the classroom experience for some students. in another classroom study, ainley (2012) found a relationship between engagement and interest in classroom activities that are likely to lead to students acquiring knowledge more readily. zepke et al. (2014) also examined whether students and lecturers shared similar understandings of engagement in the classroom and found that the students and lecturers in 90 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) their study had dissimilar as well as similar perceptions about what engages students in the classroom. kift (2004) thus proposed curriculum renewal to enhance student engagement. in addition, bryson and hand (2007) maintained that students will engage if lecturers demand high standards and provide them with feedback. lecturers’ support for students will therefore impact positively on students’ levels of engagement. in the south african context, the south african survey on student engagement (sasse) is based on the american version and was customised for south africa by the university of the free state. it provides information at the institutional level whereas classroom surveys on student engagement (classe) focus on the classroom level. the classroom surveys on student engagement include both a classe (lecturer survey) and a classe (student survey). these surveys provide insight into classroom engagement with the aim of developing effective educational practices. the ultimate aim of these surveys is to increase student success rates (strydom & hen-boisen, 2017). a study by strydom and hen-boisen (2017) found that a large number of the students in their study memorised course material even though their lecturers did not consider memorisation desirable. the students stressed the importance of tutoring or teaching other students while the lecturers did not consider this important. strydom and hen-boisen (2017) also found that preparation and participation in class were behaviours that lecturers believed students needed to improve on. this south african study thus showed similar trends to international studies even though the context differed and even though classroom surveys on engagement in south african have only recently been adopted. previous studies internationally and nationally focused on whether to improve engagement by focusing on the course level (zepke et al. 2012), or whether classroom surveys could improve student success or engagement (thomas et al., 2015). another focus in the national literature (strydom & hen-boisen, 2017), has been on how student engagement surveys could provide evidence to inform student success. what these studies lack is a focus on how lecturers’ and students’ reflections on the student engagement data could inform effective classrooms. this is a gap in the literature which this study fills. reflective practice is a dynamic concept (cunningham 2001), with philosophical origins in constructivism. learning is thus viewed as “an active process where learners reflect upon their current and past knowledge and experiences to generate new ideas and concepts” (2). cunningham (2001) argues that reflective practice is a continuous cycle which involves self-evaluation and self-observation to understand actions and reactions and refine practices. using classroom engagement surveys to ascertain what the reflective perceptions of lecturers and student are, could inform effective classrooms and fill a gap in the literature. the following section proposes a theoretical framework for examining effective classrooms in the south african context. 4. theoretical framework: attributes of effective classrooms tinto is a well-known scholar in the field of student success and engagement. the classroom attributes or characteristics of effective classrooms that he articulates are a result from his work in the field. tinto (2012) highlights the importance of students’ experiences in the classroom by focusing on the attributes of effective classrooms and argues that improving classroom experience will lead to greater student success. these attributes of effective classrooms were chosen as a theoretical framework because they have not been explored in the south african context. they also focus on the classroom situation and have direct bearing on engagement in the classroom. tinto’s (2012) attributes form the basis of effective classrooms and focus 91 moosa critical attributes of effective classrooms: insights from classroom engagement on “clear expectations, timely support, assessment and feedback, engaging pedagogies and enhancing teaching skills” (4-7), which inform and serve as data points to give an indication of engagement in the classroom. these attributes will thus be used as a theoretical framework to guide the analysis of the data, in this study. a focus on these attributes indicates that the expectations that lecturers have of their students, as well as the expectations that students have of themselves, influence performance in a course. tinto argues that “student success is directly influenced not only by the clarity and consistency of expectations, but also by their level” (2012: 4), with high expectations therefore fostering student success. students’ behaviour can then be shaped accordingly, based on their perceptions of the lecturer’s expectations both verbally and in writing. timeous support underpins high expectations, especially in the first year of study. however, this support must be contextualised in terms of the demands placed on students in the classroom (tinto, 2012) in order for it to impact on student success. according to tinto (2012), continuous assessment of and feedback on students’ performance should be structured in a way that allows students to modify their behaviour. tinto (2012) adds that as engagement is the most salient attribute of an effective classroom, both academic and social learning with lecturers and peers in classroom activities are more likely to increase the chances of classroom success. engagement in the learning process will thus occur through learning activities, and students are also likely to gain social and emotional support through social affiliations in the classroom, which can ultimately foster success in the classroom (tinto, 2012; ainley, 2012; bryson & hand, 2007). learning activities lay the foundation for engaging pedagogies as an attribute of effective classrooms, and various assessment methods are available to assess learning. lecturers can also contribute by enhancing their teaching competence. tinto (2012) argues that the skills of teaching staff are vital for the implementation of pedagogies of engagement. most lecturers in he have not developed appropriate practices in curriculum development, pedagogy, and assessment, which would increase their effectiveness in the classroom and consequently promote student engagement and success (tinto, 2012). tinto (2012) highlights recent initiatives aimed at encouraging new staff members to attend short courses and degree programmes to improve their teaching. how these courses are conceptualised and whether they are voluntary will largely determine their effectiveness (tinto, 2012). however, their impact will be limited as there are generally more existing staff in the he system than new staff. nevertheless, professional development is a worthy initiative to promote student engagement in the classroom. these attributes are thus essential for effective classrooms but whether they are sufficient and relevant to the south african context will become evident through the data analysis process. 5. methodology the present study was based on a qualitative, exploratory case study research design. according to creswell (2012: 465), a case study is “an in-depth exploration of a bounded system”. high-risk courses represented the bounded system or the ‘case’. this study is described as an exploratory case study because it was the first time that classroom surveys on student engagement had been conducted at a research intensive university in south africa as part of a pilot project that began in 2015. three data collection methods were employed to explore the perceptions of lecturers and students on effective engagement in classrooms. these methods included interviews with the lecturers, a review of the reports based on a 92 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) quantitative analysis of classroom surveys with the lecturers and the students, and a review of institutional data on high-risk courses. the data were aggregated across four faculties (commerce, law and management; engineering and the built environment; humanities and science). the aim of this study was to ascertain whether the data generated from classroom surveys could be used to improve student engagement and ultimately student success by focusing on the attributes of a micro-level component of an institution such as the classroom. the research question posed is to what extent, if any, could classroom surveys improve engagement in the classroom and contribute to the characteristics of effective classrooms. a purposive sampling strategy was used. the sample was drawn from classroom surveys on student engagement conducted in 2015 in 25 high-risk courses identified through the university’s early warning system. a high-risk course was defined as a course with a pass rate of 66% or lower. within the 25 courses, 1945 students completed the questionnaires, and 18 lecturers agreed to participate in the surveys. of the 18 lecturers, nine interviews were conducted with lecturers who were available and still employed at the university. the 18 courses were mostly first-year courses or courses offered for the first time in the second year of study. krause and coates (2008) stress the importance of qualitative and quantitative measures in engagement surveys and propose a synthesis of qualitative and quantitative data. this was achieved by analysing reports based on quantitative methods and combining them with qualitative interviews and an analysis of course pass rates. the interviews were conducted between 2015 and 2016, transcribed verbatim, and analysed using content analysis. a limitation of this study was that the courses were not representative of all the highrisk courses at the university. in addition, a qualitative case study was used, which prevented any generalisation of the findings. furthermore, the results were aggregated, and an in-depth view of a particular course is possible only through a disaggregated approach, which is not presented in this article. 6. findings the findings are based on an analysis of the reports on the classroom surveys completed by lecturers and students, as well as interviews conducted with lecturers. an aggregated view is presented to give an overall picture of classroom engagement. the analysis of data drew on tinto’s (2012) attributes of effective classrooms. expectation of learning activities the analysis of the data indicated that lecturers and the students had different expectations of the same course with regard to preparation for the class, the time spent on tasks, and the ability to combine ideas from different subjects or to discuss ideas with others. most lecturers and students considered it important to attend class and to take notes in class. most of the students did not consider the need to work hard as important nor did they consider it important to spend more than one hour on an assignment or to attend class prepared. some students also did not consider it important to receive challenging content, to combine ideas from different subjects, or to discuss ideas with others. the lecturers however, considered these matters as an important indication of the students’ commitment to engage in learning activities. lecturers also expected students to come to class prepared. one lecturer stated an expectation of students as: “so i wouldn’t expect them to spend more than 3 hours ... i think the way i said it is, sit down for one hour a day before class and go through the lecture notes. yes revising to reconcile what you 93 moosa critical attributes of effective classrooms: insights from classroom engagement have learnt to what you have pre-read, to what you would require … do all the tuts and get done with that” (lecturer 5). irrespective of the number of years a lecturer had taught, some lecturers indicated that it was essential to clarify important aspects of the course for students to enhance their engagement. lecturers also reported that assumed knowledge and the importance of peer discussions and preparation for class, should not be taken for granted. while most lecturers perceived the need to work hard as important, one lecturer reported that the need to work hard or not might be a perception related to having some previous knowledge of the content. previous knowledge of a course led some of the students to believe that they did not have to work as hard as students who were being exposed to the content for the first time. nevertheless, expectations of learning activities highlighted a mismatch between the expectations of some lecturers and some students with an acknowledgement by both that some expectations could be legitimate. inclusive academic support a specific question on inclusive support was not asked in the classroom surveys or in the interviews. this theme emerged during the analysis process. lecturers highlighted the need for appropriate early interventions for students preferably after the first assessment. this was highlighted despite the large class sizes in excess of 200 students in the first year. lecturers reported that support was provided in many courses not only by the lecturer but by tutors as well. the role of tutors was thus considered essential for engagement in the classroom. lecturers also stressed the need for all students to receive extra support – not only those at risk of failing or those who required the extra support. in some courses, the stronger students who were obtaining first class passes, tended to take advantage of the additional academic support provided. most lecturers indicated that additional academic support tutorials were small, consisting of between 10 and 15 students. one lecturer captured this as: “we try and keep students at 10 or less working with a tutor and it’s an opportunity for them to bring a draft, to answer a question or the introductory paragraph or whatever ... it’s interesting because the strongest students are the ones who attend most often. this is intended for students who need help, but in fact the strongest keep getting stronger. so our remedial opportunity is being attended by some of our students who are getting first class marks, which you know is just one of those weird things that students do” (lecturer 3). the inclusive support recommended by lecturers, encompassed early interventions for students as well as inclusive tutorial support targeting all students. the surveys did not probe whether the students attended additional academic support tutorials, although such tutorials were mentioned by the lecturers as a common support mechanism implemented as part of the tutorial system. the findings thus indicated that tutorials are spaces for student engagement. forms and frequency of assessment and feedback some students reported that challenging assessment tasks were set, which required them to do their best. however, most students reported that it was not important to receive prompt oral or written feedback from the lecturer on their academic performance (e.g. marks from tests, exams, and assignments). students also did not consider discussions with lecturers, on their assignment grades or detailed information about learning outcomes, as important. this is interesting as assessments are usually considered very important in shaping student learning. one lecturer’s explanation for this related to the intake of stronger students with grades 94 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) above 70% for mathematics and to the fact that the results were published on the learning management system, which mitigated against the collection of assignments and consultations with lecturers. in addition, most of the students reported that they did not discuss ideas with the lecturer outside the classroom and also that they did not consider it important to ask questions in the classroom. in sharp contrast, the lecturers believed that feedback on assessments was crucial because students could use it as a learning opportunity to improve on the next assessment. most of the lecturers reported that opportunities to reflect on feedback were provided in some courses, however one lecturer noted that the students did not perceive feedback as a “major teachable moment”. lecturers also reported that emails from students and consultations with students increased close to exams, perhaps indicating that some students are marks driven with their focus on passing rather than learning. the mismatch between lecturers and students regarding the importance and frequency of feedback and consultations was raised by some lecturers. continuous feedback from lecturers was built into tutorial preparation for assignments in some courses, and asking questions inside and outside the classroom was considered very important by most lecturers. comments on assessment and feedback were exemplified as: “… so what happens is that when we mark something, we got the feedback and we’ve got the mark. and they just really want to see the mark. but the problem with that is, let’s say you got 60%. unless you have seen the comments that i have written on your assignment, how do you know where the problem is. i think often students just want a solution...i think feedback is important otherwise i wouldn’t give you an assessment if i didn’t think it was important” (lecturer 8). lecturer and peer engagement/affiliations some students indicated that they enjoyed working with peers in group work sessions. however, the majority of students did not perceive working with classmates on projects and assignments during class or working with classmates outside of class to prepare assignments, as important. they also did not perceive as important the need to explain subject content to other students or to use emails and/or smss to communicate with the lecturer. in addition, some students did not consider it important to communicate with the lecturer to discuss assignments. in support of this, a lecturer in the faculty of science agreed with the students that communication with other students and the lecturer was not important. most lecturers were in favour of consultation times and reported that they communicated these times to the students and also made their email addresses available to the students in the course outlines. a mismatch was noted with some lecturers who believed that lecturer and peer engagement or affiliations were very important. as such, lecturers and tutors as well as structured and intentional peer engagement was emphasised as important by some lecturers. lecturers suggested capitalising on and incorporating students’ perceived need to tutor each other into classroom pedagogy. the importance of peer engagement and discussion was also stressed by some lecturers. one lecturer noted that peer engagement was supported in the literature thereby confirming its importance. an example of a comment included: “so it’s not just one or two who … feel that way [that they can explain the subject content to other students].... i can use that quite a lot then. but, i can even get them in a tut to tutor each others” (lecturer 7). 95 moosa critical attributes of effective classrooms: insights from classroom engagement lecturer and peer engagement was thus reported as important in a classroom situation where students engaged with one another. it is thus evident that a culture of teaching and learning that supports lecturer and peer engagement is essential for effective classrooms. classroom context (curriculum and engaging pedagogies) curriculum lecturers and students used the term curriculum to refer to the content, discussions and assessments of their courses. students and lecturers differed on their view of the importance of curriculum as a form of engagement. students reported making limited contributions in class discussions and asking questions. this included limited inclusion of different viewpoints in class discussions or papers. students added that they often attended class without having completed readings or assignments although the lecturers considered drawing on different viewpoints and preparation for class as key to success. some students reported finding it difficult to follow the lecturer, and one lecturer raised this as a concern related to engagement in the classroom. how the students experienced learning as well as the curriculum was important for some lecturers. some students also indicated that making judgements and synthesising and analysing data was important to them. scaffolding and the avoidance of surface learning was highlighted as important by those lecturers who were interviewed. some lecturers mentioned the challenges involved in getting students to prepare for class and added that deep learning on the part of students was an expectation of theirs. how the curriculum content was paced and scaffolded to foster engagement in the classroom was considered by lecturers to be important for students to achieve higher order learning in terms of bloom’s revised taxonomy. a reflection included: “it’s the higher order learning skills … because they doing surface learning … all of the things we find critical are all these deep level kind of applying. this is on that taxonomy all the higher order stuff … so they recognise that this is what we want them to do, but they can’t make those connections. so how do we synthesize if you haven’t done the readings” (lecturer 9). engaging pedagogies engaging pedagogies such as working with classmates or using an electronic medium were not considered important by students in some courses, thus highlighting a mismatch between some lecturers’ views on the importance of engaging pedagogies and those of some students. an analysis of the interviews with the lecturers revealed that engaging pedagogies employed in the classroom included the use of clickers, tutorials, pop-quizzes, consultation with lecturers, review sessions, peer support and group work, weekly concept tutorials, and reading and writing programmes. some lecturers and students mentioned the importance of attending review sessions. in addition, some lecturers reported using engaging pedagogies to encourage active engagement and discussion as well as active peer learning. this was typified as: “i use clickers and make them discuss among themselves in classes. i tell them to think about it and discuss it with somebody... just so there’s active engagement and discussion and also active peer learning.” (lecturer 7). “yeah i mean tutoring is something that i found, …it makes a big difference.” (lecturer 4). engaging pedagogies were thus highlighted as a means of achieving higher order thinking skill and peer learning in the classroom. 96 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) reflective practice in teaching and learning reflections on teaching and learning practices were implicit in the classroom engagement surveys and interviews, but emerged during the analysis process. completing these surveys enabled reflections on various issues such as expectations of learning activities, support, lecture and peer engagement, the curriculum, and engaging pedagogies. the classroom surveys enabled lecturers and students to reflect on engagement indicators. lecturers’ reflections included thinking about what pedagogic practices were good and why they were used, making the course expectations clearer to students on a weekly basis, and using feedback from the classroom engagement surveys to inform planning. some reflective comments included: “hmm, so i need to make it more explicit” (lecturer 7). “so maybe, i need to start thinking outside the box and say next week, i’m going to do a pop quiz that has a potential prize, to see if they have read for the lecture” (lecturer 5). reflections on the mismatch of expectations between students and lecturers were perceived by most of the lecturers as useful for improving classroom engagement. the majority of the lecturers also reported that reflective practice helped highlight mismatches between lecturer and student perceptions of teaching and learning and provided insights into who the students sitting in the classroom actually were and how best to improve engagement. professional development analysis of the interviews with the lecturers indicated that some lecturers were actively involved in improving their professional skills through conference attendance, registering for postgraduate diplomas in he, attending short courses, and various other activities to improve their teaching such as reading in the field of teaching and learning and attending internal university symposia. while obtaining a phd was noted as a means of improving professional competence, one lecturer said it was a challenge as well. the comment was made that a lack of publications was not an indication that research in a discipline was not taking place and that attending teaching and learning conferences was essential for professional development. this was typified as: “so i will do a lot of reading and find out a lot of things about my field but i’m not writing papers about it. it doesn’t mean that i’m not researching …people need to be on top of their field and that’s fine, but i see that [attending teaching and learning conferences] as important. it’s not the same as me churning out papers about the research that i have done, it’s improving my teaching” (lecturer 8). engagement in the classroom thus included aspects of professional development and highlighted the importance of the partnership between lecturers and students in fostering student success. 7. discussion tinto’s (2012) attributes of effective classrooms served as a theoretical framework to guide the analysis of the data. the findings indicated that classroom surveys provide insight into how engagement in the classroom leads to effective classrooms. reflective practices by lecturers and students emerged from this study and can be added as an attribute of effective classrooms. congruence as well as mismatches between the lecturers’ and students’ perceptions of engagement in the classroom were evident. similarities were highlighted 97 moosa critical attributes of effective classrooms: insights from classroom engagement between some lecturers and students who considered it important to attend class, to work with peers, to attend review sessions, to take notes in class, and to discuss ideas with others. some comments indicated that students were required to make judgements, synthesise and analyse data and also that challenging assessment tasks encouraged students to do their best. mismatches were noted between the lecturers’ and the students’ expectations of a course, what constituted engagement, the importance and frequency of feedback, the importance of peer and lecturer interaction, and the perception of how many hours of work was required. as is the case with the studies by zepke et al. (2012) and zepke (2013), classroom engagement surveys can be used as a strategy to enhance the experience of first-year students. however, these mismatches need to be addressed. zepke et al. (2010) argue that teaching has the greatest influence on engagement, a view supported by bryson and hand (2007), who state that lecturers should demand high standards, challenge students, make themselves freely available to discuss academic progress, and create inviting learning environments. the present study indicated that although the lecturers acknowledged the importance of consultation times and timeous feedback to students, a mismatch was evident between the importance that the students and the lecturers attached to such learning environments. radloff and coates (2010) found that students who engaged in higher forms of learning such as analysing, synthesising, and evaluating information, tended to be the most engaged, as was found also by hockings et al. (2008) in their study. however, the findings in the present study indicated a mismatch between the students’ and the lecturers’ perceptions regarding the expectations of higher forms of learning. higher order learning, analysing and synthesising material, together with diverse views in a course, were regarded by the lecturers as important and conducive to engagement, but this perspective was not shared by some students in this study. kuh et al. (2005) found that high expectations of students and challenging assessment tasks enhanced engagement, provided that prompt and clear feedback was given. the present study revealed that some students did not value challenging content or prompt assessment. in some cases, the assessments were not even collected, and the lecturers were not approached to obtain feedback. this is surprising since the students could have used the lecturers’ feedback as a learning opportunity to do better in future assignments. although some lecturers commented that their feedback was structured as proposed by tinto (2012), students were not able to modify their behaviour. this study also provides an indication of student learning processes and how bloom’s taxonomy could be used to counter the mismatch between the students’ and the lecturers’ perceptions, thereby promoting engagement in the classroom. while these classroom insights are valuable, it should be noted that learning is not confined to the classroom and that the classroom is only one space where engagement to promote learning takes place. 8. implications and concluding remarks this study has implications for both theory and practice with regard to classroom surveys and their contribution to effective classrooms. the findings indicated that data from classroom surveys provides a means for lecturers and student to critically reflect on ways to improve engagement. student reflections on engagement further provide lecturers with the feedback required to improve teaching and learning. active reflection by lecturers is able bridge the gap between theory and practice by helping lecturers consider strategies to promote student engagement in the classroom. this study has contributed to theory by adding reflective practice in teaching and learning to tinto’s (2012) attributes of effective classrooms (see figure 1). 98 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) expectations reflective practice in teaching & learning enhancing teaching skills curriculum transformation & engaging pedagogies engagement frequent assessment & continuous feedback timely support attributes of effective classrooms figure 1 attributes of effective classrooms (adapted from tinto, 2012) within the south african context, this study highlighted areas for improvement in the curriculum and pedagogical practices based on classroom perceptions and mismatches between lecturers and students on what constitutes engagement. another implication of this study is that valuable insights can be gained from research that focuses on the results of classroom surveys at the micro or sub-institutional level. if lecturers engage with and critically reflect on student engagement data and the mismatch between students’ and lecturers’ responses and more importantly, if this feeds into improving classroom practices, then there is value in administering the classe surveys. further implications are that high impact practices such as classroom engagement surveys can be linked to deep learning, which is also supported by the literature (strydom & hen-boisen, 2017; kuh, 2013; 2005). however, why students engage in one course and engage less or do not engage in another course warrants further exploration. future research could triangulate classroom surveys on engagement with other institutional surveys to improve the first-year experience as well as student success more broadly. triangulation with other surveys could thus offer lecturers a more holistic view of engagement and effective classrooms. through the reflective perceptions of lecturers and students, this study has shown that classroom surveys are able to improve engagement in the classroom despite some mismatches in perceptions and that reflective practice through engagement is an attribute of effective classrooms. 9. reference list ainley, m. 2012. students’ interest and engagement in classroom activities. in: s.l. christenson et al. 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n.j., brown, e.a., & thomas, l.y. 2015. use of student response and engagement systems in the collegiate classroom: an educational resources review. journal of hospitality, leisure, sport & tourism education, 17, 59-61. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhlste.2015.09.002 zepke, n., leach, l., & butler, p. 2014. student engagement: students’ and teachers’ perceptions. higher education research & development, 33(2), 386-398. https://doi.org/10 .1080/07294360.2013.832160 zepke, n. 2013. student engagement: a complex business supporting the first year experience in tertiary education. the international journal of the first year in higher education, 4(2), 1. https://doi.org/10.5204/intjfyhe.v4i2.183 zepke, n., butler, p., & leach, l. 2012. institutional research and improving the quality of student engagement. quality in higher education, 18(3), 329-347. https://doi.org/10.1080/13 538322.2012.730338 zepke, n. & leach, l. 2010. improving student engagement: ten proposals for action. active learning in higher education, 11(3), 167-177. https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787410379680 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhlste.2015.09.002 https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2013.832160 https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2013.832160 https://doi.org/10.5204/intjfyhe.v4i2.183 https://doi.org/10.1080/13538322.2012.730338 https://doi.org/10.1080/13538322.2012.730338 https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787410379680 _goback using participatory video to explore teachers’ lived experiences tilla olivier, naydene de lange & lesley wood faculty of education research technology and innovation unit nelson mandela metropolitan university south campus p o box 77000 port elizabeth 6031 tel (041) 5042834 fax (041) 5042822 e-mail lesley.wood@nmmu.ac.za teachers who work in economically and socially disadvantaged environments have first-hand knowledge of the challenges that can impede teaching and learning, yet their voices are often ignored when researchers and policy-makers attempt to address such issues. in this article we describe how we attempted to make teacher voices audible via an intervention based on participatory visual methodology. a two-day participatory research-as-intervention workshop enabled twelve teachers from economically and socially disadvantaged township schools to produce videos that examined some challenges applicable to their praxis. the process of producing the participatory video offered the teachers the opportunity to learn more about themselves and their educational contexts, and to position themselves as “teachers who care”, as they collectively identified pertinent issues affecting their practice, decided on how to represent those issues visually and how to further use the finished product as a tool for teaching and/or community engagement. keywords: participatory visual methodologies; research as intervention; participatory video; agency; pastoral role introduction “together we can make a difference” are the words used by one group of teachers to conclude their short video. these words highlight the importance of acknowledging the constructive influence embodied in teaching. based on their lived experiences1 in the educational environment, teachers interpret their context and construct meaning, which influences how they prepare the learners for their eventual roles as responsible global citizens. this premise is based on dewey’s (1938) earlier, but still relevant, philosophy that a strong interconnectedness exists between education and experience, and the fact that teachers draw strongly on their own experiences when they teach (chan, 2006). for dewey (1938), however, experience has both a personal and a social connotation, because individuals exist among other human beings and cannot be understood outside of their social context (clandinin & connelly, 2000). as teachers work together on a project such as making a participatory video, they learn from each other and are exposed to varied and alternative interpretations of their lives in context. moreover, their collective experiences, both past and present, help them to imagine future experiences and how current situations could be changed for the better (dewey, 1938). in this article, we focus on the expressions of teachers portrayed in the participatory videos they produced, based on our belief that the teachers’ “experience is the primary agency of education” (connelly & clandinin, 1988: ix) and that the videos reveal their perceptions of what is significant in their working perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201044 context. the ability of teachers to influence positive change should not be underestimated (osman & kirk, 2001), and ultimately, teacher knowledge should be at the forefront of educational interventions, rather than be created from the theoretical assumptions of academics or policy/curriculum planners, who are not necessarily in touch with the reality of daily school life (craig & olson, 2002). how teachers respond to issues that they perceive as barriers to effective teaching and learning thus constitutes the focal point in this research project. connelly and clandinin (1988, xv) contend that teachers’ voices are often ignored, resulting in their feeling devalued and demotivated. in contrast, it can be argued that if teachers know that they are heard and valued, they will possibly become more inspired, passionate and dedicated in their practice. in this article we offer a practical and transformational way of encouraging teachers to make their voices heard, since much can be learned from their first-hand experiences and interpretations of issues relevant to education today. since transformational experiences can “change the pathways of one’s life” (hopp, 2001:274), both the education system and the teachers themselves can benefit from such involvement. we frame the teachers’ participatory video work within the pastoral role of teachers as identified in the norms and standards for educators (doe, 2000), since this role is one that they are increasingly having to develop, particularly in an era where hiv/aids is affecting south african school communities (heaids, 2010), yet it is one in which they are less likely to have received formal training. research design our research design is influenced by the notion of “liberatory pedagogy” (freire, 1998) as “the means by which men and women deal critically with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world” (thompson, drawing on paulo freire, in mayo, 1999:5). our choice of using participatory video was therefore aimed at not only helping the teachers liberate themselves from their own beliefs about the inability of teachers to address the poverty-related social issues affecting education, but also to raise their awareness of how embodiment of the pastoral role could bring about positive change in the lives of their learners. the following research questions were formulated to reflect these aims: what issues do teachers perceive to be barriers to teaching and learning? � how can participatory video be used with teachers to promote an understanding of � their ability to address these barriers? we had been working for two years with the twelve participant teachers on a project entitled masenze umekhluko (translated from isixhosa as: let us make a difference), using various approaches to help them to develop their agentic potential to address the social issues that were impinging on their ability to provide quality teaching and learning experiences for learners. the participants, (three from two different high schools and nine from four different primary schools in the township of motherwell), were all teachers who had volunteered to be part of this project. the project had originated at the request of the principal of one primary schools in the area, who had identified the need to help teachers in this regard. this research approach was qualitative (creswell, 2003) and participatory (pain & francis, 2003), following an emergent and unstructured design (willis, 2007). we adopted an interpretive approach as we attempted to gain a deep understanding (willis, 2007:100) of the participants’ expressions. in participatory research, a partnership between researchers and participants is formed, so the research is conducted with them and not on them (willis, 2007:209). participating teachers have an opportunity to play an active part in the process, sharing their expertise and power in a relationship characterised by trust, connectedness and open communication (hogan & flather, 1993:100). pain and francis (2003:48) caution that equality of researchers and participants is crucial for effective change and empowerment to take place. at this stage of the project, similar to the previous stages, the participating teachers chose the focus of the research, generated the data through their video productions, contributed to data analysis by acting as a critical audience and gave input into the final representation of the data. it was therefore important to us as researchers to be vigilant about “who talks, and who acts in the process; whose knowledge dominates in the process; whose language is used as a medium in the process and how is the knowledge produced” (van olivier, et al. — using participatory video 45 der riet & boettiger, 2009:1). this level of participation and learning also resonates with freire’s (1970) notion of reciprocity, i.e. between researchers and participants, and among participants themselves, thus being engaged with and learning from each other. visual methodologies over the past two decades visual methodologies have been used more frequently in social research (banks, 2001; gauntlet & holzwarth, 2006:82; rose, 2001). image-based empirical social inquiry and visual methodologies, such as film and video, embrace the prospect of unlocking a deeper understanding of our social reality (wagner, 2007:26), while acting as “intimate connections to the lived experiences of a particular phenomenon” (stanczak, 2007:5), providing unexpected and surprising discoveries and details of situations (david, 2007) that other approaches may overlook. visual media can have a significant influence on people’s thinking (gauntlet & holzwarth, 2006:82), as creative images convey messages in a way that the written word cannot. visual methodology is also a powerful way of promoting the construction of knowledge and meaning in the social and academic world (stanczak, 2007), since visual images are not mere illustrations, but intrinsic components of the research itself. the crucial elements of visual methodologies are engagement, fun, creativity and bringing about new knowledge and change (de lange, mitchell, moletsane, stuart & buthelezi, 2006), and they were thus ideally suited to the purposes of this research. data production: participatory video participatory video provides an alternative approach for teachers to explore burning issues that are important to them and that affect their lives as teachers and the production of a video requires that a small group of participants construct their specific video script. the role of the researcher is that of facilitator, who provides an opportunity to foster learning (bateson, 1994:4) by highlighting differences and challenging assumptions, values and beliefs. the development of the story line is left in the hands of the teachers. here the twelve participants were divided randomly into two groups of six. each group was given paper and pen for planning the storyboard activities, as well as a video camera and a tripod (see figure 1) to film their storyboard. figure 1: trying out the video camera and planning the shoot perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201046 this process of reflection, deconstruction and reconstruction around their perceived challenges allowed the participants to simultaneously learn from each other’s experiences and create new experiences as they individually and collectively “generated visions” for themselves and each other (price & osborne, 2000:28). it is of vital importance to involve every member of the group in the process and in the actual video production, including learning to use the camera (see figure 2). figure 2: shooting the video documentary a “no editing required” (ner)2 approach was followed. in order to promote communication and creativity, it was stressed that the participants could choose to work in isixhosa, their home language. at the end of the workshop each group had their video ready to screen in front of both groups. while we thought it appropriate for teachers to produce the participatory videos separately in two smaller groups, we wanted them to have an opportunity to see each other’s work and to appreciate the different perspectives. when we returned a week or two later, to watch the composite video3 put together by a videographer, sub-titles in english and isixhosa were created for the various scenes by the teachers themselves, enabling a wider audience to follow the story-line and to hear the “voices” of these teachers. trustworthiness the literature emphasises that the focus in qualitative research shifts more to the interpretation of significance than discovering generalisability (geelan, 2003). the dependability and trustworthiness of the research demand verification of the process through access, honesty, verisimilitude, authenticity, familiarity, transferability and clarity of the data (webster & mertova, 2007). during this research every attempt was made to record and make accessible the information on the process and its outputs. the research is well grounded and supported by the rigour of the process and the rich, coherent and persuasive information that was generated through the process. ethical considerations participants participated in the project voluntarily and received regular feedback from the researchers. the teachers gave informed consent for their participation and were not at risk in any way. they were also aware that they could be identified in the videos and signed a waiver, allowing the videos to be used by the researchers and other participants for educational and research purposes. the researchers strived olivier, et al. — using participatory video 47 throughout to maintain honesty and trust in the relationship with the participating teachers (webster & mertova, 2007). the ethical aspect of participatory video as a research method remains problematic (clandinin & connelly, 2000), for example, as regards the question of who owns the video documentaries the project leader, the researchers, the participants who produce the videos? in the case of this research, the videos were given to the teachers to use as tools to provoke discussion in their school communities, while the researchers kept a copy for research dissemination purposes. since the teachers themselves played the various roles in the videos, there were no ethical issues around the lack of anonymity of learners, parents or community members. analysing the participatory videos analysing film and television texts involves the scrutiny of the following layers of text: (1) the primary text, namely the participatory video, (2) the secondary text, made up of the viewers’ responses (e.g. audiences), and (3) the production text, made up of what the producers (namely the teachers) had to say (fiske 1987). these layers cannot always be disconnected from one another, as they sometimes overlap. the analysis of these three layers of text is framed by the pastoral role that teachers play, which, according to the department of education (2000), includes developing both a supportive environment for the learners and supportive relations with parents and other key people and organisations, to address the needs of learners (doe, 2000). since most teachers are not fully equipped to take up this role (wood, 2008) we wanted to encourage further exploration in this intervention. the primary text: the completed participatory video through a process of discussion, prioritisation and negotiation, the teachers identified two ‘burning issues’ related to their pastoral role as teacher. these were identified as i) parental involvement in education, and ii) poverty as it impacts on learners. once the topics had been chosen, the two groups of teachers had to write a storyboard of approximately ten scenes or shots of 10-30 seconds each to represent their chosen issue visually, before shooting their video with technical support provided by the researchers. the title of the first participatory video was absenteeism of learners and parental involvement, illustrating how an teacher takes steps to investigate the situation of a learner who is often absent from school. she sends a letter to the parent, visits the parent at home, and then takes the matter up with the principal, who suggests a team effort to resolve the problem. this highlights the teachers’ concern about learners not attending school, and shows their willingness to extend their pastoral role as teachers to ensure that the learner is at school and able to learn. it also conveys their understanding of the need to work collaboratively with parents and other teachers. the title of the second participatory video was the effect of poverty on learners, also highlighting the teachers’ pastoral concern about the health and well being of their learners. this video conveys the teachers’ willingness to ‘go the extra mile’ and make home visits to try and resolve problems they perceive their learners to be facing. the team of teachers in the video decided to enlist the help of outside agencies on behalf of the learner, again indicating that they are aware of the need to be proactive and to partner with resources outside of the school. the videos of the two groups of teachers, as primary texts, first highlight the challenge, on which they reflect and follow up with a practical and workable solution to address it, clearly demonstrating their willingness to take up their pastoral role, but also proactively effecting change in their world of work (thompson, drawing on paulo freire, in mayo, 1999). the two participatory videos were combined with footage of the process of making the videos and turned into a composite video of about ten minutes, called teachers and parents take hands (see http://www.nmmu.ac.za/default.asp?id=11180&bhcp=1). perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201048 the secondary text the composite video was shown to an audience of 38 teachers who all teach in schools in areas characterised by social problems typically related to economically disadvantaged communities, e.g. where basic physical needs for food, shelter and clothing are not adequately met, and where crime, substance abuse, hunger, parental neglect, and violence to mention a few, feature regularly. from the start, the audience was engrossed in the video, remaining silent throughout the showing. at the end, the consensus was that the video highlighted problems we really have, indicating that the audience could identify with the issues raised. moreover, the video helped to increase the learning of some of the teachers in the audience. for example, the video where the teacher visited the parent at home prompted one teacher to comment, it is great, i have also gained something about visiting homes – i had never even thought of doing this before – now i am motivated to do so. several teachers pointed out the courage required to conduct home visits. this comment sparked off a lively discussion among all the teachers about the advantages and disadvantages of home visits. the video could therefore be seen to act as a catalyst for shifting the mindsets of the teachers and opening up new possibilities for them to explore further understanding of their pastoral roles. the video also acted as a tool to spark discussion around stigmatisation. one teacher asked for clarification about the comment in the video that schools should be careful not to create an opportunity for stigmatisation when distributing food parcels, clearly something not all teachers had thought about when providing support to learners. many of the other teachers then shared their experiences and advice was given as to how to approach this issue. the video also increased the motivation of some teachers to address similar issues in their schools, “it is a reviver [sic]”. finally, the teachers could identify ways that the video could be used as a learning tool in the learning areas of arts and culture (discussions on drama/video making), language (writing of alternate scripts, practising of the xhosa language), social sciences (discussion about social issues) and economic management sciences (poverty/economic situation of different communities). similarly, it could also be used to initiate discussion on the issues with parents, opening up the space for engaging and supporting the community, and with colleagues, creating an opportunity to further their own professional development. it is clear from the above that the engagement with a wider audience created an opportunity to learn and to reflect on their pastoral role, in particular in terms of how to practise and promote an attitude which is critical, committed and ethical, in developing a sense of respect and responsibility towards others (doe, 2000; heaids 2010). the production text while busy with the production of the participatory videos, the teachers enthusiastically adopted a leadership role in deciding which topics to compose their storyboards around. their cooperation with each other was noticeable, although lively debate ensued as they each presented their ideas and versions of what the issue is and what should be done about it. their participation and interest became evident, as they all took on various active roles in the constructed dramatisations, such as acting, operating the camera, directing or time keeping. their enthusiasm, laughter and informal comments, as seen and heard in the final composite video, serve as proof of the pleasure they derived from their participation. their pride in and satisfaction with the final product are also self-evident – they have enjoyed a ‘mastery experience’ (bandura, 1997), which has undoubtedly increased their self-efficacy beliefs. during a follow-up session, the composite video was shown to the participating teachers. a video-recorded discussion was facilitated around the following questions: what would you like to say about the participatory videos? what do you appreciate most about them? what did you not like about them? what would you change if you could? what are the lessons that can be learned from them? how would you use them to convey a message in your community? what problems do you envisage in showing such a video to audiences? olivier, et al. — using participatory video 49 their responses indicated an increased consciousness about their pastoral role and their own agency, although they were aware that they could develop more in this area: we have a potential that can be used more. another teacher remarked: i am happy … now others can see the problems at our school. this remark indicates that the teacher had perhaps felt that her voice regarding the challenges facing her school had previously not been heard, but now she had a ‘tool’ to make the challenges visible. they appreciated that they had been encouraged to construct their videos around relevant topics of their own choosing, that they believed represented their true contexts: they (the topics) are the ones really that are affecting our schools. they also appreciated the fact that they could create such a product as it is our own production, we can take ownership for it. in terms of skills development, they acknowledged that their technical skills had improved since their first attempts to produce the participatory videos, although some of the ‘special effects’ they achieved, such as a cock crowing in the background during the home visit, which added authenticity to their video, were actually unintended. they were not uncritical of their work, and picked up technical shortcomings, such as cutting the shot while in the middle of something (such as a sentence or a song), an unsteady hand, and the wrong light exposure at times (shooting into the sun). they have, however, learnt that they can do things that they would never before even have dreamt of attempting (making a video), and this has increased their confidence and will most likely have a positive effect on their willingness to try new things in future – an important life skill they should be passing on to learners. they were convinced that these participatory videos could be used in their community to convey their message to other stakeholders in education, such as colleagues, parents, department of education officials, school governing bodies and churches, all of whom they thought should work together towards educating and caring for the children of the community. the experience of engaging in participatory video seems to have made them more conscious of their own agency and provoked a desire to be heard, precisely what our research aimed to do they expressed the wish that department of education officials should see the composite video and requested a meeting with the appropriate people, to carry their message further. we will encourage and assist them to set up such an event. all participating schools received a copy of the composite video to take their message further into their community. linking participatory video with educational change swanepoel (2008) emphasises that teachers are key role-players in bringing about educational change and implementing these changes effectively in the classroom. this can happen only if they feel confident and able to act as role models and agents of social change, and are able to “discover how to participate in the transformation of their world”, in freireian terms (thompson, drawing on paulo freire, in mayo, 1999:5). while we do not suggest such grandiose transformation, the teachers, through this participatory work, discovered (or for some, rediscovered) how they could take up their pastoral role and contribute to transforming their professional practice and to making a difference in the lives of their learners. pring (2001:101) refers to education as a “moral practice”, because it is based on moral roots and serves the well being of learners. teachers respond to issues in education by drawing on their personal sense of what is morally appropriate, on empathy, and on their love and care for their learners, based on their own understanding of life. the participating teachers’ moral responses to their work-related challenges are portrayed in these participatory videos. they tell about their lives within a particular social and educational context, reflecting the issues that affect their classroom practice. the videos highlight and promote their role as caring professionals, while emphasising the challenges they face in executing this pastoral role. they play a meaningful role in taking up and addressing current issues and constructing the future for their learners (harris, 1994; swanepoel, 2008), thereby intervening in the lives of their learners in a significant way, with their voices acting as a catalyst for meaningful change. perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201050 conclusion this article illustrates that teachers’ lived experiences can be explored and made visible by means of participatory videos. the medium of participatory video allows teachers to be proactive in making their voices heard and the final product has the potential to influence other role-players in the education system. using visual participatory methodologies, in particular the process of producing a video of their lived experience, contributed to the personal and professional development of the teachers, while also producing a teaching and learning resource that foregrounds contextually relevant issues and how teachers respond to them as caring professionals. “lived experience” an expression also used in phenomenology highlights the lived quality of the essence 1. of experience (burch, 1991). monica mak coined the term ‘no editing required’ (ner) to refer to the use of “on camera” revisions. 2. each scene of the storyboard is shot only once, with the participants then moving on to the next scene. a composite video draws together video footage of the participatory video process as well as the 3. participatory videos that were generated by the participants. see also mitchell and de lange (2010) who have used the method in various projects and with various participants, and along the way have refined the composite video genre. references bandura a 1997. self-efficacy: the exercise of control. new york: wh freeman. banks m 2001. visual methodologies in social research. thousand oaks: sage. bateson mc 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african school communities, including rural limpopo, the site of this research study, created an immediate and urgent need to transform teaching and learning during the unprecedented covid-19 global pandemic. within this context, this study demonstrated the importance of technology and digitisation in building future-ready schools. the literature study clarified the requirements of a neuroleader as a future-fit leader and used the theoretical framework of neuroleadership to define and explain future-fit leadership. insights for this article were derived from 10 school leaders in rural limpopo primary schools. the data was collected using whatsapp voice notes, which were converted into narratives for each of the principals. digital stories of each school were also used. the phenomenological approach was adopted to better understand the lived experiences of these principals. thereafter, the data was analysed using thematic analysis in order to identify themes or patterns in the narratives. the main findings emphasised the necessity of neuroleadership in a future-fit leader. finally, more research is required to investigate the idea of creating entirely digital rural schools with a rotating schedule that alternates between days of in-person instruction and days of online instruction. keywords: digital skills; future-fit leadership; future-fit schools; fourth industrial revolution, rural schools 1. introduction education is a way to prepare learners for the future (coombe, 2019). to make us future fit, education has a special and crucial role to play (smitsman, laszlo & luksha, 2020). according to coombe (2019), education provides learners with the knowledge, skills and tools needed to succeed in the workplace. consequently, to manage the covid-19 pandemic, school leaders had to use fourth industrial revolution (4ir) imperatives to transform the way they were leading. the study aimed to understand the types of futurefit leadership techniques used by school leaders that author: ms frenchesca june clark1 dr. paul karel triegaardt1 affiliation: 1university of johannesburg, south africa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v40i4.6812 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(4): 296-311 published: 23 december 2022 received: 22 october 2022 accepted: 22 november 2022 research article http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0630-0077 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0294-1459 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 2972022 40(4): 297-311 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 clark & triegaardt future-fit leaders for future-fit schools created future-fit schools in limpopo’s rural primary schools. the 10 principals who were the participants in the study, were members of the national education collaboration trust (nect) sandbox project prior to covid-19. the national education collaboration trust (nect) is an organisation which is dedicated to strengthening partnerships between society and government with the purpose of achieving south africa’s nationwide goals for basic education (national education collaboration trust, 2019). the nect is based on the principle that collaboration and focused effort by important role-players increases our power as a nation to secure the changes we urgently need in order to deliver quality education to all our children. the nect’s point of departure is that the government and civil society have different but complementary roles to play in relation to education (volmink & van der elst, 2017: 11.) eleven schools in underprivileged communities are involved in the multi-year nect sandbox project. ten of these schools are located in the rural limpopo region and one is in soweto. these are all quintile 1-3 schools. the national norms and standards for school funding (republic of south africa, 1996) uses a ranking system called quintiles to categorise schools. this quintile scheme was designed to provide equity in school financing, and it places each school in one of five quintiles to accomplish this improvement in equity with quintile 1 being a no-fee school and quintile 5 being a school with higher school fees (white & van dyk, 2019). the low socio-economic status of parents in rural areas places learners at a disadvantage (du plessis & mestry, 2019: s1). this research sought to understand how rural primary school principals in limpopo used 4ir imperatives to lead the development of future-fit schools. future-ready leaders are those who can adapt and innovate in the face of disruption and who value and embrace diversity (factor10 consulting, 2019; smitsman et al., 2020). these leaders also use their skills and capabilities to ensure that learners are equipped with 21st-century skills (tan et al., 2017) to sufficiently prepare them for the future (schönwetter et al., 2020). an effective and successful school or education system can develop futureready individuals who will continue to study beyond graduation, seek future life employment opportunities and thrive in a society and environment that are constantly changing (seong, 2019). according to ledwaba (2020), the member of the executive council (mec) for education in limpopo province states that a lack of development and poverty are the most significant factors that contribute to the poor results. statistics from stats sa’s 2018 general household survey revealed that at least 91,2% of learners in limpopo, including the schools in this study, depend on school nutrition programmes. learners in rural areas do not have the same advantages as learners in urban areas because of the low socioeconomic status of their parents (du plessis & mestry, 2019). therefore, the aim of this study was to understand how limpopo’s rural primary school principals guided the creation of future-fit schools that are compatible with the 4ir imperatives. in order to achieve this aim, this article will begin by explaining the theoretical framework which frames this study. thereafter, the literature review will give a deeper understanding of existing research as it relates to this study. this is followed by the research design and methodology. next, the findings of the study are explained, followed by a discussion of the findings and the possible limitations of the study. the article ends with the conclusions which can be drawn from the data. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 2982022 40(4): 298-311 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) 2. theoretical framework the i4 neuroleader model, developed by sylvia damiano in 2009 for the 21st-century leader, is a neurobiologically based personal leadership model that provides the theoretical framework for this study. this approach takes into account how the brain and body interact with leadership and management, using neuroscience to demonstrate how the brain may function more effectively. four essential qualities make up the i4 neuroleader model: performance, collaboration, innovation and agility (mclennan, 2015). this leadership approach supports leaders in improving their capacity for performance (@aboutmybrain). to manage groups, they should also create cooperation frameworks that are adaptable enough to accommodate the constant change in those groups (bagwell, 2020; worley & jules, 2020). agility is required to integrate strategy and implementation in trying out new and innovative techniques (dhir, 2019) and innovation should be employed to decide where and how growth can and should occur (@aboutmybrain). table 1 below gives a graphic representation of the i4 neuroleader model. table 1: the i4 neuroleader model (mclennan, 2015) performance collaboration innovation agility integration of body and mind balance – rest, exercise, work ethics and values mental readiness inspiration communication generosity thinking beyond self courage fear management imagination – generation of ideas resilience and determination curiosity and eagerness to learn attitude positivity, embracing change intuition and decision making awareness and mindfulness influence personal power and respect adaptability versatility 3. literature review we were able to gain a deeper understanding of the 4ir in future-fit education and rural primary school leadership, including leadership styles and challenges, through the literature review. this section begins with a discussion of future-fit education, which includes future-fit leadership and the role of future-fit leaders as well as future-fit schools, future-fit learners and future-fit learning. this is followed by a discussion of the fourth industrial revolution (4ir) and the opportunities and challenges that it brings for education. 3.1 future-fit education we are currently living in what has been dubbed the creative age, the digital age, the conceptual age (tan et al., 2017) and the imagination age (mclennan, 2015). according to roddie and thomas (2020), the future is uncertain, and it involves novel realities that vary depending on the context (seong, 2019). the future is not some moment in the future; it is happening right now, every day (schönwetter et al., 2020). therefore, future-fit education is education that can prepare learners to cope and be productive in this creative, digital and imagination age, as well as in the future. 3.2 future-fit leadership and the role of future-fit leaders a successful education system will produce learners who are capable of contributing positively to society in the future (smitsman et al., 2020). if learners cannot translate their academic talent into the skills and knowledge required for jobs in the future, then their academic ability http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 2992022 40(4): 299-311 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 clark & triegaardt future-fit leaders for future-fit schools is worthless (seong, 2019). a future-ready leader must take initiatives that will contribute to the institution’s expansion (smitsman et al., 2020) to ensure that the different parts of the institution are learning and developing in order to keep abreast of the rapid changes in technology (hawkins, 2017). this calls for a shift in the leadership style of the institution that promotes innovation and collaboration (de smet, lurie & st. george, 2018). futureready leaders must be role models who can collaborate with and motivate the upcoming generation of leaders through partnership, listening, challenging and motivating them in addition to providing mentoring and coaching (hawkins, 2017). a future-fit leader recognises the skills and abilities within the organisation (hawkins, 2017) and assists everyone to grow to achieve organisational objectives and deal with the challenges of the 21st century (mestry, 2017). leaders must be able to draw on their own values and views as well as those of others (schönwetter et al., 2020). a school principal’s primary duties include “supporting and fostering the progress of others”, especially the teachers, and leaders must also put their own health and well-being first (sterret & richardson, 2020: n.p.). 3.3 future-fit schools, future-fit learners and future-fit learning with the increased relevance of information and communication technologies, schools must prepare educators and learners to be successful participants in the knowledge society (zagami et al., 2018). we are living in the age of a technological revolution that is constantly changing our lives, our work and how we relate to each other (schwab, 2016). therefore, we must switch our attention from a labour and resource-based economy to a knowledge-based economy (rodny-gumede, 2020). the necessary abilities and skills are no longer industryor role-specific but pertain to abilities and skills that can be transferred and that centre on the four c’s: “critical thinking, collaboration, communication, and creativity” (rodny-gumede, 2020: 57). to tackle problems creatively, one must learn to think outside the box and experiment with fresh strategies and viewpoints. an efficient and effective education system creates people who are future-ready and who will continue to learn after graduation, contribute favourably to the economy and prosper in a constantly changing environment. therefore, individuals should seize opportunities to advance their knowledge and abilities and organisations should implement policies and programmes that encourage employee learning (walker & boyer, 2020). learners must be equipped with “technology, linguistic and human skills, cultural readiness and ethical values” (amihan, 2020: 1151) to be adequately prepared for the 4ir. through case studies, virtual or game-based learning, situated project-based learning and service learning, they may be exposed to the actual world while studying (walker & boyer, 2020). organisational development, leadership development and human resources should all be combined to make an organisation future-ready (hawkins, 2017). figure 1: future-fit education and the 4ir (hawkins, 2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 3002022 40(4): 300-311 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) 3.4 fourth industrial revolution (4ir): opportunities and challenges for education the capture, storage and transmission of energy, new computing technologies, biotechnologies, neurotechnologies and space technologies are just a few of the technologies that power the 4ir (mhlanga & moloi, 2020). according to different scholars (see ayentimi & burgess, 2018; kaggwa & sithole, 2019; kayembe & nel, 2019; oke & fernandes, 2020; schwab, 2017; sheninger, 2019; twinomurinzi, 2019), the 4ir involves different technologies, namely digital, physical and biological systems which merge together to work as one. mobile devices, social media and cloud storage, which have contributed to the creation of an effective computer environment (alghamdi, 2021), can be used for furthering education. schools must prepare teachers and learners for successful participation in the knowledge society as a result of the rising relevance of information and communication technology (zagami et al., 2018). to adapt to the 4ir, school leaders must maintain a commitment to education and encourage others to think creatively in order to find novel solutions (bagwell, 2020). to do this, they should promote cooperation and the exchange of technological expertise (pangaribuan et al., 2020). the fact that not all teachers are equally knowledgeable about and confident in using technology in their instruction presents a challenge for education as technology development and implementation also take time (pascaris et al., 2021). another serious problem is that of poor internet connectivity because of poor infrastructure (dube, 2020; mhlanga & moloi, 2020). as a result, any institution will benefit from understanding the 4ir and adjusting to the changes it brings as well as aiding in the development of the students and teachers of the future. 4. research design and methodology this study employed the phenomenological research approach. phenomenology is employed to give a deeper understanding of a phenomenon which has been a common experience of several people (creswell & poth, 2016). narrative research falls within the realm of social constructivism in the interpretive paradigm and it explores the experiences of individuals and how those experiences are impacted by their environments (haydon et al., 2018). the site of this study was rural limpopo and it formed part of the sandbox project. a sample of 10 principals from rural, low-quintile primary schools was chosen from the population of over 2 000 rural schools in limpopo. these principals could provide an understanding of how 4ir imperatives could be implemented in school communities where poverty, unemployment and other social ills create an equity divide. in phenomenology, criterion sampling is used, which means that the participants must meet predefined criteria and have experience with the phenomenon under study (moser & korstjens, 2018). for the purposes of this study, 10 school principals who were already research participants of the nect sandbox project were asked to be a part of the study. criterion sampling was used because these school principals had already committed to being research participants as part of leading a 4ir culture of learning, which is the larger project that this study contributed to. there were seven female principals, one female deputy principal and two male principals. their ages ranged from 49 to 62 years of age. their years of experience as school leaders ranged from 7 months to 30 years. all ethical considerations were observed in collecting data. approval was obtained from the relevant authorities. ethical clearance approval letter number sem 2-2021-015 was issued http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 3012022 40(4): 301-311 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 clark & triegaardt future-fit leaders for future-fit schools by the university of johannesburg before data collection. approval was also obtained from the limpopo department of education with reference 2/2/2 before the commencement of data collection. additionally, all the participants signed written consent letters before participating in the study. the 10 principals were then labelled principal a to principal j to protect their identities. principal 11 is not located in the limpopo province and could therefore not be included in the study. a qualitative research methodology was used to identify the types of future-fit leadership methods that school leaders used that led to future-fit schools in limpopo’s rural primary schools. a characteristic of narrative inquiry is that there are usually many meetings between the researcher and the participants (haydon, browne & van der riet, 2018). due to the covid-19 safety protocols, data was collected during two meetings using the zoom platform. the first meeting was to introduce the author to the research participants. the second meeting was for the purpose of data collection, and it was during this meeting that the research questions were asked. ten limpopo primary school principals sent voice notes on whatsapp in response to the study’s research questions. narratives and digital stories were produced from their answers to the research questions. narratives are a way of using language to depict reality (foxall et al., 2021). the principals each responded to 5 research questions. due to covid-19 restrictions, instead of conducting 10 interviews, i had a meeting with the principals via zoom for the purpose of data collection. during the meeting, i asked each research question and gave them time to respond via whatsapp voice notes before proceeding to the next question. thereafter, i was able to transcribe the responses into narratives of each principal’s experience, using their voice note responses to each of the research questions. creating stories allows the researcher to create a narrative that is reader-friendly and easierto-understand and one that can answer the research questions more accurately (ford, 2020). the narratives were sent to each principal to read and approve, to ensure that the author had accurately captured their stories. each principal also created a digital story which gave an audio-visual explanation of what they had explained in their voice note responses. following data collection, the narratives were categorised and thematically analysed to identify the main themes and sub-themes. thematic analysis was used to identify themes and patterns in the narratives (maguire & delahunt, 2017). thereafter, these were analysed and interpreted to make sense of the data. the whatsapp voice notes were saved automatically and are stored together with the narratives and digital stories in a onedrive folder for future reference. 5. findings this study aimed to understand the types of future-fit leadership techniques used by school leaders that created future-fit schools in limpopo’s rural primary schools. neuroleadership theory was adopted, determining the relevance of a neuroleader as a future-fit leader in the creation of future-fit schools commensurate with 4ir imperatives. mclennan (2015) identifies four competencies of a neuroleader, namely performance, collaboration, innovation and agility. the findings led to the discussion of three themes. these are firstly, the importance of a neuroleader as a future-fit leader. the second theme is future-fit education and the 4ir, and the third theme is rural school leadership in a time of crisis. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 3022022 40(4): 302-311 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) theme 1: the importance of a neuroleader as a future-fit leader this study showed that in order for these 10 school leaders to manage their schools effectively during an unprecedented crisis, they needed to improve both their physical and emotional well-being. these leaders also learnt that strong communication among all their stakeholders helped their leadership be more effective. they had to be creative, especially in improving their own and their teachers’ skills, and in getting their schools ready to follow covid-19 protocols. agility, versatility and adaptability were required to achieve success. performance refers to mental acuity, morality and a healthy balance between the body and the mind (mclennan, 2015). school leaders must be flexible and continuously prepare themselves mentally, physically, and emotionally to lead their schools, regardless of the circumstances. these are some of the findings related to the question: how did covid-19 impact your school? we gave each other ideas and assistance so that schools who were struggling could perform activities in ways that were safe and healthy (principal f). the pandemic taught us to be accountable, compassionate, and loving ... allow educators to connect and share ideas to deal with the family trauma, financial challenges, as well as social and mental instability (principal c). collaboration refers to how leaders collaborate both within their institutions and with other schools in their regions. it also refers to how leaders lead, inspire, motivate, encourage and communicate (mclennan, 2015) to lead across boundaries. as a result of increased communication during the covid-19 pandemic, it was possible to continue teaching and learning, and networking and coordination among the schools made it possible to maintain accountability and uniformity. because teachers are sharing their expertise and resources with one another as a result of the pandemic, teamwork has been strengthened (principal d). educators were encouraged to use the school’s digital devices to prepare teaching and learning activities together. this created a community of practice – one that will grow and, in many ways, bring teachers together towards a common purpose (principal f). we had team teaching, which improved teamwork within the school (principal g). innovative leaders are very supportive and use intellectual stimulation (mclennan, 2015) to push themselves to try different solutions. therefore, when problems arise, the leader creates an awareness of the problem and allows others to share their knowledge and expertise. during the covid-19 pandemic, educators were encouraged to use their knowledge of ict to assist with solving problems such as communication and the improvement of their facilities. the upgraded facilities ensured the safety of the educators and learners and also helped to provide uninterrupted internet access. these are some of the responses to the question: what innovations did you and your team embrace during the pandemic? we were successful in modernising the kitchen facilities, where we added equipment to guarantee the food kept there is clean. ... we gave carts to the mother helpers who provide lunch to the students (principal d). we also purchased laptops for each educator which enabled them to attend virtual meetings and workshops and type their tasks (principal g). we realised that we needed a photocopy machine, so we got one (principal i). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 3032022 40(4): 303-311 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 clark & triegaardt future-fit leaders for future-fit schools the ability to inspire people to be adaptable in order to better a situation is referred to as agility (bagwell, 2020). these principals had to be flexible and agile in their leadership of their schools during the unexpected global pandemic. we learnt to take control of the problems, as and when they arose by having the agility to think creatively and understand each obstacle as it presents itself (principal a). i had to undertake a lot of on-the-job learning mostly due to a lack of expertise in dealing with a pandemic. we had to adapt to a sense of urgency with relation to lesson preparation, duty distribution, timetabling and networking such as instant messaging (principal d). we had to adapt to the rotational system (principal h). theme 2: future-fit education and the 4ir future-fit leadership and the advantages of technology future-ready learners who are well-equipped to compete globally are created by future-fit schools using the 4ir (zagami et al., 2018). this entails having leaders who are prepared for the future and who can assist in the growth of their teachers. a future-fit leader is always adaptable, agile and prepared to lead, no matter what situation may arise. this is how 3 of the participants responded to the question: how did the crisis that the pandemic brought impact your leadership? what did you have to change or adapt to? as future-fit leaders, we must be able to turn our situations around based on the evolving circumstances by altering our duties, our expectations, procedures, as well as operational practices (principal a). we have also become more accountable in everything that we do” (principal c). a future-fit leader “needs to keep abreast with the latest trends and changes, move with the times and continually do research…there was no way that, as a leader, you can continue leading your school the way that you lead before the pandemic” (principal d). virtual meetings and electronic communication schools had to create ways to hold staff meetings remotely or online (houston, 2020; simamora, 2020), as they could no longer be held in staff rooms. they coordinated all the necessary adjustments through online meetings. we had started holding meetings online. because it was not possible for us to physically meet, we had to learn everything through virtual meetings and training (principal i). holding staff meetings virtually was another important innovation (principal d). the principals had to come up with creative ways to communicate while also maintaining the safety of their teachers and students; therefore, they adopted the use of digital tools. installing a pa (public announcement) system to use for assemblies and announcements forced me to fast-track my method of using the ict for communication, addressing the school, and conveying messages (principal d). for contact with parents who have cell phones to be able to obtain information from the school, we also set up a facebook profile (principal j). we also created whatsapp groups for the teachers and parents (principal g). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 3042022 40(4): 304-311 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) improved skills the pandemic, which prompted schools to close to enforce social distancing, also made principals responsible for leading their schools into the 4ir. teachers were forced to learn how to use laptops and smart boards. because of covid-19 protocols, ict literacy has been accelerated and improved among educators because it was risky for the educators to touch each other’s devices, so everyone has to learn to do everything on their own, instead of relying on one person and using the same resources. … there was a need to fast-track staff developmental programs so that the staff can move and keep up with the changes in technology (principal d). in order for me to effectively implement the school’s digitisation strategy, teachers were workshopped and trained on how to connect the laptops as they were not accustomed to doing so (principal f). the teachers are also keen to learn independently and to create methods to help the learners to become learners who can compete worldwide in terms of the 4ir (principal a). the 4ir and the digitisation of schools each principal developed a unique strategy for integrating ict and digital devices. for the benefit of their students and their schools, they all discovered creative ways to guarantee that their educators were properly prepared and knowledgeable. the students cannot be taught in the manner that was used before, thus the school had to acquire 4ir tools and resources. i realised it was time to take the school into the 4ir and to start teaching digitally when the teachers set up whatsapp groups for their lessons to allow the learners to submit their work to the school (principal d). the pandemic encouraged most of them to get more involved in using technology (principal e). we are working to establish a digital school in the future. all the teachers now regularly use the whiteboards and projectors, which were not used before (principal a). the schools discovered ways to train more of their teachers in the use of digital tools. they came to understand that it is beneficial to use technology to enhance learning. principals urged teachers to send homework assignments and communications to parents via facebook and whatsapp and they came up with inventive strategies to keep the students engaged in their studies. the challenges of technology although digitisation assisted many schools to continue operating there were also many difficulties. the primary issues were that of being unprepared, a lack of data and slow internet connections. a lack of technology was another issue as many of the parents could not afford smartphones and other digital devices because of economic circumstances. we have issues with network coverage during virtual meetings. due to the inefficiency of the bad network connection, the school’s performance suffers when we are unable to hear what has to be done during virtual meetings (principal b). some parents did not have internet connection because of their diverse socio-economic circumstances, making it difficult for them to respond to messages from the school (principal d). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 3052022 40(4): 305-311 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 clark & triegaardt future-fit leaders for future-fit schools theme 3: rural school leadership in a time of crisis dealing with the unexpected the findings showed that resilience and a desire to succeed under any conditions are the major traits that promote school leadership. the 10 school leaders were completely unprepared to deal with a pandemic that forced a strict lockdown and the closure of schools. we were caught off-guard (principal d). it was a situation that we were not prepared for (principal i). we never knew what to expect each day (principal e). despite being taken by surprise, these leaders decided to be tenacious, inventive and critical thinkers. as a result, they were better able to oversee their schools and make sure that classes could resume as soon as it was possible. barriers to the success of school leadership there were many challenges, barriers and hindrances to successful school leadership during the unprecedented crisis brought about by the covid-19 pandemic. these are the findings related to the question: what challenges did you experience as a leader during the pandemic? one barrier was the department of basic education (dbe). in these 10 schools, many challenges were brought on by external forces. the research showed that the dbe was one of the issues preventing effective school leadership because their support during this crisis was inconsistent. some principals had very little support while others felt overwhelmed and overburdened by the volume of instructions they were given. the directives from the dbe left me feeling overburdened and getting communication from the department of education telling me what to do and informing and advising me what to do was too much for me as a leader (principal d). we did not receive any support or visitation (principal a). unfortunately, during this time of crisis, when teachers with comorbidities applied for leave, the approval did not come in time, and some did not get approval at all. we were told to make requests and apply based on the needs of the school, but we have not received the approval, the extra teachers, or the extra classrooms as yet. there were no replacements for the teachers who were on sick leave. the department did not take this into consideration (principal i). there were no replacements for educators with comorbidities (principal g). another barrier was poor infrastructure and lack of resources. communication difficulties resulting from inadequate infrastructure were another problem. schools also did not have enough furniture to accommodate social distancing. additionally, not all the parents could respond to messages from the schools. digital communication with the school stakeholders who were at home became a challenge because some of them did not have access to digital devices (principal f). we experienced overcrowding in classrooms, especially in august when all the learners were phased in. ... we did not have enough classrooms at our school (principal g). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 3062022 40(4): 306-311 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) there was a lack of resources such as space to accommodate all the learners and maintain social distancing when they all had to return to school. there was not enough furniture to support social distancing because some of the furniture was broken (principal d). additionally, it was a challenge to change daily practices and routines, but schools had to change how they operated from day to day. all of the school’s activities had to be reorganised and some of them were forbidden. adapting to social distancing is a lifestyle adjustment (principal i). our lifestyle and habits changed too because all students, teachers, and support staff are required to often wash and sanitise their hands. social distancing must be enforced (principal g). the students in grades r-3 leave the building first, followed by those in grades 4-7 (principal d). the rotational timetable was also a challenge to all the principals. the rotational method required that the students remain at home on alternate weeks and continue to do their work under their parent’s supervision while still completing the curriculum. the parents were not sure when their learners should attend school and learners also faced uncertainty because they were no longer following the timetable as expected. closing the school for days due to covid cases made it very difficult for the educators to cover the curriculum as expected (principal f). it was also confusing for everyone at school. the teachers had to repeat activities two or three times. this was difficult because the methodology, the energy and the flexibility were not the same the second and third days as it was the first time (principal j). a lot of content was not covered because of the rotational attendance of the learners (principal g). another challenge was communication with stakeholders. being limited to digital communication made it challenging for some to keep parents informed (mukuna & aloka, 2020) of changes and give them key information like the rotation timetable, the dates their children should be at school and how to follow covid-19 regulations. communication is the key that had to be looked at and worked on, and we wondered how we would communicate with the stakeholders, with the parents, with the learners and even with the department … when we phoned the parents, we could not always reach them (principal i). we had compromised contact with stakeholders. there were no longer any parent meetings and there were fewer curriculum meetings (principal g). i saw it as a primary need to create a system of communication but digital communication with stakeholders who were at home became a challenge because some of them did not have access to digital tools (principal f). last, the challenge of poor attendance worsened. attendance has always been a challenge for these rural primary school principals. however, it worsened and even resulted in some learners dropping out (shepherd & mohohlwane 2021) of school during the covid-19 pandemic. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 3072022 40(4): 307-311 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 clark & triegaardt future-fit leaders for future-fit schools we also had a high rate of absenteeism from both educators and learners, and we also had covid cases which delayed attendance. we had poor learner attendance due to ill health and poor teacher attendance due to comorbidities (principal c). what made it worse is that when it was their week of the rotation to be in school, and their friends from other schools did not have to be in school for that week, then they were influenced to stay out of school due to peer pressure (principal j). there were a high number of educators on sick leave. there were no replacements for educators with comorbidities. we also experienced a shortage of support staff (principal g). the fifth research question was a general question which allowed the participants to mention anything else related to their leadership experiences during the covid-19 pandemic. 6. discussion and recommendations this study aimed to investigate how 10 school principals were able to exhibit future-fit qualities that supported the formation of future-fit schools in environments with severe resource shortages. the future-fit leadership techniques used by these school leaders to support instruction and learning (smitsman et al., 2020) during the pandemic were revealed in this qualitative study of their practices. the findings from this study may assist in the development of future-fit schools led by future-fit leaders in other rural areas. even though these principals were unprepared for the strict lockdown and the shutdown of their schools, they employed creativity (rodny-gumede, 2020) and improved their digital literacy to ensure that instruction could continue (mhlanga & moloi, 2020). the study also clarified how important it is for school leaders to keep abreast of the most recent technological advancements in education and to make sure that their staff members are proficient in the use of technological devices (dube, 2020). the need for principals and educators to be more mindful of their health and well-being was highlighted too. mahfouz (2018) states that leaders with emotional stability are necessary in order to create a healthy, positive school culture. this study also made the case that in order to reduce the high absence and dropout rates among learners and educators (du plessis & mestry, 2019), educator and learner well-being (wessela & wood, 2019) needs to be addressed. there was a significant contribution from all the participants in which they explained and described their future-fit leadership strategies for the development of future-fit (seong, 2019) rural schools in limpopo. although most of their narratives were similar, their characteristics and circumstances were different. however, to create and develop future-fit schools with future-fit educators, future-fit learners and future-fit leaders, there is a need for effective programmes to be put into place and adhered to. the needs of individual schools should be taken into consideration when creating these programmes. these needs could relate to digitisation, improving infrastructure (mhlanga & moloi, 2020), or the training of teachers in the use of online learning platforms (dube, 2020). they should be well planned, managed, and implemented. the planning should be done by the school management teams (smts), in collaboration with the department of basic education (dbe). committees should also be selected by each of the schools to lead and be accountable for the planning, management, and implementation of the programmes. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 3082022 40(4): 308-311 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6812 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) 7. possible limitations the main author’s inability to visit any of the schools as a result of covid-19 travel limitations was a study drawback. we had to use zoom meetings, where the attendees struggled with connectivity and punctuality problems. however, the study was not negatively impacted thanks to the 4ir. email, zoom and whatsapp are all online tools that helped keep the study on track. principals struggled to communicate their answers through whatsapp voice notes because they were attending the zoom meeting on the same smartphone, which caused connectivity challenges. then, once the zoom meeting concluded, we improvised by sending the questions via whatsapp and having them send their voice notes as soon as they could. this compromise had one drawback because some participants were tardy in sending their voice notes. some principals gave numerous short voice notes rather than only five lengthy responses because they were unsure of how to send voice notes. even if some voice notes were longer and more detailed than others, the shorter responses were still informative. 8. conclusion all schools should adopt the tools of the 4ir and ensure that their teachers have the necessary skills 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this article is based, examined two long-standing genres of philosophy: western philosophy, as a critical academic discipline and african philosophy, as a collective worldview. the article shows that universal philosophy and, by implication, a universal knowledge system transcends these seemingly particular, opposite and irreconcilable eurocentred and afro-centred schools of thought. in doing so, the article proposes that universal philosophy as an inclusive, rational and reflective practice makes it possible to merge western and african philosophies to form a single knowledge system. unfortunately, the curriculum assessment policy statement emphasises indigenous african knowledge systems – thus, regresses to narrow african provincialism. in the end, the author (re)establishes a universal knowledge system as a sound african philosophy of education in post-apartheid south african schools. keywords: western philosophy, african philosophy, african philosophy of education, endogenous knowledge, curriculum assessment policy statement, schools 1. introduction there are three main concepts that underpin this article, namely bantu (popular) philosophy¹ western (academic) philosophy² and universal (single) philosophy³. bantu philosophy, is [a] single system and unique to [african people]. … true knowledge, human wisdom is dependent upon the wisdom of the [african] elders. one can learn to read, to write … but all that has nothing in common with wisdom (tempels, 1959: 25–35). ethno-philosophy [one aspect of bantu philosophy] exemplifies an essentialist/particularist orientation, while academic philosophy constitutes a paradigm case of universalism (horsthemke, 2015: 18). dr thokozani mathebula division of education studies, university of the witwatersrand, south africa thokozani.mathebula@wits. ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v37i1.2 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 37(1): 15-28 date published: february 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:thokozani.mathebula@wits.ac.za mailto:thokozani.mathebula@wits.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.2 http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 16 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) this universality must be preserved … because these differences of content are meaningful precisely and only as differences of content, which, as such, refer back to the essential unity of a single discipline, of a single style of inquiry (hountondji, 1996: 56). below, i show how the three quotations above are integrated in the article in order to mount a clear, coherent and consistent argument. tempels (1959), a belgian missionary, sets out a systematic account of bantu philosophy – a primitive philosophy foreign to european philosophers. the key principle of bantu (indigenous) philosophy, tempels maintains, was that bantu ontology (theory of life) is the basis of bantu psychology. simply put, african people explain things by reference to supernatural forces, magical remedies, ancestor worship, ritual of forces, folklore and customs, oral traditions and legends, to name the few, and these vital forces penetrate and inform african thought. horsthemke (2015) speaks of two analytical constructs: ethnophilosophy (oral tradition) and professional philosophy (written tradition) as a subtext of universal philosophy. hence, hountondji (1996) asserts that only universal knowledge (as we shall see in later sections, philosophy is defined as a theoretical discipline, while knowledge is defined as a justified true belief) transcends these narrow schools of thoughts (i.e. “knowledge of african” and “knowledge of the west”) – anchoring universal knowledge as a professional discipline. in light of this integration, the study on which this article is based, argued that: • classical western philosophy and indigenous african philosophy – and by implication of african philosophy of education – are part of a universal (united) knowledge system; • as a unity of a single discipline, a universal knowledge system is feasible, desirable and relevant in settling differences between the “western epistemology” and “knowledge of africa”; • although, the national curriculum assessment policy statement (caps) promotes (scantily so) both academic knowledge and a universal knowledge system, the scale is tipped in favour of indigenous knowledge systems in south african schools; and • only a universal knowledge system is able to address global challenges and deal with domestic philosophical-educational issues in post-apartheid south africa. 2. methodology the author maintains that all research contains (or should contain) a review of literature and locates empirical research within the relevant theory or theoretical framework. a conceptual article too, proceeds on theoretical level and works (even if it reports on empirical research) purely with concepts and texts. viewed this way, this conceptual article employs three methods of inquiry. on the descriptive side, the author looks at the meaning and features of western philosophy, african philosophy and universal philosophy. on the analytical angle, he provides a critical analysis of the concept of african philosophy of education reflected in the caps. lastly, from a normative perspective, he makes practical claims about how the caps african philosophy of education project can be meaningful and consistent with the changing world. briefly, this article is the result of a process of investigation with two aspects. first, the article liberates us from internal conceptual complexity we get into when normally used words, such as ‘indigenous knowledge systems’ idle in our minds. second, the article presents possible alternatives to this popular conceptual use in curriculum policy in south african schools. 17 mathebula african philosophy (of education) and post-apartheid ... 3. what is western philosophy? what is western philosophy4? the term “philosophy” comes from the ancient greek words, philo meaning “love” and sophia meaning “wisdom” – the love of wisdom (akinpelu, 1987: 1; lacey, 1976: 59; kanu, 2014: 87; plato, 1994: 190; runes, 1960: 234 & scruton, 2007). the concept is attributed protagoras (575–495 bc), a greek philosopher, scientist and religious scholar. in plato’s dialogue, protagoras (1991), socrates describes protagoras to his friend as “the wisest man alive” (1991: 1). socrates’ friend concurs, “he is the only man who is wise … one who is knowledgeable in learned matters” (1991: 2–4). protagoras’s love for wisdom is succinctly encapsulated in this protagorean public statement (o’meara, 1989: 42–43): philosophy is indeed, it seems, is a road … chose that philosophy and that road to wisdom … the philosophy which progresses through immaterial eternal intelligible objects that always remain the same and do not admit in themselves of destruction or change, like its subject-matter, is unerring and firm, producing grounded and unswerving proof. interpreting o’meara’s quote, we can see that philosophy is “a kind of agony” (extreme mental suffering) (strangroom & garvey, 2012: 76). this metaphor of philosophy as a road takes one to the “intelligible world of truth postulated by the objects of knowledge, which are perfect, eternal and unchanging” (dupré, 2007: 9). since then, protagoras’s philosophy has passed into common usage. recently, it has been given two meanings, namely that of a science of questions (asking wise and foolish questions) and a general set of beliefs (general outlook on the world) (luthuli, 1982: 19; scruton, 2007: 552; standish, 2014: 6; waghid, 2016: 455). as the reader will see in this section, african philosophical literature rests on what hountondji (1996; 47) calls a “confusion”, a confusion between the strict (science of questioning) use on the one hand and the popular (general beliefs) use, on the other. 4. what is african philosophy? hountondji (1996: 33) defines african philosophy as “a set of texts, especially the set of texts written by africans and described as philosophy by their authors themselves”. but beyond this usage, lies a begging question: what feature should african philosophy take, ethnophilosophy (oral literature) or academic (written literature)? interestingly, hountondji challenges oral tradition, i.e. tempels’s (1959) reconstruction of bantu philosophy as a collective system of beliefs and supports written tradition, namely pythagoras’ theoretical discipline or science of questioning. hountondji (1996: 103–104) contends, “oral tradition favours the consolidation of knowledge into dogmatic, intangible systems, whereas archival transmission promotes better the possibility of a critique of knowledge between individuals and from one generation to another”. to drive this point home, philosophy existed in the west, hountondji asserts, because “the history of the west is not directly cumulative but critical: it moves forward not through a mere plurality of knowledge … but through the periodical questioning of established knowledge, each questioning being a crisis” (1996: 104). so, what is likely to give african philosophy a disciplinary character? bensusan (2016: 255) notes that philosophy is a discipline for two reasons: it involves beliefs about the world that are singularly different from mythical or ideological beliefs; and it investigates the world using distinct concepts, principles, assumptions and methods. in this sense, but only in this sense, it seems to the author we can speak of african philosophy as a single, universal discipline – a concept of african philosophy of education that the author advocates for in the caps. 18 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) 5. what is universal philosophy? if we accept, as the author believes we must, locke’s (1960: 304) thesis that “individuals possess strength and reason according to the dictates of the law of reason”, then human beings by nature are philosophers in pursuit of knowledge – the protagoras road to wisdom. in other words, philosophy is a universal activity not confined to western pythagoras or african hountondji. from this point of view, it is possible, as le grange (2007: 586) spurs us to disrupt the dichotomy between classical western philosophy and an african indigenous worldview by creating “third spaces or interstitial spaces”. as odour (2012, cited in horsthemke, 2015: 18–19) aptly points out, “universalists would maintain that … african philosophy is first and foremost philosophy before it is african”. equally, hountondji (1997: 13–18) expands this point and says the integration of the third world (i.e. the developing world) into the world processes of knowledge production entails “a push of endogenous elements of knowledge4 to the periphery … the ability to shift from one mode of thought and one logical universe to another. […] the endogenous become ‘indigenous’ in and through such a world-widening process.” there are three points worth noting about this “new knowledge space”. first, if we treat the so-called “western thought” and “african thought” as unique, distinct, opposite philosophies, we are unwittingly perpetuating “narrow provincialism”, to use amin’s (1989) phrase (cited in moll, 2002: 11). second, kanu (2014: 92) maintains that philosophy is an “all-inclusive enterprise, a universal activity not limited to whites or blacks, nor confined to the peoples of the west and the east”. third, instead, universal knowledge takes the locale as the basis of international knowledge production – far from “permitting western triumphalism or the retrieval of pre-colonial african tradition” (enslin & horsthemke, 2016: 188). it is clear therefore that there are three streams of thought that have emerged in the wake of protagoras’s concept of philosophy and hountondji’s (1996) definition of african philosophy: popular (or indigenous) knowledge, professional (or academic) knowledge and universal (single) knowledge. the focus now turns to a debate between african knowledge and western knowledge. 6. african and western knowledge: going beyond the two poles seepe (2000: 119) writes, “africanisation of knowledge … refers to a process of placing the african worldview at the centre of analysis … [and] advocates for the need to foreground african indigenous knowledge systems to address [africa’s] problems and challenges”. why is there a need to re-centre the african worldview and foreground an indigenous knowledge outlook? according to horsthemke (2015: 21), the motivation is easy to discern and explains it considering the “denigration, suppression and exploitation of the traditional knowledge systems” from western colonialism to date. to put it bluntly, ochieng (2010) sees the call to africanise knowledge as a response to western barbarism. santos (2014, cited in le grange, 2016: 4) describes the dissemination of (indigenous) knowledge as “the murder of knowledge … the death of the knowledge of the subordinated culture … [t]he loss of epistemological confidence … the epistemicides perpetrated by hegemonic eurocentric modernity”. in the eyes of lumumbakosongo (2000: 145), “[i]n africa, knowledge within the western educational context was transmitted through the institutions associated with [slave] capitalism, colonialism and slavery, such as churches and schools.” does this mean that we are in an endless battle of the dominant european centre on the one hand, and a push to recentring africa, on the other? a universal knowledge system is not only possible, if the author may say so in a kantian spirit, but a categorical imperative, especially in enabling africa’s recentring project in the global “processes of knowledge production” (hountondji 1997: 13). however, the recentring 19 mathebula african philosophy (of education) and post-apartheid ... project needs to confront its theoretical inadequacy of indigenous knowledge captured by horsthemke and enslin (2008: 217) as the “collective singular” that is often employed in african philosophy of education – a single, collective, unreflective and implicit worldview of african people – “african reality”, “african experience in its totality” and “indigenous african epistemology” (lebakeng, manthiba & dalindjebo, 2006: 76; ramose, 1998: vi). it is no longer tenable to deny sartre’s (1974) transphenomenality of being, that is, human beings have absolute individuality and absolute freedom, and the self is a construct that is built and rebuilt and it can be changed and reconstructed as we choose. in the face of philosophy as a universal enterprise, it is therefore crucial for the advocates of indigenous knowledge systems to re-think their call and go beyond western and african philosophies and their theoretical inadequacies and sartre’s transphenomenality of being. letsekha (2013) made a call for a reconceptualisation of the term “africanisation” – and by implication of indigenous knowledge systems. this means that the conceptual use of african philosophy as a general set of beliefs or collective systems of beliefs is in desperate need of definition, analysis and critical evaluation. in two of his famous passages, hountondji puts it this way: african philosophy, like any other philosophy, cannot possibly be a collective worldview. we do not need a closed system to which all of us can adhere and which we can exhibit to the outside world (hountondji, 1996: 53). bantu philosophy is shown to be a myth. to destroy this myth once and for all, and to clear our conceptual ground for a genuine theoretical discourse (hountondji 1996: 44) … philosophy is … essentially an open process, a restless, unfinished quest, not closed knowledge (1996: 71). what does it then mean to reconceptualise “african philosophy”? two instances can be given. first, it should meet three basic philosophical tasks central to the clarification of any general set of beliefs. analysis of african philosophy itself, which specifies its elements; synthesis of african philosophy, merging it with academic philosophy to foster universal knowledge and improving african philosophy, for example, the concept “african philosophy” should be used in a strictly theoretical sense, and not in the popular, ideological sense. second, by reorienting african philosophical discourse in this way, it is better placed to define, justify and defend itself on rational grounds (nsamenang, 2011: 60). in the absence of clarification and critical evaluation of african collective beliefs, we end up with an uncritical and unargued acceptance of a false dichotomy between good, indigenous knowledge and bad, western knowledge, or the other way around – and that is not useful. it is not useful because african philosophers should “take the word philosophy in the active, not passive, sense” as hountondji (1996: 53) maintains. moll (2002) supports the claim that a universal knowledge system is able to resolve the debate between african knowledge and western knowledge. to defend his position, moll revisits a number of african philosophers and psychologists committed to a universal knowledge system that transcends eurocentric knowledge and african knowledge. starting with amin’s (1989) defence of universal inquiry, moll (2002: 1) maintains that afrocentrism and eurocentrism, as two positions in the philosophy of knowledge, in fact entail each other – eurocentric thinkers are blind to the entailed opposite while african thinkers believe there is nothing to be done about it. it is against this mutual entailment that we encounter the eurocentric and afrocentric “theoretical inadequacy”, which compels the advocates of these positions to “start to develop africa in a universal system of thought”. as hountondji (1997: 8–17) convincingly demonstrates: 20 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) [r]esearch in the peripheral countries is … tied to the local scene, it is trapped in particularistic details, unable and unambitious to break to the level of universal … it is in such a context that … traditional knowledge must be placed … [we] need to move beyond the present impasse … beyond the mute coexistence of discourses, to examine each and every mode of thought within their specific frames, then, if possible, to bring them face to face within the unifying context … such option for a rational approach requires … to create bridges, to re-create the unity of knowledge, or in simpler, deeper terms, the unity of the human being. … endogenous knowledge appear[s] to be a better choice. by way of a brief summary, the author maintains that: man is by nature a philosopher, “characterised by a ceaseless quest for knowledge” (luthuli, 1982: 31); philosophy is a universal practice not confined to western or african people; it is possible, as le grange (2007: 586) argues, to disrupt the dichotomy between classical western philosophy and african indigenous worldviews. as horsthemke (2015: 23) also states, “a rapprochement between so-called indigenous and non-indigenous’ insights is not only possible but desirable – educationally”. such is, regrettably not the case with caps – on the contrary, the policy document promotes indigenous knowledge systems – the claim that this article advocates and intends to demonstrate. the key question therefore is: which concept of african philosophy of education is reflected in the caps? it is to the african philosophy of education and critical analysis of caps that we now turn. african philosophy of education and caps: indigenous, professional or universal? in the light of the three streams of thought discussed in the preceding sections, this article provides a critical discussion of the national caps. to this end, the author argues that: • there is an untenable mixture of indigenous, academic and universal philosophies within the document; • indigenous knowledge systems lack a clear, coherent and unambiguous definition of “knowledge”; and • the emphasis on indigenous knowledge systems is based on a weak understanding of constitutional democratic education. the author concurs with le grange’s (2007: 581) assertion that “the inclusion of indigenous knowledge in south african curriculum policy statements [wa]s a positive step and could provide opportunities for debate on interaction(s) between westerns and indigenous worldviews”. the underlying principles of the caps point to a combination of philosophies of education5 in south african schools. to illustrate this point, two principles and the subsequent aim of the caps as far as this aspect of policy, i.e. indigenous knowledge is concerned, read: • valuing indigenous knowledge systems: acknowledging the rich history and heritage of this country as important contributors to nurturing the values contained in the constitution (department of education [doe], 2012: 5); • active and critical learning: encouraging an active and critical approach to learning, rather than rote and uncritical learning of given truths (doe, 2012: 4); and • to promote knowledge in local contexts, while sensitive to global imperatives (doe, 2012: 4). the caps philosophy of education is questionable, especially if one considers the urgent need to disrupt western philosophy and african indigenous worldviews, for forming a single knowledge system. apart from being questionable, the caps philosophy is untenable because 21 mathebula african philosophy (of education) and post-apartheid ... it promotes “differences of content” (hountondji, 1996: 56). first, indigenous knowledge emphasises african history and preserving its cultural heritage through songs, poems and stories. second, academic, professional philosophy fosters active, critical and inquiring citizens in post-apartheid south african schools. third, universal philosophy seeks to promote local knowledge responsive to the global context. the difficulty is that at present, caps does not have a settled philosophy (of education); it is at the crossroads and is stretched and pulled in different directions. what should be the response to this state of affairs? only a return to the source can enlighten us. africans should not be afraid of thinking new thoughts. simply put, africans should appreciate academic philosophy as a window to universalism or the unity of knowledge in south african schools. but, what is knowledge? what are indigenous knowledge systems? which knowledge systems are taught and learnt by learners in post-apartheid south african schools? hospers (1997) distinguishes three ways of knowing: knowledge by acquaintance (knowledge of a person, place or thing, e.g., i know that cyril ramaphosa is the president of the republic of south africa), practical knowledge (knowledge how, e.g. i know how to write a letter) and propositional knowledge (knowledge that, e.g. does god exist?). although, there is no definition of indigenous knowledge systems, the caps attempts to reclaim africa’s “collective singular” by re-acquainting and re-familiarising school learners with – • african religion (life orientation grades 4–6; 11–12 years of age); • cultural rites of passage (e.g. important stages in the individual’s life in south african cultures: birth, baptism, wedding and death and cultural heritage (life orientation grades 4–6; 11–12 years of age); • oral traditions and scriptures of major religions and community or indigenous games (life orientation grades 7–9; 13–15 years of age); • indigenous medicine, such as healing properties of the aloe and indigenous knowledge systems, such as mountains and ancestors (social sciences grades 4–6; 10–12 years of age); • indigenous people’s interpretation of nationalism as a system of self-defence, whereby they aimed to unify commonly oppressed peoples (history, grades 10–12; 16–18 years of age); • indigenous culture of collective cooperation as a form of resistance against apartheid (history, grades 10–12; 16–18 years of age); and • ethical traditions and/or religious laws and indigenous belief systems of major religions (life orientation grades 10–12; 16–18 years of age). • there are three points worth noting about “indigenous knowledge” in the caps document. • first, there is an overlap between knowledge by acquaintance, in other words, knowledge of african religion, cultural rites of passage, the role of oral traditions and sculptures, african mountains and ancestors as well as practical knowledge. (this involves the use indigenous medicine, systems of self-defence, indigenous culture of collective cooperation, indigenous games and ethical traditions and/or religious laws and indigenous belief systems.) • second, there is an assumption that acquaintance with african knowledge is shared by africans of the blood (african defined by racial terms) and africans of the soil (african defined by geographical or territorial terms) to use mazrui’s (2009) phrase. 22 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) • third, as horsthemke (2016: 583) argues, practical “knowledge of africa” is dubious in terms of its “purported knowledge-content and its epistemic status”, as the author demonstrated at the beginning of this section. • commendable modesty, no doubt, but re-acquainting and re-claiming african epistemology is only one aspect of individual development. of equal importance, is the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, the so-called “knowledge that”, or embarking on the road to endless wisdom. • the author maintains that caps should be concerned with hospers’ (1997) third way, i.e. the primary (propositional) knowledge. this form of knowledge, hospers argues, is based on three requirements or the classical analysis of the concepts of knowing: • the statement must be true (objective knowledge); • you must believe that the statement is true (the subjective component knowledge); and • there must be good evidence for believing the statement. put it differently, knowledge is defined as justified true belief. now, if african collective knowledge is incompatible with western professional knowledge as far as knowledge by acquaintance and practical knowledge are concerned, the implication is that caps promotes different truths, beliefs and justification. if, indigenous and non-indigenous africans share features, such as “truth-content and truth-functionality” as horsthemke (2004: 584) puts it, why use a collective singular “african knowledge” in post-apartheid south african schools? one caveat is needed here: the emphasis solely on indigenous knowledge systems is restrictive and misleading, especially if one considers that the bantu ontology (theory of life) is the basis of bantu psychology, i.e. it means indigenous knowledge is not subjected to criticism but is regarded as enduring truth. we need a common, not a narrow african philosophical framework for caps. it is quite clear, then that unless we justify african collective beliefs there is no ground to make claims for african knowledge but acquaintance and practice of indigenous knowledge systems. as already mentioned, indigenous knowledge systems acknowledge the rich history and heritage of south africa as a vehicle to nurture the values contained in the constitution of the republic. however, the emphasis on knowledge by acquaintance and practical knowledge is unlikely to promote active, critical and inquiring learners in south african schools. as we have seen, the language of “collective singular” paints a picture of a child, incapable of theoretical discipline, unable to use universal philosophical concepts, principles, assumptions and methods, to employ bensusan’s (2016) words. let me argue one small, but significant, point of disagreement, the understanding caps shows of indigenous knowledge systems flies in the face of a liberal constitutional democracy, especially when it comes to learners’ abilities and inclination to act for themselves. however, caps’ “learner-imagery” is one of “a flock of sheep innocently nibbling the grass side by side” (mill, 1975: 345). there is a need, therefore, to consider gutmann’s (1987) theory of democratic education that is built on two principles: non-repression that secures freedom to deliberate rationally among different ways of life; and non-discrimination, which requires that all learners participate as citizens in shaping the future of citizenship education south africa. these are the educational benefits of democratic education: 23 mathebula african philosophy (of education) and post-apartheid ... • safeguarding the principle of active and critical learning also considered “core” by the national caps; • unlocking learners’ intellectual abilities and critical faculties that constitute the cornerstone of south africa’s democracy; and • recognising human agency, that is, learners’ capacity to think, act independently and make free choices among different philosophies of life. african philosophy of education: endogenous knowledge in the words of horsthemke and enslin (2008: 2005), african philosophy of education, i.e. “‘oral tradition’, ‘african traditional worldview’ (or ‘narrow communitarianism’) and ‘african experience’” is strikingly similar to characteristics of fundamental pedagogies based on the ideology of christian national education (cne), its history and its basic beliefs. in 1948, the institute for cne published a well-known pamphlet setting out christian education policy. the introduction of the pamphlet stated: afrikaans-speaking children should have a christian-nationalist education, for the christian and nationalist spirit of the afrikaner nation must be preserved and developed. … by christian, in this context, we mean according to the creeds of the three afrikaner churches; by nationalist we mean imbued with the love of one’s own, especially one’s own language, history, and culture. … nationalism must be rooted in christianity (federasie van afrikaanse kultuurverenigings, 1948: 1). equally, the bantu education act (no. 90 of 1953) established bantu schools with a blackoriented education and black-oriented school curriculum “based on black identity … black thought … black humanism … the idioms of black culture … black culture” (luthuli, 1982: 32–101). three possible traps should be avoided in thinking about african philosophy of education neatly encapsulated in the caps: • an essentialist definition of african identity that suggests that there is only one authentic set of characteristics which all african people share and which do not alter across time – identities involve multiplicity, therefore rarely coherent and integrated (woodward, 1997: 2); • africans are not a solidified, undifferentiated and homogenous mass of people: this tends to ignore differences and the fact that “africans” are individual subjects too; and • politics of collective identity that tends to accept historically inherited views escape critical scrutiny and constructive criticism. such is, regrettably, the case with caps as was with cne and bantu education. at the heart of african philosophy of education should be the clarification and critical evaluation of the national caps. as strawson (1973: 828) puts it, “one remembers the kantian tenet that concepts are empty, have no significance for us, are not concepts for us, unless we can relate them to experiential conditions for their application”. the author’s disquiet about caps’ preferred indigenous knowledge systems are its inability to clarify, defend and justify itself. consequently, one doubts its educational benefits in the light of global and domestic philosophical-educational challenges, such as: • globalisation (that led to knowledge sharing) and neo-liberalism (and its privatisation of education that undermines theoretical knowledge) educational programmes that are suspicious of democratic human rights culture; 24 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) • africa’s scientific, intellectual and academic dependency, and african philosophers’ inability to embark on a quest for universality of philosophy as a basis for endogenous knowledge; • the need for african institutions of higher learning to undergo a process of decolonisation and arrest what hountondji (1996: 56) describes as “african mythical exploration”; • the general unwillingness to choose and travel the road to wisdom calls for “the next stage of struggle, a reality that, unfortunately, never fails to arise, but whose battle must be waged (gordon; 2016: 177); and • the demons of racism and xenophobia that drain one emotionally and intellectually (mckaiser, 2015: 1). all these global and national philosophical-educational issues taken together require policymakers to re-examine post-apartheid education and, by implication, the indigenous knowledge system in south africa anew. in simple terms, the open nature of the aims of the caps attests to carr’s (2004: 57) misgivings about “policy makers who make and implement educational decisions in a way which generally lacks intellectual rigour and in which serious and systematic reflection on the fundamental philosophical standpoint that informs their decisions is conspicuously absent”. if carr’s charge holds, presenting the aims of african philosophy of education in such open terms leaves the caps without the necessary theoretical foundation to discipline learners in particular, or to address global and domestic problems and challenges as seepe (2000) hopes. amid the diverse but, deep down, so strangely similar genres, which conception of african philosophy should underpin education in post-apartheid south african schools? the author is in no hurry to answer this question, except to highlight possible pathways. one possibility, of course, is to revise and reformulate caps, since it operates in the realm of an academic curriculum (govender & fataar, 2015). however, that would be retrogressive and unhelpful. the issue, therefore, is how to make an african philosophy of education project meaningful. if such a course is followed, two mechanisms may be considered as ways of moving from where we are to where we ought to be. first, it involves reconceptualisation of african knowledge, i.e. acknowledging that this collective belief has a specific place within the wider field of beliefs. second, african scholars should recognise professional philosophy for what it is, a free critical inquiry into problems raised by their intellectual and socio-political milieu (green & condy, 2016; hountondji, 1996). third, universal knowledge would require policymakers to explore ways of developing locally and regionally relevant policy that go beyond narrow provincialisms, but which is consistent with the changing world – the “freedom of movement of knowledge – knowledge in motion” as mbembe (2016: 37–38) observes. 7. conclusion the author puts forward a conclusion, hegel’s (1977) dialectical method best understood in terms of the concepts of thesis (the minds), antithesis (the result of the encounter between minds), which together produce a synthesis (the resolution into western philosophy and african philosophy). according to hegel’s conception, the battle for recognition between human minds leaves no room for cooperation between western philosophy and african philosophy. the author alters this dialectical process in part, and maintains that endogenous knowledge is the third member of the triad – western, african and endogenous knowledge – the latter being the unity of the other two. there is a far, nobler prospect of african philosophy of education in post-apartheid south african schools if indigenous knowledge (in itself) ceases 25 mathebula african philosophy (of education) and post-apartheid ... to regard itself as independent of western philosophy (not-self). historically and to date, african philosophy is arguably distinct from and identical to western knowledge traditions. the cause of disagreement was, and still is, the identity in difference. western philosophy and african philosophy should bury their narrow differences and “work together, recognising that what they have in common is much more than what separates them” (budge, 1993: 154) – a unity of a single philosophy, of a single abstract subject matter, careful and systematic thinking (method) and way of life. 8. notes • according to hountondji (1996: 60), bantu philosophy is a myth at work, the myth of primitive unanimity, with its suggestion that in “primitive” societies – that is to say, nonwestern societies – everybody always agrees with everybody else. bantu philosophy is merely “a collective world-view, an implicit, spontaneous, perhaps even unconscious system of beliefs to which all africans are supposed to adhere” (hountondji, 1996: 60). • for our purpose, raphael (1990: 8) interprets the main tradition of western philosophy as having had two connected aims: the clarification of concepts, for the purpose of the critical evaluation of beliefs. put differently, classical western philosophy can best be described as a theoretical discipline with its own descriptive analysis and normative methods of inquiry. • for kanu (2014: 92), philosophy is an “all-inclusive enterprise, a universal activity not limited to whites or blacks, nor confined to the peoples of the west and the east”. • briefly, according to hountondji (1997: 17), “endogenous knowledge evokes the origin of the kind of knowledge identified as an internal product drawn from a given cultural background, as 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http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.1 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) editorial in 1913, rabindranath tagore was awarded the nobel prize for his sensitive, fresh and beautiful poetry. he wrote that the butterfly counts not months, but moments and has enough time. when people realise how short life is, they often develop a new gratefulness for life. but it also makes people more focused. often in life we are faced with emergencies that call for urgent actions. these become our butterfly moments. for all education institutions across the globe covid-19 has become a butterfly moment. it seems to me that butterflies have inspired scientists over many centuries also realising that a single moment can change the course of society for a lifetime. in the 1960s scientist, edward lorenz, began exploring the phenomenon we now know as the butterfly effect. we also now know that covid-19 was such a butterfly-effect event. there are many examples of how covid-19 has impacted on education in countries all over the world. for many educational authorities the butterfly moment was to plan education on a day-to-day basis. every day was important to ensure that children do not lose valuable teaching and learning time. for educational institutions the challenge was to migrate from a traditional face-toface learning situation to an online mediated teaching and learning situation. there was little conceptualisation of how online mediated learning should be and for many it was a trial and error approach. it is here that research can make a huge difference and the articles that are taken up in this issue make a valuable contribution to the educational thinking and deliberations about changing to online mediated approaches. we open with an article by ilsa basson in which she looked at 20 years into the new millennium and asked the question how aligned and integrated is mathematics, physics and computer science at secondary school level? she found that there is no clear indication of an alignment between the disciplines, which, to a certain extent, puts south africa outside the international frame. this article is followed by research done on the influence and value of science and technology in the education system of south africa and russia (niconette maree and deon vos). this study provides ample evidence of the value that technology adds if successfully implemented and how much value it can bring to an education system. we conclude our focus author: jan nieuwenhuis1 affiliation: 1university of the free state doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i4.1 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(4): 1-2 published: 6 december 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.1 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.1 22021 39(4): 2-2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.1 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) on ict in teaching and learning with a contribution from reina abraham where she reports on research that she has conducted into turning constraints into opportunities. she has looked at the online delivery of communication skills simulation sessions to undergraduate medical students. in her conclusion she argues that there is the need to consider how online simulation can be sustained after the pandemic and not just returning to the conventional face-to-face teaching and learning. in the next group of articles, we focus on issues of diversity. lunga, koen and mthiyane discuss managing disrupted learner behaviour in a rural learning ecology while tanita reddy and yolandi woest consider the influence of learner behaviour on beginning teachers’ perceptions of their own credibility. van der walt and oosthuizen interrogate ubuntu in south africa. this paper examines the phenomenon that the actual modern-day practical, day-today life in south africa does not seem to attest to application of the ubuntu ideal of maintaining and improving the human condition. keeping with the rights discourse, linda van aardt, roy venketsamy and ina joubert discuss children’s experiences and perceptions of rights and responsibilities. the findings were that education advances children’s understanding and knowledge of their rights and responsibilities. the final group of articles look at several diverse aspects relating to teaching and learning at school level. these articles raise a number of important concerns that should be taken further in the educational discourse as it touches on vital aspects in the provision of education not only in south africa but also across the globe. may you find pleasure in reading the stimulating articles and research presented in this edition of perspectives of education. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.1 75 a child inmate’s stories of schooling and the possibilities for self-change and self-care abstract going beyond the static, dangerous version of a single story about who an african child inmate is, is an ethical responsibility – especially when we consider the structural and material forces that are tangled in this evil deed. drawing on a sociological framing of self and foucault’s theory of ethics, we take a narrative inquiry stance to explore what can be learnt about being an african child from a juvenile ex-inmate, bakhona who negotiates the complex educational experience as a poor, orphaned and homeless child. the three storied vignettes represent our attention to the multiplicity and fluidity of self – negotiated through the entangled pathways of learning to and from prison. the analysis releases our eyes to a deeper understanding of the young african child who turns to crime driven by a desire to learn, know, and live differently. the choice to learn to care for self differently within dislocating and unproductive material and structural conditions is complex and possible if schooling as a system can become more educationally relevant, socially responsive and inclusive teaching and learning sites. keywords: crime, vignettes, self-care, stories, juvenile inmate, 1. introduction a tradition of sub-saharan africa as a place of negatives, of difference, of darkness, of people who, in the words of the wonderful poet, rudyard kipling, are “half devil, half child.” (aditchie, 2016: n.p.) to create a single [african] story, show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become. (aditchie, 2016: n.p.) 2. how do we compose the stories of the african child who does crime? to move beyond the stereotypes of the african child entrenched by colonialism and the white man’s burden – immortalised in the words of rudyard kipling as “half devil, half child” – we take seriously this danger of the single story (adichie, 2016). in this paper we are careful about the use of ‘african child’. this term has historical roots that functioned to reproduce race, class and age inequalities. soudien (2006) for instance argues that the term was used to classify, judge, police and ‘other’ the african child as pathetic and passive, premised upon essentialist notions of daisy pillay school of education university of kwazulu-natal sithembiso ngubane school of education university of zululand doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v36i2.7 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 36(2): 75-87 © uv/ufs 76 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) race. this paper rejects the use of african child that serves to reproduce racist apartheid logic. rather our use of the term is situated in a context where race, class, space, geography and history intersect to provide a particular understanding of the inequalities through which the african child is produced. adichie (2016: n.p.) reminded us that the danger of single stories “is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete.” they imprison us (falzon, 1998), from thinking and understanding the complexity of an actual life lived and experienced from the individual’s perspective. as educational researchers, we know the potential of stories to evoke empathy and reflection and as social constructions, they allow us to question the social world in which they are entrenched (goodson, 1994). stories also function as arguments in which we can learn something unique about an actual life lived (connelly & clandinin, 1990), and thoughtfully disentangled, they can elucidate the reasoning of the individual courses of action and the effects of system-wide constraints within which these courses of action evolved. our attempt in this article therefore is not to objectify the experiences and accounts of the african child. rather we are careful to focus on the unequal social, political and economic consequences for the complex experiences of an african child inmate’s pathways to learning to and from prison, that are documented in this paper, and that require attention to race, class, and gender inequalities. the architects of apartheid ensured, through the bantu education act of 1953, that the african child had little or no access to proper formal educational opportunities – as a basis for being trained to become the unequal native to europeans (verwoerd as in kallaway, 1984). being denied the “right to claim an identity other than the one ascribed and enforced” (bauman, 2004:39), meant that education ensured social exclusion and the perpetuation of a deliberate silencing of the minds and hearts of the african children. the call for research to explore what and how basic educational provisioning and schooling sites in these present shifts can act as potent spaces to mitigate the impact of poverty, unemployment and the many other related social ills on the african child, is a compelling one (msibi, hemson & singh, 2018). our purpose is to understand bakhona’s life beyond the single story of incarceration, and it requires us to reflect, question and turn the act of crime on its head. we pay attention to the multiplicity and fluidity of self-connected to larger contexts of society. we read the lines between the pleats for the textures and nuances of an actual living life, whilst acknowledging the ongoing negotiation with the social, economic, and political miseries and vulnerabilities that african children, in particular, continue to experience. according to mathews and benvenuti (2014): the breakdown of community and family structures due to apartheid policies such as the group areas act and migrant labour system; the hiv/aids pandemic; gender inequality; unequal access to essential services; poverty and social exclusion; high rates of unemployment and substance abuse; migratory patterns; and a high incidence of violent crime all contribute to children’s experiences of violence… different forms of violence are more prevalent at different stages of a child’s life, and it is important to understand how violence impacts on children’s psycho-social functioning at different developmental stages and across the life course racial inequalities are salient (hall & sambu, 2014). despite the historical shift to democracy, the “beast of the past” (tutu, 1998, 22), continues to have undesirable, enduring effects on the lives of specific population groups, and detrimental to children in particular (mathews and benvenuti 2014). according to hall & sambu (2014, p. 95), 37% of african children have no working adult at home, as compared to 12% of coloured children, 7% 77 pillay & ngubane an african child inmate’s stories of schooling... of indian children and 2% of white children, who live in similar circumstances. as south african researchers, we see the danger in taking a one-dimensional view of the african child and childhood, 24 years after the legitimate end of the vicious and racist apartheid regime (msibi, 2012; pillay & pithouse-morgan, 2016). in this article, we, first present a review of key debates and issues on children and crime and the systemic issues that continue to reproduce the ongoing violence and inequalities that african children, in particular, confront daily. we then explain how we generated the storied data with bakhona, for this article. this is followed by an analysis of bakhona’s pathways of learning, to and from prison presented as three storied vignettes and framed by sociological understanding of identity and foucault’s theory of ethics and ethical practice. we demonstrate how turning to crime and being incarcerated is one of bakhona’s many small stories negotiated within a broader social order. we conclude our article by highlighting the value of stories as critical instruments for opening up our understanding of the african child, learner and inmate as one with capacity and desire to learn as a practice of care for the self. 3. the african child and crime while much anthropological research has focused on the central role that african children play within families and communities, especially in conditions of social and economic distress (bass, 2004; grier, 2004; bhana, 2017), it patently silenced the voices and lived experiences of the african child. the growing increase in child orphans due to the many social ills – disease and political conflicts, and the growing youth population and unemployment – has, according to bhana (2017), exacerbated the violent and inhuman conditions of existence for many children growing up in african households and attending south african schools. the dislocation and dysfunctionality of the family as a system to support, protect children from harm and take care of their physical and emotional needs has left the school vulnerable to the asocial behaviour being transmitted to its system (mathews & benvenuti, 2014; maphalala and mpofu, 2019). a serious consequence is the high crime rate as poverty increases and adolescents in many townships are drawn into crime and violence, which provide them with a “sense of power and respect that they are otherwise denied” (mathews & benvenuti, 2014:32). walmsley (2012) noted that of south africa’s estimated population of 53.1 million people, the prison population totalled 156 370 people, and that prisons stood at 139.9% capacity in 2009. also of significance is roper’s (2005) study that highlighted the alarming growth in the number of children and young people arrested, charged and convicted in south africa. statistics of imprisonment in south africa from walmsley (2012) also shed light on the number of people who are incarcerated, in terms of race and gender, with incarceration rates of black males far in excess of those of any other race or gender. taking a cue from recent work on juvenile crime and incarceration in africa (roper, 2005; walmsley, 2012), our article offers a perspective on the african child’s experiences and practices that lead to doing crime. the urgency to understand school learners and criminal practices, intersected by issues of class, gender, sexuality, disability and other social identifications, is compelling (ngubane, 2017; msibi, hemson & singh, 2018). the call invites us to go beyond and apprehend the statistical, disembodied accounts of the african child who attends school and commits crime as violent, uncaring and without agency. instead, we frame our understanding of the african child inmate, as one who desires learning and to live and be 78 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) known differently whilst recognising the material and social conditions in and through which this position is negotiated and produced. 4. a sociological framing of the african child according to yoo (2017:451), taking on a sociological perspective as researchers calls for special “‘cognitive ability’ to look at the world through the particular framework or lens of sociological imagination.” through writing within this paradigm, we wanted to develop an eye for observing unique patterns of behaviour” (yoo, 2017:451) that otherwise go unchecked and remain invisible. from a sociological perspective, we considered “the mechanisms and ways of knowing” (pillay & saloojee, 2012:43) that are adopted by a child not only for understanding and negotiating the external world but for being a certain kind of individual and learner. we open up and explain the course of action taken up by the individual for negotiating the complexity of everyday situations in and through which the child seeks to live and learn outside of his or her static biological limits and the normalising discourses of being a poor, rural, and african. the premise we take from this stance is of identity as socially produced, socially embedded and worked out in individuals’ everyday social lives. we also found it important to think in alternate ways with foucault’s theory of ethics, and to explain the self’s capacity for both resistance and transformation when negotiating everyday practices in and through which self is produced and addressed. interestingly, to unravel bakhona’s complex learning pathways to and from prison required us to challenge our own narrow ways of framing individuals who do crime and to understand more deeply what “determine[d] which [was] the main danger” in this choice, and had the potential to harm him or others (foucault, 1984:343). the sociological framing assisted us to exercise imagination and to interpret bakhona’s “hyperand pessimistic optimism” (foucault, 1984:343) as an african child, “orphaned” and homeless and driven by an ethical need to live fully and differently. 5. accessing bakhona’s stories through poetry, photos and narratives sithembiso, the one author, first met and worked with bakhona at a halfway house near durban, where he lived with his brothers after his release from prison. sithembiso started by asking him to reflect on his childhood memories as a boy growing up in a rural area near scottburgh, in kwazulu-natal. adopting a narrative inquiry approach enabled sithembiso to draw on long, open-ended interviews complemented by arts-based methods and journalling (olivier, wood & de lange, 2009) to elicit stories about a life lived and experienced historically, culturally and politically. sithembiso, who is male, black and an isizulu first-language speaker conducted the interviews mostly in english – code switching at times while he listened and probed as bakhona told his stories: “can you explain what you mean by this?” “how did this come about?” “how do you feel about . . .?” “tell me more . . .” through probing, sithembiso took the opportunity to delve and elicit information that a participant might not be consciously aware of, allowing for deeply concealed beliefs and ideas to emerge of a life lived, told and experienced (bruner, 1984). to enhance the trustworthiness and ethical responsibility of the research process, sithembiso also made extensive field notes in which he reflected on his own sense making of his face-to-face encounter with bakhona, and the prejudices and biases he felt and experienced as a victim of crime himself. also, being an older male researcher meant acting responsibly and sensitively to bakhona’s memories around potentially harmful issues and experiences of growing up with adults who betrayed and abandoned him as a 79 pillay & ngubane an african child inmate’s stories of schooling... child. sithembiso paid careful attention to his own positioning in the research relationship, knowing that “narrative identities are dynamic, partial, fragmented and context dependent” (hatch & wisniewski, 1995:128). the participant was asked to verify the accuracy of the data that was reconstructed into these storied narratives for the doctoral study. bakhona’s experiences, represented as storied vignettes and developed from the poems that he wrote and reflected on, the photographs that he shared and the little stories he remembered of his relationship with significant others, were central to our analysis of the storied vignettes. in our representation of some of the storied vignettes, we ensured that we stayed as close as possible to the particular in bakhona’s stories to make authentic connections that were not “disembodied and impersonal” (butt et al., 1992:122) so that we could learn differently from the actual life lived (clandinin & connelly, 2000). the following three storied vignettes allowed us to magnify those in-between spaces of bakhona’s negotiation of self, in particular, social settings so that we could “make judgments about the feel and significance of the particular” (eisner, 2002:382): • vignette 1: a knowledgeable self: seeking school knowledge as a practice of care for self • vignette 2: a creative self: seeking healing as a practice of care for self • vignette 3: ethical self: seeking social spaces and relationships to practice care for self as responsible school learner 5.1 vignette 1: a knowledgeable self: seeking school knowledge as a practice of care for self brought up in an impoverished rural setting in the late 1990s in kwazulu-natal, bakhona’s life, like many other young black boys’, was narrated in insidious ways by the racialised structures of apartheid and the persistent economic inequalities that set the path for migrant labour and the disruption of family life (nkani & bhana, 2010:3): i was born on the 27 january 1991 and brought up by my grandmother who was a pensioner. my mother abandoned me when i was 6 months old. i attended the primary school near where i stayed with my grandmother from 1997 to 2003. my father left home to look for work in durban. the pension that my grandmother received was not enough to satisfy all our needs. sometimes we went to bed without having had a meal. i did very well at school and passed grade 5 in 2003. abandoned by his mother when he was just six months old and raised by his grandmother, a pensioner, bakhona’s life was no different from that of many children growing up in rural settings (carpena-méndez, 2007). regulatory power dispersed through a social network of gender, poverty and a community life plagued by seemingly insurmountable challenges, was what many african children like bakhona had to negotiate and, most often, with no change in sight (moletsane & ntombela, 2010). the absence of one or both parents is also a familiar narrative of many black children living in economically disadvantaged rural areas in kwazulu-natal (bhana, 2010). whilst acknowledging bakhona’s life as in “crisis, calamitous and catastrophic” (bhana, 2017:2), looking wider and beyond the external discourses that institutionalise and regulate the african child’s life, we shift our gaze and look beyond to who he is, what he thinks, desires and knows – and what kind of person he wants to become (lawler, 2008). his success at school as a learner foregrounds an alternate form of relation with the self – a form of hyper-pessimistic activism (foucault, 1984:343) that enabled a transgression from the narrow borders that confronted him daily. bakhona’s capacity to work on himself and acquire 80 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) knowledge offers him a new and different way of knowing himself. acknowledging himself as a successful grade 5 learner offers hope for a different kind of existence. 5.2 vignette 2: a creative self: seeking healing as a practice of care for self things started to fall apart when my grandmother passed away in july 2004, after being sick for a long time. i had to move to live with my “father” in phoenix, durban. a year later he passed away and i had to live with an “aunt.” in 2003, my aunt accused me of raping her two daughters. i was detained in westville youth centre for six months. i was only 13 years old at that time and was accused of something i did not do. after being released from prison, i ended up as a street kid . . . until the social workers accommodated me at the valley view place of safety where i was able to continue my schooling. bakhona’s experience of homelessness and abandonment is a central plot in his life even when he leaves the rural life to take up schooling in the township. finding himself on the streets of durban was another glimpse into the intimacies of his pessimistic world and his choice to be addressed as a street kid. studies highlight a close relationship between homelessness and school drop out for children who live on the streets or in children’s homes or suffer from parental bereavement (operario et al., 2008), because of weakened social bonds (schwartz et al., 2008). however, the greater need for bakhona, daily, was determining which “the main danger was” (foucault, 1984:343) and what practices would enable him to transform his traumas whilst trying to negotiate life on the streets, in a halfway house and in a shack in claremont with his alcoholic mother. below, we present one of the many poetic writing pieces that bakhona shared with sithembiso. 5.2.1 “because all i needed was love and care” my new home was the streets of durban, i found no peace moving from rural to urban, there was no need to live with my aunt, when i had no happiness in my heart. valley view place of safety was my new accommodation, that is when i continued my education, at burnwood secondary school, and was transferred to ziphathele secondary school. social workers traced my mother, they handed me over to her, she had nothing, an alcoholic, my new home was a shack in clermont. i accepted my mother, 81 pillay & ngubane an african child inmate’s stories of schooling... because all i needed was love and care, we stayed with my younger brother, my new home had no love and care. bakhona’s experience of success as a learner in the different schools he attended, and his experience of learning to write, emphasise the workings of language as a tool for making sense of his life and gaining control of his thinking and behaviour. his poetry takes us into the “intimacies of [his] world” (yoo, 2017:457), and to his reflections of his traumatic experiences. it engages us as readers through its aesthetic and evocative language. by accessing “carnal knowledge or the inner artist” (eisner 2002:382), bakhona opens up the fluidity within his daily routinised life through his creative reconstructions. his poem enables him to adopt the “creative consciousness that underlies such writing” (yoo, 2017:451), and to “engage the world creatively, he draws on his emotions to “ignite his thoughts” (murray (1992:15) and develop an ethical relation to the self. it is this exercise of writing by which he makes himself an object to be known (foucault, 1985:30) and addressed, in “a real and taxing situation” (foucault, 1997:236), differently. writing poetry, according to foucault, is “to show oneself, make oneself seen, makes one’s face appear before the other” as a reflective mode of being, desiring a connection with meditative self (1997:243). using poems to express his emotions heightens his consciousness of his own presence and agency in the knowledge he creates to heal himself. 5.3 vignette 3: ethical self: seeking social spaces and relationships to practice care for self as responsible school learner the upshots of the iniquitous apartheid legacy are the reservoirs of unskilled labour and high unemployment crisis we struggle with daily. many, historically designated, black residential areas and makeshift residential spaces are still “the dumping ground of the poor and unemployed” (hsrc-epc, 2005:136). this scenario remains unchanged post our democracy, as schools continue to produce students who have limited chances of obtaining a meaningful education and life after matriculation – because of the combination of poverty and poor quality education (hsrc-epc, 2005; spaull, 2013). women whose lives as domestic workers mean low salaries in south africa, often head families, this type of work is usually done by african women (cook-daniels, 1998). as a consequence, it is a common trend in south africa for young african children to drop out of school or to be subjected to different forms of menial labour and domestic work (ansell & van blerk, 2004; robson, 2000) while also attending school – in order to supplement the demands of home. bakhona’s “role of worker at a young age” (bushin et al., 2007: 78), living in a shack in a township with two siblings was not an option, as he narrates below: 5.3.1 a gardener, high school learner and the juvenile inmate i worked as a gardener during weekends and earned r100, which i used for transport to school. i was surprised one sunday when my employer’s wife told me that i did not have a job anymore. i was confused and all i could see was a dark future for my schooling career. i was writing exams on wednesday. there was more frustration and confusion in me. i borrowed an illegal firearm from a man who was our neighbour. i went to new germany and spotted two white females who were walking towards the car park. i pointed the firearm at them and demanded money and cell phones which they surrendered. i ran 82 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) back home . . . a few hours later i was apprehended by police and was identified positively by the victims. i was arrested, tried and sentenced to six years imprisonment. the choice to work was what foucault (1984:343), describes as “pessimistic activism” – something that bakhona had to do in order to attend school and succeed as a school learner. having to work was dangerous but an ethical choice for bakhona the high school boy; without work bakhona had to “determine what the main danger” was (foucault, 1984, p. 343) when he had he decided to rob two women so that he could have the money to get to school. we learn, from the dramatic situation described above, about the conflict bakhona is faced with alone – in search of the ethical choice to make – among conflicting options in relation to different individuals and relationships (family, self, school, the neighbour and the two white women), in essence, his ethical dilemma. as fransson and grannäs (2013:7) remind us, “dilemmas are not ‘out there’ per se... dilemmatic spaces are social constructions resulting from structural conditions and relational aspects in everyday practices.” understanding the complexity of the dilemma that confronted bakhona, and why he made the choice to do crime, assisted us in making sense of his behaviour differently. the motivation for bakhona’s choice was “‘not bad” (foucault, 1984:343) but in accordance with the rule that “everything is dangerous” (foucault, 1984:343). to effect the process of transformation of unethical self into an ethical subject of his behaviour (foucault, 1885:26) meant serving time as a juvenile inmate in prison. 6. ethical work: rebuilding moral self as a learner and facilitator in prison foucault’s explanation of ethical work helps us to focus on bakhona’s learning journey towards self – his transformation into a moral being. we now draw on the poem he wrote, a found photo and memories of critical experiences to highlight the moral aspect of bakhona’s transformation of self through a process which blacker (1998:362) explained as a kind of “controlled and self-regulated dissemination of the subject into the world”. 6.1 “i’m the star to shine in the dark” i’m the star to shine in the dark today is the day, i’ve lost my strengths, today my life is made up of my weaknesses, because i’ve been placed in the darkness, today i’m the star to shine in the dark, don’t cry but try. they’ve made sure that i’m in prison, but never realise that it was my new season, 83 pillay & ngubane an african child inmate’s stories of schooling... i’ve seen the tears of the innocents, but who realised i’ve been in need of life assistance, i’ve cried but it wasn’t loud, i’ve tried but it wasn’t enough. yesterday i’ve seen my life crashing, today i view it sparkling, it was burning to ashes, and i wrote about it till i finished my book pages, yes to god i’m a sinner, yet in this world i could be stronger. the written poem, as a practice enacted of the self, evokes the care of what exists for him as an inmate – and might exist in the future (foucault, 1988:328). it offers a crystallised sense of reality and his determination to throw off his familiar ways and weaknesses and to look at prison space as a potent site for transforming self: to practice a sense of social belonging as a moral being. involvement in a range of enacted practices in interaction with others served as acts of “social worship and social binding” (lawler, 2008:111) as a necessity of establishing conduct that seeks the rules of acceptable behaviour in relation to others (allan, 2013:29). there are two things that you can do in prison. you can learn to be a hard criminal or change your life for the better. being in prison marked the starting point of rebuilding my own life. it was the beginning of the new world. there are inmates who continue committing crime while in prison like fighting and doing drugs because of peer pressure and influence from gangsters. i knew that my intention was to help my brothers to live a decent life. bakhona did not have much choice as an inmate working within the specifics of prison space built on particular rules of behaviour. of importance, was bakhona’s choice to “foreground the self as the principal object of care” (allan, 2013:29), and as a means through which care for his siblings could be made possible: 6.1.1 i continued learning while i was in prison i continued learning while i was in prison because i wanted to become a teacher. i liked commercial subjects and registered to study them in grade 12. i was very happy that i passed grade 12 with good percentages 6.1.2 i was chosen as a tutor and facilitator in prison i was chosen as a tutor for english and life orientation in the prison school. i used to facilitate lessons during school hours and also assisted other inmates after school hours. this made me gain some practice and confidence a learner. 84 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) figure 1: tutoring inmates 6.1.3 i was chosen as a motivational speaker my english teacher also sent me to neighbouring high schools to make other learners aware of the consequences of committing crime. i enjoyed motivating other learners about focusing on their studies because i knew that education was key to a better life. figure 2: addressing and motivating youth preparing for their final examinations in chesterville within the setting of the prison and the rules of interaction that were possible, bakhona fashions an alternate and oppositional routine for himself as an inmate, determined to conduct himself according to the rules of acceptable behaviour. to effect transformation of himself into an ethical subject, he trains himself to focus on “how to be, how to act” (pillay & ngubane, 2015:6) through poetic forms of writing, tutoring, studying and motivating other inmates. for bakhona, learning to conduct himself according to rules of moral conduct meant engaging in activities that encourage reflection, social interaction and thinking that aligned with good behaviour. 7. our learning and concluding remarks 7.1 imagining schools differently the architects of apartheid used education as an anaesthetic tool – intended to traumatise and painfully deaden (nkomo, 1990) african children’s capacity to think, know and act as 85 pillay & ngubane an african child inmate’s stories of schooling... embodied, creative social beings. research studies conducted nationally continue to narrate public education in south africa as a national disaster (bloch, 2009), in which vast inequities remain evident. spaull (2013) reiterated that a vast majority of south african learners who grow up in poorer communities and attend poorer, less resourced public schools in urban and rural settings remain destined for failure if we continue to offer inferior education. as an ethical obligation to explore and understand the lived educational experiences from the perspective of an african child, school learner and ex-inmate, we draw from our learnings to highlight how an impoverished schooling environment (pillay & pithouse-morgan, 2016) might be understood as a potent learning environment that can offer spaces for enlivening learners’ thinking, creativity and moral development. our learnings emphasise the need for schooling as learning spaces where african learners can seek out something more (boulton-founke, 2014) than book knowledge, namely: • schooling as a potent learning environment for constructing different content knowledges to evoke care to know and think of self with a refined sense of reality. • schooling as a potent learning environment for practising the deliberate cultivation of voice (not silencing of voice) and creative knowledge for feeling, healing and to evoke care of self differently. • schooling as a learning environment for developing ethical social knowledge through peer collaborations, role-modelling and public activism in the moral aspect and care of self. questioning schooling spaces – inside and outside of imprisonment – are open to different possibilities for producing different knowledges that assist individuals like bakhona to “look at the same things in a different way….a lack of respect for the traditional hierarchies” (foucault, 1988:328) that oppress and limit better ways of knowing one’s self. if we are serious about researching the african child’s complex lives differently and with greater insight, we must open up what and how we think about school spaces, and related practices, in ways that can nurture the learner’s own funds of knowing (foucault, 1997); and in what ways can schools become more responsive to developing learners as caring, ethically responsible citizens who have the capacity to connect with self and society in more embodied and interconnected ways. this is core to the human condition (krall, 1988). 7.2 imagining the african child and schooling sites differently in setting the african child inmate’s stories of experience as the agenda, our article argues that children who do crime and are incarcerated can be strongly invested in learning, and can care enough to develop self as intellectual, creative and moral beings. bakhona’s narrative, beyond the danger of the single narrative, alerts us to the complex, pleated and nuanced versions of the african child relational to broader structural and material constraints. importantly, this article highlights for us the need for the school as a system to strengthen its response and relevancy in its role for social transformation. as an official learning space, the school is a potent system for creating an enabling environment where teaching is inclusive and supportive of children’s emotional, psychological and intellectual development across different developmental stages of the child’s life (mathews & benvenuti, 2014). notably, appropriate support, resources and protective measures and initiatives may be integrated into the school life and culture to mitigate the impact of poverty and unemployment and increase the chance of a child’s positive psychological and emotional realignment. 86 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) for children who are victims of violence, live in poverty and without family support and parental love and care, schools may serve as safe and nurturing learning settings. as spaces of affective containment (dale and james, 2015), they can open up possibilities for children to learn as embodied 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implications for learner experiences and performance in a disadvantaged community in south africa. data was gathered through individual and focus group interviews, involving 3 principals and 12 teachers respectively. the paper is buttressed by epstein’s model of school­family­community partnerships that advocates for genuine collaboration between stakeholders. the findings show that educators’ perceptions concerning parent non­involvement do not take into consideration the contextual realities that restrict involvement, and this serves to alienate parents further. the paper also reveals the gap that exist between policy and practice in terms of school­parent relationships. existing relations, especially in disadvantaged communities emphasizes the need for schools to initiate and implement strategies that are context friendly, taking into consideration challenges experienced by parents. in this regard, empowering teachers on school­parent relationships is a vital ingredient to ensure the initiation and implementation strategies towards a sustainable parent involvement. keywords: learner performance; parental involvement; disad­ vantage communities; poor schools 1. introduction researchers around the world acknowledge the importance of parent involvement in their children’s education (bakker, denessen & brus-laven, 2007; chowa, ansong & oseiakoto, 2012; johnson & hull, 2014; luxomo & motala, 2012; mcdowall & schaughency, 2017; mncube, 2010), and the desire to ensure that these children succeed in school (kemal, 2011). parents’ participation in learners’ education, both formally and informally, can have social and emotional benefits (bakker et al., 2007; bhengu, 2003; mcdowall & schaughency, 2017), but globally, certain contextual challenges negatively affect the achievement of sustainable parental engagement (humphrey-taylor, 2015). this influences stakeholder perceptions and dr paul nwati munje sanral chair, faculty of education, university of the free state, email: munjepaul@ gmail.com prof vusi mncube school of further and continuing education, university of fort hare, email: vmncube@ufh.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v36i1.6 issn 0258­2236 e­issn 2519­593x perspectives in education 2018 36(1): 80­93 © uv/ufs mailto:munjepaul@gmail.com mailto:munjepaul@gmail.com mailto:vsmncube@ufh.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.6 81 munje & mncube the lack of parent involvement as hindrance in selected public primary schools ... definitions of effective parental involvement, thus perpetuating misunderstandings amongst this cohort (anderson & minke, 2007; herrell, 2011; jafarov, 2015; shen, washington, palmer, & xia, 2014). in the view of epstein (2018), this is orchestrated by the fact that teachers are increasingly not having adequate knowledge about the varied characteristics of parents, what lemmer (2007) suggests is caused by the lack of training on parent-school relationships. educators in schools serving disadvantaged communities are more likely to have a negative perception of parental involvement; often classifying it as less encouraging and less rewarding in terms of advancing children’s learning (koutrouba, antonopoulou, tsitsas & zenakou, 2009; luxomo & motala, 2012; mcdowall & schaughency, 2017), while ignoring the potentials of parents to supervise learners and partake in school activities (edwards, 2004). this clearly indicates that teacher education curricula and teacher training institutions do not specifically prepare educators to specifically deal with issues related to family-schoolcommunity partnerships (epstein, 2018; jacobs, 2008; lemmer, 2007). teacher training is relevant because significant emphasis is placed on the importance of parental involvement for both learner outcomes and the life of the schools that their children attend (epstein, 1995, 2018; mansfield-barry & stwayi, 2017). epstein (2018) notes that very few teacher while starting their profession have knowledge of what they need to do to initiate and implement partnership programmes that will inform and involve parents in a way that will keep them active in their children’s education during the entire academic year. the south african schools act (sasa), 84 of 1996 (rsa, 1996), cognisant of the importance of parental involvement (for both learners and schools, given the growing need to change the face of south african education), put in place systems aimed at facilitating meaningful school–parent relationships (msila, 2012). mansfield-barry and stwayi (2017: 78) argue that such partnerships require that role players “work together to achieve every learner’s right to education”. these provisions mandate the inclusion and participation of parents in school governing bodies (sgbs) (mncube, 2009). in the local context, however, policy promulgations are yet to align fully with teacher education curricula. as lemmer (2007) notes, this gap emanates from the fact that the only formal opportunity for educators to acquire knowledge on parental involvement is through a distance certificate course offered by the university of south africa. this practically limits access to such information by teachers. clearly, individual schools do not have the capacity to provide educators with the necessary skills and strategies to engage with parents effectively, despite evidence showing that acquiring such knowledge is cost effective for the schools involved (epstein, 2018). despite attempts to encourage parental involvement in this country, progress is being hampered by factors such as poverty, single-parent households, unemployment and a lack of supportive familial structures (abrahams, 2013; karibayeva & bŏgar, 2014; van loggenberg, 2013). luxomo and motala (2012) add that in poverty-stricken areas, an overreliance on social grants contributes to parental antipathy: the monies parents receive barely cater for basic household essentials, hence under these circumstances they cannot be held solely responsible for their failure to participate fully in their children’s education (abrahams, 2013). that said, parental involvement should not be construed as only pertaining to financial involvement (albeit that monetary contributions are important): parents ought to be directly involved in the academic, social and emotional needs of their children. as such, parents from poor backgrounds have different ways of participating in learner education (anderson & 82 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) minke, 2007). shearer (2006) argues that parental non-involvement is exacerbated by an overarching worldwide phenomenon, whereby schools are unable to clearly delineate parental roles from those of the school, thus introducing conflict where there ought to be collaboration. therefore, the inability of parents in impoverished communities to enhance learners’ learning abilities positively is aggravated by the failure of schools to effectively cooperate with these stakeholders (singh, mbokodi & msila, 2004; van loggenberg, 2013). irrespective of the circumstances, the history of education in south africa requires parents to play a leading role in enhancing learner success, especially in previously disadvantaged communities (singh et al., 2004). parental involvement thus needs to extend beyond theorisation – especially at home, where educational inequality is deemed to originate (harris & robinson, 2016). furthermore, schools are seemingly not initiating or/and implementing appropriate strategies that are genuinely inclusive, welcoming or encouraging, and are thereby preventing parents from volunteering on a regular basis (msila, 2012; van loggenberg, 2013). smith (2006) and msila (2012) argue that schools can overcome parental disengagement by following robust, inclusive approaches with the capacity to unlock parents’ existing potentials and enhance their meaningful participation (park & holloway, 2017). therefore, the need to empower teachers with family and community involvement skills to enable them have the capacity to identify the potentials of parents and exploit them for the benefit of the learners and the schools is becoming more relevant (epstein, 2018). broader social contexts also impede the establishment of strong relationships between parents and schools, with the former often feeling excluded (walker & berthelsen, 2010). parents thus become increasingly disconnected from what they ought to be doing, and may be alienated from gaining knowledge that could spur them to get involved (in diverse school programmes relating to their children’s education) (van loggenberg, 2013). for donkor (2010) there is a concomitant non-negotiable, urgent need to change parents’ perceptions of education and improve their participation. clearly, parents – irrespective of context – can only help to guarantee a positive educational future for their children by working hand-in-glove with schools (msila, 2012). since educators are also likely to reap the benefits of parental involvement in the form of improved teaching and learning, they need to spearhead engagements that are aimed at enhancing such participation (jacobs, 2008). undoubtedly, when parents and educators come together and work holistically towards learners’ education, by focusing on the academic, social and emotional needs of the latter, success is bound to happen naturally (epstein, 1995; epstein, 2018) – this, while recognising all children’s rights to quality basic education (mansfield-barry & stwayi, 2017). 1.1 research aims and objectives the research on which this article is based, investigated the relevance of parental involvement, educators’ perceptions of parental non-involvement in learner education, factors influencing parental non-involvement, as well as the implications parental disengagement had for learner experiences and performance in a selected disadvantaged community. the paper also explored ways and means of enhancing parental involvement in disadvantaged communities in south africa and beyond. 1.1.2 research questions the following research questions were formulated: (i) why is parental involvement necessary, and what factors obstruct parental involvement in the education of their children? (ii) how do 83 munje & mncube the lack of parent involvement as hindrance in selected public primary schools ... educators perceive parental involvement as it relates to both learners and the school? (iii) what effects does parental non-involvement have on learners and the schools? and (iv) how can parental participation be enhanced, to benefit all stakeholders? 2. theoretical framework the paper is underpinned by epstein’s school-family-community partnerships model that focuses on stakeholder relationships, which is dominated by internal and external overlapping spheres of influence with either negative or positive implications on learner experiences and performance (epstein, 1995, 2018). since stakeholders have similar educational goals, maintaining school-parent-community partnerships, and harnessing untapped parent resources guarantees learner achievement (atkins, bastiani & goode, 1989; epstein, 1996; epstein, 2018). since parents know their children’s educational aspirations and how to drive them to success, schools can decide to make choices that are either positive or negative to school functioning, by either drawing them together or not (epstein, 1995; kemal, 2011). according to epstein’s model, learners are instrumental in sustaining relationships between schools and parents, in terms of maintaining communication by way of delivering summons, reports and memos (epstein, 1995). as such, schools have to carter for both their learners and their parents by involving them in school activities (epstein, 1995, 2018). since stakeholder involvement affects learner attendance and performance, the model also suggest that schools should understand community’s context and parent backgrounds, and embrace them despite varying ideologies, perceptions and challenges (epstein, 1987; 1995; 2018; sheldon, 2002). presumably, parents in disadvantaged communities thinly participate in learner education based on their level of education, lack of empowerment, lack of vision, poverty and employment dynamics, familial structures, teacher attitude and exclusion (lemmer, 2007). 3. research design and methods this is a qualitative study located within the interpretivist paradigm, due to the integration of human interests (yin, 2018). the approach provides an opportunity to explore participants’ wealth of experience, their intentions, beliefs, values and reasons for doing what they do, and making meaning from them (denzin & lincoln, 2011; henning, van rensburg & smit, 2004; merriam, 1998). in understanding perceptions towards parent participation in the education of their children, participants were engaged by way of individual and focus group interviews. 3.1 case study design the research design is a multiple case study exploring educators’ perceptions of parental involvement in three disadvantaged primary schools in cape town. the schools were chosen based on ongoing discourses on substandard learner performance, and contestations and debates around disadvantaged primary schools. a case study was used (as opposed to surveys and experimental research) because such research is carried out in natural settings and investigates a contemporary phenomenon within a real-life context (yin, 2018). 3.2 research population sample the data was gathered from 15 participants (12 teachers and 3 principals). four teachers were randomly selected from each of the schools with the assistance of the participating principals (teddie & yu, 2007). for clarity purposes, the schools are coded as schools a, b and c, principals as principal a1, b1 and c1 and teachers in each school as teacher 1, 2, 3 and 4. 84 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) circuit managers from the metro south education district (msed) in cape town assisted in choosing the schools, based on the objectives of the study and their knowledge of the schools holistically. all three schools located in the same informal settlement are classified as poor (quintile 1) (hall & giese, 2009), purportedly receive comparable support from government, and have learners with similar backgrounds and experiences (mestry & ndhlovu, 2014). 3.3 individual and focus-group interviews data emerged largely from individual and focus group interviews. principals participated in individual interviews while teachers participated in separate focus-group interviews in their individual schools (morgan, 1997). focus-group discussions were meant to understand how participants interact amongst themselves and tolerate others ideas (hancock, ockleford & windridge, 2007). semistructured interviews were designed to allow participants express themselves openly and freely, and to define the world from their own perspectives, not solely from the standpoint of the researcher (hancock & algozzine, 2017). it is within this context that educators were able to express their minds freely regarding parental involvement in the education of their children. the data from individual interviews with principals was crossexamined with that obtained from focus-group interviews with teachers to ensure validity and reliability. 3.4 data analysis data emerging from individual and focus group interviews were captured using audio recording (bloor, frankland, thomas & robson, 2002). the transcribed data was crosschecked and compared to ensure validity and reliability (ritchie, lewis, nicholls & ormston, 2014). the data were analysed using the thematic approach (boyatzis, 1998; guest, macqueen & namey, 2012). major themes that emerged during the coding process included parental involvement, and particularly the voices of educators. 3.5 ethical considerations permission for the study was obtained from the western cape department of education (wcde) and participants signed consent forms (merriam, 1998; silverman, 2000). effort was made to ensure voluntary participation, void of coercion, and participants were informed of their right to withdraw without prior notification (swann & pratt, 2003). acronyms were used to conceal the identities of participants and research locations, to ensure confidentiality and anonymity. 4. discussion of findings parental involvement in the education of learners in south africa is an ongoing discourse, especially in poor schools where learners are in dire need of support to improve persistently low levels of performance (coetzee, 2014). ongoing low levels of parent participation despite the existence of policies encouraging parent-school relationships (rsa, 1996), calls for the cross-examination of the nature of such involvement in a selected community to understand the reasons for this, by focusing on the perceptions of educators, who are expected to work in partnership with parents (epstein, 1995, 2018). to begin with, principal b1 in an unequivocal manner described the complexities of parental non-involvement when she said: some of these challenges concerning parental none-involvement are just too difficult to diagnose and understand, leaving school authorities at [a] crossroad, and making all our 85 munje & mncube the lack of parent involvement as hindrance in selected public primary schools ... efforts at intervention just a long shot in the dark. our struggle to make parents active participants has been challenging. it seems the reasons for non­involvement are deeper than what we see (principal b1) to explore the concerns of principal b1 further, the findings of the present study are categorised under the following headings: family structure, parent’s job dynamics, poverty imperatives, and a lack of vision and commitment. 4.1 family structure although parents are expected to play a significant role in the cognitive, social and emotional development of learners (bakker et al., 2007; bhengu, 2003), the participating educators argued that certain family dynamics adversely affect learner performance. it was reported that many learners resided with extended family members or grandparents who for varied reasons did not invest in their education, with negative repercussions (luxomo & motala, 2012). within this strand, jæger (2012: 918), in a study conducted in the united states, noted the effects of extended family on learner educational success, which varies based on the distribution of a family’s socioeconomic status (ses) and the quality of familial relations: “extended family members’, especially grandparents’, socio-economic characteristics matter more for children’s educational success in low-ses families than in high-ses families”. likewise, teacher c1 explained that although extended family members (especially grannies) provided a solid structure for many children in the absence of their biological mothers (mtshali, 2015), they were either incapable of assisting or unwilling to assist learners with their schooling, especially when it came to homework when he said: “when these children are with grannies they do not take things seriously, because grannies do not follow up on them, which has negative implications [for] their abilities to perform.” clearly, participants concurred that most grandparents were not involved in the learners’ education, because they attached less value to schooling and in some instances gave them unreasonable and physically tiring household chores which used up the children’s energy and time, and distracted them from their schoolwork (hillman & jenkner, 2004; obeng, 2002: 108). the perception was that, excessive household chores took up potential homework time and often contributed to learner homework being either incomplete or shabbily done, due to time constraints and a lack of guidance (desforges & abouchaar, 2003). clearly, overtired learners lacked motivation, concentrated less in class, lacked a sense of belonging, and/or become psychologically and emotionally challenged, all of which resulted to poor performance. additionally, principal c1 described how the passivity of extended family members and their demoralising words and actions induced animosity in the home. this created unstable environments that eroded the much-needed love and support learners required to adequately focus on their schoolwork (smith, connell, wright, sizer, norman, hurley & walker, 1997). educators concurred that learners that resided under such conditions are unlikely to pay attention to their schoolwork. principal b1 emphasized that home circumstances predetermine learners’ attitudes towards schoolwork, and this increases their chances of not performing well: most of our learners reside with extended families, mostly grandparents. in most cases, these learners need parental love which they cannot get from these relatives. sometimes their attitude and behaviour towards these learners traumatizes them to an extent that they do not see any reason to go to school. at times they are made to regard the assistance rendered to them as a favour, and not an obligation. they are regularly informed that their biological parents are incapable to take care of them, often resulting to 86 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) behavioural problems that hamper their ability to learn, and consequently perform. many of them are absent minded, often secluded, prefer to be alone and sad, and do not share their problems with others in the classroom (principal b1) in agreement, principal c1 noted that the interrelationship between family structures and learner performance remained a sensitive issue that most people preferred not to talk about, despite its visible implications on learner performance. the category of learners described above came to school needing more attention and assistance than was the norm (navsaria, pascoe & kathard, 2011). 4.2 job dynamics generally, parents in disadvantaged communities have jobs that obstruct their involvement in learner education (jensen, 2009). according to the participating educators, most parents are either unemployed or engage in informal or casual employment (e.g. cleaners, petrol attendants, domestic servants, and farm/general labourers) that is time and energy consuming (page, 2016). the occasional weekend shifts associated with these kinds of jobs leave them with very limited time to spend at home with the family, and they are therefore unable to check on their children’s school progress or supervise their homework. evidently, many parents in disadvantaged communities are not at home when learners return from school, which leaves the youths free to misbehave (abrahams, 2013; manilal, 2014). likewise, low-paying jobs limit parents’ ability to provide the necessary educational resources for their children (anderson & minke, 2007). according to gardiner (2017), the living conditions in a community have a direct impact on the nature of teaching and learning in its schools, and this naturally has an impact on teaching and learning. participants reported attempting to sensitise parents on the importance of being involved in their children’s education, and the various ways they can engage despite their job constraints, but they seldom met with success. in this regard, teacher a1 recounted how his fruitless struggles to persuade parents to prioritise their children’s education were met with stiff resistance, as parents complained of demanding work schedules, thus placing more emphasis on their jobs at the detriment of learner education. although not all educators were able to see reason in the complaints of parents, research indicates that low-income families often engage in jobs that are low paying but involve long working hours, with damaging effects on the family (fields, 2011). similarly, teacher c4 elaborated own efforts that were equally unsuccessful: yes, we try with the parent meeting, to ask them to please help us to see that the homework is done, but…they also complain that they must work. [also], the school makes an effort to provide parents with cover letters to prove that they were delayed by the school to resolve issues concerning their children; they [still] complain that they must work. they are not serious (teacher c4) educators argued that the inability of parents to cooperate despite attempts made by the schools forced them to send learners who misbehaved out of the classroom as a last resort, as a way of coercing parents to respond to their summons – an action that contravenes school policy (wced, 2007). although this approach forces some parents to come to school to assist teachers in resolving outstanding issues concerning specific learners, being out of class already excludes them from the teaching and learning process, thus exacerbating already existing challenges. this was worsened by the fact that, lessons are never repeated to enable those learners sent out of class to catch up, irrespective of the number of days for which they are barred from the classroom, and this eventually contributes to them failing the grade. in the 87 munje & mncube the lack of parent involvement as hindrance in selected public primary schools ... view of educators, such passivity results in them battling with numerous unresolved cases of poor learner performance, resulting to staff demotivation. 4.3 poverty imperatives participants identified poverty as a factor preventing parents from actively participating in their children’s education. although extended family members and grannies are considered to be pillars of support for these children (mtshali, 2015), participants revealed that the kind of care they were able to give was (in some instances) compromised by a lack of financial resources. clearly, poverty compels many parents to cater only for household essentials, while ignoring the educational needs of the learners, because most carers were unemployed and/or dependent on minimal social grants which barely sustained the family’s needs. ferreira (2017) notes that while social grants generally help to lift many disadvantaged households out of the poorest quintile and improve school attendance they have little effect in terms of alleviating poverty holistically. clearly, the poverty conditions of parents have an overall impact on learners who, due to the lack of certain learning materials, feel excluded. such learners view schooling from a negative perspective, which undermines their motivation to learn, especially in class (humble & dixon, 2017). the research participants concurred that it was not uncommon to see learners who are absentminded in class, secluded, alone and sad, and unwilling to share their problems with classmates. in the view of educators, circumstances such as these, which emanated from dire poverty, had serious implications for teaching and learning, especially if parents opted not to attend meetings to discuss what the learners were experiencing. 4.4 parents’ level of education even though research shows that the level of parent education has a significant impact on a learner’s ability to learn at home, and influences the way s/he interacts, learns and performs in class (affuso, bacchini & miranda, 2017; koutrouba et al., 2009), narratives from research participants varied. while a majority of educators argued that parents’ lack of education genuinely contributed to limiting their involvement, others considered education as a convenient cover-up used by parents to avoid doing their duty. based on the former cohort, teacher b3 contemplated the impact of parental education on their level of involvement: they just send the kids to come school, which is where their own contribution starts and ends. they don’t do any follow­ups, say for example check on their books when they come back from school daily to see what was done, and maybe to assist them with homework where necessary…this is also because, maybe they don’t know the work, and how to assist the learners…some say they are not educated, and as such do not know how to help the learners study at home, or do their homework (teacher b3) in corroboration, teacher a2 narrated the reactions of a mother summoned to school to discuss her child’s low performance, when she detailed: i don’t want to lie to you, i don’t do anything about this, in fact, and i don’t know how to assist my child…i just ask her to look at her books, but i don’t have any means to help her…i didn’t go to school (teacher a2) similarly, principal a1 observed that grannies do not know much about homework and cannot figure out what the children did in school or whether they were at school (ogina, 2007; page, 2016). principal b1 agreed that the level of education contributed to parents’ inability to 88 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) read letters sent to them by the schools requesting that they attend meetings/briefings, thus excluding them from participating in crucial decisions concerning their children’s education. however, teacher a1 who was sceptical of the role the level of parental education plays in influencing their involvement in learner’s education approached the discourse from a different perspective. he concluded that some parents choose to deliberately distance themselves, not necessarily because they are uneducated, but as a smokescreen to avoid fully engaging in educational matters, including assisting learners with their homework. he lamented that parental laxity contributed to waywardness among learners, unruly behaviour, poor responses in class, thus, exacerbating substandard performance when he said: i want to disagree with that...if we look at the children that are in school now in grade 7, their parents were born late 70s, and beyond. during this period education was serious, and many parents went to school to a certain level, and can read and write. what about the help for the children? i say that they are negligent, not uneducated, yes i will always stand by my point, and i always tell my colleagues about this stance. education to these parents is an excuse whenever we confront them on why they don’t do their best to assist the learners at home (principal a1) however, this school of thought may hold true for some biological parents and not for grannies, many of whom are truly illiterate and therefore cannot assist the learners with their homework (audu, 2016). despite these conflicting views, it was clear that a continuous lack of support and motivation at home, irrespective of the reasons, resulted in learners being distracted and losing focus on their schoolwork. 4.5 lack of vision and commitment furthermore, parental non-involvement was attributed to misguided priorities, in what principal a1 coined as “a genuine lack of vision and commitment”. she argued that even the biological parents did not care about the educational needs of their children, because they were unable to grasp the purpose of schooling. principal a1 further explained that many parents in the community under study exhibited an uncaring attitude towards education and sent children to school not to learn, but to liberate themselves from the burden and responsibility of having the youngsters around them all the time. teacher c4 thus wondered whether parents indeed do have an educational vision, since many regard learning as a pastime, not a means of gaining the required academic competencies for future employment and social mobility. 5. conclusion although factors constraining parent participation in the education of their children are context related, the diverse views of educators further alienate parents from participating, with implications on learner performance. clearly, educators seem to have a better understanding of why parents are not participating, but the schools are seeming not taking appropriate actions to overcome such challenges and ensure sustainable parent participation. this inaction potentially emanates from the unpreparedness of teachers to effectively initiate and implement sustainable school, family, and community partnerships (epstein, 2018; lemmer, 2007). this paper therefore reiterates the existing gap between the promulgations of the south african schools act (sasa), 84 of 1996 (rsa, 1996) that emphasizes sustainable parent-school relationships as a cornerstone for school functionality and what currently manifests, especially in disadvantaged schools. considering that parents are important mediators between the school and the learners, with an undeniable impact on performance, schools ought to 89 munje & mncube the lack of parent involvement as hindrance in selected public primary schools ... initiate strategies that are genuinely inclusive, welcoming and encouraging (msila, 2012; van loggenberg, 2013) with the intention to enhance sustainable parent participation, rather than engaging in a blame game. this reemphasizes the need to empower educators on school, family, and community partnerships (epstein, 2018). this could be reinforced by ongoing trainings that endow teachers with capabilities to initiate and implement sustainable parentschool-community relationships for the benefit of the schools and the learners (epstein, 2018; 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https://wcedonline.westerncape.gov.za/documents/learnerdiscipline/learner_discipline_and_school_management.pdf https://wcedonline.westerncape.gov.za/documents/learnerdiscipline/learner_discipline_and_school_management.pdf https://wcedonline.westerncape.gov.za/documents/learnerdiscipline/learner_discipline_and_school_management.pdf 103 research article 2023 41(1): 103-118 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) lessons learnt from teaching an applied drama and theatre pedagogy online in a digitally divided south africa abstract an applied drama and theatre pedagogy is rooted in principles of embodiment, participation and collaboration, praxis and immersion in social contexts. over the past fourteen years, the drama for life department at the university of the witwatersrand prioritised the implementation of an applied drama and theatre teaching and learning practice that is premised on our bodies operating within social and cultural contexts. furthermore, the experiential pedagogy is reliant on physical presence and human contact for the purposes of reflection, transformation and education. with the arrival of the covid-19 pandemic, this complex pedagogy faced a threat. how can we migrate an applied drama and theatre curriculum to online learning platforms? can we fully honour its pedagogical objectives remotely? the study explored how applied drama and theatre educators re-envisioned and implemented strategies to maintain the integrity of the embodied pedagogy as it moved online. these collective approaches transpired amidst a disruptive digital divide within a south african context, which impacted connectivity, access and the hopes of a synchronous learning experience. from 2020 to 2021, the ethnographic study tracked and observed drama for life and its applied drama and theatre educators as they; 1) responded to the pandemic and identified its threats to the pedagogy; 2) through processes of experimentation, transitioned the curriculum to online learning platforms; and 3) reflected on their discoveries, challenges and interim solutions throughout the journey. the study found (based on literature and data) that the pandemic provided higher education institutions and practitioners with an opportunity for directed change. central to the collective strategies remained student centredness and pedagogical alignment. although certain aspects of the applied drama and theatre pedagogy have undeniably been compromised online, the study demonstrated that with increased efforts to bridge the digital divide, the strategies can be navigated continually with a carefully negotiated balance. keywords: applied drama and theatre; covid-19; digital divide; education; online learning; pedagogy author: moratoa trinity mokoena1 dr petro janse van vuuren1 affiliation: 1university of the witwatersrand, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i1.6284 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(1): 103-118 published: 31 march 2023 received: 8 september 2022 accepted: 12 january 2023 research article https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7093-5344 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7714-2424 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 1042023 41(1): 104-118 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) 1. introduction and background the covid-19 pandemic has changed the face of education forever. while it undeniably caused unprecedented disruptions, it fostered a rapid progression in the lagging approaches to the digitising force of the fourth industrial revolution. as tertiary institution-based educators, initial feelings of anxiety and fear crept in. adotey (2020) comments that the pandemic exposed the under-preparedness of higher education institutions in africa at large to migrate to online platforms. particularly within a south african context with inherent post-apartheid inequalities, lack of educator and student training, and the realities of the digital divide (amongst many other factors) our anxieties were valid. however, they could not overshadow the opportunities to innovate. in 2020, i served as a teaching assistant at the university of the witwatersrand’s (wits) drama for life department. once the hard lockdown had been announced, we began to prepare for the emergency remote teaching and learning1 (ert&l) period. this included the attendance of online seminars for training to use platforms such as zoom and ms teams, as well as maximising our proficiencies with the existing, yet underutilised learning management system (lms) sakai. at this point, it was evident that the theoretical aspects of an applied drama and theatre curriculum were compatible with these platforms. crucial to the study was how we would negotiate the more practical and embodied constructs of the pedagogy online and remotely. i2 wanted to establish how we as drama for life (and specifically its applied drama and theatre) educators would honour the integrity of the complete pedagogy when the pandemic threatened its inherent need to connect. furthermore, what impact would the digital divide have on our efforts to synchronicity and maintaining collective access remotely? a characteristic applied drama and theatre pedagogy offered at drama for life, as described in their pre-covid mandate, is informed by 1) a teaching practice that is not only methodologically embedded but also thrives in contexts which enrich the learning, study and experience; 2) integrating the curriculum across inward (staff and student body) and outward levels (community and stakeholders); and 3) documenting and sharing the role of fieldwork as part of the curriculum (drama for life, 2020a). based on these descriptions, i deduced that the pedagogy’s agenda promotes participatory and collaborative interactions, the learning is praxis based, and transformation and change happens when we are immersed in social contexts. these approaches are primarily achieved through embodiment and physical engagements. the pandemic highlighted how crucial it was to address the inequalities that exist in south africa (graham, 2020). an undeniable obstacle to the ert&l strategy was the digital divide and disparities in devices, connectivity and access. david reiersgord (2020) explicates that central to online learning is the ability for students to access their content. however, “the current necessity for a shift towards online learning reminds us that although we live in the same country, we don’t have the same resources” (reiersgord, 2020: para. 3). for applied drama and theatre educators the challenge was two-fold, because they had to 1) understand the intricacies of the pedagogy and appropriately manipulate them for online learning platforms, and 2) promote an equitable learning experience whilst acknowledging the limitations of the digital divide. the study investigated their collective strategies in migrating a rich pedagogy online and documented the lessons learnt during an unprecedented time. 1 a temporary shift of instructional delivery (face-to-face) to an alternative delivery mode (online or blended modes) as a response to crisis situations (hodges et al., 2020). 2 i will refer to myself (the researcher) in the first person. the study, however, is not auto-ethnographic, as i was predominantly observing the participants. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 1052023 41(1): 105-118 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 mokoena & janse van vuuren lessons learnt from teaching an applied drama and theatre pedagogy judging by the inadequacies of the lms, available online learning platforms, and the challenges of the digital divide, i deduced that the entire applied drama and theatre pedagogy would be compromised online; especially the aspects of participation and collaboration, praxis and immersion in social contexts, which are embodied and thrive on human contact. 2. conceptual framework the conceptual framework serves to delineate participation and collaboration, praxis and immersion in social contexts as the core intentions of an applied drama and theatre pedagogy related to the study. warren nebe, founder of drama for life defines applied drama and theatre as a “living pedagogy” which is mutually shared, negotiated and determined by all participants present in the education space (nebe, 2022: 6). aligning with the consensus by other practitioners that the pedagogy is a relational set of practices (ackroyd, 2000; freebody et al. 2018), drama for life (2021) rejects functional interpretations of the pedagogy that “reduce the field to a limited technical approach” and outlines that it carries many functions according to each context. “drama and theatre techniques can have remarkable educational, community-building and personality changing effects if they become accessible and tangible to participants and spectators” (kovács, 2015: 399). when explored in various contexts, applied drama and theatre processes (questioning, role enactment, play, and reflection) have the ability not only to effect change, but also address social issues concerning the specific group of people. although there are clear distinctions and similarities between the two, philip taylor (2003) distinguishes that applied drama is processual by nature and employs drama in education (die) strategies to teach about issues, relationships or people, while applied theatre is powered by a strong sense of aesthetic education and is usually centred on presenting a final performative product to spectators − who also take part in the action. i refer to the two terms jointly as they are used in a flexible and interchangeable manner (nicholson, 2005: 4). an applied drama and theatre pedagogy is cognisant of its material conditions, the embodied presence of its participants as active agents in their educational trajectory, the role of the lecturer as the facilitator in compassionate self − and community-care, health and well-being… (nebe, 2022: 16). central to applied drama and theatre processes is the participant (within this context, the student) who through the curriculum is exposed to the critical pedagogy, in order to become a competent and skilled professional (drama for life, 2020b). this is achieved in the presence of a trained and qualified applied drama and theatre facilitator or educator who, as stated by prendergast and saxton (2013), knows and is capable of employing drama and theatre tools and strategies. the educator’s role is to empower the student with essential competencies to undertake this interventional and socially transformative pedagogy and train them with the tools to manipulate each function to suit the diverse contexts and their specific needs. before the pandemic (in addition to the learning in class), students typically explored their curriculum through placements at various schools and community centres, attendance of and hosting drama for life-partnered conferences and festivals across the country, and participating and collaborating with stakeholders across the globe. integral to these engagements are physically embedded and embodied strategies, which include warmups, icebreaker and thematic games, breathing and centring techniques, as well as roleplay or enactment (guhrs, 2022: 110). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 1062023 41(1): 106-118 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) applied drama and theatre is participatory and collaborative. kees epskamp (2006: 11 in barnes, beck carter & nebe, 2022), outlines that participation happens as 1) facilitators/ educators and participants/students exchange ideas; 2) the content or subject matter directly relating to and impacting that group of people is discussed and reflected upon collaboratively; and 3) the problem-oriented themes are addressed through collective solution-making by the physically present parties. freebody et al. (2018) argue that participation is a central tenet of practice in applied drama and theatre and it interacts with our embodied histories, whilst simultaneously creating new potential ways of being. therefore, in the educational practice, the educator guides students through collaborative and interactive processes of examining questions, themes or concerns within and through embodied self-expression (alrutz, 2015). there is clear emphasis on shared learning that is involving and inclusive of all present bodies and this happens within a common setting. now that the learning is remote, it is removed from the required shared space. praxis, according to draper-clarke is a “central ambition of drama for life curricula” (2022: 135). praxis can be understood as the integration of theory and practice in the learning and then interrogating the results of this combination as a collective. paolo freire (1973) expands on this that praxis involves students reflecting and acting upon their world and practices. therefore, a praxis-based approach to learning is facilitated by connecting the theoretical concepts of the pedagogy and expressing them practically whilst reflecting upon them in the presence of fellow participants. draper-clarke (2022: 135) highlights that the commitment by applied drama and theatre educators to combine theory with experience, allows for the transformation of self and society. gavin bolton describes the result thereof as the student being “within the subject matter rather than outside it and their understanding remaining implicit rather than proportionally explicit” (1986: 158). earlier, i alluded to the lms’s design and capacity having the tendency to favour theoretical curricular content more. for an applied drama and theatre pedagogy, the study found this imbalance problematic. the immersive aspect of the pedagogy is two-fold. firstly, cited in prendergast & saxton (2009), thompson & jackson (2006) explain that applied drama and theatre is taken out of the conventional mainstream theatre spaces and into various non-traditional and marginalised community settings. these non-glamorous settings include schools, villages, prisons, hostels, parks, etc. (lasisi, 2020). through the manipulation of drama and theatre techniques, the immersion into marginalised communities, cognisant of the social, cultural and political constructs, promotes dialogue and fosters citizenship and agency. secondly, participants immerse themselves into fictional contexts. building belief techniques such as story, play and use of props are carried out with the purpose of immersing participants in the roles of an imagined world (wagner, 1999). from a dual perspective, enrolled participants negotiate their lived experiences with the situation in the fictional world to achieve the pedagogy’s solution-driven agenda. ultimately, it is through these immersive encounters that concrete experience and transformation take place. the inability to physically immerse in various contexts and the distractions of the home environment to the stepping into the role in fictional contexts have compromised the purpose of this intention. finally, uninterrupted and undistracted physical connection remains a characteristic feature of an applied drama and theatre’s encounter. coetzee (2018) states that all dramatic and performative activities are acts of being grounded in the body and as such, drama for life (2021) emphasises that we “learn in, through and with the body”. the pedagogy is premised https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 1072023 41(1): 107-118 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 mokoena & janse van vuuren lessons learnt from teaching an applied drama and theatre pedagogy on human interaction and this is translated through the exploration of participation and collaboration, praxis and immersion. vettriano, linds and jindal-snape (2017) motivate that reflection is also an embodied expression, hence participants make the necessary changes through feeling and not just thinking. our entire bodies and senses are active agents in our practice. the above definitions indicate that in the absence of the shared space and human interaction, the experiential learning aspect of the pedagogy is rendered incomplete. 3. literature review for the purpose of this article, this section is divided into two sub-sections. the literature covers the role of the digital divide and the complexities of migrating an applied drama and theatre pedagogy online. andreas schleicher (2020) comments that the overall response to the covid-19 crisis motivated university institutions to undergo a process of creative adaptation by reinventing a digitised learning environment. although universities did undergo these adaptive and redesigning processes, the transition was a struggle. kupe and wangenge-ouma (2020) highlight that apart from inadequate infrastructure and limited expertise for ert&l methods, the inability of institutions to provide devices and data posed a huge challenge to the digitisation process. the digital divide is complex. muller and de vasconcelos aguair (2022) express that it is multifaceted and includes numerous factors such as access, affordability, quality and relevance. an extension of these are areas that create digital inequalities such as security, interconnectivity and digital literacy. this shows that getting internet access is half the battle and institutions should not ignore related implications of the divide when confronting it. castells (2000: 269 in graham, 2020) indicates that the fundamental digital divide is not measured by the connections to the internet, but by the consequences of both connection and lack thereof. van dijk (2020: 3) argues that the term ‘digital’ suggests that the divide is only a technical issue, “when, in fact, it is more of a social problem”. especially in terms of participation, the digital divide can include or exclude individuals from society in domains such as education, community and citizenship etc. (van dijk, 2020). consequently, the lack of physical connection and the difficulties to sustain internet connections for virtual activities were a double blow to the pedagogy. inclusion is a central agenda for reaching marginalized communities and if the digital divide is not managed, it continues to marginalise them further. the immediate strategy to kickstart ert&l by tertiary institutions across south africa was by conducting surveys to evaluate the digital situation across the student and staff body. premnath (2020) outlines that these surveys focused on the kinds of devices and compatibility to the lms, as well as access to the internet and the level of connectivity. cellular networks and telecommunication providers also contributed to the zero-rating3 of lmss and some online educational resources. nonetheless, cloete (2020) criticises that online libraries such as jstor and google scholar were excluded from this provision. moreover, for students without devices, the university made provision on a financial aid basis and they would have to replace them upon the loss or damage thereof. it is ironic, because these students might not afford to replace the devices anyway. the black academic caucus (2020) defends that these strategies have failed to interrogate the deeper issues surrounding students’ circumstances such as a conducive 3 the data-free access to approved institutional portals and educational websites for students (mzekandaba, 2020). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 1082023 41(1): 108-118 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) learning space and essential resources. as such, steele (2020) confirms that students from low-income households with less internet access, living in cramped homes and with no food are at a disadvantage, compared to their privileged counterparts, who have a better learning experience. protesting against these dynamics, a social media movement called #boycottonlinelearninguj ensued, raising awareness on the holistic inequalities that were ignored (molosankwe, 2020). in response to this, #neverstoplearning was a call for the government to consider feasible and equitable strategies that forge productivity, while saving the academic year (makwakwa, 2020). world bank group education (2020) acknowledges that much of what happens in physical classrooms cannot easily be translated online and therefore, educators need to consider carefully what content, pacing and interactional models can be adapted for the transition. although teaching remotely was foreign to drama for life, we took full advantage of the opportunity. sicre (2020) admits that unlike business, math and science majors, going online would be challenging for drama and theatre-based practitioners, but it can be done. bridging the divide requires a multi-faceted approach that is contextually conscious and promotes an optimal learning experience for all. prendergast and saxton (2009) highlight that applied drama and theatre predominantly takes place in non-traditional settings and it can be taken to any space or site for the benefit of the targeted community group. as such, this implies that the online or remote space fits into the classification of non-traditional and it is simultaneously capable of connecting people from more than one site. janse van vuuren and freisleben (2020) demonstrate this through an applied improvisation process where students across the world interacted and collaborated in the virtual space. educators are encouraged to produce and design exceptional experiences from a variety of multi-modal digital technologies for students to engage with in fostering collaboration and participation across their screens (d’mello, 2020). however, if the mediating agent – connectivity – is not resolved, then the pedagogy cannot reach all of its participants in meaningful ways. due to the data demands, asynchronous learning was found to be the most viable option − even with its drawbacks. besides, physical contact cannot be achieved online and there is an immensely disconnecting effect when working in isolation. addressing these dynamics, janse van vuuren and freisleben (2020) advise that flexibility is key and even though students cannot touch one another or engage spatially, they can access other aspects of one another that are available in online rooms. sajnani (2020) recommends that educators return to the very games and exercises that were established in contact to the online space in order to negotiate this lost connection. by using whatsapp voice notes, students can lead one another into physical warmups and exercises and although they are engaged with individually, there is a feeling of collective exploration. song, rice and oh (2019) confirm that online learning can be as effective as face-to-face courses, as long as students are provided with well-designed interaction activities. some elements of process drama (a die strategy) that are related to simulation or interactive narrative experiences can be merged online through virtual reality (vr) technologies. however, there are drawbacks to such interface, technical and social communication issues (el-nasr, vasilakos, & robinson, 2008). arguably, vr technologies are too expensive within our educational context and they relinquish any ability to imagine and create − which is what the pedagogy’s fictional context relies on. alternatively, sajnani (2020) suggests that educators https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 1092023 41(1): 109-118 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 mokoena & janse van vuuren lessons learnt from teaching an applied drama and theatre pedagogy use story and students prepare costumes for enrolment to enhance their imaginations and belief into the fictional world. although cziboly and bethlenfalvy (2020) admit that they were greatly constrained online, they affirm working in roles, showing character objects on screen and using teacher-in-role for functioning powerfully in their attempts at zoom-based process drama during covid-19. ultimately, drama and theatre is concerned with the making of things perceptible by and through the senses (prendergast & saxton, 2013: 2). as such, adam habib, ex-vicechancellor of wits concedes that such degrees will still require face-to-face learning (the south african, 2020). it must also be explicitly stated that we cannot paint all pedagogies at an institution with the same brush. whether in combination or returning fully to campus, applied drama and theatre pedagogy cannot do without its quintessential need to interact and assemble in physically present bodies. the navigation of the online space should remain equalised, or we should consider a mix of equitable and accessible approaches for each pedagogical function. 4. research methods and design the study was conducted in the ethnographic qualitative case study research tradition. from 2020 to 2021, as the researcher, i observed drama for life and its five applied drama and theatre educators through participant observation, field notes and documentation. drama for life was selected as a case study due to its pioneering of a richly historical and internationally recognisable offering of the applied drama and theatre pedagogy. the research focused on the department at large and its approaches to the pedagogy (prepandemic) and specifically observed its applied drama and theatre educators who delivered the curriculum under unprecedented circumstances. as the pandemic unfolded, i began to undertake preliminary research through journaling, and relevant reflections made as teaching assistant (and then ethnographer) were included as data. wee (2011) appropriates case study for educational institutions as it attempts to understand the complex instructional approaches and student-educator interactions in an open and flexible manner. the details and discoveries recorded in the journal became the melting pot of the study. the study drew on ethnographic methods, in parallel to ‘classroom ethnography’, which “can be viewed as a matter of foregrounding the classroom and back-grounding the broader contexts” (bloome, 2012: 10). consequently, the classroom was redefined by the inability to be in the physical classroom. brodkey (1987) states that ethnography is the study of lived experience and the context (settings/environments) cannot be separated from the participants. williams (2018) describes the role of an ethnographer as ‘getting under the skin’ of the problem in order to understand it and reeves, kuper and hodges (2008) conclude that ethnography is a cyclic process that requires of the ethnographer to begin with a panoramic view and then close in on the finder details. as teaching assistant (doer) negotiating the role of ethnographer (observer), the process demanded reflexivity. the research tools employed were participant observation and field notes, semi-structured interviews and documentation. i observed the department and their five applied drama and theatre educators throughout the 2020 and 2021 academic years. i am not included as a participant in the study even though i was part of the teaching cohort in 2020. i gathered notes from whatsapp teaching staff group chats, captured related conversations on zoom meetings and recorded overall reactions and key developments throughout the data collection period. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 1102023 41(1): 110-118 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) the field notes also included my personal reflections recorded in the research journal. three of the five semi-structured interviews were conducted virtually and the other two participants opted to respond via google link questions. kakilla (2021) indicates that researchers are susceptible to rely on technology-based data collection for critical qualitative research because of the effects of the pandemic on gatherings, travel and contact. finally, i relied on documents such as institutional communiques, departmental notices and relevant media articles. these aided in tracking significant progress and changes throughout the crucial pandemic years. caulfield (2022) writes that thematic analysis is a good approach not only to find out one’s participants’ views, experiences and knowledge but the flexibility in interpreting the data allows one to sort it out into one’s research questions as well. the research question related to this article is: how did the applied drama and theatre educators set about honouring the core mandate and intentions of an applied drama and theatre pedagogy (especially amidst the challenges of the digital divide) during the move to online learning platforms? the thematically analysed data present 1) managing the digital divide, and 2) migrating the pedagogy online. permission to conduct the study was granted by the wits ethics committee for non-medical research in human participants with protocol number h20/11/43. the ethical permissions covered all research steps mentioned in the article. participants are not named or gendered and are referred to as participant a-e, although their anonymity could not be guaranteed. 5. findings and discussion the study endeavoured to establish the strategies that drama for life and its five applied drama and theatre educators employed in navigating participation and collaboration, praxis and immersion in social contexts amidst the prevalent and disruptive digital divide. 5.1 managing the digital divide following the announcement of the hard lockdown, wits and drama for life assessed the digital affordances of students and staff by circulating online surveys. once devices and data provisions were somewhat finalised, ert&l commenced. naturally, the digital divide was an apparent issue and its interlinking factors became increasingly exposed. nonetheless, the main priority was to save the academic year. managing the divide was not only about the provision of data, but remaining platform conscious. in 2020, wits university emphasised that the primary learning platform would be their lms sakai and as such, staff were trained to use it effectively and its data-free mode was activated. however, the findings revealed that students were resistant to it due to device incompatibility and functionality issues. in fact, when asking the participants to name the least effective online learning platform in 2020, sakai was included. in 2021, ulwazi was introduced and wits vowed it to be more effective and functional than its predecessor, sakai (wilson, 2021). confirming this, participant c stated that it was more user friendly and participant e appreciated its “one-stop-office” features. central to the applied drama and theatre’s pedagogical endeavour is the advocation of social justice and agency. then where is the justice in an unequal learning situation? even though phakeng, habib and kupe (2020) emphasise that students should take agency in their learning by being vocal about their digital challenges, the findings of the study reported that some students were unable to take agency in their learning, regardless of being supplied with data and devices. consequently, their learning experiences were dissimilar to their more economically and digitally resourced peers. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 1112023 41(1): 111-118 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 mokoena & janse van vuuren lessons learnt from teaching an applied drama and theatre pedagogy the data also exposed that in the early stages of lockdown, some students relied on phone calls and emails to be reached due to data demands. thus, findings specify that a multiple platform approach was most practical for managing the digital divide. participant d found that using platforms in a “unidirectional manner” yielded better student engagement and added that “whatsapp was extremely effective for full classes and students could send voice notes, images and videos of their work and respond to one another”. zoom was mostly used for practical assessments and drama for life had to subsidise their students with additional data. due to data-saving measures and lack of frequent connectivity, some students could only engage with content or participate in lesson activities in the evenings – robbing them of a collective learning experience. even though the attempts to mitigate the digital divide allowed ert&l to progress, they were inadequate and the pedagogy suffered immensely. participant a reflects that the biggest challenge of the digital divide is the inability to be synchronous. due to data constraints, disruptive home environments, connectivity issues and unequal access to resources, students were unable to assemble virtually at once and this had a negative impact on their overall academic endeavour. ert&l produced an individualised and fragmented approach to learning and destabilised the sense of community that could be achieved in person. the emergent data deduced that online learning replicated a passive banking system − which an applied drama and theatre pedagogy opposes. the failure to address the digital divide adequately compromised the learning experience and the pedagogy’s commitments to equalised participation. 5.2 migrating the pedagogy online 5.2.1 participation and collaboration the participants described a pre-covid contact class in which students play and interact through bodily expressions and make embodied connections. however due to the pandemic, the loss of physical connection and embodiment in a collective learning space was significantly felt and the online lesson structure had to be distilled. although concerns were prevalent; the participants shared an excitement for innovation and directed change. wildman et al. (2021) reflect that the pandemic made it difficult to engage in teamwork-related activities. still, in efforts to build solutions, participant b responded, so what i would do is …4 i would specifically assign group tasks and peer teaching and learning, uhm opportunities. but they would have to do this outside the main whatsapp group and then come back and give feedback to the rest of us. almost identically, participant d commented that participation became more of a “show-andtell” model where students would receive the stimulus of the day, complete the task and then return to the whatsapp group to present to their peers through videos and images for review, reflection and response. a problematic analysis of this approach is that students may not respond as instantaneously and the process of downloading peer contributions would be timeconsuming or even delayed. encouraging a more consistent approach to collaboration, participant e expressed their use of a “chommie (buddy) system” where in groups of three, students would account for one another by forming relationships and tackling group tasks together remotely. due to data inconsistencies, the participant recalled some buddies “going off the grid” and negatively impacting their peers’ progress. 4 ellipses between words are an indication of pauses in thought or speech. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 1122023 41(1): 112-118 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) offering a more concrete example, participant a described their zoom-based redemptive theatre process, firstly, the facilitator shares a slide show and the enrolled storyteller presents the script for everyone to see. at any point of the process, participants can continue or shift the story by swopping with the storyteller. throughout the process, participants respond through questioning and reflect on themes and perspectives collaboratively. similarly, participant c designed a whatsapp-based process drama encounter where in groups of four, students took up roles and explored a story. the story was shared via voice note in the group and all members had to listen simultaneously. then the facilitator asked questions, the artist sketched the world and characters of the story and then, all participants had to bring the story to life through the role-actor, who used props and clothes from their home. this was all shared by sending pictures and videos on whatsapp. although these processes were effective for collaboration, both participants reported that not all students could be present for the entire duration of processes (due to data constraints) and this was disruptive. analysis reveals that participation was alienating because it was expressed from an individual perspective. cziboly and bethlenfalvy foster collaboration by creating small groups in zoom breakout rooms. however, it is difficult because they cannot not have an overview of “what is going on in the four corners of the room” (cziboly & bethlenfalvy, 2020: 3). participant a confirms that the quality of participation and collaboration remained on a material level. wanting to change this narrative, participant d shifted their view of collaboration by promoting students’ voices through sharing quotes and texts from books they were reading in the form of group seminars. nikos-rose (2020) explains that even though zoom breakout rooms can assist with interactivity, the challenge of the virtual chasm remains the same. collaboration improved from mid-2021 when restrictions were eased and students could partially return to campus and access the learning spaces. this implies that the pedagogical and curricular objectives are highly dependent on physical presence and contact-based exploration. 5.2.2 praxis bates (2021) challenges that teaching content-heavy lessons may feel like the easiest way to move the practical aspects of courses online, but it would clearly be detrimental to students if their technical skills were diminished. the data depict a battle faced by the participants as they fought to negotiate the balance between practice and theory and conclude that they resorted to simplifying the concepts. it begs the argument that simplifying or watering down concepts has the potential to weaken a potent pedagogy. i asked the participants, “what does praxis look like online?” participant a described the process as follows, ... so i have translated some of the embodied practices into … so i would do voice notes that take the students through a process. if they put the voice note on and follow what i say then they could go through a warmup exercise from where they were. then they need to reflect on what that process did for them in the group chat. participant c acknowledged that praxis was not easy to achieve and through a process of trial and error attempted to apply some techniques to video, photography and art/drawing. participant e chose to locate praxis from memory. their group of students had travelled to an interventional site before lockdown and as such, the students drew from the memory of that experiential encounter to reflect upon and theorise the rest of their learning better. also, https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 1132023 41(1): 113-118 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 mokoena & janse van vuuren lessons learnt from teaching an applied drama and theatre pedagogy participant b first gave students the theoretical underpinning; then, as mentioned above, left the practical parts to be explored individually and students would share it back online through various media. participant d maintained that throughout this crucial period, the questions became … what is the effective practitioner skill set required from that method and then, uhm how can i simulate it online? the theory would be engaged in a similar way as before − whether its lecture notes or powerpoint. it was consistent. integrating the practice though was … uhm … we were limited and it became about what the students could design, write down, draw up and critique and review, off the page. the data suggests that because students and educators could not consistently use zoom, the practical aspects were difficult to engage with. as a result of being consumed by the complications of learning from home, taylor’s (2003) reflective aspect of praxis was “sacrificed” (participant a). the findings shows that students were not fully present (in all senses of the word) and therefore, the reflexive lens of the pedagogy turned on itself (draper-clarke, 2022: 136). the findings deduced that educators found themselves relegating their primary roles of facilitator to those of counsellor or therapist at times. progressively, even though there was no collective embodiment and the practice aspect was fragmented, participant a applauded the pedagogical tool of story and symbol: yes, we became less embodied but we were far more verbal and story based. it’s sadly more in the head than the body. we used symbol, asked people to interact with objects … used hand gestures with their phone cameras. there are gives and takes but praxis still happened … although it is less embodied and more story based. critical reflexive praxis is a drama for life course that is structured by storytelling and roleplaying. draper-clarke (2022) validates stories for their effectiveness in communication and allowing students to reconstruct their identities through collective creation. taking digital action is about adapting pedagogical tools appropriately (matteo, 2020). this was a common lesson for all participants. praxis was possible, but could not be expressed in the same ways or depth as in-person. therefore, the findings concluded that due to the limitations of connectivity, the participants (in their teaching) treated theory and practice as separate entities. attempts to integrate the two was marred by the reality of students learning in isolation and the act of reflection being overshadowed by their unfavourable learning circumstances. 5.2.3 immersion in contexts the data explicate that immersion is not only about the social and fictional contexts, but extend to students’ immersion in the online space for the benefit of their learning. it further discussed that students could not go into schools or engage with communities and, due to the data inequalities and the overall nature of the pandemic, “there was no way to bridge that” (participant d). all of the participants attested to not being able to provide students with field trips and placement opportunities in 2020 and 2021 and this was disadvantageous. nonetheless, participant d appreciated the pedagogical gift that was the first ever zoombased conference and festival, masidlale:5 exploring connection in august 2020. this partnership between drama for life and assitej6 not only fostered participation and collaboration, but participant b pointed out that it gave students “a window into engaging with other voices in the applied space and the larger community”. i also journaled that as attendees, we immersed ourselves in the programme and engaged with the greater applied 5 meaning “let us play” in isizulu. 6 a south african performing arts network organisation for artists, educators and institutions. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 1142023 41(1): 114-118 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) fraternity. nonetheless, in the communal spirit of sparing bandwidth, cameras had to be switched off and microphones were muted. neiss (2020) fears that educators and students cannot receive emotion or bodily feedback when cameras are switched off. when the camera is off, one cannot fully immerse in the online space, because the participants resort to doing other things without fear of being seen. in the same breath, one cannot immerse into fictional contexts if their attention is divided and imagination is interrupted. the data also revealed that some students could only access their learning at nearby wi-fi hotspots or next door. hence they could not tap into their imaginations as freely as those nestled in more conducive spaces. participant b stated that continued interactions with others in the online space are another way of immersing into the field as future practitioners. participant e expressed that, after seeing the capabilities of facebook for reaching greater community contexts at masidlale, students felt more encouraged to explore digitally immersive engagements. this suggests that within the student body or across year groups, students can take on the role of community for one another, or utilise the communities in their surrounding areas for their learning. participant e found the latter difficult to manage in 2021, because educators would not be able to supervise their students’ interventions in their different locations. evidently, this period was characterised by resilience and determination to on-board a nuanced curriculum to an unfamiliar learning space. du plessis et al. (2020) foreground that educators worked through sense-making and debriefing steps. as such, the findings deduced that certain platforms were more productive than others, but ultimately, returning to campus would be the most feasible option. the findings also outlined that the experimental nature of this period could not be boiled down to simply ticking off what was achieved, but rather considering the intricate details of the pedagogy and reflecting on the students’ capacity to achieve the curricular objectives. 6. conclusion the conclusions drawn from the findings maintain that drama for life and its applied drama and theatre educators took the “living pedagogy” and valiantly transformed it online (nebe, 2022: 6). through carefully considered processes of distillation, reflection and negotiation, the malleable pedagogy − even though not experienced to its full capacity − had its territory enlarged. the pandemic, albeit breeding chaos, birthed creativity and new paths were charted. did we honour the integrity of the entire pedagogy, online? no. but the migration of certain aspects was proven possible and there is evidence of directed change in our collective efforts. amongst the many lessons and discoveries, it was interesting to witness that one strategy could work for one aspect and not the other, and some ert&l successes of 2020 did not have the same effect in 2021 due to the evolving needs of the students and the deterring digital divide. consequently, the severity of the digital divide has stripped us from examining the full might of our technological affordances as a country. therefore, the study recommends that a blended approach with increased in-person activity may serve the teaching and learning of a progressive applied drama and theatre pedagogy optimally. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 1152023 41(1): 115-118 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6284 mokoena & janse van vuuren lessons learnt from teaching an applied drama and theatre pedagogy 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https://witsvuvuzela.com/2021/02/05/sakai-out-ulwazi-in/ https://bit.ly/3hudigp 132 ecological approach to childhood in south africa: an analysis of the contextual determinants abstract in south africa, the educational attainment of african children has been a focal point of policy and research since the end of apartheid in 1994. individual and policy-level determinants of child development and educational outcomes have been exhaustively investigated. a less researched perspective is the role of community and household composition on educational outcomes. the aim of this paper is to explore the socio-economic and demographic composition of communities and households that influence grade repetition among children in south africa. the nationally representative south african general household survey of 2017 is analysed. the sample is children, 7–14 years old who have repeated a grade (n=529,624). frequency distributions and multilevel modelling techniques are used to estimate the impact of household and community characteristics on child education outcomes. results show that males (62.29%) and older children, 10–14 years old (61.27%), have higher grade repetition. in addition, children in female-headed households (54.57%) and poor households (61.13%) also have higher repetition rates. finally, household poverty (or: 1.617) and community poverty (or: 1.944) are associated with increased likelihood of grade repetition. to ensure that south african children progress through school, the households and communities they are nested in require attention and intervention. 1. introduction during apartheid, segregation policies ensured that nonwhite south africans were not given access to quality education. in fact, a separate education system for nonwhites was established and referred to as bantu education (horrell, 1969). the racist ideology behind bantu education was based on the national government’s argument that education for blacks needed to be based on a separate way of life (christie & collins, 1982). ultimately this meant that whites and non-whites would not receive the same education. further this resulted in not all non-whites receiving education with research showing that in 1930 only 4.9% of the black population received and education and by 1970 this had only increased to 7.7% (christie & collins, 1982). since 1994, considerable efforts have been made to reduce educational inequalities and prioritise the education nicole de wet1 1demography and population studies, schools of social sciences and public health, faculties of humanities and health sciences, university of the witwatersrand ruksana osman2 2 wits school of education and faculty of humanities, university of the witwatersrand doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v36i2.11 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 36(2): 132-146 © uv/ufs http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2.11 133 de wet & osman ecological approach to childhood in south africa of african children. in 1996, the south african schools act was passed and this sought to decentralise and abolish segregated education in the country (sayed, 1999). efforts to increase the educational status of previously disadvantaged adults were also introduced, namely the adult-based education training (abet) which accommodates adults who were unable to get primary and secondary education during apartheid (lomofsky & lazarus, 2001). progress was made, and by 2011, 97% of children aged six and seven had been enrolled in primary education (statistics sa, 2012). between 1996 and 2016, the number of the population aged 15 years and older who completed matric increased from 3,7 million in 1996 to 11,6 million in (statistics sa, 2017). however, there have also been challenges and failures. under-staffing has resulted in high teacher to pupil ratios at 32:1 (onwu & sehoole, 2015). data from a 2007 study shows that many south african mathematics teachers have below-basic levels of content knowledge, with high proportions of teachers being unable to answer questions aimed at their pupils (spaull, 2013). in addition, decentralised education and having two public school systems (model c schools), resulted in the smaller, better performing system accommodating the wealthiest 20-25% of pupils who achieved much higher scores than the larger system which caters to the poorest 75-80% of pupils (spaull, 2013). more recently, issues around violence and safety at schools, teacher related issues including payment, motivation and adequate training, poverty and school infrastructures have led to poor schooling outcomes in the country (mncube & madikizela-madiya, 2014, donohue & bornman, 2014, ono & ferreira, 2010, gibberd, 2007). in postcolonial south africa, while segregation policies have been dismantled, there remains vast inequality by race. these inequalities in access to healthcare, education and employment, among others, have contributed to poverty and literature in the country sees a confounding relationship between class and race (matsinhe, 2016, burger et al., 2016). and while these structural challenges are currently being addressed, research has discovered the individual-level constraints experienced by children in their pursuit of education. these include learning and physical disabilities, food insecurity, and language barriers. an estimated 14.5% of south african children have who have difficulty in concentrating and remembering information are not attending school (statistics sa, 2014). further, a reported 20% children live in households that ran out of money to buy food in 2016 and about half a million live in households where they are expected to contribute to income through engagement in work (statistics sa, 2018, statistics sa, 2016). in addition, between 4% and 5.4% of children have mild or severe sight disabilities and, about 2% have physical disabilities which impairs their abilities to walk or write (statistics sa, 2014). these constraints have contributed to the less than ideal progression of children through school. recent statistics show that only 73% of 20-24 year olds in the country have a completed secondary education (statistics sa, 2017). approximately 60% of first grade pupils are estimated to drop out of school rather than complete secondary education (department of basic education, 2012). reasons for drop out include illness (20.47 per 10,000), pregnancy (42.14 per 10,000) and no interest in school (32.51 per 10,000) (mkwananzi & de wet, 2014). this study examines the role of household and community composition on grade repetition among children in south africa. these constructs refer to the social, familial and physical environments of children. more importantly, these are environments children and youth are born into and have no autonomous power over. therefore if these are not conducive and supportive environments, children, and to a large extent youth, cannot leave or recreate better 134 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) environments for themselves until they are much older. households and communities are a neglected area of research yet are fundamental to our understanding of school progression. while the quality of education and school infrastructures are key to our understanding of individual children’s progression, household and community characteristics give insight into the environmental layers that enhance or prohibit learning. this is because while formal learning happens in schools, households and communities provide environments of support, encouragement and safety, which are key to childhood and development. research has found that in households where parents are presents and supportive, malechildren have less anger (simons et al., 2006). furthermore, a study using the family stress model, found that households where stress is mediated, children have more positive physical and emotional health outcomes which enables learning and development (masarik & conger, 2017). therefore identifying the household and community characteristics that contribute to negative educational outcomes, we are better able to redirect resources and implement additional programmes of assistance to children who are at risk. burman (2016: 9) reminds us thus: “childhoods are constructed; we therefore have to study not only ‘the child’ but also the context… that produces her” (burman, 2016). 2. data and methods data are from the 2017 general household survey by statistics south africa. this nationally representative survey is cross-sectional and includes data on person and household demographic and socioeconomic characteristics (statistics sa, 2018). the survey covers households in all nine provinces of south africa and the annual survey is used to measure levels of development as well monitoring of service utilization and quality (statistics sa, 2018). the study population is children (7–14 years old) from all nine provinces, both sexes and all identifiable racial groups. a weighted total of 8,408,746 children, residing in 5,329,947 households, who are currently in school, are analysed. of these children 9.94% (n=529,624) repeated a grade at school and these are the children who are examined here. the outcome of interest in this study is ‘grade repetition’. in the survey, respondents are asked various questions pertaining to the education of each of their resident children. in particular, respondents are asked if their child(ren) ever repeated a grade at school. the responses to this question are ‘yes’ (1) or ‘no’ (0). various demographic characteristics of the children including their age, sex, race and relationship to the household head, are used as to describe the population by grade repetition at the individual level. however, since previous research has already identified these individual-level characteristics to be associated with grade repetition and other negative education outcomes, this study does not include the children’s characteristics in the predictive modelling. the second reason why children, or individuallevel, characteristics are not included in the inferential statistics is because households and communities are hypothesized to be of more importance to education outcomes than the characteristics of children. at the household level, race (african/black, coloured, indian/asian or white), sex (male or female) and age of the household head (12–19 years – “child headed”, 20–64 years – “adult headed” or 65+ years – “elderly headed”), household size (number of resident members), number of economically active persons in the household (none, one, two, three or more) and wealth status of the household (wealthy, average or poor) are used. the latter variable is from a question that asked household respondents what the wealth/poverty status of the 135 de wet & osman ecological approach to childhood in south africa household at present is. the responses were re-coded into ‘wealthy’, ‘average’ and ‘poor’ from the original responses of (1) wealthy,(2) very comfortable, (3) reasonably comfortable, (4) just getting along, (5) poor and (6) very poor. responses 1 and 2 are considered ‘wealthy’, 3 and 4 are ‘average’ and 5 and 6 are ‘poor’ in this study. responses from the household surveys pertaining to race of the household head, wealth status of the household and food security were aggregated and proportions for specific geographical locations at the level of primary sampling units (psus), were attained for the purpose of multilevel analysis. community racial diversity was the proportion of racial diversity in a community (low, medium or high). using the race of the household head and geographic indicator, these estimates were determined based on the racial mix of households. community poverty is the proportion of households in the communities that are “poor” and is coded as low, medium or high; and community food security (proportion of households in the district that did not run out of money to buy food in the last week) are also estimated as low, medium or high. these community-level variables were generated from the household variables and psu data available in the survey. descriptive and analytical statistics were used. to describe the children who have repeated a grade and the characteristics of the households where these children are situated, chi-square cross-tabulations were done. to identify the impact of household and community characteristics on grade repetition among children, three binary multilevel logistic regression models were run showing odds ratios (snijders, 2011) . odds that are 1.00 refer to even odds of the outcome occurring, while odds ratios less than 1 indicate that the outcome is less likely to occur and odds ratios more than 1 refer to the outcome being more likely to occur. multilevel models were selected for the robust capabilities of this method to produce the likelihood of an individuallevel outcome, child’s grade repetition, at the larger macro-levels of households and communities. this suits the purpose of this study because our aim is to situate educational progression of the child within household and community structures in south africa. the first model identifies the probability of grade repetition by characteristics of the household alone. the second model identifies the probability of grade repetition by community characteristics alone and the final model estimate the odds or probability of repetition when households are nested within communities. the reason why three models were done is to see the separate effects of households and communities on grade repetitions and then to identify the combined effects. the separate and combined effects did not produce very different results suggesting that methodological approach is sound. 136 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) 3. results fig. 1. percentage distribution of sex and race of children (7-14 years old) south africa, 2017 most of the children in south africa are african/black. figure 1 shows that 85.40% of the total population is african/black followed by 8.14% who are coloured, then 4.90% who are white and 1.56% who are indian/asian. there are more males in the coloured and white population groups and more females in the african/black and indian/asian groups. in all households where children are heads, 66.34% are female heads (figure 2). in households where the child respondents are the biological, step or adopted child of the head (child) 50.19% are male and 49.81% are female. where children are the sibling to the head of the household, the majority is males (52.67%) and where the child is the grandchild of the head of the household, just more than half (50.97%) are females. in other types of households, the distribution of male and female children is almost even. fig. 2. percentage distribution of the relationship to the household head by sex of children (7-14 years old) in south africa, 2017 less than 1% of south african children are not attending school. among those who have discontinued education, figure 3 shows the reasons given in the survey. almost half of the respondents (48.17%) are not attending due to illness or disability. this is followed by 18.9% 137 de wet & osman ecological approach to childhood in south africa who do not want to continue and 16.24% who cite failure of exams, unable to perform at school and not accepted for enrolment (school performance challenges) as reasons for nonattendance. pregnancy (0.68%) and school violence (0.63%) were the least reported reasons. fig. 3. percentage distribution of the reasons for school discontinuation among children (7-14 years old) in south africa, 2017 grade repetition is highest among children in urban areas at 53.26% (figure 4). in traditional or rural areas, 41.93% of children have repeated at least one grade and in farm areas, 4.82% of children have repeated. fig. 4. percentage distribution of grade repetition by type of place of residence of children (7-14 years old) in south africa, 2017 138 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) table 1. percentage distribution of child’s demographic characteristics by grade repetition status in south africa, 2017 child’s demographic characteristics repeated grade total (n=8,408,746)yes (n=529,624) no (n=7,879,122) sex* male 62.29 48.98 49.82 female 37.71 51.02 50.18 age group* 7-9 years old 38.73 41.22 41.07 10-14 years old 61.27 58.78 58.93 race* african/black 90.56 85.32 85.65 coloured 7.35 8.11 8.06 indian/asian 1.00 1.59 1.56 white 1.09 4.97 4.73 relationship to household head* head of household 0.00 0.04 0.03 child of head 51.79 55.43 55.20 sibling of head 1.78 1.40 1.43 grandchild of head 36.38 33.82 33.98 other 10.05 9.31 9.36 *denotes statistical significance (p-value<0.05) table 1 shows the distribution of children by whether or not they have ever repeated a grade at school. among those who have repeated 62.69% (n= 329,093) are males and 61.27% (n= 324,501) are between the ages of 10 and 14 years old. the majority of children who repeat grades are african/black (90.56%, n= 479,627), followed by coloureds (7.35%, n= 38,927). in households where the children are biological or stepchildren of the head of the household, grade repetition is 51.79% (n= 274,292) and where the child is the grandchild of the head, grade repetition is 36.38% (n= 192,677). table 2 shows the household characteristics of children by whether or not they have repeated a grade at school. grade repetition of children is highest in households where the head of the household is african/black (88.91%, n= 295,038) and in female headed households (54.57%, n= 181,084). in households where the age of the head is 20-64 years old or adult-headed households, grade repetition is 86.47% (n=286,941) followed by households where the head is elderly (65+ years old) at 13.28% (n=44,068). households with six or fewer members account for 77.36% (n= 256,711) of grade repetitions and where there is only one economically active person, grade repetition is 88.24% (n= 292,815). finally, in households with average wealth status, grade repetition is 61.13% (n= 202,853). 139 de wet & osman ecological approach to childhood in south africa table 2. percentage distribution of household characteristics by grade repetition status of children in south africa, 2017 household characteristics repeat grade total (n=5,329,947*)yes (n= 331,839) no (n=4,998,107) head: race** african/black 88.91 84.94 85.19 coloured 9.03 8.67 8.69 indian/asian 0.91 1.61 1.56 white 1.15 4.78 4.55 head: sex** male 45.43 46.71 46.63 female 54.57 53.29 53.37 head: age group** 1219 years (child headed) 0.25 0.69 0.66 20-64 years (adult headed) 86.47 87.09 87.05 65+ years (elderly headed) 13.28 12.22 12.28 household size** <=6 77.36 78.66 78.58 >=7 22.64 21.34 21.42 number of economically active in household** none 35.67 29.12 29.53 one 38.24 40.67 40.52 two 21.11 25.22 24.96 three/more 4.98 5.00 5.00 wealth status of the household** wealthy 4.25 5.88 5.78 average 61.13 65.72 65.43 poor 34.62 28.40 28.79 *total is less than the number of children because some households have more than one child (7-14 years old) present’ ** denotes statistical significance (p-value<0.05) table 3 shows the results of the three multilevel logistic regression models. model i shows that the odds or likelihood of grade repetition is lower (odds ratio<1) for children in households where the head is coloured (0.948, p-value<0.05), indian/asian (0.607, p-value>0.05) and white (0.341, p-value<0.05) compared to african/ black (rc=1). also, the likelihood of repetition is lower in households headed by females (0.951, p-value<0.05). age of the household head, household size and number of economically active household members are not statistically significant in model i, with p-values>0.05. however, households that are of average (1.143, p-value<0.05) and poor (1.562, p-value<0.05) wealth status are both more likely to have children repeat grades than wealthy (rc=1) households. 140 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) model ii shows the probability of grade repetition by community characteristics alone (table 3). in communities where poverty is medium (1.871, p-value<0.05) and high (1.897, p-value<0.05) there are higher odds of grade repetition. further where racial composition is more heterogeneous (medium or high racial diversity), the odds of grade repetition is lower at 0.690 and 0.636 odds respectively. finally, in communities where food security is medium (0.533, p-value<0.05) or high (0.085, p-value<0.05) there is a lower probability that children will repeat grades. in the final combined model (model iii), white (0.398, p-value<0.05) and female (0.945, p-value<0.05) heads of households, where there is one or more economically active person in the household (range: 0.865-0.793, p-value<0.05), in communities with racial diversity (medium: 0.846 ; high: 0.777, p-value<0.05) and with food security (medium: 0.240; high: 0.536, p-value<0.05) there are lower odds of grade repetition. alternatively, households with a coloured head (1.022, p-value<0.05), are average (1.188, p-value<0.05) or poor (1.617, p-value<0.05) and in communities were poverty is medium (1.850, p-value<0.05) or high (1.944, p-value<0.05) there is a higher likelihood of grade repetition. table 3. logistic regression results showing the relationship between household and community characteristics and grade repetition household characteristics model i model ii model iii head: race odds ratio p-value odds ratio p-value odds ratio p-value african/black rc rc coloured 0.948 0.031 1.022 0.048 indian/asian 0.607 0.331 0.760 0.608 white 0.341 0.006 0.398 0.021 head: sex male rc rc female 0.951 0.026 0.945 0.049 head: age group 1219 years (child headed) rc rc 20-64 years (adult headed) 1.097 0.056 1.115 0.053 65+ years (elderly headed) 1.131 0.059 1.156 0.054 household size <=6 rc rc >=7 0.942 0.057 0.907 0.057 no. econ active in household none rc rc one 0.852 0.072 0.865 0.01 two 0.816 0.079 0.844 0.014 three/more 0.761 0.174 0.793 0.025 141 de wet & osman ecological approach to childhood in south africa wealth status of the household wealthy rc rc average 1.143 0.049 1.188 0.042 poor 1.562 0.028 1.617 0.024 community characteristics community poverty low rc rc medium 1.871 0.016 1.850 0.027 high 1.897 0.045 1.944 0.045 racial diversity low rc rc medium 0.690 0.047 0.846 0.043 high 0.636 0.026 0.777 0.028 community food security low rc rc medium 0.533 0.025 0.240 0.03 high 0.085 0.000 0.536 0.07 rc denotes reference category, with an odds ratio=1 or even odds of grade repetition occurring 4. discussion grade repetition has been found to result in school drop-out and stigmatisation of children (guevremont et al., 2007, marshall, 2003). in addition, grade repetition results in pupils completing school at older ages and delaying their entry into the labour market as adults (cook & kang, 2016). a consequence of the latter is that the south african economy, which is dependent on adult workers, will have slow growth rates due to labour activities starting at older ages. this study was done to better understand the ecological determinants of grade repetition among children in south africa and to contribute to understanding of how household and community structures are influencing this school outcome. children are more likely to repeat grades if they reside in poor households and communities. this is important because it is evidence that children need more than schools and school resources in order to progress. a study done in the us also found that pupils from under-privileged backgrounds and in households where poverty is high have higher grade repetition rates at 18% compared to their wealthier counterparts at 7.8% (chaudry & wimer, 2016). in south africa, children living in poverty have suffered in schooling too due to being aids orphans or caring for hiv-positive parents; acting as caregivers to younger siblings and elderly guardians; and being unable to afford transport, school uniforms and other schooling necessities (case & ardington, 2006, freeman & nkomo, 2006, lemon, 2004). 142 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) literature suggests a myriad of individual reasons as to why pupils might repeat a grade. among these prolonged absences, learning challenges and illness have been reported (kabay, 2016, coudé et al., 2007, de wet & frade, 2018). and while these proximate determinants are noted, very little research has examined the environments which perpetuate and influence these individuallevel causes. this study has identified that households and community characteristics play a role in increasing the likelihood of grade repetition. in addition to wealth of the household and community, race plays a role in grade repetition. african/black children are still more likely to repeat grades than children of other races. research corroborates this finding and many studies have shown that racial inequality in access to quality education, feeding schemes and enabling learning environments persist (spaull, 2015, faber et al., 2014). past racial inequalities in the country have contributed to an african/black adult population not being as educated or skilled as the non-african/black population in the country. and now the children of the previously disadvantaged are inheriting a similar fate because of the state of poverty in households and communities. with the national demographics showing that african/black population in south africa is substantially larger than other races, this result is particularly concerning as it suggests that african/black children’s education and knowledge is being constrained by the households and communities they are in. surprisingly, results from this study show that more male children repeat grades than female children. elsewhere in sub-saharan africa and other developing countries, the education of male children is prioritised over that of female children (blakemore & cooksey, 2017, manning et al., 2017). a study of 12 sub-saharan african countries found that 79% of female children ever attended school compared to 84% of male children (kuépié et al., 2015). cultural preferences and patriarchy are largely driving these gendered disparities in other parts of the developing world (ashraf et al., 2016, atta, 2015). however, in south africa, we are seeing male children perform poorly compared to female children. within the contexts of household and community poverty, however, research has shown that male children tend to assume more economically active roles which contribute to prolonged school absences (edmonds, 2006). this study is not without limitations. first, the highest level of education of the household head could not be determined. this indicator would have given insight into, among others, the household resources available including the ability of the head to assist children with schoolwork. second, the study is cross-sectional and therefore it cannot be deduced that the relationship between household and community characteristics and grade repetition is causal. however, a particular strength of this study is the nationally representative nature of the data. this study, compared to others, is not a sample of selected households, but rather a representation of the national profile of household and community characteristics that place children at risk of grade repetition. second, since grade repetition is an often cited reason for eventual drop-out, this paper addresses an issue that can be rectified to prevent school discontinuation. finally, the study reinforces the hypothesis that poverty remains a driver of poor school outcomes in the country. while many studies before have found this, the recentness of the data source proves that the issue is far from being addressed in contemporary south africa. further to this, the household and community characteristics identified suggest that in addition to structural problems, households and communities are perpetuating grade repetition. 143 de wet & osman ecological approach to childhood in south africa 5. conclusion the environments that children inhabit play a role in their school progression. when children are not at school, they are nested within households and communities that are not supportive of their development. with national government emphasis being placed on schooling environments, efforts to improve the socioeconomic status of households and entire communities also require attention as these environments are trapping children in a cycle of poverty. this study contributes to knowledge by offering an ecological explanation for poor schooling outcomes among children that has not been done in south africa before. research on child education predominantly focuses on the individual and parent characteristics contribution to succession but none has nested individuals and parents within households and communities. this ecological approach therefore contributes to our understanding that schooling outcomes are reliant on multiple levels of supportive environments and cannot be addressed by treating these levels in silos. future research on this topic should include more characteristics of households and communities that are not available in cross-sectional data. a better understanding of how members of the household perceive the benefits of education and how households assist each other in child support is needed. this will strengthen our understanding of the household coping mechanisms under circumstances of abject poverty. further research that examines the social composition of communities would give insight into the roles of community leaders and peers in educational attainment of children. finally, programmes in the country that are addressing child education and those addressing community poverty should work together. this will create the environment children need to succeed in school through cooperative work to ensure that poverty and education are addressed simultaneously. the findings from this research suggest that school success in childhood is linked not only to what happens in the school and the classroom, but also the conditions and the context of the community in which the school is located. it calls into question dichotomies between and home and school, and reasserts the importance of home and community more broadly in schooling and schooling outcomes. it calls for weaving the individual and the collective lives of children into integrated and whole realities if school success is a priority in childhood; linking all facets of children’s social worlds. education policy directed toward equalising schooling outcomes would require a deep commitment to bringing school and home as close as possible to ensure school success in childhood. references ashraf, n., bau, n., nunn, n. & 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(ed.) statistical release p0318. pretoria: statistics south africa. _goback 362020 38(2): 36-55 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) towards the institutionalisation of community engagement in higher education in south africa abstract although discourse related to the salience of community engagement in higher education has proliferated, little has focused on the process of institutionalisation of community engagement in south africa. this paper presents findings from a national study that explored how community engagement could be institutionalised at higher education institutions locally. a qualitative research approach was used to guide the study and semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with members of executive management, members from the directorate and office of community engagement and academics from six universities nationally. data revealed that there were eight key factors deserving of consideration in order to institutionalise community engagement through teaching and research, student involvement, transforming institutional infrastructure and through community partnerships. keywords: engagement, institutionalisation, transformation, higher education, research 1. introduction kofi annan, former secretary-general of the united nations, said that, “the university must become a primary tool for africa’s development in the new century. universities… enhance the analysis of african problems; strengthen domestic institutions; serve as a role model for human rights, and enable african academics to play an active part in the global community of scholars” (bloom, canning & chan, 2006: 2). it is within this context that higher education institutions in south africa must respond to the needs of its local communities, become more socially responsive, but more importantly, join the global scholarly community that has increasingly nurtured community engagement (ce) within its teaching and research initiatives. south africa, through the inheritance of the apartheid legacy of poverty, poor human socio-economic development and a growing health burden, faces greater responsibility, which challenges universities locally to restructure their author: professor r. bhagwan1 affiliation: 1durban university of technology doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38. i2.03 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(2): 36-55 published: 04 december 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1584-9432 372020 38(2): 37-55 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 bhagwan towards the institutionalisation of community engagement in higher education institutions, to become more socially responsive to these problems. moreover, it compels south african universities to reconsider how their teaching, research and their internal structures and policies can become more enabling of community engagement. in the transition towards inclusive democracy in 1994, south african universities endeavoured to undo the historical threads of social justice, by heeding the call made by the department of higher education (dhet, 2014:10) that universities redress past inequalities and “transform the higher education system to serve a new social order,” in a way that redirected its purpose towards society and development. community engagement and service learning became entrenched within documents such as the green paper on higher education and transformation (1996), the white paper on higher education (1997), the national plan for higher education (2001), the founding document of the higher education quality committee (heqc) of the council on higher education (2001), the heqc criteria for institutional audits (2004) and the heqc criteria for programme accreditation (2004). more recently the white paper for post-school education and training (2013) noted that many of the community engagement initiatives at south african universities are fragmented and not interrelated with the teaching and research functions of these institutions, which suggests the need for it to be rigorously interweaved into the core business of teaching and learning, but moreover institutionalised into the broader academic culture of the university. despite the calls made within the aforementioned policy documents, community engagement has emerged slowly within the local literature (albertyn & daniels, 2009; maistry, 2012). several local scholars have however written around the theorisation and conceptualisation of community engagement locally (bhagwan, 2017; slamat, 2010; muller 2010). despite this, favish (2010) lamented that ce remains under theorised in south africa and argued the need for greater interconnectedness between ce and the other core activities of the university. the council on higher education (che) (2008) made similar observations following a perusal of institutional audit reports, arguing that whilst the conceptual continuum appears evident at a superficial level, there are dissonances in the understanding of ce. in contrast, the theorisation and implementation has burgeoned globally, particularly in the united states and scholarly work has evolved around its institutionalisation in higher education. accordingly, almost a decade ago twenty-one new initiatives emerged within higher education networks, in the united states, which began organising themselves around advancing engagement (battistoni & longo, 2011). concomitantly universities began transforming themselves into socially responsive civic institutions by engaging in service learning, community based participatory research, community oriented primary care and community service and outreach (bhagwan, 2017). it is against this backdrop that the current study sought to understand how community engagement was being strengthened at universities that were flagged as best practice examples of ce and what was needed to further entrench ce within higher education institutions nationally. 2. literature review post the new democracy, universities were urged to “create and advance economic, social and cultural opportunities and development” (higher education south africa, 2007:15). the higher education quality committee of the council on higher education also called for knowledgebased community service and argued for the co-construction of relevant knowledge that http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 382020 38(2): 38-55 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) would benefit communities (heqc, 2001). the unesco co-chairs for social responsibility have argued that knowledge-based community service has since become a criterion for accreditation and quality assurance and community engagement needs to be reported on in institutional audits (hall, tandon, tremblay & singh, 2015). literature related to community engagement (ce) in south africa reflects a lack of conceptual clarity around ce (favish, 2010; nongxa, 2010; pienaar-steyn, 2012; bhagwan, 2017) and may be a factor challenging its institutionalisation at local higher education institutions. some of the more salient definitions that are offered by the centre for higher education transformation (chet, 2003 :4) which defined ce as “... a systematic relationship between higher education and (their) environment (communities) that is characterised by mutually beneficial interaction in the sense that it enriches learning, teaching and research and simultaneously addresses societal problems, issues and challenges”. this definition views ce as being embedded within the knowledge exchange between universities and communities through co-inquiry, joint research initiatives, co-learning, interdisciplinary and use of knowledge that benefits academia whilst endeavouring to solve real world problems (bender, 2008). however, several papers recently endeavoured to enrich an understanding of ce locally. bhagwan (2019) detailed the process of community engagement and how universitycommunity partnerships can be nurtured. in her paper she emphasised the need for institutional preparedness, a greater commitment to understanding the local contexts surrounding universities by building respectful community partnerships that focus on capacity building and sustainability, working towards transdisciplinary research and the co-production of knowledge with community partners. through a research initiative undertaken in a rural town in south africa, albertyn, botha, van der merwe, le roux and coetzee concluded that teaching and learning related to community development principles, planned activities, appropriate research methods, quality, ethical issues, sustainability and reciprocal benefits were the criteria to ensure an integrated approach to community engagement. olowu’s (2012) article provided greater insights into developing a systematic approval for benchmarking universitycommunity engagement in south africa and is relevant to enabling institutionalisation of ce. internationally, efforts to nurture community engagement activities that could “enrich scholarship, research, and creative activity; enhance curriculum, teaching and learning; prepare educated, engaged citizens; democratic values and civic responsibility; address critical societal issues and contribute to the public good” have also received dedicated attention (cic committee on engagement, 2005:2). community engagement has been defined as the “strenuous, thoughtful, argumentative interaction with the non-university world in at least four spheres: setting universities’ aims, purposes and priorities; relating teaching and learning to the wider world; the back-and-forth dialogue between researchers and practitioners; and taking on wider responsibilities as neighbours and citizens” (acu, 2001:i). scholars have argued for “nothing less than a transformation of contemporary academic culture,” and a transformation of higher education institutions into “engaged” universities (zlotkowski 1995:130). it was the talloires network (2020) that devoted itself to advancing the civic roles and social responsibilities of universities in multiple ways. the talloires network is an international association of institutions committed to strengthening the civic roles and social responsibilities of higher education, that have worked together to implement the recommendations of the talloires declaration and build a global movement of engaged universities. the talloires http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 392020 38(2): 39-55 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 bhagwan towards the institutionalisation of community engagement in higher education network, through this declaration, agreed to embed public responsibility through the policies and practices of higher education institutions by creating institutional frameworks that encourage, reward and recognise good practice in social service by students, faculty and their community partners and by fostering partnerships between universities and communities to enhance economic opportunity, and by strengthening the relevance of university education and research (watson, hollister, stroud & babcock, 2011:xxiv). the global literature has consequently mirrored the shift towards the “engaged” university and a change in institutional vision and culture was articulated within boyer’s (1996:7) “scholarship of engagement”. aligned with this, a set of indicators of engagement evolved that included administrative and academic leadership, internal and external resource allocation, faculty roles and rewards and professional development and community voice as key markers for institutionalisation (hollander, saltmarsh & zlotkowski, 2001). this led to the development of multiple institutional assessment tools that reflect institutional commitment to community engagement through the university’s mission, structures, leadership and through, faculty and community involvement (furco, 1999; holland, 2006). the development of effective benchmarking tools for university community engagement is still however, in its infancy in south africa (olowu, 2012). major shifts are required within an institution’s culture, related to institutional behaviours and processes, in order to institutionalise engagement (eckel, hill & green, 1998). universities that have been successful in terms of the criteria set within the classification for community engagement are those that reflect deep and pervasive changes in practices, structures and policies, thereby enabling an institutional culture of community engagement (saltmarsh & johnson, 2018). whilst depth is critical to transformation, it is insufficient as deep changes are not necessarily broad (eckel et al., 1998:4). hence, it is possible for deep changes to occur within specific units or academic departments without being widespread throughout the institution, meaning that no pervasive organisational transformation has occurred (eckel et al., 1998). pervasiveness refers to the extent to which community engagement “crosses unit boundaries and touches different parts of the institution” (eckel et al., 1998:4). the shifts and transformation being called for should be deep and pervasive, such that it affects the entire institution, is intentional and occurs over time (saltmarsh, janke & clayton, 2015). although some institutions have begun to prioritise engagement, mugabi (2015) expressed that community engagement remains marginally institutionalised and most south african universities have not fully integrated engagement into their agenda. furco (2014) argued that the institutionalisation of community engagement requires an intentional agenda for embedding it into the institution’s academic culture. he added that unlike marginalised practices that are episodic, isolated, at risk and lack status, institutionalised practices are widespread, legitimised, expected, supported and resilient to changes at the institution (kramer, 2000). individualised engagement programmes that are strong are large, deep and permanent (kiely, kittelberger & wittman, 2018). transformational change occurs only “when shifts in the institution’s culture have developed to the point, where they are both pervasive across the institution and deeply embedded in practices throughout the institution” (saltmarsh & johnson, 2018:9). institutionalising community engagement also occurs by focussing on how engagement affects the educational experience of students; how it is integrated into faculty scholarly experience i.e. teaching, research and creative activity and service, and the creation of engagement specific budgets, professional staffing and other infrastructure (saltmarsh & johnson, 2018: 1). hatcher and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 402020 38(2): 40-55 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) hundley (2018) argued that community engaged scholars enact their passion by being instruments of change within teaching, research or service for the collective good. the institutionalisation of ce moves through crucial phases of development that include critical mass building, quality building and sustained institutionalisation, which occurs over five to seven years (saltmarsh & john, 2018). empirical inquiries have in fact documented that it takes 15–20 years to achieve full institutionalisation of ce (sandmann, thornton & jaegar, 2009; furco, 2010). 3. methodology 3.1 study design and setting this inquiry was guided by qualitative research methodologies, specifically a multiple case study design (yin, 2001) as selected universities across south africa were chosen. the study sought to distil rich descriptive information from key stakeholders namely executive management that included 1 vice chancellor, 2 deputy vice chancellors, academics, middle leadership and administrative staff involved in community engagement at their institutions, with regards to how community engagement was being strengthened at their institutions and what was necessary to institutionalise community engagement at higher education institutions in south africa. one of the aims was to understand how ce was being advanced at these local universities and how it could be further strengthened at local universities. the research questions then were: what factors contribute to advancing ce and what can be further done to strengthen ce at local universities. six universities were involved in this study from the western cape, eastern cape, limpopo and gauteng. two primary criteria were used to purposefully select the case study sites for this inquiry. the south african higher education community engagement forum list of best practice institutions was used and from this those universities with best practice community engagement activities were identified. moreover, those institutions that offered diversity in the forms of community engagement being undertaken namely community outreach, volunteerism, community-based research and service learning formed the criteria to purposefully select them for inclusion in the study. finally, all those who voluntarily agreed to participate were included in the study. 3.2 sample in accordance with qualitative inquiries non-probability sampling methods, specifically purposive sampling, was used to recruit the participants. the primary criteria for selection related to their administrative management of ce as well as academic involvement in ce initiatives at their institutions. in total 33 academic and administrative staff participated in relation to the data derived for this paper. 4. ethical considerations ethical clearance for this study was obtained from the institutional research ethics committee (irec) of the durban university of technology (dut). the study was allocated ethical clearance number irec 088/15. permission was thereafter obtained from all participating universities. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 412020 38(2): 41-55 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 bhagwan towards the institutionalisation of community engagement in higher education 5. data collection process after receiving permission to conduct the study at the respective institutions, dates to visit these sites were arranged. academics who were involved in best practice projects at their institutions, as well as administrative staff and management were interviewed. an interview guide was used to facilitate these semi-structured in-depth interviews. semi-structured interviews have a set of predetermined questions on an interview guide, but the interview will be guided rather than dictated by the schedule (greeff, 2011). the guide was pilot tested with a group of similar participants and reviewed by the ethics committee at dut, before use. it consisted of broad questions that focused on how ce was conceptualised, the values and principles underpinning ce partnerships, how ce was being strengthened and recognised at their respective institutions and what could be done to advance the ce mandate at local universities. whilst in-depth interviews and focus groups were also conducted with students and community partners, they will not be reported on within this paper. in addition, document analysis was also undertaken in relation to the university’s mission statement. holistically this data served to understand what efforts were being made to embed ce into institutional culture and to understand from these ce managers, academics and practitioners what was required to advance and institutionalise ce in south africa. 6. data analysis the data was analysed using thematic analysis as per the steps outlined by braun, clark, hayfield and terry (2020). thematic analysis allowed the researcher to make sense of collective meanings and experiences. this helped to organise and reduce the data into broad themes. a preliminary coding scheme was generated that served as a template for the data analysis (tutty, rothery & grinnell, 1996). similar themes and recurring patterns in the data were linked together and the contrasts and differences identified (liamputtong & ezzy, 2005). 6.1 trustworthiness to enhance the trustworthiness of this study, the researchers used guba’s model (1994). this model provides four criteria to ascertain rigour in qualitative studies, namely credibility, dependability, conformability and transferability. strategies used were multiple interviews with the participants, member checking, using a triangulation process during data analysis and maintaining an audit trail and a reflective journal (buetow, 2019). this ensured trustworthiness of data and reflexivity of the researcher. although not reported on within the purpose of this paper, data was also derived from students and community partners that validated the findings and served as important within the triangulation process. 7. discussion of findings analysis of the data revealed that there were eight salient themes that were critical to enabling the institutionalisation of community engagement. these are discussed in the sub-subsections that follow: 7.1 mission, vision and policies participants expressed that institutions seeking to advance engagement should state that it will be “an engaged university … in its vision, mission and policies.” http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 422020 38(2): 42-55 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) create “an ethos of engagement and speak to social justice and community-based learning.” talk “about communities” and use the “social justice and engagement and communitybased needs,” in their mission, vision and policies. “develop a policy for community engagement. the policy must be infused into teaching and learning.” the data reflected the importance of embedding ce within the mission statement and teaching and research policies of the university. an analysis of higher education mission statements in the united states reflected citizenship, democracy and social responsibility as being the key themes within these documents as well (jacoby, 2015). mission statements should reflect the purpose and goals of engagement and serve as a basis for identifying potential partnerships (bringle & hatcher, 2002). moreover, universities should also explore how their strategic plan incorporates specific goals to achieve engagement and whether these goals are communicated throughout the university (beere, votruba & wells, 2011). local scholar, mugabi (2015:23) suggested that each university pay attention to its surrounding “institutional context, for example, history, disciplinary focus, location, ownership, mission, culture values and priorities, and national policy agendas when drawing up its mission and vision… because universities, even those in the same country, cannot have the same institutional environments, the focus, forms and organization of community engagement.” each university should therefore support its own unique vision in relation to engagement. one example of this is the mission statement of nelson mandela metropolitan university1, which reads “we create and sustain an environment that encourages and supports a vibrant research, scholarship and innovation culture and we engage in mutually beneficial partnerships locally, nationally and globally to enhance social, economic, and ecological sustainability.” the nwu institutional plan 2011–2013, prioritised engagement as one of its five values by describing its relationship with the “cultural, social and economic life” of its localities, region and nation; “with international imperatives; and with the practical, intellectual and ethical issues of … partner organisations” (north-west university, 2010:4). other good international examples are of northern kentucky university, which states it will be nationally recognised as the university “that prepares students for life and work in a global society and provides leadership to advance the intellectual, social, economic, cultural, and civic vitality of its region.” its mission statement states it “supports multidimensional excellence across the full breadth of its work; teaching and learning, research and creative activity, and outreach and public engagement … with the emphasis on active learning, including student research, internships, co-op programs and service learning” (northern kentucky university, 2009:3). civic engagement and social responsibility are emphasised within the university of melbourne’s strategic plan, under “knowledge transfer.” knowledge transfer is conceived as fostering partnerships to advance teaching, learning and research and meeting responsibility for greater good” (watson et al., 2011: 49). some scholars have argued that whilst ce should be mirrored within the mission and institutional strategic plans, it is important that a unified definition exists that incorporates elements of the carnegie definition (manok, 2018). the carnegie definition of community 1 formerly known as nelson mandela metropolitan university (nmmu) during the period of data collection. the name has since changed to nelson mandela university (nmu) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 432020 38(2): 43-55 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 bhagwan towards the institutionalisation of community engagement in higher education engagement is classified as “the collaboration between institutions of higher education and their larger communities (local, regional/state, national, global) for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge and resources in a context of partnership and reciprocity” (discoll, 2009: 39). the carnegie community engagement classification is therefore a strategic planning tool (quan, 2018) that sa universities can use to develop their mission and vision statements. continuous reflection and a re-evaluation of how the university’s community engagement definition evolves in relation to new trends however remains critical (manok, 2018). whilst the aforementioned speaks to institutional policies, at a deeper level the data suggests the need to infuse notions of social justice and community-based learning into academic life. social justice can be integrated into education by teaching students to acquire a vision of a just society that provides for the basic needs of all members of society, the realisation of the potential of society’s people and developing an understanding of the power of people to change unjust structures so that people can be empowered to work towards a more just society (bhagwan, 2017:9). much of this can be achieved through community-based learning as suggested in one of the excerpts that helps students to acquire, practise and apply disciplinary knowledge and skills whilst acting on concerns that affect communities. the need to interweave the institutional vision and mission and translate policies into action occurs through teaching and research as discussed in the following sub-section. 7.2 embedding community engagement within teaching and research “it is …about the scholarship of teaching and learning.” “i think community engagement should not be looked upon as a third pillar, but rather infused within teaching and learning” “community engagement should also get involved in work integrated learning, which cuts across all the disciplines, at all the schools all the faculties.” “it’s how you teach and what you teach, how you research and what you research. it’s the research methods that you use.” “the fruits of research are just so much greater. there’s a scholarship of community engagement and then it’s all the other co-creation of work.” it is about being “serious about knowledge construction and dissemination in partnership.” as evidenced in the data, the institutionalisation of ce occurs through a deeper understanding that ce remains indivisible from the core missions of teaching and research. moreover, as one participant suggested, institutionalisation starts to take its roots only when ce is interweaved across all schools and faculties as opposed to sporadic, linear efforts being made by a few academics and departments. engaged teaching manifests when course or curriculum related learning activities engage students with the community in mutually beneficial ways (o’meara, 2008). curricular engagement within the carnegie classification for community engagement is described as “teaching, learning and scholarship that engages faculty, students, and community through interactions that address community identified needs, deepen students’ civic and academic learning, enhance community well-being, and enrich the scholarship of the institution” (saltmarsh & johnson, 2018:6). the focus is on the “extent to which community engagement is part of the central academic experience of the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 442020 38(2): 44-55 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) campus, the number of students impacted, the breadth of the courses offered, the depth of the curriculum, the goals of learning outcomes, and assessment of community engagement outcomes.” what this translates into is that academics integrate outreach into their classes and curricula, and that students begin participating in co-curricular activities such as service learning that place them in the community, where they can apply their learning to solving real-world problems (boyer, 1990:7). this supports the arguments made for it to become embedded across all disciplinary academic departments. reiff (2018) identified the following criteria for service-learning, which can also be used to guide same in the sa context: • it should involve students in substantive, ongoing community service activity that is directly integrated into the curriculum in a significant way. • the service component should be developed cooperatively with community partners, so that it meets the needs identified by the community. • it prepares students for work in the community. • it requires systematic and regular reflection, reporting and assessment of the service experience with faculty and other students e.g. reading assignments or oral presentations that combine the service experience. • it assesses the impact of the service-learning component. moreover, service learning should reflect mutuality, reflection before/during/after service, by tying service-learning objectives, to learning objectives and goals of community partners (welch, 2018). capstone courses with titles such as creating liveable communities for an aging society, women and development, poverty and homelessness, social justice education and environmental advocacy, can be used to compel students from a variety of disciplines to respond to complex concerns for their communities (watson et al., 2011). institutionalisation at a deeper level, however, impacts course design and classroom pedagogy. designing the undergraduate curriculum to embed experiential, community based and interdisciplinary learning across all departments, is one way to strengthen institutionalisation through teaching and learning (furco, 2014). when individual academics adopt service learning in a linear way, without departmental, faculty or institutional commitment, the impact on the student is limited (schneider, 2005). however, if a student repeatedly encounters engagement as they move through every academic level it will become entrenched within their learning. empirical evidence in fact supports notions that service learning and community-based research is beneficial to student learning (antonio, astin & cress, 2000; astin, vogelgesang, ikeda & yee, 2000; passarella & terenrzini, 2005). as participants suggested, there is a need to reconsider research approaches such as community participatory approaches that will enable the co-production of knowledge. community based research focuses on research “with” and not “on” communities and values community members as research partners or co-investigators (bhagwan, 2017:13). 7.3 involvement of academics participants argued that academics play a crucial role in the institutionalisation of engagement in terms of teaching and learning as discussed in the preceding theme. they were urged as follows: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 452020 38(2): 45-55 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 bhagwan towards the institutionalisation of community engagement in higher education rethink, their teaching and research and to work in participatory ways that mutually benefit the university and the community. support transdisciplinary research…(this) could move people out of their disciplines and that’s also very much an engagement thought. you can’t solve very complicated problems of community through just one discipline. as discussed under the preceding theme for engagement to move from the margins to a more advanced position as part of institutional culture, requires that academics bring it into institutional culture (lazarus, erasmus, hendricks, nduna & slamat, 2008). hall et al. (2015) found in their study that whilst the middle level leadership, which includes deans, chairs and directors, play a significant role in institutionalising community engagement, it is in fact the professoriate, lecturers and research leaders who are at the heart of the engaged scholarship process. academics should therefore constantly reflect on how they may transform faculty work roles through their daily practices, priorities and commitments (rhoades, kiyama, mccormick & quiroz, 2008). this requires, as suggested in the data, to rethink how teaching and research is done to embrace community-based participatory approaches. a powerful argument in the data was the argument made for transdisciplinary research. transdisciplinary research refers to research that transcends the disciplinary knowledge within the university to include knowledge that resides amongst community voices (bhagwan, 2019). 7.4 student involvement student involvement in engagement emerged as the next theme related to institutionalising ce. participants had the following to say: first step would be to get students invested in the engagement that we’re doing. students should do an hour of service a week in our community sites and through doing that service, they learn lots of things about the community, they build relationships and the whole way through this course. we need to cultivate student interest and to grow the number of post graduate students in community engaged scholarship and trans-disciplinary research. as reflected in the data, participants believed that student involvement was crucial in solidifying engagement within higher education. they asserted that this could occur through involvement in volunteerism, out-reach activities, service learning and community-based research. a review of literature undertaken by antonio et al. (2000: 374–375) found that student engagement is positively related to “persistence in college, interest in graduate study, the development of leadership skills…greater knowledge of subject matter, ability to apply course concepts, strengthened critical thinking skills (and) civic responsibility.” beere et al. (2011) asserted that one way to ensure that students have a communitybased research experience is to set it as a requirement within a capstone course. they cited the work of portland state university that stipulates that each student (except honours and liberal arts majors), complete a community-based research capstone course that is “multidisciplinary, problem focused and community based.” this approach can ensure that engagement becomes pervasive throughout the institution and that it involves students in social responsibility initiatives at some point in their academic journey. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 462020 38(2): 46-55 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) 7.5 building an institutional culture “universities should have divisions of community engagement.” “embedding community engagement actually into institutional culture.” “it should be infused into every discipline.” “for engagement to be institutionalised it has to be ‘constant,’ with little things happening to reach different groups.” “we offer service-learning workshops for academics, just to orientate them. “the opportunities to build partnerships between faculties because it’s possible to be in the same university and running projects/programmes in the same area” “we have a community engagement week. main thrust of it is a community engagement learning symposium, where our academics get given a space to come share what they’re doing.” we have pushed… for the good scholars … (they) tell you about their community engagement, they can’t separate it. it’s so embedded in their teaching portfolios for personal promotions” it is ‘important to host colloquiums on engagement… (they), showcase best practice projects and strengthen transdisciplinary collaboration.” whilst the data has suggested the need for community-based teaching and learning, other key ways of interweaving into the academic life in the institution also emerged as evidenced in the excerpts above. workshops, colloquiums, dialogue within the university and faculties were seen as ways to bring engagement scholars together and strengthen awareness of ce through such activities. the carnegie foundation classified community engagement into three parts viz. foundational indicators, curricular engagement and outreach and partnerships. foundational indicators are regarded as institutional commitment and institutional identity and culture. the latter is interlinked with mission and vision, recognition, marketing materials and community engagement as a leadership priority (saltmarsh & johnson, 2018) as discussed under the first theme. transforming institutional culture however requires “a new set of practices, creating new structures, and revising policies,” which collectively requires organisational change (olowu, 2012:99). institutional leadership is crucial to transforming institutional culture (olowu, 2012). moreover, connecting universities to their communities have the potential for transformational change as it can contribute to reshaping institutional practices and purposes (boyer, 1990). whilst depth is critical to transformation, it is insufficient as deep changes are not necessarily broad. it is possible for deep changes to occur within specific units or academic departments without being widespread throughout the institution, meaning that no pervasive organisational transformation was occurring (eckel et al., 1998:4). pervasiveness reflects the extent to which community engagement “crosses unit boundaries and touches different parts of the institution” (eckel et al., 1998:4). beere et al. (2011:112) suggested the need for “campus conversations,” where “dialogue, rather than a lecture or formal talk” is the norm. these conversations although organised at the department or faculty level, should include management as well http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 472020 38(2): 47-55 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 bhagwan towards the institutionalisation of community engagement in higher education so that both stakeholders can deliberate upon the value and challenges of engagement and strengthen understanding between administrators and academics. most important was the suggestion made by one of the participants regarding having an office or division of ce to drive ce initiatives into academic life. this office could implement the workshops suggested by participants, recognise scholarly work that embraced ce and to ensure the “constancy,” of ce within the daily space of the institution. 7.6 institutional support the need for institutional support also emerged as being important as follows: “we have community partner of the year so there is recognition.” “the vc is incredibly supportive of community engagement.” “we have a dvc that is open to service learning to communities, her interest is in community projects.” “our dvc understands why we do it… from a very deep level and so whenever he gets a platform of sorts, whether senior management meetings, other engagements with academics etc. he speaks to it.” “it took the process of implementing the infrastructure to basically manage engagement within the institution.” “community engagement projects must be run by a dedicated office.” “it’s got very good policies, very good administrative system. it’s got good report systems.” “the role of the community engagement office is to put partnerships and processes in place, to enable engagement…implement workshops related to engagement and to help academics write their philosophies for their portfolios.” “the directorate of engagement should manage a database of information, regarding which communities were involved, what projects were implemented, their location and how many communities were involved.” “the directorate should also monitor activities and provide a report on institution wide activities and scholarly outputs that emerged through engagement on an annual basis.” the aforementioned data reflects the importance of management support in order to institutionalise ce, but more importantly a dedicated ce office or division to coordinate, manage and support ce initiatives. the vice chancellor or deputy vice chancellor was perceived to be a powerful role player in promoting and supporting the engagement agenda of the community engagement office, academics and students involved in community engagement projects. institutional policy is equally important to supporting the functions of a community engagement office and to ensure commitment to drive the community engagement agenda institutionally. these organisational structures are therefore responsible for providing greater support to academics involved in engagement and so that community members can easily connect with the university (beere et al., 2011). moreover, ccommunity partners have more positive perceptions of institutional engagement when campuses operate centralised offices http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 482020 38(2): 48-55 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) of engagement compared to decentralised systems lacking a clearinghouse function for engagement activities (weerts & sandmann, 2008). the presence of executive management in community spaces was perceived as crucial in building stronger bridges between the university and community and can ultimately serve to validate ce as an equally important mission alongside teaching and research at university. what also emerged in the data was that some engagement staff worked in decentralised offices within each faculty. this appeared to enable more engagement activities being initiated across departments and disciplines within faculties, as opposed to it being sporadic activities limited to a few disciplinary homes. what was evident from the data was that these faculty representatives are part of an engagement committee who worked with the directorate of engagement to conscientise academics regarding engagement and provide capacity building related to engagement. the institutionalisation of engagement therefore rests on developing university-wide agendas and policies, structures and practices to guide and facilitate the involvement of academic units, staff, students and external communities in engagement (mugabi, 2015). an approved budget also appears important to supporting engagement, a problem that has challenged universities abroad (weerts & sandmann, 2010). an engaged campus is characterised by funding to support its infrastructure, which includes leadership positions, facilitative offices, internal grants to support or relieve academics who pursue engagement, support for major, multidisciplinary initiatives and scholarship support for engaged students (beere et al., 2011). it is the institutional context, by way of their policies however that shapes the extent to which academics become involved in community engagement, how they infuse engagement into teaching and research roles and how they are rewarded and encouraged (o’meara, 2004; sandmann et al., 2008). the recognition of engaged scholarly work, as evidenced in the data, is an important way of recognising the importance of ce within institutional culture. 7.7 community partnerships the active presence of community partnerships was viewed as important to institutionalising ce. participants said: the transformation and institutionalisation of engagement can only be effected when universities are serious about community partnerships that enable knowledge construction for mutual benefit through this relationship. it is a two-way engagement…it is from a perspective that the university will possibly come with resources and the community has the indigenous knowledge. the community provided a real-life context that allowed students, to understand relevant issues not from books but through the stories of people. community engagement has an element of sharing knowledge and perhaps mutually constructing or mutually defining an issue …co-production…co-creating knowledge in those spaces. the institutionalisation of ce is enabled through a tangible presence in the community and through community relationships and partnerships. it is through these relationships that a context is created to facilitate learning about real life issues, through the stories of people. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 492020 38(2): 49-55 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 bhagwan towards the institutionalisation of community engagement in higher education moreover, it creates the context for community-based research and the opportunity to build partnerships with community members who can advance the university’s capacity to conduct rigorous scientific research that has benefits for the society (furco, 2014). communities however should not be viewed as objects for study but instead as partners. those partnering with the community should therefore understand its history, its history of the relationship with the university, its different sub-cultures, its needs and priorities and the sources of power and influence within it (torres, 2000). moreover, the community should be seen in terms of its assets, which includes its strengths, wisdom, knowledge and experience that it brings to the partnership (beere et al., 2011). the classification for community engagement recognises relationships between those in the university and those outside the university that embrace the qualities of reciprocity, mutual respect, shared authority and the co-creation of goals and outcomes. these relationships are by their nature “transdisciplinary (knowledge transcending the disciplines and the college or university, and asset based (where the strengths, skills, and knowledges of those in the community are validated and legitimized” (saltmarsh & johnson, 2018: 4). outreach and engaged partnerships are two different but interrelated approaches to community engagement (janke, 2018). whilst outreach focuses on the application and provision of institutional resources for community use, engagement differs due to its focus on “collaborative interactions with community and related scholarship for the mutually beneficial exchange, exploration, and application of knowledge, information, and resources (research, capacity building, economic development, etc.)” (saltmarsh & johnson, 2018: 6). the latter are the types of interactions that universities need to nurture with communities. 7.8 rewarding engagement rewarding engagement was also seen as a means of institutionalising ce as follows: we have research awards, teaching awards and community engagement awards and the community engagement lecture… (all should be equal), just the way others have been recognized and supported. we have the vice chancellor’s award for community engagement. there are awards for student volunteers as well. we have an awards evening in october... we have the top ten volunteers of the year, we call that a gold award. as evidenced in the data, several universities reward their academics, student volunteers and community partners alike for their engagement work. research has indicated that a lack of this recognition inhibits ce at institutions and relegates it to a lesser space in comparison with teaching and research (driscoll & sandmann, 2001; sandmannn, 2006). the institution’s rituals, awards and ceremonies should therefore recognise the value of ce and it should be “celebrated” (beere et al., 2011: 38). as indicated in the data, several universities have rewarded academics for their engagement work at awards functions. in an african context most universities emphasise publications, supervision of students and teaching experience as criteria for promotion, as opposed to engagement work (mugabi, 2015). promotion policies that recognise ce need to be created alongside awards that recognise ce activities at institutions (o’meara, sandmann, saltmarsh & giles, 2011). the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 502020 38(2): 50-55 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) latter will draw greater attention to the institution’s ce initiatives, provide material for internal and external publications, showcase the institution and the individual, publicly identify engaged faculty to serve as role models for all faculty, reward those doing the work and motivate those who are considering it. awards should be made at department, faculty and institutional level and can range from a book to securing the title of “engaged scholar” (beere et al., 2011:116). 8. conclusion although the institutionalisation of community engagement is still in its infancy locally, several universities have begun making concerted efforts towards entrenching it within their university’s milieu. the study has unveiled the importance of community-based teaching and learning, transdisciplinary research, community partnerships and a dedicated ce office to bring these dimensions together. moreover, the importance of institutional support and the embedding of ce within the mission and policies of a university will undoubtedly serve as the pillars from which ce activities may grow. collectively all the themes interrelate in a synergistic way, which suggests that when integrated over a sustained period, it has the potential to enable institutionalisation, as opposed to linear, sporadic efforts. overall the findings cohere with the literature that the key indicators of engagement are administrative and academic leadership, internal and external resource allocation, faculty roles and rewards and community voice (hollander et al., 2001). furco (2014) reflected on the journey made by the university of minnesota to move the university into a sustained institutionalisation phase, saying that it took 13 years to reinvigorate the engagement agenda by prioritising ce as being integral to research and teaching, becoming more intentionally integrated with academic programming; becoming infused into the work of all and not just the work of those who work in traditional outreach units; creating more mutually beneficial partnerships by acknowledging the assets and knowledge in the community; focusing on working “with” the community and not just doing “for” or “in” the community and moving from discrete, time limited projects to “supporting multi-faceted, interdisciplinary ‘partnerships’ addressing grand challenges and broad societal issues,” such as health, education and poverty (furco, 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massachusetts: stylus publishing, llc. zlotkowski, e. 1995. does service learning have a future? michigan journal of community service learning, 2(1): 123–133. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.03 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203818763 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203818763 https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2010.11779075 https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2010.11779075 towards the institutionalisation 322022 40(2): 32-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 students experiences of demotivating online formative assessment strategies at an open distance learning university abstract there is a growing body of research that suggests that improving the quality of online formative assessment strategies increases students’ motivation to participate in online assessment. however, the way in which course leaders at open distance learning universities communicate the expectations of learning to students through online formative assessment strategies largely determines how students approach online formative assessment tasks. the design of online formative assessment strategies is an important element that is needed to promote an interactive level of engagement needed for motivating students learning online. it is against this background that this paper investigated the experiences of students with demotivating online formative assessment strategies at an open distance learning institution. the study achieved this through phenomenography, a developmental, qualitative and non-dualistic case study research. twelve purposively selected students from a postgraduate course were interviewed to understand their experiences with demotivating online formative assessment strategies. students identified seven demotivating online formative assessment strategies that provided insight to course leaders in the production of more motivating assessment strategies. keywords: demotivating online formative assessment strategies (dofas), online assessment, motivation, lecturer, phenomenography, open distance learning (odl). 1. introduction since open distance learning (odl) was introduced in higher education institutions, it became necessary to accept online teaching as part of the institutional operational plan (unisa, 2017). however, the expectation of the plan to carry out online teaching and learning did not in itself translate into how the institution could adopt or adapt to the initiative. it was not only challenging experiences for students studying at a distance, using information and communication technology (ict), but there was also a need to ensure a consistent, high quality online experience. e-teaching and learning in higher education required a new way of thinking author: dr antonia makina1 affiliation: 1university of south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i2.4 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(2): 32-51 published: 08 june 2022 received: 26 october 2021 accepted: 07 january 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2602-0347 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 332022 40(2): 33-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 makina students experiences of demotivating online formative assessment strategies for the lecturer and hence a new way of motivating student participants in online assessment as this was a new full-time space for the students and the lecturers (unisa, 2017). the support and guidance that was required for the lecturers to be able to work successfully and effortlessly online was not easily available (unisa, 2017). with the advent of new technologies for teaching and learning, online teaching and learning is emerging as a growing trend in open and distance learning (odl) and gaining wider popularity among african higher education institutions (mathew & ebelelloanya, 2016). the move by the odl institutions that are growing fast in the education sector in south africa towards online learning has made online formative assessment a complex issue with which to deal. this is partly because the designing of online formative assessment strategies is still new ground in the higher education system, and with the adaption of open distance learning principles for online learning, lecturers started investigating using online formative assessments as a motivation for student engagement. it has been stated that “[s]tudents can, with difficulty, escape from the effects of poor teaching however, they cannot escape the effects of poor assessment if they want to graduate” (boud 2018:3). students’ attitude and motivation towards assessment is the critical factor for success in online learning since motivation is a condition for and a result of effective instruction (mclaughlin & yan, 2017; prensky, 2010). therefore o’neil, fisher and newbold (2004), through the distributed pedagogy, encourages the involvement of students in the construction of their learning spaces because they involve new demands with respect to their learning. students want to contribute to how they want to be taught and assessed, and in this way, they want to be supported. they want their ideas to be built into course structures and into new strategies to be developed for their lecturers to facilitate effective online learning (bates & sangra, 2011). motivation is the key to successful formative online assessment experiences with the students. understanding and reflecting on various formative assessment strategies used online in an odl environment can attribute to positive experiences to student motivation. this is especially so in higher education odl environments. the influence of formative assessment strategies in motivating students to learn has been increasingly examined in education (gikandi, morrow & davis, 2011, mclaughlin & yan, 2017). however, aspects of students’ demotivation to participate online has not been of much interest in the research about online assessment (andersson & palm, 2017). in other words, what is the story behind online formative assessment strategies that are demotivating to students. the way in which lecturers communicate the expectations of learning through online formative assessment strategies to the students largely determines how students approach assessment tasks. this paper investigates the experiences of students with demotivating online formative assessment strategies (dofas) in an odl environment. the aim is to reflect on the potential of online formative assessment strategies to enhance the motivation and the quality of the students’ online learning experiences. dofas have some of the following characteristics in common that were reflected in this paper. the activities within dofas might be too difficult to be managed by the students, since they might not be easy to understand, not fairly or ethically managed by the course leader, not user friendly and do not determine the students’ real capabilities. furthermore, the activities within dofas might not show any difference from those who work hard and those who do not and they might cause difficulty for the course leader to retrieve any helpful and meaningful information about the students. this can result in either the students failing the assessment or be deterred from continuing with the assessment. it can also cause the student to drop out http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 342022 40(2): 34-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) from the whole course, to stop or to just be frustrated to the point of taking long to complete the course. ultimately, they just cause frustration and dejection from the work being pursued. there is a growing body of research that suggests that improving the quality of formative assessment strategies increases students’ motivation to participate in online assessments (gikandi, morrow & davis, 2011; walker, topping & rodrigues, 2008). quality of all systems in education is important because it touches on aspects of online assessment right through to the strategies used. quality in education is seen as the conformance to standards, fitness for purpose, excellence and overall, it is seen as effectiveness in achieving institutional goals (andersson & palm, 2017). to be in line with the changes in an odl institution towards teaching online, there was a need for academic capacity building that led to several lecturers enrolling for a master’s in education in odl (med in odl) (unisa, 2017). the dropout rate in the course was as high as 80% (10/50 students completing). through institutional research it was found that the high dropout rate in the med in odl courses, was partly influenced by the nature of online formative assessment strategies (unisa, 2017). it was against this background that this paper investigated the experiences of students with dofas in the med in odl. 2. formative assessment formative assessment is characterised by several purposes that include a feed-out function of assessment, assessment of learning (formative and diagnostic) and assessment as learning which fosters rigorous learning processes in which the learner can engage with tasks that will eventually be assessed (heritage, popham & wiliam, 2012; wiliam & thompson, 2008). formative assessment is understood to be the collection of students’ data and their learning processes, to make particular educational decisions (gikandi, morrow & davis, 2011). effective integration of formative assessment in online learning environments has the potential to offer an appropriate structure for sustained meaningful interactions among learners and the lecturer, and to foster the development of effective learning communities that facilitate meaningful learning and assessment (walker, topping & rodrigues, 2008). in reviewing the literature about online formative assessment and its pedagogical implications, one cannot help but acknowledge the obvious challenges to its implementation because this requires well-structured strategies that are new to most online educators. 3. student dropout and retention in odl university courses from the researcher’s personal observation of the university data in the med in odl, in some cases students failed in their attempt to master activities/assignments or completely failed to master the activities assignments from dofas. their achievement in these activities cumulatively contributed to the bad results at the end of the semester course and were then able to pass well within other types of assessment strategies but ultimately did not succeed in some types of assessment strategies. this happened irrespective of whether the assessments were weighted. hence, cumulatively, they then failed the course. this observation was supported by a “rivergram” (figure 1) that originated from a united kingdom open university (ukou) research that showed students progressing on a course but dropping out from assignments that fell in a particular strategy. during certain times within particular assessment types. for example, assignment 1could have been group work and a lot of students did not make it and assignment 2 could have been a portfolio or from digital communication platforms. a substantial number of students are struggling as shown in figure1. also note that the width of http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 352022 40(2): 35-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 makina students experiences of demotivating online formative assessment strategies the river at any point (indicating course assessment) is proportional to the number of students who were still active on the course (simpson, 2013). the rivergram is based on the evidence that assessment or assignments can drive the dropout of students. figure 1: “rivergram” showing the percentages of students progressing and dropping out during a ukou foundation course module (simpson, 2013) 4. motivation in online formative assessment a student’s motivation towards participation in online assessment and learning has often been reported to be one of the critical factors for success within e-learning (harandi, 2015; gormley, codella, & shell, 2012). the learners’ attention and maintaining their engagement is vital, and if this is ignored, the outcome will be limited participation by students (prensky, 2010). motivation is generally defined as the process whereby goal-directed activity is instigated, sustained and controlled by a construct that can originate from the interaction of conscious and unconscious factors (keller, 2015). motivation encompasses the real aspects of participation in online formative assessment which embodies a behaviour, which when started, must be kept going (bekele, 2010). motivated learners are more likely to undertake challenging activities that enable active engagement, enjoyment and adoption of a deep approach to learning. they will exhibit enhanced performance, persistence and creativity (brophy, 2010). these factors could include the intensity of desire or need, incentive or reward value of the goal or expectations of the individual (harandi, 2015).covington (2000) described motivated students as individuals who willingly persist on learning tasks that move them toward learning goals. in online motivated environments tasks are goal-oriented and course leaders should have the ability to manipulate online formative assessment strategies to achieve those goals. this is because in online learning environments motivation can influence what students learn, how they learn and when they choose to learn (harandi, 2015). this paper reports results from a dissertation on dofas that were carried out from the students’ point of view. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 362022 40(2): 36-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) 5. students’ involvement in developing online formative assessment strategies although formative assessment is a key component of the teaching and learning process, little evidence exists to prove that lecturers use their students to inform and guide the design of formative assessment strategies. students’ perceptions in designing assessment tools should be key in influencing the way students proceed with learning (erhardt, 2014). quantitative studies by griffin, mcgaw and care (2012) have demonstrated that students tend to employ different learning approaches or strategies in different situations, according to their perceptions of the assessment requirements. therefore, the involvement of students in developing assessment strategies would be a positive and relevant approach to teaching and learning online. relevant studies in education, especially in higher education institutions, advise that students should be included in the process of developing online assessment (sewell, frith & colvin, 2010; murnane & sharkey, 2006; fisher, waldrip & dorman 2005). this is in alignment with student centeredness which requires that students become the focus of the educational process to take progressive responsibility for their learning. this study assumes that there are many advantages in involving students in decision making about online assessment tasks and strategies. it is important to study the characteristics of assessment strategies from the students’ perspectives and then utilise the results to integrate into online formative assessment strategies used (shepard, 2000). sewell, frith and colvin (2010) mention that students’ perceptions of online assessment strategies will affect their motivation to approach them and ultimately the teaching approach of the lecturers in an odl. 6. teaching with online formative assessment strategies identifying characteristics of online formative assessment strategies may aid in designing better assessment strategies that motivate students to persist with their studies. the approach in learning adopted by an individual student is not normally an attribute of the student but is their response to the perceived demands of any learning task (laurillard, 2002). in other words, it is how students respond to an assessment (do they like it or not) that determines an individual’s ability or approach to learning (kauffman, 2015). therefore, lecturers in online teaching environments need new attitudes, knowledge, skills and ways of operating that will motivate students to learn in online environments (barker, 2003). identifying dofas that cause problems for most of the students contribute to success with most students. it also assists lecturers, coordinators and instructional designers in odl universities to design quality and motivating online formative strategies. this study will provide lecturers and instructional designers with the opportunities to learn and have the information required to design motivating online assessment strategies from the students’ point of view. for example, scientific research has developed a formula for motivation in learning that was first recognised during the twentieth century (wigfield, cambria & eccles, 2012) and states that: learning motivation = (assumed possibility of accomplishing task) x (perceived value of task) if a student sees an online formative assessment activity as invaluable or not possible to accomplish or both they are automatically demotivated to do it. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 372022 40(2): 37-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 makina students experiences of demotivating online formative assessment strategies 7. the research methodology this study followed a developmental case study research design of a qualitative phenomenographic approach. phenomenography provided a means of collecting data that combined analytic and systemic processes to examine the generic components of the online formative assessment strategies as perceived and experienced by the students themselves. purposive sampling was used to select the 12 lecturers who were current or past students of the med in odl qualification. this type of sampling was chosen because participants were students in the med in odl course and therefore, had experience with the online formative assessment strategies that were used for the course. using an interview guide, semi-structured interviews were the main data collection method that gave participants freedom to respond to questions according to their inclination. participants were first exposed to all the online formative assessment strategies that were used in the med in odl course (appendix 1) and then asked to identify and describe at least four online formative assessment strategies that they perceived as demotivating to their learning in the med in odl course. the interviews that were first piloted were audio recorded and transcribed to identify the experiences that were related to the research questions. results were categorised qualitatively into students’ descriptive narratives that resulted in emergent themes focused mainly on dofas. themes and sub-themes of dofas were identified using the percentages generated from the questionnaires. the participants’ confidentiality and anonymity were ensured by using pseudonyms/codes ma#1, ma#2, ma#3… ma#10 during data collection, analysis and reporting stages. permission to conduct research that dealt with the institutional staff was granted by the research permission sub-committee (rpsc) and a consent form was sent to the participants. 8. the theoretical framework in order to investigate how dofas contribute to the failure of students to persist with particular assessments online, the self-determination theory (sdt) describes what motivates students in assessment online and its relationship with the design of online formative assessment. it is against this background that insights from the sdt guided the investigation of dofas as it encompassed all the aspects of motivation and online educational settings (deci & ryan, 2012). among the theories of motivation, the sdt offers a broad framework for understanding the factors that promote human motivation and personality that concerns people’s inherent growth tendencies and innate psychological needs (ryan & deci, 2017). for example, extrinsically motivated students are motivated by gaining good grades, avoiding negative consequences or because the task has utility value, such as passing a course in order to earn a degree (ryan & deci, 2000). online formative assessment strategies need to be designed effectively and efficiently by nurturing the social technical environment in order to motivate students to learn online. 9. results and discussions 9.1 the biographic profile of participants a snapshot of the demographic and biographic profile of the participants was represented before analysing the experiences of students with online formative assessment strategies that demotivated them to learn. the demographic profile of the participants included their age, gender, race and the academic qualifications as illustrated in the pie charts in figure 2. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 382022 40(2): 38-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) students experiences of demotivating online formative assessment strategies 9 figure 2: biographic data analysis the student sample (n=12) is shown as frequencies and percentages in pie charts 1, 2, 3, and 4. the findings reveal that 58 per cent of students (lecturers) involved were in possession of doctoral degrees, 33% had master’s degrees and 8% had completed modules towards the med in odl postgraduate courses. all participants possessed the required qualifications to teach at an odl institution of higher learning and all were employed at the institution. fifty-eight per cent had completed the med in odl degree and 25 per cent had completed just the certificate in odl, while 8% had completed some modules towards the completion of the two qualifications. as indicated, the certificate in odl was a stage in their process of obtaining an med in odl. the participants’ lecturing experience at the institution ranged from 3 to 28 years. pie chart 1 depicts 75% of the participants being female, with the male participants’ representation being just a quarter of the overall sample. pie chart 2 indicates that most of the participants were not very young since most of the participants were between 45 and 55 years of age and constituted about 68% of the group. the rest of the participants were still relatively young, being 45 years of age and below. of the participants aged between 46 and 55 years, females (75%) were in the figure 2: biographic data analysis the student sample (n=12) is shown as frequencies and percentages in pie charts 1, 2, 3, and 4. the findings reveal that 58 per cent of students (lecturers) involved were in possession of doctoral degrees, 33% had master’s degrees and 8% had completed modules towards the med in odl postgraduate courses. all participants possessed the required qualifications to teach at an odl institution of higher learning and all were employed at the institution. fiftyeight per cent had completed the med in odl degree and 25 per cent had completed just the certificate in odl, while 8% had completed some modules towards the completion of the two qualifications. as indicated, the certificate in odl was a stage in their process of obtaining an med in odl. the participants’ lecturing experience at the institution ranged from 3 to 28 years. pie chart 1 depicts 75% of the participants being female, with the male participants’ representation being just a quarter of the overall sample. pie chart 2 indicates that most of the participants were not very young since most of the participants were between 45 and 55 years of age and constituted about 68% of the group. the rest of the participants were still relatively young, being 45 years of age and below. of the participants aged between 46 and 55 years, females (75%) were in the majority. the racial distribution indicates that black students (66.7%) were in the majority, followed by white students (17%) in terms of representation. after identifying the demographic characteristics of the participants, all online formative assessment strategies used in the med in odl course were identified before streamlining the demotivating online formative assessment strategies. 9.2 presentation and discussion of students’ experiences after the exposition to the participants of all the online formative assessment strategies used in the med in odl course, figure 3 shows the different categories of themes that http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 392022 40(2): 39-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 makina students experiences of demotivating online formative assessment strategies were commonly identified by students as dofas. ten participants involved in the interviews were named in codes from ma#1 to ma#10 to protect the direct identification of them in this study. the different categories of the main themes are discussed as participants shared their experiences of dofas. students experiences of demotivating online formative assessment strategies 10 majority. the racial distribution indicates that black students (66.7%) were in the majority, followed by white students (17%) in terms of representation. after identifying the demographic characteristics of the participants, all online formative assessment strategies used in the med in odl course were identified before streamlining the demotivating online formative assessment strategies. 9.2 presentation and discussion of students’ experiences after the exposition to the participants of all the online formative assessment strategies used in the med in odl course, figure 3 shows the different categories of themes that were commonly identified by students as dofas. ten participants involved in the interviews were named in codes from ma#1 to ma#10 to protect the direct identification of them in this study. the different categories of the main themes are discussed as participants shared their experiences of dofas. figure 3: themes of demotivating online formative assessment strategies (author’s own compilation) theme 1: group activities most participants expressed their unhappiness with group assessment strategies because they experienced challenges in adapting to group activities that were required of students in an odl environment (ma#1, ma#3, ma#4and ma#5). they asserted that there was no direct relationship between the students who worked hard and the students who did nothing in the group. as ma#5 stated: 1. group activities 2. digital interactive platforms 3. peer assessment 4. achievement scores 5. digital communication platforms 6. using social media 7. feedback and turnitin demotivating online formative figure 3: themes of demotivating online formative assessment strategies (author’s own compilation) theme 1: group activities most participants expressed their unhappiness with group assessment strategies because they experienced challenges in adapting to group activities that were required of students in an odl environment (ma#1, ma#3, ma#4and ma#5). they asserted that there was no direct relationship between the students who worked hard and the students who did nothing in the group. as ma#5 stated: i got into a group of six. we had an activity to carry out some important research and record results, but no one did any work except me. this meant that i had to do the activity on my own. …. we all got the pass mark from my effort. in another one, i didn’t do as much work and we all failed. …. i could not report my group members because …. i would not want anyone to report me. but the situation continued until i completed my course. ma#4 further commented: surely, working in a group online is more complicated than working in a face-to-face group, therefore, more time should have been given to us. the deadlines were too tight, and i always never did my role in the group. it also seems no one was bothered by my non-participation. most of the participants concurred that they did not know how much they were expected to contribute towards their achievement marks – the minimum amount that a student could contribute in the group was not elaborated on. this led to some students contributing many pages of information while others contributed very little, depending on how much they thought was needed. this implied that students received unfair achievement scores. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 402022 40(2): 40-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) some participants (ma#1, ma#3 and ma#4) agreed that the time given to do assignments in groups was not well managed. students require time and flexibility for the completion of their tasks. it seems as if course leaders tend to use the “one-size fits all” facilitation approach that does not consider the varying abilities, needs and interest of students. ma#4 commented: surely, working in a group online is more complicated than working in a face-to-face group, therefore, more time should have been given to us. the deadlines were too tight and i always never achieving my role in the group. it also seems no one was bothered by my non-participation. participants also mentioned the absence of course leaders in discussion forums (ma#2, ma#3). some participants (ma#1, ma#6, ma#7) concurred that groupwork was disorganised. ma#7 observed that: group work in this course is disorganized. i feel that i was just posting ideas to myself. i also never had time to look at and comment on other people’s postings… it was obvious that the course leaders did not also follow what was happening in discussion forums. in addition, in most cases no one knew if all students ever contributed to the forum and if so, who. ma# 1 further commented: the course leaders do not arrange the groups strategically and therefore fail to monitor their functionality or their progress. i was for some reason always unable to participate in the group activities and yet, the course leader never noticed or perhaps he chose not to notice. time management is very important in group work. largely, the participants commented that many challenges seemed to reduce their interest in group or project activities. theme 2: digital interactive platforms: discussion forums, diigo annotation, grid contributions and skill builders a discussion forum is one area where most participants in the study expressed concern regarding the design of these for productive learning. they expressed concern that domination of active participation in online discussion forums inadvertently de-emphasised the importance of discussions, especially if course leaders paid less attention to the quality of participation (ma#4, ma#8 ma#9’) .ma#10 had this to say: i work and could not post as many contributions as i would have wanted to…it appeared that the interest of the course leader was in the number of postings…i felt that the course leaders should have checked for quality contributions. this was clearly unfair for the hardworking students. ma#2 further commented: our course leaders were rarely involved in the discussion forum apart from the point where they gave us marks. it was not very nice since as students we did our own thing without guidance. i never understood what the purpose of the discussion forums was supposed to be. this demotivated me greatly. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 412022 40(2): 41-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 makina students experiences of demotivating online formative assessment strategies students also mentioned the absence of course leaders in discussion forums (ma#2 and ma3). this resonates with anderson (2008) who concurred that when academics contribute to the discussion forums, the students’ interaction increases. even if it is only periodically, it helps to encouraged students to participate. diigo annotation, grid contributions and skill builders a grid or skill builder could be a table, a diagram or a constructed space used to present the ideas. effective, efficient and engaging learning is a product that is achieved from a combination of factors, of which communication is one of the real major factors in distance education (kauffman, 2015). according to the participants, the communication platforms that were offered in the med course such as diigo annotation, grid contributions and skill builders were not readily accessible and were also difficult to use. some experiences are shared below. ma#10, is quoted here, when you asked me about diigo annotation as an assessment strategy, i had already forgotten about it. i leant about diigo platforms for research groups on my own. even up to now, i do not really understand what it is for…. i thought the role of the course leader was to guide us on what diigo annotation is all about. i did not do that assignment. i almost failed because of it. ma#2 further comments that: it was my first time to be involved in grid contributions and skill builders. i did not get the purpose of contributing in a grid. information was just dumped in the grid and i never went back to use the grid for anything. some of these things need to be re-thought. i do not think that there was anything to learn from these exercises except to waste my time. nothing really constructive from them. some participants ((ma#2, ma#9) indicated the existence of bully students who dominated the grid contributions within in-group activities and that course leaders seemed to ignore this obvious challenge. they were concerned about the lack of control of cyber bullying in grid activities. online bullying is a huge problem, especially to students who are not adequately equipped to defend themselves (dhet, 2012). theme 3: peer assessment the reluctance to use peer assessment by participants who were themselves lecturers imply that there are more challenges with peer assessment than what is generally thought. this also concurs with participants who said that achievement marks given to them by their peers were not reflective of what they had achieved (ma#3). students also said they lacked information about how to successfully carry out peer assessments and therefore preferred the course leader to oversee the scoring of their work. participant ma#9 commended: …my colleagues often fell back on correcting punctuation, grammar and unimportant concerns, rather than focusing on the content and context issues. i became very upset …, i did not even know the colleagues involved. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 422022 40(2): 42-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) furthermore, another participant (ma#1) also expressed her dismay with peer assessment: personally, i don’t think online learning is ready for the application peer assessment. students hold extreme ends of emotions. this can lead to them giving you very high marks or very low marks. this is very unfair. it can lead to unnecessary class and student conflicts that can destroy any future collaborative activities in the med in odl course. students were less optimistic about the current use of peer assessment in online formative assessment. this was due to concerns surrounding the management, validity and reliability of students having the responsibility for awarding grades to their peers in the context of online formative assessments. there seems to be no trust among peers in online formative assessments. there was also mention of peer assessment being vulnerable to being used as an opportunity to cyber bully other students or to make students feel incompetent. this agrees with leahy et al. (2005: 23) who argued that “students should not be giving peer students a grade that will be part of the final assessment”. theme 4: achievement scores during interviews, several participants said that lecturers were not fair in the allocation of achievement marks within available rubrics. the most serious demotivating factors mentioned by students was a lack of balance or fairness in the distribution of achievement scores in online assessments. participants did not understand how the marks were distributed and therefore allocated within the rubric. participant ma#7 made the following remarks: what gave me the most motivation to carry on with online formative assessment was the fact that i needed to pass my assignments with a given mark. if they don’t give marks in the course during formative assessment, what would be the purpose of doing assignments? correspondingly, ma#3 agreed that: i will work 80% of the times more than the regular days or more than some other times, if i expect that, at some point it will be awarded some marks. i don’t care whether its online or not. i still need some marks to know where i am going within my studies. students had different interpretations of the scores they earned in online formative assessments. for some, scores meant the extent to which they studied, and therefore translated into hard work and effort. most participants shared that their primary motivation was to achieve higher marks in online formative assessment so that they would be guaranteed a pass in their courses. without the awarding of marks by the course leader participants expressed high demotivation. the above discussion implies that formative online assessment can act as a stimulus (behaviourist reasoning) that motivates learning, when rewards (e.g. scores in this scenario) are attached to it (deci & ryan, 2012). theme 5: digital communication spaces: e-portfolio, blogs and wikis mind maps and flow charts participants recorded quite comprehensive experiences of disadvantages created by the lack of technical skills in the use and access of digital spaces in the med in odl. they felt that the main impediment to working in digital spaces was their lack of technical skills that include the “know-how” to operate in these spaces (ma#10 ma#9). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 432022 40(2): 43-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 makina students experiences of demotivating online formative assessment strategies participant ma#10 indicated: i originally could not successfully register for the e-portfolios that we had to use. when i finally managed to register and get into the e-portfolio, more challenges began. there were lots of unexplained keys and instructions which i either never understood or …i still failed to see how they worked. participant ma#1 had this to say: the e-portfolio was a nightmare as i could not make head or tail of how to use it. i failed it because of the impediment in technical aspects and not because i did not have the information needed for those spaces…i still do not understand what i was doing within that e-portfolio. participant ma#7 asserted: it was my first experience to tweet and blog... and it was not easy for me to use these social media tools. imagine that i needed to them for learning. when i thought i had mastered the art of using tweets and blogs no student responded to my attempted sharings. ma#4 confirmed the above problem: i battled to gain a clear understanding of how to use blogs and wikis in order to complete the set tasks that had been given...there were a lot of technical issues that were challenging in the use of blogs and wikis. that i needed to understand in order to organizing my thoughts. i failed all the assignments and am re-doing the module again. most participants wished they had more time to explore the use of the required digital spaces (ma#9 ma#1). digital and technical support can encourage students to access their learning environments where they can work collaboratively with their peers. in a survey of wiki users by hester (2010), findings indicated that ease of use and relative advantage were the most important factors that positively influence the use of wiki technology. mind maps and flow charts a mind map is a diagram that connects information around a central subject while a flowchart represents an algorithm, workflow or process used in analysing, designing, documenting or managing a process and programmes in various fields (hramiak, 2018). several participants mentioned that they were not comfortable to work with mind maps or flow charts because of their lack of technical expertise in the construction of these (ma#1 ma # 4, ma # 6, ma # 9, ma # 10). ma#5 responded by saying: irrespective of the many types of mind maps and flow charts spaces that i found on the internet they were not easy to access and then it was difficult to construct my own within these examples. i did all my assignments in a trial and error mode. up to now, i do not know how to utilise mind maps and flow charts for constructive learning. participant ma#8 further commented: as much as there were many advantages given online about flowcharts and mind maps, i did not find them easy to construct. i needed a lot of guidance on how to take best advantage of them. there is need for the technical and educational support in the use of flowcharts and mind maps in order to appreciate their advantage. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 442022 40(2): 44-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) theme 6: using social media social media can offer many possibilities as far as online learning is concerned; however, there are noticeable limitations that go with it if students do not know how to use it in the proper way. the inability to work within social media was mentioned by many participants. participants ma#4, ma#6, ma#9 and ma#10 were very negative about the use of social media for learning as it was not easy to access and work within it for productive learning. participant ma#6 had this to say: sometimes learning and implementation simultaneously is not easy.... my main issue was to learn how to use instagram whatsapp and telegram etc. that were new to me. now learning how to use them for meaningful learning was a difficult additional issue. it never worked for me and i didn’t have time to learn it. ma#5 further had this to say: i find it very difficult to learn in a social media space like whatsapp and then concurrently play in the space. we play dirty in these spaces to de-stress. for example, i communicate well with my friends using whatsapp and telegraph about politics, being tired or being ill. it becomes difficult to ask my friends to show me how to solve a mathematical problem because its simply not a serious space. for me using social media for learning was a total waste of time. participants ma#1, ma#3, ma#5 generally thought that adequate orientation and support in the use of social media was not provided to enable them to appreciate the use of the social media spaces for productive learning. participants did not regard the use of social media as beneficial to their learning as most students thought it was a platform to play. from the results students noted that social media platforms were difficult to exchange for serious learning platforms since there seems to be a thin line between social media for learning and social media for play. howard and parks (2012) noted there are still untrue hypotheses on the advantages of social media in research. theme 7: feedback and turnitin several participants (ma#3, ma#6 ma#7 and ma#10) indicated that the feedback provided was ineffective. most participants commented that the majority of the course leaders concentrated on language editing. ma#10 had this to say about irrelevant feedback: the feedback that was offered to me was mostly superficial. feedback from a course leader was some given ticks in the assignments. in some cases, i received comments like good, can be improved, not relevant. it was not a reflection of my shortcomings or my needs. so, i stopped looking at it. ma#1supported this by saying: most of our online assessment was always given language feedback of spellings comas full stops etc. furthermore, i got comments like ‘the sentence is too long’, ‘this is passive…’ ‘this is a double negative’. i needed to get comments that would improve the understanding of that part of my study. untimely feedback was a common problem identified by participants. black and william (2009) contend that students learn faster and more effectively when they are provided with the feedback on their current performance. to determine the size of the gap between students’ http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 452022 40(2): 45-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 makina students experiences of demotivating online formative assessment strategies understanding, action to close the gap must be in the form of relevant feedback that functions to move students toward stated learning outcomes (timperley, 2013). turnitin was not being used as a teaching or assessment tool but just as a plagiarism tool (ma#3, ma#6, ma#10). participant ma#3 commented: i was excluded from a module because my similarity index % was higher than 30%. it was because i had used many references in that assignment and was therefore punished for that. many references make your similarity percentage higher. it was those who used less references and did not do a lot of research who gained a lower similarity percentage and therefore passed the module. bostock and taylor (2014) commented that turnitin must not be used specifically for plagiarism and excluding students from courses but instead could also be utilised to assess students formatively. a synopsis of recommendations derived from the interviews it was not only important that students identified the dofas but also that it was important to find out the possibility of improving dofas in the med in odl course. during the interviews with the participants, suggestions of possible improvements were categorised into five best practices (figure 4). best practice situated in real online environments around students offers a direction for creating effective and efficient online formative assessment strategies. they play an important role in the guidance to quality designs of online formative assessment strategies that do not demotivate students to learn online. students experiences of demotivating online formative assessment strategies 19 figure 4: best practices for online formative assessment strategies  students’ involvement in the design of assessment strategies students should be afforded a chance to have a say in the type of and design of online formative assessment strategies that they use. online assessment is moving away from the notion that the student is a passive recipient of information and moving toward the concept that the learning process is active and learner-centred (yazon, mayer-smith & redfield, 2002). when students have a say in the issues of assessment strategies, then online formative assessment motivates the students to work (laurillard, 2002). students who feel that they are in control of their learning, are motivated, actively participate and take advantage of learning opportunities and resources. recent studies advocate for including students in developing assessment tools because assessment becomes a mutual activity between students and the course leaders and therefore adds more value to the learning process (falchikov, 2005; linn & miller, 2005).  managing student digital, technical and academic support adequate and ongoing student support is vital for learners to engage productively in the development of self-regulated learning dispositions that are an important requirement for motivation in online learning (ludwig-hardman & dunclap, 2003). e-tutors, sometimes called online tutors, are a crucial part of the learner support system since they drive the interactions, within a learning community in which meaningful, authentic learning takes place. e-tutors encourage active student participation in the class, help students to interpret the tutorial matter and provides a systematic structure for effective learner support. through ongoing monitoring of learning and provision of adequate formative feedback students are motivated to work. to best practices 5.managing staff dvelopment for online assessment 4.relevant feedback to online formative assessment 3.evaluating the quality of online formative assessment strategies 2.managing student digital, technical and academic support 1.students' involvement in assessment strategies figure 4: best practices for online formative assessment strategies • students’ involvement in the design of assessment strategies students should be afforded a chance to have a say in the type of and design of online formative assessment strategies that they use. online assessment is moving away from the notion that the student is a passive recipient of information and moving toward the concept that the learning process is active and learner-centred (yazon, mayer-smith & redfield, 2002). when students have a say in the issues of assessment strategies, then online formative http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 462022 40(2): 46-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) assessment motivates the students to work (laurillard, 2002). students who feel that they are in control of their learning, are motivated, actively participate and take advantage of learning opportunities and resources. recent studies advocate for including students in developing assessment tools because assessment becomes a mutual activity between students and the course leaders and therefore adds more value to the learning process (falchikov, 2005; linn & miller, 2005). • managing student digital, technical and academic support adequate and ongoing student support is vital for learners to engage productively in the development of self-regulated learning dispositions that are an important requirement for motivation in online learning (ludwig-hardman & dunclap, 2003). e-tutors, sometimes called online tutors, are a crucial part of the learner support system since they drive the interactions, within a learning community in which meaningful, authentic learning takes place. e-tutors encourage active student participation in the class, help students to interpret the tutorial matter and provides a systematic structure for effective learner support. through ongoing monitoring of learning and provision of adequate formative feedback students are motivated to work. to minimise demotivation to work online, digital support should be offered to students who encounter technical problems such as accessing their teaching and learning environments in which they work collaboratively with their peers. increased digital support can for example help students learn how to navigate their way through the learning management system (lms) resulting in better motivated students. course leaders must give meaningful, timely and valuable feedback supported by well-designed guidelines since it is a critical component of students support. • evaluating the quality of online formative assessment strategies there is need to evaluate the quality of online formative assessment strategies that are used in postgraduate courses. this is important to provide designers and course leaders with feedback that could guide them into adapting the new practices aligned to the needs of students for the improvement of dofas (nicholas & thomas, 2000). evaluating online formative assessment strategies as learning objects to “determine the merit, worth and value of things, as the products of that process”, is one of the most important quality assurance measures in teaching and learning (scriven, 1994:1; nesbit, belfer & vargo, 2002). evaluation must be an ongoing process during any stage in the design or the implementation of the learning object since it focuses on the usability and the pedagogical design of the learning object (williams, 2000). • managing information and communication technology those who are teaching and learning with online technology must be cognisant of the range of technologies used in the design, delivery, management and support of online distance education. the use of the affordances of ict must be a conscious design decision by the course leaders to offer possibilities for a more interactive engagement in their design of online formative assessment strategies (mccombs, 2000). the competences and skills that are required for the learner today are different as they include: good communication skills, the ability to learn independently (whatever it means); social skills (ethics, positive attitudes, responsibility); teamwork; ability to adapt to changing circumstances; thinking skills; knowledge navigation (where to get information) and being creative as well as risk takers (bates & sangra, 2011). therefore, there is need to manage information and communication technology. the challenge is to ensure that the technologies selected for building assessment http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 472022 40(2): 47-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 makina students experiences of demotivating online formative assessment strategies strategies enable achievement of the goals that have been set for distance education. providing students with a supportive learning environment as well as user-friendly tools to interact with peers could help them to enjoy and persist with their learning online. • managing staff development for online assessment course leaders themselves must be competent in online spaces and be motivated to do more for their students. therefore, staff development for online assessment and technology is critical and vital to a collaborative process towards e-teaching and assessment (oyeleke, 2012) course leaders in odl institutions must also be provided with the opportunities to interact and share collaborative ideas through, for example short-term courses, workshops and seminars across universities, provinces, regions or countries for them to be innovative and develop new ideas. without staff development and without the opportunities to learn how to use the online equipment, course leaders may fail to use online technology in their teaching environment. occurrences of unethical behaviour associated with online formative assessment strategies should be avoided as those involved with online assessment are unfortunately not immune to unethical practices (crumbley, flinn & reichelt. 2010). the available standards of ethical practice and the issues associated with the implementation of these standards in online assessment should be part of the online assessment practices. unethical practices demotivate students to persist with online formative assessment. 10. discussion the aim of this paper was to share the experiences of students with online formative assessment strategies that are demotivating in their learning in a postgraduate course. the focus of this paper was to align online formative assessment strategies with the students’ needs in odl settings. therefore, through the experiences of students with dofas, the paper also examined the challenges regarding the high rates of dropout (called stop-outs in some platforms) that contributed to the low throughput and completion rates at odl universities in general. the socio technical perspective (std) serves as the fundamental component to unite all components of the study in framing and supporting the design, facilitation and direction of the online formative assessment strategies and motivational processes. the selfdetermination theory (sdt) makes distinctions between different types of motivation and the consequences of them. results show that in most cases, students shared similar experiences of working with online formative assessment strategies that demotivated them to learn. it must however be noted that online formative assessment strategies can be demotivating through the nature of how they were originally constructed. in many cases the strategies themselves were also specifically demotivating in the way they were managed or set up by the course leaders. this finding of students being demotivated to work in a substantial number of online formative assessment strategies are an indication of challenges facing the university with dropout, completion and throughput rates. there were some good indications from most of the participants that the current practices of online formative assessment provided limited motivation for their learning. these problems are partly related to the design of online formative assessment strategies. in some cases, students had different views about demotivating online formative assessment strategies. however, what was important was the possibility of improving the online formative assessment strategies for the med in odl course. online formative assessment strategies have the potential to act as powerful tools to support teaching and learning in odl if they are used in a way that can motivate students to learn online. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 482022 40(2): 48-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) due to the nature of interactivity in online environments among students and the course leader, the need for careful consideration during the design and choice of online formative assessment strategies is key to address students’ motivation to learn. students’ experiences in relation to demotivating online formative assessment strategies are important factors in shaping and improving the design and development of online formative assessment. however, it must be noted that the recommendations discussed here are derived from a particular case study of one course at an odl institution, and they cannot be generalised to other areas of odl. 11. conclusion online formative assessment strategies, though complex within the teaching and learning process, play a role as special and essential components central to online teaching and learning. the study offers guidance, not only to the improvement of online formative assessment strategies but also to those involved in the design, development and implementation of online formative assessment strategies. it provides a prompt for course leaders to examine and reflect on learning and assessment strategies. in probing students’ experiences with online formative assessment strategies, this study confirms its potential to raise standards in higher education. involving students in developing online formative assessment strategies gives more confidence to the students to learn as a sense of 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corwin press. sewell, j.p., frith, k.h. & colvin, m.m. 2010. online assessment strategies: a primer. journal of online learning and teaching, 6(1): 297-305. shin, d. 2014. a socio-technical framework for internet-of-things design: a human-centered design for the internetof -things. telematics and informatics, 31(4): 519-531. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.tele.2014.02.003 simpson, o. 2013. supporting students for success in online and distance education. new york: routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203095737 timperley, h. 2013. feedback. in j. hattie & e. m. anderman (eds.). international guide to student achievement, (pp.402-404). new york: routledge. university of south africa (unisa) 2017. open distance-learning policy. available at http:// www.unisa.ac.za. ushida, e. 2005 the role of students’ attitudes and motivation in second language learning in online language courses. calico journal, 23(1): 49-78. https://doi.org/10.1558/cj.v23i1.49-78 walker, d.j., topping, k. & rodrigues, s. 2008. student reflections on formative e-assessment: expectations and perceptions. learn, media technol., 33(3): 221-34. https:// doi.org/10.1080/17439880802324178 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v4i1.131 https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12200 https://doi.org/10.1086/505060 https://doi.org/10.21432/t25c8c https://doi.org/10.21432/t25c8c https://elearningindustry.com/arcs-model-of-motivation https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2014.02.003 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2014.02.003 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203095737 http://www.unisa.ac.za http://www.unisa.ac.za https://doi.org/10.1558/cj.v23i1.49-78 https://doi.org/10.1080/17439880802324178 https://doi.org/10.1080/17439880802324178 512022 40(2): 51-51 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 makina students experiences of demotivating online formative assessment strategies wigfield, a., cambria, j. & eccles, j.s. 2012. motivation in education. in r.m. ryan (ed.). the oxford handbook of human motivation (pp.463-478). new york, ny: oxford university press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195399820.013.0026 wiliam, d. & thompson, m. 2008. integrating assessment with instruction: what will it take to make it work? in c.a. dwyer (ed.), the future of assessment: shaping teaching and learning (pp.53-82). mahwah, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. https://doi. org/10.4324/9781315086545-3 yazon, j.m.o., mayer-smith, j.a. & redfield, r.j. 2002. does the medium change the message? the impact of a web-based genetics course on university student’s perspectives on learning and teaching. computers & education, 38: 267-285. https://doi.org/10.1016/ s0360-1315(01)00081-1 appendices appendix 1: formative assessment strategies used for the med in odl course 1. essay writing 2. assignment writing 3. group research activity 4. individual research activity 5. article writing 6. google docs 7. flow charts 8. twitter 9. mind maps 10. wikis 11. power point 12. weebly 13. group based activities 14. blogs 15. discussion forums 16. skype 17. grid contribution 18. emails 19. skill builders 20. telegraphs 21. whatsapp 22. quizzes 23. instagram 24. audios 25. awarding of marks 26. podcasts 27. writing coach assistance 28. multiple choice 29. selfassessment 30. professors' videos 31. peer assessment 32. summative tests 33. rubrics 34. turnitin 35. learning journal 36. e-portfolio 37. debating 38. group based assessments 39. audiovisual 40. class feedback 41. social media(other) 42. powerpoint 43. diigo annotation 44. annotated bibliography 45. continuous tests http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.4 https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780195399820.013.0026 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315086545-3 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315086545-3 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0360-1315(01)00081-1 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0360-1315(01)00081-1 12021 39(2): 1-3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.1 editorial editorial a year ago, the new editorial team published its first edition of perspectives in education (pie). in the past year, pie has increased its publication output from a meagre one publication per year to four high quality publications: march, june, september and december. annually, the march publication is earmarked as a special issue focused on a specific topic. every issue carries a minimum of 20 articles of good quality covering a broad spectrum of educational topics of relevance. we are also extremely proud that perspectives in education is listed on the ici world of journals list and has recently been included on the doaj while remaining included on the ibss, scopus and dhet lists. because of our listing we are deemed accredited nationally and in many overseas countries and have recently received articles for publication from russia, morocco, poland, usa, australia, lesotho, zimbabwe as well as numerous other countries. in this issue our lead article is by oron jackson (university of redlands) and matthew witenstein (university of dayton) and addresses the need to create research spaces for underserved communities. the paper is aimed at engaging researchers and practitioners in an intellectual dialog that may contribute to the ever-expanding research on intersectionality to include the united states, european union, south africa and other global communities. it is argued that intersectionality has extended beyond the tenets of race, gender and class to include queer communities, religious issues, literacy concerns, pedagogical styles, etc. the article encourages discourse and provides a roadmap to examine intersectionality’s expansion critically and how that expansion can aid in improving the lives of k–12 public education students on an international scale. moreover, the paper addresses whether intersectionality or its expansion served as a pivotal voice for marginalised communities and structures domestically and abroad. in this issue of pie, we also devote a large part to the increasing importance of research in higher education. the articles explore several important aspects ranging from the aspirations of post-school youth (devika naidoo) and the school-university mathematics skills gap (ilsa basson and madri jankowitz) to very specific curriculum aspects. ethel abe vitallis chikoko and stella lubinga discuss the link between outcomes expectancy and career decision-making author: jan nieuwenhuis doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i2.1 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(2): 1-3 published: 11 june 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.1 22021 39(2): 2-3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.1 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) self-efficacy of stem students in a south african university. nozuko mbutho tackles the thorny issue of plagiarism and explores the literature on undergraduate and postgraduate student perspectives of plagiarism and related concepts in a global context. her findings shed important insight on how students perceive plagiarism. this issue also includes two articles dealing with teaching and learning in health sciences. in the first, reina abraham looks at how to adapt the delivery of clinical skills remotely while róan slabbert and jeannette du plessis explore quality assurance of peer assisted learning of health sciences extended curriculum students. we also carry two articles on universities of technology in which we explore low research productivity in these institutions (isaac abe and virimai mugobo) and the issue of knowledge and specialism in curricula of professional and sectorial fields of practices (isaac ntshoe and ntsoaki malebo). a key indicator of the academic worth, value and development of a university is its research capacity and publications. the universities of technology that merged from former technikons have been poorly ranked due to low research performance and these articles therefore constitute an important development in terms of their research productivity. the articles on curriculum aspects in higher education are making an important contribution in terms of the development of teaching and learning in higher education. the articles look at the landscape architecture pedagogy (christine price and arlene archer); success rates of third-year accounting conversion students (sophia brink and mareli rossouw) and the attitudes of students towards sesotho modules (soyiso khetoa and sara motsei). the second half of the issue focuses more on school education and the management thereof. we start with an interesting and thought-provoking article on the manifestations and effects of patriarchy in female-led secondary schools in south africa (makuena bereng and edmore mutekwe). it shows how strong patriarchy still features in schools. kabelo moloantoa and stephan geyer report on research undertaken into a work-based support programme for teachers using maslow’s hierarchy of needs as theoretical lens. the findings supported existing literature that states that teachers face numerous malleable workplace challenges such as learner indiscipline, parental disengagement, overcrowded classrooms, considerable administrative work and burnout. this issue also carries four articles on foundation phase teaching. for many years this was a very neglected research field and it is good to see that research in foundation phase teaching is really taking off. two of the articles focus on inclusive education in this phase and the challenges of its implementation (yolanda mpu and emmanuel adu) and, secondly, teachers’ attitudes towards the inclusion of learners who experience barriers to learning in their classrooms (mahlapahlapana themane, joel mamabolo and medwin sepadi). the other two foundation phase articles look at literacy development. roy venketsamy and sophia sibanda report on their research on the strategies teachers use to develop literacy skills among english first additional language learners, while schmidt, condy and tiba explore higher-order comprehension skills required to understand text. the aim of this study was to explicitly teach higher-order reading comprehension strategies to a grade 2 learner who could not read for meaning. we also include some articles on learners with barriers to learning. maximus sefotho and charity onyishi introduce us to the challenges faced by learners with autism spectrum disorder (asd) and their families in these learners’ school transition at different levels. kolobe and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.1 32021 39(2): 3-3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.1 nieuwenhuis editorial mihai tackle the impact of ict as an intervention tool for progressed learners in teaching and learning of english first additional language (fal) comprehension in the intermediate phase. mosimege and winnaar assert that teachers use a variety of instructional strategies when they teach various mathematical topics and concepts. some of these strategies have been found to positively affect the performance of learners, while others do not. the research reported on analysed data from the trends in international mathematics and science studies (timss) 2015 study in which the teachers indicated the instructional strategies that they used in the mathematics classrooms. the final article in this volume deals with the very sensitive aspects in african culture. nomawonga msutwana reminds us that african women in the xhosa culture used to hold powerful positions in the sexuality arena. this has changed in contemporary xhosa culture, where they take up submissive roles. this is especially so in the teaching of certain aspects of sexuality, as xhosa women are not supposed to give guidance in the sexuality of their male learners. in the article msutwana discusses strategies used to explore xhosa life orientation, life sciences and natural sciences teachers’ views of the meaningful teaching of sexuality education to xhosa learners. as has become tradition, we close with a book review done by saloshna vandeyar of the book teacher education for transformative agency: critical perspectives on design, content and pedagogy by carina america, nazeem edwards and maureen robinson. in the book the authors recognise the need to foreground the voices of teacher educators and highlighting successful practices in culture-rich classrooms. hence, the focus of the book is on educational practices that inspire, encourage and revive. the book foregrounds the role of auto-ethnography in the telling of transformative stories by teacher educators that possess the knowledge and vocabulary to articulate these experiences largely within a critical pedagogy frame. i trust that you will find this issue of perspectives in education insightful and enriching and that it will impact on improved education practices in the long run that are grounded in the research reported in this issue. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.1 181 research article 2020 38(1): 181-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 the values learners consider as important in the learning of mathematics abstract learners have different values that could affect their learning and eventually their performance in mathematics. however, many teachers are unaware of these values. therefore, this paper reports on a study that established the values learners consider as important in the learning of mathematics. the participants were 274 grade 9 learners, selected purposively from one school in gauteng, south africa. an exploratory quantitative research method was adopted and data were collected with a standardised questionnaire developed by seah (2011b). the results revealed that learners value 1) hard work and effort when doing mathematics; 2) numerous different methods to obtain the answer to a mathematics problem; 3) authentic examples of shapes to understand their properties; 4) demonstration and explanation of mathematics concepts and proofs; and 5) teaching and explaining mathematical concepts. this paper highlights the values teachers should consider in the teaching and learning of mathematics in order to ensure better learner performance in mathematics. furthermore, the paper adds to research on values in mathematics education within a south african context. keywords: learners; values; mathematics; learning 1. introduction worldwide there is a concern about the poor performance in mathematics at school level (jerrim, 2015; spaull, 2013). in particular, simkins (2013), spaull (2013) and taylor (2011) claim that the performance in mathematics of the average south african grade 9 mathematics learner is two years behind that of the average grade 8 learner from other comparable middle-income countries, such as botswana and honduras. from 2012 to 2014 the average mathematics marks of grade 9 learners have fluctuated between 11% and 13%, which besides being low, implies that schools are not producing the expected results (department of basic education, 2014). some of the reasons for poor performance include learners’ poor work ethic, lack of motivation from teachers and non-completion of the syllabus within specified timeframes (makgato & mji, 2006; schollar, 2015). peng and nyroos (2012) add that another authors: mrs tendai madosi1 dr erica dorethea spangenberg1 dr viren ramdhany1 affiliation: 1university of johannesburg doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v38i1.13 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(1): 181-196 published: 11 june 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3073-9239 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0828-1196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 182 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 182-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 factor that may potentially impact on the performance in mathematics is many teachers’ unawareness of learners’ values in mathematics. seah, andersson, bishop and clarkson (2016) consider values in mathematics as fundamental in facilitating effective learning and, as such, teachers should know what values are important for their students. according to seah et al. (2016:14), if learners’ values are developed by “whatever sorts of beliefs, attitudes and interests they possess, [teachers] should be able to better facilitate a more positive and productive view of mathematics learning, and also a more empowering and relevant approach to curriculum reform”. however, learners have different values that require different teaching methods to be used to cater for these different values (peng & nyroos, 2012). the idea of using the same teaching method for all learners of the same group should be reconsidered since the use of different teaching methods might improve the learners’ understanding of mathematics concepts (peng & nyroos, 2012). seah (2016) argues that learners who value achievement in mathematics overcome most barriers to success and seem to better understand and remember the mathematics concepts they value. the values that learners subscribe to, relate to their conceptual understanding of mathematics (seah, 2013), but also provide learners with the motivation and determination to work diligently in mathematics classrooms (seah et al., 2016). values, such as working hard and putting in effort when doing mathematics, may cognitively affect learners’ levels of reasoning and intellectual capacity, while values, such as appreciation for the usefulness of mathematics in real-life, may effectively contribute to learners’ emotional experiences and/or motivation in learning mathematics. seah et al. (2016) include that if learners are supported in appreciating what they value, it will encourage more positive and profitable learning of mathematics and might enable a significant approach to educational curriculum change. therefore, what learners value as important in the learning of mathematics could impact directly on their learning of the subject. this paper reports on a study aimed to establish the values that grade 9 learners from a public school in gauteng, south africa consider as important in the learning of mathematics. a better understanding of learners’ values could assist teachers to infuse values in their pedagogies to teach mathematics, which may lead to a better performance in mathematics. studies on values in the learning of mathematics are mostly limited to countries external to the african continent, such as australia, asia and turkey (seah, 2011a). australian learners value memorising mathematical facts and shortcuts to solving a mathematical problem. learners in hong kong and malaysia value achievement, which motivates them to work hard to achieve their intended goals. learners from turkey are expected “to grow as citizens who embrace, protect and improve the turkish nation’s national, ethical, humanitarian, spiritual and cultural values” (dede, 2011:605). despite much research on the reasons underlying poor performance in mathematics (de matthews, 2016; makgato & mji, 2006; masekoameng, 2014), the researcher could not find any pertinent studies on learners’ values associated with mathematics learning that has been conducted in south africa. the authors of this study argue that if teachers could identify what values learners view as important in their learning of mathematics, they will be able to align these values according to mathematics education aspects, which, in turn, could lead to better performance in mathematics. therefore, this paper could add to the body of literature on learners’ values, with specific reference to the south african context. thus, the research question arising is: what values do grade 9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 183 madosi, spangenberg & ramdhany the values learners consider as important 2020 38(1): 183-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 mathematics learners from a public school in gauteng, south africa consider as important in the learning of mathematics? in the following sections, values in the learning of mathematics will be defined and motivated, followed by a discussion on the main theoretical underpinnings on values-based studies. thereafter, the research methodology utilising a quantitative research approach will be outlined, followed by a discussion on findings from the data analysis process. 2. values in mathematics values refer to choices about what one regards as important, such as freedom to choose, having alternatives to choose from, as well as choosing after keen thought of the results of each option, prizing and appreciating (raths, harmin & simon, 1987). chin and lin (2001) agree that values are preferences of individuals related to their personal standards of thoughts and actions that are important and worthwhile to themselves. in particular, mathematics educational values are connected to the teaching and learning of mathematics and refer to the degree to which standards and procedures that can be associated with teaching and learning of mathematics are viewed as important (sam & ernest, 1997). bishop (1996) adds that mathematics education values are deep affective qualities that education aims to put into effect through engagement in mathematics. these values are reflected in the views that an individual has believed as being important and worthwhile for their learning of mathematics (seah & andersson, 2015). therefore, for this paper values are defined as something important to a learner and worth doing. the importance of values in the learning of mathematics is foregrounded in this paper since values influence the way learners choose to engage with mathematics tasks (peng & nyroos, 2012). askew, hodgen, hossain and bretscher (2010) found that good performance may be much more closely connected to learners’ values than to particular arithmetic instructing practices. valuing provides an individual with the will and determination to work in mathematics, as learners tend to engage in mathematics tasks they value (seah, 2013). values improve learners’ conceptual understanding, thus maximising learners’ learning (seah, 2013). values are dynamic and they do not have the same meaning for everyone as learners’ values differ (peng & nyroos, 2012). when values are incorporated into the learning of mathematics, different approaches to teaching have to be employed depending on what the learners value (dede, 2009). therefore, different teaching methods must be employed to cater for learners with different values. according to seah (2013), learners who value achievement, work hard and succeed. therefore, appropriate valuing might arm learners with a powerful force to overcome barriers to success. if learners have negative attitudes about mathematics, but they value achievement, this valuing will give them the determination to do well in mathematics (seah, 2013). learners understand and remember the concepts they value more than what has been taught to them in class (bishop, 1999). seah (2013) advises teachers to incorporate that what learners value in the learning of mathematics as it will improve conceptual understanding, thus maximising learners’ learning. incorporation of learners’ values might in turn enhance learners’ performance in mathematics. most studies incorporating values in the learning of mathematics have been conducted in countries such as malaysia, japan, turkey, asia and australia (seah, 2011a). sam and ernest (1997) conducted a research study in malaysia to explore the values contained in the malaysian http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 184 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 184-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 mathematics curriculum and revealed that values on “effectiveness, responsibility, self-discipline and appreciation of the importance and beauty of mathematics” are emphasised (malaysia curriculum development center, 1993:2). in addition to the curriculum analysis, teachers using this curriculum added that persistence, patience, punctuality and discipline might make learners develop good behaviours, which could lead to better mathematics learning. according to stigler and hiebert (1999), japan’s mathematics teachers value a flexible approach, which allows a learning environment filled with disruptions, discussion and new ideas. ueda, baba and matsuura (2014) conducted another study on values in japanese mathematics education and found the use of an open-ended approach that values learners’ mathematical thinking. learners are allowed to work individually in order to build mathematical ideas in the lesson (ueda et al., 2014). a research study by dede (2011:609), with 107 randomly selected pre-service primary mathematics teachers enrolled at cumhuriyet university in sivas, turkey, revealed that these teachers valued developing learners as citizens who embrace, shield and improve the turkish nation’s national, ethical, humanitarian, religious and cultural values. this value is similar to the south african curriculum, where emphasis is placed on access, equity, redress and being a critical citizen (masekoameng, 2014). however, dede (2011) found that mathematics in turkey is taught without relating the mathematical content to daily life. the textbooks and mathematics syllabi are incorrectly presented as value free. the research further revealed that mathematics achievement of turkish learners is at a very low level compared to other countries where research on values was carried out. seah and wong (2012) conducted research in east asia to harness relevant values in mathematics pedagogy and found that learners from the region valued achievement that pushed them to work hard to achieve their intended goals. mullis, martin and foy (2008) also revealed that although many asian learners fear and even hate mathematics, they perform well in the subject and thus value achievement. asian learners value achievement much more than they hate or dislike the subject. seah and bishop (2000) conducted a study in singapore and australia where they studied lower secondary mathematics textbooks. they found that textbooks in both countries value teaching mathematics using routine drill questions. as a result, most of the textbooks test learners’ knowledge and memorisation. seah and barkatsas (2014) conducted a research study focusing on what primary school learners from australia value in mathematics learning. the sample consisted of 63 grades 5–6 learners in a single catholic school in suburban melbourne, australia. they found that these learners value memorising of mathematical facts and shortcuts to solve mathematical problems. they also value knowing the stages of the solution that are formulated to get the answer and knowing the multiplication tables. furthermore, these learners value the use of calculators, understanding the concepts they are learning through examples, and being able to analyse if the solutions are correct or wrong. finally, they found that these learners value teachers who pose questions to them while providing individual help and feedback, and allow them to complete mathematical tasks individually and to know the importance of examinations and tests. one of the few studies in africa, conducted in ghana, examined what learners intrinsically and extrinsically value. the sample consisted of 1 256 learners from 18 primary and secondary http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 185 madosi, spangenberg & ramdhany the values learners consider as important 2020 38(1): 185-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 state schools across urban and rural settings in the cape coast metropolis of ghana (seah, davis & carr, 2017). learners in ghana value “achievement, relevance, fluency, authority, resourcefulness, learning environment, strategies, feedback, communication, fun, connections, engagement, applications, and accuracy in their mathematics learning” (seah et al., 2017:1). the values appear to be more extrinsic than intrinsic to the mathematics discipline, which imply they value things that are not really mathematically related. the countries mentioned above had similar learner values such as effectiveness, selfdiscipline and achievement. teachers in japan value learning that promotes higher order thinking while teachers in singapore and australia promote routine drill questions and memorisation. learners in these countries value working individually and memorisation respectively. 3. theoretical underpinnings the two theoretical underpinnings for the study this paper reports on are the value theory in mathematics education of bishop (1996) and seah’s (2011a) five value dimensions. bishop (1996) classified values taught in mathematics lessons into three kinds, namely general educational values, mathematical values and mathematics educational values. first, general educational values are not subject-related concepts, but include values such as good behaviour, honesty, respect, humanity and humility. secondly, mathematical values are the values that mirror the type of mathematical knowledge and are shaped by mathematicians who have grown up in different cultures, such as rules, conjectures or inferences. lastly, mathematics education values connect the pedagogical approaches and norms of teaching. for example, some teachers might value showing all working out when answering questions and not to rely on a calculator when doing calculations. bishop (1999) classifies mathematical values taught into three categories. firstly, rationalism/objectism refers to the values that learners have about mathematics. “rationalism elaborates on correctness of results and explanations, while objectism value shows objects and symbols which is an instrument to concretize mathematics that has an abstract language” (dede, 2011:86). secondly, control/progress is open to development and can be used in other subjects in school lessons. control involves forming rules or conjectures. progress incorporates generalising. lastly, openness/mystery is revealed when deliberating and analysing mathematical concepts, thoughts, outcomes and influences. asking learners to explain their ideas to the whole class is a good way of developing openness. on the other hand, mystery indicates how wonderful and surprising mathematics can be. this paper focuses specifically on these mathematics education values. the second theory underpinning this study is seah’s (2011a) five value dimensions, namely relevance, accessibility, formalistic view, relational view and process (tool or procedure). according to dede (2011), relevance implies values where learners can solve everyday issues and make more brilliant ways through which the society develops. accessibility indicates the values focusing on doing and preparing of mathematical activities by everyone or just by people with the talent to execute them. the formalist views mathematics learning as including consistent thinking and pleasant learning, whereas the extremist sees mathematics learning as including natural thinking and discovery learning (dede, 2011). a relational view refers to values associated with learning of rules, procedures and formulae, while process implies the use of a tool and a procedural view of mathematics learning (seah, 2011a). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 186 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 186-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 seah’s (2011a) five value dimensions are related to bishop’s (1996) five mathematics educational values. relevance view is equated to progress–control dimension; accessibility view to openness–mystery dimension; formalistic view to explanation–exploration dimension; relational view to recalling–creating dimension whilst process (tool or procedural) view is equated to process–product dimension. these two underpinnings support the view that values provide the individual with the will and strength of character to maintain any development chosen in the learning and teaching of mathematics. these theoretical underpinnings endorse good behaviour, honesty and respect; reflect the nature of mathematical knowledge; and attribute success to effort and excellence of the teacher. 4. method an exploratory quantitative research method was used to collect data. the data collection instrument was a standardised questionnaire developed by seah (2011a). the instrument comprised ten (10) semantic differential items where participants had to tick one of the blocks to indicate if phrase a was more important to them in the learning of mathematics than phrase b, or vice versa. if a participant placed a tick in the middle block, this would mean that phrases a and b were equally important to the learner. table 1 represents an example of an item in the questionnaire. table 1: example of a semantic item number phrase a -2 -1 0 1 2 phrase b 1 leaving it to ability when doing mathematics x putting in effort when doing mathematics two hundred and seventy-four grade 9 learners were purposively and conveniently selected from a public school in gauteng, south africa. it was convenient since the researcher is teaching at the same school under study. participants agreed to participate voluntarily and were from a school where many learners experience challenges with mathematics learning. all participants’ home language was english, which made it easy for them to understand and respond to the items in the questionnaire, which had been developed in english. the biographical information was analysed according to age, gender, race, home language and learners’ views on their mathematics achievement. data were collected by means of a printed version of the standardised questionnaire. two hundred and fifty-six participants of the 274 grade 9 learners, grouped in nine grade 9 classes, completed the questionnaire within 30 minutes over a period of two weeks during school hours. reliability for the data collection instrument used in this study was mainly confirmed by previous studies. one of the studies in africa, conducted in ghana by seah et al. (2017), obtained a cronbach alpha value of 0.947, whilst a study done in japan by shinno, kinone and baba (2014:172) “yielded satisfactory cronbach’s alpha values for each of the five factors, ranging from 0.772 to 0.936”. although the researcher employed a reliability analysis using the cronbach alpha coefficient, the strength of association was poor (cronbach α = 0.253). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 187 madosi, spangenberg & ramdhany the values learners consider as important 2020 38(1): 187-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 pallant (2007) acknowledges that it is common to get a low degree of internal consistency for small samples, especially if constructs consist of less than ten items. therefore, inter-item correlation was performed as an additional test of reliability to determine whether they fitted the optimal recommended range between 0.20 and 0.40, as displayed in table 2. table 2: inter-item correlation for the ten semantic differential items component for inter-item correlation mean minimum maximum range number of items item means 3.079 1.949 4.191 2.242 10 content validity was ensured by using a standardised questionnaire, called what i find important (wifi) in mathematics learning, designed by seah (2011a). this questionnaire was validated by various research teams from different countries, such as australia, brazil, china, hong kong, malaysia, japan, singapore, sweden, taiwan, turkey and the united states in 2012 (seah et al., 2016). to ensure face validity, 36 learners were randomly selected to participate in a pilot study prior to the actual study to rectify any vague questions in the data collection instrument that learners might not understand. face validity was also ensured by requesting content experts and colleagues to check if the data collection instrument represented what it was expected to measure and to identify items that lack clarity or that may not be appropriate for the information needed for the study. ethical clearance was obtained from the university of johannesburg’s faculty of education ethical committee (clearance number 2017-100) and from the gauteng department of education before any empirical work was conducted. the principal of the school, parents and learners also gave consent and all ethical measures were adhered to. 5. results data pertaining to the responses on the ten (10) semantic differential items were analysed with assistance of a software program, namely the statistical package for the social science (spss), version 23, using descriptive statistics methods, such as frequency analysis cross tabulations. the percentage response for each phrase on what values participants consider as important in the learning of mathematics is presented in table 3. table 3 also presents the mean and standard deviation of each phrase. the negative values -2 and -1 in table 3 imply that participants value the phrases listed on the left side more than those listed on the righthand side in the questionnaire, but also the opposite direction applies. the positive values 1 and 2 imply that participants value the phrases listed on the right-hand side more than those on the left-hand side. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 188 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 188-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 table 3: descriptive statistics pertaining to what values participants consider as important in the learning of mathematics statements -2 phrase a strong -1 phrase a mild 0 neutral 1 phrase b mild 2 phrase b strong mean standard deviation how the answer to a problem is obtained versus what the answer to a problem is. 87 38 66 24 18 -0.65 1.285 37.3% 16.3% 28.3% 10.3% 7.7% feeling relaxed or having fun when doing mathematics versus hard work is needed when doing mathematics. 29 25 65 44 79 0.49 1.355 12.0% 10.3% 26.9% 18.2% 32.6% leaving it to ability when doing mathematics versus putting in effort when doing maths. 3 20 23 63 134 1.26 1.013 1.2% 8.2% 9.5% 25.9% 55.1% applying mathematics concepts to solve a problem versus using a rule or formula to find the answer. 27 19 89 25 82 0.48 1.327 11.2% 7.9% 36.8% 10.3% 33.9% truths and facts, which were discovered versus mathematical ideas and practices used in life. 26 37 69 64 43 0.26 1.232 10.9% 15.5% 28.9% 26.8% 18.0% someone teaching and explaining mathematics to me versus exploring mathematics by myself or with friends. 135 42 41 9 17 -1.10 1.221 55.3% 17.2% 16.8% 3.7% 7.0% remembering mathematics ideas, concepts, rules or formulae versus creating mathematics ideas, concepts, rules or formulae. 99 59 49 20 18 -0.82 1.251 40.4% 24.1% 20.0% 8.2% 7.3% telling me what a triangle is versus letting me see examples of triangles to understand their properties. 12 10 31 59 133 1.19 1.115 4.9% 4.1% 12.7% 24.1% 54.3% demonstrating and explaining mathematics concepts and proofs versus keeping mathematics magical. 103 66 46 14 15 -0.93 1.115 42.2% 27.0% 18.9% 5.7% 6.1% using mathematics to predict or explain events, for example, staying in control versus using mathematics for development and progress 12 19 88 47 76 0.64 1.148 5.0% 7.9% 36.4% 19.4% 31.4% http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 189 madosi, spangenberg & ramdhany the values learners consider as important 2020 38(1): 189-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 the values, as stated by the semantic differential items, were aligned with those values identified by bishop (1999) and seah (2011a) and illustrated according to their mean values as indicated in figure 1. furthermore, the values were categorised either as intellectual (items 1, 3, 7 and 10) or emotional (items 2, 5, 6, 8 and 9). items 1, 2 and 4 were negatively worded and the order was reversed. 6. discussion and interpretation of results the discussion of the results should be interpreted with caution as the results are trends emerging from the particular context of this study and not pertinent findings that can be generalised. from figure 1 it can be deduced that the intellectual values of participants tend to focus more on the application and process of mathematics, than on theoretical and procedural knowledge. however, memorisation of mathematics concepts and rules are also valued. this finding is aligned with seah et al. (2016) noting that practising mathematics may affect learners’ cognitive capabilities. slightly more than half of all participants (n = 125; 53.6%) valued how the answer to a problem is obtained (m = 0.65, sd = 1.285) over what the answer to a problem is (n = 42; 18%). according to 63 grades 5–6 learners in a catholic school in suburban melbourne, australia, achievement is possible if one knows the steps of the solution (seah & barkatsas, 2014). knowing the steps to a solution might lead to the understanding of the concepts learners are learning, and their ability to analyse mathematics problems if the solutions are correct or incorrect. these steps of getting a solution may be achieved if one values mathematical ideas and practices used in life. many participants (n = 158; 64.5%) valued remembering mathematics ideas, concepts, rules or formulae (m = -0.82, sd = 1.251) over creating mathematics ideas, concepts, rules or formulae (n = 38; 15.5%). alike to this finding, seah and bishop (2000) found that textbooks in singapore and malaysia value teaching mathematics using routine drill questions. as a result, most learners tend to resort to memorisation in order to remember the formula instead of generating mathematics understanding. this finding could have transpired because of learners not being critical thinkers who could solve problem solving questions on their own, but who require the provision of step-by-step calculations. most of the participants (n = 197; 81%) valued putting in effort when doing mathematics (m = 1.26, sd = 1.013) compared to leaving it to ability when doing mathematics (n = 23; 9.4%). according to schollar (2015), good work ethic will result in learners putting in effort when learning mathematics. therefore, it could be derived http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 190 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 190-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 fi gu re 1 : s em an tic d iff er en tia l i te m s on v al ue s al ig ne d w ith th os e of b is ho p (1 99 9) a nd s ea h (2 01 1a ) n o b is ho p (1 99 9) s ea h (2 01 1a ) ite m s m ea n va lu es ite m s s ea h (2 01 1a ) b is ho p (1 99 9) intellectual values 1 rationalism th eo re tic al (c om pu ta tio na l) w ha t t he a ns w er o f t he pr ob le m is h ow th e an sw er to a pr ob le m is o bt ai ne d r el ev an ce (a pp lic at io n) o bj ec tis m 7 r em em be rin g m at he m at ic s id ea s, co nc ep ts , r ul es o r fo rm ul ae r em em be rin g m at he m at ic s id ea s, co nc ep ts , r ul es o r fo rm ul ae 3 fo rm al is tic le av in g it to a bi lit y w he n do in g m at he m at ic s p ut tin g in e ffo rt w he n do in g m at he m at ic s a ct iv is t 4 p ro du ct (in st ru m en ta l) u si ng a ru le o r f or m ul a to fi nd th e an sw er a pp ly in g m at he m at ic s co nc ep ts to s ol ve a pr ob le m p ro ce ss (r el at io na l) 10 u si ng m at he m at ic s to p re di ct o r e xp la in ev en ts , f or e xa m pl e, st ay in g in c on tro l u si ng m at he m at ic s fo r d ev el op m en t a nd pr og re ss emotional values 2 openness fo rm al is t h ar d w or k is ne ed ed w he n do in g m at he m at ic s fe el in g re la xe d or ha vi ng fu n w he n do in g m at he m at ic s a ct iv is t m ys te ry 9 d em on st ra tin g an d ex pl ai ni ng m at he m at ic s co nc ep ts a nd p ro of s k ee pi ng m at he m at ic s m ag ic al 5 th eo re tic al tr ut hs a nd fa ct s, w hi ch w er e di sc ov er ed m at he m at ic al id ea s an d pr ac tic es u se d in li fe id ea s an d pr ac tic e 6 control s pe ci al is m (fa ct s an d th eo rie s) s om eo ne te ac hi ng a nd ex pl ai ni ng m at he m at ic s to m e e xp lo rin g m at he m at ic s by m ys el f o r w ith fri en ds a cc es si bi lit y (id ea s an d pr ac tic e) p ro gr es s 8 te lli ng m e w ha t a tri an gl e is s ee e xa m pl es o f tri an gl es to u nd er st an d th ei r p ro pe rti es -2 -1 0 1 2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 191 madosi, spangenberg & ramdhany the values learners consider as important 2020 38(1): 191-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 that it is not only a person’s ability that predicts good mathematics results, but it is about putting in effort when doing mathematics. slightly less than half of the participants (n = 107; 44.2%) valued using a rule or formula to find the answer (m = 0.48, sd = 1.327) rather than applying mathematics concepts to solve a problem (n= 46; 19%). according to seah and barkatsas (2014), 63 grades 5–6 learners in a catholic school in suburban melbourne, australia believed achievement was possible if one knows which formulae to use to arrive at the solution and know the multiplication tables. this finding could be a result of learners’ inability to use the correct formula that leads to wrong calculations and a possibility of misunderstanding the concepts. almost half of the participants (50.8%, n = 123) valued using mathematics for development and progress (m = 0.64, sd = 1.148) compared to using mathematics to predict or explain events, for example staying in control (n = 31; 12.9%). mathematics concepts enable learners to develop the ability to deal with mathematical challenges of daily life and to progress with their study of mathematics in high school and beyond (kilpatrick, swafford, & findell, 2001). this study is similar to the findings from ueda et al. (2014) who revealed that learners value mathematical thinking when they have been allowed to work individually to build mathematical ideas in the lesson. this skill to think critically and to work independently might allow learners to be able to deal with any mathematical challenges in real life. evident from figure 1, participants for this study tend to have a mix of emotional values regarding the appreciation of the nature of mathematics and motivation to do mathematics. although they are likely to enjoy doing mathematics, the participants lean towards teachers to explain the mathematics to them by means of practical examples. this finding aligns with seah et al. (2016) claiming that valuing the usefulness of mathematics in real-life may add to learners’ emotional feelings and motivation in doing mathematics. about half of the participants (n = 123; 50. 8%) valued that hard work is needed when doing mathematics (m = 0.49, sd = 1.355) over feeling relaxed or having fun when doing mathematics. this finding is similar to seah and wong (2012) who found that some learners from two asian countries, namely hong kong and malaysia, valued achievement that push them to work hard to achieve their intended goals. this finding was made after seah and wong (2012) had identified and had discussed the values espoused by learners and their teachers when mathematics had been learnt particularly effectively (from the learners’ perspectives) in hong kong classrooms. this finding can be interpreted that for one to succeed in mathematics one has to work hard. more than half of the participants (n = 169; 69.2%) valued demonstrating and explaining mathematics concepts and proofs (m = -0.93, sd = 1.115) than viewing mathematics as magical (like a dream or supernatural subject) (n = 29; 11.8%). if teachers are mathematically proficient, they are able to explain mathematical concepts to learners, carry out procedures flexibly, accurately and guiding learners to see mathematics as sensible (kilpatrick, swafford, & findell, 2001). this finding is similar to a study by stigler and hiebert (1999), who revealed that japan’s mathematics teachers value a flexible approach that allows a learning environment filled with disruptions, discussion and new ideas. this finding could be interpreted as follows: if teachers demonstrate and explain mathematics concepts well, learners might see mathematics as sensible and worth doing, as this might result in a clear understanding of what is being taught. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 192 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 192-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 in addition, less than half of the participants (n = 107; 44.8%) valued using mathematical ideas and practices used in life (m = 0.26, sd = 1.232) compared to participants valuing truths and facts that they discovered (n= 67; 26.4%). similar to this finding, ueda, baba and matsuura (2014) found that learners from japan value constructing mathematical ideas in the lesson, which implies learning mathematics does not rely only on discovered facts, but facts used in a real-life context. this finding could be derived from learners tending to understand and remember concepts they see in real life. almost three quarters of the participants (n = 177; 72.5%) valued someone teaching and explaining mathematics to them (m = -0.10, sd = 1.221) over exploring mathematics by themselves or with friends (n = 26; 10.7%). this finding is comparable to seah and barkatsas (2014), who found that learners from australia value teachers who pose questions to them whilst providing individual explanation, help and feedback. in line with this finding, we have seen as practitioners that there are learners who understand better when mathematics concepts are explained to them than when they have to learn these concepts by themselves. a considerable number of participants (n = 192; 78.4%) valued seeing examples of shapes to understand their properties (m = 1.19, sd = 1.115) over the teacher telling them what a shape is (n = 22; 9%). this is similar to the findings from ueda, baba and matsuura (2014) who found that learners from japan value constructing mathematical ideas in the lesson, which implies learning mathematics does not rely only on discovered facts, but facts used in a real-life context. seeing real-life models of shapes provide relevance to learners’ learning, while giving them an opportunity to connect their world to classroom mathematics (riley, 2012). some learners might even understand mathematics better, simply because of seeing authentic examples of the concept being taught at that moment (vanada, 2011). in summary, almost half of all participants valued how the answer to a problem is obtained over what the answer to a problem is. the same applies to participants valuing hard work when doing mathematics over feeling relaxed or having fun when doing mathematics. the last finding shows that learners realise that in order to succeed in mathematics learning, one has to work hard through practise, ask questions, do homework and concentrate in class. according to the findings, it could be derived that if learners value working hard, they will put in effort when doing mathematics instead of only relying on their ability when doing mathematics. most participants value using mathematical ideas and applications in real life, rather than valuing truths and facts, which they have discovered. almost three quarters of the participants valued someone teaching and explaining mathematics to them over exploring mathematics by themselves or with friends. from the findings, it can be derived that learners rather value remembering mathematics ideas, concepts, rules or formulae than creating mathematics ideas, concepts, rules or formulae. however, as 21st century mathematics teachers, we should enforce skills such as creativity, critical thinking, collaboration, communication and problem solving. 7. conclusion poor performance in mathematics at school level is a concern in many countries. a possible reason for poor performance could be that teachers are ignorant about what values learners consider as important in the learning of mathematics. the identification of values that learners view as important in their learning of mathematics could assist in categorising these values according to mathematics education aspects, which, in turn, could lead to better performance http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 193 madosi, spangenberg & ramdhany the values learners consider as important 2020 38(1): 193-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 in mathematics. therefore, this paper reported on a study that established these values that grade 9 learners from a public school in gauteng, south africa consider as important in their learning of mathematics. this study revealed that learners have various values that they associate with mathematics learning. most participants value how the answer to a problem is obtained and hard work and effort when doing mathematics. some participants valued someone teaching and explaining mathematics to them, and the remembering of mathematics ideas, concepts, rules or formulae. lastly, learners tend to value the learning of mathematics when teachers let them see reallife examples of shapes to understand the properties and when teachers demonstrate and explain mathematics concepts and proofs to them. one limitation of the study reported in this paper was that the researcher only used ten semantic questions to determine what values learners consider as important in mathematics. unfortunately, the extent to which these values relate to learners’ performance in mathematics was not determined. the localised nature of the study applicable to one single school in gauteng, south africa, also prevents the generalisation of the results to other contexts. therefore, it is recommended to expand this study to more types of schools, to various grades and to different contexts. further studies could also include the values that teachers find important in the teaching of mathematics. values influence the way learners choose to engage with mathematical tasks, and eventually how they will perform in the subject. therefore, mindfulness by teachers about what values learners consider as important in their learning of mathematics, afford teachers the opportunity to use pedagogical approaches that will include these values. the findings of the study reported in this paper add to the international body of research on values in mathematics and specifically in the context of south africa. 8. 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(phd thesis), university of cape town, cape town. available from https://nicspaull.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/eric-schollar-thesisfinal-library-copy-27_may_2015.pdf. seah, w.t. 2011a. effective mathematics learning in two australian primary classes: exploring the underlying values. in: b ubuz (ed), proceedings of the 35th conference of the international group for the psychology of mathematics education: developing mathematical thinking: 129-136. ankara, turkey: pme. seah, w.t. 2011b. the third wave project: what i find important (in maths learning). discussion paper for study 3. melbourne, australia. seah, w.t. 2013. values in the mathematics classroom: supporting cognitive and affective pedagogical ideas, gazi journal of education, 1(1): 45─63. https://doi.org/10.12973/ gazijedu.2013.103. seah, w.t. 2016. values in the mathematics classroom: supporting cognitive and affective pedagogical ideas. pedagogical research, 1(2): 1-14. https://doi.org/10.20897/lectito.201653. seah, w.t. & andersson, a. 2015. valuing diversity in mathematics pedagogy through the volitional nature and alignment of values. in: aj bishop, h tan, & tn barkatsas (eds), diversity in mathematics education: towards inclusive practices: 167-183. cham, switzerland: springer. seah, w.t., andersson, a., bishop, a. & clarkson, p. 2016. what would the mathematics curriculum look like if values were the focus? for the learning of mathematics, 36(1): 14-20. available from http://www.jstor.org/stable/44382694. seah, w.t. & barkatsas, t. 2014. what australian primary school students value in mathematics learning: a wifi preliminary study. in: j anderson, m cavanagh, & a prescott (eds), proceedings of the 37th annual mathematics education research group of australasia conference: curriculum in focus: research guided practice: 565-572. sydney, australia: merga. available from https://www2.merga.net.au/documents/merga37_seah.pdf. seah, w.t. & bishop, a.j. 2000. values in mathematics textbooks: a view through 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https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858-012-0391-4 196 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 196-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 shinno, y., kinone, c. & baba, t. 2014. exploring ‘what japanese students find important in mathematics learning’ based on the third wave project. in: c nicol, s oesterle, p liljedahl, & d allan (eds), proceedings of the 38th conference of the international group for the psychology of mathematics education and the 36thconference of the north american chapter of the psychology of mathematics education, 5: 169-175. vancouver, canada: pme. available from https://www.pmena.org/pmenaproceedings/pmena%2036%20pme%2038%202014%20 proceedings%20vol%205.pdf. simkins, c. 2013. performance in the south african education system. what do we know? johannesburg: centre for development and enterprise. spaull, n. 2013. south africa’s education crisis: the quality of education in south africa 1994-2011. johannesburg: centre for development and enterprise. available from http:// www.section27.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/spaull-2013-cde-report-south-africaseducation-crisis.pdf. stigler, j.w. & hiebert, j. 1999. the teaching gap: best ideas from the world’s teachers for improving education in the classroom. new york, ny: the free press. taylor, s. 2011. uncovering indicators of effective school management in south africa using the national school effectiveness study. stellenbosch, south africa: stellenbosch university. available from https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/6725498.pdf. ueda, a., baba, t. & matsuura, t. 2014. values in japanese mathematics education form the perspective of open-ended approach. teaching innovations, 27(3): 69-82. https://doi. org/10.5937/inovacije1403069u. vanada, d.i. 2011. designing thinking: developing dynamic learners in the arts. saarbrucken, germany: lap lambert academic. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.13 https://www.pmena.org/pmenaproceedings/pmena%2036%20pme%2038%202014%20proceedings%20vol%205.pdf https://www.pmena.org/pmenaproceedings/pmena%2036%20pme%2038%202014%20proceedings%20vol%205.pdf http://www.section27.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/spaull-2013-cde-report-south-africas-education-crisis.pdf http://www.section27.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/spaull-2013-cde-report-south-africas-education-crisis.pdf http://www.section27.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/spaull-2013-cde-report-south-africas-education-crisis.pdf https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/6725498.pdf https://doi.org/10.5937/inovacije1403069u https://doi.org/10.5937/inovacije1403069u _goback i author: prof jan nieuwenhuis editor-in-chief. doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v38i1.editorial e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(1): i-iii published: 11 june 2020 turning a new page welcome to a new look perspectives in education. not only did the cover of perspectives in education change, but also its editor in chief, managing editor, editorial board and a new reviewer team. in addition, we have moved online to offer our authors and reviewers a much better system of tracking the progress of articles and an ease of communication with the editorial team. may i use this opportunity to thank everyone who was part of this turning a new page. i trust that we will be able to offer our authors a much better system as we move towards the ideal of providing authors with an outcome on their articles submitted within six months. you are always welcome to provide us with your ideas to improve and better our service to the education fraternity. in line with all the technological changes and advances that pie adopted, it also found a new home at the university’s technological hub and campus for open distance learning, the south campus in bloemfontein. 1. editorial in his well-known work “future shock” alvin toffler (1980) wrote about “the avalanche of change,” but most of us have never experienced it like in 2020 with the covid-19 pandemic. the whole world came to a standstill as countries closed their borders and went into lockdown. this had a massive impact on schools and universities that had to send their students home and had to adopt an online learning approach to continue with the education of their students. many of the residential universities were grossly unprepared for this. although most of the universities had programmes that have moved to a blended learning approach, many were still oriented towards face-to-face teaching and learning. in this issue we provide some valuable input on the use of electronic and digital resources to offer our students a quality education. in the first four articles look specifically at aspects of e-learning and blended learning. jacqueline batchelor looks at designing for vibrant and robust communities of practice in blended learning environments. jacqueline argues that by placing cops central to the design of the blended learning programme affords students an authentic learning experience in higher education with an opportunity to make design decisions explicit, thereby contributing to the overall impact of the programme in the education sector. in the second article, swanepoel and bruwer discuss the “always-on generation” in an “instant(gram) #blendedlearning” environment. they posit https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0205-2042 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.editorial http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.editorial http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.editorial ii that the anticipated fourth industrial revolution and the non-linear sharing of information have afforded tertiary education institutions with opportunities to apply new technology to their pedagogy model. the study found that instagram creates an always-on learner, who thinks about the module outside of lectures. in the next article by makina podcasts are looked at in the context of an open, distance and e-learning environment. the three articles are highly relevant to the current debate in higher education and the migration to the use of new technology to mediate learning. the next group of articles takes the discourse further by looking at an array of subject offerings. melikhaya skhephe, ntombekhaya princess caga, and robert mwali boadzo interrogate accounting teachers’ readiness for e-learning in the fourth industrial revolution. in their research they concluded that accounting classrooms are not designed in a way that supports e-learning, and that accounting teachers do not understand how e-learning benefits classroom teaching. ngwenya also look at accounting and specifically at the assets teachers identified for the teaching of accounting in a rural secondary school. the study found that accounting teachers used capacities, skills and resources from the school, neighbouring schools and wider community outside the school to improve their teaching practices. mishack gumbo reports on the professional development of technology teachers and poses the question whether the professional development training offered to them meet their needs. the three articles reveal the deeper lying concerns regarding the challenges of effective teaching in the more disadvantaged rural areas. the next group of articles look at a different set of research challenges. suriamurthee maistry looks at transactional ethics as a response to a recent article by nieuwoudt, dickie, coetsee, engelbrecht and terblanche (2019), that has attracted considerable negative attention, leading to its official withdrawal from circulation. in this article by maistry the issue of “intentionality and (un)witting othering” is considered. it is argued that there is a need to reconsider the practice of transactional ethics. arendt’s concept of the banality (of evil) has resonance, as it speaks to the notion of “blissful oblivion of complicity”, even in the context of a widespread contemporary discourse of social transformation and decolonisation in south african higher education. hereafter we turn our attention to higher education and look at issues such as the textbook burner on students; the role of motivation and self-efficacy in the success of doctoral students and pre-service student teachers’ perspective on why they have chosen education. using a quantitative study, roelf reyneke looks at teachers’ use of the circle of courage in the classroom and argues that teachers could improve their teaching strategies linked to the principles of belonging, mastery, independence and generosity. the study by ndlovu, proches and naidoo investigated ethical challenges in high school football at circuit level. they found that the environment in which school football operates is not conducive to promoting ethical leadership. this study also found that ethical leadership is a key contributor to the holistic development and socialisation of learners. in another study by madosi, spangenberg and ramdhany on the values learners consider as important in the learning of mathematics, it was established that learners identified five values that they associate with mathematics. the authors concluded that values influence the way learners choose to engage with mathematical tasks, and eventually how they will perform in the subject. therefore, mindfulness by teachers about what values learners consider as important in their learning of mathematics, afford teachers the opportunity to use pedagogical approaches that will include these values. iii in the latter part of this edition of pie, we turn out attention to science education. kazeni introduces us to the strategies used by grade four educators to decode science terminology while durandt and lautenbach consider strategic support to students’ competency development in the mathematical modelling process. jackson, de beer and white then discuss the affective affordances of frugal science (using foldscopes) during a life sciences water quality practical. all of these pedagogical strategies discussed in the articles are of immense importance to the success of the pedagogical endeavour and make a significant contribution to the body of understanding. the last three articles are a bit diverse but are nonetheless of significance. i would like to draw your attention to the article by bayat and fataar that looks at an aspect of the education system that is seldom studied: marginalised occupations such as school clerks. the authors conclude that through participation in the sociocultural contexts of their workplaces and organisations, participants can and do accumulate and deploy participatory capital, which forms the basis for their enhanced agency whereby they engage in productive practices and reposition their occupational identities, which endows them with greater status and influence. the last article hails from zimbabwe and addresses the very topical issue of “ubuntulising” curriculum change and implementation. perspectives in education hopes to publish a book review(s) with every edition. in this edition we review the book edited by jonathan jansen and cyrill walters. the book is very topical to current discourses around race and society. you are welcome to submit any book recently publish for review by pie. we have already started on the december 2020 issue. this year we will not have a special issue. to clear our backlog of articles received last year, we have decided to have two ordinary editions this year and park the special edition for 2021. enjoy the june edition that is packed with high-quality thought-provoking articles that will stimulate your academic taste buds. _goback 862020 38(2): 86-102 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) the relationship between teachers’ professional wellbeing and principals’ leadership behaviour to improve teacher retention abstract challenges and changes in the south african education system could have an impact on teachers’ professional wellbeing, which, in turn, results in changes in teacher retention rates. the leadership of the school principal directly influences teachers’ experience of professional wellbeing. some research focuses on teacher wellbeing and plenty of research focuses on principals’ leadership behaviour and leadership styles yet very limited research was found that links these two variables. in this research, the main aim was to explore the relationship between the principal’s leadership behaviour and teachers’ professional wellbeing improving teacher retention. the research design was a quantitative survey design embedded in the post-positivist paradigm. two standardised instruments – the institute of work psychology multi-affect indicator and the multifactor leadership questionnaire – were used to collect data among teachers from 20 selected schools in the kenneth kaunda district of the north-west province of south africa. descriptive statistics and spearman’s rank correlations were used to analyse the data. the results showed a relationship between perceived leadership behaviour and wellbeing. transformational and transactional leadership dimensions could positively contribute to teachers’ professional wellbeing, whereas laissez-faire leadership has a potentially negative influence on their professional wellbeing. the use of transformational and transactional leadership behaviour results in teachers reporting positive job-related affective wellbeing, which can, in turn, influence teachers to remain in the profession due to their experience of enhanced professional wellbeing. keywords: affective wellbeing; circumplex model of affect; full range leadership theory; laissez faire; leadership styles; principals; professional wellbeing; transactional leadership; transformational leadership; wellbeing. 1. introduction teaching is a challenging profession with high levels of stress and mental disorders frequently occurring (jackson & rothmann, 2005; kern, waters, adler & white, 2014). teachers have different ways of coping and react differently authors: dr c.p. van der vyver1 me t. kok1 prof l.n. conley1 affiliation: 1north-west university doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38. i2.06 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(2): 86-102 published: 04 december 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0424-5593 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3903-3996 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1470-0433 872020 38(2): 87-102 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 van der vyver, kok & conley the relationship between teachers’ professional wellbeing to challenges and stress (fouché, 2015). some consider changes as fuel for their professional development, while others become demoralised and unmotivated, which harms their personal and professional wellbeing (jackson & rothman, 2005). teacher wellbeing has been receiving attention since the 1930s (orsila, luukkaala, manka & nygård, 2011). however, most research focuses on teacher burnout rather than addressing teachers’ strengths and wellbeing (hoy & tarter, 2011). there seems to be an increased awareness that teachers’ professional wellbeing is a significant consideration in many educational organisations (acton & glasgow, 2015), as it leads to low levels of teacher retention. pitsoe (2013) reports that approximately 55% of south african teachers would leave the profession for various reasons, including stress, if they could. one of the reasons for the poor retention rate of teachers can be linked to the principal’s leadership behaviour as a contributing factor to teachers’ professional wellbeing. van der vyver, van der westhuizen and meyer (2014) indicate that school principals who display caring in their leadership contribute positively towards teacher wellbeing, whereas a lack of care reduces teachers’ experience of quality of working life and wellbeing. 2. problem statement more than a third of teachers in south africa experience the teaching profession as highly stressful (jackson & rothmann, 2005). many teachers experience burnout because of prolonged functioning in a highly stressful working environment (oberle & schonert-reichl, 2016). evers, castle, prochaska and prochaska (2014) found a relationship between poor professional wellbeing and absenteeism, while kuoppala, lamminpaä, liira and vainio (2008) found a relationship between poor professional wellbeing and retirement due to ill health. by identifying factors influencing teachers’ professional wellbeing, it becomes possible for school principals and policy developers to enhance teachers’ professional wellbeing or implement interventions when problems arise (yildirim, 2014). one of these factors is the leadership behaviour of the principal. as mentioned in the introduction, education in south africa is far from optimal and teacher wellbeing is viewed as a contributing factor in this regard (fouché, 2015). the functioning and performance of schools are directly influenced by lower levels of wellbeing experienced by teachers, which, in turn, indirectly influences learner performance (fouché, 2015). mwangi (2013) indicates that the principal’s leadership behaviour has a significant influence on teachers’ professional wellbeing. although some research has focused on teachers’ general wellbeing and much research has been done on principals’ leadership styles, a scarcity of studies researching teachers’ professional wellbeing prevails (yildirim, 2014). although some research indicates a relationship between caring in leadership behaviour and teacher wellbeing, no research examined the relationship between teachers’ professional wellbeing and principals’ leadership styles, specifically within the south african context. 3. research paradigm this research was conducted from a post-positivistic paradigm. post-positivism refers to creating new knowledge with the aim of changing the world and contributing towards social justice (mertens, 2015). this type of research paradigm is very broad as theory and practice are interlinked and not seen as two separate aspects. post-positivism requires a researcher to take a distanced view and see the whole picture. the post-positivistic researcher performs a learning role instead of a testing role. this approach enables the researcher to recognise the common humanity that connects researchers and individuals who participate in the research (creswell, 2013a). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 882020 38(2): 88-102 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) 4. theoretical framework various factors, of which leadership is one, influence the way teachers perceive their working environment (fouché, 2015). school principals’ leadership finds its manifestation in different leadership styles being used to achieve the objectives of the school (avci, 2015). some leadership styles may enhance teachers’ professional wellbeing (yildirim, 2014) and facilitate optimal performance (antonakis, avolio & sivasubramaniam, 2003), while other leadership styles may contribute to teacher stress and burnout (oberle & schonert-reichl, 2016). in this research, the focus was on two variables: professional wellbeing and leadership behaviour. professional wellbeing professional wellbeing refers to individuals’ perception of their qualities needed for professional tasks. it refers to positive emotions towards factors such as self-efficacy and job satisfaction (aelterman et al., 2007). in contrast, general wellbeing can be defined as being psychologically, physically and emotionally healthy (yildirim, 2015), whereas affective wellbeing refers to the experience of pleasant or unpleasant emotions and the impact these have on individuals’ resilience and ability to utilise resources (luhmanna, hawkleya, eidb & cacioppoa, 2012). the theoretical framework used in this study to conceptualise professional wellbeing is the job-related affective wellbeing framework of warr (1990) and warr, bindl, parker and inceoglu (2014), who conceptualise job-related affective wellbeing on two orthogonal dimensions, namely arousal and pleasure. according to this conceptualisation, a specific level of pleasure may be accompanied by a level of arousal, and a level of arousal may be either pleasurable or unpleasant (warr, 1990; warr et al., 2014). for example, high levels of activation that are perceived as pleasant are associated with being excited, enthusiastic, energised, happy and pleased. furthermore, low levels of activation that are perceived as pleasant can produce states such as feeling contented, relaxed, calm and tranquil. unpleasant states accompanied by high levels of activation can produce states such as being agitated, hostile, irritated, angry and tense. lastly, unpleasant states that are accompanied by low levels of activation can produce states such as feeling dejected, lethargic, fatigued, gloomy and sad (de jonge & schaufeli, 1998). to further expand on this theoretical framework, warr et al. (2014) developed the institute of work psychology (iwp) multi-affect indicator, which is presented in figure 1 below. the iwp multi-affect indicator is indicated in a circumplex model that specifies feelings in terms of a displeasure-pleasure continuum and through low to high mental arousal or activation (warr et al., 2014). mental arousal or activation refers to an individual’s readiness for action and energy levels (remington, fabrigar & visser, 2000). the feelings associated with the two axes (pleasure-activation) are mentioned in figure 1, with descriptive labels provided for each of the quadrants. in broad terms, positive affect is associated with the feelings on the right-hand side of the figure while negative affect is associated with the feelings reported on the left-hand side (warr et al., 2014). to be more specific, the top-left quadrant (anxiety) is referred to as “high activation negative affect”. the bottom-left quadrant (depression) is referred to as “low activation negative affect”, while the top-right quadrant (enthusiasm) is referred to as “high activation positive affect”. the bottom-right quadrant (comfort) is referred to as “low activation positive affect”. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 892020 38(2): 89-102 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 van der vyver, kok & conley the relationship between teachers’ professional wellbeing figure 1: the iwp multi-affect indicator (warr et al., 2014:343) according to warr (2016), job engagement and other proactive behaviour were found to be associated more with activated positive affect (enthusiasm) than with the other three quadrants. low activation negative affect (depression) is associated with negative behaviour, such as effort avoidance and social withdrawal (warr et al., 2014). table 1 provides a summative overview of a specific model of the iwp multi-affect indicator of affective wellbeing in terms of items, quadrants and factor structure (axis) consisting of two correlated factors. table 1: items of the iwp multi-affect indicator (gonçalves & neves, 2011:709) items factor (quadrant) factor (axis) tense anxious worried comfortable calm relaxed anxiety comfort anxiety-comfort depressed melancholic unhappy motivated enthusiastic optimistic depression enthusiasm depression-enthusiasm in table 1 the first column indicates the factors in the four quadrants of the iwp multi-affect indicator. these factors can be combined and tested in different ways. gonçalves and neves http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 902020 38(2): 90-102 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) (2011) tested five factor models on warr’s iwp multi-affect indicator. in one of the models for example, the four correlated factors representing the four quadrants on the emotional-affective states based on pleasure and activation are supported. table 1 presents the model with a specific factor structure consisting of two correlated factors, namely depression-enthusiasm and anxiety-comfort. this specific model of the iwp multi-affect indicator was used in the empirical part of the research. leadership behaviour the second variable in this research is the principal’s leadership behaviour. leadership style is a coherent approach used to motivate and manage teachers and handle grievances while maintaining relationships with teachers (kauts, 2010). the theoretical framework used to examine leadership behaviour in this study was the full-range leadership theory (frlt), which is often used in the field of leadership (bass, 2008; van jaarsveld, 2016). the frlt is regarded as a modern leadership theory rooted in three theoretical perspectives of leadership behaviour, namely transactional, transformational and laissez-faire (luo, wang & marnburg, 2013) within the nine-factor frlt model, transformational leadership consists of five dimensions: idealised influence (attributed); idealised influence (behaviour); inspirational motivation; intellectual stimulation and individualised consideration. the two dimensions related to transactional leadership are contingent reward and management-by-exception (active), while the two dimensions of laissez-faire leadership are management-by-exception (passive) and passive-avoidant (witges & scanlan, 2014). the frlt aims to explain highlevel leadership or transformation to help followers and leaders transcend beyond the limits of resource exchange (transaction) to achieve change at a higher level, driven by a utilitarian or moral motivation (witges & scanlan, 2014). the frlt suggests that elements of transactional leadership form the foundation of searching for the ability to produce transformational results. an important consideration of frlt is that transformational leadership is not meant to replace transactional leadership; rather, without a foundation of transactional leadership, the attainment of transformational effects may not be possible (witges & scanlan, 2014). the most widely used survey instrument to measure the nine factors in the frlt is the multifactor leadership questionnaire (mlq-5x) (antonakis et al., 2003). table 2: the nine factors of the frlt (luo et al., 2013) dimension of leadership behaviour factors explanation transformational (a) idealised influence (attributed) the ability to influence followers as a role model in values and morals. (b) idealised influence (behaviour) the ability to motivate and inspire followers to accomplish objectives through extra effort. (c) inspirational motivation the ability to communicate the leader’s vision and mission and find the means to realise these objectives. (d) intellectual stimulation the ability to stimulate followers to think in new and creative ways, challenge others and be innovative in problem solving. (e) individualised consideration the ability to meet followers’ unique individual needs and develop them to realise their full potential. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 912020 38(2): 91-102 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 van der vyver, kok & conley the relationship between teachers’ professional wellbeing dimension of leadership behaviour factors explanation transactional (a) contingent reward leaders who clearly define obligations, objectives and tasks for followers and stipulate reward associated with the contractual obligations being met. (f) management-byexception (active) leaders who actively check that work standards are met. laissez-faire (a) management-byexception (passive) leaders who passively check that work standards are met. (g) passive-avoidant leaders who do not take responsibility, avoid making decisions and do not use authority. the two theories, namely job-related affective wellbeing framework and frlt informed the empirical part of the research, where specific instruments related to these theories were employed to measure leadership behaviour of the principals as well as professional wellbeing of educators in order to determine if a relationship between these variables exist. 5. research methodology 5.1 purpose of the research the main purpose of the study was to determine the relationship between the professional wellbeing of teachers and the leadership behaviour used by principals. to address this purpose, it was necessary to determine the dominant dimension of leadership behaviour of the principal according to the frlt and measure the professional wellbeing of the educators. the relationship between these variables could then be determined. 5.2 research design the study employed a non-experimental quantitative survey design (cf. creswell, 2013b). non-experimental research is used during quantitative research to describe the relationships between variables or to describe tendencies for variables in a population without manipulating any circumstances (clark & creswell, 2015). clark and creswell (2015) define survey research designs as non-experimental quantitative procedures used by researchers to administer a questionnaire to a smaller group, referred to as a “sample”, to describe trends in attitudes, opinions, behaviours or characteristics of a larger group, referred to as the “population”. 5.3 population and sampling in the study, quintile four and five (schools that charge school fees) urban primary and secondary schools within the kenneth kaunda district of the north-west province of south africa were regarded as the population. within the study population, a non-probability, convenient sampling method was used for selecting schools within the district. a representative sample was not used, as the researchers did not aim to generalise the findings obtained from the study but merely aimed to explore the possible relationship between two variables. the sample in the study consisted of teachers from 20 schools. all teachers from each school were approached to take part in the research. from the 20 schools selected, the researchers obtained completed questionnaires from 400 participants, consequently regarded as the sample. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 922020 38(2): 92-102 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) 5.4 research instruments data were collected through standardised structured questionnaires. leadership behaviour was measured using the mlq-5x (avolio & bass, 1995, 2004), and professional wellbeing was measured employing the iwp multi-affect indicator (warr, 1990). 5.5 reliability, validity and ethical considerations as two standardised measures were used in the research (see par 5.4), the reliability and validity of the instruments are beyond any suspicion. to make sure the instruments were reliable and valid in the south african context, cronbach alpha coefficients were calculated and factor analyses were done. cronbach’s alpha coefficients were calculated to determine the inter-item consistency of the questionnaires. table 3: cronbach alpha reliability coefficients for the main factors and sub-scales of the multifactor leadership questionnaire (mlq-5x) leadership dimension sub scales cronbach alpha inter-item correlation mean standard deviation transformational leadership dimension idealised influence: attributed 0.786 0.486 3.11 0.791 idealised influence: behaviour 0.628 0.372 3.12 0.680 inspirational motivation 0.828 0.554 3.26 0.708 intellectual stimulation 0.786 0.478 2.84 0.829 individualised consideration 0.768 0.471 2.75 0.899 0.923 0.715 3.02 0.687 transactional leadership dimension contingent reward 0.670 0.356 2.91 0.784 management-byexception: active 0.611 0.283 2.45 0.824 0.455 0.295 2.68 0.647 laissez-faire leadership dimension management-by exception: passive 0.625 0.324 0.90 0.990 passive-avoidant 0.756 0.434 0.73 0.845 0.842 0.736 0.81 0.855 the cronbach alphas for the subscales measured in the mlq ranged from 0.611 to 0.828, while the cronbach alphas for the three main factors ranged from 0.455 (transactional dimension) to 0.923 (transformational dimension). table 4: cronbach-alpha reliability coefficients of the institute of work psychology (iwp) multi-affect indicator for the affective indicators affective indicators cronbach alpha mean standard deviation anxiety (hana = high activation negative affect) 0.89 1.73 0.90 depression (lana = low activation negative affect) 0.80 1.45 0.69 comfort (lapa = low activation positive affect) 0.93 3.87 1.05 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 932020 38(2): 93-102 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 van der vyver, kok & conley the relationship between teachers’ professional wellbeing affective indicators cronbach alpha mean standard deviation enthusiasm (hapa = activated positive affect) 0,93 3.88 1.00 secondary scores cronbach alpha mean standard deviation negative affect 0.78 1.59 0.73 positive affect 0.77 3.87 0.92 very high cronbach alphas were calculated for the iwp multi-affect indicator, ranging between 0.77 and 0.93, indicating that the iwp multi-affect indicator is reliable within the south african context. as no south african studies were found where the iwp multi-affect indicator has been used, an exploratory factor analysis was conducted to determine the validity of the iwp multi-affect indicator. in a recent study by van jaarsveld (2016), the construct validity of the mlq-5x was determined for the south african context by means of a factor analysis. therefore, the researchers deemed it necessary to conduct a confirmatory factor analysis in combination with standardised regression weights and goodness-of-fit indices to determine whether the different items loaded meaningfully on the same factors as indicated in the manual of the mlq-5x and to ensure that the factor structure remains the same within the specific sample used. ethical clearance was obtained from the university under whose auspices the study was conducted, and permission was granted by the north-west department of education. a sealed box was provided to each school where the completed questionnaires were posted to ensure the anonymity and confidentiality of all the participants. each of the boxes received a number. participation in this study was voluntary and the researchers adhered to all the ethical guidelines. the participants provided informed consent to take part in the research. 6. data analysis descriptive statistics in which averages, standard deviations, frequencies and percentages were calculated from the responses to the questionnaires were used to summarise, organise and condense the large numbers of observations (cf. mcmillan & schumacher, 2014). spearman’s rank correlations were calculated to determine the relationship between leadership behaviour and teachers’ professional wellbeing. 7. results 7.1 dimensions of the frlt behaviour displayed by principals in the study population figure 2 provides a visual overview of the respondents’ mean scores for the three main factors of the mlq-5x. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 942020 38(2): 94-102 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) 0 0,5 1 1,5 2 2,5 3 3,5 transformational transactional laissez-faire figure 2: visual overview of scores obtained for the three main factors of the mlq-5x the mean scores depicted in figure 2 indicate that the dominant dimension of leadership behaviour of principals in the selected schools as perceived by teachers participating in the research related to transformational leadership with a mean score of 3.02, followed by the transactional dimension with a mean score of 2.68 and, lastly, laissez-faire with a mean score of 0.81. the least dominant dimension of leadership behaviour displayed by principals in the selected schools appears to be laissez faire. 7.2 professional wellbeing experienced by teachers in the study population table 5: descriptive statistics for the iwp multi-affect indicator 1 never 0-20% 2 some of the time 20-40% 3 half of the time 40-60% 4 most of the time 60-80% 5 always 80-100% item n % n % n % n % n % mean sd 4. comfortable 14 3.5 40 10.0 43 10.8 143 35.8 160 40.0 3.99 1.11 10. motivated 14 3.5 33 8.3 70 17.5 146 36.5 137 34.3 3.90 1.08 12. optimistic 10 2.5 42 10.5 68 17.0 147 36.8 133 33.3 3.88 1.07 5. calm 13 3.3 47 11.8 48 12.0 162 40.5 130 32.5 3.87 1.09 11.enthusiastic 9 2.3 48 12.0 65 16.3 150 37.5 128 32.0 3.85 1.07 6. relaxed 19 4.8 58 14.5 56 14.0 144 36.0 123 30.8 3.74 1.18 1. tense 208 52.0 117 29.3 42 10.5 25 6.3 8 2.0 1.77 1.00 3. worried 212 53.0 117 29.3 40 10.0 20 5.0 11 2.8 1.75 1.01 2. anxious 230 57.5 111 27.8 28 7.0 23 5.8 8 2.0 1.67 0.97 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 952020 38(2): 95-102 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 van der vyver, kok & conley the relationship between teachers’ professional wellbeing 1 never 0-20% 2 some of the time 20-40% 3 half of the time 40-60% 4 most of the time 60-80% 5 always 80-100% item n % n % n % n % n % mean sd 9. unhappy 237 59.3 111 27.8 32 8.0 16 4.0 4 1.0 1.60 0.87 7. depressed 302 75.5 49 12.3 32 8.0 14 3.5 3 0.8 1.42 0.84 8. melancholic 313 78.3 47 11.8 29 7.3 11 2.8 0 0.0 1.35 0.73 (positive affect; negative affect) using the iwp multi-affect indicator, it was possible to determine the levels of affective wellbeing experienced by the teachers in the study population. according to table 5, the highest mean score of 3.99 was reported on item 4 (comfortable) of positive affect. the lowest mean score was reported on item 8 (melancholic) of negative affect with a very low mean score of 1.35. furthermore, all the items measuring positive affect (items 4, 10, 12, 5, 11 and 6) have a mean score not lower than 3.74, which is regarded as very high. however, all the items measuring negative affect (items 1, 3, 2, 9, 7 and 8) reported very low mean scores, with the highest being 1.77. reporting on the positive affect, item 4 reported the highest percentage (75.8%) of respondents stating that they felt comfortable at work most of the time. secondly, as is evident in item 10, the respondents felt highly motivated with an agreed percentage of 70.8%. thirdly, the respondents agreed, with a percentage of 70.1%, that they felt optimistic at work. concerning negative affect, item 9 reported a very high percentage (87.1%) of the respondents stating that they were not unhappy at work. item 7 indicated that 87.8% of the respondents were not depressed at work. lastly, item 8 indicated that most of the respondents (90.1%) did not feel melancholy at work. 7.3 relationship between the dimensions of principals’ leadership behaviour and the professional wellbeing of teachers calculating spearman correlations gave an indication of the causal relationships between the perceived leadership behaviour and the factors associated with professional wellbeing according to the iwp multi-affect indicator. the size of the correlations is indicated as well as the direction of the relationship (+ or -). if the direction is indicated as a positive relationship it means that as the one variable increases the other also increases. for example, if there is a positive correlation between transformational leadership and enthusiasm it means with an increase perception of principals as transformational leaders teachers show more enthusiasm. however, less likely it could also mean enthusiastic teachers experience their principals as more transformational. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 962020 38(2): 96-102 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) table 6: spearman correlation between perceived principal leadership behaviour and professional wellbeing of teachers anx depr comf enth aff + aff leadership dimension transformational -0.354** -0.426** 0.456** 0.639** -0.432** 0.608** idealised influence: attributed -0.336** -0.423** 0.410** 0.557** -0.412** 0.539** idealised influence: behaviour -0.261** -0.323** 0.323** 0.500** -0.323** 0.456** inspirational motivation -0.299** -0.334** 0.378** 0.595** -0.348** 0.540** intellectual stimulation -0.286** -0.365** 0.409** 0.561** -0.362** 0.538** individualised consideration -0.342** -0.381** 0.444** 0.578** -0.407** 0.566** transactional -0.187** -0.259** 0.269** 0.364** -0.256** 0.349** contingent reward -0.312** -0.356** 0.369** 0.495** -0.365** 0.478** manage-by-exception: active -0.004 -0.060 0.075 0.121* -0.051 0.109* laissez-faire 0.315** 0.375** -0.333** -0.471** 0.370** -0.439** manage-by-exception: passive 0.314** 0.346** -0.313** -0.467** 0.361** -0.423** passive-avoidant 0.264** 0.367** -0.309** -0.427** 0.326** -0.405** *correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed) **correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed) r=0.1 (small); r=0.3 (medium); r=0.5 (large) 7.3.1 correlation between transformational leadership dimension of the frlt and professional wellbeing according to table 6, a medium negative correlation (r = -0.354; p < 0.01) was found between the transformational dimension and anxiety, which could indicate that teachers who perceive their principal as predominantly displaying the transformational dimension of leadership, experience lower levels of anxiety. between the transformational dimension and depression, a medium negative correlation (r = -0.426; p < 0.01) was reported. it is thus possible that principals displaying transformational dimensions of the frlt could result in teachers experiencing lower levels of depression. it also could be that anxious and depressed teachers experience principals as less transformational, however this is less likely. a medium positive correlation (r = 0.456; p < 0.01) was found between the transformational dimension and comfort (table 4). it is thus possible that teachers experience higher levels of comfort when principals predominantly display the transformational dimension of the frlt. between the transformational dimension and enthusiasm, a large positive correlation (r = 0.639; p < 0.01) was found. teachers who perceive their principal as practising transformational dimensions of the frlt thus possibly experience higher levels of enthusiasm. however less likely, it could be possible that teachers experiencing comfort and enthusiasm may experience principals displaying more transformational dimensions of the frlt. a medium negative correlation (r = -0.432; p < 0.01) was found between the transformational dimension and negative affect. between the transformational dimension and positive affect, a high positive correlation (r = 0.608; p < 0.01) was found (table 4). it seems thus possible that a high level of positive affect is experienced by teachers when principals are perceived to predominantly display the transformational dimensions of the frlt. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 972020 38(2): 97-102 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 van der vyver, kok & conley the relationship between teachers’ professional wellbeing 7.3.2 correlation between transactional leadership dimension of the frlt and professional wellbeing (table 4) referring to table 6, a small negative correlation (r = -0.187; p < 0.01) was found between the transactional dimension and anxiety. thus, teachers who perceive their principal as predominantly displaying transactional dimensions of the frlt, may possibly experience lower levels of anxiety. a small negative correlation (r = -0.259; p < 0.01) was found between the transactional dimension and depression. thus, teachers who perceive their principal as predominantly exhibiting transactional dimensions of the frlt, could possibly experience lower levels of depression. between the transactional dimension and comfort, a small positive correlation (r = 0.269; p < 0.01) was found. although less likely, teachers with lower levels of anxiety and depression and higher levels of comfort may experience the principal’s leadership as showing transactional dimensions. a medium positive correlation (r = 0.364; p < 0.01) was found between the transactional dimension and enthusiasm. thus, teachers might experience higher levels of enthusiasm, perceiving their principal as predominantly displaying transactional dimensions of the frlt. a small negative correlation (r = -0.256; p < 0.01) was found between the transactional dimension and negative affect. it is thus possible that teachers who perceive their principal as practising transactional dimensions of the frlt, and giving a contingent reward, may experience lower levels of negative affect. between the transactional dimension and positive affect, a medium positive correlation (r = 0.349; p < 0.01) was found. 7.3.3 correlation between the laissez-faire dimension of the frlt and professional wellbeing (table 4) a medium positive correlation (r = 0.315; p < 0.01) was found between the laissez-faire dimension and anxiety. thus, teachers who perceive their principal as predominantly displaying a laissez-faire dimension of the frlt, may experience higher levels of anxiety. between the laissez-faire dimension and depression, a medium positive correlation (r = 0.375; p < 0.01) was found, which could mean that teachers who perceive their principal as predominantly practising the laissez-faire dimension of the frlt, might experience higher levels of depression. a medium negative correlation (r = -0.333; p < 0.01) was also found between the laissez-faire dimension and comfort. therefore, it is possible that teachers who perceive their principal as practising the laissez-faire dimensions of the frlt, may experience lower levels of comfort. on the other hand, the less likely relationship is that teachers with higher levels of anxiety and depression and lower levels of comfort may experience the principal’s leadership as displaying laissez-faire dimensions of the frlt. between the laissez-faire dimension and enthusiasm, a medium negative correlation (r = -0.471; p < 0.01) was found, resulting in the deduction that teachers who perceive their principal as showing laissez-faire dimensions of the frlt possibly experience lower levels of enthusiasm. a medium positive correlation (r = 0.370; p < 0.01) was found between the laissez-faire dimension and negative affect, which could imply that teachers who perceive their principal as practising laissez-faire dimensions of leadership, experienced higher levels of negative affect. between the laissez-faire dimension and positive affect, a medium negative correlation (r = 0.439; p < 0.01) was found. thus, principals perceived as predominantly practising laissezfaire dimensions of the frlt could result in teachers experiencing lower levels of positive affect. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 982020 38(2): 98-102 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) 8. discussion of findings from the results it can be deducted that the respondents in the study population had an overall positive experience of affective wellbeing. this positive experience of wellbeing contrasts with the suggestion made by jackson and rothmann (2005), claiming that more than a third of teachers experience the profession as highly stressful. it was further indicated that the dominant leadership dimension as experienced by teachers was the transformational dimension. this is in line with arokiasamy, abdullah and ismail (2016), who also found in their study that principals in general mainly utilised a transformational leadership style. there is an indication that the perceived transformational leadership dimension could be associated with the experience of higher levels of professional wellbeing. teachers perceiving principals displaying the transformational dimension of the frlt experience high positive affect and low negative affect. this relationship between transformational leadership and professional wellbeing is also supported by nielsen, randall, yarker and brenner (2008). in addition, bono, foldes, vinson and muros (2007) reported a positive relationship between increased transformational leadership and less stress. a negative relationship was also reported between transformational leadership and burnout (hetland, sandal & johnsen, 2007). large effect sizes may be indicative that perceived transformational leadership could result in the experience of higher professional wellbeing than in the case of transactional dimensions. there is an indication of teachers that perceived their principals displaying the transactional dimension could also experience higher levels of professional wellbeing, although not to the same extent as experienced with increased use of the transformational dimension by principals. when teachers know expectations and receive recognition when objectives are accomplished as indicated by transactional contingent reward (bass, avolio, jung, & berson, 2003), it could be a reason why the above experiences manifest. teachers experience an increase in positive affect and a decrease in negative affect when principals are perceived as displaying the transactional leadership dimension, although not to the same extent as when principals display a dominance in the transformational leadership dimension. the correlations with the transformational dimension were medium to large, whereas the correlations with the transactional dimension were medium to small. the possible reasons for the large correlations with the perceived transactional leadership dimension could be as a result of idealised influence, referred to as the humane side of the transformational dimension, referring to a leaders’ ability to set aside self-interest, accentuating the importance of collective values, beliefs, purpose, a shared mission and the potential gains of trusting one another (gozukara, 2016). with the aforementioned in mind, teachers experienced lower levels of professional wellbeing when principals are perceived as predominantly displaying the laissez-faire dimension of leadership. this results in teachers experiencing higher levels of negative affect and lower levels of positive affect with the increase of a perceived laissez-faire dimension of leadership displayed by principals. the relationship between increased levels of the laissezfaire dimension of the frlt and decreased professional wellbeing is also supported by hetland et al. (2007) who also found a positive relationship between passive-avoidant leadership and burnout. skogstad, einarsen, torsheim, aasland and hetland (2007) also found a relationship between laissez-faire leadership and psychological distress. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 992020 38(2): 99-102 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.06 van der vyver, kok & conley the relationship between teachers’ professional wellbeing 9. recommendations current courses for prospective and practising school principals, such as the advanced diploma in school leadership, could be used to make school leaders aware of leadership behaviour and the impact thereof on the professional wellbeing of teachers. these training courses, including short courses, could further be expanded to include dimensions of the frlt, specifically the transformational dimension and, to a lesser extent, transactional leadership dimension. equipping teachers and prospective principals with knowledge of the characteristics of these dimensions of leadership behaviour and the impact it has on the professional wellbeing of teachers could particularly be emphasised. professional development opportunities in the form of workshops, discussion forums and seminars could help the department of basic education to create an awareness among principals about the influence of leadership behaviour on the professional wellbeing of teachers as well as the necessity to focus more on transformational and transactional dimensions of leadership. existing measures, such as the iwp multi-affect indicator, may be utilised by school governing bodies and principals to determine teachers’ level of professional wellbeing, informing interventions that could be conducted when low levels of professional wellbeing are detected. in creating an awareness of the influence of their leadership behaviour on professional wellbeing of teachers, principals may strive towards adopting characteristics of transformational and transactional leadership styles in their own leadership style. it is recommended that future research explore the use and development of instruments that measure leadership behaviour other than the three leadership dimensions of the frlt measured by the mlq-5x to enable the consideration of other leadership behaviour as well. 10. conclusion because of the sampling method used, the study population was not representative of the larger population and therefore no generalisations can be made. in the study, it was found that principals who were perceived as utilising a combination of the transformational and transactional dimensions of leadership behaviour may contribute to the professional wellbeing of teachers. the positive relationship between these leadership dimensions and teacher wellbeing implies that the use of these two leadership dimensions of the frlt results in teachers reporting positive job-related affective wellbeing. the literature shows that teachers experiencing positive job-related affective wellbeing tend to remain in the profession due to their experience of enhanced professional wellbeing. as indicated by fouché (2015), lower levels of wellbeing indirectly influence learner performance. therefore, the stability of teachers remaining in the profession due to positive professional wellbeing indirectly results in improved learner performance. one of the aims of the department of basic education, namely to contribute towards improving quality of life, could be partially realised by creating a school climate in which teachers can flourish and experience high levels of professional wellbeing, as wellbeing could contribute to the quality of working life of teachers. references arokiasamy, a.r.a., abdullah, a.g.k. & ismail, a. 2015. correlation between cultural perceptions, leadership style and ict usage by school principals in malaysia. procedia-social and behavioral sciences, 176: 319–332. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.01.478. 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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mnl.2014.02.007 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.mnl.2014.02.007 https://doi.org/10.5897/err2013.1691 https://doi.org/10.1080/13664530.2014.970663 https://doi.org/10.1080/13664530.2014.970663 the relationship between teachers’ professional wellbeing 1 research article 2021 39(1): 1-11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.1 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) can covid-19 bring about 20/20 acuity in education scholarship in south africa? abstract this leading article to this special issue on “covid-19: opportunity to rethink and to restructure education in the world” is an overarching position paper, drawing on contributions made in papers in this issue, to argue the case that there is a compelling need to overhaul education research, in south africa in particular, and that the covid-19 pandemic has created an opportunity to do so. the south african education scene is surveyed and the survey reveals enormous challenges along all three dimensions of education supply: quantitative, qualitative and equality. the education sector in south africa is clearly in need of guidance from the education research community. education research activity, globally and in south africa in particular, is surveyed and found to be seriously wanting in terms of the lack of theory, autochthonous and a unified, coherent theory, the small scale and fragmented nature of many research projects, the lack of practical impact, education scholars eschewing subscription to and building a normative superstructure in their research and the concrete problems of the education faculty regarding heavy teaching loads and difficulty in attracting funding for education research. the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic and the ravages it has brought to education have created the need and the opportunity to urgently and enthusiastically attend to these desiderata in education scholarship. keywords: covid-19 pandemic; education; education research; education theory; south africa. 1. introduction this leading article to the special issue on “covid-19: opportunity to rethink and to restructure education in the world” is an overarching position paper, drawing on contributions made in papers in this issue, to argue the case that there is a compelling need to overhaul education research, in south africa in particular, and that the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic has precipitated both a renewed imperative and an unprecedented opportunity in this regard. this article first surveys the education landscape of south africa, identifying the most compelling challenges. then the current state of education research is assessed, especially in view of its assignment to guide the endeavour to address the identified challenges in education. the state of author: prof c.c. wolhuter1 affiliation: 1north-west university, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i1.1 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 1-11 published: 12 march 2021 received: 30 october 2020 accepted: 9 january 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.1 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4602-7113 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.1 22021 39(1): 2-11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.1 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) education research is found to be seriously wanting. subsequently, what the epistemological theory and the history of scientific development have to say about scientific progress and scientific revolutions are invoked to come to a more precise formulation of the change needed in the development of education research. lastly, the covid-19 pandemic is explicated and its potential to serve as catalysator of the desired change in education research is evaluated. 2. the dire straits of education in south africa in the run-up to the creation of the current (post-1994) socio-political dispensation, one of the main rallying points of the current government was education (the slogan was “the doors of learning shall be opened to all” [see legodi, 2001]). in line with this, the post-1994 restructuring was predicated on the much-proclaimed principles of access, equality, desegregation, multiculturalism, decentralisation and democratisation, and on the belief that education would be the instrument to attain an assortment of societal objectives from economic growth and the eradication of unemployment to the creation of a non-racial, non-sexist, equal-opportunity society (wolhuter, 1999). yet, the picture emanating from the scholarly and public discourse is that education in south africa is, at present, in dire straits. commentators in the public discourse use expressions such as “schools of shame” to describe south african schools (mthethwa, 2020). a report by amnesty international (2020) typified the south african education system as “broken and unequal”. the following is an assessment of south african education, using as analytical framework wolhuter’s (2020b) model of assessing an education system or project. according to this model, an education system should be assessed along the following three dimensions: • quantitative dimension: this refers to physical access and participation in education (enrolments). • qualitative dimension: this refers to the quality of learning and teaching of those who participate in education. • equality dimension: this refers to how evenly the quality is spread among all participants. to commence with the quantitative dimension, while gross primary and even (though less so) secondary education enrolment ratios are impressive, the problem lies with high attrition rates and the low tertiary education enrolment ratio. unesco (2020d) gives the gross primary and gross secondary school enrolment ratios of the country as above 100% (the figures of over 100% can be ascribed to the presence of large numbers of overage learners), although the net primary and secondary school enrolment ratios amount to 87,01% and 71,93% respectively. concerning the first problem – that of attrition – out of every 100 learners entering grade 1, 60 write matric (the secondary school termination examinations), 37 pass the matriculation examination, 14 pass with university admission granted, 12 enter university, six eventually finish a degree and four finish in six years with a degree (council for higher education, 2017). with regard to the second problem, while impressive higher education enrolment growths have been recorded in the past 30 years, the current gross higher education enrolment ratio of 22,37% pales in comparison to that of other upper middle-income countries, for example, mexico 40,23%, malaysia 45,13% and brazil 51,34% (unesco, 2020d). turning to the quality dimension, “education quality” is a term that defies attempts at a simple definition (see wolhuter & van der walt, 2018). rather than attempting to encapsulate http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.1 32021 39(1): 3-11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.1 wolhuter can covid-19 bring about 20/20 acuity in education scholarship in south africa? “education quality” in a one-sentence definition, wolhuter and van der walt (2018) contend that it is more meaningful to enumerate the constituent components of education quality and distinguish between the following four components of education quality: input quality, process quality, output quality and product quality. the situation in south african education is that while, in terms of the per-student public expenditure (as first indicator of input quality), south african education does compare well (much more so compared to other upper middle-income countries), the problem is that even in terms of infrastructure (as the next measure of input quality), the majority of schools are barely functional or even dysfunctional. furthermore, at the levels of process quality (quality of teaching and learning) and output quality (as is evident in test and examination results), the problems are compounded (see wolhuter & van der walt, 2018). in education and political discourse, the equality dimension also figures – justifiably – prominently. in the socio-political and historical context, inequality along the lines of race occupies the prime position, also not unjustifiably. to cite one example, of an aspect very pertinent to the topic of this article, taking the research cadre as the pinnacle of the education system, the racial division of the pool of rated researchers of the national research foundation is as follows: white researchers 68,25%, indian researchers 7,85%, coloured researchers 4,62% and african researchers 19,27% (national research foundation, 2020b). this is at gross variance with the demographic composition of the population, namely 8,4% white, 2,5% indian, 8,8% coloured and 80,2% african. however, the other universal dimensions of education inequality, that is, gender, socio-economic descent and geography (see wolhuter, 1993) are by no means absent on the south african education scene. on top of these intra-education system difficulties, the south african education system is embedded in a societal context that has a debilitating impact on education. these debilitating factors include the following: geographical factors: many parts of the country have warm or very warm and humid mid-summers, while others have severe winters; demographic factors: a high population growth rate; economic factors: high unemployment rates and a stagnating economy; social factors: a socio-cultural diverse population (complicating the supply of education), a high incidence of crime and other forms of social pathologies, a high unemployment rate and widespread poverty; and political factors: a weak state and experiencing difficulty with implementing policy and service delivery. this concern-raising state of education clearly represents a cry for help to the body of scholarship on education. 2.1 education as field of scholarship globally and in south africa the field (or, more accurately, fields) of education research in south africa and globally is beset by a series of mutually reinforcing problems. firstly, a holistic survey and interrogation of the education field or fields are in very short supply. the first (extensive, of book length) history and stock taking of the entire field(s) of education scholarship was ellen condliffe lagemann’s (2000) an elusive science: the troubling history of educational research. in south africa, the one and only all-encompassing survey and study of the state of scholarship of education, that of deacon et al. (2009), already is more than a decade old. secondly, education has long suffered from a problem in terms of credibility – being perceived by scholars of other fields as being an inferior field of scholarship. this perception, obviously degrading to scholars of education in university settings, if not accepted as equals by their peers, is present globally, first brought to the fore of scholarly literature by larrabee’s (1998) article, but also frequently http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.1 42021 39(1): 4-11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.1 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) encountered elsewhere (e.g. see brock, 2010: 293; king, 1965) as well as in south africa (e.g. see g3 business solutions, 2005; herman, 2020: 185; kannemeyer, 1990). in tony becher’s (1989) trailblazing study of the cultures of scholarly disciplines, no field of education is included in his 12 disciplines selected for the study (this despite the fact that in most countries in the world, the faculty attached to faculties or schools of education constitutes a large, if not the largest, segment of the academic profession). in as far as these perceptions as to education as field of scholarship are true, it can be related to a number of interrelated factors. in the first place, a point of criticism often brought against education as a field(s) of scholarship is the absence of structure, also formulated as the lack of coherence or the absence of accumulative scholarship. there is no universally uniform manner in which knowledge in education as a discipline or field of scholarship is organised or ordered. in a recently published pioneering international comparative study edited by whitty and furlong (2017) of how education as a field is constructed, it is shown from the seven countries included (france, germany, latvia, australia, china, england and the united states of america) that in each country, education is organised in a different way. this finding is echoed by the portrayal given by richmond et al. (2019) of a lack of coherence in teacher education programmes in the world. this amorphous state of the body of education knowledge can be related to a second problem, namely that theory and theory construction do not figure high on the agenda of education scholars (see wolhuter, 2020c). indeed, the central criticism that lagemann (2000) – in her publication mentioned earlier – levels against the field of education is that research is driven by narrow problematics and that research takes on the form of a technicist exercise, unconnected to a broad theoretical framework. it has been pointed out that the fields of education scholarship lack autochthonous theory (see wolhuter, 2020c). the inadequate attention to theory in education research has been pointed out earlier in this article. in as far as theory does figure, it is theory developed in fields other than education – developed for purposes other than to elucidate and explicate education as the object of study. scholars such as michel foucault, pierre bourdieu, sam bowles and harry gintis, who figure strongly as reference points in the discourse among scholars of education, were never attached to any faculty or school of education and did not define their disciplinary identity as education, while scholars such as basil bernstein and michael young (also anchor points in the discourse among scholars of education) developed their theories outside education before being recruited for institutes of education research. the original central discourse in the british (if not anglophone) sociology of education discourse in the 1970s and 1980s was described by michael young as follows: “education’s knowledge wars – fought around what schools should teach children – began nearly half a century ago with three sociologists chatting in the bar of london’s russell hotel” (whilby, 2018). this is a far cry from the ideal of a field of scholarship where scholars work to refine and to extend a theoretical edifice that has, in the first place, been constructed by those professing to belong to the scholarly field of education. in the critical turn in education: from marxist critique to poststructuralist feminism to critical theories of race, isaac gottesman’s (2016) reconstruction of the history of how key issues in educational theory and research came to be understood, is clear on how the scholarly discourse of education has been kowtowing and got its trajectory prescribed by an avant-garde or fashionable discourse in social critique. j. palmer’s (2002) fifty modern thinkers on education: from piaget to the present day is leavened with scholars outside education, who have exerted a dominating force on the scholarly discourse of education since the beginning of the twentieth century. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.1 52021 39(1): 5-11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.1 wolhuter can covid-19 bring about 20/20 acuity in education scholarship in south africa? while all these debilitating factors are factors in south african education scholarship too, matters are complicated by the fact that scholars of education in south africa historically have been, and the vestiges of this are still perceivable, in three widely divergent silos. scholars in these silos are to a significant extent insulated from each other. at the risk of overgeneralising, these three categories can be delineated as follows: • the afrikaner scholarly community, which has historically been strongly shaped by the european continental (especially the dutch and german) tradition. this community harbours sentiments not present among members of the other two epistemic communities in south africa, for example, sentiments about the preservation of afrikaans as the language of learning and teaching. • the white english scholarly community strongly attached to the liberal system of values and to academic traditions in the united kingdom and, to a lesser extent, those of the united states of america. • the rising generation of black scholars. this scholarly community has been strongly affected by the ideas of franz fanon and paolo freire and theoretical orientations such as classical and neo-marxism, the dependency theory, black consciousness, pan-africanism, post-colonialism and the decolonisation theory (wolhuter, 2020c). the scholarly field of education finds itself in the position of not only a lack of adequate theoretical foundations, but neither can it boast any visible strong impact on practice. in harold herman’s (2020: 163-164) recently published autobiography, the inspiring and captivating life history of the former dean of the faculty of education at the university of the western cape, having risen to become an internationally recognised scholar, is spiked by his observation of scholarly publications lacking a record of any social amelioration. this problem of a lack of practical impact exists despite the prima facie strong impression that many research papers make to be driven by a strong instrumentalist objective and that applied research is currently privileged over basic research in academe in south africa (see ndibuuza, 2021: 135). the problem of a lack of demonstrable practical impact may be related to the small scale of many instances of education research, a problem that has been pointed out in the education research project globally (lagemann, 2000) as well as in south africa (deacon, osman & buchler, 2009). much research has shown that one of the major difficulties in theory building and writing guidelines for practice is the transfer of the findings of research made in one smallscale study to another context. this is done without factoring in the contextual similarities and differences between the one context (where the research has taken place) and the context to which the findings are applied. richardson’s (2011) publication about the determinants of success of technology in education can be cited as an example. it has been argued that the lack of a normative superstructure in education theory (and much scholarship) is a further deficiency in education scholarship (wolhuter, 2020c). scholars eschewing a patent normative dimension in their publications may be ascribed to numerous factors. these include the drive – long present in the anglo-american context – of turning education into a positivist, social science, in contrast to the continental european tradition where education commenced as one of the humanities. however, under the force of anglo-american hegemony, even here education has changed to become a social science in recent decades. another factor may be philosophies such as existentialism, and especially postmodernism, becoming in vogue by the end of the twentieth century. whatever the reasons, the lack of a normative dimension seriously hampers the potency of any body of education knowledge http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.1 62021 39(1): 6-11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.1 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) to guide practice. moreover, in the face of social pathologies in the world, the ecological crisis and the possibilities of the looming fourth industrial revolution (artificial intelligence, genetic programming, surveillance capitalism, etc.) the need for such a moral dimension in education research becomes increasingly urgent. in this regard, the creed of human rights, carlos torres’s (2015) global commons, social justice and the capabilities theory have all been mentioned as worth considering as sources for the building blocks for such a dimension (wolhuter, 2020c). two final problems are besetting education as a field of scholarship. the first is the relatively large teaching loads of the education faculty compared to their peers in other fields of scholarships, evident in, for example, the extraordinary high students per lecturer ratios in faculties of education globally (see van der walt, potgieter & wolhuter, 2016), leaving academics of such faculties with less time for research. then there is the problem with funding, where scholars of education appear to have been shunted to the end of the pecking order. the faculties of other fields refusing to accept their colleagues in education as equals (as explained earlier) evidently places scholars of education in a disadvantaged position when in forums such as university senates, bargaining needs to be done for the distribution of resources, such as buildings, infrastructure and funding (see herman, 2020: 189). neither in the national research foundation’s (2020a) latest strategy document nor in the book by ramoutar-prieschl and hachigonta (2020) does education research explicitly appear; neither does education figure in the survey of the main research fund allocation of the national research foundation in the past years (ramoutar-prieschl & hachigonta, 2020: 72–74). the dearth of funding stands in sharp contrast to the poor state of education in the country and to government’s and society’s belief in education as a major instrument to build a new society. the gross multitude of shortcomings in education scholarship, globally and also in south africa, invites the question as to how a field of scholarship can be changed. 3. theoretical framework: models of development and change in science this article is at the level of meta-theory. meta-theory is theory about theory (baker et al., 2012). the conventional conceptualisation of the scientific research method and of the development or evolution of science holds forth a spiral – an uninterrupted, smooth development model of the evolution and progress in a field of scholarly endeavour. the researcher commences with a literature survey of existing knowledge, does his or her new research, and the results of the research are ploughed back into the existing field of knowledge to form the literature basis for a new round of research. the entire method of citations and footnotes of the scholarly publishing industry is based on the premise of this mode of development. this view of the operation of science and the development of science was described and extensively explicated by, for example, sociologist robert merton (1957; 1973). this notion of the evolution of science was disrupted in 1962 by thomas kuhn when he, in his book the structure of scientific revolutions, distinguishes between two modes of change or progress in science (kuhn, 1962). the first is the incremental, accumulative or piecemeal mode of development outlined in the previous paragraph. but then there is also a second, more radical mode, or a revolution. that is when a scholar brings in a totally new paradigm, that is, a new way of organising knowledge. mulkay (1975) later pointed out a lacuna in kuhn’s scheme and identified a third mode of scientific development, namely the branching mode. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.1 72021 39(1): 7-11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.1 wolhuter can covid-19 bring about 20/20 acuity in education scholarship in south africa? with, inter alia, the example of the development in radio wave theories in physics, mulkay (1975) shows that one kind of discovery not included in kuhn’s analysis takes place when observations or theoretical inferences are made that are unexpected but not incompatible with existing scientific assumptions. such discoveries reveal “new areas of ignorance” to be explored, in many cases by means of the extension and gradual modification of established conceptual and technical apparatus, into a new branch of an existing paradigm. terhart (2016: 927) describes education as being in a pre-paradigmatic phase, indicating an immature field of scholarship where there does not (yet) exist unanimity among scholars as to how to organise or package or even how to explain observed phenomena. this chimes in with the depiction of education in this article. it also means that kuhn’s and mulkay’s models are, at best, of limited value to serve as a device for analysing developments in the field. the other shortcoming in kuhn’s model is that it is oblivious to how societal-contextual factors shape the evolution and contours of a field of scholarship. but the sum total of this means that the current stock of models (both kuhn’s paradigmatic model and the model of evolutionary, incremental development, as well as mulkay’s branching model) of the evolution of fields of scholarship is clearly deficient in analysing and assessing the state of development of education theory. this article is constructed on the premise or view of education scholar gert biesta, who, in his most recent publication at the time of writing this article, contends that theory and theory development (in education or any other field of scholarship) are contingent on societal context – i.e., context-driven rather than being driven by what takes place within the community of scholars – and rightfully so (biesta, 2020: 12–23). this belief chimes in with a fundamental theorem of the field of comparative and international education (the field from which the author hails) that (national) education systems are called into existence by society to serve specific societal needs and that education systems are shaped by their societal contexts (wolhuter, 2020a). as a research endeavour is part of an education system (in the broadest sense of the word), this theorem therefore applies to research communities as well. a major contextual disruption, such as the current outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, will therefore have implications for the construction and development of education theory. 4. the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic and its impact on education in the world in the first months of the year 2020, the world was caught off-guard by the unexpected and sudden outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. the earth-shattering disruptions caused by covid-19 also included global challenges for education systems to promote and continue meaningful learning. the outbreak of the pandemic saw multiple announcements of the suspension of schools, colleges and universities in all parts of the world. statistically, this has affected approximately 91% of the global student population (unesco, 2020a, 2020c). the challenges south africa faces in education, along the quantitative, qualitative and equality dimensions of the national education project (explained earlier), are the same education challenges extant globally. the covid-19 pandemic has instantaneously accentuated the problems experienced and the challenges faced by education worldwide. along the quantitative dimension, for example, even before the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, 17% of the 258 million children of school-going age across the globe were not attending school (unesco, 2020b: 6). the onset of the pandemic brought education http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.1 82021 39(1): 8-11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.1 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) institutions worldwide to a standstill, affecting 91% of the global student population. also, with poverty deepening because of the virus, it was not just a matter of a mechanic reopening of schools. when schools in south africa reopened for grade 7 and grade 12 learners, attendance rates in the western cape (one of the better provinces) were 46,4% and 70,4% respectively by beginning september 2020 (anon., 2020: 4). the pandemic brought about a shift towards online learning and home-schooling worldwide. but in this transfer, much – already, pre-pandemic-deficient – quality goes lost. an extensive survey under primary and secondary schools, done a few months into the pandemic-induced national lockdown in south africa, revealed that 29% of all students had lost all contact with their teachers, 79% of schools that were dependent on school fees (from parents) could not manage to collect such fees and 51% of schools could not send any homework to their learners (slatter, 2020: 6–7). it does not take much imagination to conclude that it is the already disadvantaged students (from poor households) suffering most, as they are on the wrong side of the digital divide, their parents are likely to be the least equipped to offer home-schooling assistance and their households do not contain aids such as books. thus, inequalities in education are exacerbated (see macdonald, 2020). as education finds itself thus rendered rudderless in the storm created by the covid-19 pandemic, unfortunately, practitioners and leaders in education cannot look up to the scholarly field of education for guidance as to how to navigate out of the storm. here, the narrative of the earlier mentioned recently published autobiography of herman, lamenting the state of education research, comes to mind. in glaring contrast to the inspiring life story of the author of the autobiography, forming a central, ascending line throughout the book, stands the end of the book, in which the author paints a picture of the ravages brought about in the education system by the covid-19 pandemic and how impotent the scholarly community of education is to come forward with any guidance or alleviation (herman, 2020: 320–323, 328–343). 5. conclusion it seems unfortunate, but a foregone conclusion, that by the end of the second decade of the twenty-first century, south africa is finding itself in an education crisis. this education crisis manifests along all three dimensions of the national education project: the quantitative, the qualitative and the equality dimensions. to aggravate matters, as it has historically developed, education scholarship does not give clear guidance as to how to get out of this quagmire. the deficiencies regarding education scholarship, globally as well as in south africa, relate to the lack of theory, autochthonous and a unified, coherent theory, the small scale and fragmented nature of many research projects, the lack of practical impact, education scholars eschewing subscription to and building a normative superstructure in their research and the concrete problems of the education faculty regarding heavy teaching loads and difficulty in attracting funding for education research. the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic and the ravages it has brought to education have created the need and the opportunity to urgently and enthusiastically attend to these desiderata in education scholarship. it is the wish of the editors of this issue that the papers contained therein will contribute to igniting a serious collective effort of scholars in the education research community, in south africa in particular, to use the occasion and imperative precipitated by the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic to redo their corpus of scholarly knowledge and to reshape their ways of producing such knowledge to supply education practice and the clear, worthy and credible guidance of which they are in 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(ed.). education studies in south africa: the quest for relevance, rigour and restructuring. durbanville: aosis. https:// doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2020.bk155.11 wolhuter, c.c. & van der walt, j.l. 2018. wat is fout met suid-afrikaanse skole: geheelbeeld van, en leemte in die navorsing oor skoolleierskap as sleutelfaktor. [what is wrong with south african schools: overview of and gap in the research of school leadership as a key factor.] litnet akademies (opvoedkunde), 15(2): 463–485. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.1 file:///c:\users\wilcockb\appdata\local\microsoft\windows\inetcache\downloads\available%20at%20https:\en.unesco.org\covid19\educationresponse\globalcoalition file:///c:\users\wilcockb\appdata\local\microsoft\windows\inetcache\downloads\available%20at%20https:\en.unesco.org\covid19\educationresponse\globalcoalition http://data.uis.unesco.org https://doi.org/10.1080/09751122.2016.11890546 https://doi.org/10.1080/09751122.2016.11890546 https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/oct/09/counterculture-class-warrior-turned-to-gove https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/oct/09/counterculture-class-warrior-turned-to-gove https://doi.org/10.15730/books.100 https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2020.bk207.01 https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2020.bk155.11 https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2020.bk155.11 _hlk60655458 _hlk59521738 1382020 38(2): 138-154 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) juxtaposing south african and namibian teachers’ perceptions and teaching practices to develop selfregulated learning: do they practise what they preach? abstract teachers are expected to be self-directed and to instil in their learners the ability to self-regulate their own learning processes. there are however personal and contextual factors that promote or inhibit teachers’ abilities to develop self-regulated learning skills. this study was conducted in two south african secondary township schools and in two namibian rural secondary schools. twenty-eight, conveniently and purposively selected teachers participated. this interpretive basic qualitative study was intended to provide food for thought about the perceptions of south african and namibian teachers regarding the development of self-regulated learning skills, differences in their perceptions as well as consistencies and inconsistencies between their perceptions and their actual teaching practices. data were collected via observations and semistructured interviews. the results indicate a need for interventions to train practising teachers to be activators and facilitators of selfregulated learning (srl) skills. keywords: development, namibian, self-regulated learning, south africa, teaching strategies 1. introduction the study was part of a bigger faculty of education project in the research unit self-directed learning at the north west university. the overarching aim of the bigger project was to contribute to promoting self-regulated learning (srl) as a vital prerequisite for self-directed learning and academic achievement in schools. the project has four secondary aims: firstly, to obtain qualitative data on teachers’ perspectives on the value of srl, to determine if teachers are aware of srl and specifically if they are trained to use and implement srl strategies. secondly, authors: prof b.w. geduld1 mr h.s. sikwanga affiliation: 1faculty of education, northwest university doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38. i2.09 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(2): 138-154 published: 04 december 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2050-8541 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8477-2491 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 1392020 38(2): 139-154 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 geduld & sikwanga juxtaposing south african and namibian teachers’ perceptions and teaching to explore individual differences and nuances in factors that influence teachers’ use of selfregulatory teaching to develop srl skills in their learners. thirdly to explore and juxtapose south african and namibian teachers’ perceptions of how they develop srl skills and whether there are inconsistencies between teachers’ perceptions and their actual classroom teaching. the last secondary aim is to compare namibian and south african srl teaching interventions in education contexts to facilitate similar interventions in south africa and contribute to selfdirected learning (sdl) scholarship. this study is only based on the third secondary aim of the project. namibia was chosen because two namibian postgraduate students wanted to research srl in the namibian education context. the two countries were also chosen as their education systems are comparable in terms of their general features of schooling, curriculum, assessment and the teacher minimum qualifications at each school level. on learning pathways, both countries have similar groupings of subjects, such as technical, vocational, sciences, commercials, arts and humanities (southern africa association for educational assessment, 2014). the namibian and south african education sectors are facing education crises and are struggling to provide quality education. these education crises are apparent, amongst others, through high dropout and failure rates in schools, poor infrastructure, lack of educational resources, teachers’ inadequate pedagogical content knowledge, teacher and learner absenteeism and a lack of parental support (miranda, amadhila, dengeinge & shikongo, 2011; unicef, 2015; milner, chimuzu, mulera, chimombo, kunje & matale, 2008; national development plan 2030). township and rural schools are particularly notorious for the abovementioned adversities. consequently, these schools are underperforming and failing to equip learners with the required knowledge, skills and values to function effectively in the 21st century (spaull, 2013). according to the unicef 2015 report, learners in many rural namibian schools show learning deficiencies and academic backlogs that cannot be detected earlier, since the first national assessment in namibian schools are only done in grade 10. from the results of the south african annual national assessments, it can be deduced that south african earners demonstrate similar learning deficiencies. nkosi (2016) reported that approximately 90% of south african learners in grades 3, 6 and 9 achieve less than 50% in the second annual national assessments in literacy, mathematics and science. to manage the education crisis, the namibian government has embarked on vision 2030, to improve the quality of the lives of the namibian people through quality formal education (malumo, 2012). likewise, the south african national government launched the national development plan (ndp) which aims, amongst others, to build the south african society through the improvement of the quality of public services which includes the education sector (national development plan 2030). despite these efforts, the performance of many namibian and south african schools remain substandard (nkosi, 2016; tjihenuna, 2014) and selfregulated learning (srl) is alarmingly absent in many namibian and south african learners (geduld, 2017; iiyambo 2018). srl is a prerequisite for academic success. srl refers to the proactive, cyclical processes in which an individual is metacognitive, motivationally and behaviourally active in their own problem-solving processes to attain academic success and general functioning in life (zimmerman, 1989). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 1402020 38(2): 140-154 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) the authors argue that if the teaching focus is redirected to the development of selfregulated learners, problems with high failure rates and dropout can be alleviated and lifelong learning will be enhanced. our argument is supported by eyre (2016), who states that the teaching focus should be geared to develop in learners not only methods of learning, but various thinking and reasoning skills, metacognitive and behavioural skills such as personal initiative, perseverance and adoptive skills, values and positive attitudes that could better prepare them for a rapidly changing world, as well as for social, informational and technological changes of the twenty-first century. the development of srl skills is therefore especially relevant for the goals for the educational development plans of namibia and south africa. moreover, the vital role of self-regulated learners in academic learning is globally confirmed (bembenutty, 2011; vandevelde, vandenbussche & van keer, 2012). however, we experience a tension between what teachers say and what they do. this tension is created by a mismatch between teachers’ perceptions of how they develop srl with their teaching and what they actually do in classes to develop srl. such a tension creates a disturbing sense that many teachers are out of touch with the realities of the roles they should play to develop self-regulated learners. for example, geduld (2017) found that even though many teachers may support the development of the srl skills discussed above, they lack practical knowledge of srl and how to develop srl skills. this lack of knowledge stems from several sources such as teacher education programmes that emphasise subject-area knowledge and mastery of pedagogical methods, and focus less on principles of learning, development and motivation (peeters, de backer, reina, kindekens, buffel & lombaerts, 2014). moreover, some teachers view it as a time-consuming process amidst the pressures of inter alia, curriculum coverage (simão, duarte & ferreira, 2008). against this background, the following research questions arise: • what are namibian and south african teachers’ perceptions of how they develop srl skills in their learners? • what are the differences, if any, between namibian and south african teachers’ perceptions of how they develop srl skills in their learners? • what are the differences, if any, between the perceptions of namibian and south african teachers’ subsequent practices to develop srl in their learners? in the next section the theoretical conceptual framework in which the research questions were framed will be discussed. 2. theoretical conceptual framework to conceptualise namibian and south african teachers’ supportive practices to develop srl, this study drew on zimmerman and moylan’s (2009) cyclical model of srl that outlines the srl skills self-regulated learners demonstrate. this model contributes to our understanding of what skills self-directed teachers should possess themselves in order to develop and foster srl skills in their learners. we will furthermore draw on literature that highlighted various teaching strategies to develop srl. zimmerman and moylan’s (2009) self-regulated learning model zimmerman and moylan’s (2009) self-regulated learning model integrates three phases. the fore thought phase comprises the actions self-regulated learners take before they engage with http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 1412020 38(2): 141-154 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 geduld & sikwanga juxtaposing south african and namibian teachers’ perceptions and teaching a learning task. this phase consists of two intertwined main processes namely, task analysis and self-motivational beliefs (zimmerman, 2013). for example, self-regulated learners know how to analyse tasks, set goals, plan and use different task strategies. their goals assist them to sustain their motivation, develop intrinsic task value, interest and a mastery learning goal orientation. when they achieve their learning goals, they experience higher self-efficacy beliefs. this influences their motivation for future tasks (ramdass & zimmerman, 2011). during the second phase, the performance phase, self-regulated learners demonstrate self-control and self-observation while performing a task. during the self-control process, they apply different cognitive and task strategies such as attention focusing, self-instruction, imagery, time management, environmental structuring and help-seeking (panadero & tapia, 2014). during the self-control process learners sustain their motivation by increasing their efforts, using own interest incentives and self-consequences. they furthermore self-observe their progress and apply metacognitive monitoring strategies such as self-questioning and self-recording of behaviour (zimmerman & moylan, 2009). the self-reflection phase occurs last and influences the way learners approach future tasks. this phase is divided into the processes: self-judgement and self-reaction (zimmerman & moylan, 2009). self-judgement involves the self-evaluation and casual attributions (panadero et al., 2014). in terms of self-evaluation, learners self-assess their performance using the assessment criteria set by teachers and engage new strategies for better results (schunk, pintrich & meece, 2014). successful completion of relevant and valued tasks results in greater self-satisfaction and motivation, whereas failure results in dissatisfaction, adaptive or defensive decisions regarding their own learning. adaptive decisions direct learners to alternative goals and strategies, increased effort to improve and better help seeking strategies. defensive decisions result in avoidance to perform the tasks again in order to protect their pride and self-image (zimmerman, 2000). in the next section some teaching strategies to develop srl skills that might be useful for teachers will be discussed. please note that the following strategies to develop srl, skills as discussed below, are not comprehensive. 3. teaching strategies to develop srl skills the first level of learning srl behavior and meta-cognitive competence occurs through observing a model such as a teacher or a competent peer (schunk & zimmerman, 1996). the second level encompasses imitating the skills or behaviour observed from the teacher. during the third level the learner independently practises what was learnt. finally, the selfregulation level is reached when the learner has internalised the knowledge and skills and can apply them autonomously in similar or new tasks. if teachers demonstrate or teach these srl skills in zimmerman and moylan’s (2009) model to learners on a continuous basis, learners will realize that they will only master the srl skills if they constantly monitor their learning processes to recognize their mistakes as well as to make the necessary corrections and adjustments (zimmerman, bonner & kovach, 1996). besides demonstration and teaching of srl skills, schunk and zimmerman (1996) advise teachers to provide guidance, feedback and social reinforcement when learners practise the modelled srl skills to motivate learners’ application of the modelled srl skills. schunk and zimmerman (1996) propose five types of modelling to teachers to develop srl skills. firstly, with disposition modelling, teachers display, during social interaction with http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 1422020 38(2): 142-154 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) learners, their own attitudes and dispositions, values and practices of srl skills. secondly, teachers can use task and performance modelling that guides learners with the expected skills and behaviours required from them. task and performance modelling ensues for example, when learners observe teachers’ demonstrations of mathematical problems on writing boards, pronunciation in language or reading lessons or with steps and procedures followed with experiments. thirdly, metacognitive monitoring is promoted through think-alouds where teachers verbally explain their own thought processes while they solve a problem on the writing boards. with think-a-louds teachers demonstrate how they apply srl skills such as planning, goalsetting, self-questioning, predicting outcomes and other metacognitive strategies to analyse and solve a problem. in the same vein paris and paris (2001) explain that with metacognitive modelling learners are taught how to activate their prior knowledge, to use imagery and elaboration. fourthly, modelling as a scaffolding technique for struggling learners is advised. lastly, learner-centred modelling is proposed to assist learners to learn certain concepts from the modelling of more expert peers. additional strategies to develop srl are providing learners autonomy and control, independence and responsibility to enhance motivation to learn. this can be achieved by giving them homework for independent practise, choices regarding academic tasks and study partners, teaching explicit task strategies and offering guidance with complex, interesting reallife relevant tasks (panadero et al., 2014). learners should be taught how to set specific goals for their academic work, highlighting important aspects, establishing clear assessment criteria before learners’ start with the task, explaining how summative assessment will occur and facilitating selfand peer assessment. simão et al. (2008) suggest the presenting opportunities to share information in pair-work and group work as well as providing adequate and timely feedback. teachers should adopt teaching methods that will allow the learners to plan and organise their own learning as well as identify, select and apply learning strategies to learning objectives, to identify and express difficulties and be able to transfer knowledge from one context to another (simão et al., 2008). zimmerman (2013) and schunk et al. (2014) recommend a variety of interesting, novel learning tasks to keep learners motivated and focused on their learning, providing guidelines for task completion, frequent feedback and praise on comprehension and progress, facilitating task monitoring and providing regular assessments. the development of help-seeking skills is also proposed by andrade and bunker, (2011) while schunk et al. (2014) report that the social and physical environments of classrooms influence learners’ adoptions of srl. 4. research methodology this “basic interpretive qualitative study” (merriam, 2002:6) is located within an interpretivist philosophical orientation. the aim of a basic interpretive qualitative study is for researchers to discover and understand the worldviews, perceptions, experiences and meaning making of people involved regarding a situation or phenomenon. data are usually collected through interviews, observations and document analysis and presented in thick, rich descriptions. the findings are presented in themes and using references to the theoretical frameworks that framed the study (merriam, 2002:7). this approach is suitable for this study because we want to explore and interpret experiences around the phenomenon of srl. we want to understand the namibian and south african teachers’ perceptions of how they develop srl skills in their learners. we also want to explore whether their actual teaching behaviour in classrooms http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 1432020 38(2): 143-154 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 geduld & sikwanga juxtaposing south african and namibian teachers’ perceptions and teaching support their perceptions of how they develop srl skills in their learners. with this purpose, we followed the guidelines of merriam (2002) for conducting an interpretive qualitative study. the sample consisted of twenty-eight purposively selected participants from two south african and two namibian schools. the fourteen qualified south african teachers are teaching different subjects in the school curriculum at two quintile 2 township schools located in the eastern cape province of south africa. quintile 2 schools are representative of socioeconomically middleand lower-class communities with low levels of education living in high poverty and unemployment. the academic backgrounds of 11 teachers consist of four-year bachelor’s degrees in education, two teachers have honours degrees in education and one participant holds a master’s degree in education. all the participants have didactic and pedagogical training in education and undergo continuous professional development and training for curriculum implementation when it is offered by the school district in the region. the average teaching experience of participants is fifteen years. the fourteen namibian teachers are teaching within the bukalo circuit in the zambezi region in namibia. their schools are located in a rural area in similar socio-economic situations as the two south african quintile 2 schools. school 1 seems to be more resourced than school 2 in terms of infrastructure, services and human resources. the participants’ professional qualifications range from: eight teachers with a four-year qualification in education, three participants with bachelor’s degrees in education and three participants holding higher diplomas in education. similar to their south african counterparts, they had didactic and pedagogical training in education and undergo continuous professional development and training for curriculum implementation. the average teaching experience of participants is eight years. the university at which we are based granted ethical approval for this study. the education departments of both countries and the principals of the four schools also granted permission to conduct this study. ethical considerations such as informed consent, honesty, objectivity, confidentiality, anonymity, respect for the participants, protection from harm and the right to withdraw, were adhered to in this study (maree, 2016). reliability was assured by applying similar procedures and a systematic approach to data collection consistent with the theoretical framework of srl and the research aims. the first data set were collected via semi-structured interviews based on zimmerman and moylan’s (2009) cyclical model for srl. the broad questions in the semi-structured interviews explored how they develop srl skills with their teaching. examples of the main interview questions were: “what do you know about the concept of srl?”. “which specific actions do you take to develop srl skills in your learners?” “please explain what you do to help your learners cope when they have to prepare for assignments and examinations.” “what do you do when your learners experience problems with reading or writing or understanding new content you teach?” “do you believe your learners can take responsibility for their own learning?” “please explain what you do to help your learners make their own decisions on where, when, how and with whom to study.” at the start of the interviews an explanation of the concept srl was given when a participant did not have any knowledge of the concept. characteristics of self-regulated learners were explained to ensure that all participants understand what srl entails. follow up questions were asked to explore which specific actions participants take to teach their learners specific http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 1442020 38(2): 144-154 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) srl skills to: plan, to set goals, to use different learning strategies, to reflect on their work and to evaluate their understanding and progress. after the interviews, one lesson of each participant was observed. the semi-structured interviews and lesson observation schedule were based on zimmerman and moylan’s (2009) cyclical model for srl. the data from the semi-structured interviews were analysed utilising content analysis and a thematic approach (nieuwenhuis, 2016). we started with the a priori and open coding process (saldaña, 2015). categories or responses referring to srl knowledge and skills development were identified and placed under predetermined themes, namely the forethought, volition and self-reflection phases of zimmerman and moylan’s (2009) model. the verbatim quotes, printed in italics, present the descriptions of the participants’ experiences about the development of srl skills. reference codes were placed after the verbatim quotations to indicate the relevant country, participant and the school: sap1s1 means south african participant 1 from school 1 whereas namp2s2 means namibian participant 2 from school 2. we recorded the presence or absence of pre-coded srl skills on the observation schedule for the lesson observations. this was supplemented by field notes of the teaching and learning environment as well as the social interaction patterns of the participants and learners. srl was observed as an event (winne & perry, 2000), meaning that a participant developing srl skills was ticked off in the observation schedule when it occurred. the data from the lesson observations are presented in narrative text. 5. discussion of findings our discussion will start with the interview data. we created seven themes and nine subthemes that illustrate how participants perceive themselves to develop the srl skills, differences between participants from the two countries and how their perceptions are supported by their actual teaching practices, or not. themes created can be referenced to the theoretical frameworks that framed the study (merriam, 2002:7). 5.1 participants’ perceptions of srl skills developed in the forethought phase this theme relates to the srl skills illustrated in the main processes task analysis and selfmotivational beliefs of zimmerman and moylan’s (2009) srl model. task analysis, goal setting and planning south african participants had inadequate responses of how they developed task analysis and planning skills, which allows the assumption that these srl skills were neglected in most of the participants’ teaching behaviour. they explained however that they develop intrinsic and mostly extrinsic motivation, as well as positive outcome expectations by teaching learners to set proximal and distant goals (zimmerman & moylan, 2009). in the namibian education context, goal setting or academic performance target setting as they refer to it, self-evaluation and reflection on attainment of academic goals is compulsory in each subject. it was therefore notable that the strategies the namibian participants use are supported by literature (ramdass & zimmerman, 2011; simão et al., 2008). they could elaborate on how they scaffold and guide learners who lack goal setting skills. they furthermore assist learners with personalised timetables and ensure that learners clearly understand the requirements and assessment criteria of tests and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 1452020 38(2): 145-154 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 geduld & sikwanga juxtaposing south african and namibian teachers’ perceptions and teaching examinations beforehand to enable goal setting and planning. the following statement reflects their outlook: …before the exam, i ask learners what mark you want to get and what they obtained, then they target for next term. then from there they will plan their goals and objectives, and what they want to be in future (namp5s2). development of motivational beliefs participants from both countries perceived their teaching behaviour to be supportive for nurturing of motivational beliefs that include self-efficacy, task interest, positive outcome expectations and proficiency in goal orientations to develop learners’ srl. south african participants indicated that they develop self-efficacy beliefs through positive feedback about learners’ capabilities and progress. namibian participants (namp5s2), (namp7s1) and (namp4s2) revealed that they use a variety of interesting, novel learning tasks to keep learners motivated and focused on their learning (zimmerman, 2013; schunk et al., 2014). namp7s1 explained: “i design activities that raise the learners’ interests, motivate them, and encourage them”. another participant, (namp4s2) believes that a confident, well-prepared teacher motivates learners. another south african participant echoed this sentiment: “i work hard to get the learners motivated. i tell them to persist in difficult times. i have expectations for their success. i support my learners academically and emotionally” (sap1s2). 5.2 participants’ perceptions of srl skills developed in the volitional phase development of task strategies the following response indicates most of the namibian participants’ perceptions of task strategies while learners are performing tasks. one participant explained: i will ask learners to read the words and ask him or her to pronounce the words correctly and when they fail, i will ask another learner to give or read that one (namp4s1). typical of the namibian participants another one added: “i mostly i tell them to study with a paper and a pen beside them so that they read first and thereafter transfer the knowledge they gained on the paper” (namp3s2). similar task strategies that signify behaviouristic learning through repetition and drilling were also mentioned by other namibian participants. five south african participants (sap3s2, sap4s2, sap5s2, sap7s2, sap9s1) mentioned they develop srl task strategies through modelling metacognitive questioning, writing of summaries, activating of prior knowledge, imagery, elaboration and step-by-step explanations. sap9s1 elaborated: i give my learners time to think about what they do not understand. when i explain content to them i make sure i the way i structure it on the writing board will help them to understand. i bought different colours of chalk to highlight and underline the important aspects. sometimes i circle key words. i showed them and let them practice how to take their own notes. development of self-observation and metacognitive monitoring most namibian and south african participants struggled to explain what they do to develop self-observation of learning that can be achieved through metacognitive monitoring and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 1462020 38(2): 146-154 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) self-recording (panadero et al., 2014). participants had ill-conceived the consolidation of content through homework and activities with the srl skill of self-observation during the learning process: ”i always encourage them to ask questions or do more activities or check their textbook so that they can do extra activities in relation to the topic we have covered” (namp2s2). likewise, a few south african participants refer to their own use of higher order questioning. sap8s1 explained how she develops these skills: “i let learners go back if they make mistakes. they must figure out what is wrong then they must cross out wrong answers and write the correct answers above the crossed-out answers”. a possible reason for the misinterpretation might be that participants themselves never focus on the development of self-observation and metacognitive monitoring in their daily teaching, therefore it is not a srl skill they develop in learners. participants from both countries mentioned questioning as a strategy to guarantee attention focusing and comprehension monitoring (paris & paris, 2001). questioning on different cognitive levels helps learners to return to the main idea of learning and to check their progress. although questioning enforces a sense of teacher control, it can, on the other hand, help learners to monitor and self-regulate their behaviour in order to apply themselves to learning and to pass examinations (zimmerman, 2013). development of time management skills south african participants associated the importance of time management with summative examinations and not with everyday planning of study time and leisure time. this is how sap9s1 explained: i tell them they only have three hours in the exam. the same content i test now can be asked differently in the examination. they must be well prepared to finish their papers in time. whereas namibian participants seemed more conscious of time management. this is how the participant namp4s1 explained: i ask them to have a plan on the piece of a paper whereby they will indicate the time frame let me say from this time to this time what should i do. creating conducive learning environments a major difference between the south african and namibian participants was that most of the south african participants identified the use of the social and physical environment of classrooms to create conducive settings for learning, as well as teacher expectations for success as important factors. only a few namibian participants referred to the arrangement of desks to promote cooperative learning and the importance of discipline and class rule to help establish a conducive learning environment. developing help-seeking skills regarding the development of help-seeking skills, namibian participants used similar strategies to their south african counterparts that are supported by andrade et al. (2011). sap9s1 said: “i let them go to the library to find information to work on the internet to produce good projects”. another participant explained: “we write letter to parents or guardians to help by their child to complete homework at home” (namp5s). responses indicated that the namibian participants experienced more challenges consequential of the location of the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 1472020 38(2): 147-154 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 geduld & sikwanga juxtaposing south african and namibian teachers’ perceptions and teaching rural schools, the socio-economic circumstances of the school communities and the shortage of libraries and laboratories at rural schools (miranda et al., 2011). namp3s2 clarified: “our school is surrounded by bars … a lot of music even during study time”. namp7s2 shared the same sentiment: “some schools are located far away from towns. some are located nearby taverns and that and poverty affects learners. learners are come from a society where they experience a lot of things which does not encourage education”. moreover, the inabilities of parents to act as help seeking sources and additional academic help for learners is problematic, since fifty-four per cent of namibian adults older than 20 years in rural areas have low literacy and education levels (unicef, 2015). south african teachers also taught help seeking skills explicitly such as where and how to find resources (schunk & zimmerman, 1996; paris & paris, 2001). cooperative learning is not mentioned as an srl skill (zimmerman & moylan, 2009), however eleven namibian participants included group work as a strategy to develop help seeking skills. one participant elucidated: “so that they can easily interact with each other, exchange the good and bad about their learning and i am quite sure that this can be a motivating factor” (namp2s2). in the namibian education context, the learner-centred approach requires teachers to use cooperative learning as a teaching strategy, which explains participants’ perceptions in this regard. 5.3 participants’ perceptions of srl skills developed in the self-reflection phase opportunities for self-reflection and autonomy homework is commonly perceived, mostly by south african and by a few namibian participants, as the most suitable strategy to educate learners to take responsibility for their own learning. homework offers the opportunity for guided practise and independent practise of strategies that can ultimately reinforce autonomy and srl (paris & paris, 2001). however, the question arises how do learners of the two south african township schools complete their homework without books? the spirit in which some participants give homework is however questionable for the development of srl. for example, sap8s2 stated: you just give your lesson, explain what they must do, then give their homework. they must learn to work on their own and be accountable for their wrongdoings if they did not do the homework. formative assessments namibian participants mostly embedded self-evaluation and formative assessment by frequently setting small tests. likewise, south african participants (sap1s1, sap1s2, sap4s2 and sap8s1) used small tests to allow opportunities for selfand peer assessment. these practices, described by the participants, enable learners to gauge their progress, to learn from feedback and mistakes and to take responsibility for their own learning. such use of self-evaluation also reduces anxiety, since errors are seen as opportunities to improve. it also gives learners the opportunity to reflect and to judge their own understanding in relation to the qualities they themselves, the teacher and peers, identify as good quality work. namibian participants revealed that they develop srl through showing learners how to make honest and realistic attributions about their successes and failures (schunk et al., 2014). participant (namp1s2) gave this example: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 1482020 38(2): 148-154 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) through assessment, we help them and also when they are given progress reports they will obviously see, they did not do well and then you tell them: this is ok, i want you to aim higher and i want you to study hard, you did this or you obtain this symbol because you did not study or worked hard toward it. 5.4 motivation through teacher modelling some namibian participants exemplify disposition modelling (schunk & zimmerman, 1996) which is beneficial for the development of srl. participants revealed that they inform learners about their expectations for their success. they also explained that they show their love for teaching and education by reflecting on and adapting their own teaching strategies (namp6s1) and teaching aids (namp2s1) to improve learners’ performance. namp2s1 explained: “i normally look at my teaching material, what are the teaching aids that will make my learners know or understand my lesson?” participants from both countries, for example namp5s2, said they use task and performance modelling to develop srl (schunk & zimmerman, 1996). they claimed that they put effort in with additional after school classes, re-teaching, doing and demonstrations to improve learners’ performance. for example, namp6s1 clarified: i do remedial teaching where you identify learners who are having difficulty not understanding the topic. after the others knock off i stay even 30 minutes with them just to go through that topic. in the following themes we will discuss our observations of whether participants’ actual teaching behaviour in classrooms are aligned with their perceptions of how they develop srl skills. three themes were created. namely: tension between perceptions and classroom reality, sporadic facilitation of srl skills and practising what they preach. tension between perceptions and classroom reality this theme encapsulates the observations where a disjuncture between perceptions and subsequent practice in classrooms were found. poor alignment between perceptions and teaching behaviour to develop srl skills was observed in seven south african and six namibian participants’ teaching. these participants (sap82, sap6s2, sap7s1 and sap5s1) perceived their teaching behaviour as one promoting srl, however the observations of their lessons proved otherwise. for example, sap7s1 stated: “i always encourage my learners to take responsibility for their learning and to learn from one another”. however, in this participant’s class, learners were sitting passively and were not encouraged to participate. he used his whole lesson to revise concepts such as liability, profit, assets, etc., learners had been taught the previous week (geduld, 2017). another example comes from sap8s2 who claimed: “i teach my learners to concentrate when i teach. i teach them to use their time wisely, to ask deep questions, to learn from each other in group work”. yet, observation of the lesson revealed that sap8s2 used most of the teaching time to control homework and to sign books while the rest of the class were doing an activity from the textbook. the namibian participants gave some attention to the physical environment to ensure conducive classrooms for learning. in contrast, their south african counterparts’ classrooms lacked subject posters, teaching aides and displays of learners’ work. participants from both countries used the transmission approach, individual activities for learners and relied http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 1492020 38(2): 149-154 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 geduld & sikwanga juxtaposing south african and namibian teachers’ perceptions and teaching on textbooks, even though three to four learners were sharing textbooks. although most of the participants tried to be enthusiastic and seemed to have good subject knowledge, poor teacher-learner interactions were observed. besides a few south african participants who gave what seemed to be unplanned homework, no opportunity was given for learners to take responsibility for their learning. given the nature of transmission teaching, many participants in this theme used questioning to activitate prior knowledge and to monitor learners’ progress. however many times sap5s2 was observed asking questions and not directing it to any specific learner. south african participants used more prompting questions to monitor the learners’ comprehension, however none of the participants intervened when wrong answers were given and misunderstandings of the content was obvious. most participants did not state the lesson objectives to support learners’ goal setting, planning and focus on targeted skills and knowledge the various lessons aimed at. in comparison with the south african participants, the namibian participants. contradictory to the interview data, did little to build learners’ selfmotivational skills. the application or explanation of task strategies and awareness of time management skills, although mentioned in the interviews, were seldomly observed. namibian participants mainly wrote summarised notes on the chalkboard to help learners process information. south african participants used teaching time to revise concepts (sap5s1) and allowed learners to underline in their books while the participant was reading definitions from the book (sap2s2). sap1s1 and sap8s2 used most of the teaching time to control homework and to sign books while the rest of the class were doing an activity from the textbook to keep them busy. even though there were many opportunities to develop srl skills such as reflection and selfevaluation, participants in this category unfortunately did not capatilise on these opportunities to develop the metacognitive and srl skills. a few participants utilised homework activities to develop responsibility for learning and activate learners’ prior knowledge. sporadic facilitation of srl skills the development of srl skills was often observable in eight namibian participants’ teaching (namp1s1, namp2s1, namp7s1 namp1s2, namp2s2, namp3s2, namp4s2 and namp7s2). however, these participants overlooked many opportunities to develop srl skills. it was noted that even though namp2s2 found it difficult to describe the teaching strategies he uses to develop srl skills, his teaching behaviour in class displayed that he uses many metacognitive modelling, scaffolding and task and performance modelling (schunk & zimmerman, 1996) to develop srl skills. in general, the participants were energetic and seemed to have a good rapport with their learners. their classrooms displayed efforts of environmental structuring that created a conducive atmosphere for learning (namp1s2, namp4s2, namp5s2). the use of technology and learner-centred teaching methods such as cooperative learning, which was mentioned in the interview, was often observed (namp5s2): “i use group work, i divide learners into groups and give them topics or questions to discuss.…they can share ideas, put their discussion on paper and then to present them”. participants ensured each learner has a specific responsibility in the groups. they facilitated group and pair discussions that gave learners freedom to make decisions, to learn from their mistakes and to take responsibility of own learning (namp1s1, namp5s2). encouragement, positive verbal feedback and praise were often observed to enhance motivational and self-efficacy beliefs (namp7s1, namp5s2) (schunk & zimmerman, 1996). participants often used higher order questioning and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 1502020 38(2): 150-154 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) step-by-step explanations and examples as prompt interventions when miscomprehension and struggling learners were noticed (namp1s1 namp2s1, namp4s2). participants (namp1s2, namp2s2) taught srl skills indirectly by explaining, thinking aloud, asking selfquestions and by clarifying expectations and the criteria for good work (panadero et al., 2014). when learners gave feedback after group and individual activities, a few participants utilised the opportunity to facilitate learner self-evaluation and reflection on their understanding and progress (namp2s1, namp7s1). the modeling of a limited variety of task strategies such as note taking, highlighting of important concepts, rereading and paraphrasing for comprehension and use of dictionaries were observed (namp2s2). a few participants successfully linked learners’ prior knowledge with new content (namp7s1). it was however noticeable that many participants do not allow enough time for learners to think about answers and gave the answers themselves if learners could not answer immediatley (namp1s1, namp4s2). in general these participants explained the relevance of their subject content to learners’ real lives (sikwanga, 2018). only two participants were observed stating the goals of the lessons and continoulsy reminding learners about the competencies they should attain. the same two participants drew learners’ attention to time mangement and gave them help-seeking guidance. homework activities as a strategy for developing agency and individual practice was often observed (namp3s2, namp4s2, namp7s1). practising what they preach we found consistencies between seven south african participants’ perceptions and their teaching practices to develop srl skills (sap3s2, sap4s2, sap9s1, sap10s1, sap12s2, sap13s2, sap14s2). the following are examples of how they demonstrated the development of srl skills. the tidy physical environment and posters in their classes and their passionate nature for teaching created a positive effect and emotions in their classes that facilitate task interest and motivation (schunk et al., 2014). the fostering of persistence, self-efficacy and motivation to develop srl were also observed in their teaching. all participants developed goalsetting, planning and task analysis in their teaching (panadero et al., 2104). they set clear learning goals and intervened when learners misunderstood new content. this assisted learners to focus and to stay on-task. time management skills were facilitated with activities in class, time spent on individual practise with homework and with similar questions in examinations (sap14s2). participants sap3s2, sap4s2 and sap9s1 used scaffolding, metacognitive and task and performance modelling to develop srl (schunk & zimmerman, 1996). on their writing boards they gave logical and organised explanations of the subject content that made information processing easier. participants’ self-questioning and thinking-a-louds illustrated their thinking processes from which learners could learn (sap3s2, sap4s2, sap9s1; sap10s1). participants exposed learners to task strategies by using the writing board and other visual aids to model how to highlight and underline important concepts, create mnemonics and flow charts and to make summaries. struggling learners were never spoon fed with correct answers but were referred to work previously done and to their notes to reflect on incorrect answers (sap10s1, sap13s2). this compelled them to engage in help seeking from peers to revise and to take responsibility for http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 1512020 38(2): 151-154 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 geduld & sikwanga juxtaposing south african and namibian teachers’ perceptions and teaching miscomprehension and gaps in their understanding. having to take responsibility for their own learning resulted in self-evaluation of progress, making alternative decisions about task analysis and strategies to complete activities. these opportunities for individual improvement, learning, progress and mastery are essential for the development of srl skills such as selfefficacy, task interest, self-observation, self-satisfaction (zimmerman, 2013) and teaching learners to see mistakes as opportunities for learning (schunk et al., 2014). learners were given some freedom of decision-making when they could decide on with whom and where to learn (zimmerman, 2013). learners could work with peers in pairs or in small heterogeneous groups as well as move to another group if they struggled to understand and no one in the group could assist them (sap4s2, sap13s2 and sap14s2). furthermore, it seemed as if most participants in the category could meaningfully link their subject content to learners’ everyday lives (schunk et al., 2014). learners were explicitly taught how to form study groups to discuss, to read newspapers and to watch certain programmes on television to see the connection between school and real life (sap3s2, sap12s2). these strategies are confirmed by schunk et al. (2014) who state that tasks relevant to real life stimulate learners’ personal desire to learn as well as their persistence and cognitive engagement, which are important srl skills. 6. conclusion the aim of the study was threefold, namely to explore and interpret namibian and south african teachers’ perceptions of how they develop srl skills in their learners, possible differences between the participants of the two countries and differences, if any, between participants’ perceptions and their subsequent practices to develop srl. responses from the interviews revealed that participants from both countries perceive the importance of their subject knowledge and their motivational roles as vehicles to develop srl skills. however, the south african participants emphasised the importance of being a passionate, well prepared teacher to foster srl skills. from the responses on the srl skills developed in the volitional phase it seemed namibian participants rely on memorisation whereas the south african participants mentioned more sophisticated and meaningful task strategies. the most common strategy used by namibian and south african participants to develop skills in the self-reflection phase was small tests, homework, peer and self-assessment. the lesson observations revealed a considerable variation in the occurrence. additionally, all the participants claimed to develop srl but only a little more than half of the participants’ teaching aided the development and support of learners’ srl skills. disjunctions were noted between some lesson observations and teachers’ perceptions of how they develop srl. data from lesson observations showed that almost half of each country’s participants’ perceptions of how they develop srl were not aligned with their actual teaching practices to develop srl. south african participants demonstrated more and better supportive practices to develop srl skills, however the large number of participants from both countries who are under the erroneous impression that they do develop srl, remain troublesome. despite education reform programmes and curriculum transformation in both countries, the transmission teaching approach is more dominant in the namibian schools. participants in both countries voiced concern and frustration with illiterate and poor parental involvement as well as with the poor socio-economic living conditions of both township school and rural school learners. other similar challenging, contextual factors mentioned are little http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 1522020 38(2): 152-154 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.09 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) support from communities to emphasise the value of education. namibian participants’ responses highlighted low learner motivation, teenage pregnancies, unfavourable physical environments surrounding their schools, a shortage of infrastructure and access to libraries and laboratories as well as learner absenteeism caused by geographical locations (sikwanga, 2018). the research design and sample size does not allow the generalisation of the results to other domains or populations. however, although this interpretive basic qualitative study is subjective in nature, it is objective in its particular teaching context, namely township and rural schools and the research area of srl. 7. future research this study indicates a need for interventions to train practising teachers and student teachers in the development of srl during teacher education sessions and workshops. another recommendation is that national curriculum policy statements should outline teachers’ roles in the development of srl. findings from this study may also serve as an instrument for reflection and offer some ideas for changing practice in rural and township schools. it is anticipated that this research might stimulate discussions with education departments and teachers about the significance of developing srl by means of professional 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large classes; predictive modelling; mathematical model; statistics courses; tertiary education. 1. introduction the transition from school to university seems exciting for many first year students, but a daunting fact is the high drop-out rates, especially in mathematics-related courses. this phenomenon is locally and globally a matter of concern and universities are making efforts to investigate the reasons and eliminate the occurrence of this phenomenon (compare greefrath, koepf & neugebauer, 2016; van zyl, gravett & de bruin, 2012). research results published by the centre for development and enterprise in south africa (sa) confirmed a significant underperformance in education at school level, particularly in mathematics teaching and learning (bernstein, 2013). rach and heinze (2017) reported vaughan van appel department of statistics, university of johannesburg, south africa email: vvanappel@uj.ac.za rina durandt* department of mathematics and applied mathematics, university of johannesburg, south africa email: rdurandt@uj.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v37i2.1 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 37(2): 1-15 date published: 27 november 2019 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:vvanappel@uj.ac.za mailto:rdurandt@uj.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.1 http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 2 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) that the transition from school to university, particularly in mathematics, is often a substantial hurdle for students. results from their research, conducted in germany on 182 first-semester university students majoring in mathematics, indicated only a marginal influence of schoolrelated mathematical resources on first semester study success. they explain mathematical related courses at university is very different from school mathematics and the learning cultures at both institutions could be a reason for the transition problems between school and university. at tertiary level, a clear distinction exists between statistics education and mathematics education, although both subjects fall under the umbrella mathematical sciences. in the current sa context, statistics forms some part of the mathematics school curriculum. bernstein’s report (2013) underlined three key factors, among others, that are noteworthy for the teaching and learning of mathematics at school level (that also includes the teaching and learning of statistics at school level), namely (i) poor mathematics teachers’ competencies (related to content and pedagogy); (ii) poor mathematics students’ competencies; and (iii) a large gap in mathematics competencies among school students from the lowest income areas (approximately 66% of the population) and those from the richest areas. to appreciate the scale of mathematics schooling deficiencies in sa and the challenges that lie ahead, bernstein’s report (2013) puts learners’ and teachers’ competencies into an international context and further highlight significant disparity within sa (between quintile1 5 schools from the richest areas and quintile 1, 2, and 3 schools reflecting the average rural area, small towns, and most townships). for example, the competency of sa grade 6 mathematics teachers are placed at the bottom end of the spectrum compared to a selection of other eastern and southern african countries. mathematics is a key requirement for not only entry into higher education, but also for most modern, knowledge-intensive work (bernstein, 2013). the report underlines that pass rates at universities are low, with an eventual graduate rate of roughly half the students at contact education universities who start a bachelor’s degree. one concludes from these results a large number of sa students, who enter formal tertiary education, might be underprepared in terms of fundamental mathematical content for mathematics-related courses, such as statistics. successful transition between school and university is dependent on factors such as knowledge related to scientific mathematics and students’ abilities to develop adequate learning strategies (rach & heinze, 2017). it seems logical that the latter factors are also important for learning statistics at tertiary level. garfield and ben-zvi (2007: 380-381) argue that learning statistics involves an integration of a first “statistical literacy” component, a second “statistical reasoning”, and a third “statistical thinking” component. the first component, statistical literacy, is often the expected outcome of introductory courses in statistics and is generally described as an understanding of the basic terms, symbols, tools of statistics, and the recognising and interpretation of different representations of data. garfield and ben-zvi (2007) emphasised that statistics students’ understanding of the basic concepts of statistics can easily be underestimated or overestimated by the educator. the second component, statistical reasoning, refers to the way people reason with statistical ideas and make sense of statistical information. the third component, statistical thinking, involves a higher order of thinking than statistical reasoning, more the way professionals will think. ideally, all three components should be integrated to increase proficiency and for educators to 1 in south africa the term ‘quintile’ is used as the national poverty ranking of public schools and their learners. five different groups exist into which all public ordinary schools and their learners are placed – from the poorest in quintile 1 to the least poor in quintile 5. 3 van appel & durandt investigating possibilities of predictive mathematical models... assess student’s understanding of statistics. in this inquiry, students were expected to master the statistical literacy component and show some evidence of statistical reasoning, but they were not expected to act as professionals. we argue that every student can learn statistical literacy and develop basic reasoning skills to ultimately reach academic success – the focus should be to meet the students’ needs and not the incapacity of students. almost three decades ago, an at-risk student was defined as “one who is in danger of failing to complete his or her education with an adequate level of skills” (slavin & madden, 1989:4). educators often view at-risk students as the ones who are more likely to fail than pass the course, and the term may be applied to students who face particular circumstances (e.g., low test scores, or low class attendance) that could jeopardise their ability to be academically successful. a broad overview of the literature revealed numerous studies on students’ lack of academic success or delay during formal tertiary education, particularly in numeracy related fields, with a number of contributing factors (cassidy, 2015; greefrath et al., 2017; onwuegbuzie, 2004; rach & heinze, 2017). some of these contributing factors include a lack of self-efficacy, statistical anxiety, fostering negative attitudes towards statistics courses, and students finding statistics content difficult (coetzee & van der merwe, 2010; onwuegbuzie, 2004; talsma, schüz, schwarzer, & norris, 2018; van appel & durandt, 2018). in addition, science and engineering courses generally obtain lower pass rates than many other courses at tertiary level, making it very important to take part in the global discussion regarding academic success, the efforts to identify at-risk students as early as possible and the concerning variables or factors to support these students on their academic path. within the sa context, but also globally, educators (lecturers, faculties, and universities) are continuously more strained to increase pass rates and at the same time present students with a quality course. it therefore seems essential to identify the needs of students as early as possible to improve instructional practice. however, the focus of this inquiry is merely to identify at-risk students in a statistics course at a public university in sa, and not to improve instructional practices as such, although the latter might be seen as a possible outcome of this investigation. the two research questions are: (1) what is a suitable predictive mathematical model used to identify at-risk students in a business statistics course at tertiary level, and (2) how effective is such a model to predict students’ academic success in this course? in answering these research questions, we attempt to broaden our knowledge about the identification of at-risk students in a statistics course as early on as possible in the academic semester, and to identify and improve a suitable mathematical model that can provide trustworthy results in an educational context. these results have implications for the educational practice; it could contribute towards promptly detecting the needs of at-risk students, and ultimately resulting in enriched instructional practices and improved throughput rates in statistics. 2. primary theoretical perspectives 2.1 theoretical guidelines for learning statistics learning statistics is grounded in the learning of mathematics, although it has developed as a research area in its own right with a growing network of researchers studying the development of students’ statistical literacy, reasoning, and thinking. according to garfield and ben-zvi (2007) research studies focus not only on statistics instruction, but also on the development of conceptual understanding. kilpatrick, swafford and findell (2001) defined 4 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) five different strands of mathematical knowledge, which in combination indicate mathematical proficiency. these strands (supported by samuelsson, 2010: 62) seem to connect particularly well with learning statistical knowledge (literacy, reasoning, and thinking) and are therefore relevant to this study, and include: i. conceptual understanding – the ability to grasp mathematical and/or statistical concepts, operations, and relationships. ii. procedural fluency – the skill of performing flexible procedures accurately, efficiently, and appropriately to support mathematics and/or statistics learning. iii. strategic competence – the ability to formulate, represent, and solve mathematical and/ or statistical problems to contribute in developing various mathematical and/or statistical competencies and appropriate attitudes. iv. adaptive reasoning – the capacity for logical thought, reflection, explanation, and justification, in order to contribute to an adequate picture of mathematics and/or statistics. v. productive disposition – the ability to view mathematics and/or statistics as sensible, useful, and worthwhile, together with a belief in self-confidence. both boaler (2000) and samuelsson (2010) argued that situational context is a key aspect in producing mathematical knowledge and seems important to learn statistical literacy, which forms the foundation for reasoning and thinking. garfield and ben-zvi (2007) claim statistical literacy is often seen as an expected outcome of schooling and a necessary component of adults’ numeracy and literacy. in summary, we argue that the five strands of mathematical knowledge, by kilpatrick et al. (2001), provide the knowledge base for students to learn statistics. apart from the knowledge base, a notion of supporting disposition is also present with the belief that every student can attain the necessary skills for academic success when formal education meets the students’ needs and not the incapacity of students. 2.2 mathematical models and their relevance for teaching doerr, ärlebäck and misfeldt (2017: 71) underscored the substantial impact of mathematical models at all levels of society by claiming that “mathematical models are used to control processes, to design products, to monitor and influence economic systems, to enhance human agency, and to structure and understand the natural world in society and above all in the workplace”. earlier, lesh and doerr (2003) described models as conceptual systems that are used for some specific purpose. it seems reasonable to consider a mathematical model to monitor study success in an educational context, but if such a model is used to improve decision-making (e.g. regarding study success) then the quality of the model is also important. in the context of this study, we used a mathematical model in the context of teaching to identify students that are at-risk of failing a business statistics course. the idea was to implement the model as early as possible in the second academic semester of the academic year. thus, the emphasis was more on the product and its efficiency as it would play a role in decision-making in the education context, than on all the steps taken during a modelling cycle. meyer (2012: 150 – 222), proposed six criteria for mathematical models that should be considered during the evaluation of a model: (i) accuracy, (ii) realism, (iii) precision, (iv) robustness, (v) generalisability, and (vi) fruitfulness. we followed the traditional steps in a modelling cycle; to identify the problem in the real world (e.g. low throughput rates in mathematical related courses), to make assumptions and identify variables by selecting relevant information and finding relations (e.g. using 5 van appel & durandt investigating possibilities of predictive mathematical models... continuous and formal assessment marks), to formulate a mathematical model and perform procedures to find results (e.g. multiple regression, or linear regression, or decision trees), to analyse and assess the solution by questioning the results and consequences (e.g. by checking the model’s accuracy), and to iterate the modelling process to refine and extend the model (e.g. to use different data sets) (compare blum and leiβ, 2007; comap-siam, 2016). through this modelling process we purposefully considered the evaluation criteria from meyer (2012): (i) accuracy, if the output values were correct or near correct; (ii) realistic, if the model is based on correct assumptions; (iii) precise, if its predictions were in definite numbers, and imprecise, if its predictions were in a range of numbers; (iv) robust, if the model is to some extent protected against errors in the input data; (v) general, if it applied to a variety of educational contexts; and (vi) fruitful, if it resulted in useful conclusions. in this study we used a predictive model for a first-year business statistics course, but such a model can easily be adapted and used in other courses, given that there is enough reliable data available to ‘train’ the model. by predictive modelling we intended to use mathematical and computational methods to predict students’ probability of academic success based on changes in the model input values. a genuine evaluation of the accuracy of the model used in this study will require observations over a number of years, or perhaps observations in a variety of courses. a limitation in building accurate predictive models is that these models are largely dependent on the quality of the data available. thus, in this study, the quality and reliability of the data (which were only collected in one academic semester) will influence the accuracy (or predictive power) of the model. we attempted to increase the reliability and consistency of the data through a well-structured course plan with multiple assessment opportunities. data from future research could refine the mathematical models and its implications in other educational context, for example to investigate the ‘optimal’ time to implement an at-risk model in an academic semester. 3. research design model building seems important in identifying at-risk students, and in this study the accuracy of models was studied to determine the most suitable predictive model to identify at-risk students in a business statistics course offered at the university of johannesburg during the second semester of 2017. data were collected from 395 first year (undergraduate) students. in particular, we used this data to build five predictive models to predict the possible outcome of a future students’ success in the course. moreover, the data used in the building of the predictive models are often referred to as the training data. the aim of training a predictive model is for the model to learn to identify patterns or trends from the training data, which is then used in predicting the success of future students in the course. the ever-growing need to increase throughput rates and maintain high course standards makes predictive modelling especially useful. for example, in large classes, a predictive model can be used to identify students that are likely to fail the course and provides the educator with information about students that require much needed assistance. this identification process would be tedious in a large class without a predictive model, and would only be possible later in the academic semester. for the training data, we used the 2017 gradebook that consisted of each students online cumulative average quiz mark and, two formal semester test marks, which accumulated to a final period mark (fpm). thereafter, the students wrote an examination (em), which was weighted in equal parts to compute the final mark (fm). in order for a student to pass the course, the student must obtain a fpm and em greater or equal to 40%, and then a fm 6 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) greater or equal to 50%. in addition to the gradebook, we also collected the grade the students obtained in their prerequisite module, if students were repeating the module (yes or no), the gender of the students, and the student’s high school quintile ranking (range between quintile 1 and 5). more specifically, in our model building design we considered the school quintile ranking to be a descriptive of the student’s socio-economic status. socio-economic status generally combines three measures based on income, education, and occupation. therefore, the school quintile raking represents a good predictor for the socio-economic variable in this study, as a high quintile ranking (levels 4 and 5) indicates a well-performing school (normally these schools are situated in or around major cities, where tuition fees are paid) indicating a higher socio-economic status. in contrast, low quintile ranked schools (levels 1, 2 and 3) reflect weaker performing schools (normally situated in rural or township areas, where no tuition fees are paid) indicating a lower socio-economic status. in table 1, we summarise the categorical covariates considered in this study. most students are from a quintile 5 (well-performing) school, followed by the school quintile being unknown to the university. students assigned to the unknown school quintile are students who completed their schooling outside the borders of south africa (international students), where schools may not follow the same rating scheme, or perhaps no rating scheme. table 1. descriptive statistics of the categorical covariates factor percentage gender male 48% female 52% repeating the module no 87% yes 13% school quintile 1 4% 2 6% 3 10% 4 9% 5 39% unknown 32% a good predictive model should be trustworthy and robust with as few covariates (also commonly referred to as independent or predictor variables) as possible. bainbridge, melitski, zahradnik, lauría, jayaprakash and baron (2015) studied some demographic, educational and behavioural patterns in search of finding promising covariates to predict at-risk students in an online masters of public administration programme. among their promising covariates were the number of times a student logged into their online course portal, and their participation in an online forum for the course. in summary, they revealed that combining these covariates with more traditional covariates, such as the gradebook, class size, and age, could enhance the predictive power of the model to identify at-risk students. furthermore, special care must be taken when considering possible covariates for building a predictive model as different courses might require different information to train the model. for example, some courses 7 van appel & durandt investigating possibilities of predictive mathematical models... might require practical or laboratory work and others not, or a face-to-face course component compared to an online course component. these unique differences require some strategic awareness from the educator in order to decide whether it is meaningful to incorporate these variables into the predictive model. furthermore, it is of good practice and according to the traditional steps of a modelling cycle (compare comap-siam, 2016) to continuously update the training data and retrain the model to improve the robustness and predictive power of the model. 4. statistical analysis and results 4.1 predictive model a number of forces should be considered when building a predictive model, such as, model simplicity, predictive power and the usability of the model in a course, where often these factors work against each other (emmert-streib & dehmer, 2019). for example, to carry out a predictive model early on in an academic semester will allow sufficient time to assist atrisk students. however, this will come at an accuracy cost, as there will be less information available to ‘train’ the model. furthermore, to increase the predictive power of a model might come at a simplicity and usability cost, as more predictor variables may be required to improve the accuracy. in this study, we followed the approach of finding a suitable balance between these opposing forces. the course outline for the business statistics course is displayed in table 2. after careful consideration of the course outline, we decided to implement the predictive model in week 7 of the semester. we reason that this strategy should allow for a good balance between forces; it will allow educators enough time to assist the identified atrisk students without largely compromising the accuracy, and it will allow enough information (training data) to ‘train’ the model. table 2. course outline of the business statistics course from week 1 14 week quiz semester test content 1 sampling & sampling distribution 2 & 3 1 confidence intervals 4, 5 & 6 2 hypothesis testing: one population mean & proportion 7 1 (week 7) revision 8 3 hypothesis testing: chi-square procedures 9 4 hypothesis testing: anova 10 5 multiple regression 11 differentiation 12 maxima and minima 13 2 (week 13) revision 14 linear programing 8 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) the predictive power (trustworthiness) of the models used in this study was assessed by using the statistical calculations explained below (see marbouti, diefes-dux & madhavan, 2016): where: • true positives denote the number of students that failed and were identified as at-risk, • true negatives denote the number of students who passed the course and were not identified as at-risk, • false negatives (also known as type ii error) denote the number of students who failed the course but were not identified as at-risk students, • false positives (also known as type i error) denote the number of students who passed the course but were identified as at-risk students, and • f1.5 denotes the harmonic mean of precision and recall. more specifically, the harmonic mean takes into account the accuracy for the students who passed and failed the course, where it weighs the accuracy for students who failed more than students who passed (van rijsbergen, 1979). the traditional technique often used to identify at-risk students in statistics courses in the higher education context in sa (which is also the current technique used in this business statistics course), is to identify the students that obtain a mark less than 50% in their first formal assessment (semester test 1). then, these students are categorised as at-risk of failing the course. this traditional technique will be referred to as the baseline model for this investigation, analysis and report findings. in section 4.2.1, we illustrate that this model is not trustworthy in predicting at-risk students. therefore, it seems necessary to find a better performing predictive model. following this notion, we investigated four alternative predictive models in this study, namely: • multiple regression: multiple linear regression is an extension of simple linear regression by allowing for more than one independent variables. • logistic regression: logistic regression is a widely used prediction method in statistics and particularly in predicting at-risk students (see e.g. bainbridge et al., 2015; marbouti et al., 2016). moreover, logistic regression calculates the likelihood of observing a binary variable (e.g. 0 – fail and 1 – pass), using multiple covariates (independent variables). 9 van appel & durandt investigating possibilities of predictive mathematical models... • decision trees: a decision tree is a tree-like model that predicts responses by following the decisions in the tree from the root node to the leaf node. in this study we considered two trees described as i. a classification tree (the response variable is nominal, i.e. pass or fail), and ii. a regression tree (the response variable is numeric). the advantages of the above models, compared to other predictive models found in the literature, are the ease in which these models can be implemented in the most basic statistical software packages. moreover, when building a predictive model, one should keep in mind the following good statistical practices: (i) a good predictive model should be as powerful as possible with as few covariates as possible so that we are not overtraining the model. this occurs when the model maximises its performance on the training data by unknowingly modelling the residual noise as if it represented the underlying model structure, rather than learning to generalise from a trend; (ii) the selected covariates for a predictive model should be reliable and easily accessible to the educator. in addition, when deciding on a prediction model, one should also take into consideration the type of data used to train the model. for example, categorical covariates may yield better results in a classification tree than in a regression-based model. 4.2 statistical analysis and results before building our predictive models, we started by assessing the causal relationship between the covariates and fm. in table 3, we show the pearson’s correlation coefficient, which is a measure of the strength of the relationship between the students fm and the numeric covariates. equivalent to the study of marbouti et al. (2016), a pearson’s correlation coefficient of at least 0.3 is regarded as an acceptable covariate for further analysis, which was acceptable for all covariates in this study. table 3. pearson correlation coefficients between covariates covariate pearson correlation coefficient semester test 1 mark 0.6197 average quiz mark 0.4339 mark for the prerequisite 0.3080 table 4 shows the results for the chi-squared test for independence. this test determines whether the categorical covariates and fm (pass/fail) are statistically related. the only categorical covariate statistically related, at a 5% level of significance, to the fm is whether the student is repeating the course or not. table 4. chi-squared independence test covariate p-value repeating the module 0.0003 gender 0.0751 school quintile 0.7530 10 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) in addition, figure 1 (a)-(d) displays the relationship of each student’s covariates to their course outcome (i.e. pass or fail). more specifically, figure 1a shows the relationship between the prerequisite course mark (shown on the x-axis) and the semester test 1 mark (shown on the y-axis), figure 1b shows the relationship between the average quiz mark and semester test 1 mark, figure 1c shows the relationship between the prerequisite course mark and average quiz mark, and figure 1d shows the relationship between all three numeric covariates. to emphasize the challenging nature of building predictive models, it is meaningful to point out the irregular behaviour of some students. for example, in our dataset some students performed well in one or both of the covariates but failed the course. in contrast, some students passed the course but performed poorly in one or both of the covariates used. similarly, marbouti et al. (2016) highlighted that a students’ behaviour is seldom the same throughout the semester. for example, in our study, many students did not write semester test two or stopped attending lectures due to financial constraints. therefore, it seems unreasonable to expect that a model can precisely predict all the student’s final outcome in the course – no model is faultless. regardless of these difficulties, the traditional steps of the modelling cycle should be considered and continuous work should be carried out to improve the accuracy of the model over time. a b c d figure 1. the relationship between the covariates and the module outcome 11 van appel & durandt investigating possibilities of predictive mathematical models... 4.2.1 model validation in order to satisfy the six evaluation criteria mentioned above, we start by partitioning the sample data into two datasets: 50% for training and 50% for model validation. this technique, known as cross-validation, assesses how the models will generalise to an independent dataset. the goal of the model validation is to assess how accurately a predictive model will perform in practice, by using the accuracy formulas above, and to prevent the likelihood of overfitting the model to the training set. to reduce variability in our analysis of the models, we implemented 1000 rounds of the cross-validation, using random samples, where the validation results are averaged giving us an estimate of the model’s predictive performance. in addition, we also calculate the standard error (se) of the accuracy estimates over the 1000 rounds. a good predictive model should yield high accuracy measures, a low number of false positives (type i error) and false negatives (type ii error) with small se measures. however, it is particularly important to have as few false negatives as possible as this classification carries a high consequence (i.e. to identify a student as not at-risk, but the student should have been identified as at-risk), where the false positives classification (i.e. to identify a student as being at-risk, when the student is not at-risk) carries less consequence. in keeping with the good statistical practices mentioned above, we found that the best covariates, based on this dataset, for the logistic regression model to be their semester test 1 mark and their prerequisite course mark, for the multiple regression model the average quiz mark, semester test 1 mark, and their prerequisite course mark. for the decision trees, we found the best covariates to be the average quiz mark, semester test 1 mark, their prerequisite course mark, and whether the student is repeating the course or not. table 5 summarises the accuracy measures for the five predictive models used in this study. table 5. measures of accuracy in the predictive models method base method logistic regression multiple regression regression tree classification tree f1.5 43% 66% 72% 62% 61% se 4% 4% 3% 6% 6% accuracy 70% 80% 79% 75% 75% se 2% 2% 2% 3% 3% accuracy-pass 86% 88% 80% 81% 82% se 2% 4% 3% 5% 5% accuracy-fail 39% 65% 76% 62% 60% se 5% 6% 5% 8% 8% true negative* 57.7% 59.0% 53.6% 54.2% 54.7% se 2.5% 2.4% 2.6% 3.3% 3.1% true positive* 12.9% 20.2% 25.1% 20.6% 19.9% se 1.8% 2.0% 2.1% 3.0% 2.6% false negative* 20.2% 12.8% 8.0% 12.4% 13.1% se 2.0% 2.7% 2.0% 3.2% 3.1% false positive* 9.3% 8.0% 13.3% 12.7% 12.3% se 1.5% 2.3% 2.5% 3.1% 3.2% *represents the percentage of the sample. 12 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) from table 5, the base model is not a suitable model for predicting at-risk students with a f1.5 score of 43% and an overall accuracy of 70%. more importantly, it yielded the largest percentage of false negatives. recall, the high consequence the false negative classification carries. therefore, the base model is untrustworthy, as no intervention programme for at-risk students could be meaningful. the logistic regression and multiple regression models yielded far superior results with f1.5 scores of 66% and 72%, respectively, and an overall accuracy of 80% and 79%, respectively. in addition, both models yielded a satisfactory percentage of false negative and false positive outcomes, making these two models superior to the base model. the regression and classification tree models did not perform as well (with a f1.5 score of 62% and 61%, respectively and high se) as the logistic and multiple regression models in this study. however, the decision trees may be more useful when using categorical variables that are related to the dependent variable. the expected percentage of the sample incorrectly predicted (false negatives + false positives) by the models are 29.5% for the base model, 20.8% for the logistic regression model, 21.3% for the multiple regression model, 25.1% for the regression tree, and 25.4% the classification tree. thus, the logistic regression and multiple regression models yielded the most trustworthy results in identifying at-risk students, making these our models of choice in this study. in addition, the regression and decision tree models satisfied the six evaluation criteria outlined in section 2.2 (compare meyer, 2012). in particular, these models (i) yielded accurate results; (ii) are realistic and viable as the data required in the building of these models are relatively easy to obtain and implement in many statistical packages; (iii) yielded precise predictions (i.e. pass or fail); (iv) are known to be robust with extensive literature available to test the robustness of these models (although this is beyond the scope of this inquiry); (v) have successfully been used to predict at-risk students in this business statistics course, and (vi) yielded useful results, which will allow educators to identify at-risk students more accurately. an area, worthwhile for further investigation would be to determine how well these predictive models perform in other courses and particularly in other mathematically related courses. such an investigation might point to a model that is robust enough to give accurate results across many courses. furthermore, it would also be worthwhile to consider incorporating a class attendance covariate into these models, especially, since we as educators mostly have the perception that academically successful students have good class attendance. it is often challenging to record data from class attendance, especially in large classes, where not all students have smart devices for an electronic attendance recording system, especially in a developing country such as south africa. another covariate to consider could be how active the students are on the electronic learning environment and how often they visit information and support material on this platform. in addition, both the logistic regression and multiple regression models forecasted over 30% (true positives + false positives) of the students in the study as being classified as atrisk of failing the course. these large numbers could place enormous strain on educators to provide sufficient support for at-risk students, after all, it will be a fruitless exercise to identify students as at-risk, and not providing sufficient academic support. 5. conclusion in this study, we developed five different predictive mathematical models to identify at-risk students as early as possible in the academic semester in a business statistics course at a public university in sa. quantitative and qualitative data were collected from past 13 van appel & durandt investigating possibilities of predictive mathematical models... business statistics students and a number of numerical and categorical covariates and their relationships were investigated to answer the two research questions: (1) what is a suitable predictive mathematical model used to identify at-risk students in a business statistics course at tertiary level, and (2) how effective is such a model to predict students’ academic success in this course? we followed traditional modelling steps to construct the different predictive models (based method, logistic regression, multiple regression, regression tree, classification tree), commonly found in the literature, and compared the accuracy of these models based on meyer’s criteria (2012). a good selection technique for a predictive model should be an ideal balance between accuracy and simplicity. in particular, the logistic regression and multiple regression models yielded the most truthful results, using a cross-validation test. more specifically, these models yielded the highest accuracy with the smallest standard errors. an interpretation of model results might inform educators early in the academic semester of potential at-risk students, where educators will have the opportunity to intervene by providing rich academic support in the learning of statistics. early detection of possible academic failure with suitable treatment can improve throughput rates in statistics courses without compromising academic standards. furthermore, our efforts of finding a suitable predictive model is aligned with the notion of learning mathematical and/or statistical knowledge by highlighting the different strands of kilpatrick et al. (2001) conceptual understanding, procedural fluency, strategic competence, adaptive reasoning and productive disposition. apart from the knowledge base, to ultimately develop statistical literacy, reasoning and thinking, and an interconnection between these statistical components (compare garfield & ben‐zvi, 2007), a notion of supporting disposition is also present with the belief that every student can attain the necessary skills for academic success when formal education meets the students’ needs and not the incapacity of students. further research could follow; into efficient intervention programmes for at-risk students and at combining models to build a ‘new’ hybrid model to predict at-risk students more accurately. references bainbridge, j., melitski, j., zahradnik, a., lauría, e. j.m., jayaprakash, s. & baron, j. 2015. using learning analytics to predict at-risk students in online graduate public affairs and administration education. journal of public affairs education, 21(2), 247-262. retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24369796. https://doi.org/10.1080/15236803.2015.12001831 bernstein, a. 2013. mathematics outcomes in south african schools. what are the facts? what should be done? the centre for development and enterprise. south africa. retrieved from http://www.cde.org.za blum, w. & leiβ, d. 2007. how do students and teachers deal with modelling problems? in c. haines, p. galbraith, w. blum, & s khan (eds.), mathematical modelling: education, engineering and economics (pp. 222-231). chichester: harwood. https://doi.org/10.1533/9780857099419.5.221 boaler, j. (ed.). 2000. multiple perspectives on mathematics teaching and learning. london: ablex publishing. cassidy, s. 2015. resilience building in students: the role of academic self-efficacy. frontiers in psychology, 6,1781. https://doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01781 coetzee, s. & van der merwe, p. 2010. industrial psychology students’ attitudes towards statistics. sa journal of industrial psychology /sa tydskrif vir bedryfsielkunde, 36(1), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajip.v36i1.843 http://www.jstor.org/stable/24369796 https://doi.org/10.1080/15236803.2015.12001831 http://www.cde.org.za https://doi.org/10.1533/9780857099419.5.221 10.3389/fpsyg https://doi.org/10.4102/sajip.v36i1.843 14 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) comap-siam. 2016. guidelines for assessment & instruction in mathematical modeling education (gaimme). norman, oklahoma. available from http://www.siam.org doerr, h.m., ärlebäck, j.b. & misfeldt, m. 2017. representations of modelling in mathematics education. in: ga stillman, w blum, & g kaiser (eds.), mathematical modelling and applications (pp. 71-81). cham: springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62968-1_6 emmert-streib, f. & dehmer, m. 2019. evaluation of regression models: model assessment, model selection and generalization error. mach. learn. knowl. extr., 1, 521-551. https://doi. org/10.3390/make1010032 garfield, j. & ben‐zvi, d. 2007. how students learn statistics revisited: a current review of research on teaching and learning statistics. international statistical review, 75(3), 372-396. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-5823.2007.00029.x greefrath, g., koepf, w. & neugebauer, c. 2017. is there a link between preparatory course attendance and academic success? a case study of degree programmes in electrical engineering and computer science. international journal of research in undergraduate mathematics education, 3(1), 143-167. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40753-016-0047-9 kilpatrick, j., swafford, j. & findell, b. (eds.) 2001. adding it up: helping children learn mathematics. washington, dc: national academies press. lesh, r. & doerr, h. 2003. foundations of a models and a modelling perspective on mathematics teaching, learning, and problem solving. in r. lesh & h. m. doerr (eds.), beyond constructivism: models and modelling perspectives on mathematics problem solving, learning, and teaching (pp. 3-33). mahwah: lawrence erlbaum. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410607713 marbouti, f., diefes-dux, h.a. & madhavan, k. 2016. models for early prediction of at-risk students in a course using standards-based grading. computers & education, 103, 1-15. retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2016.09.005 meyer, w.j. 2012. concepts of mathematical modeling. mineola, new york: dover publications, inc. onwuegbuzie, a.j. 2004. academic procrastination and statistics anxiety. assessment & evaluation in higher education, 29(1), 3-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/0260293042000160384 rach, s. & heinze, a. 2017. the transition from school to university in mathematics: which influence do school-related variables have? international journal of science and mathematics education, 15, 1343-1363. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763-016-9744-8 samuelsson, j. 2010. the impact of teaching approaches on students’ mathematical proficiency in sweden. international electronic journal of mathematics education, 5(2), 61–78. slavin, r.e. & madden, n.a. 1989. what works for students at risk: a research synthesis. educational leadership, 46(5), 4-13. talsma, k., schüz, b., schwarzer, r. & norris, k. 2018. i believe, therefore i achieve (and vice versa): a meta-analytic cross-lagged panel analysis of self-efficacy and academic performance. learning and individual differences, 61, 136-150. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. lindif.2017.11.015 van appel, v. & durandt, r. 2018. dissimilarities in attitudes between students in service and mainstream courses towards statistics: an analysis conducted in a developing country. eurasia journal of mathematics, science and technology education, 14(8). https://doi. org/10.29333/ejmste/91912 http://www.siam.org https://doi.org/10.1007/978 https://doi.org/10.3390/make1010032 https://doi.org/10.3390/make1010032 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1751-5823.2007.00029 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40753 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410607713 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compedu.2016.09.005 https://doi.org/10.1080/0260293042000160384 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10763 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2017.11.015 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lindif.2017.11.015 https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/91912 https://doi.org/10.29333/ejmste/91912 15 van appel & durandt investigating possibilities of predictive mathematical models... van rijsbergen, c.j. 1979. information retrieval (2nd ed.). london: butterworths. van zyl, a., gravett, s. & de bruin, g.p. 2012. to what extent do pre-entry attributes predict first year student academic performance in the south african context? south african journal of higher education, 26(5), 1095-1111. https://doi.org/10.20853/26-5-210 https://doi.org/10.20853/26 _goback 1 research article 2022 40(3): 1-13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.1 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) the sustainable development goals as criteria for the global ranking of universities abstract the aim of this article is to survey and interrogate the university sector of the world ranked by international rankings critically as to the sector’s pursuit of the sustainable development goals. universities have a unique and indispensable role to play in the pursuit of the lofty objective of the sustainable development goals. however, when dealing with the global impact rankings, three provisos should be kept in mind, namely that academic autonomy is a prerequisite for a university and cannot be sacrificed, the sustainable development goals do not capture the entire round of challenges facing humanity and social metrics should be treated with circumspection, as these too have their shortcomings. most universities, with the possible exception of a few very top-tier universities, seem not to be geared to make their contribution to the realisation of the sustainable development goals. however, pockets of excellence exist, also in the global south, and in terms of internationalisation and comparative international studies, these should be capitalised on. keywords: comparative and international education, internationalisation of higher education, social metrics, sustainable development goals, universities, twenty-first century. 1. introduction the 17 sustainable development goals (sdgs) are the lodestar of the global community for its path to 2030. one of these goals (goal 4) deals with education: equitable, lifelong, inclusive quality education being the goal. this goal differs from all the others in that it is not only a goal in itself, as all the other goals, but is seen as instrumental towards the attainment of all other 16 goals. hence, goal 4 is of special significance. the university is not only part of the education project of every nation, but also constitutes the pinnacle of a national education system and of the global education project as well. hence, in view of the significance accorded to education to attain the sdgs, the university sector is by implication a key sector or instrument in society’s scheme for achieving the sdgs. in recent decades, the global ranking of universities has emerged as an important industry. from zero, 30 years ago, a myriad of global ranking of universities schemes are author: prof cc wolhuter1 affiliation: 1north-west university, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i3.1 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(3): 1-13 published: 30 september 2022 received: 07 march 2022 accepted: 16 may 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.1 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4602-7113 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.1 22022 40(3): 2-13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.1 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) in currency at present. one of these, the times higher education university impact rankings, ranks universities according to how universities support the 17 sdgs. this article aims to survey and interrogate the university sector of the world ranked by international rankings critically as to the sector’s pursuit of the sdgs. the article commences with the place of the university in society. then an overview of the rise of the university ranking industry over the past 30 years will be given, whereafter the focus will narrow down to the impact rankings – the history of this ranking system, its methodology and current patterns in the world as to how universities register on this ranking system. 2. the university in society a university can be defined as “a relatively autonomous education institution for the advancement of various branches of higher learning” (wolhuter, 2021: 368). it is a moot question as to where and when the first university in the world was established (see van der walt & wolhuter, 2016: 1022). western historians usually put it at the university of paris, 1080, not without merit. on the other hand, extra-western historians, and especially islamic and african historians, give the honour to the university of karouine in fez, morocco, founded in 859; and their case too is not without merit. much depends on how a scholar defines a university and how well institutions, in the view of the scholar, conform to that definition. in any case, for much of its history, the university stood at the fringes of society, cut off from public discourse or from the frontiers of technological, political, economic and social development. many of the leading thinkers of the eighteenth century, such as montesquie, voltaire, jeanjacques rousseau, john locke and james watt, were not attached to any university and did not even ever attend a university. while the founding of the humboldt university in berlin in 1810, the transplantation of that model to the united states of america with the establishment of johns hopkins university in 1876 and the institutions established in carrying out the 1862 land grant act were all milestones in the expansion of universities and in the consolidation of the nature of the modern university, by 1900, the global total higher education enrolments came to but 100 000 (or a gross enrolment ratio of 1%). an acceleration took place in the first half of the twentieth century, to reach 6,3 million (5%) in 1950, followed by another acceleration during the decades after the second world war, but the real global higher education revolution took off in 1990 (by that year the global enrolment was 88,6 million and the global gross higher education enrolment ratio 14%) (unesco, 2020). the global higher education revolution, which took off around 1990 and is still continuing, with ever-increasing momentum, can be ascribed to at least nine interrelated causal factors or societal antecedents. these are the population explosion and youth bulge in the global south; increasing affluence, which is making higher education affordable to more families; the rise of knowledge economies, where the driving axis of national economies becomes the production and consumption of new knowledge, i.e. making education even more valuable than in earlier times in history; the neoliberal economic revolution, which has brought about principles of efficiency, the profit motive, performativity and managerialism into higher education; the information and communication technology revolution, which not only has facilitated teaching and learning but, especially through distance education, has also made higher education accessible to growing numbers of people, the rise of multicultural societies, democratisation, individualisation, and the rise of the creed of human rights. the last four trends have made themselves manifest in higher education in calls for multicultural and intercultural education and giving students a bigger say in the running of universities (wolhuter & langa, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.1 32022 40(3): 3-13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.1 wolhuter the sustainable development goals as criteria for the global ranking of universities the single most salient feature of the global higher education revolution has been massification. in the short space of less than 30 years, higher education enrolments and gross higher education enrolment ratios have increased almost threefold from 88,6 million and 14% in 1990 to 223,7 million and 38,04% in 2018, respectively (unesco, 2020). other features of the global higher education revolution include a shift from mode i knowledge (traditional, discipline-bound produced and taught knowledge) to mode ii knowledge (interdisciplinary, applied produced and taught knowledge). furthermore, the principles of the neoliberal economic revolution were carried into the higher education sector, resulting in the principles of profit motive, efficiency, performativity and managerialism commencing to guide universities, and the state and industry gaining a stronger say in the running of universities. in the more democratised global environment, students have become more empowered too, and within this new context, the power or authority of the professoriate has been reduced as the professoriate now finds itself sandwiched between the demands of students on the one side, and, on the other side, the dual force of national and institutional governance. before the global higher education revolution is assessed, clarity first needs to be gained on the unique functions or purposes of the university. based on the definition of a university as “an advanced autonomous educational institution for the promotion (teaching and research) of various branches of science” (merriam-webster dictionary, 2020), wolhuter and langa (2021) deduced six roles or functions of the university. first, the university is an institution of teaching and learning of various fields of learning, at the highest level. the second function of a university is research. the idea is that teaching-learning and research activities at the university exist in symbiosis. the service delivery function is the third role of the university – an opaque function, but it includes, inter alia, activities whereby universities place their expertise to the benefit of different external stakeholders. the fourth function of the university is to act as the conscience of society, meaning to critique society. a precondition for the university to fulfil this role is that it is an autonomous institution. the university also has a role with respect to the maintenance, preservation and development of culture. the final function of the university is to be a location of innovation. when held up against these functions of the university as a yardstick, the global higher education revolution has brought to higher education its set of achievements as well as its quota of concerns or new challenges. while the massification of universities has opened the doors of the university to ever larger numbers of people and people from more social strata, the rising level of graduate unemployment is a problem to factor into the balance sheet. an unresolved question is who should carry the costs of the global higher education project. the way the global higher education revolution is playing out (closely tied to the principles and dictates of the neoliberal economic revolution) is sacrificing the quest for excellence and for truth, the principle of autonomy, the place of basic research, the role of the university in serving as the conscience of society and the role of the university with regard to the preservation, transmittance and development of the cultural wealth of humanity. 3. the sustainable development goals from the above, a close relationship between the university and society is evident, autonomy being one of the defining features of a university, notwithstanding. this does not only refer to the roles of the university in serving as the conscience of society, in cultural preservation and maintenance and in service delivery, but also in the teaching-learning and research functions of the university. teaching-learning has always been of a dual nature. besides the general http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.1 42022 40(3): 4-13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.1 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) intellectual moulding and character formation, training for the professions in society has been a central part of the teaching-learning activity of the university right from medieval times. besides basic research, the motivation of which is to push back the frontiers of knowledge, ever since research made its appearance at the university with the founding of the university of berlin in 1810, research too had a pragmatic function. the imperative for vocationally orientated teaching-learning and for applied research has become stronger during the global higher education revolution of the past three decades. the nascent knowledge economy (where the production and consumption of new knowledge have become the driving axis of the economy) and the fourth industrial revolution (where the blending of the physical, biological and digital worlds is asking for an ethical discourse) have attached new value to the university in society. it is, therefore, understandable that when the global community formulated the sdgs as its vision for the world of 2030, a specific place was given to the university in this scheme of things (un, 2015; unesco, 2015). by the beginning of the twenty-first century, it became clear that humanity was facing an ecological crisis. rising population numbers, growing technological prowess and more affluence have placed the finite resources and the finite capability of the earth to replenish resources under increasing pressure. aspects of this environmental degradation include atmospheric pollution and global warming, freshwater and marine pollution, the destruction of wetlands, soil depletion and soil erosion, deforestation, moving the natural geographical location of species and the destruction of biodiversity. the extent of environmental degradation is serious, to the point of putting the survival of the human species and even that of the planet at stake (ord, 2020). even if the planet and the human species can be saved, the ecological destruction has enormous and serious geopolitical implications, threatening global peace and stability, if not stopped and reversed in the near future. this was pointed out recently in a statement by frans timmermans, first vice-president of the european union, and josip borell of the european union’s foreign affairs and security policy section (timmermans & borell, 2021). dominique moïsi (2020), attached to the institute of international affairs in france and professor at harvard university, united states of america, calculated that an average increase of half a degree of the temperature of the planet would result in a 10–20% increase in the risk of deadly conflict around the world. in response to this ecological threat, the global community has formulated the sdgs as its vision for the world in 2030. on 25 september 2015, the general assembly of the united nations adopted resolution 70/1, that is, “transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development”, listing the following 17 sdgs: ending poverty in all its forms everywhere: • ending hunger, achieving food security, improving nutrition and promoting sustainable agriculture; • ensuring healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all ages; • ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all; • achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls; • ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all; • ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all; • promoting sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all; http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.1 52022 40(3): 5-13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.1 wolhuter the sustainable development goals as criteria for the global ranking of universities • building resilient infrastructure, promoting inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and fostering innovation; • reducing inequality within and among countries; • making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable; ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns; • taking urgent action to combat climate change and the impact thereof; • conserving and sustainably using the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development; • protecting, restoring and promoting sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably managing forests, combating desertification, halting and reversing land degradation and halting biodiversity loss; • promoting peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, providing access to justice for all and building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels; and • strengthening the means of implementation and revitalising the global partnership for sustainable development (un, 2015). based on a meeting convened by unesco in incheon, south korea, from 19 to 21 may 2015, the incheon declaration was drawn up by the over 1 600 participants from 160 countries, including over 120 ministers who attended the meeting. the incheon declaration unpacked goal 4, which is the vision of the global community for education by the year 2030 (unesco, 2015). from the united nations document spelling out the 17 sdgs, and especially from the incheon declaration, it is clear that goal 4 differs from the others in that it (education) is seen not only as an sdg in itself, but also as a means to and precondition for the realisation of each of the other sdgs. as the pinnacle in national education systems (as explained above), this means that universities are accorded a pivotal place in the pursuit of the sdgs. indeed, the term ‘universities’ is mentioned 16 times in the incheon declaration (see unesco, 2015). soon after the adoption of the sdgs and the incheon declaration, publications on the role of universities in the realisation of the sdgs started to roll in, such as the book by university of london scholar of comparative and international education, tristan mccowan (2019). 4. the global rankings of universities one powerful global societal trend since 1990 has been the neoliberal economic revolution. in the 1980s, conservative governments in leading western states, especially the united kingdom (margaret thatcher), germany (helmuth kohl) and the united states of america (ronald reagan), took the lead and cut down on expenditure and limit the scope of activities of the state, giving the forces of the market and the private sector freedom of reign. this neoliberal economic revolution spilt over to the east bloc after its implosion since 9 november 1989, and with the conclusion of the cold war, and nations in the global south no longer had the trump card to play off the superpowers of the west against the east bloc for aid and grants. these countries now had to turn to the world bank and international monetary fund for bail-outs, pressuring the nations of the global south into the neoliberal economic revolution. the principles of neoliberal economics have been carried into sectors outside the confines of the economy, including education, higher education in particular. indeed, as was explained earlier, the principles of neoliberal economies have been one of the hallmarks of the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.1 62022 40(3): 6-13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.1 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) global higher education revolution since 1990. these principles include cut-throat competition, performativity and performance measurement and appraisal. in the merciless competition and performance measurement between single universities, and between national university sectors, the global university rankings industry — which appeared after 1990 — is standing central (liu & cheng, 2011). university rankings have a long history. the rankings of the us news & world report, which date back to 1983, are usually regarded as the beginning of global university rankings (liu & cheng, 2011: 145; wildavsky, 2010: 101), although exercises in the ranking of american universities go back to 1895 (wildavsky, 2010: 101). since 1983, but especially since the dawn of the new millennium, the number of global rankings of universities in circulation has increased, so much so that by 2011, when shin, toutkoushian and teichler (2011) published the first book on global university rankings, there were already 33 such rankings on the internet (shin, toutkoushian & teichler, 2011). in 2003, the shanghai academic ranking of world universities (carried out by the institute of higher education at shanghai jiao tong university), also known as the academic ranking of world universities, was followed by the times higher education supplement rankings a year later. in 2010, the qs world university rankings, done by quacquarelli symonds, commenced. these are the three most-viewed university rankings, according to alexa browsing extension (2021); the times higher education supplement rankings, the qs rankings and the academic ranking of world universities rankings attract 10 734, 4 484 and 85 518 views, respectively per day. besides the three most commonly cited rankings, there is a growing kaleidoscope of global rankings of universities in circulation. world-class universities typically boast their placement on these rankings up-front on their websites, as in the age of globalisation, with its cut-throat competition and race towards competitiveness, including global competitiveness, and in times of neoliberalism, with its predilection for performance measurement, these rankings are used as an index of the standing of a university. these rankings are usually done annually and use composite indices in calculating the standing of a university. these indices typically include research output and research impact, internet pages of a university, peer ratings, evaluation of teaching activities, internationalisation effort, number of patents registered and number of nobel laureates among alumni. besides rankings in the aggregate pool of the world (with its some 25 0000 universities), many of the ranking systems also break down rankings as per world region. furthermore, rankings of individual faculties are done too. rankings of emerging or younger (than 50 years old) universities also exist. higher education scholar philip altbach (2012: 27) writes that in their relatively short history, the rankings of universities have attained “iconic status”. these rankings are keenly followed by university managers who use them for decision-making and benchmarking; governments use them as an index for national power, the media, funding agencies and prospective students, faculty and scholars looking for research collaborators. yet the global ranking of universities has not escaped criticism, and many abuses and caveats of this ranking exercise have been pointed out, right up to the pages of the top scholarly journal nature (see gadd, 2020; see also maxwell, 2018). criticism about methodological issues abounds, for example, the use of the number of nobel laureates as a proxy for quality teaching and learning. functions of the university, such as character building by means of teaching and learning, or the role of the university in exercising social critique (i.e. serving as the conscience of society), or the role of the university in cultural preservation and development (see wolhuter & langa, 2021), are not easily quantifiable. in the context of http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.1 72022 40(3): 7-13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.1 wolhuter the sustainable development goals as criteria for the global ranking of universities high-stakes ranking, there is always the danger that universities will concentrate on what is measured (to the detriment of a host of issues that are pivotal to quality university education) and the danger of excessive competition undermining the collegiate ethos of universities. the undergraduate experience is seldomly probed and there is also the problem of treating an institution as a single entity. university rankings are also criticised for relying on reputation (what others think of a university, i.e. 50% of the weight in the qs rankings comprise opinion surveys) — hardly an objective measure (bekhradnia, 2019). what comes to mind here is campbell’s law, formulated by american sociologist and research methodologist, donald campbell, namely that once a metric has been identified as a primary indicator for success, its ability to measure success accurately tends to be compromised (see campbell, 1979). for example, when police departments are subjected to performance measurement and performance appraisal as measured by the numbers of arrests made for specific crimes, they may quickly concentrate on those crimes and aim for the highest number of arrests, regardless of how many of those arrests will end or stand a chance of ending in a successful prosecution. performance measurement is very time consuming for educators or academics and can distract attention and drain energy and resources from teaching and learning and research. tellingly, in the introduction of his edited volume on the building of world-class universities in developing countries, altbach (2011) cautions about university administrations doing administrative work just to satisfy the requirements of performance appraisal, easily creating a false impression of the quality of education taking place at a university. global rankings of universities are just one of many instances of the use of metrics in education. the use of large data sets (especially results of international test series, e.g. the iea, the international association for the evaluation of education achievement and pisa, the international programme for student assessment) and the growth of technology (to make available and analyse such results), within the context of the neoliberal economic revolution and its forceful impact on education, have contributed to the growth of the use of metrics in education, resulting in a heavy backlash within the scholarly community of comparative and international education. examples of such criticism, which chimes in with that of donald campbell, include klees (2016), komatsu and rappleye (2018) and auld, rappleye and morris (2019). 5. the times higher education impact rankings of universities: using the sustainable development goals as a yardstick for the ranking of universities given the pivotal place universities assume in modern society, the rise of the global ranking of universities industry and the importance of the sdgs as the vision of humanity for 2030, it is only natural that the sdgs would be taken as a yardstick for the global ranking of universities. the times higher education (the) impact rankings assess universities against the sdgs. carefully calibrated indicators are used to provide a comparison across four broad areas – research, stewardship, outreach and teaching. these impact rankings commenced in 2018/19, and three annual rounds have been done to date. the aim of this new ranking is to capture the impact of universities on society based on the success of the institution in delivering the united nations 17 sdgs. the aim of the impact rankings is, per the the (2021), “to provide a showcase for the work being delivered by universities in our communities, and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.1 https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/ 82022 40(3): 8-13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.1 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) it is an opportunity to shine a light on institutional activities and efforts not covered in other rankings”. thus, it allows the the to demonstrate the differences a university makes to the world in which we live (the, 2021). any higher education institution in the world may apply to the the for participation in the impact-rankings exercise. in the latest round (2021), 1 118 higher education institutions in 98 countries or regions participated. the overall score is generated from the score for sdg 17 (partnership for goals) (worth up to 22% of the overall score), plus the three strongest of the other sdgs for which they provided data (each worth up to 26% of the overall score). for each sdg, a list of metrics has been developed for measuring a university. for example, sdg goal 1 (no poverty), has been put in the list of the sdgs, because some 10% of the global population live in poverty. universities need to be able to demonstrate how they are helping to address this problem through their work. the metrics used to measure the performance of a university with respect to this goal include the following (the, 2021): • the number of research papers on poverty published • the number of papers co-authored with authors from low-income countries • the citation impact of research papers on poverty • the proportion of students receiving financial aid to attend university because of poverty • university anti-poverty programmes • community anti-poverty programmes further to the caveats of the global ranking of universities, as pointed out earlier, two points should be mentioned. a university has many functions in society and cannot be reduced to becoming the “supermarket for society”, i.e. instantaneously supplying everything society asks (see mccowan, 2018). secondly, the sdgs are by far not a full inventory of the most serious and urgent challenges or crises facing humanity. in a well-researched recent publication, king and jones (2021) of the global sustainability institute at anglia-ruskin university list a number of scenarios of a global collapse, and the factors giving rise to such a collapse. some of the scenarios and factors do not figure in the sdgs, such as unchecked population growth, a financial crisis and a pandemic such as – or even worse than – covid-19. when the impact rankings are then considered, the problems involved in reducing complex institutions and events to metrics, all the roles of the university in society and the shortcomings of the sdgs in capturing all challenges facing humanity should be borne in mind. as explained earlier, a university has a set of unique roles in society and cannot be subjected to the dictates of society. furthermore, a university, in the execution of its unique role in society, needs a certain measure of autonomy and cannot be dictated by the needs of society (see mccowan, 2018). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.1 92022 40(3): 9-13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.1 wolhuter the sustainable development goals as criteria for the global ranking of universities 6. global impact rankings of universities: outcome and patterns the top 20 universities, according to the 2021 cycle of global impact rankings, and their national location and overall score are presented in table 1. table 1: top twenty universities according to the 2021 cycle of impact rankings rank university country overall score 1 university of manchester united kingdom 98,8 2 university of sydney australia 97,9 3 rmit university australia 97,8 4 la trobe university australia 97,8 5 queens university canada 97,0 6 aalborg university denmark 96,1 7 wollongong university australia 96,1 8 university college of york united kingdom 96,0 9 arizona state university (tempe) united states of america 95,8 10 university of auckland new zealand 95,8 11 kings college, london united kingdom 95,8 12 university of newcastle australia 95,2 13 university of british columbia canada 95,1 14 mcmaster university australia 94,9 15 university of newcastle united kingdom 94,8 16 university of leeds united kingdom 94,7 17 western sydney university australia 94,3 18 monash university australia 94,0 19 university of leicester united kingdom 93,8 20 university of bologna italy 92,8 source of data: the (2021). what is striking from table 1 is that the top 20 slots are all occupied by universities from the global north. furthermore, within the global north, the pattern is also lopsided; all but two are in anglophone countries, and within the anglophone countries, there is only one university from the united states of america. for the size of its university sector, australia (with eight universities in the top 20) is doing exceptionally well. secondly, the ranking scores are very high – 98,8 to 92,8 out of a possible 100. however, these drop to 47,6 to 56,5 in the rank order 601 to 800 group, and to 9,2 to 36,4 in the 1001 and lower rank order group. for the further interpretation of patterns, firstly, the results of the four south african universities that took part in the impact rankings are given in table 2. these are followed by a presentation of the results of three other brics (brazil, russia, china, india and south africa) countries in the global south and a selection of other countries in both the global south and global north in table 3. table 2: south african universities registering on the impact rankings university rank order overall score university of cape town 101-200 85,2 university of pretoria 201-300 77,4 nelson mandela metropolitan university 301-400 70,9 university of the western cape 501-600 66,2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.1 102022 40(3): 10-13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.1 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) table 3: registration of a selection of countries on impact rankings country total number of universities in impact rankings ranking of university with highest score brazil 38 48 united kingdom 50 1 united states of america 45 9 china 13 94 india 49 81 nigeria 5 401-500 egypt 31 95 germany 6 101-200 france 18 101-200 while the global north dominates the top slots, the global south is by no means absent or even poorly present, in many cases outperforming the global north. for example, 38 universities of brazil register on the rankings, against only six from germany and 18 from france. within the global north, the number of universities on the rankings is very uneven. for example, the united states of america has fewer than the united kingdom, and germany and france each has much fewer than the united kingdom. within the global south, patterns are as uneven as in the global north. for example, the five universities of nigeria and 12 of china pale in comparison to the 31 of egypt and the 49 of india. 7. conclusion within the context of the sdgs as humanity’s vision for itself and for the world of 2030, and within the context of the global university ranking industry, the impact rankings, ranking universities according to their performance in pursuit of the sdgs, were a logical development. universities surely have a unique and indispensable role to play in the pursuit of the lofty goal of the sdgs. however, when dealing with the global impact rankings, the following provisos should be kept in mind: • in order to be a university, academic autonomy is a prerequisite and cannot be sacrificed. • the sdgs do not capture the entire round of challenges facing humanity. • social metrics should be treated with circumspection, as these too have shortcomings. • only a tiny minority, 1 118 out of some 25 000 universities globally, participate in the impact rankings. having stated the above provisos, most universities, with the possible exception of a few very top-tier universities, seem not to be geared to make a contribution to the realisation of the sdgs. in the global south, a few exemplary universities exist. in the present era of the covid-19 pandemic, which has wreaked havoc on the internationalisation programmes of universities but, at the same time, has created an opportunity to rethink and redesign the international dimensions of universities, the sdgs and the scattered presence of model universities present a new opportunity for universities to collaborate and to learn from one another. at a scholarly level, this also presents the scholarly field of international studies in education with an opportunity in terms of international comparative studies. from the vantage point of the global south, there has been long-standing criticism that the way internationalisation has hitherto been promoted at universities worldwide serves the hegemony of the global http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.1 112022 40(3): 11-13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.1 wolhuter the sustainable development goals as criteria for the global ranking of universities north and is, in fact, an agent of neo-colonialism, but does not benefit the global south (see oleksiyenko et al., 2020: 11-12). while 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https://doi.org/10.17159/2224-7912/2021/v61n1a21 https://doi.org/10.15388/actpaed.2021.46.7 https://doi.org/10.15388/actpaed.2021.46.7 _hlk86304956 _hlk86305082 _hlk86307261 4 research article 2021 39(2): 4-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/..... creating research spaces for underserved communities: expanding and extending intersectionality in contemporary educational contexts abstract methods: intersectionality has extended beyond the tenets of race, gender and class to include queer communities, religious issues, literacy concerns, pedagogical styles, etc. in south africa, the european union and beyond. intersectionality is no longer solely relegated to the needs of african american women germane to the united states. aim(s): this paper is also aimed at engaging researchers and practitioners in an intellectual dialog that may contribute to the everexpanding research on intersectionality to include the united states, european union, south africa and other global communities. background: educators are cognisant of the dense demographic shifts and inequities in primary and secondary schools. the call for guidance, resources and policy is critically needed; the disproportionalities consistent in schools have manifested themselves in school disciplinary practices and student achievement. the manuscript encourages discourse and provides a roadmap to examine intersectionality’s expansion critically and how that expansion can aid in improving the lives of k-12 public education students on an international scale. additionally, the manuscript addresses whether intersectionality or its expansion served as a pivotal voice for marginalised communities and structures domestically and abroad. keywords: gender; intersectionality; black; research; practitioner; expansion of framework; students; women; marginalise. 1. introduction according to núñez (2014), scholars and practitioners in the educational community have borrowed, engaged in dialogue with and applied kimberle crenshaw’s (1989) intersectionality framework to a variety of educational issues. crenshaw (1989) coined the term intersectionality, author: oron jackson1 prof matthew witenstein2 affiliation: 1university of redlands, redlands, ca usa. 2university of dayton, dayton, oh usa. doi: e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(2): 4-18 published: received: 1 july 2020 accepted: 28 september 2020 http://orcid.org/%230000-0003-0722-056x jackson & witenstein creating research spaces for underserved communities 52021 39(2): 5-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/... embracing the idea that marginalisation of gender (in her analysis, female), race (black) and class (poor) can intersect, overlapping well documented elements of power and privilege in respect to policy challenging the advancement of an intersectionality research and framework (cho, 2013; graham et al., 2008). the stage for intersectionality to serve as a launching board to engage issues of gender, race and class at its intersections never quite found traction in the us. the cases of degraffenreid vs. general motors, moore vs. hughes helicopter inc. and payne vs. travenol laboratories inc. provided case law revealing a national disregard for the welfare of marginalised black women (crenshaw, 2018). instead of these cases becoming the springboard for an intersectional lens from which disenfranchisement could be isolated, the american legal system dug in its heels and perpetuated the already exclusive societal norms. moreover, under the guise of accountability and fear lodged into the frontal lobe of reticent americans, there seemed to be backlash and perhaps institutional warfare that would impact these women for subsequent generations in occupational, social and educational settings. while crenshaw’s initial framing evolved from legal contexts, educationists have utilised it as a framework to more clearly make meaning of students interlocking identities (typically those from marginalised communities) and the cumulative weight that those identities produce when impacting a variety of educational phenomena including academic achievement, retention, disproportional suspension/expulsion rates, etc. (blake et al., 2011; blake et al., 2015; morris, 2016). in fact, the two of us, a practitioner-scholar who serves as a principal of an alternative education complex and an assistant professor in a school of education, have ourselves considerably grappled and processed through conversations about its use and application for shedding light on students’ and other educational constituents’ interlocking oppressions and possibly even their privileges. moreover, debating and challenging one another has unearthed tensions, barriers and possible opportunities related to the intersectionality framework. one example to begin this debate is simply the important weight carried by practitioners and researchers when extending intersectionality, as mentioned above, from legal contexts into educational ones with due diligence. we reflected on the fact that contemporary literature on intersectionality in the field of education has greatly expanded (bowleg, 2013; hulko, 2009). this is notable because of the ways it has been utilised to frame diverse work in the field and because of its derivation from the group the framework was originally intended for black women (mehrotra, 2010). consequently, we wondered and even questioned with concern whether the ways in which crenshaw’s framework was being employed in education supported intersectionality and its original philosophy. as this meaningful dialogical exercise persisted for well over a year (including the exploration of other tensions, challenges and opportunities), it led us to realise that others may benefit from an article that situates a current conversation about intersectionality, mainly as it relates to us educational contexts with some short reflections about it abroad as well. therefore, the goal of this paper is to unpack those tensions, barriers and opportunities by providing a meaningful path forward for educational practitioners and researchers to responsibly use intersectionality in their work. three overarching questions emanating from the dialogic exercise are: a) has intersectionality use in educational contexts dutifully supported the framework’s original intentions? b) (how) has intersectionality been expanded in order to support other disenfranchised and marginalised populations in educational contexts? c) as practitioners employ theory to application through an intersectional lens, what might those practices look like? the manuscript will provide contextual evidence about intersectionality’s expansion from a historical, social and educational perspective. in other words, this evidence advances perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 62021 39(2): 6-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/..... the readers understanding of how intersectionality came to be, why it has expanded and whether it has addressed its original intent. greater understanding may provide resources to address the student achievement gaps in respect to students of colour in primary and secondary education sectors in the united states, european union (eu), south africa and in other global communities. 2. unpacking intersectionality 2.1 one hundred and fifty years of intersectionality intersectionality’s historical underpinnings can be traced back to the pivotal women’s suffrage era (late 1800s and early 1900s) in the us. the initial meeting in seneca falls, new york, despite its billing and perceived historical context, targeted white middle and upperclass women. elizabeth cady stanton and susan b. anthony collaborated in constructing the declaration of sentiments, patterned after the us declaration of independence. the declaration of sentiments elaborated on the “injuries and usurpations” resulting from male dominance. however, they did not intentionally reflect upon the inequities consistent with women of colour (dubois, 1999). instead, it was sojourner truth’s landmark “ain’t i a woman” that embarked upon the discourse of marrying race, class and gender. “i have borne thirteen children, and seen ‘em mos’ all sold off to slavery, and when i cried out with my mother’s grief, none but jesus heard me!” (stanton, anthony & gage, 1881:116). although only implied, truth allows the reader to enter the intersections of an existence marred by servitude, poverty and the expectations to breed. and by concluding with stanton, anthony and gage (1881:116), “what’s dat got to do wid womin’s rights or nigger’s rights?” she initiated a conversation that would take nearly one-hundred and forty years to formally conceptualise and gain acceptance in academic research communities, thanks to the work of crenshaw. as the civil rights period (1954–1968) came to a close, black dreams of upward mobility, level playing fields and a world where opportunity was expressed and given, blindly fell victim to both de jure and de facto segregation. the promise of the equal pay act of 1963, the civil rights act of 1964 and the voting rights act of 1965 became merely rhetoric compiled on pieces of paper. if we are to honour history and empirical facts, it should be acknowledged that the “protections” promised to folks of colour were overshadowed by the many welfare programmes afforded to whites during the new deal and fair deal era escaping the grasps of african americans aspiring to join the ranks of our middle class. instead, they adhered to jim crow laws and segregation. these practices persisted into the late 1970s when crenshaw could no longer ignore the inequities that plagued poor, black women. crenshaw identified the inadequacies of our judicial process to protect the most marginalised populations in our country, particularly black women. 2.2 understanding intersectionality crenshaw (year of publication) centred intersectionality as a framework on african american women. one might argue that they are marginalised and discriminated against in ways that do not judiciously and equitably support them through legal lenses as it relates to racism and sexism. unlike caucasian women, black women are saddled by racism and sexism (crenshaw, 1989). unfortunately, the combination of their gender and race place them on the lowest rung of america’s social strata. intersectionality, through a legal lens and case law, highlights the “invisibility” of the black woman (smith, 2013). jackson & witenstein creating research spaces for underserved communities 72021 39(2): 7-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/... part of our goal is to distil this brief introduction of intersectionality as a means to frame and support equitable opportunities for marginalised black women in legal contexts into considering how it might be extended and applied in educational contexts via research and policy. like the context for black women, if us society and educational environments are to progress forward in relation to providing equitable support for those with multiple marginalised identities, there is a pressing need to broaden our understanding and possible applications of intersectionality. consequently, this could lead to a reframing and conceptualisation in ways that maximise its utility in support of many students and stakeholders in educational communities globally. 3. what is the depth and breadth of intersectionality? 3.1 authors’ insights and reflections initial discussions between us supported delgado’s assertion that “intersectionality, if applied without constraint, can result in the creation of subcategories ad infinitum” (davis, 2015:214). these subcategories may include lgbtq people, those with disabilities and others consistent with primary and secondary schools. our concerns on crenshaw’s original premise we feared were lost in rhetoric and institutional practices that refused to embrace the intersections consistent with black women. rather than bolster her framework, we had concerns whether the expansion of such a focused framework would remove the density from the voices of black women. in order to properly conceptualise intersectionality, one would have to make a very basic assumption that the lived experiences of one group has been more traumatic and problematic than another. there is an abundance of evidence to support the claim that black women, historically, have borne the brunt of racial inequities throughout the world. for example, wun’s (2015) work shared the startling statistic that 90% of all girls expelled in the 2011–2012 school year in new york city were african american. and sadly, black women ages 18–19 are likely to be imprisoned at a rate three time greater than white women, despite only making up less than one third of their population (wun, 2015). 3.2 measuring marginalisation a major contribution to the research communities is their commitment to reviewing literature and acknowledging and confirming the additions and advancement of that theory. current expansion of intersectionality has largely failed to commit to the same process (salem, 2018). after acknowledging this error and commencing to reviewing additional literary contributions, the process of extending intersectionality to marginalised communities outside of those consistent with impoverished african-american women had already begun to take place (bassel & emejulu, 2014). most notably, gloria ladson-billings’ (1992 &1995) works provided a major springboard to extend the conceptual frameworks to not only an arena outside of the school of law, but to marginalised populations impeded because of their identified class and inability to achieve upward mobility. in choosing to extend the conversation into the educational arena, ladson-billings provided a voice to approximately 31 million children from low-income families and another 9.5 million who were products of poor families (jiang, granja & koball, 2017). because poverty is really an absence of financial resources, it greatly hinders an individual or family structure from adhering to dominant culture-imposed societal norms and expectations, often resulting from a lack of exposure and experience. in fact, the lack of knowledge and resources to effectively navigate through and take advantage of perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 82021 39(2): 8-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/..... learning opportunities often leaves multiply marginalised people without the effective tools to combat poverty. ladson-billings’ voice brought two very important perspectives forward, challenging the limited constraints of crenshaw’s paradigm. she extended the conceptual walls of crenshaw’s framework that initially addressed the nearly 24 million black women in the us. today, ladson-billings’ extension of intersectionality provides an extended framework to support the nearly forty million low income, poor, voiceless children who are often multiply marginalised. secondly, ladson-billings challenged delgado’s (2011:1264) claim that “intersectionality can easily paralyze progressive work and thought because of the realization that whatever unit you choose to work with, someone may come along and point out that you forgot something”. figure 1. the many facets of identity. intersectionality: going forward shawn harris, 2015, www.clydefitchreport.com. source: canadian research institute for the advancement of women moreover, the attempt by many to isolate which groups or combinations of marginalisation determines the level of injury is ethically and morally wrong. questions such as the following provide injurious examples: does disability exceed poverty? is class more pertinent than language barriers? should gender be a greater concern than sexuality? does a poor black woman garner a greater consideration for marginalisation than a first generation, latino male who is disabled? there truly is no appropriate concrete answer or possible policy resolution or implementation to support these fallible questions. in the last forty years, there has been much legislation identifying the expansion of vehicles leading to how one’s lived experiences serve as elements of marginalisation. several examples include the introduction of the american disability act, recent transgender legislation, expansion of religious selections, fluidity in sexual orientation, 1982 plyler vs. doe (unconstitutional to deny an illegal alien a free public education), reauthorisation of the bilingual education act of 1974, increase in globalisation, etc. these acts have expanded and complicated the conversation of injury, injustice, marginalisation, equity and access (crawford, 1997; hutchinson, 1982). our philosophy is that all these voices deserve to be heard and equitably supported; consequently, intersectionality must be expanded to include the needs deserved by the disenfranchised. in http://www.clydefitchreport.com http://criaw-icref.ca/intersectional-gendered-analysis http://criaw-icref.ca/intersectional-gendered-analysis jackson & witenstein creating research spaces for underserved communities 92021 39(2): 9-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/... sum, this should include (but is not limited to) all combinations of race, gender, sexuality, age, immigration status, income, ability, occupation, education, etc. when people or groups are relegated to a second class citizenry. 3.3 crenshaw’s blessing to expand in an op-ed piece, “why intersectionality can’t wait”, crenshaw (2015) acknowledged that the constraints placed on her original framework were simply too narrow. she became perplexed by the “big miss” where african americans came up on the short end of three monumental cases involving intersections of race and gender. it was here that she realised that by expanding the intersectionality’s walls, the variety of channels through which racial and gender oppression were lived amongst mainstream america could assist in illuminating their voices. by expanding the lens, she saw an opportunity to quiet conservative voices who often discredited intersectionality’s narrow framework as mere identity politics. by expanding the frame, she could move from an easy target highlighting a single identity (black women) to smothering and holding accountable the institutions that covet practices of institutionalised privilege aimed at discrediting black women through the guise of identity politics. through the expansion of intersectionality, the term is no longer susceptible to isolation. going forward, those that assert that intersectionality is merely identity politics will have their work cut out attempting to discredit the many platforms in which the expansion of intersectionality has been extended to and through: #metoo, black lives matter, march for our lives, lgbtq community, jagmati sangwan’s movement, naked protest of manipur’s mothers, gulabi gang movement, etc. (lebron, 2017; chaudhuri, 2017; misri, 2011; white & rastogi, 2009). 3.4 expansion of intersectionality abroad opportunities for interpreting and supporting the needs of multiply marginalised individuals and groups outside the us through an intersectional lens can provide meaningful comparison and of course, equitable response and care for those needing it. less than ten million people of african descent reside in europe; this is less than a third of those inhabiting the us. given such a low representation, it would be safe to say that crenshaw’s conceptualisation of intersectionality as it pertained to black women would be less of a focal point as these women represent a small percentage of the population. as referenced above concerning the jagmati sangwan, naked protest of manipur’s mothers and the gulabi gang movements, intersectionality has already expanded beyond the scope of crenshaw’s paradigm. the eu has made attempts to move beyond the narrow constraints of intersectionality to a broader multiple discrimination approach. unfortunately, the eu legal frameworks, similar to those in the us, have done a poor job of comprehending how multiple points of marginalisation intersect and incorporating policies and practices that address each of these as equally important. unsurprisingly, there is still significant work to be done. outside of the eu, south african students began reintroducing intersectionality’s theoretical framework back into academic conversations, they too had expanded crenshaw’s “interlocking identities” to sexuality, sexual orientation, disability, etc. (gouws, 2017). as the new century commenced, the intersectional cry moved beyond the borders of the united states and european union. south african voices in support of crenshaw’s application of intersectionality grew louder. “my feminism will be intersectional or it will be bulls***” became the battle cry challenging the passive ontology of south africa’s population of black females from past generations (dzodan, 2011). perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 102021 39(2): 10-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/..... it may be these discussions that bring clarity to the struggling “public” education system in south africa where “white students still attend schools with disproportionate shares of white students, and most black students still attend virtually all black schools” (ladd & fiske, 2006:7). similar to the united states, there are severe inequalities in terms of student outcomes that hinge on wealth, where students attend school, language and locale. these factors have contributed to discrepancies in at least two and sometimes four grade levels worth of learning (spaull, 2013). the poor reports on student achievement couple with the persistence of sexual violence experienced by young black south african girls inside and outside of south african schools begs the need to further research and understand the complexity of how race, gender, class and other factors intersect should be of great concern to future research and researchers (bhana, 2012). 4. opportunities and challenges when applying intersectionality 4.1 intersectionality and the african american and lgbtq communities it is important to address whether intersectionality or its expansion served as a pivotal voice for marginalised communities and structures. in this section, we give some context as it relates to black women and lgbtq communities on an international scale began to address this important question (lee & brotman, 2013). unfortunately, for crenshaw’s intended focus of intersectionality, american black women have had mixed results and consequently, have not nearly been liberated and supported in a fully equitable manner. despite empirical evidence to the contrary, black women are often stereotyped in ways that produce perceptions of angry, hostile people (childs, 2005). the strength and commitment to displaying fortitude, communicating their emotions and breaking the silence consistent with servitude, black girls are susceptible to undue disciplinary attention (brown & giligan, 1993; wrinkle-wagner, 2009). when considering educational contexts, young school age african american girls are suspended at “six times the rate of white girls and more than any other group of girls and several groups of boys” (george, 2015:104). since 1970, the number of incarcerated women has increased from 8 000 inmates to 110 000 (1.275% increase) (swavola, riley & subramanian, 2016). of those, black women comprised 44% of the above. providing another important perspective, roughly 4.1% of american adults identify as lbgtq (gates, 2014). some voices within lgbtq grassroots, literary and political arenas have engaged in intersectionality conversations. the culmination of these efforts has resulted in emerging research as demonstrated by parent et al.’s (2013) special issue on utilising intersectionality with lgbtq, gender and race identities. despite their efforts, homosexuality remains illegal in 75 countries. as of 2016, the following ten countries maintain laws where homosexuality is punishable by death: iran, iraq, mauritania, nigeria, qatar, saudi arabia, somalis, sudan, uganda and yemen (bearak & cameron, 2016; smu, 2018). in 2015, the national youth risk behaviour survey revealed the following: • 10% of the lgb students were threatened or injured with a weapon on school property • 34% of the lgb students were bullied on school property • 28% of the lgb students were bullied online using two formidable examples, we have briefly identified some of the ongoing needs and struggles that exist domestically and abroad. regardless of the success in some of the jackson & witenstein creating research spaces for underserved communities 112021 39(2): 11-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/... marginalised communities, the amount of unfinished work is evident. for this work to succeed and continue with an upward trajectory, researchers and scholar-practitioners must continue to support these marginalised groups with empirical research with meaningful practical implications. further progress demands that the paradigm and frameworks supporting the integrity of intersectionality is consistent with its expansion. 4.2 intersectionality and the state of affairs in public schools intersectionality’s viability and sustainability continues to struggle through societal obstacles. the ongoing challenge of equitably approaching the complexities of the breadth and depth as it pertains to the social complexities of intersectionality is open to much debate and criticism. on the contrary, one area where intersectionality’s interdisciplinary approach has proven to be relevant and backed by empirical research is in the arena of public k-12 education. for the first time in the united states, president george bush echoed that one hundred per cent of america’s publicly provided students would be “proficient”. the language demanded that all racial, economic, marginalised, etc. significant subgroups be acknowledged. in the world of education, intersectionality has become synonymous with an educational practice embraced by many teachers across the nation. educators’ interdisciplinary approaches to education often work in concert with the creed that all children can and will learn. the “all” accepts the notion that a child’s educational success is predicated upon the whole child where their academic achievement relies on the sum of many parts. before a child can maximise all the school provides, they must be provided with opportunities to eat, sleep, presume safety, feel loved, gain confidence, achieve and problem solve. these basic needs and aspirations can be seen as foundational tools that can be leveraged alongside public education as springboards to college and career opportunities. historically, we have failed to incorporate intersectional tools that heavily contribute to developing the “whole child”. for example, a young black girl is punished for her lack of introduction to “mainstream sociocultural norms” and acquired behaviours from a “culturally influenced” environment (weinstein et al., 2003:269–270). her perceived loud and boisterous communication styles are often misconstrued as hostile and antagonistic rather than a source of strength and insistence on not being “invisible” (weinstein et al., 2004). black girls were more likely than latina and white girls to be sexually harassed through touching, grabbing and pinching having a profound psychological effect on the population. these young girls are being reprimanded for behaviours that are championed and accepted in their very own living (downey & pribesh, 2004). after controlling for sociodemographic factors, the findings caused me to pause. african american girls were 60% more likely to be referred to the discipline office and 440% more likely to be referred and suspended when compared to their white peers (bryan et al., 2012). how scholars and practitioners respond to the needs of these students going forward are critical and intersectionality can help not only interpret challenges encountered by multiply marginalised students but also invoke strategies and policies to support their needs. collaborative work going forward may be a key to more successful experiences. 5. conclusions and implications for policy and practice in educational contexts millions of marginalised students internationally who attend primary and secondary schools lack involvement from their loved ones, reside in impoverished neighbourhoods, are hungry, possess minimal academic foundational skills and endure the daily struggle of implicit perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 122021 39(2): 12-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/..... bias. for a variety of co-mingled reasons, school becomes unattractive for many and the achievement gap persists and grows. utilising the groundwork established in this paper regarding intersectionality and considering enhanced opportunities for it to be utilised in schooling contexts and practices, we have proposed three related opportunities for teachers, administrators and educational stakeholders to support students. 5.1 culturally relevant instructional practice/curriculum first and foremost, students must experience a level of academic success to support the work in this area. while they are improving, and achieving academically, students of colour should be introduced to a curriculum grounded in their lived experiences leading to cultural competence (ladson-billings, 1995). in other words, their own cultural and communal wealth should be leveraged to best support their academic success. furthermore, they must be provided with tools that teach and encourage them to “question the question” and be equipped to challenge the status quo and power structures marginalising them. 5.2 implement culturally relevant disciplinary practices and interventions empirical data has revealed the disproportionalities in the administering of school discipline when students of colour are compared to their white peers. to mandate that schools actively look for relevant interventions to improve behaviours, it would be advantageous to eliminate the two tools contributing to the mass increase in referrals, suspensions and expulsions, zero tolerance policies and wilful defiance violations found in the education codes of each state. 5.3 increase community involvement for african american families noticing the disproportionalities in referrals, an african american male parent advisory group was developed in the school of the principal writing this article. having tough conversations with marginalised groups, providing them with a voice and outlet and teaching them how to navigate through the educational process made a profound difference in increasing parent involvement and reducing discipline amongst that population. there is no doubt that low income parents are often underrepresented when discussing parent involvement (wallis, 1995). those who have immersed themselves in the process have often been regarded as receivers of information; they have not been afforded the role as participants and decision makers in school sanctioned events (lightfoot, 2004). ironically, for those who have made earnest attempts to engage, they have found that the roles offered to parents were passive in nature. for those who moved from passive engagement to advocating for their children, they observed a distinct level of resistance (lareau & horvat, 1999). instead of practitioners placing judgements, it is incumbent upon them to understand the “why” and to understand/define parent involvement as it pertains to their schools and communities. practitioners must ask themselves the following questions: what is known about the uses of parent involvement in well-represented minority communities? knowing the skill gaps, time constraints and institutional fears of minority parents (e.g. african americans, hispanics, english language learners, undocumented families), are administrators and practitioners providing meaningful orientation/training components? or, are they simply blaming parents for skills that they lack? consistent with common core standards, students must be asked to “work with peers to promote civil, democratic discussions and decision-making, set clear goals and deadlines, jackson & witenstein creating research spaces for underserved communities 132021 39(2): 13-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/... and establish individual roles as needed” (cde, 2013) . perhaps practitioners can employ similar standards in their attempt to bridge the gap between those that know and those who do not. 5.4 implicit bias training that is followed up through administrator and teacher evaluations educators are subject to forming stereotypes that marginalise young african american kids (and other minority kids as well) consistent with danger. often, this causes educators to exacerbate minor threats due to biases created by a lack of social interaction and an ignorance of cultural norms akin to children of colour (brown et al., 1991; canon, idol & west, 1992; mandell & strain, 1978; myles & simpson, 1989). coupled with a lack of classroom management skills, common amongst newer instructors, teachers enter power struggles that tend to escalate behaviours due to inexperience and inadequate training (emmer, 1994; kearney, plax & sorenson, 1988). finally, as we strive to find cohesive solutions that involve all stakeholders (pre-service teachers, experienced teachers and administrators), we propose the following provocative questions that can be framed through an intersectional lens to support the needs of students: • how does social context influence our perceptions of race, class and gender? • how might restorative training and processes change the culture of your school? • as a pre-service teacher, what do you need from your peers and administration to enhance your pedagogical, classroom management and social experiences? 5.5 need for research community to collaborate contemporaries have often declined invitations to engage in the necessary dialogue required to broaden the intersectional paradigm. in order to advance intersectionality, further research revealing empirical data is needed to conceptualise its expansion and extension so that it may be placed in an appropriate framework that can be understood and accepted throughout the research community. it is also key to acknowledge that numerous extensions should be made to best support people with diverse interlocking social identities. because intersectionality lacks core elements and variables that can be tested and operationalised, it serves as an analytical force that can only be dealt with in a qualitative fashion through dialogue of lived experiences. because social identities are varied and often intertwine, they cannot rest on race and gender deeming a disenfranchised population as more or less marginalised 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higher education is crucial for the development of ideals and skills necessary for democratic societies to take root and prosper, higher education institutions’ missions have been tested during this time of uncertainty. the covid-19 pandemic has revealed the instabilities and disparities in global higher education by exacerbating profound social fractures and long-standing structural imbalances. as such, the study examined how the covid-19 pandemic has affected rural higher education institutions in building a sustainable and democratic future. it also examined students and staffs’ perspectives on how these higher education institutions responded to the covid-19 pandemic in building a resilient, inclusive and democratic culture. informed by an interpretivist paradigm, the study utilised a qualitative research approach and a case study design. data were collected at two rural universities from university managers, lecturers and students using interviews. the study’s findings revealed that while the covid-19 pandemic represents a time of survival of the fittest, which also strengthened democratic tenets and revolutionised the higher education sector, the pandemic has revealed pre-existing institutional issues and vulnerabilities in rural higher education institutions. research findings also revealed that the pandemic has also spotlighted the poor and the most vulnerable in society as rural heis endeavoured to build resilience, and an inclusive and democratic culture to stay sturdy in the face of the ‘new normal’ and emerge stronger from the covid-19 pandemic. based on the study’s findings, it was concluded that building a resilient, inclusive and democratic culture at heis could generate success for higher education institutions by influencing students’ career opportunities and employment readiness, amongst many others. we recommend that heis consider focusing more on equity and inclusion; reinforce capacities for risk management at all levels of the system; strong leadership and coordination; and enhance consultation and communication mechanisms. keywords: covid-19 pandemic; democratic culture; higher education, sustainable development, transformation. 1. introduction and background since their inception, higher education institutions (heis) have been the centres of socio-economic and environmental transformation (filho et al. 2017; awuzie & abuzeinab, 2019). in addition, heis are known for their strong influence author: dr babawande emmanuel olawale1 prof vs mncube1 dr shephard ndondo1 mr bonginkosi hardy mutongoza1 affiliation: 1university of fort hare, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i3.2 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(3): 14-28 published: 30 september 2022 received: 04 march 2022 accepted: 14 june 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.2 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5265-1583 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2103-2530 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2939-1274 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.2 152022 40(3): 15-28 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.2 olawale, mncube, ndondo & mutongoza building a sustainable and democratic future on community sustainability and a diverse cultural orientation that is achieved through the three related pillars of teaching and learning, research, and community service (armeanu, vintilă & gherghina, 2018). through these three university pillars, the global community is expected to achieve the 2030 sustainable development goals (sdgs) agenda that will see an improved quality of life in all aspects of human endeavour (awuzie & abuzeinab, 2019; un, 2020). the commitment to ensuring equitable quality education and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all, underscored by sdg number 4 (un, 2020), has broadened the role heis are expected to play. the socio-economic inequalities that characterise different geographical spaces also pose a great threat to the achievement of the sustainable development goals. there is a lot of evidence that most heis, especially those in marginalised rural areas, are constrained in their operations, owing to resource limitations and poor local, regional and international networking (marta, susana & miranda, 2018). the glaring inequalities among heis and communities in which they are situated were further exposed by the covid-19 pandemic, an epic crisis. the pandemic has affected every facet of human function, not sparing the global higher education sector. the abrupt lockdown measures that restricted people’s movement and consequently led to the loss of freedom have had profound implications on the proper functioning of heis. despite the effects of the pandemic, heis were expected to be resilient in fulfilling their functions; hence a shift in paradigm in teaching, research and community engagement was unavoidable. while several studies focused on how heis have responded to the covid-19 pandemic (mittal et al., 2020; fasae, adekoya & adegbilero-iwari, 2020; martzoukou, 2020), this study explored how heis in rural ecologies were affected in their teaching for sustainability and democracy. it also examined how the institutions reacted to maintain their expected roles in the face of the covid-19 pandemic. 2. literature review 2.1 rural higher education institutions’ response to the covid-19 pandemic the devastating repercussions of the covid-19 pandemic brought a ‘new normal’ in the functioning of heis so that a sustainable and democratic life is achieved. the pandemic, in a way, provided a unique opportunity to assess heis’ capacity to respond to changes in the external environment, and to be a learning organisation in the service of addressing significant social challenges (reimers & marmolejo, 2020; olawale et al., 2021). the pandemic saw heis adapting to new modes of teaching and learning, research and community engagement. in line with the world health organisations’ guidelines on the covid-19 pandemic, heis responded by downsizing workers and students in offices and lecture rooms, respectively, and also resorting to virtual graduation ceremonies (maitanmi et al., 2021; reimers & marmolejo, 2020; mncube, mutongoza & olawale, 2021). in their community service programmes, some universities were involved in producing and distributing covid-19 test kits, vaccines, and personal protective equipment (ppe) (reimers & marmolejo, 2020). the heis fulfilled their role of socio-economic sustainability through knowledge generation and dissemination; as such, the research focus was diverted to issues about the mitigation of the pandemic effects. in addition, digital platforms have become more dominant as means of data generation, owing to covid-19 guidelines that restrict face-to-face interactions. a shutdown of heis meant that the traditional face-to-face mode of instruction ceased; yet learners were supposed to cover their semester work. the present covid-19 crisis has therefore revolutionised the entire higher education architecture of most heis the world over through http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.2 162022 40(3): 16-28 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.2 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) e-tools for teaching and learning, since there was no other option for the continuation of the academic activities (dutta, 2020). some institutions resorted to using social-media platforms to disseminate learning resources to students, despite challenges faced by institutions in different geographical locations (dutta, 2020). the fast transition into the digital era caught heis unprepared, resulting in glaring deficiencies in implementation, especially in the disadvantaged rural spaces. as a result of institutional unpreparedness, a rush for educators and student’s induction to digital platforms ensued. on the one hand, the use of digital platforms to varying degrees depended on the location of particular institutions (howshigan & nadesan, 2021; olawale & mutongoza, 2021). on the other hand, the covid-19 crisis can be viewed as a catalyst for change, owing to the transition into the digital era that would have taken a long time, due to bureaucracies and general resistance to change (adnan & anwar, 2020). while this can be true of most urban heis, the same is not happening with the poorer rural heis. the rural heis’ response to the effects of the pandemic is constrained by the scarcity of resources (agormedah et al., 2020). the shift to online digital platforms means a widening digital divide that leaves rural institutions far from achieving the sdgs for their communities (mhandu, mahiya & muzvidziwa, 2021). some rural heis have managed to prepare their staff for online learning, but could not connect with their students who live in remote areas because of the lack of access to fast, affordable and reliable internet connections (adnan & anwar, 2020; olawale & mutongoza, 2021). as such, most rural heis adopted a blended learning system to ameliorate the inadequacies of digital learning (agormedah et al., 2020). notwithstanding the challenges faced, high academic standards are required for heis to produce high-quality teaching outputs and graduates (howshigan & nadesan, 2021). the heis’ adaptation to digital technologies confirms their role as centres of societal transformation for sustainability and democracy. 2.2 role of higher education in building a sustainable and democratic culture the global community strives to meet democratic ideals, as this has become a standard for quality life in contemporary societies. it is believed that if all citizens are allowed to take part in an issue affecting them, quality decisions can be made for the sustainability of institutions and society at large (dahlum & knutsen, 2017; german youth institute, 2021). given their role as incubators of knowledge, research leaders and partners to the social and business world that surrounds them, universities play a crucial role in creating a culture for societal sustainability and a culture of democracy in contemporary terms (dzimi, fijałkowska & sułkowski, 2020; mncube & olawale, 2021). as centres for transformation, heis have a crucial role in creating an environment where democratic ideals can be fostered for socio-economic sustainability. universities are often viewed as key assets in communities, important resources for advancing democratic principles and strengthening democratic processes (cooka & nation, 2016; world bank group, 2020). through teaching for democracy, active and independent participation in research and community engagement, heis prepare students for a democratic society (akins et al., 2019). heis are also saddled with the responsibilities of creating sustainable communities by fostering democratic ideals, thereby reducing societal inequalities that manifest in the rural urban divide. this is because democratic values allow students to participate actively in their learning through learner-centred approaches and independent research (bergmark & westman, 2016); yet the poorer rural heis are constrained by a shortage of resources. currently, students at heis are actively engaged in finding solutions to covid-19 through http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.2 172022 40(3): 17-28 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.2 olawale, mncube, ndondo & mutongoza building a sustainable and democratic future research, with those in rural ecosystems likely to have a depleted capacity to engage in research. universities also contribute more than any other social institution to the development of civil society (akins et al., 2019). this is evidenced by developing key competencies such as reflective and critical thinking and self-knowledge, which entail self-appraisal processes (fuertes-camacho, dulsat-ortiz, & álvarez-cánovas, 2021). these, coupled with students’ involvement with society, can be operationalised through the heis’ openness to the wider community to engage with and respond to local interests and needs (dzimi et al., 2020). the responsible citizenry, an aspect of democracy, is shown by participation in issues that affect the community; hence the heis’ role of preparing students for citizenship through community engagement. these democratic aspects can be fully fostered if the effort is made to address the inequalities between the urban and the disadvantaged heis. 3. theoretical framework: green theory, citizenship education, and participatory democracy this study is underpinned by the green political theory developed by dobson (1980). since its development in the 1980s and 1990s, the central pillar and key value of this theory has been participatory democracy. this is often associated with grassroots political decisionmaking, decentralisation and citizen participation in a ‘strong democracy’ (barber, 1984), and increasingly with conceptions of deliberative democracy (dryzek, 2000). according to peters (2019), the importance of participatory or grass-roots democracy seemed to coincide with growing environmental consciousness, non-violence and concern for social justice. green politics promote participatory and, more recently, deliberative democracy as a model for open discussion, direct citizen engagement, and an emphasis on grass-roots action above electoral politics (peters, 2019). over a century ago, dewey (1916), possibly the most ardent advocate of participatory democracy, offered an ‘ecological’ system based on a sort of darwinian naturalism that grasped that knowledge originates from the experience of humans in the process of adapting to its environment. democracy, according to dewey (1936), is more than just a way of preserving our interests or expressing our uniqueness; it is also a forum for defining our interests. it was above all “an account of democracy as social inquiry that emphasised the importance of discussion and debate as a mechanism of decision-making with the institution of education at its heart” (peters, 2019: 133). dewey’s (1916) position on democracy and the distinctive greens’ ethical and political perspective enables us to comprehend the urgency of actual unsustainability and its associated exploitation of people, abuse of the planet, and continued degradation of the nonhuman world (barry, 2014). greens’ theory pays close attention to three fundamental issues of deliberative practice, namely control, design and democratic transformation. this may go a long way towards assuring meaningful and successful debate in the face of significant structural inequities and complicated power relations (barry, 2014; peters, 2019). the green theory was relevant for the present study, because it criticises the economic and technological developments that damage nature. as such, green theory recognises the need for radical change in the world’s political structure and takes its stance to challenge the world order to protect the planet from human-caused damage. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.2 182022 40(3): 18-28 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.2 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) 4. statement of the problem while the covid-19 pandemic affected both wealthy and poorer nations and interrupted the lives of all groups in society, the impact on students from vulnerable groups may be worse than on the typical student population (salmi, 2020). this is evident amongst students from disadvantaged groups who have encountered higher hurdles in low-income nations, due to a shortage of resources and more severe capacity restrictions (salmi, 2020; mncube et al., 2021). furthermore, prospects for online learning have been severely constrained in nations with limited internet and insufficient broadband capacity, particularly in rural regions (mncube et al., 2019; mncube & olawale, 2020; salmi, 2020). while the covid-19 pandemic has caused a major disruption in all sectors and has highlighted the importance of universities in modern society, higher education institutions still need to reflect on the common good and reconsider the marketisation path they have followed in recent decades in order to emerge from the pandemic as more sustainable and inclusive institutions. hence, the need to examine how the covid-19 pandemic has affected rural higher education institutions and their reactions in building a resilient, inclusive and democratic culture. 5. research questions • how has the covid-19 pandemic affected higher education institutions’ quest to build sustainable and democratic futures? • how have higher education institutions’ responses to the covid-19 pandemic ensured a more sustainable and democratic future? 6. research methodology 6.1 research paradigm this study is underpinned by an interpretivist paradigm. according to the interpretivist paradigm, the ontological position is reflected in a belief that there are various manifestations of reality, which the researcher constructs. thus, interpretivism contends that there are no absolute or correct realities (irene, 2014). epistemologically, interpretivism posits that the researcher takes on a subject–subject position, where reality and beliefs are intimately connected (irene, 2014; olawale, 2021). the methodological approach of the interpretivist holds that knowledge about reality is constructed socially by human actors (olawale, 2021). as a result, reality is multifaceted, such that researchers can come up with different realities (creswell & creswell, 2018). this paradigm was deemed suitable for this study, because the researchers believe that people make meaning of their existing environment based on their interactions with the world around them. as such, this paradigm will facilitate undertaking an in-depth investigation into how heis in the rural context have responded to the covid-19 pandemic in building a more sustainable, equitable and just post-covid world. 6.2 research approach to gain a deeper insight into how heis have responded to the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, a qualitative research approach was chosen. the use of this approach enabled the researchers to obtain qualitative data, thereby enhancing the systematic investigation of social phenomena in natural environments (teherani et al., 2015). these phenomena include, but are not limited to how people experience their life, how individuals and/or groups behave, how organisations operate, and how interactions shape relationships (teherani et al., 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.2 192022 40(3): 19-28 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.2 olawale, mncube, ndondo & mutongoza building a sustainable and democratic future thus, a qualitative approach was found suitable, because it allows the researchers to study critically how heis have responded to the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic and how these experiences can contribute to building a sustainable and democratic future. 6.3 research design the present study employed a case study research design. according to yin (2014), a case study is a first-hand inquiry that examines a contemporary phenomenon (the ‘case’) in greater depth. a case study design also seeks to examine a particular phenomenon within its real, natural setting, especially when the connections and/or limits between the context and the phenomenon are not immediately obvious (yin, 2014). thus, a case study design was suitable for this study because of its nature, which explored how rural heis have responded to the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic and how these experiences can contribute to building a sustainable and democratic future. specifically, the study examined both the phenomenon and the context. as yin (2014) affirms, case studies are the most appropriate strategy when contextual conditions are relevant to the phenomenon under study; hence, its suitability for the study. 6.4 population, sample and sampling technique population refers to a set of components, cases, or events, whether persons, things, or events, that conform to particular criteria and aims to generalise research conclusions (mcmillan & schumacher, 2010). for this study, the population comprises university managers, lecturers and students at two selected rural higher education institutions in the eastern cape province, south africa. the purposive sampling technique was used to select a sample for the study. the sample comprised fifteen students, three lecturers, and two managers from each institution, totalling forty participants from the two selected universities. the purposive sampling technique was considered appropriate, because it allowed researchers to hand-pick the cases needed for the sample by making assumptions about their relevance to the study. in that way, researchers could collect and use samples that are pertinent to the topic under study (cohen, manion & morrison, 2018). 6.5 data collection instrument a semi-structured interview was utilised to investigate how higher education institutions (heis) responded to the covid-19 pandemic to build a more sustainable and democratic future. as such, semi-structured interviews were held with university managers, lecturers and students on their experience during the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic. the semi-structured interview was found suitable because it allowed researchers to probe for clarification in case of vague or incomplete answers (datko, 2015). during the data collection process, fifteen university students, three lecturers and two managers were interviewed one-on-one at each university. as such, each in-depth interview lasted approximately 10–15 minutes, which was framed by informal conversation and audiotaped. 6.6 data analysis and trustworthiness for this study, data collected were analysed thematically using marshall and rossman’s (2011) analysis procedure, which comprises six steps. the researchers organised the data collected through interviews from different participants following the six steps. after that, the researchers generated themes and patterns, coded the data generated, tested the emergent understanding, and thereafter searched for alternative explanations before writing the full http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.2 202022 40(3): 20-28 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.2 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) report with many attempts to minimise the authorial voice, but focus on creating an objective account of meaning as provided by the participants (marshall & rossman, 2011). 6.7 ethical consideration ethical clearance was sought from the authorities of the participating universities and the issues of anonymity and informed consent were considered for this study. the ethical principles of confidentiality, anonymity and privacy were also preserved, and these principles were discussed and agreed upon before the commencement of data collection. similarly, all participants’ consent to participate in this study was obtained. before the participants’ agreement was requested, they were given information about the research’s aims, procedure and data usage. the participants were also given the option to withdraw from the study at any time, with the data from that respondent not being utilised. 7. result and discussion the present study sought to investigate how higher education institutions (heis) have been affected by the covid-19 pandemic and their response to building a more sustainable and democratic future. as such, results and discussions were presented under the following sub-headings: • the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on building a sustainable and democratic future in rural heis. • building resilience, inclusive and democratic culture in heis 7.1 impact of covid-19 pandemic on building a sustainable and democratic future in rural heis to gather information on how institutions have responded to the covid-19 pandemic to build a sustainable and democratic future, it is paramount to establish its impact on rural heis. as such, participants were asked, “how has the covid-19 pandemic affected your institution in building a sustainable and democratic future?” research findings revealed that the covid-19 pandemic represents a time of survival of the fittest, which can also strengthen democratic tenets and revolutionise the higher education. on the other hand, findings revealed that the pandemic has exposed pre-existing institutional issues and vulnerabilities at rural areas’ higher education institutions. these vulnerabilities at rural heis were evidenced in the teaching and learning practices, managerial role, institutional social life, and psychological preparedness of stakeholders in handling the covid-19 challenges, amongst many others. for instance, a participant stated, the pandemic necessitates that we return home and remain at home all day and night while continuing the learning process in a different learning environment. this had a negative impact on both our interpersonal and intrapersonal lives socially and academically. as a result, the shift from a face-to-face to an online class was not an easy transition for me given that some of my major courses cannot be taught online – this caused a lot of stress, worries, and confusion which eventually had an adverse effect of my marks (student 8 – university 2). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.2 212022 40(3): 21-28 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.2 olawale, mncube, ndondo & mutongoza building a sustainable and democratic future similarly, another student added, the sudden outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic has had a negative impact on our academic work and social lives. for example, students like myself who live in the rural community and study in a previously disadvantaged institution like my university do not have quality access to online learning due to limited internet connectivity and the lack of digital infrastructures … as such, it becomes challenging for me to complete my assignment or any given tasks or projects (student 15 – university 1). a lecturer who lamented on how the pandemic has affected the teaching and learning practices, as well as the psychosocial wellbeing of the stakeholder, explained, the pandemic has necessitated a sudden transformation in the way we teach and assess learning and this has put us as lecturers under a lot of pressure. at that time, we were not trained on using some learning software such as the blackboards, microsoft teams, google meets, etc. … for educational purposes. as such, this caused and, to some degree, still caused considerable stress and uncertainties for both staff and students and increased workloads for the university staff (lecturer 3 – university 2). a faculty manager also spoke on how leadership responsibilities have been altered in the face of the covid-19 pandemic. the manager posited, … while the pandemic is abrupt, it has put a lot of pressure on the faculty as well as the institutional systems of quality assurance, leadership, and governance. while the majority of staff have complained and requested support during this trying time, we as managers also find it difficult to attend to all the needs of our staff and students while navigating household responsibilities which has blurred boundaries between work and home … this has resulted in me working longer hours, which causes a lot of stress (manager 2 – university 1). a faculty manager from university 2 also added, although most universities in the urban region have successfully integrated some form of online learning into their coursework and assessment practices, it has been very challenging and stressful for us in a rural university. as a previously disadvantaged university, we often struggle to meet up with demands from the higher authorities, the training of staff and students towards the transition to online teaching and learning platforms, the development of formal training on software and community of practice through which good practices can be shared, as well as the provision of ppes and other required support (manager 1 – university 2). research findings revealed that the covid-19 pandemic has significantly stressed education in terms of clarity and responsiveness of communication with the stakeholders, particularly students and staff. while the shift from traditional to online teaching and learning was unavoidable, many students at rural higher education institutions were somehow excluded from learning. many of them were unable to access online resources due to a lack of infrastructure, poor internet connection, and students’ complex mode of communication. consequently, students’ unique study path and the need for individualised attention and support from academic staff and the institution at large were found to be lacking. these findings are in line with the views of dube (2020), who argues that, typically, rural students often lack access to socio-economic amenities such as quality education, adequate healthcare, transportation, marketing opportunities, and even electricity. thus, the covid-19 pandemic and the implementation of online learning have exacerbated the challenges faced by rural students and lecturers. the shortage of resources deprived students and lecturers in rural http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.2 222022 40(3): 22-28 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.2 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) heis of the necessary information, education and skills for community development, selfdevelopment and the fight against the covid-19 pandemic (mncube, olawale & hendricks, 2019; dube, 2020; mncube et al., 2021). from the above research findings, it seems as though the sudden transition to online learning favours urban and affluent students, thereby widening the gap between rich and poor, rather than uniting the nation in the fight against the covid-19 pandemic. these findings corroborate those of dhawan (2020), who argues that the pandemic has created a digital divide that widens inequality gaps. this resulted in students who are less affluent and belong to a less tech-savvy family with financial restrictions, losing out during the sudden transition to an online platform. thus, chaturvedi, vishwakarma and singh (2021) assert that the covid-19 outbreak has significantly impacted students’ mental health, education and daily routine. however, given the government agencies-imposed measures such as social distancing and travel restrictions, proper consideration was not given to the health implications, as there was no strategy in place to protect against the psychological impact of the covid-19 pandemic (chaturvedi et al., 2021; olawale et al., 2021). this is why green’s theory argues for a deliberative practice in terms of control, design and democratic transformation, which fosters a successful debate in the face of significant structural inequities and complicated power relations (barry, 2014; peters, 2019). 7.2 building resilience, inclusive and democratic culture in heis to elicit information on the sustainability of heis in the face of the covid-19 pandemic, participants were asked, “how has your institution responded to the covid-19 pandemic in building a sustainable and democratic future?” research findings revealed that while the pandemic has spotlighted the poor and the most vulnerable in the society, rural heis endeavoured to build a resilient, inclusive and democratic culture to stay sturdy in the face of the ‘new normal’ and emerge stronger from the covid-19 pandemic. as such, rural higher education institutions were able to build and sustain democracy in the face of the pandemic by supporting a democratic ethos, engaging in debates on the future of education and society, and engaging with the lives and problems of students in the community. for instance, a participant stated, while the pandemic has erupted in an unexpected form, the only way our university has managed to maintain institutional activities, as well as democratic standards, is by promoting a culture that allows us to engage in various debates with both students and other relevant stakeholders for continued academic activity. this form of engagement is characterised by participation, cooperation, and dedication to public goods, which enables us to make informed decisions with regards to teaching and learning, as well as the institutional management practices” (manager 3 – university 2). a similar sentiment was echoed by a lecturer who argued that lecturers, through their respective institutions, have managed to build a sustainable and democratic future amidst the covid-19 pandemic by infusing democratic principles across all aspects of their teaching and learning activities. for example, a lecturer said, while covid-19 has broadened our views of sustainability, we as lecturers endeavour to create a better covid-19 experience, as well as a better post-covid-19 world through the inculcation of democratic values and principles in our online teaching and learning activities … the university has also assisted us through several workshops on how technology can be harnessed for service delivery, all of which allowed us to produce knowledgeable, and educated students for a just and sustainable society (lecturer 2 – university 1). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.2 232022 40(3): 23-28 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.2 olawale, mncube, ndondo & mutongoza building a sustainable and democratic future in support of the above, a student also stated that, … while this academic year has been challenging because of the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, my university has been able to sustain its activities by promoting academic freedom and institutional independence, both of which have been critical to the quality of teaching and learning activities, as well as educational research. they have [the university] managed to build a system that requires expanding access to digital learning thereby supporting academic resilience in which we can learn anywhere and at any time. also, our lecturers have encouraged creative and democratic practices, and have promoted inclusivity in the teaching and learning processes (student 6 – university 1). a participant who believed that building a more sustainable and democratic future in the face of unexpected challenges goes beyond the promotion of inclusivity in heis to a parade of democratic principles added, i believe that the primary goal of a democratic civic university in the face of any unexpected challenges such as that of the covid-19 outbreak should encompass inclusivity of all stakeholders and demonstration of democratic principles. as such, during the pandemic outbreak, our university promoted the development of standards of academic disciplines and quality, built a resilient education service delivery, harnessed different forms of technology for service delivery, and establish democratic practices in form of openness, transparency, fairness, transparency. this includes working with and contributing to the immediate society in which our university exists (manager 3 – university 1). in line with the above, a student added, during the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, the university has managed to sustain academic activities and build a post-covid-19 environment by making sure that we as students are trained to be democratic citizens who respect the values and principles of democracy such as the freedom of expression and opinion, as well as the freedom of participation in academic matters as well as societal issues emanating from the outbreak of the pandemic (student 14 – university 2). from the above responses, research findings revealed that rural heis were able to respond to the covid-19 pandemic by building a resilience, inclusive and democratic culture through the strengthening of an educational system capable of extending accessible digital learning platforms. these findings concur with that of sarmiento, ponce and bertolín (2021) and the world bank group (2021), who argue that laying a foundation for green, resilient and inclusive recovery are approaches to responding to uncertainties and planning for future crises. thus, building a resilient educational service delivery in uncertain times necessitates the expansion of accessible digital learning platforms in institutions as well as investments in information systems to track the enrolment and retention of at-risk students and engage citizens (world bank group, 2021; sarmiento et al., 2021). as such, educators in a resilient system must understand how and endeavour to use distance-learning platforms and tools to reach students in their homes. similarly, research findings revealed that through the inculcation of democratic norms, encouraging debates that weigh in on education and societal prospects through participation, cooperation and commitment for the public good, are ways in which heis have endeavoured to live up to their responsibilities for a sustainable and democratic future. thus, it is worth noting that for heis to fulfil their mandate, democracy should not be constructed theoretically, but should be cultivated as part of the institution’s day-to-day operations during and after the covid-19 pandemic. these findings thus concur with that of harkavy et al. (2021) and mncube and olawale (2021), who argue that democratic practices within higher education institutions are a precondition for a fair, inclusive and sustainable http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.2 242022 40(3): 24-28 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.2 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) democratic society, and as such, higher education must collaborate through debates about the future of society as well as the future of education. similarly, greens’ political theory also emphasises collaboration and participatory democracy, which fosters open discussion, direct citizen engagement, and an emphasis on grass-roots action for sustainable development (peters, 2019). the research therefore suggests that to build a sustainable and democratic future during and post-covid-19 pandemic, academics, students and their representatives, university administrators, public officials, governmental entities and key stakeholders must collaborate locally, nationally and globally. this will give way for the establishment of civic universities dedicated to the development of fair, respectable, just, equitable, inclusive and sustainable democratic societies (bergan & harkavy, 2018; bergan et al., 2020; harkavy et al., 2021). 8. conclusion and recommendation in this study, we sought to examine how higher education institutions have responded to the covid-19 pandemic in building a sustainable and democratic future. our results revealed that while heis are among the world’s predominant establishments serving as a host for advancing and disseminating knowledge and assisting in the development of ethical and capable citizens, the pandemic has created an environment in which socioeconomic changes have an adverse impact on learning in heis. however, rural heis through resource commitment, defined roles and responsibilities, and the exhibition of democratic norms have been able to maintain resilience and recovery momentum in the face of the covid-19 pandemic. in this regard, we conclude that in the face of the covid-19 pandemic, resilience is linked to sustainable development because it can generate success for higher education institutions by influencing students’ career opportunities and employment readiness. it is noted that the lack of a coordinated mechanism, clear planning guidelines, and institutional mandates reduce efficiencies in building a sustainable and democratic heis. in this regard, rural institutions are advised to strive towards a grounded system approach based on a shared vision, commitment, and collaboration of all organisational members in shaping a better, equitable and just postcovid-19 world. similarly, given that building a resilient education system positions heis to reopening of their doors safely and cope better with future crises, heis should consider focusing more on equity and inclusion, reinforcing capacities for risk management at all levels, strong leadership and coordination, enhanced consultation and communication mechanisms. references adnan, m. & anwar, k. 2020. online learning amid the covid-19 pandemic: students’ perspectives. journal of pedagogical sociology and psychology, 2(1): 45-51. https://doi. org/10.33902/jpsp.2020261309 agormedah, e.k., henaku, e.a., ayite, d.m. & ansah, e.a. 2020. online learning in higher education during covid-19 pandemic: a case of ghana. journal of educational technology & online learning, 3(3): 183-210. https://doi.org/10.31681/jetol.726441 akins, e., giddens, e., glassmeyer, d., gruss, a., hedden, m.k., slinger-friedman, v. & weand, m. 2019. sustainability education and organizational change: a critical case study of barriers and change drivers at a higher education institution. sustainability, 11(2): 1-17. https:// doi.org/10.3390/su11020501 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.2 https://doi.org/10.33902/jpsp.2020261309 https://doi.org/10.33902/jpsp.2020261309 https://doi.org/10.31681/jetol.726441 https://doi.org/10.3390/su11020501 https://doi.org/10.3390/su11020501 252022 40(3): 25-28 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.2 olawale, mncube, ndondo & mutongoza building a sustainable and democratic future armeanu, d.s., vintilă, g. & gherghina, s.c. 2018. empirical study towards the drivers of sustainable economic growth in eu-28 countries. sustainability, 10(1): 1-22. https://doi. org/10.3390/su10010004 awuzie, b.o. & abuzeinab, a. 2019. modelling organizational factors influencing sustainable development implementation performance in higher education institutions: an interpretative structural modelling (ism) approach. sustainability, 11(16): 1-18. https://doi.org/10.3390/ su11164312 barber, b. r. 1984. strong democracy: participatory politics for a new age. berkeley: university of california press. barry, j. 2014. green political theory. in: political ideologies: an introduction (4th ed), pp. 153-178. london: routledge. bergan, s. & harkavy, i. 2018. higher education for diversity, social inclusion and community: a democratic imperative. council of europe higher education series no. 22, strasbourg: council of europe publishing. bergan, s., gallagher, t. & harkavy, i. 2020. academic freedom, institutional autonomy, and the future of democracy, council of europe higher education series no. 24. strasbourg: council of europe publishing. bergmark, u. & westman, s. 2016. co-creating curriculum in higher education: promoting democratic values and a multidimensional view on learning. international journal for academic development, 21(1): 28-40. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144x.2015.1120734 chaturvedi, k., vishwakarma, d. & singh, n. 2021. covid-19 and its impact on education, social life and mental health of students: a survey. children and youth services review, 121(1): 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.105866 cohen, l., manion, l. & morrison, k. 2018. research methods in education. 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http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) student leadership: participation of the representative council of learners in the management of school violence in high school abstract school violence has been on the increase over the past few years, despite several interventions put in place by school management, the department of education and parents. nonetheless, school violence remains a debilitating factor to safe and secure schools. it is within this context that this paper examines the participation of representative council of learners (rcls) in the management and reduction of school-based violence in high schools and their participation in school governance as stipulated in the south african schools act (sasa) act. no 84 of 1996. insights for this paper were drawn from twelve participants at two high schools; six participants were selected from each school. semi-structured interviews were employed for data collection and content analysis employed to analyse collected data for the paper. a purposive case study approach was adopted in the study to achieve the objective of the paper. the core melodies that emerged from the outcomes include that representative council of learners (rcls) serve as a vital information gathering tool for school managers; most times the representative council of learners are the first school management arm to intervene in chaotic incidents before school managers arrive and some representative council of learners serve as role models to other learners influencing them positively. keywords: class, council, learners, management, representative, school violence 1. introduction it is estimated that over half a million people are murdered every year across the globe (butchart & mikton, 2014). the south african police service crime statistics for 2017/18 revealed that approximately 20336 people are murdered every year in south africa which also represents an increase in the crime statistics from the previous year. breetzke (2020) reveals that 56 people are murdered daily in south africa. the schools are a sub-system of the community and the increase in the rate of school violence in schools could be viewed as a spill over of violence in the community into author: chidi idi eke1 affiliation: 1mangosuthu university of technology doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i2.18 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(2): 251-263 published: 08 june 2022 received: 27 september 2021 accepted: 07 january 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.18 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1407-7706 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.18 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.18 2522022 40(2): 252-263 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.18 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) our schools. it is extremely difficult to isolate school-based violence from the high rate of violence in our communities. this is because the schools are part of the community. 2. the objective of the paper south african schools act no. 84 of 1996 (sasa) mandates that secondary schools in south africa establish representative council of learners (rcls) in their various schools. sasa stipulates that learners’ representatives shall be democratically elected. the representative council of learners are the only legally recognised representative of learners in secondary schools in south africa, with representative seats in the school governing body (sgb) (sasa,1996). bessong, mashau, and mulaudzi (2016) maintain that the policy position for the creation of rcls is to create an all-inclusive management system where all stakeholders in secondary education are fully represented. the rcls are tasked with maintaining order in schools that would reduce school violence, create good relations and communication amongst management, teachers and learners. despite the statutory recognition of representative council of learners in south africa, learners still play an insignificant role in the management of schools, especially concerning school violence in south africa (hunt, 2014). it is based on this trajectory that this paper evolved to evaluate the experiences of representative council of learners (rcls) representatives in school management, to understand their challenges and proffer ways to capacitate the rcls to be more functional in the management of school violence. 3. research problem the concept of school governance ensures the participation of all stakeholders in decision making in high schools as stipulated in the south african schools act no. 84 of 1996 (bessong et al., 2016). the roles of the democratically elected representative council of learners (rcls) are clearly outlined in the sasa act 84 of 1996; however, the multifaceted and dynamic nature of school-based violence has made it difficult for them to play a vital role in the management of school-based violence. mncube and harber (2013) posit that the participation of learners in school governance is to develop their democratic and leadership skills. despite interventions by the department of education and other stakeholders statistics of school violence continue to increase (mncube & harber, 2013). over the years there has been a steady increase in the amount of school violence globally. this increase has raised great concern on how to reduce and manage school violence in secondary schools in south africa. it is upon this premise that this paper evolved to explore the experiences of rcls to identify gaps in learners’ capacity to manage school violence and to develop an approach that would capacitate the rcls to be more proactive in the management of school violence. 4. policy and legislative framework the south african schools act (sasa) act no. 84 of 1996 chapter 2 (11) provides the legislative framework for the establishment of rcls to actively participate in the governance of public schools within south africa. this paper explores the experiences of rcls in the management of school violence in two selected high schools in kwazulu-natal, south africa. the rcls are democratically elected representatives of learners that are recognised by the law. the roles of rcls are clearly described in sasa act no. 84 of 1996. it is important to note that school violence is multifaceted and as such, the interventions of the management should be dynamic. the challenges of creating a school climate that promotes teaching and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.18 2532022 40(2): 253-263 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.18 eke participation of the representative council of learners in the management of school violence learning varies greatly from school to school. this is dependent upon different variables, for example, student discipline, educators’ pedagogical content knowledge, their commitment and provisioning of resources. this paper, however, focuses on another important component in high schools, namely the participatory role of rcls in the management of violence within a dynamic school environment. 5. literature review recently schools are more proactive in developing intervention strategies to curb the menace of school violence in schools globally. grobler (2018) reported the following incidents of school violence: on 16 november 2018, an educator in gauteng sustained minor injuries after a learner threw a stone at the educator and in another similar incident on 20 november 2018, a grade 11 learner stabbed a pupil to death in a north west high school. both incidents occurred in south africa, highlighting the devastating nature of such violence in high schools. in september 2017, in modimolle, a pupil was stabbed to death by a fellow pupil, and a grade 2 boy was found in possession of a gun and ammunition on the school premises. over the years, issues of school violence have moved from incidents of bullying to more violent circumstances involving dangerous weapons such as swords and guns. the creation of a school climate that promotes tuition and learning remain a shared responsibility of all stakeholders including parents, learners, government, school staff and school managers. it has become imperative for school managers to develop intervention strategies to curb acts of violence in high schools in south africa. 5.1 the heuristic theory components in the management of schoolbased violence this paper takes insights from the heuristic theory model developed by (astor & benbenishty, 2018). astor and benbenishty (2018) identified school components that could be adopted to develop intervention strategies to reduce school violence and stimulate positive learning attributes. the identified five (5) key components are as follows: class management, class size, learner-teacher affiliation, school management and infrastructure. the above-mentioned components make up the heuristic theory that are school-based variables. they could positively influence school factors that encourage teaching and learning within the school environment. these components shape the school environment that create a school climate that promotes a safe and secure teaching and learning atmosphere, which could bring about desirable academic and social-emotional outcomes in learners (o’malley et al., 2015). 5.1.1 classroom management heredia (2015) posits that effective classroom management is vital to maximise teaching and learning. class representatives are elected in each class and grade of secondary education in south africa. radebe (2019) maintains that through the application of learners’ code of conduct in each class and grade by class representatives, unacceptable behaviours are minimised. the reduction of unacceptable behaviours in class creates a climate that promotes teaching and learning (radebe, 2019). the implementation process of learners’ code of conduct begins with the class representative and could get to the disciplinary committee if not adequately resolved and subsequently to the school management team. the effectiveness of class management is optimised when class representatives ensure that learners are called to order when they deviate from the norms of good behaviour, for example, disrespecting the teacher, by consuming food while teaching is in session (heredia, 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.18 2542022 40(2): 254-263 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.18 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) cheng (2013) stated that teachers are inadequately prepared to carry out the task of classroom management effectively and efficiently amidst increased administrative demands and alarming unacceptable learners’ behavioural issues and as such require the class representative to install some form of discipline such as not allowing playing while teaching and learning is in session. the need for an effective teaching and learning session must be proportionate with a manageable class size. a large class size may lose the required class management by an educator and affect the productivity level of the educator as well as increase teachers’ burnout rate. the increased unacceptable and antisocial behaviours by learners have led to increased teacher burnout and remains one of the factors responsible for the increased exit rate from the profession by educators (inandi & buyukozkan, 2013). cheng (2013) purports that in order to have effective class management, the perspectives of educators’ and that of learners should be adequately considered to strike a balance that would promote a school environment that could endorse teaching, learning and knowledge. classroom administration is an important element of the three-way mix of operative teaching approaches, which comprises expressive content, real teaching strategies and an organisational structure that would support industrious learning. doyle (2013) revealed that classroom administration epitomises the art of providing an auxiliary and an active teaching and learning environment that encourages speculative enactment. the inability of an educator to effectively manage a class session could stimulate unacceptable behaviours with a teaching session that could lead to school-based violence. effective class management by teachers could produce a school climate that promotes tuition and learning, and subsequently this leads to better academic performance by learners. 5.1.2 class size it has been established that large class sizes hinder progressive learner engagement which enhances teaching and learning, and the smaller the class size the easier it is for the class representative to maintain control of the class during and after lessons (beattie & thiele, 2016). a sense of connectedness amongst learners could be easily built through adequate class management which has the potential to increase class connectedness and reduce idle time for unacceptable behaviours in class (chingos, 2013). this development of positive connectedness where educators and learners could interact could be developed through a small class size. effective class management could result in productive class interaction and shared knowledge. 5.1.3 improved learner-teacher relationship the establishment of the south african schools act no. 84 of 1996 was to create a platform within which learners’ voice can be heard and more so to participate in school governance through democratically elected rcls (duma, 2011). class representatives communicate vital information that foster improved learner and teacher relationships, including consequences for those that violate the code of conduct of schools. a continuous learner-teacher relationship could have an immense positive outcome when the two parties have mutual respect and at the same time provide the required support for skills development and leadership style (furrer, skinner & pitzer, 2014). the adoption of low stake assessment is designed to provide learners with an opportunity for continuous improvement that is affected by the teacher-learner relationship. this relationship creates a positive or negative perception of the learner towards the assessment (schut, van tartwijk, driessen, van der vleuten, & heeneman, 2020). schut et al. (2020) maintain that teacher support assists learners in achieving their goals with a http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.18 2552022 40(2): 255-263 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.18 eke participation of the representative council of learners in the management of school violence range of motivational variables. schut et al. further reveal that learners value their relationship with their teachers and would not want to taint the relationship as this would make it more difficult to achieve goals. 5.1.4 school management representative council of learners seat on schools governing bodies meeting to deliberate and protect learners interest on issues that may adversely affect them (duma, 2011). schools governing body remains the highest decision-making body in school african schools as stipulated by sasa act no.84 of 1996, the presence of learners representatives on the body entails that learners voice are heard and considered in school management decisions means their participation harmonises critical decisions in school management. the trajectory and leadership style of school management influences the attitude of educators and learners in high schools (joyce, 2015). an effective and efficient school management team could, because of their management style, create a school climate that reduces unacceptable behaviours in schools, thereby promoting tuition and learning. likewise, an ineffective school management could experience an increase in school-based violence. 5.1.5 infrastructure bradley, keane and crawford (2013) argued that the establishment of sporting and recreational amenities in schools for extra-curricular activities would reduce the level of unacceptable behaviours since learners could be constructively engaged by sporting activities during break periods. class representatives are posted to strategic locations in school during recreational periods to ensure that facilities are not abused and utilised for other juvenile motives like smoking and drinking in the toilets (duma, 2011). the engagement of learners during break with activities like soccer games would keep the learners busy, two parties are engaged at this point (1) learners engaged with the actual playing session and (2) soccer fans who are watching by the side to keep themselves engaged and to enjoy skilful soccer display. the provision of various extracurricular amenities in schools may not only reduce anti-social activities but also see the emergence of talented sports men and women. 5.1.6 peer leadership influence studies over the years have maintained that youths with like behavioural penchants and similar attitudes over time begin to behave in the same manner (ashley, 2016). it becomes vivid that friends in the same high school with disruptive behaviour that primes to school violence could act in the same disruptive manner. whereas those with acceptable behaviour could create a prolonged school environment that promotes teaching and scholarship. choo and shek (2013) revealed that peers are a vital socialisation agent for learners. class representatives with exemplary leadership attributes could influence a learner positively to stimulate academic achievements and reduce antisocial vices. likewise, peers with unacceptable behaviour may only increase the rate of school violence. teerachote et al. (2013) reveal that peer leadership has been acknowledged as an effective positive influencing agent amongst young people with similar attributes, which assists in empowering each other for better academic achievement within the school context. the more academic connectedness a learner has in school, the less idle time spent on infertile activities that encourages school-based violence. peer leadership has been acknowledged as a morale booster for young sports men and women who have surpassed their individual ability as a result of positive peer leadership to win trophies and excel outside the academic environment http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.18 2562022 40(2): 256-263 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.18 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) (teerachote et al., 2013). peer leaders can motivate other learners and shape their behaviours in school to create a school climate that promotes tuition and learning because peer leaders are intrinsically motivated (tredinnick, menzies & van ryt, 2015). in terms of class control, the optimisation of discipline and class control remain dependent on the behaviour of the class leaders; furthermore, the command climate in the class is a reflection of the extent of leadership display (segal et al., 2016). 6. methodology the study adopted a non-probability purposive sampling technique for data collection. etikan, musa, and alkassim (2016) state that purposive sampling has to do with careful selection of participants in a study to achieve and gather information directed at a specified phenomenon. relevant to this study are the selected representatives of the rcls in both schools. the adoption of a qualitative research approach was a better choice to examine real-life phenomena such as school-based violence to ascertain a better understanding and develop interventions that would help curb the menace, which is school violence in this study (lune & berg, 2016). 6.1 data collection instrument the study employed semi-structured interviews as a data collection instrument. the adoption of semi-structured interviews provided avenues for the researcher to ask leading questions that led to better comprehension of the phenomenon underpinning the study (adams, 2015). the study employed a case study research approach as a lens to harness the participants in the study. content analysis was used in analysing data collected in the study. the interview sessions were recorded with a voice recorder and transcribed before the analysis of the data commenced. each interview lasted between 15 to 20 minutes; the transcribed data were given to an accredited editor to verify the transcription to reduce the margin of error and to increase the quality of data collected in the study. the researcher ensured that systematic recordings of all data collection processes during the study were documented and carefully stored on external storage and onedrive for future reference. 6.2 sample size a total of twelve participants, consisting of six males and six females from the rcls of the two high schools made up the sample for this study. the selection of males and females as participants in the study was to create gender equality and avoid gender discrimination. the six participants from each school constituted the following: two class representatives (a male and a female) from each of the following grades, grade 12; grade 11 and grade 10 from each school, respectively representing the further education and training (fet) phase of the high school. the fet phase was selected in the study because they were older and better positioned to understand the role of rcls in the management of school violence. 7. ethical considerations all ethical considerations were observed in collecting data and with interactions with participants. approvals from relevant authorities were obtained, ethical clearance approval letter reference number hss/o530/0150 was issued by university of kwazulu natal before data collection. approval was also obtained from department of education in kwazulu-natal with reference:2/4/8/1/82 before the commencement of data collection. participants were asked to sign consent letters before the commencement of data collection. parental consent http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.18 2572022 40(2): 257-263 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.18 eke participation of the representative council of learners in the management of school violence was obtained in situations of minors participating in the research. pseudonyms were adopted to protect the identity of participants in the research. data for the paper were collected inside the school premises at a convenient time for the participants in the study. 8. research sites the study employed two research sites that are high schools in the province of kwazulu-natal, named school a and school b. school a is a high school in imbali; a township established in 1958 and that was used as the research site for the study. imbali is located 15km west of pietermaritzburg. the second study site is school b, located in richmond. richmond is a town located 38 km southwest of pietermaritzburg. 9. discussion the study adopted the heuristic theory in carrying out this research, evaluating the importance and the relevance of learners’ leadership in each of the five (5) components that underpin the heuristic theory. benbenishty and astor (2005) identified school components that could be adopted to develop intervention strategies to reduce school violence and stimulate positive learning attributes. the identified five (5) key components are (1) class management, (2) class size, (3) learner-teacher relationship, (4) school management, and (5) infrastructure. 9.1 management expectations of peer leaders sasa act no. 84 of 1996 mandates all high schools in south africa must have democratically elected leaders who form part of the governance structure of the school representing the students. the united nations convention on the right of the child (uncroc 1989) stipulates that children must participate in discussions of anything that affects them and especially in school matters where they are part of the stakeholders (bessong et al., 2016). over time it has become a democratic process for class teachers to institute a process that will see that a learner is elected as a class leader, sometimes referred to as a class representative. the elected learner becomes the mouthpiece of the class as well as the communication link between the learners in that class and the school management. the school management sees the class leaders as part of the management structure to install control and create a school climate that promotes learning and tuition. the class leaders represent a vital tool in school management. feruzi, a participant in the study, revealed that: the school management expect what the learners expect from me. what do i mean? the school management expect me to report what happen in the class to report to them. school management rely immensely on class leaders for information on the daily happenings in school to be able to keep the system functioning. the notion of learners on key decisions of the management is brought to the attention of the school management by the rcls. furthermore the school management evaluates the quality of their decisions based on feedback from the class leaders. bessong et al. (2016) reveal that part of the functions of the rcls is to serve as liaison and communication mechanism for school management to function effectively. it is based on vital feedback that school managers initiate interventions that will make the school management more effective to stimulate teaching and learning. likewise, learners expect the class leader to give them all the information from the management, mostly a tip on disciplinary programmes and initiatives designed to identify and reduce unacceptable behaviours in school. learners also expect class leaders to be on their side when there are http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.18 2582022 40(2): 258-263 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.18 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) disagreements among learners, educators and school management. the head prefect of one of the study sites john stated that: the school management want me to take responsibility, isn’t it that when things happen in school as a class leader i communicate with learners and give the school management the information. an efficient and effective class leader would be identified through the level of respect the learners have for school rules and regulations that could translate to the level of control the class leader has over his class. dhlamini (2016) asserts that poor communication channels could have a devastating effect on school management and as such recommends the utilisation of rcls to play this vital role. the collective effort of effective and efficient class leadership could produce a school climate that promotes tuition and learning. it could also ease the burnout rate of educators through a reduced anti-social behaviour in school. learners’ leadership in school serves a liaison role in schools communicating between the learners and school management. the flow of information from class leaders helps in reducing school-based violence in high schools in the sense that class leaders assist school management identify perpetrators of school-based violence in high schools. the class leaders also assist school managers identify high risk areas within the school with high indices of violence. 9.2 expectations of learners from their representative leaders class leaders are elected by members of the class who in most instances know one another outside the school premises. the interaction of learners within their communities gives them a better insight regarding whom to elect as a class leader. the community friendship could translate into a stronger bond in school that could foster better relationships. a participant in the study senzo revealed that: they expect me to fight their battles and tell the teacher. helping them to fight. i don’t help them to fight but go and report to the teacher. the relationship that exists between class leaders and other learners show a strong bond of brotherhood to the extent of taking on one another’s battle. this feeling of oneness makes it easier for school management to involve the class leaders in the implementation of policies to reduce school-based violence in high schools. dhlamini (2016) posits that there are learners who lack moral training and modelling from their parents and as such the need to reshape the moral status of these learners remain important through the leadership qualities of learners’ leadership. the exhibition of exemplary attributes by class leaders could have a positive impact on other learners that would reduce school-based violence in high schools. the decision by class leaders not to join forces with learners when there is a problem and instead report to the appropriate authority makes it easier to contain and moderate school-based violence in schools. nevertheless, the control and management of school-based violence should not be a chain of communication process but an effective unit that can swing into action immediately to remedy the situation before someone is badly injured. one of the participants, as stated below, revealed that learners expect class leaders to provide an instant solution in terms of unrest in school. musa one of the participants revealed that; they expect us to stop the fight and expect leadership, normally the class members look up to the class representative to stop the fight. sometimes we involve the teacher. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.18 2592022 40(2): 259-263 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.18 eke participation of the representative council of learners in the management of school violence it is evident that learners see their class leaders as a problem-solving tool that can be relied upon outside management to provide solutions during emergency and crisis periods in school. the statement above reveals that there is more personal attachment between the class leader and other classmates to the extent of fighting for them that goes beyond a formal relationship. the functions and roles of rcls are clearly stated in the sasa act no.84 of 1996 and as such rcls must function within the framework of the rules and regulations of sasa act no.84 of 1996 without breaching the law in performing their functions (bessong et al., 2016). class leaders are looked upon by other learners to restore law and order in crisis situations. however, the leadership qualities imbibed in the class leaders do not allow them to support unlawful behaviours within and outside of the school premises. 9.3 training training enhances the performance and capability of an individual. the representatives in this study need to perform their duties effectively and efficiently. nischithaa and rao narasimha (2014) postulate that training imparts specific skills to achieve predetermined results. in this instance, the training of class leaders would inculcate school violence management skills that could include non-violent approaches to conflict resolution. the training of class leaders would increase their leadership qualities that improve the school climate and promotes teaching and learning. the right training of class leaders could provide them with the necessary knowledge and skills required to carry out their duties effectively (nischithaa & rao narasimha, 2014). precious a participant in the study revealed that, no i did not get any form of training being a class leader. a class leader or representative is chosen as a result of personal attributes. all participants in the study concurred that the school management do not provide any form of training for class leaders in their school. the absence of training of class leaders by school management limits the capacity of class leaders to perform and contribute effectively to the creation of a school climate that promotes teaching and learning. it is obvious that without the right skills and knowledge the role of class leaders in high school cannot be exploited to capacity by school managers in curtailing the menace of school violence. the class leaders get training from a student forum that liaises with interested teachers and community members for help in the form of training. nathi one of the participants in the study revealed that: not from the school. i have a programme that i run this is a campaign that i call fundekutle student democratic student organisation. we training people to be future leaders because we seeing this country going down instead of going up. so in the campaign this where we get the training to be leaders, teachers training us on a personal note. over the years, the issue of school-based violence has become a global problem with multifaceted dimensions. the hosting of trainings by people who are not professionals in violence management or human resource developers will not add the required value to the learners’ leadership. bessong et al. (2016) reveal that the lack of mentorship and direction to comprehend the concepts of leadership and democracy are core challenges facing and limiting rcls in performing their roles. combatting school violence require special skills and knowledge, the individual leadership attributes of class leaders is not enough to combat the menace of school-based violence. school managers should ensure that managing school-based violence is a task that must involve all stakeholders and training of all stakeholders should be an ongoing event to keep http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.18 2602022 40(2): 260-263 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.18 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) them abreast on how to tackle and manage school-based violence. the training would also be better handled by professionals to equip all stakeholders with the necessary skills and knowledge including trends of school-based violence. the school environment should be a place of learning and ground to groom future leaders, as such the empowerment of class leaders to become future leaders and assist school management in creating a school climate that promotes tuition and learning must be encouraged. 9.4 perceptions of peer leaders emergent data from the study revealed that class leaders at some point in performing their duties attach some level of emotions when it comes to discipline of perpetrators of school violence. they do realise that they are all from the same community and are friends within and outside the school premises. andiswa a participant in the study stated that; it varies, right now i feel happy that other learners my peers have faith in me that i can be their leader for 2 times in a row so am happy about that but when it is time for me to take tough decision because we have friends and when friends does something wrong it and it is time for discipline, it is tough but we try not to mix business with pleasure. coaching provides a practical method of developing and capacitating young leaders outside the formal organised human development initiative (jones, 2015). it also provides a learning experience in an informal manner that fosters a cordial relationship between the student and the learner (jones, 2015). even though class leaders are happy that they are leaders chosen by the learners themselves, it does not deter them from carrying out their duties when it is due. class leaders understand the difference between friendship and work as well as the task of maintaining peace and order in school that overrides personal interest. 10. conclusion inclusively, the findings of the study revealed that most class leaders are happy to dispense their duties effectively and efficiently. the core emerging challenge remains that the class leaders do not have any form of structured, appropriate training or development interventions afforded to them. the class leaders’ roles and responsibilities are clouded and not delineated to offer any empowerment opportunities. despite this limitation, the mere fact that class leaders perform functions without formal training, is a testimony of some exceptional leadership skills on their part. this implies that a lot more could be achieved if the class leaders are given formal training, in order to develop their skills, practices and knowledge in the management of school violence in high schools. the findings of the paper revealed that school management are yet to realise the strategic importance of rcls’ involvement in the management of school violence in high schools. the downplay of the roles of rcls in school management, especially school violence management, could be responsible for the lack of development and training for rcls in the management of school violence in high schools in terms of skills development. the empowerment of rcls with the right skills will enable them to function effectively in their roles as leaders and assist significantly in the management of school-based violence. 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_hlk101832908 882020 38(1): 88-99 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.7 transactional ethics and “damage-centred” research: of banality and oblivion abstract the recent article by nieuwoudt, dickie, coetsee, engelbrecht and terblanche (2019) entitled “ageand education-related effects on cognitive functioning in colored south african women” published in the journal aging, neuropsychology, and cognition, attracted considerable negative attention, leading to its official withdrawal from circulation. while it may be argued that this unfortunate piece of “scholarship” had “slipped through the cracks”, there is certainly a need for a more nuanced analysis of what constitutes ethical social research practice. in this article, the issue of intentionality and (un)witting othering is contemplated by invoking tuck’s notion of “damage-centred” research, an approach that continues to frame contemporary investigations in the name of social justice. it is argued that there is a need to reconsider the practice of transactional ethics. arendt’s concept of the banality (of evil) has resonance, as it speaks to the notion of “blissful oblivion of complicity”, even in the context of a widespread contemporary discourse of social transformation and decolonisation in south african higher education. keywords: ethics, banality, damage-centred research, oblivion 1. introduction the ethical standards of the academic industrial complex are a recent development, and like so many post–civil rights reforms, do not always do enough to ensure that social science research is deeply ethical, meaningful, or useful for the individual or community being researched (tuck & yang, 2014: 233). the jury is out as to the extent to which the south african academy has engaged in any substantive way with what deeply ethical social science research might entail. this may be understandable, given the academy’s preoccupation with streamlining a national policy framework (and provision), now that the country has emerged from a fragmented academic and social history. centuries of racial hierarchisation in particular have meant that research and scholarship occur in a south african society that is still afflicted by racial stratification. it is not inconceivable that the lingering effects author: professor sm maistry1 affiliation: 1university of kwazulu-natal email: makina@unisa.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v38i1.7 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(1): 88-99 published: 11 june 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9623-0078 mailto:makina@unisa.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.7 89 maistry transactional ethics and “damage-centred” research: of banality and oblivion 2020 38(1): 89-99 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.7 of 350 years of political, economic and ideological control by settlers are not likely to have been eroded in the short, 25-year post-apartheid phase of the country’s history. the notion of a shared or common humanity remains an elusive national project. in fact, public circulation of the article by nieuwoudt, dickie, coetsee, engelbrecht and terblanche (2019) entitled “ageand education-related effects on cognitive functioning in colored south african women”, published in the journal aging, neuropsychology, and cognition: a journal on normal and dysfunctional development, might well be considered a lingering symptom of the country’s diabolical history (le grange, 2019). at a time when there appears to be elevated discourse on reconciliation, transformation and decolonisation in the higher education space, this kind of scholarship appears still to have a place in the local academy. its occurrence demands analysis and an openness to intellectual conversations about what might be deemed socially, morally and ethically acceptable research. clearly the universal principles of research, as outlined in the seminal work of beauchamp and childress (beauchamp & childress, 1979), do not appear to be sufficiently robust for the peculiarities that might manifest in post-conflict societies such as south africa. social divisions and racial hierarchies were the normative (legislated) structure of the country for many years. however, researching across race and culture has not been sufficiently theorised or debated in any profound way. it is not unexpected that this contentious article would generate an acrimonious response (le grange, 2019). it was in fact a stark reminder that the proverbial “rainbow nation” and the national social cohesion project of south africa’s fledgling democracy is still very much in its infancy. given the apology from the institution’s public relations office on behalf of the researchers, one might infer that this was certainly not brazen defiance (on the part of the researchers) meant to (re)create racial divisions. how, then, might we analyse and make sense of this occurrence, given that institutional ethical review committees are a common feature in the south african context, and tasked to apply and oversee adherence to the basic, generally accepted principles of research ethics? as a point of entry into this analysis, it might be useful to trace back how historical violations led to the genesis of contemporary research ethics principles, guidelines that have become mandatory in postgraduate research programmes around the world. 2. the genesis of an ethical code the work of beauchamp and childress (1979) has framed the ethical code in western research institutions, almost acquiring a canonical status. it offers key insights into the principles of respect and dignity, justice and beneficence, as well as non-maleficence. however, the formalising of ethical principles can be traced back to the judicial tribunal established during the nuremberg trials after world war ii. the revelations at this landmark trial were arguably the most publicised exposé of human atrocities relating to biomedical research on prisoners. this marked the first public deliberations on ethical principles for research on human subjects. the 1964 helsinki declaration also signalled the international research community’s quest for a universally acceptable code of ethics (carlson, boyd & webb, 2004). despite this international acknowledgement of an ethical code by which researchers ought to abide, ethical violations of various kinds persisted in different countries across the world. for example, the “tuskegee study of untreated syphilis in the negro male” remains a reprehensible piece 90 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 90-99 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.7 of america’s racist history, conducted over a 40-year period from 1932 to 1972 (alsan & wanamaker, 2018). its exposé forced the then united states (us) government to set up a commission to develop a set of guiding principles for research on human participants. the subsequent belmont report, released in the us in 1979, foregrounded three fundamental ethical principles, namely, respect for persons, beneficence and justice (alsan & wanamaker, 2018). however, while these principles came into ‘theoretical’ effect in 1979, it was only in 1997 that the then us president, bill clinton, offered a somewhat belated apology to the victims and their families. this was significant, as it marked the first public acknowledgement and official assumption of responsibility for the atrocities committed against poor, unsuspecting africanamerican men, many of whom perished over the study period. the jury is out as to whether the compensation and apology were enough to offset the generational effect on the wives and offspring of the victims. it was clear that several ethical violations, among others against beneficence, informed consent, respect and justice, with significant maleficence, took place in the tuskegee study (shavers, lynch & burmeister, 2000). three key issues that emerged then continue to plague the world of research involving humans. firstly, while at face value biomedical ethics principles have appeal in guiding research and the work of the institutional ethics committees of the world, it has become apparent that despite the relative robustness of the framework, the potential for selective appropriation and application that might lead to (un)witting harm, is very real (pittaway, bartolomei & hugman, 2010). that the principles are culturally neutral is also a moot point (westra, willems, & smit, 2009). in fact, principlism and the principlist model of beauchamp and childress in particular are somewhat benign in factoring cultural peculiarities into the conduct of research (padela, malik, curlin & de fries, 2015). there is also contention as to the extent to which they are able to capture universal moral principles (christen, ineichen & tanner, 2014). more than a decade ago suggestions for unique principles that should guide research with indigenous communities were mooted (see castellano, 2004 for example). similarly, there have been appeals for research methodologies that are culturally sensitive and which entail reciprocal relations with vulnerable communities (wilson & neville, 2009), and a review of the applicability and contemporary usefulness of beauchamp and childress’ four principles (de castro & valero, 2018). clearly, the beauchamp and childress framework is not without its shortcomings. the second key issue emerging from the tuskegee study is that the poor and most vulnerable continue to be the subjects of experimentation. the 2007 united nations declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples makes explicit that historical markers of prejudice (race, gender, ethnicity, religion and culture) cannot and should no longer be tolerated in the academic research space. yet research practices such as the study under scrutiny happened in plain sight. the third issue is that race remains a distinct determining factor as to who might be the source of data for studies that involve harm to human beings. brazen racism and paternalism were at play in the niewoudt et al. study, and it begs the question as to the extent to which these issues – which are particularly germane in the south african context – have received the attention they deserve. this is an argument that this paper takes up. the question, then, is what explains why – despite widespread awareness of ethical principles in the academe – research studies such as the study in question came to fruition? i want to argue that dispositions of racism and paternalism are cultivated over generations, 91 maistry transactional ethics and “damage-centred” research: of banality and oblivion 2020 38(1): 91-99 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.7 and while some members of the contemporary generation can and have shaken off unhealthy learnt behaviour, an unknown quantity who are oblivious to their racialised socialisation remain. ajam (2019: 1) in her critique of this same study contends that “racial thinking persists in the south african academe, despite a growing global scientific consensus that race as a biological construct holds no legitimacy” the article by nieuwoudt et al. (2019) was an important trigger piece that has reawakened the somewhat complacent level of engagement on ethics as it relates to research in south africa. the purpose of this current article is not an analysis of the specifics of the contents of this withdrawn article, and neither is it meant to be an attack on these colleagues per se. rather, the focus is on the key systemic issues at play in the south african research arena that are conducive to this kind of research. in an attempt to unpack these issues, it might be useful to trace the genealogy of racism and paternalism, which may offer an explanation as to why these social injustices have endured. 3. the genesis of racism and paternalism south africa’s peculiar history, as arguably the last bastion of institutional settler totalitarianism, unwittingly makes racism and paternalism susceptible to what might be described as “the recency effect”. the relative “freshness” of legislated racism and paternalism has the misguided effect of locating the genesis of these social phenomena as uniquely south african, and as originating in south africa. on the contrary, grosfoguel (2013) asserts that the genesis of racism can be traced right back to columbus’s so-called “discovery” of the americas in the 1400s. grosfoguel (2013) argues that the conquest of the americas was not purely an economic manoeuvre for trade, but marked the genesis of the construction of racial hierarchies. of note, though, is that religious racism was the precursor to colour racism. the following brief description of the social construction of a racial hierarchy runs the risk of over-simplification and reductionism (or a linearity) of what was indeed a heinous process that occurred over a period of more than 500 years. race did not exist as a demographic classification or social construct in the periods prior to the 1400s. the same can be said for the ascription of hierarchical ranking (grosfoguel, 2007). in fact, european colonialists and the european empire struggled to make sense of the indigenous communities that inhabited the americas (and africa). at the time, what distinguished indigenous peoples outside of continental europe were their peculiar societal systems and spirituality. while for obvious reasons they were not christian, these peoples were constructed as entities without religion (grosfoguel, 2009). eurocentric christianity was premised on the possession of a soul – of christians having a soul that rendered them human. people with a soul and with a religion were deemed god-like. it follows that people without a “recognisable” christian religion (at the time) were deemed not to have souls. maldonado-torres (2007) refers to this as misanthropic scepticism, an unfounded uncertainty as to whether others (human beings) had souls or not. not having a soul and not being god-like relegated such living entities to being classified as animal-like. the ascription of a sub-human animality to people who were non-christians legitimated their being utilised as expendable slave labour for the advancement of european capitalism and exploitative colonial conquests. all of this was enforceable through a military superiority: the possession and use of guns and ammunition. 92 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 92-99 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.7 the prototypical, socially fabricated slave was non-christian, non-european and of dermatologically darker pigmentation than the european colonist, and was african, indigenous american or asian. please note that this grossly abbreviated account is certainly not meant to diminish the hundreds of years of systematic, brutal torture and inhumanity meted out to generations of subjugated peoples. it does, however, intend to offer an abstraction of how a sustained epistemicide (the obliteration of indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing) and genocide (the brutal extermination of millions of people at the hands of colonisers) occurred and, importantly, to reflect on how narratives of contemporary racial hierarchisation have come to maintain its hegemony. grosfoguel (2009) offers a more sophisticated account of what he describes as the “zones of being” and “non-being”. he argues that eurocentric hierarchisation has mutated beyond the dermatological white-skinned – that even people of dermatologically darker shades, through their assimilation of various degrees of eurocentricism and economic and social class, have self-assigned or self-located in the zone of being (grosfoguel, 2009). similarly, ajam (2019: 1) asserts that “ingrained racist mental models are still prevalent across institutions of higher learning, and that they are by no means confined to white academics”. note, though, that paternalism and racism are a contingent fabrication of history, and masquerade as normal social practice. paternalism and racism can be described as performative (butler, 1990), or essentially learnt behaviour. it is not a kind of learning (“competence”) that one acquires in a single sitting. learning to be paternalistic and racist comes through immersion, observation and repeated practice in social environments that consciously and unconsciously teach this. it is likely to occur in settings where racism and paternalism have been normalised and reified over generations, to a degree that the practising individual develops a level of oblivion. note that when race is invoked as the conceptual premise in research “politically constructed racial categories are reproduced, thereby perpetuating stigma, discrimination, and racism” (hendricks, kramer & kopano, 2019: 308). 4. theorising oblivion “[t]he dissonant use of the past” makes the study of oblivion highly relevant in the present day (kaasik-krogerus, čeginskas, & sääskilahti, 2020: 272). plate (2016) notes however that this barren field lacks a coherent theoretical and methodological framework for the study of the production of oblivion. oblivion is a state of unconsciousness: a state of mind in which the individual becomes immune to certain stimuli in his/her environment. while the individual is in fact very responsive to some pertinent stimuli, they are completely disconnected from others. being oblivious may be akin to being in a meditative state of sorts, akin to where the meditator has been trained or has trained him-/herself to shut out irrelevant stimuli automatically and systematically in order to maintain a singular focus. plate reminds us that “oblivion is culturally produced” (plate, 2016: 146). when the meditator repeatedly “practises” marinating in this state of unconsciousness, such a state becomes normalised or naturalised, and may acquire an element of fixity in the psyche of the practising meditator. the meditator is able to acquire and be in this state, without much effort. a state of oblivion then becomes a refined state of “unawareness” that can either be produced actively or passively (plate, 2016). note that different individuals experience a state of oblivion to different kinds of stimuli. usually, being oblivious to certain stimuli in the environment is quite harmless, as the individual proceeds with his/her daily life. note though, that “purposeful oblivion is an active process that 93 maistry transactional ethics and “damage-centred” research: of banality and oblivion 2020 38(1): 93-99 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.7 serves particular interests and needs” (kaasik-krogerus et al., 2020:272). there are, however, overt instances where the individuals’ oblivion to their behaviour might well be a nuisance to others who inhabit the same space; for example, individuals who converse loudly on their cell phones, unaware that they may be intruding on the noise/sound space of others around them. such individuals may check themselves if they become self-aware or if someone alerts them to the superfluous noise they are emitting. similarly, male chauvinism might be regarded as shaped by high levels of oblivion to the ridiculousness of self-ascribed superiority based on physiology. in the context of social research, what might be the implications of researcher oblivion, and how did it play itself out in the now infamous research project and subsequent publication of the findings? for the purposes of this discussion, i want to focus very specifically on the degrees or levels of oblivion that appear to be pervasive, especially as this relates to the research project being critiqued. deleuze and guatarri’s (1987) concept of assemblage has resonance, as it draws our attention to the fact that academic researchers – members of a particular assemblage – do not exist in isolation of the fraternity to which they belong. they shape and are shaped by the fraternity (lorraine, 2011). an assemblage, a discursive practice in foucauldian (foucault, 2001) terms, is “signifying and interpreting activities we engage in … they entail enacted rule…of the social field” (lorraine, 2011: 13). the academic researchers in question could well argue that they were, in fact, working within the parameters of an established and sanctioned, discursive practice or assemblage. the constitution of this particular assemblage is worthy of further analysis, as this will demonstrate that the responsibility or the burden of criticism should be borne by a wider set of complicit agents. 5. moving beyond the fall guys in tracing back to its genesis, it is clear that the research project under scrutiny passed (‘undetected’) through various institutional control systems. in the first instance, the conceptualisation of the project by the project team, comprising experienced and relatively novice researchers, had deemed the ethicality of the project to be in order. the conceived project would have received departmental approval at the host institution (the university of stellenbosch, in this instance). similarly, the academic leadership gave this project its endorsement. the research and higher degrees committee, comprising academic experts in the field, would have approved the research project proposal. it would subsequently have come before the university research ethics committee, where research ethics experts would have applied the basic principles of research ethics to ascertain the ethical integrity of the proposal. this latter committee subsequently consented to the research project. in essence, this project did not simply “fall through the cracks” – it was sanctioned in accordance with due institutional process. of significance is that the multiple agents and committees that subjected this project to scrutiny failed to raise concerns about its ethicality. this makes the case for oblivion particularly compelling, especially since high-level, phdqualified academics/professors appeared unperturbed by the nature of this project. the assemblage to which the implicated colleagues belong extends beyond the institution/ university. for instance, the funding agency adjudged this project to be one that was worthy of financial backing. arguments would have been made for its significance and contribution to knowledge. whether there was discussion as to it trampling on the humanity of the research participants, is a moot question. arguably the most disconcerting aspect of this debacle was 94 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 94-99 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.7 the endorsement by the journal of this “scholarship”, and the authority given to its “knowledge” at that time. it was only after sustained pressure from various sectors of the academy and civil society that the article was withdrawn. the managing editor, as first line of defence of the scholarship that the journal publishes, proved to be somewhat unwary that the article submitted for consideration might prove to be controversial and may have violated an acceptable ethical code. a similar analysis applies in relation to the sensitivity of the “blind” reviewers (experts in the field) who sanctioned the contents of the article. that these high-level experts were in fact blind to the ethical oversights suggests that the expertise might well be of a truncated kind. the same argument holds for the members of the editorial board of the journal. it is not unreasonable to conclude that the entire assemblage (the various agents in that particular fraternity) cannot make claim to having the requisite levels of sensitivity to racial, gender and economic class-related issues, as the research project in question and its manifest outcome – the article and its ethical frailties – passed through its echelons completely undetected. however, the hovering ghosts of modernity and positivism have to share complicity (le grange, 2019). modernity and the western intellectual tradition’s hegemony can be traced back to rene descartes’ cogito ergo sum – “i think therefore i am”. this marked the death of spirituality and ushered in an era signalled by a disconnect with nature, the environment and human beings. it assumes and advocates for a distant, non-partisan researcher – a clinical separation of the researcher and research participant. that the positivist tradition may have had an influence on the research “culture” of the researchers in question is certainly an argument that should not be discounted. le grange reminds us of the phenomenon of ethics creep, namely the application of pure science ethics in the human and social sciences (le grange, 2019). that said, even research in this tradition has largely been able to work within the ethical “boundary”. the fact that this study and its outcomes was paraded in the public academic space suggests a thoughtlessness on the part of this fraternity as to the effects that this kind of research may have on the research participants and associated communities. it marks a banality with which the research study was executed, a discussion of which follows. 6. about banality hannah arendt’s controversial concept, the “banality” (of evil) (arendt, 1998) received widespread critique in the period following the trial of adolf eichmann, the notorious nazi commander responsible for executing millions of jews during world war ii. in attempting to analyse what predisposed eichmann to this kind of act, arendt came to the conclusion that people are not innately evil, but that everyone has the propensity to commit evil deeds. in describing eichmann and his actions, arendt invoked the concept of “banality”, a condition where the actor carries out atrocious deeds with an inexplicable thoughtlessness, an acute yet authentic inability to think. she described eichmann as not pathological nor overtly wicked, an analysis that drew serious condemnation at the time. this analysis might be useful as we extend its tenets to the participating researchers in question. the concept of banality, then, might be described as a state of mind in which human conscience has receded into an abysmal dormancy or hibernation. people trapped in this condition may not be inherently sinister or have an inhuman disposition, but they wilfully undertake sinister acts. these acts are not those of stupidity; they do, however, characterise a thoughtlessness. such individuals do not demonstrate “any diabolic or demonic profundity” 95 maistry transactional ethics and “damage-centred” research: of banality and oblivion 2020 38(1): 95-99 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.7 (arendt, 1998: 237). often these acts are carried out in pursuit of personal advancement. in this instance, it might well be related to research profile enhancement. in this manner, it becomes merely the application of a transactional ethical code, without any level of realisation of the repercussions of such behaviour, especially for those on the receiving end. transactional ethics then represents a contract of exploitative exchange in which the researcher secures data from unsuspecting participants to whom promises of benefit are made, but seldom materialise in any substantive form. it is the outcome of asymmetrical power relations between researchers and research subjects in which subjugated research subjects have little or no knowledge of the dynamics of their participation in the “exchange” and have limited recourse post-consequence. transactional ethics thus constitutes an inherent venality in plain sight. there may not have been any overt affiliation to any institutional vision or ideological conviction on the part of the perpetrators, but it could be argued that this kind of research is premised on a misguided theory of social change – of litigation-motivated change (tuck, 2009). the challenge with this approach to social change is that it essentialises the research endeavour to becoming a transaction, a trade of sorts: give us access to the worst of your conditions and let us magnify your adverse conditions as leverage for institutional action. the assumption here is that of a well-functioning legal/juridical system that is responsive, and that the poor have the ability to harness the data effectively to make a legal case for interventions to alleviate their plight. however, the reality is that legal systems are notorious for lethargy and ineptness in following through to a conclusion in such cases (if they get to court at all). the real beneficiaries of the transaction are the researchers, as manifested in the research outputs that they produce, from which they gain academic mileage. the question as to which race groups remain the most “researchable” for this kind of social justice research (even in disguised form) is moot. however, it does bring into sharp purview who might constitute a convenient, available and accessible research population in the south african context. south africa’s ailing socio-economic situation, and its vast numbers of poor and unemployed, present as an appealing and lucrative research field. it is no secret as to who the poor and most vulnerable populations are. data from statistics south africa (2017) unequivocally indicate that the poverty gap for blacks was a high 32.5%, while it was 16.9% for coloureds, 1.5% for indians, and under 1% for white south africans. for black and coloured south africans, this affected group comprised children, women and people living in rural areas. the data are indeed telling, as they reveal quite explicitly the race groups that are most susceptible to all kinds of social and medical research. of concern is when selective expedience by researchers overshadows any bona fide social justice intent (zulu, 2013), a research approach that designates and elevates damaged and broken (human beings) as evidence for intervention. 7. troubling damage-centred research eve tuck, an indigenous scholar reflecting on research on native american communities in canada and the us, argues that the time for damage-centred research is now long past (tuck, 2009). she contends that damage-centred research has served its purpose, and is likely to create more harm to research participants than the benefits that might accrue. the argument is premised on the fact that historically social science research has had, as a key objective, the need to expose frailties in social settings. the idea was that this kind of 96 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 96-99 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.7 exposé through empirical research will draw attention to areas of need/intervention, and that resources will be harnessed in the direction of where the deficit occurs. at face value, this appears to be a noble intent, and as such should receive support. so, in an effort to amplify the plight of oppressed subjects, researchers reveal explicit details of the extent of the depravation with “good” intent. in essence, then, the more one can reveal/ demonstrate deprivation, the more likely it is that such social conditions might receive due attention. what in fact happens is that this kind of construction inadvertently crosses the border into depictions of “damage”, of people as broken, as pathology. tuck reminds us that, [t]hese characterizations frame our communities as sites of disinvestment and dispossession; our communities become spaces in which under-resourced health and economic infrastructures are endemic. they become spaces saturated in the fantasies of outsiders (tuck, 2009: 412). while attention is drawn to the condition being reported on, this comes at the expense of essentialising the plight of such communities. even when studies are completed, and the findings reported, researchers do little to restore the dignity of the participants that they had patronised. the narrative of deficit and depravation lives on. tuck argues that researchers have to reconsider how even the most atrocious contexts/conditions being reported on need to factor in, in a highly sensitive way, the humanity of the participants (tuck, 2009). failure to do so simply renders such research as surreptitious, as it solicits narratives with an exclusive focus on dispossession and powerlessness. in other words: “tell us your tragic stories, we will commandeer help”. this is not a new phenomenon or approach to constructing research participants. it is, however, timely to revisit what this might mean and how researchers (research supervisors included) might envisage this re-alert or re-consciousness as it relates to the human beings that they work with in the research field. the contention with damage-centred research is that it fails to centre human dignity as an important point of departure. in fact, damage-centred research alters and shapes the very way in which researchers approach the research field and the manner in which they engage with research subjects. damage-centred research conceives of research subjects in a particular way and might degenerate into research that patronises instead of creating conditions for empowerment. it might also have the effect of reducing research participants to mere repositories of data, as opposed to sources of knowledge, or understanding the research participant as moral agent (pittaway et al., 2010). it also has the effect of reinforcing racial stereotypes (hendricks et al., 2019). 8. about sympathy, pity and empathy dispositions of pity and mere sympathy are not particularly useful, as they position research subjects as victims (to be rescued). the location of power and agency resides in the researcher. victim constructions suggest the need for rescue of sorts – rescue by some outside force. the subjects in this instance are maintained in a state of paralysis, which may well endure beyond the life of the project, especially when the interventions/rescue/recommendations that are lobbied for do not materialise. the reality is that, very often, recommendations from academic research remain at a theoretical (paper) level, contained within theses and journals. they are rarely taken up or alter policy in the short term. this kind of research does not guarantee that there will be 97 maistry transactional ethics and “damage-centred” research: of banality and oblivion 2020 38(1): 97-99 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.7 any change in the material and emotional well-being of the participants. indeed, it might well have the effect of reifying the condition in the psyche of the research subjects, as somewhat doomed to remain in a “condemned” state, denying any recognition of the intrinsic ability or potential of research participants. an empathetic approach, however, frames the research subject in a qualitatively different fashion. the premise is to recognise the potential in subjects – to see subjects as able and capable. this involves being acutely sensitive to projecting a disposition of respect, of deep regard and, importantly, recognising and acknowledging innate agency. ascribing innate agency is the recognition, even in the most despairing of contexts, of the intrinsic ability/potential of people. it locates the locus of control and power within subjects. being an empathetic researcher is thus a high-level competence. it requires high levels of perception, acute sensitivity to the environment, and the ability to glean information from non-verbal cues (body language, tone, mood, emotions projected). it might be described as an approach that requires a “listening” with one’s entire body. empathetic researchers work hard at building relationships and trust, in ways that enable research participants to recognise the researcher’s authentic intent. 9. concluding comments several (research) issues emerge from the deliberations presented in this paper. while many institutions have stand-alone ethics courses for postgraduate students, or have this aspect integrated into research methodology modules, how does the academy invoke the notion of researchers “living” ethical principles, as opposed to engaging mere paper ethics and bureaucratic compliance? internalising ethical principles as they relate to research cannot be reduced to a mere tickbox exercise where researchers merely parrot research ethics theory and principles. given the tight timeframes within which researchers have to access the field, collect data and see projects to completion, it is not unusual to expect that deep, deliberative conversations about the application of an ethical code seldom happen. pinar’s (2004) insights about complicated conversations have salience here. the idea of complicated conversations refers to the notion of troubling the self, in the first instance, as it relates to the impact of one’s behaviour and actions. it might require an introspection of learnt social behaviours and prejudice, especially those that have become normalised in our individual psyche, with a view to interrogating the assumptions we make about fellow human beings. implicated in this introspection is a recognition of relations of power that exist between researchers and participants, and how this power might produce particular behaviours and actions in a foucauldian sense – an acknowledgement of the flawed assumption that researchers often make as to who has power and who does not, and power’s productive potential (foucault, 1979). complicated conversations need to move beyond individuals engaging with themselves; there is a need for deliberative conversations in the academic assemblage. how might complicit structures – departments, disciplines, higher degrees committees, university research committees, journal reviewers, editors, editorial boards – review and reconsider the robustness of ethics protocols that prevail? how might the research community contemplate candid discussions of how social justice issues of race, gender and class, for example, are implicated in the selection of research participants? 98 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 98-99 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.7 the multiple agents implicated in the assemblage discussed above might well find this paper accusatory. the consequences of not paying attention to having these complicated conversations might well be another shameful research project that tramples on the humanity of its research subjects in the name of societal transformation. should this recommendation be embraced, there might be much potential for growth and the application of justice as ethical principle. it might well spawn paradigmatic innovations as we search for an arendt-inspired reconciliation between modernity and spirituality (arendt, 1998). given that the researchers implicated in the offending study might well be traumatised by the fall-out that the research study has created, how might we apply an immanent ethics (deleuze & guattari, 1987) in a positive spirit of reconciliation, as opposed to attempting to ostracise such colleagues? instead of seeking to punish and alienate/vilify, how might we become prospective, as opposed to applying retrospective condemnation? references 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https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.79.3.n0016675661t3n15 https://doi.org/10.4135/9781544329611.n12 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00431 https://doi.org/10.5172/conu.33.1.69 _hlk23503766 _goback _hlk23432108 2242020 38(1): 224-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 the affective affordances of frugal science using foldscopes during a life sciences water quality practical abstract manu prakash, the developer of the foldscope microscope reported on in this paper, stated that it is important to use tools that can support open-ended inquiry in the classroom, without dumbing down those tools. scientific equipment in the school laboratory is often very expensive and only available to those who can afford it. “frugal science” is a trend in education that researches, develops and introduces economical and quality scientific resources to developing countries. in south africa, many underprivileged schools lack quality practical and laboratory resources to perform simple tasks, such as microscopy. furthermore, the absence of laboratory investigations could lead to learners not enjoying life sciences nor developing a more nuanced understanding of the nature (tenets) of science. as part of an indigenous knowledge intervention hosted by the north-west university, teachers were provided with $1 foldscopes (paper microscope) to use in their classrooms. this research reports on the views of life sciences learners and teachers on the use of foldscopes in the life sciences classroom during a practical lesson. the focus of the research is to illuminate how such problem-based approaches could enhance affective outcomes. this generic qualitative research study has elements of design-based research (dbr) as well as classroom action research (car), carried out by participating teachers to investigate the affordances of foldscopes. data was collected using observations, teacher reflections, learner reflections, photographs and personal interviews. from an affective stance, this qualitative study used engeström’s third-generation cultural-historical activity theory (chat) as a research lens in order to identify factors that promote or inhibit the use of foldscopes in the life sciences classroom during a practical lesson. keywords: affective domain, classroom action research, foldscopes, frugal science, pedagogical content knowledge, self-directed learning and teacher professional development. 1. introduction and problem statement according to the world economic forum’s competitive index for 2017 to 2018, south african mathematics and science education is ranked 128th out of 137 countries (schwab, 2018). the 2019 report highlights that sub-saharan africa authors: mrs cherine jackson1 prof josef de beer1 dr lounell white1 affiliation: 1research unit self-directed learning, north west university doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v38i1.16 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(1): 224-241 published: 11 june 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5134-8125 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2411-6599 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8243-399x http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 225 jackson, de beer & white the affective affordances of frugal science using foldscopes 2020 38(1): 225-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 is globally the least competitive region, though south africa did improve to the second most competitive country in the region, after mauritius (world economic forum, 2019). one of the educational issues that teachers in the life sciences classroom face is that some learners do not enjoy, engage or prosper academically in life sciences as a subject (hidi & harackiewicz, 2000). researchers such as de beer (2014) and buma (2018) call the marginalisation of the affective domain in the science classroom as the “missing link” and suggest that teachers should consciously teach for the affective domain. we would like to echo the words of rotherham and willingham (2010:17) who, in a slightly different context, argued that the teaching of certain skills and aptitudes are often “a matter of chance rather than the deliberate design of our school system… we cannot afford a system in which receiving a highquality education is akin to a game of bingo”. hidi and harackiewicz (2000:151) identified two factors that inhibit learner academic performance and interest in the classroom, namely “lack of ability” and “lack of effort”. these factors inhibit affective learning in the classroom. learners might find various topics in life sciences too difficult, or learners might find the teacher or topic too boring (pretorius, 2015). many teachers still use content-based, conventional, transmission-mode teaching methods such as “chalk-and-talk” (riga et al., 2017), which does not favour “out-of-the-box thinking” and autonomous learning (farahani, 2014). this should also be seen in the light of research by ramnarain and schuster (2014) that showed that teachers often replace open-inquiry approaches with transmission-mode and teacher-centred approaches (and “teaching-to-the-test”), due to systemic pressure, e.g., from parents and principals for good examination results. inquiry-based (heuristic) methods are not a new approach to teaching life sciences (riga et al., 2017). heuristic methods allow teachers and learners to have a sense of discovery and enhance their own sense of learning (becoming a self-directed learner). this concept is also commonly known as the “armstrong method” (riga et al., 2017:247). scientific methods and skills cannot be taught using transmission-mode teaching, but rather hands-on practical and self-discovery methods. many teachers neglect using practical-based teaching or problembased learning as well as cooperative strategies (jacobs, de beer & petersen, 2016) because teachers feel they may be taken out of their comfort zones. furthermore, some teachers do not have a comprehensive understanding of the nature of science (ogunniyi, 2002). teachers may also avoid problem-based learning as they are not confident or comfortable in conducting hands-on practical sessions with learners (de beer & petersen, 2016). many studies have been done to indicate that teachers avoid problem-based learning and cooperative learning (cronje, 2015; de beer, 2017) due to a full curriculum and time constraints (pretorius, 2015), as well as systemic pressure (ramnarain & schuster, 2014). another issue in south african education is the lack of quality resources including practical equipment in the life sciences classroom (cronje, 2015; jacobs, 2015; pretorius, 2015). consequently, there is a need for quality “shoestring approaches” (de beer & petersen, 2016) or “frugal science” (ahuja, 2014). teacher agency requires constructive thought processing, and improvisation of various approaches, in order to achieve the aims of the content in the life sciences curriculum. consequently, teachers were introduced to foldscopes during indigenous knowledge interventions held by the north-west university. a foldscope is a microscope that was developed by stanford university (cybulski et al., 2014). during the interventions, teachers were invited to develop their own practical activities; hence, the importance of exposing teachers to classroom action research (car). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 226 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 226-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 many researchers find ways for life sciences teachers to improve on the teaching of science in context. however vital resources are required to teach science (pretorius, 2015). many schools or life sciences teachers do not have these resources, which is part of the enormous challenge south african education is facing. therefore, teachers need to use every opportunity to identify cheaper, alternative ways to improve their practice (de beer & petersen, 2016). the focus of this research was to investigate affective gains among learners and teachers, who engaged with foldscopes and car. more detail regarding the affective domain and conceptual orientation is discussed under krathwohl’s taxonomy of the affective domain later in this article. 2. literature review 2.1 pedagogical content knowledge and an understanding of the nature of science according to shulman (1987:8), pedagogical content knowledge is the “blending of content and pedagogy into an understanding of how particular topics, problems, or issues are organised, represented, and adapted to the diverse interests and abilities of learners and presented for instruction”. many studies suggest that teachers do not have sufficient life sciences pedagogical content knowledge due to poor content and poor pedagogical knowledge (schneider & plasman, 2011). part of a life sciences teacher’s pedagogical content knowledge should be a good understanding of the tenets of the nature of science. abd-el-khalick, bell and lederman (1998) mention that there is a relationship between teachers’ views on the nature of science and how they teach. teachers need a good understanding of the nature of science in order to accurately portray these tenets in their pedagogy. therefore, there is a need for consistent and continuous professional development interventions (cronje, 2015; pretorius, 2015). in response to this, the north-west university designed a professional development intervention concerning indigenous knowledge. the intervention had a variety of design principles that allowed for the growth of various skills among the teachers, including pedagogical content knowledge and the competency to conduct action research in their classrooms. 2.2 affective domain the affective domain as a learning domain has been neglected by the education community (garritz, 2010). the cognitive domain is central in education, yet the affective domain (values and attitudes, e.g., perseverance, tolerance, etc.) is a driver for cognitive development. research in neuroscience (dubinsky, roehrig & varma, 2013) shows that experiences with an emotional flavour are more likely to be committed to memory. the affective domain includes the perceptions, interests, attitudes, values and emotions of the teachers and learners (birbeck & andre, 2009; clark & price, 2016). krathwohl’s taxonomy was used as an intermediary theory to see if any affective learning took place during the water practical using the foldscopes. there are five affective categories that indicate internalisation. these include receiving, responding, valuing, organisation and characterisation by a value complex (krathwohl, 1964; lynch, russell, evans & sutterer, 2009). 2.3 teacher professional development the idea of teacher professional development is to assist, build and support teachers’ professional learning (warford, 2011) and capability regarding pedagogical content http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 227 jackson, de beer & white the affective affordances of frugal science using foldscopes 2020 38(1): 227-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 knowledge, skills and effectiveness as a teacher (fraser, kennedy, reid & mckinney, 2007). thus, one of the design principles of the intervention included the incorporation of car as part of the programme. the notion of the “teacher as a learner” sheds light on teacher professional development, which creates opportunities for teachers to learn more about a specific topic and to continue their professional development (fraser et al., 2007). teacher professional learning is complex and requires teachers to reflect individually and cooperatively with other teachers (avalos, 2011). teachers can share ideas from car with other teachers; thus, motivating others as part of a community of practice. teachers should adopt a practice of lifelong learning, which in turn will enhance continued professional development. 2.4 classroom action research (car) gravett and de beer (2015:344) explain car as “more data-based and systematic than reflection, but less formal and controlled than traditional educational research”. during the intervention on infusing indigenous knowledge into the life sciences classroom, teachers were trained to engage in car. this car centred on the use of foldscopes in the classroom and the affordances of this method. there are various steps (figure 1) that should be followed during the car cycle. firstly, teachers are required to identify a problem in the classroom. in this case, the problem that two participating teachers identified was the lack of learner curiosity about, and interest in, the topic ecology (pretorius et al., 2014). secondly, teachers are required to plan their research. in this case, the two teachers planned a water quality assessment project using the foldscopes. thirdly, the teacher must act and collect data. during the water quality activity, learners completed the practical handout, which was then analysed and evaluated. reflection cannot be excluded from car, and teachers must continually reflect during the lesson as well as during the entire car. these reflections were also analysed and are reported on in this paper. such reflection can assist teachers to become self-directed learners (sdl) (knowles, 1975) and agents of change (van der heijden, geldens, beijaard & popeijus, 2015). figure 1: the car cycle adapted from gravett and de beer (2015:347) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 228 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 228-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 2.5 frugal science and foldscopes many south african schools do not have the privilege of quality school resources (mampane & bouwer, 2011) including laboratory equipment for practical work in the life sciences classroom. “frugal science” is a concept in education that introduces cheap, accessible scientific educational tools within developing countries (ahuja, 2014). the foldscope is a lowcost optical paper microscope that was designed and developed by manu prakash and his students at the stanford university school of medicine (ahuja, 2014). the paper foldscope can magnify up to 2000 times, which is greater than the common light (compound) microscope (400 times); thus, exposing greater detail when viewing unicellular organisms. the foldscope is also portable and does not require electricity. the foldscope is ideal for fieldwork and an affordable and useful tool for schools that do not have the resources for practical lessons. the foldscope can provide learners, who do not have access to light (compound) microscopes, with practical skills as well as the opportunity to view the unicellular world (cybulski et al., 2014). following instructions, the paper foldscope can easily be assembled by folding various cardboard parts (including a 2000x lens). teachers can easily design handson activities (part of their car) using the foldscope while also infusing indigenous knowledge into life sciences lessons. as shown in the chat diagram (figure 2), this was the object of the research project reported on in this paper. 3. aim, objectives and research questions 3.1 aim the aim of the research reported on in this paper was to explore the affordances of the implementation of foldscopes during two teachers’ action research projects. 3.2 research questions the two research questions that guided this research were: 1. what are the affordances of utilising foldscope microscopes in promoting affective outcomes in the life sciences classroom? 2. what are teachers’ experiences of engaging in classroom action research (car) on foldscopes, and what are the affective affordances of such car? 4. research design, research methods and theoretical framework as part of a master’s dissertation, this research followed a generic qualitative approach (creswell, 2013; merriam & tisdell, 2015). this research also has elements of dbr as well as car, as carried out by participating teachers after the intervention. after cycle 1 of the larger national research foundation (nrf) project, the data showed that teachers could benefit from engaging in car. therefore, car was included in later interventions. this research focused on two teachers’ experiences of engaging with car based on the affordances of the foldscopes for affective development. 5. theoretical framework the theoretical framework followed epistemological models to allow the researcher to interpret the data from the car projects. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 229 jackson, de beer & white the affective affordances of frugal science using foldscopes 2020 38(1): 229-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 5.1 theoretical framework this research used social constructivism as the theoretical orientation. social constructivist discourses allowed the researcher to make sense of learner and teacher experiences during the water quality investigation (seimears et al., 2012). social constructivism has its roots in the developmental theory of vygotsky and his well-known construct, the zone of proximal development (vygotsky, 1978). social constructivism is based on how people understand and construct their cultural and social reality to create meaning (kim, 2001). furthermore, activity theory was used for further analysis of the data using engeström third-generation culturalhistorical activity theory (chat) (engeström, 2009) on an interpersonal plane. therefore, as suggested by engestrom (2009), we used chat by juxtaposing two interdependent activity systems – the teacher’s teaching activities compared to the learner’s learning activities (figure 2). within the classroom two different, but related, activity systems were compared with each another to identify any tensions or contractions within the activity system. although the teacher is teaching in a classroom setting, it does not necessarily mean that the learner is learning (brown, 2003). therefore, the use of chat on an interpersonal plane (mentz & de beer, 2017) allowed the researcher to identify the affective outcomes of the foldscope activities. the different nodes of a third-generation activity system include the subject (s), object (o), tools (t), community (c), rules (r) and division of labour (d) (engeström, 2000). figure 2: using third-generation chat in an unconventional way by comparing the life sciences teacher and learner (adapted from engeström, 1987; and de beer & mentz, 2017) the first triangle in figure 2 shows the life sciences teacher as the subject and the second triangle shows the life sciences learner as the subject. the tools that the teacher and learners used for the car projects include the foldscopes, educational equipment and laboratory equipment. the activity system is guided by rules, namely, the nature of science (the learners complete a practical activity that uses scientific methods); the subject assessment guidelines http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 230 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 230-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 (sags) (ieb, 2018) or curriculum assessment policy statement (caps) (department of basic education, 2011); as well as the rules of problem-based learning. the community include the principal, parents, teachers and learners. the principal granted permission to conduct research in the classroom and parents were required to take their children to the nearest water source (dam or river) to collect water for the foldscope practical activity (fieldwork). the division of labour in triangle 1 includes the teacher as a facilitator of learning, critical reflective practitioner, agent of change and researcher (car). the division of labour among the learners include their role as “scientists” conducting fieldwork and using scientific methods. the object in this activity system is the achievement of affective outcomes from the learning activity, namely, enjoyment, excitement, appreciation and engagement. engeström (2009) emphasises that the object should be permeated into the activity system. furthermore there is complexity in the object called the contradiction of control (mcneil, 2013). in an ideal context there should be a shared view to achieve the object (mentz & de beer, 2017). 5.2 krathwohl’s taxonomy of the affective domain krathwohl’s taxonomy was used as an intermediary theory to see if any affective learning took place during the water practical using the foldscopes. there are five affective categories that indicate internalisation. these include receiving, responding, valuing, organization and characterization by a value complex (krathwohl, 1964; lynch et al., 2009). as seen in figure 3 below, there are varying degrees of affective learning that can occur. these proceed from simple to complex affective learning (buma, 2018). according to krathwohl (1964), the simplest affective learning trait is receiving, which includes awareness and willingness to respond to the water quality project. the second affective learning trait is responding, which relates to the degree of involvement in the learning activity. the third affective learning trait is valuing, which relates to appreciation of the learning activity. the fourth affective learning trait is organization, which prioritises the aim of the learning activity. lastly, the most complex affective learning trait is characterizing by a value, which includes complete internalisation of the value set, i.e., “responsible and ethical use of science knowledge in the service of humanity” (buma, 2018:106). this set of criteria was used to analyse the data collected from the car projects. figure 3: krathwohl’s taxonomy of affective learning (neuman & friedman, 2010) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 231 jackson, de beer & white the affective affordances of frugal science using foldscopes 2020 38(1): 231-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 6. methodology one of the design principles that was distilled from the larger nrf-funded dbr research project was to inspire teachers to engage in car. this allowed teachers to research and design problem-based activities. gravett and de beer (2015) define car as a methodology that is midway between unstructured teacher reflection and formal and structured traditional educational research. as part of the indigenous knowledge intervention, teachers received foldscopes to use in their classroom. two enthusiastic teachers were selected after the intervention to conduct an action research activity with their life sciences class. the activity was using the foldscopes to assess the quality of water in south africa (on a very small scale). in this case, the two teachers planned a water quality project using the foldscopes. the teachers identified the theoretical framework as social constructivism (powell & kalina, 2009). the conceptual framework is related to the affective domain, as it is important to see if learners affectively embraced their learning during the practical, and to see if learning occurred. teachers were instructed on the affective domain during the interventions. the research approach used was generic qualitative research, because data collection involved observation, artefacts and learner and teacher reflections. the methodology included how the participants were selected and how the activity was conducted, which will be explained later. ethical considerations were vital, and the teachers, being employees at the school, had to obtain consent from the learners and parents. figure 4: completed foldscope assembled by one of the learners the water quality activity was conducted, and learners completed the practical handout, which was then analysed. the data was transcribed and coded by the researcher to determine the affordances of the foldscopes. the foldscope activity consisted of two components. firstly, learners had to conduct fieldwork, whereby they had to collect a water sample from a dam or river close to their home, observe their surroundings and test the ph and the temperature of the water. learners had to further test the water samples in the classroom (practising their laboratory/practical skills), including testing ph, temperature and the ammonia test. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 232 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 232-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 learners had to fold the foldscopes carefully following the instructions provided. after folding the foldscope learners were required to make slides from their water samples in order to view unicellular or multicellular organisms. finally, learners had to complete the practical write-up that included writing reflections. 6.1 sampling it was important to select participants who were willing to share their car experiences. therefore, a purposeful sampling strategy was used (creswell, 2013). the participants were experienced high school life sciences teachers who attended the indigenous knowledge intervention held by the north-west university. 6.2 ethical considerations the north-west university faculty of education ethics committee provided ethical clearance (ethics clearance number nwu-00357-18-a2). first, the principal was notified about the classroom visit and the purpose of the research. consent and permission forms were handed out to the teachers and learners involved in the car. teachers and learners were informed that they would remain anonymous and pseudonyms would be used. parents had to give permission for their children to be part of the research; thus, parents had to sign permission letters. 6.3 collecting data qualitative data instruments were used as well as in the action research projects. these instruments captured real-life experiences (social constructivism) regarding the foldscope activity. the instruments included classroom observations, personal teacher interviews as well as teacher and learner reflections. teachers were interviewed after the water quality investigation. teacher and learner reflections were captured. the teachers received a document with questions to guide the reflection process. the learners reflected during the water practical activity, as these questions were embedded in the working document. 6.4 data analysis data from the interviews and reflections were transcribed and analysed using a code-totheory method (saldaña, 2015). themes that emerged are discussed in conjunction with the literature reviewed. descriptive coding was used in this research. the transcribed data was added to tables and codes were extracted from the information. codes were organised to form categories and, from the categories, themes emerged. in-vivo coding was used to include excerpts from the direct speech of the teachers and learners, rather than the codes selected by the researcher; since qualitative research is descriptive and natural responses from participants are preferred (saldaña, 2015). emotion coding was also used as it captures affective outcomes. emotions are part of participants’ worldviews and can provide a variety of perspectives (saldaña, 2015). 6.5 validity, reliability and trustworthiness member checking was used and generated data was taken back to the participants to ensure that what was written reflected their realities. open-ended reflective questions for the interviews and questionnaires were designed according to the aim of the research, thus strengthening validity. the question items were also reviewed by a panel of experts. according to thyer (2001), reliability is repeatability and uniformity of data in a similar context yielding http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 233 jackson, de beer & white the affective affordances of frugal science using foldscopes 2020 38(1): 233-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 similar results. various details about sample selection, methodology and data analysis must be provided and explained to ensure reliability of the findings. trustworthiness of qualitative data can be guaranteed through credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability (babbie & moutin, 2002). trustworthiness can be achieved by ensuring that the results obtained are credible according to the literature and the context of the study, using triangulation. 7. findings and discussion the following themes emerged from the analyses of the data of the foldscope activity. 7.1 theme 1: some learners were frustrated that no “quick-fix” guidelines were provided for the foldscope microscopy activity; and that they had to devise own experimental designs. some trends in educational research are learner autonomy (farahani, 2014) and teaching skills for the 21st century (kereluik et al., 2013). educational pedagogies are moving towards learnercentred approaches (o’neill & mcmahon, 2005), including: cooperative learning strategies (johnson & johnson, 1987); flexible learning (o’niel et al., 2005); experiential learning (burnard, 1999, quoted by o’niel et al., 2005) and self-directed learning (knowles, 1975). research has shown that teachers do not incorporate learner-centred pedagogies in the life sciences classroom due to lack of pck (mothwa, 2011); time constrains; a full curriculum and a poor understanding of cooperative learning approaches (confusing it with group work) (jacobs, de beer & petersen, 2016). ramnarain and schuster (2014) also show how systemic pressures to “teach-to-the-test” militate against open inquiry and cooperative learning. furthermore, learners are unfamiliar with these strategies because some teachers do not implement cooperative strategies in the classroom (jacobs et al., 2016); thus, learners rely on the teachers to include specific instructions and explain certain concepts, in other words “spoon feeding” for the exam, consequently reducing “out-of-the-box” thinking. teachers are also constricted to the curriculum (caps or sags); therefore, the curriculum also reduces agency. we have a system that only wants the correct answers and does not allow for agency. learner 33 said: “it took a while for me to gain trust in myself, as i didn’t want to make a mistake”. teachers are now becoming aware that learners need to be prepared for “life beyond the classroom” (farahani, 2014). evidence from this research showed that children are still accustomed to being “spoon fed” because it is very difficult for them to follow instructions on their own. during this car, data indicated that learners find lateral thinking very difficult. learner 1 said: “it was difficult because the instructions weren’t specific”; and learner 2 added that “it was extremely difficult to fold the microscope as the instructions were not very clear and many of the parts looked similar to each other”. this gives evidence that learners are accustomed to being “spoon-fed”, despite the learner-centred approaches to initiate “self-feeding” (farahani, 2014). learners also realised that they require psychomotor skills to complete this activity. for example, learner 56 indicated that “folding the foldscope was difficult because it required the use of fine motor skills, something many people lack, it also required careful and meticulous following of instructions within a short time period”. once again such responses suggest that our education system does not allow for self-discovery and “self-feeding”; and shows a lack of awareness and responsiveness towards autonomous learning (farahani, 2014). therefore, there is a need for more interventions that include car; to enable teachers to become more aware of autonomous learning, for themselves and the learners they teach. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 234 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 234-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 7.2 theme 2: learners enjoyed the overall experience of folding the foldscope, and indicated that it was fun, interactive but also challenging cognitive dissonance is evident in the data. festinger (1962:93) explains cognitive dissonance as “two items of information that psychologically do not fit together are said to be in a dissonant relation to each other”. in the context of this research, the data shows contradicting expressions from the learners. learners found the activity very difficult yet rewarding. learner 7 indicated that “the folding of the foldscope microscope was very interesting and challenging”; and learner 44 said: “it pushed me out of my comfort zone as normally i do not build things or enjoy making things, but i really enjoyed building the foldscope”. taking learners out of their comfort zone creates a sense of cognitive dissonance. learners engage with the learning material, but find it challenging; yet towards the end, learners enjoyed it and learnt a lot from the foldscope activity. learner 27 explained: the folding of the foldscope microscope was a challenging, and yet rewarding task – at times i truly struggled to interpret the instructions that were provided on the instruction manual and thus the folding was quite tricky at stages – and yet, it was exhilarating at the same time, every time i folded a piece of the microscope. during certain stages of the folding process, i experienced irritation and agitation due to the fact that i could not achieve the desired outcome/fold the different pieces together in the manner that was depicted on the instruction leaflet. not only was the foldscope activity challenging for the learners, but data also shows that learners were fearful of the activity and easily gave up. teacher 2 indicated that: “those who persisted did see things but some gave up”. learner 55 indicated the following: “i was just a bit scared that i was going to tear it but if you work carefully you won’t”. the quote from learner 55 above suggests a degree of anxiety regarding the activity, which indicates that teachers don’t always give learners hands-on activities to challenge themselves. teachers often indicate that they have limited time in the classroom to conduct such activities (cronje, 2015; de beer, 2017). 7.3 theme 3: affective domain is addressed during this hands-on practical learners indicated that it was a stimulating and fun task. another trend in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (stem) education is the inclusion of the arts (steam). the inclusion of the arts has synergy with the notion of homo ludens – the playing human or the pedagogy of play (huizinga, 1955, quoted by jautse, thambe & de beer, 2016) was evident in the data. learners 2, 5, 9, 12, 28, 33, 35, 40 and 41 indicated that the foldscope activity was “fun”, suggesting that learners really enjoyed the hands-on foldscope activity. data shows that the affective domain was evident in this learning opportunity. the affective domain has been described as “penetrating the innermost recess of the heart, affective education attaches greater meaning to what learners learn and makes the overall learning experience more memorable, fulfilling and relevant to the real world” (green, 2017:36). learners showed respect, and build relationships, by asking for assistance regarding folding of the foldscope. learner 7 said: “i found myself asking for help whilst constructing it more than once, my classmates were very helpful and we all tried to help each other if need be”. furthermore, this activity created a mutual learning zone (cooperative learning); at the same time improving their patience and creativity. learner 42 remarked: “it allowed us to let http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 235 jackson, de beer & white the affective affordances of frugal science using foldscopes 2020 38(1): 235-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 lo[o]se, be creative and embrace our inner child”. learners showed awareness and responded well to the task at hand (level 2 of krathwohl’s taxonomy): “this practical was a fun learning adventure which taught me many new things; it gave me problem solving skills” (learner 5). another affective outcome was that learners showed appreciation for nature: learner 28 said: “you feel like a proper biologist”; learner 17 added: “it is eye-opening and almost humbling to realise that a tiny living thing can affect your life drastically”. learners also showed self-gratification and found it very rewarding, which is another affective outcome. learners showed value (level 3 of krathwohl’s taxonomy) towards the foldscope learning activity. learner 21 said “it looked really cool”; learner 27 said “the experience was positive and enjoyable”; and learner 31 said “i had to be very involved and attentive”. overall, the data indicated that affective learning took place during this foldscope activity. learners found it new, enjoyable, exciting and fun. in the parlance of immordino-yang and damasio (2007:3), the data showed evidence that the learners and teachers were of the opinion that: “we feel, therefore we learn”. 7.4 theme 4: learners show an appreciation for the role of life sciences in society (caps – aim 3) the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) includes three aims, one being appreciating and understanding the history, importance and application of life sciences in society (department of basic education, 2011:1). the data indicates that learners showed appreciation for the role of science in society. learner 5 reflected: the foldscope was a valuable tool as it brings microscopes to everyone at a very cheap price, which will end up exposing more people to biology and increase knowledge and learning within schools, the overall prac gave me some insight into how people cause pollution, and how rural people can investigate the quality of their water. furthermore, learner 9 added: it gives me great pride to know that under privileged children will soon feel the joy and curiosity one feels when they look down a microscope. learner 15 argued that: very often people assume water is safe to drink because the water looks clear which indicates there’s nothing in the water. through the use of the foldscope it was found that there is in fact many organisms that inhabit the water. learners have indicated that there is a lack of scientific literacy in the community, but with the use of the foldscope, more people will become aware of scientific reasoning. 7.5 theme 5: teacher as a reflective practitioner, researcher and selfdirected learner using car. the teachers’ reflections indicated that they found the design and implementation of problembased activities “daunting”, which has been shown in other studies (de beer & petersen, 2016). the foldscope is also a new tool that teachers were not familiar with. they did not really know what to expect and they had to acquire a set of new skills. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 236 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 236-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 teacher 1 conducted the foldscope activity with two classes. the first lesson was challenging as the teacher realised that the instructions were difficult for the learners to follow. therefore, the teacher reflected “how can i improve my next lesson?” the teacher found videos that showed step-by-step instructions for the learners to follow, thus the second lesson went much better. learner 9 said that “the instructions on the paper in the package was very difficult to follow and was unclear, but the video was helpful”. teacher 2 indicated that it takes a lot of time to perfect the technique, thus losing valuable teaching time. again, time is a major factor in the life sciences classroom, and many teachers avoid doing practical activities because of this. teacher 2 added that there is value to doing handson activities in the life sciences classroom in order to develop fine-motor skills because “children aren’t accustomed to paper model building and struggles with instructions”. both teachers reflected that the car assisted them in becoming more critical and reflective practitioners. figure 5: life sciences teacher using the foldscope during car 7.6. looking at the data through a chat lens chat is a useful lens to analyse data; to provide a “rich description”. in figure 2, focus is given to the life sciences classroom (where foldscopes were used), by identifying two interdependent activity systems (mentz & de beer, 2017). although the teacher is teaching in a classroom setting, it does not necessarily mean that the learner is learning (brown, 2003). the two activity systems in figure 2 show the learner as subject, engaging in learning activities (diagram on the right); and the teacher as subject facilitating the foldscope learning activity (diagram on the left). the use of chat in this rather unconventional way (mentz & de beer, 2017) allowed the researcher to see what transfer of affective outcomes took place in the classroom using foldscopes. the chat analysis showed that the learners and the teachers obtained affective outcomes, which is surprising as often there are conflicts in terms of contradicting (non-aligned) objects in the two juxtaposed activity systems. in this case, there was good alignment between the objects in the two activity systems. the teachers appreciated the role of car in their own professional development; and the learners actively learnt life sciences concepts inside and outside the classroom. the teachers’ design of the learning activity supported the realisation of affective outcomes by the learners. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 237 jackson, de beer & white the affective affordances of frugal science using foldscopes 2020 38(1): 237-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.16 8. conclusion not only did teachers indicate that their engagement in car assisted them to become more critical reflective practitioners, but the learners also achieved valuable affective outcomes through their participation in the foldscope learning activity. teachers that engaged in car found it very stimulating and exciting to create successful activities that contributed to learners’ enjoyment of science. teachers also improved their research skills, which should enhance teaching and learning in the life sciences classroom. 9. acknowledgement we would like to acknowledge financial support of the national research foundation (nrf) and the fuchs foundation. views expressed in this paper are not necessarily that of the nrf or fuchs foundation. references abd-el-khalick, f., bell, r.l. & lederman, n.g. 1998. the nature of science and instructional practice: making the unnatural natural. science education, 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https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654311423382 https://www.weforum.org/search?utf8=%e2%9c%93&query=education+ranks&cx=005374784487575532108%3azwr8u4lxoba&cof=forid%3a11&op.x=14&op.y=9&op=search https://www.weforum.org/search?utf8=%e2%9c%93&query=education+ranks&cx=005374784487575532108%3azwr8u4lxoba&cof=forid%3a11&op.x=14&op.y=9&op=search https://doi.org/10.1080/00131725.2011.653092 https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x015002004 https://doi.org/10.4135/9781412986182 https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2015.1044328 https://doi.org/10.1080/13540602.2015.1044328 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2010.08.008 www.weforum.org/gcr _goback 227 research article 2022 40(4): 227-244 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) teacher factors influencing grade 12 accounting learners’ performance in the eswatini general certificate secondary examination abstract this study examined the influence of teacher-related factors on grade 12 accounting learners’ performance in the accounting general certificate secondary examination (gcse) in eswatini. a sequential, explanatory, mixed-methods design was employed. a stratified random sample for the quantitative phase comprised 400 accounting learners and 80 accounting teachers from 10 schools performing well, and from 10 schools performing poorly. purposive sampling was used for the qualitative phase to select 6 learners and 4 teachers from schools performing well, and 6 learners and 4 teachers from schools performing poorly to participate in the study. the data collection instruments were questionnaires and semi-structured interviews. quantitative data were analysed using statistical package for social sciences (spss), while qualitative data were analysed thematically. the study revealed that teacher variables affecting learners’ performance in grade 12 accounting gcse in eswatini were teachers’ attitude, teachers’ absenteeism, non-completion of the syllabus, revision before the examination, assignments to learners, and regularly giving up-to-standard tests. the researcher recommended inter alia that teachers should teach the relevant accounting content thoroughly during the first and second terms so that enough time is available for revision intended to address knowledge gaps that may occur as a result of learners having not understood some content during the teaching sessions. keywords: teacher-based factors, grade 12 accounting learners, accounting performance, eswatini general certificate secondary examination 1. introduction accounting is a subject that focuses on identifying, measuring, processing and communicating financial information and non-financial information to permit informed judgements and decisions by users of the information (merriam-webster, 2022). accounting includes bookkeeping, which deals with recording and organising financial data. accounting involves planning or budgeting the finances of the business, recording accounting data (bookkeeping), classifying and summarising data in order author: prof msizi vitalis mkhize1 dr muntuwenkosi abraham mtshali1 ms khumbuzile sithebe1 affiliation: 1university of kwazulu-natal, south africa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v40i4.6191 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(4): 227-244 published: 23 december 2022 received: 9 april 2022 accepted: 3 december 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8499-9445 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7346-5162 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4474-5376 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 2282022 40(4): 228-244 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) to make the accounting information easily accessible and useful, as well as communicating this information to the relevant people (the american institute of certified public accountants, 2022), all of which form part of the grade 12 learning programme. accounting may be studied to pursue a career in both the private and public sectors, wherein life-long skills of financial accountability are required. this indicates that the study of basic accounting at secondary schools is useful for those individuals who have a keen interest in entrepreneurship as a means to survive unemployment. it further prepares those who may wish to study it as a means to personal survival rather than as a career (examination council of swaziland, 2015). it can therefore be argued that it is important that learners pass this subject. an analysis of results by subject revealed that learners have consistently performed poorly in accounting over the years, according to the 2019 report of the examination council of eswatini (eceswa) (sibandze, oloyede & pereira, 2020). according to aremu (2000), failure to obtain a pass mark does not only affect learners and parents; it affects the society as well as the economy and politics of the country. the purpose of this study was to explore teacher factors influencing accounting learners’ performance in the eswatini general certificate in secondary education (gcse). the researcher, therefore, sought to pursue the following research questions: what teacher factors influence learners’ poor performance in grade 12 accounting in the eswatini general certificate secondary examination (gcse)? how do teacher-based factors in the eswatini gcse relate to demographic variables? 2. literature review a number of factors determine teachers’ capabilities to teach in ways that will enhance learners’ academic performance. in line with the first research question, this section is set to present some of the factors that influence teachers’ ability to instruct learners in such a way that they perform well academically. these factors are teacher attitude, syllabus completion, teacher effectiveness, revision before the examination, teaching methods, learners’ punishment, feedback to learners, motivation, content knowledge of the subject, teacher absenteeism, and teachers’ experience. 2.1 teacher attitude teacher attitude towards the learners or the teaching of the subject impacts learner performance either positively or negatively. maziya (2009) conducted a study on the variables influencing urban high school learners’ academic performance in agriculture and found that the negative attitude towards the teaching profession in certain teachers affected the teachers’ effectiveness in the teaching of agriculture. suter and busienei (2013), in a study that aimed to establish the attitude of kiswahili teachers towards the education of kiswahili oral literature in the marakwet district, kenya, found that negative teachers’ attitudes had an equally negative effect on learners’ attitudes towards the subject. similar findings were found by ogembo, otanga and yaki (2015) in chemistry, namely that teachers’ negative perception of their learners’ abilities was a cause for the failure of learners. 2.2 syllabus completion musasia, nakhanu and wekesa (2012) report that completing the syllabus on time helps learners to have more time for revision so that they can recall even the content they might have forgotten. musasia et al. (2012) state that teachers who cover the syllabus promptly, spend more time on revision, and their learners have a better chance of performing well http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 2292022 40(4): 229-244 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 mkhize, mtshali & sithebe teacher factors influencing grade 12 accounting learners’ performance than those who complete the syllabus just before the examination. zungu (2011) found that devoted teachers are always in class and adhere promptly to the bell. they are thus not only able to complete the work of that day, but also the syllabus for the year on time. however, mushwana (2000) reveals that some teachers do not adhere to their responsibility; when the schools re-open they bask in the sun. they thus fail to cover the prescribed volume of work in preparation for the examination. as a result, learners perform dismally in the examinations. malenya (2008) stresses that completion of the syllabus significantly contributes to the good performance of learners. 2.3 teacher effectiveness teacher effectiveness refers to teachers’ ability to present work in such a manner that learners are able to absorb and understand the material being presented. effective teachers create an environment that promotes learning (woolfolk, 2007). measures of teacher effectiveness are based on student learning, the difference between how much learners knew before they began a subject, and how much they knew after they have finished it (jupp, 2009). oliver and paulas (2004) reveal that teacher effectiveness determines learners’ academic performance. effective teaching may manifest itself in high scores in learner performance assessments, or in rewarding classroom interaction (mastrokoukou et al., 2022). ineffective teaching may occur due to stress. a teacher may experience burnout such as exhaustion, frustration and less motivation (oliver & paulas, 2004). characteristics of ineffective teachers in secondary schools are as follows: waste of learners’ time, poor mastery of the subject, a source of boredom to students, partial treatment of learners, lack of respect for learners, low level of self-confidence, poor mastery of teaching skills, emotional immaturity, inappropriate dressing, injurious to learners, fond of frivolous talk, miscommunication in class, poor in providing feedback, non-dialogic in class, poor in maintaining discipline, immoral in behaviour, unapproachable to learners, poor with counselling, poor psychological health, and autocratic towards learners (kodero et al., 2011). 2.4 revision before examination the main purpose of revision conducted by teachers is to increase and strengthen the cues associated with prior learning, include information about exam techniques, subject-specific key words, essay plans, dates, skills or facts (benjamin, 2022). teachers’ use of past examination papers during revision helps learners to improve their grades, as it helps learners to have a clear picture of the examination layout and expectations (jayanthi et al., 2014). teachers who do not finish the syllabus early are unable to do a thorough revision. this has a negative impacts on the performance of the learners (odumbe, simatwa & ayoto, 2015). jayanthi et al. (2014) advance that the use of previous years’ examination papers as a learning method improves learners’ marks in comparison with other approaches. 2.5 teaching methods teachers’ lack of appropriate instructional methods lead to dismal learner performance demonstrated when writing composition in french (kalima, 2010). in accounting, some teachers do not make use of learning resources such as practice sets, visual aids and teaching resources. dlamini (2000) and achor (2008) both found that a number of teaching approaches that are learner-centred may enhance learners’ performance. dlamini (2000) pointed out that in accounting, most teachers believe in exposition, demonstration and practice strategies http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 2302022 40(4): 230-244 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) to master the accounting principles. dlamini (2000) further states that teachers believe that effective practice makes perfect as they train the learners by giving them more exercises to practice. 2.6 learners’ punishment many studies show that discipline at school through either physical or emotional humiliation hinders a child’s ability to learn, undermining the very purpose of education (muddit, 2013). research by gershoff and grogan-kaylor (2016) found that physical punishment of learners results in numerous consequences which may include augmented inimical and disparaging deeds, poor academic achievement, more learners leave school, less self-confidence, school paranoia, nervousness, and misery. similarly, dhlomo, pereira and shiba (2006) found that learners felt threatened by teachers who carry sticks to class. this has a negative impact on learning and results. consequently, learners resort to copying and avoid asking for help from their teachers. on the other hand, simelane (2011) found learners whose teachers threatened them with corporal punishment and for whom leaners are scared, often get high marks in tests and perform well in external examinations. dlamini, dlamini and bhebhe (2017) even argue that corporal punishment should not be prohibited yet teachers should strike a balance between using corporal punishment and positive discipline. 2.7 feedback to learners according to roberts (2013), without providing information about learners’ performance of a task, learners cannot be aware of areas to improve and cannot accomplish according to their capabilities and be confident that what they are writing is accurate. the feedback assists learners to discover their mistakes and improve their work. hence, feedback plays a major role in the improvement of learners’ performance. gamedze (2010) reveals that if feedback is given promptly, it is more effective than delayed feedback, as learners will not repeat the same mistake committed during tests and examinations. 2.8 motivation numerous researchers reveal that motivation has a positive and significant impact on learners’ performance (simelane, 2011; vansteenkiste et al., 2009; walker-dalhouse & risko, 2008). simelane (2011) points out that those learners who receive no or less motivation perform badly in their schoolwork. in contradiction, mamba (2009) found that motivation is not the predictor of higher performance, but pupils’ scores depend on factors such as intelligence, classroom interaction and teacher effectiveness. 2.9 content knowledge of the subject according to martin (2010) content knowledge refers to the body of knowledge and information that teachers teach and what learners are expected to learn of a given subject or content area. teachers need to develop strong pedagogical content knowledge, which comprise mastering both subject-area knowledge and the most effective ways to teach learners of that particular subject. mavhungu (2004) suggests that a substantial relationship exists between teachers’ content knowledge and the coping strength of learners. less knowledgeable teachers are perceived negatively by learners. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 2312022 40(4): 231-244 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 mkhize, mtshali & sithebe teacher factors influencing grade 12 accounting learners’ performance 2.10 unqualified teachers ogunbanjo (2001) states that unqualified teachers and shortages of teachers are factors that influence the academic performance of a school. a study by theophile, faustin and benjamin (2020) reveals that unqualified teachers affect their learners’ academic performance negatively. ugbe and agim (2009) posit that learners taught by experienced teachers perform significantly better than those taught by inexperienced teachers. 2.11 absenteeism when a teacher is absent from the classroom, the learning process is disrupted (obengdenteh, yeboah & sam, 2011). teacher absenteeism, whether planned or unplanned, affects learners’ performance. some teachers fail to attend scheduled classes and are thus unable to complete the syllabus. this may result in learners’ poor academic performance (porres, 2016). malefo (2000) confirms that teachers who are often absent themselves show no commitment towards learning and teaching. mushwana (2000) found that teachers are not disciplined when they stay away from classes and attend to their own business. moreover, finlayson (2009) reveals that when a teacher is repeatedly absent, learners’ performance can significantly be impacted negatively. 2.12 teachers’ experience lesson acquaintance, which is knowledge or experience of the subject, has a substantial inspiration for learners to accomplish good results in the final examination. teachers who do not know the subject matter well, easily become disrupted by unusual circumstances. on the other hand, teachers who are experienced are often able to act assertively when learners misbehave (ilugbusi, falola & daramola, 2007). research also suggests that lesson acquaintance is associated with greater teacher efficacy (cheung, 2008). more experienced teachers have higher expectations for good learner performance (rubie-davies, flint & mcdonald, 2021). 3. research methodology to answer the research questions the study sought to address, a mixed-methods research approach, where elements of quantitative research are used in combination with elements of qualitative research, was adopted. the questionnaire was used to find surface answers to the two research questions, while interviews were a way of eliciting thick and rich descriptions of these answers to these research questions. 3.1 research design, paradigm and sampling a sequential, explanatory, mixed-method research design and sampling were adopted for this study where a quantitative portion of data collection, sampling and analysis took place before qualitative data collection, sampling and analysis. combining both the qualitative and quantitative approaches provided a more elaborative approach to the research problem. twenty schools in the two regions (lubombo and manzini) were stratified according to performance; therefore a stratified sampling method was used. the first stratum comprised schools consistently performing well and the second stratum comprised schools consistently performing poorly for a number of consecutive years from 2010 to 2014. each stratum consisted of participants with similar characteristics such as age, gender and home language. participants were randomly selected from each stratum in stratified random sampling. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 2322022 40(4): 232-244 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) 3.2 data collection methods and procedures questionnaires: closed-ended, open-ended, and likert-scale questions were distributed to selected teachers and learners. field workers distributed the questionnaires to schools, as well as during accounting workshops and accounting meetings. the questionnaires, accompanied by a covering letter and consent form, were distributed to 400 teachers and 80 learners. after they had read the letter and consent form, the latter was handed back to the fieldworkers. once the questionnaire was received from respondent, it was thoroughly checked and coded with a reference number. table 1 indicates that the responses received were as follows: 378 from learners and 66 from teachers. the overall response rate was 92.5%: 444 responses received out of 480 questionnaires. table 1: dispatched questionnaires and received responses position sample responses received % learners 400 378 94.5% teachers 80 66 82.5% total 480 444 92.5% semi-structured interviews: the interview questions were derived from the questionnaire questions. the qualitative data assisted in getting in-depth understanding of quantitative results. face-to-face interviews were conducted with 8 teachers and 12 learners (table 2). these teachers and learners were sampled from those who participated in the quantitative phase. the interviews were recorded, and notes were taken. permission was obtained from participants before beginning to record. the interview guide and questionnaires were piloted using four accounting teachers, not included in the sample, to check whether questions needed to be revised and also to verify the response time. table 2: dispatched questionnaires and received responses schools manzini region lubombo region total performing well 2 teachers 3 learners 2 teachers 3 learners 4 teachers 6 learners performing poorly 2 teachers 3 learners 2 teachers 3 learners 4 teachers 6 learners total 4 teachers 6 learners 4 teachers 6 learners 8 teachers 12 learners 3.3 data analysis the researcher used statistical package for the social scientists version 20 for analysing quantitative data to generate descriptive statistics such as frequencies and percentages, and exploring relationships through correlations. the interview data were transcribed to produce a written document and were afterwards confirmed by the participants. qualitative data were analysed thematically. 3.4 integrity of the study the cronbach alpha coefficient was calculated to establish internal consistency reliability. the reliability for the overall questionnaire was 0.826, which is regarded as good. member checks and peer confirmation of interpretations were also undertaken to improve the trustworthiness of the study. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 2332022 40(4): 233-244 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 mkhize, mtshali & sithebe teacher factors influencing grade 12 accounting learners’ performance ethical clearance was obtained from the higher education ethics committee of the university of kwazulu-natal, protocol reference number: hss/1537/015m. informed consent forms for teachers accompanied the research instruments. teachers were requested to complete, sign and hand it back. a gatekeeper letter was obtained from the eswatini ministry of education. 4. results 4.1 quantitative results table 3: demographic characteristics of respondents features and descriptions learners (378) teachers (66) count % count % gender: male female 197 181 52% 48% 24 42 36.0% 64.0% age in years: 21 – 20 21 – 25 26 – 30 31 – 35 36 – 40 41 – 45 46 50 51 60 295 83 78% 22% 6 9 28 6 8 4 5 9% 14% 42% 9% 12% 6% 8% race group: african coloured indian/asian white 373 3 2 98.7% 0.8% 0.5% 66 100% home language: siswati english 374 4 99% 1% 66 100% type of school: government private mission community 258 5 44 71 68% 1% 12% 19% 48 2 10 6 73% 3% 15% 9% academic qualification: diploma bed degree bcom degree bcom plus diploma med degree 31 17 6 11 1 47% 26% 9% 17% 1% table 3 shows that the majority of learners were male (52%), below 21 years (78%), and african (99%). the majority of teachers were female (64%), under 36 years (65%), and african (100%). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 2342022 40(4): 234-244 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) almost all learners’ respondents (99%) speak siswati as home language and only four respondents speak english while all teachers’ respondents (100%) speak siswati as their home language. 4.1.1 teacher variables that give rise to poor academic achievement the data are presented using frequencies and percentages. according to the learners, teacher factors contributing to poor performance in sgcse accounting were found to be: absenteeism (f=255, 67.5%), syllabus completion (f=248, 65.6%), revision before the examination (f=154, 64.5%), teaching methods (f=238, 63%), lesson preparation (f=221, 58.4%), content knowledge on the subject (f=217, 57.4%), assignments to learners (f=216, 57%), use of past examination papers (f=215, 56.9%), class punctuality (f=211, 55.8%), teacher attitude (f= 200 ,52.9%) and topic mastering by learners (f=199, 52.6%). on the other hand, teachers cited giving classwork and marking it in class (f=60, 90.9%), giving up-to-standard tests regularly (f=60, 90.9%), quality work (f=57, 86.4%), awards for learners for good performance (f=46, 84.8%), feedback to learners after a test (f=55,83.3%), revision before examination (f=55,83.3%), absenteeism (f=50, 75.7%), teaching methods (f=50, 75.7%) and content knowledge of the subject (f=49, 74.2%) (cf. table 4). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 2352022 40(4): 235-244 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 mkhize, mtshali & sithebe teacher factors influencing grade 12 accounting learners’ performance ta bl e 4: te ac he r v ar ia bl es g iv in g ris e to th e po or le ar ne r’s a ca de m ic a ch ie ve m en t i n e sw at in i g c s e a cc ou nt in g s tr on gl y d is ag re e d is ag re e u nd ec id ed a gr ee s tr on gl y a gr ee le ar ne rs te ac he rs le ar ne rs te ac he rs le ar ne rs te ac he rs le ar ne rs te ac he rs le ar ne rs te ac he rs f % f % f % f % f % f % f % f % f % f % te ac he r’s a tti tu de 74 19 .6 17 25 .8 73 9. 3 3 4. 3 31 8. 2 0 0 91 24 .1 17 25 .8 10 9 28 .8 29 43 .9 s yl la bu s co m pl ex io n 30 7. 9 1 1. 5 31 8. 2 16 24 .2 69 18 .3 7 10 .6 14 3 37 .8 17 25 .8 10 5 27 .8 25 37 .9 r ev is io n be fo re ex am in at io ns 70 18 .5 8 12 .1 47 12 .4 3 4. 5 17 4. 5 0 0 13 8 36 .5 34 51 .5 10 6 28 .0 21 31 .8 te ac hi ng m et ho ds 24 6. 3 0 0 54 14 .3 6 9. 1 62 16 .4 10 15 .2 17 0 45 .0 41 62 .1 68 18 .0 9 13 .6 u se o f t ea ch in g ai ds du rin g le ss on s 43 11 .4 1 1. 5 11 1 29 .4 15 22 .7 80 21 .2 24 36 .4 98 25 .9 11 16 .7 46 12 .2 15 22 .7 q ua lit y w or k 37 9. 8 0 0 45 11 .9 7 10 .6 10 0 26 .5 2 3. 0 12 4 32 .8 37 56 .1 72 19 .0 20 30 .3 a ss ig nm en ts to le ar ne rs 51 13 .5 7 10 .6 77 20 .4 16 24 .2 34 9. 0 7 10 .6 10 9 28 .8 18 27 .3 10 7 28 .3 18 27 .3 g iv in g cl as sw or k an d m ar k it in c la ss 73 19 .3 0 0 89 23 .5 3 4. 5 24 6. 3 3 4. 5 99 26 .2 14 21 .2 93 24 .6 46 69 .7 re gu la rly g iv in g up to st an da rd te st 52 13 .8 0 0 88 23 .3 3 4. 5 56 14 .8 3 4. 5 96 25 .4 14 21 .2 86 22 .8 46 69 .7 le ar ne rs ’ p un is hm en t 10 3 27 .2 7 10 .6 90 23 .8 26 39 .4 60 18 .8 14 21 .2 71 15 .9 3 4. 5 60 14 .3 16 24 .2 a w ar ds fo r l ea rn er s’ go od p er fo rm an ce 77 20 .4 0 0 89 23 .5 7 10 .6 29 7. 7 3 4. 5 54 14 .3 36 54 .5 12 9 34 .1 20 30 .3 fe ed ba ck to le ar ne rs 63 16 .7 0 0 84 22 .2 10 15 .2 39 10 .3 1 1. 5 89 23 .5 25 37 .9 10 3 27 .2 30 45 .5 le ar ne rs ‘m ot iv at io n 48 12 .7 0 0 89 23 .5 1 1. 5 53 14 .0 16 24 .2 11 0 29 .1 23 34 .8 78 20 .6 26 39 .4 s ub je ct c on te nt kn ow le dg e 27 7. 1 0 0 46 12 .2 17 25 .8 88 23 .3 0 0 13 5 35 .7 29 43 .9 82 21 .7 20 30 .3 c la ss p un ct ua lit y 45 11 .9 0 0 36 9. 5 13 19 .7 86 22 .8 11 16 .7 15 1 39 .9 24 36 .4 60 15 .9 18 27 .3 a bs en te ei sm 54 14 .3 0 0 39 10 .3 11 16 .7 30 7. 9 5 7. 6 83 22 .0 13 19 .7 17 2 45 .5 37 56 .1 le ss on p re pa ra tio n 47 12 .4 0 0 45 11 .9 19 28 .8 65 17 .2 2 3. 0 12 9 34 .1 19 28 .8 92 24 .3 26 39 .4 u se o f p as t ex am in at io n pa pe rs 68 18 .0 14 21 .2 63 16 .7 8 12 .1 32 8. 5 17 25 .8 86 22 .8 15 22 .7 12 9 34 .1 12 18 .2 to pi c m as te rin g by le ar ne rs 70 18 .5 4 6. 1 69 18 .3 4 6. 1 40 10 .6 11 16 .7 72 19 .0 16 24 .2 12 7 33 .6 31 47 .0 e xa m s po tti ng 76 20 .1 2 3. 0 74 19 .6 4 6. 1 47 12 .4 15 22 .7 88 23 .3 18 27 .3 93 24 .6 27 40 .9 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 2362022 40(4): 236-244 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) 4.1.2 relationships between teacher determinants and their selected demographic characteristics correlations were used to describe the relationship between the variables. the correlations were presented in terms of correlation coefficients. table 5 presents the relationships between teacher variables and their selected demographic characteristics. it can be observed that the relationship between teacher variables and their selected demographic characteristics is generally low. table 5: relationships between teacher variables and demographic characteristics teacher variables learners teachers gender .11 -.12 age -.03 .33 location .14 .31 type of school .20 .13 region -.09 .09 previous grade .07 _ academic qualification _ .31 4.2 interview results teacher variables that contribute to poor learner’s achievement in grade 12 accounting are teachers’ attitude, assignments given to learners, syllabus completion, and allowing learners to master a topic or section before moving to the next one. however, the teachers interviewed cited syllabus completion, revision before the examination, giving classwork and marking it in class, and regular, up-to-standard tests as variables contributing to learners’ performance. 4.2.1 attitude towards the learners the overall results indicated that most of the learners cited attitude as a variable affecting grade 12 learners’ performance in accounting. learners said that teachers had a negative attitude towards them when a learner asked for clarity. sometime teachers scolded learners before explaining the work to them, e.g. teacher’s negative attitude is the key factor contributing to our poor performance. my teacher’s attitude towards those who don’t have books makes us lose interest in accounting. he kicks me out of the class often, because i don’t have a textbook, even if i try to explain; as a result, i am no longer doing well in accounting (learner 3). quite a few of the teacher-participants attested that if teachers’ negative attitude towards the learners causes learners to have a negative attitude towards them and the subject, the learners will not perform well. learners who have teachers who are not supportive and have a negative relationship with them, are likely to produce poor results. the teachers, when asked why their learners fail accounting, mentioned that the learners complained that the accounting teachers were harsh. it seems as if learners would rather fail accounting than to ask for clarification. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 2372022 40(4): 237-244 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 mkhize, mtshali & sithebe teacher factors influencing grade 12 accounting learners’ performance teachers’ attitude is the main factor affecting learners’ performance hence their poor performance because it determines how the learner will respond. if the teacher has a negative attitude the learners will respond unfavourable too and their performance will be poor (teacher 4). 4.2.2 assignments to learners the majority of the learner-participants mentioned that assignments affected their performance and the effect depended on the number of assignments given. most of the learners complained that teachers gave them too many assignments, which do not help them, as they end up copying from one another. the learners complained that sometimes their exercise books came back unmarked because of the volume of the work given as assignment. a few mentioned that a reasonable amount of assignment helps them to recapitulate what was done in class and reinforce it on their minds. learners 1 and 5 as an example had the following to say regarding the large amounts of homework: assignment affects our performance depending on the volume of work. if it is reasonable, it helps us to recall what was done in class. as you do it, you re-read what you cannot recall by head. but if too much it reduces our study time and i end up not finishing it but copy from those who have written. but, my accounting teacher likes give to us too much homework (learner 1). my teacher gives us too much homework (sometimes four activities in a lesson). this makes us to copy the work in the morning from those who have written all the activities. sometimes after submitting, she will come with the exercise books unmarked and ask us to exchange them (learner 5). 4.2.3 syllabus completion the learners were in agreement that not finishing the syllabus on time affected their performance negatively. learners mentioned that although they had to write their examination in three weeks’ time they had not finished the syllabus. the learners complained that failure to finish the syllabus in time would reduce the time for revision and they would find themselves having to skip some questions during the examination. the learners felt that this would cause them obtain poor grades in the examination. those who had finished the syllabus also complained that they were rushing some topics, as the teachers told them that they wanted to finish the syllabus before the examination so that they could have enough time for revision. others mentioned that when the teachers realized that they were lagging behind with the syllabus, they opted for some topics to be covered through the revision of past examination papers. learner 2 elucidated the problem as follows: failure to complete syllabus in time reduces our chances of crediting the subject. for instance, we are left with three weeks, but we are left with almost all the difficult topics, including analysis and interpretation of accounting information, amalgamation and acquisition and we skipped statement of reconciling in the control accounts. most teachers who participated in the interviews mentioned that finishing the syllabus on time enabled them to have enough time for revision; hence the improvement in the learners’ performance. however, it is difficult to finish the syllabus on time, which leads to poor performance. the participants added that sometimes they did not finish the syllabus, but covered the topics that had not been done during revision when they did past examination papers. they said some topics were not in the prescribed and recommended textbook, so http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 2382022 40(4): 238-244 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) sometimes they skipped them or, if previously set as an exam question, they did it during revision. the teachers also complained that there were so many activities, for example, sports and music, which took their allocated teaching time slots, causing a delay in completing the syllabus. teacher 7 explained the impact of the non-completion of the syllabubs on his learners’ performance as follows: in 2014 i finished the syllabus on time and had enough time for revision hence the results were good, but in 2013 and 2015 i could not finish the syllabus on time and the results were poor. so, finishing the syllabus on time does affect the learners’ performance. 4.2.4 revision before the examination the learners agreed that revision before the final examination had an impact on their performance. the learners explained that proper and enough revision enhanced their performance, because it reminded what one had learnt or forgotten. they mentioned that revision before the final examination might not be effective, because the teachers just gave them past papers and ask the learners to complete the papers on their own. the learners further explained that the teachers just put them in groups without monitoring if they were really revising or not. some learners mentioned that at their schools, revision had a positive impact on their performance. revision influences performance because if it is done properly, it reminds us of what we learnt and forgot which makes one to perform better. but the previous form 5’s complained that they didn’t have enough revision time, that’s why their performance was poor (learner 1). quite a number of the teacher-participants mentioned that revision before the examination had an effect on learners’ performance. they said that not getting enough time for revision before the examination impeded the performance of the learners. the teachers explained that sometimes they just gave learners past examination booklets or papers so that the learners could revise on their own, but learners did not do that. teacher 6 explained that in most cases, those learners who did not participate in the revision were the ones who eventually got bad results: not getting enough time for revision hinders the performance of the learners. during revision, learners lose interest and focus on doing anything pertaining learning and some don’t come to school and are the ones who use to perform bad. 4.2.5 giving classwork and marking it in class the teacher-participants revealed that giving classwork and marking it in class had an impact on learners’ performance. they mentioned that giving classwork and not marking it in class made it difficult to identify struggling learners. although the teachers revealed the importance of marking classwork in class, they felt that it was difficult, because learners took their time when writing and they did not finish until the bell rang to end the lesson; hence making it impossible to mark the classwork in class. consequently, the teachers were unable to identify individuals’ weaknesses. teacher 1 mentioned that giving classwork and moving around marking, while at the same time monitoring the learners if they did not page their books for answers or copied from their friends, had a positive effect on learners’ performance. however, some of the learners mentioned that giving classwork and marking it in class were factors affecting their performance. the learners mentioned that they could copy the http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 2392022 40(4): 239-244 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 mkhize, mtshali & sithebe teacher factors influencing grade 12 accounting learners’ performance classwork from one another unless the teacher monitored each learner and moved around, helping those who were struggling. the learners revealed that unless the teachers did that, their performance in tests and examinations was poor. learner 10 further said that teachers had a tendency of giving classwork and then sat down and be busy with other things while waiting for learners who had not yet submitted their work. 4.2.6 regular, up-to-standard tests most of the teachers mentioned that not giving up-to-standard tests regularly contributed negatively to the performance of learners. they said that, in most cases, teachers set structured, rather than objective questions during tests, teacher 3 elaborated, and said that in most cases the specification grid on the examination syllabus was not followed when tests were set: i think the performance is affected by the way we set tests; our tests are not up to standard especially the examination standard. most teachers like setting structured questions during tests while the exam structure now contains more questions that are objective. 5. discussion of results 5.1 teacher variables affect learners’ performance in grade 12 accounting gcse in eswatini according to the learners, the following variables contributed to poor performance in grade 12 accounting in eswatini: teachers’ attitude towards the learners, giving too much assignments to learners, non-completion of the syllabus, not allowing learners to master a topic or section before moving on to the next one, lack of revision before examinations and giving tests that were not on standard. 5.2 attitude towards the learners findings of the study indicate that teachers have a negative attitude towards learners, and this contributes to poor academic learner achievement. teachers’ negative attitude towards the learners has a negative impact on the performance of learners, as the learners also develop a negative attitude towards the teacher and the subject, resulting in learners performing dismally. this complements ogembo, otanga and yaki’s (2015) findings that teachers’ negative attitude towards learners breeds a negative attitude towards the subject on the part of the learner. 5.3 assignment to learners the researcher found that giving assignments to learners contributes positively or negatively to the performance of learners. the findings revealed that giving too many assignments to learners has a negative impact on their performance. giving long assignments to be submitted within a short period (e.g. by the next lesson) causes learners to copy from those who complete their work on time. in addition, the assignments take much of their studying time. the findings also reveal that a well-handled and reasonable number of assignments reinforce what learners have already learnt and improve an understanding of the learnt content. this finding is consistent with the findings of gershoff and grogan-kaylor (2016) that assignments enable learners to acquire knowledge, develop learning skills, and enhance their academic achievements. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 2402022 40(4): 240-244 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) 5.4 syllabus non-completion based on the findings of this research, it is evident that finishing the syllabus on time correlates with the performance of learners. generally, the syllabus is not completed on time and teachers rush to finish the syllabus; hence the poor performance of the learners. most accounting teachers agreed that they did not finish the syllabus on time. this finding of the study is consistent with that of musasia et al. (2012) who found that learners who covered the syllabus had a better mean score than those who could not cover the syllabus. zungu (2011) also found that a syllabus not completed on time and teachers rushing to finish the syllabus led to the poor performance of the learners. 5.5 revision before examination the findings reveal that doing proper revision before an examination contribute positively to learners’ performance. the researcher found that although teachers are aware of the importance of revision before examination, they sometimes end up leaving the learners to revise on their own. the researcher also found that some teachers do not do revision due to delays in completing the syllabus. the teachers complained that learners lost focus and did not come to school once they started with revision. odumbe et al. (2015) allude to the idea that not conducting enough revision before learners write their examination deprives them of the opportunity to achieve desirable academic results. 5.6 regularly giving up-to-standard tests the majority of the teachers revealed that not giving up-to-standard tests regularly affect the performance of learners negatively. this finding is supported by roberts (2013), who found that classroom tests are designed and administered by teachers to assess leaners’ learned capabilities. not giving up-to-standard tests regularly affects learners’ performance negatively. during the interviews some of the teachers pointed out that most of them did not follow the specification grid when setting tests and that they mostly set structured questions, while the examination contained more objective questions. 5.7 teacher variables and demographic variables the relationship between teacher variables and demographic variables revealed that there is a moderately positive relationship between the teacher variable and the following variables: age of the teacher (r=.33); location of the teacher (r=.31); and academic qualification of teachers (r=.31). otherwise, there is low or no association between the teacher variable and the rest of the demographic variables. 6. conclusion and recommendations to improve the learners’ performance the study focused on some of the teacher-related factors that influence learners’ academic achievement in grade 12 accounting in eswatini in the lubombo and manzini region. the variables were similar to those discovered by other researchers, as cited in the literature review, such as teacher attitude, syllabus completion, teacher effectiveness, revision before examination, teaching methods, learners’ support, feedback to learners, motivation, content knowledge of the subject, unqualified teachers, absenteeism and teachers’ experience. the findings reveal that teacher variables affect learners’ performance in grade 12 accounting gcse in eswatini were teachers’ attitude, teachers’ absenteeism, non-completion of the http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 2412022 40(4): 241-244 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 mkhize, mtshali & sithebe teacher factors influencing grade 12 accounting learners’ performance syllabus, not doing enough and proper revision before the examination, not allowing learners to master a topic or section before moving on to the next one, giving too many assignments to learners and not giving up-to-standard tests. the researcher recommends that teachers • must try to finish the accounting syllabus by the middle of the second term to allow for enough revision time. • need to change their attitude towards the learners. those teachers that are harsh towards learners must refrain from this type of behaviour. teachers must try to be friendly and motivate learners to learn and study. • should apply a variety of teaching methods and aids to cater for all type of learners. • should employ a learner-centred approach when teaching. • should upgrade themselves by attending accounting workshops, cluster meetings and conduct research about the subject so that they can improve on their content knowledge and delivery. • should give a reasonable number of assignments and allow learners’ enough time to work on assignment solutions or answers before submitting it. • should incorporate mock tests (a simulation of actual examinations) during revision sessions as a way of promoting the importance of revision classes. references aremu, a.o. 2000. academic performance 5 factor inventory. ibadan: stirling horden publishers. benjamin, z. 2022. revision techniques: a teacher’s guide. available at https://www. structural-learning.com/post/revision-techniques-a-teachers-guide [accessed 13 september 2022]. cheung, h.y. 2008. the measurement of teacher efficacy: hong kong primary in-service teachers. journal of education for teaching, 32, 435-451. https://doi.org/10.1080/02607470600982134 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educational psychology. nsw, australia: pearson, prentice hall. zungu, n. 2011. factors influencing the good performance of rural high schools in swaziland, a case study of four schools. med dissertation. kwaluseni, swaziland: university of swaziland. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6191 https://doi.org/10.4314/gjedr.v8i1-2.53770 https://www.iedunote.com/accounting-definition https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015083 https://doi.org/10.1598/rt.61.5.7 _hlk113987738 _hlk113987962 _hlk113982368 _hlk100407108 356 book review 2021 39(2): 356-358 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.24 teacher education for transformative agency: critical perspectives on design, content and pedagogy in this fascinating volume dedicated to illustrating transformative agency in teacher education by means of critical perspectives on design, content and pedagogy, editors carina america, nazeem edwards and maureen robinson recognise the need to bring foreword the voices of teacher educators in the field, giving agency to and highlighting successful practices in culture-rich classrooms. reading the introduction, i was reminded of the repeated call by james martin (2004:7) to not only look at what is wrong with the world but instead provide “a complementary focus on community, taking into account how people get together and make room for themselves…in ways that redistribute power without necessarily struggling against it”. hence, the focus of this book is on educational practices that inspire, encourage and revive us. in doing so, the book foregrounds the role of auto-ethnography in the telling of transformative stories by teacher educators that possess the knowledge and vocabulary to articulate these experiences largely within a critical pedagogy frame. situated within the lingering legacies of inequalities of the apartheid era, teacher educators at a south african university share their “lived experiences” and teaching realities in a postgraduate certificate of education (pgce) programme. poised precariously between changing educational paradigms and statutory regulatory frameworks on the one hand and academic freedom on the other, the authors of this volume attempt to navigate the murky waters from the ravages of apartheid education to inclusive, democratic practices that address the developmental needs of the majority of south african citizens. in addition to foregrounding teacher agency and successful practices, two powerful frames of reference are used in constructing the discourse. the first, is productive pedagogies (hayes, mills, christie & lingard, 2006) that emphasises four dimensions namely, intellectual quality, connectedness, supportive classroom environment and author: prof saloshna vandeyar1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i2.24 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(2): 356-358 published: 11 june 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.24 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.24 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.24 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.24 vandeyar teacher education for transformative agency 3572021 39(2): 357-358 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.24 working with valuing difference. the second frame is the distinction made between “knowledge about education and knowledge for educational practice” (horden, 2018:787). the structure of the book is artfully crafted to mimic the structure of the postgraduate certificate in education (pgce) programme and is divided into three sections. the first section comprises six chapters that focus on the generic and compulsory modules of the programme. the second section deals with subject-specific modules and the concluding section presents an agenda for reinventing teacher education in south africa. the chapters in this book arise from shared discussions across staff in the postgraduate certificate in education (pgce) programme. teacher educators of this programme have taken the important step of problematising the programmatic issues underpinning their respective subjects by engaging in shared deliberations on: • how to navigate within teacher education from the ravages of apartheid education to inclusive, democratic practices that address the developmental needs of the majority of our citizens; • the desire to move out of academic “silos” and to work across subjects and departments to build a shared understanding of the programme; • how to ensure structural and conceptual coherence across the programme while allowing lecturers the academic freedom to engage students critically within their disciplines; • how to engage with demands of knowledge-building in the twenty first century; and • how to integrate different forms of knowledge across the curriculum. the book represents a set of engagements with these questions that unearth a longer term set of issues that need to be addressed as the programme design unfolds and evolves in practice and in relation to policy guidelines. this opens up spaces for teacher educators to reflect on knowledge-in-practice by probing their own experiences and expertise as makers of wise judgements and designers of rich learning interactions in the classroom and knowledgeof-practice. knowledge of practice emphasises the role of teacher educators in constructing knowledge and learning, and growing through that process. it also suggests the importance of ongoing inquiry by teacher educators in their own classrooms and into other practical sources of knowledge for addressing problems of practice (darling-hammond & bransford, 2005). there is much thinking provoked by the different chapters. maureen robinson’s (chapter 2) work considers how lectures and school observations impacted on students’ own sense of agency within diverse and unequal south african schooling contexts. karlien conradie (chapter 3) highlights the human condition as one of connectedness and interdependence where people experience themselves in relation to others. marie louis botha’s (chapter 4) work attempts to align the curriculum with the demands and needs of the “new generation” student cohort so as to promote engaged and informed citizen teachers equipped for the unpredictable future. jerome joorst (chapter 5) utilises the methodology of auto-ethnography to effectively provide a unique voice and window into his lived experiences and how some challenges he encountered influenced his pedagogy. aslam fataar and jennifer feldman (chapter 6) highlight how students’ reflexive engagement with content in relation to their own biographies served to make the shift from how they think about themselves in relation to their emerging “teacherly” identities. chapters 7 and 8 present research related to subject specific modules. carina america reflects on the notion of business ethics that govern business or http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.24 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 3582021 39(2): 358-358 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.24 organisational decision-making. nazeem edwards reflects on his role as a teacher educator in developing prospective science teachers as epistemic agents in the classroom. a valuable contribution of the book is the concluding section written by marie brennan, a critical friend, who renders an excellent reflection on broader historical, political and pedagogical issues that emerge from the book. she provides direction and valuable recommendations for future research on transformative agency in teacher education that could be of significance to a variety of higher education contexts worldwide. this book puts a spotlight on individual academic pedagogic practices but also implies questions about what is possible to do differently across individual modules. in summary teacher education for transformative agency is a well-written and revealing contribution to understanding how critical perspectives on design, content and pedagogy in a postgraduate certificate of education (pgce) programme can promote transformative agency by contributing to deeper educational purpose, conception of knowledge for teaching and connect to the wider frame of educational transformation and social justice. references darling-hammond, l. & bransford, j. 2005. preparing teachers for a changing world: what teachers should learn and be able to do. san francisco, ca: jossey-bass. martin, j.r. 2004. positive discourse analysis: power, solidarity and change. revista canaria de estudios ingleses, 49: 179–200. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.24 1182020 38(2): 118-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) teachers’ perceptions in creating an invitational learning environment in culturally diverse foundation phase classrooms abstract south africa is characterised by its vast cultural diversity, and the current classrooms are filled with learners from multicultural and multilingual backgrounds. this cultural diversity has an impact on the classroom climate. the classroom climate is seen as a major determiner of classroom behaviour and learning. research surrounding classroom practice is changing the way teachers organise their learning spaces as well as their methods of teaching and learning. this paper aimed to gain insight into the teachers’ perceptions of the creation of invitational learning environments, using the invitational learning theory as the basis. a qualitative case study involving methods such as focus group interviews with teachers and document analysis containing teachers’ notes were examined through the lens of the invitational learning theory of purkey and novak. the results indicated that the learning environment plays a significant role in teaching and learning. teachers noted that when the learning environment was friendly and conducive, learners showed greater enthusiasm to participate in classroom activities. if classrooms were inviting, neatly organised and well-arranged, learners showed a willingness to learn and accepted responsibility for their learning. teachers noted that learners would go to a specific subject table, for example, mathematics or literacy, and engage in peer learning with the materials. keywords: invitational learning theory, invitational environments, diverse culture; five powerful “ps” 1. introduction the changing landscape of south african schools, post1994 has become highly diversified. glancing across the school environment, it is observable that schools are a platform of learners from multicultural and multilingual backgrounds. classroom environments are diversified; thus, cultural factors have an impact on the classroom climate. the classroom environment is seen as a key determiner of learner behaviour and learning therefore understanding authors: dr r. venketsamy1 dr n. sing1 ms lyndsey smart1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38. i2.08 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(2): 118-137 published: 04 december 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3594-527x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8798-5161 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8797-5008 1192020 38(2): 119-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 venketsamy, sing & smart teachers’ perceptions in creating an invitational learning environment how to establish and maintain a positive classroom climate is seen as a basic requirement to improving schools (adelman & taylor, 2005). ginsberg (2015) states that when a learning environment acknowledges social behaviour and identifies cultural awareness, learners can become “knowledge builders”, instead of “knowledge resisters”. examining reports on academic progress in south african schools raises concerns surrounding the classroom climate and the role of the teacher. this problem seems to perpetuate itself repeatedly. large classes, poor quality teaching and learning, lack of resources and an uninviting classroom environment have all contributed to the poor performance of learners in national and international assessments (taylor, 2011). studies by steyn (2010) indicated that invitational pratices have a significant impact on the quality of learning and teaching. the aim of this paper was to gain deeper insight into the teachers’ perceptions of the creation of invitational learning environments by using the invitational learning theory framework of purkey and novak (1996) in the foundation phase. this paper was guided by the primary research question: how do teachers perceive and create an inviting learning environment in culturally diverse foundation phase classrooms? according to purkey and novak (1996, 1988 & 1984) and purkey and schmidt (1990), invitational theory tries to find explanations for phenomena and provides a means of intentionally beckoning people to realise their unlimited potentials in areas of worthwhile human endeavour. its main purpose is to make life a more satisfying and enrichening experience. purkey (1991) states that the invitational learning theory suggests that to facilitate learning, learners should be provided with an environment (five “ps”) that is optimally inviting. these five ps are represented in table 1 below. table 1: the five ps identified by purkey people places policies programmes process teachers and staff (both teaching and non-teaching). physical attributes of the classroom and school. written and unwritten rules regarding procedures. this includes policies on grading and discipline. curriculum and content for learners. this includes programmes of wellness and parent participation. examines how the other four ps are conducted. the invitational learning theory outlines five domains that exist in almost every environment that contribute to the success or failure of human endeavour. these domains are referred to as the “five powerful ps” and consist of people, places, policies, programmes and processes. the powerful “ps” create an ecosystem in which the individual exists (purkey, 1991). each of the five ps identifies elements that teachers are expected to adhere to for successful invitational teaching and learning. a starfish analogy is used to illustrate the five powerful ps. when these are applied with steady and persistent pressure, it is easier to overcome the biggest challenges in a classroom. just as a starfish gently and continuously uses each of its arms in turn, to keep steady pressure on the one oyster muscle until it eventually opens, so will teachers in the classroom meet their challenges successfully by paying close attention http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 1202020 38(2): 120-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) to the five powerful “ps” (purkey & novak, 2015). figure 1 below depicts the five “ps” and their elements. figure 1: the elements of the 5ps (from invitationaleducation.org) 2. literature review 2.1 invitational learning environment an invitational learning environment, according to haigh (2011), is an environment created by the teachers and learners to promote quality teaching and learning. he argues that within this environment, learners are positively encouraged or “invited” into the educational experience by the teacher (haigh, 2011). the invitational pedagogy is constructed on four principles: respect for people, trust, optimism and intentionality and upon five “ps”. its main contributions address the psycho-geography and the constructive alignment of learning environments and the training of teachers and counsellors. “invitational education (ie) is a theory of practice that aims to create and maintain a human school environment that intentionally and cordially invites individuals to realise their boundless potential in all areas of worthwhile human endeavour” (friedland, 1999:15; purkey & novak, 2015). ie acquires its foundations from the democratic ethos, the perceptual tradition and the self-concept theory (purkey, 1992). the democratic ethos is based on the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 invitationaleducation.org 1212020 38(2): 121-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 venketsamy, sing & smart teachers’ perceptions in creating an invitational learning environment belief that all individuals matter and can find growth in self-governance, which is established in ie through deliberate conversation, collaboration and respect (purkey & novak, 2015). purkey (1991) goes on to explain that invitational teaching and learning is based on five basic assumptions or elements: trust, respect, optimism, intentionality and care. these five assumptions create purpose and directionality in the theory and leads to the creation of an inviting learning environment. 2.1.1 trust a pivotal aspect of ie understands that human existence is a collaborative activity and all humans are interdependent (purkey & novak, 2015). to create relationships that are inviting, both time and effort are prerequisites to create a trustworthy pattern of interactions between teachers and learners. 2.1.2 respect “people are able, valuable and responsible and should be treated accordingly” (purkey, 1991:2). school success is determined by mutual respect from all role-players. respect should be manifested in all aspects of places, policies, programmes and processes that exist within the school. 2.1.3 optimism “people possess untapped potential in all areas of human endeavour” (purkey, 1991:2). the learning environment requires more than just an invitational teacher. it is essential for all roleplayers in the environment, such as the principal, heads of department, teachers, support staff and parents to be optimistic about the process. human potential has no clear limits and should be considered as boundless. therefore, in doing so, curricula can be devised, policies can be created, programmes can be supported, processes can be encouraged, physical environments can be established, and relationships maintained (purkey, 1991). 2.1.4 intentionality human potential can be optimally applied by places, policies and programmes that are tailored to address the aspect of invitation as a prerequisite for development. moreover, it can be used by those who focus on inviting both others and themselves, personally and professionally (purkey, 1991). intentionality gives experiences purpose and allows teachers to create environments that have directionality and are purpose driven. intentionality is essential to consistently invite people to realise their human potential (purkey, 1991). 2.1.5 care caring involves warmth, empathy and positive regard for others; “it provides others with benevolence which filters through in one’s personal life as well as the lives of one’s fellow humans” (purkey & novak, 2015:2). the element of care is considered as one of the most important elements of ie. the teacher represents the mechanism of change and together with the learners, they create the tone of the classroom environment. according to van deventer and kruger (2003:3), “teachers play central roles in the development of the tone and ethos that are conducive to teaching and learning and in the process of building a sound culture of learning and teaching in a school”. the experiences and opinions of teachers provide a source of knowledge to educational researchers. teachers hold insightful and real-world experiences of creating an http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 1222020 38(2): 122-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) environment that nurtures the child socially, physically, emotionally, spiritually and intellectually (nel, engelbrecht, swanepoel & hugo, 2013). 2.2 levels of intentionality the invitational learning theory identifies four levels of invitation for the creation of an inviting learning classroom environment. 2.2.1 level one: intentionally disinviting when an environment is intentionally disinviting, it is at the lowest functioning level. on this level, people’s actions, places, processes, policies and programmes are drafted to deliberately daunt, demean and demolish (purkey & novak, 2015). intentionally disinviting functioning might involve a person who is purposely insulting, an intentionally discriminatory policy, a programme that purposely reduces people to functionaries or an environment intentionally left unpleasant and unattractive (purkey & novak, 2015) 2.2.2 level two: unintentionally disinviting teachers who are unintentionally disinviting can be characterised by thoughtless, chauvinistic and condescending behaviour (purkey & novak, 1984). teaching that can be classified as unintentionally, disinviting is characterised by boredom, busy work and insensitivity (purkey & novak, 1984). unintentionally disinviting environments often result from a lack of a guiding theory, and although it is not intended, the environment remains disinviting and the damage is still caused (purkey, 1991). 2.2.3 level three: unintentionally inviting unintentionally inviting environments occur when the teachers are acquainted with the effective strategies, but lack knowledge in their working methods and how to maintain them consistently (purkey, 1992). environments that are unintentionally inviting function effectively by chance and teachers are unable to explain why they function so effectively (purkey & novak, 1984). these types of environments lack intentionality; there is no deliberate design to create the environment (haigh, 2011). teachers functioning on this level behave in ways that cause students to feel invited, although they are largely unaware of the dynamics involved (purkey & novak, 1984). a lack of intentionality and knowledge in effective inviting strategies poses a problem in creating a consistent, inviting environment. 2.2.4 level four: intentionally inviting an invitation is defined as an intentional act designed to offer something of value and benefit for consideration (purkey 1992). intentionally inviting allows people to create, maintain and enhance total environments that consistently and dependably invite the realisation of human potential. teachers that successfully create intentionally inviting learning environments act with sensitivity and consistency (purkey & novak, 1984). intentionality is a crucial element in creating an inviting learning environment. an intentionally inviting environment can be achieved through purposeful alignment with the five elements of trust, respect, optimism, intentionality and care as well as “the powerful ps”. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 1232020 38(2): 123-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 venketsamy, sing & smart teachers’ perceptions in creating an invitational learning environment 3. factors that contribute to the creation of an invitational learning environment 3.1 understanding invitational education steyn (2005) states that professional development and teacher education is an essential ingredient for creating effective environments. a case study on the creation of ie at the christian alliance college in hong kong outlined the need for educators and role-players to understand the concept of ie and the elements that are required to implement the theory. a group of teachers with a deep understanding of ie will be capable of intentionally creating an environment that is inviting (yin, 2008). by implementing teacher workshops that are hosted and run by the school management, team teachers will be equipped with a deeper understanding of the concept of ie and this will allow invitational environments to form within the classroom. 3.2 invitational domains places and physical environments have an impact on the way one feels when in the learning environment. a study by lipsitz (1984) showed that learners felt ownership and pride when they took part in activities that helped make the environment aesthetically inviting such as cleaning up, decorating areas and building things for the classroom (purkey & stanley, 1991). a similar study by johnston and ramos de perez in 1985 revealed that when the school was well kept and aesthetically pleasing, learners felt cared for (purkey & stanley, 1991). places should be functional, attractive, clean, efficient, aesthetic, personal and warm in order to invite success (purkey & novak, 2015). an inviting environment is characterised by beautiful and clean school grounds, classrooms, halls, corridors, gardens, offices and teaching-learning equipment (steyn, 2010). purkey and stanley (1991) identified a list of practical indicators for an inviting classroom such as fresh paint; pleasant smell; attractive bulletin boards; lots of books; sanitary environment; flowers on the desk; sunny room; matching colours; positively worded signs; clean windows; living green plants; comfortable temperatures; attractive pictures; conveniently located trash cans; well-arranged furniture; current learner displays; window bird feeders and proper ventilation. the third “powerful p” refers to policies. policies can include those of attendance, academics and discipline. policies should be easy to understand as well as being developed to maintain the respect of all role-players (purkey, 1999). policies should promote equal treatment of all. policies are aimed to regulate learners as well as the teachers (purkey & stanley, 1991). rules and procedures regulate human functioning and policies that are inclusive, fair, equitable, tolerant, defensible and consistently invite success (purkey & novak, 2015). learners respect policies when teachers follow and show respect towards the policies in place (purkey & stanley, 1991). policies and rules that are written with positive language such as “keep your desk clean” are more effective than rules that are written with negative language such as “do not mess on your desk” (purkey & stanley, 1991). these positive prompts should be considered when designing classroom and school policies. purkey and stanley (1991:69) describe programmes as “curricular and extracurricular activities designed to meet the needs of students”. programmes maintain the needs of people and allow for the successful achievement of goals (smith & hunter, 2007). programmes that are enriching, stimulating, healthy, interactive, constructive, developmental and engaging invite success (purkey & novak, 2015). all programmes that are introduced into the classroom http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 1242020 38(2): 124-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) should be evaluated to test whether they are invitational by questioning the programmes’ ability to show trust, respect, optimism and intentionality as well as their ability to communicate the learners’ ability, value and responsibility. cooperative learning is a successful method for creating invitational programmes (haigh, 2011). processes regulate the conduct of the other above-mentioned “ps”; the ways in which the above “ps” function determine the atmosphere within the environment. processes that are democratic, collaborative, cooperative and interdisciplinary invite success (smith & hunter, 2007). purkey (1999) states that processes involve all management and operational processes and that they should create inclusivity, democracy and support that encourage self-development in the learning community. processes are inseparable from the other four “powerful ps”. “process” focuses on the “how” of learning rather than the “what”. teachers can create inviting processes by assigning responsibility, practising democratic activities including cooperative peer teaching and teaching peer counselling (purkey & stanley, 1991). 3.3 a sense of family a “family model” must be developed between staff members, management and learners for learning environments to be fully inviting (steyn, 2007). the school, especially the classroom, should be viewed as a place of collaboration and cooperation where learners and staff members feel open to express their successes and disappointments. this need for a sense of family is further seen in yin’s 2008 study, where the principal noted that companionship is essential. he described the school as a family rather than a factory and stated that “support and care are needed for staff to become intentionally inviting” (yin, 2008:11). 4. the effects of invitational learning environments on teaching and learning 4.1 motivation research by fretz (2015) outlines the relationship between invitational theory and motivation. invitational learning environments offer a systematic way of communicating positive messages that develop potential and eliminate any threats. invitational teachers intentionally communicate optimism, respect, trust and care as well as design lessons to ensure that the teaching and the learning environment is inviting (fretz, 2015). in doing so, learners are provided with a choice that creates responses of interest and commitment to learning, as learners have chosen to engage in learning. extrinsic motivation often causes learners to lose motivation and interest as their focus becomes orientated around gaining the extrinsic reward offered rather than the value of the learning activity. promoting the values of the invitational theory encourages learners to identify the value of an education and creates intrinsic motivation. 4.2 improved learner outcomes learning environments that are characterised by the elements of ie allow learners to perform better. where learners feel safe, supported and encouraged, they are more likely to be open to new knowledge and learning; this then enables them to achieve better outcomes. haigh (2011) states that learning is more effective in environments that is supportive and caring. a case study of cooper elementary by kalec (2004) provides insight into the overall improvement of academic results after the implementation of ie. involvement and invitational practice in the school made a remarkable difference to the culture and climate of cooper elementary that continues to be crucial for learner success (kalec, 2004). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 1252020 38(2): 125-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 venketsamy, sing & smart teachers’ perceptions in creating an invitational learning environment 4.3 embraces cultural inclusion the classroom environment is described as comprising four elements: ecology; milieu; social systems and culture (marais & meier, 2012). these four elements of classroom environments find similarities and ties in with purkey’s (1992) “five powerful ps”, indicating: people; places; policies; programmes and processes. south african classrooms are culturally diverse, which affects the teaching and learning environment. respect for other cultures facilitates nuanced meanings. the cultural background sets the foundation for interest and prior knowledge. the invitational learning theory creates learning environments that denote trust, respect and care, allowing for cultural responsiveness and inclusion. embracing invitational learning in the classroom invites learners to share cultural experiences and backgrounds (predmore, kushner & anderson, 2017). milieu encompasses the interpersonal and social atmosphere of the classroom (marais & meier, 2012). frisby and martin (2010) state that interpersonal relationships, based on mutual trust and connection, enhance teacher-learner relationships, aiding in developing positive classroom environments. the first “powerful p” referring to people, comprises teachers and learners, including their interactions (marais & meier, 2012). teachers and centre managers play central roles in the development of the tone and ethos that are conducive to teaching and learning and, in the process, a sound culture of learning and teaching in the school (van deventer & kruger, 2003: 206). in this section of the classroom environment, invitational theory’s elements indicating trust, respect, optimism, intentionality and care can be examined (purkey, 1992). ecology encompasses the physical attributes of the classroom (marais & meier, 2012). it also includes classroom composition, class size and classroom management (miller & cunningham, 2011). studies on class size indicate that the learner-teacher ratio influences the interaction time with each learner, discipline and instruction time. smaller classes were characterised by low stress and frequent “on-task” behaviour, with fewer discipline challenges (miller & cunningham, 2011). classroom management strategies such as grouping learners in cooperative settings, leaving learners with a positive perception of grading and learning, class cohesion and a sense of social support (miller & cunningham, 2011). woolfolk (1995) agrees that the classroom environment should be inviting; learners should feel accepted and encouraged through the classroom display. purkey’s (1992) second “powerful p” of places examines the physical environment of the classroom (marais & meier, 2012). social interactions encompass the formal and informal rules regarding interpersonal relationships in the classroom (marais & meier, 2012). these interactions include aspects of classroom management such as set rules, incorporating purkey’s elements, indicating treating one another with care, respect, trust, optimism and intentionality (purkey, 1992). when teachers develop positive instructor-student relationships whilst focusing on student needs and projecting care, students improve academically (barr, 2016). teaching and learning do not occur only between the instructor and students, but also among students themselves (hirschy & wilson, 2002). a classroom environment with inviting interaction is characterised as compassionate, displaying student-to-student support (barr, 2016). purkey’s (1992) first, third and fifth “powerful ps”, of “people” “policies” and “processes” can be used to guide interpersonal interaction between teachers and learners. democracy, fairness, inclusion, tolerance and consistency should govern all interpersonal interactions (purkey, 1992). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 1262020 38(2): 126-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) culture refers to the values, belief systems and norms in the classroom (marais & meier, 2012). it also refers to the values and beliefs brought by each unique learner. these include the values and beliefs projected by the teacher. immense importance is placed on the teacher to model and shape the culture towards a positive and inclusive environment (bates, 2016). purkey’s first “powerful p”, signifying “people”, integrates with culture, as learners and teachers are expected to interact with care, trust, respect, optimism and the intention to create an environment inviting to all people, regardless of their beliefs and value systems (purkey, 1992). it is important to consider that all programmes project respect for people’s various cultures. as schmidt (2004: 31) states: [p]rogrammes that neglect or ignore cultural or individual differences or processes adopted for the convenience of an elite few, may disinvite people who feel slighted or set apart from the rest of the population. 5. theoretical framework invitational learning is based on the invitational learning theory (purkey 1984), contending that learning is enhanced when learners are invited into the learning environment using improved approaches (haigh, 2011). according to haigh (2011), ie was founded by purkey to persuade learners into meaningful knowledge construction by removing barriers and obstacles to learning, causing learners to be disengaged and unreceptive. the invitational learning theory defines five domains according to purkey and novak (1996, 1988 & 1984). these domains include people, places, policies, programmes and processes. these authors agree that the five basic assumptions are essential in understanding invitational theory. these assumptions, according to purkey and novak (1996, 1988 & 1984) and purkey and schmidt (1990). are that: • people are able, valuable and responsible and should be treated accordingly; • educating should be a collaborative, cooperative activity between the relevant stakeholders; • the process is the product in the making; • people possess untapped potential in all areas of worthwhile human endeavour; and • this potential can be realised by places, policies, programmes and processes specifically designed to invite development and by people who are intentionally inviting themselves and others, personally and professionally. figure 2 below illustrates the sections of invitational theory. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 1272020 38(2): 127-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 venketsamy, sing & smart teachers’ perceptions in creating an invitational learning environment figure 2: invitational theory (purkey & novak, 2015) invitational learning aims to make these domains intentionally inviting by cordially encouraging each learner to develop physically, intellectually and emotionally. an invitation is measured through four possible levels: intentionally disinviting, unintentionally disinviting, unintentionally inviting and intentionally inviting. this research will use purkey’s (1999) four invitational levels to measure the extent of the invitation as perceived by the teacher. in addition, purkey (1991) identifies four principles of the invitational theory that will be considered, namely respect for people and their difference, trust expressed through cooperation and sense of community as well as optimism regarding the learner’s untapped potential and intentionality (haigh, 2011). 6. research methodology 6.1 research design and methods it was considered that a qualitative study would be best to provide an in-depth understanding of the phenomenon using an interpretivist research paradigm. an interpretivist research paradigm allows a quest for answers and insight by studying social settings and individuals (nieuwenhuis, 2016). qualitative research is characterised as linguistic, meaning-based, naturalistic, exploratory and seeking in its understanding of phenomena (creswell, 2014; yanow & schwartz-shea, 2015). this allowed a conversation to take place during interviews that assisted in the gathering of a more well-rounded understanding of the teachers’ experiences and interactions with the learning environment. a case study approach was used as “an intensive study about a person, a group of people or a unit, aimed to generalise over several units” (gustafsson, 2017:2). a sample of seven foundation phase educators was selected. it was envisaged that they would be able to contribute to the answering of research questions with rich information on their perceptions of creating an inviting classroom environment (nieuwenhuis, 2016). the sample consisted of teachers from grades 1, 2 and 3 from two schools in the tshwane district of the gauteng province in south africa. a specific criterion was stipulated in the selection of the participants and the schools. the school and teachers had to be actively involved in attempting to create http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 1282020 38(2): 128-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) an environment that is inviting and conducive to teaching and learning. all participants in this study were selected using purposive sampling; this study required participants that would accurately represent the population in question (battaglia, 2011). data were collected from semi-structured interviews and classroom observation. the data were transcribed and analysed by organising and sectioning responses into units, synthesising them, identifying patterns as well as ascertaining which data was of importance and needed to be shared. permission for the study was granted by the gauteng department of education (gdoe) and all participants gave written and informed consent. they were also made aware that participation was voluntary and that they were able to pull out of the study at any time. codes were used to ensure anonymity. 7. results: discussions and findings 7.1 teachers’ perceptions of the creation of an invitational learning environment invitational theory focuses on five domains that exist in practically every environment. purkey and novak (1984) state that the classroom is an ideal environment in which the five powerful “ps” can be implemented. the research findings and discussion focused on people, places, policies, programme and processes. the discussion and findings are supported by the theoretical framework, relevant literature and verbatim quotes. 7.1.1 people teachers perceived the need for an invitational learning environment as a high priority for successful teaching and learning. an invitational learning environment was not only identified as important for learner success but was equally valuable for the teachers’ morale, functionality and effectiveness. haigh (2011) emphasises that invitational theory constructs itself on four principles: respect for people and their differences, trust expressed through cooperation and a sense of community, optimism about the untapped potential contained within each learner and intentionality, which means taking those steps needed to create each learning invitation and addressing it to each learner (purkey & novak, 2008). to this pt 1 stated: as foundation phase teachers, we must make sure that our classrooms look welcoming to our learners. our children must love to come into the classroom. it is a place of learning and safety for them. some of our children come from very broken homes, and therefore it is my job to make sure they are safe in this environment. they must come to a place where they feel loved and appreciated. (pt 1) pt 3 added: “our classrooms are so diversified, as teachers we must show love, trust, respect and affection to our learners. they must know that we care for them just like their parents.” purkey and novak (1996) expressed that people are able, valuable and responsible and should be treated as such. to ensure that their young learners felt trusted and cared for, teachers modelled caring and loving behaviours in their classrooms such as praising their learners for good work, hugging them when the learners needed a hug, and appreciating their learners’ efforts in their schoolwork without making children feel unappreciated or unloved. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 1292020 38(2): 129-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 venketsamy, sing & smart teachers’ perceptions in creating an invitational learning environment pt 4 explained: “the teachers must allow full attention towards them and even give hugs and individual attention when needed.” pt 2 indicated that as teachers, we must take the time to listen to learners, having one-on-one conversations and taking an interest in their personal lives. our children come from different backgrounds, and they have their own stories to tell. my job is to listen and appreciate their individual stories and experiences. within their powerful five ps, purkey and novak (2015) state that teachers must be “professionally inviting with others”, that is treating their young learners as valuable individuals, acting carefully, ethically and respectfully. it was noted that children began to understand and appreciate cultural differences in their classes. establishment of healthy relationships and positive social interactions in the classroom can be the main prerequisites to start forging an inviting atmosphere (haidari & karakus, 2019). most teachers indicated that they always made themselves approachable to learners. they made a point of encouraging learners through positive reinforcement and rewards such as stickers and behaviour certificates. teachers used positive and inviting communication when addressing learners, helping learners to focus on what they were able to do and how they were able to improve, rather than focus on what they were not able to achieve. 7.1.2 place nurturing a sense of emotional and psychological safety is essential in every learning environment to facilitate effective teaching and learning opportunities (holley & steiner, 2005). a safe and desirable learning environment requires creating participative and rich learning opportunities for the learners so that they feel connected to their teacher and classmates (frisby, berger, burchett, herovic & strawser, 2014). the classroom environment is an important space for learners in the school. this is an environment where they are safe and secure to venture and learn. according to haidari and karakus (2019), young learners are sensitive to negative and extreme behaviours, which can easily result in distraction, a sense of fear and unlearning. teachers identified the “place” domain of an invitational environment as very important; the teachers felt the physical environment such as the decorations, posters, lighting, ventilation and learning resources were vital when creating an invitational learning environment. in the interview, pt 5 mentioned, “in my class the children get involved in organising the classroom furniture, learning corners for example the library corner, maths corner and lifeskills corner”. pt 4 said, “i allow my children to make charts for me. they feel very proud to pin up the charts on the walls. you must see the care they take for their charts. i have noticed that they take their friends along and read the information off the charts”. to this pt 7 added, “most of my learners are eager to pin up their artwork on a friday. each week, i try to allow a different group of learner[s] to post up their artwork; it’s difficult to have 45 learners artwork up on the walls in the class. these corners are set according to the learners’ needs.” purkey and novak (2015) state that learning spaces should be functional, attractive, clean, personal, aesthetic and warm. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 1302020 38(2): 130-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) the teachers indicated that they have created personal spaces for each learner using nametags and spaces for the storage of their items; these ensured learners felt a sense of belonging in the environment. three teachers (pt 3; pt 5 and pt 7) expressed an understanding of an invitational learning environment as follows: “an invitational environment is neat, tidy and decorated. it must look inviting in that it must be pleasant to be there”. the teachers highlighted the importance of the learning environment being safe and comfortable as well as aesthetically appealing to children. the teachers included the following strategies to ensure their classrooms were inviting and conducive for learning; brightly coloured walls and charts, clean and neat functional bookshelves as well as reading corners. it should have appropriately marked up areas with clearly visible signs and instructions for all learners. all teachers agreed that an invitational learning environment would result in educators and learners taking pride in their schools and striving for greater academic success. the teachers encouraged learners to respect each other’s space and learning areas. the teachers helped promote these values by sharing the responsibilities of classroom jobs and allowing learners equal opportunities. an invitational learning environment must be ready to ease classroom pressure and allow learners to become educated as worthy members of society (haidari & karakus, 2019). all teachers agreed that creating a safe space in the classroom where learners’ identity and individuality are valued and nourished, is essential in enforcing learners’ connectedness to the learning environment. 7.1.3 policies a controlled classroom environment is essential for effective learning, good teacher relationships and peer collaboration. many teachers commonly find that approximately onehalf of all classroom time can be taken up with activities other than instruction (walter & frei, 2007). to facilitate learning, there needs to be order in the classroom. order in a classroom simply means that within acceptable limits, the students are following the programme of action necessary for a particular classroom event to be realised in the situation. purkey and novak (2015: 4) clearly articulate that when policies are drawn up in classes to promote invitational teaching and learning, these polices should be “inclusive, fair, equitable, tolerant, defensible, consistent and just”. in response to classroom management and discipline, pt 7 stated, “in the beginning of the year, together with my learners we decided on basic ground rules which we should obey in our class. each learner was given an opportunity to write down two basic ground rules which they thought were important to respect. we decided on basic six rules for our grade 2 class. i felt that six was enough for them to remember for the first term. other teachers also indicated that they involved their learners in deciding on classroom rules. according to chandra (2015), classroom management aims at establishing learner selfcontrol through a process of promoting learner behaviour and achievement. according to evertson and weinstein (2006), classroom management seeks to establish and sustain an orderly environment so that learners can engage in meaningful academic learning and to enhance social and moral growth. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 1312020 38(2): 131-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 venketsamy, sing & smart teachers’ perceptions in creating an invitational learning environment one teacher said: “i have a cleaning roster in my class. learners know which week they are responsible to clean the classroom. everyone has a turn to keep the classroom clean. it is not pleasant to be in a dirty class.” in the same way, teachers addressed the aspects of consistency and equality; teachers strove to include all learners equally and use this same consistency when applying rules. the teachers treated each learner with dignity regardless of their behaviour. the teachers created discipline strategies that were invitational by using positive reinforcement, time-out and motivational reward charts. a participating teacher supported and posited: stickers for good behaviour are a method for creating care. following a learner’s individual progress and taking an interest in it makes the learners feel like they are not “lost in a crowd”. i make individual name cards for each child to put on their desk, so they know i recognise each of them. i also put in an effort to learn their names (pt 6). all teachers agreed that through democratic participation in the classroom, teachers could manage classroom discipline and behaviour. the teachers and learners must be committed to teaching and learning to overcome classroom management. learners and teachers should be punctual, feel and believe that the classroom policies and rules are for the benefit of all who enter the learning environment. the teacher and learners must be willing to accept responsibility for classroom management and behaviour. 7.1.4 programmes purkey and novak (2015) describe invitational programmes as enriching, stimulating, engaging, developmental, interactive and constructive. participants had their opinions on the content they taught as well as described the steps they took to ensure their programmes are engaging and constructive. participants provided insight into how programmes could be more enriching. all the participants agreed that when creating programmes that were engaging and constructive, teachers should incorporate the use of teaching resources and multi-media to make the lessons child-centred and relevant. they stated that the use of concert objects and exciting resources kept learners engaged and focused on the activity for longer. pt 5 indicated that, in my school we design lessons to be interactive with both peers and objects, helping learners to strengthen knowledge through conversation and practical tasks. we try to make the content relevant to the learner’s life-wor[l]d and this helped our learners to feel as if what they were learning was valuable to their lives. briggs (2014) stated that learners need a personal connection to the learning material, whether that is through engaging them emotionally or connecting the new information with previously acquired knowledge. pt 4 shared her view about the learning programmes in her class: although caps is very prescriptive in what we must teach, my principal has allowed us to adapt the lessons to the learners’ situational context. most of our learners come from the townships. instead of teaching them about mining, i teach them about farming. my learners are encouraged to go and start their own food gardens at home in small spaces or containers. purkey and novak (2015) and briggs (2014) agree that relevance is a key factor in intrinsically motivating learners to implement their learning. by establishing the personal and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 1322020 38(2): 132-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) real-world relevance, learners are provided with opportunities to relate their subject matter to the world around them. pt 5 explained that she adapted some of the topic and made them relevant to learners and tried to make the lesson about the learners, for example “i have taken my star story readers and included the learners’ names in the story. instead of kathy, i name the little girl refilwe. i noticed that my learners enjoyed reading books with their names in it”. during the observation lesson, it was noted that the teacher related content and examples to learners on a personal level. when she taught word problems, she used the names of the learners. as an observer, i noticed how excited these learners became and how quickly they tried to solve the word problems. the learning atmosphere became more inviting, friendly and conducive to teaching and learning. haigh (2011) advocates cooperative teaching and learning as a successful method for creating programmes that are inviting. concern raised by teachers regarding the implementation of successful programmes is the class-size. most teachers felt that their classes were too large to teach successfully in small groups and individually. however, pt 1 indicated, “i plan in advance and make use of a wide variety of media and posters. although my class is not ideal for small group teaching, i use group leaders and reading mums to help out with small group teaching”. purkey and novak (2015: 1) state that “people possess untapped potential in all areas of worthwhile human endeavour”. pt 1 stated as a teacher, “i have seen the importance of parental involvement with schools. they can make a big difference in supporting us in the classroom”. according to waterford.org (2018), when parents and teachers work together to establish a thriving classroom, the effect on their school is profound. pt 4 and pt 3 felt that their lessons would be more enriching if they had more time and less work from the annual teaching plan (atp), less administration and fewer learners in the class. pt 5 stated more individualised learning as well as more free play would create more enriching and constructive lessons. pt 1 and pt 2 both felt access and use of technology would assist them in providing lessons that are more enriching and stimulating. pt 1 said: we have white/smart boards in the classroom. having internet to show the learners videos would actually really help. more technology causes us to use our own equipment. it is sometimes hard for all 40 learners to see the small screen. all teachers agreed, saying that lessons and programmes would be more enriching if a teacher had fewer learners per classroom. internet, data projectors and laptops can also make a difference. most teachers agreed that collaboration and cooperation were incorporated into all lessons using group work, work that was done on the carpet, in pairs or tasks that were done in class. purkey and stanley (1991) state that cooperative learning creates opportunities for group and individual accountability. the teachers created the opportunity to teach skills such as conflict resolution to a group and working as a team despite their differences. an opportunity to show the value of working collaboratively in a team was presented. the teachers extended this into the classroom by sharing the responsibilities of classroom jobs so learners collaborated to achieve a common goal. democracy was established by treating all learners the same and involving learners in decision-making. the teachers did not shy away from celebrating learner differences and making curriculum differentiation a norm in their classrooms. the children understood that http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 waterford.org 1332020 38(2): 133-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 venketsamy, sing & smart teachers’ perceptions in creating an invitational learning environment they were unique and did not find it strange that they needed different approaches to be able to learn. a teacher involved in the study said, “my children are used to curriculum differentiation, as they do not tease each other, and they understand that different children learn differently”. the learners were involved in decision-making, such as creating classroom rules. this shows that their thoughts were valued by their teacher and their class. 7.1.5 processes all teachers agreed with purkey and novak (2015) that for the creation of an invitational learning environment, democratic principles should be applied; there should be collaborative teaching and learning, the learning environment must be encouraging and cooperative. academic success should be encouraged and learners who do not succeed academically should be motivated to succeed. purkey and stanley (1991) suggest holding mock elections, trials and debates to encourage and practise the use of democratic values in the learning environment. pt 4 and pt 5 agreed with pt 1, who stated, “treat all learners the same, always consitently. all learners are treated the same and i always try and be consistent. we are all the same and should be treated equally”. pm7 agreed that, “all children must be equal stakeholders in the classroom. a democratic ethos can be achieved by allowing everyone in class to have a chance to participate and chores must be divided equally”. to this pt 6 opined, we can achieve democracy by encouraging diversity and curriculum differentiation. we are all different in life and it’s important to view our differences as something that makes us unique rather than something that sets us apart in a negative manner. we must be like beautiful unicorns. purkey and stanley (1991) identify an effective invitational teacher as one who can attend to the ”social side of learning”, meaning the process of working collaboratively to achieve a common set goal. a sense of encouragement is an important ingredient in an invitational learning environment for all involved to realise their goals and reach their full potential. pt 2 said “positive reinforcement and praising excellent efforts work well. positive feedback for good behaviour helped much. invitational communication must be used as a encouraging tool. praise them good or bad”. during the classroom observation, i noticed that teachers walked around the classroom monitoring the progress of learners and providing encouragement. pt 2, pt 3 and pt 4 used a coupon system to keep learners encouraged. they used stars or stickers as tokens of appreciation. yin (2008:16) asserts that educational change and effectiveness depend on people who work collaboratively. collaboration and cooperation are interdependent with invitational education. collaboration is required on all levels of the school system. for the environment to be invitational, each individual impacts the environment (steyn, 2005). teachers described several techniques to promote collaboration amongst learners. pt 1 used group work as well as encouraged learners to support and encourage each other. pt 4 similarly used group work, as she stated, “learners do lots of group work, and that helps them to read together, build together and tolerate each other even if we are not always fond of each other”. pt 3 indicated, “it is not only about what they do in a group, but it is about learning the skills needed to work in a group. in life, you are not going to like everyone, but you are going to have to work with them”. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 1342020 38(2): 134-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) 8. recommendations the aim of this paper was to gain insight into the teachers’ perceptions of the creation of invitational learning environments. the findings of this research bring to light the following recommendations: a people-centric environment focuses on people and making them the number one priority. purkey and novak (2015) articulate throughout their theory that people are able, valuable and responsible. they should be treated with respect, care and love. in the classroom environment, it is recommended that teachers create an environment whereby learners show respect, tolerance and care for each other. this can be done through the topic “personal and social well-being” in the life skills caps. the teachers and learners can incorporate an inviting attitude in their professional demeanour – treating people as valuable individuals, acting carefully, ethically and respectfully with regard to all five “ps”, but also strongly promoting the same attitudes among others, cooperating with others professionally, remaining optimistic and behaving ethically. blackburn (2018) states that the first step in creating an inviting environment is to build a relationship with your learners. this relationship should be based on mutual trust, knowledge and authority. this relationship will invite learners to explore and venture in a well-organised, appropriately labelled classroom. the school environment (place) should be a safe haven for learners where they are free to venture, explore their interpersonal and intrapersonal relationship and learn without fear or anxiety. purkey and novak (1984) recommend that teachers should give learners an opportunity of clearly organising and planning their classroom settings. it is recommended that teachers, together with their learners, develop a code of conduct for their classroom (classroom rules), develop guidelines for positive behaviour and the reinforcement of such behaviours. it is recommended that every learner should have their own personal space in the classroom for which they become accountable. these personal spaces should be labelled appropriately, brightly coloured and visible. learners can also become involved in cleaning their classrooms and learning space, making it inviting for teaching and learning. it is recommended that classrooms should be organised neatly and methodically to control confusion and stress. the teachers and learners always need to know where to find their books and learning materials. purkey and novak (2015) state that educating should be a collaborative, cooperative activity. it is recommended that classroom policies and processes should be clearly outlined and articulated from the time the young learner enters the classroom. policies should be drawn up democratically, allowing every learner to participate in the consultation and advocacy of the policy. in the classroom, policies such as discipline, code of conduct, work ethics, homework guidelines and bullying should be developed age-appropriately. it is also recommended that within these policies, certain processes should be included if transgressions occur. the policies and processes for each classroom must be transparent and acceptable (inviting) to all learners. these policies and processes should not deter learners’ learning (disinviting) or be restrictive from being themselves. in the book inviting classroom success, purkey and novak (1984) articulate that to create an invitational learning environment free from stress and confusion, teachers need to plan lessons thoroughly. it is recommended that lesson plans should allow learners to participate in the learning process actively. in planning their programmes, teachers should teach young http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 1352020 38(2): 135-137 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 venketsamy, sing & smart teachers’ perceptions in creating an invitational learning environment learners to set measurable academic and behaviour goals. young children are readily invited to routines. it is recommended that teachers set clear routine activities that learners can follow. to further create an invitational learning environment, it is recommended that teachers should search for learners’ strengths and build on them. include activities in the lessons that allow every learner to feel a measure of success. to create a positive classroom discipline system, teachers should uphold the classroom rules developed together with learners and give them ownership in the discipline process. teachers should be careful from straying away from these rules. they need to keep to the rules and fairly and consistently execute the consequences. it is recommended that teachers use negative consequences infrequently by reinforcing positive behaviours with a reward system. learners should be disciplined in private. this demonstrates respect and protects the learner from public humiliation. 9. conclusion most significantly, the study found that educators offered valuable information regarding successful strategies in creating and maintaining an invitational learning environment. while strategies varied slightly from teacher to teacher, a core atmosphere of care, love and individual focus dominated most techniques. human existence, according to purkey and novak (2015), is a cooperative activity where the process is as important as the product. to develop and sustain inviting relationships requires the time and effort to establish trustworthy patterns of interaction. caring is at the core of the inviting stance. finally, human potential can best be realised by places, policies, process and programmes specifically designed to invite development and by people who are personally and professionally inviting with themselves and 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2008. creating an inviting school: a case study on introducing invitational education (ie) in a secondary school in tuen mun. available at http://www.cactm.edu.hk/~ie/document/ ie2008.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.08 https://www.invitationaleducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/art_intro_to_invitational_theory-1.pdf https://www.invitationaleducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/art_intro_to_invitational_theory-1.pdf https://doi.org/10.1080/18146620508566304 https://doi.org/10.4102/koers.v75i4.111 https://doi.org/10.1177/105268460101100306 https://doi.org/10.1177/105268460101100306 https://www.waterford.org/education/how-parent-involvment-leads-to-student-success/ https://www.waterford.org/education/how-parent-involvment-leads-to-student-success/ https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315703275 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315703275 http://www.cactm.edu.hk/~ie/document/ie2008.pdf http://www.cactm.edu.hk/~ie/document/ie2008.pdf teachers’ perceptions in creating 80 a comparative analysis of virtual and traditional laboratory chemistry learning abstract laboratory experimentation in the context of school science is a widely advocated teaching strategy for the simplification of several abstract scientific concepts. laboratory-based learning activities have proven to enhance learners’ conceptual and procedural understandings of micro chemical phenomena, thus boosting achievement in chemistry content tests. in the south african education landscape where there is inequitable distribution of resources for laboratory-based science learning, this study exploited how available virtual learning resources could also be used for learning chemistry concepts, and further compared student achievement in chemistry content test post intervention with both traditional and virtual laboratory learning resources. in this quasiexperimental study, we provided a group of third-year pre-service science teachers (n=50) with four chemistry concepts to learn using a hands-on traditional (control group) and a virtual laboratory (experimental group) intervention. the same pre and post chemistry content test was administered to control and experimental groups of pre-service teachers (herein also referred to as students), before and after learning interventions, with the aim of assessing students’ achievements postlearning in the two different laboratory environments. tests scores were analysed and the results of a paired-sample t-test showed a statistically significant difference between preand post-test results for all groups of students. using independent sample t-tests, we further compared post-test scores for the control and experimental groups which revealed the mean post-test score of the experimental group (m = 79.36, sd = 8.306), being significantly higher than that of the control group (m = 68.72, sd = 9.076) at t (48) = 4.32, p < .01. the findings from these tests indicated that, students obtained significantly higher achievement scores postlaboratory learning interventions and that virtual laboratory interventions yielded significantly higher achievement scores than traditional laboratory interventions. based on these findings, the researchers concluded that, laboratory learning has a positive impact on achievement in chemistry and that virtual laboratories provide a worthy complement for traditional laboratories when learning abstract and difficult chemistry concepts. implications of these findings and some recommendations for practice and research are also discussed herein. keywords: traditional laboratories; virtual laboratories; experimentation; conceptual understandings; content test 1. introduction in chemistry learning laboratory-based experimentation has been proven to play a significant role in improving learners’ understandings of abstract scientific concepts (estapa, & nadolny, 2015). as postulated by early constructivist theorists, learning through experiences and experimentation engages learners in the meaningful mafor penn faculty of education, university of johannesburg e-mail: mpenn@uj.ac.za umesh ramnarain professor, science education faculty of education university of johannesburg e-mail: uramnarain@uj.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v37i2.6 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 37(2): 80-97 date published: 27 november 2019 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:mpenn@uj.ac.za mailto:uramnarain@uj.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.6 http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie 81 penn & ramnarain a comparative analysis of virtual and traditional laboratory chemistry learning process of knowledge construction which enhances cognition and retention significantly (bruner, 1990). usually, this improvement in cognition is associated with the relationship between visualisation and the formation of mental schemas within cognitive structures of the brain (mayer, 2011). with chemistry being a core science subject, and it’s content cutting across physics, biology and engineering concepts, it becomes fundamental that science students a have a good understanding of the subject knowledge. however, finding from several studies on chemistry learning indicate that, chemistry is difficult to comprehend for many students due to its abstract nature and the lack of connectedness to students’ lives (carter & brickhouse, 1989; chittleborough, 2014; kamisah & nur, 2013). in the south african context, the need for science to be taught as inquiry has also been widely advocated within curriculum documents and research communities, with the main aim of creating more authentic contexts for learners to visualise and grasp difficult and abstract science concepts (department of basic education [dbe]: physical sciences, 2011; gaigher, lederman & lederman, 2014; ramnarain & schuster, 2014; hsu, lin, & yang, 2017). however, the scarcity of traditional laboratory learning resources for many under-resourced schools and the financial implications of trying to provide each school with its own traditional chemistry laboratory are enormous. this makes laboratory-based inquiry learning to become even more difficult to implement. it is therefore imperative that science teachers identify and implement alternative pedagogic strategies, to address the learning difficulties which are associated with the learning of abstract chemistry concepts, like the nature of chemical bonds, atomic structure, spectrophotometry and many others. in cases where schools, are equipped with all relevant resources for running a traditional chemistry laboratory, large class sizes, time constraints and laboratory safety issues constitutes some of the other limitations to effective inquiry learning within traditional laboratories (hsu et al, 2017; yen, tsai, & wu, 2013). with the development of novel learning technologies and the several advances registered in technology within the last three decades, the learning of science in virtual laboratory spaces has been widely advocated as an alternative pedagogic approach to address some of the limitations caused by the lack of traditional hands-on chemistry laboratory. virtual laboratories which refer to web-based spaces characterised by the use of software in creating simulations of real scientific processes and systems are used extensively to enhance science teaching and learning (hsu et al, 2017). these virtual laboratory spaces can be used by educators, not as replacements for traditional hands-on chemistry laboratories, but as learning tools to complement real laboratories (hsu et al, 2017; makranskya, terkildsena, & mayer, 2017; wu, lee, chang, & liang, 2013). with the understandings of the short comings in not always having a traditional science laboratory and the potential benefits of virtual learning in enhancing chemistry concept formation, the researchers decided to investigate the effects of virtual and traditional laboratory learning on third-year preservice science teachers’ understandings of chemistry concepts and compare the effects of traditional and virtual learning on students’ achievement in content test. 2. virtual and traditional laboratories in chemistry education. one of the essential features of effective science teaching and learning is the incorporation of activities that target the development of science process skills through experimental and experiential learning (abdulwahed & nagy, 2009). traditional science laboratories are known to provide the relevant hub for enacting effective teaching and learning of chemistry through 82 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) experimentation. the main aim for ensuring that students learn chemistry by experimentation is the opportunity for students to visualise chemical phenomena and make sense of learned chemical and scientific theory (liu, valdiviezo-diaz, sun & barba, 2015). traditional laboratory experiments also provide students with the opportunity to experience real-life applications of concepts they have learned, experience hands-on authentic chemistry learning where products are tangible and gain science process and equipment handling skills in a real environment (chiu, de jaegher, & chao, 2015). some of the disadvantages of traditional science labs include: limited access time; the large number of students who cannot be accommodated in a single lab at the same time; and the need for more time to prepare and carry out all investigations. with the practical shortcomings of not being able to equip every classroom with a traditional chemistry laboratory due to the expense of creating and maintaining them, alternative virtual learning tools have been considered. the integration of learning technologies in science teaching and learning aids in augmenting the traditional pedagogical approaches that are inherent in science teaching. virtual science laboratories are software-based tools created to mimic scientific processes as would be enabled in a traditional science laboratory (chiu et al., 2015). virtual learning software have been incorporated in many future fit classrooms for the simplification of science concepts (wu et al, 2013). despite the fact that several virtual laboratories and other technology-based educational tools tend to focus on the technology rather than pedagogical effectiveness (naidu, 2007), learners can use these virtual spaces to enhance chemistry concept formation, procedural and conceptual knowledge in chemistry learning. some of the advantages of using virtual laboratories include the fact that they are cheaper to create and maintain than a physical laboratory, and can be accessed from anywhere, at any time. a teacher is not needed to facilitate and manage activities within a virtual space. experiments can be repeated without waste of chemicals or other resources. less time is required to complete the given tasks because no physical preparations are required prior to an investigation. learners can engage in open and discovery learning without any fear of failure or making procedural errors. the interactive virtual interface is captivating and keeps learners engaged for longer (wu et al., 2013). some disadvantages of using virtual laboratories include mainly the hazards of prolonged exposure to computer screens. in addition, disengagement from reality due to immersion into a virtual space can be very problematic for students and the creation of tangible and physical products cannot be archived in a virtual learning laboratory space (hsu et al., 2017; makranskya et al., 2017). for this study, the researchers analysed and compared pre-service teachers’ use of traditional and virtual laboratories in learning four chemistry concepts: acid-base solutions, chemical reactivity, beer-lambert’s law (spectrophotometry), the atomic structure and isotopes. the control group which constituted 25 pre-service teachers used a traditional science laboratory while, the experimental group used free online-simulated virtual laboratories (phet) provided by the university of colorado, in the united states of america to enhance their learning of the identified concepts. the fundamental argument with the use of virtual science laboratories is related to their relative effectiveness in enhancing conceptual understandings when compared to traditional laboratories. also under contention is their ability to completely replace traditional laboratories, in enhancing science learning. with these various discourses, science education researchers strive to understand the affordances of virtual learning technologies for science learning and how they contribute in developing 83 penn & ramnarain a comparative analysis of virtual and traditional laboratory chemistry learning interest in science, attitude towards science, interest in stem careers and achievement in science subjects. 3. theoretical framework the study is underpinned by different learning and teaching theories which combine the principles of socio-cultural theories, constructivism (learning by active participation), the cognitive theory of multi-media learning (mayer, 2011) and the technological pedagogical and content knowledge (tpack) framework (koehler, mishra & cain, 2013). this combination of theoretical underpinnings was considered in addressing different aspects in the creation of traditional and virtual laboratory learning interventions used in this study. constructivist and socio-cultural theories provide a lens through which traditional hands-on laboratory experimentation is enacted in science learning. these socio-constructivist theories advocate that effective learning occurs when the learner interacts with the object of learning, and hence construct knowledge in the process (chittleborough, 2014; de jong, linn, & zacharia, 2013). the lack of connectedness of chemistry concepts to the lives of students contributes to some of the learning difficulties in grasping concepts. socio-cultural theorists therefore advocate that interactive learning, the environment where learning happens and the context should be taken into consideration when teaching such abstract concepts (erdogan, 2016). in chemistry learning, this can be practicalised by providing a laboratory scenario where the students can interact with material and particle chemistry. constructivist theories also postulate that learners will be able to assimilate concepts better if they participate in constructing the theoretical, practical and procedural knowledge about these concepts based on the prior knowledge they possess (bruner, 1990; chittleborough, 2014). in his book the same and not the same, hoffman, a nobel prize winning chemist, argued that chemistry students should be developed to have an understanding of “what it is that chemists do” (hoffman, 1995:228). by this he implied that authentic chemistry learning can be achieved when student actively engage in activities that mimic the work of chemists. chemistry laboratories and the associated chemical and physical resources provide a space where students can perform investigative tasks individually or in small groups (crooks, sharma & wilson, 2015). for example, within the school chemistry laboratory a student will be able to conduct a titration experiment to establish how many molar quantities of a base can neutralise a certain amount of acid. the advantages of engaging in this kind of experimental task are enormous in that, the student does not only learn about neutralisation reactions but also learns science process skills like equipment handling, measuring, analysing data and drawing conclusions based on empirical evidence. research also reveals that when learners engage in experimental inquiry they are able to retain the acquired conceptual and procedural knowledge for longer (chiu et al., 2015; erduran & duschl, 2004; lui et al., 2015). virtual experimentation in addition to the afore-mentioned theories is underpinned by mayer’s theory of multimedia learning and the technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) framework. in virtual laboratories, students are able to use a combination of multi-media (word, pictures, simulations, motion pictures, etc) and technology to enhance visualisation, comprehension of abstract chemistry concepts and the creation of mental representations (mayer, 2011). in training pre-service teachers, it is important they are afforded the opportunity to experience the effectiveness of these learning theories as part of their preparation for how they will engage the learners they teach once they are placed in a science classroom. as suggested by erduran and duschl (2004: 126), ‘‘for chemistry teaching to be 84 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) effective, prospective teachers will need to be educated about how knowledge is structured in the discipline that they are teaching’’. the tpack framework advocates that, learning can be enhanced when technology is used to complement teaching, using the right pedagogical approaches (koehler and mishra, 2008; swallow & olofson, 2017). this implies that the right use of technology can be beneficial in enhancing science learning and vice versa. 4. research methods 4.1 methodology and design the study was mainly quantitative in nature characterised by numerical data (leedy & ormrod, 2014). the reason for preferring this approach is related to the fact that measurable constructs such as achievement in a content test cannot be assessed using interpretivist qualitative methods (frankel, wallen, & hyun, 2015). a quasi-experimental design was also employed as a means to answer the research questions framing the inquiry. this design has its flaws in education and other social science research in that, it is difficult to isolate control groups where no interventions are provided. in educational contexts it also considered unethical to isolate a group of students from the learning process. this is because, learning is the fundamental right of all the students in each programme hence, a group of students cannot be excluded from tutorial sessions. also, controlling contamination is not an easy task to achieve in such quasi-experiments. 4.2 sample fifty pre-service science teachers (n=50) were randomly selected form a group of 102 (n=102) thirdyear pre-service science teachers at a higher institution of learning. in this population of pre-service teachers, only 50 were majors in physical sciences (chemistry and physics) while the remaining students indicated that their interest leaned more towards life sciences (biology) teaching. the partial randomisation of the sample was effected only when allocating students to the control and the experimental group. this means that for the sample of 50 students, the chances of being in the experimental or control groups were 50-50. online randomisation tables were used to load the names and student numbers of all participants and a program command was set to separate the sample in to two random groups, namely “control” and “experimental”. 4.3 laboratory learning interventions in the first phase prior to laboratory learning interventions, all 50 participant students were given a chemistry content test (content validity established by a team of three expert science instructors) while internal consistency of the test items was established to be ⍺ = .82 by calculating cronbach’s alpha. the test assessed students’ understandings of atoms (isotopes and mass number), acid-base solutions, chemical reactions and the applications of beer’s law (see extracts of the test in appendix a). this content test was administered after students had attended the regular lectures on these topics and had a basic theoretical knowledge of the concepts. after the pre-test was marked and the scores captured on ibm spss 25, participant pre-service teachers were then separated into the two randomised groups of 25 preservice teachers each for participation in laboratory learning interventions. at this stage laboratory learning interventions commenced as part of the second phase of the study. these interventions were conducted during tutorial sessions for the chemistry 85 penn & ramnarain a comparative analysis of virtual and traditional laboratory chemistry learning module. the control group had traditional laboratory sessions to investigate the concepts while the experimental group engaged with phet simulation laboratories installed on their personal laptops. one of the researchers and a second tutor participated in designing and administering the learning interventions. in the first week of the intervention control group participants were taught the rules of the traditional chemistry laboratory while the experimental group was informed on how to run phet simulations and their associated learning activities online and offline. the same learning outcomes where also given to participants in the 2 groups. after the introductory week was concluded, four weeks of the laboratory interventions on the atomic structure, acid-base solutions, chemical reactions and beer’s law were enacted respectively. the control group was assigned to explore the chemistry concepts in a traditional chemistry laboratory, while the experimental group was assigned to investigate the same concepts using online open phet simulation laboratories. this kind of learning intervention was guided by the principles of inquiry-based learning where the participant students were expected to ask questions, construct and test hypotheses, analyse their findings and draw logical conclusions by themselves (ramnarain, 2010). after four weeks of completing the learning interventions a two-day gap period was given to participants before engagement with the post-test. the same content test was again administered to the participants, marked and scores recorded. both preand post-test scores were captured on ibm spss 25 and analysed by means of descriptive and inferential statistics. figures 1 and 2 below show sample screen shots of some of the specific activities and links for virtual laboratory experiments which the experimental group engaged in. figure 1. phet simulation screenshot for learning acid-base solutions: (source: https://phet. colorado.edu/en/simulation/acid-base-solutions) figure 1 above illustrates a screen shot of an acid-base reaction activity, which preservice teachers engaged in. for the task, participants were expected to analyse the molar concentrations of acids and bases that were found in different aqueous solutions by titrating the solution against a strong/weak base or acid. by carrying out the task, the students could visualise at each stage the two-dimensional representation of the molecules of acid or bases and measure the ph value for the given solution. this was done both in a virtual and a traditional laboratory. https://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulation/acid-base-solutions https://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulation/acid-base-solutions 86 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) figure 2. phet simulation screenshot for investigating beer’s law: (source: https://phet. colorado.edu/en/simulation/beers-law-lab) figure 2 above shows the screen shot of a primary task where students investigated the relationship between the concentration of a solution, transmittance and absorbance as informed by beer’s law. the range of experiments covered during these intervention was also assessed in the content test as seen in appendix a below. 4.4 research questions the main research questions which guided the inquiry included: 1. what is the relationship between laboratory learning and achievement in chemistry content test? 2. is there any significant difference in the post-intervention achievement for control and experimental groups? 4.5 null hypotheses ho1: there is no relationship between laboratory learning and achievement in chemistry content test ho2: there are no differences in the post-intervention achievement for control and experimental groups 4.6 data analysis and results. all test scores from the study were analysed using descriptive and inferential statistics with the aid of statistical software for quantitative data analysis, spss 25. the results from all the statistical analysis are presented in the sections below. 4.6.1 normality in examining if there were any statistically significant differences between preand post-test scores for experimental and control groups, it was important to firstly establish whether the test scores were normally distributed. this rationale for establishing normality was based on the main assumptions of parametric tests; that data must be normally distributed. based on this assumption pre and post-test scores were run through spss to check for a normally https://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulation/beers-law-lab https://phet.colorado.edu/en/simulation/beers-law-lab 87 penn & ramnarain a comparative analysis of virtual and traditional laboratory chemistry learning distributed data. table 1 below shows the results of two normality tests, the kolmogorovsmirnov and the shapiro wilk tests. table 1: test of normality pre-service teacher group kolmogorov-smirnova shapiro-wilk statistic df sig. statistic df sig. test scores for chemistry content test pre lab experience control group .110 25 .200* .974 25 .754 experimental group .132 25 .200* .967 25 .568 test scores for chemistry content test post lab experience control group .109 25 .200* .964 25 .503 experimental group .108 25 .200* .973 25 .733 *. this is a lower bound of the true significance. a. lilliefors significance correction as seen on table 1 above, the results of both the kolmogorov-smirnov and the shapirowilk tests. contrary to other statistical tests, the shapiro-wilk test, which is more appropriate for small sample sizes, will indicate normally distributed data when the significant (p) value is > .05. in the case of these chemistry content tests, both pre(p = .75 and .57) and post-test scores (p = .50 and .73) were normally distributed for control and experimental groups. 4.6.2 pre-test and post-test descriptive and inferential statistics table 2 below shows group descriptive statistics for the control and experimental test score means. for the pre-test, the groups recorded means of m = 60.20, sd = 9.66 for the control and m = 60.72, sd = 9.42 for the experimental groups, while after the intervention the posttest means for the groups were m = 68.72, sd = 9.08 and m = 79.36, sd = 8.31 for control and experimental groups respectively as shown in table 2. table 2: group statistics for pre-test and post-test scores for all groups. pre-service teacher group n mean std. deviation std. error mean pre-test scores control group 25 60.20 9.657 1.931 experimental group 25 60.72 9.423 1.885 posttest scores control group 25 68.72 9.076 1.815 experimental group 25 79.36 8.306 1.661 we further investigated whether there was a statistically significant difference in the observed means for both pre and post-test for control and experimental groups. the first independent sample t-test was carried out to establish whether there was a difference in the pre-test scores for the two groups. findings from this test are shown in table 3 below. 88 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) table 3: comparing pre-test means for control and experimental groups f sig. t sig. (2-tailed) mean difference std. error difference pretest scores equal variances assumed 1.398 .243 .774 .443 2.560 3.310 equal variances not assumed .774 .443 2.560 3.310 in table 3, the t value for the pre-test of both group was .77 at p>.05 = .44 which indicated that there was no statistically significant difference in the pre-test marks for both control and experimental groups at a 95% confidence interval. this step was taken to ensure that pre-test means for both participant groups had no difference, which could constitute sample bias. in answering the research question; is there any significant difference in the postintervention achievement for control and experimental groups? another independent sample t-test was conducted to establish whether there was a statistically significant difference between the post test scores for both groups. the results of the t-test revealed a statistically significant difference between the post-test scores for the control and experimental groups, t (48) = 4.32, p < .01). tests showed that the mean content test score for the experimental group (m = 79.36, sd = 8.306) was significantly higher than the mean content test score of control group (m = 68.72, sd = 9.076), after the laboratory learning interventions as shown in table 4 below. we therefore rejected the null hypothesis “there are no differences in the postintervention achievement scores for control and experimental groups”. table 4: t-test for group post-test scores f sig. t sig. (2-tailed) mean difference std. error difference posttest scores equal variances assumed .209 .649 4.324 .000 -10.640 2.461 equal variances not assumed 4.324 .000 -10.640 2.461 to answer the research question; what is the relationship between laboratory learning and achievement in chemistry content test? a paired sample t-test was used to establish whether the observed difference between the preand post-test means of the whole sample was significant at 95% confidence levels. table 5 shows the result of the paired sample statistics for the entire sample (n =50). with this finding we rejected the null hypothesis, “there is no relationship between laboratory learning and achievement in chemistry content test.” 89 penn & ramnarain a comparative analysis of virtual and traditional laboratory chemistry learning table 5: paired samples statistics mean n std. deviation std. error mean pair 1 test scores for chemistry content test pre lab experience 60.46 50 9.446 1.336 test scores for chemistry content test post lab experience 74.04 50 10.150 1.435 the finding on table 5, revealed that, the mean post-test score for the entire sample (m = 74.04, sd = 10.15) was higher than the mean pre-test scores of the sample (m = 60.46, sd = 9.44). this led the researchers to conduct yet another paired sample t-test in order to establish whether there was a significant difference in the observed means. table 6 below shows the result of the paired sample t test, indicating a statistically significant difference between pre-test and post-test scores for all the participants within the study t (49) = 10.01, p < .01). table 6: paired sample t-test mean paired differences t sig. (2-tailed)std. dev. std. error mean 95% confidence interval of the difference lower upper pair 1 pre-test scoresposttest scores -13.58 9.592 1.356 -16.306 -10.854 -10.01 .000 4.6.3 practical significance one of the main questions that arose when interrogating the findings of this study, is the extent to which the interventions, especially virtual laboratory learning interventions, were responsible for the variations in post-test score means. to this effect we calculated cohen’s d (effect size) which refers to the standardised difference between two means and speaks to the practical significance of the findings. cohen’s d = mean difference/pooled standard deviation the cohen’s d values between 0 0.3 show a small effect size while those 0.3-0.6 show a moderate effect and any effect size > 0.6 is a large effect size (kelley & preacher, 2012). for the post test scores between experimental and control groups cohen’s d = (79.36–68.77) / ((8.306+9.076)/2) = 1.22 for the effect size of all the participants pre and post-test cohen’s d = (74.04–60.46) / ((10.150+9.446)/2) = 1.39 the cohen’s d values above indicated that pre-service teachers gained 1.22 standard deviations due to the virtual learning interventions when compare to the traditional hands-on 90 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) laboratory interventions. they also gained about 1.39 standard deviations on achievement scores in the chemistry content test after all the laboratory interventions, whether traditional or virtual. these findings are now discussed below. 5. discussions and conclusions the findings of this study indicate that, all types of laboratory-learning interventions have a positive effect on achievement in chemistry content test. the specific effect size for the learning interventions showed an improvement of up to 1.39 standards deviations for all interventions, and 1.22 standard deviations virtual laboratory intervention. this implies that, while all laboratory learning interventions proved to enhance higher conceptual understandings of chemistry concepts, the use of virtual laboratories had more impact for the participant students, than traditional handson laboratory, as revealed by the relative effect size of the post-test scores for the control group. these findings concur with the some findings of studies within this decade, which were conducted using different virtual laboratory settings, including abdillahi (2015), chua and karpudewan (2017), estapa and nadolny (2015) and hsu et al. (2017). these researchers reported that virtual laboratory learning had a positive impact on learners’ understandings of scientific concepts (as revealed by achievement) and stimulated interest in science subjects. the findings also confirm the theoretical underpinnings of socio-constructivism which promote learning by active participation and coconstruction of knowledge (bruner, 1990; chittleborough, 2014). laboratory experimentation (virtual or traditional) aided participants’ leaning by enhancing visualisation of micro-chemical worlds, like atoms, bonds and molecules, which are responsible for the associated abstract nature of chemistry (akçayır, akçayır, pektas & ocak, 2016; hoffman, 1995). on the other hand, some researchers in science education recognise and counter the effectiveness of virtual learning in that, students do not always connect with the authenticity of virtual laboratory spaces (hsu, et al., 2017; wu et al., 2013). payne (2005) also reported that 53% of the participant students in a high school study did not endorse virtual learning at all. other downsides of virtual learning registered included the lack of technological savviness, the loss of realism and more immersion into a virtual environment (makranskya et al, 2017). for the current study, the authenticity of the simulators was also one of the aspects which was not very appealing to the pre-service teachers. 5.1 implications the implications, of these findings are related to alternative pedagogical approaches that should be used in enacting laboratory-based learning. holistically, the use of experimentation in chemistry learning whether in virtual or traditional laboratory learning spaces will provide learners with a second chance to engage with learnt concepts and actively participant in verifying or generating scientific evidence. this therefore has an overall positive effect on learners’ achievements in chemistry content tests in the event where traditional laboratories are scarce or not adequately resourced, virtual simulation laboratories could be employed as complementary learning tools at school and tertiary institutions to enhance students’ engagement and understandings of chemistry concepts. the findings of the study also suggest that virtual laboratories, which prove to have a more positive impact on achievement scores, are worthy alternatives to consider even when traditional laboratories are available. this is because independent learning can be promoted, and trial-and-error activities can be effected in the virtual platforms before students go into a traditional laboratory session. with this notion science teachers should consider using virtual laboratories for teaching abstract concepts in all school science subjects and chemistry in particular. even though virtual laboratories cannot replace hands-on laboratories, they are 91 penn & ramnarain a comparative analysis of virtual and traditional laboratory chemistry learning capable of complementing them in learning abstract chemistry concepts and promoting higher achievement scores in content tests. curriculum experts should also consider instituting the use of virtual laboratories in science curricula globally. 5.2 limitations the sample size isolated for the study was relatively small and hence finding could not be generalised to a wider population of pre-service chemistry teachers. we therefore recommend the use of a larger sample size across different institutions of learning, in future research. a designbased research with several iterative cycles and the used of mixed research methodologies could also be employed in further investigating the affordances of laboratory learning. only four chemistry concepts were exploited for the study and therefore we cannot assume that the experiences will be the same for all science subjects and concepts. references abdillahi hh 2015. the effects of simulations supported 5e teaching model on academic achievements and attitudes in physics education. master’s degree thesis. kırıkkale: university of kırıkkale. abdulwahed m & nagy z k 2009. applying kolb’s experiential learning cycle for laboratory education. journal of engineering education. 93(3): 283 – 294. https://doi. org/10.1002/j.2168-9830.2009.tb01025.x akçayır m, akçayır g, pektas, mh & ocak ma 2016. augmented reality in science laboratories: the effects of augmented reality on university students’ laboratory skills and attitudes toward science laboratories. computers in human behavior 57:334-342. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j. chb.2015.12.054. arvind vr & heard jw 2010. physics by simulation: teaching circular motion using applets. latin american journal of physics education, 4(1): 35-39. bruner js 1990. acts of meaning. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. carter, c.s. & brickhouse, m.w. 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· c₂h₅oh + 3o₂ -> 2co₂ + 3h₂o · c₂h₅oh + 3o₂ -> co₂ + 3h₂o · c₂h₅oh + 3o₂ -> 2co₂ + 2h₂o · c₂h₅oh + 2o₂ -> 2co₂ + 3h₂ 2.2 in covalently bonded molecules, oxidation and reduction are determined by: · enzymes and coenzymes · products that are synthesized · uneven sharing of electrons · reactants that are broken down · gaining and losing electrons 2.3 if you wanted to decrease the rate of reaction, what action would you need to take? · double the reactants. · insert a catalyst. · increase the surface area. · decrease the temperature. 95 penn & ramnarain a comparative analysis of virtual and traditional laboratory chemistry learning 2.4 in general, what do ksp values tell us about the solubility of a compound under the designated conditions? · smaller ksp values mean the substance will dissolve better at lower temperatures. · smaller ksp values suggest low compound solubility. · ksp values are circumstantial; we cannot know anything about a compound based on them. · higher ksp values indicate low solubility. 2.5 consider the reaction: mg +cucl2 = mgcl2 + cu which type of reaction is shown above? · combustion · combination · double-displacement · single-replacement (2 marks x 5 =10 marks) 2.6 identify the type of reaction and balance the following reactions. you must show your element inventory. 2.6.1 ____p4 + __br2 ___pbr3 2.6.2 __fe __cl2 __fecl3 2.6.3 ___albr3 + _ k __kbr + ___al 2.6.4 __h2o2 __h o2 _____o2 2.6.5 ___pbbr2 +___hcl ___hbr +____pbcl2 2.6.6 ___n2 + ___h2 __nh3 2.6.7 __na + ____br2 ___nabr 2.6.8 ___alcl3 +___naoh ____al(oh) ___nacl 2.6.9 _ na3p + ___caf2 __ naf + ____ca3p2 2.6.10 ch4 + ___o2 __h2o + ____co2 ( 3 marks x 10 = 30 marks) question 3: acid base titrations 3.1 100ml of an unknown solution of naoh is titrated with 3m hcl until neutralized. the resulting solution is evaporated, and 3.0g of white crystal are recovered. what was the concentration of the naoh solution? a. 1.25m b. 0.7m c. 0.3m d. 0.5m 96 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) 3.2 how many milliliters of 0.05m hcl are required to neutralize 200ml of 0.025m ca(oh)2 ? a. 250ml b. 200ml c. 500ml d. 100ml 3.3 what volume of 0.375m h2so4 is needed to fully neutralize 0.5l of 0.125m naoh? a. 0.5l b. 167ml c. 83.3ml d. 41.7ml 3.4 which of the following is true regarding an acid and its pka? i. one can increase the strength of an acid by decreasing its pka value ii. pka increases as the acid dissociation constant decreases iii. pka of an acid cannot be changed by altering the concentration of the acid a. i, ii, and iii b. i and ii c. i and iii d. ii and iii (3 marks x 4 = 12 marks) 3.5 consider two solutions: solution a and solution b. solution a is a 0.1m hydrogen iodide solution and solution b is a 0.1m hydrochloric acid solution. what can you conclude about these two solutions? a. both solutions have approximately equal amounts of hydrogen ions b. solution b has twice as many hydrogen ions as solution a c. solution a has twice as many hydrogen ions as solution b d. both solutions have high pka values. provide an explanation for your selected answer backing it with chemical equations (4 marks) 3.6 consider the following reaction: 97 penn & ramnarain a comparative analysis of virtual and traditional laboratory chemistry learning which of the following changes will increase the ph of this solution? a. increasing the pka of ch3cooh b. decreasing the volume of h2o c. adding sodium acetate d. increasing the acetic acid concentration provide and explanation for the selected choice (4 marks) (total = 8 marks) question 4: beer’s law spectrophotometry 4.1. what is the absorbance of each? 4.1.1 a solution with a transmittance of 0.570 4.1.2 a solution with 43.5%t 4.1.3 0.084 mm x(aq) in a 5.00 cm cell if the molar absorptivity of x is 365. 4.1.4 59.5% of photons are transmitted through a cell (3 marks x 4 = 12 marks) 4.2. what is the percent transmittance of each? 4.2.1 a solution with an absorbance of 0.015 (1 mark) 4.2.2 a solution with a transmittance of 0.272 (2 mark) 4.2.3 a 0.084 mm x(aq) in a 5.00 cm cell if the molar absorptivity of x is 365. (2 mark) (total = 5 marks) 5. chromatography catalogues often list the “uv cut‐off” value for various solvent. this is the wavelength below which uv absorbance starts to become significant. why are these numbers of value to anyone doing uv spectroscopy? (3 marks) 6. a solution containing 64.1 ppm of z had an absorbance of 0.231 in a 1.00 cm cell at 388 nm. 6.1 what is the absorptivity of z? (2.5 marks) 6.2 if another solution of z had an absorbance of 0.767 under the same condition, what is the concentration of z? (2.5 marks) 7. a solution containing 40.00 ppm of b had an absorbance of 0.425 in a 1.00 cm cell at 690 nm. if 5.00 ml of this solution was diluted with water to 100.0 ml, what is the absorbance of the new solution at 690 nm? (2 marks) (total = 10marks) (grand total= 100 marks) _goback 277 research article 2021 39(1): 277-290 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.17 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) leveraging communitybased innovations during covid-19 to strengthen the haitian school system abstract war, natural disasters, and other emergencies regularly disrupt children’s education in developing countries. the digital divide has long since affected low-resource and rural schools’ responses to crises that necessitate distance learning, often excluding children in remote and rural parts of countries from internet-dependent online learning programmes. in no place is this truer than in haiti where, prior to august 2020, political unrest combined with the covid-19 pandemic caused learners to miss 60% of their scheduled days in the 2019–2020 school year with only 45% of haitian households having access to a power source, let alone internet or a smart device, that would enable them to participate in online learning. this study presents findings from exploratory research on the readiness of the haitian education system to withstand crises and the impact of covid-19 on the system and its learners. through analyses of secondary data and semi-structured interviews with a variety of education stakeholders, the research reveals gaps in the system’s readiness; identifies key challenges prompted by school closures in haiti and shares a handful of innovative responses developed to respond to these challenges. findings indicate that the covid-19 health crisis has not created the need for educational reform in haiti, but rather, by exacerbating pre-existing gaps and frailties within the system, the pandemic has heightened the urgency with which educational reform must be pursued. salient gaps include a significant digital divide, financial instability and inattention to learning adjacent needs such as nutrition and psychosocial health for parents and children alike. while this initial research has exposed a series of significant gaps and inequalities in the haitian education system, moving forward, more comprehensive research is needed to determine how such inequalities can be most effectively addressed. although the haitian government has a key role to play in addressing these inequalities, findings from this study reveal that governmental responses to covid-19 school closures and broader digital learning inequalities, were ineffective in their reach and did not reflect the majority of haitian learners and their families’ realities. findings also identify numerous innovations and assets on the part of non-governmental actors striving to address these gaps. however, these mechanisms were limited in scope and lacked the coordination among one another and the government that would be required to have scalable or measurable impact. therefore, more research is needed to determine what the most successful mechanisms for addressing inequalities in the haitian author: dr n. boothby1 a. hart1 h. chandler1 d. dupuy2 affiliation: 1university of notre dame, usa 2independent consultant, usa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i1.17 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 277-290 published: 12 march 2021 received: 10 november 2020 accepted: 15 february 2021 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.17 2782021 39(1): 278-290 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.17 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) education system are and how they can be most effectively leveraged and scaled to create a more resilient education system moving forward. keywords: haiti; covid-19; hybrid-learning; resilient education; digital divide, distance learning. 1. introduction in 2019, jacques abraham, a haitian educator and researcher, explained that the haitian education system “is made up of a set of unevenly effective educational institutions [...] offering different educations to the students depending on their socioeconomic background” (abraham, 2019: 1172). in haiti, schools offering high quality education are few and are coopted by parents in high income brackets. in this context, students who are socio-economically disadvantaged do not benefit from the same quality of education as others “and become disadvantaged in terms of both their learning and their learning outcomes” (abraham, 2019: 1172). abraham later argues that the haitian school system, in its manner of functioning and its method to separate social and school [...] does not treat all the students the same way [...]. therefore, quality education for all is far from being a reality in haiti despite the commitments made by the haitian government (abraham, 2019: 1172). the learning realities and experiences of students in haiti illustrate these inequities clearly where half of students, after attending school for two full years, are unable to read a single word in creole, their mother tongue language (ball, paris & govinda, 2014; nielsen, 2014; rti international, 2012). close to 15% of primary school aged students do not attend school and the average haitian, 25 years or older, has only had five years of schooling (usaid, 2020). classrooms are overcrowded and under-resourced; children are often under-fed; the school days are short and teacher and student absenteeism is high. teachers are not paid a living wage, are poorly trained and supported and work in extremely challenging conditions teaching classes of well over 40 students, most of whom live in extreme poverty and have an array of learning needs (d’agostino, liberiste-osirus & schuenke-lucien, 2020). only 20% of haitian teachers are trained in literacy education and only 25% have received an education beyond eighth grade (inter-american development bank, 2007). classrooms frequently lack student books, instructional materials, adequate lighting, ventilation, protection from weather and adequate space for large class sizes (d’agostino et al., 2020). while covid-19 did not cause any of these gaps or inequities, it did expose and exacerbate the pre-existing vulnerabilities in the system. when covid-19 shut down schools in haiti in march 2020, the system was already in a fragile state having just reopened; months of political turmoil in the fall (autumn) of 2019 had disrupted three months of the 2019/2020 calendar. owing to limited to no support in place for the continuation of learning outside the confines of classrooms in haiti and frequent disruptions, the majority of haitian students missed 115 of 189 days of school in the 2019/2020 school year. in june 2020, a former haitian government official estimated that most haitian learners had covered less than 30% of the school curriculum (government, former moe interview). in an effort to make up for the missed days, the haitian ministry of education (moe) instituted a 54-day catch-up period for the 2019/2020 school year from august to september 2020. this resulted in the official 2020/2021 school year beginning in november 2020 and being condensed from 189 days to 172 days (haiti libre, 2020c) with expectations that there may be further disruptions due to political unrest and/or natural disasters. while the moe 2792021 39(1): 279-290 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.17 boothby, hart, chandler & dupuy leveraging community-based innovations during covid-19 oversees curriculum development, official exams and academic calendars, 85% of haiti’s primary schools are private and managed by communities, religious organisations or nongovernmental organisations (ngos) (usaid, 2020). this paper presents initial findings of the gaps in the haitian school system that affected the overall development and well-being of students when schools were not in session during covid-19. through secondary source analysis and interviews with key stakeholders, this exploratory study assesses the state of the haitian education system prior to covid-19 as well as the impact of covid-19 on the system. the paper then introduces promising practices developed in response to the impact of covid-19 by a variety of stakeholders. finally, the authors call for more comprehensive research into how to most effectively address the inequalities and gaps discussed. 2. research questions and methodology the purpose of this research was to examine the state and readiness of the haitian education system for distance learning and to understand which factors affected the quality and continuation of student learning and well-being in real-time during the covid-19 school closures. an initial scoping exercise revealed there was no clear portrait of the state of the haitian education system that addressed its challenges and capacities for a resilient and comprehensive distance learning response despite frequent school closures; therefore, an exploratory research method was employed to develop an initial portrait of the haitian education system prior to covid-19 and some of the impacts of the pandemic on the education system and learners. insights and ideas shared in interviews prompted further exploration of the secondary research to understand more fully the variety of factors impacting the haitian education system, and insights gleaned from secondary research were fed back into the interviews to understand the lived experience of what was being reported or was available as data. therefore, secondary sources and interviews were consulted in unison to develop a more comprehensive understanding of students and families’ access to learning and learning adjacent needs. recognising the restrictions of covid-19, the immediate nature of the crisis and its impacts, as well as the ongoing technological constraints of the haitian context (e.g., irregular access to power, internet and data), the authors sought to rapidly capture a range, rather than a depth, of experiences through semi-structured interviews in order to construct an initial and wide understanding of the readiness of the haitian education system and suggest relevant next steps and future areas of inquiry. owing to technological constraints and confidentiality concerns (e.g., stigma associated with hardships imposed by covid-19 and job security), interviews, held over zoom and whatsapp, were not recorded. instead, the interviewers took meticulous notes. interviewees gave consent for their comments to be summarised anonymously and anecdotally rather than directly quoted. this process gave interviewees the opportunity to speak freely and without concern of ideas being traced directly back to them by a neighbour, colleague or family member. in order to understand the extent of the impact of school closures on the haitian education system, this research took a holistic view of the system and assessed factors that not only impact a child’s academic progress but also his or her basic needs and psychosocial wellbeing. specific areas of inquiry included exploring 1) who had access to learning materials in the midst of school closures? 2) how did schools and the government respond to closures? 2802021 39(1): 280-290 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.17 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) 3) what was done to support distance learning in remote, rural communities? 4) who were the key actors in the continuation of education efforts? 5) what was done to support learning adjacent needs such as nutrition and psychosocial well-being? and 6) what do the events of the crisis and subsequent responses suggest in terms of fostering a more resilient haitian education system moving forward? semi-structured interviews were conducted with 83 key stakeholders including haitian government officials; telecommunications and technology private actors; healthcare civil society actors and leadership, teachers, parents and students from public, private and ngo schools across haiti’s ten geographical departments throughout a four month period of the covid-19 pandemic during which time schools were closed in haiti and eventually reopened (table 1). purposive sampling was utilised to identify the initial cohort followed by snowball sampling as the research progressed. government officials, private actors, civil society actors and school leadership interviewees were selected for their ability to provide knowledgeable insight on a specific topic or process. in the case of parent, teacher and student interviews, interviewees were selected to ensure representation from each of haiti’s geographic departments. researchers received verbal consent from parents before interviewing students. insights and experiences from these interviews have been used to inform the findings detailed below. additional insight was pulled from webinars hosted by the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco), the united nations international children’s emergency fund (unicef), the early childhood development action network (ecdan), and international education funders group (iefg). research occurred from 27 april 2020 until 27 august 2020. table 1: summary of interviews by position civil society 3 government-former government 13 ngo 23 private sector 7 parent 10 teacher 11 student 10 school admin 6 total 83 in order to facilitate a clearer relationship between what was discovered about the state of the haitian education system through secondary source analysis and the lived experience of stakeholders in haiti during the selected research timeframe and to reflect the research methods, the authors have included secondary sources within their findings as they relate to each key issue. 3. findings in may 2020, the haitian moe issued two tentative calendars for the reopening of schools in the fall (autumn). interviews with educators revealed that a minority of haitian students (an 2812021 39(1): 281-290 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.17 boothby, hart, chandler & dupuy leveraging community-based innovations during covid-19 estimated 1%) were able to continue instruction and complete their school year in full through remote learning programmes either online or via take-home packages. these learners would return to school in september 2020 to begin their 2020/2021 school year. the moe required all other schools to use august and september as catch-up days for the 2019/2020 school year and thus had to condense their calendar for the 2020/2021 academic year (haiti libre, 2020d; haiti libre, 2020e). in interviews, parents, school leadership and teachers expressed concern that the pre-existing education gap between students from high-income and lowincome backgrounds has widened for marginalised students compared to the elite who were able to access remote learning. study findings have been organised around four key issues of education inequality related to distance learning in haiti and themes that emerged in interviews and the secondary research: the digital divide, financial instability, learning adjacent needs and non-governmental responses. 3.1 the digital divide: access to connectivity and technology the digital divide, the separation between those who have access to the internet and technology and those who do not, has long since impacted learners and their families in low-income contexts, barring or limiting their access to educational materials. the digital divide is particularly stark in haiti. in the world economic forum’s 2016 network readiness survey, haiti ranks 137 out of 139 countries, scoring 2.5 out of 7 in the network readiness index, which measures a country’s propensity to leverage communication and information technology (baller et al., 2016). looking at the breakdown of technology ownership and access to the internet further illustrates the deep nature of the digital divide in haiti where only 6% of households have access to a computer, and 15% use the internet regularly (finscope, 2018). while 60% of haitian adults do own some form of a cell phone, this number can be misleading (finscope, 2018). consumption patterns shared by cellular network companies as part of this research revealed that only an elite minority of consumers use between 30 to 100 gigabytes of internet data a month, while the vast majority of haitians use a mere 150 megabytes per month. compare these numbers to a typical household in the united states that uses, on average, 268 gigabytes per month (toledo, 2020). for most teachers and parents interviewed for this research, the purchase of data comes in direct competition with buying food, paying rent and paying tuition. in addition, network service follows existing consumption patterns; therefore, low-income communities, with low data purchasing power have limited to no access to coverage, and when they do, it is of poor quality. moreover, only 45% of haitian households nationally have access to the electricity that would enable them to regularly charge and use a device (the world bank, 2018a). this number narrows even further in rural areas where only 3.5% of the population has access to electricity (the world bank, 2018b). here too, statistics can be misleading; in recent months, coinciding with the covid-19 health crisis, haiti has been plagued with nationwide blackouts lasting for weeks, affecting the existing communication infrastructure and eliminating access to electricity for all but the few who can afford private back-up sources (charles, 2020). despite these realities, the government’s response to covid-19 school closures and distance learning was composed of two components and was solely tech-dependent. the first, pr@ctic, an online platform and digital learning solution, was introduced in mid-april and contained resources for students, parents and teachers. an interview with an moe official in 2822021 39(1): 282-290 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.17 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) june revealed that pr@ctic recorded an average of 67 000 visits a day – reaching 1.67% of learners. pr@tic is supported by the world bank, the inter-american development bank (idb) and unicef (haiti libre, 2020b). the second initiative, télé école, was a collaboration between the télévision nationale d’haïti (rtnh) and the moe. this televised education programme featured a variety of courses (haiti libre, 2020a), but student interviewees shared that the programmes stopped running a few weeks into broadcasting due to logistical problems. this was later confirmed in an interview with a media official. thus, students without access to technology and connectivity at home were not reached in government-implemented distance learning programmes and other online learning solutions. students interviewed for this research expressed frustration at the disconnect between the government’s initiatives and their own realities, stating that even the capital had no electricity when télé école aired. furthermore, there was no way to retrieve the educational shows later on an alternate platform. the broadcast also shed light on the limited reach of the state-run television programmes. government officials interviewed could not give an exact figure on the channel’s audience or evaluate its geographical reach beyond port-auprince. learners in cities outside of port-au-prince shared that they could only tune into rtnh through its relay on private satellite companies such as canalsat, which is the largest satellite provider in haiti. a canalsat employee shared that monthly subscriptions for canalsat cost between $7 and $35. today, the company has approximately 60 000 monthly subscribers nationwide. due to limited connectivity, most haitian student learners were unable to access other online learning solutions that learners leveraged globally during covid-19. 3.2 financial instability economic stability in haiti has been challenged by its history of political stability, natural disasters and poor economic management (heritage, 2020). half of the population lives below the poverty line on less than $2.41 a day (the world bank, 2020). additionally, transfers from the diaspora account for over 36% of haiti’s gdp (bojarski, 2020), and data reveals that there has been an 18% decline in remittances to haiti in the previous year (march 2019 to march 2020) (cela & marcelin, 2020). in october 2020, haiti’s gdp was expected to decline by 3.1%, and incoming cash transfers to the region had significantly dropped (the world bank, 2020). in every parent interview conducted during this research, either one or both caregivers had lost all or part of their source of income due to covid-19. loss of jobs was particularly high in the garment industry, affecting tens of thousands of low-income women. as of 11 june 2020, 18 000 women had lost their jobs in textile factories in the port-au-prince metropolitan area alone (le nouvelliste, 2020). when covid-19 forced school closures in haiti, the economic realities of students and their families had direct implications for learners’ continuation of education. students who attended schools beneath a certain tuition threshold were less likely to have access to any form of a distance learning programme, making tuition a key indicator in whether students would be able to continue learning during covid-19. as could be anticipated, schools with higher tuition were more likely to have some type of programme — although it was not always online — while schools with lower tuition frequently had no formal programming, and parents with students enrolled at these schools received little to no communication from their children’s teachers. for example, one elementary school observed in the nord charges $200 per month for tuition. this particular school held class every day on zoom. just a few kilometres northwest, another school of a similar size, where parents pay $5 per month for 2832021 39(1): 283-290 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.17 boothby, hart, chandler & dupuy leveraging community-based innovations during covid-19 tuition, had no communication with parents once schools closed. a parent interviewee from the latter considered unenrolling their children and borrowing money to put them in a school where “learning continued”. notably, students who attended schools beneath a certain tuition threshold were less likely to understand the gravity of covid-19. in all research interviews with young children who attended better quality schools — almost all with tuition over $60 a month — students stated they learnt about the covid-19 health risks in school and became mobilising forces in their households and communities, teaching others about preventive measures such as frequent handwashing and social distancing. interviews with children from lower resource schools revealed that they had limited to no understanding of the virus and did not know why schools had closed, making it an abrupt and unexplained disruption to their day. this difference in experience sparks an area of inquiry the authors believe should be studied further to determine if the resource-level of schools has a direct impact on children’s access to vital health information. additionally, based on the study’s ten parent interviews, a family’s economic situation was a key determiner in whether children would be able to attend school post covid-19. families with multiple children had to make difficult decisions regarding which of their children to enrol in school for the fall (autumn). interviews revealed that faced with these tough decisions, parents would prioritise sending boys, younger children and children with “better” learning capacities back to school over girls or “slower” learners. some parents shared how they would send their children to school on a rotation basis, giving access to each child for one semester. in other cases, financial hardships and school closures had direct implications for the physical safety of learners. in interviews, parents admitted to abandoning children with suspected developmental impairments, reflecting a global pattern that crises disproportionately impact differently abled children. the impact of school closures on schools themselves, frequently accompanied by families’ inability or refusal to pay tuition, was also significant. school administration shared that schools’ financial stability affected teacher salaries, the quality of education delivered and schools’ ability to reopen in the coming year. unfortunately, throughout this research, school principals and administration expressed that the government had offered little relief to schools’ financial turmoil. these observations reflect what most education actors in haiti already know: funding for education in haiti is limited and covid-19 has only exacerbated a pre-existing issue. in june, one ngo official anticipated that as many as 20% of schools in their network would not reopen due to financial difficulties. similar numbers were recorded in december 2019 following three months of political lockdown (world food program, 2019). 3.3 learning adjacent needs access to quality nutrition is another key component of a child’s educational experience in haiti. research has long established the links between nutrition, academic success and key developmental gains (huebner et al., 2016). for example, undernutrition (stunting, wasting and micronutrient deficiencies) often negatively affects cognitive development (black & dewey, 2014). poor nutrition can negatively impact brain development, causing permanent cognitive impairment and leading to poor school performance, early termination in the workforce, decreased work capacity and ultimately, limited future earning potential (huebner et al., 2016). 2842021 39(1): 284-290 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.17 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) in haiti, 300 000 children rely on daily meals provided by un-funded school canteens in over 1 000 schools countrywide (world food program, n.d.). for many children, this serves as their only daily meal. in january 2020, months prior to the covid-19 lockdown, haiti had already surpassed the who emergency threshold for malnutrition, with over 2% of its population experiencing severe acute malnutrition and 6% of children within the acute malnutrition threshold (haiti libre, 2020f). given the large number of haitian school children who rely on school meals for daily nutrition, school closures leave many children vulnerable to hunger and their parents wondering from where their children’s next meal will come. according to the world food program (wfp), haiti is among the top 10 countries most affected by food insecurity, with projections that half of the country’s population will be in severe nutrition insecurity by 2021 and one million people in emergency need for food assistance (le figaro, 2020). an employee of the wfp in haiti, which spearheads the un canteen programmes in haiti, had no detailed information on the nutritional impact of the pandemic and the halt of the pre-covid-19 canteen programme on its typical 300 000 beneficiary children. as of 29 june 2020, according to a wfp official, the wfp had triaged their supplies in order to reach as many of these students as possible but ultimately only reached 90 000 children through emergency rations. fast forwarding to september 2020, the wfp estimated that 42% of the haitian population needed nutrition assistance, of which 9% were in phase 4 emergency – the level preceding famine (le figaro, 2020). civil society actors and ngo officials interviewed through this research echoed the realities of these numbers for the families they serve and expressed concern over the absence of interventions from nutrition organisations as well as active organisations’ small scale and slow pace. to further complicate the situation, to date, many schools do not have an established system for collecting basic contact and demographic information on their students and families. there is no coherent student information system in haiti; therefore, school officials have very little data available to locate families and their children outside of the school environment. as a result, word-of-mouth emerged as the main communication method to reach learners’ families during covid-19 school closures. this made it nearly impossible for nutrition organisations to locate beneficiary children or assess their needs. in addition to limited access to nutrition during school closures, ngos and civil society actors disclosed the reality of living through the stress of covid-19 where a lack of psychosocial support put students, parents and teachers at risk for dangerous behaviours and had significant implications for their mental health and overall well-being. in fact, ngo officials and civil society actors reported recording a notably high level of distress calls from students, parents and teachers in their networks who shared that they felt hopeless. for young children especially, the psycho-emotional implications of the lockdown were recognisable. one parent described how their children took on their classmates’ identities in efforts to remember their friends and maintain social connections. for haitian mothers, who traditionally bear most of the household and child rearing responsibilities, the psychosocial impact was particularly salient. all mothers interviewed reported feeling isolated, stressed and concerned about finances and their children’s next 2852021 39(1): 285-290 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.17 boothby, hart, chandler & dupuy leveraging community-based innovations during covid-19 meals. this stress, self-admittedly, manifested itself in being taken out on children, with mothers sharing that they were more prone to beat or yell at their children. 3.4 non-governmental responses recognising the academic, financial, nutritional and psychosocial gaps and limited to no comprehensive interventions on the part of the government, ngos, school officials and civil society members, interviewed in this research, developed and implemented their own responses to address the gaps outlined above. the examples and information below come from participants in this research. 3.4.1 addressing the digital divide example 1: in cap-haitien, there is an elementary school that balances the country’s digital and economic divide. when it first opened in 2002, the school strove to create an elite school that offers a world-class education accessible to students from all socio-economic backgrounds. over 30% of the school’s students come from low-income communities and attend school on a full scholarship. for others, tuition costs approximately $75 per month. given its diverse demographic, the school caters to students on both sides of the digital divide; therefore, developing a distance learning plan in response to covid-19 became a task of identifying practices for sharing resources that would be accessible to all students. the principal, interviewed in this research, shared how the school went through multiple iterations and encountered numerous obstacles when developing a programme. by mid-may, the school had put together a rotation system where parents picked up and dropped off printed homework at assigned times from the school, which proved to be effective and meet all learners’ needs. given its success in maintaining learning through a printed rotation system, all students completed their school year and the school was one of the few to start the 2020/2021 school year as scheduled in september 2020. unlike other members of this small cohort, the school did not use high-tech methods such as zoom classes to keep children learning. example 2: in haiti, 52% of households have access to a radio, making radio the most common medium for media consumption (finscope, 2018). recognising radio as the most democratic and effective means of disseminating learning materials in haiti, a university-based research centre, in collaboration with two international ngos, created three radio programmes – a literacy programme supplemented with a reading hour programme and a pre-k social and emotional learning (sel) and parent engagement programme – as part of a comprehensive approach to distance learning in a low-tech environment. broadcasting on a countrywide network of community and catholic radio stations was supported by the distribution of 15 000 radio devices equipped with solar panel chargers. adapted from a pre-existing classroom curriculum and leveraging an agenda of listener-centred activities, radio episodes integrated learning opportunities in french and creole while also seizing opportunities to support students in developing key social and emotional skills during shutdowns. accessible to students outside of the centre’s typical beneficiary schools, the radio programme attempted to reach students on the wrong side of the digital divide and enabled thousands of students to remain engaged in learning despite being unable to communicate with their teachers and classmates. 2862021 39(1): 286-290 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.17 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) example 3: an ngo founded in 1994 whose main objective is the “elimination of social barriers to learning,” prioritises education projects in rural, peri-urban and underserved communities of haiti. over the past two decades, the ngo has created digital content for learning in french and creole and introduced hundreds of interactive whiteboards (tni) into classrooms. today, 50 000 students across rural haiti have tni in their classrooms (ngo, ceo interview). during the covid-19 school closures, the ngo adapted some of its material for radio broadcast to target primarily high school students. they broadcasted through radio télé la brise in the south department (ngo, ceo interview). 3.4.2 addressing a lack of psychosocial support example 1: a foundation based in haiti’s artibonite region uses the arts, psychosocial support and education to foster resilience and empower at-risk adolescent girls and differently abled and marginalised youth in rural haiti. taking a whole-person approach to cultivating resilience, the foundation provides counselling, health and well-being education and support, along with literacy, academic strengthening, skills-building and scholarships to its learners. in an effort to support psychosocial health, during the lockdown, the foundation provided a basic cell phone to each of its 1 000 beneficiaries and set-up weekly check-in calls with their girls. in these check-in calls, staff listened and encouraged the girls to journal. the foundation distributed packets with tools to support youth in detecting, accepting, articulating and defusing any stress. the foundation also introduced an innovative toll-free hotline for their beneficiaries to call from monday to saturday from 9am to 3pm in order to speak to a nurse, teacher or counsellor. example 2: students were not the only demographic struggling with the psychosocial impact of covid-19. based on a need identified through interviews with mothers during this research in august 2020, a university-based research centre organised a series of focus groups for haitian mothers to discuss the specific causes of stress in their lives during the pandemic and what, if any, action could be taken. mothers shared that they felt “overwhelmed,” “unseen,” “isolated,” and “hopeless”. in an effort to mitigate the negative impact of these stressors, the centre launched alo manman, kòman ou ye? or “hi mama, how are you?” in which haitian mothers in the programme, aged 20 to 45, received a well-being and check-in call once a week from a trained facilitator. calls were tailored around empathetic listening, positive coping mechanisms, stress-reducing techniques and optional prayer and song. addressing gaps in nutrition one of the key revelations of this study is the limited response to food insecurity for students during school closures. while the wfp distributed food to 90 000 children, there were no other clear or systematic approaches identified and no clear information on the outstanding 210 000 students who rely on school canteen programmes for daily nutrition. in some interviews, parents discussed how their children’s principals took the initiative to distribute the school’s canteen supplies to families they knew to be in need. more detailed research and inquiry is needed to fully map the reality of the response to nutrition gaps in haiti. 2872021 39(1): 287-290 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.17 boothby, hart, chandler & dupuy leveraging community-based innovations during covid-19 in an interview, a senior official in the haitian ministry of education highlighted the national policy for school feeding programs released in 2016 (republique d’haiti, 2016). this policy was designed to eliminate hunger as a barrier to education by working with the department of agriculture to shift sourcing from imported goods to quasi-exclusively local supplies. the report outlines the complicated “call for tender” system in haiti that ultimately prohibits informal local producers from participating in production. it recommends the creation of a database to register local suppliers as primary suppliers for school feeding programmes. the recommendations of the 2016 policy, to date, have not been taken up. the interviewee felt strongly that the implementation of these measures could have countered the challenges food distributors faced during covid-19 shutdowns due to disruptions and delays in global supply chains. at the time of the interview, the interviewee reported that four million haitians were on the brink of famine and hundreds of thousands of students were left without their school meal on 19 march 2020 (government, moe interview). 4. discussion and recommendations while this research illuminated a variety of promising and innovative practices, perhaps more importantly, it revealed limited coordination among responders and on the part of the government or other entities that were able to comprehensively impact the majority of students. the experiences of interviewees exposed serious inequities as it relates to learners’ ability to continue education (digitally or through other means) and the overall health and well-being of haiti’s students and their families. the limited scope and capacity of the government’s response to distance learning failed to reach the majority of learners and while individual actors worked to address these gaps, they were unable to scale and share innovations in realtime to meet the immediate needs of the crisis. schools reopened in august and september 2020 with no apparent adjustments or plans in place by the moe for future crises. despite the impact of covid-19 on learners and their families in haiti, the question of how the system will respond to future crises and ensure all students have access to learning and learning adjacent needs continues to loom and must be addressed. the research from this exploratory study exposed serious problems and inequities in the haitian education system; however, it also revealed potential assets in the form of innovative programming and responses. these efforts were primarily driven by non-governmental actors and more accurately reflected the reality of haitian learners and families than the response of the government. however, while promising, these initiatives were small in scale and did not have the funding or necessary coordination to achieve high impact on the entirety of the system. therefore, more comprehensive and in-depth research is needed to understand how to identify initiatives and mechanisms with the greatest potential for efficacy while simultaneously reflecting the realities of the haitian context. future research should also address how to scale and build upon promising innovations and mechanisms as well as how to forge the best partnerships to do so. while moes in many countries are well positioned to lead comprehensive education initiatives, that is not currently the case in haiti. eighty-five per cent of haitian schools are run by non-governmental actors, and ultimately, it was a subset of these actors that initiated the more promising responses to covid-19 school closures that addressed not just academic needs but learning adjacent needs as well. careful thought is required to fully understand how to build a more resilient and equitable haitian education system that leverages the experiences of non-governmental actors and addresses the holistic needs of learners. 2882021 39(1): 288-290 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.17 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) what will the state of education in haiti look like in 2030? without any plan put in place now, the answer to this question could be grim. an ecumenical commission is needed to oversee further in-depth research and thoughtful deliberation on how to organise the many different haitian education, religious, civil society and private sector actors into a coherent and resilient system that better serves the interests and rights of all haitian children. references abraham, j. 2019. segregation in basic school in 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available at www.wfp.org/countries/haiti [accessed on 18 may 2020]. world food program. n.d. what the world food program is doing in haiti. available at https:// www.wfp.org/countries/haiti [accessed on 7 november 2020]. https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1862/usaid_haiti_education_fact_sheet_-_january_2020.pdf https://www.usaid.gov/sites/default/files/documents/1862/usaid_haiti_education_fact_sheet_-_january_2020.pdf https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/eg.elc.accs.zs?locations=ht&view=map https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/eg.elc.accs.zs?locations=ht&view=map https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/eg.elc.accs.ru.zs?locations=ht&view=map https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/haiti/overview https://www.worldbank.org/en/country/haiti/overview http://www.wfp.org/countries/haiti https://www.wfp.org/countries/haiti https://www.wfp.org/countries/haiti _goback 742023 41(1): 74-87 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 cross-cultural collaboration through virtual teaming in higher education abstract scholars from three universities in three different parts of the world – north america, africa, and eurasia – across different cultures, disciplines, and contexts, collaborated with the objective of advancing transversal skills and intercultural competences through immersing their students in international virtual teamwork. students and lecturers represented the appalachian state university (united states of america), university of the free state (south africa), and novgorod state university (russia). in this article, we share our lessons learned from the challenges we faced in the hopes of deepening understanding in higher education concerning what can be accomplished through remote learning across continents and cultures. this work allowed us to be ahead of the collapse of traditional teaching on campuses caused by the covid-19 pandemic, as we had prior experience of online pedagogies reaching across international borders, cultures, time zones, and languages. even during hard lockdown, when travelling abroad was impossible, our students experienced internationalised curricula, interacted with international scholars and staff, and were able to continue with the programme as planned. we began this work more than five years prior to the pandemic; therefore, these efforts led to successfully switching to online learning in other courses. we began with engaging staff members as well as students in ongoing, project-based collaboration across cultures from these institutions. this required the use of synchronous and asynchronous digital platforms, which would enable staff members and students to work collaboratively for six to eight weeks to create realistic projects. staff members began to compile the collaborative co-creating courses that would be taught together, thus combining and adapting various pedagogical approaches. we then shared the responsibility for co-facilitating each course, despite different philosophies of teaching and learning. the result was a balanced blend of pedagogies, allowing students to collaborate successfully with students from the other universities. students overcame a number of challenges: (a) cultural differences; (b) infrastructure for technology platforms; (c) time zones; (d) languages; (e) age and generational differences; (f) unfamiliarity with various pedagogies; (g) interaction with other cultures and settings; and (h) stereotypes fuelled by popular media. we share our journey and the strategies that addressed these challenges, including the use of technology and results from this continued collaboration. keywords: collaboration among higher education students; cross-cultural teaching in higher education; international studies; internationalisation; transformative learning author: prof barbara howard1 dr natalia ilyashenko2 prof lynette jacobs3 affiliation: 1appalachian state university, united states of america 2novgorod state university, russia 3university of the free state, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i1.6319 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(1): 74-87 published: 31 march 2023 received: 18 august 2022 accepted: 20 january 2023 research article https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5769-5411 https://orcid.org/0009-0007-5914-9300 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1582-5024 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 752023 41(1): 75-87 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 howard, ilyashenko & jacobs cross-cultural collaboration through virtual teaming 1. introduction the three authors, who are scholars from the appalachian state university (appstate) (united states of america), university of the free state (ufs) (south africa), and novgorod state university (novsu) (russia) worked across different cultures, disciplines and contexts to collaborate with the purpose of advancing transversal skills and intercultural competences by immersing their students in international virtual teamwork. the three institutions are statefunded universities within their countries, and as such seek to serve diverse populations. all three universities seek to enhance cross-cultural experiences. both the ufs and novsu have established partnerships with appstate, resulting in faculty and student exchanges and study-abroad programmes. the collaboration between novsu and appstate began in 2014 during an international conference held at novsu attended by a delegation from appstate for the purpose of establishing a long-term partnership for future staff and student exchanges. while various staff and student exchanges, along with study-abroad programmes, resulted from this initial partnership agreement, two lecturers,1 (first and second author) one from each university, shared a vision of building a more sustainable bridge across the political and cultural divides of their countries. this vision was not unique to the two lecturers, as universities across the globe were awakening to the potential and challenges of internationalised learning and transcultural studies for their students (mackenzie & meyers, 2012; yasuhara, 2013; shin, lee & kim, 2013; eliyahu-levi, 2020). furthermore, there is an increasing awareness that intercultural exchange through mobility programmes remains exclusive (woicolesco, cassol-silva & morosini, 2022). daunted by the expense and time required for international travel for themselves and their students, these two lecturers came up with the idea of utilising their universities’ online learning management platforms and other online communication tools for online international learning opportunities. it seemed a logical step to expand the growing partnership of their universities and connect not only students, but also lecturers. this initial idea of collaboration among the two lecturers grew organically to encompass interested colleagues at both universities, as more courses were developed requiring expertise in such fields as technology, sustainability, and leadership. in 2019, a third university in south africa joined the collaboration after the first author had visited the ufs as a fulbright specialist, which added lecturers and students from yet another continent. this new partnership thus expanded the cultural diversity represented by staff and students. the network now extended across three continents and brought into the mix three different university policies and systems of governance, thus increasing the challenges and complexity. yet it enriched the experiences of all the students as well as the lecturers. blessinger and cozza (2016) emphasise that reaching the goals of a partnership or project ultimately depends on “good personal relationships between individuals”. in this case, the three lecturers instinctively found report amongst one another, which was then strengthened through weekly engagements by means of online meetings, during which we planned for the work but also at times shared our stories from our daily lives. collaboration among lecturers at university level is crucial for the effective development of coursework that will transcend cultures and geopolitical spaces (mackenzie & meyers, 2012; sun & kang, 2022; wimpenny et al., 2022). collaborators must be open to sharing their teaching philosophies and strategies as well as learning new ones. one lecturer cannot 1 we use the term ‘lecturer’ as a general reference to academic and professional staff involved in teaching at universities. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 762023 41(1): 76-87 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) simply ‘recycle’ syllabi and teach materials taught in an earlier course on his/her own (haug & jacobs, 2023). this defeats the purpose and loses the richness of cross-cultural collaboration. the collaboration cannot continue successfully if all parties are not open to engaging in new approaches to teaching and learning (mackenzie & meyers, 2012). that is not to say that there cannot be a division of skills or tasks among the group. for instance, one or more leaders within the collaborative group will keep the group on track by maintaining deadlines, setting up online meetings, handling logistics, etc. such leadership, however, should not overpower the creative nature of the group and must be trusted to empower each team member to allow for the collaborative project to develop (halim, 2021). the authors had to learn and engage with these critical principles of collaboration themselves before leading their students in such practice. yet, through commitment from all three, in line with the recommendation by blessinger and cozza (2016), challenges were overcome. according to halim (2021), effective international collaboration is at a much deeper level than many university lecturers may have experienced in the past. interaction among parties take place on three distinct levels: cooperation, coordination, and collaboration. collaboration at the level of cooperation lacks a defined mission, with little or no planning among partners. individuals retain control over their projects, only sharing individual progress, with little or no input or feedback from outside partners. this level of collaboration is generally no-risk, shortterm, with lower intensity and lack of shared resources. collaboration may come about with study-abroad programmes where a university group visits another country, but the programme itself is under the complete control of the visiting lecturer, with little or no input from the host country other than to assist with logistics (halim, 2021). there is generally not this level of collaboration described in our project; yet this is the level experienced by most lecturers who consider themselves international scholars due to study-abroad programmes. coordination, the next level up, is longer term, with more formal relationships in which partners understand the shared mission of the programme, as there has been some planning. resources are generally shared. there are open channels of communication, but authority over aspects of the project is still retained by the individuals involved. this may create a power struggle in the long run. there is higher risk than at the coordination level, but it is still considered low-level risk, as any partner may withdraw and retain authority over his or her part of the project (halim, 2021). the highest level of interaction among partners is collaboration. this was the level sought by the partners engaged in the project reported in this article. according to halim (2021), collaboration tends to be longer term, with commitment on all sides for a common mission developed mutually over time. this level of interaction results in a totally new structure or programme through input and exchange of ideas among all partners. resources are shared, and there is open communication that is sustained over a longer period. at the heart of such a project one finds a level of trust and a common value base, in spite of geo-political divides (blessinger & coza, 2016; jacobs et al., 2021). in our project, collaborative efforts have been sustained through such open communication since 2014. no one partner or university lays claim to the project, as the input and resources are mutually shared, and the project is coowned (cf. kirk et al., 2018). the level of collaboration among the partnering universities of this project resulted in a programme of four courses developed over several years, rolled out at different tempos. three of the four courses have been co-taught to students representing each university, with https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 772023 41(1): 77-87 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 howard, ilyashenko & jacobs cross-cultural collaboration through virtual teaming the fourth only bilaterally, as one university was unable to participate. while the registration of students, payment to lecturers, if applicable, and course credits are handled separately at each university according to their policies, the goals and objectives of the programme and within each course are shared by all partners. this is a typical feature of collaborative online international learning programmes and lessens the complexities (haug & jacobs, 2023) the project described in this paper follows a journey filled with challenges and celebrations, as it becomes a story of effective collaboration among lecturers from three very different cultures and systems of university governance. all courses were offered through virtual classrooms making use of online learning and communication platforms. this allowed students to engage in synchronous and asynchronous collaborating interaction with peers from around the globe. the results of the collaboration among the lecturers, including course development, pedagogical approaches and outcomes, will be shared below. in this paper we chronologically share our collective experiences on virtual international collaborative teaching and learning that evolved organically to a project of four complementary courses. ethical clearance was obtained for research on this project (ref ufshsd2019/2056/1402). we situate the paper in the current discourse on online international learning and reflect on how our experiences could inform future projects. 2. the experiences of the lecturers in developing these courses to be used transnationally, lecturers did not have the option of traditional face-to-face classrooms with regular meeting times. the nature of these courses forced lecturers to develop new skills in teaching based on theories of online learning and andragogy. while it could not be predicted that such skills would prove so valuable later during a global pandemic, at the time, online learning through distance education programmes was the only way to accomplish the vision and goals established. the collaboration allowed a rich diversity of pedagogical philosophies and strategies that created learning opportunities for students who ordinarily would not experience them. for example, the lecturer from appstate regularly immersed students in project-based learning and action research, while the teaching approach of the lecturer from novsu focused more on direct instruction and lecture. these lecturers learned from each other to bring in diverse andragogical approaches. it is important that lecturers find the proper approach for the context in which courses are offered (mashaui & nyawoii, 2021), which in this case was in a virtual international space. 2.1 early development of courses between two countries at the start of this project, the platform used was openqwaq, a three-dimensional (3d), immersive platform that involved avatars and virtual environments similar to second life, to bring lecturers and students together. originally developed by the united states navy (maxwell et al., 2011), the platform was adapted for use in higher education to bring together students from remote areas across one or two states. the partners in this collaboration utilised the platform to bring their students together from two different countries (usa and russia). this first course focused on cross-cultural communication, which was deemed a foundational course for all subsequent courses. this first course, and all subsequent courses, were grounded in project-based learning (barber & king, 2016). this approach, while deviating from the more traditional russian lecturing approach grounded in theory and content, allowed the lecturers to provide realistic, relevant projects requiring collaboration among student https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 782023 41(1): 78-87 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) team members, with all teams comprising students from each of the two countries. the more traditional approach to teaching morphed into some sessions of direct instruction (i.e. minilectures) and required readings on theories and content associated with the project. students were required to work together in virtual teams (comprising a combination of students from the usa and russia) on a series of activities that scaffolded the final projectbased assessment task. each team selected a country other than russia or the usa for their project. specific activities engaged students in learning experiences, including culture mapping (meyer, 2014) of their own as well as another country, doing research about that third country, developing a business proposal and finally presenting the business proposal to their peers and lecturers as an imaginary audience from the third country. placing students in virtual teams online in openqwaq began the process of transformative learning (taylor, 2008) as they struggled with language barriers (translators were assigned to each team for those who were non-english speaking), time zone differences of up to seven hours, and cultural expectations for a course in higher education. in transformative learning, students must first be placed outside their usual comfort zone, which challenges familiar paradigms. to transform their thinking, they must first abandon such paradigms to seek more innovative and appropriate solutions to the problem (taylor, 2008; patterson & munoz, 2015). in placing students into virtual teams with those from another culture upon whom the success of a project depended (haug & jacobs, 2023), the students were forced to examine their existing paradigms, including biases, prior knowledge of other cultures, and expectations for conducting decision-making among groups. openqwaq, hosted by appstate, was used for synchronous meetings among the students. students came together with staff for ‘real-time’ presentations, discussions, and activities. due to time zones and work schedules of students, these meetings took place on saturdays in the morning for usa students, which was afternoon for the russian students. we observed that participation was high, as students maintained a high level of commitment to the course, their teammates, and the project, despite the encroachment on personal time over weekends. asynchronous work was accomplished through the online learning management system, moodle, hosted by novsu. the course syllabus, instructions for activities, required readings, and forums were posted on this site. it allowed a common level of communication among students and lecturers throughout the course. the lecturers collaborated on the development of all course materials, on the structure of the moodle site, and review of student work, drawing from specific expertise in each of the collaborating lecturers. in this course, students met over the course of nine weeks during one semester. since the two countries’ academic calendars differ, the weeks in which they overlapped were designated for collaboration among student teams. this is referred to as the collaboration period of the course. time outside this period allowed individual lecturers the freedom to prepare or debrief their students concerning the collaboration period. additional readings or meetings were assigned during this time. the focus on the shared mission and goals of the course meant that the time spent in collaboration accomplished the desired results and any additional instruction outside the overlapping weeks strengthened student collaborative skills. during this first iteration of the course, student teams presented their projects in openqwaq (monte et al., 2011). due to the virtual environment, it was possible to invite other academics and university administrators to attend. the presentations could also be recorded and shared https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 792023 41(1): 79-87 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 howard, ilyashenko & jacobs cross-cultural collaboration through virtual teaming later. each team successfully presented a project that met the course requirements by providing the following components: culture maps of russia, the usa, and the third-party country; samples of simulated communications to the third country based on that country’s culture; and a business plan. examples of ideas presented by the teams included a business to produce yoga equipment to a partner in india and plans for a music festival to a partner in spain. the simulations required of each team to work together to design the business as well as the pitch to a third party. as a result of participation in this course, students shared the mind shift they made during the course in reflections as they discovered the unintended biases and stereotypes previously held about the other culture. they began to focus more on similarities rather than on differences. this built a bridge between two cultures that have been engaged in political struggles for decades. over the course of the weeks spent in collaboration, students were encouraged to communicate on social media and any other platform, including email and whatsapp, with the result that many continued this level of communication beyond the course. several reported becoming facebook friends, sharing mutual interests and hobbies. the results of this pilot project and initial course encouraged the continuation and expansion of the collaboration. participating lecturers evaluated the course based on the level of the projects presented, the reflections of students at the end of the course, and the level of engagement of students throughout the course. all projects met the requirements and exceeded the expectations of the lecturers. reflections of students indicated the value the course brought to their individual growth in understanding diverse cultures. no students left the course or lacked regular engagement on moodle or attendance – even at the saturday meetings. these student reflections, social media postings, and course assessments represent the data sources used to evaluate the course and the international collaboration. we were able to determine that all students achieved the stated goals of the course through the assessment of the project and course postings in moodle. we had a focus-group discussion with the cohort of students at the end of the course and requested that they submit a personal reflection paper regarding their perceptions of the course and its impact on their views of different cultures. each student shared an increase in positive perceptions of different cultures. inspired by the success of the project, the first two authors committed to expanding the project and to ensure sustainability. 2.2 continued course development through collaboration the initial course development continued from 2014 to 2018, when new courses were introduced as more colleagues became intrigued with the international collaboration. the model for the courses followed the pilot project in terms of lessons learned and structures that worked. all subsequent courses followed the same simple developmental structure: collaboration among lecturers from all participating universities; courses attended by students from all collaborating universities; project-based learning reflecting the course goals; and the establishment of virtual teams among the students. this structure reflected the constant monitoring and input from the lecturers as they applied the lessons learned from the initial pilot project. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 802023 41(1): 80-87 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) 2.3 reflecting on lessons learned during the early collaboration efforts the cross-cultural communication course provided a starting point for continued collaboration. the use of the moodle site offered a means of providing consistent information and resources across all universities so that students could share posts and materials with all lecturers and students engaged in the course. expectations and requirements for the course, designed by the team, were uniformly presented. the use of this course management system allowed uniformity across the board, bringing the entire group of students together. this moodle site continues to be hosted by the russian university. this is an example of resource sharing that is vital to collaborative efforts (halim, 2021). the openqwaq platform, while enjoyed by most of the students, was problematic. it presented complicated room settings and graphics designed to engage learners, but challenges in the virtual international class abound. the more graphics are used, the greater the bandwidth necessary to sustain it. in remote or rural areas, regardless of country, the infrastructure simply was not available. stanford (2020, par 2) warns that frequent use of high-bandwidth technologies can limit [students’] ability to fully participate in course activities. this can jeopardize their success in the course, create a sense of shame and anxiety. staff at the us university worked on the support, but the technological issues often proved to be beyond the staff’s skill and knowledge levels. students were often ‘kicked out’ by the system when the bandwidth became overloaded. sound was sometimes lost. students often did not have the means to supply the necessary equipment such as external microphones or headsets. subsequently it was impossible for all the groups to post all their materials on the platform due to the many issues. this resulted in frustration and lost materials, which then had to be recovered and posted through the moodle site or sent as attachments via email. after the second year, as technology developed and more platforms became available, it became obvious that an alternative platform might be more appropriate. as the collaboration continued, the universities switched to using zoom, which was hosted by the us university. zoom allowed a more stable online environment. students connected through cameras rather than avatars, offering a much more realistic approach. the added advantage was the more personal approach. chat boxes became a good feature to share as it was sometimes easier to read the written statement rather than listen to language heavy with an unfamiliar accent. screen sharing, breakout rooms, and recording of sessions offered various instructional advantages. as zoom was a much more widely used and therefore familiar platform, it did not require the same level of training. there were no downloads or bandwidth issues as previously experienced, thus making it easier to use. this is important in online learning, as the course should not be about the technological platform in which instruction is delivered, but about the experiences and content knowledge gained. the us lecturers also had the advantage of access to their university subscription of zoom, which provided unlimited access around the world. since zoom had been adopted for online distance education programmes at the us university prior to the shut-down of universities due to the pandemic, these lecturers had participated in long-term professional development in online andragogy. this experience and training not only served the international project, but greatly eased the transition to closed campuses and mandatory online classes. indeed, mashaui and nyawoii (2021) emphasise the importance of sufficiently preparing both the lecturers and the students for any form of online learning. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 812023 41(1): 81-87 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 howard, ilyashenko & jacobs cross-cultural collaboration through virtual teaming most importantly, the earlier pilot programme reinforced the need for collaboration among more of the university lecturers, and some were invited. the authors remained a core team, involving also other who became the virtual teams they intended to teach to their students. this required a shift in approach and philosophy of teaching as lecturers shifted from individual course design to a collaborative co-teaching model based on co-design. not all instructors (beyond the three authors) were, however, able to make this shift successfully, and some left the project or were replaced. in this regard, blessinger and cozza (2016, par 12) explains that within this multi-cultural context, some discomfort may arise as participants struggle to understand different perspectives and customs. so, given the different cultural beliefs that may exist in international partnerships, it is important that all participants come together in a spirit of solidarity that is centred on shared values and a shared vision. the design and implementation of a transnational online course are indeed neither simple nor easy, especially when involving public universities on three different continents with vastly different systems of policies, resources, and governance. navigating these differences to allow lecturers to collaborate and students to participate was one of the first hurdles. haug and jacobs (2023) point out that in such collaborative virtual learning space there is no transfer of credits, and each institution retains its autonomous administrative processes (e.g. processing of marks), and likewise we were each responsible for our own registration of students and the concomitant administration. also, working with the respective international offices2 within each university in this project proved to be a major advantage in negotiations within institution to overcome barriers. using the positive results of the pilot project also assisted, as the obvious advantages to each university in developing rigorous online international experiences for students figured largely in the strategic planning for each partnering university. 2.4 moving to tri-country collaboration the third partnering university (ufs) joined this collaboration in 2019 as a result of a formal partnership between appstate and the ufs, as well as the first author’s visit to south africa as a fulbright specialist, advising on distance education programmes. inspired by what was shared, and mindful of the national policy framework on internationalisation of higher education in south africa that was forthcoming at that time,3 the third author saw the invite to join in the project as a means to build capacity for online international learning by engaging professional staff from relevant offices (e.g. working on curriculum design and in international offices) as ‘students’ in the cross-cultural communication course. haug and jacobs (2023) explain the importance of experiencing online collaborative learning first-hand as part of staff capacity development. 2.5 additional courses in the programme once the programme had become established at each university according to their policies, three additional courses were added. the courses focused on the following: technological platforms and systems for international learning, sustainability and best practices internationally, and leadership in virtual teams. these courses were developed and taught by virtual teams of lecturers from all three universities. each of these courses followed the 2 these offices are referred to differently at the three institutions, but generally serve to enable and support internationalisation of the institutions 3 the policy framework for internationalisation of higher education in south africa was published in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic on 6 november 2020, and inter alia requiring of south african universities to internationalise their curricula (department of higher education and training, 2019). https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 822023 41(1): 82-87 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) agreed-upon structure of collaboration among lecturers, establishment of virtual teams of students, and project-based learning, with shared content. in the sustainability course, for example, students collected actual samples from their home environments to study the worldwide impact of pollutants. this gave the students a unique opportunity to work together on real life problems informed by instruction, and their contextual knowledge. 2.6 instructional strategies the instructional strategies used in the classes were determined by the collaborating lecturers, mostly from different disciplines, but all courses relied on one final project related to the course topics that also required virtual international teaming by the students. it was not enough simply to convey the knowledge of the course, but to move to transdisciplinary knowledge to solving real-life problems. in this programme, it was much more important for students to learn the process and to experience the teaming. this created an online environment that challenged students to exchange ideas, using such strategies as literature circles in which shared readings were discussed (varga et al., 2020). opportunities for real-time authentic learning through the projects developed by each team followed by deep reflections on individual learning led to greater cultural competency (sun & kang, 2022). regardless of the strategies utilized, it was far more important that the focus be on the open exchange of ideas with an emphasis on the similarities among the students rather than the cultural differences (goodall et al., 2020). 3. student experiences this programme was widely applauded by the students who engaged in the courses. students were asked to write final reflection papers in which they shared the impact of the courses on their learning. reflection provides students with the opportunity to reflect on their learning, but also to learn through reflection (haug & jacobs, 2023) the following excerpts are representative samples of the majority of student reflections for the courses. in the words of one postgraduate student who engaged in the programme:4 during the courses we discussed several concepts, including culture, ethnocentrism, communication, and collaboration, each of which have enriched my capacity as an educational leader and global citizen. the opportunity to work on an international team was an added bonus to the courses, because it afforded me the opportunity to have rich, multi-perspective conversations around the concepts discussed in class. another student noted: collaboration on a project, proposing a new idea to a country different from both cultures, has been a fascinating experience of analysing communication structures, global leadership styles, and overall cross-cultural dynamics consideration. leadership skills were also developed that will help me later in life if working on international projects. while many challenges were faced throughout the process of developing an international project, i learned a lot outside my own culture with regard to russian and german culture. an international student reflected on her unique cultural position: as a dutch international student in the united states, i did work together with students from the united states, of course, but i was the only international student among them, which is a very different experience from working in the team during the les6100 class. our team consisted of two members from russia, three members from south africa, and me. it was a very enriching experience to work with people from these cultures, 4 the reflections of students from the usa and south africa were used, as geopolitical complexity and different ethical policies impacted on our study. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 832023 41(1): 83-87 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 howard, ilyashenko & jacobs cross-cultural collaboration through virtual teaming because i had never met people from these countries before. working professionally in an international environment was thus a very good and valuable experience for me. i am very sure it will be useful in the future as well, for any career path i may take. one of the south african students commented as follows: i really enjoyed the course. i am glad i said yes when you invited me despite thinking that i would not have time. i have no regrets, i learned so much. this sentiment was echoed by other students who found the courses helpful in understanding cultures for which they had long-held stereotypes fuelled by media and politics. as one south african student stated, i had no idea we had so much in common with one another! the impact on students in engaging in this kind of learning experience indicates the value of cross-cultural collaboration from both the viewpoints of the lecturers as well as those of the students. indeed, de hei et al. (2020) found that groupwork with diverse students in this space enhances the intercultural competences; however, the groupwork must be planned and executed to advance such competences intentionally. the lecturers continue to collaborate on course development and other projects as these arise. the programme offers the opportunity for a strong network of colleagues across these universities to extend to even more collaborations. 4. discussion reflecting jointly on the value of working together to develop and offer virtual collaborative international learning programmes allowed several issues to emerge. firstly, the project began through face-to-face contact between the first and second authors at a conference, and secondly, through a scholarly visit of the first author to the third author’s institution. in both cases, there was intentionality on the part of the universities that international work would develop, and formal agreements to collaborate in general signed, but it remained up to the individuals involved to operationalise it. kirk et al. (2018) discuss the value of combining a bottom-up and top-down approach to internationalisation of higher education towards empowerment and ownership. these initial interactions then led to many staff and students meeting and working together online beyond the intent of the universities. developing these connections at the university level is key to establishing initial contacts, leading to longterm collaboration. commitment by those instructors engaged in such collaboration and development of courses is instrumental to sustaining the courses (blessinger & cozza, 2016). secondly, the project drew from different institutional and individual resources and strengths, and an equal relationship despite positionalities was established. each collaborator brought unique strengths, both individually and institutionally, which contributed greatly to the development of the project. yet, no one voice or opinion dominates the work. this is the essence of intentional collaboration, especially in respect of diverse cultures. each collaborator must not only maintain respect for what the other partners bring to the project, but appreciate and value one another (jacobs et al., 2021). thirdly, through the virtual collaboration, opportunities arose for staff and students to participate in an internationalised curriculum, irrespective of financial inequalities, or the disruption brought by the covid-19 pandemic. indeed, it is generally accepted that virtual https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 842023 41(1): 84-87 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 perspectives in education 2023: 41(1) exchange education courses are cost effective. when such courses are developed in teams, this approach is even more cost effective, with a sharing of resources, workflow, timeline management, instructional design, and budget oversight (crowley, chen & cerver, 2018). fourthly, in the project, we worked with different disciplinary and ideological perspectives as well as different course levels (undergraduate, postgraduate and staff development), which led to rich transdisciplinary learning. the value thereof was clear, even if it brought its own complexities. in this, we attempted to break down the traditional silos that tend to confine disciplines in higher education within departments and colleges. students were then actually able to experience the ebb and flow of intersecting theories and practices such as exist in the real world, and could appreciate the value of a poli-ocular team to solve problems. haug and jacobs (2023) argue that moving into the transdisciplinary realm leads to impactful collaboration and a more holistic approach to problem solving. finally, each lecturer brought students into the course for a wider range of purposes than are normally considered. for example, in south africa, the course was used among staff for professional development as they learned how to engage in internationalised teaching and learning. in russia, it was primarily an opportunity for the development of english-speaking skills and cultural awareness that would benefit them in business and medicine. in the usa, the courses offered credits for a postgraduate programme in educational leadership. the flexibility that came with this approach has revealed incredible opportunities beyond our expectations. it further demonstrates the value of this type of collaboration among other universities. certain limitations must, however, be noted. data from students were limited to those who gave permission for their reflections to be used, and excluded the reflections of the russian students, as a result of geopolitical complexities, as well as different ethical policies at the time of writing the manuscript. this in itself is an example of respecting differences, whilst maintaining positive academic relationships. 5. future directions it is becoming harder and harder in today’s political climate to arrange student or staff exchange programmes among universities in countries that may be experiencing conflict or sanctions. yet, due to the pandemic and move toward globalisation, it is more important than ever that as citizens of the world, we understand one another and experience a deep sense of diverse cultures to combat increasing levels of xenophobia and nationalism threatening our nations. working with policies and administrations in higher education can be the most challenging aspect of transnational collaboration for the academics, and professional staff of a university. this is especially true when administrators change positions, leaving behind promises of resource allocation and support for the programme. maintaining strong advocacy in administration is critical to continuance of this kind of programme. this programme challenges the traditional methods of enrolling and supporting students at most universities – even for online distance education programmes. because it brings together students and lecturers from three universities with different policies and governance, it had to be established that each student be registered and enrolled at their home university. this resulted in counting the academics’ load at the home university as well as student tuition, credit for coursework, etc. certification for the course had to originate with the home university, which created another set of permissions and policy changes to in some cases, https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 852023 41(1): 85-87 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 howard, ilyashenko & jacobs cross-cultural collaboration through virtual teaming allow students to apply these courses to their existing programmes of study. all these details were worked out among the administrations of the collaborating universities as part of their partnership agreements. this programme is capable of being expanded beyond this one four-course programme to become part of collaborative degree programmes . there is a demand for this kind of learning experience, as evidenced by student inquiries. there is a definite need for universities to reconsider how they immerse students into cultural experiences to gain true skill in international collaborations in a world that is becoming more and more interdependent. is it still enough for universities to rely on student exchanges and study abroad? the pandemic effectively shut down such programmes with its travel bans; yet online programmes such as the one described in this paper could survive the weight of a pandemic. it is quite a sensitive time in our collaboration due to the war in the ukraine, and our different governments’ positions on that. still, we continue to keep in touch on a personal level, and consider ways to advance collaborative research, until such time that it will be possible for us to continue with the courses. references barber, w. & king s. 2016. teacher-student perspectives of invisible pedagogy: new directions in online problem-based learning environments. the electronic journal of 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https://doi.org/10.1080/0305764x.2020.1736002 https://doi.org/10.1177/10283153221094085 872023 41(1): 87-87 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 howard, ilyashenko & jacobs cross-cultural collaboration through virtual teaming woicolesco, v.g., cassol-silva, c.c. & morosini, m. 2022. internationalization and home and virtual: a sustainable model for brazilian education. journal of studies in international education, 26(2): 222-237. available at http://doi.org/10.1177/10283153221076898 yasuhara, y. 2013. journey to an international collaboration on the origins of higher learning. history of education, 42(3): 299-305. available at http://doi.org/10.1080/004676 0x.2013.795617 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i1.6319 http://doi.org/10.1177/10283153221076898 http://doi.org/10.1080/0046760x.2013.795617 http://doi.org/10.1080/0046760x.2013.795617 1462022 40(3): 146-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency planning design in open, distance and e-learning abstract pedagogical contingency policy planning in open distance and e-learning plays a critical role in achieving the united nations 2030 agenda for sustainable development and the 17 sustainable development goals, with the aim to stem poverty, protect the planet, foster gender equality, defend and promote cultures and cultural understanding, and ensure prosperity for all. the purpose of this conceptual paper is to describe criticalities of flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency policy planning designs in open, distance and e-learning in developing states like south africa. furthermore, it examines epistemologies of diverse students’ pedagogic inclusion in line with social justice and equal rights during strategic planning and management. the legal rational paradigm is underpinned by a qualitative narrative research design to analyse available theories and epistemologies of flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency policy planning theories in open distance and e-learning. using the theory of justice by rawls, the paper recommends that flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency policy planning in open, distance and e-learning ecosystems must ensure that students from diverse backgrounds are catered for in line with social justice and equal rights values and principles. this is critical for a country like south africa to achieve the 2030 agenda for sustainable development and the 17 sustainable development goals. keywords: high flexibility and agility; pedagogical contingency planning (pcp); covid-19; policy paradigms; teaching and learning; open distance and e-learning (odel) 1. introduction globally, around 131 million schoolchildren in 11 countries have missed three quarters of their in-person learning from march 2020 to september 2021 (unesco, 2021). among them, 59% – or nearly 77 million – have missed almost all in-person instruction time. these 77 million students come from six countries. among these countries, bangladesh and the philippines represent 62 million of the 77 million learners impacted. around 27% of countries worldwide continue to have schools fully or partially closed. additionally, according author: prof jabulani nyoni1 affiliation: 1university of south africa, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i3.10 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(3): 146-162 published: 30 september 2022 received: 04 march 2022 accepted: 16 may 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9711-2150 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1472022 40(3): 147-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 nyoni flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency planning design to unesco’s latest data, more than 870 million students at all levels are currently facing disruptions to their education (unesco, 2021). to respond to the covid-19 pandemic, teaching and learning in open distance and e-learning (odel) and other institutions of higher learning modified students’ approaches to teaching and learning. odel planners, lecturers or facilitators generally acknowledge that ‘equal rights’ and ‘social justice’ are commonly used to depict the requirement for society to treat people fairly comprehensively. during pedagogical contingency planning (pcp) design for change, institutional leadership needs to accommodate students’ circumstances equitably, in other words fairness, social justice and equal rights values and principles must be adhered to. social justice implies redefining what it means to have access to quality instruction and learning. equal rights and social justice in education require careful inclusion of a diverse group of hybrid members of any given society, thus diversity and equity are guiding beacons. equal rights and social justice take into cognisance diverse personal experiences, values and philosophical views that emanate from race, ethnicity, gender and gender identity, religious and spiritual beliefs, class, age, colour, sexual orientation, disability, living in the diaspora and nationality to enhance creativity and learning potential. 2. purpose statement the conceptual paper discusses criticalities of flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency policy planning (pcp) designs as applied by open, distance and e-learning (odel) institutions in developing states like south africa. i furthermore examined epistemologies of diverse students’ pedagogic inclusion in line with social justice and equal rights principles, pre-, during and post-strategic planning models and frameworks. 3. flexibility and agility in odel policy contingency planning theories the single most significant agile step that institutions that offer odel mode of education delivery can take to continue facilitating teaching and learning is to increase access to those in need of education by adapting to different technological platforms. once they have done so, to deal with the complex challenges of contact facilitation, they should follow a thorough consultative preparatory process and adopt a flexible and agile pcp for online and virtual teaching and learning. an undeniable human right, education is the bedrock of just, equal and inclusive societies and a key driver of sustainable development. therefore, institutional pcp policy regimes accommodate a diverse range of students’ educational needs and accessibility. strengthening the resilience of odel systems enables institutions to respond to the immediate challenges of safely reopening centres of learning and positions them to cope better with future crises. the pcp theory is not only for disasters but involves planning and preparing for specific events such as the loss of teaching and learning time, modification of instructional modes and platforms, adapting instructional tools in open, distance and e-learning (odel) and other relevant factors undermining education reform in general. because of this, any existing institution of teaching and learning must have a contingency plan in place to ensure smooth workflow and it becomes easier to address issues and threats that way. flexibility and agility theories in pcp are the results of preparedness actions. it refers to the outcome of planning, resource allocation, training, exercise and organisation to build, maintain and improve operational capabilities based on risk assessments. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1482022 40(3): 148-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) in this concept paper, agility is the natural evolution of flexibility. up until the 1990s, the term ‘flexibility’ was used for agility, but due to pcp design changes, competitiveness and the need for speed, the term ‘agility’ was coined. while flexibility is viewed as an operational capability, agility is a strategic capability that enables an organisation to develop a strategic long-term vision. in fact, flexibility is an agility skill alongside other skills like responsiveness or speed (abdelilah, el korchi, & balambo, 2018). 4. theoretical perspective van der westhuizen (1991: 80) views contingency as an approach that requires a different management style and therefore no general way of managing is applicable to all situations. hoy and miskel (1982: 235) have the following to say: “... the contingency theories maintain that leadership effectiveness rests on the fit between personality properties of the leader and the situational variables such as task structure, position power, and subordinate skills and altitudes”. marks, stoops and king-stoops (in van der westhuizen, 1991: 137) define planning as “the management task which is concerned with deliberately reflecting on the objectives of the organisation, the resources, as well as the activities involved, and drawing up the most suitable plan for effectively achieving these objectives”. however, very little, if any, is said about flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency planning (pcp) designs. pcp design should never be reserved for calamities only but should be part of day-to-day leadership and management activities. the current concept paper uses the theory of justice by rawls (1971) that provides a contract theory of the principles of social justice in terms of the “basic structure of society, or [in other words] the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties [to] determine the division of advantages from social cooperation” (rawls, 1971: 6). the distributive justice proposed by rawls is underpinned by two fundamental principles. the first principle, which is prioritised over the second, is the idea that people’s liberties should be preserved in distribution. the second principle is the idea that any inequality that is permitted should only be permitted on the basis that it benefits the least favoured in society. many odel institutions around the world are now reopening fully, partially or in a hybrid format, leaving millions of students, particularly in developing states, to face a radically transformed educational experience in the form of open distance and e-learning. one will argue that as covid-19 pandemic cases rise and fall during the months ahead, the chaos will likely continue, with odel institutions shutting down and reopening as needed to balance educational needs while protecting the health of students, lecturers, support staff and families. invariably, agility in university leadership practices must ascertain that odel policy accommodates pro-poor students virtually, or education will remain the preserve of the elite. rawls’ (1971) theory of justice and the universal declaration of human rights affirm that education is a fundamental human right for everyone and this was further detailed in the convention against discrimination in education (united nations human rights council, 2011). after having completed a thorough situation analysis and getting an understanding about what is currently being done under covid-19 pandemic lockdown to identify the gaps, odel institutional policy planners must review their business model to accommodate the educational rights of a diversity of students. educational philosophers have also drawn on several classical philosophical discussions of justice and applied them to contemporary educational situations. for example, they have http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1492022 40(3): 149-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 nyoni flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency planning design considered how kant’s (1883) categorical imperative, mill’s (2000) utilitarianism, or rawls’ (1971) original position may help planners to provide criteria for making assessments or judgments about whether educational policies and practices are fair. in this vein, rizvi (1998: 48) identifies three broad philosophical traditions for thinking about social justice: liberal individualism, market individualism and social democracy. the liberal individualist view, drawn heavily from rawls (1971), elevates fairness as the central feature of justice. two principles of rawls (1971) come into play in the liberal individualist perspective. firstly, each person is entitled to as much freedom as possible if others share the same freedom. secondly, social goods should be distributed as equally as possible, with inequities being allocated in a way that benefits the least privileged members of society. almost diametrically opposed to rawls, the market individualist view of justice emphasises that people are entitled in relationship to their efforts. rizvi cites nozick’s (1976) work to support this perspective on social justice, which advocates that justice is measured by fair starting conditions. rizvi (1998: 49) writes that in this perspective, it is “the justice of the competition – that is, the way competition was carried out and not its outcome – that counts”. the social democratic perspective, largely drawn from marx, considers justice in relationship to the needs of various individuals, emphasizing a more collectivist or cooperative vision of society (miller, 1999; nozick, 1973). 5. related literature review 5.1 educational contingency planning pedagogical contingency planning (pcp) design is contextually defined in this paper as a planning technique (including prototyping and modelling) that determines actions to be taken by individual planners and groups at specific places and times if abnormal threats or opportunities arise. mcfarland (1977) defines contingency planning (cp) as, “a concept of executive action that embodies the skills of anticipating, influencing and controlling the nature and direction of changes”. features of a plan (mcfarland, 1977) are the following: 1. planning is a process rather than behaviour at a given point in time. the process determines the future course of action. 2. planning is primarily concerned with looking into the future, which requires forecasting of the future situation. 3. planning involves the selection of a suitable course of action. 4. planning is undertaken at all levels of management and is concerned with the future course of action. 5. planning is flexible and agile as commitment is based on future conditions which are always dynamic. 6. planning is a continuous managerial function involving the process of perception, analysis, conceptual thought, sequencing, communication, decision and action. therefore, pedagogical contingency planning (pcp) design refers to an organisational planning process of developing the thinking behind an entire odel landscape in virtual and online teaching and learning activities. pcp design is concerned with pedagogical practices that influence learning of all students, are part of the lecturer’s pedagogical thinking when they are planning their teaching and learning (nyoni, 2013). a good plan should aim at the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1502022 40(3): 150-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) improvement of physical facilities, lecturer skills and competence library services, curricular, co-curricular activities, participation in community programmes and the like. 5.2 the covid-19 pandemic as a crisis impacting on odel teaching and learning even if a second wave of covid-19 pandemic infections is avoided, global economic activity was expected to fall by 6% in 2020, with average unemployment in oecd countries climbing to 9.2%, from 5.4% in 2019. in the event of a second large-scale outbreak triggering a return to lockdown, the situation would be worse (oecd, 2020). all this has implications for equitable accessibility of education, which depends on tax money, but which is also the key to tomorrow’s tax income. decisions concerning budget allocations to various sectors (including education, healthcare, social security and defence) depend on countries’ priorities and the prevalence of private provision of these services. education is not only a fundamental human right, but also an enabling right with a direct impact on the realisation of all other human rights. it is a global common good and a primary driver of progress across all 17 sustainable development goals as a bedrock of just, equal, inclusive and peaceful societies. when education systems collapse, peace, prosperous and productive societies cannot be sustained. the massive efforts made in a short time to respond to the shocks to education systems remind us that change is possible (un, 2020). odel contingency planners should seize the opportunity to find new ways to address the learning crisis and bring about a set of solutions previously considered difficult or impossible to implement. 5.3 the impact of covid-19 as a crisis in education contingency planning the current covid-19 crisis may affect education budgets more quickly as public revenues decline sharply and governments review the prioritisation of education in national budgets (hallak, 1969; un, 2020; unesco, 2020; 2021). forecasts predict that the pandemic will lead to slower growth in government spending in the coming years and that, if the share of government spending devoted to education were to remain unchanged, education spending would continue to grow, but at significantly lower rates than before the pandemic (al-samarrai, gangwar & gala, 2020). the covid-19 crisis has brought to the fore the need to focus on pcp designs for learning equity and inclusion. the most challenging issue in education under the current crisis is to ensure that equity in access and learning are not set back. given the nature of the crisis, all countries need to lend support to the most vulnerable children to keep them from being further marginalised and ensure they remain engaged in learning. equity and inclusion in learning needs to continue being a key objective in crisis management. in any odel institution, educational pcp design is necessitated by varied reasons which include, among others, the desire for the organisation to meet the yearnings, needs and aspirations of the students and national interests, the demand for education and equitable access to education, to provide quality education to the students, to respond to innovative technological development, to ensure global competitiveness and, more importantly, to actualise education philosophy. 5.4 an exacerbation of disparities in learning opportunities an estimated 40% of the poorest countries failed to support learners at risk during the covid-19 crisis and past experiences show that both education and student inequalities tend http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1512022 40(3): 151-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 nyoni flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency planning design to be neglected in responses to quality and equitable education provisioning. the digital divide has especially far-reaching consequences when it comes to education. for students in lowincome rural districts, inadequate access to technology can hinder them from learning the technological skills that are crucial to success in today’s economy (un, 2020). technology now allows lecturers to differentiate instruction, providing extra support and developmentally appropriate material to students who require constant constructive feedback and feedforward. the latest ‘intelligent’ facilitating systems can not only assess a student’s current weaknesses, but also diagnose why students are making specific errors. these technologies could enable lecturers to reach students who are further from their lecture halls better, potentially benefiting students with weaker academic preparation. if pcp design does not cater for poorly resourced students, the process of teaching and learning violates their rights. pcp must accommodate the disparities that exist among the resourced and those that are without rights as enshrined in a bill of rights. 5.5 a wide range of distance learning tools ensuring learning continuity during the time of odel closures became a priority for them the world over, many of which turned to ict, requiring lecturers to move to virtual classrooms and other blended delivery modes. racheva (2018) defines the virtual classroom as an online learning environment that enables live teaching and interaction between lecturers and students. the most common tools in virtual lectures include videoconferencing, online whiteboards, instant messaging tools and breakout rooms. countries report that some modalities have been used more than others, depending on the education level, with variability across regions. in areas with limited connectivity, governments have used more traditional distance learning modalities, often a mix of educational television and radio programming, and the distribution of print materials. relatively few countries are monitoring the effective reach and use of distance learning modalities. estimates indicate variable coverage: distance learning in high income countries covers about 80–85%, while this drops to less than 50 per cent in low-income countries (un, 2020). this shortfall can largely be attributed to the digital divide, with the disadvantaged having limited access to basic household services such as electricity, a lack of technology infrastructure, and low levels of digital literacy among students, parents, and lecturers (anderson & dron, 2011; bates, 2012; nyoni, 2014). 5.6 digital transformation and reform in odel the emergence of internet-based distance learning is attributed to the information revolution. in addition to print materials, course materials are now available in digital format. today, students can even conduct virtual experiments and simulations with educational software applications. odel pedagogies are mapped into three specific generations; firstly, the cognitive-behaviourist pedagogy that focuses on the way in which learning was predominately prescribed, practised and researched among learners in the latter half of the 20th century. secondly, the social-constructivist pedagogy of distance education (de) focuses on a tradition of cognitive constructivist thinking that hinges on personal construction of knowledge. the roots of the constructivist model most commonly applied today emanate from the works of vygotsky and dewey and are generally lumped together in the broad category of social constructivism. lastly, the connectivist pedagogy of de emerged recently and is known as connectivism. connectivism views learning as the process of building networks of information contacts and resources that are applied to real problems. since the three generations arose in different eras and in chronological order, none of the three pedagogical generations has http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1522022 40(3): 152-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) disappeared and one will argue that they can still be used effectively to address the full spectrum of learning needs. aside from these differences, the third-generation distance learning is unlike the first two in a fundamental way. the main objective of the first and second generations was to produce and distribute teaching and learning materials to learners. the learning activities were predominantly one-way, and interactivity was supported marginally. internet-based learning, however, enables interaction between instructors and students (bates, 2012; nyoni, 2014). internet-based distance learning can be categorised into two models: recorded online courses (asynchronous) and online interactive sessions (synchronous) (anderson & dron, 2011; nyoni, 2014). the covid-19 crisis has shed light on the key enabling factors for effective digital education: connectivity and suitable digital equipment for students and lecturers. online and virtual teaching and learning require confident and skilled lecturers in using digital technology to support their teaching and adapted pedagogy, leadership, collaboration and the sharing of good practice and innovative teaching methods. experiences from this period show that education and training systems and institutions that previously invested in their digital capacity are better prepared to adapt teaching approaches, keep learners engaged, and continue the education and training process (anderson & dron, 2011; un, 2020; unesco, 2020; 2021). internet connectivity is now a public utility that can be used to improve learning capacity. to comply with human rights tenets, it is critical that odel policy planners equitably provide accessibility and connectivity to the poorest students. the internet and broadband connectivity plays a critical role in solving many of the world’s most pressing challenges. the internet offers important avenues for countries to transform themselves into hubs of knowledge, innovation and progress; broadband technologies are a means to access the internet, and they are also widely recognised to make a significant contribution to productivity and employability. hence, it is critical for education institutional policy planners to make certain that those poor students have access (un, 2020). 5.7 odel exercise of educational contingency planning ecosystem pcp is fundamental to the achievement of set goals in any organisation. pcp design is a deliberate effort to determine the future course of action for accomplishing predetermined goals and objectives. akpan (2000) conceptualises pcp design as the process of examining the future and drawing up or mapping out a course of action for achieving specified goals and objectives. it involves working out, in broad outline, the informal and procedures for doing them to accomplish set purpose. similarly, unesco (2003) describes pcp design as a process that makes it possible to work out a systematic outline of activities to be undertaken to meet the developmental objectives of a country within that country’s possibilities and aspirations. these definitions depict that pcp design is both futuristic and goal oriented. it is intelligent preparation for actions that will lead to the achievement of predetermined goals and objectives (akpan, 2000). it involves a conscious, careful and systematic process of arranging a future course of action directed at goal accomplishment. comb (cited in akpan, 2011) describes educational pcp design as the application of rational systematic analysis to the process of educational development with the aim of making education more effective and efficient in responding to the needs and goals of the learners http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1532022 40(3): 153-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 nyoni flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency planning design and the society. this means that educational pcp design should consider the needs of the pupils/students in terms of learning facilities and equipment, textbooks, classroom spaces and qualified educational personnel. educational pcp strives to research, develop, implement and advance policies, programmes and reforms within odel institutions. educational planners might work at the local, national or international level to advance or improve education. leadership doing the right things management doing the right things right planning strives to research, develop, implement and advance policies, programmes and reforms figure 1: overlapping relationships of leadership, management, and the pcp design ecosystem. the three basic skills depict the following: (a) leadership is the ability to inspire a team to achieve a certain goal. (b) management is a problem-solving process of effectively achieving organizational objectives through the efficient use of scarce resources in a changing environment. (c) pcp design strives to research, develop, implement and advance policies, programmes and reforms within educational institutions (adapted from drucker, 2003) 5.8 diversity and equity contingency planning in context the scope of diversity, equity and inclusion work includes a wide range of social identities (e.g., race, gender, sexual orientation), focal groups (e.g., students, faculty and staff) and core areas applicable across focal groups and social identities (e.g., recruitment and retention, campus climate, curriculum and instruction) (worthington, 2012). for the purposes of this chapter, diversity can be defined as students from various backgrounds. as a nation and a country, the world is becoming more diverse and multi-ethnic. inclusion is the act of bringing diverse students, lecturers and ancillary staff together in a manner that celebrates and values their backgrounds. equity is the process of ensuring that each student has the access and opportunity needed to realise their full educational potential. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1542022 40(3): 154-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) morales, knowles and bourg (2014) distinguish diversity from social justice in the literature by stating that diversity encompasses fundamental efforts to improve services, handling of intercultural differences and staffing challenges, while social justice addresses power and privilege at both structural levels the level of mere representation. 5.9 contingency planning for digital transformation a digital transformation plan is a strategic, long-term plan focusing on integrated digital media channels, the implementation of new technologies, and smart, digital ways of working. the purpose of a digital transformation plan is to define how to compete more effectively with digital marketing. the scope of a digital marketing plan is typically annual, but a digital transformation plan will typically be longer since this involves creating long-term digital roadmaps. since creating awareness and achieving conversion still commonly involve offline channels such as a call-centre, digital marketing plans need to define the integration between channels using techniques like customer journey mapping. comprehensive odel pcp design requires a collaborative leadership approach that starts with developing a shared vision on how digital learning tools and resources support learning; seeking input from a variety of internal and external stakeholders; communicating with all stakeholders to encourage buy-in and using and understanding research and data to support plan goals and objectives. other key areas to consider in the pcp design include operational considerations, incorporating budget, procurement, interoperability; student data privacy; infrastructure needs, including devices and connectivity; as well as professional development (coladrci & getzels, 1955). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1552022 40(3): 155-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 nyoni flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency planning design figure 2: flexibility and agility matrix of pedagogical contingency planning design for pedagogy (adapted from coladarci & getzels, 1955) according to coladarci and getzels (1955), planners must cast their eye to the everyday functioning of educational institution to construct a realistic pcp design model. it is important, they maintain, to make explicit the problems that give rise to the pcp design and decisionmaking process so that a pcp model is chosen that is appropriate to the problems of a given area, academic or institutional development. a clear, well thought-out pcp theory provides odel not only with effective practices, but also with a frame of reference that establishes the criteria by which such practices can eventually be evaluated. as can be seen from the model (figure 2), pcp design is a systematic process that involves stating the goals of the system, determining the degree to which these goals are met and using these comparisons as a basis for establishing priorities. pcp design includes assessing the resources needed and available to attain the goals. one way of conceptualising pcp design is a series of meetings between executives who are trying to arrive at a mutually agreed set of decisions about actions to be taken in the future. in all these meetings the basic question being addressed is the same: what should we do? to develop a detailed answer to this question, it is advisable to break it into a series of more specific questions, such as those mentioned in the introduction. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1562022 40(3): 156-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) according to ruzicka and miklos (1982) this type of pcp design involves: • the identification and refinement of alternative aims; • the development of alternative means of achieving them; • the identification of the most promising means; • monitoring the extent to which aims have been achieved and; • based on the information gained, the means are revised, and aims are altered. this model implies that there is regular evaluation and alteration, not only of the way policy is operationalised, but also of policy aspects which prove unrealisable. 5.10 leadership vs management vs pedagogical contingency planning design people often mistakenly equate leadership with management, but there are fundamental differences between the two; they are based on separate and distinct competences and skillsets. management involves a focus on executing of functions in an organisation, whereas leadership is about motivating people and doing the right things right. leaders will have a vision of what can be achieved and then communicate this to others and involve strategies for realising the vision. they motivate people and can negotiate for resources and other support to achieve their goals. there is a continuing controversy about the difference between leaders and managers. some scholars argue that although management and leadership overlap, the two activities are not synonymous (bass, 2010). furthermore, the degree of overlap is a point of disagreement (yukl, 2013). in fact, some individuals see them as extreme opposites and believe that a good leader cannot be a good manager and vice versa (ricketts, 2009). katz (1955) defines management as exercising direction of a group or organisation through executive, administrative and supervisory positions. leadership is a complex, multidimensional phenomena (depree, 1989). it has been defined as a behaviour, style, skill, process, responsibility, experience, function of management, position of authority, influencing relationship, characteristic and ability (northouse, 2007). leadership is very different. it is about aligning people with a vision, which means agreement and communication, motivation and inspiration. management is a set of processes that keep an organisation running. planning processes include pcp, budgeting, staffing, task clarification, performance measurement and problem-solving when results do not go according to plan (hallak, 1969). 5.11 understanding equal rights and social justice article 1 of the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization’s (unesco) convention against discrimination in education (1960) guarantees equal access to education of all types and levels to everyone and similarly prohibits the limitation of any person or group of persons to education of inferior standards. persons with disabilities must, therefore, be granted equal access to education-by-education authorities, which is of comprehensively comparable standards to that which is available to non-disabled persons. this shows that there is a requirement of “reasonable accommodation” of able and disabled students in the same school in the unesco convention. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1572022 40(3): 157-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 nyoni flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency planning design according to unesco (2021), more than 1.5 billion students in 188 countries were out of school due to covid-19 on april 8, 2021, representing over 91 per cent of the world’s student population. the crisis has exposed vast disparities in countries’ emergency preparedness, internet access for children and the availability of learning materials. for many students, the covid-19 crisis will mean limited or no education or falling further behind their peers. students affected by university closures also miss the sense of stability and normalcy in quality education provisioning. university closures may disproportionately affect students who already experience barriers accessing education or who are at higher risk of being excluded for a variety of reasons. these include students with disabilities, students in remote locations, asylum seekers and refugees, and those whose families have lost their income because of job cuts or precarious employment or are otherwise in a difficult situation. 5.12 quality education receiving quality education is the foundation to improving people’s lives and sustainable development. major progress has been made towards increasing access to education at all levels and increasing enrolment rates in schools, particularly for women and girls. basic literacy skills have improved tremendously, yet bolder efforts are needed to make even greater strides for achieving universal education goals. for example, the world has achieved equality in primary education between girls and boys, but few countries have achieved that target at all levels of education. education enables upward socioeconomic mobility and is a key to escaping poverty. over the past decade, major progress was made towards increasing access to education and school enrolment rates at all levels, particularly for girls. nevertheless, about 260 million children were still out of school in 2018 – nearly one fifth of the global population in that age group. furthermore, more than half of all children and adolescents worldwide are not meeting minimum proficiency standards in reading and mathematics and nearly 369 million children who rely on school meals need to look other sources for daily nutrition. never have so many children been out of school at the same time, disrupting learning and upending lives, especially for the most vulnerable and marginalised. the global pandemic has far-reaching consequences that may jeopardise hard-won gains made in improving global education. to protect the well-being of children and ensure they have access to continued learning, in march 2020, unesco launched the covid-19 global education coalition, a multi-sector partnership between the united nations (un) family, civil society organisations, media and information technology (it) partners to design and deploy innovative solutions. together they help countries tackle content and connectivity gaps and facilitate inclusive learning opportunities for students during this period of sudden and unprecedented educational disruption. specifically, the global education coalition aims to: • help countries in mobilising resources and implementing innovative and contextappropriate solutions to provide education remotely, leveraging hi-tech, low-tech and notech approaches. • seek equitable solutions and universal access. • ensure coordinated responses and avoid overlapping efforts. • facilitate the return of students to school when they reopen to avoid an upsurge in dropout rates. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1582022 40(3): 158-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) unicef also scaled up its work in 145 lowand middle-income countries to support governments and education partners in developing plans for a rapid, system-wide response including alternative learning programmes and mental health support. 5.13 the right to education to include connectivity entitlement considerable attention has been given to the use of technology to ensure learning continuity. those digital solutions to improve teaching and learning that have been institutionalised in the aftermath of the pandemic need to put equity and inclusion at their centre to ensure all learners may benefit from them. lecturers and learners need free and open-source technologies for teaching and learning. quality education cannot be provided through content built outside of the pedagogical space and outside of human relationships between teachers and students. education cannot be dependent on digital platforms controlled by private companies. governments should support open educational resources and open digital access. the right to education includes making a concerted and conscious effort to equitably vary teaching and learning methodologies. the effort must include the use of blended studentcentred teaching, monitor and assess methodologies to ensure effectiveness of distance learning: guide teachers to design appropriate methodologies for the provision of online teaching, or for the organisation and facilitation of learning based on television or radio programmes or print based materials. design the duration of the distance learning units based on students’ self-regulation and metacognitive abilities, especially for screen-based learning – the unit for primary school learners should preferably not be more than 25 minutes, and no longer than 40 minutes for secondary school learners. improve learners’ engagement through pedagogical approaches that are appropriate for their interests and cognitive abilities, including utilising possible group discussion, peer assistances, and peer assessment. design formative questions, tests, or exercises to monitor students’ learning processes closely. there will be a transition period back to more school-based learning settings during which some elements of distance teaching and learning practices will revert to face-to-face provision quickly. therefore, it is advisable to plan strategies that progress from the provision of rapid responses to a transitional period, to a long-term goal of improved education provision systems. looking to the future, actions now being taken to ensure the effectiveness of distance learning will lay a solid foundation for more technology-enhanced pedagogical innovations, more open and flexible learning environments, and a more vibrant education system. the long-term goal should be to integrate key principles and key constituent elements for more inclusive, more open and resilient systems when education stabilises to a new normal. key elements of this new normal include enhanced accessibility for the most vulnerable groups, upgraded learning platforms, distance learning courses covering all grade levels and all subjects, and teachers with improved capacities in designing remote teaching and facilitating distance learning as countries rebuild and reinvent themselves in response to covid-19, there is an opportunity to accelerate the thinking on how to best support quality education for all. in the months and years ahead, coalitions of evidence-to-policy organisations, implementation partners, researchers, donors and governments should build on their experiences to develop education-for-all strategies that use expansive research from jameel poverty action lab (j-pal) and similar organisations. in the long term, evidence-informed decisions and programmes that account for country-specific conditions have the potential to improve pedagogy, support teachers, motivate students, improve school governance, and address many other aspects of the learning experience. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1592022 40(3): 159-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 nyoni flexibility and agility in pedagogical contingency planning design 5.14 diversity social justice contingency planning in education diversity is a contentious term and is generally associated with the politics of recognition around issues of race and ethnicity (sweet & etienne, 2011). it often excludes other dimensions of difference such as age, gender, class, disability, ethnicity, sexual orientation, culture, religion, family background, and cognitive style (forsyth, 1995; sandercock, 2000; doan, 2015). social justice is traditionally related with the distribution of public and private resources as well as externalities to the urban poor and working class (agyeman & erickson, 2012). critics have argued that defining social justice as socio-economic redistribution may not remedy the injustice of cultural non-recognition. since ills of our cities stem from both socio-economic inequities and cultural non-recognition and domination of ethnic minorities, there is a need to address both aspects of justice (goonewardena, rankin & weinstock, 2004). for the purposes of this paper, i use the terms ‘diversity’ and ‘social justice’ to encompass the broadest definitions possible, including those that integrate various dimensions and intersectionalities of difference (e.g. race, gender, class, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality, physical disability, culture, religion, age), as well as more comprehensive definitions of justice that include issues of cultural recognition in addition to socioeconomic redistribution (agyeman & erickson, 2012; sandercock, 2000). pcp design education and practice in the united states have only come to embrace concepts and topics related to diversity and social justice relatively recently. until the mid-1960s, ‘monocultural’ or ‘monistic’ pcp design was the bulwark of pcp design education, reflecting the notion of a unitary nation and national culture in which minority groups were expected to assimilate to the norms, belief systems, language and identity of the majority (tiryakian, 2003; kymlicka, 2003). the dominant monocultural pcp design paradigm consisted of adhering to a value-free singular public interest that contingency planners believed they could promote as technicians through rational or comprehensive pcp design rooted in positivist epistemology. one argument that remains relevant today is that issues of diversity and social justice must be integrated into all parts of the pcp design curriculum and not reserved for separate programmes that often remain on the margins of the core curriculum. there is, however, no evidence that pcp-designed schools are following such a path. 5.15 education planning institutional policy the plan, being a policy statement, is a process that determines the future course of action and is undertaken at all levels of management to drive the pcp design. it is continuous and includes the process of perception, analysis and conceptual issue. this implies that the odel pcp design provides the tool for coordinating and controlling the direction of the different components of an educational enterprise so that educational objectives can be achieved. in any country, educational pcp design is necessitated by varied reasons, which include, among others, the desire of government to meet the yearnings, needs and aspirations of the citizenry. it also includes the demand for education and access to education, provision of quality education to the people, to respond to technological development, and lastly, to ensure global competitiveness and, more importantly, to actualise government political philosophy. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 1602022 40(3): 160-162 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) 6. conclusion covid-19 pandemic disruptions on the scale the globe witnessed are not limited to simple calamities, but may also result from natural, education, health, political, economic and environmental disaster. their impact on odel institutions’ capacity to plan effectively and efficiently hinges on foresight, agility, flexibility, readiness and preparedness to provide policy guidelines to students, institutional leadership and management, lecturers and body stakeholders. the flexible and agile pedagogical contingency planners’ (pcps) role includes developing policies and processes that guide odel pedagogy planning, leadership and management ecosystems. odel is but one teaching and learning methodology of higher education whose pcp design team is called upon pre-, during and post-pandemics such as covid-19 to rethink how quality online and virtual delivery modes should evolve to guard against adversity, and defining the skills, education and training required to support institutions that offer odel flexible and agile pcp design ecosystem, requires meticulous rejigging of policies, processes and procedures to accommodate open equitable distribution of resources pre-, during and post-crisis periods, to avail resources to students and lecturers equitably while observing diversity and inclusion principles. in line with rawls’ theory of justice, pcp design processes must ensure that students from diverse backgrounds are catered for in line with social justice and equal rights objectives, particularly during crisis periods. this is critical for a country like south africa to achieve the 2030 agenda for sustainable development and the 17 sustainable development goals. ethics statement before compiling this conceptual paper, i sought approval from the institutional ethics review committee. the request was approved. the privacy of the participants was of no consequence for the paper dealt with pedagogical contingency planning concepts and theories. this is in accordance with the private policies of the research as no human subject’s privacy was violated. references abdelilah, b., el korchi, a. & balambo, m.a. 2018. 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https://openlibrary.org/publishers/belknap_press_of_harvard_university_press https://openlibrary.org/publishers/belknap_press_of_harvard_university_press https://doi.org/10.1080/14649350050135176 https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456x11414715 https://doi.org/10.1177/0739456x11414715 https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse/solutions https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse/solutions https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027184 https://doi.org/10.1037/a0027184 _hlk95718449 _hlk95718204 _hlk90469568 _hlk90468398 _hlk95724330 _hlk95718618 _hlk92093515 _hlk88663366 _hlk95724776 _hlk90717783 _hlk89266872 _hlk90548256 _hlk90563147 txt4 _hlk90718416 _hlk90922971 _hlk90664204 _hlk90718172 _hlk95827393 _hlk109290777 _hlk90567829 _hlk90626442 _hlk89074955 _hlk95751832 _hlk95817245 _hlk109292559 youth self-formation and the ‘capacity to aspire’: the itinerant ‘schooled’ career of fuzile ali across post-apartheid space aslam fataar department of education policy studies, stellenbosch university afataar@sun.ac.za this article is a narrative analysis of one young boy’s encounter with his schooling across the rural and urban landscape. it is set against the backdrop of the changing social reproductive context of education in south africa in the democratic period. based on in-depth qualitative interviews, the analysis probed the subjective basis on which this young boy encountered his various spatial terrains in order to establish his schooled career. the article employs the lenses of ‘aspiration’, ‘space’, and ‘technologies of self ’ to present the argument that his ‘capacity to aspire’ has to be understood on the basis of his active selfformation and disciplining, accumulated across the itinerant spaces of his life. the aim of this article is to open a window onto how young people now go about navigating their educational aspirations in the light of their contingent life circumstances. keywords: youth formation, subjectivity, aspiration, schooling, post-apartheid space introduction this article is an analysis of the ‘schooled’ career of one young person who transacts his itinerant school going in a number of spaces across his life’s geographies. the word ‘schooled’ is a referent for the ways this person encountered his school education as part of his life circumstances. his schooled body was constructed both inside and outside the institutional environments of the schools he attended. it is the argument of this article that his schooled career can be understood on the basis of a consideration of his self-representations that were cultivated in the light of the adaptations he made in his living spaces. the article is motivated by the position that qualitative work, in this case one story, can provide one view of the intersections of rapidly changing macro-societal processes and their micro-lived dimensionality (dillabough, kennelly & wang, 2008:330). an analysis of a story has the potential to reveal an embodiment of these larger social processes, of how young persons’ subjectivities emerge as they navigate their socialities. the article is based on intensive qualitative work over a three-month period. i conducted nine in-depth semi-open-ended interviews with my subject, fuzile ali (pseudonym), which were initially intended to investigate the interaction between his life circumstances and his school career. the first six interviews explored the contexts of his life, from his birth in 1990 until his grade 12 (matriculation) year in 2008, at the age of 18 years. i probed him about how his circumstances led him to move back and forth between rural and urban terrains at regular intervals, and on the adjustments he had to make to these new environments and the schools he attended. my research assistant and i subsequently interviewed twelve of his intimate associates: family members, friends, teachers, classmates and religious associates, who played a role in facilitating his schooled career. intended as secondary interviews meant to provide a basis for verifying his story, they proved invaluable in determining the unfolding trajectory of the research. they persuaded me to dig deeper into aspects of fuzile ali’s self-formation. having come to some understanding of the logic of his spatial navigations and how he performed his subjective transactions spatially. the next three interviews probed the inner dimensions of fuzile ali’s becoming and were an excavation into his mode of self-representation and management and how he comported himself through cultivating a specific bodily adaptation in his different lived spaces. fataar — youth self-formation and the ‘capacity to aspire’ 35 the interviews explored the complex ways in which this young person adapted to his itinerant social world in which his mobility from one living space to another became a formative part of his life. i concentrated on bodily styling, adaptation and discipline established in lived space. i argue that it is bodily cultivation and discipline that enabled him to develop an appropriate ‘schooled’ career that served as an entry point into fulfilling his educational aspirations in the very difficult social terrain of his upbringing. theoretical considerations the theoretical perspective employed here views youth subjectivity as fluid, ever-changing and unstable. my point of departure is a response to a question by dillabough, kennelly & wang (2008:330): “what is the combined impact of [changing] social processes upon young people’s modes of self-representation and their conceptions of the urban life as they pursue social status and recognition in the new urban city?” one approach to this question is provided by appadurai (2004:59-84), who constructs the notion of “capacity to aspire” as a way of understanding the complex webs of interactions by which people in impoverished terrains construct viable lives. appadurai (2004) argues that people’s maps of aspiration consist of a dense combination of nodes and pathways. for him, people who live in poverty have available to them a much smaller number of aspirational nodes and thinner pathways by which to enact their desires for mobility. i will suggest that fuzile ali encounters his desire to access an education in the light of smaller and thinner social nodes and pathways. understanding young people’s capacity to aspire requires the researcher to focus on how the social repertoires, rituals and performances of aspirants “increase the density, variety and frequency of the loops between the nodes and pathways” (appadurai, 2004:81) that they pursue. as a navigational capacity, the more the capacity to aspire is exercised, “the more its potential for changing the terms of recognition under which the poor must operate” (appadurai, 2004:81). appadurai suggests that specific forms of “self-governance, self-mobilisation, and self-articulation” (2004:82, my italics) are vital to the changing conditions under which aspirants establish their capacity to aspire, and thereby open productive aspirational routes. he argues that, instead of viewing social rituals, practices and performances as meaningless repetition of set patterns of action, they should be viewed flexibly as producing new social effects, feelings and connections out of which sets of individuated practices are generated (appadurai, 2004:83). the capacity to aspire thus provides a lens to understand how young people like fuzile ali, who are caught up in impoverished contexts, use what dillabough et al. describe as the agency “that young people may accumulate as spatial divisions and social relations intersect” (2008:331). i deploy two interconnected theoretical constructs to bring fuzile ali’s aspirant navigational routes into view. ‘space’ and ‘self-formation’ provide lenses through which to understand how he opens up a viable schooled career. the notion of space draws on the work of spatial theorists such as lefebvre (1991/1971), and massey (1994), while self-formation draws on nespor (1997) and reay (2000; 2005). lefebvre (1991/1971) lays out the analytical territory of space, viz. the interaction among physical or material space, representational space and lived space, and points out that production of space is tied up with power and politics, and the production of inequality. lefebvre suggests that the uses of space are classed, gendered and racialised (1991/1971:5-40). the point to emphasise is that space, or ‘lived’ space, is produced by human agency. space is not an empty container separate from human action; rather, the notion of lived space suggests that human action is constructed of dynamic interaction with the physical attributes of the environment. space is socially constructed within multiple and interwoven social relations (massey, 1994: 3). it involves the production of material and symbolic practices in specific localised contexts, themselves produced within wider circuits of global, national and local scales (lefebvre, 1991/1971:2). fuzile ali’s mobility across different spatialities (in reference to the relational production of human agency in space), across urban and rural environments, is a fundamental dimension of his aspirant schooled becoming. space plays a crucial part in “both extending and limiting a young person’s ‘horizon of action’, and operates as a productive context” (dillabough et al, 2008:333) for his unfolding subjectivity. space also provides the formative texts in terms of which he exercises his aspirations against the odds imposed by perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201036 his environment. important about his story is how he subverts and invents space, how he moves to extend beyond its physical limits. a reading of the ‘body in space’ makes an understanding of such spatial inventiveness possible. capturing the iterative relationship between space and bodily experience, nespor (1997:122), argues that bodily dispositions are formed in the flows of human activity in and across specific spatial environs. my focus is on how bodies are constructed and how their relationships to space are constructed – how, for example, fuzile ali’s self-construction takes place across space in which his relations with people and institutions are important. i will suggest that a key part of fuzile ali’s self-formation across his lived spaces entails the affective aspects of his aspirant adaptations, what reay (2005:911) calls “psychic economy”, which refers to “affective aspects of class – feelings of ambivalence, inferiority and superiority, visceral aversions, recognition, abjection, and the markings of taste”. key to his spatial expressions is his ability to comport himself in relation to the normative expectations of each situation, in effect constituting effective self-management. reay (2005:912) points out that a key aspect of self-formation is that it is constituted in dynamic interaction among thinking, feeling and social practices. for her the emotional or psychic dimension is a key aspect of self-formation. as i illustrate below, it is fuzile ali’s ability to adopt appropriate comportments in his various living environments that enables him to maximise his capacity to aspire. his ability to control and adapt his body (see reay 2000) to the expectations of the “psychic economy” of the spaces in which he finds himself, is crucial to how he thickens his social nodes and networks. i will argue that it is his ability to adapt to, and manipulate these psychic economies that provides him with the platform to cultivate an aspirant schooled body in the light of his spatial terrains. i proffer the argument that his ability to marshal a specific self-representation depends on his inventiveness in utilising his acquired knowledge, which is key to establishing his aspirant schooled career. fuzile ali’s mobile spatial tapestry this section sketches the spatial tapestry against which fuzile ali wove his aspirational mappings. his life is an example of massey’s (1994:337) view that lived space is constituted through social relations and material practices in the light of the material textures of the environment. fuzile ali was born in 1990 in a poor rural village in south africa’s eastern cape province. the closest town, umtata, is 50 kilometres from his family’s homestead. he initially lived with his father’s parents, but from the age of two he stayed with his mother’s family some distance away, in the same village environs. his father was away working in johannesburg and his mother lived away from home, practising to become a sangoma. they played a very minor role in his upbringing. instead he grew up with his maternal grandparents until he was eight years old. through fortuitous circumstances, he spent a large part of his middle childhood, from age eight to fourteen years, with his paternal grandfather’s family. from an early age fuzile ali learnt to adapt to the changing domestic circumstances which were the result of changing family dynamics. his maternal family’s ties to a tradition-based village-lifestyle shaped his early childhood. he spent his childhood as a village boy who played an indispensable role in the family’s domestic economy. fuzile ali learnt to look after cattle, tend to the yard, run errands and generally play a role in day-to-day family life. he came to understand the importance of cattle in this rural cosmology. it was through his commitment to shepherd work that he learnt the values of responsibility, commitment and hard work, which played a crucial formative role throughout his childhood. fuzile ali’s cultural experiences were made up of an amalgam of traditional rituals and social texts, and sporadic interaction with the christian church in the village. he spoke of a syncretic interaction with african traditional rituals, on the one hand, and church attendance, on the other. the socialisation context of his rural village-upbringing provided him with a firm grounding as a proud boy who loved to render poetry. he basked in the adulation of his elders, who adored him because of his articulateness and respectable nature. he attended the singlebuilding, multigrade primary school in the village, where he received rote instruction from a strict teacher in the isixhosa language. he learnt to enjoy the rhythms and routines of attending school. he explains that it provided him an escape from his daily chores, while introducing him to reading books in isixhosa, new friends from surrounding villages, and an opportunity to partake fataar — youth self-formation and the ‘capacity to aspire’ 37 of the food that periodically arrived at the school via the new government’s nutrition programme. school attendance, however, was subordinate to the vagaries of rural existence. tending to cattle early in the morning, as well as taking cattle for periodic dipping, meant that he often arrived late for school or missed full school days. this seemed to be acceptable in the context where the school had to fit into the traditionorientated rural culture. nonetheless, this is not a case of fuzile ali being “trapped by place” as bourdieu (in dillabough et al, 2008:333) suggests, with his horizons being closed by the sporadic and halting commitments of his community to school going. instead, his rural school provided a basis for his ongoing engagement with his school going. attending the school laid a basis for cultivating a mental image of becoming a schooled person, which he could marshal as his early childhood unfolded. fuzile ali had begun to enjoy schooling and had marshalled the oral, reading and memorising skills gained at the village school as part of his self-image as an ebullient, responsible and likeable young boy. until then his cosmological universe was limited to this rural village, the rhythms and semiotics of his xhosa oral culture and the spatial vistas in which his tradition-based upbringing took place. this rural village was not left untouched by modernities that played out in the city, especially through the cultural influences of itinerant migrants who worked in big south african cities (bozzoli, 2004), nor were its cultural and political orientations and economic organisation left unscathed by the larger processes associated with global reorganisation, economic reconfiguration and reforms that accompanied the democratic order. as ngwane (2001) shows, the changing nature of mining in south africa rearranged the political economies of rural villages, affecting their ritual and cultural organisation, the nature of authority relations between elders and the youth, and the spreading of newer forms of gendered power relations. rural villages were also caught in deepening poverty as the remittances of migrant labourers dried up. as his withdrawal from the village school shows, change on global and national scale impacted the local cultural economies of villages such as fuzile ali’s. the impact of educational reform played out in his village school in the middle of his third year at school in 1998. informed by neo-liberal principles of choice and partnership funding for schools, the south african schools act (doe, 1996) that was promulgated in 1996 made it possible for schools to charge user fees to augment the under-funded state allocation. his school decided to charge an annual fee of r20, a pittance for middle-class urban families, but an enormous sum for someone living in an impoverished rural village. lack of affordability and the overriding survivalist and subsistence orientations of his family led to his grandfather simply withdrawing fuzile ali from school, interrupting his school going at the age of eight years in the middle of grade 3. consequently, he became a full-time participant in his grandfather’s domestic economy, spending most of his time looking after the homestead’s cattle. he fulfilled his domestic duties dutifully, if ruefully. his two and a half years of schooling had planted in him a desire to attend school, to perform poetry, learn to read, make new friends and escape the tedium of domestic life. he had at this stage not tied his school going to larger ambitions of becoming educated, rich and middle class. the school provided a site for him to practise his unfolding self-parallel to the constrictions of domestic life. tied to the social attribution of this far-off rural village, fuzile ali might have continued along a path that would have inserted him firmly into this rural space and removed education as an option for him to exercise his youthful becoming. as with many other children in similar situations, his life would have unfolded without his being exposed to the possibilities of aspiration that inhere in becoming educated. the aspiration maps of rural children generally, are operable in relation to other texts, such as rural subsistence, itinerant migrant labour and unemployment, as is more and more the case in the post-apartheid cultural landscape (see comaroff & comaroff, 2008). fuzile ali’s life then took a dramatic turn. his paternal grandfather, who lived in a nearby village, came to hear about his withdrawal from school. he arranged for his grandson to accompany him to cape town, lured by the promise of going to school. at this stage fuzile ali had minimal contact with his father’s family, but the promise of going to school in the big city persuaded him to accompany his grandfather to cape town. fuzile ali explained dramatically how he escaped from his maternal grandfather’s house in the middle of the night to embark on the journey to the city. instead of being regarded as an abduction drama, his move to the city was not unusual. unlike his maternal family, who were rural dwellers, his paternal family were urban itinerants who lived their lives between the big city and their rural village. his polygamous paternal perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201038 grandfather had two wives in different parts of the city and a third wife in the rural village. this family had sent their children to schools in the city. two of the grandfather’s sons had completed high school and were studying at a technical college and his daughter is a qualified and practising teacher. the move to cape town was therefore not as unexpected as the dramatic account of abduction might suggest. i argue, though, that his move from the rural village to the city was made possible by accessing a dormant family network which was crucial to his unfolding subjectivity as a school-going child. his mobility in urban space played a determining role in his ability to insert himself into novel educational territory. his encounters in the city were neither uncomplicated nor straightforward. the aspirational map that he built for himself emerged as a result of his active engagement in these tough newer spatial terrains. this engagement started in a school chosen for him in langa, the oldest township for black africans in cape town. although his grandfather lives mostly with his wife in khayelitsha, he decided to place fuzile ali with another wife in langa, so that he (fuzile ali) could accompany this wife’s children and grandchildren to what is regarded as a choice school in langa. this family lived in cramped hostel quarters where he shared a bedroom with five of his cousins. choice of an appropriate school in the township involves a careful judgment of the school’s safety and educational quality (see fataar, 2009a). the chosen school was a twenty-minute walk from their hostel. it was the only school in this predominantly xhosa township whose language of instruction was sotho. apparently the difficulty of adjusting to a new language was trumped by the school’s image as safe and of relatively good quality. choosing the sotho school had consequences for fuzile ali’s schooled career. he failed a placement test because he didn’t understand the questions, which were in sotho. he had to be persuaded to start back in grade 1 at the age of nine, having finished two grades at his village school. having had a head start in the rural village school, coupled with enthusiasm and an above-average intelligence, according to the teacher i interviewed at this school, fuzile ali excelled during the five years that he spent at the school. he thrived in an environment where he could attend school with his cousins, aunts and uncles. his grandfather paid his fees and fuzile made many friends in his new environs. his teachers, who regarded him as respectful, diligent and clever, noticed his ability to perform and his love of poetry recitation. he was a top academic achiever in his class. he also began to participate in the social networks of langa township and attended love life workshops, went to church with his step-grandmother, ran errands and played with the children who lived close by. above all, fuzile ali became a city child, who saw his surroundings as inspiring and pregnant with possibility, despite what my aesthetic sensibilities and ability as a researcher later recognised as somewhat grim social surroundings of this impoverished black township. this was not an aesthetic judgment of the urban terrain on which he based his urban becoming, but rather on the promise of and possibility for subjective inventiveness inherent in the city. fuzile ali came to play a more active part in how he occupied this urban space. here he discovered the power of his own inventiveness, of what he could potentially become in the city. it was his ability to access his schooling that provided him with the aspirational text for his encounters with his subject formation in the urban terrain. fuzile ali’s spatial agency across the city this urban text was abruptly short-circuited immediately after he completed grade 5 at the age of 13. changing family circumstances again affected his domestic circumstances. his grandfather decided to take a fourth wife on his retirement in the village and his step-grandmother in langa retaliated by banishing fuzile ali from her home. he reluctantly returned to his eastern cape village, where he stayed in his paternal grandfather’s homestead. the latter arranged for him to attend the village high school. a story about a report card destroyed in a fire at their khayelithsha home was presented to the school in a successful attempt to enrol him in grade 8, instead of grade 6. the memory of being put back into grade 1 at the school in langa served as a justification for fuzile ali wanting to skip two grades in the village context. without a national surveillance system for detection, grade-skipping among migrant children who frequently move between rural and urban areas is not unusual in south africa. fuzile ali was therefore inserted back into a rural space at the age of fourteen in 2004. he fell back into the routines of this environment easily. he had by now learnt to make relatively seamless adjustments to his changing domestic environment and excelled at his fataar — youth self-formation and the ‘capacity to aspire’ 39 schoolwork. he demonstrated the literacy skills he had acquired in the school in langa, where the curriculum offering was of a better quality compared to that of the village school. yet fuzile ali was looking for a way to return to the city. he spoke in the interviews about the smallness of his rural village. he missed the excitement of the city, his many friends and the opportunities to attend youth activities. his persistent search to move back to cape town was rewarded when his mother’s family presented an opportunity. the memory of his abrupt departure from his maternal grandfather’s home a few years back had faded and his family persuaded his grandmother’s sister, who lived in philippi township in cape town, to take him and his younger sibling into their shack dwelling. he was back in the city in 2005 where he endured the discomfort of this extended family’s meagre circumstances. he had to do many daily chores and take care of his sibling and was constantly reminded about the burden their presence placed on this desperate and struggling family. it was at this stage, at the age of fourteen, that fuzile ali began to play a more assertive role in creating his life’s destiny. he began to actively cultivate his own agency within his environments. he attended phakama high school in philippi, where he completed grade 9 and 10. the teachers spoke of him as an eager learner, determined and charming, who quickly became popular with his peers. grateful for the opportunity to go to school in the city, fuzile ali was able to work the formal and informal networks of this township to his advantage. while he remained focused on his schoolwork, he became thoroughly immersed in the religious, welfare and youth activities of an evangelical christian church, which ran youth and social welfare activities at an impressive centre in the township. he diligently attended church services three times a week, participated in its youth programmes, and made use of its social welfare provisions such as food, health services and clothing. the church environment also presented him with the opportunity to become involved in a drama programme that was provided in association with the church. fuzile ali’s religiosity in this environment has to be understood in the light of the many associations of which it is a part. eschatological commitments for fuzile ali combined with material need, on the one hand, and his youthful navigations, on the other, to find sustenance for his aspirations in particular environments and networks. his religious commitments generated certain understandings of life as well as the broader possibilities that inhered in such understandings. the specific readings and aspirations that he brought to the exercise of his religiosity help explain his youthful subjectivity. the attributions of space are crucial, of being inside specific spatialities that organise, articulate and give meaning to his subjective being and becoming. this understanding can be applied to his christian commitments and his ‘christianness’, in the space of the black township, and his ‘muslimness’ in the space of a subsequent environment, as i will now go on to explain. his mother, until then relatively absent from his growing up, migrated to cape town in mid-2006. she initially lived with her sister in a deeply impoverished township in cape town. fortuitous circumstances led to her obtaining a rudimentary house structure in an area of this township that was hurriedly laid on for victims of a fire in an adjacent informal (squatter) settlement. the south african national zakaah fund (sanzaf), which became involved in relief work in this area, had set up a social welfare office in response to the needs of the refugees. they also established a madrassah (muslim school) structure, where they provided basic islamic education to people who converted to islam. fuzile ali and his sibling were now required to live in this new area with their mother and had to travel to school by taxi. fuzile ali thus became somewhat cut off from his christian-based social networks, although the church continued to pay his school fees and his taxi fare and he still travelled to philippi township for his drama classes every saturday. clearly, becoming muslim had not cut him loose from his christian-based networks. nor had it alienated him from his christian and traditionally orientated family and friends, who were spread across the cape sub-region. he visited his family in the eastern cape regularly and stayed in touch with his many cousins and friends. fuzile ali became muslim after three days of attending the madrassah, the only religious structure in close proximity to their home in his mother’s township. he speaks of having been under the impression that the madrassah was a church, of people worshipping there, dressed in a particular way, reciting in a somewhat strange language. it seems from my interviews that the madrassah provided an effective religious environment in a very depressed situation. the madrassah assisted people with their immediate social welfare needs. perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201040 fuzile ali and his mother were possibly attracted to becoming muslim because of the access it provided to symbolic and material sustenance in a deeply impoverished and alienating environment. he suggested that access to food played a major role in their family’s attendance of the madrassah and in their becoming muslim. his mother left the faith after three months, but fuzile ali engaged more actively with the discursive material and opportunities that becoming muslim in this space offered. he began to associate a successful and moral youthful existence with his becoming muslim. he explained that his conversion was not based on any strong conviction about the eschatological veracity of his new religion. his move from the high school in philippi to the balaagh institute (pseudonym) in 2007 proved decisive in his youthful muslim becoming. this move afforded him the opportunity to step out of ‘black space’ into the cultural and ethnically ambiguous space of a middle-class muslim private school controlled by indian ethnic interests and attended by coloured (mixed race) and indian children (see fataar, 2005). children then paid about r12 000 per year in fees to attend the balaagh institute, situated on a newly built and fairly sophisticated campus. the south african national zakaah fund and the missionary organisation, discover islam, active in his new township, had decided that it would be in his educational and religious interest for him to complete his high school years at the balaagh institute. viewing him as an asset to their missionary efforts, these organisations decided to secure fuzile ali a place in the school. he was exempt from the annual fees and the missionary organisation paid his taxi fare to the school at which he was one of the first black african children. fuzile ali’s resilience, courage and adaptability were severely tested in this new environment. he struggled to adapt to the expected academic rigour and standards of the school where he had to take mathematics on the higher grade and english as a first language. he never wavered in his commitment to his educational improvement. he immersed himself in islamic studies, proving much more eager to learn about his new religion than his classmates. this commitment endeared him to his teachers and the school governors, but his presence became unnerving for his classmates, who ended up bullying him periodically. they challenged the school about the fuss it was making about a “stupid black kid” who didn’t pay school fees, wasted the teachers’ time asking “irrelevant” questions, and didn’t deserve to be at the school, let alone command all the attention and time teachers spent on him. fuzile ali felt deeply hurt and alienated from this environment when he experienced these verbal and physical assaults. the teachers and school management did not countenance the assaults. they managed to establish a tolerable context for him in which to complete his studies. he eventually succeeded in making friends with many of the students. he remained committed to his educational aspirations and continued to work hard at accessing the educational resources of the school, all the time figuring out and taking on the appropriate religious and educational comportments necessary for success at his new school and in his new religious environs. the decision by a director of sanzaf to have fuzile ali live in a muslim family, proved to be decisive in his successful completion of high school and his ‘muslim becoming’. he lived as a full member of this stable middle-class nuclear family, which consisted of parents and three daughters. they lived in a comfortable home within walking distance of the school. the family followed strict domestic etiquette and fuzile ali initially struggled to adapt to these vastly different domestic circumstances, to be on time for dinner and prayers, to observe the family’s table etiquette and its spatial arrangements based on a relatively strict gender separation. having mastered the domestic decorum of this middle-class religious family, he went on to use the space of his new home to commit himself to his studies, establishing a productive and rigorous routine in its protected confines. fuzile ali wrote the final matriculation examination, which he failed, at the end of 2008. he rewrote the three subjects he had failed during the supplementary examination the following march, passing two, and matriculating successfully in mid-2009. he is currently studying at a muslim theological seminary and has plans to study law at a cape town university. self-formation and bodily discipline i now consider aspects of fuzile ali’s self-formation that played a role in cultivating his schooled career. the argument pursued here is that a focus on his specific self-expression and disciplining can help explain his adjustments and adaptations during his young life. these have been key to his aspirant navigations. i fataar — youth self-formation and the ‘capacity to aspire’ 41 consider aspects of his self-formation which he develops across his living spaces, how he actualises himself in their discrepant psychic economies, and finally his bodily disciplining as an important adaptive strategy. fuzile ali’s ebullient personality was already firmly established during his early childhood. his personality was shaped in his early childhood in his rural village. his family members spoke of him as a proud and confident boy who commanded admiration and respect from the villagers. he was an obedient and expressive child, and kind and helpful towards older people, while his male peers seemed to love his company. he appeared to be a natural conciliator who never became involved in fights, although he was confronted with the occasional jealousy of some of the boys, who demurred at what they regarded as his unduly favourable treatment by his community. according to them, the attention he received was at their expense. some of his urban friends felt invisible in his company. this elevated sense of self was the result of a respectful and helpful demeanour and displays of deference towards others. his performative personality was key to these displays. it was particularly his poetry recitals in the village, later his acting ability in philippi, and his love of public speaking that gave clues into his public persona. from a young age he loved the public spotlight by means of which he cultivated a visible and commanding presence.he could entertain and hold people’s attention and his precociousness and handsome physique positioned him favourably in the various spatial arenas. people generally warmed to fuzile ali when he was in their presence. his move to the city provided a larger context for his self-formation. here he cultivated a style of self in the light of larger social relations and networks. his interactions with a wide range of institutions, friends and associates in various community interactions provided a platform for him to practise his urban becoming. here he came to understand the personal requirements for his own social advancement. unlike the limited horizons of the rural village, the city provided with a social context in which he could cultivate his personal ambitions. this explains his active and persistent search for an opportunity to return to the city after being forced to return to his village at the age of thirteen years. living in decrepit shack conditions on his return to philippi township was a price he was prepared to pay for the opportunity to return to his urban itinerary. while his schooling in various city schools played an important role in his navigations, it was his ability to access and utilise various social processes and practices in his living spaces that proved to be decisive in producing his ambitions. his unfolding self-formation from his middle childhood onwards was tied to his urban environments. he had to learn to negotiate vastly different environments, each with different expectations of acceptable behaviour and had to develop the skill of reading these new expectations in each space. he did this on the basis of displaying sensitivity to the social mores and temper of each space. his ability to read each space was built up by quickly learning what the boundaries of acceptable behaviour were, and how to position himself favourably within these limitations. it is apparent that he acquired this adaptive skill through a process of “morphing” (see nuttall, 2008:93), which refers to the ability to accumulate knowledge of cultural practices over time and in different spaces. one’s ability to morph into an urban sophisticate depends on the quality of one’s accumulated readings and adaptive capacity. fuzile ali had lots of practice gauging the acceptable behaviour in each space and determining how to maximise his presence in these spaces. morphing also suggests that one never discards the cultural impact and residue of previous experiences, but that these serve as a stock of memories whose lessons are deployed in a new situation. it seems that fuzile ali managed successfully to maximise the opportunities in each space for the bigger purpose of thickening his aspirational map on which he built his schooled career. fuzile ali’s morphing could be described as accumulative and future-orientated. he was able to bring together the skills, friendships and networks in each space into a formidable capacity to aspire, but he also acquired the ability to identify the new opportunities and skills he deemed necessary for his journey. he always sought ways to maximise the opportunities that inhered in his environments, without becoming wedded to them. his is a mobile identity based on the anticipation of becoming successful in the future and space is coincidental to his aspirant mobility. consequently, i argue that he has developed a utilitarian connectedness to his living spaces. it is not the physical environment that is important to his self-formation, but what he can become in the environment and how it can be maximised. perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201042 his enormous leap into ‘muslim space’ on becoming muslim, i argue, is one example of fuzile ali’s accumulated ability to maximise his spatial readings and transactions. adapting to an environment that is differently raced, classed and ethnicised required enormous courage. drawing on reay (2005), i suggest that fuzile ali had entered a cultural environment whose cosmological or psychic universe was unfamiliar to him. until then he had lived most of his life in black african communities. that he was able to function successfully should be understood in the light of earlier adaptations he had to make as he traversed his living spaces. emotional capital refers to “emotionally valued assets and skills, love and affection, expenditure of time, attention, care and concern. emotional capital can be understood as the stock of emotional resources built up over time within families and which children could draw upon” (reay, 2000:572). fuzile ali had accumulated the emotional capital that made such an affective leap possible. fuzile ali always resided with people other than his immediate family: with both sets of grandparents; a step-grandmother in langa, who kicked him out after five years; in a shack dwelling with distant aunts of his mother in philippi; and in the middle-class home of an indian muslim family. he didn’t grow up with the direct emotional security that a parental home provides and remained an outsider in most of the homes in which he lived. in the interviews he spoke about how he had to learn to adjust to these somewhat distant domestic situations and to find his way in all of his domestic environments as a relative outsider. this required fuzile ali to take on a kind of self-discipline and an acceptable comportment in relation to these changing domestic circumstances. he pointed out that he could never be himself, how he had to “bite his teeth” lest a critical comment about his living circumstances jeopardised his stay. he explained how he had to endure the pain inflicted by racial taunts and insults at the hands of his classmates at balaagh high school, and how on separate occasions, he was beaten up, hung by his feet, and made to jump from a balcony. he had to struggle to remain focused on his education. similarly, in the shack in philippi, he often went without food, but was afraid to complain, for fear of being sent back to the eastern cape. in the muslim home he struggled to adapt to the strict gendered arrangements and expected observance of rituals. he was often punished with extra chores and seclusion when he infringed these expectations. fuzile ali learnt to adapt to the requirements of each space. with his eyes set on his schooled career, and based on the disciplining experiences in the other spaces, he managed over time to adapt to the psychic economy of the muslim home. this proved decisive in his ability to negotiate the last two years of his schooling at the balaagh institute. self-formation and bodily discipline were crucial parts of fuzile ali’s schooled career. these abilities enabled him to access the city and its social practices and networks. his ebullient personality, ability to actualise his spatial adaptations, and adopting an appropriate self-discipline proved decisive in his ability to establish and navigate his aspirational map, and provided him with the appropriate adaptive capacity to maximise his potential of becoming someone significant. i will now discuss how he went about thickening his capacity to aspire in the light of his encounters with his different knowledges during his spatial routines. classification struggles in fuzile ali’s aspirant schooled career appadurai (2004:67) suggests that aspirations are formed in interaction and in the thickness of social life, that they are part of wider ethical and metaphysical ideas which derive from cultural norms. a young person’s educational aspirations are thus shaped by the cultural context of which they are a part. unlike middle-class children, whose cultural capital transfers between home and school are closely aligned, fuzile ali’s life circumstances were incommensurate with his desire to become educated. he had to transact his life in difficult material circumstances, interrupted by periodic movement from one living quarter to another across non-synchronous terrains. this forced mobility disrupted his school going. his schooled career therefore has to be understood in the light of his navigations across his living spaces and the schools he attended. the challenge is to understand how he and other youths in similar circumstances manage to become educated. central to such a consideration is how they access and accumulate their everyday and school knowledges, and how they go about establishing a schooled career. commenting on their work among working class youth in a canadian city, dillabough et al. (2008:343) suggest that, fataar — youth self-formation and the ‘capacity to aspire’ 43 young people who are tied to particular geographical spaces might be seen as engaging in ‘classification struggles’ over the social meaning of being young. ... this shapes the ways in which young people construct cultural meanings of everyday life and education, creating perhaps more (rather than less) anxiety about their ability to perfect themselves for an imagined future in new times. these classification struggles involve daily battles over survival and attempts to break free from the limitations of spatial containment. fuzile ali’s struggle for an education is an example of such a classification struggle, which played out across his various living spaces, in the social networks that he managed to access and the schools he attended. his is, however, not a story of straightforward achievement. it involved complex personal battles to open up a path into his schooled career in which self-management, discipline and single-minded determination were decisive. the first ten years of his schooling took place in schools meant for black africans under apartheid. it is commonly accepted that the educational standards at these types of schools were low compared to their middle-class counterparts (fleisch, 2007). this situation has not changed during the post-apartheid years. he spent his first years in two rural schools in the village and in two city schools in the langa and philippi townships. the routine didactic transfer of prescribed content, repetition, rote learning and memorisation made up the pedagogical platform of these schools. fuzile ali excelled at his schoolwork and he was a hardworking and diligent learner. he accomplished his schooling in an environment bereft of social or familial support and had no one to turn to for help with homework. educational resources were minimal and he had no access to reading books and internet-based information. his main learning resource was comprised of school-issued textbooks, from which he memorised sections that were prescribed for tests and examinations. he also studied from copies of typed notes received from his teachers. the lower cognitive load at these schools later impacted his educational struggles when he entered the middle-class muslim school. fuzile ali managed to sail through his first ten years of schooling, but his educational aspirations were severely tested when he entered the balaagh institute to complete his final two years of school. apart from the affective adjustments he had to make in this middle-class space, the educational adjustments were immense. the school, for example, offered mathematics only on the higher grade. according to one of his teachers, his level of mathematics proficiency when he arrived for grade 11 was estimated as being at grade 4 level. similarly, the school offered english as a first language subject only. fuzile ali was automatically disadvantaged because of his much lower level of english proficiency. he was thus confronted with the challenge of having to address enormous cognitive and conceptual backlogs in these and other subjects. having jumped space into a middle-class school environment, he now had to struggle to survive in the light of the educational standards expected there. cultural adaptation thus had to be accompanied by educational adaptation, and it seems that his commitment to the latter overshadowed considerations about the negative impact of the former. it became for him, a case of his utilising this opportunity provided by the school to succeed educationally, which required him to suppress his experiences of racism and exclusion there. he threw himself into his schoolwork. he used every available opportunity to do his homework and study for tests. he requested and was granted additional classes during break and before the start of school. what is remarkable is that in addition to his daily attendance of school during school hours, fuzile ali took extra tutorial classes in mathematics and english four afternoons per week. in addition, he had to take xhosa first language classes on saturdays, which were offered by one of his former teachers at his old school in philippi. the school covered the additional cost for these daily tutorials, which was eager to offer him an opportunity to pass his matriculation examination. the school invested in a success story of a black african boy who would make good on an educational opportunity it provided. he assumed what could be described as a perpetually ‘tutored body’, having been compelled to attend endless and exhausting remediation classes for two years. his strong aspirant desire to be educated translated into a disciplined and focused approach to his educational remediation. he threw all his energies into addressing the gaps in his education and succeeded in his matriculation examination on a second attempt. as unlikely as his story may seem, his personal commitment and skills to adapt to a novel environment opened a path into his school career. perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201044 conclusion this narrative analysis is an attempt to prise open a window onto the lives of young persons’ educational navigations in a democratic south africa. its starting assumption is the view that the terrain of social and educational reproduction has undergone fundamental changes during the last twenty years, and young people are precariously located in this complex newer terrain. the narrative analysis of one young person’s encounter with the youth landscape allowed me to capture an understanding of the iterative links among broader social processes and educational becoming. fuzile ali’s story exemplifies the uneven terrain on which working class youth have to construct their educational aspirations. his is an uneven and impoverished spatial text, given life by his active agency. the article illustrates how this young person went about cultivating and navigating his capacity to aspire, and the basis on which he thickened his social nodes and pathways into his future. he forced open a generative route into his schooled career across the socialities of his various spaces, and his ability to steer along a productive path by cultivating strategic relations and networks, and developing a performative persona, played a large role in the exercise of his aspirant desires. i have argued that it is an understanding of a specific self-formation and bodily discipline that is key to his youthful subjectivity. his ability to adjust his comportment to the requirements of his living spaces, based on acute readings of his varying terrains, is decisive in his navigations. he has learnt to maximise his living spaces in relation to his future-orientated ambition of self-improvement and landing a good job. finally, i suggest that it was his capacity to engage with his uneven knowledges based on discipline and commitment that allowed him to establish a relatively successful and mobile schooled career. there is a dearth of academic work on young people’s engagement with their education. this article brings this engagement to the fore, showing that a number of systematic inquiries into the ways young people encounter their education in the light of a rearranged youth landscape are required. it is my view that youth studies must capture the recursive impact of social change on young people’s lives. the school is a crucial site for understanding the composition of these newer youth subjectivities. this article provides one example of the ways young people encounter the worlds of their schooling, and what they become as they exercise their capacity to aspire in the light of their educational and broader social practices. references appadurai a 2004. the capacity to aspire: culture and the terms of recognition. in: v rao & m walton (eds). culture and public action. california: stanford university press. bozzoli b 2004.theatres of struggle and the end of apartheid. johannesburg: wits university press. comaroff j & comaroff j 2001. millenial capitalism and the culture of neoliberalism. durham: duke university press. department of education (doe) 1996. the south african schools act. pretoria: government printers. dillabough j, kennelly j & wang e 2008. spatial containment in the inner city: youth subcultures, class conflict and geographies of exclusion. in: l weis (ed.). the way class works: readings on school, family, and the economy. new york: routledge. fataar a 2009a. schooling subjectivities across the post-apartheid city. african education review, 6(1):1-18. fataar a 2009b. youth becoming across the rural-urban landscape: the case of fuzile ali at a muslim community school in cape town. southern african review of education, 15(2):105-117. fataar a 2005. discourse, differentiation and agency: muslim community schools in post-apartheid cape town. comparative education review, 49(1): 23-44. fleisch b 2007. primary education in crisis: why south african schoolchildren underachieve in reading and mathematics. cape town: juta. lefebvre h 1991/1971. the production of space. oxford: blackwell. massey d 1994. double articulation: a place in the world. in: a bammer (ed.). displacements: cultural identities in question. bloomington: indiana university press. fataar — youth self-formation and the ‘capacity to aspire’ 45 nespor j 1997. tangled up in school: politics, space, bodies and signs in the educational process. new jersey, lawrence erlbaum. ngwane z 2001. real men reawaken their father’s homesteads, the educated leave them in ruins: the politics of rural domestic production in post-apartheid rural south africa. journal of religion in africa, 31(4):402-426. reay d 2000. a useful extension of bourdieu’s conceptual framework?: emotional capital as a way of understanding mothers’ involvement in their children’s education? sociological review, 48(4):568-585. reay d 2005. beyond consciousness? the psychic landscape of social class. sociology, 39(5):911-928. 173 research article 2021 39(1): 173-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.11 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) the challenges posed by covid-19 to the brics education systems: lessons to be learnt abstract it is considered an axiom that the national education system is expected to render a service during the real and ever-changing educational needs of a given nation. typically, the primary functioning is characterised by the provisioning of an educationally determined pathway for each student according to their specific contexts. a real state of emergency arises when the national community is suddenly faced with dramatic challenges such as those posed by the external factors namely the global outbreak of covid-19. in this situation, the unique challenge for individual national education systems was to address the educational needs of the students and the community with the pre-condition to safeguard their health in the face of the pandemic. the response of each education system had to prioritise the implementation of health protocols to safeguard all education stakeholders, along with the provision of quality education. the objective of this article was to explore the approaches and practices that the brics nations (brazil, russia, india, china and south africa) implemented during the time of the pandemic. to accomplish this objective, a systematic document analysis was conducted that ultimately allowed the identification of lessons to be learnt. the results show many similar approaches employed by the brics such as transitioning to online teaching, devoting funds to address emerging challenges and developing new teaching strategies. the article concludes with the lessons learnt from the nations under investigation. keywords: brics member states; national education systems; external contextual forces; education responses to covid-19; education system planning. 1. introduction covid-19 has brought a great adversity to global society including hardships for the educational sector. with the state of emergency, the national communities were faced with dramatic challenges that they had to tackle in a timely manner (oecd, 2020). the unexpected global pandemic posed a serious threat, not only to human health, but also to the social, cultural, political and economic aspects of life. the pandemic especially affected vulnerable population including people living in poverty, refugees, older individuals and individuals with disabilities. it is also important to author: prof e.k. niemczyk1 dr z.l. de beer1 prof h.j. steyn1 affiliation: 1north west university, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i1.11 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 173-188 published: 12 march 2021 received: 10 november 2020 accepted: 2 february 2021 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9381-5449 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9682-2441 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7596-8361 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.11 1742021 39(1): 174-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.11 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) acknowledge the existence of disparities between developed and developing nations, which cope with the challenges based on their social and economic situation (undp, 2020). to that end, nations around the world took different measures to contain the spread of the pandemic within their national borders. many nations enforced lockdown, social distancing, bans on mass gatherings and international travel, the closure of entertainment venues, and only allowed the sale of essential products. along with the developments related to the covid-19 pandemic, measures taken by these nations are being reviewed and adjusted on an ongoing basis (unicef, 2020). as reported by the un (2020a), the pandemic exposed challenges, vulnerabilities and inequities, along with human resourcefulness in many areas of life, including in the education sector. in a short time, covid-19 has changed the ways in which students are educated around the world and has forced the education sector to adapt to the state of crisis rapidly. internationally, the education sector experienced a massive disruption due to the covid-19 pandemic (unesco, 2020a). as stated by the director-general of unesco, audrey azoulay, it is only through collaboration and innovative action that students and teachers can be supported in these unexpected times of crises. this message brought attention to the importance of inclusion and equity as well as the necessity to prompt the sharing of experiences to unlock solutions. in support of the statement of the director-general of unesco, the goal of this article is to share the approaches and practices that the brics nations implemented in education during the challenging times of the pandemic. thus, the goal of this article, in alignment with the research question, was to discover the approaches undertaken by brics nations to confront covid-19. to accomplish the objective of this article, a comparative qualitative study was conducted based on the document analysis method. as articulated by khakpour (2012), comparativists often study a particular topic or phenomenon in two or more countries. in this case, a comparison was made across the five brics member states in order to identify the approaches that each nation had implemented at all levels of education to confront covid-19. data collection involved purposeful sampling through which publicly available and relevant documents were selected. the documents included government reports, reports of international organisations, policy briefs, journal articles, chapters in books and e-news reports. bowen (2009) describes a document analysis as a methodical process that entails reviewing, examining and evaluating documents to gain understanding and meaning. to that end, the conclusion of this article provides meaning in a form of lessons learnt, which may lead to awareness and actions that advance effective education practices in response to covid-19, especially if the pandemic will protract. as mentioned earlier, sharing knowledge and experiences provides a way to unlock solutions and, therefore, inform future practice in education. 2. theoretical underpinnings 2.1 the challenges of covid-19 as reported in scholarly literature, the coronavirus, officially named the covid-19 virus on 11 february 2020 (who, 2020a) caused havoc around the world and in 10 months became one of the most discussed global topics. after its first notation on the timeline of the world health organization (who) on 31 december 2019, on 10 october 2020, the spread was reported as 37 824 151 covid-19 cases, of which 28 386 548 patients recovered and 1 082 405 passed away (worldometers, 2020). the who categorised the covid-19 outbreak as a pandemic on 11 march 2020 (who, 2020b). in order to curb the spread of covid-19, the organisation 1752021 39(1): 175-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.11 niemczyk, de beer & steyn the challenges posed by covid-19 to the brics education systems advised that infections should be limited and could be decreased by using one of five reaction levels. in general, the who promoted the following basic measures to be adhered to, namely to wash hands thoroughly, wear a face mask, keep a safe distance from other people, stay at home as much as possible and to avoid large gatherings of people (who, 2020c). all the above-mentioned measures had a direct influence on the provisioning of education in all educational institutions. on 26 march 2020, the who (2020a) and the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) officially emphasised the need to ensure quality education for all students who experienced a period of unprecedented educational disruption. a document named key messages and actions for covid-19 prevention and control in schools was published providing the provisioning of basic principles to effectively manage the effects of covid-19 in education. educational institutions were advised to update their emergency plans and to cancel all mass meetings to implement general safety measures and to consider special measures such as staggering school times. school policies had to be adapted and plans had to be developed for the continuation of quality education, such as online teaching strategies, assigning home projects for studying purposes and implementing educational radio and television broadcasts. a checklist about the relevant actions to manage covid-19 was provided for the use of education managers, teachers and parents (who, 2020d: 4–12). unesco also put together a comprehensive coalition of education interest groups to unlock creative solutions in order to support all groups of students and educators during and after the impact of covid-19. distance education was excepted as the most achievable way forward. in addition, the coalition collaborated with education ministers and departments on an international level to realise the advantages of distance education according to the different unique contexts (unesco, 2020b). overall, it is clear that covid-19 had a dramatic effect on all the countries and societies across the world. individual governments and education departments across the world reacted to the challenges of covid-19, often according to the advice of international organisations and practices employed in other countries. the impact was also evident in all the elements of education systems, especially for updating policies, provisioning of the required additional funding to support the required changes and developing new programmes and teaching strategies. 2.2 covid-19 as an external contextual factor of the national education system the influence of covid-19 on the provisioning of individual education systems across the world represents a classical manifestation that the context of, or incidents in the target group, have an explicit and implicit effect on the nature and functioning of a given national education system (steyn, wolhuter, vos & de beer, 2017). covid-19, as an occurrence in national society, can be classified as an external contextual factor of a particular national education system. as evident in scholarly literature, two types of contextual factors that influence an education system can be identified, namely internal and external contextual factors (steyn & wolhuter & de beer, 2017). covid-19 can be classified as an external contextual factor because its presence in the national community necessitates the reactions of that education system to those challenges. more precisely, covid-19 can be classified under the category of socio-economic contextual factors because it negatively influences the physical and mental health of national society and the detrimental effects on 1762021 39(1): 176-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.11 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) the local and national economies. the relation of the external and internal contextual factors to a national education system is represented in figure 1.1 (steyn & wolhuter, 2014: 151). figure 1.1: the external and internal contextual factors of a national education system the fact that governmental institutions lead the way in the reaction of the education system to the national crisis of covid-19 can be found in the understanding of the relationship between the target group and the national education system, namely that the state acts as the coordinator of the participation of the many interest groups (steyn & wolhuter, 2014: 115–118). in conclusion, it is clear that the theory that the structure and functioning of the education system is affected by an external contextual factor such as covid-19 is valid. what is important to notice is that a single incident of crisis can influence the structure and functioning of a particular education system. 3. comparing the impact of covid-19 on the education systems in brics the comparison of approaches that brics nations implemented due to the external contextual factor, namely covid-19, that influenced all the education systems has potential (a) to maximise an understanding of a national education system and (b) to provide lessons that may inform future reactions of education systems in comparable situations. comparing the responses of the education systems of the brics countries is particularly useful because of the following (de beer, 2017: 69): • the fact that education plays an important role in the development of each of the countries; • the fact that it is agreed by the brics countries to synchronise the functioning of their education systems; and • the sheer size of the brics organisation: 26% of the world’s surface, 42% of the total world population and 27% of the gross domestic product of the world and each with a significant regional influence. 1772021 39(1): 177-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.11 niemczyk, de beer & steyn the challenges posed by covid-19 to the brics education systems 3.1 the impact of covid-19 on the brazilian education system 3.1.1 the situation of covid-19 in brazil as reported by worldometer (2020c) website providing reliable real-time statistics, the current population of brazil accounts for 212 962 134, which is equivalent to 2,73% of the world population. on 26 february 2020, the government of brazil confirmed the first case of the coronavirus and from that moment on, the numbers increased from 13 cases of infected individuals in early march to 5 000 000 cases reported in early october 2020. in terms of deaths due to the pandemic, the numbers increased from 77 cases in late march 2020 to almost 148 000 cases at the beginning of october 2020. on a global scale, in october 2020, brazil was listed in third place as one of the most at-risk countries. similar to other nations, brazil adopted various measures to slow down the spread of the virus. the world bank (2020a) reported that the country was slowly recovering from the 2015/2016 recession and, therefore, its economic state was frail even before the outbreak of covid-19. focusing specifically on education, brazil faced many challenges due to an already-existing lack of financial resources, resulting in cuts to their education budget, as well as severe inequalities among education provisioning based on geographic location, social status and access to education. 3.1.2 responses from the brazilian education system the brazilian school year aligns with the calendar year where classes start in february and end in december. the closure of schools in march 2020 created an enormous concern about how to deal with the entire school year. as reported by berti (2020), it was heavily debated whether students should repeat their current grades in 2021 or if the material covered in 2020 should be delivered along with the material offered in 2021. ultimately, the ministry of education (2020a) took several measures in this regard. in terms of immediate changes to teaching strategies, face-to-face teaching had to be replaced with distance teaching and education at home. in fact, not all schools were prepared to teach remotely and not all parents were prepared to home-school their children. it is important to note that parents’ ability to assist children with schoolwork has a strong correlation with their socio-economic status. some of the well-equipped brazilian states assisted parents by providing broadcasted educational content on open television via satellite, along with social media livestreaming and applications (world bank, 2020). unequal access to computers, digital tools and internet connectivity presents a basic problem for schools and teachers to engage students from lowincome families in remote education (parreiras & macedo, 2020). primary schools and higher education institutions were allowed to distribute the workload in a period different from the 200 school days provided for by law. many higher education programmes extended their registration dates. face-to-face defences of master’s dissertations and doctoral theses were suspended. furthermore, the ministry of education provided university students with the opportunity to convert their studies to internships, for example, where students of medicine and nursing, pharmacy and physiotherapy were able to work in medical clinics and emergency care units during the emergency period of the coronavirus pandemic (ministry of education, 2020). based on the information provided by the brazilian ministry of education (2020a) and the world bank (2020a), the following is a concise list of support services designed during the early stage of the pandemic to deal with education vulnerabilities. it is important to mention 1782021 39(1): 178-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.11 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) that the brazilian ministry of education is a major stakeholder and educational policymaker responsible for quality education. • distributing school lunches: in order to prevent possible malnutrition, the government authorised the distribution of food baskets to disadvantaged families. • supporting parents in home-schooling: keeping parents involved in children’s education during the covid-19 pandemic became a priority by ensuring a broad use of platforms to provide distance teaching (digital, television, radio) in order to reach families with no connectivity. • improving connection: local governments engaged with local internet providers to reduce connection costs in an effort to make it more affordable for vulnerable families and by sending regular text messages or providing phone lines for communication between parents and teachers. • providing help centres for teachers to ask questions, receive feedback and search for emotional support. • more technology for schools and universities: more than 123 000 students and teachers were provided with technological resources. 3.2 impact of covid-19 on the russian education system 3.2.1 the situation of covid-19 in russia it was reported by worldometer (2020c) that the population of the russian federation amounts to 145 951 318. furthermore, the same source confirmed that the first coronavirus case was confirmed in moscow on 27 february 2020, which, by the end of september 2020, quickly grew to 1 200 000 cases. the number of deaths due to the pandemic also increased, however, at a significantly less alarming rate. by the end of march 2020, only four deaths were reported, while 21 500 deaths were reported at the beginning of october 2020. in terms of the global picture, russia is after brazil and is listed as the fourth nation most at risk. foy and seddon (2020) reported that russia, similar to other nations, adopted emergency measures such as quarantines, border closures, visa restrictions, restrictions on large public events and the cancellation of most flights and rail links with china. meanwhile, education institutions adapted new teaching practices and strategies. by the end of march 2020, schools and higher education institutions rapidly moved to online teaching, learning evaluation processes were accordingly reorganised, and remote support was established for students and educators. president putin delegated educational decisions to 85 regional governors of the russian federation. 3.2.2 responses from the russian education system the ministry of education (2020) recommended that the regional authorities organise educational institutions in such a way that children and teachers engage in educational activities from home. as per the ministry of education recommendation, some kindergartens closed completely, while other special groups with a small number of children remained open. all three levels of general schooling, more specifically 16,5 million school children in more than 9 000 schools shifted to online learning in all regions. class schedules were adjusted in accordance with the curriculum for each subject and the lesson time was reduced to 30 minutes. the organisation of distance learning included arranging training sessions, consultations, webinars on the school portal and platforms using electronic educational 1792021 39(1): 179-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.11 niemczyk, de beer & steyn the challenges posed by covid-19 to the brics education systems resources. furthermore, the ministry of education decided that the entry exams to universities would be taken in 2020 and only by those graduates who would enter higher education in 2020. it was decided that students who did not plan to enrol for higher education could be awarded grades at the end of the year. the world bank report (2020) indicated that in march 2020, 248 universities reporting to the federal ministry shifted to distance education. in order for universities to prepare for online formats, an extra week of vacation was granted to students from 28 march 2020 to 5 april 2020. state accreditation was prolonged for one year for those universities whose accreditation expired between march 2020 and december 2020. on 1 september 2020, russian schools resumed face-to-face classes for the new school year, which does not align with the calendar year and begins in september. as reported by the moscow times (2020), in preparation for the reopening of schools, moscow city authorities ran coronavirus tests on all employees of the capital’s education fraternity. those who tested positive were temporarily kept away from schools. in terms of higher education, universities had the right to shift the beginning of the school year by two months. a total of 25 universities opted for delaying opening day and planned to introduce mixed teaching strategies to prevent the new coronavirus infection from spreading the world bank (2020) reported that the ministry of education had launched a hotline to support regional ministries, schools and colleges in organising distance learning. based on several documents released by the ministry of education (2020d), many initiatives received financial support from the ministry during the pandemic. for instance, the following support services were provided by the russian ministry of education (2020d) to facilitate students’ online learning: • a free public platform containing clear and proven educational material for self-learning at home for students in grades 1–11. educational material for students from grades 9–11 were designed for basic and in-depth levels, including preparation for compulsory examinations. the necessary resources could be stored on computers, tablets and phones. • the ministry of education, in partnership with public television, provided the implementation of an educational television project for high school students in preparation for examinations. the key video lessons from the country’s leading teachers were broadcasted. • a special resource centre was opened in the area of recreation and health for children. • a navigator of consultation centres was launched on a single free state portal to support parents. a total of 163 counselling centres provided psychological, pedagogical and methodological support for the upbringing and education of children as well as distance learning. • information for specialists and parents, which was important for the education of children with special educational needs, was loaded onto a designated website. the site contained methodological and informational material for teachers, defectologists and psychologists. parents could also consult with leading specialists in the field of remedial education and psychology. • the ministry of education recommended that the regional authorities provide school meals for socially disadvantaged students from low-income families. 1802021 39(1): 180-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.11 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) • provision was made for the organisation of temporary employment for graduates in educational institutions under the supervision of such organisations and the continuation of vocational training. 3.3 the impact of covid-19 on the indian education system 3.3.1 the situation of covid-19 in india the following statistical synopsis illustrates the effect of the covid-19 pandemic on india. india’s current population stands at 1 383 085 891 people (united nations, 2020b), which is equivalent to 17,7% of the world population (united nations, 2020b). the government of india confirmed india’s first case of the coronavirus disease on 30 january 2020 (ward, 2020). the infection rate in india grew exponentially. if india’s infection rate is compared to the rest of the world, india has the second-highest infections after the united states of america on 30 september 2020 (worldometer, 2020a). the worldometer (2020a) further informed that as of 30 september 2020, india had 6 229 474 infections. focusing on india’s statistics regarding the number of cases, fatalities and recovery rates, the outcomes are as follows: a total of 97 541 people died from the virus on 30 september 2020, 5 187 825 made a full recovery and 944 048 active cases remained. india’s recovery rate stands at 84,84% as of the end of september 2020. one of the most important statistics that could influence the covid-19 infection number is the “test per million” rates. india has tested 53 000 per 1 000 000 inhabitants. prime minister narendra modi ordered a nationwide lockdown as a preventive measure to flatten the curve of the covid-19 infection for 21 days on 24 march 2020 (government of india, 2020b). lockdown phase 1 limited the movement of 1,38 billion people living in india (gettleman & schultz, 2020). nearly all factories and services as well educational institutions, were closed (government of india, 2020b). as reported by the government of india (2020b), on 14 april 2020, the nationwide lockdown (phase 2 from 15 april 2020 to 3 may 2020) was extended to 3 may 2020. every town and state had to be evaluated to see if the spread of covid-19 had been contained. lockdown areas were classified as green zones with no infections, orange zones indicated some infection and red zones indicated the presence of high infection. relaxation on industries included agricultural businesses, public works programmes, cargo transportation and banks and government centres distributing benefits would open as well (government of india, 2020b). small retail shops were also allowed to open with half of their staff. on 1 may 2020 (phase 3 from 4 to 7 may 2020), the government of india further extended the lockdown period to two weeks beyond 4 may 2020. some relaxations were allowed except for hotels, cinemas, schools, colleges, restaurants, shopping centres and sports complexes remained closed, as indicated during the first phase. the government of india (2020b) decided that the religious, political, social and cultural gatherings were also still not allowed (government of india, 2020b). on 17 may 2020, the ministry of home affairs extended the lockdown for another two weeks with additional relaxations. 3.3.2 responses to covid-19 by the indian education system in response to the covid-19 pandemic, the indian government closed all its educational institutions under lockdown 1. this closure affected 1,5 million schools, 8,5 million teachers and 250 million children (unicef, 2020). the lockdown led to the suspension of all classes and examinations at schools and universities. as a result, students’ academic year was disrupted. the contact method of teaching and learning was not possible, which led to a new era of online teaching (unicef, 2020). 1812021 39(1): 181-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.11 niemczyk, de beer & steyn the challenges posed by covid-19 to the brics education systems kumar (2020) states that indian teachers and students were confused during the onset of the covid-19 pandemic, but later realised that the lockdown forced them to adapt and taught them ways to manage during the emergence of new epidemics. pravat (2020) accentuates the fact that covid-19 has created many challenges and opportunities for the educational institutions to strengthen their technological knowledge and infrastructure. this implied the necessity for computers with internet access and software that could enable online teaching. software such as microsoft teams, vidyo, google meets and whatsapp became very important to relay educational content and to facilitate learning and teaching. the new normal of online teaching drew attention to the digital divide in india (pravat, 2020). as reported by the ministry of human resources development (mhrd, 2020), the indian government took specific measures to overcome the digital divide and other pandemic driven challenges. it is important to mention that the ministry of education in india provided additional financial resources for support services. the first measure was that teaching had to be done online. school education was supported by the mhrd with the following initiatives (mhrd, 2020): • diksha made more than 80 000 e-books available for grades 1 to 12. • e-pathshala: in this web portal, the national council of educational research and training (ncert) deployed 1 886 audios, 2 000 videos, 696 e-books and 504 flip books in different regional languages for grades 1 to 12. • national repository of open educational resources (nroer): the nroer portal has a total of 14 527 files, including 401 collections, 2 779 documents, 1 345 interactive, 1 664 audios, 2 586 images and 6 153 videos in different languages. higher education support consisted of (mhrd, 2020) the following: • swayam: the national online education platform hosts 1 900 courses covering school (grades 9 to 12) and higher education (undergraduate, postgraduate programmes) in all subjects, including engineering, humanities and social sciences, law and management courses. • swayam prabha: this platform has 32 dth television channels transmitting educational content daily. the channels cover school education (grades 9 to 12) and higher education (undergraduate, postgraduate, engineering out-of-school children, vocational courses and teacher training) in arts, science, commerce, performing arts, social sciences and humanities subjects, engineering, technology, law, medicine and agriculture. the mhrd also made access to these facilities and platforms free of charge. students in india, therefore, had access to a wide variety of online educational sources at no cost to students. 3.4 impact of covid-19 on the chinese education system 3.4.1 the situation of covid-19 in china the population of the people’s republic of china in october 2020 was 1 440 722 001, which equates to 18,47% of the world population (un, 2020). china was the first country to report the covid-19 virus and it also alleges to be the country from which the virus is derived. the initial outbreak of covid-19 was in wuhan, china (fox, 2020). china had 85 414 confirmed cases on 30 september 2020. a total of 80 594 of these persons have recovered from the virus and 4 634 persons have succumbed to covid-19. on the 30th of september china had 1822021 39(1): 182-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.11 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) 186 active cases, of which 184 (99%) are mild and 2 (1%) persons are in critical condition (worldometer, 2020b). the people’s republic of china already conducted 160 million tests at the end of september 2020. the chinese action plan to contain the virus focused on wuhan in the hubei province. the lockdown of wuhan was promulgated on 23 january 2020 and 11 million people were quarantined (reuters, 2020). soon after the wuhan lockdown, travel restrictions were also imposed on the nearby cities of huanggang and ezhou. later, restrictions were also imposed on the remaining 15 cities in the hubei province, restricting the movement of nearly 57 million chinese citizens (cnn, 2020). wenzhou, zhejiang, implemented a seven-day lockdown on 2 february 2020, which allowed one person per household to go out once every two days for food and medicine only (straitstimes, 2020). the lockdown of wuhan officially ended on 8 april 2020. the people’s republic of china acted fast in their response to the pandemic and was the first country with a partial stringent lockdown. china contained the covid-19 outbreak with a very low population to infection ratio of 85 414:1 440 722 001, which equates to one infection per 59 284 persons (straitstimes, 2020). 3.4.2 responses to covid-19 by the chinese education system the people’s republic of china was the first country to close schools selectively on 16 february 2020 with other countries that followed suit. chinese education institutions were closed for more than 18 weeks, which affected nearly 200 million primary and secondary school children (oecd, 2020; unesco, 2020c). wyman (2020) conveyed the main challenges that the chinese education system faced. the first challenge reported was the poor quality of a number of online programmes and the second one was the low quality of some teaching applications and the need to cancel the major examinations. the action plan of the ministry of education of the people’s republic of china started with an initiative titled ensuring learning is undisrupted when classes are disrupted (moe, 2020). the minister of education and the minister of industry and information technology joined forces to enable online learning and teaching with the following initiatives, namely to (unesco, 2020) – • mobilise all major telecom service providers to increase the internet connectivity service for online education, especially for the underserved regions; • upgrade the bandwidth of major online education service platforms, especially the capacity of the national cloud-platform for educational resources and public service in serving millions of visitors simultaneously; • mobilise society-wide resources for the provision of online courses and resources. more than 24 000 online courses were made accessible for university students. a total of 22 validated online course platforms, most of them empowered by artificial intelligence, were mobilised to provide primary and secondary schools with free online courses; • adopt flexible and appropriate methodologies to facilitate learning. schools and teachers were advised to choose appropriate modes of delivery based on local e-readiness, including online platforms, digitalised televisions or mobile applications. teachers received guidance on teaching methodologies, including through the livestreaming of online tutorials and massive open online courses (moocs). the recommended number of online learning hours varied by grade to – 1832021 39(1): 183-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.11 niemczyk, de beer & steyn the challenges posed by covid-19 to the brics education systems • strengthen online security through collaboration with the telecom sector and online platform service providers; • provide psychosocial support and courses to impart knowledge about the virus and protection against it; and • provide substantial financial support to maintain quality education. the efforts of the people’s republic of china to make teaching and learning available on this enormous scale are notable and may be used as a framework for future crises. 3.5 the impact of covid-19 on the south african education system 3.5.1 the situation of covid-19 in south africa south africa had tested 4 229 709 citizens out of a total population of 59 308 690 by 3 october 2020. that represented a ratio of tests per total population of 0.0711:1. as of the 3 of october 2020 a total of 677 833 south africans has tested positive, of which 611 044 have recovered and 16 909 people have passed away (sacoronavirus, 2020). the south african initial lockdown of alert level 5 was announced on 26 march 2020 and lasted until 30 april 2020 (rsa, 2020a), followed by alert level 4 (1 to 31 may 2020), alert level 3 (1 june to 17 august 2020), alert level 2 (18 august 2020) and alert level 1 on 21 september 2020 (rsa, 2020a). the primary aims of the alert levels were to contain the virus by limiting the movement of people, instituting several health measures and by limiting the gathering of people on various levels. all of these had a major impact on the provision of education and educational institutions. alert level 1 represented a situation where most of the normal societal and economic activities could resume. 3.5.2 the response to covid-19 by the south african education system the south african government closed all basic and higher education institutions from 18 march 2020. it partially opened the educational institutions on alert level 3. the number of students was restricted according to the physical spaces available for teaching and other activities such as breaks between classes. the students’ temperatures had to be measured and personal protective gear had to be worn. educational institutions physically closed for nearly three months. these measurements had an adverse effect on teaching and learning in south africa (rsa, 2020b). the department of basic education announced a recovery plan for basic education on 30 april 2020, which included additional emergency funding (rsa, 2020b). this comprehensive plan consists of the following student support interventions: • focus on achievable catch-up programmes; • double the efforts towards the promotion of learning and teaching at home; • prepare a catch-up programme when the children would return to school; • use the available 123 radio stations and six television channels with a total reach of more than 35 million people. this was implemented as an intervention to bring curriculum lessons to households across the country in order to assist students as the schools remain closed; • make available resources online for those who could access them; • involve telecommunication partners in making academic sites zero-rated platforms; and 1842021 39(1): 184-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.11 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) • move the final and mid-year examinations for exit-level students to later in the year. higher education focused their efforts on online teaching (rsa, 2020c). this implied the following two major challenges, namely, to provide sufficient access to hardware such as computers and network devices and secondly, to provide data for access to online education sites of universities. higher education reacted speedily in this regard by putting a tender out for the supply and delivery of laptops to students. higher education also negotiated zerorated data sites for academic use. the internet service providers’ association of south africa (ispa) and mobile operators announced that almost 1 000 local websites were free to access. the south african effort to address the covid-19 pandemic challenge was comprehensive. internet access was one of the biggest challenges. therefore, south african education planning for the future should focus on online accessibility. 4. lessons learnt and way forward as stated at the outset, it was the objective of the article to explore the approaches that the brics nations implemented during the time of the pandemic with the intention to identify the effective practices that can serves as valuable lessons for the future. the influence of covid-19 as an external factor on the education systems in brics was evident. the text clearly shows that the pandemic had a significant impact and posed many challenges on the education sector. brics countries updated their policies, provided funds to address emerging challenges, developed new programmes and adjusted teaching strategies. all these changes show that external factors, in this case the pandemic, have a significant impact on the functioning of national education systems. in fact, covid-19 affected decision making and actions in terms of education provisioning and structure. as evident in the findings, the need to provide all students, irrespective of economic status, gender or location, with quality education was taken into consideration by the governments. the respective ministries of education in the brics countries took the lead in implementing safety measures and dedicating the necessary funding to enable the required changes to ensure effective participation of all education groups. collaboration with other social platforms such as radio and television were also at work. more specifically, to address the challenges posed by the pandemic, brics nations implemented similar practices, namely closure of education institutions with their gradual selected opening; moving mainly to online teaching, new planning regarding school times and new dates for examinations. in addition, different measures were implemented to ensure successful distance education. this includes provisioning of online programmes, learning materials and teacher presentations, provisioning of the required hardware and software and the accessibility to the internet. a number of lessons can be identified based on these approaches. the key lesson that can be derived from the findings is that education systems should be better prepared for the states of emergency such as the covid-19 pandemic. the strategic plans should be available in advance to allow for faster adjustment to emergencies. this includes preparation to move effectively to online teaching, supervising and supporting students. stemming from that is the next lessons related to professional development. significant consideration should be devoted to training of educators in developing the necessary knowledge and skills to effectively engage in quality online teaching. in addition, 1852021 39(1): 185-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.11 niemczyk, de beer & steyn the challenges posed by covid-19 to the brics education systems support staff should also be trained how to provide a supportive learning environment. this connects to the following lesson, namely, to maximise the use of technology. available technology should be used to the maximum advantage for all educational activities, including teaching, researching, assessing, supervising and engagement with remote communities. to that end, various e-platforms should be explored and introduced to educators, administrators and students in crisis-free times. proficiency with digital technologies and maximised access to internet is instrumental in solving the challenges posed by the pandemic and any potential future emergencies. another lesson that deserves attention is the power of collaboration. although the responsibility to safeguard and support education lies with the government and the relevant ministries of education, inclusion of other education stakeholders (educators, administrators, students, parents) and beyond (radio, tv, other social media) is essential. making informed decisions and actions highly depends on bringing diverse perspectives that expand the potential of effective solutions. in addition, research about creative education strategies to approach future states of emergency should be promoted. this pandemic will not last forever, however, we have to learn from it to be prepared for future emergency situations. to that end, we need to reflect about all challenges presented by the pandemic, analyse the effectiveness of the implemented interventions, consider the consequences, develop strategic plans and sustainable solutions. a crisis cannot be dealt with using standard accepted measures and practices. we need to be reminded that extraordinary circumstances call for extraordinary actions. it is fair to conclude that now more than ever the ability to deal with unprecedented challenges calls for solidarity and information sharing. in recognition of disparities across the nations, it is our stand that every country should have the opportunity to learn from other nations about effective education approaches in crisis situations. to that end, we need to promote greater exchange of information, ideas and expertise about teaching, researching 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https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/key-messages-and-actions-for-covid-19-prevention-and-control-in-schools-march-2020.pdf?sfvrsn=baf81d52_4 https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/india/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/ https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/ https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-country/ http://www.oliverwyman.com/dam/publication/march.html _goback 129 research article 2022 40(2): 129-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.10 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) teachers’ perceptions of the factors influencing rural school grade 12 business studies learner performance in the national senior certificate abstract the purpose of this study is to examine teachers’ perceptions of teacher factors affecting the dwindling grade 12 learners’ performance in business studies national senior certificate (nsc) examinations at the rural umbumbulu circuit of umlazi district, in the province of kwazulu-natal, south africa. the study employed a qualitative research methodology to explore teachers’ perceptions. five grade 12 teachers were purposively selected from five rural secondary schools that offered business studies as a subject of teaching and learning in the umbumbulu circuit. the case study research design was used to focus on a few participants who had lived experiences of teaching business studies at grade 12 in rural schools and could relate to dominant factors influencing learner performance in this subject. data were generated through faceto-face, semi-structured interviews, and thematic analysis was used as a method of analysing qualitative data with the purpose of identifying salient traits in data that could develop into themes. the study found that teacher factors influencing learner performance in grade 12 business studies were teacher approaches to teaching business studies, timetabling and impediments to innovative teaching and assessment in the form of rural contextual factors such as large classes and a shortage of textbooks. the study nurtures awareness of teacher factors influencing rural school learners’ performance in grade 12 business studies, so that business studies teachers in emerging economies can think of ways to address these factors to improve learner performance. keywords: business studies, learner performance, face-to-face semi-structured interviews, timetabling, large classes. 1. introduction and background the persistent decline in learner performance in grade 12 generally, and in business studies particularly, has been a cause for concern for the department of basic education (dbe). in south africa, the department of basic education uses the grade 12 learners’ end-of-year results to measure performance in public schools. it has become a trend that author: dr muntuwenkosi mtshali1 dr jabulisile ngwenya1 mr thandanani myende1 affiliation: 1university of kwazulu-natal doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i2.10 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(2): 129-142 published: 08 june 2022 received: 05 september 2021 accepted: 07 january 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.10 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7346-5162 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8256-8174 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.10 1302022 40(2): 130-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) principals of secondary schools also use these results to measure teachers and learners’ performance in their respective schools (moletsane, 2012). according to alsubaie (2016), the central function of a public school is to deliver the curriculum effectively. the implication of effective curriculum delivery is that all schools should demonstrate quality teaching and learning processes that are consistent with the effective implementation of the curriculum. many south african teachers face daily challenges of having to cope with additional pressures of curriculum reform, as well as high performance expectations, with limited resources and support (du plessis, 2017). despite this, teachers try to ascertain that regardless of the circumstances under which they teach, grade 12 results remain pleasing to the department of education (letsoalo, 2018). to maximise effective teaching, business studies teachers must consult numerous textbooks when preparing for their lessons. however, using many textbooks may not necessarily bring about the same desired effect in all learners. some learners may find the language and presentation style of one textbook exciting and meaningful, and remain indifferent with other textbooks; hence, the assumption that utilising a variety of textbooks is beneficial to learners cannot be a complete universal reality (meintjes, henrico & kroon, 2015). in addition, while the subject is plagued by the curriculum reforms, training and support provided to teachers is inadequate. although workshops are organised for teachers, support and follow-up visits to monitor the implementation of changes are missing. therefore, teachers found workshops to be ineffective in providing them with the knowledge necessary to understand new content (dube, 2020). in south africa, studies (mamabolo, kerrin & kele, 2017; ntshangase & ezeuduji, 2020) indicate that active learning in a business-simulated learning environment can enhance learners’ entrepreneurial skills, and this can best be facilitated by qualified teachers. entrepreneurial skills are essential for learners as they help them create value, new wealth and new jobs, and are important for growing the south african economy (meintjes et al., 2015). this is the contribution of business studies to the school curriculum, since entrepreneurship is part of the subject’s learning content alongside problem-solving skills, which constitute one of the chapters in the grade 12 business studies learning content, and entails inculcating the ability to solve life-related problems in learners. dube (2020) argues that qualified business studies teachers are needed to promote the creation of as many ideas as possible during the problem-solving process before focusing on the feasibility of the solutions. however, the lack of qualified teachers in rural areas continue to compromise learner academic performance in business studies, with schools achieving results that do not please the department of basic education. the department of basic education in south africa makes reasonable attempts to improve grade 12 results by introducing interventions aimed at assisting learners. some of these interventions take the form of programmes such as winter schools, spring classes and saturday classes that are fully funded (mkhize & otu, 2018). business studies as a basic education subject is included in these interventions by the kwazulu-natal department of basic education. this suggests that this subject forms part of a group of subjects whose final end-of-year results require urgent improvement for the education department to achieve desirable objectives. despite these interventions, grade 12 business studies results show a persistent decline in learner performance in schools in the province of kwazulu-natal and in umlazi district that incorporates the umbumbulu circuit. the following table bears testimony to this. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.10 1312022 40(2): 131-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.10 mtshali, ngwenya & myende teachers’ perceptions of the factors influencing rural school table 1: analysis of grade 12 business studies results in kwazulu-natal province and umlazi district in south africa year subject number wrote kzn province number achieved 30 % and above kzn province number wrote umlazi district number achieved 30 % and above umlazi district 2014 business studies 60157 71.7 9851 76.6 2015 business studies 60504 69.5 9712 75.5 2016 business studies 65390 67.8 9653 74.7 2017 business studies 55772 63.1 8980 66.4 2018 business studies 51588 59.5 8369 59.6 source: adapted from department of basic education (2019): report on the 2018 nsc examination for business studies table 1 indicates that there has been a steady decline in learner performance in the province of kwazulu-natal and umlazi district in terms of the number of learners who obtained 30% and above, expressed as a percentage in business studies from years 2014 to 2018. the statistics clearly show the downwards trajectory pointing to the dwindling performance at provincial and district levels. while 59.6% of learners in the umlazi district achieved at least a 30% pass in business studies in the year 2018, only 46.2% achieved at least a 40% pass in the subject in year 2019 (department of basic education, 2019). based on this, the study sought to explore teachers’ perceptions of teacher factors affecting grade 12 rural school learners’ performance in the business studies national senior certificate examinations (nsc) in rural schools in the umbumbulu circuit, and their implications for teaching practice. the question, “what are teacher factors influencing grade 12 business studies learners’ performance in the nsc examination?” is therefore central to the study. the importance of business studies is justified by the nature of challenges contemporary businesses face, not only in new products invention but also in introducing change to the management of this invention for the purposes of organisational growth and subsistence in the competitive business context (mamula & popovic-pantic, 2015). however, it is amazing that only three per cent of research reports on business and management studies and little of this account for innovation in conventional business management practices (jelaca, 2016). 2. literature review for purposes of this article, this section is divided into three sub-sections covering the rural context of teaching, learner performance and brief literature on factors influencing learner performance, and business studies as a subject of teaching and learning. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.10 1322022 40(2): 132-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) 2.1 the rural context of teaching poor school management (leadership) in south africa yields poor results, especially in provinces overwhelmed by rural areas, as sometimes teacher absenteeism is rarely monitored and learners in such schools are left vulnerable (motala, 2011). this suggests that principals and school management teams (smts) in rural schools do not manage schools properly. poorly managed schools mean that there is very little involvement of parents as school governing bodies (sgbs) scarcely participate in school matters (atchia & chinapah, 2019). sgbs should provide support to principals on how the school should function. if this does not happen, the whole school does not function properly. mkhize and otu (2018) alluded to the fact that the malfunctioning of schools in rural areas lies with poor management and disorganised sgbs, rendering schools unable to offer desirable support such as libraries, computers and the internet facilities required for teachers to assist learners to perform better. self-confidence in studying is but one lacking characteristic in rural school learners owing to poor family structure epitomised by single parenting, poor parent support and deprived economic status, which give rise to poor academic achievement by learners (chibale & nakamba, 2018). this indicates that academic achievement is not only about learners’ behaviour and their perceptions of learning, but also about school management and the involvement of parents in school matters. 2.2 learner performance and brief factors influencing learner performance learner performance, also referred to as learners’ academic achievement, forms the basis for the advancement of a country’s social and economic development and growth (mushtaq & khan, 2012). learner performance is heavily influenced by the teaching styles and pedagogies teachers use during lesson presentation as they attempt to inspire learners to comprehend difficult concepts and to enhance learners’ interest in their instructional offerings (mlambo, 2011). teacher characteristics encompassing teaching behaviour demonstrated by the teacher towards the achievement of learning outcomes, as well as the experience of the teacher, influence learners’ academic achievement (aziz, mahmud & muda, 2019). teachers’ professional competencies as demonstrated in comprehensive and profound knowledge of the subject the teacher teaches, often translate to high levels of learner academic achievement (long, ibrahim & koang, 2014). the teachers’ role makes a significant contribution to how learners apply themselves in the learning process and achieve in class (atchia & chinapah, 2019). this implies that teachers’ engagement with learners is not only limited to the delivery of content but also includes the role of teacher as a parent to learners, the provision of counselling, social work and sometimes role modelling. assan (2019) argues that not all teachers understand these roles because most teachers interpret their engagement with learners only as a commitment to teaching the subjects allocated to them, at the complete exclusion of other perceived roles. it is true that amongst many other challenges facing learners, domestic, psychological, cognitive, physical, mental and comprehension challenges with a direct impact on how they achieve in class, are highly prevalent (bannister et al., 2018). this suggests that teachers must not only be concerned with the delivery of content but should also take keen interest in addressing these challenges during their interaction with learners (harb & el shaarawi, 2006). most teachers may not be aware of the prevalence of these challenges when learners’ academic performance decline in their specific subjects. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.10 1332022 40(2): 133-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.10 mtshali, ngwenya & myende teachers’ perceptions of the factors influencing rural school 2.3 business studies as a subject of teaching and learning according to the curriculum assessment and policy statement (caps) for business studies, the subject “deals with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values critical for informed, productive, ethical and responsible participation in the formal and informal economic sectors” (dbe, 2011: 8). joshua and bibiano (2015) assert that business studies has a well-established specialised subject matter content knowledge that is essential in the school curriculum. acquisition of this specialised knowledge equips learners with relevant information they need to understand the ever-changing business and technological advancements in the world of work (odundo, 2012; joshua & bibiano, 2015). furthermore, specialised knowledge of business studies provides learners an opportunity beyond their normal lives since it equips them with knowledge and skills they need for potential employability, enterprise capability and responsible citizenship (america & mallon, 2020; fletcher et al., 2011; kimotho, 2016). consequently, teachers should utilise relevant teaching and learning strategies to empower all learners from all backgrounds with suitable knowledge and skills (meintjes, henrico & kroon, 2016). for teachers to adjust to the context where learning takes place and the diversity of learners, pedagogical changes are needed. this entails a combination of discipline-specific knowledge, knowledge about pedagogy and the curriculum, knowledge about the learners and their context and practical knowledge (america & skelly, 2021; emeasoba & igwe, 2016). the business studies curriculum has four main topics that include the subject matter knowledge: business environments, business operations, business roles and business ventures. these topics involve understanding and critical thinking on specific business activities, learning objectives and teaching strategies (kimotho, 2016; meintjes, henrico & kroon, 2016; sithole, 2012). business studies emphasises teaching and learning of the theory and practice, and of business principles that support the enhancement of entrepreneurial and sustainable initiatives and economic growth (america & skelly, 2021; emeasoba & igwe, 2016). although business studies knowledge is mainly theoretical, active learning methods are essential to increase real-world relevance of the subject and the acquisition of skills and knowledge required to keep up with the rapidly changing business environment (america & skelly, 2021). therefore, teachers must understand and use various innovative ways of teaching and assessment that are consistent with the focus of the subject and the requirements for examinations and any other formal assessment. the study on which this article reports is underpinned by dweck and leggett’s (1988) achievement goal theory, which considers all aspects that contribute to good or poor performance of students at colleges and learners in school contexts. according to this theory, the achievement of goals is more a function of the situation or context. maehr and zusho (2009) argue that the level of learners’ achievement motivation varies across school contexts, suggesting that goal approval is based on arrangements arising from the situation. hickey (1997) suggested that there is a strong influence of contextual cues in learners achieving or not achieving goals. the achievement goal theory proposes that for learners to achieve better results, it is wise to not only focus on teaching, but also on the context in which the learner is situated. based on this, it will be reasonable to suggest that despite teacher efforts, rural school learners’ academic performance differs from the academic performance of learners in other school contexts, since learners in different contexts do not share the same levels of achievement motivation. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.10 1342022 40(2): 134-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) a study conducted on teacher factors influencing learners’ academic achievement in the kenya certificate in secondary education that found weekly teaching loads and the administration of learners’ assignments to be among other factors influencing learner performance, sampled teachers across all secondary school contexts and teaching subjects in nyandarua county (kimani, kara & njagi 2013). another study conducted in zambia on the factors influencing poor examination performance by learners in the grade 12 business studies national examination in commerce, sampled learners, teachers, heads of commerce departments and headmasters of three secondary schools in the city of ndola (chibale & nakamba 2018). however, the current south african study seeks to report on teacher factors influencing grade 12 business studies rural school learners’ performance in the nsc examination. this suggests a gap in research conducted in developing countries, as no research has yet been reported on this phenomenon in this subject of teaching and learning in a rural context. this study attempts to narrow this gap. 3. research methods and design a qualitative case study research design was adopted, and the researchers positioned themselves in the interpretive paradigm in order to pursue rich and thick descriptions of factors affecting grade 12 business studies learners’ performance in the umbumbulu circuit. 4. sampling method, sample size and ethical considerations case study methods of sampling were used to select five participants from five rural schools that offered business studies as an instructional offering at grade 12 in the umbumbulu circuit. these schools were conveniently and purposively selected as research sites owing to their proximity and accessibility to one of the researchers (remler & ryzin, 2014). the choice of schools located in the rural settings was meant to allow the sample to be a true representation of the target population in terms of typical attributes (de vos et al., 2011). the choice of five participants was motivated by dworkin’s (2012) idea that case study research seeks to report on the depth, rather than on the breadth of the case and phenomenon being studied. access to research sites was ethically negotiated by seeking permission to conduct the study with the university of kwa-zulu natal’s research ethics committee that granted this permission by extending ethical protocol hssrec/00001164/2020 to the researcher. consent letters requesting teachers’ participation in the study were issued to them, indicating that participation was voluntary, and stating their right to decline the request and to withdraw from participating if they felt like it (choi, 2017). the copy of the consent letter was appended to the ethical clearance application form submitted to the research ethics office. pseudonyms were used during data presentation to protect the identity of the participants, and participants’ responses to interview questions were treated with confidentiality. 5. data collection procedure the study used face-to-face, semi-structured interviews to collect data to construct meaning and develop an understanding of the phenomenon as subject to participants’ experiences. a series of questions were formulated for all interviewees; however, the researchers also asked probing questions to seek further clarity on participants’ responses to scheduled questions (dejonckheere & vaughn, 2019). the interview schedule was first piloted with three grade 11 teachers who had previously taught grade 12 business studies, and the research supervisor reviewed this schedule in order to correct faults and measure the response times. this http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.10 1352022 40(2): 135-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.10 mtshali, ngwenya & myende teachers’ perceptions of the factors influencing rural school enhanced the credibility and trustworthiness of the instrument. to enable the researchers to generate transcribed interview versions, permission to use a tape-recorder during the interviews was obtained from participants. this was to guarantee an even more accurate report on the interviews than hand-written reports. 6. data analysis the researchers used thematic analysis to make meaning of data. bernard (2018) suggests that inductive thematic analysis is more relevant in understanding any phenomenal issues when exploring more than just a single truth. to gain familiarity with the data before transcribing sound into text, the researchers repeatedly listened to the voice-recorded interviews (creswell & creswell, 2018), and their intimacy with the data was enhanced through numerous readings of the interview transcripts. open coding was used for the purposes of clustering specific themes together in ways compatible with qualitative research to enable the forming of initial data relating to the phenomenon being investigated, by sectioning categories based on information collected (brennen, 2017; bryman & bell, 2019). evidence in support of findings will be drawn from extracts from participants’ responses to interview questions. 7. findings the study sought to establish teacher factors influencing grade 12 learners’ dwindling performance in the business studies nsc examination. 7.1 teachers’ approaches to teaching business studies from the data analysed, it was evident that one of the causes of the factors affecting learner performance related to methods teachers use to teach in the classroom. this was evident in participants’ responses to the question “which methods do you normally use to teach business studies to your learners in class?” one participant offered the following response to this question: due to limited contact time, i end up doing remote teaching where i ask one learner to teach on my behalf; i believe that it builds their confidence and understanding of the content. i normally make copies of different resources including copies of textbooks, memorandum of previous question papers etc. when i do get time with them, that is the time i explain the notes i gave them (zama). the participant in the above extract used remote teaching as an approach to facilitating teaching and learning in class because time for contact, face-to-face teaching is insufficient and believes that remote teaching inspired the confidence and understanding of subject content in learners. the participant suggests that remote teaching occurs when the teacher is not physically in class but asks a learner to lead classroom interaction using teaching resources such as textbook copies and memoranda to previous question papers. this indicates that the participant is of the opinion that learners can learn from each other in class, even in the absence of the teacher. another participant expressed the following sentiments in response to the same question presented and/or asked above: i use textbooks to summarise notes on the board for learners to write as they do not have textbooks. i seldom group them, sometimes storytelling but mostly, i use a teachercentred approach to cover for atp. the environment surrounding learners i teach does not allow me to vary strategies as i have to explain everything to them (zoleka). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.10 1362022 40(2): 136-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) the participant in the above extract claims to have used a textbook as a method central to the delivery of content in class. moreover, the participant indicates to have used storytelling as an alternative method of teaching when learners are organised into groups. the participant also mentioned that she used teacher-centred methods of instruction because in the rural environment of umbumbulu, she could not vary strategies to include cases of existing businesses such as a shopping mall. the reason being that learners could not relate to this since such businesses are non-existent in this environment, thus, she had to explain everything. the participant could therefore not use teacher-centred methods interchangeably with learner-centred methods. another participant shared the following thoughts in response to the same question relating to the methods they normally use for teaching business studies: by preparing notes for learners to read repetitively so that they memorise content, and using plain and simple english for learners help them (sipho). the participant in the above excerpt cites rote learning as a teaching approach that he used to facilitate teaching by using notes prepared from the content of the textbook. these notes were formulated in ways that simplified the textbook content as complex english words and terms were expressed in a regular and straightforward language for learners to memorise with understanding. the participant asserts that this assisted learners with their learning. this shows that the most dominant approaches teachers used to teach business studies owing to the context in which learners are situated, as the achievement goal theory suggests, which ultimately had an influence on learners’ performance were remote teaching, using a textbook, storytelling and rote learning. 7.2 timetabling participants also felt that the slots for business studies in the timetable had a bearing on how they taught the subject to learners in the rural context. they raised concerns that the period for business studies is always in the afternoon when they were already tired. this transpired from participants’ responses to the question “what can you say about the timing of the business studies’ period in the school time-table?” the following extracts from the interview transcript support this idea: all periods for business studies are after break towards the last or during the last period when teachers and learners are tired, earlier periods are for mathematics, accounting and languages ... (mahle) all the time business studies is taught when teachers and learners are tired after break … and it is even worse because there are so many learners in just one class, making it difficult for the teacher to control. (zoleka) a participant in the following extract observed that teachers face challenges with learners sleeping in class, with low levels of motivation due to periods being placed after break: teachers struggle with learners sleeping in class, teenage pregnancy, peer pressure and lack of motivation during the business studies period that often appears late during the day after break in the timetable … (zama). the assumption is that, according to participant zama, if the period was scheduled earlier during the day, say in the morning before break, the teacher would be able to teach http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.10 1372022 40(2): 137-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.10 mtshali, ngwenya & myende teachers’ perceptions of the factors influencing rural school an all-attentive group of learners who will be focusing on learning as the teacher teaches, leading to a better understanding of content that would eventually lead to improved learner performance. this also suggests the likelihood that learners would not fall asleep while the teacher presents the lesson, and the teacher would be vibrant while learners would be fresh and motivated to participate in class. 7.3 impediments to innovative teaching and assessment the large number of learners in business studies classes, coupled with the shortage of textbooks in most rural schools, challenge the creativity of teachers when teaching. teachers could not utilise other teaching strategies deemed to be more appropriate and effective due to large classes. this surfaced when participants were asked the question “does the size of the class impact on how you teach business studies?” this question triggered the following response: floor space [is a] problem. i have over 50 learners in one class and it is not easy to assess and give immediate feedback to learners owing to class size. it is not easy to conduct group discussions owing to the shortage of textbooks (sipho). participant sipho observes that the size of the class, accompanied by the shortage of textbooks hinders the use of different innovative teaching strategies such as group discussions. the participant also notes that it was difficult to give learners more assessment tasks and provide timeous feedback because of numerous scripts received from learners. large numbers of scripts received from learners meant that more time had to be devoted to marking. another participant had this to say in response to the same question on the impact of class size on teaching: i think i need to give learners more assessment tasks using innovative forms of assessment to prepare learners for formal tests, but i cannot because the number of learners in my class is too big (zola). the participant in the above excerpt indicates that they tend to avoid the use of innovative ways of assessing learners as the class size increases, especially when learners have to be informally assessed in preparation for formal assessment because marking becomes cumbersome. the assumption is that, with less use of innovative ways of preparing learners for grade 12 formal quarterly tests and end-of-year nsc final examination paper, learners’ academic achievement tends to be poor. 8. discussion findings presented in this article suggest that methods teachers use to teach business studies to grade 12 learners in rural schools may not be compatible with good learner performance. mlambo (2011) alluded in the literature reviewed in this article that teaching methodologies teachers adopt when teaching learners in class have a considerable effect on learners’ performance. this suggests that teachers may use innovative methods to inspire learner understanding of subject matter. aziz, mahmud and muda (2019) report that teacher quality characteristics coupled with a teacher-centred approach positively correlates with effective teaching, which in turn gives rise to enhanced learner performance. while participants in this study used textbooks as a teaching methodology, bregman and bryner (2012) found that the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.10 1382022 40(2): 138-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.10 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) scarcity of textbooks among learners inhibits teachers’ efforts towards the achievement of higher learning outcomes which, once addressed, can enable teachers to improve learners’ academic performance. consistent with this finding is the achievement goal theoretical assumption that teacher practices, including teachers’ choice of teaching methods, have a significant influence in shaping goal achievement and academic performance by learners (maehr & zusho, 2009). findings also indicate that the positioning of the subject in the school or class timetable has a major effect on the way the teacher teaches business studies to learners in class. klein and lawrence (2012) indicated that there were various levels of attention at different times of the day on the part of the learner, with learners experiencing lesser levels of attention as the day develops towards the afternoon. this happens despite added effort and innovative teaching methods applied by teachers to attract learners’ attention. pope (2016) suggests that the time-of-day effect, perceived as the variance in productivity at different times of the day owing to stamina effects, results from changes in the teachers’ teaching quality. this gives rise to a decision to move certain teaching periods considered to be more affected by time of day such as mathematics to the morning, and others such as english to the afternoon (pope 2016). this renders teachers of the latter subject unable to achieve pleasing levels of learner academic performance in the subject and this is consistent with this finding reported in this article. certain impediments to innovative teaching and assessment that teachers cannot control such as the size of the class frequently constrain learner academic performance. teaching in large classes becomes cumbersome for teachers who often find it challenging to engage individual learners in learning. teachers cannot do what they would like to do to enable learners to achieve desirable levels of academic achievement, while accessing opportunities to participate during the lesson becomes complicated for learners (nguyen, 2015). feza, juan and visser (2015) observe that large class sizes make it difficult for teachers to provide individual attention and support needed by learners because of high teacher-pupil ratios in rural schools. large classes are not compatible with the use of learner-centred teaching methods directed at enhancing learner performance. teaching methodologies, the positioning of the subject in the class timetable and impediments to innovative teaching such as class size are teacher factors influencing learner performance and are compatible with the achievement goal theory since this theory considers all factors that contribute to good or poor learner performance in a pedagogic context. a study conducted in gambia, on teacher-related factors as predictors of academic achievement in english grammar (olagbaju, 2020) recommended based on its findings that more research focusing on teacher-related variables influencing learners’ academic achievement should be conducted in contexts where english is used as a second language for instructional purposes in developing countries. it is based on this recommendation that the current study that sought to report on teacher factors influencing rural school learners’ performance in grade 12 business studies was conducted in a developing country. 9. conclusion and recommendations conclusions drawn from the findings presented in this article suggest that grade 12 business studies teachers could not use innovative and learner-centred methods of instruction due to constrained time for face-to-face contact teaching. the rural context where the schools are http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.10 1392022 40(2): 139-142 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.10 mtshali, ngwenya & myende teachers’ perceptions of the factors influencing rural school situated also made it difficult for teachers to use methods that relate to the real businessworld. the large class size that is highly prevalent in rural schools also presented difficulties with which appropriate methods of teaching business studies can be used to enhance learner understanding. it can also be concluded that the scheduling of business studies in the school’s timetable contributes to the way the teacher interacts with leaners in class. concerning this, participants stated that the likelihood of exhaustion affects teachers’ levels of teaching efficacy when teaching periods are placed towards the end of the day. all this points to teacher-related factors influencing grade 12 business studies rural learners’ academic achievement in the nsc examination; these need to 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[accessed 2 june 2017]. remler, k. & van ryzin, g. 2014. research methods in practice: strategies for description and causation. the american review of public administration, 42(1): 54-65. https://doi. org/101177/0275070110397333 sithole, b.m. 2012. pedagogical practices of business studies teachers in botswana junior secondary schools: are teachers and curriculum planners singing from the same hymnbook? international journal of scientific research in education, 3: 21-28. https://doi.org/10.1080/09 718923.2012.11893053 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.10 http://erepository.uonbi.ac.ke:8080/xmlui/handle/123456789/34098 https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/8897719 http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/rest_a_00525 http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/rest_a_00525 https://doi.org/101177/0275070110397333 https://doi.org/101177/0275070110397333 https://doi.org/10.1080/09718923.2012.11893053 https://doi.org/10.1080/09718923.2012.11893053 _hlk74501868 _hlk75096125 _hlk76317723 _hlk73646226 _hlk76744861 _hlk76744878 _hlk76744900 _hlk74408964 _hlk75084474 _hlk75159822 _hlk75164888 _hlk72761636 _hlk75096053 _hlk87961254 _hlk87962799 _hlk76328700 _hlk81393706 _hlk75168504 _hlk75084102 277 book review 2021 39(3): 277-278 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.20 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) “skoolleierskap en die skep van produktiewe leerruimtes in skole” [school leadership and the creation of productive learning environments in schools] a book review by prof lynette jacobs this afrikaans book, which stems from the first author, johann burger’s, doctoral study, makes an excellent contribution to original research nationally and internationally. the book is divided into seven distinct chapters with chapter 1 orienting the reader to the book and study itself while chapter 7 rounds off the book and study with conclusions and recommendations. chapter 2 starts with a good introduction to leadership, leadership practices and management, and sets the tone for chapters 3 to 6, which each discuss how two school leaders intentionally reimagined and produced physical, mental and social spaces within their schools to the advantage of the school community and to advance productive learning. as the authors themselves state, [h]ierdie boek is ‘n poging om die konsep en belangrikheid van ruimte in ‘n skoolopset te verduidelik, asook hoe dit geskep en tot voordeel van beide leerders en opvoeders aangewend kan word. [this book attempts to explain the concept and importance of space in a school environment as well as how it is created and could be used to the advantage of the learners and teachers.] the authors of the book argue that space is pivotal to our experience of the world, and report on two school leaders who regarded the creation of spaces within which formal and informal learning can flourish as seminal to their task. author: prof lynette jacobs1 affiliation: 1university of the free state, south campus doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i3.20 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(3): 277-278 published: 16 september 2021 the book is available from the following platforms: google books: https://bit.ly/3fctx7x takealot: https://bit.ly/39f3gz2 itsi: https://bit.ly/3lpdogi amazon print: https://amzn.to/3khnbrj amazon kindle: https://amzn.to/3eqngkf jstor: https://bit.ly/3hgxttk proquest & ebsco host african sun media: orders@africansunmedia.co.za / +27 (0)21 201 0071 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.20 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1582-5024 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.20 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.20 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.20 https://bit.ly/3fctx7x https://bit.ly/39f3gz2 https://bit.ly/3lpdogi https://amzn.to/3khnbrj https://amzn.to/3eqngkf https://bit.ly/3hgxttk 2782021 39(3): 278-278 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.20 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) in my opinion this book not only promotes original research that adds to the body of knowledge on school leadership, but it takes a refreshing approach to leadership, particularly to the leader as the creator of physical, mental and social space (theorised by henri lefebvre [1991]). furthermore, the concept of space is understood as a lived space with interaction between the physical environment, the utilisation of the environment by people and the different social practices within the space. transformative leadership is a key concept in this book and it resonates with distributive leadership and the importance of school climate and culture. this book is very well written, the research methodology is explained in detailed and accurately and yet it does not give one the feel that this book originates from a doctoral thesis. the main argument is carried throughout the book and the structure conforms to that of the three spaces that form the focused framework of the book. powerful narratives of the leaders put the reader in their context and thinking. even though the authors write and describe the spaces so well that one can visualise it, the photos assist in supplementing the descriptions. for me, the contributions of the book can be summarised in the following two quotes: die bevindings van ons studie dui daarop dat skoolhoofde wat oor transformerende leierskapsvaardighede besit, beter daartoe in staat is om fisiese, geestelike en sosiale ruimtes te skep, wat ‘n direkte invloed op die skepping van produktiewe leeromgewings het, en wat invloed op die denke, gemoed, verbeelding, motivering, gedrag en dissipline van die gebruikers uitoefen, en wat op verhoogde geluksvlakke en verbeterde prestasies by die skole uitloop. [the findings of our study indicate that principals who have transformative leadership skills are better able to create physical, mental and social spaces, which have a direct influence on the creation of productive learning environments, and that influence thinking, mood, imagination, motivation, behaviour and discipline of the users, and that results in increased levels of happiness and improved performance at the schools.] …die doeltreffende benutting van ruimte deur middel van transformerende leierskappraktyke [kan] wel goeie leerderuitkomste behaal, ongeag of ’n skool landelik of stedelik, arm of middelklas, ruim of beknop, christen of moslem is. […the efficient use of space through transformative leadership practices [can] achieve good learner outcomes, regardless of whether a school is rural or urban, poor or middle class, spacious or cramped, christian or muslim.] although the primary audience for this book would be academics, specialists and practitioners in the field of educational leadership and management, this book also adds value to the wider field of leadership since the insights from this research have wider reach and relevance that just education. perhaps the only critique i have of the book is the use of some terminology such as that of “metropolitaanse kollegas” [metropolitan colleagues] and “metropolitaanse gebiede” [metropolitan areas]. these could be replaced with simpler terminology such as “stedelike gebede” [urban areas]. overall however, this is an excellent book. i would recommend that the authors and publishers translate the book to other south african languages to make it accessible to a wider readership, including school governing body members of diverse schools. ebooks would suffice. authors: johann burger and aslam fataar publisher: african sun media http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.20 101 delivering sexuality education: a review of teaching pedagogies within south african schools abstract the life orientation (lo) learning area provides the primary vehicle for the delivery of sexual and reproductive health (srh) information in south african schools. the efficacy and uptake of the lo agenda is understood to rest with the individual educator facilitating this learning area, as located within a particular schooling environment and broader socio-cultural systems. this paper examines the perspectives of education staff responsible for lo lesson delivery, their competencies in understanding the varied challenges and contextual realities of this position as well as their abilities to impact learner engagement. data was collected from secondary school contexts across three different provinces in south africa, including high performing and low performing districts and across different economic profiles. thematic content from educator interviews were enriched with classroom observations and structured questions on educator qualifications, training experiences, and personal orientations. the success of lo lessons and self-efficacy of learners are sourced in a combination of certain cognitive, behavioural and environmental factors. didactic teaching methodologies and prescriptive approaches to potentially sensitive lo content are potential barriers to learner development as selfefficacious beings. our findings suggest that lo educators would benefit from further professional and personal development to ensure the realisation of the sexuality education objectives. keywords: educators; hiv and aids; life orientation (lo); sexuality education; south africa; self-efficacy; teaching pedagogies 1. introduction sexuality education programmes are widely recognised as key in challenging negative assumptions in respect of hiv and aids, gender-based violence and unwanted pregnancy, and in promoting safer, equitable and non-violent sexual practices (shefer & macleod, 2015). sexuality education delivered in schools aims to reduce risky sexual practices, thereby contributing to the reduction of hiv incidence among youth and adolescents (mavedzenge et al., 2011); which is an outcome of the sustainable development goals (sdgs) (un general assembly, 2014) and south africa’s national strategic plan for hiv, stis and tb 2017-2022 (south african national aids council, 2017). apart from promoting the development of young peoples’ sexual dr gavin george university of kwazulu-natal georgeg@ukzn.ac.za dr leigh adams tucker university of the western cape ltucker@uwc.ac.za dr saadhna panday unicef spanday@unicef.org dr faith khumalo south african department of basic education kumalo.f@dbe.gov.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v37i1.8 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 37(1): 101-114 date published: february 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:georgeg@ukzn.ac.za mailto:ltucker@uwc.ac.za mailto:spanday@unicef.org mailto:kumalo.f@dbe.gov.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.8 http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 102 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) knowledge, school-based life skills programmes may also potentially help develop maturity, self-confidence, communication skills and well-rounded personalities (goldman, 2006). the hiv and aids life skills education programme has been implemented in all schools via the life orientation (lo) learning area from 2000/2001. while the lo learning area continues to function as the primary vehicle for the delivery of sexuality education, including reproductive health (bhana et al., 2005; shefer & mcleod, 2015), translation of this knowledge into improved prevention behaviour has been somewhat inconclusive (department of education, 2006; reddy, james & mccauley, 2005; visser, 2005). south african studies have suggested that lo efforts may often not lead to healthier sexual attitudes and behaviour (hendricks & tanga, 2016). lo is falling short of its goals and often appears to be failing to impact positively on youth sexual practices and experiences (sedibe, 2014; shefer & mcleod, 2015). even though a theoretical understanding exists of the goals and objectives of the lo programme, there are knowledge gaps regarding the extent to, and conditions under which the programme is delivered (tucker et al., 2016). 1.1. educators’ challenges in delivering sexuality education the efficacy of sexuality education in south africa is wedged within a triad of policy, personal and community values (francis, 2011). frequent changes in the lo curricula over the past two decades, as well as limited detail or departmental guidance for teaching practice and pedagogy, have left lo educators feeling overwhelmed by the complex nature of the subject (diale, 2016; francis, 2010; goldman, 2010). this is concerning, as many lo educators across south african schools lack uniformity in professional training and come from a diverse range of fields, which do not always adequately equip them for delivering sexuality education confidently and effectively (francis, 2011; rooth, 2005). effective pedagogical strategies are missing to create a dynamic classroom atmosphere for lo lesson delivery that incorporates cultural diversities (prinsloo, 2007). engaging youth as legitimate sexual subjects who can provide input into what is being taught (francis, 2010), while paying attention to students’ personal biographies and life-histories – sexuality issues, opinions and experiences – is crucial to the realisation of the programmes objectives (timmerman, 2009). educators’ individual experiences and personality affect their pedagogical and didactic approach, including their ability to address practical knowledge about relationships and issues of gender and desire (francis, 2010; timmerman, 2009). south african educators have reported a lack of confidence in embodying the role of effective instructors and modellers of life-skills, rendering lo a daunting task for many of them (wood & olivier, 2007). models to increase educator’s self-efficacy beliefs have proven effective in enhancing their confidence in the teaching of this learning area (wood & olivier, 2007). operational research is needed to understand the factors contributing to an effective delivery of sexuality education, particularly in under-resourced and culturally diverse contexts to “bridge the gap” between good curricula and positive sexual and reproductive health (srh) outcomes in adolescents’ lives. as such, research in the education arena should move beyond solely critiquing the content of sex education programmes, towards scrutinising “how” these curricula are being delivered in developing contexts, and by whom (diale, 2016; yankah & aggleton, 2008). in so doing, not only structural and individual barriers but also local (south african) value systems ought to be taken into consideration (prinsloo, 2007). 103 george, tucker, panday & khumalo delivering sexuality education this paper examines educators’ views of lo delivery and if pedagogic strategies and use of resources, favour the development of learners as capable, self-efficacious decisionmakers. it is the intention of this research to assist lo educators in identifying and anchoring pedagogies in approaches that are more structured and theoretically geared towards greater levels of understanding and behaviour change. 1.2. conceptualising the action of learning through social cognitive theory bandura’s (1986) social cognitive theory (sct) conceptualises individuals as agents, proactively engaged in their personal development. upon processes of reflection, the self is regulated in a dynamic interplay of cognitive, behavioural and environmental influences, as noted in figure 1 below. this conceptualisation of humans as self-efficacious represents a move away from theories understanding the individual as mostly reactive to their environments. bandura’s (1986) understanding of reciprocal determinism instead finds self-regulations to be a product resulting from a process of triadic reciprocality, including interactions between (a) personal factors in the form of cognition, affect and biological events, (b) behavioural competencies and (c) environmental influence. concerning sct, this paper highlights the cognitive and behavioural factors underpinning lo educators’ competence in teaching lo, as well as the key environmental factors that shape lo lesson delivery, thereby positively or negatively influencing learners’ engagement with and application of srh information. figure 1 bandura’s social cognitive theory (adapted by the authors) 2. methodology a cross-sectional research design was used to explore factors affecting the implementation of lo programmes, specifically the sexuality education sub-component, in public secondary 104 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) schools across select districts in three provinces in south africa (george et al., 2013). in the original study, focus-group sessions were held with grade 9 and 11 learners, typically representing our 14-18 year old adolescent group, while in-depth interviews were conducted with lo educators, lo heads of department (hods), departmental lo subject advisors and coordinators for non-governmental organisations involved in school-based life skills education (tucker et al., 2016, 2017). this paper focuses on teaching practices with an emphasis on the views expressed by lo educators and lo hods. these views are supplemented with classroom observational data. 2.1. sampling the participating schools in the study were sampled across three districts in south africa: the umgungundlovu district in kwazulu-natal, the north tshwane district in gauteng and the bohlabela district in mpumalanga. the purposive selection of these districts was geared towards developing a better understanding of lo programmes across varying educational contexts. north tshwane and bohlabela represented the best performing and worst performing districts for the 2010 national senior certificate (nsc) examinations, with matriculant pass rates of 85.6% and 40.1% respectively (department of basic education, 2011). the bulk of the research was conducted in the umgungundlovu district in kwazulunatal. the grade 12 pass rate for kwazulu-natal (70.7%) was closest to the national average of 67.8% for the 2010 nsc (motshekga, 2010), while umgungundlovu recorded the highest hiv prevalence among pregnant women across all districts within kwazulu-natal (45.7% in 2008) (department of health, 2009). poverty quintile rankings (pqs) were also taken into consideration as national indicators for poverty and infrastructure. pq communities 1, 2 and 3 represent more under-resourced and non-fee paying schools compared to pq 4-5 communities (department of basic education, 2013). stratified random sampling was employed across districts and pqs, resulting in a final sample of 16 schools, comprising nine pq 1-3 schools and seven pq 4-5 schools. 2.2. data collection the humanities and social science research ethics committee at the university of kwazulunatal and the national department of basic education (dbe) granted permission and ethical approval for the study. fieldwork was conducted between july 2011 and mid-october 2011. across the sixteen sampled schools, 45 semi-structured interviews were conducted with lo educators (n = 30) and lo hods (n = 15)1. written, informed consent was obtained from participants regarding the audio recording of interviews and the understanding of confidentiality, anonymity and voluntariness of participation. interviews lasted approximately 45 minutes and were conducted in a private office or area on the school grounds. educators were interviewed during free lesson periods, break times or after school, by trained fieldworkers proficient in an interview language of choice (english, zulu or tsonga). in addition to recording basic demographic data, participants responded to various open and closed questions about their teaching position, their qualifications and experience, enjoyment of teaching lo, lesson preparation, teaching pedagogies, staff and student relationships and other community-level issues and services. thirty-two lo classroom observations were performed in the sixteen schools, one per grade 9 class and grade 11 class in each school. opportunistically, an additional three classroom observations were conducted, bringing the total observations for analysis to thirty-five. one 105 george, tucker, panday & khumalo delivering sexuality education trained fieldworker was tasked with conducting lesson observations to improve evaluation consistency across sites. the observation questionnaire contained questions designed to assess several dimensions of lo lessons, including teaching methods and activities, teaching resources and materials, as well as learner participation and engagement in lo lessons. questions were primarily in the form of numeric rating tables with only a few open-ended, qualitative questions covering lo lessons and the educators’ approach to discipline and classroom management. the observation questionnaire was piloted in two durban secondary schools prior to the formal research activities. 2.3. data analysis after the recorded interviews were transcribed, the qualitative data was thematically analysed. analysis was guided by the conventions proposed by gibbs (2007), boyatsiz (1998) and bazely (2007). transcripts were analysed using the qualitative software, nvivo (version 9) and coded according to themes and sub-themes relating to how lo is taught at the 16 schools sampled. during analysis and interpretation of the data, narratives from different groups of participants were triangulated with one another as well as with findings from the lo lesson observations to examine commonalities and discrepancies. where applicable, frequency counts were used to document the demographic information of respondents and their responses to closed questions regarding teaching experiences and preferences. pseudonyms were used to protect the identities of schools and the interviewees. 3. results hereinafter, lo educators are profiled, based on the information obtained during the structured interviews. this is followed by an overview of perceived lo educator competence and selfefficacy in relation to the cognitive, behavioural and environmental features that negatively or positively influence the delivery of lo content. 3.1 profile of lo educators demographic information was obtained from the 30 lo educators within the sample, as noted in table 1 below. lo educator ages were evenly distributed between 23 to 56 years, with an average educator age of 37 years. there were more female educators (70% n=21) than male educators (30% n=9). when questioned about their desire to teach lo, 20 educators (66.7%) reported that it was their preference, while 10 educators (33.3%) indicated that it was not their first subject choice. a review of teaching responsibilities reveals that most of the lo educators teach one other subject in addition to lo (58.6%. n=17), while six educators taught two subjects in addition to lo (20.7%. n=6). educators within lower pq schools in this sample appear to have a more diverse teaching portfolio by covering a greater number of subject areas in addition to lo, while educators in high pq schools were more likely to appoint specialist lo educators. most lo educators in the sample were responsible for teaching lo to two grades within their schools (38%. n=11). the number of individual lo classes assigned to educators ranged from one class to 20 classes, with two classes most frequently reported (41.4%. n=12). the reported number of classes, lessons and the duration of teaching periods were calculated to ascertain the contact time that lo educators share with their learners. contact time reported by educators varied considerably. the most frequently reported contact times were four (17.2%. n=5) or six hours (13.8%. n=4) within a five or ten-day timetable. the greatest overall 106 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) contact time for teaching lo in a week was reported at 28 hours for a specialist lo educator teaching lo to classes across four grades. the qualified teaching experience of educators within the sample ranged from 0 years to 33 years, with the former indicating an absence of a formal teaching qualification. the years of experience for teaching lo ranged from less than 1 year to 9 years, with some respondents including their experience facilitating pre-lo school subjects such as career guidance. nearly half the educators (43.3%. n=13) reported having less than one year experience teaching lo as a subject within their current school, while eight educators reported having less than one year experience teaching lo at any level (26.7%). table 1: profile of lo educators variable response options number (%) sex male 9 (30) female 21 (70) total 30 (100) preference for lo yes 20 (66.7) no 10 33.3 total 30 100 learning areas in none 6 20.7 addition to lo 1 17 58.6 2+ 6 20.7 total 29 100 number grades taught 1 9 31 2 11 37.9 3 6 20.7 4 2 6.9 5 1 3.4 total 29 100 number years qualified less than 1 year 3 10 teaching experience 1-4 years 7 23.3 5-9 years 10 33.3 10-19 years 6 20 more than 20 years 4 13.3 total 30 100 number years teaching >1 year 8 26.7 lo 1-4 years 12 40 107 george, tucker, panday & khumalo delivering sexuality education variable response options number (%) 5-9 years 10 33.3 total 30 100 number of years >1 year 13 43.3 teaching lo at 1-4 years 8 26.7 observed school 5-9 years 9 30 total 30 100 number of learners in >19 2 5.9 lo classes 20-39 learners 22 64.7 40-59 learners 6 17.6 more than 60 4 11.8 total 34 100 lesson duration >30 minutes 2 5.9 30-45 minutes 16 47.1 46-60 minutes 13 38.2 more than 60 minutes 3 8.8 total 34 100 3.2. cognitive: knowledge, expectations and attitudes lo educators’ levels of knowledge regarding lo themes and lesson content, and their perceptions of and general attitudes towards the subject, are important factors shaping competence for lo lesson delivery. understanding the expression of these ideas and values in class is critical, as learners’ judgement of their own knowledge and the ways in which this information becomes encoded, is rooted in their observations of educators as role models. more than two thirds of the educators in the study preferred teaching lo to other subjects but also covered other subject areas, with only higher pq-levelled schools having dedicated specialist lo educators. lo educators frequently had little teaching experience and lacked training. this affected classroom management and attitudes towards sexuality education. nearly every educator expressed belief in the importance of teaching learners about hiv and aids, sex and sexuality and acknowledged learners’ needs for related information. a responsibility to tell learners the “truth” about sensitive topics such as hiv and aids and sex was highlighted, meaning that learners ought to know the consequences of their behaviour. however, this often resulted, particularly within pq 1-3 schools, in simplistic and prescriptive warnings, designed to deter learners from having sex, rather than discussing values, knowledge and developing skills to make healthy and informed sexual and reproductive health choices, as exemplified in the following two excerpts: interviewer: is that why it is very important to teach learners about sexual issues? 108 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) yes, so that they know the risks of engaging in sex, especially unsafe sex. because when you take risks, you will die from aids, and you will give birth to an hiv positive child who will die as well (lo educator, pq 2 school, umgungundlovu district). you must just ask them, “do you know what sex is?” then some they’ll say “we know”, some will say “we don’t know”, and i said, “it’s good for you if you don’t know because sex is very dangerous, because you are going to fall pregnant, you’re going to get hiv, you’re going to have babies with no fathers” (lo educator, pq 1 school, bohlabela district). while many educators found lo important and put effort into conveying lesson content, there were concerns regarding the perceived value and recognition of lo within the academic context: there’s that stigma that life orientation is just a subject where we talk about everything, so it’s an “easy subject”. so, “can we have your period now? we can use them for something more important”. though they [other educators] don’t say it like that but if you are an adult, you can read between the lines ... sometimes they don’t understand the importance of it (lo educator, pq 4 school, umgungundlovu district). if it was according to me, we could have been doing away with this subject because, though it is important, as important as it is, it is not being recognised by the learners and even us as the teachers because the score for life orientation is not considered for admission at universities, that is another serious problem. so why must we waste our time by allocating this thing in the timetable, in a composite timetable, whereas it’s not taking the learner anywhere? (hod, pq 2 school, umgungundlovu district). as the previous quote illustrates, perceptions of lo credibility at the individual-level in the context of a schooling system cannot be divorced from the broader environmental influences related to institutional policies like university accreditation. 3.3. behavioural: skills for practice internalisation of lo content and the skills learners develop, also hinge on the various pedagogical approaches used by lo educators to covey sensitive subjects. the expressed comfort of the majority of educators in teaching these topics largely stemmed from individual factors, including background training in psychology or nursing; personal characteristics such as confidence, open-mindedness and having frequently been exposed to information on hiv and aids. however, there also appeared to be insecurities about handling classroom situations, as the following educator statement highlights: now if you go deep into that (hiv and aids and sexuality topics) and there are those older boys who now are like, “yes ma’am, please tell us more, tell us more”, they make it personal now. they ask you, “ma’am, when did you start to engage in sex? what can be done, how can we do it?” now, they digress, they take the lesson in a bad direction. that’s why i feel that you mention it, you don’t have to actually go deep and explain how it happens, but if you say that, “girls don’t sleep with boys. boys don’t sleep with girls!” i think that is generally understood (lo educator, pq 4 school, umgungundlovu district) classroom observations revealed three major trends in educator-learner interactions. half the observed lessons (48.6%. n=17) supported a democratic atmosphere in which educators and learners shared equal participation and retained a focus on the subject material. fourteen lessons (40%) were formal and educator-dominant with a one-way transmission of information from educator to learner and little opportunity for learners to participate. in a few cases 109 george, tucker, panday & khumalo delivering sexuality education (11.4%. n=4), this power dynamic was inverted whereby learners were reluctant to follow the educator’s instructions and failed to complete tasks. even though learner participation was prized within lessons covering sensitive thematic areas, educators reported a need to ensure an even stricter control of classroom discipline in order to prevent inappropriate comments or questions from learners that may offend peers affected by the lesson content. in contrast, educators from pq 5 schools largely felt that their learners were tired of hearing about hiv and aids, given that they had been exposed to hiv prevention messages and lessons since primary school. their primary education approach was dedicated to piercing through a perception of invulnerability to hiv infection that learners had developed: regarding the hiv specifically, i have a feeling that, that it’s, old news, it’s “flogging a dead horse”. the learners have had this on primary school, in every grade, and in different subjects also, they do it in the languages, in essays, or in comprehension tests, or whatever. they are bored with the subject, on the one side. the other side, we must keep on doing it because there are still a lot of myths and lack of information out there and personally i don’t know how to bridge that gap. “it will not happen to me”, sort of, “it happens to black people or to poor people. it won’t happen to me. so i don’t listen in class to what the teacher says”. i don’t know how to bridge that gap. if somebody can discover that tool. (lo educator, pq 5 school, north tshwane district) 3.4. environmental: social norms and resources in the previous themes and excerpts, it is suggested that educators’ individual views of lo and the ways in which it is internalised by learners, is influenced by how the subject is facilitated across broader institutional levels. educator accounts reveal how institutional sentiment shapes curriculum time, as well as staff and other resource allocations. many educators and hods in the sample acknowledged that insufficient time is allocated to lo in curriculums, reinforcing a perception of lo as unimportant relative to other learning areas. this was seen as compromising teaching quality, either through reliance on didactic teaching to progress quickly through content, or through a vague and superficial teaching approach that failed to cover curriculum material and formal department assessments. the allotment of educators to lo was not only described as secondary to other subjects, but also as a form of penalty for under-performing educators: they think that life orientation is an easy subject because it’s not examinable. that is why i was saying that when a teacher is absent a lot they give them life orientation. when a teacher has got ill health, they give them life orientation. when a teacher did not perform well in grade 12 results, they switch them to teaching grade 8 and also give him life orientation. that’s the problem that we are facing. (hod, pq 1 school, bohlabela district). most of the educators were utilising and closely following the work plans provided to them by the dbe subject advisor and their lo textbooks in preparing lo lessons. apart from educators in pq 5 schools who routinely held meetings to confer about lesson content, activities and pace of delivery, lo educators from other poverty quintiles tended to prepare their own class content independently from fellow lo educators in that same grade. while educators in pqs 4 and 5 consulted multiple textbooks and relied heavily on alternate sources to diversify the information for their lessons, educators in pqs 1-3 had access to only one lo textbook per grade as reference material, which was said to contain insufficient information. creative methodologies like role-plays and debates, as well as project activities 110 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) were largely absent from lo lessons. the use of technology through powerpoint slideshows was observed in six lessons (17.1%) and solely within pq 5 schools. one significant resource constraint challenging the use of participatory activities, which was observed and reported by respondents, was the overcrowding of classrooms (ranging from 90-120 learners in pq 1 schools to 38-45 learners in pq 5 schools). educators who acknowledged difficulties with large class sizes recalled using a more didactic approach in lessons to manage learner misbehaviour and ensure the covering of the volume of work outlined in the curriculum. furthermore, a lack of internet access and school libraries in all but six schools (pq 4-5) and long distances to community libraries and facilities made it particularly difficult for learners and educators in poorer, rural communities to source information and conduct independent research tasks. nevertheless, there was evidence of motivated lo educators assisting learners in sourcing external information, including the provision of transport to community locations and improvising with lesson materials: i’m feeling comfortable except the pet, although i’m flexible to use whatever material that i have. for instance here, during pet time, we need to have changing rooms, we don’t have changing rooms, even the material we don’t have the equipment but if you are an educator you need to be creative. you need to use whatever is in front of you. you can’t just say, or being lazy, there’s no material at work. you need to improvise (lo educator, pq 3 school, umgungundlovu district). 4. discussion the lo subject is designed to enhance personal growth, to develop the self in society and form a sense of responsibility for oneself and others, including learning to make healthy choices. thus, lo lessons ought to be geared towards learner’s notions of self-efficacy; an ability to influence aspects affecting their lives. through the lens of lo educator accounts, as outlined in the findings, this section discusses potential intersections of lo educator’s pedagogic approaches and learner self-efficacy. firstly, the socio-structural frameworks of lo lesson delivery will be discussed further. secondly, the section will elaborate on how educators within these structures respond to learners’ experiences and information needs regarding sexuality and health, as this forms a crucial part in the reciprocal interplay between the personal, behavioural and environmental factors (see bandura, 1986). 4.1. socio-structural frameworks the finding that lo as a subject area was lacking acknowledgement is in line with other research conducted across south africa (sedibe, 2014; tucker et al., 2016; shefer & mcleod, 2015). standards of lo delivery vary considerably across different pq-levelled schools, highlighting the hampering effects of structural inequality on the quality of sexuality education. however, there remain motivated educators who provide learners with additional material, even in contexts with limited or absent internet and library access. while educators of all pq levels emphasised the potential of participatory teaching strategies, only pq 5 educators used creative and innovative activities in their lo lessons. pq 5 educators, equipped through additional meetings, greater access to lo resources including specialist educators and smaller classes, used a less didactic and more participatory pedagogic approach. the simplistic and prescriptive warnings about hiv and sexual behaviour shared by many pq 1-3 educators coincide with fewer resources, less training, over-crowded classrooms and having to deal with learners’ issues. limitations regarding training resources, 111 george, tucker, panday & khumalo delivering sexuality education as reported by lo educators in lower pq schools, resulted in lo staff having to rely heavily on their individual skills and judgments, requiring them to be at ease teaching sexuality education content. even though most educators expressed comfort in teaching lo, the close following of the department work plan and the often disciplinary pedagogies used may indicate insecurities in conveying sexuality education messages. the lack of communication between educators in nonpq 5 schools prevent a potentially helpful exchange of experiences and may perpetuate the treating of sexuality as a taboo subject. 4.2. responses to learner information needs in line with bandura’s (1986) theory, learners’ perceptions of their own self-efficacy depend on how their information needs are responded to. lo educators ensuring a strict control of classroom discipline in order to prevent “inappropriate” and possibly offensive comments or questions from learners pose a considerable challenge in conveying sexuality education messages successfully, which hinder skills-building and self-reflective activities, as do oversimplistic and prescriptive warnings. the most passionate and well-trained educators emphasised the importance of approaching lessons on sex, sexuality and sexual health with great sensitivity and care. the comments of lo educators in our study describing sex as quintessentially dangerous, particularly for girls, posits a strong indicator for gender bias, which is likely to permeate through lo lessons. the disciplinary and authoritative character of lo lessons and gender bias indicate that learners are only, to limited degrees, encouraged to cultivate abilities to self-reflect, regulate their actions and make responsible choices on their own account. such prescriptive teaching approaches potentially reproduce discourses shaping unequal gendered sexual practices, including coercive, unsafe and inequitable sexual intimacies (see shefer & mc leod, 2015). 5. conclusion and recommendations our findings suggest that the majority of lo educators recognise the importance of their role and responsibility in teaching learners about sex, sexuality and potential risks. however, the success of lo education depends on a range of overlapping cognitive, behavioural and environmental aspects. in the study contexts, many of these aspects did not favour such education goals. insufficient resource allocation for the lo subject area (especially in lower pq-levelled schools), the lack of training and experience of lo educators, and crowded classrooms, overlapped with prescriptive teaching pedagogies, limiting educators from engaging learners as legitimate sexual subjects who can provide input into what is being taught. concerning formal training and knowledge development amongst educators, our findings suggest it would be beneficial to: (1) enhance educators’ knowledge about hiv and aids, sex and sexuality, and increase their proficiency and skill in teaching this content. (2) educators need to be provided with the skills and knowledge to deliver participatory lessons and implement classroom management strategies that will channel learner interest and energies into productive forms of engagement. (3) educators should be assisted in teaching and managing learners who are personally affected by sensitive topics in order to minimise trauma and emotional distress. (4) finally, to enhance educators’ personal development by interrogating and creating awareness of personal belief systems, cultural worldviews and attitudes that have bearing on the way lo is delivered, and how they position themselves and learners in that process. in order for the subject to be transformative, there is a need for lo 112 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) educators to pay attention to learners’ personal biographies and life histories (timmerman, 2009) and adopt exploratory, discussion-based and reflective pedagogies in addressing their abilities to act self-efficaciously (matseke, 2011). future educator training opportunities should include pedagogic and personal development workshops; providing knowledge and skills required to deliver hiv and aids and sexuality education by using participatory activities and a rights-based framework, and creating awareness of educators’ internalised beliefs, attitudes and biases. it is acknowledged that the dbe hiv strategy (2012-2016) and the dbe national policy on hiv, stis and tb (2017) address these needs, with the latter policy advocating for the use of scripted lesson plans to unpack the sexuality curricula and provide educators with the tools to deliver sexuality content more effectively. future research should evaluate the progress against these and other relevant strategies. 6. acknowledgements the authors acknowledge the role of the south african department of basic education, specifically sinikiwe sithole for her support during the research process. the authors would also like to acknowledge candice reardon who played a valuable role in the initial research. 7. references bandura, a. 1986. social foundation of thought and action: a social-cognitive view. englewood cliffs, nj, us: prentice-hall. bazely, p. 2007. qualitative data analysis with nvivo. california: sage publications limited. bhana, a., brookes, h., makiwane, m. & govender, k. 2005. evaluation of the impact of the life orientation 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schools in two provinces. doctoral dissertation. cape town: university of the western cape. sedibe, m. 2014. teaching citizenship education as a learning outcome of life orientation in a diverse ex-model c high school. journal of educational and social research, 4(3), 59. shefer, t. & macleod, c. 2015. life orientation sexuality education in south africa: gendered norms, justice and transformation. perspectives in education, 33(2), 1-10. https://doi.org/10.20853/30-3-670 https://doi.org/10.20853/30-3-670 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2009.12.003 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2009.12.003 https://doi.org/10.1080/14330237.2011.10820463 https://doi.org/10.1080/14330237.2011.10820463 https://doi.org/10.7459/ept/28.2.07 https://doi.org/10.1080/00131881003588287 https://doi.org/10.1080/00131881003588287 https://doi.org/10.1080/09766634.2016.11885719 https://doi.org/10.1080/09766634.2016.11885719 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2011.02.007 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2011.02.007 https://doi.org/10.31899/hiv2.1030 114 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) south african national aids council, 2012. national strategic plan on hiv, stis and tb, 2012-2016. south african national aids council. timmerman, g. 2009. teaching skills and personal characteristics of sex education teachers. teaching and teacher education, 25(3), 500-506. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. tate.2008.08.008 tucker, l.a., george, g., reardon, c. & panday, s. 2016. ‘learning the basics’: young people’s engagement with sexuality education at secondary schools. sex education, 16(4), 337-352. https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2015.1091768 tucker, l.a., george, g., reardon, c. & panday, s., 2017. sexuality education in south african schools: the challenge for civil society organisations. health education journal, 76(1), 77-88. https://doi.org/10.1177/0017896916652166 united nations general assembly, 2014. open working group proposal for sustainable development goals (a/68/970). united nations: new york, usa. visser, m.j. 2005. life skills training as hiv/aids preventive strategy in secondary schools: evaluation of a large-scale implementation process. sahara: journal of social aspects of hiv/ aids research alliance, 2(1), 203-216. https://doi.org/10.1080/17290376.2005.9724843 wood, l. & olivier, t. 2007. increasing the self-efficacy beliefs of life orientation teachers: an evaluation. education as change, 11(1), 161-179. https://doi.org/10.1080/16823200709487158 yankah, e. & aggleton, p. 2008. effects and effectiveness of life skills education for hiv prevention in young people. aids education & prevention, 20(6), 468-485. https://doi. org/10.1521/aeap.2008.20.6.465 (endnotes) 1 this number was within a pre-defined estimate of 32-48 interviews, as per two to three staff interviews per school (grade 9 educator, grade 11 educator, and lo hod). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2008.08.008 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2008.08.008 https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2015.1091768 https://doi.org/10.1177/0017896916652166 https://doi.org/10.1080/17290376.2005.9724843 https://doi.org/10.1080/16823200709487158 https://doi.org/10.1521/aeap.2008.20.6.465 https://doi.org/10.1521/aeap.2008.20.6.465 _goback 43 research article 2021 39(4): 43-56 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.4 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) ict policy appropriation: teachers as transformative ict agents abstract this qualitative instrumental case study set out to explore how the national e-education policy is appropriated by teachers in south african schools. the meta-theoretical paradigm was social constructivism and the research strategy of inquiry utilised backward mapping principles. a socio-cultural approach to policy analysis and emancipatory theory provided the theoretical framings of this study. the case study design included a mix of data collection methods namely, interviews, classroom observations, document analysis and a researcher journal. findings revealed that the existence of an “invisible national e-education policy” served as a catalyst for teacher agency in the formulation and implementation of a school ict policy. second, a change in the implementation paradigm of these teachers highlighted their role as transformative ict agents. their stance shifted from being merely conduits of policy, to becoming proactive socio-cultural actors in the formulation and appropriation of a school-based policy. third, a new construct to policy appropriation emerged, namely the ignorance of teachers about the national e-education policy led to their practice informing policy. teachers’ beliefs, attitudes, will and professionalism are key to ict policy formulation. teachers’ experiences of policy implementation are valuable assets that should be incorporated in the formulation of policy. keywords: appropriation; e-education; transformative ict agents; ict policy; teacher professionalism. 1. introduction and background context in an attempt to influence and change teacher practice and learning in south africa, three key education policies on information and communication technology (ict) were introduced over a period of time by the department of basic education (dbe). these were the e-education policy (doe, 2004), guidelines for teacher training and professional development in ict (dbe, 2007) and the professional development framework for digital learning (dbe, 2018). the e-education policy mandated timeframes to develop public schools as e-schools, with the primary intention of improving teaching and learning in schools. this policy was author: prof thirusellvan vandeyar1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i4.4 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(4): 43-56 published: 6 december 2021 received: 29 june 2021 accepted: 25 august 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.4 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5542-3460 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.4 442021 39(4): 44-56 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.4 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) ambitious and aimed to achieve its principal mandates by 2013. however, the e-education policy only made its way onto school shelves, long after the introduction of technology in most schools. this policy seemed merely symbolic as it was neither integral to the many iterations of the curriculum policy, nor was it promoted at systemic levels as a policy that had to be implemented (vandeyar, 2015). the guidelines for teacher training and professional development in ict (dbe, 2007) stipulates ict knowledge and skills as a prerequisite to effectively implement the national school-based curriculum. the professional development framework for digital learning (2018), aimed to develop teacher’s digital skills to promote and facilitate learning with information and communication technology tools and digital resources. the intent of these policies was to “transform learning and teaching through information and communication technologies” (department of education, 2004:14) to keep abreast with technological advancements and foster economic growth and social development in south africa. it was hoped that the use of ict will lead to e-schools, change teachers’ practice and improve the learning experiences of learners. sadly, these ict policies were never given implementation priority, not even by the local district e-learning units. post-apartheid south africa witnessed the introduction of a barrage of changing education paradigms, namely outcomes-based education, national curriculum statements (ncs), the revised national curriculum statements (rncs) and currently, curriculum and assessment policy statements (caps). resultantly, some schools were in the throes of simultaneously implementing two different educational paradigms to accommodate the curriculum phasing-in process. teachers were extremely overwhelmed, confused and experienced policy implementation exhaustion. given this context, the most pressing concern for teachers was the implementation of the various iterations of national curriculum policies and not ict policies. the extant literature has focused on the implementation of policy (alghamdi & holland, 2020) and the rationale for introducing ict into schools (hammond, 2014). attention has also been given to the ict integration in teaching and learning (cha, park & seo, 2020; sabiri, 2019), teacher training and changed pedagogy (younie, 2006; wadmany & kliachko, 2014) and ict infrastructure and access (ferrell & wachholz, 2003; pradhan, mallick & bagchi, 2018). little research has been conducted on the “influence of the e-education policy on teaching and learning in schools” (vandeyar, 2015: 7). accordingly, this study asks how does the e-education policy influence teaching and learning in south african schools? 2. exploring the terrain to situate this study in the context of the body of literature, this review of relevant literature focuses on teachers as policy actors, teachers as change agents and teachers as policy shapers. empirical research into ict policy implementation has not been the focus of researchers in the south african context. there is and still remains a “paucity of research regarding relevant ict policy” (czerniewicz & hodgkinson-williams, 2005: ix). this dearth of literature is mainly on how schools have developed and implemented either the national ict policies or their own school-based policies (padayachee, 2017). although the south african education system has been prolific in developing numerous ict policies, it has fallen short in the implementation of these policies. successful implementation of an ict policy depends on willing schools with a supportive culture (moyle, 2006), forward-thinking leadership with a sound understanding of policy mandates (qureshi, 2013) and teacher professionalism (ghavifekr & rosdy, 2015; bhattacharjee & deb, 2016; cha, park & seo, 2020). within the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.4 452021 39(4): 45-56 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.4 vandeyar teachers as transformative ict agents systemic hierarchy from national, provincial, district and local school context of educational policy, teachers must be acknowledged and recognised as central actors in implementation (heineke, ryan, & tocci, 2015). teachers are pivotal and situated at the coalface where policy meets practice. it is what happens behind classroom doors that determine whether policy takes effect. in order to understand how local ict policy informs teachers’ policy implementation in schools, smit (2005) found that teachers’ voices are silent during policy implementation. this phenomenon is not unusual in the south african education context, as teachers are often viewed as mere conduits to policy implementation. however, smit (2005) argues that by ignoring teachers’ voices we miss the classroom knowledge and experience they bring as crucial actors to policy formulation and policy implementation. if teachers’ local contextual knowledge in policy formulation is taken into consideration, effective policy implementation may be enhanced (smit, 2005). heineke, ryan and tocci (2015) argue that teachers should be acknowledged as a valuable policy resource at all systemic levels of policy formulation, however policy studies indicate they are not recognised as central actors. this may account for why teachers resist change, resulting from an anomaly between what policymakers mandate for teachers to implement and what teachers believe about their classroom practice. fullan (1993) suggest that most teachers have a moral purpose that is evidenced by the single most prolific response “to make a difference in the lives of students” (fullan, 1993, 12). it is this moral purpose that suggests that teachers must become change agents. the teacher who is a change agent believes that schools must re-invent themselves as dynamic institutions that do not exist merely to entrench the present policies. change agents believe that schools have an obligation to enhance the life chances of all learners to prepare them for career opportunities through the development of the necessary 21st century skills. the extant literature has increasingly recognised the importance of teacher agency as a crucial factor for promoting policy implementation (menken & garcia, 2010; nguyen & bui, 2016). although the body of literature indicates that there is limited research on teachers’ agency in the implementation of policy (zhao & baldauf, 2012; hamid, nguyen & baldauf, 2013), as scholars we have to advance the notion that we have a vested interest in the potential of teachers to be transformative agents to meaningful policy implementation. “local implementation” of policy is complex (spillane, reiser & reimer, 2002: 390). policymakers need to understand that making sense of policy by local actors is a cognitive action constituted by the interaction of their prior knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, local context and policy mandates. tondeur et al. (2008) found that the formulation of local ict policies tend to reflect “to a larger extent” what transpires behind closed classroom doors. furthermore, they maintain that if teachers’ values and beliefs are inherently expressed in school-based policy, it is more likely that policy will influence their practice. li (2010) adds to this debate by suggesting that the inclusion of teachers in policymaking may make policy more meaningful and thus promote implementation. this argument brings to the fore the idea that teachers are capable of shaping and formulating policy and not merely tasked as implementers of policy. kumar and scuderi’s (2000) concept paper claim that policymaking should not only be in the domain of those in authority but should also include local actors in the process. affording previously excluded teachers a policymaking stance is more likely to make them willing implementers of policy, and less likely of a discord between what is desired by policy mandates and what is implemented. a review of the literature has revealed many studies calling for or recommending that teachers be involved in the policy formulation process http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.4 462021 39(4): 46-56 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.4 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) (kumar & scuderi, 2000; tondeur et al., 2008; toll, 2002). little, if any empirical studies have been conducted to test this hypothesis. this study aims to address this gap in the literature. 3. theoretical frameworks socio-cultural approach to educational policy studies (sutton & levinson, 2001) and emancipatory theory (proudford,1998) provide the theoretical framings of this study. social practice is a key tenet of the socio-cultural approach to educational policy studies. social practice and specific contexts are key elements of policy implementation. resultantly, as policy makes its way across various settings and different levels of the organisation it can become susceptible to policy incongruency. thus, the appropriation of policy by various social actors often assumes many forms. policy is constantly “negotiated‟ and “reorganised” by social actors as it meanders through the corridors of an institution, whether it exists as a form of governance or as a locally self-enacted policy within an institution. in this study policy as practice is defined by the way in which teachers (local actors) within an organisation (school) engage in situated behaviours and “exercise agency‟ in their contextual situation. the term “appropriation” refers to the taking of official or unofficial policy and “making it one’s own‟ (levinson, sutton & winstead, 2009:3). agency is thus embedded in the term “appropriation” as actors can and often do have the right to create policy. previously local actors were excluded or marginalised from this exercise of power, they were seen as mere conduits of policy. this study seeks to understand how teachers appropriate policy on ict within a school context. emancipatory theory deals with teachers’ reactions to policy changes in terms of professional confidence, professional interpretation and professional consciousness (proudford, 1998: 139). teachers’ belief about their authority and inability to make crucial and effective decisions about their teaching is what constitutes professional confidence (helsby, 1995). it relates to how teachers cope with their work, the feeling of being in control and their ability to address the demands of educational change. professional confidence has a direct influence on professional interpretation. teachers with a high professional confidence level often “impose their own professional interpretation of government policy and to balance its demands against other professional priorities” (helsby, 1995: 325). the deconstruction and critical analysis of policy texts is what characterises professional interpretation. this relates to the ability of teachers to interpret policy text such that it enhances their professionalism and promotes transformative educational change. the “capacity to problematise taken for granted assumptions and values which underpin policy response and professional practice” (proudford, 1998: 136) refers to the professional consciousness of teachers. proudford (1998) claims that teachers’ “writerly” scrutiny of policy documents directly relates to the success of transformative educational change. such scrutiny and action is “underpinned by a defensible philosophy and theory of education that is guided by professional consciousness” (proudford, 1998: 137). the professional confidence and professional interpretation of policy in practice is largely influenced by teachers’ beliefs, attitudes, values and contexts. consequently, adopting an emancipatory approach “is a political act in so far as teachers’ assumptions and values may be in conflict with those of policy implementation through their ‘writerly’ interpretation of policy texts” (proudford, 1998: 138). helsby (1995) draws a distinction between “readerly” and “writerly” professional interpretation of educational policy. a “readerly” stance to policy inhibits creative interpretation. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.4 472021 39(4): 47-56 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.4 vandeyar teachers as transformative ict agents a “writerly” stance on the other hand takes on an interpretative role. helsby (1995: 324) claims that a “readerly” or “writerly” policy position “depends upon the interactions between the text and the user and is not inherent within the policy text itself”. this implies that the user exercises a “degree of choice” (helsby, 1995). teachers may unquestioningly accept policy regulations as “readerly” and become mere conduits of policy texts or alternatively they can resist and reinterpret policy texts by taking a “writerly” stance (helsby, 1995). thus, a direct correlation exists between teachers’ interpretation of policy texts and teacher practices. 4. methodology in this study i believe that reality is socially constructed as participants perceive it to be and thus affiliate to a social constructivist meta-theoretical paradigm (amineh & asl, 2015; karagiorgi & symeou, 2005). according to social constructivism, “knowledge is a human construction” within which persons actively engage in educational experiences that enable them to construct their own meaning (hester, 2020: 140). social context is a key component of social constructivism. it is within the social context that “meaning-making” is generated. “knowing” arises not only from within the individual but also occurs out of shared social and cultural spaces (schreiber & valle, 2013). thus, individual cognitive development is mediated through the social world. a qualitative exploratory approach (bowen, 2005) provided the methodological paradigm of this study. an instrumental case study (stake, 2005) about the phenomenon of policy formulation and implementation using backward-mapping principles (elmore, 1980) defined this case. i utilised maximum variation sampling (patton, 1990) in the selection of research sites. three primary schools situated in socio-culturally diverse settings in the gauteng province of south africa, namely a former model c school, a former coloured school and an independent school1 were selected for this study. these sites were purposively selected because teachers were using ict for teaching and learning and not merely for computer literacy as was the case in many township and former indian schools. participants were selected by purposeful sampling and included two teachers at each research site. following a backward mapping strategy, the principal, district and provincial e-learning officials were selected as additional data sources. a mix of semi-structured interviews, classroom observation, reflective journals and document analysis as primary methodological approaches comprised the data gathering techniques of this study. two face-to-face interviews, using interview protocols and a digital recorder as instruments, were conducted with each teacher. the initial interview took place prior to classroom visits. the second interview was conducted post-lesson observation. observations and informal conversational interviews were captured as field notes in the researcher reflective journal. by invitation from participant teachers digital video technology was used to capture classroom observations. document analysis included school computer rules, ict literacy syllabi, curriculum policy and computer screen captures. most of the data were reduced to text format in readiness for data analysis using atlastitm as computer-assisted qualitative data analysis software (caqdas). the gathered data were analysed utilising content analysis methods as advocated by charmaz (2001). research rigour was ensured through the following quality criteria: transferability, credibility, dependability, confirmability and authenticity. ethical approval for this study was granted by the university of pretoria (cs080502). 1 former model c school, a former coloured school and an independent school: descriptions of pre-1994 south african schools. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.4 482021 39(4): 48-56 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.4 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) 5. findings: how do teachers interpret the e-education policy? 5.1 the “invisible” e-education policy the e-education policy existed as an “invisible policy” within these schools. most of the teachers seemed to be aware that a national e-education policy existed, but they have never seen it. however, the contents of the policy were oblivious to teachers. it seemed that this policy swirled around in the clouds above, without touching ground level, i haven’t seen it [e-education policy] [laughs], i haven’t seen it haven’t been through it but know about it that there’s a white paper on e-learning, that’s at national [level]. at district level, i don’t think there’s any, i haven’t seen it (anna, white, female teacher, former model c school). yes, the e-education policy isn’t familiar to all educators. i heard of it when i went to e-learning exhibition station at a workshop, but i do not know what is in the contents of this policy (dezlin, black female teacher, former coloured school). two teachers expressed the need to implement policy as it was intended and called for more structured guidelines and guidance from the district office, look we’ve got that white paper [e-education policy], but something more better and more…that explains it better and more structured (cycil, coloured, male teacher, former coloured school). putting it on paper and saying you have to do this. ja, just like the way they do with textbooks. or give a list of open source websites that’s accessible to the teachers, that they [district] actually went through and say we’ve put our stamp of approval on it (jenny, white female teacher, independent school). one teacher seemed to know about the contents of the e-education policy. he noted that he “browsed” through the e-education policy and tried to integrate ict into the curriculum. we used it [e-education policy] when we drew up our schemes… we tried and fit it [ict] into the curriculum…er..so that it’s got to be part of the curriculum. we only take what we think is good or we think would work in our context and incorporate it into what we are already doing (phillip, white, male teacher, former model c school). another teacher’s rationale for the existence of an “invisible” eeducation policy was the lack of knowledgeable ict implementation support from systemic structures. he believed that the district e-learning office lacked the knowledge and expertise to deliver substantive support in this regard, no i would not. i would not, because i don’t think they (district) have, this is a personal opinion, that they (district) don’t have the knowledge, expertise or the resources to be able to do it the way it should be done (john, white male, independent school). this teacher also held the belief that some teachers at independent schools were more competent than officials from the district e-learning office. we have people here [in the independent school] that are way beyond what is offered by the district. if you look at computer centers which is pushed by the government…that is not working, and my question is ‘why is it not running from the district level?’ it’s again because they do not have the knowledge and maybe resources. so, no. i would not http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.4 492021 39(4): 49-56 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.4 vandeyar teachers as transformative ict agents feel comfortable with them being involved in an independent school (john, white male, independent school). the principal of the former model c school expressed similar sentiments about a lack of guidelines and policy support from systemic structures on how to implement the eeducation policy in schools. he viewed this as a contributing factor for the existence of an “invisible” e-education policy at schools. i think the time is right now for the district to play a bigger role. to come forward and say ‘guys we are implementing computer centers in you schools, we starting this mml (mathematics and mathematical literacy), this is the bigger picture. this is where we are now this is where we want to go, and this is how we are going to get there’. there’s no big picture (principal, white male, former model c school). the local district official provided the following reason for schools’ obliviousness of the e-education policy and attributed this to the failure of the “cascade” model that was used to disseminate the e-education policy to school, whenever i send out a memo... not everybody gets to read that memo. that is for me… the question of clusters … information doesn’t filter through…the cascading model it does not work [emphatic]. it does not work you see. i don’t blame those teachers they haven’t seen it (e-education policy), regardless of the memos or the policy documents that have gone to schools (e-learning official, black female, district) 5.2 teachers as transformative ict agents the absence of what comprised the contents of the e-education policy did not deter teachers from integrating ict into their teaching practice. despite teachers’ expressed desire for access to a more tangible policy, what clearly emerged from the data was teachers’ instrumental role in compiling ict schemes of work, ict curriculum and ict policy that were influenced by their practice and teaching context. teacher professionalism came to the fore as teachers developed an unwritten policy that highlighted the integration of ict in their teaching practice. what appeared to be happening was the development of a school e-education policy by teachers, in accordance with their own understanding and professional experience. the absence of systemic policy support led to increased levels of teacher frustration, but also served as a catalyst to develop a school-based policy, we’re making it up as we go along. we’re using our own stuff. they [district] don’t give guidelines, i don’t think it’s fair (anna, white, female at the former model c school). one teacher suggested that directives of the policy goals as envisioned by the relevant district office required clarification and practical guidance. he bemoaned the fact that there was a lack of school-district link. this was a concern raised by all the teachers in this study, there needs to be a link. we don’t know what they [district] want, we’re making it up as we go along. we’re using our own stuff… it’s not like they [district] have it all lined out like the portfolios, you have to have this, this and this in your portfolio. they don’t say we want this kind of teaching, and…(cycil, coloured, male teacher, former coloured school). as expected, the prescribed learning outcomes as stipulated in the national curriculum policy seemed to inform the teaching of all the teachers in this study. accordingly, ict literacy outcomes were developed for each grade and integrated into learning programmes. having http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.4 502021 39(4): 50-56 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.4 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) fulfilled this requirement in the absence of the e-education policy and their resultant ignorance of the contents of this policy, teachers felt free to incorporate ict according to their own understanding into their teaching. they drew on their professionalism and experience and adopted suitable teaching methods and strategies to integrate ict into their teaching, 100% total freedom [emphatic]. there’s no prescription there’s no, er i can use anything i want. so it’s not er…, in our school we focus on just being able to reach the outcomes, but how you get there it’s totally up to you (john, white male, independent school). well, we don’t use text books... so for me i like i said, it is very open i decide...there is no limit here…you have to do it this way you have to do it that way. we have our work schemes we have our lesson plans we have to cover our lo’s [learning outcomes] and that’s it and oh the assessment standards have to be met and they have certain guidelines…you want to use a powerpoint presentation…that’s up to you. (anna, white, female, former model c school). teachers also seemed to initiate viable strategies to overcome systemic constraints, ict use in class is not scheduled on the timetable, i have become a renegade since i can choose what content i want to teach. i’d rather rush the content in the week ... so that i can incorporate [ict] ... it’s nice for learning and also fun. ict helps them understand that maths isn’t war. kids are kids so i make it fun to learn (john, white male, independent school). two teachers were acutely aware of their calling in terms of preparing learners for better life chances and the realities of the workplace. they highlighted the use, benefits and vital role of ict in their practice, the classroom must not be a place where it is ‘kunsmatig’, you know artificial, the classroom must be made as real as possible to what the learners experience at home, and eventually must prepare them for the realities of the workplace. ict has a big role to play in this regard (cycil, coloured, male teacher, former coloured school). what clearly emerged in these findings were teachers’ attempts at challenging top-down policy directives by allowing their practice to inform policy. ict concerns that related to teaching and learning and the socio-cultural context of the school influenced the change of policy by teachers. 6. discussion teachers’ subjective, contextual and social realties of educational change were starkly revealed in this study. policy alienation, top-down initiated change, pressures of the extent and pace at which change was unfolding, the way in which policy change was communicated and policymakers’ lack of understanding of realities of the teaching context, led to teachers feeling confused and being overwhelmed. however, this feeling of confusion and being overwhelmed, which could so easily have allowed teachers to slip into a state of policy lethargy and a sense of disempowerment, did completely the opposite. it served to awaken a sense of agency in teachers and to empower their professionalism as the teacher fraternity. teachers took action and their voices surfaced in this study. in the absence of the e-education policy, they demonstrated how practice could inform policy. their sense of professionalism seemed to be informed by their experiences as they navigated through the social realities of the school climate and culture, to effectively prepare their learners for the fourth industrial revolution. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.4 512021 39(4): 51-56 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.4 vandeyar teachers as transformative ict agents professional confidence, professional interpretation and professional consciousness were clearly evident in this study. teachers felt they have the “authority and capacity to make important decisions about the way in which they conduct their work” (helsby, 1995: 324). they also experienced a sense of “coping with the work in hand and of being in control” (helsby, 1995: 325). in this way they affirmed their professional confidence in implementing the school-based e-education policy. most teachers were unaware of the e-education policy and thus did not deconstruct or critically analyse the policy text itself. except for one teacher (jenny), who expressed a “readerly stance”, all teachers of this study adopted a “writerly stance” in their professional interpretation of the implementation of the e-education policy. they interpreted the educational realities within which they operated and “looked beyond the classroom and school context to the role of the teacher within society” (bottery & wright, 1996: 92) to develop a school-based ict policy that could enhance the professionalism of teachers and foster transformative educational change. they seemed to have an “acute understanding of the political, social and ethical implications of the impact of their practice, and of changes to it” (bottery & wright, 1996: 87). teachers’ “capacity to problematise taken for granted assumptions and values which underpin policy response and professional practice” (proudford, 1998: 145) clearly demonstrated their professional consciousness. the lack of systemic support influenced teachers’ policy in practice (blignaut, hinostroza, els & brun, 2010). what motivates teachers to formulate, appropriate and implement a school-based ict policy? why did these teachers do this? given that these teachers were products of the historical legacy of the segregated education system in south africa, what influenced their professionalism? appropriation is a “form of creative interpretive practice” (levinson, sutton & winstead, 2009: 768) that teachers engage in to interpret what is essential and of importance in the implementation of an ict policy. beliefs and attitudes inform teachers’ value systems and “dictates their actions and classroom practices” (drake, spillane & hufferd-ackles, 2001: 7). informed by their beliefs and instinctive professional attitudes, teachers in this study adopted the socio-cultural approach to policy analysis. the appropriation and implementation of an ict policy was negotiated on personal, cultural and social level. in so doing, they overcame educational challenges such as “education policy overload, low teacher morale, overcrowded classrooms, diverse learners, new teaching philosophy, curriculum policy changes, absence of systemic directives and support” (vandeyar, 2010: 260) and pursued what was in the best interest of their learners. the exceptional practice of socio-cultural analysis of policy of these teachers is succinctly captured by the following quote, social democratic processes must have leaders and groups struggling with courage, passion, and a strong sense of moral conviction to bring about change (sutton & levinson, 2001: 119). motivated by their beliefs, attitudes, a strong sense of moral conviction and innate calling to the profession, teachers proactively set out to improve the lives and life chances of their learners. they implemented a school-based ict policy to address their agenda of “making a difference”. this is aligned to findings in the literature that revealed that “teacher professionalism is key to whether ict is integrated in teaching and learning” (ghavifekr & rosdy, 2015: 175). a contributing factor to the formulation and implementation of a school-based policy were teacher experiences of the demands of a corporate world. at each of the respective schools, the teacher who was the driver of this agenda had resigned from teaching to explore working in the corporate world, only to return to the teaching profession. corporate life experiences http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.4 522021 39(4): 52-56 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.4 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) and its demands reflected the reality of the world beyond school and influenced the belief and attitudes of these teachers, which ultimately informed their practice. teachers in this study became acutely aware of their role in equipping and empowering their learners with the ict tools of the future, the very opportunity that they seemingly did not have. a strong sense of commitment mediated by their own ict experiences propelled teachers to use ict in their teaching and learning practice to enhance, empower and prepare their learners for a digital society and ultimately the digital workplace. this vision culminated in educational change yielding teachers as transformative ict agents. the significance of policy appropriation within the school context (sutton & levinson, 2009) was highlighted in this study. teachers demonstrated their ability to be developers of local policy and drivers of ict implementation. the agentive role of teachers in implementing educational change came to the fore. teachers generated a new and enabling policy by drawing on their practice to inform policy. teachers repositioned themselves not merely as conduits of policy, but as proactive socio-cultural actors in the formulation and appropriation of a school-based policy. in so doing they took a writerly stance to policy appropriation. a new construct to policy appropriation emerged, namely the ignorance of teachers about the national e-education policy led to their practice informing policy. 7. conclusion this study clearly enforced the notion that the formation and appropriation of policy is a sociocultural practice that can be seen “[as] a set of activities embedded in and informed by certain cultural models and social relations” (sutton & levinson, 2001: 141). teacher ignorance of the national e-education policy that could be perceived in a negative light actually spawn something positive. it forces us to recognise that teacher voice participatory decision making is crucial for the formulation of policy. if teachers are given the opportunity to co-formulate policy on teaching, which ultimately draws on their professionalism and the day-to-day experiences in schools, they will take ownership of policy and “make it their own”. the dire lack of systemic support catalysed school-based policy formation, appropriation and implementation. agency and professionalism played a key role in the formulation and implementation of a school ict policy. teachers stance toward policy implementation was that of social and cultural actors who possess the ability to “articulate, construct and implement new educational procedures that eventually became formulated and appropriated as new educational policy within a school context” (vandeyar, 2010: 264). these teachers were not only transformative ict agents in terms of teaching, but by countering the approach to e-education policy implementation adopted by the department of education, they were taking a stand against de-professionalising the work of teaching (ellison et al., 2018). despite their voices being silenced by policymakers in the process of policy formulation, these teachers clearly illustrated that they were able to embrace an emancipatory stance toward policy change and to exercise their agency (proudford, 1998). they developed and mediated a school-based e-education policy that was feasible and sustainable in their teaching context, aimed to improve the life chances of their learners. policy as a social practice positions actors in various roles within the policy, dependent on the context (sutton & levinson, 2001). it recognises that teachers are major actors of e-education policy and are central to the success of responsive classroom practices. thus, teachers are crucial role-players for the sustainability of e-education policy implementation. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.4 532021 39(4): 53-56 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.4 vandeyar teachers as transformative ict agents this study advocates for an emancipatory and a socio-cultural approach to e-education policy analysis for meaningful and sustainable educational 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child abstract the school system in south africa has only in recent years begun to more deeply grapple with issues of power and privilege along a number of axes of oppression including race, gender, class and recently, sexual and gender diversity. as a result, learners who embody sexual and gender diversity experiences spaces of belonging and exclusion in school settings. as a result, this paper asks: what needs to be done in the school system to reconstruct the “african child” to include sexual and gender diversity? possibilities include inclusive policy implementation; inclusive learning and teaching resource materials; teacher preparedness to teach about and affirm sexual and gender diversity in the classroom and a clear rejection of homophobic and transphobic violence. the lessons learnt through the process of challenging racism in the school system – such as around essentialising, othering and systemic violence – have yet to be fully applied to sexual and gender diversity in schools. key words: sexual and gender diversity; belonging; exclusion; schools 1. introduction this paper engages with some of the ways in which education continues to perpetuate marginalisation along one axis while fostering greater inclusion along another axis of historical exclusion. sayed, soudien and carrim (2003) rhetorically ask if it is possible that education, in becoming more inclusive in one or more areas, becomes complicit in creating exclusion in others. this paper is also aware that social justice in education is a complex terrain with imbricated conceptual webs and understands schools as sites of inclusion and belonging as well as of exclusion, pain and alienation. in south africa, the phenomena of poverty, inequality and exclusion are often rightly understood in terms of race, class and gender. as a result, education policy and practice flowing from these overarching frames tends to foreground particular areas of struggle and, either consciously or unconsciously, silences, obscures and marginalises other forms of difference. this dynamic of in/ exclusion leads to a situation in which schools function as prof finn reygan human sciences research council (hsrc); department of educational psychology, university of the western cape; wits centre for diversity studies (wicds), university of the witwatersrand. email: freygan@hsrc.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v36i2.8 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 36(2): 90-102 © uv/ufs mailto:freygan@hsrc.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2 91 reygan sexual and gender diversity in schools sites of injustice and, as a result ,this paper focuses on the need for educational change and presents some concrete steps in that direction. this analysis of the education sector responses to difference is applied specifically to issues of sexual and gender diversity, which has generally been a troubling topic for many education stakeholders. the paper draws parallels between the essentialising, othering and systemic violence against the racialised other and the ongoing repression of sexual and gender diversity in education. however, within this context of enforced voicelessness and invisibility, there are also spaces of agency, belonging and inclusion and the paper asks: to what extent has education provision in south africa been able to speak to the diverse realities and needs of young people who embody sexual and gender diversity? this raises a number of important questions such as: what does it mean to be a learner who embodies sexual and gender diversity in south african schools? to what extent are young people who embody sexual and gender diversity impacted by violence? how might young people who embody sexual and gender diversity be best educated keeping in mind the specific challenges and needs of children who are perceived to be different in terms of sexual orientation and gender identity (sogi)? finally, what needs to be done in the school system to reconstruct the “african child” to include sexual and gender diversity? the use of terminology in this paper also requires some level of explanation, as does the framing of the paper. in recent years, the “deficit model” has informed much of the scholarship as well as school-based interventions on sexual and gender diversity. this approach mirrors the long global interdisciplinary history of pathologising sexual and gender diversity by continuing to focus on what is not working, what is wrong, the challenges and the negative impacts of exclusion, marginalisation and discrimination on the educational pathways, academic success and mental and physical health and well-being of queer young people. for example, this has led to a strong focus in research writing, funding streams and at a programmatic level, on homophobic and transphobic bullying and violence in schools (notably unesco, 2016). while cognisant of the realities of violence and harassment faced by young people who embody sexual and gender diversity in schools, this paper also frames the focus around issues of belonging, inclusion, social justice and the value that different perspectives bring to the school system. in tandem with this focus on belonging and inclusion, there has been a shift in south african sexualities scholarship in education in recent years away from a focus on identity – as exemplified in the terms lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (lgbti) – and towards a focus on sexual and gender diversity. the term “sexual and gender diversity” is employed in this paper because it reframes the issues in the broader context of human diversity and encompasses experiences not always included in the more specifically identitarian “lgbti” label. this has included a greater focus on gender diversity, in terms of gender non-conforming young people and the realisation that communities, including school communities, name and make verbal reference to sexual and gender diversity in multiple ways and through multiple historical and contemporary lenses. a small but growing body of scholarship indicates that gender is the primary encoding lens for this form of diversity (francis et al., 2017). not all sexually and gender diverse people encode their ways of being in identitarian terms or using the particular linguistic strategies of the “lgbti rights” movement. as a result broader conceptual categories, such as that of sexual and gender diversity, offer a greater scope for a multiplicity of worldviews, cultural norms and lived experiences, as well as being more sensitive to a variety of local contexts, including school realities. furthermore, 92 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) the term “queer” is employed in the paper and requires some interrogation. as mcewen and milani (2014) point out, there is ongoing debate about the usefulness of the term queer, which emerged in western contexts, for pan-african realities. the term is helpful in maintaining the distinction between practices and identities. however, while msibi (2014) points to the relevance of queer theory for the study of sexuality generally, he cautions against an uncritical application of this originally western/northern term in african contexts. the term cisnormativity is also used in the paper and refers to the assumption that all people are cisgender or rather that their gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth. the paper begins by briefly engaging with the broad topic of diversity in education in south africa before engaging in a more detailed way with the issue of sexual and gender diversity in education. avoiding a purely deficit approach to this topic, the paper explores educational spaces of inclusion and exclusion in relation to sexual and gender diversity before concluding with some thoughts on how best to reconstruct the school system and notions of african childhood in order to be more broadly inclusive. 2. diversity in education education in south africa has always focused on diversity but often in a manner that cements and embeds inequality and oppression (francis & hemson, 2007). under apartheid, the educational approach of fundamental pedagogics pivoted around the notion of “cultural groups” through which black south africans were positioned outside of the notion of the “nation” which was closely tied to understandings of western civilisation (du plooy, griesel & oberholzer, 1982). the apartheid philosophy and its essentialising impetus had a lasting impact on the structure and processes of south african education and conceptualised diversity primarily in relation to “race” and ethnicity, thereby largely avoiding other axes of oppression. the resistance to this oppressive, essentialising and violent approach to education was apparent (see francis & hemson, 2007) in the emergence of people’s education and the philosophies of paolo freire (1970) and steve biko (2015). the comparison between apartheid education philosophy and people’s education is stark given their diverging approaches to the notion of difference. the latter viewed difference as a mean to create unity and strive towards collective freedom while the latter foregrounded specific axes of difference to oppress and divide through a process of systemic violence. this paper critically analyses the realities and struggles of learners in schools who embody sexual and gender diversity and is positioned in the tradition of social justice education (see adams et al., 2007; ayers, 1998; nieto, 2004), engaging as it does with issues of exclusion, inclusion, inequality and power as evidenced in and through the school system. schools may challenge the reproduction of inequality and offer possibilities for social change. social justice education is a process and a goal (adams et al., 2007) that aims to support the full and equal participation of all learners, including learners who embody sexual and gender diversity. this social justice project requires halting the intergenerational transmission of outdated and oppressive heteronormative and cisnormative ideologies and knowledge forms. this is possible because, while the challenges of compulsory heteronormativity, cisnormativity, homophobia and transphobia in schools are real (msibi, 2012), there is agency among lgbti young people in speaking back to education structures and in advocating for full inclusion in education. this queer youth advocacy in education emerges at a time when there is an increasingly vocal call for a greater focus on issues of power, privilege and difference in south african education, as was evident in recent years with the tertiary #feesmustfall movement. in a time of flux, change and pervasive violence, questions arise regarding the best ways to 93 reygan sexual and gender diversity in schools capacitate schools to embrace issues of diversity such as through teacher preparedness to confront issues of oppression, discrimination and the ways in which these manifest in schools. in response to these challenges, we also know that classroom pedagogies that challenge forms of oppression such as sexism, racism and heterosexism are not new (see adams, bell & griffin, 2007; francis & hemson, 2007; hemson, moletsane & muthukrishna, 2001; kumashiro, 2000; richardson, 2004). there is also a range of policy measures and legislation that provide for equality of opportunity regardless of difference, including sexual and gender diversity, and some of these are presented below. however, many schools and teachers appear either unwilling or unable to follow through on this mandate and to prepare learners and school communities to develop competence on issues of diversity (moletsane, hemson & muthukrishna, 2004). as reygan and steyn (2017) point out, given the apartheid legacy in south africa, policy makers and educators need a much greater focus on the “theoretical, epistemological, methodological and pedagogical underpinnings of diversity literacy in schools”. reygan and steyn (2017) argue that this is the case for all educators and not only for the life orientation (lo) subject area and that meanwhile the impetus towards essentialising the difference is an apartheid legacy that is perpetuated through the severe inequality in south african schooling. 3. sexual and gender diversity in education grounded in the tradition of critical theory (freire, 1970, 1972; giroux 1980a, 1980b; mclaren, 2015), this paper necessarily looks at the ways in which gender, sexuality and schooling overlap with the field of education. a critical theory approach elucidates the ways in which structure and process in education regulate and police diversity, including sexual and gender diversity and the implications of this in terms of power, difference, privilege and oppression in and through schooling. while the literature, both global and south african, highlights how often heterosexuality is compulsory in school settings, advocacy and research around sexual and gender diversity in education has also elucidated strategies for reform and emancipatory change, some of which are presented in this paper. around the world, the evidence base has clearly demonstrated that schools can be hostile and exclusionary spaces for learners who embody sexual and gender diversity (ellis & high, 2004). heteronormativity, or the presumption that heterosexuality is the right and natural way to be, characterises many school environments and is perpetuated in the everyday practices and processes of the everyday practices and processes of school life (depalma & atkinson, 2009, 2010; epstein, o’flynn & telford, 2003). as recent research across southern africa has also found (unesco, 2016), schools function as sites for the policing and control of gender and sexuality. the global data (unesco, 2016) also points towards a pervasive gap in support services for learners who embody sexual and gender diversity, including a lack of support from friends, families and school communities. while schools are ideally sites of care and support in which educators make a positive difference in the lives of young people, this may not always be the case for young people who embody sexual and gender diversity (bhana, 2012, 2014; francis, 2017a; francis & reygan, 2016; msibi, 2012). in south africa in particular, heterosexual learners are privileged above sexual and gender minority learners and there is a pervasive culture of secrecy and silence in relation to sexual and gender diversity (msibi, 2012; potgieter & reygan, 2012; wilmot & naidoo, 2014). this is generally accompanied by a lack of comprehensive, or any, education in relation to sexual and gender diversity (potgieter & reygan, 2012; wilmot & naidoo, 2014). 94 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) overall, the evidence base identifies factors that determine the daily realities of learners who embody sexual and gender diversity in schools. these include: the policy terrain; textbooks as well as learning and teaching support materials (ltsms); teacher education and sensitisation and the obstacles created by homophobic and transphobic bullying and violence in schools. the confluence of the following exclude learners who embody sexual and gender diversity from full participation or indeed any participation in the school system: • silencing or exclusionary policies; • textbooks that render invisible or denigrate sexual and gender diversity; • teachers who are ill prepared and uncomfortable dealing with the topic of sexual and gender diversity in the classroom; and • hostile and violent, especially homophobic and transphobic, school spaces. • conversely, the following support access to and completion of education for learners: • inclusive educational policies and guidelines in relation to diversity broadly and specifically in relation to sexual and gender diversity; • textbooks and related materials that affirm diversity and semiotically embrace sexual and gender diversity; • educators who are capacitated, skilled and comfortable with engaging issues of intersectional diversity in the classroom, including having reflected deeply on issues of sexual and gender diversity; and • school spaces that are safe, welcoming and inclusive of all young people. the sections below very briefly and in snapshot form analyse some of the determining characteristics of these spaces of belonging and exclusion. in the current context, the evidence base in south africa in relation to sexual and gender diversity in schools is robust enough to make some tentative determinations of what the challenges are and what appropriate solutions might be. 4. spaces of belonging policy space a range of policies and frameworks have been developed in recent years in south africa related to the inclusion of sexual and gender diversity in the process of teaching and learning. such frameworks include care and support for teaching and learning (cstl), which includes lgbti learners as a vulnerable group. the cstl framework includes six key pillars that take a rights-based and inclusive approach to the school environment that focuses on fostering safe, protective and supportive schools as well as a “gender sensitive” approach to promote equity and equality throughout the school system. the first pillar rejects discrimination against any child or educator based on gender, race, colour, creed, physical/mental ability, economic status, hiv and aids status, health status, sexual orientation, nationality or ethnicity or culture. the national department of basic education has also developed guidelines on the prevention of and response to bullying in schools. for example, the dbe’s school safety framework foregrounds the possible role of schools in breaking the cycle of violence in south africa in which many young people are caught. part of the approach to making schools safer and more inclusive is through a whole school approach that the dbe urges be an integral part of schools’ mission statements and overall vision. in recent years, with the increased attention 95 reygan sexual and gender diversity in schools paid globally to bullying, harassment and school related gender based violence (srgbv), schools are mandated to have an anti-bullying policy that includes all members of the school community, including lgbti young people (see dbe, 2015): homophobic bullying should always be challenged in the same way that racist or sexist behaviour is challenged. normal anti-bullying strategies can be used when responding to homophobic bullying and these must have a clear place in the whole school preventative policy. these frameworks and guidelines sit squarely under the general governing legislation for the education sector such as the south african schools act of 1996 (republic of south africa, 1996) which was intended to create an education system that rejected all forms of unfair discrimination and intolerance. teacher education the global and south african literature (see kumashiro, 2000) continues to highlight the determining role of teacher positioning in social justice and anti-oppressive education. in terms of sexual and gender diversity, given the role of religion, patriarchy and cultural norms, reygan and steyn (2016) flag that the topic may elicit some level of discomfort and triggering from educators in comparison with issues of race, class and gender. for example, in terms of developing critical diversity literacy (cdl) in relation to sexual and gender diversity, teachers may experience challenges in responding to certain questions. these questions include what are the “rules” for different groups of people (read lgbti people)?; what is your school/family/ neighbourhood like for people who are different (read lgbti people)?; what are the important words to talk about being different (read lgbti people)?; and where is power in society (especially in relation to sexual and gender diversity)? such processes of self-reflection in teacher education require teachers to interrogate their experiences of marginalisation and privilege. for example, a black female south african may be asked to question her privilege in terms of heteronormativity and nationality among others as well as possible marginalisation in terms of gender or race. this approach to teaching and learning requires a sophisticated understanding not only of the ways in which the african child is constructed in and through schooling but also of the ways in which this child is socially positioned in terms of race, class, ethnicity, (dis)ability and sexual and gender diversity. the implications of this social positioning in terms of access to and completion of education is also part of this nuanced understanding of diversity in education. taking this critical, anti-oppressive approach to education helps in elucidating the interconnections between race, class, gender and sexual diversity among others and assists in moving thinking away from essentialising identities to a more informed approach that is cognisant of a wider range of the oppressions, all as equally important (francis & le roux, 2011). an optimal outcome of such processes of teacher education is the cultivation of a generation of teachers that see themselves as agents of change, capable of identifying and challenging racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia and transphobia in school settings. while teachers may often want to avoid taking on responsibility for confronting issues of power, privilege and oppression (francis & le roux, 2011), often due to a lack of prior education and support, national policies and frameworks are clear in terms of duties and responsibilities in terms of creating schools that are caring, supportive, safe and non-discriminatory, including in relation to sexual and gender diversity. 96 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) 5. spaces of exclusion homophobic and transphobic violence in south africa, the national department of basic education’s (dbe) school safety framework states that bullying is not something that educators should accept and rejects the notion that bullying is a normal part of growing up and includes homophobic bullying. the dbe (2015) defines homophobic bullying as a particular type of bullying that happens when motivated by prejudice against lgbti people or people who are thought to be lgbti. it can target young people and adults who are, or are perceived to be, lgbti; teachers who are, or are perceived to be, lgbti; learners who are perceived to be different in some way and learners who have an lgbti parent or sibling. the dbe (2015) links homophobic violence and bullying as a school safety issue to sexual harassment and gender discrimination and can be either a single event or be repeated over time and that lgbti young people who come out are more at risk of homophobic bullying. the dbe (2015) points out that homophobic bullying is widespread in south african schools, creates an unhealthy school environment, has a negative impact on learners and, given the linguistic diversity of south africa, includes terms such as: isitabane in isizulu; moffie in afrikaans; faggot and queer in english; and the term ”gay” used in a derogatory way. human rights watch (2011) found that overly strict dress codes that do not consider valid gender identity and expression exert excessive pressure on lesbian and transgender learners by creating a hostile environment that can ultimately lead to early school leaving: i gave up. i didn’t finish matric. if i can get a job this year, next year i can go back to finish school. (suma: human rights watch, 2011) morrell (2002) found that learners exist on “a knife’s edge” and butler, alpaslan, strümpher and astbury (2003) found that participants experienced discrimination, isolation and non-tolerance within their high school contexts. the 18 sexual and gender minority youth experienced harassment inflicted by peers, teachers and school administrators as well as avoidance, rejection and isolation. wells and polders (2005) found victimisation based on sexual orientation was widespread, including verbal and physical abuse and even rape. richardson (2009) found that, because of homophobia in schools, youth suffer from stress, loneliness, identity crisis, depression, high levels of anxiety, isolation, and self-hatred. kowen and davis (2006) found that lesbian youth experienced isolation and marginalisation due to homophobic attitudes within school and the broader social context: …in the south african context, coming out means confronting a range of punitive social controls, including, among others, abandonment, rape, physical violence, censorship and accusations of witchcraft. (kowen & davis, 2006: 82–83) bhana (2014) explored the way in which school leaders, including principals and heads of departments, engaged with issues of sexual and gender diversity. her findings point to the absence of management-level expertise and know how in relation to sexual and gender equality in south african schools. heterosexist discourses as well as the idealised notion of heterosexual marriage and norms pervaded the reports of school managers. bhana (2014) found that heterosexuality was the norm while homosexuality was associated with sexual desires, excess and discomfort in a general context that silenced and obscuredsexual and gender diversity. msibi (2012) found negative experiences of schooling among lgbt young people derogatory language to hate speech and violence perpetrated by teachers: 97 reygan sexual and gender diversity in schools i am used to it now ... mr mncube dragged me by my neck and told me to stop bothering them in the staffroom. he had done this to me before. he likes pushing me and shouting at me in front of other teachers whenever i go to the staffroom. he always says he doesn’t like “izitabane”. other teachers just laugh and do nothing. (msibi, 2012: 525) depalma and francis (2014) report on religious discourses and the conviction that homosexuality can be cured or prevented, which gives way to an additional religious discourse of intolerance. some of the teachers, in their study, expressed ambivalence over curative or conversion methodologies, even when they had expressed an understanding of homosexuality as a sin or disorder. for example, one teacher described a poster that she had put on her wall that depicted the christian’s choice: two roads, a narrow one leading to heaven and a broad one leading to hell, with a bible verse advocating violence towards homosexuals. the dbe (2015) affirms that all actors in the school community have roles and responsibilities in terms of addressing bullying: principals; the sgb; the school safety committee; educators; parents and caregivers and peer leaders. however, depalma and francis (2013) conclude that there is a strong disconnect between progressive legislation and education policy. in short, in the broader context of school related gender based violence (srgbv), homophobic and transphobic bullying and violence compromises learners’ right to a quality education in a safe school environment (unesco, 2016). 6. textbooks in the south african context, the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) indicates that the national curriculum is grounded in values of “social transformation; ensuring that the educational imbalances of the past are addressed” (doe, 2011: 4). caps is also intended to support “human rights, inclusivity ... and social justice; infusing the principles and practices of social and environmental justice and human rights as defined in the constitution of the republic of south africa” (doe, 2011: 4). in this broader context, textbooks play a key role in the construction of norms, values and identities (wilmot & naidoo, 2014) and serve to convey national policies and guidelines as well as forming one of the bases for classroom practice. textbooks have an ideological function in terms of selecting knowledge, in communicating the “thinkable”, erasing the “unthinkable”, and in reproducing the epistemic and ontological values underpinning curriculum policy (issitt, 2004). in their critical analysis of south african lo textbooks in relation to sexual and gender diversity, wilmot and naidoo (2014) found that heteronormativity and heterosexism determine the representation of sexualities broadly in lo textbooks through a range of techniques. first, there is little mention of sexual and gender diversity in textbooks. second, the presumption of heterosexuality informs content on marriage, family, sex and dating, and there is a generally inaccurate representation of sexual and gender diversity. third, there is an overly simplistic reduction of the variety and nuance of sexuality and diversity. finally, heterosexuality is reified by normalising judgements and exclusion. wilmot and naidoo’s (2014) findings develop on the findings of potgieter and reygan (2012) who found a pathologising and obscuringimpetus in the general (non)representation and silencing of sexual and gender diversity in lo textbooks. overall, textbooks generally fail to provide adequately informed and nuanced knowledge about sexual and gender sexuality in a manner that is accessible, useful and interesting for young people. 98 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) 7. conclusion the lessons learnt through the process of challenging racism in the school system – such as around essentialising, othering and systemic violence – have yet to be fully applied to sexual and gender diversity in schools. school community members, textbooks and pedagogical practices continue to essentialise sexual and gender diversity in individual learners, thereby avoiding turning the gaze back on a system that continues to experience deep-seated discomfort in relation to multiple forms of difference. however just as adult lgbti people continue to push back against patriarchal notions of gender and sexuality in society in general, so too are the education system itself and lgbti young people themselves creating spaces for belonging and inclusion. while the media is saturated with stories of school violence, we also know that schools can and do function as sites of belonging and inclusion for young queer people (see http://www.newnownext.com/south-african-gay-boys-kiss-valentinesday/02/2018/). it is also increasingly apparent that the sogi issues cannot be understood outside an intersectional approach that takes into account issues of race, class and disability among others. the school experiences of sexual and gender minority learners are complex and extend beyond sogi issues such as concerns over being outed, discrimination and oppression. sexual and gender minority learners embody a broad range of other identities grounded in race, class, religious belief, linguistic differences, disability and so on. as a result, it is imperative to understand the ways in which multiple identities and social positions are imbricated and to develop a clearer understanding of the ways in which the processes of teaching and learning are influenced by the overlapping experiences of privilege and marginalisation. for example, the lived experiences and social positioning of a black, upper middle class, cisgender female learner with a disability will differ from the school-based experiences of an able bodied, white, transgender male from a disadvantaged background. a focus on sexual and gender diversity problematises the single notion of the “african child” by considering the ways in which responses to sexual and gender diversity determines the experiences of youth in schools. to be lgbti identified also means holding deeper more nuanced understandings of the ways in which power operates and the ways in which experiences of class, race, age and sogi intersect, overlap and co-construct each other. to be queer identified in schools means to hold a vision for a more inclusive future and to seek out communities of belonging, often online, where many sexual and gender minority youth find connections to other likeminded individuals and to communities of support. to be lgbti identified in schools means to experience possible violence, bullying and harassment and to be required to develop strategies of resilience and perseverance in the face of systemic violence. to visibly embody sexual and gender diversity in school settings means to require school systems to confront the sometimes-troubling notions of childhood sexuality and diversity of gender expression. all of the above asks of schools to question desexualised, non-agentic visions of youth sexuality, desire and identity. in terms of the best way to educate the african child who embodies sexual and gender diversity, one effective approach is to bring sexual and gender diversity in from the margins and position diversity as a core aspect of the curriculum, practice and culture in schools. some steps have been taken toward creating a school system that is safe and inclusive for sexual and gender minority learners, which have been presented in this paper. a socially just education system will facilitate learners who embody sexual and http://www.newnownext.com/south-african-gay-boys-kiss-valentines-day/02/2018/ http://www.newnownext.com/south-african-gay-boys-kiss-valentines-day/02/2018/ 99 reygan sexual and gender diversity in schools gender diversity to feel a sense of safety, inclusion, belonging and visibility in education. this is because the inclusion of sexual and gender minority learners requires a robust engagement with issues of power, privilege and oppression in and around education. in this regard, there is a growing recognition of the constitutive role of privilege and power in perpetuating inequality, including the transmission between generations of exclusionary epistemologies in and through education processes. 8. recommendations this paper began by asking what needs to be done in the school system to reconstruct the “african child” to include sexual and gender diversity. from the foregoing analysis of education policies and processes, some possibilities include: • inclusive policy implementation, such as the development of school policies in relation to the inclusion of transgender learners especially in relation to school dress codes; • inclusive learning and teaching resource materials and especially those that mainstream some of the robust materials developed by civil society organisations such as genderdynamix; • teacher preparedness to teach about and affirm sexual and gender diversity in the classroom, including pre-service through all schools of education in south african universities as well as in-service interventions such as delivered by organisations such as lovelife; and • a clear rejection of homophobic and transphobic violence. references adams, m., bell, l. a. & griffin, p. 2007. teaching for diversity and 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https://doi.org/10.1080/19361653.2015.1088814 https://doi.org/10.1080/16823206.2014.943259 https://doi.org/10.1080/16823200409487084 https://doi.org/10.1023 https://doi.org/10.1023 jedu.0000006162.07375.aa https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2014.896252 https://doi.org/10.1080/14681811.2014.896252 _goback 3122022 40(4): 312-324 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 the management and governance conundrum in south african public schools: principals’ perspectives abstract the introduction of school governing bodies (hereinafter sgbs) changed the roles and functions of principals dramatically when this new approach to school governance and professional management (referred to as a participatory decision-making approach) was activated when the south african schools act 84 of 1996 (hereinafter sasa) was implemented in january 1997. consequently, the principal is no longer the only decision-maker in the school. the principal as the protagonist in school management and governance (implementing sgb policy) is the role-player most affected by the introduction of the participatory decision-making approach. in this article, we discuss principals’ perspectives regarding the shared participatory decision-making approach and the effects thereof on the relationship between the principal and the sgb. in this regard, it is important to note that the perceptions the two parties have of each other are established by the sgb’s encroachment on the professional management functions of the principal and vice versa. the research findings concluded that the relationship between the principal and the sgb is often a relationship characterised by tension, no trust and irrational actions by the sgb. the relationship is further influenced by the functionality or lack of functionality of sgbs as well as prevailing socio-economic conditions and sgb members’ levels of literacy. on the other hand, principals who do not adapt to participatory decision-making, and who still implement an assertive autocratic management approach, also contribute to a turbulent relationship. keywords: public schools; school governance; school professional management; south african schools act 1. introduction the south african schools act 84 of 1996 (hereinafter sasa) (republic of south africa (rsa),1996a) made it possible to give effect to a participatory form of democracy by redistributing power to local school communities while at the same time, centralised control over certain aspects of educational decision-making was abolished (squelch, 1998:101; smit & oosthuizen, 2011:59). in principle, these stipulations in the sasa were intended to create democratic power-sharing and co-operative partnership between the state, parents, and educators (karlsson, 2002). principals author: dr johan kruger1 prof johan beckmann2 dr andre du plessis1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria, south africa 2university of pretoria and university of the free state, south africa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v40i4.5735 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(4): 312-324 published: 23 december 2022 received: 27 october 2021 accepted: 18 may 2022 research article http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9991-4018 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7252-8483 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2561-5138 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 3132022 40(4): 313-324 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 kruger, beckmann & du plessis the management and governance conundrum are now expected to implement democratic management models and leadership styles in schools (mhone & edighej, 2003). this is the reason why in the present-day governance of the school system a complex and broad set of inter-relationships between inter-dependent groups and individuals exists. this broad range of interests and involvement complicates school governance and the pattern of rule (balarin et al., 2008:5). in terms of section 20 (1)(a) of the sasa (rsa, 1996a) members of sgbs are democratically elected by parents, educators, learners and non-teaching staff members of a school to promote the best interests of a school (rsa, 1996a). in terms of section 20 (1) (b) the principal is a member of the sgb in his official capacity, and in terms of section 20(1) (c) a sgb also has the option to co-opt members to the sgb (rsa, 1996a). sgbs also have the democratic and statutory authority to adopt a constitution (section 20), recommend the appointment of teaching and non-teaching staff (section 20), determine the language policy of a school (section 6), adopt a code of conduct for learners (sections 8 and 9) and control the school property and financial resources (sections 20 and 21) (rsa, 1996a). in essence, it is a structure that has a great deal of influence in the school environment. in addition, the directive principle in sub-section 4(m) of the national education policy act 27 of 1996 (hereinafter nepa) (rsa,1996b) stipulates that the national minister of basic education must ensure broad public participation in the development of education by including stakeholders in policy-making and governance in the education system (rsa, 1996b). the national development plan 2030 (rsa, 2012) is clear that education requires political consensus. participants in education include political parties, government, unions, the private sector, professional bodies, subject-specific associations, associations of governing bodies and the communities. new legislation after 1994 allowed sgbs to govern schools (squelch, 1998; smit & oosthuizen, 2011:59) and provided public school principals with greater autonomy in respect of the professional management of their schools (squelch, 1998; oosthuizen, roux & van der walt, 2003). the article begins with a discussion regarding the peripheral school landscape in which the principal must operate, by referring to the proverbial ‘three hats’ public-school principals must wear in relation to the management and the governance conundrum, ultra vires actions of sgbs, and grassroots governance challenges. 2. the three hats of a public-school principal section 16(3) of the sasa (rsa, 1996a) stipulates that the professional management of a public school must be undertaken by the principal (hat 1) under the authority of the head of department of a province (hat 2), his or her superior authority. section 16(1) vests the governance of every public school in its sgb which may perform only such functions and obligations and exercise only such rights as prescribed by the act. the education laws amendment act 31 of 2007 added section 16a to the sasa (rsa, 2007). section 16a contains more detailed stipulations regarding the professional management duties of public-school principals. in terms of section 16a (1)(a) a principal of a public school represents the provincial head of department on the sgb when acting in an official capacity as contemplated in sections 23 (1) (b) and 24 (1) (j). the principal is therefore an ex officio (by virtue of his office) member of the sgb in accordance with section 23 (1) (f) of sasa (hat 3). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 3142022 40(4): 314-324 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) consequently, principals wear three proverbial hats namely: representing the school management team, the dbe, and the school community. as a result, public school principals find themselves in a precarious position because they must look after the interests of multiple stakeholders. this is one of the reasons why sefeane (2013) argues that schools are complex institutions to manage, lead and govern. this is explained by beckmann (2002: 11) as follows: in practice, the principal should implement the policies of the provincial education department when operating as a departmental employee, and, when dealing with the department in his/her capacity as governing body member, watch over the interests of the governing body, the school and the parent community. what makes the position of principals even more complex is that they often live among the parents and learners of their school where they must be cognisant of both the government and parents’ expectations and must strive to work to the benefit of both the government and the community, while simultaneously ensuring that effective teaching and learning takes place within their schools. this balancing act is crucial to establish and maintain a relationship of trust with both the parents and learners. furthermore, public school principals are obliged not to divert from the directives of the dbe (cf. sections 16a (2-3) of sasa) because the department pays his/her salary (heystek, 2004). simultaneously, the community can expect the principal to respect the expectations of the community (heystek, 2004:308). the challenge is that if the principal acts against the department’s instructions, such behaviour will be regarded as insubordination and the principal could be subjected to disciplinary action. on the other hand, if the principal does not support the sgb, the principal could be exposed to various forms of sanctions implemented by the sgb (the school-based authority). 2.1 ultra vires actions of sgbs in recent years the phenomenon of sgbs meddling in the professional management of schools has become more and more prevalent. several scholars indicate that the most obvious demonstration of authority abuse can be found in the relationship between the principal and the sgb (van wyk, 2004; mncube & harber, 2013). this often leads to unhealthy relationships between school principals and sgbs that escalate to such levels of tension that court intervention becomes the only way to remedy the situation. in that regard, serfontein and de waal (2018:2) indicate that although authority is a necessary part of managing and governing a school, the desire for power can become a major challenge, as it is often abused for own gain. authority used fraudulently, dishonestly or in bad faith, is prohibited by law (hoexter, 2008). power abuse, as set out by makumbe and chairman (1999) and expressed in section 33 (1) of the constitution of 1996 includes the malevolent, unaccountable, devious, unlawful, unreasonable and procedurally unfair exercise of power. some recent examples are presented below. 2.1.1 the grey college case the grey college case is the most recent documented case of tension between a principal and the sgb. in that case, the court determined that the sgb did not have the power to make the pronouncements it made about the principal’s management responsibilities because the sasa (rsa,1996a) does not sanction it. therefore, it is imperative to be cognisant of the judgement in the schoonbee case in which judge moseneke indicated that in the sgb and the principal relationship the principal is tasked to guide and assist the sgb in the execution http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 3152022 40(4): 315-324 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 kruger, beckmann & du plessis the management and governance conundrum of its statutory functions. the sgb can delegate specific parts of their duties to the principal. however, a public-school principal is also answerable to the sgb, and it is the sgb that must hold the principal accountable for monetary and property affairs that are not specifically delegated to the principal by law as the principal is not the accounting officer of a public school (prinsloo, 2016). 2.1.2 the potchefstroom boys high case in this case, angry parents of the potchefstroom high school for boys and members of the sgb got together to protest against the principal. the meeting was arranged by the sgb urging parents not to take their children to school. according to the sgb, “parents of learners at potchefstroom high school for boys are resolute that the principal must be shown the door. this is based on poor results from grade 8 to 12” (van der westhuizen, 2021). the south african teachers’ union (saou) pointed out that the sgb was dysfunctional and was manipulating the parents of the school thus acting outside their jurisdiction (van der westhuizen, 2021). 2.1.3 the theresapark case in this incident, the south african democratic teachers union (sadtu) expressed objections to unlawful behaviour by the principal of the theresapark primary school. multimedia footage was circulated where the principal was forcefully carried out of her office. it was alleged that the principal was being thrown out by a group of parents and the sgb. the parents and sgb allegedly released her from her duties (mahlokwane, 2021). 2.2 school principals abusing power earley (cited in van wyk, 2004: 53) states that “in previous years, principals regulated south african schools affording parents, educators and learners very little to no opportunity to make inputs in reference to policy and decision-making”. educators and parents were functioning merely as secondary governors, reliant on the principal for information. principals became used to exercising sole control and authority in public schools (heystek, 2004). having to deal with many stakeholders who might want to be active participants in the exercise of authority presented a challenge to many public-school principals (heystek, 2011). this often led to unhealthy relationships between school principals and sgbs that escalated to such levels of tension that intervention by the dbe or courts became the only way to remedy the situation. the hoërskool eldoraigne case is the most recent documented case where draconian management approaches by the principal led to tension with the sgb, parents, educators and learners. parents, learners, and educators at eldoraigne high school were shocked when the gauteng department of education (gde) instructed the principal to report back for duty at school after being suspended pending an investigation into the way he managed the school. the educators and the school community reported the principal to the gde because of his continuous bullying behaviour at school (van der merwe, 2021). the charges against the principal included victimisation of staff members, the humiliation of staff members in the presence of others and threats that some staff members’ contracts would not be renewed. a law firm appointed by the sgb recommended that the principal be investigated for misconduct (willemse, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 3162022 40(4): 316-324 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) 2.3 additional grassroots governance challenges at grassroots level, there are also various issues that contribute to tensions between principals and sgbs. research by mohapi and netshitangani (2018) indicated that parent governors found it especially difficult to implement the functions of the sgb as articulated in the sasa (rsa, 1996a). their research points out that some functions of sgbs are dependent on, and influenced by the socio-economic settings of schools and capacity differences of sgbs (mohapi & netshitangani, 2018). in that regard, mohapi and netshitangani’s (2018) research revealed that low levels of education and literacy of some parent governors are linked to low-income regions while parent governors from wealthier regions have higher levels of education. participants in the study indicated that they had challenges comprehending some of the discussions in the sgb meetings due to the english language barrier (mohapi & netshitangani, 2018). mohapi and netshitangani’s (2018) research suggested that what mokoena (2005) emphasised in 2005, still held true: there are widely varying capacities among sgbs in affluent suburban schools and those in rural areas. sgbs in urban schools are dominated by well-off and highly qualified professionals and managers, predominately whites, but also include a small and growing complement of blacks who have accumulated some experience in running schools under the old model c system. sgbs in rural areas are often dominated by parents who are illiterate and without administrative and financial experience to oversee the affairs of the schools. mathonsi (2001) remarked that when sgbs are well-educated and capacitated in understanding their roles and responsibilities, they are able to govern schools well and improve the quality of education in south africa. on the other hand, parent governors who are illiterate, present challenges when it comes to parent involvement in school activities (mohapi & netshitangani, 2018). in that regard, section 19(l) of sasa empowers the provincial head of department to establish a programme to provide introductory training for newly elected governing bodies to enable them to perform their functions and to also provide continuing training to governing bodies to promote the effective performance of their functions or to enable them to assume additional functions (rsa, 1996a). in essence, it is the duty of the provincial departments of education to assist sgbs that are not functional. another important marker of the functionality of the sgb is the respect that the sgb and the principal have for each other’s functions and duties (mohapi & netshitangani, 2018). in that regard, mohapi and netshitangani (2018) mention that the perspectives the two parties have of each other are negatively affected by the sgb’s encroachment on the professional management functions of the principal and vice versa. another major grassroots governance challenge is the sasa’s expectations of the sgb. some scholars such as soudien (2003) and duku (2006) criticise the sasa (rsa, 1996a) for being too much aligned with middle-class standards. they maintain that sasa has been drafted to reflect middle-class conditions and values, without any consideration given to disadvantaged societies. soudien (2003) and duku (2006) refer to the absolute assumptions made about parents in the sasa, wealthier regions for example: that they have sufficient time to take part in school activities without receiving any compensation for their time, and that they have the means to make decisions about their children’s education (soudien, 2003; sayed & soudien, 2005 in duku, 2006). as a result, in some communities (particularly in less affluent http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 3172022 40(4): 317-324 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 kruger, beckmann & du plessis the management and governance conundrum schools) parents seem to rely more on educators in matters of school governance (duku, 2006; mncube, 2009). 3. research methodology this qualitative research project made use of a multiple case study design. creswell and poth (2017: 96) refer to a case study as “a qualitative approach in which the researcher explores a phenomenon in an everyday realistic, bounded system (a case) over a period of time, through comprehensive, in-depth collection techniques like interviews, documents and reports”. this design enabled the researchers to collect data in bounded systems namely twenty-four public schools in four school districts in gauteng. semi-structured interviews were conducted with the principals in these bounded systems (schools) to determine their perspectives of participatory decision-making and the effects it has on the relationship between the principal and the sgb. data coding was used to analyse the transcriptions of the semi-structured interviews. the data coding began with the identification of significant segments (mcmillan & schumacher, 2014) to formulate meaningful words or phrases that were grouped into categories. the categories were the main ideas that were used to describe the meaning of similarly coded data (mcmillan & schumacher, 2014). the categories were then arranged into themes and the themes into clusters of themes. finally, the themes and clusters of themes in patterns were grouped together. a pattern formed the connections between categories (mcmillan & schumacher, 2014). 4. presentation and discussion of the data from the analysis of the data the following sub-themes appeared: • negative perspectives about school governing bodies; • positive perspectives about school governing bodies; • keys to functional principal and sgb relationships; and • the importance of establishing boundaries between professional management and governance. each sub-theme is discussed below. 4.1 negative perspectives about school governing bodies several participants from predominantly poorer schools had negative perceptions regarding their relationship with their sgbs. for example, participant 10 said that he “must deal with very nasty people” in his school governing body and participant 12 indicated that the sgb was a structure that he disliked and that “it is a structure that is more of a hindrance than a help.” these opinions were supported by participants 14, 18 and 19 who emphasised that some sgb members had hidden agendas that were not in the best interest of the schools. this also led to conflict and the sgbs then sometimes reacted by withdrawing duties that they had allocated to the principal as it could provide the parent members with more freedom to promote their own vested interests. participant 9 said that the chairperson of his sgb interfered with the professional management of the school. he explained as follows: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 3182022 40(4): 318-324 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) my school governing body chairman tends to be too involved sometimes and actually makes a nuisance of himself. the sgb must know it should be ’hands off’ regarding professional school matters. some participants pointed out that many parent members of sgbs were not highly educated and that they lacked the capacity to make well-informed and rational governance decisions. they also mentioned that such parents were generally employed in the lower levels of the private and public sectors. consequently, most of them were not familiar with the principles of good governance and they struggled to make positive contributions in the sgb. this led to a great deal of tension when the principal disagreed with proposals made by the sgb that were not viable or in the best interest of the learners. although an uneducated parent serving on an sgb can be a good governor, research findings indicate that it is not the norm (mohapi & netshitangani, 2018; mathonsi, 2001; soudien, 2003; duku, 2006; mncube, 2009). some of the participants indicated that they had multi-cultural and multi-racial sgbs and, if the principal was from a different racial group than the rest of the members of the sgb, conflict often occurred and that some sgb members would go out of their way to make the principal’s interactions with the sgb unpleasant. according to participant 12, his sgb chairman told him that “the school must be led by a person of colour and that transformation is too slow at the school”. participant 21 mentioned that in an sgb meeting it was said that it was unacceptable that the school still had the name of a previous afrikaner leader and that the school was still managed and co-governed by a white person. participant 18 indicated that the sgb had informed her that the leadership had to be transformed to form better associations with learners and parents. “leaders from the same culture as the learners and parents have a better understanding of the cultures and customs and that leads to more trust”. there is thus a discernible racist undertone that impedes the principal-sgb relationship at some of the participating schools. participants 4, 9, 12, 19 and 22 were cautioned by their sgbs that, if they did not implement the sgbs’ policies, the sgb would limit their statutory powers and would proceed without the principal. participant 9 indicated that “the chairperson of the sgb informed me that you either comply with the demands of the sgb or else your duties will be allocated to other staff members”. participant 22 pointed out that “the sgb on several occasions forced me to implement policy and [said] that if i did not support them, they would implement it on my behalf”. participants 3, 10, 12, 14, 18 and 19 alluded to the fact that sgbs terms of office were short and sgbs only had short-term visions while the principals had long-term visions for the school. this often led to a great deal of tension. participant 3 expressed the above notion in the following way, “the sgb plans for now while i must make long-term plans. this leads to a lot of tension”. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 3192022 40(4): 319-324 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 kruger, beckmann & du plessis the management and governance conundrum participant 18 indicated that “the sgb wants to make a statement by focusing on shortterm projects because they only have a three-year term. i, on the other hand, must focus on the long-term. this leads to conflict”. 4.2 positive perspectives a relatively small number of the participants perceived their sgbs in a positive light. these participants managed schools in more affluent communities. they indicated that they were “spoilt” with professional parents serving on their sgbs. for example, participant 22 stated that: our governing body chairman is an accredited accountant. our finance committee consists of three chartered accountants. in addition, we have a structural engineer who looks after the school’s infrastructure, and we also have two lawyers who serve on the governing body. in a similar vein, participant 7 remarked that: i have a positive relationship with my sgb. they support me in the vision i have for the school. all of them are professionals and they bring a lot of knowledge to the table. participant 23 indicated that he had a good working relationship with his sgb: we have a united front. we also co-opted a person to manage conflicts that might arise between members on the sgb. this makes my work easier. according to participants 2, 13, 17, 23 and 24, their sgbs entrusted them with many functions. they received a great deal of support from their sgbs and they had the freedom to approach the sgbs with any problem they had at school. 4.3 keys to a functional principal-sgb relationship participants shared their perspectives on aspects that contribute to a functional principal and sgb relationship. participants indicated that the relationship between the principal and the sgb must be built around the best interests of the learners and staff. there must be transparency in management and governance. the school principal and the sgb must work in harmony, and they must have a shared vision for the school. the principal must establish cooperation between the sgb and the school management. it is important for the principal to establish a cordial and professional relationship with the sgb. the participants stressed the importance of mutual respect and trust that the principal and the sgb must have for each other. in this regard participant, 4 explained that “it is important to establish a relationship of trust. you earn trust by keeping the sgb well-informed”. a similar view was expressed by participant 7 who indicated that he had an open relationship with his sgb and underlined the importance of always keeping the relationship professional. participant 14 emphasised that: there must be a mutual understanding and a mutual agreement between the principal and the sgb. in other words, an amicable relationship, because the principal needs to work with the sgb and the sgb with the principal. a diplomatic relationship must exist. participant 1 stated that “you need to tie people and you need a collective focus on where the school is heading”. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 3202022 40(4): 320-324 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) 4.4 the importance of establishing boundaries between professional management and governance earlier, we referred to principals’ proverbial three hats in relation to the management and governance challenges. the duality of being involved in management and governance featured prominently in the responses. the fact that professional school management and governance stand adjacent to each other is the main reason why a strong emphasis on the need to establish clearly defined boundaries between management and governance came to the fore. participants were adamant about the importance of establishing clear boundaries between management and governance. they highlighted the importance of proper communication in setting clear boundaries between management and governance functions. participant 10 explained as follows: “right at the beginning of the sgb’s term, i set the boundaries of professional management and governance”. participant 24 emphasised that “[if] the sgb knows what its duties are and if there is continuous interactive communication, a productive relationship will develop. it is important to communicate the boundaries”. participant 4 mentioned that when she was appointed as a principal, she communicated to the sgb that they must trust her: this means you do not interfere in my professional management of the school, and you stick to your functions which are the governance of the school. it is important to set firm peripheries regarding the management and governance [of the school]. although it is important to have respect for each other’s boundaries, principals must guard against not being transparent when it comes to professional management issues. if the principal manages the school in a silo the principal and sgb relationship will become unhealthy. 5. discussion the participants had mixed perspectives regarding their relationships with their sgbs. on one hand, there were participants who had strongly antagonistic feelings about their sgbs. these participants expressed their displeasure with the sgb by using words like: “nasty people” (participant 10); “a structure i dislike” (participant 12); “lacked capacity” (participants 3, 10, 12, 14, 18 and 19); “racism” (participants 12, 18 and 21); “intimidation” (participants 4, 9, 12, 19 and 22); “hidden agendas” (participants 12, 14, 18 and 19) and “threats to curtail duties” (participants 4, 9, 12, 19 and 22). the deduction can be made that a principal who had negative experiences with a previous sgb could enter a relationship with a newly elected sgb with preconceived beliefs that all sgbs are bad and should not be trusted. there is then a danger that a principal could be the source of the problem should the relationship with his or her sgb turn sour. furthermore, principals must guard against temptations to act too assertively or defensively towards sgbs if they do not agree with the sgbs. such conduct could contribute to a toxic relationship (van wyk, 2004). it seems that some principals find it difficult to adapt to the participatory decision-making approach. this deduction is especially pertinent to principals who belong to the so-called ‘baby boomer’ generation. these are the educators that were in management positions at schools http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 3212022 40(4): 321-324 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 kruger, beckmann & du plessis the management and governance conundrum before 1994 when the system was still highly centralised and parents had a limited voice in the education of their children. the department of basic education failed these educators in the sense that there were no programmes implemented to assist these educators to adapt to a democratic education system. the data indicate that, if principals did not agree with the sgb on governance issues, some sgbs reacted irrationally by curtailing the principal’s duties through actions that were not always legal. the deduction is supported by recent incidences where sgbs attempted to remove principals from schools as mentioned earlier. the fact that some sgb members are not highly educated can directly be associated with the reasons why they may act irrationally towards the principal. because these parents work in lower levels of the private and public sectors, they may not be familiar with or exposed to the principles of good governance and therefore struggle to make positive contributions in the sgb. this can lead to tension when the principal disagrees with proposals made by the sgb that are not viable or in the best interest of the learners (mohapi & netshitangani, 2018; participants 3, 10, 12, 14, 18 and 19). an important deduction to make from this is that the sasa assumes that all sgb members will positively contribute to sgbs in which they serve. south africa is one of the most diverse and unequal countries in the world and the dbe should consider a more contextually intelligent approach when it comes to sgbs (soudien, 2003; duku, 2006). consequently, the sasa must be amended in such a way that it takes cognisance of the contextual differences in communities. furthermore, the training of sgbs becomes a vital imperative to ensure effective governance at school as it seems that the current training programmes for newly elected sgbs are not up to standard. the dbe must include other role-players such as governing body federations, teacher unions and universities to assist in the development of training programmes. the data further revealed that some sgb members have vested interests and such members often compromise the principal and sgb relationship. in such cases, there is a lack of trust between the principal and the sgb because of a lack of transparency and open lines of communication (participants 12, 14, 18 and 19). the deduction can be made that sgb elections must be solely based on a parent’s abilities and the positive contributions a member can make towards the school. pre-sgb election meetings with parents that indicate their availability to serve on sgbs can be introduced as one of the steps in the sgb process. this is in line with arguments made by serfontein and de waal (2018) and hoexter (2008). the data also revealed that principal sgb relationships are influenced by race. although south africa is in its 27th year of being a non-racial democracy, the issues and sensitivities around race are still a determining factor in many sectors of society, especially in the education sector. some of the participants indicated that they had multi-cultural and multiracial sgbs and when because the principal is from a different racial group than the rest of the members of the sgb, conflict often occurs and some sgb members do their utmost to undermine the principal’s authority (participants 12, 18 and 21). this suggests that both principals and sgbs must receive in-depth training on politically sensitive issues such as race. the researchers could not find any literature that specifically addressed this matter from a south african perspective. this seems to be an area that needs the urgent attention of the education authorities. on the other hand, there were participants who had positive interactions with their sgbs. those participants used words like: “professionals” (participant 22); “support” (participant 7) http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 3222022 40(4): 322-324 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) and “united front” (participant 23) to describe their relationships with sgbs. the research identified two foundations of a healthy relationship between principals and sgbs. firstly, the participants referred to the establishment of well-defined boundaries between the professional management functions of the principal and the governance duties of sgbs. the importance of proper communication in setting clear boundaries between management and governance is a prerequisite for establishing and maintaining a healthy principal-sgb relationship (participants 4, 6, 10, 12, 18, 19 and 24). consequently, if there are no clearly defined and agreed-upon boundaries between the principal’s leadership and management functions and the sgb’s governance domains, the potential for interference in each other’s domains increases exponentially and could lead to mistrust and tension. by clearly distinguishing between the professional management and governance of schools, the principal can protect his/her management domain. however, when establishing these boundaries, principals must guard against managing the school in a silo as it is against the democratic vision of the sasa. secondly, the participants mentioned that effective and successful principal-sgb relationships flourish where: the best interests of the learners and staff are placed at the forefront; there is transparency in management and governance; the principal and the sgb purposefully work in harmony; the principal and the sgb have a shared vision for the school; the principal and sgb promotes sound cooperation between the sgb and the school management; and, where there is mutual respect and trust between the principal and the sgb (participants 1, 2, 4, 7, 11, 13, 14, 23 and 24). the grey college, potchefstroom boys high and theresapark incidents are examples of how quickly relationships can become toxic when role players do not understand and respect or the role that each are supposed to perform. the cases also underscore how vested interests can undermine the best interest of a school in general and the learners in particular. furthermore, the hoërskool eldorainge case should serve as a warning to despotic principals who believe that ‘their way is the highway’. such a mentality will ignite the wrath of the school governing body who represents the school community. as the protagonist in this complex relationship, the principal should be open to suggestions from school governing body and the school management team. in so doing, the partnership-principle as envisaged in the preamble of sasa will be promoted. 6. conclusion against the background of the provisions of the sasa, both the school principal and the sgb have an obligation to establish an ethical culture to ensure that their relationships are conducive to effective communication and decision-making. in an effective relationship, no one should be powerless and mistrusted. trust is earned if one acts in good faith towards another and the school. in a trusting environment, decision-making can be carried out by one person after consultation with other stakeholders. to build trust among stakeholders (sgb/parents/ teachers and non-teaching staff/learners/the community/dbe/ngos) in a school there is a need for cooperation rather than a desire to compete or dominate. a trusting relationship is an interactive process, involving the sharing of information, ideas, and feelings. principals and sgbs must, therefore, be open and transparent about the school’s objectives and demonstrate expertise without being oppressive or trying to signal superiority. in this way, mutual trust between stakeholders will be fostered. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 3232022 40(4): 323-324 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.5735 kruger, beckmann & du plessis the management and governance conundrum the operative word in trust is reciprocity and it is important to share rather than conceal feelings. thoughts should be expressed in ways that respect parents’ and learners’ rights so that they can understand and appreciate what the school management and sgb are trying to achieve. references balarin, m., brammer, s., james, c. & mccormack, m. 2008. the school governance study. london: business in the community. creswell, j.w. & poth, c.n. 2017. qualitative inquiry and research design: choosing among five approaches. international student edition. los angeles: sage publications. duku, n. 2006. the exploration of parents’ negotiations of their identities in school governance participation in six selected villages. phd thesis. cape town: university of 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disability and rehabilitation; policy literacy 1. introduction the landscapes of knowledge are ever changing (blignaut, 2007). it has become necessary to take cognisance of the role played by policy in steering these changes (hyatt, 2011), and one can argue that a critical engagement with policy analysis is needed. in the era of human rights advancement and ethical codes of practice, as upheld by the south african constitution, professionals and service providers who work at various levels of practice are grappling to correctly interpret and apply policy to their work context. thus, there is a need for policy literacy that is “a critical understanding of policy to understand, critique and participate in policy” (lo bianco, 2001: 213). this is particularly important considering that the discourse of rehabilitation is a fluid construct that has been subject to the changing understandings of, and approaches to, disability (mji, chappell, statham, mlenzana, goliath, de wet & rhoda, 2013). dr chioma ohajunwa* centre for rehabilitation studies, department of global health, stellenbosch university, south africa tel: 021 938 9090 chioma@sun.ac.za dr lieketseng ned centre for rehabilitation studies, department of global health, stellenbosch university lieketseng@sun.ac.za ms rosemary luger centre for rehabilitation studies, department of global health, stellenbosch university rluger@sun.ac.za dr martha geiger centre for rehabilitation studies, department of global health, stellenbosch university mgeiger@sun.ac.za *corresponding author doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v37i1.3 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 37(1): 29-42 date published: february 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:chioma@sun.ac.za mailto:lieketseng@sun.ac.za mailto:rluger@sun.ac.za mailto:mgeiger@sun.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.3 http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 30 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) we present our methodology using examples from the field of disability and rehabilitation, as the policy analysis course being described here is positioned within disability and rehabilitation. however, we want to emphasise that the methods and processes described in this paper could be replicated when teaching policy literacy within other courses and disciplines. various authors confirm that disability and rehabilitation practitioners experience challenges at the level of service provision, and these challenges are further compounded by inadequate knowledge and skills to interpret and implement policy in a manner that supports the alignment between policy formation and actual practice (dube 2006; duncan, sherry, watson & booi, 2012). a gap between formation and implementation has become a common attribute of policy formation (muller, 2016). the main reason given for this gap is the lack of trust between policy makers and researchers. researchers reproach policy makers for not ensuring that they create policies informed by research evidence, while policy makers state that the formation of policy cannot depend solely on research evidence (muller, 2016). policy makers maintain that research outcomes should be conveyed in practical, realistic terms that take note of the various interest groups within the context of implementation. therefore, policy outcomes must be interpreted meaningfully to address diverse stakeholders on a practical level. policy literacy is aimed at addressing this gap by increasing the practice of evidence-based implementation. to address these policy implementation challenges, capacity of the relevant implementation structures must be strengthened and this is where policy literacy comes in. there needs to be skills development, informed insights and the will to apply changes to enable implementation (naledi, barron & schneider, 2011). policy literacy is a core contributor to knowledge acquisition and capacity to understand policy content, to interpret it in light of existing factors and to implement policy in a contextually relevant manner (barnes, 2007; duncan et al., 2012; neille & penn, 2015). in essence, policy literacy can serve as a catalyst for the effective alignment of policy with practice as things change when people have the knowledge and skills to help themselves (duncan et al., 2012; howell, 2015; neill & penn, 2015; sherry, 2012; torres-harding, steele, schulz, taha & pico, 2014). there has been a shift in recent times to perceive issues of literacy as being diverse across nationalities and as culturally and contextually located (lo bianco, 2001). there is thus a need to ensure that any policy related literacy is grounded in context. while literacy is increasingly recognised as influenced by human capital thinking, there are also issues of advocacy, resource allocation and protection of marginalised communities that speak to issues of power (lo bianco, 2001). within the ethos of the foucauldian position (with its focus on the relationship between power and knowledge), policy is perceived as power, and literacy as knowledge, with policy seen as discourse constructive and open to interpretation (lo bianco, 2001). language, text and culture of the policy and the context of implementation (lo bianco, 2001; luke, 2003) influence this interpretation process. dockweiler, putney and jordan (2015) discuss the relevance of exploring various methodological approaches in policy analysis that bring to the fore better understandings of the complexities of policy formation, which often include issues of language and power. an example is the use of critical discourse analysis (cda) which is focused on identifying how power is used and abused in societal processes. applying critical discourse analysis to policy analysis for instance, would then reveal complex contextual processes that show the interplay between language and power within policy and engagement of the societal elites within these processes as they influence public discourse through policies (dockweiler, putney & jordan, 2015) and ultimately, impact on end users of 31 ohajunwa, ned, luger & geiger investigating possibilities of predictive mathematical models ... the policy. there is however currently, more need for the use of methodological frameworks for policy analysis, as the policy analysis framework is predominantly guided by theoretical positioning. in alignment with this assertion, we posit that any discussion on policy literacy should include a critical understanding of and exploration into the complexities that inform the awareness, knowledge and application of policies as mentioned above. these complexities are also reflected in the chosen definition in this paper. we define policy as “a broad field of practice that marshals particular kinds of knowledge to bolster executive action” (lo bianco, 2001: 213) and literacy as “critical understanding of the process, history and dilemmas of the overall practice of public policy-making to contribute towards a more reflective and full participation in its processes” (lo bianco 2001: 213). there are texts on basic policy analysis methods in other disciplines. for example, patton, sawicki and clark (2015) describe two main methods of approaching policy analysis within the public policy domain: basic methods (focus on specific, immediate short-term solutions by staff and policy implementers) and researched methods (large scale with a longer time period to produce responses to policy dilemma, often led by the academics). patton et al. (2015) posit that a basic standardised process of policy analysis exists, while stating that an understanding of the micro and macro structures within the context of policy formation and implementation is crucial to the policy practitioner. they however, advocate that these strategies are better learnt and practiced even before one gets involved in policy planning and implementation. while this might be the ideal situation, it is not always the case, which is where our course is uniquely positioned. while we agree that context is crucial and unique, our strategy firstly involves the inculcation of the work environment into learning, especially when working with adult learners. this inclusion of work in learning is a methodological strength within this course. secondly, the course pulls together the two methods in that learners who are policy implementers get to identify shortand long-term solutions to policy dilemmas, within an academic problem solving research process. this is beneficial to the learners as they get to walk the tension-filled space between researcher and implementer. even within a locally developed policy analysis framework in rehabilitation studies, which focused on disability inclusion within health policies (law, 2008), a gap remains in terms of what should be taught, and how the development of policy literacy in disability and rehabilitation studies can be supported (neille & penn, 2015). in this paper, we document the process we followed in teaching policy literacy, considering existing inequalities, in an attempt to align policy and practice. 2. study background, motivation and aims this paper is one of the outcomes of a project that aimed to explore awareness, knowledge and application of key international, national and local policies, frameworks and guidelines of a multi-disciplinary cohort of eleven students in a postgraduate diploma course in disability and rehabilitation studies at the centre for rehabilitation studies at stellenbosch university. a scaffolded teaching and learning approach was applied; consistently allowing for, encouraging and integrating student experiences and current understanding of policy into their learning activities at different levels of complexities according to bloom’s taxonomy (kolomitro & gee, 2015). the students’ awareness, knowledge and application of key international, national and local grassroots disability policies were assessed through an ongoing process 32 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) (this aspect is beyond the scope of this article but discussed in a separate paper titled “tracking the policy literacy journey of students” to be published elsewhere). 3. theoretical framework the social constructivist framework informed the course process. this framework allows for situational context and experiences to inform the construction of knowledge or discourse and impacts on how we understand phenomena (denzin & lincoln, 1998; guba & lincoln, 2005). aligned with this pragmatic approach, we developed class and web-based activities in a format that supported the exploration of different interactions and factors that influenced student awareness, knowledge and application of policy. it also enabled an opportunity for students to relate and co-construct policy literacy from their diverse understandings and worldviews (chilisa, 2012; cresswell, 2013; mertens, holmes & harris, 2009). thus, content and learning activities of the course were structured around three areas: • the student context and experiences; • the policy context at all levels; and • the lecturer’s positioning of the course itself. these areas allowed for a co-construction of knowledge, informed by the contexts and experiences reflectively identified by the students, who performed tasks that systematically challenged the different levels of complexity as given by bloom’s taxonomy (may, 2015). this culminated in an opportunity to apply their learning and competence in a contextualised assignment at the end of the course. the discussion on how the taxonomy influenced the course content and structure follows. 4. ethical considerations this no-risk study was conducted in keeping with research ethics principles grounded in the declaration of helsinki (health professions council of south africa, 2008; horn, 2011; national department of health, 2015). approval was received from the university’s health research ethics committee (hrec ref. n16/02/025). 5. methodology selection criteria required student-participants of the course firstly, to meet the admission criteria of a completed undergraduate degree and secondly, a personally identified need to understand disability and rehabilitation in their specific professional context. the group comprised two students from lesotho, one from zambia, one from zimbabwe and seven students from south africa (one based in the gauteng province and six in the western cape province). of the participants, two were male and nine were female. the group represented diverse professional backgrounds, including one nurse, three psychology/social work/ pastoral counsellors, three occupational therapists, one speech therapist, one biokineticist, one physiotherapist and one theologian/pastor/academic. the students were all working while studying part-time with some working in the private and some in the public sector. furthermore, some were involved in clinical institution-based work in their disciplines while others were working in non-governmental organisations and at community levels of work. the students were also based in different contexts of work: rural, semi-urban and urban environments respectively. the module was piloted with a cohort of 11 students, and all 11 33 ohajunwa, ned, luger & geiger investigating possibilities of predictive mathematical models ... agreed to participate in the study. the students are from diverse professional and contextual backgrounds; including state institutions, the private sector, civil society and the non-profit sector. one of the students was admitted via recognition of prior learning (rpl) while the others all came with undergraduate professional degrees and the required experience of at least three years of work in the field of disability and rehabilitation. all eleven students consented to becoming study participants and provided written consent. a blended learning approach meant that students attended a two-week contact session on campus at the beginning of the one-year course and then participated in six weeks of web-based teaching and learning activities for each of the four modules. these comprised an introduction to disability and rehabilitation; then the policy module, followed by an applied ethics module and finally a module on community integration of persons with disabilities. six weeks of web-based tutorials, readings and participation in discussion tasks on key topics were followed by an exam week comprising a web-based assignment. application of bloom’s taxonomy to course methodology a “block release” method was used within a blended learning approach, meaning that the students first had two days of contact time in the physical classroom while the rest of the module was web-based and completed online over 7 weeks. mindful of the social constructivist framework, the course was aimed at interrogating issues of policy literacy and analysis through graded practical strategies and authentic learning. all three of the web-based discussions and the final assessment aimed to facilitate the students’ learning through self-led meaning making and application of their own experiences and contexts to policy issues. the course was structured in three sections: policy analysis, policy implementation and policy monitoring. each section included a formative online discussion assessment (requiring students to utilise and apply their own experiences and contexts to their learning) and culminated in a final, summative assessment that synthesised their learning in the writing of a policy brief for their specific work context. applying bloom’s taxonomy as a learning framework (figure 1, below), class activities began with the familiar (i.e. basic remembering) progressed to more complex understandings and finally created an opportunity for the application of their knowledge in the creation of a policy brief. 34 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) figure 1 bloom’s revised taxonomy as a learning framework (source: kolomitro & gee, 2015:7) 6. findings regarding process the findings of the study that emanated from the course methodology are discussed below. the process: policy analysis the first activity was the introduction of the course to the students through a reflective process, which was aimed at personalising policy and making the students realise that they are involved in policy one way or another; either as duty bearers or rights holders. students were asked to say the word that comes to mind when they hear “policy”. students responded with words such as: “boring”, “tedious”, “top-down”, “challenging”, “not interested” and “bogus”. lo bianco (2001) also describes this negative view of policy among teachers and researchers in the literacy field, stating that policy has become a symbol for “cut-backs” and an unwelcome intrusion into their professional spaces. this first expression of the students’ reaction to policy gave room for a legitimisation of their emotive responses (as allowed by bloom’s taxonomy) to policies, which is often linked to personal experiences and context. then, in small groups of three, students did a critical reflection (breier, 2001) of their previous experiences of policy and unpacked what their relationship to policy had been like. issues identified by students as influencers of their reaction to policy, were then deconstructed and linked to a brief discussion of discourse theory and the socially constructed nature of meaning. here, students understood that although previous encounters with policy had acted as barriers to policy literacy, they now had an opportunity to change that narrative and apply it differently. context and experience could therefore be applied as a facilitator of policy literacy, rather than the widely held view of being a barrier. this was done by explaining that every policy document carries a discourse 35 ohajunwa, ned, luger & geiger investigating possibilities of predictive mathematical models ... with it, and does not rest in an empty space. every policy document comes from somewhere, right from its statement of purpose to problem identification, which is influenced by philosophy, is often contested and negotiated and aimed at certain outcomes, depending on the type of policy (taylor et al., 1997). the relevance of understanding voice, text, language, and “the who” of policymaking was emphasised, as the understanding of the context of policy formation is important for interpreting and analysing the policy. students identified policies of choice to which they could apply these analysis tools and which were debated by peers, with feedback given. then, for the web-based discussion assignment students were given a contextually relevant local policy document on disability and asked to apply the analysis tools discussed, using their own illustrations (in terms of aims, discourse, dominant/silenced voices, intended audience, text and sub-text, language used, context of formation and possible negotiations made) of that policy. students were also required to respond to their peers’ contributions. the process: policy implementation from these discussions on personal experience and their link to discourse that influences policy, we entered into the space of implementation. here students again brought in the personal and socio-cultural context, discussing how these affect their implementation of policy/ies as duty bearers. this was linked to personal history, knowledge discourses, lack of adequate resources, attitudinal challenges and existing power dynamics, which often influence how policy is interpreted. it highlighted how policies often do not take the context of implementation into account, including the important role of culture. students were asked to identify policies from their home countries or work contexts and discuss how they would effectively implement these policies, taking note of the challenges identified. again, students worked on this and gave feedback to each other, identifying key challenges and/or enablers within these contexts of implementation that were similar to, or different from, each other. the outcome of the discussion was to identify and consider different stakeholders involved and their particular roles within the process, with the students also identifying their own roles within the process. moreover, they needed to understand the diversity of spaces for policy implementation and that an analysis of the context of implementation is important. students were then asked to identify policies that did not work out well in their workplace and discuss possible factors that might not have been taken into consideration during planning. the need for a constant negotiation of the processes and context when implementing policy, looking at what works and what does not work, was highlighted. for this web-based discussion contribution, students were asked to select relevant articles from the united nations convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (uncrpd) (un, 2006) related to their work or research interest and discuss how they could best implement these policy instruments within their work context, school or community. first, they were requested to present an introduction of their context, followed by a discussion of the chosen uncrpd article and how they would implement it. they needed to show how they had taken note of the imbalances existing within their context, power dynamics, prevalent socio-political and cultural discourses and especially the use of an intersectional perspective to ensure inclusion of persons with disabilities throughout the process. the process: policy monitoring the first section on policy analysis thus touched on personal experiences and its influence on policy processes, for policy makers, implementers and end users, while the second section extended the personal to the immediate context of the individual and the dynamics 36 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) of implementation. this last section links to a wider discourse and community of practice and was intended to highlight the relevance of monitoring policies for effective implementation; showing how monitoring is more effective when it is carried out as a collaborative process, with stakeholders for instance. here the experience of policy implementation is engaged with retrospectively to list what could have been put in place to make implementation more effective and what can be identified as parameters for a successful implementation. students then went through an activity with a policy of their choice trying to identify and select factors that indicate successful implementation and factors that show unsuccessful implementation. these factors were then compared to the intended outcomes of the policy document, highlighting the gaps. students went through a didactic session on how to write a policy brief after which they identified one issue related to disability on which they could practice writing a policy brief. for the third web-based discussion, students were asked to select one of three sets of country reports and corresponding shadow reports from three countries to the united nations. they read and identified the similarities and differences between the government and shadow reports, highlighting dominant discourses and voice, language, text and various compromises expressed within the policies. the outcomes of the analysis were then compared to their own contexts of policy implementation, considering and coming up with a plan of contextually relevant ways to monitor policy implementation across communities of practice. from these discussions, the final assignment on writing a policy brief emanated. students were required to identify an issue related to their work or research interest from all previous discussions related to a particular target group within the disability sector. they wrote a policy brief on the identified issue, referring to relevant discussions and academic literature sources and showed careful consideration of involvement of persons with disabilities and respect for cultural sensitivity and diversity relevant to the context of policy implementation/practice. 7. linking process to learning theory although the first two sections of the course were mainly drawing from, and had activities that primarily worked through the first four levels of the taxonomy, some learning and application of skills touched on all levels to varying degrees. first, through reflections, students remembered their previous experiences of policy and this elicited statements about what policy meant to them. they described their emotive responses to policy that we noted as one barrier to policy literacy. next, within this same activity, they were asked to sit in small groups and discuss why they see policy this way. this gave them an opportunity to begin to compare narratives, discuss and give examples of events that informed their dislike of and a propensity towards a lack of engagement with policy. students for example, discussed the issue of written (government/ institutional policies) versus unwritten policies, for example; rules that guide the home and they were asked to think of what influenced some of rules they have at home. through analysis of what informed these policies at home, they learnt about philosophies underpinning policy and applied their learning to work policies that was the focus of the second aspect of the course. the second section of the course again supported the students to reinforce their learning from the first section. then they applied this learning by investigating, separating and distinguishing factors that influence policy implementation, illustrating with their own narratives as they participated in the small group discussions and again comparing each other’s knowledges that they then presented to the plenary. one-on-one and small group discussions were constantly used through the course. thinking of the politics of implementation called 37 ohajunwa, ned, luger & geiger investigating possibilities of predictive mathematical models ... for the use of the students’ judgement; for instance, when implementing a policy within a traditional african community, they had to apply judgement by adhering to the cultural norms of the community and first get the buy in of the gatekeepers. so at this stage, an evaluation of their practices and strategies when implementing policy was already happening. the final section of the course again reinforced previous learning and skills, but now focused more on what can be done to improve practice. in evaluating the process and coming up with a plan, they began to utilise their creativity, operating at the highest level of bloom’s taxonomy. this creative space culminated in a final assessment that required the students to produce or construct something from their learning; that is, a policy brief. as part of gaining feedback on the course delivery methodology and class discussion, a questionnaire was sent via email to the 11 students after completion of the course; four students responded. some written feedback from the students at the end of the course on how this methodology reshaped their thinking about policy is presented below: policy was very foreign to me – something that was imposed on me, rather than something that i had a role in shaping. it felt as if i had to (sometimes blindly) implement or follow policy, rather than policy being a tool i could use to advocate alongside my patients. it was eye opening to learn how much is encompassed in policy – policies affect so many areas of the lives of the individuals i work with, and also affect the way in which i can deliver my services (student 2). the response above demonstrates a shift from seeing policy as something foreign to reconsidering policy as embedded in and shaping everyday work practices. other students shared similar shifts in mind-set towards policy below: yes, the more i learnt about policies, the more i realised how important it is to have policies in place for every aspect of life, but even more where working with human beings is concerned (student 9). my contributions are much more informed than they were before i enrolled for the policy module. it has allowed me to bring about positive change wherever i am called in to undertake a certain task. i am much more aware that policy is impacted by issues around duty bearers and rights holders and that it needs various support structures and development of contextually relevant strategies for it to work well (student 10). some students equally experienced a mind shift in their personal approach to policy engagement as they expressed below when asked how they perceive policies after the course yes! before i enrolled i had very little interest in policies, as the lack of understanding both the jargon and the process of developing and/or changing policies left me feeling completely removed from it (student 7). …now i am motivated to lay my hands on any policy that i come across because i am now appreciating better what a policy should look like; types, process etc. i am now familiar with different policies on disability and rehabilitation (national and international) and ways in which they can be constructively appraised (student 10). 38 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) 8. implications for teaching policy literacy policies are always changing and being updated. as hess-april (2013) puts it, the weakness in awareness and knowledge of, and engagement with, policy as well as translation of policy to practice can possibly be attributed to the lack of policy literacy within undergraduate curricula. as discussed above, one of the greatest challenges to the successful implementation is the gap between policy formation and context of implementation between researchers and policy makers (muller, 2016). the strategies (reflection, peer engagements and authentic learning) used within this course afforded students an empowering engagement with policy whereby they bring together policy and practice at theoretical and reflexive levels. the presentation of contextualised learning in teaching policy literacy, as structured in this course, facilitates a balance between reflexivity with policy theory thus allowing for comprehensive engagement with policy processes. within rehabilitation, sharing this expertise with persons with disabilities and community members in their countries so that together, they can advocate for effective policy implementation (hess-april, 2013) is key. furthermore, policy literacy within disability and rehabilitation for instance, should not merely be a case of orientating students to policies relevant to disability and rehabilitation, but calls for addressing policy processes in terms of interpretation of policy and factors that influence analysis, implementation and monitoring (hess-april, 2013). consequently, contextualising policy enabled critical reflexivity and an interaction between conceptualisation and actual practice. reflection as applied within this course, is a critical underpinning component of growth and learning (schön, 1991), a doable strategy for teaching policy literacy when it focuses on the individual level and the broader social contexts including issues of power, language, text, structures and systems in the critical engagements with policy. this is what students were given an opportunity to engage with, in the process of understanding and analysing policies taking cognisance of their varied contexts where such policies are implemented. taking cognisance of the relationship between the policy context and student’s context of implementation emerges as a critical component that influences policy literacy and supports authentic learning (rule, 2006). authentic learning posits that learning should reflect real life activities in meaningful ways that centre the student within the process. again, using examples from the course methodology, learning activities were set to include the workplace experiences, the personal/emotive experiences and these were structured into an academic problem framework (rule, 2006; walton & rusznyak, 2016.) at various levels of complexities as informed by bloom’s taxonomy. engaging students in a discussion of the different levels of complexities that emanate from the interaction of varied physical, environmental, socio-political and cultural contexts that influence policy formation and the duty bearers is vital. these discussions, as highlighted above, create a cohesive approach that grounded policy within students’ experiences, so policy seems “less formidable”, making it more accessible and realistic to the students’ practice. situated learning, collaborative problem solving and goal-based scenarios (rule, 2006) were the three main methods used for formative assessments and feedback, but there are many more methods that could be used to achieve this outcome and enhance policy literacy. the emotive responses to the question of how students perceive policy were important to the process of contextualising learning. hajer (2003) and hendriks (2005) affirm that most people absolve themselves from participating in politics, even when it comes to actively 39 ohajunwa, ned, luger & geiger investigating possibilities of predictive mathematical models ... seeking political representations or engaging with policy documents. this may be because people do not traditionally link the idea of policy formation to politics, and policy making itself is often presumed to take place within certain boundaries and stable predictable contexts, with the assumption that people prefer to live their individualistic lifestyles and not be bothered with any form of politicking. this is because policy discourse is not just about a guiding document, but is emotional and political, carries with it a certain ideology and identity that often touches on what people are attached to or care about, or people’s sense of self. when this happens, people suddenly experience a policy awakening (hajer, 2003). in acknowledging and grounding the emotional attachment to policy formation and implementation, the learning becomes personal as students engage from a new perspective. the role of a student’s emotional context and the manner in which they interact with learning processes should be emphasised as these emotions act as indicators of the student’s positionality in terms of their learning, rather than the focus being mainly on putting forward facts and information to inform cognition. a person’s emotive state affects learning (challco, andrade, borges, bittencourt & isotani, 2016; craig, graesser, sullins & gholson, 2004; kort, reilly & picard, 2001). this is particularly true in terms of the history of south africa when related to policy formation and analysis. discussions in this area elicited certain emotional reactions and responses that revealed a personal aspect to the engagement with policy for the students, which could form a barrier to authentic learning if ignored. this particular point above proved very helpful during formative assessments. the feedback could be given in a way that acknowledged the student’s emotional responses, while encouraging a knowledge construction and locating of self within these policy processes. situating learning to inform policy literacy also meant that students worked through frustrations and confusion as they performed class activities, confronting contradictions and affirmations from their classmates in the form of feedback and discussions as they began to co-construct knowledge on policy (craig et al., 2004). although the teacher gives feedback, he or she is more of a facilitator of this process, ensuring a space for and taking note of the interaction of emotions and class activities to facilitate meaningful learning for the student (faria, almieda, martins, gonçalves, martins & branco, 2016). hence, an intersection of the personal or emotive with the cognitive created a more meaningful learning experience that contributed to authentic learning. an example of this meaningful experience of learning is reflected in the fact that one of the students, after completing the module, submitted her final assessment (the policy brief) to inform a current, ongoing community project in mental health. she not only had a cognitive interest in this area, but also an emotional commitment. this combined approach created motivation to see through and commit to concretising this assessment as part of lifelong learning beyond the academic space. 9. conclusion teaching and learning to build policy literacy is often perceived by students to be onerous, as students and professionals’ experiences of policy implementation are often very different from the expectations that inform the policy. one reason for this is that policies are formed in spaces removed from the realities of implementation and the inequalities that inform these contexts. the findings of this teaching innovation indicate that facilitating learning that builds policy literacy must include a contextualisation of learning so that the policy context itself and the students’ personal, social, political and cultural experiences are constructed within an academic framework that 40 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) supports authentic learning. the teacher becomes a facilitator of this process, allowing students to journey 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ashgate publishing limited. sherry, k. 2012. policy literacy among service staff: ppp&p findings. seminar presented in the course ahs 4053s, in the school of health and rehabilitation sciences, university of cape town, 20 april 2012. taylor, s., rizvi, f., lingard, b. & henry, m. 1997. educational policy and the politics of change. new york/london: routledge. torres-harding, s.r., steele, c., schulz, e., taha, f. & pico, c. 2014. student perceptions of social justice and social justice activities. education, citizenship and social justice, 9(1), 55–66. https://doi.org/10.1177/1746197914520655 walton, e. & rusznyak, l. 2016. approaches to assessing preservice teachers’ learning in authentic and rigorous ways: the case of an inclusive education module. perspectives in education, 34(1), 84–101. https://doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.7 yin, r.k. 2013. case study research: design and methods. thousand oaks: sage publications. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315664736 https://doi.org/10.1177/1746197914520655 https://doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v34i1.7 _goback 94 inter-rater agreement in assigning cognitive demand to life sciences examination questions abstract taxonomies of cognitive demand are frequently used to ensure that assessment tasks include questions ranging from low to high cognitive demand. this paper investigates inter-rater agreement among four evaluators on the cognitive demand of the south african national senior certificate life sciences examinations after training, practice and revision. the taxonomy used was based on the cognitive dimension of the revised bloom’s taxonomy, with analysis, evaluation and synthesis combined into one category. descriptors from the revised bloom’s taxonomy were slightly modified to suit life sciences. inter-rater agreement was poor to fair, but pairwise percent agreement did not reach acceptable levels. evaluators found it difficult to assign cognitive demand to examination items, and constantly referred to the descriptors. we question the usefulness of a taxonomy of cognitive demand when individuals differ in their interpretations of the levels of cognitive demand. the results indicate that standards of life sciences examination papers cannot reliably be assessed by evaluating cognitive demand using bloom’s taxonomy. keywords: assessment; cognitive demand; inter-rater agreement; bloom’s taxonomy; reliability 1. introduction exit-level examinations are a form of summative assessment, the results of which serve several different purposes in an education system. • selection of students for further study or the world of work (broadfoot, 2007). • monitoring what learning has been achieved (burke, 2010; harlen, 2012; newton, 2007; taras, 2005) and whether the goals or outcomes stated in a curriculum have been achieved. the monitoring purpose enables authorities to ensure accountability of schools and the educational system (atkin & black, 2003; kellaghan & greaney, 2004). it also promotes equality of provision of educational opportunities across the schooling system (dbe, 2015: 13). • examinations enable comparability of educational standards across different syllabuses, between years, dr edith r. dempster school of education, university of kwazulu-natal, pietermaritzburg, dempstere@ ukzn.ac.za dr nicola f. kirby school of education, university of kwazulu-natal, pietermaritzburg doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v36i1.7 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2018 36(1): 94-110 © uv/ufs mailto:dempstere@ukzn.ac.za mailto:dempstere@ukzn.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.7 95 dempster & kirby inter-rater agreement in assigning cognitive demand to life sciences ... between subjects and between countries (baird et al., 2000; cresswell, 2000; kellaghan & greaney, 2004). early studies comparing school-leaving qualifications were generally qualitative, providing a subjective evaluation of the whole qualification (eckstein & noah, 1989; kellaghan & greaney, 2004). their reliability is therefore questionable. efforts to improve the reliability of crossnational studies are illustrated by a major study comparing the curriculum and assessment at exit level of four subjects in 16 countries (ofqual, 2012). expert judgement was used to evaluate the demand of comparable qualifications. as explained by pollitt et al. (2007: 168), there is no statistical indicator of demands, and no prospect of our developing objective scales for assessing them. instead, we rely on the judgement of experienced professionals. the south african national senior certificate (nsc) has three important functions. it has a strong selection function as it determines access to different post-school qualifications or employment based on the results achieved. it also has a monitoring function and, thirdly, has a comparability function as educational standards can be compared before and after curriculum revision or benchmarked against similar qualifications in other countries. post-apartheid south africa has seen several curriculum revisions, accompanied by public accusations of lowering of standards (see, for example, pauw et al., 2012; joseph, 2016). in 2016, the marks of 28 of the 58 nsc subjects written were adjusted upwards and 4 subjects’ marks were adjusted downwards during the standardization process that follows the marking of examinations (davis, 2017). standardization is carried out by a committee appointed by south africa’s quality assurance body, umalusi council for quality assurance in general and further education and training. it is intended to limit large fluctuations in results for each subject from year to year. in an open letter to the ceo of umalusi, opposition parliamentarian davis (2017) accused umalusi of making upward adjustments without evidence that examination papers in 28 subjects were more difficult, by which he meant more cognitively demanding, than in previous years. davis recommended that standardization should begin by examining the cognitive demand of examination papers before students’ mark distributions were interrogated. davis’ (2017) recommendation is premised on the reliability of evaluations of cognitive demand by external raters. this paper addresses the reliability of such evaluations of cognitive demand. umalusi has investigated the standards of examination papers before and after a curriculum revision in 2008 (bolton, 2009a), and benchmarked the south african nsc against international qualifications such as the cambridge a levels and the international baccalaureate (grussendorff et al., 2010). author (2011) describes an effort to compare the nsc examinations in biology with equivalent examinations of ghana, kenya and zambia. between 2008 and 2015, umalusi conducted annual external evaluations of the standards of nsc examination papers in the subjects with the highest enrolment in south africa, including life sciences. these evaluations included analysis of the cognitive demand of the examination papers. such evaluation reports contribute to standardization decisions that follow each year’s examinations. umalusi’s benchmarking and examination evaluation exercises have been rigorous, quantitative and systematic (see, for example, bolton, 2009a; grussendorff et al., 2010). teams of three to four analysts drawn from different sectors of the education system have 96 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) conducted the evaluations. examination questions have been analysed individually for cognitive demand. nevertheless, even though team members were retained for successive studies, it was noticed that inter-rater agreement was frequently poor (bolton, 2009b). the present study was conducted after a curriculum change in 2014. the process provided an opportunity to formally evaluate inter-rater agreement on assignment of examination questions to categories of cognitive demand in nsc life sciences examinations. the research question addressed the extent to which team members agreed on the application of a taxonomy of cognitive demand after intensive practice and revision. the findings have implications for the reliability and credibility of decisions based on expert evaluation of the cognitive demand of examinations. 1.1 cognitive demand in examination papers most examining bodies provide a weighting of the categories of cognitive demand to be expected in their examination papers. the most recent south african life sciences curriculum specifies that: 40% of the marks should assess knowledge; 25% understanding, 20% applying knowledge and 15% analysing, evaluating and synthesizing knowledge (dbe, 2011: 67). the curriculum does not provide explicit criteria for each category of cognitive demand although it does provide a list of helpful verbs for each category. pollitt et al. (2007: 169) define cognitive demand of an assessment item as the cognitive mental processes that a typical student is assumed to have to carry out in order to complete the task set by the questions. elliot (2011: 11) defines cognitive demand more broadly as the level of knowledge, skills and competence required by typical learners. cognitive demand requires that examiners and evaluators of the examination questions predict what thinking processes a student will use to make sense of a question and construct a response to it. a considerable number of frameworks, taxonomies and models relating to cognitive processes involved in the activities of thinking and learning exist (moseley et al., 2005). the most popular taxonomy of cognitive demand for over 60 years has been that of bloom et al. (1956). bloom’s taxonomy has been criticised by some assessment specialists. forty years ago, wood (1977: 204) described the problem with bloom’s taxonomy as being that too many people have accepted the taxonomy uncritically. knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, evaluation and synthesis are still bandied about as if they were eternal verities instead of being hypothetical constructs constantly in need of verification. wood (1977) stated that assigning weightings of cognitive demand to formal assessment tasks is not justified because it implies a precision that does not exist. he described the organisation of bloom’s taxonomy as remarkably ad hoc and not grounded in any psychological principles other than that knowledge is straightforward and anything involving mental operations is more difficult (1977: 205). twenty-five years later sugrue (2002) reiterated wood’s criticisms of bloom’s taxonomy because it was developed before cognitive science had progressed. a revised bloom’s taxonomy was produced after many years of discussion (anderson et al., 2001). the revised bloom’s taxonomy changed the noun forms of cognitive processes to verbs, and reversed the order of the last two levels of cognitive demand. it introduced a second dimension to accommodate different types of knowledge on which the cognitive operations were performed. the cognitive dimension is remember, understand, apply, analyze, evaluate and create. the knowledge dimension is factual, conceptual, 97 dempster & kirby inter-rater agreement in assigning cognitive demand to life sciences ... procedural and metacognitive. combining the two dimensions allows for 24 possible combinations of cognitive process with type of knowledge. bloom’s taxonomy is assumed hierarchical, with knowledge being the least demanding and evaluation the most cognitively demanding. the revised bloom’s taxonomy has create as the most cognitively demanding cognitive skill. thus, examination questions assigned to higher order cognitive skills are assumed more demanding than questions assigned to lower order cognitive skills (wood, 1977). however, reasoning may be easier than remembering for a large proportion of the student population. the following essay question in an ieb examination provides an example of a higher order question of low difficulty. it is an argumentative essay on a socio-scientific issue. do you think the south african natural environment will survive the human population increase in this country? read the source material carefully and present a debated argument to illustrate your point of view. to answer this question, you are expected to: • select relevant information from sources a to g below. do not attempt to use all the detail provided. • integrate your own biological knowledge. however, do not write an essay based solely on your own knowledge. • take a definite stand on the question and arrange the information to best develop your argument. • write in a way that is scientifically appropriate and communicates your point of view clearly. write an essay of not more than 1 to 2 pages to answer the question. (ieb paper 2, 2014) several short pieces of source material are provided, presenting different sides to the argument. the task requires students to decide on a standpoint, analyse the source material, evaluate which sources support the argument, and synthesize a coherent argument. it therefore incorporates three higher order cognitive skills as described in the original bloom’s taxonomy and the revised bloom’s taxonomy. in practice, most students perform well on this type of question, because its structure is familiar to them. they experience this high order task as easy. the revised bloom’s taxonomy has refined bloom’s types of cognitive demand by providing fairly detailed descriptors of each cognitive skill and knowledge type (anderson et al., 2001). moseley et al. (2005) advocated the revised bloom’s taxonomy for helping teachers to align learning objectives, instruction and assessment. pollitt et al. (2007) cited the revised bloom’s taxonomy as a possible instrument for analysing the cognitive demand of examination papers, but were concerned that its main purpose was to evaluate the cognitive demand of educational objectives. a comprehensive ofqual (2014) study comparing senior secondary assessment in high-achieving countries used an analytical scale of cognitive demand based on the work of 98 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) edwards & dall’alba (1981). pollitt et al. (2007) describe how they modified the edwards and dall’alba analytical scale, trialled the new scale and further modified it based on the comments of analysts. the final instrument is known by the acronym cras, representing complexity, resources, abstractness and strategy (crisp & novakovic, 2009). each assessment task is assigned a rating of 1 – 4 on each criterion, with 1 being lowest demand and 4 being highest demand. it is possible, although not advisable, to calculate a single index of demand for an examination paper (pollitt et al., 2007). dempster (2012) compared the 2008 cambridge a-level, the 2006 international baccalaureate organisation higher level (ibo hl) and the 2008 south african national senior certificate final examinations using a three-level bloomian-type taxonomy, comprising remember, understand and apply, and reason and synthesize. the results showed that the a-level had the highest proportion of marks allocated to understand/apply, and the lowest proportion of marks allocated to remember of the three examinations. the ibo hl had a high proportion of marks allocated to remember, similar to the examinations of the nsc. the results were counter-intuitive, because the content of the ibo hl curriculum was judged to have the greatest depth of the three curricula. dempster (2012) re-evaluated the examination papers using cras. the ibo hl emerged as having the highest cras score on each of the four parameters, followed by the cambridge a-level, and then the nsc. cras has the advantage of taking into account the complexity, abstractness and technical nature of the subject matter, which is absent in bloomian taxonomies. the essay question cited earlier would have received a low cras score, because the subject matter lacks complexity and abstractness, most of the resources are provided, and students are coached in the strategy for writing an argumentative essay. 1.2 inter-rater reliability in using a taxonomy of cognitive demand crowe et al. (2008) developed the blooming biology tool (bbt), based on the original bloom’s taxonomy, specifically to assign a level of cognitive demand to questions on biology-related topics. three lecturers teaching different biological subjects developed the bbt (crowe et al., 2008). after intensive practice, the three lecturers achieved agreement of at least two out of three evaluators in over 90% of the 500 questions analysed independently. a sample of 36 students, trained to use the bbt and assign a bloomian ranking to each question in their assessments achieved inter-rater reliability >80% for 31 of 51 test questions. high inter-rater reliability was claimed for a bloomian analysis of five biology-related examinations, which had been criticised for over-emphasizing recall of facts (zheng et al., 2008). interestingly, crowe, wenderoth and dirks conducted the bloomian ratings of the examination items (zheng et al., 2008). the blooming biology tool needs to demonstrate that its reliability extends beyond its originators. näsström and henriksson (2008) compared the revised bloom’s taxonomy and porter’s taxonomy as applied to standards and assessment in a chemistry course. inter-rater reliability for classification of standards was significantly better for the revised bloom’s taxonomy than porter’s taxonomy. their study was limited to two evaluators, both teaching on the same course. bloom et al. (1956) claimed to have achieved a high level of agreement when classifying thinking and learning outcomes through discussion, but wood (1977) reported that teachers using bloom’s taxonomy to classify examination questions found it difficult to reach agreement 99 dempster & kirby inter-rater agreement in assigning cognitive demand to life sciences ... on higher-order categories. sugrue (2002) also stated that bloom’s taxonomy is unreliable, to the extent of it being impossible to achieve consistent application by different people. however, she does not provide evidence for her claims in her short paper. pollitt et al. (2007: 189) cite many studies (e.g. greatorex et al., 2002; fearnley, 1999; griffiths & mclone, 1979), which report that evaluators had difficulty interpreting the statement classifiers with regard to scales of cognitive demand, and differed in their assignment of scale values. they concluded that judgement is inherently comparative and only approximately quantitative, due to the problem of trying to pin down relative meanings of words. 1.3 the present study south african nsc examinations are set by several examiners, moderated by internal and external moderators and finally evaluated by a team of experts. the expert evaluator team appointed by umalusi conducts a post-examination analysis of the papers before they have been marked. their task is to ensure compliance with the prescribed weighting of categories of cognitive demand, and to express an evidence-based judgement of the overall standard of the examination papers (umalusi, 2014a). examiners, moderators and evaluators follow the taxonomy of cognitive demand specified in the south african life sciences curriculum (dbe, 2011: 67). agreement among examiners, moderators and evaluators on the meaning of each category of cognitive demand is a pre-requisite for valid judgements. the present study was a by-product of a commissioned comparison of the cognitive demand of nsc life sciences examination papers before and after the implementation of a revised curriculum in 2014. the four-member evaluation team used the revised bloom’s taxonomy to write descriptors for each of the four prescribed categories of cognitive demand. the structure of the evaluation project provided an opportunity to assess inter-rater agreement in the interpretation of the taxonomy of cognitive demand. the results have implications for the validity of assigning weightings of cognitive demand in examinations, and the reliability of examiners’, moderators’ and evaluators’ assignment of assessment items to levels of cognitive demand. 2. method all public schools write the national senior certificate set, marked and controlled by the department of basic education (dbe). some independent schools write exit-level examinations set, marked and controlled by the independent examinations board (ieb). both examining bodies follow very similar curricula, and umalusi assures their quality. candidates from both examining bodies write two life sciences examination papers in an examination session. each examination paper contains questions requiring short answers (such as multiple choice, matching columns, giving definitions for terms, and supplying missing words in a short text) worth 50 marks, questions requiring longer answers of one or two sentences and interpretation of data (80 marks), and an essay question worth 20 marks. candidates are required to answer all questions. the ieb examinations include a separate practical examination, worth 50 marks. after examinations have been marked, umalusi standardizes the results to ensure that the frequency distribution of marks remains within the range of the previous three years’ mark distribution. decisions about mark adjustments are informed by reports from moderators and 100 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) a team of expert evaluators, as well as the distribution of marks for the current year. the expert evaluators are tasked, amongst other things, with evaluating the cognitive demand of each examination paper. the expert evaluation team in 2014 consisted of: • a university academic experienced in life sciences teacher education and evaluation of examination papers (e the team leader); • a subject advisor in life sciences (j); • an experienced life sciences teacher from a public school (l); • an experienced life sciences teacher from an independent school (r). table 1: taxonomy of cognitive demand used for expert evaluation of life sciences examinations (adapted from anderson et al., 2001). type of cognitive demand descriptor recognise or recall information (k = knowing science) recall from memory or recognize from material provided explicit information, details, facts, formulae, terms, definitions, procedures, representations. demonstrate understanding (u = understanding science) communicate understanding of a life sciences concept, idea, explanation, model or theory, for example to: • interpret: change from one form of representation to another (e.g. pictures to words; words to pictures; numbers to words; words to numbers; pictures to numbers). • exemplify: find a specific example or illustration of a concept or principle. • classify: determine that something belongs to a category. • summarize: abstract a general theme or major points. • infer: draw a logical conclusion from presented information. • compare: detect similarities and differences between two objects or concepts. • explain why: create a cause-and-effect model of a system or concept. apply procedures, facts and concepts (a = applying scientific knowledge) • use, perform or follow a basic/standard/routine procedure/ rule/method/operation. • use/apply understanding of biology facts, concepts or details from a known context to an unfamiliar context. 101 dempster & kirby inter-rater agreement in assigning cognitive demand to life sciences ... type of cognitive demand descriptor analyse, evaluate, create (aec = evaluating, analysing or synthesizing scientific knowledge) • analyse complex information adopting a variety of appropriate strategies to solve novel/ non-routine/complex/ open-ended problems. • apply multi-step procedures. • evaluate or make critical judgements (e.g., on qualities of accuracy, consistency, acceptability, desirability, worth or probability) using background knowledge of biology. • create a new product by integrating biological concepts, principles, ideas and information; make connections and relate parts of material, ideas, information or operations to one another and to an overall structure or purpose. the taxonomy of cognitive demand used by the evaluation team, with descriptors, is shown in table 1. the evaluation team held a training session in october 2014 with intensive discussion of the taxonomy shown in table 1. the team worked through three examination papers from previous years together, discussing each individual question and sub-question until consensus was reached on the category of cognitive demand. the team then separated and independently analysed a further nine papers from 2012, 2013 and exemplar papers for 2014. the team leader collated results, and questions identified where inter-rater agreement was low. a second meeting was held early in november 2014 to re-visit the instrument and revise analyses until greater consensus was reached. this was the practice phase of the research project. the final set of examination papers for 2014 was analysed by evaluators working independently. two examination papers from each of the examining bodies were analysed, giving a total of four examination papers and 244 individual items. each examination question was entered on a spreadsheet, and the team leader recorded the ratings of demand from the four evaluators. table 2 is an extract from the spreadsheet to illustrate how the team leader recorded the ratings. we omitted the ieb practical paper because it was not comparable with the dbe examinations. the independent analysis of the final 2014 examination papers provided an opportunity to evaluate inter-rater agreement on assigning questions to categories of cognitive demand after intensive training and practice. table 2: sample of spreadsheet showing collated results for cognitive demand. item marks cognitive demand by evaluator e l j r 2.2.1 1 u a k k 2.2.2 2 u u u u 2.2.3 3 u aec u u 102 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) each team member also completed a questionnaire asking them how confident they felt about their ratings, and to what extent they referred to the criteria for assigning cognitive demand. 2.1 statistical analysis of inter-rater agreement inter-rater agreement is used extensively in tests of agreement in medical diagnoses and psychological assessment (altman, 1991). gwet’s ac1 (gwet, 2011) was chosen as the most suitable coefficient of agreement for this study, because it can be applied to more than two raters, and is unaffected by ratings that are skewed towards the marginal, e.g., rating most questions as knowledge. ratings that are skewed towards the marginal interfere with the correction for chance agreement. interpretation of coefficients of agreement followed the recommendations of fleiss et al. (2003), who suggested that coefficients >0,75 represent excellent agreement beyond chance, 0,4 to 0,75 represent fair to good agreement, and <0,4 poor agreement beyond chance. per cent agreement is the average pairwise per cent agreement for each item. the agreements among all possible pairs are calculated and averaged for each item. for example, item 2.2.3 in table 2 resulted in three evaluators agreeing (e. j and r) and one evaluator (l) disagreeing. the pairwise percentage agreement is calculated for all possible pairs (e and l, e and j, e and r, l and j, l and r, j and r). e l j l 0 j 100 0 r 100 0 100 the average pairwise percentage agreement is ((100 x 3) + (0 x 3))/6 = 50%. the percentage agreement is then averaged for all the items on an examination paper. percentage agreements of 90% or greater are nearly always acceptable; 80% is acceptable in most situations, and 70% may be appropriate in some exploratory studies (neuendorf, 2002). percent agreement needs to be included in evaluation of inter-rater reliability, because it either supports or refutes the agreement coefficient. 3. findings 3.1 inter-rater agreement inter-rater agreement within the evaluation team for the 2014 final papers is presented in table 4 and figure 1. table 4 shows, for example, that there were 59 individual items in the ieb paper 1 examination. all four raters agreed on the cognitive demand of 18,6% of the items, while three agreed on 42,4% of the items. two raters agreed and two differed in 20,3% of the items, while two agreed on one rating, and another two agreed on a different rating in a further 17% of the items. no raters agreed on 1,7% of the items. this explanation applies to all the papers analysed. 103 dempster & kirby inter-rater agreement in assigning cognitive demand to life sciences ... table 4: percentage of items at each level of agreement, and statistical test results for cognitive demand in four life sciences examination papers (n=4 evaluators) 4 agree 3 agree 2 agree + (2 sets 2) none agree gwet’s ac1 pairwise percent agreement ieb paper 1 (59 items) % agreement 18,6 42,4 20,3 + (17,0) 1,7 0,33 poor 49 ieb paper 2 (52 items) % agreement 42,3 38,5 11,5 + (7,7) 0 0,56 fair 66 dbe paper 1 (68 items) % agreement 35,3 39,7 25,0 + (5,9) 0 0,53 fair 63 dbe paper 2 (65 items) % agreement 33,8 29,2 16,9 + (20,0) 0 0,46 fair 58   0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 ieb p1 ieb p2 dbe p1 dbe p2 %  o f i te m s 4 agree 3 agree 2 agree 0 agree figure 1: percentage agreement among four evaluators on the cognitive demand of four examination papers. the percentage of items on each paper on which three or four evaluators agreed was 61% for ieb p1, 63% for dbe p2, 75% for dbe p1 and 81% for ieb p2 (figure 1). this is considerably lower than 91% achieved by at least two of three raters rating questions using the blooming biology tool (crowe et al., 2008). gwet’s ac1 showed that ieb p2, dbe p1 and dbe p2 achieved “fair agreement”, and ieb p1 achieved “poor agreement” among evaluators, based on the categories of agreement provided by fleiss et al. (2003). none of the analyses approached 0,75 (excellent agreement). 104 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) average pairwise percentage agreement was lowest for ieb p1, but all pairwise agreements were unacceptable according to neuendorf (2002). percentage agreement was congruent with coefficients of agreement. in the questionnaires, all evaluators indicated that they were not particularly confident about their analyses of cognitive demand, and that they referred to the criteria listed in table 1 all or most of the time. 3.2 identifying outliers given the diverse professional experiences of the evaluation team, an analysis was conducted to determine whether any one team member could be identified as consistently different from the others. the mean number of items assigned to each level of demand was calculated for the four examination papers analysed. results are shown in figure 2.   0 10 20 30 40 e l j r m ea n  nu m be r o f i te m s rater know und app aec figure 2: mean number of items assigned to each cognitive category by four evaluators (n = 4 examination papers comprising 244 items) (know = know; und = understand; app = apply; aec = analyse, evaluate, create) figure 2 shows variation among the evaluators in the mean number of items assigned to each category of cognitive demand for the four examination papers. evaluator r stands out because she assigned more items to the cognitive category know and fewer items to understand and aec than the other three evaluators. however, the pearson chi-square statistic was not large enough to be statistically significant (p= 0,33). cramer’s v (0,12) indicates a small effect size of evaluator on the overall variance. in order to explore the effect of individual raters further, variation was analysed for each examination paper separately. results are shown in table 6. according to the pearson chisquare statistic, evaluators’ results for ieb p1 and p2 were not sufficiently different to be statistically significant. 105 dempster & kirby inter-rater agreement in assigning cognitive demand to life sciences ... table 6: number of items assigned to each category of cognitive demand by examination paper and evaluator. ieb p1 (59 items) evaluator cognitive category statistical test results know understand apply aec c2 (9) =15,9; p =0,07; cramer’s v=0,15 e 17 22 12 8 l 26 17 5 11 j 11 28 9 11 r 24 20 10 5 mean±sd 19,5±6,9 21,8±4,7 9,0±2,9 8,8±3,5 ieb p2 (52 items) e 20 11 15 6 c2 (9) =12,2; p =0,21; cramer’s v=0,14 l 22 12 7 11 j 22 16 9 5 r 29 12 7 4 mean±sd 23,3±4,0 12,8±2,2 9,5±3,8 6,5±3,1 dbe p1 (68 items) e 36 17 11 4 c2 (9) =18,6; p <0,05; cramer’s v=0,15 l 32 24 2 10 j 35 20 7 6 r 42 10 9 3 mean±sd 36,3±4,2 17,8±5,9 7,3±3,9 5,8±3,1 dbe p2 (65 items) e 29 15 13 8 c2 (9) =20,7; p <0.05; cramer’s v=0,16 l 21 23 10 11 j 27 22 9 7 r 32 11 20 1 mean±sd 27,3±4,7 17,8±5,7 13,0±5,0 6,8±4,2 both dbe papers had sufficient variation among evaluators to achieve a significant pearson chi-square statistic. cramer’s v shows a small, but significant effect size of evaluators on the chi-square. in both papers, evaluator r assigned more items to know, and fewer to understand and aec than the other evaluators. in dbe p2, evaluator r assigned more items to apply than other evaluators did. evaluator l stands out in that she assigned more items than other evaluators did to aec in both dbe papers. 106 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) 4. discussion the lack of agreement among four expert evaluators is clearly illustrated in the data presented here. despite intensive training and practice with feedback, inter-rater reliability remained low. our results support the view that identifying cognitive demand is subjective. larger teams of raters may increase inter-rater reliability, because they dampen the effect of one outlier. subjectivity is acknowledged in the ofqual (2014) report, where it is accepted that expert judgement is rarely definitive, since it represents the views of a diverse group of experts who are influenced by their individual professional experiences. the evaluators did not feel confident about their ratings, and referred constantly to the list of descriptors. while the evaluators clearly thought deeply about what cognitive processing students had to do to answer a question the questions did not neatly fit the descriptors. the findings presented here raise questions about agreement among examiners, moderators and evaluators on what is meant by each cognitive category of the prescribed bloom’s taxonomy. alignment between the prescribed weighting and the actual weighting presents a challenge in the absence of common agreement on the meaning of categories of cognitive demand. comparisons of the “standards” of successive examination papers is questionable when inter-rater reliability in judging cognitive demand is low, even after intensive practise. this raises doubts about the value of moderators and evaluators’ reports to inform standardisation of marks, as recommended by davis (2017). further complexity is added when one considers the multitude of factors influencing the demand of examination questions. high order questions that recur in successive papers lose their discriminatory power because of their familiarity to students. they do not necessarily indicate increasing or decreasing standards of examinations. davis (2017) incorrectly assumes that high cognitive demand is indicative of examinations that are more difficult. as pointed out by pollitt et al. (2007), difficulty is a measure of the performance of learners on an assessment task, which can only be reliably evaluated by studying mark distributions. it is distinct from cognitive demand, as illustrated by the high cognitive demand but easy essay question in the ieb examination papers. cognitive demand is influenced by the breadth and depth of the subject matter being assessed (opposs & moss, 2012). in this regard, the cras scale of demand has advantages over bloomian taxonomies because it considers the abstractness of the subject matter being assessed, and the complexity of the operations required to complete the task. inter-rater reliability of cras has not been assessed, but crisp and novacovic (2009) reported that raters found it particularly difficult to assign a level of abstractness to an item. nevertheless, cras holds potential as an alternative taxonomy to bloom’s. wood (1977) and sugrue (2002) recommend having no taxonomy at all, replacing it with performance objectives that inform structuring of examination questions. kanjee and moloi (2016), in consultation with teams of experts, developed a standards-based approach to reporting south african grade 6 assessment results. the standards were based on performance level descriptors for four levels of performance and cut scores. the cut scores were determined by expert judgement of how many out of ten learners would be able to correctly answer each item on a national assessment (kanjee & moloi, 2016: 38). kanjee and moloi’s (2016) determination of cut scores may be difficult to apply in south africa’s diverse educational context. experts’ answers to the question “how many of 10 107 dempster & kirby inter-rater agreement in assigning cognitive demand to life sciences ... just proficient learners will get this item right?” will be influenced by their own home language and learning and teaching experiences. the panel of experts determining cut scores would need to be large and representative of the entire educational system. the present study illustrates how unreliable the subjective judgements of a panel of four experts can be. the three specific aims of the south african life sciences curriculum, with their descriptors, provide a set of performance objectives (dbe 2011: 11-17), which could be developed into performance level descriptors. the standard of the examination would then reside in experts’ prediction of what percentage of “just proficient” learners would answer each question correctly. however, such a judgement would be based on the current standard of education, which is below what is deemed appropriate (umalusi, 2014a). even experts will have difficulty conceptualising the performance of what a “just proficient” learner ought to be able to do, as compared with their lived reality. a standards-based approach for reporting national senior certificate results is currently unattainable. 5. conclusion this study illustrates the difficulties of achieving inter-rater agreement on the interpretation of levels of cognitive demand in examination questions. despite training, practise and revision, evaluators still failed to achieve high levels of inter-rater reliability. we recommend that the standardisation committee uses the results of analyses of levels of cognitive demand with caution, and that examining bodies consider critically their practice of prescribing weighting of bloomian levels of cognitive demand in examinations. we also urge examiners and moderators to consider alternatives to bloom’s taxonomy, particularly those that are informed by cognitive science. 6. acknowledgements the authors wish to thank the evaluators whose conscientious work enabled this analysis to be undertaken. umalusi is thanked for initiating the project to evaluate consistency of standards in successive examinations. this work is based on the research supported in part by the national research foundation of south africa (grant number 104666). references altman, d.g. 1991. practical statistics for medical research. london: chapman and hall. anderson, l.w., krathwohl, d.r., airasian, p.w., cruikshank, k.a., mayer, r.e., pintrich, p.r., raths, j. & wittrock, m.c. 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http://www.umalusi.org.za/docs/assurance/2015/dbe.pdf %5baccessed 15 nov 2017%5d. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1147852 147 making a new south african learner: an analysis of the south african schools act abstract this paper interrogates the relationship between south africa’s most important piece of educational policy, the south african schools act (sasa) (republic of south africa, 1996b), and learner identity. it seeks to understand how this central piece of south african educational legislation foreshadows, intersects with, foregrounds, prescribes and/or disturbs dominant notions of south african learner identity. what does the sasa say about the south african learner and particularly about what it expects the learner to be? the perspective used in this paper is that identity is constructed from history, memory, social and cultural institutions and power apparatuses. the specific interest of the paper is not to look so much at the mediation of identity in its practical forms, as in actual interchanges between subjects in the classroom, but to develop an understanding of the symbols and signifiers that are privileged in the formal and legal prescripts that surround the process of mediation. what significance this holds for the achievement of equality and justice in south africa is what is explored here. 1. introduction the south african schools act (sasa) (republic of south africa, 1996b) promulgated in 1996 is one of the most important pieces of post-apartheid legislation. it put in place the critical elements required for building an educational system framed by the ideals of the south african constitution. it was not, however, without issues and questions. the purpose of this paper is to examine how it dealt with the challenging question of imagining new learner identities for south africa’s young people. how did it challenge, disrupt and /or reconstitute dominant ideas of learner identity inherited out of apartheid? the issue stimulating this contribution is the challenge of the (re) making of a social order for south africa which enjoys the trust and commitment of the majority of its people. apartheid had produced a social order that institutionalised power in particular kinds of ways. while there is an ongoing debate about the fundamental nature of that power, whether it was primarily racial, classed or gendered, there is no question that its symptomatic everyday expression took a racial form. that “everyday” – the classic quotidian – was about ordinary human beings being subjected to detailed sorting and differentiating and ranking and hierarchising processes crain soudien human sciences research council and the university of cape town doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v36i2.12 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 36(2): 147-157 © uv/ufs http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i2.12 148 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) that began with their emplacement in tightly defined racial categories. categorisation produced acute distress – the disfigurement of people both physically and psychologically. the physical space in which people found themselves was profoundly disfigured. it was deliberately made ugly. its material and architectural semiotics, as coetzer (2013) has argued, were encoded in often brutalist representations of self and other. complementing this were psychological hurts inflicted on the minds of black people. the bantu education act of 1953 (rose & tunmer, 1975:266) was the apartheid government’s central instrument for effecting this trauma. its chief architect, minister hendrik verwoerd, later to become prime minister, described its purpose in the following way: there is no place for him in the european community above the level of certain forms of labour…. for that reason it is of no avail for him to receive a training which has as its aim absorption in the european community where he cannot be absorbed. until now he has been subjected to a school system which drew him away from his own community and misled him by showing him the green pastures of european society in which he was not allowed to graze (ibid). karlsson (2003) has written of the ordering of the space of the school. not sufficiently acknowledged is the physical and visceral effect produced by the apartheid form – the strategic modulation of bodies. how these processes work, the “race”-ing, “gendering”, “class”-ing and a whole host of other formative influences on the making of bodies and their outward identity manifestations, as part of the process of understanding what lies beneath them as suggested above with respect to the system’s fundamental power structure, has yet to be raised, explored and understood.1 in such an analysis, an attempt must be made to understand how colonial education as a pedagogical and learning experience worked. it is important to explore the experience of cognition in the racialised space of what we have come to understand by “white” classrooms, “african” classrooms and so-called coloured and indian classrooms. what does it mean to teach and learn – to educate in the sense of “leading through spaces that are coded and marked with the signs of inferiority and superiority?” what does “education” mean in spaces such as these? this large task notwithstanding, there is consensus (see christie & collins, 1979) that apartheid education schooled young white people for dominance and young black people for subordination. from this form and substance came a normative order inflected in the register of distress – being subjected to intense scrutiny and surveillance through the south african “pass” system and finding oneself arrested and imprisoned for often bureaucratic violations produced for many south africans a life of trauma. in education, one of the first major policy initiatives taken by the post-apartheid government to turn this situation around was the passing of the south african schools’ act of 1996 (sasa). it brought together in a single bureaucracy the previously separate and racialised education sub-systems that served the country. subsequently, legislation has been passed which has sought to standardise the curricula, governance and financing platforms from which individual schools move to achieve specific and commensurable outcomes in what all students learn and how they learn. the task of the post-apartheid government was to set in motion the processes for creating a new normative order. this was facilitated through the passing of a number of key pieces of legislation and policy instruments. in relation to the physical space of education, norms and standards baselines for the country were set. their purpose was to prescribe equitable distribution criteria within the system to ensure that all learners had the 1 the issue of identity and space was raised in a landmark exhibition, setting apart, in 1994 curated by hilton judin at the castle of cape town. 149 soudien making a new south african learner opportunity to receive a quality education. for this, the national norms and standards for school funding (nnssf) were prescribed by the then minister of education. they specified norms and standards for school infrastructure (e.g. electronic connectivity and recreational facilities), school capacity (e.g. classroom size), and learning and teaching support material (e.g. science apparatus, electronic equipment) to be provided by the government (amended in nnssf 2015). norms and standards were also set out in 2000 for educators (nse). these specified the knowledge, values and skills that an educator was expected to acquire. the nse policies constituted an important attempt to reconstitute an educational system that had, as a result of apartheid, been fractured and hierarchised according to race, gender and class. they sought to put in place a new normative order. while this policy has sought to accommodate social and cultural differences, in so far as governing councils at schools have been able to determine the media of instruction for their students, its thrust, driven by notions of equity and redress, has been to adumbrate the learning subject and his/her identity in the guise of the ideal south african. in the context of south africa’s divided cultural, race, class and gender history, what policy documents say about the ideal south african has many implications for how south africans manage their everyday lives, their relationships with each other and the society that they share. while this paper seeks not to pursue these implications, and wishes to defer that discussion to another occasion, it does wish to argue that it is important to recognise, locate and understand the privileged signs that are circulated in and around the polis. these signs, and in this case the sign of the ideal south african learning subject, provide an indication of the state’s understanding of who its citizens are, how their citizenship might be practised, and particularly the social and cultural spaces in which citizenship might be expressed.2 what limitations and possibilities inhere in this identity, and what is excluded from it, given south africa’s complex social, cultural and economic history is an important question to be pursued. the perspective used in this paper is that identity is constructed from history, memory, social and cultural institutions and power apparatuses. the specific interest of the paper is not to look so much at the mediation of identity in its practical forms, as in actual interchanges between subjects in the classroom, but to develop an understanding of the symbols and signifiers that are privileged in the formal and legal prescripts that surround the process of mediation. what significance this holds for the achievement of equality and justice in south africa is what is explored here. the theoretical basis for the paper is derived from post-modern debates around the unity (or the death) of the subject. attention is given, in a brief overview, to the notion of the displaced and decentred subject. this platform is used to address the idea of the subject in the sasa of 1996 the paper will examine sasa, the major policy instrument in education to have emanated from the state since 1994, and will use the tools of deconstruction to draw out the recurring 2 a key site for the idealisation of south africa’s new citizenship, and the identities within it, has been proffered in official and popular discussions about south africa’s new “rainbow nation”. the concept of the rainbow nation, popularised by archbishop tutu, has occasioned much debate. for its supporters, the idea of the rainbow, expressed as it is in the metaphoric ambience of “newness”, “togetherness” and “harmony”, stands for the glorious arrival of the new multicultural south africa after its tempestuous past. for its detractors, the concept of the rainbow, with its fixed and defined, colours, is all too reminiscent of south africa’s racialised past. the rainbow is, for them, a celebration of the concept of race and is, on those grounds alone, an objectionable metaphor. 150 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) themes, dissonant chords and crosscutting frameworks that are contained within the document. the aim is not to achieve a complete and total analysis but to show through what gasché (1995) calls the self-referentiality of the text, how the text is involved in processes of appropriation, denunciation and renunciation. 2. the theoretical frame a concerted attempt is being made in a welter of policy documents, legislative enactments and other discursive devices to reimagine the south african identity. in the context of a colonial and apartheid history that systematically sought to inscribe south africans racially, this attempt has as its objective the reformulation of the subject as a citizen framed by “(a) [h]uman dignity, the achievement of equality and the advancement of human rights and freedoms. (b) nonracialism and non-sexism...” (the constitution of the republic of south africa, 1996a:3). this paper is interested in exploring the meaning of this new construction of citizenship as it is being articulated in planning and policy texts of the new south african state. it seeks specifically to work with the key text in education, the south african schools act (sasa) (republic of south africa [rsa], 1996b). the focus of the paper will be on notions of the learning subject that are embodied in the act.3 interestingly, a few commentaries that bear on questions of the identity of the child in the sasa exist. these, however, are neither explicit nor focused on the idea of learning as a framework for making sense of identity. an interesting example is the discussion on “child-centeredness” in the review of reyneke (2016:4) on the need for the sasa to be changed to take heed of more strongly focused interpretations of child-rights. the issues that this paper seeks to explore are connected with current debates around the culture of modernity and its embeddedness in the assumptions of the enlightenment central to which is the efficacy of universal reason. the central issue, within the ensemble of questions that are raised within this discussion, is the status of modern civilisation and its search for a universal moral order informed by an intellectually self-actualising human race operating under the aegis of a universal human reason. within this modern civilisation, the position of education is central. to it is accorded the responsibility of “educating reason”, of putting together a “universal education based on universal methods equally applicable to all nations and cultures and of a mass education operating on the principle of merit that would equip individuals with the necessary skills, attitudes and attributes to become useful citizens and good workers” (peters, 1996:2). from this process is expected to emerge the universal citizen ready and equipped to be “the agent of historically progressive change” (peters, 1996:2).4 conceptions of this modern condition, premised as they are on a new universalism of morals, values and understandings, and on a notion of a unitary rational subject, have been challenged for their dogmatism and their colonisation of the right to “truth-making”. postmodern5 critics have been profoundly “incredulous” with respect to the project of modernity 3 learners, of course, are not the only “subjects” in the act. important and interesting subjects for analysis are teachers and learners who have been “captured” in particular guises and who, in relation to learners, present a particular ensemble of types. 4 working with the idea of universal reason and its projection into material contexts, one has to be aware, of course, of actual historical subjects – actual learners – and the influences and factors at play in their formation. this analysis seeks to work with the juridical – the law – here as one such factor. 5 aware that a distinction is sometimes made, particularly to emphasise notions of difference and the notion of the “death of the subject”, i will use the term post-modern in this paper to include post-structuralist traditions of analysis. 151 soudien making a new south african learner and have taken issue with claims that it addresses all of humankind, speaks on behalf of all humankind and has the interests of all humankind at its philosophical heart. gasché (1995:16), drawing on derrida, makes the point that the singular subject, presented as singularity, and as the bearer of the ideals of universalism, has to be protected from differences in philosophic interpretation. this protection is achieved through “repeated inscription”. singularity, by refusing all translation and interpretation becomes opaque, silent or immediate in a non-dialectic sense. it becomes quite simply thoroughly unintelligible. such a singular would be a failure in its own terms. no longer identifiable, it could not be recognized, let alone repeated as a singular. for the singular to be possible as a singularity, it must pose itself as singular, that is, it must repeat itself in an idealizing doubling. differently put, to be repeatable, the singular must translate itself, interpret itself as intelligible in its own unintelligibility (gasché, 1995:14). in translating, transposing and repeating itself, the singular subject is required to demarcate itself from the very thing that it is not. it is in this demarcation that it becomes readable. as derrida (quoted in gasché, 1995:15) says, for demarcation, “[i]t is necessary that the unrepeatable be repeated in it”. from this emerges a necessary idealisation and universalisation, “which at the same time betrays it” (gasché, 1995:15). the sovereign subject in this construction is thus always and ever only possible in the presence of the other. what the pose of universalism and the presentation of a unitary subject serve to do is assert “truth” from the perspective of the discourse of the enlightenment while silencing and excluding the other. at the forefront of these critiques have been post-structuralist thinkers such as lyotard, derrida and foucault. lyotard (1984), for example, challenged the grand narratives of modernity such as the “emancipation of humanity” and “the unity of knowledge” as metanarratives glossed in the language of totality seeking to assume the status of transcendental paradigms. talking about how prefaces are used in texts, difference, derrida argued, was sublimated and repressed in this narrative system (see derrida, 1981:45). what the texts do is to internalise and domesticate leftover issues. in contrast to the tropes of enlightenment, post-modernists have been concerned to inaugurate a discourse that is, [about] a putative anti [or post] epistemological standpoint, antiessentialism, antirealism about meaning and reference, antifoundationalism, a suspicion of transcendental arguments and viewpoints, the rejection of the picture of knowledge as accurate representation, the rejection of truth as correspondence to reality, the rejection of canonical descriptions and final vocabularies and, finally, a suspicion of metanarratives (peters, 1995:3). post-modernists seek to speak in terms of the provisional and the contingent, to eschew the power of universal rationality and to recognise in the enlightenment the cultural and economic procedures and apparati which have come to dominate the world. they argue that, “the cultural value of the enlightenment – and of the process of modernization – linking subjective freedom to a “scientific” reason “conceals a will to power that ultimately binds the individual to the technological apparatus” (david ingram quoted in peters, 1995:5). in post-modern thought, structural linguistics is used as the vehicle to mount an attack on rationality. derrida, for example, draws on saussurean linguistics to show that language is built on the arbitrary connection between the signifier and the signified. he seeks to make the point that in the western tradition “the formal essence of the signified is presence and the 152 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) privilege of its proximity to the logos as phonè is the privilege of presence” (derrida, quoted in peters, 1995:6). he goes on to say that western philosophy has privileged the meaning of being in general as presence – a self-identical, transparent self-presence. philosophy has tried to freeze the play of différance and to invoke what peters (1995:6) calls “clear and distinct ideas, ideal platonic forms, an ultimate referent or ‘transcendental signified,’ absolute knowledge... within closed systems of truth”. derrida argues that such closure is impossible simply because philosophy cannot reach beyond language. the claim to have escaped the boundary of language depends on “excluding or assimilating whatever escapes the grids of intelligibility it imposes on the movement of différance” (ibid). in derrida’s language, philosophy is predicated on logoand homocentric conceits that are incapable of recognising the play of différance. the significance of this line of thought is deeply subversive of the project of positivist philosophy that claims for itself the ability to define and describe in terms of unitary and stable phenomena that, as derrida argues, might take their meaning outside of the frontiers of linguistic description (see derrida, 1981:328). what i will attempt to do in this paper, following tentatively in the procedure of deconstruction offered by derrida, is to reduce the sign’s “originality and originarity” (gasché, 1995:38), and, in a sense, its ideality. what this accomplishes, as derrida says, is to show how much ideality depends on the sign and how much tension and contradiction there is within the sign, for within the sign are both presence and absence. self-reflection of the presence is only possible in the presence of the absence. this work seeks to argue that the articulation of presence is inherently political, constructing, as it does, hierarchies of position in which that which is absented is simultaneously also disprivileged. 3. identity in the south african schools act the sasa is the framing document for school education in south africa. its various chapters include, inter alia, the following: “the learner”; “public schools” (this chapter describes the public school in its ownership dimensions, its governance provisions, who has responsibility for what aspects of managing and governing the school); the “funding of public schools” and the “private schools”. the act is meant to provide a general and comprehensive framework for the management of the restructuring of south african education and emanated, principally, from an investigation conducted under the leadership of peter hunter, an academic at the university of the witwatersrand. in the preamble to the act, broad general principles are set out. the act is presented as a statement of the new state’s intentions to, provide an education of progressively high quality for all learners and in so doing lay a strong foundation for the development of all our people’s talents and capabilities, advance the democratic transformation of society, combat racism and sexism and all other forms of unfair discrimination and intolerance, contribute to the eradication of poverty and the economic well-being of society, protect and advance our diverse cultures and languages, uphold the rights of all learners, parents and educators, and promote their acceptance of responsibility for the organisation, governance and funding of schools in partnership with the state (rsa, 1996b:2) (all italics in the original). the central political preoccupation of the act is that of the re-storation of form – it is “[t]o provide a uniform system for the organisation, governance and funding of schools” (rsa, 1996b:2; my emphasis). the new system is predicated in the form and structure of an integrated system inhabited by “learners”, “parents” and “educators” who are the subjects of 153 soudien making a new south african learner education and the subjects for education. to them fall the rights to be derived from the new system and the responsibilities for making it what it should be. embedded explicitly in the preamble is the shape of the old system and its disfiguring history. the past is presented as having been “consigned to history”. in terms of this preoccupation with re-forming the system, the first strategic move that the act makes is to present the subject of the learning process as the learner. after the act proceeds through its formalistic definition of the terms that it uses, it focuses its attention on this learning-subject. i want to argue now, in seeking to make sense of this learning subject, that far from being consigned to history, the past is intensely present in the construction of the subjectivity of this learning-subject. the subject of the learning process in south african schools has an interesting history. s/he has been variously described as a pupil, scholar and latterly as a student. the significance of these terms is buried in the complexity of the social and cultural frameworks which have permeated and diffused through the south african landscape and have, drawing on gasché’s (1995:5) comments about deconstruction, come to signify what one might understand to be “unities of sense” rather than simply “regular” uses of a mark or a sign. the learning-subject as invoked in the act is given a defining singularity. it is projected as “any person receiving or obliged to receive education” (rsa, 1996b:4). if we are to understand “unities” as implying a bringing together of what was not previously unified, then the learner clearly cannot be understood to be an innocent representation of the “learning” subject. instead, s/he has to be understood as a moment, or a subject, which, as bhabha (1994:8) says, is “blasted out of the continuum of history”. the conditions of the production of this term, i want to argue, are located inside the history of learning in south africa, particularly in the detachment of the learning subject from the very act of what has traditionally and conventionally been understood as learning. the conditions which currently prevail in south african schools and which emerge from the country’s almost twenty-five year long experience of the decomposition of formal schooling have been preeminently about the displacement of the learning-subject in the traditional couplet of teacherlearner and, indeed, the emergence of very different teacher-learner arrangements. in this twenty-five year long period, to the learning-subject has fallen rights and responsibilities that have more regularly been the preserve of others, such as teachers, parents, elders and so on. the learning-subject, for example, has assumed, in various ways and forms, the responsibility for determining the length of the school day, what qualities are desirable in a teacher and, even, what should be taught. this subject has thus been the primary agent in the process of defining the character of the modern south african school. s/he has positioned the school as a site for political socialisation and the taking on of political responsibility (see gilmour, soudien & donald, 2000). out of this history have come learning-subjects who have rewritten the laws and codes of schooling and who have effectively taken upon themselves the responsibility of taking hold of the educational space of the school and effectively specify its character and mission. the present act has, in its own discursive way, the historic task of decentring and displacing and then replacing and recentring these arrangements. the recent history of schooling has projected the learning-subject as the author of political activity – encoded as a student in the discursive tradition of paris, 1968 and the radical student movement in the united states in the late sixties and early seventies – and as an actor outside of the traditional institutional 154 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) pedagogical frame who decides for him-/herself what appropriate learning constitutes. the task of the new state is to establish the proper order in which this learning subject is to function, to define and to relegitimate the social and pedagogical hierarchy in which this learning is to take place. the new act situates learners, i contend, as “receivers of education” and as people “obliged to receive education”. from being the makers of the school environment, they are projected now as subjected beneficiaries – the “receivers” of this environment. the intention of the act is to displace the power of giving and receiving in the school environment. at stake in this form of analysis is recognising the strategies of representation in the text, particularly the ways in which the subject is staged. gasché (1995:27) talks of the hyperbolic way in which emblems come to inscribe the whole. this is evident in the ways in which the learning-subject is totalised in terms of age, juristic personality and family position. s/he, for example, is presented as someone who is between the ages of seven and fifteen years. the subject is presented as the ward of a parent who is obliged to take his or her learning-subject to school – s/he is the “responsibility” of a parent. the parent is him-/herself specified in relation to the learning-subject as someone who has the obligation of keeping the learningsubject in school, and where s/he fails to do so is him-/herself open to/subject to investigation. emphasis is placed in the text on the minor status of the learning subject who is firmly located within the safety of a structured family to whom is accorded and from whom is expected the performance of particular functions. it is not with the learning-subject but with the family that agency, choice and responsibility lie. this development is repeated later in the act when admission to the public school is discussed. the act makes clear that the learning-subject’s rights of admission to a school are pre-determined in relation to his parent’s class, religious and juristic status. the act states that, “no learner may be refused admission to a public school on the grounds that his or her parents cannot pay the school fees, do not subscribe to the mission statement of the school or refuse to enter into a contract with the school in terms of which they waive claims for damages which may arise out of the education of the child” (rsa, 1996b:6; italics in the original). the learning-subject is accorded rights in relation to his or her parents. a similar move to the above takes place in relation to the learning-subject and his or her place in the school. the act emphasises that a “public school must admit learners and serve their educational requirements without unfairly discriminating in any way” (rsa, 1996b:6). aside from centring learning in the school (and not the learning-subject); learning as an activity is projected in a deterministic and top-down fashion. the school is awarded the sole responsibility for designing and managing learning. the learning-subject is again positioned as the passive player within the relationship. the act speaks of the learning requirements of the subject being served to the learning-subject. implied in this formulation is the notion of a dependent in relation to an unproblematised and all-understanding power. in invoking school as the authority, it is assumed that this authority is self-evident and is beyond the need of reference. more, and in addition, “educational requirements” are spoken of as if they are obvious, already defined and available as a pre-packed commodity. state policy is specified in the act in relation to language and religion. the act makes clear that “no form of racial discrimination may be practised in implementing policy under this section” (rsa, 1996b:8). it also makes clear that attendance at religious observances at schools is entirely voluntary. crucially, however, in these sections, the learning-subject is 155 soudien making a new south african learner rendered largely invisible. school is addressed spatially only – it is a place where unspecified things happen – and it is only in relation to religious observance that “learners and members of staff” are specified. the strategic staging that takes place in this text, it could be suggested, is around the framing of the subject as a derivative of either his or her parents or the school. the learningsubject is consistently described in a subordinate relation to his/her parents and the school. the rights that the subject has access to are rights that accrue via his or her parents. critically, the only time the learning-subject is decoupled from these significant others are when the act addresses the learning-subject as a subject of the school’s code of conduct and when the act speaks of the establishment of a “representative council of learners”. the act requires that a school adopt a code of conduct which “must be aimed at establishing a disciplined and purposeful school environment, dedicated to the improvement and maintenance of the quality of the learning process” (sasa, 1996:8). it also requires that all schools enrolling “learners in the eighth grade and higher” have to establish learner representative councils. the act makes clear that there can be no reason that exempts the learning-subject from the provisions of the code of conduct: “nothing,” it says, “contained in this act exempts a learner from the obligation to comply with the code of conduct of the school attended by such a learner” (rsa, 1996b:8). the act emphasises how important the code of conduct is for “safeguarding” the interests of the learner (my emphases). this process of decoupling occurs again when the learning-subject is positioned in relation to processes of suspension and expulsion from school. the subject is addressed directly in these provisions and is presented as a person in his or her own right who is accorded the status of an individual and is the subject of autonomous action distinct from his or her parents. the juxtaposition of this discourse of the law of subjects alongside of the pedagogical discourses in the school here makes for interesting analyses. what is most apparent is how the language and the framing devices shift when the focus of attention moves to question of law and punishment. the subject is approached in this part of the act as one who is entitled to a “fair hearing” and is deemed to be able, at this point, to take responsibility for his or her actions. to the subject is accorded speaking rights. significantly, however, the subject is also presented as one to whom corporal punishment may not be administered.6 rights and responsibilities inhere directly in the person of the subject. his or her behaviour is described as his or her responsibility. this behaviour is normed and standardised and “correctional measure(s)” can be applied to it. these measures, it is assumed, are measures that appeal to the speaking subject. s/he is able to receive that which the society has to offer and to make good of it. significantly, however, the capacity of the subject to speak – his or her autonomy – is modified when it comes to seeking redress. the learning-subject is required to seek relief from interpretation of the law through, mainly, the person of his or her parent. the learning-subject is accorded the right to “appeal against a decision” which results in his or her expulsion or suspension from a school. 6 this provision has caused a great deal of confusion in the schools and has, i suspect, come to be widely ignored. teachers and parents have complained about their “authority” being usurped by the state. what this raises are interesting questions about the discourse of punishment and authority and the framing of subjects within it, and the perceived dissonance with liberal discourse around practices of disciplining. 156 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) this autonomy is similarly proscribed, one might argue, when the act talks to the learner representative councils. it states that they are to be established by the provincial minister of education who will specify their functions. 4. conclusion deconstruction, as gasché (1995:35) reminds, is important for decoding the significatory practices in a text, i.e., accounting for the presences and the absences in a text. in response to the question why it is important to work textually with policy documents, my answer would be that texts such as the sasa are profoundly important in holding up to us that which its authors7 wish us to be and also that which they wish us not to be. in using the approach of deconstruction, it is important to see that it makes possible not only the recognition of contradiction, but fundamentally also the recognition of the deployment of power. identityframing strategies are an important expression of this power. following this, how might one begin to understand the identity, and its conditions of production, of the learning-subject as it is framed in the act? the argument i want to make is that these conditions of production are profoundly historical. the central significatory move that the act makes is to stage the learner as a not-yet-adult. its principal ambition is to present the learning-subject as a subject of education. subjectivity in this development is, moreover, encoded doubly in the text. it is framed in the traditional western epistemological tradition as the autonomous and rational subject, but also as the subjected subject. it is in this duality that the text reveals that which is privileged as presence and that which is disprivileged as absence. i want to argue that the primary objective of the act is to restore the form of the school and the identities of those who inhabit it. this form is central to the historic destiny of the modern south african school8. many of the strategic devices the act invokes are about asserting this form. the learning-subject is presented as a learner or as one who has begun a process of obtaining membership but has not yet, classically, passed the major test to achieve membership. membership in this context refers specifically to that of south african citizenship. this citizenship is a citizenship of responsibility. the learning-subject is framed here as being tutored towards the achievement of this membership. an identity of tutelage is thus the fundamental characteristic that is to be displayed by the learning-subject. the act seeks to specify how this tutelage is to be managed and repeats the inscription of tutelage through inflecting the learning-subject repeatedly in subordinate terms. this inscription becomes selfreferential and is managed through the decentring of the learning-subject in relation to the state, the school, parents and teachers. at each stage of the process of inscription of the identity of the learning-subject in the act, even when it refers to moments when the learningsubject is to take self-responsibility, the subject is framed in a state of tutelage. even the requirement of the school to establish a code of conduct is about the establishment of a “disciplined and purposeful school environment” (rsa, 1996b:8) (italics in the original). what is this tutelage all about? tutelage in the act is about restoring to south africa the correct order of things and bringing it into a state of alignment with the rest of the ordered world, as opposed to the disordered world. in this order, subjectivity is obtained through the 7 i use authors in the double sense here. i refer to the actual authors, i.e. those who created and encrypted the document, and those who legally authorised it, i.e. the government and the lawmakers of the day. 8 this destiny has, of course, been represented in a number of ways, not least of all in the functionalist and class-reproductive language of the sociology of education. 157 soudien making a new south african learner subjection of the subject. young people enter the world of adulthood through the experience of their parents. of course, this is a little different to the protocols of any other society. in this process, however, the text of modernity is privileged and re-iterated. the subject of modernity is also, unlike his or her pre-modern counter-part (and even a-modern and, therefore, deviant counterpart), the subject of education. he or she cannot be permitted to define the conditions of his or her own socialisation independently of the master narratives that authorise the correct and appropriate order, sequencing and framing of the stages through which young people move towards autonomy and responsibility. feared and, therefore, rejected in the world that young people make themselves are “ignorance”, and the proper understanding of their place in the modern world. the cognitive framework in which the subject is socialised is, instead, pre-eminently that of rationality. rationality, as the process suggests, is acquired through being a learner. what is displaced, however, or rather is sought to be displaced, in these constructions are non-western and non-traditional forms of learning. the form of learning that young people in south africa have developed for themselves in the past twenty-five years is the practice of a dangerous other. young people, and this discussion recognises the demarcation that the term young people9 invokes, have, for good or bad, taken responsibility for their identities in ways which the positivist turn in western philosophy and its application as a principle of schooling have denied.10 young people have come to take on roles as producers of knowledge that dominant idealisations of youth do not recognise. this identity, in as much as it has come to shape the meaning of the idealised tutored south african subject, is arguably, and for whatever reason, not recognised in the act. the effect of this is that in projecting itself to the mass of south africa’s learning-subjects, it makes itself audible only to the minority, i.e., the middle-class whose learning identities are constructed in the paradigmatic frame of subjected learning subjects. in the process, this privileged discourse talks past those whose histories are inscribed outside of the symbolic economy of the act. in constructing a new unity of meaning for the subject around the condition of tutelage, the act cannot but invoke the identity of the dangerous other that it wishes to keep out of the new south africa. it is in this very act of displacing and decentring the other, however, that the new south africa and the new identities within it presents themselves as profoundly discriminatory moments of history and opens up opportunities for new struggles as the other continues to announce itself and calls for recognition. called for, i would argue, is a more historically aware framing of the learner that acknowledges the significant developments that have taken place in south africa over the last fifty years through which young people’s agency has dramatically come to the fore. such an acknowledgement would need to work critically with the idea of agency. it would not wish to privilege youth agency over other interests in the making of a new normative order but it would have to assist in the process of thinking how such an agency is made a productive feature of learning experiences and how new and vital learning identities are shepherded into being in a learning landscape that insufficiently honours the value of learning. 9 i am not oblivious to the critique that would pose questions about the distinctions that are made between children and adolescents and the pedagogical and psychological debates that surround the use of terms such as these. 10 discussions of the difference between modernity and post-modernity often include the point that the transgressive logic of post-modernism has the same end-point as rationality. rationality is not bounded and always seeks to overturn itself. 158 perspectives in education 2019: 36(2) references bhabha, h. 1994. the location of culture. new york: routledge. christie, p. & collins, zc. 1979. bantu education: apartheid ideology and labour reproduction. in p. kallaway (ed.). apartheid and education: the education of black south africans (pp. 16–183). johannesburg: ravan press. coetzer, n. 2013. on architecture and other in cape town. london: ashgate publishing ltd. derrida, j. 1981. dissemination. chicago: university of chicago press. gasché, r. 1995. inventions of difference: on jacques derrida. cambridge, massachusets: harvard university press. gilmour, d., soudien, c. & donald, d. 2000. post-apartheid policy and practice: educational reform in south africa. in k. mazurke, m. winzer & c. majorek (eds.). education in a global society: a comparative perspective (pp. 341–350). boston: allyn and bacon. karlsson, j. 2003. remembering apartheid: political discourse in school space. in r. edwards & r. usher (eds.). space, curriculum and learning (pp. 13–27). greenwich, conn: information age publishing. lyotard, j-f. 1984. the post-modern condition: a report on knowledge. manchester: manchester university press. peters, m. 1996. post-structuralism, politics and education. westport, ct.: bergin and garvey. republic of south africa. 1996b. the south african schools act, no. 84, 1996. government gazette, 15 november 1996. no. 17579. rose, b. & tunmer, r. 1975. documents in south african education. johannesburg: ad donker. republic of south africa. 2017. “south african schools act 1996”, no. 84 of 1996, amended national norms and standards for school funding, government gazette, no. 394, 28 april, pretoria. republic of south africa 1996a. the constitution of the republic of south africa, act 108 of 1996. cape town, south africa. reyneke, m. 2016. realising the child’s best interests: lessons from the child justice act to improve the south african schools act. per/pelj, 19, 1–29. https://doi. org/10.17159/1727-3781/2016/v19i0a1228 https://doi.org/10.17159/1727-3781/2016/v19i0a1228 https://doi.org/10.17159/1727-3781/2016/v19i0a1228 _goback 241 research article 2020 38(2): 241-254 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) pedagogical approaches to develop social skills of learners with autism spectrum disorder: perceptions of three foundation phase teachers abstract there are limited studies into the exact pervasiveness of autism spectrum disorder (asd) in sub-saharan africa, and fewer still into early intervention for learners with autism. this paper focuses on how three foundation phase teachers provided explicitly structured classroom experiences to develop social skills training, particularly independence, behavioural etiquette and self-esteem of their learners. some learners with asd do become welladjusted independent adults, but others experience challenges in interpreting emotions or forming and sustaining healthy interpersonal relations. this study was underpinned by vygotsky’s (1978) socio-cultural theory which highlights the importance of social learning in the education of children with disabilities. a qualitative research design and an interpretivist paradigm were used for generating the data needed to track the development. three purposively selected foundation phase (fp) teachers in three different types of schools were selected as the sample. three vignettes provide the background to the discussions. knowing that asd is characterised by order and disorder, some pedagogical approaches may generate new divisions, while those presented here have noticeably benefited the learners with asd; the teachers created learning opportunities to elevate the social skills of their high functioning learners with asd. keywords: autism spectrum disorder (asd), qualitative, pedagogical approaches, social skills. 1. introduction there have been limited studies on pedagogical approaches that teachers use when working with learners with autism spectrum disorder (asd) in southern africa (franz, chambers, von isenburg & de vries, 2017). prior to 2016, there have been few studies on the importance of social skills in learners with asd. badiah (2018) states that young learners with asd may experience difficulties with authors: mrs liezl myburgh1 professor janet condy1 dr elna barnard1 affiliation: 1cput doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38. i2.16 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(2): 241-254 published: 04 december 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7119-0532 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8083-7200 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4046-9175 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 2422020 38(2): 242-254 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) social skills and social interactions, although this difficulty may depend on the age level and the level of autism in the learners (brink, 2012). children with high levels of social skills will be easily accepted by their peers in their community, they will be able to resolve problem conflicts and have a sense of friendship. whereas others may be rejected and vulnerable to be bullied by their peers. brink (2012) suggests that learners with asd need to interact with people in their environment but, without assistance, they could experience mental health problems such as depression and anxiety. the gap in this particular field of research and pedagogical approaches teachers use when working with learners with asd, encouraged the researchers to explore how three teachers attempted to develop social skills in their learners with autism in the fp classroom. the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders v (dsm-v) (2013:50) defines asd as a “neurodevelopmental, biologically determined disorder; characterised by a triad of impairments which involve social interactions, communication skills and imagination”. the following three social skills are experienced by learners with asd: deficits in social-emotional reciprocity can range from abnormal social approach and failure of orthodox back-and-forth conversation, to reduced sharing of interests, emotions or affect, to failure to initiate or respond to social interactions. deficits in non-verbal communicative behaviours used for social interaction can range from poorly integrated verbal and nonverbal communication, to abnormalities in eye contact and body language or deficits in understanding and use of gestures, to a total lack of facial expressions and nonverbal communication. deficits in developing, maintaining and understanding relations can range from difficulties adjusting behaviour to suit various social contexts; to difficulties in sharing imaginative play or in making friends; to absence of interest in peers. the south african constitution (1996) states that every person has the right to basic education whether they are disabled or not, and subsequently since 2001, there has been a plethora of policy documents that unambiguously regulate the inclusion of learners who experience barriers to learning. the latest policy from the department of basic education (sias, 2014) called “screening, identification, assessment and support” paradoxically states that one of the barriers to the implementation of this document is the inflexible curriculum in our schools, particularly prevalent in special schools with learners with asd. the fourth sustainable development goal (sdgs) (2019) on quality education states that the quality of learning in many of our schools is a challenge and is about the restoration of the dignity and hope of people leaving no-one behind (2019). although many south african teachers are willing to accommodate learners with asd in their classes, they often have a limited understanding of the unique combination of character traits of learners with asd (franz et al., 2017). it is therefore not surprising that teachers find it difficult to adjust their curricula and classroom environments to address these learners’ distinctive social skills needs. creating an environment of understanding amongst teachers of learners with asd may enable them to make modifications to their curriculum, classroom environments and teaching styles to allow these learners to experience optimal social skills learning (franz et al., 2017). this information is a precursor to the research question, which is: what were three foundation phase teachers’ experiences of explicitly developing social skills with their learners with asd? http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 2432020 38(2): 243-254 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 myburgh, condy & barnard pedagogical approaches to develop social skills the researcher, who was teaching at a “learners with special educational needs” (lsen) school after she graduated from her undergraduate studies, taught learners experiencing a variety of barriers to learning, and became interested in how to work with developing social skills in learners with asd. during this five-year period, she observed that some of the more autistic learners often showed delays in social skills, behaviours that are unacceptable to general society and made it difficult for these learners to act in a socially acceptable way. the more the researcher investigated this field of interest, she discovered that many teachers resorted to developing their own programmes as there was indeed a lack of training and knowledge in this field. the global monitoring report of 2017/2018 confirms this, as it states that there is unsatisfactory professional capacity development in the south african schooling system, complemented by insufficient support from the department of education (2017:46). this lack of information amongst department of education officials, principals and lecturers in higher education institutions motivated the researchers to investigate how other fp teachers were attempting to develop social skills with their learners with asd. in order to understand this environment fully, the researcher conducted relevant national and international literature reviews on diverse interactive skills of learners with asd when they are in a group or community situation. this discussion follows. social skills: lemmer (2009:22) points out that learners on the autism spectrum, experience challenges regarding their social development. social challenges may include limited interactive communication skills, restricted eye-contact during social interaction, limited sharing and being aggressive. despite this old, but relevant reference, iovannone, dunlap, huber and kincaid (2003:162) accentuate the pivotal role by teachers to ensure that their interactions with learners who experience interactive communication and social skills challenges, should correspond with each learner’s specific and distinctive needs in order for growth to occur. they recommend that multiple approaches and methodologies such as personalised assistance, regular and organised coaching and tutoring as well as creating clear and logical learning situations with a practical and purposeful approach to challenges be utilised by teachers. brink (2012) supports the idea that there should be good communication relations between teachers, parents and learners in order to give the learner with asd the best possible support. the importance of social interactions with other people, including peers, is stressed by badiah (2018), when she cautions that, unless learners with asd are exposed to encouraging and constructive interactions with friends, even forming friendships, they may be intimidated and even bullied, by their peers. furthermore, failing to read and interpret the body language, feelings and meanings of their peers and other people during social and communicative interactions especially when they are engaged with play activities with their friends, some learners with asd may be anxious, depressed and think about taking their own lives (badiah, 2018). maljaars, noens, scholte and van berckelaer-onnes (2012) explain that learners with asd may experience problematic communication and language abilities, which complicate their social interactions. they distinguish between communicative language and symbol formulation in language. language for communication is an intended action where learners become aware that their language gestures influence the behaviour of others whilst symbol formation refers to “an understanding of the relationship between a sign and its referent” (maljaars et al., 2012:2182). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 2442020 38(2): 244-254 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) although there are many social skills, for the purpose of this research, the researchers focused on only four social skills that learners with asd struggle with as these were the skills that emerged as prominent in the study. they include sharing; independence; behavioural etiquette and self-esteem. each of these social skills is discussed in more detail below. sharing: learners with asd experience challenges joining or inviting class friends to participate in fantasy play activities and cooperative games which have an element of sharing. they struggle to act on communicative cues given by their peers that may include the sharing of apparatus, sharing of attention and sharing of emotions and ideas during these play activities (gillis & butler, 2007). the ability to share is not only an important element in cooperative games and fantasy play activities, but it contributes to social and communicative skills, which form the basis of healthy and positive peer relations (lang et al., 2014). wolfberg, mccracken and tuchel (2008) warn that learners with asd do not necessarily prefer solitary play but that they articulate their play interests and socialising needs in ways that are their own and this sets them apart from their friends. the exclusion of these learners in play and social activities affects their formation of friendships negatively and learners with asd may experience feelings of rejection. independence: badiah (2018:23) alludes to the importance of teachers in guiding learners with asd to become more autonomous, especially in their socialising interactions with their peers and other people in their community. lemmer (in eloff & swart, 2018:390) stress that all learners need to be taught functional communication skills in order to become more independent. for learners to become more autonomous, she advises teachers that social instructions need to be given in different situations and environments; preparing the learner with asd to adapt to a variety of instructions, activities and locations. techniques to assist learners to become more self-reliant include using of visual cues, a list or schedules depicting the various activities to be engaged with as well as facilitating the changeover from one activity to another. iovannone et al. (2003) emphasise that the learning environment should be structured and enable learners with asd to envisage what is currently being taught, as well as to predict what the following activity will entail and how the knowledge and/or skills that have been taught, can be generalised to another environment or situation. behavioural etiquette: learners with asd display complicated behavioural manners due to the possible manifestation of anxiety disorders (adams, macdonald & keen, 2019). they may experience an overload of senses, a deviation from everyday schedules and practices and social bewilderment. other non-social deficits include inability to show facial expressions and empathy, verbal intonation and making eye contact; looking through or beyond a person (daou, vener & poulson, 2014). running away without the consent of the parent constitutes a challenging behaviour. strang et al. (2012) allude to an inability to demonstrate acceptable behaviour in his or her social interaction with others, which may lead to depression and anxiety within the learner. subsequently, the relations between the parents and child are further strained as parents and caregivers are under stress due to their child’s behaviour in the house and broader society (almansour et al., 2013:62). self-esteem: interaction with peers and forming of friendships can have a detrimental affect on the social esteem of learners with asd. healthy relations contribute to the development of a learner with asd in totality; enhancing intellectual, language, social and emotional as well as physical abilities (rowley et al., 2012). however, they caution that the lack of social and interaction skills to form and maintain healthy interactions with friends, may lead to a learner http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 2452020 38(2): 245-254 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 myburgh, condy & barnard pedagogical approaches to develop social skills with asd feeling anxious and stressed as well as isolated and lonely. such a lonely learner may be victimised and bullied by their peers (rowley et al., 2012). support strategies: support strategies used in this research project include group work, structured play, social stories and visual aids. badiah (2018) is of the opinion that social skills that are modelled and taught in social groups, is an effective strategy to be employed in classrooms with learners with asd. radley et al. (2017) agree that working in groups makes provision for observations of learners with constructive and practical feedback to occur constantly. davin (2013) explains that structured play entails guided learning opportunities by the teacher while o’connor and stagnitti (2011) view structured play as an intervention by the teacher to assist in the enhancing of social skills, language and behaviour, in planned play activities. in order to succeed in developing these important play activities, bedrova and leong (2015) believe that they need to be strategically and explicitly scaffolded by classroom teachers. coogle et al. (2018) advocate the employment of narrative techniques for learners with asd to understand as well as address their improper social interactions. they believe that this technique entails a team consisting of important people in the lives of learners with asd, namely parents, teachers, and therapists utilising strategies such as comic strips, cartooning, social scripts, smartboards and power cards to obtain specific identified behaviour, knowledge and skills. 2. theoretical framing vygotsky’s (1978) socio-cultural theory was appropriate for the interpretation of this study in that he emphasises the active roles of the teachers and learners in the learning and development process (verenkikina, 2010). the teachers and learners co-construct knowledge together; it is the quality of the teacher-learner collaboration that is crucial. kozulin and gindis (2007) explain that to move a learner from the known knowledge to the unknown, requires the learner and the more knowledgeable other to scaffold, mediate and guide the learner through the zone of proximal development (zpd). vygotsky’s (1978) term “mediation” is used in the zpd to extend the learners’ cognitive skills from the lower-order to the higher-order cognitive functions to assimilate and accommodate new knowledge until the learner is in a phase of equilibrium. this process appears three times: first socially amongst peers, then on an individual level or between people and thirdly inside the learner where they are able to function effectively independently (vygotsky, 1978). “good learning occurs in the zone of proximal development (zpd)” (verenkikina, 2010:17). in this research project, the teachers scaffolded the new knowledge through using many examples of guided practise and role modelling, so that the learners with asd could move to their own zones of ability and independence. when working with learners with asd, vygotsky (1978) contends that a disability has an impact on the learner’s relations with the community and affects interactions with the general public. this socio-cultural theory stresses the value of learning in and amongst people when rearing and educating learners with disabilities. the zpd is illustrated by vygotsky (1978) as the space between what the learners are currently doing and their potential with support from more knowledgeable others (mkos) and their peers. verenkikina (2010:20) explains that vygotsky argues “rather than having education dragging behind in sociological development it must anticipate it; it must run ahead”. the amount of learning depends upon the individual learner’s potential and readiness to learn (mutekwe, 2018). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 2462020 38(2): 246-254 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) 3. research design and methodology this research may be described as a qualitative study embedded within an interpretive case study (cohen, manion & morrison, 2018). data were collected to explore the selected phenomenon of how three fp teachers taught social skills to their learners with asd. three different types of schools in the western cape were chosen since they accommodated learners with asd: a resource class in a full-service government school (rural), a non-profit school (rural) and a government special needs school (urban). purposive sampling was used to select three foundation phase teachers: t1 [female], t2 [female] and t3 [male] working with high functioning learners with asd. the data were generated through open-ended and one-on-one interviews and being a nonparticipant observer. prior to the study, a pilot study was conducted at the lsen school where the researcher taught. she invited colleagues to pre-test the two data collection instruments before the data collection commenced in order to enhance the value and credibility of this study and to identify possible challenges (dikko, 2016). as a result, the language structure and wording of a few interview questions were adapted, and another question was added. the researcher collected detailed, subjective understandings of the teaching of social skills experienced by the three fp teachers using structured, open-ended, one-on-one interviews with each of the teachers. the open-ended questions provided individualised responses from the teachers because this method enabled the researcher to ask follow-up questions when needed (cohen et al., 2018). observations were used to generate rich, contextual information on the phenomena and enabled the researcher to collect first-hand information. the researcher conducted individual, highly structured observations as a participant observer in the two teachers’ classrooms (flick, 2018). although the researcher tried to observe t3 in his classroom, his children were unexpectedly called to the hall, so he was interviewed instead. the researcher began the data analysis by preparing, transcribing and translating all the collected data and returned it to the teachers to check for accuracy (henning, van rensburg & smit, 2004). once it was approved by the teachers, the researcher read and re-read all the data and then began the inductive data analysis process. the researcher identified similarities within the data that was used to develop categories and themes. the coded data included the experiences of the four social skills discussed in this research paper. to increase the credibility of this study, the researcher utilised instrument triangulation (cohen et al., 2018). she used three structured open-ended, one-on-one interviews along with three classroom observations for the data collection. in order for the researcher to promote validity and collect credible, in-depth responses that were relevant to the research phenomenon, the data collection was conducted in the natural setting (classrooms) of the three fp teachers working with learners with asd. to minimise bias, the researcher asked the three fp teachers to member-check the transcribed interviews to see if they corresponded with their truth (henning, van rensburg & smit, 2004). to improve the trustworthiness of this research project, it was conducted in an ethical manner. ethical clearance was obtained from both the university of technology at which the researcher was a registered student, and the western cape education department (wced) granted the researcher the right to collect data in the three schools. furthermore, signed http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 2472020 38(2): 247-254 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 myburgh, condy & barnard pedagogical approaches to develop social skills consent forms were obtained from all the research participants and the principals of the selected schools. 4. findings and discussion the purpose of this research paper was to investigate how three fp teachers developed four social skills: sharing, self-esteem, behavioural etiquette and independence with their learners with asd. four vignettes provide the background to the discussions. t1 (vignettes 1 and 2) and t2’s (vignette 3) observations are provided then discussed, whereas t3 (vignette 4) was not observed. rather, inside t3’s vignette is a short clip of his interview, followed by a discussion. vignette 1 t1 in a group, t1 told her learners a story about a girl who grabbed another girl’s lollipop and took it for herself and walked away with it. she then role modelled this experience using one of the learners in the class. following this, t1 asked the learners, as a group, what emotions the learner would be feeling and why she would be feeling that. t1 followed up with a discussion asking if this was acceptable behaviour or not. during the interview with t1, she informed the researcher she experienced her learners with asd had started to demonstrate they understood that they must share with their classmates. this became evident in the learners’ response to sharing their experiences of how they would feel if their lollipops were taken without permission. an example of t1 developing the social skill of independence with her learners with asd, was by asking the learners to independently role model the scenario of taking someone else’s lollipop without their permission. for long-term effectiveness of social skill interventions that focus on self-worth and self-reliance, these learners with asd have experienced how to independently identify and resolve social difficulties in everyday situations (lantz, nelson & loftin, 2004). as learners with asd have trouble developing and mastering social skills, they need social skill interventions that enable them to independently participate in a socially acceptable manner in the community (isni, 2018). t1 modelled the social skill of behavioural etiquette by using group work. as she was aware that her learners with asd experienced difficulty in interpreting nonverbal language in social situations, she presented a problem involving behavioural etiquette skills to them in a visual and practical manner (lowth, 2015). t1 prompted and motivated her learners to communicate whether they thought it was acceptable behaviour to take the lollipop without asking permission. this strategy of behavioural etiquette training to improve the interaction of learners with asd with their classmates has been shown to be effective (orton, 2011). vignette 1 indicates how t1 explicitly developed the self-esteem of her learners by providing each of them the opportunity to express how they would feel if someone took their lollipop without permission. t1 focussed on increasing the learners’ self-esteem by teaching all the classmates to respect each other’s verbal contributions and gave everyone a chance to express their views. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 2482020 38(2): 248-254 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) vignette 2 t1 after the first break, t1’s asd class went outside with the mainstream grade r class, to do some gross motor activities as a group. the more independent grade r learners were paired with a “buddy” and a learner with asd during this activity. t1 got all the learners to mirror her when she stretched, crossed her midline and jumped up and down. afterwards the learners and their “buddies” played on the gym equipment. one of the boys with asd pushed in front of the grade r “buddy” to get to the slide and did not say sorry. as individuals with asd do not tend to assimilate skills through implicit learning, it is important that they receive clear and direct instruction from the teacher when they are focusing on the development of specific social skills such as independence (laushey & heflin, 2000). t1 provided direct instruction to guide her learners with asd to interact with the grade r learners in a socially acceptable manner and improve their behavioural etiquette by using the peer support strategy. during the interview, which occurred after the observation, t1 shared how she provided daily assistance and guidance to her learners with asd to encourage the skill of sharing: … sharing has improved a lot with group work. we struggled a lot with the learners to share in the beginning of the year, they did not want share or give anything to each other. this sharing has improved a lot during the year. according to vygotsky’s zpd theory, a child with asd who receives appropriate support from an mko will achieve higher levels of learning than if they attempted the learning on their own. in this example, t1 knew that direct teaching and using vygotsky’s (gindis, 2007) scaffolding skills is useful for teaching learners with asd specific social skills (laushey & heflin, 2000). vignette 3 t2 in t2’s class, each learner had a chance to be the leader for the week. this role included managing the morning ring and assisting the teacher throughout the day with any administrative or teaching/learning tasks. on this particular day, the class captain began the morning ring session. he asked his classmates to say what day it was and how the weather was. after this he said: “we are going to dance with this song today”. he opened his laptop and selected the just dance music program, then selected the justin bieber song. this played on the large interactive whiteboard with him in front of the class facing the whiteboard with his back to the class. he comfortably led the group without any help from t2. vygotsky (1987) contends that learners with disabilities struggle with relationships close to them and on a broader scale with the world, as well as their interactions with the people closest to them. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 2492020 38(2): 249-254 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 myburgh, condy & barnard pedagogical approaches to develop social skills vygotsky (1987:102) asserts that a disability “not only alters the child’s relationship with the world, but above all affects his interaction with people”. t2 addressed the social skill of sharing, by providing each learner with an opportunity of taking a leadership role and learning to respect each other. sharing leadership roles assisted these learners with asd to experience the importance of not interrupting, knowing when to interrupt and dealing with making mistakes (reyes, 2013). all these behaviours lead to treating each other with respect and listening to others’ opinions when they worked in groups. the class captain for that particular day used visual cue cards and asked his colleagues questions such as “what is appropriate clothing for this season?” he showed his pictures of a variety of clothing and asked which clothes were the most appropriate. the peers shared their ideas in a respectful way and completed the activity in a respectful manner. by modelling the morning-routine and allowing each learner to take leadership roles, t2 was encouraging the social skill on working independently with her learners with asd. t2 had previously explained what was expected of her learners in this role of being the class captain and leading the morning-ring. this learner had brought in his own laptop, found his own choice of music for the day and shared it with his peers. the music he chose was timeous as justine bieber was expected to visit south africa. he independently led the morning-ring, answered his peers’ questions and managed their responses. t2 further reinforced behavioural etiquette by teaching her learners with asd to be respectful of each other and not hurt each other’s feelings. t2’s approach reflects sotelo’s (2009) belief that a well-structured routine and good classroom management are vital when it comes to the enhancement of behavioural etiquette of learners with asd. t2 increased the self-esteem of the class captain by providing him with an opportunity that he successfully managed. using modelling combined with stories and discussions, helps learners with asd to learn social skills and develop their self-esteem more effectively (badiah, 2018). vignette 4 t3 while learners were out of the class making bread in the kitchen, the researcher sat in t3’s class and conducted the interview with him. during the interview, there were examples of how he encouraged sharing, independence, behavioural etiquette and self-esteem during an information and communications technology (ict) and a social science lesson. t3 mentions that his class had many successes regarding social skills in general, by integrating different support strategies. t3 encouraged sharing in his classroom by stating: ... the children must be involved and get more answers coming out from their side as well. they will give their own personal experiences and then we relate the personal experiences to other children in the class and bounce questions around. t3’s educational approach reflected ogilvie’s (2008) beliefs of inclusion of students with special needs by providing a respectful and safe environment where the learners could share their opinions and views of internet safety. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 2502020 38(2): 250-254 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) he was aware that the internet and technology are a part of his learners with asd’s daily lives – at school and at home – and taught his learners how to use the internet safely. he expanded the social skills and social experiences of his learners with asd by guiding them to independently communicate with others in an acceptable and safe manner via the internet and social media. t3 used behavioural etiquette to teach his learners how to make friends and communicate in a socially acceptable manner: ... i am teaching acceptable social interaction skills on how to make friends. t3’s focus on behavioural etiquette enabled his learners with asd to form new friendships and is supported by isni (2018) who states that an understanding of social skills can assist learners develop positive friendships. t3 used incidental teaching when enhancing the self-esteem of his learners by sharing his own experiences of rejection during morning ring. he did this to show his learners that anyone can be rejected and victimised, how not to be socially isolated (gates et al., 2017) and that social interactions are vital in order to develop complex social functions. t3 reflected vygotsky’s (1978) view as he used the zpd to promote his students’ self-esteem by using technology that they already knew and expand their knowledge by sharing it with their peers (césar & santos, 2006). 5. conclusion this research identifies and explains pedagogical approaches to address the teaching of social skills with learners with asd. since there have been limited studies (franz et al., 2017) on early intervention programmes of learners with asd in africa and particularly south africa, this research project is important to share. the two lessons learnt from this empirical research will be discussed below. first, knowing that asd is characterised by order and disorder, some pedagogical approaches generate divisions, while those presented here noticeably benefited the learners with asd. these three teachers chose to proactively scaffold their social skills lessons to their learners, where they adjusted their classroom environments and provided practical solutions. they included rather than excluded, they built trust to reassure their learners and acted caringly. they built bridges by creating constructivist classroom environments and offered insights into how their learners with asd learnt social skills to lead humane lives. a second, and final interpretation that can be drawn from this study is that, contrary to the apa (2013:50) definition of learners with asd characterised by a “triad of impairments which involve social integration, communication skills and imagination”, these three teachers provided evidence where they drew on vygotsky’s (1978) notion of scaffolding and created learning opportunities to elevate their learners with asd’s understanding of social skills. they worked towards their learners’ zone of abilities and independence. the findings of this study must be viewed in light of some limitations. first, due to time constraints, the researcher selected only three fp teachers working with learners with asd. second, although all fp teachers mediate many social skills, the researcher limited her study to focus on the following social skills that emerged as the most prominent ones from her data: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 2512020 38(2): 251-254 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 myburgh, condy & barnard pedagogical approaches to develop social skills sharing, self-esteem, behavioural etiquette, and independence. third, all the schools selected were in the western cape. since learners with asd frequently display limited interests, repetitive activities and stereotypical behaviour (dsm-v, 2013), it is proposed that teachers spend time getting to know their learners and are aware of the many support programmes that are available for the development of social skills of fp learners with asd. in addition, teachers can educate learners without asd on the substantial contribution that they can make when they engage in positive interactions, develop a sense of friendship and resolve conflicts with their peers with asd. since no thorough curricular guidelines may ever be available for learners with asd, it is pertinent for parents and communities to become jointly involved in developing the selfesteem of learners with asd for them to reach their full potential and live balanced lives, and not be rejected because of a lack of social skills. 6. disclaimer at the date of submission, this paper was extracted from an unpublished master’s thesis. references adams, d., macdonald, m. & keen, d. 2019. teacher responses to anxiety-related behaviours in students on the 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the autism spectrum: preparing highly qualified educators. kansas: autism asperger publishing co. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.16 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2019.101467 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2011.06.015 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rasd.2011.06.015 https://doi.org/10.1007/bf03168362 pedagogical approaches to develop social skills pedagogical approaches to develop social skills 197 research article 2022 40(3): 197-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mitigating the digital divide in the south african higher education system in the face of the covid-19 pandemic abstract access to higher education has been one of the critical areas of concern in south africa, particularly for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. the corona-virus (covid-19) pandemic has brought the systemic cleavages into sharp relief, with ‘access’ and subsequent ‘success’ emerging as an important variable. availability of digital facilities and internet connectivity have been important factors in enabling participation in higher education during the covid-19 pandemic. the advent of the pandemic has, however, brought a new context to the challenges of higher education access, deepening the precarious position of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. thus, online teaching and learning intensified the digital divide between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’, exacerbating the already existing inequalities in the south african higher education system. the paper reflects on the question of how digital divide and access to learning infrastructure exacerbated inequality among students during the covid-19 pandemic in south african higher education. this question is particularly important, given the rapid digitalisation of the curriculum that many south african institutions are still struggling to align with. this paper aims to interrogate the implications of the covid-19 pandemic on south african higher education, highlighting the challenges of the digital divide and access to learning infrastructure using a social justice approach. the article draws on the work of fraser (1999), which refers to the idea of social justice as distributional justice, re-allocating resources accessed solely by the privileged to the historically disadvantaged. it also aims to understand how the typology of inequality across the differentiated institutions affected the delivery of education during covid-19. this is a qualitative research based on both secondary and primary data exploring official documents, statistics and published materials. the article argues towards a comprehensive and inclusive digital learning strategies with substantial coordination both from government and non-government stakeholders. it recommends that digital pedagogy and online platforms of learning should become an integral element of south african higher education services to ensure the continuity of education; this is necessary to avoid similar difficulties if crises that restrict physical movement occur in the future. keywords: digital divide, social justice, higher education, south africa, covid-19 pandemic author: prof emnet tadesse woldegiorgis1 affiliation: 1university of johannesburg, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i3.13 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(3): 197-211 published: 30 september 2022 received: 04 march 2022 accepted: 03 june 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6371-7832 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 1982022 40(3): 198-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) 1. introduction the covid-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the socio-economic and political landscape of countries throughout the world. even though the severity, effects and consequences of the pandemic are yet to be understood properly, it has already affected various sectors and created a new order that is complex and uncertain. since the outbreak in late december 2019, covid-19 has wreaked havoc across the world in critical sectors, including higher education. according to the april 2020 world bank report, by that time, 175 countries had closed their higher education institutions, affecting a student population of over 220 million (world bank, 2020). the south african higher education institutions and their students have also been deeply affected by the covid-19-related lockdowns. the pandemic led to a nationwide shutdown of face-to-face services, with online remote learning being implemented to avert the ensuing educational crisis. social interaction has since been restricted to varying degrees because of lockdown requirements, including social distancing. these have resulted in unprecedented challenges associated with the physical meeting of students and lecturers at higher education institutions. essop (2021) notes that over 800 000 students enrolled at the 25 campus-based public universities and 100 private higher education institutions in south africa were directly affected when institutions halted face-to-face interaction because of the lockdown. this paper aims to understand the implications of the covid-19 pandemic on south african higher education, highlighting the challenges of the digital divide and access to learning infrastructure. following the outbreak, higher education institutions in south africa had to amend their teaching and learning strategies. innovations aligned to global trends were adopted by the sector so that institutions could still meet their academic targets. reflecting on the context of transition, ahmad (2020) states, “we are entering uncharted territory and working with countries to find hi-tech, low-tech and no-tech solutions to assure the continuity of learning” (ahmad, 2020: 11). many universities in south africa were not ready for a complete transition from face-to-face teaching to online systems, because they did not have the infrastructure or resources to facilitate a complete switch to virtual delivery immediately (see kele & mzilen, 2021; menon & motala, 2021). this was especially difficult for public universities that had practised face-to-face and web-enhanced teaching modalities and had little experience of teaching online. there were therefore detrimental consequences when higher education institutions embraced the new normal – that is, teaching and learning online, and meeting and collaborating from a virtual office via zoom, ms teams, skype, google classroom and whatsapp (essop, 2021). despite known challenges such as a lack of information and communication technology (ict) infrastructure, excessive data costs and a shortage of resources (such as electronic devices), higher education institutions were forced to move to online delivery or emergency remote teaching in response to the lockdown caused by covid-19. although online teaching is a well-planned activity, emergency remote teaching refers to a temporary shift of instructional delivery to an alternative mode of delivery due to crisis circumstances. such teaching involves the use of fully remote solutions for instruction or education that would otherwise be delivered face-to-face or as blended/hybrid courses that are anticipated to return to normal once the crisis/emergency has abated (hodges & fowler, 2020: 1). in emergencies, higher education, as in the case of the covid-19 pandemic, generally rely on basic technological access (mpungose & khoza, 2020). however, in such emergencies, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 1992022 40(3): 199-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 woldegiorgis mitigating the digital divide in the south african higher education system students from disadvantaged backgrounds are vulnerable, and access to technology for higher education training is not easily affordable. the paper draws on the notion of the ‘pedagogy of the marginalized’ (cross & atinde, 2015), defining disadvantaged groups. cross and atinde (2015) define ‘marginalized’ or ‘disadvantaged’ groups within the context of south africa as “those individuals or social groups who, by virtue of their race, gender, geographical location (rural, township or poor neighbourhood), etc., have historically been placed on the margins or periphery of the mainstream social and economic hierarchy” (cross & atinde, 2015: 308). this includes students from low-income families, rural or township areas, and with a multidimensional suite of constraining factors when accessing and participating in higher education. thus, the precarious position of students from disadvantaged backgrounds during the pre-covid-19 era has amplified several challenges that embrace the students’ broad economic and social experiences; these have manifested in diverse forms of academic exclusion. the issue of access to higher education has always been one of the critical areas of concern in the south african higher education system, particularly for those from disadvantaged backgrounds (menon & motala, 2021). however, the advent of the covid-19 pandemic has brought a new context to the challenges of higher education access, deepening the precarious position of students from disadvantaged backgrounds. digital learning platforms have not been fully accessible for many students, especially those from low-income backgrounds. at this crucial juncture, teaching and learning online have thus intensified the digital divide between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ and has exacerbated the already existing inequalities in the south african higher education system (essop, 2021). the impact has been the most severe for institutions working with poor and historically disadvantaged students. furthermore, the pandemic has underscored the reality that the south african higher education system is fragile and not uniformly resilient. the notion of resilience is central here as it emerges from the interrogation of approaches to technology in higher education that have come to the fore as a result of covid-19 and the associated challenges. several pressing and critical questions need to be addressed, including how to reinforce alternative teaching methods and delivery structures – notably, many south african institutions are still struggling with the rapid digitalisation of the curriculum to ensure alignment with the latest digital era. thus, critical reflection on the challenges caused by the digital divide in south african higher education is needed. the article aims to interrogate the implications of the covid-19 pandemic on south african higher education, highlighting the challenges of the digital divide and access to learning infrastructure within a social justice context. it also aims to understand how the typology of inequality across institutions has resulted in the differential delivery of education during covid-19. the article draws on the work of fraser (1999), who refers to the idea of social justice as distributional justice, reallocating resources accessed solely by the privileged to the historically disadvantaged. the transition of teaching and learning from face-to-face to an online platform during covid-19 restrictions brought the discussion of a digital divide between the haves and the have-notes, i.e., the question of access, distribution of education resources and outcomes for different groups, particularly the marginalised and disadvantaged. the notion of social justice also includes the concepts of inclusiveness and equity. the social justice framework informs south africa’s higher education approach as bell (1997: 3) notes, “the goal of social justice education is full and equal participation of all groups in society that is mutually shaped to meet their needs.” http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 2002022 40(3): 200-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) 2. methodology the sudden shift to online learning during the covid-19 pandemic has created a new order that is complex and uncertain. various national and international institutions have tried to document the numerical implications of the pandemic, generating various data sets on access to digital facilities and learning infrastructures during covid-19. this study is a qualitative research based on both secondary and primary data, exploring official government documents, statistics and published materials. this study utilised data sets and statistics from the council on higher education (che), department of higher education and training (dhet) reports, universities’ annual and quarterly reports, the south africa general household survey, and other national reports on covid-19. it also involved keeping a weekly diary of significant events during the lockdown, constructing a written account of institutional experiences regarding the pandemic and meanings attributed to the experiences. 3. internet access and digital learning in south african higher education according to datareportal (kemp, 2021), south africa is one of the most urbanised countries in africa, with 67.6% of the population living in urban centres (kemp, 2021). yet, the gini inequality index indicates that south africa is ranked among the countries with the greatest and most persistent inequality rates in the world (world bank, 2020). this is also strongly reflected in south africa’s stubbornly high inequality between urban and rural areas, despite government efforts to eradicate this disparity (murahwa, 2019). adding to the challenges in the higher education space, many of the students from disadvantaged backgrounds arrive from rural regions of south africa such as limpopo, mpumalanga, the eastern cape and northwest province. developments in the past two decades – including the introduction of ‘free’ higher education for students from disadvantaged communities – have dramatically increased the number of students from designated (black, coloured and indian) groups (cross, 2018). yet, despite huge investment and numerous initiatives, there continues to be a significant lack of academic achievement by students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds (essop, 2021). the south african higher education system has also made significant progress on the expansion of its ict and digital learning since the 1990s (basol, cigdem & unver, 2018); yet access to these facilities has generally been confined to campus spaces. both the white paper 3: a programme for the transformation of higher education of 1997 and the national plan for higher education published in 2001 acknowledge the key role of the ict revolution in south africa. the national plan explicitly notes the critical and central role that higher education needs to play in contributing to the development of an information society, both in terms of skills development and research (czerniewicz, ravjee & mlitwa, 2006). however, a common thread underpinning all these strategies is that they have remained campus-centred and have given little consideration to student learning beyond the boundaries of the university campus. difficulty with internet access is one of the barriers to expanding the availability of higher education learning beyond campus spaces. despite south africa having one of the highest internet penetration rates in africa (64.0% in january 2021), the majority of this access are accounted for by metropolitan households (kemp, 2021). the internet penetration rate is calculated as the percentage of the total population of a given country or region that uses the internet in a given period (soomro et al., 2020). thus, connectivity is still skewed towards urban http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 2012022 40(3): 201-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 woldegiorgis mitigating the digital divide in the south african higher education system areas, while it remains a significant challenge in rural regions, with limpopo province being the lowest at just 43% (kemp, 2021). a significant proportion of the historically disadvantaged students in south african higher education live in such rural areas. digital technology and ict facilities provide a comprehensive set of technological tools and resources used to create, communicate and manage information. besides internet connectivity and access, technologies include radio, television, telephone, satellite systems and computer devices (owusu-ansah, 2013). within the context of higher education services, internet connectivity and digital facilities (including smartphones and computers) are particularly important indicators of relative access to online learning platforms and digital facilities; they can therefore highlight inequalities in digital access. however, inequality in skills levels of internet users also creates uneven access to digital learning. the transition to virtual platforms without equitable access to skills and ict facilities during the covid-19 lockdown has deepened the already existing inequalities among the country’s diverse groups of students. the inequality has also been manifested across south african academic institutions, as they have shown different levels of readiness for the transition to online education. the introduction of ict infrastructure and digital facilities in higher education has profound implications for access, equity, management, efficiency, pedagogy (method and practice of teaching) and quality of online teaching and learning (soomro et al., 2020). even though several higher education institutions in south africa have made significant progress in building ict infrastructure, the efficiency of digital pedagogy at many of them is still poorly developed. several pedagogical challenges are associated with the relocation of course content to an online platform. the recent emergency re-alignment – very often by trial and error – of existing courses for south african higher education institutions into a logical structure suitable for online education has not always been accompanied by suitable pedagogies and methodologies. course structure had been neglected and remained severely undeveloped, despite the need for revision, given the country’s history. south african universities are still struggling with anomalies relating to alternative teaching methods and delivery structures, particularly with the rapid digitalisation of the curriculum. in other words, many institutions are still struggling to align with the latest digital era (fourth industrial revolution). given that most academic staff had had little, if any, experience or training in the pedagogy or delivery of online learning, during the adjustment to the pandemic, the academics with teaching responsibilities quickly had to upskill and familiarise themselves with online learning platforms (and all that entails – including increased administration tasks). while the covid-19 pandemic has put enormous pressure on south african higher education institutions (that is, adapting to remote and digital learning), it has also fast-tracked the adaptation necessary to align to 21st-century needs. calling for quick adaptation on the part of educational systems, the catalytic impact of covid-19 can thus be viewed as beneficial to south africa’s educational landscape in the long run, especially considering the growing pressure to digitalise learning (olugbara & letseka, 2020). given that the virus had a ripple effect from starting point(s) that spread to the global scale, higher education has had to embrace this reality, and further accept that the legacy of the covid-19 crisis will be with us for years (perhaps even decades) to come. thus, it is paramount to reflect on pedagogical practices in creating and maintaining a sustainable and responsible environment that promotes the digital learning skillsets of the higher education community – arguably part of their responsibility as digital citizens in the 21st century. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 2022022 40(3): 202-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) 4. the challenges of the digital divide in south african higher education accessing ict facilities and digital platforms from home during the covid-19 pandemic has been a privilege accessible to those who can afford to pay for services (soomro et al., 2020). thus, at this crucial juncture, both online teaching and learning at many south african higher education institutions have deepened the digital divide between the ‘haves’ and the ‘havenots’. the term ‘digital divide’ was first coined by a former united states assistant secretary for commerce for telecommunications and communication, larry irving, jr, referring to the uneven distribution and access to ict infrastructure in societies (dragulanescu, 2002). the concept has been used to explain the gap that exists between those with and without access to ict and digital facilities (paul, 2002). the notion of digital divide can also be narrated within the social justice framework, since, at its core, social justice is about the fair distribution of opportunities including digital facilities as they become a decisive factor to access learning facilities (fraser, 1999). the notion of the ‘digital divide’ does not, however, fully explain the complete spectrum of inequality across socio-economic lines in societies, as it is often conceptualised in binary terms positioning individuals as either having or lacking access. the skill and capacity of each user to make the most of different forms of ict are as important as access itself. there is a strong correlation between the digital divide and other forms of social inequality. generally, the highest levels of digital exclusion are found in the lowest income sectors. some scholars (see hargittai, 2003; van deursen et al., 2017), prefer to use ‘digital inequality’, as it refines the understanding of the digital divide as a spectrum of inequality across diverse segments of society, depending on differences among several dimensions of technology access and use. these dimensions include race, ethnicity, gender, settlement pattern, economic status and class. however, both concepts; that is, divide and inequality, emphasise the uneven access to and use of digital facilities and internet connectivity based on people’s pre-existing and deeply embedded socio-economic and cultural contexts (beaunoyer, dupéré & guitton, 2020). a comprehensive analysis of the digital divide indicates that it is not an independent phenomenon, but a variable that reflects socio-economic inequalities in areas such as education, health, employment, and access to knowledge bases, to mention but a few (van deursen et al., 2017). narrowing the digital divide could play a crucial role in the development of emerging economies such as south africa because it can enhance socio-economic equality, further social mobility and improve innovation/economic growth (shenglin et al., 2017). african countries, however, have an especially long way to go towards ensuring affordable access to internet and ict facilities. according to the 2019 world bank report, with the current average broadband penetration rate of 25%, africa needs to invest an estimated $100 billion in the next decade to achieve universal access (world bank, 2019). in the aftermath of the covid-19 lockdown, south african higher education has become one of the sectors in which the digital divide is the most evident. this is displayed via a wide variety of challenges linked to the deeply rooted legacies of apartheid and its policies of dispossession. these set the context of inequality regarding access to technology in south africa. the nature of higher education institutions in south africa is also reflected in the deep-seated inequalities between the historically ‘white’/advantaged institutions and ‘black’/disadvantaged institutions (essop, 2021). as argued by mnguni (2016), universities are reflections of social experiences and as such the higher education system in south africa http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 2032022 40(3): 203-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 woldegiorgis mitigating the digital divide in the south african higher education system is also a reflection of the legacies of apartheid. when the national party came into power in 1948, it created a racially segregated system. the extension of university education act in 1959 further proposed to have separate universities for black students and white students (coetzee & geggus,1980). the act was an extension of apartheid policy that excluded people according to race. the inequities of the apartheid legacy, represent serious obstacles to the effective delivery of higher education services to the disadvantage communities. nevertheless, the covid-19 pandemic further broadened the concept of access to embrace issues beyond the classroom (e.g., data and connectivity, electricity, access to appropriate technology, including basic living conditions, and the notion of ‘home education’). while the responsibility for some of these aspects falls beyond the domain of higher education, covid-19 has pointed out the need for agile synchronies and synergies across institutions and with other sectors. access to ict infrastructure and/or digital facilities is also heightened by the historical inequalities and marginalisation of black students as a result of the legacy of apartheid. this is reflected in the findings of the stats sa 2020 general household survey (ghs) report of students enrolled at 24 of the 26 public higher education institutions. according to the report, 16% of students have access to home wi-fi; however, only 7% of students benefitting from the national student financial aid scheme (nsfas) which is a national funding agency, have access to home wi-fi, versus 33% of non-nsfas students. moreover, only 51% of nsfas students own laptops versus 69% of non-nsfas students (department of higher education and training [dhet], 2020). the mechanisms for an emergency response to the challenges of the digital divide also highlight the infrastructural inequalities that exist between historically white urban universities and historically black rural universities (czerniewicz et al., 2020: 961). the former had the necessary technology and infrastructure to migrate systems to the online space, while the latter have been compelled to put their systems on hold during the covid-19 pandemic. thus, during the transition to online learning in the aftermath of covid-19 lockdown, only students who have adequate psycho-social and material resources (and mostly from affluent backgrounds) have been comparatively successful at taking advantage of new forms of education. this is despite the universities’ efforts regarding the systematic distribution of equipment (laptops or ipads), the allocation of data to minimise data and connectivity problems, and the use of available ict, including blackboard, ms teams, zoom and whatsapp (hodges & fowler, 2020). the uneven access to the internet at the household level has impacted online learning during the lockdown in many rural households. according to the 2020 general household survey (ghs) report of stats sa, even though 63% of south africans have access to the internet, mobile devices are the most-used means of accessing it by households, especially in rural areas. nationally, internet access using mobile devices (58.7%) was much more common than access at home (9.1%), at work (18.6%) and elsewhere (10.7%) (stats sa, 2020). digital learning consumes comparatively large volumes of data as it involves accessing various audio-visual learning materials. thus, affordability and cost of internet data become part of the equation when it comes to the digital divide. south africa is still one of the most expensive countries in africa in terms of internet data costs. for instance, mobile data in south africa is ranked as the 16th-most expensive out of 45 countries in africa, at $6.81 per gb in 2020 (research ict africa, 2020). to alleviate the challenges of internet access at home for higher education students, the dhet negotiated with mobile network operators for reduced data rates for nsfas students http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 2042022 40(3): 204-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) to receive 10 gb daytime and 20 gb night-time data for three months (tamrat & teferra, 2020). even if smartphones are essential devices for accessing information from the world wide web, they are not as effective as personal computers or laptops for teaching, learning and research in higher education. the distribution of personal computers among students in south africa has also been amongst the lowest in the world (essop, 2021). according to the 2020 national survey by the dhet on ‘students’ access to and use of learning materials survey report’, almost 20% fewer nsfas students own laptops than non-nsfas students, and 90% indicate that the device they own is a smartphone (dhet, 2020). the extent of the digital divide is illustrated by the fact that while 97.5% of students live in municipalities where more than 50% of households have access to electricity, of this group only between 10–20% of households have internet access and 30–47% of households have access to a suitable device (either a laptop or tablet, irrespective of whether shared or not) (whitelaw et al., 2020). before the covid-19 pandemic, south african universities were largely unprepared for the sudden switch to online learning – not only in terms of digitalising course contents, staff training on digital pedagogy or online teaching, but also preparing students for a full transition to online learning and engagement. face-to-face teaching and learning environments are synchronous (in real-time), and communication technologies are not necessarily required (see kele & mzilen, 2021; menon & motala, 2021). this method was the norm within the pre-covid-19 context in higher education, even if the internet brought flexible access to study material. in contrast, web-enhanced teaching and learning rely on a learning management system (lms) or web-based tools to upload resources for students. students do not necessarily have the same level of competence and this varies based on their prior experience with technology in their households and schools. there are three tiers to digital skills – literacy, fluency and mastery (chetty et al., 2017). if a student is digitally literate, they can conduct basic functions using a range of technical tools, but to engage properly in virtual higher education learning spaces, fluency and mastery are required. the actual engagement within the learning space depends on the ability of students to use the technology for learning. despite most students in south africa being ‘digital natives’ (prensky, 2001) and experienced users of technology (basol et al., 2018), their proficiency is primarily at literacy levels, which may not aid much in understanding technology for digital learning (nami & vaezi, 2018). the proficiency is even worse for students from poor economic backgrounds who are not exposed to the digital platforms for learning until they join universities (czerniewicz et al., 2020). bozkurt and sharma (2020) argue that during any crisis or disaster, students will not necessarily remember the content delivered, but they will recall how they felt during interaction with their lecturers and peers and how they were supported during this period. the disparity among higher education students in terms of technology usage and skill for higher education virtual learning contributes to the challenges of the digital divide in south africa. students from disadvantaged backgrounds who do not have appropriate access to digital learning facilities or lack the resilience and engagement to learn on their own are at risk of falling behind (schleicher, 2020). thus, the challenges of the digital divide in south african higher education are reflected through two interrelated factors. first is the unequal distribution of ict infrastructure and digital facilities among students because of deep-rooted socio-economic inequalities. higher education students from rural and disadvantaged backgrounds and communities have limited access to digital technologies owing to high costs and lack of infrastructure/ict facilities, which creates unequal access to virtual learning. the rural population of south africa comprised http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 2052022 40(3): 205-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 woldegiorgis mitigating the digital divide in the south african higher education system on average around 33% of the country’s total population in 2019 (plecher, 2020), while in provinces like the eastern cape, mpumalanga and limpopo, the rural population and hence the population of students from rural areas are comparatively greater. secondly, students from disadvantaged backgrounds often have inadequate skills levels and insufficient ability to fully tap into the benefits of digital learning. students who are not exposed to digital learning platforms before joining universities are at a particular disadvantage. providing state-of-theart infrastructure in ict technologies to students on campus has neither lead to an immediate adoption of such facilities, nor to conditions suitable for addressing the challenges of poor digital skills. studies show that digital training is the crucial component in harnessing better use of ict infrastructure investments made by higher education institutions (chetty et al., 2017). 5. responses of south african universities to the digital divide the introduction of digital and online learning in higher education systems is a journey that started in the early 1990s for many african countries. south african universities have also been trying to introduce e-learning to expand, access and keep up with innovative technological tools that will advance the teaching and learning experience. online and distance education were already flourishing in parts of the south african higher education system long before the covid-19 pandemic. thus, the urgency of integrating digital technology into south african universities had been felt long before this time. for instance, with over 300 000 students, unisa was already africa’s largest open-distance learning institution in 2016 (queiros & de villiers, 2016). furthermore, the rapid improvement in access to internet connections over recent decades facilitated the process of information and knowledge-sharing among many higher education institutions in south africa. many universities in the country had also already introduced various kinds of online learning management systems (lmss) and digital strategies to optimise service delivery and upscale productivity (mpungose & khoza, 2020). the covid-19 pandemic has changed the context of online learning and digitalisation as it has compelled higher education systems to fully embrace virtual platforms that provide access for all to higher education services. higher education institutions had to intervene with strategies to ensure that academic programmes could continue despite uncertain times. nevertheless, the digital divide remains a major factor, limiting the feasibility of e-learning in south africa. studies highlight different response mechanisms that have been implemented to remedy the challenges of access to digital facilities and internet connectivity; hence, higher education institutions provide students with laptops and wi-fi access inside residences (essop, 2021). the nsfas has also initiated a business plan to facilitate the continuation of student funding, application queries, processing of appeals and general assistance. it has further ensured, during the covid-19 pandemic, that students receive their allowances to which they are entitled to sustain themselves; continue with academic activities online; as well as to pay for learning materials. the reduced rates for data charged by mobile network operators noted earlier, as negotiated by the government (tamrat & teferra, 2020), went some way to addressing the access to data, even if more permanent solutions do need to be found. the nsfas has launched the digital learning device project, whereby nsfas-funded students can apply to receive a laptop from their learning material allowance. close to 50 000 laptops were distributed to nsfas students at various universities (dhet, 2020). south african higher education institutions also adopted various strategies for remote multimodal teaching and learning during the period of the lockdown. most institutions made swift commitments to do http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 2062022 40(3): 206-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) what was feasible to make their systems equitably accessible to their students (kele & mzilen, 2021). this included providing free technological gadgets (computers/laptops, data and study material) to students from disadvantaged backgrounds, as well as the flexible application of assessment deadlines to cater for those who might have connectivity challenges in their communities. despite these efforts, digital learning platforms have not been fully accessible for many students, especially from low-income backgrounds. providing comprehensive and inclusive digital learning at little or no cost requires substantial coordination among government and non-governmental stakeholders to rally sustainably behind such tools and platforms. the south african government has also managed to generate funding from international organisations such as the world bank. a glimpse of the world bank’s portfolio on higher education indicates that africa as a whole has been receiving the biggest slice in terms of higher education funding – us$3.8 billion, with a total of about us$9.8 billion investing in the sector globally. in january 2022, the world bank also approved south africa’s request for a us$750 million development policy loan. this loan is intended to support and accelerate the covid-19 response mechanisms that maintain resilience and protect disadvantaged and vulnerable communities from the unfavourable socio-economic impacts of the pandemic (world bank, 2022). the biggest challenge, however, remains the once-off/short-term modalities implemented by the ministry of higher education, various agencies and higher education institutions to alleviate the digital divide. this approach to alleviating the crisis will not address structural and systemic concerns regarding the digital divide. rather, policy measures and practices become fundamental in creating and maintaining a sustainable and responsible environment that promotes equal access to ict infrastructure; the building of information literacy skillsets both of lecturers and learners is another crucial component of this sustainability. the latter is central to responsible roles as digital citizens in the 21st century. while leadership at many universities worked hard to ensure that emergency remote teaching continued, the pandemic-driven shift to remote teaching and online learning has not been well-coordinated at many universities. thus, for most institutions, the transition to emergency response teaching and multimodal remote learning systems was made with insufficient technical and digital pedagogical support (kele & mzilen, 2021). higher education lecturers were expected to make a swift transition to emergency remote learning without a reasonable level of technical and digital pedagogical training. nevertheless, each institution has taken a different strategy to the risk-adjusted, phased-in return, based on their context and readiness, and in line with their detailed institutional plans and strategies. a useful distinction has also been made between teaching with technology and teaching through technology (schleicher, 2020). lecturers who previously used technology to support face-to-face/contact teaching to construct engaging learning opportunities, no longer have the blended option when teaching online. in the latter context, lecturers had to teach largely through technology and consequently, the teaching and learning process has had to be rethought. in some cases, lecturers used alternative ways of teaching, conscious of the internet access challenges that students face (menon & motala, 2021). even though there has been a significant degree of adaptation and improvisation to ensure the continuity of teaching and learning, there have been severe budgetary, knowledge, skills and pedagogical constraints. furthermore, the uncertainty as to how long the pandemic will last has a strong bearing on the ability to plan the academic processes. even though providing immediate remedies for the digital divide, as well as access to requisite technologies and data as necessary conditions for virtual teaching and learning, these cannot be lasting solutions http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 2072022 40(3): 207-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 woldegiorgis mitigating the digital divide in the south african higher education system to the digital divide. instead, the service needs to be integrated into the operation of the higher education system. strategies and interventions during covid-19 should continue to be framed around supporting student challenges, which will, now need to extend not to the nontraditional student, but rather to the non-traditional space of learning. this underlines the call being made by higher education stakeholders for ‘responsive universities’ in the 21st century, whereby university programmes are connected more closely with the aspirations and needs of the broader communities they serve. this is especially relevant in mitigating the challenges faced by students from disadvantaged backgrounds. the ad hoc transition from face-to-face to online learning has caused a serious moral dilemma, yet there is a societal expectation not to disrupt the plans and academic careers of thousands of poor students (menon & motala, 2021). thus, the challenges of access to higher education within the context of a pandemic ought to be conceptualised to expand digital and online facilities to all students beyond campus environments. higher education institutions have adopted different strategies to mitigate the challenges of virtual teaching and learning during the covid-19 pandemic. among others, this includes the preparation of course documents for online delivery, and the provision of supporting documents, resource packages and reading materials using virtual learning platforms. moreover, addressing confusion associated with emergency learning is part of the mitigating process; as such, universities have set up hotlines and information centres providing up-to-date information for students and parents through frequent messages, explanations, questions and answers. more flexible approaches have been adopted reorganising assessment procedures (adjusting, annulling or rescheduling exams) to meet the demands of students. lecturers have been encouraged to record their classes through automated video-recording venues so that students have flexible timetables to access lectures from home. as stated above, universities have also made large-scale data purchases for all students, identified digitally excluded students and tried to provide devices where possible. emergency remote learning in south africa has compelled the higher education sector to make changes that were long overdue by pushing the boundaries of students’ ability to engage virtually with their learning. nevertheless, the higher education system still needs to create a seamless system of student support and a comprehensive digital and ict policy if no student is to be left behind. the paper explores the implication of the digital divide among various social groups in the south african higher education system on access to higher education services during the covid-19 pandemic. it discusses the complex relationship between access to digital facilities and learning infrastructures, highlighting the challenges faced by both institutions and students from disadvantaged backgrounds. the paper recommends designing an all-inclusive digital learning strategy collaborating with both governmental and non-government agencies of education services. as such, digital pedagogy has to be mainstreamed in higher education services to ensure the continuity of education during similar crises that might restrict physical movement in the future. 6. conclusion the covid-19 pandemic has brought a new layer of complexity to the higher education sector that demands a different dimension to the notion of access to higher education services. the traditional notion of learning through face-to-face classroom interactions has been significantly altered as virtual platforms have become the new normal. this has brought renewed discussion on digital equality and its effect on access to higher education services. even though several http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 2082022 40(3): 208-211 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) south african higher education institutions already had experience with both online and blended learning approaches before the covid-19 pandemic, they were not prepared for the virtual transition of such magnitude. the prior experiences of virtual approaches were mostly campus-based or campus-centred and gave little consideration to student learning, particularly the dynamics beyond the boundaries of the university campus. moreover, the competence and skills level required to participate fully in virtual learning and properly access knowledge from digital spaces are not at uniform levels among students; rather, these vary based largely on students’ prior experience with technology in their households and schools. there are also challenges related to digital pedagogy, as most academic staff have little, if any, experience or training in the pedagogy or delivery of online learning. the article has interrogated the implications of the covid-19 pandemic on south african higher education, highlighting the challenges of the digital divide and access to learning infrastructure. the article has argued for comprehensive and inclusive digital learning strategies with substantial coordination both from government and non-government stakeholders. it has also been argued that digital pedagogy and online platforms of learning should become an integral element of south african higher education services to ensure the continuity of education; this is necessary to avoid similar difficulties if crises that restrict physical movement occur in the future. references ahmad, a.s. 2020. why you should ignore all that coronavirus-inspired productivity 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en/news/press-release/2019/10/17/achieving-broadband-access-for-all-in-africa-comes-witha-100-billion-price-tag [accessed 17 october 2019]. world bank. 2020. the covid-19 crisis response: supporting tertiary education for continuity, adaptation, and innovation. http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/621991586463915490/wbtertiary-ed-and-covid-19-crisis-for-public-use-april-9.pdf [accessed 18 february 2021]. world bank. 2022. south africa’s covid-19 response gets a $750 million boost. retrieved from the world bank – i brd/ida: https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/01/20/ south-africa-s-covid-19-response-gets-a-750-million-boost [accessed 31 january 2022]. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.13 https://doi.org/10.1016/s2589-7500(20)30142-4 https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2019/10/17/achieving-broadband-access-for-all-in-africa-comes-with-a-100-billion-price-tag https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2019/10/17/achieving-broadband-access-for-all-in-africa-comes-with-a-100-billion-price-tag https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2019/10/17/achieving-broadband-access-for-all-in-africa-comes-with-a-100-billion-price-tag http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/621991586463915490/wb-tertiary-ed-and-covid-19-crisis-for-public-use-april-9.pdf http://pubdocs.worldbank.org/en/621991586463915490/wb-tertiary-ed-and-covid-19-crisis-for-public-use-april-9.pdf https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/01/20/south-africa-s-covid-19-response-gets-a-750-million-boost https://www.worldbank.org/en/news/press-release/2022/01/20/south-africa-s-covid-19-response-gets-a-750-million-boost _hlk95890806 _hlk46875016 _hlk46863746 _hlk95835864 1342023 41(2): 134-150 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 perspectives on dialogue and care in teaching, learning relationships in an everchanging online higher education landscape1 abstract this article explores whether pedagogies of dialogue and care are evidenced in how lecturers engage online with their students in teaching and learning on learning management systems (lmses). many lecturers in the online higher education landscape predominantly come from affluent educational habitus, whereas many students come from working-class backgrounds. many students struggle with internet connectivity, the cost of mobile data, as well as software and hardware issues that prevent them from accessing quality tertiary education. the south african education and training system is unevenly distributed and has too many barriers to growth for many working-class students from an online learning perspective. all online higher education institutions are responsible for creating teaching and learning outcomes that are achievable for students, as well as empowering them to take part in their own learning, which ought to speak to how these institutions create dialogue and care for students. moreover, a student’s full potential as a person must also be developed when setting the content and standards on lms platforms like blackboard. a pedagogy of care as a holistic pedagogy emphasises the relationship between the lecturer and the student (social consciousness). an interpretivist paradigm was employed in this study. identified outcomes for the use of lmses exploring staff’s engagement with students through blackboard were employed in a recent academic article based on a project done by the university of the free state’s centre for teaching and learning (ctl). from this quantitative document, an analysis was made by the researcher to sustain the following three broad themes. these include lending support to students participating in online teaching and learning, supporting students in building relationships on online teaching and learning platforms and the challenges faced by lecturers in caring for students in online teaching and learning. the most obvious finding to emerge from this study is that social class plays an active role in the decision-making in the online teaching and learning process, as lecturers are the unwitting tools 1 this article is the dissemination of a phd entitled “exploring deliberative democracy in the higher education online space: towards dialogical and caring pedagogies,” under the supervision of dr. c. tsotetsi & dr e. barnett, department of education foundations and higher education, faculty of education, free state university. author: doniwen pietersen1 affiliation: 1university of the free state, south africa doi: https://doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v41i2.6291 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2023 41(2): 134-150 published: 30 june 2023 received: 17 may 2022 accepted: 25 may 2023 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3050-589x https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 1352023 41(2): 135-150 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 pietersen perspectives on dialogue and care in teaching, learning relationships of the ruling class. this is foregrounded in whether pedagogies of dialogue and care are evidenced in how lecturers engage online with students on lms platforms such as blackboard. important observations are noted and can be summarised as follows: the fourth industrial revolution (4ir), if managed by online and higher education spaces, could potentially be a landscape where the nature of the relationship between lecturer and student is neither docile nor self-gratifying. instead, such a relationship has the potential to be transformative because teaching and learning should empower working-class students to become successful graduates. keywords: covid-19 pandemic, fourth industrial revolution, higher education, learning management system, pedagogies of care, social capital, student engagement, student success, technology 1. introduction despite the end of apartheid in 1994, severe socio-economic inequalities still persist in south africa today. nowhere is this more apparent than in education, where disadvantaged youth are not equipped with the skills they need to succeed in life. the challenge for educators at institutions of higher learning is to alleviate these inequalities as an essential foundation of pedagogies of care in order to turn our society around (lawrence & maphalala, 2021). coupled with this, higher education is faced with the following challenge: the covid-19 pandemic has disrupted the lives of students in different ways, depending not only on their level and course of study but also on the point they have reached in their programmes. those coming to the end of one phase of their education and moving on to another, such as those transitioning from school to tertiary education, or from tertiary education to employment, face particular challenges. (daniel, 2020: 92). the onset of the pandemic resulted in a drastic increase in the use of online teaching and learning platforms among south african universities. has this resulted in the engagement between student and lecturer becoming a richer, more positive relationship? in order to answer this question, this research will frame pedagogies of care within an online, blended teaching and learning environment to ascertain the engagement between lecturer and student – a relationship that is so often ignored in an online context. this is important because it is so critical for dialogue in order to address any inequalities that may exist in a post-pandemic environment. given that online higher education is often ‘faceless’, this research contends that the responsibility to offer a democratic space of care is limited and is largely the responsibility of the lecturer. the question is whether lecturers exercise this responsibility through dialogue and care, and if it is evidenced in how lecturers engage online with their students in teaching and learning on lms platforms such as blackboard. by implication, social class comes into play because of the huge impact social class has on the decisions lecturers make. however, it does not appear that lecturers engage adequately with their students in terms of social consciousness,2 but rather are largely interested in achieving module and course outcomes (mpungose & khoza, 2022). noddings (1984: 113) posits that this kind of social connected awareness in the higher education space is difficult to “proximate ... under whose gaze i fall” if there is not a deliberate stance to create interactions and engagements. this includes lecturers being able to know 2 according to pavlidis (2015: 1), social consciousness is: “consciousness in the sense of knowledge of the objective reality and consciousness in the sense of awareness of oneself as a subject in his/her social ties with other persons-subjects”. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 1362023 41(2): 136-150 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) their way around the lms, such as blackboard, and creating communities of engagement that support students’ needs. this might have to happen in a stop-start manner because of the need for continuous evaluation which may prevent lecturers from fully utilising the digital tools at their disposal (zawacki-richter et al., 2019). max weber (2017) places this kind of transformation on the ontological locality of social class – it is a liminal space that has ethical implications. people who are closely associated with one another in terms of wealth, power and status tend to stick together. this is also true of the lecturer-student relationship, while the reverse also applies. where there is a mismatch between lecturer and student, misunderstandings and problems arise, not just in terms of social consciousness, but also in terms of technological challenges (ditaunyane, 2008). it is therefore crucial that it is never assumed that caring takes place in online higher education (pietersen, 2023). this is what this research problematises and there is real apprehension for opponents. for example, selwyn (2019: 16) surmises that: … as with digital technologies in general, digital data do not offer a neat technical fix to education dilemmas – no matter how compelling the output might be. moreover, the same claim is made by sabiha and oualid (2022: 127), who write: … the higher education sector had not experienced remarkable development in terms of digitalisation, except for a few activities in a few sectors such as health, industry and services that have experienced a gradual evolution to new information and communication technologies. in a country like south africa, one needs to consider the big gaps between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ in society, particularly concerning data and technology (lembani et al., 2020). from a marxist perspective, people can be separated into the working (proletariat) class, middle (bourgeoisie) class, and upper classes. these distinctions cause much conflict to arise – the poor fighting for equality for all, while the rich fight to maintain their prestigious position within society. this throws the interaction between 4ir, students, lecturers and tertiary education off balance as the sociological conflict theory plays itself out. the online relationship between lecturer and student is important to frame through this lens, because “caregiving and the related moral element of competence refers to ensuring that the care required or needed by the person being cared for, is met” (feldman, 2020: 13). this article discusses how dialogue and care are evidenced in how lecturers engage online with their students in teaching and learning on digital platforms. this discussion includes their pedagogy of engagement through examining their teaching values, abilities and equitable distribution of resources when using an lms to create a secure and welcoming learning environment. the prospect of offering pupils a learning environment that motivates them to become engaged citizens is also covered in the article. moving from the literature review, the themes of class stratification in relation to higher education and the evaluation of measures to boost online engagement will also be explored. the interpretivist underpinnings employed in this study explore whether pedagogies of dialogue and care are evidenced in student and lecturer relationships in the online education lms space. the paper will then go on to detail how dialogue and care are suggested from an instructional online teaching and learning perspective before arriving at some conclusions. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 1372023 41(2): 137-150 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 pietersen perspectives on dialogue and care in teaching, learning relationships 2. literature review if online higher education is constructed around the lecturer-student relationship (social consciousness) and not just technology, then the value proposition for a pedagogy of care as a holistic pedagogy has the potential to usher students towards active citizenry. this idea is important for its contribution to deliberative democracy in higher education and online spaces in order to foster inclusive learning environments for students where dialogical and compassionate pedagogies from a south african perspective are prioritised. 2.1 location of class stratification in relation to teaching and learning even though class stratification is unjust, it can nevertheless be seen in how dialogue and care are displayed by lecturers in their online engagement with students. ignoring the habitus3 in the students’ working-class background, any ‘building blocks’ thereafter may result in challenges with the 4ir environment, which consequently could diminish care in online learning platforms. it has previously been stated what impact was made through the ufs’s ctl project (pietersen, 2022:4). it showed that with the relevant role-players, mostly lecturers, dialogue and care are critical in the teaching and learning process. tronto (2017: 32) poignantly describes this phenomenon as follows: … all humans are vulnerable and fragile, some more so than others, and … all humans are at some point in their lives vulnerable, which requires them to rely on others for care and support. humans are both recipients and givers of care, although a person’s capacity and need for care shifts and changes throughout life. where human vulnerability and fragility exists, stratification exists, and where stratification exists, conflict is sure to arise. however, one’s location and rank can change according to individual achievements, even though class is still strongly determined by one’s social background (anderson & taylor, 2006: 211-228). this creates an uneven balance of power in the teaching and learning relationship between students and lecturers. even though social class is predetermined, it is the factor in society which matters significantly and can be challenged, allowing deliberative, caring education that is inclusive and based on dialogue to take place. engagement of this kind may not matter immediately to lecturers in the online teaching and learning space. however, it is concerning that many lecturers are oblivious to the “phantom” power they wield that determines social class (feldman, 2020: 12). this has the potential to directly influence lecturers’ decisions negatively – including decisions to engage with students from diverse socio-economic and linguistic backgrounds. however, if these decisions to engage with students are executed well, the use of 4ir technology in online higher education and the care for students may yield long-lasting positive results. the question then becomes: what connection do lecturers have beyond clever technology to enhance the teaching and learning experience in order to send the signal that caring is taking place? 3 according to navarro (2006: 16) who succinctly summarises bourdieu, habitas can be defined as “the way society becomes deposited in persons in the form of lasting dispositions, or trained capacities and structured propensities to think, feel and act in determinant ways, which then guide them”. this definition has been referred to throughout the article. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 1382023 41(2): 138-150 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) figure 2: connections4 that need consideration for pedagogies of care the above infographic, adapted by cohen and ball (1999), shows how e-learning can be differentiated to make it more meaningful for students. the first stage shows how learning is standardised, such as pre-recorded lessons in the case of distance education. the second stage features an increasing level of differentiation to suit the needs of students, such as one-on-one online tutoring. in the third stage, more opportunities are found for students to practise their newly-gained knowledge through practice exercises. this can be further enhanced in the fourth stage through video tutorials and games, which in turn enhance learner engagement further. pedagogies of care necessitate thorough acknowledgement and engagement with students by lecturers. they are confronted with a choice: to favour their own social class or that of the students they teach. students flourish when the lecturer’s instruction allows them to engage with the content in various ways. however, this can only be achieved when lecturers move beyond standardised education and offer their students differentiated, expanding opportunities to learn – thus facilitating a pedagogy of care for the student’s whole being. if we look at online higher institutions, it can be argued that most lecturers come from a more affluent educational background (kaufmann & vallade, 2022). in contrast, most students being taught are mostly from working-class backgrounds (bunt, 2021: 4-5). students in online higher education find themselves bound to their lecturers’ educational habitus and all their 4 see this diagram, adapted by cohen and ball (1999), from https://www.brookings.edu/essay/ realizing-the-promise-how-can-education-technology-improve-learning-for-all/ https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 https://www.brookings.edu/essay/realizing-the-promise-how-can-education-technology-improve-learning-for-all/ https://www.brookings.edu/essay/realizing-the-promise-how-can-education-technology-improve-learning-for-all/ 1392023 41(2): 139-150 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 pietersen perspectives on dialogue and care in teaching, learning relationships disconnecting traditions and cultures, but they make the best of it. these subtle factors shape and add character to the students’ lives. they are also filtered through the use of an lsm, which can offer these minor but necessary traits in delivering a satisfying student experience. offering students a quality education is a choice and unfortunately this kind of choice is often predetermined by social class (hlatshwayo, 2021). if students belong to the same class as their lecturer (usually upper class), they have a wider scope of prior knowledge to tap into and, as a result, receive a better pedagogy of care (pausigere, 2016: 43-45). lecturers should take their duty of care to their students very seriously, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds with whom they have less in common. this is particularly true in an online setting where many lecturers fail to care adequately for their students’ needs. two social factors can be seen as the driving force behind decision-making in society, i.e. agency and structure. according to marx (1973), the structure of the capitalist economy takes precedence over human action or agency. this is debatable, but looking at this statement, one needs to realise that karl marx was a sociologist who based most of his work on capitalism. if one thinks logically about the two concepts (agency and structure), observe whenever one makes a decision, there is the question: was it a free choice or was it in a manner structured by social class or social structure? tronto (2016b: 6) notes: what caring democracy equalises, then, are not acts of caregiving, but responsibilities for care – and as a prerequisite, the discussions about how those responsibilities are being allocated … and assuring that everyone can participate in those allocations of care as completely as possible. this kind of caring democracy directs lecturers to acknowledge that middle-class students and lecturers have more cultural and social capital to seek out and interpret information in an online education landscape. this determines the best criteria to achieve the module outcomes. therefore, not only is information relevant, but it is also faculty preference as far as teaching and learning are concerned. working-class students have no choice but to spend the majority of their time assimilating the habitus of their lecturers, because middle-class lecturers always teach with a long-term-orientated strategy in mind (avram & dronkers, 2005). this means that online teaching and learning may result in a series of undesirable effects, such as conflict. social mobility within the class system is also an inherent quality where this teaching approach is concerned. when one considers the middle class, the people who fall under this group are those who aspire to stay in the middle class and secure their prestigious position. therefore, class stratification in relation to online higher education is important to interrogate within a diverse education space, because it communicates the potential effect of dialogue and care. for class systems to stay the same, or for individuals to progress upwards is something that lecturers have the unique power to influence. thus, if students are asked to interact online on an lms, it should be in such a way that they feel protected and genuinely cared for. lecturers need to make a concerted effort to understand students as whole persons before they can enable them to perform well in technologically advanced spaces (long et al., 2022). of course, there are those who oppose the idea of acknowledging habitus and doing something to address inequality in higher education. they argue that in order to give greater care to students, lecturers need only lean into technology. however, these opponents should https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 1402023 41(2): 140-150 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) consider the views of charles taylor in his politics of recognition. in it, he writes sublimely on how social recognition lends authenticity to human identity:5 … our identity is partly shaped by recognition or its absence, often by the misrecognition of others, and so a person or a group of people can suffer real damage, real distortion if the people or society around them mirror back to them a confining or demeaning or contemptible picture of themselves. non-recognition or misrecognition can inflict harm, can be a form of oppression, imprisoning someone in a false, distorted and reduced mode of being (taylor, 2021). taylor’s theory extends to a multicultural society where all are equal and tolerant of one another and have equal access to resources in order to thrive. unfortunately, contrary to taylor’s utopian vision, not all things are equal in south africa because of our colonial past (maigari, 2021: 187-189). not all students are able to access higher education; not many students have access to technology; not many lecturers are open to engagement on these issues. according to a teaching and learning document by the ufs ctl (pillay, sibeko & witten, 2021), most students are first-generation students (in other words, neither of their parents attended university); 61% are the first individual in their family to attend university; 7% have a mother that attended university and 3% a father; and almost 20% have had either a brother or sister attend university before them. the support and care given to students are crucial, as a high percentage of students are first generation, especially at the ufs. these students have little or no family collegiate history and may enter the university with limited knowledge about the jargon, traditions and patterns of behaviour expected of them (pillay, sibeko & witten, 2021). these are all factors that are embedded inequalities and speak to a lack of resources and access that moves beyond the narrative of equal distribution. notwithstanding this, taylor’s thesis implies that a multicultural recognition requires a redistribution of resources, such as greater access to technology and resources, particularly in education, because higher education is still largely reserved for the advantaged. if a pedagogy of care is set against this backdrop, conditions will become far more favourable and an enabling environment for students to succeed will be created (feldman, 2018). 2.2 measures to engage teaching and learning stakeholders to evaluate the quality of online higher education, measures need to be put in place to reevaluate teaching and learning. it is important to tap into this “action-reflection” process. this process lays bare how students participate positively and actively on a virtual platform like blackboard, where the stories of students and who they are as persons from different backgrounds lend richness to the teaching and learning process (longo, 2020: 1-2). this ultimately allows all stakeholders in the teaching and learning process to strengthen and modify their practices (davids & waghid, 2018: 221). this is where freire’s theory may help to support the pedagogy of care because he is deeply aware of habitus when it comes to education, particularly religious education. this is an approach that encourages a reflective process in which both lecturers and students are able to value the cultural and historical sources of individuals. davids and waghid (2018) refer to this as “active citizenry”. these ideas are important for the contribution to deliberative democracy in higher education and online spaces in order to foster inclusive learning environments for students where dialogical and compassionate pedagogies in a south african setting are prioritised. 5 this research not only supports the belief that education should affirm students’ cultural identity, but also that it should examine habitus from a social justice viewpoint. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 1412023 41(2): 141-150 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 pietersen perspectives on dialogue and care in teaching, learning relationships to put this within a theological or philosophical framework, it is prudent to borrow again from the words of habermas (2002: 149) who, when asked his opinion on his love for education, replied: for the normative self-understanding of modernity, christianity has functioned as more than just a precursor or catalyst. universalistic egalitarianism, from which sprang the ideals of freedom and a collective life in solidarity, the autonomous conduct of life and emancipation, the individual morality of conscience, human rights and democracy, is the direct legacy of the judaic ethic of justice and the christian ethic of love. this legacy, substantially unchanged, has been the object of a continual critical reappropriation and reinterpretation. up to this very day, there is no alternative to it. and in light of the current challenges of a post-national constellation, we must draw sustenance now, as in the past, from this substance. everything else is idle postmodern talk. in the above statement, habermas (2002: 149) accentuates that any ethos, including any theological and religious ethos, ought to embrace education. more importantly, critical, dialogical and deliberative higher education, including on online platforms, ought to be foregrounded in a pedagogy of care. through open communication and debate, students and lecturers should arrive together at a better rationality for the community. communication must be constant in teaching and learning, an integration and inclusion of cultures and religion, so that everyone understands and can learn from one another. without communication, rationality and common good are impossible (ruga, 2014: 11). the aforementioned views necessitate an educational ethic of care and are undergirded by inclusion in order to dictate a fair action and redress in the teaching and learning process. this means true transformation on online platforms such as blackboard can indeed take place. this is described by freire (2018), noting that reflection and action in close interaction are the necessary conditions for dialogical action and if one of them is prevented, the word becomes an empty word, one which cannot denounce the world, for denunciation is impossible without commitment to transform, and there is no transformation without action (freire, 2018: 87). 3. theoretical framework the theoretical framework in this study is interpretivist by nature because, according to yanow and schwarts-shea (2014), the interpretative framework strives for a sophisticated circumstantial and reflective approach that centres on how people form meanings. this kind of meaning making will help to enhance our understanding of whether dialogue and care are evidenced in how lecturers engage online with their students in teaching and learning on lms platforms such as blackboard 3.1 culture-related capital capacity in online higher education inclination and capacity involve the extent to which lecturers are inclined to be engaged with the choice of technological teaching and learning advances as determined by social class. its constructs need to be revaluated to ensure that dialogue and care are evidenced in how lecturers engage with students in the online higher education space. if a lecturer has a higher inclination, this implies that he or she possesses a certain belief about, for example, how they prefer engaging with students on an online learning platform (feldman, 2020: 3). according to tooley (1997), this can be expressed in terms of cultural capacity. “cultural capital capacity includes having knowledge about familiarity with the education system, self-confidence, and https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 1422023 41(2): 142-150 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) stamina – to research, visit schools, make multiple applications and decisions about the schools of choice” (tooley, 1997: 217-230). this in turn strongly influences the choices that are made for the education of working-class students so that, in the course of education and quality online higher education in particular, the working class feels that it owns its own social constructs. the different lived experiences of working-class students and middle-class lecturers would mean that they come to different conclusions based on their differing social backgrounds. social class distinction and inequality in south africa remain problems in our society. apartheid has left deep scars and these wounds are ready to burst open due to the tension which exists between the different races and culture groups. the curriculum and lecturers’ identities add to the disparity exacerbated by apartheid in a sphere such as education (davids, 2018). the past has had a major influence on how working-class students fare in online higher education today. the relationship between student and lecturer and how they relate and collaborate in the teaching and learning process need to be carefully considered, especially if the power wielded by lecturers is greater than that of the students. the attempt to achieve this can be summarised by greene (1986: 430) when she asserts “[teaching and learning is] joined to a justice or equity process”. this process ought to prompt students and lecturers to question meanings and ideas, to imagine alternative possibilities and outcomes, to modify practical judgements and to develop respect and critical engagement in their fields of study. in this way, critical assignation and deliberation are unhindered communicative liberty that involves both rational opinion and wilful allowance of information, which can almost always potentially lead to a transformation in people’s preferences and perceptions of their learning (adams & waghid, 2005: 28). 3.2 online learning and higher education: the role of care and dialogue it is important to both contextualise and clarify the origin of the research problem. the historical situatedness of how higher education institutions operated in the past and only catered for the needs of a few also falls within the ambit of evaluating whether proper care and dialogue takes place in institutions of learning today. higher education and online education spaces are perhaps unwittingly contributing to an unevenly distributed education and training system that has too many barriers to growth. this is because they do not prioritise the voice of students in relation to creating dialogue and care for students to feel included. it is, accordingly, the researcher’s conviction that quality education ought to be evenly distributed and should be available to all south african students, regardless of background or location. therefore, education entities need to set equitable teaching and learning standards for every student, but they also have the responsibility to create teaching and learning outcomes that are achievable in their process of “becoming” and a means to empower students to be part of their learning process. additionally, when setting the content and standards for online teaching and learning programmes such as blackboard, it should be kept in mind that all students need to be developed in reaching their full potential as persons, not just for academic accolades (bloch, 2005: 9). factors that sustain excellent dialogical outcomes include valuing the views of students in the learning management systems (lms)6 process, particularly when it comes to indigenous 6 blackboard is the learning management system (lms) that the university of the free state make use of. it has been used in this study to investigate whether it fosters online engagement between students and lecturers or not. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 1432023 41(2): 143-150 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 pietersen perspectives on dialogue and care in teaching, learning relationships knowledge, as it forms part of their educational formation. this signals to students that education spaces do value dialogue and care. if this is done well, students will feel that they are included to create depth and meaning to their studies. in doing so, institutions would have wholly developed students who are engaged both globally and locally, and will not be restricted by geographical borders (bloch, 2005: 10). ultimately, higher education institutions would have instilled in their students an appreciation of care and dialogue, a key attribute in their future workplaces. this discourse does not allow the possibility for any individual or group of students to be excluded from critical, dialogical and deliberative educational matters that interest them and that determine their future. after all, the rights of students to participate in deliberation and dialogical engagement are legally institutionalised and should be measured against the effective use of teaching and learning tools, such as blackboard. this means that each individual student has an equal opportunity to be heard during the deliberative and dialogical process, which in turn means that the viewpoints of the minority are heard, and the domination of the majority is subdued. however, for dialogical engagement and deliberation to be effective and truly beneficial, certain crucial aspects constantly need to be monitored by the lecturer in order to create pedagogies of care for students (bloch, 2005: 10). 4. research methodology against the above theoretical framework, an interpretivist paradigm has been applied to this investigation (cohen, manion & morrison, 2017). this means that data retrieved from participants came from ufs ctl documents based on a project previously done, which now forms part of the policy formation documents that govern the online teaching and learning space. this was considered from varied interpretive points of view and not just one single perspective (denzin & lincoln, 2018). the interpretivist theory was framed against qualitative research done by the ctl and highlighted and analysed in this study, to reflect on whether lecturers exercised their responsibility of dispensing dialogue and care in their online classrooms, and if it is evidenced in how lecturers engage online with their students in teaching and learning on lms platforms, such as blackboard. what this research therefore aims to point out is that technological platforms ought to be used to benefit the education system on a broader level, extending a notion of care and engagement to purposeful action. this speaks to the epistemological concerns with the kind of dialogue and care experienced in online higher education, together with discussions into deliberative democratic tenants of online teaching and learning. in other words, students should be motivated to learn, because lecturers care for them as human beings and are genuinely interested in them as whole persons (noddings, 2006: 341), beyond just the outcomes that are often expected in the online education environment. 5. ethical considerations this research adheres to the ethical standards of the university of free state’s ghrec committee. this study falls within the category of low risk. for further clarification to this study, the ethical clearance number is ufs-hsd2022/0045/22 for further reference. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 1442023 41(2): 144-150 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) 6. findings and discussions exploring the adoption of technological platforms ought to be used to benefit the education system on a broader level to understand and impact the student using a pedagogy of care approach. the responsibility of lecturers should be reflected not only by how many students engage with class content, but also in the embodied cultural capital that students bring to online, face-to-face and hybrid learning spaces. this requires of lecturers to manage the online learning space carefully from a social equity and multicultural perspective (pietersen, 2023). these ideas are important for the contribution to deliberative democracy in higher education in order to foster inclusive learning environments for students. tronto (2010a: 32) argues that the process “starts from the premise that everything exists in relation to other things ... and assumes that people, other beings and the environment are interdependent”. thus, the researcher has categorised the findings from secondary data into broad themes, namely: • lending support to students to participate in online learning • supporting students in building authentic relationships on online learning platforms • challenges in caring for students online the researcher has further elaborated under these three themes how the respondents (academic staff) gave credence to these categories. 6.1 theme: lending student support to participate in online teaching and learning engagements figure 3: support to build online teaching and learning spaces according to this graph from the sep-tlf report (2021)7 and pietersen (2022), the majority of academic respondents were in a position to lend active support when they engaged with students online. this included affording students the opportunity to do well in their studies by giving active feedback online and providing clarity where there was confusion about the subject matter. from the above graph, it can be seen that most lecturers “very much” supported their students in meeting their needs (the blue bar) or at least were willing to do “quite a bit” to help 7 see report, available online https://www.che.ac.za/sites/default/files/inline-files/sep-tlf_report.pdf https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 https://www.che.ac.za/sites/default/files/inline-files/sep-tlf_report.pdf 1452023 41(2): 145-150 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 pietersen perspectives on dialogue and care in teaching, learning relationships them when they needed support. few lecturers admitted to doing “very little” (the green bar) to help their students during the covid-era of exclusive online learning. questions reflected in the graph are spelled out below, and the following had to be ticked very much, quite a bit, some, very little and not applicable: • provide clear learning outcomes or objectives • give students access to content that is relevant to the learning outcomes • provide activities which encourage me to engage with the content critically • provide clear instructions and use a level of language that was easy for me • offer me an opportunity for feedback on the tests and assignments what the graph indirectly shows is that students need to take control of their own learning in a process known as self-directed or active learning (gqokonqana, olarewaju & cloete, 2022). it shows that there exists some level of care and engagement beyond just performing on advanced online technological platforms. this approach of support is critical in an online teaching and learning environment. 6.2 theme: building teaching and learning relationships on online teaching and learning platforms figure 4: technology as a means of engagement according to the above figure, most respondents (93%) agreed that the lms platform blackboard had allowed them to interact with students effectively, with most agreeing or strongly agreeing with the statement. only one person strongly disagreed, feeling that blackboard had not helped him to engage effectively with his students. due to the national lockdown caused by the covid-19 pandemic, tertiary students were forced to go online. most classes at the ufs were taught via blackboard as an lms. this graph may not be a true reflection of the level of interaction between lecturer and student because much of the online teaching that occurred during the lockdown was necessitated by emergency measures and, as a result, not much real interaction occurred. in other words, technology was more the focal point, while the caring relationship between lecturers and students was largely neglected. this is highlighted by a recent study, platformisation of https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 1462023 41(2): 146-150 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 perspectives in education 2023: 41(2) education: an analysis of south african universities’ learning management systems, in the following way: in south africa, the 2020/2021 academic calendar has begun amid the pandemic as educational institutions were confronted with the urgent need to improve their modes of online curriculums and course navigation, online examinations, increase student inclusion for remote learning and strengthen their capacity for ict solutions in the time of crises (badaru & adu, 2022: 67). this speaks to this research’s core focus, which is that the same advances in technology that were made during the pandemic where no face-to-face engagements were allowed also became a stumbling block for many in terms of prioritising caring relationships with their students beyond curriculum, grades and technological outcomes. 6.3 theme: challenges in caring for students in online teaching and learning strategies in south africa, the 2020/2021 academic calendar has begun amid the pandemic as educational institutions were confronted with the urgent need to improve their modes of online curriculums and course navigation, online examinations, increase student inclusion for remote learning and strengthen their capacity for ict solutions in the time of crises (badaru & adu, 2022: 67). this speaks to this research’s core focus, which is that the same advances in technology that were made during the pandemic where no face-to-face engagements were allowed also became a stumbling block for many in terms of prioritising caring relationships with their students beyond curriculum, grades and technological outcomes. 6.3 theme: challenges in caring for students in online teaching and learning strategies figure 5: caring attitudes in online teaching and learning spaces the general view of respondents, as illustrated by this graph, was that most lecturers did their best to include as many students as possible in their blackboard lessons. almost 43% of lecturers who were surveyed said that they “always” encouraged student participation (the purple portion of the pie chart), while the majority said that they “often” or “sometimes” dido so (29% and 21%, respectively, as represented by the green and yellow slices of the pie chart). only 7% were brave enough to admit that they only “occasionally” sought to include as many students as possible in their online teaching. no doubt this result was influenced not only by the challenge of students from disadvantaged backgrounds struggling to come to grips with the technology, but also by the fact that lecturers perceived caring in a very narrow sense as simply the percentage of students who attended virtual classes. academic staff found it hard to interpret caring by means of descriptive course figure 5: caring attitudes in online teaching and learning spaces the general view of respondents, as illustrated by this graph, was that most lecturers did their best to include as many students as possible in their blackboard lessons. almost 43% of lecturers who were surveyed said that they “always” encouraged student participation (the purple portion of the pie chart), while the majority said that they “often” or “sometimes” dido so (29% and 21%, respectively, as represented by the green and yellow slices of the pie chart). only 7% were brave enough to admit that they only “occasionally” sought to include as many students as possible in their online teaching. no doubt this result was influenced not only by the challenge of students from disadvantaged backgrounds struggling to come to grips with the technology, but also by the fact that lecturers perceived caring in a very narrow sense as simply the percentage of students who attended virtual classes. academic staff found it hard to interpret caring by means of descriptive course input on learning platforms (makina, 2022: 35). rather, they perceived care by viewing the frequency and percentages of students attending lectures and handing in assignments on time. the definition of care should have been expanded to suggest more than achieving outcomes on blackboard. it should have required of lecturers to inspire motivation in their students – the kind of motivation that maintains engagement and participation, which includes conscious (what we see) and unconscious (what we hear and feel) behaviour (bekele, 2010). deliberate caring on the part of lecturers involves being investing in students’ success and keeping up forward momentum in the teaching and learning process. https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 1472023 41(2): 147-150 https://doi.org/10.38140/pie.v41i2.6291 pietersen perspectives on dialogue and care in teaching, learning relationships 7. conclusion this research explored how pedagogies of dialogue and care can influence how lecturers engage online with their students on lms platforms, such as blackboard. aligned with this aim, it has also established that social stratification and how lecturers choose to acknowledge their cultural background can affect how students feel about being cared for and listened to. it may help lecturers to move towards affecting positive change in the life of students and instil traits in them which will impactfully pave a path in their lives (pietersen, 2023). with regard to social constructs, students need to feel that their social habitus, which includes ‘invisible’ morals and respect for others in society, as well as their own being, is adequately acknowledged by lecturers. these ideas are important for the contribution to deliberative democracy in online higher education in order to foster inclusive learning environments for students. to transform online higher education to become a socially just environment, lecturers need to adopt pedagogies of care towards their students. this article has established that social class plays an active role in decision-making in the online teaching and learning process, as lecturers are often unwittingly the tools of the ruling class (pietersen, 2023). the 4ir, if not managed properly, could become an environment which perpetuates, rather than challenges, the status quo and provides a disservice to disadvantaged students wanting to leapfrog the restrictions that apartheid placed on them. academics at the university of the free state would do well to re-read its motto: “… leading learning and teaching, focused research, and impactful engagement with society. situated in the heart of south africa, our character of caring and diversity translates into an outstanding university experience” (ufs website, 2022). a pedagogy of care is implied in this statement and therefore creating an online learning environment for higher education institutions like this is non-negotiable. rather than just tapping into the one-dimensional technological advances required in a 4ir higher education space, this philosophy needs to be part of an ongoing praxis in order to attain deliberate relational engagement which enables students to be truly successful and impactful in 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article 2020 38(1): 269-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 representation of the zimbabwean 2015–2022 social studies curriculum: teachers’ perspectives on challenges and “ubuntulising” curriculum change and implementation abstract the new 2015–2022 zimbabwean curriculum in which social studies is engrained was driven by the need among others to transform the zimbabweans’ demeanour and etiquette by employing ubuntu as its philosophical base. through the ubuntu lens, this qualitative case study explores how ubuntu values could be applied to mollify challenges of curriculum reform and implementation. we purposively sampled 12 teachers who participated in semistructured interviews, observations and a focus group discussion (fgd) to generate data for this study. the findings established that employing the top-down approach in the dissemination of the zimbabwean curriculum, devoid of the teachers’ consultations and participation, catalyses the manifestation of acerbic and innumerable challenges that included inadequate resources, lack of consultation, lack of training for teachers and poor public relations, which led to poor implementation of the social studies curriculum. the study discovered that the basis of ubuntu, which the zimbabwean curriculum claims to hinge on, is merely a paper exercise but practically it is not applied. the study recommends the rekindling of the ubuntu values that capture the traditional african customs, work ethics and beliefs and applies them to curriculum reform and implementation in order to inform educational policy and practice as uncovered from the fieldwork undertaken for this study. this study is a contribution to the current topical issue about decolonisation globally. keywords: “ubuntulising”, curriculum implementation, challenges, mitigation strategies. 1. introduction and background there has been a surge of interest recently in the concept of curriculum change and its relevance in the global village. zimbabwe was caught up in this storm and took remarkable author: dr p. chimbunde1 dr m.c. kgari-masondo1 affiliation: 1university of kwazulu-natal doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v38i1.19 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(1): 269-282 published: 11 june 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3423-2163 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1850-6363 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 270 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 270-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 steps to align the education system to the needs of the people in terms of socio-cultural and economic transformation. the new 2015–2022 zimbabwean curriculum in which social studies is engrained was driven by the need among others to transform the zimbabweans’ demeanour and etiquette by employing ubuntu as its philosophical base (mopse, 2015). to achieve that, the social studies curriculum of zimbabwe was created around this african philosophy and through its aims, spelt out what the products of the education system were expected to be (mopse, 2015). the exit competencies of the learners are heavily tilted towards the demands and expectations of a society in which a full person laced with ubuntu principles was expected to be moulded. in order to put this study in context, a brief background of the evolution of the zimbabwean social studies curriculum is presented hereunder. the development of the social studies curriculum in zimbabwe was a response to crises that included, but were not restricted, to political agitation (foley, 1979). these were later followed by tribal disturbances and indecorous behaviour amongst students in tertiary institutions (mapetere, chinembiri & makaye, 2013; namasasu, 2012). literature depicts that the 1982 social studies curriculum, which was inherited after attainment of nationhood by zimbabwe, had remnants of the colonial perspective. the curriculum briefly reveals that it was not addressing the civic competence expected because of the lack of the ubuntu philosophy. consequently, the inherited social studies curriculum did not respond to the needs of a new vision of embracing ubuntu that the decolonisation of the curriculum to capture the missing african dictates. the challenges resulting from lack of ubuntu forced the government of zimbabwe in 1999 to set up a commission of inquiry into education and training. the commission subsequently reported that indeed vandalism, violence and indiscipline in the schools and society were a result of the dearth of values, relevant ethics and morals (nziramasanga, 2018). the above suggests that education in zimbabwe requires national values or philosophy to guide learners. as such, the government sought to eradicate the social ills through the development of a new personality of ubuntu, which would fit in and contribute towards the construction of a better society. this led to the birth of the 2015–2022 version of the zimbabwean curriculum, anchored to ubuntu philosophy in which the social studies curriculum was embedded (mopse, 2015). as such, that move was meant to produce a student imbued with the attributes of unhu/ubuntu that revolve around communalism, consultation, respect, dignity and cooperation. on that note kwaira (2018: 6) argues that there was a need to infuse elements of hunhu/chivanhu/ubuntu across the full spectrum of learning areas in order to produce “a whole person” instead of just a book-based student. the birth of the 2015–2022 curriculum based on ubuntu philosophy shows that the government of zimbabwe had now found faith in the ubuntu philosophy that was once rejected in favour of scientific socialism (samkange & samkange, 1980) in the 1980s. interest in ubuntu only resurfaced after the nziramasanga commission of 1999. a scan through literature exposed that very few studies had been undertaken on the social studies teachers’ representations of curriculum change and implementation. the limitation of these studies is that they used eurocentric models of curriculum change overlooking the afrocentric model. this study located in africa in general, and zimbabwe in particular, drew insights from the ubuntu philosophy, an african model. from a literature review conducted, ubuntu philosophy had not gained prominence in the new basic education zimbabwean curriculum 2015–2022 design and implementation discourses. concentration even globally in ubuntu and curriculum change has been confined mainly to higher education, overlooking http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 271 chimbunde & kgari-masondo representation of the zimbabwean 2015–2022 social studies 2020 38(1): 271-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 its relevance to curriculum change and implementation in basic education (chikoko, 2016; chitumba 2013). thus, none of the studies from my scan of literature in zimbabwe had applied the ubuntu values on curriculum discourse involving perspectives of teachers. as such, this study is an attempt to sensitise the policy makers on the importance of a collective involvement of all stakeholders in the development and articulation of policies. this article argues that this is possible when curriculum change and implementation follow a consultative process as engrained in the african institutions. 2. research objectives the study sought to: 1. explore teachers’ views on challenges they faced in implementing the new 2015–2022 social studies curriculum in zimbabwe; and 2. establish ubuntu strategies that policy makers can adopt to lessen challenges faced in the implementation of the new 2015–2022 social studies curriculum in zimbabwe. 3. theoretical framework the study is guided by the ubuntu philosophy. the strands that run through ubuntu are of african origin, as remarked by setiloane (1985), and is a piece of homegrown african wisdom that strives on its virtues that emphasise the importance of a group or community through the promotion of communal interests. the philosophy of unhu/ubuntu is a collectivist approach, which samkange and samkange (1980) claim contradicts the eurocentric approach to life and education, which is individualistic. this is because the ubuntu philosophy implies that we are correctly human purely in a group with other people. mbiti (1989: 108) aptly explains the philosophy as, “i am, because we are; and since we are, therefore i am.” or, as turaki (2006: 36) says: “[p]eople are not individuals, living in a state of independence, but part of a community, living in relationships and interdependence”. social studies is about people and the values against which ubuntu is built which is about people. these principles include norms, values, attitudes, collectiveness and comradeship, among others. therefore, how policy makers and teachers work when developing and implementing a social studies curriculum must be consistent with ubuntu principles. ubuntu strives on three components namely metaphysics, ethics and epistemology (mangena, 2018). ubuntu ethics refer to the idea of morality and use of terms such as good or bad behaviour; respecting or not respecting etc. (mangena, 2018); hence, it is premised on a common moral position in which the community is the source, author and custodian of moral fibre or standards. metaphysically, ubuntu’s nature of reality is on “being” in which the idea of being has its fullest expression through participation. sekou toure has termed this “the communion of persons” whereby “being” is a function of the “us” or “we” as opposed to the “i” as found and celebrated in the west (cited in mangena, 2018: 313). this suggests that the idea of being is relational and carries a communal character. in that light, whatever must be reformed in education should reflect the realms of togetherness and cooperation in terms of suggesting the ways on how to implement the process of curriculum change. ubuntu philosophy is thus a footing on which a society is not only fortified but rather, it cements and fastens the people together. ubuntu epistemology is concerned with the meaning, source and the nature of the knowledge. setiloane (1985) submits that african epistemology begins with the community http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 272 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 272-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 and moves to individuality. this suggests that the idea of knowledge in africa is vested in the community and not in individuals who make up that community. ubuntu epistemology is experiential, meaning experience is the best teacher. as such, strategies on meaningful curriculum change and implementation reside with the community of stakeholders made up of teachers and experts. the teachers in the schools have knowledge of what challenges they could face when implementing a new curriculum. teachers are also the custodians of the implementation matrix because of their experiences. therefore, their participation in decision making of the educational change is central to effective implementation of educational policy. ubuntu philosophy is a fountain of wisdom which, when applied to educational reforms similar to or beyond what had been applied, can become an effective lever within the education system just the way it influenced management circles (bryun, 2017; msila, 2014). as such, it is the basis upon which interventions to challenges of curriculum implementation were formulated. it was from the ubuntu philosophy that we drew the attributes and the work ethics of educators that were necessary to unpack the challenges of the new curriculum implementation. its strength is anchored in the fact that it is an indigenous, purely african, philosophy of life that is not borrowed from eastern or western europe. it is grown from africa and therefore had potential to offer african solutions to african challenges that teachers faced in the education sector. its strength lies in the fact that it is the usable past which means the traditional values and beliefs drawn from the african societies can be utilised to drive reforms in education in africa and globally. the essence of ubuntu is participation by all people as collective assets in village activities. in the current study, participation is defined as “being with and acting for others with the aim of advancing the common good” (pembroke, 2019: 1). benefiting from the tenets of ubuntu namely participation, consultation, love, dignity, respect, togetherness and compassion, this study was guided in the provision of mitigation strategies to curtail challenges of curriculum implementation. in addition, the same tenets introspected on what could have been done before the social studies curriculum implementation in order to thwart the possibility of poor implementation. the ubuntu philosophy was ideal as it explained why the challenges of curriculum implementation manifested the way they did as represented by teachers. it directed the formulation of suggestions on how to mitigate the challenges, the same way african communities solved their day-to-day problems. intrinsically, the study argues that no challenge of curriculum change could therefore be completely averted without the efforts of interest groups. this is so because their major obligation is to work as support pillars for successful curriculum implementation. the collective involvement of all stakeholders in the development and articulation of policies is therefore an important issue. 4. methodology the study was framed from the qualitative approach which permitted us to continually tease out the nature of the implementation as it was “experienced, structured and interpreted” by the teachers in the course of their everyday teaching (cropley, 2015: 13). by being qualitative in nature it sat comfortably within the philosophical assumptions drawn from interpretivism which is aimed at understanding people in their natural settings or context as de vos, strydom, fouche and delport (2014) claim. the research design was cast as a descriptive and interpretive case study which fitted well within the interpretive methods (ledford & gast, 2018). we borrowed from yin (2015) who sees the primary defining features of a case study as being a multiplicity of perspectives that are rooted in a specific context. in addition, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 273 chimbunde & kgari-masondo representation of the zimbabwean 2015–2022 social studies 2020 38(1): 273-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 cohen, manion and morrison (2011: 289) elaborate that case studies are “unique example of real people in real situations”. this case study cast from a qualitative paradigm used semistructured interviews, observations and a focus group discussion (fgd) to elicit data from 12 purposively sampled teachers. the face-to-face semi-structured interviews and observations were conducted over a period of four weeks. the 12 mixed gender teachers from the six participating schools were purposively selected with the aid of the school principals. the schools were situated in the rural, urban, mission, farm and growth points dotted in the masvingo province of zimbabwe. the six schools selected were representative enough of the nature of the schools found in zimbabwe, allowing multiple voices. it was also logical to select six schools and two participants from each school for “feasibility reasons” (o’leary, 2014: 30). the teachers were selected because they were the first batch of teachers to engage in the implementation of the new curriculum upon its launch in 2017 and they were trained as specialists in social studies. this enabled us to generate data from the experts of social studies rather than picking untrained social studies teachers who were not conversant with the learning area. we had the view that selecting one teacher at a school could defeat the purpose of data triangulation; hence, the choice of two teachers from each sampled school. we observed infrastructure, facilities and educational materials at each of the six schools under study. the observations were made on the same day the interviews were conducted using an observation guide. this helped us to validate the quotes from the interviews and the fgd. each interview lasted approximately 45 minutes to an hour. the face-to-face interviews were conducted to establish rapport, build trust and to identify any non-verbal cues that warranted further questioning. in this research, teachers who took part in the interviews were the same teachers who were part of the fgd. this was important because rich and sensitive data emerged that were not possible to elicit through individual interviews. this was because being part of a group often created a more relaxed atmosphere compared to a oneto-one interview (pandey & pandey, 2015) and as such, varied and rich in-depth material from several teachers was obtained. adherence to strict ethical guidelines in order to uphold participants’ privacy, confidentiality, dignity and rights was religiously followed. before approaching the participants, permission was sought from gatekeepers of institutions. as such, ethical clearance was obtained from the university of kwazulu-natal, protocol reference number hss/0855/018d. approval was first given by the permanent secretary of the ministry of primary and secondary education, provincial education director for masvingo province, the district schools inspectors and then the school principals to conduct research in schools. participants signed consent forms in line with de vos et al. (2014: 117). consent was requested for the use of a tape recorder during interviews and focus group sessions and then later for the use of the interviewees’ quotes for publications. to hide the identities of participants, pseudonyms were employed. in this study, data analysis involved reducing “the volume of raw data, sifting the important data from the less important, identifying significant patterns, and constructing a framework for communicating the essence of what the data revealed” (de vos et al.,2014: 397). aware of maree’s view that qualitative data analysis is “an on-going and iterative process generating large amounts of data,” analysis was done simultaneously with data collection (2012: 99). data were thematically presented as narratives ensuring the teachers’ representations of the 2015– 2022 social studies curriculum implementations in zimbabwe were depicted. their views were http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 274 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 274-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 on the challenges they faced and the mitigation strategies thereof. to enhance trustworthiness of data, member checking was done where themes were returned to the participants who verified “the data collected matched or not to their lived experiences” in implementing the social studies curriculum (birt, scott, cavers, campbell & walter, 2016: 1802). in addition, validity of data was enhanced through triangulating the data generating techniques namely the observation, semi-structured interviews and fgd. 5. findings and discussion the teachers’ representations of the challenges and the ubuntu strategies to abate them are presented below. 5.1 the top-down approach in curriculum reform from the fgd and semi structured interviews, data gathered indicated that the top-down process that was followed in the dissemination of the curriculum reform was problematic because the participants claimed that in the top-down approach changes were generated from the centre and then diffused to the periphery without their voices. with a frown visible on her face, s1 said: no effort was made to seek our views though we were to go and implement the new social studies curriculum since it was now a policy. as teachers, we do not change policies. so the new curriculum was an imposition by the government. eeh it was the ministry of primary and secondary education’s directive and we had no option as classroom practitioners. but what worried me was that while i am a trained teacher, the changes were not clear to me. i don’t know how to start. in most cases, i retained my old practices. it is like putting new wine in an old bottle. this means teachers were told of the 2015–2022 social studies curriculum at the dawn of its implementation. that finding confirms zindi’s (2018: 31) observation that, “not enough information was given to zimbabwean teachers on how the new changes were to be implemented”. implied herein was that the teachers were seen as mere implementers regardless of whether they were aware of the modality or intentions of the changes. this implies that teachers were dehumanised as ubuntu values emphasise participation as an aspect that fulfils ethics humanness in african philosophy (setiloane, 1985). 5.2 teachers’ participation in curriculum reform it emerged from the study that there was lack of ownership by teachers on the reforms made because they were imposed on them. it means that if curriculum change is enforced without teacher participation then the issue of ownership by the teachers is belittled. as posed by s2 that: “we perceive the reforms as a threat, which can challenge our beliefs, and tear our confidence in our established practices and the feeling of self-efficacy”. this means that teachers did not own the reforms since they were centrally planned. consequently, teachers remained quiet about the social studies reforms out of fear. the non-participation of teachers in the reforms led to a lack of vision as advanced by fullan (2015). that worsened the challenges of the social studies curriculum implementation because the teachers had no clear direction to follow. as argued by s2 who lamented that she was not aware of the social studies changes, vision and its thrust in depth. in the words of teacher g1: at first, we did not fully participate in the planning and development of the new curriculum. they did not consult us at all on the implementation process of the updated curriculum. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 275 chimbunde & kgari-masondo representation of the zimbabwean 2015–2022 social studies 2020 38(1): 275-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 they planned and developed the implementation process without us from the grassroots. later, they called us to attend a workshop at which we were informed of the launch of the new curriculum. that was tokenistic participation because we could not get the gist of the implementation matrix which as implementers was supposed to know before the roll out. the above suggests that the informants were partly consulted in the process though they bemoaned the lack of meaningful participation that could have assisted them in acquiring necessary skills and knowledge related specifically to the social studies changes. to avoid challenges that emanated from non-involvement of teachers in educational reforms, the participants in the fgd as well as in semi structured interviews mentioned one essence of ubuntu, which is participation. participation by all people in community tasks is common in african societies and is aptly etched in the ubuntu philosophy expressed in their proverbs. one such idiomatic expression couched in the nguni language is “okuhlula amadoda kuyabikwa” meaning what is a challenge to the individual, is declared to the community (khoza, 2018: 6) and that whenever there is a community task people have to assemble together to work on solutions. the implementers of the reforms should be involved in the planning stage so that they gain an understanding of what is to be implemented and how that is to be done. 5.3 inadequate educational resources from the interviews and the fgd, the participants indicated that the lack of the syllabus, textbooks, teaching and learning media and standardised classrooms prevented the effective implementation of the social studies curriculum and littered it with challenges. a summary of the inadequate resources that were seen as determinants that side-tracked the proper implementation of social studies was made by one teacher, c1, in the fgd: the new social studies curriculum was giving us problems as we happen to have scarce educational materials such as the syllabus, textbooks in form of teachers’ books, learner’s books and the teaching aids which could go a long way in the implementation of the subject. teachers were facing challenges in getting these materials. in addition, textbooks were not yet available in book shops and even if funds were available, we could not find them. what was available at our schools and in the market were the sample books which were not for sale as they awaited the approval from the ministry of education. observations at m and c’s schools located in rural and farm areas respectively confirmed the acute shortages of educational resources. zindi agrees by stating that there were “no adequate textbooks in most of the learning areas to be used in the implementation of the new zimbabwean curriculum” (2018: 31). failure to provide resources results in the decline and/or death of any new curriculum implementation, which can also lead to the death of the education system. from the findings of the study, the teachers suggested working together as a team to source resources as captured in the finger theory of ubuntu by mbigi and maree who illuminate that “a thumb working on its own is useless” (2005: 103). participants in the fgd suggested numerous options in getting teaching resources. one teacher summarised when she narrated: on their part, teachers ought to be resourceful and should scavenge for instructional materials from their communities. they are urged to author books for use in the schools. as for schools, they should introduce a book levy so that they can have textbooks. schools should organise fund raising activities such as raffles to beef up their coffers. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 276 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 276-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 the government has to resuscitate the per capita grant for all schools on need basis so that the money is used to purchase more educational resources. it has to exercise speed in approving new textbooks in the bookshops. the government has to establish minimal infrastructures required per school. provision of educational materials has to be the responsibility of the government and everyone else (teacher r2) drawing insight from this sentiment, the essence of ubuntu is therefore a collective, shared experience and collective solidarity. hence, teamwork through partnership, which is an application of the ubuntu philosophy, may help to abate the challenges of inadequate resources. the ubuntu values centred on teamwork celebrate cooperation as also captured in the african proverb “ditau tsa go tlhoka seboka di sitwa ke nare e tlhotsa” (an uncooperative pride of lions fails to bring down a limping buffalo) which implies that, the social studies curriculum change and implementation is an easy task if collectively enacted. this is because teamwork as an african belief system considers that collectivity supersedes the individual and interdependence is a superior value in all community operations (khoza, 2018: 8). that again is celebrated by globalisation which views nations of the world as a connected village. 5.4 the nature of professional development for teachers to mitigate the challenges of lack of knowledge and expertise, teachers called for continuous and vigorous training to be undertaken during the holidays in social studies. teacher r1 pointed out that human capital needs to undergo surgery and needs to be re-serviced to align it with the new social studies changes. this was further suggested by s2 that the education department: should give us more workshops on how to teach the new social studies curriculum in particular because we do not have any problems with other learning areas like mathematics or english since not much was changed in these disciplines. but as for social studies curriculum, we need to be educated because the content added is new and while we were at school or college we did not learn this subject to such a depth. as such, we are told to teach what we have not been trained to teach. in accordance with the above suggestion, j2 also indicated that, “i think more training is needed because the training we undertook did not look at a particular subject area. considering that view, we argue that training of teachers that is based on ubuntu values of love, respect and participation is important because it boosts their confidence and skills for implementing the curricula. thus, training of the teachers is linked to the hallmarks of ubuntu values which submit that training is not a one-man task as depicted in the nguni saying that “izandla ziyagezana” which means that one hand washes the other. to borrow from khoza (2018: 8) on ubuntu principles, the xhosa say “akukho qili lino kuzikhoth emhlana (no genius is so clever that he can lick his own back). this implies that teachers with various levels of social studies knowledge and experiences must meet regularly to sharpen each other’s skills through workshops and seminars at different levels of the educational structures because no one has the monopoly of knowledge. seen this way, the teachers’ various levels of experiences when combined could become a weapon to destroy the challenges of curriculum implementation. benefiting from ubuntu values, the issues of inadequate training were because of the neglect of what is entrenched in the african village. educationists need to use ubuntu to address the problems of inadequate training and return to the african villages and seek in-depth understanding of how a village trained its members, extracting relevant elements and bringing them back to the education system. as mbigi and maree (2005: 105) state, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 277 chimbunde & kgari-masondo representation of the zimbabwean 2015–2022 social studies 2020 38(1): 277-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 training and development in an african village is based on collective action where leaders of such training must be collective in their approach and practice. as such, the whole village is responsible for raising and training the child. thus, for training to move from collective talk to collective action it will need to harness the collective energy and support of the key players in the education sector. this implies that no one must be excluded in terms of what is to be learnt and applied during the reforms and implementation stage if the ubuntu values are embraced. 5.5 school principals’ relations and demeanour from the study, the teachers felt detached from the social studies curriculum implementation owing to the school principals’ failure to sow good relations in schools. as teacher j2 explained: school principals do not understand us in terms of the help we expect from them. as such each time we seek for help, they answer arrogantly and in a militia stance. we ask them to exercise due caution and respect our views as well. school principals must shun arrogance, impolite a[n]d disheartening responses when asked for help. we expect them to show respect and love since they should offer us pastoral care. above all, we need to share information on the requirements of the new social studies curriculum. this sharing promotes working together as a team. united we stand but divided we fall. we can share information at school, cluster or even at district level. the spirit of unity must prevail at all these levels. hence, the principals’ poor support of staff emerged as a challenge to effective curriculum implementation as generated from interviews and the fgd. the school principals offered minimal professional support infused with arrogance, disrespect and lack of love. as such, recent studies support that this is a problem because implementation of programmes and initiatives have the greatest chance of success if they are supported intellectually and emotionally by the management (dube & jita, 2018; fullan, 2015: 97; nziramasanga, 2018). while literature focuses on professional support characterised by communication and feedback; management and supervision of teachers as key to avoid challenges of curriculum implementation, interviews indicate that emphasis is on respect and demeanour coupled with grooming. this means ubuntu is at the core of the needs of teachers in terms of curriculum support. in this context of the social studies curriculum implementation, respect was expected from the school principals. frei and shaver (2002) in seroto (2016: 47) describe respect as a social or attitudinal construct that guides people’s social behaviour toward others and in most instances, it regulates relationships. as such, treating others with respect and dignity is at the heart of ubuntu. poovan, du toit & engelbrecht (2006: 26) describe respect as ukuhlonipa, which in an african word that demonstrates its centrality in the values of the ubuntu worldview, stipulates the social position of an african in society and permeates an entire set of authoritarian and hierarchical relations that are found within an african culture in general and educational culture in particular. as suggested by the teachers in the fgd, if school principals used respect and dignity in their interactions with teachers, then teachers will view school principals as understanding people. the application of respect and dignity in the school context implies that it allows for an interactive process to take place between teachers and school principals. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 278 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 278-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 5.6 teachers as curriculum content developers it was clear that the social studies content, as represented by the teachers, has directed more effort in democratic societies that are powered by western views. the nature of topics in the new social studies curriculum reflected eurocentric biasness as argued by j2: …new topics were added for instance the topics “global issues” and “governance” were added yet they are too difficult to be delivered by teachers. i am clueless of what to teach and how to teach it. i wonder why they left out a topic like “living together” which promotes humanity and african values for instance respect and tolerance. they brought in eurocentric topics which are not necessarily helpful in the african way of life. we are potent sources of knowledge for the social studies curriculum. as such, we can be helpful in the development of the curriculum content. the views indicated above reflect that the policy makers did not identify teachers as an effective source of social studies content. they belittled them to be mere implementers of an already crafted policy. they missed the experiences of the teachers as springs of knowledge indicating that curriculum planners overlooked the importance of the local people and their ubuntu values, which is the guiding philosophy in the zimbabwean education system (mopse, 2015). the ubuntu philosophy is rooted in sharing, cooperation, group cohesion, communal and communitarianism that could have been articulated in the topic living together, which was regrettably removed. this indicates that decolonisation and “ubuntulising” of the curriculum was used as window dressing when constructing the new curriculum. such representations from teachers had pointed out that the teachers were to some extent not consulted on the content and nature of the social studies curriculum. that led to a situation where learners were exposed to non-african values. thus, it emerged from the semi-structured interviews and the fgd that teachers were not represented in the construction of the social studies curriculum because new topics with a european slant were introduced in social studies while others were modified. this confirms that the ubuntu philosophy was only on paper but was silent on its application. teachers’ lack of content regarding curriculum change is not new because it is reported in several studies (zindi, 2018; mtetwa, 2018). ubuntu epistemology strives on oneness and is concerned with the meaning, source and nature of knowledge. this infers that the content of the social studies curriculum could have been derived from the community so that it addresses the realities of the community (dube & jita, 2018: 907). as suggested in the fgd, integrating ubuntu into the content would fulfil what the curriculum is expected to address – the lived realties of people and offer solutions and facilitate the improvement of human lives. this suggests that the community members (teachers included) had to contribute to the content of the curriculum since ubuntu epistemology is experiential (mangena, 2018; ramose, 1999). in cognisance of that view, we argue that teachers as members of the community, have vast experiences in the subject matter of the school curriculum that they can use to decide what, why and how that is to be taught. if that were done through consultation of teachers, the challenges of having new topics that were beyond the teachers’ knowledge and comprehension would not have surfaced. teachers could therefore make meaningful inputs towards developing the content that could address lived realities. in that way, unwanted content materials could have been left out, relevant concepts could have been incorporated and more african values could have been http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 279 chimbunde & kgari-masondo representation of the zimbabwean 2015–2022 social studies 2020 38(1): 279-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 added, whichr were not done, limiting the space for teachers to participate in curriculum change and implementation. 6. recommendations based on the findings of the study, the problems of curriculum implementation could be circumvented through the participation of teachers in curriculum reform and implementation as engraved in the work ethics of ubuntu values which are centred on participation and communism. based on the findings, this study argues that the idea of dare/imbizo (african indigenous traditional council) being the usable past as enshrined in the african culture can be used to guide people on the direction of curriculum implementation. thus, for effective educational policy development and implementation, there must be wide consultation, advocacy and piloting before proper implementation can take place. teachers in the study called for teamwork to source instructional resources by engaging the community in the form of partnerships. mitigating the unavailability of educational resources could be done if the global village plays their collective part by giving a hand and sharing what it has. that partnership in resource mobilisation hinges on globalisation and the ubuntu values of compassion and sharing which demonstrate a collective psyche where stakeholders partner with others in order to source critical resources. as such, policy makers must partner with the corporate world to source resources for use in schools. the findings of the study indicated that some of the school principals offered unprofessional support characterised by arrogance, disrespect and lack of love. the ubuntu philosophy cites poor relations as an impediment to effective implementation of changes in education. the teachers’ representations of the mitigation strategies proposed the creation of cordial and symbiotic relations between school principals and teachers based on ubuntu values. this is a plausible strategy that can effectively reduce the challenges faced in the implementation of the social studies curriculum. this is because ubuntu is about hiring leaders who understand the workplace and lead “with the heart and soul” so that teachers who are followers are motivated to contribute to an organisation if they feel that they are valued (makka, 2019: 77–82). this study argues that this could be made possible by altering the attitudes of school principals positively through some management training that is drawn from ubuntu ethics such as sharing views. teacher evaluation of school principals’ demeanour and etiquette in the form of reports can be administered termly to improve the working relations. while the government is urged to direct its effort towards improving relations in schools, the school principals themselves are also implored to undertake studies that empower them to understand their subordinates in terms of their needs to promote cooperation from teachers. the study discovered that the basis of ubuntu that the zimbabwean curriculum claims to hinge on is a mere paper exercise but practically it was not applied. to mitigate that hurdle, teachers pointed out that there was a need to harness the ordinary teachers’ past experiences. it can then be merged with the policy makers’ input to come to an agreeable african social studies content and in so doing, capture the realities of the zimbabwean community in line with the ubuntu philosophy. the policy makers are reminded to acknowledge that the content of any learning area must be drawn from the community so that it addresses its realities. use of teachers in the construction of the africanised social studies content is useful here. thus, a review of the social studies curriculum with teachers as developers is therefore important in order to align it with the demands and dictates of the african community. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 280 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 280-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.19 7. conclusions the study argues the implementation would not have been so fraught with challenges had the policy makers consulted the teachers and worked within the confinements of ubuntu ethics. it can be argued based on the findings obtained from fgd data that there was now need for policy makers to decolonise their western ways of thinking and resuscitate their african way of life if curriculum change and implementation are to take place effectively in educational institutions couched in africa. this study argues that the curriculum is only good when it addresses the needs of the community. failure to embrace the people’s concerns in curriculum change is tantamount to creation of two separate worlds because such a curriculum will breed alien values that are not applicable outside the classroom and therefore differ from the realities of the people who were excluded. relevance of curriculum is possible only if the people are the contributors of their education as drawn from the ubuntu philosophy which respects the construction of knowledge by the people for the people. seen from that african view and approach, once a nation sees it fit to make curriculum innovations and implementation, it becomes the duty of the policy makers to invite all members to a consultative meeting from which pertinent issues are gathered and collated in the spirit of survival. the ideas from all people could then be solidified to make one critical thing for use by all. survival is one value of the ubuntu philosophy that runs through all african activities. why do the african people do what they do? the obvious reason for doing that hinges on survival. from that view, if curriculum change and implementation are for the survival of any country, then consultation of all stakeholders including teachers is necessary, as enshrined in the african institutions which staunchly believe in the power of sharing through consultation which can aptly be applied to the education system of today. this is because participation is a key value in the philosophy of ubuntu (ramose, 1999). references birt, l. scott, s. cavers, d. campbell, c. & walter, f. 2016. member checking: a tool to enhance trustworthiness or merely a nod to validation. qualitative health research, 26(12), 1802-1811. https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732316654870. chikoko, v. 2016. issues in africanising higher education curricula. in: v. msila & mt gumbo (ed), africanising the curriculum: indigenous perspectives and theories, 71-82. chitumba, w. 2013. university education for personhood through ubuntu philosophy. international journal of 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(3rd ed.). new york: routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315150666. makka, a. 2019. spirituality and leadership in a south african context: in j kobus & sc van den heuvel (eds.). leading in a vuca world. available at http://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-31998884-4-5. [accessed 5 february 2019]. mangena, f. 2018. hunhu/ubuntu in the traditional thought of southern africa. internet encyclopaedia of philosophy. available at http://www.iep.utm.edu>hunhu. 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perspectives from firstyear south african preservice teachers abstract south african initial teacher education institutes are currently experiencing an annual increase in admissions of first-year students. in addition, the increasing attrition rate of newly qualified teachers is of concern globally. this begs the question of why students are opting for teaching as a profession. this study focuses on reasons why first-year students have opted to study teaching at a south african university. the theoretical lens used is linked to the expectancyvalue theory of achievement motivation (wigfield & eccles, 2000). five hundred and eighty first year students participated in a mixed methods research study. data were analysed by using theories of career motivation categories, namely: altruistic, extrinsic, and intrinsic reasons. trustworthiness was ensured by a side-by-side comparison which collated quantitative and qualitative data. all ethical principles were adhered to. the findings indicate that more than half (60%) of the participants were motivated to pursue teaching for altruistic reasons, followed by almost a quarter (23%) choosing teaching for extrinsic reasons, and 17% opting to become teachers for intrinsic reasons. this paper argues that it would be prudent for initial teacher education institutes to understand students’ rationales for selecting teaching to support them to complete their qualification and remain in the profession. keywords: pre-service teachers, teaching, initial teacher education, career motivation, expectations 1. introduction teaching is a profession that has a long and interesting history, from being a preferred career with high social status (wolhuter, van der walt, potgieter, meyer & mamiala, 2012) to being regarded as a career selected by young people, based on the extent that teaching is judged to be useful (watt & richardson, 2007). in the past 15 years there has been a revived interest in studying teaching with an increase in students enrolling in initial teacher education programmes at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels (oecd, 2019; van broekhuizen, 2015). from 2004 to 2013, firsttime enrolments and graduations in initial teacher education programmes in south africa have doubled with graduations growing by 49% in total (van broekhuizen, 2015). reasons for these increases include funding in the form of bursaries author: dr. moeniera moosa1 affiliation: 1university of the witwatersrand, school of education email: moeniera.moosa@wits.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v38i1.10 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(1): 130-143 published: 11 june 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.10 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6231-9370 mailto:makina@unisa.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.10 131 moosa why teaching? perspectives from first-year south african pre-service teachers 2020 38(1): 131-143 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.10 such as the funza lushaka1 bursary and motivation to acquire a teaching qualification because it is a degreed profession. despite this growth, south africa is still faced with a challenge of not graduating enough teachers to meet the increasing demand. in addition, large numbers of teachers, according to newspaper articles, have resigned from the profession, with an estimated 30 000 resignations between 2011 and 2015 (malingo, 2016). the majority of teachers who resign or opt for early retirement are motivated to do so because of the “increased workload, low teacher salaries, lack of security and safety, indebtedness of teachers and lack of incentives which demoralise teachers” (mafukata & mudau, 2016: 2243). but surprisingly, there is no shortage of aspirant teachers as teaching was the first choice of career for 49% of teachers in south africa (dison, shalem & langsford, 2019; oecd, 2019). this paper heeds the call by wolhuter et al. (2012: 188), that more research is needed on what exactly “inspires, motivates or drives student teachers to involve themselves in teacher education programmes and to persist with their studies”. by arguing, that understanding south african pre-service teachers’ reasons for becoming teachers will enable initial teacher education programmes to better prepare students for the realities of practice. there is a growing body of research on why people opt to pursue teaching as a career, with studies being done in malaysia (azman, 2013), ireland (heinz, 2013), brunei (yong, 1995), slovinia (javornik krečič & ivanuš grmek, 2005), hong kong (wong, tang & cheng, 2014), turkey (akar, 2012), the netherlands (fokkens-bruinsma & canrinus, 2014) and australia (manuel & hughes, 2006). what is evident from international research is that pre-service teachers choose to become teachers for intrinsic, extrinsic, and altruistic reasons. however, there is limited information within a south african context about what motivates students to become teachers. what is known is that sources of inspiration for becoming a teacher are “(extended) family, religion, the teacher education institution, teaching practice, friends, and personal life” (wolhuter, et al., 2012) factors. this paper argues that understanding students’ motives for choosing teaching as a career is an important educational inquiry that will have implications for the retention of teachers in the profession. there is a relationship between pre-service teachers’ commitment, their entry to teaching and their retention in the teaching profession (rots, aelterman & vlerick, 2010). furthermore, the reason why students decide to study teaching is of value to initial teacher education institutes in that it would allow for institutes to reconsider their recruitment strategies and programmes offered. this information will enable teacher educators to be more mindful of how to prepare students adequately for the classroom context by being cognisant and considering their reasons for selecting teaching. this paper reports on the 2016 cohort of first-year students’ reasons for studying teaching at a university in south africa. this paper intends to add to the limited current body of knowledge within a south african context as well as internationally on why first-year students have opted to become teachers. first, i situate the work within the wider body of research on what motivates pre-service teachers to become teachers. i then refer to theories of career motivation. this is followed by a discussion of the expectancy-value theory which is the theoretical framework used in this paper. next, i describe the research context and process, outline the findings and conclude with a discussion of the findings. i now turn to a brief review of selected literature on theories of career motivation. 1 the department of education in south africa has a bursary programme for pre-service teachers that require funding. the aim of this bursary is to financially assist disadvantaged pre-service teachers who intend on studying in the education sector. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.10 132 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 132-143 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.10 2. literature review pre-service teachers often have unrealistic optimism about their ability (woolfolk & hoy, 1990) to teach. this is combined with them having various reasons for being drawn to teaching, which is aligned to their own ideals, values, and perceptions (hagger & mcintyre, 2006) as well as personal characteristics, desires, and motivations (deacon, 2012). it can be argued that the motives for pre-service teachers’ reasons for choosing to become teachers are often based on their observational learning experiences (lortie, 1975; pugach, 2006) which could lead to fixed conceptions, perceptions and beliefs about teaching (mahlios & maxson, 1995; mcdiarmid, 1990). these perceptions include the view that teachers enhance knowledge (mtika & gates, 2011), that teachers play a crucial role in developing society and helping students succeed (wafaa, 2011), the desire to work with children and adolescents and the perception that teaching is a good fall-back career (fokkens-bruinsma & canrinus, 2014), the salary (liu & onwuegbuzie, 2014) and that there is a need for teachers (akarsu & kariper, 2015). experiences of previous teachers and family have been frequently nominated as having an influence on students’ decision to become teachers (book & freeman, 1986; lortie, 1975; nieto, 2004; pugach, 2006). inspiring, caring and respected teachers, and teachers who employed effective instructional strategies dominate pre-service teachers’ depictions of good teachers (ashby, hobson, tracey, malderez, tomlinson, roper, chambers & healy, 2008) yet negative recollections of former teachers also play a role, if only as models to be avoided (flores & day, 2006). 2.1 career motivating factors there are three basic categories of motivation that have been identified for selecting a teaching career: intrinsic, altruistic, and extrinsic motives (abbott, dallat & mcclune, 2001; brookhart & freeman, 1992; moran, kilpatrick, abbott, dallat, & mcclune, 2001). each of these categories will be discussed below starting with intrinsic motives. intrinsic motives intrinsic values have been rated as the highest motive for choosing teaching (ashby, hobson, tracey, malderez, tomlinson, roper, chambers & healy, 2008). these include the desire to make a social contribution and to work with children which is based on individuals having had positive prior teaching and learning experiences (watt, richardson, klusmann, kunter, beyer, trautwein & baumert, 2012). intrinsic motives also include interest, personal experience and intellectual fulfilment (brookhart & freeman, 1992; moran, kilpatrick, abbott, dallat & mcclune, 2001). pre-service teachers who are motivated by intrinsic factors tend to be more committed to the teaching profession (wang & fwu, 2001) and the joy of teaching is regarded as a driving force (roness, 2011). that is, those who are more motivated by intrinsic factors feel a sense of belonging and if these needs are being met by the profession they feel fulfilled by teaching. according to macintyre (1984), meaningful teaching is that which is pursued for its intrinsic rewards or internal goods that are worthwhile and good. altruistic motives pre-service teachers are also drawn to the teaching profession for altruistic reasons as they are concerned with the well-being of others. the altruistically-motivated teacher views teaching as a socially meaningful and important job and has a desire to be part of young people’s growth and development (roness, 2011; sinclair, 2008). they are focused on wanting to contribute http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.10 133 moosa why teaching? perspectives from first-year south african pre-service teachers 2020 38(1): 133-143 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.10 to the growth of another individual (brookhart & freeman, 1992; moran et al., 2001). altruistic motives would include being responsible for shaping the future of children, making a social contribution, and enhancing social equality within a school context (watt & richardson, 2007). teachers are more likely to stay in the profession if their desires to bring about change in the lives of learners are met. extrinsic motives the extrinsically motivated teacher focuses on the benefits of teaching, such as salary, lengthy holidays, status, vacations, or other external rewards connected to the job (brookhart & freeman, 1992; moran et al., 2001; roness, 2011). the challenge with extrinsic career motives is that they may undermine a long-term commitment to teaching (yong, 1995) when pre-service teachers realise the realities of the demands of the profession. as such, these teachers would be easily encouraged to exit the profession if these needs are not met. next, i will be discussing the theoretical framework which is drawn on to better understand what motivates individuals to choose teaching as a career. 3. theoretical framework the theoretical framework that will guide this paper is the expectancy–value theory (wigfield & eccles, 2000). this theory postulates that individuals are motivated by their personal values and the expectation that particular choices will fulfil those values. values such as the need to make a difference in the lives of learners and a love for the teaching profession are often guiding factors for opting to become a teacher (brookhart & freeman, 1992; moran et al., 2001). preservice teachers’ specific beliefs regarding their longand short-term success as teachers are defined as their expectancies (eccles & wigfield, 2002). these expectancies will shape pre-service teachers’ choices for becoming teachers. individuals’ choices, their persistence, and their performances can be explained by their expectations of doing well in an activity and the extent to which they value that activity (atkinson, 1957; eccles, 2005; wigfield & eccles, 1992; wigfield, 1994). in addition, individuals’ self-efficacy expectations and outcome expectancies (bandura, 1994; wigfield & eccles, 2000) can also be viewed as contributing to the expectancy-value theory of motivation. furthermore, teacher self‐efficacy can be linked to the amount of time pre‐service teachers intend to remain in the profession (bruinsma & jansen, 2010). there is thus a close relationship between the type of motivation and degree of commitment. individuals’ values and expectations are formed through past experiences and the stereotypes held (eccles, adler & meece, 1984). as such, individuals’ motives for becoming teachers can be linked to altruistic, intrinsic and extrinsic motives and expectations. this framework allows for a nuanced understanding, interpretation, and shared language of discussion of the factors that govern pre-service teachers’ careers choice decision. it also allows the research to draw links between participants’ personal values, expectation and levels of self-efficacy regarding their choice to become teachers. furthermore, the framework would open up possible opportunities for discussion and interpretations of the findings based on motivating factors, observations, expectations, and a recognition of one’s own abilities to execute the needed tasks of teaching. all these aspects will allow for an understanding of why participants have opted to become teachers. in the next section, i discuss the research methodology used to explore pre-service teachers’ motives. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.10 134 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 134-143 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.10 4. materials and methods a convergent mixed-method design (creswell, 2014) was used to collect data on why students have opted to study teaching. the use of quantitative and qualitative data allowed for greater breadth and depth in understanding first year students’ choices (johnson, onwuegbuzie & turner, 2007). furthermore, a mixed method design enhanced triangulation (scott & morrison, 2006) and provided a better understanding (creswell, 2014) of why first year preservice teachers have opted to become teachers. the use of a mixed-method design allowed for a more “complete understanding” (creswell, 2014: 267) of first year students’ choices. a mixed methods approach strengthened the reliability of data and the validity of the findings, by using the qualitative data to check the accuracy of the quantitative data (creswell, 2014). by checking the quantitative data against the qualitative data created a better understanding between the variables (scott & morrison, 2006) as the data was merged and connected (creswell, 2014) in order to create an understanding of why first year pre-service teachers have opted for teaching as a profession. the validity of the findings, therefore, was established by using the qualitative data to explain the findings of the quantitative data. thus, the qualitative data was used to enhance and expand the findings of the quantitative data (creswell, 2018: 206) and provide a more evidence-based argument. one of the challenges of using a mixed methods approach is that it is time consuming to analyse two different data sets. this was augmented by a deductive analysis approach. all ethical principles of voluntary participation, informed consent from all stakeholders as well as confidentiality and anonymity were upheld in this study. data were collected in two phases namely by means of close-ended questionnaires and narrative essays. the quantitative data consisted of a closed-ended multiple-choice questionnaire (see appendix 1) and the qualitative data included narrative essays on why students opted to become teachers. first, participants were requested to complete the close ended multiple-choice questionnaire on why they had decided to enrol to study teaching. the questions were formulated using the categories indicated by pugach (2006) because these categories encompass a wide range of positive and negative reasons for why preservice teachers might have selected teaching as a career option. thereafter, participants were requested to compose a narrative essay on why they decided to do teaching; this allowed them to naturally express their decision (scott & morrison, 2006). data were analysed in two phases. first, the responses from the multiple-choice questionnaires were collated and tallied. thereafter the responses from the narrative essays were analysed using a thematic analysis approach by identifying parts of data using category names, symbols or descriptive words (saldana, 2015). responses were categorised deductively using pugach’s (2006) factors that influence pre-service teachers in deciding to become teachers. then responses from the quantitative and qualitative data were collated, by using a side-by-side comparison (creswell, 2014) method to acquire a richer data set. finally, pugach’s (2006) categories were used to group the findings and percentages were used in order to rank categories according to importance designated by participants. the findings from the questionnaires provided the statistical data and the narrative essays allowed participants to expand on their reasons and provide the direct participants quotes used in this paper. thereafter the data was further categorised using the factors indicated in the theories of career motivation, namely: intrinsic, altruistic and extrinsic motives (see table 1). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.10 135 moosa why teaching? perspectives from first-year south african pre-service teachers 2020 38(1): 135-143 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.10 table 1: composite findings from questionnaires and narrative essays theories of career motivation categories with overall percentage value pugach’s (2006) criteria for understanding preservice teachers views about teaching participants’ specific reasons for becoming a teacher p er ce nt ag e of r es po ns es fr om q ue st io nn ai re s p er ce nt ag e of r es po ns es fr om n ar ra tiv e es sa ys c om bi ne d ov er al l p er ce nt ag e altruistic reasons 60%1 personal commitment to make a difference in the lives of learners 31 22 27 personal commitment the love for teaching as a profession 13 35 24 experiences as a student in school because of observing their teachers at school 13 5 9 extrinsic reasons 23% personal belief better employment opportunity because there is a shortage of teachers in south africa 18 5 12 autobiography based on parents and teachers’ views teaching is a career that will create opportunities 9 5 personal belief because of not being accepted for their first career choice 7 4 personal belief teaching offers suitable conditions of employment 3 1 personal belief teaching offers bursaries to study 2 1 intrinsic reasons 17% personal commitment the belief that they will make a good teacher 2 31 17 5. participants the study was conducted in a well-established university in johannesburg, south africa with first-year students in 2016. first year students were purposively selected (de vos, 1998) to participate in this research as they are in the best position to provide reasons about why they opted to become teachers, which is relevant to the overarching research question. the overarching research question for this paper is: why have first-year students decided to study teaching? in 2016 all 678 first students completed a questionnaire and narrative essay as a compulsory requirement for an on-campus-based teaching practice programme. in total 580 students gave consent for the responses from their questionnaires and narrative essays to be used in this research. of the 580 participants, 68% were female and 32% were males. forty-seven per cent of the participants indicated that teaching was their first choice of career while 53% stated that teaching was not their first choice. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.10 136 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 136-143 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.10 in order to establish their background, participants were requested to indicate what they had done during the year before enrolling to complete their teaching degrees. from the 580 participants, 66% had completed their final year of schooling the previous year, 4% stated that they were working within a school context either as assistant teachers, unqualified teachers, sport coaches, or tutors, 13% were employed in a full time job, 5% were enrolled in another course the year before, and 2% were repeating their first year in bed degree. eleven percent (11%) ticked the column that indicated “other” on the questionnaire and elaborated that they were either at home doing nothing because they had no funding, repeating or rewriting some of their grade 12 subjects in order to qualify to study teaching. thus, two thirds of participants had just completed their final year of high school and the other third were engaged in other activities before enrolling for teaching. next, i discuss the findings of this research. 6. results2 this section will focus on the overall results as gleaned from responses in the questionnaires (quantitative data) and use the information from the narrative essays (qualitative data) to substantiate participants’ decisions. the discussion of the results was guided by the factors stipulated in the theories of career motivation, namely: altruistic, intrinsic, and extrinsic motives. 6.1 altruistic motives for becoming a teacher overall, altruistic motives were the highest category indicated by pre-service teachers for becoming teachers. in total, this category made up 60% of pre-service teachers’ reasons for pursuing teaching. participants cited their personal commitment to the profession and experiences at school as key factors for selecting teaching as a profession. four specific reasons why pre-service teachers wanted to become teachers were identified. the first reason, which 27% of the participants’ data indicated, was that they wanted to “make a difference” in the lives of children in south africa and in their “community”. their data pointed out their desire to “change the education system and close the gap between township and urban school education in south africa”. some 24% of the participants in this study said that they wanted to become teachers because of the love they have for teaching as a profession. they stated that “teaching is a calling” and they felt that teaching was their “purpose in life”. participants also indicated that they were “inspired by children”. this, they claimed, has influenced their decision to teach as they have “always loved working with children”. lastly, 9% of the pre-service teachers wanted to become teachers because of their ‘apprenticeships of observation’ (lortie, 1975) at school. some participants had been exposed to teachers who they regarded as positive role models and indicated that they were “inspired by [the] teachers who motivated” them. other participants indicated that they had “bad teachers in [their] past and would like to change that” by becoming better teachers. 6.2 extrinsic motives for becoming a teacher extrinsic motives made up 23% of pre-service teachers’ reasons for becoming teachers and as such forms the second-largest category. the overarching categories as per pugach’s (2006) categorisation included aspects relating to pre-service teachers’ autobiographies, specifically their parents and teachers’ views and their personal belief about teaching. analysis of the dataset found that 12% of the participants believed that a degree in teaching would enable them to get better employment opportunities because “there is a need for teachers” in south africa. for 5% of the participants in this study, teaching was a career that they think will 2 quotations in this section refer to the exact words of participants in their narrative essays. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.10 137 moosa why teaching? perspectives from first-year south african pre-service teachers 2020 38(1): 137-143 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.10 create other opportunities for them. one reason was that teaching is a good “fall-back” career if they cannot find other employment. for those who indicated that teaching was not their first choice, they “hope[d] [that teaching will] open more doors to greater opportunities that will further help [them] develop in [their] field of choice”. with a teaching degree, students felt that they “are able to shift to another country easily” and hence, is “ideal” for those who “love to travel”. thirdly, 4% of the participants indicated that teaching was not their first choice but because their “application for another degree was unsuccessful,” they thought that teaching was a good second choice because “teaching is an easy job and even studying teaching would not be that difficult”. one percent (1%) of the pre-service teachers were drawn to teaching because of the conditions of employment which include “working hours”, “school holidays” and “job security” for them. these conditions of employment will allow them “[to] do other hobbies in [their] free time and it [will] allow [them] to be able to spend time with family”. a further 1% of the research participants decided to enrol for teaching because of their financial constraints and the fact that “it was easy to get a bursary that will fund the bachelor of education degree”. 6.3 intrinsic motives for becoming a teacher intrinsic motives were the lowest-ranked overall category. in this category, 17% of the participants indicated that they had been motived to become teachers for intrinsic reasons that were specifically based on their personal commitment to the profession. these participants decided to become teachers because they believed that they had the necessary characteristics to become good teachers. these characteristics included them being “patient” and having the ability to “easily interact with people”. furthermore, participants indicated that they had good subject knowledge, especially in the subjects they have selected as their major teaching subjects. 7. discussion overall, more than half of the participants did not want to study teaching, according to what they indicated in the questionnaires. this means that half of this cohort had chosen a programme that did not align with their initial career plans, and this could lead to high dropout probability (belloc, maruotti & petrella, 2010: 137). despite this admission, participants still provided reasons in their narrative essays for selecting teaching as a career based on altruistic, extrinsic, and intrinsic reasons. regarding these categories, which were derived from the quantitative and qualitative data, more than half (60%) of this cohort of south african pre-service teachers opted to become teachers based on altruistic reasons. this group was mostly concerned with the well-being of learners as they wanted to make a difference in the lives of learners and be responsible for shaping their futures. if these specific pre-service teachers feel that they are making a difference in the lives of learners, they would be more likely to remain in the profession. as such, their motivation to remain in the profession is likely to be based on their perceived sense of them making a difference. this finding is in line with findings in the 2018 talis report that indicated that 97% of teachers in south africa became teachers to influence children’s development and to contribute to society (oecd, 2019). they would need reinforcement in the form of acknowledgment from learners or various stakeholders that they are making a difference. in the absence of that affirmation they might opt to leave the profession and pursue a career outside of teaching. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.10 138 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 138-143 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.10 the second largest category (23%) included extrinsic reasons for wanting to become teachers. the specific reasons cited by research participants was that there were bursaries available to study teaching as well as being almost guaranteed employment opportunities because of the shortage of teachers in south africa. these extrinsic factors that motivate students’ decisions, however, may demoralise their continuing commitment to teaching (yong, 1995). furthermore, the challenge with extrinsic decisions by pre-service teachers who did not get into the course they initially wanted is that they are at higher risk of leaving initial teacher education programmes early (lassibille & gómez, 2008: 103). if pre-service teachers should find that teaching is not an easy job, but a career that can be demanding and not always inspiring, they may be discouraged from staying in the profession. the challenge with altruistic and extrinsic motives is that if these needs are not met in the profession, teachers are more likely to look for alternative work opportunities, and as such the cycle of a shortage of teachers will continue. in addition, the challenge with being motivated by altruistic and extrinsic reasons is that in order for these needs to be met, these teachers may be reliant on external factors and might not be self-motivated. this could lead them to easily be persuaded to exit the profession. those who are unable to exit the teaching profession could become despondent and negative about the demands placed on them and as such become ineffective in meeting learners’ needs. thus, the stereotyped views held about teaching, based on students’ past experiences through their apprenticeship of observation, could have negative and devastating implications for individuals but also the profession at large if not demystified as early as possible in initial teacher education programmes. lastly, intrinsic reasons for becoming teachers were cited by the least amount (17%) of participants. in this category participants’ decisions were spearheaded by their level of selfefficacy that will impact on their ability to do well. this group of pre-service teachers have a high sense of personal commitment for the teaching profession because they believe that they have the required characteristics to make good teachers. this group could tend to be more committed to the teaching profession (wang & fwu, 2001). hence, this group of pre-service teachers is more likely to remain in the profession because they are motivated by intrinsic factors. it is concerning, however, that this group makes up the smallest percentage of all the participants. 8. concluding remarks in conclusion, what the data showed is that altruistic reasons for choosing teaching were the highest scored criteria by this cohort of students. their foremost reason for becoming teachers was to make a difference in the lives of learners in south africa because they loved working with children. it is encouraging to note that this cohort of teachers have opted to become teachers to make an overall difference in the lives of learners in south africa. despite being encouraging, this finding is also concerning based on research that states that teaching is not an easy career and that the attrition rate of teachers is due to lack of job satisfaction, school policies, workload, future prospects and relations with parents (chireshe & shumba, 2011; struyven & vanthournout, 2014) and teaching not being the first choice for some (mkumbo, 2012). in addition, it is evident that at this stage of their journey to becoming teachers, these participants lack a nuanced understanding of the complexities, challenges and realities of teaching. thus, even though this cohort of pre-service teachers would like to focus on improving the lives of learners, they might find that due to the challenges they would be faced with in teaching, the realities of what teaching actually entails, and a lack of teacher self-efficacy, their needs will not necessarily be met. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.10 139 moosa why teaching? perspectives from first-year south african pre-service teachers 2020 38(1): 139-143 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.10 extrinsic factors include better employment opportunities, not being accepted for their first choice, the belief that teaching offers suitable employment conditions, and financial constraints. these findings differ from those in research conducted by wolhuter et al. (2012) in south africa. the findings from wolhuter et al. (2012) mostly referred to extrinsic reasons for pre-service teachers’ choice. in this research, however, pre-service teachers mostly cited altruistic reasons for becoming teachers. this information provides a deeper understanding of why students opt to enter the teaching profession, thus contributing to the overall understanding of how to better prepare pre-service teachers for the profession. if pre-service teachers have a deeper and more realistic understanding of what teaching actually entails, they might be more resilient to deal with the challenges of the profession. the findings of this paper would benefit initial teacher education institutions and the department of basic education as it would not be of value to either one if the needs of teachers are not met at a preor in-service level. it is important to prepare students fully for the profession, but it is equally important that the conditions of service are such that they would want to remain in the profession especially since this cohort is mostly motivated by altruistic factors. this suggests that institutes of teacher education need to counter misrepresentations of student teachers’ choices to enter the profession and why they leave. they need to recognise the preferences of student teachers and develop curricula that respond appropriately to those established needs. a limitation of this study is that students’ views were sought at the beginning of their degree. a follow-up study to this research would be to re-evaluate the same cohort of students’ views about teaching in their final year. this would allow for a stronger argument to be made about their resilience, or lack thereof to remain in the profession. references akar, e.o. 2012. motivations of turkish pre-service teachers to choose teaching as a career. australian journal of teacher education, 37(10): 67–84. akarsu, b. & kariper, i.a. 2015. investigation of pre-service teachers views of teaching as profession. bulgarian journal of science and education policy, 9(1): 23–45. ashby, p., hobson, a., tracey, l., malderez, a., tomlinson, p., roper, t., chambers, g. & healy, j. 2008. beginner teachers’ experiences of initial teacher preparation, induction and early professional development: a review of literature. research report no. dcsf-rw076. london: department for children, schools and families. atkinson, j.w. 1957. motivational determinants of risk-taking behavior. psychological review, 64: 359–372. azman, n. 2013. choosing teaching as a career: perspectives of male and female malaysian student teachers in training. european journal of teacher education, 36(1): 113–130. bandura, a. 1994. self-efficacy. in v.s. ramachaudran (ed.), encyclopedia of human behavior (vol. 4, pp. 71–81). new york: academic press. 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f t he lo ve i ha ve fo r t ea ch in g i h ad g oo d te ac he rs a nd w an t to b e lik e th em i w an t t o m ak e a di ffe re nc e in th e liv es of le ar ne rs i w as n’ t a cc ep te d in an y ot he r c ou rs e o f t he b ur sa ry it’ s w ha t m y fa m ily / pa re nt s/ te ac he rs w an t m e to d o i n ee d to g et th e qu al ifi ca tio n to b e be tte r e m pl oy ed it is b et te r t ha n ju st s itt in g at h om e an d do in g no th in g i e ve nt ua lly w an t t o be co m e a le ct ur er / pr of es so r th er e is n ee d fo r te ac he rs in o ur c ou nt ry i w an t a jo b w he re y ou c an le av e ea rly a nd h av e lo ng ho lid ay s o th er i w ill m ak e a go od te ac he r be ca us e i h av e a lo ud v oi ce i a m ta ll i a m n ot a fra id o f ch ild re n i w as re al ly c le ve r at s ch oo l i c an b e bo ss y an d st ric t w ith le ar ne rs i l ov e w or ki ng w ith ch ild re n i a m fr ie nd ly an d ki nd i a m a g oo d lis te ne r i h av e a go od s en se o f hu m or i k no w m y su bj ec t re al ly w el l e ve ry on e sa id i w ou ld i w an t t o m ak e a di ffe re nc e in th e liv es o f ch ild re n in s ou th a fri ca i a m a fra id o f n ot b ei ng li ke d by le ar ne r, te ac he rs an d pa re nt s n ot b ei ng a bl e to di sc ip lin e le ar ne rs n ot b ei ng a bl e to c om m un ic at e eff ec tiv el y n ot b ei ng a bl e to an sw er q ue st io ns le ar ne rs m ig ht a sk du rin g a le ss on a ll th e m ed ia re po rts o f w ha t ha pp en s at s om e sc ho ol s a ll th e m ar ki ng a nd ot he r a dm in is tra tiv e ta sk s te ac he rs h av e to d o i a m ex ci te d ab ou t b ei ng c al le d si r/ m am b ec om in g a te ac he r h av in g lo ng w or ki ng ha lf da ys a nd h av in g lo ng h ol id ay s w or ki ng w ith c hi ld re n m ak in g a di ffe re nc e in th e liv es o f t he c hi ld re n i t ea ch e ar ni ng a s al ar y i c ho se m y m aj or b ec au se o f m y bu rs ar y i l ov e th e su bj ec t i h ad n o ch oi ce a s ot he r c ou rs es w er e fu ll i g ot h ig h m ar ks fo r th e su bj ec t i n gr ad e 12 m y te ac he r/f am ily m em be rs sa id i w ill b e go od a t te ac hi ng th is s ub je ct th er e is a n ee d fo r te ac he rs in th is s ub je ct s is th er e an yt hi ng e ls e yo u w ou ld li ke to m en tio n re ga rd in g w hy y ou d ec id ed to b ec om e a te ac he r, w hi ch h as n ot b ee n in cl ud ed in th e ab ov e qu es tio nn ai re ? __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ _ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ __ _ (f oo tn ot es ) 1 pe rc en ta ge s w er e ca lc ul at ed b y di vi di ng th e nu m be r of re sp on se s in th is c at eg or y by th e to ta l n um be r of p ar tic ip an ts . http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.10 163 research article http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.122020 38(1): 163-180 promoting quality education by addressing ethical challenges in high school football at circuit level in durban, south africa abstract the sport of football, also commonly referred to as soccer in south africa, has become a socio-cultural phenomenon and its popularity manifests itself in school football. the study aimed to identify ethical challenges in high school football at circuit level in durban, south africa, in order to promote quality education. a phenomenological paradigm, drawing on a qualitative research approach, was used. a purposive sample of 16 high school football coaches and administrators from a particular region, or circuit, were selected to participate in this study. semi-structured interviews were conducted. all interviews were recorded and transcribed for analysis, and an inductive approach was used to identify patterns in the collected data by employing thematic analysis. age cheating and identity document fraud were perceived as the leading ways unethical leadership in the circuit facilitates cheating. the study also found that the environment in which school football operates in the circuit is not conducive to promoting ethical leadership. this study highlighted that governmental structures should focus on ethics and leadership in school football, thereby ensuring quality education. this study has shown that ethical leadership is a key contributor to the holistic development and socialisation of learners. keywords: quality education; ethical leadership; high school; football 1. introduction and background internationally it is acknowledged that sport prepares a school-going child with life skills in a way that is unparalleled to any other. in particular, school sport has a valuable contribution to make to the development and transformation of sport; it has the ability to maximise the sport potential of pupils and to become the foundation for the development of sport in a country. de coning (2014) found that schools with physical education and a focus on sport tend to have improved grades. however, for this to be authors: mr ayanda ndlovu1 prof cecile n. gerwel proches1 prof rowena naidoo2 affiliations: 1graduate school of business and leadership, university of kwazulu-natal, durban, south africa 2 discipline of biokinetics, exercise and leisure sciences, university of kwazulu-natal, college of health sciences, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v38i1.12 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(1): 163-180 published: 11 june 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5888-4775 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2330-9575 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9664-3734 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 164 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 164-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 fully realised, the appropriate leadership by school sports coaches and administrators needs to be consistently demonstrated. ethical school sport leaders personify intrinsic qualities that direct them to making ethical decisions for the benefit of the wider school sports programme; especially since, as kalinowski (1985) noted, a sport leader’s influence should extend beyond athletic performance to the holistic development of learners. sport, and in particular school sport, provides an environment in which to learn positive social and personal values and conduct, contributing to good citizenship, good character and ethical leadership. it is thus critical to adopt a systemic perspective when focusing on the concept of quality education. this entails not only focusing on academic matters, but also on the critical role that sports can play in the holistic development of the learner – a focus on the whole child and ‘life after school’. it thus becomes clear that everyone who is responsible for motivating learners to achieve their full potential has to be held accountable for their behaviour – this includes educators and principals, as well as those who are tasked with leading sports. this aligns with the systems thinking perspective and leadership styles, which are discussed later. individuals who are in positions of power and have influence are therefore considered to be leaders, with the learners, in a sense, being the followers. considering that sports leaders are role models, and that learners observe their attitudes and behaviour, ethical leadership becomes paramount, so that learners are able to interact with positive role models. as learners develop and slowly reach adulthood, it becomes paramount that they are exposed to moral and ethical behaviour, so that they can one day become responsible citizens. the sustainable development goal 4 aims to ‘ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all’ (unesco, n.d.). it is also highlighted that the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes required by citizens to lead productive lives, make informed decisions and assume active roles locally and globally in facing and resolving global challenges can be acquired through education for sustainable development (esd) and global citizenship education (gced), which includes peace and human rights education, as well as intercultural education and education for international understanding (unesco, n.d.). a holistic view of education is therefore important, as learners will be learning how to behave, particularly with respect to ‘soft skills’. through playing sport, learners will observe their leaders (sport leaders, etc.) to determine what it takes to win, and how to interact with others – this could have implications for how an individual will view ethical and unethical behaviour, and the necessary actions to achieve success. if unethical behaviour is part of the schooling system, then the learner may later transfer this to other aspects of life. sports leaders need to illustrate a firm commitment to striving for ethical behaviour, as they set the ethical tone (daft, 2018). ethical leadership includes showing humility, respect and honesty; serving others; being accountable; having concern for the greater good; demonstrating courage to accept responsibility; not being a conformist; and opposing unethical behaviour (daft, 2018). unethical practices in their different forms infiltrate sports systems, distorting fair play, integrity and confidence in the game (ionescu, 2015). unethical practices in sport include any type of competitive advantage generated by any kind of undertaking viewed as prohibited by law and viewed as unjust or dishonest, based on shared global rules and restrictions (nica & potcovaru, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 165 ndlovu, gerwel proches & naidoo promoting quality education by addressing ethical challenges 2020 38(1): 165-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 in south africa, the sport of football, also commonly referred to as soccer in south africa, has become a socio-cultural phenomenon and its popularity manifests itself in school football. school football is highly competitive, with various inter-school competitions, beginning at circuit level, with winning teams progressing to district, provincial and national championship level. the south african model for school football is primarily focused on competition, with an emphasis on elite teams, and aligns with a performance discourse instead of a participation discourse. a performance discourse can lead to a culture of cheating, which can exacerbate unethical behaviour in school football. a win-at-all-costs mentality is harmful (orlick, 1978) and could lead to inappropriate, unethical and/or illegal behaviour (rechner & smart, 2012). previous research examined issues pertaining to power interests, ethics, moral conduct and truth in sports (sage, 1990; nicolaides & surujlal, 2011; van wyk, steyn & goslin, 2007; butler, 2000; bredemeier & shields, 1984). ethical behaviour is directly related to leadership (sport coaches and administrators) in high school football (sağnak, 2010). duda, olson and templin (1991:79) found that a ‘low task orientation and high ego orientation corresponded to an endorsement of unsportsmanlike play/cheating’. since school sport coaches and administrators wield influence, sport coaching and sport administration are roles that require leadership, which is the primary reason why effective leadership is a necessary trait in these role players (kellett, 1999; davids, 2015). sport leaders must be ethical leaders if they want to be good coaches and administrators. this ultimately influences the quality of education in schools. the aim of the study was to identify the ethical challenges in high school football in a circuit in durban in order to promote quality education. the study also examined the factors perpetuating unethical behaviour exhibited by football coaches and administrators at circuit level. in south africa, an education circuit is part of an education district which is demarcated for administrative purposes by the member of the executive council (mec) of the provincial legislature responsible for the provincial department of education. a circuit is a second-level sub-division and, depending on the context, the term ‘circuit’ is used to describe either a geographical area or the administrative unit (department of basic education, n.d.; mafuwane & pitsoe, 2014; van der woort & wood, 2016). unethical behaviour has been a subject of debate for many years, as highlighted by eber (2011:142), who suggests that ‘from the age of the first rock-throwing contest, each generation of competitors tends to do whatever is necessary to win’. unfortunately, these unethical practices have permeated the entire range of sports. there are various forms of unethical practices that are common in sport (brooks, aleem, & button, 2013), many of which emerged in this study and are outlined below. sponsoring of major sporting contests and the competitive nature of winning may lead to unethical practices (ionescu, 2015). cooper and frank (1991), as cited in boes (2015), identify the following factors as influencing unethical behaviour: one’s personal moral values and standards; family and friends who provide support and insight in relation to resolving ethical issues; leaders who pressurise employees to compromise ethical standards; an environment/culture that controls the pressure to compromise ethical values to achieve organisational goals; and an organisational leadership philosophy that emphasises ethics within operations. however, o’fallon and butterfield (2012) found that peer influence plays a major role in influencing ethical decision-making. the more individuals observe their peers engaging in unethical behaviour, the more likely they are to engage in the same or similar activities. boes (2015) states that if an individual believes that others are behaving unethically, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 166 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 166-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 then that individual will feel more inclined to behave unethically (like inverse peer pressure). thus, there is a strong relationship between one’s behaviour and one’s expectation of others. furthermore, rivalry and unethical behaviour appear to be linked (kilduff, galinsky, gallo & reade, 2016). the theoretical framework that underpins the study is systems thinking and leadership. daft (2018) described systems thinking as the ability to see the synergy of the whole rather than the separate elements of a system, and to learn to reinforce or change whole system patterns. this, therefore, means that what sport leaders do in the circuit is not independent of, but rather interdependent with, follower actions and organisational processes. leadership in the circuit high school football programme is thus related to a complex system that contains various subsystems, including members’ personalities; intergroup processes; tasks; work processes and practices; accountability systems; policies and administrative structures. these subsystems need to fit together within the overall system in order for leadership to be effective. daft (2018) highlighted that it is the relationship between parts that forms the whole system. in the context of this study, primary school football is a part (subsystem), high school football is a part (subsystem), club football is a part (subsystem), age group football is a part (subsystem) and professional football is also a part (subsystem); and collectively they form the south african football system, with the pinnacle being our senior national team. it is therefore important for leaders in the circuit to see football development as a system that requires them to operate within the school football subsystem, which in turn requires them to focus on the big picture, which is the national development agenda. daft (2018) suggested that leaders need to develop ‘peripheral vision’, which is the ability to view the organisation and subsystem through a wide angle lens, so that they perceive how their decisions and actions affect the whole system. this is also aligned to responsible leadership and the awareness of the impact of the influence that a leader has. high school football requires a re-evaluation of leadership education, not only in the circuit but in school football in general. it is important to have a strong emphasis on ethical leadership. sport leaders should learn that socialisation takes place through participation in high school football. sports leaders need to understand that, although learners may be told to engage in prosocial behaviour, they will more likely follow an example set for them (daft, 2018). it is critical that all educators and volunteers involved in high school football appreciate a systems thinking perspective, and how they should accordingly mould their way of thinking when dealing with issues of school football, learner development and football development in general. in view of the current demand for more ethical, learner-centred leadership in the school football programme in the circuit, servant leadership may very well be what the high school football needs. these are the sport leaders who combine their motivation to lead with a need to serve beyond their self-interests (daft, 2018). if there is to be a change in the culture of high school football in the circuit, then transformational leadership should also be exhibited by sport leaders. transformational leadership is a type of leadership that facilitates change in the organisation and followers (daft, 2018; avolio & bass, 2002). frontiera (2009) found that, despite there being an extensive collection of literature examining organisational culture in business, no empirical literature could be located that explores organisational culture in sport. this is despite the fact that there is an increasing appreciation of the contextual influences of ethical leadership in sport, as the prevalent culture http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 167 ndlovu, gerwel proches & naidoo promoting quality education by addressing ethical challenges 2020 38(1): 167-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 plays a leading role in bringing about and condoning various forms of behaviour, including ethical and moral behaviour. according to säfström and månsson (2004), the creation of the social being is a process commonly referred to as socialisation. parke and buriel (2006) describe socialisation as a dynamic and reciprocal process whereby individuals learn and endorse the values, norms and behaviours appropriate to their social environment. säfström and månsson (2004) further described socialisation as an institutional process that affects a person from the moment they enter a society such as a school, until the day they leave it. leaders are often viewed as role models, given their formal status, position of power and referent power (yukl, 2010), which result in followers imitating the behaviour of their leaders. sosik and godshalk (2002) found that follower-modelling of leader behaviour may also be prevalent because leaders often serve as mentors to their followers, while protégés often learn by imitating the behaviour of their mentors. followers are especially inclined to model leader behaviour when they perceive the leader as possessing desirable qualities and being successful. school sport, through the coach-player relations that are created, is key to the socialisation of learners. sullivan, paquette, holt and bloom (2012) suggested that coaches can apply a powerful influence on children’s experiences in youth sport. this is especially the case in school sport, where the players as learners look up to, and generally admire, their coaches, not only as educators and parent figures, but as adults who they can learn from and model their behaviour around. seungbum and keunsu (2012) cited research conducted by bandura (1977), who indicated that most human behaviour is learned through modelling certain behaviour, particularly when that behaviour is perceived to be effective and/or successful. they referred to this as ‘observational learning’ in the social learning theory. rechner and smart (2012) indicated that ethical/unethical behaviour that may have been developed and/or fostered as a function of active sport involvement could well have an influence on the subsequent development of individual ethical judgements within other contexts, such as in the school academic setting and even in business later on in life. rolemodelling behaviour is supported by the social learning theory (de wolde, groenendaal, helsloot & schmidt, 2014), which also suggests that individuals learn to pay attention to the attitude, behaviour and values of role models, as well as to reproduce these types of behaviour (brown & trevino, 2006). based on this theory, brown and trevino (2006) suggested that individuals need others for ethical guidance. weaver, trevino and agle (2005) argued that most followers are strongly influenced by those individuals who are closest to them, while kaptein, huberts, avelino and lasthuizen (2005) commented that followers who are led by an ethical leader are most inclined to imitate the behaviour of their leader by showing ethical behaviour themselves. perceived ideals and standards can be fully or partially shaped by learners’ early sporting experiences as they grow up as part of the educational system. schwebel (1996) cited piaget (1965) in his revolutionary book on moral judgement, when he said that youth obtain from their elders most of the moral rules that they respect. besides community elders, schwebel (1996) suggested that the most significant adults in a youth’s social learning processes include educators, especially educators who are coaches in school sport. how these educators teach/coach and what they value are powerful influences on the future behaviour of the learners. schwebel added that the values of school sport coaches influence the social and moral quality of learners’ behaviour. for his part, kjeldsen (1992) highlights http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 168 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 168-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 that coaches engage the learners they coach, not only as educators but also as role models, because they should strive to inform, persuade, stimulate and inspire. this means that they need to be coaches as well as ethical leaders, and in order to carry out this mandatory added leadership function, they need to present a high standard of personal ethical behaviour as a model to be imitated. the coach not only has a fundamental responsibility to enhance learning, but as cemalcilar (2010) suggested, as educators they play various roles that are additional to providing academic guidance. the influence they enjoy in setting the broad social climate in their academic institution through their association with the learners is key to the effective socialisation of the learners. ethical leadership and the organisational culture in school sport is important, according to molina (2012), who indicated that the education system has the duty to create the consensus necessary to maintain social order. molina (2012) referred to durkheim (1956), who suggested that education is vital to the process of adopting norms and values, as it plays a leading role in attempting to solve social ills. however, durkheim (1956), as cited by molina (2012), also reminded us that education synthetically reproduces society, so much so that it is unable to completely solve social ills. according to levermore (2011), the primary beneficiaries of sport are the youth, as sport is regarded as a particularly potent vehicle for this age group. prominent amongst these benefits are sport’s ability to contribute to the education process and the building of social, physical and community infrastructures, as these are viewed by levermore (2008) as essential factors for development to succeed. schooling an individual on how she or he is expected to act and why, makes education not just a social, but also a normative, act that connects morality to the social sphere (säfström & månsson, 2004). schools are therefore thought of as environments where individuals are socialised into identified values and norms, through which their life prospects can be correctly founded and their personal lives not only fulfilled, but also made ethically significant. 2. research design and methodology the research drew on the phenomenological paradigm, which examines the ways in which individuals make sense of the world around them. phenomenologists maintain that human action is meaningful and that people therefore ascribe meaning to their own and other people’s actions (du plooy-cilliers, davis & bezuidenhout, 2014). the fundamental difference in approach is that, in the phenomenological paradigm, the task of the researcher is to interpret and gain an understanding of human actions and then describe them from the point of view of the person or people being studied (du plooy-cilliers et al., 2014). the phenomenological paradigm is more aligned to the qualitative research methodology where qualitative methods refer to a broad class of empirical procedures designed to describe and interpret the experiences of research participants in a context-specific setting (denzin & lincoln, 2000). the qualitative research approach was thus used to collect data. qualitative research methods refer to a broad class of empirical procedures designed to describe and interpret the experiences of research participants in a context-specific setting (du plooy-cilliers et al., 2014). the qualitative research method was considered suitable for this research and aligned to addressing the study objectives. this was an exploratory case study. therefore, the qualitative research method allowed for engagement with sport leaders in the circuit who were intricately http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 169 ndlovu, gerwel proches & naidoo promoting quality education by addressing ethical challenges 2020 38(1): 169-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 involved in high school football, and the collection of data that was ultimately informed by their experiences and knowledge. this study was set in quintile three and four schools in a semi-urban area in durban, south africa. all south african public schools are categorised into five groups known as quintiles, largely for the allocation of financial resources. schools in quintiles one, two and three are ‘no-fee schools’, while schools in quintiles four and five are fee-paying schools (ally & mclaren, 2016). schools in quintiles one to three are under-resourced. the particular circuit selected has 79 high schools, of which 45 participate competitively in high school football. a purposive sample of 20 high school sports leaders were selected to participate in this study as these schools compete in at least two of the three major school football competitions, annually. a sample of 16 school sports leaders volunteered to participate in this study. the provincial department of education granted permission to conduct this study. ethical clearance was obtained thereafter. meetings were set up to discuss the study with the school sports leaders. all participants completed informed consent forms prior to data collection. respondents were assured that data would be treated confidentially and that their identities would not be revealed in the write-up of the research. semi-structured, one-on-one interviews were conducted with sports leaders (dearnley, 2005; hand, 2003). all interviews were audio-recorded and later transcribed. interviews lasted between 45 and 60 minutes. participants were encouraged to share relevant stories, as a means of ‘painting a rich picture’ of the phenomenon under research. data were analysed using thematic coding, a process of data reduction by means of identifying themes (du plooy-cilliers et al., 2014). in analysing the data, the researcher allowed the codes to emerge from analysing the interview transcripts. the researcher continually read through the transcripts, finding dominant patterns, working inductively with emerging categories and frequently comparing them. since the study involved interactions with individuals, extreme caution was taken to avoid harming them and to ensure that their right to privacy was respected. the researcher informed the respondents that their participation in the study was voluntary, and informed consent was sought prior to data collection. the respondents were also informed that they could decline to participate, or could withdraw from the study at any time with no adverse consequences. there was no monetary benefit for those who participated in this study. as data were collected during face-to-face interviews, all interviews were conducted in either a classroom or an office, where only the interviewer and the respondent were allowed in the room, to ensure privacy. all interviews were recorded using an audio device. no one individual was informed as to who else was part of the sample and the contents of other interviews were not divulged to anyone. when analysing the data, the researcher ensured that no personal details of respondents were given; nor was any information included that could reveal who the respondents were. the same principle was applied for all individuals and schools who were mentioned during the data collection process, and the findings are presented in terms of general narratives. the researcher is a practitioner in the sport industry with vast experience in school sport; this facilitated an understanding of the industry and subjects. the researcher was, however, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 170 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 170-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 careful to avoid researcher bias, by ensuring that the responses of the participants were presented and that he remained neutral. as a means to ensure the credibility of the study findings, the researcher also spent time in the field to enhance his understanding and gain insights into each sport leader’s environment at school and within the circuit, and their subsequent perceptions of, and experiences within, the circuit. the researcher ensured that the research findings were authentic by paying careful attention to the procedures that were used for data collection and analysis. interviews were recorded and transcribed, which enhanced the credibility and trustworthiness of the study. the same questions were asked of all the interviewees and the responses were compared on the same level. 3. findings based on the data analysis from the responses of the 16 school sports leaders, the following themes emerged: existing unethical practices; perceived unethical leadership by sport leaders; and factors perpetuating and promoting unethical practices. 3.1 existing unethical practices respondents identified the fielding of ineligible players as a leading unethical practice in high school circuit football. the respondents argued that the fielding of players who are nonlearners, learners from other schools, and/or over-age, is being practised by some schools. coaches sometimes concurrently coach community clubs – fielding non-learners from their clubs and presenting them as learners. these sports leaders occasionally condone the fielding of ineligible players by allowing the falsification of player identification, and age cheating within their schools. “we need to stop age cheating because it is killing our football.” (r9). “some learners have said that their coaches have encouraged them not to take identity documents as that will get them caught.” (r14). 3.2 perceived unethical leadership by sport leaders respondents believed that there is a problem with refereeing. there was the impression that the appointment of referees for games is largely manipulated, with more appointments of unqualified, biased referees. it was argued by some that referees were being bribed to influence the outcome of games, ensuring that selected schools win crucial games. some respondents indicated that they had observed sports leaders manipulate the system for personal gain. for example, ad hoc games are organised to escape classroom teaching duties. moreover, a few respondents stated that they had observed some educators leaving their school whenever the school team was competing, under the pretence of accompanying the team. however, the educator would not attend the game, thus leaving learners unattended, and without a coach; or with a coach or volunteer coach who was not an educator at that particular school. another unethical practice that was highlighted was the conduct of sports leaders at tournaments. some respondents pointed to the use of foul language by some learners and sports leaders; substance abuse, including alcohol consumption and smoking by the learners; and unruly behaviour as unacceptable and damaging to the reputation of school football. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 171 ndlovu, gerwel proches & naidoo promoting quality education by addressing ethical challenges 2020 38(1): 171-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 several respondents also believed that the mismanagement of school finances is rife among sport leaders, through the theft and maladministration of school funds. this includes fraudulent practices such as inflating the prices of goods and services to be purchased and soliciting a kickback from the service provider. one respondent even argued that there is no transparency in the use of funds at multiple levels. sports leaders, especially educators, were unsure how much money was being used to run the tournaments that are regularly held at circuit and district level. a few respondents believed that, too often, coaches would engage in the unethical practice of playing (fielding) their best players repeatedly – even when a player was nursing an injury. these players should have been recovering, so as to not aggravate their injuries. however, they are forced to play by their coaches. “coaches can use sport as a means to promote good behaviour and good academics amongst learners.” (r7). 3.3 factors perpetuating and promoting unethical practices 3.3.1 win-at-all-costs mentality the leading factor promoting unethical practices in the school football circuit, according to respondents, is the prevalent ‘win-at-all-costs’ mentality among many sports leaders. it was suggested that the deep desire of sports leaders to win has created this mentality. this has pushed sports leaders to seek glory at any cost. coaches want their schools to represent the circuit at the district championships; the district at the provincial championships; and even the province at national championships. coaches see other schools winning frequently, sometimes by employing unethical practices. this promotes a negative mentality where sports leaders are willing to sacrifice their ethics and values to ensure victory. “there is one particular educator in our circuit that does not want to be beaten at all.” (r1). “if coaches were doing their job, there would be no need to cheat.” (r8). “ethical leadership is like a hidden curriculum.” (r2). 3.3.2 monetary winnings half of the respondents stated that the monetary prizes at tournaments were also perpetuating unethical practices, with all schools aiming to win money. winnings also included resources such as sporting attire and general sports equipment. 3.3.3 incompetent administrators, coaches and technical officials it was highlighted that a few sport leaders, as educators, are not performing the tasks they have volunteered for, as they do not engage in proper player and team development. there are no structured football programmes in their schools, with regular and consistent training sessions for school teams. some respondents stated that the poor quality of refereeing in circuit school football was a primary factor contributing to unethical practices. unqualified officials are seen as incompetent and biased, and do not allow games to be played fairly, leading to some sports leaders resorting to unethical behaviour to try to win games. a few respondents claimed that this lack of capacity http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 172 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 172-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 is not restricted to refereeing. some sports leaders, both educators and volunteers, also lack experience and the formal coaching and technical qualifications essential to the sport. “… maybe we need to suspend, or even ban, coaches and administrators that are unethical, but that is harsh and an extreme measure.” (r7). 3.3.4 attaining personal glory respondents argued that recognition as good football coaches or administrators is highly sought after. sports leaders have personal ambitions, wanting to present themselves favourably to their colleagues and peers, within and outside their schools. such individuals want to be perceived as being responsible for developing good players and teams. these personal ambitions could, however, lead to unethical behaviour, especially in instances where a sports leader does not put in the necessary groundwork to ensure success, or to gather the required resources for him/her to achieve his/her goal. “… before a tournament he even tells us that he is going to win this tournament ….” (r2). 3.3.5 lack of understanding of the role of school sport some respondents believed that the unethical behaviour of some sports leaders is directly linked to a lack of understanding and appreciation of the role of school sport in general, and school football in particular. these respondents indicated this as the reason why some schools do not have learner-centred football programmes. programmes are centred on the personal desires and ambitions of the sports leaders – thus promoting unethical leadership. “learners in high school are still young so they still need guidance.” (r13). “it is not only about the school and its reputation, but it is also about the child and his/her future.” (r10). “some of us do not realise that the school is a development platform for the learners.” (r8). 3.3.6 involvement of volunteers several respondents argued that sports leaders who are non-educators, namely volunteers, may be lacking in capacity and could possibly exacerbate unethical behaviour in the circuit. these individuals are often not part of the school and education setting, but are coaches from local clubs in the community who are willing to coach at the schools. a problem arises, however, when these volunteer coaches see the need to include ineligible players. the respondents indicated that having outside coaches coaching school teams is not an abnormal practice in the circuit, and some schools even pay them to coach. the challenge is that, in order for these coaches to retain their jobs, they have to produce results for the school. if they do not have learners of quality football-playing ability in the school, they resort to unethical behaviour to win and keep their jobs. “some teachers will do the bare minimum because they say they do not get paid for all the additional sport work they are doing.” (r8). “people want to be praised … they sell the farce that they are successful coaches.” (r7). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 173 ndlovu, gerwel proches & naidoo promoting quality education by addressing ethical challenges 2020 38(1): 173-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 3.3.7 unhealthy school rivalries it was highlighted that there are unnecessary politics and rivalries between schools and individuals in the circuit school football programmes, thus exacerbating unethical practices. these respondents argued that schools and people want to prove a point at the cost of ethics and values. 3.3.8 football as a career prospect it was indicated that schools have many learners who are not academically inclined. it was thus suggested that some sports leaders see no academic future for these learners: these individuals have little chance to successfully complete high school. therefore, coaches tend to use football as a path to success in the lives of these learners. as a result, coaches may justify engaging in practices such as age cheating and the falsification of documents. “… it is up to you as a leader to not buckle under pressure and do the right thing…” (r7). 4. discussion the study findings revealed that respondents believe that there is a culture of cheating in the high school circuit football environment. green (2004) indicated that cheating is a practice people hear about and discuss frequently. cheating in school football may be a norm that is silently accepted, and often desired. this culture frequently seems to be endorsed and perpetuated by educators, external coaches and sometimes even school management – threatening the values of school sport. cheating appears to be a given in sport and manifests itself in different forms (mewett, 2002). boone, steele and harmon (2004) suggested that cheating is acceptable as long as one is not caught: this view has been supported by the current study, where some high school football sports leaders could either be amoral or morally myopic. being amoral is ‘unthinking relative to either ethical processes or harmful outcomes’, and being morally myopic implies being ‘focused so much on outcomes/results that one fails to see, or one accepts as inevitable, the costly consequences of the programme’ (kjeldsen, 1992:100). the reason for this could be that individuals immersed in high school football may have become accustomed to accepting certain activities and behaviour as being part of the culture of high school football. the risk with this is that undesirable values can become so deeply rooted in a culture, that members of an organisation/group may not be consciously aware of them (daft, 2018). as shogan and ford (2000) stated, ethical misconduct emanates from both rule-breaking and cultural complicity. previous research has also examined the link between ego-orientation and moral growth of athletes (kavussanu & roberts, 2001). boone et al. (2004) suggested that cheating is not relative, meaning that its perception does not change, irrespective of the context within which it is demonstrated. according to these researchers, cheating is personal and professional misconduct. this is consistent with mccallister, blinde and weiss (2000), who noted inconsistencies between coaches’ philosophies and their behaviour. this suggests that coaches normally understand the importance of fostering socially desirable values through sport participation. however, in this study, coaches may fail to modify their environment in order to facilitate the learning of these values. this could lead to the authentication of unethical leadership and behaviour in the dayto-day running of sport programmes. melzer, elbe and brand (2010), citing bredemeier and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 174 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 174-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 shields (1984), further stated that sport in general does not turn people into moral beings. on the contrary, unethical behaviour seems to be more accepted in sport than in daily life. the study also revealed that the culture of rule-breaking is linked to cheating in high school football. this is as a result of the implementation model of high school football. according to stowe and gilpatric (2010), undesirable but output-enhancing activities such as cheating may occur in tournaments. this view confirms that rank-order tournaments are an environment in which the incentive to cheat may be particularly strong, especially as actions are difficult to monitor in tournaments. stowe and gilpatric (2010) found that a small increase in a contestant’s output could dramatically change his payoff if it increases his ranking. when participating in these rank-order tournaments, every high school aspires to win. therefore, ethical considerations are often neglected because they are seen as a barrier to success (melzer et al., 2010). the study highlighted that a major challenge is the fielding of ineligible players. such players often change their age fraudulently to enable them to play in certain age group tournaments for which they do not qualify. fraudulent documentation misrepresenting the learner is submitted, and/or schools field players who are not learners at their school. this practice of cheating is referred to as age-fraud. age-fraud is a term for the fabrication or the use of false documentation to gain an advantage over opponents for personal or team benefit (mhlana, 2008; cryer, 2014). furthermore, mhlana (2008) indicated that the greatest challenge is that approximately 20% of children in rural and impoverished communities do not have birth certificates or valid identity documents. this creates an even greater opportunity for unethical conduct. sports leaders should advocate and promote learner-centred football programmes by ensuring that age-appropriate learners consistently participate and compete in appropriate tournaments. gradidge, coopoo and constantinou (2010) highlighted that sport can evolve into a win-at-all-costs phenomenon, where doing whatever it takes to excel in competitions may become routine practice. 5. conclusion the aim of the study was to identify the ethical challenges in high school football in a circuit in durban in order to promote quality education. the study also sought to identify factors perpetuating unethical behaviour exhibited by football coaches and administrators at circuit level. the study has shown that sport leaders generally agree and acknowledge that sport has a major role to play in the development of learners through the socialisation process; but not all of them appreciate that, in order for it to be fully effective and its benefits to be fully realised, sport leaders in the circuit need to be ethical in their leadership. this is consistent with the reviewed literature and previous studies, which highlight that sport at school is part of the educational journey that learners embark upon, and the lessons they learn from winning and losing are an extension of the classroom, and a window into understanding the challenges of life. the study has thus emphasised how critical this is to ensuring that learners become responsible citizens, with the school environment contributing to quality education by striving for respect, fairness, integrity, honesty and a holistic understanding of learning, which acknowledges the implications of such traits on the future of the learner. sport leaders, in particular, play a critical role in being positive role models to learners, through being in a position of authority and having the ability to be influential. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 175 ndlovu, gerwel proches & naidoo promoting quality education by addressing ethical challenges 2020 38(1): 175-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 the study has highlighted that the department of basic education needs to play an active role in emphasising the impact of ethics and leadership on school football. the department of basic education needs to incorporate ethical leadership in all school sport conversations, training and performance management at the different levels of implementation. the study has shown that ethical leadership is key to contributing to the socialisation and positive holistic development of learners. hence, the department of basic education needs to ensure that all educators and volunteers engaged in high school football receive the relevant training to enable them to appreciate the value and benefits of ethical leadership. the findings of the study also highlight that the department of basic education needs to review the implementation model of high school football at a circuit level, which could include reviewing the time allocation to school sport and the budget allocation to school sport at a school and circuit level. the study found that the standard of ethical leadership in the high school football programme in the circuit is less than acceptable. graf (2005) highlights that unethical behaviour may benefit a programme temporarily, but that the success cannot be sustained. the status quo, where there is a culture and an environment that allows for unethical leadership, and which are contrary to the ethos of the greater school sports programme and school football programme, in particular, needs to change. the change in culture in the circuit needs to start at the school level and manifest itself outwards. ultimately, the ideal goal for sports leaders is to establish a culture where the followers are challenged and encouraged to create an environment that promotes commitment to excellence, where educators can become great educators, and where learners feel motivated to perform at their highest possible level (herrington, 2013). changing the culture will require a process whereby new ways of thinking, and a change in the mental attitude of the sports leaders, are enforced. however, before there can be a change in culture when new ways of thinking can be learnt and mental attitudes changed, deliberate effort should be applied to unlearn the existing culture and practices. this could be achieved through inclusive strategic planning, workshops, seminars and training and development, in order to stress and reinforce the importance of ethical leadership in school football; and the subsequent benefits. the first step to changing the culture in school football in the circuit will be to engage in a process whereby new ways of thinking, and a change in the mental attitude of sport leaders, are enforced. this is especially true in the circuit, where the findings suggest that there is blurring of the lines by leaders. when the environment and culture supports and encourages unethical behaviour, maintaining ethical standards in such an environment is a challenge that sport leaders in the high school football programme face. if sport leaders in high school football in the circuit are to achieve the goal of creating and sustaining lifelong learners, then they must continually ask themselves what the learners see, hear and experience at school. as a means to eliminate egocentric behaviour exhibited by sports leaders, the governing bodies of school football should aim to create a climate that focuses on development and growth rather than ranking, and coaches should encourage their athletes to improve their personal bests rather than over-emphasising competition with others. the recommendation, therefore, is that government should also incorporate ethical leadership in all school sports training and performance management at the various levels of implementation. the department of basic education should ensure that all educators and volunteers engaged in high school football receive the relevant training to enable them to appreciate the value and benefits of ethical leadership. a compulsory leadership development programme should http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 176 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 176-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.12 be introduced for all high school football leaders which they should successfully complete before they can participate in high school football. such a programme should place a strong emphasis on leadership that is rooted in ethical behaviour, by providing critical and deep experiential learning for school football leaders, involving personal reflection and positive practical outcomes for all participants who engage in this programme. this can be achieved by incorporating modules related to ethics and moral knowing, socialisation and systems thinking (shields & bredemeier, 1995). it is recommended that there be a conscious effort by all sports leaders and key stakeholders to actively promote and advocate for a learner-centred high school football programme by striving for a systemic perspective underpinned by servant leadership and transformational leadership styles. when the circuit can get to a point where the programme is about the beneficiaries and not certain individuals, schools, egos and attempts at selfish gains, ethical leadership would most likely improve drastically. if the football fraternity of the circuit values school sport and professional values, is willing to make those values known, and helps learners and sport leaders understand that life and sports are defined by the choices we make, then very likely they will have the courage not to engage in unethical practices (boone et al., 2004). as in any study, limitations are noted. firstly, the study sample in this study was relatively homogenous in terms of ethnicity and socio-economic status, and thus the findings on the state of ethical leadership in high school football in this particular circuit cannot be generalised to other circuits in the district, province, or nation – as their social contexts differ vastly. it is therefore important to highlight that the study findings are not necessarily a reflection of the state of ethical leadership in high school football in other circuits, and not even in primary school football in the circuit in question. generalisability is restricted by the context in which this study was conducted, particularly considering that the study only drew on the personal perspectives of a few high school sports leaders in one circuit. the study also only drew on the qualitative research approach with one stakeholder group. future studies could investigate the effect on commitment and ethical leadership when educators are remunerated for participating in school sport as an extra-mural activity. it is suggested that future studies draw on the mixed methods approach and involve diverse stakeholder groups who are critical in ensuring that ethical standards be maintained in school football. these stakeholder groups could include principals, parents and officials from the department 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https://doi.org/10.4284/sej.2010.77 https://doi.org/10.1123/tsp.26.1.122 https://sdg4education2030.org/the-goal https://sdg4education2030.org/the-goal https://doi.org/10.15700/saje.v36n4a1327 https://doi.org/10.4314/ajpherd.v13i3.24775 https://doi.org/10.4314/ajpherd.v13i3.24775 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orgdyn.2005.08.001 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orgdyn.2005.08.001 _goback 43 research article 2020 38(1): 43-57 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.4 accounting teachers’ readiness for e-learning in the fourth industrial revolution: a case of selected high schools in the eastern cape, south africa abstract this study sought to explore accounting teachers’ readiness to implement e-learning in their classrooms during the fourth industrial revolution, specifically in schools in the eastern cape province of south africa. to this end, the authors employed a qualitative approach and a case study research design. interviews and observation were used to gather data from accounting teachers with sampling consisting of six educators being purposively and conveniently selected. the findings revealed that accounting classrooms are not designed in a way that supports e-learning. another finding was that accounting teachers do not understand e-learning or the benefit associated with an e-learning classroom. the recommendation made here is that information and communication technology officials at the district level should establish educational platforms at the cluster level to service teachers, advising them on how to use helpful technologies in practice. the department of basic education needs to establish relationships with local universities so that the universities’ specialists might assist teachers in implementing e-learning in practice. keywords: accounting teachers, e-learning classroom, fourth industrial revolution and readiness 1. introduction in a 21st century, which is characterised by the pervasive influence of technology across all spheres, e-learning in classrooms offers an uncompromising alternative form of instruction, especially in the developed world where it is rapidly becoming the mainstream method of teaching and learning in educational institutions (rosen, 2014). rosen further observed that technology affects every aspect of our lives and is revolutionising how we conceptualise and act towards teaching and learning. in accounting classrooms, e-learning has been identified as an important feature and an innovative way of providing quality education through authors: dr melikhaya skhephe1* dr ntombekhaya princess caga2 dr robert mawuli kwasi boadzo2 affiliations: 1university of fort hare 2walter sisulu university email: mskhephe@ufh.ac.za, npcaga@ufh.ac.za & rboadzo@wsu.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v38i1.4 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(1): 43-57 published: 11 june 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.4 44 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 44-57 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.4 web-based communication, collaboration, multimedia, knowledge transfer and training, to support active learning unhindered by time and space barriers (motaghian, hassanzadeh & moghadm, 2013). according to dahawy, tooma and kamel (2014), instructional methods in accounting have rapidly changed over a relatively short period due to the influence of technology in the subject as a whole. dahawy et al. (2014) further revealed that prior to the mid-20th century the resources available for accounting instruction consisted of little more than textbooks, chalk and talk. however, with the inclusion of technology within the subject, the methods of getting cutting edge information around the subject has improved as a result and teachers and learners are able to go beyond the limit and are able to receive all the information they want with the help of e-learning resources. petter, sevicik and straub (2013) point out that, in many african countries e-learning implementation in accounting classrooms has been advancing at a snail’s pace. gardner (2014) opines that modern-day learners should be taught using technology if they are being prepared to be problem solvers in the fourth industrial revolution (4ir). gardner (2014) warns that continuing to write on chalkboards does not address the needs of the current media-savvy generation, whose mindset differs from that of learners of the past. this view supports the argument made by fosu (2017) that e-learning classrooms have changed how learners learn and think. the daily dispatch (2019) confirms that in the amatole education district, which was the district where the study was conducted, the majority of schools do not have access to technologies. the same cannot be said for the teachers. as reported (daily dispatch 2019), schools that have technologies within the same education district are struggling to maintain them in an attempt to keep abreast of current global trends, while some devices are lost or stolen due to a lack of security in schools. 2. statement of problem in the 4ir, one of the main questions currently facing accounting teachers is what might prompt them to adopt and integrate the new technologies that are available in their own classrooms. do these factors relate to teachers’ qualities, personalities and backgrounds or is teachers’ acceptance of technology driven by other external factors? (dahawy, tooma & kamel, 2014). wagner (2014) opines that, in the 21st century, chalk and talk is a key characteristic of an outdated way of delivering content in the classroom. wagner (2014) further confirms this method has worked well in the past; however, for the 4ir generation of learners it may not yield many positive outcomes, since the youth’s exposure to, and understanding of, technology differs from those of even their more recent predecessors. wagner further observes that today’s learners are obsessed with technology and this obsession is fuelled by continuous advances in technology, in developed and developing countries, around the world. one of the most important questions that current accounting teachers need to answer, is: what causes teachers not to implement and advance e-learning in accounting classrooms? is it a lack of technology resources in schools or teachers’ lack of appropriate knowledge, skills and expertise? given this conundrum, the authors sought to explore accounting teachers’ readiness for e-learning in the 4ir by undertaking a case of study of selected high schools in the eastern cape, south africa. 3. research question the main research question being addressed in this study is: what are the factors that influence accounting teachers’ readiness for e-learning in the fourth industrial revolution? the sub-research questions derived from the main question are: 45 skhephe, caga & boadzo accounting teachers’ readiness for e-learning 2020 38(1): 45-57 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.4 • do accounting teachers have knowledge of the benefits of implementing e-learning in their classrooms? • do accounting classrooms in schools support e-learning? • do accounting teachers use e-learning platforms in their classrooms? • do accounting teachers understand their roles and responsibilities in implementing e-learning in their classrooms? 4. significance of the study the authors envisage that accounting curriculum planners, information and communication technology officials from the district where the study was conducted, community members and school principals have benefited tremendously since they have first-hand information in relation to why technology integration in accounting is at slower pace. accounting teachers of the selected high schools have also benefited since the study gave them an opportunity to voice their views around technology integration in accounting. authors believe that recommendations from the study may assist to serve as “intervention” to address the challenges in technology integration in accounting. 5. theoretical framework of the study based on global expectations and changing realities related to the way in which technology influences teaching in the era of 4ir, siemens (2005) proposes the theory of connectivism, which the authors identified as ideal for underpinning the study reported on here. this theory reveals how connectivity in educational classrooms has offered learners an opportunity to explore and create new opportunities to learn, and for users to share information via the world wide web. siemens’ (2005) theory brings together aspects of cognitivism and constructivism in suggesting a broader and more inclusive framework for learning in today’s “open” and “connected” learning environment which is enabled by interactive web 2.0 technology. the key feature of siemens’ theory is that learning not only happens on an individual basis, but also through peer-to-peer interaction and in groups who use the internet. however, when the platform for internet interaction is not supported then the teaching and learning is affected. when connectivity is fully operational and functioning optimally, learning becomes more enjoyable, talents are developed and learners work at their own pace and in their own time, without being forced to learn. the theory observes that, in connectivism the teacher’s job is to guide learners in his/her classroom, simply by answering key learners questions that arise while largely allowing the network to support learners’ learning. learners are also encouraged to seek information, through the internet, on their own, before sharing that knowledge with their peers in the classroom. this theory views learning as a means of creating meaning, by allowing individuals to incorporate their past experiences, needs, emotions and experientially gained knowledge into present knowledge acquisition. siemens continues arguing that the theory accepts that the world of e-learning is an overwhelming place in which knowledge is abundant, yet fragmented. siemens further states that when technology learning is in full use at a particular institution, learning becomes easy, since online networks support it. furthermore, teachers can note the benefits of a connected classroom once they offer the practical’s of the theory they have in mind. siemens goes further in arguing that in connectivism the only way that it helps teachers become familiar with the technological system, is through practising and gradually they find 46 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 46-57 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.4 themselves becoming familiar and oriented as time goes on. this theory is applicable in this study since delivering of information is constantly changing, its validity and accuracy may change over time, depending on the discovery of new contributions pertaining to a subject. connectivism is very relevant to this study since it stresses that two important skills that contribute to learning are the ability to seek out current information and the ability to filter secondary and extraneous information. furthermore, the capacity to know is more critical than what is actually known. 6. literature review in this study literature on accounting teachers’ readiness for e-learning in the 4ir was reviewed under six separate sub-headings. the benefits of e-learning for the accounting classroom an e-learning classroom is an important and powerful tool since the world of the 4ir is characterised by the rapid processing of information. the education domain has no choice but to embrace this (sangrà, vlachopoulos & cabrera, 2012) if it is not to lag behind. sangrà, vlachopoulos and cabrera confirm advantages associated with e-learning include the ability to quickly deliver learning, anywhere and at any time. smythe (2012) confirms when e-learning is used optimally, it can facilitate blended learning (i.e., the use of multiple platforms to convey information). alajmi (2013) opines that worldwide, all societies are working towards changing to become e-learning communities. alajma further reveals through e-learning classrooms, learners may develop the potential skills, knowledge and expertise to unlock the ever-changing world and become game-changers in society. kiilu and muema (2012) confirmed that in e-learning classrooms, talent may be developed that will allow learners to access the global economy and improve their lives. kiilu and muema further observe that, once learners learn by means of technology, they become more creative, motivated and eager to test their boundaries. kiilu and muema go further in revealing that many learners can even go on to become designers of technology, which allows them to contribute to the production and productivity of their country. keramati, afshari-mofrad and kamrani (2011) argue that in many developed countries, many technological gains and advances are associated with the innovative technologies being used and these gains are the result of implementation of e-learning in the education system at an early stage. e-readiness accounting classroom an e-readiness classroom is one that is designed especially for the delivery and support of electronic learning systems (elss) (lloyd, byrne & mccoy, 2012). lloyd et al. (2012) assert that where such classrooms exist, the teacher’s job is to instruct learners to work on their own, while his/her role is to guide the learners throughout – this is where teaching is supported by technology, often in the form of a connection to the internet. for keramati, afshari-mofrad and kamrani (2011), the e-readiness of an accounting classroom is determined on three levels: technical readiness, lifestyle readiness and pedagogical readiness. technical readiness is where the focus is on the readiness of technology hardware, software and a connection to the internet, as all these aspects support e-learning. in lifestyle readiness, the focus is on the facilitator and related challenges that may affect his/her satisfaction with an e-learning community, for instance his/her in/ability to adapt to change (panda & mishra, 2013). pedagogical readiness places the emphasis on the facilitator’s understanding of technology and his/her experience, confidence and attitude (akaslan & law ,2011). sammak, baghbel 47 skhephe, caga & boadzo accounting teachers’ readiness for e-learning 2020 38(1): 47-57 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.4 and samancioglu (2010) assert that pedagogical readiness pertains to perceptions regarding the electronic learning systems, and evaluates whether facilitators have a predisposition to embrace new technology to accomplish different related tasks. holsapple and lee-post (2010) believe that in terms of pedagogical readiness, it is crucial to assess whether a facilitator prefers a chalk-and-talk approach to the optimal use of technology. the use of technology in accounting classrooms apostolou, watson, hassel and webber (2013) opine that before the 20th century, many researchers did not investigate the use of technologies in accounting, as a result, accounting teachers are still using an old approach when teaching accounting. this finding has also been confirmed by halibi, touvein and maxfield (2014) when confirming that accounting teachers in egypt predominantly still adhere to the “old-fashioned” method of delivering accounting lessons to their learners. loch, straub and sevick (2014) believe that there are two main reasons why e-learning is difficult to achieve in the accounting classrooms of developing nations: one reason relates to rituals and cultural differences that manifest them and the funds required to adopt electronic platforms. the second is the prevailing state policies and regulations, which either facilitate or impede technology transfer. however, the findings of peterson and reider (2009) noted that in algeria and other parts of the african continent, accounting teachers prefer to teach financial management using technology. downes (2012) reported that e-learning is influenced by diversity, autonomy, openness and the availability of connections. this means that when one of the components is not connected to the others, learning cannot proceed smoothly. using technology to teach modern-day accounting learners hammond (2013) notes that over the past two decades, information and communication technology (ict) has changed the way learning is delivered. for harasim (2009), taking advantage of e-learning technologies such as telematics, blended learning, live broadcasts, smart phones and broadband connectivity to the internet and social media, has brought about substantial changes to learning, apart from providing equal opportunities to all learners. harasim (2009) admits that the technical ability to connect to the internet has changed the face of learning completely. through the adoption of innovative technologies, learning has moved away from being a one-man activity and become collaborative in nature – think of the discussion forums in which users can participate, thanks to internet access. however, as certain technologies become more accessible and user friendly, learners look forward to experiencing them and seeing for themselves what these platforms entail. furthermore, when learners are positive about using technology in the classroom, the process of transforming teaching and learning takes place in educational settings. this change shifts teaching and learning from a traditional to a modern approach, with learners becoming more hands-on in their learning (kock, 2014). farid (2014) believes that knowledge of e-learning can only be available to teachers once their schools start to embark on support and implementation of e-learning. this can be done by means of acquiring e-learning devices that are needed to support the full implementation of e-learning and maintaining of classes where e-learning teaching can take place. furthermore, once all supporting systems in a school are in place then teachers will be interested to use the technologies available and some might end up taking technology short courses to improve their understanding on the use of it. 48 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 48-57 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.4 e-learning platforms most schools in the united kingdom are virtual learning environments (vles), thanks to the use of web 2.0 or “soft software” such as sakai and drupaled, moodle, blackboard, turnitin and many more (beetham & sharpe, 2007). vles are a component of web-based software that grants teachers the opportunity to search topics on the internet within a very short period. typically, such learning environments include a chatroom, an online discussion forum, daily reminders and online assessments with clear instructions on what learners need to do when completing assignments and submitting assessments. beetham and sharpe (2007) reveal that through various platforms, teachers can track their learners’ activities in the vle and are in a position to display syllabus information. through these platforms, a teacher is given access to a series of integrated tools that allow him/her to guide learners while the latter are studying, and to decide on the best ways of teaching a particular topic – even before entering the classroom. teachers’ roles in supporting an e-learning classroom in teaching and learning, subjects that require the use of e-learning, inside and outside the classroom, may assist in developing ways of moving away from the old method of teaching (traditional) to adopting modern ways of teaching (e-learning). in the process, teachers need to assume novel roles and responsibilities (which may, in fact, be carried out by more than one person) (fowler & mayes, 2004). they further stated that teachers are required to transform his/her traditional teaching approach into an e-learning approach that suits the needs of the current generation by means of implementing e-learning throughout when teaching in their classrooms. furthermore, teachers need to realise that they have to be part of developmental initiatives that aim at improving their efficacy. through these initiatives they will realise that teaching an online subject might, for example, feature the following characteristics: • an educator who continuously employs suitable, available technologies to create attractive content; • an e-learning instructor who serves as an assistant in class, while taking day-to-day responsibility for keeping up with current discussions; • an educator who has the responsibility to perform administrative roles, in addition to overseeing the learners’ work, and who gives guidance when learners undertake practical activities; and • an independent moderator, who has been hired by the school to come and assess the authenticity of the learners’ work. 7. methodology approach this study is a qualitative research study and is based on a naturalistic approach that seeks to understand phenomena in context or real-world settings. in addition, the researcher does not attempt to manipulate the phenomenon of interest (maree, 2015). this approach is interpretive in nature. 49 skhephe, caga & boadzo accounting teachers’ readiness for e-learning 2020 38(1): 49-57 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.4 design we used a descriptive case study research design, as we were interested in participants at case level and relied on a descriptive framework for analysis of data. one of the most important features of a case study is its flexibility to allow examination of “a phenomenon in its natural setting” and allowing use of many methods in the collection of data (johansson, 2003). a case study inquiry, such as the one completed here, also involves intense descriptions of a phenomenon or case (henning, van rensburg & smit, 2004). population bell (2013) concurs that population is a target population from which the researcher draws the sample. in this study, all accounting teachers in the district formed the population. sample de vos, strydom, fouché and delport (2011) assert that a sample is a set of elements taken from a larger population according to certain rules. they further state that a sample represents the larger population from which it is drawn. in this study, sampling was drawn from six accounting teachers of the amatole east education district. convenient sampling: it refers to situations when elements are selected because they are easily and conveniently available (maree, 2015). in this study the sampled participants were chosen based on being quick and easy to reach them. purposive sampling is a method used in special situations where the sampling is done with a specific purpose in mind (maree, 2015). in this study the authors handpicked participants to be included in the study based on having possession of the particular characteristics being sought. data collection instrument data collection instrument is a term used to describe a process of preparing and collecting the data (johnson & christensen, 2008). in this study interviews and observation were the method of collecting data. interviews were semi-structured. semi-structured interviews assist in collecting thoughts, beliefs, knowledge, reasoning, motivations and feelings about a topic from participants (johnson & christensen, 2008). according to johnson and christensen (2008), observation involves watching behavioural patterns of people in a certain situation for gaining data. participants participants in this study were only six teachers sampled from teachers of the whole district of amatole east education district. these teachers were selected from six different secondary schools. three teachers were selected from the rural areas and the other three were selected from urban areas. in this study participants were expected to respond to interview questions in english since it is a medium of instruction (department of education, 2003). the participants were also sampled using the volunteer sampling technique, which refers to a scenario where participants willingly volunteer to participate in a study (de vos, strydom, fouché & delport, 2011). data analysis the recorded interviews were transcribed. after the authors had satisfied themselves that the transcript was accurate, we made three copies of it and independently coded the data. 50 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 50-57 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.4 after that we categorised the codes by putting similar things together as per the data from the interviews. from here we developed themes by giving the data codes to differentiate each data from one another. then the authors decided to have a meeting where we discussed the themes and reached a consensus on four themes. in this study, data analysis was done manually following these steps namely: organising the data, finding and organising ideas and concepts, building over-arching themes in the data, ensuring reliability and validity by giving the participants the transcribed document to verify the correctness of it. the data was coded following these steps: reading through the data and creating a storyline, categorising the data into codes and using memos for clarification and interpretation. ethical consideration permission was obtained from the university where the author was studying, then the provincial head office of department of education for access to schools, and then consent from accounting teachers. further, participation in the study was voluntary and the participants were made aware of their rights, including the right to withdraw from the study at any point should they deem it necessary. trustworthiness according to maree (2015), consistency checking and credibility or stakeholder checks involves for example, having another coder take the category descriptions and finding the text that belongs in those categories. the authors also made it a point that in the process of data collection, there were no biasness. the authors were not part of the schools where research was conducted, they only went there for research purposes. the authors did not participate in the conversation with the participants to avoid influencing their responses. limitations of the study classroom observations were not allowed and thus did not form part of our data collection techniques. this was a limitation for the study, since we wanted to see the conditions of the classrooms as a way of verifying our other data collection technique and the lack of support of e-learning in the classrooms. presentation of data the first question was “do accounting teachers have knowledge of the benefits of implementing e-learning in their classroom?” in this question data was collected through interviews. when the participants were responding to this question it was clearly shown where the starting point for the implementation of the e-learning was. looking into the response it is clear that there are participants who do not even know what e-learning platforms are all about, if they do not know them, they cannot use them. the sub-themes/categories below have been identified in this question. no understanding of e-learning benefits in the classroom the results indicated that despite the laptops given to accounting teachers in order to integrate technology when teaching, the reality is that there are accounting teachers who do not know the benefits associated with e-learning. as a result, they do not implement any e-learning in their classroom. participant 5 supported this notion, stating: 51 skhephe, caga & boadzo accounting teachers’ readiness for e-learning 2020 38(1): 51-57 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.4 in my case allow me to say i don’t know anything pertaining those benefit, and please allow me not to go further in [answering] this question. participants 6 had a similar response: i cannot say i know the benefits by just listening from the radio and newspapers while i never [got] time to attend any workshop so that i can learn it by myself and later be afforded with an opportunity to practise those lessons in my classroom by implementing it. looking into these responses, e-learning and the benefits associated with it can never be achieved with these teachers. unfamiliar with e-learning teaching south africa is celebrating 26 years of democracy, yet there are still accounting teachers with laptops in their hands who are unfamiliar or unclear about e-learning teaching as an extra educational resource to support the 21st century goals. participant 1 supports this notion, commenting: let me be honest with you, i am not familiar or clear with e-learning related teaching even if i was allocated a laptop by my employer. participant 4 confirms this stating: i am not a fan favourite of technology especially the fact that my school does not have technology as result i’m not so clear on how it can be used in the classroom to improve teaching and learning. the above responses clearly show why integration is slower in accounting classrooms since teachers do not possess the type of skills required in order to integrate technology in the classroom. one of the questions asked was “do accounting classrooms in schools support e-learning?” even in this question data gathered was collected through interviews. when responding to this question, accounting teachers disclose that classrooms in their schools (not only accounting classrooms) do not support any e-teaching due to vandalism of electricity components by learners. the sub-theme/category below has been identified in this question. classrooms are damage in order to improve technology integration in accounting classrooms, electricity supply needs to be attended to by the school managers since it is through electricity that teachers [not only accounting ones] can implement e-learning in their classrooms. without the proper supply of electricity within the classroom e-learning cannot happen. participant 1 supports this assertion saying, in my school, all classrooms’ – not only accounting classrooms’ – electricity supply like switch, plugs and lights are damaged meaning it does not support any electronic learning. participants 2concurred: in order for the classroom to support e-learning it needs to be supplied [with] computers, furniture which support[s] the e-learning environment, other computer device[s] like whiteboards, projectors, pointers and cooling systems for the computers not to [be] 52 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 52-57 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.4 damage[d]. in our case, we do not have any of those technologies i have mention[ed], so let me say our own classrooms do […] not support e-learning and also even if we can have those components, if electricity supply within the classroom is not maintained as it is a big challenge due to damages we cannot implement it at all. for any classroom to be in position to support e-learning its starting point is well-connected electricity that allows technology connections. classrooms without the proper electricity connection are a danger to everyone in the school and managers need to attend to them quickly. another question that was asked to the participants was “do accounting teachers make use of e-learning platforms in their classrooms?” in this question, participants indicated that they do not make use of any e-learning platform since they do not even know what e-learning platforms are about. in this question the following sub-theme/category has been identified. no e-learning platform is used in the classroom in order for participants to use e-learning, they firstly need to have a deeper understanding of various forms of e-learning available and how they can use them in their various classrooms. looking into the above response it has come out that there are accounting teachers who do not even know what e-learning platforms are all about. if they do not know them, they cannot use them. participant 1 confirmed this notion by stating: what do you mean when you are talking about [an] ‘e-learning platform? [the researcher explained the concept] i will be very honest with you […] i have never use[d] any form of e-learning platform in my entire teaching career. participant 2 revealed a similar result that, “absolutely no form of e-learning platform i am using”. in order for participants to use any extra teaching and learning material such as e-learning they firstly, need to be workshopped around e-learning material. once they have been workshopped, they will identify them by themselves and they will start using them. the next question asked if accounting teachers understood their roles and responsibilities in implementing e-learning in their classrooms. only one participant claimed to understand the roles and responsibilities of the teachers in implementing e-learning in the classroom. the remainder admitted that they were not aware that they had to play a leading role in making sure that they teach their learners with the aid of new technological approaches and innovations. in this question the following sub-theme/category has been identified. no understanding of the roles and responsibility to implement e-learning the results indicated that even though accounting teachers have technology, they still think that it is not their responsibility to implement e-learning in their classrooms. furthermore, these teachers are still waiting for government in their school to build a computer laboratory in order for them to implement e-learning. participant 1 supported this notion, asserting that: i really don’t know that i have a responsibility of making sure that the classroom is an e-learning class, however, i can accept the responsibility after i can be workshopped so that i can learn how to make use of computers within the classroom of accounting. participant 2 stated: i don’t know that i have a responsibility, maybe it [is] [be]cause by the fact that no technology learning is taking place in my education district and even the information communications 53 skhephe, caga & boadzo accounting teachers’ readiness for e-learning 2020 38(1): 53-57 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.4 technology section is not doing anything to assist us as teachers. maybe i can say i have such responsibility if there [the] department can build a computer laboratory to my school. the above responses paint a different picture between participants and their employer. they are expected to play a meaningful role in implementing e-learning, but they have not been educated on the use of it. based on this, participants think that they do not have any responsibility in the successful implementation of e-learning in their classroom. 8. discussion of findings in this study the findings arrived at after data interpretation and analysis were examined in the light of the questions asked. emerging themes were discussed with reference to literature. one of those themes was: accounting teachers do not understand e-learning benefits in the classroom the study revealed that despite the education initiatives of allocating laptops to each teacher with the aim that teachers will utilise these laptops to support e-teaching in the 21st century, the reality is that these teachers do not have sufficient information on the gains associated to e-learning and they rely on the chalk and talk method of teaching. this finding confirms halibi, touvein and maxfield’s (2014) finding in that accounting teachers in egypt predominantly still adhere to the “old-fashioned” method of delivering accounting lessons to their learners. this study revealed that knowledge of e-learning can only be available to teachers once their schools start to embark on support and implementation of e-learning. furthermore, this can only be done by means of acquiring e-learning devices that are needed to support the full implementation of e-learning and maintaining classes where e-learning teaching can take place. accounting classrooms are damaged the study revealed that e-learning can only take place if classrooms are specially designated to support technology use. furthermore, the study revealed that an e-ready classroom is one that is designed especially for the delivery and support of electronic learning systems. when the classroom is in a bad condition, it hinders the smooth running of teaching and learning especially e-learning in the 21st century. furthermore, it appears that due to the bad state of the classroom, none of the teachers – not only the accounting teachers – use technology in the classroom to stimulate and inspire learners through their teaching. the finding confirms keramati, afshari-mofrad and kamrani’s (2011) ideas that e-readiness of an accounting classroom is determined on three levels: technical readiness, lifestyle readiness and pedagogical readiness. accounting teachers do not understand their roles and responsibilities in implementing e-learning one of the findings revealed that in order for accounting teachers to implement e-learning in their classrooms the starting point is to educate them on e-learning so that they can have a deeper understanding of it. once they possess a deeper understanding of it, they will start to understand their part in the implementation of e-learning. through educating those teachers about e-learning they will begin to understand the fundamental roles attached to them in supporting e-learning and they will realise that e-learning is a feature of 21st century learning. furthermore, the study discovered that teachers do not realise that they have to 54 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 54-57 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.4 be part of developmental initiatives that aim at improving their efficacy. the finding connects with siemans’ (2005) findings that once teachers understand that they have a role to play in implementing e-learning, a teacher’s job becomes easier and through connectivism that takes place, they can guide learners in his/her classroom, simply by answering learner questions that arise while largely allowing the network to support learners’ learning. accounting teachers are unfamiliar with e-learning teaching another finding in the study is that the only way teachers, not only accounting teachers, can become familiar with e-learning teaching and learning is through practising. furthermore, the study reveals that the allocation of laptops to teachers is not an assurance that teachers are familiar with e-learning, instead these teachers need to be supported and monitored in the implementation of e-learning in their various schools. through supporting them, especially in the first two years after they have received their laptop, they will end up developing a motivation to utilise these laptops as a mean of supplementing their teaching, which familiarises them in e-learning teaching and learning. these findings corroborate harasim’s (2009) finding that technical ability to connect to the internet has changed the face of learning completely. through the adoption of innovative technologies, learning has moved away from being a oneman activity, and become collaborative in nature. no e-learning platforms are used in accounting classroom in this study, the authors found that given the changing reality of what teaching and learning in the 4ir involves, extra teaching aids available in the 21st century such as telematics, live broadcasts, video learning platforms etc. are not being utilised for the purpose of extending boundaries in teaching and learning even if they contain valuable information. furthermore, the study revealed that through non-use of e-learning platforms learners are missing out the real chances to participate in chatrooms and discussion boards that are available nationwide. the study goes further in revealing that, when learners and teachers understand the reasons for using these platforms within the classroom, it allows them to be increasingly exposed to other, appropriate ways of learning one thing in different ways. these findings indicate a significant gap between the actual state of affairs, since peterson and reider (2009) noted that in algeria and other parts of the african continent, accounting teachers prefer to teach financial management using technology. this means accounting teachers in south africa are behind some other countries in africa in terms of integrating technology in the classroom. 9. conclusion this study explored teachers’ readiness for e-learning during 4ir. to that end, the study focused on selected high schools in the eastern cape province of south africa. the authors concludes that based on the research findings, the participants’ readiness to implement e-learning in their classrooms needs urgent attention from education officials, if the aim is to provide learners with quality, targeted e-learning in a rapidly changing world. the ict section of the eastern cape’s department of education (doe) needs to realise, however, that the successful implementation of e-learning in schools depends entirely on teachers being intensively capacitated in respect of their e-learning readiness, since it is their expertise, skills and knowledge of technologies and platforms that will enable them to play pivotal roles in ensuring that e-learning is achieved across all subjects. furthermore, the authors conclude that all levels of capacitation (from the teachers’ point of view) must occur as a matter of urgency – from school infrastructure provisioning to the upskilling of educators. after all, e-learning will take place smoothly if it is 55 skhephe, caga & boadzo accounting teachers’ readiness for e-learning 2020 38(1): 55-57 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.4 not only seen as a nice-to-have tool, but as a facility that changes the learners and teachers’ experiences of how they view learning in an increasingly technology-driven environment. 10. recommendations in the 4ir era, the goals and gains of the education system have changed from those of the past century. now, the goal is to develop critical thinking and self-learning abilities in learners, so that they can become independent learners and lifelong learners. therefore, an e-learning classroom, with properly trained teachers, is the ideal solution for changing educational practice in all provinces of south africa. the authors recommend that ict officials at the district level establish educational platforms at the cluster level to service teachers by keeping them updated on how to use icts in their classrooms. the eastern cape doe needs to establish links or relationships with local universities whose experts could guide teachers in how to implement e-learning in their classrooms. another recommendation is that all classrooms – not only those designated for teaching accounting – be renovated so that they can support e-learning, since it is pointless to distribute laptops to teachers when they cannot use them for lack of power or due to damage to outlets/plug points, 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mathematical understanding in a computer algebra system abstract many engineering subjects rely on the interpretation of symbolic, numeric and graphic representations. engineering students have challenges pertaining to their mathematical understanding of their actions with a computer algebra system (cas). we investigated how a mathematical modelling task could mediate varied levels of mathematical understanding. when engineering students are exposed to a cas environment, they habitually engage in programming activities without considering the computerised outputs. the purpose of this paper was to ascertain south african engineering students’ actions that can mediate broader levels of mathematical understanding in a cas by utilising the piriekieren model of growth in mathematical understanding. thirteen participants agreed to engage collaboratively in a mathematical modelling task. the task was analysed by means of content analysis following a deductive research approach. the findings disclosed that engineering students interdepend on paper-and-pen, computerised and reflective actions in their growth of mathematical understanding. engineering students can be assisted in mediated and folding-back actions in order to fluctuate back and forth on their way to a more sound mathematical understanding. explicit planning and sequence of subtasks can support engineering students to merge new levels of mathematics understanding with past comprehensions. thoroughly planned modelling tasks can mediate novel levels of mathematical understanding when engineering students learn with a cas. keywords: computer algebra system; differential equations; engineering students; mathematical modelling; pirie-kieren model; understanding. 1. introduction and background engineering graduates of the 21st century face a technologically-driven world of work that is different from that of a few decades ago. therefore, engineering students have to be exposed to a computer algebra system (cas), such as mathematica, which offers the user a symbolic, numeric and graphic interface (dubinsky & tall, 1991). a cas stimulates the use of other desirable mathematical kotze, h university of johannesburg spangenberg, ed university of johannesburg e-mail: ericas@uj.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v37i2.2 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 37(2): 16-34 date published: 27 november 2019 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:ericas@uj.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.2 17 kotze & spangenberg engineering students’ actions in a mathematical modelling task... tools for work-place engineers namely programming, mathematical modelling and visualisation (aslaksen & santosa, 2013). for students who are predominantly schooled in analytical procedures, such a technologyrich environment, a cas implicates a shift from traditional paper-and-pen-based techniques. when engineering diploma students at the university of johannesburg (uj) are first exposed to a cas, they find it challenging to understand computer generated graphs. the transition from a paper-and-pen learning background to a cas environment can be difficult. engineering students require “changing lenses” to bridge the “cognitive discontinuity” caused by different tools, a new computer language and multiple representations (yerushalmy, 2005:37). also, berger (2010) argued that while the epistemic value of particular practices may be important in a paper-and-pen environment, it could be marginal in a cas environment. a cas responds to syntax-specific inputs, thereupon suppresses procedural processes and instantly displays outputs in the form of symbols, tables and graphs. unlike in a paper-and-pen environment, the systematic step-by-step cognitive processes that would normally be followed, are outsourced to cas. as such, students are confronted by a cognitive discontinuity (yerushalmy, 2005). those students who come from under-resourced teaching and learning backgrounds are often underprepared for the cognitive complexity imposed on them by a cas. within a cas task, students have to contextualise pre-knowledge from various mathematical domains into new situations. this re-contextualisation requires a past-to-present continuum that is emphatically part of mathematical problem solving. hjalmarson, wage and buck (2008) highlighted that knowledge cannot remain detached in separate mathematical domains. engineering students must be able to generate and interpret computer generated graphs by using various fields of mathematics in the final interpretation of graphs. thus, future engineers require metacognitive skills to integrate their mathematical knowledge with their technological skills in order to logically interpret and analyse computer graphs. literature reveals substantial support for more research on the cas domain of postschool mathematics. in a comprehensive review, buteau, marshall, jarvis and lavicza (2010) concluded that cas in higher education is mainly integrated in mathematics major courses while service courses lag behind. eighty-eight percent of the 204 articles analysed by buteau et al. (2010) originated from the usa, 4% from the uk and 8% from elsewhere in the world. combined, engineering and science majors represented only 4% of the total number of courses incorporating cas. usiskin (2013) is of the opinion that the introduction of computer technology and graphing calculators in sa has not reached the benchmark of the rest of the world. this raises concerns about the under-represented body of research on using cas within the vocational stream in sa. more specifically, further explorations can shed light on the particular challenges of engineering students when they interpret cas-based outputs in both largeand small-scale studies (berger, 2010). stillman (2015) argued that cas technologies supplement the difficulty of tasks and therefore recommended that the intellectual challenges enforced by real world problems be facilitated through thoroughly planned mathematical modelling tasks. nevertheless, there is a scarcity of research on mathematical modelling as intervention for the intellectual difficulties imposed by a cas environment. therefore, the authors of this paper offer to address this gap by asking the question: which actions can mediate broader levels of mathematical understanding in a cas task? 18 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) 2. theoretical views ang (2010:1) referred to mathematical modelling as a mathematical activity consisting of real world problems in order to interpret and solve the problems. for niss, blum and galbraith (2007), the term mathematical modelling refers to an entire process. these authors argued that mathematics can be used to explain, investigate and understand the world outside mathematics. the extra-mathematical world is termed the real world and can involve another subject or discipline such as medicine or engineering. objects, phenomena, facts or problems entrenched in the real world are translated into mathematical objects, facts or problems. in turn, these objects, facts and problems can be manipulated within the mathematical world where inferences can be made. the mathematical results can then be translated back into the real world where the original objects, phenomena, facts or problems can be validated. if the real world conclusions are not satisfactory, the modelling process can be repeated. prominent characteristics of mathematical modelling focus on the mathematising of authentic situations (yerushalmy, 1997) and collaborative activities that create an inherent social activity (english, 2003; hamilton, besterfield-sacre, olds & siewiorek, 2010; zbiek & conner, 2006). according to blum and leiß (2007), the modelling cycle illustrates the modelling process which originates in the real world as an observed phenomenon in daily life. the real world problem then gets translated into a mathematical problem, a process called mathematising (freudenthal, 1991). by acknowledging all relevant domains of mathematics, paper-and-pen graphs, sketches, diagrams or tables can be used to interconnect and contextualise the assumed relationships and equations to construct a mathematical model. the model is then solved mathematically; different representations such as graphs, tables and symbolic results can be constructed. the model needs to be validated to justify its appropriateness to the real world context. should undesirable results emerge, it may be necessary to iterate the modelling cycle. technology can be used in all phases of the modelling cycle to help understand the real life problem (greefrath, siller & weitendorf, 2011). blum and leiß (2007:225) proposed seven fundament skills to proceed from one phase of the modelling cycle to the next, namely 1) understanding the task; 2) simpifying/structuring; 3) mathematising; 4) working mathematically; 5) interpretation; 6) validation; and 7) presenting. to move from one phase of the modeling cycle to the next, galbraith and stillman (2006: 144) identified seven generic modelling activities, namely a) real world situation; b) real world problem statement; c) mathematical model; d) mathematical solution; e) real world meaning of solution; f) evaluation; and g) report. the modelling process is as follows: “a → b: understanding, structuring, simplifying, interpreting context; b → c: assuming, formulating, mathematising; c → d: working mathematically; d → e: interpreting mathematical output; e → f: comparing, critiquing, validating; f → g: communicating, justifying, report writing (if the model is considered to be satisfactory) or f → b: revisiting the modelling process if the model is not satisfactory”. a cas can be utilised throughout the modelling cycle to advance mathematical understanding of the real world problem and, in turn, learning. the pirie-kieren model is deemed appropriate to analyse growth in mathematical understanding in a cas environment (meagher, 2005). pirie and kieren (1994) viewed mathematical understanding as “a whole dynamic process and not as a single or multi-valued acquisition, nor as a linear combination of knowledge categories” (p. 165). according to pirie and kieren (1989), mathematical understanding is initiated by a primitive knowing that activates intuitive understanding. specifically, pirie and kieren (1994) categorised eight levels of structured understanding namely, primitive knowing (pk), image making (im), image having (ih), property 19 kotze & spangenberg engineering students’ actions in a mathematical modelling task... noticing (pn), formalising (f), observing (o), structuring (s) and inventising (i). inventising is the outer-most level where the structured understanding of a concept reaches a climax. the level of pk is the start in the process of “coming to know” (pirie & kieren, 1989: 8). this level is based on what the observer (i.e. a teacher or researcher) assumes students are doing. such activities may involve the use of concepts or processes based on students’ previous experiences. this level denotes to the entry-level understanding that will set the coming to know in motion. the level of im is directed by the images formed as a result of previous doing and knowing. these images may be in the form of mental images or concrete images that portray an understanding of a concept; images may also be quantities, comparisons or metaphors in an attempt to understand the nature of the problem or situation. the level of ih is regarded as the first level of abstraction in the pirie-kieren model. by using and/or reviewing existing images formed on the im level, understanding from doing is substituted an understanding emerging from seeing. understanding can only develop if ihimages were self-produced. on the level of pn, images can be scrutinised for features and prominent tendencies. in the instance where numerous images were established for a certain concept, characteristics and associations can be generated. a back-and-forth movement between different images builds understanding on all other inner levels in the model. the level of f comprises the formal abstraction of accomplished images and associated understanding. thus, features and properties noted in concept images can be formalised. f can emerge by means of merging properties, definitions, equations, formulas or models. the level of o requires metacognition where thoughts are controlled and effects of thoughts are viewed. the cognisance of organised thoughts mediates reflection on actions in order to view, witness and communicate formulated understanding. the level of s anticipates the certainty, soundness and validation of the attained thoughts and understanding. all accomplished thoughts and understanding are at this point interconnected. underlying ideas across all pertinent areas are organised in a lucid argument (meel, 2003). the furthest level of understanding is i. at this level, structured knowledge of a concept is exceeded when thoughts beyond the anticipated area of knowledge is being explored. the i level of understanding exceeds the restrictions of the initial concept being considered: understanding is creative, original and ground breaking when opportunities of ‘what if’ are contemplated (meel, 2003). the pirie-kieren model advocates that at each level, layers are nested. this entails that the outer layers hinge on understanding of the preceding, inner layers. levels are not hierarchical, thus mathematical understanding at an outer level is not necessarily interpreted higher than understanding conveyed at an inner level. however, the fractal-like rings of the model symbolise the absorbing, yet encompassing nature of inner levels of understanding into an outer level. the transcendence of understanding is negotiated at different levels but must be compatible between levels. understanding reached at one level is therefore not reducible to the previously visited level since at each level, understanding is “fundamentally new in some way, it has to be consistent with all previous levels of knowing” (pirie & kieren, 1989:9). understanding at a particular level can also sidestep some inner levels. for example, 20 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) abstraction of thoughts may be displayed on the level of f without necessarily demanding concrete images on the im and/or ih inner levels. pirie and kieren (1994) labelled the backand-forth kinds of understanding as “folding back”, explaining it as follows: when faced with a problem or question at any level, which is not immediately solvable, one needs to fold back to an inner level in order to extend one’s current, inadequate understanding. this returned-to, inner level activity, however, is not identical to the original inner level actions; it is now informed and shaped by outer level interests and understandings. (p. 173) according to blum and borromeo ferri (2009) the process of understanding through imaging is essential in the back-and-forth conversion between the real world and mathematical world (i.e. mathematising). a cas environment shows students real life tasks that can stimulate their understanding when they have to visualise, generate, draw and evaluate mathematical models in real world terms. thus, mathematical modelling provides an all-inclusive framework for understanding of mathematics and its relevance (ang, 2010). 3. research design and methodology we adopted a real life world view where the gap between engineering mathematics curricula in sa where traditional approaches focus on close-ended theoretical problems founded in 20th century contexts on the one hand, and the demands from the engineering practice for real world problems situated in cas contexts on the other hand, can be bridged by utilising mathematics modelling as a suitable learning approach (stillman et al., 2013). experiences faced in everyday living describe the nature of knowing but also affect students’ means of doing mathematics and their understanding of the subject. the qualitative study is exploratory and formed part of a broader research project that investigated the influences of mathematical modelling in a cas environment. the study played out in an undergraduate course, engineering mathematics 3, which is a compulsory module for electrical, mechanical and industrial engineering students registered for a national diploma in engineering at uj. the module is offered during each first semester to an electrical engineering cohort in their second academic year. in the second year engineering mathematics 3 curriculum, differential equations (des) constitute the core topic. this curriculum is divided into a theory (70%) and a practical component (30%) where des are solved analytically and numerically. analytical procedures are taught in the engineering mathematics 3 theory classes and follow strict theoretical procedures. engineering mathematics 3 students learn how to solve differential equations (des) numerically with mathematica, a type of cas. once every week of the semester, students have to attend a practical session of 150 minutes in a computer laboratory. we analysed how engineering students connected their intuitive knowledge, mathematical understanding and technological skills when they had solved a differential equation (de) that related to a real world problem. from a 2016 cohort of 139 students, thirteen students participated voluntary in this study. two groups were formed by using prior assessment results; each group included low, average and top performers. over a period of two weeks, two mathematical modelling tasks were completed. this study reports on the second task which was designed in the form of a worksheet comprising nine subtasks. worksheet documents in the form of handwritten text and electronic files were 21 kotze & spangenberg engineering students’ actions in a mathematical modelling task... the primary sources of data to gain insights in students’ actions, processes, objects, and ultimately their mathematical understanding. in this study, worksheet documents refer to hard or soft copies of a document that was used in a computer laboratory. on completion of the task, each group had to submit the worksheet document together with a task report to explain their thinking processes and difficulties encountered. the modelling task consisted of a tollgate problem described the yearly retreat of pilgrims over the easter weekend to the city of moria, sa. the n1 national highway between the cities of pretoria and bela-bela is known for traffic jamming, partly due to four tollgates as indicated in figure 1. the differential equation (de) that models the traffic movement on this part of the road was given as where n point to the density of vehicles and x the position on the road. the task was done just after the easter weekend in 2016. figure 1: a map accompanying the tollgate task subtask one was intended to set students’ coming to know in motion and prompted the pirie and kieren (1989) level of pk. in subtask two, students had to derive an initial condition (ic) from the given narrative and translate the ic symbolically. the initial condition of the de had to be translated from the clue “assume there are 945 vehicles at the first tollgate”. this implied a reversal since in the traditional classroom/laboratory lectures, the ic is always given and students merely have to substitute the ic into the de. in subtask three, students had to predict the solution without doing any formal mathematical analyses, which stimulated visual reasoning either by drawing a picture or by explaining in 22 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) words. this subtask also elicited intuitive insight since students were compelled to interpret the narrative prior to extensive analysis and not only in retrospect (nardi, 2014). in subtask four, thereafter, students had to solve the de analytically and generate a graph for the analytical solution they had to do it with paper-and-pen and had to programme the analytical solution. as subtask five, the analytical solution – a sinusoidal graph – had to be compared with the solution as predicted in subtask three. such a comparison could facilitate links between the real world and the mathematical world. supported by the analytical solution, subtask six required students to use their graphs and/or numerical values to read off the maximum number of vehicles that gather at any single tollgate. this subtask required a realworld interpretation of the sinusoidal function and its related maxima and minima. till now, all subtasks do not generally appear in the traditional teaching approach. instead, numerical analyses with the euler, runge-kutta order 2 and runge-kutta order 4 methods are preferred. in general, students learn to programme these numerical methods from first principles and do not simply rely on built-in mathematica commands (such as dsolve). the numerical analyses of the de were intentionally held back up to subtask seven in an attempt to provoke deeper understanding and mediate associations between the real world and the mathematical world. programming with mathematica (a type of cas) assisted students to connect and correlate their symbolic, numeric and graphical representations. an interpretive question was presented in subtask eight: ‘is there a tollgate at the 50km mark? give a reason for your answer.’ for subtask nine, the distance between the carousel and kanskop tollgates (refer figure 1) had to be calculated. on completion of the task, each group had to prepare a task report outlining their interpretations and/or challenges with particular subtasks. the task prompted connections between the real world, mathematical world and technological world as showed in figure 2. the tollgate task commences in the real world by means of a narrative that encouraged personal experiences in the real world; specially how traffic is distracted over peak travelling periods as suggested in the tollgate task. the tollgate incidence had to be converted into a mathematical problem by using mathematical knowledge, skill and understanding. the mathematical solution, a sinusoidal function, could then be investigated in the technological world by means of different representations namely graphical, numerical and symbolical. the different representations could be evaluated and correlated. common sinusoidal characteristics such as minima and maxima could be understood mathematically but more notably, these meanings could assist to comprehend the congestion of cars at the four tollgates. 23 kotze & spangenberg engineering students’ actions in a mathematical modelling task... figure 2: linking three worlds while modelling with differential equations 4. data analysis content analysis was used to analyse the task. the students’ actions were utilised to code each group’s task. in the case of experiential actions, two sub-themes differentiated between cas (mathematica) actions and paper-and-pen actions. in turn, these themes and subthemes were classified according to the eight pirie-kieren levels of understanding. in the subsequent section, the tollgate task of each group is analysed according to specific actions in each subtask. 4.1 group 1 in subtask one, group 1 sketched (action 1) a primitive hand-drawn diagram to visually interpret the lessening and broadening traffic flow along the four tollgates on the n1 highway (figure 3). by using their daily experiences, these students disclosed their instinctive knowledge of how tollgates interrupt the flow of traffic. a lessening effect suggested the high density of vehicles as traffic move ahead to the tollgates. figure 3 further suggests that as vehicles depart the tollgates, the traffic density speedily decreases and in that way generates a broadening result. the lessening and broadening occurrence was further labelled (action 2) with comments clarifying the traffic density as either “high” or “low”. these comments, originated from students’ experiences and impressions, served as hints that could possibly assist with later understanding (kant, 1964). with the uncommon diagram illustrated in figure 3, group 1 portrayed the qualitative nature of the tollgate occurrence and thereby mathematised (action 3) the real world problem. these initial ideas, insights and considerations were ascertained on the pirie-kieren level of pk. although only one of the six members in group 1 resided in a province outside of gauteng, this group offered a suitable interpretation of the tollgate occurrence which assisted them well in the following subtasks. 24 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) figure 3: group 1: pk of how four tollgates would affect traffic flow in subtask two, group 1 counted on the given narrative to interpret (action 4) the initial condition (ic) symbolically. it is likely that the high-low features noticed in the primitive diagram backed their conversion from the real world narrative and laid the foundation to formulate (action 5) the ic. understanding turned to the pn level as the group attempted to predict (action 6) the solution in subtask three. these students sketched (action 7) an exponential solution as they predicted the traffic to “decrease with infinity” over time. it seems that group 1 imagined (action 8) a more complete solution that could estimate the traffic density over the entire four-day period of the easter weekend. in subtask four, students solved (action 9) the de analytically using the separation of the variables method. they simplified (action 10) the de by substituting the ic and obtained a sinusoidal solution with equation equation 1 in subtask five, the analytical solution was compared (action 11) with their solution as predicted in subtask three but they grappled to reconcile (action 12) the sinusoidal solution with the exponential prediction. in order to validate (action 13) the solution, they generated (action 14) a mathematica graph for the analytical solution and identified (action 15) the function: “it looks like a sine graph”. faced with conflicting solutions, these students were contested to critique (action 16) and in the end out rule the exponential solution. to this end, they combined (action 17) their primitive tollgate diagram with the exponential function to represent a longterm effect of the tollgates on the traffic flow. by superimposing (action 18) the exponential function onto the primitive tollgate diagram, they demonstrated their understanding of the lessening traffic density towards the end of the easter weekend. this superimposed image would be compatible with students’ knowledge of the steady state and transient state solutions of a de. with this image, their understanding went further than the extent of the planned task and bordered on the pirie-kieren level of i. in subtask six, group 1 predicted (action 19) the maximum number of vehicles that pile up at any single tollgate would be around 994. 25 kotze & spangenberg engineering students’ actions in a mathematical modelling task... according to their report, they (mis)calculated (action 20) this value by substituting 1x = in eq.1. since the maximum possible value of the first term in eq. 1 is 350, the correct answer was 350 + 700.2 = 1050.2. in subtask seven, students constructed (action 21) the rungekutta order 4 (rk4) algorithm from first principles. they programmed (action 22) a code to get both a numerical table of values and a graph through which they could visualise and compare (action 23) the rk4 numerical values with the analytical values; this graph is presented in figure 4. figure 4: group 1 identifying a tollgate at the 50 km mark and reading off the distance between the last two tollgates in subtask eight, students interpreted (action 24) their graph (figure 4) and explained (action 25) why there would be a tollgate at the 50km mark. they could read off (action 26) a maximum value for n where 50x = to confirm (action 27) the presence of a tollgate. furthermore, they substantiated (action 28) this reality by cross-referring to the numerical table of rk4 values. in subtask nine, group 1 read off (action 29) the distance between the carousel and kanskop tollgates utilising figure 4; thereby justifying (action 30) their understanding that the maxima of the sinusoidal solution represent the position of the tollgates. the 30 actions that were recorded for group 1 are sequentially numbered in table 1. 26 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) table 1: thirty actions recorded for group 1 pirie-kieren level (pirie & kieren, 1994) (n = 8) 30 sequential actions generic modelling activities (galbraith & stillman, 2006) (n = 18) experiential reflective (n = 12) computerised (n = 3) paper-and-pen (n = 15) pk (3 actions) 1 sketch 2 label 3 mathematise assuming: b → c mathematising: b → c im (4 actions) 7 sketch 17 combine 8 imagine 13 validate interpreting context: a → b validating: e → f ih (2 actions) 14 generate 23 compare working mathematically: c → d interpreting output: d → e pn (5 actions) 4 interpret 6 predict 29 read off 12 reconcile 15 identify interpreting output: d → e validating: e → f f (6 actions) 21 construct 22 programme 5 formulate 9 solve 10 simplify 20 calculate formulating: b → c working mathematically: c → d o (6 actions) 19 predict 26 read off 24 interpret 25 explain 27 confirm 28 substantiate communicating: f → g report writing: f → g interpreting output: d → e s (3 actions) 11 compare 16 critique 30 justify comparing: e → f critiquing: e → f justifying: e → f i (1 action) 18 superimpose in the first column of table 1, actions are organised according to the pirie and kieren (1994) levels of mathematical understanding. a distinction is made between experiential and reflective actions in columns two, three and four. experiential actions were traced in the worksheet and reflective actions were coded from the task report. experiential actions were further sub-divided as either cas (mathematica) actions or paper-and-pen actions. in the last column, actions were aligned with galbraith and stillman’s (2006) generic modelling activities. the conversions between specific modelling stages are indicated with arrows. for instance, mathematising is an activity associated with the movement between the real world problem statement (phase b) and mathematical model (phase c) and thus annotated as b → c. 27 kotze & spangenberg engineering students’ actions in a mathematical modelling task... table 1 discloses that the majority of group 1’s actions were performed with paper-and-pen (n = 15), followed by reflective actions (n = 12) while the least number of actions performed were computerised (n = 3). the actions of group 1 can be traced to all generic modelling activities as acknowledged by galbraith and stillman (2006). it is significant that within the first 20 actions, this group performed only one action (action 14) with the assistance of mathematica. this result is in absolute contrast with the traditional learning approach where most activities are only performed with mathematica. that means that in the traditional curriculum, most activities are executed symbolically through procedural processes; concentrating much on the f level of the pirie-kieren model. at the same time, group 1 also reached all eight the piriekieren levels of mathematical understanding. even more unusual is that all eight pirie-kieren levels of mathematical understanding were appropriated within the first 19 actions. this finding can be interpreted that with the exception of action 14, all pirie-kieren levels of mathematical understanding were reached prior to computerised activities. mathematical understanding was extensively unpacked on the pn level (5 actions), f level (6 actions) and o level (6 actions). 4.2 group 2 the actions of group 2 were to take a step back to the traditional teaching and learning approach. they began the task by programming (action 1) a mathematica code to compute a rk4 solution of the given de (subtask seven). in actual fact, they bypassed the first six subtasks. they generated (action 2) an incorrect rk4 graph as illustrated in figure 5. figure 5: incorrect runge-kutta order 4 (rk4) graph of group 2 their oversight was to swap the dependent and independent variable in their mathematica code. the current teaching approach over-accentuates the use of x as the independent and y as the dependent variable where first order de of the form dy dx are typically used. to a large extend, students are lacking ability in the use of atypical variable sets. actually, group 2 apprehended that something was wrong, yet fell short to debug their mathematica code. unexpectedly, they distributed the variables correctly on the axes when they copied figure 5 in their task report. these students were nevertheless inattentive about this inconsistency. 28 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) if this mistake was noted, they could have debugged their mathematica code by switching the variables around. however, their task report disclosed how they attempted to interpret (action 3) their inaccurate rk4 graph as illustrated in figure 6. figure 6: example of a student’s task report these students were confused by their rk4 graph as they attempted to explain (action 4) whether there was a tollgate at the 50km mark (subtask eight). they observed (action 5) a constant number of cars around the 50 km mark and beyond. this group became apprehensive of the (faulty) graph when they not succeed to identify any obvious tollgates: “we had an argument on weather (sic) or not there is a tollgate … it is hard to tell”. according to their task report, these students then tried subtask four – to solve the de analytically – but to no avail. uncared for, they relied on mathematica’s built-in commands to integrate (action 6) the righthand side of the de, that is 2 0.15 350 cos 0.15 . x x dx + + ∫ the appropriate mathematica syntax would have necessitated them to include an initial condition for the ‘integrate’ command, else the output would relate with the indefinite integral, lacking the constant of integration. mathematica’s output returned the analytical solution as n = 350 sin x + 0.15 outsourcing the integration process to mathematica was an unanticipated turn of events since the de could have been solved by direct integration. unwary of syntactic nuances, they generated (action 7) a mathematica graph for the analytical solution as illustrated in figure 7. due to the neglected initial condition, the figure discloses (unrealistic) negative values to represent the density of cars. this observation went ignored, perhaps because their graph brings to mind the standard sine graph which fluctuates above and below the horizontal axis. more distressing, the maxima on the graph does not reflect the proposed initial condition of 945 vehicles at the first tollgate. 29 kotze & spangenberg engineering students’ actions in a mathematical modelling task... figure 7: analytical solution of group 2 as they try to identify a tollgate at the 50 km mark at this point, group 2 had produced two separate but conflicting solution curves and tried to make sense (action 8) of these opposing figures. they compared (action 9) their rk4 solution (figure 5) with their analytical solution (figure 7). the latter appeared to be more compatible with their understanding of the tollgate occurrence. lesh, doerr, carmona and hjalmarson (2003: 223) stated that when students “become aware that two models are inconsistent, they begin to notice some of the differences” and seek the model that “appears to be fittest”. based on its features, group 2 validated (action 10) the sinusoidal graph to be the best representation of the tollgate occurrence (revisiting subtask eight). in spite of outsourcing all symbolic processes to mathematica, these students confirmed (action 11) in their task report “yes, there a tollgate at the 50 km mark. at the maximum amplitude of the graph there is a high count [of vehicles]”. of the nine subtasks, group 2 only finished three as they appeared to have been mirroring classroom practices. only 11 actions were recorded for group 2 and are encapsulated in table 2. yet, the understanding of group 2 was structured on six of the eight pirie-kieren levels of mathematical understanding. furthermore, all experiential processes were cas-driven since these students did not execute any paper-and-pen actions. it is also worth mentioning that the majority of actions executed by group 2 were reflective actions (7 actions). 30 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) table 2: eleven actions recorded for group 2 pirie-kieren level (pirie & kieren, 1994) 11 sequential actions generic modelling activities (galbraith & stillman, 2006) experiential reflective (n = 7) computerised (n = 4) paper-and-pen (n = 0) pk im (1 action) 2 generate working mathematically: c → d ih (1 action) 7 generate working mathematically: c → d pn (2 actions) 8 making sense 10 validate interpreting output: d → e validating: e → f f (2 actions) 1 programme 6 integrate formulating: c → d simplifying: c → d o (3 actions) 3 interpret 4 explain 5 observe communicating: f → g report writing: f → g interpreting output: d → e s (2 actions) 9 compare 11 confirm comparing: e → f confirming: e → f i it persists vague why group 2 did not follow the sequence of subtasks in the worksheet but rather relied on known, well-rehearsed processes to finish the tollgate task. a possible reason may be that some students could have felt that the modelling task required them to think creatively but might not assist them during the test or examination. another reason is offered by berger (2012) who referred to different levels of engagement by different students, even though a cas task may have been “designed with one pedagogic purpose and with appropriate mathematical and technical demands” (p. 266). 5. discussion the modelling task was different from the traditional computer laboratory approach where abstract des are solved using numerical methods and cas. instead, the task substantiated a de as a real life occurrence and provoked students’ experiential mathematical understanding. while the underlying mathematics of the tollgate task was fairly straightforward and the mathematica code-writing a familiar process, additional subtasks added a modelling flavour. for most of the task, students in group 1 used cas hardly to verify understanding with paperand-pen and reflective actions. this finding is similar to dubinsky and tall (1991) claiming that parallels should be drawn between programming actions and the way underlying mathematical processes are constructed. the subtasks outlined the means to navigate between mathematical concepts, cas tools and real world contexts as these students appeared to draw on reality throughout the task. the origin of these students’ mathematical understanding came in the form of a primitive but thought-provoking diagram (figure 3). accentuated by all eight pirie-kieren levels of mathematical understanding, actions were in 31 kotze & spangenberg engineering students’ actions in a mathematical modelling task... sync with the real world contexts of the task. understanding was verified by paper-and-pen, executed with technology and supported by plenty reflective actions. it was remarkable how 1) the tollgate phenomenon was visually imagined; 2) the primitive model offered understanding of the task and 3) the real world scenario were mathematised, prior to cas analyses. the findings firstly point toward an interdependence between paper-and-pen, computerised and reflective actions in the development of mathematical understanding. the way the modelling task was planned and arranged fostered a interaction between these three types of actions. students in group 1 not only merged their computerised actions with paper-andpen actions, but due to multiple paper-and-pen actions they could also deeply reflect on their cas outputs. the interaction between computerised, paper-and-pen and reflective actions augmented these students’ understanding of their computer-generated graphs. this finding is similar to drijvers (2003) who observed that students’ reflection by way of paper-and-pen actions can potentially enhance their interpretation of how computerised processes work and thereby deepen their understanding of computerised outputs. as a direct result of paper-andpen actions, the mathematical understanding of group 1 was recurrently supported on the pirie-kieren levels of pk, pn and f (table 1). due to rich reflective actions, the understanding of group 1 was further perceived on the pirie-kieren levels of o and s. it is notable that group 1 executed the task with minimal computerised actions (only 3 actions) but acquired considerable assistance from paper-and-pen and reflective actions. this finding is in contrast with students’ normal actions during computer laboratory sessions when teaching and learning focus mostly on the pirie-kieren level of f. group 1 could reach more pirie-kieren levels of mathematical understanding than group 2 who largely relied on familiar computerised actions and reflective actions. group 2 failed to correlate their computer-generated results with paper-and-pen actions. to understand computerised processes requires some procedural knowledge of the internal mathematical processes that would normally have to be executed with paper-and-pen. tall (1993) distinguished between external and analogue insight of computerised processes. a user is said to have external insight when knowledge of the internal workings of the computer is unclear. this may however not distract the user to cross-validate with paper-and-pen that the computer results are logical. for example, a student may not be aware of mathematica’s internal processes when a certain integral is computed, but by applying the relevant differentiation process the computer result can still be confirmed with paper-and-pen. a user with analogue insight is cognisant of the specific algorithm utilised by the computer and comprehends the mathematical basics of these internal processes. for example, even if a student is unfamiliar with mathematica’s integration syntax, a student with analogue insight will be cognisant that, in the lacking of an initial condition, the integration process will develop in a general solution that must include a constant of integration. tall (1993) cautioned that a computerised algorithm may be misleading if the user is not mindful about the internal workings of the algorithm and recommends three ways in which to attend to internal computerised processes, namely enactive, procedural and symbolic. in the lacking of suitable paper-and-pen (procedural or symbolic) actions to confirm their mathematica results, students in group 2 failed to connect their cas actions with basic theoretical principles. students do not naturally associate their computerised misinterpretations with theoretical principles as in general through paper-andpen activities. this finding is similar to drijvers (2003) who was of the view that students may be “unable to ‘look through’ the way the cas arrived at its results, and cannot relate [the results] to their own experience[s] with paper-and-pencil techniques” (p. 90). group 2 apparently 32 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) found answers in their own real world experiences of toll roads which encouraged a variety of reflective actions. while it is possible that cas actions were conventional, mathematical understanding was noticeably reinforced by considerable reflection on the logicality of cas solutions. however, when paper-and-pen actions were allowed, even deep reflective actions could not effectuate sufficient mathematical understanding. the findings secondly reveal that the way the tollgate task was parted into subtasks augmented development in mathematical understanding. even when a specific subtask was totally wrong (group 1, subtask three), mathematical understanding could be corrected, reflected upon and/or enhanced. pirie and kieren (1994: 173) labelled the back-and-forth characteristics of mathematical understanding as “folding back”, explaining it as follows: when faced with a problem or question at any level, which is not immediately solvable, one needs to fold back to an inner level in order to extend one’s current, inadequate understanding. this returned-to, inner level activity, however, is not identical to the original inner level actions; it is now informed and shaped by outer level interests and understandings. when mathematical understanding that was formed in later subtasks was despite everything disjointed, these mathematical understanding could be redirected to understanding framed in former subtasks. all together, the series of mediated and folding-back actions assisted students in group 1 to fluctuate back and forth in the direction of a better logical mathematical understanding. in this case, the particular organisation and planning of subtasks assisted these students to merge new interpretations with prior experiences. this finding is in agreement with vandebrouck (2018) who argues that subtasks can play a mediating role in tasks comprising technology. 6. conclusion the pirie-kieren (1994) model mediated the examination of non-linear mathematical understanding by assessing computerised, paper-and-pen and reflective actions of engineering diploma students while they executed a cas task. we discovered that students’ approaches and actions were prompted by the mathematical modelling characteristics of the task and the mediation of different actions through well-defined subtasks. the significance of mathematical modelling when students engage 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http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) black african parents’ narratives on apartheid schooling and school history abstract this paper was motivated by the anecdotal experiences of the lead author on the views of middle-class black african parents who did their schooling under apartheid and who were parents of high school learners in contemporary post-apartheid south africa. in this paper narrative inquiry was used to engage with ten purposively selected black african parents. in the process their narratives of schooling under apartheid and the parental choices they made on the subjects their children studied were constructed. as a theoretical lens critical race theory was used to allow the parents to tell their counter-stories. these parents were adamant that their children should not study history. this was partially rooted in their own apartheid-era schooling experiences. for the most part the black african parents tried to live their unfulfilled dreams and ambitions through their children by getting them to study science and mathematics as this was directly linked to upward-mobility, middle-classness, prosperity and success. while school history in the post-apartheid context was lauded and appreciated, the prevailing sentiment was that their children should steer clear of it. keywords: apartheid; education; narrative inquiry; parenting; school history. 1. introduction this study is contextualised within apartheid and postapartheid south africa. we sought to explore narratives of black african parents of today in relation to their schooling and school history experiences when they were learners under apartheid, and their contemporary positionality regarding school history as it relates to their children. studies (mackie, 2007; subbiah, 2016) have been conducted in relation to learners’ views of school history, but black african parents’ experiences about their schooling and school history is under-researched. therefore, the study is guided by one research question: what are black african parents’ narratives on schooling and school history under apartheid and how did this impact their parenting as it relates to school history in the current context? this question will allow for counter-storytelling as it relates to generational learning and parenting. the study is framed author: dr mauricio langa1 prof johan wassermann1 dr marshall maposa1 affiliation: 1university of kwazulu-natal, durban, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i3.2 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(3): 3-16 published: 16 september 2021 received: 21 july 2020 accepted: 02 october 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6004-9293 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9173-0372 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9264-2569 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 42021 39(3): 4-16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) within critical race theory (crt) and guided by narrative inquiry methodology, both of which were important in informing the methods of sampling, data generation, data analysis and discussion of the findings. 2. background and context the 1948 elections marked the beginning of a key historical period in the history of south africa. it was in this year that the national party (np) ascended to power and adopted the policy of apartheid. the np ruled south africa until 1994, when the first fully democratic elections in south africa ushered in a new democratic dispensation under the african national congress-led government. as such, the historic 1994 elections marked the end of 46 years of the racist apartheid regime in south africa. central to the policy of apartheid was the idea of white supremacy and privilege that led to the social engineering of separation from black africans, coloureds and indians. posel (2001: 50) posits that, according to the contemporary south african employment equity act, “black” denotes “to all those classified as ‘african’, ‘coloured’ or ‘indian’ under apartheid”. for the purpose of this study black african refers to people classified as “african” under apartheid. the apartheid system affected the lives of black africans on social, economic and political levels. on a social level, the lives of black africans were guided and controlled by a series of race-based legislations. amongst such laws was the population registration act of 1950, which racially classified all people in the country (thompson, 2014). based on this law, the south african population was divided into four racial groups namely whites, indians, coloureds and africans (who in this study are referred to as black africans) (thompson, 2014). the population registration act was underpinned by the group areas act of 1950 through which racial segregation was manifested in all aspects of life such as “public facilities, restaurants, transport, beaches and learned societies” (welsh, 2009: 56). through these, and other apartheid laws, black africans experienced exploitation, oppression, racial segregation and discrimination, thus leading to extreme inequalities between whites and black africans. whites were not only considered more civilised but they also had absolute political and economic power over black africans (thompson, 2014; welsh, 2009). the white minority formed the dominant class whereas the black africans were socialised to remain in positions of servitude (wassermann, 2015). under apartheid, black africans were further subdivided according to their ethnicity, with each group being allocated its own place, ostensibly to nurture their own identity and culture. for instance, welsh (2009: 60) highlighted that as part of the policy of apartheid, land was divided and allocated to ancestry and language groups. the aim of such policy was aptly captured by dr hendrik verwoerd, who was once the minister of native affairs before becoming prime minister of south africa, and who was quoted as stating: the bantu must be guided to serve his own community in all respects. there is no place for him in the european community above the level of certain forms of labour. within his own community, however, all doors are open (christie & collins, 1982: 68). this is an indication that the lives of black africans were meant to evolve around the impoverished homelands without adequate resources and infrastructure, thus making the vast majority of black africans susceptible to oppression and exploitation. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 52021 39(3): 5-16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 langa, wassermann & maposa black african parents’ narratives on apartheid economically, black africans bore the brunt of the apartheid laws that were designed to keep them at the periphery of the economy, while preserving and promoting the economic interests of the white dominant class. the np effectively used the job reservation act of 1956 to regulate the labour market, thus ensuring that certain jobs were reserved for whites (welsh, 2009). such discriminatory laws established a master–servant relationship between whites and black africans (thompson, 2014). the apartheid laws also contributed to the gross disparity in the distribution of economic resources and a wide gap between whites and black africans’ earnings (thompson, 2014: 200). an additional objective of the job reservation act was to curb interracial competition, particularly in the urban areas. in the process, the law created a reliable and sustainable source of cheap labour for white-owned industries (thompson, 2014; giliomee, 2009). at a political level, the lives of black africans under apartheid were characterised by oppression. black africans under apartheid did not have the right to vote in public elections (thompson, 2014). such a political differentiation based on race not only promoted white supremacy and control over black africans, but it also inculcated a sense of “otherness of black africans” (welsh, 2009: 65). the black africans had to find solace in the homelands of which they were citizens or the township on the outskirts of white urban areas. this socioeconomic and political inequality borne by black africans under apartheid had a bearing on their experiences of education. prior to the establishment of the apartheid state, education for the vast majority of black african children was under the control of mission schools (hartshorne, 1992; reagan, 1989; thompson, 2014; zungu, 1977). however, this was destroyed by the implementation of “bantu education” in 1953. this marked the end of the dominant role of mission schools in the country (johnson, 1982). as christie and collins (1982) noted, before 1953, out of 7 000 schools, 5 000 were under the control of missionaries and by 1959, all black schools, with the exception of 700 catholic schools, were under the tutelage of the native affairs department. with such a paradigm shift, education became a crucial vehicle through which afrikaner ideology and identity were instilled in white learners (kallaway, 1995; siebörger, 2018). the education system under apartheid was underpinned by the np philosophy of christian national education cne, which was used to cement afrikaner ideology and white supremacy through segregated education (thompson, 2014). based on the above, whites were set to manipulate the education system to their own advantage and to the detriment of the vast majority of black africans whose education was geared to turning them into mere ewers of wood and drawers of water (thobejane, 2013). as the then administrator of transvaal stated, “we must strive to win the fight against the non-white in the classroom instead of losing it on the battlefield” (johnson, 1982: 214). in other words, at the heart of apartheid education was the notion that the black african child should not be educated beyond certain predetermined positions in life. all of this was guided by the bantu education act of 1953. this legislation instituted “an inferior type of education that was designed to maintain the subordinate and marginal status of the majority racial group of the country” (thobejane, 2013:2). such an education was aimed at promoting unskilled labour amongst black africans. it follows then that the bantu education system advanced racial segregation, inequality and economic need, detrimentally affecting the lives black south africans. this impact on black students highly contributed to their low-quality education and lack of access to employment (gallo, 2020). the inferior curriculum was also linked to the inadequacy of resources such as infrastructure, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 62021 39(3): 6-16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) stationery and qualified teachers (thompson, 2014). coupled with the challenges faced by black africans in their schooling journey, was the lack of opportunities after school. 3. school history for black africans under apartheid history plays a vital role in the establishment of an identity in a given society, so often school history is used to advance governments’ ideologies and the use of that for identity formation. according to barton and levstik (2004: 48), “one of the most important ways of legitimising claims to nationality is through history”. this was the case in south africa when the np came to power in 1948. in line with their racist philosophy, they successfully ensured that the school history curriculum promoted “afrikaner nationalist historiography” (kallaway, 1995: 12), which placed a focus on racial segregation and advocated the myth that the afrikaners were chosen by god to lead and civilise black africans. to this end, the school history curriculum affirmed an “afrikaner-centred european perspective in history books during the apartheid era” (engelbrecht, 2008: 519). in these textbooks the history of black africans hardly featured. it is in this context that van der berg and buckland (1982: 23) argue that “the history taught to the black african denies his existence as it is a heroic tale of the rise of the afrikaner, the heroism of black resistance to their conquest is hardly charted”. such a historiography contributed to the creation of the notion of white supremacy. the denial of black africans to learn about their own history was aimed at conditioning the minds of black african learners to accept afrikaner historiography, thus taking part in the glorification of afrikaner identity and supremacy. in support of this, van der berg and buckland (1982: 23) noted that black africans were taught a “history intended to prevent the growth of a national consciousness and to reduce as much as possible any desire for a radical alternative”. such history teaching relied heavily on religious validation. johnson (1982: 218) explains this as such: “history must be taught in light of god’s decreed plan for human race … god willed separate nations and peoples”. in order to cement undisputable authority, the np introduced various master symbols that were used to indoctrinate and inculcate a sense of patriotic spirit amongst white learners and subjugation for black african learners. such symbols included: whites are superior; blacks are inferior; the afrikaner has [a] special relationship with god; south africa rightfully belongs to the afrikaner; south africa and the afrikaner are isolated; the afrikaner is military ingenious and strong; the afrikaner is threatened; south africa is the leader of africa and the afrikaner has a god given task in africa. (wassermann, 2015: 4) for black learners, these symbols denied them a sense of identity and the right to belong to the south african nation. this meant that the school history education for black africans under apartheid was not rooted in their life-world situation, aspirations and political development (van jaarsveld, 1990: 119). they were exposed to a school history with which they could not identify. in this regard, z.k. matthews, in the 1950s, highlighted his major concern regarding the history that was taught to black african learners: our history as we had absorbed it from tales and talk of our elders, bore no resemblance to south african history as it has been written by european scholars. the europeans insisted that we accept his version of the past … we struggled through the white man’s version of the so-called k* wars … we studied this history not merely in the white man’s version but in a distinctly pro-boer version (stolten, 2003: 3). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 72021 39(3): 7-16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 langa, wassermann & maposa black african parents’ narratives on apartheid the bias and misrepresentation meant that black african learners were taught a school history that systematically denied their citizenship rights thus considering them “aliens” in their own country (wassermann, 2017). in this way, the black africans during apartheid studied a history that promoted white supremacy and black inferiority. in order to ensure effective indoctrination, a teacher-centred methodology was used in the teaching of history at school, with the dominant pedagogical methods being rote learning and memorisation. weldon (2010: 2) points out that “education for all children emphasised rote learning, and discouraged questioning or critical engagement in the lesson”. these methods were aimed at discouraging critical thinking, while at the same time promoting passive learners. it is under such general conditions that the participants in this study went to school. 4. theoretical framework in order to make sense of the narratives of black africans who were history learners during apartheid and parents post-apartheid, this study adopted critical race theory (crt) for its theoretical framework. the literature reviewed earlier showed that one’s racial categorisation pre-1994 had a bearing on the type of schooling experiences they would have had. since race is a critical aspect of the study, we adopted a theory that explains issues of race and racism in relation to the established power relations. crt first emerged in the united states of america (usa) during the 1970s, and it is mainly concerned with transforming skewed power relations based on racial lines (delgado & stefancic, 2011; hiraldo, 2010; landson-billings, 1998). most of the proponents of crt broke away from critical legal studies (cls) because they were of the view that it did not give sufficient attention to the racism and racial discrimination to which black americans were subjected. the main tenets of crt are the permanence of racism; whiteness as property; counter-storytelling and the challenge to dominant ideology (solorzano, 1997). these tenets were used to make sense of the black african parents’ narratives of schooling and school history during apartheid and how they subsequently influenced their children about the subject. regarding the first tenet, critical race theorists assert that race and racism are viewed as normal, permanent features of society and are imbued in people’s daily routines, thus making them difficult to eradicate (hiraldo, 2010; solorzano, 1997; landson-billings, 1998). according to hiraldo (2010), the notions of race and racism play vital roles in the creation of social, political and economic control of society. furthermore, critical race theorists view racism as an integral part of the elite’s civilisation, “privileging white individuals over black americans including education” (hiraldo, 2010: 54). in the case of south africa, crt can help make meaning of the research participants’ narratives, since the study, from the outset, makes it clear that it is about black africans who can be categorised as a racial group that experienced apartheid and the post-apartheid dispensation, by virtue of their race, in a particular way. the second tenet is the notion of whiteness as property. this notion explains how some systems validate the “possession and privileges of white individuals” (hiraldo, 2010: 54). for instance, in the usa, institutions and systems, including education, gave whites more privileges, meaning that a white person could use their whiteness as property that would give them easier access to power and authority over those categorised as black and thus inferior. this was also the case in apartheid south africa whereby whiteness was a property that gave individuals access to better education, facilities and personal aspirations (thompson, 2014). this means that crt, as the theoretical lens for this study, can be used as a prism to http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 82021 39(3): 8-16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) understand how the black africans’ lack of this particular property influenced their experiences of schooling, school history and their subsequent views as adults towards the subject. another key tenet of crt is counter-storytelling, which is a tool used by many disadvantaged groups, not only to express their lived experiences, but more importantly to criticise and expose the injustices perpetrated by the dominant group (hiraldo, 2010). according to landson-billings (1998: 11), this type of storytelling is called counter-storytelling and it aims to “integrate their experiential knowledge, drawn from their shared history as other with their struggles to transform a world deteriorating under the albatross of racial hegemony”. the use of crt in this study gives the participants a chance to provide stories that counter the dominant narratives to which they were subjected. the last tenet of crt is to challenge the status quo and the privileges of the dominant class, and especially where such privileges are maintained and sustained by unequal power relations between whites and black africans. critical race theorists posit that while the situation on the ground continues to favour the dominant groups in society, “the claims of meritocracy, equal opportunity, objectivity and colour blindness are a camouflage for selfinterest, power, and privilege of dominant groups” (solórzano, 1997: 6). the sum of the above serves to clarify the choice of crt as the theoretical framing for this paper. 5. research methodology this study adopted narrative inquiry as a methodology since we sought to explore black african parents’ narratives in relation to apartheid schooling, school history and their parental positioning related to the latter. narrative inquiry enabled us to unearth and analyse the data and create new meaning out of it. in other words, through narrative inquiry we acknowledge that “stories are social artefacts, telling us as much about society and culture as they do about a person or a group” (riessman, 2008: 106). in this paper, the participants, through their stories, were able to relive their difficult experiences of schooling and school history during apartheid and explain why they made parental decisions related to the subject. such counter-storytelling presupposes a positive “collaboration between the researcher and participants, over time, in a place or series of places, and in social interaction with milieus” (clandinin & connelly, 2000: 20). narrative inquiry accordingly shows the embeddedness of human experience in the historical and political, thus shaping peoples’ identities and worldviews, as well as the way they understand themselves in relation to others. it is in this context that goodson and gill (2011: 20) note that “narratives provide opportunities to gain insight into the lived experience of individuals and thus can illuminate an understanding of culture as [a] whole”. the fact that the participants experienced apartheid education and school history as black african learners, and post-apartheid education and school history as parents, means that their experiences were also cultural and this differed from the cultural experiences of whites. we adopted convenience and purposeful sampling methods to select the black african parent sample of the study. for punch, “purposive sampling is a deliberate way, with some purpose or focus in mind” (2005: 187). in addition, du plooy-cilliers, davis and bezuidenhout (2014) and bertram and christiansen (2014) view purposive sampling as the selection of participants based on certain characteristics for which the researcher is looking. these characteristics included being a black african who experienced schooling and school history under apartheid and who is now a parent of a high school child. the participants were identified by the first author at the independent school in kwazulu-natal at which he teaches history. as http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 92021 39(3): 9-16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 langa, wassermann & maposa black african parents’ narratives on apartheid such, this was convenient since we did not need to search for potential research participants sampling processes in qualitative studies, such as this paper, have no set rules for sample sizes (de vos, 2005). the bottom-line being sample size must be large enough to generate relevant data for the study or “small enough to manage it” (bertram & christiansen, 2020: 77). consequently, we selected ten participants, who were black african, had studied school history during apartheid and were parents of learners. in them agreeing to participate in the study pseudonyms were, for ethical reasons, allocated. these parents were all middle-class and their children attended a private school and as such this study cannot be generalised to the black african population as a whole. the data for this paper were generated through semi-structured interviews enhanced by photo-elicitation. the photographs depicted education-related aspects of apartheid and school history and they helped to trigger the participants’ memories of their own experiences when they were learners. the open-ended questions allowed for the generation of in-depth data as participants freely expressed themselves without necessarily being interrupted (hesse-biber & leavy, 2011). as noted by bold (2012: 65), semi-structured interviews give the researcher the “flexibility to ask further questions to clarify points raised by the interviewee”. these methods tally with narrative inquiry methodology, which enabled us to “generate detailed accounts rather than brief answers or general statements” (riessman, 2008: 23). the data analysis was conducted in two stages. the first stage consisted of analysis of the transcribed data, which led to the compilation of ten personal narratives – one for each participant. the analysis was done through open coding, which is “a way to generate an emergent set of categories and their properties” (ezzy, 2008: 8). similarly, strauss and corbin (1990: 62) view open coding as “the part of analysis that pertains specifically to naming and categorising of phenomena through close examination of data”. during the second stage of data analysis, the personal narratives were analysed, also using open coding, to compile participants’ narratives about their experiences of schooling and school history under apartheid and their contemporary parental positioning related to school history. 6. presentation of the data the findings of this study are based on two major narratives: • contemporary black african parents’ narratives on their experiences of schooling and school history under apartheid, and • contemporary black african parents’ narratives on the impact of their experiences of schooling and school history on their parental positioning as it relates to school history in the contemporary context. the narrative of the black african parents on their experiences of schooling and school history under apartheid painted a picture of an evil system under which education was used as a tool of oppression. in this regard phiwe remembered, “when i look back, i can say it [education] was a way of blocking us, maybe they doubted our intelligence”. the personal narratives of the black african parents serve to highlight what “blocking” entailed, namely inadequate infrastructure and overcrowded schools. in this regard sindi vividly recalled that “it was common at school to have different grades in a mud-brick classroom. one side would be one class and the other side would be another class”. how normal such educational conditions were under apartheid were commented on by madoda, “we did not see anything wrong with the mud-brick school because that was the only experience we had”. this mental http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 102021 39(3): 10-16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) and physical oppression extended to the general curriculum as remembered by themba who bemoaned the fact that, “we were prevented from doing mathematics and science for the sake of opening doors for the whites. that was a demarcation; it was well planned that as blacks we could not cross the line”. the result was, according to thabo, that “we were limited and we were not exposed to different professions as we see them today”. the consequence in terms of employment was, as recalled by phiwe, “if you did not become a teacher, a nurse, or policeman then you could become a clerk or simply a school drop-out and nothing else”. against the above backdrop of counter-storytelling black african parents hardly featured in the schooling of their children. for instance, fana highlighted that his parents were too poor to send him to school, which is evidenced by the fact that he only began attending school aged 13. he stated that his main motivation for going to school was learning how to read and write. sindi, in her narrative recalled that, “in my schooling days i do not remember the practice of parents coming to attend school meetings at school”. in the context of apartheid schooling, as revealed by the narratives as outlined above, school history was experienced as a meaningless memory discipline based on white experiences that left a lasting negative attitude towards the subject. for instance, nomakhosi confirmed that “we did not really ask questions”. all they had to do was memorise and regurgitate the historical content handed down to them without critically engaging with it. the meaninglessness was enhanced by the participants being exposed to an afrikaner-centred european perspective of school history. as a result, themba, during his interview, angrily complained, “how dare you keep such selective knowledge which affected us?” adding that “it was difficult to understand my teachers when they spoke about christopher columbus, and bartholomew dias. it was difficult too to differentiate history from folklores”. the analysis of the personal narratives also shows that the participants viewed school history as educationally and academically meaningless because it was seen as being based on distorted content. this was highlighted in the narratives of fana, sindi and thabo, who pointed out that they were taught that the history of south africa began with the arrival of jan van riebeeck and the white settlers in 1652. the participants also lamented the experiences of black africans being misrepresented and belittled in history textbooks. madoda, menzi, themba and thabo, recalled that black african leaders were deliberately represented as murderers, barbarians, cowards and as unintelligent. this was especially so with reference to the content in textbooks on south african history, which emphasised the negative elements of the mfecane in southern africa. similarly, thabo, in his interview, complained that all they were shown were images of half-naked african leaders carrying spears. likewise, madoda recalled king shaka being presented as a cruel and heartless leader who was always ready to kill. the participants found it difficult to listen to their history teachers describing such a negative history about black african characters. at the same time victories of black africans over white settlers were deliberately omitted or not taught. for instance, as explained by fana, the victory of king cetshwayo and the zulu over the british at the battle of isandlwana was never taught. black african parents were thus exposed to a selective school history while being fully aware of their local history and leaders. in this regard phiwe commented “when we were growing up we knew that there was mandela, but we never saw him, even his pictures were banned from circulation”. unsurprisingly then the black african parents who participated in this study did not hold positive recollections of studying history at school during apartheid. this was the case because they were confronted by school history as a memory discipline devoid of any analysis. the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 112021 39(3): 11-16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 langa, wassermann & maposa black african parents’ narratives on apartheid participants felt that they had to learn a white supremacist history that was meant to establish a collective memory for the ruling afrikaner nationalists and other whites. this tallies with wassermann’s (2017) argument that black african learners had to learn a history in which they were not considered as citizens of the country and only appeared on the fringes of society as troublemakers. as a result, the participants of this study developed a negative attitude towards school history in that it not only excluded them from a white master narrative or collective memory, but also undermined their integrity and self-esteem as black africans. as such school history was a powerful tool of indoctrination, aimed at instilling compliance and submissiveness amongst black african learners, while promoting an idea of superiority and pride amongst white learners. how then did the educational experiences of black african parents’ affect their parental positioning as it relates to school history in the contemporary context? based on the personal narratives of the participants, they viewed school history as being a necessary component of the current school curriculum. appreciation was especially expressed for the fact that the content on south african history has changed and that the liberation struggle was foregrounded. the relevance of school history was succinctly explained by menzi who stated that “history provides us with lessons that we have got to learn as we move into the future. if you don’t know where you come from, you don’t know where you are going”. menzi clearly speaks from personal experience in this regard. such a positive view of school history is contrary to the participants’ experience of school history as learners under apartheid but were underpinned by a sense of triumph over apartheid school history and what it stood for. thabo highlights the idea of a triumphant school history curriculum when he stated that “today learners can learn about the struggle against apartheid and how the blacks fought and resisted the oppressive system”. themba expressed similar sentiments, proclaiming that “our history now is something that is quite interesting and does not dehumanise me, but instead makes me regain my humanity and confidence”. however, drawing on the past, themba argued that the anc government “was not doing enough in promoting our history while the afrikaners did promote theirs so well during apartheid”. however, the sea of change school history had undergone, from a memory to an analytical subject, and the accompanied changes in content, was not enough for black african parents to allow their children to study the subject in the post-apartheid democratic context. the reasons for this were multiple and complex. in his counter-story thabo directly linked past educational experiences to the present when he explained that “it was challenging for most parents to allow their children for instance to pursue history because since history did not help them in the past it will not help their children now when there are many opportunities”. likewise, phiwe related allowing his children to do history with the lack of opportunities of the apartheid past, “for me history is non-existent and what would you do with history, because with it you just become a teacher and what else?” across the narratives the idea of new opportunities, which they did not have, were foregrounded by the black african parents. in the elite professional fields they envisaged for their children, school history was seen as irrelevant in securing job security and economic prosperity. in thinking in this manner, they projected their own difficult life experiences, characterised by lack of opportunity, as an opportune moment to encourage or persuade their children to see the future through their eyes. consequently, mathematics and science were highly favoured as subjects by the black african parents. this is unsurprising since school history has not received the same attention as science and mathematics post-1994 (kallaway, 2012). the importance and status of the last-mentioned http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 122021 39(3): 12-16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) subjects were strongly foregrounded by fana when he argued that they “were linked to status and better paying jobs which was what many black african parents wanted for their children since they had been disadvantaged themselves”. in ensuring that their children chose appropriate subjects in grade 10 close supervision and monitoring took place. the narrative of menzi is a point in case. he made it clear that his daughter could not take history for he would not allow her to pursue a career in teaching because she came from a family of teachers. she needed to pursue a different profession such as, for example, civil engineering, medicine, accounting or architectural studies. and in this the black african parents expected the private school their children attended to be supportive of such thinking, as explained by madoda: “my concern was to see if the teachers or the school did not impose on my children subjects that would not match with the advice that i gave to my children in view of the careers after matric”. the most striking counterstorytelling in this regard came from themba who very directly linked his abysmal schooling under apartheid to his personal ambitions for his children in the post-apartheid world, “we had high aims as well, but we failed to achieve them. now that we have kids, we want them to achieve those goals for us, we are pushing them”. in sum, the black african parents lived their unfilled childhood dreams through their children and in this, school history had no place. however, the parental decisions regarding subject choices and the envisaged careers for their children were not without problems. tension arose between their children’s interest and abilities and the ambitions of their parents. this was recognised by sindi when she pointed out that “the main issue we face as parents is that of status and better life, as opposed to what my child is capable of doing or love as far as subjects are concerned”. similar counterpoints were raised by other female participants with phiwe highlighting the fact that the overemphasis on mathematics and science led to many dropouts in these subjects. the best balance between acknowledging learners’ abilities and freedom of choice was conveyed by londeka who stated that “my view is that children need to be encouraged to do any subject they are comfortable with, provided that they are in line with what they want to become in future”. however, the male african parents who participated in the study had much stronger views and themba’s personal narrative highlighted the idea of a generational tension when he stated that “whatever we ought to be, if we failed in our time in what we were interested in we tend to make our children do what we failed to do”. madoda continued by explaining that: i feel now that my children could have a taste of the side that i never had, the opportunities that i never dream of … what i teach my children is what i know and i will never teach them what i don’t know. so, i will push them to take advantage of the opportunities available for their benefit and well-being in future. participants echoed similar sentiments, with thabo stating that “we would like to see our children get better jobs and succeed in life and not be like us who did not have opportunities”, and themba confessing that “when i began working as a teacher, i told myself that i will have to channel my child to become a medical practitioner because i did not have the chance or opportunity myself”. 7. discussing the findings what is clear from the data as presented is that the apartheid past, its schooling legacies in general and the teaching of school history in particular, loomed large in the lives of the black african parents who participated in this study. in fact, it can be argued that this is generally http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 132021 39(3): 13-16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 langa, wassermann & maposa black african parents’ narratives on apartheid omnipresent in the decisions they make as parents. this is to be understood when considering the lingering trauma caused by apartheid as a racist system that served to advance the interest of whites while severely neglecting the interests of blacks and especially black africans (engelbrecht, 2008). educationally speaking, apartheid was driven by the bantu education act of 1953 which enforced an inferior type of education on black africans with the distinct aim to subordinate, suppress and marginalise (thobejane, 2013). bantu education was anchored by school history with its afrikaner nationalist historiographical ideological underpinnings. the bias and misrepresentation that this spawned resulted in black african learners being confronted with a school history in which they were classified as inferior and thus partial to being misrepresented or excluded (ladson-billings, 1998). as a result, black africans only appeared on the fringes of society as criminals, labourers and troublemakers (wassermann, 2017). the result was the construction of an identity of white superiority and black inferiority. this is the world the black african parents who participated in this study inhabited as school children. consequently, to them race and racism and the associated white privilege was real, normal and seemingly permanent features of their apartheid world (hiraldo, 2010; solorzano, 1997). accordingly, racism permeated their daily lives as black africans down to the jobs they could do after completing school. it is from this world that the black african parents who participated in this study “migrated” when the np rule was replaced in 1994 by the democratically elected anc government. this migration coincided with them becoming parents, with the related parental duties, in a world with new and previously unimagined opportunities. however, the end of apartheid did not necessarily mean a trouble-free post-apartheid dispensation. by virtue of their race, the black african parents experienced this world in a particular way. this included the opportunity to reconstruct their own lives, by means of a crt prism, namely counter storytelling of their experiences and struggles as was done in this paper (hiraldo, 2010). at the same time, they could imagine lives for their children different to theirs. one aspect of reimagining related to parental involvement is subject choices at school level in grade 10. while contemporary school history was lauded by the participants as constituting a triumph over the apartheid past and joy was expressed that they could see themselves in it and associate with it, this was for the most part not the subject they wanted their children to study. this could but partly be attributed to the personal experiences of the black african parents as learners under apartheid. the more convincing reason was that it was possible to envisage a different world and career for their children. this was a world in which school history had no place but in which science and mathematics were foregrounded (kallaway, 2012). as a result, the black african parents were seeking a world of prosperity, status, social mobility, success and professional jobs for their children. consequently, the black african middle-class parents who participated in this study preferred their children to study science and mathematics as these were the subjects that could entrench the middle-class status of their children (pazich & teranish, 2012). for the most part this was done to the detriment of their children’s interests, abilities and freedom of choice. in the process the black african parents were pushed away from history towards mathematics and science by government policies aimed at redressing the imbalances of the apartheid past (asmal & james, 2001). in the process their children were not part of the 33 per cent of south african learners taking school history up to grade 12. with reference to the above, it became possible for the black african parents to live their lives and deal with their unfulfilled ambitions and dreams, which were thwarted by apartheid, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 142021 39(3): 14-16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) through their children. this meant they now could, by mark of their middle-class status, for the first time, as per crt, challenge the existing status quo and the privileges sustained by unequal power relations, especially economic paper, between whites and black africans (thompson, 2014). being upwardly mobile and middle class meant having power to challenge and access institutions and systems unavailable under apartheid. in short, having property gave the black african parents who participated in this study admittance to better education, facilities and personal aspirations (thompson, 2014) which they then projected by means of parental care into their children. in this school history did not have a foothold. 8. conclusion this study explored the narratives of black african parents in relation to their schooling in general, and school history in particular, both as learners during apartheid and as parents in the post-apartheid world. schooling under apartheid was oppressive, demeaning, unequal and racist, while school history was biased, negatively value-laden and white supremacist in nature and served to remind black africans of their inferior position, not just in school, but in south africa as a whole. in sum, the narratives of the black african parents who participated in this study revealed that they experienced school history as learners under apartheid as enabling the racist system. as middle-class parents in the post-apartheid world school history was abandoned in favour of mathematics and science and an envisaged world of opportunity, prosperity, middle-classness and better jobs for their children. these parental decisions on behalf of their children were made by black african parents based on their educational experiences under apartheid and the value they attach to education. in so doing they 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approach. routledge, 73-85. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315203591-5 welsh, d. 2009. the rise and fall of apartheid. johannesburg & cape town: jonathan ball publishers. weldon, g. 2010. history education and democracy in post-apartheid south africa. special issue international journal of education, law & policy: 88–102. zungu, y. 1977. the education for africans in south africa. the journal of negro education, 46(3): 208–218. https://doi.org/10.2307/2966768 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.2 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110466133-002 https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110466133-002 https://doi.org/10.2307/525576 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315203591-5 https://doi.org/10.2307/2966768 _hlk51754778 _hlk51753079 _hlk51695053 _hlk51761464 _enref_65 337 research article 2020 38(2): 337-346 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.22 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) the element of surprise: an innovative approach in art education abstract this article examines the role that the element of surprise plays in the implementation of the art curriculum at the higher education level. my critical analysis and evaluation of the subject matter are based on the outcomes of three case studies and the resulted exhibitions, organised and realised in the south african politico-economic and socio-cultural framework. consequently, the research develops in the context of three most significant streams of policies in education: socio-cultural inclusion policy, multiliteracies in education and the needs of the fourth industrial revolution for soft skills. the aim of the study is twofold: to demonstrate an appropriate climate of interaction among students and educators in the visual arts and design discipline and to propose different teaching strategies for the enhancement of skilful planning, accurate decision taking as well as analysing and synthesising creative ideas under unfamiliar and challenging circumstances. keywords: element of surprise, innovation, linear, multiliteracies, soft skills, inclusion policy 1. introduction as a noun, the term “surprise” has different meanings, such as “an unexpected or astonishing event”, a “shock” or a “complete wonder”. as usual, the given meanings do not distinguish between positive or negative connotations of the term surprise (webster, 1981: 2301), yet its synonyms shock, astonishment, astound, amazement, disclosure, revelation, wonder and many others, include eye-opener. the element of surprise as an “eye opening” and self-discovery process, indirectly leads an interested seeker to sophocles’ oedipus rex, the tragedy that has been thoroughly analysed and largely discussed in many disciplines, with special attention to the symbolism of oedipus’s self-inflicting blindness. the reality was too horrific for him to contemplate (sophocles, 400 b.c.). though less relevant, the emotional association of the term surprise with the eye-opening mental function of the element itself has equipped me with the necessary motivation to constructively apply a different and author: dr r steyn1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38. i2.22 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(2): 337-346 published: 04 december 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.22 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7506-8179 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.22 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.22 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.22 3382020 38(2): 338-346 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.22 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) challenging approach to teaching and learning skill development in the practical application of my educational project in my visual arts and design education classes. my present study forms part of my broader research project on innovative approaches in art education and the development of teaching strategies through constructive teacherslearners communication channels. it demonstrates how meticulous planning, applicable at various aspects of creativity in the visual arts and design discipline, can strengthen soft skills consciousness among students, the importance of which has been stressed by saavedra and opfer (2012: 10-12). by challenging existing conventional restricted ways of thinking, the heuristic and experimental approach has demonstrated the great importance of openness in reasoning for the development of artistic creativity (valerie oliver, 2017: 71). furthermore, in the framework of the fourth industrial revolution, innovative thinking is a crucial factor for the adoption of change, the development of different attitudes and the promotion of new skills. since, as rogers (1983: 168–174) states, any innovation, material or otherwise, has been associated with reluctance towards the introduction of a new unfamiliar element or change of any conventional way of thinking, a precise and well-defined understanding of the novel subject matter is recommended. however, in art education the process of exposure and adaptation is equally – if not more important – than the outcome itself, since most innovations take place through a process of testing and applying new ways of thinking and reasoning. furthermore, the expected successful learning outcomes in arts and design education cannot be reached without an appropriate climate of interaction among students and educators. the greater the mutual trust between the two parties, the stronger the motivation for adaptation and implementation of a new idea. 2. why the element of surprise in artistic creativity? the lack of recognition and progress of art at all levels of the modern education system has been discussed and attributed to serious “neglect” and incapacity of the educators themselves to demonstrate art achievements on an “empirical level”. based on a combined philosophical theoretical framework of existentialism (sartre, 2003), power-knowledge interaction (foucault, 1984) and social behaviour (bandura, 1982), oliver (2017: 69, 70, 84), demonstrates the pedagogic and social value of art education and practices. her empirical findings promote the importance of action research, ideally based on a well-adjusted integration of art theories with practices in teaching and learning processes. in reference to teaching and learning interaction, however, no matter how interesting a teaching subject may be, or in which discipline (yule, 1987: 150–155), repetition, drilling exercises and class routine, in general, may discourage, block or raze any creative ideas and – even worse – interrupt the relevant creative design process at a most crucial stage of its development. having identified the importance of creative thinking, odendaal (2016: 84–85) explains you need to stimulate motivation to enhance artistic creativity. in this context, he proposes practise through reproductions, photographs, drawing projects, or inviting professional guests and planning field trips (my emphasis). in my case, based on professional empiricism to counteract the predictable, expectable, anticipated and, even better, unsurprising aim of any design process development, one of my strategic approaches has been the element of surprise. in my long teaching experience http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.22 3392020 38(2): 339-346 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.22 steyn the element of surprise: an innovative approach in art education and field, this element has proven to be the most challenging factor. it may, however, be a powerful tool in creative thinking as it stimulates the synthesis of ideas, the quick and accurate assessment of possibilities and the making of appropriate decisions in terms of time, space and available information. hence, due to the unfamiliar nature of my message to my receivers, the communication and the process to be followed had to be carefully planned to ensure the positive acceptance and successful outcome of my innovative idea. in the framework of promoting multidisciplinary and multiliteracy approaches in visual arts and design (steyn, 2019: 156–172), my communication process has been based on different forms and fields of artistic expressions and activities. literature is one of them. following aristoteles’s poetics, the design of the plot in any work of fiction rests heavily on generating curiosity and suspense, by which narrative and causality maintain the sequence of events structurally in a well-balanced unit (cuddon, 1986:513). therefore, with reference to the sequence of events interlocking causality with happenings within a novel, a play or a film, the element of curiosity is essential as the receiver of a message tries to find answers to questions such as “what? who? where? when? why?” from my point of view, the element of surprise can provide motivation for “rigorous examination”, accurate focus (in response to the pressure exercised on the brain in terms of time and space) and quick decision-making. this article aims to demonstrate the importance of the surprise element in receiving, accepting, assimilating and diffusing change and innovation through quick thinking, as well as creative and critical thinking. the focus of the study is placed on the outcomes of the innovated approach as illustrated in three consequent exhibitions. aspects of the exhibitions were discussed in class. 3. critical framework ideally, in arts education, new ideas, original creations, new orders of things and different approaches are welcomed, tested and, if successful, adopted; thus, through education, enhancing the social and cultural value system individually and collectively. yet, anything “new” and “innovative” is often very difficult to be accepted, adapted and modified. machiavelli’s words in his prince (1513) never cease to be relevant: “there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new order of things.” in line with the new directions and necessary reforms in south africa, the design education national curriculum planning defines critical and creative thinking, self-discipline and leadership as crucial life skills. in this framework, teaching should inspire and train learners to be inventive, innovative and capable to strategise as leaders, but also to act “as team players” (dbe 2011:8).1 creative thinking in arts education, therefore, by definition, calls for alternative ways of reasoning and new patterns of possibilities when solving problems of creating and delivering. in discussing the 21st century innovative teaching requirements, saavedra and opfer (2012:11–12) among others, propose the development of thinking skills in terms of: 1) exposure to multiple disciplines, such as “native and foreign languages, hard and social sciences, mathematics and the arts”, 2) relevance of subject matter and 3) the transfer of learning through active class participation. according saavedra and opfer (2012:11–12), “creativity is not a fixed characteristic that people have or do not have” but rather an incremental 1 curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) 2011. saavedra & opfer, “learning 21st-century skills requires 21st-century teaching”, in new styles of instruction, october 2012, 8-13. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.22 3402020 38(2): 340-346 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.22 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) one that can be creatively developed through proper encouragement, newfound knowledge and a clear understanding of innovation and innovative approaches. in his pioneer work on diffusion innovation, rogers (1983:163–167) identifies five sequential stages of the innovation-decision process: 1. knowledge = the gaining of some understanding of the nature and relevance of the proposed innovation. rogers (1983:164) notes that, “[k]nowledge occurs when an individual (or other decision-making unit) is exposed to the innovation’s existence and gains some understanding of how it functions” (my emphasis). in my case, to lead to successful outcomes, some understanding has to be controlled through a direct, practical, inclusive approach. i consider this line of mental activity as the most appropriate for a better and more accurate knowing as well as a better applied cognitive tactic, especially in the field of education. 2. persuasion = the affective or personal feeling that directs the assessment of the innovation towards its acceptance or rejection. in agreement with this viewpoint, williams (1969: 7–13) argues that the receiver has to have a fair amount of cognitive information to develop an attitude towards a new idea. this is the point whereby, i trust, curiosity and anticipation about an unrevealed aim to stand up against established prejudices, existing stereotyped images and predisposed opinions. 3. decision = the act of choosing between totally adopting innovation as the best way forward or completely rejecting it due its unfamiliar features. for a positive decision-making stage, i depended on the well-studied practical application of my plan and the speedy sequence of the stages. 4. implementation = the point where the mental activities of the previous stages are set to their practical materialisation and the problem-solving process entailed by innovation. in arts education, in the context of productive communication between educators and students, this step is quite significant because it defines the point at which a theory integrates with reality, abstract ideas are put into use and mentally structured plans take their concrete form. 5. confirmation = the stage that mainly refers to continuation or discontinuation of innovation after its adoption. from an educational point of view, this step can be particularly important, provided the ongoing course for testing and finalising the designed product has been properly guided, well-controlled and critically assessed (steyn, 2019:156–172). according to rogers (1983:163–167), these series of actions affect every decision about an innovation whilst the relevant process occurs over time: “diffusion scholars have long recognised that an individual’s decision about an innovation is not an instantaneous act. rather, it is a process that occurs over time and consists of a series of actions” (my emphasis). on the other hand, social media communication, multi-channelled information and high global demand for socio-economic changes, constantly increase the number of demands for innovative and different ideas. in this context, though from a different point of view, cassim (2013: 190–201) challenges the traditional design education in south africa, advocating for greater engagement with the contemporary social, economic and environmental problems of the country through a more human-centred design thinking approach. according to cassim (2013: 191–192), to deal with the 21st century changes and complexities, traditional educational approaches should be challenged and developed through integration with the introduction of new ways of thinking. designers should “traverse traditional disciplines” and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.22 3412020 38(2): 341-346 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.22 steyn the element of surprise: an innovative approach in art education “articulate new areas of design” for the sake of innovation, especially given the uneven south african social map. as for the realisation of any creative idea, its development process consists mainly of three stages: idea-process-creation. the design process is commonly understood amongst teachers as a single linear process. according to tim brown (2009:9) linear thinking is about sequences and not as creative as the synthesis of developing thinking based on the designer’s personal mind map. in the definition of the term linear, the oxford advanced learners dictionary includes the following sentence: “students do not usually progress in a linear fashion!”(my emphasis). indeed, in the context of the three stages organised by the teachers, which ohemeng-appiah labels as identify-design-make-appraise, students are expected to follow these steps “sequentially and diligently” in their projects. in addition, the linear view of the design process hinders learner creativity as “learners do not have the freedom to explore design solutions using their own ideas or methods” (ohemeng-appiah, 2014:52). in this context, ohemeng-appiah (2014:9, 52) does not hesitate to use expressions such as “hinders creativity” or lack of “freedom to explore”. briefly, referring to hill (1998), williams (2000), mawson (2003) and rowel (2004), ohemeng-appiah rejects the existing design process as rigid and limiting the development of creative skills of the learner, suggesting the need for an alternative pedagogy or approach. in this framework, dwyer, has developed the modern conceptualisation of critical thinking (2017:17–18), which is based on romiszwoski’s distinction between “reproductive” and “productive” skills and adapted to contemporary technological needs (romiszowski, 1999:462). the former is used when students follow instructions and merely copy or simply duplicate the planned work, while the latter refers to “productive” skills, through which learners consider the instructions, adapt their skills accordingly and create something new. when students are given a brief to follow, the relevant on-going process is tightly controlled by the educators and followed by a “reverse process”. consequently, “practical skills will involve ‘productive’ skills that follow standard procedures or plans, as opposed to ‘reproductive’ skills that involve also applying standard procedures, plans and strategies” but from another point of view (romiszowski, 1999:462). in short, romiszowski makes a clear distinction between “productive” and “reproductive” skills by replacing the approach of following by the act of application, which, as he argues, allows for a greater and more direct engagement of creative problem-solving. notwithstanding the importance of rogers’ process and the need for reform and changes in the traditional thinking discussed above, in the context of the time pressure imposed by technology and the high demand for soft skills, decision-taking-processes are constantly being challenged and forcing human thinking to act fast and at the same time with great efficiency. to satisfy the relevant needs, time needs to be managed differently and controlled supervision based on relevant structure is needed. future designers and teachers need to work under different circumstances and requests where in the proposed stages of the above model of acceptance and confirmation, fast thinking becomes crucial. in this context, after being tested, the surprise element is expected to be an important and valuable factor. 4. methodology: the creative role of the “infinity” stage considering the creative process as most crucial for the final production, to reach the desired outcomes, i have divided its course in three different phases (figure 1). i have labelled the middle stage b, which is the one between the planning (a) of a requested design product and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.22 3422020 38(2): 342-346 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.22 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) its creation (c), as the “infinity” process, thus defining it with an emphasis on the ongoing course of making and testing the relevant product before its final presentation (or the solution to a pre-problem). the role of the “infinity” stage in the development of creative ideas and their realisation is important in the sense that it aims at an infinite number of constructive relative attempts and an improved planned continuation. this infinite stage-approach has proven its validity in practice, first because it secures the coordination between stage a and c, and second, because it accommodates the element of surprise in terms of risk-taking. this is an important factor for successful outcomes in the context of the design teaching-learning targets (steyn, 2019:156–172). stage a stage b stage c 0 planning stage creating stage infinity stage figure 1: three basic stages of the creative production process figure 1: this plan is based on the proposed three versions of the designing process (steyn, 2019:163). option a: the planning stage. option b: the infinity stage. this is an ongoing “infinity” process between the planning, making and testing stages of the design product. option c: the creating stage. in the above context, our research question is: how can “the element of surprise” pedagogically become a constructive factor in the development of a different line of creative and critical thinking of the design process? in the process of design development, in opposition to the “expected” outcome of the design process, the unexpected experience at a given moment of the process, cannot only narrow the existing distance between theory and practice, but hopefully also render the designing process an unforgettable learning experience. in this context, i applied my theoretical premises in three different visual arts and design classes in the framework of three representative case studies. consequently, whilst demonstrating the negative and positive aspects of the “element”, the following three case studies also promote the “element of surprise” by way of an alternative approach or tactic to teaching and learning. in all three cases, and in terms of constructive communication between teachers and students, my approaches had to challenge two deeply imbedded human sentiments, namely: a) “we” and the “others” b) “the comfort zone” both states of mind are powerful enough to impede social inclusion and cultural interaction by promoting societal prejudice, social marginalisation and cultural exclusion. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.22 3432020 38(2): 343-346 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.22 steyn the element of surprise: an innovative approach in art education 5. three case studies in the framework of the realisation of the “end-product”, all three case studies introduce the “element of surprise” as part of the design process, albeit at different stages of each corresponding process. in case study 1, the “element of surprise” was brought in before the execution stage while in case study 2, the “element of surprise” was introduced during the execution stage. in case study 3, the “element of surprise” functioned as an “eye opening” factor, after the execution stage, that is, when the design and artworks had already been exhibited. 5.1 case study 1 pre-surprise stage: art and design education students were given the task of finding problems in the everyday classroom for the purpose of creating meaningful solutions to the relevant problems. during the process, students had to brainstorm all the possible challenges and issues a teacher might face in a classroom environment, write them down, do relevant research and share their ideas and findings with their peers. once such problems were identified, the students were grouped accordingly. once in groups, a brief was introduced whereby each group had to create a product that would solve their chosen problems. element of surprise: as part of the design process, the groups were asked to compose a detailed step-by-step plan of their designed solution or product. the first part of the work was handed in for evaluation and when i returned their assessed work, the “element of surprise” came as a “shock”. as planned, i inter-exchanged the different groups’ concepts, notes and drawings and told each one of them to carry on with the execution of another’s designed product. the crucial factor at this point was to indicate to the future art and design teachers, the steps leading to the final designed solution without revealing the solution or product itself. the “element of surprise” was a real challenge for the involved groups as i took them out of their comfort zone (ohemeng-appiah, 2014:12; flowers, 2010:16). i admit that i felt strongly for their justifiable emotions, as they were reluctant to depart from their personal inspirations and designs. yet, once they understood the aim of the exercise, they accepted the challenge as part of the “interpreting” process for the enrichment of their creative and critical thinking skills, through the analysis of other groups’ concepts, notes and drawings (steyn, 2019:166–167). in line with alexander romiszwoski’s division of “reproductive” and “productive” skills, this exercise also led to further and more creative design solutions resulting from the opportunity presented to them to practise their critical and comparative thinking in interpreting, assessing and reproducing one of the other’s work. the importance of this case lies in the fact that, by allowing risk taking and flexibility in the design process, the “element of surprise” resulted in different, quality wise improved products compared to what the original plans were set to produce. 5.2 case study 2 pre-surprise stage: case study 2 was realised in the context of the south african socio-cultural and educational policies of awareness, anti-discrimination and inclusion. this time, art education students had http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.22 3442020 38(2): 344-346 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.22 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) different opinions about artistic aesthetics, while relative stereotypes and prejudices were tested and productively challenged. thus, to challenge the notion of “aesthetic appreciation”, students were required to create artworks that could be experienced through different human senses. their artworks would then be exhibited2 to raise awareness about the blind and visually impaired. during the design process, students worked towards producing artworks mainly based on the tactile sense3. in other words, regarding the conventional concept of blindness, whereby artworks can be experienced and appreciated only and simply through touching. the function of any other sense is thus excluded. in the resulting artistic creations, my most interesting observation was the general lack of empathy. conscious of the fourth industrial revolution needs for soft skills and of “empathy” and higher order thinking4 (saavedra & opfer, 2012: 1012) i continued to execute my plan with increased confidence and faith. element of surprise: this time, the students were surprised with a challenge just before the “execution stage” of the design process. they had to revisit their brief and redesign their final artworks, but from another conceptual viewpoint. to experience the emotional thinking of “empathy”, in other words, the core of their task, a prearranged visit to a school for the blind and visually impaired was organised. the students visited the visually impaired and blind learners and attended an introductory lecture on different eyesight problems. shortly after, they were taken by the “element of surprise” when in pairs, one blindfolded and the other assisting, they had to find their way through the school passages, relying heavily on their partner’s guidance and their own acoustic and tactile senses. each couple had to switch roles afterwards. this personal involvement seemed to overcome barriers between “we” and the “others”. the students experienced empathy with the daily challenges of people with visual impairments. most importantly they were forced to depend on other senses and were driven out of their “comfort zone”. after their eye-opening encounter, the students’ initial ideas, artworks and designs changed to an improved artistic expression of deeper understanding and real empathy. 5.3 case study 3 pre-surprise stage: in case study 3, which was done in collaboration with my colleague, ms delene human, art education students received teaching morals, ethics and censorship in visual arts. in conjunction with the university’s launch and host of anti-discrimination week, they required students to form groups and create artworks or posters dealing with controversial issues, including race, gender, religion, culture, abuse and other. element of surprise: during this very week, the relevant art works were exhibited, challenging the public to interpret the students’ controversial messages. the students were unaware that the public was also allowed to react freely and spontaneously to these messages through direct interaction and 2 the exhibition took place on 24 october 2018, available at: https://www.up.ac.za/faculty-of-education/news/ post_2734033-i-shut-my-eyes-in-order-to-see-annual-art-exhibition 3 for an analysis of the relationship between vision and touch, see lauwrens (2019: 333-338) 4 https://medium.com/@workato/what-skills-will-thrive-in-the-fourth-industrial-revolution-61149634d356 https://www.psychalive.org/honesty-empathy-higher-order-and-thinking-moral-development/ http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.22 https://www.up.ac.za/faculty-of-education/news/post_2734033-i-shut-my-eyes-in-order-to-see-annual-art-exhibition https://www.up.ac.za/faculty-of-education/news/post_2734033-i-shut-my-eyes-in-order-to-see-annual-art-exhibition https://medium.com/@workato/what-skills-will-thrive-in-the-fourth-industrial-revolution-61149634d356 https://www.psychalive.org/honesty-empathy-higher-order-and-thinking-moral-development/ 3452020 38(2): 345-346 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.22 steyn the element of surprise: an innovative approach in art education engagement with the artworks. obviously, the notion to intentionally permit the public to interact and even vandalise the artworks contained the “element of surprise”. for me it also meant “taking a risk” as i did not know what the result would be. i questioned whether the use of risk-taking activities was always justifiable as a means to enhance student learning and dealing with life realities? the answer was given at the conclusion of the whole experience. the initial, very unpleasant but understandable emotional reaction of the students was soon followed by their complete understanding of the task and the utmost importance of its motive and aim. they were especially content that their works would not be wasted, since they are to be preserved for future relevant empirical insights and future teaching and learning courses. 6. conclusion in the framework of creative thinking and problem solving in visual arts and design courses, this article has challenged the traditionally established and never-questioned value system in arts. at the same time, it has demonstrated ways whereby humanity and technology in teaching and learning design, arts and crafts can interact in a well-structured and wellbalanced way. indirectly, it has illustrated a better formation and articulation of creative ideas, which through relevant analysis and accurate assessment, in terms of time and space, can lead to proper decision-making through skilful and, most importantly, quick, adaptation and fast performance. personal reflections have been included for the sake of direct empirical information from a teacher’s point of view, regarding the value and application of an innovative teaching strategy. my findings have mainly been drawn from the three concluding exhibitions, whereby impressions, emotions and sentiments were artistically and most eloquently illustrated through various sensations beyond the sole imagery means of communication. the “element of surprise” was a vital factor in inspiring the art education students through excitement. the eagerness and anticipation should equip them with flexibility and the ability to cope with unpredictable real-life situations as well as sharpen their soft skills in the context of the fourth industrial revolution. as an alternative teaching and learning tactic, the “element of surprise” has inspired and strengthened the art education students’ understanding of risk taking, which has often been disregarded in the design process. i believe that this study is relevant and contributes to the development of innovative creative thinking, problem solving as well as a well-balanced integration of human values with technological innovations amidst concerned and fast developing communities. references brown, t. 2009. change by design: how design thinking transforms organizations and inspires innovation. new york: harper collins. cassim, f. 2013. hands on, hearts on, minds on: design thinking within an education context. the international journal of art and design education, 32(2):190–202. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1476-8070.2013.01752.x. cuddon, j.a. 1986. dictionary of literary terms. london: penguin books. department of basic education, 2011. national curriculum statement (ncs) curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) fet design. pretoria: department of basic education. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.22 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1476-8070.2013.01752.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1476-8070.2013.01752.x 3462020 38(2): 346-346 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https://doi.org/10.1080/14702029.2019.1680510 http://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10413/12683/ohemeng-appiah_frank_2014.pdf?sequence=1 http://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10413/12683/ohemeng-appiah_frank_2014.pdf?sequence=1 https://doi.org/10.1386/jaac.9.2.69_1 https://doi.org/10.1023/b:itde.0000007362.21793.88 https://doi.org/10.1023/b:itde.0000007362.21793.88 https://doi.org/10.1177/003172171209400203 https://kenglazer.com/oedipus-rex-resources/ https://doi.org/10.21061/jte.v11i2.a.4 the element of surprise 82 research article 2021 39(2): 82-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 the need of the hour: adapting the delivery of clinical skills teaching remotely abstract as the world health organization (who) announced the prevailing covid-19 pandemic, the south african government enforced a nationwide lockdown in march 2020. the resulting closure of medical schools necessitated the provision of clinical skills teaching on remote platforms. this presented numerous challenges especially for skills that require face-to-face interaction and hands-on instruction. the nelson r mandela school of medicine, university of kwazulu-natal modified george’s (2001) five stage process and devised a framework for online small group skills teaching with the help of videos. the adapted method retained as close as possible the significant concepts and frameworks of conventional face-to-face programmes allowing for continuation of teaching under the current constraints. keywords: clinical skills; medical education; remote teaching; online/electronic learning 1. introduction acquisition of clinical skills is important during medical school (abraham & singaram, 2019). early simulation and deliberate practise of clinical skills in a simulated setting such as the clinical skills laboratory enhances competencybased skills development and transference of skills to the clinical setting (krackov & pohl, 2011). as the coronavirus (covid-19) pandemic spreads, its societal effects are becoming increasingly widespread and the conventional methods of medical education are now under pressure. to reduce the spread of covid-19, the south african government announced a national lockdown in march 2020 (rsa, 2020). several medical schools postponed all clinical placements in the expectation that viral transmission would be mitigated. given the profound implications of postponing student learning due to the inability to carry out teaching and clinical placements, particularly in the context of clinical skills involving close interaction between the examiner and the patient, there is a need to consider alternative teaching methods that can be provided during this period. in recent years, some medical schools have moved from author: dr reina abraham1 affiliation: 1university of kwazulu-natal doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i2.7 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(2): 82-94 published: 11 june 2021 received: 15 june 2020 accepted: 03 august 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1732-6616 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 abraham adapting the delivery of clinical skills teaching remotely 832021 39(2): 83-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 traditional in-person teaching to other approaches, including online, distance or interactive e-learning (moran et al., 2018). though not ideal, delivery of online education can prove to be an appropriate solution for the current postponements (mian & khan, 2020). authors have identified the use of multimedia video-based material as an effective method of teaching cognitive and psychomotor skills to medical students (waseh & dicker, 2019; muñoz, 2010; salyers, 2007; schwan & riempp, 2004; lewis 2003). these literature reports also suggest that students’ performance in assessments after multimedia instruction is often better and identified as positive adjuncts for medical students learning. with students sent home and all forms of face-to-face clinical skills interactions not feasible, the university of kwazulu-natal (ukzn) put in place a contingency plan to transition to remote clinical skills teaching using online platforms. this has required retaining the key principles and structure of clinical skills teaching to as close as possible despite the obvious challenges. the objectives of this study were to adapt and develop a plan for clinical skills training remotely, identify an online platform, pilot an online skills session using the identified platform and evaluate the effectiveness of the process. the aim was to identify advantages and difficulties with this new approach as a necessary replacement for traditional face-to-face small group clinical demonstrations during the covid-19 pandemic. 2. methods this study was carried out at the nelson r mandela school of medicine (nrmsm), ukzn clinical skills laboratory. undergraduate pre-clinical medical students at nrmsm, ukzn are taught clinical skills in the first three years in the clinical skills laboratory, prior to their clinical placement in the last three years of training. clinical skills are taught in an integrated fashion within the theme-based hybrid problem-based learning curriculum. the clinical skills course within each theme covers the history-taking, physical examination and procedural skills related to a specific body system that extends over a period of six weeks. the skills teaching sessions are delivered by a group of clinical tutors in large and small group sessions on a weekly basis. the tutors are medical doctors from a wide range of specialist backgrounds and have had at least five years of clinical skills teaching experience. the clinical skill teaching sessions are conducted following the five teaching stages described by george (2001). his suggested steps/stages are: stage 1: the tutor provides an overview of the need for the skill and how it is applied in patient care. the students are also introduced to the clinical manifestations and the pathophysiological bases of common clinical signs as well as the measurement of vital signs. stage 2: the tutor demonstrates the skill with little or no explanation, while the student observes the execution of the skill/procedure. stage 3: the tutor then repeats the skill while discussing/providing students with a detailed, step-by-step explanation of the skill/procedure and encourages the students to ask questions. stage 4: the tutor demonstrates the skill a third time and requires the student to provide an explanation of each step whilst the tutor coaches and provides necessary correction to the student. this step is repeated several times until the tutors are satisfied that the student fully understands the skill. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 842021 39(2): 84-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 stage 5: the student is allowed to demonstrate the skill while other students provide commentary and instructions while learning from each other. once the students have mastered the necessary clinical skills, they are left to work independently. for many years, this method has been implemented and still remains powerful and popular among students and tutors (munster et al., 2016). as the transition from face-to-face to remote teaching became a necessity and to ensure continuity of student’s education, the clinical skills lead lecturer and tutors got together remotely using online platforms, whatsapp chat groups and emails to initially outline the skills to be covered and the principle teaching approaches. tutors further collaborated over multiple meetings towards working out a practical framework within which these could be implemented remotely. they agreed on using a pre-existing bank of bookmarked examination skills videos from recommended clinical methods textbooks (douglas et al., 2013). these videos had been used previously by the tutors to augment and reinforce their teaching, hence, making the process of searching and selecting videos easier. 3. steps to adapting and developing a plan for clinical skills training remotely 3.1 core principles and structure that we aimed to retain the covid-19 lockdown and the need to transition to remote online teaching required retaining the key principles and structure of the clinical skills teaching to as close as possible. to do this, the clinical skills tutors first identified the important aspects to retain. these included the following: 1. george’s (2001) five teaching stages: the nrmsm’s teaching material and sessions have been based on this framework for years and have been found to be effective for students and tutors. 2. small group sessions: for practical teaching the nrmsm has always agreed that the teaching and learning experience in smaller groups is more effective as it enhances more personalised engagement compared to larger cohorts of hundreds of students. the small group work is indicative of the movement from a teacher-centred approach to education to a more student-centred approach where students can take responsibility for their own learning (walton, 1997; dent et al., 2017). in addition, deliberate practice with clear specific tasks and ongoing feedback from tutors has been found to have a positive effect on students’ acquisition of skills and improved clinical performance (abraham & singaram, 2019). 3. clinical tutors: using the existing clinicians was important as they are experienced with delivering clinical skills teaching and are aware of the expectations of the students. the core session structure that we aimed to maintain included: at the beginning of a new theme, the lead lecturer coordinating the clinical skills academic programme in the school often briefed the clinical tutors about the structure of the teaching sessions through a teaching schedule. during departmental meetings the lead lecturer shares the teaching content (powerpoint presentations, skills protocols, and links to videos) with the tutors. s/he then discusses the technical aspects of the skills to ensure structure and consistency in teaching between tutors while allowing opportunities for tutors to ask questions and clarify examination techniques etc. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 abraham adapting the delivery of clinical skills teaching remotely 852021 39(2): 85-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 one clinical tutor would be assigned a skills topic based on the teaching schedule to deliver the teaching content to the whole class as a lecture during a large group resource session (lgrs). typically, classes comprise around 250 medical students. during this session students are provided with an overview of the skill for the week using a powerpoint presentation. this covers the first teaching stage mentioned by george (2001) as outlined above. the class is then divided into four smaller practical skills group of over 60 students for the skills demonstration in the clinical skills laboratory. the teaching often began with an audio-visual session where a video of the skill to be taught is shown to reinforce the teaching and learning. each skills group was further divided into four subgroups. this was followed by skills demonstration by tutors to the assigned subgroup. usually four tutors are allocated for a three-hour practical session with approximately 15 students per group. the tutors keep to the session plan and adhere to the skills protocol to implement george’s (2001) other four teaching stages. the tutors ensure that the students are engaging during the skills demonstration and answer questions to support their learning. afterwards students practise their clinical skills by examining each other, simulated patients or mannequins and seek feedback from tutors and the lead lecturer. the use of the large group lectures and small group demonstration sessions may be complementary to the learning process. a mixed approach to the learning situation is often appropriate and may be positively encouraged (baeten et al., 2010). 3.2 how these key aspects were preserved in the remote online setup we used a flipped or blended learning approach. the approach included a combination of asynchronous and synchronous learning strategies (bourne, 1998; wu et al., 2008). as part of the asynchronous learning, students were given learning outcomes and activities that they conduct on their own. this included self-directed learning through engaging with learning material posted on the university’s online learning platform (moodle). this replaced the large group didactic traditional lectures. the asynchronous learning method was then followed and supplemented by synchronous learning that involved face-to-face interaction with tutors for the small group skills teaching using an online videoconferencing platform. to deliver teaching remotely ukzn opted to use zoom (zoom video communications inc., san jose, ca, usa) as the institutional online videoconferencing platform for teaching. zoom is a portal that allowed hosts and participants to conduct real-time online meetings and webinars. it allowed participants to see and hear each other using webcams and microphones on computers and smart phones. the screen sharing function enabled documents and web browsers to be shared. most importantly it allowed meetings with a whole class to be set up for a general introduction to the topic after which participants can be broken up into groups to special breakout rooms for small group sessions. alternatively, small group meetings can be set up directly. it also allowed for discreet observation of group meetings by the lead lecturer to view sessions without intervening. considering the functionality of the university’s online learning platform (moodle) and of the zoom videoconferencing software, it provided an opportunity for us to preserve all our key teaching components i.e. clinical tutors to deliver sessions to large and small groups of students through george’s (2001) five stage approaches. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 862021 39(2): 86-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 3.3 modifying george’s (2001) five stage approach to a remotely deliverable format in the absence of “real” face-to-face practical clinical skills teaching, the biggest challenge was adapting george’s (2001) five stage approaches onto an online format to replicate our usual teaching format. tutors initially considered demonstrating and broadcasting the skills online from the skills laboratory using the simulated patients or mannequins for students to view as a live broadcast at home. however, this idea had to be abandoned due to the potential risk of covid-19 transmission through physical contact. this was also against the government’s social distancing guidelines and travel restrictions during the lockdown period (rsa, 2020). in view of these limitations a decision was made to modify george’s (2001) five stage skills teaching approach to a format that could be delivered purely on an online platform using voiceover recordings of powerpoint presentations and recommended clinical examination videos available through off-campus ukzn library resources as well as on youtube. the tutors also produced audio and video recordings through zoom meetings where they role played a clinical scenario from home to reinforce the history-taking skills using the calgarycambridge framework for a clinical consultation (kurtz et al., 2003). 4. the adapted “five stage approach” that we drew up for online teaching for the pilot session cardiovascular examination skills was taught online to second-year undergraduate medical students. for each of george’s (2001) five stage approaches i discuss the traditional method of clinical skills teaching prior to covid-19 and how it was replaced by the adapted asynchronous and synchronous online method of delivering the teaching. 4.1.1. stage 1 traditional method – the tutor introduces students to the clinical manifestations and the pathophysiological bases of common clinical symptoms, signs and measurement of vital signs of the skill through large group face-to-face lecture sessions. online method: introduction – the tutor developed a voiceover recording of a powerpoint presentation of the cardiovascular examination skill working from home. the presentation included description of the a) systematic approach and techniques; b) physical signs demonstrated; c) common mistakes by medical students and d) clinical relevance. this presentation was converted to a video by the multimedia department and was uploaded on the online learning platform (moodle) for students to listen to and engage with in preparation for the next stages i.e. online demonstration and discussion of the cardiovascular examination skill. 4.1.2. stage 2 traditional method – the tutor demonstrates the skill with little or no explanation while the students observe. online method: demonstration – recorded and online videos were used to replace the demonstrations. links to the full cardiovascular examination videos were uploaded and made available for the students to view on moodle during their self-directed learning time. there is no commentary or discussions happening during this time. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 abraham adapting the delivery of clinical skills teaching remotely 872021 39(2): 87-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 4.1.3. stage 3 traditional method – the tutor repeats demonstrating the skill while discussing the skill. students are encouraged to ask questions. online method: discussion – after students previewed the online material on moodle, they were split into small groups of approximately 15 students for a single 60-minute tutorial with a clinical tutor on the zoom cloud-based video conference platform. the tutor shared zoom invites on moodle with the particular group of students they were allocated to before the online teaching session. during the zoom interactive session, the tutor explained and described the cardiovascular examination skill using a powerpoint presentation. the tutor determined the precise time within a cardiovascular examination video to play and embedded these video clips onto a summarised powerpoint. to facilitate the discussion the skill was divided into sections e.g. general examination, examination of the pulses and pressures and examination of the precordium. the tutor then discussed each section of the cardiovascular examination highlighting important systematic approaches, techniques, pitfalls and clinical knowledge. the discussion was augmented and illustrated by the short clips of the selected videos demonstrating the section being discussed. using the private message/chat function, students were able to send live questions as some wanted to maintain anonymity. hence, a combination of multiple video clips and discussions replaced this stage of the traditional tutor demonstration and discussion of a skill. 4.1.4. stage 4 traditional method – the tutor demonstrates the skill and allows each student to provide instructions and explanations of each step until the student fully understands the skill. online method: comprehension – the tutor invited each student in the group to narrate from memory each step of the skill without referring to the skills protocol. the tutor selected one student for each step-in order to cover the entire group by the end of the zoom session. hence, the group narration replaced this stage of student’s understanding/comprehension. 4.1.5. stage 5 traditional method – the student demonstrates the skill while other students provide commentary and instructions while learning from each other. online method: execution – with the limited time provided for zoom sessions (approx. 60 minutes) and the fact that students are unable to afford data charges, tutors opted at this stage to shift from the zoom platform to the university’s zero-rated learning platform, moodle. students were requested to post their questions and any doubts they might have about the cardiovascular examination skill on the discussion forum on moodle. moodle discussion forums were developed by the lead lecturer for each topic. a tutor was available to answer the questions and interact with the students. the advantage of a discussion forum was that students could post their questions at their own time and they benefited from questions posted by other students. academically strong students also answered other student’s questions providing opportunities for students to learn from each other. peer learning is accepted as being a powerful learning tool (tai et al., 2014). the tutor added to or reinforced the answers provided by other students. this provided clinical context to the skill to finish the student’s learning by helping them to consolidate, clarify and reinforce the skills learnt. this online step can be referred to as “consolidation”. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 882021 39(2): 88-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 the tutors discussed the possibility of students practising their cardiovascular examination skills at home and capturing videos of their practise to share with tutors. however, they decided against this as the government urges social distancing among other family members and especially with those considered “at risk” (rsa, 2020). an agreement was therefore made not to encourage or promote any such interaction. the modified online remote five stage teaching approaches can be summarised as follows: 1. introduction (introduces the overview of the skill using powerpoint presentations converted to voiceover recording as pre-reading material on moodle) 2. demonstration (demonstrates the skill using recommended examination skills video shared on moodle with no commentary as a pre-viewing material) 3. discussion (discussion and illustration of the skill by tutor using multiple short video clips embedded in a presentation during the zoom interactive session) 4. comprehension (narration of the skill by students assisted by other students during the zoom interactive session) 5. consolidation (question and answer with clinical contextualisation on the moodle discussion forum) for comparison, the traditional “five stage approach” is as follows: 1. stage 1 – (introduces the overview of the skill by teacher as a lecture) 2. stage 2 – (demonstration of skill by tutor on a simulated patient without commentary) 3. stage 3 – (demonstration of skill by tutor on a simulated patient, whilst providing explanation and discussing with students) 4. stage 4 – (demonstration of skill by tutor on a simulated patient, whilst instructions and explanations are provided by students) 5. stage 5 – (demonstration of skill by student on a simulated patient, with commentary and instructions from other students) 5. results a dry run online teaching week gave us the opportunity to pilot this remote “adapted five stage teaching approach” to deliver clinical skills teaching to the second year undergraduate mbchb class. out of a total of 248 medical students enrolled for the second-year cardiovascular system theme, an average of 160 students participated in the online learning. online google survey forms were generated by the school for assessing the dry-run sessions for feedback. the purpose was to identify gaps, both positives and negatives in terms of lessons learnt and then try to bridge the gaps for the formal online teaching. 5.1 survey data a total of 91 (57%) out of the 160 medical students that participated in the online learning completed the survey. the majority (62%) of students that responded were female. openended response questions were also included in the survey and the student responses are illustrated with quotations below. of all the respondents, 85.6% indicated that they were able to access and engage with the voiceover presentations on moodle before the online zoom clinical skills demonstration http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 abraham adapting the delivery of clinical skills teaching remotely 892021 39(2): 89-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 session. almost 90% (88.9%) of the students found the voiceover presentations helpful with developing their self-preparation before the online skills session. network connectivity issues and added responsibilities at home were often reasons for those that did not access the prereading material before the online zoom skills sessions. when asked what they felt about the learning material uploaded on moodle, 56.7% of respondents found the voiceover presentations as good as a clinical skills face-to-face lecture. most of them echoed that though face-to-face lectures are more interactive and informative, the transition to online learning provided opportunities to develop deeper learning strategies and to self-direct their learning: obviously there is a difference when a lecture is online. face-to-face interaction helps you focus better. but it’s up to us to learn, so it’s okay if the lecture is online. we will just study harder to compensate for the lack of face-to-face interaction, in response to which format they would prefer the learning material to be shared on moodle, 55.6% of respondents preferred the voiceover presentations converted to video, while 36.7% preferred powerpoint presentation with audio viewed as a slide show and 7.8% the traditional powerpoint without audio. the students confirmed the strength of the videos, in that they could be viewed multiple times, stopped for note taking and reviewed later again. these were all features felt not to be available with an in-class lecture. it was also felt that, generally, the videos offered a better line of sight than occurred in-class: the powerpoint with audio teaching found in the media gallery was an extremely effective way to learn. i was able to pause the video when i made notes and replay things i didn’t understand. it was a lot more detailed and easier to go through as the audio made things clear and was as good as face-to-face lessons. a student mentioned how the lack of face-to-face interactions with tutors motivated them to find other means of communication with their teachers on a more personal level: the video is just like the actual lecture, the only difference is that you can’t raise your hand to ask a question but in that case you can just email the lecturer to clear up any confusion you might have or can ask a private message during the zoom session. when asked which method of teaching (traditional vs. online) did they prefer, 85.6% of students preferred a combination of pre/viewing the audio/video presentations and the online zoom skills demonstration sessions. they indicated how their need to attend an online zoom skills session motivated their engagement with the learning material. knowing that in-class demonstrations were not going to occur as in the traditional method disciplined the students to make better use of the video tools as a preview, even if it took time and organisation to preview the videos. when students were asked what they thought of the zoom teaching session, the majority of respondents (71.4%) thought it was well organised and met the objectives of the skill demonstrated. most (75.8%) found the demonstration part of the session interactive while 78% of students thought the use of multiple short audio/video clips augmented the discussion around the cardiovascular examination skill and assisted them to consolidate their understanding of the systematic approach and techniques of performing the skill in the absence of direct face-to-face instruction. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 902021 39(2): 90-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 most students (83.3%) seem to understand that while replacing actual clinical presentations with videos are not perfect, they are the best possible option for reducing the health and safety risks in the current situation. they mentioned that the online teaching method was a welcome alternative they appreciated in the current scenario but could never replace the face-to-face skills demonstration sessions in the skills laboratory: it is difficult to learn a skill without being able to practise [practise] and have tutors correct you. having the opportunity to practise [practise] on simulated patients with individual attention from a skills tutor better aids skills development as opposed to the online teaching method. a lot of skills need physical contact and observation of non-verbal cues so online classes cannot replace that aspect of skills that needs human contact. however, for learning theory, it's sufficient. in these times, it is not possible and the online methods used by the skills department is effective and i am grateful for the effort put into online teaching, as it is nearly as good as a face-to-face practical. the students were asked to identify any difficulties and benefits they experienced in using the online learning tool. many of the respondents (70.3%) highlighted challenges with transitioning to a purely online teaching approach with majority of issues centred around technical difficulties such as access to data, devices, electricity, and situations of living circumstances that allow for e-learning: i for one need to practice the skill when being taught. that is impossible online. also, as much as my online session was good, our mates faced difficulties. most of the students, including myself are not ready for online learning due to various issues at home. there are internet connection problems that cause a barrier in learning. the environment at home is not as accommodating for learning as that on campus... students also mentioned noticing their tutors experiencing “use of technology” issues: my lecturer had difficulty using the platform [zoom] and did not get much into teaching due to the difficulty. a few students mentioned identifying benefits for considering transitioning to the blended learning approach in the future: ideally, i would prefer to have online lectures like this and then attend skills practical sessions to demonstrate and learn the physical techniques. well for communication skills and possibly for analysis skills (analysis of an ecg, x-ray, etc.), this method can be extremely beneficial due to the fact that it is easier to fully pay attention to the demonstrator and take down notes, as well as edit additional information into our personal notes and use a textbook as reference when needed. for skills that require a hands-on approach and require us to get a feel of the tools needed, the traditional method dominates. while students’ feedback has been mostly encouraging so far, some have shared a reasonable frustration about the lack of “face-to-face” opportunities to learn clinical skills. the dry run online teaching week worked out successfully with positive feedback from tutors and students. however, there were a few technological challenges by some tutors such as creating zoom invites and navigating the functionalities of the zoom platform efficiently. while the university has been offering numerous online workshops to enable staff to explore and familiarise themselves with the different technology platforms, tutors mentioned learning from their mistakes during the online teaching process. one tutor’s comment resonated a lot with challenges when implementing any new programme. he said: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 abraham adapting the delivery of clinical skills teaching remotely 912021 39(2): 91-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 the more mistakes we make now the better. after all that is the purpose of the dry run. we will make less later on. 6. discussion this study was a pilot investigation into the feasibility, utility and perceived effectiveness of an adapted clinical examination skills online teaching strategy within a second year mbchb cardiovascular theme. the five-stage approach to teaching clinical skills as mentioned before has been found to be popular and evidently superior towards students’ development of clinical, professional and communication skills (george, 2001; krautter et al., 2011). as it has proved to be easy to use by the tutors and acceptable to the students, we decided to retain these key approaches during the pandemic as we adapted and moved towards remote teaching. our five-pronged approach was designed to retain students’ knowledge acquisition and competency attainment in clinical skills. voiceover powerpoint presentations and clinical examination videos uploaded on moodle and the multiple short video clips embedded in the zoom presentations were used as the sole method of instruction. the students overwhelmingly preferred a combination of the two. the students who reported benefits from the powerpoint presentations and videos, as a preview component combined with practise zoom sessions, clearly elucidated the positive aspects of a more “active” and engaged learner. introducing an element of self-directed learning to precede the zoom session provided an opportunity for reinforcement of self-directed learning followed by the online clinical demonstration during the zoom interactive session (wu et al., 2008; waseh & diker, 2019). this teaching method has provided an opportunity to shift from the traditional lecturing and passive students to a more collaborative and interactive approach in which students and teachers contribute to the learning process. whilst some students adopted these active behaviours spontaneously, others reported they needed to be forced into this pattern of learning. though working with better prepared students who know the theory is always more rewarding for teachers; however, it does not mean that s/he will be able to practically execute the skill which can be a limitation of this study. this was a concern echoed by nearly all students. to learn a cardiovascular examination skill which includes hands-on instruction, students first need available simulated patients to practise on. furthermore, much of the difficulty in this skill is in understanding the correct approach and the techniques of palpation, percussion and auscultation when examining the precordium. student-patient engagement that includes face-to-face demonstration and tutor correction of techniques is still a more effective means of teaching clinical skills. though tele-teaching does not substitute actual patient contact, considering the probable duration of a pandemic and to avoid a substantial loss of student learning time, along with depreciation in student confidence it is still the best option in the current situation. studies have found that interacting with telemedicine technologies during undergraduate medical training can contribute to improved medical knowledge, core competencies and overall learning (waseh & diker, 2019). while students’ feedback has been mostly encouraging so far, some have shared their frustration with the move to a strictly online teaching approach. most of the issues have focused on technical difficulties such as internet data access, lack of computers and living conditions for e-learning. technical access issues need to be addressed before any changes to alternate online teaching methods are instituted as this can have a detrimental effect on maintaining all the core concepts of george’s (2001) five-stage approach effectively. in response to the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 922021 39(2): 92-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 foregone suspension of face-to-face teaching and learning and the need to take a decision to switch to remote online teaching and learning, the university of kwazulu-natal rolled out laptops to students in need and arranged for 20gb data per student monthly through south africa’s three largest mobile network providers (mtn, vodacom and cell c). the university also made the learning management platform (moodle) zero-rated and provided online training to get students familiar with using the various online platforms. as we are still in an early stage of rolling out such a programme, we will need to continue to evaluate this system with more feedback. an important revelation that resulted from the introduction of zoom sessions was the ability for students to post questions privately in the chat facility to the clinical tutor. also, students found it more comfortable to privately email their tutors or post a question on the discussion forum anonymously. it allowed the tutors to read out and address the questions for the entire group’s benefit without the student having to reveal his or her identity. this is a unique advantage especially in african schools where students are often uncomfortable asking questions in public during lectures and group tutorials fearing embarrassment (adendorff et al., 2017). furthermore, another significant advantage of our adaptation was that recordings of the zoom sessions were made available to students to re-watch later at their own pace. it also allowed accommodating for students that had network connectivity issues to catch-up whenever they were able to connect. there are advantages to online teaching methods, although not enough to adequately replace the traditional method (mian & khan, 2020). a major advantage is to force both students and staff to use information technology skills which will be of advantage in both their future professional lives considering the digital age we are in now (phyllis & guze, 2015). many skills can still be taught almost as well as in the traditional method using e.g. audio (auscultation of the heart and lungs) and visual (skin lesions, x-rays, ecgs, examination of the eye, ear, mouth etc.) technology. these skills can be emphasised using these technologies so that less time can be spent during actual clinical teaching sessions with live patients (moran, 2018; waseh & diker, 2019). transitioning to online platforms allows student preparation for learning sessions to be monitored using e.g. grade books in moodle. in addition, students can be encouraged to express their opinion of tutors and tutorials through online surveys to allow for further improvement of teaching methods. electronic learning can therefore provide students with more educational possibilities while increasing professional efficiency and effectiveness at the same time. however, a certain degree of institutional readiness in both human and infrastructural resources are required to implement e-learning skill, which can be a constraint particularly in lowand middle-income countries (frehywot et al., 2013). 7. conclusion as universities worldwide have been forced to provide remote teaching in the absence of faceto-face interaction during the covid-19 pandemic, teaching clinical skills remotely offered significant challenges. by adapting george’s (2001) “five-stage approach” using powerpoint presentations converted to voiceover recordings and multimedia videos, clinical teachers can deliver clinical skills at a distance and maintain the core concepts and frameworks of conventional face-to-face programmes. the adapted george’s (2001) 5-stage clinical skills teaching approach includes: 1. introduction – the tutor introduces the overview of the skill using powerpoint presentations converted to voiceover recording as a pre-reading material on moodle; 2. demonstration – the tutor demonstrates skills with the use of a recommended http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 abraham adapting the delivery of clinical skills teaching remotely 932021 39(2): 93-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.7 examination skills video shared on moodle with no commentary as pre-viewing material; 3. discussion – discussion and illustration of skills by tutors with multiple short video clips embedded in a presentation during the zoom interactive session; 4. comprehension narration of skills by students assisted by other students during the zoom session and 5. consolidation – question and answer with clinical contextualisation on the moodle discussion forum. in summary, within the constraints of a remote set-up during the covid-19 outbreak, the adapted approach retains the significant aspects of the five-stage process and can be used by clinical educators to deliver clinical skills teaching remotely until face-to-face instruction can be resumed. not only will this strategy be applicable to the current crisis, but 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https://doi.org/10.1186/s12916-020-01577-y https://doi.org/10.1007/s40596-018-0946-y https://doi.org/10.1007/s40596-018-0946-y https://doi.org/10.3205/zma001059 https://www.gov.za/coronavirus/travel https://www.gov.za/coronavirus/travel http://orcid.org/10.2202/1548-923x.1373 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2004.06.005 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2004.06.005 http://orcid.org/10.1046/j.1365-2923.1997. 00703.x https://doi.org/10.2196/12515 191 research article 2021 39(2): 191-207 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) examining the manifestations and ramifications of the patriarchal ideology in female-led schools in the north west province of south africa abstract the study sought to explore the manifestations and effects of patriarchy in female-led secondary schools in south africa. the thesis advanced was that despite government initiatives towards gender parity in the employment social structure, the prevalence of patriarchal tendencies continues unabated. located in the pragmatic paradigm and adopting a convergent parallel mixed method as the specific strategy of inquiry, the study used a sample size of 20 respondents, purposefully and systematically sampled from secondary schools in the north west province. the data were collected through structured and unstructured questionnaires with the analysis following thematic and descriptive approaches. the major findings included that gender roles are so deeply ingrained in society that they have become part and parcel of the cultural traditions in which they engender patriarchy. the conclusion arrived at was that social structures such as schools, religious, political and economic organisations are the villains in advancing the patriarchal hegemonic ideology. the recommendations made included the need for the south african government to step up efforts to address gender disparities, whose ramifications continue to haunt women especially in leadership positions where men believe they are “naturally the ideal candidates”. keywords: patriarchy; equality; equity; development; hegemonic masculinity; gender ideology; disparities. 1. introduction globally society is trying to combat discrimination and inequality especially meted against women in order to move towards a free and equal society for all, yet most of the cultural embedded ideologies continue to deter such initiatives (makhuba, 2017). sekano and masango (2012) observe that many men in south africa are raised in homes where patriarchal practices are the order of the day and as a result, they learn to internalise the ideology at a tender author: makuena bereng1 edmore mutekwe1 affiliation: 1north-west university, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i2.14 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(2): 191-207 published: 11 june 2021 received: 14 may 2020 accepted: 08 july 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1402-2051 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7830-6171 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 1922021 39(2): 192-207 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) age. the ideology is further disseminated through social institutions such as schools and religious organisations where patriarchal tendencies gain their momentum and continue to undermine the rights of women particularly in such areas as decision-making and leadership positions (makhuba, 2017). makhuba (2017) further contends that some african women have gone to the extent of writing books portraying nasty experiences at the hands of their male counterparts. others have satirised their portrayal by men as weak and fragile species yet conveying their frustrations as women in an effort to raise societal awareness of their ill treatment and marginalisation at the hands of men. some of the studies on gender and educational differences in africa, for example, mutekwe and modiba (2012a; 2012b), agha, syed and mirani (2018) as well as bridger (2018) have focused on boys’ and girls’ academic achievements with the former being considered superior to the latter in terms of academic excellence. however, in this study such a view is considered an ill-conceived ideological violation of girls and women’s rights on account of the fact that the south african history of colonialism and apartheid is part of this marginalisation of girls and women in society (maodzwa-taruvinga & divala, 2014). the social structural arrangements of the south african society coupled with the effects of apartheid are largely to blame for the subjugation of girls and women to the patriarchal ideology, which has led men to believe that because they are the breadwinners and property heirs, they are thus the custodians of all power and authority (zaatut & haj-yahia, 2016). thobejane, mogorosi and okere (2017) are of the opinion that despite the global acceptance of the patriarchal ideology and practices, gender inequalities need to be vigorously dealt with. the patriarchal ideology and practices affect the social division of labour especially where leadership roles are involved because women must grapple with their male counterparts who assume a male gender supremacy. it is in this sense that this paper intends to explore and expose the manifestations and ramifications of the patriarchal ideology in many of the female-led secondary schools in the north west province of south africa. 2. background to the study owing to the influence of the patriarchal ideology in the south african society and despite many women possessing the cherished 21st century soft skills for leadership roles, there are some men who still consider them inferior (mutekwe & modiba, 2012b). no wonder some women continue to suffer the patriarchal hegemony exercised by their male counterparts over them (dlamini & adams, 2014:122). further to the above, setlhodi (2018), seedat et al. (2014:132) maintain that the current high prevalence of violence in south africa is associated with patriarchy, which promotes gender inequality in the society and because men are uncomfortable with the challenge of their hegemonic masculinity, they resort to physical violence towards women who dare challenge them. this observation lends credence to the contention by lerner (1986) that over the years, the african continent has witnessed various challenges across societies and although they have managed to overcome some, the patriarchal hegemony embedded their social institutions particularly in the family, religion, mass media, workplaces and polity remains. unpacking the patriarchal hegemony, lerner (1986:239) contends that the term describes a mind-set that regards men as not only superior but more capable than their female counterparts of leading in virtually all social institutions. it also covers the manifestations and institutionalisation of male dominance over women and children in all social structures and the extension of male dominance over women in society in general (makhuba, 2017). wood (2019:2) further notes that the patriarchal ideology conveys the mind-set or impression that men are more superior to women and therefore they should be accorded more respect and be allowed to take the reins of headship of women in virtually http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 1932021 39(2): 193-207 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 bereng & mutekwe examining the manifestations and ramifications of the patriarchal ideology all social structures. it is for this reason that the ideology is perceived to be oppressive and exploitative of women’s rights and responsibilities. it is also in this light that wood (2019) further contends that the patriarchal ideology is engendered by social structures, most notably the family, religious organisations and in institutions of learning as well as in the mass media. in some situations, in order to buttress hegemonic masculinity, christian misinterpretations of scriptures are also brought to the limelight. a good example of this is what wood (2013) notes in the interpretation of the scripture expressed in 1 timothy (2:11–15), which has been used to foster patriarchal tendencies on the misguided view that women were excluded from speaking in social gatherings and churches in the olden days. as a consequence of this view, makhuba (2017) observes that african women are always relegated to positions that make them feel like second-class citizens and this is often attributable to culture and tradition. in a study conducted in zimbabwe, mutekwe (2013) found that the patriarchal hegemony is predominant in schools and the contemporary society where it fosters inequality and social divisions. this certainly causes a serious concern for women themselves. in affirmation, zvarevashe and sandada (2016) maintain that the ideology of patriarchy has led to women being relegated to mothers and housewife positions that increase gender inequality especially in the african context. these practices have to a larger extent affected women entrepreneurial interests as most women are usually disrespected even as office bearers in different institutions. those who manage to make their ways into leadership positions are faced with stiff cultural challenges emanating from the patriarchal ideologies embedded therein (shekhawat & saxena, 2015). in a study by okafor and akokuwebe (2015), it was reported that women in nigeria are hugely marginalised as a result of the patriarchal perceptions held and that are manifested in the private and public spheres of their society; some of which evidence themselves in the management levels in institutions such as schools, colleges and universities. the issue of the patriarchal hegemonic ideology in africa thus continues to pose detrimental consequences to the rights of women in the economy and the social engagements with women from other countries and continents. patriarchal ideologies and practices are therefore conveyed in the social institutions as part and parcel of the hidden curriculum or tacit learning (mutekwe, 2013). however, it is worth acknowledging the view that the south african constitution considers one of the essential rights of her citizens to be equality, which institutions of higher learning and other sectors should observe because no human being is more superior to the other (dlamini & adams, 2014). many feminists are of the opinion that the rights, obligations, privileges and status of every human being should not be determined by their gender. o’brien et al. (2015), for example, maintain that women’s decision making prowess need to be improved if society is to do away with these typical patriarchal hegemonic tendencies and start giving them due respect especially in their social institutions. 3. aim(s) and objectives of the study the aim of this study was to explore the manifestations and ramifications of the patriarchal ideology in female-led secondary schools in the north west province of south africa. in pursuit of this aim, the following objectives guided the study: • to establish the manifestations of the patriarchal ideology in female-led secondary schools in south africa’s north west province. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 1942021 39(2): 194-207 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) • to identify the effects or consequences of the patriarchal ideology in the female-led secondary schools in north west province of south africa. • to determine the interventions for mitigating the influence of the patriarchal hegemonic ideologies in female-led secondary schools in south africa’s north west province. 4. research questions • in what ways does the patriarchal ideology manifest itself in the curriculum in female-led secondary schools in the north west province? • what are the effects or consequences of the patriarchal hegemonic ideologies in femaleled secondary schools in the north-west province of south africa? • how can the ramifications of the patriarchal ideology in female-led secondary schools in south africa’s north west province be mitigated? 5. significance of the study it is envisaged that the practical findings of this study would go a long way towards facilitating an in-depth understanding of the patriarchal hegemonic challenges faced by females in school leadership roles. theoretically, the study is expected to add to the literature on the manifestations of the patriarchal ideology in female-led secondary schools in south africa’s north west province and to identify the effects or consequences of the patriarchal ideology in the female-led secondary schools in north west province of south africa. in terms of contribution to policy, it is hoped that the findings of this study would help in the determination of intervention strategies for mitigating the influence of the patriarchal hegemonic ideologies in female-led secondary schools in south africa. 6. theoretical framework the study adopted the feminist theoretical framework as the lens for viewing the problem of hegemonic masculinity and the gendered ideologies that characterise south africa’s social structures. in its broadest form feminism is a movement for the political, social and economic emancipation of women from the patriarchal hegemony typical of many societies the world over (mutekwe, 2018). this movement essentially embodies an active commitment to equality and respect, specifically between men and women and is against oppression and discrimination of any human being on any grounds (basow, 1992). feminists are concerned with the existence of inequalities between men and women as well as ways of improving women’s positions in society for the better. for example, liberal feminists strive for free women’s oppressive gender roles; those roles that are used as explanations for giving women a less important place or not a place at all more especially in the academy, the forum and workplace (motta et al., 2011). therefore, liberal feminism suits this study perfectly because female principals in the study are exceptional in their determination to go against the traditional societal ideas and beliefs that manifest from the patriarchal hegemonic ideology by being female principals in a male dominated field. this approach contends that if women are given access and opportunities as men and to the same extent as men, they will be free to determine their own future, which is advocated for by this study. marxist socialist feminists believe that all women experience oppression simply by being women. therefore, one way of ending this oppression is to put an end to class and gender. that is, women should work together with men in the political arena and workplace. if anything is to be accomplished, women must partner with men, as http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 1952021 39(2): 195-207 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 bereng & mutekwe examining the manifestations and ramifications of the patriarchal ideology opposed to humiliating them (tong, 2013). a working relationship between men and women and seeing each other as equals in all aspects of life, is believed to undoubtedly improve gender relations, equity and equality (krolokke & sorensen, 2006). the study examined how the ramifications of the patriarchal ideology in female-led secondary schools in south africa’s north west province can be mitigated so that they can execute their duties without challenges and marxist feminist theory provide the basis for such interventions, which is instrumental to the contribution of this study. for example, in the field of education, socialists believe that government policies and laws that put women at a disadvantage should be removed and that new ones geared towards equality should be designed. the cultural feminist theory aims at liberating women from patriarchal ideologies hence it is considered “a moral and countercultural movement” (willis, 1984:91). it commends women’s morality, values and acknowledges the natural differences between males and females. it emphasises that these natural differences should be accepted instead of being undervalued as they are of vital and beneficial to the society. for example, female leadership styles such as democratic as acknowledged by female principals in this study and feminine attributes should be embraced and valued instead of not being acknowledged. 7. the research methodology the study adopted a pragmatic paradigm utilising a convergent parallel mixed method as the design genre, which implies combining the quantitative and qualitative methodologies (creswell, 2014). a mixed methodological research is a type of research approach that allows the researcher the chance of collecting data using qualitative and quantitative approaches and integrating the findings for an in-depth understanding of a research problem (creswell, 2014). to ary et al. (2018) the approach helps overcome the limitations of using a single approach (e.g., qualitative or quantitative) by bringing in the advantage of the other approach and this offers a spectacular flair to the overall results of the study culminating in a better understanding of the phenomenon under study. thomas and magilvy (2011) further posit that mixed methodology research is ideal for researchers who wish to obtain deeper information regarding a research problem, which might not be easily obtainable using a single approach. it is for this reason and the fact that the empirical data could easily be generated concurrently for a better understanding that the research approach was preferable ahead of either the qualitative or quantitative approach. creswell (2014) further observes that a convergent parallel mixed methods design allows the researcher to collect the quantitative and qualitative research data at the same time and also to expedite the merging of the quantitative and qualitative research phases for credible, reliable and valid data sets (fetters, curry & creswell, 2013).the study thus followed three phases as follows: phase 1, the quantitative, phase 2, which was the qualitative phase and phase 3, which involved merging the results of phase 1 and 2. 7.1 phase 1: quantitative research section for this study, the quantitative and qualitative research took place in a simultaneous or parallel format. this implies that the data generation took place at the same time with the researcher posing the questions for data generation from the same questionnaire accompanied by clear explanations. the above implies that the questionnaire had 2 sections, one section with closed-ended questions for the quantitative data and the other section with open-ended questions designed for the qualitative data. it had questions covering the section on structured (quantitative) and unstructured (qualitative) data sets. the quantitative research approach was used to answer all questions of the study, which are; (1) in what ways does the patriarchal http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 1962021 39(2): 196-207 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) ideology manifest itself in the curriculum in female-led secondary schools in the north west province? (2) what are the effects or consequences of the patriarchal hegemonic ideologies in female-led secondary schools in the north-west province of south africa (3) and how can the ramifications of the patriarchal ideology in female-led secondary schools in south africa’s north west province be mitigated? 7.2 phase 2: qualitative research section schneider and whitehead (2016) posit that a qualitative research approach enhances the understanding of a phenomenon through in-depth exploration and description. qualitative research approach generates word data rather than numerical data. the word data generated can be transcribed and coded in order to arrive at the participant’s authentic meaning regarding the study (creswell, 2014). data can be collected through first-hand interaction with the participants that enhanced a broad understanding of the study (kemparaj & chavan, 2013). furthermore, the use of a qualitative research approach fosters an in-depth exploration of participant social lives, perceptions, emotions and the general interpretation given to things by the participants in their social environment (mccusker & gunaydin, 2015). all three questions were asked in this phase to seek clarifications from quantitative results through the adoption of a qualitative open-ended unstructured questionnaire. hence, the convergent parallel mixed research design was deemed best for the study. 7.3 phase 3: merging the results of phase 1 and 2. in this phase, the researchers combined or merged the results of phase 1 (quantitative phase) and phase 2 (qualitative phase) into one comprehensive focus to discuss them concurrently or simultaneously in their quest to unmask the manifestations and ramifications of the patriarchal ideology in the female-led schools in the north west province. the study was conducted in twenty female-led secondary schools in ngaka modiri molema district, in the north west province of south africa (nwp, sa). ngaka modiri molema district is one of the four districts that make up the nwp, sa with a land area of 28 114km2. the district is situated centrally within the province and shares an international border with botswana with a population of about 889 108 as of 2016 (municipalities of south africa). this study was conducted in the schools led by females from the five local municipalities in ngaka modiri molema districts. these schools were purposely selected for the study because they are female led. 7.4 population and sampling the target population for this study were all secondary schools located within ngaka modiri molema district led by females. female principals were targeted because the study focused on the manifestations and ramifications of the patriarchal ideology in female-led secondary schools in the north west province of south africa. the population comprises the total number of persons in a specific place at a given time that the researcher is willing to study (de vos et al., 2007). it was from the population that a total sample of 20 participants comprising female principals of secondary schools was purposefully and systematically selected. all 20 female principals who participated in the structured questionnaire were systematically sampled by picking all 80 female led schools in multiples of 4 and as stated above for the unstructured section of the questionnaire the rationale of the purposeful sampling was to make sure all the participants were female school leaders. given that the questionnaire contained two sections, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 1972021 39(2): 197-207 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 bereng & mutekwe examining the manifestations and ramifications of the patriarchal ideology with the first section being structured followed by the unstructured section, the assumption was that the unstructured responses would seek clarifications on the respondents’ structured responses thereby ensuring researchers have an opportunity to ask for clarity (de vos et al., 2007). 7.5 ethical considerations according to o’leary (2010), ethics refer to the rules of behaviour that states what is acceptable in a profession. the ethical considerations that the researcher took into account for the purpose of this study included permission to gain access into the schools from the department of education (doe). a letter of permission from the institution to gain access to all selected schools for the purpose of data collection and a letter asking for permission from the female principals as the study’s participants. they also signed the consent forms, explained by josselson (2013) as crucial, because it ensures that participants have agreed willingly to participate in the study. they were also informed that they could withdraw from the study at any time should they feel uncomfortable and there would not be any penalties. 7.6 data collection method the researchers utilised a questionnaire containing two sections: the section for the structured quantitative data generation and the other for the qualitative unstructured questions. this was the instrument used for data generation based on babbie’s (2014) contention that a questionnaire contains a collection of questions designed by the researcher with the intent of generating data to answer their research questions. participants or respondents are usually directed to tick or mark any of the answers as contained in the questionnaire that represent their response to the research questions. the justification for using the questionnaire as the instrument for data generation was its advantage in generating a large amount of data within a short period of time (babbie, 2014). 7.7 data analysis quantitative data were analysed through descriptive statistics. yilmaz (2013) states that descriptive statistic allows a researcher to describe variables in number and discuss them in relation to the study. descriptive statistics was deemed best for the study as the researcher intended to keep the data as simple as possible by describing the findings. the qualitative data was analysed using thematic techniques. thematic data analysis most times refers to a comprehensive term used to denote different analytical procedures for generating “themes” during the analysis of qualitative data (braun et al., 2019:844). the thematic data analysis process enabled the generation of categories, sub-categories and themes in order to arrive at the participant’s authentic meaning. 8. presentation of findings of quantitative data descriptive statistics and frequencies on the research questions this section deals with the presentation of descriptive frequencies presentation of the quantitative data analysis for section a, b, c and d of the structured questionnaire. the descriptive statistics process began with section a and ended with section d. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 1982021 39(2): 198-207 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) section a: biographical and demographical information the biographical and demographic information of female principals are subsequently presented below: based on the total sample size of 20 respondents systematically drawn to be representative of a target population of 80 female principals in the area, it is important to note that their distribution was such that the majority of them were aged between 46 and 55 (35%) and 30% were aged 56 and above. twenty per cent of them were aged between 36 and 45, with 10% aged between 26 and 35 years while 5% were aged between 18 and 25. the bulk of the respondents have been working as principals from 7 to 9 years (50%), and 25% had between working for between 4–6 years. five per cent of respondents have been working for more than ten years and five per cent of respondents have been principals for less than a year. as for level of education, 50% obtained master’s degree, 30% an honours degree and 20% of the respondents had obtained a first degree. seventy-five per cent were married, 10% were divorced whereas 5% were single while another 5% were separated from their spouses and the other 5% widowed. clearly the aforementioned statistics have implications for the manifestations and ramifications of the patriarchal ideology or hegemonic masculinity as it raises its ugly head across many of the south african social institutions. section b: ways through which the patriarchal ideology manifests itself in the curriculum in female-led secondary schools table 1: factors that influence the patriarchal ideology variable frequency percentage section b: ways the patriarchal ideology manifest itself in the curriculum in female-led secondary schools 1. tradition and culture 2. family 3. community 4. schools 5. politics and economy 10 4 2 3 1 50 20 10 15 5 total 20 100 section c: consequences of patriarchal ideology in some female-led secondary schools 1. gender discrimination 2. sexism 3. lack of respect from female colleagues 4. male teacher’s resistance towards authority 5. lack of respect and cooperation from parents 6. gender stereotype 12 1 2 2 2 1 60 5 10 10 10 5 total 20 100 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 1992021 39(2): 199-207 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 bereng & mutekwe examining the manifestations and ramifications of the patriarchal ideology variable frequency percentage section d: strategies for dealing with patriarchy in female-led schools 1. creating the environment that recognises the potential roles and responsibilities of women and men. 2. create a culture in which both sexes are free to express their feelings and adopt an attitude of gentleness and sensitivity to the feelings of others. 3. by involving men and women in the efforts of addressing patriarchy. 4. by providing training and sensitisation on gender equality and equity education for school stakeholders. 5. by neutralising the strength that patriarchy holds in the communities by giving gender equality the place it deserves in the curricula. 6. by revisiting gender equality and equity policies on equal employment and making adjustments where necessary. 3 3 4 5 3 2 15 15 20 25 15 10 total 20 100 table 1, section b above shows ways the patriarchal ideology manifests itself in the curriculum in female-led secondary schools. half (50%) of the respondents chose tradition and culture, 20% chose family whereas 15% followed the school. the community, politics and economy follow with 10% and 5% respectfully. section c: consequences of patriarchal ideology table 1, section c shows the consequences of patriarchal ideology in some female-led schools. in this aspect, most of the respondents chose gender discrimination (60%), followed by lack of respect from parents with 10%. ten per cent of the respondents chose resistance by male teachers towards female principals whereas gender stereotype represents 5% of the respondents. ten per cent of respondents chose lack of respect by female teachers and five per cent chose sexism. section d: strategies to ensure female leadership is without hindrances table 1, section d depicts different ways that can be used to mitigate patriarchy to ensure female leadership is without hindrances. twenty five per cent of the respondents confirm that training and sensitisation on gender equality and equity education for school stakeholders is vital in addressing patriarchy whereas 20% of respondents believe that efforts to dismantling patriarchy should include men and women collaboratively. fifteen per cent of respondents reckon it is best to create an enabling environment that recognises the potential roles and responsibilities of women and men in the development of the country. fifteen per cent of respondents believe the best strategy is to create a culture in which both sexes are free to express their feelings while another fifteen per cent of respondents believe in neutralising the strength that patriarchy holds in the communities by giving gender equality the place it deserves in the curricula. ten per cent of the respondents believe gender equality and equity http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 2002021 39(2): 200-207 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) policies on equal employment and access to resources should be revisited and necessary adjustments should be made. 9. presentation of findings from the qualitative data section this presentation includes information of data obtained from the unstructured questionnaire. it consisted of 20 female principals managing secondary schools in the north west province, south africa. 9.1 coding of data into themes and categories as defined by maree (2010), coding is a process whereby a researcher reads through raw data very carefully and tries to analyse them into meaningful units. the table (2) below shows the themes and categories: table 2. coding of themes and categories themes categories ways the patriarchal ideology manifests itself in the curriculum in female-led secondary schools • tradition and culture • family • schools • community • ascribed gender roles consequences for patriarchal ideology in some female-led schools. • gender discrimination • male teacher’s resistance towards authority • lack of respect and cooperation from parents • female teachers’ reluctance to seek promotion • lack of confidence • exhaustion ways to deal with patriarchy to ensure smooth female principalship • ensuring consistency in implementing policies • update policies on gender and equal employment opportunities • mentorship • delegation on leadership roles • parental engagement 10. discussion of quantitative and qualitative findings the process of this discussion includes the actual views of participants and analysis by the researcher by correlating with past literature. during this discussion, references were also made to the quantitative results where applicable in order to use the qualitative data to explain clearly the research questions thereby complying with the research design (convergent parallel) whereby data analysis for the quantitative data were done separately, each analysis was done independently, however, the discussion was done concurrently. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 2012021 39(2): 201-207 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 bereng & mutekwe examining the manifestations and ramifications of the patriarchal ideology 10.1 ways the patriarchal ideology manifest itself in the curriculum in female-led secondary schools it emerged from the structured and unstructured questionnaire sections that tradition and culture, family, religion and schools play a vital role in influencing the patriarchal hegemonic ideology in some female-led schools. this result merges with the findings of the study by albertyn (2009) where it was reported that patriarchy or male domination is deeply entrenched in tradition and culture and continues to be so not only in families, schools and religious institutions but also in the wider community and society at large. mathoto stated: when we start schooling girls are drawn to the so-called girls’ subjects such as sewing, agriculture, food and nutrition among others while their boy counterparts are given the privilege of choosing all of the so-called menial or challenging subjects such as mathematics and the hard sciences maletsatsi: people especially sgb members as elders of the church use bible to justify why women cannot be leaders whereby it is stated that a woman (eve) was created from one of the ribs of man. drawing from the above statements from the participants, one can recognise that patriarchal ideology has been traditionally and culturally embedded in different societies (rothman, 2016). it is clear that what has been taught to girls and boys from birth has contributed enormously in the way things are now where it is normal for girls to come second to boys even at schools. teachers encourage patriarchal practices through hidden curriculum whereby learners’ role models encourage boys and girls differently to follow certain subjects which models them for future careers. 10.2 consequences of patriarchal ideology in some female-led secondary schools the consequences of patriarchal ideology are discussed in themes below with brief assertions from the participants to authenticate their responses. gender discrimination the results indicated that the majority of respondents totalling 60% confirmed that gender discrimination is one of the major drivers of patriarchal hegemonic ideology in many femaleled schools. the findings of the study and the literature show that gender discrimination is a barrier to women’s advancement (faulkner, 2015). fourteen out of twenty, representing the majority of the participants, also affirmed that they were mostly discriminated against at the appointment stage where they were asked questions that were not necessarily asked of male candidates, such as their ability to maintain discipline with boys and family commitments. this result concur with the findings of the study conducted by ntaka (2013) who found out that most female principals experience gender discrimination at the appointment stage whereby the recruitment panel doubts women’s capabilities of being high school principals. male teacher’s resistance towards authority male teacher’s resistance towards women authority and lack of respect and cooperation emerged from quantitative results and qualitative results. the study’s participants made it clear that because of the horrible effects of patriarchal ideology, they are being disrespected in the workplace, they are perceived as not worthy of secondary school principalship. this was http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 2022021 39(2): 202-207 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) evidenced in a study by kanjere (2008) where women principals revealed that male educators found it difficult to submit to their authority as women. some of the things they experienced due to patriarchal ideology were lack of acceptance and cooperation from the parents and a wider society, which made their life very difficult. matumelo: most male parents are not comfortable to be attended by me, they say “ha re bue le basali” (meaning they don’t solve serious issues with women). matieho: i have dismissed five (5) men from this school since i became a principal, they did not appreciate being led by a woman so they did not hide their feelings and thoughts in the meetings and they tortured me just for being a female principal. significant themes that emerged from the unstructured questionnaire that did not emerge in the structured questionnaire included reluctance to seek promotion by female teachers, exhaustion and lack of confidence. reluctance to seek promotion by female teachers it was made clear from the female principal’s assertions that female teachers are reluctant to seek promotions even when they qualify because they are scared of what female principals go through in their day to day running of secondary schools. this finding is similar to that observed by chabaya, rembe and wadesango (2009:245), which revealed that women do not apply to be principals even when they are as qualified as their male counterparts because they have negative self-perceptions and lack of confidence even though they have qualifications and experience. marelebohile: i encouraged one female teacher to apply for a promotion because she had all the required attributes to be a good principal and said she did not want to die young due to stress. i thought she was joking so i insisted and that is when i realised she was serious. masenate: my best female teacher and a friend simply told me she was not strong like me because she knows everything i go through running this school. exhaustion most participants explained that as female principals they are not trusted for the secondary principalship position and as a result they have to work extra hard to convince people that they are capable of doing the job perfectly, which leaves them drained. according to coronel, moreno and carrasco (2010), male teachers fail to acknowledge female principal’s authority which leads to women working too hard to obtain recognition and legitimacy in the decisions they take. in this regard one participant confessed: malibuseng: since i got promoted, i have built more classrooms and toilets, a staff room and two toilets one for male and one for female teachers. i am happy with the changes i made and surprisingly, the people and teachers around here like me now that i have worked hard to prove myself. lack of confidence female principals explained that as a result of the constant reminder that they are women and could not successfully manage schools, they ended up doubting themselves so much that some felt like quitting. however, they did not quit because of the support they received from their families. this result was identified by researchers such as moorosi (2010) as generally http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 2032021 39(2): 203-207 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 bereng & mutekwe examining the manifestations and ramifications of the patriarchal ideology hindering women’s career progression. coleman (2005) is however, of the view that lack of confidence might occur as a result of women having experienced more failure and rejection than their male counterparts. mahlajoane: i was fighting with so many people who did not believe in a woman as a school leader. the community, sgbs, female and male teachers, i felt so overwhelmed and ended up doubting my capabilities. matokelo: parents come to school and ask to see a principal and when they realise it is me, some ask for my male deputy principal. for a while there my self-esteem took a knock, i started believing that indeed i was not good enough to be a manager. 10.3 ways to mitigate ramifications of the patriarchal ideology in female-led secondary schools a higher proportion, representing 55% of the sample size, further confirmed that training and sensitisation on gender equality and equity education for those who participate in the appointment process such as sgbs and district education officials should be a priority. this result agrees with the findings of the study conducted by posholi (2012) where the necessity for training on gender education for all school stakeholders was conveyed as crucial. twenty per cent felt that efforts to redress the impact of patriarchy in school leadership should involve men and women and do away with frames such as “it’s a women’s issue,” because patriarchy impacts everyone, at all levels of society (makama, 2013). most of the participants from the unstructured section of the questionnaire claimed that they struggled with parental engagement. thus, parents did not attend meetings because they said they had nothing to discuss with a woman. one participant suggested democratic leadership to win a parent’s trust. she delegated some of the school activities to them such as raising funds, she would let them come up with strategies to raise funds and be in charge of such activities so they could feel a sense of belonging in the school. participants reckoned that delegation for staff members on leadership roles is also very important; it brings colleagues together and enhances teamwork and good relations. this result resonates with the study conducted by bosch (2015) where she reported that the participants in her study acknowledged that they had been granted opportunities to grow and develop through delegation in leadership roles. some participants strongly believe that there is a dire need for continual mentorship to ensure the smooth running of schools by female principals. this in my view perhaps explains why mckenna (2007) claims that one of the ways to overcome the gender gap in leadership is to provide young women with access to mentors and role models who will help boost their knowledge of the importance of gender equality in society. one theme that emerged in both data sets was the importance of the government to revisit gender equality and equity policies on equal employment and access to resources and making adjustments where necessary as well as ensuring consistency in implementing policies (phakathi, 2016). 11. conclusion and recommendations the main conclusion in this paper is that patriarchal practices and attitudes have a negative effect on women’s development as men continue to dominate senior positions in educational leadership even though women dominate the field of education in all other areas and equally have good qualifications. patriarchal trends that value masculine superiority constrain women’s career progression despite the presence of policies on gender equality and the agency of http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 2042021 39(2): 204-207 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) individual women. among the key recommendations made based on the aforementioned conclusion were the following: there is a need for government to enact clear-cut policies capable of addressing gender equity and equality issues. an evaluation of the current policies and legislation on gender equality and equity will also go a long way towards buttressing the need for gender equality in the south african educational institutions and the general social structures. women cannot resolve this conundrum of patriarchy alone. there is thus a call for collaboration with and an inclusion of men in efforts towards improving women’s career development in virtually all social institutions of society particularly improving women’s leadership roles in the face of the patriarchal hegemony typical of their male counterparts. references agha, n., syed, g.k. & mirani, d.a. 2018. exploring the 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teachers was incredibly important. precautions were necessary to prevent the potential spread of covid-19 in school settings; however, care had to be taken to avoid stigmatising students and staff who may have been exposed to the virus. with a phased-in approach to grades returning to school, school leaders had to ensure that their environment was safe, conducive, welcoming, respectful, inclusive and supportive at all times. a qualitative case study, involving individual interviews with principals, was conducted using the health theoretical framework of attitudes, behaviours and communication (abcs) to investigate how school leaders were ensuring a safe and conducive environment for teachers and learners. the findings highlighted establishing an emergency school management team to be the covid-19 point of contact, implementing social distancing, frequent sanitising, mask-wearing, daily screening, encouraging flexible school times and promoting the outdoor classroom. staff with comorbidities were assigned noncontact duties. keywords: school leaders; a safe environment; responsibilities; abcs of health; safety; teachers and learners. 1. introduction the covid-19 pandemic was declared a public health emergency of international concern (bender, 2020). the closure of schools affected teachers, learners, parents and relevant stakeholders in education across the world (unesco, 2020). although there has been a low infection rate among school-aged children, the closure of schools on 18 march 2020 by the south african government and the department of basic education (dbe), was one measure taken to mitigate the spread of the disease in south africa (dbe, 2020a). the national lockdown came into effect on 26 march and remained in place until 30 april 2020. in june 2020, the south african government agreed to re-open schools using a phased-in approach. school leaders were author: dr roy venketsamy1 dr zijing hu2 affiliation: 1university of pretoria 2university of johannesburg doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i2.2 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(2): 3-16 published: 08 june 2022 received: 19 august 2021 accepted: 05 october 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.2 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3594-527x http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9752-4163 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.2 42022 40(2): 4-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.2 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) tasked to ensure that their schools meet the required standards and precautions for creating a safe environment for teaching and learning (dbe, 2020a). the issue of health and safety for teachers, learners and other officials became a primary concern to parents, teacher unions and the public. teachers’ unions and parents were reluctant about teachers, learners and other officials returning to schools amidst the covid-19 pandemic (bengu & nair, 2020). some of the questions raised by teachers and parents were: how safe is the school environment? what measures will be taken to ensure the safety of teachers and learners? how will schools maintain social distancing to prevent or minimise the risk of covid-19 infection? due to the pandemic, many schools were moving away from compliance with legislative requirements and focusing on a safety culture. some school leaders agreed not to open their doors to learners, despite the dbe indicating to them that they should return to school. most school leaders were listening to the voices of parents and the unions regarding the reopening of schools. to ensure safety, school leaders, staff, learners and parents needed to cooperate, collaborate and communicate to provide an authentic safety culture within the school environment (arnou et al., 2020). this article explored how school leaders created a safe and conducive learning environment for their teachers and learners during the reopening of schools as well as identifying some of the challenges principals faced. the safety of the school environment is a collaborative effort from all stakeholders. according to bhengu and nair (2020), teachers’ unions, parents and other stakeholders agreed that the school environment is potentially a high-risk area for the spread of the virus. reimers et al., (2020) stated that for school leaders, the covid-19 pandemic is a quintessential adaptive and transformative challenge, with no prescribed or preconfigured guidelines to support teachers and learners. according to the dbe (2020d), the school calendar for the academic year 2020 was re-organised to support a “phased-in” plan for the re-opening of schools. this plan was a progressive means of managing the risk of infection. this would help to ensure that schools can manage a smaller number of learners present while in transition from the level 5 lockdown measures. for a precise and efficient response to the pandemic, the dbe (2020a) highlighted the importance of a national alert level and separate provincial, district and metro alert levels for targeted interventions. table 1 provides a summary of covid-19 alert levels. table 1: summary of covid-19 alert level activities source: dbe 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.2 52022 40(2): 5-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.2 venketsamy & hu school leaders’ responsibilities for ensuring safe schools gronholt-pederson (2020) agreed that when the covid-19 pandemic started, every stakeholder within the school environment had a crucial role to play in curbing the spread of the virus. all schools were expected to follow the national and municipal alert levels (dbe, 2020a). schools should be safe spaces for learners, teachers and non-teaching staff. a collaborative effort that entails total commitment and dedication was expected from teachers and learners to curb the spread of the virus and ensure safety from infection within the school environment. according to the gauteng department of education (gde) (2020), to ensure the safety of teachers and learners, the concept of safety had to be meaningful and understood to encompass the well-being of all staff and learners on the school premises. according to the dbe (2020b), the covid-19 pandemic had placed school leaders in an unenviable situation to manage their schools and promote safety. 2. literature review schools should play a crucial role in ensuring safety for teachers and learners. unicef (2020a) agrees that as schools begin to re-open, it is important that measures and precautions are taken to prevent the spread of covid-19. reimers (2020) acknowledged that school safety should include adherence to policies and guidelines and that all decisions should be data driven. according to the dbe (2020f), schools planning to re-open must ensure that all safety precautions and measures are in place. these measures should include cleaning practices, proper and adequate ventilation conditions and physical distancing protocols. a safe school environment encourages learning by safeguarding the health and safety of staff and learners. school safety is not achieved with a single programme, but begins with prevention in mind; thus, providing teachers and learners with physical and psychological safety (dbe, 2020f). 2.1 importance of a safe and conducive learning environment the school environment is a significant learning space in which teachers and learners spend a considerable part of the day. according to the california state pta (2016) and arslan (2018), a safe school is a place in which staff and learners are free to learn and teach in a nonthreatening or psychologically harmful environment. the dbe (2020d) also agreed that a healthy education environment is vital to teachers and learners’ health and well-being. school principals play an active role in ensuring a safe school environment to protect teachers and learners. during the phased-in approach to the re-opening of schools, the dbe (2020a) agreed that appropriate measures, according to the national guidelines, would assist school leaders to ensure measures were in place to prevent the spread of the virus. the dbe (2020d) further articulated in their guidelines for schools that school leaders had multiple roles and functions to promote safety and hygiene in their schools and at the same time, maintaining the highest educational standards of their schools during the pandemic. through education, teachers and learners can become advocates for disease prevention and control at home, in school and their communities. clapper (2010) states that school leaders must look for learning environments that are safe and conducive during emergencies. his statement is appropriate for the current covid-19 pandemic because school leaders need to be creative and amenable to suggestions and they must be willing to try novel methods of ensuring safety for all learners and staff (dbe, 2020e). for effective teaching and learning to occur, teachers and learners must feel safe and secure to enter the school environment. jenson (2008 cited in clapper, 2010) stated that in an unsafe learning environment, teachers and learners become more aware of the need for survival and protection. psychological and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.2 62022 40(2): 6-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.2 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) health safety becomes critical as teachers and learners brave through their teaching and learning journey during the covid-19 pandemic. to create a safe school environment, gde (2020) and bonell (2013) believe that a positive relationship between learners and school staff is crucial. they agree that school leaders must be supported by relevant stakeholders to develop a dynamic safety team of teachers and learners who will focus on the overall school climate as well as crisis and emergency preparedness, response and recovery. with the current covid-19 pandemic, the gde (2020) states that the provision of a safe school environment has gained momentum among parents and other stakeholders. according to the dbe (2020b), all school managers should be visionary in creating and maintaining a positive and safe environment for all teachers and learners during the covid-19 pandemic. teachers, learners and other officials need to become extremely vigilant and cautious, both inside and outside the classroom (gde, 2020). 2.2 preventative measures to minimise covid-19 infections the dbe (2020b) maintains that school leaders should identify areas that are potentially risky and begin to find appropriate intervention measures to ensure physical and psychological safety for teachers and learners. according to the dbe (2020d), school leaders should consider developing planned emergency strategies to respond to crisis situations. in the current situation, the covid-19 pandemic is an emergency that calls for carefully thought-out strategies to create a safe and conducive environment to minimise infection. the school safety and crisis team should be involved in emphasising learners’ positive behaviour and following the safety protocol of the school (dbe, 2020c). the team should also be helping teachers support learners in need, assessing at-risk learners and providing appropriate interventions and referrals (dbe, 2019). every school must ensure that their school crisis and emergency plans are reviewed on a continued basis, protocols for appropriate behaviours are updated and everyone is made aware of them. these plans, according to the dbe (2020d), should be linked to the national alert levels and the broader community needs. another measure advocated by the dbe (2020a) and the global education cluster (2020) is ensuring safe school operations. they recommend that school management should develop school emergency contingency plans. unicef (2020a) stated that schools must cancel all communal events or meetings and assemblies that usually take place on school premises. they further endorse frequent handwashing and sanitation of all people on the school premises. to facilitate handwashing and sanitation, the school should make sure that there are adequate handwashing stations with soap and water. it is also advisable that an alcohol-based hand rub is placed in each classroom, at entrances and exits and near lunchrooms and toilets (dbe, 2020d). it is also necessary to disinfect and clean school buildings and classrooms daily. particular emphasis should be placed on providing clean water and sanitation facilities. the centre for disease control and prevention (cdc) (2021) advised that all surfaces that had been touched by many people such as railings, tables, sports equipment, door and window handles, toys and teaching and learning resources should be sanitised frequently to prevent the spread of the virus. the dbe (2020a) recommended that schools should stagger their school start and end times for teachers and learners. every individual entering the school environment is requested to wear their mask, have their temperature taken and ensure appropriate social distancing. both bender (2020) and the global education cluster (2020) agree that learners’ desks should be at least one metre apart to ensure social distancing. the dbe (2020a) delegated authority http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.2 72022 40(2): 7-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.2 venketsamy & hu school leaders’ responsibilities for ensuring safe schools to school leaders to adapt school policies where appropriate to accommodate teachers and learners to promote a safe and healthy school environment. they indicated that school leaders should design and plan flexible attendance and sick leave protocols that encourage learners and staff to stay at home when they are sick. they further stated that school leaders should discourage the use of perfect attendance awards and incentives during the pandemic. school leaders should plan for possible changes to the academic school calendar, especially around break times and exam schedules (gde, 2020). they should also plan for continuity of learning using different methodologies to accommodate all learners. in cases where learners are absent or schools are closed for prolonged periods, learners should be supported through online/e-learning strategies; assigning reading exercises for home-based studies; radio, podcast or television broadcasts of academic content; giving teachers instruction to conduct remote daily or weekly follow up with students (reimers et al., 2020). the dbe (2020a), bender (2020) and the global education cluster (2020) agreed that all staff and learners should know the latest facts surrounding covid-19 to avoid misunderstanding and misinterpretation. they should have knowledge and information through the curriculum about covid-19, its symptoms, complications, how it is transmitted and how to prevent transmission. 3. theoretical framework a theoretical framework “provides an overview of perspectives and research results regarding the proposed topic” (ferreira, 2012:34). this research was underpinned by the abcs of the safety model for safety management systems (ackland, 2013). this model aimed to determine the attitude, behaviours and commitment of school management towards the safety of its stakeholders (in this instance teachers, learners and relevant stakeholders within the school community). the safety management system, according to ackland (2013), is as easy as abc, considering the attitudes of people, their behaviours and their commitment towards safety. school leaders’ attitudes towards safety, the environment or the customers (teachers, learners and parents) during the covid-19 pandemic will determine what they will or will not be able to do. the actions that the leaders and the customers take depend on their awareness of what is required to change and how it is aligned to the overall safety in the education environment (dbe, 2020a). the safety model for safety management systems advocates attitudes, behaviours and communication among all stakeholders in an organisation. the attitudes, behaviours and communication amongst school leaders, teachers and learners are crucial in ensuring a safe school environment. unicef (2020b) views school leaders and teachers as important role players in ensuring that appropriate behaviours are maintained at all times. how school management teams, teachers and learners behave and communicate during the pandemic affects the protection and safety of all stakeholders. the a, b and c fundamentals are common to all management systems and their effectiveness depends on the people involved within the school community. unicef (2020b) stated that school leaders and teachers are in a position to promote safety precautions and measure during the phased-in approach to schooling. school staff should communicate information about covid-19 from reliable sources and ensure that all learners understand how covd-19 spreads and how each one can protect the other in establishing classroom procedures and protocols. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.2 82022 40(2): 8-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.2 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) a safe system within the school environment can easily be spoilt by the unsafe behaviours of people working within it (dbe, 2020d). if school leaders do not put in place safety measures and teachers, learners and parents do not adhere to these measures, there is a risk of creating an unsafe environment. the dbe (2020f), in their communication to schools and school communities, stated that it is the responsibility of all staff and learners to adopt appropriate and responsible attitudes, behaviours and communication while in the school environment for the safety of everyone. school leaders’ priority should always be safety. regarding the behaviour of staff, it is critical to look at the perceptions of teachers, learners and parents; how they act or react in a given situation – this is in alignment with the abc’s safety model. an effective safety management system needs to invoke safety, mindfulness and actively encourage a positive safety culture (ackland, 2013). 4. research methodology this article explored how school leaders attempted to create a safe and conducive learning environment for teachers and learners during the re-opening of schools in the covid-19 pandemic and what challenges they faced, using an interpretivist paradigm. the primary research question formulated for this research was: how did school leaders ensure a safe school environment for teaching and learning during the reopening of schools? the adoption of the interpretivist paradigm allowed the researcher to gain an in-depth understanding of the various measures and precautions school leaders embarked upon, to ensure a safe school environment for teachers and learners (yin, 2016). a qualitative approach was, therefore adopted using a single case study methodology. the single case study included identified school leaders from one district in the gauteng province in south africa. the qualitative approach provided detailed information and insights from school leaders regarding their commitment to ensuring a safe environment during the pandemic. this approach encouraged school leaders to expand their responses to share their experience in making schools safe. purposeful sampling was used to identify five school leaders (sl1–5) employed by the gauteng department of education, who were responsible for creating a conducive and safe learning environment in their schools during the phased-in approach to schooling. the researcher sent out invites to ten schools in the gauteng area and only five responded positively. the selection criteria were the school had to be a public school under the department of basic education; a school management team (smt) had to participate in the telephonic interview and the schools had to have permission from the dbe to re-open to learners using the phased-in approach. according to the dbe (2020a), the phased-in approach for the learners who were returning to schools would take place across seven phases. telephonic interviews were the primary means of collecting data for participants to avoid any contact with the authors. semi-structured interview questions were the primary data collection method, with departmental documents as secondary data sources. the policies and guideline documents were systematically reviewed and evaluated against the mandates of the dbe regarding covid-19 protocols. an interpretative analysis of each document was done and reported in the findings. participants responded to each of the questions. interviews lasted approximately 30-45 minutes. unstructured questions served to explore the participants’ views on how they created a safe and conducive learning environment during the covid-19 pandemic for their teachers, learners and general staff. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.2 92022 40(2): 9-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.2 venketsamy & hu school leaders’ responsibilities for ensuring safe schools data analysis was inductive and was mainly based on information obtained from transcripts of the interviews (maree, 2017). the data were analysed using a thematic approach (creswell, 2014). the researcher compared the data sources in search of common themes (creswell, 2014; maree, 2017). the content of the data was analysed and presented in a descriptive format with verbatim quotes. the flexibility of qualitative research analysis allowed the conversion of raw data into the credible findings of the study. the university of pretoria and the gauteng department of education granted permission for the study to be conducted. the researcher adhered to the ethical principles of informed consent, confidentiality and privacy, honesty and openness, access to findings and avoiding harm as described by maree (2017). the authors obtained informed consent telephonically from all the participants in the study. the principle of anonymity was clearly articulated to the participants before undertaking the research (creswell, 2014). after consent had been obtained, the author phoned each of the participants. the author also explained that withdrawal from the study was possible at any time. pseudonyms were used to conceal the identity of the participants. the codes sl1, sl2, sl3, sl4 and sl5 were used for the school leaders in the discussion. trustworthiness was ensured through treating the participants with the utmost respect throughout the research and aspiring to develop trustworthy relationships built on honesty and transparency (creswell, 2014). furthermore, to ensure the credibility of the data, the researchers transcribed and coded the data; thereafter themes were identified and grouped. the data were checked and rechecked separately by both authors. the authors also presented the data in an unbiased manner to avoid skewing the interpretation. the findings from this research can be transferred to other provinces where school leaders can learn best practices for implementation in their schools. 5. results: findings and discussion in exploring school leaders’ responsibilities for ensuring safe schools for teaching and learning, the authors categorised the findings into two broad themes, namely: • measures were taken by school leaders to create safe schools for teaching and learning; and • challenges experienced by school leaders in creating safe schools this section presents findings that emanated from the participants’ responses. 5.1 theme 1: measures were taken by school leaders to create a safe school for teaching and learning the covid-19 pandemic is a novel pandemic. there are no textbooks or readily available materials for guidelines for school leaders to follow. school leaders were advised to follow the basic principles discussed below: 5.1.1 adherence to dbe guidelines, circulars and communication school leaders relied on information circulated by the dbe through guidelines (dbe, 2020e) and circulars (dbe, 2020f). all smts agreed that the current situation is unique to them. they also agreed that there was no right or wrong way of doing things in their schools to ensure safety. they had to follow the dbe guidelines, namely: “coronavirus orientation: guidelines for schools – for teachers, support staff and learners on the covid-19 outbreak in south africa” and circular 1 of 2020 “containment/management of covid-19 for schools and school http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.2 102022 40(2): 10-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.2 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) communities”. school leaders attended workshops and district-based meetings organised by the gauteng education department (gde) regarding safety protocols on the re-opening of schools. information from these workshops and the guideline documents and circulars were used to orientate their staff with the screening protocols so that they become conversant with the compliance protocols of the national and international norms and standards. all participants indicated that teachers were continually updated with regulations and laws through correspondence and handouts to make them aware of the changes and the dynamics of how the school management team’s strategic plans synchronised with professional accountability. to further support teachers in his school, sl2 stated: i downloaded resources from international platforms to incorporate covid information in all subjects and gave them to teachers. i made sure that the information was taken from reliable websites such as who, unesco and national health. 5.1.2 making safety precautions visual school leaders stated that they were required to ensure that safety protocols were visibly placed around their school environment. according to smts, they placed much emphasis on creating posters and other visual media emphasising the importance of handwashing, social distancing, wearing masks and avoiding large groups and gatherings. school leaders also indicated that since the first day of school, learners were informed of, and shown where the sanitising stations were set. teachers were informed to impress upon learners the importance of the safety protocols. 5.1.3 sick students, teachers and other staff should not come to school school leaders were instructed by the dbe that they should inform their students, teachers or staff members who are unwell or experience comorbidities not to come to school. school leaders mentioned that, according to circular 1 of 2020 (dbe, 2020f), they were required to establish procedures to follow when learners and staff become sick at school or arrive at school sick, as they should be sent home as soon as possible. according to the standard operating procedures policy document (dbe, 2020e), school principals were tasked to ensure that they adopt a flexible approach to school timetabling, exam schedules and leave for staff who are diagnosed with chronic illnesses. school leaders were instructed to keep thorough records of all staff. staff were requested to complete a health profile questionnaire regarding their comorbidities. this information was sent to the district offices every month. according to the dbe (2020e), school leaders, together with the district office, had to take the necessary precautions to always ensure the safety of all teachers and learners to prevent the spread of infection and to officially advise those who are unwell to stay at home. 5.1.4 social distancing according to the centre for disease control and prevention (cdc) (2021), social distancing, also called physical distancing, means keeping a safe space between yourself and your colleague. to practice social distancing, it is required that teachers and learners stay at least two arm lengths away from each other. the cdc further advises that social distancing should be practiced in combination with other everyday preventative actions to reduce the spread of covid-19, including wearing masks, avoiding touching your face with unwashed hands and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.2 112022 40(2): 11-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.2 venketsamy & hu school leaders’ responsibilities for ensuring safe schools frequently washing your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. in response to social distancing, all school leaders, namely sl1, sl2, sl, sl4 and sl5 agreed that: they have limited mixing of classes and after-school activities; all schools had arranged their desks to ensure a distance of 1 metre apart. learners were required to stay in one classroom throughout the day, while teachers moved between classrooms. school days were staggered to vary the start and end times. class sizes have been split into smaller groups and smaller groups attended school on specific days. school grounds and assembly areas were marked, taped and other barriers were used to maintain 1 metre distance. some lessons were taught outdoors and teachers and learners were encouraged not to gather or socialise in groups. 5.1.5 mask wearing in schools mask should be used as part of a comprehensive strategy of measures to suppress transmission and save lives. unicef (2020b) states that if learners are allowed to wear fabric masks, then school leaders, teachers and learners should be familiar with when they should wear masks; also, how to dispose of used masks safely to avoid the risk of contaminated masks in classrooms and on the playground. sl1 and sl3 stated that they provided masks to all their learners who attended school on alternative days. sl3 indicated that he asked the chair of the school governing body to get a group of parents to sew masks for their learners. this was a very successful project. to ensure that masks were disposed of safely, sl4 mentioned that “plastic bags” and “dirt bins” were placed around the school premises where learners could drop off their used masks. 5.1.6 schools should provide water, sanitation and waste management facilities unicef (2020a) stresses the importance of frequent handwashing and sanitisation procedures in schools. according to the dbe (2020e) schools should procure the necessary supplies from the relevant service providers. schools should prepare and maintain handwashing stations with soap and water, and if possible, place alcohol-based hand rub (hand sanitisers) in each classroom, at entrances and exits as well as near lunchrooms and toilets. to this sl4 responded: before my teachers and learners came to school, i requested the gde to have my school sanitised. the sanitation company came to my school and sanitised the entire school. i also made sure that i received the appropriate personal protective equipment (ppe) for my school. i am in a poor community and i know that my learners will not be able to afford sanitation liquid and masks. i had this ready for them when they came to school. according to bender (2020), the fundamental principles can help keep learners, teachers and staff safe at school and curb the spread of the virus. the findings show that since covid-19 is a novel pandemic with no book knowledge to follow (reimers et al., 2020), most school leaders had to rely on advice from the dbe, the media and reliable sources. they agreed that for school leaders, the covid-19 pandemic is a quintessential adaptive and transformative challenge that has no prescribed or preconfigured guidelines to support teachers and learners, yet these managers had to use their insights and knowledge from available literature, guidelines, circulars, protocols and the media to adapt and make their schools safe and conducive. in line with the theoretical framework of the abcs (attitude, behaviours and communication) of the model for safety management systems (ackland, 2013), there was evidence of behaviour change in the school organisation when learners http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.2 122022 40(2): 12-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.2 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) attended school from june to december 2020. furthermore, teachers and learners were receptive to information regarding the pandemic and adhered to the safety protocols. all school leaders, sl1, sl2, sl3, sl4 and sl5 confirmed that the covid-19 protocols were an agenda item for discussion in staff meetings and assemblies. they also indicated that every teacher had to spend at least five minutes discussing and emphasising safety measures to all learners, especially, frequent washing of hands, sanitising, wearing of a mask and observing social distance. 5.2 theme 2: challenges experienced by school leaders in creating a safe school for teachers and learners harris and jones (2020) stated that schools that have re-opened have faced significant challenges of social distancing, rigorous cleaning and the careful arrangement of all movement and association around the school. 5.2.1 teachers’ health challenges and unions the re-opening of schools during the phased-in approach posed some challenges to school leaders. according to school leaders, they received information from the department requesting them to provide information on teachers who experienced health challenges. in some schools, most teachers experienced an average of two to three medical challenges such as diabetes, asthma or hypertension. they were placed at high risk (dbe, 2020e). according to most school leaders, (sl1, sl3 and sl5) almost 70% of their staff experienced comorbidities. to the dbe these teachers are at high risk of covid-19 infection and therefore should not return to school. this posed a major challenge to school leaders because they had to work with a limited number of teachers. furthermore, teacher unions recommended that their members do not return to school and teachers informed their principals that they are responding to the call from their unions. most principals indicated that they were left helpless between the department requesting them to re-open schools and the unions asking teachers not to return to school. harris and jones (2020) stated that it is a complicated situation – school leaders had to do much more with less. the maintenance of social distancing and ensuring a safe environment means extra work and extra pressure on those staff members who can return to work. according to bhengu and nair (2020), teacher unions played a significant role in preventing teachers from returning to school., five teacher unions recommended that teachers do not report to schools due to the lack of readiness under the covid-19 protocols. ackland (2013) agrees in his abc model that safety is of paramount importance in any organisation and teacher unions have heeded this. all school leaders, sl1, sl2, sl3, sl4 and sl5 stated that they heeded the advice of the unions and respected the decision of their teachers who did not want to return to school. they also indicated that they too were concerned about the safety of their teachers, especially those with comorbidities. 5.2.2 parents’ reluctance to send their children to schools the call for children to return to school in south africa and globally has heightened the fear and anxiety amongst parents and children. parents are fearful and anxious that their children may become infected with covid-19 while at school. they fear that their children will bring covid-19 into their households. furthermore, teachers also fear for their safety (the scientist collective, 2020). according to sl2, most parents refused to send their children to school. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.2 132022 40(2): 13-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.2 venketsamy & hu school leaders’ responsibilities for ensuring safe schools they were scared that their young children would not maintain social distancing, which could lead to spreading the infection to the home environment. according to gronholt-pederson (2020), parents are questioning why their children should be “guinea pigs” and therefore made a calculated decision not to send their children to school. sl2 stated that: most learners’ parents were concerned that their children will be travelling on public transport and they do not know of the safety conditions in these mini-buses and taxis. they were afraid that their children will become infected onboard these buses and taxis, thus carrying the virus to their homes and spreading the infection. 5.2.3 the lack of personal protective equipment during the phased-in approach, many schools did not receive their personal protective equipment (ppe) as indicated by sl3, sl4 and sl5. this equipment was en-route to schools; however, it did not reach the desired destination (macupe, 2020). this left school leaders in a chaotic and challenging situation, delaying the re-opening of schools. bengu and nair (2020) stated the disappearance of the ppe makes the re-opening of schools an elusive goal. schools were also not provided with hand sanitisers, soaps and non-contact temperature assessment devices. most school leaders, sl3, sl4, sl5 indicated that: they have contacted the district office to inform them that they have not received the appropriate ppes, and other equipment. according to these school leaders, the district officials themselves were unaware of where the equipment was coming from or where it is stored. most school leaders shared their disappointment due to the lack of information and support from the department of education. furthermore, at a press briefing on monday 1 june 2020, the minister of education announced that no school would be allowed to open if it does not meet the health regulations to minimise the spread of covid-19. school leaders shared their disappointment and frustration with the department of education due to conflicting messages. 6. recommendations learners missed a substantial number of schooling days due to the lockdown and the aggressive spread of the covid-19 pandemic. therefore, creating a safe and conducive learning environment is critical in supporting all learners to achieve the targeted learning outcomes. to prevent the spread of covid-19, every individual needs to work collectively and collaboratively with all stakeholders, namely: policymakers, parents, instructional leaders, teachers, learners and support staff, to ensure a safe and conducive learning environment. the following recommendations are proposed by the authors to ensure a safe school environment for teachers and learners during the phased-in approach to schooling. each school is recommended to establish a covid-19 school management team (smt) led by the school principal and designated staff members who will be responsible for the management of issues about covid-19. this includes ensuring a safe school environment, teacher and learner absenteeism (sick leave), communication between relevant stakeholders and support to school staff and the school community. the team should also monitor the effectiveness of symptoms-reporting, monitoring, rapid testing and tracing of suspected cases. school leaders and their covid-19 team should manage the implementation of interventions such as physical distancing, regular hand washing or using sanitisers, practising coughing etiquette and wearing a mask. these interventions should be reinforced throughout the day by all http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.2 142022 40(2): 14-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.2 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) learners. schools should help to prevent stigma and discrimination by encouraging students to be kind to each other and avoid stereotypes when talking about the virus. another recommendation is that school leaders should keep a health profile of their staff, including their comorbidities. this information will assist school leaders to adapt the school timetable for those teachers who may work from home. school leaders should adopt a hybrid learning model, where most students and teachers participate in virtual learning, while some students and teachers engage in in-person learning. school leaders should promote and demonstrate regular hygiene, clean and disinfect school buildings regularly, ensure that there is an increase in airflow and ventilation in all classes, post signs encouraging good hand and respiratory hygiene practices. school leaders could implement the use of outdoor spaces as much as possible. according to ayotte-beaudet (2021), outdoor spaces allow learners to meet their teachers and classmates in person, at the same time observing a safe distance. the outdoor classes also allow for teachers to incorporate outdoor education into their lessons. children will also engage with the outdoor environment to learn more about social behaviour. they agree that outdoor spaces can also encourage teachers to combine physical activity with educational content. school leaders must ensure that teachers and learners are checked and screened daily before entering the school premises as per the dbe/doh screening guidelines, including a symptom evaluation and a temperature check. harris and jones (2020) agree that crisis management during the unforeseen pandemic is critical in all schools and school leaders need to be visionary and proactive. according to the dbe (2020f), school leaders should also ensure that psychological services and support are made available to learners and teachers exposed to the virus. curriculum developers should be encouraged to include health-related topics during pandemics across the curriculum as a means of awareness and advocacy. the topic of pandemics and diseases should not be confined to the life skills curriculum. 7. conclusion the call for children to return to school, both in south africa and globally, has caused much anxiety, fear and tension. there is a growing need for parents and society to be reassured that their children and teachers will be safe within the confines of the school environment. teachers also need support in reducing risk in their classrooms and minimising schoolbased transmission. harris and jones (2020) state that crisis and change management are now fundamental and essential skills of every school leader. managing an effective school in disruptive times (such as the covid-19 pandemic) will require more than basic problem-solving. instead, all school leaders will need to be involved in continuous emergency management, which will require support and teamwork from all staff to ensure safe and conducive teaching and learning environments. references ackland, i. 2013. the abcs of safety – for safety management systems. making excellence a habit. bsi ncs international. available at https://www.bsigroup.com/localfiles/enau/as%20 4801%20and%2018001%20safety/documents/the-abcs-of-safety-management-systems. pdf. 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high-stakes testing environments; science and mathematics 1. introduction under-achievement is notably very high for secondary school science and mathematics in south africa (maree, aldous, hattingh, swanepoel & van der linde, 2006; ndlovu, 2011). there are various factors linked to underachievement in mathematics and science which may stem from the socio-economic status of the schools and learners including historical and current conditions (rhodes & brudrett, 2009; visser, juan & feza, 2015; govender, grobler & mestry, 2015). some of socio-historical factors have had an enduring impact on science and mathematics achievement in stratified societies such as south africa (khupe, balkwill, osman, & cameron, 2013). some schools maria tsakeni tsakenim@ufs.ac.za/ mtsakeni@gmail.com university of the free state, qwaqwa campus loyiso jita jitalc@ufs.ac.za university of the free state doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v37i2.7 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 37(2): 98-109 date published: 27 november 2019 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:tsakenim@ufs.ac.za/ mailto:mtsakeni@gmail.com mailto:jitalc@ufs.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.7 http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie 99 tsakeni & jita school leadership practices for science and mathematics... in deprived communities are characterised by poor learner attainments as may be compared to schools in more affluent communities. south africa faces critical shortages of students with learner attainments that can allow them to be placed successfully in higher education to pursue careers in stem (maree et al, 2006; ndlovu, 2011). the trend is similar in some parts of the world (mcfarlane, 2013). the adoption of ‘education for all policies’ such as the ones adopted by the south african government aim for transformation to ensure the inclusion of previously disadvantaged learner groups in mathematics and science education. the emphasis is placed on raising participation and achievement of previously disadvantaged learners in senior certificate mathematics and science, providing quality science and mathematics education at general education and training (get) and further education and training (fet) phases and developing the human capital to teach science and mathematics (mushayikwa, 2009). we realise that while socio-historical factors are known to have enduring effects on schools (rhodes & brundrett, 2009; msila, 2011) some school improvement plans bring about the desired change despite the perceived incapacitation. similarly, mcfarlane (2013) notes that some countries bestowed with more wealth, resources and technology such as the united states are often outranked in international benchmarks for literacy in science, mathematics and reading by poorer countries. maringe, masinire and nkambule (2015) explored the reasons why some impoverished schools manage to achieve enhanced learner attainments despite their conditions. based on the observations above, we noted that conditions of affluence or poverty may not by themselves determine the performance of schools in science and mathematics. we noted that science and mathematics learner performance is measured through high-stakes testing methods such as common tests and national examinations. accordingly we considered the high-stakes testing environments to be one of the contextual factors that school leaderships for science and mathematics need to consider in the day to day practices. for this study we assumed that, if schools are considered to be performing well in science and mathematics in high-stakes environments then it would be interesting to study the leadership practices that they put in place. based on the discussions above and our own experiences we observed that school leadership practices may not bring about the aspired change in learner attainment in the subjects of science and mathematics in the same way they do for the rest of the subjects in the school curriculum. achievement in science and mathematics does seem to respond in a unique way to school improvement plans under a given leadership practices set-up in high-stakes testing environments. therefore we ask, how do leadership practices mediate improved outcomes for science and mathematics in high-stakes testing environments? the study was conducted in a high-performing school in science and mathematics in one affluent suburb in the city of pretoria, south africa. therefore, the case study contributes to the conceptual development of school leadership practices for science and mathematics by highlighting some of the practices for high performance in highstakes testing environments. 2. conceptual framework: integrated model of school leadership educational leadership can be a tool to improve learning in the classrooms (llorent-bedmar, cobano-delgado & navarro-granados, 2017). the improvement in learning results from the influence exerted on classroom practitioners by individuals or groups of individuals in leadership positions. accordingly, leadership may be regarded simply as influence exerted in 100 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) order for certain tasks to be completed in an organisation (bush & glover, 2014). educational leadership encompasses various forms of school leadership, such as principal leadership, head of department leadership and teacher leadership, among others. improved learner classroom achievement is a basis for monitoring school improvement. hallinger (2003) asserts that there is not one school leadership model that can be singled out as the best practice for supporting school improvement. the literature reviewed deals with the cultivation of school cultures and climates that translate into enhanced learner outcomes, and points to certain leadership functions that should be effective to improve learner attainment (govender et al., 2015; hallinger & heck, 2010; maringe, masinire & nkambule, 2015; msila, 2011; rhodes & brundrett, 2009). the functions are closely linked to the typologies of school leadership outlined by bush and glover (2014). bush and glover (2014) outline eight typologies of school leadership which are (i) instructional leadership, (ii) managerial leadership, (iii) transformational leadership, (iv) moral and authentic leadership, (v) distributed leadership, (vi) teacher leadership, (vii) systems leadership and (viii) contingent leadership. these leadership functions will be explained below. instructional leadership instructional leadership influences the teaching and learning processes. this leadership focuses directly on improved classroom practices and learner achievements. an extraordinary focus on teaching through effective instructional leadership practices is underscored as a vital gateway to enhanced learner attainment. studies on learner attainment improvement closely associate learner outcomes with strategies of proficient instructional leadership practices (maringe et al. 2015; valentine & pratter, 2011). in addition, effective instructional leadership is closely associated with the school’s capacity to execute managerial leadership to ensure that tasks and behaviours related to teaching and learning are performed optimally. managerial leadership managerial leadership focuses on the functions and behaviours of the people who are being led, such as classrooms teachers. the leaders engage in scheduling of work, planning and prioritising steps to achieve tasks that are related to teaching and learning. the teaching and learning process tasks need to be implemented effectively in schools. the inability to protect the time for teaching and learning is cited as one of managerial weaknesses that lead to inefficient and ineffective schools in some south african schools (botha, 2013; maringe et al., 2015). engels et al. (2008) assert that in effective school cultures principals are devoted to tasks that focus on instructional leadership, people management and time management. transformational leadership transformational leadership focuses on ensuring that teachers have high levels of commitment and greater capacities to achieve centrally determined educational objectives. bush and glover (2014) explain that educational goals to be achieved would have been formulated by governments, or are aligned to the values of the leader. one way of building teacher capacity is through continuous professional development. successful leadership hinges on its ability to engage both the teachers and learners in robust learning processes (rhodes & brundrett, 2009; mushaikwa, 2009). govender et al., (2015) root for an organic transformational leadership that transcends from being able to determine what was taught to establishing how it was taught and what was learned in order to bring about change in teaching and learning practices. 101 tsakeni & jita school leadership practices for science and mathematics... moral and authentic leadership the moral and authentic leadership focuses on integrity and is therefore, largely influenced by the values, beliefs and ethics of the leader. leaders use certain orientations in educational, personal and professional values to direct their vision and guide school improvement. bush and glover (2014) further posit that the goals of transformational leadership should be morally and ethically appropriate. similarly, maringe et al. (2015) stress that leadership practices in disadvantaged schools should be empathetic to the plight of learners and work to improve their life chances. distributed leadership distributed leadership focuses on shared leadership practices. this form of leadership, however, differs from other forms of shared leadership in that leadership is spread over several individuals through harnessing their expertise. in addition, for distributed leadership to take root, the principal of the school should allow it to flourish (bush & glover, 2014). distributed school leadership practices support teacher leadership. harris (2003) points out that there is an overlap that exists between distributed leadership and teacher leadership. teacher leadership teacher leadership recognises that teachers can execute leadership roles. both the distributed and systems leadership set-ups allow teachers to lead through their agency of expertise. it follows that teachers may become leaders in school improvement by engaging in activities to improve their classroom practices and learner attainment. teacher leadership is very significant in school science and mathematics (tsakeni & jita, 2017). there is an increasing observed usefulness of teacher leaders in driving continuous teacher learning and professional inquiry for classroom change in mathematics and science (green & kent, 2016). systems leadership systems leadership may use set-ups such as school clusters, so that teachers learn from each other. subject teachers from a number of schools meet periodically to develop work schedules, discuss teaching strategies, develop assessment tools and share resources, among other professional development activities. contingent leadership contingent leadership provides insights into ways leaders respond to unique school improvement situations. contingent leadership recognises that a single type of leadership may not be appropriate for all situations. therefore, the school leadership should be able to respond to unique school improvement situations appropriately. all of the functions of school leadership mentioned above should be implemented accordingly, to support a holistic change and school improvement. we used this integrated leadership model approach as a lens to identify practices that support enhanced learner outcomes. 3. the context of the study using a descriptive qualitative single case study approach, data were collected from a high performing school in science and mathematics. the case study was defined by two parameters which were context and the phenomenon under study. the school was situated in an affluent suburb of pretoria in south africa. the school was one of the former model c schools in 102 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) south africa. these schools were formerly reserved for whites only before the dawn of democracy in 1994. the school used afrikaans as a medium of instruction. the phenomenon under study was how the school leadership for science and mathematics were practised under high-stakes testing environments. the high school was selected because it had achieved a consistent track record of good learner performance in science and mathematics over a period of five years before the study. the information on the schools’ performance was obtained through word of mouth. data were collected by means of semi-structured interviews and unstructured observations. the interview schedules for mathematics and science teachers (including positional leaders who taught these subjects) included questions to probe experiences of challenges and opportunities in leading for improved learners’ attainment. some of the questions probed the teachers’ experiences of activities and support that had been organised to improve learner achievement at the schools. the questions were asked in ways that revealed the leadership functions in place for improved mathematics and science teaching and learning by both the teachers and the positional leaders. in addition, the positional leaders were asked about the schools’ visions, plans, forms of support and activities for improved learner achievement in mathematics and science. the interview schedule was one of the instruments developed for a wider national research foundation-funded project. experienced researchers in the area of instructional leadership developed the interview schedule collaboratively. the unstructured observations captured relevant data, such as that used in the description of the sample. the unstructured observations were used to collect relevant school contextual data that might have been missed by the interview schedule. martin (2016) says that narratives bring forth stories in which the participants paint pictures of real experiences. sample we were allowed to interview four participants in the school whom were, the vice-principal responsible for curriculum and instruction (he was also a physical sciences teacher), the head of department for grades 10-12 science, a physical sciences teacher and a mathematics teacher. accordingly, we used a convenient sample. this was a sample taken from 13 mathematics and 15 science teachers. the school had one principal and six vice-principals. we coded the participants as vp (vice-principal), hod (head of department for science) pst (physical sciences teacher) and mt (mathematics teacher). the school had close to 1800 learners and 105 teachers. ethical considerations and quality measures using an ethical clearance that we obtained from the university of the free state, we sought further clearance from the gauteng department of education, tshwane south education district and the school principal. the principal consulted with the school governing body before granting us permission to conduct research. in order to ensure the trustworthiness of the data that was collected, the semi-structured interviews were developed with an analytical framework in mind, based on the eight leadership functions discussed above and proposed by bush and glover (2014). data from the 4 participants were triangulated during analysis in order to of ensure the credibility and trustworthiness of the findings. data analysis the components of the integrated model of school leadership were used to develop the analytical framework as a first step in making sense of the data. the second step involved 103 tsakeni & jita school leadership practices for science and mathematics... developing themes that were used to respond to the research question. the two steps in data analysis were conducted to ensure rigour as a quality measure. the interview transcripts were shared with the participants for member checking. in addition, the findings were compared with literature findings on the same phenomenon. 4. findings of the study the findings of this study are discussed under six themes which are (1) material mobilisation for science and mathematics classrooms, (2) school-based professional development on mastery of content, (3) professional development organised by a teachers’ labour union (4) districtbased professional development focusing policy and scheduling of work, (5) managing school activities to protect teaching time, and (6) enacted school culture for high-stakes testing. material mobilisation for science and mathematics classrooms through our unstructured observation we noticed that the science and mathematics classrooms were well-resourced. below is an extract from the field notes written by one of the researchers during a visit to the school. the extract was as follows, after the interviews i was escorted on a tour of the science laboratories in the school. i was taken to 7 large physical sciences laboratories and equally large 5 life sciences laboratories. the labs are well equipped and in good condition. in one of the physical sciences labs, grade 11 learners were conducting experiments on redox reactions. in one reaction the learners observed a small boat made out of an aluminium foil disappear as it was floating in a solution of copper (ii) sulphate and in the other reaction learners collected hydrogen gas in balloons from the reaction between zinc and hydrochloric acid. they then tested the hydrogen gas with a flame to get a popping sound. learners wore safety goggles and aprons. the teacher was in a lab coat. the class was of about 22 learners. the evidence in the extract indicates that resources for science teaching and learning were available in the school. there is evidence that the teachers and the learners used the materials for teaching and learning activities. in addition to the science laboratory, virtual laboratories were also available. the physical sciences teacher pst said the following about the existence of virtual laboratories, we have a simulator, the phet program from the internet. we use the phet. we use those simulations in class for the kids and me as well and it helps with other problems as well yes. the mathematics teacher mt also indicated that the school had sufficient resources. these included human resources with several heads of departments. below is an extract of the conversation that the researcher had with mt. interviewer: are you happy with the resources you have in mathematics? mt: we have lots of resources but what i can also tell you is that our department is broken up into five little departments, with a head. the grade 8s, all the teachers teaching grade 8 is one umbrella, how do you say it in english? that makes the group even smaller and accessible both teachers perceived the resources to be adequate for the needs of teaching and learning in science and mathematics. ensuring that teachers had enough resources to execute their duties and complete tasks was one of the ways to demonstrate managerial leadership in the school. the extract from the interview with the mathematics teachers was suggestive 104 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) of distributed leadership practices in which there were several smaller departments by grade for example. school-based professional development on mastery of content the teachers mentioned that school-based professional development was an ingrained exercise within their daily activities. the head of department for science pointed out that it was her duty to make sure teachers are assisted with mastery of content. the following interview extract shows that she had 25 years of teaching experience at the time of the interview and used that experience to mentor other teachers. hod: i’ve been an hod since 1990 so it’s been 25 years you know interviewer: so what can you say are the roles of hods, what are you doing as an hod? especially in mathematics and science hod: yeah, yeah, the real important thing is to look at the standard of the teaching and learning of everybody. i’m only hod for grade 10-12 physical sciences at the moment and really it’s imperative for me to make sure that all the teachers know the content, they can discipline the learners and they can put empathy within the learners, the standards of learning is very important so the whole story is on a high standard and that’s about it. the mathematics teacher also indicated how the teachers helped each other with the content. the following interview extract demonstrates how having many teachers of mathematics in one school who were working in one building facilitated the discussions on content. interviewer: you see with teaching there are many things that are encountered, for example the learners and whether it is a change in curriculum, do you get assistance somehow to understand things, and how is it easy to get any kind of help? mt: it’s very easy here because we are 13 in the maths department and we work together very, very [emphasis] well. we stand outside the classes. all our maths classes are in one building so during breaks and when the children come to class in between lessons, we stand outside and we ask questions. no it’s very easy and um our union [teachers’ union] has created an activity book for the year which has helped a lot. school-based professional development was a demonstration of active instructional leadership facilitated by the heads of departments and through teacher interaction. the mathematics teacher also gave an indication of how a teachers’ union facilitated professional development for the teachers at the end of the extract. professional development organised by a teachers’ labour union it looked as if the teachers in the school belonged to one teachers’ union that catered for some afrikaans medium schools similar to this particular school that we studied. the mathematics teacher went further to describe the kind of support the teachers received from the teachers’ labour union after the researcher probed for more information in the interview extract below. interviewer: so what kind of support do you get from the union? mt: worksheets and question papers whatever you ask them, they will reply the same day and help you, with whatever your problems is. 105 tsakeni & jita school leadership practices for science and mathematics... the professional development role of the teachers’ union was also confirmed by the viceprincipal in the following interview extract. vp: there are a lot changes that came along in the 20 years and luckily the department and the unions had some courses for the change in the syllabus. we sent out teachers to those development sessions to get used to the new system and the new syllabus. we sent them for those workshops to go and learn more and at school we have staff meetings as well so that if they have questions or people have questions we discuss such situations in the staffroom and the meetings. interviewer: are you saying the teachers’ union is involved in the professional development of the teachers? vp: yes it is the teachers’ union, we are part of the south african um! they conduct workshops for the different subjects. the above evidence was an indication of an active systems-based leadership. the systems-based leadership also happened at another level through district and cluster based professional development. district-based professional development focusing on policy and scheduling of work the district-based professional development focused mostly on policy interpretation and scheduling of work. this finding was gleaned from the interview extract below with the physical sciences teacher. interviewer: so in cluster meetings what do you do? pst: in cluster meetings, usually our facilitator goes through certain sections whereby she finds um what we might still need to develop in, it’s not like a workshop it’s only mentioning like in this section you must pay attention to this. it’s quick and it’s not a whole thing. cluster meetings are all about dates and when we are writing exams and all of those things. it’s not workshop related. interviewer: not workshop related? so the workshops that you receive are from within? pst: yeah we discuss amongst ourselves. i just passed one of my colleagues in the hall and we quickly discussed the thing and it is 2 minutes and it’s finished. sometimes it’s through corridor meetings and at times we sit and we discuss a certain aspect. the vice principal (vp) further explained that the district activities focused on monitoring assessments through moderation of test papers and marked learners’ scripts. he said, mostly at our school we’ve got sessions, so moderators at times and the different facilitators come long to the school, not all the subjects every time so there is a process and they’ve got to visit every school at a certain time. so they are visiting us and all the assessments should be sent at one stage to the district moderation session so the people in our cluster or circuit are moderating and we are discussing such situations at the meetings on how we should implement new developments. that’s what the district does. the participation in district activities was another demonstration of systems leadership in addition to the union activities. 106 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) managing school activities to protect teaching time in a demonstration of managerial leadership to protect teaching time the hod explained how the school ensured that the 35 minutes of class time are optimally utilised in the following interview excerpt. interviewer: how do you ensure that learning is taking place because our concern is that learning should take place, if it is happening how is the principal involved? hod: i think in our context, learning is happening here 35 minutes of each period 8 times a day. that’s all we do. we have to be in class on time when the bell rings. there is nobody that’s not in his/her class. i’ve been to a class just know, half an hour ago and we are teaching as from the beginning to the end of the year. the notion of class time protection was reiterated by the vice-principal of the school when he said the following, so we using all the time we have and we don’t mess around with time. our academic time is very important, so we keep to our timetable. we keep to our time so that the kids can go to class on time and do what is expected of them. enacted school culture for high-stakes testing the deputy principal outlined what he believed is a school culture that enabled learners to do well in science and mathematics. he mentioned the nature of learners who were eager to obtain good marks, teachers who were willing to support the learners and protection of teaching time. interviewer: so i think i’ve met the right person here being a vice principal and also a physical science teacher. so what is crucial about the school’s vision and mission for science and mathematics in the school and what you wish your learners’ performance to be? vp: as i said it is the culture of the school for learners to want to study and they want to do good and want to get good marks. then as teachers we get them on the way and give them direction on where to go… the kids compete for top academic positions. they are working each other out and they want to learn so it is nice in our school. we just have to manage it but as a school we want 100% pass rate, we want the most distinctions we can get from the school, every year and the kids know they have to respond to it. in addition to instilling a culture to achieve high performance in science and mathematics through the learners, new teachers were also inducted into the culture by the hods. on being asked about how the school communicated the vision of the school for science and mathematics the vice-principal said the following, yeah you see that’s part of the schools culture, so mainly the head of departments will be involved in orientating the new staff members, the various science and mathematics teachers and through that we are getting the culture of science and mathematics in our school through the younger teachers. we try to develop them well. the development of a school culture conducive to the learning of science and mathematics was a demonstration of transformational leadership practices. in addition, the influencing of the learners’ and teachers’ values and work ethics towards science and mathematics is evidence of moral and authentic leadership. leadership is value-laden and based on beliefs of individuals (bush & glover, 2014). we interpreted the engagement of the school in a three tier 107 tsakeni & jita school leadership practices for science and mathematics... professional development set-up through the school-based, district-facilitated and teachers’ union facilitated activities as a demonstration of contingent leadership. the professional development activities seemed to complement each other in meeting the teachers’ needs to allow easy access to content enrichment, support for the curriculum and assessment policy implementation and work scheduling and pacing. 5. discussion the study set out to describe how school leadership practices mediated the achievement and maintenance of high science and mathematics achievement using one afrikaans medium and former model c secondary school in one affluent suburb in pretoria. the case study is important because hallinger and heck (2010) observe that schools follow unique trajectories when they conduct activities for school improvement. the findings were made from the participants’ point of view in line with qualitative case study in which data were collected by means of narratives. the use of the integrated school leadership conceptual framework opened up a lens to explore all possible avenues of leadership through which the high learner performance in science and mathematics was influenced. we were able to conclude that the school made use of the integrated leadership model comprising the eight leadership functions mentioned by bush and glover (2014). there was evidence of managerial, distributed which was suggestive of teacher leadership, systems, transformational, instructional, moral and authentic, and contingent leadership. we noted that the use of most of the leadership functions contributed to the construction of the school’s leadership for science and mathematics. in addition, the leadership functions were performed through six leadership practices that were highlighted for having an influence on school’s science and mathematics high achievement record. these leadership practices were (1) mobilisation of resources for science and mathematics, (2) school-based professional development for mastery of content, (3) teachers’ union facilitated professional development, (4) district-based professional development focusing on work scheduling and policy implementation, (5) protection of teaching and learning time for science and mathematics, and (6) an enacted school culture for high-stakes testing to ensure improved learner achievement in science and mathematics. there were significant efforts to mobilise resources for effective science and mathematics teaching and learning. the resources included a significant human capital base in a demonstration of managerial leadership to enable teachers to complete their tasks (bush & glover, 2014). in addition, managerial leadership was demonstrated through efforts to protect teaching and learning time by making sure that the timetable is respected by both the teachers and the learners. maringe et al. (2015) observe that failure to protect the time for teaching and learning is one of the factors that lead to poor learner performance in south african schools. the school engaged in professional development for the teachers at three identified levels. there was a significant drive to ensure mastery of content by the teachers through school-based professional development entrenched as a school culture. the school-based professional development was a demonstration of instructional leadership activities facilitated by a mix of the positional, distributed and teacher leadership set-ups. the creation of sub-divisions headed by different teachers under a department ensured the practice of leadership spread over several individuals and teacher leadership. harris (2003) propounds that there is an overlap between distributed leadership and teacher leadership. professional development was also facilitated by a systems leadership through the district and a teachers’ union based activities. the districts were mostly responsible for ensuring the implementation of the curriculum and assessment policies through scheduling of work and 108 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) moderation activities. the teachers’ union engaged the teachers in professional development activities by providing some resources in electronic forms and through content mastery enrichment activities. the district and teachers’ union facilitation of professional development for the school was a demonstration of both instructional and systems leadership. the use of a three tier professional development was evidence of contingency leadership to make sure that the teachers optimally received the necessary support. the professional development presented itself as a unique response to particular support needs that the teachers required. finally, transformational leadership was demonstrated through an enacted school culture responsive to the high-stakes environment by ensuring high performance in science and mathematics. the school instilled suitable attitudes, values and work ethics for science and mathematics achievement in learners. the teachers were also inducted to support the learners and maintain the school culture. the development of values and work ethics were a demonstration of moral and authentic leadership. through this case study we explored how leadership functions and leadership practices can be used by a school to achieve high learner performance in science and mathematics in high-stakes testing environments. although the findings of the study are limited to a context, they serve as an example of how schools can use most of the leadership functions to survive the high-stakes testing environments. 6. conclusion the provision of sufficient resources and protection of teaching time supported managerial leadership efforts that ensured the completion of tasks by the teachers and learners. the use of a three tier fit-for-purpose professional development set-up through school-based, districtfacilitated and teachers’ union facilitated activities worked to meet the teachers’ needs for content enrichment; curriculum and assessment policy sense-making and implementation; and work-scheduling and pacing. the enactment of a school culture to achieve and maintain high learner achievements in science and mathematics was made possible by instilling appropriate attitudes and work ethics in both the teachers and the learners through transformational and moral and authentic leadership functions. the study recommends further research on how teachers’ labour unions can be effective players and stakeholders for school improvement in other school contexts. 7. acknowledgements this study was funded by the national research foundation (nrf) of south africa. references bush, t. & glover, d. 2014. school leadership models: what do we know? school leadership and management, 34(5), 553-571. https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2014.928680 govender, n., grobler, b. & mestry, r. 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education project, university of cape town. ndlovu, m.c. 2011. re-envisioning the scholarship of engagement: lessons from a universityschool partnership project for mathematics and science teaching. south african journal of higher education, 25(7), 1397-1415. rhodes, c. & brundrett, m. 2009. leadership development and school improvement. educational review, 61(4), 361-374. https://doi.org/10.1080/00131910903403949 tsakeni, m. & jita, l. 2017. followership and sustainability of school leadership for science and mathematics: a distributive perspective. journal of education, 69, 239-255. valentine, j.w. & prater, m. 2011. instructional, transformational, and managerial leadership and student achievement: high school principals make a difference. nassp bulletin, 95(1), 5-30. https://doi.org/10.1177/0192636511404062 van der voort, g. & wood, l. 2014. assisting school management teams to construct their improvement plan: an action learning approach. south african journal of education, 34(3), 1-7. https://doi.org/10.15700/201409161046 visser, m., juan, a. & feza, n. 2015. home and school resources as predictors of mathematics performance in south africa. south african journal of education, 35(1), 1-10. https://doi. org/10.15700/201503062354 https://doi.org/10.1080/1363243032000112801 https://doi.org/10.1080/00131881.2013.801243 https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143217728084 https://doi.org/10.1177/1741143215570303 https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2014.0061 https://doi.org/10.18052/www.scipress.com/ilshs.4.35 https://doi.org/10.1080/18146627.2011.618650 https://doi.org/10.1080/00131910903403949 https://doi.org/10.1177/0192636511404062 https://doi.org/10.15700/201409161046 https://doi.org/10.15700/201503062354 https://doi.org/10.15700/201503062354 _hlk2004267 _goback 202020 38(2): 20-35 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) leading with meaning: why diversity, equity and inclusion matters in us higher education abstract in this paper, i review some recent research findings that demonstrate the need to address issues of diversity, equity and inclusion in us higher education contexts so that educational leaders can live out the espoused values of their institutions as they work to transform students into responsible citizens. articles were selected for review with the intent of painting a picture of how diversity, equity and inclusion work being done across an institution can shape the experiences of persons of colour at these institutions. these findings highlight the need for academic leaders to consider how to best embody the mission and vision of their institutions as they frame diversity issues for the campus community with a few additional considerations specific to religiously affiliated institutions. keywords: diversity, equity, inclusion, leadership in higher education, united states 1. introduction in academic leadership and governance of higher education, hendrickson, lane, harris and dorman (2013) argue that institutional decisions, adaptations and activities of successful academic leaders need to be mission and value focused. academic institutions value autonomy and expertise in decision-making, which necessitates that academic leaders “create and foster democratic partnerships with myriad constituents” (hendrickson et al., 2013: 2) and organise their activities around a shared vision based on institutional mission and values. mission statements are meant “to provide motivation, general direction, an image of the company’s character, and a tone, or set of attitudes, through which actions are guided” (hurt, 1992: 35). educational institutions that are missiondriven prioritise initiatives and activities that support the institution’s mission. many higher education institutions in the united states (us), particularly those institutions that have been historically white (hwi) or predominantly white (pwi), recognise diversity, equity and inclusion as essential to their institutional missions, creating programmes and departments dedicated to increasing diversity, promoting author: r.m. barnett1 affiliation: 1university of dayton doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38. i2.02 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(2): 20-35 published: 04 december 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 212020 38(2): 21-35 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 barnett leading with meaning: why diversity, equity and inclusion matters equity and enhancing inclusion. in a 2012 study of 80 us higher education institutions, 75% included the term “diversity” within their mission statements (wilson, meyer, & mcneal, 2012). however, “supporting a cosmetic desire for inclusion … only serves to make the university appear inclusive but does not illustrate a true commitment to students of color” (robertson, bravo & chaney, 2014: 14). it seems that institutional commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion at many predominantly white institutions (pwis) can be inauthentic given the extent of research documenting the negative experiences of students of colour at pwis in the united states (e.g. engstrom & tinto, 2010; morrison, 2010; robertson et al., 2104; saufley, cowan & blake, 1983; smith, allen & danley, 2007). students of colour at pwis perceive campus climates as less welcoming and tolerant of diversity than white students and efforts to increase diversity, equity and inclusion on campus as institutional rhetoric (harper & hurtado, 2007). the aim of this paper is to examine how what institutions in the united states are doing to advance social justice outcomes through infusing diversity, equity and inclusion into academic and social institutional contexts can shape the perceptions of students of colour at these institutions. a small sample of 12 articles were selected for this review to be examined in-depth to tell a story of how diversity, equity and inclusion work being done across an institution can shape the experiences of persons of colour at these institutions. in order to better contextualise the experiences of students of colour, this review includes a sampling of research in three key areas: infusing social justice topics into the curriculum; improving educational outcomes and minimising negative experiences for persons of colour on these campuses and improving relationships between diverse peers. as a higher education practitioner at a catholic campus in the united states, how to systemically address issues of diversity, equity and inclusion on a catholic campus community are also explored. 2. social justice in the curriculum many institutions of higher education in the us have been infusing social justice topics into curricular opportunities, but which among them are the most meaningful or impactful for students? krings, austic, gutiérrez and dirksen (2015) investigated the impact of service learning (sl), intergroup dialogue (igd) and social justice (sj) course curriculum on political participation, civic engagement and multicultural activism. their sample included 653 students who were mostly female (61.7%), white (50%) and middle class (53.4%) from one large midwestern university. they used a cross-sectional, quasi-experimental research design with repeated measures to evaluate the extent to which student exposure to sl, igd or sj courses prepared them for active participation in an increasingly multicultural world. analyses compared intervention (sl, igd, sj course) to non-intervention (intro to psych course) groups on preand post-test responses on three dependent variables: political participation; civic engagement and multicultural activism. the researchers held race, gender and socioeconomic status constant. results confirmed a significant intervention effect on overall commitment to collective action (f(1, 622) = 13.79, p < .001), with specific intervention effects on political participation (f(1, 622) = 16.38, p < .001), civic engagement (f(1,622) = 3.19, p < .05), and multicultural activism (f(1,622) = 8.99, p < .001). while the non-intervention group showed no significant change in their orientation toward collective action, the intervention groups showed significant changes in political participation and multicultural activism (p < .05). krings et al. (2015) found no significant change in collective action orientation within the sl group, perhaps because these students were already highly oriented toward collective action. igd participants experienced significant change in all three dependent variables (p < http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 222020 38(2): 22-35 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) .05), while students in sj courses had significant changes in their orientation toward political participation (p < .05) and multicultural activism (p < .01). these findings clearly show that mere college matriculation is inadequate to address issues of increased collective action and democratic participation. while the authors believe the study to be large and diverse, it drew only on students from one university and therefore these results may not generalise to other institutions and contexts. however, these results suggest that a more nuanced look at how sl, igd and sj education can impact student orientation toward diversity, equity and inclusion issues is warranted. the researchers suggested that future research could include random assignment to course type to minimise the self-selection bias to course type, but this may be impractical. researchers could examine the effects of course content, structure, experiential learning components and opportunities to engage in discussions and reflect on course content to see how they may orient students toward collective action across multiple universities to identify generalisable findings of what course experiences lead to achieving collective action outcomes. kilgo (2015) employed data from the wabash national study of liberal arts education (wns) to understand effects of sl on undergraduate student intercultural effectiveness. she used a longitudinal design with preand post-tests to measure changes in cognitive and psychological outcomes. the study included students (n=1934) from 17 us colleges and universities varying in both size and student selectivity. intercultural effectiveness was measured using the short form of the miville-guzman universality-diversity scale (m-guds), which measures awareness as well as potential acceptance of the similarities and differences in others characterised by interrelated cognitive, behavioural and affective components (fuertes, miville, mohr, sedlacek & gretchen, 2000). variables were dichotomised for gender (male/female), race (white/students of colour), socio-economic status (received federal grants/did not), institution type (regional/research or liberal arts), and sl participation (yes/ no); the researchers also included a continuous variable for number of diversity courses taken in the model. pre-college levels of intercultural effectiveness were controlled by including pre-test measures and covariates (racial composition of high school, academic ability, academic motivation, volunteerism and teacher interactions outside of class). students rated courses across seven good practice measures, including: quality of non-classroom faculty interactions; teaching clarity; academic challenge; integrative learning; cooperative learning; diversity experiences and positive interactions with diverse peers. results indicated a strong, positive effect of sl on student intercultural effectiveness. however, this effect became non-significant when four good practice measures – academic challenge, integrative learning, diversity experiences and positive interactions with diverse peers – were added to the model. kilgo’s findings suggest that it is not the mere experience of sl, but rather how it is structured around good practice, that leads to increased intercultural competency. holsapple (2012) reviewed 55 published empirical studies to better understand student outcomes related to participating in credit-bearing sl courses at us institutions. he coded articles based on field/discipline, participants, student characteristics, number of institutions included in study, community service experience and methods/data used in the study. he then used an open-coding process to indicate how authors described their results and how student voices were included in the paper. this process generated 197 individual codes grouped into six main themes: tolerance of difference, stereotype confrontation, recognition of universality, interactions across difference, knowledge about the served population and belief in the value http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 232020 38(2): 23-35 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 barnett leading with meaning: why diversity, equity and inclusion matters of diversity. forty-five studies presented the effects of a particular sl course or programme at one institution; the other 10 studies included students from 2 to 388 schools. confronting stereotypes was commonly observed across studies (n=32). holsapple (2012) invited further research that addresses the lack of theoretical models, programme details, external validity and data trustworthiness to answer more fine-grained questions about what specific aspects of sl lead to specific diversity outcomes. eyler and giles (1999) interviewed 133 students at 12 institutions and found a reduction of negative stereotypes as the most common outcome from sl experiences. knowledge about the served population also increased (n=28) and was more likely when the population was international or immigrant. eighteen studies found evidence that student belief in the value of diversity increased after sl experiences. eleven studies found students increased their tolerance for, interactions across, and ability to find common ground with people who appeared at first to be different. astin and sax (1998) found sl participants (n=2000+; across 42 institutions) improved their ability to get along with people of different races and cultures. this review mostly included sl programmes unique to their institutions and that hinders the generalisation of these findings to other institutions. unlike the sl programmes that are often unique to institutional settings, many igd courses are designed following a model put forth by the university of michigan, which facilitates comparison across institutions. the university of michigan igd model: brings together students from different social identity groups over a sustained period of time to understand their commonalities and differences, examine the nature and impact of social inequalities, and explore ways of working together toward greater equality and justice (zuniga et al., 2007:2). gurin-sands and colleagues (2012) examined how students wrote about their igd experiences, analysing papers (n = 739) written in 52 igd courses from nine universities to determine how igd encourages social action and collaboration with diverse others. although these courses were taught by different professors at various universities, the igd shared many features, such as a balance of men/women or white/black students in the gender/race courses, similar content and processes across courses, and the same final paper requirement. within each final paper, students were asked to address their hopes and fears about the dialogue; understanding of their own and others’ identities, power, privilege and inequality; how conflict was managed through dialogue and the class skills they planned to apply in society. the researchers looked for references to course concepts and coded these responses to test a theoretical model of factors leading to student discussion of actions in their papers. the researchers coded 10% of papers twice with an average inter-rater reliability of 88%. the 11 dimensions coded included: pedagogical features (readings and structured interactions); communication processes (engaging self, appreciating difference, critical reflection, alliance building); psychological processes (emotions, active thinking, and politicised identities); and outcomes (collaborating with others and educating others). these dimensions and dialogue topics (gender/race) were added to the model, while controlling for race and gender. gurin-sands et al. (2012) found pedagogy only had indirect effects on educating and collaborating with others, but communication processes had direct and indirect effects. critical reflection was statistically related to educating others (ß = .099, p = 0.01) until psychological processes are added to the model (ß = .065, p = .108). alliance building directly affected educating others (ß = .144, p < .001) and was not reduced when psychological processes http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 242020 38(2): 24-35 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) were considered (ß = .142, p < .001). all three psychological processes directly affected collaborating with others (active thinking ß = .111, p < .01; politicised identity ß = .095, p < .01; emotions ß = .164, p < .001). in this study as well as holsapple’s (2012) review, what students discussed in their papers were used to assess expected future student behaviours. while analysing student papers can lend insight into how students make meaning of their experiences in igd courses, student beliefs about how they will act may not always match up to how students actually act or use the skills they developed in class. papers do offer students a chance to reflect, and what commonly arose is that what and how students are taught impacts what they take away from these experiences. the structure of dialogue courses and facilitators’ trainings must emphasise communication and psychological processes to maximise the potential for students to find value in educating and collaborating with diverse others in society. mayhew and engberg (2010) included data measuring moral reasoning, interactional quality and educational outcomes to build a statistical model that explains which factors lead to development of student moral reasoning. they compared igd to an introductory sociology course, both of which offered similar sj content but differed in how intergroup conflict and difference were addressed and discussed. students were given preand post-tests and completed the defining issues test 2 (rest, narvaez, thoma & bebeau, 1999) to measure moral reasoning. a measure of classroom moral practices designed by mayhew (2005) was also given to students at the end of the course to measure negative interactions with diverse peers. while both groups showed significant developmental gains in moral reasoning, the igd group displayed fewer gains; a chi-square analysis indicated that negative interactions with (racially/ethnically) diverse peers were reported more frequently in the igd courses (m = 0.677, sd = 0.803), t (177), p < 0.001. their between-course model indicated that greater reporting of negative diverse peer interactions significantly reduced moral reasoning development (ß = -0.122, p < 0.05). with no statistically significant cross-product terms, it seems more negative interactions with diverse peers significantly reduced moral reason regardless of race, gender, political orientation, level of cognitive motivation or previous experience in courses with moral emphases. negative peer interactions significantly lowered moral reasoning in sociology but not igd courses, which suggests that not all negative interactions with diverse peers hinder moral reasoning development. course contexts may mitigate the effects negative peer interactions can have on moral reasoning development if these interactions are managed within the learning environment. 3. racial disparities in educational outcomes if negative interactions with racially diverse peers can affect student moral reasoning development, are other racial/ethnic educational outcomes observed as well? martin (2014) examined the effect of student ethnic identity on educational outcomes in a multicultural classroom. the study was conducted at a large public university in new york city that included students enrolled in a multicultural course with focused content on race, ethnicity and identity (n=68); martin also included students enrolled in psychology courses (n=49) as a control. the two groups did not significantly differ demographically, but attrition rate was greater in the psychology courses, which explain the difference in group sizes. students were given preand post-test surveys documented as valid and reliable self-report measures of learning, democratic, intergroup and identity outcomes. although the results did not indicate group differences in learning outcomes, whites in the multicultural course decreased their http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 252020 38(2): 25-35 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 barnett leading with meaning: why diversity, equity and inclusion matters active thinking scores (f (1,108) = 4.62, p < .05). the multicultural group showed greater gains in citizenship engagement (f (1,109) = 9.77, p < .001) and when race was factored in, interactions emerged. whites in the multicultural group increased perspective-taking (f (1,108) = 3.86, p < .05) and their belief that democracy and difference are not incompatible. those in the multicultural course reported greater discussion and interaction with diverse others (f (1,111) =4.77, p <.05), cross-group contact (f (1,106) =6.62, p < .01), and significant gains in understanding ethnic identities (f (1,111) =5.16, p < .05). these findings led martin (2014) to look at identity development in relation to democratic, intergroup and learning outcomes. in the multicultural course, whites with increased identity development increased perspective-taking (r (13) = .73, p < .05) and agreement that conflict was a normal part of democracy (r = .70, p < .01). her results suggest that only white students benefited from taking the multicultural course. although these results are compelling, it is worth noting the sample was relatively small and from one school. roksa, trolian, pascarella, kilgo, blaich, and wise (2017) examined racial inequality in critical thinking skills by using data from the wns of liberal arts education. they used data from 43 us colleges and universities (28 liberal arts, six research and nine regional institutions) and randomly selected participants from large schools or included the entire incoming class from small ones. participant critical thinking skills were measured three times: in the fall and spring of their incoming year as well as in the spring of their fourth year. at those times, students were also asked about their college academic and diversity experiences. their models controlled for critical thinking as well as background characteristics upon entrance to college and used critical thinking as the dependent variable, race as the independent variable and academic as well as diversity experiences as explanatory measures. the number of cases in certain racial groups is a limitation as the researchers did not want to group multiple identities into one, non-white category. also, the wns includes mostly selective, liberal art schools. the researchers also note there is a long-standing debate as to whether standardised tests used to measure critical thinking skills are biased against certain groups due to the limited learning opportunities afforded to them (fischer et al., 1996). results of hierarchical linear models indicate substantial inequality in the development of critical thinking skills between african american and white students (p < .01) and hispanic and white students (p < .1). teaching clarity and organisation significantly related to critical thinking development, but time spent studying did not. most striking in their models was how academic experiences were not as important as diversity experiences in developing critical thinking skills. negative diversity experiences had an inverse yet statistically significant relationship on critical thinking skills, which mostly affected african american and hispanic students because they were disproportionately exposed to negative diversity experiences. in other words, negative diversity experiences may similarly affect all students, but occur most frequently amongst african american as well as hispanic students. 4. negative experiences of racial minorities a major source of negative diversity experiences is a result of microaggressions. microaggressions are the: everyday verbal, nonverbal, and environmental slights, snubs, or insults, whether intentional or unintentional, that communicate hostile, derogatory, or negative messages to target persons based solely upon their marginalized group membership (sue, 2010:3). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 262020 38(2): 26-35 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) boysen (2012) explored teacher and student perceptions of classroom microaggressions. the sample included 222 teachers from 15 institutions in a large state system and 166 students from one medium-sized state college within the large state system. participants were asked to take an online survey and rate their perceptions of microaggressions based on vignettes of a classroom event as if they were in the teacher/student roles in the classroom scenario. students rated the effectiveness of teacher responses to the microaggressions on a 6-point scale (very ineffective to very effective) ranging from ignoring the incident to confronting the student directly. teachers of diversity courses perceived microaggressions more negatively (f (2,312) = 6.43, p = .002) and were more likely to respond to all incidents (all chi-squares > 6.98, all p’s < .008) than non-diversity teachers. diversity teachers rated ignoring microaggressions as significantly less effective than non-diversity teachers and discussion as more effective than non-diversity teachers (p < .05). students tended to perceive all responses except ignoring the incident as effective. while imagined situations may have inflated student and deflated teacher perceptions, these results do suggest that the students and teachers perceive that responding to microaggressions is essential to effective management of these incidents. most students sampled were white and may have different perceptions of how best to handle microaggressions compared to non-white students, but this study highlights the need to train faculty members (especially those teaching non-diversity course content) how to identify and manage classroom microaggressions. what are the consequences for students who are targets of microaggressions? blume, thyken, lovato and denny (2012) examined the relationship between microaggressions and self-reports of alcohol use and anxiety among minority students at a historically white institution (hwi). college students (n=684) aged 18–20 from the hwi were surveyed and 178 self-identified as students of colour (100 african american, 37 asian american, 6 american indian, 35 hispanic/latino). alcohol use was measured using the daily drinking questionnaire (collins, parks & marlatt, 1985) and the rutgers alcohol problem index (white & labouvie, 1989). the beck anxiety inventory (beck, epstein, brown & steer, 1988) was used to assess anxiety symptoms and self-reports of microaggression frequencies experienced by students in the past month and year. the situational confidence questionnaire, short form (annis & davis, 1988), and the general perceived self-efficacy (jerusalem & schwarzer, 1992) scale measured levels of self-efficacy to cope with high risk drinking and anxiety-inducing situations. students of colour reported experiencing on average 290.55 microaggressions in the past 90 days and report significantly more microaggressions than whites in the past month (t (592) = -3.292, p = .001). while no independent variables were significant predictors of anxiety or binge drinking, both models were significant overall (anxiety: = .20; p < .001; binge drinking = .11, p < .01). when the interaction of microaggressions and general self-efficacy were removed from both models, lower perceived self-efficacy scores and higher reports of microaggressions were significantly associated with greater anxiety (= .20, p < .01) and binge drinking (= .10, p < .01). greater binge drinking, greater microaggression self-reports as well as the interaction of self-efficacy and microaggressions were significantly associated with increased negative alcohol related consequences (= .28, p < .001). while methodological limits prevent broad generalisation, these findings demonstrate how students of colour may be at greater health risks at hwi due to their potential for encountering increased incidents of microaggressions at hwi. given the impact of negative interactions with diverse peers on learning and the health risks associated with exposure to microaggressions on campus, how can we improve http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 272020 38(2): 27-35 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 barnett leading with meaning: why diversity, equity and inclusion matters relationships between diverse peers on college campuses? glass, glassf and lynch (2016) examined the relationship between perceptions of affordance for interaction with diverse peers and patterns of student engagement among students at seven similarly situated universities. the researchers used the global perspective inventory (gpi) to identify seven universities of similar type, size, levels of structural racial diversity (moderate) and opportunities for crosscultural peer engagement. they invited students (n=16,684) from said schools to complete an online questionnaire. three validated construct measures of student engagement (multicultural curricular engagement, co-curricular engagement and cross-cultural peer engagement) were combined with perceptions of affordances for interaction with diverse peers as dependent variables in a mancova analysis with race/ethnicity as the independent variable. glass et al. (2016) found a small but significant effect of race on student engagement factors and perceptions of affordances for interaction with diverse peers. whites reported higher levels of curricular engagement, greater levels of campus support for diversity, and less openness to cross-cultural interaction than their peers from all other racial groups. students were connected through a network analysis based on their perceptions of affordances for diverse peer interactions, which identified a cluster of core and fringe students with little mixing between them. this pattern was strikingly different from typical network analyses, which led glass et al. (2016) to conclude that institutional context was central to network creation among students. greater engagement between core and fringe students through curricular contexts such as igd and co-curricular contexts could promote greater exchange of diverse information and perspectives and ultimately more nuanced and independent minded views of the campus context (locks et al., 2008). 5. institutional authenticity if institutional contexts have the power to frame student network creations on campus and greater mixing of core and fringe students can decrease negative diverse peer interactions and their deleterious effects on (mostly minority) students, then it behoves academic leaders to identify the lived and espoused beliefs pervasive within institutional culture surrounding issues of diversity, equity and inclusion. hoffman and mitchell (2016) used discourse analysis to critically assess administrator responses to student activism on a large public university campus; whether their responses conflicted with institutional values of equity and diversity and how student campus leaders perceived their responses. using an intrinsic case study design, the researchers analysed publicly available campus documents, advertisements, transcripts of public conversations, all-campus emails from administrators describing policy changes resulting from activistu efforts as well as the student-maintained website and blog for activistu. they also interviewed the chief diversity officer, chief student affairs officer, and seven student leaders of minoritised campus groups. hoffman and mitchell employed a three-step coding process for textual data and figured worlds of “antagonism” and “unwavering support for equity and diversity” (2016:282) emerged, which was then used as a lens to code interview transcriptions. their analyses showed “the institutional responses to activistu’s student activism on campus often produced a climate for diversity that directly countered espoused institutional and departmental values” (ibid:283) and that vague notions of academic excellence and failure to define diversity led to paying lip service to these issues while reinforcing institutional power dynamics. administrators diminished their role as institutional authorities by claiming that diversity and equity were “everyone’s ongoing responsibility,” thereby placing additional burdens on already minoritised http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 282020 38(2): 28-35 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) individuals. students were further minimised when their request to meet off-campus to reduce power relations was denied by an administrator who said they were “getting caught up in minutiae”. activistu members tried to use institutional processes to address their concerns but routinely were denied the opportunity to meet and discuss their concerns with administrators, which reinforced institutional power while student frustrations mounted. this article uses perceptions of minoritised students to develop an argument that demonstrates how institutional authority is reinforced through specific actions and rhetoric at one institution. if staying true to institutional mission is necessary for successful diversity efforts and the “whats” and “hows” of doing diversity work are integral to its success on campus, then peer institutions are excellent sources from which to draw on successful integration of diversity and equity issues through institutional mission. as one example, st. john’s university is a catholic peer institution to bellard university (bu) and as such is an excellent case to compare to other catholic universities in the united states. the sinatra and mayer (2012) article chronicles the history of st. john’s and the formation of its vincentian institute for social action as a means of integrating scholarly work within a community service framework to positively affect community agencies. in 2010, over $1.5 million in funds were invested in the institute to develop the ozanam scholars program; academic service learning; a faculty research consortium (frc); student retreats; conference presentations; international service; institutional staffing and additional programme costs. sinatra and maher (2012) investigated the service impact of the institute’s major programme components through outcomes-based quantitative and qualitative research. data were collected for the as-l programme, ozanam scholars program, and the community partners research program and included survey results from students, faculty, community partners and clients as well as a more in-depth evaluation of the newly instituted ozanam scholars program. sinatra and maher (2012) found that the formation of the vincentian institute for social action was key to the success of its social justice programmes because it served as a central management agency through which students, faculty, administrators and partners could collaborate to support the vincentian mission. the authors suggested this as a first step to any similarly situated institution to consider strengthening their efforts, as long as the financial and staff resources are available to advance the mission and vision of the institute. they stressed the importance of creating “win-win” situations where everyone (faculty, staff, students, community partners, and clients) gets something out of the social justice programme as academic integrity is preserved and mission-oriented outcomes are met through collaborative partnerships for the common good. sinatra and maher (2012) suggested offering rewards or incentives to create buy-in for faculty and students and determining how to best evaluate the success of these programmes. 6. key points in the findings the key overall finding from the 12 articles highlighted in this paper is that educating students toward outcomes that promote diversity, equity and inclusion-related values is highly complex and context dependent. if we do not consider the diverse needs of our student body, we may design curriculum that benefits one (majority, white) identity group over another (minority, non-white) group (martin, 2014). evidence seems to exist that sl programmes can lead to the attainment of student diversity outcomes (holsapple, 2012), but those effects may be tied to the inclusion of best practices such as academic challenge, integrative learning, diversity experiences, and positive interactions with diverse peers in those experiential learning opportunities (kilgo, 2015). we also cannot ignore the possibility that students who choose to http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 292020 38(2): 29-35 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 barnett leading with meaning: why diversity, equity and inclusion matters enrol in sl programmes may already be more oriented toward collective action, as are some students who choose to enrol in other social justice courses such as igd (krings et al., 2015). igd courses can also lead to students attaining educational outcomes toward collective action (krings et al., 2015) and communication processes such as alliance building may have a direct effect on educating others and psychological processes such as active thinking and engaging politicised identity and emotions directly affected collaborating with others (gurinsands et al., 2012). in this way, it becomes clear that it is not just what is taught to students but how it is taught that determines whether desired educational outcomes (such as commitment to social or collective action) will be achieved. furthermore, it is not just academic experiences that affect a student’s ability to achieve desired educational outcomes. the quality of diverse peer interactions greatly influences a student’s ability to develop moral reasoning (mayhew & engberg, 2010) and critical thinking skills (roska et al., 2016). faculty should respond to classroom microaggressions (boysen, 2012) as these subtle prejudices put its victims at increased (mental) health risks (blume et al., 2012). faculty, staff and administrators have an opportunity to model what they expect to see in the student body and by effectively managing negative interactions between students (and others, if such occasions arise), they set the stage for doing more than paying lip service as they truly make diversity everyone’s business (hoffman & mitchell, 2016). 7. discussion of key findings as it relates to mission, adaptation, and governance taken together, these twelve studies highlight how staying true to mission, maintaining good governance processes and adapting to a changing landscape converge on best practices for successful diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives on college campuses. institutional leaders at predominantly white institutions seeking to embed diversity, equity and inclusion into their mission, vision or values, must engage in a whole-hearted commitment to examine historical legacies, epistemological and societal racisms that pervade their institutional policies and practices (brayboy, 2003). academic leaders must do more than pay lip service to diversity, equity and inclusion issues on campus (hoffman & mitchell, 2016). for academic leaders to successfully integrate mission and social justice outcomes, they must listen to students, faculty, staff and other relevant stakeholders. leaders must listen to concerns that their actions do not line up with espoused institutional values and they must reassess how they can adjust their responses. if notions of academic excellence and diversity are unclear, administrators must lead conversations to define them. administrators cannot diminish their role as institutional authorities by claiming that diversity and equity are everyone’s business. if institutional processes routinely deny opportunities for individuals or groups to be heard, more equitable processes are in order. but leaders need followers and even the greatest academic leaders with the best visions will fail without support from faculty, staff, students and stakeholders. for a leader’s actions to stay true to mission while broadening constituent support, they need to find ways to focus mutually beneficial goals (between academic leaders and faculty, staff, students and external stakeholders) on institutional mission and values. good governance practices will help academic leaders achieve buy-in as they create democratic partnerships and encourage collaboration among constituents. funding an institute for diversity, equity and inclusion and creating win-win situations where everyone gets something out of our striving for the common good (sinatra & maher, 2012) may help centre efforts for students, faculty, staff and community http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 302020 38(2): 30-35 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) partners at catholic universities where these values are supported and strengthened. if academic leaders hold themselves to high standards and act with true democratic intentions (hendrickson et al., 2013) while adhering to the three p’s of persistence, patience and process (bolman & gallos, 2011), they will be embodying a democratic process as they create a shared vision and not just paying lip service to espoused higher education values. what does embodying the mission and good governance practices look like for creating a shared vision around diversity, equity and inclusion issues on campus? first and foremost, it means having diverse voices at all levels of shared governance and ensuring they are heard. this requires including representatives across stakeholder groups and ensuring all perspectives are valued and respected throughout the governance process. the institution must also have an effective organisational structure that empowers diversity officers to perform their work, ensuring issues of diversity, equity and inclusion may be heard at the highest levels of the organisation. faculty must also be included, as administrative authority is constrained by norms of autonomy and shared governance in higher education. while some may believe faculty are more interested in preserving the status quo, research suggests that shared governance can work when faculty are brought into decision-making roles (hendrickson et al., 2013). as the makeup of our institutions change, our institutional systems should change with it. adjusting the number of faculty seats on the academic senate to match full-time tenuretrack, full-time non-tenure track and adjunct professors in proportion to their makeup is one way to include greater representation of all faculty interests in decision-making. the best academic leaders will know when to be patient, when to persist and when to trust the process. administrators should use their power and authority to create spaces where democracy plays out, giving a voice to all constituents and encouraging active participation in diversity activities and forums. research on best practices should be considered along with constituent needs and coalesce around institutional mission and a shared institutional vision. mission-driven and democratic institutions survive and weather storms (hendrickson et al., 2013) and adaptation to external environments is integral to survival. to remain relevant, academic leaders must continually assess the issues facing higher education institutions. the board can help inform the president, but the president and other academic leaders must also convey the urgency to adapt to relevant changes on the horizon. many factors contribute to a bu’s shrinking recruitment pool of students, such as its emphasis on catholic identity and traditional instruction, its affordability and declining birth rates in the united states. we must attract students as we retain our reputation as one of the best schools in terms of job placement, since it is a major factor families consider when choosing which university their child should attend. the most diverse incoming first year class was welcomed on campus this year (2020) and we can expect this to be the new normal as we work to increase access and affordability in a changing landscape. university administrators need to ensure a culture and climate amenable to the needs of our increasingly diverse student body is cultivated as we embrace the challenges that will come with this trend. increased diversity will cause greater tension in the short run but can lead to great advantages overall if obstacles can be overcome. no longer can we make assumptions about the typical college student as they vary in race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status and age (hendrickson et al., 2013). student persistence is connected to personal characteristics, organisational factors and individual experiences in and outside the classroom (hendrickson et al., 2013). using technology to create new types of student-faculty learning communities is one way to meet individualised educational needs. while higher education institutions are getting better at identifying students at-risk, it is not clear if schools are offering adequate resources to help them succeed. using technology to http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 312020 38(2): 31-35 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 barnett leading with meaning: why diversity, equity and inclusion matters create new types of student-faculty learning communities is one way to meet individualised educational needs and developing metrics to evaluate these intervention strategies will go a long way in helping determine what strategies are successful. students want and expect diverse collegiate experiences, but they need help navigating these spaces to reduce the likelihood that they will engage in negative interactions with diverse peers. faculty, especially those without a social justice or diversity orientation, may lack skills necessary to identify or effectively manage microaggressions in classroom settings. faculty reward structures could be created that offer opportunities to learn the skills necessary to teach in more diverse classrooms. if faculty do not consider microaggressions academic issues, leaders can point to the negative effects these experiences have on student learning outcomes, which may in turn lead faculty to re-centre the mitigation of these negative classroom events as a means of preserving academic integrity and maximising learning outcomes. it may also be important to remind faculty that learning is affective as well as cognitive (hendrickson et al., 2013). gurin-sands et al. (2012) reminds us of how important affective components are to reaching diversity-related outcomes focused on commitment to social action, as affective and communication processes were the only direct influencers found to influence these educational outcomes. 8. key recommendations for academic leaders • act with true democratic intention – engage the campus community, create spaces where every constituent voice is heard, model the behaviours and attitudes you want to see and facilitate good shared governance processes. • ensure diversity, equity and inclusion is defined around institutional values through an inclusive conversation with campus constituents. • align institutional policies, structures and reward systems to support diversity efforts and encourage new initiatives informed by best practices. • increase diversity recruitment, retention and representation throughout the institution and be cognisant of how structural diversity shapes collegiate experiences for all. • provide resources and incentives for faculty to work towards diversity goals, including encouraging them to create multicultural classroom experiences that support educational learning for all (martin, 2014). • provide adequate resources to at-risk students (including programmes that address potential health risks as well as technology-based student-faculty learning communities) and create metrics to evaluate their effectiveness. • cultivate a culture that welcomes and embraces individuals of diverse backgrounds. 9. gaps, inconsistencies and further research although informative, the research i present here leaves questions unanswered. krings et al. (2015) found intervention groups led to community action outcomes: sj courses led to significant gains in multicultural activism and political participation, igd courses to multicultural activism, political participation and civic engagement, but no gains in sl. further analysis of the data suggested that students in sl (and to some extent igd courses) had higher initial levels of community action outcomes, leading the researchers to believe that self-selection bias may have played a part in their results. when kilgo (2015) looked at the impact of sl, she found a strong positive effect on intercultural effectiveness that became nonsignificant http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 322020 38(2): 32-35 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.02 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) once good practices were factored into the model. martin (2014) found that only whites benefited from a multicultural classroom and gurin-sands et al. (2012) that communication and psychological processes had direct effects on student commitments to social action. taken together, these results suggest that positive gains in diversity-related educational outcomes can be reached if best practices are implemented in the classroom. but if how we do something is just as important as what we do, then these studies leave much to be desired as information is missing about how faculty led discussions, incorporated pedagogy, utilised communication processes and engaged psychological processes in the classroom. furthermore, it is one thing to teach sl to a group of students who are already community action-oriented and another to design classroom experiences that improve student outcomes when the students come into the classroom with different orientations. these results suggest there is still much to learn about how to design curricular experiences (and what factors are relevant to those designs) to create optimal learning environments for all students. future research could investigate how specific course contexts incorporate best practices to create optimal learning environments for all. perhaps more important, the research suggests that negative interactions with diverse peers gets in the way of educational outcomes, such as moral reasoning (mayhew & engberg, 2010) and critical thinking development (roksa et al., 2017). negative interactions can also lead to health risks such as anxiety and binge drinking, especially for students of colour at hwi (blume et al., 2012). increasing interactions between students in the core and fringe through curricular contexts may help (mostly white) students develop appreciation for interacting with diverse others, but then negative interactions, such as microaggressions, must be identified and responded to effectively (boysen, 2012). these findings point to a need for increased faculty training or other strategies, such as inviting trained peer educators to facilitate classroom dialogues and effectively manage microaggressions in the classroom. peer-led dialogues allow truth to emerge between equals as peers collaborate and bring elements of their own identities, experiences and sentiments to their interaction (voorhees & petkas, 2011). researchers could investigate how faculty teaching diversity courses actually manage microaggressions in the classroom as well as actual student perceptions of their effectiveness rather than rely on imagined scenarios (boysen, 2012), which may better inform best practices to engage negative interactions with diverse peers in the classroom. in addition, it may be useful for researchers to look at a variety of igd models to determine whether one is more effective to achieve particular outcomes in certain circumstances or if an overarching best practice can be derived. references annis, h.m. & davis, c.s. 1988. assessment of expectancies. in: d.m. donovan & g.a. marlatt (eds.). assessment of addictive behaviors (pp. 84–111). new york, ny: 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explicit intent to establish a learning environment conducive to the development of vibrant and robust communities of practices (cops). within the higher education context, the explicit articulation of learning design principles as derived from theory is not often offered for dissemination and are regarded as implicit to programme development. this paper begins by exploring the association between cops and learning design; considers various approaches to blended learning; offers a blended learning programme as an exemplar for interrogation and then presents learning design principles that informed the development of vibrant and robust cops within the blended learning programme. placing cops central to the design of the blended learning programme afforded students an authentic learning experience with an opportunity to make design decisions explicit, thereby contributing to the overall impact of the programme in the education sector. four emerging learning design principles that underpin the design decisions in this programme are offered for interrogation: provide opportunities to model professional behaviour; develop social foundations from which to build the cop; sustain guided and self-regulated learning; and realign and reinforce the course objectives. drawing from the knowledge gained in their vibrant and robust cops, institutional leaders – as students in this programme – embraced new models of professional development to bring sustainable change at schools in all districts across south africa. keywords: learning design principles; communities of practice; teacher professional development; blended learning; learning environments; learning design decisions 1. introduction the case examined in this paper is a blended learning programme for professional development of teacher centre managers: managing and leading with digital technologies, where the aim was for these managers (as students in this programme) to learn how to better support teachers in schools in the use of appropriate digital technologies and to enhance teaching and learning in the classroom. the programme aimed to deliver a contextually relevant course to enable education officials to lead and manage author: jacqueline batchelor1 affiliation: 1university of johannesburg email: jbatchelor@uj.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v38i1.1 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(1): 1-15 published: 11 june 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6837-3864 mailto:jbatchelor@uj.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 2 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 2-15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 change and complexity by harnessing the potential of digital technologies. it also aimed to provide education officials with a university-accredited qualification that can contribute towards their individual lifelong learning pathways and continued professional development. the design of the short learning programme (slp) purposively created opportunities for participants to interact with one another and with faculty members within a vibrant and robust cop. the design also served to accommodate both a geographically dispersed student cohort, and individuals with challenging work schedules. learning design principles supporting the development of a vibrant and robust cop is central to the authenticity of the actual programme. the reason for focusing on the design rather than having an emphasis on the findings, is that the role of design is often underplayed in academic reporting. in this respect, particular consideration is given to the design principles derived from theory that underpin the establishment of vibrant and robust communities of practice in this blended learning programme. 2. learning design meets communities of practice communities of practice as a concept was first introduced by lave and wenger (1990), in their seminal work “situated learning,” to position legitimate peripheral participation within communities with differing levels of competency. this type of apprenticeship, in the form of peripheral participation is seen as an appropriate mechanism of induction into a community of practice with a strong emphasis on cultivating a learning culture amongst participants to aid the development of mastery within a specific domain (bradbury & middlemiss, 2015). being the novice or the apprentice in any given situation reinforces a position of vulnerability and, thus, navigating your way in this social setting is ultimately driven by the value proposition of belonging to a specific cop (lave, 2009). impression management subsequently becomes important for new members as they establish new connections and navigate new interpersonal relationships within the cop. first impressions are often lasting, and novice members tend to be more reticent in their initial engagements. they recognise that their initial interactions influence the group’s perceptions of the value they can bring to the cop. therefore, they carefully craft their image and adjust their interpersonal interactions accordingly. in order to grow a cop and maintain its relevancy, it is essential to recognise how members of a community can form structures to empower each other through collective participation in order to accelerate new members through the induction phase, lessening associated audience anxiety, and encouraging risk-taking and knowledge sharing (lubke & counts, 2007; cowan & mervyn, 2014). baker and beames (2016) assert that learning with others is a social process where individuals collectively engage to share learning and expertise from various cultural and historical contexts. it is because of these diverse backgrounds that sharing among members denotes a level of acceptance that allows the individual to position themselves within a social space (wenger-trayner, fenton-o’creevy, hutchinson, kubiak & wenger-trayner, 2014). another aspect to consider when growing a cop is the dimension of time in the formation and maturation process. novice members initially spend a period simply lurking and observing. these lurkers are “legitimate peripheral members” and usually require the affirmation of more experienced members before they fully commit to the cop. novices need time to grow into experts as they become enculturated into a cop in that “you become a person out of a whole series of experiences over time” (farnsworth, kleanthous, & wenger-trayner, 2016:11). time also allows for a sense of belonging to be cultivated when members commit to each other and realign expectations to remain relevant. this sense of belonging is not about acquiring http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 3 batchelor designing for vibrant and robust communities of practice 2020 38(1): 3-15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 knowledge and skills that can help you in a process of critical decisions making, but more about finding a sense of social belonging and using the acquired knowledge as members transition through various levels of mastery, thereby strengthening social cohesion even further (wenger-trayner et al., 2014). furthermore, findings of a number of studies seem to indicate that social and emotional connectedness need to be actively encouraged and fostered, especially in a blend of learning environments (bower, dalgarno, kennedy, lee & kenney, 2015). wenger (1998) views cops as being made up of three distinct components: • a domain where members share the same interests and are committed to the domain. knowledge shared in the domain is dynamic and can be both explicit and tacit as well as social and individual. the domain therefore gives a group its identity and distinguishes it from an informal club of friends (nistor, daxecker, stanciu & diekamp, 2015); • a community with members who interact and actively share information with each other, and where participation and affirmation become a negotiated experience in knowledge construction. the quality of the relationships among members tends to reinforce the social cohesion in the community (farnsworth et al., 2016); • a practice orientated environment with members as practitioners developing a shared repertoire of resources that include helpful tools to archive and curate information. practice implies knowledge of, and engagement with, a domain to advance knowledge construction (mentis et al., 2016). practice implies doing, and not just dreaming about the idea. a strong cop develops practices that allow members to work together in creating insights and enforces collective practice towards problem solving (holland, 2018). in a collaborative learning space, decisions are informed by the knowledge, skills and attitudes of participants as well as their reasons for cooperating. as such, cops have become a popular mechanism to scaffold professional development among practitioners. both the concept of cops and the enactment thereof create value when used to explore, contest and refine ideas – both collectively and individually. cops are also useful as a knowledge management tool in collaborative communities (blackmore, foster, collins & ison, 2017). in terms of professional development, the advantages of participating in a cop, apart from peer-modelling where participants share resources through curation, include refinement of their beliefs and ideas. members collectively refine ideas and make joint decisions regarding the scope and relevance of their community. in addition, if participants in a cop derive value from shared experiences, they are more likely to adopt and advocate models of teaching and learning strategies in which discussion and sharing of ideas are central. the value of a cop is that multiple perspectives and experiences collectively shape the nature of the collaboration and knowledge sharing as members transition through various levels of mastery. 3. approaches to blended learning as a mode of programme delivery blended learning can be described as hybrid learning, flexible learning or even mixed-mode learning; it accommodates synchronous and asynchronous communication as well as formal and informal forms of learning. blended learning addresses the need to provide a variety of coherent measures at the pedagogical, organisational and technical levels to assist students to achieve intended learning outcomes. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 4 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 4-15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 the blend will vary depending on the nature of the discipline, the profile and context of the students, type of learning material, level of interaction required, fidelity and technological solutions available to complement the face-to-face teaching and learning environment. the main tenet of blended learning is to fully exploit the affordances of learning technologies to accommodate and allow different ways for students to engage with curriculum and lecturers whilst demonstrating their learning. with the rapid expansion of blended learning offerings in higher education, there is a growing interest in how cops can further support and sustain learning beyond course boundaries (halverson, graham, spring, drysdale & henrie, 2014). higher education institutions, making the transition from the more traditional face-to-face mode of delivery to include more elements of open and distance learning, find it a major challenge when confronted with the myriad of choices in terms of pedagogy, technology and disciplinary expectations. in traditional face-to-face environments, educators tend to focus more on traditional teaching patterns, such as the “teach, practice, apply” mode (toetenel & rienties, 2016). in blended and online learning approaches, more consideration is given to create technology mediated learning experiences. alammary, sheard and carbone (2014:443) identified three distinct processes when designing blended learning courses based on the level of changes required in existing offerings: 1. low-impact blend: adding extra activities to an existing course 2. medium-impact blend: replacing activities in an existing course 3. high-impact blend: building the blended course from scratch in the low-impact approach, most course designers simply add technology-mediated instances to their existing course materials without eliminating existing activities. their choices are limited due to their inexperience and lack of knowledge about appropriate technologies and their associated pedagogical affordances. in the medium-impact blend, courses are redesigned to replace face-to-face offerings with online activities. designers make a concerted effort to re-conceptualise learning activities and target key areas that might work better in the online medium. this approach requires long-term planning and is iterative in nature with constant refining of the offering. the high-impact approach, which is the most difficult to apply, requires significant investment of seasoned designers with high levels of technological and pedagogical confidence and can be described as a full redesign, total redesign or a radical change. such a radical approach is most suitable for new course offerings or courses that require revisiting course objectives with a stronger focus on the participants’ needs. the lead time for development, in this case, is up to three times longer than for courses developed in the traditional format. 4. learning design and blended learning conole (2012) described learning design as a process whereby teachers or designers plan learning instances to reach desired learning outcomes whilst matching specific pedagogical approaches with the most suitable technological tools and services available in a specific educational space. the following cases present various learning design and pedagogical principles that informed the design of programmes offered in both online and blended modes of delivery. bower, dalgarno, kennedy, lee and kenney (2015) analysed seven cases involving blended synchronous learning in university settings. key findings from the seven cases highlight http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 5 batchelor designing for vibrant and robust communities of practice 2020 38(1): 5-15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 the need to design for active learning and to select and utilise appropriate technological tools to meet student communicative needs. boelens, de wever and voet (2017) identified four additional challenges in the design of blended learning environments and point to the learning processes, incorporating flexibility, stimulating interaction and fostering an affective climate. they find that more can be done to cede control of the blend back to students as active participants. furthermore, planning for social interaction to pre-empt a lack of engagement in the learning process allows students to bond with each other, furthering emotional engagement. promoting a positive learning environment and recognising the importance of student selfmotivation addresses the tension between incorporating student control and facilitating and structuring students’ learning processes. in their study of three blended learning courses at a higher education institution lai, lam and lim (2016) derived learning design principles that emphasise student autonomy, interaction and feedback, awareness of student diversity and the consolidation principle. consolidation uses different types of activities for students to think again, so that their knowledge can be consolidated. in their expansive literature review covering instructional design approaches within blended and online learning environments, scott, ribeiro, burns, danyluk and bodnaresko (2017) articulate the need to shift the focus away from any particular technology and to rather focus on specific pedagogical designs that are more likely to be effective in relation to the material being studied. they suggest linking technologies to productive pedagogical strategies in order to enhance learning and to provide iterative feedback loops to further online interactions. in their study on the effectiveness of blended learning environments from a student perspective, kintu, zhu and kagambe (2017) identified learning design features such as the quality of technology tools, the nature of support provided and student self-regulation as predictors of student engagement and interaction in programmes offered in an online and blended learning mode of delivery. in a recent study, smith, hayes and shea (2017:224) critically examined online and blended learning research published between 2000 and 2014, for ways in which higher education and professional development spaces use wenger’s cop as a theoretical framework. they attest to finding only 17 research studies meeting their selection criteria of online and blended learning with a community focus bounded by time limits as well as predetermined communal goals and outcomes. their study generated recommendations worthy of consideration when deriving learning design principles for similar online/blended learning spaces. these recommendations are: • include more sophisticated ways of gauging the progress of cop formation; • consider how time impacts on the establishment of a cop and the process of professional identity development; • encourage modes of thinking and acting to assist individuals to participate meaningfully within virtual spaces; • use mediating tools to support intellectual engagement; and • apply cop theory to inform the design and execution of online/blended learning. it is evident from these various case studies that online and blended modes of delivery presuppose careful learning design to accommodate for various aspects related to student agency. this includes creating a positive learning environment supported by appropriate pedagogical strategies that are mediated by sound technological tools to assist in the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 6 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 6-15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 consolidation of new knowledge. careful consideration should also be given to manage the student’s affective disposition through positive social interactions that increase social cohesion in a programme. therefore, the explicit articulation of appropriate learning design principles to underpin the establishment of vibrant cops programme delivered in a blended mode is essential to ensure the relevance and longevity of such cops. 5. blended learning programme context this short learning programme (slp) targeted 166 dbe managers of district teacher development centres (dtdcs) and provincial teacher development institutes (pdtis), which are collectively called teacher centres. elearning specialist trainers who serve on the dbe’s national core ict training team (ncitt) in all provincial education departments (peds) were also included. these teacher centre managers and elearning specialists are embedded within each district in south africa and have a mandate to capacitate the professional development of teachers in providing appropriate and contextual in-service training opportunities and to implement the dbe’s action plan to 2019 in a response to the priorities, targets and programmes articulated in the national development plan 2030. the purpose of this slp was to enable education officials in the dbe and provincial education departments (peds) to effectively harness the potential of digital technologies in support of their management and leadership roles. disparate qualifications of existing teacher centre managers ranging from technical, managerial to educational qualifications resulted in differing approaches to problem solving. the distinct lack of coherence between past training instances with little articulation to formal accredited training programmes for progression also emerged as a stumbling block to sustained professional development. as such, a dedicated learning programme that integrates self-management with appropriate leadership and management tools in ways that harnesses the potential of icts was designed, developed and delivered as a continuing professional development opportunity. the programme was designed to fully exploit the affordances of digital technologies in a blended learning space supported by the availability of tutors on a 1:10 ratio to address concerns of high attrition rates endemic to online learning. the programme was delivered over a period of eight months combining an initial four-day face-to-face component followed by a prolonged online phase. participants who complete this accredited nqf level 8 slp are equipped to strengthen the education sector in south africa, particularly the dbe and peds, by contributing towards effective leadership and management of education in the design and implementation of teacher development initiatives in each district of south africa. the practical ict skills they acquire during this course, and the deepening of their theoretical understanding, will allow them to identify and address various tensions in their own ict work activity systems. they can also be equipped to establish vibrant subject-specific professional learning communities (plcs) in their districts. these dbe-mandated plcs for teachers, supported and mediated with various ict tools and services, will further build capacity in each school. furthermore, they can expand their own pedagogical repertoire, modelling appropriate and subject-specific ict use in the various teachers training instances they are required to host in their districts. according to alammary et al. (2014), a course designed to capacitate educational officials can be considered as a high-impact blend. in response to this, this new programme demonstrated radical change as compared to traditional offerings by allowing for flexibility in http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 7 batchelor designing for vibrant and robust communities of practice 2020 38(1): 7-15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 terms of the choice of pedagogy, as well as the selection of tools and services for the delivery of the programme. the overall programme design is immersed in principles of authentic learning (herrington & reeves, 2017) with a strong emphasis on: • managing and leading change through self-management; • policy and institutional contexts with reference to teacher development and digital technologies; • driving optimal use of education resources and digital technologies; • innovative digital tools for collaboration and knowledge creation; • making data-driven decisions as educational intervention; and • competencies and attitudes necessary for lifelong learning. there are several desired learning outcomes for the slp, the most important of which is the formation of a cop. the overall aim is to get a sustainable model for teacher support for the use of technology for teaching and learning. therefore, we began with the ict managers as change agents within each of their districts. their establishment of a cop is crucial to moving/working with teachers in their regions. once they have had a lived experience and can acknowledge the benefits of being a member of an active cop, they are more likely to establish similar cops with the teachers in their districts. teachers in turn can then develop their own plcs in their own learning areas. whereas some of these centres are in very poor under-resourced areas, others are situated in more established areas with more access to resources that result in a robust knowledge exchange amongst participants with the associated transference of ict and leadership skills. as such, forming cops across socio-economic boundaries amongst district officials and teacher centre managers ensures a rich exchange of ideas that can result in appropriate and contextual measures to be implemented in their respective communities. furthermore, the strategic selection of participants ensures that a larger number of officials are skilled; it ensures a better possibility for sustainability and implementation of skills learnt. in turn, these skilled officials can use their centres to serve the needs of their education communities more directly. in addition, due to the under-representation of women in the specific domain of ict in education, a conscious effort was made in the development of resource materials to promote positive female role models in the selection of relevant cases. 6. communities of practice in context the applied learning design principles pertaining to the development of cops within the scope of this programme, their theoretical underpinnings and enactment thereof, are presented in figure 1. the blended nature of the slp is visually presented in figure 1. the slp recognises the importance of cops in the successful delivery of the blended learning programme. the blended mode of delivery was designed to start with a short face-to-face period followed by a protracted online phase. due to the affective nature of the face-to-face phase, participants could first establish personal connections and then deepen these relations during the online phase of the programme. the face-to-face environment was designed to have opportunities for managers to get to know each member on a personal level; it allowed them to build http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 8 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 8-15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 strong social foundations that could potentially sustain their self-directed learning and later online collaboration. face-to-face encounters were characterised by high energy levels that motivated, inspired confidence and nurtured professional behaviour that continued into the online phase. managing first impressions was important during the face-to-face encounters as levels of competencies were revealed and participants positioned themselves within their new cops. social belonging was also actively fostered as participants had time to explore social and emotional connectedness during the face-to-face encounters. these connections proved to be valuable as they strengthened the social cohesion within the cops that were then sustained during the prolonged online phase. trust also developed with time as initial levels of acceptance established during the face-to-face phase were confirmed, and new competencies revealed, during the online period. figure 1: emergence of cop design principles face-to-face encounters allowed for the realignment and reinforcement of the course objectives. the online environment allowed for students to further foster and build their cops through collaboration and knowledge sharing – they experienced technology-enriched learning. this necessitated the development of a digital skills set that grew as they became more confident in their ability to develop, curate and aggregate information. their learning was enriched and was extended beyond the environment of their own context. usually members of a cop can assist one another through teamwork in the completion of tasks of increasing http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 9 batchelor designing for vibrant and robust communities of practice 2020 38(1): 9-15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 complexity. support is typically provided by a member of the cop as they continue to learn with, and from, one another. students are exposed to exemplary pedagogical practices as modelled by their facilitators who enact practices underpinned by sound learning theory. using appropriate pedagogical strategies such as the use of relevant digital artefacts; authentic tasks; timeous tutorials; various social media services and literature reviews, fosters greater collaboration and allows students to deepen working relationships within their cops. this design is consistent with the views of henri and pudelko (2003), that a cop starts out as a goal orientated community of interest and with time takes on a more formal character. meeting in a face-to-face environment allows the more formal online interactions to be guided by rules adopted by members negotiated in the face-to-face environment, thereby ensuring a level of coherence and meaningful engagement. 7. programme learning design principles the design principles informing the face-to-face component, derived from literature and enacted in the online component, included the following: provide the opportunity to model professional behaviour; develop social foundations from which to build the cop; sustain guided and self-regulated learning and realign and reinforce the course objectives. 7.1. provide opportunity to model professional behaviour practical complexity and levels of theorising and abstraction increased as participants progressed through the programme. this is in line with boei, dengerink, geursen, kools, koster, lunenberg and willemse (2015) who found that changes in professional behaviour that deepen reflection are informed by solid theoretical thinking. the programme did not foster rote learning, rather, it fostered deep and meaningful learning – learning that is “rich with connection-making” needed for “insight and for the lively and flexible use of knowledge” (perkins, 1991:6). participants were expected to use the tools of their trade which included the connected digital devices supplied to them by their various peds in order to complete the programme successfully. activities and assignments were designed for participants to demonstrate proficiency substantiated with evidence of implementation captured in online portfolios. eventual success was dependent on demonstrating technical, academic, contextual and practical competencies thereby allowing students to feel more confident to serve their own teacher communities in their respective districts. they had multiple opportunities to test their own teacher development learning solutions within their own cops before deploying these to the teachers in their districts. they, thereby, modelled professional behaviour in recognising the value of constructive feedback as they refined their teaching and learning solutions. providing and accepting feedback both allow students to first model professional behaviour within their own cop that can then be replicated at a later stage when working with teachers from their own districts. 7.2 develop social foundations from which to build cop cultivating a social presence, including the degree of awareness of others, is positively linked to learning outcomes (akcaoglu & lee, 2016). social interactions during face-to-face sessions that extend to online spaces, where exchanges are mediated through social media and other forms of online communications, provide comfort where emotional connections can form between students. one of the aims of this programme was for ict centre managers to first form firm connections with their peers within the programme before they replicated the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 10 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 10-15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 same model with the teachers in their districts. forming connections between individuals is dependent on their social and professional status and perceived levels of expertise. feeling comfortable with another person, trusting their intensions and judging their willingness to share contribute greatly to social cohesion within a group. the social presence of individuals regarded as experts sets the tone for engagements within a cop. experts in the group carry the responsibility of seeing novices through their induction phase in a new cop thereby ensuring the mutual appreciation for the interpersonal aspects of that integration. mills and ballantyne (2016) believe that a sense of community is necessary for some participants to renegotiate their subject positions especially when confronted with contesting and divergent perspectives. a sense of community is preceded by a sense of belonging and refers to a feeling of connectedness and that one is important or matters to others thus preventing a sense of alienation. being accepted, respected and valued direct the sense of community and can sufficiently influence human behaviour. the quality of social connections within a cop is one of the strongest indicators of a robust cop and actively contributes to its vibrancy. strong social connections are forged over time and reinforced with sustained engagements. higher levels of trust are developed as a cop matures and as members develop a shared history, especially when they are heavily invested in sustaining the cop. as a result, teacher centre mangers as students in this programme first needed to have an authentic, immersive experience in a cop before they were able to recreate similar communities elsewhere. 7.3 sustain guided and self-regulated learning nilson (2013) considered self-regulated learning as a multi-dimensional and multi-stage process requiring conscious planning, monitoring and evaluations of one’s learning in order advance lifelong learning skills. without a desire for self-regulation, cops become vulnerable and can lose its momentum. each student must have the opportunity to fully participate in the practice orientated cop environment requiring levels of self-awareness, self-regulation and self-monitoring. students with superior levels of self-regulation can adapt their approach to learning more readily. the ability of a person to determine and regulate their own developmental path through collaboration with others within a cop is an essential element of self-empowerment and self-regulation. juxtaposing individual learning needs against that of the cop allowed members to reach higher levels of self-awareness and trust. presenting, reflecting and contesting their ideas within the boundaries of their cop offered opportunity for anyone to become cognisant of their own strengths and weaknesses. this self-regulated learning is a constructive process characterised by instances of group scaffolding whereby reciprocal feedback is used as a mechanism to develop knowledge within the specific domain (nistor et al., 2015). cops are prone to instances of informal learning as members chart their own course and address commonly shared problems in collectively finding suitable solutions. even though cops are not dependent on any particular medium, combining the advantages of both faceto-face and online interactions in a blended mode of delivery offers unique opportunities for prolonged engagement in the physical, and by extension, the virtual world. this slp instilled the attitudes, values and competencies necessary for lifelong learning, including dimensions of self-regulated learning, metacognition and emotional and motivational control. the strong theoretical foundations of the programme do not only advance the scholarship of teaching, learning and research, but also, through a combination of guided and self-regulated activities, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 11 batchelor designing for vibrant and robust communities of practice 2020 38(1): 11-15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 creates opportunities to reflect on learning. students are empowered to practice quality ictmediated teaching and learning as they collaboratively learn from, and with, each other. as a result of increased levels of self-regulation, students become agents of transformation and innovation. 7.4 realign and reinforce the course objectives the use of icts in a changing educational landscape is explored from eco-systemic perspectives. it leads to understanding the dynamic contexts of education that can enable students to make informed decisions about ict use in education at the policy level, contextualised for the environments in which they work. in this way, student learning becomes meaningful and will have relevance and influence in the shaping of a better future for the communities they serve. table 1: content areas mapped to units, topics, outcomes and assessment criteria content areas unit topic outcomes assessment criteria 1 leadership in ict – driving sustainable change display active leadership in education communities and professional development groups as agents of change develop and collect evidence of engaging with the wider education community in conceptualising and providing instances of continuous professional development as needed in the districts. 2 learning theories engaging with learning theories around adult learning (andragogy) andragogy and associated with 21st century skills 3 appropriate ict tools and services for lifelong learning select and apply appropriate ict solutions to various educational scenarios create a variety of multimedia in the form of various digital learning artefacts and display competence in the planning and management of educational/instructional media facilities and programmes. 4 communities of practice as theoretical framework the theory of communities of practice engaging with ict innovation in education communities of practice as a mechanism to drive change in teacher professional development learning from research 5 policy and practice interchange understanding the relevant policies, guidelines and plans and how it impacts my working environment exhibit knowledge and understanding of complexity of implementing ict solutions in education reflecting on key policy issues highlighted during swot analysis in closing the gaps to conceptualise and develop an articulate reflective report: leading with technology in my district: a contextual implementation the teaching and learning strategy is further premised on authentic learning principles. this means that students will encounter learning tasks that have real-life meaning, are illdefined, are cross-disciplinary, rely on peer collaboration, produce polished products that have value in their own right and where multiple outcomes are possible (herrington & reeves, 2017). it also provides for learning about emerging learning technologies as they become available, and students can engage with these tools and apply learning in the authentic contexts in which they practice. learning tasks meet the criteria for authentic learning, since there is a http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 12 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 12-15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 strong emphasis on the development of ict skills, specifically skills in the use of a variety of online ict tools in contextual settings. students are required to develop authentic learning artefacts that are polished products that are immediately useable. the learning design principles were enacted in the units as captured in the assessment criteria as presented in table 1: providing meaningful and authentic learning experiences explicitly connects learning design principles to the establishment and development of robust and vibrant cops. these learning design principles pertain not only to the process of growing and sustaining the particular cop, but also to the range of activities and associated technology choices to support the lifecycle of the cop (cambridge, kaplan & suter, 2005). the selected topics for the programme are relevant in an emerging and evolving educational landscape. they are sufficiently agile to dynamically influence and enable better learning outcomes for the participants in the programme. the programme is sufficiently responsive to the needs of the developed and developing contexts, to be influential in shaping the future in both contexts. it makes provision for an exploration of a range of pedagogies that are appropriate for the diversity of contexts in which ict is used for educational purposes. 8. recommendations for further action firstly, we find that there is a pressing need for a deeper articulation of qualifications available in the education space. the attraction of completing this particular nqf level 8 slp resides in the potential to progress to the full qualification: postgraduate diploma in education ― ict innovation in education. secondly, the blended mode of delivery played a key part in the success of the programme. not only did it ensure increased access to a quality programme outside of individual provinces, but also provided a sense of purpose in learning more about learning with digital technologies. being forced to interact online to complete this programme also ensured the strengthening of individual digital skills as well as improving confidence in using digital technologies for learning. participants can now assertively model future teacher professional development instances in their own provinces, having had the advantage of a personal lived experience in completing a blended learning course. going forward, they will receive some assistance in considering aspects of learning design for digital learning when delivering teacher professional development workshops in their own provinces and districts. the next slp in this series will be designed to focus fully on this aspect. thirdly, regarding the importance of supporting emerging cops, the timing of the faceto-face phases was critical in allowing students not only to meet their facilitators and tutors, but also for them to get to know each other across provincial boundaries. where existing provinces did not have well-established cops, students organised themselves by forming working groups that later evolved into strong cops. within these cops, they were not only personally accountable for their progress but also to each other. a strong camaraderie seemed to develop naturally and grew within provinces. naturally, more thought needs to go into how to harness and support these cops to gain further traction in districts and provinces. fourthly, the level of visible support from project partners further strengthened their resolve to complete the programme. each of the partners provided visible and tangible support for the candidates, thus, underscoring their value within the programme as well as the critical role http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 13 batchelor designing for vibrant and robust communities of practice 2020 38(1): 13-15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 they play in the implementation of educational policy. the thrill of meeting the minister of basic education and living up to her challenge of a 100% pass rate provided additional incentive not only to complete, but to also excel in the programme. finally, the level of support, provided in the form of online tutors and readily available facilitators, contributed greatly to the high throughput rate. additional lines of communication in the form of mobile chat groups were established where participants felt safe to make enquiries or request additional support. the amount of digital scaffolding required from tutors and facilitators was not anticipated, nevertheless, it was provided in the form of supporting videos and tutorials in line with the objective of not leaving anyone behind on this journey. more can be done in future by anticipating and addressing support needs early in the course that may arise due to differing levels of familiarity with educational theory as well as differing competencies in using learning technologies. in conclusion, designing programmes that are offered in a blended learning mode of delivery offer unique opportunities to deeply interrogate the design thinking when creating cops as part of 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https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315777122. wenger, e. 1998. communities of practice: learning, meaning, and identity. cambridge university press. https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511803932. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.1 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-014-9773-6 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-014-9773-6 http://dx.doi.org/10.11575/prism/31720 http://dx.doi.org/10.11575/prism/31720 https://doi.org/10.24059/olj.v21i1.963 https://doi.org/10.1080/02680513.2016.1213626 https://doi.org/10.1080/02680513.2016.1213626 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315777122 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511803932 _hlk40942133 _hlk40909905 _hlk41494775 _goback 2182021 39(4): 218-235 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 playing games in a masters class: experiences of student educational psychologists abstract playing authentic educational games can support learners of all ages and abilities, particularly those with special educational or remedial needs. playing games in cooperative groups allows learners to relate socially, motivate each other competitively and rehearse schoolwork. literature mostly covers computer games rather than real-life educational games. this study explored student educational psychologists’ experiences in creating and playing authentic educational games to facilitate learning for children with special educational needs. in pairs, the students constructed educational games from everyday recyclable material with the purpose of reinforcing concepts related to phonics, spelling, reading and mathematics. the games required small groups of learners to play together with minimal teacher facilitation. working with a generic, qualitative, interpretive research design, the experiences of this cohort (n=29) of master’s students were gleaned from their reflective writings and the researcher’s journal. thematic content analysis was used to analyse the data and identify the emergent themes within the theoretical framework of game-based learning. the findings indicated that authentic self-made educational games exhibited all the required features conceptualised in the theory of gameplay. learning through play created experiences that are fun, motivating and have learners requesting more. authentic educational games provided emotional and educational support. playing educational games is a supportive adjunct to remedial interventions in the therapeutic context. keywords: authentic educational games, educational psychology students, gaming principles, learning support, qualitative methodology. 1. introduction the learning support curriculum, which is part of the master’s in educational psychology degree (fourie & van der merwe, 2019), entails training in skills to support learners with special educational needs in inclusive mainstream, full-service, remedial, and special needs author: dr jean fourie1 claire wilson1 affiliation: 1university of johannesburg doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i4.15 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(4): 218-235 published: 6 december 2021 received: 11 june 2021 accepted: 10 august 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1367-0156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 2192021 39(4): 219-235 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 fourie & wilson playing games in a masters class schools. a core component of the curriculum requires the students to design and create an authentic educational game (aeg) that can be played with learners in the classroom who exhibit diverse learning challenges and difficulties with schoolwork. the game was assembled with every day, easily accessible, recycled materials and needed to address areas of literacy or numeracy difficulties. the master’s students played their games with each other and with a group of learners during their learning support classes to determine its effectiveness. based on the researcher’s experiences, it appears that there is limited research available on aeg for learners attending schools – be they private, public, inclusive mainstream, fullservice, remedial, or special schools, and irrespective of culture, gender and age. the few available studies do not provide the successful design features of effective educational games and learning. other literature relates to computer games only (breuer & bente, 2010; hamari, koivisto, & sarsa, 2014). this study, therefore, aimed to address the gap in literature related to aeg. although some educators incorporate games as part of the school day, some are concerned that the games they use are not a worthwhile replacement for academic tasks. managing to incorporate games into their class routine is challenging for some educators who find games disruptive and counterproductive (marklund & taylor, 2016), and this may be exacerbated in larger inclusive classrooms. some games also disregard the importance of social groups in learning (avory, 2010). educational games can be beneficial for learning support and can play an important part in the social development of children (piaget, 1965). this study described the experiences of master’s student educational psychologists in developing and implementing aeg that facilitates learning support for learners who have special educational needs. 2. authentic educational games an aeg recognises every person’s intrinsic need for learning, developing a sense of autonomy and a recognition of the person’s competence (amory, 2010). competence leads to improved self-esteem or an improved sense of achievement, something that children who require learning support often do not have (kriel & livingston, 2019). the key elements of an aeg are discussed in terms of seven principles: engagement, flow, creativity, innovative thinking, immersion, enjoyment and challenge, as conceptualised by takatalo et al. (2012). the first principle of engagement involves a collection of mindfully goal-directed behaviours that indicate involvement in an activity (amory, 2010). an engaged learner, when given the opportunity, will initiate, persist and concentrate on mastering and applying new knowledge or skills. they will also demonstrate positive attitudes towards the learning process (ke, xie & xie, 2015). engagement is beneficial provided there is sufficient social interaction and constructive discussion (amory, 2010). the second principle, game flow, gives the player a motive for playing. it describes a psychological state of complete absorption and intense concentration regarding the task at hand, typically resulting in a lost sense of time (csikszentmihalyi, 2014). the third principle, creativity, is multifaceted and is described as a process involving creative thought to solve challenging problems (shabalina et al., 2016) and the seemingly simple act of play fosters creativity (holmes et al., 2014). principle four is innovative thinking, where the aeg offers an exciting environment to foster intellectually stimulating thought. the gaming interaction must be relevant to the educational http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 2202021 39(4): 220-235 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) context to avoid frustration and capture the learner’s interest so that action is taken, and objectives are reached (smeureanu & isaila, 2017). principle five relates to immersion, which is critical to game playing. immersion relates specifically to focused attention and concentration while playing the game to learn its rules and how to win the game rewards. gaining positive accomplishments experienced while playing, is also highlighted by immersion. immersion is less extreme than flow and is therefore seen as a separate principle (michailidis et al., 2018). principle six focuses on enjoyment and fun, a crucial component of a successful authentic game. learners should play a game by choice because it is entertaining (miller, 2013). if the game is fun and exciting the player will stay focused and engaged (koster, 2013). the element of fun may distract learners from engaging actively in some learning content if the cognitive load is beyond the learners’ reach (iten & petko, 2016) which could apply to learners with special educational needs. finally, principle seven requires that games should be sufficiently challenging as they help learners to acquire new knowledge in their zone of proximal development as described by lev vygotsky (kuusisaari, 2014). sufficiently challenging games have a positive effect on learning by increasing engagement and are a predictor of learning (haman et al., 2016). game based learning is the theoretical underpinning of this study. it refers to the borrowing of game play principles with defined learning outcomes (pho & dinscore, 2015). psychologists and educators have discussed the benefits of play in learning. amory (2010) stated that aeg will support learning and mediate learning outcomes if they are designed according to specific game designs. games are effective learning environments as they motivate learners to stay engaged over long periods (plass, homer & kinzer, 2015). game designers decide on the specific game that reflects the specific learning goal, learner attributes, learning settings and different learning commitments that can be achieved. ideally, these would be cognitive, social, affective, behavioural, and socio-cultural, depending on the game (plass et al., 2015). authentic games that enable the achievement of cognitive engagement will also allow for learning goals to be achieved by developing the learner’s cognitive abilities and focusing on the learner’s potential (plass et al., 2015). when game-based learning is viewed from a cognitive perspective, the goal of learners’ engagement with a game is the construction of mental models (mayor, 2014). learners first select what is presented in the game, organise this information as visual and verbal presentations in working memory, and then integrate these representations with one another and with prior knowledge (mayor, 2014). games are powerful ways of developing social learning in children and younger adults. during game play, skills such as regulation of emotions, turn taking, playing fair and being respectful to fellow game players, are learnt (hromeck & roffey, 2009). therapeutic board games are also available to assist learners who have difficulty socialising and may need emotional support (hromeck & roffey, 2009). the educational psychologist then uses these games during therapy sessions with learners who have difficulties expressing their feelings, regulating emotions or making social connections. the current generation of aeg largely ignores the emotional role of learning, hence new game development is striving towards more affective game play (wilkinson, 2013). three key aspects of affective game design are identification of senses and how they impact on one’s body, identification of emotions and expressing and modelling of emotions (wilkinson, 2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 2212021 39(4): 221-235 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 fourie & wilson playing games in a masters class discussions amongst the learners during game play will lead to increased self-awareness and self-esteem. children playing aeg with children from different cultural groups benefit from the knowledge construction and mediation of learning that takes place through the game (amory, 2010). children’s social learning could also be promoted through discussions stimulated during the board game sessions (marjanen, monkkonen, & vanhala, 2011). however, socio-cultural rules, prizes and forfeitures may not mean the same for everyone playing the game. educators and educational psychologists who give learning support should be aware of cultural differences and the implications for different age groups. the elements of game design are determined by the content and skills that the game is designed to teach (plass & homer, 2012). the content and skills are the subject matter, which has a profound effect on the game mechanics, visual aesthetics design and the incentive system (plass et al., 2015). the mechanics of the game involves the methods, rules and procedures that guide the player and the speed with which the player responds to the demands or responses of the game. through the mechanics of the game, definitions or rules are created regarding how the game is going to work for the people who play it (plass et al., 2015). the visual aesthetics give the player an overall impression, and the look and feel of the game. visual aesthetics relate to the way the elements of the game are visualised and how the cues are represented. guidelines, key aspects, and feedback are displayed either on the screen, the board, or the game insert (plass et al., 2015). feedback could be corrective (right or wrong answer), can include sound effects, points scored, or visuals of the damage done to the victims. at times these can be motivating and engaging to the player (plass et al., 2015). aesthetics are exceptionally important as these correlate directly and positively to the players’ experience (ahmad, 2019). incentives include the different motivational elements that aim to encourage players to continue their efforts and the feedback from the adult who oversees the game. the incentive system can use tokens, stars or badges, going up a level, increasing one’s time or speed (plass et al., 2015). some learners play to win, for the excitement, entertainment or just fun, for improving their previous scores or levels, or for the reward of learning. the health professions council of south africa (hpcsa) is a statutory body established in terms of the health professions act that is committed to protecting the public and guiding professionals such as the educational psychologists (hpcsa, 2017). educational psychology is a category within professional psychology that focuses on alleviating emotional, learning, academic, intellectual, behavioural, social, and developmental difficulties in children and young people within the systems in which they function (hpcsa, 2017). these include families, schools and peer groups. educational psychologists provide extensive support and psychological services to support clients’ optimal functioning. this may include family-based interventions, teacher support and learning support. in addition, educational psychologists enhance the vocational development of children and adults (hpcsa, 2017). in the last thirty years the educational support of learners by educational psychologists has grown. in addition, contextual demands require a shift from the traditional child-deficit, medical model towards a bio-ecological and eco-systemic paradigm (pretorius, 2012). the hpcsa prescribes the role of the educational psychologist in supporting learners. principle two (p. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 2222021 39(4): 222-235 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) vi) states that educational psychologists must provide services to learners of all ages who have learning disabilities, learning difficulties, multiple disabilities, and intellectual disabilities, and to their families, systems and agencies that serve them (hpcsa, 2017). the educational psychologist would also be required to draw up an individual support plan (isp) in conjunction with the sias document for the learner if they required one, or if they needed assistance with alternative school placement. they also have a role to play in the training and supporting of educators in inclusive schools (doe, 2014). these roles can be enhanced through aeg played in therapy rooms and in schools to provide fun experiences for supporting learners. learning support incorporates the resources, strategies and practices that provide physical, social, emotional, and intellectual support intended to enable all learners to have an equal opportunity for success at school by addressing barriers to learning and teaching (landsberg, kruger & nel, 2019). using aeg in learning support sessions could assist with reducing barriers to learning. learning support acknowledges that each learner has the potential to learn at their own pace by using their choice of strategies and learning styles, which is provided in a variety of educational game experiences. learning support relies on collaboration with various people from the learners’ system who will participate in the process of their learning (fourie, 2018). learning support is a way to provide equal educational opportunities for diverse learners who may have a multitude of difficulties and to respond to their needs. learning support should consider the ongoing educational demands placed on the learner despite the presence of a barrier to learning. educational psychologists could collaborate with the learners’ educators to assist them with knowledge and strategies to use aeg in their classrooms to decrease learning difficulties in a fun way. according to the doe (2001; 2014), educators are responsible for administering the first level of support to the learners in their care who may have barriers to learning. as educators are often too busy to assist learners with learning disabilities, the educational psychologist is best placed to assist the educator and the learner (berger, 2013; doe, 2014; landsberg et al., 2019: 48). a learner needing learning support often feels insecure and anxious about schoolwork. the use of play and games is beneficial for those learners who need support and consolidation of skills already learnt. these learners can be assisted to learn new skills, have fun and obtain individualised attention from the educational psychologist. play-based interventions lead to better understanding of concepts, as the learning process is relaxing, accessible and more effective. 3. research design and methodology an interpretive paradigm was used to describe the personal experiences of the participants in their unique contexts (alase, 2017; creswell, 2013). qualitative, interpretive research requires a highly active, yet creative engagement from researchers with dynamic skills (mason, 2017). the researcher engaged actively with the class during the game playing sessions and meticulously recorded observations in a researcher’s journal (rj). the researcher assumed that knowledge is subjective, and the researcher learns from the participants to understand the meaning of their lives and experiences (creswell & poth, 2018). a generic qualitative research design was used which is a method that draws on multiple participants voices while remaining flexible regarding the guidelines (kahlke, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 2232021 39(4): 223-235 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 fourie & wilson playing games in a masters class the study took place at a university and the participants were the master’s in educational psychology student group (n=29). to maintain anonymity each participant was given a number (1 through 29). working in pairs the students were tasked to plan, design and create an aeg out of recyclable material. the student group played their game during the learning support classes. they then played their game with groups of school learners (n=26) requiring learning support who attended inclusive mainstream, full service, remedial or special schools, depending on where the student worked. the student educational psychologists (sep) observed the learners’ play and recorded their observations as reflections in notebooks which they handed in to the lecturers at the end of the course. the sep are trained to observe, record strengths and challenges in learners and have all worked in classrooms. while playing their game with the selected group of learners they noticed the learners’ ability to focus, their anxiety about playing the game, the benefits in language development, and active indications of motivation and fun (sattler, 2014). observing student’s behaviours is part of the sep training (sattler, 2014). the researcher analysed the sep assignment reflections to extract data to establish thematic commonalities. lastly, the students submitted a reflective written assignment in which they recorded their observations, experiences, successes and challenges. their reflective assignments provided meaningful data, and rich descriptions, which is in keeping with the generic qualitative design (kennedy, 2016). data were analysed using thematic content data analysis using an inductive and deductive approach. an inductive approach allows the data to determine the themes, whereas the deductive approach involves the researcher coming to the data with some preconceived themes (roberts, dowell & nie, 2019). thematic content analysis was used to identify common patterns of meaning within the data that were repeated (nowell, norris & white, 2017). the researcher defined coding units or units of text such as individual words, phrases, symbols, sentences or paragraphs in the data that related to the research question. coding was done manually by using highlighters and making notes next to the relevant text being analysed (nowell et al., 2017). meaningful sections or data of interest were also noted. four themes emerged from the grouping of identified categories for consistency. thematic data analysis produces trustworthy and insightful findings (braun & clarke, 2006). to ensure trustworthiness, this study followed lincoln and guba’s (1985) guidelines of credibility, transferability, and confirmability (korstjens & moser, 2018). as ethical concerns are an integral part of the planning and implementation of the research to protect the welfare and rights of research participants (terreblanche, durrheim, & painter, 2014), the researcher adhered to all ethical requirements and obtained ethical clearance from the university. 4. presentation and discussion of themes 4.1 conceptualisation of authentic educational games motivation and focus the sep designed games that were engaging, motivating and aesthetically colourful. they chose pertinent topics for the games that could be interesting for the learners and would keep them focused. some of the games had competitive elements such as collecting coloured tokens to keep the learners motivated. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 2242021 39(4): 224-235 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) p22: our board game was bright and interesting to catch their attention. it included obstacles which would see learners moving forward and backward on the game board. the learners focused on tasks at hand. they are motivated to take part. p16: the learners were motivated by collecting the pictures on the ice-cream sticks. p15: the learners wanted to play so they could get the tokens, they were so competitive. p 6: when the learners became immersed in the game a sense of competition and camaraderie started to build in order to win the game. using aeg is learner-centred and according to the sep’s reflections, as the learners played their games, the students noticed the following about the learners’ focus: p16: the activities encouraged attentive listening skills in the group. p21: the learners had to pay close attention to the questions and really listened. p3: the learners were attentive and it was apparent when they quietened down whilst grabbing objects in the box, and that their team-mates were also attentive as they were actively listening to the clues. learners will be engaged and stay focused in an aeg if their interest is captured (amory, 2010). the learners’ interest was piqued by the design of the game, which assisted with focus and by some of the activities which required attentive listening to hear the clues read by their peers. in short regarding the first theme, the games designed by the sep were engaging. the learners listened attentively when required to, were adequately motivated, focused and gave attention when required. fun learners love playing games (piaget, 1965) and the sep stated how much fun the learners had. the learners found different aspects of the game they played enjoyable. for example, it may have been the appearance of the game. p16: the learners loved the pictures at the back of the cards. p23: the game offered greater enjoyment to the learners, greater motivation to learn, strive to finish so that they could be part of the winning team. the learners wanted to play the game because they experienced real fun when playing it. p5: they requested to play the game again on more than one occasion. p15: they wanted to continue playing after break as they were having so much fun. p19 and 2: the learners who played the game loved it. p28: the boys started calling the game “our game” and wanted to take it out to break to play. the element of fun is a core aspect of any good, authentic, educational game (koster, 2013), and we know that learners who enjoy an activity are motivated, which means that they will want to keep playing the game. a feeling of enjoyment and fun in an activity makes you more prone to learning (miller, 2013; plaas et al., 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 2252021 39(4): 225-235 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 fourie & wilson playing games in a masters class creation of new knowledge the sep observed that during the game, the learners carried on discussions amongst themselves, exchanged ideas, contributed their experiences and this allowed the groups to create new knowledge, as for example, the mathematics multiplication game (figure 1). p21: you can observe that the learners built on from what they knew. there were opportunities to learn from each other, chances to exchange ideas, express their own thoughts. by exchanging their thoughts and understanding of the word they were able to write a sentence. p22: learners learned better when they were actively encouraged to explore and practise the use of their knowledge. there was active participation, constructing and reconstructing of their knowledge and understanding. rj: they [the] learners learned new information that they did not know before, such as differentiation of middle vowels, adjectives associated with sensory evaluation, building of sentences and increased speed with timetables. during the game there was social interaction amongst the learners, which improved their language skills. p1: the use of language became very evident whilst the learners were playing the game. p3: noticeable improvement in the learners’ oral language stimulated vocabulary development and created further meaning and understanding. creating new knowledge, which includes the building of language skills, is a key element of learning (amory, 2010). creating new knowledge is best achieved in everyday situations where children can interact socially with their peers through play, games, exploration and social discourse (amory, 2010). the aeg designed and created by the sep enabled learners to create new knowledge through social interaction and improvement of language skills. figure 1: mathematics game designed by participants 4 and 19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 2262021 39(4): 226-235 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) critical thinking and problem solving the learners worked together, made mistakes, learnt from their mistakes, discussed the problems and found suitable solutions to subject related questions and maths operations, such as addition, subtraction and fractions. p7: learners could participate actively the entire time, work together in teams to solve problems. they learnt from their mistakes. p5: it soon became evident that they were learning from each other and through collaboration, they were able to remember more of what i had taught them in the term, such a punctuation and parts of speech. rj: some games were tools to be used for revision and consolidation of schoolwork prior to writing of exams. (figure 2). p22: she specifically formulated activities for her game from the curriculum statements to be line with the subject content the learners are currently working with. the sep also used the curriculum textbooks to ensure the game content was suitable. p21: it incorporated reasoning; they had to visualise what the others were doing. the learners were allowed to discuss the possible answers amongst themselves. p14: the learners internalised the problem-solving technique that they used. p22: working in cooperative groups allows the learners to have the opportunity to learn from each other, give opinions and debate the processes they used to complete the questions. critical discussions taking place amongst the players, pointed to active problem-solving skills. aeg is an effective platform to teach problem-solving and critical thinking in social groups. (plaas et al., 2015). some critical thinking, internalising of problem solving and learning from each other was observed by the sep as the learners played their games in cooperative groups as posited by amory (2010). figure 2: game designed by participants 6 and 18: reinforcing of subject matter http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 2272021 39(4): 227-235 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 fourie & wilson playing games in a masters class 4.2 playful elements of the games the games were described by the participants as having a strong element of play. p25: the best way to teach a child is by letting them play. they have fun and learn while playing. p7: play is a successful tool that can be used to support learning. p11: play is the initial step to learning. p23: through play, learners get a chance to learn in a fun way, they are playing and learning at the same time. p19: educational games are fun and interactive. p3: educational games have a positive impact on learners generally. p20: games meet children at their stage of personal development and promote individual learning. rj: special needs learners who have different learning needs find games beneficial as games can target them or their barrier specifically. aeg can be played with children of all ages and cultural groups. in playing games that involve real world problems and mimic the world of adult work children learn valuable skills (rule, 2006). p15: aeg also teach learners other life skills such as anger management, coping with anxiety and grief. the game designed by participants 1 and 3 was designed to teach social skills such as coping with anxiety and grief (figure 3). p7: educational games should be much more part of an educator’s pedagogy. p11: children learn how to adapt to the world and make sense of things around them by playing. playing is the initial step to learning. through these activities they can develop social, cognitive, and emotional skills. p18: learning through play empowers children to become creative engaged life-long learners. the games were captivating, motivating for higher levels of engagement. learning through play can create experiences that are fun, motivating and the use of aeg can assist learners to become creative and more engaged (zosh et al., 2017). the sep captured the essence of aeg in their reflections stating that without play in general, learning, socialisation, and adaptation to the world around them becomes seriously compromised. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 2282021 39(4): 228-235 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) figure 3: game designed by participants 1 and 3 on social skills 4.3 games assist with emotional regulation and remediation the participants noted in their reflections that the games they had created were worthwhile aids to assist learners who needed learning support in an inclusive, mainstream, special or remedial classroom. playing the aeg in a small group with a facilitator appeared to be an effective way to support learners with special needs. p7: the games can be successfully utilised as a technique for learning support with children with special needs. p6: having the support of the educator or educational psychologist only for clarification while playing the game, but really leaving it up to them to sort out. p5: i also observed how the learners would coach one another and tried to help each other to guess the correct answer to the questions, giving each other clues and reminders of the activities we had completed in class. p22: the educator would play in smaller groups and support each learner on their own level. learners will learn more effectively through participation and activity than passive instruction. p14: i was able to see the learners’ potential develop as they learnt with a competent and supporting mediator. with that they become more competent problem solvers themselves. learners with learning support needs may require specialised teaching individually, in smaller groups with a facilitator who may be an educational psychologist or educator. this would make using aeg beneficial (landsberg et al., 2019). social interaction is crucial during learning support as it constructs knowledge (avory, 2010). playing games in a masters class  13  p15: aeg also teach learners other life skills such as anger management, coping with anxiety and grief. the game designed by participants 1 and 3 was designed to teach social skills such as coping with anxiety and grief (figure 3). p7: educational games should be much more part of an educator’s pedagogy. p11: children learn how to adapt to the world and make sense of things around them by playing. playing is the initial step to learning. through these activities they can develop social, cognitive, and emotional skills. p18: learning through play empowers children to become creative engaged life-long learners. the games were captivating, motivating for higher levels of engagement. learning through play can create experiences that are fun, motivating and the use of aeg can assist learners to become creative and more engaged (zosh et al., 2017). the sep captured the essence of aeg in their reflections stating that without play in general, learning, socialisation, and adaptation to the world around them becomes seriously compromised. figure 3: game designed by participants 1 and 3 on social skills 4.3 games assist with emotional regulation and remediation the participants noted in their reflections that the games they had created were worthwhile aids to assist learners who needed learning support in an inclusive, mainstream, special or http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 2292021 39(4): 229-235 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 fourie & wilson playing games in a masters class the sep reflected on the anxiety levels in many of the learners prior to playing their game. learners who are anxious will frequently be nervous in new situations. p18: because the learners are so anxious, i believe that utilising games in learning support provides a safe place for learners to explore their ability to learn their curriculum content that is more challenging, without causing them distress associated with learning. p15: the learners were anxious initially as they were not sure what the game entailed and what would be expected of them. maths anxiety is common in schools (sarker dowker, & looi, 2016), so the sep planned aeg to help reduce learners’ anxiety. this is what they noted. p19: our game was meant to reduce mathematics anxiety by making it fun as it was an informal game for children with all different mathematics strength and confidence levels to take part in. rj: as part of the game each learner was provided a card with multiplication tables with answers that they could refer to initially as they played the game. the learners could refer to the answer cards until they no longer needed to use them. this was an example of scaffolding where support is provided to a learner until a concept is grasped and thereafter the child is left to work independently (kuusisaari, 2014). p22: tackling maths anxiety was an important focus area for this game. by playing games negative attitudes towards mathematics can be changed. children enjoy playing games and are motivated to take part. learners will learn better when they are active; that is why we decided on a board game, where they can work together in a group to find the correct answer to the maths operation. (figure 4). p7: we created a very comfortable atmosphere with very little performance pressure to reduce the kid’s maths anxiety. p19: learning support should be less structured and informal in order to relieve anxiety and the associated emotional stress of schoolwork. maths anxiety can be defined as feelings such as worry, fear and apprehension about mathematics linked to tests and performance anxiety, especially in front of peers. as mathematics anxiety increases, so performance decreases. playing the mathematics games with small groups gave the learners some self-confidence and reduced some of the anxiety (landsberg et al., 2019; sarker et al., 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 2302021 39(4): 230-235 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) figure 4: mathematics game designed by participants 22 and 5 making games from recycled material in terms of their careers as future educational psychologists the participants were excited that they had learnt to make educational games from easily obtained recycled materials which is an essential skill needed when providing therapeutic interventions in under-resourced communities. rj: the authentic educational games created by the sep were made out of laminated board, paper boxes, egg cartons, bottle tops, sucker sticks, little stones, different counters and a wide variety of other recyclable materials. this is useful when working in poor school communities. p10: from working on this game with my classmate, i came to realise and appreciate that it does not need expensive resources to support learning. we were able to create a game from easily accessible materials for educational psychologists and teachers. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 2312021 39(4): 231-235 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 fourie & wilson playing games in a masters class figure 5: game created by participants 11 and 29: learning of middle vowel sound and spelling. 4.4 games in the therapy room the participants saw the value of the games for use in learning support to screen for struggling learners while conducting diagnostic scholastic assessments. p7: designing educational games to facilitate support in the classroom is not the only role as educational psychologist. educational games can successfully be used by the educational psychologist for learning support or as a screening aid in a one on one session. p3: the diverse and flexible nature of our educational game has many implications for practising educational psychologists. they may be adapted for assessment and diagnosing purposes, however, its main function would be for intervention purposes. the participants reflected on the benefits of playing aeg with children needing learning support for learning problems. they noted that working in small groups in a relaxed nonthreatening environment was beneficial to the learners. p23: i learnt how educators can use games to get learners more interested and excited about their studies. educators can play a game that will focus on a skill they want learners to acquire. p7: i learnt that a well-designed educational game can make learning fun, relevant and even change learners’ attitudes towards subjects. i have realised that play should be a much more integral part of an educator’s pedagogy. the sep reflected on how their roles have transformed to a more collaborative whole school approach. they noted that key psychological interventions focus on enhancing, promoting, and facilitating optimal learning of learners, which includes providing learning support and working with the educators in the classroom (hpcsa, 2011). they reflected on the value of using well-designed aeg in their own therapeutic practice as educational psychologists. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 2322021 39(4): 232-235 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) 5. conclusion extensive literature abounds regarding online computer games that share the same principles with aeg such as focus, flow, motivation, competitiveness, fun, gaining new understandings, problem solving and critical thinking. the games designed by the participants contained all these elements and had the advantage of teaching learners school concepts, particularly for learners with learning difficulties. playing aeg teaches social skills of sharing, winning, and losing gracefully, and interacting with peers. the games can assist with emotional response regulation and play a crucial role in support and remediation of school concepts. the participants’ reflections expressed how much they had learnt by creating an aeg from recyclable material that could allow them to practise in under-resourced schools and communities. a comparative study between computer and aeg would be beneficial. references ahmad, m. 2019. categorizing game design elements into educational game design fundamentals. game design and 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https://www.legofoundation.com/en/learn-how/knowledge-base/learning-through-play-a-review-of-the-evidence/ _hlk67821020 89 research article 2022 40(4): 89-103 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6190 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) academic women departmental heads’ coping mechanisms during covid-19: a capabilities approach perspective abstract this paper explored women departmental heads’ leadership experiences in higher education during the covid-19 pandemic. this paper highlighted aspects of their care and coping mechanisms in terms of them working in virtual spaces. most scholars have examined employees’ effects and challenges while working from home during a lockdown. however, most studies are silent on women in leadership, especially concerning the provision of resources to enhance effective leadership during this crisis. the paper draws on three concepts of sen’s capabilities approach: functionings, freedoms, and agency. this approach facilitates an incisive understanding of institutional and individual coping mechanisms that might be beneficial for women leaders to mitigate the challenges of the devastating covid-19 lockdowns. the qualitative narrative approach, supported by a feminist lens, provides a critical, in-depth understanding of the real-life stories of women in leadership positions when making-sense of their challenges in working in a virtual environment. data which was collected through semi-structured interviews with ten female heads of department, was analysed thematically by applying the capabilities approach as an analytical tool. the findings indicated that functionings and freedoms are inextricably intertwined to institutional ethnographies. these ethnographies might support or hamper the coping capabilities of women leaders in academic institutions, especially during the covid-19 crisis. keywords: capability approach, coping strategies, covid-19 pandemic, higher education, women leaders, stress 1. background covid-19 was reportedly first detected in wuhan, china in 2019; and this progressed to a global pandemic, which spread to south africa only in march 2020 (giandhari et al., 2020). governments in all countries rushed to find ways and means to protect people from the deadly pandemic (jakovljevic et al., 2020). globally, lockdowns were imposed to minimise physical contact among people which led to most workers transitioning from working in offices to working from home. kniffin et al. (2020) who highlight the impact of author: dr. nthuna juliet ramohai1 dr. somarie holtzhausen2 affiliation: 1durban university of technology, south africa 2university of the free state, south africa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v40i4.6190 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(4): 89-103 published: 23 december 2022 received: 9 april 2021 accepted: 11 november 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6190 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4324-7519 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8241-0024 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6190 902022 40(4): 90-103 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6190 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) the pandemic on employees and organisations, describe disruptions in normal work practices, economic repercussions, and social instabilities. working from home became a new normal for the working class around the world (mcpherson, 2020). in education, it involved learning new skills to access online and virtual learning platforms which replaced face-to-face classroom teaching-learning environments. in south africa, this migration to online strategies of teaching and learning affected all spheres of education, including higher education institutions (heis) that responded by developing capacity-building initiatives to upskill workers for online work environments (dumulescu & mutiu, 2021; international labour office, 2021). such skills development initiatives included webinars on how to effectively conduct lessons online, online meeting management, and online management of administrative duties, amongst others (dumulescu & mutiu, 2021; international labour office, 2021). while such initiatives could have been helpful, scholars argue that these efforts did not realistically provide a smooth transition to working online for a multiple of reasons (mangolothi, 2021; organisation for economic cooperation and development, 2020). studies conducted during the pandemic in different parts of the world indicated a plethora of challenges that hei staff had to contend with (mangolothi, 2021; international labour organisation, 2020). 2. research interest generally, women leaders in academia were challenged by virtue of their positions (ramohai, 2019; sherpered, 2017) regarding the debilitating effects of the pandemic. studies by rhyan and haslam (2005) and sabharwal (2013) assert that deep-rooted cultural and political barriers plague the higher education institutions at all times. these challenges emanate from the hostile socio-political gender-related discourses in higher education that discriminate against women as leaders in heis (sherpered, 2017; ellemers, 2018). women leaders execute their roles in planning and monitoring the curriculum, teaching and learning, financial management, and staff development. in addition to these roles, women leaders have to shoulder heavy teaching responsibilities. when covid-19 disrupted the higher education sector, particularly when lockdowns were introduced, all staff were adversely affected. scholars immediately explored challenges experienced by workers in an effort to find solutions. studies that focused on women and their challenges during this period, had a general focus on all women leaders. in this paper, we focused specifically on academic departmental heads to understand how their leadership was affected, and more importantly, how they coped. we believe that shedding light on the covid-19 lived-experiences of women academic leaders will enable institutions to understand them and draw on their narratives when planning interventions during crisis periods. the main question that this paper addressed was: how did covid-19 and the resultant lockdowns affect academic women departmental leaders, and what coping mechanisms did they use to deal with their challenges? emanating from this main question, the following secondary questions were interrogated: • what challenges did academic women departmental heads face as leaders during covid-19? • what resources and capacity-building initiatives did women leaders use to cope with the effects of covid-19 on their leadership? • how did their own capability and agency as leaders pave the way for effective leadership during lockdown? http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6190 912022 40(4): 91-103 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6190 ramohai & holtzhausen academic women departmental heads’ coping mechanisms during covid-19 3. theoretical framework to attempt to answer the main and secondary questions, sen’s (1999) capabilities approach (ca) was adopted. the capabilities theory in general looks into how environments enable people’s functionings and agency (sen, 1999). the four important principles advocated in this theory are functionings, capabilities, agency, well-being, and conversion factors which emanate from the belief that human beings only attain a sense of well-being and achievement if they have freedom to be, and to do (robeyns, ingrid & byskov, 2020). this means that the environment should offer enablers as tools that create a conducive environment for people to succeed in becoming, and being (white, imperial & pereira, 2016). such enablers are resources and opportunities in the environment which could be harnessed as a means to an end. what is important though, is not the abundance of enablers, but the practical opportunities they provide to capacitate people to become, and do. for the purposes of this paper, ca assisted the researchers to gain insight into women leaders’ resources for coping. in this case, we explored the personal coping mechanisms that were a source of strength, in addition to the resources that the institutions provided to assist women who are heads of department (hods) to enact effective leadership practices during the covid-19 period. in this regard, ca refers to these personal and environmental resources as enablers or functionings (sen, 1999) which are opportunities that are available to create a means to achieve what people do, or wish to be. however, while it was important to explore the enablers, we were cognisant of the critical ca aspect of freedoms which signifies that the availability of functionings should be investigated in conjunction with how accessible they are, and how easy it is to fully utilise them. accordingly, an exploration of functionings (enablers) was extended to include whether the women leaders had the agency and capability (white, imperiale & perera, 2016) to successfully utilise the resources at their disposal to combat the challenges of the covid-19 pandemic. in emphasising the importance of agency in ca, buzzelli (2015) reiterates that people should have freedom to choose, and achieve what they value through the use of available resources. this choice is what makes the available resources real opportunities. the assumption we had at the commencement stage of our research after reviewing relevant literature sources, was that institutions provided resources to assist women hods to cope with the challenges covid-19 imposed on leadership roles. however, we needed to establish whether the women had any choice in when, how and why they used the resources to assist in the effective management of the crisis period for themselves and their departments in terms of successful teaching and learning. 4. leadership and coping during the crisis managing a crisis has never been an easy task for any leader. leaders are often expected to buffer the effects of the crisis so that subordinates do not feel the full impact of the crisis (klann, 2003). an emergency crisis can entail any situation requiring unprecedented effort to respond to challenging circumstances and still deliver the required outputs. the energy and commitment needed from leaders during a crisis could be a tremendous test of a leader’s strength and resilience (klann, 2003). as work environments experience crisis periods ranging from operational and policy development to procedural and process management, leaders are generally expected to cushion the devastating effects on employees, sometimes without formal training on the strategic management of crises. this constant transformation and stress in the higher education context could lead to psychological distress that includes anxiety, burnout, and at times depression on the part of the leaders (hulbert-williams et al., http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6190 922022 40(4): 92-103 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6190 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) 2021). leaders, therefore, require coping mechanisms for crisis management to prevent physical and mental ill-health (lupe et al., 2020; vinkers et al., 2020). this paper delved into women hods in higher education with a view to understanding their challenges and coping strategies during the devastating time of covid-19, specifically the online working aspect. a particular focus on women leaders was essential when considering women’s history as a marginalised group in all spheres of the labour market (casale & shepherd, 2021). scholars (priola, 2004; ellemers, 2018) have always emphasised the challenges women in leadership face as they execute their role as leaders, in addition to other multiple roles that they are expected to perform at home and on other fronts. the challenges also occurred during regular face-to-face interactions; therefore, it is critical to establish how women leaders coped in critical crisis periods such as lockdowns. scholars have already conducted several studies on the effects of covid-19 on human beings in different work environments; hence, they allude to the crippling effects of mobility restrictions such as quarantine, isolation, and social distancing (rubin & wessely, 2020; talevi et al., 2020). studies by amaral-prado et al. (2020) and roy et al. (2020) on university staff during covid-19 found that many suffered from mental health complications that affected their normal work functions. the mental health challenges mainly originated through inadequate preparedness of staff to work via virtual platforms (babore et al., 2020) and their unpreparedness in using technology. as mentioned earlier, despite the challenges engendered by the pandemic, university leaders and management had the difficult task of continuing with the academic programmes during this traumatic period. they had to stabilise internal and external demands (skinner & zimmer-gembeck, 2016) by adapting their functions to online platforms. adapting assessment strategies was particularly difficult, requiring extra efforts by ordinary academics to align these to online learning and teaching. when leaders manage this stressful transformation, they guard against staff burnout and low morale. klann (2003) emphasises that crisis management and leadership are demanding on the leader because it entails managing operations and human responses simultaneously. managing the workforce (humans) is particularly challenging as people’s emotions are involved. women leaders are even more challenged because they must constantly play a balancing game of sound professional leadership while still attending to household responsibilities. for most women, multitasking has created a confusing and disempowering space. as such, mangolothi (2021) describes the dire situation of women in higher education who must multitask through their work responsibilities which include nurturing, child-rearing, and home-caring roles during the lockdown. the women are forced to engage adaptive coping behaviours to reduce, tolerate and manage this stressful balancing game (algorani & gupta, 2020; baqutayan, 2015; folkman & lazarus, 1980). therefore, the question is, what critical-thinking and behaviours were enacted by women departmental heads to cope with, and to continue with daily responsibilities (functionings) in a psychologically-distressed context? while scholars have investigated multiple coping and adaptation strategies that academic leaders applied to cope with the effects of the pandemic, their studies do not focus on women in leadership positions who also had to mitigate pandemic challenges (almazan et al., 2019; chirombe et al., 2020; gan, 2020; seriño & ratilla, 2021; verdida et al., 2020). it is the contention of the authors of this paper that the voice of women leaders in hod positions is imperative to create a platform for them to narrate their own experiences, and to offer workable and realistic strategies that might assist them in similar crisis situations. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6190 932022 40(4): 93-103 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6190 ramohai & holtzhausen academic women departmental heads’ coping mechanisms during covid-19 5. methods the phenomenon of coping in a crisis among academic women hods was explored through the narrative inquiry qualitative research method (butina, 2015). this narrative qualitative methodology allowed us to engage women via in-depth discussions (etikan, 2016) into their lived-experiences of leadership during the covid-19 period through an interpretive paradigm. such discussions mostly occurred via the media platform instead of face-to-face interactions. this was due to the fact that, at the time of data collection, lockdown restrictions had just been lifted, and most participants were uncomfortable with contact sessions. ten (10) academic women leaders from two heis in south africa were selected to participate in individual semistructured interviews which were aligned to the study’s purpose and research questions. thus, this narrative inquiry was relevant and feasible because the researchers collected extensive information to make-sense of the context of individual women leaders during a pandemic crisis. additionally, the selection of participants and institutions was conducted through the convenience sampling technique as we ensured that selected participants were available, and that they met the necessary criterion (etikan, 2016) of holding a hod position at a hei during the pandemic peak periods of 2020 and 2021. from both higher education institutional cases, the same email that clearly stipulated the inclusion criteria for the target population, and was approved by the ethical clearance committee beforehand, was sent to participants. in the case of the one institution, the researcher used the central head of department email address, while for the second institution emails were sent through the relevant representative deans on the ethics committee. in both cases, the first five hods who responded were selected. table 1 depicts the demographic information of the selected women hod participants. table 1: demographics and summary of women academic leader profiles woman academic code institution age years of experience in hod position hod1 hei1 42 2 hod2 hei1 63 2 hod3 hei1 34 3 hod4 hei1 58 8 hod5 hei1 60 1 year & 6 months hod6 hei2 43 2 hod7 hei2 51 4 hod8 hei2 52 2 hod9 hei2 51 5 months hod10 hei2 65 2 the demographic data showed a greater participation of women leaders aged between 34 and 65 years who occupied academic leadership positions during the last five months to eight years. 6. data analysis, interpretation, and discussion the aim of this study was to understand and share the challenges experienced by ten university women academic leaders (i.e. two case studies which are referred to as hei1 and hei2) during covid-19. this pandemic resulted in an abrupt change in the heis’ routine which caused strenuous demands; for example, technological resources that had never been used much before for leading, teaching, learning and administrative activities, were now compulsory for http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6190 942022 40(4): 94-103 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6190 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) remote work. thus, throughout this pandemic the higher education environment, leaders, staff, and students were exposed to psychological and physical pressures which required resilience and coping strategies to deliver astute management and leadership. the findings of this research confirmed that the duties of all women academic leaders’ astronomically increased to include additional tasks related to online teaching and learning management. therefore, these women academic leaders indicated that it was critical to alleviate the negative effects of their stress for a healthier, more productive, collective future for higher education. this was evident when participants shared that healthy eating, sleeping, resting, and exercise habits remain essential for operative leadership (hod5/hei1; hod9,10/hei2). in terms of women leaders’ study programmes, one participant stated that due to high workload demands at university she had to suspend her doctoral studies for a year (hod1/hei1). concerning the analysis of collected narrative data for this study, thematic analysis was applied by using the capabilities concepts as analytical tools based on the psycho-social model approach (lizano, he & leake, 2021). this demonstrated a significant connection with other biopsychosocial models in coping studies (son et al., 2016; amaral-prado et al., 2020). the findings revealed that women hod narrators utilised social, physical, psychological, and spiritual resources (lizano, he & leake, 2021) to develop capacitybuilding skills to cope with their diverse leadership responsibilities during the covid-19 pandemic. additionally, the psycho-social model approach (amaral-prado et al., 2020) aligned with folkman and lazarus’ (1980, 1988) inventory of coping strategies. most of the adaptive coping strategies and the dynamics of biopsychosocial factors that these ten university women leaders unitised were either problem-focused or emotion-focused approaches. these two approaches are consistent with algorani and gupta’s (2020) assertions mentioned in a comparable study on coping strategies in the united states. moreover, the coping strategies that women academic leaders displayed were mostly linked to sen’s (1999) capability model. in line with this model, the findings are discussed below in congruence to the concepts of functionings, freedoms, agency, and institutional structures that might support or hamper the coping abilities of women leaders, especially during times of crises. within the coping strategies discussion in the sections below, challenges that women leaders in heis faced, are highlighted. we therefore did not include a section specifically dedicated to challenges as we believed that these are intertwined with the coping mechanisms. 6.1 social resources utilised by women academic leaders to cope with the effects of covid-19 on their leadership this study ascertained that adaptive coping strategies of women leaders during the pandemic predominantly aligned with proactive cognitive and behavioural dispositions. this resulted in snowballing two coping strategies (which will jointly be discussed for that reason), namely: • confrontative coping refers to attempts to aggressively confront a stressful crisis to change the situation. women academic leaders shared their experiences: (hod6/hei2): i directly confront my line manager or colleagues. (hod10/hei2): the dean became my greatest support. (hod1/hei2): i focused on getting things to work. (hod1,5/hei1): but you must act quickly. (hod9/hei2): there is the need to be assertive during crisis periods. (hod4/hei1; hod9,10/hei2): i had to put my foot down and [say no] … this is the policy that we all have to follow; and confronting the line managers also ensured that we could address a negative working environment. (hod5/hei1): i am getting into a toxic space, so the one thing now is i’m ready to fight. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6190 952022 40(4): 95-103 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6190 ramohai & holtzhausen academic women departmental heads’ coping mechanisms during covid-19 • seeking social support refers to efforts to find information, including emotional and instrumental support. this strategy which links to the confrontative one (above) is applied to enhance the confrontative mechanisms used by the hods. the support that the hods referred to included friends and colleagues (hod1), the it department, secretaries, and other support departments and family (hod5). the hods reported that without these fundamental support systems, their leadership during the pandemic would have been unsuccessful. thus, most of the narrative reflections (hod1,4,5/hesi1; hod6,9,10/hei2) on the effects of covid-19 on women academic leadership practices confirmed that confrontation and seeking support as cognitive and behavioural tactics, were the valued functionings for these participants. also, the academic women leaders chose to grasp opportunities such as reaching out to line managers or colleagues (social support), and other relevant departments to assist and minimise the debilitating effects of the pandemic. in other words, the women hods themselves were instrumental in increasing their own functioning by using the social institutional resources to increase their agency. 6.2 physical resources utilised by women academic leaders to cope with the effects of covid-19 on their leadership the results of this study indicated that management in the two institutions ensured that curriculum delivery functionings within higher education became a priority. the majority of the women academic leaders’ narratives disclosed the provision of physical institutional resources that included a range of capacity-building programmes, administrative support, and digital technology provision that were meant to facilitate the smooth transition to virtual platforms. this is consistent with other studies that report on the initiatives by heis in their endeavours to provide support to all employees to mitigate stress levels (white, imperiale & perera, 2016; nash & churchill, 2020). in the first institution (i.e. hei1) in particular, the deputy vice-chancellor organised a series of leadership seminars that focused specifically on capacitating hods during covid-19. while these were not tailor-made for women leaders, its importance for all hods’ capacitation was applauded by some of the participants from this institution. however, some hods felt that this initiative was misplaced because it shifted the accountability burden from top management to the hods. one hod from this institution expressed the following sentiments: for me, it was an insulting response to a crisis amongst hods to take the people that are the most functional, the most capable, who are holding things together by a thread, and tell them that they’re the ones who need leadership training (hod3) this excerpt is a clear example of how the concepts of functionings and freedoms could be misaligned. the hod3/hei1 in this instance, felt that this initiative was not increasing her agency to function better, but was a demeaning exercise. this highlights the importance of following a consultative process in assisting leadership during times of crisis. it is, however, worth acknowledging that institutional interventions assisted the women leaders to cope better. the hods’ functioning was also strengthened through regulated access control overseen by them, in addition to them providing guidelines to others to follow a clear direction to transition during lockdown. while focusing on the available resources might present a picture of smooth-running institutions during pandemic lockdowns, a look at the challenges that the women academic leaders mentioned indicated that women leaders still lacked the freedoms and agency to lead effectively during this period. the multiple roles of women as workers and home-caregivers http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6190 962022 40(4): 96-103 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6190 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) have always been at the centre of research on women – which now increased to home-office duties during the pandemic. in other words, boundaries between home and work became progressively blurred (alon et al., 2020; augustus 2021; cui, ding & zhu, 2020; yildirim & eslen-ziya, 2020). women academic leaders were not only confronted with the home being an unsuitable environment for formal work duties, but also to enact the balancing of diverse roles during their daily functioning. one hod lamented: nobody looks at who you are, whether your home is a conducive environment to work in… you are married, you have a husband, you have maybe relatives coming into visit or my friends coming to visit. and here i am occupying this table now and don’t want any noise. (hod2) this situation affected their families in a negative way. families, and not institutions, had to make space to accommodate work-related activities in their family spaces. one of the participants aptly commented on the sacrifice that families had to make: (hod2/hei1): i am occupying this table now, and don’t want any noise. on the lack of shared understanding concerning resource provision, sen (2020) emphasises the importance of freedoms and agency since organisations and institutions provide necessary valued potential functionings such as digital and technology management, including support and access to devices for staff in various departments – all of which contribute to alleviating the stresses of operating during the pandemic. thus, during the pandemic it was not merely a provision of effective and efficient resourcesupport, but also interacting proactively and innovatively to convert these online digital resources (e.g. through weekly research broadcasts) into opportunities for research support and output achievements (hod7/hei2). another hod (hod8/hei2) stated it was beneficial to enhance one’s own technological skills and expertise to build a supporting learning community within a department. 6.2.1 focusing on problem-solving and managing technology from this study, it emerged that women academic leaders are active problem-solvers who adopt analytical approaches to initiate change to lessen the effects of a stressful situation like the covid-19 pandemic. they applied techniques such as ‘prioritising written tasks’ (hod2/ hei1; hod8/hei2), conducting ‘strategic planning meetings’ (hod3/hei1) or diffusing a conflict management situation ‘by acting as a safety net for staff’ (hod9/hei2). another (hod8/hei2) indicated that the success of problem-solving is related to a leader’s ‘work ethics’ which ‘determines how you are going to cope, perceive stress and solve problems’ related to the online work environment. other women leaders stated that to have ‘competent members in your team’ (hod3/ hei1) and being ‘flexible’ and ‘my way is not the only way’ (hod8/hei2) assisted in enacting problem-focused coping strategies which are essential to decrease the intensity of stress during a crisis. this stressful situation is especially due to the increased complexities at universities that necessitate prompt solutions, such as finding strategies to limit the effects of the covid-19 pandemic on educational programmes. al-dabbagh (2020:2) emphasises that “making innovative decisions and responding to needs within the limits of time, uncertainty, the lack of information, and high level of stress”, intensified the difficulty of the decisionmaking process for leaders during covid-19. it was significant that women academic leaders demonstrated that they improved their professional development in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic crisis through ‘creative research broadcasts’ (hod9/hei2), ‘paying attention to http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6190 972022 40(4): 97-103 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6190 ramohai & holtzhausen academic women departmental heads’ coping mechanisms during covid-19 detail and correcting your own mistakes’ (hod9/hei2), and adjusting to the crisis through decentralised decision-making processes (al-dabbagh, 2020; augustus 2021). in this study, it was evident that during the traumatic covid-19 pandemic, women academic leaders not only fulfilled an essential role so that their universities became functional, but also displayed distinct leadership competencies. similar studies advocated crucial leadership competencies to circumvent the challenges associated with the pandemic; namely flexibility, accounting for emotions, attention to others’ opinions, engagement, sense-making, being a technology enhancer, possessing emotional stability, and emphasising employee well-being (dirani et al., 2020; schwantes, 2020). aligned to the range of leadership competencies, academic leadership normally comprises of diverse management roles such as strategic management, administrative roles, transformational agendas, and visionary planning (settles et al., 2019). the women leaders in this case demonstrated these competencies to serve as safety nets for their departments while creating a flourishing and functional online working environment. however, using online spaces presented its own challenges that affected the freedoms and agency of women hods to effectively and efficiently utilise valuable resources provided by the institution. the women mentioned barriers such as loadshedding, increased workloads (hod9,10/hei2), limited time for research (hod8,9,10/hei2), as well as being physically and emotionally exhausted (hod9,10/hei2). in some cases, the resources did not offer sufficient relief from the exhaustion of leading during covid-19, as adequate rest and sleep (hod5/hei1; hod9,10/hei2), and good eating habits (hod10/hei2) to release tension were difficult to attain. the value of teamwork (hod3/ hei1; hod9/hei2) and a sense of community (hod10/hei2) were also perceived as powerful resources for effective decision implementation (kohtamäki, 2019; & zafar et al., 2019). in this study women leaders were plagued by regular uncertainties and inconsistencies, which were only possible to eradicate by exhibiting trust (hod7,8,9,10/hei2), honesty, and ensuring that systems are implemented to promote psychological safety (hod7/hei2) as recommended by samoilovich (2020). 6.3 psychological/spiritual resources applied by women academic leaders to cope with the effects of covid-19 on their leadership 6.3.1 distancing and escape-avoidance it was evident that only one woman academic leader did not utilise cognitive efforts to decrease the effects of the stressful covid-19 pandemic situation. this was illustrated when the narrator stated: ‘i’m better off in a lecturer position because then at least i can protest ... being a lecturer ...researcher’ (hod3/hei1). this confirmed that she did not display resilience to lessen the effects of the challenges during the pandemic. others who lacked resilience to cope with the stresses of the pandemic at an hei recently resigned, citing burnout as a cause (clark et al., 2020). although this study demonstrated that these two higher education cases have taken steps to support employees during the covid-19 pandemic, including initiating remote working arrangements (nash & churchill, 2020), it appeared that flexible working arrangements were not consistently applied. despite these ‘flexibility freedoms’ regarding their functioning, some women leaders felt that they should not micro-manage from home (hod7,9,10/hei2), but rather ‘create an innovative environment where staff can flourish and be appreciated’ (hod7/hei2). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6190 982022 40(4): 98-103 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6190 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) 6.3.2 self-control, accepting responsibilities, positive appraisal, and connectedness worldwide, the covid-19 pandemic forced higher education institutions to adapt and migrate towards online platforms. in this study women academic leaders’ efforts to control their actions and emotions, also known as “internal locus of control” (kniffin et al., 2020; rotter, 1954; rotter, 1966) assisted them when confronted with ‘a chaotic job’ (hod3/hei1). to exacerbate the situation, additional administrative responsibilities which were unavoidable (hod10/hei2) during the pandemic, overburdened the women hods. for example, monitoring campus access was not only a tedious administrative task, but also emotionally stressful. however, these women leaders gallantly fulfilled their contribution in addressing the related problems concerning the pandemic by accepting increased responsibilities, even if this meant an increased workload. one hod confirmed that despite the increased workload, she could cope because of the assistance of a supportive dean, and by belonging to a small department (hod10/hei2). additionally, these women leaders could perform with inner strength and courage due to online professional development opportunities; one-woman leader articulated ‘if i know how it is done [capabilities], it is easier to lead others’ (hod6/hei2). additionally, self-appraisal is motivational: ‘thank you for being honest’ (hod6/hei2), ‘balancing verbal presence via your voice’ (hod8/hei2), and ‘students have often said to me… we appreciate … you are honest about your experiences and your mental health … it makes us feel … if you struggle … can also be successful (hod3/hei1). these motivational articulations are enriching for women leaders to feel self-connected, and to strengthen their relationships with other academics and students. these women leaders balance the problem-focused with the emotional-focused coping strategies that facilitate engagement and shared decision-making. dumulesco and mutiu (2021) emphasise that a shared leadership paradigm assists higher education institutions to react to a crisis through distributed leadership and an increase in responsibility at any organisational level (kezar & holcombe, 2017). besides, distributed leadership implies creating connections among all higher education staff members at all levels to confront a crisis and facilitate meaningful transformation in the future. women leaders’ balancing act between problem-focus and emotion-focus coping strategies ensures psychological safety in the department. 7. conclusion global pandemics such as covid-19 have forced many to re-think how they function, use their homes and offices, and appreciate their freedom. additionally, the higher education environment becomes progressively more complex as our society evolves through technology to allow unlimited connections and possibilities. in this study, identifying coping structures was necessary to understand how stress related to covid-19 affects human health, functioning, and the freedom and psyche of academic women departmental leaders. thus, this case study analysis makes a significant contribution to contemporary literature and research on the challenges of women’s academic leadership during crisis situations. additionally, this research innovatively used an non-controversial gender lens on covid-19-related research with women academic leaders taking centre stage. these academic women leaders’ narratives confirmed that balancing their problem-coping and emotional-coping competencies defined a space for merging coping categories in response to psychological stress – usually triggered by abrupt changes. life stressors such as the pandemic require coping strategies that are the behaviours, thoughts, and emotions that one activates to adjust to the changes that occur in one’s life to create a flourishing working environment. women academic leadership practices may vary across higher education institutions according to their differing organisational http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6190 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is used to compare the performance of different language of instruction groupings (english, afrikaans and african languages) in primary schools on the more complex, higher-order reading comprehension items tested in a large-scale international test. prepirls 2011 (n=15 744) was conducted in south africa’s eleven official languages. schools were sampled according to the language of learning and teaching (lolt) in grades 1–3 and the reading comprehension test was administered in that same language. to examine bilingual effects, a sub-sample was drawn from the national dataset that consisted of low socio-economic status (ses) learners whose first language was not english (but who had received instruction in english from grades 1–3) as well as low ses learners who received their foundation phase instruction in one of the african languages as a mother tongue. a linear regression (n = 6 342) showed that low socio-economic status (ses) learners whose language of instruction is english, despite it not being their mother tongue, benefitted by 20.35 score points with a t-value of 3.19. this is significant at the 0,01 level (equivalent to half a year) from being in the english l2 group, in comparison to the african languages l1 group, as a measure of achievement on the higher-order subscale. it is argued in this paper that learners whose lolt is english, but who do not speak english as a home language and tend to be part of the most disadvantaged sector of the population, perform better on the higher-level reading comprehension processes when compared with african language mother tongue instruction across the same grades and socio-economic status. the findings highlight the importance of improved english second language instruction for all lolt groupings. keywords: english l2, higher-order reading comprehension, mother tongue, language in education 1. introduction an adequate reading comprehension level is a critical factor in determining overall learning achievement. moreover, weak reading comprehension prevents the learner from reaching a required threshold necessary for the ability to comprehend abstract, academic text requiring higher-order dr nelladee mcleod palane university of pretoria nelladee.palane@up.ac.za prof sarah howie university of stellenbosch sarahhowie@sun.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v37i1.4 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 37(1): 43-57 date published: february 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:nelladee.palane@up.ac.za mailto:sarahhowie@sun.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.4 http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 44 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) reading comprehension (cummins, 2000). according to cummins (1979), if learners have developed a sound understanding of their first language, these skills will be transferred to the additional (l2) language that is introduced later. he argues that in bilingual education systems, it is important for learners to develop strong literacy skills in their home language as a basis for building academic literacy proficiency that can be shared across languages (cummins, 1979, 2000). this research integrates theory that emphasises the importance of the home and school context in learning (bandura, 2001; bruner, 1996; vygotsky, 1978) with cummins’ (1979) work on bilingual development and bourdieu’s (1986) writing on cultural capital as a research lens for interrogating the low level of reading comprehension performance observed in the preprogress in reading literacy study (prepirls) 2011 (howie et al., 2012). in grade 4, most south african learners transition to english as their language of learning and teaching (lolt) in the classroom. however, evidence that the learners have not reached a higher level of language threshold development in their home language is seen in the extremely low achievement performance found for grade 4 learners in the prepirls 2011 study. results from the prepirls 2011 study, conducted at year 4 level internationally across 60 countries and in south africa in the 11 official languages, reveal the lowest reading achievement score in comparison with the international centre point of 500 (mullis & martin, 2012). historically african language learners have been required to learn in an african language for their primary schooling in south africa. officially, this meant they were to receive mother tongue education in their primary years, but change to english or afrikaans as their lolt in secondary school. the department of basic education’s report (2010) on the language of learning and teaching indicated that 76% of african learners were learning in their home languages in the foundation phase in 2007. however, according to pretorius and mampuru (2007), the majority of learners on the african continent do not have the advantage of being able to do all or even some of their schooling in their home language. in the current south african context, schools and classrooms are often diverse linguistic environments and the languages may be mixed in spoken language (probyn, 2009). however, pretorius (2014) notes that the prepirls results indicate that reading is more than simply a language issue and should be explicitly taught and nurtured since, despite the lolt being the home language for most learners, reading proficiency was still extremely low. learners who have been taught in their home language from grades 1–3 often begin, from grade 4, to receive classroom instruction in the additional language, which is usually english. the performance of the learners in the 2006 and 2011 study reveal that they are not well prepared for the literacy challenges moving into a new phase (zimmerman, 2010; pretorius, 2014) where there is a language change as well as a focus change and where learning to read in the foundation phase becomes reading to learn in the intermediate phase. research has shown that poor comprehension in a mother tongue affects transfer of linguistic competence to the additional language, yet in the south african context, learners are, nonetheless, required to perform cognitively complex tasks in the additional language, namely english, from the grade 4 level. endorsement of bilingual transitional models, where development in the mother tongue is regarded as a prerequisite for developing proficiency in an additional language, is pervasive in the literature (banda, 2000; cummins, 1992; taylor & coetzee, 2013). some proponents of this theory argue that the interdependence of literacy skills across languages takes at least five years to master (cummins, 1992). others state that it takes between six to eight years to 45 palane & howie a comparison of higher-order reading comprehension performance ... learn enough of a second language in formal school environments before this language can be used as a medium of instruction (reeves et al., 2008). taylor and coetzee (2013) demonstrate that home language instruction in the early years of schooling significantly improves english acquisition in later grades. they, however, point out that given certain contextual factors, english instruction from grade 1 may be preferable and schools should make the choice between mother tongue instruction and an immersion approach (taylor & coetzee, 2013). the requirement that learners be schooled in their mother tongue during the years of apartheid has, among other reasons, resulted in a backlash amongst the african population, with the result that nowadays, with greater access to schooling in english, many families prefer this route for their children. the reason is the perception that schooling in english lolt will lead to fluency in english and create opportunities for social mobility. learners receiving instruction in a mother tongue other than english still receive language lessons in english as a subject (usually as a first additional language). however, these lessons are not always of the quality or quantity that would result in the fluency level necessary for higher-order reading comprehension. the fact that learners must all move to english tuition in grade 4 makes the need for high quality, explicit instruction in english as a second language in the foundation phase and throughout the learner’s school career a critical requirement. mother tongue instruction throughout schooling for all learners in south africa is observed as an educational and political ideal in a complex multilingual context where, nonetheless, fluency in the additional language (for many south african learners) is seen as a vehicle of social mobility and a means of reaping tangible socio-economic benefits (posel & casale, 2011). as such, it becomes necessary to weigh up the multiplicity of factors affecting the learner’s future well-being, not least of which is the need for careful, timeous preparation for the national senior certificate in grade 12, which is written in either english or afrikaans. of interest, is that pretorius and mampuru (2007) have noted that most learners in africa complete their schooling in the former colonial language of that country. concrete and nuanced factors affect and mediate the efficacy of mother tongue instruction for african language learners in south africa. critical questions need to be asked around issues such as: • how homogenous the language of the school or area is which determines whether the learner will indeed be instructed in a mother tongue or in another african language predominant in the area or chosen by the school itself; or • the availability of reading and textbook resources in the mother-tongue; and • the language in which the teachers have been trained and their fluency levels as well as an ability to convey complex concepts to a class. access to mother tongue education is enshrined in the south african constitution, which obligates the state to provide each person with education in the language of his or her choice wherever possible. while the state is required to consider quality, equity and redress when providing education, this objective must be weighed against the limitation of resources. in south africa, it has been found that particularly amongst better educated black parents, it is recognised that the home language must be nurtured, even while there is strong support for english only (evans & cleghorn, 2014). despite the constitution deeming all eleven languages to be of equal value and parents (as represented by a democratically elected school governing body) having the power to choose the language of instruction in schools, many parents, nonetheless, prioritise english instruction (woolman & fleisch, 2006). 46 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) banda (2009) argues that current policy is based on western and colonial notions of multilingualism and that the promotion of multilingualism in south africa should not be a case of promoting eleven monolingual streams of distinctive languages in homogenous speech communities, since this perception is erroneous. banda (2009) further posits that even though the country has eleven official languages, the majority of africans speak either nguni or tswana-sotho dialects, or that careful planning and cross-linguistic referencing would enable these languages to share a large amount of teaching and reading material. given the extent to which language in schools often becomes a melting pot of the dialects spoken in the area, and the classroom the interface of more than one language, these ideas should be explored further. this approach could address the reality of financial and capacity constraints while taking cognisance of the socio-cultural call for indigenous languages in schools. it also offers some leeway for the possibility of realising a bilingual ‘late-exit’ approach, where the number of years of instruction in the home language is extended. similarly, pragmatism also needs to be foregrounded in the provision of pedagogically sound and consistent early english l2 instruction since so many south africans regard english as essential for their children to find their way into global participation. it is argued in this paper that learners whose lolt is english, but who do not speak english as a home language, and tend to be part of the most disadvantaged sector of south africa, perform better on the higher-level reading comprehension processes, when compared with african languages mother tongue instruction across the same grades and socio-economic status (ses). the primary research objective is a comparison of performance on the higherorder reading comprehension items for the language of instruction groupings english, afrikaans and african languages. the group “african languages” includes isizulu, isindebele, sepedi, setswana, xitsonga, isixhosa, tshivenda, siswati and sesotho. prepirls 2011 data was used to compare the performance of the different language of instruction groupings on the more complex, higher-order reading comprehension items tested in the large-scale international test. since prepirls 2011 sampled schools according to the language of instruction of the school (also referred to as language of learning and teaching or lolt), the language of instruction of the learner is also the language of the test (lot). performance is compared across these three groups for learners who spoke the language of the test before school and those who did not. performance is then compared for the african languages home language/l1 grouping and the english l2 learners. learners who did not speak the language of the test before school and wrote in english, are compared to the learners who wrote in an african language and did speak the language of the test before school. the analysis for this paper is conducted at the learner level (single-level analyses) and learners whose lot/lolt is english as an l2 but may be in a school where they find themselves amongst peers who are mostly english first language speaking or the school may be predominantly english second language speaking. 2. methodology for prepirls 2011 in 2011, 15 744 grade 4 learners in 341 schools across all provinces participated in the prepirls assessments in the language that was their lolt during the foundation phase of grades 1–3. all eleven official languages of south africa were tested. permission to conduct the prepirls 2011 study in the sampled schools was obtained from the minister of education, school principals, teachers and parents, and ethical clearance was obtained 47 palane & howie a comparison of higher-order reading comprehension performance ... from the university of pretoria. for secondary analysis of the data, ethical clearance was obtained from the university of pretoria. the prepirls reading comprehension assessment is based on shorter texts comprising more accessible vocabulary than the international pirls assessments intended for grade 4. sampling a three-stage stratified cluster sampling design was employed in prepirls 2011. in south africa, a sample of schools that went up to grade 4 level was selected. the sample was stratified explicitly by language. originally 345 schools were sampled, but only 341 (99.1%) were eligible for participation. in each school, an intact class was sampled and all the learners present on the day of testing were included. the majority of learners (71%) (n=14 030) wrote the prepirls test in their home language (mother tongue). however, for the learners writing in english, approximately 70% were not mother tongue english speakers. design of the instruments the design of the instruments included the testing of reading comprehension of literary and informational text. item design incorporated constructed response and multiple choice type questions. questions accompanying each prepirls reading text were designed to assess learner reading ability in the following reading comprehension processes: focus on and retrieve explicitly stated information included tasks where the learner had to identify information explicitly stated in the text: 57 items, which were 45% of the score points. make straightforward inferences included tasks such as having to infer that one event caused another event: 35 items and correspondingly 27% of the score points. interpret and integrate ideas and information included reading tasks where the learner had to discern the overall message or theme of a text, infer a story’s mood or tone and interpret a real-world application of text information: 17 items. evaluate and examine content, language and textual elements included reading tasks such as a description of how the author devised a surprise ending, judging the clarity of information in a text and determining an author’s perspective on the central topic: 14 items. items measuring the ability to interpret and integrate ideas totalled 28% of the score points. interpreting and integrating and examining and evaluating are both higher-level comprehension processes and the pirls reporting strategy combines these items into a single subscale in order to provide a stable measure of higher-order reading comprehension for the prepirls assessment (mullis, 2007). description of the international benchmarks of reading achievement the benchmarks are a qualitative description of learner performance at different levels in order to describe competencies at each of the set scores. the range of performance shown by learners is represented by four benchmarks: advanced (625 points), high (550 points), intermediate (475 points) and low (400 points). the descriptions of each are cumulative, 48 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) meaning that learners who were able to reach the higher benchmarks could also demonstrate knowledge and skills associated with the lower ones. 3. discussion of the results in the 2011 pirls study, 15 744 learners in 341 schools across all the provinces were tested in the 11 official languages using the prepirls assessment. the mean score for south african learners was 461, well below the international centre point of 500 (howie et al., 2012). in most languages, the achievement was significantly higher when children wrote in their home language, with the exception of afrikaans, isizulu and sepedi, where there was no significant difference. those writing prepirls in english, who did not have english as a home language, achieved 80 points less than those who did (howie et al., 2012). the results of the research conducted for this study are discussed in sections 3.1–3.5 below. a comparison of learner performance across languages of instruction descriptives were run using the idb analyser (version 3.0) and are presented in table 1 below, which illustrates the difference in mean performance for learners who spoke the language of the test before starting school. table 1: language of test/spoke the language before school: comparing learner mean performance w spoke lot before school sample size (n) per cent per cent se higher-order subscale mean mean se afrikaans yes 1009 95,65 1,24 535,66 11,33 no 48 4,35 1,24 480,63 12,60 english yes 835 48,35 4,12 573,94 11,55 no 866 51,65 4,12 495,72 9,78 african languages yes 7 705 87,77 1,07 431,01 4,42 no 1 793 12,23 1,07 405,52 5,56 the table indicates that mean performance on the higher-order subscale improves where learners spoke the language of the test before going to school for each of these three language groups, but that this difference is more marked for english and afrikaans. afrikaans, however, had only 48 learners that wrote the test in afrikaans but did not speak the lot before going to school. english had 835 who spoke the language of the test before school and 866 learners who did not. mean performance on the higher-order subscale for this group is 495.72 (se=9.78). the african languages group that spoke the language of the test before school (n=7 705) has a mean performance of 431.01 (se=4.42), showing that on this subscale there is a marked difference between these two groups of learners. of particular interest (see shaded groups in table 1) is the first group comprising the learners who attend school where the lolt (the same as the lot as per prepirls sampling) is english, but this is not a language they spoke before starting school. the other group are 49 palane & howie a comparison of higher-order reading comprehension performance ... the african language learners whose lolt was an african language from grades 1–3, but would have transitioned at the start of grade 4 to an english lolt, but were tested in an african language. performance on the international benchmarks for african languages l1 and english l2 almost one out of three south african learners (29%) was unable to reach the low international benchmark. most grade 4 learners (71%) reached the low international benchmark. forty per cent of the learners also reached the intermediate international benchmark. nineteen per cent reached the high international benchmark but only six per cent attained the advanced international benchmark (howie et al., 2012). mean performance on the international benchmarks is depicted in table 2 below. table 2: percentage international benchmarks reached by english l2 and african languages l1 la ng ua ge o f l ea rn in g an d te ac hi ng international reading scale benchmark reached higherorder subscale lowerorder subscale overall reading below 400 at or above 400, but below 475 at or above 475, but below 550 at or above 550, but below 625 at or above 625 mean mean mean e ng lis h l2 20.9% 33.1% 27.9% 14.3% 3.9% 467.7 473.4 471.1 a fri ca n la ng ua ge s l1 37.0% 37.3% 21.5% 4.0% 0.3% 419.7 424.8 425.5 the table above shows that in the below 400 points category, a greater percentage of african languages l1 learners (37.0%) was placed in this category compared with the english l2 (20.9%). in contrast, 14.3% of english l2 learner achievement placed them in the “at or above 550, but below 625” category compared with only 4.0% of african languages l1 learners. the english l2 learner mean is 467.7 score points in contrast to the african languages l1 learner mean score of 424.8. multiple regression comparing the language of instruction models the multiple regression tabulated below (table 3) was conducted in the idb analyser (version 3.0). there is a 49.55 (t-value significant at -9.06) decrease in score points when the learner writes in english as an l2 (language not spoken before school) compared to an english l1 learner. notably, the full group of african language learners achieve 125.18 (t-value significant at 14.03) score points less than the english first language learners. the effect size for this model is moderate at .28. 50 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) table 3: results of a multiple regression comparing language models unstandardised standardised m od el c on st an t s e t δ r 2 s e b se t β se t 55 9. 13 10 .8 7 51 .4 4 .2 8 .0 4 e ng lis h l2 -49.55 * * 5.85 -8.48 -.20** -.02 -9.06 a fr ik aa ns lo t -23.72 14.44 -1.64 -.07 .04 -1.66 a fr ic an la ng ua ge s lo t -125.18** 11.36 -11.02 -.59** -.04 -14.03 *t-value>1.96 **t-value>2.58 comparing african languages l1 and english llow ses learner performance the next step in this research was a comparison across two language groups sampling learners from a low socio-economic stratum for achievement on the prepirls 2011 higherorder subscale that combines interpreting and integrating items and examining and evaluating items. this research investigated whether belonging to either the non-mother tongue english lolt (low ses) group or the african languages lolt as equal to mother tongue (low ses) group results in a significantly improved chance of performing better on the higherorder prepirls 2011 subscale. further analysis also used performance on the high and advanced international benchmarks as a demonstration of proficiency in higher-order reading comprehension. the benchmark categories contain items that are not restricted to the higherlevel reading processes, but all the items are formulated in such a way as to require higherorder thinking from the learner. 51 palane & howie a comparison of higher-order reading comprehension performance ... the sub-sample derived from the prepirls 2011 sample, reflects learners exposed to an english immersion approach, as well as learners comprising the additive bilingual approach to language in education. afrikaans lolt learners were not included in this analysis. non-mother tongue english learners who wrote in english, and learners writing in the african languages as a mother tongue, with both groups pulled from a low socio-economic background, were isolated through the learning to read survey administered to parents and the school contextual questionnaire administered to the principals of the schools tested. where parents indicated that their children had not spoken the language of the test before school, it was assumed that the language of the test was not their home language. in the school contextual questionnaire, where principals indicated that “more than 50% of the students come from economically disadvantaged homes”, this was taken to indicate that the learners falling within this ambit came from low socio-economic backgrounds. a linear regression of the specified sample (n=6 342) was conducted with the iea international database (idb) analyzer software (version 3.0). table 4: linear regression model for language effect on the higher-order subscale unstandardised standardised m od el c on st an t δr2 b se t β se t 4 5 3 .8 4 0.3 l a n g u a g e o f in st ru c ti o n 20.35** 6.38 3.19 .18* .05 3.35 t-value >1.96; **t-value > 2.58 the linear regression results in table 4 above reveal that learners from a disadvantaged background, whose lolt is english, despite it not being a language spoken prior to starting school, benefitted by 20.35 score points (β =20.35, t-value= 3.19) by being in the english lolt group, in comparison to the african languages (lolt spoken before they started school) group as a measure of achievement on the higher-order subscale. since at this point in the analysis, the number of african learners stood at 5 858 and the english group at 484, these two groups were made further comparable by randomly selecting 52 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) the same number of african learners as found in the english group. outliers (a total of eleven selected with spss [version 23.0] as being three standard errors above the mean) were removed from the dataset. in this way, the sample size and homogeneity of variance were better equalised. once the african languages l1 group had been reduced for equivalence with the english l2 group (n=968) and outliers removed, the regression was run again. the results of this regression are depicted in table 5 below. table 5: linear regression model for language effect of reduced sample on the higher-order subscale unstandardised standardised m od el c on st an t δr2 b se t β se t 45 5. 79 0.4 la ng ua ge o f in st ru ct io n 17.34* 7.13 2.43 .20* .08 2.46 t-value >1.96; **t-value > 2.58 having met all the regression requirements (field, 2009), the results indicate a 17.34 regression co-efficient (в=17.34) with a t-value of 2.43, which is significant at the 0.05 level. learners from a disadvantaged background whose lolt is english, despite it not being their mother-tongue, benefitted by 17.34 score points (equivalent to just under half a year) from being in the english lolt group, in comparison to the african languages lolt group (despite this being their mother tongue) as a measure of achievement on the higher-order subscale. comparison of african languages l1 and english l2 low ses on benchmarks since items across the achievement booklets are classified according to difficulty levels, aimed at assessing higher-order reading comprehension ability in the high and advanced benchmarks, achievement on this scale is also an indication of learner ability to comprehend text using higher-level processing. by combining benchmarks 4 (550) and 5 (625) as an indication of the highest level of reading comprehension tested and retaining benchmark 3 (475), which includes inferential questions and the more difficult access and retrieve items, a chi square test was conducted to ascertain whether there is an association between lolt and the likelihood of falling into the highest (combined) benchmark. these analyses are depicted in tables 6 and 7 below. table 6: language group percentage likelihood of falling into highest level benchmark 53 palane & howie a comparison of higher-order reading comprehension performance ... at or above 475, but below 550 at or above 550 african languages l1 80.7% 19.3% english l2 61.4% 38.6% total 68.9% 31.1% table 7: results of chi-square test for highest level benchmark value df asymptotic significance (2-sided) exact sig. (2-sided) exact sig. (1-sided) pearson chi-square 14.948 ͣ 1 .000 .000 .000 0 cells (.0%) have expected count less than 5. the minimum expected count is 43.56. the association was found to be significant with the results of the chi square test showing that the learners in english non-mother tongue low ses group are statistically more likely to fall in the highest level combined benchmark (χ² (1) = 14.948, p =.000) than the african languages mother tongue low ses group. 4. discussion of performance across the different language of instruction groupings the above analysis explored how the language group within which the learner falls affected performance on the higher-order and more cognitively complex items in prepirls 2011. it was found that across the lowest socio-economic strata, the learners whose lolt was english for the foundation phase of their schooling, performed better than the mother tongue lolt (african languages group) on the higher-level reading processes assessed in the higher order subscale, and were more likely to be placed in the high and advanced benchmarks. cummins (1979) suggests that the immersion model works better for the middle-class learner (as opposed to the poorer learner) because of access during early childhood to parental re-enforcement of the nature and importance of text (language used in an abstract form and in a manner other than the interpersonal or communicative). this mediation allows for the development of a threshold level of language in the child and the ability to cope with immersion in the additional language. cummins (1979) stated that the immersion model often does not work well for poorer learners because the home literacy context during early childhood is often inadequate for threshold language development. however, it was found in this study that the immersion group performed better on the higher order items than the additive bilingual group. 54 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) the impact of ses for each of the language of instruction groupings is particularly pertinent to the south african educational context. it is possible that the immersion group (despite having the same low ses home mediatory context experienced by the additive bilingual group with regard to their mother tongue development) has the advantage of a stronger school or classroom mediatory context either through language support or access to text for the learning of english and attaining proficiency in reading comprehension. 5. conclusion this research examined how the language grouping of learners reflects performance on the higher-order and more cognitively complex items in prepirls 2011. it was found that across the lowest socio-economic strata, the learners whose lolt was english during the foundation phase performed better than the mother tongue lolt african language learners on the higherlevel reading processes assessed in the higher-order subscale. differences in performance across language of instruction are indicative of unequal quality of instruction across the languages of instruction. changing the lolt does not address the underlying problems, but providing high quality english l2 (alongside quality l1 instruction) from grade 0 is a possible means of addressing inequality. learning a home language and learning english as an l2 are both important for the south african learner. english l2 learners perform poorly when compared to english l1 learner performance, despite having had access to english as a lolt throughout the foundation phase. this suggests that english l2 requires a different instructional approach to bring english l2 learners up to the same language proficiency level as their l1 peers, particularly if english is to be the lolt from grade 4 onwards (mcleod palane, 2017). the cultural dominance of english prevalent in south africa manifests in motivation for parents to have their children instructed in english (de wet, 2002), a perception of social mobility (posel & casale, 2011) and access to print material in english (reeves et al., 2008). these weighty cultural capital factors possibly contribute to the better performance of the english l2 learners on the higher-order reading comprehension items and benchmarks over the african languages l1 learners. the multilingual complexity of south africa is further complicated by the influx of immigrants from the surrounding african countries. providing learners from all sectors with quality english l2 instruction from an early age could counteract marginalisation within the south african society (mcleod palane, 2017). adequate home and school mediatory contexts are critical for every learner to develop their home language and further research is needed to provide better quality mother tongue support and instruction to learners. however, for many learners in south africa an early immersion in english l2 with their l1 as a subject provides critical access to print material for the development of higherorder reading comprehension. the complexity inherent in the debate of whether learners should rather receive instruction in english over an african language that is their home language requires much consideration. many parents would prefer that schools offer instruction in english (webb, 2002; de wet, 2002). however, many schools are unable to support an english lolt for reasons such as: • the teachers not being equipped to instruct a class in english because they lack the prerequisite skills to teach english at an academic level (uys et al., 2007). • teachers having insufficient english l2 instructional resources (uys et al., 2007). 55 palane & howie a comparison of higher-order reading comprehension performance ... • the community within which the school is found does not support the learning of english as a second language and english becomes a foreign language for these learners and, as such, extremely difficult to master (reeves et al., 2008). however, the availability of resources in a home language will also affect learners whose lolt is the l1 where the l1 is an african language. lack of educational materials in african languages may cause parents to move their children to the better resourced english-medium state schools (webb, 2002; reeves et al., 2008). the lack of print material in all the home languages in equal quality and quantity suggests that mother tongue education in every african language, as blanket policy for every context, will not provide the best opportunity for every learner. while access to home language instruction remains the right of every learner, equal opportunity should be an important consideration in every context. building english l2 instructional capacity for all learners (whether as the language of instruction or as a subject) from the start of formal schooling, and even before in early childhood education, needs to be carefully considered as a means of facilitating equal learning opportunities. this means research is required into how instruction in the classroom 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de facto school choice. perspectives in education, 24(2), 1-24. zimmerman, l. 2010. the influence of schooling conditions and teaching practices on curriculum implementation for grade 4 reading literacy development. doctoral dissertation. pretoria: university of pretoria. https://doi.org/10.1075/impact.14 _goback 115 threats to the quality of marking of the national senior certificate examinations in the northern cape abstract examinations are regarded as vital instruments not only to determine the progress and success of learners, but also the quality of an education system. owing to these high stakes, south africa places enormous emphasis on the national senior certificate examination. although quality should be ensured by an effective, accurate and a high standard in the marking process, complaints suggest that there may be threats to the quality of marking and, by implication, to the education system itself. this exploratory study reports on the possible threats to a high standard of marking that emerged from data generated through semi-structured interviews with various role-players involved in the marking process. the findings suggest that the threats relate to the appointment of markers, the competency of the markers and an overall lack of confidence in the marking process. we conclude the article by proposing various recommendations to curb the identified threats to accurate marking. keywords: markers’ competence, markers’ appointment, national senior certificate examination, marking standard 1. introduction in south africa (sa), the national senior certificate (nsc) examination serves as a school-leaving certificate, as a university-entrance qualification and as the public measure of learners’ performance (umalusi, 2004). the nsc examination also serves as a measure of accountability and a yardstick to measure the quality and effectiveness of the entire education system. suspicions about the quality of the examination process could therefore hamper learners’ access to tertiary institutions, their entry into the workplace and thus have a negative influence on the development of the country. the national regulatory body, umalusi, ensures the quality and integrity of the nsc examination. in addition, the regulations pertaining to the conduct, administration and management of the national senior certificate examinations (nsc regulations) (dbe, 2014, chap. 1, s. 2) aim to “regulate and control the administration, management and conduct of the nsc examination and assessment process”. complementary to the nsc regulations, is the patricia s. van wyk university of the free state vanwykp59@gmail.com kevin l. teise* school of education, sol plaatje university kevin.teise@spu.ac.za adré le roux school of education studies, university of the free state lerouxad@ufs.ac.za *corresponding author doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v37i1.9 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 37(1): 115-129 date published: february 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:vanwykp59@gmail.com mailto:kevin.teise@spu.ac.za mailto:lerouxad@ufs.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.9 http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 116 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) personnel administrative measures (pam) of 2016, which provides in section d.4 criteria for the appointment of educators for examination-related work. as the marking of examination scripts forms an integral part of any assessment process, it is accepted that the nsc regulations establish guidelines to ensure the quality of marking and the credibility of the nsc examination, while pam provides criteria for the appointment of markers. in 2012, the department of basic education (dbe) (2012, s. 6.2.3) conceded that “some divergent practices regarding a number of the marking processes” exists and indicated that a manual, aimed at standardising the marking process across all provinces, had been developed. whilst this process was earmarked for implementation in 2013, in 2014 the nsc regulations were adopted. however, despite procedures to regulate assessment, several concerns have been raised about the standard of the nsc examination process. these concerns include, non-transparency in the statistical adjustment of nsc marks (loock, 2013), the poor quality of results (du plessis, 2014), and the unequal treatment of learners, based on their home language (du plessis, steyn & weideman, 2016). concerns about the nsc examination that have been persistently reported in the media range from the qualifications of markers, their competence in terms of subject knowledge and the language they mark (beeld, 17 december 2011; beeld, 25 april 2012), insensitivity in the content of question papers (sabc news, 2014), to the leaking of examination papers (sabc news, 2016). although the media reports are anecdotal, they contribute towards public perceptions of the trustworthiness of the nsc examination. on a more official level, umalusi highlights in their annual reports various areas of concern and non-compliance, ranging from aspects related to the moderation of question papers, to the monitoring of marking, and to the selection, appointment and training of markers (umalusi, 2015; 2017). as noted by umalusi, “[e]vidence gathered over the years suggests that inconsistency in the marking of nsc scripts decreases the fairness and reliability of marks awarded to candidates, and therefore threatens the validity of the examinations (umalusi, 2017:35). internationally a wealth of studies have been conducted on various aspects of the marking of high-stakes examinations (barkaoui, 2011; bloxham, den-outer, hudson & price, 2016). in south africa, however, despite some scholarly research on the nsc examination (du plessis, steyn & weideman, 2016; loock, 2013), little research has been undertaken, particularly in the northern cape province on the possible threats to the integrity of the examination. this article is subsequently exploratory in nature as it aims at exploring nsc marking in the northern cape about which very little information is available (cf. fouché, 2005: 109; strydom, 2013: 152). given the persistency of the complaints about the nsc examination as an exit point examination, and since very little is known about the possible threats to the integrity of the examination, the aim of this paper is to explore people’s perceptions of the threats to the standard of the marking of the nsc examination in the northern cape. the decision to work with the northern cape was informed by the fact that every province is primarily responsible for managing its own nsc examinations according to province-specific directives (dbe, 2014, chap. 7, s. 36). the intention, however, was not to investigate the accuracy of the marking or the entire examination process, but rather to explore the perceived factors that could potentially threaten the standard of the marking and subsequently jeopardise the reliability and credibility of results. 117 van wyk, teise & le roux threats to the quality of marking of the national senior certificate ... 2. conceptual framework this article centres on the possible threats to the standard of marking. although the aim is not to comment on the quality of marking itself, it is important to consider the notions “quality in education” and “high standard of marking”. our contention is that an understanding of these notions would highlight the threats to the standard of nsc marking. quality and standards in education the concept of quality and standards is generally rather vague and difficult to define because its meaning depends on its context, as well as its relative and value-laden nature (elassy, 2015; tikly & barrett, 2007). nonetheless, in the literature, “quality” is conceptualised in terms of fitness for purpose, transformation, excellence, exceptional and zero error (nicholson, 2011), relevance and sustainability (barrett, chawla-duggan, lowe, nikel & ukpo, 2006); responsiveness and reflexibility (nikel & lowe, 2010); and being up to standard, purposeful, exceptional, and having accountability (schindler, puls-elvidge welzant & crawford, 2015). the concept of quality (and standards), therefore, have many connotations. defining quality in and of education is equally difficult due to the fact that, in education, “quality concerns cannot be confined to only one aspect of education as all the elements associated with educational quality are interrelated” (dare in anekeya, 2015:46). tikly and barrett (2007; sayed & ahmed, 2011), however, identify three approaches that influence the current perceptions of quality in education and of the quality of education, namely: the human capital approach, the human rights approach and the social justice approach. whilst the human capital perspective highlights education’s contribution to the economy, the human rights approach emphasises education as a basic human right. in contrast, the social justice approach foregrounds participation and the voice of the marginalised as being imperative to quality education. these approaches largely correspond with the view and expectation that sa education should contribute towards the economy (doe, 1996b, s.4[b]), that education is a basic human right (rsa 1996, s.29), and that education is in principle also a social justice issue (doe, 1995, chap. 4, s.4). however, quality education has the potential to transform an education system and to redress inequalities that are specifically significant for sa education. in particular, the appeal for quality in education relates to its use as a desirable goal for education, to secure distributional justice and equality, and to serve as a justification for the reorganisation and restructuring of education (sayed, 2001). although the concept of quality appears not to be explicitly defined in sa policy documents, a good quality of education is linked to the capacity and commitment of the teacher, the appropriateness of the curriculum, the way in which standards are set and assessed and the efficiency and productivity of the system (doe, 1995, chap. 4, ss.4; 5; 9). in essence, quality in sa education resonates strongly with the system’s transformative vision articulated in the south african schools act whereby the government commits itself to: redress past injustices in educational provision, provide an education of progressively high quality for all learners and in so doing lay a strong foundation for the development of all our people’s talents and capabilities (doe, 1996a, preamble). a high quality of marking if quality in sa education relates to the way in which “standards are set and assessed” (doe, 1996a, chap. 4), then it can be assumed that quality marking will involve more than the mere 118 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) judging of individual students’ performance, their achievement of learning goals and the worth of their responses (ramnarain, 2014). rather, a high standard of marking, by implication, should also reflect the integrity, the efficiency and productivity of the education system – a high standard of marking is thus an indispensable part of quality education. a high quality of marking is generally associated with concepts such as accuracy, reliability, fairness, efficiency and consistency (killen, 2010; ofqual, 2013b). however, the achievement of these concepts within the context of a high standard of marking depends not only on robust systems and controls (that promote good marking, and identify and remedy poor marking), but also on marking undertaken by skilled and experienced examiners (ofqual, 2013a; hkeaa, 2014). accordingly, we agree with ahmed and pollit (2011:259) who maintain that it is not only “futile to design excellent assessment tasks if an equal amount of care is not also put into the marking process”. the dbe (2011:32) views marking as “a meticulous and systematic process that is based on a reasoned judgement based on learner evidence and agreed standards”. the dbe further explains that good marking should be accurate and reliable and aim to produce valid and reliable results (dbe, 2012; 2016a). this implies that the marking process should produce results that are not only accepted as an accurate reflection of a candidate’s efforts, but which also demonstrate that the marking process is not tainted – something which could have a serious impact on the quality and standard of the entire examination process and on perceptions about the education system. 3. research strategy participants in this qualitative study, eight participants were purposively selected because of their rich knowledge regarding the different aspects of marking. the participants consisted of one internal moderator, one chief marker and one senior marker, one centre manager, one curriculum official, one school principal and two union members from two different unions (“union member a” and “union member b”). the selection of participants was based on the assumption that they were best positioned to draw on knowledge and experience of the marking process and would therefore be able to provide rich and relevant information (maree & pietersen, 2016). data sources data was generated through semi-structured interviews. this decision was premised on the understanding that interviews would provide a platform for the participants to construct and present their own opinions of the marking process and perceived threats to the quality thereof (flick, 2018; seidman, 2013). written informed consent was sought from each participant. ethical clearance was obtained from the university of the free state and permission to undertake this study was granted by the head of the northern cape department of basic education (ncdbe). the interviews lasted approximately 45 minutes and were recorded and transcribed. data analysis and ensuring integrity we used thematic data analysis that enabled us to draw various themes from the data. trustworthiness was ensured by objectively examining the data. while we were guided by the results rather than by pre-conceived notions, we ensured that the results were not the product of research design errors or misunderstandings that could have influenced our interpretation 119 van wyk, teise & le roux threats to the quality of marking of the national senior certificate ... of the data. we subsequently remained committed to intellectual honesty by leaving a clear audit trail. sufficient, detailed descriptions of the data were collected and reported in context to allow judgements about transferability by the reader (nieuwenhuis, 2016). 4. findings our findings are organised around three themes namely: perceptions about the appointment of markers, marker competence and confidence in the marking process. although discussed separately, these themes are not only interrelated, but point towards how to establish a high standard of marking and indicate the public’s opinion of the standard and value of the nsc examination. appointment of markers from the data, it seems that some participants are not convinced that objective criteria and strategies for the ranking and evaluation of markers are always used to ensure that the best candidates are selected. while union member a raised the concern that appointments are not always based on objective criteria because “personal feelings from departmental officials play a big role during the selection and appointment”, the senior marker was uncertain of “whether the department pays attention to that evaluation form” during the selection of markers. in fact, the senior marker justified this perception by indicating that, “some markers who have been evaluated as poor during the previous marking session, just get re-appointed and even promoted to the next level in the marking”. the selection of markers and the process of their appointment seem to be clouded in secrecy, as it is uncertain “what criteria are used during the selection … and the department never gives reasons” (chief marker). various participants corroborate this perception: while union member b expressed uncertainty in the words: “i don’t actually even know what informs the ranking [of potential markers]”, the centre manager stated: “how they [the selection committee] select, i don’t know.” the problem with regard to the ranking and evaluation of markers is succinctly captured by the observation that “there is no transparency from the department” (union member a). concerns regarding the lack of objectivity and transparency, including the secretive nature of the selection of markers and the process of appointing them, seem to feed into another frustration, expressed by the chief marker: “there is no platform to raise these issues.” in addition to the lack of transparency, the participants also indicated that the selection process is often hampered by imperatives of equity and representivity that need to be considered during the appointment of markers. the perception is that the appointment of competent markers is often subject to these imperatives. one union member in particular noted that, “issues of representivity, equity and the likes are the cause that [sic] teachers who are not competent get appointed”. this perception was corroborated by the chief marker who observed that, “sometimes your strong markers are from the same district but then you must swop (change) them for someone from another district. this means that, because of district representation, you must swop a good marker for a bad marker”. by implication, it can be assumed that when the appointment of markers does not seek to appoint the best markers within the parameters of equity imperatives, the quality of marking will be open to attack. a third factor that came to the fore during the interviews was that teachers’ unions seem to exert undue power and influence on the selection and appointment of markers. while the chief marker conceded that, “they [the unions] are fully taking part [sic] in the selection of markers”, 120 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) the one union member explained their involvement by saying, “[w]e are invited to the selection meeting during which we look at the experience, qualifications and the grades taught by the markers”. interestingly, however, the chief marker noted that, “[t]eacher unions are supposed to be observers only. but as far as i am concerned for all the time that i was there, they were fully taking part [sic] in the selection of markers”. the notion that the involvement of teachers’ unions exceeds mere observation was further supported by the curriculum official who indicated that, “the department wants to use pass results [of the learners in the subject taught by the potential marker] as [a] criterion for selection, but one teacher union do [sic] not agree with this”. union member b expressed the union’s discontent with the selection criteria: “the ranking is really unfair … as well as the 60% [pass rate required to be selected as a marker].” while union member b boasted that, “we ensure that the right people are appointed”, the chief marker foregrounded the problem with the unions’ involvement in his words, “the department would compromise to the unions [decide in favour of the unions] … they would take somebody else instead.” marker competence concerns about the quality of marking seem to be further complemented by reservations about the competency of some markers. in particular, the internal moderator expressed the opinion that the language competency of appointed markers was, “a great headache, especially in the northern cape.” the senior marker supported this concern, observing that markers appointed without the necessary language competency, “struggle with the language they don’t understand and penalise the learners unfairly”. the internal moderator corroborated this, by citing various examples to indicate how markers “fail to recognise synonyms which learners are using and regard it as not the correct word that is used [sic] in the memo, therefore marking it wrong”, and how: … learners [from namaqualand] use a different type of afrikaans expressions [sic] than the kimberley learners but their answers are not wrong … the english markers do not understand and therefore disadvantage the learners unfairly and cause huge mark differences. in addition to the issue of language competency, the participants also raised concerns about markers’ knowledge of the contents of the subject they marked and their qualifications. the importance of content knowledge was emphasised by the senior maker and the internal moderator. while the former indicated that “the lack of content knowledge disadvantage [sic] learners”, the latter was of the opinion that, “the selection committee should consider subject content knowledge”. the senior marker equally underscored the importance of content knowledge, and by implication, foregrounded such knowledge as a prerequisite for a good standard of marking: “markers should have a subject-related degree which helps [them] to have a better understanding of the content knowledge”. such a prerequisite is also implicitly supported by the internal moderator who blames the poor quality of marking on a lack of knowledge of the contents of the subject in that “big differences are only picked up during the re-mark from those who struggle with the content”. the data also revealed that various participants regard a marker’s teaching experience and relevant qualifications as important prerequisites for good marking. in this regard, the internal moderator was of the opinion that the selection committee should “look more thoroughly to [sic] qualifications” and the senior marker observed that, “the person must be qualified and must teach the subject”. although some respondents were in favour of the current requirement 121 van wyk, teise & le roux threats to the quality of marking of the national senior certificate ... of a two-year minimum teaching experience for markers, the school principal felt that, “a person must at least have taught the subject for a minimum [of] three years before that person can mark”. the chief marker shared the view that “two years of experience … is not enough”. it seems that a marker’s competence is being threatened by his or her poor language competence, his or her lack of content knowledge and insufficient teaching experience. as a result of these concerns, some participants are in favour of the implementation of a competency test for markers. although the senior marker agreed with the chief marker that a competency test is “the only fair process to appoint markers” and that it “should determine the content knowledge of markers”, the chief marker warns that such a test “must just not be used to discriminate against markers”. confidence in the quality of marking the data revealed that the majority of participants had reservations about the quality of the marking in the northern cape. while the internal moderator doubted the marking “because my involvement with the re-marks show [sic] how many mistakes slipped through”, the chief marker expressed a similar concern because “of the mistakes that i’ve picked up during the remark sessions. i’ve seen during re-marking the errors which was [sic] made by the markers”. the centre manager unequivocally expressed the opinion that “the quality of marking is not good”, while the senior maker’s doubt stemmed from “fear of the english-speaking markers who are incompetent in the language [afrikaans]”. even the school principal doubted the quality of the marking: “yes, i do have doubts because i know [some] of [the] markers who just couldn’t cope”. it is interesting, however, to note that, contrary to the views of the majority of the participants, the two union members were unanimous in that they did not “doubt the quality of marking” (union member a). the participants highlighted various factors that might influence the quality of marking and that could indirectly feed into the lack of confidence in this regard. a lack of commitment by the markers was foregrounded as a possible threat to the quality of marking. union member a announced that, “some are committed but there are those who are just there for the sake of the money” and union member b shared a similar opinion: “the salary definitely has an impact … because they are there just for the money”. the perception that markers are only concerned about the money they earn, was corroborated by the curriculum official who felt that, “the money part will always be the driving force”. another factor that could also be linked to a perceived lack of the markers’ commitment is the centre manager’s observation that, “you can see how relaxed and ‘don’t care’ the markers are with regards to the importance of their duties”. more than one participant observed how the markers were “too [much] in a rush to get finished and miss out on the importance to do [sic] a proper job” (senior marker) and how they “get more relaxed as the marking progress [sic] and then loiter around on the stoep and to [sic] the cafeteria” (centre manager). two other factors of concern, which might have a possible detrimental impact on the quality of marking, are the number of scripts moderated and the conditions under which marking often takes place. the data reveal that some participants shared a similar view, “the 10% moderation is not enough to track down all mistakes of markers” (internal moderator). the chief marker also conceded that, “the 10% moderation is not enough and more scripts need to be moderated in order to eliminate the mistakes done by markers”. it appears that there might not be a sufficient number of scripts currently moderated during the marking process and subsequently the senior marker is compelled to ask the question: “only 10% 122 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) is moderated, so what happens to the unmoderated scripts?” in addition, the physical space for marking and, in particular, unbearably high temperatures in rooms with no air conditioning seem to be of concern to some participants. the chief marker noted how markers are forced to “keep on taking breaks to get some fresh air because of the heat”, while the senior marker suggested that “the department [should] arrange extra fans because not all schools have air conditioning”. in line with their general concern for workers, the two union members were sympathetic towards the fact that, according to union member a, “teachers sacrifice a lot away from home and they should be comfortable”. union member b also felt that, “the department should do more to make the markers comfortable”. 5. discussion three themes and related concerns emerged from the findings, namely the appointment of markers, the markers’ competence and confidence in the quality of the marking. the discussion of the findings subsequently pivots on these themes. the appointment of markers markers are at the centre of the marking exercise and are fundamental to ensuring consistent performance in the selection process (lumley in barkaoui, 2011). the selection of competent markers assumes that the selection of markers and the appointment processes be guided by criteria that are clear, transparent and consistently applied. by implication, it can be said that markers with the necessary language proficiency and knowledge of the content of the subject ought to be appointed. the nsc regulations (dbe 2014, s.4.4) provide for the appointment of competent markers with: a recognised three-year post-school qualification which must include the subject concerned at second or third year level or other appropriate post matric qualifications; appropriate teaching experience, including teaching experience at the appropriate level, in the subject concerned and language competency. although the minimum requirements for the appointment of markers are clearly laid down, the data revealed that these criteria are not consistently applied. while markers without the basic qualifications and competencies are appointed, the ncdbe’s process of appointing markers is not always transparent. the problem with the appointment of markers seems to be persistent in the northern cape, despite clear guidelines provided for marker selection and appointment (cf. dbe, 2016b). in 2015, umalusi reported that in the northern cape, “not all marker applications contained verifiable academic records”. in 2017, umalusi reported in a similar vein that the appointment of markers in the northern cape deviated from the sub-criteria, as the qualifications of many applicants could not be verified. in the absence of transparency, incompetent and poorly qualified markers can be appointed. although the application of equity and redress imperatives, as is mandated by the constitution of the republic of south africa (1996), remains important in the selection and appointment of markers, care should be taken that appointments be aligned with the recognition of the significance of the nsc examination, both for the learner, the integrity of the examination process, as well as for the development of the country. the findings also reveal that teachers’ unions are actively involved and participate in the appointment of markers. however, such involvement has been criticised because the appointment of teachers in some provinces is controlled and inappropriately influenced by 123 van wyk, teise & le roux threats to the quality of marking of the national senior certificate ... particular teachers’ unions, and that posts are literally sold to the highest bidder (dbe, 2016a). moreover, marking the nsc is financially rewarding and potential markers do anything to get appointed, even if they are not linguistically capable or if they lack the relevant experience or content knowledge to mark the assigned scripts. by implication, any unethical involvement of teachers’ unions in the northern cape that leads to the appointment of incompetent nsc markers has the potential to contaminate the entire marking process. section 4.4.6 of annexure k of the nsc regulations, states specifically that the direct involvement of teachers’ unions in the selection and appointment of markers should be that of observers (dbe, 2014). however, it seems that this regulation is not adhered to in the northern cape and, by implication, the non-adherence to nsc regulations violates the very aim of the regulations, namely to “regulate and control the administration, management and conduct of the national senior certificate examination and assessment process” (dbe, 2014, chap. 1, s.2). markers’ competence the dbe (2016a, 15) concedes that the “quality of marking is dependent on the competency and expertise of the markers appointed”. to ensure that competent and experienced markers are appointed, the dbe audits the process to select the markers across all provinces (dbe, 2016a). with regard to ensuring the quality of marking of the nsc examinations, umalusi foregrounds the importance of verifying the selection of markers and their subsequent training as “[i]nconsistency in the marking of scripts has a negative impact on fairness and reliability of marks awarded to candidates and thus thwarts the validity of the examinations” (umalusi, 2017, 35). although suto and nadas (2008) maintain that a teacher’s experience does not contribute to his or her marking accurately, elander and hardman (in baird, greatorex & bell, 2004) find that markers who have taught the subject before can apply wider criteria when marking and consequently contribute towards fair marking. similarly, yorke, bridges and woolf (2000) maintain that a marker’s experience and expertise have an impact on the quality of marking. what is more, experienced and competent teachers not only ensure valid marking, but experience and competence are also desirable characteristics that ensure good quality in education (efa-global monitoring report, 2005). as such, the appointment of experienced markers serves not only to ensure quality marking and to do justice to candidates, but it also enhances the quality of education. in this regard, some participants advocated a test of markers’ competency and this highlights the fact that the implementation of such a test is of national importance. one of the advantages of such a test is that it could ensure that the markers who comply with the basic requirements for appointment are competent enough to mark. knowledge of the content of the subject is also significant for a high quality of marking. jaeger (in barret, 2001) maintains that reliability can only be expected if markers are highly knowledgeable in the subject that they mark. similarly, suto, nadas and bell (2011) regard a marker’s highest qualification in a relevant subject as being a better predictor of accuracy. it can thus be assumed that a good quality of marking and reliable nsc results rely on markers who have the relevant qualifications and knowledge of the subject. relevant knowledge of the subject will enable markers to get a better grasp of the responses of candidates. south african teachers are constantly accused of having poor knowledge of their subject (spaull, 2013). to improve teachers’ performance (also in nsc marking), the national development plan (rsa, 2012) proposes that teachers be supported in terms of their knowledge of the subject they teach. the dbe (2010) also believes that teachers with little knowledge of the subject they teach are unable to handle problem solving and the critical thinking of learner’s responses. findings from a study conducted by carnoy, chisholm and chilisa (in heystek & minnaar, 2015) confirm that learners’ 124 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) poor performance and low scores in particular subjects are directly related to inadequately qualified teachers. the link between poor performance and teacher inadequacy is recognised in the selection and appointment of markers for the nsc examinations in that specific criteria are associated with qualifications and extensive experience in a particular subject (dbe, 2016b). however, the participants’ concerns about markers’ knowledge of contents of the subjects they marked and their qualifications align with non-compliance by the northern cape as reported by umalusi in 2015. umalusi reported that the pass rate criterion was not consistently applied in the northern cape as some applicants were appointed to the position of senior marker in mathematics, despite having pass rates as low as 25% in 2014. in 2017, “[a]pplicants who lacked subject qualifications were appointed as markers or senior markers for geography, history and mathematical literacy” (umalusi, 2017, 40). the appointment of markers who lack subject qualifications contravenes the stipulation in pam (dbe, 2016b, ssd.4.2.3.1 & d.4.2.3.2). according to which an appointee must have “a recognised three year post grade 12 qualification, which must include the subject concerned at second or third year level” (section) and “extensive experience as an educator in the particular subject or a related area and at least two years teaching or other curriculum-related experience within the last 5 years at the appropriate level”. this state of affairs foregrounds the cautiousness with which the selection of markers and their appointment should be approached. in south african education, the link between quality and the teacher’s capacity and commitment (doe, 1995, chap. 4) underscores such cautiousness – the appointment of teachers without the necessary knowledge of their subject, and without sufficient proficiency in language will seriously threaten not only the quality of marking, but also the integrity of the nsc. the opposite could also be assumed – that the appointment of competent markers will not only significantly contribute to accurate, reliable, fair, efficient and consistent judgement of a learner’s achievement, but will also have the potential to restore the public’s trust in the nsc examination. confidence in the quality of marking general confidence in the quality of marking seems to be problematic. it could thus be assumed that the lack of transparency in the appointment of markers and, what is more, the appointment of incompetent markers threatens the quality of marking. although the appointment of incompetent markers feeds the perceptions and experiences that undermine confidence in the marking process, other factors also contributes toward the lack of confidence in the quality of marking. markers work in difficult conditions, which include long hours, cramped venues that are blisteringly hot. bearing in mind that the northern cape is one of the hottest provinces in south africa, these concerns could have an impact on the quality of marking. wolfe, moulder and myford (2001) find that a marker’s accuracy, reliability and quality decrease over time. klein and el (2003) note that papers marked earlier in a marking session are awarded significantly lower marks than papers marked later in the session. physical factors also play a significant role in the efficiency with which marking takes place and, in this regard, plake (in barret, 2001) contends that markers’ inconsistencies could be exacerbated by fatigue during the marking process. in a similar vein, aslett’s (2006) opinion is that a lack of sleep affects markers’ vigilance, attention, logical reasoning and rational thinking – all skills that are necessary for sound judgement of a candidate’s work and that enhance the quality of marking. in other words, if conditions of marking are not favourable, as indicated by the participants, the quality of marking will indeed be jeopardised. 125 van wyk, teise & le roux threats to the quality of marking of the national senior certificate ... another significant concern that affects the quality of marking is that only 10% of randomly selected marked scripts are moderated. moderation ensures equity, accountability, reliability, fairness, consistency and community building (bloxham, hughes & adie, 2015). moderation also enables one to detect and rectify marking mistakes, which if not detected, could have a distressing impact on a candidate’s mark. while the participants raised concerns about the small percentage of scripts that are moderated, it is interesting to note that bloxham (2009) also criticises the moderation of only 10% of scripts, claiming that this percentage is based on the assumption that 10% of a sample is true of the whole. the assumption that a sample does in fact represent the whole implies that all scripts were marked consistently, accurately and fairly. however, when one considers the problems related to the selection and appointment of competent marks, including the difficulties with language competence, and the dire conditions under which markers often have to work, it is highly unlikely that quality marking is consistently done during the northern cape nsc marking process. 6. implications for nsc marking in drawing on the discussion of the possible threats to quality nsc marking in the northern cape province, we conclude this article by proposing some recommendations to address the identified threats to quality marking in the province. although the study was undertaken in one province only, it is likely that these threats may be equally prevalent in other provinces. this means that these recommendations are not relevant to the northern cape only. given the concerns about the appointment of competent markers, it is recommended that the ncdbe should ensure that the minimum requirements to qualify as a marker be adhered to. in addition, measures should also be put into place to ensure that markers’ language competency and knowledge of the subject they are marking are excellent and that administrative requirements are followed. we recommend the implementation of a competency test to assist with the selection of teachers that are qualified to be appointed as markers. we also propose that the perceived involvement of teachers’ unions be restricted to observation by aligning the selection process with nsc regulations. in order to improve marking conditions and, by implication, strengthen markers’ confidence in the marking process, it is recommended that attention be given to the circumstances under which markers are expected to work. this includes factors such as physical conditions and the marking period itself to limit fatigue and improve vigilance, logical reasoning and rational thinking during the marking process. it is important to ensure that marking conditions at marking centres are as favourable possible in order to enhance the quality of marking. if the quality, thus including the consistency of marking, is enhanced, then the moderation of only 10% of the scripts can be justified. however, as the present lack of confidence in the marking process is supported by concerns regarding the small percentage of scrips moderated, it is recommended that a larger percentage of scripts be moderated, under improved circumstances, at the marking centres. as the percentage of scripts moderated is linked to the extent to which marking is done consistently, it is important to ensure consistency in marking in order to do justice to the moderation of scripts. 7. conclusion this article was premised on the assumption that the nsc examination serves as a measure of the quality and effectiveness of the entire education system, and by implication, an indication of the extent to which quality education contributes towards a more equitable education system. if the quality of the examination process is placed under suspicion, it can have dire consequences for learners’ access to institutions of higher learning, their future prospects in 126 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) the work place, but also for the development of the country. given public concerns about the nsc examination, areas of concern that is annually highlighted by umalusi and the perceived threats emanating from the research findings, it is assumed that the value of attending to these potential threats could be two-fold: it could contribute towards restoring confidence in the nsc examination and in the entire south african education system. 8. references ahmed, a. & a. pollit. 2011. “improving marking quality through a taxonomy of marking schemes.” assessment in education, principles, policy and practice 18(3), 259-278. https:// doi.org/10.1080/0969594x.2010.546775 anekeya, d. 2015. “school based factors affecting quality of education in primary schools in kakamega, north sub county, kenya.” international journal of recent research in social 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http://www.section27.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/spaull-2013-cde-report-south-africas-education-crisis.pdf http://www.section27.org.za/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/spaull-2013-cde-report-south-africas-education-crisis.pdf https://doi.org/10.15270/49-2-58 https://doi.org/10.1080/02671520902721837 https://doi.org/10.1080/02671520701755499 129 van wyk, teise & le roux threats to the quality of marking of the national senior certificate ... umalusi. 2001. general and further education and training quality assurance act. pretoria: government printers. umalusi. 2004. investigation into the senior certificate examination: a summary of the evaluation of the senior certificate examination. pretoria: umalusi. umalusi. 2015. quality assurance of the 2015 national senior certificate (nsc) examinations and assessment of the department of basic education (dbe). pretoria: umalusi. umalusi, 2017. quality assurance of the 2017 national senior certificate (nsc) examinations and assessment of the department of basic education (dbe). pretoria: umalusi. wolfe, e.w., moulder, b.c. & myford, c. 2001. “detecting differential rater functioning over time (drift) using the rasch multi-faceted rating scale model.” journal of applied measurement, 2(3), 256-280. yorke, m., bridges, p. & woolf, h. 2000. “mark distributions and marking practices in uk higher education.” learning in higher education, 1(1), 7-27. https://doi. org/10.1177/1469787400001001002 https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787400001001002 https://doi.org/10.1177/1469787400001001002 2422021 39(1): 242-256 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.15 covid-19 and the exacerbation of educational inequalities in new zealand abstract new zealand’s response to the covid-19 pandemic was “to go fast and go hard”. this directive meant closing the borders, requiring returning new zealanders to go into two-week self-isolation and, on 25 march 2020, putting the entire country into full lockdown. schools had a short period of time to get ready to offer online learning. the move highlighted the country’s social, economic and educational divide. on television we were shown children with laptops working at home in their designer living rooms, talking to their teachers through zoom with their parents hovering around supportively. however, this was not the reality for all. there are parts of the country with limited or no internet connectivity. there are high poverty areas where households do not have basic materials, let alone computers or other devices suitable for use as learning platforms. a survey of schools showed that only half the schools in the country felt that their students would be able to access online learning. the ministry of education had to quickly organise the delivery of learning packs of printed materials to outlying areas, laptops and modems to low-income communities and set up a home-learning television channel with programmes in english and te reo māori (the indigenous language). studies are now revealing that despite these efforts, and as the covid-19 economic impacts begin to bite, new zealand’s at-risk students have fallen even further behind. this article discusses these research findings and highlights what was learnt from the covid-19 experience in order to begin to redress these disparities. keywords: covid-19, school closures, lockdown, educational disparity, digital divide 1. introduction on 25 march 2020, in response to the arrival of the covid-19 virus in new zealand, the prime minister, jacinda ardern, put the entire country into strict lockdown. schooling was suspended so that the ministry of education could assess readiness for converting educational delivery to online teaching and teachers could have time to prepare and upload teaching programmes. the ministry of education’s assessment revealed that only half the country’s approximately 750 000 students in the compulsory author: prof c.a. mutch1 affiliation: 1the university of auckland, new zealand doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i1.15 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 242-256 published: 12 march 2021 received: 26 november 2020 accepted: 18 january 2021 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5756-2042 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.15 2432021 39(1): 243-256 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.15 mutch covid-19 and the exacerbation of educational inequalities in new zealand schooling sector would be able to easily access their learning through electronic means (new zealand government, 2020). since adopting neo-liberal economic policies in the 1980s, the gap between rich and poor in new zealand has widened (mutch, 2012). increasing economic disparity has led to higher levels of poverty, food insecurity, poor housing, domestic violence, child mortality and youth suicide (ministry of health, 2019; statistics new zealand, 2020). in the education sector, the divide manifests itself in what is colloquially known as “the long tail of underachievement” (snook et al., 2013). it appears that those most affected by poverty, poor housing and lower educational attainment are new zealand’s indigenous people, māori, and migrants from the various pacific islands (haig, 2018). pacific people are often referred to by the term, pasifika, to denote new zealand residents or citizens of pacific descent (samu, 2006) the news that that half of new zealand’s school students would be disadvantaged by a digital divide was tempered with the recognition that students in lower-socio-economic areas, such as māori in rural locations or pasifika in high density urban suburbs would be most negatively affected. in this article i will outline how the educational and digital divide manifested itself during the pandemic and what attempts were made to alleviate it. i will discuss what we have learnt about how successful those attempts were and what lessons we can take from the lockdown experiences into the future. first, i will outline the chronology of the pandemic’s arrival and impact on new zealand, then report the steps taken to support students’ online learning during the lockdowns. next, i will review the recent studies, mostly surveys, that have been undertaken in new zealand to gauge the impact of the lockdowns on students’ achievement and wellbeing, supplementing this with some preliminary insights from my own qualitative study. in the conclusion, i will argue that while the pandemic and consequent lockdowns threw the economic, social and educational disparities into sharp relief (cook et al., 2020), the return of a labour government by an outright majority in the october 2020 elections, provides the opportunity to take up the challenge to address the disparities that are prevalent in our education system. 2. the arrival of covid-19 in new zealand when news of a novel coronavirus first reached new zealand in january 2020, it was initially considered to be another flu epidemic that would be under control before it reached our shores. as death rates overseas began to climb and cases started arriving in new zealand, it soon became clear the country would need to take the virus seriously. health systems in other countries were struggling to contain the virus and concerns were being raised here that, with decades of chronic underfunding of our health system, public health authorities and hospitals might not cope. one analyst said: “the key message was, if things gets out of control, our health system will be overwhelmed and very quickly, and it will be disastrous” (cameron, 2020: 4). contrary to the response in many other countries, the new zealand government acted quickly. the prime minister began gathering expert advice and weighing the options. table 1 provides a timeline of just how quickly the virus arrived and infections spread. several large gatherings, now known as super-spreader events – an international conference, a wedding and a st patrick’s day celebration – bringing people together from different parts of new zealand, were responsible for the virus spreading quickly around the country, even to the isolated west coast of the south island, which recorded the country’s first death on 29 march 2020. 2442021 39(1): 244-256 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) table 1: covid-19 in new zealand from first infections to first lockdown january 2020 february march • a new strain of the coronavirus, named later in short form, as covid-19, is reported in wuhan, china • 27–28 january 2020, the new zealand government activates the national security system and the ministry of health activates the national health co-ordination centre in case the virus arrives in new zealand • travellers from or through china are barred from entering new zealand • a repatriation flight brings new zealanders trapped in wuhan home • the department of the prime minister and cabinet organises a team of analysts to lead a government response strategy • despite pleas from universities, foreign students from china are not granted exemptions to return to or begin their studies in new zealand in the new academic year • public health modellers and biomedical experts are called in to support policy development and decision making • cases arrive in new zealand from italy and iran where the virus is spreading quickly • further restrictions are placed on incoming travellers who are now required to selfisolate for two weeks on arrival • an attendee at a large international conference on the south island tests positive for covid-19 and other linked cases begin appearing around the country • gatherings of more than 500 people are banned and, several weeks later, no more than 100 people are allowed to meet together • epidemiologists and other experts contribute to the growing pool of expertise informing the director general of health’s response plan • cases in new zealand continue to rise • severe concerns are raised about the under-preparedness of the country’s health system and its inability to cope • the prime minister creates an ad hoc cross-party committee to manage the pandemic response • new zealanders overseas are told to make plans to return home as quickly as possible • debates begin about the best approach to take – lockdown (as per wuhan) or herd immunity (an approach championed by sweden) • a scientific paper from imperial college london paints a stark warning of the possible consequences of the virus and swings the debate in favour of a “stamp it out” approach • the prime minister requests the creation of an alert level system, such as the familiar geological hazard system, geonet • alongside the level system, a communication plan is devised with a simple message: “unite against covid-19,” with four recommended actions: “wash your hands; cough or sneeze into your elbow; stay home if you are sick; and be kind” • on 20 march 2020, the four-level alert system is presented to the government: level 1 – prepare; level 2 – reduce; level 3 – restrict; and level 4 – eliminate • one day later the country is put into level 2 • on 23 march 2020 the country moves to level 3 • on 25 march 2020, the country goes into full lockdown at level 4, where it is announced it will stay for at least four weeks • the prime minister and the director general of health, dr ashley bloomfield, begin the first of their regular daily televised 1pm briefings to inform the country of the latest numbers (infections, hospitalisations, recoveries and, from late march, deaths) • school holidays, due to begin on 9 april 2020, are brought forward several weeks to allow the ministry of education and schools to prepare for online learning sources: cameron, 2020; ministry of education, 2020; ministry of health, 2020; new zealand doctor, 2020; new zealand government, 2020; radio new zealand, 2020. 2452021 39(1): 245-256 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.15 mutch covid-19 and the exacerbation of educational inequalities in new zealand in level 4 lockdown, people were restricted to interacting only with those living in their immediate household. the analogy of a bubble was used. people were to seal themselves in their bubble, not to burst someone else’s bubble by mixing with people from a different bubble and not to allow others into their bubble. while an effective metaphor, it instantly separated families, friends and neighbours, adding to social anxiety and dislocation. elderly people aged 70 and over, and others at risk were to stay indoors. in my own extended family, for example, an elderly aunt passed away early in lockdown. my sister who works at the local hospital was in a different bubble than my mother. she relayed the sad news through an open door and they stood and cried unable to offer physical comfort to each other. in my aunt’s family, no one could go and see their mother before she was hurriedly buried. social distancing and masks became a reality. families were to choose a designated shopper who would be their contact with the outside world for exempted activities such as getting medical supplies or going to the supermarket. bubble groups were allowed out to take exercise as long as they stayed local and maintained a safe distance. looking back, it was a time that felt as if a black cloud hung over the country. each day we tuned in to the televised one o’clock covid-19 briefing to watch the national and international numbers steadily rise. in retrospect, we can see that the “go hard and go fast” approach, along with the exhortations to “be kind”, seemed to work. new zealanders were mostly compliant and the virus was seemingly contained. after eight weeks, the country’s restrictions began to lift and we re-emerged from our small bubbles into a nationwide bubble with closed borders. since then, a community case of unknown origin put the auckland region into a local lockdown for several weeks in august. in general, however, the lockdowns, public health measures, border closures, two-week quarantines for returnees, regular community testing and tracking and tracing procedures have seemingly worked. we are in relative freedom compared to much of the rest of the world where they are still dealing with rising case numbers or second waves of infections. 3. the impact of covid-19 on schools to coincide with the march level 4 lockdown, the ministry of education brought forward the april school holidays by two weeks. students went into lockdown in their family bubbles. it was not a holiday for principals and teachers, however, as they used the break to quickly plan and prepare for online teaching and learning. table 2 below outlines the chronology for school closures and re-openings. 2462021 39(1): 246-256 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) table 2: timeline outlining the impact of covid-19 on the education system march 2020 april may june august september october • 17 march 2020 a dunedin high school closes temporarily as a student tests positive for covid-19 • calls increase for the closure of schools • the ministry of education announces the decision to bring the april school holidays forward by two weeks • 23 march 2020 schools are warned to get ready to close • 25 march 2020 schools are closed as level 4 comes into force • the ministry of education contacts schools to assess their readiness for remote learning • 8 april 2020 a government press release notes that with only 50% schools able to provide online learning, the ministry will roll out a four-pronged support programme to increase capacity across the sector • most schools phase into online learning after easter, beginning on 15 april 2020 • level 4 lockdown is extended until after anzac day (27 april), then the country moves to level 3 • 13 may 2020 the country moves to level 2 • from 18 may 2020 schools could begin a phased approach for students to return to school sites with the necessary precautions: students staying in designated bubbles, maintaining social distance and continuing strict hygiene routines • 8 june 2020 the country moves to level 1 • the border is still closed with only returning new zealanders, or others with exemptions, admitted. returnees must spend 14 days in governmentmandated quarantine facilities • over 100 days pass without new cases in the community • 12 august 2020 a community outbreak puts the city of auckland into level 3 lockdown and the rest of the country on level 2 • schools in the greater auckland area return to online learning • 30 august 2020 auckland comes out of level 3 lockdown and schools reopen at the newly created level 2.5 (more restrictive than level 2 but not as restrictive as level 3) • 23 september 2020 auckland moves down to level 2 and the rest of the country to level 1 • 5 october 2020 the entire country moves back to alert level 1 sources: cameron, 2020; education review office, 2020a; greater christchurch schools network, 2020; ministry of education, 2020; new zealand government, 2020; te, 2020; wade, 2020. bringing the school holidays forward enabled the ministry of education and schools to buy some time. as already noted, the ministry contacted every school to ascertain their readiness for online learning. what they found was that only half the country’s schools thought that it was possible for teachers to deliver and students to access online learning appropriately. lack of 2472021 39(1): 247-256 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.15 mutch covid-19 and the exacerbation of educational inequalities in new zealand access to the internet and suitable devices were the major problems. in a press release on 8 april 2020 the minister of education, chris hipkins, states: we know that tens of thousands of households either lack an internet connection or an education device at home. we’re working with telecommunications companies and internet service providers to connect as many of these households as we can as quickly as possible (new zealand government, 2020). minister hipkins explains that he wants all families to have at least one education delivery option available when term 2 starts. he outlines a rolling four-pronged delivery strategy that would (a) increase access to the internet and provide devices to homes; (b) deliver hard copy learning packs to families in hard-to-access areas; (c) present learning via two television channels, one in english and one in te reo māori and (d) make a variety of web resources available for teachers and parents. minister hipkins also notes that principals and teachers are getting ready for the start of the new term to help students continue their learning. his brief comment belies the huge effort that principals and teachers were to put in, foregoing their usual break at the end of the first school term to become familiar with different virtual platforms, re-plan their programmes, revise their lessons, find suitable materials and make arrangements for their own families so that they could keep their students engaged in learning. derek wenmoth, an expert in educational technology, highlights some of the challenges they were to face: for most teachers the sudden shift to remote learning, without any time for preparation posed significant challenges and exposed the need for a range of skills and knowledge required to operate effectively in these new environments and with these new tools (wenmoth, 2020). in hood’s study, one teacher, for example, needed to become familiar with 15 different platforms and applications that would be used by the school (hood, 2020a). new tools were only one of the concerns raised by moore and andersen (2020: 6): distance learning brought to the fore considerations of pedagogy, content, and being fully conversant in a digital world. social media was filled with stories of challenge and concern by teachers. for many, the intricacies of distance learning saw extensive disruption to their normal ways of teaching and thinking about teaching. additionally, some parents were anxious that they were thrust into a more intense role of supporting their child’s learning, while for many continuing to be busy with their own work and home demands. despite the quick turnaround time, online, remote or home schooling in some form was underway for most students by 15 april 2020. students settled into their new routines with varying levels of success. the following section discusses findings from formal and informal studies undertaken during or following the nationwide lockdown to provide insights into the experience of lockdown teaching and learning. 4. a synthesis of recent new zealand-based lockdown learning studies hood notes (2020a: 6), “[t]he lockdown period brought substantial changes to the day-to-day realities of educators, students and their families”. in order to understand what these changes were, a few organisations undertook quick-turnaround studies to gain real-time snapshots of learning during lockdown. two of the studies reported here have larger representative 2482021 39(1): 248-256 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) samples, while others use convenience or self-selected samples, but they all, in some way, provide insights into students’ varied experiences. table 3 provides the details of the studies to be discussed. table 3: summary of studies conducted during or after the national lockdown authors and date study type sample details education review office (government evaluation agency) published in two reports (2020a and b) online survey qualitative interviews 10,000 students; 700 teachers 95 early childhood centres; 110 schools nina hood, the education hub, published in two reports (2020a and b) online qualitative narrative responses 251 responses from teachers and school leaders; 64 from parents; 47 from students heidi leeson, sue duignan, desiree wehrle & james beavis, the springboard trust (2020) phone questionnaire 65 principals all former participants in springboard trust’s programmes wendy moore & irene andersen, evaluation associates (2020) melanie riwai-couch, et al., evaluation associates (2020) an analysis of students’ written or video commentaries online survey of māori and pasifika parents 31 students who responded to an invitation to comment on their experiences 134 participants (102 māori; 32 pasifika) greater christchurch schools network (2020) online survey (canterbury region only) 3 105 responses from school staff, students, parents and wider family from 150 schools the studies mostly asked generic questions around matters such as what worked well, what could have been done better and what we can we learn from the experience. a central feature that emerged was the widely varying experiences students encountered. while anxiety around the nature of covid-19 and loss of social interaction were common concerns, some students benefitted from supportive home environments and were able to engage in deep and meaningful learning, whereas others struggled to find focus and became disengaged from their learning. while synthesising the findings, i created a continuum of experiences from positive to negative (see table 4). some of the variation is explained by the different ways that schools and teachers approached lockdown teaching and learning or in terms of the ways students engaged with and experienced what was provided for them (hood, 2020a, b). overall, however, the studies highlight that prior economic and social disadvantage led to a digital divide that exacerbated existing educational inequity (education review office, 2020a, b; hood, 2020a, b; greater christchurch schools network, 2020; leeson et al., 2020; moore & andersen, 2020; riwai-couch et al., 2020). 2492021 39(1): 249-256 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.15 mutch covid-19 and the exacerbation of educational inequalities in new zealand table 4: continuum of lockdown learning in new zealand continuum of lockdown learning experiences a. accessible internet and device limited access b. sufficient skills for online study limited skills and training c. quiet or suitable study space crowded or noisy home situation d. relevant materials inappropriate or insufficient materials e. quality curriculum busy work rather than deep learning f. flexibility, choice or tailored activities one-size-fits-all activities g. clear communication between school and family difficult access or unclear messages h. clear instructions and expectations confusing or vague instructions or expectations i. regular contact and feedback from teacher irregular contact and limited feedback j. learning support from family families lacking knowledge, skill, time or energy k. self-regulation and time management students struggle with managing time and focus l. autonomy and independence students lack confidence and are dependent on others m. less distraction more distraction, loss of focus n. improved concentration inability to concentrate o. regular engagement intermittent or no engagement p. enjoyment in learning loss of enjoyment in learning q. visible progress lack of progress, slipping back r. enhanced wellbeing loss of wellbeing, anxiety, stress, mental health concerns the first six factors (a–f) focus more on the learning provisions, such as digital access and devices, the home study environment and materials or content for learning. the next six factors (g–l) are more about what happened during the learning process, including what students brought to their learning and how this was fostered by their teachers and/or family. the final six factors (m–r) highlight the learning outcomes, including how the learning provisions, context and process enhanced their learning; what they gained from the experience. what the continuum highlights is that, at each step, those in advantageous situations were able to continue their learning and those already disadvantaged by the system were primed to fall further behind. each of the three steps will be discussed in turn in relation to the studies listed in table 3. 4.1 learning provisions: starting at different places the studies highlight successes and challenges. moore and andersen (2020) report on a self-selected group of students who were willing to share their learning experiences in writing or by video. this study tended to attract students who found themselves on the positive side of the continuum, but it provides a valuable insight into what lockdown was like for this more successful group of students. on the positive side, students reported that they enjoyed the freedom and flexibility to choose the materials they wanted to engage with and to structure their day to suit their needs and interests. these students often found being at home less stressful, “due to being able to work in their own spaces, enjoy music and generally work more 2502021 39(1): 250-256 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) comfortably” (moore & anderson, 2020: 12). another positive aspect was having their parents more closely involved with their learning. on the other hand, not having a teacher easily available sometimes led to lack of clarity, loss of motivation and anxiety. moore and andersen (2020: 3) explain, “no longer could learners physically work alongside their peers and their teacher, the virtual world of zoom, google meets and other platforms became the new portal for communication”. engaging with these new technologies, however, while disruptive at first, was something that these students quickly gained familiarity with and felt could be integrated more into their learning once they returned to school. students who found themselves on the negative side of the ledger were impacted by inequities already present in the system. leeson et al. (2020: 9) state, “many students, despite best efforts, remained cut off from the same learning opportunities as others due to a technological divide stemming from structural inequality. in this, covid-19 has not created new problems but highlighted longstanding ones.” in contrast to moore and andersen’s study (2020), findings from the other studies highlight poor internet connectivity, lack of devices and limited digital literacy as the first set of barriers that disadvantaged students were to face (education review office, 2020a, b; hood, 2020a, b; greater christchurch schools network, 2020; leeson et al., 2020; riwai-couch et al., 2020). as hood (2020a: 4) notes, “the most immediately apparent embodiment of this inequality was those students who did not have access to a device or internet connection at home.” the education review office reports (2020a, b) highlight that māori, pasifika and students in low socio-economic communities were the groups most likely to have limited access to devices and connectivity or would have to share a device between siblings. while the ministry of education worked hard to improve access and deliver devices or provide hard-copy materials, given the urgency of the need and the difficulty in obtaining and delivering materials, these did not always arrive in a timely manner – and in some cases not all (leeson et al., 2020). one of my teacher education students, who is also a parent living in an isolated rural community, told the story of bundling her family into the car, driving 20 minutes to the top of a hill to get a signal, then each taking turns to copy down their learning instructions from a single cell phone. the second immediate barrier that students in disadvantaged communities faced was the lack of a conducive environment in which to study (education review office, 2020b; hood, 2020a, b; greater christchurch schools network, 2020; leeson et al., 2020; riwai-couch et al., 2020). in crowded homes, often there was not a suitable space to study or the space, along with any learning devices, was shared with other siblings. again, the same groups of students were most affected (education review office, 2020b; riwai-couch et al., 2020), although some secondary pasifika students in low socio-economic families reported feeling more comfortable at home than at school (education review office, 2020a). in general, secondary students, especially boys, found it harder to study at home (education review office, 2020a). difficulty with learning from home increased with each year level (education review office, 2020a). parents in low socio-economic families were often juggling multiple priorities or working long hours in low-paid employment as essential workers and struggled to help their children with their studies. they did not always have the language, knowledge, skill, time or energy to support their children’s learning (hood, 2020a; riwai-couch et al., 2020). older students often became responsible for looking after their younger siblings and helping them with their learning to the detriment of their own studies (education review office, 2020a; riwai-couch et al., 2020). sometimes, older students needed to abandon their studies altogether to gain employment to help their families survive (education review office, 2020b). 2512021 39(1): 251-256 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.15 mutch covid-19 and the exacerbation of educational inequalities in new zealand 4.2 learning processes: facing different stressors digging deeper into why some students engaged with home learning better than others, hood (2020b) notes that teachers explained variation as access to devices or the internet and the nature of home environment. in hood’s study, parents gave wider explanations including students’ age, motivation, time management and interest. parents also commented that the quantity or nature of the work set, the lack of clear expectations or feedback from teachers and the opportunities for student agency also contributed to the variation in engagement. students reported being unable to cope with the workload or not receiving sufficient support or feedback to move forward as contributing to their lack of engagement or enjoyment (education review office, 2000a). teachers in hood’s study (2020a) also indicated that there were individual student-level factors contributing to students’ ability to engage with online learning. they cited foundational content knowledge, learning skills, social and emotional competencies and student selfregulation or self-management. students also noted that they missed their teacher’s regular presence as a motivator (greater christchurch schools network, 2020; hood, 2020a; education review office, 2020a). for students in lower socio-economic areas, there were added stressors. hood notes, “while access to a device and the internet is a very tangible (and real) representation of the inequalities that exist within education and society more broadly, it belies a deeper set of issues affecting equity in educational achievement” (2020a: 14). schools quickly became aware that some of their students’ families were financially hurt by the lockdown. not only were they struggling prior to the pandemic but, given their precarious employment, these parents were often the first to lose their jobs as business began to close. up to 38 per cent of parents lost a third or more of their income because of covid-19 (greater christchurch schools network, 2020). the education review office (2020b) reports that one quarter of schools throughout the country needed to deliver care packages to their families. they provided food, clothing, face masks and sanitiser, often in conjunction with the local marae (māori community centres) or the charity kidscan. one principal in the lesson et al. (2020) study reported providing around 400 lunches for struggling families. teachers and principals reported that many māori students attending kura (māori immersion schools) or regular schools, along with pasifika students and their families, needed ongoing support to combat hardship (education review office, 2020; leeson et al., 2020). some families ceased contact because of high levels of stress or moved because they could no longer afford to remain in their present location. 4.3 learning outcomes: exacerbated inequities while the lockdown provided “silver linings” for some individuals and families (foon, 2020) including more time spent together as a family and living in a quieter, less busy environment, this was not the reality for all. those already at a disadvantage rarely caught up with their more advantaged peers. for example, students without devices prior to lockdown, even when they gained access, progressed at a lower rate than those who already had access (greater christchurch schools network, 2020). two-thirds of parents needed to continue working inside or outside the home during lockdown (greater christchurch schools network, 2020). stressors built up as time went on to the point that some families took the step of opting out of home schooling altogether (hood, 2522021 39(1): 252-256 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) 2020a). levels of psychological distress, family violence and suicidality increased (foon, 2020). the education review office (2020b) report notes that one third of principals had concerns about the safety and wellbeing of particular students. distressing family situations or violent incidents were referred to oranga tamariki (the relevant government agency) or to the police to follow up. at risk students were also slower to return to schools when they reopened. these students had lower attendance rates, were difficult to contact, displayed high levels of trauma and had more unsettled or challenging behaviours (education review office, 2020b). sometimes families had separation anxieties post-lockdown or worries about their children mixing with other students because of the impact it might have on the vulnerable members of their extended family (education review office, 2020b). a further lockdown in august closed schools in the greater auckland region for several weeks. anecdotally, teachers reported to me that their students found this lockdown harder than the first because it brought home the reality that regular lockdowns might become the “new normal”. auckland is home to some of the more disadvantaged communities in the country and this was to put the students in these schools even further at risk. as hood (2020a: 4) notes, “the lockdown period shone a light on the range of inequities, disparities and divides within new zealand’s educational system, as well as potentially exacerbating them”. 5. the voices of disadvantaged students during covid-19 lockdowns in order to give voice to the young people whose educational experiences were further negatively affected by covid-19, i provide excerpts from a qualitative research project i am currently conducting on young people’s responses to learning in lockdown. while the data collection and analysis are still ongoing, i have selected examples from interviews with students in one auckland, low socio-economic, urban, multi-cultural high school with a high proportion of pasifika students. their stories resonate with the findings relating to economic and structural inequities and exemplify the way in which students in this demographic experienced their learning during the lockdowns. access to the internet or learning devices often hindered the students’ engagement or progress. this student was working on a joint project with another student, making a documentary for one of her classes while in lockdown: um, sometimes we, we couldn’t communicate with each other, ‘cos one or the other, like, didn’t have internet or didn’t have a device to communicate with each other. so that… that also, like, disrupted our work of continuing to finish our documentary. … a lot of effort was put into, into the documentary and there’s a lot of times where i wanted to give up. but now it’s finished … yeah, i guess i’m pretty proud of it … of me and my partners’ effort to finish it. yeah... students missed the social aspects of their school day. one student explains how the loss of routine and social contact was difficult for her, combined with her anxiety about the pandemic and its possible effects on her family: yeah. i think really, during lockdown, it’s just the whole thing, like, changed, in the way that my days used to run. i mean, i’d just come to school, see my friends, you know, do my schoolwork. it was really just a routine almost every day. i mean, we’re so used to having contact and, you know, physically, seeing our family and friends and connecting with each other. and then all of a sudden, that just got cut off and, like, we had to stay at home. and i guess a lot of us were really scared for ways that our families or ourselves 2532021 39(1): 253-256 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.15 mutch covid-19 and the exacerbation of educational inequalities in new zealand could be affected by the virus, especially since my mum works at the airport. so, she was on the front line and welcoming people. and up until last week, she was still working at the airport, all through the lockdown and stuff. yeah, so, it was real scary. many students from this community live in extended family groups in crowded housing. one student shares her experience: yeah, it was quite stressful. because at my dad’s house, we have, like, a big family. so, we’ve two younger siblings. and, like, i’m trying to help them with their schoolwork because my dad’s an essential worker. and then there’s my stepmother who lives there. my great grandmother, my cousin. so, it’s, like, really hard just trying to do everything as well as my schoolwork because your parents they’re telling you to do all this stuff, but you have this huge load of schoolwork to do, so it was really stressful. the families of students from disadvantaged communities often work in precarious lowpaid employment and were the first to be laid off. one student says: in the beginning, i really liked the idea of lockdown, no school. yeah. and then a couple weeks, and, um, my dad couldn’t go to work because it was level 4 and he’s, like, a trainee, so he couldn’t work. and then i started seeing the financial effects that started kicking in and things aren’t the best at home. yeah, so yeah, it was really hard trying to, like, keep doing schoolwork and then trying to enjoy things at the same time and keep a focus on mental health and everything. alongside attending school, some students work after school to help support their families. another student discusses having to continue working as an essential worker while trying to keep her family safe and do schoolwork: from my family, even i am… we’re working as essential workers. so, we continued to work during lockdown. and the added precautions of being at home and taking care of your family as well. and thinking of their safety along with yours is kind of nerve-wracking at times. so, like, when we get home, we’re hand sanitising and taking our clothes off and going straight for a shower and all that. and the same goes for most of my friends in year 13. they have to do the same. another student talks about the lack of support from home because of the added stress in her family: …it was just so hard to just do my schoolwork at home because, like, i don’t know, my household just then … i live in a really small house. so, it was really hard to get work done with my family there. yeah, ‘cos, i didn’t have much support at home. so, it was really hard to do my schoolwork. yeah. because my mum and my sister were essential workers. but when they came home, they’ll just get angry at me for like no reason, and it was really hard to just, you know, be there… in the end, some students struggled to focus, became overwhelmed and even gave up. this student explains how it affected her: … i was one of those people that just tried to pass or when teachers would email me work, i would just, just do it when i could. not when they asked for, i just, sometimes, i’d be doing work at, like, one in the morning for, like, no reason, because i had nothing else to do. but the work was there. but i just never did it. i just felt like i couldn’t do it. like, i didn’t know what i was doing. even though the teacher was telling me what i was doing. i still was confused and it was just stressful. 2542021 39(1): 254-256 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.15 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) the voices of these students clearly resonate with the findings shared earlier. in early 2021, the education review office (the government agency that evaluates the quality of education in all schools in new zealand) stated that over half of the schools they surveyed reported that lockdowns had affected student progress and achievement. schools suggested that some students would begin the new year up to 10 weeks behind, with students in low socioeconomic communities being most affected (gerritson, 2021). meanwhile, the new zealand qualifications authority, (the agency that monitors secondary school examinations and qualifications) has instigated a system of “learning recognition credits” to acknowledge the disruption to students’ learning during 2020 . given that research findings to date confirm the extent of educational disparity, hood exhorts us to make good use of this knowledge: the lockdown as a whole, plus the experiences of teachers, students and parents, present an opportunity. however, it is easy to fall back into business as usual and not to follow up on the questions the experiences raised, the opportunities it presented or the challenges it uncovered or exacerbated” (hood, 2020a: 9). 6. conclusion: where to from here? the leadership of the prime minister through the covid-19 pandemic in new zealand garnered much international acclaim. in the october 2020 elections, her party received the majority of the votes and the mandate to govern alone without the need for a coalition partner. three years earlier, prime minister ardern had promised a transformational government. the mosque massacre of 2019 and pandemic of 2020 took the focus away from this goal. with covid-19 vaccines on the horizon, there is an opportunity to use the covid-19 economic recovery to tackle the chronic housing shortage, increase employment outcomes, reduce poverty, improve the health system and address educational disparities. several of the studies reported on in this article ended with sets of recommendations for policy and practice that are worthy of serious consideration. as political commentator, rod oram highlights, if new zealand can pull together as a country to overcome covid-19, we can do the same to create a more socially just nation for all our citizens, in particular, for the children and young people who are our future. oram (2020) concludes: indeed, these are no ordinary times. covid-19 is teaching us we have to respond decisively, collectively and comprehensively. to do so, we have to prioritise, communicate and support each other. then we can learn as we go in this fast, all-encompassing crisis. these things we have done well as a society, showing great purpose, innovation and resilience during the pandemic. now we have to apply those lessons to solving our preexisting and interdependent social, economic and ecological challenges. kia kaha, kia maia, kia manawaui. 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https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/coronavirus-lockdown-what-it-means-for-schools-universities-and-other-education-facilities/p7csw25t7qrwg3ph2sicibcdvi/ https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/coronavirus-lockdown-what-it-means-for-schools-universities-and-other-education-facilities/p7csw25t7qrwg3ph2sicibcdvi/ https://wenmoth.net/2020/08/20/lessons-from-lockdown/ https://wenmoth.net/2020/08/20/lessons-from-lockdown/ _goback 115 research article 2020 38(1): 115-129 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.9 kenyan doctoral students’ success: roles of motivation and self-efficacy abstract doctor of philosophy (phd) degree holders are highly regarded in kenya, especially in academia, and the kenyan economy needs them to undertake administrative, research and innovation roles in academia and industry. however, attaining this qualification is arduous and kenyan phd programmes are characterised by low enrolment numbers, long degree completion times and low graduation rates. in other countries, phd students’ success has been linked to motivation and self-efficacy. this cross-sectional study explores the extents to which motivation and self-efficacy relate to phd student success in kenya and to which this relationship differs across background and programme characteristics. using multiple linear regression, the authors analyse data from an online questionnaire administered to 628 phd students enrolled between 2010 and 2018. the findings indicate that extrinsic motivation does not predict phd students’ pace. intrinsic motivation positively predicts students’ pace in the medical sciences programme cluster and for those aged 51 years or older. self-efficacy negatively predicts students’ pace in the medical sciences programme cluster. keywords: doctoral student success, student pace, intrinsic motivation, extrinsic motivation, self-efficacy. 1. introduction although attaining a doctor of philosophy (phd) degree is regarded as a huge achievement in kenya, the number of students enrolled and who graduate are lower than expected. the number of phd graduates also does not align with the demand for phd holders, estimated at 2,400 per annum (government of kenya, 2012). kenyan universities instead enrolled 7,146 and 9,577 phd students in 2015 and 2016, respectively; with a 13% graduation rate reported in kenya. these numbers yield about half of the phd graduates required (commission for university education [cue], 2018; matheka, jansen & hofman, 2020). yet demand for university education in kenya has grown rapidly, as evidenced by increases in the aggregate enrolment numbers in bachelors’ and masters’ programmes. between 2015 and 2016, student enrolment in bachelors’ programmes grew to 478,418 (.6% growth), authors: ms. h. m matheka1,2* dr. e. p. w. a. jansen2 prof. w. h. a. hofman2 affiliations: 1commission for university education, nairobi, kenya 2university of groningen, groningen, netherlands doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v38i1.9 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(1): 115-129 published: 11 june 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.9 116 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 116-129 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.9 that in masters’ programmes to 58,221 (5% growth), and that in doctoral programmes to 9,577 (34% increase) (cue, 2018). in response, the government of kenya increased the number of universities from 32 in 2011 to 74 in 2017 (cue, 2017; sifuna, 2010). however, this increase heightened pressures on available phd holders, given that it takes at least three years to train a phd graduate. one reason for persistently low phd graduation numbers is that efforts to increase phd training have been minimal and disjointed, yielding poor results (barasa & omulando, 2018; kigotho, 2018). in turn, low phd graduation rates increase the pressures on available phd holders to cover administrative, teaching, research and outreach roles. in addition, this situation threatens kenya’s vision 2030 goal of becoming a middle-class knowledge economy, through the development of high-quality human resources to undertake research and innovation (government of kenya, 2007). to break this cycle, researchers and policy makers need to find the key to increasing the number of phd graduates. prior research identifies several contributing factors to phd students’ success, which can be broadly grouped into students’ background factors, supervisory and integration factors and programme characteristic variables (bair & haworth, 2004; litalien & guay, 2015; tinto, 1993). in terms of students’ background characteristics, research has emphasised socioeconomic factors, though individual psychological factors such as self-efficacy, self-regulation and motivation may also be key predictors of educational achievement (lovitts, 2001; wao & onwuegbuzie, 2011). the influence of these factors is more salient in phd-level programmes, due to their complexity, loose structure and demand for sophisticated outputs, which require long working hours for extended time periods (litalien, guay & morin, 2015). from the literature reviewed, there has been extensive research on phd success factors including motivation and self-efficacy. however, these studies were undertaken in western countries. therefore, this study seeks to clarify how motivation and self-efficacy relates to phd students’ success in universities in a developing country, in this case, kenya. 1.1 theoretical framework researchers investigating motivation and self-efficacy have sought to explain people’s choice of tasks, persistence and actual achievement. for example, expectancy–value theory posits that a person’s choices, persistence and achievement can be predicted by subjective task value and expectancies (wigfied & eccles, 2000). the subjective task value refers to how important the person perceives the task to be, with four components: attainment value, which refers to the importance of doing well in a task based on personal values and schema; intrinsic value, which relates to the enjoyment experienced while undertaking the task; utility value or how success in a task relates to the achievement of current and/or future goals and task cost, which refers to the amount of effort and time required to succeed, lost opportunities and fear of failure. expectancies are individual perceptions of current and future chances of success based on personal beliefs in competencies and abilities (eccles & wigfied, 2002; wigfied & eccles, 2000). although expectancy–value theory was developed to explain adolescents and their achievements, it has been applied to explain persistence, success and even satisfaction at the phd level (cheng, taylor, williams & tong, 2016; zhou, 2014: 178). according to this theory, four components of value influence a phd student’s effort to persist and succeed. phd students who are intrinsically motivated assign attainment and/or intrinsic value to their phd trajectory, meaning that they have an innate need to gain knowledge in a field or discipline of study. earning a phd is an end in itself, not a means to an end. extrinsically motivated 117 matheka, jansen & hofman accounting teachers’ readiness for e-learning 2020 38(1): 117-129 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.9 students view a phd as a way to achieve some current or future goals beyond the degree (utility value), such as career advancement, social status or professional mobility (eccles & wigfield, 2002; wigfield & eccles, 2000; zhou, 2014). lastly, the cost of quitting can influence students’ persistence, even in the face of severe challenges. these costs could include the finances, effort and time already invested, the opportunities already lost while undertaking the phd programme, embarrassment to self and family for non-achievement and the fear of disappointing parents and sponsors (eccles & wigfield, 2002; zhou, 2014). people invest more effort when they expect to achieve a goal. thus, phd students who feel confident about their abilities are likely to be more enthusiastic and motivated to expend the required effort. this feeling of confidence is influenced by previous task performance results and experiences, self-schema and other socialisation factors such as culture and gender roles (eccles & wigfield, 2002; wigfield & eccles, 2000; zhou, 2014). doctoral studies involve extensive work executed independently for long periods of time. this isolation can expose students to enormous stress, which might result in self-doubt and reduced motivation. intrinsic motivation tends to be more sustainable in promoting persistence and achievement, though zhou (2014) notes that some extrinsic motivators are effective. similarly, persistence and success require students to believe in their capacity to achieve the standards of the phd programme (eccles & wigfield, 2002). expectancy–value theory has been applied in studies of special phd groups and in western countries (cheng et al., 2016; zhou, 2014); this study represents an extension by applying three elements of the theory to explain phd students’ success in a developing country, in this case kenya. figure 1 displays the conceptual model. figure 1: conceptual model in this study, we test three components of the expectancy–value model to explain phd students’ success, while controlling phd students’ background characteristics. it involves two motivation dimensions (intrinsic and extrinsic) and students’ self-efficacy. students’ intrinsic motivation is influenced by the attainment and intrinsic value they assign to phd success. their extrinsic motivation corresponds to the utility value they expect to gain by attaining their 118 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 118-129 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.9 phd degree. the expectancies of their own abilities and competencies to succeed in their phd programme relate to the phd students’ self-efficacy. background characteristics many studies of doctoral education cite background characteristics (e.g., students’ age, gender, residential status, employment, family commitments) as important factors (council of graduate schools, 2009; groenvynck, vandevelde & rossem, 2013; jiranek, 2010; maher, ford & thompson, 2004). some research reports that age does not predict success (watthanapradith, choonpradub, & lim , 2016: 880; wright & cochrane, 2000), whereas other studies indicate that younger phd students achieve better progression than older ones (groenvynck et al., 2013; johnson-motoyama, petr & mitchell, 2014). research on gender effects similarly offers mixed results: some scholars report that male phd students can better persist and feature higher graduation rates (ferreira, 2003; groenvynck et al., 2013; jiranek, 2010), whereas other studies report better progression among female students (watthanapradith et al., 2016), and still other studies show no gender differences (johnson-motoyama et al., 2014; park, 2005; thune, kyvik, sörlin, bruen, vabø & tømte, 2012; wright & cochrane, 2000). international phd students do better than local students in terms of graduation times and rates, which has been attributed to potential expiration of their visa status and the higher opportunity costs of being away from their home country (watthanapradith et al., 2016). employment status is sometimes related to the availability and adequacy of financial aid and family commitments. for example, phd students who must work while studying have difficulty finalising their phd projects (bair & haworth, 2004; ho, wong & wong, 2010; khozaei, khozaei & salleh, 2015; wao & onwuegbuzie, 2011). students working outside their university and in jobs unrelated to their phd research area also progress more slowly than those who work in a research project related to their phd work (bair & haworth, 2004; herman, 2011; wao & onwuegbuzie, 2011). however, another study indicates that phd students who work full-time progress better than those who work part-time (gittings et al., 2018). financial assistance also likely predicts persistence, such that the type, amount and timing influence students’ progress (wao & onwuegbuzie, 2011). when phd students experience a major life event, they are more likely to delay or drop out of a programme (schoot, yerkes, mouw & sonneveld, 2013). motivation motivation refers to the reason people undertake the things they do, the process of eliciting behaviours that achieve certain objectives or a set of factors that influence behaviour or decisions (deci & ryan, 2000; eccles and wigfield 2002; wiegerová, 2016, zhou, 2015). deci and ryan (2000) theorise that people can be intrinsically or extrinsically motivated. intrinsic motivation occurs when the person performs a task for the sole purpose of obtaining the satisfaction of accomplishing it, or the fun and enjoyment of the experience. intrinsically motivated students undertake the phd programme because they are interested in gaining knowledge in the research area or in teaching. extrinsic motivation occurs when a task is performed as a means to an end, for reasons other than self-interest (i.e., instrumental purpose; deci & ryan, 2000). extrinsically motivated students might be interested in furthering their teaching or research careers and increasing their job and physical mobility to fit among their peers or gain social status. 119 matheka, jansen & hofman accounting teachers’ readiness for e-learning 2020 38(1): 119-129 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.9 motivation and phd students’ success to explain choice, persistence and success in phd studies, scholars have investigated push and pull forces (brailsford, 2010; wao & onwuegbuzie, 2011; wiegerová, 2016). motivation is especially important in predicting success in phd studies, due to their nature. these programmes require phd students to work independently and autonomously (include little or no coursework) while demanding complex activities and outputs (litalien et al., 2015). therefore, motivation and personal drive are key factors in phd students’ success (kyvik & olsen, 2014; wao & onwuegbuzie, 2011:129; zhou, 2015). according to kyvik and olsen’s (2014) investigation of norwegian doctoral training, improved completion rates stem from extrinsic motivation, due to a new policy that required a phd qualification for any permanent academic position and as a pathway for any successful researcher. similarly, lindsay (2015) reports that phd students’ individual motivation level is a key enabler or hindrance of their thesis completion. self-efficacy the general concept of self-efficacy has been applied in various contexts and situations (almgren et al., 2016; litalien & guay, 2015), operationalised as a self-evaluation of one’s own ability or chances in academic environments, perceptions of academic performance efficacy or perceived self-competence. researchers posit that the degree to which people perceive their own competences for a task may determine the effort they put into that or related tasks (bandura, 1978; litalien & guay, 2015). similarly, various scholars have argued that students’ perception of their ability to succeed in achieving the requirements of a degree programme can explain differences in student success, regardless of the education level (litalien & guay, 2015; nilsen, 2009). in particular, litalien and guay (2015) find that phd students’ confidence in their academic capacity is a predictor of completers and non-completers. it is helpful when phd students understand and have confidence in their writing and research capacities, which reduces the frequency and length of self-doubt episodes (lindsay, 2015). many phd students report experiencing a certain level of uncertainty about their capacities; when this self-doubt is persistent, students may end up self-sabotaging and procrastinating or not attempting tasks for fear of failure (wao & onwuegbuzie, 2011). however, nilsen (2009) notes that faculty and university management can employ strategies to improve the selfefficacy, motivation and expectancy–value of their phd students. this study therefore seeks to answer the following research questions: to what extent do motivation and self-efficacy factors influence phd students’ success in kenyan universities? to what extent does the relationship of motivation and self-efficacy with phd students’ success differ across background and programme characteristics in kenyan universities? 2. method 2.1 design and data collection we administered a cross-sectional student survey through an online questionnaire (sosci survey online tool). the target population was phd students admitted in universities in kenya between 2010 and 2018. to this end, we utilised a database of phd students provided by some of the universities. we also contacted phd students from universities who had not made 120 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 120-129 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.9 a phd students’ database available, through their graduate school coordinators. we contacted participants by phone and, after introducing the study, asked them to provide or confirm their email addresses to receive the link to the online questionnaire. a total of 1,354 phd students provided valid email addresses. after emailing the questionnaire, we sent weekly email reminders and made two follow-up calls. consent to participate in the study was sought from all participants and the study proposal was approved by the national council for science and technology kenya. of the 1,354 phd students who received the questionnaire, 21 declined to participate, and 840 attempted to complete the questionnaire. ultimately, 628 respondents fully filled out the questionnaire. seven of the completed questionnaires were excluded because they did not meet the study inclusion criteria (studied in universities outside kenya, enrolled after december 2018, were outliers). we sought and got permission to undertake this research from the national commission for science, technology and innovation (nacosti) in kenya and respondents were given the option to consent/decline their participation in the survey. variables 2.2.1 motivation to measure motivation, we used an eight-item scale adopted from the motivated strategies for learning questionnaire developed by pintrich and groot (1990) and explained by pintrich, smith and mckeachie (1991). this scale was designed to measure college students’ motivational orientations and use of study strategies; therefore, we changed the questionnaire to be applicable to phd students. for example, we adapted the original question “in a class like this, i prefer course material that arouses my curiosity, even if it is difficult to learn” to “i chose a challenging research topic so that i can learn new things”. we used a five-point likert scale (1 = “strongly disagree”, 2 = “disagree”, 3 = “neutral”, 4 = “agree” and 5 = “strongly agree”). after factor analysis and principal component analysis with varimax rotation, we split the eight-item motivation scale into two four-item scales measuring intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. the reliability tests resulted in cronbach’s alpha scores of .74 and .73 for the intrinsic and extrinsic motivations, respectively (see table 1). table 1: motivation items rotated factor loadings intrinsic motivation α = .74 extrinsic motivation α = .73 i am/was doing my phd to strengthen my research capabilities. .73 i chose a challenging research topic so that i can learn new things. .82 the most satisfying thing for me in this programme is/was trying to understand the content as thoroughly as possible .78 i prefer/preferred research tasks that i can/could learn from even if they do/did not guarantee a good score. .66 if possible i want/wanted to graduate faster than my friends. .68 i want/wanted to graduate as soon as possible to get a new job/promotion. .73 i want/wanted to earn this phd so that i can/could show my abilities to my family and friends. .83 i am/was doing my phd to fit in my social and work cycles. .74 121 matheka, jansen & hofman accounting teachers’ readiness for e-learning 2020 38(1): 121-129 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.9 self-efficacy we measured self-efficacy using the general self-efficacy scale developed by chen, gully and eden (2001). this eight-item, five-point likert-type (1= “strongly disagree”, and 5 = “strongly agree”) scale measures individual perceptions of the ability to perform in various situations. factor analysis resulted in one factor and a reliability test of the self-efficacy scale resulted in a cronbach’s alpha coefficient of .90 (see table 2). table 2: self-efficacy factor scores self-efficacy α =.90 i will/would be able to achieve most of the goals that i have set for myself. .681 when facing difficult tasks, i am/was certain that i will accomplish them. .764 in general, i think/thought that i can obtain outcomes that are important to me. .754 i believe/believed i can/could succeed at most endeavours to which i set my mind. .822 i will/would be able to successfully overcome many challenges. .828 i am/was confident that i can perform effectively on many different tasks. .827 compared to other people, i can/could do most tasks very well. .716 even when things are tough, i can/could perform quite well. .757 students’ success we operationalised students’ success as being on track or delayed (matheka et al., 2020), measured with a pace variable that indicates the time needed to graduate; 48 months (36 months plus one-year extension) is the official phd programme duration. we classified students who took 48 months or less as being on track, those who took between 49 and 60 months as being delayed one year and so on. we calculated the pace variable for continuing students by comparing duration in the system (i.e., from students’ start date to a cut-off point at 31 december 2018) and the equivalent programme year based on output produced to date. we classified the pace variable into four categories (on track, delayed one year, delayed two years and delayed three or more years). a student with recorded output of undertaking coursework and a duration in the system of 36 months would thus still be in the first year of the programme, indicating being delayed for one year. to calculate the phd students’ pace variable, complete information about the student’s success variable was required. however, not all respondents provided this data, such that we could only calculate the pace variable for 621 respondents, as presented in table 3. table 3: students’ pace n % on track 118 19.0 delayed one year 83 13.4 delayed two years 237 38.2 delayed three or more years 183 29.5 total 621 100.0 122 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 122-129 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.9 background characteristics table 4 contains descriptive characteristics, including age category, gender, financial support, mode of study, employment status and programme cluster. the number of respondents varies from one variable to the other because some respondents opted out of some questions and others did not complete the questionnaire. table 4: students’ characteristics variable n % age 40 years and younger 219 26.5 41–50 years of age 339 41.0 51 years and older 268 32.4 gender male 498 60.1 female 331 39.9 financial support self-sponsored 628 79.9 partial scholarship 111 14.1 full scholarship 47 6.0 mode of study full time 333 40.9 part time 482 59.1 employment status fully employed 680 83.3 part-time or self-employed 97 11.9 unemployed 39 4.8 programme cluster social sciences and humanities 358 44.4 business and economics 188 23.3 physical and life sciences 43 5.3 applied sciences 122 15.1 medical sciences 96 11.9 3. results 3.1 introduction to address the extent to which motivation and self-efficacy factors influence phd students’ success in kenyan universities, we undertook multiple linear regression starting with the core model predictor variables (self-efficacy, intrinsic and extrinsic motivation) and students’ pace as the dependent variable (model 1). for models 2–6, we included one background or programme variable at a time. if the new variable significantly explained the variance in phd students’ pace, we retained it in the subsequent models; otherwise, we omitted it. we also explore the extent to which the relationship of motivation and self-efficacy with phd students’ success differs across background and programme characteristics. we thus undertook a multiple linear regression with the core model variables (self-efficacy and intrinsic and extrinsic motivation as predictor variables, phd students’ pace as the dependent 123 matheka, jansen & hofman accounting teachers’ readiness for e-learning 2020 38(1): 123-129 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.9 variable) on split data sets based on age groups, mode of study, financial support groups and programme clusters. do motivation and self-efficacy factors influence phd students’ success in kenyan universities? the multiple regression analysis (table 5) showed that intrinsic motivation is not a significant predictor of students’ pace. students with higher intrinsic motivation exhibited no significant difference in pace from those with lower intrinsic motivation. in addition, phd students’ extrinsic motivation had no predictive value regarding students’ pace, and those with higher levels of self-efficacy did not show significant differences in progress from those who had lower self-efficacy. in terms of background characteristics, phd students’ age was a significant predictor of their pace: older phd students were significantly slower than their younger counterparts. we observed no difference between male and female students’ pace, and financially supported students did not progress faster or slower than self-financed students. regarding programme characteristics, we observed no significant differences in students’ pace based on their mode of study. however, programme clusters significantly predicted their pace. table 5: multiple regression of predictor, programme and background variables on phd students’ pace predictor variable model 1 model 2 model 3 model 4 model 5 model 6 constant 3.58 (.42) 1.68 (.48) 1.69 (.50) 1.77 (.48) 1.52 (.50) 1.84 (.48) intrinsic motivation −.13 (.09) −.09 (.08) −.09 (.08) − .09 (.08) − .09 (.08) − .07 (.08) extrinsic motivation .01 (.05) −.02 (.05) − .02 (.05) − .01 (.05) − .02 (.05) −.02 (.05) self-efficacy −.07 (.10) −.07 (.10) −.07 (.11) −.06 (.10) −.06 (.10) −.04 (.10) students’ age .04** (.01) 04** (.01) 04** (.01) 04** (.01) 04** (.01) gender −.03 (.09) financial support −.15 (.08) mode of study .10 (.09) social sciences and humanities ref. business and economics − .26**(.11) physical and life sciences − .34* (.19) applied sciences − .46** (.13) medical sciences −.17 (.14) r² .01 .095 .095 .098 .096 .116 *significant at .05 level. **significant at .01 level. notes: a negative coefficient indicates a positive effect on students’ pace. students’ pace in applied sciences, physical and life sciences and business and economics differed significantly from those in humanities and social sciences. in contrast, students’ pace in the medical sciences cluster did not significantly differ from those in the humanities and social sciences cluster. to further specify differences in students’ pace across 124 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 124-129 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.9 programme clusters, we cross-tabulated students’ pace with the programme cluster variable. the applied sciences programme cluster had the largest proportion of students on track at 29.5%, closely followed by physical and life sciences, with 28.6% on track, and medical sciences, with 20.5% on track. humanities and social sciences had the lowest proportion of students on track at only 14.2%, and the business and economics programme cluster had 18.5% on track (table 6). table 6: students on track by programme cluster programme cluster humanities and social sciences business and economics physical and life sciences applied sciences medical sciences students on track 14.2% 18.5% 28.6% 29.5% 20.5% does the relationship between motivation, self-efficacy and phd students’ success differ across background and programme characteristics? we conducted further analyses to determine whether the core model pattern (in which the three core predictor variables were included with students’ pace as the dependent variable) differed across age groups, mode of study, financial support groups and programme clusters. table 7 shows that intrinsic motivation was a significant positive predictor of students’ pace for phd students in the medical sciences cluster but had no effect for the students in the other clusters. similarly, self-efficacy was a significant predictor of students’ pace only in the medical sciences programme, though this relationship was inverse. extrinsic motivation showed no significant prediction of phd students’ pace in any of the five programme clusters. table 7: multiple linear regression of predictor variables on phd students’ pace by programme cluster variables humanities and social sciences business and economics physical and life sciences applied sciences medical sciences m od el 1 constant 3.9 (.610) 2.95(.81) .05 (2.17) 2.55 (1.37) 2.82 (1.02) intrinsic motivation −.04 (.13) .18 (.17) .55 (.41) −.33 (.25) −.64 (.24)** extrinsic motivation .06 (.08) −.01 (.09) −.08 (.23) .03 (.15) −.08 (.12) self-efficacy −.22 (.17) −.24 (.18) .08 (.45) .27 (.30) .69 (.30)* **significant at .01 level. notes: a negative coefficient indicates a positive effect on the students’ pace. self-efficacy and extrinsic motivation showed no significant predictive capacity relative to students’ pace among the three age categories (see table 8). among phd students aged 51 years and above, intrinsic motivation was a positive significant predictor of phd students’ pace. 125 matheka, jansen & hofman accounting teachers’ readiness for e-learning 2020 38(1): 125-129 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.9 table 8: multiple linear regression of predictor variables on phd students’ pace by age category variables 40 years and below 41 to 50 years old 51 years and above model 1 constant 3.17(.83) 3.06 (.65) 3.92 (.64) intrinsic motivation −.00(.17) .00(.13) −.36 (.16)* extrinsic motivation −.15 (.09) −.02(.08) .11 (.08) self-efficacy −.11(.18) −.04 (.17) .07(.18) *significant at .05 level. notes: a negative coefficient indicates a positive effect on students’ pace. the core predictor variables and students’ pace patterns did not significantly vary between part-time and full-time phd students. similarly, we observed no significant differences in how self-efficacy and intrinsic and extrinsic motivation predicted phd students’ pace among financially supported versus self-supported phd students. 4. discussion and conclusion previous research shows that phd students’ success rate is rather low in kenya (matheka et al., 2020). in this study, we observed that only 19% of the phd students were on track with their programme. with this investigation of whether motivational factors, background and programme characteristics relate to phd students’ progress, we find, in contrast with other research (kyvik & olsen, 2014; wao & onwuegbuzie, 2011; zhou, 2015), no evidence that intrinsic or extrinsic motivation affects phd students’ pace in kenyan universities. these findings are in line with results reported by litalien and guay (2015), who note that completers and non-completers do not vary in their level of autonomous regulation (intrinsic, integrated and identified motivation) and controlled regulation (introjected and external motivation). however, looking more closely at programme clusters, we find that phd students in medical sciences exhibit a significant relationship between intrinsic motivation and students’ pace. this result could signal that medical sciences courses are particularly challenging. in order to handle such challenges at a phd level, students would require great internal motivation, leading to the greater variance in students’ pace across their levels of intrinsic motivation. although previous studies have shown that self-efficacy is positively correlated with phd success (litalien & guay, 2015; nilsen, 2009), we do not find such a significant relationship. this finding could be explained by the self-efficacy scores in this study, which are positively skewed, with a mean score of 4 on a 1−5 scale and a standard deviation of .524. mcbrayer et al. (2018) record similarly high self-efficacy scores among doctoral students and also do not find a correlation between self-efficacy and time to degree or progression. the medical science cluster was an exception, indicating a significant negative effect of self-efficacy on phd students’ pace. a possible explanation is that the high scores of self-efficacy may hint at overconfidence. the phd students in medical sciences have usually gone through demanding bachelors’ and masters’ programmes. another possible explanation is that phd students in this area are extremely busy in their professional career, because so few medical practitioners are available in kenya, even at bachelors’ level, which could lead to slow student pace despite high self-efficacy scores. students’ age significantly predicts their pace. younger phd students move faster than their older counterparts. other studies report similar results (groenvynck et al., 2013; 126 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 126-129 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.9 johnson-motoyama et al., 2014). as people age, they acquire more responsibilities and family obligations; thus, older phd students likely experience more severe time and resource constraints, which can require them to split their time and resources to cover family, social and employment obligations, in addition to their studies. the finding that younger phd students (under 40 years) receive significantly more financial support also could explain their faster pace, because financial constraints can influence phd students’ progress and success (bair & haworth, 2004; groen et al., 2008; jiranek, 2010; khozaei et al., 2015; mohamed et al., 2012). applied sciences phd students achieved the fastest pace, followed by those in physical and life sciences, business and economics, medical sciences and humanities and social sciences. the challenges in persistence and completion rates in humanities and social sciences have been reported in other regions (canadian association for graduate studies, 2004; groenvynck et al., 2013; herman 2011). some scholars attribute the slower pace in the humanities and social sciences to inadequate financial support, and we observed a similar trend in this study gender, financial support and mode of study were not significant predictors of students’ pace. only 6% of the phd students had a full scholarship grant compared with almost 80% who were self-financed. we observed significant differences in financial support across the five clusters. the humanities and social sciences and business and economic programmes featured the lowest proportions of financially supported phd students; the physical and life sciences and applied sciences programme clusters had the highest proportions. we observed some significant differences between our results and those reported previously in studies conducted mainly in the united states, europe or australasia. these differences might reflect the variations in country-level phd programmes and funding. almost 80% of the kenyan students we surveyed were self-financed, and more than 80% were fully employed, so we anticipate that aspects other than motivation likely have an important role in explaining kenyan phd students’ success. we acknowledge a few limitations of this study. first, we used only self-reports. second, not all respondents indicated their position on the timeline of the phd trajectory. to gain further insight into factors that affect phd success in kenya, we recommend that researchers follow a cohort of students longitudinally and explore how different factors positively or negatively influence success at various points along the trajectory. 5. acknowledgements this research has been supported by a grant from the dutch government organisation nuffic. we have no conflicts of interest to disclose. 127 matheka, jansen & hofman accounting teachers’ readiness for e-learning 2020 38(1): 127-129 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https://doi.org/10.28945/1080 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.82.1.33 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.82.1.33 https://doi.org/10.1037/t09161 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0068839 https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0068839 https://doi.org/10.1080/13596748.2010.526803 https://doi.org/10.1080/13596748.2010.526803 https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226922461.001.0001 https://doi.org/10.28945/1505 https://doi.org/10.28945/1505 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2016.02.043 https://doi.org/10.1006/ceps.1999.1015 https://doi.org/10.1080/713696139 https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037196 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734 _goback _cotdje444xyp _tsxwhcyx33ft _tyjcwt _3dy6vkm _1t3h5sf table3factoranalysis _17dp8vu _4d34og8 _2s8eyo1 _hlk29141510 2242022 40(2): 224-237 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.16 towards a humane learner punishment: a lesotho secondary schools’ teachers perspective abstract this study examined teachers’ interpretation of the lesotho education act of 2010’s phrase “cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment” and its impact on how learners are disciplined. for some researchers, punishment in schools is associated with corporal punishment. for this reason, researchers often focus on the issue of abolishing corporal punishment, thereby overlooking other non-physical forms of punishment despite them being equally agonising. this study departed from the interpretivist paradigm and adopted a qualitative approach. an open-ended qualitative research questionnaire was used to generate data. this was followed up with focus group interviews conducted with the teachers in some selected lesotho secondary schools. the findings indicate that teachers interpret the above phrase as a mere referring to the abolishment of corporal punishment. hence teachers still use other forms of cruel, degrading and inhumane punishments such as insulting and ridiculing the learners, despite the legislation protecting children against abuse. these forms of teacher behaviour not only constitute learner abuse, but also compromise the professional ethics by which teachers ought to abide. the recommendation made by the study is that teachers should be mindful of the teaching professional ethics taught to them during their pre-service training. in addition, lesotho’s ministry of education and training, in collaboration with other stakeholders, should train teachers on children’s rights and how to safeguard such rights in the school setting. keywords: children’s rights, cruel, inhumane and degrading punishment; international and regional treaties and protocols; teacher professional ethics; social contract theory. 1. introduction fundamental human rights are considered crucial and must be respected at all costs (mccowan, 2013). the promulgation and signing of the united nations convention of 1987, which refutes torture and other cruel, inhumane or degrading punishment, sealed the importance of human rights by member states. the same principle is captured in many other protocols and treaties such as the united nations convention on the rights of the child (uncrc) (1989), universal declaration of human rights (1948), author: kelello rakolobe1 tebello tlali1 affiliation: 1national university of lesotho doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i2.16 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(2): 224-237 published: 08 june 2022 received: 18 october 2021 accepted: 07 january 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.16 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4852-7587 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1570-3369 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.16 2252022 40(2): 225-237 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.16 rakolobe & tlali towards a humane learner punishment unesco convention against discrimination in education (1960) and african charter on the rights and welfare of the child (1990). these international protocols and treaties regard torture and inhumane punishment as a crime. as a result, all member states of these international organisations are bound to prohibit torture as well as cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment in their communities. 2. research problem children’s rights are considered fundamental human rights. in the context of education, the primary interest is to safeguard the rights of the children. in particular, it is crucial to protect them from inhumane, cruel and degrading punishment. hence the uncrc (1989, article 37[a]) stipulates: no child shall be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. neither capital punishment nor life imprisonment without possibility of release shall be imposed for offences committed by persons below eighteen years of age. thus, the uncrc (1989: article 1) considers a child as someone under the age of 18 years and who needs to be protected and cared for. this also covers learners in schools as their rights need to be protected too. in addition, they also need to be cared for and spared from any torture or inhumane treatment. while lesotho is a signatory to the above-mentioned convention on children’s rights, it had to ratify the latter through promulgating its own legislation in order for this international convention to be legally binding. this means that in order for a treaty or convention to be enforced in lesotho, there first needs to be an enactment of an appropriate national legislation to domesticate it (kingdom of lesotho, 2013; shale, 2019). hence lesotho enacted the education act of 2010 (which was reviewed and amended in 2021). the education act of 2010 (ministry of education and training [moet], 2010: section 4[4]) also reiterates the stipulation of the uncrc (1989) that “…no child shall be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”. lesotho further introduced the codes of good practice (moet, 2011) which stipulate that “a teacher shall treat the learners with dignity, respect and consideration of their circumstances”. these documents were meant to domesticate the provisions made by the uncrc (1989) regarding the children’s rights. corporal punishment has been a phenomenon of interest among researchers such as jacobs, de wet and ferreira (2013); matheolane (2016) as well as mahlangu et al. (2021). while the current study recognises the foundation laid by this other research, its main focus, however, is on other forms of punishment that are non-physical but that are equally horrendous. the premise held by this study is that there seems to be a lack of clarity on the meaning of the phrase “cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment”. in our view, this stipulation does not only refer to corporal punishment, but to all forms of cruel, inhumane and degrading punishment. nonetheless teachers and those vested with learner discipline in schools continue to practice other forms of non-physical punishment as though they are acceptable (de wet, 2007). thus, regardless of the pronouncement made in the international and regional treaties, some teachers perpetually ill-treat learners by verbally and emotionally torturing them. the contemporary world faces considerable moral degradation to which some teachers also seem to contribute (marica, 2013). while some teachers are humane and fully abide by regulations of the teaching profession, there are also those who lack such humaneness http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.16 2262022 40(2): 226-237 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.16 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) and professionalism. this lack of ethical and legislative mindfulness not only degrades the learners and infringes on their rights, but it also tarnishes the image of the teaching profession (gelmez-burakgazi, can & coskun, 2020). hence there is a need to demystify the above legal phrase with a view to enhance its interpretation and the application thereof. against this background, the study sought to answer the following overarching question: what are the lesotho secondary schools’ teacher interpretations of the phrase “cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment”, as stipulated in the uncrc (1989: article 37) and in the education act (moet, 2010)? 3. research objectives in line with the above question, the study was guided by the following objectives: 1. to examine the lesotho secondary school teachers’ understanding of the phrase “cruel, inhuman and degrading manner”; 2. to suggest strategies for promoting humane learner punishment in lesotho secondary schools. having provided the research problem, overarching question, as well as guiding objectives, the next section focuses on the theoretical framework that underpins the study, and the relevant literature is reviewed. 4. theoretical framework this study is framed within the social contract theory as defined in the works of curtis et al. (2017) as well as fiesler, garrett and beard (2020). aristotle first advocated this theory. according to aristotle, human beings are seen as social animals. the gist of the social contract theory is succinctly captured in an excerpt from one of aristotles’ books, the politics, which reads: “he who is unable to live in society or is sufficient in himself, must either be a beast or a god, he is no part of the state” (koenane & mangena, 2017: 62). as suggested in the above except, the social contract theory debunks the claim that “man is born free”. rather it holds that man is accountable to society and is bound by societal moral expectations (holden et al., 2012; koenane & mangena, 2017). at the core of this theory is the acknowledgment that absolute freedom could only result in vicious moral chaos since individual desires are bound to clash with the societal common good (thornburg & oguz, 2015; curtis et al., 2017; fiesler et al., 2020). aristotle’s theory has since been applied in research on ethical competence and humane societal behaviour. it provides a substantial framework for research on teacher ethical and humane conduct. teachers need to realise that by virtue of opting for the teaching career, they have signed a social contract and have pledged to live by the ethical obligations of this career (sharma, 2020). this requires teachers to be mindful of their social accountability even when they discipline learners at school. thus, in cases where they have to resort to punishment, they should seek strategies that are as humane and non-degrading as possible. 5. literature review the literature was reviewed in four areas, namely: conceptualisation of ethics, the significance of teacher professional ethics, the attributes of an ethically competent teacher and the definition of cruel, inhumane and degrading punishment. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.16 2272022 40(2): 227-237 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.16 rakolobe & tlali towards a humane learner punishment 5.1 the concept of ethics the term “ethics” originated from a greek word “ethos” or “ethikos” which stands for “seeking a path of wise action” or “general human moral dispositions” (sultana, 2014. the concept of ethics is also described as a branch of philosophy that focuses on the nature of morality (chowdhury, 2016). this branch of philosophy constitutes the prescription of norms and standards for human conduct. it further seeks to probe the reasoning behind human morality (sultana, 2014; chowdhury, 2016). ethics are universally accepted and are applicable in the individuals’ personal and professional lives (sharma, 2020). there are two categories of ethics, namely: (1) theoretical ethics and (2) applied ethics (gulcan, 2015). under theoretical ethics, there are three subcategories, namely: (1) normative ethics, (2) descriptive ethics and (3) meta ethics. applied ethics, on the other hand, refers to professional ethics (gulcan, 2015). members of a particular profession are thus bound by codes of ethics for which they should profess a commitment and competence to uphold. this commitment forms the basis of a social contract between a particular profession and the society. 5.2 the significance of teacher professional ethics a profession is founded upon service and promotion of the public good. by virtue of being members of the teaching profession, teachers have a moral obligation that requires them to exhibit ethical competence in relation to professional ethics that govern this profession. teachers need to have specific abilities, techniques and ethical aspects that should create conducive teaching and learning environments (seghedin, 2014) professional ethics, therefore, refer to how ethics are applied in the context of a particular profession (mcpherson, forster & buchanan, 2019). these are regulated by standards that are often referred to as codes of ethics (sultana, 2014). the code of ethics sets the boundaries within which professionals should operate. according to bhusnar (2018: 205), “professional ethics incorporate the individual, authoritative and corporate benchmarks of conduct expected of professionals”. in the context of lesotho, the governing code of ethics is in the form of the teaching service regulations (2002), as well the teachers’ codes of good practice (2011). ethical issues permeate every aspect of a teacher’s life. as such, teachers find themselves having to make innumerable moral judgements in their different activities. this is exacerbated by the complexity and the multiple layers of the environment (boon & maxwell, 2016; mcpherson et al., 2019). as a teaching and learning environment, the school must nurture positive and harmonious co-existence among the various stakeholders involved, namely the students, parents, colleagues and educational authorities (gelmez-burakgazi, can & coskun, 2020). hence it is crucial to cultivate professional ethics as a foundation for providing a respectful, safe, warm and friendly school context. 5.3 some characteristics of ethically competent teachers ethically competent teachers are those that have subject-matter knowledge, reasoning skills, problem-solving skills, advocacy skills, self-awareness and a positive attitude towards the teaching profession (schrijver & maesschalck, 2013). such teachers have ethical awareness; they are conversant with the relevant educational legal framework; they can anticipate ethical problems in real life and perceive them in time. they make sound ethical decisions; they have sharp cognitive skills to analyse and solve ethical problems the best way possible; they http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.16 2282022 40(2): 228-237 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.16 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) can discuss and handle ethical problems at class or school level as well as contribute to formulating ethical principles and guidelines (lilja, et al., 2018). due to the social contract that the teachers have with the communities that they serve, their behaviour is constantly under scrutiny in terms of whether they display the required level of ethical proficiency and humaneness (gluchmanova, 2017). a teacher is seen as a personification of some of the following ethical standards: wisdom and display for the highest acumen, integrity and honesty, fairness and prudent action, motivation and learner encouragement, care and empathy for the learners, respect and consideration for all the stakeholders, respect for spiritual and cultural values, diversity, social justice and democracy (gelmez-burakgazi & can, 2018; devika & dilip, 2019). 5.4 clarifying the meaning of “cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment” there appears to be a dearth of literature regarding the definition or interpretation of the phrase “cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment” of the learners (boulos, 2019). although many international treaties and protocols prohibit cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, none of them gives a definition of this crucial stipulation (o’donnell & liwski, 2010). as a result, the definition and interpretation of the phrase “cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment” remains quite confusing. this, therefore, complicates the interpretation and application of this policy clause since the users cannot actually figure out what it really prohibits (waldron, 2010). adler (2018) suggests that the best way to demystify this phrase is to individually describe the words that make up the phrase. the first word in the phrase is “cruel”. steinneford (2017) observes that the term cruel, although ambiguous, should be described based on the legal context in which it is used. thus, the term cruel should be explained regarding the manner and degree of the punishment inflicted on the victim. in line with the foregoing view, cruel punishment is defined by alastin (2006) as an extreme form of punishment meant to inflict substantial and maximum pain that can be avoided by giving a lesser punishment to the culprit. mendez (2015:4) posits that “even very short periods of detention can undermine a child’s psychological and physical well-being and compromise their cognitive development”. another important word in the phrase is “inhuman”. in the school context, inhuman punishment is a well-orchestrated plan intended to harm a person physically, emotionally and psychologically (arai-yokoi, 2003). nonetheless, it is imperative to note that there is a thin line between torture and inhuman treatment. the difference between the two lies in the extent of emotional and physical distress assumed to be suffered by the victim and must be intuitively and factually scrutinised (arai-yokoi, 2003). the severity of punishment is dependent on factors such as gender and age of the victim as well as the period of the punishment (organisation for security and co-operation in europe, 2013). another equally important term from the phrase is “degrading”. degrading punishment means the type that is grossly embarrassing and shameful to the victim (fenwick, 2007). this is the kind of punishment that humiliates a person in a way that weakens their human self-esteem and/or self-respect and breaks their spiritual and physical well-being (araiyokoi, 2003). the last word in the phrase is “punishment”. the concept punishment comprises hurting, causing suffering through depriving a person of something (canton, 2017). additionally, punishment is viewed as unethical since it involves perpetrating negative methods to correct http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.16 2292022 40(2): 229-237 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.16 rakolobe & tlali towards a humane learner punishment and transform the person’s manners (scott, 2009). therefore, “cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment” is the kind that uses unconventional and negative methods. it causes unbearable physical pain and emotional distress. it is hence advisable that international and local laws clearly stipulate the punishment methods that fall in this category. this may sensitise and help teachers to be mindful of the ethical and legal boundaries in their application of the various disciplinary or punishment measures. 6. research design and methodology this study is underpinned by the interpretivist paradigm, and a descriptive qualitative research design (merriam, 2014) was adopted to examine interpretations of the teachers regarding the meaning of cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. descriptive designs seek to understand the meaning or definitions that the participants have constructed about a particular phenomenon. cohen, manion and morrison (2011) add that the process of meaning-making is also reflexive in nature. hence it compels the participants to reflectively interrogate and redefine their own perceptions about a particular phenomenon. an open-ended qualitative research questionnaire was used in this research study to generate data. even though this method did not allow probing, it still allowed ample data generation. this was followed up with focus group interviews conducted with the teachers in some selected lesotho secondary schools to elicit their perspectives. the assumption was that group interaction would create a less intimidating platform while at the same time allowing participants to freely give their views on the issue of teacher misconduct freely. this style of interviewing also allowed probing for in-depth exploration of certain issues (cohen et al., 2011). the reason for following up a qualitative questionnaire with focus group interviews was to supplement the data and to ensure crystallisation of the data collection methods. 6.1 selection of participants the population for this study consisted of the lesotho secondary school teachers. the participants were purposively selected (cohen et al., 2011) by virtue of having the minimum of three years teaching experience. the assumption was that they may have at some point had to discipline and punish the learners, or they may have on some occasion witnessed their colleagues punishing learners. thirty-two teachers took part in the study. thus, twenty teachers were requested to respond to a qualitative questionnaire, while twelve were interviewed in two focus groups of six participants each. 6.2 ethical considerations ethical issues that are espoused by research communities globally were observed by issuing informed consent to the participants. no one was coerced into participating and the participants’ right to opt out of the research project was reserved. confidentiality and anonymity were observed by ensuring that none of the presented findings could be traced back to the participants (strydom, 2011). the participants were given pseudo-codes to disguise their identity and to enable ease of reference in the reporting of the findings. hence, the participants were labelled t (teacher) 1 to t32. the audio tapes and data transcriptions were safely locked away with the intention to destroy them after five years. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.16 2302022 40(2): 230-237 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.16 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) 7. the findings data from the qualitative questionnaire and the focus group interviews were transcribed verbatim and inductive codes were used for analysis (merriam, 2014). due to the overlapping themes, the findings were synthesised and categorised into the following main themes: (1) awareness of the legal framework that guides lesotho education; (2) interpreting the phrase “a learner shall not be subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment”; (3) forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading disciplinary practices prevalent in the schools; (4) strategies for curbing cruel, inhuman and degrading learner punishment; and (5) advocacy to stop cruel, inhuman and degrading learner punishment. 7.1 awareness of the legal framework that guides the lesotho education before examining the teachers’ understanding of the phrase “cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment”, the participants were first asked to identify the laws that guide education and welfare of the children in lesotho of which they were aware. the following responses were given: i am aware of the following laws that guide education and welfare of basotho learners in the country: the lesotho education act 2010 and the constitution of lesotho, 1993 (t1). i am aware of the lesotho education act, 2010 (t2). i truly do not know any specific laws (t5). i bought the education act, 2010 from lesotho government printers (t9). the strategic plan and the lesotho inclusive education policy (t14). the constitution of lesotho, children’s protection and welfare act (2010) and education act 2010 (t20). the foregoing findings indicate that while some teachers are aware of the legal and policy documents that govern education in lesotho, there are also those who are unaware of the pertinent legal framework within which they ought to operate. as part of their social contract, teachers need to know and abide by the legal framework that governs their profession. this lack of mindfulness regarding legislature may imply recklessness on the part of teachers. 7.2 interpreting the phrase “cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment” the participants were then asked to describe their understanding of the policy clause that reads “a learner shall not be subjected to cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment” (the un convention on the rights of a child, 1987, article 37; education act of 2010 section 4(4)). these are the interpretations that came to the fore: my understanding, as far as the education act is concerned, is that any learner in lesotho shall never be intentionally hurt either physically or emotionally by anybody. for instance, that corporal punishment is said to be inconsistent to the supreme law of lesotho as it contravenes the constitution of lesotho where it states that “every person in lesotho is entitled to freedom from inhuman treatment as a legal fundamental human right and other freedoms (t1). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.16 2312022 40(2): 231-237 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.16 rakolobe & tlali towards a humane learner punishment i do not know the education act but i think the cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment refers to the cases where the learners are torched physically, insulted and mocked. for example, a teacher may use a stick which has thorns to beat a learner at sensitive body parts (such as the buttocks), shouting and telling the learners how dirty they are (t3). teachers are not supposed to hurt children because the children may hide or drop out of school due to the cruelty, inhuman and degrading punishment that is imposed on them (t11). i think punishment is ingrained in our school culture. i believe the way the punishment has been done all these past years is the best way to deal with the learners (t18). from the above findings, it can be noted that there are teachers who are aware that harsh and cruel punishment is against the supreme law of the country and that it may push some learners to drop out of school. however, some of these teachers interpret the phrase “cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment” as corporal punishment. nonetheless, they still continue to lash the learners because it is part of the school culture, and they are convinced that it is the best way to deal with the learners. more worrisome, teachers are not only ignoring the legislature, but they are also breaching their social contract and accountability to the stakeholders. 7.3 forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading discipline prevalent in the schools the participants shared their experiences where teachers punished the learners in a cruel, inhumane and degrading manner. they further stated some of their reasons for that kind of treatment. this is what they said: there are some instances which require corporal punishment. sometimes it is administered by the principal but sometimes it is done by teachers, including me. we resort to corporal punishment as a result of frustration that can be triggered by lack of emotional control. the act itself negatively affects the mental health of a person who tries to discipline the learners (t2). in cases where we think the learners’ offences are outrageous, we team up to lash them. we make them lie flat on the floor, on their stomachs, and we lash their buttocks (t5). we do lash students for their misbehaviour. some offences need us to help the learners to do self-introspection (t9). we detain them after school hours and assign them to clean the school surroundings (t19). i use punishment at home, both physical and emotional punishment, and i definitely do it at school as well (t23). sometimes we hurt the learners physically or emotionally in a way that will make them feel less of persons. for instance, we beat the learners on the bottoms and call them names. we label them according to their physical appearance (t26). as noted from the preceding findings, the punishment methods that are prevalent in some of the schools include harsh corporal punishment even though teachers are aware that it is illegal to administer it. other forms of punishment also consist of name calling, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.16 2322022 40(2): 232-237 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.16 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) detention, as well as undisclosed physical and emotional torture. participants even went further to acknowledge the negative psychological effect of the cruel, inhumane and degrading punishment to the learner and the teacher. these findings confirm that teachers who practice these forms of inhumane punishment have neglected their contractual obligations to protect and care for the learners. 7.4 strategies for curbing cruel, inhuman and degrading learner punishment the participants suggested the mechanisms that can be used to discipline the learners without being cruel, inhumane and/or degrading to them. the following strategies were proposed: learners should be empowered through the provision of life-skills education and counselling. these mechanisms can nurture or instil the expected discipline in the learners. most importantly, these can, as a result of routine practice, serve as the alternative discipline mechanisms (t2). keeping the learners busy with tasks could curb misbehaviour. teachers should not exercise their power over the learners. rather, they should talk to them and help them to realise where they went wrong. learners should be helped to learn from their mistakes (t7). provision of constructive criticism towards the learners is required through, for example, motivation, teamwork, time management and communication (t28). it is crucial to talk to the students about their bad behaviour and reward good behaviour (t32). the findings reveal that upon reflection, participants realised the negative effects of cruel, inhumane and degrading punishment. they therefore suggested the following strategies in order to curb such punishment: empowering and influencing the learners’ behaviour through the introduction of life-skills education, counselling, keeping the learners meaningfully engaged or busy, communicating the expectations and providing constructive criticism. 7.5 advocacy to stop cruel, inhumane and degrading learner punishment the participants further appealed to their fellow teachers to treat the learners in a manner that is not cruel, inhumane or degrading. these were their appeal statements, in their own words: my fellow teachers should be empowered with life-skills and counselling orientations through in-service or workshop programmes. moreover, the ministry of education should see to it that teachers are taught the education law (t2). teachers should remember the teaching profession ethics taught to them during their training. they should create friendly classroom environments; the learners are not prisoners they should feel free around their teachers (t6). listen to the learners carefully; that is, listen to what the learners have to say and talk to learners in a precise and soft tone using words that are not harsh but soothing (t10). learners are different so they need to be treated differently. we need to know our learners individually in order to choose the appropriate mechanism for disciplining or punishing them (t13). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.16 2332022 40(2): 233-237 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.16 rakolobe & tlali towards a humane learner punishment teachers should show genuine interest in their learners and let them know that getting to know each of them as an individual is important; they should ask the learners about their opinions, interest and backgrounds as well as the social believes and religion (t17). in their plea to the teaching fraternity to stop all forms of cruel, inhumane and degrading punishment, the participants emphasised that the teachers should be mindful of the teaching profession ethics taught to them during their pre-service teacher education. this implies that they should also be mindful of the social contract that they signed by virtue of opting to become teachers. for instance, they should seek to create a friendly school climate where the learners are nurtured and listened to. they also emphasised the need for the moet to provide in-service training to empower the teachers with life-skills and counselling skills, as well as to promote awareness and proper interpretation of the education laws. 8. discussion and recommendations despite the implementation of the un declarations and other national as well as international treaties on school discipline that include: the uncrc (1989: article 37), the education act (moet, 2010), the children protection and welfare act of 2011, and the code of good practice (moet, 2011), it seems that there are still teachers who are not aware of the policies and the legal framework within which they ought to operate. even those who are aware of these documents seem to ignore or misinterpret them. as revealed by the findings, such teachers not only use harsh corporal punishment, but they also perpetually subject the learners to other cruel, inhumane and degrading forms of punishment such as name calling, detention as well as other undisclosed physical and emotional forms of torture. while there are those participants who concede to the negative psychological effects of harsh punishment on both the learner and the teacher (steinneford, 2017), there are some who recognise the latter as the best way to deal with learner misbehaviour. it seems that the lesotho moet needs to liaise with the different stakeholders (such as parents, communities and school management teams) to train the teachers on alternative and more humane methods of disciplining the learners as well as to promote the awareness and proper interpretation of the pertinent legislature. the literature indicates that “cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment” is the kind of punishment that uses unconventional and harsh methods; it causes unbearable physical pain and emotional anguish (steinneford, 2017; adler, 2018). as confirmed by the findings, the above-mentioned forms of punishment not only cause distress to the learners but sometimes even push the learners to drop out of school. apart from being tantamount to child abuse and compromising the teaching professional ethics (gelmez-burakgazi & can, 2018; devika & dilip, 2019); they also contravene the social contract that teachers got into by virtue of choosing the teaching career (curtis et al., 2017; fiesler et al., 2020). in this regard, teachers are not only urged to recall the professional ethics instilled in them during their pre-service teacher training, but they are also persuaded to seek alternative behaviour-changing mechanisms that could curb cruel, inhumane and degrading punishment. these include consciously creating a friendly and nurturing teaching and learning environment, empowering and influencing the learners’ behaviour through the introduction of life-skills and counselling, keeping the learners meaningfully engaged or busy, communicating expectations, providing constructive criticism and rewarding good behaviour. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.16 2342022 40(2): 234-237 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.16 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) 9. conclusion this study sought to examine lesotho secondary school teachers’ perspectives in interpreting the legal phrase “cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment”. adversely, the findings indicate that the teachers misinterpret the stipulation as a mere abolishment of corporal punishment. teachers continue to use corporal punishment and other forms of cruel, degrading and inhumane punishment such as insulting, ridiculing, name calling and detaining the learners despite the legislation protecting children against these forms of torture. such teachers’ behaviour is not only tantamount to learner abuse, but it also compromises the teacher’s social contract, as well as professional ethics by which they ought to abide. in the final analysis, the position taken in this study is that the phrase “cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment” does not refer to abolishing corporal punishment. rather, it covers all other forms of punishment, physical and non-physical. the key recommendations made by the study are that the lesotho moet, in collaboration with other stakeholders, should provide inservice training for teachers about children’s rights and their protection in schools. moreover, teachers should be educated about the legal framework that governs the teaching profession so that they can be mindful and act within the boundaries of teacher professional ethics. they should also seek to create warm and friendly learning environments and find 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lecture inhuman and degrading treatment: the words themselves. canadian journal of law & jurisprudence, 23(2): 269-286. https://doi. org/10.1017/s0841820900004938 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.16 https://doi.org/10.18034/abcjar.v3i1.31 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2016.01.002 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0841820900004938 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0841820900004938 189 research article 2021 39(1): 189-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.12 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) primary school-level responses to the covid-19 pandemic in ethiopia: evidence from phone surveys of school principals and teachers abstract located at the intersection of the education system, the school and community, school principals now have the responsibility for the effectiveness of school-level responses to the covid-19 crisis. this includes translating directives into practice during school closures as well as supporting teachers to continue to provide learning and responding to local needs, including the specific needs of disadvantaged students. subsequently, teachers have a direct responsibility for supporting students during school closures, especially those who are disadvantaged. this article aims to provide an understanding of the response of school principals and teachers during school closures using data collected in ethiopia through phone surveys with 127 school principals and 316 teachers in august 2020. we explore the support school principals received from the government during school closures as well as contact by school principals and teachers with parents and caregivers. our findings suggest an important role for the local government in supporting school-level responses to the covid-19 pandemic while parents and caregivers are important in helping to cater for the needs of disadvantaged groups. keywords: covid-19; primary schools, equity, school principals, teachers, ethiopia. 1. introduction 1.1 education system response to covid-19 as a result of the covid-19 school closures in ethiopia, beginning in march 2020, approximately 26 million students missed out on at least five months of schooling, which is expected to negatively affect their learning and wellbeing. the effects of covid-19 on students’ learning are believed to be unevenly distributed, with students who are most marginalised likely to experience the greatest losses, which in turn will have consequences for ongoing efforts to improve equitable learning in ethiopia. in seeking to mitigate the effects of school closures on students’ learning, author: dr l. yorke1 prof p. rose1 prof t. woldehanna2 dr b.h hailu2 affiliation: 1university of cambridge 2addis ababa university doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i1.12 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 189-206 published: 12 march 2021 received: 10 november 2020 accepted: 20 january 2021 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5028-0317 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6701-6774 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0658-4188 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2047-2454 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.12 1902021 39(1): 190-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) the government put in place strategies to provide distance learning for students and placed special emphasis on supporting disadvantaged students1. even with these efforts, reports suggest that distance learning has not reached all students in ethiopia (kim et al., 2020; wieser et al., 2020). globally, the evidence regarding the effectiveness of remote learning strategies is mixed at best, with challenges found in implementing even the most basic measures to support the continued learning of students (srivastava, 2020). in ethiopia, reaching all students is particularly challenging due to inequalities in access to resources, infrastructure and facilities needed to support students’ distance learning by wealth, rural-urban location and regions within the country (csa, 2016). for example, data gathered during the school closures indicates that families’ access to electricity and technology to support learning varies considerably across rural-urban location and, as a result, rural families are much less likely to engage in any form of distance learning (kim et al., 2020; wieser et al., 2020). since october 2020, schools in ethiopia started to open once again. however, they face a number of challenges ahead, including ensuring that all students return to school, helping students to catch-up on lost learning, catering for the diverse needs of different groups of students and ensuring that schools are resilient to future shocks. given that many countries have seen a resurgence of the virus, it is very likely that there may be successive closures and reopening, with education shifting between in-person learning and remote learning or a combination of both approaches for the foreseeable future (dreesen et al., 2020; unesco, 2020; srivastava, 2020). in this context, strengthening local-level capacity to respond to the covid-19 pandemic will be imperative. 1.2 school level response to the covid-19 pandemic located at the nexus of the education system, the school and the community, school principals are pivotal in the immediate response to covid-19 and in efforts to strengthen education systems to ongoing and future crises and improve equitable learning outcomes (leithwood, harris & hopkins, 2020; yadete, 2012). school principals’ roles have been dramatically changed by the crisis and beyond their traditional responsibilities; they are now responsible for the effectiveness of school-level responses to school closures, including implementing government strategies at the local level, supporting and encouraging teachers to provide distance learning and putting in place strategies to ensure a safe and healthy learning environment for all students as schools reopen (harris, 2020; harris & jones, 2020; leithwood, harris & hopkins 2020; smith & riley, 2012). owing to the unprecedented nature of the current situation, there is no set direction for school principals to follow, yet they must continue to adapt and respond quickly to mitigate the effects of the pandemic (harris & jones, 2020). it is important that school principals receive sufficient support to respond to the ongoing pandemic and can communicate efficiently and effectively with other stakeholders, including the local community (harris & jones, 2020; smith & riley, 2012). while school principals are fundamental in managing the school-level response to the covid-19 pandemic, teachers have a critical role in engaging and supporting students (unesco/ilo, 2020; wilichowski & cobo, 2020). like school principals, teachers have 1 strategies to support students included a digital learning platform for those who have access to the internet and required technology, educational programmes broadcast through radio for the majority of primary school students and material distribution for students who were likely to be supported through other means (ministry of education, 2020). 1912021 39(1): 191-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.12 yorke, rose, woldehanna & hailu primary school-level responses to the covid-19 pandemic also had to adapt to the new context and acquire new skills to enable them to interact and effectively engage with students and their parents and caregivers (wilichowski & cobo, 2020). as schools reopen, teachers play an integral role in creating a safe learning environment and helping students to catch up on lost learning (unesco/ilo, 2020). teachers, therefore, need support and guidance in undertaking these new roles (unesco/ilo, 2020; wilichowski & cobo, 2020). despite the vital role of school principals and teachers in the effectiveness of school level responses to the pandemic, there is currently a lack of research that takes account of their experiences and perspectives during the covid-19 school closures. as such, we do not sufficiently understand what is needed to strengthen the education systems and ensure equitable and quality learning. in this article we aim to address this gap, drawing on the data collected through phone surveys with school principals and teachers in ethiopia in august 2020. our aim is to explore the response of school principals and teachers to the covid-19 pandemic, taking account of their perspectives. in doing so, we demonstrate the importance of strengthening school-level capacity in responding to the pandemic to ensure that strategies are adapted to the local context and take account of the needs of those who are most disadvantaged. 2. literature review and ethiopian context 2.1 strengthening the education system the covid-19 crisis has highlighted the significant shortcomings of education systems worldwide, most of which were unprepared for the crisis and, as a result, were unable to ensure the continuity of learning outside schools especially for those who are most disadvantaged (srivastava, 2020: unesco, 2020). in response, much discussion has focused on ensuring that education systems can respond to the ongoing crisis and also on what is needed to build back better and more resilient and equitable education systems (harris, 2020; srivastava, 2020; unesceo, 2020; world bank, 2020). in ethiopia, prior to the covid-19 outbreak, the government was working hard to transform the education system to provide equitable and quality learning for all students. one of the primary means for achieving these aims has been through a large-scale government education reform programme, the general education quality improvement programme for equity (geqip-e). this is the third phase of the programme, funded by a consortium of donors and implemented by the government (world bank, 2018)2. strengthening local decision-making and capacity has been a central focus across the three successive phases of the geqip programme (yadete, 2012; world bank, 2018). according to the government’s education and training policy, improving school-based management and community participation can help to “…improve the relevance, quality, accessibility and equity of education and training” (ministry of education, 1994: 29). it is also expected to achieve greater responsiveness to local needs (world bank, 2008/2013). 2.2 challenges in local-level capacity while efforts to improve local-level capacity have made good progress in recent years, a number of related challenges have been identified, which may also have consequences for 2 see asegdom et al. (2019) for more information on the geqip-e programmes, including the key stakeholders included in the design process. 1922021 39(1): 192-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) the efficacy of local-level responses to the covid-19 pandemic. first, the centralised nature of education planning is suggested to be at odds with efforts to decentralise the education system and building local-level capacity (iyer & rossiter, 2018). this often results in limited ownership and significant knowledge gaps at lower levels of the education system, which are in turn exacerbated by an over-reliance on inefficient modes of information communication and dissemination (asegdom et al., 2019; gibbs et al., 2020; mitchell, 2015; yadete, 2012). secondly, the top-down nature of the system and upward nature of accountability upon which the education system is predicated leads to a lack of flexibility in adapting nationally/regionally mandated plans to local contexts, which limits the ability of school principals to respond to local challenges (mitchell, 2015; yadete, 2012). thirdly, the nature of the relationship between the woreda (district) education offices and school principal is critical in enabling school-based management and local decision-making and in passing directives and regulations to schools (yadete, 2012). however, where there is weak communication between the woreda education officials and school principals, implementation gaps appear (yadete, 2012). furthermore, due to the upward modes of accountability, school principals are often not in a position to hold woreda education officials accountable. 3. understanding local-level responses to covid-19 ethiopia provides an important case study for understanding how to build back resilient and equitable education systems given that strengthening the education system has been a priority prior to the pandemic. understanding local-level responses to the pandemic in the context of ongoing efforts to improve the education system and strengthen local capacity are important. as such we consider the interaction between the education system response and the school level response at the local level. figure 1: schematic representation of school level response to covid-19 figure 1 provides a schematic representation of our approach for exploring the schoollevel response to the covid-19 pandemic. we pay attention to the roles, responsibilities and relationships between different actors at the local level, including the woreda education office, school principals, teachers and parents and caregivers. first, to set the context, we take account of the level of access that school principals and teachers have to electricity and communication devices, which may have consequences for how they respond to the pandemic. we then focus on the interaction between the woreda education office and school principal, exploring in particular if and how school principals receive support on how to respond 1932021 39(1): 193-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.12 yorke, rose, woldehanna & hailu primary school-level responses to the covid-19 pandemic to the covid-19 pandemic. we use the term “support” to refer to the non-material support that stakeholders receive from others to help them to effectively respond to the covid-19 pandemic, which may include advice, information and guidance. we subsequently explore how this affects the response of the school principal to the pandemic, including the support they provide to teachers and parents and caregivers, and the strategies that they put in place for school reopening. finally, we consider if and how teachers support students during the school closures. 4. methods and data the data presented in this paper were gathered through a phone survey with school principals and teachers in august 2020. this was undertaken as part of the research for improving systems of education (rise) in ethiopia to examine the effects of school closures. we drew on the sample of schools included in the rise ethiopia baseline data collection, which included seven regional states and city administrations including addis ababa, amhara, benishangul gumuz, oromia, southern nations, nationalities and people’s (snnp), somali and tigray in rural and urban locations. although the sample is not nationally representative, it broadly reflects the distribution of the population across regions and rural-urban location in ethiopia (see hoddinott et al., 2019 for an in-depth discussion of the rise ethiopia sampling strategy). phone surveys provided us with a means of collecting data during the covid-19 crisis, allowing us to collect important information without compromising the safety of either the fieldworkers or the participants included in the study (ballivian et al., 2015; dabalen et al., 2016; hoogeveen et al., 2014). we followed an iterative process of instrument design, which included instrument design, pre-piloting and piloting the instruments, refining the instruments and translation into the relevant languages. the phone surveys primarily consisted of closed-ended questions in order to enable us to reach a relatively large number of respondents and to avoid placing too much burden on the participants (dabalen et al., 2016; hoogeveen et al., 2014). the main areas of investigation included the flow of information during the covid-19 school closures, the support that school principals and teachers received from the education system to assist their response to the crisis, if and how school principals and teachers were supporting students’ learning during the school closures and the priorities of school principals and teachers in advance of schools reopening. given the focus on equity of the rise ethiopia study and also the geqip-e reforms, we sought to identify the particular impacts of the covid-19 school closures on students from disadvantaged groups including girls, children with disabilities, children in rural and remote locations and children from low-income families. a benefit of the study was the ability to draw on the existing rise ethiopia school and community database from which to sample participants, and this is likely to have contributed to the high response rate to the phone survey (85%). all schools that participated in the school survey (2018/19) were contacted. the enumerators were provided with a detailed protocol for contacting participants and obtained informed consent from participants. where interviews did not take place, this was mainly due to failure to reach the participant by phone or, less commonly, the participant declined to take part in the research. compensation (100 etb phone credit, equivalent to approximately £2 sterling) was provided to participants once the interview had been completed, drawing on best practice within ethiopia and in consideration of ethical procedures (morrow, 2009). all the data was captured through tablets and uploaded 1942021 39(1): 194-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) directly to the designated online storage system and then anonymised. ethical clearance was obtained from the ethical review board of the college of education and behavioural studies at addis ababa university and from the faculty of education at the university of cambridge. a total of 443 participants were included in the phone surveys, including 127 school principals and 316 teachers (see tables 1 and 2). as such, this cannot be considered a representative sample, but rather it provides a snapshot of the response to the covid-19 pandemic across a number of regions and rural-urban locations in ethiopia. table 1: school principals interviewed in the rise ethiopia phone survey region total rural urban female male (no.) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) addis ababa 16 13 0 100 6 94 amhara 17 13 71 29 6 94 benishangul gumuz 17 13 75 25 0 100 oromia 31 24 77 23 6 94 snnp 14 11 93 7 7 93 somali 15 12 79 21 7 93 tigray 17 13 71 29 6 94 total 127 100 67 33 6 94 table 2: teachers interviewed in the rise ethiopia phone survey region total rural urban female male (no.) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%) addis ababa 47 15 0 100 42 58 amhara 40 13 65 35 42 58 benishangul gumuz 41 13 69 31 41 59 oromia 83 26 75 25 51 49 snnp 28 9 89 11 82 18 somali 37 12 65 35 52 48 tigray 40 13 70 30 24 76 total 316 100 61 39 45 55 as seen in table 1, two-thirds of the school principals were from rural areas and one-third from urban areas. only 6% of school principals were female, while 55% of teachers were female. this is similar to the proportion of female school principals and teachers in primary schools across ethiopia. in general, females are found to be under-represented in decision making roles within the education system and over-represented in what are perceived as lower-status positions (yorke, rose & pankhurst, 2021). data analysis was assisted by stata software. we present a range of descriptive statistics, including chi-squared tests (χ2) to test for the significance of differences across the various groups of participants (e.g. gender, rural-urban location). building on the descriptive analysis presented in this paper, we also include three simple logistic regression models to provide 1952021 39(1): 195-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.12 yorke, rose, woldehanna & hailu primary school-level responses to the covid-19 pandemic further insight into the factors influencing the likelihood that school principals reported that they received support during the covid-19 school closures, provided support to teachers and were making plans for disadvantaged students to return to school. 5. findings 5.1 access to electricity and technology we first explored the level of access to electricity and technology for school principals and teachers. the majority of school principals and teachers had access to electricity, a phone, a television and a radio, while less than half of school principals and teachers had access to a computer/tablet, and very few school principals or teachers had access to the internet (table 3). based on chi-squared tests (χ2), we found significant differences across rural-urban locations, with urban school principals and teachers more likely to have access to these resources than their rural counterparts, except for radio for rural teachers. table 3: school principals’ and teachers’ access to electricity and communication devices school principals teachers rural (%) urban (%) sig. rural (%) urban (%) sig. electricity 62 100 *** 71 95 *** phone 89 100 ** 84 92 * television 57 98 *** 63 89 *** radio 71 85 * 76 75 computer/tablet 15 63 *** 5 34 *** internet 15 22 12 21 ** chi2 significance: ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.1 5.2 support provided to school principals during the covid-19 pandemic we then proceeded to ask the school principals if they had received any support on how their school can keep education going during the covid-19 school closures. almost three-quarters of the school principals reported receiving support about how to keep education going during the covid-19 school closures (table 4). of these, 84% received support from the woreda education offices. table 4: support received during covid-19 school closures % female male sig. rural urban sig. school principals 68 71 68 61 83 ** chi2 significance: ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.1 our chi-squared test (χ2) indicated that urban school principals were significantly more likely to report receiving support than rural school principals, but there were no significant differences between male and female school principals. school principals reported support as mainly being provided by phone (36%) or face-to-face (28%). 1962021 39(1): 196-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) the main types of support that school principals and teachers received included guidance and counselling, how to use a radio to support students’ learning at a distance and how to support students who did not have access to technology (figure 2). the type of support that school principals received was broadly similar to the type of support that teachers were likely to receive from school principals. figure 2: types of support received by school principals and teachers we ran a simple logistic regression to further explore the probability that school principals report receiving support during the school closures. gender, rural-urban location and access to a phone were included as independent variables in the model (see appendix a which identifies that the model was a good fit to the data). access to a phone was most likely to be associated with whether school principals received guidance, with the odds of school principals receiving support more than three times higher among school principals who had access to a phone, controlling for other factors (table 5). school principals in urban locations were almost three times more likely to report receiving support than those in rural areas, while the gender of school principals did not affect the likelihood as to whether they received support from the government. table 5: probability that school principals report receiving support on keeping education going during covid-19 β s.e odds ratio 95% confidence interval gender (male) -0.07 0.94 0.94 0.15 5.88 urban 1.02** 0.48 2.76 1.07 7.11 phone 1.26** 0.75 3.52 0.81 15.32 (constant) -0.63 1.09 0.53 0.06 4.51 1972021 39(1): 197-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.12 yorke, rose, woldehanna & hailu primary school-level responses to the covid-19 pandemic significance: ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.1, β stands for coefficient, s.e stands for standard error 5.3 support provided to teachers during the covid-19 pandemic approximately two-thirds of school principals reported supporting teachers during the covid-19 crisis and indicating that this support was mostly provided face-to-face. our chi-squared test (χ2) indicated that urban school principals were significantly more likely to report supporting teachers than rural school principals. in addition, our analysis revealed that school principals who had received support were significantly more likely to report supporting teachers (table 6). table 6: support provided by school principals to teachers during covid-19 % female male sig. rural urban sig. support no support sig. support to teachers 63 57 63 56 78 ** 83 18 *** chi2 significance: ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.1 we also ran a simple logistic regression to further explore the factors influencing the probability that school principals reported supporting teachers during school closures. three independent variables (gender, urban-rural location and support received) were included in the model (see appendix a that shows the model is a good fit to the data). school principals who received support were almost six times more likely to report supporting teachers controlling for the effects of other variables (gender, rural-urban location) (table 7). gender was not found to have any significant effect in our model. contrary to our chi-squared tests (χ2), the ruralurban location of school principals did not have a significant effect on the likelihood that they reported supporting teachers when controlling for other variables. table 7: probability that school principals report supporting teachers β s.e. odds ratio 95% confidence interval gender (male) 0.61 0.91 1.85 0.31 11.09 urban 0.77 0.47 2.16 0.85 5.45 support received 1.74*** 0.43 5.67 2.47 13.06 (constant) -1.39 0.96 0.25 0.04 1.64 significance: ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.1, β stands for coefficient, s.e stands for standard error 5.4 support received by teachers less than half of teachers (42%) reported receiving any support to provide distance learning. the vast majority of those who had received support mainly received this from their school principal (91%). important to note is how the proportion of teachers who reported receiving information from their school principals was much lower than the proportion of school principals who reported supporting teachers. this perhaps suggests that school principals were not supporting all teachers. as reported by school principals, the support was mainly 1982021 39(1): 198-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) provided face-to-face (59%) while some (30%) teachers also reported receiving support via phone. male teachers and teachers in urban areas were significantly more likely to receive support than female and rural teachers (table 8). while it is not directly apparent why these gender differences exist, it could be that female teachers faced an increased workload within the home and were therefore less likely to be able to meet school principals face-to-face. table 8: support received during covid-19 school closures % female male sig. rural urban sig. teachers 42 35 53 *** 38 48 * chi2 significance: ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.1 5.5 teachers’ support for students’ distance learning around one-half of teachers (49%) reported supporting students, which was mostly provided face-to-face (table 9). urban teachers were significantly more likely to report supporting students than rural teachers, while no significant differences were found between male and female teachers despite the fact that female teachers were less likely to receive support from the school principal. the main types of support that teachers reported providing to students included guidance and counselling, and monitoring others that are responsible for students (e.g. parents and caregivers). the main barriers that teachers identified included their lack of technical equipment (such as computers) and their lack of experience in delivering online courses, with many teachers indicating that they were not confident in their ability to support distance learning. table 9: support provided by teachers to students during covid-19 % female male sig. rural urban sig. support no support sig. support to students 49 47 53 45 57 ** 65 35 *** chi2 significance: ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.1 amongst teachers who reported supporting students during the school closures, less than half (43% urban teachers, 49% rural teachers) reported adapting the information that they provided to students for disadvantaged groups including girls, students from lowincome families, boys and low-performing students. rural teachers were more likely to adapt information for girls, while urban teachers were more likely to adapt information for students from poor families. in addition to facing difficulties in continuing their learning during the school closures, teachers believed that disadvantaged students would be likely to miss out on additional support during the covid-19, particularly students from low-income families, girls and lowperforming students. the types of support that teachers believed these students would be likely to miss out on included school feeding for students from low-income families, emotional support for girls and children with disabilities and peer-to-peer support for low-performing students and rural students (figure 3). 1992021 39(1): 199-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.12 yorke, rose, woldehanna & hailu primary school-level responses to the covid-19 pandemic figure 3: support disadvantaged students are likely to miss out on (%) 5.6 contact with parents and caregivers during the covid-19 pandemic we also explored the extent to which school principals and teachers had contact with the parents and caregivers of students during school closures. in our sample, school principals were more likely to report having had contact with parents and caregivers than teachers (85% and 54% respectively), which was mainly through face-to-face communication (table 10). we found that male school principals were significantly more likely to have contact with parents and caregivers than female school principals, while no differences were found across ruralurban location. again, these gender differences could perhaps point to the fact that female school principals also had other additional responsibilities within the home. the information that the school principals provided to parents and caregivers included information about health and safety measures and advice for supporting students’ learning. table 10: contact with parents and caregivers during the covid-19 school closures % female male sig. rural urban sig. support no support sig. school principals 85 57 87 ** 85 86 70 30 teachers 54 55 57 56 51 53 47 *** chi2 significance: ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.1 the level of support that school principals received (primarily from the woreda education office) did not affect their contact with parents and caregivers. by contrast, the level of support that teachers received from the school principals did affect their contact with parents and caregivers. many teachers in our sample suggested that parents and caregivers would be unable to effectively support students’ distance learning, which may be due to a number of 2002021 39(1): 200-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) different factors such as parents and caregivers’ heavy work demand, their low literacy levels and their low value for education. 5.7 preparations for school reopening school principals and teachers alike identified a range of anticipated challenges when schools reopen, including increased student dropout, inadequate number of classrooms to implement social distancing, inadequate handwashing facilities and decreased student performance (table 11). in terms of increased student drop-out, students from low-income families, rural student and girls were perceived as those most likely at-risk of dropout. table 11: perceived barriers when schools reopen (%) school principals teachers urban rural total urban rural total increased student drop-out 20 33 27 29 41 35 lack of classrooms 27 25 26 22 16 19 lack of handwashing facilities 24 19 22 10 17 14 decreased student performance 27 17 22 31 20 26 other 2 6 4 7 6 7 almost two-thirds of school principals and less than half of teachers indicated that their school was preparing to support children who are less likely to return to school to be able to return to school (table 12). no significant differences were found across gender or rural-urban location in terms of the likelihood that school principals and teachers would report that their school was making such preparations. table 12: likelihood schools are making plans to support disadvatrnaged children to return % female male sig. rural urban sig. school principals 60 43 61 63 54 teachers 41 40 41 44 37 chi2 significance: ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.1 we ran a simple logistic regression to further explore the factors influencing the probability that school principals reported making plans to support disadvantaged students to return to school. four independent variables (gender, urban-rural location, support received and contact with parents and caregivers) were included in the model. the model was found to be a good fit (see appendix a). as shown in table 13, contact with parents and caregivers and support received was significantly associated with the likelihood that school principals were preparing to support disadvantaged students to return. school principals who had contact with parents were almost five times more likely to prepare for disadvantaged students to return, controlling for all other factors. school principals who received support were more than twice as likely as those who did not received support to make plans to support disadvantaged students to return. in our 2012021 39(1): 201-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.12 yorke, rose, woldehanna & hailu primary school-level responses to the covid-19 pandemic model, gender and rural-urban location has no impact on the likelihood that school principals were making plans to support disadvantaged students to return. table 13: probability that school principals made plans to support disadvantaged students to return β s.e. odds ratio confidence interval gender (male) 0.23 0.87 1.26 0.23 6.99 urban -0.60 0.42 0.55 0.24 1.25 support received 0.87** 0.42 2.38 1.04 5.42 contact with parents and caregivers 1.56** 0.58 4.77 1.54 14.72 _cons -1.52 0.97 0.22 0.03 1.46 significance: ***p<0.01, **p<0.05, *p<0.1 6. discussion the covid-19 pandemic has revealed the need to strengthen local-level capacity and decision-making to respond to the current and future crises. with this in mind, in this article we have explored the school-level response to the covid-19 pandemic from the perspectives of school principals and teachers. this section summarises the main findings from our analysis, relating it to other related evidence where available. 6.1 support is critical in strengthening local-level capacity our findings point to the crucial and complementary roles of local-level actors in responding to the covid-19 pandemic, including school principals, teachers, and parents and caregivers. school principals are pivotal in translating official government strategies into practice and supporting teachers, while teachers are essential in supporting and engaging students. notably, our findings reveal the importance of providing school-level stakeholders with the appropriate support through the woreda education office to enable them to respond effectively. as other researchers have highlighted, the relationship between the woreda education office and school principals is key in strengthening school-based capacity (e.g. yadete, 2012; mitchell, 2015), and we found that this is particularly true in the context of responding to the covid-19 pandemic. the support that school principals receive from the local government had knock-on effects for how they respond and interact with teachers, parents and caregivers, as well as woreda education officials. according to our findings, school principals in rural areas receive less support from local government than their urban counterparts, thus highlighting the need for greater efforts to ensure that rural school principals are supported in responding to the pandemic. the fact that those school principals who do not receive support from the local government are less likely to respond perhaps suggest that they lack the appropriate information and are therefore unsure of how they should respond (asegdom et al., 2019). while the gender of school principals did not have an impact on the level of support that they received from the woreda education office, gender did affect the level of communication between school principals, teachers, and parents and caregivers. female teachers were less likely to report receiving support from school principals, while male teachers were more likely 2022021 39(1): 202-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) to have contact with parents. this is perhaps related to the fact that communication between school principals, teachers and parents was most likely through face-to-face communication. it is possible that female school principals and teachers have additional responsibilities within the home that mean they have less time to have face-to-face contact with other stakeholders. by contrast, communication between the woreda education officials and school principals was most likely to be via phone, which could be more feasible for female school principals to engage with amongst their other responsibilities. 6.2 covid-19 is likely to increase education inequalities similar to other research (kim et al., 2020; wieser et al., 2020), our findings suggest that covid-19 is likely to increase education inequalities, especially for girls, rural students and students from low-income families. as found in other research, implementing even the most basic strategies to support students’ distance learning has been a challenge (e.g. srivastava, 2020). in our sample, less than half the teachers were engaged in supporting distant learning, with rural teachers even less likely to be involved. where teachers were engaged in distance learning, they faced barriers such as a lack of access to the appropriate technology and a lack of confidence in their ability to support students, highlighting the importance of supporting teachers to respond. given the challenges that teachers faced, it is likely that students who are harder to reach, notably those in rural areas, are also less likely to have been engaged in distance learning. thus, while the government outlined the need to prioritise the needs of disadvantaged groups in responding to covid-19 (ministry of education, 2020), in practice it seems that this has not been achieved. according to teachers, disadvantaged students are also likely to have missed out on other essential support due to school closures including school feeding for students from low-income families, emotional support for girls and children with disabilities and peer-to-peer support for low-performing students and rural students. as such, it was not surprising that school principals and teachers believed that school dropout would increase because of the school closures, especially amongst these disadvantaged groups. despite these concerns, only two-thirds of school principals reported that they were preparing to support disadvantaged students to return. these findings point to the need for greater efforts to support the needs of disadvantaged groups, which take account of local priorities and resources and the need to invest in local infrastructure and facilities for education going forward. 6.3 engaging parents and caregivers helps to provide for the needs of students the importance of communication between the school and parents and caregivers has also been highlighted through our study. contrary to our expectations, school principals had more contact with parents and caregivers than teachers in our sample and communication usually occurs face-to-face. one possible explanation for the limited contact that teachers have with parents and caregivers could be that they are not confident of the parents and caregivers’ ability to support students’ distance learning and therefore do not make the effort to contact parents and caregivers. another potential reason is that parents and caregivers in rural areas and those who are poorer are less likely to have access to forms of technology that will enable regular contact remotely (kim et al., 2020). although the capacity of some parents and caregivers to support students’ distance learning has been questioned by teachers, our findings do suggest that parents and caregivers may have an important role in advocating for the needs of students. the contact 2032021 39(1): 203-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.12 yorke, rose, woldehanna & hailu primary school-level responses to the covid-19 pandemic that school principals have with parents and caregivers is an important factor in determining whether they report making plans to support disadvantaged students to return to school. this might suggest that school principals who had contact with parents and caregivers were more aware of the challenges that disadvantaged students faced. potential implications are that enhancing parents and caregivers’ participation may help to achieve greater responsiveness to the needs of students, particularly those who are disadvantaged. 7. conclusion drawing on the perspectives of school principals and teachers during the covid-19 pandemic, our findings provide important insights into what is needed to build local-level capacity to respond to the covid-19 pandemic. our findings have implications for efforts to strengthen education systems going forward – an issue of ongoing relevance to ethiopia and beyond (harris, 2020; srivastava, 2020; unesceo, 2020; world bank, 2020). the role of the woreda (district) education office in providing support to school principals and teachers proves critical. overall, our analysis suggests that in terms of providing support to school principals and teachers, a cascade approach is taking place where support is provided to school principals from the local government, they in turn are more likely to support teachers. and these teachers who receive support are more likely to engage with parents and caregivers during school closures. however, as a result of this cascade model, it appears that information is being lost from one level to the next, and as a result, our findings also suggest that not all school principals and teachers are receiving support and subsequently not all students are being reached. in particular, the evidence suggests that it is students who are most disadvantaged, due to poverty, living in rural areas and girls, who are potentially missing out the most. more explicit attention is needed concerning the manner in which support is provided by the government to school principals and teachers to ensure that support reaches even the most disadvantaged students. an important caveat of our study relates to the fact that the school principals and teachers from our sample who are included in the phone survey were those who were relatively easier to contact than those who did not participate. it may be the case that those who were not included are even less likely to have been supported to respond to the covid-19 school closures. nevertheless, our findings provide important insights to the local-level response to the covid-19 pandemic, paving the way for further analysis and a more in-depth assessment of the factors influencing the local-level response during school closures, including through engagement with local government stakeholders. such analysis will continue to be important given the ongoing effects of the current pandemic as well as lessons for other crises in the future. references asgedom, a., hagos, b., lemma, g., rose, p., teferra, t., wole, d. & yorke, l. 2019. whose influence and whose priorities? insights 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(eds.). reforming education and challenging inequalities in southern contexts: research and policy in international development. london: routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429293467-7 https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2014.927829 https://doi.org/10.1080/00131911.2014.927829 https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230362796_3 https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230362796_3 https://doi.org/10.1080/13632434.2011.614941 https://inee.org/system/files/resources/t20_tf11_pb6.pdf https://inee.org/system/files/resources/t20_tf11_pb6.pdf https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000373992 https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000373992 https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000373479?fbclid=iwar1at--jaaoq5ljrc9oaf3ri3hhfhdf9yxc47pf-pqfvhwmxlqjdpr1nagc https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000373479?fbclid=iwar1at--jaaoq5ljrc9oaf3ri3hhfhdf9yxc47pf-pqfvhwmxlqjdpr1nagc https://blogs.worldbank.org/education/coping-improving-and-accelerating-supporting-teachers-pandemic-and-beyond https://blogs.worldbank.org/education/coping-improving-and-accelerating-supporting-teachers-pandemic-and-beyond https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429293467-7 2062021 39(1): 206-206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) appendix a: logistic regression model fit support received (by school principals) supporting teachers during covid-19 supporting disadvantaged students to return obs. 127 127 127 pseudo r2 .12 .16 .09 chi2 chi2(3) = 9.89 p<0.05 chi2(4) = 26.29 p<0.05 chi2(4) = 15.81 p<0.05 hosmer-lemeshow chi2 p>0.05 p>0.05 p>0.05 pearson chi2 p>0.05 p>0.05 p>0.05 correctly classified 70% 73% 68% _hlk63059289 _goback 1182022 40(3): 118-131 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 on sustainability and higher education: towards an affirmative ethics abstract sustainable development has been the dominant focus in sustainability discourses over the past three decades. in 2015, the united nations member states adopted the 2030 agenda for sustainable development as a blueprint for peace and prosperity. the agenda is to be driven by the now well-known 17 sustainable development goals (sdgs). the higher education sector has not been left unaffected by these developments. in 2021, we saw times higher education (2021) for the first time introducing its impact rankings, which assess universities against the united nation’s sdgs. this new category of the university ranking system may see universities increasingly account for their contributions towards both ecological sustainability and social justice. paradoxically, higher education would have to embrace sdg targets as a social justice imperative, but within a neoliberal performance architecture and by applying the ethics of neoliberal market fundamentalism. in this article, we trouble the underlying normative, economy first (instrumentalist) assumption and anthropocentric approach to sustainability and its relationship with (higher) education. we argue that sustainability is not a means to an end (instrumentalist), but a social and ethical process that is situated, open and forever inbecoming. in doing so, we draw on rosi braidotti’s (2019; 2013) critical, posthumanist perspective, which enables us to perform two methodological moves: 1) a critical philosophical exploration of the concept sustainability and 2) generating affirmative propositions for thinking about sustainability education. at the heart of braidotti’s (2019; 2013) postulations is the affirmation of hope to enable sustainable transformations and futures. in addition, she proposes an ethics of joy and affirmation that functions through transforming negativity into positivity. through this affirmative ethical philosophy, we offer alternative imaginings of sustainability and generate six affirmative propositions for sustainability in higher education. keywords: sustainability; higher education; affirmative ethics; sustainability education 1. introduction the word ‘sustainability’1 appeared for the first in an english dictionary as recently as the 1970s. its appearance followed a dawning awareness in the western, anglosaxon world that planet earth has finite resources and 1 sustainability is a broad concept that concerns the ability of something to endure or continue unabated. sustainable development is one approach to sustainability, amongst others. author: prof petro du preez1 prof lesley le grange2 prof suriamurthee maistry3 prof shan simmonds1 affiliation: 1north-west university, south africa 2stellenbosch university, south africa 3university of kwazulu-natal, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i3.8 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(3): 118-131 published: 30 september 2022 received: 04 march 2022 accepted: 25 july 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9100-6461 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7096-3609 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9623-0078 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5005-9906 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 1192022 40(3): 119-131 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 du preez, le grange, maistry & simmonds on sustainability and higher education that human actions are eroding the planet’s biophysical base. aldo leopold’s (1949) a sandy almanac and rachel carson’s (1962) silent spring are two of the seminal works that inspired calls for greater emphasis on conservation in the post-world war ii era. however, in the wake of the first conference on human development held in stockholm in 1972, there was disillusionment among countries of the developing world, because the conference emphasised conservation. these countries argued that they needed opportunities to develop and that it was convenient for countries that were more developed to argue for conservation. to address competing aspirations, sustainability became (re)configured by governments and supranational organisations such as the united nations (un) as sustainable development (sd). a consequence of this reconfiguration was that sustainability became framed in anthropocentric terms. the popular definition of sustainable development captured in the brundtland commission report shows sd’s strong anthropocentric focus: “development which meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (wced, 1987). the needs emphasised in this definition focus on those of present and future generations of humans. sustainable development was reinforced at several intergovernmental conventions such as the rio earth summit in 1992 and the johannesburg summit in 2002 (le grange, 2003). in 2015, all united nations member states adopted the 2030 agenda for sustainable development (united nations sustainable development, 2015), which is to serve as a blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and planet in the present and the future. this agenda will be driven by the now popularly known 17 sustainable development goals (sdgs), which call for actions on the part of countries, also in partnership with one another. these developments have resulted in sustainability being constructed as policy (something external to life itself) and as goals to be achieved, as opposed to a frame of mind, as well as an ethical process of becoming, bearing testimony to the instrumentalism associated with the term. instrumentalism, or merely viewing sustainable development as a means to an end, is also evident in the way in which sustainable development has become associated with education in the notion, education for sustainable development (efsd). the united nations, for example, declared the decade 2005 to 2014 as the decade of education for sustainable development (desc), giving prominence to the idea that education should be narrowly directed in the interest of a particular understanding of sustainability. more recently, we have seen sustainability being couched in performative terms, with the times higher education impact rankings introduced in 2020 (times higher education, 2021). this ranking system measures universities in terms of their success in delivering the united nation’s sustainable development goals. despite all the above efforts, the state of the planet has worsened. the inequality gap has widened (globally and in south africa), glaciers continue to melt, floods and droughts have increased due to climate change, biodiversity loss is increasing, more virulent viruses are found such as sars-cov-2, and many more. the problem is that responses to the global environmental crisis (such as the ones mentioned) are based on the same thinking that caused these problems in the first place. sustainability, in this context, remains an instrumentalist endeavour that is linked to policy discourse. what we argue for is a non-instrumentalist approach to sustainability that is informed by an immanent ethics involving the becoming of the subject. we argue that our thinking on/about/with sustainability needs to change and therefore in this article we draw on rosi braidotti’s (2019; 2013) critical posthumanist perspectives, which enable us to perform two methodological moves: 1) a critical philosophical exploration http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 1202022 40(3): 120-131 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) of the concept sustainability and 2) generating affirmative propositions for thinking about sustainability education. at the heart of braidotti’s (2019; 2013) postulations is the affirmation of hope to enable sustainable transformations and futures. in addition, she proposes an ethic of joy and affirmation which functions through transforming negativity into positivity. through this affirmative ethical philosophy, we offer alternative imaginings of sustainability and generate six affirmative propositions for sustainability in higher education. 2. our methodological (dis)position we frame our conceptual exploration within the realm of speculative philosophy, more specifically, braidotti’s (2013) critical posthumanism. braidotti’s (2013) critical posthumanism is informed by her anti-humanist roots and aims to develop affirmative perspectives on the posthuman subject; that is, to affirm the productive potential of the posthuman predicament as we are caught between the fourth industrial revolution and sixth extinction. genealogically, braidotti’s critical posthumanism can be traced back to the poststructuralists, the antiuniversalism of feminism and the anti-colonial phenomenology of frantz fanon and his teacher aimé césaire. braidotti (2013) argues that what all these intellectual endeavours have in common is a sustained commitment to work out the implications of posthumanism for mutual understandings of the human subject and humanity as a whole. importantly, she points out that the situated cosmopolitan posthumanism produced by these intellectual endeavours are supported by both the european tradition and by ‘non-western’ sources of moral and intellectual inspiration. braidotti (2013) points out that another powerful source of inspiration for present-day reconfigurations of critical posthumanism is ecological and environmentalist. this relates to the larger sense of subjectivity and how it evokes the interconnections between self and others, including the more-than-human-world (le grange, 2018). when one does critical posthuman work, the aim is to understand the actual and to hypothesise the virtual (what could be) (koole 2020). in the article we make two methodological moves: 1) conceptual critique of the actual, and 2) generating affirmative propositions of the virtual (what could be). 3. slippages in the sustainability debate literature bears testimony to the contested nature of sustainability and its association with education. le grange (2017: 95) highlights some of the criticism levelled against sustainability and in particular its couching as sustainable development, it has internal contradictions, it manifests epistemological difficulties, it reinforces a problematic anthropocentric stance, it has great appeal as a political slogan, it is a euphemism for unbridled economic growth, it is too fuzzy a term to convey anything useful, and it does not take into consideration the asymmetrical relationship between present and future generations. the internal contradictions relate to the coinage of the term ‘sustainable development’, in an attempt to satisfy opposite aspirations (conservation and development). drawing on the discourse analyst norman fairclough, stables (1996) argues that compound terms such as sustainable development are created by politicians in democratic societies in an attempt to satisfy diverse desires, but remain ideal regulative notions that result in gaps between policy sloganizing and policy implementation. le grange (2013) goes further and argues that the notion of ‘need’ (captured in the brundtland commission report) should be viewed as a political instrument and that ‘needs’ in relation to sustainability should be viewed as part of political discourses on ‘needs’ that have become constructed in late capitalist societies. therefore, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 1212022 40(3): 121-131 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 du preez, le grange, maistry & simmonds on sustainability and higher education the angle of vision on ‘needs’ should be on the politics of needs – on needs discourses (for a detailed discussion see le grange, 2013). the epistemologically difficulties relate to narrowing of the discourse on sustainability by framing it as sustainable development, and in so doing limiting the pathways for knowing in relation to sustainability. moreover, the instrumentalism associated with sustainable development implies that we have come to know about sustainability in relation to predefined goals such as the sdgs. le grange (2016) argues that the sdgs provide an a priori image of a future global society. the anthropocentricism associated with sustainability is not only concerned with its focus on human needs and desires, but that constructions of sustainability in mainstream discourse are correlates of human thought – constructs of sustainability as policy, political slogan, goals, political discourses, etc. correlationism is a term coined by speculative realist meillassoux (2008) and holds that reality appears only as a correlate of human thought. speculative realists, of course, trouble the notion of correlationism and this philosophical approach is concerned with speculating possibilities of understanding reality independent of human thought. these philosophers therefore view traditional continental philosophy as anthropocentric because of the latter’s entrapment in correlationism (ibid). furthermore, in an era of neoliberal capitalism, sustainability has become co-opted into neoliberal agendas and in doing so has become a euphemism for unbridled economic growth driven by market interests. in her book, hijacking sustainability, parr (2009) argues that sustainability has become co-opted by governments, the military and the corporate world. the upshot of this is that sustainability has become driven by the power of potestas,2 with effects that are colonising, homogenising and normalising. moreover, this co-option has meant that sustainability has become rationalised in terms of resources (to be used and managed). irwin (2008) argues that the stabilisation of ‘sustainability’ as a metaphor for a market-oriented neoliberal ethos of managing resources radically limits the spectrum of approaches to environmentalism. the relationship between sustainability and education, in particular the notion education for sustainable development (efsd), is also a contested terrain. some scholars within the critical tradition such as fien (1993) and huckle (1999) argue that it is necessary to educate for sustainability, given unprecedented levels of environmental destruction and growing social injustices. however, johnson (2013) correctly observes that thirty years of critical theory have failed to present a significant challenge to the dogmas of neoliberalism – by implication it has failed to address environmental destruction and social injustices. jickling (1992; 1997) argues that education for sustainable development is instrumentalist and that educating for anything outside of education (itself), is anti-educational and tantamount to indoctrination. for a more comprehensive discussion of instrumentalism and education for sustainable development, see le grange (2016). the introduction of impact rankings by times higher education (2021) holds a danger of sustainability in higher education becoming reduced to an instrumentalist logic that narrows the discourse on sustainability in universities and the pathways for learning about/with sustainability. in this article, we prefer to use the term ‘sustainability education’ instead of ‘education for sustainability/sustainable development’. we argue that ‘sustainability education’ is a more worthwhile signifier for the relationship between sustainability and education because it is non-instrumentalist. sustainability education does not denote an a priori image of sustainability, nor does it determine the education pathway towards achieving sustainability (le grange, 2017). rather, it opens up possibilities for critical discussions on/ with sustainability and proposes learning processes that are always in-becoming. 2 potestas refers to negative power that is exerted through dominance, coercion and force. potestas is a restrictive force which manifests when power is complex, scattered and productive (braidotti, 2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 1222022 40(3): 122-131 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) there have, of course, been productive responses to dominant discourses on sustainability and we note some of these affirmative propositions briefly. bonnett (2002) suggests that instead of viewing sustainability as policy (an ideal), we should think about sustainability as a frame of mind – as a way of thinking. hroch (2014) expands on this idea by arguing that we should not only sustain things, but also become sustainability thinkers so that we may think differently about ourselves, subjectivity, our becoming and the very concept of sustainability. with reference to becoming, le grange (2011) argues that we could view sustainability rhizomatically, as having no fixed central point – always in-becoming and able to proliferate in multiple directions that cannot be pre-fixed. brown (2015) draws on ernesto laclau’s notion of ‘empty signifier’ as an affirmative proposition for sustainability (education). in short, an ‘empty signifier’ does not mean that it does not signify anything, but rather that it opens up possibilities for multiple significations, including those that affirm sustainability in ways that counter its signification in dominant discourses. as a counter to the co-option of sustainability by governments, the military and corporate world, parr (2009: 165) argues for a grassroots movement, which she calls ‘sustainability culture’ that taps into the creative and productive energies of potentia,3 inviting us “to imagine and design alternatives to how a culture is produced, disseminated, and consumed”. in this article we wish to take the discussion further by arguing that we need to rethink sustainability (education) more radically to explore how it can be liberated from the fetters of anthropocentric correlationism, which is based on transcendent thinking. transcendent thinking has given rise to instrumentalist approaches to sustainability (education), narrowing the discourse on the sustainability and limiting ways of knowing, subjectivity and becoming vis-à-vis sustainability. through immanent thinking, we believe that the instrumentalist and anthropocentric focus of sustainability (education) can be challenged to ignite a relational approach to sustainability (education). a relational approach considers a posthuman subjectivity that recognises all forms of life, so that sustainability (education) is not a means in itself, but a social and ethical process that is situated, open and forever in-becoming. it is this type of critical posthumanist perspective, which enables us to offer alternative imaginings of sustainability and generate possible affirmative propositions for sustainability in higher education. 4. affirmative posthuman ethics we live in times marked by what braidotti (2020) terms a posthuman convergence: enjoying the excitement of technology, bio-medical advancements, globalisation, and hybridity, but at the same time fearing the painful effects of these on both human and non-human planetary inhabitants. the posthuman convergence is marked by a critical call for a subjectivity that can “build on the generative potential of already existing critiques of both humanism and anthropocentrism, in order to deal with the complexity of the present situation” (braidotti, 2019: 9). part of moving beyond humanist exceptionalism yearns for an understanding of the posthuman subject as relational on at least three different levels; “to one’s self, to others and to the world”, where the world is a complex set of environmental, social and affective ecologies (braidotti, 2019: 45). as such life is not exclusively human; “it encompasses both bios and zoe forces, as well as geoand techno-relations” (braidotti, 2019: 45).4 recognising the limitations 3 potentia refers to positive, affirmative power that is by its nature productive and could be understood as one way of opening up to new possibilities for self-affirmation (braidotti, 2013). 4 braidotti (2019: 10) avers that the more classical understanding is that bios pertains to the life of humans organised in society, whereas zoe refers to the life of all living beings. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 1232022 40(3): 123-131 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 du preez, le grange, maistry & simmonds on sustainability and higher education of life as anthropocentric warrants exploring more transversal conceptions of what a subject is and how this might invoke rethinking sustainability (education) more radically. for braidotti (2019: 11), in posthuman times, the subject should have at least these four attributes. one is the need to take distance from abstract universalism and to be materially embedded. a second is the subject as embodied, which entails challenging transcendental thinking by decentring transcendental consciousness and instrumentalist thinking. an alternative understanding of difference is a third attribute. when difference is oppositional or grounded in binary logic, it is representational of being worth less than. for a posthuman subject, difference is “an imminent, positive and dynamic category” (braidotti, 2019: 12). last, is the affirmation of affectivity and relationality as an alternative to individualist autonomy. when drawing on these four attributes, it could be argued that for the posthuman subject, sustainability (education) can then be regarded as a concrete social and ethical practice and “not the abstract economic ideal that development and social planning specialists often reduce it to” (braidotti, 2011: 310). in other words, sustainability (and endurance as an intensive notion) is not a means to an end (instrumentalist), but a social and ethical process that is situated, open and forever in-becoming. it holds that sustainability (education) is capable of different things and this can occur at “different speeds of becoming” (braidotti, 2019: 42). difference is not a means to categorisation but is rather a dynamic process of becoming that allows for multiple directions with no fixed central point so that sustainability can be viewed in rhizomatic terms (le grange, 2011). with this goes the point of posthuman subjectivity as affirmative relational activity, namely “in constant negotiation with multiple others and immersed in conditions that it is trying to understand and modify, if not overturn” (braidotti, 2019: 42). sustainability (education) as transversal and relational denies liberal individualism so that there is a qualitative shift from individualism (as emanating from identity politics) to relationism. these postulations align with deleuze’s dismissal of life as a teleological notion (a means to an end) – or sustainability (education) as a means to an end. the rejection of transcendent notions of the subject and/or sustainability (education) is the invocation of radical immanence that is underscored by amor fati (complete worldly love) in its radical immanence, namely that, i.e. “life, simply by being life, expresses itself” (braidotti, 2011: 230).5 the posthuman subject thus has the potential for immanent thinking as it is immersed and immanent to this world; a closed world where there is no escape to the outside, nor any crossing over borders/boundaries to some distant realm as is the case with transcendent thinking (verhoef & du preez, 2020: 146). braidotti draws on deleuze’s notion of radical immanence (an absolute, pure immanence), which is a total rejection of epistemological and metaphysical transcendence. for deleuze, pure immanence is that which is free from representation, hierarchies and eternal, fixed values; and calls for a creative and free ethics (deleuze, 2007). such ethics are informed by the positive affirmative philosophies of nietzsche and spinoza who greatly influenced deleuze’s thinking. furthermore, deleuze “… considered immanence not as a concept, but as the pre-philosophical horizon against which thinking can be creative and productive” (verhoef & du preez, 2020: 146). verhoef and du preez (ibid) continues by stating that “… immanence positively acknowledges our interconnectedness as 5 etymologically, the concept ‘transcendence’ is comprised of the latin prefix transwhich means ‘across’ – and scandere (latin) which literally means ‘to climb’, i.e. the action of ascending or a type of ‘crossing over’ to somewhere beyond or outside of this world (verhoef, 2016). immanence, on the other hand, is not concerned with anything outside of this world, but focuses on the inside of a thing or person (being) (blackburn, 2005). immanence comes from the latin prefix in(‘in’) and manere (‘remain’). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 1242022 40(3): 124-131 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) human beings with the material world in which we find ourselves in, and our connectedness to nature and matter in being of nature and matter ourselves”. immanent thinking could challenge the anthropocentric focus of sustainability (education) as it stands for the decentring of the notion of ‘man as the measure of all things’ and calls for a relational approach to sustainability (education). this relational approach should take account of all forms of life, present and future, and not be limited to what humans alone are capable of. sustainability (education) based on immanent thinking thus has the potential to surpass the superficial, temporal notion of sustainability that begets its instrumental character, and replaces it with a more intensive notion of endurance that is driven by relational encounters. in this regard braidotti (2013: 138) argues that [t]he inner coherence of this posthuman subject is held together by the immanence of his/ her expressions, acts and interactions with others and by the powers of remembrance, or continuity in time. i refer to this process in terms of sustainability, so as to stress the idea of endurance which it entails. sustainability does assume faith in a future, and also a sense of responsibility for ‘passing on’ to future generation a world that is liveable and worth living in. a present that endures is a sustainable model for the future. radical immanence is a continual process of affirming life as meaningful in itself (verhoef & du preez, 2020: 152). it also allows for a new kind of ethics; one that is immanent, nonnormative and that is in-becoming, creative, and truly free (verhoef & du preez, 2020: 161). in other words, this kind of ethics is of this world and not from some transcendent world (i.e. it is a secular ethics). it is not driven by pre-determined normative constructs (and is therefore not instrumentalist), and is fluid insofar as it allows for the continuous becoming. it is also creative and free, as it is an ethics that is not merely informed by critical theory that resists the present (and fails to put alternatives on the table), but also informed by the relationship between creation and critique (braidotti, 2011: 267) and the speculative possibilities it opens for a new way to (re)negotiate ethics and its underscoring normative trajectories freely in the wake of the posthuman predicament. for braidotti (2011: 317), “[e]thics is a thin barrier against the possibility of extinction. it is a mode of actualizing sustainable forms of transformation”. this, she states, requires assemblages of interaction to increase active becomings and avoid the diminishing of one’s potentia. potentia as a form of power is filled with inherent positivity and is empowering and affirmative, as opposed to potestas that is driven by negativity and warped power relations, which is disempowering. braidotti (ibid) avers that to fulfil the inherent positivity of potentia, it “must be formatted in the direction of sustainability”. affirmative ethics is a process of transforming the negative underpinning potestas into the positive that comes with potentia; i.e. it is a transformation from resentment to affirmation as nietzsche suggested (braidotti, 2011: 314). furthermore, affirmative ethics is not a naïve optimism or unrealism, “[i]t is about endurance and transformation. endurance is self-affirmation. it is also an ethical principle of affirmation of the positivity of the intensive subject – its joyful affirmation as potentia” (ibid). 5. standing in the cracks: on sustainability and higher education mccloskey’s observation that “(t)here appears to be a lack of critical engagement in the international development sector with the sdgs and their capacity to impose meaningful change on a dangerously deregulated neoliberal economic system” is compelling (mccloskey, 2019: 155). two important inferences can be drawn from this assertion. firstly, a neoliberal approach to sustainability prevails despite evidence that development outcomes continue to http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 1252022 40(3): 125-131 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 du preez, le grange, maistry & simmonds on sustainability and higher education confound. secondly, the research community, including those located in higher education, has had little effect in influencing any shift in what mccloskey (2019: 155) describes as a “managerialist and technical approach to development” and by extension to sustainability. if anything, neoliberal, market-oriented discourse that now permeates all spheres of higher education is likely to sit uncomfortably alongside sustainability discourses. drawing on deleuzian inspiration, we contemplate what proceeding rhizomatically might mean for higher education and the sustainability (education) project. we argue for a conceptualisation of the sustainability project as immanent (always in-becoming), embodied, embedded, flexible and inclusive, as opposed to instrumentalist, solution-offering advocacy that fertilises the seeds of its own unravelling. we are acutely aware that moving towards engendering a relational affirmative ethic in higher education is in conflict with the neoliberal performative ethic that now occupies higher education’s economy (for profit) enterprise. of particular concern is that the sustainability agenda, already muddied by the united nations anthropocentric bias, as evident in the subtext of the concept ‘sustainable development’ (critiqued above), has been institutionalised and now parades as a key performance area (kpa) for university managers, with quantifiable outcomes/deliverables. as such, neoliberal managers are likely to approach sustainability as a check-box exercise and might be impervious to the anthropocentric predisposition of sustainable development goals. higher education research funders (with knowledge economy pursuits) apprehend this anthropocentric inclination as a moot point. it does raise the question as to the nature of outcomes in projects that claim to address sustainable development goals as they are currently envisaged, given its anthropocentric skewness. what becomes clear, is that the sustainability project appears to be circumscribed already within pre-established neoliberal contours, the realisation of which might not be obvious to the rank-and-file academic. as with the decolonisation (of the curriculum) imperative (that appears to have become a mandatory, ‘moral’ obligation that higher education institutions in south africa have been propelled into) with sustainability (education), it is not unreasonable to expect that university academics (researchers) might have different levels of proclivity for the sustainability project, let alone any level of nuanced understanding of its anthropocentric predilection. the enormity of the sustainable (education) project is obvious and begs the question as to how and who should take up the responsibility of developing a new generation of sustainability activists – eco-critical activists that embrace the posthuman predicament as the interconnectedness of subjects, both humans and the more-than-human world. how might the energies, intellect and established ‘infrastructure’ of existing enclaves of resistance (with critical, social justice-oriented agendas) be harnessed (posthuman convergence) to create a critical mass of conscientized sustainability (education) activists? the recent re-sprouting of the decolonial project with renewed vibrancy is a prime example of activism sustainability (education) might well ‘piggy-back’ on. it might in fact be argued that the decolonial agenda and the sustainability (education) agenda are not incommensurate – if anything, indigenous notions of sustainability, ones that understand and respect the harmonious articulation between ecosphere and biosphere, present as rich contextual, cultural and spiritual resources from which to draw inspiration – potentia, the rhizomatic power of which explodes with possibility. arguably the most vexing task is the process of disruption and dislodgement of current anthropocentric and neoliberal discourses. while neither the posthuman (nor the sustainability) project is not new, its evolving discourse (ways of thinking, being and speaking), does not enjoy the same level of engagement and prevalence as reigning neoliberal meta-narrative http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 1262022 40(3): 126-131 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) discourses. how might ‘emerging’ concepts like ecological justice, anthropomorphism, speciesism, diffraction and anthropoharmonism, for example, become common-speak, internalised and integrated across the higher curriculum? how might higher education professional development programmes be (re)configured or reimagined to signal sustainability (education) as desirable graduate attribute? while there is a wariness about the institutionalisation of sustainability (education) as ‘compulsory’ dimension of curriculum for example, such institutionalisation might well have positive spinoffs for exposing, engaging with and elevating a posthuman discourse. arrogant, purist notions of sustainability (education) are not likely to gain traction – that conflict and contradiction are immanent to immanence – are congruent with a rhizomatics that is being proposed. bottrell and manathunga’s (2018) strategic notion of standing in the cracks, with the view to prising open such cracks, as well as anzaldúa’s inspiration to embrace the proverbial borderlands as spaces of productive resistance (anzaldua, 1987), one that allies with the likeminded (critical scholars) in contesting hegemonic strangleholds, has salience for how one might contemplate the sustainability (education) project in higher education. this strategy might entail seeking out fissures – opportunities that present to disrupt or trouble ‘new’ canons (like neoliberalism) before they consolidate in the academic space. it might also entail forming and strengthening alliances – to develop a critical mass of activist voices. in (human) development-focused universities in the south, how might a posthuman conception of the subject post-humanist (scholars/researchers) widen the net(work)? how might critical discourse analysts, for example, extend their work beyond the socio-linguistic to consider ecolinguistics as exemplified by the recent work of mauritian researcher hookoomsing (2021), for example. ulmer (2017: 11) reminds us that the language and materiality of posthumanism creates openings for research, educational and otherwise … as ice melts and the seas continue to rise, the habitats of multiple species are disappearing. this creates several potential futures for educational classrooms: at the same time that ocean waves threaten the island classrooms of soon-tobe climate refugees, ‘green’ private schools made of bamboo are being placed in jungles to teach students about the environment. because we live in a time of environmental exigency, there are opportunities for both education and educational research to respond in democratic ways. this is a critical endeavor. it is critical in the sense that it is urgent, and it critical from a theoretical and philosophical perspective, as well. 6. parting thoughts: towards affirmative propositions for sustainability and higher education the discussion on immanent ethics and the becoming of the subject serve as basis for the affirmative propositions for sustainability (education) in the context of higher education that we argue could provide alternative perspectives to thinking about sustainability education. but who is this becoming subject? for the purpose of this article, it is conscientized sustainability (education) activists, or generally, those like-minded people who embrace the interconnectedness of the human and more-than-human-world as a counterforce to how sustainability has been perceived in dominant policy discourses. firstly, as we have seen from the introduction, education is often perceived as an intervention to attain goals associated with sustainability, for example. perceived as such, education becomes instrumentalist; a means to an end, driven by externally defined goals. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 1272022 40(3): 127-131 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 du preez, le grange, maistry & simmonds on sustainability and higher education a transcendent justification for sustainability (education) could thus potentially deny the immanent meaningfulness that education has. an immanent justification acknowledges education as good in and of itself (vlieghe & zamojski, 2019: 69). higher education institutions should thus strive towards an affirmative ethics that is immanent, non-normative, in-becoming, creative and truly free and that emphasises an immanent justification to education, should they seriously want to pursue the question of sustainability (education) – one that is not limited to transcendent justifications that is essentially interventionist. secondly, for sustainability education to be invigorated in a non-instrumentalist way it needs to be approached as constantly in-becoming. pinar’s (2012) conception of complicated conversation proves insightful in this regard. he warns that our education institutions have too long been “cram schools” and “academic businesses plundered by profiteers” with an absence of participating in education as an ongoing conversation in all its complexity with human and non-human assemblages (pinar, 2012: 11). rather than devising sustainability education as “airtight” arguments (ibid), conversation is complicated, because it is a multireferenced interlocutor among those present, not present and with one’s selves (that have been, are now and who are in the process of becoming) as well as ongoing with no intent of reaching congealed conclusions (pinar, 2012: 43). they are not nonchalant, but also do not necessarily mirror an anterior aim or objective (pinar, 2012: 50). for pinar (2012: 47) “it is conversation with oneself … and with others threaded through academic knowledge, an ongoing project of self-understanding in which one becomes mobilised for engagement in the world”. for sustainability education, this would imply the type of engagement that is not an end within itself, but rather generative. different conceptions of who the teacher is as well as how we might approach pedagogy and research. the place of the teacher forms our third proposition and draws on biesta’s (2017) inspirational work that has resonance with our approach to contemplating sustainability (education) and the teaching and learning thereof. while biesta (2017) was not writing about sustainability in particular, he skilfully analyses the role of the teacher in emancipatory education by bringing into dialogue the work of renowned critical pedagogy scholar paulo freire and that of contemporary philosopher jacques rancière. he alerts us to freire’s concern with authoritarian knowledge and banking education and rancière’s lament of the stultifying effects of the master explicator. biesta (2017: 52) concludes that “emancipatory education … is a process in which teachers and their teaching are indispensable … (that) teaching remains indispensable for emancipatory education”. in the context of the somewhat sparse (and fragile) understandings of sustainability in the south african higher education context, biesta’s (2017) affirmation of the role of the (university) teacher is important – he cautions, though, about the awareness of the indoctrinating effects of transmission teaching and the construction of teachers as expert (sustainability) knowledge holders. we thus suggest a conception of the higher education teacher as ‘in-becoming’ and not ‘all-knowing’, and advocate teaching as ‘learning with’, as opposed to ‘teaching to’. this leads us to our fourth proposition, namely the importance of slow sustainability education that involves cultivating deceleration as a form of resisting neo-liberalism’s appropriation of sustainability. berg and seeber’s (2016) stance to cultivating deceleration resonates in their postulation of a slow professor movement that challenges the culture of the pedagogy and research. this movement “takes back the intellectual life of the university” so that pedagogical concerns such as sustainability education “advocate deliberation over acceleration” and harness “open-ended inquiry” as a crucial component to higher education http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 1282022 40(3): 128-131 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) (berg & seeber, 2016: x). braidotti (2019: 148) supports this movement for its ability to resonate with a more “embodied and embedded vision of intelligence, as a situational and affective quality”. from this vantage point, a collaborative approach is promoted because of its vision for sharing and communal learning instead of “the fierce competition, self-sufficient individualism and accelerating pace”, so that deliberations are more important than pedagogy and research as productivity for the sake of malignant velocities of advanced capitalism (ibid). braidotti (ibid) also stresses that as an ethical endeavour, the slow movement enables an open-ended nature to thinking that is “connected to an openness to others, which also includes non-human agents” (ibid). our discussion on instrumentalism and slowness gives rise to our fifth proposition, which is the valuing of beauty amidst the ugliness of environmental destruction, inequality in the world and neoliberal capitalist practices more generally. in writing about the university of beauty, bearn (1997) avers that beauty is pointless, non-representational and formless. this is not because beauty has no form, but because it has an indeterminate number of forms that stimulate the playful pleasure of the beautiful. bearn (ibid) argues that enjoying formlessness is akin to caressing. caressing is pointless in the sense that there is no single point, no starting or endpoint that can be determined in an a priori manner. in relation to sustainability (education), le grange (2020) suggests that the lecturer could invite students to engage in a conceptual caressing of the indeterminate multiplicity of forms and representations of sustainability. he writes, “conceptually caressing the myriad of forms and representations of sustainability will take time, therefore pedagogy in respect of sustainability should be slow – not be characterised by the efficiency of performativity” (le grange, 2020: 6). our sixth proposition is that we should generate new words, curriculum words that are life enhancing and advancing. this would involve jettisoning or rethinking performative words such as aims, objectives, outcomes, curriculum development, and so forth. the words are dehumanising, colonising and makes pedagogy cold and heartless – the earth becomes a stage of which pedagogy is performed, instead of pedagogy being attuned to the rhythms and intensities of the earth (le grange 2016). le grange (ibid) suggests two ‘new’ words that he opines are attuned to sustainability (education) that is life enhancing: curriculum improvisation and curriculum experimentation. he writes, improvisation [is] … not only … concerned with the human that reverberates from within and is animated, but to include the vibrations of the earth, its flows, rhythms and creative intensities. we need to create new concepts that open up opportunities for experimentation. it is in experimentation with the real that we expand our powers to enhance life in a context where we are presented with challenges of a posthuman condition (le grange, 2016: 34). we do not wish to conclude by summing up what we have discussed in this article for the reader. much more could be said about sustainability (education) and many more affirmative propositions could be generated. we invite the reader to join us in generating such propositions and to engage in complicated conversations on/with sustainability (education), where the conversation is not about what sustainability (education) is, but about what it could become. we have raised critical questions vis-à-vis sustainability (education) in order to break with the way in which sustainability (education) has become framed in dominant discourses and offered affirmative propositions so that sustainability in higher education could be reimagined, free from the strictures of neoliberalism. we invite the reader to stand with us in prising open the cracks in neoliberal higher education to invigorate multiple pathways for sustainability (education) in the interest of advancing all of life. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 1292022 40(3): 129-131 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.8 du preez, le grange, maistry & simmonds on sustainability and higher education references anzaldúa, g.e. 1987. borderlands/la frontera: the new mestiza. san francisco: aunt lute book company. bearn, g.f.c. pointlessness and the university of beauty. in p.a. 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https://doi.org/10.29086/2519-5476/2020/sp31a8 https://doi.org/10.29086/2519-5476/2020/sp31a8 https://doi.org/10.3390/rel7110135 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16003-6 _hlk109042941 _hlk96941845 27 research article 2021 39(4): 27-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) the influence and value of science and technology in the education systems of south africa and russia abstract the aim of this study was to identify the influence of technology on the education systems of south africa and russia. the study has brought to light the importance of technology, and that it contributes to the increase of quality of education. the correct application of relevant technology in education can be used as valuable support to education delivery, it can stimulate creativity, contribute to the development of higher-order cognitive thinking skills, assist learners to develop technological skills and finally it can help economic growth in the country. moreover, the study created an opportunity to highlight differences and similarities in the purpose of technology, the access to and distribution thereof, the implementation thereof in classrooms and the challenges in terms of implementing them successfully. by using a comparative method, the researchers had the opportunity to identify gaps in the research for future studies, methods for the implementation of technology and universal challenges, such as the digital divide. this study has provided ample evidence of the value that technology adds if successfully implemented and how much value it can bring towards an education system. this is also the reason why an education system of any country should ensure the sustainability of the implementation of technology in the system. it is important that the education systems of both south africa and russia proceed to directly identify and address gaps in their approaches to implementing technology. it is also important for these countries to release more relevant data and policies regarding this topic, specifically in education. although the role of the brics organisation is identified as the science and technology innovation (sti) initiative, there are no clear indicators in policy documents or references to technology in education. moreover, looking specifically at the brics countries, it is clear that they have made strides in addressing such challenges as stipulated in the literature. to conclude, this research can be used to further address the challenges and limitations that were identified in the study in order to assess the future impact of technology on an education system. keywords: technology; education systems; south africa; russia; science and technology; brics. author: me. niconette maree1 dr deon vos1 affiliation: 1north west-university, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i4.3 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(4): 27-42 published: 6 december 2021 received: 06 september 2021 accepted: 04 november 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2287-8810 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 282021 39(4): 28-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) 1. introduction the level of success of an education system can be found at the level to which it succeeds to provide in the real and ever-changing education needs of its target group. the education system should provide the learners sufficient opportunities, on pre-primary, primary, secondary and tertiary education levels, to prepare themselves to live their roles in life successfully. these roles include for example their roles as family members, citizens and career persons. the ever-changing education needs of the learners from the target group are influenced by the ever-changing lifeworld of learners in which they should function. one of these continuous changes is the aspect of science and technology that (should) have a direct influence on the content of the curriculum and on the nature of teaching (steyn & wolhuter, 2014). the changes in the field of science and technology is clearly demonstrated by the sequence of industrial revolutions, from the first industrial revolution, during the second half of the 18th century to the most recent fourth industrial revolution (ied team, 2019). the characteristic of the fourth industrial revolution can be explained as the integration and connectedness of different technologies such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology and nanomaterials. a paradigm created around the fourth industrial revolution is based on the fact that what we now know as it presently is, will not exist in the future (penprase, 2018: 215; schwab, 2018). also, what we know as the industry – factories, liberties and so forth – will cease to exist. the source of the fourth industrial revolution and its impact on education and society are still unknown, but the urgency for schools to prepare and adopt a technological environment cannot be stressed enough (penprase, 2018: 217; ndung’u & signé, 2020). the focus is placed on science, technology, engineering and mathematics (stem) education, which should develop a capacity for improvement and the incorporation of artificial intelligence, data science, robotics and so forth, so that basic understanding and knowledge can be fostered among the future generations (scepanovič, 2019; butler-adam. 2018). to understand the influence of these remarkable changes in science and technology on education and the education system are of major importance to provide quality education and will be one focus of this article. to understand the influence of science and industry on particular education systems, it would be very informative to use the education systems of brics as example. “brics” is an acronym for a cluster of nations that consists of five countries with imperiously growing economies (kolachi & shah, 2013), namely brazil, russia, india, china and south africa. the brics-organisation is a major role player in the international scene and represent at least 23,3% of the global gross domestic product (gdp) (schwarzman, pinheiro & pillay, 2015). “brics” was formed in 2010 when south africa joined the previous bric-organisation (kolachi & shah, 2013). it is generally accepted that the brics countries are “becoming the hub for natural resources, hydrocarbon reserves, production, consumption, technology and forward-looking opportunities while also being equal contributors to human capital” (kolachi & shah, 2013: 105) with the consequence that the use of science and technology will play a major role in their economies. similarly, to liberal arts education, the recognition of science and technology as core factor should be regarded as progressively important in the 21st century to develop a variety of cognitive skills for lifelong learning. therefore, ensuring the ability to practise relevant competencies (knowledge, skills and values) are essential to cope with the fourth industrial revolution (lewis, 2018). thus, the second focus of this article will be the influence of science and technology on the education systems of south africa and russia, because a discussion regarding the influence in all countries is too large. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 292021 39(4): 29-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 maree & vos the influence and value of science and technology therefore, the aim of this article is to identify and describe how technology influences the south african and russian education systems. in countries such as south africa and russia (part of the brics organisation) that are serious about the development of stronger economies by means of an effective and sustainable education system, the increasing of the use of technology cannot be overemphasised and is non-negotiable. a central focus of the article is a focus on technology and particularly to indicate how the one education system can learn from the other in implementing and bridging the digital divide. it is important to indicate methods by which technology can successfully be implemented to better prepare future generations and add value to the education system in general. 2. problem statement the world is constantly changing, and as it is moving into the fourth industrial revolution, it is shifting to a more technologically inclined orientation (penprase, 2018). examples of such technologies that will dominate the years to come, according to penprase (2018), are artificial intelligence, biotechnologies and nanomaterials. this is where the current research has been born – the urge to understand the influence of such competencies on education and the educational systems of south africa and russia and the value it holds. the rising gap in knowledge regarding information and communication technology (ict) in schools and classrooms raises problems for the preparation of future generations to thrive in the technological era that is to come (department of science and technology, 2019). the problem that guides this study is not only the influence of technology on education in south africa and russia but also the value in quality it contributes to the education systems and classrooms of these two countries in bridging the digital divide. “technological innovation is considered as being one of the major driving forces in fostering economic growth” (santana et al., 2015: 425). moreover, sustainable development, technological innovation and economic growth play a significant role in the development and growth of the brics countries (santana et al., 2015). makarov et al. (2011) situate russia and south africa, two of the brics countries, in a deteriorating trade affected by the economic downturn. adding to the abovementioned problem, chetty et al. (2017: 1) highlight that only 40% of the world’s population has access to digital technology. chetty et al. (2017: 1) define this digital divide as a form of “exclusion, poverty and inequality … [that] continues to be exacerbated due to the effect of unemployment, and due to poor digital skills”. thus, this research aimed to identify gaps in terms of the influence of technology on education that has not been widely discussed in the literature, while also portraying the value of technology in education systems. in accordance with the above literature, the following problem statement has been formulated: technology plays an important role in developing fourth industrial revolution skills among the youth; however, there is a lack of technologies in schools, and the importance of the use thereof is not stressed enough. 3. research aims this article reports on research with the aim to explore the use of technology to increase the quality of education in the education systems of south africa and russia. the research aimed to: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 302021 39(4): 30-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) • identify the influence of technology in the south african and russian education systems; and • identify the challenges in the implementation of technology in the education systems of south africa and russia. 4. research design the research methodology used in this study was the qualitative tradition and the nature of the paradigm was interpretivistic. qualitative research methods were used to gather, interpret and analyse existing theories on the influence of technologies on the educations systems of the two chosen brics countries to enhance the understanding of the value that technology contributes to our schools by going through each element of the research design. for this study, document analysis was the primary data generation method used to gather relevant data. documents that were used in this research included the following: published and unpublished documents, educational policies, memorandums, letters, reports and articles. the following search engines were used to gather documents for this study namely, google scholar, j store, ebscohost, and research gate. the instrument used to understand and explore the impact of the technology on the two education systems, was the theoretical guidelines of the internal and external contextual factors of the education system. according to these guidelines the nature of an education system is also determined by external contextual factors that are linked with the nature of the particular target group. examples of these are the demography, the economy, language(s) and culture as well as science and technology. the comparative method used in comparative education was used to compare the influence of technology on the education systems of south africa and russia. using the comparative perspective helped to identify, understand and evaluate different aspects of the education systems required to improve the respective education systems (see steyn et al., 2017). 5. literature review the purpose of conducting research into the abovementioned topic was to identify the value that technology has for the brics countries, by using russia and south africa as typical examples. the aim of the literature review is to discover and learn from previous literature on the state of technology supply and usage in the schools and education systems of these two countries. in order to fully understand the issues that are being addressed, the following key concepts need to be explained: 5.1 technology technology can be defined as a “science that encompasses the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experimentation” (oxford reference, 2020), which can then be applied to technology in the development and use of technology. from another perspective technology can be defined as the use of scientific knowledge, skills and values to serve practical purposes, in the everyday life of societies but especially in the environment of commerce and industry. the term particularly refers to those machines and instruments that help man to live with greater ease and comfort (cf. google dictionary, 2021). furthermore, technology can be defined as an aspect that allows global http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 312021 39(4): 31-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 maree & vos the influence and value of science and technology access to knowledge, has an impact on global social, economic, and political situations, and allows countries and businesses to develop (steyn et al., 2017). furthermore, technology plays a significant role in people’s daily lives through phones, the internet, automobiles, computers and cell towers, to name a few examples. as a result, technology has an impact on every aspect of our lives. most people’s homes have computers, which are used by children and adults to surf the internet, send text messages, use social networks, play games and do a variety of other things (costley, 2014). the white paper on education and technology in south africa states that many challenges have been overcome, but there is still a large gap between schools with adequate technological resources and those that suffer from poverty, with individuals who are technologically illiterate as a result of this situation. south africa strives to promote lifelong learning, and the use of technology can help to reach this goal (cf. steyn et al., 2017). furthermore, steyn et al. (2017) state that the availability of relevant technology in schools is scarce due to a lack of knowledge and creativity, high demand, insufficient funds and expensive technology. 5.2 value of technology even in 2004, when discussing technology in education, it was stated in the white paper 7 (department of education, 2004) that the world was in a process of globalisation, filled with new challenges posed by technology. it was found that technology changed the workplace, how one functioned in the work environment and how information is perceived, the equal distribution of technology as well as the ever-greater role of technology in education (department of education, 2004). cordell et al. (2012) pointed out that the use of technology in education assisted with the implementation of the common core standards, improves graduation rates and prepares learners for life beyond secondary education. moreover, white paper 7 (department of education, 2004) explains that an education system has the responsibility to create a means for quality education to be delivered in promoting economic and social growth. utilising technology in teaching and learning is powerful and provides education options such as replicating the classroom practice or including guest speakers worldwide. it is a fact that technology keeps evolving and that remote education is a new trend that must be pursued by educators because it offers an additional way of teaching and learning picker (2020). that being said, it is important for developing countries to consider enhancing quality by increasing access to ict. the correct use of ict has the capability of addressing many inequalities in education systems to overcome barriers; it is revolutionising curricula and proposes new oppositions to challenge educations systems worldwide. these challenges include taking part in the era of ict, the effect ict has on quality education and the inclusion of ict in teaching and learning programmes (department of education, 2004). the inclusion of technology in education leads to a situation where the organisation, models, processes and activities of teaching are changed to a mix of technological digital applications in a prioritised and strategic manner to accommodate the fast-growing changes and needs of a digital society (gobble, 2018). 5.3 advantages of technology technology plays an important role in people’s everyday lives, including the diverse environment of employment that did not previously require technological skills but that have now adopted the use of new technology (costley, 2014). technology has improved individual’s participation in education because it allows learners to engage in an additional manner with the teachers, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 322021 39(4): 32-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) other learners, the content and the relating world (costley, 2014). moreover, technology creates alternative learning opportunities that allow learners to learn hands-on (costley, 2014). it is even argued that the most important aspect of the implementation of technology in education is to provide adequate education that learners can acquire competencies in the use of technology. some authors even explained that the use of technology in education can be compared to the availability of a teaching assistant, not only to support the learners but also to, for example, assist teachers to find solutions to education-related problems (kapur, 2019). the advantages of the use of technology in education is listed by kapur (2019) and are provided in table 1. table 1: advantages of science and technology in education (adapted from kapur, 2019:3) advantages description communication communication forms an integral part of people’s daily lives. it can be conducted in a socially formal or informal way. it is made more accessible through technologies such as computers, smartphones and laptops by sending email correspondence worldwide. research research forms an important part of education, especially in higher educational institutions. it can be conducted through books and articles, as well as e-books and internet searches. increase motivation it has been found that when technology is incorporated in the learning experience and when technology aids the teaching experience, learners are more motivated to participate. creativity technology allows for more alternative ways in which lessons can be taught and more ways in which learners can complete tasks. an example of this is that when learners have to write an essay, they can make a video or add pictures to aid in their project. it is generally accepted that technology enables groups to be more creative in approaching education and particularly regarding teaching and learning in new ways. it also supports teachers and learners in the creation of new real-life opportunities to prepare the next generation to function in the new technological era. according to savvidis (2016), learners are enticed by the concept of technology and reveal the benefits of using technology in classrooms, such as improving engagement, knowledge retention, encouraging individual learning and encouraging collaboration among learners. 5.4 challenges of technology although technology has already to some extent been incorporated in education, there are still major challenges that prevent this change from being fully implemented. some of the challenges in terms of the implementation of technology in education, are as follows (nagel, 2013: 1–2; mclaughlin, 2021): • professional development there is an ongoing lack of professional development to assist teachers in using technology in the teaching and learning process. due to the lack of professional development of teachers, they are unprepared and unable to use technology. • resistance to change teachers and school leaders are often scared of change. they may view the use of technology as not being a part of their job description. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 332021 39(4): 33-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 maree & vos the influence and value of science and technology • delivering informal learning many teachers can perhaps be described as professionals that are very rigid and keep to formal ways of teaching in the so called “bricks and mortar” environment. with this attitude they often fail to acknowledge the new manners of relating to the learners. they can be reluctant to work outside the formal structures of teaching and learning. 5.5 digital divide gudmundsdottir (2010: 84) defines the digital divide as “the mismatch in access and use of ict”. there are many gaps in the education system of south africa, and one of these involves the access to and use of ict (gudmundsdottir, 2010). a more current definition of the digital divide is the one by lexico (2020) describing it as “the gulf between those who have ready access to computers and the internet, and those who do not”. white paper 7 (department of education, 2004) states that the digital divide highlights disparities between richer and poorer communities. bridging the digital divide does not only have to do with connectivity but also focuses on the following (department of education, 2004: 9; oecd, 2021): • collective knowledge generation, learning should be central because machines and equipment are useless without the competencies to use them. • building a quality knowledge basis for the promotion of the economy and online affairs for users’ businesses and other sectors in the economy. • developing the capacity of the workforce by improving access to the internet and educational contributions in schools and colleges, creating digital libraries for universities, promoting professional training institutes and stimulating the economy to employ people with a variety of ict skills. the focus of bridging the digital divide means that the digital divide and the endeavour to bridge it, aim to meet challenges, not only in education but in the workplace as well, to offer internet access to all in order to offer a wider range of information. ict can be described as a key component in economic growth and social development. technology and ict navigate access to worldwide information and knowledge, but there is an irregular distribution of this knowledge, and it differs between communities and between societies. due to this irregular distribution, there is a difference between the number of individuals that can use such technologies and those who cannot, which influences economic growth. the digital divide does not necessarily mean that one’s access is limited to the technical infrastructure of science and technology; it can also be a gap in terms of social infrastructure (srinuan & bohlin, 2011; solomon & van klyton, 2020). social infrastructure can be described as a determinant of the digital divide that has ties to demographic elements such as income, gender, race, education, age and location (srinuan & bohlin, 2011). table 2 provides a summary of the different determinants of the digital divide. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=solomon%20em%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=32904493 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=van%20klyton%20a%5bauthor%5d&cauthor=true&cauthor_uid=32904493 342021 39(4): 34-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) table 2: elements that determine the digital divide (srinuan & bohlin, 2011: 9) determinant explained skills and experience having poor skills in ict will create a gap to cope with new challenges. this means that individuals who did not receive training to be technologically literate will widen the digital divide. geography individuals living in a rural area where access to the internet is not provided may create a gap regarding new challenges. working-class societies will most likely have computers and wifi, whereas a rural or urban community may not have this luxury. education people with a higher degree of education or people from a more formal educational background that was well resourced will most probably have a better background in the use of science and technology than those who had been educated at under-resourced schools. age older people are more cut off to new changes and the participation with technology than younger people. cost due to the high cost of technology, the use of technology is limited to the poor. consequently, lower costs for technology will increase the use thereof by all. occupation more occupations are moving towards the integrated use of ict. for example, technicians and scientists are more prone to use science and technology in their occupation. it is important to note that although ict and science and technology are linked with the digital divide, they are a driving force that facilitates education. the value of science and technology is used to cover the gap that the digital divide creates. technology and ict should be understood, integrated and distributed in education, because the use of science and technology builds a foundation for life after school. 6. data analysis: technology as an external determinant in educations systems 6.1. technology as an external determinant in the south african education system in the south african education system, technology in education revolves around the diverse distribution of technology in schools (sarkar, 2012). this diverse distribution of technology in the south african education system deals with academic readiness, diversity and schooling background (sarkar, 2012). the use of technology in education became important in order to support the use of science and technology that have become critical for economic growth in developing countries such as south africa (juan & visser, 2017). the challenge in south african schools is to successfully administer and manage the logical use of various types of technology in the diverse settings of the schooling environment. the aim for south african schools, as mentioned in white paper 7 (department of education, 2004), is to push south africa into a new era of finding solutions that can adapt to future growth. srinuan and bohlin (2011) provide statistics from 143 articles, which, when analysed in terms of the digital divide, reveal that africa, including south africa, has one of the lowest percentages for access to technologies, not only in schools but also in the wider society. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 352021 39(4): 35-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 maree & vos the influence and value of science and technology according to balancing act (2020), only 7 000 south african schools have access to the internet, while as many as 21 000 schools still fall short in this regard. balancing act (2020) adds that the south african curriculum writers must be advised on how to reach these unconnected schools in order to ensure that learners are equipped with the relevant competencies to meet the needs of the country and the working environment. in addition to the foregoing, nokwali, mammen, and maphosa (2015) state that for technology to be functional for teaching and learning in a classroom, it must first be accessible. 6.2. technology as an external determinant in the russian education system according to dmitrieva and khvantova (2018: 3), there is a “convergence of education and economics of knowledge”, which involves the growth of the education system in russia and basic economics and social development. it was proposed that changes be made regarding different digital aspects of the russian labour market, education and the general economic market to support this convergence of education and knowledge economy. one of the more important changes is the implementation of computer-aided education (dmitrieva & khvantova (2018). in 2015, the russian president supported a development strategy of the information society in the russian federation for the period 2017 to 2030 in an effort to address the inequalities caused by the digital divide (kushnarenko, 2018). additionally, kushnarenko (2018) categorised the digital divide into three levels in terms of the obstacles that most countries are still trying to overcome. the first level dealt with access to technology and the internet; the second level involved the different skill levels in technology and the last level referred to the unequal distribution of the internet and technologies amongst individuals and communities in order for them to obtain opportunities related to the technological era. in a survey in 36 countries, it was found that the main factors that influenced the digital divide in russia regarding the use of technologies and the internet were the age, health, income and education of individuals, as well as the economy (kushnarenko, 2018). furthermore, an inequality is reported in the distribution of and access to education based on social, cultural and geographical groups. this can be related to the equitable distribution and access to technology (world bank, 2003). the world bank (2003) created protocols and strategies for technology to be used to bridge the digital divide. although russia has made an effort to adhere to these protocols, there is a lack of equipment in russia to effectively produce enough material and technology to effectively distribute these to different schools. so, although russia has made strides in this matter, the provision of these technologies has increased the digital divide between the wealthier and poorer areas (world bank, 2003). more recent studies showed that in 2018, at an education forum in moscow, it was brought to light that russia had invested many resources towards the improvement of the russian education system, with an emphasis on technology education in order to ensure equality in the access to technologies (hill, 2020). 7. influence of technology on the education systems of south africa and russia – a comparison from a comparison between the south african education system and the russian education system, it has been brought to the fore that the two education systems have differences and similarities. the following information will highlight the more explicit similarities and differences. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 362021 39(4): 36-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) 7.1 similarities of technology in the education systems of south africa and russia the following explicit similarities in terms of the use of technology in the two education systems have can be identified (cf. sections 6.1 & 6.2): • both education systems aim to implement technology in education to enforce open access to education, which creates opportunities to learn from a distance (filippova, 2015). • technology is implemented in schools to provide a larger scale of educational opportunities and to improve the teaching and learning experience. technology provides the opportunity to teach a larger mass of learners or to provide access to education on a larger platform to large groups of learners. • in both countries, there is a clear difference in the socioeconomic backgrounds of learners that divide them, which directly influences the distribution of technology and finances available to access technology. • russia and south africa want to contribute and build towards the economy through the implementation of technology in order to create quality teaching and learning for learners to become a part of society and contribute to it. • although south africa has accomplished much with regard to connecting schools to technology platforms, there are still many individuals who are unprepared when they enter higher education institutions and that do not have sufficient access to technology or the necessary technological skills to help with teaching and learning (ng’ambi et al., 2016). this can be directly related to russia as well. 7.2 differences of technology in the education systems of south africa and russia the following differences in terms of technology in the two systems have been determined (cf. sections 6.1 & 6.2): • south africa struggled to provide sufficient access to technology due to poverty that is experienced in large parts of the country. the lack of funding in some schools, low levels of household wealth and even crime can play a role in this matter of low technological access. russia, on the other hand, struggled with access to and the distribution of technology because of a lack of national funding and the unavailability of equipment to distribute the relevant educational technologies (sarkar, 2012). • sarkar (2012) highlights that diversity in south africa has a direct effect on science and technology in education, culture, language and academic readiness, which is not the case in russia. • russia has made big advancements through changes in its education distribution. however, online learning and technology innovation are still underfunded compared to the rest of the formal education in russia (hse university, 2020). in south africa the biggest focus is still on developing education on all levels, which limited the significant introduction on technology in education. 8. investment from the brics organisation in technology cassiolato and lastres (2011) mention that the brics countries are strongly influenced by historical aspects. excluding russia and china, colonialism plays an important role in the current technology proficiency of the brics countries. kuklina (2020) points out that the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 372021 39(4): 37-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 maree & vos the influence and value of science and technology science, technology and innovation (sti) initiative of the brics organisation has evolved in the past five years, and the russian federation is at the forefront of the sti initiative of the brics countries. the brics sti initiative is based on the four pillars of sti innovation and cooperation in the brics countries. these pillars are as follows (kuklina, 2020): • research collaboration with sti workgroups on the enhancement of biotechnology and ict, as well as preventing and monitoring natural disasters • research infrastructure • collaboration • sustainability kahn (2015) explains that various factors influence education and technology in the brics countries. the brics nations have been utilising the western higher education model for the past century (kahn, 2015). in addition to the above, the brics countries did not adequately adapt to the industrial revolutions until much later than most other countries, and only then were they able to benefit from new technologies (kahn, 2015). also, the brics organisation regularly issues strategies regarding sti, with russia, south africa and china being pioneers in adapting science and technology innovation (kahn, 2015). 9. findings this research was conducted to generate information regarding technology in education and to analyse the implementation of applicable technology on the education systems of south africa and russia. the research aims guided the research and the findings are directed to answer the main research question. by using the aims of the research to guide the study, a literature review was conducted, whereby data collection took place regarding relevant literature analysis. the data were analysed and interpreted in order to arrive at reliable findings and recommendations. 9.1 technology has been introduced in the south african and russian education systems this section deals with the influence of technology in the education systems of south africa and russia, which is the main research aim of the study. the study highlighted the general value and acknowledgement of science and technology in education and schools in general. also, the implementation of technologies in the south african education system and schools as well as those of russia were described. south african policy documents point out the existence of a digital divide in the south african society as well as in the south african education system, with russia experiencing the same problem. with the notion of economic growth that is a major aim of the brics-organisation, it is important to note that south africa and russia ascribe great value to the implementation of science and technology in education to add to and increase economic growth. furthermore, a literature review has been conducted, which has revealed statistics in south africa showing that there is a low percentage of schools that have access to computers and even fewer schools have access to science and technology for teaching and learning. it has been ascertained that the digital divide in south africa is largely influenced by factors such as different levels of academic readiness, the existence of diversity in different areas and difference in schooling background by the learners. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 382021 39(4): 38-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) in addition to the findings discussed above, one of the most important findings is that there is a digital divide in both south africa and russia in terms of equal distribution of technology and access to technology. more importantly, it has been discovered that wealth and socioeconomic status have a significant impact on household access to technology and the internet. it has been explained that in russia the economy and the age, health, income, and education of technology users were some of the main factors that played a role in russia’s digital divide. another important finding relates to the fact that both russia and south africa want to use technology to create alternative and better learning opportunities to reach a bigger target group in need of education. 9.2 challenges faced when implementing technology in this section, the way the second research aim, namely, to identify the challenges in the implementation of technology in the education systems of south africa and russia, was reached is being discussed. the following can be identified as main challenges that the two education systems faced in terms of the implementation of science and technology in the respective education systems. the first challenge that both these education systems are facing is the existence of the digital divide. as previously mentioned, the digital divide is defined as “the gulf between those who have ready access to computers and the internet, and those who do not” (lexico, 2020). challenges experienced in south africa: • one of the most challenging factors in south africa regarding the equal distribution of technology is diversity (sukanta (2012). diversity can be defined as a multitude of individual differences and similarities that exist among communities, people and organisations (washington, 2008), which include, for example, race, age, nationality, religion, educational qualifications and economic sustainability. this can be seen as a challenge because south africa is a large and a very diverse nation. • sukanta (2012) adds that this diversity may influence the academic readiness of individuals, and that language and educational background can play a role in creating stronger barriers. this is seen as a challenge because more employment opportunities require employees to have basic technological and computer skills. moreover, insufficient access to technology in schools will result in a disadvantage when entering the workplace. • another major challenge that south africa is facing in implementing technology in education involves the effectiveness, cost, equity and sustainability of technology provision (sukanta, 2012). furthermore, the lack of availability of resources may lead to new forms of exclusion (cloete, 2017). • perhaps the biggest challenge is to motivate education leaders and managers, teachers and learners to creatively embrace the possibilities of introducing technology in education and qualify themselves to introduce it successfully. challenges experienced in russia: • according to the world bank (2003), russia is facing challenges due to a lack of materials and a lack of equipment to produce technologies. this directly influences the ability of the country to effectively distribute technology to different schools. russia has only recently invested major resources in the endeavour to improve its education system. according to the world bank (2003), russia has limited resources to invest in and distribute technology in its education system. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 392021 39(4): 39-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.3 maree & vos the influence and value of science and technology • a real challenges is to ensure an equal spread of technology use in education, where, for example only a third of universities use e-learning on a regular basis (almazova et al., 2020). • another challenge is to increase the ability and readiness of teaching personnel and learners to use technology in education and to transform the curricula to fit the requirements of technology in education (almazova et al., 2020). 10. conclusion it is gratifying to observe that south african and russia are putting a lot of effort into the implementation of technology in their respective education systems. however, there is still much room for expansion regarding the effective and meaningful implementation of technology in the 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https://wwwbritannica.com/topic/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-2119734 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9570-8 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9570-8 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8760114 https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/8760114 https://doi.org/10.1109/meco.2019.8760114 https://doi.org/10.1109/meco.2019.8760114 http://dwashingtonllc.com/images/pdf/publications/the_concept_of_diversity.pdf http://dwashingtonllc.com/images/pdf/publications/the_concept_of_diversity.pdf _hlk80257987 _hlk71684908 _hlk86139940 _hlk71661946 _hlk71682846 _hlk80269102 _hlk86159346 _hlk76627620 _hlk86059908 _hlk86175059 _hlk86055865 _hlk86059002 _hlk86059490 143 research article 2022 40(2): 143-158 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) measuring risks associated with students of introductory statistics: scale development and implementation abstract a lack of understanding of statistics, and being unable to apply its techniques, not only has a negative impact on the pass rates of students studying introductory statistics, but also affects the potential usefulness of these students when they enter the marketplace. i report here a novel scale developed to measure various factors that may be associated with the risk of failing an introductory statistics module at university. various scales are available, but a single scale succinctly combining the factors was not available. the risks students face were explored by creating a 17-item instrument, named the statistics students’ risk questionnaire (ssrq). the resulting ssrq scale consists of four dimensions (motivation, attitude towards statistics, statistical anxiety and academic procrastination) that were identified through exploratory factor analysis. the model was confirmed using confirmatory factor analysis. the reliability of the scale was determined, and its usefulness was demonstrated to identify at-risk students. the scale can be applied to determine overall risk but can also be used to reveal which factors contribute to the risk. the scale can be supplemented by including the mathematical history of students of concern as an additional risk factor. this enables the statistics lecturer to select an appropriate support plan to assist atrisk students based on which factors are flagged as risks. keywords: statistics students at risk, statistical anxiety, attitude towards statistics, motivation, academic procrastination, mathematical history, scale development. 1. introduction statistics is a crucial discipline for students, irrespective of what they are studying, since it is needed not only to evaluate empirical evidence but also to reinforce empirical research through the application of statistical techniques (ridgway, nicholson & mccusker, 2007). high failure rates in introductory statistics modules lead to increased costs for the students and the institution as well as to undergraduates being delayed entering their careers (gultice, witham & kallmeyer, 2015). since students often struggle with their statistics course, they develop negative attitudes towards author: ms wilma coetzee1 affiliation: 1north-west university doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i2.11 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(2): 143-158 published: 08 june 2022 received: 27 september 2021 accepted: 07 january 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7418-4581 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 1442022 40(2): 144-158 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) it (león-mantero et al., 2020). the effectiveness of teaching statistical courses is therefore critical (ramirez, schau & emmioglu, 2012). the purpose of this study was to develop a scale that can be used as an efficient detection tool to identify students who may be at risk of failing an introductory statistics module. various scales exist, but currently no single scale measures the statistical anxiety, the attitude towards statistics, the tendency to procrastinate when faced with statistical assignments and the motivation of a student. the scale presented in this study measures all these factors in one concise questionnaire. this scale can be applied as a screening instrument to identify potentially at-risk undergraduates early in a semester, after which they should receive appropriate assistance. this is a better strategy than waiting for test results to identify those at-risk by their subsequent failure, since by then valuable time has been lost and foundational knowledge for the module has not been mastered (gultice, witham & kallmeyer, 2015). it also provides valuable information on what contributes to the risk, making it easier to determine an appropriate course of action for someone identified as weak. this scale’s ability to identify at-risk students can be compared to existing scales. universities can then decide if they prefer using only this scale in future, or in combination with other available scales. 2. literature review numerous studies have been conducted to illustrate reasonably valid indicators of students studying statistics who are likely to fail (alston, lane & wright (2014); elder, jacobs & fast (2015); dupuis et al. (2012); duru, duru & balkis (2014); galagedera, woodward & degamboda (2000); macher, paechter et al. [2013]; ratanaolarn (2016)). research shows that factors such as statistical anxiety and attitude towards statistics affect the performance of students in subjects such as business statistics (zanakis & valenzi, 1997), research methodology (mji & onwuegbuzie, 2004) and introductory statistics for psychology students (chiesi, primi & carmona, 2011). it has also been shown that procrastination and statistical anxiety are related (onwuegbuzie, 2004). studies have further revealed that statistical anxiety is influenced by previous mathematical experience and skills (baloǧlu, 2003). various motivational regulation strategies can be indirectly linked to high academic performance via academic procrastination (grunschel et al., 2016) and learning effort (schwinger & stiensmeier-pelster, 2012). these studies indicate that the following factors are important when determining a statistics student’s risk: statistical anxiety, attitude towards statistics, motivation, academic procrastination and mathematical foundation. each of these concepts will be defined and its effect on performance in statistics courses, discussed. statistical anxiety is “a performance characterized by extensive worry, intrusive thoughts, mental disorganization, tension, and physiological arousal…when exposed to statistics content, problems, instructional situations, or evaluative contexts, and is commonly claimed to debilitate performance in a wide variety of academic situations by interfering with the manipulation of statistics data and solution of statistics problems” (zeidner, 1991: 319). statistical anxiety is a relatively common problem among students in the social and behavioural sciences (onwuegbuzie & wilson, 2003; einbinder, 2014), management sciences http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 1452022 40(2): 145-158 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 coetzee measuring risks associated with students of introductory statistics (zanakis & valenzi, 1997) and health sciences (welch et al., 2015). it adversely affects a student’s ability to understand research articles, data analysis and the interpretation of these analyses (onwuegbuzie, 1997). it also has an adverse effect on academic performance in statistics (macher et al., 2013). attitudes towards statistics can be defined as “a disposition to respond favourably or unfavourably to objects, situations or people related to statistics learning” (chiesi & primi, 2009: 309). such attitudes include anxiety, cynicism, fear and even contempt (hopkins, glass & hopkins, 1987). according to ratanaolarn (2016), students’ grades in statistics are influenced positively by their attitudes towards the subject. not only do these attitudes affect their performance, they also have an effect on the extent to which they may be willing to use statistics later in their careers (zanakis & valenzi, 1997, montcalm, 1999). academic success is influenced by various aspects of motivation; one of the important ones is self-regulation. this includes a student’s ability to direct his or her thoughts and behaviours towards the attainment of their goals (dunn et al., 2012). academic procrastination can be seen as the daily postponement of duties and responsibilities that relate to school (or college or university), or to delay them to the eleventh hour (mccarthy, haycock & skay, 1998). a significant number – between 80% and 95% – of college students apparently engage in procrastination (wilson & nguyen, 2012). steel (2007) reports a correlation of –0.19 between academic performance and procrastination. the negative effect on academic performance is because passive procrastination limits not only the quantity but also the quality of a student’s work (dunn et al., 2012). owing to the numerical nature of statistics, students lacking a strong mathematical foundation tend to struggle with statistics. dupuis et al. (2012) explain in their research that a strong mathematical background benefits a student later when studying statistics, since those with such a history enrolled for more difficult statistics courses and obtained higher grades. however, galagedera et al. (2000) found no significant correlation between prior mathematical performance and statistical reasoning. 3. research objective the primary objective of this study was to develop a scale that can be used as a detection tool to identify students at risk of failing an introductory statistics module. the dimensionality of the scale was determined, and its effectiveness was illustrated by comparing students’ risk to fail, based on the scale, with the marks they obtained. finally, guidelines have been provided on how to use it to identify and assist at-risk students. research questions that were addressed are: • does the ssrq scale meet the requirements for goodness of fit? • is the scale reliable? • do the items demonstrate good discrimination? • do the constructs display discriminant validity? • is a high mean risk (as calculated from the ssrq) associated with a low mark in an introductory statistics course? • is there a difference in the performance of students in statistics, based on the type of mathematics taken in matric? http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 1462022 40(2): 146-158 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) 4. research method the target population for this study was ba and bcom students who were enrolled for an introductory statistics module at a leading south african university. permission was obtained from the ethics committee to conduct the research; ethical clearance number is econit-2016-028. in order to develop a suitable scale and test its usability, a cross-sectional correlational study was used. first, the literature was reviewed to identify possible risks. existing scales that measure these risks were considered. a scale was then developed – which we call the statistics students’ risk questionnaire (ssrq) scale – using some questions from different scales to form one concise scale that measures the identified risks. statistics lecturers were asked to comment on the scale and amendments were made. after completing a pilot study, the final questionnaire consisted of the scale’s questions as well as questions pertaining to a student’s mathematical foundation and performance in the statistics course. the questionnaire was distributed among students of an introductory statistics course, which they voluntarily completed. construct validity was investigated using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. reliability and discriminant validity were determined. to assess if the scale provides a good measure to predict which students may be at risk, the mean risk of a student was compared to the student’s performance in the course. in constructing the scale items of the statistics students’ risk questionnaire (ssrq) used to assess the students, three resources were used: information from the literature, inputs from colleagues, and students’ opinions. possible risks were identified: statistical anxiety, attitude towards statistics, motivation and academic procrastination. established scales that measured these risks were identified and considered (the statistical anxiety rating scale [stars] (cruise, cash & bolton, 1985); attitude toward statistics scale [ats] (wise, 1985); the general procrastination scale [gp] (lay, 1986); the adult inventory of procrastination [aip] (díaz-morales et al., 2006), and motivated strategies for learning questionnaire [mslq] (dunn et al., 2012). drawing on these scales, a new scale was devised. a pilot questionnaire was constructed that contained questions that measured each of the possible risks mentioned above. statistics lecturers were asked to evaluate the original, proposed questionnaire, and as a result some changes were made. the questionnaire was then distributed online, and 170 students voluntarily completed it. a final pool of 19 items was formed, assessed using a five-point likert scale. the final ssrq was distributed to 274 participants in the introductory statistics classes during the following year. the collected data were uploaded and analysed using sas 9.4. 5. results 5.1 sample profile a total of 274 responses were captured for analysis. the race distribution in the sample was black (81%), white (11%), coloured (6%) and indian (2%). most of the students were registered for bcom (54%) and the rest for ba (46%) degrees. as many as 78% had not failed statistics modules previously, 17% had failed a statistics module once, whereas 5% had failed it twice or more times. moreover, 54% passed mathematics and 46% passed mathematical literacy in grade 12. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 1472022 40(2): 147-158 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 coetzee measuring risks associated with students of introductory statistics 5.2 exploratory factor analysis (efa) four measures were used to evaluate the appropriateness of the data set for factor analysis: sample size, sample to variable ratio, kaiser’s measure of sampling adequacy (msa), and bartlett’s test of sphericity. the sample size obtained was 217 (57 observations had missing values). this is acceptable because the recommended minimum sample size is 150, according to pallant (2013). the number of variables considered for the efa was 19. the sample to variable ratio was 11.4 cases per variable. this is greater than 5, which is the minimum acceptable ratio of cases per variable (pallant, 2013). the overall msa yielded a value of 0.822. according to hair et al. (2014), a value of 0.80 or above is meritorious. a high msa is associated with a large sample size, high average correlations and a low number of factors. msa for the individual variables ranged from 0.70 to 0.87, which are all above the minimum requirement of 0.50 (hair et al., 2014). in addition, bartlett’s test of sphericity was significant (p < 0.0001). this tests if the correlation matrix shows significant correlations among the variables. the data set was considered appropriate for factor analysis (hair et al., 2014). three criteria were used to determine the number of factors to be extracted: latent root criterion, scree test and cumulative percentage variance explained. according to the latent root criterion, an eigenvalue represents the amount of variance associated with each factor. four eigenvalues were greater than one. the “elbow” of the scree plot indicates that four factors should be extracted. four factors represented 60.3% of the total variation of the 19 variables. based on these three criteria, it was decided to extract four factors using the principal component extraction method with varimax rotation. all the constructs were one-dimensional, meaning that each construct loaded high on one of the factors but loaded significantly lower on the others. all the factor loadings were significant – above 0.40 (hair et al., 2014). the item-total correlation of the items ranged from 0.23 to 0.53. typically, the minimum value should not be lower than 0.30. items 18 and 19 (out of 19) were the only variables with values less than 0.30. it was therefore decided to remove them and redo the factor analysis. after removing these two items, the total variance of the 17 items explained by the four factors was 58.1%. preferably, the communalities should not be less than 0.50 (hair et al., 2014). in this case, they ranged from 0.483 to 0.702, which was deemed acceptable. the results of the factor analysis are shown in table 1 below. the four-factor ssrq scale was further refined and validated through confirmatory factor analysis (cfa). table 1: results obtained from the factor analysis and item analyses factors/ dimensions item no. factor loading value item–total correlations a lower– upper groups difference t-value cronbach’s 𝛼 b eigenvalue c variance explained statistical anxiety 2 0.831 0.494 –8.29** 0.837 4.848 28.5% 1 0.778 0.535 –8.61** 5 0.769 0.481 –9.78** 4 0.761 0.530 –8.75** 3 0.647 0.482 –7.09** http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 1482022 40(2): 148-158 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) factors/ dimensions item no. factor loading value item–total correlations a lower– upper groups difference t-value cronbach’s 𝛼 b eigenvalue c variance explained procrastination 9 0.760 0.486 –8.39** 0.789 2.125 12.5% 7 0.734 0.509 –7.59** 6 0.655 0.470 –7.58** 10 0.644 0.475 –7.32** 8 0.633 0.382 –6.01** r-at attitude*** 13 0.764 0.382 –6.30** 0.702 1.158 6.8% 14 0.697 0.348 –7.10** 12 0.650 0.316 –4.01* 11 0.580 0.513 –8.82** r-motivation*** 17 0.783 0.391 –5.48** 0.620 1.758 10.3% 16 0.633 0.373 –6.67* 15 0.552 0.418 –6.83** *p < 0.001 **p < 0.0001 ***attitude and motivation were reverse coded. a. item–total correlations are all above 0.3. b. cronbach’s 𝛼 values are all above 0.6. c. eigenvalues are all above 1. 5.3 confirmatory factor analysis the indicator items measured were assigned to latent constructs. cfa was run for all the constructs through structural equation modelling (sem), using proc calis of sas 9.4. the ssrq scale with four factors collectively comprised 17 items. various goodness-of-fit indices were used to assess the ssrq scale. sem allows for testing of the interrelationships among a set of related variables through multiple regression procedures. the overall fit of the model is indicated by the chi-square test (χ2). for the ssrq scale χ2 = 256.82, df = 113, p < 0.0001 was obtained. however, this test is viewed as an overly strict indicator of model fit, given its power to detect even inconsequential deviations from the proposed model (hair et al., 2014). the normed chi-square ratio χ2/df should ideally be less than 3 (hair et al., 2014). the ssrq scale met the required condition, since χ2/df = 2.273. a number of model fit indices were used to assess model fit: goodness-of-fit index (gfi), adjusted goodness-of-fit index (agfi) and comparative fit index (cfi). a perfect fit is obtained when indices are close to one (1), whereas those close to zero (0) represent no fit (hair et al., 2014). the results of the fit indices were 0.888 for gfi, 0.849 for agfi, and 0.880 for cfi. concerning the root mean square error of approximation (rmsea), there is a good model fit if rmsea is less than or equal to 0.05 and an adequate fit if it is less than or equal to 0.08 (blunch, 2016). the rmsea result for this model was 0.073. overall, the scale portrayed a very good fit for the data set as indicated by the chi-square ratio test, several goodness-of-fit indices, and rmsea results. thus, the 17-item scale ssrq with four dimensions is valid and robust. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 1492022 40(2): 149-158 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 coetzee measuring risks associated with students of introductory statistics 5.4 reliability the overall ssrq scale displayed excellent reliability (cronbach’s α = 0.84). the cronbach’s 𝛼 reliability of three of the four factors extracted ranged from 0.702 to 0.837. the cronbach’s 𝛼 reliability of motivation was 0.62, which is somewhat low, but still acceptable (hair et al., 2014). cronbach’s 𝛼 reliability of the four factors extracted were all above 0.6, which portray fairly good reliability. composite reliability (cr) for statistical anxiety was 0.87, for procrastination, 0.82, for attitude, 0.77 and for motivation, 0.70. this suggests good internal consistency of the scale. thus, overall, the scale was found to be reliable. 5.5 item analyses the results of the item analyses are presented in table 1. the item–total point correlation of the items in the ssrq yielded a minimum value of 0.316 and a maximum value of 0.535. since all the values are higher than 0.30, the items’ discrimination is good. the total scale point was calculated, and the 27th and 73rd percentiles were calculated. values below the 27th percentile were allocated to the lower group, whereas values above the 73rd percentile were allocated to the upper group. t-tests were used to determine if the items’ means differed significantly for the two groups. all the t-values were found to be significant (p < 0.001), indicating that the distinctiveness levels for all items are high. each item, therefore, makes a consistent classification. 5.6 discriminant validity discriminant validity refers to the extent to which the constructs differ from one another (hamid, sami & sidek, 2017). one measure to evaluate discriminant validity is the fornell and larcker criterion. here, the square root of the average variance extracted (ave) is compared with the correlation of latent constructs (hamid et al., 2017). the reasoning behind this criterion is that a latent construct should explain the variance of its own indicator better than the variance of other latent constructs. therefore, the square root of each construct’s ave should be greater than each of the correlations with other latent constructs (hamid et al., 2017). as can be seen in table 2 below, the smallest square root value of ave is 0.620, which is greater than the largest squared correlation of 0.330. according to the fornell and larcker criterion, the scale shows discriminant validity. table 2: squared correlations and the square root of ave — average variance extracted (on the diagonal) ssrq dimensions statistical anxiety procrastination attitude motivation statistical anxiety 0.719 procrastination 0.164 0.646 attitude 0.138 0.082 0.622 motivation 0.074 0.330 0.301 0.620 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 1502022 40(2): 150-158 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) 5.7 scoring the scale for each individual whose risk of performing badly in introductory statistics is to be measured, 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 points were given to the options “strongly disagree”, “disagree”, “neutral”, “agree”, and “strongly agree”, respectively. the points were added together and divided by the number of items, to provide a measure of the risk of performing badly. the expected point range is 1.0 (lowest) and 5.0 (highest), where a value of close to 1.0 indicates that the student is not at high risk, whereas a value close to 5.0 indicates that he or she is at high risk. 5.8 identify students at risk the mean risk was calculated for each participant in the survey as explained above and compared to the student’s participation mark (made up of marks for tests and assignments). as can be seen from the statistics provided in table 3, low participation marks are associated with high mean risk, and high participation marks with low mean risk. the correlation between the mean risk and the participation mark is r = –0.446 (p < 0.0001), indicating a moderately negative relationship. correlations between the participation mark and the individual factors are r = –0.322 (p < 0.0001) for statistical anxiety, r = –0.232 (p = 0.0002) for academic procrastination, r = 0.353 (p < 0.0001) for motivation and r = 0.328 (p < 0.0001) for attitude towards statistics. the negative association found between performance and statistical anxiety is stronger than the correlation (r = –0.035) reported by paechter et al. (2013), who used the stars instrument. the results of the ssrq also compare favourably with the correlation of –0.19 that steel (2007) reports between academic performance and procrastination. chiesi & primi (2010) also found a positive effect between performance and attitude. students awarded a participation mark of 59 or less can be considered still at risk of failing the exam, therefore a cut-off value of 2.80 may be used. students whose mean risk value is higher than 2.80 may be at risk of failing the module, whereas those with a mean risk of less than 2.80 have a low risk of failing. table 3: risk statistics for different intervals of the participation mark: mean, standard deviation and sample size participation mark mean risk standard deviation of risk sample size 0–39 2.98 0.75 12 40–49 2.89 0.58 29 50–59 2.93 0.63 42 60–69 2.70 0.50 58 70–79 2.44 0.58 54 80+ 1.99 0.57 35 the analysis of variance indicates that the mean risk differs significantly for different participation mark groupings (f = 13.92, p < 0.0001). this data set does not indicate a linear relationship. however, the fact that the number of students in the first two classes (0–39 and 40–49) is small (n = 12 and 29, respectively) may be the reason why these two classes behave differently from the expected. no model can perfectly distinguish performers from nonperformers because other factors often play a role that were not determined at the time the study was conducted, for example illness. another way of identifying students at risk is by looking at how many of the four factors have a mean value greater than 3. as figure 1 indicates, the more factors that have mean http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 1512022 40(2): 151-158 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 coetzee measuring risks associated with students of introductory statistics values greater than 3, the higher the mean risk of a student failing. a student with no risk factors with values greater than 3 will typically have a low risk of failing. when a student has two or more factors that have been flagged, the risk becomes high, and action should be taken to support that person. figure 1: risk factors (having mean values greater than 3) versus mean risk. the more factors that have been flagged as representing a risk, the higher the mean risk is. another factor that may be added to the four factors of the ssrq is the student’s mathematical background. in south african state schools, learners can matriculate either with mathematics or with mathematical literacy. this study indicates that students who matriculated with mathematical literacy are at a significantly greater risk of performing poorly in statistics than those who matriculated with mathematics. of the students who scored less than 50% for their participation marks, 69% had matriculated with mathematical literacy. on the other hand, 76% of the students who obtained 70% or more had taken mathematics ( = 33.16, df = 3, p < 0.0001). figure 2 shows the relationship between mathematical type and participation mark. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 1522022 40(2): 152-158 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) 12 figure 2: the effect of the mathematics exam taken for matriculation on participation mark. having matriculated with mathematical literacy is more associated with low participation marks whereas having mathematics as a subject in grade 12 is more associated with high participation marks. 6. discussion 6.1 development and performance of scale the ssrq scale was developed to measure the potential risk that a university student will fail an introductory statistics module. the aim of the tool was to have a measure that quantifies a student’s risk of failing a statistics module early in the semester, so that these atrisk students can be identified and special care provided for them. the results have shown that the ssrq scale consists of four dimensions that are valid and robust. the overall scale shows excellent reliability with good internal consistency, while each of the factors individually has satisfactory reliability. the scales’ items show good discriminant validity. the ssrq consists of 17 items, each measured on a five-point likert scale. the pca revealed four underlying factors, namely statistical anxiety, attitude towards statistics, motivation, and academic procrastination. these factors accounted for 58.1% of the total variance. high levels of statistical anxiety and academic procrastination, together with low motivational levels and a negative attitude towards statistics are indicators of an at-risk student. the cronbach’s alpha reliability of the whole scale was 0.84, which compares well with 0.88 for stars and 0.82 for sats that were administered to south african students (mji, 2009). the scale compares well with a scale developed by ratanaolarn 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% 0-49 50-59 60-69 70+ p er ce nt ag e of s tu de nt s participation mark math type math type figure 2: the effect of the mathematics exam taken for matriculation on participation mark. having matriculated with mathematical literacy is more associated with low participation marks whereas having mathematics as a subject in grade 12 is more associated with high participation marks. 6. discussion 6.1 development and performance of scale the ssrq scale was developed to measure the potential risk that a university student will fail an introductory statistics module. the aim of the tool was to have a measure that quantifies a student’s risk of failing a statistics module early in the semester, so that these at-risk students can be identified and special care provided for them. the results have shown that the ssrq scale consists of four dimensions that are valid and robust. the overall scale shows excellent reliability with good internal consistency, while each of the factors individually has satisfactory reliability. the scales’ items show good discriminant validity. the ssrq consists of 17 items, each measured on a five-point likert scale. the pca revealed four underlying factors, namely statistical anxiety, attitude towards statistics, motivation, and academic procrastination. these factors accounted for 58.1% of the total variance. high levels of statistical anxiety and academic procrastination, together with low motivational levels and a negative attitude towards statistics are indicators of an at-risk student. the cronbach’s alpha reliability of the whole scale was 0.84, which compares well with 0.88 for stars and 0.82 for sats that were administered to south african students (mji, 2009). the scale compares well with a scale developed by ratanaolarn (2016), which combined stars, sats and the course experience questionnaire. the χ2/df of the cfa of ssrq was found to be 2.27 (compared to 1.07 of ratanaolarn’s instrument) and the rmsea was 0.07 (versus 0.02). furthermore, the gfi, agfi and cfi were 0.89 (versus 0.93), 0.85 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 1532022 40(2): 153-158 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 coetzee measuring risks associated with students of introductory statistics (versus 0.91) and 0.88 (versus 0.99), respectively. the cr ranged from 0.697 to 0.871 for the four factors, indicating good reliability. the fornell and larcker criterion had a minimum square root value of 0.620, which is greater than the maximum squared correlation of 0.330, indicating discriminant validity. the lower–upper groups difference t-values are all significant (p < 0.001), indicating that each item makes a consistent classification. when comparing the ssrq to the sats and the stars, which are widely used to determine attitudes towards statistics and statistical anxiety, it should be noted that the sats consists of 36 response items and 51 for the stars. regarding procrastination, the gp and the aip scales consist of 20 and 15 items, respectively. the mslq scale, which measures motivation, consists of 81 items. the final ssrq in this study featured only 17 items, measuring not only attitude towards statistics and statistical anxiety, but also academic procrastination and motivation. the ssrq can obviously not measure each of the factors in the same depth as the established other scales mentioned above. however, its advantage is that it is relatively short and can easily be administered during a class to all the students to determine which, if any, of the risk factors may potentially cause any of them to struggle. since the ssrq is a short questionnaire, the chances of careless responding due to questionnaire fatigue may be minimised, as proposed by gibson & bowling (2020). the mean risk for each student was calculated based on the ssrq scale and compared to the student’s marks. high mean risks were associated with low marks and vice versa (r = –0.446), indicating the ability of the scale correctly to detect at-risk students. 6.2 implementation of scale this study therefore puts a tool in the hands of a statistics lecturer to determine which students are at risk. to implement the scale in practice, the lecturer can assess the overall risk by calculating the mean risk over all the factors. if this mean risk is greater than 2.80, a student is considered to be at risk. however, the lecturer can also look at which specific factors are flagged for a particular individual. if only one factor is indicated – that is, the mean value of a particular factor is greater than 3 – the risk is relatively low. as the number of flagged factors increases, the risk of the particular student failing, increases. another factor that can be added to the risk assessment instrument is whether a student matriculated with mathematical literacy, since it was found that undergraduates with this particular qualification in matric have a significantly lower participation mark on average than their counterparts who matriculated with mathematics. 6.3 strategy to assist at-risk students by considering which factors contribute to the risk, a customised plan of action can be adopted. if, for instance, it is found that a student has a problem with anxiety, this person may complete the stars in a follow-up session and thereafter be referred to campus psychological support services. similarly, the ssrq may be followed by administering the sats in the case of an attitude problem, the aip or gp when faced with a procrastination issue, and the mslq to address a lack of motivation. the lecturer may address attitude and motivation by showing students how the statistics module links to their major and where mastering this skill will be used in the workplace. students who tend to procrastinate may be required to undergo time management training. those with mathematical literacy may need to take a mathematical bridging course before starting a statistics programme. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 1542022 40(2): 154-158 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) 6.4 strengths and limitations this study is limited by being conducted at only one south african university. it is desirable to repeat it elsewhere – in south africa as well as abroad – to make it more generalisable. although the sample size was relatively small, it did provide enough power for the efa and the cfa. future studies are needed to investigate test–retest reliability and criterion validity. the strengths of this research are the reliability and discriminant validity of the overall scale and subscales, high pca loadings and the clarity of the four-factor model derived from the pca, which is supported by the cfa, as well as significant correlations between each of the risk factors and academic performance. 7. conclusion the ssrq scale was shown to be effective to detect at-risk students in an introductory statistics module. lecturers can implement the scale to address 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tomorrow: an overview of procrastination. international journal of psychological studies, 4(1): 211-217. https://doi.org/10.5539/ijps. v4n1p211 zanakis, s.h. & valenzi, e.r. 1997. student anxiety and attitudes in business statistics. journal of education for business, 73: 10. https://doi.org/10.1080/08832329709601608 zeidner, m. 1991. statistics and mathematics anxiety in social science students: some interesting parallels. british journal of educational psychology, 61: 319-328. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.2044-8279.1991.tb00989.x appendix: the statistics students’ risk questionnaire (ssrq) please note: items 11 to 17 have been reverse coded (r) for all the analyses item question 1 2 3 4 5 1 i experience feelings of anxiety when i have to attend a statistics class. s tro ng ly di sa gr ee d is ag re e n eu tra l a gr ee s tro ng ly ag re e 2 i experience feelings of anxiety when i have to solve a statistical problem. s tro ng ly di sa gr ee d is ag re e n eu tra l a gr ee s tro ng ly ag re e 3 i experience feelings of anxiety when i need to ask the statistics lecturer a question. s tro ng ly di sa gr ee d is ag re e n eu tra l a gr ee s tro ng ly ag re e 4 i experience feelings of anxiety when i have to study for a statistics test. s tro ng ly di sa gr ee d is ag re e n eu tra l a gr ee s tro ng ly ag re e 5 i experience feelings of anxiety while i am writing a statistics test. s tro ng ly di sa gr ee d is ag re e n eu tra l a gr ee s tro ng ly ag re e 6 i generally delay before starting work i have to do for this module. s tro ng ly di sa gr ee d is ag re e n eu tra l a gr ee s tro ng ly ag re e 7 in preparing for deadlines for this module, i often waste time by doing other things. s tro ng ly di sa gr ee d is ag re e n eu tra l a gr ee s tro ng ly ag re e 8 i often start my statistics homework at the last minute and find it difficult to complete it on time. s tro ng ly di sa gr ee d is ag re e n eu tra l a gr ee s tro ng ly ag re e 9 i tend to procrastinate (wait until last minute) more when studying for statistics than studying for other modules. s tro ng ly di sa gr ee d is ag re e n eu tra l a gr ee s tro ng ly ag re e http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 https://doi.org/10.5539/ijps.v4n1p211 https://doi.org/10.5539/ijps.v4n1p211 https://doi.org/10.1080/08832329709601608 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8279.1991.tb00989.x https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8279.1991.tb00989.x 1582022 40(2): 158-158 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) item question 1 2 3 4 5 10 because i tend to wait until it is almost too late before starting to study statistics, i don’t study efficiently for tests and/or exams. s tro ng ly di sa gr ee d is ag re e n eu tra l a gr ee s tro ng ly ag re e 11 (r) my attitude towards the content of the statistics course i am doing is v er y ne ga tiv e n eg at iv e n eu tra l p os iti ve ve ry po si tiv e 12 (r) my attitude towards my statistics lecturer is v er y ne ga tiv e n eg at iv e n eu tra l p os iti ve ve ry po si tiv e 13 (r) i think statistics will be useful for my job s tro ng ly di sa gr ee d is ag re e n eu tra l a gr ee s tro ng ly ag re e 14 (r) i can see how statistics relate to my field of study s tro ng ly di sa gr ee d is ag re e n eu tra l a gr ee s tro ng ly ag re e 15 (r) even when statistics course materials are dull and uninteresting, i manage to keep working until i finish. s tro ng ly di sa gr ee d is ag re e n eu tra l a gr ee s tro ng ly ag re e 16 (r) when i become confused about something i’m reading for this class, i go back and try to figure it out. s tro ng ly di sa gr ee d is ag re e n eu tra l a gr ee s tro ng ly ag re e 17 (r) the most satisfying thing for me in this course is trying to understand the content as thoroughly as possible. s tro ng ly di sa gr ee d is ag re e n eu tra l a gr ee s tro ng ly ag re e d ro pp ed i work hard to do well in statistics even when i don’t like what we are doing. s tro ng ly di sa gr ee d is ag re e n eu tra l a gr ee s tro ng ly ag re e d ro pp ed i ask myself questions to make sure i understand the material i have been studying in this class. s tro ng ly di sa gr ee d is ag re e n eu tra l a gr ee s tro ng ly ag re e http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.11 idx77 idx78 idx79 idx132 idx269 idx684 idx759 117 research article 2022 40(4): 117-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) first-year university students’ conceptual understanding of electric circuits in relation to school and personal background abstract this paper reports a quantitative study about university students’ conceptual understanding of simple dc-circuits when entering firstyear physics at a south african university. the aim was to investigate how conceptual understanding relates to the students’ personal and school background. the conceptual framework was based on an existing model of the effectiveness of science education. data were collected from 815 participants at a south african university. the conceptual understanding of dc circuits was measured in terms of performance in the well-known determining and interpreting resistive electric circuits concepts test (direct). background information at school, classroom, and personal level was obtained with a questionnaire. using rash analysis, it was found that the students’ conceptual understanding relates significantly to the type of school attended, home language, previous achievement, their attitudes towards physics, and gender. however, contrary to expectations, the students’ conceptual understanding did not show a relationship with their exposure to practical work at school. keywords: science education, conceptual understanding, dcelectric circuit, contextual factors, south africa 1. introduction concepts involved in the teaching and learning of electric circuits can be problematic to understand as these are highly abstract and complex (mulhall mckittrick & gunstone, 2001). accordingly, students can generally solve quantitative circuit problems but cannot answer questions that require conceptual reasoning (mbonyiryivuze, yadav & amadalo, 2019; mcdermott & schaffer,1992). misconceptions about circuits have been found to be resistant to change, existing not only in school and university, but also amongst professionals (stocklmayers & treagust 1996). therefore, it is important that university physics students should have good conceptual understanding of circuits as they represent the next generation of teachers, lecturers, scientists and engineers. author: ms moreen coetzee1 dr coréne coetzee1 prof estelle gaigher1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria, south africa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v40i4.6573 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(4): 117-134 published: 23 december 2022 received: 18 july 2022 accepted: 8 august 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2371-0721 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3446-9571 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 1182022 40(4): 118-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) while there is an urgent need for science and technology development in the south africa (sa), there is concern about the low levels of achievement at the school level. in 2017, only 26.8% of the public-school learners that wrote physical sciences in sa achieved 50% and higher, with physical sciences having the second-worst national performance pass rate out of the 11 key subjects, with mathematics being the worst (department of basic education [dobe], 2018). however, poor performance should not be investigated in isolation as contextual and personal factors contribute to the poor results of south african learners in science (makgato & mji, 2006, ramnarain & molefe, 2012). however, it is unclear how these factors relate to the conceptual understanding, as conceptual understanding cannot be guaranteed by performance (jansen, 2012). it is possible that contextual and personal factors influence leaners’ and students’ conceptual understanding of science. to investigate this possibility, the current study aims to relate university students’ conceptual understanding of circuits to their school background and personal factors. such understanding may assist in educational planning to design interventions that may support development conceptual of understanding amongst learners in different contexts. this may ultimately support the development of the next generation of scientists and engineers in sa. the following research question was addressed: how does first-year university students’ conceptual understanding of dc-electric circuits relate to their personal and contextual factors in high school? although the current paper on students entering university physics may indicate what they learnt at school, the issue of teaching and learning electricity at school level is a challenge beyond the scope of this paper. 2. literature the literature identified several contextual and personal factors that contribute to performance in general and particularly in the sciences (e.g. creemers, 1994; howie, sherman & venter, 2008; lin et al., 2016; makgato & mji, 2006). mwaba (2011: 2) indicated that … school-based factors (the availability and use of teaching/learning facilities), socioeconomic factors (the education of the parents and their economic status), student factors (motivation and attitude), school type, and teachers’ characteristics are factors that contribute to learners’ poor performance in the science subjects. literature on the some of these factors are discussed below. school type in sa, learners attending rural and township schools are disadvantaged compared to learners from well-established schools in cities and towns (howie, sherman & venter, 2008). during the apartheid regime in sa, schools in cities and towns were reserved for white learners. these schools had well equipped science laboratories and well qualified teachers. schools in townships on the outskirts of cities, were allocated to ‘non-whites’ and were poorly funded and had poorly qualified teachers. after 1994, when democracy was introduced in the country, the city schools acquired multiracial learner populations, and continues to have good facilities. however, schools in townships continue to accommodate mostly learners from low socioeconomic settings as found in poor communities and informal settlements. these schools still http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 1192022 40(4): 119-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 coetzee, coetzee & gaigher first-year university students’ conceptual understanding have poor facilities, overcrowded classrooms and a lack of equipment for practical science work, affecting learning negatively (tshiredo, 2013). independent schools generally have good facilities, well qualified teachers and learners from higher socioeconomic backgrounds. language wellington and osborne (2001) pointed out that every science lesson is also a language lesson as science has its own unique language. across the globe, much attention has been given to research in the language of science education, where english is not the most familiar language and yet is used as the medium of instruction for learners where it could be a second, third or even a foreign language (lin, 2016). apart from understanding the concepts of science, learners being taught in a second language have an additional problem interpreting the language of instruction or translating it into their home language. in south african public schools, science instruction is offered in english and afrikaans, but not in any of the other official languages such as isizulu or sepedi (gudula, 2017). it is often argued that many scientific terms cannot be expressed in african languages (hlabane, 2014) and that it is therefore not feasible to attempt to use african languages in science. african learners are consequently at a disadvantage in learning science. in the 2016 progress in international reading literacy study (pirls), south african learners achieved the lowest mean scores, and the problem continues through to the secondary school level of education (howie et al., 2016). the poor reading levels are believed to be related to english being a second or third language for most of the south african population. mcleod palane and howie (2019) reported that learners from low socio-economic backgrounds whose language of instruction is english, despite it not being their mother tongue, perform better if instructed in english during the foundation phase, compared to those instructed in their mother tongue african languages. they, therefore, argue that learners who are instructed in their mother tongue african language during the foundation phase tend to be part of the most disadvantaged sector of the population. typically, these learners attend township and rural schools, adding to the challenge of learning science in a second language to the developmental disadvantages at these schools. practical work there are three broad purposes for engaging in practical work in science, summarized as the development of understanding the natural world, using equipment and understanding the processes of scientific inquiry (millar, 2009). the first of these purposes is relevant in the current study as the focus is on the conceptual understanding of circuits. akuma and callaghan (2019) point out that practical work is designed, presented and implemented inadequately in south african schools. nevertheless, the dobe (2011: 11) emphasizes the importance of practical investigations in science to “strengthen the concepts being taught”. however, only one practical activity per term is compulsory, although the curriculum plans for various examples of investigations on each topic. this situation does not encourage teachers to prioritize constructivist practical work, as there is an urgency to cover the curriculum content for examination purposes (lelliot, 2014). muzah (2011) found that students are often coached for assessment while not allowed opportunities to explore ideas through practical activities and experiences with laboratory apparatus. furthermore, a study on the pedagogical orientations shows that sa science teachers have a strong “active direct” teaching orientation overall, involving direct exposition of the science content followed http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 1202022 40(4): 120-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) by confirmatory practical work (ramnarain & schuster, 2014). as mentioned earlier, practical work is further compromised by poor facilities and lack of equipment in many south african schools, particularly in townships and rural schools. such conditions prevent learners to explore scientific phenomena directly, as teachers are compelled to do demonstrations. on the other hand, the value of practical work has also been questioned in the international arena. sadler and tai (2001: 131) found that “frequent laboratory experiments (including openended ones) did not predict increased college grades in physics”. earlier, mcdermott and schaffer (1992) found that conceptual development cannot be guaranteed even if students are exposed to “hands-on” activities when performing standard circuit experiments. these authors argue that when performing experiments, students predominantly learn laboratory skills, rather than being engaged on a conceptual level. it is therefore argued that conceptual understanding can be enhanced by cooperative group work and interactive engagement methods, such as “hands-on activities which yield immediate feedback through discussion with peers or instructors” (hake, 1998: 2). these methods support students in overcoming their misconceptions (crouch & mazur, 2001; gok, 2012). learner attitudes attitudes are mostly found to have meaningful correlations with science achievement (abudu & gbadamosi, 2014; tekiroğlu, 2005). once students experience a positive achievement, they will develop a positive attitude towards the subject. with these optimistic thoughts, they would be more willing and patient to attempt further studying, producing more positive results. furthermore, a positive attitude would lead to an interest in the science (osborne, simon & collins, 2003). this, in turn, would lead to commitment, which will likely contribute to academic success. similarly, negative attitudes result in poor performance. osborne et al. argued that many students perceive physical sciences as an irrelevant subject, dominated by equations and chemicals that they cannot relate to their everyday lives, resulting in poor performance. previous performance students tend to have certain perceptions about their past and expected future performances according to judgments about their marks (tekiroğlu, 2005). therefore, the previous achievement affects students’ attitudes and hence their future achievement: high grades in physics lead to continued high performance while poor grades tend to set the stage for further poor performance. aggregated high school grades have been shown to be a good predictor of success at the tertiary level (geiser & santelices, 2007), while previous performance in specific subjects related to the intended study field may be better predictors of success. previous performance in mathematics is important not only because it is a prerequisite to study physics, but because understanding mathematical procedures and concepts are essential in physics. also, performance in english may be an important predictor in south africa due to the instruction in a second language for many south african students (fleish, schoer & cliff, 2015.) gender since the early 1970s, there has been much focus on girls’ underachievement in science, as males tend to outperform females. girls’ poorer performance in science has been ascribed to a general lack of interest in science (koerting, 2018), often ascribed to gender stereotyping of scientists and roles traditionally expected of women. particularly for electric circuits, http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 https://journals.co.za/doi/abs/10.10520/ejc182512?utm_source=trendmd&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=south_african_journal_of_higher_education_trendmd_0 1212022 40(4): 121-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 coetzee, coetzee & gaigher first-year university students’ conceptual understanding sencar and eryilmaz (2003) found that males performed better on practical items; however, no significant difference in the theoretical items was noted. the accepted wisdom that boys perform better than girls is contradicted by spaull and makaluza (2019), who found that the national senior certificate (nsc) data of 2018 indicated that girls outperformed boys even in physical sciences. however, at achievement levels higher than 60%, boys performed better than girls in mathematics and physical sciences. conceptual framework from school effectiveness research, school and classroom environments and learners’ personal situations and attributes are assumed to contribute to the effectiveness of learning (creemer, 1994; scheerens, 1990). in sa, cho (2010) developed a conceptual model of effectiveness in science education to investigate variance in trends in international mathematics and science study (timss) results. according to this model, learner outcomes are impacted by factors at school, classroom and learner levels. the learning climate, consisting of school, classroom, and student factors, is interactive and interrelated, contributing to learning effectiveness. therefore, the model, shown in figure 1, was selected and adapted to frame the current study. figure 1: conceptual framework showing contextual and personal factors at different levels contributing to conceptual understanding of dc electric circuits (coetzee, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 1222022 40(4): 122-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) school type was used in the model as a single factor at the school level, as it largely represents the location and socio-economic status in the south african context. although the home language may be considered a factor operating at each of the three levels, we regard it as operating primarily as a factor in the classroom, as most science learning and conceptual understanding development occur in the classroom. also, at the classroom level, exposure to practical work was used as a factor. at the student level, gender, attitudes towards science, and previous performance are incorporated as factors that may contribute to students’ conceptual understanding of dc-electric circuits. some of these contextual factors may be interrelated as implied by the multi-level conceptual framework. for example, previous performance may influence attitudes and vice versa, while the school type may influence attitudes and exposure to practical work, and school type may be related to the home language. however, in the conceptual framework, the factors are grouped under the level where they are expected to influence the conceptual understanding of dc electric circuits directly. 3. methodology this quantitative study is located in the positivist paradigm, in alignment with the research question. the sample, consisting of 815 first-year students, was conveniently selected as they were enrolled for any of four first-year physics modules offered in different programs at a south african university. the admission requirements for each program are based on candidates’ performance in physical science in the final school examination, as shown in table 1. due to the university’s location in proximity to four provinces, the student population is diverse, including students speaking different african languages, english and afrikaans as home languages. furthermore, the student population is drawn from different types of schools, depending on the location of schools as well as socioeconomic background. regarding gender, the sample included slightly more male than female students. table 1: sample composition qualification admission requirement (final school physics result) number of participants b.eng. 70 490 b.sc. (physical sciences) 60 92 b.sc. (biological sciences) 50 142 b.sc. (extended program) 50 91 total participants 815 conceptual understanding was measured as the score obtained in the direct-instrument which consists of 29 multiple-choice items. this instrument was shown to be reliable and valid (engelhardt & beichner, 2004) and has been used in many international studies (e.g. karpatzianis & kriek, 2012; zimmerman, 2015). the biographical questionnaire consisted of structured, undisguised multiple-choice questions, presented in the same order and wording to all participants (churchill, brown & suter, 1996). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 1232022 40(4): 123-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 coetzee, coetzee & gaigher first-year university students’ conceptual understanding data were captured during normal class periods under test conditions; discussions between students was not allowed. the rasch unidimensional measurement model (rumm2030) was used to analyse the data. the model places personal ability (measurement of performance in the test) and item difficulty on a single numerical scale so that the point on the scale that defines a person’s ability is marked by the item that the person has a 50% likelihood of getting it correct (wright & mok, 2004). 4. results and discussion validity and reliability even though the direct-instrument was found to be a reliable and valid instrument in other contexts, its reliability and validity for the south african context had to be established. before meaningful inferences could be made, we had to establish whether the instrument and sample fit the rasch model. the individual item fit residual reflects the difference between the expected and the observed number of correct responses for a particular item. in the rumm software, items are set to be flagged when the fit residual falls outside the -2.5 to 2.5 interval. even though the mean item fit residual for this test and sample was 0.204, four items were flagged with fit residuals outside the accepted interval. consequently, these items (questions 14, 16, 20 and 28) were excluded from the analysis to improve validity for the south african context. a detailed discussion of these items and why they were flagged were given elsewhere (coetzee, 2021). although this discussion falls outside the scope of the current paper, the reasons are related to the south african physical sciences school curriculum. another aspect that may threaten the validity of an instrument is that two or more items are measuring the same concept too closely, indicating that some items may be redundant. response dependence was investigated for the instrument, and it was established that response correlation between items was acceptably low. after the deletion of the four misfitting items, the degree of internal consistency reliability was calculated by cronbach’s coefficient alpha (α), which is most widely used for items with a range of possible options (mcmillan & schumacher, 2010). the reliability coefficient ranges from 0.00 to 1, and where the scale’s coefficient is high, the scale is highly reliable, and vice versa. values from 0.70 to 0.90 are acceptable (mcmillan & schumacher, 2010). in this investigation, the cronbach coefficient value was 0.70, indicating a good model fit. contextual and personal factors investigation of unidimensionality and differential item functioning (dif) in the rasch model indicates the invariance of test items to contextual and personal factors such as those investigated in this study. the contextual factors mentioned in the framework were defined as person factors in the analysis. the rumm software executes an anova for each of the person factors. anova is a parametric technique used to measure the variance, both within and between different groups per factor within a sample (cavanagh, romanoski & fisher, 2005). in this study, the anova, yielding fand p-values for each person factor, was used to see if there is a meaningful difference in the performance of the different groups identified within each person factor. such a difference would mean that the factor is important in predicting performance in the test. the f-statistic and the p-values obtained from the anova for each of the factors are shown in table 2. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 1242022 40(4): 124-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) table 2: summary of fand p-values of all personal and contextual factors contextual factor f-value probability type of school attended 12.02 < 0.05 physical science average 28.52 < 0.05 mathematics average 32.69 < 0.05 english average 12.69 < 0.05 home language 23.46 < 0.05 exposure to practical work 1.21 0.31 gender 56.26 < 0.05 attitudes towards physics 20.63 <0.05 the f-statistic value must be considered in combination with the p-value when deciding if the results are significant. a large f-value and a small p-value (<0.05) indicate that an item does not function similarly for all participants, indicating a relationship between that specific factor and the students’ conceptual understanding of dc-electric circuits. table 2 reveals p<0.05 for all personal factors except for “exposure to practical work”, indicating that it is the only personal factor that did not contribute significantly to performance in the study. a person frequency distribution graph, such as figure 2 (generated by the rumm software) is a visual representation that compares the performance of different groups within the relevant person factor. the person location (on the horizontal axis) measures the participants’ ability. a person with an average ability (0.00-person location) has a 50% chance of getting an item of average difficulty (at 0.00 item difficulty) correct. each bar indicates the frequency of participants (on the vertical axis) at a specific location. the person frequency distribution graphs indicate the mean and the standard deviation (sd) value for the particular factor in the display’s top left corner. in the section below, results for each of the person factors are discussed. type of school figure 2 shows four types of schools, indicated in the questionnaire by participants, namely rural, township, city, and private schools. 11 person factor. the person location (on the horizontal axis) measures the participants' ability. a person with an average ability (0.00-person location) has a 50% chance of getting an item of average difficulty (at 0.00 item difficulty) correct. each bar indicates the frequency of participants (on the vertical axis) at a specific location. the person frequency distribution graphs indicate the mean and the standard deviation (sd) value for the particular factor in the display's top left corner. in the section below, results for each of the person factors are discussed. type of school figure 2 shows four types of schools, indicated in the questionnaire by participants, namely rural, township, city, and private schools. figure 2: person frequency distribution graph for type of school participants coming from city schools (mean location = 0.08; sd = 0.88) and private schools (mean location = 0.07; sd = 0.82) performed better than participants from township schools (mean location = -0.38; sd = 0.70) and rural schools (mean location = 0.32; sd = 0.77). these results support du plessis (2014), who argued that rural and township schools are characterized by various factors that negatively influence the quality of education. home language person with greatest ability person with lowest ability figure 2: person frequency distribution graph for type of school http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 1252022 40(4): 125-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 coetzee, coetzee & gaigher first-year university students’ conceptual understanding participants coming from city schools (mean location = 0.08; sd = 0.88) and private schools (mean location = 0.07; sd = 0.82) performed better than participants from township schools (mean location = -0.38; sd = 0.70) and rural schools (mean location = 0.32; sd = 0.77). these results support du plessis (2014), who argued that rural and township schools are characterized by various factors that negatively influence the quality of education. home language the results indicate a significant difference in the performance of the different language groups. figure 3 shows that afrikaans home language speakers displayed the best test performance in the direct-instrument (mean location = 0.18; sd = 0.82). on the other hand, students speaking any of the nine african languages (277 students) in sa as their home language displayed the weakest performance (mean = -0.41; sd = 0.64). this is not surprising as instruction in the home language is regarded as important for developing conceptual understanding in the classroom environment. figure 3: person frequency distribution curve for home language this outcome supports howie et al. (2008), who found that language proficiency in sa is a strong factor influencing science achievement since most of the students study science in a second or even third language. at the student level, many african learners may also have a disadvantaged background where many parents are illiterate due to poor education in the black population during the apartheid years. from a social constructivist perspective, home language plays an important role in the expression of understanding and concept development of scientific concepts and phenomena as scientific meaning is constructed through teachers’ and learners’ social practices (fox, 2001). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 1262022 40(4): 126-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) engagement with practical work the options in the questionnaire, indicating how participants engaged with practical work at the school level, were: (a) learners worked in small groups building circuits, (b) teacher did demonstrations, (c) teacher gave a reading from a book, (d) a travelling laboratory visited the school, and (e) students visited another school/institution. although students who were exposed to practical group work performed slightly better, with the highest person location mean of -0.11, the anova indicated that the difference is not significant (table 2 & figure 4). figure 4: person frequency distribution curve for practical work these results contradict the expectation that hands-on practical work would contribute to participants’ conceptual understanding of electric circuits. the use of apparatus (even partially) in conducting science experiments is associated with developing cognitive and psycho-motor skills, which facilitates the logical process of education (michaelides & miltiadis, 2004). these results support mcdermott and shaffer (1992) as well as ronen and eliahu (2000), who argued that some misconceptions are so strong and resistant that even direct experience with the real phenomena may not always be effective in changing students’ understanding. previous performance the results indicate a significant difference in the conceptual understanding of dc circuits for groups as predicted by high school performance. this is true for the three subjects that were investigated. these results are expected as the literature shows that high school grades tend to be a very good predictor of success at the tertiary level (geiser & santelices, 2007). the results for physical science are shown as an example (see figure 5). students that achieved a level 7 (80% 100%) in their final grade 12 physical sciences exam performed best in the direct-instrument, while those who achieved a level 3 (40% 49%), displayed the weakest performance. only the level 7 participants achieved a positive mean person location (0.17) (figure 5). all other participants had a mean person location below zero, which means they found the direct-instrument challenging. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 1272022 40(4): 127-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 coetzee, coetzee & gaigher first-year university students’ conceptual understanding figure 5: person frequency distribution curve physical science average for mathematics, participants that achieved a level 7 (80%–100%) in their final grade 12 mathematics exam performed best in the directinstrument with a mean location value of 0.15 and an sd-value of 0.78. students that achieved a level 4 (50%–59%) displayed the weakest performance (mean location = -0.62; sd = 0.59). for performance in english, students achieving level 7 (above 80%) in their grade 12 year performed the best in the direct-instrument, indicating a better conceptual understanding of simple dc-electric circuits. the sample of participants who achieved at level 4 (50% 59%) for english had the lowest average (mean location = -0.59; sd = 0.49). this emphasizes that proficiency in english supports south african learners’ conceptual understanding of simple dc-electric circuits. this result underlines the negative effect of the situation where most south african learners do not have the privilege to use their home language to study and understand science conceptually (probyn, 2004). gender figure 6 indicates that male participants (mean = 0.02 and sd = 0.8) displayed better conceptual understanding of simple dc-circuits compared to females (mean = -0.40 and sd = 0.59). in this study, 58.4% of the participants were male, 35.9% were female while 5.7% of the students did not indicate their gender when completing the biographical questionnaire. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 1282022 40(4): 128-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) figure 6: person frequency distribution curve for gender males showing significantly better conceptual understanding in this study aligns well with literature (e.g. koerting, 2018) on gender in science performance. however, the sample was not homogenous, with the largest participating group of males in the engineering group having the highest minimum admission requirement (table 1). this may have exaggerated the results on gender in science performance. however, the sample was not homogenous. the largest participating group were males in the engineering group (77%) which has the highest minimum admission requirement (table 1). on the other hand, most of those who enrolled for biological sciences were female. this may have influenced the results as the entrance requirement was highest for the engineering program (see table 1). this selection pattern may result from how family and culture help shape gender relationships, as both males and females commonly perceive physical sciences and engineering courses as more masculine (halpern et al., 2007). attitudes towards physical science it is no surprise that students who like physics and who regard themselves as good in physics performed better (mean = 0.05 and sd = 0.78) (see figure 7). participants who did not like physics and thought they were not good at it performed the worst (mean = -0.52; sd = 0.56). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 1292022 40(4): 129-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 coetzee, coetzee & gaigher first-year university students’ conceptual understanding figure 7: person frequency distribution curve – attitudes towards physics the result agrees with the researchers’ shared vision that achievement and science attitudes are affected by each other and have a mutually supportive relationship (tekiroğlu, 2005). 5. concluding remarks this study investigated how students’ personal and contextual factors relate to conceptual understanding of electric circuits for students entering physics at a south african university. however, our results are limited to the south african situation and should not be applied indiscriminately to other countries. furthermore, our speculation about the causes of these relationships is not meant to claim causality. figure 8: learning contexts and student outcomes http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 1302022 40(4): 130-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6573 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) it was found that conceptual understanding relates to school type, home language, gender, attitudes towards physics, and previous performance in physical sciences, mathematics and english. these results agree with the literature findings regarding relationships between science outcomes and language (lin, 2016), previous performance (lin et al., 2016), gender and attitudes (osborne et al., 2003) the model presented in figure 8 is based on the conceptual framework indicating how factors at school, classroom, and personal level may contribute to the outcome of students’ conceptual understanding. the multi-level model emphasizes how school type lies at the basis of factors contributing to the conceptual understanding of circuits developed at south african schools. it is clear that that conditions in particularly township and rural schools continue to obstruct the development of scientists needed in the development of our country. we recommend that educational authorities develop and implement a comprehensive plan to support science education in township and rural schools. an unexpected outcome of this study was the absence of a significant relationship between conceptual understanding and students’ exposure to practical work at school, contradicting existing beliefs about the value of practical work in science (hodson, 2014), providing scope for further research. the finding suggests that practical work in south african schools, even as group work, is not typically aimed at conceptual development but is of a confirmatory nature (ramnarain & schuster, 2014; sadler & tai, 2001). therefore, we recommend that practical work include cooperative group work and interactive engagement methods (hake, 1998) to enhance conceptual development. the study highlights the language dilemma in south african science education. the advantage of mother-tongue instruction is clearly emphasized by the higher levels of conceptual understanding demonstrated by learners for whom afrikaans is a home language, as these learners are usually schooled in afrikaans. however, mother-tongue instruction is not feasible for the majority of learners, as discussed earlier. we concur with rollnick’s (2000) belief that a new language of science concepts must be learned to conceptually understand science. we, therefore, recommend more research into the development of learners’ abilities to successfully study science in english as a second language. finally, we recommend further research to search for explanations of how each of these contextual factors is associated with conceptual development in science during the school years. references abudu, k.a. & gbadamosi, m.r. 2014. relationship between teacher’s attitudes and student academic 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physical science in lesotho abstract the aim of the paper is to explore the knowledge base of high school physical science teachers, from selected high schools in lesotho, regarding the integration of information and communication technologies (icts) into the curriculum. the new physical science curriculum in lesotho requires the use of icts for teaching. the teachers’ use of icts was explored through a questionnaire based on the technological pedagogical content knowledge model (tpack). data were analysed using the statistical analysis software (sas) and the results showed that 77% of the teachers used icts for teaching, while 80% used them for non-teaching activities. the mean score for teachers’ tpack was 2.88. this score is below the average of three for the likert points of the items on teachers’ tpack, which was set as the acceptable level for this paper. therefore, the study concludes that lesotho teachers do use icts for teaching physical science even though their tpack may be below average. their low tpack may be an indication that they used icts to get more information about the content, rather than for delivering the lessons. there is thus an urgent need to increase the support for teachers to maximise the use of icts for teaching. keywords: icts, ict integration, tpack, physical science, constructivism 1. introduction scholars have already established the importance of icts for teaching (abdullahi, 2014; unesco, 2014). some research also suggests that most teachers are optimistic about the integration of icts as a strategy to improve instruction (aslan & zhu, 2016; peralta & costa, 2007). as learners, in many countries, are often surrounded by modern technologies, there is a need for educators to take advantage of icts in the school and classroom settings. however, in practice some teachers struggle to translate their positive attitudes and availability of ict infrastructure into actual ict integration despite the improvements made towards their technical training on icts (rastogi & malhotra, 2013; zehra & bilwani, 2016). as a result, it is important to ms lucia nthooa lisene university of the free state, school of education studies dr thuthukile jita university of the free state, school of education studies doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v36i1.8 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2018 36(1): 111-127 © uv/ufs http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.8 112 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) continue to examine teachers’ knowledge on ict integration in order to collect the evidence required for development of improvement strategies. some of the barriers of ict integration as identified by teachers include lack of confidence, insufficient time, inappropriate software, inaccessibility of ict resources, limitations of the curriculum, insufficient support and lack of knowledge related to ict integration, among others (alkahtani, 2016; prasad, lalitha & strikar, 2015). chigona, chigona and davids (2014) assert that the context of the school can also be a barrier to ict integration because it can discourage teachers from using icts, such as when they are teaching very large classes. ward (2003), however, believes that it is sometimes the teachers who use their school contexts to make limited choices and relates the problem to inadequate institutionalisation. teachers with positive attitudes are more likely to overcome some of these barriers, either individually or in collaboration with others. consequently, in the absence of conclusive evidence on what hinders ict integration in the classrooms especially in developing countries, it is important to continue with investigations related to ict integration in various contexts. this paper therefore examines teachers’ knowledge related to ict integration into physical science in lesotho. although a few studies have been conducted in lesotho on the subject of ict integration (chere-masopha, 2011; kalanda & de villiers, 2013; ntoi, 2007; olatokun & ntemana, 2015), there are gaps in terms of their focus and/or approaches. for instance chere-masopha (2011), explored ict integration by secondary level teachers in general with no specific subject focus. ict-integration is likely to vary based on the nature of the subject, the teaching thereof, and perhaps the availability if ict-related material in that subject. the focus on physical science, specifically, is thus important in the context of the country’s curriculum framework that specifically advocates for such integration. similarly, olatokun and ntemana (2015) studied ict integration by university lecturers, but neither focused on specific subjects nor on the prescribed secondary school curriculum. methodologically, kalanda and de villiers (2013) approached their study through a participatory action research design while ntoi (2007) conducted a qualitative case study. the present article reports on a quantitative study that focuses on ict integration in the high school physical science subject area. 2. research objectives the study aimed at exploring the types of knowledge of lesotho physical science teachers in relation to the integration to the integration of information and communication technologies (icts) into the curriculum. we examined the icts used and how was it used. the research tested the null hypothesis that high school teachers in lesotho do not have the types of knowledge required for the integration of icts in their teaching of physical science. 3. research questions the following research questions were explored: 1. how physical science teachers in lesotho high schools use icts for teaching? 2. which icts do they use? 3. what type of knowledge do they have with regard to the integration of icts in their subject? 4. background to the study the lack of knowledge on ict integration into the daily instructional activities in schools is a global challenge (lau & sim, 2008). in lesotho, the officials in the ministry of education and training (moet) intertwine this lack of knowledge with the shortage of technical support 113 lisene & jita exploring the integration of modern technologies in the teaching of physical science ... for teachers (farrell, isaacs & trucano, 2007). part of the reasons may include the lack of knowledge about the status of ict integration in the country and/or lack of supervisory capacity in the country. the role of icts in supporting growth and development in lesotho has been enshrined in several policy pronouncements (morgan-jarvis, 2015). for instance, the policy on the use of icts, which was developed in 2005, earmark learning institutions as some of the main role players in the implementation of the ict policy (lesotho government, 2005). the aims of the national vision 2020, which is the basis for the ict policy, include ensuring a strong foundation for technology research and development in the country (lesotho government, 2002). this aim emphasises a strong link between science and technology curricula, which is part of the reason for conducting the study on how teachers integrate technology into physical science. the examinations council of lesotho (ecol) expects physical science teachers to integrate icts when they deliver content knowledge (ecol, 2012). the physical science syllabus forms part of the new lesotho general certificate of secondary education (lgcse) curriculum which demands acquisition of technological and communication skills by the learners. the relatively new physical science syllabus, which dates back to 2012, is the focus of this paper. the paper explores how teachers have responded to the call by the lgcse curriculum for the use of icts in the teaching and learning of physical science. the literature and framework which form basis of the paper will be discussed first, followed immediately by the methodology, and finally by the discussion of the results and conclusions respectively. 5. theoretical framework and literature review this paper views the concept of ict integration through two lenses, namely the model of constructivism learning theory in e-learning environments and the technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) model. the learning theories such as behaviourism, humanism and constructivism, among others, have consistently influenced the designing of instruction and as such, designs that embrace theories of learning can potentially have a positive impact on ict integration (koohang, 2004). the model of constructivism learning theory in e-learning environments is a learner-centred strategy for integrating icts into instructional activities aimed at encouraging learners to use their experiences to formulate new knowledge in an active manner (koohang et al., 2009; wang, 2008). the tpack model has a potential to explain the complex nature of ict integration into teaching, and allows teachers to reflect on their own practice for professional development (messina & tabone, 2012; shu, 2016). 6. constructivism learning theory in e-learning environments koohang developed the model of constructivism learning theory in e-learning environments in 2009 with the aim of explaining how teachers can involve learners in the process of knowledge construction (koohang et al., 2009). constructivism advocates for learners to be allowed to use their existing knowledge to actively create new knowledge (vygotsky, 1978). cognitive constructivism focuses on the ability of the individual learners to interpret their own experiences in their formulation of new knowledge, thus being engaged in their own learning (wan, 2014; wang, 2008). social constructivism emphasises teaching in an environment that is conducive for learning contextually and authentically through cooperation, interaction and communication (lever-duffy & mcdonald, 2011). icts provide such an environment by enabling the learners to learn in a collaborative setting where they interact amongst themselves and with subject experts. drijvers et al.’s (2013) and mouza et al.’s studies (2014) were 114 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) underpinned by constructivism as their framework and they confirm that research continues to view constructivism as a suitable theory for ict interaction. the model consists of instructional design elements and assessment elements as its main components. there are two types of design elements. these are the fundamental elements that deal with individual aspects of learning strategies such as exploration, high-order thinking skills, learners’ pre-knowledge, authentic examples and scaffolding, as well as collaborative elements that include social interaction and cooperation (koohang et al., 2009). the diagram also illustrates assessment, which can be performed by the learners on themselves or in groups as well as by the teachers. the model is diagrammatically depicted as follows: figure 1: constructivism elements and e-learning design learning activities; adapted from koohang et al. (2009:95) 6.1 technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) model the tpack model was proposed by mishra and koehler in 2006 to provide a framework through which people could deal with complications of ict integration after many years of empirical research (koehler & mishra, 2008). teaching is intricate as it is based on various types of knowledge, including understanding the educational programme and the learners’ ways of thinking and learning (chai et al., 2013; mishra & koehler, 2006). the type of knowledge that an individual has is highly contextualised because it affect culture, socio-economic status and ability to plan, among other factors (harris & hofer, 2011). the surfacing of digital icts forms part of the contemporary context and hence necessitated the addition of technological knowledge (tk) by mishra and koehler to shulman’s original idea of pedagogical content knowledge (pck). consequently, the tpack model has been widely used to explore the use of icts by pre-service and in-service teachers (maher, 2013). 115 lisene & jita exploring the integration of modern technologies in the teaching of physical science ... however, most tpack studies observed pre-service teachers rather than in-service teachers. most tpack studies also dealt with the integration of icts into general teaching rather than teaching of individual subjects (wu, 2013). this paper thus focused on ict integration into physical science, in particular. figure 2 is a representation of the contexts and the types of knowledge that they influence. figure 2: technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) model. adapted from koehler et al. (2013:3) the three circles represent the main categories of knowledge i.e., technological knowledge (tk), pedagogical knowledge (pk) and content knowledge (ck). the main categories of knowledge intersect in pairs to form three more types of knowledge, namely technological pedagogical knowledge (tpk), technological content knowledge (tck) and pedagogical content knowledge (pck). all three main categories interconnect to form the technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack). the literature explored in this section confirms that knowledge is highly dynamic and as such requires to be regularly interrogated. the circumstances that surround us influence the type of knowledge we develop. both models outline the application of the knowledge of icts for teaching. according to chai et al. (2011), tpack is the knowledge of enhancing learning of a particular content by applying suitable pedagogical and technological methods. koohang and harman (2005) define e-learning as the process of imparting knowledge through technology. both models, therefore, emphasise the appropriate use of pedagogy and technology to deliver the content of the subject. 7. methodology 7.1 research approach, paradigm, design and process the present study followed the quantitative approach, a deductive paradigm guided by postpositivism to allow the researchers to be objective, logical and systematic when testing the hypothesis (leedy & ormrod, 2013; higgs, 1996). the descriptive non-experimental survey 116 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) design, which was adopted enabled the researchers to focus on exploring the knowledge of a large population of teachers through only a small sample because of its flexibility and adaptability (mulwa et al., 2012). this principle further enabled the description of ict integration without manipulating the school contexts or explaining the cause-effect relations between teachers’ knowledge and teachers’ age, teaching experience, gender or place of work (johnson & christensen, 2014). 7.2 population and sample of the study the target population consisted of 138 high schools, which offer physical science as a subject (ecol, 2013). a sample of 23 schools and 76 teachers was selected from five of the ten districts of lesotho, namely mafeteng, maseru, berea, leribe and mokhotlong. the districts consist of places in the highlands, lowlands, urban areas as well as rural areas for a fair representation of the population schools in terms of their location that may affect availability of technological resources. leedy and ormrod (2005) suggest that if the population size is greater than 100 but around 500, then a sample size should be 50% of the population. based on this argument, the sample intended for the present study consisted of 74 schools, but the response rate was low and thus the study resulted in 23 schools. 7.3 sampling techniques a random cluster sample of schools was selected through stattrek table of random numbers by giving the schools numbers that were fed into the table to choose the stipulated number of school (stattrek, 2016). a random sample has the accuracy, efficiency, validity and reliability required for generalising the conclusions of the study to the entire population (mathers, fox & hunn, 2009). random sampling minimised costs and time while still ensuring reasonable representation of the population (creswell, 2013). the cluster method was preferred because the individual teachers were located in separated places that would otherwise be difficult to reach. the basic one-stage cluster method was chosen because each school had only few physical science teachers who were all asked to participate. 7.4 data collection and analysis the respondents filled in a questionnaire consisting of 29 closed-ended items. the data collected included the teachers’ demographic details, knowledge and use of icts. items 1 to 23 were based on the tpack model with a 5-point likert scale ranging from 1=no knowledge at all to 5=complete knowledge. items 24 up to 29 were employed to establish whether the teachers were integrating icts into teaching, also with a 5-point scale with the rating range from 1=none at all to 5=always. the questionnaires were delivered to the schools and then collected as soon as they had been filled in. some forms were not completed in full, which resulted in inclusion of the last weighting (11=no response) for purposes of data analysis. percentages of the responses to the biographical questions were calculated using the statistical analysis software (sas) frequency procedure (sas, 2013). this software seems to be widely used in recent years particularly in research related to ict integration (alkahtani, 2016). descriptive statistics were calculated for the mean scores for the entire sample (‘all’) and by gender, age group, teaching experience, type of school and location of school through the sas tabulate procedure (sas, 2013). the respondents were grouped into various categories of the biographical variable in question because all the biographical variables were categorical. the mean for the different domains (types of knowledge) of the demographic groups was contrasted through one-way analysis of variance (anova) using 117 lisene & jita exploring the integration of modern technologies in the teaching of physical science ... the sas general linear model procedure (sas, 2013). the sum score in question was the dependent variable whereas the stipulated biographical variable was the single factor in the anova model. 7.5. reliability and validity a pilot study was conducted on ten teachers and the required adjustments were made the questionnaire to facilitate a high response rate and reduce the errors for reliability and validity. the effect of confounding variables on the teachers’ knowledge and use of icts was explored to augment the internal validity. the external validity was improved by using a random sample (bhattacherjee, 2012). the cronbach’s alphas between 0.69 and 0.90 obtained indicated that all the items were reliable for measuring teachers’ knowledge (tavakol & dennick, 2011). these alpha coefficients are comparable with those obtained by schmidt et al., (2009) which ranged between 0.82 and 0.92. 7.6 ethical considerations the university of the free state granted the ethical clearance for this study. permission for teachers’ participation in the study was sought in writing from the ministry of education and training and from the principals. the volunteers were requested to complete a consent form emphasising the significance of the study and the respondents’ right to participate in and/or withdraw from the study at any time (leedy & ormrod, 2005). the respondents were assured that they would not be exposed to any possible harm. privacy and confidentiality were observed by using numbers on the research instruments and keeping all the completed questionnaire forms in a safe place (johnson & christensen, 2014). 8. results and discussions in this section, the results are presented in tables and charts then discussed. the demographic details of the participants are presented first, followed by the discussion of the results on the use of icts and the knowledge of teachers related to the integration of icts, respectively. 8.1 demographic data table 1 below shows the demographical data of the 76 participants from the 23 schools that constituted the sample used in the paper. table 1: teacher’s demographic data age (missing = 3) gender (missing = 5) experience in number of years (missing = 4) type of school (missing = 3) location of school (missing = 4) group 20-29 30-39 40+ male female 0-4 5-14 15+ government non-government lowlands highlands % 20.6 53.4 26.0 69.0 31.0 27.8 51.4 20.8 12.3 87.2 88.9 11.1 results in table 1 illustrate that the number of males (69.0%) was higher than that of females (31.0%). the following groups of teachers were also larger than the rest of the groups within the same variable; teachers aged between 30 and 39 (53.4%), teachers with 5 to 14 years 118 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) of experience (51.4%), teachers from non-government schools (87.2%) and teachers from schools in the lowlands of the country (88.9%). 8.2 the use of icts the following table illustrates the results of the teachers’ use of icts including the means for how often they use the icts. table 2: teachers’ use of icts category results teaching activities non-teaching activities use of icts positive 77% 80% negative 33% 20% frequency mean 2.5 3.4 s. dev. 1.08 1.15 the results in table 2 show that 77% of the teachers used icts for teaching and 80% used them for non-teaching activities. there were slightly more teachers who used icts for nonteaching activities than those who used them for teaching. the mean of the likert points is 3 which is the sum of all five points divided by 5 (1+2+3+4+5=15÷5=3). this was set as the acceptable level of responses for this paper (nwanekezi, onyekuru & oragwu, 2011). the mean scores for the frequency of the use of icts were 2.5 for teaching activities and 3.4 for non-teaching activities. the mean for teaching activities was below the acceptable level of responses (m=3), while the mean for non-teaching activities was slightly above the acceptable level. both means can be rounded off to likert point 3 which represents “sometimes, about once a week”. these findings indicate that teachers employ some technological skills inside and outside their classrooms. however, the fact that teachers used icts more for non-teaching activities than they do for teaching itself and that they only use them occasionally may be regarded as an indication that they use the technologies to perform their traditional duties (haddad, ferreira & faria, 2014). for instance, they may be using the internet to strengthen their content knowledge rather than for presenting it to their learners. the standard deviations were 1.08 for teaching activities and 1.15 for non-teaching activities (table 2). these results demonstrate that in both cases the results were close to the mean and therefore the two extremes on the questionnaire (viz. 1=none at all or 5=daily), were not common. these results were to be expected, as kalanda and de villiers (2013) observe that the use of icts in lesotho is increasing. 119 lisene & jita exploring the integration of modern technologies in the teaching of physical science ... the figure (3) indicates the types of technologies used and the frequency of their use.   48 17 12 42 21 11 62 10 67 60 number of  teachers  frequency of use of technologies figure 3: technologies used by teachers (n = 76 but the teachers chose more than one technology) figure 3 shows the numbers of teachers using various technologies as 67 for mobile phones, 62 for the internet and 60 for computers. ten teachers used digital cameras, 11 teachers used scanners and 12 teachers used cds. this shows that mobile phones, the internet and computers were among the technologies that were mostly used in schools, while digital cameras, scanners, cds and dvds were among those that were rarely used. the rest of the technologies were used in moderation. digital cameras were probably not widely used because smart phones and computers have built-in cameras, which are more convenient to use. cds and dvds were probably replaced with flash drives, which are more durable. this also demonstrates that teachers probably used mobile phones more than computers to access the internet. this was to be expected because teachers have more access to their mobile phones than to the school computers. they access the internet and other services more easily through their phones, thus reducing the problem of a lack of access to ict resources (mulwa et al., 2012). 8.3 teachers’ knowledge the seven domains of knowledge that we explored are technological knowledge (tk), pedagogical knowledge (pk), content knowledge (ck), technological pedagogical knowledge (tpk), pedagogical content knowledge (pck), technological content knowledge (tck) and technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack). figure 4 and table 3 show the descriptive results for various domains of teachers’ knowledge. figure 4 shows the overall means and standard deviations while table 3 show the means and standard deviations for different groups of teachers. 120 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1)   3.37 3.51 3.55 3.12 3.89 2.93 2.88 0.96 0.94 0.81 1.04 0.76 1.11 0.95 0 1 2 3 4 5 knowledge domains mean sdev figure 4: overall descriptive results (n=76) the descriptive statistics (figure 4 and table 3) indicate that the standard deviation values ranged from 0.4 to 1.6. these results demonstrate more similarities than differences within and between the groups of teachers because the standard deviations were low. the teachers who have taught for 15 years or more had the highest standard deviations of 1.4 to 1.6 for the types of knowledge that integrate technology, namely tpk, tck and tpack (table 3). this variation indicates that some of the teachers may consider themselves technophobic because they had not received formal technological training (chigona et al., 2014). the overall mean scores for all domains of knowledge ranged between 2.88 and 3.89 (figure 4). these scores are above the acceptable level of 3 except for the scores of tck (m=2.93) and tpack (m=2.88). the mean scores for ck and pck range between 3.3 and 4.3 (figure 4 and table 3), and hence were above the acceptable level for all groups of teachers. this means that most of the teachers had more than the moderate level (likert point 3) of ck and pck. the mean score for pck was the highest at 3.89 and the mean score for tpack was the lowest at 2.88 (figure 4). the mean score for female teachers (m=2.70) was the only mean lower than the overall score for tpack. the high score for pck and the low score for tpack corroborate messina and tabone’s (2012) findings viz. 4.28 and 2.88 respectively. 121 lisene & jita exploring the integration of modern technologies in the teaching of physical science ... table 3: descriptive statistics for various groups of teachers va ri ab le group of teachers tk pk ck tpk pck tck tpack m sd m sd m sd m sd m sd m sd m sd g en de r female (n=22) 3.2 0.9 3.5 1.2 3.6 1.0 2.9 1.2 4.2 0.7 3.0 1.0 2.7 1.0 male (n=49) 3.5 1.1 3.6 0.3 3.5 0.7 3.2 1.0 3.7 0.7 2.8 1.2 2.9 0.9 a ge 20-29 (n=15) 3.9 0.6 3.9 0.7 3.5 0.7 3.2 0.9 3.8 0.7 3.5 1.0 3.2 0.6 30-39 (n=39) 3.5 1.0 3.6 1.0 3.5 0.9 3.1 1.1 3.8 0.8 2.9 0.9 2.8 0.9 40+ (n=19) 2.9 1.1 3.3 1.2 3.6 1.0 3.0 1.3 4.1 0.8 2.5 1.6 2.9 1.4 ye ar s of te ac hi ng ex pe ri en ce 0-4 (n=20) 3.6 0.9 3.6 0.8 3.5 0.7 3.2 0.9 3.8 0.7 3.1 1.0 3.1 0.7 5-14 (n=37) 3.4 1.0 3.6 1.0 3.4 0.8 3.1 1.1 3.8 0.8 3.0 1.1 2.8 0.9 15+ (n=15) 3.0 1.2 3.2 1.2 3.8 1.1 3.1 1.4 4.3 0.6 2.7 1.6 2.9 1.5 ty pe o f s ch oo l government (n=9) 3.4 0.9 3.4 1.3 3.4 0.9 3.2 0.5 3.9 1.0 3.1 0.7 3.0 0.8 church (n=59) 3.4 1.0 3.5 0.9 3.6 0.8 3.1 1.1 3.9 0.7 2.9 1.2 2.9 1.0 community (n=5) 3.7 0.6 3.7 0.9 3.6 0.8 2.9 0.6 4.0 0.5 2.6 1.0 3.2 0.7 lo ca tio n of s ch oo l lowlands (n=64) 3.4 1.0 3.5 1.0 3.6 0.9 3.2 1.1 3.9 0.8 3.0 1.1 2.9 1.0 highlands (n=8) 3.6 1.2 3.7 0.6 3.6 0.4 3.2 1.1 4.0 0.9 3.3 1.4 3.3 1.0 rural areas (n=29) 3.6 1.0 3.6 0.8 3.4 0.5 3.3 1.0 4.0 0.8 3.5 1.4 3.4 0.7 urban areas (n=43) 3.4 1.2 3.6 0.8 3.8 0.7 3.1 1.1 3.9 0.8 2.8 1.2 2.8 1.1 the pck mean scores for various groups of teachers ranged between 3.74 and 4.25 (table 3) and they were the highest. this shows that teachers had more pck compared to the other types of knowledge. this is surprising because the teachers had to master content and pedagogy as the fundamental domains of knowledge before they could learn to integrate them (ndongfack, 2015). the fact that pck, ck and pk had the highest means (3.89, 3.55 122 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) and 3.51 respectively) as shown in figure 2 indicates that teachers’ professional development programmes probably focussed on content and pedagogy (barujel et al., 2013). the results in figure 4 also show that tk had a mean score of 3.37 while the mean scores for tpk, tck and tpack were 3.12, 2.93 and 2.88, respectively. tk had a higher mean than the types of knowledge that require integration of technology i.e. tpk, tck and tpack. this means that teacher education programmes may have focussed more on technology itself than on its integration into other types of knowledge (koehler et al., 2013). all groups of teachers had means above the acceptable level of 3 for tk (table 3), with the exception of teachers aged 40 and above (m=2.9). this suggests that most teachers have acquired satisfactory levels of technological training, either through pre-service or in-service education. it also suggests that the groups of teachers with a higher age were trained before technologies could be integrated into higher learning because technology is a relatively new phenomenon in developing countries (khan, 2014). the mean scores for tck and tpack were higher for rural schools (tckm=3.5, tpackm=3.4) than for schools in urban areas(m=2.8 for both), the feature that disputes kalanda and de villiers’ (2013) claim that rural school teachers in lesotho lag behind in terms of integrating icts. 8.4 anova for the hypothesis the p-values varied from 0.0130 to 0.9358 (table 4). the p-values for most domains of teachers’ knowledge (33 out of 35) were above the significance level of α=0.05 set for this paper (bhattacherjee, 2012). these confirm a greater possibility that the findings obtained were a result of random variation and that there were no significant differences between different variables and groups of teachers (aslan & zhu, 2016; gelman, 2013). we therefore do not have sufficient evidence to reject the null hypothesis that high school teachers in lesotho do not have the types of knowledge required for the integration of a variety of icts in their teaching. however, two of the 35 values are below 0.05. these are the tkage (p=0.013) and pckgender (p=0.0218). these p-values indicate a significant variation between the tk mean scores of different age groups of the teachers and between males and females in terms of their pck (greenland et al., 2016). the pck mean scores for males (m=3.7) and for females (m=4.2) are both above the acceptable level of 3, as a result they may not be a point of concern. however, the tk mean scores for teachers aged 40 and above (m=2.9) may require some consideration. table 4: p-values for teachers’ knowledge domains domain of knowledge probability values (p-values): age gender experience school type school location tk 0.0130 0.1766 0.2942 0.7107 0.7363 pk 0.5337 0.3785 0.5226 0.9156 0.8778 ck 0.7517 0.4946 0.4886 0.7999 0.7009 tpk 0.9358 0.2452 0.4854 0.8792 0.9194 123 lisene & jita exploring the integration of modern technologies in the teaching of physical science ... domain of knowledge probability values (p-values): age gender experience school type school location pck 0.2795 0.0218 0.2207 0.9135 0.8925 tck 0.1765 0.5489 0.6834 0.7080 0.4978 tpack 0.4624 0.3530 0.2253 0.7478 0.5447 9. conclusion many physical science teachers in selected high schools of lesotho use icts, even though they use them irregularly. their use of icts for non-teaching activities is slightly higher than their use of icts for teaching. the teachers’ ability to integrate technological knowledge into other types of knowledge needs to be improved for effective implementation of the new physical science curriculum, which demands the integration of icts. measuring ict integration into education is important because the amount and type of intervention required depends on the existing level of technological application (du toit, 2015). the lack of ict assessment can lead to provision of far less assistance than is demanded. mobile networks have increased lesotho’s telephone density from 1% to 96% in the past 16 years (morgan-jarvis, 2015). the education system has to take advantage of this fact by promoting the integration of icts – especially mobile phones – into the curriculum. mobile phones and other hand-held devices provide teachers with more accessible means of surfing the internet. this paper highlights the technologies that are widely used so that they can be promoted. the findings presented in this paper should be handled cautiously because of a few limitations. firstly, this study was a survey characterised by a low response rate, thus a small sample. secondly, schools were sampled rather than the individual teachers and this may have affected the sample representation of the population. however, the study is rendered resourceful, with valid findings, because the sample was representative enough of the 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http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.128.7136&rep=rep1&type=pdf https://doi.org/10.22555/joeed.v3i1.709 2242022 40(3): 224-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 sustaining a tutorship programme at a university of technology: a systems approach abstract the role of tutorship programmes at universities is well documented. given the continual challenges faced by universities such as low pass rates, low retention rates, low graduation rates, under-preparedness of first-year students, low throughput rates, and at-risk students, tutorship programmes have become an indispensable part of teaching and learning at universities. tutorship programmes are one of the key interventions put in place by universities to ameliorate these challenges as part of student support and development mechanisms. it is said that a positive correlation exists between tutorship and improved student academic performance. additionally, tutorship programmes are beneficial for tutors as well, as they develop critical skills throughout the programme. as such, it is befitting to reflect critically on the sustainability of the tutorship programme as a tool for student development (both the tutor and the student). this paper adopts a systems approach to reflect on the question of how to sustain a tutorship programme at a university of technology. a systems approach is a management technique used for examining all critical areas of an organisation. within the context of higher education, it makes it possible to analyse teaching and learning enterprise and enable an appropriate analysis of the critical areas of the tutorship programme. a systems approach is adopted in this paper to demonstrate the holistic functioning of the tutorship programme, its tenets, as well as the factors that affect its sustainability. to understand the sustainability of tutorship, it is not enough to view it merely as a product of teaching and learning and the responsibility of academic departments and lecturers: rather, tutorship should be seen as an integral part of a university system, a more complex phenomenon than a mere sum of its constituent tenets, because the interrelationship between parts of the university plays a critical role for the sustainability of the tutorship programme. keywords: tutorship, systems approach and tutorship, tutorship programme and sustainability, student development, sustainability in higher education. 1. introduction the purpose of this paper is to interrogate how tutorship programmes could be used as a tool to sustain tutorship as student support and development using a systems approach. empirical and non-empirical studies have author: mashango phillemon sithole1 phiwayinkosi r gumede1 affiliation: 1mangosuthu university of technology, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i3.15 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(3): 224-240 published: 30 september 2022 received: 04 march 2022 accepted: 08 may 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 2252022 40(3): 225-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 sithole & gumede sustaining a tutorship programme at a university of technology documented the importance of tutorship in higher education (mckay, 2016; gazula et al., 2017; maphalala & mpofu, 2020). in praxis and research, tutorship programmes continue to receive considerable attention due to south african universities prevailing and persistent student academic success challenges such as low undergraduate pass rates, low retention rates, low throughput rates, and low graduation rates (bhorat, mayet & visser, 2010; mckay, 2016; penprase, 2018). the under-preparedness of students transiting from basic education into the university system is often a significant contributor to mentioned challenges (mckay, 2016). in an attempt to ameliorate these persistent challenges, universities have devised tutorship programmes as one of the strategies to provide academic support for students. the discourse on tutorship in higher education has hitherto mainly focused on the benefits of tutorship for students regarding improving academic performance (bhorat et al., 2010; gazula et al., 2017; isohätälä, järvenoja & järvelä, 2017; penprase, 2018; arco-tirado, fernandez-martín & hervas-torres, 2020; kim, jillapali & boyd, 2021). elsewhere, martin (2015) and miravet, ciges and garcía (2014) have shown that tutoring at a university bridges the academic and experiential gap among first-year students. the focus on tutorship has conceived tutorship through the social realist paradigm and epistemological access (layton & mckenna, 2016; maphalala & mpofu, 2020). furthermore, ntuli and gumbo’s (2019) study investigated tutors’ views on the integrated tutor model for open distant learning. a similar study by cupido and norodien-fataar (2018)support provision for academic staff is often overlooked when prioritising student success. in this article, we examine the need for academic support structures in relation to student success from the perspective of bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory. we argue the merits of a teaching assistant (ta looked at developing a teaching assistant programme to support academic staff at a university. however, despite the consensus on the significance of tutorship in higher education, the question of sustaining tutorship programmes appears to be at the periphery of the discourse. this paper adopts a systems approach as a framework to analyse the critical facets of the tutoring programme at a university of technology in grappling with the question of sustainability. to the authors’ best knowledge, this is the first work that applies a systems approach in tutorship programmes in higher education. a conceptual posture is adopted in this paper, which makes its unit of analysis a nonempirical phenomenon. as per mouton (2005) and babbie and mouton (2006), non-empirical studies fall in the second order of reality. gilson and goldberg (2015: 127) posit that conceptual studies “do not have data, because their focus is on integration and proposing new relationships among constructs. thus, the onus is on developing logical and complete arguments for associations rather than testing them empirically”. gilson and goldberg’s (2015) supposition applies to this study. this article does not deal with empirical data but concepts. conceptual studies are not inferior to empirical studies (jaakkola, 2020). according to jaakkola (2020: 24), a conceptual paper “contributes to extent knowledge by delineating an entity: its goal is to detail, chart, describe, or depict an entity and its relationship to other entities”. yadav (2010) substantiates that in a conceptual study, the creative scope is unfettered by datarelated limitations, allowing the researcher to explore and model emerging phenomena where little empirical data is available. as a conceptual paper, this article contributes by providing a roadmap for understanding the entity in question (tutorship programme) by delineating the focal concept, how it changes, the processes by which it operates, or the moderating conditions that may affect it (macinnis, 2011). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 2262022 40(3): 226-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) despite attempts to make the tutorship programme a success, such as augmented funding, the problem of its sustainability persists. so far, little is known about using the systems theory to address this problem. therefore, this study sought to explain how a systems theory might assist both the policymakers and practitioners to combat the issue of the non-sustainability of tutorship programmes. the paper is structured as follows: firstly, it delineates the concepts of tutorship and sustainability in higher education. secondly, it is followed by a conceptual description of the systems approach. thirdly, it shows how a systems approach applies in higher education. a systems approach is then used to analyse the critical components of the tutoring programme and the relevance of these components to ensure a sustainable tutorship programme. 2. literature review given that this is a conceptual paper, the literature needed to examine pertinent issues that relate to its purpose closely. therefore, the literature is limited to tutorship, e-tutoring and sustainability in higher education. 2.1 tutorship studies show that south african universities, especially concerning academic enterprise, are grappling with a myriad of challenges, at the centre of which is high failure rates. the culprit for the high failure rates, particularly for first years, appears to be that students are often underprepared by the high school education system and thus find it challenging to transition into the academically demanding environment at universities (mckay, 2016; spark, de klerk, maleswena & jones, 2017; penprase, 2018). consequently, this has a ripple effect on success rates, throughput rates and graduation rates. for instance, mckay (2016) researched that first-year students are at greater risk; two in three first-year students fail at least one module during their first year of study at university. what follows are low graduation rates, low retention rates (mckay, 2016; penprase, 2018), and high dropout rates (spark et al., 2017). thus, gazula et al. (2017) suggest that to ensure high graduation rates among such students, it is incumbent upon universities to supplement student instruction with tutoring to address the challenges mentioned above. chief among the strategies are the tutoring programmes aimed at providing academic support for students (maphalala & mpofu, 2020). according to cupido and norodien-fataar (2018: 15)support provision for academic staff is often overlooked when prioritising student success. in this article, we examine the need for academic support structures in relation to student success from the perspective of bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory. we argue the merits of a teaching assistant (ta, “a crucial part of academic support structures is the development of tutorial programmes”. literature indicates conclusively that tutorial interventions have significant benefits for students as a supportive, idiosyncratic tool, collaborative and pedagogical enabler to support students (isohätälä et al., 2017; maphalala & mpofu, 2020). scholars such as martin (2015) and miravet et al. (2014) aver that tutoring at university bridges the academic and experiential gap among first-year students. globally, studies on university tutoring have tended to focus on experiences of implementing tutoring programmes (miravet et al., 2014; gazula et al., 2017), the evaluation of tutoring models (narciss, 2017), the impact of tutoring on academic success (cheng & ku, 2009; blanch et al., 2012; ng & low, 2015) and the relationship between the tutor and tutee (derrick, 2015). these studies have provided critical theoretical underpinnings for tutoring, highlighting the pedagogical and efficacy benefits. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 2272022 40(3): 227-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 sithole & gumede sustaining a tutorship programme at a university of technology furthermore, horn and jansen (2009) and karan (1996) underscore that tutorials have a positive impact on student academic performance as they encourage a collaborative approach to learning and assist students to become independent learners. independent learning is a well-documented concept in education (pather et al., 2017), implying that utilising tutors to provide support and feedback can improve the performance of students who might be performing poorly academically (bhorat et al., 2010; penprase, 2018). literature concurs with the notion that there is a positive relationship between tutorial interventions and student academic support (hof, 2014; baleni, malatji & wadesango, 2016; mckay, 2016). hof (2014) and mckay (2016) indicate that because of tutorial interventions for first-year students, the failure rate decreased considerably. the tutorials helped to bridge the gap when students did not understand the concepts in regular lectures and fell back on tutorials, suggesting that tutorial interventions provide a significant value proposition for both students and the institution battling low pass rates and at-risk students. the synthesis between the effectiveness of tutorials (karan, 1996; horn & jansen, 2009) and the challenges of higher education (bhorat et al., 2010; pather et al., 2017; penprase, 2018) show that the institution needed to have tutorial interventions as part of student support strategies to improve student academic performance. the objective of the tutorship programme at the selected university of technology is to provide students with academic support through tutorials. academic support promotes active and independent learning and creates a conducive environment for engaged learning (tutor manual, 2020). the end goal is that students should ultimately improve their academic performance, based on the assumption that when students work with tutors, they perform well academically (karan, 1996; horn & jansen, 2009). ultimately, as maphalala and mpofu (2020) underscore, graduation-based funding systems have resulted in higher education institutions using tutoring as a self-serving strategy to augment learning and improve completion rates to ensure funding. tutorials are also beneficial for student development (maphalala & mpofu, 2020) for both the tutee and the tutors. the institution’s tutor manual (2020) states that there are benefits associated with tutorials for both students and tutors. tutors can reflect on their attitudes towards a particular module and adjust to assist students. the interactive nature of tutorials also helps students to prepare for tests, exams and assignments (tutor manual, 2020). for tutors, kraft and falken (2021) aver that tutoring likely also has reciprocal benefits. leung’s (2019) study found evidence of substantial academic gains for tutors. additionally, tutors develop higher-order thinking, improve subject matter knowledge and general knowledge, improve their ability to manage their learning and study strategies, and are motivated to learn more. tutorials also provide an opportunity to supplement what was covered in the lecture, gain more understanding of various topics, improve their academic performance, and improve their independent learning (kraft & falken, 2021). 2.2 e-tutoring with the surreptitious advent of covid-19, subsequent lockdowns that closed universities (mashau & nyawo, 2021) and the introduction of educational technologies, it would be a travesty to discuss the future of tutorship without the ‘electronic’ and ‘online’ aspects because these are critical features of modern teaching and learning at universities. motaung and makombe (2021) attest that higher education institutions gravitated towards online learning. covid-19 accelerated and forced the move to online learning, even for traditional universities (dube, 2020). consequently, it made sense for tutorials, as a critical supporting role in teaching http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 2282022 40(3): 228-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) and learning, to also be administered online. mashau and nyawo (2021: 124) observe that “the modern trends in education technology have led many universities to utilise online learning (e-learning)”, which suggests that e-electronic tutorials (e-tutorials) are an integral part of modern higher education and the future thereof. e-tutoring can be defined as teaching, support, management, and assessment of students on programmes of study that involve significant use of online technologies (motaung & makombe, 2021). kopp, germ and mandl (2010) explain that e-tutoring comprises all the activities of a teacher that support a learner in constructively and actively dealing with the learning environment. the concept of e-tutoring is thus used in this paper to refer to all forms of tutoring through online platforms – learning management systems (lmss) – such as blackboard, moodle, microsoft teams and whatsapp broadcast. e-tutoring takes place online and virtually, unlike traditional tutoring, which is through contact sessions. the principles of tutoring do not necessarily change, but the mode of delivery is different as it is mainly online and requires access to the internet. interaction between students and e-tutors can occur synchronously or asynchronously. according to ntuli (2016), synchronous interaction involves exchanging information where the session is conducted in real-time. the learning instruction and collaboration is in “realtime”, “live” via online platforms such as blackboard collaborate, ms teams, zoom, e-chat and whatsapp broadcast. on the other hand, asynchronous learning is when learning does not occur in real-time. instead, students use information-sharing facilities such as thread discussions on bb, e-mail, etc., to leave questions or communicate their ideas. the benefits of e-tutoring include that students can interact with tutors and engage with their peers on the subject content from anywhere (ntuli, 2016), as long as they have access to the necessary tools and the internet. thus, when planning a tutorship programme, it is vital to consider a university’s lms, student profile, including students with disabilities (ntuli, 2016), and appropriate and relevant training for e-tutors (mashau & nyawo, 2021). given the prominence of e-learning, e-tutoring appears to be an essential aspect of tutorship concerning sustainability. 2.3 sustainability in higher education it is apparent that tutorship plays a critical role in higher education; as such, its sustainability is pertinent. the concept of sustainability in higher education appears to be fraught with a lack of consensus or commonality in the university systems (weisser, 2015). according to weisser (2015), understanding the etymology of sustainability is crucial to understanding its current usage in higher education. in broad terms, the notion of sustainability is related to the environment concerning the society and the economy, advocating that the environment should be utilised sustainably in the pursuit of economics. the central discussion on sustainability in higher education emphasises the broader spectrum of sustainability. for instance, wu and shen (2016: 3) consider that universities can be agents for the promotion and promulgation of sustainable development principles in societies. although wu and shen’s (2016) assertion is stated within the broader societal context, the role of universities and higher education institutions in general with regard to sustainability is further accentuated by filho et al. (2018) and padayachee, matimolane and ganas (2018) especially in light of universities’ expected contribution to economic and socio-political transformation. in particular, curriculum transformation has proved challenging, as evidenced in actions and calls by students in recent years for decolonisation of the curriculum. this study, which formed part of an institutional response to the challenge of curriculum transformation http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 2292022 40(3): 229-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 sithole & gumede sustaining a tutorship programme at a university of technology and decolonisation, initially sought to examine perceptions of the term \”decolonisation\” amongst a group of early career lecturers at a leading university in south africa. highlighted in the outcomes of the study was the centrality of personal and contextual relevance in notions of decolonised curricula, the impact of curriculum conversations on lecturers’ well-being, and the broader implications of responsive and relevant curricula for institutional and societal well-being. in this respect, the findings of the study illustrated the similarities of curriculum decolonisation approaches and the concept of education for sustainable development which is underpinned by the goal of global well-being and the common good. also highlighted was the need for greater balance between mode 1 (theoretical. according to alturki and aldraiweesh (2021), the integration of sustainability in education is a global trend, which places emphasis on the development of a wide variety of skills or qualities that contribute to academic achievement by both academics and students. in the context of tutorship, sustainability pertains to the longterm management and implementation of the tutoring programme to ensure that its benefits are not once-off or short-term. instead, sustainability is about ensuring that future cohorts of students also benefit beyond the immediacy of the current cohort of students. a sustainable tutorship programme would contribute to long-term benefits to students in terms of academic support. universities are heavily influenced by continuous attempts to improve and optimise the services provided to both students and staff and are constantly involved in means to enhance the delivery of its programmes (filho et al., 2018). given the obstinate challenges universities face as articulated earlier, the sustainability of tutorship is imperative, and tutorship should be viewed through a long-term perspective. 3. the context of the paper the tutorship programme emerged from the teaching and learning development centre (tldc) at the mangosuthu university of technology (mut). the core mandate of the tldc is to provide academic support to both staff and students. at the centre of the student support is the coordination of the tutorship programme and tutorial training to all appointed tutors. in 2019, an internal baseline study was conducted by the tldc regarding the implementation of the tutorship programme across the institution, which identified three main concerns: 1) the implementation of the tutorship programme was not uniform across departments, mainly because there was no policy on tutorship; 2) the institution reduced funding for the programme annually, thus increasingly relying on external funding; and 3) the training and support for tutors were found to be inadequate. without a uniform approach to implementation, the tutorship programme is fragmented, which poses a threat to long-term sustainability. the gradual decrease in internal funding and increasing reliance on external funding place the tutorship programme at the caprices of external environments. tutors are the main agents for any tutorship programme, and as such need adequate and relevant training supplemented by support throughout the semester. the key recommendations of the report were: 1) a tutor policy should be developed and implemented to improve standardisation and commonality for the implementation of the tutorship programme; 2) the tutor funding model needed to be reviewed; and 3) the training content needed to be reviewed, and departments needed to provide additional continuous discipline-specific training to capacitate tutors. as a result, the tldc developed an equitable funding model to ensure that the distribution of the university capacity development grant (ucdg) funding for the tutorship programme considers the key contextual factors at mut in general, such as students per department, number of programmes offered in a department, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 2302022 40(3): 230-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) high-risk modules and pass rates. the tutor training manual was also reviewed and incorporated feedback from previous tutors who attended the training. 4. theoretical framework against the backdrop of tutorship in higher education and its sustainability and how it takes place at mut, the complexity of a university as a system is apparent; hence, this study adopted a systems theory model to interrogate the question of how to sustain the tutorship programme at mut. a systems theory can be traced to the classical works of ludwig von bertalanffy in the 1950s and 1960s, notably, his seminal work general system theory (von bertalanffy, 1956; von bertalanffy, 1968). also referred to as open systems theory, it is applied in various organisational contexts. roiszowki (1981: 23) defines a system as “a set of elements or components or objects which are interrelated and work towards an overall objective”. for groenewegen (1996: 15), “a system is comprised a complex of factors interacting according to an overall plan for a common purpose”. achieving a common strategic goal or objective appears to be central to the definition of a system. gupta and gupta (2013) postulate that a systems approach is a management mechanism that enables the examination of all aspects of the organisation, including the interrelationships and how resources used can be optimised. according to gupta and gupta (2013: 53), in higher education, a systems approach makes it possible to analyse teaching and learning enterprise. although the systems approach has been used in higher education (gupta & gupta, 2013), the theory appears to be scantly used within the context of tutorial systems. literature indicates that theories applied in the tutorship programme mainly focus on educational practices theories such as cognitive development theories, personal and professional development, talent development, and cooperative learning theories (krajewska & kowalczukwalędziak, 2014). scholars such as maphalala and mpofu (2020) and layton and mckenna (2016) embed their studies in a social realist paradigm and epistemological access. the main theories applied in tutorship appear to be concentrated in the realm of teaching and learning, and not necessarily the tutorship programme itself as part of the university system. the application of systems theory is thus apt in this paper, given the significance of tutorship and given the complexity of higher education institutions. a university is a complex system operating in a complex environment, influenced by internal and external factors. thus, the systems approach could provide a framework through which the sustainability of the tutorship programme can be analysed. within the context of this paper, figure 1 depicts a basic systems model that is viewed as a unit of a whole incorporating all its aspects and parts. in a basic systems model, also called the transformation model, the inputs comprise the elements that need to be transformed into outputs. inputs are the ingredients of the system – what is required to be transformed into an output. transformation is concerned with the conversion of inputs into outputs. outputs result from the systems process; that is, it is the product of what has been transformed. figure 1: basic systems model http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 2312022 40(3): 231-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 sithole & gumede sustaining a tutorship programme at a university of technology as shown in figure 1 below, a basic systems approach has three tenets – input, transformation and outputs. in this regard, the inputs for the tutorship programme are the key resources, key role-players and beneficiaries of the tutorship programme. transformation involves the management of key resources and coordination of activities by key role-players in the implementation of the tutorship programme, the output of which is a sustainable tutorship programme. the application of the systems approach as depicted in figure 1 is further illustrated in detail in figure 2 in the next section. 5. discussion 5.1 tutorship programme as a subsystem, the tutorship programme is depicted to show in detail the interrelations between system components and how their coordination offers potential sustainability. the tutorship programme provides academic support to all undergraduate students. to this effect, key components underpinning the tutorship programme are elucidated using figure 2 below, which illustrates a holistic picture of the tutorship programme as a subsystem. inputs comprise all the key resources – key resources (funding, tutorial venues, timetabling), key roleplayers (tldc, human resources and development [hr&d], finance), beneficiaries (tutors, students) and internal structure (policies). transformation is concerned with implementing the tutorship programme, the crux of which is the availability and deployment of key resources in the management and implementation of tutorship. within the context of this paper, the central output is a sustainable programme that delivers intended outcomes. figure 2: implementation of tutorship (source: authors’ own creation) the section below describes the tutorship programme’s key inputs, transformation, and output as depicted in figure 2. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 2322022 40(3): 232-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) 5.2 inputs as indicated in figure 2, the inputs of the tutorship programme comprise key resources (funding, tutorial venues, lms), role-players (tldc, hr&d, finance, academic departments), beneficiaries (tutors) and internal structure (policy). 5.2.1 key resources: funding in figure 2, funding is one critical resource for a typical tutorship programme. as part of a university-wide grant application availed by the department of higher education and training (dhet) and applied for by universities, the university received a ucdg for the cycle ending in 2020. funding was awarded for several projects, one of which focused on student support. the student support project comprises a tutorship programme, first-year experience, and mentorship. regarding funding, the tutorship programme is funded by the university and augmented through ucdg. in the previous ucdg cycle, 450 tutors were appointed, and over 5 000 undergraduate students benefited from the programme. an internal review of the tutorship programme indicates a 30% to 40% funding shortfall annually based on what departments need and the available funding, meaning that departments cannot appoint enough tutors. 5.2.2 key resources: tutorial venues and timetabling tutors need venues to conduct tutorial sessions. as highlighted earlier, the unavailability of venues was identified as one of the challenges hampering the programme’s implementation. the typical tutorial is characterised by students meeting regularly in a classroom with their tutor. however, due to the increasingly large numbers of first-year students entering the institution, who are perceived to need academic support, this exerts a great deal of pressure on the university’s resources in terms of venues and available tutors. 5.2.3 key resources: lmss from the discussion on e-tutorship, it is apparent that lmss are vital resources for the tutorship programme (motaung & makombe, 2021). currently, the uot, under the scope of this article uses blackboard as the primary lms, which offers tutors functionalities for both synchronous and asynchronous e-tutoring. however, as noted by machika and dolley (2018), the adoption of an lms is often marred by challenges such as infrastructure, support and access. 5.2.4 role-players the key role-players are tldc, hr&d, and the academic and finance department. the primary role of the tldc is to coordinate the tutoring programme at the university, which involves issuing calls to academic departments for tutor submissions, coordinating tutor appointments, providing training for tutors, blackboard training for both staff and students, and managing the ucdg project funding. academic departments recruit and select tutors, deploy them in specific modules, allocate tasks, and supervise tutors. the hr&d processes appointments per normal institutional recruitment processes and policies. 5.2.5 beneficiaries as per figure 2, tutors and students are the main beneficiaries of the tutorship programme. critically, the quality and calibre of tutors are vital to ensure that tutorship contributes positively to student academic success. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 2332022 40(3): 233-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 sithole & gumede sustaining a tutorship programme at a university of technology 5.2.6 internal structures: tutor policy regarding policy, nguyen, nguyen and dao (2021) indicate that institutional policies are essential for the success of projects, as policies create a regulatory framework and serve as guidelines for implementing projects. as a crucial input, the tutor policy plays a vital role in regulating the tutorship programme, including regulation of interactions of the components of the systems, such as the deployment of funds and other critical activities such as recruitment and training of tutors. previously, the institution had no tutor policy, which created challenges regarding the management and implementation of the tutorship programme. owing to these challenges, the tldc developed a tutor policy in 2020 to create a regulatory framework within which the tutorship programme is coordinated, managed and implemented. 5.3 transformation transformation is concerned with putting all pieces of the puzzle (the inputs) together in implementing the tutorship programme. the main elements of transformation include resource planning and allocation, recruitment of tutors, training and support for tutors, coordination of activities, and monitoring and evaluation. in this regard, resource planning and management are crucial for tutorship programme success and require careful planning and cooperation by the role-players. 5.3.1 recruitment, training, and support recruitment of tutors starts towards the end of an academic year with the submission of applications by senior students to academic departments. ordinarily, departments identify modules that need tutors and initiate the recruitment process. recruiting quality tutors is vital for achieving the intended objectives of tutorship, as ntuli and gumbo (2019) reiterate that tutors enhance student learning. once appointed, tutors are provided with training and support by the tldc. staub and hunt (1993) underscore the significance of tutor training. a study by faroa (2017: 6) found that “tutors seem to exhibit a generally positive attitude toward training as well as recognise the need for training”. continuous training and support for tutors are critical for the development of tutors and ultimately enhances their performance (layton, 2013). the training is provided at the beginning of each semester and covers various topics such as teaching strategies, learning approaches, group dynamics, and professional development for tutors. ntuli’s (2016) study recommends that for tutors to perform what the institution has employed them to do, they should be equipped appropriately with the relevant skills that will enable them to do so. 5.3.2 coordination of the programme once all the resources are in place, the implementation of the tutorship programme, depicted as transformation in figure 2, requires proper coordination of activities and management of funds to ensure a successful implementation of the tutorship programme. coordination is a critical element of the implementation of activities in organisations. lodge and wegrich (2014) posit that coordination is concerned with the purposeful alignment of units, roles, tasks and efforts to achieve a predefined goal. in praxis, the coordination of the tutorship programme involves multiple key role-players – the tldc, academic departments, faculties, hr&d, and academic departments. in this scene, the central coordination of the tutorship programme is vested in the tldc, which, for instance, manages the ucdg project funding issues, the call for tutor submissions, coordinates appointments of tutors, and provides training for tutors. academic departments are responsible for selecting high-quality tutors, deploying them in http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 2342022 40(3): 234-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) specific modules, allocating tasks, and supervising tutors. the hr&d processes appointments per normal processes, whereas delays in appointment processing may have adverse effects as tutors cannot be deployed. 5.3.3 tutorials in terms of facilitation and learning instruction, the current approach adopted in tutorials is face-to-face. e-tutorials are primarily conducted via whatsapp groups and have yet to fully embrace lmss for tutorials. during the covid-19 lockdown, the implementation of the tutorship programme was greatly affected as the institution was caught off-guard and not ready for online and remote learning. in some departments, some tutors used whatsapp groups to support students. the lack of online presence by tutors posed serious interruptions for the needed academic support for students. 5.3.4 monitoring and evaluation monitoring and evaluation are integral parts of project implementation (persaud & dagher, 2021) to ensure continuous improvement and sustainability (biwott, egesah & ngeywo, 2017). feedback, as a vital feature of the systems approach, offers an avenue for monitoring activities and evaluating the implementation process and requires a commitment to continuous improvement. as filho et al. (2018) mention, universities grapple with constant attempts to improve processes and service students. the tldc mainly elicits feedback on an annual basis from students, tutors, lecturers, and departments, to identify areas of concern and improve the implementation of the tutorship programme. 5.4 output figure 2 depicts that the output should be a sustainable and effective tutorship programme, characterised by qualified and well-trained tutors, stable policy, adequate resources, effective coordination of the activities, and cooperation amongst key role-players. the implementation of the tutorship programme mirrors the complexity attested to by roiszowki (1981). the tutorship programme components are interrelated and work towards an overall objective. as per groenewegen (1993), the components interact according to an overall plan for a common purpose – successful and sustainable implementation of the tutorship programme. 6. prospects for sustainability in the previous section, we detailed the fundamental tenets of the tutorship programme and the management and coordination of critical activities. the critical components of the tutorship programme are intertwined and interdependent. thus, the central idea espoused herein is that the tutorship programme, viewed as a complete subsystem, cannot be managed, conceptually and functionally, without proper coordination of all the interrelated aspects as a system. four key pillars are essential in this regard, as shown in figure 3 – funding, coordination, tutors and policy. various integrated activities underline these four pillars. with regard to funding, relying on external funding poses a serious threat to the long-term sustenance of the tutorship programme, meaning that proper allocation of funding is needed internally. for tutor policy, the development and implementation of the tutor policy is the bedrock of implementing a tutorship programme, as it ensures standardisation and point of reference for coherence, without which the stability of the programme may be compromised. as per nguyen et al. (2021), policies play a vital role at institutions for the success of projects. policies are inherently not static, and the internal and external environments change, meaning that the tutor policy needs to be reviewed periodically. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 2352022 40(3): 235-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 sithole & gumede sustaining a tutorship programme at a university of technology resource planning and coordination of activities undergird the tutorship programme. implementation is thus guided by the regulatory framework and guidelines enshrined in the tutor policy. at the heart of coordination is a cooperation between the multiple key roleplayers in the implementation process – the tldc, hr&d and academic departments. such coordination would, for example, ensure that resources are available, tutors are recruited and trained on time before the start of the semester, and the appointment forms are processed timeously. tutors and e-tutoring are integral parts of the tutorship programme, largely dependent on lmss. in this sense, the appointment of qualified tutors who fit the purpose is critical. beyond recruitment, training, followed by continuous support, is vital to ensure that tutors are upskilled and aided in the tutoring journey. e-tutoring requires appropriate lmss, access to the internet or the availability of mobile data for e-tutors to ensure that they are adequately resourced. figure 3: key pillars for sustaining tutorship programme (source: authors’ own creation) tutorship programmes have become an indispensable part of teaching and learning at universities. we argue that in pursuing a sustainable tutorship programme, instead of approaching tutoring as an ancillary intervention for remediating student learning in the shortterm, tutorship should be viewed as an integral part of the university system, with adequate allocation of resources and efficient coordination of the tutorship programme activities. longterm sustainability is pertinent, considering that tutorship programmes are critical interventions put in place by universities supported by the dhet to ameliorate the challenges alluded to earlier, and are part of student support and development mechanisms. the success and suitability of a support programme such as tutorship are further underscored by godfrey (2008) and johnson (2000), who even propose that support programmes need support at a strategic level. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 2362022 40(3): 236-240 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.15 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) 7. conclusion in this paper, we discussed the implementation of the tutorship programme aided by a systems approach in a quest for sustainability. the article provides insights on sustaining a tutorship programme at a university of technology, using a systems approach, thus providing holistic functioning of the tutorship programme, its tenets, and the factors that affect its sustainability. it has become apparent that the tutorship programme, as a subsystem, is a complex phenomenon than the mere sum of its constituent tenets. the interrelationship between parts of the university plays a critical role in the sustainability of the tutorship programme. the central idea espoused in this paper is that the tutorship programme cannot be sustainably managed without proper coordination of all the interrelated aspects of the tutorship programme as a system. to this effect, the four key pillars were identified as critical for sustaining the tutorship programme – funding, coordination, tutors, and policy. the argument advanced in this paper is that tutorship should not be viewed as an ancillary intervention for remediating student learning in the short term. instead, tutorship should be considered an integral part of the university system with adequate allocation of resources and efficient coordination of the tutorship programme activities. 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162020 38(1): 16-29 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.2 educating the alwayson generation in an instant(gram) #blendedlearning abstract the anticipated fourth industrial revolution and the non-linear sharing of information have afforded tertiary education institutions with opportunities to apply new technology to their pedagogy model. the prominence of social networking sites (snss), specifically instagram, calls for educational institutions to innovate and acknowledge, as well as apply, these snss within an innovative blended learning approach. this study aimed to analyse students’ perspectives on the use of instagram as a blended learning educational and administrative tool in tertiary education. while the use of facebook as an educational tool is widely researched, limited studies exist on the use of instagram in tertiary education. the expectation is therefore set on tertiary education to apply instagram for effective communication and an enhanced teaching experience. the instagram account created by the research team as a blended learning tool had more than 270 student followers. their perceptions of the use of instagram in tertiary education were evaluated using a questionnaire approach and analysed as continuous data on a five-point likert scale. by using a one-way t-test, the preferred blended learning approach to be implemented on instagram was determined. open-ended questions were asked to obtain a better understanding of what students expect and prefer from the use of snss, specifically instagram, in tertiary education. while previous research only focused on the possibility of the implementation of instagram and the use of videos on instagram, this study indicates how tertiary education can apply the various functions of instagram within an innovative blended learning approach. the study found that instagram creates an always-on learner, who thinks about the module outside of lectures. students perceive it as an effective educational tool in aiding them to understand difficult topics better, as well as an administrative tool that complements the current administrative systems. the overall perception was concluded to be that instagram is welcome in tertiary education, with both the lecturer and the student as the driving force. keywords: instagram, technology, tertiary education, blended learning, igeneration, always-on learning 1. introduction and background the introduction of social networking sites (snss) have gone viral and so has the use thereof by its digital natives, the igeneration, the demographic cohort born in authors: mr g.p. swanepoel1 mr a. bruwer1 affiliation: 1school of accountancy, stellenbosch university doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v38i1.2 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(1): 16-29 published: 11 june 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7614-5885 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0951-8397 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1 17 swanepoel & bruwer educating the always-on generation in an instant(gram) #blendedlearning 2020 38(1): 17-29 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.2 1994 and after. while the natives have quickly adapted to this change, the use of snss for educational purposes within the tertiary education milieu is still adapting (jovanovic, chiong & weise, 2012). the current problem is that the fast pace at which snss are developing leaves tertiary education institutions with the option to either adapt at the same pace or exclude certain snss from their pedagogy model (tess, 2013). brown (2011) established that the latter is not a feasible option and that the tertiary education model should be as current and mobile as the students. the introduction of instagram in the tertiary pedagogy model of a firstyear financial accounting module aimed to address this objective of always-on learning and to adapt the tertiary education model to the current igeneration student population. an sns can be defined as an individual web page or application that obtains data from a browser or web page, which creates online human interaction by collecting and sharing information with specific and non-specific people (kwon & wen, 2010). the use of facebook was on the rise in 2010, with facebook being one of the most popular snss among the tertiary education age cohort of 18 to 24 years. roblyer, mcdaniel, webb, herman and witty (2010) suggested that facebook could be used to support lecture sessions in tertiary education; however, the literature on the successful implementation thereof is limited. in the time since the research was performed in 2010, the tertiary model started to adapt and implement the use of facebook; however, a new sns, instagram, was introduced in the same year. instagram has since risen to prominence with an active participation of one billion monthly users in 2019, mainly in the 18 to 24 age cohort, while the use by this age cohort of facebook experienced a decrease in users (clement, 2019a; 2019b). instagram is an sns used to upload and share photos and videos. the service also allows different interfaces such as users having the option to pose questions and using polls on statements made by users. to meet students on the fast-paced road, instagram was adopted and incorporated in the pedagogy approach and therefore developing a blended learning approach to suit the always-on generation by using the platform where the generation is “always on”. this aimed to enhance student contact time outside of the face-to-face lecture environment. the problem identified by previous research indicated that disruptive forces such as the fast pace of change and non-linear access to information that influence tertiary education could best be addressed by exploring new solutions (milliron, 2008). the new problems require new and relevant strategies to determine how educators can use snss to engage students. because of these rapid changes and disruptive forces, an sns like instagram might relate to students in a form that they know and in which they might be comfortable. therefore, instagram was used in a first-year financial accounting module to engage students in the module and to connect with them outside the lecture hall environment on an academic and an administrative level. in addition, visual images were used to transfer and establish the students’ understanding of difficult concepts and topics in the module. by using these images, the transferability of these constructs was aimed to enhance the students’ fundamental grasp of the module. the instagram account offered students an open line of communication with questions that can be sent to the administrators at any time. with the combination of the grounded theory obtained from studies regarding the use of snss in tertiary education, the framework is set to investigate the use of another sns, instagram, which led to the use of an exploratory approach. the main objectives of this exploratory study focused on the successful use of the instagram in a south african university. the study aimed to achieve the following specific objectives: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1 18 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 18-29 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.2 1. to analyse the students’ perspective on the successful use of instagram as a blended learning educational approach and as an administrative tool in tertiary education. 2. to evaluate the perceptions that students have of the possible uses of an sns, specifically instagram, within the tertiary education milieu. this study used a questionnaire approach to obtain the perceptions of the students regarding the use of instagram in tertiary education. the sample for the study comprised first-year students registered for an accounting module. this module is an introductory business module and includes students across different faculties, including economic and management sciences and agricultural sciences. this research aims to contribute to the existing literature on the use of snss in tertiary education by evaluating whether instagram as a platform of blended learning could be a feasible student aid, as well as suggesting successful implementation methods noted from the research. in order to obtain meaningful benefits from the use of instagram, it is important to understand the expectations held by the students that were identified by obtaining students’ perceptions of the use of instagram in tertiary education. next follows the review of the existing literature, which provides an overview of the implementation of other snss within tertiary education and a background of instagram. this leads to the discussion of the findings and lastly the conclusion. 2. literature review the existing literature has shown the prominence of snss within education since 2004. this followed after snss were first introduced in other spheres, including the creation of brand communities and marketing (harrison & thomas, 2009; hung & yuen, 2010; muniz & guinn, 2001; sundarraj, kaliyamurthie & udayakumar, 2016). the introduction of snss in education was received well by students, with multiple studies showing a positive response by students to the use of snss as an academic tool in tertiary education (hung & yuen, 2010; irwin, ball, desbrow & leveritt, 2012; ophus & abbitt, 2009). since the studies were conducted, the snss available to use in tertiary education have increased and the users have changed; thus, leading to the question whether the newly introduced snss are similarly received by students as those that were the topics of previous research. a strong body of research exists on the use of the largest sns, facebook, in tertiary education. it has been found that students experience the use of facebook as valuable in their courses, especially in encouraging conversations in face-to-face lecture time and improving communication between students (ophus & abbitt, 2009; pempek, yermolayeva & calvert, 2009; shraim, 2014; tess, 2013). the research on the use of snss has expanded as another new sns, twitter, was introduced. twitter is used as a platform to encourage collaboration between students, to share administration information, as a form of peer feedback, as well as an outside-of-lecture contact and teaching platform (junco, heiberger & loken, 2011; kassens-noor, 2012; lowe & laffey, 2011). the move in the adoption of snss, as well as the field of research, from facebook to twitter, indicates the fast-moving pace of technological development and the influence of the anticipated fourth industrial revolution on tertiary education. part of the anticipated fourth industrial revolution is the increase of non-linear access and sharing of information. instagram is an sns built around the access and sharing of information and could be the steppingstone of tertiary education in this revolution. instagram is a free visual imageand video-sharing app where people can upload photos or videos, with a length of up to 60 minutes, and share them with their followers or with a selected group of people/ http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1 19 swanepoel & bruwer educating the always-on generation in an instant(gram) #blendedlearning 2020 38(1): 19-29 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.2 students (instagram, 2019). since instagram is an sns where information can be presented in a visual format and without a length restriction, it holds the potential to be a useful platform and educational tool. the potential of instagram as an educational tool is rooted in the increase in the retention rate of information experienced when information is presented in a visual format (al-bahrani & patel, 2015; levie & lentz, 2017). although facebook has more users than instagram, and remains popular among young adults, teenagers are abandoning facebook for the likes of instagram and snapchat, as recent research has found (duncan, 2016; lang, 2015; matthews, 2014). years later, these teenagers find themselves within the tertiary education system and spend more of their time on instagram than on facebook (alhabash & ma, 2017). furthermore, students engage in their social media accounts more often than their e-mail or their electronic course management system. instagram can be a useful administrative and educational tool as it allows students and teachers to communicate easily beyond office hours and face-to-face contact lectures (al-bahrani, patel & sheridan, 2015; handayani, 2016; khalitova & gimaletdinova, 2016). based on these benefits associated with the use of snss within tertiary education, this study evaluated instagram as an outside-ofclass educational and administrative tool in a blended learning environment. blended learning has numerous definitions due to the context and the developers of blended learning instructions (caner, 2012; graham, 2006; procter, 2003; kim, 2007). these studies indicate that blended learning is the effective combination of different modes of delivery, models of teaching and styles of learning. two blended learning approaches that have been developed is one where face-to-face interaction is replaced by e-learning activities, and the other is a model where supplemental materials are optional and not explicitly scheduled and where students can decide which supplemental material they would like to use (bersin, 2004). instagram was used in this study as a supplementary tool, since not all students have access to snss, and therefore it was not compulsory to use this tool. it was also applied as an administrative tool. limited previous research was found on the use of instagram as a tool in tertiary education. previous research focused on the possibility of the implementation of instagram in education, students using instagram to write descriptive essays and instagram used to post videos to evaluate listening comprehension (akhiar, mydin, akma & kasuma, 2017; al-bahrani & patel, 2015; handayani, 2016; khalitova & gimaletdinova, 2016). this study evaluated the success of an implemented instagram account in a first-year financial accounting module as a blended learning educational and administrative tool with the lecturer as the driving force. the study further analysed the perceptions of students as the users, as opposed to the perceptions of the content creators, namely the educators. 3. research methodology this study incorporated not only a qualitative but also quantitative approach to evaluate the use of instagram in tertiary education. the qualitative analysis was based on the exploratory research data obtained from the descriptive design questionnaire. the qualitative analysis was aimed at reaching the objective of analysing students’ perceptions of the possible uses of instagram and other snss in tertiary education. the quantitative analysis obtained from this questionnaire is based on likert-scale designed statements, with options (1) fully disagree to (5) fully agree, in the questionnaire that measured the students’ perceptions of the success of the use of instagram in tertiary education. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1 20 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 20-29 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.2 the research team circulated the questionnaire during a face-to-face lecture of the 2019 first-year financial accounting students. the sample of students comprised all first-year financial accounting students who attended their respective lectures on the day of the questionnaire distribution. this is the sample at whom the instagram account was directed. this sample of students was considered representative of the first-year population, as various students of different faculties are enrolled in this module. the students were given the opportunity to complete the questionnaire before the formal lecture commenced. the questionnaire comprised openand closed-ended questions and the questions were developed from previous studies in the field of accounting on student perceptions by steenkamp, baard and frick (2009). steenkamp et al.’s (2009) research was chosen as the base of the questionnaire as their study was conducted on students within the same faculty at the same university and was adapted to the understanding of the students questioned and for the use of snss. to address the objectives set by this study, the results of the questionnaire completed by the students, both those following the instagram account and those not following the instagram account, were analysed. the analysis of the exploratory research performed using the openended questions was conducted to determine the perceptions of the future possible uses of instagram and other snss in tertiary education. the perceptions of students currently following the instagram account were analysed to determine the success of the current application of instagram in tertiary education as a blended learning tool. to determine whether the perceptions of the students were positive or negative towards the use of instagram, a comparative analysis was performed by using parametric statistic techniques that are deemed as appropriate for likert-scale data (norman, 2010). the students who did not follow the account could not be seen as a comparative group as they had no exposure to the use of instagram in tertiary education. a one-sample t-test comparison was therefore conducted on each question, using a mean value score of 3 as the neutral point (the comparative group). this was done to indicate a significant positive or negative perception. two negative statements included in the questionnaire were reverse coded to obtain comparative results used in the t-test performed on latent variables. a 95% confidence level was used and all items with p-values <0.05 were deemed statistically significant; this is indicated in bold in the tables presented. the latent variables were determined by the research team by allocating statements to either one of the four different categories: firstly, the enhancement of students’ participation in the module; secondly, the enhancement of learning; and thirdly, the administrative function of the sns. lastly, the students’ overall perception of instagram within tertiary education was measured. in order to test the reliability of the results obtained from the questions as well as the accuracy of the measurement of the latent variables, a robustness test calculating the cronbach’s alpha levels were performed. a further one-sample t-test comparison was conducted on the latent variables to determine the significance of the positive or negative perceptions held by the students. 4. findings in the findings, the descriptive analysis is reported after which the statistical analyses and discussion follows. 4.1 descriptive analysis valid and complete questionnaires were obtained from 631 respondents, which represent 11.67% of the potential population of 5 405 first-year stellenbosch university students. the percentage coverage of the population is deemed statistically representative of the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1 21 swanepoel & bruwer educating the always-on generation in an instant(gram) #blendedlearning 2020 38(1): 21-29 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.2 total first-year student population. based on the data obtained from the questionnaire, the most popular sns used by first-year university students is instagram, with 87.96% (n=555) of students using it, followed by facebook with 59.59% (n=376) of the population. linkedin and twitter were at 5.2% (n=33) and 16.96% (n=107) respectively, while 12.52% (n=79) of the students indicated the use of other snss. from the study performed, it is suggested that the previously stated teenagers who abandoned facebook and moved to instagram are now finding themselves in tertiary education, which makes instagram a suitable platform to reach students. the results of the first-year group indicated that 69.73% (n=440) of the students perceived that academic modules could make effective use of instagram within tertiary education. this indicates that an sns such as instagram shares the same perception of usability within tertiary education as others such as facebook and instagram (irwin et al., 2012). further discussions regarding these different uses are presented in the statistical analysis. the counter-group comprised 24.09% (n=152) of the respondents who indicated that academic modules cannot use instagram effectively within tertiary education and 6.18% (n=39) of the respondents withheld an opinion. the perceptions of students who indicated that instagram could be used in tertiary education were further analysed with regard to the driving force behind snss, with 19.65% (n=124) preferring lecturers to be the driving force behind the use of snss for academic purposes, while 15.06% (n=95) preferred students to be the driving force. most of the students, 53.88% (n=340), preferred lecturers and students to be the driving forces. in this study, the lecturers were the driving force behind the implementation of the sns; therefore, further research could be conducted on the combination of students and lecturers as the driving force, which might increase the overall positive perception of the use of instagram in tertiary education. the allocation of latent variables to the statements posed to the group who followed the instagram account is indicated in table 1. the results of the reliability and accuracy test are tabled as well. all the cronbach’s alpha levels, with the exception of instagram as an administrative tool, were consistently higher than .70 and therefore the scale of measurement was considered acceptably reliable for these items (george & mallery, 2016). in order to assess whether the scale of measurement for instagram as an administrative tool was considered reliable, the average inter-item correlations were calculated as 0.481, which is between 0.15 and 0.50 and therefore considered reliable (clark & watson, 1995). all the results of the perceptions of the first-year students were therefore analysed further. 4.2 statistical analysis in order to analyse the perceptions of first-year students on the different statements and latent variables, a t-test statistical analysis was performed. the analysis was performed per statement and per latent variable. the variables identified by the research team were participation, educational tool, administrative tool and overall perception. 4.2.1 participation: perception of instagram as an out-of-class active participation blended learning instrument the first four questions related to instagram being used as a blended learning tool to increase outside-of-class participation in the module. in table 2, the results suggest that students were motivated to think about the module outside of lecture time. a mean of 3.582 was observed, significantly higher (p<0.05) than the neutral point of 3, which suggests that instagram creates http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1 22 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 22-29 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.2 an always-on learner. the results of this study are in line with previous studies for other snss such as twitter and facebook as found by kassen-noor (2012). table 1: questionnaire items and reliability scores latent variable statements reliability & accuracy perception of instagram as an out-of-class active participation blended learning instrument the funrek188 instagram account made me more eager to participate in the module. cronbach’s alpha = 0.769 following the funrek188 instagram account motivated me to think about the module outside of lecture time. the use of the funrek188 instagram account made me feel more connected to the module. the use of the funrek188 instagram account made me more connected to my fellow students. perception of instagram as an educational blended learning tool the use of theoretical visual images on the funrek188 instagram account made me understand difficult topics better. cronbach’s alpha = 0.779 the use of comical visual images with detailed descriptions on the funrek188 instagram account made me understand difficult topics better. the “ask me a question” function on the funrek188 instagram account enhanced communication between me as a student and the lecturers. the “ask me a question” function on the funrek188 instagram account was more accessible than other means of contact, such as e-mail. perception of instagram as an administrative tool the use of the funrek188 instagram account was more convenient than the use of sunlearn. cronbach’s alpha = 0.633 the funrek188 instagram account kept me administratively informed of module administration. overall perception of instagram and social media within tertiary education following the funrek188 instagram account enhanced my overall experience of the module. cronbach’s alpha = 0.727 i would prefer that academic activities are not conducted on social media platforms. (reverse coded.) the funrek188 instagram account was not worthwhile following. (reverse coded.) table 2: one-sample statistic results statements n mean std. deviation std. error mean p-value the funrek188 instagram account made me more eager to participate in the module. 155 3.032 1.016 0.082 0.693 following the funrek188 instagram account motivated me to think about the module outside of lecture time. 158 3.582 1.078 0.086 0.000 the use of the funrek188 instagram account made me feel more connected to the module. 157 3.299 1.016 0.081 0.000 the use of the funrek188 instagram account made me more connected to my fellow students. 154 2.416 1.130 0.091 0.000 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1 23 swanepoel & bruwer educating the always-on generation in an instant(gram) #blendedlearning 2020 38(1): 23-29 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.2 the students perceived the instagram account as not making them feel more connected to fellow students, which could be attributed to the lecturers being the driving force of the instagram account in this research study. most of the students preferred that lecturers and students be the driving force behind snss. the results above, except for students feeling more connected to one another, are more than the neutral point of 3, with two of the three statements being significantly above the neutral point (p<0.05). the combined results of the perception of instagram as a participation tool are indicated in table 3. the results in table 3 indicate two test results for the same latent variable, namely participation. the second test excluded the following question: “the use of the funrek188 instagram account made me more connected to my fellow students”. since the lecturers were the driving force behind the instagram account, it is suggested that this could affect the perception of students of feeling more connected to one another. in future studies, students could form part of the driving force of the instagram account and the question can be considered. table 3: one-sample t-test latent variable test value = 3 t df p-value instagram used as a blended learning tool in order to increase participation by students. 1.367 158 0.174 instagram used as a blended learning tool in order to increase participation by students (excluding “the use of the funrek188 instagram account made me more connected to my fellow students”). 4.406 157 0.000 as expected, the attitude towards instagram used as a tool to increase participation was not well accepted (t=1.376, p>0.05), since the students did not perceive being more connected to their peers, as stated above. when performing the t-test on the latent variable after removing the question, the results suggest that instagram increases participation by students (t=4.406, p<.05). 4.2.2 educational tool: perception of instagram as an educational blended learning tool instagram has multiple functions that can be used as educational tools. the critical concepts that were discussed in face-to-face lectures were either summarised in visual images that were presented with detailed descriptions below the image or using a visual image that is theoretical in nature and therefore not needing a detailed description. at the end of each chapter lectured, summaries of the important concepts were shared with the students on instagram. a further function was used, called the “ask me a question” function, where questions could be asked to the lecturers on instagram. each of these functions was included in the questionnaire in different questions, as seen in table 4. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1 24 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 24-29 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.2 table 4: one-sample statistic results statements n mean std. deviation std. error mean p-value the use of comical visual images with detailed descriptions on the funrek188 instagram account made me understand difficult topics better. 158 3.652 1.105 0.088 0.000 the use of theoretical visual images on the funrek188 instagram account made me understand difficult topics better. 158 3.608 0.976 0.078 0.000 the “ask me a question” function on the funrek188 instagram account enhanced communication between me as a student and the lecturers. 136 3.368 1.228 0.105 0.001 the “ask me a question” function on the funrek188 instagram account was more accessible than other means of contact, such as e-mail. 129 3.411 1.229 0.108 0.000 the students found the use of comical visual images with detailed descriptions, as well as the use of theoretical visual images, useful to understand difficult topics better. both these questions had a mean significantly above 3 (p<0.05). this perception of students regarding the use of visual aids in teaching enhances the study by levie and lentz (2017). to determine the overall perception of “instagram used as an educational blended learning tool”, a onesample t-test was performed; the results are displayed in table 5. table 5: one-sample t-test latent variable test value = 3 t df p-value instagram used as an educational blended learning tool. 7.200 158 0.000 the students perceived instagram as a significantly effective educational blended learning tool (t=7.2, p<0.05). this was further confirmed by the open-ended questions, since the students indicated that they perceived visual images and summaries presented on instagram as a possible use of instagram in tertiary education. some of the responses from the students were as follows: “explain difficult topics in a fun but useful way.” “help understanding topics in a more relatable way; in class it may be confusing sometimes.” “it should be used regularly to add comedy to the theory; it helps people to remember it.” 4.2.3 administrative tool: perception of instagram as an administrative tool the research team found that students engaged with their snss more often than their e-mail or the electronic course management system. table 6 indicates the statistical results of the questions relating to instagram as an administrative tool. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1 25 swanepoel & bruwer educating the always-on generation in an instant(gram) #blendedlearning 2020 38(1): 25-29 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.2 table 6: one-sample statistic results statements n mean std. deviation std. error mean p-value the use of the funrek188 instagram account was more convenient than the use of sunlearn. 153 2.660 1.28 0.104 0.001 the funrek188 instagram account kept me administratively informed of module administration. 158 3.342 1.033 0.082 0.000 as suggested by the results, instagram kept the students administratively informed, with a mean of 3.342, which is significantly (p=0.000) greater than 3. it was indicated, however, that it was not perceived to be more convenient than sunlearn (mean=2.660), the electronic course management system used by stellenbosch university. the researchers therefore suggest that although the students perceived that the instagram account aided them with the module’s administration, it should not replace the current electronic course management system but rather complement it. table 7 displays the results of the one-sample t-test on the latent variable “instagram used as an administrative tool”. table 7: one-sample t-test latent variable test value = 3 t df p-value instagram used as an administrative tool. 0.040 158 0.968 the results indicate that the perception of the students of instagram being used as an administrative tool was neutral (t=0.040, p>.05). the students indicated that they would prefer administration notifications to be shared on instagram, for example their test dates, test venues and reminders of upcoming deadlines. the researchers suggest that instagram might be a platform to reach students faster. 4.2.4 overall perception of instagram and social media within tertiary education the last three questions of the questionnaire addressed the students’ overall perception of the use of instagram and snss within tertiary education. the one-sample t-test’s results on the overall perception of students of instagram and snss are displayed in table 8. table 8: one-sample t-test statements n mean std. deviation std. error mean p-value following the funrek188 instagram account enhanced my overall experience of the module. 157 3.300 1.089 0.087 0.001 i would prefer that academic activities are not conducted on social media platforms. (reverse coded.) 150 3.887 1.190 0.097 0.000 the funrek188 instagram account was not worthwhile following. (reverse coded.) 153 4.072 1.007 0.081 0.000 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1 26 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 26-29 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.2 the first question, stated positively, indicated that the students perceived the overall experience of the instagram account as significantly positive (mean = 3.3, p=0.001). the students’ perception was significantly positive (p=0.000) regarding the instagram account, with a mean of 4.072 (reverse coded). in this sample of 631 respondents, only 20 students indicated in the open-ended questions that instagram should be kept out of academic modules. therefore, following the positive response to the above questions that indicated that students had a positive experience, as well as the small amount of students that indicated that instagram should not be used, the results therefore suggest that instagram as an snss can be used in tertiary education. the one-sample t-test on the final latent variable, the overall perception of the use of instagram in a blended learning environment, further confirmed this in the results displayed in table 9. table 9: one-sample t-test latent variable test value = 3 t df p-value overall perception of the use of instagram in a blended learning environment. 9.843 163 0.000 the results address the objective that instagram can be used as a blended learning educational and administrative tool in tertiary education. and as a student acknowledged, the benefit of the instagram account by directing to the following words: “if i don’t understand the visual image presented on the instagram page, i discuss it with my friends to find out if i missed something in class.” the results of the one-sample t-test on the overall perception indicated that the use of instagram in a blended learning environment is significantly positive (t=9.843, p<0.05). this overall perception is based on the results of the students who followed the account. the limitations to this study were that no perceptions of the successful implementation of instagram were available for students who did not follow the instagram account. this was addressed by the question in the descriptive analysis that indicated that 69.73% of the students perceived that academic modules could use instagram effectively within tertiary education. 5. conclusion the findings of this exploratory study suggest that instagram can be used in various aspects of tertiary education. a positive perspective of the successful implementation as a blended learning educational and administrative tool was observed. as a participation tool, the students perceived that the instagram account motivated them to think about the module outside of lectures. instagram as a blended learning educational tool indicated successful use through visual images that enhanced learning to aid students in their understanding of difficult concepts. from the administrative perspective, the students indicated that instagram should complement the current electronic module management system and should not replace it. instagram could therefore provide lecturers with an additional line of communication to engage with students and to create a space of continuous, always-on learning. a very limited number of students held the negative perception towards instagram indicating that instagram should not be used in tertiary education in order to keep social and academic activities separate. the overall perception of the students of the use of instagram and snss in tertiary education was significantly positive following the perceived successful implementation of instagram in http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1 27 swanepoel & bruwer educating the always-on generation in an instant(gram) #blendedlearning 2020 38(1): 27-29 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.2 a first-year accounting module. in this study, the driving force behind the instagram account was the lecturers. the success of instagram in tertiary education could be enhanced further by engaging students and lecturers as the driving force behind the instagram account. the instagram functions applied in tertiary education could be expanded beyond the specific functions applied by the research team. this could lead to a higher perceived level of successful implementation. the focus functions implemented by the research team were on the use of visual images, the “ask me a question” function on instagram, and the use of polls to identify difficult concepts. the instagram account was limited to use by first-year students; further research studies could therefore be performed on the effect of instagram on other undergraduate levels, as well as on a postgraduate level. instagram is one of the current snss; however, due to the constant change in the technological milieu and the anticipated fourth industrial revolution, future research can be conducted on new functions developed within instagram as an sns or other snss that are 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https://doi.org/10.1177/0273475311410851 http://business.time.com/2014/01/15/more https://doi.org/10.2308/iace.2008.23.3.405 https://doi.org/10.2308/iace.2008.23.3.405 https://doi.org/10.1086/319618 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2008.12.010 http://usir.salford.ac.uk/27428 http://usir.salford.ac.uk/27428 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2010.03.002 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2010.03.002 https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v9i8.3805 https://doi.org/10.3991/ijet.v9i8.3805 https://doi.org/10.1080/10291954.2009.11435142 https://doi.org/10.1080/10291954.2009.11435142 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2012.12.032 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2012.12.032 _goback rudi jeanne 255 research article 2020 38(2): 255-271 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) south african parents’ understanding of inclusion and exclusion in education in primary schools abstract inclusive education has featured strongly in the south african education landscape since it was first incorporated into policy in 2001. although parents are key stakeholders in the successful implementation of inclusive education, there has not been much research exploring parents’ understanding within this space. therefore, this study aimed to explore parents’ understanding of inclusion and exclusion in education from seven primary schools in the johannesburg area. this paper is based on the qualitative data drawn from a larger mixed methods study where 559 written responses exploring parents of primary school learners’ understanding were analysed and 13 semi-structured interviews were conducted. thematic analysis was used to analyse the results. four core themes were identified, namely, inclusion/ exclusion criteria, levels of inclusion and exclusion, effects of exclusion and the effects of inclusion. sub-themes of interpersonal and extra-personal characteristics emerged for the theme of inclusion/exclusion criteria, while further analysis of levels of inclusion/exclusion resulted in the sub-themes of formal and epistemological access. it was clear that parents’ understanding of inclusion and exclusion was grounded more in the practices of inclusion/exclusion as opposed to a more abstract, theoretical understanding. these results are discussed within the context of the sasa and education white paper 6 policy within south africa, as well as literature around the types of educational access. keywords: parents, inclusion, exclusion, education, south africa, barriers to learning 1. introduction parental participation in the schooling of learners with and without barriers to learning is an important factor in the successful implementation of inclusion (de boer, pijl & minnaert, 2010; lui et al., 2015). this is recognised locally and internationally, with new legislation calling for the enhancement of parental involvement (srivastava, de boer & pijl, 2015). involvement empowers parents and provides a sense of autonomy as it allows parents to take responsibility for decisions regarding the educational placement of their author: mrs a.c. kern1 affiliation: 1university of the witwatersrand doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38. i2.17 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(2): 255-271 published: 04 december 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0292-7905 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 2562020 38(2): 256-271 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) children. additionally, parental attitudes towards inclusion influence attitudes and behaviours of children (de boer et al., 2010; leyser & kirk, 2011). the 2020 global education monitoring report on exclusion (gemr) (2018) also argues that communities, of which parents are a part, can prevent children from accessing education based on their own beliefs and attitudes towards inclusion. given the key role that parents have to play in the implementation of inclusion, research has focused on their attitudes towards inclusion (de boer & munde, 2015). however, what is not understood is whether parents, in fact, understand what inclusion and exclusion means. an understanding of this is important since attitudes are with reference to “objects of thought” or “referents” (augoustinos & walker, 1995: 13). in this instance, the referent is inclusion. research into parental attitudes towards inclusion overlooks parents’ understanding of what inclusion is and thus assesses their attitude towards this referent under specific conditions. these conditions include the inclusion of children with various disabilities and disorders, such as physical and intellectual disabilities and autism (bossink, van der putten & vlaskamp, 2017; de boer & munde, 2015; sproston, sedgewick & crane, 2017), to name a few. vlachou, karadimou and koutsogeorgou (2016) found that more than 50% of their participants did not know what school inclusion meant. literature has highlighted that inclusion has numerous interpretations (brantlinger, 2003), often contextually based, and thus research into the attitudes of parents towards inclusion may yield results of an attitude towards different referents based on the parents’ interpretation and understanding. what does emerge in the literature is parents’ attitude towards “who” is being included and “what” they are being included in (arjmandnia, kakabaraee & kermanshah, 2011). not knowing what parents understand by inclusion could result in a misalignment in proposed interventions and support offered. as demonstrated in figure 1 below, this study aims to evaluate what parents understand by inclusion and exclusion with the aim of establishing how this may influence their level of support for, and role in the implementation of inclusion in the south african context. this aim is premised on the knowledge that understanding impacts attitude and attitude determines behaviour. figure 1: conceptual framework as outlined in figure 1 above, parents hold an understanding of the referents of inclusion and exclusion. this means that they assign meaning to the terms inclusion and exclusion. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 2572020 38(2): 257-271 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 kern south african parents’ understanding of inclusion and exclusion this meaning includes their belief of who is to be included/excluded and what they are to be included/excluded from. parents’ understanding of the referents influences their attitude towards inclusion and exclusion. the attitude that is formed then results in specific actions and behaviours (cross, 2005; schwarz & bohner, 2001). regarding this study, the parents’ understanding of inclusion and exclusion informs their attitude towards such, which in turn determines the level of support that they give to inclusion and the role that they are willing to take in the implementation thereof. as such, investigating what parents understand by the terms inclusion and exclusion is an important step in facilitating attitude change and support of inclusion. in south africa, the move to inclusion was heralded by the education white paper 6: special needs education, building an inclusive education and training system (doe, 2001). this document proposed a move away from the notion of “special needs education” and the adoption of the idea of “barriers to learning”. in this way, recognition and respect for diversity are encouraged. the policy explains that barriers to learning can result from intrinsic medical conditions, such as disability and illness, as well as from extrinsic factors, such as poverty, language, culture and socio-economic status. in addition, the education white paper 6 (doe, 2001) and the salamanca statement (unesco, 1994) note that inclusion is not merely about physical presence in a specific environment, but should focus on access, acceptance and participation in education (engelbrecht, nel, smit & van deventer, 2016). given that inclusion is contextually specific, short definitions of exclusion and inclusion are provided followed by a brief overview of formal and epistemological access and an exploration of studies that focus on the understanding of parents’ perceptions of inclusion. 2. definition of exclusion exclusion, similar to inclusion, can be understood from different perspectives. one such perspective is that the exclusion of certain individuals emanates from societal biases regarding difference. slee (2011) argues that the exclusion of individuals emanates from the way society differentiates between people. children are excluded from education because of the broadly espoused view of their particular barrier to learning. thus, exclusion results from a distinct set of decisions that are made around their differences (slee, 2011) such as race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, migrants and poverty that exclude these groups of individuals from particular contexts and societies. an alternative perspective of exclusion is presented by silver (1994) who defines exclusion within three paradigms: solidarity, specialisation and monopoly. according to these paradigms, exclusion is attributed to different causes and associated with varying philosophies. within the paradigm of solidarity, exclusion is attributed to the breakdown of the bond between society and the individual (silver, 1994). concerning specialisation, exclusion is the consequence of “social differentiation resulting in specializations within the various spheres of life” (silver, 1994:542). within the third paradigm, monopoly, exclusion arises from the interplay between “class, status and political power” (silver, 1994:543). this last paradigm creates “social closure” in which individuals are kept out of something, and thus promotes inequality (silver, 1994:543). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 2582020 38(2): 258-271 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) 3. definition of inclusion while the concept of inclusion is often used in the educational environment, it is not easily defined and there are many interpretations and definitions on offer. two distinctions are made between the definitions of inclusion: a narrow definition and a broad one. the distinction between the two definitions refers to “who” needs to be considered for inclusion. in terms of the narrow definition, inclusion only occurs for those individuals whose functioning has been impaired due to cognitive and psychiatric difficulties. however, a broad definition addresses the manner in which all individuals can be included meaningfully in education and addresses such concepts as race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, economic status and hiv status, to mention a few (ainscow & sandill, 2010), i.e. any identity marker that would render an individual vulnerable to marginalisation and exclusion. according to the un committee on the rights of persons with disabilities (crpd), inclusion involves a process of systemic reform embodying changes and modifications in content, teaching methods, approaches, structures and strategies in education to overcome barriers (crpd, 2016:4). the 2020 global education monitoring report on inclusion (gemr, 2018:4) however notes that inclusive education is a “statement of political aspiration, an essential ingredient to the creation of inclusive societies”, while ainscow, booth and dyson’s (2006) principled approach to inclusion foregrounds the guiding principles of “equity, participation, community and respect for diversity” (messiou, 2017:147). in south africa however, the education white paper 6 states that it hopes that inclusive education would provide “a cornerstone of an integrated and caring society” (doe, 2001:10). while these explanations of inclusion vary, they all meet the requisites of a broad definition of inclusion and converge on the element of society with the education white paper 6 and the gemr referring to inclusive education having a positive influence on the society. however, the variety in explanations leaves room for parents to develop their own understanding of inclusion, which may well diverge from the intended use. the gemr (2018:6, 7), goes on to refer to the dimensions of inclusion; physical, social, psychological and systematic inclusion, while the elements of inclusion refer to [n]ational legal frameworks and policies, governance and finance, curricula and learning materials, teachers, school leaders, and education support personnel, schools, and finally communities, parents and students. 4. formal and epistemological access within the education sphere, the first step to inclusion speaks to access to institutions afforded to individuals. consequently, an exploration of parents’ understanding of inclusion, necessitates a discussion of what is meant by access. the consortium for research in educational access, transitions and equity (create) refers to access to education as admission, on age progression, attendance and achievement of curricular norms, access to post-primary education and equality in learning opportunities (lewin, 2007). morrow however, argues that access to education occurs across two levels: formal access to an institution in terms of being admitted or enrolled, while epistemological access refers to “the goods distributed by the institution” (2007:37). the consideration of formal and epistemological access is embodied in the principled approach to inclusion where “presence, participation and achievement” (messiou, 2017:147) for all children is the ultimate outcome. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 2592020 38(2): 259-271 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 kern south african parents’ understanding of inclusion and exclusion in south africa, formal access to schools is espoused in various policies governing education within schools (doe, 2001; republic of south africa, 1996a, 1996b), however, in practice, access to schools is not guaranteed. learners may be denied formal access to schools based on the language of instruction, proximity to home and ability to pay school fees. epistemological access is also denied to as many as 50% of south african children (du plooy & zilindile, 2014). of these children only 45% who enter the system in grade 1, exit the system in grade 12 (roberts, 2019). furthermore, the progress in international reading literacy study (howie et al., 2017) demonstrated that 78% of grade 4 learners who participated in the study are functionally illiterate (howie et al., 2017). this means that, even though children are in school (formal access), they may not be able to access what is “at the heart of basic education”, that is, “learning to read and write” (pendlebury, 2009:25). thus, while children are included in schools, they are excluded from the teaching and learning that takes place in these environments. 5. parents’ understanding of inclusion while this study’s focus is on parents’ understanding of inclusion and exclusion, there is a dearth of literature in this regard. instead, literature presents findings regarding parents’ perceptions of inclusion, which has been included here. a review of the literature found that parents generally hold positive perceptions towards having children with special education needs in mainstream classrooms (de boer et al., 2010; elzein, 2009; peck, staub, gallucci & swartz, 2004). their perceptions are impacted by, firstly, socio-economic status that was found to be a determinant of parental perceptions towards inclusion in south africa (de boer et al., 2010). specifically, parents with high to average socio-economic status held significantly more favourable perceptions towards inclusion than parents with a low socio-economic status. in south africa, this is particularly relevant because of the large discrepancies in the economic status of its citizens. secondly, another influencing factor is that of parental education level. studies have found that parents with only a high school education are less favourable towards the inclusion of learners with barriers to learning than parents who have continued their education beyond grade 12 (leyser & kirk, 2011; tafa & manolitsis, 2003). given south africa’s history, this finding is important as many individuals did not have access to quality education during the apartheid era and did not complete their formal schooling (lu & treiman, 2011; thomas, 1996). based on the literature reviewed, parents identify positive outcomes for their children experiencing barriers to learning (elzein, 2009; lui et al., 2015; peck et al., 2004). parents placed these benefits in three categories, which are “general benefits for development, social/behavioural benefits for development and cognitive/language benefits” (seery, davis & johnson, 2000:274). parents find that, as a result of inclusion, children develop increased self-concepts, improved social and emotional development and an acceptance of individual differences (peck et al., 2004; duhaney & salend, 2000). despite the predominantly positive outlook on inclusion, parents also harbour concerns. the allocation of teacher time was a concern for some parents who felt that their children without barriers to learning will receive less attention than learners with barriers and that this will compromise their children’s academic development (lui et al., 2015; narumanchi & bhargava, 2011). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 2602020 38(2): 260-271 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) on the criteria parents use when thinking about inclusion, peck et al. (2004) found that parents were more open to having a child with a physical disability included in the class but were less open to having children with behavioural difficulties in the class. 6. parental participation internationally, parental participation in both the decision-making about their children and their education is defined in reform acts and regulations (leyser & kirk, 2004). south african legislative policies, such as the south african schools act (doe, 1996b) and the education white paper 6 (doe, 2001), espouse parents’ rights to educational placements of their choice for their children as parents are considered to be integral partners in developing a more inclusive system, where decision-making and the responsibilities for outcomes are shared (swart et al., 2004: 81). from the research outlined above, it is clear that inclusion is a multi-faceted concept that is the most effective means of “combating discriminatory attitudes, creating welcoming communities, building an inclusive society and achieving education for all” (unesco, 1994:ix). in south africa, this is particularly pertinent given the country’s history as it is viewed as a means of addressing the inequalities of the past. even though parents are integral to the success of inclusion, the literature has only focused on their attitude towards inclusion without a clear indication of what parents understand by inclusion. therefore, the research question guiding this paper is to explore parents’ understanding of inclusion and exclusion with the aim of indicating how this understanding may influence their role in its implementation. 7. methods 7.1 research design the current paper is part of a larger study that investigated the attitude of sgb members and non-sgb members towards inclusion. the study employed a mixed method explanatory design, as the quantitative data was collected prior to conducting the interviews (cresswell, 2012). the quantitative results were used in conjunction with literature to develop the interview questions in the qualitative phase of the study (barnes, 2012). the focus of this paper was on parents’ understanding of inclusion and exclusion. to this end, the qualitative data collected from the surveys and the interview data was analysed. 7.2 sample for the quantitative phase, a non-probability sample of 861 parents of learners from four non-fee-paying schools and three fee-paying schools in the johannesburg area completed questionnaires, of which 559 completed the open-ended questions used for analysis in this article. the sample was primarily female (n=436, 78%) and the majority identified as black (n=377, 67.4%). participants’ level of education ranged from some education (n=87, 15.6%) to doctoral degree (n=1, 0.2%), with the highest frequency of parents having obtained a matric certificate (n=167, 29.9%). the age of the parents ranged between 19 years and 77 years with a mean age of 34.1 years (sd=8.84). for the qualitative phase, a non-probability, convenience sample of 12 females and one male agreed to be interviewed. ten of these participants identified as black, while three identified as coloured. their education level ranged from some high school education to a bachelor’s degree, while their ages ranged from 28 years to 67 years. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 2612020 38(2): 261-271 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 kern south african parents’ understanding of inclusion and exclusion table 1: demographic information demographic frequency (n) percentage (%) gender male 118 21% female 436 78% race black 377 67.4% coloured 156 27.9% white 4 0.7% indian 2 0.4% 7.3 instruments questionnaires and semi-structured interviews were used to collect data. the questionnaire consisted of a number of sections that assessed parents’ perception of inclusion and exclusion. for this paper only the first two sections were pertinent. the first section was a biographical section (including age, gender, race, highest level of education, number of children and grade that children are currently completing). the second section of the questionnaire comprised open-ended questions that asked respondents about their understanding of inclusion and exclusion in education in general and gave them the opportunity to make any additional comments. the questionnaire was piloted on 19 parents resulting in edits being made to the presentation of the questions and the wording of a few of the questions. the semi-structured interview schedule comprised 10 questions. these questions allowed parents the opportunity to express their understanding of inclusion and exclusion in more depth as well as discuss the exclusionary and inclusionary criteria used within their child/ ren’s specific school. parents also expressed their views on what “types” of children they would prefer to have in a classroom with their child. the interview schedule was piloted on two parents. 7.4 data collection and analysis ethics clearance was obtained from the human research ethics committee at the university of the witwatersrand (protocol no. h16/08/14) and permission to approach the schools was obtained from the gauteng department of education. of the twelve school principals who were approached, seven gave permission to access the parent sample. the questionnaires were distributed via the school to the parents. based on the questionnaire responses, parents who indicated a willingness to be interviewed were contacted and arrangements were made to conduct the interview at a time and place convenient for them. the interviews were audiorecorded and transcribed verbatim for analysis. the responses to the open-ended questions in the questionnaire and the interview transcriptions were analysed using thematic analysis, as described by braun and clark (2006). codes were generated and potential themes identified. descriptive statistics, particularly frequencies and percentages, were used to analyse the demographic data as well as the occurrence of themes. 8. findings and discussion four themes emerged from the thematic analysis of the open-ended questions in the questionnaire and the interview transcripts. these were inclusion/exclusion criteria, levels of inclusion and exclusion, the effects of exclusion and the effects of inclusion. these themes http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 2622020 38(2): 262-271 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) elicited several sub-themes, as is shown in table 2 below. interviewees are referred to using numerals, e.g. participant 1, participant 2, etc. data from the questionnaire responses is referenced using letters and numbers to indicate the different schools (letters) and the participant (numbers), e.g. aa1:1. table 2: themes theme sub-theme results from questionnaires results from interviews n n inclusion/exclusion criteria interpersonal characteristics 144 10 extra-personal characteristics 81 13 levels of inclusion/exclusion formal access 106 12 epistemological access 38 9 effect of exclusion 37 6 effect of inclusion 22 9 8.1 inclusion/exclusion criteria the data gathered and analysed indicated that parents thought about inclusion and exclusion in education in terms of individual characteristics. this implies that parents thought about interpersonal and extra-personal characteristics that would result in children being included and excluded. interpersonal characteristics refer to characteristics that are innate to the child and include disabilities, learning abilities and those with behavioural difficulties, while extrapersonal characteristics refer to characteristics that are external to the child and include home language and socio-economic status. parents predominantly referenced physical access being granted or withheld, linking to morrow’s (2007) formal access. interpersonal characteristics parents responses indicated that they consider interpersonal characteristics when thinking about inclusion and exclusion. interpersonal characteristics can be understood as those characteristics that are intrinsic to an individual. inclusion and exclusion, for these parents, is thus aligned to the medical model, where deficits are seen to result from the individual. this understanding contrasts with policy documents that view barriers as emerging from the environment. from the data sources, interpersonal characteristics emerged as the most prominent criterion for inclusion with many parents (interviewee, n=10; questionnaires, n=144). thus, most parents considered factors that were intrinsic to children, such as disability, learning ability and behavioural difficulties: ok, firstly we have disability right. this highly determines whether learners can access the school, for example, if a child is in a wheelchair, there is no way he/she can go around in a school with no ramps and elevators to allow him to move around so the school can decide no, that the child should not be admitted (participant 3). we also have so-called slow learners, which we say they are slow in comparison to other learners, which are the majority in the school. these learners require special attention at all times, leading to a time-consuming process … then in such a case … we need them to be removed from schools that cannot teach them fully for their safety and convenience of other students (participant 3). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 2632020 38(2): 263-271 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 kern south african parents’ understanding of inclusion and exclusion with reference to the data above, parental thinking around interpersonal characteristics coincides with slee’s (2011) understanding of exclusion that results, not necessarily from the individual, but from decisions that are taken around an individual’s difference. this means that parents believe that barriers to learning can emanate from the individual (doe, 2001). if an understanding does not look at how the education system further constrains those with intrinsic barriers, then learners with factors, such as disability, learning ability and behavioural difficulties, will continue to experience stigma and discrimination. extra-personal characteristics analysis of the data indicates that parents consider extra-personal factors, such as language and socio-economic status (ses), as criteria for inclusion and exclusion (interviewee, n=13; questionnaires, n=81) that are outside of the child’s control. thinking around extra-personal characteristics is strongly related to formal access for children with hints made towards epistemological access. the finding regarding the impact of ses on inclusion is echoed by meny-gilbert and russell (2012) who found that ses impacts formal access. the focus on formal access only captures part of what inclusion means and ignores the learning experiences, participation and environment once formal access is gained (crpd, 2016; messiou, 2017). participants noted that, schools around our area are divided into tribes and languages (participant 12). children’s home languages are the reason children are not well integrated in their learning environments (participant aa4:78). abilities plays a crucial role too, we have parents who cannot afford to pay fees for their children (participant 10). 8.2 spaces of inclusion and exclusion it emerged that parents identified four “spaces” that children are given access to namely, schools, classrooms, activities and teaching and learning. these “spaces” reflect morrow’s (2007) notion of formal and epistemological access. thus, while parents reference the different spaces what is communicated is a notion of admission into spaces and being able to engage meaningfully with the curriculum. however, most parents referred to formal access, through school and class admission, in contrast to epistemological access, through activities and teaching and learning. this contrast reflects that parents are more concerned about the physical admission into school and class, compared to what happens when a child is in those spaces. this may lead to children being internally excluded. distinguishing between these various spaces of inclusion and exclusion was found in 12 interview responses and 136 questionnaire responses. formal access despite the fact that inclusion is about more than mere placement (runswick-cole, 2008), formal access, through enrolment at school and admission into classrooms, was noted by 12 interviewees and reflected in 106 questionnaire responses. admission to school is noted in the following excerpts: my understanding of exclusion, it means not allowing a child to enter a school (participant 10). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 2642020 38(2): 264-271 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) when your child is excluded from school, when educators can’t help them (participant cc3:80). not allowing a child to be enrolled in a school (participant 11). these reflect being enrolled in the school as an element of inclusion. parents identified the type of school that children would have access to by stating: all students attend … their neighbourhood school (participant cc3:156). inclusion involves admitting all children into class (participant 4). all learners should be accommodated into mainstream classrooms (participant cc3:212). these excerpts prove that parents differentiate between public/private and mainstream/ special schools, along with regular and special classes. the type of access referred to by the parents correlates with the first dimension of inclusion identified in the gemr (2018), that of physical inclusion. this understanding of inclusion does not include the other dimensions, which imply a shallow understanding of inclusion. epistemological access for some parents, notions of inclusion and exclusion moved beyond mere presence within a school or classroom to include an understanding that inclusion implies that children develop their knowledge and understanding of content within the spaces that they have been allowed to access. this type of access, epistemological access, was noted by nine interviewees and in 38 questionnaire responses: inclusion takes into account the classroom activities whereby, as a teacher, you are able to accommodate even the weakest learners in the classroom (participant 4). thus, parents are able to identify that a mere presence in the classroom does not automatically result in teaching and learning but that, in fact, children should be “integrated in their learning” (participant aa4:78) and that exclusion is being deprived from certain learning areas especially if the child is disabled or suffers from some sort of impairments (participant cc3:61). taking everyone into consideration when you teach children. here we talking about being able to reach all the learners in a meaningful manner that ensures they understand the content [that] you, as a teacher, is delivering to them. so i would say a school that is serious about inclusion … includes all children in the learning process (participant 15). given that learning does not only occur within the classroom, parents also considered the aspect of being included in school activities and believed that exclusion is when “children do not take part in any of the activities in school” (participant cc3: 39). one such activity could be school outings where children are left out of opportunities to learn because they cannot afford the ticket to go to the trip with their peers (participant 13). the idea of being excluded from learning because of finances is captured in the final dimension of inclusion as per the gemr (2018), systematic inclusion. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 2652020 38(2): 265-271 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 kern south african parents’ understanding of inclusion and exclusion it is clear from the aforementioned that parents think about inclusion not only in terms of physical access but also in terms of gaining an understanding of the content being taught. however, their understanding does not seem to include the dimension of social and psychological inclusion (gemr, 2018). furthermore, many more parents referenced formal access rather than epistemological access, indicating an understanding of inclusion linked to placement as opposed to participation and achievement. a focus on placement may be linked to changes that occurred in the school application system. this change has meant that parents can apply to a school of their choice, be it a neighbourhood school, a school close to their place of work or a school where siblings attend (inside education, 2018). 8.3 effect of exclusion six interview respondents and 37 questionnaire respondents referred to the effect of exclusion in their understanding of inclusion and exclusion. the effect of exclusion was however, understood through the impact it had on children with barriers to learning specifically. the effect of exclusion is a novel finding in this study with previous studies demonstrating parents’ understanding of the positive and negative effects of including learners. this focus on the effects of exclusion may have emerged in this study as a result of the country’s history, which is marred by exclusion. the majority of the respondents in this study would have had firsthand experience of being excluded in one way or another resulting in an awareness of the effect of exclusion. the first aspect identified was the emotional development of the child: now, when we talk about excluding that learner, it also becomes painful to him and challenges his sense of self and worth … because one of them must be removed due to disability. the entire friendships and relationships they had are stripped away from that child’s life (participant 3). the emotional element of exclusion was substantiated by participants, who noted that, exclusion may cause children to lose their self-confidence and to lose concentration (participant aa4:58). when you start to exclude, by not involving the child now in classroom activities, they become aggressive. as a result, the child lacks concentration in class because of feelings of being inadequate and being different (participant 10). thus, parents noted that exclusion has a negative impact on children’s behaviour with the possibility of causing children to be violent towards each other and not help each other with their school work (participant aa3:41). problems of bullying and victimisation of children with special needs and lack of empathy and mutual understanding (participant 4). the child’s attitude towards learning was also thought to be affected by exclusion as it makes learners become lazy about learning because they are afraid that no-one cares about them (participant aa2:77). this demotivation regarding learning could be linked to exclusion understood as a reason for learner attrition, for example: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 2662020 38(2): 266-271 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) exclusion is the reason why kids drop out of school (participant aa2:56). we should end exclusion at schools because it leads to children dropping out of school (participant aa1:34). 8.4 effect of inclusion it is evident that parents’ views on the effects of inclusion for children with and without barriers to learning shift their understanding from formal access to epistemological access. thus, instead of being concerned with where children are included (formal access), parents start to think about what that access may be and the consequent outcomes thereof. parents’ understanding of inclusion (interviews, n=9; questionnaires, n=22) was expressed through the predominantly positive impact inclusion had on the typically developing child as well as those traditionally excluded from learning. for the typically developing child, inclusion prepares them for life after school and international travel, and they are exposed to different cultures which makes it easier for them to adapt (participant 1). being educated in an inclusive environment was thought to assist children in interacting with those with differences, give them the opportunity to learn from others and develop friendships. the pro-social outcome of inclusion is echoed by the parents in the de boer et al. (2010), duhaney and spencer (2000), elzein (2009) and ferguson (2008) studies. these studies noted that children developed increased self-concepts, improved social skills and that an acceptance of individual differences was fostered through their interactions with children with barriers to learning. parents also referred to the possibility of inclusion developing more inclusive societies, which is one of the aims of the education white paper 6 (doe, 2001). despite the positive outcomes of inclusion, the negative impact of inclusive classrooms is reflected by participant 3, who stated, now you can imagine a situation where my child is being held back by another child who was supposed to be in a school for slow learners but now delays the rest of the learners. this may not be fair to other learners … slow learners, i don’t think they should necessary take them to the school because they take time and slow things down a lot, in a way, they waste other kids’ time. this reflects the notion that parents are in favour of inclusive education provided that it does not affect their child negatively. this is supported by a parent in seery et al. (2000) who stated, i don’t think all education should be inclusionary because then someone always is lacking, missing out … i don’t want the needs of the other children jeopardised. positive outcomes for the children who were being included were also identified. a parent noted that, mixing with other children also positively impacts on their self-esteem. the child does not have self-hate that they are in a school for the disabled and they are all disabled around him. the child in an inclusive school can feel that they can associate with other people, even though they have whatever condition they have. mixing can also help them to accept themselves (participant 2). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 2672020 38(2): 267-271 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 kern south african parents’ understanding of inclusion and exclusion not only did inclusion have a positive impact on the children emotionally but parents also felt that it had other benefits: inclusion in education gives one the opportunity to excel in their studies and to be more involved (participant aa1:47). [inclusion] allows them to develop individual strengths and gifts with high and appropriate expectations (participant cc1:4). these findings are consistent with seery et al.’s study (2000), where parents identified the benefits of inclusion in the social/behavioural and cognitive domains for children with barriers to learning along with elzein (2009) who found that parents perceived social and academic improvements in their children. as with children without barriers to learning, a disadvantage to inclusion also emerged for children with barriers: others are afraid to say that they do not understand because other learners catch things much faster. now he may feel stupid (participant 2). while inclusion was identified as having a predominantly positive impact, a negative emotional impact was also identified. this parental concern was found by leyser and kirk (2004) with parents expressing concern about the emotional well-being of the child being included. the identification of positive outcomes by parents for children with and without barriers to learning is supported by nussbaum (2006:205–206) who states that the mainstreaming of children with disabilities can be defended on the grounds of benefit to the mentally disabled child, who will be given more incentives to develop cognitively and who may be less likely to be stigmatised as type apart. it can also be defended because of the benefit it offers to so-called normal children, who learn about humanity and its diversity by being in a classroom with a child who has unusual impairments. they learn to think for themselves, their own weaknesses, and the variety of human capability, in a new way. the positive outcomes of inclusion were also noted by duhaney and salend (2000) who found that parents noted improvements in their children’s self-concepts and acceptance of difference. 9. limitations of the study the biggest limitation of the study was that only parents of learners attending township schools were included. this resulted in not all of the population groups being sufficiently represented, along with the fact that only public schools were included. 10. conclusion the aim of the present study was to explore parents’ understanding of inclusion and exclusion in education and how this may influence their role in its implementation. the results of this investigation show that parents’ understanding of inclusion is represented in four themes, namely, inclusion/exclusion criteria, levels of inclusion and exclusion, effects of exclusion and effects of inclusion. analysis of the data showed that parents’ perceptions of inclusion are http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 2682020 38(2): 268-271 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.17 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) strongly linked to the practice of inclusion as opposed to a deeper theoretical understanding. thus, much of their understanding of whom and where children should be included links strongly to formal access. this lack of understanding from an epistemological stance is problematic since what happens to the children once they are granted formal access goes largely uninterrogated. given that south africa aims to use inclusion in education as a gateway to developing a more inclusive, understanding and tolerant society, a narrow understanding of inclusion will not assist in developing that but may instead further entrench separation and exclusion of those who are perceived as being different. 11. acknowledgements this work was supported by the national institute for human and social sciences (nihss) under grant number sds15/1037 and national research fund (nrf) under grant number nfsg180417321950 i am grateful to mandy wigdorowitz for the statistical support provided. references 2020 global education monitoring report on inclusion (gemr). 2018. available at https:// unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000265329 ainscow, m., booth, t. & dyson, a. 2006. improving schools, developing inclusion. london: 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associated with aggressive behaviour, conflict and war, counterproductive work behaviour, “bad” leadership, and weaker environmental ethics. evidence suggests that individual and collective narcissism is increasing worldwide. correspondingly, individualism is increasing while collectivism is declining. furthermore, leadership attracts narcissists with its allure of power and prestige, who then affect their organisations’ performance, and those higher in narcissism tend to attain higher leadership levels. these trends are increasingly problematic as our world shifts toward greater interdependence. add the challenges of narcissism with its corresponding threats to sustainable institutions to the challenges of sustainable development, “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (united nations world commission on environment and development, 1987: 43), and this identifies an overlooked barrier to education for sustainable development. we developed a testable model to address this barrier. since the determining factors for institutional sustainability are generated largely by activities of specific teams, departments, and task forces, our framework stresses interactions at the group level in education systems. this model presents seven sets of impacts of a narcissistic leader’s actions upon the outcomes for her or his group, generates fourteen propositions, and outlines research strategies. keywords: narcissism, leadership, sustainable development, institutional sustainability 1. introduction the united nations world commission on environment and development (1987: 43) defines sustainability as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.” according to the united nations development programme (undp), “education is one of the most powerful and proven vehicles for sustainable development” (undp, author: dr meg milligan1 dr john mankelwicz1 dr hoon peow see2 affiliation: 1troy university, usa 2berjaya university college, malaysia doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i3.3 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(3): 29-46 published: 30 september 2022 received: 04 march 2022 accepted: 21 april 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 302022 40(3): 30-46 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) n.d.). furthermore, education is one of the key institutions to produce human capital for future needs and sustainability by integrating the principles, values and practices of sustainable development in all aspects of education through teaching and research centres, outreach activities, institutional culture, forming the next-generation professionals, and by implementing sustainable campus practices (žalėnienė & pereira, 2021). the united nations general assembly designated 2005–2014 as the un decade of education for sustainable development (desd), with the united nations educational, scientific, and cultural organization (unesco) as the lead agency. the goals were to change education and improve quality of life globally through sustainable development (tilbury, 2011). nearly a decade later, there remains a need to identify drivers and barriers to reaching those goals, especially in higher education. this paper addresses narcissism – extreme self-interest – as a barrier to education for sustainable development, describes a testable model, and outlines research strategies. 2. sustainability and resilience sustainability is typically measured by continued high performance in social, economic and environmental dimensions – the “triple bottom line” (tbl) (savitz, 2006; žalėnienė, & pereira, 2021). performance on the social dimension may be in terms of such factors as public service, student conduct, faculty cohesiveness, and mutual benefit (lee, 2016). colleges and universities, whether for profit or not, measure the economic dimension in terms of tuition revenue, grant revenue, cost reduction, new programmes, and so forth. evaluation of environmental performance is similar to other large service organisations. resilience, originally an ecological concept (holling, 1973), is a fundamental aspect of sustainability. resilience is not just stability or propensity of the focal system to return to its original state. rather, resilience is persistence over time in the critical relations among major system components and variables. resilience enables continued performance of educational departments and teams, in turn contributing to an institution’s own performance along the three triple bottom line dimensions. resilience enables development of professional and subunit level skills needed to provide higher education for sustainable development (hesd or hefsd, franco, et al., 2019), which refers to higher education’s pivotal role in achieving sustainable development goals. these subunits generate the determinants of performance. historical performance and its present snapshot are not the concerns, but rather the organisation’s “fitness for the future” (thompson, 1967). sustainable development builds this fitness. stakeholders have different views regarding the adequacy of performance on each dimension and its contribution to that fitness. also, there is incomplete knowledge of the causal pathways to performance. in thompson’s terms, stakeholders rely largely on social and instrumental measures rather than efficiency metrics. for example, since most universities compete with one another within the same highly quantitative ranking system; this often leads to ‘mcdonaldization’ of education, such as the emphasis on the monetary amount of grants received and short-term results, instead of long-term fundamental research (see, 2008), unscrupulous practices such as instructing colleagues to cite one another to improve ranking (university of malaya, 2017), or graduating a questionable number of phds (citizen, 2022; rafidi, 2019). an institution’s quality is typically rated by its material capital and measured ability of human inputs, students, faculty, staff, and administrators and, in turn, perceived quality attracts students and job candidates as well as external financial support. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 312022 40(3): 31-46 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 milligan, mankelwicz & see narcissism as a global barrier to education for sustainable development the advent of globalism, the interconnected-world ideology that forms the basis of globalisation, the associated dynamic processes (steger, 2005), and the ‘information society’ provoked repeated attempts at wholesale higher education reform, especially towards producing students with strong critical thinking, intercultural competence, emotional intelligence, teamworking, and other soft skills (aldulaimi, 2018). this shifted the focus from knowledge to competencies, based on active learning, experiential learning, and individualised learning. it also involved decentralisation and less rigid regulation. hesd programmes proliferated. concurrently, there are interacting global trends towards a consumer, growthoriented mindset (sterling, 2008), economic globalisation, diminishing authority of expert opinion, persistent media disinformation, rising consumerism, erosion of collective values, impact of social media, and increased narcissism (exaggerated self-interest). all of these trends impact the provision of hesd. the next section will focus on the last factor, narcissism, with special emphasis on the narcissism of educational leaders. 3. narcissism and the effectiveness of hesd ‘personality’ refers to what someone is like as a person, a general style of thinking, emotions, and behaving, often described with adjectives, such as friendly, intelligent, pessimistic, and irresponsible. ‘narcissism’ refers to a set of characteristics describing some individuals’ basic personality style as well as to a mental disorder called narcissistic personality disorder (npd), and includes traits such as arrogance, self-centeredness, need for admiration, a sense of entitlement, interpersonal exploitation, lack of empathy, and grandiosity. people exhibiting grandiosity, a key characteristic, are more likely to be hired and promoted to leadership positions in organisations, including educational institutions (nevicka & sedikides, 2021), though research results on their effectiveness is mixed (dowgwillo et al., 2016; grijalva et al., 2015). npd is a mental disorder in the diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: dsm-5-tr (american psychiatric association, 2022), and can manifest with destructive psychopathic features (milligan, 2019). the term derives from the myth of narcissus, who fell in love with his reflection in a pool of water, which led to his demise. narcissism has a genetic basis (vernon et al., 2008), and is exhibited worldwide (foster, campbell & twenge, 2003), more typically in men (grijalva et al., 2014). whether someone is narcissistic or has a narcissistic personality disorder is a matter of degree and severity. npd is a clinical diagnosis; narcissism is not. research suggests increasing narcissism worldwide (dingfelder, 2011; santos et al., 2017; twenge & campbell, 2009), though this is not unequivocal (chopik & grimm, 2019), an association with individualism (durvasula, lysonski & watson, 2001), and weakening social networks or “social capital” (putnam, 2000). as paris (2020: 53) summarises, “as globalization proceeds, these cross-cultural differences could be attenuated”. 4. concerns about narcissism there are concerns about narcissism in politics and big business, especially considering the trend towards globalisation, through which decisions by powerful leaders in one location affect economies around the world. if these leaders are narcissistic, the results could be dire, such as the financial crisis and recession in 2008 (arjoon, 2010; george, 2009). furthermore, data from many nations indicate increasing individualism, focusing on oneself rather than group http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 322022 40(3): 32-46 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) wellbeing, with a corresponding decrease in collectivism (santos, varnum & grossmann, 2017). this is concerning, since narcissism is the primary predictor of counterproductive work behaviour and is moderated by a collectivist culture (grijalva & newman, 2014). see grijalva et al. (2015) for a metanalysis of associations between narcissism and leadership, and van bevel and packer (2021) for benefits of the ‘collective mind’ and a self that is defined in shared terms. specific to sustainability, bergman et al. (2013) found that narcissism is significantly related to materialism, and materialism is significantly related to lower levels of environmental ethics (concern about effects of our behaviour on the earth and its health). although negative and destructive aspects of narcissism are obvious, such as associations with criminality, including white-collar (stone, 2009), counterproductive work behaviour (grijalva & newman, 2014; penney & spector, 2002), aggression and vengeance (rasmussen, 2016), there appears to be some positive outcomes from narcissism within certain contexts. narcissists can be productive (wilhelm et al., 2013), providing successful leadership in settings with effective governance to temper their behaviour (maccoby, 2007), and there is positive organisational narcissism (duchon & drake, 2009; rousseau & duchon, 2015). leadership with its allure of power and prestige attracts narcissists. the narcissistic personality inventory (npi) (raskin & hall, 1979; raskin & terry, 1988) is the most widely used measure of narcissism, with higher scores reported in the u.s. (more individualistic), compared to asia and the middle east (more collectivist) (foster et al., 2003). the npi provides distinct dimensions for narcissism: exploitative/entitlement, leadership/ authority, grandiose/exhibitionism, and self-absorption/self-admiration. “reactive narcissists” are strongly averse to criticism, are harsh taskmasters who prefer sycophants as subordinates, and tend to launch huge risky projects. this style is associated with especially pathological consequences for organisations, though others can be detrimental as well. narcissistic behaviour, especially by leaders, inhibits the development processes of hesd, and hinders the implementation of new programmes. this resistance is at least in part due to distortions related to goal setting, accelerating classic goal-displacement processes (merton, 1949; michels, 1911), and moving institutional goals towards unit level goals that are shortterm, simply measured, and yield visible outcomes derived from visible behaviours. the results emerge differently in the economic, social and environment facets of hesd. nevertheless, some dynamics are common, such as over-obsession with ranking, student population size, financial gains; sacrificing longer wellbeing, and subject areas that are important but less popular or employable, such as pure sciences, humanities and philosophy. the narcissistic leader thinks of performance as a device for self-enhancement and chooses and interprets goals accordingly. this applies to the tbl social, economic, and environmental performance factors. leaders at all levels tend toward goals that will reflect well on themselves, performance goals relating to their personal benefit. these propensities of narcissists are stronger than those of other managers. they seem to (often unwittingly) shift efforts and resources toward maximisation of goals they feel will yield personal benefit. this pattern of decisions should be evident in the allocation of resources. oliver williamson (1964) provides a useful descriptive framework for this in his classic managerial utility function (muf). the section on economic performance below employs his model. in all of this, it is actual leader narcissism, not narcissism as perceived by followers, that is most concerning here. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 332022 40(3): 33-46 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 milligan, mankelwicz & see narcissism as a global barrier to education for sustainable development 5. process of narcissist conduct narcissistic leaders seek visible accomplishments as intermediate and symbolic goals along the path. overall, the goals favoured will be short-term and clearly measurable, such as key performance indicators (kpis). this in itself is not undesirable; it could even lead to improved short-term performance. problems arise as attention and efforts are drawn away from important long-term objectives. sustainability and hesd are by definition long term affairs. motivated by power and status, narcissists pass through a continuous process of status seeking (grapsas et.al., 2020), described in their four-stage spin model of narcissistic conduct. first, in ‘situation seeking’, narcissists gravitate towards situations that provide opportunities for status growth. usually these are hierarchical and publicly competitive, allowing them to both display real ability and practice impression management. in the second ‘surveillance’ stage, they attend to cues that indicate actual status increase from their behaviours. since status-seeking behaviours by others may impede their own efforts, they also carefully observe others’ behaviours. together these cues can trigger the third ‘appraisal’ stage in which the narcissist determines whether self-promotion will truly increase status. those authors believe that most narcissists’ sense of grandiose self-importance is so high that the default judgement will be affirmative. in the last ‘response execution’ stage, narcissists will ordinarily act in very self-promoting ways. however, if they judge that self-promotion will not work, they begin ‘other-derogating’ comments and behaviours in attempt to at least improve relative status. completion of the cycle, of course, results in a new situation, and the process may begin anew. these issues are characteristic at all levels of management. narcissistic leaders of teams or work units wish to survive and to advance. although they may demand esteem from their own subordinates, narcissistic unit leaders seek first to ingratiate themselves to their superiors and to the top management. they verbally invoke top management goals and seek to be visibly supporting them, yet implementing those goals in ways that foster self-image. in williamson’s (1964) classic terms, this means increasing economic slack, maximising opportunities for new investment projects, and jockeying for salary. the result is distortion and goal displacement, regardless of the realism of their own goals. the next sections review how this occurs in each area of performance related to sustainability. 6. impacts of narcissistic leadership in higher education for higher education institutions to fulfil their role to promote sustainability, a strong organisational culture emphasising sustainability values and behaviour is critical (žalėnienė & pereira, 2021). the presence of narcissistic leadership in higher education may be a strong barrier to developing sustainability values and behaviours and lead to some of the following social, economic, and environmental impacts: 6.1 social impacts social processes are the core of education. while economic performance provides resources needed to facilitate overall social performance, personal interactions generate the processes of hesd, and goal displacement through narcissism begins and is evident. narcissistic leadership injures the morale and cohesion of work units, then their group performance, and ultimately institutional performance. it is associated with counterproductive work behaviour (meurs et al., 2013), generally ‘bad’ leadership (higgs, 2009), and risker decisions (maccoby, 2007). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 342022 40(3): 34-46 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) narcissistic team leaders do not provide the best feedback to their superiors. thus, they are not truly ‘good followers’ (kelley, 1988), since they are reluctant to directly submit contrary ideas. when their own followers sense their efforts at impression management, they become less responsive (liao et. al., 2019) and the quality of leader-member exchange (lmx) in the unit declines. individual followers may also be narcissistic. employee narcissism is associated with lower organisational citizenship behaviour (yildiz & oncer, 2012). “the unexamined life is not worth living”, a quote attributed to socrates, has many implications for education. our discussion posits that the core driver of effective hesd consists of resilient, thoughtful and reasonably virtuous people. aristotle asserted that only a virtuous individual could have stable relationships or lead consistently beneficial teams. to him, relations among the non-virtuous were inevitably shifting, faithless alliances. virtues develop through practice, and some virtues are fairly ubiquitous. the most sweeping intercultural study of virtue is the values in action (via) project, reviewed in peterson and seligman (2004). based both on a philosophical study of many traditions and statistical analysis, the study derived 24 separate ‘character strengths’, clustered under six universal virtues recognised by all major cultures: wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, temperance, and transcendence of self. the expectation is that all are instrumental for sustaining functional education teams. in terms of via virtues, narcissism is a lack of both the universal virtue humanity and the character strength humility, a component of temperance. narcissistic leaders are unlikely to implement curriculums or practices that address future needs, such as ongoing humanitarian concerns or unexpected ecological crises, for example, covid-19 (kim et al., 2021), which may cause an immediate set back in achieving their kpis (ryan et al., 2010: 112). the chinese often say that the earlier generation plants trees, so that the later generations can enjoy the shade. it will be hard for self-seeking narcissistic leaders to be the planter, as they often seek immediate glory rather than praises they may not live to enjoy. the quality of an institution is typically assessed a priori by the quality of inputs, based on admission test scores, faculty credentials, or facilities. however, “it is also their social responsibility to help students and broader community acquire competences for sustainable development” (franco, 2019: 1622). those social responsibilities are often neglected by narcissistic leaders, as fulfilling them, such as admitting students from disadvantaged backgrounds often means ‘lowering standards’. 6.2 economic impacts the economic or market aspects of education are tricky. hesd is almost by definition long-term oriented. however, the fundamental definitions of learning and education are not universally agreed; hence, the production function of education is uncertain. also, most educational institutions remain not for profit. there can be disagreement even on the proper units of productive output – credit hours, course matriculation, degrees granted, and there are many short-run performance measures including tuition revenue, total enrolment or enrolment in particular programmes, grants, new programmes, capital acquisitions, and alumni salary or achievement. with no universal clarity on such matters, the quality of a university is typically assessed a priori by the quality of inputs, based on admission test scores, faculty credentials, and facilities. thus, the institution’s long-term expected performance, or “fitness for the future” (thompson, 1969), would be judged on inputs. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 352022 40(3): 35-46 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 milligan, mankelwicz & see narcissism as a global barrier to education for sustainable development in economic terms, educational institutions deliver their products in imperfectly competitive markets. also, for-profit institutions have a minimum profit constraint from the owners, while other public and private institutions must seek acceptable rates of return on projects. nevertheless, ownership of the institutions, public or private, is separated from its management. in these terms, educational institutions closely approximate the assumptions of williamson’s (1964) muf, which derives from the idea that as ownership and management are separate, an agency problem arises. managers do not maximise profit but rather their own utility, which may be based on such factors as revenue, market share, salary, perquisites, status and prestige, social service, and certainty of outcomes. after extensive regression analyses, williamson (1964) simplified the function. its implicit form is u = f (s, m, d), where u represents the utility function, s is staff expenditure, m is management slack (largely nonmonetary, hence untaxable), and d is discretionary investment. an increase in any of the three components will increase the manager’s personal utility, or benefit. as conceived, this function can be applied in analysis at the organisational or work unit level. relating the above to the known propensities of narcissistic managers, it is intuitive that the role of hesd in fostering economic performance may be vulnerable to goal displacement effects from narcissistic educational leaders. due to extreme self-focus, these leaders would be prone to drift from the official performance goals toward goals related to maximising their own utility. this drift would increase each component of williamson’s u. consider staff expenditure. the unit staff budget, number of staff, and highly paid professional staff are determinants of performance and symbols of accomplishment, status, and power for the leader. wisely directed, staff expenditures may indeed increase all of these for a leader, while still nursing a narcissist’s grandiosity and need for attention. narcissists’ sense of entitlement suggests that they would favour higher staff costs, and especially higher salaries for themselves, and would seek to increase economic slack, from which perquisites (largely non-taxable) can be absorbed as cost. again, narcissistic managers make riskier decisions (maccoby, 2007; foster et. al., 2011) and often unrealistic ones, that may entail the aggressive addition of new programmes initially started from increased discretionary investment funds. thus, narcissistic leadership can be costly in many ways, including bureaucratic accretion (coccia, 2009). 6.3 environmental impacts narcissism is associated with weaker environmental ethics through its association with materialism (bergman et al., 2013). narcissistic self-focus can mean too little empathy for others, minimising or ignoring the costs to others in the process of benefiting oneself, and risktaking, grandiose and exhibitionist status seeking. even without conviction, they may gravitate towards positions and projects that are socially acceptable in order to enhance their images. environmental innovations are very socially desirable in many quarters and may even attract narcissists. the factors counterbalance, so that it is not certain what the short-run impact of narcissistic leader behaviours will be for environmental performance. over time, however, there is declining enthusiasm as followers realise the leader’s motives (liao et al., 2019). the expectation is that narcissistic leadership diminishes the long-run effectiveness of hesd to promote environmental performance. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 362022 40(3): 36-46 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) while it is encouraging to see many universities, especially in asia-pacific, are embarking on the ‘green campus’, often these are achieved through extensive and expensive renovations; while lacking in actual curriculum and pedagogic reforms (ryan, et al., 2010; franco et al., 2019). one may wonder if such efforts are truly for the environment or narcissistic self-seeking efforts, such as to win awards. žalėnienė and pereira (2021) point out that high effectiveness in teaching sustainability issues depends on making sustainability principles core to the course. the increase in risky projects has been greater at for-profit schools and colleges; their status allows, even encourages, that they utilise loans and the capital markets more frequently. results have often been unfortunate (lynch, engle & cruz, 2010); risky projects frequently involved advertising-driven open enrolment policies to gain revenue, which also result in massive accumulation of student debt. in addition, administrators do not always provide concomitant oversight or integration. overreliance on part-time faculty partly facilitates cost containment, but aggravated underlying problems. while the immediate economic penalties fall to the defaulting students, the colleges’ reputations suffer, with attendant enrolment declines. some of the institutions also face serious u.s. federal legal actions for fraud. some colleges closed or underwent corporate reorganisation and ownership change. educational administrators at the university of phoenix, for example, once the largest for-profit educational institution in the world, has faced all of these issues as a result of its rapid expansion and decline (lynch et al., 2010; newton, 2019). 7. model and propositions specific teams, departments and task forces generate the determining factors for the success of hesd programmes. the leaders’ skills and behaviours impact the motivation and performance of each member, and ultimately of the entire work group. it is the actual behaviour of the leaders, not their narcissism per se, that is the influencer. narcissistic leader behaviours may have mixed effects in the short run, but in the long run they are counterproductive. several factors drive this result. perhaps the most significant development is that group members start recognising the leader’s narcissism. there is diminished voice (liao et al., 2019) on the part of the members, and hence less feedback to encourage the narcissist to change behaviour. figure 1: narcissism of superior magnifies the negative effects of a leader’s narcissistic behaviours http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 372022 40(3): 37-46 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 milligan, mankelwicz & see narcissism as a global barrier to education for sustainable development successful hesd programmes are long-term efforts, resilient and sustainable. the grandiosity and need for reinforcement to their self-image makes narcissists impatient for results. this can lead both the group leaders and their superiors to make premature adjustments. at the same time, their willingness to take risky decisions sometimes ironically results in needless costs and delays as a consequence of those adjustments. in modern economies of highly interdependent producers, sustainable development usually involves consistently satisfying key stakeholders. hesd programmes are strategic, meaning success depends on adequate implementation, as well as on what stakeholders do. educational institutions have diverse stakeholder sets and typically find cooperative endeavours the most effective for hesd. however, narcissistic grandiosity and a sense of entitlement may work against cooperation and the sharing of resources, even if this provides the greatest long-term rewards. it may be especially true if the cooperative arrangement involves significant commitment from the stock of discretionary investment (with some loss of leader control) to gain results over time. hence, narcissistic leaders may bypass many opportunities, instead leading go-it-alone efforts of their institutions. drawing from the literature of hesd, narcissism, and applicable leadership theory, this section will present a model and propositions relating to these long-run impacts of narcissism. 8. applicable leadership theory in addition to the corpus of work on narcissism and managerial utility, recent contingencybased theories of leadership allow considerable insight by focusing on the interactions of leaders and followers within situational contexts. our discussion draws from three wellestablished areas: path-goal theory (pgt) (evans, 1970; house, 1971; house, sahane & herold, 1996), followership (follett, 1949; kelley, 1988; hurwitz & hurwitz, 2015), and leader-member exchange (lmx) (dansereau, 1995). each of these models implies a twoway influence between leader and follower. path-goal theory derives from vroom’s (1964) expectancy theory, asserting that people act consistently with their expectations of outcomes (rewards) and the perceived attractiveness of those rewards. followers are motivated if they strongly hold three beliefs: they are capable of doing the work (expectancy); their efforts will actually result in reward (instrumentality); and the rewards are valuable (valence). leaders seek to strengthen these beliefs, and by this motivate followers to accomplish designated goals. they clarify both the goal and the paths to it, and remove obstacles or roadblocks by providing information and needed resources. leaders may also strive to make the work itself more intrinsically satisfying (intrinsic rewards), possibly tapping into organisational slack or the excitement of discretionary projects. they can also strive to increase the number, kinds and amounts of payoffs (extrinsic rewards) to the followers. although it has roots in follett’s (1949) work, followership gained impetus through the work of kelley (1988), but has matured only recently as a field of study (hurwitz & hurwitz, 2015). this theory stresses two-way influence: effective leaders must have effective followers, and highly effective followers often emerge as excellent leaders. ideally, good followers become the “mature partners” of lmx theory (dansereau, 2014). determinants of follower influence include education, experience, locus of control and power. with its potential for role conflict and ambiguity, the role of “good follower” can become very difficult. they must offer continuing support and show appreciation for the leader, seeking honest feedback and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 382022 40(3): 38-46 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) clarifying their roles and expectations, while taking initiative, keeping the leader informed and playing counselling and coaching roles to the leader when appropriate. a good follower is not a ‘yes man’, but must raise concerns when necessary and resist inappropriate influence of the leader. leader-member exchange views leadership as a process and emphasises the interactions and relationships between leaders and followers. the dyadic relation of the leader with each follower is the basic unit. dyadic leader-follower relationships proceed through ‘leadershipmaking’ stages of stranger, acquaintance and mature partner, or true in-group (uhl-bien et. al., 2014). hierarchy, rules, and organisational culture largely govern relationships at the stranger phase; influence is one way from the leader. beyond the stranger stage, there is two-way selection: leaders seek followers with enthusiasm, participation, gregariousness, and extraversion, while followers seek leaders who are pleasant, trusting, agreeable, and cooperative. a milieu of culture, formal hierarchy, and existing relationships among the members themselves forms context for processes of lmx, which is applicable to all levels of analysis: group, organisation, larger networks, or nations. a leader’s referent power – reputation, charisma, and general attractiveness – draws followers to seek entrance to the in-group. reward power may have a similar effect. by getting along well with the leader and negotiating expanded responsibilities, followers gain entrance to the leader’s ‘in-group’, admission to which is the leader’s choice. over the course of contact episodes (grapsus et. al., 2020), narcissistic leaders would choose an in-group that is both personally supportive and likely to enhance the leader’s status. at educational institutions, this would often involve a group member’s specific abilities related to funding or regarding implementing new discretionary projects. working longer and harder, in-group members become involved beyond the job description, but also receive more attention, information, raises, promotions, opportunities, trust and influence, thereby, having some access to the benefit components (salary, perquisites and discretionary investment) of the muf. within the in-group, charismatic leadership might even be termed transformational for a time. by contrast, out-group members are less involved overall, receiving only standard benefits and opportunities of the employment contract and their hierarchical position; leadership here is thus transactional. 9. influence of the leader’s superior not only the leader, but also the leader’s superior would influence the group’s outcomes. however, in most cases the dean or other responsible education executive would not interact directly with group members in the course of normal work. most of the superior’s behaviours would likely be diffuse and long-term, invisible to most individual group members. in many cases the most significant behaviours would be recommendations or authorisations regarding new projects, and sometimes for salary or perquisites. for these reasons, a senior academic’s influence on the group leader would come in their propensities regarding decisions. intuitively, a narcissistic superior would aggravate ego-defensive or overcompensating propensities of the group leader. thus, the narcissistic influence of the senior leaders is best understood as a moderator, strengthening the effects of the group leader’s narcissistic behaviours. both leaders would provide undesirable role models. also, the superior might be above several other leaders, thus influencing the overall culture of the institution. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 392022 40(3): 39-46 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 milligan, mankelwicz & see narcissism as a global barrier to education for sustainable development in terms of the muf, the leader seeks from their superior access to greater discretionary investment, which now serves multiple functions. allocation of sufficient discretionary investment can be a determinant of project success and recognition to the leader. this may also have symbolic value, signalling to group members the rising status of the leader. actual project success may also be a positive signal to still higher management. the leader’s ingroup would also have some access to the benefits of discretionary investment. 10. propositions the proposed model in figure 1 stresses interactions at the group level: academic departments, teams of faculty or staff, or possibly even student classes, and includes seven sets of impacts of a narcissistic unit leader’s actions upon the group. here the output of each group affects hesd, while the overall triple bottom line of sustainability for the institution is some composite of the functional group performance. some of the impacts discussed are not by themselves reductions in hesd effectiveness, but reductions in productive determinants of hesd. presentation is in the expected order that impacts will occur, but these may develop at differing rates and severity within different institutions or cultures. each linkage represents a proposition for research on behaviour and group outcomes. also included is the influence of the leader’s own supervisor. the superior’s influence is posited to be interactive with that of the group leader, thus magnifying the deleterious long-term effects. thus, there are fourteen propositions. leaders serve as role models, living examples for followers. erratic behaviour of any kind blurs the example portrayed by the leader. narcissistic impatience by senior leadership pressures the group leader. that leader’s own impatience may manifest in erratic communications that blur the goal or the path(s) toward it, weakening expectancy beliefs and possibly instrumentality beliefs. narcissistic leaders focus on their own advancement, which impedes clarification of the path to group goals. hence, the hypotheses/propositions: p1: narcissistic behaviours by the leader over time confuse followers in the group. p2: the superior’s narcissism strengthens the leader behaviour to confusion linkage. confusion in the very short run might provoke new creativity and problem solving, but continued confusion would work against path clarification and weaken all three expectancy beliefs. thus, there would be a weakening of motivation and morale. new followers would be less likely to seek in-group status, and the very value of this status would decline; hence, p3: narcissistic behaviours by the leader negatively impact group morale. p4: the superior’s narcissism strengthens the leader behaviour to morale linkage. confusion can lead to declining group morale; trust in the leader and the overall situation declines. members come to realise the leader’s narcissism. followers’ motivation falls, especially because they do not believe proper rewards will actually come. group members, especially the in-group’s, desire for favourability may result in unproductive rivalries. there may be jockeying for position, and competition for the opportunities afforded from the muf. group members become defensive towards the leader and possibly one another. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 402022 40(3): 40-46 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) p5: narcissistic behaviours by the leader provoke defensive behaviours by followers in the group. p6: the superior’s narcissism strengthens the leader behaviour to defensiveness linkage. as these things progress there will be less cooperation and trust, open sharing of information, and mutual support. overall, there is less member initiative, innovation, and reduced quality of hesd activities. in particular, instrumentality beliefs suffer. members may come to view some others as roadblocks to their own paths to performance. defensiveness results in a less cohesive team. much of this may be visible to those outside the group, and that does not enhance the leader’s image or self-image. in that circumstance the expectation is for the narcissist leader to turn to other-derogating behaviour, which only strengthens elements of a vicious cycle. p7: narcissistic behaviours by the leader result in reduced group cohesion. p8: the superior’s narcissism strengthens the leader behaviour to cohesion linkage. with declining trust and sharing, there is less spontaneity and innovativeness. the pace of accomplishment slows. narcissistic leader behaviour will not only delay follower achievement, but further frustrate the followers, hurting motivation and group morale still more over time. delays also mean the immediate situation and perhaps the paths themselves may change. this, of course, further weakens all three expectancy beliefs, inhibiting both the personal development of the follower and the follower’s contribution to the two-way influence (i.e. good followership). p9: narcissistic behaviours by the leader result in slower group performance. p10: the superior’s narcissism strengthens the leader behaviour to performance rate linkage. the leader’s increase and appropriation factors in muf thus has myriad impacts. these factors combine to displace the official goals. members focus primarily on self-protection and leader approval; not the stated goals of the hesd effort. p11: narcissistic behaviours by the leader promote goal displacement by the group. p12: the superior’s narcissism strengthens the leader behaviour to goal displacement linkage. many reasons suggest declines in quantitative rates of output, in total throughput, and in the general quality of group performance. due to narcissistic actions by the leader, some may stop practising good followership. new members may never develop good followership at all. even the in-group will not develop as an effective core, as able members fail to identify with the leader. thus, for many reasons, p13: narcissistic behaviours by the leader result in reduced group performance. p14: the superior’s narcissism strengthens the leader behaviour to performance linkage. there are many likely specific narcissistic behaviours by a leader, and different possible operational variables to represent the group impacts. hence, empirical testing might involve a http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 412022 40(3): 41-46 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 milligan, mankelwicz & see narcissism as a global barrier to education for sustainable development larger set of specific hypotheses. the core relationships would hold in a scalable fashion. in a large educational institution, with several divisions, the superior would be under one or more levels of higher management. sustainability for such a large organisation would indeed be a complicated function of the division performances. 11. discussion narcissistic leadership is expected to have deleterious impacts on group performance over time, with some of them appearing earlier. appealing to the literature on narcissism and a stratum of institutional economics, the authors’ framework yields descriptive propositions to elucidate the impacts more specifically. narcissists, driven by status seeking, select environments with apparent potential in this regard. they relentlessly scan for cues on such opportunities and clues on means to realise them. with narcissistic entitlement, they utilise the school’s resource base to increase their personal status and benefit materially and symbolically. this paper extends existing theory on narcissistic leadership by relating it to specific models of decision-making and by including the effect of the narcissistic leader’s superiors. narcissistic behaviours follow an episodic pattern in which the narcissist attends to cues that allow possible increases in their status (grapsas et. al., 2020). in the muf framework, managers are generally self-serving, maximising personal benefit and utility rather than true organisation goals. entitlement-prone, narcissistic leaders will continually seek to increase their status and personal benefit, tapping the organisational resources defined in williamson’s muf. joint application of these models provides a practical, operational framework in which to view specific narcissistic leaders’ behaviour and suggest possible governance practices to ameliorate the worst effects. future research on hesd begins with testing the hypotheses individually, and then the full model. moderate sample sizes and standard statistical methods should be sufficient. longitudinal research is ideal. comparing contexts – firms in different industries, government agencies, non-profit organisations, public and private colleges – could establish external validity. personality factors are consistently instructive moderating variables (house, sahane, & herold, 1996). however, the interactions of a narcissistic leader and superior may be more complex than presented here, and dependent on institutional context. some questions are clear even at this juncture. first, do the interactions always produce a positive moderating effect, making the narcissistic leader’s behaviour more deleterious. could a highly narcissistic superior so intimidate a narcissist that, at least temporarily, behaviour changes, perhaps reflected in more restrained use of discretionary investment, avoiding the temptation of risky commitments? could a superior very low in narcissism act in a way that partially ameliorates the worst effects of leader behaviour, perhaps by virtuously exemplifying restraint on perquisites as well as discouraging uncertain ventures? such possible patterns would change the sign and/or the form of the appropriate expected interaction term (podsakoff et. al.,1995) in testing hypotheses involving the superior. however, some insights to guide later research might come through simple initial case studies. ideally, strongly narcissistic managers would never reach positions of high authority and power, in which their risk prone decisions can affect the institution and its members adversely. but they do! our framework does not deal with the a priori issues of leader selection, but does http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 422022 40(3): 42-46 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) evoke clues toward ameliorating the worst effects at the group level. the driver is the episodic appearance of status enhancement opportunities, seized largely though appropriation of the institution’s resources, then appropriated into the utility function. governance procedures can then focus on these resource-based factors and on overt behaviours. the most serious abuses by narcissistic group leaders will not be in overclaiming perquisites through appropriating slack resources. similarly, salary procedures in universities will impede overreaching at most hierarchical levels. rather, the main issues will be through risky resource commitments as well as other-derogating behaviours towards followers and peers. in the long run there would be clear displacement of hesd goals. the first emphasis must then be on transparency, particularly on use of resources that are considered discretionary. since the group leader’s preferences will always remain at least partly unobservable at each episode, it will never be perfectly clear just what narcissists perceive as cues as they scan situations. accordingly, the status-seeking process will continue through the early stages. to stop it might even impact the group leader’s motivation counterproductively. the task of governance is to specify early what activities are permissible and desirable, and to monitor the situation carefully. since oversight will come first through the superior, the superior also must face the same scrutiny. thus, much of the correction must start and continue with exemplary leadership from the top. 12. conclusion “every sustainability problem is first a social problem and therefore a psychological problem” (chandler, 2020: 309). we linked a social motive, status seeking, with associated behaviour of narcissistic educational group leaders. relating these behaviours in turn to institutional resource bases and the proclivities of leaders for self-interest deepens understanding of the impacts and paths by which impacts occur. this framework also considers the moderating effects of a superior’s narcissism on the narcissistic group leader, and outlines propositions on specific impacts. sometimes the process may be unstoppable, but there are areas for corrective intervention by the institution’s governance. “integrating strategies and improving leadership is critical to the longevity of sustainability initiatives” (ryan et al., 2010: 115); thus, identifying the narcissistic leadership which may inhibit such hesd is of paramount importance. references aldulaimi, s.h. 2018. leadership soft skills in higher education institutions. social science learning education journal, 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perspective. geography and sustainability, 2: 99-106. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geosus.2021.05.001 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.3 https://doi.org/10.1080/1356931052000310263 https://doi.org/10.3928/004857.13-20090401-08%202021 https://doi.org/10.3928/004857.13-20090401-08%202021 https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/927unesco10.pdf https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/927unesco10.pdf https://doi.org.10.1016/j.leaqua.2013.11.007 https://doi.org.10.1016/j.leaqua.2013.11.007 https://doi.org/10.1016%2fj.leaqua.2013.11.007 https://retractionwatch.com/2017/08/22/one-way-boost-unis-ranking-ask-faculty-cite/ https://doi.org/10.1016/b978-1-59749-993-4.00002-1 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geosus.2021.05.001 _hlk96765712 _hlk108603851 _hlk113984675 _hlk109292761 _hlk114033371 i editorial early in 2016, the editorial board of perspective in education took a decision to publish two issues of the journal per year, one being a general issue put together from the open contributions by various authors, while the second would be a special issue focusing on a topical theme in the field championed by (a) guest editor(s). this is a general issue that picks up the conversation on diverse issues affecting education across a number of fronts, both locally and internationally. the first article by rajah draws on the national debates on africanisation in higher education within the south africa context to problematise what is sometimes viewed as the third arm of the academic enterprise, viz. community engagement and/or engaged scholarship. in the second article, mathebula continues on the africanisation theme when he debates the reliance on what he sees as a narrow indigenous african philosophical worldview to underpin the post-apartheid national curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) for schools in south africa. on the policy front, ohajunwa, ned, luger, and geiger then examine the gap between public policy and practice and propose what has often been called the “pedagogy of policy” or what the authors specifically term “policy literacy” as a way to bridge that gap. mcleod palane and howie follow on the policy debates with their article that draws on a large data set from an international study, the preprogress in reading literacy study (prepirls, 2011) to argue the benefits of various language of instruction (lolt) models in improving reading comprehension for south african primary school learners. continuing on the language policy discussions, ngcobo and makumane examine the pre-service teachers’ attitudes to introduction of chinese mandarin into the south african curriculum. aderibigbe and mosia take a look at the often marginalised stream in education, the technical and vocational education and training (tvet) stream and unpack the importance of work integrated learning (wil) within that stream. the next three articles take us back into the classroom dynamics. raazia moosa begins the series by theorising the concept of student engagement in higher education and proposes various ways to counter what may seem to be rampant disengagement by students in various university classes. in the next article, george, tucker, panday and khumalo take readers into the life orientation classrooms, the site of most learning about sexual and reproduction health (srh) issues in south african schools. the authors identify an urgent need for personal and professional development of the educators to enhance the delivery of the life orientation curriculum in the schools. in the penultimate article of prof lc jita editor-in-chief prof ml mokhele-makgalwa, associate editor doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/ pie.v37i1.editorial issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 37(1): i-ii date published: february 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.editorial http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.editorial http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.editorial http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie ii perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) this issue, van wyk, teise and le roux raise alarm bells on the potential threats to the quality of marking for the high school national examinations in one province of south africa. given the importance of the end-of-high school national examinations in the country, the discussion on the quality of marking can thus not be ignored. in the final article, ramlall, singaram and sommerville also raise quality issue with respect to doctoral examinations. against the backdrop of the ongoing national review of doctoral degree qualifications in south africa, the study by these authors could not have come at a better time to inform the discussions. in closing, it is perhaps a good point for the editor-in-chief to announce formally that the 2019 edition would be the last under our editorship. it has been a great honour and privilege for me to serve as the editor-in-chief of perspectives in education, (2015-2019). i was privileged to work with prof sechaba mahlomaholo as the co-editor in the early years and later with prof matseliso mokhele-makgalwa as the associate editor of pie. the search for a new editorin-chief is ongoing and will be announced in due course. we also wish to thank the editorial board and the readership of pie for the memories and wonderful experiences in editing the journal. we have no doubt that the journal will continue to scale the heights and retain its status as an accredited outlet for education research, nationally and internationally. 303 research article 2021 39(2): 303-323 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) the integration of technology in supporting progressed learners in english first additional language comprehension abstract this study aims at finding the impact of information and communication technology (ict) as an intervention tool for progressed learners in teaching and learning of english first additional language (fal) comprehension in the intermediate phase. with learner progression proving a challenge facing the south african education system, the aim of this qualitative descriptive study was to investigate the extent to which first additional language educators employ ict as an intervention tool to assist learners who are progressed. data collection strategies used in this study were semi-structured interviews and documentation such as lesson plans, progression tracking tools and support policies used at selected schools. the study population was eight intermediate phase english fal educators from two tembisa schools. tembisa is a township north of kempton park on the east rand, in gauteng, south africa. in selecting these participants, purposive sampling techniques were used. data was analysed using atlas.ti and presented in a descriptive and graphical way. there is limited research in south africa on the impact of ict for progressed learners or a progression policy, as this policy is a relatively new phenomenon. the findings from this study indicated that the use of ict in a classroom to support progressed learners yields positive results. the findings further indicated that ict has a potential to reduce failure rates that ultimately minimises the number of learners who need to be progressed without meeting promotional requirements. keywords: comprehension; educators; first additional language; ict; pedagogy; progression policy; qualitative case study. 1. introduction according to the department of basic education (dbe, 2011), a south african national curriculum assessment policy statement has been described as a solitary, broad and concise document, introduced to replace the previous curriculum for all the subjects listed in the national curriculum statement grade r to 12. it is a author: ms lineo kolobe1 dr maryke mihai1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i2.21 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(2): 303-323 published: 11 june 2021 received: 24 may 2020 accepted: 22 july 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0254-6122 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 3042021 39(2): 304-323 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) detailed programme pertaining to promotional requirements for learners to progress through the education system, from grade r up to grade 12. it further clearly indicates and outlines subjects to be offered in each grade and their promotional requirements (dbe, 2011). according to dbe (1996), a child should be allowed to repeat once in a phase and should be within the age cohort of that phase. if a learner does not meet these promotional requirements, such a learner should be progressed to the next grade (condoned either due to age or number of years in the phase). it is therefore expected that educators should give expanded opportunities to enable these learners to be at the same level as other learners in the phase. teachers have indicated a concern that this policy has the potential to hinder these learners instead of assisting them and increases the failure rate in higher grades (spaull, 2013). 2. rationale english fal is regarded as a core subject. a failure in a first additional language (which includes comprehension) implies that a learner fails the grade (dbe, 2011). comprehension writing consists of approximately 50% of the examination while the rest is split between creative writing and oral exams (dbe, 2011). comprehension is therefore one of the components, among others, that have a direct impact on the progression policy. with learner progression proving a challenge facing the south african education system, the aim of this study is to investigate the extent to which first additional language educators employ available ict tools (smart boards, tablets, e-books) in their pedagogy for intervention in delivering comprehension content in the classroom to assist learners who are progressed and to evaluate the effects of such an intervention. although there are a number of computer-orientated interventions that have been developed for children and that appear to be interactive and attractive, holloway, green and livingstone (2013) assert that their impact and efficiency with low ability learners is minimal. there is limited research in south africa on the impact of ict for progressed learners or on the progression policy. this study was therefore important as it fills a gap in the literature and could be a guideline or reference in promoting ict in schools as a support tool for progressed learners. 3. problem statement in the sunday times, nomahlubi (2018) stated that progressed learners are believed to be a factor that fairly recently contributed to a decline in the matric pass rate. in the daily vox, (zimasa, 2015), this notion was further supported with many educators slamming the progression policy, citing various reasons, among which is the fact that the said learners were not ready to be promoted to the next grade, hence, extending a web of failure in grade 12. what then remains of great concern, is how educators support these learners in the next grade to be on par academically with the rest of the promoted learners who met the promotional requirements. despite the fact that comprehension plays an important role in the reading process, the literature in a south african context reveals that learners continue to struggle with it and teachers continue to neglect it in their teaching. the literature has further shown that teachers’ http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 3052021 39(2): 305-323 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 kolobe & mihai the integration of technology in supporting progressed learners neglect of comprehension in their reading lessons could be attributed to various reasons, including the fact that teachers are not taught how to teach reading during their teaching training years (madikiza et al., 2018). 4. research questions 4.1 main research question how effective is ict in supporting progressed learners in english first additional language (fal) comprehension? 4.2 sub research questions a. what are the benefits of using ict in pedagogy for supporting progressed learners in english fal comprehension content? b. how do first additional language (english) educators use ict to support progressed learners in english fal comprehension? c. what are the challenges faced by first additional language educators when supporting progressed learners using technology? 5. literature review 5.1 ict in education the introduction of ict throughout the world into school systems began with the rationale that learners are required to develop and master the normal use of ict tools, but, in the 21stcentury, the focus has shifted to integrating ict into teaching and learning (cha, park & seo, 2020). the importance of ict has been seen through communication to obtain information and staying connected to a rapidly increasing digital world. with the introduction of ict resources, how people perceive and co-exist in the world has changed. “the ability to use ict has therefore become the new literacy for the 21st-century” (al harbi, 2014: 1). ict used in pedagogy encompasses the use of tools and resources brought together to create, communicate, pass on and store information. this includes integration of software presentations, games, videos, smart boards, online dictionaries and various websites (negoescu & boştină-bratu, 2016). in education, ict functions as a tool to empower educators and learners for effective teaching and learning (van niekerk, 2009). in this study the use of ict refers to smart boards, tablets and e-books. 5.2 ict in teaching and learning english language english is one of the most important languages in the world and the most common means of communication throughout the globe (akhtar, 2016). the use of the english language has become vital for better learning. therefore, it is necessary to teach english and develop english language skills among learners from school level. it is necessary to use modern approaches and ict tools to develop better understanding and acquisition of basic skills (akhtar, 2016). the use of computers, internet, television, radio, projectors, mobile phones, email facilities, online audio and video conferencing as well as new applications has made the teaching and learning process attractive and convenient (akhtar, 2016). this is also the view of experts and educational practitioners who strongly advocate for the integration of ict in language learning. they are of the opinion that the integration of ict will improve http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 3062021 39(2): 306-323 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) efficiency and effectiveness of learning and enhance the quality of understanding and mastery of the language (ntongieh, 2016). it also creates opportunities for people to communicate world-wide and allows for a learner-centred approach. in the english language classroom, ict addresses key outcomes of the syllabi and allows learners to become competent users as well as consumers in english (ntongieh, 2016). it is suggested that incorporating ict into the english curriculum can improve writing and reading skills, develop speaking and listening skills and support collaboration, creativity, independent learning and reflection (ntongieh, 2016). in the 21st-century where technology is predominant in all spheres of life, teaching and learning has also been directly impacted and this change has also been seen in the english language classroom. the teaching and learning of english has also seen a change over the years with the introduction of ict tools in the classroom (samsuri, nadzri & rom, 2014). according to ranganath, rayappa and priscilla (2017), in a study about the new roles of english teachers with ict in teaching and learning of english, the field of english language learning (ell) has been made authentic, exciting and thought-provoking. different assets for teaching and learning english are accessible through the internet nowadays. in a study, samsuri, nadzri and rom (2014) concurred that ict assists non-english speakers to learn english as a second language and a subject. 5.3 factors affecting the incorporation of ict into pedagogy for ict implementation to be effective, education should be innovative and equipped with relevant skill sets (msila, 2015). development and innovation in public education also depends on educators because they are the people who are the core drivers in achieving the expected outcomes from the ict investment for the development of education. malewska and sadjdak (2014) give an illustration of the benefits of ict pedagogical implementation into a 21stcentury classroom. they note that technology reinforces and enriches the quality of formal instruction. as stated by domalewska (2014), teaching and learning that is supported by ict offers life experiences and develops independent lifelong learners. a study by padayachee (2017) that combined qualitative and quantitative data collection methods in order to provide a rich nuanced perspective of ict integration in south african schools, found that the uptake of technology remains low. on average, the frequency of usage per tool type was as follows: contextual tools (41%), sharing information and ideas tools (29%), experiential tools (26%) and reflective dialogue tools (18%). it was found that teachers are uncertain in respect of the enforcement of e-education while being encumbered by poor infrastructure and lack of skills. factors such as school support, technological infrastructure, issues such as attitudes towards ict, the importance of ict use, the ability to use ict and beliefs, are among other factors accepted that challenge the implementation of ict in teaching methodologies (goodwin et al., 2015). 6. theoretical framework this research takes the technological pedagogical content knowledge framework (tpack) as its theoretical framework. tpack is defined as an educator’s interpretation and technological reorganisation of content knowledge so that it can be understood by the learners (angeli & valanides, 2009). according to wong, mishra, koehler and siebenthal (2007), 21st century educators possess the ability to get and process knowledge in every field and transform this pedagogy by offering improved methods to engage learners. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 3072021 39(2): 307-323 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 kolobe & mihai the integration of technology in supporting progressed learners kadijevich and madden (2015) further explain that teachers are regarded as skilled when they can customise content knowledge and know what is beneficial for learning and technology; this is explained as tpack. tpack has been regarded as a diverse process which, among others, includes the development of a complicated relationship between the uses of technology in methodology, to deliver content knowledge relevant to a particular group of learners in a specific setting (koehler, mishra & yahya, 2007). the tpack framework (figure 1 below) for educator knowledge is explained as a complicated interface between content, pedagogy and technology in theory and in the form of a practice that yields or works towards integrating the use of technology into learning (schmidt et al., 2009). figure 1: tpack model source: koehler and mishra (2009) tpack denotes that educators can solve problems by aligning their content with the technological tools that they will apply in the classroom for content delivery of a specific topic. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 3082021 39(2): 308-323 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) philomina and amutha (2016) argue that, although tpack is important, an educator should be creative and innovative in content delivery in addressing learner needs. 7. methodology scotland (2012) explains ontological assumptions as concerned with what constitutes reality, in other words what is. the researchers’ ontological assumptions were that in this study, what is evident is that a learner’s ability in a classroom varies and technology used in teaching has the ability to influence a learner’s comprehension of content. epistemology deals with the nature and forms of knowledge (cohen, 2007). this research was approached according to the interpretative paradigm as people interpret, perceive meaning and understanding as they form their own perspectives about the existence of reality (vandeyar, 2011). this study used a qualitative methodology. the researchers interacted with the participants and in the process, the participants unravelled their world. interpretations were made using qualitative procedures (de vos, 2002). bogdan and biklen (1992) explain a qualitative data collection technique as a method in which researchers pay attention to how things in a society have been naturally created or made, as the deeper relations between content matter and what shapes the inquiry. the researchers seek to respond to how social experience is created and given meaning (denzin & lincoln, 2011). the researchers followed an inductive approach and started collecting data that was relevant to their topic of interest. when we had enough data, we read attentively through the whole data set and looked for patterns in the data. to analyse data and classify it into meaningful analyses, atlas.ti software was used. according to lewins and silver (2007), atlas.ti assisted us to find and systematically analyse concepts posed in the unstructured data. the program offers tools that allow the researcher to find, code and interpret findings in primary data material, to weigh and evaluate their importance and to visualise the often complex relations between them (lewins & silver, 2007). according to barry (1998) this software works with qualitative data by coding it and classifying it into similarities and patterns and creating meanings and explanations according to various categories. data is then transcribed and organised into codes and themes. the documents (lesson plans and policies) were analysed doing a comparative content analysis. 7.1 data collection techniques the interviews were in-depth but open-ended in nature and questions were fluid rather than rigid. in their description bogdan and biklen (1992) describe that, in an in-depth interview, in order to obtain detailed information, open-ended questions are the best type of questions to use. the interviewer’s line of questioning logically followed the respondent’s answers so that the interviewee’s point of view is consistently received, acknowledged and reflected. in our study, data was further collected from recent departmental policies, circulars and educators’ lesson plans. 7.1.1 study population and sampling marshall (1996) defines a population as a target group or a set of objects to which the researcher has an interest to study. the use of sampling is a viable and logical way of forming interpretations about a larger group. the study population for this inquiry was english first http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 3092021 39(2): 309-323 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 kolobe & mihai the integration of technology in supporting progressed learners additional language educators in the intermediate phase from the two ict priority schools in tembisa. education minister, angie motshekga, adopted these schools in 2014 as a pilot project. they received icts such as smart boards and tablets in order to make them paperless. convenience sampling was used because these schools are near to the workplace of one of the researchers. in convenience sampling, those who are available and likely to participate are selected (hancock, ockleford & windridge, 1998). purposive sampling was used to select all intermediate (grade 4–6) fal educators who use technology. the participants included three intermediate english fal educators from each school. two more educators working on the reading programme offered in these schools by the click foundation, were selected based on their willingness to participate. this foundation, which uses ict tools to improve reading for low ability learners, has formed a partnership with the department of basic education. in total there were eight participants. 7.1.2 trustworthiness according to lincoln and guba (1985), truth value in a research asks whether the researcher has established confidence in the truthfulness of his or her findings and the contextual factors in which the study was undertaken. it further takes into consideration the level of confidence of the researcher based on the research methodologies, participants and situation. in qualitative studies, to examine the truth value, threats and internal validity must be considered and managed (sandelowski, 1986). 7.1.3 credibility according to leininger (1994), for a concept to be credible, it needs some level of submersion within the research to allow that findings or patterns are verifiable. to achieve this, the researchers spent a lot of time studying and verifying recurrences and similar patterns within the data obtained. 7.1.4 dependability the dependability criterion is explained by lietz and zayas (2010) as a relation to the consistency of findings. the researcher ensured that participants selected were true representatives of a larger sample and the qualitative data collected could be obtained by another researcher. 7.1.5 confirmability confirmability is the ability of others to confirm or corroborate the findings (drisko, 1997). as asserted by shenton (2004), steps were taken to help ensure, as far as possible, that the work’s findings were a true reflection of the participant’s ideas. the researchers ensured that the data and findings were clearly linked. to achieve confirmability, this research portrays findings that are only yielded from the findings, not the researchers’ own predictions and assumptions. 7.1.6 transferability lincoln and guba (1985) argue that transferability means that findings can be applied in theory, practice or in future studies. transferability is the level to which findings fit situations outside of the study and are regarded as meaningful. as much as full transferability may not be guaranteed, this research intended to find information that may be applicable to other research with the same or similar population or unearth findings that may be relevant to other http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 3102021 39(2): 310-323 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) studies similar in nature. to ensure transferability, the researchers gave a full description of the phenomenon, findings and background information to enable other scholars to compare. 7.2 ethical considerations 7.2.1 informed consent informed consent refers to the research participants being fully informed about all aspects of the study such as the objectives, benefits and disadvantages of the study (christensen, johnson & turner, 2015). informed consent ensures that participants are informed about the objectives, benefits and disadvantages of the study and the participation in this study (leedy & ormrod, 2015). before each interview, the researcher explained all aspects of the study to the participant. the participant also received an information and consent form explaining these aspects of the study. these forms had to be signed to ensure that each participant was giving voluntary, written consent to participate in this study. 7.2.2 voluntary participation participation must be voluntary and participants should not feel pressured to participate (leedy & ormrod, 2015). the researcher asked potential participants if they would be willing to participate in this study after explaining all aspects of the study. if the participant was willing to participate, they had to sign a consent form. participants could withdraw from the study at any time. 7.2.3 confidentiality confidentiality was used to protect the privacy of all participants, by not revealing any information obtained from this study (christensen, johnson & turner, 2015). the researcher ensured the confidentiality of the participants by giving each participant a unique number, which was used in the place of an identifying characteristic of the participant. only the researcher and her supervisor had access to the data and all data collected is being kept safely at the university of pretoria for 15 years. 7.2.4 anonymity anonymity can be defined as keeping the identity of all participants unknown (christensen, johnson & turner, 2015). the researcher ensured the anonymity of the participants in this study by using pseudonyms. each participant received a unique number. this number was used to label all the data as well as the findings and results. 8. analysis of results 8.1 the effectiveness of using ict to support progressed learners in english fal comprehension teaching methods educators use in their pedagogy what methods and strategies do you use in your pedagogy when you teach progressed learners? the eight participants shared the view commonly shared by bas and beyhab (2017) that learners learn through practise. they acknowledged that self-exploration to find responses has proven to be a great benefit. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 3112021 39(2): 311-323 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 kolobe & mihai the integration of technology in supporting progressed learners participant 6 highlighted that, when one uses the discovery method as a teaching method, learners arrive at a significant amount of responses or solutions and can explain how they arrived there. discovery learning is a kind of teaching that is based on the learner finding things out for themselves, looking into problems and asking questions. essentially, it is all about learners coming to their own conclusions and asking about things in their course that might not make particular sense. as soon as enquiries are made, they can learn new things and hence will have become part of an innovative, thought-provoking and interesting educational journey (brown, 2006). another common method educators use is problem-solving. five of the eight participants felt strongly about this method. it encourages learners to seek their own solution to a given problem. in this kind of learning, learners are given a challenge, they are unaware of the solution and their role is to determine the answer (deen, van den beemt & schouten, 2015). three participants indicated that they use more drill and practise because some english fal concepts require memorisation instead of problem solving. in essence, drill and practise deals with the “what” and “when” which is best suited for a comprehension test (murali, 2016). integrating ict into your lesson content how do you integrate ict in your lesson content for progressed learners? in responding to this question, numerous and varied views were shared. the two participants who were running a click reading programme indicated that they use applications of phonics with pictures, whereby learners learn how to sound words guided by pictures, gestures and images to depict meanings of words, sentences and paragraphs. the most common response from the eight participants was that they use easy materials from the internet, e-books and smart boards as reading resources. this practice is supported by day (2002) saying that, in order for reading to be effective and possible and to obtain expected results, texts must be of the learner’s competency level, especially if they are written in a second language. educators’ experiences using ict explain your experiences in using ict in the classroom for progressed learners. participant 2, who is a new graduate, indicated that he used ict at tertiary level and for him integration comes easy and naturally. four participants indicated that they started in 2014 when the ict pilot programme was introduced at their schools while another two indicated that they had just started using ict during the click foundation reading programme. wang (2011), in a study conducted in mongolia, asserted that less experienced educators who have recently graduated from higher institutions portrayed an ability to teach with more ease with icts compared to the more experienced educators who were exposed to older, traditional teaching methods. even in this study, an educator who had just graduated indicated that he felt more comfortable with teaching with icts compared to other educators who were used to a more traditional way to support progressed learners. educators’ view about teaching with ict (benefits) how do you feel about teaching progressed learners using ict? in responding to how participants felt about their teaching with ict (smart boards, e-books and tablets), they shared the same view by indicating that it had improved their easy access http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 3122021 39(2): 312-323 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) to resources, made lesson planning easier and teaching became fun. the introduction of ict tools introduced the power of diversity, accessibility of information and knowledge transfer beyond the classroom (majumdar, 2015). in his research about benefits and challenges of information and communication technology (ict) integration in québec english schools, rabah (2015) indicated that when ict is incorporated into teaching and learning, the following occurs: learners’ attention span improves, educators are able to deliver well-researched content, learner autonomy is encouraged, learners learn in a cooperative way as they obtain individualised content aimed at their specific needs and a learner’s level of participation increases. instant feedback offered by ict acts as reinforcement and correction of misconceptions. these findings are similar to the responses obtained from the participants in this research. the analysed codes in figure 2 below shows similar responses from the eight participants. these participants shared common views on the perceived benefits of using ict in supporting and teaching progressed learners. figure 2: the benefits of using ict in pedagogy for supporting progressed learners all participants indicated that the introduction of ict in their schools have yielded more far-reaching results than anticipated in terms of learner performance for progressed learners. participant 7 further confirmed that it was easy to support progressed learners because the lesson is self-paced, while high ability learners can move forward, as opposed to a traditional classroom where you are unable to support progressed learners and teach the high ability learners; with ict this becomes possible. this view is further shared by participant 1 who highlighted that, traditionally, he had to create time in the afternoon for support sessions but, with the new ict tools, he could teach and support at the same time and use afternoon lessons as extra classes for something else. all eight participants shared common views that the introduction of ict to their school proved beneficial. one participant noted that one of the most critical benefits of ict is that http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 3132021 39(2): 313-323 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 kolobe & mihai the integration of technology in supporting progressed learners learner absenteeism has reduced significantly since its introduction. learning has become fun and learners look forward to using either tablets or smart boards to discover new information. 8.2 ways in which educators use ict to support progressed learners in english fal comprehension types of ict tools educators use in their pedagogy what types of ict do you use in teaching progressed learners? the following analysis examines ways in which educators support progressed learners and the tools they use in doing so. common factors between all the participants is that all classrooms use smart boards, e-books and e-lesson plans. ict has replaced the traditional way of teaching whereby the interaction was only facilitated by an educator using a chalkboard. today, smart boards, smart phones, computers or tablets are new tools brought in as part of pedagogy (persson, 2016). youtube and videos most participants indicated that they use youtube more often than previously in their lesson plans. youtube provides simplified videos and, even though they are not caps aligned, they possess similar themes. the educators download relevant videos and use them as resources. videos capture pictures and sounds that create vision, sound and movement, hence generating excitement for the learners (sahni, 2016). games and simulations most participants use games to drill their learners. these have interactive content that address section b of the fal exam. phonics: sounds, songs and pictures digital story-reading “stimulates students to utilize the technology such as audio, video, and images to convey information in the form of a story” (bui, 2015: 6). most progressed learners are unable to read; some can read but with little understanding. the fundamental aim of comprehension is to test the learner’s critical understanding of a written text. both participating schools introduced a click foundation programme which assists with an application aimed at improving reading and phonics. this application teaches learners how to read using sound, songs and pictures. it starts at a very low level and it assists progressed learners to be able to read. in both schools, participants indicated that this programme is a solution to a serious reading challenge they have been facing over the years. what happens is that learners use computer animations, pictures, songs and video clips to sound words and explain their meanings. they then progress to a higher level where they are expected to read paragraphs and understand the meaning. smart boards when learners use a smart board, they are able to read a long text with ease because they can control the font size and at times change the colour of the text, thereby reducing eye stress compared to hard copy or print material (sahni, 2016). in both schools, participants shared the same view by indicating that using smart boards for reading is easier than reading from a textbook. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 3142021 39(2): 314-323 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) this study therefore sees a similarity in terms of tools educators use in ict for content delivery. they all agree that, since the introduction of ict into their schools, the teaching aids are no longer a challenge to obtain and it is easy to teach with these tools. 8.3 ways in which ict is used in pedagogy how do you use ict in teaching progressed learners? pérez-sanagustín et al. (2017), in a research on ict in k-12 schools, indicate that ict provides new ways of supporting learners – it changes pedagogy. one of the main advantages of utilising ict in teaching is the opportunity of digitalising assessment methods, offering quicker, individualised and constant responses and feedback through various ways (collins, 2011). figure 3 below shows ways in which ict is used. of the eight participants interviewed, all indicated that they use ict for informal assessment, as a support activity used for reinforcement and to introduce a lesson. ict is used as a tool for exploring new learning topics, solving problems and promoting critical-thinking skills. figure 3: ways educators use ict in a classroom 8.4 challenges of using icts to support progressed learners what challenges do you experience when using ict to support progressed learners? all the participants in this study were selected from two ict priority schools. this therefore indicates that ict resources and access are not a challenge. however, despite all the fully resourced classrooms and readily available technicians, participants still experienced challenges. curriculum demands our curriculum is still the same caps curriculum, it is overloaded and as a result it becomes difficult for low ability learners to learn at the expected pace, especially because they still have to refine their search skills on the internet and still struggle to read what is said (participant 1). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 3152021 39(2): 315-323 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 kolobe & mihai the integration of technology in supporting progressed learners the challenge facing educators to fully apply ict into their teaching methods is not only finding enough time to come up with appropriate computer skills or how to apply these in the lesson, but also to find relevant contexts for practical integration in line with the curriculum and the learning process (richards, 2005). we learn this technology together with learners and we are not able to complete the prescribed syllabi requirements (participant 4). one common finding was, that the participants did not feel ready to use interactive activities at their disposal. teachers need to do their own research which at times is not fully in line with what the annual teaching plans (atp) prescribe, especially for progressed learners. training and development one of the most exciting findings in this study was that educators who were new to the profession, as seen from participant 2, were more comfortable using ict than educators who were experienced in teaching. when i studied at university, we used a lot of ict tools, so for me integration comes easily (participant 2). participant 1 indicated that it gets really challenging as he has been using the traditional method of teaching for over 20 years and just switched to ict in 2014. plumb and kautz (2016) note that, in order to master ict, normal it competence plays an important role and lack of this competence therefore becomes a challenge when it comes to enhancing a technologyorientated teaching and learning classroom. for ict integration to be effective in the classroom focus should be on educator development and a change of mindset for educators who use and prefer a more traditional approach to teaching (qasem & viswanathappa, 2016). 9. policy analysis according to dbe (2012), the national policy pertaining to the programme and promotion requirements of the national curriculum statement grades r-12 (nppppr) attempts to explain and give direction on how learners should move from one grade to the next. according to this policy, progression refers to the movement of a student to the next grade from grade r to grade 12 even if this learner does not meet the requirements to be granted a pass to the next grade. this rule, among others, was introduced to prevent learners from repeating one phase for more than four years and having more mature learners in lower grades. the admission policy for ordinary public schools as published in government notice 2432, government gazette, vol. 400, no. 19377 of 19 october 1998, outlines that the underperformance of a learner in the previous grade is addressed in the grade to which the learner has been promoted through various support initiatives. the rationale behind the policy on progression, according to dbe (2017), is that it is intended to minimise the high dropout rate and maximise school retention. the notion of progression of learners is not new in our education system or internationally. the policy further gives a guide on promotional requirements. “promotion” in this context refers to the move of a student from one grade to the next, if such a learner has satisfied a required level of achievement in a particular subject and grade, based on the national policy pertaining to the programme and promotion requirements of the national curriculum statement grades r–12. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 3162021 39(2): 316-323 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) since south africa became a democracy in 1994, the task of transforming from the past apartheid era to a democratic society, which strives to create equal opportunities for all its citizens, became the country’s number one goal. there was a dire need for redress and change in areas such as language (sayed & ahmed, 2011). according to motala (2006), the big achievement was a review and creation of an education system based on principles of quality and equity in pursuit of democratic ideals (van staden, bosker & bergbauer, 2016). spaull (2013) indicated that, in south africa, learners learn in their mother tongue in the foundation phase and then switch to what is termed a language of teaching and learning from grade 4 to grade 12, which is mostly english or afrikaans. table 1 below indicates all legal frameworks around progression and promotion in south africa. all participants indicated that these were the policies that guided their teaching and the movement of learners from grade to grade. through a review of these policies, it is indicated that there is a link between progressing policy application and tools to be used to implement this policy; one being changing the classroom and applying ict tools in line with constructivist theory thinking. table 1: policies guiding progression 1996 south african schools act age cohort number of years in the phase 2012 npppr national policy pertaining to the programme and promotion requirements of the national curriculum statement grades r–12: pretoria 2014 white paper on e-education introduction of ict as a support tool for teaching and learning 2015 circular 3 of 2015 mark adjustment 2017 circular 1 of 2017 maths condonation 10. lesson plan review this study further gathered data from educators’ lesson plans. all participants indicated that their smart boards have annual teaching plans (atp), e-books and e-lesson plans. one common view from all the participants was that these materials were not categorised to suit all classroom dynamics or varying learner abilities and that their timeframes are stringent. you are expected to complete 2.5 % of syllabi coverage weekly but some learners are slow and it takes more than a week to complete a prescribed activity as per the atp, (participant 4). table 2: sample lesson plan for grade 5 at school a english first additional language grade: 5 term: 2 date: 12-23 july 2018 module: 15 topic: friendship unit: 2 contact hours: 1 hour period 11 & 12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 3172021 39(2): 317-323 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 kolobe & mihai the integration of technology in supporting progressed learners english first additional language previous content learnt: language: adjectives content and concepts: reading comprehension resources required: smart board, youtube video; internet access; laptop/desktop; students’ tablets; dbe books; speakers; moodle; tyb portal; powerpoint presentation. teaching plan introduction 1. pre-test: spelling test on the following wordsman, fast, handsome, girl and pretty. 2. watch the you tube video, “the sharing song” (available from: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=tshvolofz_4) 3. sing along to the song. discuss the video with the class. what is the importance of sharing? how can we share? body: 1. students must complete “the angry brothers comprehension” by answering the questions into their workbooks. conclusion 1. post-test: students must complete the comprehension questions in their workbook. 2. display memorandum. mark as a class. student activity introduction 1. watch the youtube video, “the sharing song” 2. sing along to the song. discuss with the class. body 3. read “the angry brothers” comprehension and answer the questions in your workbook. conclusion 4. mark and correct your work according to the memorandum. remember to check your spelling and grammar. assessment: informal-memorandum another common finding was that learners could expand their learning by googling on the spot to obtain a solution. this allows for self-discovery of information but educators should guide such searches. some learners get easily distracted by these gadgets and end up in wide searches as our lesson plans do not have a clear guide of which sites to visit hence learners prefer google (participant 1). as to the question whether the e-books have materials that cater for progressed learners, the participants’ views were common in the sense that there was no room for support activities. what the policy advises them to do is to use simplified resources from a lower class. i use materials from grade 4 as support material to teach progressed learners in grade 5 because i do not have the competence to re-create my own interactive lessons (participant 1). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tshvolofz_4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tshvolofz_4 3182021 39(2): 318-323 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) introduction of ict has enabled an educator to obtain support materials easily from the internet. they can use some applications to test for prior knowledge, test current content understanding informally or be used for formal assessment to test if the objectives of the lesson have been achieved. ict is also a tool that assists progressed leaners to give them information, explains processes and uses games and video for illustrations. some applications offer instant feedback and rewards, unlike traditional teaching and learning where feedback is given later, after a teacher has controlled all responses. 11. study limitations the findings of this study cannot be generalised as a representation of a broader population of south african schools using ict in pedagogy. this study was a research project in fulfilment of a med dissertation (kolobe, 2019) and thus the sample was limited. its main aim was to understand the benefits of using ict in pedagogy to support progressed learners in english fal comprehension. 12. contribution of this study this study contributes as a source of knowledge and a point of reference for scholars. it also acts as a reference for the department of basic education in the roll-out of ict into schools where ict will specifically be used as a support strategy to address progression policy concerns. 13. recommendations for future research although there have been concerns around the progression policy, the benefits of learners’ progression have been established in this study. one which was cited by steiner and mendelovitch (2016) was that making older learners repeat a grade a few times demoralises learners and increases the dropout rate. application of ict in teaching and learning has been seen to be impactful in south africa and globally, although the scale of application, especially in sub-saharan africa, is still quite minimal in rural and semi-urban schools. it is recommended that this study of ways to support progressed learners is further explored in the south african context as the progression policy does affect the south african education system. a broader sample of urban and rural schools still needs to be explored. this study has the further potential to be a comparative study where a researcher could test two classrooms using traditional methods of teaching, plus ict to test the level of learner acquisition in both classes. 14. conclusion as english is studied as a first additional language in some south african schools, application of ict can act as a support intervention that simplifies and makes learning this subject easier. learners manage to find resources such as spelling and explanations from online dictionaries, encyclopaedia, grammar quizzes and word puzzles. this has made learning easy, fun and self-controlled. the following are similar findings as outlined by participants: the introduction of ict has enabled educators to obtain support materials easily from the internet. educators can use some applications to informally test for prior knowledge and current content understanding http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 3192021 39(2): 319-323 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 kolobe & mihai the integration of technology in supporting progressed learners or for formal assessment to verify if the objectives of the lesson have been achieved. ict also assists progressed learners to gain information, explain processes and use games and videos for illustrations. some applications offer instant feedback and rewards, unlike traditional teaching and learning where feedback is given later, after a teacher has controlled all responses. one can therefore draw the conclusion, that in the two selected schools, ict is beneficial in assisting progressed learners. it 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technology in the college classroom. stillwater, ok: new forums press. zimasa, m. 2015. teachers slam policy of promoting learners who’ve failed. the daily vox, 4/02/2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.21 https://doi.org/10.1080/15391523.2009.10782544 https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v5n9p9 https://doi.org/10.5539/elt.v5n9p9 https://doi.org/10.3233/efi-2004-22201 https://doi.org/10.12973/eurasia.2017.00670a https://doi.org/10.4102/sajce.v6i1.441 https://doi.org/10.4304/tpls.1.3.273-277 13 educating for a plural democracy and citizenship – a report on practice elmarie costandius university of stellenbosch sophia rosochacki university of stellenbosch this paper presents an argument for the relevance of education for critical global citizenship, with reference to a graphic design module at the university of stellenbosch in south africa as a case study. the first part of the paper argues that tolerance, cultural diversity, democratic participation and social cohesion are prerequisites for plural democracies. the second part argues that educational institutions, as prominent organisational structures, have an obligation to address these social issues. it is argued that addressing social inequality and developing conditions for democratic flourishing is particularly important in the newly democratised south africa. consequently, particular attention is paid to the south african higher education context. the paper then gives an account of an attempt at practically engaging university students in these issues through the university curricula, describing, in terms of its form and content, the above-mentioned graphic design module on critical global citizenship. finally, it considers to what extent the module has been successful in promoting attitudes of tolerance and social cohesion in a racially and culturally mixed educational environment, using qualitative data collected from participants in the module, and reflects on the ethical and practical challenges that critical citizenship education might face. keywords: critical citizenship, pluralism, social inequality, cultural diversity, social cohesion, tolerance . conceptions of citizenship – what kind of citizenship is important and why? the notion that education plays an integral part in the moral and political development of individuals and their societies has resurfaced in recent educational and political theory (nussbaum, 2002; osler & starkey, 2003; schuitema, ten dam & veugelers, 2008). various arguments have been presented in favour of a renewed emphasis on teaching for civic engagement and social change in higher education (furco, 2010; hartley, saltmarsh & clayton, 2010). these arguments frequently call upon the notion of citizenship to capture values of social responsiveness and political engagement. but what kinds of social responsiveness and political engagement are valuable and desirable? osler and starkey (2003) point out that citizenship, since its conception, has been a contested term and, depending on the context, could implicitly support conflicting values and ideals. there can be no neutral conception of citizenship. indeed, critical theory has encouraged suspicion of any claims of neutrality in social and political realms. consequently, calls for civic education need to articulate clearly the assumptions, norms and values that support the particular conception upon which they rely. within the literature on citizenship education it is evident that different understandings of democratic citizenship (nussbaum, 2002; waghid, 2002), global citizenship (mcdougall, 2005; weinstein, 2004) and cosmopolitan citizenship (osler & starkey, 2003) have been advocated. however, despite the articulation of the different conceptions, the conflict between them is often overlooked. osler and starkey (2003:244) argue that, while contemporary notions of democratic citizenship allow equal participation in theory, “in practice, this formal equality is undermined by discriminatory practices and public discourses that exclude minorities or which marginalise them within the imagined 14 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 community of the nation”. this suggests that, although liberal democracies are committed to the principles of freedom and equality and, as such, should accommodate multiple cultural identities, in reality, the norms and values of a particular group are naturalised and become dominant. the notion of pluralism seeks to amend this tendency. weinstein (2004:236) defines pluralism as “the political situation in which people of different fundamental beliefs and histories share equally within a common governance and live within common borders”. this conception requires the separation of public and private spheres, and assumes that the public sphere is a neutral one. thinkers opposed to the notion of a ‘neutral’ political and social space are critical of the idea of pluralism and suggest an alternative in the form of multi-culturalism. weinstein (2004:237) refers to a counterclaim made by feinberg that multiculturalists “suspect that this idealised common identity is just a disguise for the dominance of one cultural group over others”. instead, multiculturalists propose a less compartmentalised understanding of public and private space and advocate the expression and promotion of different cultures within the public sphere. weinstein (2004:237) responds that pluralism, and indeed liberalism, has no right to make such a claim to neutrality in the public sphere but, instead, has to substantiate the values it promotes as an equal participant in a democratic system. weinstein (2004:237) points out that the traditional role of politics and philosophy as set out by the greek thinkers was the defining and promoting of ‘the good life’ (aristotle, nussbaum). the defining aspect of liberalism is that the state is neutral on the question of good life. in liberal thought, this question is an individual prerogative, which is exempt from social judgement unless individual choices infringe on the freedom of others. weinstein (2004:237) (along with thinkers such as john rawls and michael sandel) argues that liberalism does, in fact, make various non-neutral value claims – the most obvious being freedom itself: “[t]o choose freedom over restraint is a violation of neutrality, yet this non-neutral commitment lies irrevocably at the core of liberal theory”. the implication is that issues of common governance are never self-evident, and that values such as pluralism, freedom, open market and equality need to be justified and defended over others, and not assumed as given social or human conditions. furthermore, these values always have cultural attachments and should be acknowledged as such. martha nussbaum argues that values such as tolerance, equality and non-discrimination should not be seen as positive values in themselves only, but as guards against destructive human tendencies. she asks what it is about human life “that makes it so hard to sustain democratic institutions based on equal respect and the equal protection of the laws, and so easy to lapse into hierarchies of various types – or, even worse, projects of violent group animosity” (nussbaum, 2010:28). she suggests various conditions which are conducive to the flourishing of discriminatory social behaviour, and argues that the cultivation of principles of accountability, tolerance and equality work to resist these tendencies. as societies become increasingly plural, the cultivation of these values becomes increasingly urgent. if pluralism and mutual respect across national and cultural boundaries are values that we want to promote, it is not clear that traditional national citizenship, which prioritises national unity and singular loyalty over difference and dissonance, facilitates this. sung (2010:77) refers to stuart hall who argues that “market liberalism has deeply engaged in efforts to decouple the link between citizenship and a caring society”; rather “they have tried to link the liberty of citizens with property rights”. critical global citizenship takes into account the socially constituted nature of identity, which requires a conception of citizenship that extends beyond an individual collection of rights. theorists considering what notions of citizenship are conducive to the development of peaceful and tolerant societies in a globalised world, have begun to advocate a more symbolic and inclusive notion of citizenship. nussbaum (2002, 2010) has come to understand citizenship in terms of individual and group attitudes and identities as well as a collection of legal rights and responsibilities. this conception affords individual autonomy and responsibility to members of diverse groups who are (in theory) held accountable for their own behaviour as members of a larger ‘global’ group. mcdougall (2005:25) describes global citizenship as “a moral disposition which guides individuals’ understanding of themselves as members of communities both on global and local levels – and their responsibilities to these communities”. belonging to different communities, which might promote conflicting values, could create some instability in the creation of individual and group identities. to deal with this conflict, theorists advocate a conception 15costandius & rosochacki — educating for a plural democracy and citizenship of identity that encompasses multiple loyalties and at the same time emphasises individual action. mcdougall (2005:10) uses the idea of “concentric patterns of community” and “homes of identity” to understand complex group identity. this understanding is supported by osler and starkey (2003: 244) who postulate the individual as having “shifting and multiple cultural identities”. instead of denying these sometimes opposing forces, weinstein (2004) advocates a process of “cognitive conflict”, particularly in young people grappling with questions of identity and authority, which encourages critical engagement with difference. this conception of democratic citizenship is not reliant on social conditions of unity and cultural homogeneity and is thus particularly useful in the south african context. critical citizenship and the university the second part of this paper aims to explore the role of the university (particularly south african universities) in addressing social and democratic development through critical citizenship education. osler and starkey (2003:245) highlight the connections between particular political developments and a renewed interest in citizenship education. they argue that educational institutions in recently democratised countries (such as south africa) need to educate a new generation of citizens about principles of democracy and human rights. in this instance, a re-education from an exclusive and racially unequal to an inclusive, egalitarian understanding of citizenship, which could translate into social practice, is necessary for all involved in educational institutions. in addition, emphasising civic duties and the capabilities held by individuals could restore confidence in democratic processes in the face of an apparent crisis in formal politics (osler & starkey, 2003:245) and thus foster a generation of informed and politically engaged citizens. this correlates with the emphasis laid on individual responsibility and agency in recent conceptions of citizenship, which aim to challenge global trends of political apathy. finally, as discussed above, global shifts have resulted in demographic changes all over the world, which present an increasing need to educate young people to be able to understand and tolerate difference and cultural diversity (osler & starkey, 2003:245). this new cosmopolitanism has two distinct aspects: first, that people far away from one another are more exposed to one another’s cultures and lives, and, second, that communities in themselves have an increasingly more historically, culturally and racially diverse composition. in all three aspects, institutions of higher education play a crucial role. however, particular challenges are encountered in focussing on critical citizenship in south african higher education institutions (heis). the imperatives of the global market present a challenge to the cultivation of values that support pluralism and diversity within south african heis. reddy argues that, in one instance, universities are called upon to “perform as viable ‘corporate enterprises’ producing graduates to help steer south africa into a competitive global economy. in the second, universities are expected to serve the public good and produce critical citizens for a vibrant democratic society” (reddy, 2007:5). he suggests that, although “these two tendencies need not be inherently contradictory, they do contain in a country with deep class, race and gender divisions the possibility of pulling in opposite directions”. the implication of reddy’s argument is that pressure to produce skilled workers often overrides the need to produce a tolerant and critical citizenry. although social and economic reconstruction should develop co-operatively, the national economy, instead of levels of social cohesion and stability, is taken as the primary signifier of development. south african universities tend to privilege what nussbaum (2010:10) calls “education for economic growth” over education for social cohesion and understanding. nussbaum (2010:10) argues for the priority of educating for “the stability of democratic institutions, since a strong economy is a means to human ends, not an end in itself”. the south african context presents another urgent call for a focus on citizenship education which relates to its apartheid and colonial past. as education played a defining role in the maintenance of a segregated social order, through both its structure and content, there has been an expectation within the democratic social order that educational institutions might be redefined in a post-apartheid era “to serve more emancipatory purposes” (vale & jacklin, 2009:21). however, recent research suggests that many heis have failed to live up to this expectation and, while there have been significant demographic changes in the institutions, in some instances, reproduce rather than challenge social inequality. the report of the 16 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 ministerial committee on transformation and social cohesion and the elimination of discrimination in public higher education institutions (2008) makes it clear that, although institutionalised practices of racial exclusion which characterised the apartheid era have been discontinued, there are still considerable cultural, social and racial divisions in the institutional culture in most universities. michael apple’s analysis of educational institutions is helpful in this regard. he argues that, because they are “‘naturally’ generated out of many of educators’ commonsense assumptions and practices about teaching and learning, normal and abnormal behaviour, important and unimportant knowledge”, educational institutions can create “conditions and forms of interaction [that reproduce structures of inequality]” (apple, 1979:63). as a result, we cannot assume that education functions as one of “the great engines of democracy” (although it can), but rather that educational institutions “are not necessarily or always progressive forces (apple, 1979:63). in the context of the democratisation of south africa, this perspective suggests that we cannot assume the democratic transformation of all social institutions. rather, transforming social values and unequal forms of interaction should be a conscious and continual process that works against the ‘natural’ modus operandi of social and educational institutions. fourie (1999:277) argues that transformation of heis in south africa requires a deep and integrated response which demands the “development and acceptance of new, shared values [which] can only be achieved through fundamental changes in the mindset (‘cognitive transcendence’) of all stakeholders and role-players”. the imperative to shift mindsets and cultivate tolerant attitudes instead of enact superficial commitments to democratic transformation ties in with the aims of critical citizenship education. conditions at the visual arts department at the university of stellenbosch indicated a need for globally oriented critical citizenship education. the mission statements of both the stellenbosch university and the visual arts department (see references) emphasise the importance of respect for diversity and difference and knowledge applied for the benefit of the community. it is clear, however, that both the university and the visual arts department are struggling with the implementation of policies and initiatives to integrate racially and culturally diverse groups on campus. this relates partly to language issues but, more important perhaps, also to perceptions and attitudes formed in colonial and apartheid years, which have become features of particular group identities. the fact that the institution (in both student and staff composition) remains, to a large extent, racially and culturally homogenous means that there is a distinct lack of interaction between young people from different socioeconomic and racial groups within the visual arts department. this could contribute to a lack of experiential knowledge of the complex social and political problems facing south africa, many of which can be avoided or overlooked through the comfort of privilege. the educational structure – in both form and content – suggested a need to grapple more directly with issues relating to social inequality and cultural tolerance and understanding. a module which sought to address these issues was built into the core curriculum and drew strongly from nussbaum’s criteria for education for critical democratic citizenship – in both the structure of the module and the content it covered. nussbaum’s (2002) criteria are to develop a critical consciousness, which allows students to question their own traditions while practising a mutual respect for reason; to think as citizens of the world; and to develop a ‘narrative imagination’, which fosters a deeper understanding of difference and diversity. nussbaum (2002:301) advocates an educational approach that could “cultivate [students’] ability to see complex humanity in places where they are most accustomed to deny it”. this kind of skill requires theoretical and experiential knowledge as well as the use of the imagination. consequently, the citizenship module was composed of three main components: theoretical learning, social and experiential learning and creative or imaginative learning. the theoretical learning component took the form of readings and seminar sessions covering a range of topics, including blackness/whiteness, stereotyping, power relations, discrimination, helping behaviour, risk, family and social memory. the themes were placed in the south african context of post-colonial and post-apartheid history. the social or experiential learning component centred on a partnership between the visual arts department and a local youth development ngo called vision k, which works with high school students from kayamandi (a township in stellenbosch). the equally numbered groups of design students and high school students for the most part differed with 17costandius & rosochacki — educating for a plural democracy and citizenship regard to race, class and culture. the interaction and co-operation between the groups was to form the basis of the multi-cultural teaching and learning process and thus facilitate critical citizenship education. the students were paired and embarked on discussions of topical issues and relevant social problems, which would often be raised or chosen by the students themselves and related back to the theoretical research component. together, partners had to find a solution to a design brief which either would be a visual exploration of, or a response to, a social issue. interactive sessions, which would take place over an afternoon, were conducted at the high school in kayamandi. the groups would often move out of the classrooms into the streets and homes around the school as students conducted visual and field research. the information resulting from the conversations was then used in a typographical layout. the medium of art and design is particularly conducive to the exercises in ‘narrative imagination’ required to foster mutual respect and tolerance and to investigate rarely articulated and sensitive human issues. nussbaum (2002:299) describes narrative imagination as “the ability to think what it might be like in the shoes of a person different from oneself”. the development of this capacity for a ‘moral imagination’ has traditionally been the prerogative of the arts, which provides a space for ‘non-instrumental’ knowledge production and the possibility of reflection and introspection. in order to assess the effectiveness and value of critical citizenship education with regard to the attitude and perception changes which it enabled, we have tried to identify the most significant ethical and practical challenges that arose through the implementation of the module. students would write reflections before, during and after the process. these became our principle source of data through which to evaluate the module, along with interviews and our own reflections as facilitators. teaching and learning in multi-cultural contexts: problems and assumptions research revealed that mandatory community interaction projects implemented into a curriculum without a ‘knowledge producing’ or learning component easily dissipate into a thinly substantiated exercise in charity. the high school students had initially participated in weekly workshops and classes in the department which were facilitated or taught by the design students. the idea was that high school students would benefit from the extra-mural art classes, as art as a subject was not provided by any of their schools, and that design students would benefit from both the teaching experience and the social interaction. after one year, the arrangement was reviewed through a series of interviews with and reflections from all students. during the interviews, 67% of the design students said that they participated in the interactions because it counted toward their final mark, while 9% remarked that they had not learnt anything from these interactions and 5% felt that it was their christian duty to participate. reactions from the students who were uncritically assimilated into ‘community projects’ recalled steve biko’s insights into the psychological dimension of racialised power hierarchies. biko (2004:23) said that forced integration can be an illusion and often provides a “vague satisfaction for the guilt-stricken whites”. research showed that all that was achieved was that the concept of “white as knowledgeable and black as needy” (biko, 2004:23) was perpetuated. the restructuring of the module in order to facilitate meaningful transformation of attitudes for both stellenbosch university and kayamandi students was based on the principles of reciprocity and exchange rather than service and help. however, although the revised structure served to challenge perceptions of what kinds of knowledge and education are valid and why, the ‘charity’ problem remained salient. a high school student remarked, “i have learned that i can help someone even if i’m not educated”. for the high school students then, the project did serve to challenge the social hierarchies that they had come to expect. in this way they were able to think beyond the confines of a paradigm of ‘charity’ and ‘outreach’ in a way that many university students felt unable to do. this emerged as another barrier to equal interaction. a design student pointed out that it was difficult “to guard against not viewing the white person as the ‘saviour’ figure and the black students as those in need of saving”. students’ reflections after the first few weeks revealed that the groups held deep prejudices about one another, which presented a barrier to equal interaction. some of the design students’ reflections revealed deeply ingrained attitudes and perceptions that they held about people who lived in townships. fanon (1967) writes about the notion of the white people’s gaze and the fascination with the poor or exotic as a 18 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 strategy of ‘othering’. a student remarked, “[i]t felt as if we were tourists exploring a foreign country … it was as if we were looking in from the outside, observing and judging their lifestyle, without the adequate knowledge to do so”. although the township of kayamandi geographically is part of the university town of stellenbosch, most university students had never been there and experienced the first visit as alien. this was recognised as problematic, because actual reflective learning could be hampered if the interaction remained on a level of fascination. the tendency of the university students to unconsciously enlist this strategy of ‘othering’ highlights the extent to which their own culture has been established as the norm. seekings (2008: 6) argues that “white south africans – like white people in many other contexts – take their culture for granted”; consequently, “[c]ulturally, whiteness is invisible to most white people”. the naturalisation of white culture disguises its dominance over other cultures. as long as whiteness is not critically analysed as a constructed (rather than naturally given) identity by white people, its invisible dominance will not be challenged (snyman, 2008). britzman (in kumashiro, 2000:36-37) argues that “[d]eveloping a critical consciousness” to address this problem “involves not only learning about the processes of privileging/normalizing and marginalizing/othering, but also unlearning what one had previously learned is ‘normal’ and normative”. some student reflections indicated that the interactions with the kayamandi students gave them a new sense of self-awareness and an awareness of their backgrounds and cultures. a student remarked: “[i]t is now that i understand the profundity in the simple research conducted at kayamandi; it allows for an internal inspection of your own situation through others, the people you thought were so different from you”. the kayamandi students also indicated that the opportunity for self-reflection was a valuable outcome of the project. one student said that “[t]he project was very interesting in a way that other people around us really want to know about how we as people in kayamandi live our lives. it was good because i got a chance to talk about my life without being discriminated against”. another thought that “this was a great opportunity to talk about blacks openly”. the project appeared to offer the high school students an opportunity not only to talk about, but also to critically examine their culture and traditions. nussbaum (2002) argues that the ability to criticise one’s own traditions is a crucial step in the promotion of cultural tolerance and social cohesion. students expressed a fear of being blamed for apartheid and of being white. a student remarked, “i experienced a lot of guilt throughout the programme … i felt guilty being more privileged” and another student said, “[i]t made me want to be a better person, like herself [her high school partner], because she didn’t see me as a bad person for being white”. evident here is the assumption that the response to difference would manifest in prejudice or intolerance. paolo freire (in palmer, 2001:131) talks about the “irresistible tendency of opposing the differences”. resisting this tendency is often an unsettling process, as it represents a deeply ingrained cognitive and physical attitude towards the world. moacir gadotti (1996:xvi) explains that “[e]ducation presupposes a transformation, and there is no peaceful kind of transformation. there is always conflict and rupture with something, with, for instance, prejudices, habits, types of behaviours and the like”. face-to-face interactions between the students, who were unlikely to meet through the course of their ordinary lives, presented a powerful challenge to deeply set personal and cultural frameworks. however, while the project sought to highlight cultural and racial difference as a topic of engagement, instead of pretending that it was irrelevant, it was sometimes unclear whether emphasis on difference, in fact, deepened rather than provided insight into processes of racial stereotyping and discrimination. the ambiguity of the findings pointed to mclellan and pillay’s (2010:21) argument that “universities should acknowledge and embrace ambivalence as it is often such contradictions that can open up spaces for conversation and interaction among a university’s stakeholders and that might yield additional avenues of development for the university”. in light of this, the outcomes of the citizenship module, though still fraught with problems, might be an affirmative response to mclellan and pillay’s (2010:22) question of whether “the acknowledgement and embracing of ambivalence toward diversity and difference ... can present valuable opportunities for transformation”. 19costandius & rosochacki — educating for a plural democracy and citizenship conclusion this paper has argued in favour of an understanding of democracy as a form of social organisation which accommodates difference and manages conflict rather than one which requires conditions of social homogeneity. the role that education might play in the strengthening of this kind of social organisation is in “establishing a social morality ‘that enables shared practices and mutual intelligible interactions while communicating divergent opinions, beliefs and values’” (jansen et al., 2006 in oloyede, 2009:433). since accepting difference and developing shared practices might be processes which produce both social conflict and harmony, critical citizenship education must remain open to the possibility of dissonance and ambiguity when engaging students with difference and diversity. despite (or perhaps because of) the module’s emphasis on exploring cultural difference, the predominant (though not unanimous) response from both groups of students was surprise at the feeling of commonality instead of ‘otherness’ that arose between learning partners. this outcome suggests both the existence of deeply entrenched cultural prejudices as well as the possibility of educating for tolerance and social cohesion. references apple mw 1979. ideology and curriculum. london: routledge. biko s 2004. i write what i like. 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retrieved on 20 january 2010 from http://sun025.sun.ac.za/portal/page/portal/arts/departments/visual-arts#vision. vale p & jacklin h (eds.) 2009. re-imagining the social in south africa, critique, theory and postapartheid society. scottsville: university of kwazulu-natal press. waghid y 2002. knowledge production and higher education transformation in south africa: towards reflexivity in university teaching, research and community service. higher education, 43(4):457-488. weinstein j 2004. neutrality, pluralism, and education: civic education as learning about the other. studies in philosophy and education, 23:235-263. 225 research article 2021 39(2): 225-238 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.16 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) the challenges of inclusive education and its implementation in schools: the south african perspective abstract inclusive education is the term used to describe an education system in which all learners are accepted and fully included, educationally and socially. the process of inclusion proves to have challenges in developing countries such as south africa which adopted it a bit later than the developed countries. research has mentioned that amongst other challenges is the lack of resources and overcrowding. hence, this paper debates and discusses the challenges in the implementation of inclusive education in south african schools. the study was designed as a multiple case study research in which a qualitative research approach was employed. three schools in the buffalo city metro and three participants per school participated in the study. qualitative data analysis was grounded on an interpretive philosophy. the findings revealed that overcrowding, insufficient training, lack of knowledge and skills of educators were the overarching themes that resulted in educators feeling a sense of inadequacy to teach in an inclusive education classroom. the study will cover the challenges faced in the implementation of inclusive education. therefore, the study recommends that inclusive education should cater to all learners irrespective of the type of disability. keywords: barrier; curriculum adaptation; diversity; sexual orientation; inclusive education. 1. introduction during apartheid, the south african schooling system had ever-worsening challenges of inequality and social rights. the disabled children from the white communities were accommodated in well-resourced special schools whereas the black schools were extremely underresourced. the education for all (efa) initiative, first put forth in 1990, marked a global movement towards providing quality basic education for all children, youth and adults (unesco,1990). there is a need for additional teacher training, as reported in these studies, therefore engelbrecht and muthukrishna justify the need for sound professional training so that teachers can build the self-confidence and author: dr yolanda mpu1 prof emmanuel o. adu1 affiliation: 1university of fort hare, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i2.16 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(2): 225-238 published: 11 june 2021 received: 22 july 2020 accepted: 02 october 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.16 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1345-5517 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.16 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.16 2262021 39(2): 226-238 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.16 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) cognitive flexibility to develop innovative localised approaches (engelbrecht, muthukrishna, 2017). the complement to mainstreaming can best be described as the “full-time education of learners with and without disabilities in regular classroom settings” (engelbrecht, 2012:112). central to understanding the purposes for mainstreaming and inclusion, the “least restrictive environment” can best be described as the general education classroom (schwartz, 2013:40). most of the experiences that threaten individuals’ need to belong can be conceptualised as social exclusion. social exclusion has been defined as the process through which individuals or groups are wholly or partially excluded from full participation in the society within which they live, (galabuzi, 2004). social exclusion has been broadly defined as the experience of being kept apart from others physically (e.g., segregation) or emotionally (e.g., being ignored or told one is not wanted) (riva & eck, 2016). the literature on social exclusion identified two main instances of exclusion: rejection and ostracism (wesselmann & williams, 2017). in recent years, the practice of inclusive education has been widely embraced as an ideal education system. the current state of education in south africa can be attributed to the legacy of the education policies instituted to combat the apartheid laws. the salamanca statement in 1994 accelerated towards the international move towards inclusive education. it is an international policy initiative that envisions that mainstream schools with an inclusive orientation are the most effective means of combating discriminatory attitudes, creating welcoming communities, building an inclusive society and achieving education for all (1994:45). 2. historical overview of inclusive education learners with special needs were historically educated in special schools away from their homes and their peers. the historical legacy of separate special schools in higher-income countries was gradually challenged by moral concerns about segregated special education. questions also arose around the disproportionate representation in separate special education settings of learners from culturally and linguistically non-dominant groups in, for example, the united states, and the marginalisation of girls in formal education in other parts of the world (kozleski, artiles & waitoller, 2013). the inclusive education discourse is one of the most acclaimed yet controversial recent developments on the right to education. according to du plessis (2013: 78), inclusive education in the south african context is defined as a learning environment that promotes the full personal, academic and professional development of all learners irrespective of race, class, gender, disability, religion, culture, sexual preference, learning styles and language. recently, a more multidisciplinary, critical discourse based on the implementation discourse has emerged, which interrogates how inclusion is enacted in diverse contexts (walton, 2016). the exclusion of learners in schools is strongly discouraged in the white paper 6 as the act of ignorance and lack of compassion. the new curriculum and assessment policy (2009) in lesotho represents the latest education reform and marks a departure from the examinationoriented curriculum to a new approach wherein the curriculum is organised into learning areas (raselimo & mahao, 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.16 2272021 39(2): 227-238 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.16 mpu & adu the challenges of inclusive education and its implementation in schools the challenges to schools at the meso-level relate to two main factors such as the lack of time and the lack of resources. the resources and time issues are schooland classroombased issues. one challenge faced by individual teachers is class size. many schools have an average class size of 80 to 100 students (mkandawire, maphale, & tseeke, 2016). mitchell (2008) states that obtaining adequate resources is one of the many important functions of school leadership since a key barrier to the successful creation of ecology for inclusion is the lack of appropriate resources (kgothule & hay, 2013). in south africa, the average class size has 90 to 100 learners and this is due to the challenges regarding infrastructure (mpu, 2018). inclusive education approaches (such as cooperative learning, curriculum differentiation, learning accommodations and flexible response options) become necessary to reach all learners when class sizes are large. 3. objectives of the study the principal objective of this paper is to highlight the main challenges in the implementation of inclusive education in south african schools. it further produces the strategies on how these challenges can be addressed. 4. the research questions participants were asked the following questions: • how much do educators know about inclusive education? • what are the educators’ views regarding the inclusion of learners with physical disabilities in mainstream classrooms? • what support do educators require from district-based support teams (dbst) to help them improve their practices? 5. theoretical framework/methodology the theoretical framework is the theory of social change and more specifically, structural functionalism (van den bergh, 2014) which favours a unitary concept of society that emphasises social integration. bronfenbrenner’s bio-ecological systems theory is the theoretical model that guided the study. the first system of this theory is the “micro-system” which constitutes a pattern of activities, roles and interpersonal relations between individuals and the systems in which they actively participate, such as the family, the school or peers (swart & pettipher, 2011). the advantages of using this theory for the study is because bronfenbrenner finalised his theory by developing his thinking about “proximal processes” which are reciprocal in the development of an individual and other significant processes (rosa & tuge, 2013). this is line with the different systems and the influences surrounding their development such as parents, peers, teachers, the school policies and the society from which they come. out of the systems in this theory, bronfenbrenner added chronosystem last as he took into account the changes over time, not only within an individual but also in the environments in which that individual is found to investigate these changes may affect a person’s developmental outcomes (bronfenbrenner, 1986). the study is based on the interpretive paradigm. in keeping with naicker’s definition (2007), a paradigm is a framework for identifying, explaining and solving issues. the aim of the interpretive paradigm for this study is to understand the subjective world of human experience. it is relevant for this study as it is aimed at investigating the perceptions of educators on inclusive education regarding learners with physical disabilities. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.16 2282021 39(2): 228-238 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.16 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) the interpretive paradigm can also be called the “anti-positivist” paradigm because it is developed as a reaction to positivism (mack, 2010). the anti-positivist approach argues that the social world can be understood only from the standpoint of the individuals who are part of the ongoing action being investigated. it emphasises the ability of the individual to construct meaning; thus, it is sometimes referred to as constructivism. one of the advantages of this approach is the close collaboration between researcher and participant, while enabling participants to tell their stories. the intention of the research, in line with the view of creswell (2007), is to rely as much as possible on the participants’ views of the situation. consequently, the researcher’s intention is to make sense of the meanings others have about the world. 5.1 design and sample the study used a case study design. creswell (2013: 97) describes it as “a qualitative approach in which the investigator explores a real-life, contemporary bounded system (a case) or multiple bounded systems (cases) over time, through detailed, in-depth data collection involving multiple sources of information”. as the data were collected from three different sites such as private, mainstream and special schools, this approach is relevant as the cases differed from one another. the participants from each site had different views regarding the challenges of inclusive education and its implementation. the qualitative research approach correlates with an inductive approach as it is a systematic procedure for analysing qualitative data in which the analysis is likely to be guided by specific evaluation objectives (thomas, 2006:283). the participants were educators from private, special and mainstream schools. the participants were selected using two sampling techniques such as convenience and purposive sampling. according to evans (2014), a convenience sample is one in which the researcher selects participants who are readily available (e.g. teachers in this case). purposive sampling, also referred to as judgemental sampling, refers to the selection of participants based on a study’s purpose as well as on the researcher’s knowledge of the population under research (crossman, 2014). 5.2 data collection and analysis qualitative data analysis for this case study is grounded in an interpretive philosophy. as interviews are the most common data collection method, observations and documents can be used to conduct the research as it was the case with this study. in this research approach, factual accuracy is not of significance as the focus is on the person’s lived experience of what it is like to teach inclusive education in mainstream schools. the researcher generated initial codes that helped in searching for themes. coding was used to combine themes, subthemes and patterns that emerged. on the findings, the researcher discovered that there were challenges that were common amongst the participants. 5.3 ethical consideration for this study all ethical considerations were fulfilled and an ethical clearance certificate with rec-270710-028 level 01 is its reference. the study was approved by the principals of the schools where the study was conducted. prior to the encounter, the consent forms were signed by participants and the research instruments were piloted before the commencement of the study. voluntary participation, liberty to withdraw at any time and anonymity were clearly discussed with the participants. pseudonyms were used in adherence with the ethical issues and the schools of the provincial department of education were also informed and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.16 2292021 39(2): 229-238 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.16 mpu & adu the challenges of inclusive education and its implementation in schools approval was granted. after the completion of the study, the participants were debriefed as was promised in a district workshop organised by the researcher in discussing the findings. 6. findings 6.1 challenges in the implementation of inclusive education in south africa according to donohue and bornman (2014), when the education white paper 6 was first published in 2001, south africa appeared to be following the international trend towards inclusion, but subsequent policy implementation has made little progress over the past decade. researchers found that educators were not provided with sufficient support in implementing the policy (dreyer, 2017; du plessis, 2013). donohue and bornman (2014:10) concluded that the implementation of inclusive education is at an apparent standstill because of ambiguity about the means through which inclusive education can be achieved. donohue and bornman (2014) believe the ambiguity of policies is linked to the lack of funding and is intentional. policies such as these are created to conform to international norms not as a direct result of locally led changes and are hence “symbolic”. the lack of funding attached to such policies is an indication that the policy has little local substance. there is certainly some consistency in the way many of the articles that are critical of policies tend to point to the influence of the international development sector on promoting inclusive education as the only progressive approach for the education of learners with disabilities. in this sense, donors have become very influential in promoting practices that are based on socio-economic contexts that are not the same in low-income countries (kalyanpur, 2008; 2011; 2014; le fanu, 2014). however, over a decade after the introduction of the education white paper 6 (department of education, 2001), most learners with barriers to learning who attend school are still in separate “special” schools for learners with disabilities (donohue & bornman, 2014). according to the views of educators regarding the implementation is their lack of knowledge and skills in dealing with inclusive education. the discourses that surround educators’ roles in inclusive education largely include the way educators are prepared to carry out their responsibilities wherever they are at the time of their duty. in other words, a success in inclusive education in a country depends largely on the capacity of the educators’ skills and knowledge in inclusive education (bourke, 2010). 6.2 formulating an inclusive education policy as explained by muthukrishna and schoeman (2000), policy development in south africa was a unique process that attempted to model its own recommendations. it was characterised by a participatory, democratic approach that adopted a problem-centred approach that took into account the complex challenges presented by a developing context. in accepting this approach, it is essential to acknowledge that the learners who are most vulnerable to barriers to learning and exclusion in south africa are those who have historically been termed “learners with special education needs”, i.e. learners with disabilities and impairments. their increased vulnerability has arisen largely because of the historical nature and extent of the educational support provided (white paper 6:21). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.16 2302021 39(2): 230-238 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.16 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) despite the development of an inclusive education policy to address this exclusion, one of the issues that hamper progress is the lack of educator skills in adapting the curriculum to meet a range of learning needs (chataika, mckenzie, swart & lyner-cleophas 2012). educator training programmes do not appear to be adequately addressing this need, resulting in stress for educators and the lack of progress of learners with disabilities (chataika et al., 2012; engelbrecht 2006). according to the department of basic education report by the minister of basic education, mrs angie motshega (department of basic education, 2010), the total population of learners between the ages of 5 and 18 was estimated at approximately 14.6 million – of which nearly 1,000,000 were disabled. the motives why disabled learners are not attending school are diverse; however paramount among them is that their needs are not catered for in mainstream schools (engelbrecht, nel, smit, & van deventer, 2016). the intention of adopting the policy was to divert from the precept of exclusion of individuals with disabilities through special schools that were in the area several years after independence to “inclusion” into the mainstream. the inclusive education policy, as outlined in white paper 6, recognises that each learner is unique and therefore each has a unique feature of learning needs. the underlying principle of inclusive education is to offer an education that is as equitable as viable for all learners, while adapting it to the needs of each learner (thomazet, 2009). white paper 6 accepts that a broad range of learning needs exist among the learner population at any point in time, and that, where these are not met, learners may fail to learn effectively or be excluded from the learning system. 6.3 policy implementation to address these past and current challenges, in 2001 south africa adopted the inclusive education policy, education white paper 6. since its implementation there have been several initiatives to facilitate the effective implementation of an inclusive education system. this policy outlines strategies for the provisions of education support for learners who experience barriers to learning and development. according to this policy, one of the key strategies for improving education support to learners experiencing barriers to learning and development is through the establishment of an inclusive education and training system (report guidelines, 2014). in south africa, teacher education has been characterised by fragmentation and involves deep disparities in duration and quality (engelbrecht, nel & tlale, 2015). many educators are seen to be disadvantaged due to the poor quality of their training within the field (engelbrecht et al., 2015). in the past, in-service training was predominantly provided by universities, educator-training colleges and non-governmental or private organisations (logan, 2012). these were generally uncoordinated with no clear overall policy guidelines formulated by government education departments (logan, 2012). the south african co-operation programme in education (scope) sector funded various in-service programmes in which a cascade model was used to introduce and support inclusive education in several south african provinces (amod, 2015; logan, 2012). the cascade model was designed for one or two representatives from each school to attend the programmes and then relate the knowledge and skills they learnt to their colleagues (engelbrecht, 2006). educators’ prior knowledge of inclusive education from pre-service training as well as in-service training was found to have more positive attitudes towards http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.16 2312021 39(2): 231-238 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.16 mpu & adu the challenges of inclusive education and its implementation in schools inclusion than educators who had not gained that knowledge (logan, 2012; wylde, 2015). training that involves administrative issues surrounding inclusive education, exposure to the best inclusive practices, collaboration with colleagues and parents as well as the availability of support structures are viewed as fundamental aspects of educator training in inclusive education (amod, 2015; engelbrecht et al., 2015). 6.4 challenges faced by students in mainstream schools • poor physical infrastructure: poor school physical infrastructure as one of the major problems constraining the teaching of and learning for learners with disabilities: the construction of school buildings, even those constructed under the new government, do not consider the needs of learners with physical disabilities and other disabilities. the entrances to most buildings, for example, have long staircases that cannot be accessed by physically disabled learners using wheelchairs. • poor facilities: lack of learning materials is another problem constraining their learning. many schools in south africa do not have enough chairs and tables for the students; therefore, many learners struggle to get a chair to sit on and this becomes more difficult for a student with any disability who cannot run fast to get a chair. there are also no books for visually impaired learners. • transport problems: learners with physical disabilities do not have reliable means of transport from their homes to schools. because of this, they are always late in attending classes as a considerable amount of time is lost in travelling. public transport in south africa is not wheelchair-friendly as there is no place to keep their wheelchairs. • feelings of neglect by and dissatisfaction with educators: it was observed that the type of education received by learners with disabilities is of very poor quality, in fact, they did not consider themselves as receiving any education! this may be because there are very few education centres that provide training for teachers in special education, so the available teachers are not knowledgeable about teaching learners with physical disabilities. • stigma: another problem is stigmatisation and embarrassment perpetrated by other learners, primarily characterised by laughing and name-calling, (avramidis, 2012) the participants were very vocal about the above challenges p1: you can see for yourself the condition our school. we do not have ramps around our school for wheelchair bound learners. how do you think we can manage this problem? p2: my classroom is on the second floor. we use stairs to access it which could be a challenge for those learners who are using wheelchairs. p3: i teach computer my learners which is located in the next block. the learners have to get to the computer lab on time. you have to wait long for those who cannot walk and the period will be almost gone by the time they reach. the veranda has huge potholes and their wheelchairs get stuck whilst struggling to get to class if they do not find someone to push them, really the infrastructure does not cater for the disabled. the issue of the shortage of furniture and learner teacher support material (ltsm) were also a challenge. participants complained of the lack of assistive devices such as braille and the books printed in large fonts were another concern. p1: my view is that the teaching equipment like large font books and other teaching aids must be available in schools and that continuous training must be at the heart of the management teams. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.16 2322021 39(2): 232-238 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.16 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) p3: i once visited a school where i saw learners who are deaf having books written in braille. if we can for example have signed language interpreters to assist whilst teaching, modified books with bigger prints and maybe computers that are designed for learners who cannot handle the mouse maybe. it is just wishful thinking because to have ict devices in this province is just a dream. during the researcher’s stay at the sites, she observed that when the learners come from their transport, it was the driver’s duty to assist learners out of the transport. there was no support from the parents or caregivers. when getting out of the transport, the driver has to be the one unfolding the wheelchair and wheeling the child to the entrance where he meets with the teacher or a fellow student. p1 and p3: in this area all learners use the same mode of transport and the transport picks and drop in various schools and when it finally arrives it is late already for the first period. another overarching challenge in schools is the issue of stigmatising and name-calling. the respondents had the following to say: p1&p2: positive attitude, i can say can help in the refurbishment of the current teaching conditions. this does not only lie with educators but attitudes can be from among learners calling each other names related to disability and stigmatisation. p3: due to the lack of knowledge and skills, some teachers still associate disability with witchcraft. they have a negative attitude towards learners with disabilities. 6.5 strategies in responding to challenges in the implementation of inclusive education while much public debate and inclusive education research focus on the importance of initial teacher education, the connection between initial teacher preparation and ongoing professional learning is recognised. educators who experience high-quality initial preparation are more likely to seek ongoing opportunities to improve in their practice and engage in professional development throughout their careers (scheerens, 2010). as indicated earlier in this report, new educational reforms such as inclusive education demand new skills and abilities from educators. for in-service educators, the effective professional learning opportunities must be provided to enable them to gain these competencies. hwang and evans (2011), fuchs (2010), hido and shehu (2010) as well as brakenreed (2011) agree that the following factors are integral in the implementation of inclusive education: information sharing workshops, time management for planning, adequate resources, reduced class sizes and training for school administrators help to promote inclusive education. furthermore, they consented that collaboration roles and a change in educational values and philosophy are the best methods of establishing an inclusive education. in addition, slavica (2010) reported that commitment and a clear vision are needed for learners with special needs to flourish. other strategies that have been successful for working with students in the inclusive classroom: • get to know your students’ individualised education plan (iep) • implement universal design for learning (udl) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.16 2332021 39(2): 233-238 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.16 mpu & adu the challenges of inclusive education and its implementation in schools • support important life skills • engage in collaborative planning and teaching • develop a strong behaviour management plan (ciyer, 2010). 7. discussion the interviewed participants shared their perceptions of inclusive education stating the lack of support from district-based support teams (dbsts). the data analysis indicated that not only the educators in these classroom environments are playing a role; classroom organisation and overcrowding; resources; strategies and teaching methods and the well-trained personnel as well as the other stakeholders outside the school are essential. the policies regarding the implementation of inclusion need to be reviewed regularly and need to be advocated to all stakeholders. the availability of necessary resources is vital and that challenges addressed in the study need to be addressed. it is important that southern african countries give due consideration to their social, economic, political, cultural and historical singularities in responding to the challenges posed by the implementation of inclusive education. the participants reported a lack of skills in working with learners who are physically challenged. all participants expressed a desperate need for training and follow-up support. a few have at least attended workshops on inclusive education; however, they claim that those workshops were not enough. their responses are expressed under the theme on the support that the participants get from district-based support teams (dbst). similarly, the participants were quoted saying: p1: the district support teams must give us intensive training on how to handle the issue of inclusive education. p2: district based support teams must train the teachers on how to do intervention strategies in our schools. p3: training is very limited as it is done once in a while. after the training there is no monitoring done to check progress. the findings revealed that insufficient training, lack of knowledge and skills of educators were the overarching themes that resulted in educators feeling a sense of inadequacy to teach in an inclusive classroom environment. these findings were consistent with bigham (2010), who discovered a correlation between attitudes and training. such training initiatives could include, but should not be limited to: • in-depth courses with a focal point for accommodating learners with special needs; • periodic seminars and workshops for training in teaching diverse learners; • promotional videos of inclusion in action at the school level; • training for parents and the school community; • technology; • first aid training; and • annual, professional development training on inclusive education (bigham, 2010). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.16 2342021 39(2): 234-238 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.16 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) these findings are consistent with recent literature that established that while educators were positive about inclusive education, they still preferred to include certain categories of learners (engel-yeger, 2010). additionally, educators were adamant that access to resources and support from administrators for educators and learners would prove beneficial to the implementation of inclusive education at the secondary level as consistent with previous research (fuchs, 2010; hwang & evans, 2011; kalyva et al., 2007). 7.1 the milestones regarding the implementation of inclusive education south africa, similar to all other countries, has since embarked on components such as: • inclusive policies that promote education for all (efa) • flexible and inclusive curriculum • formation of school-based support teams (smts to work in collaboration with district support teams) • equitable distribution of resources • strong and supportive school leadership • training of teachers in inclusive pedagogy and diversity • parental involvement in the schooling system 8. conclusion the issues of inclusive education and its implementation are indeed south africa’s challenge. statistically, learners with disabilities do not attend school because of the lack of knowledge and skills by educators. training needs to support educators and caregivers are crucial. owing to inadequate infrastructure and the shortage of assistive devices lead to social exclusion. this study highlighted strategies in responding to challenges in the implementation of inclusive education. 9. recommendations this study only focused on one district of the eastern cape. future research should focus on qualitative and quantitative research approaches. future researchers may repeat this study using a larger population covering a greater part of the province. references amod, z. 2015. south african foundation phase teachers’ perceptions of adhd at private and public schools. international journal of environmental research and public health, 12(3): 3042–3059. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph120303042 avramidis, e. 2012. a survey into mainstream teachers’ attitude towards the inclusion of children with special educational needs in an ordinary school in one local education authority. london: routledge. bigham, t. 2010. do teachers have a negative attitude towards the inclusion of students with special needs? unpublished master thesis. usa: 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https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654313483905 walton, e. 2016. the language of inclusive education: exploring speaking, listening, reading and writing. london: routledge. wylde, c. 2015. state, economy, and society in post-neoliberalism: argentina under cristina fernandez de kirchner. new political economy, 21(3): 322–341. https://doi.org/10.1080/135 63467.2016.1113949 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.16 https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654313483905 https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2016.1113949 https://doi.org/10.1080/13563467.2016.1113949 60 policy analysis of the english graduation benchmark in taiwan chih-min shih nanyang technological university to nudge students to study english and to improve their english proficiency, many universities in taiwan have imposed an english graduation benchmark on their students. this article reviews this policy, using the theoretic framework for education policy analysis proposed by haddad and demsky (1995). the author presents relevant research findings, and concludes that this policy does not achieve the intended goals. it is suggested that policymakers reconsider this english graduation benchmark. keywords: english graduation benchmark, taiwan, university students, washback, policy analysis introduction in order to embrace globalisation and enhance students’ proficiency in english, it has become common practice in taiwan to impose an english graduation benchmark on university students as one of their degree requirements. this paper analyses this policy, using the theoretic framework for education policy analysis proposed by haddad and demsky (1995). this framework encompasses seven policy-planning processes: “(1) analysis of the existing situation; (2) the generation of policy options; (3) evaluation of policy options; (4) making the policy option; (5) planning of policy implementation; (6) policy impact assessment; (7) subsequent policy cycles” (haddad & demsky, 1995:24). these seven processes also form the skeleton of this article. since there is a paucity of research on this subject in taiwan, all relevant empirical studies are cited to present the current understanding of this issue. analysis of the existing situation the economic and educational contexts played an important role in forming the policy of the english graduation benchmark. in terms of the economy, over 80% of taiwan’s gross national product depended on international trade (taiwan government information office, 2004). in 2007, taiwan was ranked the 16th largest exporter and the 17th largest importer in the world (taiwan government information office, 2008). therefore, foreign languages such as english, german, french, spanish, and japanese were used as a medium of communication with foreign companies and played an indispensable role in taiwan’s economy. in the past two decades english has become a lingua franca in international trade. starting from the mid-1980s, the higher education sector in taiwan has witnessed an unprecedented expansion. according to the ministry of education (n.d.), higher education used to be under government’s stringent control. in 1994, the university law was enacted, granting universities more academic freedom and institutional autonomy. due to the liberalism of higher education, the number of universities increased by 3.75 times, and that of students by 2.52 times from the mid-1980s to 2003. the market-oriented mechanism was also introduced to the education system (chou, 2008). due to a high demand for foreignlanguage talents, numerous universities established their english-related departments (e.g., applied foreign language department, applied english department). the expansion of the higher education, however, has sparked unprecedented concerns about the quality of university students in the education system and society. decades ago, being admitted to university was dubbed by the taiwanese as a “narrow gate”, which denotes the competitiveness of the joint college entrance examination (jcee). only top-notch students were able to excel in the jcee. in the wake of the liberation of higher education, university students’ academic performance varied significantly (shih, 2007). 61shih — policy analysis of the english graduation benchmark in taiwan the generation of policy options given that english has become a language universally used for international trade, and that university students’ academic performance, on average, plummeted, there was a call for improving all citizens’ proficiency in english. imposing an english graduation benchmark was one of a multitude of proposals to improve proficiency in english. prior to the new millennium, english was a compulsory subject for university students, but the english graduation benchmark was prescribed to a limited extent at taiwanese universities. a dramatic turn occurred after the language training and testing centre (lttc), commissioned by the taiwan ministry of education (moe), phased in the general english proficiency test (gept1). the introduction of the gept made the english graduation benchmark feasible partly due to its relatively low registration fees and five levels of proficiency (shih, 2010); university authorities could choose one proficiency level out of five which was deemed appropriate for their students, and did not have to be concerned that students could not afford the registration fees. some universities started to impose an english requirement on their students circa 2002. for example, since 2003, freshmen at national chiao tung university have been required to pass the first stage of the gept’s high-intermediate level (chen, 2008). this policy became contagious, and was soon adopted by many universities. evaluation of policy options numerous policies might be conducive to english learning, and they can be implemented concurrently. therefore, i will not compare this policy with others in this article. rather, i will focus on how universities evaluated the policy of the english graduation benchmark. different universities and programmes have various views of this policy. one study examined how higher education institutions (heis) evaluated this policy and arrived at different conclusions. shih’s (2010) research in two applied foreign language departments at different institutes of technology in 2004 examined why one department (department a) had not prescribed an english graduation benchmark, whereas the other (department b) had. although faculty members in department a believed that the graduation benchmark would motivate students to learn english, they had other concerns, namely that parents might oppose this requirement, and that students’ proficiency in english was too low to pass the graduation benchmark. they also learned that this policy had not been successfully implemented at other universities, and understood that the moe did not allow universities to prescribe this requirement in the early 2000s. therefore, they decided not to implement this policy. faculty members in department b had a different approach to this requirement. they believed that this policy would persuade students to study english, and that an english certificate would be conducive for students to seeking employment after graduation. in addition, they perceived that this requirement would make the university more competitive in the higher education market in taiwan. school authorities could also be more confident of students’ proficiency in english if they could pass the test. although faculty members in department b were also concerned that this requirement may flout the law of the moe, they solved this problem by providing failing students an opportunity to take a make-up examination administered by the department. despite its narrow scope, this research exemplified how faculty members at different universities evaluated the policy of the english graduation benchmark from various perspectives. validity issues with the exception of the empirical study which demonstrated how this policy was examined at different institutions, one theoretical issue which emerges when this policy is evaluated is the validity of the test used. since the gept is probably the most universally used test for graduation benchmark purposes, its validity deserves close attention. according to messick (1996:245), “validity is an overall evaluative judgement of the degree to which empirical evidence and theoretical rationales support the adequacy and appropriateness of interpretations and actions based on test scores or other modes of assessment”. this 62 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 definition implies that interpretations of test scores are important to establish the validity of the test. one source of invalidity of the gept is its proficiency descriptions for different levels which fail to provide proper interpretations of test scores. both shih (2008b) and vongpumivitch (2010) pointed out that this aspect is the weak link of the gept. for example, the lttc (n.d.-b) claimed that a high-intermediate level of certificate roughly equates with non-english-major university graduates’ proficiency in english. this statement is untenable because there is no unified english curriculum among taiwanese universities. therefore, the so-called proficiency in english of non-english-major university graduates is arbitrary. due to the inaccuracy of the proficiency descriptions of the gept, university authorities cannot use them to correctly interpret the results of the test, and prescribe an appropriate graduation benchmark. the other source of problematic proficiency descriptions is that the gept used can-do statements to portray what test takers should be able to perform in the four skills in real-world situations. roever and pan (2008) pointed out that these can-do statements were not empirically substantiated and thus dubious. for example, when describing the listening tasks that test takers who pass the advanced level can perform, the lttc (n.d.-a) states that they are able to comprehend conversations of a variety of genres, such as television programmes and debates. in their workplace, they are able to understand oral reports and negotiations when they are in a meeting or are engaged in a discussion. such sweeping statements can be found in all of the four skills across all levels of the gept. however, the test tasks of the gept do not always reflect the claimed language uses. according to messick (1996:244), this threat to validity is known as “construct under-representation”, meaning that “the test is too narrow and fails to include important dimensions or facets of focal constructs”. ethical issue the second theoretical issue which deserves more attention is ethical concerns. using a single test for gate-keeping purposes is considered inappropriate. in his article the ethics of gate-keeping tests: what have we learned in a hundred year?, spolsky (1997) states that there is an inevitable psychometric error embedded in tests. instead of eradicating it, psychometrists are acknowledging and accepting its existence, paying attention to how the results of the tests are interpreted and used, and employing several assessment methods in the process of making a critical decision. he concludes: “tests can provide valuable data for gate-keeping decisions, but must not be left as the sole arbiter” (spolsky, 1997:246-247). similar suggestions have been proposed by other scholars (see brown & hudson, 1998; shohamy, 2001; brown, 2004). it appears that all of the above-mentioned literature rebuts the legitimacy of adopting a single english test as the benchmark for graduation. making the policy decision as reported earlier, imposing this requirement on students was even forbidden by the taiwan moe in early 2000, according to the accounts of two chairpersons of applied foreign language departments at taiwan institutes of technology in 2004 (shih, 2010). the government’s attitude towards this policy changed significantly in 2005. as part of the governmental four-year plan for 2005-2008, the taiwan moe mapped out the goals for improving the english ability of students at heis (moe, 2005). by 2007, 50% of students at both institutes of technology and universities of technology would pass the elementary level of the gept, and the same percentage of university students would be certified at the intermediate level of the gept. almost concurrently, the moe commissioned the higher education evaluation and accreditation council of taiwan (heeact), taiwan assessment and evaluation association (twaea) and national yunlin university of science and technology to evaluate all academic programmes, a practice that would be institutionalised to hold heis accountable. programmes with a negative evaluation report are to receive less funding, to recruit fewer students, and to charge less tuition as a penalty. in addition, these programmes will receive extensive media coverage, which undoubtedly will ruin their reputation. if the issues pointed out by programme reviewers are not improved, the programmes will be closed after consecutive negative evaluation results. it is obvious that programmes face dire repercussions if they fail 63shih — policy analysis of the english graduation benchmark in taiwan their evaluation. it appears that imposing an english graduation benchmark on university students has become an important index when academic programmes are reviewed. for example, it was suggested that the department of applied english and the department of accounting information systems of national taichung institute of technology establish an english graduation benchmark (national yunlin university of science and technology, 2008), an indication that this requirement should be imposed on english-major and non-english-major students. in their endeavour for acceptable evaluation reports, universities are left no choice but to lay down this requirement even if it is not endorsed by faculty members and students. planning of policy implementation at national level, the moe officials had several strategies to achieve the above-mentioned goals in the governmental four-year plan for 2005-2008 (moe, 2005): 1. the cross-reference table of different english tests can be used as the criteria for reference. 2. universities are encouraged to offer english programmes as students’ electives, and students to take different levels of english tests. 3. students’ passing of english tests is included as one of the indices of university evaluation. 4. universities’ reward rules for improving students’ foreign language proficiency should be examined and rectified, and universities should be guided to actively promote english tests and remedial teaching. 5. english competition campaigns should be held for technological institutes. 6. english teaching and learning resource centres should be established in the geographic regions of northern, southern, eastern, and central taiwan. at university level, close scrutiny revealed that every university has its distinct english graduation benchmark for students’ proficiency in english. for example, distinguished universities (e.g., national taiwan university, national chiao tung university), in general, require students to pass the first stage of the gept’s high-intermediate level; others may set a lower criterion such as the gept’s elementary or intermediate level. irrespective of their benchmark, they may allow students to take other english tests (e.g., ielts,2 toefl,3 toeic4) as the equivalent. upon reaching a stipulated score in one of the abovementioned tests, students are also considered to have fulfilled this requirement. to assist and encourage students to achieve the english graduation benchmark, english self-study centres have been established, test-preparation courses have been offered, and various incentives (e.g., monetary incentives) have been awarded to students who pass the test at many heis. in fact, as university authorities realise that not every student can pass the graduation benchmark, they offer a “back door” (e.g., remedial english course, makeup examination) to students who fail the english test. as long as students pass the alternative, they can still graduate from the university. such a measure is so universal that even national taiwan university, which always recruits the best performing senior high school students in taiwan, cannot avert. in fact, empirical studies have seldom been conducted to show that passing the course is tantamount to attaining the graduation benchmark. more often than not, these alternatives are easier options, which might be a source of invalidity. policy impact assessment stakeholders’ acceptance is a critical factor which determines the success of a testing policy (berry & lewkoxicz, 2000). it is thus necessary to investigate students’ views of this requirement. it appeared that the majority of the participants in shih’s (2008a) and chu’s (2009) studies supported the policy of prescribing an english graduation benchmark. they upheld it because it motivated students to study english and thereby improved their english (shih, 2008a; chu, 2009); it was conducive in the context of globalisation (chu, 2009); it reflected an inevitable global trend (chu, 2009); it built the reputation of the university (chu, 2009), and, english certificates were critical for future job-hunting (shih, 2008a; chu, 2009). however, some of the participants opposed this requirement for several reasons. first, they believed that taking an english test is a personal matter, and that universities should not prescribe any graduation benchmark (shih, 2008a). secondly, they disapproved of this policy because not all students would pursue 64 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 a career which required using english (shih, 2008a; chu, 2009). according to some participants, the requirement was an unnecessary burden for students who would not encounter foreigners in their jobs. thirdly, some students did not consider this policy to be an appropriate way to improve english (chu, 2009). they suggested offering more english courses and creating an english learning environment instead. fourthly, students’ proficiency in english varied; thus having the same benchmark imposed on everybody was not fair (shih, 2008a; chu, 2009). fifthly, students considered the gept to be a test that should be used in the workplace, not in the education system (shih, 2008a). one relevant perspective which is worth considering is shohamy’s (2001) theory of critical language testing. she advocated that test takers be empowered to question the uses and methods of the test, and that they have the right to reject the test if they perceive that it does not fit into their knowledge. her theory emphatically refutes the appropriateness of the english graduation benchmark and appears to promote a neutral policy which allows students to decide whether they will take the test or not. this neutral policy, in my view, is also a good solution to students’ divided opinions of the controversial english graduation benchmark. washback studies probably the most direct way to analyse the impact of this policy is to conduct washback studies. to date, several research projects have focused on this subject. for example, shih (2007) investigated the washback effects of the gept on students’ english learning. the applied foreign language department of a university of technology (department a) and that of an institute of technology (department b) were selected as his research sites. when he collected his data in 2004, department a students did not have to take any english test whereas department b students had to pass the first stage of the gept’s intermediate level one year prior to graduation. those who failed the gept were eligible to take the departmental make-up examination. if students failed both examinations, they would not be able to graduate. shih (2007) found that the gept had limited or no impact on students’ english learning in both departments, regardless of the status of the gept. although the test seemed to encourage some autonomous learners when they passed the test with ease, it also caused frustration among students who failed the test. for example, english was originally the favourite subject of super killer, a student who participated in shih’s study. after he failed the gept on three successive occasions, his confidence suffered a serious setback, and his motivation was severely blunted. shih (2007) further deciphered why the gept was perceived as a high-stakes test by a marginal majority of his participants but induced limited washback. he enumerated nine factors that attenuated the washback of the gept on students’ english learning: 1. passing the gept was not desperately needed for students who would graduate in a few years’ time, so they could take a lax attitude to prepare for the test. 2. since students in his study were english majors, their routine english learning could be used as their test preparation. 3. although students were willing to gear up for the test, they did not know how to prepare for it, or they did not have a partner with whom to practise. 4. students were so proficient in english that they did not have to prepare for the test. 5. students were occupied with other duties or obligations (e.g., part-time jobs) prior to the test, so they could not fully commit to their test preparation. 6. students acknowledged that their laziness prevented them from preparing for the test. 7. students were not autonomous learners, and did not have good learning attitudes. 8. students abhorred testing and were reluctant to study solely for the test. 9. department b had a make-up examination which had a loophole. in fact, the make-up examination was randomly selected from 15 sets of simulated gept questions to which all students had access. diligent students could try to answer the questions and pass answer keys to those who needed to take the test to help them pass the test without any preparation. 65shih — policy analysis of the english graduation benchmark in taiwan chu (2009) conducted another study to scrutinise the impact of the gept on students’ english learning at two universities of technology. she elicited help from a public university of technology (university a) and a private one (university b), both of which required their day-division non-english-major students to pass the first stage of the gept’s intermediate level. none of the 32 students interviewed told her that the gept had induced a high level of washback on their english learning; 19 reported that the gept had no impact at all. similarly, findings which emerged from 606 copies of student questionnaires showed that the positive washback on learning was minute. regrettably, the graduation benchmark had induced negative feelings such as fear and frustration among students. overall, the results suggested that the english graduation benchmark had sparked more unintended, deleterious washback than the intended, positive one. chu (2009) attributed the low washback to different factors for students with various proficiency levels. she found that the english benchmark was too formidable and daunting a task for low-achieving students to attain. the students were of the opinion that they were doomed to fail the test. although willing to prepare for the test, they did not know how to. high-achieving students were not swayed by the english test because they studied english out of their own interests. they would study by themselves irrespective of whether there was an exit test or not. those students whose proficiency in english was between the two extremes would wait until the last minute to prepare for the test. their concern was to boost their test score, not their proficiency in english. the other factor that attenuated the washback on learning was that the gept did not meet the students’ needs. for example, a participant mentioned in the interview that he was interested in improving his speaking skills, which were not assessed in most of the tests in taiwan, including the first stage of the gept’s intermediate level. chen (2008) investigated the washback of the gept at a leading university where undergraduate students were required to pass the first stage of the gept’s high-intermediate level as their graduation benchmark, or they had to take remedial english courses. results showed that students were not very motivated to study for the test; 101 participants prepared themselves for the gept, whereas the remaining 182 students took the test unprepared. vongpumivitch (2006) conducted the other washback study at another prestigious university in taiwan. she found that the gept was solely one of the numerous tests which students took in their lives. regardless of the gept’s presence, students’ learning methods remained invariable. she concluded that the gept neither induced any long-term washback on students’ english learning nor promoted life-long learning of english. to recapitulate, the above empirical studies indicate that the gept induced limited or no washback on both english-major and non-english-major students, national and private heis, comprehensive universities, and institutions of technology. no studies, to the best of my knowledge, have shown that the english graduation benchmark generated a high level of washback on students’ english learning, and therefore boosted students’ proficiency in english at taiwan heis. although all washback research projects are case studies which lack generalisability, they showed limited washback effects of this policy to some extent. impact on the workplaces tests are now considered social practice (see mcnamara & roever, 2006; mcnamara, 2008). another method to examine the impact of the policy is to investigate whether an english certificate is indispensable for students’ future job applications and their workplaces. two recent studies examined this topic. pan (2009) recruited 19 participants responsible for hiring employees in their companies whose workforces ranged from 8.000 to 30.000. she noted that only 13% of the participants required their job applicants to submit their english certificates despite their unanimous espousal of the english graduation benchmark. she also noted that 53% of her participants considered applicants who possessed an english certificate diligent. this attribute, however, was not assessed by english tests, a fact which meant that these stakeholders had a different view of the test than did testers. her study implied that english might not be a cardinal skill when university graduates seek a job. in addition, the results of the english tests might be misinterpreted and therefore be used for construct-irrelevant purposes. 66 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 chu (2009) focused solely on jobs that required employees to use english, and interviewed six representatives from the industry to explore students’ future needs in their workplaces. notwithstanding the important roles english might play in the workplace, professional knowledge, not english proficiency, was the determining factor when job applicants were considered for recruitment. english skills became essential when the rest of the qualifications were roughly equivalent. in addition, chu (2009) noted that verbal and written communications with foreign clients as well as datasheet reading were the primary tasks that students would have to perform in their future workplaces. this finding was congruent with the student participants’ perceptions of their future needs for english. to complete the above tasks, fundamental listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills in english as well as specialised english vocabulary knowledge were required. chu further compared students’ english needs in the workplace with the content of the gept and found that there was a mismatch between them. she claimed that this disparity contributed to the gept’s lack of washback on students’ learning. although demonstrating that english might be important in certain companies, chu (2009) indicated that english was not the primary consideration when companies recruited new employees. if conclusions are to be drawn from these empirical studies, other core abilities which taiwanese companies regarded highly, rather than the english graduation benchmark, should be prescribed. however, both qualitative studies involved a small number of participants. more large-scale research is required to investigate this issue. subsequent policy cycles according to haddad and demsky (1995), the above processes of proposing, deciding, implementing, and evaluating a policy should be iterative. at national level, it appears that this policy, to date, has not been revisited and that educational authorities have not questioned its efficacy. at school level, university authorities and faculty members have attempted to fine-tune this policy. the two departments in shih’s (2010) study have undergone several modifications in their policy of english graduation benchmark, an indication that policymaking is a complex issue. for example, in 2003, faculty members in department a decided to require all new students to pass the intermediate level of the gept prior to graduation. however, due to various considerations discussed earlier, this policy was not implemented. to date, a dearth of research has investigated the evolution of this policy; more studies can be conducted to further examine this issue. conclusion it is not surprising to witness that numerous taiwan heis, facing the pressure from the taiwan moe and society, have required students to pass an english benchmark prior to graduation. in his article to mark the 25th anniversary of language testing, spolsky (2008) mentioned that the government and the general public substantially affect testing, both calling for using tests to hold education accountable and to implement educational reforms without devoting more resources. although policymakers, educators, students, and the general public are confident about the impact of this policy, empirical studies have shown that this policy is merely a “placebo”. the lack of washback stems from the complex nature of the washback phenomenon. in addition, although it plays a significant role in taiwanese economy, english is not a skill that all taiwanese students will use in their daily lives and workplaces. other professional knowledge is, in fact, more critical than english, according to the interviewees in chu’s (2009) study. it is therefore untenable that students must attain a graduation benchmark in english, not on the expertise they pursue in their university studies. finally, this policy sparks concerns about validity and ethics, as has been elaborated. in general, this policy does not achieve the goals established by policymakers, but it raises validity and ethical concerns. it is suggested that policymakers reconsider the english graduation benchmark. 67shih — policy analysis of the english graduation benchmark in taiwan endnotes 1 information on the gept can be found in some scholarly reviews (e.g., roever & pan, 2008; shih, 2008b; vongpumivitch, 2010) and on the lttc’s website (http://www.lttc.ntu.edu.tw/elttc/gept_eng_main.htm). 2. the ielts means the international english language testing system. 3. the toefl stands for the test of english as a foreign language. 4. the toeic is the acronym of the test of english for international communication. references berry v & lewkowicz j 2000. exit-tests: is there an alternative? hong kong journal of applied linguistics, 5(1):19-49. brown hd 2004. language assessment: principles and classroom practices. new york: pearson. brown j d & hudson t 1998. the alternatives in language assessment. tesol quarterly, 32: 653-675. chen t-h 2008. impacts of compulsory standardized exams on college students’ l2 learning motivation. med dissertation. hsinchu: national chiao tung university. chou c-i 2008. the impact of neo-liberalism on taiwanese higher education. international perspectives on education and society, 9:297-311. chu h-y 2009. stakes, needs and washback: an investigation of the english benchmark policy for graduation and efl education at two universities of technology in taiwan. phd dissertation. taipei: national taiwan normal university. haddad wd & demsky t 1995. education policy-planning process: an applied framework. paris: united nations educational, scientific, and cultural organization. language training and testing center n.d.-a. advanced. retrieved on 18 september 2009 from http:// www.lttc ntu.edu.tw/e_lttc/gept_eng_ad.htm. language training and testing center n.d.-b. high-intermediate. retrieved on 18 september 2009 from http://www.lttc ntu.edu.tw/e_lttc/gept_eng_hi htm. mcnamara t 2008. the socio-political and power dimensions of tests. in nh hornberger (series ed.) & e shohamy & nh hornberger (vol. eds), encyclopedia of language and education: vol. 7. language testing and assessment (2nd ed., pp. 415-427). new york: springer science+ business media. mcnamara t & roever c 2006. language testing: the social dimension. malden, ma: blackwell publishing. messick s 1996. validity and waskback in language testing. language testing, 13:241-256. ministry of education 2005. 教育施政主軸行動方案 [four-year plan for 2005-2008 in education]. retrieved on 25 april 2005 from http://www.edu.tw/edu_web/edu_mgt/secretary/ edu8354001/940309-01.doc. ministry of education n.d. 教育政策白皮書(初稿) [white paper of educational policies (draft)]. retrieved on 2 september 2011 from mail2.ylc.edu.tw/~gces.kentxchang/pipi/white.doc national yunlin university of science and technology 2008. 國立台中技術學院評鑑報告 [evaluation report on national taichung institute of technology]. retrieved on 14 september 2009 from http:// www.twaea.org.tw/download/tech-school/台中.pdf. pan y-c 2009. the social impact of english certification exit requirement. paper presented at the language testing research colloquium, denver. retrieved on 26 september 2009 from http://www.cal.org/ ltrc2009/schedule/ ltrc2009_program.pdf. roever c & pan y-c 2008. gept: general english proficiency test. language testing, 25:403-408. shih c-m 2007. a new washback model of students’ learning. canadian modern language review, 64:135-162. shih c-m 2008a. critical language testing: a case study of the general english proficiency test. english teaching and learning, 32(3):1-34. shih c-m 2008b. the general english proficiency test. language assessment quarterly, 5:63-76. shih c-m 2010. the washback of the general english proficiency test on university policies: a taiwan case study. language assessment quarterly, 7:234-254. 68 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 shohamy e 2001. the power of tests: a critical perspective on the uses of language tests. essex: longman. spolsky b 1997. the ethics of gatekeeping tests: what have we learned in a hundred years? language testing, 14:242-247. spolsky b 2008. language testing at 25: maturity and responsibility? language testing, 25:297-305. taiwan government information office 2004. a brief introduction to taiwan: the economy. retrieved on 17 august 2005 from http://www.gio.gov.tw/taiwanwebsite/5-gp/brief/info04_8 html. taiwan government information office 2008. the republic of china yearbook 2008. retrieved on 15 september 2009 from http://www.gio.gov.tw/taiwan-website/5-gp/yearbook/ch9 html. vongpumivitch v 2006. an impact study of taiwan’s general english proficiency test (gept). paper presented at the language testing research colloquium, melbourne, australia. vongpumivitch v 2010. the general english proficiency test. in l cheng & a curtis (eds), english language assessment and the chinese learner (pp. 158-172). new york: routledge. 1382021 39(1): 138-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.9 the impact of covid-19 on the holistic development of young south african at-risk children in three early childhood care and education centres in a rural area abstract early childhood care and education (ecce) has gained recognition as an important means of promoting the holistic development of the inseparable social, emotional, cognitive and physical facets of education in the early childhood years. since early childhood development poses challenges to many young children, the prolonged mandatory closure of ecce centres during the national lockdown exposed many young children to the additional risk of being deprived of the continuity of learning, security, health and safety. this article draws from a research project in three bafenyi ecce centres in the rural area of ikageng (potchefstroom) in the north-west province of south africa and focuses on how covid-19 influences the holistic development of young children at risk. a qualitative approach was taken, following a participatory actionlearning and action-research (palar) design where all participants collaborate as equal partners and construct their own meaning from experiences within the action-learning set (als) to advocate for change. within a critical and transformative paradigm teacherparticipants were encouraged to think critically about the holistic development of young children and to consider how collaboration could lead to social change. the data collection method was limited to the recorded group discussions of the als during cycle 1 of the palar process. given that positive environmental and contextual factors are able to lay the groundwork for holistic development in the early years, the african ubuntu philosophy of compassion, respect and humanity was viewed as being suitable to serve as theoretical framework for the study. the findings highlight that, even during a lockdown, it vital that collaborative ways are found to harness the precious early years with a view not only to meeting these children’s needs but also to laying the foundation for a sustainable future. it is argued that if teachers were to apply the ubuntu philosophy, they would learn how to make lifelong use of the acquired skills to improve the holistic well-being of young children on an ongoing basis. keywords: early childhood; covid-19; education; holistic; sustainable; ubuntu. author: prof m. koen1 dr m.m. neethling1 dr s. esterhuizen1 mrs b. taylor1 affiliation: 1north west university, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i1.9 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 138-156 published: 12 march 2021 received: 9 november 2020 accepted: 23 january 2021 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3393-6724 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4548-426x https://orcid.org/%200000-0002-5321-9570 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8600-8593 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.9 1392021 39(1): 139-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.9 koen et al. the impact of covid-19 on the holistic development of young south african at-risk children 1. background to the study it is generally argued that the measures to prevent and contain the spread of covid-19 have implications for everybody, everywhere. the coronavirus does not respect national borders and, regardless of race, religion, class or nationality, we can all potentially be infected (ndebele & sikuza, 2020). beyond the obvious physical consequences of the infection, the pandemic has had a severe impact on people’s holistic well-being. although young children seem less susceptible to the physical symptoms, prof eric atmore, the director of the centre for early childhood development (ecd), is concerned about the holistic well-being of the 2.3 million young south african children who were housebound during lockdown (masweneng, 2020). globally, the containment measures that triggered school closures negatively affected the socio-emotional, cognitive and physical well-being of over 1.5 billion children (devercelli, 2020; unesco 2020c). the extent of the long-term damage to the holistic development of children caused by the closure of schools and early childcare centres cannot yet be determined. it is however expected that the effects will be most damaging to children in the early years who live in the poorest societies, especially those young children already deprived or living in vulnerable situations (makhubu, 2020; unesco, 2020b). according to flynn (2020), even before the pandemic, 43% of children younger than five years of age were already estimated to be at risk or unable to achieve their developmental potential. this pre-existing inequality has now increased dramatically because of the covid-19 containment measures. the school closures additionally exposed vulnerabilities in social, political and economic structures, which could have a lifelong impact on the holistic development of children (unesco, 2020b). the foregoing discussion has emphasised the fact that optimal development in the early years calls for a stimulating and enriching environment, adequate nutrition, learning opportunities and social interaction (unicef, 2020). against this backdrop, four researchers embarked on a research project in march 2020 in three bafenyi ecce centres in a rural area of ikageng in potchefstroom, south africa. the purpose of this study was not to generalise but to gain an understanding of how the physical (p7), cognitive (p6), social and emotional domains (p5) influence the holistic well-being of young children in the relevant centres, and how a play-based approach (p8) could contribute to the creation of potential learning opportunities in the different domains (see table 1). four researchers were involved in the project because each researcher planned to focus on one of the abovementioned focus areas. the covid-19 lockdown restrictions compelled us (the researchers) to conduct the research online. in the process of the investigation, we realised that the restrictions and forced school closures during lockdown added additional pressures to the holistic well-being of young children. the research question was therefore rephrased accordingly: how does covid-19 influence the holistic development of young children at risk? while optimal holistic development in the early years comprises the influence of intrinsic and extrinsic factors, many children in the early years are deprived of a nurturing and caring parent-child environment (gumbi, 2019). given that positive environmental and contextual factors can potentially lay the groundwork for holistic development in the early years, we deemed the african ubuntu philosophy of compassion, respect and humanity to be suitable to serve as theoretical framework for the study. in this paper, we argue that using this theory could provide opportunities ‒ by means of collaboration between the school and the community ‒ for engaging young children in activities that stimulate development in the physical, 1402021 39(1): 140-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.9 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) socio-emotional and cognitive domains. we concur with rampke (2016) that the term ubuntu may be open to alternative interpretations and approaches in different communities. in this study, the term ubuntu has been chosen to reflect an awareness of the spirit of compassion and care to cultivate holistic development in the early years in the bafenyi community. because mushaandja (2015) moreover cautions against the common practice of using the term without clarity and substance, our purpose was therefore not to present ubuntu as a seamless way to guarantee holistic well-being for all young children, but rather to investigate how the implementation of this theory could serve as a means not only of minimising but also of protecting young children against the harmful effects of containment. in the first section, the relevant literature is explored with a view of identifying the potential damage caused to the holistic well-being of young children by the closure of early childcare centres. next, we turn to exploring how applying the ubuntu philosophy could act as social ideal that encompasses the holistic development of young children at risk in three bafenyi ecce centres. then we explain how the research question was addressed by employing a palar research design to address the issues that affect the lives of young children collaboratively. we present the findings by the relevant integrating literature with a discussion to substantiate ideas offered by participants. in our conclusion, we emphasise the need for teachers, parents and caregivers to collaborate and to find creative solutions in respect of providing south africa’s most vulnerable young citizens with the education they deserve. 2. literature review in south africa, the department of education’s white paper 5 (2001) uses the umbrella term early childhood development (ecd) to describe the holistic process by which children from birth to at least nine years of age grow and thrive physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, morally and socially (dbe, 2001). in the present paper, the focus is on children from birth to four years of age. since evidence indicates that more than 80 per cent of a child’s cumulative brain development happens in the first three years of life, these are globally recognised to be the most crucial years for lifelong development (etdp-seta, 2020; peckham, 2017; unicef, 2020). researchers agree that early childhood care and education (ecce) includes much more than merely the preparation for primary school. they emphasise that it is an important means of nurturing future citizens who will be caring, capable and responsible (warwick, warwick & nash, 2018). they further add that holistic development in the early years is shaped by opportunities to conceptualise, think critically, participate with others and to reflect (warwick, warwick & nash, 2018). young children who are deprived of holistic development are at risk of experiencing cognitive, social, emotional and health problems (fourie & kgalenga, 2014). for this reason, quality education in the early years should provide opportunities for significant development in the inseparable social, emotional, cognitive and physical needs of young children (bennett & palaiologou, 2016). this is why government officials, researchers, stakeholders, teachers and parents are worried that the outbreak of the coronavirus has not only changed the lives of hundreds of millions of children across the world, but that it will further place education on hold indefinitely (egan, 2020; pedro, mthimunye & bust, 2020). in south africa, the prolonged mandatory closure of ecd centres (including ecce centres) during the national lockdown changed the daily routines and domestic dynamics of many young children and placed them at risk of being deprived of the continuity of learning, security, health and safety (pedro, mthimunye & bust, 2020). what particularly concerns makhubu (2020) about a report entitled the plight of the ecd workforce (april 2020) is that it projects 1412021 39(1): 141-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.9 koen et al. the impact of covid-19 on the holistic development of young south african at-risk children how the numbers of young children who are supposed to be receiving quality education had dropped from 5 million to 1.5 million as a result of containment measures. researchers are concerned that covid-19 not only halted the economy, but that unemployment, a lack of social nets and crowded housing added to the financial strain (flynn, 2020). in addition, the financial shortages required many ecce centres to close or to lay off teachers and other staff, thereby increasing the vulnerabilities of young children who desperately need care and stimulation (makhubu, 2020; masweneng, 2020). young children were housebound during the lockdown and parents, grandparents, guardians or caregivers were forced to care for, nurture and teach them while many of them were themselves not equipped to meet the young children’s holistic developmental needs (unicef, 2020). some living environments were moreover characterised by a lack of appropriate resources, learning opportunities and social interaction. these circumstances resulted in lost learning time that placed the children’s holistic development at risk (makhubu, 2020). bennett and palaiologou (2016) are convinced that the quality and quantity of resources and access to toys and play materials have a major impact on young children’s physical, social, emotional and cognitive development. researchers are also concerned that vulnerable children could become victims of crime and abuse if they are not able to spend their daily lives in the safety of ecce centres (masweneng, 2020). it is expected that the ripple effects of the circumstances outlined above are set to compro mise the healthy development trajectories of children in the early years in that they may have spill over effects on the development of the holistic domains (buheji et al., 2020). as a result of lockdown, most young children were deprived of interaction and playing with other children. this could influence physical-activity behaviours (chen et al., 2020). young children will furthermore be returning to a changed physical environment characterised by restrictions aimed at minimising health risks, promoting safety and prescribing with whom they may interact or play (egan, 2020). the situation is further exacerbated if children are confined to their homes where they have no access to outdoor activities or interaction. all these factors could potentially lead to weight gain in children, and to various social and emotional problems (buheji et al., 2020). the lack of social interaction could also limit the development of independent thinking, a sense of belonging and relationship skills (peckham, 2017). the lack of social-emotional skills may consequently impact on personal development and can also have a significant effect on the future academic achievement of young children (bennett & palaiologou, 2016). in this paper, the african ubuntu philosophy is used as a theoretical approach to orientate this research project and to guide us on important issues that could contribute to the holistic well-being of children in their early years. while research emphasises that all young children have the right to develop to their full potential, it is evident that holistic development is determined by the learning opportunities afforded to young children (peckham, 2017). in addition to challenges posed by unequal opportunities, many young children are experiencing further restrictions and unprecedented challenges resulting from the covid-19 pandemic (flynn, 2020). 3. theoretical framework the rationale for applying an ubuntu philosophy lies in the ideas of interconnectedness, sharing, caring and collaboration (mugumbate & cherini, 2019). the theoretical framework of ubuntu served as a nurturing tool for collaboration to create learning opportunities for young children in the three bafenyi ecce centres. this idea is in line with norren’s (2014) 1422021 39(1): 142-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.9 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) suggestion that positive interactions between the young child, school, families and caregivers could embrace an ubuntu approach in early childhood development by providing opportunities to extend the holistic development of children. applying an ubuntu approach may thus create learning opportunities by strengthening the interaction between teachers, parents and caregivers to lay the foundation for learning experiences that influence children’s holistic wellbeing and, ultimately, their future lives. it is also argued that not take collaborative action against covid-19 challenges may adversely affect the already at-risk children. considering this view, ubuntu has been linked to the phenomenon of holistic well-being in the early years. according to bondai and kaputa (2016), the holistic development of the whole child is underpinned by the ubuntu philosophy in which different facets of life feature as part of an indivisible whole. it is explained that “umuntu ngumthu ngabantu” is a nguni philosophy, a way of being and a moral code (afrika tikrun, 2020). these words are translated as “i am because we are”, and this notion is understood as “a person is a person through other persons” (ndebele & sikuza, 2020:1–3). the ubuntu idea can be translated and explained as a common humanity, one that suggests that a “person becomes a person” through other people (wooldridge, 2020:1–2). in other words, it signifies an integrated action in which people live in harmony and operate amidst a shared humanity and interconnectedness. mushaandja (2015) adds that the survival of human beings needs to be strengthened by connection. this idea could suggest that by focusing on the strength of connections, the adversity of covid-19 can be addressed. in this way, governments, departments, policies, communities, caregivers, parents and teachers become pathways to personhood by being collectively responsible for one another’s well-being (mugumbate & chereni, 2019; phasha, 2016). wilemon (2020) illustrates the above sharing view by arguing that all of us are together in this pandemic: we are one. for some, the pandemic is a reminder of our nation’s oneness, that we are all equally human and that we are interconnected and dependent by virtue of our shared human mortality (ndebele & sikuza, 2020). thus, in order to face the real enemy in these challenging times, we all have to work together by practising the principles of ubuntu (ndebele & sikuza, 2020). according to mamanzi (2020), a revitalisation of ubuntu during covid-19 could instil the value and significance of a shared responsibility. it was suggested that embracing the ubuntu philosophy in our study could result in educational change influencing the socio-emotional, cognitive, spiritual and physical development of young children in the bafenyi ecce centres. rampke (2016) cautions that ‒ from a western perspective ‒ there might be barriers to an understanding of ubuntu. while we concede that applying ubuntu will not make all the risk factors created by the covid-19 pandemic disappear, we do believe that some of the challenges could potentially be avoided by promoting positive interactions between significant adults with a view of improving the holistic development of young children. 4. research methodology qualitative studies assume that participants construct their own knowledge and meaning from experiences (bertram & christiansen, 2020). this study is situated in a qualitative research approach as the purpose of the research was to investigate the meaning participants assign to the holistic development of young children. 1432021 39(1): 143-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.9 koen et al. the impact of covid-19 on the holistic development of young south african at-risk children 4.1 context of the study bafenyi is the tswana word for “winners” and the bafenyi trust provides early childhood programmes to bring hope and love to communities that are in desperate need of these qualities (bafeyni trust, 2021). the study was limited to a specific group of eight participants between the ages of 35 and 56 years, comprising three setswana-speaking principals from three bafenyi ecce centres, four afrikaans-speaking researchers and a gatekeeper in ikageng, a rural area in north-west province of south africa. all three principals fulfil the dual role of a teaching principal and we will refer to them simply as teachers. as suggested by mcareavey and das (2013), the gatekeeper negotiated directly with the research participants and acted as mediator to enhance the trust relationship in the als. the participants were purposively selected to form part of the als to allow the researchers to work in a small group and to gain a deeper understanding of the research problem (leedy & ormrod, 2015). threeweekly zoom meetings, each lasting approximately 45 minutes, enabled the als to discuss, share and reflect openly on the main research question, namely how covid-19 influences the holistic development of young children at risk. 4.2 research design taking a qualitative approach as our point of departure, participatory action learning and action research (palar) was used as the research design because it allowed us to engage in a collaborative action-learning research process (cf. zuber-skerritt, 2019). any form of participatory action research goes further than the mere understanding of the research problem, as all participants collaborate as equal partners within the action-learning set (als) to advocate for change (wood, 2020). within a critical and transformative paradigm, the participants were encouraged to think critically about the holistic development of young children and to consider how collaboration could lead to social change. this idea is in line with the thinking of cohen, manion and morrison (2013) who have argued that a critical paradigm introduces participants to new possibilities while examining the social reality of collaboration. in order to establish the collaborative role of participants, the three rs suggested by zuberskerritt (2011) were employed, namely a trusting relationship, continual critical reflection and recognition of the learning generated by the participants. the palar process usually consists of more than one cycle where a research question is addressed during each cycle (wood, 2020). while the purpose of the research project initially was to investigate the holistic development of young children by rolling out three cycles, the restrictions during covid-19, highlighted the impact of the school closures on the development of young children at risk in the early years. therefore, the main research question was adapted to determine the nature of the challenges that teachers are facing in terms of supporting the holistic well-being of young children in the three bafenyi ecce centres in the light of the impact of covid-19. the first cycle comprised four recorded action-learningset (als) sessions, which included a start-up workshop for organising the group; exploring and negotiating the role of participants and conducting a needs analysis. in an attempt to answer the main research question, the following secondary questions arose, namely, 1) what the factors are that influence the holistic development of young children in the three bafenyi centres? and 2) how can these challenges be addressed to enhance the holistic development of the young children in the three ecce centres? while reflecting on the factors that influence the holistic development of young children in the specific centres during covid-19, the significant role played by teachers, parents and 1442021 39(1): 144-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.9 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) caregivers in stimulating young children’s holistic development was foregrounded. these ideas led to the organising of the singakwenza workshop. singakwenza (meaning “we can do it” in isizulu) is a charity organisation in kwazulu-natal, south africa, which aims to provide nurturing learning dispositions by stimulating young children through play (news 24, 2020). indeed, the ubuntu philosophy not only forms part of the knowledge and wisdom of afrocentric policies, but it also embodies a collaborative care approach (lefa, 2015). the als followed the idea proposed by mamanzi (2020) that perhaps the cohesiveness of the community of ikageng could respond to the pandemic as a social action that aims to work collaboratively to influence the holistic development of young children. wood (2020) indeed proposes that the action-learning component of the als foreground the notion that participants acquire the skills of lifelong learning to develop potential that would stretch beyond the scope of a specific project. it was argued that the singakwenza workshop could involve teachers, parents and caregivers in the bafenyi community when they learn how to make educational toys from recycled materials. although we realised that ubuntu would not make all the covid-19 challenges disappear, oladokun’s idea (2020) that 2020 was a perfect time for a collaborative approach seemed worth trying. 4.3 data analysis and ethics a thematic-analysis approach was used to analyse the data according to braun and clarke’s (2013) six-phase steps. this process entailed familiarising ourselves with the data; coding, segmenting and searching for themes; reviewing, defining and organising the views of participants according to themes and, finally, substantiating the findings with participants’ verbatim quotations. to ensure credibility, the five quality indicators as set out by herr and andersen (2005) were employed, namely outcome validity, process validity, democratic validity, catalytic validity and dialogue validity. the ethics committee of the north-west university and the department of education and sport development of the north west province both granted ethical clearance and permission to conduct the low-risk-level research project. given that palar’s vision and principles cannot be adhered to unless participants are well informed, committed and feel engaged (zuber-skerritt, 2011), the research was conducted in a participatory, collaborative manner. even though no participant’s input could be private, autonomy was ensured by respecting one another’s voices and one another’s rights and opinions. ethical issues were negotiated with participants during the pre-cycle phase (relationship building). voluntary participation was thus ensured and participants were required to sign a letter of consent prior to participation. the gatekeeper, a person known to all the participants, screened all the correspondence from the researchers. it was clearly explained that the participants could withdraw from the study at any time should they not feel comfortable with participating in the research. the data were stored electronically by using password-protected documents on google docs and are to be destroyed within the timeframe indicated by the north-west university record system. in the next section, the findings will be presented in an integrated manner, in response to the questions addressed by the als. 5. findings and discussion in presenting the data, we have numbered the female members of the als from p1 to p8. the 1–3 verbatim statements of participants have been used to reflect the originality of the information we have collected. table 1 below summarises the biographical details of the als: 1452021 39(1): 145-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.9 koen et al. the impact of covid-19 on the holistic development of young south african at-risk children table 1. biographical details of the als participant code (p) race home language professional status p1 black setswana teacher 1 p2 black setswana teacher 2 p3 black setswana teachers 3 p4 white afrikaans gatekeeper p5 white afrikaans researcher p6 white afrikaans researcher p7 white afrikaans researcher p8 white afrikaans researcher from the data it is apparent that a multitude of factors influence the holistic development of young children. we now turn to a discussion of the themes that emerged from the data (see figure 1). relevant literature and verbatim statements will support each theme. ung children. we now turn to a discussion of the themes that emerged from the data (see figure 1). relevant literature and verbatim statements will support each theme. figure   themes that  emerged  from the  data lack of  support physical well‐ being social and  cognitive well‐ being collaborative  approach figure 1: themes that emerged from the data. 1462021 39(1): 146-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.9 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) 5.1 lack of support before lockdown it was already apparent that reaching marginalised young children and providing them with access to quality education represented a key challenge to the south african state and non-governmental organisations (ngos) (edtp-seta, 2020). in the south african early childhood review (2019), for instance, it is stated that the leading actors in the south african education system are failing the majority of the country’s children in that in excess of one million 3to 5-year-olds are excluded from early childhood developmental programmes across the country. researchers agree that ecce centres lack adequate access to governmental support, are poorly capacitated and are moreover under-resourced (barker & misselhorn, 2014; harrison, 2020). it would appear that, as from the beginning of march 2020, south africa’s already overburdened government departments now also had to face increased challenges brought on by the financial strain of the pandemic (eastern cape news, 2020). in addition to other requirements, they now also had to adhere to the standard operating procedures (sop) for the prevention, containment and management of covid-19 issued by the department of basic education (dbe) and the department of social development (dsd). while there were extremely strict rules to follow, the departments in question failed to provide ecce centres with the necessary personal protective equipment (ppe) or adequate training opportunities regarding covid-19 safety measures (masweneng, 2020). because the said departments moreover failed to respond telephonically or in person to enquiries, this complicated the process of opening centres. as one participant explained: p2: when the minister said we can open, i’m a little bit worried; now the reason is, number one i’m not yet ready and i’m also not trained to receive kids. yes, we have been receiving so many documents from social development and really i needed training. another participant added: p3: we cannot open because the readiness of our schools are [is] not in place like the sanitisers and stuff ppes and everything. it appears as if ecce centres had generated no income for months because parents had stopped their payments (masweneng, 2020). one of the practitioners voiced her frustration because they did not receive funding from the dbe and the dsd was struggling to make ends meet. the participant explained that ecce centres were unable to buy covid-19-related detergents and masks for the staff and children: p3: the department of education and again social development doesn’t help any school until today, because i’ve ask around and nobody gets any help from them, especially with the materials, the essentials of covid-19, like your mask and all those other things. so we are really like (laughing) we are trusting god to make a way for us all ecds ’cause there’s no one who gets any help from any department, social development; also [the] department of education. a lack of informative guidelines, of relevant psychosocial support and of resources during lockdown widened the existing significant education gap of all children younger than five years of age (flynn, 2020). researchers are concerned that covid-19 has not only halted the economy, but that unemployment, a lack of social nets and crowded housing have added to the financial strain (flynn, 2020). 1472021 39(1): 147-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.9 koen et al. the impact of covid-19 on the holistic development of young south african at-risk children another problem with which the teachers were confronted was the enormous administrative load they were required to bear. they received no guidance from the authorities regarding the completion of tasks and the creation of precautionary protocols. p2: the covid-19 file, it’s … uh … really a challenge because there’s so many things that they want there. we must print out policies and print out the … uh … trainings, especially the covid-19 training and they also want … uh … staff … uhm … precaution protocols and everything, so we are not yet open. the above discussion underlines the fact that the teachers experienced anxiety and fear regarding the reopening of schools, administration and also the development of the young children. the above comments serve to emphasise the fact that the holistic well-being of three bafenyi teachers was also affected by much strain experienced during lockdown. it appears that while they were concerned about the well-being of the young children, they also feared being closed down if their centres failed to observe the covid-19 rules. the sharing of feelings and emotions pointed to the teachers’ dire need for support. this idea is in line with takyi-amoako and assié-lumumba (2018) who maintain that, in an ubuntu approach, the focus on support and togetherness takes precedence over individuality. while we are aware that ubuntu will not fulfil all the holistic needs of young children, we nevertheless believe that togetherness, sharing and caring could potentially provide opportunities to enhance holistic well-being. 5.2 physical well-being holistic development in the early years requires a healthy lifestyle that sustains physical, cognitive, social and emotional well-being (peckham, 2017). without nutritious meals, children’s physical, cognitive, emotional and social development are at risk of not developing as they should. their immune systems weaken and render them susceptible to illnesses. because the children in their ecd centres were accustomed to receiving two nutritious meals daily, the participants were concerned that the children would go hungry or that they would not have nutritious food during the winter months. p1: some of they [parents] were asking if maybe we can do like a food for them. then they must just come and get food and go home. at least that it would help them.… they were asking like when the creche is opening. our children are hungry. you know mos, when they are at the centre, [this] is where they get something to eat for the whole day. participants added that with the help of donations, 200 families could be fed twice per day (400 food parcels). the food parcels, distributed from ten drop-off points, contained essential foods, such as maize, beans and milk, and detergents. besides fears regarding children’s’ health, a further concern is that vulnerable children could become victims of crime and abuse if they are not able to spend their daily lives in the safety of ecce centres (masweneng, 2020). children’s safety was a critical concern for all participants because children were unattended and roaming the streets without warm clothes, masks or shoes. they were vulnerable to crime and abuse. one concerned participant had the following to say: p3: the children they don’t even stay at home even … every morning you go outside, they are playing, they are running around. they don’t even wear warm clothes like shoes. some of them they are like … uh … barefoot. another participant stated: 1482021 39(1): 148-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.9 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) p2: it’s breaking my heart, you know. we saw this child in the street, it was cold, it was really cold, colder than today. that child ‒ it is a 2-year[-old] child ‒ didn’t wear anything and that child was walking past us, crying. we didn’t know who the parents was [were], no one was with this child. participants agreed that the children were better off at school where they were safe, fed and warm. p1: i don’t know what to say because of you see this [these] children. if they were at school, they will be safer than being at home. now i can say that in school it will be safer for the children. they experienced conflicting emotions in respect of whether to open their centres for the children’s safety. p3: when i don’t open, i can see this [these] children suffering. no one [is] supervising them, children are not stimulated, children are not being educated, children are suffering, and they are actually [the] victims. victims of … joh … crimes and all these things. bennett and palaiologou (2016) maintain that the quality and quantity of resources, especially access to toys and play materials, have a major impact on young children’s physical, social, emotional and cognitive development. participants were therefore not only concerned about effectively sanitising their schools, and about the provision of soap, sanitisers and masks for staff and children, but were also apprehensive because they had to remove all the soft toys from their classrooms. one of the teachers shared this concern: p2: [during] covid-19 we have removed all the toys that were there … uh … especially the soft toys and it’s a challenge because these soft toys are actually the dolls and the … the … uh … teddy bears, neh. and they are soft and they say… uh … that we cannot … uh … keep them for now with the covid-19, with the virus. so, for me, i think the need will be, yes, to make … uhm … recycled material toys for the babies. the above statements underline the fact that teachers are worried about how covid-19 has affected opportunities for young children to be physically active and to have a supportive network to facilitate their activities. while the teachers were worried about the health of young children, they realised that the physical aspects could also have an impact on the various inseparable facets of well-being. 5.3 the cognitive and socio-emotional well-being of children holistic development in the early years is shaped by opportunities to conceptualise, think critically, participate with others and to reflect (warwick, warwick & nash, 2018). teachers expressed concern regarding children’s social interaction as a result of covid-19. the fact that children were at home where they were deprived of constructive play with peers, might impede their cognitive and socio-emotional development (egan, 2020). participants explained that while the teachers did indeed send activities to the parents of the children in their centres during the lockdown, the parents failed to do the activities with their children, their excuse being that they did not understand how to do the activities. the teachers believed many of the parents in the informal settlements do not really care about the well-being of their children. p3: i know parents are very negative sometimes. and our parents, most of the time, 80% of them are very negative. they don’t want to work towards … uhm … maybe helping all the kids at school. 1492021 39(1): 149-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.9 koen et al. the impact of covid-19 on the holistic development of young south african at-risk children the above comment suggests that parents did not always assist their children to do activities sent from school. another teacher explained: p1: my experience … with sending maybe work to the parents ‒ it was actually not worth it, because they didn’t understand the activities and so on and i just stop to do, to send work to them. the above discussion highlights that school closures and the consequent delegating of the educational role to parents and/or caregivers have been responsible for this. while parents and caregivers are in the best position to support the holistic development of young children, the participants stated that many parents experienced challenges in respect of supporting children academically or financially. another participant stated: p1: some of them you could even see that they were not interested to do the activities with their kids. it is therefore argued that ecce centres could be creative about the way they develop collaborative educational interventions to stimulate the holistic development of young children. given that the ubuntu philosophy involves characteristics such as collaboration, social responsibility and sharing (mugumbate & cherini, 2019), it is argued that involving communities in the making of educational toys from recycled materials could be a first step towards acknowledging the human worth in communal relationships. during the reflection stage, the als suggested that involving parents in the making of recycled educational toys might encourage them to commit to doing the activities sent from school with their children. in order to address this need, the als organised a singakwenza workshop aimed at teachers, parents and caregivers at the grassroots level to develop young children holistically by involving the community in using recycled materials (singakwenza, 2020). 5.4 collaborative approach singakwenza runs a “waste2toys” project that provides stimulating opportunities for communities to guide its members in the process of preparing young children for formal school (news24, 2020). hay (a singakwenza board member) believes that although it is not possible to change the perceptions of all the people, it is however worthwhile to create opportunities to change the future of one young child (singakwenza, 2020). at the end of the singakwenza workshop, it was decided that recycling bins would be put outside the school gate so that parents could contribute usable refuse for the making of toys. one of the teachers suggested: p2: i’m thinking also that we can also … uh … maybe work with one class this week maybe involving certain parents like our baby group ‒ just an example. only the baby group will bring certain materials because we will know, yes, for which … uhm … development skill … uh … do we want to work with and then we can also limit the … uh… rubbish (laughs) in the schools … yes. the teachers were very creative when it came to making educational toys from waste material. p3: to be honest, since i’ve made those toys that i showed you, those ones with the squares and triangle and circle, the bottles, the milk bottles … so, what i’ve learned [is] that children are gonna learn, gonna use their eyes and their hands, to take a shape and put it to the, the, the bottle. you could see, okay now that child is learning. she could take the shape and put it in the same shape, like that one. so it will be, what you call it, eyehand coordination. 1502021 39(1): 150-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.9 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) another participant made toys for the babies. p1: i have used different sizes of medicine bottles and empty milk box[es]. i have make [made] a hole in the middle, but it is a round-shaped hole in the middle and the idea was [that] the baby [should] take any size of the medicine bottles, stick it inside that hole and then with different sizes. so that the child can also be aware of sizes because the bigger bottle will fit, and if you want to take it out of that hole, it won’t be easy for the baby to take it out. so that was also the small muscles development for me. and also i have tried with this [a] 10-month [old] baby and the baby was just starting to grab all the bottles at the same time and then throw them again on the floor and bit that box. so, for me it was like a physical development that was happening. also, the intellectual [development] of the baby because he/she could see that there is a different [difference] of these bottles, the one is smaller, the one is bigger than the others. one of the participants came up with the idea of creating children’s games that require no apparatus. p2: i’m thinking about something like hopscotch, for example. you know we can even draw it and give a brief explanation of how to play the game. another participant added that hopscotch can be used to develop number sense, recognise colours and shapes and even letters, depending on the age of the children. it was argued that it would be valuable if role-players were to appreciate and respect the principles of ubuntu. not only does the ubuntu philosophy form part of the knowledge and wisdom of afrocentric policies, it also embodies a collaborative care ethic (lefa, 2015). mamanzi (2020) concurs, arguing that the cohesiveness of societies is often tested in times of crisis and that south africa could therefore respond to covid-19 as a social action aimed at working in unity for a significant impact. we further realised that proposing the idea of making recycled educational toys could be a means of involving parents in the school and the classroom. this is an issue mentioned by one principal. it was stated that of the 49 grade rs in the ecd centres, only three or four parents were committed to doing the activities with their children that teachers had sent home during the lockdown. the parents did not understand, were not interested or were too lazy to do the activities with their children: p2: out of 49 grade rs, only three parents responded positively and the other, the other one said: “ma’am, i don’t understand anything here. i don’t know how to match and sort and … uh … you know all those activities.” and we realise and decide that we are not going to send any work home because the parents either doesn’t [do not] have interest or they, i don’t know, but ja, it is not good. we are worried that our grade r learners are not ready. one participant indicated that at her centre they decided to tell the parents what to bring to prevent them from bringing unnecessary items to the recycling project. p2: we have decided to make a list of things that we want them to bring. so i must still draft, maybe like … uhm … the containers of the eggs or the egg shells or maybe the bottles, 2l bottles of cool drink and so forth. the als argued that collaboration could lead to incidental learning and to stimulating the holistic needs of children. it was decided that pictures with information on the purpose and use of recycled educational toys would be placed above the different containers. this would help the parents to understand the purpose of the activity. it will further encourage them to start thinking differently about waste materials before dumping these in the dustbin. involving 1512021 39(1): 151-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.9 koen et al. the impact of covid-19 on the holistic development of young south african at-risk children parents in the making of toys is also seen as part of building relationships between parents and the school. with this initiative, parents and caregivers are actively engaged by participating in the making of toys and, while in the process of making the toys, teachers use concepts such as cognitive, physical, emotional and social development. given that during the lockdown parents and caregivers became important contributors to the holistic development of young children, it was explored how an awareness of the principles of the african ubuntu philosophy could be used to contribute to the holistic education of young children. 6. limitations the findings of this study are limited in the sense that they cannot be generalised to other contexts because they only include the experiences of three rural ecce centres. meeting faceto-face to develop knowledge and skills within a palar approach helps the process of working collaboratively and learning while investigating a topic. the covid-19 regulations made it impossible for the als to meet face-to-face. we therefore had to re-think data generation when the covid-19 pandemic was declared a national disaster. the als was limited to online sessions via zoom. sessions had a time limit, interruptions due to connectivity problems occurred and valuable non-verbal communication was lost. despite the mentioned limitations, we all learnt a great deal from one another and moreover gained a better understanding of the diverse contexts and of the challenges presented by the pandemic. 7. conclusion it is widely accepted that in the early years of a child’s life, positive educational experiences and stimulating environments are critical for children’s future personal and academic success (unicef, 2019). finding opportunities to improve access and quality education in ecce centres in sa should thus be regarded a high priority. in fact, researchers honour quality ecce programmes as the first step in the education ladder. they argue that the right kind of investments could certainly cultivate potential within young children and serve to bridge the social-equity gap from a very young age. the findings suggested that the lack of informative guidelines, relevant psychosocial support and a lack of resources during lockdown in the three bafenyi centres widened the already considerable education gap of all children younger than five years of age. in addition, many parents from this community experienced challenges in respect of supporting children academically or financially. the findings suggested that the three bafenyi ecce centres could be creative about the way they develop collaborative educational interventions to stimulate the holistic development of young children. this idea is in line with the goal of palar research, namely that of assisting participants with a skill of lifelong learning beyond the scope of a particular research project (wood, 2020). it was suggested that it could be valuable if parents, teachers and caregivers from the three bafenyi centres were to appreciate and respect the principles of ubuntu. not only would such an action respect the wisdom of afrocentric philosophies, but it would moreover acknowledge the idea put forward by ndebele and sikuza (2020:1–3) that the covid-19 pandemic is an invitation to all south africans to remember familiar values and to turn these into one of “our great strengths”. given that the ubuntu philosophy involves characteristics such as collaboration, social responsibility and sharing, it was argued that involving the communities of the three bafenyi ecce centres in the making of educational toys from recycled materials 1522021 39(1): 152-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.9 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) could be a first step towards acknowledging the human worth in communal relationships. ubuntu was thus not seen as a magical agenda to make covid-19 challenges disappear, but the als agreed with oladokun (2020) that there certainly is no more opportune moment for a collaborative approach than the present. given the multitude of factors that could potentially influence the holistic development of young children, it becomes apparent that, even during a pandemic, it is key that ways be found to harness the precious early years while aiming not only to be mindful of children’s needs but also to lay the foundation for a sustainable future. it is seen as a means of contributing to the building of relationships. more than ever, teachers, parents and caregivers should now join hands to strengthen, develop and support the holistic development of young children. 8. acknowledgements, competing interests and funding information the authors would like to thank the project participants. we also gratefully acknowledge funding from the carn research foundation (susan noffke award) and comber nwu. references afrika tikkun. 2020. ubuntu: the philosophy we need to follow right now. available at ubuntu – the philosophy we need to all follow right now! – afrika tikkun south africa [accessed 5 january 2021]. bafenyi trust. 2021. our vision. available at our vision – bafenyi trust [accessed 4 january 2021]. barker, j. & misselhorn, m. 2014. informal settlements: informal early childhood development centres. available at http://thehda.co.za/pdf/uploads/multimedia/isu_guidelines_informal_ early_childhood_development_centres_in_informal_settlements-ilovepdf-compressedcompressed.pdf [accessed 20 october 2020]. bennett, j. & palaiologou, i. 2016. personal, 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modelling process: a qualitative study abstract this article reports on third-year mathematics students’ competency and sub-competency development through providing intentional support in the learning of mathematical modelling. students often experience modelling as difficult, and obstructions in the modelling process can lead to a dead end. literature reports confirm that the modelling task is central in the modelling experience and a carefully planned task, aligned with a suitable activity sheet, can be used as a scaffold in learning mathematical modelling. hence, this inquiry was conducted to provide a scaffold, as strategic support, for students’ mathematical modelling competency development in the early stages of a modelling cycle. guided by the framework of the zone of proximal development, key elements suggested by the metaphor scaffolding are considered in the learning experience. based on an analysis of activity sheets collected through group work, an example of a realistic and an unrealistic solution is presented, and students’ development of mathematical modelling competencies is argued. finally, suggestions for intentional support in the modelling process are discussed. keywords: activity sheet; mathematics applications; mathematical modelling cycle; mathematical modelling competencies; scaffolding; strategic support. 1. introduction niss, blum and galbraith (2007) explained that the generic purpose of building and making use of a model is to understand problems in some segment of the real world (e.g., nature, society or culture, everyday life, scientific and scholarly disciplines, and others). but then, for teaching in particular, ikeda (2013: 255) highlighted two primary pedagogical aims – modelling for teaching can firstly be identified as the content area modelling “through modelling treated as the objective” and secondly, the construction of mathematical knowledge “through modelling treated as a method to achieve a goal”. authors: rina durandt1 geoffrey lautenbach2 affiliations: 1department of mathematics and applied mathematics, university of johannesburg 2 department of science and technology education, university of johannesburg emails: rdurandt@uj.ac.za geoffl@uj.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v38i1.15 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(1): 211-223 published: 11 june 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1530-9433 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7099-095x http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 212 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 212-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 in this study, the emphasis on learning mathematical modelling is the modelling process, and moving successfully through the different phases of a modelling cycle. thus, the content area focuses on modelling, and not so much on the construction of new mathematical knowledge. the notion of a mathematical modelling perspective, described in the seminal work in the field of educational mathematical modelling by niss et al. (2007: 9-10), is explained through the initial conceptualisation of some problem situation, and mathematical modelling is then “the entire process consisting of structuring, generating real world facts and data, mathematising, working mathematically and interpreting/validating (perhaps several times round the loop)”. the modelling process is cyclic in nature and includes a number of phases. although a variety of cycles exist in the literature, the original modelling cycle from blum and leiβ (2007) seems most useful for research purposes in mathematics education. this particular cycle includes individual steps (that separate the phases of the mathematical modelling process): (i) constructing, (ii) simplifying/structuring, (iii) mathematising, (iv) working mathematically, (v) interpreting, (vi) validating and (vii) exposing. in this inquiry, considering the limited experience of participants in mathematical modelling and the pragmatic lens of the research, a simplified scheme seemed appropriate to support student teachers to solve mathematical modelling tasks e.g., the “solution plan” in blum and borromeo ferri, (2009). furthermore, the mathematical modelling cycle proposed by balakrishnan, yen and goh (2010: 250) seemed suitable for attempting modelling tasks for the first time. in this cycle, student teachers were introduced to the nature of the mathematical modelling process and could acquaint themselves with the various elements. the cycle comprised four elements (indicated as steps), namely (i) “mathematisation” that involves understanding the problem, making assumptions to simplify the problem and representing the problem in mathematical form; (ii) “working with mathematics” that includes solving the mathematical problem using mathematical methods and tools; (iii) “interpretation” that contains interpreting the mathematical solution within the context of the original problem and (iv) “reflection” that comprises reviewing the assumptions and the limitations of the mathematical model and the solution to the problem, reviewing the mathematical methods and tools used, and improving on the mathematical model. this particular modelling cycle (balakrishnan et al., 2010) has been developed to support secondary school mathematics teachers in implementing mathematical modelling in singaporean schools. despite numerous challenges in the changeover between the different stages of the cycle, stillman et al. (2007) highlight remarkable mathematical accomplishments by students moving through the modelling cycle. some of these accomplishments include much-needed modelling competencies, described by niss et al. (2007: 12) as “the ability to identify relevant questions, variables, relations, or assumptions in a given real-world situation, to translate this into mathematics, and to interpret and validate the solution of the resulting mathematical problem in relation to the given situation”. in order to avoid a “dead-end” in the mathematical modelling process or a possible lack in mathematical understanding, experts in the field propose that challenges should be addressed through a strategic intervention (schukajlow, kolter & blum, 2015). schukajlow and colleagues reported on the positive effects of a step-by-step instrument, the “solution plan”, on learning mathematical modelling though a quasi-experimental design study. grade 9 german students who used the solution plan outperformed the other students in solving modelling problems related to the theorem of pythagoras. the solution plan provides a modelling schema for students – understanding the task, searching for the mathematics, using the mathematics and explaining the results. some http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 213 durandt & lautenbach strategic support to students’ competency development 2020 38(1): 213-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 studies reported on modellers experiencing difficulties in the modelling process (compare blum & borromeo ferri, 2009), while others reported on the positive outcome of intentional support activities (compare buchholtz, 2017). the latter explained the way in which an “outof-school” activity (in a european setting), such as a mathematical city walk, could be used to develop competences in mathematising. this inquiry forms part of a broader research project focusing on a strategy to integrate mathematical modelling in the formal education of mathematics student teachers (grade 10–12). early findings (durandt & jacobs, 2018) from the broader project revealed that a well-planned set of activities is required for the professional development of mathematics student teachers. as a result, the authors implemented a strategic intervention in the form of an activity that involved two mathematics application tasks. the aim of these tasks was to support students in the development of competencies and the sub-competencies required for the mathematical modelling process, guided by the notions of the zone of proximal development (zpd) (vygotsky, 1978), before they are exposed to more challenging tasks. the modelling task is central in the mathematical modelling learning experience and the guidelines for assessment and instruction in mathematical modelling education (gaimme) report (comap-siam, 2016) explains the transformation from a mathematics word problem to a modelling task as follows (see figure 1). a traditional mathematics word problem (requiring traditional problem solving) is transformed to a mathematics application problem (requiring mathematical applications) by adding context and meaning, and finally to a mathematical modelling problem (requiring the complete modelling process) by adding interpretation. with mathematical applications, the focus was on the flow “mathematics → reality” and to more generally emphasise the objects involved in the real-world (the parts of the real world that are made accessible to a mathematical treatment and to which corresponding mathematical models exit); while with mathematical modelling, the focus was on the direction “reality → mathematics” and the general emphasis was on the process it involved (niss et al., 2007: 10). figure 1: transforming a mathematical problem into a modelling problem (comap-siam, 2016: 12) the two tasks that were used in the intervention can be seen in figures 2 and 3. both of these tasks can be classified as mathematical applications (according to gaimme’s explanation) and solving these tasks would merely require “stripping” the words from the problem, and the modelling process would be limited to mathematisation, mathematical procedures, and a direct contextual interpretation. the participants in this inquiry were thus expected to use their mathematical knowledge to solve the tasks. a more open-ended modelling task would require substantial modelling demand from students, but the focus in this inquiry was to support novice modellers (due to their limited exposure to such tasks before) and to avoid possible “dead ends” in the modelling process that could handicap students’ competency development. through the tasks, the authors attempted to follow at least five of the six elements using the metaphor of scaffolding identified by wood, bruner http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 214 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 214-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 and ross (1976): (i) to enlist students’ interest in these mathematical application tasks, (ii) to simplify the tasks by regulating feedback according to particular sub-questions asked, (iii) to keep the students focused on the task by means of well-planned facilitation, (iv) to emphasise correspondences and discrepancies by discussing results in groups, and (v) to discuss a possible solution for a mathematical application problem in groups. mathematical application task 1 the daily production of a sweet factory consists of at most 100kg chocolate covered nuts and at most 125kg chocolate covered raisins, which are then sold in two different mixtures. mixture a consists of equal amounts of nuts and raisins and is sold at a profit of r5 per kilogram. mixture b consists of one third nuts and two thirds raisins and is sold at a profit of r4 a kilogram. let there be x kg of mixture a and y kg of mixture b. 1. express the mathematical constraints that must be adhered to. 2. write down the objective function that can be used to determine maximum profit. 3. represent the constraints graphically and clearly show the feasible region. 4. use the graph and determine the maximum profit obtained. figure 2: mathematical application task 1 mathematical application task 2 a nutritionist is performing an experiment on student volunteers. he wishes to feed one of his subjects a daily diet that consists of a combination of three commercial diet foods: minical, liquifast and slimquick. for the experiment, it is important that the subject consumes exactly 500mg of potassium, 75g of protein, and 1150 units of vitamin d every day. the amounts of these nutrients in one ounce of each food are given in the table. how many ounces of each food should the subject eat every day to satisfy the nutrient requirements exactly? minical liquitfast slimquick potassium (mg) 50 75 10 protein (g) 5 10 3 vitamin d (units) 90 100 50 figure 3: mathematical application task 2 the purpose of this inquiry is to report on third year mathematics students’ mathematical modelling competency development by providing strategic support in the learning of mathematical modelling as they take part in an activity containing two mathematical application tasks. the two activity questions are: (1) can novice modellers move successfully through the elementary stages of the modelling cycle by exposing them to mathematical application tasks, and (2) have they learnt mathematical modelling competencies and sub-competencies through this learning experience? this inquiry, that forms part of a broader research project, was conducted to provide a scaffold as intentional support for students’ competency and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 215 durandt & lautenbach strategic support to students’ competency development 2020 38(1): 215-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 sub-competency development in the early phases of a modelling cycle while they are exposed to mathematical application tasks, and before they are exposed to more open-ended mathematical modelling tasks. 2. theoretical perspectives one characteristic of the mathematical modelling activities in this intervention was the team problem-solving approach via collaboration. this collaboration was enhanced by the two underlying notions of the zpd (vygotsky, 1978) and scaffolding. the most widely known definition of zpd is “the distance between the actual developmental level, as determined by independent problem solving, and the level of potential development, as determined through problem solving under adult guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers” (vygotsky, 1978: 33). following on the western interpretation of vygotsky’s work, the notion of scaffolding developed almost 40 years ago (wood et al., 1976). other researchers in mathematics education (anghileri, 2006; schukajlow, et al., 2015) have also acknowledged this metaphor, which refers to the intended systematic support for an individual student by a knowledgeable adult. in this inquiry, a collaborative zpd was made possible by student interaction in small groups as they participated in mathematical modelling activities. this provided a support structure or “scaffold” for students’ competency development and they could learn from one other’s knowledge. furthermore, the notion of the zone of proximal development can be seen as the underlying theoretical lens to explain students’ cognitive development in mathematical modelling. student cognitive development was potentially promoted by following the steps in the mathematical modelling cycle and by collaborating in groups when involved in a learning activity containing two mathematical application tasks – both serving as a scaffold to support mathematics students’ increasing independence as their understanding of mathematical modelling became more secure. wood et al. (1976), also cited by anghileri (2006:34), identified six key elements using the metaphor of scaffolding, namely: i. recruitment – to enlist the students’ interest in a mathematical modelling activity, to willingly adhere to the requirements of the activity; ii. reduction in degrees of freedom – to simplify mathematical modelling tasks by regulating feedback according to the particular phases of modelling cycles; iii. direction maintenance – to keep the students focused on the task by means of well-planned facilitation by the facilitator; iv. marking critical features – to emphasise correspondences and discrepancies by discussing results; v. frustration control – to respond to students’ reactions when participating in mathematical modelling tasks; and vi. demonstration – to discuss a possible solution for a real-life contextual problem. all of these key elements were considered in planning and implementing the structured intervention in this inquiry, but in particular the first four as well as the last element. 3. research approach and method the participants, third-year mathematics student teachers at a public johannesburg university, characterised by a variety of demographical profile elements, are identified http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 216 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 216-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 in table 1. the research was conducted from a pragmatic viewpoint (creswell, 2013), by collecting qualitative data, and participants were arranged into 10 groups according to ability. each group had to contain at least one high achiever (an average mathematics mark of equal or above 70%), one moderate achiever (an average mathematics mark of between 50% and 70%), and one low achiever (an average mathematics mark of below 50%). the participants were all enrolled in a third-year mathematics course for teachers and their average mathematics course marks were used for the group allocation. the rationale for the group selection of high, moderate and low achievers was due to the complexity of realworld contexts, the high cognitive demand of mathematical modelling tasks (although in this inquiry participants were exposed to a mathematical application task and not yet open-ended modelling task), and student teachers’ lack of experience in mathematical modelling. small group sizes were practical and the idea was to promote participation of all members. stratified sampling procedures were used, which are also convenient (due to respondents’ availability) and single stage, as the researcher had access to the names of all student teachers in the group and could sample directly (creswell, 2003). table 1. demographical profile elements of participants profile variable (n=55) n % gender (n=43) female 17 39.5 male 26 60.5 ethnic group (n=42) asian, indian, coloured 2 4.8 black 32 76.2 coloured 3 7.1 white 3 7.1 no response 2 4.8 home language (n=43) afrikaans 4 9.3 english 5 11.6 indigenous 33 76.7 no response 1 2.3 participants were exposed to the mathematical modelling activity (see figures 2 & 3) that contained two contextual problem-solving examples that required little ambiguity from groups about their strategies and methods, and an activity sheet (similar to the solution plan from schukajlow et al., 2015) containing the fundamental steps in solving modelling tasks (understanding the task, searching for mathematics, using mathematics and explaining results). the information in both selected examples had already been carefully defined, containing all the necessary data to formulate a model, and called for a specific procedure to be employed. thus, the authors expected participants to move successfully through the modelling cycle. the activity, involving both tasks, was conducted during a 110-minute official class timeslot. during the activity, the researchers were present to observe group discussions. apart from the theoretical basis that informed this inquiry, the rationale for exposing student teachers to mathematics application tasks was informed by chan’s viewpoint (2013) that a possible starting point for the integration of mathematical modelling into the classroom can be identified via simple tasks. the researchers intended to design an activity, not only to support http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 217 durandt & lautenbach strategic support to students’ competency development 2020 38(1): 217-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 students in the development of mathematical competencies in the modelling process, but also to enhance collaboration between group members, and to stimulate favourable participant attitudes (also compare durandt & jacobs, 2018). task 1, on the daily production of a sweet factory (see figure 2), required students in groups to express mathematical constraints and to represent the given data, then graphically represent the constraints, and to make use of the graph to determine maximum profit (bester et al., 1998: 113). task 2 (see figure 3), adapted from stewart, redlin and watson (2012), provided information on the potassium, protein and vitamin d content in one ounce of commercial diet food. information was presented in the form of a table in order to compare the three different brands of diet food. groups were expected to calculate how many ounces of each type of food should be taken per day to satisfy daily nutrient requirements. groups submitted their strategies and mathematical solutions on a pre-designed activity sheet, designed according to the elementary stages of a modelling cycle to provide students with a scaffold. 4. analysis and findings qualitative data were analysed by following the direct content analysis method (hsieh & shannon, 2005). this method of analysis uses existing research to guide the variables of interest (proposed categories) and to devise operational definitions for these variables. hsieh and shannon (2005) argued that the use of existing research could not only provide guidance on the variables of interest, but also assists in focusing the research questions. two proposed categories originated from the theory on students’ mathematical modelling competencies (stillman, et al., 2007) on the one hand, and the principles (accurate, realistic, precise, practical and robust) to evaluate a mathematical model (meyer, 2012) on the other hand. the two coding categories, mathematical modelling competence (with a differentiation between modelling sub-competence and mathematical sub-competence) and model capability, guided the analysis of the activity sheets by the different groups that were collected during the intervention (see table 2). the directed content analysis method also suited the researchers’ pragmatic approach, and existing theory on mathematical modelling was supported and extended by means of this method. the first category, mathematical modelling competence, describes the ability of participants to identify relevant questions, variables, relations, or assumptions in a given real-world situation. examples in this paper include the modelling task described earlier that required a mixture of a certain food substance according to certain conditions and to translate this into mathematics and to interpret and validate the solution of the resulting mathematical problem in relation to the given situation (compare niss et al. 2007). within this first category, modelling sub-competence is underscored as a sub-category focusing particularly on the modelling cycle, real-world meaning and real-world solution or how participants (in groups) followed the steps of the modelling cycle, progressed from meaning towards a possible solution, and then interpreted the solution within the given real-world context created through the mathematical application tasks that were applied. also embedded in this first category is mathematical sub-competence as a sub-category, focusing on participants’ mathematical abilities – or if participants (in groups) used relevant and accurate mathematical representations of the realworld problem in their selection of applicable mathematical content knowledge, and if they worked correctly with the mathematics. the second category, model capability, describes if participants (in groups) considered the evaluation criteria of the mathematical models produced by the various groups. this relates http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 218 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 218-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 to their particular model’s precision, validity and applicability and is described by the model’s accuracy (if the model output values are correct or near to correct), realism (if the model is based on original correct assumptions), precision (if the model output values is definite mathematical quantities or if they fall in a specific interval), practicality (if the model output values provide a sensible solution) and robustness (if the output values are protected against errors in the input data). owing to the nature of the mathematical application tasks used in this inquiry, which contained clearly defined data, it was expected that the different group models would mostly satisfy meyer’s (2012) criteria. table 2 shows an analysis of participant groups’ activity sheets how the different groups displayed mathematical modelling competence and model capability by solving the two mathematical application tasks (compare figures 2 and 3). 5. discussion the mathematics application activity in this inquiry involved two different tasks and did not require the participant groups to progress through the complete modelling cycle. it also did not require them to consider the implications of their decisions, or to discuss the validity and applicability of their selected mathematical models. the focus of the two tasks was on the development of mathematical and modelling competence, and the researchers attempted to use the modelling cycle as a metacognitive tool to expose students to the early stages of the modelling cycle. in figure 4, the mathematical and modelling competence of group 1 is illustrated. the figure indicates the manner in which the group structured the relevant information in a table, how they expressed the mathematical constraints as two inequalities having written down an objective function to determine maximum profit, and finally how they presented the problem graphically. in addition, the objective function (as the dotted line) and final solution (at point a) are depicted in the figure. all 10 groups showed mathematical modelling competence, particularly modelling sub-competence in their documents, as they proceeded successfully through the first two fundamental phases of the modelling cycle (balakrishnan et al., 2010). all groups identified relevant information and made simplified assumptions about the real-world contexts in both examples included in the task. furthermore, all groups showed mathematical sub-competence as findings. they indicated the mathematical representation used, as well as the content selection and mathematical operations performed by the different groups. all 10 groups introduced relevant variables and represented the application problems mathematically (given in two examples), although only eight of these representations were accurate. the two inaccurate representations, from group 8 and 9, contained minor mathematical errors. the entire class selected appropriate mathematical formula to solve the problems, and seven groups investigated more than two mathematical procedures, such as solving equations simultaneously, determining solutions graphically, and performing matrix operations. seven of the groups applied the selected mathematical content knowledge correctly, but the documents from three of the groups indicated mathematical errors in procedures. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 219 durandt & lautenbach strategic support to students’ competency development 2020 38(1): 219-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 table 2. analysis of group activity sheets initial coding categories groups 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 total category: mathematical modelling competence modelling sub-competence moving successfully through the first two stages of the modelling cycle. x x x x x x x x x x 10 identifying, from the available information, what is relevant and what is irrelevant. x x x x x x x x x x 10 making simplified and relevant assumptions about the situation to enable mathematics to be applied. x x x x x x x x x x 10 mathematical sub-competence recognising relevant variables. x x x x x x x x x x 10 accurately representing the realworld problem mathematically. x x x x x x x x 8 inaccurately representing the realworld problem mathematically. x x 2 selecting appropriate mathematical formula – consistent with the representation. x x x x x x x x 8 selecting appropriate mathematical formula – inconsistent with the representation. x x 2 applying mathematical content knowledge correctly. x x x x x x x 7 applying mathematical content knowledge incorrectly. x x x 3 investigating more than two mathematical procedures to solve the problem. x x x x x x x 7 category: model capability accurate (model output expected to be near to correct) x x x x x x x 7 realistic (model based on original correct assumptions) x x x x x x x x x x 10 precise (model output values should be definite mathematical quantities or falling in a closed interval) x x x x x x x x x 9 practical (sensible solutions provided) x x x x x x x 7 robust (relatively safe from errors) x x x x x x x x x x 10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 220 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 220-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 owing to the carefully defined mathematical application tasks included in this inquiry, little ambiguity about the model and procedures was expected from the groups. as anticipated, all groups formulated realistic models based on correct assumptions and prior exposure to relevant mathematical content knowledge. groups displayed model capability by means of its accuracy, precision and practicality (meyer, 2012). these criteria depended on the mathematical competencies of groups; hence, seven of the groups formulated output values expected to be correct (referring to accuracy). the same seven groups provided sensible solutions (directed towards practicality), while the models from nine of the groups generated definite output values (indicating precision). in the case of group 8, who struggled to represent the real-world problem mathematically, definite output values were calculated, given by , but the values were impractical and inaccurate. noticeably, a negative number of ounces of liquifast () is an unrealistic solution. the researchers expected that the particular group would realise the negative value is impossible and comment on that or check their mathematical calculations. a figure 4: example from group 1 illustrating mathematical and modelling competencies http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 221 durandt & lautenbach strategic support to students’ competency development 2020 38(1): 221-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 6. conclusion this inquiry reports on third-year mathematics students’ mathematical modelling competency (and sub-competency) development through intended strategic support in the learning of mathematical modelling. the researchers attempted to use the modelling cycle as a metacognitive tool and to use the mathematics application tasks, together with an activity sheet linking the key steps in the modelling cycle as a scaffold in the modelling process. the rationale for exposing student teachers to mathematics application tasks was informed by chan’s viewpoint (2013) that a possible starting point for the integration of mathematical modelling into the classroom could be identified via simple tasks. furthermore, the different steps in the modelling cycle could be a potential cognitive barrier for participants. thus, the aim of these tasks was to support students in the development of competencies and subcompetencies required for the mathematical modelling process, guided by the notions of the zone of proximal development (zpd) (vygotsky, 1978), before they are exposed to more open-ended and more challenging modelling tasks. knowing the modelling task is central in the mathematical modelling learning experience, and that modellers often experience blockages in the modelling process, well-planned and structured support was found to be necessary in the case of novice modellers. the structured support included a solution plan containing key steps that are linked to the fundamental phases of the modelling cycle – understanding the task, searching for the mathematics, using the mathematics, and explaining the results. in this inquiry, findings confirmed that inexperienced modellers could move successfully through the elementary stages of the modelling cycle (balakrishnan et al., 2010) by exposing them to an easier, clearly defined mathematical modelling activity including two mathematical application tasks. the tasks required mixing particular food substances according to certain conditions. data were analysed via the direct content analysis method and existing research categories guided the coding categories. most participant groups displayed mathematical and modelling sub-competencies and they showed an understanding of mathematical models (within a clearly defined situation). some groups displayed realistic answers, while others had unrealistic answers. it was expected that the groups with unrealistic answers would attempt some effort to unpack the problem or move through the modelling cycle for a second time, in searching for an explanation for their particular solution, but they did not. in conclusion, the participants revealed themselves as mathematical modellers, although the modelling process was limited to mathematisation, mathematical procedures, and a direct contextual interpretation. this inquiry provides a basis for further strategic support and continued exposure to more open-ended modelling tasks. 7. acknowledgement this work is based on the research partially supported by the national research foundation (nrf) of south africa, unique grant no. 106978. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 222 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 222-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 references anghileri, j. 2006. scaffolding practices that enhance mathematics learning. journal of mathematics teacher education, 9, 33–52. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10857-006-9005-9. balakrishnan, g., yen, y. p., & goh, l. e. e. 2010. mathematical modelling in the singapore secondary school mathematics curriculum. in b. kaur & j. dindyal (eds.), mathematical applications and modelling. 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https://doi.org/10.1142/9789814313353_0013 https://doi.org/10.1533/9780857099419.5.221 https://doi.org/10.1533/9780857099419.5.221 https://doi.org/10.1007/978 https://doi.org/10.1007/978 http://www.siam.org/reports/gaimme.php https://doi.org/10.1007/978 https://doi.org/10.1177/1049732305276687 https://doi.org/10.1007/978 https://doi.org/10.1007/978 https://doi.org/10.1007/978 223 durandt & lautenbach strategic support to students’ competency development 2020 38(1): 223-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 schukajlow, s., kolter, j. & blum, w. 2015. scaffolding mathematical modelling with a solution plan. zdm – the international journal of mathematics education, 47(7), 1241–1254. https:// doi.org/10.1007/s11858-015-0707-2. stewart, j., redlin, l., & watson, s. 2012. precalculus: mathematics for calculus. united kingdom: brooks/cole cengage learning. stillman, g., galbraith, p., brown, j., & edwards, i. 2007. a framework for success in implementing mathematical modelling in the secondary classroom. mathematics: essential research, essential practice, 2, 688-697. vygotsky, l. 1978. interaction between learning and development. readings on the development of children, 23(3), 34–41. wood, d., bruner, j. & ross, g. 1976. the role of tutoring in problem solving. journal of child psychology and psychiatry, 17, 89–100. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1976.tb00381.x. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.15 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11858 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.1976.tb00381 _goback 103 research article 2020 38(2): 103-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) how district teacher development centres support teachers’ learning: case studies in kwazulu-natal, south africa abstract this research is based on case studies of seven district teacher development centres (dtdcs) in the kwazulu-natal province of south africa. the paper describes the perceptions of selected teachers regarding professional learning and development experiences at these centres. the purpose of the study was to determine the role centres play in supporting teachers’ learning and development as stipulated in the integrated strategic planning framework for teacher education and development (ispfted) policy in south africa. the study employed a qualitative research approach in which semi-structured interviews, observation, document analysis and field notes were used to generate data from six centre managers, two librarians, two ict specialists and 46 teachers at the centres. findings from the study indicated that the dtdcs create an ideal opportunity for teachers’ professional learning with the presence of computer, science laboratories and libraries. however, the study noted that teachers seldom used these resources. teachers used the centres mainly for professional development activities such as workshops and meetings. our study concludes that at present, the centres are not supporting the full vision of the policy, and the potential of dtdcs to enhance teacher learning and development remains largely untapped. keywords: district teacher development centre, teacher learning, professional development policy, managerial professionalism 1. introduction an education system cannot be better than its teachers; thus, teacher development is a key focus of many systems. in south africa, a range of policies had been implemented to support and align teacher development practices. the most recent policy is the integrated strategic planning framework for teacher education and development (ispfted) 2011–2025. the plan expresses the seriousness with which the department of education views current educational challenges. one of the requirements stated in this framework is that provincial education departments authors: dr benedicta a. ajibade1 prof carol bertram1 affiliation: 1school of education, university of kwazulu-natal, south africa e-mail: bennyajibade@gmail.com doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38. i2.07 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(2): 103-117 published: 04 december 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 mailto:bennyajibade@gmail.com http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2961-5645 1042020 38(2): 104-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) need to establish district teacher development centres (dtdcs) to serve as local support sites for teachers (dbe & dhet, 2011). dtdcs have been established as part of school improvement efforts and provide access to resources, sites for curriculum delivery and continuous professional development training as well as a meeting place for professional learning communities (dbe & dhet, 2011). while the idea of dtdcs is laudable, the extent to which this vision has been realised is not clear. one cannot make a case for the success of the dtdcs without asking the following questions: what kind of professional development activities are delivered at these centres? how are the professional learning communities organised and monitored? are there enough personnel to run the dtdcs? accordingly, this study aimed to understand the extent to which these dtdcs support teachers’ learning and development in kwazulu-natal. 2. background the plan policy and the establishment of dtdcs in south africa research studies on teacher professional development and teacher quality have been identified as a lever for improving the quality of teaching and student outcomes (bayar, 2014; borko et al., 2010; higgins & parson, 2011; klieger & oster-levinz, 2015; van der bergh et al., 2015). unfortunately, research in south africa and internationally has shown that professional development approaches intended to help teachers move beyond typical teaching practices have not had a significant impact on teaching and learning (bantwini, 2012; bertram, 2011; luneta, 2012; jita & mokhele, 2014; opfer & pedder, 2011). nonetheless, bautista et al. (2015) identified features related to the content and design of professional development programmes for teachers that are regarded as “features of high-quality pd”. thus, it is important to ascertain the basic mechanisms for the effectiveness of these programmes (bautista, wong & gopinathan, 2015). teacher development has been part of the central focus of south african education reform and development initiatives. in july 2009, a teacher development summit was held to address the challenges facing teacher education in the country. hence, ispfted (2011–2025) (known as the plan) was developed, which paved the way for the establishment of district teacher development centres (dtdcs). dtdcs are therefore a conscious effort to boost educational support and address the challenges facing teachers, especially those working in rural areas where learners’ educational attainment is low and teachers do not have easy access to resources and professional development opportunities (dbe, 2011; van der berg et al., 2011). similarly, bantwini (2018) argues that the lack of attention to education quality and failure to reach the marginalised members of the society have immensely affected teaching and learning, which can no longer be overlooked. thus, supporting teachers to meet these expanded challenges through their involvement in dtdcs is essential. to date, 147 fullservice dtdcs have been established across all the provinces (dbe, 2011). studies on teacher development centres in other contexts the concept of teacher development centre is termed differently in various contexts. according to giordano (2008), this model has been widely promoted across countries under different names such as teacher resource centres, teacher activity centres, teacher advisory centres and teacher support groups (giordano, 2008). teacher resource centres (trcs) started in britain in the 1960s as a strategy for delivering a range of educational resources http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 1052020 38(2): 105-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 ajibade & bertram how district teacher development centres support teachers’ learning and supporting teachers’ professional development (fairhurst et al., 1999). the ideal of trc initiatives spread to other countries as part of national education reforms (giordano, 2008). according to fairhurst et al. (1999:24), trcs are “places where teachers from several surrounding schools could meet and discuss with one another, work on curricula, develop materials, but most importantly, develop their knowledge and skills”. research carried out in tanzania by mosha (2015) points out the importance of trcs as an independent environment where teachers can access organised educational resources, get assistance and have productive discussions with their colleagues. sabaya (2011 cited in mosha, 2015) indicates that trcs provide opportunities for teachers to obtain necessary professional support for day-to-day work. various studies on trcs in britain have shown that the teachers who visited these centres were relatively well trained, very well resourced and had a high level of autonomy in terms of curriculum and classroom practice (weindling et al., 1983). however, research shows that very little systematic curriculum development was in operation and only small groups of teachers and head teachers engaged in such activities at the centres. hence, the authors concluded that materials production and curriculum development were difficult tasks for teachers to achieve in the limited sessions at the trcs (weindling et al., 1983). similarly, empirical research conducted in india and zambia shows that while teachers were supposed to reflect on practice, exchange experiences and develop materials, the centres failed to support these ideas (fairhurst et al., 1999). noticeably, in india, where meetings are rigidly structured, the centres lacked formative opportunities for professional development activities and skilled personnel. in zambia, the only strategy identified that gives teachers opportunity to think about teaching was the newly established school-based teacher workshop programme. however, with little resources, it was not enough to bring about change in their practice (fairhurst et al., 1999). in kenya, it was found that centres provided ongoing workshop support for teachers on exams, syllabi and provided essential resources. however, it was noted that the support was only for teachers and schools near the centres (fairhurst et al., 1999). weindling et al. (1983) revealed that despite the unanimous support for teachers engaging in curriculum development at the trc in the countries listed above, there are some limitations that hinder the intended outcomes. the main objective of all these case studies was to highlight the underlying idea that teacher centres would encourage and support professional development interactions. teacher professional learning and development darling-hammond et al. (2017:2) conceptualise teacher professional learning “as a product of both externally provided and job-embedded activities that have the potential to increase teachers’ knowledge and bring about change in their instructional practice in ways that support student learning”. they argue that teacher learning involves both formal and informal learning activities. given the complex nature of teacher professional learning and development, avalos (2011) argues that teachers are the subjects and objects of learning and development, which requires their cognitive and emotional involvement. similarly, opfer and pedder (2011) argue that teacher learning should be understood as a complex system rather than an event. for opfer and pedder (2011), professional learning should be viewed in the light of complexity theory, as they indicate that teacher learning is influenced by many factors such as the teacher, professional development activity and the school context. opfer and pedder (2011) note that professional learning may be influenced by the school context, the teacher’s personality http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 1062020 38(2): 106-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) (attitude and beliefs) and the external stimulus provided by the learning activity. these interact with each other and combine with the dynamics of the individuals’ social processes within their different contexts. 3. conceptual framework the conceptual framework used in this study was adapted from harland and kinder’s (1997) model of nine possible outcomes of any professional development activity (table 1). they describe material and provisionary outcomes and information outcomes (such as the distribution of new material or teaching resources) as third-order outcomes; new awareness, motivational and attitudinal outcomes, affective outcomes and institutional outcomes as second-order outcomes, and value congruence outcomes and knowledge and skills outcomes as first-order outcomes. while many professional development activities may achieve thirdlevel outcomes of distributing material and information, teachers may not learn any new knowledge or skills (first-level outcomes) which actually impact on their classroom practice. table 1: a hierarchy of professional development outcomes, adapted from harland and kinder (1997) professional development activity input 3rd order outcomes: provisionary information new a wareness 2nd order outcomes: motivation affective institutional 1 st order outcomes: value congruence knowledge and skills impact on practice in this study, we were interested in what ways the activities offered at dtdcs achieved the first-order outcomes that contribute to learning of new knowledge and skills. harland and kinder (1997) suggest that such first-order outcomes are needed to bring about change in teachers’ classroom practices that may then have a greater impact on teachers’ learning. these outcomes are numerous, varied and complex, and they interact dynamically. 4. research methodology research context this study used a qualitative design that incorporates case studies of seven dtdcs in kwazulu-natal. the case studies were undertaken by a number of researchers, including the authors and some masters’ students (hlabisa, 2018; mnguni, 2018; shange lpp, 2018; shange n, 2018; thwala, 2018). data presented in this study were generated through multiple data sources, including field visits to the centres, observation of the professional development activities, interviews with selected teachers and centre staff and document analysis of reports and attendance registers from workshops. the same data collection instruments were used in all the case studies. the hierarchy of in-service education and training (inset) outcomes proposed by harland and kinder (1997) was used to frame the analysis of data. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 1072020 38(2): 107-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 ajibade & bertram how district teacher development centres support teachers’ learning kwazulu-natal (kzn) is one of the nine provinces of south africa and has 47 dtdcs (kzn doe, 2014). the seven dtdcs purposively selected for this study were situated in four districts of kzn. the centres serve primary and secondary school educators, subject advisors, circuit managers, department of education (doe) officials, learners from different schools and the community at large. the physical structures of the seven centres visited were found to be in good condition. the centres have access to electricity and water and are well fenced with burglar doors and windows. however, resources such as computers, available space provided and personnel at the centres vary. participants and sampling seven dtdcs were purposively selected as the case studies in this study. interview data from 46 teachers and 17 centre personnel were generated. the teachers interviewed were those who were present at the dtdc when the researchers visited the centre; thus, this is not a representative sample of all teachers who may use the centre (bertram & christiansen, 2014). of the 46 teachers interviewed, 27 were female and 19 were male. thirty-five were in the age range of 35 and 55 years, while 11 were aged between 25 and 30 years. the interviewed teachers taught at least two subject areas at two different grade levels. thirty of the teachers interviewed had between 15 and 30 years of teaching experience, ten had between five and 14 years, while six had between one and four years. of the 17 personnel interviewed, six were centre managers and two were librarians; other staff included a secretary, an ict specialist, an it technician, four administrative clerks, a science lab assistant and a receptionist. the selection criteria were based on a convenient sampling technique and participants’ accessibility and willingness to participate in the study (etikan et al., 2016; wilson et al., 2016). data collection methods data were collected using semi-structured interviews, observations, document analysis and field notes. the interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, coded and thematically analysed (plunkett & dyson, 2011). observations were conducted to ascertain the kind of resources available and the types of professional development activities offered at the dtdcs. the words of the participants, observations, document analysis and field notes informed our understanding of the role of the dtdcs and the impact they have on teacher learning. all ethical protocols were duly observed. permission was granted by the university of kwazulunatal and the department of education to conduct the research and participants signed informed consent forms. pseudonyms are used to ensure the anonymity of the participants and identity of the centres in this article (creswell, 2013; neumann, 2014). brief description of the case studies westheath centre is in a rural area with three permanent buildings of which two serve as workshop venues and one as a conference centre. there are two mobile structures, one of which is used as a science laboratory and the other as computer room with 24 computers with internet access. the centre has a centre manager, a library assistant, volunteer science laboratory assistant, information technology (it) specialist and a cleaner. the second case, peacedale centre, is also in a rural area. it has one big open-plan office for the centre manager, reception area for community engagement and space for circulars and other documents for schools. the centre has two rooms used for workshops and meetings, a science laboratory, library with almost-empty shelves and a computer room with 25 laptops with internet access and offices for the circuit manager and doe officials when they visit the centre. the centre http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 1082020 38(2): 108-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) has a centre manager, a receptionist, ict specialist, it technician, a cleaner, gardener and security guard. there is a section at the centre used by university of south africa (unisa) to run their online programme and is monitored by an ict clerk employed by unisa. the third case, sunshine centre, is in a remote rural area. it has one big hall used as a venue for workshops, seminars or meetings. a library and a computer room with 12 laptops with internet access. the centre also has eight offices for staff, one board room and four classrooms. staff at the centre comprises the centre manager, an it specialist, two cleaners, one gardener and two security guards. ndlovu centre is in a semi-rural area and serves the as dtdc and as municipal offices. the centre has four rooms: one is used as a meeting room, computer room with 26 computers, science laboratory and a library with few and out-dated books on its shelves. the centre comprises the centre manager, an administrative clerk, a librarian, two cleaners and one security guard. there is also a broadcasting facility for unisa at the centre. lovedale dtdc is in a semi-rural area and has a permanent structure with relatively small spaces. the centre serves as a multipurpose and ecological centre where both primary and secondary school learners can engage actively with nature. the centre has one large office that is used as the media room with 15 computers but no internet access. the library simply comprises a few bookshelves with outdated books by the corner of the media room. the centre also has a jika imfundo resource bank “nolwazi”, which contains caps (the current school curriculum resources and past exam papers. adjoining the media room is the centre manager’s office. in addition to the centre manager, the centre has an administrator who is an intern, a cleaner and two security guards. jabavu dtdc is in an urban area and shares the premises with the department of art and culture. the centre has one big office for the two administrators, an adjoining office for the centre manager and four classrooms that are used as venues for workshops, meetings and three conference rooms. the centre has a science laboratory, a computer room with 24 computers with internet access and a library. the library was found to be in a state of disrepair due to rain, with many of the books, roof and floor being damaged. personnel at the centre included the centre manager, two administrators, a librarian, a cleaner and gardener. funza dtdc is located in an urban area and has 24 air-conditioned classrooms that are used for meetings as well as workshops for subject teachers. there is also a large conference room, one fully fitted computer laboratory with 25 functional computers but without internet. there are also two halls in which one operates as a boardroom and the other as a conference room. there is a mobile library bus that distributes books to the schools that do not have a library for a specified loan period and collects them again. there is also a processing centre that is used to process the books received from eduction library information and technology services (elits) before they are dispatched to schools. there is a centre manager, a receptionist, admin officer, processing centre coordinator, a handyman, a cleaner and two security guards. table 2: summary of the resources at the district teacher development centres centre name westheath peacedale sunshine lovedale ndlovu jabavu fuanz nature of district rural rural remote rural semi-rural semi-rural urban urban no. of staff 5 5 7 5 5 6 8 no. of classrooms 3 4 4 3 3 4 24 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 1092020 38(2): 109-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 ajibade & bertram how district teacher development centres support teachers’ learning centre name westheath peacedale sunshine lovedale ndlovu jabavu fuanz no. of offices 8 no. of computers 24 25 12 20 26 24 25 conference hall/ room 1 1 0 1 3 1 no of science laboratories 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 no of libraries 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 functioning level of library not used not used not used not used not used not used not used 5. findings this section presents the findings of the study and discusses participants’ understanding of the purpose of dtdcs, activities offered, available resources and how these resources support teachers’ learning. participants’ understanding of the purpose of the dtdc according to interviewed teachers, the overwhelming purpose of the dtdcs is as a “venue for teacher meetings”, to help teachers from different schools in the same area to come together and form clusters. some teachers viewed the dtdcs as “a venue where moderation and workshops are conducted for teachers by district education officials and subject advisers”. trevone, a natural sciences teacher who is also a cluster coordinator believed the centre to be for administrative purposes. for example, when the doe needs to conduct a headcount of teachers for statistical purposes, the officials would call teachers from neighbouring schools to assemble at the venue. chikoko revealed, “i go there mainly for attending workshops and to find out information on cross transfers from the administrative office”. similarly, lungy, a high school mathematics teacher, stated that: “it’s a teacher resource centre, i would say, and also a venue where teachers would meet to discuss issues affecting them in their careers”. sizwe, a deputy principal of a local high school, agreed with trevone that the centre is a venue where teachers meet for workshops and for meetings which are held by the south african democratic teachers union (sadtu). he also maintained that the centre plays a remarkable role through the resources it offers, which are not present in schools, such as the conference room that accommodates more than 30 teachers. centre managers shared similar views with most teachers. a typical remark includes: “the centre is about capacitating teachers in different subjects. the subject advisers and the teachers from different schools come here for workshops on different learning areas.” nicole, a centre manager also explained that the dtdc provides resources and supports teachers, guides professional learning committees and runs workshops after performing a needs analysis as well as providing a venue for meetings. teachers and centre managers view dtdcs as venues for meetings and workshops for teachers in different learning areas to carry out curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) and school-based assessment (sba) moderation. to some degree these views comply with the ispfted policy, which states that: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 1102020 38(2): 110-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) dtdcs are to serve as local support sites for teachers, sites from which curriculum support staff can operate sites where teachers can access shared resources, sites of delivery for continuing professional development courses and as meeting points for teacher professional learning communities (dbe & dhet, 2011:13). it was evident from the study that participants simply view the dtdc as a venue for meeting and workshop purposes only. the finding reveals that participants in the study did not understand the objectives of the “plan” policy. professional development activities offered at the centres evidence from the interviews and observations indicates that activities offered at the centres include moderation of school-based assessments, content workshops, curriculum coverage/ orientation workshops, computer literacy training and cluster meetings. participants from the sunshine and funza centres also mentioned computer training on microsoft office (word, excel, powerpoint), how to create a database and email was offered, and that teachers were awarded certificates. some teachers mentioned that attending computer literacy workshops has improved their computer literacy. they indicated that they now know how to type their own question papers at school. this reveals that they learned new skills that can be attributed to learning at the centres. in the collection of documents, we perused, we found attendance registers of computer workshops conducted for teachers in 2016. moderation appeared to be the main professional development activity offered at the centres. participants stated that moderation focuses on exam questions and marks, question papers, marking of scripts and discussion of previous exams question papers. most participants had a positive attitude towards these moderation exercises, stating that it provides them with an opportunity to discuss the challenges they experience in setting examination questions and marking scripts. simangele, a grade 10 english and history teacher, explained: as you know kzn is so big, this centre helps us to get a nearby place with resources that make our work easier in terms of teaching. for example, subject advisors come to the centres for us and give us information that we need. they also check our marking; how do we mark. if we have meetings, as teachers we come here and discuss a way forward also get enough information. we are also helping each other as teachers. the teachers indicated that they attend moderation workshops at the centres organised by subject advisers to check their level of compliance with the annual teaching plan (atp). majeyi stated that: we are checked if we are behind with curriculum and we come with strategies on how we are going to fill those gaps because if you are behind there is an annual teaching plan where you state the date when that section of work will be done because the department has got the exact date for the completion of each lesson or topic. in addition, interviewed teachers stated that they were provided a cd to download caps documents, annual teaching plans, work programmes, past years question papers, pamphlets and study guides at moderation workshops. a group of isizulu subject teachers use sunshine dtdc as a venue to participate collaboratively in activities that encourage them to learn from one another. the three interviewed teachers belong to a professional learning community established by teachers http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 1112020 38(2): 111-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 ajibade & bertram how district teacher development centres support teachers’ learning after a moderation workshop and saw the need to continuously meet out-of-moderation. the teachers indicated that the centre provided them with a central venue since they are from different schools. one of the participants, chonco, mentioned, “being part of the collaborating group has improved my quality of teaching and i produce good results in my matric class”. he indicated that he was not confident in teaching poetry but coming together as isizulu teachers and engaging in poetry collaboratively has made his teaching much easier: “participating in this activity has uncovered new knowledge and understanding”. this view is consistent with policy that states that dtdcs serve as a meeting venue for plcs, which is the only learning activities driven by teachers. the use of collaboration amongst teachers present an ideal opportunity to improve teachers’ growth as well as teaching and learning practice (steyn, 2014). learning from activities at the centre several participants indicated that they had gained new knowledge and skills because of moderation and content-related workshops. typical comments include “after sharing our experiences like content challenges, methods of tackling certain topics, i just feel ready to respond to any questions my learners might have”. other teachers shared similar sentiments. after attending these content workshops, one comes out bold and confident about teaching the subject and you see one feels bad to miss any of these workshops. coming back from the content workshop enables me to give confident feedback to my learners; you see i am in the position of presenting a new and fresh perspective. vusi also revealed: i used to be very frustrated when my learners fail my subject or when they score very low marks. memo discussion workshops have taught me that some answers might be expressed slightly different from the memorandum and be more accommodative of the answers conveying the similar idea. jele noted, yes, i have learnt a new way of marking learner’s assessment tasks … for example all grade 12 isizulu teachers in my cluster bring in a sample of marked learners’ scripts and exchange in ensuring standardisation and consistency in teachers’ marking. teachers mabheleni, malwande, philani, pranesh, kele, benzile and majeyi regarded themselves as lifelong learners and said that they learn a lot at the centres that keep them up to date with all the curriculum changes. these responses are confirmation that the dtdc programmes have produced certain positive feelings and motivation. resources at the centres most of the centres have a library, computers, a science laboratory, photocopying machines and so on. however, many of these resources were not functional. computers are not used owing to a lack of trained personnel and internet access, and many of the libraries stock outdated and unrelated textbooks. several teachers said that they had never used the library or the computers at the centres except for those at sunshine and funza centres. we also found that centres with laboratories find it challenging to use the equipment due to a lack of personnel. despite internet facilities at some of the centres, they lacked trained personnel to http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 1122020 38(2): 112-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) run computer literacy classes for teachers. we argue that without the relevant personnel at the centres, no professional development activities can be conducted effectively. ayanda, a grade 7 natural sciences teacher at peacedale centre, lamented: “as much as i like to visit the centre and use the science laboratory, unfortunately, i cannot … ever since (nicky) the laboratory assistant left there has been no replacement and therefore when teachers go there, there is no one to assist them.” ayanda also mentioned that attempts to raise the issue with the centre manager had been futile. ceasa, a teacher, affirmed, “there is no internet here and the books are old and unrelated”. such experiences thus become a setback for the teachers and policymakers in creating better learning experiences for holistic school development. sithe, a school principal, said: i think there is a library and computers here, but i don’t know much. we only come here for workshops and meetings. i think it is an information problem. ngcobo, a life orientation teacher, asserted: i know there are computers and library here at the centre, but i was never told by the manager, my school, department officials or even the subject advisers that the resources at the centre are meant for us. however, susana (a science lab assistant) had a different perspective. she believes that some teachers are aware of the resources at the centre but hardly use them. jotham (centre librarian) at lovedale corroborated susana’s view, stating that, “teachers hardly visit the library at the centre despite the department supplying instructional materials”. sindy and zuthole, both centre managers, confirmed that not all teachers who visit the centre know about available resources. sindy thought that some teachers could be reluctant to use the resources in the science laboratory because there is no one to assist them. she explained: previously we had two qualified assistants but were here on a two-year contract which was never renewed. there has not been any replacement for them. i’m the only one who assists wherever possible. similarly, observation revealed the science laboratory materials were insufficient and the learning space in the science lab was not in line with the specified standards. 6. discussion participants’ understanding of the purpose of the dtdc the vision of the dtdcs as espoused by the ispfted is clearly stipulated that dtdcs are to serve as support sites for teachers, access shared resources, delivery for continuing professional development courses and as meeting points for teacher professional learning communities (dbe & dhet, 2011). our findings demonstrate that participants largely understood dtdcs as venues for meetings and workshops called by the department of education. this limited vision of the dtdcs by participants means that most teachers do not take ownership of these resources to support their own professional development and learning. they are waiting to be called to attend workshops and meetings at the centres. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 1132020 38(2): 113-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 ajibade & bertram how district teacher development centres support teachers’ learning professional development activities offered at the centres one of the important components of any professional development activity is that it should be related to teachers’ specific learning needs (dbe & dhet, 2011). the dtdcs in this study did not provide a selection of professional activities that would enable teachers to learn new pedagogic content knowledge or content knowledge that was not directly linked to the implementation of state policies. moderation workshops are one of the main professional development activities offered at the centres. however, we argue that the activities of marking learner scripts, setting question papers and revising past exams papers are focused on achieving smooth implementation of state policies, and are not necessarily activities that lead to teacher learning. moderation also plays the role of monitoring teacher accountability and thus could reflect as a managerial professionalism discourse (day & sachs, 2004). hence, there was no evidence of professional development that supports teachers’ specific strengths and addressed their specific needs, and that was not linked to compliance with policy directives (kennedy, 2014). thus, the vision of the dtdc as being a place where a “variety of modes of study and support” (dbe & dhet, 2011:8) are offered is at present not being implemented at these centres. avalos (2011) argues that the core of professional development endeavours is about teachers learning how to learn and transform their knowledge into practice for the benefit of their students’ growth. this transformation of knowledge that was driven by teachers was not apparent in our case studies. rather, we argue that professional development activities offered at the dtdcs are driven by the provincial department of education to ensure that teachers understand and comply with the assessment and curriculum policies. learning from activities at the centre in this study, participants at the centres we studied have specific ways of working together that are related to the values and principles of the profession. the first important observation in our study is that there was only one example of a group of teachers who used the dtdc as a venue for their professional learning community. this was a group of isizulu teachers who met at the centre on their own volition. evidence from our study reveals that teacher collaboration took place outside of the workshop. this is an indication that these teachers have developed some levels of trust to support each other in their profession. in addition, collaborative learning allows teachers chances to progress and be developed well in their teaching (bantwini, 2018). a second important observation was that some teachers were equipped with computerrelated skills and provided the resources to browse the internet for information, download material to use when teaching as well as prepare computer-generated lesson plans. this statement confirms that activities at dtdcs support some teachers to develop computer skills. the dtdc therefore fulfils its role to support teacher learning in some capacity and meets the requirements of dtdcs, as clearly stated in the policy (dbe & dhet, 2011). the third observation was that many of the participants noted that they learnt from the moderation of school-based assessment about appropriate marking standards and setting of exams questions according to the curriculum guidelines. this indicates that harland and kinder’s (1997) first-order outcomes were achieved, which relates to acquiring new knowledge and skills. however, the focus on moderation of assessment and on setting exam questions indicates a strong focus on managerial professionalism, which is driven by the state for the purposes of implementing state policies (day & sachs, 2004). teachers also received new information about assessment guidelines and curriculum planning and materials. this new information and materials received such as caps documents, annual teaching plans and work http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 1142020 38(2): 114-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) programmes, indicates that harland and kinder’s (1997) third-order outcomes were achieved. it was not, however, possible to conclude that the first-level outcomes of learning how to moderate and set school-based assessment tasks lead to changed pedagogic practices. resources at the centres evidence from the findings reveals resources for learning, including library, laboratory, computers and internet access. we noted that resources were seldom utilised and science equipment often sits in locked cupboards gathering dust and rust. library shelves are often half empty and books are outdated. the findings in this study suggested that teachers did not access nor share resources at the centres. despite the policy statement regarding the dtdcs as a site for teachers to access shared resources, the study found that this was not the case with these centres. we argue that a lack of resources is not in accordance with specified standards for the dtdcs norms and standards (dbe, 2015) which stipulates that dtdcs should be equipped with relevant resources to support teaching and learning. levin (2010) points out that lack of attention to adequate implementation is a major flaw in policy process. he highlights two elements that are critical to successful implementation: the importance of engaging those who must make the change in the process of learning and improvement, and the need for “enough skilled people to provide ongoing support”. we recommend that to ensure a coherent system that supports teachers, teachers should be made aware of the purpose and function of the centres, more personnel should be provided to improve the cohesion and coordination of professional development activities at the centres and resources should be updated and maintained. in addition, setting up of dtdcs and aligning resources to current education practice should be developed and reviewed with active involvement of teachers and personnel who are themselves professionals in the field. 7. conclusion the policy on dtdc structures and its required procedures and purposes are clearly stated. this study set out to answer the questions outlined in the introduction: what kind of professional development activities are delivered at the centres? how are the professional learning communities organised and monitored? and, are there enough personnel to run the dtdcs? the study discovered that dtdcs only offer professional development activities that are aimed at the implementation of the curriculum and assessment policies. very few teachers initiated plcs which met at the centres. the study also found that the centres were limited in their capacity by lack of trained personnel. most teachers visit the centres only to attend meetings and curriculum workshops. we conclude that the dtdcs in this study do not significantly support teachers’ learning and development beyond the workshops offered for the implementation of state policies. the dtdcs in our case studies provide venues for meetings and workshops but these meetings do not provide wide-ranging professional development activities. the centres also provide access to resources that are often inadequate, nonfunctional and barely utilised. we argue that without relevant resources at the centres, it is impossible for them to offer any professional development activities. this study concludes that the expectations of the policy that the centres should support teachers’ learning have not been realised holistically. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 1152020 38(2): 115-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 ajibade & 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schools council working paper 74, london: methuen educational. wilson, a.l. greenacre, l., pignata, s. & winefield, a. 2016. challenging the notion of the transition year: the experiences of rural and urban tertiary students. international journal of educational research, 79: 21–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2016.06.002. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.07 https://doi.org/10.3102/0034654311413609 https://doi.org/10.14221/ajte.2011v36n1.3 https://doi.org/10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n23p1331 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2015.01.002 https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2973766 https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2973766 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2016.06.002 how district teacher development centres support teachers’ learning 702020 38(2): 70-85 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.05 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) “connectedness” in business studies pedagogy: is a transition year alluring? abstract the continuously changing business world demands that students entering the world of work have an adaptable skill set. the acquisition of appropriate exit-level knowledge, skills and competencies also holds true for young school learners and early school leavers. at school level the engagement and connectedness with the outside world and the development of subject-specific practical competencies could be structured through an experiential education approach that will allow learners to become self-regulating and active in their learning. this kind of active learning could involve an education that also facilitates a “real-life” experience in the workplace. this article argues for a workplace-based learning approach for business studies teaching by reflecting on the “connectedness” dimension of the productive pedagogies framework. in doing so, the authors deliberate on a unique irish model called the “transition year” (ty), its orientation of “real-life” learning, the background to the development of the ty, its implementation and its viability within a south african school context. keywords: experiential learning, business studies, enterprise education, entrepreneurship, productive pedagogies, connectedness, transition year, workplace-based learning. 1. introduction businesses are constantly exposed to changing environments and fast-paced technological advancement, which demand employees with an adaptable skill set. this ever-changing business environment has implications for promoting an education that is expected to be responsive to the needs of the country (alexander & khabanyane, 2013). the education system therefore has an impact on the acquisition of knowledge, skills, competencies and attitudes on which future career choices are based (birdthistle, hynes, flemming, 2007) as well as on the ability to perform optimally in this dynamic environment. business education specifically needs to continuously evolve to take into account the fundamental re-ordering of the way that businesses are structured and managed (hytti & o’gorman, 2004). however, there is still a limited authors: dr c.g. america1 p. mallon1 affiliation: 1curriculum studies department, faculty of education, stellenbosch university doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38. i2.05 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(2): 70-85 published: 04 december 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.05 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7916-4440 712020 38(2): 71-85 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.05 america & mallon “connectedness” in business studies pedagogy understanding of how best to achieve these objectives. exit-level outcomes at the end of schooling do not necessarily prepare learners for entry-level skills needed for industry coupled with an “urgent need for tailor-made entrepreneurship training programme in south african secondary schools” with regard to entrepreneurial attitudes in particular (steenekamp, van der merwe & athayde, 2011:328). horwitz (2013) argues that teacher commitment to entrepreneurship education is necessary, especially for topics such as business ventures, enterprise dynamics, financial literacy and hands-on planning skills, which are in turn a function of materials and resource availability. recent statistics in south africa show that the unemployment rate was 27,7 per cent and the youth unemployment rate was 38,6 per cent at the end of the third quarter of 2017. this finding indicates that the majority of youths are unskilled (world bank, 2018). in the late 1990s, the technical colleges in south africa were restructured into the technical and vocational training (tvet) colleges which are mostly known for its workplace-based learning where the apprenticeship-type training was broadened to include all business sectors (van der bijl & taylor, 2018). the formation of the sector education and training authorities (seta) as an imperative to redress the inequalities of the country’s apartheid past, provided collaborative learnerships between employers and tvet colleges so as to integrate practice (on-the-job training) and theory (offered by tvet lecturers). however, the tvet colleges face challenging times as a result of a combination of factors; lack of demand for apprenticeships, the introduction of learnerships, the national certificate (vocational) (ncv) curriculum in 2007 and other structural changes (van der bijl & taylor, 2018). the ncv were offered in 11 economic sectors ranging from engineering, business, information and communications technology, agriculture, tourism and hospitality. the decline in the workplace-based learning at tvet colleges is also because of the extent and quality in the learnerships that tended to be the responsibility of the employer. furthermore, programmes are structured in such a way that the workplace-based component became optional, coupled with many lecturers who do not have any workplace experience (van der bijl & taylor, 2018). the practical learning component is also a compulsory part of teacher education programmes at higher education institutions (see dhet, 2011), where student teachers do their practical teaching and learning at schools for a specific period(s) during their year(s) of study. experiential learning can expose young people to the world of work and help them to understand the importance of skills efficiency in contributing to building a strong economy (jones & iredale, 2010).the basic premise behind experiential learning is that “learning is a continuous process grounded in experience” (kolb, 1984:41). in order to gain such experience(s), learners should engage with the community/business to learn from and experience the “real world” (alexander & khabanyane, 2013). jones and iredale further aver that employers should be encouraged to deepen their links to schools and universities in addressing the skills gap. however, unlike practical learning for the tvet colleges and teacher education that are part of an existing programme or qualification, the establishment of education-business networks with the intention to integrate more practically oriented teaching and learning is not common within the south african school context. this conceptual paper explores the integration of an experiential action-learning orientation by using the productive pedagogies framework (ppf) within the context of business studies teaching and learning at school level. the ppf is a balanced theoretical framework that incorporates school organisational capacity, the pervasive practice of pedagogies and external support from various systemic levels to encourage a particular professional learning 722020 38(2): 72-85 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.05 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) community of teachers (lingard, hayes & mills, 2003) as well as the impact on the learners. in reflecting on the ppf, and more particularly its “connectedness” dimension, the authors also deliberate on a unique irish model of active “real-life” learning through the implementation of a “transition year”. the transition year (ty) is an optional, one-year, stand-alone, full-time programme offered by schools in the republic of ireland. it is taken by 15to 16-year-olds on completion of a three-year junior certificate (jc) programme and prior to a two-year leaving certificate (lc) programme. (jeffers, 2010:469) the aim of this paper is to add to the ongoing debate about the meaning, nature and purpose of an experiential action-learning component within a business-oriented curriculum by using connectedness as a theoretical lens. this paper focuses on the following question: how relevant could a ty as an experiential active-learning approach be within the south african school system? we argue that the ty could be a productive opportunity for young leaners to explore a yearlong real-life business experience within a structured school programme. this paper is presented from the perspective of the two authors: one a south african and the other irish. the latter completed his school and university education in ireland and obtained his postgraduate certificate in education (pgce) at a university in south africa with the business studies teaching (bst) module as his specialisation subject. but he did not opt to do the ty during his own schooling in ireland, an option that he estimates in retrospect he should have considered doing then. throughout the yearlong pgce course, he actively engaged in class discussions and brought his experiences of the workplace and education in ireland into class discussions. the south african author has extensive experience as a business education lecturer and business studies teacher educator, witnessing and continuously reflecting on the pervasive inequality of the south african post-apartheid education system and making sense of alternatives to systemic gaps that hinder educational outcomes, from a schooling and teacher education perspective. it was the juxtaposition of the respective situations in ireland and south africa during these discussions that prompted the writing of this article. whilst the two countries are diverse in terms of population, culture, education system and so forth, it is worth exploring this unique addition to the irish schooling system, namely the ty, with reference to the south african context. in this article we will focus on the following features. first, we make distinctions between terminology that is often conflated and used interchangeably in business education. second, we provide an overview of bst and “connectedness” within the ppf. the third aspect focuses on the transition year programme (typ) as part of ireland’s education system. this is followed by a discussion on the viability of the incorporation of an experiential learning component such as a typ into the south african school context. we conclude with some summative comments. 2. conflation of terminology there appears to be differences in terminology related to enterprise education and entrepreneurship education (jones & iredale, 2010). whilst these terms are closely linked, their meanings are not the same but they are often used interchangeably and/or directed at a specific school or university context. the same conflation, albeit to a lesser extent, is evident in business education and business studies. the latter two concepts are also explained. teasing out the differences and similarities between concepts helps to better understand them, but http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.05 732020 38(2): 73-85 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.05 america & mallon “connectedness” in business studies pedagogy more importantly it indicates how an experiential component resonates within the respective subjects (jones & iredale, 2010). 2.1 enterprise education and entrepreneurship education the focus on education-industry collaboration signals a change in the preparation for the world of work (iredale, 2002). enterprise education is geared towards this focus. the scope and practice of enterprise education should not be equated solely with business needs, as it is a broader, deeper and richer concept (jones & iredale, 2010). they argue that the different strands of pedagogy, entrepreneurship, citizenship and civic responsibility could form part of enterprise education. enterprise education could be more multidisciplinary, where the pedagogy is not subject specific, but can be introduced and applied across the curriculum (iredale, 2002). the pedagogical approach to enterprise education advocates actions, experiential learning styles and taking seriously the broad notions of citizenship, civic responsibilities and more importantly work-related learning. enterprise education focuses on the development of transferable attributes, skills and behaviours to enable learners to act in innovative ways in a variety of contexts (bridge, hegarty & porter, 2010). entrepreneurship education is concerned with promoting awareness of and a greater orientation towards setting up a new venture or business (jones & iredale, 2010). the world economic forum and the global agenda council, which promotes entrepreneurship, recognise entrepreneurship education as a global concept (arthur, hisrich & cabrera, 2012). the 2016/2017 report of the global entrepreneurship monitor (gem) south africa (sa) acknowledges the causal relationship between entrepreneurship development, employment and economic growth (herrington, kew & mwanga, 2017). table 1 illustrates the differences between enterprise education and entrepreneurship education. table 1: enterprise education and entrepreneurship education (coiffait, dawkins, kirwan & mann, 2012:9; jones & iredale, 2010:10) enterprise education entrepreneurship education holistic and broad a clear, narrow and discrete area of focus multidisciplinary – a mindset – self-employment is only a small part education for self-employment and business broad work and life skills specific business and start-up skills focus on “soft” skills, behaviours, competencies focus on “hard” skills and knowledge emphasise personal, community, social impact emphasise economic impact and money emphasise collaboration emphasise competition younger learners older learners a more complex story a simple story few role models in the media media role models common the pedagogical approach(es) of entrepreneurship and enterprise education are divergent. entrepreneurship education normally (but not exclusively) uses traditional approaches to the teaching and learning of generating business ideas, business planning and the process of creating new ventures creation process, whereas enterprise education has an active-learning pedagogy (jones & iredale, 2006). globally, school-level entrepreneurship education does 742020 38(2): 74-85 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.05 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) not function effectively and many entrepreneurial frameworks are weak (herrington et al., 2017). according to the gem report, south africa’s low score for entrepreneurship education and training in primary and secondary schools is therefore not unusual. however, the greater concern is the decline in post-school entrepreneurship training since 2015 and a low propensity for entrepreneurial activity among the youth in south africa (herrington et al., 2017:9). 2.2 business education and business studies teaching business studies teaching normally takes place within the schooling system and initial teacher education institutions, with the focus on the teaching and learning of business studies at high school level. the disciplinary knowledge is mostly theoretical and deals with the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values that are critical for productive, ethical and responsible participation in the formal and informal business/economic sectors. the subject encompasses the business principles, theories and practices that underpin the development of entrepreneurial initiatives, sustainable enterprises and economic growth (see dbe, 2011). business studies education also includes creating awareness and encouraging enterprising behaviour, skills and competency development. the responsibility of creating this kind of awareness normally rests on the teacher, who – with the support of the school – is critical in the development of learners’ enterprise attributes (leffler & näsström, 2014; matlay, 2011). business education is an overarching (international) term to refer to the teaching and learning of business, economics, finance and commerce-related subjects, more common (but not exclusive) in the higher education sector. mchann and frost (2010) state that the purpose of business education is to prepare learners and professionals for successful performance in businesses. business education refers to a broad field, which includes stand-alone subjects such as business management, marketing, economics and accounting. sub-learning areas, for example, enterprise education and entrepreneurship education may be found within these subjects. the terms enterprise education and business education are not commonly used in the south african school policy documents and the school environment. economic and management sciences is the subject in the senior phase (grades 7 to 9) that deals with introductory content for economic literacy, entrepreneurship and financial literacy (see dbe, 2011a). within the school fet phase (grades 10–12), business studies is the most relevant subject to foster entrepreneurship and enterprise education in south african secondary schools. however, meintjes, henrico and kroon (2015:9) suggest that the business studies curriculum should be adapted to cater for an emphasis on “active learning in a business-simulated set-up”. meintjes et al. (2015) argue that the lack of practical exposure to a real-world business context is problematic in the south african education system. even at the higher education level there is a gap between knowledge and practice (pfeffer & sutton, 2000), where graduates of leading business schools know a lot more than they are able to do (mchann & frost, 2010:1). similarly, business teachers frequently acknowledge the prominence of theory over application in their pedagogy (wren, halbesleben & buckley, 2007). however, hayes, mills, christie and lingard (2006) argue that pedagogies that connect the classroom with reality enable and motivate learners to engage in the learning process more effectively. 3. teaching business studies and “connectedness” productive pedagogies put forward a multidimensional model for teaching and learning, it consists of four dimensions, namely intellectual quality, connectedness, supportive classroom http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.05 752020 38(2): 75-85 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.05 america & mallon “connectedness” in business studies pedagogy environment and recognition of difference (lingard, hayes & mills, 2003; zyngier, 2007). there are twenty-one elements across the four dimensions (see linguard et al., 2003), but the ppf model does not suggest that each of the elements should be present in every assigned activity. the ppf can be used to provide a comprehensive conceptual plan for the construction and acquisition of knowledge and in developing effective teaching (education queensland, 2001; hayes et al., 2006; lingard, 2003, 2007; suhendra & nurlaela, 2018). for the purposes of this article, our reflection was specifically based on the “connectedness” dimension of the ppf, which was designed to ensure that learners engage with real, practical or hypothetical problems that connect to the world beyond the classroom (education queensland, 2001; hayes et al., 2006). the other three dimensions therefore fall outside the scope of this article. the ppf underpins capacity-building and change (lingard et al., 2003). connectedness to real-life experiences could present a glimpse into an alternative future for some learners. table 2 shows the features of the connectedness dimension and poses some questions for reflection. table 2: productive pedagogies “connectedness” dimension (adapted from lingard et al., 2003:410) features of connectedness questions for reflection background knowledge is there an attempt to connect with learners’ background knowledge? connectedness to the world does the activity and/or assigned work have any resemblance to or connection with real-life contexts? problem-based curriculum is there a focus on identifying and solving intellectual and/or realworld problems? knowledge integration does the activity and/or assigned work range across diverse fields? a “connected” education in this sense can be intellectually challenging (problem-based), relevant (resemblance to different contexts), cater for differences (diverse backgrounds), be socially supportive and it is an education in which knowledge is integrated (lingard et al., 2003; zyngier, 2003). a connection between theory and practice by means of workplace-learning has been promoted as a valuable pedagogical strategy since the early twentieth century by progressive educators (zyngier, 2003), and also as an imperative for tvet colleges in south africa. in enterprise education such a connection can be multi-disciplinary and where broad life skills can be learnt, for example to demonstrate responsibility, punctuality, a willingness to learn, positivity and ability to work in teams. even more relevant to workplace-learning is entrepreneurship education and business studies where the theory learnt in class can be put into practice at the workplace. however, apple (in zyngier, 2003:43) warns that a curriculum that is superficially connected to the “world of work” is not enough. instead, it should focus on improving quality in terms of creating opportunities to connect theory and practice, giving proper guidance, and improving communication and collaboration between schools and workplaces (onstenk, 2013). in order to illustrate the “connectedness” of the ppf to the workplace-based learning it requires a pedagogy which: a) illustrates a deliberate linking of skills, curriculum content and qualification pathways with the realities of the labour market. an economic system is inextricably connected to how an education system functions to meet the needs of the economy and society. if this connection is clearly made, we can begin to conceptualise what we might call a 762020 38(2): 76-85 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.05 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) “skills ecosystem” (osman, 2013) and such outcomes can be stipulated in the curriculum. connectedness to real-life job experience is not new, for example it has been a fundamental part of how tvet colleges used to integrate experiential learning. connectedness to the real world included learning the skills, values and attitudes the employer espouses, while learners from diverse backgrounds, learning on-the-job through solving problems and understanding the relevance of integrating theory with practice. unfortunately, with the current challenges in tvet colleges, the extent of the connectedness to the real-world is undermined by industry’s (un)intentional scepticism of the ncv curriculum and breakdown in communication and collaboration (buthelezi, 2018). (b) the practical part must be integrated with the critical (problem-solving) and theoretical. many young people leave school early, not simply because they need to find work, but because they fail to see the relevance of school to them and their wellbeing (zyngier, 2008). learners become disengaged, disconnected and bored. darling-hammond (1997:107) cautions that experiential learning aimed at genuine understanding begins with the disciplinary knowledge (subject content knowledge). the activities should therefore not be whimsical and detached from core subject matter, but rather should integrate the disciplines as factors that are alive and not inert. learners can become curious, think critically, produce new ideas and perform better if they are exposed to deep understanding in worthwhile and meaningful contexts. this kind of learning develops collaborative learning (tacit as well as codified), subject knowledge and work process knowledge (onstenk, 2013) which holds true for enterprise education, entrepreneurship education and business studies at school and tvet levels. (c) access to workplace learning and experience can be integrated across various subjects and programmes, for example the skills and knowledge acquired can be transposed to further studies, self-employment, technical competency or self-development. these competencies can be specific to or integrated across enterprise education, entrepreneurship education or business studies pathways. (d) connectedness could be evident in the acknowledgement of learners’ biographies, their previous knowledge and the connection to the world in which learners currently learn and play (lingard & mills, 2003). zyngier (2008:1773) argues for a core pedagogy that envisages an engagement that connects learners to their cultural knowledge, one in which learners own what they learn, responding actively and consciously to their experiences, and lastly where learners are empowered with the belief that they can make a difference in their own lives. the premise of the ppf is that authentic teaching and learning are fundamental. apart from the construction of knowledge and the cognitive work of learning involved in disciplinary inquiry, the ppf also explores the relationship between other aspects of classroom practice and improved student performance outcomes from different groups (lingard et al., 2003). so these “other aspects” can be useful experiences and have personal value for learners beyond school. however, in a study by lingard and mills (2003) the research team was surprised how unconnected the pedagogies were (most of the time) to the learners’ lives and communities. they discovered that the teachers’ practice was decontextualised. lingard (2007) refers to non-connectedness as a pedagogy that is actually indifferent to social justice, reminding us of bourdieu’s account of the reproduction of inequality and that middle-class learners possessing the requisite cultural capital are better positioned to handle this decontextualised school knowledge. it is thus anticipated that learners will be motivated and engaged in the learning process by pedagogies that connect classroom learning with the real world. hayes et al. (2006) argue that http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.05 772020 38(2): 77-85 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.05 america & mallon “connectedness” in business studies pedagogy this link is often absent when the curriculum is divorced from the lives of learners, thereby giving further credence to the notion that “connectedness” links new knowledge with the learners’ background knowledge and the world outside of the classroom. by having an experiential action-learning approach the learners can integrate tacit skills and competencies (background knowledge), the actual real-life experience (practice) and what they have learnt (theory). reallife experiences can allow learners to see beyond the classroom and conventional textbook knowledge to the way that businesses confront and solve problems (problem-based learning). the ty is an example of “real-life” experience as part of a structured school programme. 4. the transition year (ty) in ireland the ty is an optional, independent, full-time programme that runs over one school year in approximately 80% of secondary schools and is approved by the irish department of education (clerkin, 2013). the ty is undertaken after the junior certificate (jc) and just before a twoyear leaving certificate (lc) programme (after grade 10 in the south african school context). the lc is the equivalent of grades 11 and 12 in south africa. thus, the bulk of ty learners are between 15 and 16 years old (jeffers, 2011). the aim of the ty is to develop important life skills in a real-world environment for a full year in the absence of examination pressure, as opposed to short (ad hoc) summer exchange programmes, as in the united states or programmes outside of formal school time (clerkin, 2013). the ty was first introduced as a pilot scheme in three schools in 1974 and has since, after rectifying some initial teething problems, become something unique to ireland’s education system (clerkin, 2013). the uniqueness of the ty is that there are no other similar programmes comparable with it anywhere else in the world (moynihan, 2015). in recent years research into the ty has gained momentum (smyth, byrne & hannan, 2004; jeffers, 2007, 2010, 2011; clerkin, 2012, 2013), but has received little international attention (clerkin, 2013). jeffers (2007) reminds us of the view of richard burke, the minister for education responsible for introducing the transition year in 1974: because of the growing pressures on learners for high grades and competitive success, educational systems are becoming, increasingly, academic treadmills. increasingly, too, because of these pressures the school is losing contact with life outside and the student has little or no opportunity “to stand and stare”, to discover the kind of person he is, the kind of society he will be living in and, in due course, contributing to, its shortcomings and its good points. the suggestion was made that perhaps somewhere in the middle of the course we might stop the treadmill and release the learners from the educational pressures for one year so that they could devote time to personal development and community service (burke, 1974, cited in jeffers, 2007:1). the “stopping of the treadmill” morphed into what is now known as the ty and what burke envisaged as “a way of creating a more holistic schooling experience” (clerkin, 2013:5). to have an experiential learning encounter devoted to personal and social development in the absence of examination pressure is generally viewed as a positive occurrence, equivalent to a “gap” year (clerkin, 2012). clerkin (2013) avers that the extra year between two high-stakes examination cycles may be seen as providing an opportunity to explore familiar subjects in novel ways and to introduce learners to new areas of study. the irish education system is highly focused and influenced by the outcomes of a “high-stakes” national examination that signals the end of schooling, 782020 38(2): 78-85 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.05 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) namely the lc. the ty is seen as part of a holistic approach to self-development and selfregulated learning as preparation for the lc. moreover, schools have a significant amount of freedom to create their own ty curriculum (jeffers 2011) and at some schools it is even compulsory. jeffers (2011) is of the view that the challenge for schools is to develop a comprehensive learning experience that enhances greater personal responsibility and maturity in learners for the sake of their own learning and decision-making. jeffers (2011) further asserts that the ty can be beneficial for promoting active citizenship. the ty programme goals entail a heightened social awareness and competence with “education through experience of adult and working life” (jeffers, 2011:3), and the structure of the ty is dependent on individual teachers’ school leadership (clerkin, 2013). schools have the liberty to decide which specific subjects to offer and which modules to develop, depending on the skills of the teaching staff, the resources of the school and the access it has to outside expertise in the community (moynihan, 2015). figure 1 illustrates the four key layers of the ty and the content of each specific layer. core subjects layer english mathematics irish language religious studies physical education information technology subject sampling layer history geography science subjects business studies modern languages environmental studies ty specific layer mental health matters young enterprise psychology social innovation photography tourism philosophy calendar layer work experience foreign travel field trips guest speakers musical theatre drama production social outreach projects transition year figure 1: suggested areas of study for the transition year (moynihan, 2015:203) in terms of business studies as a subject at secondary level in ireland, there is a belief that in order to teach resourcefulness in any enterprise, an alternative pedagogical strategy such as experiential learning as opposed to traditional teaching is necessary (birdthistle et al., 2007). for many learners, there is little formal interaction between their school life and the working world around them (clerkin, 2013:6). during ty some schools may adopt “the mini-company programme”, which creates learning situations for learners aimed at promoting the know-how http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.05 792020 38(2): 79-85 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.05 america & mallon “connectedness” in business studies pedagogy and core competencies to start their own business. the mini-company programme gives learners a platform to experience the highs and lows of a business enterprise by simulating a real-world experience, from setting up the business to its liquidation (birdthistle et al., 2007). apart from the mini-company option, the attractive and central feature of the ty is the work experience component that entails performing tasks as directed under the supervision of their employer. a common arrangement is placing learners in two different workplace settings over the course of the school year (clerkin, 2013). some of the positive findings of ty research suggests that learners who choose to extend their schooling by an extra year to do the ty are, on average, younger than those who do not, they have higher educational aspirations, and they tend to come from more socioeconomically advantaged backgrounds (smyth et al., 2004). furthermore, learners who participate in a ty tend to have an advantage over peers in applying for high-demand options at postsecondary level (millar & kelly, 1999, in clerkin, 2013). however, these advantages are more pronounced in schools where the ty is offered on a voluntary basis compared to the negative views expressed about the ty programme in schools where it is obligatory. a concern from the learners and parents of learners choosing the ty option is that they will become laid back or lazy and fall out of the habit of studying. this disposition could have detrimental effects in the preparation for the leaving certificate (jeffers, 2007). 5. can a transition year work in south africa? in the south african school system, there is no such thing as a structured year-long practical learning through a work experience programme such as the ty. research has shown that the ty successes outweigh the challenges (moynihan, 2015). for many learners to make sense of what they learn in the classroom, such a programme will be highly beneficial; they will understand and comprehend much faster and better by doing the work themselves (clerkin, 2012; moynihan, 2015). however, will such an option (for example a ty after grade 10) work in the south african school system? as explained earlier, there are obvious differences between south africa and ireland. ireland has a significantly smaller population (4.8 million), with an unemployment rate of 5.7% of economically active people in 2018 (euro monitor, 2018) whereas south africa has a population of 57.7 million (stats sa, 2018) with an unemployment rate of 27.7% in the third quarter of 2017 (world bank, 2018). ireland has two official languages and south africa has eleven. one of ireland’s competitive advantages when it comes to the workforce is that the nation has historically enjoyed a strong international reputation for the calibre of its educational system and its generally high standards of education (birdthistle et al., 2007). south africa is a diverse, multicultural country with an apartheid history, the legacy of which is still troubling its school system today. south africa is also a relatively young democracy and the curriculum restructuring that has occurred since the political transformation is still exploratory, with recurring teething problems that involved five restructuring phases over the last 25 years. the income inequality wage gap is evident on many levels of south african society, coupled with high unemployment rates, especially amongst the youth (world bank, 2018). one would assume that parents want to have their children complete school in the shortest time possible and do not have the “luxury” of an extra year within the school system. so, is it fair to consider a programme such as the ty for the south african school system? our contention is that the ty model could provide an opportunity for all young learners to engage and connect with the “real world” within the structures and with the support of a school 802020 38(2): 80-85 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.05 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) system. given that it is a choice that learners exercise, there will not be so much pressure on the school system compared to the pressure experienced by the school in a normal school year. in the context of growing inequality, especially in schools located in disadvantaged communities, a more equitable distribution of cultural capital and the creation of networks could support bridging the divide between theory and practice. as discussed above, the “connectedness to the world” component of the ppf resonates with what a ty can offer within the structure and confines of a schooling system. some of the areas where business can get involved are: business start-up simulations, work placements, mock interviews, career talks, generation of viable business ideas, research and consultancy projects, mentoring, business planning, preparation of curriculum vitae, presentations and job applications related to the field of the employers (jones & iredale, 2010). the problems in a business are mostly solved by working in teams. during the ty the learner will learn how to work effectively with other people. wyn (2009:52) states that “learners preparing for life and work could do no better than to have the opportunity of working, within the structure of school, as a precursor to other work-based structures, such as they will later experience”. linking this point directly to the disciplinary content in business studies, during this period the student experiences the “softer” skills applicable to the human resources function, such as self-management skills (e.g. time management), working with others, team work and other job-specific skills (see dbe, 2011). according to the gem report, young people represent a high proportion of the total population in south africa, with almost 50% of the south african population under the age of 24. however, the majority of school leavers do not pursue tertiary studies and will therefore form part of the potential labour force immediately after leaving school. many of these young learners unfortunately become implicated in social problems because of the high levels of unand under-employment among the youth (world bank, 2018). moreover, some of the entry-level skills required for the fet-phase in business studies require competencies such as creativity, critical thinking, decision-making, reasoning, problem-solving, doing research, working in teams, collaboration and presentation skills (umalusi, 2019). the study of economic and management sciences in the senior phase offers the learner basic foundational knowledge to pursue business studies in the fet, however there are challenges to the teaching and learning of ems (see van der bijl & schreuder, 2019) which impede the acquisition of the required entry level skills for business studies. introducing the ty can advance the acquisition of these skills and bring some respite to the many socio-economic challenges the youth faces today. a ty programme for business studies could be a visionary experiential active learning approach in south africa to teach young learners about self-directed and self-regulated learning within the realm of the business sector and the school system. for many learners this will be their first taste of the workplace and the ty can offer enlightening exposure to potential future careers. learners could also realise that their perception of a certain job is not what they envisaged and they may develop new interests during their ty. smyth and calvert (2011) state that some learners have reported that their experiences had a positive effect on their attitude towards work and school and had helped them to make more informed choices after leaving school. the following are key elements from the irish ty (moynihan, 2015:204) that resonate with the south african context: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.05 812020 38(2): 81-85 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.05 america & mallon “connectedness” in business studies pedagogy • a desire to bridge the gap between school and working life by linking the local business community as an incubator to help learners develop a positive work ethic; • promoting the transition between school and linking the core academic curriculum with the world of work to increase student understanding of an enterprise and working life; • the ty is optional and learners can exercise their choice: those who do not take up the ty will continue their schooling as normal; • ty learners could find themselves immersed in an alternative learning environment where the focus is no longer on rote learning, but on more socio-cultural and experiential learning styles; • young people in ty have the opportunity to participate in various mutual arrangements where they have much to learn from experienced people in the workplace; • learners can also share their tacit knowledge during ty with older people in the workplace, for example, the use of social media and some information communication technologies; • it promotes the school-to-career transition for learners that will help learners to make better informed decisions about their future; • assist learners in the development of attitudes, skills and habits conducive to job success and personal development, for example, increase learners’ confidence levels, leadership skills, personal responsibility and creativity; • help learners acquire or refine work-related skills and job performance in a real work environment. 6. conclusion it is common to suggest the use of a broad array of active learning methods and approaches for the teaching of business studies (see dbe, 2011). however, not all active learning approaches provide a heightened social awareness or the competencies and “work experience” that young people can acquire while still part of a structured school programme. we argue for a unique programme within the south african schooling system, such as ireland’s ty, to integrate an experiential workplace-based learning approach, which emphasises real-life experience of the business world, coupled with personal and social development and education for active citizenship. it is hard to believe, given the positive research on, and the phenomenal success of the ty, that this model or a similar programme 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(re)conceptualizing student engagement: doing education not doing time. teaching and teacher education, 24(7): 1765–1776. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. tate.2007.09.004. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4773-8_14 https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4773-8_14 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2007.09.004 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tate.2007.09.004 “connectedness” in business studies pedagogy 110 enhancing visual literacy in the mathematics classroom: the case of dar es salaam visual literacy is defined as competencies that enable an individual to understand, interpret, use, generate, and evaluate visual images or messages. the role of visual literacy in teaching mathematics is to enhance learners’ understanding of complex concepts, accommodate their needs, promote their logical and critical thinking, and develop their communication skills. to develop learners’ visual literacy, teachers need to use meaningful teaching styles and strategies in mentoring and guiding their learners, giving them sufficient opportunities to engage in meaningful tasks. this study therefore aimed to answer the research questions regarding what mathematics teachers’ understanding of the role of visual literacy in mathematics teaching is; and how their instruction in terms of teaching styles and strategies facilitated the development of visual literacy. a two-part conceptual framework was used: the first part focuses on teachers’ styles and strategies and the second part on the integration of different visual media with text during instruction. this article reports on an explorative case study conducted with three form 2 (second year of secondary school) mathematics teachers who were required to facilitate visual literacy in their classrooms. the data were collected through classroom observations and semi-structured interviews and a deductive analysis approach was implemented. the study revealed that a teacher-centred teaching style and direct instruction as teaching strategy dominated all three teachers’ instruction. information was provided to the learners in the form of demonstrations through the use of still media, and oral explanations, with inadequate opportunities for learners to engage in encoding and decoding visual information. we make the recommendation that teacher training programmes should focus on how teachers can use various teaching strategies in a learner and teacher-centred style, but also how visual media can be made and effectively used by both the teacher and learners to develop their visual literacy. keywords: mathematics teachers; multimedia instruction; teaching; visual literacy; visual media 1. introduction teacher quality is directly related to learner performance (venkat & spaull, 2015). one of the factors affecting teacher quality is the opportunity to use new technology and the resultant new methodology (crossfield & bourne, 2017). the world in which learners live has changed and continues to change, particularly in terms of communication: “… the reason for that lies in a vast web of intertwined social, economic, and cultural changes” (kress, 2010:5). so learners live in a world where technology is paramount in the provision of information, even in africa, where botha, hanlie university of pretoria e-mail: hanlie.botha@up.ac.za van putten, sonja university of pretoria e-mail: sonja.vanputten@ up.ac.za kundema, imani university of pretoria doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v37i2.8 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 37(2): 110-123 date published: 27 november 2019 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:hanlie.botha@up.ac.za mailto:sonja.vanputten@up.ac.za mailto:sonja.vanputten@up.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.8 http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie 111 botha, van putten & kundema enhancing visual literacy in the mathematics classroom... accessing technology is not easy in many areas. in parts of tanzania, for example, use of the internet, cellular phones, tablets, and television is common and even prominent. it is therefore incumbent upon education systems to make use of the opportunities offered by this plethora of technological advances and visual inputs to improve teacher quality. it is however important to recognise that along with the use of technology and other media, classroom practices must be adapted in terms of teacher instruction. in the mathematics classroom, teaching for conceptual understanding rather than for accommodation of knowledge has become a requirement of many education systems because, as o’dwyer, wang and shields (2015:3) point out, “teaching practices that help students to develop conceptual knowledge have been linked to achievement in the literature”. wangeleja (2010), writing about the introduction of the competence based curriculum introduced in tanzania, stated that the ministry of education and vocational training (moevt) encouraged teaching for conceptual understanding, and that such teaching requires learners to be active participants in their own learning. to this end, the moevt made it mandatory for teachers to use visual media like still media (such as graphs), dynamic media (such as virtual and physical manipulatives), and technology to teach mathematics. the reasoning behind this decision was specifically related to enhancing the class participation of learners in mathematics lessons through the use of media they found interesting and enjoyable. the fact that learners are members of a visual stimulus driven society does not mean that they have acquired visual literacy skills (felten, 2010) or are able to communicate visually (hattwig, bussert, medaille & burgess, 2012). this study therefore aimed to answer the research questions of what tanzanian mathematics teachers’ understanding of the role of visual literacy in mathematics teaching is; and how their instruction in terms of teaching styles and strategies facilitated the development of visual literacy. for the purpose of this study, visual literacy is defined as competencies that enable an individual to understand, interpret, use, generate, and evaluate visual images or messages (hattwig et al., 2012; tillmann, 2012). 2. teachers’ instruction teaching mathematics is a challenge for many teachers. according to steedly, dragoo, arafeh and luke (2008:8), “mathematics instruction is a complex process that attempts to make abstract concepts tangible, difficult ideas understandable and multifaceted problems solvable.” this complexity can be reduced by representing mathematical ideas in multiple ways (barmby, bolden, raine & thompson, 2012; murphy, 2011). when visual media play a central role in the learning environment, learner interest and involvement is encouraged (ramirez, 2012; reddy, 2007). visual imaging contributes to the understanding of complex ideas, accommodates learners’ needs, promotes critical and logical thinking, and enhances communication (aisami, 2015; bamford, 2003; felton, 2010; murphy, 2011). herein lies the problem: learners will benefit through active involvement in interpreting the visual media used to stimulate their interest and understanding, but only if they are visually literate (murphy, 2011; tillmann, 2012). for learners to be actively involved throughout the learning process, a teacher needs to adopt a learner-centred teaching style instead of learners merely listening to teachers’ direct instruction in the form of oral explanations (cai, perry & wong, 2009). this allows learners to be actively involved in creating their own conceptual 112 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) understanding through practical work, discussions, and discovery while the teacher guides and mentors the learning process (wangeleja, 2010). the role of a teacher is therefore to mentor and guide the learners by using appropriate and meaningful teaching strategies, which includes multimedia instruction. according to reddy (2007), multimedia instruction in the mathematics classroom requires a teaching environment that is learner-centred, where not only the teacher, but the learners are involved with the media being used. such a strategy grants learners the opportunity to engage with the content, to communicate their thinking, and to take initiative in their learning of mathematics. mayer and moreno (2010) explain that this learner engagement and enhanced learning happen because of the interconnection between the verbal and visual information channels in the brain. raiyn (2016:115) describes this interconnection in terms of the storage of information in the hippocampus in place cells, from which the brain produces “cognitive maps” upon which the individual then acts. visual information allows the brain to find “the shortest path between the source and the target destination”. when mathematics instruction consists not only of text, but also allows learners to use different visual media, learners’ understanding of the subject matter is deepened (murphy, 2011; naidoo, 2012) and, bearing raiyn’s (2016) explanation in mind, reaction time is shortened. 3. visual media and their integration with instruction raiyn (2016) makes it very clear that analytical thinking skills can be increased by using visual media as a teaching strategy. he says that “such a strategy has three fundamental components: a teacher, as student, and a learning process” (raiyn, 2016:115). the inference is that each of these components is actively engaged in the classroom. visual media may be seen as “any external representation with a visual component” (presmeg, 2014:636), while visual learning is the “assimilation of information from visual formats” (raiyn, 2016:115). it is this assimilation process that is the foundation of visual literacy, which by implication goes beyond visual recognition, as it involves meaning-making (felten, 2010). the concern in this regard is stated very succinctly by shabiralyani, hasan, hamad and iqbal (2015:223): “however, it is also imperative to redirect teachers’ opinions, perceptions, experiences, failures and success while using visual aids resources”. a redirection of the teachers’ thinking within their classroom practice may be necessary in order for visual media to be as effective as they are purported to be in mathematics education. in tanzania, the teachers do not have a choice in this regard: the national curriculum requires them to use still and dynamic media in the teaching of congruency, similarity, geometrical transformations, logarithms, and statistics, amongst other topics. this study was designed to discover whether the teachers in the sample were in fact actively working towards enhancing the visual literacy of their learners. the old adage, a picture is worth a thousand words, rings true in the teaching of mathematics. quadratics, for example, are made more accessible by using graphs to capture the concept. at the same time, quadratic graphs without verbal explanations would not make sense. thus a combination of different modalities involving verbal explanations, visual representations and numbers is ideal (murphy, 2011; suh & moyer, 2007). when mathematical ideas are represented in multiple ways, learners can participate and have the opportunity to develop a fully rounded understanding (murphy, 2011). importantly, learners do not possess visual literacy instinctively or as a result of their familiarity with the world of visual media – in the mathematics classroom, this skill needs to be developed through guided practice and training (felten, 2010; hattwig et al., 2012). some scholars (bamford, 2003; cheunga & 113 botha, van putten & kundema enhancing visual literacy in the mathematics classroom... jhaveri, 2014; roux, 2009; tillmann, 2012) suggest that an appropriate starting point or skill acquisition in this regard would be the receptive end of visual images, i.e. where the main task is decoding a given image. learners are then guided to understand, decode, and evaluate visual messages from various perspectives. 4. conceptual framework a two-part conceptual framework was used in this study. the first part is about teachers’ teaching styles: teacher-centred, learner-centred, or a combination of both. teaching for visual literacy requires a learner-centred style or the combination of a teacherand learnercentred style. strategies implemented in the classroom also need to be included here because learners should be actively involved during class time through meaningful learning activities like decoding (using, interpreting and evaluating) and encoding (generating and explaining) visual information (bamford; 2003; cheunga & jhaverib, 2014; murphy, 2011; tillmann, 2012; vasquez, 2010). such strategies may include problem-based learning, discovery learning, cooperative learning and multimedia instruction. so, the second part deals with visual media being integrated with text (printed/ narrated) during instruction. visual media can be categorised into still media and dynamic media. still media are visual representations that do not involve movement, like pictures, graphs, charts, tables, drawings, maps, and even gestures (holzinger, kickmeier-rust & albert, 2008). dynamic media speak of movement or even interaction, like physical and virtual manipulatives, simulations, applications and software packages such as geogebra, while non-interactive media includes animations and videos (holzinger et al., 2008). technology, such as calculators, computers, and other smart devices are used to facilitate the use of the dynamic media and also constitute multimedia instruction (glenn & d’agostino, 2008). 5. methodology in this qualitative case study, purposive sampling was used to select three form 2 (second year of secondary school) mathematics teachers from three government secondary schools in the ilala district in dar es salaam. the inclusion criteria were that they should have a minimum of five years’ mathematics teaching experience and hold a bachelor’s degree of education or any other appropriate bachelor’s degree. when this study was conducted, teacher a was 55 years old, held a bachelor of business administration with education degree, and had 31 years of mathematics teaching experience. teacher b was 32 years old, held a bachelor of science degree and had eight years of mathematics teaching experience. teacher c was 34 years old, held a bachelor of education degree and had six years of mathematics teaching experience. each teacher was observed three times and interviewed individually immediately after the last observation. all observations were videotaped, and the interviews were audiotaped and subsequently transcribed. the observations provided information on specific aspects associated with the teaching styles and strategies used during instruction, as well as the classroom activities that provided the learners with the opportunity to encode and decode visual messages. through the interviews, insight was gained into the teachers’ level of understanding of visual literacy; its role in teaching mathematics in general, as well as their motives for using particular media in the observed lessons. credibility was strengthened through the richness 114 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) of the data, and dependability was enhanced by collecting data from different schools with different teachers using various methods of collection. the interview transcripts were given back to the teachers to verify their accuracy, thus allowing them to make changes and corrections where there were inaccuracies. ethical approval to conduct the study was obtained from the ethics committee at the faculty of education of the university of pretoria, and permission to conduct the study was sought from the tanzanian moevt, and the district education officer. informed consent and assent letters were also provided to and signed by the teachers and learners respectively. a deductive analysis was conducted using the themes as predetermined in the conceptual framework, namely the teachers’ teaching styles and strategies, and integration of visual media with text. these themes were also the basis for the coding that was implemented. 6. results since this study was qualitative, the findings cannot be generalised to the larger population, however the results are presented in sufficient detail so that the reader can arrive at an indepth understanding of the cases being investigated. the results are presented according to the themes that are found in the conceptual framework. 7. teachers’ teaching styles and strategies although the teachers acknowledged that they were supposed to teach in a learner-centred style, they all applied a teacher-centred style. their reasons were based on the length of the syllabus that needed to be completed, large class sizes with resulting discipline problems, and a lack of teaching and learning resources. they furthermore acknowledged their lack of competence in using a learner-centred style, especially given the conditions mentioned above. teacher c claimed that not even during his teachers’ training did he learn how to use a learnercentred style. teacher b stated he always involves his learners in classroom discussions, which is sufficient and meaningful learner participation. all three teachers implemented a traditional teaching strategy, claiming: “…it makes it easier for learners to understand” (teacher a); and “… because of the environment … the system does not support us to use new technology … most of the time we write on the chalkboard” (teacher b). teacher b mentioned he sometimes uses small groups, which is not ideal as the class normally ends up making noise and not doing what is expected of them. when they were asked about which other teaching strategies they use, teachers a and c said they were not familiar with other strategies, while teacher b said he sometimes uses problem solving. a brief description of each teacher’s instruction follows. teacher a was observed while teaching similarity and statistics. there were 40 learners in the class. all three observed lessons were dominated by explanations and demonstrations done by the teacher, who wrote notes on the board that learners had to copy; she also asked basic oral questions such as: “the two triangles are similar under which condition?”; “how many book shops were there?” (based on a pictogram on a chart); and “isn’t it?” to which the learners replied “yes”. teacher b was busy with sets and trigonometry at the time of the observations, in particular, angles of elevation and depression. there were 41 learners in the class. all three observed lessons were characterised by chalk and talk teaching as he explained and demonstrated the work on the board without involving the learners more actively in the lessons. during 115 botha, van putten & kundema enhancing visual literacy in the mathematics classroom... the lessons, he assessed learners’ understanding by asking them: “did you get the point?”; “are we together?”; “is it right?” and “is that clear?” to which learners replied in chorus, “yes”. teacher c was observed while teaching statistics and trigonometry. there were 95 learners in the class. all three lessons were characterised by demonstrations involving learners through straightforward and factual questions such as, “what is the formula for simple interest?”; “how do we find the class mark of the class interval?” and later, “by formula, class mark is equal to upper limit plus lower limit divided by what?” at the end of his explanations, he allowed the learners to work in groups and occasionally asked learners to demonstrate their answers on the chalkboard. while group work was supposed to be done, most of the learners were just chatting to each other. the teacher attempted to involve learners actively in the lesson through group work and peer to peer explanation on the chalk board, but these strategies were not successful. learner opportunities to decode and encode visual information the teachers described their struggles to engage the learners meaningfully in creating visual representations or making visual aids, because of the lack of time. teacher a mentioned that although she sometimes gave the learners activities in class, she normally spends more time on this during the ‘subject clubs’, the extra mural classes. all three teachers wished to provide more opportunities for their learners to be actively involved in their own learning and they believed that once learners became visually literate, they would gain a deeper understanding of mathematical concepts. although all three teachers gave homework to the learners in which they were required to both decode and encode visual information, there was little evidence of the learners being actively involved with the visual media during class time. in her statistics lesson, teacher a required the learners to interpret a pictogram on a chart depicting a variety of shops in a specific area. during the trigonometry lessons, teacher b gave the learners the following problem: find the height of the tower if the angle of elevation of the top of the tower is 34° from a point 20m from the ground level. this required the learners to use still media to solve the problem. he also asked them to find the value of tan 34° which they had to read from their mathematics tables (they did not have calculators). during the statistics lesson, teacher c gave the learners a problem where they had to use the given data to draw a frequency distribution table. apart from these activities, the learners were only passively involved, simply watching their teachers decode and encode visual information. apart from these examples, the teachers only involved the learners through basic and straightforward oral questioning, requesting them to pay attention and to copy the work from the board. the teachers’ main reasons for not allowing learners to do activities during class time, were time constraints and a jam-packed syllabus that needed to be worked through. teacher a said: “but during the subject clubs [extra-mural activities], normally i involve learners in the learning activities that require them to generate visual representations or make visual aids”. teacher b explained that he usually required learners to perform tasks, but: “[t]he authority needs us to accomplish the syllabus, which is too long within a specified time. thus why, most of the time, i minimise the activities that consume time which can prevent me from finishing the syllabus”. 116 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) in summary, all three teachers used a teacher-centred style and traditional teaching as strategy, where information is provided to the learners by the teacher in the form of demonstration and explanation (azeem & khalid, 2012), with inadequate use of multimedia and poorly implemented group work as teaching strategies. the teachers gave the following reasons for their use of traditional teaching: not enough time for creativity, the length of the syllabus (too full), a lack of resources, class sizes, no training and/or knowledge of using other teaching styles and strategies, the belief that learners learn best from direct instruction, disciplinary problems, and a school system that did not allow other forms of teaching. 8. integration of visual media with text the teachers indicated that visual literacy in mathematics teaching would ameliorate their instruction and overall classroom practice, while also facilitating learners’ learning. when asked about their use of visual media during instruction, some of the responses during the interviews were: “if i have a concept to teach, i explain and then demonstrate” (teacher a); and “by using real materials, the teacher can make the subject clear” (teacher b). regarding the advantages visual media hold for learners’ learning, the general feeling was that it not only simplifies the understanding of difficult concepts, but also saves time as learners come to understand concepts more quickly than when only words are used. in their efforts to comply with the requirements laid down by the moevt, all three teachers used some form of visual media in their lessons, albeit only still media such as graphs, tables, diagrams, pictograms and charts in all of their lessons. only teacher a also used physical manipulatives to demonstrate similar triangles. when asked about the possibility of using computers in their classrooms, the common answer was “unavailability”: “i would like to use them, but the computers we have are used in teaching computer literacy” (teacher a); “we have few computers for academic office use only … i would like to teach mathematics using new technology such as the projector or laptop … it is time now for tanzanian teachers to teach mathematics using new technology” (teacher b); and “we have only one computer and it is for the school secretary only” (teacher c). calculators were a different issue, though: the learners were not allowed to nor did the teachers want them to use calculators. teacher c said: “learners at o-level are not allowed to use them during the national examinations, therefore it is useless to use them”. all three teachers believed that learners learn best without calculators; they preferred that the learners did the calculations themselves to better understand how to get to the answer. teacher a explained as follows: “we have no calculators at all. however, it is better for learners to learn themselves because when calculators are used, they cannot get the concepts. actually, they cannot follow the steps of doing calculations such as division with calculators. rather to use the calculators is better to teach them step by step in order to know how to reach at the answer instead of using a short cut way (calculators). personally, i don’t like the use of calculators”. 117 botha, van putten & kundema enhancing visual literacy in the mathematics classroom... only teacher a had models such as geo-boards that she could use. table 1 below provides a summary of the visual media used by each teacher per topic. te ac he r to pi c s til l m ed ia in te ra ct iv e dy na m ic m ed ia n on in te ra ct iv e dy na m ic m ed ia te ch no lo gy a similarity drawings models of similar triangles none o nl y th e ch al kb oa rd w as u se d in a ll th e le ss on s ob se rv ed statistics symbols, chart: pictogram, bar graphs, frequency distribution table none none b sets venn diagrams none none angles of elevation & depression chart: drawing drawings mathematical tables none none c statistics frequency distribution tables drawings chart: pie graph none none trigonometry drawings none none table 1: visual media used by teachers the teachers preferred to explain a new concept in words initially, then used visual media to demonstrate the concept and further explain it, finally writing a summary of the theory on the board. more examples were provided from the textbook using oral explanations with still media, followed by the teacher writing the solution on the board. all three teachers explained that they found the use of text (written and verbal) in combination with visual media useful in their explanations, as visual media contributed to quicker and better learner understanding. 9. discussion visual literacy as a concept was interpreted in a simplistic way: to the teachers visual literacy meant using pictures or images together with verbal explanations to teach a mathematical concept. it seemed that these teachers did not perceive how learners could be actively involved in developing visual literacy through the use of all sorts of visual media. many of the aspects mentioned in literature (hattwig et al., 2012; tillmann, 2012; felten, 2010) did not form part of the teachers’ understanding of the concept ‘visual literacy’ and its role in teaching mathematics, nor did they feel that their use of still media alone was limiting. they did not seem to recognise the importance of providing sufficient opportunities for learners to be actively involved in interpreting visual information and using visual media. in their thinking, they did not have time to explore a variety of visual media in class time because of the perceived overloaded syllabus. how technology, and actually any visual media, are to be used depends on the topic and the desired outcomes of the lesson. the appropriate use of technology may enhance learners’ learning, but inappropriate use thereof may in fact hinder such learning (bransford, 2000). the advantages make the effort of overcoming the difficulties worthwhile: the teachers are assisted in explaining such difficult concepts as reflections, space and shape, as well as in addressing misconceptions, particularly those that may arise from a disconnection between 118 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) the mathematics classroom and the reality of the world outside. in classrooms where visual media are successfully implemented, learners are encouraged to make thinking visible and to revise and reflect, particularly in problem-solving. according to bransford (2000), such classroom practices enhance communication abilities and improve learners’ attitudes towards mathematics. while the participants in this study were aware of some of these advantages and even appreciated the need for the use of visual media, there was a generally observed inertia with regard to changing teaching styles to accommodate its use effectively. these teachers seemed to be comfortable with, or even entrenched in their established way of interacting with learners during instruction. 10. teachers’ teaching styles and strategies all the lessons observed were uniformly teacher-centred and all of the teachers used traditional teaching with a hint of multimedia instruction, with one teacher bringing in a modicum of group work. they preferred direct instruction as opposed to participatory teaching strategies because it is “easier to conduct” (teacher a), faster, which is important because of “pressure from the curriculum” (teacher b), and less complicated to manage when there are “too many learners in the class” (teacher c). zilimu (2014) also found that tanzanian mathematics teachers used whole classroom discussion most of the time due to the large number of learners in the classrooms. this is contrary to what has been prescribed in the tanzanian mathematics curriculum document (tmcd), in which teachers are required to use participatory teaching strategies such as cooperative learning rather than those that do not encourage learners’ participation (moevt, 2010; wangeleja, 2010). the problem may be that teachers do not know what these strategies are, nor how they should be used during instruction, as teacher c said during the interview: “i have no idea of other strategies”. the same applies to teachers not incorporating a learner-centred teaching style. teacher c, for example, said he lacked the pedagogical knowledge and skills for using any such style because it had never been part of his teacher training programme. learner opportunities to decode and encode visual information the teachers were aware of the need to create opportunities for learners to participate at least orally in the lessons. teachers a, b, and c frequently involved learners in lesson discussions, but only through asking simple oral questions. yet, an essential element in the use of visual media for mathematics instruction with a view to bringing about visual literacy, is learners’ full and active participation in the learning process through various lesson activities. according to reddy (2007), using visual media in decoding and encoding activities in the mathematics classroom, makes a teaching environment more learner-centred. the sort of learning activities that can enhance learners’ in-depth understanding were not implemented at all by these teachers. 11. integration of visual media with text these teachers mainly used still media in their classrooms for two reasons: they spoke of a lack of media resources at their schools, and they believed that in using still media, they were in fact sufficiently compliant with the requirements of the tmcd. nevertheless, the tmcd (moevt, 2010) prescribes the use of a variety of visual media for mathematics instruction. 119 botha, van putten & kundema enhancing visual literacy in the mathematics classroom... this situation is not exclusive to tanzania, but is a reality in urban and rural schools in many countries in africa and in fact all over the world (moila, 2006). this implies a need for teachers to work around the absence of resources and virtual manipulatives by recognising the value of physical manipulatives. carbonneau, marley and selig (2013) found that the use of physical manipulatives, where connections are made between what is experienced and seen, and the abstract properties of the problem, enhanced learners’ knowledge and retention of material, while developing understanding and higher-order thinking. physical manipulatives such as geo-boards can easily be made by teachers and learners using the available resources or even waste material. although teachers themselves were allowed to use calculators, they neither recognised nor appreciated their value in teaching and learning. this stance is not unprecedented: salani (2013) also found that some mathematics teachers disagree on the efficacy of calculators, particularly when it comes to the enhancement of learners’ understanding and development of mathematical competencies. the implementation of new technology and the attitudes towards this implementation have been the focus of several studies, maccallum, jeffrey and kinshuk (2014:141), famously explained the major concerns in this regard: “specifically, it is the perceived value of the new technology (perceived usefulness) and perceived effort needed to learn to use the new technology (perceived ease of use) that have been established as playing a major role in the adoption of technology”. while teachers a, b and c certainly perceived the usefulness of new technology and were positive and willing to use dynamic media such as software packages and youtube videos, as well as technology such as computers and projectors, they felt that they lacked training, knowledge and skills. the problem therefore lies in the area of perceived ease of use. they felt that they had insufficient time in class to make it viable to use media, the value of which was not clear to them. they were comfortable and au fait with using still media alongside of verbal explanations, but they were not able to bring in media with a view to assisting learners in developing critical thinking, communication skills and understanding new and sometimes abstract and complex mathematical concepts. they used media to illustrate what they were saying in order to bring about understanding: “i usually use both verbal and visual information to teach a new concept. the problem is the language because not all learners can figure out what is written. to make them understand easily, i try to draw some figures instead of using words alone. when you teach by showing them the picture or an image or an object, they get the concept within a short time rather than by using words alone.” (teacher b) these teachers were not averse to combining text with visual media during direct instruction – in fact, they were proficient in the use of still media as a tool to clarify or embed concepts. however, it is a misconception to believe that giving the learners a problem from the textbook at the end of the lesson involving decoding and encoding still media such as graphs, tables and drawings (teachers b & c), is sufficient to actually develop learners’ visual literacy. one or two decoding and encoding exercises at the end of a lesson does not help learners to adequately develop visual literacy. the introduction of manipulatives would go a long way to assisting the development of visual literacy as well as to bring the real world into the classroom. reddy (2007) indicates that children prefer to do practical activities and experiment with different things. objects that can physically be handled and observed create a realistic teaching and learning environment and also involve learners efficiently in the learning process (ramirez, 2012; reddy, 2007), allowing them not only to grasp content, but to be able to recall it and implement it at school, and in their later lives as citizens in the world of work. 120 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) 12. conclusion the teachers who participated in this study demonstrated both willingness and intransigence when it came to the implementation of visual media. they were willing to use dynamic media, but, in the absence of such media, were content in their use of still media instead. they were intransigent in their communal attitude toward the use of calculators, however. the learners were not allowed by the education department to use such devices, but the teachers could not see any value in using calculators anyway. they did however recognise the usefulness of visual literacy. even in a society where access to technology may be thought to be limited, the demands of the 21st century have made themselves heard and information needs to be presented visually (aisami, 2015; roux, 2009). learners who are exposed to technology in the form of cell phones, computers and television, are comfortable with the use of such technology and they are generally fascinated by visual media (reddy, 2007). the teachers in this study did in fact not comply with the requirements for effectively teaching visual literacy in their classrooms. the ultimate goal in teaching visual literacy in the mathematics classroom is to enhance learners’ procedural and conceptual understanding of complex and abstract mathematical ideas as they translate these ideas into more visible and accessible concepts (murphy, 2011; naidoo, 2012). in order to do this, more than direct instruction in a teacher-centred classroom is essential. while direct instruction may certainly be necessary, this should be accompanied by optimal learner involvement in a classroom which is intrinsically learner-centred. the lack of teaching for visual literacy is not entirely explained by the lack of resources and time. equally responsible for this lack is the absence of knowledge regarding different teaching styles and strategies as well as skills in enabling learners to efficiently encode and decode visual media. this would explain why these teachers were not complying with the tmcd, while believing that they were at least partially compliant. having access to dynamic media and new technology does not guarantee that teaching in the mathematics classroom enhances visual literacy. teachers need to be provided with the necessary skills to facilitate visual literacy acquisition. while it may not be possible to provide classrooms with the ideal media that would enhance visual literacy, it is possible to assist teachers to make use of the available media in a creative and innovative way, and this would increase their ‘buy-in’ into the use of visual media that actually are available. ideally, a teacher development programme involving workshops, seminars and conferences should be introduced. in such a programme, teachers’ knowledge and skills could be developed in terms of: • teacher-centred and learner-centred teaching styles. • how different teaching strategies can be used alongside of traditional teaching with special reference to multimedia instruction. • how to make and use still and dynamic media. • effective use of technology such as computers and data projectors, but in particular, the value and use of calculators in supporting the teaching and learning of mathematics. • how they can use the everyday resources around them, specifically in terms of physical manipulatives, to create interactive media that learners can use in the classroom. the assumption that trained teachers will know which media to use and how to make appropriate use of such media to actively engage learners in the teaching and learning process instead of passive on-lookers, is unfounded. this study has shown that trained teachers do 121 botha, van putten & kundema enhancing visual literacy in the mathematics classroom... not have extensive knowledge on the use of visual media in the classroom. specific training in this regard, particularly in terms of the efficient implementation of learning and teaching support material, should be purposefully included in teacher training programmes. references aisami, r.s. 2015. learning styles and visual literacy for learning and performance. procedia social and behavioral 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(unpublished honours paper). university of united states of america, illinois wesleyan. vasquez, j.a. 2010. developing visual literacy in science, k–8. usa: nsta. venkat, h. & spaull, n. 2015. what do we know about primary teachers’ mathematical content knowledge in south africa? an analysis of sacmeq 2007. international journal of educational development, 41:121-130. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2015.02.002 wangeleja, m.j.n. 2010. the teaching and learning of competence-based mathematics curriculum: methods and techniques. a paper presented at the annual seminar of the mathematical association of tanzania. mazimbu campus, morogoro-tanzania. zilimu, j.a. 2014. exploring the gender gap in tanzanian secondary school mathematics classroom. (unpublished doctoral thesis). university of illinois urbana, illinois. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2015.02.002 _goback 143 research article 2021 39(2): 143-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) risk as productive in landscape architecture pedagogy abstract this paper explores the notion of “productive risk” as a way of understanding how diverse students can become re-makers of landscape architectural design practices and education. we trace the design trajectories of two first-year students at a south african tertiary institution and examine how the students negotiate the risk of drawing on their own experiences and resources in order to access conventionalised disciplinary practices. it is important to recognise students’ brought-along resources, but we also need to recognise the risk involved for the students and teachers in drawing on these resources. this risk needs to be seen in the light of a history of colonised education where diverse resources and experiences were often disregarded or devalued. we show how these students contextualise landscape architecture in terms of their own experiences and draw on their resources as prompts to space-making for the imagined users of their designs. we surface the risk in terms of students’ experiential resources as well as the use of unusual model-building materials and techniques. the high levels of engagement that these two students demonstrate in their design trajectories reveal the importance of making a connection between diverse contexts and the landscape architectural classroom. we argue that a pedagogy that embraces risk as productive can recognise and validate the rich knowledge, resources and experiences that students bring with them. keywords: student resources; risk; landscape architecture; diversity; access; multimodal pedagogies; design education. 1. introduction we are interested in thesen and cooper’s (2014) notion of “productive risk” and how this illuminates the interface between diverse students bringing their own resources to their learning experiences and the conventional design resources in landscape architectural classrooms. instead of portraying risk as a threat or in need of mitigation, thesen and cooper (2014) and their contributors adopt a “warm” notion of productive risk, “concerned with the experiential domain, the lived world of [students] weighing up what they will or will not say” (thesen, 2014: 12). viewing students’ practices through a warm notion of risk allows teachers to recognise the ways in which students may negotiate landscape architectural form and space through their own experiences, position and values. author: dr christine price1 a/prof arlene archer1 affiliation: 1university of cape town doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i2.11 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(2): 143-156 published: 11 june 2021 received: 2 july 2020 accepted: 17 september 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0777-3260 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9013-7788 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 1442021 39(2): 144-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) landscape architecture is, broadly, the design of outdoor spaces, “a discipline that shapes material landscapes to enhance human experience” (swaffield, 2006: 22). because of its european and north american roots, we are concerned that current forms of landscape architectural education tend to be quite heavily influenced by dominant north perspectives and often may, if not always consciously, privilege particular ways of meaning-making or knowledge production. this research is located in the studio project of a first-year landscape architecture course at a south african tertiary education institution. although this classroom and its participants occupy a small fraction of time and space, they are part of the complexities of the local and global worlds outside its walls. the students live in global south contexts while simultaneously living in a world that is dominated by “global north” views. by “global north” we do not mean a geographical location, but rather a particular ideological perspective, a single point of view, which has been responsible for, among other things, the justification of colonialism, patriarchy, exploitation of natural resources and widening social and economic inequalities (santos, 2014: 10; kerfoot & hyltenstam, 2017: 1). in south africa, this single point of view not only promulgated three centuries of colonial rule as well as the more recent apartheid system of institutionalised racism and discrimination, but also erased and rejected many alternative values, social practices and knowledges (santos, 2014: 5; kerfoot & hyltenstam, 2017: 1). these systems and beliefs have often affected physical and epistemological access to education, particularly to those who have historically been made marginal to the dominant viewpoint. many teachers in higher education have had to confront the effects of a single perspective and have worked towards uncovering ethical and responsible pedagogies that embrace diversity. the solution is not to replace one single perspective with another, but to practice a “hermeneutics of suspicion” (santos, 2014: 44), to be aware of absences and silences (kerfoot & hyltenstam, 2017: 1) that may be at the margins of the dominant perspective. given the inequalities in education in south africa, students from diverse educational backgrounds are often labelled as “underprepared” (jaffer & garraway, 2016). however, there is a problem in viewing students’ educational backgrounds as a hindrance. in fact, diverse backgrounds “can serve as critical informants to the design of curricula in design schools” (saidi & nazier, 2011: 186). instead of dismissing meaning-makers as incompetent, deficient or in need of remediation, pedagogies of “recognition” focus on the agency, identity, ways of knowing and learning and resourcefulness of the meaning-maker. “this may mean drawing on resources that were previously unnoticed or devalued since they seemed inappropriate in an educational setting” (archer & newfield, 2014: 6). in order to interrogate risk in terms of access and recognition, this paper traces the design trajectories of two students, mbulelo and cebisa, as they engage with a spatial model project in a first-year landscape architectural design studio. the data presented in this paper is part of a larger study that investigates the question: “what resources do diverse students bring to their learning experiences in the context of landscape architectural education?” (price, 2020). while 34 students participated in the study, this paper focuses on two of these students and their successful engagement in “productive risk”. we selected these two for discussion, not to be representative of all the students, but because their projects illuminate different kinds of risk taking and its potentials. mbulelo and cebisa contextualise landscape architecture in terms of their own experiences and draw on their resources as prompts to space-making for the imagined users of their designs. we explore what it means for these students to bring their own resources to their learning environment in order to access the dominant discourse. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 1452021 39(2): 145-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 price & archer risk as productive in landscape architecture pedagogy 2. methodology: a social semiotic approach to productive risk we employ a multimodal social semiotic approach to identify and analyse resources that diverse students bring to their learning environment so that these resources may be utilised to access and challenge dominant landscape architectural educational practices. according to this approach, the meaning-maker is not seen as (il)literate, (in)competent or (under) prepared. rather, the focus falls on the students’ interest, agency and apt use of available resources in the moment of meaning-making (kress, 2010). multimodal social semiotics has an established relationship with south african education (archer, 2014; archer & newfield, 2014; newfield, 2013; salaam, 2017; simpson, 2014; stein, 2008) in its quest to “develop curricula and pedagogies which speak to the diversity of global societies and the development of students’ voices” (stein, 2008: 3). the main focus of multimodal social semiotic analysis is on the sign-maker and their situated use of modal resources. there is a strong emphasis on the notion of context. “the context shapes the resources available for meaning-making and how these are selected and designed” (jewitt, 2014: 33). in addition, a multimodal social semiotic approach foregrounds interpersonal meanings in terms of affect and power. this methodological approach thus enables research to open analytical spaces for realities that are “surprising” because they are new or have been ignored or made invisible, that is, deemed non-existent by the eurocentric critical tradition (santos, 2014: 44). our social semiotic approach to the multimodal analysis of students’ engagement in productive risk in their landscape architectural designs is developed from halliday (1978). halliday refers to three kinds of semiotic work called metafunctions, that are present to some degree in every text. the ideational metafunction represents objects and their relations in a world outside the representation system. in the students’ models, ideational resources include their narrative or guiding theme for their spatial designs as well as the ways knowledge is organised in their design to construct an argument. the interpersonal metafunction locates meaning-makers, users or viewers of texts as well as participants represented in the text in a system of social relations, social viewpoints, evaluative orientations and affective identifications. in the spatial model project, interpersonal resources include the affect, interaction and identity of the user as well as how the students position themselves in relation to other makers-of-texts through the use of precedent. the textual metafunction refers to the way elements of the text are arranged or composed. textual meaning enables the makers and users of a text to design and recognise patterns and relations between the various elements in the text. textual meanings in the students’ texts include compositional resources such as salience, coherence, cohesion and degree of enclosure as well as physical resources such as elements of design and materiality. a social semiotic view emphasises that the meaning-maker draws from available resources in order to realise the text. in a landscape architectural studio, students typically present their work in a “crit”: an informal discussion between the student and their peers, mentors or teachers, about the student’s work, with the aim to assist the student in refining their design. because the students presented their texts in crit presentations, the texts are moments of “fixing” which kress (2010: 121) describes as “punctuations” in the “flow of semiosis”. these points of fixing allow for analysis of the texts to identify some of the resources that may have shaped the students’ texts during the design process. in addition to semiotic resources, students also draw on social, interactive, experiential and pedagogical resources in their http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 1462021 39(2): 146-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) meaning-making processes. what is important and useful about a social semiotic view is that it works across modes of meaning and can be used to identify the prompts, resources, social contexts, representational practices or “habits of meaning” (halliday, 1978) that shape the meaning-maker’s design processes. a social semiotic approach thus focuses on the choices of the student in the moment of design: how they select from a range of resources based on their needs, interest, present situation and social context (van leeuwen, 2005: 5). this focus on the choices of the meaning-maker enables us to engage with the notion of “risk” in particular ways. thesen and cooper (2014) talk about productive risk that they apply to academic writing. the concept of risk is framed by acknowledging the necessity of including the diverse experiences, voices and knowledges of those marginal to the dominant, often “northern”, academic discourse and the dilemmas this may present for the students and the teachers. what does it mean for students to bring their own resources to their learning environment in order to access the dominant discourse? what are the risks of unusual modelbuilding materials and techniques or less “well-acknowledged” resources (mavers, 2007)? using a social semiotic approach, we investigate the way that students employ “productive risk” when bringing their own resources to their learning experiences and the ways in which this productive risk can inform the development of a multimodal pedagogy for diversity. in order to be able to recognise students’ resources and trace their movements through a design trajectory, the methodology for this study centred around data collection from a sixweek spatial model project in the second half of a first-year landscape architectural design studio subject. prior to data collection, this research received ethical approval. students were briefed on the nature of the research project and signed consent forms indicating their choice to participate in the study, partially, or not at all. all participants have been given pseudonyms. the project required students to design a scaled three-dimensional model of an installation that could convey their chosen narrative to imagined users through a spatial experience. students were asked to choose a narrative and represent this graphically as a poster. students presented their graphic narratives to small groups of teachers and peers. at this presentation, the groups helped the presenter to select five themes that they could use in the next phase of the project, namely conveying their narrative through a three-dimensional model or spatial experience. over the following weeks, students presented three to four iterations of their threedimensional model designs in crit sessions comprising small groups of teachers and peers. the data collection site included video-recording students’ three-dimensional models and their presentations of these. these crit sessions provided moments of “fixing” (kress, 2010) where students could explain their design choices and also reflect on how and why they may have made these choices. the design of this spatial model project includes opportunities to draw on a range of diverse conceptual and material resources, while also exposing students to some of the “canon” through design practices, spatial design theories and landscape architectural values (especially as manifest in the assessment criteria). overall, the students’ narratives for this project originated from a range of diverse contexts. they were inspired or prompted by personal experiences, movies, stories, music and news or real-life events. some students’ narratives took place in a domestic setting and some made connections to rural homesteads in the eastern cape. other narratives were based on movies the students had seen. the underlying themes of the narratives can broadly be grouped into three categories relating to inward self-discovery, faith or perseverance and outward-looking relations. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 1472021 39(2): 147-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 price & archer risk as productive in landscape architecture pedagogy the two students that we focus on here, mbulelo and cebisa, both negotiated risk by contextualising landscape architecture in terms of their own experiences (in sometimes unconventional contexts); drawing on their resources as prompts for space-making for the imagined users of their designs and working with unconventional materials. while mbulelo and cebisa’s earlier models drew on conventional landscape resources, these earlier models only made tentative connections to the students’ narratives. their final models, however, represent a significant shift away from “safe” expectations and take on more “risk” in terms of drawing on their own resources and experiences. 3. mbulelo: risk in drawing on unconventional contexts mbulelo is a young man in his early twenties who describes himself as “someone [who has grown up] in the townships” (graphic narrative presentation, mbulelo, 24 july 2017). mbulelo’s design trajectory is significant because he provides insight into the question “how does drawing on students’ resources involve risk and in what way is this risk productive?” as mbulelo moves forward in his design trajectory, he increasingly utilises his own resources and experiences of living in an informal settlement. this could be seen as “risky” because he is not employing “well-acknowledged” resources (mavers, 2007: 157) such as landscape architectural design precedent and in light of a colonial history, drawing on a context of an informal settlement may also be considered risky. however, mbulelo’s risk-taking is productive because he successfully designs a spatial model that draws on ideational, interpersonal and textual resources from his own experiences. we briefly discuss how mbulelo employs these resources in the design of his model and how his drawing on an unconventional context in the landscape classroom extends and critiques the canon to some extent. the narrative of mbulelo’s spatial model design is based on his own life, an aspirational story of “rags to riches, an everyday, black south african story that we hear on the news about the young black men or women, who are struggling financially because of poverty” (final model presentation, mbulelo, 30 august 2017). mbulelo’s narrative begins with his “normal life in the township”. he indicates that his life and community in the township was insular and that “you only see the real world after grade 12”. despite financial constraints, mbulelo secures funding for tertiary education and begins to dream that “one day you want to be something in life”. he also describes how he is focused on this goal and does not want others to “distract me because if that happens […] i’m still going to be stuck in the ghetto”. when mbulelo presents his graphic narrative, the group helps him to select the following themes: persistence, goaldriven, path to success, “rags to riches” and obstacles. during the spatial model project, mbulelo makes four models. it is mbulelo’s fourth model that we focus on here as it represents a significant shift in complexity and risk. mbulelo’s earlier models use well-acknowledged resources. he draws on landscape architectural macro-genres (ravelli & mcmurtrie, 2016) or archetypes (dee, 2013) such as walled gardens, edged pathways and water features. he also uses compositional design principles such as balance and symmetry and explicitly uses phrases such as “wall planes” and “central point” showing that he is adopting and taking on landscape architectural vocabulary. by using landscape architectural references, mbulelo may be signalling uptake of design terms and practice. despite this, the forms and abstractions of his first three models only make tentative connections to the narrative of his experiences and struggles of growing up in an informal settlement. the fourth model that mbulelo designs is, however, very different from the first three. the final model is more complex with multiple layers of meaning. mbulelo does not http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 1482021 39(2): 148-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) draw as heavily on conventional landscape architectural resources as in the previous three models but, as we will show, he expresses his narrative and experiences through novel forms and spaces. figure 1. mbulelo’s final model mbulelo’s final model has a rectangular base and is divided into two sections: the first is characterised by a black ground plane, the second is defined by a white ground plane below and a sky plane above (see figure 1). his use of contrasting colour and demarcation of space using a sky plane differentiates between the “rags” and “riches” components of his narrative. mbulelo has designed a pathway in the shape of a question-mark for his users to explore his installation. this movement route conveys the sequence of his argument as well as its symbolic meaning: “even if you’re going through the road of success, the road [to] success is not straight, so [...] that’s why the road is like a question mark” (final model presentation, mbulelo, 30 august 2017). the shape of the question mark increases the complexity of the “rags” versus “riches” binaries. mbulelo designs spaces and forms that make a connection to his experiences in an informal settlement. mbulelo explains how he hopes the user will first experience his model: “i used this [points to egg box objects] to represent the confusion. as one enters, [the] spatial experience [of] the person is confusion because it’s like a dark room”. he also explains that “you get confused, you know, which path to go, but they say at the end of the tunnel is light”. the use of textual resources such as the colour of the black ground plane and the absence of light inside the “dome”, may create the impression of confusion or disorientation. mbulelo hopes this spatial experience conveys ideational meanings such as the challenges of poverty and life in an informal settlement. as the user transitions from the first “dome” space to the second, they find themselves in a space that is bordered by thin vertical columns or “wires to represent being trapped”. this connects to mbulelo’s narrative where he felt trapped by poverty: ...growing up in the township you feel trapped that people don’t believe you’re going to make it. they don’t believe in your dream. they just say you’re dreaming [...] you just want to see the outside world, but you feel trapped because of your background or disadvantage. (final model presentation, mbulelo, 30 august 2017). in widening the project brief to encourage students to bring their own resources into the landscape architectural classroom, mbulelo has taken a “risk” to make visible experiences and contexts that may have been previously disregarded in these formal educational http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 1492021 39(2): 149-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 price & archer risk as productive in landscape architecture pedagogy settings. mbulelo not only identifies and abstracts his own personal experiences, such as feeling trapped, he redesigns these through three-dimensional spatial-making practices that can be experienced by the imagined users visiting his installation. in moving away from conventional forms and archetypes, mbulelo contributes to the diversity of available spatial forms and designs. mbulelo takes a risk by acknowledging the darker moment of “success” in his narrative. in order to represent his varied experiences of success, mbulelo draws on conventional compositional resources such as colour, shape, angle and arrangement. he does, however, redesign these traditional resources. in the second section of his model, representing the aspirations of his narrative, mbulelo designs a space that is distinct from the first half of the movement route. at the moment of transition between the black ground plane and the white ground plane, he introduces a change in level. this signifies mbulelo’s ambitions in his narrative to “climb up” and also represents that “there’s a change”. the pathway is covered by a sky plane above, providing shelter to the user. the pathway in this second section, while moderately enclosed by a sky plane, is open on all sides, allowing light into the space and ensuring high visual permeability. in addition to the level change and sky plane, mbulelo also uses contrasting colours and high colour saturation to reinforce the change in the second section of his model: “i used ... bright colours to show success”. this second space also includes black triangles that mbulelo explains represent “a superstition in our cultures ... that if you become successful as a black male ... there’s like witchcraft. so that represents if you’re successful, maybe people are going to try to bring you down”. he made a similar comment in an earlier crit: “once you get money … you’re starting to have a lot of cousins”. the reference to “lots of cousins” is colloquially referred to in south africa as “black tax”: the financial burden of upwardly mobile black south africans to support extended family members. mbulelo draws on shape as a resource to represent this aspect of his narrative. the sharp angles of the triangle and the way that they are arranged “pointing” towards the moment of “riches” in mbulelo’s model may reflect his own apprehensions of the financial expectations of his family and community. mbulelo brings these contentious aspects of “success” into his spatial model design. mbulelo’s narrative is a reminder of the stark differences between the context and environment of an informal settlement and that of the landscape architectural classroom as well as the types of spaces typically designed in landscape architecture. throughout the spatial model project, mbulelo draws on his own experiences, knowledge and resources and explicitly brings these into his design trajectory. he mobilises the resources he brings with him and takes up new resources such as landscape architectural design practices and metalanguage. in his final model presentation, he uses phrases such as “spatial experience”, “represent” and “elevation” showing that he is adopting and using the metalanguage of landscape architectural discourse. mbulelo is an example of how students successfully negotiate risk and remake and recontextualise landscape architectural design practices through their own experiences. a multimodal pedagogy that promotes different “orders of visibility” (kerfoot & hyltenstam, 2017: 7) of students’ resources in the classroom not only provides access to the dominant discourse, but also enables students to contribute to new knowledge production. the transformation of mbulelo’s diverse resources results in innovative spatial experiences and expands on what and how landscape spaces can mean. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 1502021 39(2): 150-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 4. cebisa: risk in designing space through confronting fears cebisa is a young woman in her early twenties who had been working in the civil construction sector before coming to study landscape architecture. cebisa is unusual in her approach to spatial form generation. she negotiates risk through her choices of materials and often uses materials in an unconventional way. cebisa’s design trajectory is similar to mbulelo’s. her earlier models tend to use typical landscape design conventions, but there is a visible shift in her third and fourth models where she begins to draw more strongly on her own resources and engages with “riskier” design practices, materials and forms. the “risk” here can be understood in terms of choosing resources that may have been invisible or unnoticed in the past. through her trajectory, cebisa rethinks landscape architectural design practices and redesigns new types of spaces. cebisa’s narrative is about overcoming fear. her narrative is inspired by her own decision to study landscape architecture: “i was afraid of what is landscape. what am i going to do? what is it about?” (graphic narrative presentation, cebisa, 24 july 2017). through her narrative, cebisa describes how “fear basically deprives us of the things that we could achieve as a person”. cebisa explains that people who choose to confront their fears may overcome them and achieve success. they may realise “i did it in the end without anyone helping me [...] why was i even afraid the first time?” in cebisa’s first two models she hesitantly represents themes such as “fear” and “uncertainty” through conventional landscape resources. in her first model she makes a play park that includes a slide, a bench and a tree, but these only loosely connect to her narrative. cebisa’s second model begins to take more risks in terms of unusual design features, such as a bumpy or textured pathway and a pergola covered in barbed wire in order to express her narrative of fear. cebisa’s first two models may represent what she perceives to be “acceptable” and “low-risk” design forms. as a young designer with limited design experience and landscape precedent, cebisa makes three bold design choices in her third model. firstly, she begins to move away from “named” landscape archetypes. secondly, she uses unusual materials and thirdly, she constructs her own “way in” to her model design through a series of questions and envisaged experiences for the imagined users of her model. instead of abstractly representing themes in her model as conventional spaces or forms, cebisa’s design process is shaped by her own debates around fear and how this translates into the way a user may negotiate their movement and interaction with her model. cebisa’s narrative about challenging perceptions and confronting fears is embedded in her final model through interpersonal resources such as spatial engagement as well as textual resources including salience, coherence and texture. her design process is unconventional and represents risk in terms of moving away from formulaic ways of approaching design and making. the way she expresses her argument centres around the user, their degree of interaction and choices that they may make. “in all types of spaces, the users are part of the interactive framework and can respond to the space by either accepting or challenging the semiotic design” (ravelli & mcmurtrie, 2016: 86). cebisa’s model design challenges users to overcome their perceptions and engage with the spaces in the model. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 1512021 39(2): 151-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 price & archer risk as productive in landscape architecture pedagogy figure 2. cebisa’s final model cebisa’s final spatial model design presents the user with four choices of movement routes. at the back of the model is a cave-like space with a red, textured ground surface (see figure 2). this bright colour may signal to users that there is a space to be investigated. users may choose to walk around to the back of the model to explore this space, but as cebisa explains “you [...] see there’s actually nothing interesting there. it was something just to fool the people, who were always in the comfort zone, trying to use the easy ways” (final model presentation, cebisa, 30 august 2017). users could also choose to walk underneath the ladder where there is a white, soft ground surface. cebisa describes this space as the “comfort zone” for users who may be too afraid to climb the ladder and engage with a difficult experience. she imagines users debating “‘will i just stay here or just maybe try and take the ladder to go and see what’s on top?’ or you can just stay here be like, ‘okay, i’m just fine with whatever i have’”. users may also choose to walk up a short flight of stairs. cebisa has designed this for users who are “always afraid to try new things, to try and experience new things” and miss out on an opportunity to discover the upper level. from the vantage point at the top of the stairs, cebisa imagines users may be able to see the foil texture on the upper level and may be motivated to climb the ladder: “that will challenge them to go, actually to go down and try to climb the stairs and to see what’s the foil. ‘what’s this thing that’s shining on top?’”. once the three options are exhausted, users may choose to climb up the ladder, but cebisa does not make this an inviting option. she uses texture to suggest that objects may be intriguing or deceptive. she imagines what the user might think or feel as they debate climbing the ladder: “you want to go there, but you’re afraid to use the [ladder] because i used the [...] toothpicks here [...] and they think they might fall or they might break”. assuming the user makes it at least halfway up the ladder, cebisa wonders if they might be discouraged by the shiny tinfoil texture or the wire attached to the black handrail. these spiky things [points to wire on black handrail] are just to fool them and try to manipulate their decision. some people, some adventurous people will want to climb and [say] “what is this spiky thing? is it really hard, or is it soft? does it really shine that much?” but if you are afraid and you’re not that adventurous, you’re always in your comfort zone, you can just stay here and experience little things (final model presentation, cebisa, 30 august 2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 1522021 39(2): 152-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) if a user overcomes their fears and climbs the ladder, they may experience new textures and discover that these were not what they initially perceived them to be. the textured black strip on the upper level “looks rough but it’s actually smooth”. cebisa has intentionally designed a heteroglossic and dialogically expansive spatial model (ravelli & mcmurtrie, 2016: 75): users have full access to every part of the model and are limited only by their own choices. the composition of the model enables unlimited access and user engagement, but the interpersonal and ideational meanings of the model are complex and may result in the user regulating or adapting their access and spatial engagement based on their own perceptions of the spaces, textures and materiality. this degree of spatial engagement invites users to challenge their perceptions and overcome their fears or hesitations. it is evident that cebisa’s model is exciting and creative. we have shown how she designs a complex movement route, enticing users to explore and engage with her model and the narrative that it expresses. she uses spatial engagement and unusual uses of texture as semiotic resources to convey key themes in her narrative to her imagined users. she moves away from conventional landscape forms and design processes and takes on more risk as she explores and experiments with textures and perceptions. the way in which cebisa puts herself in her users’ shoes, asking questions such as “what is this spiky thing?” and “will i just stay here?” shows how her user and their experience is at the heart of her spatial model design. these questions also prompt her own design processes and the diverse types of spaces and forms she creates. she brings her own resources into her learning environment and successfully manages risk as she designs new and unconventional forms and design practices. similar to mbulelo’s earlier models, cebisa’s early models rely on conventionalised landscape architectural elements such as parks, slides and trees. as cebisa moves forward in her trajectory, she moves away from these conventions and uses her own debates and resources to shape the forms and spaces she designs. her own resources and experiences are represented more strongly than tentative attempts at using “landscape” elements. moving away from forms and practices associated with the dominant landscape design practices may be considered “risky”. the risk that these two students take in bringing their diverse experiences into the landscape classroom is acknowledged in the light of a history of colonised education where diverse resources and experiences were often disregarded or devalued. the high levels of engagement that these students demonstrate in their design trajectories reveal the importance of making a connection between diverse contexts and the landscape architectural classroom. 5. drawing on risk to develop a multimodal pedagogy for diversity we have examined the different ways in which two students draw on and transform experiential resources into the design of spatial experiences in their models. mbulelo draws on unconventional contexts in his design and cebisa draws on unconventional materials to represent abstractions. we have argued that uncritical landscape architectural pedagogies that grew out of global north perspectives, when applied to global south contexts, could privilege particular resources or meaning-making practices and exclude and silence others. in light of decolonising education movements, there is a responsibility for landscape pedagogies to not only notice, but to validate diverse resources and design practices (archer & newfield, 2014; stein, 2008). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 1532021 39(2): 153-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 price & archer risk as productive in landscape architecture pedagogy in adapting the project brief to increase the variety of resources that students could draw from, students such as mbulelo and cebisa have designed diverse, rich, layered landscape architectural spaces and experiences for their users. these students show that when students engage in meaningful ways with their designs, there is immense potential for learning and knowledge production. in the process of learning, students are remaking and reframing landscape architecture in new and diverse contexts. they are negotiating the “contact zone” (pratt, 1999) between their own experiential resources and those of more conventionalised architectural practices. we have described the changes in “risky” materials for model-building and how this impacted the design of landscape spaces and forms. this has led us to propose three principles for drawing on risk to develop a multimodal pedagogy of diversity. 5.1 recognition of diverse students’ resources recognition is more than “noticing” students’ resources, but a pedagogical approach that can theorise resources through a metalanguage and integrate the use of diverse resources into the classroom (archer & newfield, 2014: 5). kerfoot and hyltenstam (2017: 7) describe this notion of recognition as constructing “different orders of visibility” that not only provide connections between the landscape classroom and students’ everyday lives but notice absences and endorse resources that may have been previously unnoticed (archer & newfield, 2014). recognition is thus an antidote to a single perspective pedagogy and the imbalances this has produced in the past. 5.2 recognition of resourcefulness as design precedent novice landscape architectural designers do not need to be labelled in terms of low design exposure to landscape precedent. although students may not be armed with wellacknowledged (design) resources, their own experiential, social and interactive resources are more than adequate substitutes to the successful design of spatial experiences. furthermore, the unconventional use of diverse material and non-material resources has the potential to innovate and disrupt landscape architectural design practices and contribute to the production of knowledge. 5.3 engagement in the “contact zone” designing pedagogies that encourage students to draw on their own resources involves risk for the teacher and the students. responsible pedagogies provide a space for students to successfully negotiate their own resources in order to access and transform dominant ways of knowing. we need to go beyond just noticing students’ diverse resources by celebrating and encouraging the use of these resources. successful engagement in the “contact zone” (pratt, 1999) between students’ resources and the landscape architectural discourse results in the transformation of resources, producing new and diverse landscape architectural forms and spaces. the remaking and redesign of landscape architectural design education needs to draw on diverse students’ resources that can act as a foil to the single dominant perspective. we have argued that a multimodal pedagogy that embraces risk as productive can develop classrooms as sites of transformation, where students are empowered to employ their diverse semiotic resources in productive and transformative ways to engage with the curriculum. in this view, diversity is seen as an opportunity, rather than an obstacle (gee, 1996; gomez, puigvert & flecha, 2011). multimodal pedagogies for diversity have been explored in a range of educational sites in south africa, including health sciences (weiss 2014), engineering http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 1542021 39(2): 154-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) (simpson 2014), jewellery design (salaam 2017), music (harrop-allin 2011) and english (stein 2008). the classroom environment (and not only that of landscape architecture) needs to juxtapose discourses in order to interrogate how particular knowledge has been constructed, why particular types of knowledge have been valorised and to challenge or negotiate new meanings. an approach to pedagogy that embraces “risk” has the potential to respond to the scars of south africa’s colonial, segregated and exclusive past by promoting inclusive, democratic classroom environments where all voices are valued equally (stein, 2008: 3). 6. final comments this paper has shown how two students successfully took a “risk” through drawing on experiential resources as prompts that were transformed and redesigned into their spatial models. this mobilisation of resources is pedagogically important in terms of students negotiating their way into the landscape design discipline. we highlighted the ways in which the students contextualised landscape architecture in terms of their own experiences; how they used their resources as prompts to engage with landscape design trajectories and space-making and to design meanings and spatial experiences for the imagined users of their models. analysing the students’ spatial models reveals firstly, the types of resources that may have been invisible in the past and secondly, the potential for students to draw on diverse resources in order to access and recontextualise the dominant landscape architectural discourse. landscape conventions and practices are mediated to students through the spatial model project and students need to carefully negotiate the “contact zone” (pratt, 1999) between their resources and these conventions. the concept of risk has been framed within a multimodal approach to pedagogy which recognises the value of diverse experiences, voices and resources of students in order to access and challenge dominant design practices. we believe that this is applicable to educational contexts other than landscape architecture – wherever teachers wish to implement and strengthen the semiotic practice and democratic culture. a pedagogy that embraces risk as productive can recognise and validate the rich knowledge, resources and experiences that students bring with them to their learning environment. in doing so, this pedagogical approach begins to address past educational imbalances and inequalities, thus opening up spaces for diverse perspectives. however, embracing diverse students’ resources is not unproblematic. multimodal pedagogies for diversity carry a double burden: it would be unjust to create “safe” educational spaces that value diverse students’ resources if these students cannot gain entry to the dominant discourse and the social and economic prosperity it governs. the students, however, have the agency and potential to realise change in the profession and its dominant discourse. it is thus important to create learning environments that not only foster multiple perspectives and valorise diverse resources, while also providing access to dominant discourses, but also to help students realise their potential to change the discipline and profession. this may require a shift in the role of the educator “from provider of authoritatively held and dispensed knowledge to designer of apt environments for learning” (bezemer & kress, 2016: 134). the aim is not to develop a pedagogy that adapts to the majority of the students, but to develop a pedagogy that goes beyond, ensuring that diversity does not become a barrier to success. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 1552021 39(2): 155-156 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.11 price & archer risk as productive in landscape architecture pedagogy references archer, a. 2014. power, social justice and multimodal pedagogies. in c jewitt (ed.). the routledge handbook of multimodal analysis, 2nd ed (pp.189–197). abingdon: routledge. archer, a. & newfield, d. 2014. challenges and opportunities of multimodal approaches to education in south africa. in a. archer & d. 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abstract the phenomenological study on which this article is based inquired into grade 9 technology teachers’ professional development through workshops on pedagogical content knowledge (pck) as well as their training needs. the workshops took place in nelspruit in mpumalanga, south africa. data were gathered from two groups of teachers who attended the workshops on two different days, but who were trained in the same way and were subsequently conveniently selected to participate in the study. semi-structured focus group interviews were conducted with these teachers and the workshop facilitator was also interviewed. the training manual was scrutinised, the facilitation of the workshops was observed and a follow-up visit was done at two schools where the workshop participants taught. the findings revealed that while the teachers felt that the workshops developed them, such training did not fully meet their needs or expand their pck repertoires. this study will inform the mathematics, science and technology academy (msta), which is tasked with offering in-service training to subject teachers in the province, about whether the workshops meet the needs of the attendees, thereby possibly necessitating a review of the training. keywords: teachers’ needs, pedagogical content knowledge, teacher development, technology, workshops 1. background of the study the study on which this article is based explored the professional development of technology teachers regarding their pedagogical content knowledge (pck) and related needs. pck, which is an amalgamation of pedagogy and content (what and how), concerns the knowledge of teaching (shing, saat & loke, 2015). pck is a specific form of knowledge required by teachers that involves the transformation of subject matter knowledge in the context of facilitating learners’ understanding (shulman, 1987). it is about effective teacher preparation in which the teacher understands what is to be learnt and taught (shulman, 1987). pck consists of seven elements, including author: prof mt gumbo1 affiliation: 1university of south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v38i1.5 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(1): 58-71 published: 11 june 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6760-4341 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.5 59 gumbo professional development of technology teachers: does their training meet their needs? 2020 38(1): 59-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.5 knowledge of a) the subject matter, b) pedagogical content, c) general pedagogy, d) the curriculum, e) learners and their characteristics, f) educational contexts and g) educational aims, purposes and values. the scarcity of research into the professional development of technology teachers in south africa is what motivated this study. also, technology (as it is known locally, but also known as technology education or design and technology in other contexts) was only introduced for the first time into the school curriculum two-and-a-half decades ago. professional development is about improving teachers’ skills and the competencies they need to produce outstanding learner results (villegas-reimers, 2003; mizell, 2010). this may happen via a variety of modes, for instance coaching, lesson observation, the creation of professional learning communities, support and hands-on activities, amongst others (mizell, 2010, 5). schools-based practical experience regarding the subject content, new teaching methods, technological advances and learners’ changing needs (mishra & koehler, 2006; mizell, 2010) compel teachers to further their professional development so that they can be properly immersed in their pck. this suggests that teachers’ professional development remains the hallmark of their own competence and, by implication, of learner performance (knight & wiseman, 2005; desimone, smith & ueno, 2006). for this reason, teachers should be competent if they are to achieve the desired learner success. many teachers are seriously lacking the teaching skills needed to support individual differences in learners (laine & otto, 2000; kent, 2004). in south africa specifically, teachers’ conceptual knowledge is limited (department of education, 2006). technology teachers in particular show a lack of understanding of the requisite subject content, pedagogical knowledge and skills (reitsma & mentz, 2007), especially in the teaching of design processes (investigate, design, make, evaluate and communicate) (juuti, rättyä, lehtonen & kopra, 2017). technology’s pck mainly relies on the design process, as content and pedagogy. pedagogically, teachers have to develop in their learners multiple skills that will qualify them as technologists (e.g., design, creative, critical and manufacturing skills). in the senior phase (grades 7–9), technology’s subject matter content knowledge includes topics such as the processing of materials, structures, mechanical systems and controls, and electrical systems and electronics. the three aims of this field of study are: • develop and apply specific design skills to solve technological problems; • understand the concepts and knowledge used in technology education and use them responsibly and purposefully; • appreciate the interaction between people’s values and attitudes, technology, society and the environment. (department of basic education [dbe], 2011:8) the latter aims to address the issue of indigenous technologies as well as the impact of, and bias towards, technology (dbe, 2011:10). in this context, professional teacher development risks becoming nothing more than a state-funded skills development programme (steyn, 2008:3). many programmes are unsatisfactory, failing to meet the intended professional teacher development goals (mewborn & huberty, 2004). it is in this light that mouton, tapp, luthuli and rogan (1999) argue that professional development should be tailored to the needs and expectations of teachers and should be continuous or prolonged. south africa’s mpumalanga province has responded to this challenge by prioritising technology teacher training through workshops, as part of 60 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 60-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.5 the main mathematics, science and technology project. hence, the issue explored here is about understanding the pck aspects that the workshops addressed (or failed to address) in response to technology teachers’ training or developmental needs. the present study aims to contribute to the body of knowledge on teachers’ workshops, in particular whether these respond to attendees’ professional needs. tailoring workshops according to teachers’ needs is important, as it has been found that certain offerings train teachers away from their actual areas of need (gusky, 1986). this study can be regarded as breaking new ground, since no research has yet been conducted into the msta’s initiatives regarding professional teacher development in that context. further, a study of this nature is crucial, given the contextual dynamisms of professional development workshops and the questions they raise. the msta, which is tasked with training technology teachers with respect to pck as part of their professional development, has adopted workshops as its main strategy. in partnership with msta, the department of science and technology education (dste) from the university of south africa (unisa) conducted research aimed at informing teacher training and development in mpumalanga, with a view of making improvements. to this end, the following research questions were posed to guide the study: • what are technology teachers’ pck-related professional development needs? • how do technology workshops respond to teachers’ professional development needs? 2. literature review professional development is defined as the intensive, ongoing and systematic process of enhancing teaching, learning and school environments (fenstermacher & berliner, 1985; elmore, 2002). it aims to improve teachers’ skills and the competencies required to produce outstanding learner results (reading first, 2005). in addition, teacher development describes “the professional growth which a teacher achieves as a result of gaining increased experience and examining his or her own teaching systematically” (gatthorn in villegas-reimers, 2003, 11). reasons for professional development include the certification of unqualified teachers, teacher upgrading, preparing them for new roles, and curriculum-related dissemination or refresher courses (greenland in villegas-reimers, 2003). professional teacher development is crucial for the effective implementation of any curriculum, and for boosting learners’ interest and performance in a subject (here, technology in particular). as stated earlier, the usefulness of professional teacher development in south africa has been called into question. this is backed up by examples of research in the field, including a qualitative study by the south african democratic teachers’ union (sadtu, 2014) in mpumalanga that interrogated teachers’ perceptions about their professional developmental needs. in that case, focus groups were held and a questionnaire was administered to teachers while individual interviews were conducted with principals. the findings revealed that the teachers’ concerns revolved around workshops being too short, a lack of classroom resources, learners’ disadvantaged backgrounds, high learner:teacher ratios and a disregard of indigenous languages as mediums of instruction. in an american study on science and mathematics teachers’ experiences, needs and expectations in terms of their professional development, it was found that many such programmes fail because they do not consider teachers’ backgrounds, experience, knowledge, beliefs or needs (chval, abell, pareja, musikul & ritzka, 2008). the first study cited above did not target teachers of a specific subject, while the second investigated science and mathematics teachers without focusing 61 gumbo professional development of technology teachers: does their training meet their needs? 2020 38(1): 61-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.5 on specific grades. what both studies achieved was to illuminate the problems surrounding professional teacher development and to signal that further research is required. the problem of teacher development in south africa is exacerbated by their lack of qualifications and/or their under-qualification. the dbe (2011) reports that about 40 per cent of practising teachers are unqualified and/or under-qualified, with certain teachers holding outdated qualifications (e.g., a primary teacher’s diploma, a senior primary diploma in teaching, a junior primary teacher’s diploma or a senior teacher’s diploma) (welch, 2009). this could mean that teacher training has not yet put teachers on solid ground in respect of their pck. the implementation of technology as a subject has raised concerns about teachers’ knowledge (stein, mcrobbie & ginns, 1999; mapotse, 2012). reitsma and mentz (2007), corroborated by rohaan, taconis and jochems (2012), argue that many technology teachers lack subject content knowledge and skills, pedagogical knowledge and skills and pck. this is mainly because technology is a relatively new subject to teach, for which few teachers are qualified (taylor & vinjevold, 1999; department of education [doe], 2006; mapotse, 2012). in support of their pedagogical skills, teaching resources are needed to be integrated in their teaching, particularly modern technology such as smartboards (banks, 1996; mishra & koehler, 2006). banks (1996, 176) borrows from shulman to refer to the teaching resources as “the materia media or pharmacopoeia from which teachers draw their equipment that present or exemplify particular content”. technology integration is emphasised as it is perceived as branding teaching in the 21st century. mishra and koehler (2006) extended pck to include the integration of technology, introducing pck the technological pedagogical content knowledge (tpack) to the pck framework. to investigate this topic on a local level, a centralised continuous professional teacher development model was used to frame the study. 3. centralised continuous professional teacher development different continuous professional teacher development models exist, namely the centralised, decentralised and cascade models. centralised training takes place at a central venue (teachers converge from different schools), decentralised training takes place at teachers’ own schools, while cascaded training happens with senior staff at a central venue, who in turn train their colleagues at their own schools (conner, 1991; craft, 1996; engelbrecht & ankiewicz, 2016). all these models are facilitator driven (engelbrecht & ankiewicz, 2016). the centralised model was chosen for this study and involved teachers from various schools being trained at a common venue. according to craft (1996) and muhammed (2006), most training lasts for a day or longer, and workshops are the dominant training mode employed in this model (fareo, 2013). the msta relies heavily on this model, which sees personnel from higher education institutions being tasked with monitoring high-quality planning, presentation and training materials (engelbrecht & ankiewicz, 2016, 264) – in this instance, unisa provided that service. however, the model used has many flaws (craft, 1996, 8–14): • inappropriate aims on the macro level do not reflect the true needs and expectations of teachers; • inappropriate activities are planned with no regard for the outcomes; 62 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 62-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.5 • teachers lack motivation because they are unwilling to attend training, as there is very little perceived incentive (financial or otherwise) to further their qualifications; and • it is not very popular, as teachers’ private lives are disrupted and single parents struggle to accommodate such training. despite taking place at a separate central venue, the expectation with this model is that what takes place during the training should align with what takes place at school (engelbrecht & ankiewicz, 2016), i.e., it should reflect the needs of the school/teachers. day (in engelbrecht & ankiewicz, 2016) claims that school-focused training covers natural learning experiences and conscious and planned activities that can benefit an individual or school directly, all of which can facilitate the provision of quality education. 4. research methodology this was a phenomenological study that described and interpreted the experiences of workshop participants (eddles-hirsch, 2015). the focus was on how the participants experienced the professional development workshops (eddles-hirsch, 2015) they attended. as phenomenology reflects participants’ experiences and reality, their lifeworld, sense-making and sense derivation (eddles-hirsch, 2015), the participants’ experiences and the sense they made of those experiences were sourced for this study. the workshops, content and facilitation the workshops in question were conducted in nelspruit during 2015, on two different dates, as two-day sessions, with two groups of grade 9 technology teachers from different districts being accommodated. a single workshop will be discussed here, as it was basically duplicated for the second group on another occasion, and thus also lasted two days. the content of the workshops was outlined in the training manual, which covered electronic systems and control, processing and mini-pat (i.e. practical assessment tasks based on design processes). the sub-sections of electronic systems and control included electronic components, simple electrical circuits and the impact of technology and electronics in the media. the manual, which contained learning activities for the teachers, featured illustrations (such as a diagram on input-processoutput, and another showing electronic components). throughout, the facilitator referred to the training manual that had been specifically developed for the workshops. the facilitator started the workshop by outlining the next day’s activities, which would be more practical in nature. thereafter, he gave the attendees a pre-test consisting of multiplechoice questions that he could mark quickly with their help. the teachers marked each other’s tests and supplied the answers aloud. he then discussed the first topic, electronic systems and control, and left two more for the following day. he introduced the topic by referring to real situations in which electronic systems and controls are applied (e.g., in cars), and explained logic gates using a flip chart. he relayed the historical context of electronics from a military perspective, having initially been used in radios and television sets. he also touched on concepts such as ohm’s law, electrical diodes and power sources. despite having organised a data projector, laptop and screen, he relied more on the flip chart and training manual. the next day the facilitator instructed the workshop participants to build a simple electrical circuit. he engaged the teachers in individual and group activities from the workshop manual, and asked questions based on electronic components, simple electrical circuits and the impact 63 gumbo professional development of technology teachers: does their training meet their needs? 2020 38(1): 63-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.5 of technology. he discussed the processing of metals before the teachers performed practical tasks to follow up on the work of the previous day. he focused on preservation techniques (painting, electroplating and galvanising) associated with metals and asked a few questions. he treated concepts such as oxidation, corrosion and processing, and then gave the teachers a practical task on electroplating. he ended by explaining the mini-pat and giving teachers a post-test that was marked in the same way as the pre-test. data collection methods, participants and procedures the two focus groups of grade 9 technology teachers were conveniently selected with the aid of the facilitator and were interviewed for approximately 40 minutes each. this happened outside of workshop times, at the same venue. there were 12 teachers in the first group and 8 in the second. a 30-minute semi-structured interview was also conducted with the workshop facilitator after the workshops had concluded. the interview guides for the teachers and the facilitator included biographical information and questions regarding the teachers’ views of the workshop and their professional training needs. the facilitator was asked about the intention behind the workshops and the planning that went into them. the training manual was also evaluated based on the content and design of the learning activities, using a specifically designed evaluation tool. the facilitation of the workshops was observed using an observation tool that targeted the teaching approaches, concepts taught and integration of resources. the observation and evaluation of the training manual added to the researcher’s understanding of the teachers’ expressed views about the workshops, and their specific needs. two schools were visited after the workshops to observe the teaching being done by the former workshop attendees. this extension of the inquiry helped create a deeper understanding of the impact the workshops had on teacher knowledge and practice (their pck). ethical clearance and permission to conduct the study were granted by unisa and the mpumalanga dbe respectively. the participants were asked to sign a consent letter. all ethicsrelated imperatives were observed, including participant confidentiality, their consent to record the interviews and their liberty to terminate their participation in the study. data analysis the interview data were coded, manipulated, summarised and organised into themes to obtain answers to the research questions (bogdan & biklen, 2003). this entailed preparing the data; reading and re-reading the transcripts; coding, segmenting and conceptualising the data according to emerging patterns; organising the participants’ views under a theme for presentation; and substantiating the findings with participants’ verbatim statements. an attempt was made to account for the trustworthiness of the study (labanca, 2004) in terms of validity and credibility, in accordance with acceptable standards of scientific inquiry (bowen, 2009). a multi-method strategy helped to corroborate and triangulate the findings. the preliminary findings were presented to the msta and peer debriefing was done with colleagues at unisa, who had participated in the main mst project, to add to the trustworthiness of the study (bowen, 2009). the next section presents the findings in an integrated manner, in response to the research questions. 64 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 64-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.5 5. findings teachers’ biographical information the data revealed that most teachers had only recently begun teaching technology and were largely under-qualified to do so. for example, only four had an advanced diploma in technology education, two had a national diploma (from technical fields) and one had a secondary teacher’s diploma. however, the teachers were highly qualified in specialisations such as mathematics, science and educational management. their service in other subjects, which tallied with that in technology specifically, ranged from four months to 20 years. however, their technology-specific service was combined with their prior teaching at technical schools. by implication, therefore, when their low qualifications were juxtaposed to their service and the relative newness of technology as a subject, it transpired that they had not taught technology for that long, compared to other subjects. the workshops and teachers’ needs the participating teachers expressed their passion for teaching the subject but admitted to being incompetent in certain aspects of their pck. the expectation was that the workshops would assist them with that. they explained that their low subject-specific qualifications (as reflected in the biographical information) made them question their competency. technological knowledge overlaps with certain knowledge areas of physical science and mathematics knowledge, such as the properties of materials and the calculation of pressure (e.g. in pneumatic systems), but many teachers admitted to lacking basic physical science and mathematics knowledge. as one participant explained: i did my diploma in commercial subjects. i don’t have the basics of physical science, and sometimes when i am supposed to teach where there are a lot of calculations in relation to things which are happening in physical science i sometimes find it difficult. another teacher voiced her frustration with the basic mathematical calculations required: we have a problem with practicals when it comes to the mathematical part, because in almost every term there are calculations for voltage, resistance, current, ohm’s law, gear ratio, rpm. the teachers also felt sympathy for their learners, …because learners do not have a good mathematical background. several participants expressed the need for an expert to teach them to understand difficult sections of the content knowledge: i think it is better if we can have someone who is an expert, like in structures, to train us to have a deeper knowledge so that we can teach it better to our learners. the facilitator did his best to help the participants arrive at a clear understanding of the topics being discussed. he let the teachers discuss these among themselves at times, but applied time constraints. the facilitator relied on his work experience and qualifications: he had a national certificate (n1–n6) and a diploma in engineering, backed up by 12 years of teaching experience, all of which made him experienced and reasonably well qualified. 65 gumbo professional development of technology teachers: does their training meet their needs? 2020 38(1): 65-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.5 many teachers attempted to make meaning of what they were being taught by making inputs from an indigenous perspective. for example, one teacher explained “preservation” thusly: in the olden [days], our parents used animal fat to preserve metals. the teacher wanted to explain in detail how his grannies did that, and although the facilitator welcomed that explanation, he quickly ended it. the fact that the training manual did not include any indications of indigenous knowledge might explain why he did not encourage the teacher to explain the preservation process further from that particular perspective. the teachers responded to the interview questions by reflecting on their learners who were battling with certain technological content knowledge areas in which they (teachers themselves) also needed assistance. one such area was graphics, as one teacher stated: in most cases they are struggling when it comes to drawings because some of them fail to see the top view, side view. besides learners not knowing drawings, we also do not know these things. i even could not do the two drawings which were included in the last examination. to address pck challenges of this nature, the teachers tried to involve learners [by] explain[ing] in the local language instead of using english [because] some of them experience english as a language barrier. another problem area was the new approach to teaching and learning, or mini-pats (practical assessment tasks based on design projects). again, the participants admitted that they and their learners struggled in this area. the teachers admitted needing training, as one stated: many teachers and learners are struggling with the newly introduced mini-pat. most teachers see it as a monster, and they don’t know what to do. the training manual featured a scenario-based activity on the mini-pat, but the facilitator did not instruct the participants to do it. the teachers’ needs in this regard were thus not addressed, perhaps due to time constraints. for large parts of the workshop the facilitator stated that because time was running out, he could not go into details about a certain topic. the teachers were generally positive about the workshops. from the observation done, the facilitator seemed well prepared and competent, which might have motivated the participants. he did, however, dominate the workshops by presenting material to the attendees, rather than allowing them to try it out on their own and be corrected. he appeared to keep the interactions brief as there was a great deal of content to cover. the participants therefore felt that the workshop lasted for a very short period, adding “they should give us more time”. they expected to gain more subject knowledge during the workshop, but when faced with time constraints, complained that the “facilitator [did] not have time to explain and engage [with] us as teachers”. the participants wished the training manuals had been delivered to them prior to the workshops, so that they could prepare and bring along their own supplementary materials. it is laudable that the teachers were willing to prepare for the workshops by organising materials. also, they wanted to be notified about the objectives of the workshops beforehand, to be able to participate from an informed position. they claimed that fellow expert teachers could have teamed up with the facilitators, with one participant commenting on the need for “a teacher 66 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 66-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.5 who is more knowledgeable than everybody to teach us the way they are teaching learners”. many expressed a preference for varied approaches, such as using colleagues who excel in the subject. they were not trained much on the methods of teaching, as the facilitator claimed “these workshops focus on content knowledge because this is [a] content workshop”. there was, however, a contradiction in the sense that the facilitator emphasised pck during the interview, claiming that the aim of the workshops was to ensure that teachers were being capacitated: one is to make sure that we give them enough content so that they can be able to teach efficiently. that is why we also conduct these trainings, not only content, but pck, because some teachers have content but do not know how to address this content in the classroom. “seemingly non-pck” aspects the findings revealed the “seemingly non-pck” aspects the participants mentioned in their responses to the interview questions. the fact that some schools were under-resourced was a crucial aspect that they wanted resolved. very few schools that offer technology are well resourced, whereas rural schools in particular are under-resourced. as one participant stated: i was so surprised last year when i was doing some practicals. the only thing i found at school was a [light]bulb. in addition, in instances where resources were available, teachers needed to be trained on their use during teaching. this related to more sophisticated technological resources, such as how to operate and navigate the applications/tools on the smartboards and laptops that the msta rolled out to schools under the auspices of the mpumalanga dbe. as one participant explained, they did not know how to use this technology: we must use smartboards to teach learners. some of us cannot operate a computer. the facilitator confirmed that teachers had problems with the smartboards (some were defective, others just collected dust because the teachers did not know how to use them). the facilitator had not planned to train the teachers in the use of smartboards during the workshops, and no smartboard was arranged for this purpose. according to the facilitator, no analysis was done of the teachers’ needs prior to the workshops; thus, he relied on his own sense of learners’ performance in certain areas of the subject and designed the training manual to target those areas. another “seemingly non-pck” matter that teachers raised had to do with describing their learners. they felt strongly that teachers should know their learners and the contextual factors facing them. the participants claimed that they taught many children from poor backgrounds whose parents were unemployed. however, a “hunger for education” in their communities meant schools were filled with learners, resulting in overcrowded classes and related problems. as the participants mentioned: we have small classrooms with sixty to eighty learners […] you can’t do practicals because of learner overcrowding. site visits monitoring and support are crucial aspects of teachers’ professional development, serving to ensure that what they learn can be implemented immediately and follow-up training 67 gumbo professional development of technology teachers: does their training meet their needs? 2020 38(1): 67-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.5 considered. the findings showed that this had not yet been done subsequent to the workshops in question. the facilitator confirmed this during the interview, stating that monitoring and support were in the future plans of the msta, but had not yet started. this indicated a need to visit those teachers who had already undergone training and they confirmed that schoolbased support was non-existent. they admitted to struggling to understand the subject of technology and especially how to teach it – clearly, they needed assistance in their teaching. one teacher was observed teaching the design process during the school visit. she had assigned learners a project about safety. the scenario was well conceptualised from the road construction taking place about one kilometre away from the school. having assigned the learners the design task a few days before, she asked them to report what they had done thus far in their groups. in response, the learners merely read out the scenario given by the teacher. they were hesitant to speak and did not appear confident, which indicated that they might not have understood the project brief properly. this confirms that teachers are still struggling to understand the mini-pat and how to teach the design process. another teacher, however, was a specialist in graphics, evident in the learners’ design drawings. she could be one of those teachers who can be used during the workshops to teach her colleagues. in a brief discussion with her, she indicated that she even helped to train her colleagues in her area. the teachers were motivated to a point of making efforts to display their learners’ artefacts made from thrown-away materials. 6. discussion this new initiative by the msta in mpumalanga casts light on technology teachers’ professional development. in the light of the findings of the study, the workshops revealed areas in which teachers were helped to understand the content as part of their development in pck. the workshops, on the other hand, revealed areas in which teachers’ needs were not being fully addressed. the teachers benefited from unpacking concepts related to the topics being covered but seemed to struggle with a concept such as “logic gates”. the depth of knowledge that the facilitator showed helped them in this regard. the teachers had certain preferences about the training, though, and in that sense the workshops might have compromised their needs (mouton et al., 1999). the findings highlighted a number of areas in which the teachers had hoped to be capacitated, including the mini-pat (as observed in one teacher’s struggles during a school visit); and design process through which the minipat is taught (the predominant method for teaching technology). teachers’ pck is lacking in this regard, as noted in the literature (juuti et al., 2017); thus, it is crucial that they be better empowered, especially if they are not yet sufficiently qualified in the subject. the extent of the teachers’ needs suggests that they require a training of longer duration (mewborn & huberty, 2004; reitsma & mentz, 2007; sadtu, 2014). juxtaposing the under-qualification of the teachers (doe, 2006; mapotse, 2012) adds to the need for intensive teacher training over extended periods of time. the study’s findings show that the brevity of such interventions may contribute to the allegation that the workshops are largely ineffective (villegas-reimers, 2003) and represent little more than state-funded skills development programmes (steyn, 2008). the fact that the teachers’ pck is lacking in certain areas, and that technology is still a relatively new subject, creates a need to approach their training differently, e.g. to train them for extended periods of time. this will make them acquire the necessary technological knowledge and become experts in terms of knowledge and teaching (shulman, 1987). 68 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 68-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.5 teachers’ workshops should immerse teachers more in the “how” of facilitating learning for learners (i.e., the pedagogical aspect). even if they are knowledgeable on the subject matter, but poor pedagogically speaking, they will not achieve the desired results in their teaching. as a learner commented about a mathematics teacher when the researcher was still a teacher at a secondary school: “mr x knows mathematics, but for himself. he cannot impart it to us”. this could be the same with technology teachers if their pedagogical training is compromised. the workshops did not capacitate teachers regarding their pedagogy – they mostly completed set activities, instead of practising how to teach the concepts. it is important to consider the notion of pck as being more about presenting (shing, saat & loke, 2015). the findings revealed that the teachers referred to aspects that did not necessarily fall within the pck framework, which pertained to the plight of their learners and resources. however, knowledge of the characteristics of learners and educational contexts forms part of shulman’s (1987) framework, which suggests that they cannot simply be dismissed as “seemingly nonpck” elements. also, pedagogical knowledge directly implies having to use specific resources as delivery modes in teaching subject content. any training that still treats content as separate from pedagogy thus counters the progressive work of shulman’s framework. a lack of knowledge and skills, especially when it comes to using advanced technological resources (such as the smartboard) or a lack of resources, only complicates the teachers’ job. they are forced to cope with learners who are interested in learning, but struggle to understand the subject because it is taught theoretically. imparting technology-related pedagogy without the most vital technological resources under serves the learners, thereby denying the importance of mishra and koehler’s tpack framework. 7. conclusion teacher education should involve the ongoing re-skilling and up-skilling of teachers. professional development training, which mainly happens through workshops, is an important strategy for achieving this. in response to the research questions, this study has shown that teachers’ needs should not be overlooked in their development. the main contribution of this study was therefore to highlight the importance of considering teachers’ needs in respect of their professional development. it should thus be borne in mind that professional training should be designed such that it is needs-driven – it may not succeed if teachers’ needs are compromised. the msta workshops targeted certain subject matter knowledge areas but were not informed by the teachers’ needs (e.g., learning how to teach mini-pat). it is recommended that future workshops begin by exploring the participating teachers’ professional development needs so that the content that is presented aligns with those needs. included may be aspects that might appear to fall outside of the pck framework but have an impact on teaching practice. serious consideration should be given to extending workshops to ensure that teachers acquire the necessary knowledge and expertise to enable them to become subject experts who have mastered the necessary pedagogical knowledge and skills. the workshops should be primarily about capacitating teachers so that they can present the content to their learners. the msta should offer ongoing support to teachers after such workshops, in order to supplement their training, where needed. the dbe should also consider sponsoring technology teachers to register for programmes that will qualify them as subject specialists. the limitation of this study is that it focused on one-off workshops. hence, a further study should be considered that tracks the professional development of teachers over an extended period. 69 gumbo professional development of technology teachers: does their training meet their needs? 2020 38(1): 69-71 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.5 references bogdan, 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_hlk3083248 67 research article 2021 39(2): 67-81 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) the complex concept of plagiarism: undergraduate and postgraduate student perspectives abstract the prevalence of plagiarism in university students’ academic writing is well documented. its complex and multifaceted nature has made it difficult to reduce or manage. the literature reveals a lack of significant understanding of plagiarism and related concepts to be due to a poor or an absence of education, and it advocates for extensive and explicit education in what constitutes plagiarism at higher education level. in this review article we explore the literature on undergraduate and postgraduate student perspectives of plagiarism and related concepts in a global context. these perspectives are discussed under the following themes: students’ understanding of plagiarism and related literacy practices such as referencing, the reasons contributing to why students plagiarise intentionally or unintentionally, students’ understandings and views of the seriousness of plagiarism and students’ views on how to curb plagiarism. we believe that through a deeper understanding of students’ perspectives of plagiarism, we could start to develop an all-encompassing strategy to deal with plagiarism at university level. keywords: plagiarism, referencing, perspective, undergraduate, postgraduate university students. 1. introduction: the complexity of plagiarism and referencing plagiarism is a complex subject and integrally connected to different intricate literacy practices, such as accurate referencing skills and academic reading and writing skills. several scholars have attempted simple definitions (e.g. lathrop & foss, 2000; neville, 2007). however, others have identified complications with these (angelil-carter, 2000; hu & lei, 2015; neville, 2007). for example, neville (2007) acknowledges the difficulty of defining plagiarism, as the elements of unintentional plagiarism are contextually complex. hu and lei (2015:234) state that “plagiarism is often associated with such judgmental labels as deception, cheating, academic crime, intellectual dishonesty, and moral failure”. these terms suggest that plagiarism is a simple issue that has a clear-cut boundary and situates author: mrs nozuko princess mbutho1 dr catherine hutchings2 affiliation: 1cape peninsula university of technology 2university of cape town doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i2.6 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(2): 67-81 published: 11 june 2021 received: 27 may 2020 accepted: 03 august 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 682021 39(2): 68-81 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) students within the “binary of honest or dishonest”, and “ethical or unethical”. these simplified definitions do not address the issue of unintentional plagiarism which is connected to context or cultural variation among students. angelil-carter (2000) sees plagiarism as a difficult and complex concept: the notions of intentional and unintentional plagiarism make it subjective and even more difficult to explain. scholars such as angelil-carter (2000), currie (1998), handa and power (2005), pennycook (1996), scollon (1995), valentine (2006) and vance (2009) share the views comparable of hu and lei (2015). they disagree with the simplistic notion of plagiarism and suggest it is a more complex, multidimensional phenomenon affected by a variety of issues, such as culture, politics, context, historical, social, ideological and language conditions. for example, from studies conducted in china and hong kong, pennycook (1996) concludes that second language educational issues, the concept of author and authority in academic writing and cross-cultural relations that emerge in educational contexts need to be taken into consideration when dealing with cases of plagiarism. referencing has been highlighted as one of the key skills needed in order to avoid plagiarism. it is, however, a highly intricate skill to master. in most cases, referencing is simply defined as acknowledging others’ work in one’s writing. however, the deeper purpose and meaning of referencing is often poorly conveyed to students. for example, the importance of concepts related to the referencing process, such as citation, bibliography and academic reading and writing are seldom explained in detail. as a result, as the literature shows, students usually understand the more superficial definition of plagiarism and not the benefits of referencing and related concepts (ashworth, bannister & thorne, 1997; greenwood, walkem & shearer, 2014). however, the deeper benefits of the referencing process encompass proper/exact citation and formulating an accurate reference list or bibliography in an integrated academic reading and writing process. scholars such as gilbert (1977), hutchings (2013), neville (2010) and samraj (2013) identify several benefits of referencing often not grasped by students. hutchings (2013:312) mentions that “in referring certain ideas to certain sources the writer is equipped with the ability to distinguish voices of others, and therefore allow for the establishment of their voice”. thus, when reading vast amounts of information in preparation for academic writing, one needs to be able to create an argument using others’ voices as well as one’s own voice. this can be achieved by referring to others’ texts and through practise. using one’s own voice is one of the crucial skills needed in academic discourse and referencing is a crucial part of this process. samraj (2013) suggests that this intertextual interlinking (synthesising text from different sources) of the student’s own voice with those of others in academic writing is the hardest part of constructing an academic text and that making a critical and credible connection between what a student did and what is already done by other writers is not an easy task; it requires an ability to look at “the bigger picture”. this is a difficult skill to master and if students disregard the proper citation part of referencing, they miss an opportunity to learn how to cite, and how to use others’ texts effectively in support of their own arguments/voices. gilbert (1977) explained the significance of referencing in scientific/academic writing. he considers a scientific/academic paper a “tool for persuasion”. he explains this concept: scholars who conduct research believe their results are important; they have to persuade the scholars in the field of the importance of these by relating their findings to the current literature in their field to provide evidence or create a persuasive argument for the audience http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 692021 39(2): 69-81 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 mbutho & hutchings the complex concept of plagiarism (other scholars in the field) that their work has a level of validity and is theoretically based. referencing forms a crucial part of this process. similarly, neville (2012) argues for the crucial role of referencing in the collective development and transmission of academic knowledge. referring to the work of other scholars encourages a critical thinking approach through an intelligent selection of quality research findings, reviewing and analysing these findings and presenting them to support a chosen argument. referencing is the practical manifestation of this engagement (neville, 2012). this article’s argument is that a simplistic view of the problem of plagiarism held by higher education institutions and educators could form part of the problem. universities and educators thus need to be mindful of the multifaceted and complex nature of plagiarism and its interlinking with other complex skills that need mastering, such as referencing and academic reading and writing. it is easy as educators to label learners as lazy, thieves or incompetent. thus, we must begin to look at this field with more intensity and sensitivity and teach it in an in-depth way. this is not yet happening, as the norm persists for educators to assume that university students already possess the skills for avoiding plagiarism. we have purposefully chosen to include undergraduate and postgraduate students’ perspectives of plagiarism in a global context as we see this as helping to create a more global, cross-cultural picture of students’ perspectives. by including both perspectives, one can begin to see that the struggles are widespread, from students’ early years of university and into postgraduate levels. with this in mind, it is important that we change how we view and how we address plagiarism education. a review of the literature around perspectives on plagiarism represents an attempt to explore these perspectives under these topics: students’ understanding of plagiarism and related literacy practices, reasons why students plagiarise intentionally or unintentionally, students’ understandings of the seriousness of plagiarism and students’ views on how to curb plagiarism. the database used to select articles for inclusion in this literature review was google scholar. articles published in scholarly, reliably peer-reviewed journals were included. keywords used for searching include “undergraduate students”, “postgraduate students”, “plagiarism”, “referencing” and “perspective”. most of the articles used focus on research done over the last 20 years or more in order to provide give a historic perspective of the persistence of the plagiarism problem over time. the articles were also from multiple contexts to highlight the complexity and the commonality of the problem. forward and backward snowballing was used to obtain more relevant articles. several articles address the issue of plagiarism in connection with other related concepts, such as referencing. this was in order to highlight the multidimensional issue of plagiarism. 2. students’ understanding of plagiarism and related concepts scholars have shown that, except for verbatim parroting and simple definitions of plagiarism and referencing, undergraduate and postgraduate students lack clarity on what fully constitutes referencing and plagiarism (ashworth et al., 1997; branch & iran, 2013; du, 2019; greenwood et al., 2014; gu & brooks, 2007; gullifer & tyson, 2010; heckler & forde, 2014; lea & street, 1998; neville, 2009; perry, 2010; selemani, chawinga & dube, 2018; sentleng & king, 2012; theart & smit, 2012). different, but interlinked themes emerged regarding students’ levels of understanding of plagiarism and related concepts. these themes include: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 702021 39(2): 70-81 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) common trends of superficial understandings of plagiarism, struggles with referencing and its conventions, struggles with intertextuality or text borrowing, difficulty recognising the relevance of referencing when building an argument, difficulty identifying one’s voice and others’ voices in an argument, difficulty understanding the concept of ownership of ideas, difficulty recognising the relationship between plagiarism and referencing in academic writing and misunderstanding the purpose of literature when developing an argument. ashworth et al. (1997) found that students demonstrated a lack of understanding of the concept of plagiarism. these students indicated that they battled with the concept of intertextuality and found the concept of ownership of ideas difficult. this could mean that they battled with differentiating their own voice from the voices of others. this could also mean that creating a new argument through the synthesis of texts and integrations of one’s’ authoritative voice, is not easy. these students were therefore concerned that they might plagiarise unintentionally. this trend of battling with intertextuality is evident in other studies. for example, undergraduate students in a study by gullifer and tyson (2010) had a superficial understanding of plagiarism: they understood that word-for-word copying of text without referencing was plagiarism. they were, however, confused about intertextuality and understanding the relevance of citation and attribution when developing an argument built on evidence from existing literature. similarly, students in gu and brooks’ (2007) study misunderstood the purpose of previous literature in the development of their argument. one student said, “[w]riting english essays is really easy, one has their own idea, one gets someone really powerful to support your idea”. this demonstrates that some students battle with the concept of intertextuality, trying to minimise its role. another student in gu and brooks’ (2007) study thought that referencing is a technical task that could be easily included at the end of the project and expected the lecturer to concentrate on the content rather than on the referencing conventions. students in gu and brooks’ study (2007) also acknowledged their confusion about distinctions between common knowledge, original sources and their own creativity. regarding the understanding of plagiarism and of referencing and its conventions (paraphrasing, summarising, use of quotation marks and proper citation), in most instances students considered that they fully understood these concepts. however, when they were later asked to explain or apply the concepts, they were unable to do so and battled with understanding the link between these concepts. for example, most of the students in theart and smit (2012) and selemani et al.’s (2018) studies indicated that they knew what plagiarism was and demonstrated fairly good explanations. however, students in the selemani et al. (2018) study thought that paraphrasing, summarising and acknowledging sources was a form of plagiarism. some students in their study admitted to paraphrasing, summarising and using quotation marks without proper citation and acknowledgment. this trend is also evident in heckler and forde’s (2014) study, where all students included knew how to define plagiarism and internet plagiarism in simple terms. for example, they knew that reproducing or including another’s work into one’s own without proper attribution was a form of plagiarism. however, in the same study, some students indicated that they did not know how to cite others. this suggests students in studies such as these may be unsure of what fully constitutes proper referencing conventions. concerning the issue of voice, students in the lea and street (1998) study did not feel that they were ready or capable to use their own voice in an authoritative text and were concerned http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 712021 39(2): 71-81 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 mbutho & hutchings the complex concept of plagiarism about textual borrowing practices. gullifer and tyson (2010) observed similar results. one student asked, “if i think it is my brilliant idea, do i have to actually go somewhere and check whether i have stolen it from someone else?” this clearly illustrates the confusion around the identification of the student’s own voice and others’ voices in a text. as a result of all this confusion, students appeared to be concerned that they might plagiarise unintentionally or accidentally because they lacked the skill of borrowing others’ texts appropriately. the complexity of intertextuality is also highlighted in du’s (2019) study. after attending a sixhour instructional block training on referencing, over three consecutive weeks, students could recognise improper source use. students significantly reduced blatant and subtle plagiarism. however, the students did not understand that textual synthesis without acknowledging the source was plagiarism and they relied heavily on the language of the original source. also, in the case of du (2019), due to language differences, the students felt they needed more time to master the skill of referencing. students of all levels (first-year to postgraduate) in perry’s (2010) study had plagiarised in some way. however, first-year undergraduate students were more likely to plagiarise than postgraduate students, with 71% of the first-year students not aware that word-for-word copying without acknowledging the author was plagiarism. students at all levels seemed to have an issue with intertextuality and identification of voice, as well as a poor understanding of referencing conventions. for example, overall, students were unsure whether copying one or two sentences into their assignments without acknowledgment was acceptable. according to perry (2010), undergraduate students were more likely to fabricate references (14%) compared with postgraduate students (4%). riasati and rahimi (2013) identified a poor understanding of plagiarism as the leading reason why many iranian postgraduate students plagiarise. their study showed the crucial importance of students being well trained and groomed throughout their university years to develop these skills. 3. possible reasons why students plagiarise intentionally or unintentionally the reasons for plagiarism are shown to be exceptionally broad and multidimensional. some of the reasons show intentional plagiarism, while others are unintentional. the table below illustrates themes identified from the literature regarding reasons for intentional and unintentional plagiarism. they are discussed further below. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 722021 39(2): 72-81 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) table 1: reasons for plagiarism discrepancies in the way plagiarism is taught lack of formal training in plagiarism related concepts. provision of plagiarism and referencing documents without explanation. lack of guidance and support by the educators. unrealistic expectations by educators that university students will read and understand plagiarism documents and quickly transform themselves into good academic writers without explicit guidance. students’ heavy workloads. use of legalistic, threatening and authoritative techniques to deter students from plagiarising. the assessment methods used (e.g. assignments not clear or heavy or difficult, group assignments and easily duplicatable assignments). inconsistencies among educators: some interested in addressing plagiarism, others ignoring it. poor underlying/ supporting skill poor language proficiency. poor writing skills. the inability to manage large amounts of text (intertextuality). lack of institutional guidelines lack of transparent and explicit guidelines and strategies on what to do if a student plagiarises. non-existent or overly demanding monitoring systems. lack of institutional support classes being too large for an academic staff member to handle effectively. heavy workloads for students and academics. lack of student efforts/ commitment students’ lack of interest in a specific topic the need for immediate gratification (competition, convenience and good grades). other factors financial issues. external pressures (family or society, diverse cultural and educational backgrounds). time management issues. in sentleng and king’s (2012) study, students’ reasons for unintentionally plagiarising included: poor writing skills, lack of referencing skills and never having been taught how to reference properly. these are similar to those identified in perry’s (2010) study, where students’ reasons were: lack of understanding what constitutes academic misconduct; some undergraduate and postgraduate students did not recall being taught about referencing or plagiarism. these reasons seem to suggest that if these students had been afforded an opportunity to learn and acquire the skill, they would be less likely to plagiarise. students in the heckler and forde (2014) study blamed their faculty: the faculty did not explain the assignments clearly enough, faculty’s expectations were too high; the classes were too big, resulting in monitoring systems being difficult or non-existent. some students felt the professors did not care about this issue, thus providing the freedom for students to continue http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 732021 39(2): 73-81 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 mbutho & hutchings the complex concept of plagiarism plagiarising. they also blamed lecturers’ lack of effective strategies when dealing with plagiarism within departments. ashworth et al. (1997) identified various reasons for plagiarism: heavy workload, poor understanding of the content and students paying little attention to content they felt would not benefit them in the future. students identified some of the institutional factors they thought contributed to plagiarism. these included a lack of guidelines from the university regarding what plagiarism entails and vague consequences and penalty guidelines. students also felt that collaborative work encouraged plagiarism as students could easily collude and steal others’ work. according to students in gullifer and tyson’s (2010) study, they were given no formal introduction to, or training in, the scholarship of academic writing when they entered university. they felt that when they first entered the university they were bombarded with information on plagiarism and related academic concepts and given no time to absorb the information. they believed that simply providing online access to the plagiarism documents was not enough, as it did not promote an in-depth understanding of academic writing and plagiarism concepts or how to apply these in practice. exposing students to documents that merely warn them about the consequences of plagiarism might not be beneficial for novice students who have not yet begun to understand why referencing is important for them personally. undergraduate students who are new to the academic culture of reading and writing would not necessarily be aware of the seriousness of plagiarism and referencing unless someone takes time to induct them into these discourses in a supportive learning environment. according to gullifer and tyson (2010), students also need time to absorb and process new information and put it into practice without being subject to threatening behaviour from the institution. students felt that the university was not doing enough to make all aspects of plagiarism more explicit. branch and iran (2013) identified several reasons for plagiarism. their students mentioned poor writing skills, poor language competencies, difficulty and heaviness of assignments and projects, convenience, external pressures from family and society and financial reasons. one could argue that, out of all these reasons, only three could lead to unintentional plagiarism. the rest of the reasons are influenced by students’ choice. for example, students found it convenient to bypass the time and effort involved in learning to synthesise vast amounts of information and learning to identify their own authoritative voice and the voices of others. students chose to plagiarise as they felt technology made it easy for them and thus one could argue that these students were looking for the immediate gratification of getting good grades with no future benefits in mind resulting from their academic writing development. some students in heckler and forde’s (2014) study took responsibility and accountability for their unacceptable intentional plagiarising. they sometimes plagiarised because of poor time management or they wanted good grades or the immediate gratification from obtaining good grades. in this 2014 study, intentional plagiarism was also attributed to usa cultural value systems. students identified the two highest contributory values to plagiarism: individualism and freedom. the notion of individualism was made clear by one student: “our culture tells us to do whatever it takes to be successful even if it means cheating” (heckler & forde, 2014:68). another student mentioned the culture of intense competitiveness to achieve individual success at all costs; a culture that influences the criteria by which one’s academic performance is judged: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 742021 39(2): 74-81 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) there is a stronger emphasis on making sure that you are one step ahead of everyone else; hard work and self-knowledge has taken a back burner. instead of valuing the process by which an education is obtained, and information learned through the process, our culture value of individual achievements means that rewards are based only on grades (heckler & forde, 2014:68). the notion of freedom was also reported as one to be valued. the students felt that, being no longer under the control of their parents, provided freedom to do whatever they liked. it is, however, surprising to see that the same values contributing to cheating and plagiarism for some students were seen as counter-productive by other students. for example, the freedom to make a morally responsible choice was valued by some students. individualism was also seen as a negative and harmful value by some students, who criticised those students who emphasised and valued individual merit. based on the students’ views, heckler and forde (2014) suggested that: …current emphasis on faculty grantsmanship, research, and publication should be balanced with teaching function responsibilities that include faculty vigilance on academic dishonesty issues. the challenge of doing this is significant as institutions opt for larger classes, more online instructions, and use of non-tenure-track contract instructors to carry heavy enrolment loads (heckler & forde, 2014:70). other students who took some responsibility for intentional plagiarism were those surveyed by sentleng and king (2012) in south africa. these students acknowledged that some of them lost track of where the information came from. this deficit could be improved when students understand the purpose and benefits of referencing and practise the skill. diverse cultural and educational background factors have also been identified as a possible contributing factor to plagiarism and poor referencing conventions. for example, chinese students interviewed by gu and brooks (2007) felt that the british university they were at concentrated excessively on citation and referencing relative to the focus on this in their background education, which focused mainly on profound collective knowledge a student presented in an essay. guo (2011) also mentions that a limited command of english could trap students from different language backgrounds into plagiarising. lea and street (1998) argued that top down authoritative behaviour towards students by tutors or academic staff when trying to reinforce or enforce plagiarism does not yield the desired results. their study illustrates how authoritative behaviour, used without proper guidelines, took away from the beneficial teaching and learning aspects that take place between tutors and students. the students were not happy with unclear and intimidating ways of enforcing referencing and required explicit teaching in exactly what constitutes plagiarism. mckenna (2010) shares similar views and suggestions to those of lea and street (1998). she argues that, as teaching academics in higher education, we should position ourselves with our students in the periphery, where they are relegated by the institution and with those students who do not understand the value of referencing or a particular literacy skill and make explicit to them the value of the academic literacy skill. other scholars, such as gravett and kinchin (2018), who examined the challenges experienced by students when developing referencing skills, reported that undergraduate students felt that the use of scare tactics or threatening speech about what could happen to them if they plagiarise was terrifying and paralysing. the emphasis on punishment and on authoritative speech made the research development journey a difficult one for students and failed to take into account the foundation http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 752021 39(2): 75-81 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 mbutho & hutchings the complex concept of plagiarism of good academic practice. this stress is not beneficial to students, especially when lecturing staff are in the process of trying to initiate students into university life. gravett and kinchin (2018) add that the focus on punishment and penalties puts the lecturer in a non-beneficial position of power over these students who are trying to adapt to a new environment and become accustomed to new and unfamiliar academic conventions. the literature also shows the evidence of the use of intimidation in institutional documents such as study guides, notice boards and assessment marking rubrics. for example, in lea and street’s (1998) study, such institutional documents used to caution students against plagiarism focused mainly on the legal consequences and disciplinary actions and were couched in “legalistic discourse”. this mode of delivery of plagiarism information is not unique to the lea and street (1998) study. according to manathunga and goozee (2007), there appears to be an unspoken, “common sense” assumption amongst lecturers and tutors that undergraduate graduates can transform themselves magically into independent critical thinkers and academic writers with minimal pedagogical input or support. however, studies mentioned in this review have found that students need to be introduced to any new discourse gradually and be fully supported. the alternative is that unsupported students will not have a full grasp or a uniform in-depth understanding of or the ability to apply the concepts of academic writing and critical thinking in their own writing. hamilton (2016) argues that academic staff should not expect first-year students to have acquired high referencing and citation conventions from the first semester. using the threshold conceptual framework, hamilton (2016) argues that students need to be given enough time to acquire the skill of referencing. kiley and wisker (2009) describe crossing the conceptual threshold as involving a transformation from old understanding of a concept to the new way of thinking. without this transformative, non-linear, and, what authorities might see as, messy process, students cannot progress to advanced levels of understanding and insight about a discipline. hamilton (2016) sees attribution as a conceptual gateway that new students need to be given time to cross. once they cross this, “they may change from experiencing confusion over why the acknowledgment of sources is given so much emphasis in assessments of their writing, to understanding the fundamental role of attribution and referencing in academic writing” (hamilton, 2016:44). hamilton (2016) and manathunga and goozee’s (2007) arguments are similar. however, hamilton was referring to first year undergraduate students (“novice” academic writers) and manathunga and goozee (2007) were referring to graduate students proceeding into the postgraduate level of education and doing research. both studies suggest that the attribution and referencing skill may take time to master and that students need to be realistically awarded this time, taking into consideration their individual backgrounds. furthermore, in some cases, master’s students and phd students are referred to as novice writers, implying that they too are in the process of mastering attribution and referencing skills. for example, a survey conducted by adika (2014) of 125 master’s students attending graduate programmes at the university of ghana, showed that although the majority of the students declared themselves to have a substantial level of training in referencing styles, the researcher identified a gap in their practical knowledge of the referencing format. furthermore, these students indicated that while some lecturers required them to reference, others did not require them to explicitly http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 762021 39(2): 76-81 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) acknowledge their use of source material to develop their own argument. these inconsistencies among lecturers send mixed messages to students regarding the importance of referencing. 4. the seriousness of plagiarism contradictory views were found in the literature regarding students’ perspectives about the seriousness of plagiarism. while some students thought penalties for plagiarism should be implemented, others felt these were too severe or disproportionally severe, and some felt they were simply vague and not transparent enough. some complained plagiarism practices were not monitored effectively in their faculties while others did not care about students plagiarising. some students felt plagiarism was unacceptable, others that it was acceptable in some instances. for example, some students who do their best to follow the right procedures might find it unfair when others plagiarise and pass with no effort and no consequences. in the ashworth et al. (1997) study, students felt that plagiarism was unfair, wrong and bad practice. however, some thought plagiarism was unfair only if it impacted their peers’ work, but then again, felt that if plagiarising was from a book, it was not as bad, as the individuals who wrote the book were not on the same academic level or status as the student (ashworth et al., 1997). this sentiment is in itself an indication of the extent to which students are not aware of, or are confused about, the benefits of grasping the referencing/plagiarism concept and able to use this skill in their academic writing and critical thinking for their own benefit. students in the ashworth et al. (1997) study also felt that premeditated cheating in an examination was the most serious offence, while plagiarism from course work assignments was less serious. this kind of thinking demonstrates how a lack of understanding of referencing and plagiarism could hinder student development in academic writing. in other words, if students are not referencing and are plagiarising, how can they improve the skills of intertextuality or understand the concept of the ownership of ideas? in a study by greenwood et al. (2014), most of the students felt that referencing was important. however, they were not fully confident about referencing and felt inadequately prepared for the required academic writing standards. therefore, it seems that, for the students in this study, plagiarism was caused by a lack of skill, rather than unwilling attitudes. gravett and kinchin’s (2018) study further demonstrated students’ awareness of the importance of referencing. for example, students in this study were very anxious about academic referencing skills and scared they might fail due to unintentional plagiarism. as a result, some of these students enquired about the skill from individuals such as lecturers and librarians. students in gullifer and tyson’s study (2010) perceived intentional plagiarism as serious. however, they felt that for unintentional plagiarism, penalties the university imposed were disproportionally severe. similarly, some students in theart and smit’s (2012) study considered punishment for plagiarism unfair, while some did not care if others plagiarised. the majority also indicated that they would not report plagiarism incidences. most of the students thought that severe punishment for plagiarism and the introduction of a code of conduct was needed to prevent students from plagiarising. it could therefore be argued that, in general some students do not see the long-term benefits of referencing; instead they value the immediate gratification of high marks. sentleng and king’s (2012) south african study investigating plagiarism among 139 undergraduates found that 41% of the students felt plagiarism was to be taken seriously. however, plagiarism was still evident amongst students within the department under study. some students in the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 772021 39(2): 77-81 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 mbutho & hutchings the complex concept of plagiarism gullifer and tyson (2010) study felt that the penalties for unintentional plagiarism were too severe. however, while the students in this study were aware that plagiarism is a serious offence, unfair and unethical as a practice in terms of acknowledging other scholars’ work, they chose to plagiarise in spite of this view. 5. student views to curb plagiarism the literature regarding undergraduate and postgraduate perspectives of plagiarism and related concepts indicates resolving issues of plagiarism and improper referencing in academic writing to be a daunting task requiring a variety of strategies. various studies have raised a considerable number of concerns from students and university staff. the recommendations below represent a combination of suggestions from students and researchers from the various studies reviewed. to address the issue of lack of training, guo (2011) recommends the inclusion of a module in the curriculum design that addresses plagiarism, referencing and academic writing conventions in all accounting departments. it is, however, clear – from the various studies – that this suggestion could benefit all faculties in a university. students in the selemani et al. (2018) study advocated for advanced training in information literacy to be offered to postgraduate students. guo (2011) proposes new students should be integrated thoroughly and in a variety of practical and experiential ways into their new academic life. selemani et al. (2018) suggest that academic literacy training for postgraduates should include advanced academic writing skills, paraphrasing, summarising, synthesising of texts as well as referencing skills. this kind of training would also be beneficial to undergraduate students. branch and iran (2013) suggest that academic lecturers inform students about plagiarism and the severe punishments incurred. however, several other scholars see the use of intimidating and authoritative punishment messages of punishment by lectures and in institutional documents as creating unnecessary anxiety: students need explicit teaching in what constitutes plagiarism and related concepts. gullifer and tyson (2010) and mckenna (2010) also suggest that information regarding plagiarism and other literacy practices need to be made explicit in an environment that promotes learning and that lecturers’ common sense assumption that students access the information on plagiarism on their own is unfounded. guo (2011) points out that students who perceive themselves to be poorly integrated into academic life are more likely to engage in plagiarism and hence appropriate integration is important. guo (2011) mentions that raising students’ awareness of plagiarism and its implications is important for preventing the incidence of plagiarism. this suggests the importance of formal training and continuous awareness campaigns. concerning poor writing skills, selemani et al. (2018) and branch and iran (2013) suggest that academic staff strengthen students’ writing and research skills. they advocate for students to be taught how to summarise, paraphrase and synthesise information as well as how to cite articles. students also felt that papers must be planned and written in a step-by-step way under the supervision of an academic member of staff. branch and iran (2013) also suggest students be thoroughly informed about the use of software and search engines that can detect plagiarism. land et al. (2005), cited in hamilton (2016), recommend a supportive liminal space where it is acknowledged that transformation needs time, as it is a period of uncertainty during which individual novice academic writers move to become more experienced writers. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 782021 39(2): 78-81 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) heckler and forde (2014) suggest that imbalances in academic staff workloads such as overloaded classes or high teaching load, for example, could be contributing to the following factors: poor and shorter referencing training, handing out of referencing and plagiarism documents without proper guidelines to the students, inconsistencies in terms of some lecturers enforcing referencing skill and others not enforcing referencing and poor feedback or lack of feedback. therefore, they propose that support of academic staff play a crucial role and should not be taken lightly in developing the students’ referencing skills. students in perry’s (2010) study recommended the annual design of new assignments that have fewer generic solutions available on the internet, challenging students suspected of plagiarism and giving out positive messages about accurate referencing for solid future scholarship. furthermore, students in branch and iran’s (2013) study contributed valuable suggestions and views on allocated assignments. they felt that, firstly, academic staff should select reasonably challenging topics that students are knowledgeable about and interested in. secondly, academic staff should employ and encourage students in time management techniques and give them realistic time frames to manage an assignment. thirdly, the students felt academic staff should familiarise the students with plagiarism prevention techniques. however, as mentioned earlier, this kind of support required by the students from the academic staff would put pressure on lecturers and academic staff would need institutional assistance. recommendations or studies on how academic staff can be supported to deliver more efficiently, without burnout, would be beneficial to their students. guo (2011) recommends the issue of cultural diversity should be considered. cultural and educational backgrounds can give rise to a variety of issues, including language incompetency and a complete lack of prior exposure to expected academic literacies when students come to the university. 6. conclusion this literature review revealed undergraduate and postgraduate students’ lack of an in-depth understanding of plagiarism and related concepts. although many students were found to be able to define plagiarism and referencing, most were unable to see the multidimensional nature of these conventions. the reasons provided for plagiarism in this literature were mostly related to an absence or lack of in-depth education, of support from the institution and educators, of understanding of the value and relevance of these conventions and lack of appropriate training provided for educators who in many cases are also postgraduate students, inadequate amounts of time for students to transition and build the required academic literacy skills in a gradual and incremental way. lack of understanding and of pre-university education could be part of the reason why some students do not take plagiarism and related concepts seriously. based on these conclusions we advocate for the following to be addressed by universities and educators: universities should refrain from providing shorthand training to the students. we support the views of gu (2012) on the inclusion of a course that encompasses all of the literacy practices highlighted in this literature. each year of study, especially at the undergraduate level, should include a course that addresses literacy practices in-depth and in practical ways. when such a course is developed, it should undergo a rigorous process to ensure that it has covered the kind of in-depth knowledge suited for that level of study. we consider this process to be crucial to the development of this academic writing conventions course. furthermore, this process would ensure that during department quality audits this http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 792021 39(2): 79-81 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.6 mbutho & hutchings the complex concept of plagiarism course is assessed in terms of its appropriateness, comprehensiveness and its delivery and assessment methods. additionally, the importance given by undergraduate and postgraduate students to the need for the extensive involvement of teachers/academic staff concerning the solution to the problem of plagiarism should be taken seriously. for this suggestion to be put into practice, a university would need to play a significant, active and ongoing role in equipping and supporting academic staff. we would hope that the institution comes to realise that educators are also part of the system that has failed to educate students in the nature and implications of plagiarism and that it behoves the institution to train students and educators more appropriately and thoroughly in this area. we have argued that the educator’s role be a mindful one, that they do not take the simplistic route when educating learners or merely issue instructions about plagiarism and related concepts and the penalties for plagiarising. they need to gauge the extent of students’ prior knowledge before making assumptions about their understanding. educators should also create a positive learning environment, one that encourages students to share their concerns about plagiarism and related concepts, one where they can be supported to incrementally build the skills they need to become competent writers of academic discourse. ideally an educator would guide the student into an understanding of the complex and interlinking nature of plagiarism, referencing and academic writing. university educators also 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https://doi.org/10.1177/2f1469787410365657 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2013.09.001 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeap.2013.09.001 https://doi.org/10.1017/s0047404500018388 https://doi.org/10.1007/s40979-018-0029-6 https://doi.org/10.7553/78-1-47 http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ curationis.v35i1.27 http://dx.doi.org/10.4102/ curationis.v35i1.27 35 reading skills can predict the programming performance of novices: an eye-tracking study abstract due to the character of programming languages, reading ability may have more impact on learning to program than on learning in other subjects. this paper describes an exploratory study of the relationship between reading skills, as perceived through eye tracking, and the ability to program. an empirical investigation into this relationship determined that students with inadequate reading skills are at risk of failing at introductory programming. as an explanation for the effect of reading ability on learning to program, we argue that a programming language is a special high-level written language and that using it requires high levels of comprehension, inferencing, selective attention, organising and reflecting. as a result, a student’s reading ability will have a considerable effect on learning to program. lack of reading skills may therefore be a factor that affect students’ ability to learn to program. eye tracking can expose reading skills and, therefore, be used to identify at-risk introductory programming students. the practical contribution of this research is the demonstration of how eye tracking can reveal reading problems among programming students. we relate these reading problems to their programming performance, providing a theoretical account of the connection. the results suggest that efforts to improve reading skills could have a positive impact on learning to program. keywords: human-computer interface; interactive learning environments; post-secondary education; programming and programming languages; reading skills; teaching/learning strategies 1. introduction a considerable amount of computing education research concentrate on the challenges novices experience in learning to program, the reasons therefor and aspects that forecast student success. however, a programming language is similar to other languages; with the difference being that it is never spoken, only written. furthermore, it is a high-level language that requires the capacity to infer meaning between text elements and relate information between textual units that do not always appear in sequence. this suggests that the ability to use a programming language proficiently would necessitate good reading ability. the relationship between students’ reading ability, as revealed through eye tracking, and their experience of learning to program is considered in this paper. we discuss marthie schoeman unisa schoema@unisa.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v37i2.3 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 37(2): 35-52 date published: 27 november 2019 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:author1@myemail.com http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i2.3 36 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) the relationship between reading patterns, as revealed by means of eye tracking, and students’ performance as novice programmers. these eye-tracking observations were part of a larger project to develop a program visualisation (pv) tool to teach introductory programming students in an odl environment, to trace programs in order to improve students’ programming skills. the research question for the larger project was “will a tutorial to teach tracing to visualise program execution and parameter transfer assist students in acquiring programming skills in an odl environment so that it is noticeable in average marks?”. the purpose of the eye-tracking study was to evaluate the usability of the pv artefact developed to assist learner programmers. during the eye-tracking evaluation, the relationship between students’ gaze patterns, as captured while reading text on screen, and their performance as novice programmers emerged. this led us to believe that the students’ reading skills have a significant impact on their capacity to learn how to program, and that using eye tracking to detect reading patterns could offer a means to identify at-risk students in introductory programming modules. the main contributions of this article to this discipline are: • an explanation of why lack of reading skills may have an effect on students’ capacity to learn to program • empirical evidence confirming a relationship between reading proficiency and learning to program • a demonstration of how eye tracking can be used to expose poor reading skills so as to identify students at risk of failing. in the sections to follow, we first present a literature review that covers the process of reading, how eye tracking can be used to reveal reading ability, the relationship between reading and academic success and the relationship between reading program code and learning to program. the current situation is considered briefly. we discuss two cycles of direct live observation and eye tracking, as well as an analysis of participants’ gaze replays and their responses to a questionnaire. we then relate their achievement in an entry-level programming course to the results, with possible explanations for the major effect inadequate reading skills seems to have on learning to program. ethical clearance for this study has been granted by the research and ethics committee (crec) of the college of science, engineering and technology’s (cset) of unisa. 2. a review of related work in this review, we relate reading ability to learning by describing the cognitive processes involved in reading to learn. we also describe how reading skills can be detected by eye tracking. finally, we review the relationship between academic success and reading as well as the role of reading in learning to program. 2.1 reading and learning reading is a cognitive-linguistic activity representing a combination of several skills of which decoding and comprehension are the two primary elements. decoding refers to the more technical ability to convert written symbols into language. comprehension concerns creating meaning from the entire text (pretorius & ribbens, 2005). good decoding skills are necessary for effective comprehension, however good decoding skills on its own will not suffice for successful comprehension (bertram, 2006). to successfully comprehend, requires inferencing too, i.e. the capability to complete gaps between text elements and relate information across 37 schoeman reading skills can predict the programming performance of novices... textual units (rickheit, schnotz & strohner, 1985). according to kendeou, van den broek, helder and karlsson (2014:6), “at its core, reading comprehension involves the construction of a coherent mental representation of the text in the reader’s memory”. to be a good reader requires being a good comprehender (bertram, 2006). reading also includes additional higher-level executive function processes like organising and contemplating information in working memory while selectively focussing on particular factors in the text (kendeou et al., 2014). according to the cognitive load theory, to learn requires processing information in both working memory and long-term memory. working memory has a restricted processing capacity, constrained by the intrinsic cognitive load (the difficulty of the subject matter), extraneous cognitive load (the way information is presented) and germane cognitive load (when information is presented in such a way that it facilitates the construction of cognitive schemas) (wouters, paas & merriënboer, 2008). the difference between decoding and comprehension allows for the identification of three levels of reading ability, each reflecting a specific reading maturation level (mccormick, 1997): • independent level: reading with 98% decoding accuracy and a 95% level of comprehension enable such highly-skilled readers to access information independently and learn from texts effectively. • instructional level: readers reading with 95% decoding accuracy and a 75% level of comprehension do not have major reading problems, but reading instruction at their development level will benefit them. • frustration level: readers with less than 90% decoding accuracy and 60% or less comprehension have major reading problems, particularly with comprehension, and read below maturation level. they need intensive reading programmes to improve their reading ability. decoding allows children to learn to read, but they need to understand (comprehend) to read to learn. during grades 9 to 12, successful readers master demanding subjects better through reading than by listening, whereas listening comprehension is better than reading comprehension for less skilled readers. at the post-school stage, highly-skilled readers find reading more effective than listening when learning (pretorius & ribbens, 2005). 2.2 reading skills, thinking skills and eye tracking rayner and pollatsek (2006) consider capturing eye movements as one of the best techniques to investigate language comprehension processes. recording eye movements also allows studying cognitive processes and cognitive load (zagermann, pfeil & reiterer, 2016). eye movement patterns are associated with reading skills (ashby, rayner & clifton, 2005; chace, rayner & well, 2005; krieber, bartl-pokorny, pokorny, einspieler, langmann, körner, falck-ytter & marschik, 2016). programme for international student assessment (pisa) results distinguishing between lowand high-scoring readers also correspond with eyetracking measurements of reading skills (krstić, šoškić, ković & holmqvist, 2018). eye movements during reading comprise fixations (where eye movement pause on a particular zone), saccades (moving the eyes between fixations) and regressions (saccades where eyes are moving backwards in the text). regressions typically occur when a reader finds the text difficult or do not understand what was read (rayner & pollatsek, 2006). regressive eye movements give an indication of the point at which a reader realises (if unconsciously) 38 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) that the initial decoding was incorrect (frazier & rayner, 1987; rayner & pollatsek, 2006). the level of difficulty associated with understanding a word during reading determines how long readers fixate on that word. readers will fixate longer on less frequently used and less predictable words, skip these words less and refixate on them more often (rayner & pollatsek, 2006). a high fixation duration with a lower fixation rate indicate increased strain on the working memory (chen, epps, ruiz & chen, 2011). both fixation and saccade length are influenced by text difficulty, reading skills and characteristics of the writing system and can cause substantial variation in these values. the cognitive workload required in linguistic processing determines to a large extent the duration of fixations (radach & kennedy, 2013). the length and velocity of saccades are also affected by cognitive workload (zagermann et al., 2016). longer fixations, shorter saccades and more regressions are characteristic of beginner, less skilled and dyslexic readers, and characterises reading more difficult text too (rayner, 2009). non-english-speaking readers have longer fixations and shorter saccades, resulting in a decreased reading speed when reading english text (beymer, russell & orton, 2008). to dyslexic readers, letters may appear to move around so that their vision is unstable (stein & walsh, 1997). mindless reading shows longer and more off-text fixations (reichle, reineberg & schooler, 2010). displays of rapid disruptions in eye movement control may signify difficulties in processing syntax (frazier & rayner, 1987). in summary, eye-tracking studies show that skilled readers display shorter fixation durations, with fewer fixations and regressions (krieber et al., 2016). poor or low-skilled readers use longer fixations, different saccadic patterns and more regressions, and they also focus less on relevant text and reread text unselectively (kaakinen, lehtola & paattilammi, 2015). 2.3 reading and academic success marshall (2016) considers reading skills to be inextricably linked to academic success. poor reading skills can account for up to 80% of all learning difficulties (louden, chan, elkins, greaves, house, milton, nichols, rivalland, rohl & van kraayenoord, 2000) and reading ability is viewed as one of the most important predictors of academic success in higher education (bertram, 2006; marshall, 2016). reading ability is also a predictor of understanding and learning science (hall, maltby, filik & paterson, 2016). ritchie and bates (2013) found that efficient childhood mathematics and reading skills are associated with higher marks as well as higher qualifications and higher socioeconomic status. the effect is more pronounced for second-language english speakers having to read english text (gous & roberts, 2014). our study was conducted in south africa, where, for most university students, english is their second language. pillay and jugoo (2005) observed that south african programming students whose first language differed from the teaching language achieved lower marks. stoffelsma and spooren (2018), too, found that students’ academic english reading proficiency at the start of their tertiary education in a non-western multilingual academic context (ghana) predicted and affected both their marks in the first year and the fourth year. 2.4 reading and learning to program an absence of viable mental models for programming is often the cause for novice programmers’ problems (kieras & bovair, 1984). kieras and bovair define a mental model as some kind of 39 schoeman reading skills can predict the programming performance of novices... understanding of how a device works in terms of its internal structure and processes. a model is a representation of some information, physical reality or virtual entity that hides details and aspects not critical to the phenomenon being modelled. it can therefore be manipulated and simulated, but still has the ability to provide predictions or cause change in the modelled world (isbell, stein, cutler, forbes, fraser, impagliazzo, proulx, russ, thomas & xu, 2010). a mental model is thus a person’s internal representation of an entity, how it behaves and what responses can be expected from it. mental models for programming include models of the programming language (i.e. control, data structures and data representation) and the computer, an understanding of the realworld problem domain and program design as well as a model of the actual program (robins, rountree & rountree, 2003). novices have difficulty in basic program planning and they often have fragile programming-specific knowledge (pears, seidman, malmi, mannila, adams, bennedsen, devlin & patterson, 2007; robins et al., 2003), but learning to apply rather than understand basic concepts appears to be the biggest problem (dale, 2006; lahtinen, alamutka & järvinen, 2005; milne & rowe, 2002; soloway & spohrer, 1989). one can only apply knowledge once it has been internalised, which requires a viable mental model of the knowledge. readers construct a mental model of the content of text (kendeou et al., 2014). a skilled reader will be more experienced in creating mental models, which should assist in creating the mental models involved in programming. the section of the brain where reading is processed was initially used to find objects and circumnavigate the surroundings (gous & roberts, 2014). like navigation, reading consists of negotiating objects (words and letters) in a specific setting (the larger text). similarly, program code represents an abstract space to be surveyed with the same cognitive approaches as used to investigate natural surroundings (reddivari & kotapalli, 2017), since to understand a program is a “process of generating a cognitive map from the program source-code to a set of application domain concepts” (cox, fisher, & o’brien, 2005:93). this corresponds to developing a mental model. students’ spatial ability, i.e. their capability to circumnavigate, and their marks in programming modules display a high correlation, in contrast to far lower correlations between their spatial ability and their marks for non-programming modules. students with a low spatial ability also used less effectual navigational approaches in their attempts to understand code (jones & burnett, 2007). the association between reading and navigational ability accounts for the higher degree of problems students with lower spatial ability experience with programming, sustaining chmura’s finding (1998) that students lacking in comprehension skills find it difficult to learn to program. greater spatial skills also provide for more effective understanding of science texts, apparently because of the part that spatial skills play to create mental models (jaeger, taylor & wiley, 2016). the bracelet project (lister, fidge & teague, 2009; venables, tan & lister, 2009) found that students who cannot read and explain program code cannot write program code. in this instance, reading code refers to tracing code, not to reading natural language text, as discussed earlier. tracing is the “mental simulation of a program execution” (vainio & sajaniemi, 2007:78), that is, to imitate, at some level of detail and accuracy, the process of a computer executing code (fitzgerald, simon & thomas, 2005). this involves creating a mental model of what the code does, which requires comprehending and inferencing on a higher level than reading natural language text. 40 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) to relate this to the reading maturation levels discussed in section 2.1, we can infer that in order to trace and explain program code, a student needs to be at least at instructional level, so that a mental model can be created. readers at frustration level will struggle to achieve this. furthermore, the tight integration of concepts in a programming language signifies a heavy intrinsic cognitive load (robins, 2010). insufficient reading skills would enforce a heavy cognitive load on working memory, hindering inferencing, paying selective attention and organising and reflecting, thus increasing the difficulty in understanding the study material. students who experience reading problems accordingly will find it difficult to learn to program. busjahn, schulte and busjahn’s study (2011), comparing natural language text reading and code reading, also found a significant increase in fixation duration and regression when subjects read source code, confirming the higher level of difficulty required to read and understand source code. 3. current situation a systematic literature review on introductory programming between 2003 and 2017 inclusive reveals that a small number of papers (no more than three per year) report on studies on the thinking processes of novice programmers (luxton-reilly, simon, albluwi, becker, giannakos, kumar, ott, paterson, scott, sheard & szabo, 2018). nonetheless, the use of eye tracking in programming to study cognitive processes in programming is rising (obaidellah, al haek & cheng, 2018). these studies are typically qualitative involving small numbers of participants, justifying larger and quantitative studies on the thinking processes of novice programmers. since the ability to read program code has been identified as a fundamental building block in learning to program (lister et al., 2009; venables et al., 2009), some work has been done on assisting students in developing code reading skills (sudol, stehlik & carver, 2012; busjahn & schulte, 2013; cunningham, blanchard, ericson & guzdial, 2017). however, according to obaidellah et al. (2018), by june 2017 only two papers on comparing the difference between reading natural language text and source code had been published (busjahn et al., 2011; peachock, iovino & sharif, 2017); reading is often overlooked in the teaching of programming skills (bednarik, schulte, budd, heinemann & vrzakova, 2018) and the process of reading code is not well understood either (luxton-reilly et al., 2018). 4. contextualisation of the study and methodology 4.1 background this exploratory study stems from a larger design-based project aimed at improving the tracing skills of first-year programming students enrolled for an introductory c++ programming course. for this purpose, an interactive computer-based artefact to teach students to trace program code by drawing variable diagrams was developed and tested. the research was done over four semesters at unisa – a large open distance and e-learning (odel) institution where, during the study, between 1 200 and 2 200 students were enrolled per semester. we evaluated the artefact, called the drawing variable diagrams tutorial (dvdt), for usability and user experience (ux) using eye tracking and a post-test questionnaire. usability is defined as “the extent to which a product can be used by specified users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use” (iso 9241210:2010(e), 2010:3). user experience is related to usability and defined as “a person’s 41 schoeman reading skills can predict the programming performance of novices... perceptions and responses resulting from the use and/or anticipated use of a product, system or service” (iso 9241-210:2010(e), 2010:3). the dvdt is intended to assist students in learning how to trace program code by following the process of doing so. each activity in the dvdt demonstrates the tracing of a program or program segment by drawing variable diagrams, statement by statement. during the program trace, each statement is also explained. to explain a statement, the screen is divided into four panels, as shown in figure 1. the four panels respectively show the program code, the computer memory, the program output and an explanation of the statement. the purpose of each panel is briefly explained inside the corresponding box in fig. 1. the “next” and “back” buttons is used to move forwards and backwards through an activity. the “index” button provides a drop-down menu that allows users to choose an activity, while the instructions button provides an explanation of how to use the tool. figure 1. screen layout for tutorial while analysing the results of the eye tracking study, it became noticeable that certain students exhibited reading patterns indicative of insufficient reading skills. these students typically also did not pass the module. we investigated this further using the methods explained below. 4.2 methods the dvdt was developed and tested repeatedly over two cycles (two years). one of the methods used to evaluate the dvdt is user testing conducted in a human-computer interaction (hci) laboratory. a usability study using eye tracking tested one set of students from each year, i.e. two sets in total. the intention was to observe and study how students would interact with the dvdt when using it by themselves and at home. 42 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) 4.2.1 data collection volunteers for observation and eye tracking as they used the dvdt was recruited from the course cohort using self-selecting sampling. an email was sent to all students registered for the course inviting them to participate. no reward was proffered for participating. sixteen students in total volunteered for the evaluation. both the first and the second cycle of usability and ux evaluation employed the same procedure. a tobii t120 eye tracker with a fixation radius set at 35 pixels and a 5-point eye tracking calibration was used to record participants’ eye movements while they performed various tasks on the dvdt. students were observed one at time. once a participant had signed the informed consent form, the purpose of the eye tracking session was explained to him/her and the calibration performed. the participants received a task list that comprised six activities they had to work through during the observation. this included both a pre-test comprehension test and a retrospective comprehension test as well as an open-ended posttest questionnaire1 to reflect on the encounter. data in the form of gaze videos (showing the animated fixation paths) and static gaze plots was exported using the tobii studio software. gaze videos are graphical representations of the gaze data superimposed on screen recordings of the students’ interaction with the dvdt. the gaze videos include a small video showing the participants’ face. 4.2.2 data analysis the static gaze plots were not used in the analysis because they were not really comparable across participants. the reason is that participants followed diverse paths through the tasks and scrolled in different ways through the contents of the individual panels. we analysed only the gaze videos. the animated gaze videos were analyzed qualitatively by creating rich descriptions of each participant’s interaction with the tutorial. all videos were viewed individually, in succession, while detailed notes of each participant’s actions, menu selections, reactions and body language on the recorded gaze videos were made. the fixation patterns, gaze paths and regressions were also analyzed for each participant. the sequence of fixations indicated how their eyes moved between the four quadrants of the tutorial screen. the time spent reading a statement or description, and the time spent on each quadrant was also analysed. during this analysis we were specifically looking for insight into the usability and user experience of students as they used the dvdt. a side effect of this analysis was that students’ reading ability became apparent through the results. fig. 2 and fig. 3 show extracts from the gaze paths of a skilled reader and a participant less skilled in reading respectively. the sequence of fixations is indicated by the numbers on the fixation circles. in fig. 3 the fixations jump from panel to panel while in fig.2 the fixation path follows the words as they are read. 1 the questionnaires are available on request from the first author or can be found in schoeman(2016). 43 schoeman reading skills can predict the programming performance of novices... figure 2. a typical gaze path of a participant with good reading ability figure 3. a typical gaze path of a participant with poor reading skills analysing the pre-test and retrospective comprehension test results gave an indication of the level of learning attained from using the dvdt, while the students’ ux and usability problems were revealed in the post-test questionnaire. 5. results of the eye-tracking study we discuss the results between the two cycles independently. after the cycle 1 evaluation, the dvdt interface was updated and we can therefore not combine or compare results across the two cycles. 5.1 cycle 1 results ten participants volunteered for the first cycle’s eye tracking study: two females and eight males. the ages of the participants varied from 19 to 33. they speak eight different home 44 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) languages. four participants were registered for the course for the first time, while the others were all repeating the course, although they did not all progress to writing the examination previously. all maintained that they were computer literate. four participants passed the final examination, three failed and two did not write it. one female had a vision impairment and her eyes could not be tracked successfully. her data was not included in the analysis. participants’ interaction with the dvdt and their experience of the usability of the dvdt were investigated by examining the gaze replays and observation of the videos accompanying the gaze replays. four main concerns were distinguished: • students experienced problems with learning from the tutorial, • students found the instructions for using the tutorial inadequate, • students found it difficult to navigating through the tutorial and • some students displayed poor reading skills. this paper focus on the reading skills of participants. four participants (p1, p2, p3 and p7) demonstrated eye movements that suggested good reading skills. p1 and p2 read at an acceptable rate and displayed no noticeable reading difficulties. p3 read well and faster than all the other participants. p7 read at an acceptable rate and had no problems in reading and comprehending what he had read, since he followed instructions without faltering. these participants all passed the final examination at the end of the semester. participants p4, p5, p6, p8 and p9 all exhibited eye movements indicative of patterns associated with lack of reading skills, such as erratic eye movements (p4, p5 and p6), rereading text recurrently (p5, p8 and p9), short saccades and long fixations (p8 and p9) or using the mouse to guide reading (p6). p4 sometimes appeared mystified. participants p6 and p9 were absent from the examination, while the others all failed the examination. we elaborate on their results below. on p4’s facial video he occasionally seemed puzzled. his gaze pattern confirms this – he tried to follow, sometimes fixating on code, or reconciling the content of the memory box with the program code, but did not always manage. his eye movements in the explanation box were erratic, resembling scanning, or displaying a zigzag pattern with frequent regression. from this we deduce that he probably did not understand all the explanations. it is possible that he became tired or lost concentration, resulting in mindless reading but it could also have occurred due to syntactic processing difficulties. p5 recommended adding “a zooming tab for those who have difficulties with reading small or medium texts”. the participant had a reasonable reading speed, but sometimes his fixations jumped around and he reread sentences, seemingly trying to understand. overall his gaze patterns indicate that he found the text difficult to comprehend. p6 did not fixate sufficiently on the explanation box to support comprehension. there is some indication of reading problems since he would read one or two lines of the explanations and then veer off to try something else. he also used the mouse to guide his reading. this created the impression that he did not understand or was not a skilled reader. 45 schoeman reading skills can predict the programming performance of novices... p8 read slowly, reread sentences and seemed to struggle to comprehend. his eye movements showed short saccades and long fixations which indicate that either he found the text difficult or was a beginner or dyslexic2 reader (rayner, 2009). p9 was also a poor reader, but his actions differed from that of the others. he went through the activities very quickly, sometimes barely reading anything at all. when he did read, his eye movements often showed fairly short saccades and long fixations, and he sometimes reread text. when he got stuck, he either just clicked the “next” button without reading or used the “back” button and the “index” button to exit from the activity. this could be an indication of poor reading skills, but it could also just be that he was affected by the laboratory setting and could therefore not perform the tasks properly. this participant was absent from the examination. two questions in the open-ended post-test questionnaire that students completed after the eye tracking and observations in the hci laboratory, can shed light on students’ reading skills: • “would you like to have sound / someone explaining how to do it while using the tutorial?” • “what would you change?” four participants requested auditory explanations; one would prefer to have the option of auditory explanations on request, and four favoured using the tutorial without them. of the four participants who preferred auditory explanations, two did not pass the examination (p4 and p8), and the other two were absent in the examination (p6 and p9). they all seemed to be lacking in reading skills. three of the four participants who favoured no auditory explanations passed the examination and displayed good reading skills (p1, p3 and p7). participant p5 did not favour auditory explanations, but experienced difficulty in comprehending and failed the examination. participant p2 favoured occasional auditory explanations, although he could read well and passed the examination. the feedback may be an indication that those with lesser reading skills believed auditory explanations would compensate for their lack in reading skills. the analysis of the results for the first cycle is summarised in table 1. table 1. summary of results for first cycle participant reading skills auditory explanations requested no. of times registered for the course exam results p1 good no 2 50% p2 good occasional 1 61% p3 good no 1 64% p4 lacking yes 1 39% p5 lacking no 5 20% p6 lacking yes 2 n/a (absent) p7 good no 2 64% p8 lacking yes 2 10% p9 lacking yes 1 n/a (absent) 2 dyslexic readers have long fixations and short saccades with many regressions. see section 2.2. 46 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) 5.2 cycle 2 results following the first implementation and testing cycle, the dvdt was adapted based on the findings of the usability evaluation. a second group of participants was recruited to participate in a similar usability evaluation in the second implementation cycle. seven participants volunteered, comprising of one female and six males. the ages of the participants varied between 19 and 31 years. the participants speak four different home languages. five were registered for the course for the first time. one of the remaining participants was repeating it for the fifth time, while the other one did not progress to write the examination during his previous registration. all maintained that they were computer literate. three participants passed the final examination, three failed and one did not progress to the examination. similar to the first implementation cycle, gaze replays and observation were used to investigate participants’ experience of the usability of the dvdt, after the modification for the second cycle. we again focus on the reading skills. the conduct and eye movements of p2, p4 and p7 indicate that they can read well and they also encountered no difficulties in using the tutorial. these three students passed the final examination at the end of the semester. p5 also seemed to read well, judging by the speed of his eye movements and the time taken to read the instructions, although his mathematics skills were weak. it seemed as if he found mathematical calculations difficult, since he spent considerable time to figure them out. his recommendation to incorporate the use of brackets for calculations in the tutorial since “if you make a mistake with bodmas, you’re basically out”, confirms this. he did not favour auditory explanations. he did not write the examination. participants p1, p3 and p6 were poor readers. they exhibited lack of reading skills such as reading slowly and rereading text, or using the mouse to guide their reading (p3 and p6), appearing perplexed (p3 and p6), reading aloud (p3) and displaying long fixations and erratic saccadic eye movements (p6). none of them passed the examination. we elaborate on their results below. p1 read quite slowly, although he really made an effort to understand, by repeatedly reading the explanations and trying to reconcile the program code, the variable diagrams and the console window. he clearly became tired after about 45 minutes and started paying less attention, reading less and sometimes clicking the “next” button to continue without reading the program code or explanations. judging by the speed of his eye movements and his behaviour, p3 could not read well. he frequently used the mouse to guide his reading and muttered all the time, reading aloud softly. he also returned to text several times and seemed to struggle to understand, frowning and fidgeting. his questionnaire response indicates that he would prefer an auditory explanation “… to understand it more in depth. reading it doesn’t mean we understand what they say especially if you don’t have a programming background”. this indicates that although he could decode the text (one of the main components in reading), he could not comprehend what he had decoded (the second main component in reading). he also recommended that we provide “sound disks that explain every chapter”, confirming that he struggled to understand what he read. p6 read quite slowly, often rereading the same line with very long fixations on words or phrases. he also used the mouse to guide his reading, and sometimes displayed erratic saccadic movements. he spent minutes at a time to reconcile the program code, explanations and the contents of the memory box, repeatedly rereading and rechecking boxes. his facial 47 schoeman reading skills can predict the programming performance of novices... expression seemed puzzled at times indicating that he did not understand. he did very poorly in the examination. the same questionnaire as in the first cycle was used to obtain feedback from participants after their eye tracking and observation session. three participants requested auditory explanations, three preferred using the tutorial without auditory explanations and one favoured having the option of auditory explanations on request. participants with good reading skills favoured using the tutorial without audio (p2, p4, p5 and p7), although p7 suggested a toggle switch for sound to clarify more complicated sections, i.e. having optional auditory explanations. in contrast, three of the four participants who failed the examination would have preferred to have auditory explanations (p1, p3 and p6). these three participants also experienced reading difficulties. significantly, p3’s response “reading it doesn’t mean we understand what they say especially if you don’t have a programming background”, indicates that although he could decode the text, he could not comprehend it. two of the suggestions to improve the tutorial may be related to reading difficulties: firstly, to provide cds with explanations for every chapter in the study guide as well as summaries of selected chapters and, secondly, to include optional auditory explanations with a toggle switch for further clarification or assistance. the analysis of the results for the second cycle is summarised in table 2. table 2. summary of results for second cycle participant reading skills auditory explanations requested no. of times registered for the course exam results p1 lacking yes 1 30% p2 good no 1 58% p3 lacking yes 1 19% p4 good no 1 92% p5 good no 5 n/a (absent) p6 lacking yes 2 14% p7 good no (toggle switch for explanations) 1 89% 6. discussion: reading skills and learning to program both the comprehension phase of reading as well as the higher executive functions of inferencing, paying selective attention, and organising and reflecting in working memory, are involved in the difficulties novices experience to develop viable mental models for programming. while programming languages may look like english, a far higher level of comprehension and inferencing is involved in understanding (reading and explaining) program code, because the higher executive functions need to be used to a far higher degree than when reading natural language text. in addition, program flow is not sequential, requiring a substantial degree of 48 perspectives in education 2019: 37(2) selective attention, organising and reflecting, executed simultaneously in the limited working memory. lack of reading skills will add to the strain on the working memory. the eye-tracking study’s results show that students who could read well passed, whereas those who read at frustration level did not pass. most of those who did not pass also requested auditory explanations in the tutorial. we can infer that this is an indication that they lacked the higher levels of comprehension and inferencing required to read a program. 7. conclusion this paper describes a side effect from a larger project in which an artefact to teach students to trace program code in an entry-level programming module was developed and tested. as part of the qualitative evaluation in the study, students were eye tracked in an hci laboratory to examine the usability of the tool and students’ ux thereof. on analysing the eye-tracking results, we found that the majority of the students who displayed insufficient reading skills, failed the module. although the trial was small, the analysis of the direct live observations and eye tracking bear out the relationship between students’ reading competence and their capacity to learn to program. the relationship between reading ability and programming can be explained by the character of programming languages. reading and understanding program code requires high levels of inferencing, selective attention, organisation and reflecting, all at the same time. this causes a high intrinsic cognitive load that correspondingly challenges the processing capacity of working memory, which makes it more demanding for less-proficient readers to master programming. the same area in the brain process both reading and navigation, including navigating through program code, which is an intrinsic part of understanding and writing program code. this sustains our contention that insufficient reading skills can make it more demanding to learn to program. furthermore, it points to the possibility that insufficient reading skills may impact more on success in programming modules than in other modules. the fact that our participants, who were identified with poor reading skills during the eye tracking, failed the introductory programming module substantiates our argument that inadequate reading skills can be related to students’ difficulty in learning to program. programming lecturers need to be aware of this and will have to take into account that students’ reading skills may be part of the problem, when they attempt to assist struggling students. should the reading skills of such students be enhanced, it could possibly aid them in their endeavours to learn to program as well as raise their general academic performance. references ashby j, rayner k & clifton c 2005. eye movements of highly skilled and average readers: differential effects of frequency and predictability. the quarterly journal of experimental psychology, 58a(6): 1065–1086. https://doi.org/10.1080/02724980443000476 bednarik r, schulte c, budde l, heinemann b & vrzakova h 2018. eye-movement modelling examples in source code 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total of 68 fet physical sciences teachers from urban, township and rural schools participated in the research. our findings indicate that teachers are positive about the curriculum. however, the problems identified with training, support and resources as well as the lack of teachers’ subject content knowledge, particularly in rural and township schools, cannot be blamed on the curriculum and therefore cannot be fixed by curriculum changes. keywords: physical sciences teachers, physics, curriculum changes, teacher behaviour, teacher knowledge introduction planning and teaching any subject are complex cognitive activities and, in these processes, teachers must apply knowledge from various domains (resnick, 1987; leinhardt & greeno, 1986; wilson, shulman & richer, 1987). however, teachers’ inadequate understanding of the knowledge structure of mathematics and science is problematic to the teaching and learning of these subjects (taylor & vinjevold, 1999). as magnusson, krajcik and borko (1999:135) assert: “effective science teachers know how to best design and guide learning experiences under particular conditions and constraints to help diverse groups of students develop scientific knowledge and an understanding of the scientific enterprise”. therefore, science teachers’ knowledge and beliefs have a direct effect on all aspects of their teaching (carlsen, 1993; carlsen, 1999; smith & neale, 1991) as well as how and what their students learn (magnusson et al., 1994). teachers’ personal views about content influence what goals they set for their students as well as how they implement curriculum (gess-newsome, 1999). since 1994 the heart of school reform was the establishment of the comprehensive curriculum project called curriculum 2005 (c2005) which was implemented in january 1998 (doe, 1997). deficiencies were identified and the national curriculum statement (ncs) was constituted with full implementation from january 2008 (jansen & taylor, 2003). the ncs grades 10-12 (general) physical sciences (doe, 2003) emphasises the legacy of poor quality and/or a lack of education in this area that resulted in limited access to scientific knowledge. curriculum reform, as required by the implementation of the ncs, implies that teachers hold deep and highly structured content knowledge that can be altered efficiently for the purposes of instruction (sternberg & horvath, 1995; talbert, mclaughlin & rowan, 1993). therefore, an essential component of any professional development programme should be to strengthen science teachers’ content knowledge (kriek & grayson, 2009). in addition, educational reform needs “to focus the efforts of teachers towards increased student learning” (mabogoane, 2006:127). 111basson & kriek — are grades 10-12 physical sciences teachers equipped to teach physics? the implementation of the ncs physical sciences curriculum at the further education and training (fet) level (grades 10-12) started in 2006 with grade 10. this paper focuses on some physical sciences teachers’ readiness to teach the physics that forms part of the physical sciences curriculum. it is expressed by 1) their knowledge, 2) their views and beliefs, and 3) their attitudes and experiences during the implementation of the ncs. curriculum background the ncs is modelled on an outcomes-based education (obe) philosophy (doe, 2003). the version of obe chosen encourages a learner-centred and activity-based approach for the learning environment. at the core of this curriculum are three learning outcomes (los): 1) practical scientific inquiry and problem solving skills, 2) constructing and applying scientific knowledge, and 3) the nature of science and its relationships to technology, society and the environment (doe, 2003). another important aspect is the introduction of assessment standards (ass) which describe the ways in which learners should demonstrate the achievement of the los. the thrusts of the ass for each lo are listed in table 1. table 1: assessment standards (ass) of each learning outcome (lo) of the ncs fet curriculum (doe, 2006) learning outcome assessment standard description lo1 as1 conducting an investigation as2 interpreting data to draw conclusions as3 solving problems as4 communicating and presenting information and scientific arguments lo2 as1 recalling, stating and discussing specified concepts as2 indicating and explaining relationships as3 applying scientific knowledge lo3 as1 evaluating knowledge claims as2 evaluating the impact of science on human development as3 evaluating the impact of science on the environment and sustainable development in the meantime, an amended curriculum, the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) (doe, 2010) has been announced and will be implemented in 2012 in grade 10. this single comprehensive curriculum and assessment policy document is now being developed for each subject to replace the ncs grades 10-12 (2004), as well as the previous subject statement, learning programme guidelines and subject assessment guidelines in grades r-12. the caps “promotes the idea of grounding knowledge in local contexts, while being sensitive to global imperatives” (doe, 2010:3). although the caps will replace the ncs curriculum for the physical sciences at the fet level, knowledge in the physical sciences is still organised around six core knowledge areas with the following foci: 1. two with a chemistry focus – chemical systems; chemical change (18.75% each) 2. three with a physics focus – mechanics; waves, sound and light; electricity and magnetism (12.50% each) 3. one with an integrated focus – matter and materials (25.00%). the percentages indicated in brackets represent the proposed time distribution between the knowledge areas per year. new topics have been included, such as the doppler effect, superposition and alternating current in physics, chemical systems in chemistry, and macromolecules in matter and materials (doe, 2006). 112 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 the ncs was designed to encourage educators to use a spiral approach for the knowledge areas (wilson et al., 1987). a concept is introduced in one grade and revisited in later grades. grade 10 learners are, for example, introduced to the concept of weight. in grade 10 they learn only that the earth exerts a force on any object and that this force is referred to as the weight of the object. with this, learners are introduced to motion in one dimension only. the fact that it is mentioned only as a one-way force might lead to alternative conceptions about forces since newton’s third law is dealt with only in grade 11. in grade 11 learners study forces in more detail and learn that weight is a special kind of non-contact force. they also learn that, not only the earth, but all objects with mass exert forces on each other. in grade 12 learners revisit motion and freefall and then learn about projectile motion in one dimension and the work done by a force. these examples underpin the principles of conceptual progression and coherence. in the past the physics part of physical sciences at secondary school level was presented as consisting of many unrelated topics. complex concepts such as velocity, force, acceleration and momentum were all introduced at the beginning of grade 11 in one chapter under the heading ‘vectors’ (basson, 2002). purpose all the changes mentioned above put a very high demand on physical sciences teachers. to be able to deal with the requirements of the ncs and obe, they not only ought to be equipped with pedagogical skills, but especially with appropriate content knowledge as well as pedagogical content knowledge (pck) (shulman, 1986). at the heart of pck is the manner in which subject content knowledge is transformed for teaching. shulman (1987) identified seven knowledge bases for teaching, namely subject content knowledge, pedagogical content knowledge, pedagogical knowledge, curricular knowledge, knowledge of students, knowledge of context and knowledge of educational goals. rather than viewing teacher education from the perspective of content or pedagogy, shulman (1986) believed that these two knowledge bases should be combined to more effectively prepare teachers. the purpose of this study was to probe whether teachers could be considered equipped to teach the physics part of the fet physical sciences curriculum with regard to teacher knowledge, teacher views and beliefs, and teacher attitudes. framework educational reform is, in part, implemented by changing teacher instructional behaviour and we therefore relied for the work presented here on a revised research framework on teacher behaviour (van der sandt, 2007). the original framework was developed by koehler and grouws (1992). an outline of the framework is summarised in table 2. the framework includes three factors, namely teacher knowledge, teacher views and beliefs, and teacher attitudes. four components have been indentified for teacher knowledge; those of student learning, curriculum knowledge, subject content knowledge and pck. teacher views and beliefs deal with the teaching, learning and nature of the subject, as well as the students as learners. the third factor of teacher attitude is focussed on the attitude toward the subject itself, the teaching of the subject and the attitude toward the students. table 2: revised research framework on teacher behaviour (van der sandt, 2007) teacher behaviour 1. teacher knowledge 2. teacher views and beliefs 3. teacher attitude 1.1 curriculum knowledge 2.1 teaching of subject 3.1 subject 1.2 subject content knowledge 2.2 learning of subject 3.2 students 1.3 pedagogical content knowledge 2.3 nature of subject 3.3 teaching of subject 1.4 student learning 2.4 students as learners 113basson & kriek — are grades 10-12 physical sciences teachers equipped to teach physics? participants a convenience sampling method was used due to the availability and accessibility of fet teachers at the time. the research was conducted with a total of 68 fet physical sciences teachers at meetings of five clusters; three clusters of the tshwane north district in gauteng, one cluster in the north west province and one in the western cape. the five clusters represented urban, township and rural schools (table 3). a cluster is an initiative of the provincial departments of education for subject teachers to meet at least once in a school term to discuss subject-related issues. the regions were selected as shown in table 3, since we anticipated different responses from teachers working in a rural environment as compared to those working in either township or urban environments. although a convenience sampling method was used for all the teachers, we purposefully selected teachers from north west province and the western cape to take part in the content survey. the first author was invited by these provincial departments of education to conduct workshops with the focus of developing teachers’ subject content knowledge and permission was granted for and by the teachers to write content tests. table 3: distribution of teachers in the five clusters visited cluster no. province region no. of teachers 1 gauteng north urban & township 9 2 gauteng north urban & township 19 3 gauteng north urban & township 14 4 north west rural 19 5 western cape township 7 total 68 methodology a cross-sectional survey design was used, whereby a sample was drawn from a population at a particular time (cohen, manion & marrison, 2007:213). this study was conducted after teachers implemented the first year of the ncs. individual and focus group interviews (tustin, ligthelm, martins & van wyk, 2005), as well as a questionnaire, supplied information about the views of teachers. the purpose of these discussions was to generate an understanding of participants’ experiences and beliefs. the questions posed to the discussion groups were put to the teachers in the sequence: positive unguided questions, positive guided questions, followed by negative unguided and negative guided questions as described elsewhere (kriek & basson, 2008). the interviews were transcribed, analysed and mapped onto the research framework with regard to the three factors, namely teacher knowledge, teacher views and beliefs, and teacher attitudes. the first part of the questionnaire was used to obtain some basic biographical and teaching information about the teachers. we anticipated that some biographic features might have an influence on their responses. the main part of the questionnaire contained eight questions probing their views. the questions addressed issues such as the teachers’ most positive experiences teaching physical sciences, the main problems they experienced, their views about the subject matter in the curriculum, the response of learners to their teaching and what aspects of implementing the curriculum influenced their teaching. they were also asked to indicate things they would have changed about their teaching of physical sciences had they been in a position to do so, as well as what they would need to be a successful physical sciences teacher. the questionnaire provided an opportunity for teachers to elaborate on issues already discussed or to share ideas that they did not want to mention in the presence of colleagues during the focus group interviews. the responses of the teachers to these questions were analysed and classified according to the framework. 114 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 the results of the transcriptions of the first three cluster meetings indicated serious concerns about the physical sciences subject matter prescribed by the ncs. it prompted us at the time to conduct a limited subject content knowledge survey with the teachers. the only opportunities for this were during the last two cluster meetings in the north west province and western cape. the survey contained conceptual questions taken from research-based surveys provided as part of the ‘teaching physics with the physics suite’ publication (redish, 2003). the collection of instruments in this suite is used internationally by physicists to determine the effectiveness of physics learning. the questions selected were on basic mechanics, electricity and magnetism because these knowledge areas comprise 50% of the physics part of the physical sciences syllabus. the survey focused on the subject matter that respondents were supposed to know since it had also been part of the previous syllabus. the nature of 12 of the 13 multiple choice questions were conceptual instead of numerical. a fourteenth item was added to test unit conversion skills because of the significance thereof in scientific calculations. results and discussion biographic details the biographic profile of the teachers showed 60% male and 90% in the age group 30-50 years. the average age was 38 years. the home language distribution was 29% afrikaans, 11% english and 58% african languages, of which northern sotho and tswana were the most common. the teaching language used was 15% afrikaans, 72% english and 13% both afrikaans and english. all african-language speakers used their mother tongue to explain concepts to their learners. the teachers held various qualifications. forty percent held degrees and the rest a variety of teaching diplomas. only half of the degrees were bachelor of science (bsc) or bachelor of science education (bsc ed) degrees. of these teachers, 80% taught fet physical sciences without a qualification in the natural sciences (physics and/or chemistry). twelve teachers held postgraduate qualifications, six of them bachelor of science education honours (bed hons) degrees. (in south africa, all degrees after a first bachelor’s degree are considered as postgraduate qualifications.) at the time of the survey, 24% were involved in some form of formal studies, with just more than half working on postgraduate qualifications and the rest on educational diplomas. teaching experience the participants were all fet physical sciences teachers. the majority (73%) had five or more years’ experience in teaching physical sciences (figure 1). a third had experience in teaching physical sciences at a lower level. the teachers are experienced in life and in their careers. this holds an advantage for the implementation of the curriculum, since it should be possible to rely on the general life and work experience of these teachers. there is also a disadvantage in that it might be harder for people who are used to a particular system and way of working to change their practices. teachers’ responses to the questionnaire, interviews and survey six components of the research framework (table 2) emerged during the data analysis. under the first factor of teacher knowledge, teachers elaborated on the curriculum (1.1) and subject content knowledge (1.2). with regard to views and beliefs, they indicated issues related to the teaching of the subject (2.1) and the students as learners (2.4). the third factor of attitude revealed information about their learners (3.2) and again the teaching of the subject (3.3). 115basson & kriek — are grades 10-12 physical sciences teachers equipped to teach physics? years of teaching experience n o. o f t ea ch er s 20 15 1-4 5-9 10-14 15-19 20-29 30+ 10 5 0 years figure 1: years of physical sciences teaching experience teacher knowledge: curriculum knowledge curriculum knowledge is knowledge on concepts and procedures. teachers found the curriculum challenging, but they indicated it as a positive and not a negative experience. one teacher expressed that she “sees it as a challenge to improve” while another said “it made me want to read more and want to study bed (hons) in physical sciences”. this is in accordance with what bell and gilbert (1996) reported; that teachers who changed because of a changing process viewed the changes as positive challenges rather than problems or threats. they were conscious about the los and specifically mentioned lo3. the relationship of the curriculum to the world outside the classroom, the integration of science with everyday life, the practical world and tertiary education were applauded. an important aspect of the curriculum is that it has the same themes in all three fet grades and that there is progression between the grades. teachers have to change their teaching practices and they have the opportunity to learn new teaching strategies and subject matter. teachers revealed that their teaching has become more meaningful since they have “new and exciting things” to teach and that teaching now includes activities and experiments. one teacher thought that “experimental work makes learning and teaching much easier”. content overload was reported as a constraint and that there was not adequate time available to implement all aspects required by the curriculum. in addition, not enough time was allocated for the subject physical sciences in the school programme. teachers found it time consuming to evaluate each learner according to the los and ass. there seem to be gender-dominated trends around assessment, the overload of content and the associated time constraints. all male teachers complained about the ass, the evaluation of individual learners according to the los, the setting of rubrics and too much marking. the female teachers, on the other hand, had concerns about the learning programme being too long and that they found it difficult to finish everything that is expected during the course of the school year. we will elaborate on teachers’ subject content knowledge at the end of this section. 116 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 teacher views and beliefs: teaching of subject although teachers hold positive views about the new content prescribed in the ncs, they expressed concerns about teaching it. even though these were experienced teachers (see figure 1), they were anxious that they did not have the necessary skills to deal with the content and many of them did not have any formal training in some of the topics such as electronics and semiconductors. the fact that 80% of them had not been specifically trained in the natural sciences (physics and/or chemistry) might have an influence on their capacity and confidence to teach new content. teachers worried about the effort that needs to be spent on lesson preparation. reading about the new topics takes a great amount of time. the importance of being well prepared was emphasised as a condition for success. as one teacher claimed: “to be a successful teacher i need more time to prepare experiments, worksheets, etc., which i don’t get now because i am teaching four different subjects in two grades (i.e. i have four different preparations)”. all teachers were stretched by the amount of administrative work to be done. they felt that plenty of paperwork had been added that did not serve a purpose for improved teaching. according to them, the time “wasted” on paperwork could, for example, have been spent on proper lesson preparation. the amount of content to be covered and the time constraints associated with it was a prominent issue. all teachers essentially stated that there was too much content and motivated the statement by indicating that more time was needed for learners to make proper sense of the content. when asked what they would change about physical sciences if they were in a position to do so, half of the teachers cited a reduction in the amount of content as the most important recommendation. teachers realised that they had to focus on concept development, but they felt constrained by the large amount of content that needed to be covered during one year. twenty percent of the teachers were of the opinion that they should have fixed work schemes, that everybody should teach the same content and in the same sequence. one teacher summarised the general feeling: “we need a clear curriculum and clear guidance”. learners found the new content interesting, but “they are stressed by too much work”, as one teacher put it. most referred to the content as being too difficult and too challenging for learners in grade 10. an example is the introduction of motion in mechanics that has been shifted from grade 11 to grade 10. mechanics and waves were indicated as the most difficult topics. a few comments were made about matter and materials and electricity being too easy. there was a common feeling among teachers that they did not know to what depth they had to teach each learning area. this appeared to be the case for both the old and new content. the last question of the questionnaire specifically asked teachers what do you need to be a successful physical sciences teacher? the most important answer to this question was support. support in this context meant more training to them. thirty six per cent felt that they were not adequately trained and were desperate since they were unsure about “how, what and how much”. they emphasised that professionals and experts should perform the training and that enough time should be allocated for it. they also felt that the training should be continuous for at least six months. there was an expectation that more training was needed on the new content, as well as on prescribed and other possible experiments that could be done with learners. a few also requested bursaries to improve qualifications. teacher views and beliefs: students as learners teachers’ views and beliefs about students as learners refer to the abilities and talent for science and mathematics. it includes differences between individuals or groups of learners. when referring to learners, teachers’ most frequent negative comment was that learners enter the fet phase without the necessary skills they ought to have developed in the lower grades, especially mathematics knowledge and skills. teachers complained that they had to teach the basics as well as the prescribed content of the particular grade. they said that learners thought that mathematics was something separate from science; when they are in the science class they cannot apply what they have learnt in the mathematics class. another concern was about mathematics literacy, as illustrated by one teacher: “learners should not be allowed to do science together with maths literacy when they do not even cope with maths literacy”. 117basson & kriek — are grades 10-12 physical sciences teachers equipped to teach physics? teacher attitude: students (learners) teacher attitude could include affection and enthusiasm toward learners. teachers were confident that learners were involved. they said that learners participated actively, obtained firsthand experience of doing experiments and enjoyed working in groups. some also found it more exciting to teach science these days, since learners “ask questions all the time and are more open-minded”. teacher attitude: teaching of subject teachers’ attitudes toward teaching are influenced by their perceptions about the availability of resources for teaching. twenty per cent of the teachers thought that the lack of resources was the worst thing about the implementation of the ncs. when talking about resources, complaints about a lack of equipment to do experimental work or demonstrations dominated the responses, followed by the overcrowding in classrooms and then the problems experienced with textbooks. laboratory space and equipment were perceived as preconditions for successful science teaching. the overcrowding of classrooms with, in many cases, 40-60 learners at a time, puts a huge burden on teachers. teachers have access to textbooks themselves, but they do not have textbooks and other learning materials, such as library books and access to computers and the internet, available for learners. teachers with weak subject content knowledge are prone to adopt the structure portrayed in the texts available to them (gess-newsome, 1999). they are further frustrated by “too many science books” that “have different viewpoints”. teacher knowledge: subject content knowledge the specific need and demand expressed for additional, better and more appropriate training strengthened our perception that physical sciences teachers lack the necessary subject content knowledge as well as pedagogical content knowledge. of the 26 teachers who participated in the subject matter survey, only two attained more than 80%. the most alarming result was the 14 teachers (more than half of them) who did not even manage 50% (figure 2). these results cannot be generalised, however. in a study of 75 physical science teachers teaching grades 10-12 in south africa it was found that only 75% felt it was their responsibility to study sections they did not understand (kriek & grayson, 2009). 09 10 -1 9 20 -2 9 30 -3 9 40 -4 9 50 -5 9 60 -6 9 70 -7 9 80 -8 9 90 -1 00 teahers’ marks marks (%) n o. o f t ea ch er s 12 10 8 6 0 4 2 figure 2: results of subject matter survey 118 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 three examples from the survey illustrate the seriousness of the problem. the first question on electrostatics showed two particles, a and b, with a net charge of –2 units and +1 unit respectively. the teachers were requested to select from five possibilities the pair of forces (shown by arrows) that correctly compared the electrostatic force on a (caused by b) with that on b (caused by a). only five teachers (19%) answered correctly. half of them indicated the force on a as bigger than the force on b and 15% thought the opposite, namely that the force on b was bigger than the force on a. one teacher even showed the nature of the force between two particles with opposite charges as repulsive. another two knew that the forces were equal, but indicated the directions incorrectly. the only conclusion here is that at least 80% of these teachers have serious misconceptions about electrostatic forces and that they would convey these incorrect ideas to their learners. furthermore, if forces are introduced as acting in one direction rather than as interactions, these alternative conceptions will be reinforced. the second example is from a question that showed a diagram illustrating a single bulb connected to a battery. the question stated that a second identical bulb was added to the circuit as shown on the adjacent diagram (figure 3). participants had to compare the current at point a in the circuit with the two bulbs to the current when only one bulb was connected. six teachers (23%) answered correctly. ten (38%) thought that the current remained the same and four (15%) that the current was halved. the idea that the current remained the same is in accordance with other research findings (smith & neale, 1991) that students consider a battery as a source of constant current. three were on the right track, that the current was larger than before, but they did not know that, if the bulbs were identical, the current would actually double. another three thought that the correct answer was not provided as an option. the fact that more than 75% of this group of teachers could not interpret one of the most basic direct current applications correctly, that of two resistors connected in parallel, has profound implications for the possible success of the learners in the subject they are teaching. we did not have the opportunity to ask these teachers about their teaching practice and their own training in physics, but these results could indicate that they had no or very little opportunity during their own training to experiment with simple electrical circuits, and that they possibly learnt only by rote. similarly, mcdermott and shaffer (1992) found that most students had no observational or experiential base that they could use as a foundation for constructing the formal concepts of introductory electricity. it seems that, since then, not much has changed in this regard for these south african physical sciences teachers either. the first two examples underpin findings by others that the teachers did not have a clear understanding of the underlying mechanisms of electric circuits and most likely the result of a weak or no connection between electrostatic and electro-kinetic phenomena (engelhardt & beichner, 2004; cohen, eylon & ganiel, 1983). figure 3: example of a question on simple direct electrical current circuits the third example is a simple unit conversion exercise. the question stated that the volume of a cool drink bottle is 0.75 litres. it was given that 1 litre = 103 cm3 and that 1 cm = 10 mm. they were then asked to select the volume in mm3 from five possible answers. an astounding 70% of participants could not indicate the correct answer. it should be emphasised, again, that these are teachers with an average age of 38 and with years of teaching experience. 119basson & kriek — are grades 10-12 physical sciences teachers equipped to teach physics? the results confirmed that the challenges in the two regions are similar and indicated that the teachers were not in command of even the basic subject matter. the possibility that they would be able to deal with the new content correctly in teaching situations would also be extremely slim. conclusions educational reform, which has been a part of the south african school system since the mid nineties, has an influence on teacher behaviour. a revised framework on teacher behaviour, which includes three factors, namely teacher knowledge, teacher views and beliefs, and teacher attitudes, was used to analyse the data. teachers’ knowledge about the curriculum revealed that the 68 teachers are mostly positive about the curriculum. however, matters such as content overload and insufficient time to cope with all aspects of implementing the curriculum seemed to hamper their implementation efforts. the content survey confirmed that the subject content knowledge of these physical sciences teachers from township and rural schools was not sufficient. our survey was based on the most basic content that has been in the curriculum for many years. the addition of new content, such as electronics, could complicate the situation even further since most teachers did not have any prior training on some of the new topics. our study did not address teacher knowledge on pck and student learning. teachers’ views and beliefs on the teaching and learning of physical sciences revealed the need for resources and training, and that their learners enter the fet phase without the necessary skills they ought to have developed in lower grades. teachers expressed their need for proper and appropriate training by professionals and experts to deal with the content and methods of teaching. teachers’ attitudes towards teaching are influenced by their perceptions about the lack of resources for teaching, but they were encouraged by the learners’ more active participation when the ncs was being taught. we have to conclude that the teachers from all the regions visited are not adequately equipped to guarantee a successful implementation of the curriculum – or to improve the teaching and learning of physics at the secondary school level from the levels of the past. our results are in accordance with findings and statements of the centre for development and enterprise (cde) published in a report on the “maths and science challenge in south africa’s schools” (cde, 2007:452). according to the report, two of a number of interlocking factors that account for the inadequate maths and science output of secondary schools is an insufficient supply of teachers with high levels of subject content knowledge, and the demands of the ncs curriculum itself. we are not in agreement with the report that teachers are not determined to teach the curriculum fully and well; those who we worked with are simply not equipped and it seems that their plight regarding training, support and resources has not yet been heard. new findings indicated that teachers were positive about the ncs curriculum and eager to undergo professional development. the problems identified with the lack of teachers’ subject content knowledge cannot be blamed on the curriculum. they cannot, therefore, be fixed by curriculum changes, but with attention to proper and appropriate training instead. acknowledgements we thank the curriculum advisors who invited us to the cluster meetings and all the teachers who shared their views and experiences with us. a special word of appreciation is conveyed to those teachers who participated in the conceptual survey. references basson i 2002. physics and mathematics as interrelated fields of 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sm, shulman l & richer ae 1987. 150 different ways of knowing: representations of knowledge in teaching. in: j calderhead (ed). exploring teacher thinking. sussex: holt, rinehart & winston. pie32(4) book.indb perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 56 confronting contradiction: diversity experiences at school and university merridy wilson-strydom transformation and the embracing of diversity remains a major challenge at south african universities. this article reflects on the contradictory nature of first-year university students’ experiences of diversity and highlights the difficult terrain that students need to navigate, often with hardly any preparation for the university environment based on their schooling experiences. using the capabilities approach as the guiding theoretical framework, the article interprets these contradictory diversity experiences in the first year in light of data on encounters with diversity at high school. it draws on the results of a large-scale mixed methods study. qualitative data, using focus group and visual methodologies, was collected from 270 first-year students in 2009 and 2010. in addition, a total of 2.816 high school learners selected from a diverse sample of 20 local schools completed a mainly quantitative survey that included various items about interaction with diverse peers and the broader community as well as engagement with complex and diverse ideas. the school-level data provides important contextual background for understanding and interpreting students’ experiences. such understanding is critical if we are to confront and challenge the contradictory diversity experiences during the first year at university. keywords: capabilities approach, diversity, transformation, higher education, schooling introduction despite the fact that national and institutional policies address the importance of transformation and the embracing of diversity across the south african higher education sector, in practice on our campuses and within our classrooms, we still have a long way to go in the pursuit of a more equitable higher education environment. while existing research (for example, ministry of education, 2008; soudien, 2010) has analysed and provided evidence of the lack of meaningful transformation within the sector, a great deal remains to be done, particularly in understanding the many merridy wilson-strydom centre for research on higher education and development (crhed) university of the free state e-mail: wilsonstrydommg@ufs.ac.za tel: +27(0)51 4017566 confronting contradiction: diversity experiences at school and university merridy wilson-strydom 57 and complex factors influencing the manner in which students respond to diversity encounters. in seeking to better understand diversity and transformation in practice, rather than policy, this article considers the manner in which first-year students experience diversity encounters when entering university. in addition, the research started from the assumption that, in order to understand diversity encounters at university, it is necessary to also understand the conditions that exist for students prior to university (i.e., at school). as such, the research design included both high school learners and first-year university students, thus enabling the construction of a rich account of the factors that impact on how students experience diversity. in this article, i draw on the capabilities approach (ca), as developed by amartya sen and martha nussbaum, to theorise the complexities and contradictions that emerge from students’ and learners’ encounters with diversity. the paper thus contributes to the growing body of work on higher education and human development, a body of work firmly situated within a social justice agenda (boni & walker, 2013). the oxford english dictionary defines diverse as being “of different kinds”, and diversity as “variety”.1 using these definitions as the starting point, i approach the topic of diversity encounters across two dimensions. the first is related to encounters with different kinds of people (commonly referred to as encounters with ‘the other’), and the second is about encounters with different kinds of ideas and ways of knowing. understanding both of these dimensions is critical in the case of higher education, particularly given the role of higher education in the “socialisation of enlightened, responsible and constructively critical citizens”, as was articulated as one of the four purposes of higher education in the 1997 white paper and reiterated in slightly different wording in the newly released white paper for post-school education and training (ministry of education, 1997: 7-8; department of higher education and training, 2013). the article begins with a brief introduction to the key tenets of the ca, followed by an overview of the study methodology. thereafter, i present the empirical data demonstrating how first-year students and high school learners experience diversity. the paper then shows how the ca provides a helpful lens for interpreting the various complexities and contradictions that emerge from the data, and so potentially opens up new avenues for interventions that seek to build diverse, democratic and socially equitable university spaces. agency, freedoms and capabilities the ca is particularly useful for research focused on social justice, because it emphasises the role of education and higher education in developing “complete citizens who can think for themselves, criticize tradition, and understand the significance of another person’s sufferings and achievements” in addition to the more commonly noted instrumental purposes such as skills development and preparation for employment (nussbaum, 2010: 2). the ca requires that we consider what people are able to be and to do, and what they value being and doing, or put perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 58 differently, their well-being (nussbaum, 2012, 2000; sen, 1992, 1999). capabilities refer to the opportunities or freedoms available for a person to achieve what s/he values, irrespective of whether s/he chooses to make use of the opportunity or not. agency and choice thus occupy a central position in the approach. as used in the ca, the concept of agency refers to the ability of an individual to realise the goals that s/he has reason to value. sen (1999: 19) defines an agent as “someone who acts and brings about change”. he then notes that his “work is particularly concerned with the agency role of the individual as a member of the public and as a participant in economic, social and political actions” (sen, 1999: 19). the ca emphasises and celebrates the basic heterogeneity or diversity of individuals, while providing a conceptual framework for connecting individual life histories with social and collective arrangements in order to create an evaluative framework for assessing equality and inequality (nussbaum, 2012; sen, 1992). it is important to note that social norms and structural arrangements can expand or diminish the agency of individuals. disadvantages, inequalities and injustices result where social conditions diminish agency, opportunity and choice. the concept of conversion factors is used as a means of unpacking this relationship between agency and structural conditions. since individuals are heterogeneous, they differ in terms of the extent to which they can convert available resources into opportunities/ capabilities and then these capabilities into achievements that they value. robeyns (2005) draws our attention to three groups of conversion factors, namely personal conversion factors such as metabolism, physical condition, reading ability, intelligence, and health; social conversion factors such as policies, social and cultural norms, family relations, practices of discrimination, gender roles, patriarchy, and power relations, and environmental conversion factors such as geographical location and climate (robeyns, 2005: 99). this article focuses on social conversion factors, in particular educational institutions and practices. we need to better understand the “institutional conditions of possibility” needed to foster the embrace of diversity for students entering university (walker, 2006: 36). this interplay of agency and social context can also lead to what has been termed ‘adaptive preferences’, where the choices individuals make are conditioned by their contexts. the concept of adaptive preference is particularly useful when analysing choice and opportunities (capabilities) as well as inequalities at the level of outcomes and achievements. the notion of adaptive preferences refers to “learning to desire what one is being socially constructed to want, rather than what one has reason to value” (deprez & wood, 2013: 146). in other words, one’s personal history and broader context, or, as nussbaum (2012: 83) describes it, “people’s entire upbringing in society”, impacts on preference formation and, hence, on the type of lives and societies individuals value. for example, nussbaum (2003, 2000: 136) has shown how women “adjust their desires to the way of life they know” and sometimes “undervalue basic human capabilities that they later come to value, because of social habituation and social pressure” (nussbaum, 2000: 140). bridges (2006) further unpacked the notion of adaptive preferences based on his research on widening confronting contradiction: diversity experiences at school and university merridy wilson-strydom 59 participation in the united kingdom. he identifies five different sets of constraints that have an impact on individual choice, thus potentially creating adaptive preferences. according to bridges (2006: 18-22), choice or preference can be limited by natural constraints (for example, a human being is not able to fly like a bird can); social and economic opportunity and political constraints (for example, shortage of income, unemployment, or legislative frameworks); ignorance and/or failure of rationality (illiteracy, poor levels of education, biased education, ignorance of options available); socially embedded expectations (gender roles, for example), and the individual’s own perception and construction of him-/herself – his/her identity (for example, as a liberal or conservative person, being religious, being a mother). the concepts of agency and choice, opportunity and freedom, conversion factors and adaptive preferences will be used as lenses through which the empirical data presented in this article might be understood and interpreted. using these concepts to guide the argument, the article reflects on the conditions of possibility for positive diversity encounters when entering university. methodology this paper draws on empirical data collected during 2009 and 2010 when i worked with high school learners (grades 10, 11 and 12) and first-year students at the university of the free state (ufs). the focus of the full study was on the transition from school to university. in this paper, i draw specifically on the data related to experiences or encounters with diversity. the study made use of a parallel mixed methods design that included the completion of a mainly quantitative survey by 2.816 high school learners (from a sample of 20 ufs feeder schools), qualitative data collected from 33 high school learners during a summer programme focused on university preparation as well as focus groups with 128 students in 2009, and further qualitative data collected using visual methods with a sample of 142 firstyear students in 2010. table 1 presents a summary of the empirical data collected, as well as the sample demographics. standard ethical procedures were followed. permission for the research was granted by the provincial department of education, each participating school and the ufs. participation was voluntary, and no names of learners or students were recorded, thus ensuring confidentiality and anonymity. perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 60 table 1: summary of empirical data level of study type of data sample size sample demographics2 school level quantitative (likert scale) 2.816 high school students grade 10 (37.8%); grade 11 (32.8%); grade 12 (29.4%) female (54.3%); male (45.7%) black (71.9%); white (24.5%); other/no response (3.6%) qualitative 33 high school students (nested sampling) grade 11 (66.7%); grade 12 (33.3%) female (58.0%); male (4.2.0%) black (97%); white (3%) university level qualitative 128 first-year university students female (61.7%); male (38.3%) black (75.8%); white (24.2%) living in university housing (66.4%) qualitative 142 first-year university students female (61.4%); male (38.6%) black (58.4%); white (38.7%); other/no response (2.9%) living in university housing (70.7%) the 20 schools with which i worked were grouped according to a typology that was developed specifically for the study. in line with kanjee and chudgar’s (2009) suggestion to focus on school resources as a basis for identifying school type and context, i used the geographic location of the schools and the annual school fees to create the following typology (see table 2). table 2: school types school type description number of schools suburban higher socioeconomic context (suburban hsc) suburban schools where annual school fees exceed r5.000. in most instances, these are ex-model c schools located in relatively affluent suburban areas. 9 (3 afrikaans medium of instruction; 5 english medium of instruction; 1 parallel medium) suburban lower socioeconomic context (suburban lsc) suburban schools where annual school fees range from r1.500 to r5.000. in many instances, these are also ex-model c schools, but are located in less affluent areas. many of these schools have large numbers of learners who travel by taxi from neighbouring township areas (for more on this phenomenon, see bloch, 2009:143) 4 (english medium of instruction) confronting contradiction: diversity experiences at school and university merridy wilson-strydom 61 school type description number of schools township schools schools located in township areas and where annual school fees amount to less than r1.500. 7 (english medium of instruction) quantitative data was analysed using spss, with analyses being done across the entire sample, by school type, learner demographics and language of instruction. descriptive statistics, analysis of variance (anova), independent sample t-tests and chi-square tests were used depending on the type of data being analysed. the qualitative data was analysed using nvivo software. all qualitative data was open-coded initially to allow learner and student voices to emerge and guide the identification of themes. thereafter, a second round of thematic coding was also done. this paper focuses on one of the emergent themes, that of diversity experiences. it is important to note that the line of questioning used during the qualitative data collection was openended and focused on asking students to describe their experiences of coming to university. no specific questions about diversity encounters were included. it is thus significant that out of the 11 themes that emerged from the students’ descriptions of the transition to university, encounters with diversity was the third most commonly noted. diversity experiences of first-year students it was common for students to refer to diversity experiences when describing their transition to university. for the majority of the students, encountering diversity at university was a negative experience, although there were some examples of students who found diversity encounters to be positive and enriching. this section presents the different and often contradictory responses of students to diversity of ideas and people. in doing so, i sought to present the actual words of students so that the reader is able to access and respond to the students’ own experiences. interpretation and theorisation follow in later sections. encounters with ‘the other’ at university consider the following three student drawings that highlight different and contradictory experiences of diversity. perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 62 (student drawing 1) (student drawing 2) (student drawing 3) confronting contradiction: diversity experiences at school and university merridy wilson-strydom 63 drawing 1 shows visually how this student experienced the concentration of diverse people within the relatively small space of the university. it is not clear from the drawing whether this was a positive or a negative experience for this student. drawing 2 shows the experience of both black and white students as clearly separate groups during the orientation week. this experience was also echoed by several students during the student focus groups (see the quotations below for two examples). drawing 3 presents a very different experience, where the encounter with difference is presented by showing variously coloured students holding hands and with large smiles on their faces. thus we see that for these three students, while diversity encounters were foremost in their minds when considering the transition to university, their experiences thereof were very different, and at times contradictory. where students experienced encounters with diversity in a negative light, there were two main reasons. the first was related to the fact that race differences had not been a problem at school, but on coming to university, these differences were highlighted (see student drawing 2). you would see white people all sitting in one row and then all the black people in different rows. i’m from kimberley so there’s not that much differentiation between black people and white people .... so when i came here and there’s rag and there’s the opening of the new src is welcoming them in and you see the division. it’s so distinct, like when a white person goes on stage, the other half of the rag farm starts screaming and shouting for him but when a black person gets on stage, the other half also starts. so for me, that was shocking and … it really, i wasn’t prepared for that when i came here. the second reason for negative encounters with diversity related to the difficulty experienced by several students when required to work and live with students who were different from them. socially it was worse because it was my first time meeting with different people with a different language. it was a terrible month in all. my classes were in english but all my hostel – i lived in the hostel – so all of my hostel friends were afrikaans and i was the only english girl out of 85 first-years so it was rough. although it was most common for students to describe their encounters with diversity in a negative light, a few examples of positive experiences were also noted. the following three quotations illustrate positive sentiments. oustanding! made many new friends of different races and cultures. i was amazed to see many students with different backgrounds. socially it uplifted me because you get to meet different kinds of people and you get to learn new language from that. the literature on diversity and social justice draws attention to the importance of considering intersectionalities of, for example, race, class and gender (jackson, van de vijver & biela, 2013; lewis et al., 2009; vanderyar and jansen, 2008). in this study, perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 64 intersectionalities of race and language emerged as particularly important and it was common for students to express their experiences of being in a diverse environment in relation to language. the following two examples are illustrative of students who found the multilingual environment on campus difficult to adapt to. “i don’t know, but for me it was a total social adjustment because i’m english so to come to a majority afrikaans place umm, was very difficult at first, no one wanted to talk to me because i was english so that’s also quite a massive culture-shock and that was for me the biggest adjustment, was the afrikaans.” “i also have this lecturer, she, she…she’s like afrikaans, nè, she speaks net a little bit of english. she reads everything, like she explains everything and then she just starts afrikaans and … /in english class/ … (laughter )… and i’m sitting there and i’m thinking ok, that’s a big afrikaans word. i’m not good with afrikaans, i understand just a bit and i just sit there and i think ‘yessie, i’m in an afrikaans class here’. so it would be better if they get like really good english … / lecturers/ … ja … [simultaneous speech] … because she just goes to afrikaans and i’m thinking ‘yessie, i came to the wrong class! … (laughter). by contrast, i think we should all learn another language, even the basics because really i think we have a multicultural nation and we have to, you have to speak afrikaans, english and sotho. the responses by several students emphasised just how difficult it is for students to confront their biases and learn to appreciate difference. consider the following statement that clearly shows this student’s difficulty in coming to terms with functioning in a diverse environment. the quotation illustrates the stereotypes she brings with her and is also a further example of how race and language become intertwined in discussions about diversity. and i mean he, he’s giving [an english class], it’s a language and he can’t even speak english. i mean for me in afrikaans i really need someone to like help me with english because i want to improve my english but now this person’s telling me you don’t need to attend class and he’s just, and then he’s speaking about ‘comfartable’ … (laughter) … okaaaay, i’m sorry … ja and the thing also, the guy that gives us [an english class], it’s a black guy so no, but it’s like ok, no, you, they speak umm, softer, but it’s like he doesn’t, like she said, he doesn’t pronounce it correctly and he’s like or he doesn’t know how to pronounce it so he speaks softer so you don’t hear it. you understand, so it’s like you don’t hear him half the time. encounters with diversity of ideas at university although it was most common for students to refer to encounters with students – and, in some instances, lecturers – who are different from them (‘the other’), it was also evident that students found encounters with diverse ideas and ways of knowing difficult. consider the following examples: i’m studying drama so i think that drama, the subject that they teach at school from standard 8 till matric, they should do it more based on the work we’re confronting contradiction: diversity experiences at school and university merridy wilson-strydom 65 doing now cos now i did drama at school but it means like almost nothing to me cos it’s not anything like we’re doing now. i think as well, ah, school to a certain extent it does give you that background knowledge of a specific subject but then you get, you know, when you go into some lectures and they say, they tell you what you had in high school was … was, you know, the wrong thing and this is how you do it. well, umm, since i’m from a rural school, they didn’t quite prepare us well for varsity cos nothing that we did in school was related, related to what i’m doing now here in varsity. at school you used, you read a poem, ok, there you go. they didn’t expect any, any insight from you, they didn’t expect you to go any deeper. at varsity they want you to go and read it and then to go question everything. remember at school they tried to make you think critically but they don’t always succeed all that well because they try to make you think critically within a rigid framework which doesn’t work. think critically means you throw all my ideas away. at varsity they want you to think critically – take this thing and examine every part of it. do you agree with it, do you not? at school you just write it, you just basically copy and paste. here at varsity you must be critical. we might argue that a willingness to confront and grapple with diverse ideas should be one of the central capabilities that higher education seeks to develop among its students, and that this capability is a precursor for positive diversity encounters within democratic societies (for a similar argument, see nussbaum, 1997). the above quotations begin to point to the difficulty universities face in this regard, particularly by highlighting some of the differences between school and university with respect to engagement with diverse ideas. it is thus timely to move on to the following section where i consider evidence from high school learners related to encounters with diversity. diversity experiences of high school learners the complex history of segregated schooling in south africa, and the major challenges this history continues to have on schooling transformation has been well documented in the literature (bloch, 2009; chisholm, 2004; christie, 2008; johnson, 2007; mckay & chick, 2001; vanderyar & jansen, 2008). it is not my intention to revisit this history in this article. instead, my focus is on current educational practices within schools, and the implications of this practice for diversity encounters of students when entering university. some of the quotations presented in the above section allude to the role of schooling as one of the social conversion factors that impact on transformation in universities. in this section, empirical data is presented to show how complex the links between school and university are, and to begin to unpack the contradictory experiences of students – some experience university to be less transformed than schools; some find encounters with ‘the other’ at university extremely difficult; others are enriched by the same experience, and still others struggle to come to terms with new ideas and ways of thinking. perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 66 in working with the high school learner data, i was struck by the differences in the responses from learners who attended english-medium-of-instruction schools compared to those from afrikaans-medium-of-instruction schools within the higher socio-economic context.3 although this difference is not unexpected (for example, jansen (2009: 105) notes that “[t]his kind of predictability and orderliness [that characterises afrikaans schools] is light years removed from ordinary township schools or from many of the english-medium schools”), it does raise important questions for the ufs to consider in the context of promoting positive diversity experiences of first-year students. encounters with ‘the other’ at school high school learners were asked how often they had talked to a learner of a different race or culture. just over one third, 38.7%, of the learners indicated that they often talked to a learner of a different race or cultural group, while 9.8% had never spoken to a learner from a different race or cultural group. similarly, when asked if they had talked to, or worked with a learner who differed from them in terms of religion, political opinion, family income or personal values, only 39.3% of the respondents had done this often, while 7.7% had never done so. it is important to note that the results differed significantly in terms of school type, as shown in figures 1 and 2. we notice that the results for afrikaans higher socio-economic status and township schools are remarkably similar, with learners from these schools reporting engaging with peers who are different from themselves much less than learners from the other two school types. figure 1: “talked to, or worked with a learner of a different race or culture” in terms of school type confronting contradiction: diversity experiences at school and university merridy wilson-strydom 67 figure 2: “talked to, or worked with a learner who is different in terms of religion, political opinion, family income or personal values” in terms of school type these differences across school type were statistically significant (chi square, p=0.000). across the entire sample, less than one third of the learners reported that they often encountered diverse peers. since the university draws large proportions of its students from township schools and afrikaans higher socio-economic context schools, both of which seem to provide hardly any opportunity to engage with ‘the other’, it is perhaps not surprising that encounters with diversity, with ‘the other’, are a major challenge for first-year students. encounters with diverse ideas at school several items included in the survey focused on educational practices that facilitate engagement with diverse ideas and ways of knowing. even more stark than for encounters with ‘the other’ were the differences across school type with respect to educational practices that encouraged diverse opinions and ideas, complex ideas, and problem-solving where there is no one simple correct answer. these differences across school type were statistically significant (chi square, p=0.000). figure 3: percentage of learners in terms of school type who reported ‘often’ doing the listed learning activities perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 68 figure 4: percentage of learners in terms of school type who reported that their school emphasises the listed activities ‘very much’ figures 3 and 4 present data regarding the extent to which schools are preparing learners to critically engage with diverse ideas. there is much room for improvement across all the schools included in this study. for example, figure 4 shows that fewer than 50% of the learners across all school types reported that their school places a great deal of emphasis on engaged learning that requires critical thinking, exploring new ideas and complex materials (see also soudien, 2012). despite the challenges observed across all the schools, the differences across school types are striking and, particularly so, when we consider the vastly different results for learners attending afrikaans schools compared to the other kinds of schools. jansen (2009: 109) has documented these uncritical approaches to knowledge in afrikaans schools, and describes the afrikaans school environment as follows: “what students learn more than anything is that knowledge is neutral, scientific, instrumental, mechanical, measurable, certain, and racially distinctive. this is the epistemological bedrock of school and social knowledge that frames the young white child’s knowledge of the past, present and future”. the data presented in the above figures provides further empirical evidence to support this claim. on a more positive note, some of the afrikaans-speaking students and learners who participated in this research recognised this unquestioning approach to knowledge. for example, in one of the student focus groups, a white female student from an afrikaans home and school background noted that: “at school you were much more constrained and you thought in a little box”. it is also promising to note that students attending township and lower socioeconomic-context schools tended to report relatively more emphasis on engaging with different ideas and perspectives compared to the other school types. thus, it seems that, although these schools do not provide many opportunities for interacting confronting contradiction: diversity experiences at school and university merridy wilson-strydom 69 with diverse peers, in the realm of engagement with diverse ideas, township schools fare better. discussion: a capabilities interpretation of diversity experiences arguably, in the context of a country that purports to embrace democracy and equality, we would expect (or, perhaps, at least hope) that young people in south africa – 20 years since the first democratic elections – would value diversity. yet, the empirical data presented in this paper has shown that this is not the case for many students entering universities (see also johnson, 2007). it is telling that, when asked to describe the transition to university, so many students spoke of diversity encounters. the data shows contradictory experiences and responses to diversity encounters, at the level of both diverse peers and diverse ideas, with some students having very negative encounters and others rather more positive ones, despite being in the same university context. for example, we observed how one student drew black and white students completely separated during orientation, and another drew several multi-coloured students holding hands and smiling. many students expressed personal difficulties with the multilingual environment, while others clearly had little comprehension of the complexities of the country’s divided past and of the implications of this for fellow students. the empirical data gathered at the twenty local high schools provides an important perspective for understanding these issues. i now return to the ca and use the key concepts of agency, freedoms, conversion factors and adaptive preferences to show how students’ experiences at school limit their capabilities to embrace diversity. high school learners’ experiences of diversity presented in this paper painted a somewhat bleak picture in which young people, on the whole, appear to have hardly any opportunity to interact with peers who are different from themselves (across multiple dimensions). perhaps even more concerning was the lack of emphasis on contemplating complex problems and new ideas, engaging in classroom discussion and the formulation and respectful sharing of different opinions. drawing on this data, it is thus reasonable to conclude that schools are playing the role of negative social conversion factors and, through their limited embracing of diversity (both of ‘the other’ and of ideas), are creating limits on the choices and agency freedoms of learners with respect to diversity. these findings were particularly pronounced in schools where afrikaans was the language of instruction, further emphasising the role of institutional culture as a social conversion factor. what are the implications of these schooling conditions for the development of young people’s agency, the lives they value, and the adaptive preferences they develop? in answering this question, it is useful to return to the five sets of limitations identified by bridges (2006), three of which are of particular relevance in this instance. due to the schools’ lack of emphasis on diverse ideas and ways of knowing, as well as the limited opportunities to engage with ‘the other’, students’ choices and preferences related to diversity encounters are limited by ‘ignorance’ as a result of their lack of exposure perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 70 to diversity. this first limitation is then compounded by the further constraint of socially embedded expectations related to language, culture, and socio-economic context, as emphasised by the differences across school types. it seems likely then that these limitations of ignorance and socially embedded expectations create fertile conditions for the development of constraints on choice as a result of students’ own construction of themselves through “learning to desire what one is being socially constructed to want, rather than what one has reason to value” (deprez et al., 2013: 146). ultimately, our students enter university being – as described by students’ themselves – “constrained and [thinking] in a little box”, rather than as “complete citizens who can think for themselves” (nussbaum, 2010: 2). it is thus not surprising that diversity encounters are so pronounced in students’ experiences of starting at university. conclusion: implications for action what then are the implications for action? drawing on the work of the legal theorist cass suntein, nussbaum (2000: 144) argues that “we should use institutions to create free preferences”, thus creating opportunities and freedoms. if we are serious about creating universities where diversity is celebrated, we need to ask ourselves some searching questions about the role we can play in creating institutions that foster these freedoms. what role should we be playing at school level to encourage young people to value different kinds of people, different kinds of ideas and different ways of knowing? how should we be educating our teachers who teach in these schools? given that schools (and arguably society at large) are not creating conditions for embracing diversity, what institutional conditions should universities put in place to counter the adaptive preferences with which our students enter higher education? how do we foster the development of students’ agency and choice as engaged democratic citizens when they come from environments that have limited their capabilities to do this? in contemplating these difficult questions and the implications of the answers for our practice within the higher education sector, we would be wise to consider bridges’ (2006:25) cautionary advice: he reminds us that these issues need to be addressed “holistically, at a community level [schools and universities] rather than at the level of individuals [learners or students] who are expected to change against the norms of the people to whom they feel the strongest alliances”. as such, policy and interventions that seek to foster diversity cannot focus only on changing the preferences of students through awareness-raising programmes for example, but must also be directed to the complex and deeply entrenched social arrangements within schools that currently limit young people’s agency, freedoms, and choice with respect to diversity. confronting contradiction: diversity experiences at school and university merridy wilson-strydom 71 acknowledgements i would like to thank prof. driekie hay, for her support and guidance during this research; prof. melanie walker and dr sonja loots, for comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and the two anonymous reviewers whose comments helped improve the paper. endnotes 1. 1994. the oxford paper dictionary. oxford: oxford university press, p. 235. 2. the author does not subscribe to race-based classifications. none the less, in the context of south africa, where socially constructed race groupings continue to have an impact on people’s lives and opportunities, it remains important to ensure that research includes voices across these groupings. for this reason, the proportions of high school learners and first-year students by race have been included in this table. 3. there were no afrikaans-medium-of-instruction schools in the township and lower socio-economic-context categories. for this reason, where results are presented in terms of language of instruction, this is only done for the higher socio-economiccontext schools. references ayers w, quinn t & stovall d (eds) 2009. handbook of social justice in education. london: routledge. bloch g 2009. the toxic mix: what’s wrong with south africa’s schools and how to fix it. cape town: tafelberg. boni a & walker m (eds) 2013. human development and capabilities. re-imagining the university of the twenty-first century. london: routledge. bridges d 2006. adaptive preference, justice and identity in the context of widening participation in higher education. ethics education, 1: 15-28. doi:10.1080/17449640600584946. chisholm l (ed) 2004. changing class. education and social change in postapartheid south africa. pretoria: human sciences research council. christie p 2008. opening the doors of learning. changing schools in south africa. johannesburg: heinemann publishers. department of higher education and training (dhet) 2013. white paper for postschool education and training. building an expanded, effective and integrated post-school system. pretoria: department of higher education and training. perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 72 deprez ls, & wood dr 2013. teaching for well-being. pedagogical strategies for meaning, value, relevance and justice. in a boni & m walker (eds). human development and capabilities. re-imagining the university of the twenty-first century. london: routledge, pp. 145-161. featherman dl, hall m & krislov m (eds) 2010. the next 25 years. affirmative action in higher education in the unites states and south africa. ann arbor, mi: university of michigan press. jackson ltb, van de vijver fjr & biela r 2013. coping with diversity in dormitories in a historically white hei in south africa. south african journal of higher education, 27(3): 607-626. jansen j 2009. knowledge in the blood. confronting race and the apartheid past. redwood city, ca: stanford university press. johnson d 2007. building citizenship in fragmented societies: the challenges of deracialising and integrating schools in post-apartheid south africa. international journal of educational development, 27(3): 306-317. doi:10.1016/j.ijedudev.2006.10.012. kanjee a & chudgar a 2009. accuracy of the poverty quintile system for categorising south african schools. pretoria: human sciences research council. lewis a, o’connor c, mueller j, ayers w, quinn t & stoval d 2009. discrimination, culture, or capital? the challenges of underconceptualising race in educational research. in w ayers, t quinn & d stovall (eds). handbook of social justice in education. london: routledge, pp. 249-276. mckay s & chick k 2001. positioning learners in post-apartheid south african schools: a case study of selected multicultural durban schools. linguistics and education, 12(4): 393-408. doi:10.1016/s0898-5898(01)00068-7. ministry of education (moe) 1997. education white paper 3 a programme for higher education transformation (no. 18207). pretoria: south african ministry of education. ministry of education (moe) 2008. report of the ministerial committee on transformation and social cohesion and the elimination of discrimination in public higher education institutions. pretoria: department of education. nussbaum m 2003. capabilities as fundamental entitlements: sen and social justice. feminist economics, 9(2-3): 33-59. nussbaum m 2010. not for profit. why democracy needs the humanities. princeton, nj: princeton university press. nussbaum mc 1997. cultivating humanity. a classical defense of reform in liberal education. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. nussbaum mc 2000. women and human development. the capabilities approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. nussbaum mc 2012. creating capabilities: the human development approach. cambridge: harvard university press. robeyns i 2005. the capability approach: a theoretical survey. journal of human development, 6(1): 93-114. confronting contradiction: diversity experiences at school and university merridy wilson-strydom 73 sen a 1992. inequality re-examined. new york: russell sage foundation. sen a 1999. development as freedom. oxford: oxford university press. soudien c 2010. race and class in the south african higher education sector. in dl featherman, m hall & m krislov (eds). the next 25 years. affirmative action in higher education in the unites states and south africa. ann arbor, mi: university of michigan press, pp. 187-195. soudien c 2012. realising the dream. unlearning the logic of race in the south african school. pretoria: human sciences research council press. vanderyar s & jansen j 2008. diversity high. class, color, culture, and character in a south african high school. maryland, ny: university press of america. walker m 2006. higher education pedagogies. berkshire, england: society for research into higher education & open university press. 283 research article 2021 39(2): 283-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) in-school transition challenges among primary school learners with autism spectrum disorders in south africa: parents and teachers’ perspectives abstract successful school transition is a basis for career development and eventual overall adult educational and socio-economic outcomes. transitioning through primary school grades is a combination of relative academic and social skills acquired in each grade and forms the basis for subsequent academic and social success at ensuing educational pursuit and adult independent life. evidence indicates that learners with autism spectrum disorder (asd) and their families experience limiting challenges in their school transition at different levels. there is a gap in the literature as to the specific factors that constitute school transition difficulties in primary school learners with asd in the area of study. the purpose of this study was to investigate challenges that learners with asd face as they transition through school grades. the study adopted a phenomenological design with 12 participants (6 parents and 6 teachers). two focus group discussions were held to collect data analysed using inductive thematic analysis. the results revealed three main themes, which included poor academic achievement and skills development, social and economic challenges as well as behavioural problems. the findings of the study suggest an increased need for home-school collaboration during the early stages and throughout the school years for the effective transition of learners with asd. thus, providing learners with asd and their families with academic, emotional and behavioural intervention and support can help learners with autism to develop personal resources that will encourage their educational success. keywords: autism spectrum disorders; school transition; academic success, primary school, teachers, parents 1. introduction transition is any event or non-event that is consequential to change in relationships, routines, assumptions and roles author: maximus monaheng sefotho1 charity n.onyishi1,2 affiliation: 1university of johannesburg, south africa 2university of nigeria, nsukka, nigeria doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i2.20 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(2): 283-302 published: 11 june 2021 received: 25 june 2020 accepted: 17 september 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0704-1983 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4047-7850 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 2842021 39(2): 284-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) (bailey-taylor, 2009; schlossberg, 1984; 2011). learners who demonstrate success in school transition have an increased likelihood of engaging well and experiencing adaptive academic economic and social outcomes (denkyirah & magbeke, 2010). school transition is an ongoing, process involving beginning early childhood education, starting school, changing year grade levels within a school, transferring from one school to another, shifting from primary school to secondary school and moving from secondary school to further education, training and employment (evans, borriello & field, 2018). for instance, as learners change class within or between schools, they must adjust to new surroundings, become familiar with new teachers and peers, learn new ways of working and make sense of the rules and routines that operate in their classes (strand, 2019). while students are navigating the formal school environment, they are also adjusting to the continuous social changes that happen when changing schools and classes. hence, while transition from one school to another has been widely researched (evans, borriello & field, 2018; marsh et al.,2017; nuske et al,2019; strand, 2019; west, sweeting & young, 2010), there seems to be little or no research considering challenges associated with changing classes or within-school transition (that is transition between grade levels). increasing evidence-based studies have continually shown that subsequent primary to secondary school transition is a function of the success in transition within school, such as transitioning from class to class (howard, 2004; petriwskyj, 2010; rice et al., 2015). progressing through graded social, academic and organisational experiences in the school is a cumulative function of class-specific transition success and could be challenging for every individual learner (lei et al.,2018). this is most daunting for learners with asd (coffey, 2013; connolly & gersch, 2016; lei et al., 2018), yet it is unclear what specific challenges account for poor transition in learners with asd. asd encompasses a range of neurodevelopmental conditions primarily typified by difficulties in social communication and interaction as well as the restricted, repetitive or stereotyped pattern of behaviours, interests and activities (american psychiatric association 2013; centers for disease control and prevention [cdc], 2012). apart from the primary characteristics of asd highlighted above, the majority of persons in the spectrum also experience comorbid psychological conditions such as anxiety (steensel et al., 2011), depression (wigham et al., 2017), hypersensitivity to sound and light (longtin, 2014; sarrett, 2018) and poor executive functioning (aps, 2013; demetriou et al., 2018). owing to these defining features of asd, learners within the spectrum may have significantly poorer skills to face, accommodate and adjust to overarching changes during school transition. in spite of the facts that approximately half (46%) of the learners with asd demonstrate normal intelligence quotient (iq) to attain optimum academic height and the majority have areas of significant cognitive strengths (cdc, 2012), lower percentages of such learners are retained across post-secondary school graduation and subsequent employment (shattuck et al., 2012). these are indications of poor transition outcomes, explicating the underpinning school transition challenges. transition challenges in the asd population limit their academic progress, functional participation and independent functioning (anderson et al.,2018; markin, hill & pellicano, 2017; marsh et al.,2017). thus, markin and colleagues identified transition as challenging for learners with asd. though sources of concerns in the transition from primary to secondary school in autistic and typically developing children overlap considerably (dann, 2011; dillon & underwood, 2012), increased challenges of learners with asd account for their leaving colleges unprepared for adult life in college, in community living and at work (wehman et al., http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 2852021 39(2): 285-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 sefotho & onyishi in-school transition challenges among primary school learners with autism 2014). additionally, learners with asd may show more symptoms associated with transition compared to those with other disabilities (lequia et al.,2015; ismaila et al.,2016) and the typically developing learners (marsh et al., 2017). hence, the trajectories of the localised transition problems of learners with asd may be a function of deficiencies imposed on them by the disorders (cdc, 2012). studies tend to suggest that deficits in social communication and how to put others in perspective limit their school transitions in a socially acceptable and adaptive manner (gobbo & shmulsky, 2014; longtin, 2014). furthermore, the characteristic repetitive behaviours associated with asd make it almost impossible for persons with asd to adjust to the changes in daily routines as required (barnhill 2016; kapp, gantman & laugeson, 2011) for social and academic outcomes. as such, changing from one school activity to another (such as from assembly to classroom; from one subject period to another and from playground back to the classroom) may constitute stress for learners with asd and may limit academic outcomes. additionally, impairment in executive function limits their ability to make flexible academic planning, manage their time or demonstrate organisational skills necessary for effective learning (barnhill 2016; dipeolu et al., 2014). thus, it is always difficult for teachers and parents to make decisions regarding the academic progress of learners with asd in the form of meeting requirements for changing school grade levels. these could account for the challenging nature of transition in learners with asd, which only a few of them tend to overcome (anderson et al.,, 2018; forest et al., 2004; mandy et al.,2016a; b). studies have shown that individuals with asd experience significant transition challenges across their lifespan (bolourian, stavropoulos & blacher, 2019; mandy et al.,2016; friedman, warfield & parish, 2013). the transition of learners with asd can also pose challenges for primary caregivers including parents and teachers (ooi et al.,, 2016). challenges sprout up as the child interacts with the family system, with a little change in the home routines, such as having a visitor or cooking unfamiliar food (ooi et al.,2016). moving from home to school (marsh et al.,2017); from primary to secondary school (makin, hill & pellicano, 2017); specialised to mainstream schools (martins et al., 2019); secondary school to post-secondary (gelbart et al., 2014) and to adulthood and the world of work (anderson et al.,2018; friedman, warfield & parish, 2013; schall, wehman & mcdonough, 2012) also constitutes unequal stress and challenges. these transition failures cause the learners with asd to feel lonely, isolated dejected and pathologically defensive (jackson et al., 2018), thereby increasing internalising and externalising behaviour problems and undermining academic success. thus, studies have found positive links between transition failure and negative behavioural, mental and economic outcomes in the children with asd and their families (marsh et al., 2017; schall et al., 2012; lequia et al., 2015). for instance, jackson et al. (2018) found mental health symptoms including reported feelings of isolation, high levels of stress, anxiety, depression and suicidal ideation in a sample of 56 post-secondary school students following the transition to university. there is also a strong correlation between the extent to which students experienced difficulty following transition and their likelihood of dropping out from school (west, sweeting & young, 2010). other research indicates that poor transitions impact on students’ wellbeing and on their achievement in the future (evans, borriello & field, 2018). on the other hand, success in transition may lead to positive outcomes, such as vocational competence employment perspectives, increased independence and increased social http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 2862021 39(2): 286-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) competences (schall et al., 2012), which are expected educational outcomes. thus rice et al., (2015) found that success in transition is a measure of being academically and behaviourally involved in school and feeling a sense of belonging to school. the long term outcomes include self-determination and self-advocacy, parental involvement in school and community inclusion as well as completion of postsecondary education (anderson et al.,2018; schall et al., 2012). consequently, transition through early age to adulthood in learners with asd has been widely researched in high-income countries (kapp, gantman & laugeson, 2011). kapp and colleagues observe one of the major problems in asd research and practice as paediatric-to-adulthood transition. mandy et al. (2016) found that psychopathology, adaptive functioning and peer victimisation were measured by parent, self and teacher report were major challenges of transition from primary to secondary school. additionally, in a systematic review, marsh et al. (2017) found that children with asd demonstrated poorer emotional readiness to school and higher externalising behaviours as well as self-regulation difficulties compared to their peers. marsh and colleagues suggested that such attributes affect school engagement and teachers’ relationships with children with asd as well as the ultimate school outcomes. anderson et al. (2018) found that factors such as poor person-environment fit, ambiguity in parents’ roles and the lack of comprehensive or integrated services influence poor transition outcomes. cheak-zamora, teti and first (2015) indicated that fear and anxiety regarding transitioning and unmet needs were high, leaving caregivers struggling to fill gaps and the lack of individualised services were the major challenges. caregivers faced additional difficulty in motivating youth and creating opportunities for education and employment. however, no study was found investigating within-school transition in primary school children with asd. the current study sought to investigate the challenges associated with transition of learners with asd from within autism special schools. a study in this area is timely and especially critical, given that research has focused considerably on developing interventions in different areas of emotional, behavioural, social and academic dimensions, without considering what constitutes the challenges that undermine intervention outcomes. the aim of the present study is to investigate the parents and teachers’ perceptions about transition difficulties experienced by learners with asd within the school. to guide this study, we formulated the following research question: what are the challenges to transitioning learners with asd across grades within the same primary school? 2. theory in carrying out the present study, we followed the framework of schlossberg’s transition theory. schlossberg’s work provided understanding into the impending elements of transition, looking at the individual, the environment and the support systems in place during a transition period. schlossberg’s transition theory scrutinised the elements of transition, including different forms of transition as well as the process and factors that contribute to a transition. according to this theory, the four ss guide the transition process (situation, self, support, and strategies) (evans et al., 2010; schlossberg, 1984). in the four ss, deficits can turn into resources and resources can turn into deficits during a transition. thus, in this process, the situation aspect evaluates activator (the cause of transition); timing of the transition; control of the individual undergoing the transition; role change (gain or loss) and duration, (permanent, temporary or uncertain); previous experience with a similar transition, concurrent stress and an assessment of who or what is accountable for the transition (evans et al., 2010; schlossberg, 1984). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 2872021 39(2): 287-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 sefotho & onyishi in-school transition challenges among primary school learners with autism the second s in schlossberg’s four ss (self) highlights the importance of personal characteristics and how they influence a person’s view of life. personal characteristics may include personal demographics and psychological resources. the third s (support) in the model includes intimate relationships such as family, friends and institutions. finally, the fourth s (strategies) depicts the coping responses one uses during a transition. schlossberg divided the strategies into three categories: those who modify a situation, those who control the problem, and those who aid in managing the stress in the aftermath. making successful transitions, therefore, encompass broader educational and personal purpose, considering the different participant groups (parents, teachers, assistants and the community) and learner diversity (petriwskyj, 2010). following schlossberg’s work, we sought information about the learners’ challenges, emanating from self, situation, support and strategies. data collected for the study were analysed giving rise to themes that reflect schlossberg’s 4s model of transition. 3. method 3.1 study paradigm the study followed a phenomenological qualitative research design (neubauer, witkop & varpio, 2019), which suits the present study given that the study aimed at describing the phenomenon (transition challenges) without any pre-given framework but based on the perspectives of those involved (groenewald, 2004). qualitative methods are recommended for their ability to explore the depth and complexity of phenomena (guest, namey & mckenna, 2017). a phenomenological method is a valuable approach to systematic reflection on the learning experiences of children and deeper understanding of students’ meaningful learning transition and learners’ experiences in the school (maxwell, 2013; shi, 2011). figure 1 below represents the methods used in the study. phenomenology is different from other qualitative research in that it lays more emphasis on the subjective point of view (in terms of consciousness and lived experiences), rather than theoretical, prejudicial and suppositional interference (janesick, 2011; shi, 2011). with all these strengths, phenomenological research is criticised for presenting the researchers with some dilemmas of being descriptive or interpretive; objective or subjective and participant voice or researcher voice (janesick, 2011; shi, 2011) and being time consuming (creswell, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 2882021 39(2): 288-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) figure 1: research process flow-chart 3.2 participants and sampling using purposive sampling we drew 12 participants comprising 6 parents and 6 teachers of children with asd in johannesburg, south africa. specifically, the purposive sampling techniques used was snowballing, which is a method of sampling where one participant recommends others for participating in the study (groenewald, 2004). a parent of a learner with asd, who is also undertaking her phd at the university of johannesburg and is a researcher in autism, recommended and assisted the second author in contacting other participants. participants were recruited in the study based on the following inclusion criteria: 1) must be a parent or a teacher of learners with asd; 2) must have taught or parented an autistic learner for at least 5 years after diagnosis; 3) perceived to be experienced, knowledgeable and informed about autism and finally, 4) must be willing to participate and sign an informed consent form. each focus group was made up of 6 participants. this group size is common with a minimum of four and a maximum of 12 participants per group suggested in earlier studies (guest et al., 2017). the small sample is justified by the fact that focus group discussions do not depend on a large sample size but rely on the ability of participants to provide relevant information (nyumba et al.,2018). 3.3 data generation methods focus group discussions (fgds) were carried out with parents and teachers. fgds are appropriate to investigate people’s subjective experiences, perspectives and attitudes, to elicit the views of key stakeholders or the views of marginalised groups (guest et al., 2017; http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 2892021 39(2): 289-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 sefotho & onyishi in-school transition challenges among primary school learners with autism stewart, shamdasani & rook, 2007). five open-ended questions were generated for the study and were meant to guide the interviewers and researchers in probing questions and discussions with the participants. focus group discussions allowed the researchers to elicit data through dialogue and participatory interactions. fgds were conducted in a quiet meeting room within an autism school in johannesburg, south africa. for consistency, the semi-structured interview schedule was the same for the parents and teachers. the foundational questions built on the perspectives of the participants and include: describe your experience about transition challenges of your child with asd in the following areas: home and school? comment on the challenges that may undermine successful transitioning across school activities, grade-levels or across schools (pre-schoolprimary-secondary-postsecondary). explain how those challenges could limit their transition into the world of work? some supporting questions which are “think back” and “think ahead” questions that were meant to motivate participants to reflect on the past and predict future school experiences and obstacles were included in the question. such phrases as “think back to the beginning of the new school years, what took place then?”; “can you infer the longterm outcome of…” with the consent of the participants, all fgds were voice-recorded by one of the researchers and a facilitator who in each case was a research assistant trained for facilitation and note taking for the study. each focus group discussion (parents and teachers) took approximately 90 minutes (one and a half hours). 3.4 data analysis and trustworthiness data were coded inductively to find recurring categories that define perceived transition challenges to ensure trustworthiness. with the help of the research assistant, we identified patterns across the codes and reflected on the underlying meaning to cluster codes and form themes that were consistent across the focus group. this was meant bringing out the key issues as well as similarities and differences within and between groups of participants. all qualitative data were analysed following nowell, norris, white and moules’ (2017) prescriptions for establishing trustworthiness in six phases of thematic data analysis. the phases include, phase 1: researchers familiarising selves with data; phase 2: generating initial codes; phase 3: searching for themes; phase 4: reviewing themes; phase 5: defining and naming themes and phase 6: producing the report. observing these phases in the case of this research enabled the researchers to ensure trustworthiness with reference to credibility, transferability, dependability and conformability of the study outcome (nowell et al., 2017).the researchers familiarised themselves with the data set by line-by-line reviewing of data from each group, generating initial codes, searching for themes, reviewing themes, defining and naming themes and producing the report. 3.5 ethical considerations the researcher received ethical approval from the faculty of education, university of johannesburg, south africa to conduct this study. all participant signed consent documents before participating in the study. all participation in the study was on a voluntary basis. participation in the study complied with the ethical rules of using human subjects in research. the research has no negative impact on the participants of the researchers. data collected in the study were handled unanimously. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 2902021 39(2): 290-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 4. findings three main themes emerged from inductive coding process. these were labelled academic achievement and skill development, socio-economic challenges and behavioural problems. each major theme is made up of sub-themes. figure 2: themes and sub-themes on transition challenges academic challenges and skill development socio-economic challenges behavioural problems inability to transfer learning experiences across contexts difficulties in changing from one activity to another poor academic achievement difficulty in testing and assessments of academic progress learneroriented environmental challenges lack of help-seeking skills change of classroom/teacher poor social acceptance/exclusion family structure inadequate support services communication challenge anxiety sleep problem mood swings rigidity/difficulties adjusting to new contexts economic disparity depression internalising externalising dropping to the floor running away hyper-reactivity aggressiveness poor knowledge figure 2: themes and sub-themes on transition challenges theme 1: academic achievement and skill development difficulties the first and most conspicuous emerging theme from the data was academic challenge and difficulty in developing life skills. this theme points to learning difficulties observed among children with asd. the parents and teachers attest to the fact that children with asd experience a considerable challenge in learning new skills and demonstrating considerable success in academic success. subthemes include: inability to transfer learning experiences across contexts; difficulties in changing from one activity to another; poor academic achievement even with the adapted curriculum and difficulty in testing and assessments of academic progress especially with those with high support needs. as expressed in the parents’ focus group discussion: i thought it was only a school issue i tend to blame the teacher…but i noticed it’s pretty difficult to get him to learn one thing. even what the teacher says he has learnt, i rarely see any evidence. sometimes, he turns out to be worse… a teacher submitted: teaching these children have always made me doubt my competence. i often think of doing one thing for ever… sometime[s], i feel i am not getting it… both parents and teachers highlighted: it [is] difficult to evaluate academic progress in learners with asd. it is difficult to justify the basis of promoting such learners to the next grade level and since we do not have any other framework for testing… http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 2912021 39(2): 291-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 sefotho & onyishi in-school transition challenges among primary school learners with autism these constitute considerable challenges as teachers find it difficult to assess and promote the learners with asd from one school grade to the other. since these learners find it challenging to transfer learning experiences across contexts, success in tests and application of learning to life situations are hampered. difficulties in changing from one activity to another may affect subject coverage and result in challenges managing class time. poor academic achievement even with the adapted curriculum and difficulty in testing and assessments of academic progress in learners with asd raise considerable challenges for teachers transitioning the learners to higher classes. it is clear and established that learning is cumulative and progresses from simple to complex. the implies that the difficulties experienced by learners with asd at primary school level account for their high dropout rate at secondary school and their inability to cope at post-secondary school level. theme 2: socio-economic challenges there are many social limitations identified that could impact on transition across primary school classes/grades. such challenges were highlighted under child-oriented challenges such as lack of help-seeking skills, difficulty during promotion/change of classroom/teacher, communication challenge, rigidity/difficulties adjusting to new contexts and environmental factors in the school, home or the community such as poor social acceptance/exclusion, family structure, inadequate support services, economic disparity/poverty and unemployment. some exemplary comments of members of parents’ group are as follows: resuming school each time constitutes stress for us. he would never admit to be in the school, shouting every morning. sometimes i tend to consider if he should only be at home with his home-teacher ...going to the next class promotion is challenging. i did everything possible, only to notice that leaving the former teacher was the problem. i regretted not taking any action during the holiday. he rarely likes to ask for help or anything from the siblings. sometimes when they talk about his weakness thinking that maybe he doesn’t understand, he will becomes very restless, yet would not express his grievances through words we are no more comfortable accepting visitors, because my son will surely disgrace you. i wonder how he can get to a level he will be able to relate with people at [a] workplace or in the wider world teachers also noted that the aforementioned personal limitations in children with autism as challenges in their school transition from one activity to the other. for instance, as one of the teachers expressed: to change lesson periods from reading to life skills for example, i have to prepare them before hand, otherwise that alone is enough to put the class in chaos. they are so rigid! i think that could impact on their successful transition because, the world is dynamic. at early school years, navigating their challenging classroom behaviours to establish and sustain positive student-teacher relationships necessary for learning is another, challenge to their academic progress. at late primary school grades and high school, the major challenge may be on helping them build social relationships and social networks to protect them from devastating mental health problems like depression or anxiety. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 2922021 39(2): 292-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) environmental challenges discussed were poor social acceptance/exclusion, family structure, inadequate support services, economic disparity/poverty, unemployment and poor knowledge and attitude. according to the teachers’ group, the socio-economic challenges are all critical for transition and form the basis upon which other challenges hide their roots. the parents and teachers stressed that critical learning skills are undermined by environmental factors such as poor social acceptance. a mother stated: it is a world of you and your child with autism. nobody is behind you! not even your spouse, in fact i am divorced today because i have a child with autism. my husband never for one day accepted that this child is ours; it was always me and my daughter. even the siblings were mostly unhappy. you go to [a] mall with her and all eyes are on you. my daughter is 26 now. then, she was rejected in all the schools i took her to. i know if it is now she wouldn’t have been as bad as she is. so i think community attitude accounted for most challenges we encounter, my daughter and i always create a scene. another parent said that the most overwhelming challenge her family had was economic challenges. low income and poverty limits my investment on my child with autism. autism condition is financially demanding. i pay approximately r2 100 monthly for school fees and transport of my son. you have to pay and pay and pay. providing necessary interventions is of great cost, and their transition progress depends on integrated interventions, i cannot be [an] expert in all… the environmental challenges highlighted also include social climate factors associated with home, school and the community. children with asd can sustain below normal social relationships with siblings, teachers, classmates, and friends. a challenge is meeting the requirements in organising the social frameworks of the home, school and the community to enhance positive transition in children with asd. during high school, young adults with asd continue reduced transition outcomes, such as poor self-advocacy, loneliness, dependence and unemployment. they also emphasised the challenge of un/under-employment, specific challenges such as limited employment options and limited vocational support were stressed. successful transition to adulthood is especially challenged by having to secure a blue-collar job or becoming an entrepreneur. some children have really acquired employability skills without being employed. parents experience plenty of stress in getting learners with asd to bear their personal responsibilities in terms of independent life skills and enhancing health and wellbeing depends on employment opportunities. …limited employment opportunities for them after school could be discouraging. some of them grow to be very good but unemployed. like one that now helps us here has graduated since over three years…….and i know he can be good for appropriate employment. poor knowledge was also found to be a challenge for the parents and teachers. participants expressed that poor knowledge of the parents and teachers about asd, teachers’ poor knowledge concerning the learning of children with asd and poor community awareness hamper transition in learners with asd. parents: i can say that poor knowledge is the summary of all the challenges…i regret my poor knowledge, especially at the early stage of my child’s development. i didn’t really http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 2932021 39(2): 293-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 sefotho & onyishi in-school transition challenges among primary school learners with autism understand what was wrong with him, little did i take necessary actions at that early stage when intervention is most effective. lack of knowledge is enough to keep a child with good potentials at home in complications”. teachers: …but the problem we teachers are almost novice on the prognosis of these disorders. the learners in this spectrum are so heterogeneous that in a class of 9 learners, who are at the same support need, the variation in the pattern of behaviour and learning can be so versed and daunting. teachers: in fact, all of us teaching them at different levels are poorly knowledgeable in how best we can teach and assess progress of these learners. theme 3: behaviour problems the participants showed concern about behaviour problems in learners with asd, pointing out that many learners exhibit a range of internalising and externalising behaviour problems. the teachers and parents submitted that internalising and externalising problems such as mood swings, anxiety and restlessness, aggressiveness as well as hyper-reactivity constitute great challenges to transitioning across primary school grades. as opined by the teachers’ group: managing mental health and behavioural issues in learners with asd is very challenging and could limit functionality among them. sometimes, they fail to express learnt skills due to emotional problem. …chronic depressive mood limit[s] learning and interferes with all life activities. sometimes, i get exhausted trying to understand what distresses them…you take all the time to get him back, but no way. one distress as little as a sight of a new face in the class or at home can get a child with asd shouting till infinity this could be a very big challenge, especially as the child continue to have need for independent living. i tend to nurse some concerns on what on earth can make them function well with that kind of negative emotions. it can hamper their active participation in home routine and self-care, so increases the stress if caring for them, even at adulthood. …their aggressiveness hinders peer collaboration and limits their learning. they find it difficult working with others, prefer to work alone. 5. discussion learners with asd are among the most vulnerable to transition problems, experiencing significant limitation in successful transition across life and developmental stages. this study sought to identify the overarching challenges of primary school learners with asd in transitioning from one school grade to another. the results highlighted major academic difficulties, socio-economic challenges and behavioural problems as challenges leading to poor transition outcomes in learners with asd. 5.1 academic challenges academic achievement and skill development difficulties include inability to transfer learning experiences across contexts; difficulties in changing from one subject to another or from one grade level to another; poor academic achievement even with the adapted curriculum and difficulty in testing and assessments of academic progress especially with those with high http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 2942021 39(2): 294-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) support needs. inability of learners with autism to transfer what they have learnt to different contexts found in this study is in agreement with earlier studies in that area (barnhill 2016; kapp, gantman & laugeson, 2011). difficulties in changing from one subject to another or from one grade level to another found in the present study concur with the existing literature. for instance, evidence has proven that due to the need for routine, persons with asd find it difficult to change activities (gurbuz, hanley & riby, 2019; hume, 2008; kapp, gantman & laugeson, 2011). this is a major transition issue that affects children with autism in the classroom. for parents and teachers to help the learners navigate the problem of changing activities, everything has to be prepared (kapp, gantman & laugeson, 2011; zager & shamow, 2005). the children need to be supported to get emotionally ready to change activities from in the school no matter how small the change may be. some authors have suggested the use of prompting and reinforcements through activities planning in helping such children (zager & shamow, 2005). further, the interest of the learners with asd has to be sought for any activity including what to do next, what to learn next and the associated outcomes. another conspicuous academic challenge found in this study is poor academic achievement even with the adapted curriculum. poor academic achievement undermines transition success in learners with asd. this result confirms what is available in the literature, that even though more than 50% of learners with asd have at least an average iq, most of them achieve poorly academically (cdc, 2012; estes et al., 2011). the academic difficulties in learners with asd could be due to their disorder in complex information processing characterised by irregular, idiosyncratic profiles of intelligence that show deficits in social contexts. as the learners proceed from grades to another, they are required to show considerable progress in the present grade before they are promoted to another grade. further, higher order thinking that may demand adapted cognitive styles may be required from learners with asd who struggle with organisational skills, switching attention, problem-solving and comprehension of complex operations. due to deficits in judging the passage of time (martin et al., 2010) and in cognitive flexibility learners with asd may not achieve spontaneous academic success, but may need specialised interventions to learn the required academic skills needed for transitioning from one school grade to another. learners with asd can be helped to overcome academic challenges by designing/ adapting curriculum that attend to their systemising personality characteristic (high inclination towards understanding of rules, the inner workings of objects and the organisation of systems). systemising personality places preference to predictable, rule-based and lawful systems as well as inclination to the truth (baron-cohen, 2008). furthermore, difficulty in testing and assessments of academic progress in formal and informal contexts was identified as a challenge to transition. earlier studies have also recorded teachers’ difficulties in assessing and evaluating academic progress in children with asd (tay, kee & hui, 2019). learners with asd normally present the problem of a scattered profile of results on formal testing measures, as well as inconsistent performance (durocher, 2011) making it difficult to take decisions and planning concerning their transition. 5.2 socio-economic challenges child-oriented social challenges include difficulty during promotion/change of classroom/ teacher, communication challenges, rigidity/difficulties adjusting to new contexts and non-cooperation. these findings are consistent with earlier studies that show that autistic http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 2952021 39(2): 295-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 sefotho & onyishi in-school transition challenges among primary school learners with autism children experience challenges blending with and coping in new school placements (dillon & underwood, 2012; tobin et al., 2012). these challenges are perhaps associated with deficits in social and communication skills, poor executive functions and cognitive inflexibility, which characterise asds (dijkhuis et al., 2020). researchers observed that improved social skills are related to academic achievement in learners with autism (estes et al., 2011). poor social communication may also limit the learners’ help-seeking skills making it almost impossible for them to make personal adjustments (dijkhuis et al., 2020). social situations keep getting more complex as learners progress through school and exacerbate their academic and social difficulties. on the other hand, poor executive function limits higher order cognitive functioning embedded in abstract reasoning, decision making and social regulation, which controls cognitive flexibility, working memory and planning/organising, necessary for self-regulation (hofmann, schmeichel & baddeley, 2012). these challenges may present difficulties in transition areas such as tracking deadlines, time management, keeping class notes and organising materials, coping with daily schedules and long-term assignments (dijkhuis et al., 2020). furthermore, cognitive inflexibility has been identified as a predictor of achievement. for instance, st. john et al. (2018) found that the cognitive flexibility of children with asd at the age of 6 years predicted their math achievement at age 9. a non-cooperation identified in this study could be explained by the attention problem in children with asd. attention issues have been found to be significantly associated with academic performance in children with asd (spaniol et al., 2017). environmentally oriented challenges include poor social acceptance/exclusion, family structure, inadequate support services, economic disparity/poverty and poor/negative attitude. exclusion has been a major challenge in socio-educational experience of learners with asd and their families. learners with asd are more likely to be excluded from schools than any other group of disabilities. exploring learners’ perspectives, brede et al. (2017) found that unmet needs and inappropriate approaches by previous school staff in attending to children’s difficulties were the causes of decline in children’s mental health and behaviour and, ultimately, led to subsequent school exclusion. both formal and informal school exclusions have been recorded in children with asd (brede et al., 2017), including fixed-term school exclusion, permanent exclusion (formal exclusion) and/or encouraging children to be home-schooled (informal exclusion) especially when a carer/teaching assistant is unavailable (atkinson, 2013; brede et al., 2017; sproston, sedgewick & crane, 2017). family structure was among the sub-themes in the transition challenges. while teachers outlined the place of family involvement in transition, teachers submitted that a disrupted family structure could have a negative effect on transition success. research recognises the place of family in the successful transition of students with asd across schools and employments (hagner et al., 2012). sproston et al. (2017) found that disrupted spousal relationship is a factor in exclusion of children with asd. in a relationship study, rea-amaya, acle-tomasini and ordaz-villegas (2017) found that parents who give meaning to their lives are more likely to seek help to maintain the family’s emotional bond and to solve problems inherent to having a child with asd, while those who exhibit distress, anguish, hyper-concern, little tolerance and rule inconsistency are associated with negative outcomes. this indicates family resilience in terms of acceptability of the child and being proactive in negating transition problems in asd learners and parenting behaviours (crowell, keluskar & gorecki, 2019). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 2962021 39(2): 296-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) economic disparity/poverty relates to the disparity in access between white south africans and those who are black or coloured. given the financially intensiveness of caring, treating and educating learners with asd (mthombeni & nwoye, 2018), it is not unexpected that economic disparity and poverty were identified as challenges to transition in learners with asd. parents and families living with asd face a high financial burden. the cost of therapies, special education and treatments are high and are rarely covered by the government of south africa (erasmus, 2019; franz et al., 2018). high levels of effort, both physically and financially, are required in order to ensure that placement for learners with asd is duly encapsulate in the intervention services (meiring et al., 2016). after formal education, parents take the sole responsibility to organise ongoing learning and movement into independent living and working opportunities, and disparity in economic empowerment is always experienced by white and black south-african citizens with asd learners. though this theme was quite evident during the focus group discussion, the researchers could not find literature backing the argument. this calls for further investigation. poor/negative attitude of the parents, teachers and the community were also prominent in the study themes. this finding supports previous studies that found that parents’ attitudes affect functional outcomes in learners with asd (meiring et al., 2016). attitudes of the parents determine the parental behaviours towards learners with asd (crowell, keluskar & gorecki, 2019) and affect the efforts made towards transition and development of the child. for instance, some parents see their children with asd as ones that cannot improve. such parents are not proactive towards what the learners can learn to improve their lives but see them as needing only physical care. further, due to negative attitudes, many families having children with asd have problems with spousal relationships and children are raised by single parents, most often the mother. on the other hand, teachers’ professional attitude can undermine learning and transition in learners with asd. the study findings show that some teachers believe that learners with asd are unteachable and cannot be evaluated. however, the outcomes of the present study still suggest that if the critical challenges are well captured in transition planning, the learners can learn, be evaluated and make remarkable school progress. 5.3 behaviour problems both internalising and externalising problems, such as mood swings, anxiety and restlessness, aggressiveness, self-injury, abnormal fear response, as well as hyper-reactivity, temper tantrum, running away and dropping on the floor were identified as challenging for the parents and teachers. these agree with the findings of kurzius-spencer et al. (2018), which showed that some of these behavioural problems are comorbid conditions associated with asd. evidence shows that the increased tendency of learners with asd to engage in problem behaviour during transitions constitutes a considerable challenge for the learners with asd and those in their immediate environment (lequia et al., 2015). approximately 94% of the asd population exhibits some challenging behaviours, out of which 63% exhibit externalising while 83% exhibit internalising behaviours (jang et al., 2011). results of this study are also consistent with that of lequia et al. (2015), which identified some common challenging behaviours exhibited by students with asd during transition periods, including aggression, off-task behaviour and inappropriate vocalisations, dropping to the floor and running away. parents and teachers who participated in this study expressed their worry about the level of independence that the learners can attain and the possibility of their coping without care and assistance. additionally, participants also worry about problem behaviours. this http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 2972021 39(2): 297-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 sefotho & onyishi in-school transition challenges among primary school learners with autism finding is synonymous to that of mandy et al. (2016) who found maladaptive behaviours are often exhibited by people with asd and are the main cause of caregivers’ stress. maskey et al. (2013) found that sleep, bathroom and eating problems, hyperactivity, self-injury and sensory difficulties were greater in children with high support needs. contrary to this, anxiety, tantrums and aggression towards others are common regardless of age, ability or schooling. further studies found that anxiety, depression, withdrawal, somatic complaints, problems with socialisation, thought or attention, rule breaking and aggression tend to raise family concerns (lindor et al., 2019). irrespective of learners’ position in the spectrum of autism, problematic behaviours can limit transition success. in view of the preceding discussion, it is advisable that teachers, parents and learners with asd work together to overcome these indicated challenges for a smooth transition within and across school grades. approximately 25% of a school day is engaged in transition activities, such as moving from classroom to classroom, coming in from the playground, going to the cafeteria, putting personal items in designated locations like lockers or cubbies and gathering needed materials to start working. teachers and parents should make an effort to ensure functional transition in each instance for optimum outcome. prepare for everything. most transition research has focused on learners who are transitioning across education settings, such as from primary to secondary, secondary to university, etc.. however, the present study has expanded insight on the need to make plans to navigate each of the many daily school transition processes. based on the present finding, it is clearly understandable that the transition difficulties encountered by learners with asd at later school levels are a function of specific failures in daily transition in the classroom. it is also believable that long-term successful transition is dependent on the ability of caregivers to help the learners navigate the challenges in different areas such as academic achievements, behaviour problems and social and economic difficulties. 6. conclusion based on the findings of the present study, we conclude that there are academic challenges such as the inability to transfer learning experiences across contexts, difficulties in changing from one activity to another, poor academic achievement, difficulty in testing and assessment of academic progress. learner-oriented socio-economic difficulties also exist such as the lack of help-seeking skills, chance of class or teacher, communication challenges and rigidity limit transition success. environmentally, poor social acceptance, family structure, inadequate support services, economic disparity and poor parents and teachers’ knowledge are the major challenges. furthermore, internalising problem behaviours such as depression, anxiety, sleep problems and mood swings, hamper transition success. externalising problem behaviours such as aggressiveness, hyper-activity, running away and throwing tantrums/throwing themselves on the floor were major challenges identified as significant concerns. 7. recommendations families and schools of learners with asd should make the home and school environments more accommodating and reduce the emphasis on their difficulties. family and school collaboration are encouraged for follow-up and integrating what is learnt from school into home activities and vice versa. more intervention should be put in place to help learners with autism develop personal resources that will encourage their success in school and at home. home-based interventions and community-based awareness are encouraged in south africa http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 2982021 39(2): 298-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) to overcome poor knowledge. teachers need more training and professional development in order to understand and attend effectively to the transition needs of learners with asd. necessary therapies should be free for learners with asd and their 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https://doi.org/10.1177/1044207313518071 https://doi.org/10.1177/1044207313518071 3022021 39(2): 302-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) well-being and attainment. research papers in education, 25(1): 21–50. https://doi. org/10.1080/02671520802308677 zager, d. & shamow, n. 2005. teaching students with autism spectrum disorders. autism spectrum disorders: identification, education, and treatment, 3: 589. https://doi. org/10.4324/9781410611260 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.20 https://doi.org/10.1080/02671520802308677 https://doi.org/10.1080/02671520802308677 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410611260 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781410611260 58 pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward the teaching of mandarin in south africa abstract the constitution for the republic of south africa (act 108 of 1996) embraces language as a basic human right and multilingualism as a national resource. one latest foreign language to be given recognition by the department of basic education (dbe) in 2015 is mandarin, a chinese language, for incremental implementation as a non-official optional language from 2016 in primary schools. one of the stakeholders at the centre of the implementation of this latest foreign language to be recognised, whose voice has not been heard, are teachers. the methodology adapted in the collection of data is quantitative in that pre-service teachers completed a questionnaire. the results indicate mixed attitudes with more appearing to be not entirely supportive of this move by the dbe. teachers do not share the same sentiments that are expressed at political level about the significance of mandarin for trade and globalisation. the findings suggest a need for the dbe to rethink this plan and training proportional to the minimum training requirements for the teaching of a foreign language to be provided to teachers. there would need to be some consultation to ensure a greater teachers’ support as the project continues to be piloted and implemented in more schools across the country. keywords: mandarin, teachers, attitudes, globalisation, indigenous languages 1. introduction south africa (sa) is multilingual with eleven official languages that are recognised by its democratic constitution. in this regard, the constitution for the republic of south africa (act 108 of 1996) embraces language as a basic human right and multilingualism as a national resource in that citizens are encouraged to learn one another’s languages. moreover, the constitution promotes multilingualism through the development of languages that are foreign to the country, such as, arabic, german, greek, hebrew, hindi, portuguese and tamil. the latest foreign language that has been introduced by the south african office of the minister of the department of basic education (dbe), angie motshekga, is a chinese language called mandarin. this directive was issued through circular s10 of 2015 on incremental implementation of mandarin as a nonofficial optional language from 2016–2018. the teaching of mandarin in sa was justified by the dbe as necessary for prof sandiso ngcobo mangosuthu university of technology sandiso@mut.ac.za dr makhulu makumane national university of lesotho makhulum@yahoo.co.uk doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v37i1.5 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 37(1): 58-71 date published: february 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) mailto:sandiso@mut.ac.za mailto:makhulum@yahoo.co.uk http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.5 http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 59 ngcobo & makumane pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward the teaching of mandarin ... trading reasons with china. there was also mention of china being committed to providing materials, sending volunteers and training sa teachers. the decision on its own has some merits in light of the fact that many other countries that have economic ties with china also teach mandarin. news24 (2015) suggests that south africa could be a late comer as mandarin has long been taught in other southern african countries. markell and herbert (2016) note a similar trend in the united states of america where, after spanish, mandarin was the most popular dual-language education programme implemented by individual states in 2013. paton (2014) is also in support of mandarin in the united kingdom and malley (2016) in australia. wang (2013: 25) views this global interest in chinese as due to its growing importance for trade, diplomacy, cultural exchange and better jobs. other benefits associated with being multilingual due to learning a foreign language that could be relevant for sa learners are academic achievement, cognitive development, critical thinking and multiculturalism (burton, 2018; chikiwa & schäfer, 2018; kormos & kiddle, 2013). citing lo bianco (2007: 6), wang (2013) asserts that the popularity of chinese could soon cause it to be regarded as the “new english”. despite this global interest and value of mandarin, it has become controversial in sa because of different views held by educational stakeholders. one of the stakeholders to challenge this circular was the south african democratic teachers union’s (sadtu), which labelled the announcement as the “worst form of imperialism”. sadtu’s concern is worthy of attention because it is the largest teacher’s union in sa with approximately 254 000 members and it is aligned to the ruling party, the african national congress (anc). in response, the department of basic education (dbe) claimed that the decision was influenced by a growing demand for mandarin by parents (nkosi, 2015). however, the dbe did not present any figures or consultation proof to substantiate its claim that the decision was based on parents’ demand. moreover, the dbe is not the mouthpiece of the parents, unlike sadtu, which could argue that it represents the teachers’ voice. it is, however, problematic that sadtu also did not explain the process through which it consulted teachers on this particular issue. there is therefore a need to conduct a study on what are the teachers’ attitudes on the teaching of mandarin in sa. moreover, in the south african context, language is a very emotive issue that has previously resulted in the death of many youths and destruction of property. on 16 june 1976, african youths of soweto came out to the streets to resist a language that was not theirs which was imposed on them by the then illegitimate government. it was through the bantu education department that the government gave the directive that afrikaans was to be used by africans as one of the languages of instruction at secondary school level. the soweto youths’ confrontation with the police spread to many parts of south africa and resulted in the death of many people (https://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising). the language issue remains emotive judging by the fact that it also came up in the recent (2015–2017) #feesmustfall university students’ revolts which were also characterised by confrontations with the police and destruction of property. students, academics and various stakeholders raised the language of instruction issue as essential towards decolonising education. a demand continues to be made for african languages to be used alongside english and afrikaans for knowledge production and equitable access to knowledge (mdube, 2018; mheta, lungu & govender, 2018; writer, 2019) closer to china, in hong kong, where mandarin is one of the three official languages, it has also become controversial. according to media reports, some students who perceive it as the language of the enemy, which is mainland china, are rejecting it. lo (2018), however, https://www.usnews.com/topics/author/jack-markell https://www.usnews.com/topics/author/gary-r-herbert https://www.sahistory.org.za/topic/june-16-soweto-youth-uprising 60 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) argues that this students’ rejection of mandarin goes beyond language but touches on matters of identity in hong kong. in january 2018, hong kong baptist university students are reported to have embarked on a protest march in opposition to the mandatory mandarin test to qualify for graduation. amongst other concerns was that the test was too difficult to pass after 70% of the candidates had failed it (chiu, 2018). this was not the first instance in which students had demonstrated dissatisfaction with mandarin. mair (2018) reports that the 2016 students’ referendum indicated that nearly 90% of the 1 544 participants rejected the university policy requiring them to either enrol in a mandarin course or prove their language proficiency. therefore, on the mandarin issue in south africa, teachers’ views are equally significant to interrogate because teachers are expected to undergo training in china so that they can implement this policy in their schools. merrington (2016) reports that the basic education minister, angie motshekga, told parliament that in 2016 there were 43 schools that had introduced mandarin in sa. this number falls short of the dbe vision to introduce mandarin in 500 schools over the next five years across the country. moreover, out of nine provinces, this has, however, happened in only four provinces. even then, the distribution is not balanced because 11 of these schools are in gauteng, 26 in the western cape; there are three in the eastern cape and three in kwazulu-natal. against this ambitious plan, writer (2016) and merrington (2016) note that the minister of basic education conceded in parliament that they were at that moment relying on teachers sent from china. the bigger plan was to provide a three-week training of 100 sa teachers who will be sent to china every year. yet, experts were cited in the media report as indicating that learning to teach mandarin as a foreign language can be a very daunting task requiring up to five to six years of full-time training. in light of this and many other concerns, opposition political parties are reported to have called for delays in this project until proper consultation had taken place with stakeholders in the education sector. teachers, as already noted, are critical stakeholders in this project. this therefore points to the need to investigate if they would be willing to not only implement the project but also support it by, amongst other things, undergoing the initial challenging training that they would require. along the same line of concern, jansen (2001) cautions against assumed policy images of teachers that may be in conflict with their actual personal identities as practitioners. this conflict, if not well managed, may lead to implementation dilemma in educational reform. jansen (2001) argues that this type of concern presents a new line of research inquiry that has long been neglected in education. nel (2016: 44) is of the same view when asserting that prior to the chinese project being widely piloted and implemented in sa, there is a need for immediate (and ongoing) proactive research “to ensure that challenges are overcome before they become insurmountable”. thus, the aim of this article is to explore attitudes of newly qualified language teachers on the teaching of mandarin in south african schools. the attitudes of south african preservice teachers towards mandarin are unknown whereas language is such an emotive issue in the country. the article aims to address this research gap that came to light with the recent controversial announcement that mandarin is to be taught in many government schools in the near future. the question that guides the article is “what are teachers’ attitudes towards the teaching of mandarin in south african schools?” 61 ngcobo & makumane pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward the teaching of mandarin ... 2. language attitudes the article is on teachers’ attitudes towards the teaching of mandarin in south african schools. for this reason, the term “attitude” is critical as a point of departure in the review of the literature as it constitutes the phenomenon of this study. this is more so because the concept is vaguely defined in the literature whereas in order to accurately study and measure attitudes the concept’s definition must be precisely presented (altmann, 2008: 144). in the presence of many and contradictory definitions, altmann (2008) recommends a decision to choose the most useful in relation to the aims of the research inquiry. for instance, dietz-verrier (2015: 21) indicates that there are two different theoretical approaches that can be used to define attitudes. on the one hand, there is the mentalist theory that depicts attitudes as a “mental and neural state of readiness” which makes them not to be “directly observable but have to be inferred from the subject’s introspection” (citing agheysi & fishman 1970:138). dietz-verrier (2015) finds this view problematic since it implies that the researcher has to rely on participants’ reports pertaining to their attitudes “or infer attitudes directly from behaviour patterns” (citing fasold 1984: 147). on the other hand, there is the behaviourist theory that defines attitudes as “responses people make to social situations” dietz-verrier (2015, citing fasold 1984:147). dietz-verrier (2015: 21) describes the behaviourist theory as less problematic as it requires the researcher to simply observe, collect and analyse data. the only challenge raised is that the data collected in this manner fail to account for other behaviour (citing agheysi & fishman 1970: 138; fasold, 1984: 148). against these contradictory theories, the article adopts a definition by oroujlou and vahedi (2011: 997), citing smith (1971) who describe an attitude as an enduring organisation of beliefs around an object or a situation. the learnt beliefs predispose one to react in some preferred manner that can be either positive or negative towards an object such as a foreign language. moreover, attitudes do not occur in a vacuum but rather within a particular situation such as a social environment where a teacher is expected to learn and teach a foreign language. attitudes in respect of a foreign language are important because they also influence a person’s motivation or lack thereof to learn it (dörnyei, 2001). in the same vein, a teacher who views the teaching of a foreign language in a negative manner might not be willing to learn it so that they can be in a better position to implement the policy that requires one to do so. in cases where they do not have an option, they would not exert themselves in a manner that would be beneficial to them and their learners. bundgenskosten (2009: 21), however, clarifies that attitudes do not always require to be learnt over time because a person can react to an object “on the spot”. the difference under such circumstances is that the attitude will have a very low attitude strength. it is equally expected in this article that the participants who are pre-service teachers might not have heard about this latest language development in the field of education that they would soon be joining. yet, they will be expected to express their views on the spot. in relation to the above definition and its explanation, nel (2016: 55) reports on a south african pilot project in which the teaching of mandarin received favourable responses from the learners. the learners attributed the success of the project to the chinese teacher’s friendly attitude, patience, support, her willingness to repeat things and efforts made to make the classes fun. she also went out of her way in her teaching by employing technological support such as in the form of tablets, laptops, big screen tvs and e-learning processes to facilitate her lessons in a manner that would appeal to learners. nel (2016: 50, citing rhodes 2014), associates the success of this teacher’s lessons with the fact that she is highly qualified, 62 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) something that is a priority in foreign language teaching. yet, nel argues, citing halliday (2014), that the best teachers that have been found to be most effective in the teaching of chinese were those who spoke the same language as the learners. in the same vein, tan (2017: 18) asserts that trained teachers are much better language learning models because they would have also undergone the same experience of learning a language than those for whom it is their first language. in light of the south african government plans to extend the teaching of mandarin to approximately 500 schools per year, it cannot rely on teachers from china. there is a need to train south african teachers that are however positive about the teaching of this foreign language because of the intensity that comes with the training and teaching. a relevant model worth exploring is the socio-educational model to foreign language acquisition. through this model, masgoret and gardner (2003:124) propose three components to foreign language learning. these are integrativeness, attitudes toward the learning situation and motivation. integrativeness and attitudes toward the learning situation are described as “two correlated variables that support the individual’s motivation” to learn a foreign language (ibid). first, integrativeness is explained to mean that the learning of a foreign language requires the adoption of language aspects that are part of the culture of that community. this can include the willingness to adopt the “word sounds, pronunciation, word orders and other behavioural features that are part of another culture” (126). however, gardner (2005) clarifies that attitudes to integrativeness are dependent on how individuals feel about their own heritage. in cases where individuals value their ethno-linguistic heritage as part of their identity, such as their own language, they would be less willing to support integrativeness. second, for integrativeness to occur, one needs to have a favourable attitude toward the community that speaks the language. attitudes toward the learning situation involve the individual’s reaction to matters such as the textbooks, learning materials and the teaching environment of the foreign language. third, motivation requires a “favourable attitudes toward the learning situation” with its available learning resources (128). in addition to the three components, gardner (2012: 217) introduces the fourth variable, which is language anxiety. anxiety has implications for success in learning a foreign language “as well as to attitudes toward the learning situation and possibly integrativeness” (gardner, 2012: 217). the socioeducational model is relevant in the investigation of attitudes because of the difficulty that is associated with the learning of mandarin. this difficulty is in part because chinese migrant nationals tend to avoid integrating with local communities for security, economic and social identity reasons (gukurume, 2019: 94). teagle and chiu (2016) attribute the difficulty that comes with learning mandarin as related to the amount of characters (50 000) instead of 23 alphabet letters as well as its tonal nature and familiarity with chinese culture that one requires to be able to understand the language. they cite these factors as having contributed to the failure of mandarin programmes in australian schools. the other concern, raised by teagle and chiu (2016), is the fact that there will also be a need to train local teachers, through volunteers from china, who might also struggle to grasp this foreign language to be able to teach it effectively. teagle and chiu (2016: online) rather recommend a focus on “promoting cross-cultural understanding between south africa’s own peoples by teaching indigenous languages”. another dimension brought forward about attitudes by oroujlou and vahedi (2011: 997) is that they are dynamic in that they can be learnt and unlearnt. this implies that attitudes do change over time as they can shift from being, for instance, negative to positive. one of the 63 ngcobo & makumane pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward the teaching of mandarin ... factors that contributes to attitude change among teachers is education. byrnes et al. (1997) found that teachers who had received formal training that equipped them with the necessary skills and knowledge to teach effectively had positive language attitudes. this implies that the mandarin teachers who will be recruited to undergo a three-week training course in china might find the time inadequate and come back lacking in confidence which could lead to negative attitudes. similarly, the participants in this study might respond negatively if they learn that they would be expected to receive a mere three-week training on a language they have never used before in their lives. this is to be expected against the backdrop that the participants have trained for four years on the teaching of english second language (esl) which is not their mother tongue but a familiar language in south africa. these favourable factors about english do not, however, imply that esl teachers always feel confident about teaching the language. wessels, et al. (2017:443) present figures that indicate that not only pre-service teachers but also experienced teachers often feel negative about their esl proficiency which impacts on their ability to teach effectively. raselimo and mahao (2015) are of the premise that the attainment of the new curriculum will depend on how the different stakeholders involved in the development and enactment of the curriculum understand the policy in their particular contexts. one of the critical stakeholders that is expected to enact the curriculum is teachers. however, in doing so, they would need to have a clear understanding of the curriculum’s vision. according to khoza (2016), the quality of teaching and critical thinking can be bolstered by an in-depth comprehension of the curriculum’s visions and goals. this therefore deems it essential that teachers’ understanding(s) and attitudes of the vision are examined, as this article set out to do. in this light, the success of the curriculum on foreign language teaching in kwazulu-natal is dependent on teachers’ understanding(s) of the curriculum and their attitudes to foreign language teaching. along the above views, nel (2016: 54) reports success with the pilot teaching of mandarin in a pretoria school in the gauteng province, south africa because of the manner in which the gauteng education department approached the school to offer mandarin by clearly explaining its purpose and providing the necessary support. baker (1988: 112–115) further notes that attitudes can be quite complex because they are not always simply positive or negative. there are instances where both positive and negative attitudes can be attached to a language. in this regard, ngcobo (2013) uses the term “conflicting attitudes” in describing a similar complex situation. this is whereby the teachers who participated in the study on the role of their own language in education did not display a single set of attitudes. their attitudes revealed a rather complex set of contradictory beliefs. on the one hand, they provided responses that showed that they supported the use of african languages in education. on the other hand, responses to other questions showed that they were not consistent in their beliefs. for example, the majority indicated support for the role of their languages in education. yet, a high number also said they sent their children to private schools where african languages were not encouraged. research into attitudes towards languages often adopts attitudinal likert scales in the form of survey questionnaires (dörnyei, 2001; 2007; 2010). for instance, sakuragi’s (2006) investigation into the relationship between attitudes towards l2 and cross-cultural attitudes utilised five-point scales (strongly agree to strongly disagree). 64 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) 3. methodology the study adopted a survey questionnaire that was piloted and then utilised among postgraduate students who were already qualified teachers but with no teaching experience, except the limited exposure gained as part of their training. piloting of the research tool helped address issues of validity and reliability since the researchers were able to identify areas of confusion in the manner in which questions were phrased. the questionnaires were administered and collected in class after securing permission through the assistance of the identified contact person. the contact person assisted with the survey distribution and delivery to the researchers. dörnyei (2007: 90) recommends questionnaires as a convenient tool in the collection of data on attitudes or opinions of a group of people. this is because “questioning only a fraction of the particular population” is adequate in generalising about the attitudes and opinions of a large population (dörnyei & csizér, 2012). one hundred and nine questionnaires were found to be usable. yet, the challenge with surveys is that they are based on self-report data which might lack validity because of the tendency of respondents to simply tick answers that they think the researcher expects (neuman, 2014). the survey was conducted towards the end of the year, 2017, when students were about to write examinations. the participants were purposefully selected because of their specialisation in esl teaching (teddlie & yu, 2007). ethical issues were observed whereby the participants were provided with a letter of consent, which amongst other things, stated that they were free to decide whether they wanted to participate in the survey. they were also assured of anonymity. in analysing the data, the statistical package for the social sciences programme was employed and the descriptive and inferential statistical analysis applied in the reporting. 4. results and discussion each question in the questionnaire that was distributed to respondents was analysed individually to ensure that accurate results were displayed. in light of the fact that the participants were newly qualified teachers in the teaching of languages, it was considered imperative to inquire if they felt ready to face the real world. to this effect, the first statement was: “my training experience on how to teach a foreign language has been adequate”. table 1: training experience on foreign language frequency per cent valid per cent cumulative per cent valid 1 3 2.8 2.8 2.8 2 33 30.3 30.3 33.0 3 33 30.3 30.3 63.3 4 14 12.8 12.8 76.1 5 26 23.9 23.9 100.0 total 109 100.0 100.0 65 ngcobo & makumane pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward the teaching of mandarin ... data presented in table 1 show that a low 2.8% of respondents strongly agreed, 30.3% agreed, another 30.3% were not sure, 12.8% strongly disagreed and 23.9% disagreed. these findings suggest that more than half of the respondents (67%) did not feel adequately trained to undertake the task of teaching a foreign language. the findings are consistent with those made by wessels et al. (2017) about foreign language teachers’ negative feelings about their teaching proficiency. this is a cause for concern as modipane and themane (2014) aver that teachers are instrumental agents in a successful implementation of any curriculum. therefore, if they (teachers) do not feel fit, so to speak, to teach a foreign language and have negative attitude towards it, this evidently puts effective implementation of a curriculum in jeopardy as teachers are probable to be disconnected from it due to a lack of motivation (dornyei, 2001). this insinuation is supported by the reaction of respondents to the question of whether their training experience would influence the way they learn and ultimately teach any foreign language. in response, 9.2% respondents strongly agreed, 44% agreed, 27.5% were not sure, 9.2% strongly disagreed and 10.1% disagreed. these results depict that 53.2% of respondents were of the opinion that their training would most likely have an impact on their practice. this suggests that pre-service teachers’ attitudes towards a subject, in this instance a foreign language, are largely influenced by their training experiences. thus, as byrnes et al. (1997) predicate, equipping teachers with adequate and relevant skills and knowledge is liable to lead to effective learning, which might resultantly have a positive impact on their attitudes, and ultimately, their teaching. in addressing the question of whether they would need more than three months to be able to teach mandarin, intriguing results were seen. the results indicate that 27.5% of respondents strongly agreed, 22% agreed, 30.3% were not sure, 15.6% strongly disagreed and 4.6% disagreed. the fact that 49.5% agreed in varying degrees and 30.3% of respondents were not sure (which constitutes 79.8%) talks to the need for the dbe to revise its plan and propose a programme that convincingly adheres to the minimal training requirements for teachers to be recognised as qualified to teach a foreign language (council of europe, 2001). in addition, respondents were equally unconvinced of their ability to learn and teach mandarin, and this could also be attributed to the amount of time proposed for them to learn the language (see table 2). table 2: capability to learn and teach mandarin frequency per cent valid per cent cumulative per cent valid 1 7 6.4 6.4 6.4 2 28 25.7 25.7 32.1 3 49 45.0 45.0 77.1 4 13 11.9 11.9 89.0 5 12 11.0 11.0 100.0 total 109 100.0 100.0 66 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) in reacting to the statement “i believe i am capable to learn mandarin”, table 2 indicates that only 6.4% respondents strongly agreed, 25.7% agreed, 45% were not sure, 11.9% strongly disagreed and 11% disagreed. these results suggest that respondents were sceptical with their ability to teach mandarin because of its foreign status, its limited access and scarcity and their unfamiliarity with its associated culture (teagle & chiu, 2016). moreover, the respondents display anxiety and negative attitudes toward the anticipated learning situation (gardner, 2012). interestingly, respondents displayed even more cynicism with the successful implementation of mandarin in the south african context. the reasoning was largely reliant on the capacity, financial muscle to see the implementation through and the limited space in the existing curriculum for such a scarce language. statistically, results showed that 22.9% of respondents strongly agreed that it might not be feasible to teach mandarin effectively in sa. thirty-three point nine per cent agreed, 26.6% were not sure, 6.4% strongly disagreed and 10.1% disagreed. the implication of these results, especially when strongly agree, agree and not sure are merged, is that a large number of respondents, probably fuelled by their lack of understanding regarding the rationale behind the introduction of mandarin and a negative attitude towards the utility and benefit of mandarin in the south african context. according to carl (2005), this attitude is liable to change if teachers are involved in policy development, as they would have deeper understanding of the vision. this is supported by berkvens et al. (2014), who further insist on the essentiality of understanding policy/curriculum vision to favour positive attitudes towards teaching and critical thinking. this therefore suggests that teachers should be encompassed in policy and curriculum development in view of expanding the roles and responsibilities of teachers to help them be change agents in education (samuel, 2008). more than half of the participants responded favourably to the notion that the government should rather consider teaching other foreign languages that are easily accessible, most in africa, such as french or portuguese, instead of mandarin. this was evident in that 22.0% of the respondents strongly agreed with this attestation, 31.2% agreed, 20.2% were not sure, 9.2% strongly disagreed and 17.4% disagreed. alternatively, respondents seemed to support vividly an opinion that the government should rather encourage the teaching of indigenous sa languages such as sesotho in kzn schools instead of opting for foreign languages. as in table 3 below, an astounding 45% of respondents strongly agreed with this statement, while 36.7% agreed, 8.3% were not sure, with 5.5% and 4.6% strongly disagreeing and disagreeing respectively. these results seem to echo teagle and chiu’s (2016) recommendation that the government should rather promote inter-culture, and to some extent multilingualism, by teaching indigenous languages to the locals. in addition, these findings further indicate a negative attitude towards foreign languages by teachers, which would obviously have implications on its implementation. this correlates with the caution provided by gardner (2005) to the effect that favourable attitudes to their own language contributes to less willingness to support integrativeness. previous studies conducted in south africa among africans show positive attitudes towards indigenous african languages by members of society at different levels (mashiyi, 2014; ndimande-hlongwa & ndebele, 2017; ngcobo, 2013; sebolai 2017). 67 ngcobo & makumane pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward the teaching of mandarin ... table 3: the government should encourage indigenous languages frequency per cent valid per cent cumulative per cent valid 1 49 45.0 45.0 45.0 2 40 36.7 36.7 81.7 3 9 8.3 8.3 89.9 4 6 5.5 5.5 95.4 5 5 4.6 4.6 100.0 total 109 100.0 100.0 makumane (2009) is of a premise that teaching/learning a foreign language includes exposure to the target culture. this is supported by council of europe (2001), which insists on teachers having adequate knowledge and competencies of both language and culture to be in a position to teach a foreign language. the findings of this study suggest that respondents subscribe to this belief, as 38.5% of them strongly agree that learning a foreign language requires a good understanding and exposure to its culture. additionally, 44.0% agreed, 12.8 % were not sure, 3.7% strongly disagree while 9% disagreed. these results suggest that for teachers to be in a position to teach mandarin effectively, they would have to be exposed not only to the language but also to the culture that is embedded in the language. thus, a plan to send south african teachers to china to learn mandarin with the eventuality of teaching it seems to be a step in the right direction, as they would be directly exposed to both the language and the culture in real life situations rather than solely in a secluded formal setting. 5. conclusion the overall results of this study seem to suggest that pre-service teachers display negative attitudes towards the introduction of mandarin in sa. a popular opinion among respondents was that mandarin is “too foreign” as it is not a common language in the south african context, therefore it would be difficult to teach it. in addition, respondents seemed to prefer other foreign languages that were spatially accessible, such as french and portuguese, over mandarin, and even went further to indicate that they would prefer indigenous languages to foreign languages. looming hindrances that appear to be influencing such negative attitudes from student teachers are the proposed timeline for training (three months), their belief and motivation, or lack thereof in teaching the language, and the accessibility of the target culture. moreover, teachers do not seem to understand the rationale behind the introduction of mandarin when there are indigenous languages that can be introduced in provinces where such languages are nearly non-existent, for instance, sesotho in kzn. a possible solution to change teachers’ attitudes from negative to positive towards the introduction of mandarin is to involve them in the planning stages of this seemingly advantageous initiative. the advantages of their active involvement would influence deeper understanding of the rationale in learning a foreign language and becoming multilingual, which are mainly for academic achievement, critical thinking, cognitive development, trade and 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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2005.05.017 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijintrel.2005.05.017 https://doi.org/10.1177/1558689806292430 https://doi.org/10.3726/978-3-0351-0656-5 71 ngcobo & makumane pre-service teachers’ attitudes toward the teaching of mandarin ... wessels, s., trainin, g., reeves, j., catalano, t. & deng, q. 2017. pre-service teachers’ confidence and attitudes toward teaching english learners. teacher education and practice, 30(3), 443–461. writer, s. 2016. south africa has only one qualified mandarin teacher. news report, 21 april 2016. available at https://businesstech.co.za/news/government/121201/ south-africa-has-only-one-qualified-mandarin-teacher/ writer, s. 2019. minister wants to “decolonise” education in south africa. available at https://businesstech.co.za/news/lifestyle/294654/ minister-wants-to-decolonise-education-in-south-africa/ https://businesstech.co.za/news/government/121201/south-africa-has-only-one-qualified-mandarin-teacher/ https://businesstech.co.za/news/government/121201/south-africa-has-only-one-qualified-mandarin-teacher/ https://businesstech.co.za/news/lifestyle/294654/minister-wants-to-decolonise-education-in-south-africa/ https://businesstech.co.za/news/lifestyle/294654/minister-wants-to-decolonise-education-in-south-africa/ _goback 88 the curriculum and citizenship education in the context of inequality: seeking a praxis of hope carol anne spreen university of virginia salim vally university of johannesburg in south africa, more than most countries, the meaning of citizenship and related rights has faced severe contestation centred on categories such as race, class and nation. close to two decades after the first democratic elections, notions of citizenship in south africa represent a complex dynamic involving a combination of one or another of these social constructs, as they relate at different times to changing social, political and economic imperatives. in this article we explain that analyses of citizenship education in south africa have traversed different phases over the last two decades and discuss some of the research on how ideas and values around citizenship are translated into classroom practice. we then examine notions about citizenship and social justice in the shadow of the xenophobic or afrophobic attacks of 2008/2009 and in the light of the present rise in racial tensions within and across communities in south africa. our conclusion highlights the paradox that, despite the normative framework of the constitution, policies and the curriculum, structural inequalities in society will continue to thwart attempts at social cohesion. keywords: citizenship education, south africa, social justice, rights, inequality, political mobilisation, identity, civic praxis, critical pedagogy, ethics, hope . a repositioning of any approach that claims to do ‘what is best’ must take up the apparent disconnect between neutral assumptions about citizenship on the one hand and the diverse and dynamic experiences and desires of democratic populations on the other hand […] citizenship education must negotiate a sense of belonging that re-imagines political community, encounters and engages diversity, and in exposing the symbolic level of citizenship, constructs citizenship as a site of struggle (pashby, 2008: 21-23) understandably, given south africa’s provenance and history, the purpose of the constitution itself is to “heal the divisions of the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights” (the constitution, 1996:1). yet, these values and rights remain contradictory and contested and cannot be separated from conflicting claims constitutive of social divisions in our society, whether class or gender based or racially defined. as we will show, these divisions, often intersecting, remain pervasive. the constitution as well as policy and legislation, promoting as they do consensual views of society, cannot on their own address conflicting claims. this article argues that, in the context of continued inequality, officially sanctioned views of citizenship and democracy ring hollow because they rest too easily on the myth of the ‘homogeneous nation’ in a society where all citizens are not equal. instead, critical citizenship admits to and identifies injustices and inequalities in society as a first step toward addressing them. essential to the pedagogy informing critical citizenship is the praxis, agency and ‘voice’ of those who confront marginalisation, injustices and inequality as well as an active ethics of solidarity. clearly, school communities face enormous challenges in meaningfully promoting human rights and critical thinking toward an emancipatory consciousness. pivotal to the latter endeavour and a ‘praxis of hope’ is an understanding of inequalities in society which militate against social justice and the development of teachers as critical transformative intellectuals. analyses of citizenship and education in south africa have gone through different phases over the last two decades. initially, emphasis was placed on the various sections of the constitution which spoke to citizenship and rights as well as the role of schools in contributing to citizenship and democracy education 89spreen & vally — the curriculum and citizenship education in the context of inequality beyond the formal curriculum (enslin, 2003). this first phase of innocence gave way fairly quickly to a more introspective view of citizenship and education that focused on the lack of implementation, participation and issues around poverty and service delivery (ahmed, sayed & soudien, 2007). this critique coincided with other work emphasising a strong commitment to social justice along with a trenchant critique of the ineffectual ‘declarationism’ of conventional human rights approaches (keet & carrim, 2006) and the problematic of citizenship education seen as a rationale for patriotism (waghid, 2009). next we discuss some of the research that examined how ideas of citizenship contained in the constitution, the values in education manifesto (doe, 2001) and the curriculum were translated into classroom practice. this research includes school-based research on values and democracy (wits education policy unit, 2001); discrimination in schools (vally & dalamba, 1999); work which assesses implications of schools and teachers creating space for dialogical memory making in post-apartheid south africa (dryden-petersen & siebörger, 2006); issues of nation and citizenship in history text books (chisholm, 2008); how respect and responsibility are enacted in schools (hammett & staeheli, 2011); and an examination of the manifesto on values, education and democracy as applied in the classroom (pillay & ragpot, 2011). we then revisit notions concerning citizenship and social justice in the shadow of the xenophobic or afrophobic attacks of 2008/2009 and in the light of the present rise in racial tensions within and across communities in south africa. specifically, we describe recent events in school communities in the eastern and western cape and attempt to examine the meaning of these events for citizenship education. our core argument is that, because of the pervasive poverty and continuing inequality in south africa, issues of social justice and related democratic ideals ring hollow in the lives and experiences of the majority of people whose rights have not yet been realised. we conclude by posing an alternative form of critical citizenship that includes the ‘ethics of care’ and public participation towards a praxis of hope. the evolution of citizenship education in south africa the recent and growing violent xenophobic and racial attacks described below provide an important context for thinking about how and why critical citizenship education plays an important role in democratic and social transformation at this particular point in south african history. in this context notions of cosmopolitan democracy and critical citizenship must be disentangled from the conservative conceptualisation of values, morals and responsibilities of citizens. nation-states have always rigorously sought to define what their national cultures are, and have promulgated it through the school (chisholm, 2008). in south africa such a nation-building project has been confounded by the divisions and legacies of the past together with present policies which perpetuate and even exacerbate inequalities. initially, the constitution was heralded as a document which would almost magically heal the divisions of the past. beyond the constitution the preparation for citizenship was to be constructed through education, and particularly civic education initiatives. as keet and carrim (2006:5) explain: in south africa the notions and ideals of nation-building, reconciliation, social solidarity, social cohesion, inclusivity and anti-discrimination seem to provide the basis for the rationale, purpose and structure of (human rights) in the curriculum, and are linked to the popular education movement (of the 1970s-80s) and the broader anti-apartheid struggle. the language of rights was very clearly articulated in the general education and training revised national curriculum statement (doe, 2002:10): the curriculum can play a vital role in creating awareness of the relationship between human rights, a healthy environment, social justice and inclusivity. in some countries this is done through civics. the rncs has tried to ensure that all learning area statements reflect the principles and practices of social justice, respect for the environment and human rights as defined in the constitution. in particular, the curriculum attempts to be sensitive to issues of poverty, inequality, race, gender, age, disability, and such challenges as hiv/aids. 90 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 in february 2000, kader asmal as minister of education established a working group on values in education. it identified six core values to be encouraged in learners: equity and equal rights, tolerance, multilingualism, openness, accountability, and social honour. based on the earlier values in education report, a manifesto on values, education and democracy was issued the following year by the department of education. this manifesto continues to form the preamble to all the current curriculum and assessment policy statements (department of basic education, 2011) and articulates a framework for values in education which continues to focus on citizenship and the constitution. an unusual feature of the ten-page values, education and democracy report was how it viewed the purpose of education and its challenge to some conventional assumptions around education and the marketplace. the working group argued that “the reduction of education to the market and jobs, important as they may be in some respects, commodifies education” (department of education, 2000a:5). equally impressive was the need to affirm educators and support the notion of education as a vocation, and its associated norms and values as a public and national service. the privileging of critical pedagogy featured prominently in the report, not only by showing that schools are not adjuncts to the marketplace, but also through an emphasis on the importance of debate and critique in advancing intellectual development. learning areas which do not traditionally have significant purchase in the marketplace were also given prominence. these areas include the performing arts, history and archeology, consideration was also given to the ‘underdeveloped’ reading culture. today, the new caps curriculum has embraced many of the recommendations of the working group and continues to build upon and emphasise ‘common citizenship’. in terms of the curriculum the learning area human and social sciences aims to produce “responsible citizens in a culturally diverse, democratic society”. a specific outcome in this learning area is “active participation in the promotion of a democratic, equitable and just society”. another is that learners will be helped to exercise their responsibilities and rights as citizens. it is important to recognise that the processes and ideas around human rights and social justice described in many of these curriculum policy statements carried over from previous deliberations and described elsewhere (keet, 2004) reflect a thoughtful and coherent strategy. later, a concerted critique of symbolism and ‘declarationism’ in the curriculum and a stronger commitment to social justice praxis emerged (keet & carrim 2006). other critiques were also developed best captured by ahmed et al. (2007) in their essay creating the rainbow nation? citizenship and education in south africa. they review practices of citizenship in south african schools employing notions of inclusion and exclusion while “emphasizing the fault lines of marginality that emerge in the … post-apartheid south africa” (ahmed et al., 2007:119). their paper speaks to contexts and inequalities, arguing that the discursive construction of citizenship in post-apartheid sa constrains the “potential of a notion of transformative citizenship”. they provide evidence on how the concrete struggles of the poor are sublimated by the state to the tranquilising discourse of patriotism and nation building. “the argument that the state has made is that the imperatives of nation-building require these people to live with their fate” (ibid:127). our point is not to dismiss or diminish the important thinking that went into curriculum planning around human rights and citizenship education but, instead, we examine whether and how it has been understood and implemented in classrooms. in the following section we suggest that, because rights have remained at the rhetorical level and not part of praxis, neither the public engagement nor continued values or civic education has had the intended impact of wide-scale social transformation or addressing racial tensions. apart from the critical literature mentioned above, there have been a few recent attempts to examine how these ideas were carried out in classrooms and in practice, which we discuss in the next section. curriculum in practice: school-based research on citizenship some of the research below describes how, despite infusing the curriculum with the noblest of ideals and intentions, economic and social realities revealed a “mocking discrepancy between promise and fulfillment” (centre for education policy development, 2005:14). this conclusion was informed by 91spreen & vally — the curriculum and citizenship education in the context of inequality research conducted on the impact of the manifesto of values, education and democracy in close to a hundred schools. a key finding of this research remains valid today: … there were learners, educators, and parents who placed emphasis on the link between value formation and the material world. they questioned the ‘space’ for the promotion of human-centred values in the context of the great inequities in society at large, and between and within schools in particular. parents were particularly articulate about the relationship between values in young people and the material conditions surrounding them. several parents put forward a critique of the government in respect to the link between access to basic social services, and the facilitation of values in young people. they suggest that if the government were achieving its more basic mandates, with particular reference to the provision of housing, jobs and a quality education for all, then ‘values’ could be more successfully navigated in the home environment (wits education policy unit, 2001:6). dryden-peterson and siebörger’s (2006) article examines the use of testimony in the making of a new history in south africa, situating this phenomenon in the context of public construction of memory and identifying history teachers as critical to the process. through an ethnographic study of sixteen schools that illuminates the use of teacher testimony in cape town history classrooms, the authors explore the nuanced use of testimony as a pedagogic tool and probe the role of history teachers as memory makers. finally, their article assesses the implications of teachers creating space for dialogical memory making in postapartheid south africa and outlines lessons of this experience for other countries in democratic transition. chisholm (2008) examines how ‘nation’ and ‘citizenship’ notions are addressed in new south african history textbooks with reference to changing approaches to textbook analysis, migration and xenophobia. her article considers both representational issues in the textbooks as well as the uses of textbooks in several urban classrooms and suggests that the official curriculum represents an idealised vision of the kind of citizen the state wishes to create. hammett and staeheli’s (2011) research involved observing high school teaching in twelve high schools across the country and interviews with 64 educators. in their study, respect and responsibility emerged as core concepts. the constructions of these concepts are bound up with assumptions regarding power relations and the authors argue that respect is often unequal instead of reciprocal between educators and learners. they assert that “should an individual believe that the state is not fostering a culture of respect in which he or she is valued, there is the possibility that adherence to state goals and values will be undermined”. they point out that the conditions of work and learning often have “a serious impact on the quality of and achievement in education in south africa. they affect the ways in which educators and learners engage with the curriculum and ideals of citizenship and democracy” (ibid:275). the official nation-building project in south africa is agnostic about the continued struggle for equality and contestation over differential access to rights and resources. instead, these tropes of ‘the new rights’ regime ensured by the constitution and the curriculum are intentional and instrumental – signalling and affirming a new and reconciled society. what is needed is redefining citizenship education and the teaching of social justice and placing it more firmly in the curriculum in order to explicitly address inequality and contribute to the project of social transformation. the questions posed by crittenden are apposite: “how far should the ‘curriculum’ go”? he goes on to explain: “citizens are taught to obey the laws; should they also be taught to challenge the laws and customs of the society? … civic education in a democracy…must… challenge what they see as inequities and injustices within that system” (crittenden, 2007:5). our critique considers the continued social, economic and political inequalities that persist and is, instead, informed by the lived experiences of those whose rights have been and continue to be violated. this approach to teaching critical citizenship education would fundamentally rest on new ways of understanding democracy and social justice – as part of a continued struggle to build solidarity and a sense of belonging for all those who comprise south african society, regardless of status, origin, language, culture, gender or race. we suggest that inequality and continued social unrest must be better understood and more intentionally incorporated into the curriculum, along with greater attention to the role of social 92 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 movements and political struggle. these core ideas should be an essential part of democratic praxis that not only informs the teaching of history and civics, but also plays a much more important role in building a just, equitable and open democratic society. while the ‘infusion’ of human rights, social justice and conceptions of democratic citizenship in the new curriculum are positive, the reality is that, under conditions where teachers are not provided with adequate training to understand, internalise and impart these views and where schools are not provided with adequate resources, this noble intention will not succeed. it is clear that the conditions and context for effective implementation of both the new curriculum and values in education are still not in place in most schools. chisholm (2008:367) argues that: although new textbooks appear to foreground broader notions of south africanism incorporating inclusionary, africanist identities and embody understandings of history textbooks as source-based in order to promote critical thinking, teachers appear to make limited use of them, preferring to rely on their own notes. pillay and ragpot (2011), similarly, while promoting values of social justice in schools, show through research in six gauteng schools that the proper management of the processes for implementing them is lacking. they recommend the elucidation of specific strategies to be applied in classrooms, schools, communities and at the various levels of the bureaucracy to provide real meaning to the intentions of this policy. paradoxes of citizenship and inequality in education the present dysfunctionality of the eastern cape department of education and the lack of progress of the national department of basic education in rectifying problems unsurprisingly had disastrous effects on schools in that province. in 2011, 1.6 million learners in the eastern cape were denied their right to school nutrition and more than 100 000, many living in remote areas, prevented from accessing state-subsidised transport. in this period 4 252 temporary teachers also had their contracts suspended (esakov, 2011). in april of 2012, schooling in the port elizabeth area was disrupted by racial violence and protests. initially, the discontent stemmed from overcrowding, a lack of state-paid teaching staff, language support and transport issues (williams, 2012). in one school, sanctor high school, only 28 teachers are paid by the department in a school with 1 185 learners (bodumela & mkentane, 2012). twelve additional teachers (resulting in r70 000 in salaries per month) are paid by a largely working class community (ibid). at the kuyga intermediary school at greenbushes, staff shortages over afrikaans-speaking teachers degenerated into conflict between so-called ‘coloured’ and ‘african’ parents and teachers (ibid). these inequalities and backlogs exist throughout the country. they also confront a relatively richer province, the western cape, where the department is a functioning one. in grabouw, for instance, the community also faced considerable unrest and racial violence as a result of overcrowded classrooms, the non-separation of primary and secondary schools and non-payment to taxi operators who transport learners to school (quigley, 2012). according to department of basic education, minister angie motshekga, south africa needs 3 000 more schools and 60 000 classrooms. the infrastructure backlog includes 13 617 computer centres, 14 989 libraries, 15 368 multipurpose rooms, 15 435 nutrition centres, 16 516 administration blocks and 18 258 laboratories (doe, 2012). as early as 2002, alexander warned that the new south africa’s nation-building project was “moving at a glacial tempo” and post-apartheid identity politics promise “volatility and danger” and that the country could “fall(s) apart into warring ethnic groups” (ibid:81-110). elsewhere (alexander 2006:10) he argues that: social reconciliation under conditions of cruel inequality such as we have in south africa is not only impossible; it is a lie that has to be exposed. we will have to work very hard at bringing about social cohesion and national unity. how and for what purposes such a project should be undertaken is too 93spreen & vally — the curriculum and citizenship education in the context of inequality big a subject to enter into here. suffice it to say that unless the gini coefficient is tackled seriously, all talk of social cohesion and national unity is so much nonsense. the inability fully to address issues of inequality and poverty, and effectively to provide for redress of past injustices, threatens any notion of a single south african nation – what is required, argue bentley and habib (2008:12-13): is a more inclusive notion of national identity, which would entail empathy for the fate of others and an ability to identify with them. and the way to achieve this and realize a sense of solidarity is by the sharing of institutions and a reduction of material inequalities. what is frequently seen as a cultural difference is in fact one of material circumstance. identity and common citizenship racial integration, particularly in schools has been thought to be the key to healing social divisions in post-apartheid sa. yet, many argue that, in south african schools, there has merely been ‘mechanical desegregation’. studies on racial integration (vally & dalamba, 1999) have shown the importance of drawing a distinction between desegregation and integration. desegregation is seen as a mechanical process which involves simply establishing the physical proximity of members of different groups in the same school, without interrogating the quality of the contact. “the superficiality of relationships established by different groups in the schools studied is apparent, particularly the migration of ‘black’ african into “formerly ‘white’ schools” (ibid:20). in related though later research on post-apartheid racial identity construction among youth, soudien (2004) describes how south african schools are dealing with racial integration. he argues that racial integration in schools have been chiefly characterised by a push towards a non-racial, cosmopolitan national identity illustrated by an exodus from black schools and cultural spaces without movement into them. his research found that: while there has been a flight of children out of the former black schools, there has been no movement whatsoever in the direction of black schools … this clearly suggests that the social nature of the education system has changed quite dramatically … and made it possible for the expanded middle class … to consolidate its position of power (ibid:89). reflecting on the recent violent attacks and racial unrest, jansen (2011) asks: why would people who once fought side by side to end apartheid start to turn on each other? it’s quite simple really and has happened in other postcolonial societies. as governments fail to deliver on their promises to people, the poor and desperate turn on themselves. and what better target than other poor people who are perceived to be relatively better off? public statements that are racially derogatory contradict the messages coming from the constitution or state policy. also while the rhetoric and policy symbols of a non-racial, equal democratic state are displayed prominently, we continue to hear the pronouncements of state officials and politicians who contradict these ideals. a case in point is the continued and gratuitous use of apartheid-based racial classifications by state departments as well as in academia. motala (2010), in an article titled are racial categories useful for explanatory purposes in social science research and analysis, raises a number of questions pertinent to any discussion of citizenship, social justice and the curriculum. he asks, for example, “what indeed is the meaning of the constant refrain about ‘national unity,’ ‘healing the nation,’ and such like phrases in the constitution which signify the intention to overcome the trauma of a racist and violent past” (ibid:1). motala argues compellingly that the use of race and racial classifications in the social sciences needs to be subjected to critical scrutiny. he argues that: its use reveals only the weakness of analysis since it has less explanatory power than might be understood through a much broader range of analytical categories, including income and poverty levels, social class, gender, geographic location, nationality and a wide a range of characteristics 94 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 attributable to the title of ‘citizenship’ – characteristics often obscured by the bluntness of racial classification … nothing here can or should be interpreted as a negation of the considerable effects and the impact of apartheid’s racist policies, its emotional and personal consequences on the great majority of the population facilitated by the use of racialized descriptions which have now sunk deep into the very psyche of the nation struggling to reconstitute the identity of its citizenry as that of human beings entitled to equal freedoms and social justice (ibid:15). conclusion: citizenship education, hope and the ethics of care placed against the backdrop of events in grabouw and the eastern cape, concerns over emphasising a curriculum which focusses mainly on the stem (science, technology, engineering and math) disciplines at the expense of others could be a “recipe for increasing alienation and mutual incomprehension” (alexander, 2012:6). alexander explains that the tendency to view people as “potential clients and exploitable entities which can be instrumentalised for one’s own personal benefit or for that of one’s ingroup” (ibid:6) is strengthened. he contends that “… difference, instead of constituting a bridge towards understanding the intrinsic value of diversity – biological, cultural, and political – becomes a springboard for xenophobic stereotyping and latent social conflict” (ibid:7). drawing on nussbaum and sen’s theories of justice to examine the potential of narratives in teaching and researching for social justice, keet and carrim (2006:12) suggest that “[h]uman rights can be presented as powerful ethical claims that can be critically examined by learners to consider their rights and responsibilities to others, at scales from the local to the global”. however, there is considerable confusion and contestation over the meaning of values in the curriculum. official documents convey competing views of what is meant by values and morality and the role of education in facilitating value formation. one tendency is to approach these concepts by emphasising patriotism and honour through national symbols. the second approach emphasises human rights, critical and creative thinking as the basis for value formation. carrim and tshoane (2003:803) point out that the notion of values is seen as integral to the discourse of morality and ethics and is reflective of a wider discursive network which privileges particular views about morality. these debates will continue as the values and characterformation movement gain global resonance within the conservative, right-wing reform agenda around education, where morals and ethics are patriarchal and hetero-normative often viewing broader human rights as negative. viewing values, moral and ethics in light of the growing discontent and alienation one can easily see ‘the other’ as the enemy rather than the unequal social and structural conditions. freire, instead, poses the praxis of ethics as a particular way of understanding morality. he speaks of the “ethics of universal human aspiration” which he considers the “ethics of solidarity” (freire, 1998:116). in his book, education in hope: critical pedagogies and the ethic of care, monchinski (2010) uses the arguments of dewey, freire, and feminist identifying scholars to show that critical pedagogy must reflect an ethic of care which is fundamentally at odds with conservative and narrow morality. he writes: freire was clearly against capitalism and the ethics of the market. he railed against the ‘perverse ethic of profit’ and counselled refusal of the ‘dictatorship of the marketplace’. he considered himself a democratic thinker and attributed his concern with dehumanization in part to his christianity and the liberation theology movement in latin america … at the same time, freire could not deny his indebtedness to marx. he was adamant that ‘democracy cannot be rooted in the ethics of the market’… according to freire, because education forms human beings, education cannot be separated from moral formation (ibid:107-108). nussbaum (2010:93-94) explains that global social justice and responsible citizenship requires: … the ability to assess historical evidence, to use and think critically about economic principles, to assess accounts of social justice, to speak a foreign language, to appreciate the complexities of the major world religions … world history and economic understanding … must be humanistic and critical if they are to be at all useful in forming intelligent global citizens, and they must be taught alongside the study of religion and of philosophical theories of justice. only then will they supply a 95spreen & vally — the curriculum and citizenship education in the context of inequality useful foundation for the public debates that we must have if we are to cooperate in solving major human problems. also taking issue with the human capital theory rationale behind the purpose of education, the economist, chang, has similarly argued that the links between education and raising the productivity of an economy is tenuous at best and that the reasons to invest in education do not rest in the common-sense and instrumental and economic rationales for education. he argues: …there are many subjects that have no impact, even indirectly on most workers productivity – literature, history, philosophy and music, for example. from a strictly economic point of view, teaching these subjects is a waste of time. we teach our children those subjects because we believe that they will eventually enrich their lives and also make them good citizens. even though this justification for educational spending is increasingly under attack in an age which everything is supposed to justify its existence in terms of its contribution to productivity growth, it remains … the most important reason to invest in education (chang, 2010:182). relatedly, giroux (2006:209-210) recognises critical pedagogy as a political pedagogy aiming to connect: understanding and critical engagement with the issue of social responsibility and what it would mean to educate students to not only critically [seek] to change the world but also be responsible enough to fight for those political and economic conditions that make its democratic possibilities viable. following pashby’s words, cited in the epigraph, we continue to believe that education has an obligation to contribute to a sense of citizenship worthy of its name and its purpose should be to re-imagine political community and to challenge the broader inequalities in society. we concede that this is contested terrain and it will require public mobilisation, engagement and energies that once sustained the struggles against apartheid education. yet, given our history, such struggles will do more to encourage a national identity than the official pronouncements and the exhortations of politicians. habermas’s (1992:3) statement, “the nation of citizens does not derive its identity from some common ethnic and cultural properties, but rather from the praxis of citizens who actively exercise their civil rights” remains pertinent. references: ahmed r, sayed y & soudien c 2007. creating a rainbow nation? citizenship and education in south africa. in: roth k & burbules n (eds.), changing notions of citizenship education in contemporary nation-states. rotterdam: sense publishers. alexander n 2002. an ordinary country: issues 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156-171 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 a case study of early childhood development facility infrastructure in philippi, south africa abstract adequate infrastructure plays a critical role in early childhood development (ecd) facilities providing high-quality early learning services. an ecd facility is a partial care facility that provides an early childhood programme that encompasses early learning and the development of children before they start formal schooling. hence early learning in south africa is primarily accommodated in privately owned facilities that range from registered to unregistered facilities. for this reason, the inadequate infrastructure that characterises conditions under which most ecd facilities operate in south africa has been noted with concern in numerous studies. this paper assesses the state of the physical infrastructure of ecd facilities in philippi, an impoverished township in the city of cape town in the western cape. owing to the regulatory function of the state in the ecd sector, through which compliance standards have to be met to secure subsidisation, the authors analyse the impact of ecd legislation on the state of ecd infrastructure in philippi. the analysis shows statistical differences in the infrastructure of 10 registered and 10 unregistered facilities. the infrastructure differs partly due to the registration status and the location in which the facilities are situated. we therefore deduce that the current state’s avoidance of infrastructure investment in ecd facilities amounts to the denial of positive early learning outcomes to these children in philippi. keywords: early childhood development facility infrastructure, early learning, registered ecd facility, unregistered ecd facility, philippi. 1. introduction an early childhood development (ecd) facility is a partial care facility that provides an early childhood programme that encompasses early learning and the development of children before they start formal schooling. adequate infrastructure plays a critical role in the ability of ecd facilities to provide high-quality early learning and ecd services. it is considered the foundation of the early learning phase, enabling children to learn and develop (mathwasa & shumba, 2020). sotuku, okeke and mathwasa (2016) stress the importance of ecd facilities’ infrastructure, stating that architects should not design spaces that merely author: dr siphe madyibi1 prof amiena bayat1 affiliation: 1university of the western cape doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i4.11 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(4): 156-171 published: 6 december 2021 received: 26 august 2021 accepted: 12 november 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1616-6489 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3009-930x http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 1572021 39(4): 157-171 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 madyibi & bayat a case study of early childhood development facility infrastructure enable children to meet minimum requirements in their developmental milestones but instead design spaces that challenge children to surpass the accepted norm. early learning provision in south africa is primarily provided in the home and in privately owned facilities that range from registered to unregistered ecd facilities. it is therefore concerning that a series of nationwide and provincial ecd audits of facilities have consistently described the physical infrastructure of many facilities as inadequate and called for urgent improvement (dsd, 2014; williams et al., 2001). the lack of adequate ecd facility infrastructure can be viewed as a national crisis within the ecd sector that has been fuelled by state legislation that prohibits public finance from being utilised to upgrade privately owned facilities (financial and fiscal commission, 2015). despite it being known that ecd facilities struggle to provide adequate infrastructure, many unregistered ecd facilities operating in the city of cape town metropolitan municipality fall outside the legal scope and capabilities of the provincial government (city of cape town, 2015). for its part, the city is unable to assist the two types of ecd facilities commonly found in its impoverished communities. firstly, ecd facilities established in privately-owned, converted residential houses are excluded from benefiting from council residential infrastructure upgrades (city of cape town, 2015). secondly, privately-owned ecd facilities in informal settlements also cannot be upgraded because the land they are located on, tends to have been occupied illegally. moreover, the facility owners cannot afford to upgrade the infrastructure, given the meagre fees they charge as well as the likely denial of a state subsidy. the purpose of this paper is to assess the state of the physical infrastructure of ecd facilities and the impact of ecd legislation on the state of ecd infrastructure in philippi in the western cape, pursuant to which, the following research questions are posed. • how and why does infrastructure differ between registered and unregistered facilities in philippi? • to what extent does ecd legislation in the country determine the state of the current ecd infrastructure? • how does the state of the infrastructure in philippi influence children’s early learning experience? 2. literature review the following literature review supports the case for why ecd facility infrastructure matters in terms of its implications for child development and the extent to which the ecd sector’s prominent stakeholders, namely the state and communities, are liable for financing the infrastructure of ecd facilities. 2.1 why ecd facility infrastructure matters: development implications investing in ecd facilities’ physical infrastructure is a necessity for child development (barret et al., 2019). many development researchers theorise that variations in physical environments shape child development and can determine the adult future of children (scarr, 1992). these include kurt lewin (1931), jean piaget (1962) and urie bronfenbrenner (1979), who all identified the environment, explicitly or implicitly, as the primary mechanism in a child’s development. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 1582021 39(4): 158-171 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) as an early advocate of high-quality learning settings, greenman (1988) argued that the physical environment is a living, dynamic system with the power to influence how we feel, think and behave. this old notion is consistent with modern research. for instance, smith (2007) argued that children who attend ecd facilities that offer spacious and pleasant indoor and outdoor infrastructure were less likely to exhibit distress and anxious behaviours. abbas, othman and rahman (2016) established that children in malaysian preschools who were exposed to spatially defined classrooms tended to exhibit appropriate behaviours when playing with their peers. appropriate behaviour in the study included friendliness, social conversions and cooperative play, whereas inappropriate behaviour was expressed in aggression, object possessiveness and conflicts. the same authors argue that such outcomes are likely to hold irrespective of cultural context. children need to be provided with diverse play opportunities for physical development. according to tadjic, martinec and farago (2015), children generally prefer high mobility activities, namely, climbing, crawling and sliding. a multilevel regression analysis study investigating the relationship between physical activity, which includes play, and child wellbeing, established a positive relationship between the two (sando, 2019). the same study found there was a reduction in child play in cases where ecd facilities classes had tables and other furniture, as the children assumed they were expected to be seated on the furniture. these findings mean that furniture (chairs and desks) may discourage children from playing freely in ecd facilities. knauf (2019) notes that the implications of ecd facility infrastructure are often analysed regarding how it fosters physical play or active learning. the author digresses from this traditional approach and determined that the physical infrastructure design also enhances child participation in various ecd games and activities at ecd facilities. increased child participation increases opportunities for development, especially cognitive development. finally, a high-quality ecd facility and programme is a combination of factors, with the physical infrastructure being one of the quality-determining factors. highlighting the important role of the physical facility infrastructure, many researchers (cabello & savec, 2018; sotuku et al., 2016; strong-wilson & ellis, 2007) have embraced the reggio emilia approach developed by educational theorist loris malaguzzi, of treating the physical environment as the third educator. the reggio emilia approach to education and development settings refers to three educators simultaneously: the child, teacher and the environment (malaguzzi, 1998). hence the physical environment, which includes the infrastructure, supports the capacity of a preschooler to perform tasks (creative tasks, music and movement, cognitive), relate with one another and explore their immediate environment (tadjic et al., 2015). the implications of inadequate infrastructure impact more than the children. inadequate infrastructure results in unsafe and unhygienic work environments for teachers, negatively affects the teachers’ ability to do their jobs and decreases teachers’ motivation – such teachers are likely to feel undervalued in their profession (rahardjo, 2014). 2.2 extent and limitations on state liability for ecd infrastructure infrastructural shortcomings among ecd facilities are so widespread nationally that, according to mathwasa and shumba (2020), it would require a collaborated effort by all arms of government to address the shortage of basic infrastructure, such as sanitation and safe drinking water in unregistered facilities. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 1592021 39(4): 159-171 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 madyibi & bayat a case study of early childhood development facility infrastructure state liability for ecd infrastructure is largely confined to limited funding for registered ecd facilities and setting standards for qualifying for registration. facilities need to meet ecd norms and standards to be registered, as prescribed by section 94, chapter 6, of the children’s act, act 38 of 2005 (as amended by the children’s amendment act, act 41 of 2007 and child justice act, act 75 of 2008) (republic of south africa, 2010) and the various municipal bylaws regulating building, structural safety and health. crucially, while the national minister for social development is responsible for setting the norms and standards, the delivery of the government’s ecd strategy is a provincial competence supervised by the mec of the department of social development. at first glance, the children’s act appears to concede that funding should be prioritised for “communities where families lack the means of providing proper shelter, food and other basic necessities of life to their children” (republic of south africa, 2010: section 93.4.a). however, van der walt et al. (2014) have noted the contradiction in the same, seemingly pro-poor legislation, which also criminalises non-registration and requires rigid compliance to regulations and municipal bylaws that are daunting prerequisites for registration and beyond the resources of many ecd centres. among the most challenging of these prerequisites are the national building regulations and building standard act, act 103 of 1977 (dsd & unicef, 2006). this act requires that the land or building in which a proposed ecd facility will be situated should be (re)zoned for that use, have approved building plans and a structural design that is fireproof and compliant with numerous other spatial requirements and restrictions. not only would the typical structures in informal settlements fail to satisfy most of these infrastructure requirements, but the cost of compliance in building, converting or extending a formal house for ecd use without funding assistance impacts heavily on ecd provision in poorer communities. van der walt, swart and de beer (2014) divert from the traditional discourse that holds the state to providing quality ecd services, including adequate infrastructure suggesting that communities should be allowed “to do the best they can if nobody else is going to do it for them” (2014: 4). in the absence of governmental assistance, their argument implies the relaxation of compliance requirements to enable communities to solve the ecd infrastructure challenges they face within available means. makhubele and baloyi (2018) further add that communities should seek local solutions to raising funds to establish their community based ecd facilities. for most facilities, the owners themselves have already invested in establishing and maintaining the facilities with their resources and are committed to their work (housing development agency, 2014). the self-help approach has abundant historical precedents since ecd services have been primarily provided by private organisations and communities (biersteker, 2010). however, the caveat here is that south africa also has a history of multi-dimensional inequality making high-quality early learning interventions only accessible to affluent households. this history ensures that when communities “do the best they can” in providing ecd infrastructure, it is often in the context of flouting the law. the review of relevant south african legislation shows that no law compels the state to provide ecd infrastructure and, judging by the proposed ecd infrastructure grant, it can be argued that the government seems to have no appetite for changing the status quo. in proposing the grant, the national integrated ecd policy only commits to funding public infrastructure and states that funding private infrastructure is conditional and depends on http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 1602021 39(4): 160-171 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) the availability of funds (republic of south africa, 2015). more recently in 2020, during the covid-19 pandemic lockdown, the government was criticised for not extending a relief fund to ecd facilities whose financial capabilities were heavily constrained by the imposed closure of the facilities to curb the spread of the coronavirus (bridge et al., 2020). ashley-cooper, van niekerk and atmore (2019) argue that the lack of political will is also to blame for the weak implementation of ecd-related policies in the country. jansen (2002) goes even further, bluntly concluding in his review of various educational policies introduced in post-democratic south africa that the government never intended to implement most of its significant policy measures. 3. conceptual framework according to barrett et al. (2019), the area of educational infrastructure is multifaceted, encompassing ergonomics, architectural design, education pedagogy and social policy. the conceptual framework used in this paper is drawn from the ecd norms and standards prescribed by the amended children’s act of 2007 (republic of south africa, 2010) and the ecd guidelines (dsd & unicef, 2006). the ecd norms and standards mainly relate to safety, hygiene and enhancing child development or the learning experience. figure 1: the effect of infrastructure on the learning environment and child development source: adapted from republic of south africa (2010) and dsd & unicef (2006). figure 1 depicts how infrastructure impacts the learning environment and child development. a facility with adequate infrastructure – a formal structure that is well-ventilated and waterproof, has proper sanitation and a play area, and that can accommodate the separation of children by different age groups – leads to a conducive learning environment that is safe, hygienic, stimulating, welcoming, allows free movement and exploration, and ultimately enhances child development. this understanding of the impact of infrastructure is confirmed in the literature (barrett et al., 2019; nepal, 2016, among others). 4. research methods the study was undertaken in philippi, a low-income township in cape town, south africa. despite its proximity to economic hubs – the cape town international airport, philippi horticultural area and the philippi industrial area – this township is characterised by high http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 1612021 39(4): 161-171 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 madyibi & bayat a case study of early childhood development facility infrastructure unemployment, poverty and crime, further exacerbated by seasonal floods and periodic fires affecting the informal areas. the researcher employed purposive sampling, which allowed the deliberate selection of data sources (babbie & mouton, 2001; onwuegbuzie & collins, 2007). the selection of the sample was based on the researchers’ judgement and available resources. in this case, ecd facilities were selected as likely to provide rich information relevant to answering the research questions. relying on purposive sampling, the researchers obtained an equal sample of ten registered and ten unregistered facilities representative of the different areas under philippi. the sub-areas are acacia, brown’s farm, lower crossroads, marcus garvey, luzuko park, marikana informal settlement and the thabo mbeki informal settlements. data collection was achieved through an observation questionnaire implemented at the selected facilities. hennink, hutter and bailey (2011: 170) define observation as a research method that enables researchers to systematically observe and record subjects’ behaviour, actions, interaction and the surrounding environment. for this study, the observation questionnaire investigated the state of the infrastructure at the selected facilities and identified the following themes related to physical infrastructure: the built (neighbourhood) environment of the facility; demarcation of children; safety measures of the facility; play area; availability of toilets; and the interior appearance of the facility. in analysing the results, the researchers employed descriptive statistics and the fisher exact test of independence that uses nominal data to test whether there is a statistical relationship between the nominal variables (chan, 2003). the relationship is established using the level of significance with a p-value of 0.01, 0.05 and 0.10. the study and its methodology were approved by the humanities and social science research ethics committee of the university of the western cape. since the study included ecd facilities registered with the western cape department of social development, ethical clearance was also obtained from the department. individual consent was obtained from the principals who participated under the conditions of anonymity and confidentiality. 5. results in defining what constitutes infrastructure in ecd facilities, the south african national integrated ecd policy refers to the actual structure or building, water, sanitation, indoor and outdoor space, learning material and equipment (republic of south africa, 2015). because of municipal bylaws, we argue that the built environment is also crucial in influencing the extent to which ecd facilities in philippi can develop appropriate infrastructure. 5.1 the built environment philippi consists of a mix of formal and informal houses with shacks appearing in the backyards of government-subsidised formal houses as well as on formerly vacant land. hence the categories “mostly formal” and “mostly informal” in table 1 not only reflect the type of the majority of the houses and buildings in the facilities’ immediate environment but are relevant as they will likely determine the type of buildings the facilities can use. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 1622021 39(4): 162-171 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) table 1: area type of ecd facility facility factor registered facility n=10 unregistered facility n=10 total sample fisher’s exact (pr) the type of area in which the facility is located mostly formal 100% 60% 80% 0.087* mostly informal 0% 40% 20% source: primary data. at 10% significance with a p-value of 0.087, there is a statistical relationship between the type of area in which the facility is located and its registration status, indicating a greater likelihood of registered facilities being found in formal rather than informal areas. all the registered ecd facilities interviewed are indeed situated in mostly formal housing areas. this point is significant because it tends to be extremely unlikely that an ecd facility situated in a mostly informal area will achieve registration. indeed, 60% of ecd facilities are situated in formal areas, with the remainder situated in mostly informal areas. children who reside in informal settlements are therefore highly unlikely to have access to registered facilities in their residential areas (department of social development, 2014; housing development agency, 2014; mbarathi et al., 2016). table 2: type of building used as ecd facility ecd building registered facility n=10 unregistered facility n=10 total sample formal separate house/ building 30% 30% 30% formal residential house (not separate) 70% 30% 50% informal building separate from a residence 0 20% 10% informal building not separate from a residence 0 20% 10% source: primary data. in this paper, “formal separate house/building” means a facility that does not share a roof with a residential house. it has a designated site and is not a residential dwelling. table 2 shows that a separate formal building is equally uncommon for registered and unregistered facilities: only 30% of registered and unregistered facilities are situated in a separate formal building. a facility situated on its own site has a significant advantage in terms of space, as was observed in the study sample, where the outside areas were spacious, allowing the children to play freely. such facilities are likely to have more space inside as well, evident through multiple classrooms, kitchens, toilets and play areas. the other 70% of the registered facilities were formal buildings but were extensions to residential houses and converted into ecd facilities. the homeowners were also the principals and owners of the facilities. although part of these premises remained in residential use, the greater proportion of http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 1632021 39(4): 163-171 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 madyibi & bayat a case study of early childhood development facility infrastructure the space was utilised for the children. the multiple classrooms, kitchens and toilets confirmed the prioritisation of the facility’s needs over the homeowners’ accommodation needs. of the unregistered ecd facilities, 30% are formal buildings attached to the residential house, whereas 20% of unregistered ecd facilities are separate informal buildings (i.e., backyard shacks) alongside informal residential dwellings. the remaining 20% of facilities are informal structures that are not separate from an informal residential house. that is, the residence doubles as an ecd facility. both backyard shacks and dual-purpose residences lack safety and space and will almost certainly not meet the requirements for registration. 5.2 indoor demarcation into groups children aged three-and-a-half to five years are considered to have a longer attention span than younger children and are likely to engage in physical activities. by contrast, babies between four and six months old are only starting to learn to grasp objects without using their thumbs (city of cape town, 2015). children of the same age groups are likely to have achieved the same cognitive developmental milestones and therefore be on a similar development path (piaget, 1962). thus, separating children by age group is believed to accommodate an efficient transfer of age-appropriate knowledge. table 3: children’s demarcation facility factor registered facility unregistered facility total sample fisher’s exact (pr) children demarcated into groups 100% 20% 60% 0.001*** source: primary data. although mixed-age classrooms are not entirely denounced in literature, two implications stand to be noted. katz (1992) points out that younger children might become a burden to the older children, constantly asking for help from the older children to complete tasks. secondly, being in a separate optimal space would reduce overcrowding and improve their opportunities to move freely and learn. currently some of the ecd facilities are one-room structures accommodating all ages from 0–6 years old. during the study, paradoxically, two ecd facilities had moved all the children into one room as they were constructing additional rooms to create more space. while few unregistered ecd facilities separated children by age group, all the registered facilities in the study were able to divide the children into different classrooms based on their age groups. 5.3 learning material displayed on walls displaying the instructional material on the walls of the facilities creates a bright and welcoming environment for the children and aids learning, e.g. an illustrated display of the alphabet helps children to memorise the letters. berris and miller (2011) mention that children need to feel happy when coming to the facility. the welcoming appearance of ecd facilities is especially important when the children first start attending the facility and are getting used to being separated from their families. all the registered facilities had displays of instructional material on their walls while 80% of the unregistered facilities also displayed instructional material. in http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 1642021 39(4): 164-171 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) addition to creating a welcoming atmosphere, osa and musser (2004) consider the display of learning material instrumental to assist children identify concepts, letters and differentiate between similar words and objects. 5.4 outside play area play is a critical element in fostering early learning. it fosters cognitive development, social and emotional development, speech and language development, as well as gross motor skill development. although children do play inside, outside play specifically offers the significant advantages of physical exercise and allows children to initiate the type of play they want to engage in using their own rules and reasoning (sando, 2019). the pedagogy of play at the ecd level requires sufficient space and the availability of play equipment. the researchers investigated the presence of an outside play area. table 4: outside play area facility factor registered facility unregistered facility total sample fisher’s exact (pr) play area in the facility 70% 20% 45% 0.070* source: primary data. at 10% significance, there is a relationship between having a play area and the registration status. the descriptive statistics reveal that 80% of the unregistered facilities do not have an outside play area compared with only 30% of the registered facilities not having an outside play area. the lack of an outside play area was largely the result of inadequate outside space. the facilities on residential properties had already used most of the available space for building extensions and the ecd facilities in informal areas had too little space between dwellings to allow demarcated outdoor play areas. observation of most of the facilities that had outside play areas showed that the equipment in the play areas of the facilities appeared old, rusty and inadequate. lacking an outside play area did not always mean that the children spent the whole day indoors. the principal of one registered facility that did not have an outside play area stated that they took their children to the nearest community park a few times a week for playtime. 5.5 safety features of the infrastructure ensuring the safety of children in an ecd facility setting is of utmost importance. the ecd guidelines identify the jeopardising of children’s health and safety as a cause for a potential closure of a facility (dsd & unicef, 2006). many children spend most of their daytime hours at the ecd facilities. children start arriving as early as 6 am and are fetched around 5 pm. given that children spend about 11 hours in the facilities, it becomes crucial for these facilities to ensure their safety. the observation questionnaire posed the following safety questions in relation to infrastructure: • is the ecd facility fenced? • is the gate locked during school hours? • are any hazardous objects in the yard (stones, broken bottles, any sharp objects, etc.)? http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 1652021 39(4): 165-171 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 madyibi & bayat a case study of early childhood development facility infrastructure table 5: safety of ecd facilities safety feature registered facility unregistered facility total sample fisher’s exact (pr) has fence 100% 90% 95% 1.00 has lockable gate 100% 60% 80% 0.087* no hazardous objects 100% 80% 90% 0.47 source: primary data. the registered ecd facilities fared significantly better on all the safety measures. fences and gates are normal, standard features of formal housing. unsurprisingly, all the registered facilities had a fence, a lockable gate and there were no hazardous objects that could prevent the children from playing freely and safely. only 10% (one) of the unregistered ecd facilities in the study did not have a fence. this particular ecd facility is in a part of the informal settlement where shacks are very close to each other, making fencing extremely difficult. facilities without lockable gates (40%) were chiefly situated in informal dwellings and were all unregistered. having neither a lockable gate nor constant supervision increases the likelihood of children wandering outside the ecd premises. intruders can also easily enter the ecd premises. the fisher exact test showed that there is a statistically significant relationship between having a lockable gate and the ecd facility registration status. regarding hazardous obstacles in the ecd facilities that might prevent children from playing freely and safely, it was found that 20% (2) of the unregistered facilities had hazardous objects in their yards. these were bricks and rubble resulting from renovation then underway at the facilities. for whatever reason, temporary closure of the facilities or restricting children’s outside access during construction were not considered viable options. it is probable that lacking a government subsidy, temporary closure would have risked losing vital revenue and possibly losing the children to other ecd facilities. 5.6 availability of toilets adequate sanitation at ecd facilities, including sufficient and appropriate toilets for the children, is a health and safety requirement to maintain adequate hygiene and prevent disease. the researchers observed that the type of toilet used at a facility strongly correlates to the basic services available in the community. recognising that the younger children most likely still use potties, the researchers only investigated and measured the presence of flush toilets and chemical/ bucket systems, the waste systems used by all the older children. the data on chemical and bucket system types were combined since both these systems are used in different sections of the community. table 6: availability of toilets facility factor registered facility unregistered facility total sample fisher’s exact (pr) flush toilet 100% 60% 80% 0.087* source: primary data. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 1662021 39(4): 166-171 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) the type of toilet used reflects the type of area where the facility is located. all the registered ecd facilities use flush toilets while 60% of the unregistered facilities use flush toilets and the remaining 40% use a chemical/bucket system. the availability of a flush toilet is statistically related to the registration status of the facility at 10% significance. hence, all the registered facilities in this sample use flush toilets. ecd facilities situated in mostly informal areas are more likely to use a bucket system since there tends to be no formal sewerage infrastructure. since the department of human settlements would consider the type of toilet when vetting the facility, it follows that facilities using a bucket system would be disadvantaged thereby in the assessment for registration. 6. discussion from the findings on the state of infrastructure, it is apparent that there are statistically significant differences between the infrastructure found at registered facilities and that found at unregistered facilities in philippi. unregistered facilities in informal structures and informal areas have little prospect of improving infrastructure unless they register and qualify to receive subsidies. yet, given the onerous registration standards in place, it would be unlikely for the health department, fire department or other relevant departments to approve their registration. the consequences for the communities are dire. one is the probability, that unregistered ecd centres’ infrastructure will deteriorate further because of limited financial resources. another, as pointed out in the financial and fiscal commission (2015) report, is that the lack of financial assistance to facility owners is discouraging the establishment of ecd facilities in low-income and under-resourced communities, despite demand increasing with a rising population. in 2018, the general household survey estimated that approximately 1.7 million children (9%) in south africa lived in backyard dwellings or shacks in informal settlements (hall 2019). meanwhile the government persists in its denial of economic realities by discouraging informal and unregistered facilities through legislation and withholding financial assistance, it offers poorer communities no alternative to finding their own ecd solutions, other than the untenable prospect of millions of children growing up at risk in informal settlements while being denied the quality early learning development opportunities enjoyed by their affluent peers. if the state neglects to allow ecd facilities access to funding to improve infrastructure, the onus devolves to the ecd centre owner, parents and their communities to fund infrastructure. we have already shown that the immediate area in which the facility is situated influences the structure of the facility, type of toilet available, the play area and the safety measures available for the facility. the findings further revealed that some infrastructural differences reflect spatial inequalities found in the different areas of philippi. as mentioned above, philippi experiences severe economic hardship due to high unemployment and endemic poverty. it is self-evident that despite the efforts reported by many of the principals/owners in the study, the resources to upgrade ecd infrastructure to the point of meeting registration requirements simply do not exist among the vast majority of philippi’s residents. the study provides strong indications that most of the unregistered facilities lack safety, do not have outside play areas, tend to be overcrowded and provide few opportunities for exploration and stimulation. by contrast, with somewhat more adequate infrastructure largely due to government subsidies, the registered ecd facilities in philippi constitute a more conducive learning environment that is safer, more spacious, and provides more opportunities for stimulation that in turn enhance early child development. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 1672021 39(4): 167-171 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 madyibi & bayat a case study of early childhood development facility infrastructure these pre-schoolers’ learning experience and development in unregistered facilities is compromised in nearly every aspect of physical, cognitive and social development. for instance, the lack of play area decreases the likelihood of pre-schoolers exhibiting positive behaviour (abbas, othman & rahman, 2016; smith, 2007) and engaging in physical activity, which is paramount for physical and cognitive development (knauf, 2019; tadjic, martinec & farago, 2015). although most of the facilities had displays of learning materials on the wall, 20% of unregistered facilities did not, which means the pre-schoolers forfeit the opportunity of reinforcing the knowledge of concepts, letters and shapes. the researchers share the concerns of sotuku et al. (2016) and mathwasa and shumba (2020) over ecd facilities’ physical infrastructure failing to enhance learning and child development. this was foreshadowed by the reviewed conceptual framework that showed the effect of infrastructure on the learning environment and child development. 7. conclusion developing economies are confronted with fiscal pressures but simultaneously want to receive the socioeconomic returns of investing in early learning. although south africa officially shares this goal, as is evident in the national development plan (national planning commission, 2012), its actual investment is problematic and the returns deeply worrying. this study showed statistical differences in the infrastructure of registered and unregistered facilities in philippi, a poor community in the city of cape town. the differences were partly due to the registration status, the location in which the facilities are situated and the unequal resources among the facility owners. the paper argued that prevailing ecd legislation fails to assist the provision of ecd facilities in low-income areas like philippi. despite the contravention of laws and regulations by unregistered ecd facilities, the government has not embarked on a campaign to shut them down. we argue that this could be seen as a tacit admission that their services, whatever the flaws, serve the public good. it is clear from the study that ecd infrastructure in philippi is largely determined by the communities’ self-generated resources. owners of ecd facilities are essentially prevented from achieving funding assistance from the government by onerous registration requirements. the lack of ecd infrastructure in south africa reflects a problem far beyond merely a challenge of enhancing ecd. it should be noted that due to the limited sample and confinement to one area, the findings of this study cannot be generalised. however, if the essential economic function of a government is to ensure economic prosperity for the populace through investment in human and social capital, the current government’s avoidance of such investment in ecd facilities amounts to the denial of positive educational outcomes to these children in philippi and a missed opportunity to ensure inclusive development. 8. recommendations we concede that the problems and remedies needed in the ecd sector are complex. progress is inhibited by many factors, including unrealistic legislative and regulatory standards, the state’s lack of urgency, the poor performance of the economy, a historical lack of infrastructure dating back to apartheid, the rapidly rising population, lack of education of parents, the negative impacts of crime and unemployment, the high number of single-parent households, the politics of land ownership and tenure, and banks’ lack of appetite for granting loans in poor http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 1682021 39(4): 168-171 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.11 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) communities. however, the complexity of the problem should not detract from the urgent need for solutions. options that should be investigated include: • as it does with schools, including grade r, the state could assume responsibility for erecting ecd facility buildings in line with its ecd norms and standards. given that the land is often illegally occupied in informal settlements, such state constructed ecd facilities would be built in or near formal areas. • the departments of basic education, social development and the national treasury should investigate and make recommendations on the feasibility of state provision of ecd. • build ecd facilities at public schools, which often have excess land available. • adapt the regulatory and legislated standards, without compromising health and safety, to decrease the cost of building ecd infrastructure by private owners. an incremental improvement strategy can be devised whereby ecd facilities gain increasing access to the government subsidy when reaching set milestones. • rather than imposing standards, the state could consult existing ecd facilities and engage communities on what types of ecd infrastructure would be fit for purpose. • finally, further scientific research is needed to gauge the impact of inadequate ecd facility infrastructure on children’s current and later academic performance. references abbas, m.y., othman, m. & rahman, p.z.m.a. 2016. pre-school children’s play behaviour influenced by classroom’s spatial definitions? 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the title confers an elite status within academia and an expectation of a lifetime commitment to research and teaching. yet, it seems like the examiners are the custodians of “the phd rite of passage” (kumar and stracke, 2018). even though it is regarded as an entry requirement into academia, the nature and process of earning it remain something of a mystery (holbrook et al., 2004a). despite the significance placed on the phd examination process, it is “enshrouded in mystery” and “secrecy”, with supervisors and candidates being apprehensive and failing to understand its “intricacies and subtleties”, leading to a call for detailed and explicit consensus on a more transparent process (johnston, 1997). given the value placed by both institutions and candidates on the phd, it is a matter of concern that clear guidelines on the expectations of phd dr suvira ramlall department of psychiatry, nelson r. mandela school of medicine, college of health sciences, university of kwazulu-natal dr vs singaram clinical and professional practice, nelson r. mandela school of medicine, college of health sciences, university of kwazulu-natal prof te sommerville department of anaesthesia and critical care, nelson r. mandela school of medicine, college of health sciences, university of kwazulu-natal doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v37i1.10 issn 0258-2236 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2019 37(1): 130-147 date published: february 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v37i1.10 http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/za/ 131 ramlall, singaram & sommerville doctorates by thesis and publication in clinical medicine candidates and requirements of examiners are seldom explicitly articulated or uniformly defined so that the examination can be approached in an informed and consistent way across disciplines and universities worldwide. the completion of a doctoral degree by medical specialists poses unique requirements in the south african setting. the trajectory of clinicians’ development after the mbchb is often a period of specialisation towards a (master’s level) fellowship of one of the colleges of medicine of south africa (cmsa). there has been no provision for a developmental path such as integrated md-phd programmes seen elsewhere in the world. as noted by the academy of science of south africa (assaf), 2010, the country has a very minor employment market for the clinician-phd. the ukzn requirement of a phd for all academics thus posed additional challenges for clinician-lecturers in the school of clinical medicine. furthermore, the majority of clinicians are in honorary appointments, as they are employed by the department of health, which “rationalised all health care facilities to its control and prioritised health care and service delivery to the detriment of research activity” (grossman and cleaton-jones, 2011: 111). national and institutional policies to escalate the production of doctoral degrees raised concerns about the quantity versus quality of phds and the significance of doctoral research (jansen, 2011; grossman and cleaton-jones, 2011). assaf (2010:17) highlighted the need for more research to develop a “comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of doctoral education”. literature on the quality of phds from africa is sparse; mulinge and arasa, 2013, qualitatively analysed 100 of the former’s examination reports of both master’s and doctoral dissertations, drawn from ten universities across sub-saharan africa, and found that 63% of the theses were thought to be of a low quality. however, only six of these were phds, none of which were from medicine. this study explores the examiner reports of phds by thesis and publication of a cohort of south african clinical medicine staff, to ascertain what national and international examiners regarded as the sine qua non of a successful doctorate. 2. literature the examination of a phd is a highly complex process with the execution and judgment occurring at an intellectual level that is little understood and somewhat mysterious(bourke and holbrook, 2013). however, the lack of an explicit summary measure of thesis quality and differences in examiner evaluations cannot be linked to differences in university procedures (holbrook and bourke, 2004). while the traditional qualities defining a successful thesis are originality, scholarship and advancement of knowledge, ballard (1996) expresses concern that examiners are transforming these into less lofty expectations of “imagination”, “competence” and “mastery”. bitzer, trafford and leshem (2013) highlight that the doctorate represents knowledge, skill and attitude of a level that involves intellectualising, conceptualising and contributing to existing knowledge, and not just reporting facts. there is general agreement on the content and standard of a thesis: technical proficiency, originality (meaning ‘creativity’ or ‘significance’) and conceptual development are regarded as important (mullins and kiley, 2002). criteria sought by examiners are described as “coherence”, “rigorous argument”, “meaty” and “thoroughness”, leading to the conclusion that the real role of examiners is to judge whether a student has “mastered appropriate indeterminate skills and displayed the right indeterminate quality” (delamont et al., 2000). 132 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) leshem and trafford (2007) confirm the value examiners attach to the significance, role and use of conceptualisation in a doctoral thesis, with evidence that the absence of a conceptual framework is unlikely to secure a pass; this however varies across disciplines. poorly defined objectives, mystification of the process, confusion about what constitutes appropriate research, and lack of benchmarks may account for inconsistency between different examiners’ recommendations and comments on the same thesis, as well as between the recommendations and comments of an individual examiner(holbrook et al., 2004a). only a third of examiners surveyed by mullins and kiley (2002) considered institution-specific criteria when assessing theses; even while using the universities’ assessment forms, they considered themselves the arbiters of an acceptable thesis. while assessment at phd level may not be a rigorously scientific process, it is not a lottery either, and while quality may be difficult to define, it may be more easily recognised (becher et al., 1994). examiners should be appointed on the basis of their subject expertise, examining and supervisory experience, and their possession of a phd (powell and mccauley, 2003). experienced examiners are distinguished by their formative approach to the thesis, both anticipating and wanting it to pass. conversely, inexperienced examiners rely more on institutional criteria, and approach the thesis summatively; uncertain about the boundaries between a good and a poor thesis, they often refer to their own postgraduate experience to guide their supervision and examination. despite these differences, both experienced and inexperienced examiners look for consistency, coherence, and the investigation of an interesting problem. they are impressed – and unimpressed – by the same things (kiley and mullins, 2004). furthermore, candidates’ commitment and effort do have an impact on examiners’ decision-making (holbrook et al., 2004a), and examiners should have “enough humanity” to ensure that the examination process is a developmental experience for candidates (joyner, 2003). the roles played by a phd examiner have been scrutinised, as these impact on the content and purpose of the examination report. holbrook argues that, while students want to know what examiners are looking for, there is a significant difference between what examiners look for and what they ‘privilege’ in their reports. examiners use the report to “judge, instruct, amend, mentor and confer or confirm membership of the academy”. the “assessor-arbiter, mentor-colleague and supervisor-instructor” roles played by examiners within the assessment process need to be objectively defined for the training of both supervisors and examiners (holbrook et al., 2004b). there is also a call for the learning role of assessment to be fulfilled by examiners; examiner guidelines should include the need for providing developmental feedback and negative assessments must be accompanied by advice. kumar & stracke assert that a thesis is ‘work-in-progress’, and apart from the gatekeeper (summative) role, examiners have a role as a teacher (formative) and would thus be promoting learning, which is the purpose of higher education. in their experience, even theses that required no amendments were accompanied by feedback which created learning opportunities for candidates and supervisors(kumar and stracke, 2018). the examination process does have an element of subjectivity, and while examiners consciously or subconsciously serve as gatekeepers to their community, they may also be partial to candidates who share their ideologies (johnston, 1997). the massification of doctoral studies, coupled with the climate of student entitlement and consumer rights, highlight the need for national, if not international, examining standards for phds (morley et al., 2003). at the 2010 strategic leaders global summit, the delegates identified the assessment of quality 133 ramlall, singaram & sommerville doctorates by thesis and publication in clinical medicine in international collaborations as “integral to (post-)graduate research training in the 21st century”, and tasked graduate education leaders with the responsibility, among others, for “defining, measuring, benchmarking, and improving” the skills of students (council of graduate schools, 2010). bitzer et al. (2013:781) propose that candidates’ and examiners’ contributions to new knowledge could be enhanced if there were international quality measures for theses and ‘doctorateness’. many institutions, including the university of kwazulu-natal (ukzn), have adopted the doctorate-by-publication model, but the full interpretation and impact of this approach is yet to be fully endorsed. the model is not universally accepted, with supervisors being sceptical and examiners questioning its validity (dowling et al., 2012). while ‘new-route phd’, ‘professional doctorate’ and ‘practice-based doctorates’ add to the traditional phd and phd by publication (robins and kanowski, 2008), several institutional and pedagogical reasons favour the publication route. managerial and policy imperatives for shorter completion times, lower dropout rates and higher productivity drive the pressure to publish, and incentives and rewards increase individual and institutional research productivity. therefore, practices that increase publication numbers and thus influence institutional rankings and income, and also carry monetary and reputational benefits for supervisors, may be favoured (frick, 2016, lee, 2010). students and supervisors must be adequately prepared for the publication format, which may call for a different doctoral supervisory pedagogy and infrastructure (lee, 2010), and may require more supervisory capacity (frick, 2016). further, co-authorship, especially with supervisors, may leave examiners questioning the contribution of the student. also, if papers are reviewed simultaneously with the thesis being examined, the task of double revisions may present itself and may make reconciliation of conflicting examiner/reviewer perspectives a challenge (robins and kanowski, 2008). a variety of views on this topic emerged from the survey conducted by mullins and kiley (2002). half the examiners surveyed were favourably influenced by acceptance of thesis material by a reputable journal. a small number had reservations about early publication, on the basis of journals’ standards, or suspected that the work might not represent the work of the candidate but that of the supervisor. a small number rejected outright the influence of publications on their assessment, believing that examiners should be confident in their own opinions and not be influenced by peer reviewers. the international literature describes the desirable qualities of a doctoral thesis as reflecting the thought processes behind selecting an unresolved problem, delineating relevant prior work, crystallising the aspects to be studied and the applicable methodology to do so, using findings to build further knowledge and new understanding, and presenting all this in a reasoned, coherent, readable way. given the subjective nature of discerning the necessary quality of the author’s thought processes through a manuscript alone, the supposed poor quality of theses in africa, and the pressures and distractions of clinical work, we set out to explore the nature of ‘quality’ in locally generated theses through the eyes of national and international examiners. 3. methodology and context this study adopted a hermeneutic content analysis framework (vieira and de queiroz, 2017) to analyse the ratings and comments contained in examiner reports to establish the characteristics of successful and problematic theses respectively. 134 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) anonymised reports of a convenience sample of phd candidates from the school of clinical medicine examined during 2013-2015 were obtained. only the eighteen candidates whose examiners’ qualifications and affiliations could be obtained from the college central administrative office, which is the custodian of examiner information, were included in the study. the comments of the examiners were construed as representing formative feedback to candidates towards improving the quality of the phd and were thematically analysed independently by each author (mihas, 2019). discussions were held to achieve consensus on emerging themes or main areas of feedback received from the examiners. on this basis, eight themes dominated this set of examiner reports. the overall ratings awarded by examiners according to the four categories stipulated by the university were regarded as summative feedback and were analysed quantitatively. it was expected that descriptive feedback would correlate with the final assessment of the phd. the following instructions are sent by the university to the examiners on the requirements of a phd. clearance was obtained from the ukzn ethics committee and gatekeeper permission was obtained from the registrar. 3.1 guidance for examiners examination of phd theses at ukzn requires independent reports from three external examiners, at least one of whom should be international. ukzn requires each examiner to assign a summative assessment based on four categories: 1. the dissertation should be accepted without any corrections or revisions. 2. the dissertation should be accepted, provided certain corrections and revisions are carried out, to be approved by the supervisor, dean and head of school, and dean of research. 3. the dissertation requires substantive revision/extension by the candidate and should not be accepted in its present form. it should be returned to the candidate for revision/ extension and then be resubmitted for examination. 4. the dissertation should be rejected outright, according to a detailed report (university of kwazulu natal, undated-a). accompanying the thesis to be examined, examiners receive from the university a document to explain the process, expected standard, and reporting requirements for doctoral theses. this includes: dissertations/theses must show that candidates are acquainted with the methods of research and their application in that they: understand the nature and purpose of their investigations, are sufficiently acquainted with the relevant literature, command the necessary techniques and are capable of assessing the significance of their findings. evidence of independent/critical thought, thoroughness, consistency, logical development/ structure and strength of conclusion must be present. additionally, dissertations/theses must be satisfactory in literary style and presentation. it is expected that a doctoral thesis will make an original contribution to the field. systematic review type literature review – definitive in the area. data collection usually not in one setting, often national sample. must make a new contribution to knowledge in the field (university of kwazulu natal, undated-b). 135 ramlall, singaram & sommerville doctorates by thesis and publication in clinical medicine no specific guidelines were provided to examiners on the thesis by publication. these guidelines appear to be typical of those that were available from other local universities. 4. findings of the eighteen phd submissions (all on clinical topics, with or without laboratory or other special investigations and/or audit), nine were traditional theses and nine were by publication. there were 52 examiners who submitted reports and two who returned only the rating form. table 1 lists the examiners’ ratings of each thesis, the corresponding wordcounts of the examiners’ reports, and the qualifications and locality of each examiner. 4.1 examiners’ profiles, ratings and reports table 1: analysis of examiners’ reports s t examiner 1 examiner 2 examiner 3 c at . w or ds q ua l. lo c. c at . w or ds q ua l. lo c. c at . w or ds q ua l. lo c. 1 p 1 555 bsc + phd rsa 1 481 ma + phd rsa 1 784 ma + phd usa 2 t 2 1042 sci + dsc rsa 2 891 med + phd ghana 2 882 vet + phd canada 3 t 2 547 nurs + phd rsa 2 3920 sci + phd malaya 2 5853 med + phd rsa 4 t 2 578 med + dphil rsa 1 0 med + spec rsa 1 1027 med + dphil uk 5 p 2 3200 med + phd rsa 1 119 med + phd holland 1 278 med + phd usa 6 p 1 319 med + phd rsa 1 1812 med + phd denmark 2 1365 med + phd malaya 7 t 2 889 sci + phd rsa 1 427 med + phd usa 1 53 med + spec usa 8 t 2 563 med + spec rsa 2 783 med + md rsa 1 141 med + spec usa 9 t 1 32 med + md rsa 2 355 med + md uk 2 1060 med + md uk 10 t 2 1145 med + dphil rsa 2 792 med + dphil uk 1 510 med + phd norway 136 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) s t examiner 1 examiner 2 examiner 3 c at . w or ds q ua l. lo c. c at . w or ds q ua l. lo c. c at . w or ds q ua l. lo c. 11 t 3 8176 med + phd rsa 2 511 med + phd ethiopia 2 362 med + md uk 12 p 2 847 sci + phd rsa 2 1943 med + md uk 3 2696 med + phd uk 13 p 3 1809 med + dsc rsa 3 1431 med + spec usa 2 695 med + phd australia 14 p 3 1757 med + phd rsa 2 290 med + dphil rsa 1 636 med + phd australia 15 p 3 396 med + spec rsa 1 84 phd usa 2 646 med + phd australia 16 t 3 1596 med + phd rsa 1 140 med + md rsa 1 130 med + spec usa 17 p 1 224 med + phd rsa 3 893 med + md rsa 1 454 med + spec usa 18 p 3 895 med + md rsa 1 506 med + spec usa 3 901 med + spec uk cat = category of rating loc = examiner’s country of residence nurs = nursing degree med = basic 0medical degree qual = qualifications of examiner sci = science degree spec = specialist st = student (t = by thesis, p = by publication) words = wordcount of report. vet = veterinary degree 4.1.1 examiner profiles as illustrated in table 1, the majority (44) of examiners had a medical background, eight were scientists, one a nurse and one a veterinarian. ten had only medical specialist qualifications but no doctorate. of the 54 examiners, 26 were south african (rsa), two from elsewhere in africa, eight british (uk), three european, eleven north american (usa), three australian and one from malaya. 4.1.2 examiner ratings and reports the examiners awarded varied ratings to individual candidates. their reports showed diverse formats, contents and lengths, ranging from broad summaries to detailed page-by-page and line-by-line feedback on content, referencing, and typographical or grammatical errors. report lengths varied from 0 to 16.5 pages or zero to over 8000 words with a mean of 1082 words. the twenty-one reports related to the theses with the highest rating (category 1) varied in length from 58 to 1812 words (mean 413 words), with two examiners not submitting written 137 ramlall, singaram & sommerville doctorates by thesis and publication in clinical medicine reports. the twenty-three theses rated 2 were accompanied by reports ranging from 290 to 5853 words (mean 1268 words). the reports of the ten examiners who awarded ratings of 3 were 396 to 8176 words in length (mean 2055 words). hence, in general, the longer reports correlated with poorer ratings and more detailed feedback on grammar, formatting and referencing, except for one 1812-word report which comprised 424 words of comments and a 1388-word summary of the thesis (candidate 6 examiner 2). the majority of theses (81%, n=44) were rated as high quality (categories 1 and 2) by the examiners. the remainder required major corrections and resubmission (category 3). no thesis was rejected outright (category 4). examiners’ ratings agreed fully for three theses (17%), and for ten theses (56%) two of the three examiners agreed, with the third giving an adjacent rating (1 vs.2 or 2 vs. 3). however, in three cases the discrepancy was greater (1 vs. 3), and two theses received three different ratings (1, 2 and 3). medically qualified examiners with and without phds tended to rate theses less favourably and submitted shorter reports compared to those with a science background. south african examiners tended to give less favourable ratings and to write longer reports when compared to their international colleagues. doctorates by publication tended to be given a poorer rating and required longer reports than those by thesis. 4.1.3 examiner discordance for candidates 14 and 15 (see table 1), each examiner rated the thesis differently, with scores of 1, 2 and 3. all the examiners commended the work and applauded the publications. those who accepted the thesis (rating 1 or 2) focused their comments on the worthiness of the published papers and the contribution of the thesis to resolving current problems in resourceconstrained environments. the dissenting examiners (rating 3) were unhappy with the depth, critique and discussion of the theories used, as well as the introduction and discussion. they focused on the weakness of the overall structure, the gaps in individual chapters, and grammatical errors. one of the examiners strongly highlighted the lack of guidelines for phds via publication as a factor contributing to criticisms of the structure of the thesis. as illustrated in table 1, for candidates 16, 17 and 18, examiners were split between ratings of 1 and 3. those awarding a 1 varied in their enthusiasm between noting that a thesis was in line with their own work, provided an important example, or was ‘acceptable’; each thought the topic important. one dissenting examiner congratulated the student and supervisor, but noted methodological and analytical weaknesses; in the other case, the dissenter felt that the publications included were disjointed, and that the student’s statements were inconsistent opinions unsupported by the literature or the study’s findings. in the third case, one examiner could not follow the thread that supposedly linked the included papers; another saw the links but felt that the matrix initially presented as a conceptual framework in which to consider the topic was thereafter ignored; the examiner suggested that either the publications must be related to the framework or the thesis must be rewritten as standard health service research. 4.2 examiner feedback each report contained one or more sections of, firstly, general comments (sometimes only a summary of the thesis, or, in one case, a list of references consulted by the examiner) without 138 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) indication of approval or disapproval; secondly detailed critique (positive or negative) of the student’s thought process, or; thirdly, lists of technical errors requiring correction. theses rated as category 1 tended to attract non-specific approval, little critique and virtually no mention of corrections; those rated 2 garnered an equal amount of general comments, but far more critique and more lists of errors; 3-rated theses had fewer general comments and technical corrections than in category 2, the vast majority of their reports consisting of critique of the planning, execution and/or presentation of the doctoral study. we regard examiners’ descriptive feedback as formative, despite the fact that examiners did not always explain how a particular infelicity could be remedied. some examiners provided explicit guidance: ‘…the candidate should… provide an explanation…be more explicit… state the significance and broader implications…’; ‘…the author is encouraged to provide potential reasoning…’. some examiners referred candidates to lists of errors of interpretation or presentation: ‘please attend to the following areas of concern’. some examiners were less specific: ‘…requires substantive revision…’; ‘referred back to the candidate for attention to the significant shortcomings’. eight key areas were identified from thematic analyses of the examiners’ critiques. the frequency of occurrence of each theme in the reports is included in parenthesis next to the theme. direct quotes describing commendations or condemnations are used to illustrate the exact feedback received from examiners. 4.2.1 discussion (34) the handling of the discussion seemed to distinguish between category 1 theses and others. the former attracted comments ranging from “extensive exploration and comprehensive synthesis drawing valid conclusions” to the more mundane addressing of study objectives and careful description of limitations. “brilliant synthesis” “exceptional, superb, well-written” “comprehensive and thorough” theses of categories 2 and 3, despite in some cases having plausible, lucid and logical explanations, were generally found to display disorganised thinking, were hard to follow, lacked reflection or critical thought, failed to deal with the implications of the study’s findings, or simply presented the candidates’ opinions unsupported by the research findings. “assertions not supported by evidence … need to be more carefully argued” “statements of opinion not substantiated by actual clinical findings” 4.2.2 methodology (29) familiarity with research methodology and appropriate, adequately motivated choice of methods for the intended aims of the study were applauded. “critical insight displayed” “eloquently motivated design” 139 ramlall, singaram & sommerville doctorates by thesis and publication in clinical medicine “appropriate choice of methods...correlates with aims” lack of understanding of the techniques used or failure to justify their application, inadequate sample sizes or controls, or use of inappropriate measures, were censured. “choice of technique not justified” “method lacks rigour” 4.2.3 literature review (24) familiarity with and critical appraisal of the literature in the field in order to contextualise the study was uniformly commended. “very sound and in-depth literature review” “adequately acquainted with the literature in the field” inadequate coverage for the envisioned study, or for the level of a phd, lack of a critical consideration of the literature, and candidates’ opinions or speculations unsupported by the quoted literature earned adverse comments. “critical review absent” “study not put into context due to lack of coverage of literature” 4.2.4 publications (22) some examiners commented positively on the thesis-by-publication format, as it increased the exposure of the work internationally. “pushed the boundaries of thesis by publication” “publications and manuscripts show international value” others felt that thesis by publication posed several challenges. the inclusion of papers with multiple authors and the order of authorship led to speculation about candidates’ involvement in the work. “candidate is second author in publication” “candidate’s contribution to the publications … was unclear” here, examiners suggested that the “candidate’s contribution to papers must be documented”. further, the quality of submitted unpublished manuscripts was questioned, as a submission does not necessarily equate to a published paper that has undergone rigorous peer review. “submitted papers not synonymous with accepted for publication” while some examiners critiqued published papers as they did the rest of the thesis, others explicitly or implicitly suggested that the journals’ peer reviewers had already critiqued the papers, obviating the need for the examiner to do so. those who did critique published papers sometimes disagreed with the conclusions, but felt unable to provide meaningful input since 140 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) the papers were already in print. a suggestion was made that perhaps published papers need to be interleaved with introductory and commentary sections to link the papers to each other and to the research path, and to allow for post-hoc self-critique. “not happy with amount of detail in published papers” “disagree with conclusion of published paper” 4.2.5 coherence and synergy (21) as suggested in the foregoing, even category 1 theses were not immune to the failings described. however, examiners were impressed by candidates’ demonstration of their acquaintance with their chosen topic, centred on a clearly delineated problem tackled in a well-conceived study, and by their robust findings. they also praised the arrangement of material in a sequence that supported a logical argument that demonstrated sophisticated and critical insight, and was presented fluently so as to engage the reader. “congratulations on a lucid manner of presentation” “detailed, thorough … aim is clear … good description of limitations … all objectives addressed” lack of coherence was evidenced by inconsistency or a need for integration between different parts of the thesis, absence of a stated research problem, failure to support the argument with cogent references, or lack of a discernible thread linking the parts of the thesis. “lack of diligence in detail … has not demonstrated familiarity with theories quoted … not demonstrated critical thought … no evidence of reflection … introduction, methods and conclusion lacking” 4.2.6. results (21) clear presentation and systematic analysis of study results distinguished category 1 theses from the rest. “thinking is sophisticated and data critically evaluated” “unique and powerful dataset” poorly described, inconsistent or sometimes missing data, inappropriate statistical analysis, or lack of interpretation of statistical outcomes characterised poorly rated theses. “results not consistent or systematically presented” “far too many tables and data over-analysed” 4.2.7 presentation (14) communicative aspects of format, grammar, writing style, and typographical errors tended to earn less censure in category 1 theses. the appeal of well-written and lucid texts that were a pleasure to read appeared to outweigh the irritation of errors and lack of clarity about the terms or concepts being used. “writing and diction – overall superior … fluent and versatile command of concepts ... exhibits all-too-rare combination of scholarly precision and linguistic plain spokenness” 141 ramlall, singaram & sommerville doctorates by thesis and publication in clinical medicine less admirable theses were characterised by more frequent errors in typing, referencing, and presentation of data, and in sloppy and imprecise language. “thesis not proof read” “inconsistent style, format” “grammar, punctuation, spacing inconsistent throughout” 4.2.8 originality/novelty (14) despite the fact that a doctoral thesis must generate new knowledge, and that none of the reports rejected a thesis on the basis of a lack of originality, it was almost exclusively the category 1 theses in which this aspect was specifically remarked upon, often as being significant, substantial or valuable. “well conceptualised substantial, original and valuable contribution” “original, relevant, meaningful” queries in this regard in lesser-ranked theses related to the inclusion of data gathered and publications authored a long time prior to the thesis submission dates. “10 years to complete … early part of thesis written long before the second part” “lack of publications for 12 year interval” “due to long time frame, relevance of data is questionable” table 2. themes and frequency of occurrence in examiner reports holbrook et al categories corresponding themes & frequency argument: reasoning & coherence of argument sufficiency & completeness of argument depth & sophistication of thinking discussion-14 coherence and synergy-21 originality & novelty-14 total: 69 project: theory literature data analysis literature-24 results-21 total: 45 fundamentals: presentation methods methodology-29 presentation-14 total: 43 publications-22 142 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) table 2 categorises the themes of comments (favourable and negative) and their frequency in examiner reports; the themes used in this study are compared with the 3 categories proposed by holbrook et al., 2014. while the eight themes identified in our analyses could be correlated with their three main categories, examiners’ comments on publications featured with similar frequency as for coherence and synergy, and the literature review. 5. discussion and conclusions the aim of this study was to explore the defining characteristics of ‘doctorateness’ by analysing examiners’ summative and descriptive/formative reports on a cohort of phd theses from the school of clinical medicine at ukzn. variations in the structure, length and focus of reports and a lack of consistency between examiners’ comments and ratings of the same thesis reflected a lack of standardisation of the doctoral examination process and a lack of clarity on what defines doctorateness, respectively. the lack of uniformity in the structure of reports was evident in both the length and content of examiner reports. our experience is similar to the findings of the textual analysis of phd examiner reports across disciplines in one australian university which revealed no standard structure or style. very few reports were organised by specific themes, topics or methods and assessments were presented in a variety of ways; there was also no consistency of reporting on themes with 69% making some reference to ‘significance’ and 60% to ‘approach’ and ‘methodology’ (holbrook et al., 2004b). generally, our findings on the length of examiner reports are consonant with the reported literature: weaker theses usually elicited lengthier reports with examiners commenting on both the academic and communication aspects. however, there were no sharp dividing lines between theses adjudged high or poor quality; reflections of excellence and of deficit were found throughout the three categories. it was not possible to construct a checklist based on institutional guidelines or literature that would unequivocally distinguish between theses that would pass or fail. the wide variation in length of reports correlates with the broad fields of study of 1103 examiner reports which ranged from one line to 25 pages, with an average of 2-3 pages. no study was identified that examined phds from medicine exclusively, but no significant difference in length of reports between ten studied discipline categories, which included ‘health’, has been reported (holbrook and bourke, 2004). another study of 804 australian theses revealed that satisfied examiners wrote shorter reports than dissatisfied examiners (holbrook et al., 2008). holbrook et al. (2004) note that examiners’ perceptions of the value of a thesis were quantitative rather than qualitative; commendations were more often attached to theses thought to be good, and criticisms more commonly attached to poor theses. we found, as they did, that the tone and intent of examiners’ reports varied between categories. category 1 theses tended to attract briefer summative assessments with corresponding comments on their authors’ academic abilities; category 2 and 3 theses tended to incur lengthier reports, generally of a formative nature, focused on improving the thesis to the point of acceptability. our initial expectation that adverse reports are longer because of the need to justify their unfavourable conclusions was not borne out: examiners generally went to great lengths to suggest what candidates could do to amend their theses and supplement deficiencies. direct comments on the quality of the candidates’ academic abilities were rare in these two categories. kumar and stracke(2018) found that longer reports contained more developmental feedback and 143 ramlall, singaram & sommerville doctorates by thesis and publication in clinical medicine shorter reports contained more assessment and the authors called for the practice of negative assessment without advice to be discarded. in the cases of individual theses that were categorised differently, it appears that examiners awarding a rating of 1 focused on the importance of the topic, whereas dissenting examiners were more aware of the need for rigorous scholarship, cohesion and quality of communication in the presentation of a doctoral thesis. an examiner’s familiarity with the field of research appeared to provide an implicit understanding of the author’s intentions, and agreement with his or her conclusions may have swayed the examiner to overlook the logic of the work as a whole. we also compared the comments on theses categorised by examiners as 1 (accept as is) with those categorised as 3 (re-submit). while defects in presentation were widespread, they attracted more attention in poorer theses, as if quality of thought and quality of communication were directly related. the perceived value of the literature review varied even within categories, but tended to be less relevant and less inclusive in the lower quality categories. critical mastery of the literature is suggested as the ‘litmus test’ for an ‘unambiguous academic entry point’ representative of the ‘essence of scholarship’. a good literature review favours a positive response from examiners (holbrook et al., 2007). candidates’ choices of methodology were questioned in all categories, but were generally considered better thought through and critiqued in category 1 theses, and less obviously appropriate or correctly applied to the research problem in the lower quality theses. presentation and analysis of results were most likely to be complete and systematic in category 1 theses; statistical descriptions were less adequate or less apt, and prone to misinterpretation, in poorer quality theses. students’ discussion and critique of study findings appeared to be comprehensive and thoughtful in category 1 theses, but opinions unsupported by study findings or viewed uncritically characterised poorer quality theses. general comments on theses showed, similar to examiners’ comments on specific sections, a spread of excellent and adverse features across all three categories. the coherence, lucidity of expression, clarity of sequencing and solid base for conclusions of the thesis as a whole were appreciated by examiners of category 1 theses. discrepancies between the abstract and the body of the thesis, lack of integration within chapters, lack of application of theories adduced, unclear research questions, or a number of published papers without obvious links were noted in poorer quality theses. surprisingly, although one would expect originality as a hallmark, only category 1 theses elicited specific comments on their creativity and freshness. conversely, lower quality theses tended to generate queries as to the student’s contribution to previously published papers, implying some doubts as to the authenticity of the appearance of the paper in the thesis. the relevance of previous publications was also queried in terms of their subject matter or time lapse. this analysis of examiner reports illustrates a lack of uniformity between examiners in approaching the examination of a phd, and fails to characterise the essence of a phd for students and supervisors. there were no clearly defined shortcomings that consistently defined a poor thesis, as examiners variably focused on the conceptual/intellectual or communicative aspects of theses. it was evident that, while examiners placed equal value on both aspects, scant explicit mention was made of the role of synergy and coherence in the examined theses. comment on the candidates’ demonstration of doctorateness and successful negotiation of thresholds (trafford and leshem, 2009) was lacking, begging the question of the difference between a good clinical study and a doctoral thesis. an analyses of more than 800 theses 144 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) found a lack of significant differences between satisfied and dissatisfied examiners of the same thesis; even though examiners made substantially different recommendations, the content of their reports differed little (holbrook et al., 2008). these findings highlight the challenges of seeking to characterise the defining features of a phd by evaluating examiner reports. in their analyses of the focus and substance of formative comment by phd examiners, holbrook et al (2014), proposed a hierarchical sequence from the bottom up of three categories (and nine sub-categories) ranging from the ‘fundamentals’ to the ‘project’ and, at the top, the ‘argument’ which they propose as the ‘crux’ of the thesis. the themes identified in our study (excluding ‘publications’), when aligned with their three categories, indicate that examiner comments pertaining to the ‘argument’ were most frequent (table 2). while this provides some evidence for the category prioritised by examiners, our analyses did not extend to the level that we could establish whether strengths or deficiencies in this category correlated with the final rating of the thesis. although phd by publication has been adopted nationally and internationally, our study found that doctorates by publication tended to be rated more poorly, and comments from examiners highlighted the need for explicit guidelines for students and supervisors regarding formatting of theses, authorship, publication timeframes and the need for a critical narrative linking the publications. the publication model lends itself particularly well to interdisciplinary research in clinical medicine in addition to the advantages to institution, student and supervisor, as highlighted by the literature. however, to ensure that pedagogical imperatives accompany scientific breakthroughs in keeping with doctorateness, heed needs to be paid to the communication and conceptual shortcomings highlighted by examiners. it is insufficient for a series of papers arising from clinical practice to be bound together. guidelines for a critical narrative to complement the stream of published or publishable papers that would enhance the quality of phds by publication, ensuring that doctoral standards and institutions both benefit, are recommended (badley, 2009, mason, 2018). a traditional phd and a phd by publication are equally rigorous academically, but the question of academic level needs to be addressed if the latter model is to gain wider acceptance (davies and rolfe, 2009). the question of academic level leads one back to defining ‘doctorateness’. should examiners focus on reviewing the published work – to which changes or revisions cannot be made – or should they rather focus on the critical self-appraisal that accompanies the portfolio of published work? davies and rolfe (2009) further suggest that critical self-assessment is the most important and difficult skill, and also the best index of doctoral level work; the publication route, far from being an easier route, is not for the fainthearted. writing is central to academic identity formation, and therefore a phd by publication facilitates crossing the threshold and plays an important formative role in developing the student towards becoming a member of the academic community (mason, 2018). it is the reception and not just the production and publication of one’s scholarship that shapes this identity, which is an ongoing process or journey facilitated by the publication model (dowling et al., 2012). as regards our first research question, we found examiners’ ratings of theses to be generally concordant, although in only three cases did they agree exactly, and in five of the 18 theses (28%) there was a wider discrepancy, reasons for which we have suggested. in their study of 804 theses, holbrook et al (2008) found that 4% had one or more discrepant reports among examiners leading them to suggest that, even though there is no mandated curriculum for 145 ramlall, singaram & sommerville doctorates by thesis and publication in clinical medicine the phd, this indicates “innate robustness of the ‘invisible’ doctoral curriculum and evidence of consistently applied standards”(p46). the variety of opinions on a single thesis argues for reliance on multiple examiners, plus an independent internal university committee to reconcile conflicting reports. an interesting observation in this study is the comparison of ratings of examiners based on qualification and geographical location. unlike a previous study (prieto et al., 2016) we found that the geographical location and qualification of the examiners influenced their assessment of a thesis. this study found that international examiners rated theses higher than national examiners, whilst medically qualified examiners rated theses lower than examiners with a science background. these findings also contradict anecdotal assumptions that local examiners with similar qualifications will unfairly favour candidates. perhaps this is the reason why local examiners rate theses more stringently. in qualitative terms, we established that this sample of doctoral theses, produced in a medical setting, conforms to standards and findings elsewhere in the world. this is heartening, despite it being a part-time endeavour, fashioned in between a full load of teaching and clinical service. the eight themes that emerged from our examiner’s reports spoke to the preparation (literature review and methodology), prosecution (results), intellectual preparation of findings (discussion, coherence and novelty) and dissemination (presentation and publication) as contributing to a satisfactory phd. however, while there appears to be consensus with the literature on the ‘ingredients’, the ‘recipe’ for success remains elusive. in conclusion, our analyses of phd examiner ratings and comments did not conclusively identify one or more distinctive ingredient or the hallmark that would assure success in crossing the doctoral threshold. our findings support the view that scholarship in a phd is subject to interpretation; because examiners identify and diagnose problems based on their expectations they should therefore clarify and teach what is required (kumar and stracke, 2018). we live and work in an age when doctoral programmes are following increasingly diverse paths, and while this makes standardization both less needed and more difficult, we also echo the plea of some of our examiners for guidelines on the basic conceptual and philosophical necessities of a doctoral thesis in any format. a framework for thesis quality that includes a set of stable indicators that distinguish between theses of ‘threshold quality’ and above is required (holbrook et al., 2008). the processes of doctoral research and examination would be enhanced by the provision of explicit guidelines on the format and content of both phds (by thesis and publication) and examiner reports. this would also serve to guide students and supervisors to ensure that the essence of doctorateness is maintained while enhancing the doctoral experience and quality. 6. references badley, g. 2009. publish and be doctor-rated: the phd by published work. quality assurance in education, 17, 331-342. https://doi.org/10.1108/09684880910992313 ballard, b. contexts of judgement: an analysis of some assumptions identified in examiners’ reports on 62 successful phd theses. conference on quality in postgraduate research-is it happening, 1996. becher, t., henkel, m. & kogan, m. 1994. graduate education in britain, london, jessica kingsley. https://doi.org/10.1108/09684880910992313 146 perspectives in education 2019: 37(1) bourke, s. & holbrook, a. p. 2013. examining phd and research masters theses. assessment & evaluation in higher education, 38, 407-416. https://doi.org/10.1080/026029 38.2011.638738 braun, v. & clarke, v. 2006. using thematic analysis in psychology. qualitative research in psychology, 3, 77-101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa davies, r. e. & rolfe, g. 2009. phd by publication: a prospective as well as retrospective award? some subversive thoughts. nurse education today, 29, 590-594. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.nedt.2009.01.006 delamont, s., atkinson, p. & parry.o. 2000. the nature of the quest. the doctoral experience: success and failure in graduate school. london: falmer. dowling, r., gorman-murray, a., power, e. & luzia, k. 2012. critical reflections on doctoral research and supervision in human geography: the ‘phd by publication’. journal of geography in higher education, 36, 293-305. https://doi.org/10.1080/03098265.2011.638368 frick, l. 2016. phd by publication: an institutional analysis. in: magda fouriemalherbe, ruth albertyn, claire aitchison & bitzer., e. 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(eds.) publishing pedagogies for the doctorate and beyond. oxon: routledge. leshem, s. & trafford, v. 2007. overlooking the conceptual framework. innovations in education and teaching international, 44, 93-105. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703290601081407 mason, s. 2018. publications in the doctoral thesis: challenges for doctoral candidates, supervisors, examiners and administrators. higher education research & development, 37, 1231-1244. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2018.1462307 mihas, p. 2019. qualitative data analysis in: noblit, g. (ed.) the oxford encyclopedia of qualitative research methods in education oxford university press. https://doi.org/10.1093/ acrefore/9780190264093.013.1195 morley, l., leonard, d. & david, m. 2003. quality and equality in british phd assessment. quality assurance in education, 11, 64-72. https://doi.org/10.1108/09684880310471489 mullins, g. & kiley, m. 2002. ‘it’s a phd, not a nobel prize’: how experienced examiners assess research theses. studies in higher education, 27, 369-386. https://doi. org/10.1080/0307507022000011507 powell, s. & mccauley, c. 2003. the process of examining research degrees: some issues of quality. quality assurance in education, 11, 73-83. https://doi. org/10.1108/09684880310471498 prieto, e., holbrook, a. & bourke, s. 2016. an analysis of phd examiners’ reports in engineering. european journal of engineering education, 41, 192-203. https://doi.org/10.108 0/03043797.2015.1056096 robins, l. m. & kanowski, p. j. 2008. phd by publication: a student’s perspective. journal of research practice, 4, 3. trafford, v. & leshem, s. 2009. doctorateness as a threshold concept. innovations in education and teaching international, 46, 305-316. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703290903069027 university of kwazulu natal undated-a. examiners questionnaire: college of health sciences in: university of kwazulu natal (ed.). howard college, durban: ukzn. university of kwazulu natal undated-b. information for the guidance of examiners’ of higher degrees in: university of kwazulu natal (ed.). howard college, durban: ukzn. vieira, k. a. l. & de queiroz, g. m. 2017. hermeneutic content analysis: a method of textual analysis. international journal of business marketing and management 2, 8-15. https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2017.1285715 https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2017.1285715 https://doi.org/10.1080/14703290601081407 https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2018.1462307 https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.1195 https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.1195 https://doi.org/10.1108/09684880310471489 https://doi.org/10.1080/0307507022000011507 https://doi.org/10.1080/0307507022000011507 https://doi.org/10.1108/09684880310471498 https://doi.org/10.1108/09684880310471498 https://doi.org/10.1080/03043797.2015.1056096 https://doi.org/10.1080/03043797.2015.1056096 https://doi.org/10.1080/14703290903069027 __fieldmark__198_1107328704 __fieldmark__216_1107328704 __fieldmark__258_1107328704 __fieldmark__340_1107328704 __fieldmark__349_1107328704 __fieldmark__357_1107328704 __fieldmark__397_1107328704 __fieldmark__426_1107328704 __fieldmark__435_1107328704 __fieldmark__462_1107328704 __fieldmark__482_1107328704 __fieldmark__492_1107328704 __fieldmark__526_1107328704 __fieldmark__543_1107328704 __fieldmark__557_1107328704 __fieldmark__575_1107328704 __fieldmark__606_1107328704 __fieldmark__637_1107328704 __fieldmark__648_1107328704 __fieldmark__726_1107328704 __fieldmark__749_1107328704 __fieldmark__782_1107328704 __fieldmark__791_1107328704 __fieldmark__811_1107328704 __fieldmark__823_1107328704 __fieldmark__859_1107328704 __fieldmark__884_1107328704 __fieldmark__939_1107328704 __fieldmark__963_1107328704 __fieldmark__2627_1107328704 __fieldmark__2663_1107328704 __fieldmark__2672_1107328704 __fieldmark__2794_1107328704 __fieldmark__2905_1107328704 __fieldmark__2937_1107328704 __fieldmark__2999_1107328704 __fieldmark__3011_1107328704 __fieldmark__3082_1107328704 __fieldmark__3125_1107328704 __fieldmark__3156_1107328704 _goback 1722021 39(4): 172-186 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 leadership of learning and change for successful learning outcome in history education abstract managing history learning and teaching in schools of south africa over the years has been characterised by diverse opinions regarding the causes of learner underperformance, who is to be held responsible over learner performance and possible leadership influence on history learner performance. in addressing the problem of underperformance in history from a leadership point of view, the researchers were guided by the managerial leadership and humanism learning theories. the selected qualitative methodology adopted an ethnographic design to establish hidden inferences. a sample of thirty participants comprising the provincial coordinator for history, subject advisor, principals, departmental heads, teachers and learners was obtained based on the availability of history-offering schools in the study area. data collection was mainly through interviews and meta-analysis of documents. both deductive and inductive reasoning was applied using atlas.ti version 8.4 and thematic analysis in the data analyses process. the findings suggest several managerial leadership measures ranging from policy to practice. these amongst others include the recommendation that history as part of social science should be separated in totality from geography. keywords: leadership; school management; learning outcome, history educators; learner performance; learning and teaching. 1. introduction and background to the problem managing the learning and teaching of the subject history in south african schools over the last two decades has been characterised by a plethora of opinions from different stakeholders on the macro, meso and micro levels of the school management. the range of opinions stretches to the role of the past in humanities and of history in the national culture, the discipline and the nature of its influence on what history should teach (little, 1990) as well as whose responsibility it is over learner performance in general, but specifically in history. in recent times, history education has become a rallying point in countries such as nigeria author: dr hennades tabe1 prof jan heystek1 dr pieter warnich1 affiliation: 1north-west university doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i4.12 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(4): 172-186 published: 6 december 2021 received: 11 september 2021 accepted: 26 october 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4910-8659 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7695-5047 http://orcid.org/000-0003-3967-776 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 1732021 39(4): 173-186 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 tabe, heystek & warnich leadership of learning and change and south africa (sa), at a time when many young people query the relevance of history in their lives and in the communities at large (dbe, 2018), followed by the unavailability of history educators to teach history. this could be detrimental in the schooling system where effectiveness and efficiency in the delivery of learning and teaching has made way for laissefaire and subsequently poor learner performance. the dilemma of learner underperformance in general faced by the management of some schools of south africa, according to nwati (2015), is being debated in circles among stakeholders within the macro, meso and micro levels. such curiosity on its own, shows the intensity of how much stakeholders want to deal with this problem that has affected sa and the world at large for several decades. notwithstanding, a brief review of the historical condition of sa would suggest ongoing discrepancies in history learner performance, which is largely due to the socio-economic imbalance between and amongst the black majority and the white minority. nwati (2015) in fact indicates that among the challenges identified as causes of underperformance, the lack of resources is the most prominent. mestry (2017) however includes the educators’ pedagogical content knowledge (pck) resulting from the appointment of unqualified educators as well as the non-participation by parents. but what seems certain from a leadership perspective according to leithwood, harris and hopkins (2020) is that educators, parents and learners must collectively play a pivotal role in learning and teaching while principals as instructional leaders motivate and improve working conditions. moreover, taylor (2008) says that the south african school sector can be categorised under high cost, high participation and a low-quality system. this is because from a macro leadership perspective, south africa, similar to many other african countries including ghana, kenya and nigeria, invest over 15% of the country’s budget on education. it is expected therefore that leadership at meso and micro levels respectively would make adequate use of the available resources to facilitate learning and learner performance thereof. in so doing, the right environment for learning and teaching would be created by leadership for instance through proper management of the curriculum, monitoring and evaluating educators to name but a few, which varies from one school to another. with underperformance being a challenging phenomenon in most rural and township schools of south africa (du plessis & mestry, 2019), it is believed that the different managerial leadership alterations through policy and practice at the various levels would address the problem. the purpose of the study therefore is to derive possible leadership influence on learning and teaching of history for a positive outcome. 2. literature review the literature section is structured to provide clarity on the relevance and nature by which leadership influences learner academic performance. since the demise of apartheid, a key legislation (south african school act 84, of 1996) gave considerable attention to school management and leadership, recognising their significance in a well-designed system, which would enhance the school and all its processes (bush & glover, 2016). in this study, we saw it necessary to spell out who does what and when by observing a formal structure of school leadership that ranges from top to bottom. in that respect, heystek (2014) says the role and prospects of senior school leaders in each school could differ and the different contextual roles determine the extent to which the school leader interchanges from strategic (leadership) activities to organisational (managerial) activities during an ordinary school day. seemingly, based on the seven strong claims by leithwood et al. (2020) about successful school, there is an indirect but strong influence on learner achievement in a more centralised system. louis et http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 1742021 39(4): 174-186 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) al. (2010) therefore explain that most performing schools have a high level of collaboration with other school stakeholders as opposed to underperforming schools where there is low-level involvement. such practices would work even better in a school climate where the managerial leadership theory is considered as a basic element for a successful learner performance. furthermore, makgato and mudzanani (2019) explain that the success of any school depends on the type of leadership in the school. that is, the current school leaders to some extent is expected to perform multiple functions when compared to leaders of the old centralised system. these functions among others include managerial, instructional, counsellor, arbitrator, curriculum and advisory roles. thus, leithwood et al. (2020) argue on the link between quality leadership and school performance, the conclusion arrived at is rather a contention as to whether such relationships really exist. and if they do, at what levels is leadership involved in attaining positive outcome for learners. despite the contention that there is insufficient statistical evidence to support the relationship between school leadership and specific learner’s academic performance, researchers such as mestry (2017) and leithwood et al. (2020) have variously alluded to the fact that school leadership quality indirectly influence teacher’s effectiveness and learners’ academic performance thereof. in the school environment therefore, the core business of the leader would be the success of the school by making learning and teaching enjoyable and effective, involving all stakeholders including learners and parents. this explains why coetzee and van niekerk (2015) emphasised on yet another leadership approach though closely related to the previously identified, which is to create a school climate conducive to learning and teaching as a prerequisite for good school academic performance. notwithstanding, according to leithwood et al. (2020), learners’ cognitive, social and emotional growth is influenced to a greater extent by other factors such as the socio-economic influences, features of the home and relationships between the home and the school that could either be negative or positive. therefore, besides factors within the school, especially at the level of the classroom, other factors outside the school equally matter for substantial change in learners’ academic achievement in history. the other ways by which leadership influences learning and teaching outcome particularly in history is what these researchers seek to uncover. 3. theoretical framework: the managerial leadership and humanism learning theories this section analyses the managerial and humanism learning theories by elaborating on how much influence they have in enhancing learner performance in history as a subject. according to bush and leithwood (2013) it is basically a top to bottom practice, with authorities at the macro level closely linked with more formal roles of policy making, while the rest (meso and micro leaders) do the implementation. the managerial leadership theory assumes that the duty of a leader ought to be on functions, tasks and behaviours to which if these roles are well executed, it follows that the work of other leaders would be facilitated. such an ideological conceptualisation is certainly challenging in public schools of south africa where the department of basic education at the macro level determines the manner in which schools are run, though under very challenging circumstances because of decentralisation in the schooling system. also, with the humanism learning theory, according to parson (2013), learning is seen as a personal act to fulfil one’s potential. therefore, by utilising the theory of humanism in teaching, it centralises and privileges the learners. but most importantly, the learning process is expected to be personalised and coordinated by the teacher whose role is http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 1752021 39(4): 175-186 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 tabe, heystek & warnich leadership of learning and change best suited to that of a facilitator or instructional leader with the intention to enhance learner performance. the link between these theories is not just on learners generating the relevant knowledge, but that it must be powered by managerial interventions on functions, tasks and behaviours. leaders must therefore consider the context and situation as well as being able to change and consider the circumstances to create the climate and culture for constructive learning and specifically taking the human factor into consideration. the relevance of these theories is that they are both centred around the processes involved in producing value outcome, which is the primary objective of the study. however, though deemed relevant, it must be remembered that the application of these theories would vary from one school to another, be it public or private as well as urban or non-urban schools. 4. design and methodology the qualitative mode of enquiry that is interactive in nature was adopted in an ethnographical design with the aim, according to maree (2014), to establish the assumption that all human behaviour is intentional and observably designed to understand the reason behind people’s actions. ethnography was therefore used to describe the nature of phenomena by means of a detailed enquiry of individual cases relating to learner performance in history from one individual to another as well as from one school to the other. the sites of the study, which are township schools, were selected in conjunction with considerations such as the location and availability of history offering schools; and learner performance as per the national senior certificate (nsc) history examination from 2016 to 2019. the sites comprising 5 selected history offering schools were involved through interviews and meta-analysis of documents. a non-probability purposive sampling strategy was used in the selection of 30 participants who could purposefully inform an understanding of the research problem and illuminate the central phenomenon of the study. thus, 20 learners particularly those in grade 12 were selected to obtain first-hand experience. the rationale behind this selection of participants was based on louis et al.’s (2010) notion that in order to determine whether a school is performing or not, learners ought to have been assessed for a minimum of 3 years to show consistency in either underperformance or performance. the rest of the participants comprised 1 provincial subject coordinator, 1 district subject advisor, 2 principals (who have background knowledge in history), 2 departmental heads and 4 educators. purposive sampling was thus, adopted as a deliberate choice by the researchers. 5. ethical considerations as part of the concerns over ethics, no school was associated with either of the variables performance or underperformance that was used in the selection process to ensure that their privacy is maintained. also, during the presentation of findings, acronyms such as sc for subject coordinator; s. ad. for subject advisor; p for principal; dh for departmental head; t1s1 for teacher 1 school 1; l1s1 for learner 1 school 1 etc. were used, to represent the participants in order to protect their identities. this was followed by a voluntary participation process to which participants were requested to sign an informed consent form, indicating their acceptance to consciously participate in the study. regarding dependability and/or transferability of findings, we considered the fact that too much interaction with the participants might result in conclusions that are subjective in nature. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 1762021 39(4): 176-186 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) this could subsequently deprive the qualitative study of the quality of transferability of data to other contexts as well as dependability through the consistency of results. to overcome this dilemma, we ensured that maximum interaction took place only during data collection, while triangulation between the interviews and meta-analysis of documents was made to ensure validity and reliability. 6. analysis of findings in analysing the data, both deductive and inductive reasoning was applied using atlas.ti version 8.4 as well as thematic analysis. deductive reasoning was applicable with the original data based on existing literature, while inductive reasoning allowed new concepts, themes and ideas to emerge. in doing this, the researchers examined the selected data and performed coding and category construction, based on the data characteristics, to uncover themes pertinent to the phenomenon. the data analysis further adopted an idiographic process that starts with an iterative and detailed examination from one transcript to another. the data set was then loaded into the atlas.ti software for the actual analysis process. this was followed by the allocation of codes and quotations, detecting associations and links or relationships that would constitute preliminary interpretations. the initial notes were then transformed into emerging categories and themes. the main research question therefore is “what are the possible influences of leadership on the learning and teaching of history for a positive learning outcome? figure 1. leadership influences on learning outcome from the above figure 1, it shows some degree of uniqueness in all the categories indicating that the leadership influences could be derive at various levels of managerial leadership. the categories identified above comprise ways by which leadership could influence learning and teaching for a possible outcome in history education. in the analysis process, each of these main categories were expanded to include other minor categories as indicated in table 1 below: http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 1772021 39(4): 177-186 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 tabe, heystek & warnich leadership of learning and change table 1: main and sub-categories of leadership influence on learning outcome theme main categories sub-categories possible influences of leadership on the learning & teaching of history for a positive outcome leadership expectations eliminate streaming system make history compulsory award scholarship to history learners performing leadership responsibilities play multi-functional roles timeous school visits/intervention recruitment of history teachers overcoming leadership challenges progressed learners lack of pedagogical content knowledge geographical barriers parental influence on learning exclude learners from house chores child headed families constant communication with management the relevance of accountability unhappy over accountability practices wake up call for teachers blame shifting by stakeholders the above table comprises the themes of the study, the main and sub-categories. a detailed analysis as indicated on the table is presented below. 6.1 leadership expectation in the learning of history an analysis of the empirical findings through interview reveals that one of the expectations from a leadership perspective is the reiteration of the need for history to become compulsory. besides history becoming compulsory, it is the expectation of some school leaders that learners be given an opportunity to choose their learning subjects including history as a matter of choice. this is against the assumption by some participants that in cases where learners are influenced by authorities, it has often resulted in the recommendation of mostly underperforming learners to take history as a subject. in a review of the interview, participant sub. a indicates that; in schools where there is no streaming, a learner can do maths, physics, history. but with streaming we restrict that, but then, history will only be for those leaners who are struggling, or those who are dropouts from maths and physics. should this be the case, history would be portrayed as a dumping ground or easy to pass subject for learners who are poorly performing in other subjects. what further comes to mind under such circumstances is that learners going for history are academically weak. consequently, without leadership influence learners are left with no direction. this is what the humanism learning theory emphasises, as reiterated by parson (2014), that as humans, we ought to have control over our destiny, of the things we do and say. the implication behind this theory in dealing with learners who are mostly minor is that though the theory warrants learners to make their own decision, it would work best if learners are directed rather than guided by leaders because they cannot make informed decisions on their own. as part of http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 1782021 39(4): 178-186 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) the leadership approach to fulfil this expectation, an analysis of findings from the interview and meta-analysis of documents suggest that plans are on the way to award scholarships to learners studying history as a form of motivation. this is contrary to the opinion by another participant (dh) that; should history become compulsory, everyone including the best of our learners will be doing history. to our understanding, should history become compulsory, learners across all disciplines would participate thereby raising the chances of learner performance in history to be improved from ordinary level 2 and 3, which seems to be a norm for most schools in the township areas, to level 4 and 5 pass target. this of course is affirmed from a meta-analysis of documents of the matric results for history where the study area shows that with the exception of some quintile 4 and 5 schools, most of the schools are performing at 30–39 and 40–49 which is at a level 3 and 4 pass rate respectively. thus, as indicated in the managerial leadership pyramid, top school officials could facilitate the work of others by performing their responsibilities which among others include motivation and guidance. 6.2 performing leadership responsibilities in the context of this category about performing leadership responsibilities to facilitate learning for a possible learner performance in history, various analyses were deduced. in an individual interview, participant p2 acknowledged that leadership is diverse because; one has to play different roles for example the psychologist to learners, a parent, a teacher, and a lawyer in trying to raise the curiosity of the learners. this suggests that leadership entails multi-functional activities. another concern brought to the attention of these researchers by participant sc is the role of the subject advisor (subject specialist) who as part of the responsibility must make regular visits to the schools to ensure that policy implementation through learning and teaching takes place. as affirmed by the teacher participant t4s4; it is the responsibility of the subject advisors to consult with educators by regularly visiting the school to understand their challenges regarding certain topics and address the problem for instance, through an analytical intervention. beside the intervention provided in dealing with challenging topics, another form of leadership role played according to participant t1s1 is to monitor educators. this is based on the belief that if teachers are not monitored, they will bunk classes. therefore, such visits are necessary for curriculum management and implementation. notwithstanding the unfortunate thing about monitoring in township and rural schools is that most of these schools have only one history teacher who doubles as the departmental head (dh) or in the worst case scenario where the dh is not trained to teach history. thus, the act of internal curriculum monitoring becomes unrealistic. this finding contradicts mendels’ (2012) view on curriculum leadership where the role of the principal teacher among others entails monitoring of learning and teaching activities, giving feedback to educators and guiding them. therefore, the phrase; i cannot monitor myself as expressed by a participant (t2s2) under the above circumstances must be taken seriously by management to ensure proper monitoring of the curriculum. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 1792021 39(4): 179-186 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 tabe, heystek & warnich leadership of learning and change unfortunately, the issue of resources is identified as a possible barrier towards fulfilling these tasks. a synthesis of findings according to (nwati, 2015) suggests that due to unavailability of physical resources such as money, various forms of assistance required by educators are irregular and repeatedly take the form of crash courses to familiarise educators with current policies for implementation rather than adequate training for teaching and learning. this is affirmed by one of the participants who in an interview says; they see you once or twice a year whereas they are expected to frequent the school, especially these underperforming schools or the schools that are having poor results (t1s1). based on the managerial leadership theory, one would then say leadership at the higher level is failing the educators who depend on them so much. because the process of learning and teaching must go on, it becomes the duty of the school-based management to take full responsibility based on the managerial leadership tendencies. 6.3 overcoming leadership challenges in trying to derive ways to enhance learner performance in history, there is a need to look at the challenges faced by leadership at the helm of learning and how to overcome the challenges. the issue of progressed learners is one amongst many challenges facing the leadership of most parts of south african schools. in trying to accommodate the less privileged or “the poorest of the poor” within the communities, the problem of progressed learners has remained unresolved. a synthesis of this view with existing literature perhaps clarifies why hompashei (2018) says that south africa lags far behind other countries on learner performance due to its dysfunctional leadership in many schools. this has long-term effects on the country’s economy, looking at the articulation by voogt and roblin (2012) which suggests that the dynamic changes in the types of jobs demanded by the corporate world poses huge challenges to educational systems that are expected to prepare young people for a job that does not yet exist. preparing these young people, which in most cases rest on the shoulders of the educators, requires some degree of collaboration with leadership at all levels including the school. in an individual interview participant t4s4 elucidates saying; the progressed learners have this mentalities that even when they fail, they will be pushed to the next class. as a result, they are not putting in enough effort. a similar sentiment was obtained during a focus group interview in one of the underperforming schools where l1s4 says that; they pushed us to the next class they will do the same again. judging from the above point of view, it undoubtedly reveals how much of a threat it is to the growth and development of the learners, but particularly to the leaders who are responsible for moulding these learners while adhering to the policy of progression. this is important as the non-committal attitude of these learners points to a complete lack of curiosity that partly contributes towards their underperformance. therefore, it is important to reiterate the role of the humanism learning theory by parson (2014), which urges that though learners have a greater control over their learning, the system would work better for learners with a high level of motivation and curiosity to learn as well as self-actualisation. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 1802021 39(4): 180-186 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) also, selecting the right educator to teach history in more remote schools is another pertinent challenge to leadership. this is important as quite often the right persons are unwilling to be redeployed to teach in these areas. unable to select the right candidate, the quality of learning and teaching outcome becomes jeopardised. beside the unwillingness by educators to go into remote areas, analyses from interviews with departmental heads and principals suggest that school leaders are generally faced with the problem of unavailability of qualified educators to teach history. after selecting the readily available candidate, a more serious challenge is presented, which is to implement the curriculum. in an interview with one of the leaders (s. ad), he expressed dissatisfaction saying; in textbooks we include everything, while the annual teaching plan (atp) will require educators to focus on specific areas. but there is this educator who was teaching everything in the textbook. another participant (dh) expressed a similar opinion, saying; i have observed that most of the educators that am supporting, are teaching in the classroom not what they have been taught or what is expected of them. therefore, though the issue of pck has long been identified by researchers such as carl and negumbo (2017), in terms of subject specific content, the problem has hardly been addressed as evidence from the above interviews clearly shows that besides the unavailability of history educators, those that are available lack the required pck in history. in addressing this challenge, school leaders are required to perform their responsibility as emphasised in managerial leadership theory by “head hunting” the right candidate without compromising quality. 6.4 parental influence on learning data collected during interviews indicate that the leadership role provided by parents either directly through the sgb or indirectly through the learners, varied from one parent to another based on the geographical location and the performance level of the school as determined by the socio-economic factor. as deduced from the interview, for schools at the centre of the townships or urban areas, maximum support is often received through moral and financial contribution compared to the schools away from townships where this type of assistance to leadership is barely available. from the perspective of the learners, two contrasting views were obtained representing performing and underperforming scenarios. while participant l1s4 from a performing school says; my parents play a crucial role to improve the rate of my performance because at home they have excused me from doing house chores to focus on my schoolwork. another view (l3s1) from an underperforming school in a non-urban settlement says; they do not help us, i am on my own. therefore, if the duty of a leader is on functions, tasks and behaviours as postulated by bush and leithwood (2013) in respect to the managerial leadership theory, it follows that parents in their collaborative leadership effort could give full support to the principal who is at the centre of school management by assisting learners at home and attending meetings when invited. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 1812021 39(4): 181-186 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 tabe, heystek & warnich leadership of learning and change in trying to determine the influence by parents on learning from the perspective of educators, it was revealed by participant t1s3 that; to be a parent in this school can be a nightmare due to the constant summons by management. in all, the school tries to maintain constant communication which would help to drive home expectations of both the school and the learners. inferring from the viewpoint of the managerial leadership theory, it emphasises active involvement of the entire management by means of collaborative interaction to construct knowledge compared to what warnich and meyer (2013) describe as knowledge transmission that depict the transfer of knowledge from educators to learners. on this note it could be deduced that the theory aligns with a school climate of the magnitude where parents are willing to make themselves available when invited by the school management to answer for the deeds and misdeeds of their children as opposed to scenarios where parents are hardly available either at school or at home. as established in this category, it could be concluded that the availability of parents to lead and guide their children in the learning process, is vastly determined by the geographical location and the financial status of the parents. this has been the bone of contention to some researchers such as nwati (2015) and eleanor (2019) who argue that underperformance rests on the fact that a lot of attention is diverted from the teacher pedagogical content knowledge (pck), to aspects on parental involvement and finance. consequently, although the lack of pck in history educators has been identified as a primary concern on numerous occasions, the influence of other factors such as the geographical influence on the school and educator, as well as the leadership role of the parents are all important ways to influence learning. this is important because an analysis of the findings suggest that collaborative teaching has proven to work for most schools at the centre of the township compared to schools away from the township. 6.5 reiterating the relevance of accountability in the contemporary school environment, concerns on whether the levels of accountability for teachers should be tightened or relaxed and limited to self-accountability have been raised. this is because of some educators who feel insecure that they are being investigated and therefore not trusted. in a school environment, it is the responsibility of the curriculum leader to supervise educators in the completion of a designated atp which often varies from one school to another. during individual interviews all the participants acknowledged the existence of a unique accountability system ranging from schools, district, province and to the national level. however, they differ in terms of their feelings about the processes involved. participant t1s2 for instance indicates saying; we do have accountability systems from the school to the provincial, though unhappy with the way it is conducted. regarding the different levels as indicated above, it depicts some degree of hierarchy within the system that takes the shape of a pyramid as emphasised in the managerial leadership theory which stresses a top to bottom leadership approach. for instance, at the level of the school, the subject teacher reports to the dh, who then reports to the deputy principal and lastly to the principal in a collaborative fashion. the relevance of this process, as indicated by a participant (sub. a), often lies on the opinion that some teachers need to be called to order to perform their responsibilities. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 1822021 39(4): 182-186 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) subsequently, teachers with such reckless behaviour often end up playing victim of inspection. unfortunately for most schools involved in the study, findings reveal that no proper accountability process is done either due to insufficient staff or the absence of a qualified leader who specialises in history as a subject as opposed to social science where geography tends to dominate. in an interview, participant t1s1 says; according to my understanding reporting to a higher authority is a wake-up call to do your job efficiently. unfortunately for me i am the only history teacher and whatever i give to the principal he never questions. moreover, the decision over which teacher is called to account is in most cases determined by the pass target and the delivery of the atp, which also varies from one school or district to another. this form of accountability, however, has not entirely been welcomed by some educators (t2s2 & t2s3) whose views have been reiterated in the humanism learning theory which holds that besides taking control of their learning, learners should equally be held accountable over their learning and performance thereof (parson, 2014). in view of learner pass rate target, it was deduced as a common practice that at the end of every term, the educators under the direction of the dh do an item analysis of results to determine the various levels of pass rate that ranges from levels 1–7. a more detailed analysis in this regard shows that discussions are often held with educators based on the outcome of the analysis of learner performance. participant dh thus says; in my department, after the analysis of results at the end of the term, i will call a formal curriculum meeting where educators are accounting to me as the dh as to what went wrong. thus, accountability at the level of the school, though complex, is vital as it enables particularly the educators to be on their toes, knowing that positive results in terms of pass rate target is expected of them at the end of every term. besides acting as an instrument to monitor educators, accountability must always be seen and embraced as part of a process of support and development. to the interpretation of these researchers therefore, educators perhaps see accountability as a form of control or inspection rather than a support system. 7. discussion of findings the different ways in which leadership influences learner performance in history, as identified in section 6.1 to 6.5, range from general to specific involving all the stakeholders from macro to micro levels. these influences, which seems unique, are all inter-related to leadership in different ways. first, the selection of educators and the process of learning and teaching throughout the interview process proved to be problematic for history as a subject. while in most subject areas educators may be available but not have the minimum requirement, the case of history in most instances different as educators are often unavailable as determined by the geographical location of the school. apparently, this is because educators often prefer to work in more advanced and developed city centres compared to working in townships and rural areas. even when they do accept positions in the townships, they often do not live there, which explains why at some point, underqualified educators are hired. a synthesis with existing literature by ogundele et al. (2014) and taylor (2008) on the quality of the educator shows that the quality of any educational system depends to a greater extent on the quality of educators in terms of academic and professional qualifications, know-how as well as their competency http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 1832021 39(4): 183-186 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 tabe, heystek & warnich leadership of learning and change and dedication. thus, an indication that leadership owes to the school and department, the responsibility of hiring the right educator for efficient and quality learning outcome. also, the combination of history and geography to form what is known as social science, was identified as one of the major problems facing history as a subject area. this is because most educators focus more on geography than history during training, as confirmed by the researchers – all of whom are lecturers and former lecturers in history. the above challenging situation was previously identified by carl and negumbo (2017) who explain that in some instances at the senior phase, the social science educator is only trained in geography and therefore not interested or spends minimum time in the teaching of history as part of social science. however, as a possible managerial leadership solution, educators from other subject areas most of whom specialised in geography are often converted to teach history, a practice that comes with huge consequences on the learning outcome. this was further affirmed by another participant (t4s4) that; i am the only history teacher. though my hod wants to help, she is only a geography teacher and lacks the skills in teaching history. thus, if learner performance is greatly influenced by the pedagogical content knowledge of the educators, as suggested by ogundele, et al. (2014), it follows that more training or equal content knowledge needs to be provided to the social science teachers during training. interestingly, however in respect to the lack of adequate human resources, is the constant conflict of interest or opposing views of participants. for instance, while some participants from a rural or deep township area allude to the unavailability or shortage of history educators resulting in time management issues, those at the heart of the township express some degree of contentedness with the available history educators, which allows for maximum engagement. speaking of engagement, taylor (2008) calls on the need for a change in the attitude of educators, from one which blames their situation on external motives like the lack of resources and support, to one in which they feel in control to improve their own situation by exercising innovativeness and positive energy. an example of such an innovative attribute was obtained from the findings which reveals that; the use of whatsapp as a communication tool ease collaborative teaching with colleagues of other schools (t1s1). thus, the use of various social media methods of communication as this one could be re-emphasised to help in addressing the problem of inability to meet with subject advisors on a regular basis. 8. conclusion this study explored the various ways in which leadership could influence learner performance in history, as pointed out in sections 6.1 to 6.5, which range from general to specific, involving all the stakeholders from macro to micro levels. these influences that all seems unique, are inter-related as guided by the managerial leadership and the humanism learning theory. therefore, because of the existing differences in the leadership approach, which varies from one school to another as well as one geographical area to another, school leaders, as indicated by heystek (2014), can occasionally interchange from strategic to organisational activities for a smooth functionality of the learning and teaching process. this is important as the humanism learning theory cautions that stakeholders must be watchful about the risk http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 1842021 39(4): 184-186 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) of depending on standardised protocols in dealing with related challenges that are often very complex and rather improvised as it is usually the case with leaders in some private institutions. thus, although managerial leadership has an indirect influence, it remains an important determinant of learner performance in history. 9. recommendations an overview of the history educators related queries allude to the fact that a handful of geography student educators are compelled only to take part in one history module in the second year of their studies, which has proven to be insufficient. it is therefore not surprising that when they get appointed at the end of their course as history educators and not geography, they are unable to deliver. as a recommendation from a leadership perspective therefore, history could be separated in totality from geography as part of social science at both the general education and training (get) phase and further education training (fet) phase to serve as independent subjects. another recommendation is that, besides making history compulsory, the department could begin by identifying prospective history learners at an early stage (senior phase) and place them on scholarship, rather than letting them go for history only at a later stage (fet phase), which might be construed as an escape route subject for poorly performing learners. this is crucial as experience from these researchers through classroom practice suggest that most of the learners admitted for a bed programme in history are often not knowledgeable about the subject. consequently, because most of the schools in the area are socio-economically less privileged, school leaders can attempt to motivate and create curiosity in the learners to learn in the absence of parental support and other important resources through timely changes and interventions, while managing the school organisational goals efficiently. alternatively, the humanism theory advocates for learners to construct knowledge of their own, but not without leadership intervention or guidance by the educator. thus, as postulated by kotter (2018), while it is important to recognise the differences between leadership and management, it is equally imperative to acknowledge that they both have complementary strengths. it is hereby recommended that besides influencing (leadership) decisions, school leaders such as the principal could support the conditions under which quality learning and teaching is attained (management) thereby fostering a positive learning outcome. in other words, school principals could consider taking up managerial leadership functions rather than just 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[accessed 25 january 2018]. taylor, n. 2008. what’s wrong with south african schools?. available at https://www.jet.org.za/ resources/taylor%20whats%20wrong%20with%20sa%20schools%20jet%20schools%20 conf%20final.pdf [accessed 23 april 2018]. voogt, j. & roblin, n.p. 2012. a comparative analysis of international frameworks for 21 century competences: implications for national curriculum policies. journal of curriculum studies, 44(3): 299–321. https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2012.668938 warnich, p. & meyer, l. 2013. trainee teachers’ observation of learner centred instruction and assessment as applied by history and social sciences teachers. yesterday & today, 9: 13–44. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.12 http://www.learning-theories.com/humanism.html http://www.learning-theories.com/humanism.html https://www.jet.org.za/resources/taylor%20whats%20wrong%20with%20sa%20schools%20jet%20schools%20conf%20final.pdf https://www.jet.org.za/resources/taylor%20whats%20wrong%20with%20sa%20schools%20jet%20schools%20conf%20final.pdf https://www.jet.org.za/resources/taylor%20whats%20wrong%20with%20sa%20schools%20jet%20schools%20conf%20final.pdf https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2012.668938 _hlk73714385 _hlk56153572 _hlk80427563 _hlk60747973 _hlk73783453 _hlk45962956 _hlk34214922 _hlk48694751 _hlk36226154 _hlk36299473 _hlk36545255 _hlk36671863 _hlk36677598 _hlk62286024 _hlk84539055 _hlk73611374 175 research article 2022 40(2): 175-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) pupil diversity in teacher preparation curriculum abstract this study focused on the concept of pupil diversity in the planned curriculum of teacher preparation programmes. the professional training of teachers influences the knowledge, skills and attitudes student teachers regarding diversity (akiba, 2011); however, most research studies have utilised quantitative research focused on planned curriculum or learning outcomes. we chose a qualitative approach to uncover how pupil diversity is implemented within the planned curriculums of selected teacher education programmes. based on a content analysis of syllabi and conceptual documents from teacher preparation programmes at a selected faculty of education, two conceptual approaches towards diversity within curriculums, one explicit and one implicit, are described. these concepts can be further interpreted in relation to the ideological, content and methodological dimensions of the curriculum. keywords: content analysis, planned curriculum, pupil diversity, student teachers. 1. introduction the faculties of education in the czech republic have been undergoing significant change in recent years. the objective of this transformation is a response to problems related not only to the massification of tertiary education but also to political and conceptual decisions made by the government, such as inclusive education support. the phenomenon of inclusive education, that is, working with diverse pupil populations, has been influencing reform efforts towards changes in education in the country for two decades now (national reforms in school education, 2021). despite the fact that the issue of pupil diversity is considered crucial in teacher preparation programmes (educating teachers for diversity, 2010; gay, 2002; saponshevin, 2010), many authors claim that student preparation is sometimes plagued with difficulties in determining whether the teachers are being prepared to work with diverse pupil populations in an effective way or not (akiba, 2011; king & butler, 2015). according to the conclusions of the organization for economic co-operation and development (oecd; educating teachers for diversity, 2010), university curricula often contain a rather (often optional) unique subject/module developing students’ professional competences towards pupil diversity in which students author: dr jana kratochvílová1 dr kateřina lojdová1 dr kateřina vlčková1 affiliation: 1masaryk university doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i2.13 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(2): 175-188 published: 08 june 2022 received: 28 september 2021 accepted: 12 november 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5671-9047 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6053-6040 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 1762022 40(2): 176-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) cannot be sufficiently prepared. these findings led us to ask research questions that would examine more closely the concept of diversity at all three levels of curriculum as presented by akker (2006: 19): the intended, implemented and attained curriculum of selected universities educating future teachers. we understand these curriculum levels as mutually related since studies of curricula, including mandated curricula, have consistently illustrated that they do not necessarily lead to desired learning outcomes (glatthorn, 1999). this paper, however, focuses on the concept of diversity in planned (intended and explicit) curricula (eisner, 1994), which influences the teaching process and its results through its objectives and content. 2. the intended curriculum of teacher pedagogical-psychological preparation programmes the curriculum is a constant phenomenon determining educational activity. the design of the planned curriculum – the constitutive phase – relates to the clear structuring of goals, which are achieved through the content and the means of its implementation. the goals, content and means defined in a planned curriculum become the norm for determining the teaching process and its results (googlad, 1969; akker, 2006). these have a retroactive effect on the innovation of the planned curriculum. the curriculum is not a fixed and unambiguous phenomenon determining educational activity, but, at the same time, it is a dynamic procedure changing in parallel with educational practice and social requirements that must reflect and respond to them. as akker (2006) notes, from a substantive perspective, it is necessary to search for a balance between (a) knowledge, in other words, the academic and cultural heritage that seems essential for learning and future development; (b) society, meaning the problems and issues relevant for inclusion from the perspective of societal trends and needs; and (c) the learner, as in the elements that appear to be of vital importance for learning and development from the personal and educational needs and interests of learners themselves. a universal requirement that significantly enters the curriculum of vocational training for future teachers is the social diversity associated with the joint education of pupils in planned curriculum concerns student-learning opportunities that are overtly taught and stated or printed in documents and on websites, in policy, and in guidelines such as in-course syllabi. it is perceived as a way of projecting individual dimensions: ideological, content, methodological and organisational (kelly, 2009; walker, 1990; akker, 2006). the ideological dimension mediates target values and educational objectives on different general levels that a specific society aspires to acquire. in the academic curriculum of teacher professional preparation, the ideological dimension is characterised by cross-subject, conceptual documents as well as the objectives of individual courses and the expected outcomes of students. the ideological dimension of the curriculum is a synthesising curriculum aspect and indicates target perspectives and values for learners (cf. wragg, 2002). importantly, the content of the planned curriculum of teacher propaedeutics is defined ambiguously by the czech ministry of education in the document framework requirements for study programmes, the completion of which provides a professional qualification for the performance of regulated professions of pedagogical staff (2017). the framework requirements aim to express the balanced relations between the basic components of vocational teacher training – teacher propaedeutics, subject training and subject-didactics – and the practical component of vocational training with reflection. all these components are aimed at providing the graduate with the necessary background (target dimension). while their scope is http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 1772022 40(2): 177-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 kratochvílová, lojdová & vlčková pupil diversity in teacher preparation curriculum normatively specified, their content is left to teacher education institutions. this does deliver faculties of education with some uncertainty but it also provides them considerable freedom. it is important to be aware of the fact the formal curriculum itself does not guarantee the accomplishment of expected outcomes (glatthorn, 1999). 3. pupil diversity research in the planned curriculum in its broader sense, pupil diversity includes respecting otherness and the differences and individual needs of each pupil, which influence the ways they develop and learn. diversity denotes a neutral concept that is an inevitable reflection of the diversity of human society (educating teachers for diversity, 2010). in addition to demographical descriptors such as culture, ethnicity, language, socioeconomic status, gender and religion, the pupil diversity concept embraces personal characteristics, abilities and skills (banks & banks, 2010; kaur, 2012; subero, vila & esteban-guitart, 2015). the issue of pupil diversity is somewhat extensively represented in empirical research studies on the boundaries of various fields, and attention is also paid to research on pupil diversity in the curriculum of teacher preparation programmes (taylor & sobel, 2001; jennings, 2007; akiba, 2011; severiens, wolff, & van herpen, 2014;king & butler, 2015). empirical studies dealing with diversity in teacher preparation programmes frequently concentrate on research into student attitudes towards pupil diversity (gay, 2010; taylor & sobel, 2001) or on how these change due to newly implemented, special courses in the curriculum which are directly focused on the development of students’ knowledge, skills and attitudes towards working with pupils in a heterogeneous classroom. interesting results can be seen, for example, in akiba’s (2011) research from the university of missouri, who observed a research sample of 243 teachers. a course in this study directly focused on the development of competences and changing student teacher attitudes towards diversity. the results are characteristics of professional teacher training that influence the knowledge, skills and attitudes of students regarding teaching for diversity and multiculturalism. using a quantitative content analysis of diversity and multiculturalism in professional training curricula in fourteen teaching education programmes in the united states, king and butler (2015) veer towards the differences among education programmes and highlight the absence of this issue across the analysed programmes. they conclude that student teachers do not feel prepared to work with diversity in their classes. likewise, the research focus on teachers’ professional preparedness for working with pupil diversity was the aim of an extensive centre for educational research and innovation project “teacher education for diversity” (2007– 2009). the research focused on the readiness of students to implement culturally responsive teaching practices in a diverse classroom (skepple, 2015). jennings’s (2007) study concerns an analysis of 142 programmes educating teachers of elementary and secondary programmes in seven us states. he points out the representation of curriculum topics concerning racial/ ethnic diversity, language diversity, economic (social class) diversity, gender diversity, sexual orientation diversity and special diversity as well as the extent to which they are prioritised in the curriculum. as mentioned above, most research studies have been of a quantitative nature, focused on examining the influence the introduction of various measures/courses have had in supporting pupil diversity within curricula or on the quantitative content analysis of courses according to established procedures. research of a similar character has not been conducted in the czech republic as pupil diversity and joint education are recent, new social and political phenomena. the curriculum of the selected institution was established http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 1782022 40(2): 178-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) in 2014–16 and came into force in september 2016. at the same time, the education act was amended, declaring joint/inclusive education in schools under public jurisdiction. these political and social demands have become a challenge in the czech republic for all levels of the curriculum, not only in practice but also in research. 4. research methodology our focus is on research into pupil diversity in the planned as well as implemented curriculum of teacher education within the broader research of the czech science foundation. this complex conception is suitable for the simultaneous study of relations among more related contexts – in our case pupil diversity in teacher preparation programmes at university (planned and implemented curriculum) and in school classrooms, where student teachers have their teaching practice. however, this article only focuses on the question of what aspects of pupil diversity are projected into the planned curriculum of teacher pedagogical-psychological preparation programmes. the objective of this article is to analyse the planned curriculum of a selected institution’s teacher preparation programme with an emphasis on student teacher preparation for working with pupil diversity at lower secondary schools. our concentration is on the way pupil diversity is represented in the student teacher curriculum. 4.1 research sample in terms of the sampling strategy for the planned curriculum analysis, the syllabi of teacher propaedeutic subjects across a three-year bachelor’s programme and two-year follow-up master’s programme were selected at the chosen teacher educating institution. this selection covers an entire five-year education programme to become a teacher. we selected pedagogical subjects and integrated pedagogical-psychological subjects as well as teaching practice for analysis. this choice was informed by the character of the subjects as these subjects prepare students for the teaching profession as opposed to subjects in a field of knowledge. in accordance with recommendations by zeichner et al. (1998), during text selection for analysis, documents forming the contextual frame of the study programmes were included in the sample. three conceptual documents were also embraced: the characteristics of pedagogicalpsychological preparation, where the intention of teacher professional preparation and its principles are defined; a graduate’s profile; and, last but not least, a (standard) competence framework. these documents reflect requirements for teaching quality in the international and czech contexts (delaney et al., 2010; hativa & stanley, 2013; standards, 2015; etc.) as well as in the inclusive education context (meijer, 2010). the research sample consisted of 23 subject syllabi and the three conceptual documents mentioned above. due to anonymisation, the analysed subjects are divided into three groups in this paper: theoretical (11 subjects); practical, which are used to gain practical experience with the tutoring of pupils, assistant work in schools, tandem teaching and students’ own teaching (8 subjects); and reflective, which are used concerning the experience students gain in their teaching practice (4 subjects) and are related to the practical subjects. 4.2 analytic process curricular documents are political texts (iversen, 2014), which determines their form. the syllabi are characterised by their normative character; their structure formally responds to the requirements of institutional accreditation. the syllabi compactness is ensured by the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 1792022 40(2): 179-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 kratochvílová, lojdová & vlčková pupil diversity in teacher preparation curriculum interconnectedness of categories such as course objectives, learning outcomes, content, teaching methods, evaluation methods and other information provided by the teacher. qualitative content analysis (qca) was selected as a data analysis method because qca can combine elements from qualitative and quantitative research traditions, especially the use and the combination of inductive, data-driven and deductive, concept-driven categories. this makes the method especially suitable for educational research (gläser-zikuda, hagenauer & stephan, 2020) and for efforts to find not only where pupil diversity is implemented in the curriculum but also how it is implemented. moreover, it is a content analysis prerequisite that data be reduced to concepts describing the research phenomenon by creating categories; concepts; a model, conceptual system or a conceptual map (elo et al., 2014). we used the qualitative approach, namely the open-coding procedure derived from grounded theory, to ascertain where pupil diversity topics occur in the curriculum and what kinds of diversity are preferred. to uncover these issues, an inductive data-based approach to developing codes (schreier et al., 2020) seemed most suitable. this contrasts with content analysis, where a quantitative methodology predominates over the qualitative (prasad, 2019). in our procedure, the statements from the syllabi were open coded in atlas.ti, version 7. the codes were categorised and named as discourses. however, several codes did not fit these categories. for this reason two higher-level areas were designed: an explicit approach to pupil diversity in the curriculum and an implicit approach. 5. results based on qca, pupil diversity in the curriculum has been interpreted using two approaches – explicit (obvious) and implicit (hidden) (eisner, 1994). the explicit approach detects unambiguous terms in the planned curriculum, such as diversity, otherness, variety and inclusion as well as teaching approaches and strategies related to these terms (inclusive education, individualisation, differentiation, etc.). this reveals the discourse in which these terms are used. the hidden conception of diversity, by contrast, does not explicitly operate with the abovementioned terms. it does however transmit these phenomena to students, most frequently through the model of the university’s stated teaching methods (cf. modelling behaviour in lunenberg, korthagen & swennen, 2007; ruys et al., 2013). 5.1 explicit pupil diversity in the curriculum the explicit approach to diversity in the teacher propaedeutic curriculum can be especially found at the ideological and content levels of the course syllabi. in its explicit form, the syllabi work with terms such as diversity, variety, otherness and inclusion as well as strategies on how to implement them in pedagogical practice (cf. areas of expertise in severiens et al., 2014). in the ideological dimension, these terms are most frequently related to educational results and objectives formulated within each syllabus. in the content dimension, at the individual syllabus level, different discourses of diversity were identified. 5.1.1. the ideological dimension of the curriculum, or how pupil diversity is observably covered in study programme objectives the analysis of the objective curriculum dimension demonstrates that significant attention was paid to the issue of pupil diversity. similar results were found in a university curriculum analysis by severiens et al. (2014). from the conceptual document analysis, it is apparent that http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 1802022 40(2): 180-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) the study programme is aimed at the recognition of pupils’ educational needs (learner-centred approach and personalised learning) (prain et al., 2013) and at support for their learning. differentiated teaching is not only emphasised during the lessons but attention is also paid to planning differentiated teaching in relation to pupils’ individual needs. at the individual course level, the ideological dimension is especially associated with lesson objectives defined in the course syllabi. the explicit conception of pupil diversity in course objectives is related to specific subjects, where knowledge and skills are aimed directly at comprehension of the teacher’s work with pupil diversity from the very beginning of the study programmes. two introductory classes, theoretical subjects 1 and 2, in the first year present the diversity issue in the school environment. their aims are to point out the significance of multicultural education and education that affords respect, tolerance and constructive cooperation, that reflects on one’s own attitude towards diversity and its influence on one’s own pedagogical practice (theoretical subject 2). theoretical subjects 4 and 10 in other years aim to prepare teachers-to-be for work with pupils of various abilities and needs in the inclusive environment of the school classroom, to explain the advantages and disadvantages of different forms of educating pupils with special educational needs. the objectives of the mentioned subjects are conceived of as being complete with theoretical subjects 5 and 11. these direct students to gain knowledge and skills essential to a deeper understanding of pupils’ individual needs. based on the pedagogical diagnosing of results, the students should be able to use data for differentiation, individualization and personalised learning in lessons as well as to communicate the results appropriately (theoretical subject 11). considering the explicit conception of pupil diversity in the target categories, the subobjectives in the subjects can be assumed to be consistent with higher objectives, which are stated in the conceptual documents (1, 2, 3). the subject objectives are defined as being directed towards the support of student teacher competences in personalised learning, differentiation and individualisation in lessons: student teachers take it upon themselves to gain the knowledge and skills required to support a deeper understanding of pupils’ individual needs; to select appropriate methods in relation to pupils’ needs; to implement suitable arrangements in their lessons; and to reflect upon them. the ideological dimension of the curriculum is followed by the content and methodological dimensions. the explicit approach of working with pupil diversity is further described in the content dimension of the subject syllabi. 5.1.2 content dimension of the curriculum, or how pupil diversity is observably covered in syllabi content the explicit definition of pupil diversity in the planned curriculum, with terms such as variety, diversity, otherness, inclusion and inclusive education, is most frequently found in the content component of the syllabi, hence why it is called the content dimension. our interest lies in the contexts these terms are set in, the discourses they are mentioned in as part of the planned curriculum. here, we identified the following discourses of pupil diversity: personalised pedagogical-psychological discourse, multi(cultural) and social discourse, special-pedagogical discourse, diagnostic discourse and methodological discourse. individual discourses are connected not only to a selected field that their name can refer to, but they also come up in pedagogical propaedeutic subjects. in the following samples, however, citations are selected only from chosen subjects that represent the specific discourse best. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 1812022 40(2): 181-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 kratochvílová, lojdová & vlčková pupil diversity in teacher preparation curriculum personalised pedagogical-psychological discourse as its name implies, this discourse is set across all subjects covered in pedagogicalpsychological training. its focus responds to one of the five (pedagogical) areas that severiens et al. (2014) identify as very significant for the development of knowledge, skills and attitudes towards diversity. the discourse is typical for its orientation towards the perception of pupils’ various characters, values, knowledge, skills or family background and, consequently, the possibilities of an individualised and differentiated approach to pupils in lessons. the students are supposed to learn about pupil diversity and to learn to accept it through the basic content of the pedagogical and psychological fields. in this discourse, otherness is perceived as natural, and students are encouraged to perceive self-diversity, the diversity of their fellow students and that of pupils. otherness is not connected only to problems and disorders. on the contrary, it is represented as an emphasis on the uniqueness of each pupil and a range of positive characteristics. in addition, attention is also drawn to gifted pupils. (multi)cultural and social discourse a typical representation of multicultural discourse is theoretical subject 2. its educational content presents the issue of otherness in the school environment and highlights the significance of multicultural education as education towards respect, tolerance and constructive cooperation. it introduces the possibilities of applying multicultural education in the education process. within this discourse, demanding situations in the teacher’s job are pointed out as being associated with pupils’ social disadvantages as well as with the teacher’s cooperation with assistants. the discourse is especially represented in practical-oriented subjects (practical subject 1 and 2) and reflection upon them, during which the students are supposed to share and consider their experience with otherness. practical subject 1 is based on the student teaching practice throughout the whole semester (60 hours in total counting lesson plan preparation), which consists of individual tutoring of pupils from lower secondary schools including socially disadvantaged pupils. the student teaches either within the pupil’s family, on the school premises or in another institution. this subject also contributes to raising student awareness of pupils’ social and cultural diversity, and, through integration in the curriculum, work with these pupils is set as an inseparable part of the teacher’s profession. in conclusion, the discourse can be said to highlight socio-(multi)cultural diversity, social interaction and identity in specifically oriented subjects where work with attitudes and knowledge is stated and to stress the levels of experience with diversity and reflection upon it (cf. culturally responsive curriculum in gay, 2002; 2010). special-pedagogical discourse as its name already implies, this discourse is specifically focused on work with pupils with special educational needs (in relation to valid legislation). its content orientation is connected especially to the objectives of theoretical subjects 4 and 10, and it aims to support students’ work in the heterogeneous classes of mainstream lower secondary school. the content is focused on work with individuals, with respect to their individual needs, and the heterogeneous group. the main issue is the education of pupils with special educational needs and the desirable kind and level of support, including a reference to the relevant legislation: students are encouraged to understand the specifics of educating pupils based on their special http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 1822022 40(2): 182-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) educational needs (theoretical subject 4). in these specifically oriented subjects, diversity is understood in its narrow special-pedagogical sense. students gain their own experience in special educational needs during the second year of the bachelor’s programme while doing their assistant teaching practice over two semesters. the teaching practice is focused on tutoring a selected pupil or taking on the role of a teaching assistant in a selected classroom. special-pedagogical discourse strategies emerge in both practice types; in one-to-one tutoring, social and multicultural discourses are implied as these tutoring lessons are conducted within socially disadvantaged families, including roma families. diagnostic discourse this represents the development of students’ diagnostic and interventional competences, which is essential to working with pupil diversity. the significance of getting to know pupils’ individual needs and their position in a group is proved by the fact the subjects can be found in both the bachelor’s and follow-up master’s programmes. the subjects are oriented towards student understanding of teacher diagnostic activities, which is fundamental to the individualisation, differentiation and personalisation of teaching (bray & mcclaskey, 2015; burden, 2017: 115). the content shows the subjects are focused not only on a specific group of pupils (pupils with special educational needs, gifted pupils) but, through them, how diversity is perceived as the otherness of everybody and their individual educational needs as well. with its content, they develop future teachers’ diagnostic competences, which enable them to cooperate with professionals in discovering pupils’ abilities, knowledge, skills, needs and special features. attention is drawn to the implementation of adjustments in lessons that can encourage pupils’ learning (theoretical subject 5). furthermore, the following theoretical subject 11 develops student diagnostic and interventional competences with group or class diagnoses. these discourses connect the professional, general pedagogical and the special pedagogical preparation of students for diversity (see cochran-smith & dudley-marling, 2012). the students can apply their acquired experience by implementing suitable adjustments in their teaching during their assistant or teaching practice: the students choose objectives and methods appropriate for one-to-one tutoring with respect to a specific child and communicate with a teacher considerations concerning the planning, implementation and evaluation of educational activities in the classroom (practical subject 1 and 2, similar to practical subjects 6, 7 and 8). legislative discourse legislative discourse could be included in the abovementioned discourses; however, here it is defined separately as it represents the normative character of pupil diversity in addition to its significant representation across subjects. pupil diversity is accepted not only axiologically but also legislatively in valid legislative documents: students learn to work with current legislative and curricular documents and to use them in their everyday teaching practice (theoretical subject 8). they are familiarised with the legislative framework of inclusive education (theoretical subject 4 and 10). this discourse offers students an orientation of conceptual and legislative documents where attention is especially paid to common/inclusive education. students become familiar http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 1832022 40(2): 183-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 kratochvílová, lojdová & vlčková pupil diversity in teacher preparation curriculum with specific paragraphs of the education act; with decree no. 27/2016 coll., about the education of pupils with special educational needs and gifted pupils (2016); the amendment of decree o. 72/2005 coll., about providing counselling services in schools and school counselling institutions; and with supportive materials that enable a teacher to work with a pupil when their education requires that the education process be adapted to varying extents. the legislative discourse does not consist only in a the theoretical introduction to documents and legislation but also in the application of knowledge while creating educational support plans for pupils that the students tutor as well as in their assistant work and teaching practices (practical subject 1 and 2; practical subject 6, 7 and 8). didactic discourse the didactic discourse represents the fulfilment of the abovementioned discourses in educational practice as it emphasises inclusive-didactic approaches. students are encouraged to apply their diversity training in lesson planning and the management of heterogeneous classes in individualisation as well as to differentiate in lessons and apply adjustments for pupils with special needs in their lessons. this discourse is represented by theoretical subjects 7, 8 and 10. in conformity with oecd recommendations (schleicher, 2012), the discourse supports personalised learning (bray & mcclaskey, 2015; prain et al., 2013) and lesson modification with respect to pupils’ needs in the classroom: students consider the different perspectives of agents in educational situations, evaluate them critically and verify the suitability of selected methods from the viewpoint of a pupil’s learning style, a teacher’s teaching style and the requirement to transform content didactically. students formulate learning tasks with various cognitive difficulties and demonstrate various ways of evaluating pupils with examples. they consider their advantages and disadvantages. the domain of didactic discourse is teaching practice, whose content is the student’s own teaching. it therefore requires the adjustment of inclusivedidactic approaches in practice (practical subject 6, 7 and 8). the students’ own teaching is preceded by tandem teaching, which is considered to be a significant indicator of inclusive education (silverman, 2007 as cited in parker, mchalton, & diedre, 2012: 167; parker et al., 2007: 167). 5.2 implicit pupil diversity in the curriculum regarding the implicit approach to diversity in the curriculum, the term student diversity is more suitable than pupil diversity. student diversity is embraced in syllabi as a condition for future work with pupil diversity including student self-knowledge, which should be helpful in this case. student teachers are encouraged to work with diversity while the teachers of teacher preparation programmes consciously model lessons in a way that reflects the required condition (cf. modelling behaviour in lunenberg et al., 2007). 5.2.1 methodological dimension of the curriculum or how hidden diversity is embraced in teaching methods and lesson organisations according to syllabi if specific educational content is to be implemented within professional training, it must be conducted under specific conditions and in a specific way (bauman, 2006). these conditions and ways are influenced not only by the objective and content dimension of the curriculum but also by a range of other determinants, for example, the number of teachers involved in syllabi http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 1842022 40(2): 184-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) conceptions (up to 12 teachers) or their images of teaching conceptions. this stems from the results of a curriculum analysis that suggested the following strategies be applied in lessons: 1. support safety in lessons most subjects focus on students getting to know each other, on formulating their expectations as well as the needs and rules of mutual sessions. according to syllabi, the seminars are devoted to all study majors, which implies a varied spectrum of students meeting in the sessions who differ not only in their knowledge, skills, interests, motivation, gender, age, physical capabilities, personalities and history but especially the study major connected with their interest and motivation to study too. working with diversity within a study group can be utilised. students may perceive the pedagogical phenomena from different perspectives depending not only on personal characteristics but also on their study major determinants. for example, the introductory theoretical subject 1 creates space to get to know each other, hear the students’ expectations and needs, watch a motivational video and have a follow-up discussion. it is a matter of supporting a learning culture based on respect, which is purposefully used as part of working with diversity within a study group. in the seminar, the learning procedure is based on respect for all agents in the education process with an understanding of their individual specifics. therefore, the subject is used as an opportunity to work with diversity within a study group, which the students can experience and apply later in their own school teaching. 2. use a variety of teaching methods and forms the application of various teaching methods and forms is appropriate given the requirements for teaching in a heterogeneous school classroom environment and is closely related to the principle of personalised learning, differentiation and individualisation in lessons (bray & mcclaskey, 2015). consequently, it is desirable for students to come across similar teaching strategies within their university studies as well. the syllabi analysis indicates a wide range of methods using (a) student cooperation at different levels, from pair work to cooperating group work (students discuss specific topics and their current expression in schools and education; various forms of group discussion, cooperative learning and pair work learning are applied; and group facilitated reflection is implemented); (b) various possibilities of getting feedback (students receive peer feedback in the final evaluative session and assess each other’s portfolio task; group work with a pedagogical (reflective) diary is also applied); and (c) various teaching methods (experiential learning activities, independent learning of the assigned texts from a selection of texts, mind map creation and the presentation of examples of good practice). 3. support individualisation and differentiation at the methodological level, individualisation and differentiation consist of experiencing these approaches during one’s studies. according to the planned curriculum, the students experience the individual approach through definition and discussion of their own expectations and needs in a group; the possibility of one-to-one consultations with the teacher, a mentor teacher or specialised didactics teacher; self-study; and the setting of their own personal and professional objectives as well as an action plan for their implementation in reflective subjects 1 and 2 and practical subjects 6, 7 and 8. according to bray and mcclaskey (2015), the students manage their own learning by identifying the aims of their professional development as well as their http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 1852022 40(2): 185-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 kratochvílová, lojdová & vlčková pupil diversity in teacher preparation curriculum evaluation and reflection under the supervision of teachers (academics and mentor teachers), and they select suitable methods and technologies for learning. the students’ otherness is reflected in their individual aims as well as the ways in which they learn and develop. 6. discussion and conclusion the pupil diversity concept is central in teacher propaedeutic subjects from the bachelor’s programme to the end of the follow-up master’s programme. similarly, as stated in jennings’s (2007) research, diversity is planned into curricula that are mentioned in the general introductory named pedagogical courses, courses focused on teaching methods and classroom management, courses specifically focused on practical student preparation and reflection, and diversity is a part of the training, practice, feedback and follow-up support ( 2010). while searching for an answer to the question of how pupil diversity is perceived in the planned curriculum of pedagogic propaedeutics, we started by revealing its hidden and obvious dimensions. in a similar way to evans’s (2002) description of the british context, our analysed curriculum also contains significant differences in the conception of diversity in the case of subjects that are explicitly focused on work with heterogeneous classes and subjects which covertly support work with diversity. diversity in the planned curriculum is explicitly obvious especially in the objectives (ideological dimension) and content (content dimension) of the syllabi and conceptual documents. in the subject contents, diversity is present in multiple discourses included in both bachelor’s and master’s studies, for example, multicultural and social discourse, special-pedagogical discourse, pedagogical-psychological discourse and so forth. the normative element of diversity is significant in these discourses. diversity is something that should be accepted either through the field content itself or, for instance, through legislative documents that normatively implement the acceptance of pupil diversity in teaching. likewise, the abundant representation of diversity topics in the curriculum both vertically (spanning the ideological, content and methodological components) and horizontally (across discourses) demonstrates that this topic is significant for teachers-to-be. in its implicit form, diversity in the curriculum takes place especially in the methodological dimension, where the stated teaching methods function as a model example of differentiation in university lessons. the implicit diversity of student teachers and, alternatively, pupils might thereby be implemented with experience into the planned curriculum. a significant research finding is that pupil diversity is an inherent component in the planned curriculum. however, this is not only regarding various disadvantages or talents among pupils but also concerning a wide conception of learner individualities too. in conclusion, the planned curriculum does not have to be in line with the implemented curriculum (cf. gurin et al., 2012: 333). consequently, further analysis is necessary. finally, the achieved curriculum may differ from the planned and implemented curriculum. this factor is considered in student teaching practices, where what they have learnt about pupil diversity and how they work with it in real classrooms becomes obvious. consequently, the proposed text is only one part of the complex mosaic that is the teacher preparation programme curriculum. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 1862022 40(2): 186-188 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) 7. dedication this work was supported by the czech science foundation under project ethnography of diversity in pre-service teacher education (grant number 19-06763s). references akiba, m. 2011. identifying program characteristics for preparing pre-service teachers for diversity. teachers college record, 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https://doi.org/10.1080/00405849809543800 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.13 https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-21.1.3454 https://doi.org/10.1080/02619768.2013.845166 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0742-051x(01)00008-7 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203439371 https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203439371 https://doi.org/10.1080/00405849809543800 _heading=h.lu2lmmj562y2 _heading=h.gjdgxs 20 perceived gender-based challenges endured by zimbabwean secondary school girls in their academic and occupational prospects edmore mutekwe university of johannesburg maropeng modiba university of johannesburg this study explores and unmasks factors in the zimbabwean school curricula that predispose or channel girls into particular occupational trajectories, in particular occupations or careers traditionally stereotyped as feminine. as a qualitative research study of the culture of the schooling system within this country, it employs the views of a sample size of 20 sixth form girls who were purposively selected. the study also examines the impact of the pupils’ gender and their teacher attitudes and expectations towards them as girls on their resultant career trajectories. the design adopted is an exploratory case study that utilises the focus group interview for data collection from four secondary schools conveniently sampled from the ngezi district of zimbabwe. the study establishes that as part of the hidden culture and curriculum, teachers’ perceptions, attitudes and expectations of pupils’ gender roles exert a significant influence on their academic achievement and career aspirations. this study concludes that effective intervention strategies are an imperative if the zimbabwean school curriculum is to be made gendersensitive. keywords: gender-role stereotyping, career trajectories, hidden culture curriculum, teacher attitudes and expectations introduction despite international calls for equality, and despite zimbabwe’s assumed democracy, women remain marginalised in education and career decision-making structures in this country. it is in this context that the current study posits that teacher attitudes and expectations of pupils as males or females coupled with the workings of the formal and hidden curricula are biased against the girl child. there is certainly an imperative to incorporate the views of girls and women in all spheres of life, since they constitute more than half the population of the country (51%). discriminating against them is not only a sign of male chauvinism and dictatorship, but also an antithesis to democracy, which interestingly the parties to the government of national unity (gnu) are purportedly working to re-institute in the country (kwinjeh, 2007). the masculine nature of the zimbabwean educational, occupational and political structures manifests itself in a number of ways, as shown in studies by jansen (2008), gaidzanwa (1997) and machingura (2006) who concur that the zimbabwean educational and occupational landscape lacks gender sensitivity despite previous lip-service initiatives by governmental and non-governmental organisations towards gender equity and equality. paid female labour-power still constitutes only 25% of the total workforce in the country. women are still overburdened with domestic and reproductive roles traditionally expected of them by society (kwinjeh, 2007). they are thus still underrepresented in many occupational sectors of the economy; especially in the public sphere in areas such as politics, engineering or science and technology in general (jansen, 2008). this despite the fact that zimbabwe herself boasts of having one of the highest literacy rates among countries in sub-saharan africa (nhundu, 2007). 21mutekwe & modiba — perceived gender-based challenges theoretical perspective used as the lens for the study the perspectives of scholars such as atkinson, agere and mambo (2004), jansen (2008), nhundu (2007) and feminist writers, gaidzanwa (1997), gordon (1995), machingura (2006) and wolpe (2006) are used as the lens for viewing the problem being explored in this study. in examining curricula influences of the colonial educational legacy of zimbabwe, atkinson et al. (2004) concur with gaidzanwa (1997), jansen (2008), machingura (2006) and nhundu (2007) that the colonial history of zimbabwe left an indelible legacy on her political, economic and educational systems. for instance, the zimbabwean school curriculum has for a long time been inextricably linked to the patterns of european colonisation in the region and the dominant role of the british settler regime. the curriculum inherited by zimbabwe at her independence in 1980 was modelled on the english system (wolpe, 2006). as in britain, girls in zimbabwean schools were educated for domesticity, whereas boys were amply prepared for employment and the role of family head and breadwinner (gordon, 1995). mechanisms, including the curriculum for the restructuring of gender roles in schools, were similar to those in britain. the curricular for boys and girls differed. boys and girls were offered different practical and vocational subjects, with boys being channelled into technical subjects such as metalwork, woodwork, agriculture, technical graphics and building (vithal, 2001; samoff, 2001). they were also encouraged to pursue science subjects. on the contrary, girls were offered domestic science subjects as well as typing and shorthand and were encouraged to pursue the arts subjects (gordon, 1995). the legacy of the rhodesian colonial school curriculum is often reflected in the curriculum scholarship not only of zimbabwean writers, but also of southern african writers in general (jansen, 2008). one such theme is what atkinson et al. (2004) regard as curricular reflective of the influence of the colonial settler government. according to this view, the colonial settler officials tended to visualise girls and women in terms of a victorian image of what a woman should be, instead of observing women’s actual capabilities and functions alongside their male counterparts. they equated men with breadwinners. as a result, they introduced technologies to men and recruited them for better paying and highly esteemed jobs, which often took them away from the homes, farms and their rural areas, then called tribal trust lands (mavhunga, 2009; samoff, 2001). jansen (2008) contends that the gender-based curricula challenges for girls can also be viewed in terms of school subjects focusing on their nature, design organisation and effects on teaching and learning as well as attitudes among the various categories of learners. according to this view, although schools purport to offer all pupils the same subject options, girls still tend to opt for those perceived as feminine. jansen asserts that, in southern africa, school subjects remain a powerful organisational reality in postcolonial institutions despite various initiatives for the integration of subjects or interdisciplinary curricula. the gender-typing of school subjects by teachers and their comparative importance and suitability for boys and girls set the stage for the continuing gender polarisation and stereotyping of occupations (nhundu, 2007). gender stereotypes embodied in school textbooks (gati, givon & osipow, 1995) and syllabi that define a school subject are also pointed out by dorsey (1996) who notes that, in zimbabwe, the general perception among educators on the nature and power of subjects is that mathematics and science subjects are a preserve for boys, whereas languages and humanities are a female domain. the same is true for careers involving these subjects. problem statement despite the claim that zimbabwe is a democratic nation, child socialisation practices coupled with the hidden school culture and curriculum continue to lock girls in traditional occupational roles. the challenges of gender-role stereotypes peddled by the home and school often interfere not only with the girls’ choices of school subjects of study, but also with their occupational prospects and ultimate overall life prospects. therefore, the zimbabwean school curricula subtly offer a prescription of the subjects and careers presumed suitable for the different genders. 22 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 research questions • what careers do girls from the different schools in zimbabwe prefer? • what motivates the girls’ choice of careers? • what relationship, if any, exists between the school curriculum and zimbabwean girls’ career aspirations? • how do the girls explain their academic challenges and resultant career trajectories? • what curricular strategies are necessary to mitigate the effects of gender, school subjects and occupational stereotypes? research design and methods the study adopted a qualitative exploratory case study design and used the focus group interview as the instrument for data collection. as an exploratory case study (yin, 2009), the epistemological position held was that using focus group discussions to gather the views of sixth form girls on their perceptions of challenges they face in the school curriculum would enable group interaction to generate a wide range of responses by activating details of perspectives and releasing inhibitions (dzvimbo, moloi, portgieter, wolhuter & van der walt, 2010). the instrument used thus helped to elicit rich texts as participants tended to build on each other’s ideas and comments to provide in-depth and value-added insights on their perceptions of factors affecting their education and career prospects upon their graduation from schools. a focus group, as described by mclafferty (cited in dzvimbo et al., 2010), is a semi-structured group discussion, moderated by a discussion leader, held in an informal setting, with the purpose of obtaining information by means of group interaction on a designated topic. in using focus group discussion as a data-collection tool, insights were drawn from shumba, mpofu, seotlwe and montsi (2011), who assert that the technique is capable of unearthing crucial issues regarding a people’s culture or systems of beliefs and practices embedded in their structured human social relations. sampling participants of the focus group interviews were 20 sixth form schoolgirls, a category that represents the school-leaving general certificate of education at the advanced level of study in zimbabwe (gceal). they were drawn from four secondary schools conveniently sampled as the sites for the study. the participants were organised into four focus groups, with each group being interviewed for approximately 45 minutes to one hour. the data was then drawn on to discover how the school curriculum, as reflected in teacher attitudes and expectations of the girls, predispose them wittingly or not into the gender-polarised occupational world. using a combination of convenient, purposive and stratified random sampling techniques (clark & creswell, 2008), the study managed to identify the study participants. ethical considerations the researcher had to obtain the necessary ethical clearance and permission to conduct the study from the provincial education department, district and school principals before going into the schools as part of his advance protocols. the participants had to be at ease before the interview proceedings commenced, especially in the face of a voice or audio-recorder that was used to record the data. the focus group interviews were initiated by clarifying the purpose of the research and the interview so as to give the participants an opportunity for informed consent. they were reassured of their rights during the course of the study and also made aware of the confidential nature of their interview responses, their rights to privacy, protection from harm, informed consent, anonymity and the right to withdraw from the research at any moment. however, none of the participants withdrew. 23mutekwe & modiba — perceived gender-based challenges data management and analysis guided, in particular, by dey’s (2010) assertion that data management and analysis in case study research ought to be done in terms of meanings mediated through language and action tied to particular contexts, a descriptive and interpretive mode of data presentation and analysis was adopted. this involved the use of summary tables, excerpts from interviews, narrative vignettes and direct quotes. consistent with tesch’s (2000) advice that one of the most important tasks of data analysis is the identification of patterns, commonalities, differences and processes, the focus was placed on breaking down the data into separate parts, examining it and making comparisons in the emerging themes which formed the basis of the discussion and analysis of results. results and discussion the results presented in this section of the study evolved out of the focus group interviews held with the research participants. as shown in the interview guide, the questions were categorised into four sections (a-d), with questions in each section focusing on a specific research question for the study. the purpose of the focus group interview guide was to keep the interview sessions focused (patton, 2000). questions in the first section of the interview guide were meant to solicit data on the impact of the school curriculum in orienting girls to specific school subject choices and occupational aspirations. the rationale was to try and establish the link between curriculum and career aspirations for girls. four questions were thus posed to the participants as follows: state the subjects you are studying for your gce advanced level school certificate. what career do you wish to follow upon leaving school? why did you choose to study the subjects you mentioned? has your school contributed in any way towards your choice of subjects? the girls’ responses to the above questions are summarised in table 1. table 1: summary of girls’ perceptions of the link between curriculum and careers subjects studied no preferred careers % age responses reason for choice of career accounting 5 accountant 25 well paid, requires my knowledge and skills art 4 artist/sculptor 20 like it/interested, suits my education biology 3 doctor/nurse 15 prestige/suits my education ability chemistry 3 pharmacist/cosmetologist 15 help fellow people divinity 12 teacher/lawyer 60 long holidays/white collar english literature 14 lawyer/teacher 70 like it, interested, security, holidays economics 7 economist/entrepreneur 35 requires my knowledge, suits education ability geography 7 navigator/town planner 35 travel, prestige, well paid history 13 teacher/lawyer 65 security, requires knowledge, interest, opportunity for further studies mathematics 4 architect 20 employment possibility, prestige and well paid mob 6 hotelier 30 serving people, easy interest and pleasant music 9 musician 45 entertaining, travel physics 4 engineer 20 prestige, well paid, suits education ability sociology 8 social worker 40 help fellow people 24 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 subjects studied no preferred careers % age responses reason for choice of career shona 11 teacher 55 white collar, security, and opportunity for further studies in motivating their choice of subjects and career preferences, the following were some of the responses: interviewer (int): what do you want to do when you leave school? respondent (r) 1: well, i am going to join the merchant navy. my uncle was in it. he enjoyed it. r 2: i am going for an apprenticeship to be an electrical engineer. i told the careers’ man that my dad works in zesa (zimbabwe electricity supply authority) as a sparks and he says i might as well go that road. r3: since i am studying arts subjects (divinity, history & shona), these can only enable me to become either a teacher or lawyer if i pass in my gce advanced level school certificate. r 4: i am an arts person and hoping to become either a teacher or social worker. r5: my sister is already preparing me for an internship in accounting in her firm ernest & young. she says if i pass my gce advanced level accounting, she will organise for me to join her firm as a trainee ca following her footsteps. she is the one who advised me to study accounting. she earns a lot of money there and does not even intend to get married because men who earn less than their wives often become abusive of them. r6: according to the information we received from the careers people (occupational psychologists) who visited the school twice last year, as girls we need to choose from any of the following careers: nursing, teaching, hotelier, cosmetologist, lawyers, social workers, accounting and pharmacists. professions such as engineering, architecture and others in the automotive industry are ideal for men because of their physical strength and endurance. an interpretation of the above responses reveals that, while occupational psychologists help in making available the necessary information on possible careers girls and boys can follow upon graduating from school, it appears that they still need to make girls conscious that they can do the same jobs as their boy counterparts instead of simply presenting a list of the professions or careers without helping in the deconstruction of gender-role biases or prejudices. parental influences according to the girls’ responses, parental occupations and those of their older siblings considerably influence their resultant career choices, as the following two responses indicate: r 2: i am going for an apprenticeship to be an electrical engineer. i told the careers’ man that my dad works in zesa (zimbabwe electricity supply authority) as a sparks and he says i might as well go that road. r5: my sister is already preparing me for an internship in accounting in her firm ernest & young. she says if i pass my gce advanced level accounting, she will organise for me to join her firm as a trainee ca following her footsteps. she is the one who advised me to study accounting. she earns a lot of money there and does not even intend to get married because men who earn less than their wives often become abusive of them. such responses clearly epitomise the influence of the family on girls’ career choices, in particular, the impact of parents’ and siblings’ careers. many of the girls reported during focus group interviews that they would prefer jobs that allow them to stay closer to their families to jobs such as trucking, a stereotypically masculine job that often entails spending several days away from home. it emerged from these results that 25mutekwe & modiba — perceived gender-based challenges gender-typed and polarised perceptions of jobs are attributed to the home environment and society at large, which often express social disapproval of women who pursue careers that interfere with their perceived social role of child rearing. another theme that emerged from the girls’ responses during the focus group discussion was the relationship of school subjects to career trajectories. the relationship of school subjects to career trajectories results from the focus group discussions revealed that there is a positive relationship between the subjects studied by girls and the career trajectories they ultimately follow upon leaving school. it became apparent that school girls who pursue the arts subjects’ curriculum tend to follow careers in areas such as teaching, law, hotel and catering, and general social work. the evidence from the focus group interviews revealed that 14 (70%) of the 20 respondents whose school subjects included english literature aspire for careers as either teachers or lawyers. twelve participants (60%), whose studies included divinity as a school subject, also aspired to become lawyers, because divinity is considered one of the fundamental entry subjects for a bachelor of laws degree in a zimbabwean university. the 13 girls (65%) studying subjects that included history cited teaching as their preferred career. a similar response was given by 11 participants (55%) studying subjects inclusive of shona. the 7 girls (35%) studying economics cited a desire to become economists or general entrepreneurs. only 7 respondents (35%), whose subject domains included geography. mentioned careers in fields such as merchant navy and town planning as their preferred occupations. the 5 girls (25%), who chose accounting as a career claimed to have been inspired by their families. the 6 girls (30%) studying subjects that included mob cited a desire to work in the hotel and catering industry as hoteliers or entrepreneurs in sales and marketing. careers such as architecture, medicine, pharmacy and cosmetology were also cited by girls studying pure sciences such as mathematics, biology, physics and chemistry. four (20%) of the participants studying mathematics and physics cited a desire to become architects, whereas 3 girls (15%) studying subjects that included biology intended to be medical practitioners as either nurses or doctors. four girls (20%), whose subjects included chemistry, cited pharmacy and cosmetology as their preferred careers, should they pass their gce advanced school level. eight of the girls (40%) studying subjects that included sociology claimed to aspire for people-oriented careers such as social work, whereas 4 girls (20%) studying art cited a wish to join sculpture as their career. in motivating why they are still attending school when others of their age have since left it, 11 participants (55%) cited a desire for highly paying jobs on the assumption that the higher they achieve better qualifications, the higher the likelihood of them being able to compete with their male counterparts in the job market. nine girls (45%) were of the opinion that remaining in the school up to gce advanced level would provide them with an opportunity to venture into occupations traditionally construed as masculine domains. in motivation of this idea, they argued that challenging patriarchy in the occupational sphere requires them to have a strong academic stamina. asked to shed light on what they perceive as the reasons why some girls have dropped out of school, whether or not their teachers had something to do with this; whether or not they have ever missed school or failed to submit an assignment on time due to gender-based constraints and what different tasks were assigned to them as girls compared to their brothers in the homes, the respondents cited many and varied factors that included the following: girls’ academic underachievement, sexual harassment, and parental attitudes towards girls’ education and careers. girls’ academic underachievement the notion of an underachieving pupil denotes a pupil who scores lower than the acceptable score in a test or examination and whose performance is described as below standard. eleven girls (55%) from the focus group interviewees cited underachievement as the reason why some of the girls dropped out of school prematurely. nine respondents (45%) pointed to the problem of sexual harassment of girls in the schools as one of the reasons some girls have abandoned school prematurely. 26 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 sexual harassment in schools from the results of the focus group interviews, 10 respondents (50%) were of the opinion that the sexual harassment of girls in co-educational schools accounted for a large number of high school dropouts. in elaborating their claims, they defined sexual harassment as taking a variety of forms, ranging from the verbal to the physical. they further claimed that it occurs at several levels: harassment by boys and harassment by male teachers. it emerged from the focus group discussions that the sexual abuse of girls by male teachers is not an infrequent occurrence, particularly in the rural and township schools. fifteen respondents (75%) cited teasing, humiliation, verbal bullying or assaults, and the unnecessary ridicule of girls by boys as a major impediment to girls’ education and career aspirations. the harassment was reported as occurring both within and outside the classroom, as the following sample responses from the participants show: int: tell us some of the things that the boys and male teachers you mentioned do which you can say affect your schooling. r1: the boys can laugh at you if you fail to answer a question. some boys just criticise us girls telling us that we are useless in school. then we just keep quiet in the classroom not participating. r2: the boys can make you shy by making comments about your structure, about your body. the boys will be watching you at break time. they will talk loudly and laughing saying which girls is beautiful and which girls are ugly. r3: you know if you are menstruating the boys will know it, sometimes they will see the blood on your skirt. then they will laugh at you and tell their friends to look. and they will mention it for a long time after that. int: what do some teachers do to you that you see as sexual harassment? r 4: one of the big problems we face is teachers proposing love to us girls. if you say no he can make you fail the subject, make you hate school or drop out of it. teachers proposing love to us girls make us to be shy in class. you must be very quiet so that he will not notice you. r 5: some of the young teachers will say because they are in love with you so they will ask you to clean their houses, wash their clothes, but when you fall pregnant they will leave you to drop out of school and suffer. it happened to two of my friends last year at this school. in response to the question of what their teachers do if boys unnecessarily laugh at or ridicule them in the classroom, thirteen respondents (65%) claimed that some of the teachers laugh with the boys or merely ignore them. probed further about whether or not they report incidents of sexual harassment and abuse to other staff members, particularly to female teachers, 65% of the respondents indicated that reporting cases to teachers would, in fact, do more harm than good. one girl interview respondent had this to say: r6: if you report it, no, that is not good. you will be on tight. the teacher will say that you are a prostitute and you were attracting the man. you cannot tell the lady teacher because she may be very angry with you alleging you are to blame. the lady teachers may say a teacher will not propose love to you if you did not entice him. may be he rejected you that is why you are reporting him. the above results show that some of the teachers tend to collude with the male pupils in the verbal harassment of girls in the classroom, either by omission or directly. parental attitudes many girls claimed that the belief that girls who are sexually harassed or abused by boys and teachers are, to some extent, responsible for their fate is fairly common among both parents and teachers. the girls cited this as one of the reasons why some parents do not care a great deal about the dropout of their girl children, preferring to have them married instead. sixteen respondents (80%) also lamented their teachers’ and parents’ acceptance of the feminine role as primarily domestic and the belief that the man should be 27mutekwe & modiba — perceived gender-based challenges the provider, breadwinner and head of the family on the grounds that such a view obscures the protection they should be giving to the girl child in the school. in explaining the different tasks allocated to them as girls in the home, 8 of the 20 girls (40%) claimed that they often fail to submit assignments on time due to the role conflict of the home and school. at home they are expected as girls to do basically all the household chores such as washing dishes and cleaning the kitchen after supper, whereas their brothers may be working on their school work. due to fatigue from too much work in the home, girls often fail to accomplish homework and consequently face harassment by their teachers the next morning. participants also pointed out that within their homes there are tasks that are deemed men-only and others women-only. among the men-only tasks mentioned are herding cattle, woodcarving, building houses and cattle pens, whereas sweeping, cooking, doing dishes, laundry, sewing, and fetching water and firewood are considered women-only tasks. many of the respondents shared these traditional gender-role beliefs. the respondents also indicated that both the home and the school tend to afford boys more opportunities for work compared to girls who are often pressed for time, especially for homework. at home, parents tend to afford boys more time and space for extra studies compared to girls who have to endure the dual burden of household chores and extra homework studies. the above findings correspond with those reported by mosley (2004) and mwaba (1992). mosley, for example, reported that, in ethiopia, cooking, cleaning and fetching water are considered feminine domains, whereas agricultural activities (mainly ploughing) are considered masculine roles. in another study, mwaba (1992) found that a sample of south african secondary school boys and girls characterised housecleaning, nursing, and all sweeping as predominantly women-only jobs. enquiring whether participants believe that boys and girls should study similar school subjects and whether or not the proportion of female to male teachers in their schools has an impact on their career aspirations and whether or not they were happy attending co-educational as opposed to single sex schools, 12 respondents (60%) concurred that there is a need for gender equity in all learning areas or subjects if the curriculum is to be rendered gender neutral. fourteen respondents (70%) concurred during the focus group discussion that the proportion of female to male teachers in their schools impacts negatively on their career aspirations. asked to elaborate on this idea, the respondents pointed out that when they see more female teachers teaching in the arts and humanities departments compared to the number of male teachers teaching in the sciences and technical departments, they tend to think that arts and humanities are female domains and that the sciences and technical divisions are male domains. the same is true when they see more male teachers in managerial portfolios in the school, as principals, heads of departments, senior teachers or sports masters compared to female teachers who often occupy positions at the infancyschool level and other subordinate positions in their schools. eight girls (40%) argued in favour of the notion of sexual division of labour on the grounds that it needs to be upheld in all curriculum issues so that the status quo of the stratified nature of society is maintained. the following is a sample response applauded by 40% of the respondents: r 7: the streaming of learners into the different subject areas such as the arts, sciences, commercials and humanities is a necessary step towards preparing learners for the world of work where a clear division of labour is needed on the basis of the different competencies learners possess. twelve respondents (60%) did not take kindly to the above response on the grounds that it does not augur well for pupils, in particular girls, as it fosters an inferiority complex towards their boy counterparts not only in the school but also in the general occupational world. eighteen respondents (90%) expressed happiness in being in co-educational as opposed to single-sex schools. in motivating their responses, they argued that co-educational schools afford them an opportunity to compete on an equal footing with their boy counterparts. they, however, lamented the attitudes of some teachers who tend to discourage this healthy competition and to deny girls the opportunity for learning equity in education. asked to make suggestions on ways to reduce the gender biases and prejudices prevalent in their school curricular, the participants made the following recommendations: schools need clear-cut measures to promote learning equity and reduce prejudices based on gender-role stereotypes. the ministry of education needs to ensure that teachers who abuse girls are not only blacklisted but also severely dealt 28 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 with. teachers need to revamp their attitude towards girls’ education and career aspirations so that they promote high aspirations for girls as much as they do for boys. parents also need to give ample time to their girl children at home so that they can cope with schoolwork as opposed to overburdening them with household chores at the expense of study time. girls need to be encouraged to be able to realise their full potential as human beings along with their boy counterparts. conclusion the study concluded that the gender stereotyping of school subjects and careers coupled with teacher attitudes and expectations of girls’ traditional gender roles are, to a large extent, responsible for the fate of girls’ academic underachievement and consequent career trajectories. the study also concluded that one of the most important decisions human beings make early in life is the choice of their future careers. although a variety of other factors influence girls’ vocational choices, gender has emerged as the most powerful predictor of girls’ future careers. other influential aspects in their career choices include familial influences, perceived job importance, level of difficulty, salary, interest, security, suitability for subjects or education ability, prestige, easy, pleasant, white collar, desire for travel and long holidays. in terms of intervention strategies to mitigate the effects of gender-role stereotypes in the curriculum, the results of this study point to the need for the social institutions, in particular the family, school and workplace, to minimise gender-role stereotyping by encouraging girls to realise their full potential as human beings instead of accepting to be locked up in the traditional gender-stereotyped occupational world. references atkinson n, agere t & mambo m 2004. a sector analysis of education in zimbabwe. harare: unicef. chengu g 2010. indigenization must empower women. zimbabwean, 16 december, 14-16. clark vp & creswell jw 2008. the mixed method reader. london: sage. dey i 2010. qualitative data analysis: a user-friendly guide for social scientists. new york: routledge dorsey b 1996. academic women at the university of zimbabwe: career prospects, aspirations and family role constraints. zimbabwe journal of educational research, 1: 3-10. dzvimbo p, 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http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 how covid reconfigured family relationships: explaining the work of academic women through the lens of complexity theory abstract since 2020, there has been a flurry of research on the impact of covid-19 on families, and some research on the effects of the pandemic on academic parents. however, little is known about how the pandemic reshaped academic women’s family lives and how this influenced their teaching, research, and inner selves. this innovative study of south african university-based female academics from 2020 to 2021 investigates how covid restructured family lives in relation to children, partners, elderly parents, and outside support (domestic workers, gardeners, etc.), and what this meant for their academic work. a complexity paradigm is used as the framework, and it provides a relevant approach by recognising that elements interacting in a system result in emergent outcomes that are more complex than can be predicted at the outset. this paper will show that the pandemic-enforced lockdown exposed vulnerability threats to the education for sustainable development (esd) both in terms of the direct education goals (such as lifelong learning opportunities and discrimination in education) as well as the cross-over goals from other sectors (such as health and wellbeing, gender equality, and decent work and sustainable growth). keywords: academia, covid-19, family life, female academics, gender 1. introduction the impact of the pandemic-enforced lockdown on women’s academics has been well-documented (collins et al., 2020; walters et al., 2022; minello, 2020; myers et al., 2020; nash & churchill, 2020). while male academics can be assumed to experience many of the same challenges posed by the enforced lockdown, this research indicates that these challenges have been exacerbated for women academics during the covid-19 period (meyers et al., 2020; walters et al., 2021). it is noteworthy that 80,34% of women in our current study (n=2,029) perceived that doing academic work at home during the pandemic was “more” to “much more” difficult for them than for men. this paper is part of a broader project examining the effects of the author: dr samantha kriger1 dr cyrill walters2 prof jonathan jansen2 affiliation: 1cape peninsula university of technology, south africa 2stellenbosch university, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i3.5 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(3): 62-77 published: 30 september 2022 received: 07 march 2022 accepted: 28 august 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4085-4380 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0003-9699 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8614-5678 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 632022 40(3): 63-77 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 kriger, walters & jansen how covid reconfigured family relationships pandemic-enforced lockdown on female academics. the complexity framework used here offers a broader approach to investigating the problem and reveals opportunities for future research in understanding the effects of the pandemic on universities. 2. research methodology the survey questionnaire distributed to female academics at south africa’s 26 public universities was used in this study to assess the impact of the lockdown on their academic careers. the survey contained 13 likert-scale questions, followed by an open-ended section for narrative comments. an initial pilot study was undertaken in which a draft survey instrument was used. after distributing the draft survey to a few female academics, the authors used their feedback to improve and finalise the instrument. the sample included all women working in academic portfolios at various universities, including lecturers at all levels, department heads, researchers, and administrators. we e-mailed an invitation to all 26 public universities, and after we had completed their ethical clearance procedures, each university distributed the survey to female academics who met the specified criteria. in total, 2 029 female academics took part in the study, and their responses were recorded and analysed. during the data collection period, all south africans, except essential workers, were by law required to shelter at home under “lockdown”. therefore, universities had to make a swift transition from face-to-face lectures to online teaching and learning. the online survey was distributed to universities before 1 july 2020 and closed on 30 september 2020. through textual analysis facilitated by atlis.ti software, the research team identified emergent themes from the qualitative data provided in the narrative section of the survey. 3. ethical considerations ethical clearance for the study was obtained from the relevant committee at stellenbosch university. in addition, each university provided gateway clearance certificates for the survey to be administered to its community. all participants were informed of contact information for emotional and psychological counselling support at their institutions in the research documentation for the study. a comprehensive outline of the study and its purpose was provided to each participant, together with assurances of anonymity and confidentiality. 4. literature review cultural and gender beliefs and norms influence how people interact in their daily lives (borelli et al., 2017). in turn, these aspects inform an important part of our daily living and how we manage our lives. as a result of these cultural and gender norms, women are often required to be caregivers in the family. blickenstaff (2005) makes visible the pattern in which men constitute the majority of scientists and engineers in most industrialised countries, thus solidifying the gender disparities within academia. it must be noted that the challenges academic mothers face within academia, such as unequal remuneration compared to their male counterparts, workload, and meeting promotion criteria, often add to the inequality within the academic workplace (gabster et al., 2020). generally, working mothers struggle with the conflict between the demands of home life and their work requirements. in addition, working mothers who struggled to fulfil the gender roles of caregiver, home-school teacher, and cook often resulted in feelings of guilt, inadequacy, and negativity, which extended to their academic performance in the workplace (borelli et al., 2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 642022 40(3): 64-77 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) a primary feature of the covid-19 pandemic is the complexity of the responses to the crisis, apparent in everything from the closure of all non-essential businesses, schools, and public universities to the need to socially distance and to get health care system the resources to combat the virus. thus, applying a complexity lens to the conditions that confront us promises to improve our understanding of the current covid-19 pandemic. 5. theoretical framework complexity science is a set of interdisciplinary theories that has its origins in the biological and physical sciences, but which has now also moved into the social and management sciences (marion & uhl-bien, 2001: 389). wernli et al. (2021) posit that complexity science is not a unified theory but rather “a collection of concepts, theories and methods that are increasingly influencing a range of scholarly disciplines”. in the opening chapter of his seminal book complexity and postmodernism: understanding complex systems, cilliers (1998: 3) argues that a complex system is not constituted merely by the sum of its components, but also by the “intricate relationships between these components”. this definition emphasizes the dynamic interaction, unpredictability, and emergent properties that are difficult to predict in an environment that is volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. further, cilliers provides a useful description of the characteristics of complex systems, which include the dynamic interaction of many elements, the non-linearity of such interactions, and the open-endedness of those interactions with the environment. human families are the setting of such complex systems. various elements, such as stress over finances and anxiety about health, especially during the pandemic, create uncertainty within families, and from the interactions within them emerge adaptability and self-organisation for survival. the distinguishing properties of the complexity paradigm include uncertainty, emergence, self-organisation, adaptability, and non-linearity. the table below summarises the key properties of the complexity paradigm, as well as the characteristics of complex systems. table 1: characteristics of complex systems (adapted from cilliers, 1998) characteristic explanation 1. elements complex systems consist of a large number of elements. when the number is relatively small, the behaviour of the elements can often be given a formal description in conventional terms. however, when the number becomes sufficiently large, conventional means (e.g. a system of differential equations) not only become impractical, but also cease to assist in any understanding of the system. 2. interaction a large number of elements are necessary but not sufficient to establish complexity. for example, the grains of sand on a beach do not interest us as a complex system. to constitute a complex system, the elements have to interact. and this interaction must be dynamic. 3. rich the interaction is rich, i.e. any element in the system influences, and is influenced by, quite a few other elements. the behaviour of the system, however, is not determined by the exact number of interactions associated with specific elements. 4. non-linear the interactions are non-linear. non-linearity also guarantees that small causes can have large results, and vice versa. this is a precondition for complexity. 5. short range interactions usually have a fairly short range. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 652022 40(3): 65-77 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 kriger, walters & jansen how covid reconfigured family relationships characteristic explanation 6. loops there are loops in the interactions. 7. open systems complex systems are usually open systems, i.e. they interact with their environment. 8. no equilibrium complex systems operate under conditions far from equilibrium. 9. history complex systems have a history. not only do they evolve through time, but their past is co-responsible for their present behaviour. 10. ignorance each element in the system is ignorant of the behaviour of the system as a whole. the complexity paradigm captures the reality of women academics and their family relationships by moving away from a linear and mechanistic view of the world, in which simple cause-and-effect relationships are sought to explain social phenomena, to a perspective of the family that is non-linear and organic, and characterized by uncertainty and unpredictability. 6. findings and discussion covid-19 radically reconfigured family life. in an instant, long-established domestic relationships, rules, rituals, and routines were scrambled (prime, wade & browne, 2020: 631), thereby throwing family dynamics into disarray. nowhere was this more evident than in periods of ‘hard lockdown’, when governments and health officials across the world advised citizens to shelter in place at a time when relatively little was known about the workings of the highly infectious and deadly virus sars-cov-2. it was not simply that everyone was at home under one roof. normal life activities that would otherwise happen elsewhere now had to be continued in one congested space. babies and toddlers had to receive nursery care. school-aged children had to be supported in learning, if not formally home-schooled. elderly parents had to be cared for. the spouse did his or her office work. and, amidst this congestion, the academic woman had to do her online teaching, research, and administration. the stress resulting from working under such conditions of containment was inevitable. the data below offer a powerful window on the recasting of family dynamics during the pandemic lockdown and on how this impacted the working lives of academic women in south africa. in other words, we examine family dynamics in households up close and personal through the eyes and voices of our principal subjects, academic women working from home. using the complexity theory, the following themes were outlined and discussed. 6.1 the reconfiguration of space and time to understand the drastic changes within the household during lockdown, one has to begin with the setting in which they happen – the home as a physical space. a study by agcavaroglu (2021:58) has established that the home “gained a new meaning as the only place in our everyday lives during self-quarantine”. one early-career academic and mother of two young children observed, with some economy, that “the lockdown squeezed everything under one roof”; children were at home from school, spouses and partners were at home from work, and elderly parents and the infirm were also at home. extended family shared the same space, and nobody could leave, except for a designated person – often the academic woman – to do the shopping or pharmacy run. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 662022 40(3): 66-77 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) among the first things academic women and their partners discovered was that the constraints of the new situation required that the physical space had to be negotiated. a kind of shape-shifting then happened between them: space is limited. we share office space. we both need to meet with colleagues and students frequently using online platforms. we can’t have meetings at the same time. if we do, one of us has to move to the kitchen. (established academic with no children) for an experienced academic with a three-month-old baby, the reconfigured space took the form of “a fold-up table in my sitting room as my ‘office’ and a baby on my lap during meetings most of the day”. this renegotiation of physical space for work was commonplace in lockdown situations as occupants of the household tried to work around each other and find new places in which to continue to do their jobs. at work but also at home, finding working spaces indeed led to a “very liquid, changing environment”, as one mid-career academic without children put it. sometimes it was impossible, in tight and limited physical spaces, to find an unoccupied working area. “i don’t have a home office,” said one experienced academic, and so “i work where my three-year-old plays.” what this implied, of course, was a dramatic reorganization of once-stable familial roles in which, as one mid-career academic with a toddler and a primary schooler put it, “i had to become five people in one.” this meant that she had to take care of children; cook for the family; shop for the household; do daily chores, including cleaning the house and washing clothes; and care for the elderly and infirm. during the crisis, this recasting of family roles revealed a stubborn continuation of traditional and hierarchical gender assignments that privileged men – their work and their spaces. as will be shown below, the protestations of a few respondents that the survey design only focused on women and assumed that men were not contributing equally to family life during covid was largely nullified by the accounts of most of the academics in this study: the scrambling of family roles ended up with men still in privileged spaces under the lockdown arrangements. the reorganized spaces for living and working meant that established routines with children also changed: they [the children] are used to having more of my undivided attention during normal school/work rhythms, but with them being at home, they said it felt like i was constantly working. (experienced academic and mother of two teenagers) here is an important insight that the blurring of the boundaries between home and work, and how that is experienced by others in the new physical space. for example, most women in this study reported that, because of the altered spaces, the amount of new work they were doing had increased dramatically, leading to constant exhaustion. shared spaces meant shared equipment in many homes where families could not afford additional devices for the children, compounding the work of the academic mother. in the case of one mid-career academic, “the online schooling of two children meant that they used my computer and laptop to work, and they simultaneously required help with the actual work”. something changed beyond the new physical spaces and the consequent demands placed on academic women and their work: time itself was reconfigured, as so eloquently captured in this account by an experienced academic with no children, “… your impression of time is http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 672022 40(3): 67-77 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 kriger, walters & jansen how covid reconfigured family relationships loosened from the perceptual mooring of reliable events, familiar locations, and community interactions”. this destabilization of time and space in the lives of academics working from home significantly increased workloads and levels of stress. as time and space were altered, familiar roles, routines, and rhythms changed as well, and this especially affected relations between academic women and their children. 6.2 the children it is now well-established in the literature on covid that the single most important factor behind the productivity of women scientists is the presence of a child in the home (walters et al., 2022). what is less clear from preliminary survey research is how children influence women’s academic work and which children have a greater influence (in terms of age, ability, etc.); what this means for roles and relationships in the broader family unit; and the consequences of children in the home on performing scholarly work under lockdown conditions. the first thing to record is that the age of the child matters. “mothers of toddlers may experience heightened work-family conflict, and thus work-family guilt and work-interferingwith-family guilt, as compared to mothers of older children, because the gender beliefs regarding mothering are even stronger when children are young” (borelli, 2020:364). this narrative is supported by myers et al. (2020) and yildrem & eslen-ziya (2020) where having a baby or toddler impacts the academic mother severely, since her time and attention is devoted to her young child. as the mother of children aged one and three, an experienced academic, reported, “they require constant care, love and attention and are not able to entertain themselves, especially the one-year-old”. under lockdown conditions, there was no support system to share in the task of childcare, as private and public childcare facilities, as well as domestic help, were unavailable. mothers were almost entirely responsible for baby care, which meant that their academic work could only be completed late at night. even so, with a baby waking at all hours, university work was still disrupted, increasing academic women’s anxiety about their slowed productivity. with older children not yet in school, the academic mother had one option not available in the case of babies: screen time. putting a young child in front of a tablet or television, at the very least, allowed for some time to get academic work done. invariably, this brought on enormous guilt among mothers who would not normally have allowed excessive screen time. “i wonder,” said one mid-career mother of two pre-schoolers, “whether i will ever get over the guilt of letting my children have 8+ hours of screen time per day. i hope they will be fine!” out of sheer desperation, the ability to at least get some academic work done meant compromising on a pre-pandemic principle of little-to-no screen time. about 80% of the academics in this study spoke, with some discomfort or even pain, of having to use screen time with toddlers and older children to free up time to meet at least some of their academic obligations. academic women without children (15%), commented about their relative advantage compared to their colleagues. sometimes this was expressed as feelings of guilt, and at other times in empathetic tones, as from this mid-career academic: “i have no idea how my colleagues with children could manage their academic work.” this certainly does not mean that academics without children had no problems within familial or personal contexts; indeed, several spoke of loneliness, and also of spatial constraints, despite the absence of children. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 682022 40(3): 68-77 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) in the same vein, 54% of academic mothers had school-aged children. they had different struggles that framed their changing relationships with these younger members of the family. they had to take over some of the teaching support roles that would normally have been done largely by their school-based teachers. some parents took the education of their children from home very seriously, even regarding it as more important than their academic obligations to the university. even with online teaching from the school, academic mothers found a significant amount of their time given to providing learning support for their children. an added dimension to the changing familial relationship was how the child understood her mother’s presence at home. while the academic mother was eager to get on with her university work, the child’s sense was that his mother’s being at home meant playtime, as would have been the case before the lockdown. this was very frustrating for academic moms, because it meant that work time was constantly interrupted based on pre-pandemic understandings of what happens when mothers come home from work. in a few cases where children were grown-up, such as university youth, there was a clear sense of relief among mothers that their own roles were diminished and that their grown children could assist them. older children could help around the house and play supportive roles in relation to family needs. one established academic was grateful that “my [married] children have helped me by sending meals on days when i have not managed to cook because of having to meet deadlines”. and yet, for children at home – of all ages – there were other needs as well. that is, many mothers spoke of now having to tend to the emotional and psychological needs of stressed children across the age spectrum. this was especially challenging in the case of academic mothers at home who cared for children with disabilities – a problem made even more difficult by the uneven distribution of domestic labour between academic mothers and their spouses. in short, covid not only changed but also increased the previously steady familial dynamic between academic women and their children, with clear implications for academic work. it should also be noted that there was an often-articulated ambivalence among mothers about being at home with their children. on the one hand, this was a unique opportunity to spend more time with their offspring than was possible in pre-pandemic times. on the other hand, the burden of need on the part of children locked down in the same space meant that much more time had to be devoted to taking care of their social, intellectual, and emotional needs. 6.3 the husband covid created, revealed, and intensified relational stresses between academic women and their partners. ninety percent of the women in this study referred to their spouses as husbands, and we refer to them as such. collins et al. (2020: 2) confirm that “the pandemic may further exacerbate gender gaps in childcare and housework at the cost of women’s work commitments”. the data on academic women’s relationships with their partners during lockdown revealed three broad trends. on one end of the spectrum, and for a very small minority of women, their husbands were praised for equally sharing housework and childcare. these are the words of that small company of women: i fortunately don’t have children to look after and live with a partner who is very happy to split the household chores. (early-career academic) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 692022 40(3): 69-77 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 kriger, walters & jansen how covid reconfigured family relationships my husband helps with house chores and dinner; i prepare breakfast and lunch. (experienced academic with a child in primary school) my husband helps a lot during lockdown with house stuff which meant that i had to do even less than ‘normal’. (early-career academic without children) it is a challenge looking after a baby and working full-time but my husband is very involved, and we share the load as he is also working from home during the lockdown. (experienced academic) academic mothers who tried to be organised presented detailed schedules for childcare or housework that divided the domestic labour between the two partners, while in other households it was simply the way things had always been done: sharing the burden of cleaning, cooking, and care. it is clear from all these cases that these were pre-pandemic routines well-established between partners used to cooperation at home. these arrangements flowed smoothly into the lockdown period. most academic women, on the other hand – despite the fact that both members of the couple worked and there were children in the home – received little to no help from their husbands. this could relate to culture and tradition: housewifery was taxing especially in african homes like mine where the women is expected to make sure food is cooked every day alongside carrying out the other household chores. (experienced academic with a child in primary school and three adult children) my husband expects me to be a wife and serve him as per culture because i am at home. (established academic without children) my husband expects me to do the dishes. (early-career academic with no children) domestic responsibilities are mainly my responsibility as the female in the home. (earlycareer academic with no children) these descriptions were offered either as something normal, perhaps even accepted, or with a hint of criticism that something is wrong. nevertheless, there was little sense of outrage from those who linked role expectations to their african culture. for others, there was certainly anger and distress at the fact that spousal relationships come with highly unequal distributions of domestic labour between the academic woman and her husband during the lockdown. “we are supposedly equal partners,” said one established academic and mother of a pre-schooler, but the pandemic revealed the truth – they are not. the myth of equality in domestic relationships is even held by the men in the household, regardless of the reality of overburdened women. to illustrate the point, this excerpt from one of the transcripts is worth quoting at length: my husband, when i confront him, says, “but i just don’t notice when you answer the children’s calls/remember to make them snacks/read the school’s whatsapp messages and do the school activities with them”. unless i write it down for him, he does not remember the children’s schedules. he does not cook unless i force him to. he responds with affront when i expect him to mind the children for half the workday, so that i can at least get some of my work done. and he is an educated, middle-class man who thinks of himself as a feminist. i feel as if i have to fight all the time, at work and at home, just http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 702022 40(3): 70-77 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) to have everything i do acknowledged as visible work, let alone get some equity in the distribution of work. male privilege is simply transparent to those who benefit from it, at work and at home. (early-career academic with two young children) there are several fascinating insights from this extended quotation on which to reflect. one is the extraordinary struggle of the academic woman to get her husband’s attention, sometimes using coercion to get him to share domestic duty. “i sometimes get tired of asking for help,” as an early-career mother of a teenager responded. notable too is the self-understanding of the man as progressive, even a feminist, but without any insight into what that should mean for equality in the home. most enlightening is the nugget of insight shared by an early-career mother of a toddler and a primary schooler about women’s work being ‘visible’ – the capacity to see or recognize women’s work in the home. the same question was raised by another academic woman in relation to her husband: i think i take on more duties in the home, not because my husband is lazy, but because he does not seem to ‘see’ the things that need to be done. this is the same as before the lockdown. (experienced academic with a child in primary school) what is seen or not seen within the context of women’s work at home is clearly not about physical sight, but rather about powerful gender socializations that either renders work ordinary, commonplace, and invisible (for women), or extraordinary, valued, and visible (for men). for the academic concerned, this behaviour represents a continuity of unequal relationships in the home, just as “before the lockdown”. those unequal relationships were also evident in the spatial arrangements for work. the husbands enjoyed priority in the location of physical space for work. in larger homes, this was not a stressor, but in more compact residences, with children and elderly family, the problem was compounded. the husband had first choice and could quite literally close the office door and seclude himself from the more volatile and occupied spaces left for the academic woman and other members of the family. in a third group of academics, there is neither a reluctant acceptance of the traditional roles of women in relation to men, nor a direct challenge and anger towards the privileges that men held in the lockdown. this group, while acknowledging the husband’s contribution, also complained about the inadequacy and inequality that results, despite the positive role of the spouse. for a significant number of academic women, there is a studied ambivalence: even with both of us here, sharing the childcare and home-school responsibilities, i have had significantly less time available for work. it is simply not a realistic expectation that i have to work full-time, home school my kids, buy food and cook, and clean my house. (mid-career mother of two children in primary school) even though i have a very supportive partner, i am still the primary caregiver. (experienced academic with a child in primary school) unlike my husband, i can’t just close a study door and disassociate myself from the needs of the rest of the family. (established academic with a child in primary school) even though i have a very supportive husband, who is also working from home, i have been responsible for the majority of the childcare while in lockdown. (early-career mother of pre-schoolers) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 712022 40(3): 71-77 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 kriger, walters & jansen how covid reconfigured family relationships there are several reasons evidenced from the data for this studied ambivalence among the third group of academic women. one is that while the pre-pandemic routines of family interactions were disrupted, they were, in many other ways, still stable. for example, when a child in the household experienced a crisis, she would seek out the mother rather than the father. there were also patterns that reset after the initial disruptions to family routines, such that the father’s work once again enjoyed priority, despite the new conditions of lockdown. thirdly, the academic women in the study, of their own volition, allowed such resettlement to happen in favour of the spouse. this needs elaboration from the data in hand. academic women sometimes started by claiming that their husband’s work was more pressing, if not more important, in relation to their own, as related by this early-career academic without children: “my husband’s work is more demanding at the time, with all-day meetings.” even when both partners worked at the university, it was common that “his academic obligations definitely enjoyed preference above mine”, as one experienced academic without children put it. there was often a rationalization that sought to excuse the lesser involvement of the husband in the family, such as these: my ex-husband is a medical researcher and has to fulfil essential service functions. (early-career academic with a child in primary school) my husband is the primary breadwinner [and] we prioritized duties … however more of the cleaning, cooking, and childcare duties fell to me as his workload increased. (earlycareer academic with a pre-schooler and a child at primary school) my husband is working for the government in a different province … he has not been coming home as before the lockdown … there is no assistance from him at all. (experienced academic with a child at primary school) the nature of my husband’s job … has meant that i have had to do the majority of the housework. (established academic and mother of a pre-schooler) the understanding and acceptance of the husband’s constraints of work, and therefore his reduced contribution to domestic responsibilities, do not apply to the women in any of the data; that is, their constraints are not recognized or accommodated. in fact, the women’s responses reveal an empathetic accommodation of their husband’s personal needs. singular examples will suffice. the husband lost his job and suffers from stress and depression; the wife provides and is expected to provide, the necessary emotional support. “he does less,” shared one early-career mother of two primary-school age children, “but expects me to take care of his emotional needs.” in some cases, this accommodation of the husband’s needs even meant that women felt uneasy when the partner did contribute: “my husband helps,” said one woman academic, “but i still feel guilty [about it].” these inequalities are so embedded within family relationships that even when both partners are academics and have the same university commitments, the husband does considerably less than his partner. one respondent made the striking point that even though she is the more senior academic at the university, she still does most of the work at home. in the same way, another female academic partner reported that the university expected her husband to continue his work as if he has no domestic responsibilities under lockdown. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 722022 40(3): 72-77 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) “it would have been easier if i had been a man,” said another academic woman, reflecting on the consequences of this unequal division of domestic labour in the home. needless to say, such situations often led to stress and strained relations in the home: i have a very involved husband and we try to juggle work and kids, but ultimately, when we clash, it is the mom’s work that suffers. (early-career mother of two toddlers) such intimate clashes caused anger, discomfort, and even resentment in the spousal relationship, as this experienced academic without children explained: was hard having my husband around … we work very differently, and he is quite disruptive. i also do all the house-related things and he acts like his work is way more important and serious than mine is, and because he earns more, the uneven distribution of household work is deemed fair by him. inevitably, relationships were strained, and in at least one case the academic reported that she and her spouse had separated. the underlying problems in the relationship were always there, she conceded; what the lockdown did was to make those problems more visible and to force a resolution of an unworkable relationship. 6.4 the self one of the more important findings from this study is how women academics made sense of themselves in relation to the family unit. minello (2020) uses the term “maternal wall”, which refers to the discrimination and limitations that working mothers face; thus, an image that emerged strongly and consistently across the data set was the understanding among women that they were at the center of family dramas and stresses when covid hit. we therefore see an interplay of cultural norms which overflows into and influences the idea of ‘self’. despite themselves, they would have to be caregivers, cooks, and cleaners. put differently, they were responsible for the physical, emotional, spiritual, educational, and psychological needs of the entire family, including their partners. this awareness that “everything fell on me” (in the words of a mid-career mother of a toddler) was at the centre of, sometimes, extreme stress and strain on the part of academic women. what intensified these felt emotions of distress and despair was the absence of a set of external support structures, which simply shifted those functions onto the academic women working from home. it was a revelation, as one established academic and mother of a teenager found: “i was surprised at how quickly i was rendered a servant.” under these circumstances, academic women did not fight or resist the multiplying demands on their time; in fact, they embraced it, despite the personal costs. some felt compelled to respond beyond what was required, like this early-career mother of toddler: “i felt the inherent need to do more because i am a woman.” in this respect, a difficult matter about south african gender sensibilities needs to be acknowledged: the pandemic lockdown revealed that, despite the assumptions in the broader social and political landscape about progress on gender relations and equity (at least in the academic world), the reality was quite different. academic women often reverted to traditional roles and expectations. what these academic colleagues said was, “i am usually more responsible for the health of the family” (mid-career mother of a pre-schooler and a primary schooler); “the bulk of the [children’s] schooling fell to me” (experienced academic and mother of a child in primary school and another in high school); and “women do everything.” http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 732022 40(3): 73-77 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 kriger, walters & jansen how covid reconfigured family relationships the academic women in the study were also conscious of the costs exacted on their bodies and emotions: “the responsibility of keeping everyone else going overwhelms me”, reported one established academic without children. the same costs were keenly felt in the academic aspirations of women and their chances of career success. while the personal and career costs were great, academic women still felt the need to mask their own anxieties so that the family, in turn, could remain calm: it was difficult having to deal and carry the emotional load and try to be the mother and not show it to the kids so that they shouldn’t panic and have heightened anxiety. (earlycareer academic) 6.5 elderly relatives many of the academic women in the study referred to elderly relatives such as parents or grandparents sharing the home during the lockdown period. although sometimes the older relatives assisted with childand homecare, in most cases they were identified as others who needed the attention of the academic woman at home. “given traditional gender-role expectations that mothers’ primary responsibility should involve caring for children, [elderly parents] work-interfering-with-family conflicts may create more distress for working mothers.” (borelli 2016:358). the range of care activities during the lockdown period included trips to the pharmacy and shops for medication and essentials. at times it also meant accompanying the elders on visits to the doctor or hospitals for scheduled appointments. another duty was helping them with the administration of their finances and other business. such care usually falls to the daughters, mused one established academic without children and, depending on the degree of care required, the task could be onerous: i know of an academic colleague with a 90-year-old, bedridden mother because the [usual] caregiver was also under lockdown. i am caring for an 87-year-old father who is diabetic, has hypertension and fears the unknown and death through covid-19”. another stressor for academic women with elders at home was “the fear of bringing home the virus to infect granny or [the] toddler” after going to the shops or doing other essential errands, as reported by one experienced academic. the constant concern for the frail health of elderly relatives loomed large in the accounts of academic women. the duty of care for the elderly, whether in or outside the house, was simply one of many care responsibilities shouldered by academic woman during lockdown; thus, the negative impacts on teaching and research were unavoidable, as one woman related: dealing with the mental and emotional states of my partner, elderly parents, and other family members (who do not live with me) was at times emotionally draining and had a very high impact on my academic work, especially during the levels 5 and 4 of the lockdown. (established academic without children) 6.6 those in the broader support system it is perhaps a peculiar feature of south africa’s settler-colonial heritage that for white and middle-class homes, much of what happens in and around the house is propped up by an elaborate system of supporting non-white actors. at home, there is the gardener, the domestic worker, and sometimes a nanny or au pair for the children; some of these might be live-in http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 742022 40(3): 74-77 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) workers. the pandemic meant that these workers remained in lockdown as well, thereby cutting off a vital source of support to the family in general, as the words of these two academic women attest to: i am unused to doing housework as i have always had a housekeeper or at least a cleaning lady for day or two per week … now my husband and i do all the housework as we do not want the cleaning lady to come here by taxi or to infect us from her own contacts. (established academic without children) all of my planned and usual support network for juggling career, home and children were gone: no grandparents for fear of making them sick, no domestic help and no schooling. (mid-career mother of an infant and a toddler) outside the home, schools were not only places to send children to for care and learning but also to occupy their time. schools closed during the lockdown and later opened only partially to enable some degree of social distancing among children. whether fully closed or partially opened, the absence of school as an external support system had major implications for women’s academic work and relationships within the home. the absence of these vital support structures transferred their functions, in the main, to women in the home who tried to ‘juggle’ the old and new responsibilities to keep the family unit intact. it also contributed to the reconfiguration of familial relationships, with significant stress generated in the interactions between mothers, children, husbands, and extended family members. 6.7 a note on class and its impact on familial relationships one of our respondents made a crucial observation that speaks to gradations of social class even within the broadly middle-class population of academics: “working with ‘women academics’ can thus include a very broad and varied range of people”, as one mid-career academic without children noted. this observation came through strongly in the second and third readings of the data: subtle but real differences emerged that inevitably affect family relationships in different ways. consider these contrasting vignettes that express the different experiences of physical space occupied by academic women during the lockdown: first pair: i’ve been privileged to enjoy economic security and a comfortable living standard, so i learnt to enjoy the new freedoms of organizing my own time. (established academic without children) i do not have a separate office area at home where i could close the door and concentrate. i set up my ‘office’ in the lounge as it was the only room available with space needed to set up a desk. (experienced academic with a child in primary school) second pair: i am privileged to live in a comfortable house and with sufficient income (established academic without children); my home environment is conducive to working and i have managed to adapt rather well (experienced academic without children); i am warm, comfortably housed, with a salary and plenty of food – i am one of the greatly privileged (established academic without children). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 752022 40(3): 75-77 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 kriger, walters & jansen how covid reconfigured family relationships i found that working from home full-time, with my partner, in our very tiny bachelor apartment to be very difficult over lockdown. i struggled without having a defined workspace of my own as i am extremely sensitive to and affected by the emotions/moods of others, in this case my partner, without a physical barrier (i.e. a door or wall) between us. (early-career academic with no children) these contrasting accounts demonstrate the need for further research to look beyond generalizations about academic women as a group that is assumed to share the same class status. such fine-grained studies will tease out how familial relationships are affected by the degree of economic security and physical space available to different classes of women academics. 7. conclusion this study has demonstrated the complex ways in which covid reconfigured family lives in south african households which influenced the impact on women academics within higher education systems. in south african households at least, the evidence indicates that the scrambling of family relations during the pandemic has had and continues to have a significant impact on the work of academic women, their productivity, and their careers. following complexity theory, we have shown that the self-organization of domestic ecologies has impacted more negatively on women than on men. the elimination of gender disparities in education lies at the heart of the education goals. the intensification of academic work and its differential impacts on women also undermines gender equality commitments in development, the goal of decent work and sustainable growth and of course the health and well-being of academic workers, in this case. as has been done for labour markets more broadly (sodergen, kapsos & karkee, 2022), specific work needs to be done on the enduring consequences of pandemic disruption for the attainment of the development goals in the context of higher education. for example, in order to comprehend pandemic consequences, we must first comprehend how both stable and unstable variables inside the system influence academic women’s work. the non-linear effects of the pandemic, as well as any other disruptions to family life must be considered. moreover, as families emerge from pandemic conditions, special attention must be paid to how elements of the system work together or not. if not, the pre-pandemic commitments of various agendas for sustainable development will simply not be met in higher education environments still under strain from successive covid disruptions. 8. recommendations in research terms, much more fine-grained analyses of the long-term effects of the pandemic’s disruption of women’s academic work, and indeed on family relationships at home, are needed. how and in what ways will families and work be reset in the years following the pandemic? this suggests longitudinal studies of covid’s social and academic effects centred on the home. in policy terms, there are clear indications of how institutions need to support academic women differently than before the pandemic, given the compounded nature of their work and workloads that human resources offices seemed oblivious to during the lockdown periods. interventions like childcare for staff, flexible working hours, and the reset of promotion clocks are among the important policy measures that could make a difference in the lives of academic women. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 762022 40(3): 76-77 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) the pandemic and its wide societal impacts pose a threat to the development of female academics in the south african academy. responses to the covid-19 lockdown exhibit the nonlinear behaviour in families that were not anticipated at the beginning. given the unpredictability of complex adaptive systems, women academics found themselves in a position of assessing risks, assessing spaces, and questioning the functioning of their partners’ roles. a complexity paradigm calls for university leadership to face prevailing systemic challenges, current policy goals, and the problems of inertia within the higher education system as it exists today. references agca-varoglu, f.g. 2021. “staying at home”: a rhythmanalysis of self-quarantine. in v. bozkurt, g. dawes, h. gulerce & p. westenbroek (eds), the societal impacts of covid-19: a transnational perspective (pp. 45-62). istanbul university press. https://doi.org/10.26650/b/ ss49.2021.006.04 borelli, j.l., nelson, s.k., river, l.m., birken, s.a. & moss-racusin, c. 2017. gender differences in work-family guilt in parents of young children. sex roles, 76(5): 356-368. doi:10.1007/s11199-016-0579-0 blickenstaff, j.c. 2005. women and science careers: leaky pipeline of gender filter? gender and education, 17(4): 369-386, doi: 10.1080/09540250500145072 cilliers, p. 1998. complexity and postmodernism: understanding complex systems. london: routledge. collins, c., landivar, l.c., ruppanner, l. & scarborough, w.j. 2020. covid-19 and the gender gap in work hours. gender, work & organization, 28(s1): 101-112. https://doi.org/10.1111/ gwao.12506 gabster, b.p., van daalen, k., dhatt, r. & barry, m. 2020. challenges for the female academic during the covid-19 pandemic. the lancet, 395(10242): 1968-1970. https://doi.org/10.1016/ s0140-6736(20)31412-4 marion, r. & uhl-bien, m. 2001. leadership in complex organizations. the leadership quarterly, 12: 389-418. https://doi.org/10.1016/s1048-9843(01)00092-3 minello, a. 2020. the pandemic and the female academic. nature, 17 april 2020. doi: 10.1038/ d41586-020-01135-9 myers, k.r., tham, w.y., yin, y., cohodes, n., thursby, j.g., thursby, m.c., schiffer, p., walsh, j.t., lakhani, k.r. & wang, d. 2020. unequal effects of the covid-19 pandemic on scientists. nature human behaviour, 4(9): 880-883. doi: 10.1038/s41562-020-0921-y nash, m. & churchill, b. 2020. caring during covid-19: a gendered analysis of australian university responses to managing remote working and caring responsibilities. gender, work & organization, 27(5): 833-846. https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12484 prime, h., wade, m. & browne, d.t. 2020. risk and resilience in family well-being during the covid-19 pandemic. american psychologist, 75(5): 631-643. doi: 10.1037/amp0000660 sodergen, m., kapsos, s. & karkee, v. 2022: covid-19 and the sustainable development goals: reversing progress towards decent work for all, international labour organization (ilostat) https://ilostat.ilo.org/covid-19-and-the-sustainable-development-goals-reversingprogress-towards-decent-work-for-all/ http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 https://doi.org/10.26650/b/ss49.2021.006.04 https://doi.org/10.26650/b/ss49.2021.006.04 https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12506 https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12506 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(20)31412-4 https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(20)31412-4 https://doi.org/10.1016/s1048-9843(01)00092-3 https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12484 https://ilostat.ilo.org/covid-19-and-the-sustainable-development-goals-reversing-progress-towards-decent-work-for-all/ https://ilostat.ilo.org/covid-19-and-the-sustainable-development-goals-reversing-progress-towards-decent-work-for-all/ 772022 40(3): 77-77 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 kriger, walters & jansen how covid reconfigured family relationships yildirim, t.m. & eslen-ziya, h. (2020). the differential impact of covid-19 on the work conditions of women and men academics during the lockdown. gender, work & organization, 28(s1): 1-7. doi: 10.1111/gwao.12529 walters, c., ronnie, l., jansen, j. & kriger, s. 2021. “academic guilt”: the impact of the pandemic-enforced lockdown on women’s academic work. women’s studies international forum, 88: 102522. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2021.102522 walters, c., mehl, g., piraino, p., jansen, j. & kriger, s. 2022. the impact of the pandemicenforced lockdown on the scholarly productivity of women academics in south africa. research policy, 51(1): 104403. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2021.104403 wernli, d., tediosi, f., blanchet, k., lee, k., morel, c., pittet, d., levrat, n. & young, o. (2021). a complexity lens on the covid-19 pandemic. international journal of health policy and management. doi: 10.34172/ijhpm.2021.55 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.5 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wsif.2021.102522 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2021.104403 _hlk104812239 _hlk104977803 i editorial rethinking citizenship and social justice in education notions of citizenship and social justice remain contested at the levels of theory, definition and praxis. citizenship may refer to legal status, membership of communities and relationships between members of those communities, but also to relationships between individuals, communities and nations. these definitions may also assume rights and obligations (lister, 1997). social justice addresses issues of inequality in society and the way in which burdens and responsibilities are unequally distributed along structurally engineered faultlines that become ciphers or markers of exclusion and inclusion (ayers, quinn & stoval, 2009). interesting work on ‘disrespect’ (honneth, 2007) and participatory parity, which includes notions of redistribution, recognition (fraser & honneth, 2003) and political representation (fraser 2008; 2009) in relation to social justice have emerged over the past 15 years. furthermore, different ‘ways of knowing’ as a consideration of social justice are central to fricker’s (2007) work in epistemic justice: power and the ethics of knowing, which refers to an intellectual trend that is also advanced in connell’s (2007) southern theory. notions of citizenship are intricately linked with understandings of social justice. in this respect, recent analyses point to new directions. for instance, the analytical frames related to ‘recognition’, ‘redistribution’ and ‘representation’ in the work of fraser have direct meaning-making consequences for the notion of ‘citizenship’. contemporary thinking in social identity theories significantly problematizes these notions even further and challenges the simplistic analyses of ‘citizenship’ and ‘social justice’ within the dominant human rights discourse. in view of the critiques that both the notions of citizenship and social justice attract, the views of lister (2010:216), for example, on citizenship and social justice, based on hoffman’s (2007:viii) notion of ‘momentum concepts’, are pertinent. ‘momentum concepts’ unfold so that we must continuously rework them in ways that realise more of their egalitarian and anti-hierarchical potential. the first four articles engage with citizenship and social justice as ‘momentum’ concepts. they destabilise and de-sediment existing frames and suggest new interpretive schemes for praxis. lange explores the contribution of hannah arendt’s thinking on citizenship and social justice in education. she is particularly interested in the role of higher education in developing the intellectual and moral habits for a republican notion of citizenship to take shape. in addition, she proposes a political pedagogy and a conceptualisation of citizenship as pedagogy. importing arendt’s notions of understanding and action into an understanding of a kind of citizenship which should be at the heart of the business of higher education, lange provides an innovative interpretive scheme for rethinking citizenship. bozalek and carolissen proceed on this trajectory by assessing the potential of critical feminist citizenship frameworks for citizenship and social justice in higher education. in a series of productive conceptual movements, they propose a set of themes inherent in critical feminist approaches that may be useful for contesting traditional views of citizenship in higher education as leverage points for advancing social justice. davids and waghid re-imagine democratic citizenship education by considering a form of education that can result in the enactment of one’s humanity. they argue that the cultivation of humanity, central to democratic citizenship education, is the track on which a culture of compassionate responsibility can emerge. again, they challenge us with new conceptual and interpretive schemes for rethinking citizenship and social justice. davis and steyn turn the table on the common assumptions of critical pedagogy. disrupting conventional ways of understanding the praxis principles of critical pedagogy with a focus on race and whiteness, they suggest that we view ‘student resistance’, ‘dialogue and student experience’, and ‘the advocacy of safety’ in a different light. exploring different sets on which social justice and citizenship are constructed or negated, the next four articles closely engage with pedagogical practices and artefacts. potgieter and reygan argue that ii sexual citizenship has emerged as a new form of citizenship. they found that there is an ‘invisibility’ of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and intersex (lgbti) learners in selected textbooks which points to a form of epistemic injustice. potgieter and reygan thus shift the debate to a form of ‘injustice’ that has received minimal consideration in education research. this article is followed by a creative conceptual manoeuvre where fataar combines bourdieu’s social reproduction account of education with elements of berstein’s consideration of the internal dynamics that constitute pedagogic relay. fataar brings into view the pedagogical injustice relating to a mismatch between the cultural capital of working-class students and the capital associated with successful schooling. both the epistemic injustice revealed by potgieter and reygan, and the pedagogic injustice highlighted by fataar, point to, as suggested by fataar, the need for pedagogies that incorporate the life world knowledges of students as a link with the school’s knowledge code. bayat brings an important perspective to the social justice debate and argues that we should consider the production of space through various forms of practices. studying the way in which school administrative staff produce space with personalised meanings and generate novel lived spatial practices, bayat provides a creative link between space production and contributive justice. as demonstrated by bayat, these concepts and their application for educational research have infinite possibilities. in the last article of this batch, zinn and rogers give an account of humanising pedagogy as the unfolding of work within the broader parameters of a project dealing with university transformation. they situate and make an argument for a humanising pedagogy in response to the legacy of a dehumanising past in south africa by means of mining stories of living and learning in an attempt to build social cohesion in a university faculty. the last two articles confirm the importance of critical emancipatory research in the context of pervasive poverty and mass inequalities. spreen and vally highlight the paradoxes of citizenship and equality in education and suggest that education should focus on re-imaging a political community that can challenge the broader inequalities in society. in the last article nkoane, having the power of language and communication in mind and its distortion through the inequalities to which spreen and vally refer, suggests a critical emancipatory research programme which, in the first instance, is socially just in its relationship with research communities. together, these articles respond to the call in a diverse and interlinked way; some are conceptual in nature; others straddle the conceptual-empirical interface, and most focus on the intersections of citizenship and social justice in education to explore the range of practices, meanings and values pertinent to this field. we hope that this special edition will generate further debate and act as a catalyst for different ways of “thinking” about and ”doing” social justice and citizenship in education. references ayers wc, quinn t & stovall d (eds) 2009. handbook of social justice in education. london: routledge. bell r 2007. rethinking justice: restoring our humanity. plymouth: lexington books. fraser n 2008. reframing justice in a globalizing world. in k olson (ed), adding insult to injury: nancy fraser debates her critics. london & new york: verso. fraser n 2009. scales of justice. reimagining political space in a globalizing world. new york: columbia university press. fraser n & honneth a 2003. redistribution and recognition: a political-philosophical exchange. london: verso. fricker m 2007. epistemic justice: power and the ethics of knowing: oxford: oxford university press. honneth a 2007. disrespect: the normative foundations of critical theory. cambridge: polity press. hoffman j 2007. a glossary of political theory. stanford: stanford university press. lister r 1997. citizenship: feminist perspectives. london: macmillan. lister r 2010. understanding theories and concepts in social policy. bristol: the policy press. andre keet and ronelle carolissen 128 addressing the factors responsible for the misunderstanding of technology education with other subject fields abstract technology education was introduced and rolled out in south african schools in 1998. it has been twenty years since its implementation, yet it is being confused with other traditional subjects. therefore, even though it is expected that technology education should be known for what it is exactly, it is still misunderstood, misconceived and misrepresented. there are factors that contribute towards its misunderstanding (a failure to understand it), misconception (incorrect opinion caused falsely thinking about or understanding it) and misrepresentation (giving a false or misleading account of its nature), such as it being confused with engineering education, educational technology, science education and technical vocational education and training. misunderstanding technology education causes its misconception and misrepresentation; hence, in this article i use misunderstanding to cover misconception and misrepresentation as well. there is no dedicated literature (at least in south africa), dealing with this problem in detail; only piecemeal definitions contained in studies about technology education exist. hence, this article explores factors leading to the misunderstanding of technology education. as part of addressing this problem, the article builds on the meaningful learning in technology education framework to accommodate a more expanded understanding of technology education that may help to defuse its misunderstanding. the article contributes knowledge in the scholarship of the understanding technology education – if technology education scholars, teachers and the broader readership do not have a clear understanding of technology education, how can those who are being taught the subject, i.e. the learners, be expected to understand it? keywords: technology education, indigenous technology, mis­ un der standings, factors, meaningful learning in technology education framework 1. introduction technology education was introduced as part of curriculum 2005, which was rolled out in 1998. it is still one of the subjects in the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps). however, twenty years after its introduction, technology education is still misunderstood, both outside and inside the subject (daugherty & wickein, 1993). mapotse (2012) states that the term technology is overused with little mishack t gumbo university of south africa, college of education, department of science and technology education, email: gumbomt@unisa.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v36i1.9 issn 0258­2236 e­issn 2519­593x perspectives in education 2018 36(1): 128­144 © uv/ufs mailto:gumbomt@unisa.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v36i1.9 129 gumbo addressing the factors responsible for the misunderstanding of technology education ... understanding. misrepresentations and stereotypical perceptions about technology education flood literature (daugherty & wicklein, 1993; dugger & naik, 2001; indiana technology education curriculum standards, 2006; dugger, 2008; el-deghaidy & mansour, 2015) from international down to local. in the united states context, technology is “widely misunderstood, misdefined and distrusted” (indiana technology education curriculum standards, 2006, 3). furthermore, maley and wenig (in daugherty & wicklein, 1993) identify a considerable confusion that still exists about what characteristics exemplify technology education. almutairi (2009) conducted a study that explored new zealand technology teachers’ perceptions of technology and technology education through interviews. his findings revealed obstacles attributed to the poor perception of teachers regarding technology and technology education, e.g. insufficient funds, lack of mentoring for new teachers by senior teachers and lack of regular meetings for technology teachers. regionally, a few studies confirm the confusion that exists about technology and technology education. for instance, in addition to confusing technology education with other traditional subjects in malawi and botswana, moalosi (1999), obikeze (2011), ogunbure (2011), gaotlhobogwe (2012), chikasanda, mtemang’ombe, nyirenda and kapengule (2014) and ruele (2017) are of the view that technology education is devoid of the local meaning, thus adding to the misunderstanding of technology education. gaotlhobogwe and ruele in particular blame the botswana technology education curriculum for adopting the cambridge curriculum. though technology education curricula aim to achieve the technological literacy of those taught and the citizenry ultimately (daugherty & wicklein, 1993), the misunderstanding of technology education still exists. this is also the situation in the south african context as stated above. while these studies look into the literacy problem and raise issues with the misunderstanding that surrounds technology education, scholars have not yet turned their attention to the factors that cause this misunderstanding, hence the need for the current study. this article explores these factors and thus addresses the research question: “what are the factors contributing to the misunderstanding of te?” it is important to address these factors because the misunderstanding in question frustrates the implementation (daugherty & wicklein, 2000) and content (williams, 1996) of technology education. addressing this question will also assist in clarifying the specialisation of technology education teachers and scholars, as they are often mistaken for educational technology specialists, or even science education specialists. the course that this article takes is to define technology and technology education, discuss the meaningful learning in technology education framework undergirding the study, and reflect on its claims, which have subsequently led to the discussion of the factors that contribute to the misunderstanding of technology education. the article concludes with the adapted meaning learning in technology education framework. 2. technology and technology education it is important to first clarify the concepts technology and technology education from the body of literature as these concepts suffer their misunderstanding and thus have attracted the factors that create this misunderstanding. terms that may create misunderstanding because of their usage need to be explained (pudi, 2006). the definition of these concepts rests mainly on design in the context of solving technological problems and meeting human needs and/or wants. dugger and naik (2001:31) define technology as design, making, problem solving, technological systems, resources and materials, criteria and constraints, processes, 130 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) controls, optimisation and trade-offs, and invention, as well as other topics that relate to human innovation. design encapsulates theory (content knowledge) and practice (procedural knowledge), as these relate to learning a range of material processes for metal, wood, plastic materials, textile, leather and food materials (kumar, 2002:125). technology can be studied in order to learn about the technological processes and knowledge needed to solve problems and to extend human capabilities (international technology and engineering association, 2000:242). in caps, technology is defined as “the use of knowledge, skills, values and resources to meet people’s needs and wants by developing practical solutions to problems, taking social and environmental factors into consideration” (department of basic education, 2011:8). it makes learners technologically literate by giving them learning opportunities to: • develop and apply specific design skills to solve technological problems; • understand and use the technological concepts and knowledge responsibly and purposefully; • appreciate the interaction between people’s values and attitudes, technology, society and the environment (department of basic education, 2011:8). these definitions show that technology education provides learners with opportunities to acquire technological knowledge and skills as they engage in problem-solving processes. in the learning process, learners use different materials and apply techniques to manipulate the environment carefully. on completion, these learners can participate as professionals in fisheries, agriculture, mining and so forth. technology education was introduced in the united states in the 1980s as a replacement for industrial arts education (litowitz & warner, 2008, 251). thereafter, it was included in the curriculum in countries such as england, france, finland, canada, and ultimately, in south africa (jones, buntting & de vries, 2011, 5). technology education has different names in the afore-mentioned countries. for example, in england technology education is known as design and technology, and in ireland as technology and design. in south africa, it is called technology, and at times, technology education. other african countries such as botswana and zimbabwe endorse design and technology, which they adopted from the british curriculum. there are several approaches to technology education, which are summarised according to black (1996) as follows: • craft approach: applies knowledge and skills in the transformation of materials into fabricated objects, cultural and personal value, and traditional design. learners make things based on prescribed designs. classrooms are equipped with machines and tools for woodworking, metal working, electrical, etc., with an emphasis on psychomotor skills rather than design. • occupational/vocational approach: focuses on hands-on activities and transforming materials into products and industrial practice skills. classrooms are equipped with machinery from industry. • high­tech approach: focuses on modern industry with a desire to shape the skills base of a future workforce. classrooms are equipped with the latest high-powered machinery. 131 gumbo addressing the factors responsible for the misunderstanding of technology education ... • applied science approach: relies on science to explore new applications of technology and study of two in close association with each other. • technology concepts approach: focuses on learning processes, which result in technological developments, and emphasises the theoretical understanding. • design approach: emphasises practical capability, active learner involvement in problemsolving and design–make–evaluate activities. • science–technology–society approach: curricula are organised around societal issues and connections between classrooms and [the] outside world. • integrated subject approach: integrates a number of subjects into a framework, which provides an understanding of technology education. generally, countries have adopted the design approach. specifically, in caps (department of basic education, 2011), emphasis is on the design process as the backbone of technology education, which involves investigation, design, making, evaluation and communication. this approach includes elements of the other approaches explained above. for example, at the intermediate phase, technology education is combined with natural sciences, and is called natural sciences and technology. the core content areas of technology education include design process skills, structures, processing of materials, mechanical systems and control, electrical systems and control, and technology, society and environment. technology, society and environment includes the impact of technology, the bias of technology, and indigenous technology. specifically, the caps state the following: wherever possible, learners should be made aware of different coexisting knowledge systems. they should learn how indigenous cultures have used specific materials and processes to satisfy needs, and become aware of indigenous intellectual property rights (department of basic education, 2011:10). 3. theoretical framework this study uses the meaningful learning in technology education framework of kelly and kellam (2009), as illustrated in figure 1. the choice of this framework is informed by its emphasis of pragmatism in relation to the application of design. therefore, this theoretical framework adds to addressing the factors responsible for the misunderstanding of technology education. in attempts to understand technology education, it is important to place the learner at the centre, as what is learnt about technology, impacts hugely on the learner’s understanding of what technology is all about. it is in this light that technology education can be understood through a framework that is in line with, according to kelly and kellam (2009), the needs of today’s learners and the new knowledge of teaching and learning. kelly’s and kellam’s (2009) framework consists of five main concepts, which are pragmatism, constructivism, context, engineering design and systems thinking, and problem-based teaching (see figure 1). 132 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1)framework consists of five main concepts, which are pragmatism, constructivism, context, engineering design and systems thinking, and problem-based teaching (see figure 1).   figure 1: meaningful learning in technology education framework (adapted from kelly & kellam, 2009)   engineering design learner learning systems thinking c on te xt ua l l ea rn in g an d pr ob le m -b as ed in st ru ct io n pr oj ec tba se d te ac hi ng constructivist theory to learning pragmatic or experimentation figure 1: meaningful learning in technology education framework (adapted from kelly & kellam, 2009) these authors claim that the constructivist approach to learning, as informed by pragmatist philosophy, is the foundation that holds all other learning theories and approaches to learning, namely, contextual/problem-based and project-based learning, and engineering design and systems thinking. learner learning is a keystone of the framework, which implies that learners should identify and solve open-ended problems faced by today’s society. from a pragmatic point of view, these authors claim that technology education should equip learners with knowledge, skills and abilities, so that they can live, work and function in the current technological society. however, they may not be able to if they have a narrow understanding of technology. that is why freeing technology and technology education from the cloud of their misunderstanding is important for learning technology and building the academic identity of the teachers. the pragmatist philosophy is premised on the fact that one can gain knowledge through problem solving, and it places great emphasis on critical thinking and open-minded reasoning, in pursuance of solutions to the world’s problems. this claim corroborates barron and darlingharmond (2008), who claim that design and problem-solving learning activities sourced from authentic contexts, provide relevant education to learners, who will be motivated to learn and respond well to the demands of today’s fast changing world. in this manner, learners can be prepared to cope in today’s rapidly changing world, which is subjected to ubiquitous and innovative technologies, by applying their acquired creative abilities. 133 gumbo addressing the factors responsible for the misunderstanding of technology education ... the claims associated with constructivism are that a learner cannot be treated as a passive receiver/acquirer of knowledge and skills, but that he/she should be actively involved in cooperative learning to construct new understandings. constructivism enhances learners’ understanding of complex systems and heightens their interest, engagement and motivation in the learning activities. constructivism is most appropriate in the learning of technology, as technology education makes learners identify authentic problems in relevant contexts. added to these authors’ claims, crawford (2001) perceives constructivist teaching as an enabler for learners to relate their learning in the context of their lives or pre-existing knowledge; experience learning by doing or exploring, discover and invent; apply the learned concepts; cooperate by sharing, responding and communicating with others; and transfer knowledge in new contexts. this suggests the importance of context in learning, namely, it facilitates the understanding of technology. context places learning in a specific physical context and social environment so that learners can acquire knowledge, which is intimately associated with such a setting. however, contextualisation of learning does not close out the need for transference of knowledge through exposing learning to multiple experiences to prepare learners to operate within global technological and societal contexts as well. this is important for treating conceptual and procedural knowledge in technology education. in a technological sense, context and problem solving converge as learners become puzzled by what could be happening in authentic contexts and try to figure out solutions to those problems in a selfdirected and collaborative manner. kelly and kellam cite wicklein and daugherty, who argue that engineering design is the ideal platform for addressing standards for technological literacy, and creates the teaching model that attracts and motivates learners from all academic levels. thus, from an engineering perspective, learners need the required job skills such as communication, analytical, problemsolving, creative and critical thinking skills, which can position them to perform and fit well into the job market. systems thinking is about synthesising all the relevant information about an object for us to have a sense of it as a whole (kay & foster cited in kelly & kellam, 2009, 44). this may call for reducing the system down to its constituent parts and studying their relationships. in technology education, this can happen practically by disassembling a cell phone in order to study its parts and their functional relationships. 4. reflections on the meaningful learning in technology education framework technology education cannot be taught theoretically and away from the authentic context, hence the pragmatic sense provided by this framework. learners have to think creatively and critically, and execute the assigned design projects. from the pragmatic and constructivist points of view, the meaningful learning in technology education helps teach learners through this approach. this framework also helps to set tasks for the learners that are relevant to, and which represent, authentic contexts that learners are familiar with. this primarily suggests contexts that learners come from, in order for them to relate their design projects to the problems that surface in the said contexts. in the south african context, where indigenous knowledge systems are valued and thus, appears in the caps, it becomes paramount that attempts to clear the misunderstanding of technology education should include indigenous perspectives. in addition, interest must 134 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) be inculcated in the learners so they can relate their learning to the projects they create, e.g. the creative industries in textile, bridge design and construction, house design and construction and so forth. nonetheless, the indigenous knowledge systems perspective is misor under-represented as it can be seen in the consulted literature about the definitions of technology and technology education above. this point is deliberated upon later under the factors. i argue that perceiving technology education from the western industrial perspective only is limiting and contributes towards its misunderstanding especially in the developing or indigenous contexts where technology could have a contextual meaning that is informed by local forms of technology. hence, other forms of knowledge such as indigenous knowledge, that help build a contextual understanding of technology education, should be integrated into the definition and knowledge construction. these knowledge forms and their bearers have suffered coloniality and have been accused of being devoid of any possible contribution. dewey (1930:3) cautions in this regard: we are given to associating creative minds with persons regarded as rare and unique, like geniuses. but every individual is in his own way unique. each one experiences life from a different angle than anybody else, and consequently has something distinctive to give others if he can turn his experiences into ideas and pass them on to others. furthermore, kelly and kellam seem to overemphasise engineering in the meaningful learning in technology education framework. however, they do acknowledge the limitation of confining technology education to the engineering concept. the framework should have accommodated this limitation by factoring in technology education next to the design block. an attempt to define technology education through the engineering subject and other subjects such as science education, educational technology and technical and vocational education and training, which seem to portray indifference between technology education and these other subjects, is undesired and adds to the factors that cause the misunderstanding. this and other factors receive attention in the next section. lastly, technology education should be understood from the point of view of the ecosystem of knowledge that helps build and improve it. systems thinking is useful in this regard. however, again, kelly and kellam emphasise systems thinking in as far as its constituent parts. the scope of systems thinking should transcend the phenomenon’s boundaries to other phenomena that build onto it. from a subject point of view, this is where technology education needs to be related to other subjects, especially those that lie close to it, but showing its points of convergence and divergence with those subjects. the integrationist curriculum approach that is promoted in the caps should promote this consideration. 5. factors responsible for the misunderstanding of technology education 5.1 misleading internet search results searching for literature about technology education on the internet using keywords such as “technology”, “technology education” and “definition of technology” yields results about educational technology. it is only when one searches literature through online technology education journals or authors and titles of publications that one gets the expected results. the fact that searches of technology education literature yield results about educational technology 135 gumbo addressing the factors responsible for the misunderstanding of technology education ... adds to the misunderstanding of technology education and can be misleading to educational technology educators and scholars, who may confuse it with educational technology. 5.2 technology education taught by unqualified teachers adding to the misunderstanding of technology education is the fact that when it was first rolled out in 1998 as part of curriculum 2005, there were no trained technology teachers (mapotse & gumbo, 2013). consequently, teachers qualified in other traditional subjects were asked to volunteer to teach technology. technology education’s newness in the curriculum compared to other subjects explains this state of affairs. mccormick (1997) writes that technology education has little or no established history, and this has contributed to the misunderstanding of technology education. thus, many technology education teachers are under-qualified to teach the subject, and feel incompetent to do so (mapotse, 2012). this claim concurs with garson (2000), who states that because of the relative newness of technology education, teachers in the field are still grappling with what it is actually. attempts to scrap technology education from the curriculum during the curriculum reviews of 2000 and 2009, have not only added to the confusion, but dampened technology education teachers’ and other stakeholders’ keenness to know more about the subject. 5.3 educational technology researchers who are “ill-informed” about technology education according to laufenberg (2009), many people equate technology to computers or other technological and electronic products in an educational setting. researchers who are not technology education educators/scholars or whose research field is in educational technology have contributed to the misunderstanding of technology education. a case in point is an article that i read during the writing of this paper about the implementation of technology education in south africa. the title and sectional headings of the article are about technology education, however, the text is about technology integration in teaching, and not technology education. the first sentence in the introduction relates to information and communication technology. in that sentence the authors talk about the use of technology in education as becoming an increasingly important part of higher and professional education, while the last sentence in that section deals with technology education. the authors make a claim that literature on technology is flooded by misrepresentations and stereotypical perceptions of technology and technology education. while these authors attempted to address the problem of the misrepresentation of technology education, they complicated it further, unfortunately. they confused it with educational technology. in the authors’ quest to overcome the misrepresentations and stereotypical perceptions of technology education, they exacerbated them. one section is titled as referring to technology education. however, the text in that section is misleading, as it cites a survey that was administered on the primary school learners to gather their perceptions about children’s engagement with information and communication technology, both within and outside of the school context. in addition, the investigation targeted a language subject instead of natural science and technology. this confirms that the authors focused on educational technology. the items in their survey instrument seem to relate to technology education, but the accompanying discussion of the findings is about information and communication technology. of the 48 sources quoted in the article, only 9 are on technology education, and these have been misinterpreted and misapplied in the article. 136 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) 5.4 varied interpretations of technology the misunderstanding of technology education also stems from varied interpretations of technology. dugger (2008:1–2) reports on two interview-based surveys conducted in 2001 and 2004, among americans 18 years of age and older, concerning their understanding of what technology is. participant responses were as follows: • science and technology are basically one and the same thing (59% in 2001 and 62% in 2004); • narrow view of technology as being computers, electronic devices and the internet (67% in 2001 and 68% in 2004); • it is very or somewhat important for high school students to understand the relationship between science and technology (98% in 2001); and • schools should include the study of technology in their curriculum (97% in 2001 and 98% in 2004). the views of the participants in the above findings show that technology education is confused with computers or educational technology and science. this ties in well with 5.1 and 5.3 above. 5.5 under-representation of indigenous knowledge systems in the caps the definition of technology in the caps misses out on indigenous knowledge systems. given the historical marginalisation of indigenous knowledge systems and sustainable development, indigenous knowledge systems cannot be left to chance by not giving it serious attention. the caps touches on indigenous technology rather superficially (refer to section 2 above). this is the case in the following instances: • “where possible” increases the vulnerability of indigenous technology to exclusion. the phrase lacks commitment to indigenous knowledge systems. • “made aware” and “become aware” do not mean teaching about indigenous technology, but merely make learners aware of it. • “have used” risks indigenous technology to be limited to the past. this adds to the prevailing misunderstanding of indigenous knowledge systems. the statement should rather have been formulated as: learners should learn about different coexisting knowledge systems and how indigenous cultures use specific materials and processes to satisfy needs, as well as consider indigenous intellectual property rights. indigenous technology is referred to as local or traditional knowledge, folk knowledge, people’s knowledge, traditional wisdom or traditional science (senanayake, 2006). it is expressed through indigenous knowledge, methods and processes of agriculture, food preparation and conservation, health care and education (senanayake, 2006). there are tangible and intangible forms of technology, with culture lying at the heart of all of them (custer, 1995; ogunbure, 2011). it can thus be argued that, “not every problem-solving activity will or should require a physical prototype or artefact” (kelly & kellam, 2009:45). according to obikeze (2011), tangible and intangible forms can be categorised as physical (material) technology, e.g. bows and arrows, ploughs, and machines; social technology, e.g. methodologies, techniques, and organisational and management skills; communication technology, e.g. language, signs and symbols. these forms include cultural products, which 137 gumbo addressing the factors responsible for the misunderstanding of technology education ... can be classified as goods or services, and thus divided into material goods, e.g. soap, food, houses, and ornaments; social goods/services, e.g. values, norms, and customs; intellectual goods, e.g. ideas, abstract concepts, names, and terminologies. in the light of the above, obikeze (2011) pens down that technology is any human-made or culture-generated devices, formulations or organisations that may be used for the purpose of producing or creating needed goods and services. to express this in another way: technology refers to the knowledge, technical skills and resources available in a particular community and the environment, which the community occupies, and is used to meet its needs in order to ensure its sustainable development. the definition of technology given in 2 above, then, should consider this indigenous perspective. 5.6 technology education confused with other subject fields 5.6.1 technology education and engineering education the national center for engineering and technology education proposes that technology education should follow design as conceptualised in engineering (asunda & hill, 2007, 3). the fact that the procedural terminology used in technology education and engineering education is the same, e.g. formulate a problem, generate alternatives, analyse and evaluate (eggert cited in williams, 2011, 398), does not mean that technology education and engineering education are the same (kelly & kellam, 2008). engineering education intensely depends on the body of knowledge from science and mathematics (williams, 2011); if engineeringbased design is adopted 100 percent in technology education, it means that learners should be taught a considerable amount of science and mathematics. science and mathematics are used only partially in technology education when needed, and this affords all learners the opportunity to learn technology. engineering design makes use of mathematical analysis whereas technology education makes more use of conceptual design (williams, 2011:399). 5.6.2 technology education and educational technology the use of the name ‘technology’ instead of technology education impresses upon the reader that technology education is synonymous with computer technology or information and communication technology (volk & dugger, 2005). i vouch for the use of technology education. technology education is a school subject intended to promote technological literacy in learners and to qualify them as engineers, artisans, technicians, and so on. educational technology, however, is the study of the facilitation of learning with the aim of making learning meaningful to learners by creating, using and managing appropriate technological processes and resources (dugger & naik, 2001). thus, educational technology is about technology in education (dugger & naik, 2001:32), and is not technology education in the slightest. teachers of all subjects, including technology education, should incorporate technology in their teaching (al-ammary, 2012). another way to distinguish between technology education and educational technology is by key words or phrases. the national educational technology standards for students related to educational technology include key words such as use of technology, media, multimedia, hardware and software (dugger & naik, 2001:32). technology education, on the other hand, uses key words such as design, creativity and critical thinking, solutions and investigation. however, both the literature on technology education and that on educational technology use the term technological literacy, which actually adds to the misunderstanding of technology education. some of the key words listed above are also used in both technology education 138 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) and educational technology, but signify different things for different intentions. for instance, design in educational technology may denote the design of a lesson, which incorporates technology, whereas it can signify a much more sophisticated way of designing solutions to technological problems in technology education. petrina (2003:64) refutes the notion of technology education and educational technology being synonymous, basing his argument on their evolution from the 1920th industrial education and audiovisual education (petrina, 2003:65). industrial education aimed to provide working class children with knowledge, skills and values that would enable them to survive the effects of industrialisation. audio-visual education, on the other hand, was a teacher education subject aimed to equip women with the necessary knowledge, skills and values to integrate mass communication technology, namely cinema and radio, into their teaching. according to petrina, international technology and engineering education association is in the process of promoting standards for technological literacy, similar to international society for technology education, which promotes standards for technology literacy. he suggests that both international technology education and engineering education association and international society for technology education are caught up in theoretical differences, when the masses’ observation of indifference is informed by practice. however, petrina switches to synonymising technology education with educational technology by acknowledging the conflation by the national teachers association and american federation of teachers of technology education with educational technology. the main thrust of the technology education-equals-educational technology argument is that the practices of both are information communication based, and so “when it comes down to it, te and et, teachers are technology teachers” (petrina, 2003, 70), wherein it stands for information technology, te for technology education and et for educational technology. this is unfortunate, as naming educational technology teachers technology education teachers, has the potential to add to the confusion about what technology education is. educational technology teachers teach about the integration of technology in teaching, whereas technology education teachers teach technology. the fact that petrina (2003, 70) concedes, “granted, et may be a subset of te” is sufficient to acknowledge differences between technology education and educational technology – educational technology is but one of the specialised fields of technology education career-wise, but it is not technology education. i vouch for the distinction between these two. having said this, i also acknowledge converging lines of technology education and educational technology, namely, technology education, like any other subject, needs educational technology for pedagogical purposes in order to enhance technology education’s teaching and learning. technology education also contributes the technologies that can be integrated in teaching and learning. much of what happens in the technology education workshop is taught through educational technology as an aid for teaching and learning as stated above; for instance, when cutting (cold metal drop saw, power hacksaw, and jigsaw), shaping (wood lathe, metal working lathe, and milling machine), joining (welding, drill press, and horizontal drill), finishing (finisher, and sanders), and for computer-aided drawing. 5.6.3 technology education and science education scholars tend to use the terms technoscience and technology as science loosely (davies, 1997), suggesting that technology and science are synonymous. although technology and science lie very close to, and complement, each other, they are not the same thing. they have grown 139 gumbo addressing the factors responsible for the misunderstanding of technology education ... so close that they are often thought of as the same thing. this misunderstanding adds to the thinking that technology education teachers and learners are simply doing science education. the differences between technology education and science education can further be understood by dichotomising technology and science. for example, technology designs new products that did not exist before and creates successful artefacts and systems to meet people’s wants and needs. on the other hand, science explores existing phenomena to attain new knowledge and pursues understanding for its own sake; technology creates effective, efficient, within-acceptable tolerances solutions; whereas science pursues truth, accuracy and the ideal; technology is need-/want-driven; whereas science is curiosity-driven (herschbach, 2001). davies (1997) illustrates the lines of divergence and convergence between technology and science as follows: • technology as applied science view: technological capability grows out of scientific knowledge, and the historical nature of technology takes little or no account of science. designers, on the other hand, are open-minded and borrow other knowledges from other sources in their pursuit of solutions, e.g. science has a tendency to depend heavily on technology for both ideas and apparatus. • demarcationist view: science and technology are independent, with differing goals, methods and outcomes, but it is practically unimaginable that technologists and scientists should engage in different research and development projects. • materialist view: historically, technology enjoys precedence over science, e.g. experience with tools, instruments and other artefacts, whereas it should also be noted that most modern technology is deliberately scientific, as it embraces continual formal study and empirical investigation. • interactionist view: theory and practice do not always go together; many scientists claim higher status for their conceptual frameworks, while engineers and designers are more pragmatic, and dismiss the abstractness of science. on the other hand, technology and science engage in a two-way interaction because scientists and technologists learn from one another in mutually beneficial ways. • indistinguishable view: scientists feel that this view threatens their field because it dilutes its purity, when modes of thinking between these two have fundamental differences. however, the role played by technology and science in modern times in research and development overcomes any strict distinction between the two. 5.6.3 technology education and technical vocational education and training technology education started as vocational training and the influence of industry on it has been, and is still, too strong (sanders, 2003). vocational education entails a planned series of learning experiences, whose specific objective is to prepare individuals for gainful employment as semi-skilled workers or sub-professionals in recognised occupations, and in new and emerging occupations. over time, vocational education has come to be known as apprenticeship training, vocational education, industrial arts, technical education, technical/ vocational education, occupational education, technical vocational education and training and career and technical education (maclean & lai, 2011). technical vocational education and training is a labour-market relevant programme, which includes work-based components such as apprenticeships (unesco, 2011, 11). technical vocational education and training refers to the “aspects of educational process 140 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) involving, in addition to general education, the study of technologies and related sciences; as well as the acquisition of practical skills, attitudes, understanding, knowledge relating to occupations in various sectors of economic and social life” (unesco, 2011:4). technical vocational education and training is also understood according to unesco (2011:4): as an integral part of general education; a means of preparing for occupational fields and for effective participation in the world of work; an aspect of lifelong learning and a preparation for responsible citizenship; an instrument for promoting environmentally sound sustainable development; and a method of facilitating poverty alleviation. technical vocational education and training systems are built to promote personal, social, civic and economic development in the country (unesco, 2015, 6). however, both technology education and vocational education make a valuable contribution towards the building of a technological workforce. in this regard, sanders (2003, 182) argues that those who deny the existence of a relationship between technology education and vocational education are in denial, considering the fact that the fundamental purpose of technological literacy is to contribute to the economy and workforce. 5.7 names of academic associations names of some associations or conferences can also cloud the understanding of technology education. an example is the international society for technology in education. this name reads “technology in education”, not “of technology education”; international society for technology education is an association for educational technology. however, it is easier to see the difference in the names of other associations and conferences, such as the south african international conference in educational technology, international science, mathematics and technology education conference, southern african association for research in mathematics, science and technology education, and the international technology and engineering educators association. 6. an adapted meaningful learning in technology education framework the discussion under sections 4 and 5 suggest a review of the meaningful learning in technology education framework as an attempt to contribute to the understanding of technology education. the reviewed framework is presented in figure 2. this reviewed meaningful learning in technology education still acknowledges the influence of engineering education on the design. however, it elevates technology education and thus adds “process” to “design” to make it more befitting, as it is applied in technology education. in figure 2, the centring of the learner in attempts to define and understand technology education is maintained, together with the influence of context in addressing problems that are related to authentic contexts. explaining technology education needs a systems thinking approach, which is not only limited to exploring its meaning through its aspects or relating to engineering education only, but also to other subjects, especially those that it is being confused with, in addition to engineering education, namely educational technology, science education and technical vocational education and training. technology education is also better understood by taking into account other external factors such as those discussed in this article. amongst these are alternative knowledge forms. specifically, in this article, the focus has been on 141 gumbo addressing the factors responsible for the misunderstanding of technology education ... indigenous knowledge/technology as a form of alternative knowledge. a framework explaining technology education that does not intentionally give recognition to indigenous knowledge systems suffers linearity and incompleteness, and can thus, be perceived as perpetuating the colonial agenda. the pragmatic and constructivist paradigms are accommodative of an indigenous paradigm as expressed through what these paradigms purport to achieve in a learning situation – learning as a social enterprise, which encapsulates collaborative problemsolving, team work, group and cooperative learning, active learning and construction of knowledge – the list goes on. figure 2: adapted meaningful learning in technology education   technology engineering design learner learning systems thinking (considerations of factors impacting on the understanding of technology education) c on te xt ua l le ar ni ng an d pr ob le m ba se d in st ru ct io n c on si de ra tio n of l ea rn er a nd h is /h er te ch no lo gi ca l k no w le dg e as sh ap ed b y cu ltu re a nd b ac kg ro un d pr oj ec tba se d te ac hi ng other subject fields other knowledges & factors e ng in ee ri ng e du ca tio n, e du ca tio na l t ec hn ol og y, sc ie nc e e du ca tio n, t ec hn ic al v oc at io na l e du ca tio n an d t ra in in g consideration of other knowledge forms, e.g. indigenous knowledge systems, and factors, such as internet search results, names of academic associations, etc. constructivist theory to learning pragmatic or experimentation figure 2: adapted meaningful learning in technology education 7. closing thoughts this article has addressed the factors that contribute towards the misunderstanding of technology education. the article clarified the confusion about technology education, which comes through subject fields that lie close to it, namely, engineering education, educational technology, science education and technical vocational education and training. the fact that these cited subjects are “camouflaged” mistakenly and cryptically as technology education created the need to explain their lines of convergence with technology education. most importantly, it was shown that technology education is not engineering education, educational technology, science education or even technical vocational education and training. the main contribution of this study lies in the modified meaningful learning in technology education that helps to clear the confusion in question and expand the understanding of technology education. in addition to the subjects related to or lying closer to technology education, this study has identified additional factors. going forward, technology education should not be 142 perspectives in education 2018: 36(1) narrowly explained as that contributes towards its misunderstanding. in addition, it should be explained from frameworks that make room for other knowledge forms and contexts. references al-ammary, j. 2012. educational technology: a way to enhance 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https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6091-675-5_8 https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6091-675-5_8 _hlk524832433 _hlk524832021 29 teaching social justice: reframing some common pedagogical assumptions danya davis university of the witwatersrand melissa steyn university of the witwatersrand drawing on scholarship in critical pedagogy, this article speaks to the debate about pedagogical approaches within social justice education (sje). the article addresses itself to privileged positionality within the context of university-based sje, with a specific focus on race and whiteness. as a conceptual piece, it addresses some key considerations when working with liberatory pedagogies towards conscientising people from dominant positionalities, challenging some pedagogical assumptions that have achieved virtual common sense status. it indicates that we should reframe student resistance, cautions about uncritical use of dialogue and student experience in methodologies, and problematizes the advocacy of safety as a prerequisite for sje. we end by outlining the reasons why firmly challenging students, though uncomfortable and controversial, may be necessary. key words: social justice education, whiteness, pedagogy, critical pedagogy, resistance, dialogue, student experience, race, safety, discomfort . as in other parts the world where societies are redressing entrenched inequity and historical injustice, the context of post-apartheid south africa is an important site for engaging with the pedagogical challenges of educating young people to develop subjectivities that embrace the principles of a just society (fuentes, chanthongthip & rios, 2010; nagda, gurin & lopez, 2003). while many educators would agree with such a contention, contestation surrounds questions of how to achieve this goal. this article addresses itself to the difficult question of developing a social justice orientation among those of privileged positionality in university-based social justice education (sje).1 with a specific focus on race and whiteness, the article problematizes some widely held pedagogical assumptions in sje, suggesting that, if we take the systemic nature of social injustice seriously, we may need a clearer stance on positioning’s that benefit from oppression. this, in turn, indicates that we should reframe student resistance, the uncritical use of dialogue and student experience in methodologies, and rethink our virtually taken-for-granted espousal of the notion of ‘safety’ as a prerequisite for sje – at least in the way it currently plays itself out in reports of teaching practice. we end by outlining the reasons why firmly challenging students, though uncomfortable and controversial, may be necessary. conceptual foundations this article speaks to this debate about pedagogical approaches within sje. as a conceptual piece, it addresses some key considerations when working with liberatory pedagogies towards conscientising people from dominant positionalities, challenging some pedagogical assumptions that have achieved virtual common sense status. it assumes that critical theory has a place in sje, a position that is not held across the board, and is a point of contention in the area of higher education in south africa (jansen, 2009). various approaches and pedagogies, offering contesting views, are being developed to address the challenges of how best to engage young people from different sides of historical and current social divides. we think, for example, of pedagogy for the privileged (curry-stevens, 2005, 2007, 2010), pedagogy for the oppressor (allen, 2002, 2009; schapiro, 2001), post-conflict pedagogy (jansen, 2008, 2009), pedagogy of discomfort (boler 1999, boler & zembylas, 2003), and decolonising pedagogy (tejeda, 2008). many of these pedagogies draw on the learning’s from critical multiculturalism (steinberg, 2009), 30 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 critical whiteness studies (kincheloe, steinberg, rodriguez and chennault, 2000), and critical race theory (ladson-billings, 1997; leonardo, 2009). historically, an underlying assumption in the field of sje is that oppressed people are the key audience, as explored in the highly influential work of paulo freire, pedagogy for the oppressed. recent times have seen a shift in focus with the recognition that the people who derive privilege from oppression, that is, those in dominant positionalities, also need conscientising (allen, 2009; goodman, 2001; jansen, 2009). while all these pedagogies are concerned with how to bring students and learners to develop a value system that takes justice, democratic values, freedom, and the suffering of others seriously, a crucial point of difference is the centrality that should be afforded to naming and confronting power differentials both within and beyond the classroom. we take as the theoretical foundation of our pedagogical argument freire’s (1970) frame that structural oppression and inequality result in ‘oppressed’ and ‘oppressor’ groups with related internalised inferiority and superiority. we contend that hegemonic identities develop within dominant positionalities along axes of difference; that access to power and privilege is often determined by individuals’ proximity to whiteness, heterosexuality, masculinity, ablebodiedness, middleclassness, etc. (steyn, 2010), and that people from dominant groups often share certain oppressor traits (goodman, 2001), including (dys)consciousness (king, 1991) of the social relations from which they benefit. as people are very rarely only oppressed or only oppressors, however, their overall access to power depends on factors that are interdependent (leonardo, 2009) and intersectional (yuval-davis, 2006) within social formations. while we address ourselves only to the axis of race in this article, it is important to note “the complex interplay between oppressed and privileged identities that can be a part of the same individual” (munin & speight, 2010:263). we assert the need to acknowledge and teach about hegemonic identities, power, privilege and oppression (giroux, 2011). our contention is that there are limitations in pedagogies that focus on learning about the others’ realities, worldviews, experiences, life histories, vulnerabilities, and promoting empathy and forgiveness, but do not ask for direct engagement with the way in which social dynamics shape us through unequal power relations, and with what these dynamics enable and foreclose. a corollary of this view is that different learning processes may be required for those in dominant and non-dominant positions. learning to claim power, as opposed to learning to let go of unearned privilege and the unilateral operation of power, are not identical. only if both sides are doing their own work – “white race work” and “black race work” (erasmus, 2010:397) – can we bridge the divides. this is not achieved through empathy alone, but also through developing solidarity (delgado, 1997). ‘oppressor’ pedagogy: explaining the use of the term our position follows from understanding race as a form of oppression. race cannot be construed solely as neutral difference; it is the operation of power on difference and results in oppression. race was created to justify colonialism, exploitation and slavery (leonardo, 2009:124), and much of the structural damage created in the name of colonialism and apartheid remains intact. while white people’s social locations intersect with other social formations (gender, class, sexuality, ability, etc.), resulting in different access to overall privilege in society, all white people benefit from systemic whiteness (leonardo, 2009:121). whites remain at the top of the racial hierarchy or pigmentocracy (bonilla-silva, 2004:229). it is no doubt more comfortable for many of us to use the term ‘privileged’, rather than ‘oppressor’ in talking about dominant positionalities. it is less offensive to dominant groups and therefore less likely to trigger defensive behaviour. we argue, however, that the term ‘privileged’ may be problematic in that it focuses on the symptoms of oppression instead of the cause, naming the effects and benefactors of oppression without naming the agents (leonardo, 2009:76-77). in line with critical pedagogy, we maintain that being an oppressor is related to the positioning that benefits from oppression, rather than actions that individuals take. even those oppressor group members that fight against oppression, by this logic, can be considered oppressors (allen & rossatto, 2009:165). we are therefore advocating an approach that raises awareness of positionality and the inevitable implication of individuals within such social arrangements. contrary to condemning one to helplessness and hopelessness, such an understanding offers an individual 31davis & steyn — teaching social justice: reframing some common pedagogical assumptions the tools to develop a praxis that is ultimately hopeful and self-affirming (delgado, 1997; giroux, 2011; munin & speight, 2010). framing resistance educators working in the field of sje will certainly be familiar with the sometimes vehement opposition to course material expressed by white students. encountering resistance is a central feature of sje; it “... frames the pedagogical challenge” (rich & cargile, 2004:361), and should be expected. as allen (2002:29) states: “the critical educator can assume that those from oppressor groups will not readily divest themselves of their views of themselves and others”. according to boler (1999:191), it represents a deconstruction of their identity; their beliefs, culture, values and overall map of the world. it complicates their sense of self, ways of being and knowing, their relationships (jansen, 2008:71) as well as their understanding of the past, present, and future. people resist oppressor labels (allen, 2004:130, bonillasilva & embrick, 2006:21), want to be seen as non-racist (dlamini, 2002:59; rains, 2000:94) and have a deep desire for innocence (steyn, 2001:97). in essence, we avoid the pain of consciousness (leonardo, 2009:177). white people get caught up in intention rather than effect (goodman, 2001:33) in protection of self rather than promotion of social justice (russo, 2001:210) and in solidifying inequitable power relations (diangelo & sensoy, 2009). problematizing the status quo challenges the foundation of their reality (steyn, 2001:98), and even their perceived freedom (freire 1970/1993:18; boler & zembylas, 2003:360). given all of this, it is understandable that students resist. the issue, however, is not that they resist, but that their resistance represents problematic thinking that is acted out in problematic ways. for educators, resistance is often taxing and vexed – should it be avoided, minimised, or engaged? if resistance is viewed negatively, it is understandable that educators go out of their way to avoid it. often resistance and learning are viewed as mutually exclusive, but while this is a possibility, it is not inevitable. even when students are not receptive in class, it does not mean they are not learning; their opinions may change in the days, weeks, months and years that follow. bell hooks (1994:42) relates: “i have found through the years that many of my students who bitch endlessly while they are taking my classes contact me at a later date to talk about how much that experience meant to them, how much they learned”. as rich and cargile (2004:363) remind us: “for some students, the transformation may begin during class. for others, perhaps, the seeds have at least been planted”. educators may also fear that they lack the skills to engage resistance in useful ways, or the effect that student outbursts may have on the class or on their own well-being, or even that they are being negatively received. these fears, though understandable, are not useful, especially if out of the fear of causing discomfort for students or themselves, educators change their pedagogies by either avoiding hard truths or telling half truths. hooks (1994:42) affirms: “in my professional role i had to surrender my need for immediate affirmation of successful teaching (even though some reward is immediate) and accept that students may not appreciate the value of a certain stand point or process straightaway”. resistance is not ‘not engaging’; in fact, resistance is often how white students engage. white student resistance is often deeply entrenched in problematic white discourses and white privilege (rich & cargile, 2004:360). warren and hytten (2004:336) explain: “the jump to defensiveness and a pre-established list of complications and excuses is a production of whiteness ...”. mckinney and norton (2008:200) encourage educators to “[re-conceptualize] resistance more productively as a meaning-making activity which offers powerful teaching moments”, to work resistance into one’s pedagogy instead of avoiding methodologies that result in resistant behaviour. mckinney and van pletzen (2004:169) have found that “resistance does not necessarily prevent productive engagement”. pedagogies should therefore not be changed to shelter students: resistance necessitates engagement rather than avoidance. nevertheless, student resistance does complicate common methods, so these need to be rethought with whiteness-based-resistance in mind. problematizing dialogue and personal experience as methodologies experience and dialogue-based pedagogies are widely employed in sje.2 however, the use of personal experience can encourage abuse of classroom freedom (hooks, 1994:15) and restrict a structural analysis 32 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 (hemson, moletsane & muthukrishna, 2001:95). hooks (1994:81) cautions that white male students often claim authority of experience – they expect their experience to be the centre of discussions. similarly, bell and golombisky (2004:320) comment on their “unwillingness or inability to validate subjectivities other than their own”. allen and rossatto (2009:170-171) highlight the problem with using experiences from oppressor groups: how do we use critical pedagogy with these privileged teacher credential students when they have not lived close to the traumatizing effects of, as well as daily struggles against, colonization and structural oppression? should we base instruction primarily on their experiences when their lives are so detached from the realities of the oppressed? uncritical sharing of experiences may therefore not lead to transformation (allen, 2004:133), calling into question the focus on equality of voice in a classroom (allen & rossatto, 2009:175). the question, according to russo, is not whether the subaltern can speak, but rather “whether privileged white groups are willing to listen” (russo, 2001:208). listening therefore needs to be promoted (russo, 2001:209; warren & hytten, 2004:332), taught and learned (hooks, 1994:150), and worked at (allen & rossatto, 2009:175). similarly, dialogue seldom occurs on equal grounds (allen, 2004:132): it is “fraught with difficulty” (warren & hytten, 2004:332) and is “never truly open” (allen, 2002:29-30). freire questioned whether dialogue between oppressed and oppressors is even possible (freire, 1970/1993:69; allen, 2002:28). authors argue that the communication and contribution to dialogue by white students tend to be entrenched in whiteness (allen, 2004:132; warren & hytten, 2004:332), and that it is consequently unsurprising when “[w]hite educators and students act ... to ensure that such critical dialogues are quashed” (allen, 2004:132133). leonardo (2009:116) gives an explanation of this point with reference to white racial knowledge: when dialogue is without tension, whites are willing to enter racial dialogue ... when discussions become tense or uncomfortable and people of colour show some anger or outrage, whites’ racial resolve wanes and opting out of race dialogue becomes convenient. it becomes too difficult, too much of a strain, and too dangerous ... people of colour do not enjoy the same choice. dialogue without the humility of whites is ineffective (allen, 2004:133). students from oppressor groups lack humility when they project ignorance onto others and never perceive their own (freire, 1970/1993:71); and when they “focus more on the colonized mentality of the oppressed than on their own colonizing mentality” (allen, 2002:28). allen (2002:29) explains: “... it is sometimes the oppressed who lack humility. however, the more typical and destructive scenario is for the oppressor to be the one who denies, dismisses, denigrates, and belittles the oppressed in dialogue.” ideally, humility for white students would be a prerequisite for dialogue, but since this is not always possible, educators must rather intervene in dialogue when students lack humility. while this may be met with claims of being silenced, such feedback should also be examined critically as claiming to feel silenced may itself be a strategy of keeping marginalised students occupied with their concerns (chinnery, 2008) and thus avoiding their “race work.” in sum, employing experience and dialogue in sje is both useful and potentially problematic. for these tools to be used effectively, deep power inequalities within the classroom need to be factored into practice. reframing classroom safety it is common for participants and educators to expect and promote a frame of safety when engaging social justice topics, and that safety should not be jeopardised (jansen, 2009:152). at the heart of safety is a respect for students’ emotions (adams et al., 2007:29-30; leonardo, 2009:179). it has been named a requirement for growth, empathy and trust (goodman, 2001:169) and a prerequisite for certain pedagogies. often, the taken-for-granted assumption is that transformation will not occur in the absence of safety, yet, ironically when people expect comfort and to not have their views challenged it may actually foreclose the possibility of growth. not all educators support its uncritical promotion, therefore, arguing for a balance between safety and challenging students (adams et al., 2007:30, chinnery, 2008; goodman, 2001:169). 33davis & steyn — teaching social justice: reframing some common pedagogical assumptions in the first place, the assumption that the classroom is ‘normally’ safe is dubious, because for many students of colour it is not (chinnery, 2008; hooks, 1994:39), and as explored above, classroom dialogues are often problematic. pertinently, macdonald, gebhuza, bologna and morreira (2007:70) ask: “safe from what or whom?” the marginalised students’ need for safety, i.e. not being dominated, seems incompatible with the oppressor students’ desire to not be challenged. when safety is promised, students often imagine being protected from feeling pain, conflict, discomfort and challenge. we discuss below how promoting this type of environment is at odds with transformation and justice. while students from oppressor groups are likely to avoid pain, this type of learning can be painful, and though unpleasant, painful does not always imply harmful (ron scapp in hooks, 1994:154). hooks (1994:154) reminds that there is “integrity in grappling with difficult material”, and certainly, the pain may be justified: “for white students, it should be painful to hear that the white race has colonized and constructed a world after its own image” (leonardo, 2009:123). jensen (2005:94) has also found that the process of transformation for white people inevitably involves pain. safety cannot be construed as the absence of conflict, either, as this is inevitable, necessary, and a useful part of the sje process (adams et al., 2007; allen & rossatto, 2009; berlak & moyenda, 2007; rich & cargile, 2004). engaging with passion, as hooks (1994:39) points out, has the potential for confrontation and conflict. conflict is an opportunity for new thinking and growth (hooks, 1994:113) and the concomitant trauma and crisis are often a necessary step in the journey towards transformation (berlak and moyenda, 2007:215). adams et al. (2007) see the conflict from the collision of white students’ guilt and students of colour’s anger as inevitable; accordingly, this conflict is to be expected, students are warned about it and when it occurs it is worked through (tatum in adams et al., 2007:406). similarly, rich and cargile (2004:363) take the stance that white identity transformation is facilitated by conflict. they write about the need to ‘invite conflict’ to create a more equitable community, instead of maintaining what they refer to as a false sense of community (ibid:354). bell and golombisky (2004:313) note that there is a racial component to conflict avoidance, linking conflict avoidance to race and class privilege. it is therefore problematic to promise safety, given its dichotomous relationship with conflict – and the essential role that conflict plays in shifting students. similarly, safety is too often mistaken for comfort. we should not confuse “experiencing tension or confusion with not being safe” (adams et al., 2007:54). the assumption that education should be comfortable is in any case questionable (boler & zembylas, 2003:134), as is the use of easy and comfortable methods to achieve radical transformation (allen & rossatto, 2009:175-76). still, when people feel discomfort they are likely to resist and withdraw (ibid:55). adams et al. strive to prevent this reaction by encouraging students to identify their discomfort and frame it as a cue to engage instead of a signal to retreat. for white students, safety may further imply not having their input challenged and intervened upon, yet, educators who refuse to intervene after racist or sexist comments (dlamini, 2002:57), or allow the recentring of oppressor focussed emotions, fail the class. moyenda (in berlak et al., 2007:214) explains the situation aptly: “a just environment must deal with the abuse of that safe environment. your classroom should not be a safe haven for the racist mentality”. rather, participants “need to feel confident that facilitators will intervene” if necessary (adams, 2007:30). moyenda points out that notions of safety are often incompatible with experiences of justice: “while you provide a safe environment for exploring an issue x, you don’t provide a just one” (moyenda, in berlak et al., 2007:214). similarly, leonardo (2009:178-179) notes that more harmonious environments neglect to critique feelings. hooks (1994:31) also problematizes the expectations of happy multiculturalism; implying a link to injustice, she maintains that it is the “stuff of colonizing fantasies”. in sum, promising safety sets up the false promise of a pain-free, conflict-free, comfortable and unchallenged classroom experience. such a promise would likely promote false expectations and more resistance when such expectations are not met, and is simply inconsistent with transformation and justice. leonardo (2009:89-90) explains how whites’ need for safe spaces is linked to a lack of real engagement and is incompatible with creating solidarity: 34 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 as long as whites ultimately feel a sense of comfort with racial analysis, they will not sympathize with the pain and discomfort they have unleashed on racial minorities for centuries. solidarity between whites and non-whites will proceed at the reluctant pace of the white imagination, whose subjects accept the problem of racism without an agent. we therefore argue that frames of discomfort and “unsafety” (macdonald et al., 2007:73), though counterintuitive, are more accurate and more productive. as macdonald et al. (2007:72) argue, there is already a misleading “paradoxical ‘unsafety’ located in the metaphoric ‘safe space’”. we rather need to pre-frame “unsafety” and discomfort for learners to “embrace, not to avoid, the uneasiness of participation, the shocks of awareness and the dangers of vulnerability” (ibid). even as emotions and comments are respected, problematic ones need to be challenged, and this challenge will not feel safe. if safety is incompatible with transformation, justice and the need to intervene; if pain, conflict and discomfort are part of the process – and feel anything but safe – the false dichotomy that sees challenging students and supporting them as mutually exclusive needs to be exposed. challenging students for social justice there are many reasons why educators believe students should not be firmly challenged.3 one is that educators must not choose sides, which is linked to the myth of neutrality (hooks, 1994:37; boler, 1999:179; adams et al., 2007:112; derman-sparks & phillips, 1997:24). yet, ultimately, it is crucial that educators defend social justice, and not taking sides can result in favouring oppression (dlamini, 2002:57). sje involves risks to students and educators,4 and it is possible that a more clearly committed pedagogy will increase those. as moyenda (in berlak et al., 2007:216) maintains, such risks are “part of the game if we are really committed to not harbouring a racist mentality”. and how do we even estimate the risk to society if students who are in a position to reproduce oppressor positionalities are not challenged? the threat to the educator is influenced by her or his own positional power. a critical look at the power differences inherent in the average classroom is required, asking, “who is teaching whom and under what conditions?” (dlamini, 2002:64). johnson, rich and cargile (2008:130) found that educators’ race has an impact on how much they can challenge students, and francis, hemson, mphambukeli and quin (2003:142) found it significant even when race is not the topic being discussed. one of the problems is that academia does not generally acknowledge that academics and teachers have bodies (ahmed, 2009; hooks, 1994). it is a privilege of whiteness and maleness when educators are able to forget that their bodies have meaning. johnson et al. (2008:132) describe the differential treatment educators are subject to: [i]t is important to explore how pedagogical strategies for teaching antiracism must differ based on faculty embodiment. for example, teachers of colour are treated as ‘inherently’ knowledgeable and self-interested when they teach about racism. conversely, white teachers may be viewed as ‘more objective,’ and will rarely be accused of ‘pushing an agenda’. educators of colour often experience resistance linked to their racial position (dlamini, 2002:63-64). dlamini (2002:64) writes: “how do i share power with those already in power?” it is likely that educators with more overall positional power with respect to race, gender, age, tenure, prominent status, wellrecognised work, etc., will likely have an easier time implementing more challenging methods. taking on the risk while educators experience different levels of risk and resistance when challenging students, students ultimately ought to be challenged. the idea that south african educators must be sensitive (hemson, 2006:35) may come with the cost of avoiding difficult and controversial issues related to power imbalances (francis & hemson, 2007:47). francis and hemson (2007:47) state that challenging oppression requires “challenging authority, naming privilege, emphasising the power relations that exist between social groups, listening to people one has previously ignored ...”. sometimes educators avoid challenging students because they fear that if students are pushed they will not listen. along these lines, jansen (2009:153) stresses the importance of listening to oppressor students, he states that listening to oppressors’ problematic inherited 35davis & steyn — teaching social justice: reframing some common pedagogical assumptions knowledge “signals respect, not agreement”. however, unless educators, having listened, also challenge such problematic positions they unintentionally validate them; it is important to consider that, given the depth of resistant ideologies, discourses and myths tied to whiteness, white students enter the classroom poorly equipped to listen (allen, 2004:133). at the core of allen’s argument for a more exacting pedagogy is the presupposition that challenging students from oppressor positionalities to become more human is justifiable and does not represent oppression (freire, 1970/1993:38-39; allen, 2004:133). many educators fear being hypocritical by curbing students while teaching about anti-oppression. for allen, there is a double standard in the classroom and a justifiable reason to challenge students. the pedagogical frame that he promotes is radical love,5 where challenging and loving occur simultaneously. similarly, leonardo (2009:123) maintains that educators should be at once aggressive and tender; he “tread(s) tenderly on the topic of race at the same time that i aggressively analyse it”. mckinney (2005:387) describes this dilemma when the values encouraged in the south african policy on higher education and the country’s constitution clash with student contributions. however, it is helpful to realise that demanding methods are ultimately less about pushing new agendas on students than stretching students to see what is already there, challenging them to uncover what they have been socialised to repress: one idea i find helpful to keep in mind is that the problem is less about ‘awareness’ and more about ‘repression’ and ‘denial’. white people already have a keen sense that society is structured unevenly. how they deal with that fact is really the question (allen, 2010:personal communication). adopting an unflinching approach is therefore about challenging students to see what they already know to be there. bram fischer (in passop, 2012) once asserted: “the glaring injustice is there for all who are not blinded by prejudice to see”. this uncovering is at the heart of creating dissonance, “highlighting the inconsistency between egalitarian values and negative attitudes” (pedersen, walker & wise, 2005:23), and an essential part of facilitating the unlearning of racism (moyenda in berlak et al., 2007:211). rich and cargile (2004:355) have come to a similar conclusion: “we believe that it is our job to expose the rift and rupture the silence that exists around issues of race”. while creating dissonance may be uncomfortable, we must not forget the urgent nature of this work (see kincheloe, steinberg, rodriguez & chennault, 2000; allen, 2004:133; curry-stevens, 2010:67; leonardo, 2009:90). conclusion this article explored the rationale for revising some commonly held sje assumptions which, unwittingly, assume a white audience and prioritise its comfort. specifically, we framed resistance as something to be engaged rather than avoided; urged an ethos that holds a functional discomfort rather than safety; advised the use of dialogue and personal experience only when educators are willing and able to intervene when dominant students engage in problematic ways; and invited educators to simultaneously challenge and support in firm yet tender ways to help students from dominant positionalities understand the nature of oppression, its prevalence in society at individual, structural, ideological and institutional levels, and their role in these formations. if educators want to create just societies it is likely that such a pedagogy is required; one that speaks truth to power and challenges students in dominant positionalities to own their role in either perpetuating or challenging oppression, inviting them to become allies to social justice. endnotes 1. this article is based on the first author’s master thesis (davis, 2012). 2. benefits include: first-hand knowledge (goodman, 2001:59); potential of lessening students denial of the effects of racism (hemson, moletsane & muthukrishna, 2001:93); illuminating academic material (hooks, 1994:21); creating common humanity (jansen, 2008:72); countering white students “fragmented consciousness” (leonardo, 2009:174); enhancing the chances of student effectiveness 36 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 through validating their experience; and making “the connections between personal experience and relevant theory” (francis & hemson 2007a:47). 3. these include that the decision to change should be up to student (adams et al., 2007:18); that the process must be student-led so students develop the skill of thinking critically on their own (tejeda, 2008:30); a believed dichotomy between ‘convincing’ and ‘teaching’ (goodman, 2001:1); and a fear of estranging and alienating students who need it most (curry-stevens, 2010:65-66; jansen, 2009:152). 4. students do “poorly on class assignments, both in terms of understanding the concepts or critiques and completing assignments in a full and timely manner. some even drop the class” (allen & rossatto, 2009:166), they may walk out, cry or feel attacked (dlamini, 2002:57). educators risk getting negative reviews from students, and having their credibility threatened (berlak et al., 2007:216; moyenda in berlak et al., 2007:211), students may dismiss the educator or the entire course (adams et al., 2007:108). educators risk “being seen as deviant or troublesome or unpopular” (francis & hemson, 2007a:47). it is important to note that, given the risks and challenges of this type of work, institutional support is required (moyenda, in berlak et al., 2007:212) 5. allen and rossatto (2009:178) describe radical love as “interventions that help them learn how to not dehumanize themselves and others ... not allowing them to take on the oppressor role in dialogue ... letting them know that if they make a mistake they will still be loved”. references adams m, bell la & griffin p (eds) 2007. teaching for diversity and social justice. 2nd edition. new york and london: routledge. ahmed s 2009. embodying diversity: problems and paradoxes for black feminists. race ethnicity and education, 12(1):41-52. 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research article 2022 40(3): 181-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) the role of higher education institutions in addressing south africa’s reading crisis in view of sustainable development abstract south africa has an enormous reading crisis necessitating discernment of the real pedagogic causes of failure to read in grade 1, and to read english as a second language (esl) with understanding later. in this article will be asked if the phonics approach to initial reading is suited to african learners, and why they have to start reading in two languages simultaneously. the advantages of using the syllabic approach to reading will be indicated, as well as the use of communicative language teaching for learning esl (rather than the form-focused teaching in use), so that learners will be able to benefit from english medium education. higher education institutions are in a position to make a difference, for instance by investigating these issues and influencing policy documents accordingly. keywords: approaches to initial reading; reading crisis; communicative language teaching; ‘straight for english’ schools. 1. introduction higher education institutions (heis) are in a unique position to shape the future of a country by educating and training prospective workers, policymakers and leaders. this article deals specifically with the teachers who educate the country’s learners in the foundation phase (grades r–3). there is an immense responsibility for heis in this field. if academics make mistakes when writing course material for students, as well as policy documents and teachers’ manuals so that learners do not get a good grounding in the foundation phase, the future will be bleak. in this article the present state of education will be evaluated against the united nations’ sustainable development goals (sdgs), in order to probe what the ‘future’ is to which we are heading now. goal 4, concerning education, states that every child should have access to “inclusive and equitable quality education” (un, 2015 – emphasis added). in the article is argued that south african government schools are not heading for quality education, author: dr martha magdalena cronje1 affiliation: 1university of south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i3.12 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(3): 181-196 published: 30 september 2022 received: 04 march 2022 accepted: 08 may 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 1822022 40(3): 182-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) pointing out some problems in the foundation phase (fp) which render quality education for all learners impossible as long as fundamental changes are not made. 2. the reality of education in south africa’s primary schools at present this article will focus on the training of foundation phase teachers to teach non-english learners to read the home language (hl), and also to acquire sufficient english as a second language (esl) in the fp in order for them to read esl well and with understanding, and to benefit from english-medium instruction from grade 4 onwards. more specifically, the article will deal with african township learners (the majority of south african [sa] learners). more than 80% of african grade 4 learners in south africa failed the 2016 progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) test, indicating a lack of “basic reading skills” in the hl, compared to only 4% of learners in 49 other countries who failed the test (howie et al., 2017: 11). the department of basic education (dbe) acknowledged the poor reading results in a recent report on the foundation phase (dbe, 2020). the pirls tests are taken in the hl because the benefit of initial reading in the hl is widely recognised. at the 2012 language-in-education conference in south sudan, one principle was that only when learners have reading competency in the most familiar language, should additional languages be read (norton, 2014: 642). when a learner can read in the hl, those skills can transfer automatically to reading esl (more on this below). the pirls tests underscore the findings of cronje (2021: 1) that, for the last 15 to 20 years, only about 20% of township african learners have learnt to read in grade 1, compared to 80% of basotho learners who learnt to read the hl in grade 1 in the 1990s (cronje, 1997: 77, 89). this information from the 1990s shows that the poor literacy outcomes should not merely be blamed on the african learners or their teachers. the pirls results may indicate that the approaches and strategies teachers are currently using lead to failure. the pirls tests indicate an inability to read the hl. inability to read esl is indicated by other tests, for example, the sacmeq tests of 2007, which showed that about 30% of south african grade 6 learners were still “functionally illiterate in english” (spaull, 2013: 4). some esl research done in 2013 comprised reading comprehension tests for 4 667 grade 5 esl learners from 214 rural schools. the oral reading fluency (orf) of 1 772 of those learners was also tested. it was found that 41% read less than 40 words per minute (wcpm) correctly, with an average of only 17 wcpm, and were considered “non-readers” in english. the comprehension test average of this group was less than 20% (draper & spaull, 2013: 56-72). however, even learners who seem to read english well may understand very little. the caps for esl in the fp prescribes that learners receive a “strong oral foundation” in grade 1 so that they will understand what they read in english later. it states: “children are often able to decode in their additional language, but unable to understand what they read.” (dbe, 2012a: 16). 3. consequences of the reading problems most learners can only pass the lower grades by memorising lessons and pretending to read, which is fostered since preschool (grade r) by instructions such as that learners should pretend to read, adopting a “reading voice”. in grade 1 the teacher should read to the learners (shared reading), then guide groups to read the lesson again, many times, with paired or independent reading later (dbe 2012b: 39, 56). le cordeur (2010: 83-84) mentions basically http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 1832022 40(3): 183-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 cronje the role of higher education institutions in addressing south africa’s reading crisis the same strategies, e.g. teacher modelling and assisted reading, as strategies “to improve reading fluency” in grades 4–6, while assuming that those learners have acquired basic reading skills. it is questionable to prescribe the same strategies for grade 1 learners, who still have to learn to read, as for grade 4–6 learners. the most likely result is that learners learn lessons by heart and are never motivated to read by themselves. why struggle and read slowly, if there are other ways to ‘read’ fluently, as is required? thus learners memorise lessons which they cannot read or understand, or both, impairing future reading at school. according to mlachila and moeletsi (2019: 4-6), approximately half of sa learners do not complete secondary education, and of those who do write the matric examinations, a quarter fail. the authors blame insufficiencies in the lower grades. murray (2016) writes that 25% of students who registered for tertiary education dropped out in their first year, despite programmes to help students transition to tertiary education. however, mlachila and moeletsi (2019: 9) write: “in 2015, the south african government spent about 20% of the budget and 6% of the nation’s gdp on education, exceeding many ssa countries.” (sub-saharan african countries). failure to teach literacy and esl in the fp does not only put certain learners at a disadvantage, but harms south africa as a whole, especially economically and socially. good education can reduce poverty and wage inequalities, making a nation more prosperous (mlachila & moeletsi 2019: 4). spaull and pretorius (2019: 18) also hold that getting reading “right” is essential for “national economic prosperity”, as a country cannot prosper when half its citizens cannot contribute much for lack of foundational skills. south africa probably has the highest percentage of jobless citizens in the world, with the 2021 third-quarter quarterly labour force survey citing an unemployment rate of 34,9% (statistics sa, 2021). significantly, the sustainable development goals see education as an “enabler of upward socioeconomic mobility”, and state as target 4.4 that by 2030 the number of people who have relevant skills, e.g. vocational skills for employment and entrepreneurship, should be increased substantially (un, 2015). perry (2009: 59-60) states another concern, stating, “literacy is a politically loaded activity” that can be “used for domination and control”. according to bamgbose (2000: 1-5), languages can create two distinct classes: the included, knowing the elite language empowering them, and the excluded, who are “second-class citizens”. he sees a lack of literacy as “perhaps the most devastating source of exclusion”, since literacy is a prerequisite for success. this raises the complicated problem of classist discrimination. perry (2009) adds that due to this status division, parents zealously want their children to learn esl, not knowing that an english-only policy is not beneficial for learners who still have to learn reading and esl. below, this article will explore ways in which poor sa learners are kept semi-literate, while pretending to act in their best interest by teaching written english early. 4. aims and objectives of this article the main goal of this article is to inspire heis to do more purposeful empirical research in lower primary schools, especially in township schools. two specific questions are asked: • how should initial reading be taught in african languages as hl? • how should esl be taught at primary school? http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/p0211/p02112ndquarter2021.pdf 1842022 40(3): 184-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) to answer each question, current problems at schools will be investigated, assuming that academics carry a certain responsibility for prescriptions which are detrimental to learners. 5. methodology the methodology for this article is a literature survey, augmented by personal experience during about 20 years of unofficial investigations in foundation phase township classrooms, where the author observed the difficulties faced by learners. 5.1 design section 1: background knowledge on south africa’s reading crisis section 2: the aims and objectives of this article section 3: the responsibility of heis regarding south africa’s reading crisis section 4: the responsibility of heis regarding esl teaching at school section 5: the role of heis regarding south africa’s reading crisis henceforth 6. the responsibility of heis regarding south africa’s reading crisis 6.1 causes of the reading crisis many factors contributing to the poor achievement in reading tests have been mentioned, for example spaull (2016: 7) mentions home background, the quality of teachers and of school management, socio-economic status and historical disadvantage. of these, heis can directly influence only the quality of teachers. fleisch (2008: 32-37) says that the reasons for the crisis cut across economics, politics, health and other sectors, yet comments, “but above all else, reading and math achievement is determined by what teachers and learners do in classrooms”. aitchison (2018) challenges the notion that poverty is at the root of the poor test results: if only 25% of learners could not read, this would be explained by the fact that 25% of south africa’s people live in great poverty; however, 78% of learners cannot read. the notion that all the above factors are equally responsible for the poor literacy results is also challenged by the information that in the 1990s, when resources were not more abundant or teachers better qualified, 80% of grade 1 township learners in the city of welkom learnt to read (cronje, 1997: 77, 89). two key pedagogic causes of the crisis were not mentioned in the literature before 2021: • the phonics approach to initial reading is prescribed for all, although african learners cannot say the letter-sounds the way europeans do, as will be explained. an approach to reading much better suited to african languages is the syllabic approach, which was used until about 1996. • most non-english learners in south africa have to learn reading in two languages simultaneously, their own and english. it is likely that learners are confused by the two sets of letter-sounds as they find it hard to remember the sounds of their five vowels, which seem to sound rather alike to them. most can chant a, e, i, o, u, but cannot read the vowels when single or mixed, unless they know a certain strategy. learning two sets of letter-sounds simultaneously must be perplexing. up to 1995 only the hl was read in grade 1 (cronje 1997: 70). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 1852022 40(3): 185-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 cronje the role of higher education institutions in addressing south africa’s reading crisis learning to read in two languages is largely due to a lesson plan for esl, a dbe document which contradicts the government’s curriculum assessment policy statement (caps) and is enforced on grade 1 teachers. the caps and lesson plan should align, both being dbe documents, but they are opposites, as can be seen in the two sets of extracts below. the caps for esl states that in grade 1 learners should learn english only orally and read only in their hl. 6.2 extracts from caps english first additional language (efal), grades 1–3 fortunately, children can transfer many literacy skills from their home language. when children begin to read and write in their additional language, they already know how to decode in their home language. if they learn phonics in their home language, they do not need to learn sound-spelling relationships all over again in english. it is important that in grade 1 children develop a strong oral foundation in their additional language. otherwise, they will not understand the words they are decoding in english in grade 2 (dbe, 2012a: 16). despite this emphasis on oral esl in grade 1, the lesson plan prescribes much written esl, e.g. 20 new written english words per week as vocabulary, besides other work: 6.3 extracts from grade 1 lesson plan for efal, term 1 week 3: feel, happy, favourite, backpack, carry, school, teacher, listen, excited, classroom. (plus 10 more words, “i like to play”, a 250-word story, and more). page 60: they will start to learn reading and writing in week 3. week 4: playground, ball, throw, bounce, inside (plus 15 more) (dbe, 2019: 59-79). this voluminous lesson plan has 243 pages for term 1, and is enforced by learning facilitators. learners who cannot read and could not attend expensive english crèches, have to learn english as a written language – something impossible. it amounts to stark discrimination against the poor. in the previous two years, the author has challenged academics to indicate where and how the lesson plan was put to the test before it became used as teachers’ manual, but no-one did it. the first lesson plan was written in 2011, consisted of 202 pages, and had 15 new vocabulary words per week. since about 2012, the author saw the old lesson plan at theunissen and brandfort schools, teachers saying they were assessed on its prescriptions. (soon after the beginning of each school year, teachers used to attend a week-long workshop in school time.) at the beginning of 2020, the author saw the new lesson plan being used in bloemfontein: grade 1 learners received an a4 page with 4 big english words every day. 7. the responsibilities of heis regarding initial reading although heis cannot do much about some factors contributing to south africa’s reading crisis, the under-researched pedagogical factors mentioned above can probably be addressed only by heis. spaull, pretorius and mohohlwane (2017: 1) write that linguists acknowledge the importance of learning to read in the home language, yet “reading acquisition in african languages remains under-researched and under-theorized”, adding that a “strong empirical base” is needed to understand initial reading in african languages. however, when wanting to do research in grade 1 classrooms, the author experienced that some universities are not http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 1862022 40(3): 186-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) keen to do empirical research, e.g. up and unisa, the former turning her application down when she insisted on doing empirical research. spaull and pretorius (2019: 2) bewail “the dearth of research on reading in african languages.” yet, despite this dearth, they say the poor test results can be avoided because the knowledge and teaching practices essential for teaching reading “are known and well understood internationally”. their solution is knowledge of letter-sounds, stating, “if these skills are taught methodically and clearly, they can develop quickly, adding that most learners should read a transparent orthography within a year (spaull & pretorius, 2019: 3, 13). yet 80% of learners do not learn to read – thus their ‘solution’ cannot be correct. due to assumptions such as indicated above, the phonics approach is currently prescribed in south africa and deemed the only possible way to start reading. first-hand knowledge about initial reading comes from the author’s unofficial research during about 20 years of assisting in grade 1 township classrooms, first trying phonics, then words on small pieces of paper, which is impractical. phonics cannot work because african languages have only a small number of vowel sounds; some only five. african learners can actually say a letter such as b in only five ways: ba, be, bi, bo and bu (bi pronounced like english bee, but shorter). english speakers add the neutral vowel to b, thinking they say it alone, though b cannot be said alone. however, african languages do not have the neutral vowel, and most learners and some teachers cannot use the neutral vowel for saying lettersounds. due to the prescription that phonics be taught, teachers teach the letter b as bu, and some grade 2 learners were heard trying to read bana as bu-a-n-a, getting nowhere. with the syllabic approach, bana (children) is simply taught as ba-na, and letters are taught in syllables, e.g. ka, la, ta, and not k, l, t alone. learners should also do tests on mixed consonants with -a, to establish letter knowledge (cronje, 2021: 4). the fact that syllables end on vowels means that segmenting in syllables is easy, whereas segmenting in phonemes is quite unnatural in african languages. expecting african learners to say the neutral vowel before they can read is like expecting english learners to say african click sounds before they can read english. the syllabic approach to reading was apparently not mentioned in south african literature, but is mentioned by williams (1998: 71) when writing about malawi and zambia. in recent articles, only de vos, van der merwe and van der mescht (2014: 14) refer to this approach, saying african learners were taught to recognise syllables, not phonemes, adding that some people refer to this method “anecdotally and derogatorily” as the ba-be-bi-bo method. they admit that this procedure may be a sensible response to language structures, “worthy of more research”. schaefer and de vos (2015) report results indicating that the phonics approach is not suitable for african learners. they tested 31 grade 4 isixhosa learners, finding that on average they scored about 90% on syllable segmenting and blending tasks, while their average for phoneme segmenting was only 12%, with two-thirds of learners not getting one answer correct. the authors warn against the assumption that african learners can attain phonological awareness the way english learners do. spaull et al. (2017: 12-16) also report a study indicating learners’ problems with phonics, undertaken by the resep team at stellenbosch university. a number of tests were done by 740 african learners in grade 3, e.g. on letter-sounds (including digraphs), oral reading fluency (orf), and oral reading comprehension. the letter-sound knowledge was low, the average being only 28 letters correct per minute (lcpm). only 25% read at least 40 lcpm, with 25% reading 15 lcpm or less. comprehension scores were also low, even though learners were tested in the hl. almost all the learners read 15–20% of the letter-sounds incorrectly and the authors speculated that the results showed teachers did not http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 1872022 40(3): 187-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 cronje the role of higher education institutions in addressing south africa’s reading crisis allocate enough time to teaching phonics. one may ask whether inefficient teaching is the only conceivable cause for african learners’ low scores in letter-sound tests. other factors may be that some cannot say some letter-sounds, and the fact that mastering the five vowels first is not prescribed by the caps for home languages (dbe, 2012b). yet reading the five vowels correctly is important with african languages, as there are only five and a mistake will probably mean another word and no understanding. however, knowing vowels receives little attention in grade 1 classrooms. the reason is that english has about 20 vowel sounds which are spelled inconsistently, so that little attention to vowels is the correct way to start reading english as hl, but not to start reading african languages. learners can transfer reading skills from the hl to esl, as mentioned in the caps for efal (dbe, 2012a) quoted above. in one study isixhosa learners from two schools, one having isixhosa as language of learning and teaching (lolt) in the foundation phase and the other having english as lolt, were compared. it was found that learners who can read a transparent writing system, such as an african language, can transfer decoding skills more easily than learners first reading english with its opaque orthography (probert & de vos, 2016: 9). as letters and sounds are mapped one-on-one in african languages, learners should learn to read quickly as readers of other transparent languages do (schaefer & de vos, 2015: 5). however, this does not happen in south africa after years of prescribing the phonics approach. with the syllabic approach it is easy to gain automaticity in these languages, as for every consonant (or cluster) there is a small number of possible syllables – five or less. (‘automaticity’ refers to recognising words ‘at a glance’, without sounding them.) 8. how should heis confront the reading crisis? as long as academics do not know more about african languages and learners, heis will not be able to train foundation phase teachers to achieve better results than the current 20% of grade 1 learners learning to read, and 20% having “basic reading skills” in grade 4 (pirls). for example, spaull and pretorius (2019) write about “complex consonant sounds” in african languages such as hl, probably not knowing that hl is a single sound, not a diphthong, just as mpfh and ntlh are not four-letter clusters, because the m and n function as syllables by themselves. the resep concept note (pretorius et al. 2016), compiled for “pre-service and in-service training” of fp teachers, errs in the first place by also advocating learning to read in two languages simultaneously. it says that since south africa has a bilingual education system, learners should become “not only bilingual but also biliterate”, and have to acquire solid literacy skills in their hl as well as in esl from the “very beginning of schooling”. it seems as if they never considered the possibility that it may be confusing to learners. the resep authors (2016: 5) admit that most reading research was done on english, but state they augmented it with research on other “agglutinating languages”, e.g. turkish. the problem is, turkish has final consonants and african languages do not (schaefer & de vos, 2015: 4). rigorous research activities and capacity building are needed, as well as a willingness to question old assumptions. 9. research that seems not to have yielded much improvement an extensive investigation into government schools, started in 2015 in the north-west province, was reported on by taylor et al. (2017). they compared four groups of schools: about 50 schools on each of three interventions, and 80 control schools. the new learning http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 1882022 40(3): 188-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) materials that all schools received had no new strategies or anything not already in departmental documents. • intervention 1: teachers received the learning materials, a learning programme, lesson plans, and teacher training twice a year. • intervention 2: teachers received, in addition, a “reading coach” who gave basic “orientation” to the materials and monthly on-site visits. the intervention 2 group obtained the best results. (below are some of their results). • intervention 3: it involved parents but was unsuccessful. 9.1 results found by the study in north-west province the first item in data collection was letter recognition. the fact that only 36% could read 50+ lcpm at the end of grade 2 (taylor et al., 2017: 67) indicates that in spite of much attention to letter reading, most learners could not do it well. at the end of grade 2, the fourth subtest was paragraph reading, with four comprehension questions asked. from intervention 2, 28% of learners could not read one word correctly and 39% from the control group, an improvement of 11%. in the comprehension test, 37% of learners scored zero from intervention 2 and 46% from the control group, a 9% improvement. taylor et al. (2017: 73-75) state that the “entire distribution” shifted upward with about 10%. the author thinks that a 10% improvement brought by the intervention was not sufficient to “shift teaching practice and learning outcomes at a large scale” (taylor et al., 2017: 75). it is hoped that this reference to the results of the intervention may lead to more attempts to renew grade 1 teaching. 10. suggestions for new research on reading in grade 1 it is hoped that research will also be done in free state province, where some first lessons in sesotho have been developed already, as well as the three strategies below: • use references that stay on the board/walls for weeks, e.g. a, e, i, o, u. if a child must read, for example, the letter i, he matches it with the i in the reference and recites the reference up to i. (they find matching easy but tend to forget single sounds). • use able learners as trained group leaders to give ample individual practice in reading mixed vowels, syllables, words and sentences (reading from a4 sheets through a movable ‘window’ cut in a piece of paper). • teach segmenting into syllables by pointing with one finger under one-letter syllables and two fingers under two-letter syllables. (learners find this easy). these strategies may provide solutions to some of the objectives listed in the sirp hei research report (2019). researchers should test using the syllabic approach and only oral esl in grade 1, without confusing learners early in the year with many written words in other subjects. the following should be in place simultaneously at test schools: • prioritise learning to read the hl, using at least two periods a day for reading in term 1. all other work should be done orally at first, even maths for at least two weeks – in the first place to establish the number concept before manipulating written numbers, but also to avoid confusion of numbers and letters (personal observation). • give no written english for at least three terms in grade 1, but use much oral english, e.g. learners should give instructions to one another from week 3, after obeying many http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 1892022 40(3): 189-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 cronje the role of higher education institutions in addressing south africa’s reading crisis teacher’s instructions from week 1 onwards. to build vocabulary, discuss the pictures of the esl workbook without any attention to the written words. • avoid confusion, use graded lessons, and give ample practice in real reading. start with teaching the vowels while also memorising a short sentence, e.g. m-me o ama mimi. (sentences lead to reading for meaning from the beginning.) learners then memorise sentence pairs by ‘reading’ them on the board, actually knowing what is written where. then they read those six/eight sentences in mixed order to group leaders. (in graded lessons, lesson 1 would use only one consonant with the vowels, and a consonant would be added with every subsequent lesson.) • for writing practice, use only letters used in the lessons, not words with other letters. write dictation daily, starting with the vowels, then words and sentences. the new lessons are only for term 1. depending on how many of the workbook’s words are used in the first lessons, the current workbook can be used soon. 11. the responsibility of heis regarding esl teaching at primary school concerning esl, it does not seem as if much longitudinal research for primary schools has been done this century in south africa, and knowledge about second language acquisition (sla) is lacking among influential people. even fundamental information seems to be lacking, e.g. that the sooner young learners start with esl, the better, because no esl is prescribed for grade r. although the author informed academics in 2018 about the existence of two contradictory documents for esl in grade 1, and the likelihood of the written esl confusing learners, they did not challenge the lesson plan. in 1991 stellenbosch university began a structured master’s degree in linguistics as distant education and the author enrolled, specialising in second language acquisition (sla). that course led to a five-year empirical investigation on sla in township schools and a phd in 1997. before reviewing that study, some other investigations are reviewed below. 12. differences between child and adult abilities in learning an sl for centuries ‘adults’ (people past puberty) used traditional formal grammar to learn latin, but this structural approach was futile for children, also at school. audiolingualism, based on the behaviourist ideas of skinner, was seen as a solution for children, who mainly had to repeat patterns and drills. yet it did not yield the desired results, because audiolingualism followed the same structural approach to language as traditional formal grammar, with the focus on form rather than on meaning (pica, 2005). in the 1970s, new insights into language acquisition were gained due to work by chomsky (1977), who opposed the behaviourist ideas. he held that children are born with a specific language faculty, ‘universal grammar’ (ug), which makes it possible for young children to learn languages quickly, but subconsciously. eventually people realised that children should learn an sl in the same way as the hl by using it to communicate, thus focusing on meaning. a number of new schools of thought for sl teaching sprang up, e.g. asher’s total physical response, which used directives as first interactions with learners. from these schools came communicative language teaching (clt), which advocated a functional view of language. experiments with clt showed that the communicative approach was best for sla and it has been widely implemented since the 1990s (richards, 2006: 22). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 1902022 40(3): 190-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) it was hypothesized that there is a critical period for acquiring a language easily, and some studies followed. in a study at an american university, johnson and newport (1989: 6099) assessed the english ability of chinese adults who had used english at university level in america for at least five years. the results on peripheral language structures showed “a strong positive correlation between age of arrival in america and esl achievement”. there was a linear decline in achievement for persons who had arrived younger than15 years of age, and general low attainment for persons arriving later. a second study, which investigated the availability of universal grammar principles to children and adults, found the same. it is noteworthy that formal english classes attended by children in china before immigrating to america had no effect (johnson & newport, 1991:215-258). findings such as these suggest that teaching methods effective for adults may not be effective for children. concerning esl teaching in sa township schools, it is still mainly form-focused. there is a great need for strategies to improve learners’ ability to communicate (littlewood, 2011), and to help them acquire grammar constructs they find difficult – without having to focus on grammar rules themselves. only the teacher should do that, for example by using songs to teach the third person singular -s. african learners also find the plural -s difficult, because african languages indicate plural at the beginning of words in a complicate way. it may be worthwhile to purposefully investigate the use of songs and rhymes to establish subconscious knowledge about difficult english constructs. 13. an experiment in communicative language teaching: canadian immersion a sure way of making sl teaching meaning-focused is to do subject teaching in the sl, because the focus is on the subject material and not on language form. this insight resulted in experiments with education through the medium of a second language, and the successful ‘canadian immersion’, an experiment in 1965 that has become practice. if their parents choose this option, english learners in canada do their last year of preschool and the first two years of primary school in french only. they have native french teachers who do not speak any english to them. this means the learners learn to read in their sl in grade 1, and only learn to read their hl after three years of immersion in the sl. they then follow a bilingual school programme and become fully bilingual (wesche, 2002: 357-370). however, the same success is not experienced when the programme is implemented under different circumstances, and wesche (2002: 371) warns that there are conditions for success, e.g. that teachers should be (near)-native speakers of the learners’ sl, should use only that sl at school, and should use clt, not grammar teaching. it is also important that learners know their hl well and are proud of it. wesche speaks of ‘subtractive bilingualism’ if the hl is not maintained. 14. submersion education and ‘straight for english’ schools in south africa in contrast to canadian immersion, which is a bilingual model, ‘submersion’ is a monolingual model where mainly or only the sl is used for education. skutnabb-kangas and phillipson (2017: 456-464) state that injustice is done linguistically when a “language shift is imposed on individuals and groups”. in south africa this may be the case in the ‘straight for english’ schools where esl is regarded as the hl of the learners, although the majority have an african language as hl, which is then treated as the first additional language (fal). it means that less teaching time is allocated to the real hl than to english. yet initial reading http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 1912022 40(3): 191-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 cronje the role of higher education institutions in addressing south africa’s reading crisis can also be introduced in two languages simultaneously (personal observation), unlike the practice in canada. taylor and coetzee (2013: 1-10) did an extensive study regarding ‘straight for english’ in underperforming schools. they used school records that included data on the language of learning and teaching (lolt) over the years 2007 to 2011, and combined that to dbe test scores that grade 4–6 learners had attained in 2012 in standardised tests on ability in english (data from 827 745 learners in 9 180 primary schools were used). they found that when learners came from schools of similar quality, those who used the hl as lolt in grades 1–3 outperformed those who used english as lolt. the ‘straight for english’ learners were actually outperformed in english tests in grades 4–6, showing that home language instruction in south african circumstances is the best. it was one of a few international studies, and the first done in south africa, that brought robust empirical evidence to the debate concerning language of instruction in the foundation phase (taylor & coetzee, 2013). this kind of longitudinal information is very valuable, and heis should be asked what they did with the above results. the authors also write that we need more educational outcomes in the long run, especially regarding sla, as most studies do not have data over a long enough period to answer important questions. 15. a longitudinal investigation concerning esl in primary schools from 1992 to 1996, empirical research on learning esl was done at primary schools in welkom, free state, at two schools already on different programmes for teaching english. the main participants were in grade 2 at schools a and b in 1992 (99 and 143 learners, respectively). mainly due to failure, only 29% of school a’s learners were still in the test group in 1996, compared to 43% of the school b learners. (the average pass rate at primary schools was 80%.) baseline assessment in 1992 showed that around 15% of school a’s learners could not read, and 10% of school b’s learners could not read. the test groups were observed and assessed for five years, investigations also being done at other schools on the same kinds of programmes to verify that schools a and b represented specific approaches to sl teaching (cronje, 1997: 87-91). at the time, no esl was given in grade 1. english teaching started in grade 2 when most learners could read the hl already. at school a, the esl teaching was wholly form focused, starting with written english. all attention was given to formal aspects – grammar, spelling, and pronunciation, for example chorus drills on plural -s were done regularly in grade 2: one two door doors hand hands (mostly 10 pairs) (cronje, 1997: 91-96). school b was on a clt programme, the molteno project’s bridge to english. a large quantity of oral work had to be done before learners could start reading, and no chorusing and language switching between the hl and esl were allowed. genuine communication, with information gaps, occurred daily. for example, to learn plural -s, learners were asked about pictures: “how many (cars) do you see?” although the school b learners did not ‘speak’ as much english as the school a learners did in chorus repetitions, they significantly outperformed school a on every count, including eventually the plural –s (though not in the first years). the fact that so http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 1922022 40(3): 192-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) many weak school a learners did not take part in later tests makes the good results of school b even more significant (cronje, 1997: 125, 181). 15.1 test results data gathering included elicited speech in grades 2 and 3, five compositions, three comprehension and two grammar tests, and history compositions in 1995 when the test groups were in grade 5 receiving english-medium education. compositions were analysed in 30+ categories. also when in grade 5 composition 3, the snake at the tap, was written by 30 learners at each school on a series of three pictures. only nine stories were rated successful at school a, against 24 at school b, whereas 15 learners at school a completely failed to convey the story, against only 3 at school b. test groups were numbered in accordance with grade 4 school marks, the best learner at each school being no. 1. school b learner b52 was well down the line to b99; yet his directness was typical of school b: b52: a father sit on the cheir out side. mother work [walk] with her children to fach some water. they saw a snake and ran away. father came with her [sic] stick to kill that snake. at school a, one of the ‘best’ learners wrote: a5: the house and trees the man sitting outside the house. the woman walk in to tep and two children. green grass. father is ran and mother and children carry they see a snack the backet is down. (cronje, 1997: 147-149). all test results showed that most of the school a learners could not benefit from englishmedium education, which started in grade 5 in the 1990s. school a learners did not know enough esl to understand their lessons without much translation into the hl, e.g. according to the 20/03/95 field notes the hl was used 17 times in a lesson on sprouting bean seeds (cronje, 1997: 183-187). at school b, learners could benefit from english-medium education as they were used to taking part in class discussions. they were greatly interested in history and for cronje’s last composition-test learners wrote on what fascinated them. b28 wrote about the ox wagon being both home and transport: they did not pay for transport. b6 wrote eight sentences about the clothing of the white settlers; b7 wrote five sentences on their language. b10 wrote: the slaves were sell by r12 each. b12: van riebeeck built a halfway station and other buildings (interpreting history with what he knew). other sentences not in their notes: b19: they came to cape because they haven’t got much food and no work they were very ill of food they eat, and b56: van riebeeck was love her people and rule them well. (cronje, 1997: 188, 196-198). in contrast, the school a learners could only write what they had memorised since earlier that year. from one of the ‘best’ learners: a3: the bushmen from central of africa the are very small the are 1.5 merters tall the are traenguleng [in] shape the are yellowish in colour. omission of the y in they occurred often, even with learners who had written they correctly five months earlier. their learnt esl chunks had deteriorated over time, indicating that their formfocused esl teaching in grades 2 to 4 did not prepare them sufficiently for english-medium education (cronje, 1997: 186, 194). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 1932022 40(3): 193-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 cronje the role of higher education institutions in addressing south africa’s reading crisis 16. discussion: the role of heis regarding south africa’s reading crisis henceforth the indications that education in south africa is at a low level do not reflect favourably on the training that teachers have received, although other factors are also at play, e.g. the shutting down of teacher training colleges so that universities could take over their function. nel (2011) says the burden of expert literacy teaching has been “seriously underestimated by universities”. spaull and hoadley (2017: 79) write that little explicit attention is given to reading when teachers are trained. though reading is the essential skill that learners have to learn in the foundation phase, less than 10% of the credits needed to teach in fp are about literacy, according to them. however, it may be necessary for academics to acquire more knowledge about african learners and languages, and about sla, and to revise some courses. 17. conclusions and recommendations this article indicates that south africa’s reading crisis causes undesirable consequences, and it points out that more empirical research in lower primary classrooms is urgently needed. such research should include: • investigating initial reading in african languages. the phonics approach prescribed for all south african learners is shown to be unsuitable for african learners. the syllabic approach should be considered. • investigating reading practices in grade 1, comparing the present instructions of the caps hl to using new strategies and graded reading lessons, while prioritising reading. • investigating the learning of esl at school, including research about esl in preschool, research about the efal lesson plan for grade 1, and research on how to turn current primary school esl teaching into communicative language teaching. • investigating ‘straight for english’ schools. it is hoped that heis will do it. references aitchison, j. 2018. south africa’s reading crisis is a cognitive catastrophe. the conversation, 26 february 2018. bamgbose, a. 2000. language and exclusion: consequences of language policies in africa, hamburg: lit verlag. chomsky, n. 1980. rules and 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(eds.). 2017. linguistic rights and wrongs. language rights (vol 2). london/new york: routledge. https://www.tove-skutnabb-kangas.org/dl/1291994-308-2008-2017-tove-skutnabb-kangas-robert-p [accessed 20 july 2022]. spaull, n. 2013. south africa’s education crisis: the quality of education in south africa 1994–2011. https://www.pdf4pro.com/amp/view/south-africa-s-education-crisis-the-quality-ofeducation-31e0ab.html [accessed 19 july 2022]. spaull, n. 2016. disentangling the language effect in south african schools: measuring the impact of ‘language of assessment’ in grade 3 literacy and numeracy. south african journal of childhood education 6(1):1-20. https://doi.org/10.4102/sajce.v6i1.475 spaull, n. & hoadley, u. 2017. getting reading right: building firm foundations. south african child gauge 2017, part 2: 77-83. spaull, n., pretorius, e. & mohohlwane, n. 2017. investigating the comprehension iceberg: developing empirical benchmarks for early grade reading in agglutinating african languages. https://2017.essa.org.za/fullpaper/essa_3314.pdf [accessed 20 october 2019]. spaull, n. & pretorius, e. 2019. still falling at the first hurdle: examining early grade reading in south africa. accessed 20 october 2019 at: https://nicspaull.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/ nic-spaull-and-elizabeth-pretorious.pdf. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18811-5_8 statistics south africa (stats sa). 2021. quarterly labour force survey (qlfs) – q3:2021. http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/p0211/presentation%20qlfs%20q3_2021.pdf [accessed 19 july 2022]. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 https://doi.org/10.1080/01434632.2014.908887 http://repository.upenn.edu/gse_pubs/34/ http://repository.upenn.edu/gse_pubs/34/ https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v7i1.84 https://resep.sun.ac.za/wp.../resepp_zenex-teaching-readingwriting_pdf https://resep.sun.ac.za/wp.../resepp_zenex-teaching-readingwriting_pdf https://doi.org/10.2989/16073614.2015.1108769 https://www.jet.org.za/clearinghouse/projects/primted/sesotho-and-isizulu-reading-project https://www.jet.org.za/clearinghouse/projects/primted/sesotho-and-isizulu-reading-project https://www.tove-skutnabb-kangas.org/dl/129-1994-308-2008-2017-tove-skutnabb-kangas-robert-p https://www.tove-skutnabb-kangas.org/dl/129-1994-308-2008-2017-tove-skutnabb-kangas-robert-p https://www.pdf4pro.com/amp/view/south-africa-s-education-crisis-the-quality-of-education-31e0ab.html https://www.pdf4pro.com/amp/view/south-africa-s-education-crisis-the-quality-of-education-31e0ab.html http://sajce.co.za/index.php/sajce/article/view/475/390 http://sajce.co.za/index.php/sajce/article/view/475/390 https://doi.org/10.4102/sajce.v6i1.475 https://2017.essa.org.za/fullpaper/essa_3314.pdf https://nicspaull.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/nic-spaull-and-elizabeth-pretorious.pdf https://nicspaull.files.wordpress.com/2018/11/nic-spaull-and-elizabeth-pretorious.pdf https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-18811-5_8 http://www.statssa.gov.za/publications/p0211/presentation%20qlfs%20q3_2021.pdf 1962022 40(3): 196-196 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) taylor, s. & coetzee, m. 2013. estimating the impact of language of instruction in south african primary schools: a fixed effects approach. https://www.ekon.sun.ac.za/wpapers/2013/ wp212013/wp-21-2013.pdf [accessed 17 march 2021]. taylor, s., cilliers, j., prinsloo, c., fleisch, b. & reddy, v. 2017. the early grade reading study: impact evaluation after two years of interventions. egrs evaluation report. https:// www.jet.org.za/clearinghouse/projects/primted/resources/language-and-literacy-resourcesrepository/egrs-technical-report-13-oct-2017.pdf [accessed 20 october 2019]. united nations (un). 2015. sustainable development goals. www.undp.org/sustainabledevelopment-goals [accessed 19 july 2022]. wesche, m.b. 2002. early french immersion: how has the original canadian model stood the test of time? in: burmeister, p., piske, t. & rohde, a. 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[accessed 20 july 2022] williams, e. 1998. investigating bilingual literacy: evidence from malawi and zambia. department for international development, education papers. https://assets.publishing. service.gov.uk›media›paper24 [accessed 20 october 2019]. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.12 https://www.ekon.sun.ac.za/wpapers/2013/wp212013/wp-21-2013.pdf https://www.ekon.sun.ac.za/wpapers/2013/wp212013/wp-21-2013.pdf https://www.jet.org.za/clearinghouse/projects/primted/resources/language-and-literacy-resources-repository/egrs-technical-report-13-oct-2017.pdf https://www.jet.org.za/clearinghouse/projects/primted/resources/language-and-literacy-resources-repository/egrs-technical-report-13-oct-2017.pdf https://www.jet.org.za/clearinghouse/projects/primted/resources/language-and-literacy-resources-repository/egrs-technical-report-13-oct-2017.pdf http://www.undp.org/sustainable-development-goals http://www.undp.org/sustainable-development-goals http://www.wvttrier.de about:blank about:blank 42022 40(4): 4-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 student poverty in south african universities: promoting the wellbeing and success of students abstract the fact that poverty has largely been conceptualised from a narrow financial perspective in south african higher education may have contributed to its perpetuation among students. there is limited research on the multidimensionality of poverty, particularly its wide-ranging effect on students in universities. using the capabilities approach, this study explores the extent of poverty, as well as the way various dimensions of deprivation interplay to affect the wellbeing and success of students in universities. the study employs a sequential-mixed research design and gathers data at a university, initially using three focus group discussions followed by a survey questionnaire administered to 2306 students and 470 student voices and unfiltered stories. both focus group discussion data and the short stories were coded and analysed using nvivo 12. the themes generated included basic needs, resources, psychological wellbeing, living conditions and participation. the findings of survey questionnaires, which were analysed using stata, r, spss and microsoft excel, indicate a complex relationship between the dimensions of deprivations that affect students and the corrosive effect lack of finances has. while providing funding only does not sufficiently address student poverty, the study recommends that universities should consider devising robust measures to identify those financially deprived and provide them with adequate funding. concurrently, universities should address other forms of deprivations, using mentorship programmes, for instance, to prevent and reduce psychological stress, shame, stigma and loss of dignity among poor students. keywords: student poverty, success in higher education, multidimensional deprivation, capabilities approach, south africa 1. background of the study south africa has high inequalities, with a gini co-efficient of 0,63, where 0 represents an equal society and 1 an unequal one (world population review, 2021). the poverty trends in south africa report indicates that approximately 47,4% of the country’s population is impoverished (united nations development programme, 2020). the impact of poverty negatively affects the wellbeing of students, which reduces their chances of succeeding when others have flourishing lives (wilson-strydom, 2015; gore, 2021). though some author: dr anesu ruswa1 dr oliver gore2 affiliation: 1university of the free state, south africa 2north-west university, south africa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v40i4.6379 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(4): 4-18 published: 23 december 2022 received: 27 may 2022 accepted: 1 august 2022 research article http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1475-4175 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1475-4175 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 52022 40(4): 5-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 ruswa & gore student poverty in south african universities progress has been made in addressing inequality and poverty in the south african general population (david et al., 2018), not much success has been achieved in addressing student poverty in higher education. in 2015 and 2016 students protested financial exclusion through #feesmustfall and many other broader societal issues such as decolonising universities through #rhodesmustfall (burchardt, 2022). the protests were thus essentially beyond financial as they were aimed to remove the deprivations rooted in the legacy of the past apartheid and colonialism that impoverished most black students (konik & konik, 2017). south african higher education has mainly addressed student poverty by funding students who are financially disadvantaged through the national student financial aid scheme, which takes a financial approach to student poverty (gore & ruswa, 2021). despite the financial interventions, student poverty persists as evidenced by student protests at the beginning of 2020 and the high attrition rate at universities (khuluvhe et al., 2021). approximately 28,1% of the students dropped out of the education system before reaching the second year of study in 2017, while half of the students drop out by year five of their study (department of higher education and training, 2021). exploring and addressing multidimensional student poverty is crucial for promoting individuals’ wellbeing. walker (2020) avers that when resources are limited, students do not have the opportunity to function fully during their studies which is an indication that achieving wellbeing is foundational for their success. it is vital for the south african higher education system to grapple with the real challenges poor students are facing. as gore and walker (2020) feel that the use of vaguely defined and limited terminology such as “disadvantage” in south african higher education, the policy lacks clarity and focus. studies such as walker et al. (2009); spaull (2013); and van der berg (2018) may provide a deeper understanding of the multiple dimensions in which students are deprived in south african universities. besides a lack of financial resources, poverty is made up of dimensions such as loss of dignity and the absence of psychological wellbeing hence its multidimensionality (walker 2020). there is a need for further research on the extent and multidimensionality of student poverty to bridge this information gap. 2. literature review and problem statement different approaches have been employed to conceptualise poverty and a commonly used one is the unidirectional approach, which is also highlighting the financial status. the unidirectional approach regards students as poor if they are positioned below a certain financial threshold, yet students might not be poor when we assess the other dimensions of their wellbeing (alkire et al., 2015). thus, student poverty encompasses various aspects that range from economic, educational and contextual factors. alkire et al. (2015) brought forward a mathematical index for measuring poverty with special attention given to the determination of dimensions and indicators of poverty, and their associated weights. central to alkire et al.’s (2015) methodology is that individuals who are deprived in some dimensions but not multidimensionally poor overall are left out of account when determining the incidence and intensity of multidimensional poverty (alkire et al., 2015). this is a unique and relevant advantage of alkire et al.’s (2015) methodology, which was used in this research to identify students who are deprived in certain dimensions but are not poor. simultaneously, individuals might be financially well off but lacking in other dimensions, such as psychological wellness and dignity, during their studies (ruswa & gore, 2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 62022 40(4): 6-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) the multidimensional approach to student poverty, which recognises the multifaceted nature of poverty and its underpinnings, is based on the notion that students are deprived in multiple aspects of their wellbeing. as yet this multidimensional approach, despite being widely used to conceptualise poverty in the general population (statistics south africa, 2014; fransman & yu, 2018), has not been adopted in research and interventions in south african universities (breier, 2010; firfirey & carolissen, 2010; van der bank & nkadimeng, 2014; council on higher education, 2016; van breda, 2018). literature suggests that student poverty is influenced by the intersectionality of race and class, gender and other factors (gore, 2021). besides experiencing psychological stress and restricted access to learning resources, the students have limited social networks and are unlikely to participate in campus social activities (stahl, mcdonald & stokes, 2020; bye, muller & oprescu, 2020). these studies affirm the multidimensionality of poverty in universities worldwide. however, the intensity and interrelationship of dimensions constituting poverty in south african higher education remain under-researched. universities need to understand the magnitude of poverty and the interplay of dimensions constituting poverty if they are to promote students’ wellbeing and success. failure to understand and adequately address students’ needs has contributed to the perpetuation of poverty and lower outcomes among the black low-income groups (ruswa & gore, 2021). the study explored the severity of student poverty at one university in south africa. it addressed the following questions: what is the extent of multidimensional poverty among university students? how do the dimensions of deprivation relate to each other in affecting the wellbeing of students? 3. a capabilities approach to exploring poverty the study adopted the capabilities approach developed by sen (1999). sen (1999: 80) argues that evaluative judgements about poverty should be made using ‘wellbeing’ of individuals as wellbeing reflects their ‘quality of life’. the use of income in assessing poverty is inadequate because income is only a means to achieve a person’s wellbeing (robeyns, 2017). the capabilities approach was adopted for this study because it focuses on the wellbeing of people at an individual level as well as assessing whether the social arrangements allow people to have opportunities to achieve what they value (robeyns, 2017). the concepts that constitute the capabilities approach are ‘capabilities’, ‘functionings’, ‘agency’ and ‘conversion factors’. capabilities are reflective of the effective ‘opportunities’ individuals ‘will [have] when choosing from the options open to them’ while the outcomes from the capabilities are the functionings (robeyns, 2017:8). agency relates to the different ways one can have the power to make decisions, work towards their goals and challenge constraining situations (sen, 1999), for example, to succeed in their educational journeys. both capabilities and agency are enabled or constrained by the conversion factors which are reflective of the personal, environmental and social arrangements to which an individual has access. poverty is thus a deprivation in one or more of the dimensions of students’ wellbeing. as a result of a lack of effective opportunities, students do not function sufficiently to optimally succeed in their studies. in other words, poverty to a larger extent reflects ill-being or the absence of wellbeing (wolff, lamb & zur-szpiro, 2015), which contributes to lower academic outputs. by focusing on the wellbeing of individuals, the capabilities approach suggests that poverty is multidimensional as it is through the different dimensions of wellbeing that judgements about deprivations are made (robeyns, 2017). although poverty cannot be explained using income only, lack of finances still plays a central role in identifying poverty (wolff et al., 2015; http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 72022 40(4): 7-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 ruswa & gore student poverty in south african universities walker 2020). in conceptualising the significant dimensions of student poverty, this paper draws on wolff and de shalit’s (2007:121) notions of ‘corrosive’ to determine how certain dimensions of deprivation contribute to the student being deprived in other dimensions. put differently, the dimensions of deprivation that are corrosive result in student poverty being more severe because of the compounded effects these dimensions have on students’ lives. 4. methodology the study employed an exploratory sequential mixed method design, with qualitative insights informing quantitative inquiry, to investigate student poverty as this methodology offers a rigorous analysis of poverty and its potential to achieve richer results through the integration of qualitative and quantitative findings (creswell & creswell, 2018). although quantitative techniques are helpful in developing and testing a multidimensional poverty index, they are limiting as they do not explain the nuances of poverty in detail, and they also exclude direct student voices which carry invaluable insight. these shortcomings are addressed by the qualitative research component of the design. figure 1 summarises the design: figure 1: exploratory sequential mixed research design the initial qualitative phase comprised three focus groups discussion (fgds) constituting eight members each drawn from a higher education institution in south africa. participants for the fgds were recruited using convenience sampling from undergraduate degree programmes through an open invitation posted on university social media platforms. racially and gender-diverse participants came from fields like medicine, quantity surveying and geography, humanities, business studies, education, agriculture economics and law. the fgds were audio recorded and fully transcribed and were, together with unfiltered stories (obtained in the next phase explained below) imported into nvivo 12, a qualitative software for data analysis. the data were descriptively coded and analysed using thematic analysis. the analysis identified five primary deprivation dimensions which are: basic needs, resources, psychological wellbeing, living conditions and participation. the second phase, the quantitative one, involved data collection using a survey questionnaire, which has proven an effective tool for gathering quantitative data (healy et al., 2018). the survey questionnaire was developed from the dimensions and indicators of poverty drawn from the fgds. the questionnaire was designed to establish the severity of student poverty and verify the individual indicators that emerged from the fgds. to enhance its validity and phase 1 qualitative data collection and analyisis ( 3 fgds) phase 2 quantitative data collection questionnares (2306). from the total 470 unfiltered short stories received phase 3 triangulation of findings figure 1: exploratory sequential mixed research design the initial qualitative phase comprised three focus groups discussion (fgds) constituting eight members each drawn from a higher education institution in south africa. participants for the fgds were recruited using convenience sampling from undergraduate degree http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 82022 40(4): 8-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) programmes through an open invitation posted on university social media platforms. racially and gender-diverse participants came from fields like medicine, quantity surveying and geography, humanities, business studies, education, agriculture economics and law. the fgds were audio recorded and fully transcribed and were, together with unfiltered stories (obtained in the next phase explained below) imported into nvivo 12, a qualitative software for data analysis. the data were descriptively coded and analysed using thematic analysis. the analysis identified five primary deprivation dimensions which are: basic needs, resources, psychological wellbeing, living conditions and participation. the second phase, the quantitative one, involved data collection using a survey questionnaire, which has proven an effective tool for gathering quantitative data (healy et al., 2018). the survey questionnaire was developed from the dimensions and indicators of poverty drawn from the fgds. the questionnaire was designed to establish the severity of student poverty and verify the individual indicators that emerged from the fgds. to enhance its validity and precision, the questionnaire was piloted and refined based on the gaps identified. the administration of the questionnaire was as follows: through an online link sent through the university’s online survey, evasys, to all undergraduate registered students at one university with the help of student affairs, housing and residence affairs. the data were hosted and stored in evasys. the total number of responses from the online questionnaire was 1791 students. to boost the sample size, a simple random sampling technique was used to distribute hard copies of the questionnaire to the general students across the campus, and this increased the total responses to 2306. as aono and nguyen (2017) state, random sampling yields representative samples. the hardcopy administration phase was administered by 15 research assistants strategically deployed in university residences, departments and social spaces to distribute the survey and then scan the responses back into evasys so that they could be prepared for analysis. the data from the scanned hard copies were integrated with the online data in evasys. this was done automatically and a consolidated dataset compatible with all statistical analysis software was generated. after consolidation, the researchers received 2306 completed questionnaires (515 hardcopies and 1791 electronic) which are well above the 1800 sample size initially expected. the researchers employed tanaka’s (1987) model, which determines (minimal sample size) for a population of n with a confidence level of % and a margin of error of the following relationship holds: precision, the questionnaire was piloted and refined based on the gaps identified. the administration of the questionnaire was as follows: through an online link sent through the university’s online survey, evasys, to all undergraduate registered students at one university with the help of student affairs, housing and residence affairs. the data were hosted and stored in evasys. the total number of responses from the online questionnaire was 1791 students. to boost the sample size, a simple random sampling technique was used to distribute hard copies of the questionnaire to the general students across the campus, and this increased the total responses to 2306. as aono and nguyen (2017) state, random sampling yields representative samples. the hardcopy administration phase was administered by 15 research assistants strategically deployed in university residences, departments and social spaces to distribute the survey and then scan the responses back into evasys so that they could be prepared for analysis. the data from the scanned hard copies were integrated with the online data in evasys. this was done automatically and a consolidated dataset compatible with all statistical analysis software was generated. after consolidation, the researchers received 2306 completed questionnaires (515 hardcopies and 1791 electronic) which are well above the 1800 sample size initially expected. the researchers employed tanaka’s (1987) model, which determines 𝑛𝑛 (minimal sample size) for a population of n with a confidence level of 𝑥𝑥% and a margin of error of ±𝑒𝑒 the following relationship holds: 𝑛𝑛 = � � ∙�∙(���) � � or 𝑛𝑛 = � � ���� � � � � � where: z = z value from the normal table (e. g. 1.96 for 95% confidence level) p = percentage picking a choice, expressed as a decimal e = confidence interval or margin of error, expressed as a decimal (e. g. , .04 = ±4) when the above formula was applied to the total student population of 27 000 students, the minimum required sample was 345, with a confidence interval of 95% and a margin of error of 4. the responses obtained were above the minimum sample required which means inferential statistical analysis could be conducted. the final phase involved the triangulation of the findings from the fgds and the survey questionnaires. these survey questionnaires were also used to gather additional direct where: precision, the questionnaire was piloted and refined based on the gaps identified. the administration of the questionnaire was as follows: through an online link sent through the university’s online survey, evasys, to all undergraduate registered students at one university with the help of student affairs, housing and residence affairs. the data were hosted and stored in evasys. the total number of responses from the online questionnaire was 1791 students. to boost the sample size, a simple random sampling technique was used to distribute hard copies of the questionnaire to the general students across the campus, and this increased the total responses to 2306. as aono and nguyen (2017) state, random sampling yields representative samples. the hardcopy administration phase was administered by 15 research assistants strategically deployed in university residences, departments and social spaces to distribute the survey and then scan the responses back into evasys so that they could be prepared for analysis. the data from the scanned hard copies were integrated with the online data in evasys. this was done automatically and a consolidated dataset compatible with all statistical analysis software was generated. after consolidation, the researchers received 2306 completed questionnaires (515 hardcopies and 1791 electronic) which are well above the 1800 sample size initially expected. the researchers employed tanaka’s (1987) model, which determines 𝑛𝑛 (minimal sample size) for a population of n with a confidence level of 𝑥𝑥% and a margin of error of ±𝑒𝑒 the following relationship holds: 𝑛𝑛 = � � ∙�∙(���) � � or 𝑛𝑛 = � � ���� � � � � � where: z = z value from the normal table (e. g. 1.96 for 95% confidence level) p = percentage picking a choice, expressed as a decimal e = confidence interval or margin of error, expressed as a decimal (e. g. , .04 = ±4) when the above formula was applied to the total student population of 27 000 students, the minimum required sample was 345, with a confidence interval of 95% and a margin of error of 4. the responses obtained were above the minimum sample required which means inferential statistical analysis could be conducted. the final phase involved the triangulation of the findings from the fgds and the survey questionnaires. these survey questionnaires were also used to gather additional direct when the above formula was applied to the total student population of 27 000 students, the minimum required sample was 345, with a confidence interval of 95% and a margin of error of precision, the questionnaire was piloted and refined based on the gaps identified. the administration of the questionnaire was as follows: through an online link sent through the university’s online survey, evasys, to all undergraduate registered students at one university with the help of student affairs, housing and residence affairs. the data were hosted and stored in evasys. the total number of responses from the online questionnaire was 1791 students. to boost the sample size, a simple random sampling technique was used to distribute hard copies of the questionnaire to the general students across the campus, and this increased the total responses to 2306. as aono and nguyen (2017) state, random sampling yields representative samples. the hardcopy administration phase was administered by 15 research assistants strategically deployed in university residences, departments and social spaces to distribute the survey and then scan the responses back into evasys so that they could be prepared for analysis. the data from the scanned hard copies were integrated with the online data in evasys. this was done automatically and a consolidated dataset compatible with all statistical analysis software was generated. after consolidation, the researchers received 2306 completed questionnaires (515 hardcopies and 1791 electronic) which are well above the 1800 sample size initially expected. the researchers employed tanaka’s (1987) model, which determines 𝑛𝑛 (minimal sample size) for a population of n with a confidence level of 𝑥𝑥% and a margin of error of ±𝑒𝑒 the following relationship holds: 𝑛𝑛 = � � ∙�∙(���) � � or 𝑛𝑛 = � � ���� � � � � � where: z = z value from the normal table (e. g. 1.96 for 95% confidence level) p = percentage picking a choice, expressed as a decimal e = confidence interval or margin of error, expressed as a decimal (e. g. , .04 = ±4) when the above formula was applied to the total student population of 27 000 students, the minimum required sample was 345, with a confidence interval of 95% and a margin of error of 4. the responses obtained were above the minimum sample required which means inferential statistical analysis could be conducted. the final phase involved the triangulation of the findings from the fgds and the survey questionnaires. these survey questionnaires were also used to gather additional direct precision, the questionnaire was piloted and refined based on the gaps identified. the administration of the questionnaire was as follows: through an online link sent through the university’s online survey, evasys, to all undergraduate registered students at one university with the help of student affairs, housing and residence affairs. the data were hosted and stored in evasys. the total number of responses from the online questionnaire was 1791 students. to boost the sample size, a simple random sampling technique was used to distribute hard copies of the questionnaire to the general students across the campus, and this increased the total responses to 2306. as aono and nguyen (2017) state, random sampling yields representative samples. the hardcopy administration phase was administered by 15 research assistants strategically deployed in university residences, departments and social spaces to distribute the survey and then scan the responses back into evasys so that they could be prepared for analysis. the data from the scanned hard copies were integrated with the online data in evasys. this was done automatically and a consolidated dataset compatible with all statistical analysis software was generated. after consolidation, the researchers received 2306 completed questionnaires (515 hardcopies and 1791 electronic) which are well above the 1800 sample size initially expected. the researchers employed tanaka’s (1987) model, which determines 𝑛𝑛 (minimal sample size) for a population of n with a confidence level of 𝑥𝑥% and a margin of error of ±𝑒𝑒 the following relationship holds: 𝑛𝑛 = � � ∙�∙(���) � � or 𝑛𝑛 = � � ���� � � � � � where: z = z value from the normal table (e. g. 1.96 for 95% confidence level) p = percentage picking a choice, expressed as a decimal e = confidence interval or margin of error, expressed as a decimal (e. g. , .04 = ±4) when the above formula was applied to the total student population of 27 000 students, the minimum required sample was 345, with a confidence interval of 95% and a margin of error of 4. the responses obtained were above the minimum sample required which means inferential statistical analysis could be conducted. the final phase involved the triangulation of the findings from the fgds and the survey questionnaires. these survey questionnaires were also used to gather additional direct precision, the questionnaire was piloted and refined based on the gaps identified. the administration of the questionnaire was as follows: through an online link sent through the university’s online survey, evasys, to all undergraduate registered students at one university with the help of student affairs, housing and residence affairs. the data were hosted and stored in evasys. the total number of responses from the online questionnaire was 1791 students. to boost the sample size, a simple random sampling technique was used to distribute hard copies of the questionnaire to the general students across the campus, and this increased the total responses to 2306. as aono and nguyen (2017) state, random sampling yields representative samples. the hardcopy administration phase was administered by 15 research assistants strategically deployed in university residences, departments and social spaces to distribute the survey and then scan the responses back into evasys so that they could be prepared for analysis. the data from the scanned hard copies were integrated with the online data in evasys. this was done automatically and a consolidated dataset compatible with all statistical analysis software was generated. after consolidation, the researchers received 2306 completed questionnaires (515 hardcopies and 1791 electronic) which are well above the 1800 sample size initially expected. the researchers employed tanaka’s (1987) model, which determines 𝑛𝑛 (minimal sample size) for a population of n with a confidence level of 𝑥𝑥% and a margin of error of ±𝑒𝑒 the following relationship holds: 𝑛𝑛 = � � ∙�∙(���) � � or 𝑛𝑛 = � � ���� � � � � � where: z = z value from the normal table (e. g. 1.96 for 95% confidence level) p = percentage picking a choice, expressed as a decimal e = confidence interval or margin of error, expressed as a decimal (e. g. , .04 = ±4) when the above formula was applied to the total student population of 27 000 students, the minimum required sample was 345, with a confidence interval of 95% and a margin of error of 4. the responses obtained were above the minimum sample required which means inferential statistical analysis could be conducted. the final phase involved the triangulation of the findings from the fgds and the survey questionnaires. these survey questionnaires were also used to gather additional direct http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 92022 40(4): 9-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 ruswa & gore student poverty in south african universities 4. the responses obtained were above the minimum sample required which means inferential statistical analysis could be conducted. the final phase involved the triangulation of the findings from the fgds and the survey questionnaires. these survey questionnaires were also used to gather additional direct student voices and unfiltered (unedited) stories from students who gave personal accounts of their experience of multidimensional poverty. out of the 2306 students who completed the questionnaire, 470 students provided stories of their lived experience which were captured in nvivo and analyzed using thematic analysis. a passworded computer was used to store the data. spss was used to clean the data. and then microsoft excel was used to create visuals and r was instrumental in running statistical tests. stata was used primarily for the implementation of the alkire-foster methodology (2009) which enabled us to make normative decisions regarding the weights, dimensions, and indicators to develop the multidimensional student poverty index (mspi). we proactively upheld ethical values throughout all the phases of the research, including obtaining permissions from the university, ensuring that the participation of the students was voluntary, protecting the anonymity of respondents, upholding the principle of no harm, respecting the rights of vulnerable students and not disclosing sensitive information. the study was ethically approved by the university and participants signed the consent form before taking part in the study. 5. findings the following themes, which formed the dimensions of deprivations, emerged from the analysis of the focus group data: basic needs, resources, psychological wellbeing, living conditions and participation; and these were developed from the subthemes listed in table 1. table 1: dimensions of deprivations, themes and subthemes dimension (theme) basic needs learning resources living conditions participation psychological wellbeing subtheme/ capability -food security -access to basic healthcare -physical health -amenities -tuition fees -resources for learning -management of resources (budgeting) -conducive study environment safety and security -access to transport -participation in learning -participation in leisure activities -emotional wellbeing -dignity -social support the data show complex interaction of the dimensions of deprivations. we discuss these findings to illuminate the relationship, corrosive effects and intensity of these dimensions that deprive the students and on how they affect the wellbeing of students. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 102022 40(4): 10-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) a) the interplay of the dimensions of deprivations the data indicates that the financial deprivation of some of the students resulted in other deprivations, primarily failing to access adequate learning resources and lacking basic needs i.e., food, accommodation, basic amenities, access to health care and physical health. astoundingly, about 8% of poor students from the censored head counts did not have a place to live and the same proportion did not have access to electricity and water. figure 2 below, shows the proportion of students who lacked financially and also had other deprivations. (a) the interplay of the dimensions of deprivations the data indicates that the financial deprivation of some of the students resulted in other deprivations, primarily failing to access adequate learning resources and lacking basic needs i.e., food, accommodation, basic amenities, access to health care and physical health. astoundingly, about 8% of poor students from the censored head counts did not have a place to live and the same proportion did not have access to electricity and water. figure 2 below, shows the proportion of students who lacked financially and also had other deprivations. figure 2: deprivations affected by financial lack (i) basic needs the survey data further illustrates that close to 32.8% of the students were deprived in the health indicator. students positioned health care above all the resource-based indicators, suggesting its significance in their wellbeing and success in their studies. the results corroborate with other research that reveals the centrality of the health dimension (united nations, 2016) it emerged that lack of physical health constrained students’ opportunities to achieve their wellbeing more than those who were not deprived as far as health is concerned. there is a reciprocal association between physical health and multidimensional poverty with students who are multidimensionally poor being deprived in their physical health, concurrently, those deprived in their physical health experienced multidimensional poverty (wolff, lamb & zurszpiro, 2015). thus, multidimensional poverty constrains individuals from having opportunities 8,2% 8,0% 13,5% 17,7% 20,9% water & electricity place to live access to basic health care food security physical health financially deprived students also lack figure 2: deprivations affected by financial lack i. basic needs the survey data further illustrates that close to 32.8% of the students were deprived in the health indicator. students positioned health care above all the resource-based indicators, suggesting its significance in their wellbeing and success in their studies. the results corroborate with other research that reveals the centrality of the health dimension (united nations, 2016). it emerged that lack of physical health constrained students’ opportunities to achieve their wellbeing more than those who were not deprived as far as health is concerned. there is a reciprocal association between physical health and multidimensional poverty with students who are multidimensionally poor being deprived in their physical health, concurrently, those deprived in their physical health experienced multidimensional poverty (wolff, lamb & zurszpiro, 2015). thus, multidimensional poverty constrains individuals from having opportunities and accomplishments in other dimensions. a proportion of 23.7% of students were reported to have experienced food insecurity, that is lacking access to one meal a day. up to three-quarters of these food-insecure students were multidimensionally poor. unlike other deprivations, food insecurity immediately threatened the optimal functioning of individuals. most of the food-insecure students were from low-income backgrounds who also had attended low-income schools in township and rural areas, as shown in figure 3. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 112022 40(4): 11-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 ruswa & gore student poverty in south african universities figure 3: food-deprived or non-deprived students and their type of high school (raw count refers to the actual number of students) students were likely not to have access to resources for their educational needs as revealed in their stories from the survey data. ii. learning resources the learning resources dimension constitutes aspects such as living expenses, university fees and the ability of students to budget as summarised in figure 4. figure 4: students deprived in indicators for learning resources the censored headcounts indicate that a proportion of 22% of all multidimensionally poor students was deprived in all the indicators, which together increase the learning resources dimension. this means that a fifth of all multidimensionally poor students struggles the most with resources and skills necessary for learning. as mentioned in the preceding section, the south african government introduced free higher education in 2018 but this excluded students from families earning above r350 000 per year and those who were already enrolled in the previous year. hence students who took part in this study had not yet benefitted from the new funding policy and were still having to find alternative funding. only 38.4% used nsfas, compared to the 61.6% who were funded by family (26.4%), other bursaries (19.2%) and other means including part-time work (16.0%). even when students received their nsfas funds, some of them could not budget their money properly to buy textbooks and to cater for their living expenses. (iii) living conditions living conditions emerged as another indicator of deprivation. figure 5 shows that most of the students who have poor living conditions are also multidimensionally poor. 22% 28% 32% 34% 24% 31% 39% 49% 50% 38% i have means of paying my study fees this year i have means of paying for other university expenses this year i have means of paying my study fees in coming years. i have means of paying for other university expenses in coming years i am able to manage my financial resources i.e. to budget well pe rc en ta ge d ep ri ve d indicators of deprivation in resources for learning censored head-count deprived head-counts figure 4: percentage of students whose learning resources are an indication of deprivation the censored headcounts indicate that a proportion of 22% of all multidimensionally poor students was deprived in all the indicators, which together increase the learning resources http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 122022 40(4): 12-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) dimension. this means that a fifth of all multidimensionally poor students struggles the most with resources and skills necessary for learning. as mentioned in the preceding section, the south african government introduced free higher education in 2018 but this excluded students from families earning above r350 000 per year and those who were already enrolled in the previous year. hence students who took part in this study had not yet benefitted from the new funding policy and were still having to find alternative funding. only 38.4% used nsfas, compared to the 61.6% who were funded by family (26.4%), other bursaries (19.2%) and other means including part-time work (16.0%). even when students received their nsfas funds, some of them could not budget their money properly to buy textbooks and to cater for their living expenses. iii. living conditions living conditions emerged as another indicator of deprivation. figure 5 shows that most of the students who have poor living conditions are also multidimensionally poor. figure 5: percentage of students whose living conditions are an indication of deprivation a two-way anova to test if there is a statistically significant difference between the poverty scores of approximately 58% of the students who lived off-line versus their on-campus counterparts showed that there is a statistically significant difference between the places of residence and the poverty score of the students (f (2, 2116); f=6.844; p= 0.03 ∴ < 5%). looking at these deprivations, living conditions play a central role in students’ ability to exercise their agency and choices. as indicated above, students were constrained from participating in the university activities that they valued due to a lack of safety and transport. living conditions thus play a pivotal role in determining the degree to which students can participate actively in academic and co-curricular activities (gore 2021). in this instance living conditions constrained off-campus students. the data shows that some students within the university system do not have any accommodation at all. a total of 184 students (10,7%) were accommodation insecure as they did not have a place to live since they could not afford to pay rent. i am concerned about our safety as bursary students who are not living on-campus. we have not received our private accommodation allowance which means we are constantly worried because we face the reality of getting evicted. this is such a distraction when i must study…i really do not have anywhere to go if i get evicted. i may end up staying at the library like some of my classmates who do not have accommodation (anonymous student online). while highlighting the connectedness between inadequate of finances and the failure of the 22,0% 18,3% 18,0% 8,4% 12,4% 31,5% 29,6% 24,9% 13,0% 20,1% i live in accommodation which is conducive for my studies i experience challenges with transport that negatively affect my studies i feel safe and secure where i live i have not been a victim of assault on campus i have not been a victim of assault off campus pe rc en ta ge d ep ri ve d indicators for deprivation in living conditions censored head-counts raw head-count figure 5: percentage of students whose living conditions are an indication of deprivation a two-way anova to test if there is a statistically significant difference between the poverty scores of approximately 58% of the students who lived off-line versus their on-campus counterparts showed that there is a statistically significant difference between the places of residence and the poverty score of the students (f (2, 2116); f=6.844; p= 0.03 ). looking at these deprivations, living conditions play a central role in students’ ability to exercise their agency and choices. as indicated above, students were constrained from participating in the university activities that they valued due to a lack of safety and transport. living conditions thus play a pivotal role in determining the degree to which students can participate actively in academic and co-curricular activities (gore 2021). in this instance living conditions constrained off-campus students. the data shows that some students within the university system do not have any accommodation at all. a total of 184 students (10,7%) were accommodation insecure as they did not have a place to live since they could not afford to pay rent. i am concerned about our safety as bursary students who are not living on-campus. we have not received our private accommodation allowance which means we are constantly figure 5: percentage of students whose living conditions are an indication of deprivation a two-way anova to test if there is a statistically significant difference between the poverty scores of approximately 58% of the students who lived off-line versus their on-campus counterparts showed that there is a statistically significant difference between the places of residence and the poverty score of the students (f (2, 2116); f=6.844; p= 0.03 ∴ < 5%). looking at these deprivations, living conditions play a central role in students’ ability to exercise their agency and choices. as indicated above, students were constrained from participating in the university activities that they valued due to a lack of safety and transport. living conditions thus play a pivotal role in determining the degree to which students can participate actively in academic and co-curricular activities (gore 2021). in this instance living conditions constrained off-campus students. the data shows that some students within the university system do not have any accommodation at all. a total of 184 students (10,7%) were accommodation insecure as they did not have a place to live since they could not afford to pay rent. i am concerned about our safety as bursary students who are not living on-campus. we have not received our private accommodation allowance which means we are constantly worried because we face the reality of getting evicted. this is such a distraction when i must study…i really do not have anywhere to go if i get evicted. i may end up staying at the library like some of my classmates who do not have accommodation (anonymous student online). while highlighting the connectedness between inadequate of finances and the failure of the 22,0% 18,3% 18,0% 8,4% 12,4% 31,5% 29,6% 24,9% 13,0% 20,1% i live in accommodation which is conducive for my studies i experience challenges with transport that negatively affect my studies i feel safe and secure where i live i have not been a victim of assault on campus i have not been a victim of assault off campus pe rc en ta ge d ep ri ve d indicators for deprivation in living conditions censored head-counts raw head-count http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 132022 40(4): 13-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 ruswa & gore student poverty in south african universities worried because we face the reality of getting evicted. this is such a distraction when i must study…i really do not have anywhere to go if i get evicted. i may end up staying at the library like some of my classmates who do not have accommodation (anonymous student online). while highlighting the connectedness between inadequate of finances and the failure of the students to secure decent accommodation, the unfiltered story demonstrates that poverty stripped some students of their security contributing to further deprivations in the physical and mental health dimensions. regarding participation, off-campus students were more deprived than those living on campus. iv. psychological stress the data from the unfiltered stories in the survey, also show how poverty places students in a desperate position where they experience severe distress. eighty-two per cent of all students mentioned that they were worried, while 35,9% of them were multidimensionally poor, as illustrated by figure 6. worry is a huge concern among students of all economic classes as reflected by the big variation between the raw and censored headcounts. students to secure decent accommodation, the unfiltered story demonstrates that poverty stripped some students of their security contributing to further deprivations in the physical and mental health dimensions. regarding participation, off-campus students were more deprived than those living on campus. (iv) psychological stress the data from the unfiltered stories in the survey, also show how poverty places students in a desperate position where they experience severe distress. eighty-two per cent of all students mentioned that they were worried, while 35,9% of them were multidimensionally poor, as illustrated by figure 6. worry is a huge concern among students of all economic classes as reflected by the big variation between the raw and censored headcounts. figure 6: percentage deprived in indicators for psychological wellbeing figure 6 shows that very few multidimensionally poor students had adequate social support and self-confidence. students were also not only worried about their current situations, but also their future security and future responsibilities since they were expected to take care of their siblings and family members who experience poverty because of intergenerational poverty. this interdependency perpetuates multidimensional poverty. (iv) participation the data points out that some students faced deprivation in their ability to participate in academic and social activities. however, students were more likely to be deprived more in leisure-related activities than academic-related activities as shown in figure 7. this is in part 12,9% 25,4% 14,2% 20,7% 35,9%16,4% 43,4% 21,7% 29,4% 82,1%  i have adequate social support to succeed in my studies  i am sometimes ashamed of who i am because of what i have or do not have i am a selfconfident person i have someone to talk to when i feel worried or anxious i am often worried or anxious about the challenges i face as a student pe rc en ta ge d ep ri ve d indicators of psychological wellbeing censored head-counts raw head-counts figure 6: percentage of students whose psychological wellbeing is an indication of deprivation figure 6 shows that very few multidimensionally poor students had adequate social support and self-confidence. students were also not only worried about their current situations, but also their future security and future responsibilities since they were expected to take care of their siblings and family members who experience poverty because of intergenerational poverty. this interdependency perpetuates multidimensional poverty. v. participation the data points out that some students faced deprivation in their ability to participate in academic and social activities. however, students were more likely to be deprived more in leisure-related activities than academic-related activities as shown in figure 7. this is in part attributed to the fact that interventions to support poor students focus on just granting academic access with little consideration for social access. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 142022 40(4): 14-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) attributed to the fact that interventions to support poor students focus on just granting academic access with little consideration for social access. figure 7: percentage deprived in indicators of participation campus climate, diction and articulation or accents, safety and security, the status of residence where one lived, and access to information about social events emerged as key barriers to students’ participation. bye et al. (2020) maintain that universities should create friendly environments for students to establish social networks and for their participation. (v) shame, stigma and loss of dignity some of the students experienced shame because of the extent and nature of deprivation, which was partly because of their socio-economic background and the inadequacy of their bursaries. student poverty to me is a rather critical and sensitive matter, that i feel no one cares about. there are a lot of students here at the university that do not have money for basic needs ... most of them feel ashamed of asking because then it’s like why they decided to come to such an environment where they have no funds to sustain themselves. this poverty then leads to depression, poor academic performance and general spiritual unwellness (anonymous student online). most students 1212 (68,8%) reported having felt ashamed in their lives. fear of being judged, ridiculed, and their peers feeling pity for them were the main reasons for being ashamed (walker, 2014). 10,5% 15,5% 22,3% 18,4% 25,0% 36,5% the university environment is socially inclusive of diverse students. i participate freely in study related activities i participate freely in leisure activities pe rc en ta ge d ep ri ve d participation censored head-counts raw head-counts figure 7: percentage of students whose participation is an indication of deprivation campus climate, diction and articulation or accents, safety and security, the status of residence where one lived, and access to information about social events emerged as key barriers to students’ participation. bye et al. (2020) maintain that universities should create friendly environments for students to establish social networks and for their participation. vi. shame, stigma and loss of dignity some of the students experienced shame because of the extent and nature of deprivation, which was partly because of their socio-economic background and the inadequacy of their bursaries. student poverty to me is a rather critical and sensitive matter, that i feel no one cares about. there are a lot of students here at the university that do not have money for basic needs ... most of them feel ashamed of asking because then it’s like why they decided to come to such an environment where they have no funds to sustain themselves. this poverty then leads to depression, poor academic performance and general spiritual unwellness (anonymous student online). most students 1212 (68,8%) reported having felt ashamed in their lives. fear of being judged, ridiculed, and their peers feeling pity for them were the main reasons for being ashamed (walker, 2014). b) who are the most deprived groups? the data indicated that multidimensional student poverty is distributed differently across the races, with black students being worse off. the study shows that black students were three times more likely to be multi-dimensionally poor than white students. a small number of white and coloured students experienced multi-dimensional poverty at the institution. it is also true that some black families have experienced social mobility and do not face these deprivations (spaull & jansen, 2019). gender appears to be another factor in student deprivation. for example, female students seem to have a greater struggle to find accommodation. sixtyfive percent of the 184 students who did not have a place to live were females and 35% were males. nevertheless, the mspi score was higher (21%) for male students compared http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 152022 40(4): 15-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 ruswa & gore student poverty in south african universities to females (18%). this implies that male students were overall more deprived than female ones despite female students being highly deprived in the accommodation dimension. consequently, interventions should take these factors into account. 7. discussion of findings the findings elucidated the potency of the alkire-foster (2015) methodology in illuminating both the incidence and intensity of multidimensional poverty among students. the results suggest that a lack of finances increases the severity and prevalence of student poverty as it affects other dimensions in a corrosive manner. the survey data shows that students from poor households, where a family cannot afford to pay for their fees, were more than two times more likely to experience multidimensional poverty (mspi of 29%) than their counterparts whose families could afford to fund their studies (mspi of 13%) the capabilities approach enabled the researchers to establish the multiple dimensions constituting poverty. the funding policy and the university’s tuition facilities and arrangements were some of the conversion factors that disabled students from improving their wellbeing. in the absence of finances, students’ effective opportunities to access learning resources, attain psychological wellness and exercise their agency to participate meaningfully in the university’s academic and social activities were limited, which gave them lower chances of graduating (walker, 2020). although finances are an important dimension, the findings demonstrate that the multidimensional nature of poverty means that providing finances alone is insufficient to address poverty (robeyns, 2017). the significant effect of basic needs, living conditions, psychological and participation on students’ wellbeing means that the university has to tackle the multidimensional nature of poverty. as was shown in this study, it needs to allow the capabilities approach not only to provide a platform for identifying the institutional arrangements and their effectiveness in addressing student poverty but also to point out sites where interventions should be (robeyns, 2017). finances directly limit individuals’ opportunities to access resources for them, resulting in their being deprived in other spheres of their lives (walker, 2020). in other words, a lack of finances is corrosive because it prevents students from accessing effective opportunities. however, access to finances is helpful only to the extent that it enables particular functionings in other dimensions in which students are deprived, “…rather it is a facilitating precondition of many functionings” (wolff et al., 2015). nonetheless, receiving high amounts of funding might not necessarily address the other dimensions of deprivations such as psychological stress, worries for the future and participation. this means that understanding student poverty only from a financial lens is limiting as this excludes other non-commensurable dimensions that affect the wellbeing of students (burchi, muro & kollar, 2018). despite finances not reflecting student poverty on their own, they are a key aspect of multidimensional student poverty. therefore, what this study emphasises that other studies do not is the interrelatedness of multidimensional poverty, in particular the corrosive effect a lack of finances has on other dimensions of students’ wellbeing, and the intensity and significant role played by the other dimensions of poverty have, in their own right, on student success. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 162022 40(4): 16-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6379 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) 8. conclusion and recommendations it is shown in this paper that lack of finances has a corrosive effect on the capacity of students to deal with physical needs, to have access to food, to have decent living standards, to enjoy mental health and to participate in the university’s social events. these deprivations contribute to students feeling ashamed, being stigmatised and losing dignity, performing poorly and being forced out of the education system. the clear implication is that higher education should provide adequate funding for low-income students to address financial deprivation as well as to allow students to reduce deprivation in other dimensions. this could be through allocating adequate funds and disbursing these funds timeously to financially deprived students. more so, the findings in this study have highlighted the limitations of providing finances only to students as there is a need for interventions to address other dimensions of deprivations to promote the wellbeing of students and ensure their subsequent success. most students face extreme psychological challenges which are caused or worsened by their experiences in higher education. psychological deprivations have a corrosive effect, leading to other deprivations. providing accessible mental health support and embedding empathy in the running of universities will contribute to alleviating students’ plight. universities should consider assisting students to develop their confidence and self-efficacy as a way of curbing shame to help them perform well and graduate. mentorship programmes are also helpful in reducing the effects as they widen students’ opportunities to graduate and to have flourishing lives (stahl et al., 2020). this could be conducted by peers or senior students from university residences. specific groups of students who are worse off such as black students living in off-campus accommodation, those with disabilities and women could be targeted. implementing interventions on raising awareness of and respect for diversity will encourage student participation in university social events such as sports activities. these strategies have the potential to enhance the wellbeing and subsequent success of students’ educational journeys. references alkire, s., foster, j., 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_hlk83652481 77 the challenges of school-based teacher development initiatives in south africa and the potential of cluster teaching1 f de clercq university of witwatersrand r phiri university of witwatersrand this article examines the challenges of teacher development strategies in post-1994 south africa by arguing that school-based development initiatives address teachers’ specific development needs and that it is imperative to understand the conditions under which these initiatives can have a positive impact on teachers. a framework is developed through which to examine why td initiatives evolve over time and why teachers do not benefit equally from these. it illustrates this by reporting on some research findings on the potential and limitations of school-based teacher development through a cluster case study, which could be described as a south african version of a professional learning community. keywords: teacher development, cluster teaching, professional learning community teacher development (td) continues to be the most important challenge where the improvement of south african schooling is concerned. with the post-1994 commitment to equity and redress, teacher unions negotiated the 1998 development appraisal system (das) with education departments, aimed at redress and based on the principle of teachers driving their own development. however, it became clear that sufficient, meaningful support to teachers was difficult to mobilise as a follow-up to the ‘teacher appraisal for development’ exercise. by 2003, a ministerial report on td led to the 2007 national policy framework for teacher education development (npfted) (department of education [doe], 2007). by 2008, the south african council of educators (sace) was given the responsibility of coordinating and quality-assuring continuous professional teacher development (cptd) as well as overseeing funds from the doe (doe/sace, 2008). by mid-2009, a td summit resulted in various stakeholders developing a statement of principles about td and, by april 2011, the doe publicised an integrated strategic plan for teacher development, which is still to be implemented. yet, teacher unions continue to voice their frustration at the lack of meaningful, hands-on support for teachers. it has been a high priority to counter the apartheid legacy of poor in-service provisions and assist with the implementation of the complex and ambitious post-1994 teacher-related policies. on their side, education departments appear unsure as to how to implement their vision through concrete td strategies which are to provide meaningful support opportunities to teachers with differentiated development needs. apart from education departments having a weak impact with their td programmes, many ngos and service providers face similar challenges as their support interventions have encountered serious obstacles and produced little real or sustained changes in teacher and/or learner performances (taylor, 2007). as a result, new td approaches have been attempted. the intention of this article is to develop a conceptual framework through which to examine why and under what conditions td initiatives work for certain teachers and not for others. it focuses on reasons as to why school-based td is increasingly recommended in the literature as one of the most effective interventions. furthermore, by examining a case study of teacher clustering in mpumalanga, the article reports on the conditions which were responsible for the success of one teacher-driven, school-based intervention, something that the recent 2011 integrated strategic planning framework for teacher education and development in south africa is promoting. 78 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 towards a framework for assessing teacher development strategies and practices forms and models of teacher professional development evolve to adapt to changes which occurred over time in teachers’ work, professional status and development needs. scholars who study changes in teacher work and development in the uk and us (kelley, 1997; hargreaves, 2002) argue that, traditionally, teaching was conceived of as labour which had to follow departmental rules and regulations tightly, and transmit teacher-proof, pre-determined syllabi developed by curriculum experts. in this ‘pre-professional’ period, teachers were treated as workers with basic technical competencies. preand in-service training consisted of basic subject content and a minimum of pedagogical competencies. according to reitzug (2002), in-service teacher development was driven by the department, with little teacher involvement. it consisted of generic a-contextual training workshops at teacher centres, focusing mainly on technical and administrative issues. by the 1970s, schools in europe and the usa were pressurised to produce better quality education for all learners, especially those from an under-privileged background. teachers became more than technicians and had to acquire pedagogical competences to adapt the syllabi to their learners’ context and constraints. this ‘autonomous professional’ era, according to hargreaves (2002:158), occurred when teachers gained more control over their work, as they now mediated learning to their learners. td adapted accordingly and took the form of on-site teacher development as well as department-driven, in-service training workshops, focusing on correcting teachers’ lack of pedagogical knowledge and competences (christie, harley & penny, 2004). increasing research evidence from developing countries, including chile (avalos, tellez & navarro, 2010), shows that teacher education programmes were ineffective with their generalist structures. by the 1980s – a period called by hargreaves (2002:162) the ‘collegial professional’ era – teachers were treated as high professionals, encouraged to grow and improve their professional practices by sharing and reflecting together on their experiences and practices. shulman (1986:9) argues that, beyond content knowledge, teachers need what he calls pedagogical content knowledge (pck), the transformation of content into pedagogically powerful forms or ’the aspects of content most germane to its teachability’. thus, pck refers to teachers interpreting the subject matter, finding different ways to represent it and making it accessible to learners. international research pointed to the value of school-based td with senior coaches/mentors modelling good practices to their colleagues (mclaughlin & talbert, 2006). this was considered much more effective than previous td interventions, which were based on ‘outside of classroom’ practices and criticised for providing teachers with ideas which could not easily be tested in teachers’ own practices. guskey (2002) researched various td models and argues that teachers are likely to stick to old practices when td focuses on changing their values and attitudes with orientation/ advocacy workshops. however, they are more likely to change practices when they experience these changes positively in real classroom contexts. teachers were encouraged to become reflective practitioners by working collegially in professional learning communities (plcs) (dufour, dufour & eaker, 2008) to develop creative responses to their various teaching and learning challenges (christie et al., 2004). such job-embedded td activities were beneficial by being continuous, collaborative and based on shared, reflective practices. teachers gained new information, reconsidered previous knowledge and beliefs, and built on their colleagues’ ideas and experiences (mclaughlin & talbert, 2006). haughley, howard and marshall (1996) note that such td activities had to be located in a collaborative school culture, with trusting and collegial relationships. this teacher collaboration took from what lave and wenger (1991) argue about learning (in corporate settings), namely that it does not occur in isolation but is socially constructed and specific to the situation in which it is learned. applied to schools, this ‘situated workplace learning’ theory pushes for teachers participating in a collegial reflection to improve learners’ achievements by reflecting on and comparing their practices in a real classroom situation, and by examining concretely areas that work and those that need changes. 79de clercq & phiri — the challenges of school-based teacher development initiatives african countries, on their side, were constrained by serious economic and fiscal austerity constraints, which did not allow them to translate their td vision into large-scale programmes. their commitment to basic education for all further exacerbated this situation because td was not a main priority for the department with their already stretched scarce resources. donor-funded projects became important and were targeted at moving teachers from their role of technicians to that of reflective practitioners. however, because it was difficult to fully train teachers before placing them in schools, inset became a way of completing preset rather than being part of a continuum (christie et al., 2004). as a result, a tension developed in the assumptions of inset programmes aimed at producing teachers both as effective technicians and as reflective practitioners. stuart and kunje (2000, in christie et al., 2004:13) note on a malawian teacher inset programme: “the aims of training a large number of teachers in the shortest possible time are probably incompatible with the aim of producing and supporting innovative teachers equipped to act as change agents”. this was also a time when education departments in these countries introduced a new form of td: the school cluster, whereby teachers from neighbouring schools were brought together “to improve the quality of education by enabling the sharing of resources, experience and expertise among clusters and facilitating school administration by pooling resources from several schools to be shared equally” (aipinge, 2007: ii). mc neil (2004) mentions that, in many developing countries, teacher development activities then took the form of teacher clustering, aimed at addressing scarcity problems faced by teachers in rural areas by giving them access to better facilities and staff (ribchester & edwards, 1998). such teacher clusters had pedagogical and/or administrative objectives. they encouraged teachers to assist one another in understanding their practices and break teachers’ isolation by experiencing a form of collaborative learning (jita & ndlalane, 2009; giordano, 2008). they provided a context in which teachers observed how others teach, enticing them to try out new ways of teaching. they could also constitute a special learning community, committed to discussing and planning curriculum development innovations and improving their understanding of innovations (giordano, 2008; bray, 1987). alternatively, clusters were used as formal administrative units in the hierarchy between districts and schools (bray, 1987). in south africa, cluster meetings were used by districts faced with a human resource (hr) shortage to familiarise teachers with assessment moderation. clusters simplified the work of district officials as they then worked through cluster leaders (cls), instead of dealing with individual schools. cls possessed delegated authority from district officials to ensure that tasks are carried out timely. cls knew their schools better than district officials and could therefore be more effective in making certain decisions and in planning (giordano, 2008). however, abuse by district officials could also occur, especially with officials who were not qualified or committed but more interested in delegating to clusters so as not to visit their schools and teachers. jita and ndlalane (2009:59) argue that the mere presence of cluster structures does not lead to effective td as this requires certain preconditions. effective clusters should focus on improving teacher performance for better learner achievements and need quality teacher-led interactions, based on professional knowledge and skills, and a collegial reflective culture. on-site professional learning communities have their limitations. while they may be effective at encouraging teachers to improve their practices through sharing and reflecting on their knowledge and practices, they also depend on the collective professional expertise of its members (marneweck, 2004). to generate new conceptual knowledge around curriculum and learning orientation, non-school-based educationists or experts are usually needed to assist in that respect as partners (maistry, 2008). thus, it is clear that several td strategies are needed for differentiated teachers’ needs and that these are best assessed by looking at the work teachers are expected to perform, as well as their existing level of knowledge, competences and professionalism. however, before testing the notion of reflective collaboration and its conditions in south africa, the various post-1994 td challenges need to be reviewed. 80 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 challenges of teachers’ work and development strategies in post-1994 sa in the apartheid era, teachers’ work and status were shaped by racially segregated education departments, with top-down authoritarian structures and bureaucratic procedures. teachers were expected to use prescribed textbooks and transmit syllabuses, designed by white curriculum experts to ensure that apartheid ideology was transmitted in schools. the often under-resourced black education departments controlled their teachers in a rather more oppressive bureaucratic manner. many post-1994 policies, such as the 2000 norms and standards for educators, curriculum and assessment policies, aimed at transforming teachers into professionals with high levels of competences and knowledge, a commitment to learners’ achievements as well as the capacity to reflect on what and how to teach and improve (barasa & mattson, 1998). such ambitious goals meant that teachers had to learn rapidly to act as high professionals, which represented a serious challenge as they had not been trained in performing such demanding roles. as the research of taylor and vinjevold (1999) and the centre for development and enterprise (cde, 2011) reveal, by the 1990s, disadvantaged (black) teachers lacked serious subject knowledge, professional competences and the commitment to improve their professionalism. the td challenges were enormous as teachers required different forms of td to move from where they were to where they had to be. the scholarship in teacher education grew fast to investigate, inter alia, teachers as facilitators, problems and possibilities of cooperative learning, the importance of context and the idea of teaching for learning. the latter category examines the need for “consolidation work, unpacking, modelling or making explicit the relationship between disciplinary content and the manner in which it should be learned, along with the rules and operations associated with learning it” (deacon, osman & buchler, 2010:6). yet, one of the main td challenges was to identify teachers’ developmental needs and mobilise the human and financial resources to provide appropriate and sustainable td activities. so, how were the post-1994 td strategies conceived? non-school-based departmental teacher development provincial education departments implemented a national in-service programme to disseminate the new curriculum knowledge to districts and schools. a ministerial review of c2005 (chisholm, 2000) found that provinces and teachers were frustrated by the short timeframe, planning and execution of this in-service programme. thus, a cascade approach was adopted to reach as many teachers as possible in a short time; however, this proved problematic and did not work. most training took the form of workshops, organised by districts to provide generic information for orientation purposes. these were poorly contextualised, of short duration and without any demonstration, modelling or follow-up at school level. in addition, trainers were of poor quality and unable to act as change agents in facilitating the implementation of the new policies which they did not understand themselves (narsee, 2006). as christie et al. (2004:29) state: when td is aimed instrumentally at hastily achieving a new teacher ... in a context in which many teachers have a low base of skills and competences, the way in which teachers appropriate the new paradigm may be antithetical to its premises and aims. beyond this, other forms of teacher development were organised and funded by education departments, such as university programmes in various subject content or pedagogical content programmes but without much impact on teachers’ performance. one of the most successful fora for non-school-based teacher development emerged with teacher networks, formed by professional associations such as the association of mathematics educators of south africa (amesa), led by highly competent professionals, committed and focused on improving teachers’ competences, practices, and attitudes. thus, non-school-based td was rarely able to make teachers change paradigm and improve their classroom practices. as guskey (2002) argues, teachers need to experience changes positively in real-life contexts. this is not to say that there is no place for non-school-based td, especially with south african teachers with their lack in basic content and pedagogical knowledge, but rather to argue that there is no 81de clercq & phiri — the challenges of school-based teacher development initiatives ’one-size-fits-all’ td for all. what is needed is a thorough analysis of teachers’ work, competences and knowledge as well as expectations and needs to inform the design of differentiated td interventions. school-based teacher development school-based td became a priority in 2004 when the doe introduced the posts of master and senior teachers, whose roles were to mentor and assist less experienced or knowledgeable colleagues. however, accusations of poor appointments surfaced, making the department re-think, together with teacher unions, a more formal institutionalised system through which to appoint senior teachers, namely the 2008 occupation-specific dispensation. another department-driven, school-based td strategy emerged with the cluster system which entails districts bringing teachers of neighbouring schools together to reflect on aspects of their work. the first clusters organised were designed to make teachers work through the common assessment tasks (cat). ngos and other service providers used a similar form of td to build teacher capacity. they worked with groups of schools and teachers as experts or consultants, guiding development workshops, initially without, but increasingly together with districts, as they realised the need for district capacity building to enable them to be a permanent source of school support. these projects met with mixed success, and tended to be more effective when dealing with relatively functional schools (such as the dinaledi schools) rather than with poorly performing ones (taylor, 2007). many doubted the benefits and sustainability of the cluster system as a large-scale solution for teacher development. this is because clusters were rarely driven by teachers, or consisted of teachers who did not possess sufficiently strong professional competences or knowledge to improve the competences of the teacher collective (marneweck, 2004). the few effective clusters tend to have access to and the support of professional teachers or external facilitators, with strong knowledge and competences to assist teachers to reflect and improve their practices (cde, 2011). maistry (2008) also found that effective school-based teacher development was associated with factors such as leadership, strategic thinking and understanding, expert assistance, mobilisation of resources through partnership and social networks. while not arguing that teacher clusters are the only effective td form in 21st century south africa, this article now turns towards research findings on a successful form of teacher clustering, which has not yet been reported in the south african td literature. case study of a teacher cluster in mpumalanga this study was conducted as part of a post-graduate research study by the second author of this article. it was an exploratory case study in a region of mpumalanga, designed to gain in-depth understanding of the context and characteristics of a teacher cluster, the kind of teacher learning it facilitated, the reasons for teachers’ interest in this form of teacher learning as well as its impact on teachers and learners alike. the researcher gained permission from the mpumalanga department of education ehlanzeni region. before carrying out this study permission was granted by the university of the witwatersrand’s ethics committee. to develop a rich picture of these teachers’ views on the complex interplay of contextual and other conditions under which this cluster functioned, it was decided to rely mainly on perceptual data gathered through semi-structured interviews of a district official, a cluster leader and seven teachers of a same subject area (geography) from seven neighbouring secondary schools. observations and document analysis were also used to cross-check the perceptual data. observation of the planning and conducting of one cluster teaching meeting was done to comprehend how teaching topics were assigned to individual teachers, what happened while one teacher was teaching and also after s/he had been teaching, as well as how teachers related to each other during the whole process. this added to what participants said or did not say in the interviews. analysis of the cluster policy and other provincial documents on clusters assisted in understanding the origins and purposes of this cluster system, its sponsors, and how this programme was set up and functioned. 82 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 history and context of cluster teaching as with other provincial education departments, school clusters were set up in mpumalanga as a result of a policy stipulating that circuits/districts had to organise teacher clusters for the moderation of the continuous assessment (cass) process (mpumalanga department of education [mde], undated:1). but many mpumalanga teachers felt frustrated at the circuits which rarely organised content workshops (one per year), and most teachers had little energy, resources or social capital to look for alternative sources of meaningful support: you don’t get anything from curriculum implementers [cis], even if you submitted an area to be developed. when they come to your school, which is rare, they just check your files and learners’ files to see if you comply with the requirements. cis don’t know much about the subject content. when teachers are discussing challenging topics, cis are stuck and it is teachers who help them out. however, some teachers decided to use these clusters as a form of school-based, in-service education. this teacher collaboration, modelled on the japanese jyugyo kenkyu (lesson study), was born out of an intervention in science and mathematics conceived by the mde, supported financially and technically by the japanese international cooperation agency and academically by up (mde, undated). it began with maths and sciences but spread to other subject areas to become formalised as a compulsory element of teacher education in the province (jita & ndlalane, 2009). the seven teachers explained how frustrated they were with the district and how they wanted to improve their grade 12 learners’ performance (phiri, 2011). this is when they decided to turn the cluster idea into a voluntary teacher development opportunity to share content and pedagogical knowledge and improve their practices by observing one another and modelling good practices in concrete classroom situations. they brought their learners together once a month at one school, on a saturday or after a school day, so that teachers could teach them and in the process learn from one another how to be more effective. learners were mixed and divided randomly into four groups, where four teachers at a time taught four groups of learners on a particular geography topic. this allowed each teacher to be observed by at least one other teacher. teachers met twice a month to prepare. so, while such cluster teaching appears as supplementary tuition to gr 12 learners, it started as a teacher-driven initiative to improve subject and pedagogical knowledge to benefit both teachers and learners (phiri, 2011). cluster teaching and teacher learning participant teachers (with an m+4 professional qualification and from disadvantaged schools, as the betteroff schools in the circuit did not join) explained that they wanted to pool their resources for the benefit of all, as well as learn from colleagues’ different skills and competencies related to their subject and pedagogical knowledge. because teachers had varied knowledge of the curriculum, they believed they could help one another understand different content and pedagogical knowledge by modelling it in a reallife classroom. ..it benefits to work with other teachers, you learn a lot from just listening to what others are doing. some of these teachers are very good in their subjects and cluster teaching shows you which teachers are good in which area of the subject (phiri, 2011). the teacher learning was not instant but gradual. teachers were encouraged to receive and provide assistance. even though they learnt around what they taught and observed, they also acquired some basic knowledge which laid a foundation from which they could grow further (phiri, 2011). observation of different teaching techniques from more experienced teachers became valuable learning as they experienced these directly as well as noticed learners’ reactions to different teaching techniques. ..educators often have an idea of what to teach but the problem is one of methodology, on how to deliver a particular topic to learners in a way they can understand. learners respect the teacher who knows his/her stuff and are always attentive when such a teacher is teaching (phiri, 2011). 83de clercq & phiri — the challenges of school-based teacher development initiatives the cluster teaching also resulted in teachers moving at a similar pace in the curriculum coverage, since learners wrote their assessment tasks at the same time. this encouraged teachers to work hard to catch up with their colleagues and master aspects of their subject which they found difficult (phiri, 2011). this observation empowered teachers as it broke their isolation, helped them develop trust towards one another and accept comments from colleagues whom they soon recognised as ‘critical’ friends. the less experienced teachers initially felt insecure when being observed as it laid bare their vulnerabilities, but they started to relax when they heard positive, practical feedback from more experienced colleagues. they had never felt at ease when observed before but, once trust developed, they accepted this help with greater ease: acknowledging weakness is something that makes people develop because they are then able to seek help (phiri, 2011). cluster teaching became a safe space which broke down fears and barriers to sharing, as teachers started to look forward to the useful feedback on the strengths and weaknesses of their teaching techniques. being provided with evidence on other teachers’ teaching, on what learners did not understand and why this was the case, teachers experienced the process as a valuable learning experience and were encouraged to adopt new practices. they soon witnessed positive reactions and results from the learners. this caused them to continue with these practices which, in turn, changed some of their beliefs and attitudes. cluster teaching and enhanced teacher skills besides subject content and pedagogical knowledge, cluster teaching taught teachers additional skills and competencies. they mentioned learning to work together, to improve their planning and preparation of lessons, solve professional problems, as well as share skills and resources with others. it was evident that the whole cluster of teachers and learners felt the benefits. ...teachers no longer struggle alone; they consult with each other on anything. besides, if one has a problem, it becomes a problem of every member as we deal with it together; we do not wait for cluster meetings we just call each other (phiri, 2011). cluster teaching also resulted in teachers taking the initiative to run the cluster together and make decisions in a participatory manner. they mentioned being encouraged to take initiatives and stopped looking to the cluster leader, who operated as a link between teachers, heads and the district (phiri, 2011). cluster teaching enhanced their commitment, as they also learnt how teaching can be effective in similar poorly resourced contexts. cluster teaching and teachers’ sustained interest in further learning the driving force behind the cluster was teachers, committed to learn and improve their practices so their learners could perform better (phiri, 2011). teachers were proud of their calling and wanted to be recognised by the district and the region. they wanted to become eligible for career progression by adding to their portfolios for submission for an occupation-specific dispensation (osd) evaluation. the study noted some competition among teachers who wanted to outwit one another and gain recognition as one of the best teachers in the cluster. they worked hard to impress their colleagues and learners. they showed commitment to change and to continuous learning to develop their knowledge, skills and competencies (phiri, 2011). this competitive spirit appeared healthy as teachers felt the consequences of not improving their practices and were incentivised in keeping abreast with developments in their field. besides this competition, teachers were keen to learn and improve for the sake of their learners. learners compared, contrasted and reacted to different teachers’ teaching. teachers mentioned that, when learners experienced how their teachers were not well versed in the material they taught, they tended to misbehave in class or asked difficult questions to expose the teachers’ lack of knowledge (phiri, 2011). it was difficult to ignore the negative responses of learners who had been exposed to teachers with greater expertise and knowledge, and this made teachers conscientious and committed to improve. in that sense, cluster teaching acted as a form of quality assurance – close to some form of professional accountability 84 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 (darling-hammond, 1989), because teachers were pushed to set and achieve common standards of content and practice. in fact, by providing a conducive learning environment, and knowledge and incentives to learn more, such cluster teaching combined professional development and professional accountability effectively. cluster teaching and learners’ learning one of the main goals of cluster teaching was improved tuition to learners, which is a priority goal of effective professional development (schlager & fusco, 2003). teacher development that does not lead to improvement in learners’ performance is a waste of time, as teacher practices only improve and become sustained if they produce improved learners’ performance (villegas-reimers, 2003). cluster teaching enriched learners’ learning experiences, partly because teachers shared their school resources and learning materials for the benefit of learners (phiri, 2011). it also exposed learners to a variety of learning experiences since they were taught by teachers who used different teaching techniques, which met different learning needs. the way i teach is not the same as another teacher. this is because all teachers teach differently and so are learners when it comes to learning. when i am teaching, i might not reach out to all my learners but, if many teachers teach together, there is a greater likelihood that most learners are going to get something out of it (phiri, 2011). teachers took collective responsibility for their learners’ success and actively assisted learners who struggled, to prevent them from lagging behind. in that sense, learners also benefitted from the teaching improvement of teachers (phiri, 2011). as mclaughlin and talbert (2006) and schwille and dembele (2007) show, learner learning is enhanced by continuous, collaborative teacher learning, which focuses on instruction and learning in specific contexts. as teachers learn experientially with and from other teachers in their daily practices, they develop new knowledge and competences, as they test what they experience from other teachers. how did cluster teaching impact on matric results? teachers said that the cluster teaching was initiated because something had to be done to make the region perform better: it is fruitful, it is helping our learners and we can see the improvements of [matric] results since it started. we are now one of the best clusters not just in the region but also the province as a whole, that’s a very big improvement (phiri, 2011). although the geography matric results of these schools improved in 2009 and 2010, it is difficult to establish a direct link between these results and the cluster teaching exercise. however, teachers believed that, once cluster teaching became fully fledged, learners’ learning was enhanced and their schools were back on the provincial map (phiri, 2011). conclusion cluster teaching, driven by teachers committed to improving their learners’ performance, had many intended and unintended consequences. it made teachers pool their individual expertise and resources and experience the benefits of collegiality, and the principle of ‘we are stronger as a team’. it did this by promoting direct experiential learning and colleagues’ competition which was a powerful incentive to improving teachers’ reflections and to advancing their subject and pedagogical content knowledge as well as classroom practices. it assisted teachers to deal with real rather than hypothesised problems; it pointed to areas of development and teachers witnessed immediate results from different teaching practices on their learners. the workplace learning boosted teachers’ morale and confidence, contributed to a needed collegial culture in schools and made them appreciate positive elements in teachers’ competition. thus, cluster teaching changed these teachers’ practices, beliefs and attitudes, and acted as an effective teacherinitiated td and accountability, which compensated for the lack of district support and poor resources. could cluster teaching be promoted as an effective form of td at district level? yes, but as long as similar conditions, attitudes and competences exist among teachers. it is also argued that clusters 85de clercq & phiri — the challenges of school-based teacher development initiatives have their limitations as their knowledge and teaching practices can be limited to what is known by, or accessible to, the cluster teachers. whereas this cluster community did not have access to external support from professional experts for new ideas or concepts to improve on teachers’ subject, teaching and learning practices, other communities may require experts to facilitate or guide teachers’ knowledge, competences and reflection. indeed, school-based td needs to look at and beyond the cluster system to ensure that teachers acquire new ideas, professional knowledge, competences and attitudes as well as remain motivated. endnote 1 we are grateful to the anonymous pie reviewers for their suggestions on how to strengthen this article. references aipinge lp 2007. cluster centre principals’ perceptions of the implementation of the school cluster system in namibia. unpublished master’s dissertation. grahamstown: rhodes university. avalos b, tellez f & navarro s 2010. learning about the 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villegas-reimers e 2003. teacher professional development: an international review of the literature. unesco: international institute for educational planning. wenger e & snyder w 2000. communities of practice; the organisational frontier. harvard business review, 78(1):139-145. 69 learning concepts, language, and literacy in hybrid linguistic codes: the multilingual maze of urban grade 1 classrooms in south africa elizabeth henning university of johannesburg from the field of developmental psycholinguistics and from conceptual development theory there is evidence that excessive linguistic ‘code-switching’ in early school education may pose some hazards for the learning of young multilingual children. in this article the author addresses the issue, invoking postpiagetian and neo-vygotskian ideas on children’s cognitive development and its interplay with language in an argument for a linguistically ‘stable’ pedagogy that prepares learners for the world of written language in which they have to express most of their learning in school. she argues that language development, literacy learning, and the development of concepts are intertwined phenomena in a child’s development and that semantically and semiotically unambiguous and systematic classroom communication is therefore vital for learning success in the early grades when the foundations for cognitive academic language proficiency are laid. she calls for longitudinal research of young children’s learning, investigating how language hybrids in classroom communication may impact it. taking cognisance of linguistics theory that posits language as fluid, she hypothesizes that if language use, in mixed code, is excessive, it may lead to cognitive instability and insecure academic discourse. keywords: conceptual development, urban south african classrooms, ‘code-switching’, academic language insecurity introduction: a ‘code-switching’ conundrum in south african schools when young, urban children go to school in south africa the chances that they will enter a monolingual environment are almost none. the chances that they will enter a learning environment that is home to language hybrids such as isicamtho and tsotsitaal,1 on the other hand, are plentiful. a rich linguistic mix can add to the educational tapestry of the children, bringing texture to what otherwise may have been a less dynamic cultural setting for learning. but too much language diversity in early education may come at a price. its pragmatic demands may diminish its assumed advantages for learning and communication. the sociopragmatic skills (myers-scotton, 2002) that adults use when they mix language codes in single utterances are not yet well developed in young children (cantone, 2007). psychologically, they may be underprepared for the demands of language mixing in the learning challenges they face in the first grade. yet, in local inquiries the psycholinguistics of learning in the early grades remains under-researched, while the social aspects are emphasised in research contexts as varied as san communities in the northern cape (siegruhn, 2002) and in the tsumkwe area of namibia (hays, 2002), and in rural kwazulu-natal (mashiya, 2011). contemporary developmental psychologists agree that when young children start using language, their conceptual development is accelerated incrementally with their language development (carey, 2009; gopnik, 2003). the question is, however, whether the language hybrids that abound in urban areas can lead young learners to engage with the texts they have to master in the formal version of a language, both receptively and expressively. most south african researchers of this topic would say that they do (heugh, 2006; mati, date unknown). i argue that we need to make sure of this by conducting longitudinal, school-based research in the foundation phase, something that has not yet been done. i argue, also, that we cannot rely on research findings from countries with different languages, different histories, and different sociocultural and political contexts. 71henning — learning concepts, language, and literacy in hybrid linguistic codes imagine how the pragmatic competence of a learner has to increase when the variety of languages or language hybrids increases in this maze. moreover, the different variants signal different types of sentences and with that also differences in syntactic logic, which is a prominent role player in expressed cognition (bowerman & choi, 2001; behrens, 2001). a great deal of research has been conducted on, for example, the way in which concepts of space and number are encoded in different languages (brown & levinson, 2009; saxe, 1982). developing language and concepts since the 1980s there has been a renewed interest in the role of language in conceptual development and vice versa (max planck institute, 1995; bowerman & levinson, 2001; bowerman & choi, 2001). however, there is a dearth of research on the interface of language and conceptual development in south africa. longitudinal research is generally scarce in this country’s education scholarship and developmental psycholinguistic work in early formal education even more so. policies make important statements about language and learning and so does the discourse research on classroom communication in which especially the issues of equity and code-switching are addressed in mostly descriptive studies (see, for example, the work of setati on her personal website: http://www mamokgethi.com). yet, when we investigate the most successful school systems in the world, such as those in finland and south korea, we have to acknowledge that their early education is to a large extent ‘monolingual’ (barber & mourshed, 2007), even though english is studied as an additional language. one way of investigating the reciprocal interplay of language and learning, and specifically conceptual development and change, is to do so within a conceptual framework in which the interrelationship of these two developmental spheres is clarified in longitudinal research that can deliver evidence beyond singlecase classroom descriptions. this article is a call for action for such research. the results of the recent annual national assessments (anas) that measure performance in literacy and mathematics paint a bleak picture of learning in the foundation phase (department of basic education, 2011). arguably, there may be many reasons for this poor performance, but the nature of classroom communication may be one source for concern, especially in the foundation phase, when the building blocks of the language of learning are formed. i forward an emergent conceptual framework for such research, beginning with views of conceptual development as partly innatist, meaning that young children learn concepts at first by simply being in the world and developing physiologically-neurologically. i believe that this view has some merit (spelke & kinzler, 2007), but that it cannot explain the different routes taken by children to reach a certain level of cognitive and linguistic competence in different domains. i would thus argue that there is likely to be some innate domain specificity of early concepts and that young children learn through “bootstrapping” (carey, 1985, 2009;519-523) to develop these (embryonic ) domains. to this i would add the notion of ‘linguistic bootstrapping’, meaning that language, once children start their verbal journey, serves not only as representation of the world, but also as a conjoining agent that brings different (specific) conceptual domains together (gopnik, 2001; gopnik, 2003; gopnik & nazzi, 2003; gopnik & meltzhoff, 1997). given health and a secure environment, children stand an equal chance to learn and to use language in this way. on this view, one can accept that young children thus learn their world from a base that may be partly innate, with both core knowledge structures (carey, 2009) and domain-specific knowledge learning devices, one of which is language, and partly sociocultural. and they then build their knowledge and their language in reciprocal growth spurts (gopnik, 2001). by the time they reach school age they know a great deal about their world and they use language to navigate it and to map more semantic categories onto their experience with the help of language as conjoining agent. most developmental psychologists accept that there are broad ‘constructivist’ phases of development, but that they cannot be narrowed down to specified stages as proposed by piaget (1954). as children develop, their interaction with their world becomes increasingly important as they learn to represent reality in the signs of language. the more they are able to represent their world through language, the more they are able to navigate and to map, and, therefore, to learn. in grade 1 they learn many such linguistic mapping skills. 72 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 interactionist theorists such as vygotsky (1992), bruner (1983), rogoff (1990) and tomasello (2004) emphasise this part of language development as partner to conceptual development. figure 2 of the framework that i suggest to examine children’s language, in tandem with conceptual development, shows that there is a continuous balancing interaction between the development of concepts (knowledge of the world) and language (representing the world and ‘speech acting’ in and upon the world). there is consensus about the peak period in a child’s early years when language starts to play a more important role and when it serves as one of the stepping stones with which to “bootstrap” conceptual development. at this time, around three years, children are mostly able to represent their world to some extent in the linguistic code(s) they have learned thus far and in which they are pragmatically competent. they can award a sign to time concepts (in early tense structure, as described by behrens, 2001), to absent objects, to stories, and they also engage in fantasy play, talking to imaginary friends. they ‘act’ as fairies or horses or little mice, or fly as aeroplanes. and in much of this they can explore their world with the help of linguistic representation. they have learned to theorise their world, and their specific linguistic code(s) help them to do so. in school they learn new forms of representation at a rapid rate. conceptual development language development innate capacity to develop concepts naming objects using language to capture events and actions learning concepts by building on existing knowledge (from innate capability)theorising the world by adapting concepts learning concepts through signs such as language encoding and decoding theories of the world using language that can be internalised (nominals, verbals, syntax, etc.) for “inner speech” and for communicationusing language to learn and to theorise figure 2: learning to theorise the world by way of concepts and language: a balancing act by starting to represent the world linguistically, young children make sense/meaning of the world by developing their own theories and by verbalising them, not unlike scientists theorise the world and share/ verbalise their theories (carey, 1987; gopnik, 2001, 1988; gopnik & choi, 1990). they change their first naïve, folk theories and their methodologies as they learn more, which is why it is enticing to think of 73henning — learning concepts, language, and literacy in hybrid linguistic codes cognitive development as happening in stages, as piaget did. if a child’s one theory is no longer functional, it shifts to another that functions well, or the theory is amended. upon school entry more language and more theorising are required and the two become increasingly interdependent. in the literature this view of child theory-building has become somewhat endearingly known as the “theory theory” of child cognitive and language development. bowerman and levinson (200l:6) capture a constructivist-innatist-interactionist integration, or the “theory theory” view of conceptual development, to which gopnik (2009) and other authors also subscribe and in which language manifests as agent: indeed, conceptual development is thought of as a series of theory replacements or reconstructions as over-simple theories are replaced with ones more adequate to the data of experience (just as scientific theories are overthrown or revised). such theory changes appear to be especially dramatic at just the time when language production begins to flourish, and these events may be closely linked, reciprocally feeding each other. apart from changing their ideas about their environment as they interact with it and as they use language to do so increasingly, children also change their language, especially as they enter school. in this new environment with its many new cues, children will sometimes ‘change’, or adopt words before they are fully meaningful to them. in a radical vygotksian view, it is not unlikely that they (and adults) change their knowledge because they have learned a new word (gopnik, 2001:57). learning happens either in tandem with word use, or prior to it, or results from it. socioculturalists/interactionists will argue that the word is the vehicle, or the semiotic mediator of its message (its semantics). thus, when a new term comes into a young child’s discourse, it is adopted and its meaning becomes clear with use in social action. and in school there is much new social action, most of it captured in new language and abstractions. the process of understanding this new world may be rapid, or slow. a grade 1 learner may not fully grasp the meaning of the object word ‘mammal’, but with some, often indiscriminate, use and many examples and scaffolding in the social context, the meaning settles and the category of ‘animals that are mammals’ that behave in a certain way, is established. the process of refining understanding can be messy, and this is one of the problem spaces of mixed languages in childhood education. if children learn by way of different language hybrids, there is no way of knowing which linguistic pegs or “formats” (bruner, 1983: 132 -134) will be utilised for their theorising. and, what will they do when they are expected to express knowledge in the ‘standard’ forms, such as in the ana test items and in all formal assessment in school, if they communicate and try to learn, in an extreme case, through isicamtho or tsotsitaal? language, learning, and literacy in the early grades of school with many sentences and words of their linguistic code(s) at their command and with the ability to change meaning by morphemic inflections denoting time, number, and so forth, children go to school at around the age of six. they now enter the world where signs and codes rule, where more and more is learned through these signs and their coding systems, including the orthographical and numeric ones such as written language and written mathematics. if they are adept at converting code-switched language use to the requirements of school life, they could succeed in the semiotic mediation that happens there all the time. much of lev vygotsky’s oeuvre was about the “semiotic mediation” that takes place in school, where signs are learned to grasp the ‘school knowledge’ that is needed to advance in school (vygotsky, 1992; kozulin, 1990 151-194). in this context, children thus do not only have to be able to use language for oral interaction, where code-switching usually occurs, but they have to use its representational version in written code, by either reading or writing, and increasingly so as they progress in the system. eventually their learning will be assessed mainly via written language, and this assessment does not provide for mixed language. bearing in mind what they now encounter in school, the world of the grade 1 child is arguably a maze of codes and systems of knowledge for the newcomer (see figure 1). in a few months s/he learns the arabic code for number, coupled with signs that indicate equation, subtraction, addition, and so forth.2 children also have to learn that the utterances they make can be parsed and ‘squeezed’ into letters and then related to sounds and vice versa, becoming what snow (2010) refers to as “alphabetically” literate. so, while 74 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 becoming veritable detectives, searching for clues for what constitutes the number signs in numeracy, they must also detect phonemes and find the paths of these sound bytes to graphemes, the orthographic equivalents. and then they have to get those blended into morphemes and words and ultimately lined up in sentences and make meaning within a discourse! all of this happens very suddenly and at the same time in the first grade. add oral code-switching to the mix and one realises that we urgently need local research on the issue. in her ethnographic work on grade r classes in a sowetan school, sekhukhune (2010) identifies this as the main concern. we need to ask questions about what constitutes learning in a code-switching grade 1 class where, typically, five or more new topics or ideas or concepts are introduced per day, some of which will be in the numeracy code and some in the language code, and some in the alphabetical code of literacy. unless the child’s ‘code-switching’ system is pragmatically synchronised with that of the teacher, they do not, in actual fact, use the same language and this may lead to the type of misunderstandings that happen so easily in teaching. in a classroom where the foundations for, and bridges to, logic between numeracy, biology, physics, chemistry and language itself are laid, this mix may be a hazardous one, because the building blocks for cognitive academic language proficiency (cummins, 1979) are very specific. considering what leading developmental psycholinguists and other linguists are saying about the relation between language (and its structures, specifically also its morphemic structures, as described by cantone, 2007; wei, 2000; myers-scotton, 1993), the use of mixed language communication in early school education needs to be investigated before it is taken at face value to be an asset and judged by the same norms as adult social code-switching: instead of language merely reflecting the cognitive development which permits and constrains its acquisition, language is being thought of as potentially catalytic and transformative of cognition… the conclusion could then be that the kinds of transformation of thinking by language may be subject to language-specific biases (bowerman & levinson, 2001:13). considering “language-specific biases” and the possible flood of crossed lines of meaning and form, i cannot but agree with macara (2005:63) who, while writing about code-switching in l2 classrooms, mentions, “(i)n classroom discourse, code-switching is considered by many neither an asset nor a valuable addition”. in an article on the delayed cultural-linguistic competence in primary school henning & dampier (2012) argue that lack of shared cognitive academic language (cal) may create an extended linguistic liminality and thus delay learning. understanding, stability and aligned codes in early education i have argued thus far that schools are places where learning depends to a large extent on a learner being able to encounter the objects of learning through language. but, soon after grade 1, schools require advanced alphabetical literacy and mathematical literacy and other signing systems, discourses, and genres, covering the spectrum of the humanities and physical and life sciences, each with their own discourses and genres – their own cal. moreover, when the teacher then has to teach literacy, which, notably, is always scripted in one language only in any one text, both teacher and young learner have to work in the code of that text. it makes sense to me that the language that is encoded in the initial reading material should be the same as the language used to teach literacy. why would one wish to make the road to literacy more difficult than it already is? if the developmental psycholinguistic view that i have presented briefly is anything to go by, and if one accepts that cal is constructed in discipline-specific discourses, the cross-over of languages within sentences poses problems because cal does not transfer easily (lems, miller & soro 2009:41). in his more recent work, cummins (in lems et al., 2009:41) emphasises the register specificity and the “nittygritty” of the building of cal proficiency. syntax rules and morphemic structures also do not transfer easily and morphemic cross-overs can pose semantic problems, irrespective of what the primary or host language is and which language(s) are the secondary codes. scotton-myers (2002:54) argues that “(m) orphemes denoting grammatical relations cannot be borrowed” and that a “split arises between lexicon and morphosyntax” in mixed code with either the host or the secondary language taking preference. 75henning — learning concepts, language, and literacy in hybrid linguistic codes on this view, the teaching of, for example, mathematical concepts by using cross-over linguistic structures may be obstructive to learning. hamsa venkatakrishnat (personal communication, october 2011), a mathematics education specialist, states that it does not matter what language is used, as long as the communication is clear in learning mathematics in the early grades. i am not sure how clear communication can be with the type of switching/mixing i have witnessed in classrooms. we will not know empirically until this has been investigated longitudinally, or in large cross-sectional studies of learning and language.3 conclusion: a call for action in this article i have tried to set out an argument for research that will address the interplay between children’s cognitive development and their language development in the first years of schooling and how excessive mixing of language may be a barrier to learning. i conclude by now invoking the view of psycholinguists who advocate a view of non-universalism of language, emphasising the principle that languages, including the mixed varieties of languages in urban south africa, capture reality in unique ways. gopnik (2001) talks about a fresh take on the whorf hypothesis and slobin (1996, in brown & levinson, 2009:451) argues that languages, including dialects and creoles, are not universal and that there is some relativity in what and how different codes capture the world: “in the evanescent time frame of constructing utterances in discourse one fits one’s thoughts into available linguistic frames”. “available linguistics frames”, if they are not pragmatically aligned with the frame of the specific life world and linguistic world of grade 1 children, who are laying the foundations of cal for their school career, may bring about cognitive instability that could be related to language hybridisation. for some educationists and applied linguists, code-switching as discourse practice in schools is regarded as a discursive form that enhances learning and that leads to cal. i hypothesise that there is also a possibility that it does not enhance learning. while this type of language behaviour may be socially suitable and even desirable in informal adult settings, where its sociopragmatic flavour is accepted, i propose that it becomes problematic when young children are navigating their way into the abstract world of school learning, using language to map their cognitive, academic platforms for learning. acknowledgement i wish to thank the three reviewers of this article for helpful comments and suggestions. endnotes 1. these evolving nguni and sotho dialect forms are prevalent in the broadcast media and in urban areas. 2. the 2012 ana exemplar mathematics tests require of grade 2 learners to know terminology such as “number symbol” and “digit symbol” in the various languages (department of basic education, 2012) 3. henning, dampier and welch (2011) report on the first results of a pilot study in a longitudinal panel inquiry in which, in the intervention, random code-switching is replaced with systematic translation to and from english, isizulu and sesotho in the forms in which these languages are used in the books the children read. references barber m & mourshed m 2007. how the world’s best performing school systems come out on top. retrieved on 20 may 2010 from http://www.mckinsey.com/locations/ukireland/publications/pdf/ education_report.pdf. behrens h 2001. cognitive-conceptual development and the acquisition of grammatical morphemes: the development of time concepts and verb tense. in m bowerman & sc levinson (eds), language acquisition and conceptual development. new york: cambridge university press, 450-474. bowerman m & choi s 2001. shaping meanings for language: 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(edited and revised by a kozulin, 6th edition). cambridge, ma: mit press. wei l (ed.) 2000. the bilingual reader. london: routledge. 21 drama education in the age of aids lorraine singh university of kwazulu-natal this article arose out of my involvement in an undergraduate drama module at the school of education, university of kwazulu-natal, where i made use of workshop theatre methodologies to explore how secondyear drama students construct knowledge and develop sociocultural understandings of critical issues in society. the workshop theatre project described in this article aimed to allow drama students to explore and expose the myths, practices and world view associated with the sexual behaviour of young people in two townships and on two campuses. the purpose was to ensure that, as prospective teachers, these students are prepared with knowledge and skills to engage their future learners on this topic in a relevant and effective manner. the article draws on the theories of applied drama and argues for workshopping as a cogent means of researching and representing social issues. the data-gathering process undertaken by students, and the plays constructed from the analysis are described. i conclude with a discussion on how the methodology reflected the beliefs and attitudes of the participants in a contextualised manner, exposing a flaw in their image of the sexually liberated and independent young woman. i also show how the approach allowed me to develop an emancipatory pedagogy which endows students with authority. keywords: hiv/aids, young females, applied drama, workshop theatre introduction theatre serves many purposes in society, not the least being hamlet’s injunction to hold a mirror up to life. in a more contemporary context we may list among its uses, apart from entertainment, its ability to educate, challenge, debate and reconcile. workshop drama as a form of theatre-making is a very powerful yet accessible strategy which carries a strong transformative agenda. it could be used to good effect by researchers and educators seeking methods that elicit relevant, situated and culturally contextualised knowledge. in her study of school-based gender violence in africa, leach (2002:110) notes the lack of teacher preparation in appropriate methods for teaching and counselling in the field of hiv/aids, and suggests the use of drama among other methods for more impact. although drama has been used to good effect in hiv/aids interventions, there has not been enough detail about the processes, a fact noted by pillay (2010:88) in her book review of the work of morrell et al. the purpose of this study was to use the workshop theatre methodology to explore young people’s attitudes to sexual relationships, while at the same time allowing the student researchers an opportunity to experience the processes of workshopping a play. the article is therefore written mainly as an account of the processes undertaken, while raising issues for critical reflection in terms of the implications of the findings and allowing for critique in terms of the methodology. background in their second year of study, drama education students in the faculty of education at the university of kwazulu-natal (ukzn) are immersed in a workshop theatre project as part of their study of south african theatre forms. the approach is experiential, so that the students learn the processes and techniques of workshopping a play as they go along. the choice of theme is prompted by the facilitator but negotiated with the students. the themes typically revolve around critical issues in contemporary south african society. as a teacher in the arts, part of my responsibility is to engender a consideration for social awareness and action. in a context of hiv/aids – kwazulu-natal being at the centre of the pandemic in south africa – the words of garoian (1997:20) are most pertinent: “if we acknowledge the necessity for 22 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 compassionate and caring representations of illness and disease, then art education must consider how such representations are dealt with in the classroom”. when i indicated that the topic was to be social stigma associated with a positive hiv status, the students expressed some ‘aids fatigue’, stating that they were tired of hearing about this topic. once we brainstormed specific angles to the topic, they were far more receptive. once the students actually began their interviews, the focus moved away from stigma to beliefs and attitudes about hiv/aids and how these influence behaviour. initially it was the knowledge that they would be devising and performing in their own play that excited their interest, but ultimately they came to see the significance of what they were investigating, and approached the performance with great commitment to the topic. theoretical framework this study can best be described as an example of applied theatre/drama. nicholson (2005:2) defines applied drama as those forms of dramatic activity that exist outside conventional mainstream theatre institutions and are intended to benefit individuals, communities and societies. nicholson’s seminal text on applied drama, applied drama: the gift of theatre, explores a range of performance processes and key practices to provide a critical analysis of what constitutes applied drama and its ideological content. this work forms the theoretical underpinning for this study. applied drama has a strong developmental agenda, can take on many forms and is found in a wide range of applications – corporate, community and educational. most widespread of these in the developmental context is the use of augusto boal’s theatre of the oppressed (1979) techniques, which are highly participatory and have a clear emancipatory agenda. what is common in all the many manifestations and uses of applied drama is ‘intentionality’, i.e. the intention to use drama to improve the lives of individuals and create better societies (nicholson, 2005:3). what i am suggesting in this article is the existence of a similar intentionality in drama education pedagogy, specifically through workshopping a play. i do not intend to suggest an uncritical endorsement of the theatre for development movement with all its ‘missionary’ zeal; instead, use of an aspect of applied drama in this instance is to align it specifically to my drama education pedagogy. nicholson (2005) points out the two distinct strands of pedagogy which have influenced applied drama, one associated with paulo freire and the other drawing from european traditions of progressive education. freire, in turn, had a profound influence on fellow brazilian theatre director augusto boal, who is alluded to above. both the freirean and progressive approaches place the learner at the centre of the education process, often as the generator of knowledge. the interweaving of these two strands of pedagogy raises questions about where knowledge is situated and whose cultural experiences are reproduced in theatre-making (nicholson, 2005:9); these, in fact, become the driving questions for data analysis. applied drama is intimately tied to contemporary questions about the politics of context, place and space – and so, i ask, how do i approach teaching contexts in south africa which are characterised by plurality and cultural dissonance (nicholson, 2005:13)? how can i, a middle-aged female drama lecturer, a south african of indian descent, work with undergraduate students of different racial, cultural and ethnic backgrounds in a way that promotes social justice and equity? would my (middle-class) values undermine the possibility of constructive dialogue, as bell hooks (1994) suggests? if i claim – as i do – to espouse an emancipatory pedagogy, then i have to bring into critical focus the question of power in the learning process, and how this is negotiated between the learners and i, and what is to be learnt. by shifting the locus of power from myself, i believe i can provide the kind of environment where “learning can most deeply and intimately begin” (hooks, 1994:13). an emancipatory pedagogy allows for students to have a voice in the teaching-learning process. how would i be able to guide my students to explore a critical social issue such as hiv/aids in a way that allowed their lived experiences, their community and cultural capital to have currency? i believed that applied drama, with its intentionality, provided a way to achieve a socially just approach. if i were to be true to my theoretical underpinnings and view my students as producers of knowledge, then i would have to allow their voices to shape the project as much as i did. again, i am mindful of the 23singh — drama education in the age of aids warning that hooks (1994) offers, in stating that most students are not comfortable exercising the right to free speech, even in a democratic classroom. this project, then, would be a means of encouraging free speech in a different way. my role, as i saw it, was to provide guidance where they as second-year students needed it – for example, in areas of ethical consideration, research (interview) techniques and dramatic/ aesthetic conventions of performance. in other areas they assumed the mantle of leadership and shaped the project. while i gave a great deal of input and impetus at the beginning, once the project got off the ground i found that i was playing an increasingly diminishing role as project leader. although this letting go of the reins was what i needed to do, it was extremely frustrating at times not to be able to select the sample and design interview schedules myself. i had to allow the students to choose their own participants and ask their own questions. this method, then, combined my emancipatory pedagogy and the intentionality behind applied drama. i worked with what the students generated and helped them to shape their data into a performance using the workshop method. a short guide to the workshop theatre process the term ‘workshopped’ theatre became popular in the 1960s, with the work particularly of british socialist theatre director joan littlewood. this was the kind of theatre that allowed ordinary people, particularly those in oppressed situations, to voice their concerns and share experiences. the workshop theatre movement found a home particularly in south africa in the apartheid era, providing a vehicle for the disenfranchised and marginalised to record their histories and register their resistance. more than a form of protest, workshop theatre as a methodology resonated with the needs of south african performers and theatre-makers of the 1970s and 1980s because of its unique conventions and procedures. workshop theatre relies on the shared concerns and ideas of a community of performers, and is created in collaboration. literary skills are not a prerequisite. the style of performance is drawn from the participants’ own cultural experience in terms of song, dance and acting style. in south africa the style drew on the long oral tradition and storytelling techniques of indigenous people. based as it is on the participants’ own concerns, it allows for personal lived experiences and observation of life in a particular society to become the subject of the play. much has been documented by theatre historians such as coplan (1985), orkin (1991) and fleischman (1990) about this unique form of theatre in south africa. the workshop theatre process begins with a core theme or issue. the participants then engage in a period of research on this theme. this research could follow many of the methods used in academic research in the social sciences – interviews, focus groups, document analysis, archival searches, as well as auto-ethnography in the form of personal stories and reflections. in the case of the latter, time is spent in the rehearsal process on uncovering past experiences and hidden histories. once the basic content (data) has been produced, the next step in the workshop process is improvisation: elements of drama and narrative are applied to the material to develop the characters, conflicts, dialogue and dynamics of theatre. scenes are built up by the participants, who together decide how to represent the researched material as authentically as possible. after improvising and creating the scenes, the structuring of the theatrical piece occurs. this entails selecting and sequencing the scenes in much the same way as a researcher will codify and rearrange data. if there is a ‘director’ figure involved, then this person will help shape the playmaking to enhance the central theme using theatrical conventions. the participant actors add in song, movement and any other theatrical devices which will make for dramatic impact. since workshop theatre historically had to be portable and easily accessible, it does not rely on the external artistic devices of mainstream theatre. costumes, setting and design elements are sacrificed, to be replaced by raw emotion, physicality, energy and authentic dialogue. the hiv/aids workshop theatre project a group of 11 female students formed the researchers for this project, with the drama lecturer as overall supervisor. the aim was primarily for these undergraduate students to learn about the methods of workshop theatre through an investigation based on hiv/aids. initially the project set out to explore social stigma 24 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 associated with a positive hiv status. once the students began their interviews, the focus moved away from stigma to beliefs and attitudes about hiv/aids and how these influence behaviour. the students were of the opinion that this would be more meaningful for them as future teachers; it also resonated with many of their own experiences and interests. in his research with undergraduate students on attitudes and awareness, van wyk (2006:16) notes that “relatively little attention has been devoted to testing the perceptions of the different role players, and more specifically, the youth, regarding this disease”. i was happy to accommodate the shift in topic, since it was clearly what excited the students. as bell hooks points out (1994:7), excitement in the higher education classroom can never exist where agendas are not flexible enough to allow for spontaneous shifts in direction. approach and methodology the project comprised the following steps: • brainstorming and refining the theme; • discussion of research procedures, ethical considerations, interview schedules, and so on; • the fieldwork; • a written account of process and findings; • workshopping and improvising; • shaping the plays; • rehearsals and production, and • focus group and evaluation. the drama students were both the participants in the workshop theatre project and the researchers on the hiv/aids project. for the sake of clarity they are referred to as students throughout this article, while the university students and others whom they interviewed are referred to as participants. the students chose their own sample groups; since they were working mainly with young people, they enjoyed the idea that they were ‘interviewing peers’, and were of the opinion that they would obtain more authentic data in this manner. i had little control over this aspect and trusted in the students to make informed choices. i was reassured by researchers such as kafewo (2008:205), who states that “no one can claim to know the sexuality issues that concern them more than the students who experience them first-hand”. my advice to students was that they should work in pairs so as to support each other – they were, after all, novice researchers. students were also advised to keep the numbers of the participants small to enable them to manage the material more efficiently. my idea was not to have a very large sample, but to obtain ‘thick’ data which would give insight into the participants’ attitudes and beliefs. students were asked to think in terms of the play towards which they were working. the approach i used was to ask them to find out the participants’ ‘stories’, as we would want to tell such stories in our plays later. kafewo (2008) also alludes to the power of theatre pedagogy in enabling people to explore and understand their reality, generate solutions to their problems and communicate their learning to others. one pair of students chose to source participants from three university residences located in the centre of durban. they chose off-campus residences as they believed that participant students who live off campus have ‘greater freedom’ and fewer controls over their activities, partners and lifestyles. they also believed that these residences, which are situated in an area of the city close to clubs, shopping and entertainment centres, brought participant students into closer contact with what they termed ‘greater temptations’. the three residences chosen were allied to three different institutions, namely durban university of technology, mangosuthu university of technology, and ukzn. interviews were conducted as informal focus groups of approximately 6-8 female participants ranging in age from 19 to 25 years. it was felt that a girls-only group would be more open, especially when talking to other girls. 25singh — drama education in the age of aids the second pair of students chose to interview participants from one on-campus residence at ukzn, precisely because they believed that it is cut off from the centre of town and somewhat isolated from the clubs and party circuit. this pair focused more on males, and interviewed four males and two females aged 18 and 19 years. these were individual face-to-face interviews using an interview schedule as the basis for discussion. all the participants were well known to the students who interviewed them. according to the students, this made for a more ‘comfortable’ interview situation. the third pair chose not to focus on university students at all but rather on two young females from the township of marrianridge in durban. one participant was 15 years old and the second, who was known to the students, was a 19-year-old single mother. both had dropped out of school, the older one because of her pregnancy. the data used in this article are from these three pairs of students and their female participants. other students interviewed a practising nurse, a priest, and two senior community members (including a grandmother), all from kwa mashu township in durban. the remaining students chose different means of gathering data. the ideas and information gleaned from the latter data sources were incorporated into the plays through the various older characters created. the data were analysed in terms of what could be revealed about attitudes and beliefs about sexual behaviour and hiv/aids. using an applied drama lens, the data were viewed in terms of where knowledge (about hiv/aids) is situated and what kinds of cultural experiences are reproduced. we asked questions such as: where is this knowledge coming from – what is it based on? why do young women indulge in this behaviour? what does this behaviour tell us about young women’s beliefs and attitudes about hiv/ aids? to what extent is peer pressure driving this behaviour? findings analysis of the data revealed the following attitudes and perceptions among the young female participants: • it is not ‘cool’ if you don’t party. • to prove that you are ‘hot’ you should have different guys to provide different things for you (your ‘ministers’). • if you are not having sex you are totally outdated – virginity is a ‘high school virtue’. • ‘friends with benefits’ (sex-based relationships) are acceptable. • if guys can manipulate girls like that (referring to friends being cheated on), then the same thing should happen to them; ‘two can play that game’. • you are not a prostitute, so men don’t have power over you – nobody will force you not to use protection. the following rather fatalistic responses came from the participants from the townships: • everybody is going to die at the end of the day – how they die does not matter, they are going to be dead. • it runs in a family to die from this (hiv/aids), just like falling pregnant at a young age. • if you have only one partner, you will starve; you (as a woman) also need experience. • thinking of aids ‘only spoils the mood’. using the findings these and other findings were then used as the basis for improvisation for the workshopped plays. this ‘factionalising’ process is akin to the deeper levels of analysis in social science research. in narrative analysis researchers combine the stories of their participants to tell one composite story. the students used both their drama skills and their knowledge of the participants to create characters that were credible 26 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 and effective on stage. mannerisms and actual dialogue from the interviews were woven into the scenes. in keeping with the workshop style, characters were not subtle or nuanced. this does not mean that they were all one-dimensional; there were moments of realisation and shifts of consciousness, but these were portrayed in a non-realistic style. the plays two plays were created, each with a different cultural context. in the first play, amakwapeni (underarm, i.e. the hidden girlfriends), the protagonist, sanele (known as sash to his friends and girlfriends), lives with his ‘straight’ (serious) girlfriend nomalanga, who has dropped out of school to have his baby. the heroine is zama, one of sash’s other girlfriends. zama is a confident high school student who lives something of a double life. she appeases her mother by going to church, but she likes what she calls ‘life in the fast lane’. sash is one of her many boyfriends – her ‘minister of pleasure’. she sets the pace for the relationship – she is very provocative and often takes the lead. she insists on always using a condom and carries her own with her. sash’s other love interest is the character rose, known as ‘schoolgirl’ to sash and his friends. she is a virgin when she meets him but by the end of the play she is pregnant and abandoned by her family. he has promised to marry her but cannot be found. the second play choices is set in the township of chatsworth. the protagonist in this instance is nichole, a young girl who has left home since her parents died of aids. she pretends to be much older than her 15 years and works as a prostitute. she is offered a home by a client, raj, and attempts to move in with him. raj’s wife will not tolerate this, so nichole ends up with a choice to make either go back on the streets again or return to her grandmother, go back to school and take antiretroviral medication. the choice is left open, with alternative endings provided. the play’s first ending shows nichole’s funeral in tableau, where each character speaks his/her thoughts about her out loud. the second, alternative ending depicts nichole in freeze-frame after leaving raj’s house, and the audience decides which road she takes. discussion in analysing these narratives we found two distinct strands of experiences coming through the voices of the female participants. the first may be characterised as the case of the naïve young victim. these girls had been in relationships with the same partner from their early teens. in all instances, their partners had concurrent relationships with other girls. a typical case in the data was that of one 18-year-old living in an on-campus residence. she had fallen pregnant and was dumped by her boyfriend, who had also been seeing someone else. she confessed to still loving him anyway, and was very afraid of what her hiv status might be. another story of betrayal told of a girl who was rejected when she confronted her long-standing boyfriend about his cheating. when she dropped him and tried to rebuild her life, he wanted her back. she accepted him and now pretends indifference to his ‘misbehaving’, which she says makes him ‘more loving towards her’. these participants displayed a strong dependency on their male partners and were willing to accept what was offered to them in the name of love. many of the girls appeared to be resigned to a stereotypical view of male and female roles where the male is expected to have many sexual partners. in her research, leach (2002:106) noted that “girls seemed to feel that they were always at fault, even when they became pregnant through forced sex”. the second strand encompassing by far the majority of the participants’ responses showed a strong attitude of agency and power. these young women are clear about making choices concerning their relationships and their bodies. they maintain that girls can be ‘players, too. these young women have multiple partners, and many set out to use sex and their bodies for material gain. they spoke with frankness about their ‘ministers’ – of finance, of transport, of food and pleasure. they were quite happy to date ‘sugar daddies’ who treat them well and provide them with the luxuries they want. mention was made of cars, money, clothes and cell phones which were obtained from ‘sugar daddies’. leach (2002:106) also found that “some girls entered freely into relationships with sugar daddies or teachers, primarily they said for money”. the participants from the township stated that married men were preferred. all the 27singh — drama education in the age of aids women mentioned that men their own age were ‘immature’ by comparison. these women displayed great independence and were not willing to accept less than they believed they deserved. both plays conveyed quite clearly the shift away from the dependent, victim-type young woman. dependent characters were portrayed with compassion and sympathetically acted, but the focus was on the heroines who were independent, feisty and sexually assertive. characters such as zama and, to a certain extent, nichole were portrayed as having admirable traits – survivors who were to be emulated. zama, with her ‘cabinet’ of ministers and her obvious enjoyment of sex, was set up as the liberated woman who knew her power over men and used it to her advantage. she spoke of her awareness of the dangers of her lifestyle and the responsibility to protect herself. at the end of the play, when sash the protagonist is dying, his two other partners are not only abandoned but also hiv-positive, while zama is thriving and moving on with her achievements. this calls into question the message sent out by the students in respect of popular perceptions among the participants. the students were of the opinion that they were being responsible in showing how zama insisted on protection and taking care of herself. unlike the character of nichole, she was not reckless, and unlike the schoolgirl character, she did not allow her partner to dictate to her. unlike nomalanga, the ‘straight’ girlfriend, she did not ignore the dangers. her conditions for sex were unambiguous my way or no way. while this may have been an empowering message to send out to other young women, the morality of zama’s general behaviour was left unchallenged by the student performers. this was commented on in audience feedback. she had as many as five sexual partners at the same time and used her body for material gain. the likelihood of zama being able to continue her lifestyle indefinitely without repercussions was not considered. the students believed that she represented their data best as she was presented. zama is made to say: “and i’m out there, i like things that look good, i like life in the fast lane, i just want to have fun and live for today ’cause you don’t know what may happen tomorrow!”. this character was held up as the epitome of the young woman who has power over her own destiny. by contrast, the character of nichole was presented more ambivalently. her economic situation was clearly the reason for her life on the streets. her recklessness in not using protection was attributed to a sense of fatalism about dying young. she was also shown as wanting to enjoy the material things in life – to ‘enjoy life’ while she could. she emerges as a reckless, materialistic and aggressive young woman likely to meet an unfortunate end, unless she took the advice offered to her by the other characters in the play to change her life. both zama and nichole are shown as having power and agency in their lives. both draw on the experiences of their peers and those around them to shape their lives. related literature findings many of the above findings and their representations in the plays are consistent with the findings of other researchers. the work of selikow, zulu and cedras (2002), leach (2002) and pattman (2002) have particular resonance with our findings in respect of young people’s behaviours and attitudes. nata, muula, siziya and kayambazinthu (2008) conducted research with university students in malawi and reported that “we found a reasonable knowledge base about hiv among our sample, but exposure to hiv risk behaviour was common too” (ntata et al., 2008:204). studies by pretorius, roos and visser (1995), visser, roos and korf (1995) and van wyk (2006) all indicate that students are knowledgeable about hiv transmission but whether they actually apply this knowledge to actively protect themselves is another matter altogether. it seems that young people remain at risk because of multiple partners, and women in particular because of their involvement with older men. programmes that target behaviour, attitudes and perceptions rather than information are now required. the large-scale study undertaken by harvey, stuart and swan (2000) on the evaluation of a drama in education programme to increase aids awareness confirmed that school students showed positive changes in attitude following the programme, particularly relating to preventative behaviour. they also found that 28 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 students exposed simply to hiv/aids educational literature showed some improvement in knowledge, but not in attitude (harvey et al., 2000:108). all of this confirms that the plethora of information available at school and university level does not necessarily affect young people’s behaviour. their behaviour is driven by what they perceive to be applicable to themselves. context, culture (youth subcultures) and circumstances are the drivers. “pressure to conform influences sexual practice and in so doing may serve to increase young people’s exposure to the risk of hiv infection” (leach, 2002:107). the unfairness of gender expectations especially prompts young women to undertake risky sexual behaviour. in his school-based study in nigeria, kafewo (2008:203) notes that students are sent mixed and confusing messages: “society expects girls to remain virgins and maintain their chastity until marriage but never asks the same of boys and men”. this has led to the ‘two can play that game’ attitude noted in our findings. ojedokun and balogun (2008) reported that the traditional male-female difference in early sexual experience has disappeared, and that females were at least as likely as males to engage in premarital sex. conclusion since this was a dual-purpose study with a number of subsidiary intentions, a number of conclusions arose. regarding the topic of hiv/aids, it appears that young females are out to disrupt and challenge the traditional images of themselves as oppressed and male-dominated victims. the new image of the independent and sexually savvy woman, however, also endorses the commodified body and transactional sex. reflecting on this paradox, one is made aware of the risks facing young women as they struggle to find appropriate and safe expressions of their sexuality. this is what now has to be interrogated in awareness programmes. will the liberated young woman outdo perceived male freedom in sexual permissiveness? what is the male perspective of such women? these questions, i believe, will make for challenging and authentic education in aids awareness with young people. in respect of the approach used, i have to question whether the same findings would have been found should i have chosen to use some other research method. the findings were by no means new or unknown, as researchers such as selikow, zulu and cedras (2002) and pattman (2002) show – it is thus likely that i would have arrived at similar findings. however, if the question were rephrased to ask whether the applied drama/workshop theatre approach achieved something unique, then i have to respond with a resounding yes. applied drama not only brought home to me the world that the students with whom i work inhabit, but also literally put that world on stage for all to see and begin to question. the audiences of university students could recognise and identify themselves and their world reproduced in the lives of the characters. the benefits to the students in the project were inestimable – there was no doubt that their voices came through; their experiences and opinions about the data as well as about its representation were paramount. nicholson (2005:151) mentions that “one of the social purposes of drama is to practice human rights by both embodying the position of an imagined other and re-affirming an assured sense of selfhood”. in follow-up activities (conducting theatre in education discussions for grade 12 learners on this topic, for example), the confidence and assurance of the students was unquestionable. more importantly, students came to realise that the perceptions and attitudes that they uncovered were those which they would soon encounter in their own students. they also perceived through their interactions with the participants that the conventional methods of dealing with the issue of hiv/aids were not likely to make much headway. this project equipped them with skills and techniques to provide guidance and support that would be relevant and culture-fair. in their responses to questions on the project, the students wrote the following: “we went out there and got all sides of the story from people who are really affected by hiv/aids and how life goes on for them and their perception on hiv/aids.”; “the experience gained from information gathering shocked me because i never really knew how youngsters felt.”; “… young people are really not afraid of it, exploring this topic made me change my attitude towards hiv/aids and unprotected sex. i have learned a lot i even learned new things that young people do.”; “collecting information for the play, it was really nice because you get to hear from people their different views.” it provided a method for political action 29singh — drama education in the age of aids and a critique of punitive and moralising approaches to the topic by showing a more relevant and less judgmental approach. my own role in providing an emancipatory environment for students was allowed to develop because of the approach used in the project. i return to bell hooks (1994:11), who provides one of my guiding pedagogic principles: “to teach in varied communities not only our paradigms must shift but also the way we think, write and speak”. neither i nor the students in this project will think, write or speak about hiv/ aids in the same way ever again. references boal a 1979. the theatre of the oppressed. new york: urizen books. coplan d 1985. in township tonight! south africa’s black city music and theatre. johannesburg: raven press. fleischman m 1990. workshop theatre as oppositional form. south african theatre journal 4(1):88-118. garoian cr 1997. art education and the aesthetics of health in the age of aids. studies in art education: a journal of issues and research, 39(1):6-23. harvey b, stuart j & swan t 2000. evaluation of a drama-in-education programme to increase aids awareness in south african high schools: a randomised community intervention trial. international journal of std and aids, 11(2):105-111. hooks b 1994. teaching to transgress education as the practice of freedom. new york/london: routledge. kafewo sa 2008. using drama for school-based adolescent sexuality education in zaria, nigeria. reproductive health matters, 16(31):202-210. leach f 2002. school-based gender violence in africa: a risk to adolescent sexual health. perspectives in education, 20(2):99-112. nicholson h 2005. applied drama: the gift of theatre. london: palgrave macmillan. ntata prt, muula as, siziya s & kayambazinthu ee 2008. gender differences in university students’ hiv/aids-related knowledge and sexual behaviour in malawi: a pilot study. journal of social aspects of hiv/aids, 5(4):201-205. ojedokun ao & balogun sk 2008. gender differences in premarital sexual permissiveness among university undergraduates. gender and behaviour, 6(1):1651-1672. orkin m 1991. drama and the south african state. johannesburg: wits university press. pattman r 2002. men make a difference: the construction of gendered student identities at the university of botswana. agenda, 53:33-42. pillay v 2010. book review of morrel r, epstein d, unterhalter e, bhana d & moletsane r. towards gender equality: south african schools during the hiv and aids epidemic. perspectives in education, 28(2):87-88. pretorius hw, roos jl & visser mj 1995. part ii: a proposed strategy for changing high-risk sexual behaviour among students at tertiary institutions – results and recommendations of a qualitative investigation to develop a preventative programme. chasa: a journal of comprehensive health, 6(2):86-89. selikow t, zulu b & cedras e 2002. the ingagara, the regte and the cherry: hiv/aids and youth culture in contemporary urban townships. agenda, 53:22-32. van wyk c 2006. hiv/aids perceptions, attitudes and awareness of undergraduate students. td: the journal for transdisciplinary research in southern africa, 2(1):165-180. visser mj, roos jl & korf l 1995. aids prevention on the campus. south african journal of higher education, 9(2):165-174. 3042021 39(1): 304-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.19 collective autobiographical reflexivity on active and compassionate citizenship in the covid-19 crisis abstract since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, socio-economic inequalities have become exacerbated and covid-19 related hate crimes have increased. this paper explores how citizenship education might be reimagined in response to this context, with the vision of rebuilding a more equitable and compassionate society. by using a collective autobiographical writing approach, this study documented six different autobiographical reflexivities of citizenship education scholars who were from different parts of the world: china, south korea, the philippines, the united states, nepal and the united kingdom. it also observed the way the pandemic played out in the location where they were situated during the research as well as how it played out in their countries of origin, and further, how it affected the civic development in each context. the scholars’ range of autobiographical expressions resulted in insights for developing a type of citizenship education, namely, education for active and compassionate citizenship. keywords: citizenship education; active citizenship; compassionate citizenship; civic identities; collective autobiographical reflexivity; covid-19 crisis. research, like almost everything else in life, has autobiographical roots. (seidman, 2019:36) 1. introduction at the start of london’s first covid-19 lockdown in march 2020, our eclectic and international group of education researchers linked to the research training programme at university college london (ucl) launched a research group around the theme of citizenship, called “citizenship amid the covid-19 turmoil”. using a combination of semistructured online discussion and digital reflective journaling, we met fortnightly to share our personal experiences of the author: s. mi-cheong cheong1 r. azada-palacios1,2 k. beye1 a.p. lang1 n. bahadur saud3 y. tong1 affiliation: 1university college london, united kingdom 2ateneo de manila university, philippines 3tribhuvan university, nepal doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i1.19 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 304-322 published: 12 march 2021 received: 9 november 2020 accepted: 26 january 2021 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1810-4735 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6027-487x https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2076-8634 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5371-8444 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0466-2442 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0455-8485 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.19 3052021 39(1): 305-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.19 cheong et al. collective autobiographical reflexivity on active and compassionate citizenship lockdown as the events unfolded, wrote collective reflective writing and rooted our discussions in academic theory. a question that emerged was how we might reimagine citizenship education in light of the pandemic. specifically, we wanted to know, “how has the global health crisis shaped people’s civic identities and how can citizenship education be reframed to respond to these changes?” we decided to develop a research paper that sought to answer this question. the events that played out around us determined the direction of our discussions and we worked through academic literature and popular discourse on citizenship, hate speech (waldron, 2012), economic and political populism (zembylas, 2020), decoloniality (mignolo, 2011) and the black lives matter (blm) movement. we each brought our unique perspective in exploring answers, influenced by our disciplinary inclinations, diverse geographical locations and countries of origin. we became conscious that citizenship was not merely a subject to be taught; we, too, were personally implicated as citizens whose civic identities were being affected by the events. 2. theorising civic identities and citizenship education projecting bourdieu’s (1984; 1990) concept of habitus onto civic identities, civic identity can best be understood as a sense of civic self-fostering by the interplay of socially constructed norms and conditions in society and individually internalised values, beliefs, dispositions and experiences that enable individual citizens and the collective citizenry to practise and engage in society (hart et al., 2011; tracy & robles, 2013). current sociological explorations of civic identity generally fall within three categories of research: civic elements, civic competences and civic engagement (jenks, 2013; hart et al., 2011; levinson, 2005; mccowan, 2011; starkey, 2017; 2019). traditional approaches to citizenship education focus on civic elements such as citizenship and a sense of belonging (galston,1991; kymlicka, 1997; tomasi, 2001). in contrast, contemporary trends emphasise civic competences and civic engagement (banks, 2017; gutmann, 1987/1991; nussbaum, 1996; 2001; osler & starkey, 2005; putnam, 2000; zembylas, 2015). civic identities are dynamic and flexible, shaped and reshaped through formal and informal civic practices associated with civic competencies and civic engagement (hart et al., 2011; vihalemm & masso, 2003). because the pandemic was shaping our own civic identities and given the variety of our experiences across six contexts, we realised that our own narratives were rich material through which we could investigate our research question. we, therefore, explored the possibility of writing a collective autobiography written by multiple authors, as the core of our methodology. 3. collective autobiographical reflexivity as a methodological core various versions of the autobiographical approach – from mertonian sociological autobiography to the contemporary approach of socio-biographical studies – have been used in sociology research; autobiographical narratives allow sociologists to analyse and interpret comprehensive patterns of the life out there and the particularities of a subject’s experiential world through emotional reflexivity (bertaux, 1981; chamberlayne et al., 2002; davies, 2012; merton, 1972; stanley, 1993). in seeking to transform our autobiographical accounts into empirical and analytical tools, we aimed to show the collective nature of autobiography, disconfirming the traditional view 3062021 39(1): 306-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.19 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) that autobiographical writing is mainly an autobiographical nature self-construction (hazlett, 1998). as argued by wright (2019), one author cannot thoroughly grab collective identity complexities. thus, we aimed to capture multiple memories, emotions and concerns about the covid-19 crisis, hoping that such would reveal how civic identities – our own and those around us – were being reconstructed in the pandemic. the incorporation of autobiographical reflexivity (ruokonen-engler & siouti, 2016; bourdieu & wacquant, 1992) creates self-referential forms on the social phenomenon; the investigator becomes both the informant and the analyst (ellis & adams, 2014; smith & watson, 2016). we, six scholars, agreed to participate as informants and analysts; we conducted our research between may 2020 and july 2020. the collective autobiographical approach we had chosen posed practical and analytical challenges that demanded a high level of reflection, frequent dialogue and the negotiability of our autobiographical narratives (scott, 2011; wright, 2019). this approach continuously invited discussions between contributors, including reflections on previous accounts. because this was a multi-authored text in which the established collectivity was as much in the disharmony as it was in harmony (hazlett, 1998; wright, 2019), our biggest challenge was negotiating different perspectives about our research question alongside our memories of and feelings about the pandemic. this disharmony, however, served to ensure that our methodology remained critical, reminding each of us of our interpretative position (fook, 1999). we followed mcilveen’s (2008) adaptation of morrow’s (2005) framework of trustworthiness of our research: even through the revisions, each author wrote a faithful account of their experiences because of the unusual situation of the pandemic. each experience shared was unique and unlikely to be experienced again and (3) as the vignettes below show, each experience and explication was self-transformative, leading to new insights or actions. the ethical issue of anonymity was addressed by mutually consenting to reveal our authorship to each another: each reflection was read by the other contributors at every stage of revision and even after all contributors had expressed their initial consent to participate, we reiterated this consent at each stage of revision and during our online meetings (lapadat, 2009). our chosen methodological approach confirmed what wright (2019:104) has posited: “empathy, and even imagination, can add depth to a text and help reproduce multiple voices”. the method gave us a creative platform to deeply explore our own experiences and emotions as citizenship education researchers. in the vignettes that follow, we demonstrate the possibility of collective autobiographical reflexivity in citizenship education research, based on six settings: china, the republic of korea, the philippines, the usa, nepal and england. 4. vignettes 4.1 compassion and uncompassion across geographic and racial borders yaobin tong as a chinese person living outside china, i witnessed the worsening of the pandemic through social media. seemingly confirming ben-porath’s (2006:11) view that crisis periods lead some people to behave as “belligerent citizens”, the early news about the spread of the disease included multiple disappointing stories of regional discrimination within china that victimised people in wuhan who had already been suffering from the public health crisis. before the complete lockdown in wuhan city and hubei province, millions of people living or working 3072021 39(1): 307-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.19 cheong et al. collective autobiographical reflexivity on active and compassionate citizenship in wuhan left the city. some of them posted on chinese social media platforms accounts of their experiences being discriminated against by others in their local communities. many were barred from returning to their homes or booking into hotels. some became targets of cyberbullying, even though wuhan residents were victims of the pandemic, not the cause. comfortingly, most chinese people criticised those behaviours that had stigmatised wuhan. some netizens (e.g., internet users) posted statements such as, “these are not the traditional moral values that are taught to us”, “our education teaches empathy rather than a curse”, and “those people [who behaved that way] need more moral education to learn morality” (grammes, 2020; wang, 2020). the value of moral education was repeatedly mentioned, an apparent appeal for people to rediscover their responsibility, sensitivity and sense of compassion amidst the pandemic (ghosh & jing, 2020; haste, 2004). after the epidemic spread beyond the city, people outside wuhan began to grow in sympathy for the residents there, especially the front-liners who had stayed put to battle the virus. chinese citizens used social media to organise assistance for them. for example, when some hospitals in wuhan posted about a shortage of face masks and protective clothing, people coordinated with local factories and pharmacies to send inventory to wuhan, with one netizen emphasising that: as a chinese person, it is my moral responsibility to help people who are suffering and [help] the community, which is one of the moral principles coming from my family and school education – [to] help others. (li & xie, 2020: 29) this was just one of many statements made online describing the task of helping those affected most adversely by the pandemic as an act motivated by moral standards and not just civic duty. after china managed to bring the epidemic under control, the spread of the virus worsened outside china; italy, russia and spain became the epicentres. chinese people attempted to help those countries as they had done for china at the beginning of the pandemic (reuters, 2020; xinhua, 2020). the chinese saying, “all for one; one for all” surfaced in chinese people’s displays of compassion (tan, 2020). i was glad to witness people across different nations also cooperating to defend human health, regardless of race, nation and status. unfortunately, new instances of “belligerent citizenship” began to emerge worldwide; this time victimising chinese people outside china. racism and hate crimes targeting chinese and other asians dramatically increased in the uk, the usa and many western countries beginning in february 2020 (li & nicholson, 2021). i read social media posts written by overseas chinese students about their experiences being discriminated against on the street. in london, there were at least two serious incidents involving racist crimes. the first involved a singaporean ucl student who was attacked by a group of racists on oxford street (bbc, 2020). the second involved overseas chinese students threatened and harassed by a few british teenagers even after police officers came on the scene in southampton. after reading about these incidents, i minimised my trips outdoors out of concern for my safety, but i still had three racist encounters on the street. people and politicians emphasised that those attackers had broken the law and had failed to display social responsibility; however, i wondered whether civic or legal regulations could work to resolve hate crimes, racism and scapegoating (galston,1991; noel, 2020; tomasi, 2001). 3082021 39(1): 308-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.19 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) such antagonistic attitudes allowed me to reconsider nussbaum’s (2001) concept of compassionate imagination. compassionate civic identity may not work very well in the chinese context. instead, the compassion coming from moral responsibility can provide insight into what chinese people hold to guide their actions compared with general phenomena in western countries. these reflections helped me to see that the global health crisis was also a crisis of compassion and solidarity that invited an educational response, whereby i realised that citizenship education was the most important channel to nurture people’s sympathetic consciousnesses and their appreciation of moral standards, which was much more appreciable than only focusing on legal and civic standards. i raised these ideas with my colleagues during our discussion sessions in hopes that they could help me think through these ideas further. 4.2 education for compassion: covid-19 and korean civic identities stella mi-cheong cheong “coronavirus, coronavirus, go back to china!” i was surprised to hear these words coming from behind me while i was grocery shopping. i assumed that somebody had ridiculed me because i was an asian, but i did not look back for fear of a worse attack. in fact, i am not chinese, but korean. yet it would not have mattered to them which i was. although such racism against asians overwhelmed me with anger and despair, by turning a blind eye to the incident, i was passively responding to the racists’ behaviour. as a citizenship education scholar, i felt completely helpless, wounded and even guilty. however, this experience led our group to discuss possible educational solutions to tackle such injustice that galtung (1969:180) calls “structural violence”. citizenship education alone cannot rebuild global solidarity. however, it can equip young people with a strong sense of agency and the confidence they need to be active and compassionate citizens who can help rebuild a just, united and compassionate society (nussbaum, 1996; starkey, 2019; waghid & davids, 2012). reflecting on nussbaum’s (1996: 57) concept of “compassionate imagining”, a compassionate citizen can be understood as “one who not only recognises the vulnerability and otherness of someone else but also acts humanely towards others who might experience the vulnerability” (waghid & davids, 2013:5). amidst the pandemic, i found an approach to compassionate citizenship in the korean education system and the korean civic habitus. the construction of the korean civic habitus (e.g., reciprocal and solidary attitudes) results from korean education, particularly, the humanitarian ideals (hongik-ingan in hangeul) that are the fundamental principles of the korean education system (unesco, 2006). the education act states in detail the principle of education regarding the ideals of hongik ingan in the republic of korea. article1 2 reads: education shall aim at enabling every citizen to lead a life worthy of humankind and to contribute to the development of a democratic state and the realisation of an ideal of human co-prosperity, by ensuring cultivation of character, development of abilities for independent life, and necessary qualities as a democratic citizen under the humanitarian ideal. as can be seen, the objectives of education under the ideals of hongik-ingan are to help all people perfect their individual characters, develop the ability to live independently, participate 1 this article wholly amended by act no. 8705, dec. 21, 2007. 3092021 39(1): 309-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.19 cheong et al. collective autobiographical reflexivity on active and compassionate citizenship in building a democratic state and promote the prosperity of all humankind (unesco, 2006). the korean scholar kim bu-sik (1145) introduced the traditional philosophy of hongik-ingan, which stemmed from the dangun stories about the gojoseon, the mythical beginning of korean history over 4 300 years ago (suh, 2014). hongik-ingan literally means people who contribute to “universal welfare of humankind”(jeong, 2010:34). the ideals of hongik-ingan aim to enable people to sustain their lives and fulfil their civic responsibility concerning the government and the socio-political system, thus contributing to development and prosperity individually and civically (ibid.). it is characterised by humanism, mutual respect, equality, peace, self-discipline and harmonious cooperation for the prosperity of human society (cartwright, 2016; kim et al., 2020; suh, 2014). korean citizens learn this value-laden goal from childhood – at school, where it is embedded in the korean education system and by reading dangun mythology retold as children’s fairy tales – both of which construct korean civic identities as peace civic identities. once these identities have been internalised, hongikingan ideals enable individuals to act as active and compassionate citizens. having seen how south korea has effectively responded to covid-19 allows me to interpret korean citizens’ civic commitment through the lens of korean habitus. korean citizens have voluntarily stayed indoors to combat the high transmissibility of the virus. they have maintained a high level of hygiene and have strictly complied with social distancing rules. almost everybody has taken for granted the importance of wearing masks in public to protect themselves and their fellow citizens. discipline in this context is understood to mean self-discipline to help others; this may explain why most korean citizens are willing to give up small freedoms in the context of covid-19. such civic identities have played a key role in overcoming national crises by encouraging koreans to fight together. by reflecting on the successful korean response to the covid-19 crisis and korean civic identities, i shared with our group my modest insights on how to develop compassionate citizenship education; an attitude that might be especially valuable in a post-pandemic world. 4.3 exploring our complicity in uncompassionate epistemes rowena azada-palacios tracking pandemic-related news coverage across both my homes, the uk and the philippines, i was struck by how little coverage there was in the western press about the successful public health measures used in asia, where more countries had chosen to err on the side of over cautiousness early on in the pandemic. an article on the medium self-publishing platform, titled “the overwhelming racism of covid coverage” written by indi samarajiva (2020), gave me the words to describe an additional source of the discomfort that i felt about the western coverage of the pandemic. in the opening paragraph, samarajiva criticised a new york times article about thailand’s success at controlling the virus. although the article suggested that thailand’s public health system might have been responsible for its success, it had also asked whether there might be a “genetic component” that made thais “more resistant to the coronavirus”(beech, 2020). samarajiva pointed out what he saw to be the underlying presumption of that sentence: “because thai people couldn’t possibly just be competent, it must be alchemy” (samarijva, 2020, emphasis in the original). as a scholar working on anti-colonial political thought, i am not surprised by eurocentric biases that pervade the western press. in his piece, samarajiva interpreted this phenomenon using the language of racism. apart from racism, anti-colonial thinkers have also used the 3102021 39(1): 310-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.19 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) language of coloniality and colonisation. within the postcolonial tradition, edward said famously laid bare how the colonised world to the east of europe has been represented in western art and literature as an essentialist “orient” (said, 1979). the coloniality/modernity collective extended the analysis further, demonstrating how the history of western imperialism has created a global matrix of epistemic power in which eurocentric ways of thinking dominate, and in which other ways of thinking are either appropriated to become european (their non-european roots erased) or are suppressed and dismissed as inferior to european epistemology (see quijano, 2007; mignolo, 2011). yet even if i identify firmly as a member of historically colonised peoples, i find myself reproducing a lot of this eurocentrism in my work. i am completing my doctoral thesis in london, one of the major imperial metropoles of history. as a philosopher of education, most of the works i engage with have been canonised in western universities. for any academic committed to an ideal of a more decolonised academy, questions of positionality and complicity inevitably arise. these were my thoughts as i prepared to teach an online survey course on anti-colonial political thought at a philippine university. my fourteen students all identified as coming from postcolonial backgrounds: 13 students identified as “filipino” and one identified her ancestry as half-filipino. over eight weeks, we read through some of the foundational literature in anticolonial traditions, spanning frantz fanon (1990) to glen sean coulthard’s (2014) recent work in north american indigenous studies. once a week, we met for a synchronous zoom seminar to discuss our reactions, thoughts and critiques of the literature we were reading. the students’ reflections during class echoed their positionality. they made connections between the texts and the philippines – either its colonial history or the way it is presently affected by continuing structures of neo-coloniality. just as reading samarajiva’s article had reminded me of how i reproduce eurocentrism, they also realised their own complicity in continuing neo-colonial practices that harm indigenous ways of acting and thinking, such as through economic systems that continue to harm indigenous peoples. these reflections were encapsulated in a post-course thank you message from one of the students: “i appreciate how the course has instilled in me a critical view of myself as a political actor in the current state of the world”. my student’s arrival at deeper insights about himself as a political actor was an outcome i had not originally anticipated. however, the path from civic identities to active citizenship (starkey, 2019) can explain this. many anti-colonial texts frame engagement within the political community in the language of identity: identifying with the dreamed-about nation rather than the colonising empire (fanon, 1990; anderson, 2006). the texts that we studied had evidently led my students to themselves think about their identities in the context of philippine postcolonial society. the students’ input during discussions showed how they were thinking about their civic identity as postcolonial selves and becoming more aware of the value of their citizenship, both as persons from the global south and postcolonial subjects straddled the world of the coloniser and the colonised. this helped them see that they had a potentially valuable perspective to contribute to the global community and a more compassionate role that they might play towards others in the philippines who suffer the greatest injustices as a legacy of continuing coloniality. the question that remained, which i brought to our discussion group, was whether these theoretical realisations could lead to actual changes in my students’ actions. 3112021 39(1): 311-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.19 cheong et al. collective autobiographical reflexivity on active and compassionate citizenship 4.4 from theory to active participation kamille beye as with azada-palacios, the events that have unfolded during the pandemic have made me think about racial and social inequalities in the institutions and structures around me. while surveying the damage of covid-19 on my life and the lives of people of colour in the us, i often think of the “i am a man” posters that black men carried in 1968 to protest low wages for recognition of their right to unionise and the need for safe working conditions (the collection, n.d.). although i am not a man, the same rights that black men fought for then have become symbolic of the rallying cry now to be seen as human, to have one’s rights to organise be acknowledged and respected and to work and live in spaces where the wearing of a mask to protect against covid-19 is not seen as a form of political correctness, but a patriotic duty to save lives. when my home country, the united states, began closing its borders, i was still in london, debating if i should go to the airport amidst the crowds of panicked fliers. i would not be part of the masses that i saw on the news. instead, i waited. for eight weeks, i watched and read report after report of the covid-19 cases rising in the us. i read how this virus was affecting communities of colour at higher rates. the “essential worker” was not just the person with a medical degree. the janitor, bus driver, cafeteria worker, transportation security administration (tsa) screeners, grocery store cashier – all on the frontlines being exposed, left to clean up after the death and become the dead themselves. covid-19 has humbled many americans as it changes our way of life. we eat differently. we mourn differently. many of us think differently. we love at a distance. our eyes have opened to the things we did not want to see yet many of us knew. the covid-19 crisis paraded the gaps in medical care access. covid-19 has forcefully brandished the inequalities of those who lost jobs through the weekly unemployment numbers and the crisis partnered with the clouds of racial injustice to create a storm that rained down mistrust, anger, despair and surprisingly, the awareness that the current systems that have been put in place are not working for the masses. the murders of george floyd, ahmaud arbery and breonna taylor as well as the politics of division that ravage the airways cause me to ponder how we in the united states will come together to create “that beloved community” that the late civil rights icon, john lewis, often spoke of. frantz fanon once said that “the living expression of the nation is the moving consciousness of the whole of the people” (1990:165). currently, the expression of the us is one of confusion as the government’s bungled response to covid-19 continues to affect every area of our lives. our response has shown the world that money is more important than science and therefore lives. it makes no sense that wearing a mask has become a political football. it is amongst this chaos that decency and respect for humanity must bloom and i must act. the average person of colour faces economic and social disadvantages that have been exacerbated due to the covid-19 crisis (van winkle, 2020; chetty et al., 2020; hardy, 2020). what i and others can do to demonstrate our compassion as fellow americans is to wear a mask and vote for change in our upcoming election. i do not want lives and jobs lost to be in vain. it seems that our elected officials have refused to see the devastating effects the virus has caused working people. to fight our way out of this conundrum, we must work collectively. it feels like the virus has fundamentally changed our sense of community. you either believe in the science that says that wearing a mask saves lives or you do not. president trump continues to say that “we are rounding the corner”. yet, recently, the us reached over 100 000 3122021 39(1): 312-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.19 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) covid-19 cases in one day. many americans have taken cues from the government and have shown disrespect for this virus by refusing to wear masks and purposefully exposing others to the virus. they have forgotten that we are stronger together. to turn the tide on this new normal, i am convinced more than ever that to do my part as a compassionate citizen, i must vote. suppose the source of inequalities of race and class are found in the structures of our political communities. in that case, the solutions to these inequalities must be found by affecting change within those political communities. at this moment, i feel that it is not only my civic duty to vote, but that my life and the lives of others depend on a change in our national leadership. 4.5 civic and uncivic acts at different levels of power nar bahadur saud beye described in our research group how the inequalities of american society exacerbated by the pandemic motivated her to vote. in my case, i saw how the flawed response of the nepali government was countered by different forms of nepali civic engagement at all levels of power. the second case of covid-19 to be found in nepal was diagnosed on 17 march 2020. the government immediately imposed a nationwide lockdown to control the spread of the virus, just as i was doing fieldwork for one of my research projects. because the lockdown was implemented with barely any notice, millions of other people and i found ourselves stranded or haphazardly making chaotic mobility arrangements. however, the neediest people in nepali society suffered the most, finding themselves cut off from various forms of support. these events showed how decisions made by power-holders in nepal – that is, the people who occupy positions in federal, provincial and local government; security agencies; health institutions and volunteer organisations – could affect the most powerless members of society. hopkins (2011) emphasises that citizenship education values such as honesty, compassion and responsibility are essential during a crisis. i believe that while they are relevant to all people, they are vital for people who hold the most power. had persons in power fulfilled their duties more compassionately, virus control measures might have been carried out in less harmful ways, encouraging rather than deflating citizens (kielburger et al., 2009). despite flaws in the government’s performance, the positive effects of guiding one’s civic actions by such values could be seen in hopeful examples at all levels of society. many nepali citizens fully supported some of the government’s plans such as the lockdown. security forces and health workers performed their duties professionally despite the political chaos, limited resources and lack of health safety measures, even to the point of sacrificing personal and family priorities. individual and group-based voluntary initiatives across the country strove to ameliorate the difficulties that people were facing. for example, local government units in udaypur, rupandehi, and parsa districts were able to control their high case numbers through community-based coordination. likewise, volunteers and private organisations supplied free food to the needy in kathmandu and elsewhere; sharing food was one way to show love, care and the value of humanity. other groups helped manage the distribution of safety equipment and materials to hospitals to support health workers facing supply shortages. some citizens also offered free use of their vehicles in emergencies, such as to bring coronavirus patients to hospitals, because of the lack of ambulance services. 3132021 39(1): 313-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.19 cheong et al. collective autobiographical reflexivity on active and compassionate citizenship these initiatives are examples of civic roles and identities (nussbaum, 1996; starkey, 2019). in nepal, it is clear that the initiatives were also inspired by religious beliefs and expressions of respect for the equal dignity of vulnerable members of society (waldon, 2012). sanatana dharma exerts a vital influence on nepali society that is guided by hinduism and buddhism rituals. it tries to find “eternal” truths while emphasising the indivisibility of humans and non-sectarianism. gyawali (1987) defines dharma (religion) as a correct lifestyle of living in harmony with one’s nature in a world of perpetual change, a lifestyle in harmony in three spheres; the philosophical, the social and the environmental. these spheres include the attitudes and behaviours of people. religious rituals and societal activities are carried out to observe dharma. during the religious rituals and ceremonies, one or more deities are worshipped using actions, processes and products prescribed by texts, priests or local tradition. the social services include the construction of temples, schools, rest houses for pilgrims, the building of water taps, donating to charity and constructing bridges, roads and chautara (resting place), many services of which have been crucial during the pandemic. clearly, religious beliefs heavily influence citizens’ lives, value systems, social norms and nepal’s identities. thus, the moral and religious education that nepali citizens likely received in their childhood was probably one of the roots of the acts of solidarity they displayed during the pandemic. however, this does not erase the need to hold those in power accountable. this highlights the gap that emerges in societies between those in power and those who are most powerless. how can people who have power retain their compassion and empathy for those at the other end of the scale? this was a question that i brought back to the study. 4.6 the uncertainties that remain amid the rise of illiberal tendencies: london and the revelations of covid-19 adam peter lang in london at the start of the lockdown in march 2020, unsure of what to expect and somewhat fearful, i turned, as a disruptive scholar (ball, 2017) to re-read foucault’s discipline and punish (1975). foucault finds that “history teaches us that epidemics are more like revelatory moments than social transformers”, and that “the plague-stricken town, traversed throughout with hierarchy, surveillance, observation, writing; the town immobilised by the functioning of an extensive power that bears in a distinct way over all individual bodies – this is the utopia of the perfectly governed city” (foucault, 1975:198). was i witnessing this in my home city in 2020? how has the concept of citizenship, as it has in times of war and conflict, shifted during the pandemic (zembylas, 2015) and how has this related to new forms of citizenship required by the “muscular liberalism” (cameron, 2011) that former prime minister david cameron wished to promote and that is now occupying the civic habitus in english schools? since 2014, teachers in england have been required to promote the “fundamental british values” defined by the government as democracy, individual liberty, the rule of law, mutual respect and tolerance for those of different faiths and the inter-linked 2015 “prevent duty” enshrining a legal responsibility on public bodies, including schools, to have “due regard to the need to prevent people from being into terrorism” (counter terrorism and security act 2015). both have been controversial and provoked fierce debate (vincent, 2020). 3142021 39(1): 314-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.19 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) could daniel defoe’s a journal of the plague year (1722) offer a perspective and understanding of our current crisis? london lost a quarter of its population to the bubonic plague: the rich fled town to their country homes; other citizens took refuge in churches or blockaded themselves in their homes. “lord have mercy on london”, they cried. what would other active citizens and i do in 2020? the spanish flu of 1919 and what happened in san francisco was illuminating. i stayed put in london and took my allowed daily exercise, cycling through the deserted streets, taking photographs and keeping a diary to chronicle a small part of london’s and a big part of my covid-19 experience. was foucault (1975) right when he said, “the plague is the marvellous moment when political power is exercised to the full” where in the world would we now be seeing a complete imposition of political power over the population? in this “age of anger” (mishra, 2017), there has been anger that has been created by the practice of neoliberalism and a reaction to its failings and shortcomings. using foucault, it is possible to identify a recent period of ruptures that have occurred including the economic crisis of 2007/2008, which has seen a “crisis of capitalism” and linked to it a “crisis of liberalism”. from these dynamics, the different responses and reactions have supported a global rise of populism and anti-democratic non-liberal forms of government. while still dominant, neoliberalism has and continues to be challenged, as there has been a shift away from neoliberalism, both economically and culturally, with the rise of the concept of economic populism. the pandemic has escalated these geopolitical dynamics. governments around the world have used emergency powers to counter the pandemic. still, many countries, including the uk, have moved to use and abuse these powers to restrict debate and scrutiny of policy, ban protests, silence critics and scapegoat minorities. freedom house (n.d.), a us ngo counts 80 countries where the quality of democracy and respect for human rights since the pandemic began has decreased. i cycled through london in late march and early april shocked to witness beggars on the street, homeless people sleeping in doorways and drug addicts openly trying to deal behind bus shelters. the pandemic was disproportionately affecting the poor such as our “black, asian and minority ethnic” (bame) communities and citizens. how was this playing out with young people with no school and the exertion of “muscular liberalism” on their citizenship? black lives matter: citizens demonstrate in hyde park in early june, statues are toppled and thrown into the dock in bristol. the national discourse changes and quickly, this is more than just a moment it feels significant. it is online and television stations and newspapers try to keep pace interviewing blm supporters, bame academics and listing books from the anti-racist canon. then came the push back. i am kept awake all night on 3 july 2020 by the whirring blades of a police helicopter overhead. they are policing a block party on a nearby housing estate that they believe has gotten out of hand. a “section 60”, to stop activity taking place, has been issued. the next day i speak to some of the local youth who are angry about the police and believe they are being over-policed. over the coming summer months, i work with some of these young people and they produce a powerful video “we exist”, which tells part of their story that they feel is not being heard and of their need to be seen as equal citizens, needing the space to consider and develop their citizenship education. some trainee teachers have since used this video in their teaching practice schemes of work in london schools opening 3152021 39(1): 315-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.19 cheong et al. collective autobiographical reflexivity on active and compassionate citizenship up the debate for their students. young people in london/uk. have powerful and compelling covid-19 stories to tell, including no schooling for months, lack of contact with friends, child food poverty, mental health issues, the summer a-level results fiasco (young people’s demonstrations changing government policy), the growth of youth unemployment, the chaos of the return of universities in september and the fears for future job opportunities. the pandemic brought a range of social issues; however, they also remind us that compassionate citizenship requires these needs to be addressed as we reimagine schools, the curriculum and citizenship education. 5. discussion: reimagining education for active and compassionate citizenship as the vignettes above show, we six researchers reflected on our pandemic experiences, articulated our realisations and remaining questions and shared these with the group to be explored further by our colleagues. this back-and-forth allowed us to collectively reimagine a paradigm for citizenship education arriving at the proposal that education for active and compassionate citizenship can equip young people with the moral imagination they need to be participatory civic agents and moral agents. tong’s reflections helped us identify that the pandemic was not merely a public health crisis, but also a crisis of compassion and solidarity. this realisation echoes some of the earlier literature: ben-porath (2006: 11–15) has argued that civic identities are reformulated as “belligerent citizens” in times of crisis, as a public response to perceived threats to national and personal security. likewise, the covid-19 pandemic made many citizens focus on individual survival efforts and national solidarity rather than eliciting compassion and global solidarity. tong’s reflections indicated that such a crisis demanded an educational response and this was the challenge that he brought back to the group. tong’s reflections also highlighted the moral dimension of developing compassion. these reflections are supported by the concept of moral imagination, a theoretical framework developed by dewey and nussbaum. in dewey’s work, moral imagination has two dimensions: empathetic projection and responsiveness (schulenberg, 2015). empathetic projection can be fulfilled by imagining the other’s experiences and perspectives: imagination helps one put oneself in another’s position (waghid & davids, 2012). nussbaum (2001:299) discusses imagination in relation to civic identities; she emphasises that “compassionate imagination” – taking another’s perspective – can help people treat others equally and humanely. one way in which moral imagination is used is to understand oneself in light of the other is responsiveness. by anticipating the responses of the other, “we can control our own actions to communicate; gestures can thus become symbols. the personal imagination is a further refinement of the social imagination” (alexander, 1993: 388). cheong responded to the challenge posed by tong of an educational response to antipathy by highlighting such an example. the ideals of hongik-ingan taught to pupils in the republic of korea, construct korean civic identities as peace civic identities. cheong realised that the same ideals also encouraged pupils to be compassionate towards others, as expressed in the mindfulness of others with which koreans were behaving amidst the pandemic. azada-palacios’s reflections complicated the problems associated with acts of uncompassion by demonstrating how it was possible to be unknowingly complicit in uncompassionate structures that harmed certain groups. she showed how an educational 3162021 39(1): 316-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.19 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) approach that exposes these structures could lead to a desire for personal change, reconfirming the link between civic identities and active citizenship. according to starkey’s (2019) analysis of the active citizen, all human beings can be citizens; however, individuals can specifically be active citizens when they begin to value citizenship. this, however, raised an additional question: how might such realisations translate into practical action? beye highlighted political participation through elections as one way an individual could be actively involved in changing structures of inequality. saud described how ordinary nepalis practised the principles of sanatana dharma amidst an inadequate government response to the pandemic. together, they demonstrated that the educational response invited by the pandemic ought to be concerned not only with cultivating compassion, but also active participation. such insights highlight the importance of past research on active citizenship. affective civic competences – civic self-efficacy, responsibility and commitment – are strongly related to capacities for action, playing a crucial role in becoming an active citizen (bandura, 1997; galston, 2007). saud had left an issue unresolved, though, related to imbalances of power in societies. this was a point of departure for lang, who illustrated a remaining challenge for our vision of citizenship education: how to implement it without committing over-governmentality. such is particularly important in the current global political context. exclusionary populist movements have been growing in strength, threatening democracies and fragile states, human rights and vulnerable groups’ security. lang indicated how this could be a future direction for further developing this paradigm, but also, through the example of his work with london youth, gestured to a possible way forward. education for action and compassion also entails education with compassion: citizenship educators must ensure that the students they teach are heard, seen and empathised as equal citizens. 6. conclusion through the innovative method of collective autobiographical writing, the researchers have concluded that the notion of active and compassionate citizenship is an important one during large-scale crises such as the current pandemic. our experiences confirmed that crises could foster belligerent behaviour and exclusivist thinking and ignite greater compassion and civic engagement. guided by these insights, citizenship education practitioners may want to use the concept of active and compassionate citizenship as the core theme around which to teach citizenship, as we support one another through and beyond the current pandemic. 7. declaration of conflicting interests the authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 8. ethical statements the research was based at university college london. all procedures were followed in accordance with the ethics guidelines of the british psychological society (2009) code of ethics and conduct and (2014) code of human research ethics or british educational research association (2018) ethical guidelines for education or british sociological association (2002) statement of ethical practice. all personal data were protected based on article 32 of the data http://www.bps.org.uk/ https://www.bera.ac.uk/researchers-resources/publications/ethical-guidelines-for-educational-research-2018 https://www.bera.ac.uk/researchers-resources/publications/ethical-guidelines-for-educational-research-2018 http://www.britsoc.co.uk/ 3172021 39(1): 317-322 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.19 cheong et al. collective autobiographical reflexivity on active and compassionate citizenship protection legislation (gdpr). informed consent was 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(cc-by) covid-19 and education in ukraine: responses from the authorities and opinions of educators abstract the covid-19 pandemic, which struck the world in 2020, has hit education systems around the world. the world community has begun searching for and testing models for organising the educational process in a new reality. the purpose of this study was to analyse how the education system in ukraine is functioning under the covid-19 pandemic. the theoretical framework for considering the research problem is based on the theory of synergetics. such synergetic postulates as openness, evolution, dynamics, bifurcation point, interaction, self-organisation, irreversibility and new state are key guidelines for understanding the processes taking place in ukrainian education. a qualitative research approach was used to guide the study. the research methods included the review of the governmental documents, review of the surveys and interviews. the major finding is that the covid-19 pandemic is transforming the education system in ukraine and many changes are positive. this includes the long-awaited autonomy of educational institutions, the opportunity to acquire digital skills by educators, strengthening cooperation with regional and local authorities and updates to the overloaded curriculum. the ukrainian authorities, the pedagogical community and society are working together to organise education under new conditions. however, ukrainian education faces serious challenges (partly inadequate internet access in homes, especially in rural areas; lack of educators’ online instruction skills; few official methodological guidelines and online textbooks and low levels of motivation of students to participate in online sessions). the findings thus revealed the importance of a national strategy for the development of education, considering the recommendations of the international organisations and the experience of foreign countries. keywords: covid-19; education; ukraine; challenges; quality of education; equal access to education. 1. introduction since the beginning of 2020, covid-19 has covered the world. the covid-19 breakdown is characterised by speed and scale. according to the world health organization (who) from january to october 2020, 40 455 651 people fell ill with covid-19 while 1 119 431 passed away (who, 2020). the established order of human life was destroyed; transformations affected all spheres of life, including education. author: prof o. lokshyna1 prof o. topuzov1 affiliation: 1institute of pedagogy of the national academy of educational sciences of ukraine, ukraine doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i1.13 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 207-230 published: 12 march 2021 received: 10 november 2020 accepted: 5 february 2021 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5097-9171%0d https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7690-1663%20 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.13 2082021 39(1): 208-230 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) to prevent the outbreak of covid-19 among children and youth, countries have closed educational institutions using different approaches depending on the dynamics and scale of the disease. according to unesco monitoring, over 100 countries have implemented nationwide closures, affecting over half of the world’s student population as of the end of march 2020 (unesco, 2020a). in parallel with the closures, countries started to search for and develop efficient tools for organising education under the new reality. considering the recommendations of the international organisations (who, unesco, oecd, etc.) and depending on the national policies, various approaches were introduced. ukraine, similar to other countries, began to respond to the covid-19 challenges. on 11 march 2020, the cabinet of ministers of ukraine adopted the resolution no. 211 that introduced the nationwide lockdown in ukraine (cabinet of ministers of ukraine, 2020a). the resolution prohibited the attendance of educational institutions of all levels (preschool, secondary, vet, non-tertiary, tertiary) and types (state, municipal, private) starting from 12 march 2020. thus, the lockdown of education in ukraine took place. the transformation of the education system to adapt to the new conditions had begun. the purpose of the present study was to analyse how the education system in ukraine is functioning under the covid-19 pandemic. in pursuit of this purpose, the following objectives have been developed: • to examine the character of the education policy in ukraine under the covid-19 pandemic; and • to identify achievements and challenges in the organisation of education faced by educational institutions. the following research questions have been formulated to achieve the aim and objectives: • what is the educational policy under the covid-19 pandemic in ukraine? • what is the practice of organising education by educational institutions under the covid-19 pandemic? the central idea presented in this paper is that the covid-19 pandemic is transforming the education system in ukraine. the ukrainian authorities, the pedagogical community and society are working together to organise education under the new conditions. the theoretical framework for considering the research problem is based on the theory of synergetics. such synergetic postulates as openness, evolution, dynamics, bifurcation point, interaction, selforganisation, irreversibility and new state are key guidelines for understanding the processes taking place in ukrainian education. the literature and the official documents in the field of the ukrainian education system functioning under the covid-19 pandemic are highlighted. the study provides an aggregated view of educators, students and parents’ perception of the practice of organising instruction by educational institutions under the covid-19 pandemic. the contribution this study makes is that it shows despite the efforts of the educational authorities, ukrainian education faces serious challenges. this is evidenced by the opinion of stakeholders. the prospect here is the implementation of a national strategy for the development of education under new conditions, considering the recommendations of the international organisations and the experience of foreign countries. changes should address all aspects – organisation of instruction, curriculum and assessment technologies. equal access to education and high quality of education are to be key guidelines of the strategy. 2092021 39(1): 209-230 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.13 lokshyna & topuzov covid-19 and education in ukraine 2. review of related literature given the novelty of the covid-19 pandemic, research on its impact on education is ongoing. a wide range of issues are being explored, including organising distance learning, reopening educational institutions after lockdown, ensuring equal access to education, improving the skills of teachers, adapting the curriculum to new formats and motivating students to learn. the studies on the impact of covid-19 on education as a holistic system are particularly relevant for this study. according to daniel (2020) education authorities and institutions had very little time to prepare for a remote-teaching regime while tadesse and muluye (2020) postulate about the serious impact of the pandemic on education in developing countries. they primarily emphasise challenges such as the lack of ict infrastructures, computers, radio and television. the poor and digitally illiterate families are suffering more in this situation and this increases inequality. based on the position of synergetics, we share the vision of a pandemic through a prism of prospects for education. we agree with fullan (2020), who argues that there is nothing so complex to solve than the situation we have in present times. at the same time, the pandemic has also provided opportunities to make changes. a holistic vision of the education functioning under the pandemic is provided in numerous reports of the international organisations. the organisation for economic co-operation and development (oecd) report titled a framework to guide an education response to the covid-19 pandemic of 2020 was the first document from an international organisation on the covid-19 pandemic, which, with the permission from its authors, was translated into the ukrainian language by the national academy of educational sciences of ukraine (naes) and disseminated by the ministry of education and sciences of ukraine (mes) among governmental authorities and educational institutions. the ideas on the priorities to respond the pandemic served as a valuable guide for the authors of the manuscript when developing recommendations. wolhuter (2020) writes about the potential of comparative education studies under the pandemic. comparative and international education gets an opportunity to prove its value to the world of praxis (that is praxis at the levels of education in education institutions and at the level of planning and reform of education at education system level). lokshyna et al. (2020) have generalised the practices of distance learning (selection of e-resources, designing national learning platforms, providing technical assistance) as well as the algorithm of educational institutions reopening in different countries. the report contains recommendations of the international organisations for the national governments on the organisation of education under covid-19 – how to mitigate the impact of educational institutional closures and facilitating the continuity of education for all through distance learning. the analytical report authored by hrynevych et al. (2020) highlights the experience of the countries in organisation of distance learning and the challenges of legal and technological nature accompanying the functioning of schools during lockdown in ukraine (the obsolescence of regulations governing distance learning, unregulated employment of teachers, the problems with access to broadband internet and digital gadgets and the lack of a single national educational platform). the authors proposed recommendations for the organisation of education in schools during the adaptive lockdown. a systematic vision of the challenges in schools under lockdown has become a valuable source for writing this paper. 2102021 39(1): 210-230 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) 3. theoretical framework synergy can be defined in a broad sense as a combined action or operation (meriam-webster); a combined or cooperative action or force (collins dictionary). the scientific literature on synergetics suggests that the synergy is an interdisciplinary science grounding the self-organisation of structures of open systems in the process of evolution. this view is based on the ideas of haken (1983) who defined the synergy effect when the joint actions cause the emergence of new qualities/values. the following key features of the synergy substantiated by benecke, schurink and roodt (2007:9) are especially important for our research: • it is systemic and hence should be viewed in the context of processes; • …units working together will generate greater value than they would by working apart; • it is the result of a process whereby better use of physical and invisible resources is made by viewing the total diversified organisation as one system. kremen (2013), developing the concept of pedagogical synergetics, writes that it gives an opportunity to take a new approach to the development of the challenges of education systems, considering them primarily from the standpoint of openness, co-creation and it focuses on self-development. he underlines that in the pedagogical process the emergence of new, stronger structures that have new qualities becomes possible if the old system is in crisis and its former structures do not meet the requirements of the new situation. synergetic discourse has creative potential for this study. the synergetics idea of the openness of a system to external influences is important. the covid-19 pandemic is considered as an external influence that leads to the transformation of the education system generating new qualities corresponding to the new situation. synergetic ideas about instability and nonlinearity were used for the consideration of the education system under the pandemic from the standpoint of multivariability and optionality (lack of unified approaches to the organisation of instruction in educational institutions, the possibility of choosing communication channels and the existence of learning options/model under adaptive quarantine). the concept of bifurcation is interpreted by synergetics not as a point of transition from one state to another, but as a transition zone/relatively independent time. this concept provides a better understanding of the processes at each stage (national/adaptive lockdown). the thesis of synergetics on selforganisation under the influence of social energy required an analysis of public consciousness and pedagogical thinking (the attitude of parents and teachers to distance learning). the thesis of irreversibility actualises the position of the authors of the study on the need to develop a new strategy for the development of national education. 4. research design and methodology the time frame of the research covers march–october 2020. from march to may 2020 (2019/2020 academic year) educational institutions were closed all over the country and distance learning was introduced. the 2020/2021 academic year started during the adaptive lockdown in september 2020. the adaptive lockdown provides application of quarantine measures depending on the pandemic situation in a region or in an administrative-territorial unit. the adaptive lockdown has introduced “green”, “yellow”, “orange” or “red” covid-19 epidemic levels of danger (cabinet of ministers of ukraine, 2020b). in these conditions, a 2112021 39(1): 211-230 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.13 lokshyna & topuzov covid-19 and education in ukraine blended education model has been introduced that envisages a combination of face-to-face (in-class) and distance (online) learning. different formats of the education organisation in march–may and in september–october 2020 have determined the logic of the research. based on the governmental documents, the organisation of education in the period of the national lockdown and in the period of adaptive lockdown is analysed separately. at the same time, the challenges formulated by the authors are common to both periods. the present study was based on a qualitative research design. three data collection methods were used. these methods included the review of the governmental documents, review of the surveys based on a quantitative analysis and interviews. the review of the governmental documents was employed to study the regulatory support of the education system functioning under covid-19. the official documents determining the organisation of the educational process at isced 1–5 levels have been studied. these are resolutions, orders and letters of the cabinet of ministers of ukraine, the ministry of health of ukraine and the ministry of education and science of ukraine. the key criterion for selecting documents was the time of their adoption. the documents adopted during the pandemic, starting from 11 march 2020 were selected for the analysis. in ukraine, the mes is the central executive body that ensures the formation and implementation of the state policy in the field of education. therefore, the documents approved by the mes constitute the main array of documents analysed in the manuscript. authenticity was another criterion for selecting documents. only documents posted on the official portal of the parliament (verkhovna rada) of ukraine (https:// www.rada.gov.ua/) and on the site of the mes (https://mon.gov.ua/ua) have been selected for the analysis. the aim of this review was to ascertain whether the educational policy in the conditions of a pandemic corresponds to the new realities. the education policy is understood in this study as the collection of laws/rules that govern the operation of an education system. considering thematic analysis as an umbrella method for analysing qualitative data, identifying key themes in the government documents was essential. the review of the surveys was employed to explore the perceptions of educators, students and parents on organisation of instruction in the educational institutions under the covid-19 pandemic. three criteria were used to select the surveys. these were wide geographical coverage, number of respondents and the reliability of the source. the following large-scale surveys of the governmental institutions covering various regions of ukraine and representing the views of different stakeholders have been used as data for the research: • “educating children during lockdown” by the educational ombudsman service. this is an all-ukrainian non-representative online survey conducted from 8–13 april 2020. the target population was parents of secondary school students. eight thousand and fifty-six responses have been received (educational ombudsman service in ukraine, 2020). • “organisation of distance learning in general secondary education institutions under lockdown” by the state service of education quality of ukraine. this is an all-ukrainian non-representative online survey conducted from 8–15 april 2020. the target population was secondary school principals, teachers, parents and students from grade 8 to 11. two hundred and eleven thousand nine hundred respondents took part in the survey, including 120 500 parents, 44 100 students, 43 400 teachers and 3 900 school principals (state service of education quality of ukraine, 2020a). “use of distance learning technologies in higher education institutions of ukraine” by the state service of education quality of ukraine. this online survey was conducted from 23 april until 5 may 2020. the target population was students and faculty of higher education institutions. a total of 28 391 https://www.rada.gov.ua https://www.rada.gov.ua https://mon.gov.ua/ua 2122021 39(1): 212-230 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) respondents took part in the survey, i.e. 22 367 students and 6024 faculty (state service of education quality of ukraine, 2020b). “readiness of schools to organize the educational process under covid-19 pandemic” by the state scientific institution “the institute of educational analytics” under the mes jointly with unicef. this is a non-representative online survey conducted at the beginning of july 2020. the target population was secondary school principals. in total, 10 175 school principals took part in the survey (67.4% of the total number of school principals of ukraine) of which 65% are principals of rural schools and 35% of urban schools (ministry of education and science of ukraine, 2020a). the “digital literacy of the population of ukraine” 2019 survey by the ministry of digital transformation of ukraine has been used to obtain data on the access of the population of ukraine to digital tools and the internet. one thousand eight hundred adults aged 18–70 and 859 young people aged 10–17 have been interviewed. sample type: stratified quota (ministry of digital transformation of ukraine, 2019). each survey reveals a separate aspect of the organisation of training under the pandemic, which in general provides a holistic picture of education functioning. each survey was analysed qualitatively using the research question “what is the practice of organising education by educational institutions under the covid-19 pandemic?” we looked for evidence of organisation of distance learning and blended learning in the educational institution of isced 1–5 levels. based on the topics identified during the analysis of the governmental documents, the surveys were analysed according to the following parameters: use of time table for distance learning, distance usage/communication tools, assessment of academic achievements, internet access and availability of computers at home. the interviews were conducted online at the end of october 2020. the interview guide included information about the educational institution and questions regarding the organisation of the instruction. the aim of the interviews was to study the instruction formats during the adaptive lockdown on the example of secondary education institutions. the interviews were transcribed verbatim while the interview data were summarised and organised into themes (instruction model, organisation of education, curriculum, challenges) to obtain answers to the research question. k. spitkovska, the principal of the secondary education institution (isced levels 1–3) “gymnasium no. 107 “vvedenska” of the city of kyiv, and t. yermak, the principal of the secondary education institution (isced levels 1–3) “educational complex – lyceum no. 157” of kyiv have been interviewed. these schools are experimental institutions of the institute of pedagogy of the naes of ukraine, cooperation agreements have been signed with them and the principals of these schools are graduate students of the institute. all ethics related issues were observed, including participants’ consent to record their answers and to publish the findings of the interviews. 5. results the coronavirus disease outbreak in ukraine and the governmental response to it allows for two periods of the “covid-19 time” in the education of ukraine: • the period of the nationwide lockdown of education: the end of the 2019/2020 academic year (march–may); and • the period of the adaptive lockdown of education: the beginning of the 2020/2021 academic year (september–october). 2132021 39(1): 213-230 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.13 lokshyna & topuzov covid-19 and education in ukraine 5.1 the period of the nationwide lockdown of education the nationwide lockdown of educational institutions required the authorities to propose a new education format. to this end, the mes has approved the following documents: • letter of the mes no. 1/9–154 of 11 march 2020, in which the mes recommends the local education authorities and heads of educational institutions to develop measures ensuring instruction by using distance learning tools, as well as to ensure preventive epidemiological measures (ministry of education and science of ukraine, 2020b); • order of the mes no. 392 of 12 march 2020 “on ensuring the implementation of preventive and anti-epidemic measures” in which the mes orders the local educational authorities and heads of educational institutions to organise the educational process in the distance learning format in accordance with the regulation of the mes “on distance learning” adopted on 25 april 2013 (ministry of education and science of ukraine, 2020с); • letter of the mes no.1/9–161 of 13 march 2020 on the organisation of remuneration of employees of educational institutions during covid-19 lockdown in which the mes stresses that in accordance with the labour code of ukraine, the average salary is guaranteed in emergency situations (ministry of education and science of ukraine, 2020d); • order of the mes no. 406 of 16 march 2020 “on organizational measures to prevent the outbreak of covid-19”, in which mes orders the heads of educational institutions to ensure the implementation of educational programmes under lockdown by using the distance learning tools as well as by introducing flexible (remote) working hours for employees of educational institutions (ministry of education and science of ukraine, 2020e); • letter of the mes no. 1/9–173 of 23 march 2020 on the organisation of the educational process in general secondary education institutions (isced levels 1–3) during lockdown (ministry of education and science of ukraine, 2020f); • letter of the mes no. 1/9–176 of 25 march 2020 on the organisation of the educational process in short-cycle tertiary education institutions (isced level 5) during lockdown (ministry of education and science of ukraine, 2020g); • letter of the mes no. 1/9–177 of 26 march 20 on the organisation of the educational process in vocational educational institutions (post-secondary non-tertiary education – esced level 4) during lockdown (ministry of education and science of ukraine, 2020h); and • letter of the mes no. 1/9–178 of 27 march 2020 on the ending the 2019/2020 academic year in the education institutions of secondary, non-tertiary and tertiary education (ministry of education and science of ukraine, 2020i). on 15 april 2020 mes launched a special website aimed at informing the stakeholders on the peculiarities of the organisation of education in ukraine under covid-19 (ministry of education and science of ukraine, 2020j). thus, in a short time (actually during march), mes developed general regulations for the operation of educational institutions under lockdown. mes has defined a standard format of the organisation of instruction for the isced levels 1–3 and 4 institutions. in particular, it has regulated the structure of the 2019/2020 academic year, technologies of “fixation” of the educational process (in class books, student diaries, etc.), assessment of students’ academic achievements, etc. 2142021 39(1): 214-230 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) the mes has proposed an indicative format for tertiary education institutions that are autonomous in ukraine. it has covered issues of the workload of faculty, distance organisation of lectures/seminars/practicums, access of students to educational resources, feedback between students and lecturers, management and monitoring of educational process, etc. as evidenced by the surveys the declared by the authorities, distance learning has been implemented by educational institutions. figure 1 shows that almost 90% of parents testified that their children continued studying during the nationwide lockdown (educational ombudsmen service in ukraine, 2020). figure 1. percentage distribution of the responses of parents to the question “did your child continue studying during the nationwide lockdown?” for their part, almost 100% of school principals answered that their schools switched to the distance format of instruction. in response to the question, “did distance learning take place during the nationwide lockdown in your institution?”. 96.9% of school principals responded yes in the survey of the state service of education quality of ukraine and 99.4% of school principals also responded positively in the survey of the mes (state service of education quality of ukraine, 2020a; ministry of education and science of ukraine, 2020a). the majority of the surveyed students and faculty confirmed that distance learning was introduced at the level of higher education (figure 2) (state service of education quality of ukraine, 2020b: 4). 2152021 39(1): 215-230 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.13 lokshyna & topuzov covid-19 and education in ukraine figure 2. percentage distribution of responses of students and lecturers to the question “has your university managed to organise distance learning?” to comply with the order of the mes, the most secondary schools have developed a distance learning study timetable. more than half (56.6%) of the respondents answering the question “did teachers of your educational institution have a study timetable for distance instruction?” said that such a timetable was developed until the end of lockdown, 35.8% said that it was developed a week or two in advance and adjusted if necessary and 7.6% said that there was no timetable at all (ministry of education and science of ukraine, 2020a: 234). as for isced level 5, the responses showed that most higher education institutions left the existing before lockdown timetable unchanged. the students (64.4%) and faculty (71.7%) confirmed that their universities managed to ensure compliance with the timetable in the distance learning period (state service of education quality of ukraine, 2020b: 7). the results of the analysed surveys show that viber has become the most popular messenger while zoom has become the most used video communication tool in ukraine. besides these tools, higher education institutions used such virtual learning environments as moodle and google classroom. websites of educational institutions and emails were less used. the list of tools and the degree of their use in schools from the point of view of parents is given in figure 3 below (educational ombudsmen service in ukraine, 2020: 4). 2162021 39(1): 216-230 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) figure 3. percentage distribution of responses of parents to the question “what distance learning/communication tools are used in your child’s school?” school principals confirmed the opinions of parents regarding the priority of messengers for distance education (figure 4) (ministry of education and science of ukraine, 2020a:234). figure 4. percentage distribution of responses of school principals to the question “what are the channels of communication with students used by the teachers of your educational institution during distance learning?” secondary school teachers also responded that they constantly or periodically used the tv lessons offered by the national programme “all-ukrainian school online” (ministry of education and science of ukraine, 2020a). the opinion of university educators on the distribution of distance learning tools by efficiency is generally correlated with the vision of students. however, the educators (70.1%) 2172021 39(1): 217-230 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.13 lokshyna & topuzov covid-19 and education in ukraine put the use of virtual learning environments in the first place, while students (51.5%) prefer the messengers viber, telegram, whatsapp, etc. (fig. 5) (state service of education quality of ukraine, 2020b: 7). figure 5. percentage distribution of opinion of university lecturers and students relating to the efficiency of distance learning tools the completed written assignments, which secondary school students had to send back to a teacher, were named by school principals as the most used assessment tool in their schools (figure 6) (ministry of education and science of ukraine, 2020a). figure 6. percentage distribution of responses to the question “how was the assessment of academic achievements of students organised in your institution during the nationwide lockdown?” 2182021 39(1): 218-230 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) at the isced level 5, the emailing of written assignments by students was also named as the most used technology (figure 7) (state service of education quality of ukraine, 2020b: 7). figure 7. percentage distribution of opinion of university lecturers and students relating usage of distance education assessment tools thus, the interviewed stakeholders confirmed that the distance learning was implemented in the educational institutions during the nationwide lockdown. higher education institutions had more capabilities (technical, organisational) for it. however, the level of digital skills of educators remains a challenge affecting the level of education quality. 5.2 the period of the adaptive lockdown of education in view of reducing the number of cases of the coronavirus, the cabinet of ministers of ukraine by its resolution no. 392 of 20 may 2020 replaced the nationwide lockdown with the adaptive lockdown, which by the resolution no. 956 of 13 october 2020 extended until the end of 2020 (cabinet of ministers of ukraine, 2020c; 2020d). the resolution no. 392 establishes that educational institutions are allowed to function without restrictions in a region (administrative-territorial unit), where the “green” and “yellow” levels of epidemic danger are established. in a region with the “orange” level of epidemic danger, class/group size is limited to 20 students. students are forbidden to visit educational institutions in a region (administrative-territorial unit) with a “red” level of epidemic danger (cabinet of ministers of ukraine, 2020c). to regulate the functioning of education under the adaptive lockdown, the mes and the ministry of health have developed the following key regulations: • letter of the mes no. 1/9–406 of 29 july 2020 on preparation of educational institutions for the new academic year under the adaptive lockdown. the letter explains the provisions of the resolution of the cabinet of ministers no. 392 on the format of functioning of educational institutions in “green”, “yellow”, “orange” and “red” zones (ministry of education and science of ukraine, 2020k). 2192021 39(1): 219-230 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.13 lokshyna & topuzov covid-19 and education in ukraine • resolution of the chief state sanitary doctor no. 42 of 30 july 2020, which approved the provisional recommendations on the organisation of anti-epidemic measures in educational institutions during adaptive lockdown. the recommendations contain requirements for the organisation of the educational process, feeding and transportation of students and staff. the recommendations provide mandatory temperature screening for employees at the entrance to the educational premises. the heads of educational institutions (primarily, school principals) are to make a schedule of students’ admission in order to prevent crowds (ministry of health of ukraine, 2020). • letter of the mes no.1/9–420 of 5 august 2020 “on the organization of functioning of general secondary education institutions in the 2020/2021 academic year” in which the institutions are recommended to consider the requirements of social distancing, monitoring attending school by students, informing the public health services in case of a sharp increase of covid-19 cases, etc. (ministry of education and science of ukraine, 2020l). • order of the mes no. 1115 of 8 september 2020 “some issues of distance learning”. it has approved the “regulations on distance learning format of general secondary education”. the regulations expanded the possibilities of distance learning as a fully-fledged format of blended education (ministry of education and science of ukraine, 2020m). thus, the blended model of education introduced at the beginning of the 2020/2021 academic year in ukraine is characterised by synchronisation with the local epidemiological situation, empowerment of local authorities and heads of educational institutions to make decisions on the format of the educational process and flexibility, i.e. providing various instruction options (face-to-face, blended [face-to-face + distance] and distance). 5.3 challenges it is obvious that the coronavirus has transformed the traditional model of education in ukraine. any transformation is always accompanied by challenges. unesco has identified the following global challenges accompanying the closure of educational institutions: interrupted learning; poor nutrition; confusion and stress for teachers; parents’ unpreparedness for distance and home schooling; challenges in creating, maintaining and improving distance learning; gaps in childcare; high economic costs; unintended strain on health-care systems; increased pressure on schools and school systems that remain open; rise in dropout rates; increased exposure to violence and exploitation; social isolation and challenges measuring and validating learning (unesco, 2020b). similar challenges characterise ukrainian education under “coronavirus times”. these are technological, organisational, financial and social challenges. in fact, access to digital tools and the internet have become key technological challenge (and provoked/deepened other challenges) during the nationwide education lockdown. it should be noted that this challenge is not new to ukraine. the fact that many citizens of ukraine do not have access to the internet at home has been confirmed by the 2019 ministry of digital transformation of ukraine survey (fig. 8) (ministry of digital transformation of ukraine, 2019). 2202021 39(1): 220-230 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) figure 8. percentage distribution of responses to the question “do you have access to the internet at home?” the differences relating the internet access in terms of urban and rural areas are shown in figure 9 (ministry of digital transformation of ukraine, 2019). figure 9. percentage distribution of the responses of residents of villages, regional centres and big cities to the question “do you have access to the internet at home?” no less a challenge is the availability of digital tools for distance learning. according to the survey, not all students aged 10–17 have computers at home (figure 10) (ministry of digital transformation of ukraine, 2019). 2212021 39(1): 221-230 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.13 lokshyna & topuzov covid-19 and education in ukraine figure 10. percentage distribution of the responses of youth aged 10–17 “what kind of tools for internet access do you have at home?” the technological challenges have predictably affected the organization of distance learning under nationwide lockdown. the lack of broadband internet and digital tools at homes of both students and teachers was confirmed by school principals (ministry of education and science of ukraine, 2020a: 231). technological challenges during distance learning also existed at the isced level 5. a large percentage (38%) of the surveyed students faced the lack of uninterrupted access to the internet while 23.4% of students indicated the absence of necessary digital equipment at home (state service of education quality of ukraine, 2020b: 11). in addition to technological challenges, ukrainian education faced numerous organisational challenges. at the time of the introduction of the nationwide lockdown in march 2020, the “regulations on distance learning” approved by the mes in 2013 were in force. it is obvious that this document could not fully regulate distance learning under new realities. besides, the ukrainian educators did not have the experience and skills to implement the fully-fledged distance learning format. this manifested itself in the use of inefficient technologies, low methodological quality of online lessons, overloading students with homework, long stay of students in front of computer monitors, students’ lack of awareness of cyber security rules, etc. in this situation it is predicted that the distance learning model implemented during the nationwide lockdown was poorly perceived by the ukrainian society. as of july 2020, approximately half of the surveyed ukrainians were negative about distance education with only 32% of citizens supporting it (ilko kucheriv democratic initiatives foundation, 2020). a serious organisational challenge has arisen with the beginning of the 2020/2021 academic year during the period of the adaptive lockdown. it is concerning ensuring compliance with anti-epidemic measures during the attendance of students to educational institutions. at the level of secondary education, these are the disinfection of school transport, observance of hygiene rules by students and provision of antiseptics, masks, contactless thermometers, screening at the entrance to the educational institutions, social distancing, ventilation and cleaning of premises, conducting health briefings, etc. 2222021 39(1): 222-230 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) this challenge is directly related to funding. the analysis of the experience of foreign countries shows that many of them (australia, canada, ireland, the netherlands, new zeeland, poland, switzerland, uk, etc.) have allocated additional funding to support their education systems in the “coronavirus era”. according to information from the national center on education and the economy, countries: • have allocated additional funding during the lockdown of educational institutions and after their reopening; and • have used different approaches comprising allocation of funds for the whole education system or its levels (preschool, primary, vocational, higher); purchased digital equipment for certain groups of students (vulnerable and disadvantaged) and allocated funds to schools for providing additional instructional time for struggling students, etc. (ncee, 2020). attempts are currently being made in ukraine to obtain additional funding for education. in september 2020, the verkhovna rada (parliament) of ukraine approved a number of resolutions aimed at organising a safe educational process under the covid-19 pandemic (verkhovna rada of ukraine, 2020). the lack of additional funding from the central budget complicates the organisation of education in the 2020/2021 academic year. the respondents provide evidence for this: • less than half of the school principals (47.7%) confirmed that school vehicles were disinfected and thoroughly cleaned and even fewer respondents (44.4%) said that the vehicles were provided with antiseptics for hands; • only 60.3% of the school principals performed screening of employees, and only 52.2% screened students before lessons; • only 20.3% of schools can pay for additional technicians to organise proper cleaning of the premises; • only 61.5% of school principals can provide shift visits to the school canteen and 51% ensure at least 1.5m distancing between students in it. one third of the respondents confirmed that it is impossible to organise the packaging of school breakfasts/lunches in disposable containers and another third answered “probably not”; • disinfectants for floors and surfaces as well as antiseptics for hands and paper towels are available in the range of 35–50% of the answers of the surveyed school principals. more than 35% do not have non-contact thermometers to measure body temperature. • 42.2% of school principals answered that they could not attract additional teachers for additional division of classes/groups for financial reasons (ministry of education and science of ukraine, 2020a). at the same time, the picture is different in each region and educational institution whose heads build their original models of organisation of education within the governmental framework. the practices of organising education in two schools in kyiv are examples of this (table 1). 2232021 39(1): 223-230 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.13 lokshyna & topuzov covid-19 and education in ukraine table 1. key features of the organisation of education in kyiv schools under the adaptive lockdown title “gymnasium no. 107 “vvedenska” “educational complex – lyceum no. 157” website https://www.wedenska107.com. ua/ http://lyceum157.kiev.ua/ location the city of kyiv, ukraine the city of kyiv, ukraine isced level levels 1–3 levels 1–3 number of students 955 1525 features the in-class model is introduced. it is adaptable depending on the epidemiological situation. the model envisages: (a) students are taught in face-to-face format if there are no covid-19 cases in their classroom/school. students stay in school on the principle: “one grade – one classroom”. students study in one shift; in the morning they enter the school through four entrances to avoid the crowds. (b) in case of сovid-19 cases at school, classes are divided into groups that visit the school on different days of the week (group a – monday, wednesday, friday; group b – tuesday, thursday; next week there is a change in the schedule of attendance. (c) in case of сovid-19 outbreak in a class, distance learning format is to be introduced; a teacher is equipped with the necessary technical tools in the classroom to conduct synchronous distance lessons for all students. the blended model is introduced. it is adaptable depending on the epidemiological situation. the model envisages: (a) division of each class into two groups. (b) different start time of face-to-face lessons (8.00 am; 08.15 am; 08.30 am; 12.00am). (c) subjects that students study in class in the format of traditional lessons: mathematics, ukrainian, english, german, physics, chemistry, biology and geography. (d) subjects that students study face-toface/remotely in joint project activities: ukrainian and foreign literature. (e) subjects that students study using project technologies: physical culture, labour training, health care, art and computer science. (f) in case of сovid-19 outbreak in class, distance learning format is to be introduced; a teacher is equipped with the necessary technical tools in the classroom to conduct synchronous distance lessons for all students. both schools are the communal property of the city of kyiv and have received additional funding from local authorities to purchase necessary materials to comply with anti-epidemic measures. the school principals have mentioned such common challenges as: insufficient level of digital skills of teachers, lack of motivation of some students to learn under new conditions, which is caused by insufficient awareness of parents about distance learning or parents’ rejection of it. to meet the challenges, the principals consider it necessary to intensify cooperation with parents to encourage their engagement in their children’s home-schooling; update the school’s technical base and raise digital literacy of teachers. https://www.wedenska107.com.ua/ https://www.wedenska107.com.ua/ http://lyceum157.kiev.ua 2242021 39(1): 224-230 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) 6. discussion of key findings the key overall findings from the governmental documents highlighted in this paper are that educational policy must go beyond the linearity under the covid-19 pandemic. it is important to strengthen the regional/local/institutional levels of the education policy in order to propose the specific steps in the absence of stakeholders’ experience. evidence seems to exist that the mes promptly responded to the spread of covid-19 by approving a number of regulatory documents while not offering specific recommendations for the implementation of the announced initiatives. the study revealed that during the period of the national lockdown, the mes approved the general provisions on the organisation of the 2019/2020 academic year. the documents emphasised the autonomy of schools in selecting forms of distance learning. however, the mes did not offer guidelines on the implementation of such forms. the letter of mes on organization of the 2020/2021 academic year provides mainly recommendation on implementation of the sanitary and hygienic standards without proposing a clear algorithm to implement the blended learning that is absolutely new for the ukrainian education. the study revealed that it is not just education policy that affects education under the covid-19 pandemic. in ukraine the technological challenges greatly influence distance learning. the problem of equal access to the internet and the provision of digital devices to students with special needs is a matter of national significance. in fact, it concerns the societal outcomes of education (wolhuter, 2020). analysis of the results of sociological surveys showed that educators in terms of technological, financial, methodological and managerial challenges are developing new formats of learning (distance and blended). the findings confirm fullan’s (2020) idea about “re-imagining” education. in this way it becomes clear that many changes are positive. this includes the long-awaited autonomy of educational institutions, the opportunity to acquire new knowledge and improve the skills of teachers, strengthening cooperation with regional and local authorities, updates of the overloaded curriculum and implementation of a competence education emphasising digital competence. no longer can we make assumptions about the unified format of the organisation of education across all countries. based on the findings of the interviews, it is clear that multiple institutional models of education under the pandemic exist. 7. conclusions answering the research question “what is the educational policy under the covid-19 pandemic in ukraine?” we are stating that the central education authority – the mes of ukraine – from the very beginning of the outbreak is working to adapt education to the new conditions. the approved regulations define the key parameters to govern the functioning of the education system at all levels. as a positive we note the flexibility of the educational policy, which is correlated with the epidemiological situation. the distance learning model operated during the nationwide lockdown was replaced by the blended model during the adaptive lockdown. however, the current education policy format is a response to the covid-19 challenges. it is necessary to develop a forward-looking strategy for national education under the new conditions. the existing challenges can be seen as benchmarks for such developments. equal access to education during online learning is a serious challenge. the evidence provided by oecd shows that many education systems participating in pisa 2018 are not 2252021 39(1): 225-230 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.13 lokshyna & topuzov covid-19 and education in ukraine ready to offer most students opportunities to learn online. reimers and schleicher (2020) write about numerous gaps including availability of a computer for working at home, availability of the internet and readiness of teachers to provide online instruction. in ukraine, in addition to these challenges, there is also a gap in access to the internet between urban and rural areas. therefore, equal access to education should be one of the directives of the national strategy and the search for additional funding from various sources as well as the development of supportive digital environments should be key tasks. the idea of open educational resources should take precedence. the loss of instructional time delivered in an educational institution setting requires a review of the existing practice of the education curriculum design. the class-and-lessons system that dominated for centuries no longer works, thus, ukraine needs to look for new efficient formats and methods of instruction. educators’ preparedness for distance learning is a priority of the educational policy. it is also important to introduce tools to motivate educators to improve their digital literacy. equally important is the need to increase their english language proficiency to be able to use the resources of the global community. educational institutions are the key agents of the new model of education implementation. answering the research question “what is the practice of organising education by educational institutions under the covid-19 pandemic?” the obvious conclusion is that the key challenges are common to all of them. in addition to organising a blended instruction format, they must ensure compliance with anti-epidemic measures. besides, secondary education institutions are to reach a new level of cooperation with parents to prevent students’ drop-outs, establish cooperation with the private sector with the perspective of additional funding and strengthening cooperation with the community, thus jointly combating the effects of social isolation of students and their families. 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educational studies/sodobna pedagogika, 4(71): 190-–204. http://w1.c1.rada.gov.ua/pls/zweb2/webproc4_1?pf3511=69854 http://w1.c1.rada.gov.ua/pls/zweb2/webproc4_1?pf3511=69854 https://en.unesco.org/news/covid-19-educational-disruption-and-response https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse/consequences https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse/consequences https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse/solutions https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse/solutions https://covid19.who.int/ 2762022 40(4): 276-295 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 middle leaders and managers’ perspectives of distributive leadership during covid-19 abstract on a global level, covid-19 has shaken the foundations of every sector. in the south african education context, the traditional methods of teaching, learning, and managing schools changed drastically overnight and management roles and responsibilities were pushed to unprecedented levels. moreover, the roles of middle leaders and managers took place within a more distributive framework, encouraging school leaders to adopt varying styles of leadership to cope with the demands of covid-19. for this study, middle leaders constitute departmental heads, grade heads and subject heads. this study utilised a qualitative research design, adopting a case study approach within the interpretivist paradigm. three departmental heads and seven post level one educators who occupy grade heads/leaders’ roles in a primary school constituted the sample. semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with participants to gain their understanding of how distributive leadership was practiced during the pandemic. four themes emerged, namely leadership styles and factors informing the leadership behaviour and leadership growth of middle leaders and managers in schools; middle leaders’ and managers’ perceptions of distributive leadership and the responsibilities of the different stakeholders; the impact of covid-19 on distributive leadership as perceived by middle leaders and managers; and the advantages and disadvantages of distributive leadership practices. the study recommends that school management teams (smts) involve middle leaders and managers to a greater degree to secure an effective ‘buy-in’ to the concept of distributive leadership and that middle managers offer opportunities for others to lead, by developing leadership-specific courses for them. smts must also ensure that individuals have a stable working environment where their psychological, sociological, and emotional needs are respected, fulfilled, and validated during any pandemic. keywords: covid-19, departmental heads, distributive leadership, leadership styles, middle leaders, post level one educators 1. introduction pre-covid-19, leadership roles and responsibilities in schools were traditionally determined by the type of leadership expected of the mandated role (harris, 2020). core functions of middle management which constituted heads of department; grade heads and educators assuming author: mrs laurette fourie1 dr parvathy naidoo2 affiliation: 1stadio university 2university of johannesburg, south africa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v40i4.6583 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(4): 276-295 published: 23 december 2022 received: 25 july 2022 accepted: 19 november 2022 research article http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8158-0120 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6074-8721 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 2772022 40(4): 277-295 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 fourie & naidoo middle leaders and managers’ perspectives of distributive leadership leadership positions solely assisted the principal in managing the school curriculum and to corroborate that learning and teaching were executed in the most productive manner. during covid-19, the roles of middle management were distributed where staff within phases/ departments took on additional roles as leaders assisting educators with teaching using the online platform. their responsibilities were pushed to extraordinary limits beyond any governing legislation. although covid-19 has changed the face of educational leadership forever, it has also pinpointed areas for improvement in management that cannot and should not be ignored. since the onset of the pandemic, school leaders and managers have transitioned into “unprecedented territory” (harris, 2020: 322) with very few clues or guidelines to guide them on the way forward. the focus of this study is on the perspectives of middle leaders and managers regarding distributive leadership practices during the covid-19 pandemic. this paper was directed by the following overarching research question: “how did middle leaders and managers perceive distributive leadership during the period of covid-19?” literature on leadership uses many connotations of the word, for example commanding, heading, leading, guiding, and assisting. gronn (2002) describes leadership as a technique or process where one individual can influence a group of individuals to strive towards a common aim or objective, within any specific institution. hastyar, durmaz and demir (2021: 26) describe leaders as individuals who have “full command of making decisions” that influence the actions of others. a few decades ago, principals were the sole leaders and managers. however, in more recent times educational changes have resulted in educators facing new and different challenges such as abuse of political and positional power, hostile staff, selfishness, violence, poor teamwork, lack of motivation, the absence of empowerment opportunities and ineffective communication. all this has necessitated a change in traditional styles of leadership at schools (dampson, havor & laryea 2018). lewin, lippi and white (1939) identified three leadership styles that are seen as traditional leadership styles, namely autocratic (authoritarian) leadership where the leader makes all the decisions, democratic leadership where the leader involves individuals in the decision-making process and laissez-faire leadership that is also known as no leadership. according to dyczkowska and dyczkowski (2018), autocratic leaders make important decisions on their own, whereas democratic leaders seek a general agreement with colleagues. furthermore, bhatti et al. (2012:196) noted that with an autocratic leadership style, leaders force decisions on employees without their input, whereas democratic leaders (bhatti et al., 2012:193) invite contributions by employees before a final decision is made, although final decision still lies with the democratic leader. moreover, yusup (2022: 46) makes the point that traditional type of leadership is, “based on established beliefs in the sanctity of existing traditions and the legitimacy of the status of authority, because of heredity or inheritance.” 2. what is effective and efficient leadership and management in schools? effective and efficient leadership and management, according to notar, uline and eady (2008) consist of these nine tenets: acting and thinking strategically; understanding and demonstrating the components of teams and teamwork; small group decision making; clearly defining roles and relationships; inaugurating and abiding by a leader-subordinate affiliation; achieving a systematic evaluation of policy; administering leader time and energy fittingly; setting comprehensible rules and procedures for meetings; and learning and developing steadily as a leader. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 2782022 40(4): 278-295 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) a leader’s main responsibility is not just to develop policy, but to shape the future of their school system and meet challenges by expanding mental horizons through diversity. nowadays, leaders not only face challenges within the workplace, but also “economic, social, and environmental challenges, including globalization, economic recession and overpopulation” (gorski, 2017: 372). another aspect of effective leadership is for leaders and managers to realise that they cannot function as islands (lundmark et al., 2020). generally, leaders and their staff coalesce to act as one establishment, working towards the same goal. while team endeavours are often very fruitful, discord and conflicts do arise. this is when good leaders use their authority in positive ways to inspire allegiance, teamwork, and commitment to the successful attainment of goals. according to amanchukwu, stanley and ololube (2015), this can be fulfilled by having clear goals, defining specified roles within the team, coalescing members with different skill sets, devotion to team performance and success, developing trust, making timely decisions, and using the full capabilities of all members. when leaders effectively lead and manage small group directing, time is spent on developing skills for productive teamwork. well-deserved approval and praise are extremely important, as the efforts of educators need to be acknowledged for making a difference. when educators are satisfied with school rules, salaries, discipline, workload, leadership, regulations, facilities, awards, and co-workers, they tend to show loyalty to their leaders (budiman & budiman, 2021). leaders and managers should ensure that the organisation runs effectively; those roles, responsibilities and relationships are clearly defined; and that each member’s contribution to the team (as school governing body member, educator, curriculum leader, principal, student, parent, etc.) is clearly explained in terms of purpose and execution. in essence, an effective leader moulds an effective team (khawam, didona & hernandez, 2017). all school stakeholders play an important role in establishing the effective application of policy, rules, and regulations. carver (1990) emphasizes the importance of allowing staff to give input (within determined limits) to define the means whereby they may achieve certain levels of performance. fapohunda (2013) further mentions that members should be permitted to give input in the designing and wording of goals, thereby enabling a leader-subordinate cooperation that will empower staff to do key tasks and be evaluated on the results produced. as a leader and manager, the pressure to achieve targets and increase performance levels are ever increasing. leaders and managers are expected to use feedback as a management tool to strengthen the organisation, according to mamula, peric and bovan (2020), who argue that effective feedback encourages better performance, which is directly linked to institutional success. school leaders and managers perform a multitude of daily tasks and responsibilities and to manage all of them well is very challenging. therefore, time management and efficient execution of responsibilities is vital. notar et al. (2008: 28) identified certain arenas where leaders should focus their time and efforts. these are: “goal-setting sessions, analysing results, frequent group meetings and community interaction.” of the four arenas, the community aspect is becoming more important as it is changing the role of leaders and how their time is spent. engaging with the community is important as it can lead to enhanced outcomes when organisations seek to understand the desires and principles of communities and address their issues of concern. effective leaders and managers set clear http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 2792022 40(4): 279-295 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 fourie & naidoo middle leaders and managers’ perspectives of distributive leadership rules and procedures for meetings. the absence of effective leadership results in the lack of clear direction of the organisation as well as employee discouragement and loss of motivation (atkinson & mackenzie, 2015). effective leaders manage meetings well they keep them on track, solve problems collaboratively and ensure the holistic participation of all stakeholders. lastly, efficacious leaders learn and evolve continuously because they invest time in selfreflection and engage in developmental learning by drawing from past and present experiences (mcdermott, kidney & flood, 2010). with all the changes that covid-19 has forced upon leaders, it has become noticeable that many had no choice but to adjust to a new way of leading. effective and efficient leadership cannot be viewed in isolation, as every situation is different and the goal to do the best possible at any given time, must be kept in mind. 3. distributive leadership practices during covid-19 schools are becoming more complex in structure as argued by crawford (2005) and face multifaceted challenges (naicker & mestry, 2013), requiring a more distributed form of leadership. prior to covid-19 rearing its ugly head in early 2020, distributive leadership was seen as a method of thinking and reshaping school leadership and a fresh alternative for improving the quality of education (hamzah & jamil, 2019). distributive leadership was not exclusively about one school leader, but an undertaking involving the daily interactions of many individuals, together shaping leadership for the benefit of the whole school and community (hamzah & jamil, 2019). distributive leadership is rooted in social interaction among team members, where they discuss and give or receive advice (de jong et al., 2022). it is also noteworthy that work is distributed to numerous individuals and targets are met through the interaction and collaboration of many people (spillane, halverson & diamond, 2001). furthermore, distributive leadership is planned and coordinated (leithwood, harris & hopkins, 2008) where trust has been established (harris, 2008; crawford, 2012) and empowers the individuals involved (crawford, 2012; gronn, 2002), which can lead to school improvements (leithwood et al., 2008). according to naicker and mestry (2013), teaching is a knowledge-intensive enterprise which makes it nearly impossible to complete complicated tasks without distributing leadership responsibilities. pre-covid-19, the prevalent leadership style at most schools was traditional, where the main function of school leaders was to manage or lead the school and ensure that learning and teaching took place (bush & glover, 2016). although distributive leadership has many advantages, some limitations have surfaced over the years. bill and melinda gates (2017) pointed out four aspects regarding distributive leadership (dl) in the article 4 key things to know about distributive leadership. they are the following: • dl constitutes an instructional leadership team consisting of team members with expertise in a specific area. • dl involves assuming different tasks which include the deliverance of quality education and teaching, observing, and providing feedback, in-service training, and continuous improvement. • dl is sustained by principals and deputy principals building the leadership capacity and providing sessions where knowledge can be shared so everyone works together to improve the outcomes for students; and http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 2802022 40(4): 280-295 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) • dl involves interactions among leaders and managers and colleagues to ensure the improvement of the system to reach a high-quality standard of teaching and an environment where all students can reach their full potential. it is therefore imperative to distinguish between distributive leadership and the practice of delegation in the school environment, since distributive leadership is often perceived as the delegation of duties according to gómez-hurtado et al. (2020). göksoy (2016), highlights the difference as delegative leadership being synonymous with shared leadership (as the leadership is not related to the knowledge and skills of only one leader, but relies on the participation of many individuals), whereas distributive leadership is where the leader and followers interact, not merely by assigning individuals to specific tasks, but through collective learning. schools need leaders and managers who are visionaries, mentors, motivators, and team players who lead by example rather than sit in their offices, distributing their responsibilities because responsibility, unlike authority, cannot be delegated (stein, 2016). leadership is everchanging and evolving towards new approaches as society evolves, moving from individual leadership approaches to others of a more distributed nature. over time, leadership has evolved, and more leadership styles have emerged, including distributive leadership. distributed leadership leans towards an approach whereby leadership and management responsibilities are shared, and individuals are given the opportunity to contribute (bolden, 2011). according to harris (2008), distributed leadership overlaps with shared, collaborative, democratic and participative leadership. distributive leadership involves all individuals, no matter the leadership status and focuses on expertise rather than hierarchical authority (thien, 2019). delegative leadership, also known as laissez-faire leadership (khan et al., 2015), is characterised whereby the leader or manager offers no guidance to members and leaves all decision-making to these members. the big difference between distributed and delegative leadership, “is how leadership is facilitated, orchestrated and supported” (harris, 2008: 173). during the covid-19 pandemic, the complexity of school practices and processes has been unprecedented, as education had been “re-crafted, re-designed and re-booted” (harris, 2020: 321) changing methods of teaching dramatically. it was a hard lesson to learn that unpredictable events bring about extreme changes with exceptional consequences. where management and leadership styles seldom changed over past decades, this had to be quickly reassessed to fit into the ‘new normal’. management responses to covid-19 meant that more work had to be distributed to curriculum middle leaders to lighten the load of the principal and deputy principal. bagwell (2020: 31) noted that the covid-19 pandemic is “rapidly redefining schooling and leadership” and recommended that leaders build resilient organisations by creating and promoting distributive leadership structures. fernandez and shaw (2020) also suggest that academic leaders use the covid-19 crisis as an opportunity to distribute leadership duties wherever possible. as a result, more work was delegated to post level one educators, as many middle management leaders were “running on empty” (harris & jones, 2020: 246) due to the swift and sudden challenges and increased workload caused by covid-19. harris and jones (2020) mention that distributive leadership has become a way of surviving the extreme demands that covid-19 has brought upon leadership and management in schools. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 2812022 40(4): 281-295 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 fourie & naidoo middle leaders and managers’ perspectives of distributive leadership covid-19 did not only bring stress and uncertainty to everyone, but also a change in leadership personality characteristics and style (dumulescu & muţiu, 2021). educator wellbeing suffered during the pandemic because of increased workloads and became an important issue with potentially momentous consequences for students, leadership, and management (kwatubana & molaodi, 2021). before covid-19, many educators at south african schools stared burnout and distress in the face (kwatubana & molaodi, 2021). adding covid-19, social distancing, and level five lockdowns to the list of already undesirable teaching conditions such as inadequate infrastructure, overcrowded classrooms, lack of digital infrastructure and high educator workload (mungroo, 2020), demotivated educators to an even greater extent. leaders distributing responsibilities had to be considerate towards educators, and factor in already heavy educator workloads, deviation from working patterns, the potential health risk to educators over sixty and those with comorbidities, the lack of personal protective equipment (ppe), poor hygiene measures in disadvantaged schools (kwatubana & molaodi, 2021) and they also had to consider that meetings and decision-making had to be conducted via online platforms like zoom and ms teams. 4. research design and methodology a qualitative research design, situated within an interpretive paradigm, was used in this study (maxwell, 2004). interpretive research turns away from less-humane research and focuses on humanised, contextual approaches where the emphasis is on meaning making and knowledge (yanow & schwartz-shea, 2014). this paradigm seeks to “get into the head of the subjects being studied” (kivunja & kuyini, 2017: 33). the researchers employed a single case study approach defined by yin (2009: 14), as “an empirical enquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon in-depth and within its real-life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not clearly evident”. according to lucas, fleming, and bhosale (2018), a single case study is seen as a study that stands alone and allows the researcher to explore sub-units within the case, whereas with a multiple case study the researcher is studying more than just one case. mariotto and zanni (2014) note that by using a single case study, important contributions towards theory development can be made as it is seen as an opportunity to make alterations in an already clear understanding of reality. this approach provided a unique example of real people in real situations, which enabled the researchers to understand ideas more clearly than simply presenting them with abstract theories or principles (cohen, manion & morrison, 2007:181; shadish & sullivan, 2011:972), since the researchers intended studying the phenomenon of “distributive leadership” during the covid-19 pandemic. 4.1 research site and participants the selected school is situated in a semi-urban area in gauteng, south africa. it is a mainstream school open to all races and has 1063 learners between the ages of four and thirteen, from grade rr to grade seven. there are fifty-four curriculum staff members: fortyseven educators, one deputy principal, the principal and five departmental heads. the sample of ten participants comprised of three departmental heads (previously known as heads of departments or middle managers) and seven grade heads, who serve in management positions heading respective grades. through purposive sampling (creswell, 2009; etikan, 2016) the selected individuals were identified according to their knowledge, skills, http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 2822022 40(4): 282-295 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) abilities, and duties relevant educator qualifications (b.ed. degree or diploma in education). the departmental heads were selected for their experience and leadership positions, which they must have held for two or more years. the researchers also considered those educators who occupied current or previous acting positions as departmental or grade heads. we utilized probing open-ended questions and follow-up questions for clarification on participants’ understanding of distributive leadership during the covid-19 pandemic. 4.2 data collection jong and jung (2015) note that interviews are one of the main data collection methods in qualitative research, hence individual interviews were conducted with the participants. frances, coughlan and cronin (2006) note that individual interviews give researchers the opportunities to interpret non-verbal cues by observing body language, facial expressions, and eye contact. ismail (2017) also mentions that messages are transferred by both verbal and non-verbal means. we utilised individual interviews to probe the participants’ understanding, feelings, experiences, and insights about distributive leadership during the covid-19 pandemic. the interview schedule was designed in an open-ended format to enable the participants to freely express and openly respond to the questions posed (alase, 2017). the interviews were conducted face-to-face, following all covid-19 protocols. prior to conducting the interviews, written permission to conduct the study was granted by the university of johannesburg ethics committee (number sem 2-2021-133), the gauteng department of education, the principal of the school, the school management team and the ten participants. all participants granted written and verbal permission to be audio recorded. after the face-to-face interviews were scheduled, they were conducted on the school premises after working hours. the duration of each interview varied between 30-50 minutes. 4.3 data analysis once all interviews were concluded, we transcribed the interviews (mcgrath, palmgren & liljedahl, 2019). each audio-recorded interview was transcribed verbatim by uploading it into “otter.ai”. we then began analysing the data by doing content thematic analysis of the transcriptions, which offered us a clear understanding of participants’ responses. coding and categorisation were executed through the various phases of content thematic analysis (clarke & braun, 2013; creswell, 2009; maguire & delahunt, 2017). coding and categorisation were executed through the six phases of content thematic analysis, as outlined by clarke and braun (2013) and creswell (2009). the six phases were synthesised as follows: firstly, the researchers familiarised themselves with the data, by reading through the data many times to get a sense of the participants’ views, experiences, and thoughts. in the next phase, they generated initial codes, by reflexive journaling, using a coding and categorising framework, while maintaining an audit trail of codes and categories. the researchers then searched for common ideas/thoughts, phrases, etc., developing diagrams to make sense of themes emerging, their connections and whilst detailed notes about developments were drawn. during the next phase, the researchers reviewed the emerging themes to ensure that all data gathered was relevant to each theme. phase five entailed defining and naming the themes, by testing for referential adequacy by returning frequently to the raw data and the final phase involved writing the report on the findings (creswell, 2009; maguire & delahunt, 2017; maree, 2007; silverman, 2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 2832022 40(4): 283-295 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 fourie & naidoo middle leaders and managers’ perspectives of distributive leadership 5. presentation and discussion of findings the researchers observed the unfolding of four themes arising from the participants’ discussions when analysing the results. the report below identifies the themes, supported with quotations from participants and relevant extracts from the literature. for ease of reference, we named the ten participants p1 up to p10. 5.1 theme 1: leadership styles and factors informing the leadership behaviour and leadership growth of middle leaders and managers in schools an effective leadership style is critical for the success of any organisation (murati, 2015:31). leadership theories have been evolved as time has gone by, but “none of the theory is completely irrelevant” (khan, nawaz & khan, 2016: 1). kaleem, asad and khan (2016:1) note that leadership styles in any situation are dependent on the circumstances of that situation. furthermore, kaleem et al., (2016) mention that innovative leaders change their leadership style to suit the situation, whereas less innovative leaders tend to abide by only one style of leadership. there is no agreement among scholars on the specific definition of leadership, as this varies based on interchangeable “abilities, personality traits, influential relationships, cognitive versus emotional orientation” and much more (murati, 2015: 30). through literature reviews many different leadership styles have been identified, including: “autocratic, bureaucratic, charismatic, democratic, laissez-faire, people-oriented, situational, servant, task-oriented, transactional, transformational, abusive, ethical, primal, entrepreneurial, distributive and transcendental leadership” (murati, 2015: 31). the dominant leadership styles during the covid-19 pandemic, as identified by the participants, were democratic and diverse leadership styles. to illustrate the democratic leadership style, p1 (participant 1) indicated that, “i firmly believe that the world doesn’t revolve around me…” and “… i always allow the opportunity, someone to give input and their opinion or their idea could be far better than mine…”. similarly, p9 explained that “i do believe in an open-door policy …” and “… my leadership style is to make other people grow …”. this clearly shows a democratic leadership style, described by sharma and singh (2013) as being a type of leadership that encourages participation in decision-making and offering guidance to group members. participant 4 had this to say about diverse leadership: “i try and use a diverse amount of leadership …. i’m very diverse, especially with who the person is that i’m leading …” and “… the type of situation definitely does change the leadership style …”. p10, similarly mentioned the following “… so i don’t think i have one specific type of leadership, i think i have a variety depending on who am i working with at that particular time …” and explained that “… as a subject leader it’s more of a democratic, participatory style …” and “… as an hod, sometimes you have to be authoritative …” such statements support the notion of kaleem et al. (2016:1), that diverse leadership styles is indicative of innovative leaders. participants also had different views on factors that motivated their type of leadership. when asked what specific factors informed their type of leadership, it was evident that when a specific situation arose, participants would sometimes respond in different ways. the most http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 2842022 40(4): 284-295 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) common responses of post level one participants in acting leadership positions were to involve the whole team and to consider other opinions before making a unified decision. post level two participants indicated that having a large staff influenced their leadership style. p7 said that “… i will lead by considering other people’s opinion or asking, valuing they, their points of views …”. however, terricone and luca (2002), point out that successful teamwork requires that team members must never be fully self-directed or completely independent. at times, taking people’s opinions into account is not always possible due to time and managerial constraints and the number of individuals involved. p10 noted this dilemma by expressing that “… when it comes to dealing with the whole school, and the school that is so big, sometimes you must be authoritative, unfortunately, because of the large staff. and when decisions must be made, you cannot take 30 staff members opinions all into consideration, because you will never get a consensus”. according to participants, factors that affect leadership styles include working with leaders, one’s past experiences, the availability of leaders to give advice, growth opportunities and development courses. p2 in this regard, stated that “… what informs the role would be experience. so, if you’ve been, you know, working as a grade leader, you would draw to that i haven’t personally had that experience. working with other leaders, that’s what’s helped me very much”. p6 explained that “… if you only allow people to do what they good at, they don’t get any better …”. by only allowing individuals to do what they are good at, no development or growth will take place. echoing the words of anderson (2013), that mistakes pave the way to great ideas and innovation, it is important for leaders and managers to allow individuals to make mistakes, because they force people to step out of their comfort zones to grow and discover. leaders and managers need to remember that mistakes should not be seen as failures, but as a process of elimination to see what works and what does not. 5.2 theme 2: middle leaders’ and managers’ perceptions of distributive leadership and the responsibilities of the different stakeholders in a school setting there are many stakeholders including the principal, deputy principal, governing members, school management team, academic heads, educators, and parents. everyone plays a critical role in the daily functioning and operation of the school. distributive leadership, as perceived by middle leaders, has been compared to delegative leadership. p1 explained the difference between distributing and delegating, by stating that “… even though distribute means to give out or to pass on and almost seems very similar to delegating … it feels like to me like an oxymoron because while distributing or giving out tasks, you know, is very like delegating in that, if that makes sense, the leadership part comes”. here, p1 pointed out that distributive leadership has a leadership component, whereas delegating lacks the leadership component. p7 states that “… i looked at the definition of distributive leadership and it, it’s so many sounds so similar to delegating, yet it’s not …”, but then later p7 mentions that “… to me these, although they say it’s not the same as delegating, to me, it’s very similar …”. it is easy to understand why individuals assume that distributive and delegative leadership is similar, as in both leadership styles work is given or passed on to other individuals. other participants expressed the view that distributive leadership in a school context is stipulated within the job’s responsibilities. the personnel administrative measures (pam), found in the employment of educator’s act 76 of 1998, (education labour relations council, 2003: c58), clearly states the core duties and responsibilities of educators, head of http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 2852022 40(4): 285-295 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 fourie & naidoo middle leaders and managers’ perspectives of distributive leadership departments, deputy principals and principals in public schools. when asking p6 what was understood by distributive leadership, the response was: “it’s a collaborative process, you involve everybody, from principal down to the learners, giving them responsibilities and tasks that are within the job description …”, as clearly indicated in the pam document (1999: 41), where it states that one of the core responsibilities of the principal is “to ensure that workloads are equitably distributed among the staff”. distributive leadership not only provides for skills development but focuses on the future of the school. p10 noted that the “… school management team creates opportunities for different teachers in different areas to actually use their ability to be leaders …”, where educators are given the opportunity to develop skills, grow and eventually fill the shoes of top management. the knowledge and skills of management should be shared with prospective leaders to assist with the smooth functioning of the school in the future. participants feel that for this to be successful, the principal, as the leader of the school has a duty to filter down information. to illustrate this, p3 described the process as follows “… your principal is the top leader within a school, then it filters down to hods, then to your grade leaders”. according to farah (2013), the principal is the leader and manager of a school. as the main leader, he/she ultimately takes responsibility and is accountable for everything at the school, whether it be academic improvement, support staff improvement, counselling or distributing leadership roles. the explanation of p7 regarding the responsibilities of the principal and management team, concludes this section: “i firstly believe that it is the responsibility of the principal, the certain things, you know, that starts at the top. and if it filters through correctly, then everything will fall into place. if the principal distributes leadership, firstly to the deputy and to the hods, and the hods back to the grade leaders and then to the teachers, then you will see efficiency in management, you will also see proper success in your school”. 5.3 theme 3: the impact of covid-19 on distributive leadership as perceived by middle leaders and managers covid-19 disrupted the work environment and daily management of all schools. on 18 march 2020, when schools closed for the level five lockdown due to covid-19, the research site school bid farewell to their principal, who had been in that position for seventeen years. thus, the school was without a principal for over a year, resulting in the deputy principal deputising and the smt supporting him. finally, in term 2 of 2021, a new principal was appointed. the year 2020 had brought on drastic changes in staff and the work environment. not surprisingly, leadership styles were affected as emotional factors influencing morale began to surface. odor (2013) describes organisational change as the complete or partial adaptation of new ideas, concepts, or behaviours by members of an organisation. regarding the change in leadership, p6 mentioned that “i found it from my perspective, it became a much more autocratic, dictatorial situation.” an autocratic leadership style is characterised by an organisation (or management) that uses its authority and status to manage activities without considering employee feedback or suggestions (jaafar, zambi & fathil, 2021), and a dictatorial leadership style is where the leader lays down the law and members are expected to perform without questioning authority (khan et al., 2015). p6 supports this view by stating that “… it became much more where you are going to do it this way. i don’t care what your opinion is, or what your needs are what your, what’s going on in your life”. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 2862022 40(4): 286-295 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) comparing the types of leadership, p10 noted that “i just think that our leadership style completely changed. our school has become more delegative.” a delegative leadership style is also known as laissez-faire leadership, where leaders offer little to no guidance and leave decision-making to group members who are expected to solve problems on their own (khan et al., 2015). although a delegative approach has some advantages, the disadvantages include overstepping limits, dissatisfied employees, resignations and the lack of responsibility or initiative. this is suggested by the following comment by p5: “and then we got a new principal. and to me, she is not a leader. she is a delegator and i think as a leader, you cannot be a delegator, you’ve got to have an active role.” examples given by p5 to support this include the principal not leaving the office, learners not knowing who the principal is, what she looks or sounds like, and the principal not knowing the staff. p10 voiced that “we feel like a bunch of personal assistants that must take on all the responsibility that comes with it, until it suits me until it suits high up.” additionally, p4 mentioned that “i feel like we didn’t need to include the whole school, but the grade leaders, it would have been nice to have been included and needed during that time”, clearly showing that even grade leaders were excluded from decision-making. the school’s work environment inevitably underwent great changes during the pandemic. due to lockdown levels 4 and 5, educators were forced to adapt lessons to suit an online environment and to develop study packs, as learners were permitted onto the premises. consequently, the workload of educators increased tremendously. p2 confirmed that “there [are] more tasks, roles and responsibilities that have been implemented since”. p3 added that “i think because of workload, and that might not necessarily be deliberate, but i think with the department wanting more and more from people, we are being given more and more because the people who are supposed to be doing what they are supposed to, aren’t coping.” with the onset of covid-19, schools had to assign a covid officer to oversee the reporting of all covid-19 related cases to the department. this increased the workload of grade leaders and the covid officer, who is a member of the smt. this was confirmed by p7 who said that “i think more so in 2020, we find that more people have to do more”. with the increased workload, change in leadership and fear of contracting covid-19, emotional strains adversely affecting educator morale became apparent. emotional factors included compassion fatigue, feeling unappreciated, no recognition for extra work done, not knowing what was going on, feeling unworthy of a title and grief because of the loss of loved ones due to covid-19. p5 gives this example: “it almost is because you do all this work for zero recognition. and like, there’s no perks anymore”. it came to light that grade leaders used to get a monetary incentive at the end of each term, thanking them for the extra work that they do, but without any communication, it was discontinued. p5 voiced that it felt like “… so it’s you’re a leader, but you’re not a leader”. p4 added that “… i felt i could have almost been taken away, because we didn’t have a say. and anything that we did have a say with had to be checked or signed off … i felt a lot of our own way of running things got taken away”. p6 mentioned that “i don’t know if it’s, if it’s compassion fatigue, maybe that people are suffering from, but it’s like, nobody actually cares about anybody anymore”. figley (2013) describes compassion fatigue as “secondary traumatisation”. other synonyms used for secondary traumatisation include emotional exhaustion, feelings of detachment, a lack of accomplishment, and burnout a state where a person has been physically and psychologically exhausted for a long period of time (devilly, wright & varker, 2009). figley (2013) mentions that secondary traumatisation occurs as the result of emotional http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 2872022 40(4): 287-295 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 fourie & naidoo middle leaders and managers’ perspectives of distributive leadership strain when working with individuals suffering from traumatic events. here, a stressor giving rise to compassion fatigue is an event that is found outside the range of normal human experience that would be markedly distressing to almost everyone (figley, 2013). two such events that had never been experienced before are covid-19 and the lockdowns, which had a huge impact on the whole world. almost no-one was spared from the lockdown limitations, emotional distress and loss of family or loved ones. all these factors contributed to general burnout in many schools. 5.4 theme 4: advantages and disadvantages of distributive leadership practices from the onset of covid-19, many schools were under increasing pressure to perform and improve student achievement, and school leaders and managers had to adapt quickly to deliver on this expectation. distributive leadership involves the cultivation of a system that binds elements of the organisation together, holding individuals accountable for their contributions (grenda & hackmann, 2014). when looking at the effects of covid-19 on organisations, it becomes clear that distributive leadership has adapted to the current situation at schools. harris and jones (2020:246) state that “most school leaders will be running on empty given the myriad of challenges that covid-19 has created for them, so distributive leadership is a necessity to survive”. even before covid-19, naicker and mestry (2013) described teaching as a knowledge-intensive profession, where it is nearly impossible to complete tasks successfully without distributing leadership. lumby (2013) further points out that distributive leadership forces staff members to willingly commit to an ever-increasing workload. this is because, as previously noted by stein (2016), responsibility, unlike authority, cannot be delegated. many participants mentioned that the advantages of distributive leadership are getting to know the strengths and weaknesses of individuals, providing opportunities for growth and spreading the workload. p1 states that “management and leadership will get to know their employees better.” grenda and hackmann (2014), confirm that individuals have different things they are good at, thus strengths are used to assist each other so that “many hands make light work.” p1 observes that “once they know those strengths, it helps them identify people for the right tasks so that those tasks can be done exceptionally well”. the most frequent answer from participants regarding the advantages of distributed leadership, was that it provides an opportunity for growth. distributed leadership recognises leadership attributes in others and encourages individuals to grow and develop skills (samancioglu, baglibel & erwin, 2020). fullan (2001) adds that good leaders are those who develop other leaders at different levels for the future benefit to the system. in this vein, p6 commented that another advantage of distributive leadership is that “people grow. people become; they work smarter, not harder”. challenges described by many participants include lack of expertise and unfair distribution of work. timperley (2005) concludes that distributive leadership can be risky and result in the distribution of incompetence, which ties in with the disadvantage mentioned by p1 and p7 that unrealistic goals result in being overwhelmed with work. p10 agrees that “it can place undue pressure on inexperienced or unskilled staff”. tahir, lee, musah, jaffri, said and yasin, (2016) argued that some educators see the implementing of distributive leadership as increased workloads and more responsibilities. dampson, havor and laryea (2018), in their study on distributed leadership in schools in ghana, quoted a head educator who stated that some http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 2882022 40(4): 288-295 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) educators did not want to take up extra responsibilities, due to the fear of failure. indeed, a lack of expertise in a certain assigned area could result in the fear of failure. 6. discussion in response to our guiding research question, this study highlighted the importance of distributive leadership during the covid-19 pandemic. the study also points out how distributive leadership is understood by middle leaders and assessed how this leadership style affected teaching and learning during the pandemic. true distributive leadership can only exist when all leaders work together towards the same goal. from the available literature, it was evident that it is an effective leadership style that promotes participation and growth within an organisation if implemented correctly, as it can open boundaries that encourage leadership teams to adapt to grow and expand membership within teams. the first theme addressed leadership styles and factors that inform leadership behaviour and leadership growth of middle leaders and managers. hence, we looked at the different departments and what middle leaders and managers thought the leadership role of each was in the context of distributive leadership. the different areas of inquiry identified were links to other leadership styles and responsibilities executed by the department of education and district offices and members of the smt. this theme highlighted the benefits of teamwork and a combination of different leadership styles that were warranted in diverse contexts, such as the covid-19 pandemic. the second theme addressed middle leaders’ perceptions of distributive leadership and the responsibilities of the different stake holders. this theme looked at the different departments and what the middle leaders thought the role of each was in distributive leadership. it was unanimous that middle leaders and managers felt that their leadership style contributed significantly to leadership growth and the element of distributed leadership commenced with the principal, then filters down to other members of the smt and eventually to the post level one educators the third theme focussed on the impact that covid-19 on distributive leadership practices, as observed by middle leaders and managers. participants voiced their concern in the change of leadership and leadership styles in 2020 and 2021 and the effects thereof. participants mentioned feeling unappreciated, unworthy of the leadership title such as middle leader, and compassion fatigue, which contributed to lower morale and negatively impacted the wellbeing of staff. ultimately, this theme brought to light the effects of staff burnout, secondary trauma, emotional distress, exhaustion, fatigue, feelings of detachment as some of the many side effects of the pandemic. the fourth theme examined the advantages and disadvantages of distributive leadership practices as perceived by middle leaders and managers within the context of covid-19 and beyond. this theme brought to the fore the intensity of leadership tasks being distributed during a pandemic due to the myriad of challenges experienced during the pandemic. in the context of this study, distributive leadership provided opportunities to staff for personal growth and development within the school. on the negative side, the practice of distributive leadership can be impeding, brought about by undue pressure on staff, fear of not meeting expected standards and a mismatch between task and skills. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 2892022 40(4): 289-295 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 fourie & naidoo middle leaders and managers’ perspectives of distributive leadership we align ourselves to kathirvel (2020), who states that individuals experienced emotional disturbance, depression, and post-traumatic stress symptoms after being quarantined during the pandemic. the possibility exists that long-term impacts, including anxiety, anger, depression, and substance abuse could be the aftermath of covid-19 infections. furthermore, galea, merchant and lurie (2020) argued that prolonged social distancing could lead to increased loneliness, anxiety, depression and violence towards women and children, whereas isolation could lead to social withdrawal. the importance of principals being alert to these effects cannot be underestimated. fullan (2001) states that good leaders are those who develop other leaders at different levels for the future improvement of the system. 7. conclusion and recommendations the researchers embarked on this study to explore the perceptions of middle leaders and managers regarding distributed leadership during the covid-19 pandemic. distributive leadership provides opportunities for growth by recognising leadership attributes in others, which in turn encourages individuals to grow and advance their leadership skills. the researchers reasoned whether covid-19 would re-model the educational middle management system, return to the old normal or would there be an integration of leadership styles. it was evident from the findings of this study, that participants understood what distributive leadership was, the characteristics of distributive leadership and where it should be filtered down from. the researchers endorse the core functions of middle management are to assist the principal in leading and managing the school and ensuring that learning and teaching was the core business of the school. principals and the department of education authorities should acknowledge that middle leaders and managers are first and foremost educators, who manage a teaching workload with the added responsibility of leading a phase/department. regarding challenges experienced by the participants included the lack of expertise and unfair distribution of work. indeed, this may somewhat support timperley’s (2005) point that distributive leadership can be risky and result in the distribution of incompetence. we therefore recommend that smt members should involve middle leaders and managers to a greater degree, so that there is an effective “buy-in” to the practice of distributive leadership. this is likely to occur if the concept was sufficiently understood by participants and real empowerment of all stakeholders takes priority. we also recommend that middle leaders offer leadership development opportunities for others and train them to lead, by developing courses that embrace elements of distributive leadership, as this will support and guide all staff. finally, we support the notion that staff be exposed to a stable environment during any pandemic or natural occurrence, where their personal and professional needs are catered for. furthermore, their emotional, psychological, and sociological requirements must be regarded as valid, and important to the culture of teaching and learning. it is therefore imperative that the smt monitors staff well-being and offers wellness support during any pandemic. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 2902022 40(4): 290-295 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6583 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) references alase, a. 2017. the interpretative phenomenological analysis 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https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315703275 https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315703275 https://doi.org/10.54443/injoe.v2i1.9 _hlk87951573 _hlk102206937 _hlk102207011 _hlk102206986 _hlk99893556 _hlk103159468 _hlk102934709 _hlk99086760 _hlk99086949 _hlk99086994 197 research article 2020 38(1): 197-210 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 strategies used by grade four educators to decode science terminology: a case study abstract in this paper, we discuss the results of a case study about the teaching strategies used by three primary school educators to decode grade 4 science terminology. in south africa, the study of science is formally introduced to learners in grade 4. additionally, grade 4 is the year when learners transition from being taught in their native languages in grades 1 to 3 to being taught in english. this presents the challenge of learning a new subject in an unfamiliar language. research shows that the majority of south african primary school learners find science terminology difficult to comprehend due to linguistic challenges, which could account for their poor performance in science assessments. the way educators decode science terminology during science lessons could affect learners’ comprehension of science vocabulary and consequently their performance in science. semi-structured interviews were used to collect data in a qualitative case study in order to determine the strategies used by three science educators to teach and decode science terminology in grade 4. the study findings suggest that the participating educators use ad hoc, teacher-centered teaching strategies to decode science concepts. these findings have implications for the preparation of primary school science educators in teacher training institutions. keywords: terminology, teaching strategies, decode, educators, scientific literacy. 1. introduction the scientific literacy of most south african learners has been of concern to many scholars and policy makers (lelliott, 2014; pouris, 1991). according to dragos and mih (2015: 168), scientific literacy is “the ability of an individual to understand scientific laws, theories, phenomena and things”. for learners to be successful in science, they need to develop the capacity to read and understand scientific texts; construct texts appropriate to the learning area; think about, discuss, and interact with texts and use these texts in subject-specific contexts (gay, 2010). beyond the comprehension of the overall meanings of science as a subject, learners are also expected to actively engage in observations and interactions with learning materials, authors: dr monde kazeni1 ms morongwa maleka2 affiliations: 1science education division university of the witwatersrand south africa 2university of johannesburg email: monde.kazeni@wits.ac.za rongwa.maleka@gmail.com doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v38i1.14 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(1): 197-210 published: 11 june 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2314-0869 mailto:monde.kazeni@wits.ac.za mailto:rongwa.maleka@gmail.com http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 198 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 198-210 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 educators and their peers, as they explore new science terminology and expand their understanding of science (dbe, 2011). these activities require learners to be proficient in the language of science and the language of instruction which, in the south african context, is english. according to pretorius (2014), learners in grade 4 across south african schools struggle with learning science, as it their first time studying the subject and it is taught in an unfamiliar language. in south africa, learners are formally introduced to the study of science in grade 4, where they learn the language of science, its principles and rules in english. at this time, primary school learners transition from being taught in their native languages in grades 1 to 3, to being taught in english in grade 4 (pretorius, 2014; dbe, 2011). therefore, they get to grade 4 with limited proficiency in english. at the same time, learners need to develop more book-oriented academic literacy skills to cope with the increasing literacy challenges of the intermediate phase (pretorius, 2014). grade 4 learners are therefore faced with multiple learning challenges that could affect their comprehension of science concepts. this is particularly true for most south african learners who use english as second or even third language (snow, 2010). learners need to be able to read the academic language, which guides the activities, communication and inquiry that constitute science, in order to engage with the subject (yore, bisanz & hand, 2003). it therefore becomes critical for educators to be able to decode scientific statements and terminology for learners’ comprehension of science. decoding science terminology refers to the understanding and interpretation of terminology found in the field of science (snow, 2010). gay (2010) asserted that teaching and learning are culturally determined and are not the same for all. this is especially applicable to most south african schools, where there is diversity of cultures, social backgrounds and linguistic backgrounds. in this regard, cochran-smith (2001) argued that educators, within the south african education system, should use varied teaching strategies to help learners understand subjects better. primary school science educators are therefore called upon to teach science in ways that make it accessible and engaging for all learners (national research council, 2012). literature suggests that the use of learner-centred and community-centred teaching strategies, such as inquiry-based learning (padilla, 2010) and cooperative learning (alexander & van wyk, 2014), in science classrooms could enhance learner performance in science, by allowing them to own their learning (maluleke, 2015). furthermore, inquiry-based teaching strategies could be beneficial to learners in the following ways: a) learners learn science vocabulary as they participate in inquiry activities, b) learners work collaboratively and interact with others about science content, using scientific language, and c) hands-on activities offer learners written, oral, graphic, and kinaesthetic forms of expression (lee, buxton, lewis & leroy, 2006). despite the availability of engaging instructional strategies, such as learnercentred instruction and community-centred instruction, carrier (2013) observed that most science educators teach science terms using traditional teaching methods. traditional teaching methods often begin with educators presenting learners with science vocabulary and asking them to carry out activities such as writing down the words; finding the definitions from a dictionary or the glossary of the textbook; matching words to definitions; or using the terms in a sentence. the reasons for the adherence to traditional teaching methods vary from one educator to the other. the most frequently cited reason for not using engaging teaching methods, in the south african context, is time constraint, because the time allocated http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 199 kazeni & maleka strategies used by grade four educators to decode science terminology 2020 38(1): 199-210 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 for science lessons in primary schools is limited (dbe, 2011). consequently, most educators do not have sufficient time to emphasise science vocabulary construction, in order to help learners to make sense of science related texts. in south africa, the learning of natural science and technology in grade 4 is allocated three and half hours per week (dbe, 2011). this duration is barely enough to cover the science content prescribed in the national curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) document. in their quest to complete the syllabus on time, educators often provide very brief introduction of science terms, when teaching science content. the need to complete the syllabus on time therefore plays a major role in educators’ preference of traditional teaching approaches over engaging instructional strategies. despite this general perception of educators’ instructional practice in science classrooms, the teaching strategies used by south african grade 4 educators to decode scientific concepts, in order to help learners to make sense of science texts are not well documented. the study reported in this paper explored the teaching strategies used by three south african primary school educators to teach science. and specifically to decode science terminology in grade 4 classrooms. the following research questions were investigated: 1. which science terms are perceived to be difficult for south african grade 4 learners to understand? 2. which teaching strategies do the educators in the study sample use in grade 4 science classrooms? 3. how do the educators in the study sample decode science terminology in grade 4? 2. conceptual framework teaching is likely to be more effective if it considers learners’ natural ways of learning. however, no single teaching strategy can cater for the different ways of learning, to produce desired learning outcomes. for instance, reading books may be a very efficient way of obtaining new information, while understanding the information would require other methods of learning. it is difficult for an educator to employ all instructional approaches required to produce the expected learning outcomes. therefore, educators need to create learning environments with learning principles that could provide opportunities for learners to exercise different ways of learning. according to cognitive research dealing with how people learn, environments that best promote learning have four interdependent aspects; they are focused on learners, they have well-organised knowledge, they use ongoing assessment for understanding, and they include community support (bascandziev, tardiff, zaitchik & carey, 2018; carey, 1986). these aspects are modelled in the “how people learn – hpl framework” proposed by bransford, brown and cocking (1999), which guided the evaluation of the teaching strategies used by the educators who participated in this study. in line with the aspects recommended by cognitive researchers, for creating effective learning environments, the hpl framework consists of a combination of four instructional designs, namely: learner-centred; knowledge-centred; assessment-centred and communitycentred instructions, as shown in figure 1, and elucidated in subsequent texts (brown, brown & cocking, 1999). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 200 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 200-210 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 learner-centred instruction according to the hpl framework, learner-centred instruction involves the acknowledgement and development of knowledge, skills, attitudes, beliefs and needs of learners, by actively engaging them in lessons. educators need to unearth the attributes that learners bring to learning settings, so that they can either augment them or correct them. if educators ignore these attributes, learners may develop understandings that are contrary to the intended learning outcomes. in evaluating the strategies used by the study participants to decode science terms, attention was paid to evidence of determination of learners’ prior knowledge and subsequent interventions, as well as the extent to which learning activities engaged learners. knowledge-centred instruction this aspect of the hpl framework focuses on helping learners to develop a deep understanding of the content and processes of a discipline. this requires an educator to inform learners about the knowledge they are expected to gain, how the knowledge could be used and provision of the relevant concepts. this knowledge forms the foundation on which to build further knowledge. helping learners to understand science terms and concepts was the main goal for evaluating participants’ teaching strategies, in the study reported in this paper. assessment-centred instruction for this aspect of the hpl framework, the emphasis is on formative evaluation of learners and the provision of frequent feedback, followed by revision in order to assess, reward and correct learners. formative assessments provide learners with the opportunity to evaluate, revise and improve the quality of their learning for improved meta-cognitive ability. in the study reported in this paper, the frequency and quality of formative assessments reported by the participating educators were considered when evaluating the teaching strategies used by participating educators. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 201 kazeni & maleka strategies used by grade four educators to decode science terminology 2020 38(1): 201-210 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 community-centred instruction this refers to environments that are based on a community of learners within a learning situation, who actively and constructively participate in learning activities. as the learners interact with one another, they constantly learn from each other’s mistakes and achievements. evidence for creation of community-based learning environments was also used to evaluate the teaching strategies used by the educators who participated in this study. brown, brown and cocking (1999) posited that a combination of the four instructional environments described above maximises learning. other researchers have suggested similar instructional approaches for effective science learning (alexander & van wyk, 2014; fitzgerald & smith, 2016; padilla, 2010). 3. methodology a qualitative case study research design was used to collect data from three purposively selected grade 4 educators. in sampling the participants, the researchers selected educators who have experience in teaching grade 4 natural science in south africa. specifically, the following criteria were used to select the study participants. they had to: • teach in a local primary school; • teach grade 4 natural science; • be able to communicate in english; and • have at least four years’ experience in teaching science at primary school level. the researchers visited principals from 20 primary schools in the gauteng area. during these visits, the researchers explained the nature of the study to the principals and requested a list of educators who met the sampling criteria. the researchers then contacted these educators individually. initially, nine primary school educators who met the stated criteria were invited to participate in the study. ultimately, only three educators agreed to take part in the study. these educators came from three different schools in the gauteng province of south africa. table 1 shows the profiles of the educators who participated in the study. table 1. profile of study participants participant gender school code qualification teaching experience (years) area of specialisation educator 1 male x higher diploma in primary school education; diploma in education management; and hr certificate 19 science educator 2 female y bed and bed honours in mathematics and science 25 science and mathematics educator 3 female z bed in science education 4 science 4. data collection and analysis after obtaining ethical clearance and approval from all stakeholders, and explaining the ethical rights to the participants, semi-structured interviews were used to collect qualitative http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 202 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 202-210 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 data from individual participants. an interview schedule was used to guide the progression of the interviews. interview items focused on three themes, namely: • theme a – difficult science terminology taught in grade 4 classrooms. under this theme, participants were asked to list the science terms that they thought grade 4 learners found difficult to understand. • theme b – teaching strategies commonly used by the participants to teach science in grade 4. under this theme, the educators were required to name and describe the teaching methods that they frequently use in their science classrooms and to explain why they use them. • theme c – strategies used to decode science terminology in grade 4. in this theme, participants were requested to explicitly describe how they explain the difficult science terms that they identified in theme a. for example, educators were required to explain what they do to make sure that learners understand a particularly difficult science term. the interview schedule was piloted using intermediate phase student educators at a certain university in gauteng. during the pilot study, questions that were not clear or that confused the pilot study participants were either modified or discarded and replaced with clearer questions. at the commencement of each interview, the researchers read out the interview questions to the interviewee. when the interviewee acknowledged that s/he understood the interview questions and was willing to participate in the interview, the researchers requested consent to record the interviews. the interview and the recording only commenced after the interviewee granted the researchers permission to proceed. in cases where the answers provided by the interviewees were either unclear or they did not respond directly to the question, probes and prompts were used to obtain more information from them. at the end of each interview, the researchers played the audio recording back to the interviewee to make sure that they were comfortable with their responses. after the interviews, the researchers listened to the audio records and transcribed the information. thereafter, content data analysis was used to analyse the data, by subjectively interpreting the data through a systematic classification process of coding and categorising statements into predetermined themes. in this respect, the researchers examined the transcribed statements and allocated them to the themes of difficult science terminology taught in grade 4 classrooms, teaching strategies commonly used by the participants to teach science in grade 4, and strategies used to decode science terminology in grade 4. subsequently, the statements were coded using the notations shown in table 2. table 2. notations used to transcribe interview responses themes participants a – represents the theme: difficult grade 4 science terminology 1 – represents the first educator b – represents the theme: instructional strategies used to teach science 2 – represents the second educator c – represents the theme: decoding of science terminology 3 – represents the third educator roman numerals represent the number of the statement provided by a particular participant, in each theme. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 203 kazeni & maleka strategies used by grade four educators to decode science terminology 2020 38(1): 203-210 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 according to the notation in table 2, the code ‘a1iv’ for instance, would represent a statement related to theme a, given by educator 1, as response statement number ‘iv’. the coded data were categorised according to the stated themes (a to c). the researchers reflected on the categorised information to identify possible gaps in the data. in order to ensure the accuracy and transparency of the data, and to solicit missing information from the participants, the researchers organised data sharing sessions with the participants where necessary. after adding the missing data, the researchers analysed the data further, and identified more data gaps. this was followed by additional data sharing sessions, until the researchers could not identify more data gaps. data were therefore collected and analysed in an iterative and progressive manner until the required information was obtained. 5. findings the participating educators were asked to identify science terminology from the grade 4 caps document that they perceived to be difficult for learners to understand. table 3 shows the terms frequently identified by the three educators as difficult for grade 4 learners. the researchers corroborated these terms from the caps grade 4 science content (dbe, 2011). table 3. difficult science terminology in grade 4 science strand difficult science terminology life and living living, non-living, structure, plants, habitats, skeleton, yeast, reproduction, fertilised, sensing, breathing and excreting. matter and materials materials, ceramic, solids, cycle, vapour, condensing and solidifying. energy and change photosynthesis, process, wavelength, energy, transfer, sound, impaired, vibration and plucking. planet earth and beyond planet, rocket, solar, system, sediment, rock, galaxy, constellation and comet. participating educators were also required to explain the teaching strategies that they use during grade 4 science lessons. the first and third participants indicated that they initially use question and answer to determine learners’ prior knowledge and then build around that information, using other strategies such as discussions or demonstrations, as indicated in the following quotations. b1i mmmh, question and answer, i use the the…mostly question and answer, then sometimes i link with previews [previous] question, like for instance, when i start the lesson, i would ask a questions, then link it to another question later in the lesson. b3ii mainly question and answer, then discussion and demonstration are involved to make sure that learners understand certain things. the second participant said that she explains the concepts first and then uses different teaching strategies to develop the lesson. she, however, did not specify the teaching strategies used, apart from stating that she gives classwork at the end of a lesson. b2i the teaching strategies uuumh, i teach them, yah! i teach them by explaining first, about the concept, what does it mean, then i go about the concept and clearly explain to the learners, and then the [they] get the gist of it, so that they can understand it. towards the end i give them classwork so that i can see what they understand. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 204 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 204-210 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 finally, the educators were asked to explain how they decode difficult science terms to make sure that learners understand them. educator 1 did not seem to understand the term “decode”. however, after explaining the term, he explained that he uses the recommended textbooks (which he did not name) to provide definitions of terms, as stated below. c1ii the big words, okay, okay! yah! the textbooks have key words on the side, so it is easy for them to understand because it is like a dictionary, it provides a word and then it explains it. in response to the same question, educator 2 laughed and paused for a long time, and later responded that she brings objects to class and uses pictures to explain science terminology. her response is stated below. c2i ummh…sometimes i use, let me say coming to uhm (laughs), just wait a little bit, let me say you bring objects in the class…yes! i bring objects in the classroom. sometimes i comprise [improvise] because our schools do not have the instruments. sometimes i just bring a picture so that they can see the kind of thing i am talking about or even in the book, you will find that the drawings are there but you do not have the real objects to show them [learners]. educator 3 said she uses practical examples or whole class reading and a dictionary. she emphasised that it is important for learners to read, as quoted below. c3ii to decode uuumh! science terminologies? as i said, apart from doing practical examples, like reading, yes! whole class reading is important because some of the learners in grade 4 struggle with reading, the syllables of the word and all those things are difficult, so it is important for them to read, mainly whole class reading. and they have concepts dictionary, which they use as a form of classroom activity. when prompted to provide details of how they use the cited teaching strategies, the educators could not elucidate further, they instead reiterated the use of verbal explanations, individual and class reading, writing words on the board, demonstrations, use of practical examples and the use of pictures and dictionaries or textbooks. the educators failed to provide credible answers when asked to describe the type of dictionaries used and to explain why they use dictionaries to decode science terminology. the caps (dbe, 2011) proposes some teaching resources and a variety of instructional methods, such as inquiry and cooperative learning, for teaching new information. when asked about the usefulness of these teaching strategies in decoding science terms, the three educators were evasive. educator 1 did not respond to the question, and the other educators simply mentioned that the caps document is very helpful to educators, without providing detail, as indicated in the extracts below. c1v ijoooh! that is…i do not know (laughs). ai no! c2iii eeeh! (thinking) it [caps document] makes it easier for educators to teach science, especially in the primary level, it is especially useful for new educators. c3v they [caps documents] are helpful in a way, especially when you look at the skill in natural science…so it is very much helpful depending on the concepts you are dealing with. two of the participants complained about the lack of teaching aids in township public schools, as illustrated by the quotation below. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 205 kazeni & maleka strategies used by grade four educators to decode science terminology 2020 38(1): 205-210 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 c2iv i wish we could have so many, eeeeh, learning aids, and uuhhhm, the modern things, i think it will be better for educators like myself because i cannot draw, i can draw but the picture i’m drawing is not good enough for them to capture it very clearly. if the school can buy the material or learning aids, it will make the work easier. when the two educators were pressed to explain how they ensure that learners understand science terms during science lessons, in the absence of teaching aids, they explained that they help learners in every way possible, including explaining science terms in vernacular. the third educator was quick to mention that code switching to vernacular could help learners in the short term, but learners are likely to fail science examinations, which are written in english, because learners struggle to express themselves in english during oral or written assessments. 6. discussion in the study reported in this paper, we explored grade 4 science terms that educators consider difficult for learners to comprehend, and the strategies used by educators to teach science and decode difficult science terms. the three sampled educators identified numerous difficult terms, including; photosynthesis, process, wavelength, system, sediment and galaxy. several researchers have also acknowledged some of the terms identified by the participants in this study, as difficult for grade 4 learners (cervetti, hiebert, pearson & mcclung, 2015). even though different educators are likely to perceive the difficulty of science terms differently – depending on various factors such as duration of exposure to the terms; availability of appropriate resources; and educators’ comprehension of the terms – there seems to be some consensus among science educators and researchers that grade 4 learners could be facing difficulty in understanding some science terms. various factors could account for this difficulty, including limited english language proficiency. although some researchers (pretorius, 2014; snow, 2010) have indicated that most grade 4 learners in south african schools have limited english language proficiency and science experience, little research has been conducted to determine the language and science learning needs of grade 4 learners. such research would guide classroom practice regarding the teaching of science. for instance, it is necessary to investigate the effect of introducing english, the language of instruction, and the language of science simultaneously, on grade 4 learners’ comprehension of science terms. introducing english in earlier grades could alleviate learners’ challenge of trying to learn the language of instruction and the language of science at the same time. furthermore, in the south african context, the problem of limited language proficiency and science experience could be compounded by the fact that some educators are unfamiliar with some of the science terms taught in grade 4, as acknowledged and demonstrated by the participants in this study. in such instances, it is possible for certain science terms to be ignored by educators during science lessons, depriving learners of the opportunity to comprehend the terms. continuous professional development of primary school educators in elementary science could address the problem of limited science knowledge. current understanding of language in the service of science education is mostly informed by the practice of effective educators of science, the craft of science, and by the research of applied cognitive scientists (yore, bisanz & hand, 2003). these stakeholders in science education seem to agree that learning to reason, which is one of the aims of science education, requires the ability to use the ideas and the language of science to learn how to formulate http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 206 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 206-210 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 statements and arguments, and to use familiar terms with their accepted scientific meaning, in scientific discourses. all these activities require proficiency in the language of instruction. limited proficiency in the language of science and indeed the language of instruction, which are characteristic of most south african learners, can therefore impede the learning process considerably. despite the critical role played by the language of science in science learning, the power of this relationship is seldom emphasised during science instruction (fradd, lee, sutman & saxton, 2001). to substantiate this assertion, the findings from the study reported in this paper revealed that participating educators mostly used teacher-centred teaching approaches, such as explanations, question and answer, writing terms on the board, dictionaries, demonstrations and practical examples, to teach science. these teaching strategies do not explicitly focus on the development of the language of science in science learning. this finding is not unique to the educators who participated in this study, as various researchers have found similar results (carrier, 2013; hobden, 2005). interview responses from the reported study showed that educators did not have wellplanned, systematic ways of decoding science terms. they rather used the instructional approaches stated in the previous passage, in an ad hoc manner. this is disheartening given the importance of the language of science in science learning, and the enormous challenge of learning science in an unfamiliar language faced by most south african grade 4 learners (snow, 2010). failure to prioritise and clearly decode science terminology could limit learners’ scientific vocabulary, which could in turn impact on their performance in science. it is possible that limited scientific vocabulary could partly account for the poor performance of most south african primary school learners in national and international science assessments (pretorius, 2014; reddy, 2006). unless science instruction includes an explicit focus on scientific literacy development, second or third language english speakers are likely to be perpetually excluded from science learning (westby, dezale, fradd & lee, 1999). literature proposes explicit introduction of learners to new science terms and that the introduction should be bound to hands-on scientific investigations (cervetti et al., 2015). this suggestion aligns well with the learner-centred component of the hpl framework of instruction (bransford, brown & cocking, 1999). several instructional practices for promoting scientific literacy in learners have been suggested in literature (fradd et al., 2001). some of these practices are discussed in the following texts. the first instructional practice pertains to the development of learners’ science vocabulary, which requires educators to be able to identify the terms to be used in a lesson and to use explicit instructions to integrate new terminology into learners’ communication. in a study conducted by fradd et al., (2001), educators indicated that learners required clear instruction in combination with contextualised vocabulary use to integrate new terminology into their communication. this is particularly true for learners who learn new science terms using a language that is unfamiliar to them. in order for learners to be able to integrate new science terms into their communication, they need to participate actively in lessons, which could be achieved through learner-centred and community-centred instruction. the teaching approaches used by educators who participated in this study largely fall short of learner-centred and community-centred pedagogy, suggested in the hpl instructional framework. these components of the hpl instructional framework are associated with science teaching approaches such as inquiry-based and cooperative learning, which have http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 207 kazeni & maleka strategies used by grade four educators to decode science terminology 2020 38(1): 207-210 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 recently re-emerged as crucial science instructional strategies, not only for effective science learning (alexander & van wyk, 2014; fitzgerald & smith, 2016; padilla, 2010), but also for the development of the higher-order thinking skills required for effective citizenry in the 21st century (trilling & fadel, 2009). educators’ ability to promote inquiry and cooperative learning requires competences such as; knowledge of science, an understanding of the inquiry process, and the ability to determine learners’ strengths and learning needs (fradd et al., 2001). the absence of these instructional approaches in south african science classrooms, especially at early primary school, could be the root cause of the high incidence of memorisation of science content without understanding, at different educational levels. the second instructional practice for enhancing scientific literacy is the use of multiple representations. the focus in this instructional practice is the use of several representational formats such as drawings, charts, tables, graphs and computer-developed simulations to develop learners’ content knowledge, which includes the knowledge of science terminology. such representations reduce the language load required to participate and to comprehend scientific vocabulary. multiple representations of science terminology provide learners with opportunities for concrete understanding of the terms so that they can focus on communication for understanding, rather than memorising science terms in order to reproduce them in assessments. representations are premised on knowledge-centred instruction, as described in the hpl model. the knowledge acquired through representations forms the foundation upon which to build further knowledge. while the educators revealed some evidence of knowledge-centred and assessmentcentred teaching, some of them admitted that they do not understand some of the science terms taught in grade 4. this could signal a deficiency in the preparation of primary school science educators. primary school teacher trainers might have to revisit their programmes to ensure that their graduates have sufficient content knowledge to teach primary school science effectively. educators’ failure to understand science content could partly account for the abysmal performance of most south african learners in national and international science assessments (lelliott, 2014; pretorius, 2014). assertions made by the participating educators about the lack of teaching aids are genuine and can be a significant impediment to effective science teaching, as pointed out by some of the participants. however, most primary school science activities do not require complex and expensive teaching materials. educators could easily improvise by using cheap, day-to-day household products. the third instructional practice for promoting scientific literacy in learners is the use of expository and narrative texts (fradd et al., 2001). the use of narratives has been an effective form of instruction from time immemorial. our great grandparents used this form of instruction to pass information and knowledge from one generation to the next. young learners are particularly intrigued by stories. narratives about learners’ science activities at home and their shared experiences at school could provide insights for linking science with real-world events, because stories make science more meaningful and relevant. the inclusion of science terms in narratives does not only help learners to remember the terms, but also enhances their understanding of the terms and the contexts in which they are used. furthermore, science-related stories based on home and school experiences, could foster community-centred learning, which enables learners to benefit from the experiences of others. expository texts, which use clear, focused language that moves from general to specific facts and from abstract to concrete information, could be used for summarising, reviewing, reflecting http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 208 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 208-210 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 and expanding science content for better understanding of science texts (cervetti et al., 2015). none of the educators who participated in the reported study alluded to the use of story-telling or expository texts as strategies for teaching science or decoding science terminology. it appears that the participating educators were either ignorant of these instructional strategies or they did not consider them to be effective for decoding science terminology. 7. conclusion the findings of the reported study established that there are several science terms that educators consider difficult for learners to comprehend. evidence from literature (cervetti, hiebert, pearson & mcclung, 2015) seems to suggest a consensus among scholars that similar science terms are difficult for grade 4 learners to grasp. these terms need to be explicitly explained to learners using different teaching strategies, to enhance their understanding of science. the results also suggest that the participating educators did not have well-planned strategies for teaching science and decoding science terminology. they commonly use teacher-centred teaching methods are less effective in developing learners’ understanding of new science terms. building on insights from interviews with participating educators, it was established that there is need for professional development of grade 4 educators, in effective strategies for decoding science terminology. educators’ complaints about lack of teaching aids, although genuine, could be an indication of incompetence in improvisation and in learner-centred teaching strategies, which need to be addressed through professional development programmes. the need for professional development is not unique to south african educators. literature on science teaching indicates that many educators require extended assistance with science literacy and content area instruction in order to meet the learning needs of second language english speakers (mcfarland, hussar, wang, zhang, wang, rathbun, barmer, cataldi & mann, 2018). in this respect, it becomes crucial to incorporate effective instructional strategies for decoding science terminology in intermediate phase teacher preparation programmes, in order to enable educators to deal with the challenges faced by second language english speakers in science classrooms. we therefore recommend the accentuation of learner-centred and community-centred instructional strategies, such as inquiry-based and cooperative learning in teacher education programmes. of equal importance is the establishment of collaborative research projects among educators, researchers and science education scholars, to develop and test effective instructional strategies for decoding science terminology, to enhance second or third language english speakers’ comprehension of science concepts. such strategies would enable science educators to meet the educational needs of learners who struggle with challenges of learning new science terminology in an unfamiliar language. the findings of this study should be viewed in the context of a limited sample of educators. a study with more participants is recommended to shed more light on these findings. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 209 kazeni & maleka strategies used by grade four educators to decode science terminology 2020 38(1): 209-210 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 references alexander, g. & van wyk, m.m. 2014. does cooperative learning as a teaching approach enhance teaching and learning in integrated culturally diverse school settings? an exploratory study. mediterranean journal of social sciences, 5(2), 689-698. https://doi.org/10.5901/ mjss.2014.v5n2p689. bascandziev, i., tardiff, n., zaitchik, d. & carey, s. 2018. the role of domain-general cognitive resources in children’s construction of a vitalist theory of biology. cognitive psychology, 104, 1-28. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cogpsych.2018.03.002. carey, s. 1986. cognitive science and science 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doi.org/10.1177/152574019902100107. yore, l.d., bisanz, g.l. & hand, b.m. 2003. examining the literacy component of science literacy: 25 years of language arts and science research. int. j. sci. educ, 25(6), 689-725. https://doi.org/10.1080/09500690305018. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.14 https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo https://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1182597 https://doi.org/10.1177/152574019902100107 https://doi.org/10.1177/152574019902100107 https://doi.org/10.1080/09500690305018 _hlk40877563 _goback _hlk40083238 1002020 38(1): 100-114 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.8 the importance of shepherd leadership practices on easing the textbook burden on south african university students abstract the argument advanced in this article is that excellent shepherd leadership practices serve as a condition necessary for affording south african university students easy access to the required book chapters instead of enduring the burden of having to buy the full books. in order to embellish this viewpoint, relevant data were collected through focus group interview discussion sessions (fgids) with a sample of 40 purposefully sampled participants from a target population of university students, lecturers and local textbooks sales personnel. these participants were first categorised into 4 focus groups of 10 members each and were interviewed for a duration of between 40 minutes and one hour per focus group. by adopting an interpretivist paradigm, utilising a qualitative research approach and descriptive phenomenology as a strategy of enquiry (design genre), the study was able to explore the lived experiences of the participants. the two key research questions guiding the study were; how can the key university lecturers as curriculum leaders and shepherd leaders ease the textbook burden on south african university students? and what role can textbook publishing companies play towards easing the textbook burdens on university students? deploying shepherd leadership as the theoretical lens for viewing and analysing the data through inductive and/or thematic approach, the study’s main finding was that since the biggest cost that university students have is books and given that most of the books are only used for one semester, their exorbitant prices more often than not, lead students to resort to photocopying while publishers lose out. the study concluded that using such new platforms as e-llumin 8, can help students alleviate their textbook burden since it allows them access to specifically prescribed book chapters at a time instead of buying the full books. the chief recommendation from the study was that university lecturers need to work in cooperation with the key book publishing companies to embrace any new and innovative ways to ease the textbook burden on students whilst also ensuring that publishers do not lose out. keywords: textbook burden, book publishers, shepherd leaders, south african university students author: prof edmore mutekwe1 affiliation: 1north-west university email: edmore.mutekwe@nwu.ac.z a doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v38i1.8 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(1): 100-114 published: 11 june 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7830-6171 mailto:edmoremutekwe@nwu.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.8 101 mutekwe the importance of shepherd leadership practices on easing the textbook burden 2020 38(1): 101-114 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.8 1. introduction this study seeks to show the role of shepherd leadership by university lecturers towards helping ease the textbook burden on south african university students. monama (2019:6) contends that ensuring that university lecturers liaise with textbook companies to make the required textbook chapters available instead of making the university students endure the burden of having to buy the full books is one of the best ways in which the lecturers, as the students’ shepherd leaders, can alleviate the exorbitant textbook prices, especially in view of the fact that most of these textbooks are only used for one semester (monama, 2019:6). rantloane (2019:6) supports the above idea by arguing that more often than not many lecturers advise their students to read certain book chapters in textbooks and not the whole book and therefore encouraging them to buy specific book chapters goes a long way towards easing the exorbitant payments on textbooks. in the next section the focus is thus on the role of university lecturers’ protective role as shepherd leaders for their students. 2. background to the problem in an article on the tyranny of textbooks in higher education, mathews (2012) notes that the current situation in south africa’s higher education institutions is so dire that the four billionrands -a-year textbook business, which is part of the fiscus, only serves a small percentage of the textbook needs of the higher education students. from this view, it follows that the importance of textbooks for university students cannot be over emphasised because they play a vital role in the teaching and learning process by providing the basic framework within which much of the classroom activities occur and also their availability gives every student the best possible opportunities for learning (mathews, 2012). it is on account of the dearth of research studies on the textbook challenges affecting university students, as mathews (2012) contends, that in their protective role as shepherd leaders, university lecturers ought to shield their students (sheep) from financial hazards, extravagant expenditures and financial destruction or damage, which normally occurs through the actions of unscrupulous textbook sellers (simpson, 2005). further to the aforementioned problem of the dearth of research studies on the lack of adequate textbooks in higher education institutions as further argued by monama (2019), this study was prompted by the view that just as would happen in israel when the shepherdleader would lie down at the gate physically to protect the sheep from wolves coming into the sheepfold, literally putting his life on the line for the sheep (simpson 2005), as shepherd leaders university lecturers also need to guard their flock of students from the financial predators masquerading as genuine textbook sellers. as dykstra (2010) notes, this can be one of the most fundamental lessons to learn from john calvin, a great shepherd leader of our history. as a shepherd leader and preacher, he knew what the expressions, “feed the flock”, “keep the wolves at bay”, “minister to the lambs” and “give muscles to the bones of the warriors … and skill to their hands” meant (gritters 2009:19). therefore as shepherd-leaders, university lecturers need to strive to feed their lambs and the sheep, bringing them to good pasture lands and water, grooming and clipping them, playing the role of midwives to enable the delivery of new lambs, directing and teaching them to stay on course and in unity, seeking new ways and means of avoiding exorbitant payments when the avenues for cheaper ones are available and this essentially is what protecting the sheep in the case of their students implies. 102 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 102-114 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.8 courage and responsibility should be some of the important traits for effective shepherd leadership (dykstra, 2010). every shepherd-leader in an educational institution is expected to possess a great deal of courage as it speaks of being of good cheer in the face of threatening circumstances (resanne, 2014). as a quality of spirit, courage thus enables the leader to face danger or pain without showing fear and it is also true to state that it entails ideas of boldness, confidence and bravery (wright, 2014). in the case of university lecturers as shepherd leaders, it is pertinent to note that a timid lecturer or shepherd leader will, for example, leave his or her sheep (students) vulnerable, insecure and aimless if he or she does not challenge any exploitative processes in their procurement of resources, be it food or in the case of this study, textbooks and book chapters. a courageous one is inversely the one who is prepared to stand firm for what he believes for his or her sheep (students), for example, being able to persuade textbook publishers to sell single book chapters to his students and for such exploits he or she is more often than not reputable as this is regarded as a clear show of bravery and tenacity (resanne, 2014). shepherd leaders who assume responsibilities put their lives at risk for the sake of the safety of their flock (resanne, 2014). in fact, they are not the hired hands that tend to abandon the flock when the enemy appears to destroy and kill the flock. the task of responsibility for such servant leaders is not just for the leader’s personal integrity but are, as kuiper (1998:140) asserts, “not only for dignity, but also for usefulness”. this implies they assume the responsibilities to fulfil a purpose, role, or function or to undertake a duty or hold office or to perform specifically determined functions without fear or favour (kuiper, 1998). briefly, such shepherd leaders possess the courage to challenge any unfair practices in any system. they also have the boldness to face the demanding or the stimulating situation head on. in the case of university lecturers, possession of such shepherd-leadership traits means they are not afraid to take exception to issues that may threaten the security or the courage of the students (their sheep). they may also have the courage to participate in the changing environment for their sheep in which case they are deemed as being proactive to change (resanne, 2014). in a university setting, the above view implies leaders who are at the cutting edges of the changing context and the threatening environment of their sheep (franklin, 2009). for franklin (2009:412), “such leaders are in god’s mission and therefore they must lead in a rapidly changing world – in social, cultural, economic, political and religious environments and at local, national, and global levels”. these kinds of shepherd-leaders participate in the eschatological journey with their sheep, on the grounds that they are also human beings still under construction. this shepherd-leader metaphor is clearly expounded in the biblical book of 1 samuel (17:34-37) where david says to saul, your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep. when a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, i went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth. when it turned on me, i seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it. your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living god. the lord who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this philistine. saul said to david, “go, and the lord be with you.” an effective shepherd-leader is expected to possess such courage as that of the young shepherd david in beating off cruel and unjust attackers. he or she may be required to defend his students (or sheep) from unfair and damaging accusations or practices. this leadership 103 mutekwe the importance of shepherd leadership practices on easing the textbook burden 2020 38(1): 103-114 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.8 position or role may demand readiness to confront false accusers and willingness to support victims of unjust financial prejudice or attack. as strauch (2006:149) notes, the fact remains that if one is not a positive encourager, he or she will probably be a poor admonisher. 3. theoretical framework for the study the theory of shepherd leadership suggests that shepherd leaders should be leaders who lead to ensure the well-being of their followers through the behaviours of guiding, providing and protecting their interest (cobb, 1999). literally, a shepherd is a person who herds flocks or groups of animals and such a person protects sheep from animals that would attack them, keeps them from wandering and otherwise takes care of the flock (cobb, 1999). the word can also be a noun and verb that describes a carer or implies to care for a group, sheep, other animals and even people (cobb, 1999). described as shepherd leaders, university lecturers thus follow and watch over, look after or guide their students in all their work in academia (d’souza, 2000). as a theory of leadership, the concept implies a selfless service to subordinates and it requires a commitment to serve without the potential of immediate recognition or reward (strauch, 2006:85). in the christian religion jesus is often referred to as “the good shepherd” because he looked after his people in a manner real shepherds look after their sheep (resane, 2014). further to the above, it is important to note that the symbolism of christ as a shepherd comes directly from the gospel of john (10:11–18) in which christ is leading the faithful and will lay down his life for the sheep, or those who are faithful to him (resanne, 2014). drawing from resanne (2014), such a title when applied to university lecturers implies that they lead their faithful students like sheep in ways that are proper, characterised by careful spending just as jesus the good shepherd did to his disciples in the new testament where the maxim is john 10, particularly verses 14 and 16 in which jesus says: i am the good shepherd; i know my sheep and my sheep know me-just as the father knows me and i know the father-and i lay down my life for the sheep. besides the above citation, several other referent examples are made to the concept of shepherds beginning with the view that they were amongst the first to receive the message of jesus’ birth and visited him (luke 2:8–20) through the shepherd and sheep relationship used to illustrate christ’s relationship to his followers who referred to him as “our lord jesus, that great shepherd of the sheep” (hebrews, 13:20) to jesus speaking of himself as “the good shepherd who knows his sheep and would lay down his life for them” (john 10:7-18). further examples include the fact that after his resurrection, jesus commissioned peter to feed his sheep (john 21:1) and also the idea that in his farewell address to the ephesian elders, apostle paul portrayed the church and its leaders as a flock with shepherds (acts, 20:28). further to the above, it is also important to note that the metaphor of god as a shepherd is also found in the old testament (rosanne, 2014). as the shepherd leaders for the students (sheep), the university lecturers are thus required, at times, to gently lead their students especially those in their charge, mentoring and sometimes teaching them along the way (gritters, 2009:19). 4. the role of university lecturers as students’ shepherd leaders as shepherd leaders to their students, university lecturers need to shepherd them in ways such as caring, encouraging, guiding or herding them in matters of textbook expenditures. this basically implies keeping a watchful eye over how they procure their reading resources 104 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 104-114 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.8 at fairly reasonable as opposed to exorbitant prices (monama, 2019). expanding the scope of the shepherd leadership theory implies further unpacking the abovementioned roles into such functions as restoration, feeding, watering, grooming, shearing, midwifery or delivering lambs, leading and protection, which in the case of university lecturers ultimately means taking complete care of the students throughout their stay in academia (rosanne, 2014). further to the above views, the lecturers as the students’ shepherd-leaders have the role of directing them as their flock in the world of education and helping them not to be of the extravagant world but to spend as cautiously as possible (monama, 2019). it is in this sense that shepherd leadership is said to determine the direction of the followers, to teach and steer them towards the paths of righteousness (calvin, 2009). in the case of student followers, they are protected from financial wolves and beasts through what wright (2001:277) calls disciplining and protecting the flock as part and parcel of the necessary work of ensuring justice and protection of the flock. drawing from wright’s (2001) views, it is clear that the tasks of shepherd-leaders call for the disciplining of the sheep to alert them to the pitfalls of the world. in the case of university students this implies their lecturers as shepherd leaders have of directing and teaching them to stay financially cautious and in harmony with their leaders. as properly led sheep, the university students cannot be in harmony with wolves that appear in sheep’s clothing, because they possess a strong sense of discernment (tenney, 2015). wolves can in this case be equated to unscrupulous textbook publishers who sell textbooks at exorbitant prices pretending to be in unity with the sheep (tenney, 2015). these wolves masquerade as angels of light by disguising their authenticity and genuineness in areas of textbook sales, speech and appearance. the words of tenney (2015) in his contention that, the life of the sheep is dependent upon the power and provision of the shepherd. their recognition of him and his recognition of them establishes that relationship. hearing his voice, following his leading, entering the fold through him, and the refusal to follow others was calvin’s picture of belief (2009: 165). the above extract clearly show that generally, there is some symbiotic relationship between the shepherd and the sheep, that is, the leader and his or her followers, which in this study implies the university lecturers and their students and in the final analysis it is pertinent to the caring function, for the capacity to lead is authenticated by the capacity to care (resanne, 2014). the leadership and the care of the flock cooperate synergistically and when the two are closely related, the deceiving wolves are exposed by the outcomes of their behaviour. as shepherd-leaders, university lecturers therefore teach their students (sheep) to be vigilant regarding the activities of the heartless textbook publishers bent on robbing students of their financial resources. 5. the university lecturers’ shepherd leadership role as students’ guides among the major roles of the shepherd-leaders is that of guidance, which in this research implies giving direction or helpful suggestions to their students (sheep) regarding a decision or future course of action to take in easing the textbook procurement burden (rantloane, 2019). it is part of the university lecturers’ official curricular responsibilities to offer guidance or show students the way by setting and holding a course. it is important to note that in the process of guiding the sheep, the shepherd leader is expected to be ready to exercise control over the sheep in order to guide and direct them to prevent them from wandering off into danger (resane, 2014). the important piece of a shepherd’s equipment, besides his rod to protect 105 mutekwe the importance of shepherd leadership practices on easing the textbook burden 2020 38(1): 105-114 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.8 and defend the sheep, is his staff to guide and direct them (resanne, 2014). the staff is the ever-present symbol of the shepherd’s authority and its primary purpose is supervising, guiding and directing. as shepherd leaders university lecturers are also expected to lead their students like sheep in order to courteously exercise the authority and to shape their behaviour accordingly because one member of the student body may, for example, need to be nudged to the left and another to the right. in times of uncertainties, student followers feel secure when their shepherd leaders wield authority wisely, decisively and assertively (resanne, 2014). it has been shown herein that the shepherd-leaders’ functions of caring, protecting, guiding and directing the flock requires courage but despite the shepherd-leaders being required to act courageously, firmly and decisively, they are not expected to portray the harsh treatment towards their sheep and such behaviour is guided by the fundamental maxim drawn from strauch (2006:55), which is as follows: “there is no place whatsoever for egotism in the practice of servant leadership work, especially for those who lead and teach the community …” it is also important to note that in the old testament, god is portrayed as a shepherd who sets the pattern by gathering his flock in his arms (isiah, 40:11); bandaging those that are hurt (ezekiel, 34:16) and leading them to a place of refreshment (psalms, 23). all these images clearly convey tenderness, nurture and devotion. in addition, in the new testament, we hear of the good shepherd (jesus) who knows and cares for his sheep individually and that this care involves sacrificial depths and we are furthermore informed of the good shepherd who lays down his life for his sheep (john, 10:11) and all these facts are driven home by d’souza (2000:45) and strauch (2006:46) in their assertion that kindness is key to leading people effectively. 6. aim and obective of the study the research is aimed at demonstrating how shepherd leadership practices by university lecturers help ease the textbook burden on south african university students. in pursuit of this aim, the following objectives were developed: • to examine the cheaper ways through which university students can circumvent paying exorbitant textbook prices and yet still access important book chapters • to determine the role textbook publishers can play in easing the textbook burden for university students • to establish new and innovative ways through which university students can minimise photocopying books from libraries while publishers lose out • to identify possible interventions university lecturers as the students’ shepherd leaders can adopt towards easing the textbook burden on their students 7. research questions the study is guided by the following research questions: 106 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 106-114 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.8 • what are the cheaper ways through which university students can circumvent paying exorbitant textbook prices and yet still access important book chapters? • what role should textbook publishers play in easing the textbooks burden on university students? • which new and innovative ways can university students adopt to minimise photocopying books from libraries while textbook publishers lose out? • what possible strategies do university lecturers as the students’ shepherd leaders need to follow towards easing the textbook burden on their students? 8. problem statement the issue of controversy this study wishes to explore centres around the view that one of the biggest costs that university students have is books. while most of the books are only used for one semester, their exorbitant prices sometimes lead to students either “paying through their nose” or photocopying them from libraries, which ultimately results in some of the book publishers losing out (monama, 2019:6). despite being aware of some of the legal aspects pertaining to the publishing industry for example, copyright laws, intellectual property rights among others and despite the view that there are government grants made available to many students from non-affluent family backgrounds in the year 2019 for the purposes of buying textbooks, many still cannot afford these books. rantloane’s (2019:6) contention on the above challenge is that in many instances where, for example, students need to write specific examinations or tests and their responsible lecturers herein after the shepherd leaders, give them the scope of specific chapters to be covered, for example five chapters, they might not for example, have the one thousand two hundred rand (r1200) to buy a whole textbook. the aforementioned thus calls for a paradigm shift towards easing the textbook burden for the university students in south africa. 9. significance of the study it is envisaged that part of the practical significance of the study upon its completion is that its findings would help contribute to studies in the field of curriculum leadership especially given the dearth of research in this field (mathews 2012; monama 2019). by helping higher education students gain insight into the new and innovative ways of accessing cheaper book chapter reading material while minimising photocopying textbooks from university libraries, the study hopes to make a significant contribution (rantloane, 2019). further to the above, it is also hoped that the study will raise an awareness of the strategies that university lecturers as the students’ shepherd leaders in liaison with book publishers, can adopt to ease the textbook burden on their students. over and above, the study is also expected to contribute to theory by adding to the existing body of literature on cheaper ways through which university students can circumvent paying the exorbitant textbook prices while still having access to important textbook chapters for their studies (rantloane, 2019). 10. research design and methodology in this section, the research paradigm, design, population and sampling, data collection methods, ethical considerations and measures to ensure trustworthiness are examined. 107 mutekwe the importance of shepherd leadership practices on easing the textbook burden 2020 38(1): 107-114 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.8 the research paradigm the study is located within an interpretivist paradigm, a philosophical world view greatly influenced by phenomenology in advocating the need for researchers to consider the subjective interpretations of human beings and their perceptions of their life-worlds as the starting point in understanding social phenomena (hesse-biber & leavy, 2012). given that interpretivism is an anti-positivist paradigm (mack 2010), it thus views reality as is, not objectively determined but socially constructed (kelliher, 2015). it is for this reason that the paradigm is adopted for this study of university lecturers in their social contexts or natural environment where there is a greater opportunity to understand the perceptions they have of their own activities as students’ shepherd leaders. given this philosophical underpinning, it follows therefore that the ontological assumptions of interpretivism are that social reality is multiple and subjective since dissimilar people interpret phenomena differently. as cohen, manion and morrison (2007:19) assert, my role as the interpretivist paradigmatic researcher would be to understand, explain and demystify social reality through the eyes of the different participants, i.e., university lecturers and students as well as textbook sales personnel. the research approach and design given the view that a research design is the plan or strategy that moves from the underlying philosophical assumptions to specifying the section of participants, the data gathering methods to be used and the data analysis to be done (nieuwenhuis 2016:72), it follows that based on the researcher’s ontological and epistemological orientation, the approach adopted herein is broadly qualitative while the research design is a descriptive phenomenological one. this implies that in this qualitative study the strategy of enquiry (design genre) is a descriptive phenomenology. the motivation for the approach adopted is to explore the meanings individuals or groups ascribe to their social action as shepherd leaders in higher education institutions to negotiate the human life-world, the lived world as experienced by students in their everyday textbook procurement situations and relations (van manen, 2007). as a phenomenological study, it seeks to understand the meanings certain university lecturers’ lived experiences hold for them as participants and to determine what their experiences as curriculum leaders and shepherd leaders to their students mean in terms of their lived experiences of helping students ease the textbook burdens in their higher education institutions (moustakas, 2014). population and sampling the researcher’s epistemological orientation to the interpretivist paradigm led him to adopt a nonrandom sampling strategy to purposefully draw the sample for the empirical study from university lecturers, students and textbook sales personnel. these categories of people constituted the target population from which a sample size of 40 participants was purposefully sampled. the sample size was also determined by the popular view in the interpretivist paradigm that sample sizes for qualitative research ought to be generally smaller especially when compared with those typical of the positivist or post-positivist paradigms (bertram & christiansen, 2014; hessebiber & leavy, 2012). the above views thus clearly show that while the target population for this study were south african university lecturers, students and textbook sales personnel, the sample of study was a total 40 participants all purposefully sampled. 108 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 108-114 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.8 data collection method and ethical considerations the data generation process for this study was conducted using focus group discussion interviews (fgdis), which mclafferty (2004) describes as semi-structured group discussions, moderated by a discussion leader, held in a formal or informal setting for the purpose of obtaining data by means of group interaction on a designated topic. this data collection technique enabled me to moderate and direct the discussions towards the desired areas of the research focus (nieuwenhuis, 2016). to ensure that the fgdis took off smoothly, all the participants, that is, the university lecturers, students and textbook sales personnel were asked to first divide themselves into 4 focus groups of 10 members and each of the groups was interviewed twice for the duration of between 40 minutes and one hour in order to capture the participants’ general perceptions of their roles in the shepherd leadership matrix. the rationale for giving such fgdi time was to ensure that the interview discussion sessions covered virtually all the items stated on the focus group discussion protocol or interview guide. all of the fgdi sessions were audio-recorded for later transcription. the interviews were initiated through what odimegwu (2004) describes as the funnel strategy and it adopted semistructured questions to first ease the participants into the discussion before delving into full throttle deliberations about shepherd leadership. to ensure that all the fgdis were conducted without disrupting the institutional tone of lectures, days were identified when the lecturers, students and textbooks sales personnel had free time in their schedules. each focus group discussion was scheduled on a different date and day. the whole fgdi process was preceded by ethical clearance procedures in which the researcher first sought clearance from the universities and textbook publishing houses where the lecturers, students and textbook sales personnel were sampled. this involved obtaining informed consent from not only the university and textbook publishing house authorities but also the consent to participate from the researched or participants themselves (mutekwe, 2017:156). in pursuit of this objective, would-be participants were requested to complete consent forms after the researcher’s explanation of the objectives of the study and the modus operandi the study was to assume. other ethical principles made clear to the participants included guaranteeing them confidentiality, anonymity, non-maleficence and the autonomy to voluntarily decide whether to participate in the study as well as drawing their attention to the fact that as participants, they were at liberty to withdraw from participating in the study without any strings attached should there be a need to withdraw (mutekwe, 2017). however, none prematurely withdrew from the study. data analysis in this study, the data analysis process followed was a means by which the researcher tried to establish the manner in which the study participants of this empirical research made meanings of the phenomenon of shepherd leadership by examining their perceptions, attitudes, understanding, knowledge, values, feelings and experiences towards easing the textbook burdens for the university students. in an attempt to approximate the participants’ construction of the phenomenon of easing the textbook burdens, an inductive and thematic approach was followed for the purpose of allowing the research findings to emerge from the frequent, dominant or significant themes inherent in the raw data without the restraints imposed by a more structured theoretical orientation (nieuwenhuis, 2016:109). this implies that the codes or sub-themes emerging from the focus group discussion interview sessions were identified before being clustered into code families or superordinate themes as nieuwenhuis (2016) 109 mutekwe the importance of shepherd leadership practices on easing the textbook burden 2020 38(1): 109-114 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.8 calls them. these resultant themes following what miles and huberman (2002) call data reduction and display processes constituted the basis for the discussion of the findings as reported in the subsequent sections. 11. findings and discussion the discussion of findings for this study are examined under the following key themes as they emerged from the focus group interviews held with the participants: how university lecturers as curriculum leaders and shepherd leaders ease or circumvent the paying of exorbitant textbook prices by their students; the role played by shepherd leaders in minimising the cost of textbooks, the role of textbook publishers in easing the textbooks burden on students and possible interventions university lectures as shepherd leaders can adopt to ease the textbook burden on their students. a detailed discussion of findings under each of these themes augmented by research findings from other relevant studies is offered in the following sections. how university lecturers as curriculum leaders and shepherd leaders can ease or circumvent the paying of exorbitant textbook prices by their students it emerged from the fgdis with some university lecturers that there are cheaper ways of easing the burden on students and one such way is what the book publishers’ focus group interview revealed as a new platform that allows students access to the required book chapters instead of having to buy the full textbooks. in pursuit of this idea, two of the focus group discussion interview (fgdi) participants (herein after referred to as sipho and lesego) had the following to say: sipho: there is, for example, a new local company coming up with a platform called e-llumin 8, which is a local start up helping students to lower the cost of education by making prescribed reading material cheaper such that students are able to buy chapter they need instead of buying the whole book. lesego: honestly speaking, being able to buy a chapter is our unique selling proposition. it is actually one of the things that makes us different from any other platform out there. when i realised that even in 2019, students couldn’t afford to buy many books, i wondered what was going on. in most cases a lecturer prescribes say, three or five chapters of a textbook for students to use in preparation for writing an examination or test, but the students don’t have the money to buy the whole book, which might cost between one thousand two hundred and one thousand five hundred rands. with my new platform, students can be able gain better access to the chapters because they can afford to share and buy a few of the chapters at a time. it is clear from the views expressed in the above extracts (verbatim statements) by the fgdi participants that with the new marketing initiatives such as the one offered by e-llumin 8, university students can overcome the burden of paying exorbitant prices for the textbooks they need by simply buying the required chapters at a cheaper price than the whole textbook. this also stands as the unique selling proposition offered by the platform and it also enables book publishers not to suffer the economic effects of photocopying of the textbooks by students. the above views lend credence to findings by mathews (2012) who also noted that platforms such as e-textbooks, cengage, red-shelf and vital-source are among the list that 110 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 110-114 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.8 can help provide alternative means by which higher education students can access cheaper textbook reading material. what was also pleasing to note through the fgdis was that some of the platforms such as e-llumin 8 have entered into an agreement with many book publishing companies such as juta books and have almost 10 textbooks for qualifications that include education, communication, accounting, statistics, auditing and business for offering separate book chapters to university students. sipho further pointed out that he has so far also held fruitful talks with other academic book publishers to join the platform for the academic year 2020 and this development is currently in the pipeline. he further pointed out that the app is available on the apple and android app stores at a price of forty-seven rand ninety-five cents. the role played by shepherd leaders in minimising the cost of textbooks most of the fgdi participants, particularly the lecturers and textbook sales personnel, were unanimous that the use of the e-llumin 8 platform is one of the new and innovative shepherd leadership ways through which university lecturers can help prevent their students from not only photocopying textbooks from libraries but also ensure a reduced cost of the textbooks without making book publishers suffer the economic effects of such practices. the above view clearly implies that for the book publishing companies to realise more profits on textbooks, encouraging students to buy a few book chapters at a time might go a long way in ensuring that they end up having bought the full textbooks chapter after chapter but at affordable prices. one of the fgdi participants, herein after called linda, had this to say to show the new and innovative ways to minimise photocopying textbooks and the challenges associated with the practice: linda: there are now many local book publishing companies coming up with new and innovative ways to ensure publishers don’t lose out while students also don’t break the banks to access information. with platforms such as e-llumin 8 and the encouragement of lecturers to recommend specific book chapters as opposed to the purchase of full textbooks by students the cost and effects of photocopying textbooks will certainly be curtailed. in pursuit of the above view, it is important to also observe and note the vital role played by the new and innovative way implicit in sipho’s contention that their unique selling proposition is their offer to sell specific book chapters to students, an innovation he argues makes them different from any other book selling platform that may be out there. asked to briefly discuss the negative and positive effects of photocopying textbooks from the university libraries, the lecturers’ fgdis and that of the textbook sales personnel were ambivalent that although the process of photocopying textbooks might appear cheaper in view of the photocopying prices often charged by many university libraries, the practice more often than not leads to unethical academic practices such as economically depriving some of the lecturers who may be among the writers of some of the textbooks. further to this, it also emerged from some of the students’ fgdis that some of their student counterparts often get tempted to earn extra income by selling photocopied books to others, which they also viewed as a violation of the economic rights of the writers and textbook publishers who end up losing out in terms of royalties or book selling profits as it were. similar findings were reported by rantloane (2019) in his outline of why he left his organisation to start what he calls something new in the field of e-textbooks for which he was passionate about. in his view, his e-textbook project for higher education students is expected to make a fulfilling impact by avoiding selfish ways of selling student textbooks at exorbitant prices. he also notes that through such electronic initiatives he will soon be able to fulfil his long-term view of branching out into other textbook genres on the red-shelf platform of e-textbooks. 111 mutekwe the importance of shepherd leadership practices on easing the textbook burden 2020 38(1): 111-114 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.8 the role of textbook publishers in easing the textbook burden on students the fgdis on the role of textbook publishers in lessening the burden on students revealed that they have an enormous part to play in the process. firstly, it was unanimously agreed that due to the semesters of current university education, most of the new textbooks university students are expected to buy can barely be used for one semester, certainly their exorbitant prices can be a real problem for the students, necessitating an over reliance on photocopying and therefore textbook publishers certainly need to come up with new measures and programmes to encourage the purchase of book pieces such as specific chapters at a time in order to ease the burden on students. textbook publishers also need to constantly liaise with university lecturers and students to ensure all are abreast with developments in the textbook publishing industry in so far as it relates to lowering the cost of prescribed reading material to make them not only cheaper but also affordable to the students. ensuring that students are able to buy a book chapter as opposed to buying a whole book at a time was cited by many participants in the university lecturers’ fgdis. another issue that also emerged in this fgdi is that other than being able to buy only specific book chapters needed, the book publishers also need to help ensure that after downloading the purchased book chapters, students are also able to access the study material offline. in pursuit of this view, one fgdi participant referred to as moses had this to say: moses: i am imagining students who manage to buy the book chapters and needs to study when they get home but don’t have data. it is in this sense i am arguing that it is important that they get an offline capability. further to the view implicit in the above verbatim statement, one textbook publishing house fgdi participant, who will be referred to as norma in this study, claimed that when she started with the e-llumin 8 platform, she expected a lot of push back from the academics and academic publishing industry, but was pleasantly surprised that they embraced the idea. in her words she says: norma: i was very impressed and surprised at how open-minded they were. i think it is because the way i am approaching this is that i am not necessarily cannibalising their system but i am just opening up a new market for them. with my platform, the students they lost with high textbook prices will now be able to buy the chapters at a cheaper price instead of photocopying the textbooks. in further explaining her views in the fgdis, norma noted that her first semester effort in 2019 (as a book publishing house platform agent) and with the uptake of the e-llumin 8 platform app has been very good, though it went down a bit in the second semester. she also pointed out that upon speaking to other textbook publishers, she learnt that the second semester is the slowest because it is a short one. her parting words: “i am really looking forward to next year, 2020 so we can get more books online”. this is a sure sign and hope for the future of university students that the textbook industry is poised to change and reduce the seemingly exorbitant cost of university education in south africa. these views support monama’s (2019) findings in his contention that e-textbooks are the best way to go due to the fact that they constitute the biggest cost that university students have to meet some of which are only used in one semester, a situation that leads to some students resorting to photocopying them from 112 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 112-114 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.8 libraries. therefore textbook publishers that can help ease the textbook burden on students will alleviate the burden on the education of higher education students. possible interventions by university lecturers as shepherd leaders towards easing the textbook burden on their students while the majority of students in the fgdis spoke about what they termed conscientious photocopying as one of the intervention strategies they have been using for quite some time, they were also excited about the new and innovative practices mentioned by their lecturers as their shepherd leaders as well as the views of textbook publishing houses, especially on the existence of such platforms as e-llumin 8. this is a local start up meant to help students lower the cost of education by making the cost of prescribed reading material cheaper to enable them to buy the book chapter(s) they need instead of buying the full books. it is clear from the discussion in the preceding paragraph that the main intervention strategies for alleviating the students’ payment of exorbitant textbook prices emerging from the fgdis included conscientious photocopying, adopting the e-llumin 8 platform, which is basically a local start-up that helps students lower the cost of education through making prescribed reading material cheaper such that student are able to buy the chapters they need instead of buying the whole textbook. other programmes also include using the e-textbook vendors platform, cengage, red-shelf or vital-source; all of which are alternative platforms that enable students free access to an expansive catalogue of e-textbooks. according to some of the members of the fgdis, photocopying in itself is not a bad practice especially if it is done for academic purposes. however, the problem arises when unscrupulous students use the practice to profit and deprive book publishers of their economic dues. the second intervention, which is the use of e-llumin 8, as expressed by members of book publishing houses who were participants in the fgdis, appears to have stolen the lime light as virtually all the students in the fgdis embraced the idea whole heartedly on the grounds that it allows them easy access to the purchase of specific reading material in the form of buying one textbook chapter at a time. members of the student participants in the fgdis marvelled at the suggestion by members of the textbook publishing fgdis that they are considering ways of making the purchasing of book chapters available offline after being downloaded by the student as a way of easy access when they do not have the data to access them at home without internet facilities. 12. conclusion the conclusion arrived at because of the findings in this study was that using new platforms such as e-llumin 8 has the potential to help ease the burden of paying exorbitant prices for textbooks. this is so because the e-llumin 8 platform that allows students access to specifically prescribed book chapters at a time instead of buying the full book. a further conclusion reached was that of allowing students access to photocopying facilities for prescribed book chapters provided they use the facility strictly for academic purposes. 13. recommendations among the key recommendations from this study were the following; university lecturers as the students’ shepherd leaders need to work in collaboration with the key book publishing companies to embrace the available new and innovative ways of easing the textbook burden on students whilst also ensuring that book publishing houses do not lose out and close shops. 113 mutekwe the importance of shepherd leadership practices on easing the textbook burden 2020 38(1): 113-114 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.8 references bertram, c. & christiansen, i. 2014. understanding research: an introduction to reading research. pretoria: van schaik. calvin, j. 2009. institutes of the christian religion. grand rapids: eerdmans publishers company cobb, r. 1999. an introduction to shepherd behaviour. university of illinois: university of illinois press cohen, l., manion, l. & morrison, k. 2007. research methods in education. london: routledge d’souza, a.a. 2000. leaders for today hope for tomorrow: empowering and empowered leadership. nairobi: pauline publications. dykstra, r.j. 2010. john calvin, the church reformer. protestant reformed theological journal, 43(2):30–34. franklin, k. 2009. leading in mission at a higher level: how to become a reflective practitioner in mission leadership. evangelical missions quarterly, 45(4): 412–418. gritters, b.l. 2009. calvin as 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[accessed on 24 november 2019]. strauch, a. 2006. a christian leader’s guide to leading with love. littleton: lewis and roth publishers tenney, m.c. 2015. john-the gospel of belief: an analytical study of the text. w.m.b., grand rapids: eerdmans publishers van manen, m. 2007. phenomenology of practice. phenomenology and practice, 1(1):11–30. https://doi.org/10.29173/pandpr19803. wright, c.j.h. 2001. the message of ezekiel: a new heart and a new spirit. nottingham intervarsity press. http://www.deceptioninthechurch.com/agoodshepherd.html? https://doi.org/10.29173/pandpr19803 95 research article 2022 40(3): 95-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) sustaining the ecosystem of higher education in china: perspectives from young researchers abstract the sustainable development of higher education in china has been a key priority for the national, social, economic and political development. responding to the severe competition in various university ranking systems, most universities in china have set aims to enhance their sustainability in research and publication. there has been a prominent conflict that young scholars are expected to be productive, with publications in academic journals, competitive in receiving national and municipal research grants, and prestigious in the national and international arenas, or they will be terminated by the ‘six-year-up-or-out’ policy. recent reform in higher education that calls for a sustainable development for young researchers is a strategy to revert the side effects from global university ranking systems by nurturing young researchers in their early academic lives, enhancing their productivity in research and publication internationally, and enhancing their global competitiveness without harming sustainability in academic development. this research explored (i) the difficulties that most young scholars face in sustainable academic research development, (ii) the factors that enhance or inhibit research productivity of young researchers, and (iii) the work lives in their early-career development in china. a qualitative study was conducted with data obtained from semistructured, in-depth interviews of 24 young university researchers from three provinces and a municipality in china. findings show that factors that relate to sustainable research productivity are individual attributes, discipline attributes, institutional attributes and policy attributes. lastly, suggestions for policy making in higher education and for improving sustainable research development of young researchers in china are provided and implications for future research are discussed. keywords: higher education, sustainability, global competition, university ranking, academic life, china 1. introduction in 1987, brundtland, in our common future, defined the concept of sustainability as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (world commission on environment and development, 1987). it seeks to coordinate the relationship between economic development and the protection of social and environmental author: huan chun chen1 prof nicholas sun-keung pang1 affiliation: 1east china normal university, shanghai, china doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i3.7 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(3): 95-117 published: 30 september 2022 received: 04 march 2022 accepted: 14 june 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1163-3607 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0391-7917 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 962022 40(3): 96-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) balance. sustainability also plays a critical role in the fields of education, knowledge and innovation. later on, in 2015, the united nations released transforming our world: the 2030 agenda for sustainable development, which sets out 17 sustainable development goals (sdgs) for achieving sustainable development in economic, social and environmental dimensions. of these 17 sdgs, sdg 4 is related to education and seeks to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (un, 2015). in addition to sdg 4, sdg 4.7 calls for the development of skills and knowledge “through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles” (un, 2015). higher education institutions contribute to the sustainable development and implementation of the sdgs. as institutions for knowledge production and dissemination, higher education institutions play an important role in the dissemination and promotion of sustainable development. over the past decades, the sustainability of higher education institutions has become an issue of global concern for the public and policy makers (stephens & graham, 2010; jorge et al., 2015). a sustainable university campus should be a healthy campus environment that achieves economic prosperity (alshuwaikhat & abubakar, 2008). the vision of sustainable development in higher education is to allow everyone the opportunity to benefit from high-quality education and learn the values, behaviours and lifestyles required for a sustainable future and positive social transformation (milutinović & nikolić, 2014). in the past decade, many higher education institutions have advanced their sustainable development in different cultures and contexts (ceulemans et al., 2011; stephens et al., 2008). moreover, it is interesting to note that researchers have begun to pay attention to the sustainability of higher education, and ways to promote and evaluate sustainability in higher education institutions have emerged (madeira et al., 2011). there is also evidence that sustainable development is an innovation at universities (leal et al., 2019). however, it has not been substantiated or fully permeated all disciplines, scholars and university leaders (milutinović & nikolić, 2014). how to move from sustainable idea to policy and curriculum practice is still under investigated (franco et al., 2019). in china, higher education development has always been a national priority. china has adopted a series of reforms to promote the sustainable development of higher education, including quality of higher education, teacher development, etc. in response to competitive national and international university rankings, most universities in china have set sustainable goals for improving scientific research and publication, expecting young researchers to publish more papers locally and internationally. at many universities and colleges in china, research productivity is evaluated by the number of papers published with social sciences citation index (ssci), science citation index (sci), arts and humanities citation index (ahci) or chinese social sciences citation index (cssci). the research work is usually evaluated by counting the number of published articles (xian, 2015). most of these young researchers have graduated from top universities in china, such as the project 985 and project 211 universities.1 however, these young researchers may be terminated by the ‘six-year-up-or-out’ policy and they encounter tremendous difficulties to meet the expectations of the universities. 1 project 985 is the education plan implemented by the ministry of education of the people’s republic of china in may 1998 to build several world-class universities and a number of world-renowned, high-level research universities. project 211 refers to the construction project of about 100 colleges and universities and a number of key disciplines in the 21st century in november 1995. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 972022 40(3): 97-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 chen & pang sustaining the ecosystem of higher education in china in this study, we attempted to explore young researchers’ views of their personal experiences and perceptions of the effectiveness of the recent reform on the sustainability of research productivity in china. drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with young researchers under the age of 40 from three provinces and a municipality in china, this study contributes to answer two central questions: (1) what are young researchers’ personal experiences and difficulties in achieving research productivity at chinese universities? (2) how can the sustainable development of young researchers and the sustainability of higher education in china be reinforced? 2. literature review factors that influence research productivity have been studied for decades. many studies have examined factors influencing the research productivity of academics. some studies examined the research productivity at individual levels and some at institutional levels. for example, jung (2012) summarises the factors affecting research productivity, namely individual background (e.g. age), previous experience (e.g. doctoral training), institutional characteristics (e.g. colleagueship) and the discipline context. aydin (2017) reviewed more than 30 years of research and found 51 factors, including 27 internal factors (e.g. demographic variables and personal attributes) and 24 external factors (e.g. the features of institutional structure and the opportunities offered by an institution) that are highly correlated to research productivity. blackburn and lawrence (1995) classify the determinants of research productivity into four aspects, namely (i) demographic attributes, (ii) environmental attributes, (iii) institutional attributes, and (iv) personal career-development attributes. 2.1 demographic attributes demographic productivity research has examined a wide range of factors that affect research productivity. hesli and lee (2011) investigated the variables that determine scholarly productivity. these variables include personal demographics (e.g. race, age and gender) and family-related factors (e.g. marital status, having dependent children, number of children). there is a significant relationship between the faculty members’ research productivity and age (r=0.357) (hedjazi & behravan, 2011). as age and experience increase, productivity will increase to a certain extent, and then it seems to stabilise (dundar & lewis, 1998). however, bland et al.’s (2005) findings show that there is no relationship between research productivity and age. the relationship between age and research productivity is not firmly conclusive. the relationship between gender and research productivity has been discussed in many studies. however, these findings sometimes show contradiction and sometimes correlation. through a gendered lens, many researchers have provided evidence that men publish more than women (schucan, 2011; blackburn et al.,1991; hesli & lee, 2011; aksnes et al.,2011). rørstad and aksnes (2015) conducted a large-scale analysis of more than 12 000 norwegian university researchers and concluded that female researchers have 20–32% lower publications than male researchers have. naturally, female scholars often have family demands, one of the reasons for such a difference. researchers (suitor, mecon & feld, 2001) collected data from 673 faculty members at one research university to explore the relationship between household labour and academic productivity. the result demonstrated that female professors spend more time doing housework and caring for children than their male colleagues do. examining the impact of marital status on research productivity, it transpired that married women are more productive than single women, which may be explained by the support http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 982022 40(3): 98-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) that married women received from their husbands and families, and a relatively stable life (gregory, 1999). however, some researchers found that there is no great gender difference in research productivity (kotrlik et al., 2002; teodorescu, 2000). sax et al. (2002) conducted a study on a sample of 8 544 full-time teaching faculty researchers (2 384 women and 6 160 men) from 57 universities in the united states and found that factors affecting faculty research productivity are almost the same for men and women. their study shows that familyrelated variables, such as number of dependent children have little or no effect on research productivity. schucan’s (2011) study found that in some disciplines, for example, social policy and psychology, women would publish articles at a lower level compared to the proportion of discipline they constitute, while kyvik’s (1990) study proves that women with children demonstrate a significantly negative effect on research productivity. 2.2 environmental attributes environmental factors constitute the material, social and attitudinal environments where the faculty members work. environmental factors that could have an impact on academics’ productivity may include the difference between private or public institutions, ranking of the university, and availability of resources (hesli & lee, 2011). ramsden (1994) found that backgrounds of a graduate school, the prestige of the department, collegiality within the unit, and the amount of freedom that encourages a pursuit of individual interest are highly correlated with research productivity. a few studies (fox, 2005; hunter & leahey, 2010; leahey, 2006) were conducted to explore the relationship between departmental climate and research productivity. the result was a positive correlation. sheridan et al. (2017) conducted two waves of faculty-wide climate surveys for 789 faculties in academic disciplines of medicine, science, and engineering at the university of wisconsin-madison between 2000 and 2010 to assess the longitudinal impact of departmental climate on research productivity. they measured research productivity in terms of number of publications and grants awarded, and measured departmental climate in terms of professional interactions, departmental decision-making practices, climate for underrepresented groups, and the degree of work-life balance. this study demonstrates that departmental climate is associated positively and significantly with productivity for all faculty members. in addition to the above-mentioned environmental factors, university leadership is also an important factor that affects research productivity. leadership plays a critical role in the creation of successful organization (larsson & vinberg, 2010). leadership is a relationship between the leader and their followers. it involves the process of promoting all members to achieve common goals. leadership at academic institutions can be understood as emphasizing intellectual stimulation, innovation and creativity that promote faculty members effectively to be successful in productivity (allen et al., 2016). bland et al. (2005) found that leadership characteristics within a department, a faculty and a university is an important determinant for the overall research productivity. goodall, mcdowell and singell (2014) conducted a longitudinal study to examine the impacts of department chairpersons on the overall productivity of the related departments. they analysed the data from departmental chairpersons in 58 us universities over a 15-year period and found that departmental research productivity improved if the incoming departmental chairpersons were high in research productivity and their publications were highly cited. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 992022 40(3): 99-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 chen & pang sustaining the ecosystem of higher education in china 2.3 institutional attributes individuals do not exist in isolation and research productivity is strongly affected by the social and organisational context within which they work (fox, 1983). creswell (1985) examined the institutional factors affecting research productivity, including the institutional culture and research rewards, and confirmed that institutional characteristics do have an impact on research productivity. other institutional factors, such as performance-based management, commercial orientation, shared governance (jung, 2012), academic rank, research objective, facilities (hedjazi & behravan, 2011), recruitment and selection, clear coordinating goals, research emphasis, research experience, area of expertise, a positive group climate, mentoring, communication with professional network, resources (bland et al.,2005), areas of research, availability of funding, equipment, logistic support, departmental working environment, policy on getting tenure positions (wood, 1990), etc., are all associated with research productivity of academics. according to the carnegie classification (middaugh, 2001), there are six types of higher educational institutions, namely research universities, teaching universities, comprehensive universities, liberal arts colleges, two-year colleges and specialised institutions. research evidence shows that faculty members at comprehensive universities may have fewer opportunities than those at research universities to integrate research activities (colbeck 1998). on the contrary, academics at research universities are expected to have higher research productivity (mamiseishvili & rosser, 2010). moreover, top researchers tend to be concentrated at a few elite universities and low performers at lesser-known universities or colleges of the system (kwiek, 2018). subjects and disciplines may also lead to differences in research productivity. it is evident that natural science faculty members have a higher research productivity than those in the social sciences and humanities (baneyx, 2008). with regard to research training, colbeck (1998) found that faculty members in scientific disciplines (e.g. physics) may have more opportunities to integrate research than faculty members in arts disciplines (e.g. english). additionally, postgraduate schools or faculties, which have higher numbers of research students, would have a higher degree of research productivity. a faculty with a greater percentage of phd students means that there may be greater opportunities of teacher-student collaboration in research and jointly publishing their results (wood, 1990). dundar and lewis (1998) conducted a research to examine 3 600 doctoral programs and concluded that faculty group size does enhance research productivity. a large-sized faculty or department would have greater competitiveness in gaining more resources for research, which would lead to higher research performance. 2.4 personal career attributes personal career factors refer to the academic and qualification factors of researchers. factors such as the highest degree, research orientation, publication habit, subscription to journals and sufficient time for research are all associated with research productivity (finkelstein, 1984). later on, when more research studies were conducted to investigate these issues, these factors were found to be highly associated with research productivity as well, such as working attitudes, autonomy and commitment, motivation, socialisation and self-confidence (hedjazi & behravan, 2011), as well as research style (jung, 2012). in hesli and lee’s (2011) study, they found that the variables that would determine scholarly productivity include academic rank, sub-field specialisation, frequency of conference presentation, research http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 1002022 40(3): 100-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) experience, collaboration with others, and some attitudinal factors such as stress and desire for recognition. similarly, wood (1990) investigated the views of academic staff from one australian university on the determinants of research performance and the importance of individual autonomy in research. wood points out that researchers are productive because of their ability, creativity, motivation, ambition and self-discipline. another representative research was done by bland et al. (2005), in which they used t-tests, logistic regressions and multiple regressions to analyse the data collected from a survey from the university of minnesota medical school in 2000. they found that research productivity is an outcome of dynamic interplay of motivation, content knowledge, advanced research skills, autonomy and commitment. creativity is seen as a key factor in research productivity (kim & choi, 2017). iranian researchers carried out a study involving 280 academics in agricultural faculties all over tehran province and found that creativity was the most favourable variable related to research productivity (hedjazi & behravan, 2011). besides, input in research seems to be a determining variable on research productivity. input in research is usually measured by the time spent in research activities. working hours by researchers were found to be increasing with the depth and breadth of the research. according to jung’s study (2012), research productivity was positively associated with variables, such as time spent in research and the percentage of instruction time for doctoral students. 3. theoretical framework the american psychologist, urie bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory is one of the most famous theories regarding the impact of social environments on human development. this theory argues that the environment within which people work and live affects every aspect of their lives. these factors determine the way people think, work, feel and do research. the application of the ecological system as a theoretical approach is crucial, as young researchers do not exist in isolation, but are embedded within a large academic social structure interconnected with other social domains, such as academic environment, social culture, etc. extending bronfenbrenner’s ecological systems theory to the study of factors that influence research productivity of young scholars at chinese universities, we formulated the theoretical framework for this study in terms of the three interactive sub-systems of microsystem, mesosystem and macrosystem (bronfenbrenner, 1974; 1979; 1986). a microsystem is a pattern of activities, roles and interpersonal relations experienced by a developing person within a given setting with particular physical and material characteristics. a mesosystem comprises the interrelations among two or more settings in which the developing person participates actively, such as relations between researchers and colleagues. the macrosystem refers to consistencies, in the form and content of lower-order systems (microand meso-) that exist (bronfenbrenner, 1979). there are intricate connections and interactions among different sub-systems, and it is within this connection and interaction that individuals develop. more specifically, the ecological environments can be perceived as a constellation of nested subsystems of varying sizes (paat, 2013). factors influencing the research productivity of young researchers cannot be comprehended effectively without investigating the interconnections between these multiple layers of social structure (bronfenbrenner, 1979). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 1012022 40(3): 101-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 chen & pang sustaining the ecosystem of higher education in china the recent reforms in higher education in china call for attention to the sustainable development of young researchers (wu & shen, 2016) to improve the research and publishing capabilities of young researchers, their competitiveness, and their sustainable career development. the theoretical framework for this study is making use of a combination of bronfenbrenner’s (1974; 1979; 1986) ecosystem theory and blackburn and lawrence (1995)’s classification of the determinants of research productivity (i.e. demographic attributes, environmental attributes, institutional attributes, and personal career-development attributes) to explore the sustainable research productivity of young researchers in china. 4. research methodology to fully understand the difficulties that young researchers face in sustainable research development within the context of chinese universities, we purposely sampled 24 young researchers from three provinces and a municipality of china. these participants were specifically selected for the following reasons. firstly, the selected participants were from an eastern province (jiangsu), a central province (henan), a western province (gansu) and a municipality (shanghai) in china. these provinces and city have great differences in economic, cultural and technological development. secondly, participants varied in terms of demographic factors, including gender, age, teaching experience, subject, university type and province. it is believed that these diversified backgrounds would benefit our exploration into university young researchers’ perspectives. lastly, 12 young researchers were working at double first-class universities2 in china, while 12 researchers were working at non-double first-class universities. the research facilities at the double first-class universities are significantly superior to the facilities at non-double first-class universities, because these 137 double first-class colleges and universities have more funding, resources, and policy support from central and local government and relevant competent authorities (liu, turner & jing, 2019). this will influence researchers’ research productivity and achievement. that is generally consistent with the findings that research funding and other resources affected research productivity of university research (lee, 2020). while the small number of universities sampled cannot be representative of all universities in china, it is believed that a purposive selection of researchers with maximised difference in university backgrounds could benefit our research into productivity of young researchers. university researchers of different subjects were also selected as participants in this study. these participants were chosen in consideration of the fact that researchers of different subject backgrounds could provide diverse lenses on the research activities taking place in the universities. given this, we attempted to invite three researchers of different subjects from each province and municipality as our participants. finally, a total of 24 young researchers3 from three provinces and a municipality agreed to accept the invitation in this study. table 1 presents the demographic information of the 24 participants. it can be inferred that these researchers had different teaching experiences, subject backgrounds and working environments. it is expected that their perspectives can thus shed light on factors related to sustainable research productivity. 2 double first-class universities refer to first-class universities and disciplines of the world. it is a higher education policy implemented by the people’s republic of china since 2015. the goal is to become a powerful country in higher education by the middle of the 21st century. 3 the professor series of academic rank in china includes professor, associate professor, lecturer and assistant lecturer. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 1022022 40(3): 102-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) table 1: demographic information of the 24 participants pseudonym gender age academic rank years of work subject university type province interview type aaron m 33 lecturer 2 stem double first-class jiangsu face-toface bella f 34 associate professor 3 stem double first-class jiangsu face-toface colin m 31 lecturer 1 humanities nondouble first-class jiangsu face-to face danny m 35 associate professor 5 stem double first-class jiangsu face-to face elvis m 32 lecturer 2 stem double first-class jiangsu face-to face fiona f 31 lecturer 1 humanities nondouble first-class jiangsu face-to face griss f 34 associate professor 3 humanities double first-class shanghai face-toface haylie f 28 lecturer 0.5 humanities nondouble first-class shanghai face-toface irvin m 30 lecturer 1 stem nondouble first-class shanghai face-toface jenny f 30 lecturer 1 stem double first-class shanghai face-toface king m 36 associate professor 6 humanities double first-class shanghai face-toface lewis m 37 associate professor 7 stem nondouble first-class shanghai face-to face martin m 36 associate professor 7 humanities double first-class henan online nash m 31 lecturer 4 humanities nondouble first-class henan online oscar m 35 associate professor 4 stem double first-class henan online perry f 31 lecturer 1 humanities double first-class henan online quentin m 38 associate professor 8 stem nondouble first-class henan online roberto m 33 associate professor 3 stem nondouble first-class henan online sammy m 32 lecturer 2 stem double first-class gansu online http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 1032022 40(3): 103-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 chen & pang sustaining the ecosystem of higher education in china pseudonym gender age academic rank years of work subject university type province interview type tina f 36 lecturer 10 humanities nondouble first-class gansu online upton m 34 associate professor 3 stem nondouble first-class gansu online vivian f 39 associate professor 10 humanities nondouble first-class gansu online wendy f 35 associate professor 4 humanities nondouble first-class gansu online xavier m 32 lecturer 2 stem double first-class gansu online 4.1 instrument and data collection in-depth, semi-structured interviews were adapted in this research to collect data in december 2021. all the interviews in shanghai and jiangsu were conducted face-to-face. interviews of participants from henan province and gansu province were conducted through wechat (an online tool that has audio and video functions) because of the inconvenience to reach these distant places. all the interviews were carried out in mandarin. audio records were transcribed into english for further data analysis. in addition, interview transcripts were sent to the participants for checking and verification. generally, interviews lasted for about an hour with each young university researcher. before the formal interviews, the researchers introduced to the participants the purpose of this research, the use of pseudonyms to protect the privacy of participants, and the rights of participants to withdraw from the research at any time. the researchers also asked the participants to sign consent forms. for the interviewed participants in henan province and gansu province, the electronic version of the consent forms was sent remotely via wechat, and the participants were asked to sign electronically. all interviews were completed in december 2021. 4.2 data analysis analysis of interview data was guided by grounded theory, which was designed to create theories that were empirically derived from the real-world situation (oktay, 2012). a threestage, systematic qualitative analysis was conducted to summarise the responses of young researchers. the first was to read the original interview material carefully and conduct opening coding. during the coding process, the authors extracted concepts from the original material and described these concepts in terms of attributes and dimensions. the second was to carry out axial coding of qualitative data, linking important concepts to one another, and then categorising and refining the coded data. finally, selective coding was used to identify the theme of the qualitative interview materials according to the analytical framework of the research and the needs of the research question, combined with the context (creswell, 2014). in the actual coding process, the authors needed to read through the original qualitative http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 1042022 40(3): 104-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) materials, study the views and opinions of the interviewees, and analyse some ambiguous views in particular. during the analysis, the necessary efforts were made to ensure the trustworthiness and credibility of the findings. the first author conducted interviews with young researchers for more than a month, and these continuous interviews helped him to understand the current status of young researchers better. specifically, the first author narrowed the distance between the participants and him through detailed conversations and close personal relationships. this approach allowed him to be accepted by the interviewees within a short period of time and to encourage the participants to be more willing to share. at the same time, the first author’s status as an outsider helped him to understand the current difficulties of the young researchers better. the second author checked the interview transcript to make sure it was accurate. the two authors of this study checked the codes with the original interview data in turn, and recoded the data to ensure interrater consistency and credibility (miles & huberman, 1994). any coding difference encountered was discussed and eventually confirmed together. 4.3 limitations several limitations should be noted in the current study. first, the sample of this study is rather limited, as the current study has involved only 24 researchers from three provinces and a municipality. therefore, the research findings cannot be extended or generalised to all younger researchers in the population. considering the geographical diversity in china, future research needs to engage more young university researchers to participate in this research. secondly, it is difficult to obtain exact information about research funding and research productivity from the young researchers in this study, since privacy is a major consideration. thirdly, the present study has adopted the theory of ecological systems traditionally used in western contexts. although the findings are consistent with literature, future studies to replicate the findings with a more reliable measurement in the context of china are suggested. finally, one might argue that our research is performed in the chinese culture; it would, therefore, be interesting to test whether our results can be realised in different cultures in the future research, in order to address the cultural differences. 5. findings in microsystem according to bronfenbrenner (1979), a microsystem is the immediate environment surrounding an individual. it is believed that personal individuals will have direct connection with the elements included in this category. these elements of the microsystem for young researchers are research skills, research difficulty, research time, discipline research atmosphere, discipline development, difficulty of scientific research output, and research team collaboration. 5.1 individual attributes 5.1.1 research skill research productivity generally links to the research skill (heng, hamid & khan, 2020). a few respondents mentioned that insufficient research skills impacted markedly upon their research productivity. these research skills may relate to personal qualification, ability to write a manuscript and time management (bella, danny, griss), as well as theoretical foundation, critical reflection ability, reading time, personal academic voice and academic communication (colin, davi, elvis). it is strongly related to the ability to conceptualise problems (aaron, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 1052022 40(3): 105-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 chen & pang sustaining the ecosystem of higher education in china oscar), the ability to define research questions (fiona, irvin), research methods, and research significance (jenny, tina). i think personal qualifications and abilities to do scientific research are important, especially the ability to do quantitative data analysis. other important skills include: the ability to write an academic manuscript, and overall management of time. for example, after my manuscript is rejected, i don’t like to revise it immediately, but some people will be able to revise it promptly, so it is different. (griss) i think the mastery of research methods and a clear research perspective are more important for engaging in scientific research. i feel that my ability in this area is average, and i still need to learn more. (tina) 5.1.2 research difficulty many young researchers agreed that the difficulties in scientific research include how to identify a research area (irvin, king, xavier), and difficulty in publishing manuscripts, especially in cssci4 journals (martin, tina). in china, good journals, especially those with cssci, generally have higher preference than those by scholars from famous double firstclass universities. such preference will increase the citation rate of their journals and ensure that their journals have a higher academic status. a few young researchers reported that some journals restricted the publication of their manuscripts, because the universities they worked for were non-double first-class universities. there are some difficulties in doing scientific research. i have some research ideas that i cannot put into practice. i think the root cause of these difficulties is that there is no money or funding support. (griss) it is difficult to apply for national scientific research projects, and it is difficult to publish scientific manuscripts in cssci journals. the main reason is that the number of projects is limited, while the number of applicants is far too many. (martin) the most difficult is to publish manuscripts in cssci journals. on the one hand, the level of my manuscripts needs to be improved; on the other hand, my university is not in “project 985” and “project 211”. (tina) 5.1.3 research time many studies show that the availability of time on research activities has great impacts on research productivity (finkelstein, 1984; jung, 2012). many young researchers agreed that teaching time was taking up most of their time, and limited their time input on research. after long hours of teaching, they have no more time and energy to do scientific research (aaron, griss, irvin, lewis, tina, upton). there are always various administrative meetings that take up a lot of time. i think heavy teaching is currently the most important factor affecting my research time. i basically teach three or more course every semester, and i have no energy to do research after finishing the teaching. (griss) it is common that most young researchers have a relatively high teaching workload. in this case, young researchers do not have time to work on their projects and therefore produce fewer research results. high workload leads to lower academic productivity of young researchers. in 4 cssci is chinese social sciences citation index, which is an interdisciplinary citation index programme and important tool to evaluate manuscript quality in china. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/citation_index https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/china 1062022 40(3): 106-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) addition, some young researchers have to set time aside for administrative duties, which also means that their time for research is further limited. now we are under very great pressure of scientific research assessment, while the evaluation of teaching duties has taken much time too. now, i am also the secretary of a branch of the party. there are many party affairs activities, that have used up most of my times as well. in addition, i have been engaged in other daily administrative work in the department. so, all these have occupied me for a lot of time and i don’t have more free times for scientific research. even further, i need to spare times for my family! therefore, my productivity of scientific research is indeed greatly affected. (nash) only can good research be done when you have sufficient funding and times. however, i am in great shortage of both. i can only tinker with the past research work and rush to come up with something. these rushed outcomes have been a result at the expense of my sleeping times and health! (irvin) it is good to see that some universities and faculties do now understand that the impact of high workload leads to low research productivity of young researchers. according to some interviewees’ responses, although universities recognise their difficulties of not having enough time to do research, there are not many effective measures that help to revert their adversities. it is still general practice that young researchers at many universities should bear with more teaching and administrative duties than senior researchers. 5.2 discipline attributes 5.2.1 discipline research atmosphere working environment has a powerful effect on research productivity (sheridan et al., 2017). the atmosphere of a department or discipline is important in promoting research productivity. during the interviews, some young researchers expressed that the research atmosphere in their disciplines was not very good, and there were relatively few academic activities (irvin, martin, perry, upton). the research atmosphere is not very strong here, the number of academic salons and seminars related to the discipline is relatively less, and the main duties of the discipline is currently on the assuring the quality of undergraduate teaching duties. (martin) the academic research atmosphere in the department is not strong, and it used to be more like a “teaching unit.” (irvin) 5.2.2 discipline development for any discipline, there should be no difference in the research productivity. a common perception is that the development of a discipline markedly impacted the researchers’ performance (jung, 2012). one young researcher said: at present, here is a strong development momentum. our university is ranked first in henan province and eleventh in china. the number of newly enrolled phd graduate is increasing year by year, the number of senior professorial titles is increasing year by year, and our young teachers have accounted for a large proportion. (martin) in such an environment, young researchers have a stronger motivation to apply for scientific research projects, and also have a greater chance to obtain scientific research funding. the result is that scientific research is very active there and research productivity is higher too. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 file:///c:/users/dupre/desktop/sm/journals/pie/40(3)/manuscripts/javascript:; file:///c:/users/dupre/desktop/sm/journals/pie/40(3)/manuscripts/javascript:; 1072022 40(3): 107-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 chen & pang sustaining the ecosystem of higher education in china however, if the prospect of the discipline is not good or not the state’s priority, it will be difficult to obtain sufficient funding and resources to carry out scientific research. the prospect of my current discipline in the national agenda is not very optimistic, due to the low employment rate of graduates and the support from the university for the discipline development is not strong. (tina) 5.2.3 difficulty in scientific research output research output is an important indicator to assess the performance of researchers. most young researchers believe that scientific research output is difficult, while high-level scientific research results are even more difficult (aaron, griss, irvin, martin, nash, upton). easy to produce simple research result, but more difficult to produce high-quality research. (aaron) a young researcher said that it was very difficult to obtain high-level research results from a local non-key university. high-level results are difficult, because high-level results are basically impossible to produce from local colleges and universities like ours. many journal editors have strong preference for manuscripts from prestigious universities only. (nash) 5.2.4 research team collaboration in the stem area, there are many opportunities of scientific research cooperation, while in the humanities and social sciences, especially in non-key universities, there is relatively little cooperation. production of an influential research output may demand much efforts and needs teamwork. new researchers who are just fresh graduates need more team assistance from senior researchers. however, it is hard to just fumble on your own. (martin) in scientific research, we have interdisciplinary cooperation in physics, chemistry, biology, information technology, but seldom in humanities and social science. (aaron) local colleges and universities like ours have less teamwork and cooperation and not like those in “project 985” and “project 211” universities. because those famous professors in these key universities have more research resources and are really productive. our local colleges and universities have fewer resources. even if some professors have got some research resources, they will not share with us, and there is less teamwork. (nash) 6. findings in the mesosystem the mesosystem is the next level beyond the microsystem and is defined by bronfenbrenner (1979) as the interconnection of two or more microsystem elements. in this subsystem, the main elements that directly affect the research productivity of young researchers are scientific research management system, training and mentoring, supervision and incentive, and scientific research evaluation system. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 1082022 40(3): 108-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) 6.1 institutional attributes 6.1.1 scientific research management system double first-class universities generally have more sophisticated scientific research management, with differently categorised evaluation and rewards (aaron, martin, quentin, wendy). i think the current research management system is not good enough. the university managers only rely on the number of articles published in journals to judge the performance of scientific research. they may not know the quality of each of these journals and there are no universal criteria for fair judgement. it may be due to the fact that those in charge of research management at the university level do not have much substantive knowledge of many research areas. (griss) our university has its own points accumulation system to evaluate research productivity. the point system only regards that those top journals in each professional field recognized by the university, such as sci and ssci journals, with some points, while others are none. in addition, there are corresponding points for obtaining scientific research competitive grants. then, the performance of a researcher is comprehensively evaluated according to the points obtained. (aaron) further, the research management systems of some non-key universities are also not good. one young researcher said, the assessment system of research performance is really poor! the assessment criteria, rules and regulations are a mess. the university’s policies on the assessment of research productivity are always changing and frequently revised. (nash) 6.1.2 training and mentoring some respondents mentioned that insufficient research experience and skills impact markedly upon their research productivity. these young researchers are still novices and need experienced guidance on how to conduct their research. many universities also recognised the importance of improving the research skills of young researchers and they have started offering research training programmes to assist their junior staff. for example, a few departments have organised experienced professors to work with young researchers and help them to apply for research funding. the department has organised training workshops on scientific research every year, such as, application for research grants, writing english manuscripts and publishing in international journals, etc. there are some of these workshops, but not many. (martin) when applying for some national high-level competitive projects, the university will invite some external experts to provide specific guidance. (tina) basically, everyone is work on their own research, individually. sometimes their successful experience in the application for projects offered by the national natural science foundation of china is shared online. (aaron) however, a few young researchers said that the training was not very helpful and did not help them to solve the significant problems. there are some trainings offered by the faculty, which invited external experts for helping us. each seminar lasted for around 1 to 2 hours. however, they were not much helpful and i think it was a waste of time in attending these seminars. (nash) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 1092022 40(3): 109-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 chen & pang sustaining the ecosystem of higher education in china 6.1.3 supervision and incentive many young researchers responded that the universities where they worked did have strong supervision mechanisms, but there were no incentives. at our university, we do have strong supervision mechanisms on research productivity, but they are mainly for summative purposes, not formative. (nash) the university awards only those who have publications in top journals, but not for the local or professional journals. (irvin) 6.1.4 scientific research evaluation system quite a few young researchers agreed that the current scientific research evaluation system is unreasonable and should not rely solely on the number of manuscripts published. more consideration should be given to the quality of publications. scientific research results of young researchers should be judged by related experts in the field. it is impractical to allow administrative staff who do not understand scientific research to manage research assessment. the university’s scientific research evaluation system expects that, on the one hand, we should focus on quantity in productivity, but at the same time should also emphasize quality. however, the research assessment exercise is taken annually, so many young researchers may not be able to meet the requirements and there will follow some penalty measures. this practice will discourage young researchers and no motivation is built. while the university expects young researchers to have high research productivity, they also allocate young researchers with heavy teaching loads and lots of administrative work. after all, young researchers are really exhausted with limited energy and time. so, i think it is not appropriate to evaluate research productivity within a short time frame and so frequently (griss). the evaluation cycle for scientific research is three years, and the time span is a bit short and tight, maybe, five years is a more reasonable measure (bella). universities in china should be evaluated based on the missions of talent cultivation and knowledge creation, rather than mainly on international rankings and other quantitative measures. recently, the ministry of education (moe) in china has implemented a new policy to advise that the university evaluation system should not only emphasize the number of manuscripts published, the number of external competitive research projects granted, the number of high-rank professorial titles, and the academic backgrounds of the universities (whether in the 211-project or 985-project). other criteria, such as the quality of teaching, the graduates’ employment rates, and the sustainability of disciplines and the degrees of knowledge transfer should also be consideration (moe, 2020). a more holistic university evaluation would be implemented in the coming future. scientific research evaluation system is relatively reasonable at present. the reasons are that our university has been overemphasizing just the number of manuscripts published, the number of high-rank professional titles, and the number of competitive research projects. i think, different criteria and standards in scientific research evaluation should be adopted, according to the nature of the disciplines. the assessment of research productivity in natural science, social science and humanities should be distinguished. (martin) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 1102022 40(3): 110-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) 6.1.5 research funding all the young researchers from the double first-class and non-double first-class universities interviewed in this study agreed that the research funding was insufficient. the young researchers from the non-double first-class universities in particular reported that the funding was seriously insufficient (irvin, roberto, vivian). a young researcher even used his salary as a source of research funding (colin). the shortage of research funding impacts their research productivity, and research funding is an important enabler for research productivity (wood, 1990). young researcher tina highlighted the importance of research funding for researchers’ enthusiasm: at present, due to the shortage of research funding in our university, the amount of scientific research grants has been greatly reduced from this year. i think this change has seriously affected the enthusiasm of researchers in scientific research. (tina) research funding of chinese universities mainly comes from the national, provincial and local governments as well as from the universities themselves and some enterprises, such as huawei, etc. researchers majoring in stem can carry out some scientific research with enterprises and can obtain some funding support, while researchers in the field of humanities and social sciences are difficult to cooperate with enterprises and rarely receive funding from them. moreover, it is found from the interviews that it is more difficult for young researchers from local non-double first-class universities to obtain research funding. it is very difficult for them to apply for national key projects at these non-key universities due to fierce competition. at most, they can only apply for some provincial-level projects. moreover, provincial-level project funding gradually becomes less, due to too many applications. these difficulties seriously restrict the development of research projects, let alone high-quality scientific research. research funding is insufficient, and the research funding investment should be increased. especially research funding for local non-key colleges and universities must be increased. most research funding is now concentrated in the key universities. local non-key colleges and universities have a large number of researchers, who need to teach a large number of students. if there are insufficient research projects and funding, they would have no way to carry out scientific research and guide students. it is impossible for “non-project 985” and “non-project 211” universities to undertake the teaching loads of the whole country, so the funding for local non-key colleges and universities must be changed and increased. (nash) 7. findings in macrosystem the macrosystem in bronfenbrenner (1979)’s model is much more abstract than the previous levels, which is defined as the layers of relationships surrounding the young researchers. the interview data revealed that policy was an important part. 7.1 policy attributes the chinese government has introduced reinforcements to motivate young researchers to do research. the chinese ministry of education has required of universities and colleges to rectify the problems of overemphasising just the number of manuscripts in academic appraisals (moe, 2020). the quality of manuscripts should not be judged by the journals in which the articles are published and where they are published. it is advised that over-reliance on publications in international journals should be avoided. what is more, the number of manuscripts in sci, ssci and cssic, citation rate and impact factor should not be connected to resource http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 1112022 40(3): 111-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 chen & pang sustaining the ecosystem of higher education in china allocation, material incentives and performance-based salary. responding to the government policy, one young researcher said this new policy would have some positive impact: the country has recently begun to implement the policy which calls for that the academic evaluation of universities should not overemphasize the number of manuscripts published, the number of top-rank professorial titles, the number of competitive granted projects, or their academic backgrounds. this new policy has some good impacts on us and has gradually begun to focus on the quality of manuscripts rather than the quantity of manuscripts, in the research assessment exercises (colin.) nonetheless, some respondents argued that in fact their universities did not implement the policy practically. oscar shares that, although the policies on scientific research management have begun to change, the number of scientific research publications is still highly valued by our university. most people still look at the number of manuscripts published, where the manuscripts published, or whether with ssci or cssci indices, in the annual research assessment exercise. (oscar) it can be concluded that both the moe and most universities’ policies create different impacts on research productivity of young researchers, because the definitions of quality research and a good piece of publication in journals are not well understood. it is advised that each university put the national policy into practice, and there should be some measures that enforce the effectiveness of policy implementation. the moe has to check whether the policy has changed the assessment culture effectively throughout universities at the macrosystemic level. otherwise, these young researchers may be confused and are driven to pursue just the number of published manuscripts in research assessment exercise. 8. discussion bronfenbrenner’s (1979) theory of ecological systems provides a framework that categorises the interview data, and allows for the interactions among the individual, institutional and national levels be examined and analysed. this qualitative analysis is based on the ecosystem theory that provides a systematic perspective and new approach to understanding the scientific research status of young researchers in china. the young researchers involved in this study formed the individuals at the core of a set of ecosystems that determine their long-term scientific research development. the most obvious manifestations of the microsystem are the personal and disciplinary attributes that would be directly related to the young researchers. the scientific research management system and evaluation system, together with the opportunity of professional development and involvement in mentorship, and the supervision and incentive schemes belong to an outer circle that forms the scope of the mesosystem. the context of education reform and the policy formulated will form a typical macrosystem, which is at the utmost circle. the influence of the policy will penetrate the mesosystem and microsystem, and then be reflected back to the macrosystem. the interaction among the microsystem, mesosystem and macrosystem is the ecology in which young researchers grow and develop. thus, the ecological systems theory provides us with a logical and systematic framework for analyses of the issues and enables us to recognise that the personal development of young http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 1122022 40(3): 112-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) researchers is the result of the combined effects of these systems. the inspiration of this point of view is that young researchers should strive to exert their initiatives, demonstrate their personal values, and have a positive and open attitude to interact with the new environments around them in order to promote self-development, rather than passively emphasising how the external factors hinder their scientific research. from the perspectives of young researchers, the process of research integration is a comprehensive and complex transformation, from microsystem to mesosystem to macrosystem, and systems at each level must be adjusted according to the actual situation. for example, in the fundamental change of policy in the macrosystem and in the change from independent scientific research to teamwork in the microsystem, the processes themselves are full of twists and turns. problems such as the lack of research funding found by young researchers, the difficulty of publishing papers locally or internationally, the heavy workloads and the lack of research time would ultimately determine the fates of the young researchers in sustainable career development. the scientific research evaluation system is an important part of the scientific research management system at universities. first of all, it is necessary to clarify the process orientation of evaluation and the growth orientation of scientific researchers. the determination of evaluation indicators for scientific research achievements should reflect the inherent laws of scientific research development, and attention should be paid to the transformation of scientific research achievements and application assessment, as well as the service function of scientific research results to the society. secondly, the setting of the assessment cycle at universities can be improved to overcome the mentality of quick success and quick profit that are common among scientific researchers. the research assessment period can be appropriately extended or agreed upon by both parties, so that teachers can carry out research activities without worries. besides, young researchers should keep an open attitude in the new ecosystem, learn and communicate actively, and try their best to integrate into the research ecosystem to promote their own sustainable development by promoting the development of scientific research capabilities. to some extent, the sustainable development of young researchers also promotes the sustainability of higher education in china. 9. conclusion higher education can also be regarded as an ecosystem. many scholars have carried out indepth analysis and research on the macro-, mesoand microlevels of higher education from the aspects of political economy and academic ecology. academic researchers not only provide a new field of research, but also guide the practice and research process of higher education with a sustainable and coordinated ecological concept. the sustainable development of higher education not only contains a variety of different subjects and organisations, but also nests with the entire organizational environment and cooperates with other systems to maintain the consistency of university-running goals and objectives. the academic evaluation system centres on scientific research and production plays an important role in the research capability and sustainable development of young researchers. as the main producers of the higher education ecosystem, young researchers’ research productivity is critical to the stability, circulation and sustainability of the higher education ecosystem. in this ecosystem, institutional ecology and organisational ecology jointly empower young researchers’ academic output. conversely, academic participation of young http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 1132022 40(3): 113-117 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.7 chen & pang sustaining the ecosystem of higher education in china researchers is constantly optimising, adjusting and improving the entire higher education ecosystem. this study examined the research productivity among chinese young academics and explored the factors that determined their research productivity. our findings indicate that the research productivity of young researchers is determined by a number of factors, including personal characteristics and institutional characteristics. this study shows that there is still much improvement in the research management system by university leaders. leaders who provide young researchers with the necessary research support create a good research culture, and establish feasible evaluation and effective reward programmes to help them solve difficulties encountered in the processes of scientific research. they have a significant role to play in promoting the overall research productivity and sustaining the development of higher education in china. in the future, the focus of research should take care of the entire university evaluation system from the perspective of education ecology, and deeply analyse the ecological effects, ecological advantages and institutional ecological construction in the institutional field. references aksnes, d.w., rorstad, k., piro, f. & sivertsen, g. 2011. are female researchers less cited? a large-scale study of norwegian scientists. journal of the american society for information science and technology, 62(4): 628-636. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.21486 [accessed 11 january 2022]. allen, g.p., moore, w., moser, l.r., neill, k.k., 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https://doi.org/10.1108/ijshe-01-2015-0004 https://doi.org/10.1080/10611932.2015.1119539 https://doi.org/10.1080/10611932.2015.1119539 ole_link2 ole_link1 ole_link15 _hlk102055225 ole_link20 ole_link14 ole_link7 ole_link31 ole_link18 _hlk95064753 ole_link27 ole_link26 ole_link25 ole_link23 ole_link24 ole_link9 1 editorial 2021 39(3): 1-2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.1 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) editorial it has often been said that south african citizens continue to regard poverty, unemployment and social injustice as the key challenges to be met in order to build a healthy nation. the recent incidences of violence, vandalism and looting has, to a certain extent, been blamed on these three factors. in the opening article, langa, wassermann and maposa regard the views of middle-class black african parents who did their schooling under apartheid and who are parents of high school learners in contemporary postapartheid south africa. these parents are adamant that their children should not study history. this was partially rooted in their own apartheid-era schooling experiences. for the most part the black african parents tried to live their unfulfilled dreams and ambitions through their children by getting them to study science and mathematics as this was directly linked to upward-mobility, middle-classness, prosperity and success. we then shift our lens to another topical issues, vis-àvis the covid-19 pandemic and its impact on education. in the first of the articles that address this concern, motsa discusses the educational implications of covid-19 for the vulnerable children of eswatini by indicating that in a bid to contain the spread and infection rate of covid-19, eswatini closed all its schools on 17 march 2020 and the schools remained closed for an entire year. the closing of schools set-off to heighten prevailing educational disparities towards academic access, experience and achievement for the vulnerable children of the country. but children are not the only ones who have been negatively affected by the pandemic. maphalala, khumalo and khumalo look at student teachers’ experiences of the transition to online learning during the covid-19 lockdown at a south african university. the transition to online teaching and learning by universities and institutions of higher education, is of course clouded with controversy as academics and students engage in the transition. this is well captured in the research of govender, reddy and bhagwan on the academic and psychosocial challenges of health sciences students during the covid-19 pandemic. several broad themes capturing the disruption students experienced within the context of their academic life emerged from the data: their personal author: jan nieuwenhuis1 affiliation: 1 university of the free state doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i3.1 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(3): 1-2 published: 16 september 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.1 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.1 22021 39(3): 2-2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.1 perspectives in education 2021: 39(3) fears and anxieties, struggles with online learning and connectivity issues and challenges studying remotely at home. an even greater controversy surrounds the transition to the use of technology in schools. rwodzi and de jager refer to the claim that, for the most part, teachers in south africa are not pedagogically capacitated to teach their respective subjects using technology. as an emergency strategy during and after the covid-19 outbreak, remote teaching was seen as one of the initiatives taken by resilient english teachers in resourceconstrained township secondary schools in south africa. conclusions drawn support the fact that focusing on digital literacies in the english classroom supports proficiency in the use of the language. participation in online learning programmes and utilisation of digital platforms provide learning opportunities for english learners in resource-constrained secondary schools. looking at the challenge from a different subject context, motsoeneng, nichols and makhasane studied the challenges faced by rural accounting teachers in implementing webbased collaborative learning. the findings reveal that accounting teachers are faced with myriad challenges that serve as a stumbling block in their attempt to implement web-based collaborative learning. one of the strategies often found useful in the teaching of subjects remotely is the use of youtube videos. kibirige and odora argued that understanding the effects of various multimedia technologies on students’ cognitive achievement is essential in this technological era. they focused their research on exploring the effects of youtube on technology education students’ cognitive achievement in a mechanical system module. another challenge that has gained importance during the age of online teaching relates to plagiarism or students copying from the web in their assignments. this has resulted in institutions introducing software packages, such as turnitin, to verify the similarity of assignments to other documents found on the web. but what are students’ feelings about the online submission of assignments using turnitin? this question is addressed in the article by mtshali. the study found that participants viewed this method of submitting assignments as a crucial aspect of developing student consciousness about the importance of speedy and safe delivery of assignments in ways that promote academic honesty. as always, perspectives of education presents various perspectives on teaching and learning in numerous contexts and across a variety of subjects. authors present us with insightful results based on their research into these matters. in this edition we have included articles on the teaching of mathematics, english, life orientation and commerce. we have also included articles on schooling as well as on higher education. we have included contributions from numerous countries, thereby broadening the spectrum of perspectives in education. we hope that you will find this volume of perspectives in education insightful and enriching and that it will contribute to the discourse in education in various meaningful ways. enjoy the reading. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i3.1 1 drawing aids: tanzanian teachers picture the pandemic. implications for re-curriculation of teacher education programmes lesley wood north-west university naydene de lange nelson mandela metropolitan university kitila mkumbo university of dar es salaam in this article, we explain how we engaged teachers in creating their own representations of hiv and aids in tanzania as a starting point for re-curriculation of the undergraduate teacher education programme. we employed a qualitative design, using visual methodologies, to encourage 29 in-service teachers to draw their perceptions about hiv and aids in tanzania, and to explain their drawing in a short narrative. thematic analysis of the drawings revealed that, while teachers are aware of the social injustices that fuel the pandemic, they do not envision themselves as having much influence for social change of learner attitudes and behaviour. the discussion of the findings, compared to and recontexualised by relevant literature, leads us to argue for the need to engage teachers in participatory research to find contextually appropriate ways to conceptualise and practise hiv and aids education. the recommendations we offer have relevance not only for tanzania, but for the entire sub-saharan african region. keywords: hiv and aids education, research for social change, participatory research, critical pedagogy, visual methodologies, teacher education, tanzania introduction childhood in tanzania and other sub-saharan african countries is most often characterised by poverty, which increases vulnerability to a host of risks, including hiv and aids (githinji, 2009). estimates show that 17% of the child population in tanzania aged between 0 and 14 years are vulnerable to hiv infection, poverty and associated threats to well-being, with 5% characterised as most vulnerable (kaare, 2005; lindeboom, leach, mamdani & kilama, 2006). research suggests that youth prefer to seek information on sexuality and hiv from teachers and turn to them for care and support (zisser & francis, 2006). yet teachers in tanzania are hampered in this respect by a lack of formal training in addressing hiv and aids issues, as well as by social and cultural constraints which tend to foster stigma and impede open discussion of the pandemic (mkumbo, 2010; wood, 2009). the need for effective teacher professional development in hiv and aids education is, therefore, a pressing matter at both preand in-service level. in this article, we report on the first stage of a larger action research project undertaken to begin the process of re-curriculation at one university in tanzania. in keeping with the participatory and collaborative nature of action research (piggot-irvine, 2012), it was necessary to begin by generating data to answer our initial research question: how do teachers perceive and interpret the pandemic in tanzania and what do they think their role might be in mitigating its impact on the lives of learners? an important assumption of our research paradigm is that teachers can play an important role in influencing social change through their capacity to guide the development of learner cognitive, affective and behavioural responses to the pandemic. 2 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 contextual background of the study the behaviouristic, life skills-based, abstain/be faithful/condomise (abc) approaches that have been the basis for most of the curriculum interventions in sub-saharan africa (heaids, 2010a) have not been very successful in bringing about behavioural change (baxen & breidlid, 2009; james, reddy, ruiter, mccauley & van den borne, 2006; nzioka & ramos, 2008) and teachers, as a rule, have not been consulted in the design of these programmes (clarke, 2008) or received training and support to enable them to comfortably and effectively teach hiv and aids content (tiendrebeogo, meijer & engelberg, 2003). we believe that one of the reasons for this is that they tend to target individual behaviour, rather than focus on the social, cultural, economic and political factors that create a fertile terrain for the incubation and transmission of the virus as advocated by more recent approaches (see, for example, baxen, wood & austin, 2011; chege, 2006; de lange, 2008; heaids, 2010b). one of the criticisms of teacher education in tanzania (mkumbo, 2009) is that it tends to emphasise theoretical orientation with limited opportunity to actually translate knowledge into practice. teachers are thus required to learn how to teach “on the job”. furthermore, the teacher training approach in tanzania tends to still be teacher-centred (mkumbo, 2009). as such, the current approach of teacher training in tanzania is arguably unsuited for sexuality and hiv and aids education, which calls for studentcentredness and participatory teaching methodologies (heaids, 2010). the provision of hiv and aids education in schools in tanzania is guided by the guidelines for implementing hiv/aids and life-skills education programmes in schools (ministry of education and culture, 2004). according to these, the content of hiv and aids education should reflect two major elements; provide basic information and facts about the transmission and prevention of hiv and sti, and promote responsible sexual behaviours, including delaying the age of sexual debut and practising protected sex. the guidelines stipulate that hiv/aids and sti preventive education should be integrated into the core curriculum through science and social studies for primary schools, biology and civics for ordinary secondary school, and general studies and biology for advanced secondary school. a recent content analysis study (mkumbo, 2009) indicated that only a small proportion of possible sexuality and hiv and aids education-related topics are covered in the tanzanian national school curriculum. besides being too few, the sexuality education-related topics in the national school curriculum appear to be disorganised and scattered across the four subjects to the extent that they can hardly be said to constitute a meaningful sexuality and hiv and aids education programme. studies have also shown that, although teachers in tanzania support the provision of sexuality and hiv and aids education in schools, the majority of them express discomfort and feel incompetent to deliver such content (mkumbo, 2010). we, therefore, conclude that the current approach to hiv and aids education in tanzania needs to be revised. theoretical framing there is no one “magic bullet” (peabody & cairns, 2008: 1) that will decrease hiv prevalence. however, the importance of social justice and human rights issues in addressing hiv and aids was highlighted at the 2008 aids conference in mexico city. although social change is a dynamic and unpredictable process, involving many different actors and usually not able to be transferred from one context to another (ogden, 2008), teachers could have a significant contribution to make towards hiv prevention if they are able to contextualise hiv and aids education within the social challenges of their specific communities (boler, 2003). many teachers choose their profession, because they want to make a difference (stiegelbauer, 1992). yet, in practice, teachers tend to believe they occupy relatively powerless positions, hampered by a lack of resources and decision-making power (price & valli, 2005: 58). they are inclined to forget that, to the learner, they are not only a source of (usually) unquestioned and unchallenged knowledge, but are also role models whose attitudes, values and behaviour have tremendous influence to shape the same in learners (martino, 2008). teachers’ knowledge, attitudes and practices are critical in shaping both the formal and 3wood et al. — drawing aids: tanzanian teachers picture the pandemic informal curricula in schools (hoadley & jansen, 2009). research has demonstrated that teachers have the ability to shape and influence learners’ ways of thinking and responding to the pandemic (james-traore, finger, ruland & savariaud, 2004). although the capability of the teacher as an agent of social change has been criticised (lane, lacefield-parachini & isken, 2003; maylor, 2009), it is important to acknowledge the inherent power that teachers wield over the cognitive and value formations of learners (bennell, 2004; villegas & lucas, 2002). we are not advocating that all teachers become radical social and political activists, but that they should at least become aware of how they can contribute to influencing how learners come to know, and hopefully embody, socially just ways of being. given the role of social injustices in driving the pandemic in sub-saharan africa (muthukrishna, 2009), we argue that a critical, emancipatory pedagogical approach (freire, 2003) to hiv and aids education is, therefore, needed. such an approach would enable teachers to shift from a view of hiv and aids education that is static, compartmentalised and predictable (freire, 2003) towards one that acknowledges the dynamic, holistic and unpredictable nature of how the pandemic plays out in society. however, it is vital that education concerning social justice issues and the possibility of addressing them is embedded in a local context. rights that are recognised as universal, such as equality for women, are often difficult to implement in societies where local conditions and cultural biases hamper their acceptance (de cock, mbori-ngacha & marum, 2002). what is regarded as social justice in the eyes of the western world leaders and global donors may, in fact, be experienced as a threat in local populations (stewart 2006; benator, 2001). our point of departure was, therefore, to engage with participants to help them explore how they, as teachers, perceive hiv and aids within their communities, with the aim of raising their awareness about personal bias, attitudes and behaviour which might negatively impact on their ability to implement hiv and aids education and fulfil their role as potential agents of change. methodology we employed availability sampling (grinnell & unrau, 2005) to work with a group of 29 teachers (16 women and 13 men) who were enrolled in a master’s in education programme at the university of dar es salaam. each teacher was requested to fill in a consent form, indicating his/her voluntary, informed consent to allow his/her data to be used for research purposes and assuring him/her of anonymity and confidentiality. we stressed that, should they become upset by any of the activities in the workshop, they could either speak to one of the researchers, who is a registered counsellor, or contact student counselling services. visual methodologies were chosen as a data collection tool to help the teachers reflect on their constructions of hiv and aids, since the creation of the visual representation of a topic and reflection on it is in itself an intervention that can bring about a shift in mindset and the beginning of a subsequent change in practice (guillemin, 2004). visual methodologies also encourage teacher engagement and deep thinking about social issues; promote dialogue and sharing; increase enjoyment and, therefore, participation and commitment to change, and provide a tool for taking action (pithouse, de lange, mitchell, moletsane, olivier, stuart, van laren & wood, 2010). drawing is one powerful strategy that can be used with all age groups to elicit opinions and beliefs and to generate discussion about the topic in question (stuart, 2006). we asked the participating teachers to draw a picture in response to the following prompt, “draw how you see hiv and aids in tanzania”, and to explain their drawing by means of a caption and a short narrative. the participants then presented their drawings to the larger group which allowed us to facilitate critical discussion on their interpretations. the drawings, narratives and the transcript of the critical discussion were thematically analysed by the three researchers independently, before they met for a consensus discussion (bogdan & biklen, 2006; merriam, 2009). trustworthiness of the research process was enhanced by this independent coding and re-coding, by triangulation of researcher, by recontextualising the findings within literature (poggenpoel, 1998), and by explaining the process in detail (leedy & ormrod, 2001). 4 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 discussion of findings the data analysis of the drawings, accompanying written explanations and the discussion revealed that the participating teachers did recognise that the severity of the pandemic in tanzania was closely linked to inherent social injustices, but that they did not consider themselves able to influence the situation. three main themes emerged, which will be critically discussed in the following sections, with relation to relevant literature. theme 1: hiv and aids marginalises certain groups and renders them more vulnerable many of the drawings depicted women and children as being most affected by the pandemic. this is, of course, true for sub-saharan contexts (united republic of tanzania, 2007) – 6.6% of women are infected, in comparison to 4.6% of men; 3.9% of young women aged between 15 and 24 are infected in comparison to 1.7% of males in the same age group. however, the manner in which women and children were represented was cause for some concern about the potential stigmatising discourses evident in the drawings. women were depicted as “victims”, unable to look after themselves. for example, the death of the economically active men in the community (drawing 3) resulted in women being widowed and, therefore, unable to support themselves or to contribute meaningfully to society. this notion of being “victims” was also depicted in drawing 10, where the caption read, “women are unable to protect themselves as they are dominated by men”. men, however, could protect themselves, because they had knowledge on how the disease was transmitted. the explanation given for drawing 10 and comments in the discussion implied that the majority of the participants believed that education about how to prevent transmission is sufficient to stop the spread of hiv, and that women have the choice to decide whether to educate themselves or not. according to research, both of these beliefs are false (kauffman, 2004; o’sullivan, harrison, morrell, monroe-wise & kubeka, 2006). unless there is intervention to raise critical awareness and understanding of the complexity of human behaviour, this situation will remain undisrupted. figure 1: selection of drawings to illustrate theme 1 3. 6 in tanzania hiv/aids is the most dangerous disease which leads to many deaths of people and leaves many orphans and widows. therefore the diagram represents orphans and widows caused by death of hiv/aids in tanzania, women and children are the most affected people with hiv pregnant women/girls are affected mainly 5wood et al. — drawing aids: tanzanian teachers picture the pandemic 10 hiv/aids is a disaster in tanzania. tanzania without aids is possible. women are unable to protect themselves as they are dominated by men. theme 2: hiv and aids is closely linked to poverty according to the drawings and the subsequent discussion, the teachers are aware that hiv and aids leads to loss of human resources which, in turn, ravages the economy, thereby increasing poverty and rendering people more vulnerable to hiv infection (kimaryo, okpaku, githuku-shongwe & feeney, 2004; unaids, 2006). the gap between the rich and the poor (e.g. drawing 1) is a reality (tacaids, 2008) in tanzania, but the perceptions illustrated in the drawings could lead to reinforcing the notion that it is the poor who must bear the burden of hiv rather than believing that they have the potential to improve their circumstances. the “poor” are depicted as uneducated and confused (cf. question marks above their heads, drawing 1) victims of the pandemic. their inability to help themselves is implicit in the way in which they have been depicted by the teachers, and a sense of othering is evident, since teachers portray themselves as part of the “educated” and “rich” communities. in drawing 2, the teacher has positioned herself (subconsciously perhaps) with the rich oecd countries by using the preposition “we” in this regard and “they” to refer to the poor sub-saharan countries. there is also evidence of an oversimplification of the pandemic, equating it only with poverty (e.g. drawing 2) and lack of education, negating the important social embeddedness of the pandemic (baxen & breidlid, 2009). teachers’ perceptions, as depicted in the drawings, could promote a stigmatising discourse, stemming from misperceptions and a feeling that hiv and aids is not associated with teachers, but only with the “poor and uneducated” (drawing 1); that women are to blame for their own victimisation, because they do not take charge of their situation (drawing 10), and that aids originated with the youth (drawing 12), who have now infected adults. such discourse is not uncommon among teachers in subsaharan africa (wood & webb, 2008). 6 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 figure 2: selection of drawings to illustrate theme 2 1 2 hiv/aids is a threat in the society as a snake in the diagram above. we are living with it but the poorest are much threatened than the rich (non-educated and educated). however, collective effort from both the poor and the rich is required to defeat it. rich and powerful communities with small % of hiv infection “oecd” (we’re safe) poor communities affected with hiv (ssa) (they are not safe) 13 16 loss of manpower in tanzania form 1980s to 2009. indicates loss in economic status as deaths increase. my name is …. what came in my mind is that hiv/ aids is the most dangerous disease which causes death to the people. this is due to the fact that it has no cure nor medicine to treat the disease. 7wood et al. — drawing aids: tanzanian teachers picture the pandemic theme 3: teachers are silent on their role as agents of change several drawings indicated that the teachers primarily blamed the government for not taking action to improve the circumstances of the poor, including ensuring that education is available for all. figure 3: drawings illustrating theme 3 17 27 “wait for a moment, you are too many, we cannot afford to support you” “infected and affected people, we need our rights”. though the government and other non-governmental organisations receive money from other donors or well-wishers to support people living with hiv/ aids, there are no serious efforts made to help or provide treatment and other related needs and information to the people as they require. children staying with their grandmother after their parents died from hiv aids. solution: education: more education is needed, people need to be conscientised to avoid new spread. govt: assist the vulnerable groups. 14 19 hiv aids kills women, men and children. the transmission rate is growing very fast, because of lack of education and ignorance. the government should ensure education on hiv aids is provided in each society so as to educate people on the impact of hiv aids in the society. the symbol above shows that hiv and aids is dangerous to the life of tanzanians, especially people from 18-30 years. so the government should take care of it so that we can reduce the spread of hiv and aids in tanzania. 8 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 while we agree that governments are socially responsible for providing adequate services, participants’ drawings suggest that they regard government as being solely responsible for educating and raising awareness about hiv and aids (cf. drawings 17, 14 and 19) and that such knowledge would suffice to curb the spread of hiv. none of the drawings or narratives explicitly stated that teachers themselves should educate the learners about hiv. although drawing 27 acknowledged the importance of education, the participant did not mention that teachers were responsible for this education. instead, the participants turned to “researchers” (drawing 11) and government to discover ways to reduce hiv infection, rather than stating that teachers are able to play a meaningful role in this. the drawings reveal a narrow and naïve understanding of hiv education, equating it with condom use (drawing 4); the promotion of “moral behaviour” by preaching the abc message (drawings 15 and 16), and biomedical knowledge (drawings 24, 27 and 28b). figure 4: drawings depicting a narrow view of hiv and aids education 4 11 20 15 only 20% of the people do not know how to control hiv as the years increased, the impact of hiv increased in the community. (on other side) – the government should educate the people; we need more researchers to investigate good ways of reducing the impact of hiv on our community. in my picture it shows that girls are more affected by boys by hiv, therefore there is a need to educate about it. grandmother remains with children. my drawing is about hiv/aids transmission through unpreventine (sic) sexual relationships between male and female. thereafter advice that it is possible to live in an hiv free zone by being faithful to your partner. 9wood et al. — drawing aids: tanzanian teachers picture the pandemic 24 28b 22 hiv is being transmitted by many ways, including sexual intercourse. when you are doing sex with a victim of hiv you will get infected and when you sex with another person, you will transmit it and so the trend continues. in tanzania orphans suffer a lot, there are many who do not attend school, do not have homes and they are not sure whether they can have anything to eat. some of the orphans engage in things they do not like because of the situation they are in. there are many cries in towns and villages as aids does not choose a specific place. it is about a person who is very ill, he is in bed, cannot sit or talk. his family is crying. they think he is going to die soon. also, because of the sick person the family members do not work, they stay with him, thus increasing poverty. solution: it is important to give hope to the person and try to work hard instead of waiting for his death. implications of the findings based on our findings from this study, we are led to conclude that the participating teachers do have a limited and biased understanding of hiv and aids in tanzania. they equate it with biomedical interventions, assuming that knowledge about the virus will help to curb the spread of hiv. although there is awareness of the link between hiv and aids and social injustices, this is not regarded as something that they are able to influence, rather relying on government to take action. we tend to agree with fullan (1993:5): “… teachers will never improve learning in the classroom … unless they also help improve conditions that surround the classroom”. we, therefore, propose that teacher education curricula provide opportunities for teachers to engage in reflection and debate about their own epistemological and ontological understandings to deconstruct and reconstruct their own philosophies and theories on behavioural change towards a more socially just society. they need to learn how to develop teaching strategies that will enable them to engage learners in a similar process, leading to authentic learning rather than parrot-fashion repetition of facts about human rights and social justice. social justice in education can be promoted by including service learning and community involvement requirements in a curriculum that centralises the vision for social justice (duncan-andrade, 2007), as well as by modelling and embodying values that promote social justice. we add our voices to the call made by other researchers (baxen, wood & austin, 2011; heaids, 2010) for a transformation in teacher education curricula to allow for the engagement of teachers with the political, social, cultural and economic contexts that give rise to social inequalities, so that they are in a position to “create effective pedagogical spaces” (macedo, 2006: xii) for the integration and debate of such factors in their everyday interaction with learners. given that there is no one solution to stemming the spread of the 10 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 virus, continual critique and disruption of existing social, cultural, economic and political ideologies and structures (fine, 1994) needs to be woven into the fabric of the curriculum. conclusion as borrero (2009) admits, teacher education programmes can never offer all that is required to address social injustice. however, they can help the teacher develop a passion and vision for social justice and the skills of knowing how to engage with learners on these issues in pedagogically appropriate ways, offering opportunity for real engagement with regard to learning. in this article, we have shown how the use of a participatory visual methodology created a space for teachers and researchers to explore participant constructions of hiv. the data analysis reported on in this instance has alerted us to the need to engage with the participating teachers to raise their awareness about their potential role as agents of change. we are fully aware that our interpretation of the drawings cannot be taken as ‘truth’, and further exploration of how the participants envisage their contributions to hiv and aids education is necessary. having the actual drawings in front of them will help facilitate such discussion and permit us to make our interpretation clear as a point of departure for further exploration. this article has argued that teacher education should be founded in a critical paradigm, where the aim is to enable teachers to critically analyse the status quo and find ways to move towards a more just way of being (perumal, 2009). if this is not the foundation of learning in university and schools, then education could become a tool for maintaining the status quo and perpetuating social injustices in society (villegas & lucas, 2002). in this age of aids, no one can afford to let this happen. references baxen j & breidlid a (eds) 2009. hiv/aids in sub-saharan africa. understanding the implications of culture and context. cape town: uct press. baxen j, wood l & austin p 2011. reconsidering and repositioning hiv and aids within teacher education. africa insight, in press. bennell p 2004. aids in africa: three scenarios for the education sector. retrieved from www.eldis.org/ fulltext/unaidsscenariosfinal.pdf on 22 march 2011 bogdan r & biklen rc 2006. qualitative research for education: an introduction to theory and methods. boston, ma: pearson education, inc. boler t 2003. the sound of silence: difficulties in communicating hiv/aids in schools. london: actionaid. borrero n 2009. preparing new teachers for urban teaching: creating a community dedicated to social justice. multicultural perspectives, 11 (4): 221-226. campbell c & macphail c 2002. peer education, gender and the development of critical consciousness: participatory hiv prevention by south african youth. social science & medicine, 55 (2): 331-345. chege f 2006. teachers’ gendered identities, pedagogy and hiv/aids education in african settings within the esar. journal of education, 38: 25-44. clarke dj 2008. heroes and villains: teachers in the education response to hiv. paris: unesco. cochran f & mays j 2004. cultural barriers to behaviour change among adolescents. health psychology, 5: 462-473. cohen d 2002. hiv and education in sub-saharan africa: responding to the impact. perspectives in education, 20 (2): 13-23. de cock km, mbori-ngacha d & marum e 2002. shadow on the continent: public health and hiv/aids in africa in the 21st century. lancet; 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maringe thabisile nkambule in south africa, rural education and development are issues of social justice, especially in places that were previously established as homelands. this article presents some of the tensions that are inherent in the conceptions of rurality, rural education and the possibility of sustainable rural education and development. we propose the notion of education for rural development as a useful concept for its potential for transforming and sustaining rural education. we describe the implications of education for rural development on teacher education change by focusing on the teaching experience (te) programme. keywords: rurality, rural education, rural teaching experience introduction in an editorial to a special issue of perspectives in education, balfour, de lange and khau (2012: i) state that in rural education, as opposed to education in rural areas, there is an opportunity to affirm community, to attend with special focus to the challenges that ‘place’ poses to rural education, and thus also to the quality and sustainability of rural life. thabisile nkambule curriculum studies division, wits school of education, witwatersrand university e-mail: thabisile.nkambule@ wits.ac.za tel: 011 717 3049 alfred masinire curriculum studies division, wits school of education, witwatersrand university e-mail: alfred.masinire@ wits.ac.za tel: 011 717 3056 felix maringe educational leadership and policy division, wits school of education, witwatersrand university e-mail: felix.maringe@wits. ac.za tel: 011 717 3091 education for rural development: embedding rural dimensions in initial teacher preparation alfred masinire, felix maringe, thabisile nkambule & alfred masinire 147 in this article, we adopt a framework of rurality that acknowledges the distinctiveness, agency and strength of rural communities, but that has not yet emerged in research and development programmes that use the dominant deficit paradigms of rurality (moletsane, 2012). we also acknowledge that earlier deficit notions of rurality have not served rural education. the first section of this article presents a conceptual analysis of rural education and development and their implications on teacher education. the second section describes a proposal for integrating rural education into a teaching experience (te) component of a teacher education programme. the context of rural teacher education in south africa post-1994 south africa witnessed a massive restructuring of the majority of teaching and technical colleges into fewer, larger and multidisciplinary tertiary institutions (gordon, 2009). concerns about the quality, cost and coordination of rural teachers’ colleges were cited to justify the restructuring process. new challenges for rural teachers and learners also emerged (gardiner, 2008: 22).1 in addition, there is a strong orientation towards classroom skills in the teacher education curriculum (gardiner, 2008). where the rural is acknowledgement, there is “a deficit paradigm ... that locates responsibility for student failure outside the classroom” (molestane, 2012: 3). such deficit discourses may be evident in the way in which teacher education programmes prepare individuals to seek ways of ‘turning around’ rural schools and rural communities (wits schools turn-around project, 2013). such programmes are informed by corporate technicist management styles (harvey, 2011). as noted in the ministerial commission on rural education (mcre) (doe, 2005: 76), “models of school improvement from the developed world appear to have become the orthodoxies to the extent that their terminology is frequently invoked as prescriptions without reference to the source of the theory”. given the above rural teacher education context, the question is raised as to how best current teacher education programmes may serve rural schools and communities. we argue that the challenges of rural teaching and learning require solutions that take into account the opportunities and strengths of the south african rural context. budge (2006: 3) observed that “there is something very powerful about the sense of place in rural communities that help them transcend the challenges”, citing connectedness, development of identity and culture, interdependence with the land, spirituality, activism and civic engagement as examples. given the silence on teacher education on issues of rurality and the current challenges of rural education, we propose a teacher education programme that responds specifically to these rural problems. defining rurality and rural education definitions of rurality are generally incomplete. for example, arnold, biscoe, farmer, robertson & shapley (2007) emphasise the notion of settlement or demographic features. in south africa, as indeed in many less developed countries, the notion of rural is closely associated with “histories and structures that have created conditions perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 148 and circumstances of ‘oppression’, ‘deprivation’, ‘disadvantage’ and ‘deficit’” (doe, 2005: 8).2 often, rural is formulated in comparison to the urban with strong assumptions of difference and deficit underpinning this binary. such binaries present the rural place and rural education as objects of exploration awaiting philanthropic and exotic interventions. according to halfacree (2006), rurality viewed in this way becomes a de-specialised cultural concept that is disembodied and not linked to a concrete geographical location. this view often ignores the opportunities and strengths that rural areas bring to development in terms of culture and cultural practices, indigenous knowledge systems and a deep sense of collective rather than individualised developmental approaches which tend to nurture greater community cohesion and identity (odora-hoppers, 2004). instead, rurality should be understood in terms of concrete geographical location, mapped in terms of topographical attributes, social composition of people, forms of activities, nature of social relations, and relations with other spaces (halfacree, 2006). we desisted from homogenising rurality into a ‘one-size-fits-all’ definition of rural places, but rather accept the diversity of rural schools and the myriad of challenges and potentialities of each rural school context. thus, we perceive this as not necessarily compromising broad generalisations of rural conditions, but as an opportunity to gain deeper insights into the highly contextualised nature of rural education issues and rural development. we define rural as space which sustains human existence and development outside the jurisdiction of metropolitan/city/ town authority.3 the paradox of rural education and education for rural development the post-94 democratic government in south africa has paid less attention to the notion of ‘rural education’ (as opposed to ‘education in rural areas’). in addition and, arguably, as a result of lack of resources and poverty, the specific needs of rural schools have been consistently given low priority in terms of both policy and the level of governance that prevail in rural areas. the steady widening rather than the narrowing of the gap of educational opportunities between the majority of rural and urban schools in south africa is obvious. this led the department of education to set up a mcre in 2004 which formulated a new vision for rural schooling to address the widening gap between urban and rural schools (doe, 2005). the purpose of mcre was to ensure the provision of equitable education for rural and urban learners. this was a sound social justice imperative, but differences between these two contexts make it practically difficult and potentially inequitable to provide the similar education. while quality teachers are the touchstone for sustainable education and rural development, rural areas experience both quantitative and qualitative teacher shortages (doe, 2005). the rural-urban divide creates enormous disincentives to being posted in rural areas (gardiner, 2008). it is sobering to consider that the education for rural development: embedding rural dimensions in initial teacher preparation alfred masinire, felix maringe, thabisile nkambule & alfred masinire 149 majority of south african school-going age children are condemned to substandard educational provision (modisaotsile 2012; doe, 2010). competing views about rural education have influenced government policy on the rural education problem. from related literature, we identified three dominant conceptual ideas that compete for prominence in discourses related to rural education. the first is the concept of rural education, which is intricately related to the past injustices occasioned by the apartheid regime. africans were subjected to an inferior education, whether in what was then termed townships or in underdeveloped homelands. thus, rural education resurrects the past injustices of the homeland policy which was particularly invidious in relation to resource allocation and governance structures, and this conception of rurality has been denied space in the discourses of educational provision in south africa (seroto, 2004). a second view is the notion of education in rural areas which the post-apartheid government of south africa has adopted. it focuses mainly on the need to redress past injustices by means of programmes of rural regeneration and development. the view recognises the challenges of learning in these areas and acknowledges that poor performance, poor resources, poor staffing and low standards are not only a product of the past injustices, but also a result of the dominant characteristic of rural communities, that is, embedded in realities of poverty necessitating increased funding as a strategy to address the problem (doe, 2005: 5). despite the benefits especially in terms of equity redress, this notion fails to recognise the potential assets and strengths in rural communities beyond merely re-allocating funding to rural education (moletsane, 2012). in particular, rural spaces have abundant untapped cultural and indigenous knowledge systems that have yet to find space in educational discourses and teacher education programmes. although it has a wide international literature base, the third notion of education for rural development has not yet found much space in the south african discourses on education. rural areas, in general, manifest depressingly inadequate levels of development on various indices. for the notion of education for rural development to be meaningful, specific education policy directives need to be in place. education and training are considered to be two of the most powerful strategies for rural development (unesco, 2002). however, as seroto (2004: 29) underlines, “these are also among the most neglected aspects of rural development by governments and the donor community”. creating education strategies with rural development in mind has the potential to democratise rather than restrict curriculum revision for all.4 as things stand, education is viewed, ostensibly, as providing an escape from rural poverty. according to corbett (2007), there is a deep and established connection between formal education and the loss of well-educated and/or skilled members of rural areas. this ambivalent effect of formal education to rural development and sustainability is rarely articulated in rural education policy statements and rural education discourses; yet its ugly reality confronts rural schools, rural graduates as well as rural development and sustainability. therefore, the current notion of rural perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 150 education does not align with rural development, as the potentially productive human resources leave to work in urban areas. there is very little of value in the rural areas to retain those who are educated there. in particular, young adult males with secondary education migrate to urban areas with a view to escaping the ravages of rural poverty (sace, 2011). the challenge remains as to how to retain this productive group in the rural areas, in order to serve the rural communities. rather than simplistic and nostalgic proposals that amount to developing local educational programmes that would effectively limit options for these graduates, we are persuaded by corbett’s (2007) ideas of regenerating rural education of ways that would sustain rural communities and development. corbett (2007) suggests three levels of intervention that could entail education for rural development and sustainability, namely structural development of rural communities, curriculum revision for rural schools, and pedagogic transformation at teacher education institutions. according to corbett (2007), education for rural development might consider the infusion of “place-based” educational initiatives into the school curriculum. such curriculum revision cannot occur without a concomitant review of teacher preparation programmes. teacher education programmes need to provide training in the core courses about education for rural development, with accompanying pedagogical principles and training that incorporate traditional community knowledge and skills to supplement the standard learning resources. this article will elaborate on some of the transformative rural pedagogical practices and suggest how these could be taken up in a rural te that we propose later. in the following sections, we outline some of the challenges of teaching and learning that have compromised quality education delivery in the rural areas. challenges of teaching and learning in rural schools the sustainability of rural education is critical for rural development (reid, green, cooper, hastings, lock & white, 2010). in south africa, the learning and teaching challenges in rural schools are closely tied to the sustainability of rural education and rural communities. from the interview discussions we had with a purposefully selected sample of two district officials, six school principals, and six teachers in the bushbuckridge area of mpumalanga in june 2012, we are able to make some points from this evidence. moreover, while acknowledging that there are limitations of such data, in terms of generalisations, what these participants stated closely mirrors the issues we found in existing literature (hsrc-epc, 2005). a recurring theme in their narratives was the notion of a poor culture of teaching and learning in rural schools. the participant explained this in terms of a lack of teacher content knowledge; an inadequate supply of qualified mathematics, science and english teachers; a lack of qualified grade r teachers, including foundation phase teachers; poor management of curriculum teaching time; high level of teacher burn-out; high level of learner drop-out from school, and learners’ negative education for rural development: embedding rural dimensions in initial teacher preparation alfred masinire, felix maringe, thabisile nkambule & alfred masinire 151 attitude towards learning. although it could be argued that some of these challenges also exist in urban schools, balfour, mitchell and moletsane (2008) posit that the intensity of rural challenges is more pronounced in rural than in urban areas. barter (2008: 468) argues that “alternative epistemological and pedagogical approaches in teaching and learning are required that are aligned to rural education challenges and development”. given the complex and culturally diverse contexts of rurality, there is a need for teachers to develop teaching approaches that acknowledge the dynamics and complexity of the rural context. a lack of subject content knowledge has been a challenge for some teachers in rural areas, particularly in high schools (hsrc-epc, 2005). teachers in bushbuckridge district also mentioned a lack of expertise in career guidance, an area that could provide an important opportunity for developing new thinking about prospects for well-educated rural learners. the neglect of providing timely and regular supply of teaching resources was also highlighted. in addition to the above challenges, there is the challenge to teaching and learning from learners’ erratic school attendance, which may be caused by the long distance they travel to and from school. in the bushbuckridge district, for example, poor school attendance is influenced by home chores, since parents expect the children to participate in work such as cultivating the land and taking care of the siblings. from a deficit point of view, the above challenges become the ‘reasons’ for poor academic achievement of rural learners (moletsane, 2012). because these challenges are endemic to the rural context, learners lose the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation to learn. consequently, rural schools face overwhelming teaching and learning challenges that consistently compromise efforts in delivering quality of education that could drive rural development. there have been several interventions by the doe to address some of the rural education challenges (doe, 2005). however, teacher education institutions have not taken proactive measures that specifically attend to the challenges of rural schools. for example, islam (2012) cites the lack of relevance, complete omission, and misrecognition of rural-urban disparity at kwazulu-natal to show that there is a disconnection between university courses on educational theory and the practices of student teachers. similarly, in an analysis of pre-service education programmes in australia, boylan (2004: 7) describes the situation with regard to rural education as being “piece-meal”, with no evidence of rural education or rural practicum in the modules. in this respect, we believe that our proposal for strengthening rural te is important. perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 152 proposal for integrating rural education in teacher education theoretical justifications and comparisons recent research advocates a re-conceptualisation of rurality and rural education as a lived and generative concept (balfour et al., 2008) that moves beyond the deficit paradigm of rurality (moletsane, 2012). such research shows that there are gaps in current teacher education modules in terms of addressing the challenges and unique needs of rural teachers and learners. we suggest that a rural te programme be integrated in a teacher education programme at the university where we teach. we are cognisant of the fact that there are a number of rural teacher education initiatives that are operational within south africa, aimed at improving rural teacher education discourse and practice. for example, rural teacher education project at the university of kwazulu-natal (islam, 2012) and the kwena project at the witwatersrand university (place, 2004). one of the key recommendations of the mcre (doe, 2005: 44) was that, “consideration should be given to pre-service teacher education courses to cover teaching in rural areas”. in order to address this call, the doe, in collaboration with the royal netherlands embassy, has embarked on a programme of research that focuses on initial and professional development of educators in rural areas (gardiner, 2008). of primary concern is the need to attract high-quality teachers to the rural areas and the reconstitution of teacher education programmes in ways that will make this possible. there are many aspects of rural education and development that could be incorporated into pre-service teacher education programmes. for example, understanding of the relationship between schools and communities, understanding place (gruenewald and smith, 2008; budge, 2006; white, 2010; islam, 2012), and developing skills to teach multi-age and multigrade classes (page, 2006). a rural te component of a teacher education programme is designed to make teachers classroom ready, school ready and community ready for a rural teaching career (white, 2010). the first challenge in rural teaching is to make certain that student teachers appreciate the rural space in all its diversity and complexity. we believe that this can happen only when they have an opportunity to experience teaching in a rural context for themselves. the rural te programme is designed and has activities that are structured to challenge and dispel students’ stereotypical representations and mythical conceptions of rurality (islam, 2012). student teachers need to grasp the concept of rurality defined earlier. cloke (2006: 19) observes that” we need to understand how different theoretical frames of rurality illuminate very different pictures of rurality and indeed steer rural research and practice (our emphasis) down very different pathways”. moletsane (2012: 1) suggests having strengthbased paradigms that acknowledge the challenges these communities face, but also recognise that individuals and groups have strength, skills as well as knowledge and resources that can be used to develop and implement interventions for change. education for rural development: embedding rural dimensions in initial teacher preparation alfred masinire, felix maringe, thabisile nkambule & alfred masinire 153 only a rural place can provide an opportunity for pre-service teachers to acquire the place-embedded values (boylan, 2004). we acknowledge some concerns levelled against education programmes designed specifically for the rural schools and learners. one of the concerns relates to the apartheid policy of separate education for whites and blacks. as a result, it is believed that any attempt to present a distinct programme of education with a rural focus invokes past memories. consequently, any such programme is, therefore, viewed as trying to ‘ghetto-ise the rural’ (doe, n.d.). however, we still maintain that such concerns are more politically driven rather than pedagogic and that the pedagogic should override the political, particularly in educational matters. structure of the rural te programme we position rural te not as a competing programme to the current te, but as a complementary programme that addresses the challenges of rural teaching and development. it should have both a residential and a fieldwork experience component that should extend beyond the classroom (islam, 2012). student teachers will attend a one-week residential and theoretical induction programme at the wits rural facility in the bushbuckridge district in mpumalanga, followed by two weeks of te in the surrounding rural schools. each semester will have two rural te sessions that run parallel to the regular te that the majority of students do in the urban setting. aims and content of the rural te programme focus and aims of the rural te programme given the foregoing rationale for rural education for development, the rural te focuses on four main aims. first, the programme will afford students the opportunity to explore assets and challenges experienced when working in rural schools. for example, the following rural assets could be considered, namely how people act as a community; pastoral work, and rural people derive strength rather than vulnerability from challenges (moletsane, 2012; islam, 2012). secondly, the student teachers will acquire the skills and knowledge that prepares them to teach in a challenging rural context. thirdly, the programme also aims to help students interrogate and hopefully dispel misrepresentations and stereotypical images about rural schools and communities (ebersohn & ferreira, 2012; islam, 2012). lastly, the programme hopes to develop students’ values of community, collaboration tolerance, and an appreciation of diversity. to attain the above aims, the rural te programme is divided into two key components, namely a residential one-week workshop and two weeks of teaching at a rural school. one-week residential workshop at the wits rural facility the focus, in this instance, should be to familiarise students with the various theoretical conceptions of rurality and rural schooling. in this respect, it is crucial to have an informed understanding of rural space in terms of connectedness, perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 154 development of identity and culture, interdependence on rural place, spirituality, politics, activism, and civic engagement (gruenewald and smith, 2008; bugde, 2006). the students’ experience of teaching in rural schools should be informed by their understanding of place and they should incorporate their new awareness of rural place in their teaching. part of the residential one-week programme would involve a local guest presenter (for example, a principal, community leader or parent) who would speak to the students about community/school life, challenges, possibilities, potentials, assets and values and how they might be harnessed for effective teaching and learning purposes. using the knowledge and experience of rurality and rural life and schooling, student teachers should develop a lesson plan on a subject and topic of their choice which they will implement during their teaching in the next two weeks. two weeks’ rural school experience: learning and teaching in rural schools the focus of the te, in this instance, is learning about rurality in and beyond the classroom. a real opportunity to work in the specific rural context will be provided. it will involve interactions and discussions with teachers for the purpose of sharing pedagogical strategies in order to enhance the culture of teaching and learning within the rural context. we assume that student teachers learn best about a context and acquire skills to teach effectively within that context by being immersed and embedded in the context itself. thus, student teachers will experience and explore life in the rural community in all its diversity. for example, they will be exposed to local community centres, community functions, family, and meet with learners, parents and teachers. students will work with questions such as: in what ways do learners/parents and community knowledge enable or inhibit acquisition of formal knowledge? how may the key people in the community whom they have heard/met contribute in terms of knowledge, resources and skills for teaching and learning in rural contexts? how would they collaborate with these groups to enrich learners’ learning experiences? on the last day of the fieldwork, students will share the experiences, highlighting opportunities and challenges for teaching and learning, and how the rural te could be improved. this could be presented in the form of an e-mail or text message to a friend who has not considered taking a rural te, persuading him/ her to join the rural te in the coming semester. implications of the rural te it is hoped that the rural te will have conceptual, professional and research implications for the student teachers and the teacher education programme. the conceptual shifts in terms of students’ understanding of rural teaching will be noted and they will be required to compare what they thought about rurality and rural teaching before and after the rural te. the rural te could develop into an evidencebased-practice project that would generate more knowledge on rural teaching and teacher education. education for rural development: embedding rural dimensions in initial teacher preparation alfred masinire, felix maringe, thabisile nkambule & alfred masinire 155 conclusion in south africa, rural education and rural development are important social justice issues, especially in places previously established as homelands. yet, with the post1994 democratic dispensation and government’s resolve to redress the colonial policies of separate development, the rural-urban drift continues to pose huge challenges for quality education and sustainable development in rural communities. in this article, we attempted to explain how certain notions of what rural means dominate education practice in ways that undermine rural development within the south african context. we also critically examined the concepts of rural education and education for rural development, highlighting the conceptual misunderstandings embedded in these notions and their implications for education practice in rural schools. we proposed the notion of education for rural development as a useful concept, with the potential of transforming and sustaining rural education and development. we described the implications of a change of education for rural development for teacher education, with a focus on the te programme, and we invite comment and critique on our proposal for incorporating education for rural development as an integral component of teacher preparation in south africa. endnotes 1. universities have lacked experience in training teachers for lower grades and this had a negative effect on the education of children in both rural and poor urban areas. in addition, university courses did not teach future educators how to translate the concepts and ideas of their training into the everyday realities of the learners and their parents. universities focused on training students to seek ways in which they can make changes at school and in classrooms, instead of teaching them how to work as a team at schools. 2. the problem with viewing rurality this way is that often the people who live there become both stereotyped and stigmatised as less clever, less developed, less intelligent, powerless and unenlightened than urban residents. 3. such spaces tend to cover large geographical areas and are relatively underdeveloped in terms of basic infrastructure such as transport networks, electrification, water supply, health and educational resources, but they are culturally rich and embedded with vast resources of untapped or underutilised indigenous knowledge systems. perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 156 4. they have low literacy rates; low educational progression rates; low educational participation rates; low standards of health; low educational efficiency rates; high poverty indices, and poor road networks, among other development challenges. for example, learners at all levels and in all schools could learn about development and underdevelopment; indigenous knowledge systems; traditional folklore, beliefs and values, and about life and living in rural areas, among other more privileged forms of curriculum biased towards urban areas. references arnold, m.l., biscoe, b., farmer, t.w., robertson, d.l. & shapley, k.l. 2007. how the government defines rural implications for education policies and practices. issues and answers report, no. 0101. washington, dc: retrieved on 23 june 2012 from ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/southwest/pdf/rel_2007010_sum. pdf balfour, r.j., de lange, n. & khau, m. 2012. rural education and rural realities: the politics and possibilities of rural research in southern africa. perspectives in education, 30(1): i-ix. balfour, r.j., mitchell, c. & moletsane, r. 2008. troubling contexts: toward a generative 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sustaining rural education communities. proceedings of the 26th national conference of the society for the provision of education in rural australia, queensland, 15-17 september 2010. retrieved on 15 june 2012 from http://hdl.handle.net/10536/ dro/du:30030419. 54 exploring the changing role of learning support teachers in the western cape, south africa lorna m dreyer stellenbosch university the south african education system is continuously changing and adapting to address the challenges to provide access, equal and quality education in a new democratic dispensation. one such challenge is the way in which learning support is provided to learners who struggle in mainstream classrooms. the department of education opted for a systemic approach to learning support services. the western cape education department (wced), in particular, adopted a learning support model which reflects the changed role of learning support teachers. research confirms that the role of learning support teachers is more comprehensive and complex within an inclusive education system. learning support teachers in south africa (like their counterparts across the world) have their roots in the individualised medical paradigm. therefore, as key role players in establishing inclusive education in schools, learning support teachers are currently faced with the challenge to make a paradigmatic shift from the traditional narrow focus towards addressing learning support systemically. this article explores the experiences of learning support teachers in a district of the wced as they engage and adapt in their new role as part of a collaborative team addressing barriers to learning systemically within a whole school approach keywords: south african education system, access, equity, quality, democratic, western cape education department (wced), learning support model, inclusive education system, collaborative, systemic approach introduction in response to inclusive education, an international metamorphosis is taking place in the provision of learning support in schools. this transformation towards an inclusive education system implies a change in perceptions about diversity. inclusive education now has a direct bearing on the way in which learning support teachers view their current role in schools. thus, the basis of learning support provision is shifting from a problem-focused approach to one which determines the levels of support needed for a child to participate fully in the diverse classrooms of the 21st century (bornman & rose, 2010). with the emphasis on equity, quality and access, south africa has included the notion of “education for all” in the country’s overall social, political and economic transformation (dyson & forlin, 1999). inclusive education is, therefore, much wider than the mere placement or acceptance of students with learning impairments or other barriers, such as age, gender, ethnicity, language, class or hiv status, in an educational institution (dreyer, 2011). it impacts significantly on the “transformation of philosophy, values, and practices of entire educational systems” (artiles, harris-murri & rostenberg, 2006). in this transformation, learning support teachers are regarded as key role players in establishing inclusive education in schools (lorenz, 2002). research confirms that the role of such teachers is more comprehensive within an inclusive system (harker, 2010). this transformation in the south african educational landscape has widespread implications for the way in which learning support has traditionally been provided. as in many countries across the world, learning support teachers in south africa have their roots in the individualised medical paradigm. the challenge, therefore, lies in adapting their traditional role to the changing nature of learning support (lomofsky & lazarus, 2001). this challenge explicitly calls for a paradigmatic shift from the traditional narrow focus on the “specialness of children and the education they need” to one which increases 55dreyer — exploring the changing role of learning support teachers participation in the removal of barriers, allowing children to reach their full potential (bornman & rose, 2010:6). however, despite the inclination to follow international trends, little research has been undertaken on the changing role of learning support teachers in the south african context. the western cape education department (wced) has adopted a systemic approach to providing learning support in primary schools. this model is based on a continuum of support provision in which learning support teachers have to fulfil their newly defined duties (theron, 1999; western cape education department, 2002). the model is based on the notion that, while the first level of support should be provided within the general education class, small groups of learners can be withdrawn for additional support (dreyer, 2008). it thus allows those learners who otherwise would not be able to afford highly specialised or individualised support services to gain access to such services. in addition, harker (2010) recently identified three other roles that learning support teachers currently play in primary schools in the wced. these involve the support teacher as an agent for change, as a collaborative team leader, and as an information-consultation agent. it includes the empowerment and support of general classroom education teachers, as envisioned by the department of education (2001). the role of learning support teachers has thus become more comprehensive and complex than was the case a decade ago. acknowledging the importance of equity, quality, and access to learning support in south africa, this article draws on the data from an evaluation study of a learning support model (dreyer, 2008) which explored learning support teachers’ experiences of their changed role. in this article, i particularly map the experiences of learning support teachers in primary schools in the wced, with reference to their changing role and the provision of learning support in primary schools, set against the backdrop of international trends. the findings indicate that, while the role of learning support teachers in this study showed similarities to the international trends, there remains a considerable disjuncture between national and provincial attempts at educational transformation and the contribution of the learning support teacher as currently played out in some primary schools in the wced. it is argued that, to be effective agents of transformation in schools, learning support teachers must be enabled to work at a whole-school level. provision of learning support reconceptualised although the role of the learning support teacher has expanded considerably in recent years, szwed (2007) points out that little contemporary research has been undertaken solely in the area of special needs coordination, especially in primary schools. several authors have called for a reconceptualisation of this role and its responsibilities (rose, 2001; layton, 2005). this reconceptualisation is directly related to inclusive practices designed to enable all learners to participate (moran & abbot, 2002). it is thus committed to an inclusive definition of learning support, one which embraces all the activities and practices used in response to the diverse needs of all learners, staff and the entire school as a system (dreyer, 2008). several countries have adopted various approaches to addressing the provision of learning support in schools (mitchell, 2005; artiles & dyson, 2005). due to its political heritage and discrepancies in the provision of learner support, south africa is faced with contexts similar to those in both developed and developing countries (dreyer, 2008). the all-encompassing term ‘barriers to learning’ is used to refer to a diverse range of factors that may lead to the failure of the system to accommodate diversity and, in turn, may lead to learning breakdown or prevent learners from accessing educational provision (department of education, 1997). many affluent countries have appointed specialist teachers and teaching assistants. however, the traditional role of such specialists has undergone a number of transformations in recent years, becoming more proactive and aligned to building the capacity of general education teachers and enabling them to address and overcome barriers to learning and participation in mainstream classrooms (forlin, 2001a; szwed, 2007). according to education white paper 6 (department of education, 2001), it has become imperative to orientate and train learning support staff in their new role in the provision of support. the wced responded to this challenge by appointing learning support advisors to facilitate the placement of learners 56 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 from adaptation and special classes in general education classes. in addition, these advisors had to support the learning support teachers in their changed role regarding the systemic provision of support within the whole school (dreyer, 2008). the initial team of learning support teachers came from the previous system of special, remedial and adaptation classes (western cape education department, 2000). in the education white paper 6, the department of education (2001) envisioned that education support personnel would be oriented and trained to provide support within the whole system, thus addressing the full range of learning support needs. the new role of the learning support teacher it is clear that the role of learning support teachers has expanded within the inclusive education framework. however, according to vislie (2003), although different designs to support learners in the general education classroom have been put into practice since the 1970s, these efforts have actually expanded special education thinking and practices into general education. the result is that approaches to the provision of support vary widely and are further influenced by variations in context (mitchell, 2005). nonetheless, the changing role of support teachers internationally promises to be valuable in relation to the south african desire to provide equitable access to quality education and support, redressing the disparities of the past and systemically offering access to support on a wider scale, thus reaching and supporting more learners in the system. rhetoric one way to encourage the move away from a narrow medical approach to support is to eliminate terminology such as ‘remedial, special or adaptation class teachers’. the rhetoric used when referring to specialists in the field of learning support varies from country to country. the wced (2002) in south africa has, as in australia, opted for the term “learning support teacher” (carrington & robinson, 2004; fielding-barnsley, 2005). changing roles and functions various attempts have been made to explore the changing roles and functions of the learning support teacher (layton, 2005; gerschel, 2005). research comparing the roles of such teachers in england, spain, the netherlands and australia offers valuable insight into their changing role and functions (hegarty, 2001). practices in canada (porter, 1997), the usa (vallecorsa, de bettencourt & zigmond, 2000) and research done by fielding-barnsley (2005) in australia provide further insights into this phenomenon. an important feature common to all countries is that their current position evolved from a long tradition of separate special education systems and specialist teachers (crowther, dyson & millward, 2001). in this tradition, learning support teachers were expected to give specialised and, in many cases, individualised support, either in the mainstream class or in a ‘special class’. however, the current ‘curriculum view’ (symeonidou, 2002) which, in essence, is more systemic in nature, is based on the assumption that any learner may experience difficulties in school. the curriculum should, therefore, be adapted in such a way as to respond to all the learners in a class. this new approach places the role of the learning support teacher in a totally new framework. it gradually metamorphosed into its current form in response to these challenges (crowther et al., 2001). the traditional practices of providing support in small groups, or by engaging learners in individual ‘remedial programmes’, now have to be replaced, as support teachers are increasingly expected to play a more proactive role in addressing the needs of a diverse learner population in schools (forlin, 2001a). they are expected to provide professional guidance and support for general education teachers to enable them to implement modified programmes in the regular classroom (symeonidou, 2002; florian, 2005). they also have to coordinate provision for learners who experience barriers to learning in schools (layton, 2005). in principle, learning support accentuates collaboration (bouwer, 2011). learning support teachers are, therefore, increasingly becoming consultative and collaborative (forlin, 2004; carrington & robinson, 57dreyer — exploring the changing role of learning support teachers 2004; fielding-barnsley, 2005), while special educational needs coordinators (sencos) (as in the uk) are appointed as catalysts, facilitators and managers to support general education teachers in carrying out their responsibilities while accommodating the great diversity of learner needs (mittler, 2000). although learning support is generally planned and delivered through collaboration (mittler, 2000), there are variations in the organisational structures providing learning support (vaughn, bos & schum, 2011). some countries favour a flexible model, with a continuum of services available to support learners (emanuelsson, haug &persson, 2005). this continuum ranges from support given in the general education classroom in consultation with specialists, to individuals or small groups withdrawn from the classroom, to a full-time special education classroom in a mainstream school, and ultimately to a residential school, as in the usa (vaughn, bos & schum, 2011). while there is considerable variation in their roles internationally, it is clear that being a learning support teacher cannot be regarded as merely another way of being a remedial teacher, offering a remedial curriculum via remedial approaches (symeonidou, 2005; forlin, 2001b). in comparing the roles of support teachers from these countries, emanuelsson (2001) draws the conclusion that the similarities between the roles of support teachers are more striking than their differences at an international level. the roles appear to be closely related to the reconstruction of educational systems, as they increasingly focus on including all learners. it is, therefore, reasonable that learning support be rendered within the whole-school system, through a collaborative process responding to the needs of all learners, thereby reducing exclusion from the curriculum (cowne, 2005). however, as the role of learning support teachers evolves, so does the need for training to improve their knowledge, skills and confidence (gerschel, 2005; cowne, 2005). it is also imperative that the role of learning support teachers be fully understood and supported by school principals, senior staff and school governing bodies (mittler, 2000). learning support in the wced recently, south africa introduced the screening, identification, assessment and support strategy (department of education, 2008) as a tool to assess and provide learning support collaboratively and systemically. this feeds into the new role of learning support teachers which includes collaboration as part of the newly established institution level support team (ilst). in addition, it encourages them to share their expertise with general classroom teachers, in order to give them support on a wider basis (department of education, 2001). in its attempt to spread the provision of support, the wced opted for a continuum that reflects similarities with models used in countries such as the usa, britain and new zealand. the implementation of this support model in 1999 preceded the publication of the education white paper 6 of 2001 (theron, 1999). learning support teachers play a vital role at the first two levels of support in mainstream schools. at the first level of the continuum, they are expected to provide collaborative systemic support in conjunction with the ilst. in addition, they support the general education teacher in addressing the diverse needs in their classrooms. support on level two allows the learning support teacher periodically to withdraw learners who experience barriers to learning from the general education classroom for individual or smallgroup support (theron, 1999). this new role of the learning support teacher clearly reflects the move towards a systemic and collaborative approach, as well as an alignment with international trends regarding the changing role of such teachers. method the research methodology that guided this study was the multi-method design, using both quantitative and qualitative research methods. this pragmatic approach enabled the researcher to better understand the research problem and made it possible to be practical, contextually responsive and consequential (creswell, 2003). 58 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 research population and sample the sample was purposefully selected from the geographical area of the west coast district in the wced. the region consists of a mix of urban, rural and semi-rural areas. only 43 of the 60 learning support teachers serving 87 primary schools (at the time of the study) could be reached for this research. this resulted in questionnaires being administered at 63 schools in the district. the reason for including all the schools which had a learning support teacher was that the samplepopulation relationship is important with regard to representation (punch, 2003). these information-rich cases provide valid knowledge and meaningful insights. questionnaire the questionnaire consisted of two sections. section one sought personal information relating to background variables such as gender, age, qualifications and teaching experience. section two focused on aspects related to implementation and functioning of the learning support model in the school. for the purposes of this article, i focus on data elicited from the questionnaire pertaining to the views and opinions of learning support teachers about a new learning support model. prior to being distributed, the questionnaire was piloted with five teachers (not part of the study), a senior official of the wced, and a statistician, to ensure that the questions were well framed and well structured (merriam, 2009). the participants in the pilot study reported some typographical errors, which were corrected. the statistician proposed some formatting and codification of the questions. the focus of this article is on questions directly related to teachers’ views and experiences regarding their changing role in the provision of learning support in schools. the questionnaire included closed and open-ended questions to elicit both quantitative and qualitative data. the data were used to frame the interview schedule for the next phase. dissemination of questionnaires the questionnaires were disseminated with written permission from the wced as well as the head of the specialised learner and educator services (sles) of the district. the researcher explained the questionnaire and assured the teachers of their anonymity and confidentiality regarding information given during their circuit meetings with the learning support advisors. these meetings were held in all nine circuits of the district. some teachers were absent from the meetings, with the result that only 43 of a possible 60 questionnaires were distributed. due to time constraints and the vast distances involved, this was the only opportunity to reach these teachers. they were asked to complete the questionnaire and return it to the learning support advisor for the specific circuit within a week, in the envelope that was provided. the completed and sealed questionnaires were collected by the learning support advisors and brought to the researcher on their next visit to the district office. of the total of 43 questionnaires, 41 were completed and returned. focus group interview six of the eight learning support teachers who were selected attended the semi-structured focus group interview. these teachers were systematically selected from circuits 3 and 4. the reason for this decision was that the teachers were widely dispersed over the geographic area of the district. circuits 3 and 4 were in close proximity, however, allowing teachers within a radius of 13 kilometres to travel to the interview venue at a school in circuit 4. data collected through the questionnaires were used as a guide to the interview. open-ended questions were designed to elicit more qualitative information (merriam, 2009). this enabled the interviewer to explore, in some depth, the participants’ opinions on inclusive education and the learning support model, their expectations and actions (such as the way in which learning support was provided in schools. respondents understood that they could withdraw at any stage and that a coding system would be used 59dreyer — exploring the changing role of learning support teachers to protect their identity. the interview was recorded with permission from the participants and lasted approximately one hour. results creswell (2003) argues that the point of integration, where qualitative and quantitative methodologies are varied, can occur either during data analysis or during the reporting of the results. in this study, integration occurred during the results phase. terminology responses from both the questionnaire and the focus group interview revealed that the terms ‘learning support teacher’ and ‘lsen teacher’ were used when referring to the teacher providing learning support in the school. however, although the abbreviation ‘lsen’ (learners with special educational needs) is generally accepted by the department of education and the title of education white paper 6 refers to ‘special needs education’, this terminology perpetuates perceptions ingrained in the medical model. mode of service delivery the quantitative data revealed that 51% of the respondents served only one school, while the rest worked itinerantly, with 47% serving at two schools and 2% at three schools. according to the qualitative responses, both mainstream and learning support teachers were clearly of the opinion that the need for learning support was very high and that the support given by the class teachers in the mainstream was inadequate. they argued that the itinerant learning support service delivery did not allow sufficient time for effective support. questions about operational structures elicited further data on the direct support given to core groups, grade groups withdrawn for additional support, and the learning areas supported. direct support the survey revealed that 24% of the learning support teachers still had core groups who needed a high level of support. these were groups of learners who remained with the learning support teachers for instruction, either for the whole school day, or for the major part of the day. in the pre-inclusion era, these would have been referred to as special or adaptation classes. according to the data, 95% of the respondents withdrew small groups of learners from the mainstream classes in order to give them direct support. however, only 85% reported that all the learners they supported through withdrawal were referred through the institution level support team (ilst), as required. whichever need was identified as a support priority at the school determined, to a large extent, the groups and learning areas they supported; there was, therefore, a wide variation of support through withdrawal. nonetheless, the findings showed that the majority (41%) of the respondents withdrew groups of learners from grades 1-7, while 27% focused on the foundation phase, i.e. grades 1-3. a small percentage (2%) concentrated on support in the intermediate phase only (grades 4-6). table 1: groups withdrawn for additional support (n = 39) groups withdrawn for support count % grades 1-7 16 41% grades 2-7 4 10% grades 1-3 (foundation phase only) 10 27% grades 2-5 1 2% 60 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 grades 4-6 (intermediate phase only) 1 2% grades 1-6 (foundation and intermediate phase) 5 13% other 2 5% total 39 100% with regard to specific learning areas, the data showed that the majority (73%) of the respondents focused on both literacy and numeracy in the groups that they withdrew. where the focus of support was on either literacy or numeracy, 25% supported literacy, while only 2% supported numeracy. consultative, collaborative and peer support role collaborative provision of learner support, by both mainstream and learning support teachers (and other support professionals), is a major feature of the wced learning support model. the questions in this section, therefore, focused on aspects such as support for the mainstream teacher, with the aim of improving learner support as well as establishing the extent to which mainstream and learning support teachers collaborated in providing learner support. the quantitative data indicated that 44% of the respondents often provided support to mainstream class teachers, while 17% reported that no support was given to mainstream teachers. the main conclusions on consultation, collaboration and peer support which emerged from the qualitative data were that: • the learning support teacher compiled resource files, and • helped teachers with programmes and differentiation. • learning support teachers also consulted with class teachers and parents, • and gave input at institution level support team (ilst) meetings. • in addition, they were responsible for diagnostic testing of learners’ scholastic ability, and • management of referrals to special schools. the following response from one of the learning support teachers incorporates the main themes: i adapt the curriculum; compile relevant programmes and materials, cooperative learning, support parents, arrange for learners to be tested to identify specific areas of need. the qualitative responses revealed that the resource files contained activities, worksheets and other learning materials designed to support learners who experienced learning barriers. these focused on activities that would help the teacher to address the needs of slower learners, such as graded reading passages. learning support teachers further helped general classroom teachers to develop support programmes and to adapt the work for the learners. this included showing them how to simplify the work. most of the qualitative responses to the open-ended sections of the questionnaire showed that learning support teachers offered professional input at ilst meetings on the support that mainstream teachers could provide in class. some reported that they presented work sessions for general classroom teachers in which they gave them guidelines for addressing specific barriers to learning. the learning support teachers consulted with mainstream teachers and parents on a regular basis, both in person and through the term reports on the learners. they also gave the general classroom teacher a written report on learners’ progress. consultation and collaboration with classroom teachers on an individual or group basis are essential elements of support. the ilst offers a structure through which teachers can collaborate as a collective to support the teaching and learning process. however, the learning support teachers in this study experienced very little cooperation from general classroom teachers. the learning support teachers designed their own direct support by diagnostically testing the learners referred to them. alternatively, this was done at the request of the general classroom teachers. support 61dreyer — exploring the changing role of learning support teachers teachers were also responsible for handling the referrals of learners identified as candidates for special schools, and for obtaining external help from school psychologists or social workers, where necessary. although the response from some learning support teachers was that there was not enough time to give support in the general classrooms, some reported physically offering help in the classroom (collaboratively). some support teachers also mentioned that they gave moral and emotional support to motivate the classroom teachers. collaborative planning the survey revealed that only 12% of the respondents did planning in collaboration with their general classroom colleagues. the qualitative responses supported this data. the major reason given was that learning support teachers who were working in two or more schools found it difficult to plan with their general classroom colleagues. they did, however, report that they tried to plan according to the contexts used in the general classroom. some respondents discussed the gaps in learners’ understanding with the classroom teachers and planned accordingly. a further reason for not planning in collaboration with general classroom colleagues was that they did not work on the level of the learners, but worked more quickly through the learning outcomes and assessment standards. while one of the learning support teachers found it easier to plan with foundation phase teachers than with intermediate and senior phase teachers, another preferred planning with other learning support teachers. it was felt that general classroom teachers should ask for help in planning for learners experiencing barriers to learning. it was also reported that classroom teachers sometimes planned on their own, using tips and advice from the learning support teacher. coordination of learning support provision the survey revealed that 66% of the participants considered themselves to be the coordinators of learning support in the schools where they worked. those who did not view themselves as coordinators came from schools which had a well-functioning ilst, or where they argued that it was the responsibility of the principal to plan and coordinate learning support in the school. other support teachers stated that serving more than one school made it difficult to coordinate learning support. the general theme that emerged from those who considered themselves to be coordinators was that they felt that it was expected of them, because they were qualified to do so. general responsibilities the qualitative responses to the question of the responsibilities relating to the position of a learning support teacher generally included the following: setting up and chairing ilst meetings; testing and grouping learners; providing activities; supporting mainstream colleagues, and managing referrals of learners to hospitals, therapists, social workers, school psychologists and special schools. discussion while the role of support teachers has been adapted, research (dreyer, 2008) has shown that the deeprooted and persistent values and behaviours based on the old medical model still prevail. this is clearly reflected in the medical model rhetoric and the focus on direct support to core groups. the prevalent terminology (lsen and special needs), though also used internationally, contradicts the whole notion of ‘barriers to learning and participation’ in referring to the internal as well as external systemic barriers that learners face in mainstream schools. nonetheless, the use of ‘learning support teacher’ does signify a move towards a socially more acceptable, human rights perspective on learning support. the data collected revealed that the changed role of the learning support teachers and services rendered in the wced does correspond with international trends. nonetheless, while many learning support teachers help general classroom educators in various ways, a significant number (17%) do not support learners through collaboration. in fact, according to the literature (mittler, 2000), general classroom teachers do not really want to collaborate on this level; they prefer learners to be withdrawn 62 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 for additional support. itinerant learning support teachers, on the other hand, find that serving more than one school impedes collaborative planning. it thus appears that support for mainstream teachers is rather fragmented, in that teachers can refer to resource files and individual support when required. learning support teachers are expected to implement strategies to improve literacy and numeracy in schools. it is evident, however, that schools’ needs differ in these two crucial learning areas. consequently, although the majority of the respondents supported both, provision in these areas differed from school to school. this corresponds with harker’s (2010) findings on the impact of the different contexts in which learning support teachers work. in the light of their changing role, it is regrettable that learning support teachers only regard themselves as support coordinators, because it is expected of them as specialised teachers. however, it is acknowledged that serving more than one school makes it difficult to coordinate support in any particular school. conclusion the role of the learning support teacher as it has evolved from special education is still vague and is still deeply rooted in the medical model paradigm, in spite of statements to the contrary. this, however, allows a new role in the south african context to be identified, that of making quality education and support in schools more accessible to all learners. from the discussion above it is clear that there is a dire need for more and improved collaboration between general classroom and learning support teachers. although learning support teachers in the wced have a specific job description (western cape education department, 2002), there is no national directive, such as the senco code of practice in the uk (dfes, 2001), for example, to serve as a guide to schools and learning support teachers alike. the education white paper 6 (department of education, 2001) provides a broad framework for practice. nonetheless, if learning support teachers are to coordinate learning support in schools and support and train general classroom colleagues, they will need to be given more authority. in recognition of their changed role and job description, they should be acknowledged as part of senior leadership, working strategically to promote systemic changes in schools for the inclusion of pupils with diverse learning needs (layton, 2005). by embracing this new and challenging role, learning support teachers could ensure collaborative support, both in the classrooms and the schools as a whole. this would enable them to affirm their position on a national as well as an international level. endnotes 1 in this article, the term ‘teacher’ is used instead of ‘educator’. 2 although the term ‘disabilities’ is still commonly used internationally, the author opted to use the south african term ‘impairments’ in this article. 3 internationally, various terminologies are used to refer to collaborative support teams in schools, such as teacher support teams and school support teams. in this article, the terminology ‘institution level support teams (ilst)’ is used, as officially referred to in education white paper 6. references ainscow m 2001. understanding the development of inclusive schools. retrieved from http://www.man. ac.uk/include.html in may 2005. artiles a & 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integration to inclusion: focusing global trends and changes in the western european societies. european journal of special needs education, 18 (1): 17-35. western cape education department 2000. conference proceedings. support for the school as an organisation. unpublished paper. western cape education department 2002. learning support: job description of the learning support teacher. westcoast/winelands emdc. unpublished. 285 research article 2020 38(2): 285-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) an analysis of timss 2015 science reading demands abstract this study investigated the reading demands of restricted-use items1 administered to south african grade 9 learners as part of the trends in international mathematics and science study (timss) 2015. the method proposed by mullis, martin and foy (2013) was used to categorise items into low, medium and high readability groups. the knowing domain contained mostly low readability items, the applying domain was almost equally medium and high readability items, with the reasoning domain containing mostly high readability items. results show significant differences between the percentage correctly answered between the low and high categories and between the medium and high categories. however, the full impact of reading demand on performance cannot be fully analysed without cross-reference to english proficiency. nevertheless, the higher the readability, the greater the chance for learners to answer incorrectly. a continued expected low performance for most south african learners is implied. keywords: language in education; readability; science education; south africa; trends in international mathematics and science study (timss) 2015 1. introduction it is widely known that south africa has performed very poorly in internationally administered literacy tests over the last couple of years. this is evidenced by the findings of the progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) 2006 cycle (mullis, martin, kennedy, & foy, 2007), 2011 cycle (mullis, martin, foy & drucker, 2012) and 2016 cycle (mullis, martin, foy & hooper, 2017) and by the findings of the southern and eastern african consortium for monitoring educational quality (sacmeq) 2007 cycle, sacmeq iii (moloi & chetty, 2011) and 2013 cycle, sacmeq iv (department of basic education [dbe], 2017). the former, pirls, is an international study of reading comprehension of fourth and fifth graders conducted across many counties world-wide and, the latter, sacmeq is a collaborative network of fifteen ministries of education who periodically conduct standardised surveys in southern and eastern 1 the terms “restricted use items” was adopted by the iea to replace the term “released items”. whereas the released items were previously freely available from the timss website for further analysis and use, permission to use these, now called restricted use items, have to be sought from the iea after the timss 2015 cycle. authors: dr s. van staden1 prof. m.a. graham2 ms j.c. harvey3 affiliation: 1university of pretoria, centre for evaluation and assessment 2 university of pretoria, department of science, mathematics and technology education 3 human sciences research council, inclusive economic development research programme doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38. i2.19 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(2): 285-302 published: 04 december 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5276-5705 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4071-9864 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3020-1842 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 2862020 38(2): 286-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) africa to assess the quality of education by testing language and mathematics abilities at sixth grade level. not only did the sacmeq findings point out concerns regarding reading comprehension of south african learners over the last few years, but it also emphasised problems with mathematics comprehension. another study that assesses mathematics comprehension and highlighted concerns regarding the south african results, is the trends in international mathematics and science study (timss); it also assesses science achievement. timss is a large-scale study administered every four years (since 1995) by the international association for the evaluation of educational achievement (iea) to assess the mathematics and science knowledge and skills of learners all over the world. out of approximately 40 participating countries, in both timss 2011 (mullis, martin, foy & arora, 2012) and timss 2015 (mullis, martin, foy & hooper, 2016) the grade 9 south african learners’ mathematics performance was ranked second-last, whereas the science performance was ranked second-last in timss 2011 (martin, mullis, foy, & stanco, 2012) and last in timss 2015 (martin, mullis, foy & hooper, 2016). south african learner achievement in science in the lower secondary grades (or senior phase)2 remains disappointingly low. all three these international studies (pirls, sacmeq and timss) “speak to each other” in the sense that it shows similar trends and highlights major concerns in literacy, mathematics and science comprehension and knowledge by south african learners. further questions arise such as: if south african learners have very restricted literacy comprehension, how does this affect the understanding of other subjects, for example, a word problem in mathematics or science where the problems often involve a narrative of some sort? given the vast evidence of poor achievement (evidenced from the international studies such as pirls, sacmeq and timss over the last few years) and contributing contextual factors (such as low family socioeconomic status and poor education quality; this is discussed in more detail in section 3), the rationale for the current study is to investigate the role that reading demands may play in south african grade 9 learners’ ability to demonstrate an understanding of, and engagement with, restricted use science items from the timss 2015 cycle. the following section is structured according to the iea’s tripartite model of curriculum implementation to provide a cursory contextual understanding of the south african landscape and discusses: 1) the intended science curriculum at lower secondary level, 2) the implemented science curriculum against some contextual background factors, and 3) the attained curriculum as evidenced by the south african grade 9 science achievement in timss 2015 concludes the section. 2. a conceptual framework for international comparative studies according to shorrocks-taylor and jenkins (2001), the iea’s tripartite model of the curriculum includes: what society would like to see taught in the education system (the intended curriculum), what is actually taught (the implemented curriculum), and what is learnt (the attained curriculum). in his sequential explanatory study of factors connected with science achievement in six countries using timss 1999 data, reinikainen (2007) refers to the focus on these curriculum manifestations as a broad explanatory factor underlying learner achievement. insofar as the intended curriculum is concerned, reddy, arends, juan and prinsloo (2016) summarise the south african science curriculum in terms of three broad subject-specific aims 2 south african school grades in the general education and training (get) band are divided as follows: foundation phase (grades 1–3); intermediate phase (grades 4–6); and senior phase (grades 7–9). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 2872020 38(2): 287-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 van staden, graham & harvey an analysis of timss 2015 science reading demands that speak to the purposes of learning science (mullis, martin, goh & cotter, 2016): doing sciences; knowing the subject content and making connections; and understanding the uses of science. the teaching and learning of natural sciences involves the development of process skills that may be used throughout life and may include, amongst others, the ability to access and recall information, remember relevant facts and key ideas to build a conceptual framework and conduct experiments to test hypotheses. therefore, the intention of the curriculum is to cover skills increasing in complexity and sophistication by the ninth grade so that, even if a career in a related field is not pursued, learners have scientific skills that translate to various fields (reddy et al., 2016). the implemented curriculum occurs against a complex contextual background. south africa continues to tackle injustices stemming from the apartheid legacy that stratified society along racial lines. transformation has involved improving access to inclusive education for all learners and, once access is ensured, equal quality of education. contextual factors related to this process and to science achievement were flagged in the diagnostic report of the timss 2015 south african results by prinsloo, harvey, mosimege, beku, juan, hannan and zulu (2017). for purposes of their analyses, these included issues of language, reading and writing, teacher training, the design of the curriculum, curriculum coverage, availability of laboratory facilities, the language in education policy (liep) implementation, and learners’ reasoning deficits. the impact of these factors must, therefore, be taken into consideration when evaluating classroom teaching and learner achievement. against details of curricular intention and implementation that have been discussed here, it is no surprise that the attained curriculum is at persistently poor levels of performance. results from the timss 2015 study point to grade 9 learner science performance at 358 (se=5.6), a score substantially below the international centre point of 500 (reddy, visser, winnaar, arends, juan, prinsloo & isdale, 2016). despite poor performance, reddy et al. (2016) note encouragingly that south african learner performance has shown the biggest positive change across cycles when drawing cross-country comparisons, with an improvement of 90 points from timss 2003 to timss 2015, having started at a very low level in the 2003 cycle. while the work of prinsloo et al. (2017) and others (see for example juan & visser, 2017; visser, juan & feza, 2015) extensively investigates different contextual factors that affect science education performance, of importance and relevance to the current study’s analysis is the role language and reading play from as early as foundation phase (fp) when learners start their formal schooling careers. language and its relationship(s) with reading comprehension is now discussed. 3. language in education and the development of reading comprehension language in education in south africa presents a challenge into an already complicated landscape, a common reality for post-colonial, multilingual countries. despite constitutional and policy revisions, there remains a three-tiered pyramid that positions english on top, followed by afrikaans, and lastly the african languages3 (gupta, 1997; kamwangamalu, 2000). this has influenced the choice of language of learning and teaching (lolt) in south african schools. notwithstanding recommendations that the lolt be the language of the learner, 3 the 11 official languages are english, afrikaans, sepedi, siswati, sesotho, setswana, isixhosa, isizulu, isindebele, xitsonga and tshivenda. the latter 9 languages are termed african languages. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 2882020 38(2): 288-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) several authors have found evidence that in the majority of south african schools, as a norm, learners are not taught in their primary language (for example, see fleisch, 2002; setati & adler, 2000; world bank, 2008). however, non-equivalence between homeand instructional language can have negative implications for reading development. oral language exposure and proficiency provide the vocabulary, grammar and semantic knowledge that assist learners in developing the ability to read (center & niestepski, 2014). this process is disrupted when a learner’s home language is different from the instructional language. with a lack of basic reading skills, there is little hope of significant improvement as these children grow older and progress from one grade to the next. this outcome was evinced in the pirls 2006, 2011 and 2016 cycles. in pirls 2006, 2011 and 2016, grade 4/5 south african learners were tested across all 11 official languages (see howie, venter, van staden, zimmerman, long, scherman & archer, 2009; howie, van staden, tshele, dowse & zimmerman, 2012; howie, combrinck, roux, tshele, mokoena & mcleod palane, 2017). the pirls studies provided evidence that south african children from a young age are not necessarily taught in their home language and are often taught in their second or even third language. pirls results across cycles found that children cannot read with understanding and rather engage with text at a surface level where only explicitly stated information could be accessed, at best. the most recent pirls 2016 cycle found that 78% of south african grade 4/5 children could not read for meaning in any language (mullis, martin, foy, & hooper, 2017, howie et al., 2017). the results from sacmeq iii and sacmeq iv, which assesses reading competency at sixth grade level, also shows great concern for south african learners’ and teachers’ reading comprehension as the sacmeq iii results showed that the poorest quarter of south african learners ranked 14th out of 15 countries (spaull, 2011) and that the teachers performed worse in sacmeq iv, in 2011, than in sacmeq iii, in 2007 (dbe, 2017). while sacmeq assesses reading competency, it is worth mentioning that sacmeq also assesses mathematics competency levels and sacmeq iv has also shown that teachers performed worse in sacmeq iv than in saqmec iii regarding mathematics competency (dbe, 2017), which is also disconcerting. turning the focus back to reading competency, the transition from learning to read in the early grades to reading to learn in subsequent grades is thus highly problematic, since many learners progress to grade 4 without having basic reading skills in place (see howie et al., 2009, howie et al., 2012). additionally, language-specific difficulties have been highlighted by van staden, bosker and bergbauer (2016) whose analyses of pre-pirls 2011 data found that testing in african languages predicts significantly lower results compared to their english counterparts. reading achievement outcomes for grade 4 learners who wrote pre-pirls 2011 are shown in figure 1, as taken from van staden et al. (2016), and is now briefly discussed. learners tested in english outperformed learners tested in any of the african languages. additionally, learners across all languages performed worse when the language in which they were tested in pre-pirls 2011 differed from their home language. in fact, van staden et al. (2016:1) reported that … testing in african languages predicts significantly lower results as compared to english, but that exponentially worse results by as much as 0.29 points lower of a standard deviation can be expected when the african language of the test did not coincide with the learners’ home language. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 2892020 38(2): 289-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 van staden, graham & harvey an analysis of timss 2015 science reading demands 532 590 441 438 449 398 437 437 457 404 416 506 510 424 403 420 388 400 409 431 365 385 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 pr ep ir ls 2 01 1 re ad in g ac hi ev em en t language of the test and home language the same language of the test and home language different figure 1: south african grade 4 learner performance by test language in the same or different language to their home language (van staden et al., 2016). findings from this study provide evidence that african children stand to be disadvantaged the most when a strong home language base has not been developed and when education for children between grade 1 and 3 is only available through a medium of instruction other than the home language (van staden et al., 2016). language issues are compounded in rural schools where learners have fewer opportunities to engage with science content and there is a lower probability that learners have a solid foundation in english that would allow them access to subject-related vocabulary and terminology. there can be systemic factors that negatively impact literacy development; for example, low family socioeconomic status (see hemmerechts, agirdag & kavadias, 2017; dowd, d’sa, noble, o’grady, pisani & seiden, 2018; zuilkowski, mccoy, jonason & dowd, 2019); poor education quality (see harley, woldie & von gogh, 2019; harris, slate, moore & lunenburg, 2020) and a lack of available resources including african language use in published and online texts. in a south african context, the latter obstacle is exacerbated by the fact that south africa has one of the highest linguistic diversities in the world with 11 official languages and many other indigenous languages that are not official, and the fact that a large percentage of rural english second language (esl) learners have been shown to be “nonreaders in english”. for example, draper and spaull (2015) found that 41% of a sample of grade 5 rural esl learners were classified as “non-readers in english” after analysing data from the national education and evaluation development unit (needu) of south africa. since reading forms the foundation of all future learning, the impact of poor literacy development continues to hamper learners as they progress through their academic trajectory. in addition, conceptual gaps progressively worsen as the curriculum increases in difficulty. within science, learners are positioned as outsiders, not only to subject-specific language and customs, but also to the english language. the next section thus pays particular attention to issues of readability, the role of scientific language in science achievement and some measurement recommendations that have emanated from previous studies based on readability concerns. the section concludes with an overview of selected, previous timss science item readability studies that utilised a wide array of readability measures before presenting the methods that will be used for the current analyses. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 2902020 38(2): 290-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) 4. an overview of readability issues related to scientific language and measurement for purposes of the current study, the definition provided by oakland and lane (2004: 244) will be used, namely that readability is “the ease with which a reader can read and understand text”. linguistic challenges in the south african education context have been recognised as stemming, in part, from the difference between home language and lolt for learners across grades, but most importantly in the early grades when solid foundations for reading have to be laid. but in uncovering any issues of readability for purposes of the current study, the language of science presents another challenge. the language of science, with its specific genre, often serves as a barrier to the learning of science (ramnarain, 2012). some of these barriers include specific vocabulary, terminology, grammar and text structure (nyström, 2008). it was illustrated in earlier sections that an absence of basic reading skills in the early years predicts nothing good in terms of progress and academic success in later years. yet, english first-language learners, as well as second-language learners, often struggle to understand specialised terminology, since words often mean something different when used in a scientific context than in an everyday context (dempster & reddy 2007). words such as power, consumer, energy and conduct are cited by dempster and reddy (2007) as examples of such everyday constructs that take on a different meaning in a scientific context, with matters being exacerbated by african languages that often use a single term for a concept that is embodied by three or four different terms in english. linguistic issues like these complicate the assessment of science considerably, especially where learners’ home language is not compatible with the language of science. nyström (2008) refers to the work of schleppegrell (2007), who expounded on the multi-semiotic formation of mathematics, its dense noun phrases and the precise meaning of conjunctions that link elements to one another. dempster and reddy (2007) provide examples of logical connectiveness (for example, if, therefore, unless), and prepositions of location (for example in, after and of) as particularly problematic at the interface of english and any of the african languages. across indigenous south african languages (with the exception of afrikaans) a dearth of linguistic tools such as those found in english simply means learners stand to lose important information when translating english questions in a test to their home language. in the presence of linguistic dissimilarities, a contextual background of impoverishment and deprivation for most learners makes the analysis of links between language and performance difficult to isolate (dempster & reddy, 2007). in the presence of linguistic challenges (as discussed here in terms of differences between home language and lolt on the one hand and challenges around the use of scientific language on the other) for a learner population that already lacks basic reading skills from the early grades, it has to be asked how readability can be measured. oakland and lane (2004) present the strengths and limitations associated with the use of readability formulas in their work. readability formulas typically estimate the difficulty of text of two surface-level features (i.e. vocabulary and syntax) of language and reading in paragraph text form. according to oakland and lane (2004), such formulas do not consider structure-level features (i.e. story structure) that also affect the difficulty of the text. these authors warn that surface-level and structure-level features may be independent and uncorrelated, therefore surface-level formulas can only speak to surface-level features of the text, not structure-level features and vice versa. lastly, oakland and lane (2004) warn that, given the brevity and density of information contained in single test items, readability formulas are likely to yield unreliable http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 2912020 38(2): 291-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 van staden, graham & harvey an analysis of timss 2015 science reading demands results, and recommend the use of quantitative and qualitative methods of ascertaining text difficulty where readability is one indicator of such difficulty. to illustrate this point, hewitt and homan (2004) developed the homan-hewitt readability formula and applied it in their study across three grade levels. their results support the belief that the higher the item unreadability, the greater the chance for learners to respond incorrectly (i.e. greater difficulty). incorrect responses are therefore ascribed to reading problems, not because of lack of content knowledge. however, these authors do not indicate if issues of readability still occur when the difficulty level of content covered by items is accounted for. whichever method of readability measurement is considered, the fact remains that it is an issue that speaks to the heart of reliability and validity of measurement. mullis et al. (2013) tested two hypotheses in their analyses of timss mathematics and science items: firstly, grade 4 learners with high reading ability would not be impacted by the level of reading demand, and secondly, that learners with lower reading ability would perform relatively better on items that required less reading. mullis et al. (2013) analysed the mathematics and science items separately according to reading demands that included the number of words, vocabulary, symbolic language and visual displays. these indicators of reading difficulty were then used to rate the items into low, medium and high categories according to: • the number of words (anywhere in the item, including titles of graphics and labels); • the number of different symbols (e.g., numerals, operators); • the number of different specialised vocabulary words; and • the total number of elements (density) in the visual displays (e.g., diagrams, graphs, tables). this method is used in the current article. 5. research hypotheses the main research question asked by the current study is: what is the relationship between the reading demand of selected released timss 2015 items and learners’ ability to respond correctly to the items? similar to the work of mullis et al. (2013), the current study is guided by the following null and alternative hypotheses: ho: there are no statistically significant differences between the categorisations of low, medium and high reading demand in terms of the percentage correctly answered. ha: there are statistically significant differences between the categorisations of low, medium and high reading demand in terms of the percentage correctly answered. in this study, a level of significance of 5% is used. if the p-value is less than 0.05, then the null hypothesis is rejected and there are statistically significant differences between the categorisations. on the other hand, if the p-value is greater than 0.05, then the null hypothesis is not rejected and there are no statistically significant differences between the categorisations. 6. method the data of south african learners used for this paper was taken from the timss 2015 cycle. this is the most recent data that has been released by the iea. timss 2015 used a stratified two-stage cluster sampling design. in stage 1, schools were selected (from a sampling frame provided by the country’s national research coordinator) using a stratified sampling http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 2922020 38(2): 292-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) approach according to key demographic variables. schools were sampled with probabilities proportional to their size. in stage 2, intact classes were selected with equal probabilities within schools. although timss 2015 assessed grade 8 learners, south africa, along with a few other countries opted to assess their grade 9 learners instead to reduce bunching at the lower end of the achievement scale, thereby making estimation possible. 6.1. participants and data collection instruments in the case of south africa, a total of 12 514 grade 9 learners from 292 schools participated in timss 2015. not all learners answered all of the timss 2015 science items due to the matrix sampling approach: a pool of science items were packaged into different blocks with each learner completing two of the fourteen blocks in their booklet. on average 1 698, 1 691 and 1 600 learners responded to the three cognitive domain items, knowing, applying and reasoning, respectively. these cognitive domains are related to the variety of cognitive skills learners draw on when being assessed. the knowing domain involves the recall of science facts, information, concepts and tools. the applying domain asks learners to apply their science content knowledge to straightforward situations while reasoning extends both the previous two domains through problem-solving familiar and unfamiliar scenarios (mullis, martin, ruddock, o’sullivan, & preuschoff, 2009). the restricted item list had 44 items for knowing, 50 items for applying and 21 items for reasoning. in the interest of time, only 50% of the restricted items were used in this study. they were obtained using a simple random sample, keeping proportions across domains, rendering 22 knowing items, 25 applying items and 11 reasoning items. 6.2. data analysis a discriminant function analysis was performed to validate the holistic categorisation of items. following this, the data were tested for normality and, failing the test for normality (since the p-value for the kolmogorov-smirnov test was less than 0.05), nonparametric methods were used for all statistical analyses. the mann-whitney test was used for the comparison between two groups, since the mann-whitney test is the nonparametric counterpart to the well-known independent samples t-test (field, 2014:217), and the kruskal-wallis test was used for all comparisons of three groups or more, since the kruskal-wallis test is the nonparametric counterpart to the well-known anova f-test (field, 2014:236). 7. categorising the timss grade 8 science items according to reading demands following mullis et al. (2013), the number of non-subject-specific words, the number of symbols, the number of subject-specific terminology and the number of visual displays were taken into account in order to categorise the reading demand into either a low, medium or high density. although mullis et al. (2013) used the actual count for the number of words, in this study, a cluster of 10 non-subject-specific words were counted as one element. an example of how and why this was done is given below using one of the restricted items’ images from timss 2015 (see figure 2 for item s01_11, s042195). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 2932020 38(2): 293-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 van staden, graham & harvey an analysis of timss 2015 science reading demands figure 2: example of a figure in timss 2015 science the words resistor, battery and ammeter are not counted as part of the density, following the coding guide by mullis et al. (2013) (see technical appendix a: quantifying the reading demands of the timss 2011 fourth grade mathematics and science items) where it is stated that a label should be counted with its object, not separately. the calculation for figure 2 is, therefore, six visual displays (1 resistor, 1 battery, 1 ammeter, 1 arrow, 1 wire, 1 opening) plus four symbols (a, r, +, -) to give a total density of ten. we believe that it takes longer, and is more difficult in terms of reading demand, to process this total of ten against simply reading the first ten non-subject-specific words of an item such as: “for each characteristic in the list below, fill in a…” following this reasoning, ten non-subject-specific words were grouped or clustered and counted as one element in this study. the fact that pictorials, tables, figures, etc. have a higher reading demand than non-subject-specific words must be addressed when categorising the timss 2015 science items in categories of low, medium or high reading demand. for the rest of the categorisations, the coding guide by mullis et al. (2013) was strictly followed. for example, for the indicator of subject-specific terminology, words such as pupa and larva were counted, but not puppy as the latter is familiar to most eighth or ninth grade learners in everyday life. in summation, the holistic categorisations in this paper were allocated using the following indicators: • the number of clusters of 10 non-subject-specific words; • the number of symbols; • the number of subject-specific vocabulary; and • the density of the visual displays. in order to validate the holistic categorisations of items, a discriminant function analysis (dfa) was performed (field, 2014:654). according to slate and rojas-lebouef (2011), dfa is appropriate when determining variables that predict group membership. the results show that the indicator number of clusters of 10 non-subject-specific words loaded the most heavily on this function (table 1). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 2942020 38(2): 294-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) table 1: discriminant function analysis: loading of indicators on discriminant functions indicators function 1 function 2 number of clusters of 10 non-subject-specific words 0.405 0.211 number of subject-specific vocabulary 0.334 0.125 density of visual displays 0.302 -0.043 number of symbols 0.282 -0.262 the dfa classification results are given in table 2. in order to make sense of the percentages, it is important to note that 20 items we classified as “low”, 20 items as “medium” and 18 items as “high” originally. from table 2 it can be seen that 85% (17 out of 20) of the low categorisations matched the holistic categorisations, 95% (19 out of 20) of the medium categorisations matched the holistic categorisations and 94.4% (17 out of 18) of the high categorisations matched the holistic categorisations. in total 91.4% of the classifications were performed correctly. table 2: discriminant function analysis: classification results classification results predicted group readability density low medium high original group count low 17 3 0 medium 1 19 0 high 0 1 17 % low 85.0 15.0 0.0 medium 5.0 95.0 0.0 high 0.0 5.6 94.4 8. statistical analysis the mean percentages of correctly answered items are given in table 3 for each cognitive domain along with the minimum and maximum values of the correctly answered items per domain. the highest percentage of correctly answered questions is in the knowing domain (38.1%), followed by the applying domain (17.5%) and the lowest percentage is found in the reasoning domain (12.7%). the minimum and maximum values are also provided and can be interpreted as follows: for the knowing domain, it can be seen that the learner(s) that performed the worst answered 15% of the items correctly and the learner(s) that performed the best answered 66% of the items correctly. thus, the range for the percentage of correct answers for the knowing domain is 66% – 15% = 51%. this is quite wide, when compared to, say, the reasoning domain where the learner(s) that performed the worst answered only 2% of the items correctly and the learner(s) that performed the best answered only 26% of the items correctly. thus, the range for the percentage of correct answers for the reasoning domain is 26% – 2% = 24% which is quite narrow. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 2952020 38(2): 295-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 van staden, graham & harvey an analysis of timss 2015 science reading demands table 3: minimum, maximum and mean percentage of correctly answered items per domain cognitive domain statistic number minimum % items correctly answered maximum % items correctly answered mean % items correctly answered knowing 22 15.0 66.0 38.1 applying 25 1.0 57.0 17.5 reasoning 11 2.0 26.0 12.7 in table 4, each cognitive domain is further investigated by exploring the frequency and percentage by category of reading demand. this table shows that the majority (63.6%) of the knowing domain was categorised as low, the applying domain were almost equally categorised over medium (36.0%) and high (40.0%) and the reasoning domain was mostly categorised as high (72.7%). it is worth noting that none of the items in the knowing domain has been categorised as having a high reading demand and none of the items in the reasoning domain has been classified as having a low reading demand. this limits the analysis of the impact of reading categories within each cognitive domain, see table 4 and related analyses. table 4: frequencies and percentages of per domain by category of reading demands cognitive domain readability category frequency percentage knowing low 14 63.6 medium 8 36.4 high 0 0 applying low 6 24.0 medium 9 36.0 high 10 40.0 reasoning low 0 0 medium 3 27.3 high 8 72.7 turning to reading demand categories, table 5 indicates the statistics (number, minimum, maximum, mean and standard deviation) per category. for a visual representation, the mean percentage correct for each category of reading demand is plotted in figure 3 and it is clear that there are differences between the groups. the minimum and maximum values are also provided in table 5 and can be interpreted as follows: for the low category, it can be seen that the learner(s) that performed the worst answered 9% of the items correctly and the learner(s) that performed the best answered 66% of the items correctly. thus, the range for the percentage of correct answers for the low category is 66% – 9% = 57%. this is quite wide, when compared to, say, the high category where the learner(s) that performed the worst answered only 2% of the items correctly and the learner(s) that performed the best answered only 26% of the items correctly. thus, the range for the percentage of correct answers for the high category is 26% – 2% = 24% which is quite narrow. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 2962020 38(2): 296-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) table 5: statistics for the percentage correct per category of reading demands readability category statistics number minimum % items correctly answered maximum % items correctly answered mean % items correctly answered standard deviation low 20 9.0 66.0 32.5 18.936 medium 20 1.0 56.0 26.3 17.885 high 18 2.0 26.0 13.4 8.304 figure 3: the mean percentage correct per category of reading demands the question arises whether these differences are statistically significant. normality could not be assumed [d (58) = 0.132, p = .013]. from the histogram (figure 4) it can be seen that the data is skewed to the right showing not only that the data is non-symmetric, but also emphasising the poor performance of south african learners. figure 4: histogram for percentage correct the kruskal-wallis test, along with the post-hoc mann-whitney tests (field, 2014: 217), was therefore used which indicated significant differences between the categorisations of low, medium and high reading demand in terms of the percentage correctly answered [h(2) = 11.849, p = .003]. post-hoc mann-whitney tests showed significant differences in the percentage correctly answered between the low and high categories of reading demands and between the medium and high categories of reading demands (table 6). the results thus far support the belief that the higher the reading demand, the greater the chance for learners to answer incorrectly. however, reading demand must be separated from content difficulty. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 2972020 38(2): 297-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 van staden, graham & harvey an analysis of timss 2015 science reading demands table 6: mann-whitney summarised results reading demand categories compared p-value low (mean = 32.5%) and medium (mean = 26.3%) 0.273 low (mean = 32.5%) and high (mean = 13.4%) 0.001* medium (mean = 26.3%) and high (mean = 13.4%) 0.029* * the p-value is less than 0.05, indicating that the null hypothesis is rejected and that there is a statistically significant difference. further analyses were performed in order to test differences between low, medium, and high reading demand categories within each cognitive domain. the results summarised in table 7 did not show any significant differences since the null hypothesis is not rejected (all p-values are greater than 0.05). table 7: mann-whitney summarised results cognitive domain reading demand categories compared p-value knowing low (mean = 37.1%) and medium (mean = 40.0%) 0.539 applying low (mean = 21.7%) and medium (mean = 18.8%) 0.555 low (mean = 21.7%) and high (mean = 13.8%) 0.368 medium (mean = 18.8%) and high (mean = 13.8%) 0.604 reasoning medium (mean = 12.3) and high (mean = 12.9%) 0.919 9. discussion curricular implementation at classroom level has raised the issue of language complexity. south africa is a recognised multilingual country but it cannot be assumed that the majority of learners have the advantage of home language education when starting their school careers. language issues are especially compounded in rural schools where learners have fewer opportunities to engage with science content with a solid foundation in english that would allow them access to subject-related vocabulary and terminology. one recommendation is to possibly bridge the gap for learners who have a different home language than that of the lolt, if for stakeholders, such as provincial and educational officials, the school governing body, parents and other community leaders, are made aware of the study and understand the diverse language situations of communities in order to find ways to allow for some alignment between home language and the lolt context. a second recommendation is to appoint teachers that are able to speak the learners’ home language in order to provide support to learners whose home language differs from the language of instruction. a last recommendation stems from the fact that, according to the current policy of caps, grade 1 to 3 learners are taught in their mother tongue, whereas from grade 4 onwards, english is the lolt (dbe, 2011); if more effective english lolt teaching and learning support is not available to learners in the early grades, improved achievement in mathematics and science in later grades will remain disappointingly low. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 2982020 38(2): 298-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) achievement trends and previous research provided the rationale for investigating the role that reading demands play in south african grade 9 learners’ ability to demonstrate understanding of, and engagement with, released science items from the timss 2015 cycle. it was hypothesised that learners who were able to respond adequately to the randomly selected sample science items were less impacted by reading demand. at this point, two aspects of readability and content are discussed as possible limitations. while the current results show that language difficulty is associated with performance, there are factors that were not controlled for or investigated in the current study. firstly, that simple (different than complex, at the other end) topics and work will correlate with and require simple language to discuss and assess, while complex items will inevitably involve more complex language. secondly, it may be logical and intuitive that better item reading ability and mastery of the subject will lead to better marks, not just the readability of the item. the implication is, therefore, that high-proficiency learners would do well because (1) they understand the work and (2) the language of the item. in taking these issues into account, results from the current study could be interpreted not only in terms of item readability, but also readability coupled with the complexity of topics and mastery of the subject as added predictors to the current findings. as illustrated using the curriculum intentions, implementation and attainment framework, learning science content may be so undermined during classroom teaching by a lack of learner reading proficiency as to be unattainable. the preliminary results of the current study showed significant differences between the percentage correctly answered between the low and high categories of reading demands as well as between the medium and high categories of reading demands. however, further analyses showed that there were no significant differences between the categories of reading demand within each cognitive domain. there are three possible interpretations of these results: 1) reading demand does not have an effect when the same cognitive skills are being tested, 2) reading demand impact is so severe that its effect cannot be separated from content knowledge or, 3) the initial significant observations have now disappeared due to the samples of item-combinations being too small. the first is unlikely given the plethora of research showing an impact of poor literacy on south african learner achievement and in other countries. the authors, therefore, propose that the full impact of reading demand on learner performance cannot be fully evaluated without correlating english proficiency scores but that it remains a plausible factor in the ability of learners to understand questions and present their answers. as seen by the poor achievement of south african learners in timss 2015, although this has improved over the course of repeated timss assessments, addressing factors that impact achievement such as reading proficiency is crucial. if learners are unable to engage with the content and/or their teachers, they are understandably unable to grasp what is being taught and will do poorly on assessments. however, reading proficiency has far-reaching effects beyond subject-specific achievement. it is expected of the teaching and learning of natural sciences to develop in learners a range of process skills that may be used in everyday life, in the community and in the future workplace. the development of these skills speaks to the development of scientific citizenship, which, for example, means that every learner should develop the ability to read and write proficiently in a clear and ‘scientific’ manner even if a stem career is not pursued. a lack of reading and writing proficiency may also impact other factors in academic achievement and scientific citizenship, such as self-efficacy beliefs, selfesteem or engagement during classes. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 2992020 38(2): 299-302 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.19 van staden, graham & harvey an analysis of timss 2015 science reading demands the ubiquitous effect of reading demand does not only have implications for a subject such as science with its own language and citizenship. as reading forms the foundation of all future learning, the impact of poor literacy development continues to hamper learners as they progress through their academic trajectory. this means that if the basic skill of reading is not adequately developed in the early grades of a learner’s school career, coupled with conceptual subject-related gaps and an inability to communicate academically in a proficient manner, it spells continued underperformance and bleak future prospects for a majority of south african learners who come from contextually varied and challenging circumstances. linguistic issues like these thus complicate the teaching and assessment of science in later grades considerably. the following recommendations can be made for further analyses. firstly, there is the need to disaggregate learner achievement by language according to reading demand in further analyses. according to martin et al. (2016), only 12% (se=2.3) of south african sampled schools reported that more than 90% of their learners responded to the timss 2015 science items in their home language. as much as 80% (se=2.7) of learners, therefore, wrote the test in english when, in fact, it was not their home language. expected achievement results for this group of learners can be as low as 342 points (se=6.7), as opposed to expected results for those learners for whom the language of the test and home language coincided (423 points, se=17.6). in their work, dempster and reddy (2007) found that the maximum readability and comprehensibility were not met in the timss 2003 items, rendering the results invalid for learners with limited english proficiency. further analyses of the current timss 2015 data by language and reading demand could make findings like those of dempster and reddy (2007) more nuanced and indicative of learner abilities across cognitive domains when applying indicators of reading demand and language disaggregation. a second recommendation refers to the use of rasch analysis in possible further analyses to add scientific and methodological rigour to item analyses, as was done by glynn (2012). by evaluating science items psychometrically, it could be determined if the science items from timss 2015, in fact, reduced the reading load for learners, thereby making them developmentally appropriate. the article’s findings are considered important because it speaks to the complex language situation we encounter in a multilingual country such as south africa and the impact that literacy comprehension has on other subjects such as mathematics, and more specifically, science, using reputable international data. 10. declaration the authors declare that the calculations and the interpretation of the statistics are correct. references center, c. & niestepski, m. 2014. hey, did you get that?: l2 student reading across the curriculum. in t. zawacki & m. cox (eds.). wac and second language 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https://doi.org/10.15700/201503062354 http://www.google.com/publicdata http://www.google.com/publicdata https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022119837363 an analysis of timss 2015 157 research article 2021 39(2): 157-174 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) an investigation into the success rates of third-year accounting conversion students en route to becoming a chartered accountant (south africa) abstract stellenbosch university students who graduated with a bachelor of commerce in management accounting or a bachelor of commerce in financial accounting may convert to a bachelor of accounting by completing a conversion year. the purpose of the conversion year is to meet the bachelor of accounting honours admission requirements, which puts students on course to become a chartered accountant (south africa). no previous research has investigated the success rates of these conversion students; therefore, current prospective third-year conversion students have no frame of reference to make an informed decision regarding whether or not to attempt the conversion year. the research reported in this paper sought to analyse the results of third-year conversion students to conclude on their success rate of being admitted to the bachelor of accounting honours programme and their success rate in obtaining a bachelor of accounting honours degree. a quantitative research method was applied and it was found that 37% of the third-year conversion students met the bachelor of accounting honours admission requirements at the first attempt and only 19% of the third-year conversion students managed to obtain their bachelor of accounting honours degree in the minimum amount of time. receiver operating curve analyses were also done to predict optimal cut-off marks to meet the bachelor of accounting honours admission requirements and to obtain this degree in the minimum amount of time. keywords: accounting education; third-year conversion student; student success; conversion year. 1. introduction and background at stellenbosch university (su) students who graduated with a bachelor of commerce (b. commerce) in management accounting or a b. commerce in financial accounting have the opportunity to convert to a bachelor of accounting (b. accounting) by completing a conversion year. the author: mrs sophia brink1 mrs mareli rossouw1 affiliation: 1stellenbosch university doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i2.12 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(2): 157-174 published: 11 june 2021 received: 6 july 2020 accepted: 30 october 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2716-7102 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6013-7031 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 1582021 39(2): 158-174 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) conversion year entails the following: after obtaining one of the above-mentioned degrees these students can register as a special student (non-degree purposes) for the four main b. accounting third-year subjects (financial accounting, management accounting, auditing and taxation) and mercantile law (a b. accounting second-year module not included in the b. commerce programme). the purpose of this arrangement and the reason why most students decide on this conversion year is to meet the b. accounting honours admission requirements which puts them on course to become a chartered accountant (south africa) (ca[sa]). the b. accounting honours admission requirements are as follows: 60% weighted average for the four professional third-year b. accounting subjects or 55% weighted average for the four professional third-year b. accounting subjects and 55% for financial accounting (stellenbosch school of accountancy, 2019). the weighted average is calculated as follows with weightings used in the calculation shown in brackets: financial accounting 379 (4), management accounting 378 (4), taxation 399 (3) and auditing 378 (3). these weightings changed in 2015. the 2014 b. accounting honours admission requirements applied the following weightings: financial accounting 379 (4), management accounting 378 (3), taxation 399 (3), and auditing 378 (3). third-year b. accounting conversion students may present management accounting 388 (a third-year b. commerce management accounting or financial accounting subject) instead of management accounting 378 (a third-year b. accounting subject) for selection purposes if the former was passed with a minimum final mark of 60%. all the subjects need not be passed in one year, but subjects must be passed within two years before the start of the b. accounting honours programme for which the student is applying. saica accredits university’s accounting programmes where students can study towards becoming a ca(sa). one way of measuring the success of these programmes is students’ performance in the initial test of competence (itc) exam. this exam is independently set by saica and therefore places all students at a level “playing field” when completing this exam. the itc results for january 2020 indicates the top five accredited programmes, in terms of students’ pass rate in this exam, as university of pretoria (92% pass rate), nelson mandela university (88%), north-west university (80%), stellenbosch university (79%) and university of the witwatersrand (78%) (saica, 2020). it was deemed worthwhile to investigate whether the other four universities (except for su on which this study is based and that make up the top five in terms of their performance in the itc exam) also offer their students not on the ca(sa) route the opportunity of a conversion year after graduating. university of pretoria, nelson mandela university, north-west university and university of the witwatersrand all offer their undergraduate students not on the ca(sa) route the opportunity to convert to their equivalent of a b. accounting (ca[sa]) route. the form of this conversion year differs. nelson mandela university and north-west university’s conversion year takes the form of a postgraduate diploma in accountancy (viviers, 2020; nelson mandela university, 2020). university of pretoria and university of the witwatersrand requires students to do an additional third year in order to convert to the ca(sa) route (jonker, 2020; oberholster, 2020) (this is similar to su’s conversion year). 2. literature review in order to identify the gap in the current literature it is important to review all available current or related studies done on the success rates of third-year b. accounting conversion students en route to becoming a ca(sa). the pearl growing or snowballing search strategy, together with http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 1592021 39(2): 159-174 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 brink & rossouw an investigation into the success rates of third-year accounting conversion students the building blocks search strategy, was the main strategy used to obtain literature relevant to the research. the following su library databases were searched: proquest (business premium collection & education database), ebsco host (academic search premier, africa wide information, business source premier, econlit and eric), scopus, sabinet african journals, emerald and google scholar. rossouw and brink (2020) investigated the success rates of first-year b. accounting conversion students (with no prior accounting knowledge) in obtaining a professional accounting degree. according to the admission requirements at su, students are not required to have completed accounting at secondary school level in order to enrol for a b. accounting degree. these students, with no prior accounting knowledge, can therefore register as a b. accounting student with all the same subjects as other b. accounting students (students who had accounting at secondary level) with only one exception – they will be registered for an introductory accounting module (as opposed to other b. accounting students who will be registered for a more advanced accounting module). when these students pass the introductory accounting module at the end of their first year at university, they must write an accounting conversion examination. if they pass the accounting conversion examination, they can join their peers (who had accounting at secondary level) from second-year b. accounting onwards (rossouw & brink, 2020). rossouw and brink (2020) found that 50% of the first-year b. accounting conversion students were successful in obtaining their professional degree in accounting within the minimum time of three years and 81% of these students eventually obtained their professional degree in accounting (up until the date of the study), irrespective of how long it took. rossouw and brink’s (2020) finding suggests that accounting as a subject at secondary school is not necessarily essential to obtain a professional degree in accounting. it is important to note the difference between a first-year b. accounting conversion student, i.e. a student registered as a b. accounting student from year one (as investigated in rossouw and brink’s [2020] article) and a third-year b. accounting conversion student, i.e. a student who completed a b. commerce degree (in management accounting or financial accounting) and enrolled for a b. accounting conversion year (as investigated in the study at hand). rossouw and brink’s (2020) research investigated only the success rates of first-year b. accounting conversion students and identified third-year b. accounting conversion students’ success rates as an area for further research. rossouw and brink (2020) also highlighted that the current body of knowledge contains minimum research that focuses on accounting conversion students. the literature on accounting students’ success at tertiary level focuses predominantly on first-year accounting students. these studies (rowlands, 1988; christopher & debreceny, 1993; gul & fong, 1993; van rensburg, penn & haiden, 1998; gammie, paver, gammie & duncan, 2003; hartnett, römcke & yap, 2004; du plessis, müller & prinsloo, 2005; müller, prinsloo & du plessis, 2007; baard et al., 2010; papageorgiou & townsend, 2014; bosua & van der nest, 2015; papageorgiou, 2017) investigated various factors that might have an influence on the success of first-year accounting students. these factors include preuniversity knowledge (such as whether students had accounting as a subject at secondary school), class attendance, home language and language proficiency, race, gender, motivation and personality type to name a few. specifically relevant to this study (refer to the secondary research question) is the impact of prior accounting knowledge on the success of accounting http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 1602021 39(2): 160-174 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) students at tertiary level. existing research indicates that accounting at school level is significantly associated with students’ academic performance in first-year undergraduate accounting (baard et al., 2010; bosua & van der nest, 2015; papageorgiou, 2017). limited research has been expanded to investigate accounting students’ performance or success rates beyond the first year at university (including a conversion year). various studies (byrne & willis, 2003; jackling & calero, 2006; tan & laswad, 2006; jackling & keneley, 2009; sugahara, hiramatsu & boland, 2009; baxter & kavanagh, 2013; wen, hao & bu, 2015; tang & seng, 2016; bekoe et al., 2018; owusu et al., 2018) have examined students’ attitudes towards accounting as a discipline and explored the dominant factors that influence students’ intentions to major in accounting and consequently to pursue a career in accounting. under review in this study were third-year b. accounting students who converted from a b. commerce degree to majoring in accounting. these students decided to change their major to accounting in order to pursue a career in accounting. what drove this decision and whether these factors had an impact on the conversion students’ success rates were excluded from the scope of the study. lubbe (2017: 60) makes a strong argument that the existing business and accounting undergraduate curriculum for the chartered accountant qualification should be extended from a three-year period to a period of four years, giving students the option of more time to master the core curriculum and competencies required. lubbe (2017: 60) states that the extended curriculum will enable students to progress in accordance with their level of preparedness and personal circumstances, maximising their chances of successfully completing the degree. the third-year b. accounting conversion students will also extend their three-year undergraduate period to four years in order to qualify as a ca(sa). even though these students in effect have an extra year to master the undergraduate b. accounting curriculum this will not necessarily guarantee success and therefore calls for further investigation. davidson (1976: 104-106) examined article clerks’ pass rates in the professional examination (i and ii) in order to predict the chances of a student becoming a chartered accountant in great britain. this study did not consider the student’s performance at tertiary level. khomsiyah and lindrianasari (2017) examined the correlation between student’s education and the likelihood of these students becoming a chartered accountant. the study found that the universities where the students obtained their b. accounting qualifications were not correlated with ca membership, but other factors such as the length of time since graduation, type of employment and occupation indicated a correlation. as discussed later in the paper, b. accounting conversion students’ performance beyond the b. accounting honours degree was excluded from the scope of this study. current accounting education literature focuses strongly on the impact of prior accounting knowledge on student performance at tertiary level. several studies (schroeder, 1986; eskew & faley, 1988; farley & ramsay, 1988; keef & hooper, 1991; gul & fong, 1993; rhode & kavanagh, 1996; rankin et al., 2003; uyar & güngörmüş, 2011) investigated the impact of secondary school accounting on first-year undergraduate accounting students’ performance and agreed that accounting at school level is significantly associated to students’ performance. van rensburg et al. (1998) and yee lee (1999) expanded their studies on the impact of prior accounting knowledge on university accounting performance to include accounting i and ii. both studies reached the same conclusion, namely that students with prior accounting knowledge significantly outperformed students without high school accounting qualification http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 1612021 39(2): 161-174 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 brink & rossouw an investigation into the success rates of third-year accounting conversion students in accounting i, but not in accounting ii (van rensburg et al., 1998: 93; yee lee, 1999: 301). papageorgiou and halabi (2014) investigated student performance in accounting modules throughout the three years of a bachelor of accounting science degree offered through distance education. their study found that prior accounting knowledge was significantly associated with student performance in their first year of study but not thereafter (papageorgiou & halabi, 2014: 211). limited research has studied the impact of prior accounting knowledge on university performance beyond the first academic year. it is evident from all the available literature that there is a gap in the existing body of knowledge on the success rates of third-year b. accounting conversion students en route to becoming a ca(sa). 3. research problem the success rates of third-year b. accounting conversion students at a residential university has not yet been established. this means that prospective third-year b. accounting conversion students currently have no frame of reference to make an informed decision on whether to attempt the conversion year. student counsellors and student advisers are also currently in the dark when it comes to advising these students and providing them with previous statistics on success rates. the b. accounting conversion year admission requirements (namely to have only a b. commerce degree in management accounting or financial accounting and no specific minimum marks required) have also not been tested to establish whether students that meet the current requirements are eventually successful. 4. research objective and questions the objective of this research was to analyse the results of third-year b. accounting conversion students in order to conclude on their success rate of being admitted to the b. accounting honours programme and obtaining a b. accounting honours degree. based on the extensive literature review provided in the previous section, four research questions were developed to meet the research objective, as indicated below. 4.1 primary research questions the following primary research questions were formulated: 1. what is the success rate of third-year b. accounting conversion students in meeting the b. accounting honours admission requirements at the first attempt? 2. what is the success rate of third-year b. accounting conversion students in obtaining a b. accounting honours degree in the minimum amount of time? 3. what is the minimum mark for the four main subjects and the minimum average mark (for the four main subjects weighted with reference to module credits) to obtain in third-year b. commerce to ensure that the b. accounting honours admission requirements have been met at the first attempt? 4. what is the minimum mark for the four main subjects and the minimum average mark (for the four main subjects weighted with reference to module credits) to obtain in third year b. commerce in order to successfully obtain a b. accounting honours degree in the minimum amount of time? http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 1622021 39(2): 162-174 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 4.2 secondary research question the admission requirements at su for b. commerce in management accounting or financial accounting do not require students to have completed accounting at secondary school level (stellenbosch university, 2019), meaning that it is possible that the third-year b. accounting conversion students did not have accounting at secondary level. based on the great focus that current literature on accounting education places on the impact of prior accounting knowledge at tertiary level (as discussed in the literature review), it was deemed worthwhile to compare third-year b. accounting conversion students’ performance, based on whether they had studied accounting at secondary school. the following secondary research question was formulated: how does the performance of third-year b. accounting conversion students with accounting at secondary level compare with the performance of conversion students with no prior accounting knowledge? 5. contribution of the research the study was motivated by the need to provide prospective third-year b. accounting conversion students with statistics of previous conversion students’ success rates to enable them to make an informed choice about converting to b. accounting. it was felt that this research can also assist student counsellors and student advisers when dealing with prospective third-year b. accounting conversion students who have to decide whether to convert to b. accounting. the aim was that the study would not only indicate the success rates of third-year b. accounting conversion students, but also the minimum mark for the four main subjects and the minimum average mark to obtain in the b. commerce degree that will (statistically) ensure that the b. accounting honours admission requirements will be met and that a b. accounting honours degree will eventually be obtained. this research would therefore inform these students what is expected of them to be successful in their purpose of becoming a ca(sa). this information might reduce the risk of prospective third-year b. accounting conversion students failing or of wasting additional year(s) of study. the research will also serve as a benchmark to test the current third-year b. accounting conversion year admission requirements and will indicate whether these requirements (namely to have only a b. commerce degree in management accounting or financial accounting and no specific minimum marks) should perhaps be adjusted. the research described is novel, as such research has not yet been undertaken. 6. scope and limitations the results of the third-year b. accounting conversion students were analysed for a fixed period (five years) only and at one south african university. the study also only included thirdyear b. accounting conversion students’ success rate for meeting the b. accounting honours admission requirements and obtaining their b. accounting honours degree. excluded from the scope of the study was, therefore, whether these students eventually qualify as a ca(sa). the findings of the study (specifically relating to primary research question 4) also excluded students who had successfully completed the conversion year and decided to enrol for a b. accounting honours degree at another university. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 1632021 39(2): 163-174 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 brink & rossouw an investigation into the success rates of third-year accounting conversion students even though the study was conducted in south africa (where the problem was identified) it is believed that the findings can also be applied internationally for comparative study purposes should a similar study be done internationally. the reported results are not generalisable beyond the scope of the study itself, however, the research provides valuable information to prospective third-year b. accounting conversion students (and/or their lecturers or student counsellors and advisers) and can be applied to inform b. accounting conversion year admission decisions at su. 7. research methodology this research study used a quantitative research method, focusing on third-year b. accounting conversion students’ success rates for meeting the b. accounting honours admission requirements upon completing the conversion year and obtaining their b. accounting honours degree (a total minimum two-year period). in order to answer the research questions, the relevant data were collected from the university’s central computer system after ethics approval was obtained. the methodologies of previous studies on accounting students’ performance involved data relating to various periods. data that were retrieved covered one year (baard et al., 2010; oosthuizen & eiselen, 2012), two years (bosua & van der nest, 2015), three years (van rensburg et al., 1998) and five years (papageorgiou, 2017). to ensure that a comprehensive study would be done it was decided, based on papageorgiou’s (2017) research, to analyse a period of five years as well. this would eliminate the risk of a too small population that might cause insignificant relationships. in order to meet the research objective and to answer the research questions it was necessary to use data for the years in which a student could have completed his or her conversion year and the b. accounting honours year (a total minimum of two years) by the time of this study. the study therefore identified all third-year b. accounting conversion students (registered as special students) from 2013 to 2017. these students would have completed their b. commerce degree in 2012 to 2016, attempted the conversion year in 2013 to 2017 and attempted b. accounting honours in 2014–2018 (assuming the minimum time frame). the data retrieved included the marks the third-year b. accounting conversion students obtained in their: • b. commerce third year for the four main subjects (2012–2016), and • b. accounting conversion year for the four main subjects (2013–2017), and • b. accounting honours year final mark (2014–2018), and whether they had studied accounting at secondary level. the four main subjects for the third-year b. commerce in management accounting programme are financial accounting 389 (48 credits), management accounting 388 (48 credits), taxation 388 (24 credits) and auditing 388 (24 credits). the four main subjects for third-year b. commerce in financial accounting are the same as for b. commerce in management accounting, except for auditing 378 (24 credits) (instead of auditing 388). the average mark for third-year b. commerce was calculated with reference to module credits for each subject (as indicated above). the four main subjects for third-year b. accounting are financial accounting 379, management accounting 378, taxation 399 and auditing 378. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 1642021 39(2): 164-174 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) if a third-year b. accounting conversion student repeated their b. commerce third year before registering as a special student those marks were also retrieved (2012–2016) for purposes of answering primary research questions 3 and 4. if a third-year b. accounting conversion student did not meet the b. accounting honours admission requirements at the first time attempt and decided to attempt the year again, those marks were also retrieved (2014–2017) for purposes of determining whether the student met the b. accounting honours admission requirements at a later stage. if a third-year b. accounting conversion student did not pass b. accounting honours the first time around and decided to attempt the year again, those marks were also retrieved (2015 to 2018) for purposes of determining whether the student passed b. accounting honours at a later stage. it must be noted that third-year b. accounting conversion students who successfully complete the conversion year and meet the su b. accounting honours admission requirements might decide to conclude their studies and not attempt the year or they might enrol at another university for a b. accounting honours degree. these students were excluded from the results from answers to research question 4, as discussed in section 6 (scope and limitations). for the purposes of determining the success rate in this study, a successful student was defined as a third-year b. accounting conversion student who meets the b. accounting honours admission requirements upon completing the conversion year and who passes the b. accounting honours year (obtaining a minimum mark of 50% for each b. accounting honours subject) consecutively after their conversion year (i.e. in a minimum time of two years). 8. statistical analysis the data were processed and analysed using the statistica application (version 13.4.0.14) and the r package ‘proc’ version 1.15.3. receiver operating curve (roc) analyses were used to establish cut-off points. sensitivity and specificity ratios were determined. an analysis of variance (anova) test was used for secondary research question 1 where a 5% significance level was applied. the statistician involved in the research project is satisfied that the statistical calculations and interpretation of the statistics are correct. 9. research results and findings the population selected for testing consisted of all third-year b. accounting conversion students for the period 2013–2017 and resulted in 134 data items. the third-year b. accounting conversion year also requires students to enrol for mercantile law. even though mercantile law is not a subject considered in the b. accounting honours admission requirements, students still need to pass this subject. from the population of 134 students, only 14 students failed mercantile law, but this was not the reason why the b. accounting honours admission requirements were not met. mercantile law was therefore irrelevant to this study. primary research question 1: what is the success rate of third-year b. accounting conversion students in meeting the b. accounting honours admission requirements at the first attempt? for the five years under review, 37% (50/134) of the third-year b. accounting conversion students met the b. accounting honours admission requirements at the first attempt. of the 63% (84/134) of the third-year b. accounting conversion students who did not meet the b. accounting honours admission requirements the first time, 19% (26 students) completed the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 1652021 39(2): 165-174 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 brink & rossouw an investigation into the success rates of third-year accounting conversion students conversion year a second time and only 13% (18 students) then met the b. accounting honours admission requirements. the remaining 43% (58 students) did not attempt the conversion year a second time and never met the b. accounting honours admission requirements. these results, which are based on information available at the date of the study, are summarised in table 1 below. table 1: summary of third-year b. accounting conversion students’ admission to b. accounting honours number percentage students who met the b. accounting honours admission requirements at the first attempt 50 37% students who did not meet the b. accounting honours admission requirements at the first attempt 84 63% students who met the b. accounting honours admission requirements after completing the conversion year a second time 18 13% students who did not meet the b. accounting honours admission requirements after completing the conversion year a second time 8 6% students who never met the b. accounting honours admission requirements 58 43% 134 100% primary research question 2: what is the success rate of third-year b. accounting conversion students in obtaining a b. accounting honours degree in the minimum amount of time? only 19% (26/134) of the third-year b. accounting conversion students managed to obtain their b. accounting honours degree in the minimum amount of time. of the 81% (108 students) who did not manage to obtain their b. accounting honours degree in the minimum amount of time, 17% (22 students) obtained the degree after attempting honours more than once, completing the conversion year twice or both. eleven per cent (15 students) never obtained a b. accounting honours degree after attempting honours more than once, completing the conversion year twice (8 students who never met the b. accounting honours admission requirements) or both. fifty-three per cent (71 students) never obtained a b. accounting honours degree. some of them never met the b. accounting honours admission requirements (58 students), and some met the b. accounting honours admission requirements but never attempted the year (3 students) or attempted it once (10 students) without success. these results, which are based on information available at the date of the study, are summarised in table 2 below. table 2: summary of third-year b. accounting conversion students’ b. accounting honours graduation status number percentage students who obtained a b. accounting honours degree in the minimum amount of time 26 19% http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 1662021 39(2): 166-174 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) number percentage students who did not obtain a b. accounting honours degree in the minimum amount of time 108 81% students who obtained a b. accounting honours degree in more than the minimum time frame 22 17% students who did not obtain a b. accounting honours degree after attempting the conversion year and/or honours more than once 15 11% students who did not obtain a b. accounting honours degree 71 53% 134 100% eventually, 36% (48/134) of the third-year b. accounting conversion students managed to obtain their b. accounting honours degree (irrespective of how long it took) and therefore had the opportunity to become a ca(sa). considering the results of primary research questions 1 and 2, namely that 37% of the third-year b. accounting conversion students met the b. accounting honours admission requirements at the first attempt and only 19% of the third-year b. accounting conversion students managed to obtain their b. accounting honours degree in the minimum amount of time, it is clear that the current conversion year admission requirements are insufficient. this matter will be further explored after considering the results of primary research questions 3 and 4. responses to primary research question 1 revealed that there were 68 students who met the b. accounting honours admission requirements (irrespective of how long it took). in order to obtain an idea of the success rate of the third-year b. accounting conversion students who met the b. accounting honours admission requirements only these students’ results were analysed. thirty-eight per cent (26/68) of the third-year b. accounting conversion students who met the b. accounting honours admission requirements managed to obtain their b. accounting honours degree in the minimum amount of time. of the 62% (42 students) who did not manage to obtain their b. accounting honours degree in the minimum amount of time, 33% (22 students) obtained the degree after attempting honours more than once, completing the conversion year twice. ten per cent (7 students) never obtained a b. accounting honours degree after attempting honours more than once, completing the conversion year twice or both. nineteen per cent (13 students) never obtained a b. accounting honours degree. some of these students met the b. accounting honours admission requirements but never attempted the year (3 students) or attempted it once (10 students) without success. these results, which are based on information available at the date of the study, are summarised in table 3 below. table 3: summary of the success rate of third-year b. accounting conversion students who met the b. accounting honours admission requirements number percentage students who obtained a b. accounting honours degree in the minimum amount of time 26 38% students who did not obtain a b. accounting honours degree in the minimum amount of time 42 62% http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 1672021 39(2): 167-174 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 brink & rossouw an investigation into the success rates of third-year accounting conversion students number percentage students who obtained a b. accounting honours degree after more than two years after completing the first conversion year 22 33% students who did not obtain a b. accounting honours degree after attempting the conversion year and/or honours more than once. 7 10% students who did not obtain a b. accounting honours degree 13 19% 68 100% eventually, 71% (48/68) of the third-year b. accounting conversion students who met the b. accounting honours admission requirements managed to obtain their b. accounting honours degree (irrespective of how long it took). primary research question 3: what is the minimum mark for the four main subjects and the minimum average mark to obtain in third-year b. commerce to ensure that the b. accounting honours admission requirements have been met at the first attempt? roc analyses were done for all the main subjects as well as the average obtained in third-year b. commerce to predict optimal cut-off marks in order to meet the b. accounting honours admission requirements. again, the four main subjects for third-year b. commerce in management accounting are financial accounting 389, management accounting 388, taxation 388 and auditing 388. the four main subjects for third-year b. commerce in financial accounting are the same as for b. commerce in management accounting, except for auditing 378 (instead of auditing 388). the roc analyses were also used to determine the area under the curve (auc), which is an indicator of the overall accuracy of the predictions made. the roc analyses and aucs are summarised in table 4 below. based on the results for the average mark obtained for the four main subjects, the roc and auc results can be interpreted as follows: if a student obtains an average of 58.5% for their four main subjects in b. commerce, they should be able to meet the minimum admission requirements for b. accounting honours at the first attempt. this finding is considered 93% accurate (with auc reported as 0.93). the sensitivity of 88% indicates that in 88% of the cases reported, students who achieved an average of 58.5% (or more) were successful in meeting the admission requirements at the first attempt. the specificity of 83% indicates that 83% of the cases reported, where students who obtained less than 58.5%, were correct in predicting that they would not meet the minimum admission requirements. the interpretations for all the individual subjects reported in table 4 follow the same explanation as for the average mark. table 4: receiver operating curve analyses with area under curve for b. accounting honours admission requirements being met at the first time attempt cases reported roc sensitivity specificity auc financial accounting 389 134 62.5 82% 83% 0.89 management accounting 388 134 57.5 76% 82% 0.87 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 1682021 39(2): 168-174 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) cases reported roc sensitivity specificity auc taxation 388 134 61.5 78% 80% 0.89 auditing 388 35 52.5 67% 60% 0.67 auditing 378 99 51.5 89% 88% 0.91 average for four main subjects 134 58.5 88% 83% 0.93 it is clear from the above that the current conversion year admission requirements (namely to have only a b. commerce degree in management accounting or financial accounting and no specific minimum marks requirement) are insufficient. it is therefore recommended that the admission requirements for b. accounting conversion students be adjusted, possibly requiring a subminimum average mark and/or sub-minimum marks for individual subjects. under the assumption that b. accounting conversion students mainly opt for the conversion year with the aim of obtaining a b. accounting honours degree, the results from primary research questions 3 and 4 should be considered when recommending possible sub-minimum marks to be included in the conversion year admission requirements. these sub-minimum marks will therefore be discussed after considering the results of primary research question 4. primary research question 4: what is the minimum mark for the four main subjects and the minimum average mark to obtain in third-year b. commerce in order to obtain a b. accounting honours degree in the minimum amount of time? roc analyses were done for all the main subjects as well as the average obtained in thirdyear b. commerce to predict optimal cut-off marks in order to obtain a b. accounting honours degree in the minimum time (i.e. in one year after admission requirements have been met). the roc analyses were also used to determine the auc, which is an indicator of the overall accuracy of the predictions made. the roc analyses and aucs are summarised in table 5 below. again, the results are interpreted based on the average mark for the four main subjects in b. commerce in financial accounting or b. commerce in management accounting. the results indicate that if a student obtains an average of 61.5% for their four main subjects in b. commerce, they should be able to obtain their b. accounting honours degree in the minimum amount of time. this finding is considered 85% accurate (with auc reported as 0.85). the sensitivity of 81% indicates that in 81% of the cases reported, students who achieved an average of 61.5% (or more) for their four main subjects in b. commerce were successful in obtaining the b. accounting honours degree in the minimum time. the specificity of 83% indicates that in 83% of the cases reported, where students who obtained less than 61.5%, the prediction that they would not obtain the degree in the minimum amount of time was correct. the interpretations for all the individual subjects reported in table 5 follow the same explanation as for the average mark. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 1692021 39(2): 169-174 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 brink & rossouw an investigation into the success rates of third-year accounting conversion students table 5: receiver operating curve analyses with area under curve for b. accounting honours degree in minimum time cases reported roc sensitivity specificity auc financial accounting 389 134 64.5 77% 75% 0.83 management accounting 388 134 57.5 89% 72% 0.89 taxation 388 134 66.5 73% 83% 0.82 auditing 388 35 59.5 63% 85% 0.77 auditing 378 99 51.5 83% 70% 0.85 average for four main subjects 134 61.5 81% 83% 0.89 considering the results obtained from answering primary research questions 3 and 4, some adjustments to the current conversion year admission requirements are proposed. it is suggested that a sub-minimum average mark of 61.5% be required for the four main subjects. financial accounting and management accounting are the two subjects with the highest allocated credits and also the two subjects contributing most to the b. accounting honours admission requirements. it is therefore recommended that these two subjects be included in the conversion year admission requirements. a further requirement is a sub-minimum mark of at least 64.5% for financial accounting 389 and a sub-minimum mark of at least 57.5% for management accounting 388. these recommendations are based on statistical results from the roc’s and reflect the average marks that result in optimal success prediction. if these averages were to be lowered (or increased) from what the authors recommend for the admission requirements, it should be noted that the auc will change and may lead to lowered success rates. secondary research question: how does the performance of third-year b. accounting conversion students with accounting at secondary level compare with the performance of conversion students with no prior accounting knowledge? the results of the population were further analysed, based on whether these students studied accounting as a subject in secondary school. eighty per cent of the population (107/134) had studied accounting as a subject at secondary school. their average marks for b. commerce were compared with the average marks of third-year conversion students who did not study accounting as a subject at secondary school (refer to table 6 below). the difference in these participants’ average scores for their four main b. commerce subjects combined, as well as for each individual subject, were not considered significant. table 6: b.accounting conversion students and whether (or not) they had studied accounting at secondary school accounting at secondary school no accounting at secondary school f f p-value b. accounting conversion students 107 27 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 1702021 39(2): 170-174 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) accounting at secondary school no accounting at secondary school f f p-value average for four main subjects 58.91% 58.67% 0.20 0.66 average for financial accounting 389 62.29% 61.07% 0.27 0.61 average for management accounting 388 56.77% 57.15% 0.05 0.82 average for taxation 388 61.02% 60.81% 0.01 0.92 average for auditing 388 56.32% 54% 0.65 0.43 average for auditing 378 53.13% 53.8% 0.21 0.65 it seems as though the deficit for students who did not study accounting at secondary school (versus those who did study it) had been eradicated by the time that these students obtained their b. commerce (either in management accounting or financial accounting) degree. the results for conversion students who did study accounting at secondary school, versus those who did not, were therefore not analysed any further. 10. summary, conclusion and recommendations stellenbosch university offers students who graduated with a b. commerce management accounting or b. commerce financial accounting degree the opportunity to do a conversion year. the purpose of the conversion year is to meet the b. accounting honours admission requirements in order to become a ca(sa). a quantitative research method was applied to analyse and conclude on the success rate of b. accounting conversion students admitted to the b. accounting honours programme and their success rate in obtaining a b. accounting honours degree. the population selected for testing consisted of all third-year b. accounting conversion students for the period 2013–2017 and resulted in a population of 134 items. based on the population of 134 students it was found that 50 (37%) b. accounting conversion students met the b. accounting honours requirements after their first attempt. eventually, another 18 (13%) b. accounting conversion students met the requirements in more than one year. it was concerning to note that 66 (49%) b. accounting conversion students never met the admission requirements. based on the population of 134 students it was found that only 26 (19%) b. accounting conversion students obtained a b. accounting honours degree in the minimum amount of time. another 22 (17%) b. accounting conversion students obtained a b. accounting honours degree in more than the minimum time frame. the remaining 86 (64%) b. accounting conversion students never managed to obtain their b. accounting honours degree (including 66 b. accounting conversion students who never met the b. accounting honours admission requirements). it was determined, with the use of roc analyses, that an average mark of 58.5% for the four main b. commerce subjects would ensure (based on a 93% auc accuracy level) that a b. accounting conversion student meets the b. accounting honours admission requirements at the first attempt. if this average mark is lifted to 61.5% for the four main b. commerce subjects, this in turn would ensure (based on an 89% auc accuracy level) that the b. accounting honours degree is obtained in the minimum amount of time. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 1712021 39(2): 171-174 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 brink & rossouw an investigation into the success rates of third-year accounting conversion students considering the poor success rate of the b. accounting conversion students, it was deemed valuable to reconsider the conversion year admission requirements for prospective b. accounting conversion students. based on this study, it is therefore recommended that the conversion year admission requirements should include a sub-minimum average mark for the four main subjects of 61.5% and/or a sub-minimum mark of 64.5% for financial accounting 389 and a sub-minimum mark of 57.5% for management accounting 388. this will ensure that the probability of b. accounting conversion students wasting a year (or more) of study will be reduced. as a secondary contribution, it was also noted that conversion students’ results are not influenced by their exposure to accounting as 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financial accounting courses. european journal of economics and political studies, 4(2): 139–153. van rensburg, p., penn, g. & haiden, m. 1998. a note on the effect of secondary school accounting study on university accounting performance. south african journal of accounting research, 12(1): 93–98. https://doi.org/10.1080/10291954.1998.11435081 viviers, h. 2020. "bridging" from under graduated accountancy-related degrees to pgdip (old "cta"). e-mail to s.m. brink, 7 october. available e-mail: herman.viviers@nwu.ac.za. wen, l., hao, q. & bu, d. 2015. understanding the intentions of accounting students in china to pursue certified public accountant designation. accounting education, 24(4): 341–359. https://doi.org/10.1080/09639284.2015.1051561 yee lee, d.s. 1999. strength in high school accounting qualification and student performance in university-level introductory accounting courses in hong kong. journal of education and business, 74(5): 301–306. https://doi.org/10.1080/08832329909601702 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.12 https://doi.org/10.1080/10291954.1998.11435081 mailto:herman.viviers@nwu.ac.za https://doi.org/10.1080/09639284.2015.1051561 https://doi.org/10.1080/08832329909601702 4422021 39(1): 442-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 the teaching mix matters: rethinking veterinary education at a south african university abstract globally, the covid-19 pandemic necessitated a shift in teaching and learning practices. the university of pretoria in south africa was not entirely unprepared for this event, since the university’s teaching strategy had gradually evolved into a hybrid delivery mode. in the faculty of veterinary science, however, the practical nature of the discipline brought about unique challenges in implementing hybrid-mode teaching and learning methodologies. an intervention was thus required to empower lecturers in the faculty to adapt their teaching methodologies to incorporate the hybrid teaching and learning mode. the aforementioned intervention was gleaned from a professional development framework developed by brown et al. (2010) with a definite focus on core knowledge, areas of activity and core values. long before the covid-19 pandemic, the university’s educational support department developed and presented a tailor-made course, called “the mix matters: step up your hybrid teaching”, to enhance lecturers’ hybrid teaching skills. unknowingly, the workshop amply prepared the lecturers for what was still to come in 2020. the aim was to provide participants with a deep understanding of the complexities involved and the skills required for revising and quality-assuring academic courses for the hybrid-teaching environment. using a mixed-method research design, this paper elucidates how the training and its learning outcomes inspired the lecturers to implement the hybrid teaching and learning mode that conforms to the university of pretoria’s teaching and learning model. a noticeable paradigm shift was accomplished once the initial scepticism had turned into enthusiasm and positive attitudes. keywords: hybrid learning; academic development; professional development; technology-enhanced learning; inquiry-based learning; covid-19. 1. background and objectives the faculty of veterinary science (henceforth the faculty) at the university of pretoria in south africa (up) faces unique challenges with regard to teaching and learning methodologies. it has to implement the hybrid delivery mode that up has adopted as its preferred teaching strategy, thereby including sophisticated educational technology as a pivotal part of its teaching and learning strategy (cf. hybrid teaching and learning in context). owing to the nature of author: dr m. pienaar1 dr e. mostert 1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i1.27 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 442-470 published: 12 march 2021 received: 9 november 2020 accepted: 20 january 2021 https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7007-4177 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1298-353x http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 4432021 39(1): 443-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 pienaar & mostert the teaching mix matters veterinary training, the implementation of appropriate educational technology, open education resources (oer) and applicable electronic resources calls for innovative teaching and learning practices (cf. hybrid teaching and learning in context). the faculty has to accommodate the growing number of student intake in the bachelor of veterinary science (bvsc) and the diploma veterinary nursing (dvn) (now the bachelor of veterinary nursing (bvetnurs)) programmes while simultaneously embracing the inclusion of educational technology as a pivotal part of its teaching and learning strategy. the implementation of the hybrid teaching and learning mode falls within the realm of faculty development, which has emerged as an important field of practice that includes staff, academic and educational development (warman, pritchard & baillie, 2015) (cf. hybrid teaching and learning in context). the department for education innovation (ei) plays an integral part across the university in preparing lecturers for this mode of teaching. ei is mainly responsible for the academic development of lecturers in all faculties; and to accomplish this, each faculty has an educational consultant (ec) and an instructional designer (id). when the veterinary school at the university of bristol implemented a new curriculum, warman et al. (2015) investigated the academic development of staff and made a number of important findings. firstly, implementing academic development strategies improved teaching performance and staff morale. secondly, switching from a teacher-led to a student-centred teaching and learning approach improved students’ learning experiences, thus making it essential, although (owing to the practical nature of the discipline) veterinary science education had never been associated with the extensive use of educational technology combined with a student-centred teaching and learning approach. thirdly, lecturers’ educational technology skills had to be enhanced to enable them to incorporate the hybrid teaching and learning mode as a method of teaching. ei staff in up’s veterinary science faculty therefore designed a workshop, “the mix matters: step up your hybrid teaching” (the workshop), for this purpose. unknowingly this workshop prepared the lecturers in this faculty to perform optimally during the covid-19 pandemic. the workshop fits into the bigger context of the up teaching model and up’s teaching and learning approach, which endeavours to equip up graduates with attributes such as critical thinking skills, innovation, ethical reasoning and digital fluency skills (to name but a few) – skills essential for participation in the fourth industrial revolution (4ir). the hybrid approach plays an essential role in developing these qualities in the up students (department for education innovation, 2020). the up teaching and learning approach is also based on inquiry-based learning (ibl) and community-based learning. ibl results in deep, active learning (cf. hybrid teaching and learning in context). students control how they develop their knowledge base through cognitive engagement that requires the application of higher-order thinking skills (cleveland-innes & wilton, 2018). the hybrid teaching and learning mode extends the classroom experience before and after class, in accordance with the three phases of the up model, namely students’ preparation before class, their engagement during class and the consolidation phase after class (department for education innovation, 2020) (cf. hybrid teaching and learning in context). hybrid teaching allows lecturers to mix the best of contact and online delivery, and to shift the instructional sequence in ways that create a new learning environment for their students, thereby making teaching and learning more effective (department for education innovation, 2019). the intended outcome is improved student success and lower student retention, which supports up’s campaign the finish line is yours (fly@up) that encourages 4442021 39(1): 444-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) students to finish their studies within the minimum time. one of the slogans that promote the fly@up campaign is “the learning mix matters”, which focuses students’ attention on the hybrid teaching and learning mode. the same phrase and emphasis appear in the workshop designed to entice and persuade veterinary science lecturers to use this mode of teaching by enhancing their hybrid teaching skills and emphasising that the teaching mix is important. as rapanta et al. (2020) and mohamedbhai (2020) emphasise, online learning is not merely adding notes and study material or recorded lectures to an online platform, and thus it requires that lecturers be trained in the pedagogy of delivering online teaching. although this model was developed prior to any indication of an impending global pandemic, it created an avenue by which lecturers could continue their teaching activities with minimal disruption as universities globally shut down their campuses and suspended contact academic activities to prevent transmission of the covid-19 virus. some months after having temporarily halted academic programmes, it became clear that the pandemic would last for some time to come. its effect on higher education would remain for many years and all institutions of higher education should be prepared to address the consequences (mohamedbhai, 2020). south africa’s largest universities responded by migrating to online teaching. since most had already implemented some learning management system (lms), most lecturers made the transition fairly smoothly.1 this was confirmed by professor mamokgethi phakeng, vice-chancellor (vc) of the university of cape town (uct), who stated that online teaching had been used at uct for some time already (opinion, 2020). professors tawana kupe and adam habib, vcs of up and the university of the witwatersrand (wits) respectively, both indicated that the blended (at up, the hybrid) mode of teaching would remain and a higher-education environment consisting of only face-to-face teaching would no longer be viable. they concurred that the influence of covid-19 on higher-education institutions would be global and would include a revised teaching approach (opinion, 2020). kupe rightly emphasised that training the lecturers increases the success of hybrid teaching (opinion, 2020). the implementation of a blended or hybrid model is challenging for lecturers and students (vaughan, 2007) since lecturers require support to redesign their courses to fit this mode of delivery. aiming to address this challenge, the workshop observed four main objectives: • to provide participants with a deep understanding of the complexities of revising and quality-assuring academic courses; • to teach participants the skills needed for planning, designing and quality-assuring new courseware using a set of different teaching and learning methodologies, including ibl; • to have each participant compile detailed course plans and an assessment plan to take away from the workshop; and • to have each participant develop some electronic resources that would enhance the flipped classroom approach in a hybrid teaching and learning mode (cf. hybrid teaching and learning in context). a professional development framework developed by brown et al. (2010), with the focus on the following domains: core knowledge, areas of activity and core values forms the theoretical framework and objective of this paper. this paper will highlight the kind of training ei provided 1 sadly, many students had problems transitioning to the “online only” environment, inter alia owing to limited access to electronic devices and to the internet. attempts were made to assist students, but this topic warrants a separate discussion. 4452021 39(1): 445-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 pienaar & mostert the teaching mix matters to empower lecturers to change their teaching practices to incorporate the hybrid teaching and learning mode based on this framework. it will also reveal the research undertaken by ei staff to find, and to teach lecturers applications or working solutions that would enable them to teach “smarter” in order to enhance the quality of learning in a hybrid teaching and learning mode. in our faculty, the workshop had serendipitously prepared up lecturers well for online teaching, during the covid-19 pandemic and beyond. 2. hybrid teaching and learning in context the literature contains a plethora of definitions that describe online learning in its many different varieties, making it nearly impossible to provide a definitive definition for online learning in the context of hybrid teaching and learning. online learning is just a mode of delivery. in its simplest manifestation, it is any form of learning conducted (partly or entirely) over the internet. a computer or any other type of device that can connect to the internet would be required to access all or some information and for collaboration between students and lecturers (bates, 2016). online learning supports a number of teaching methods in a continuum, as depicted in figure 1 below (bates, 2016). figure 1: teaching continuum (bates, 2016) modern teaching and learning covers a broad spectrum of methodologies and activities, as shown in figure 1. blended teaching and learning occurs when some forms of technology are utilised as classroom and teaching aids, which could include online learning, thus making blended learning a sub-branch of online learning (bates, 2016). figure 1 also shows that technology-enabled learning is an important component of blended learning. technology-enabled learning is the application of digital technology to teaching and learning in an educational context (kirkwood & price, 2016). the intention of technologyenabled teaching and learning is for learning to result from the lecturers’ and students’ interaction with the technology (kirkwood & price, 2016). it furthermore suggests that educational technology can enhance teaching and learning. although there are no explicit statements in the literature that can vouch for the aforesaid enhancements, the researchers are of the opinion that technology-enhanced teaching and learning could positively impact the effectiveness of hybrid teaching and learning (cf. the workshop; analysis and interpretation of questionnaires – day 2, day 4). it is also obvious that in blended learning, face-to-face teaching and learning is combined with some online learning, making it a web-enhanced teaching and learning approach (vernadakis et al., 2011). “this mix [which has a defined up standard as to how many courses go online] is influenced by many factors, including the course outcomes, student characteristics, lecturer’s experience and teaching style, discipline, developmental level, and online resources” (dziuban, moskal & hartman, 2004). at up, in basic terms, a course is considered mainly face-to-face when the online component is about 4462021 39(1): 446-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) 30% and the face-to-face-component about 70%. conversely, a fully online course has an online component of about 70% and a face-to-face contact component of about 30%. the hybrid is the various mixes available and possible within the aforementioned parameters. in up’s hybrid teaching and learning mode, internet resources and up’s blackboard learntm learning management system (lms), branded as clickup, offer students and lecturers easier access to learning content through the use of various tools available to them. the lms and internet resources also allow access to material and to experts who might not have been available otherwise, resulting in a learning environment where students are being actively engaged and are potentially learning more than they would have if a traditional linear teaching model had been used (cf. the workshop). the literature reveals that, often, the terms “blended learning” and “hybrid learning” are used interchangeably. although both approaches combine lecturer-led classes with online instruction, the literature does show a subtle difference between blended and hybrid learning. blended learning goes beyond e-learning (steffens & reiss, 2010); it is not achieved by merely adding educational technology to a course. blended learning requires an integrated plan of student-centred classroom instruction and online learning that is collaborative, accessible, can be personalised (cleveland-innes & wilton, 2018) and it is a continuous process (vernadakis et al., 2011). hybrid learning focuses on the most effective way to deliver a course to a student in an interactive and engaging manner, ensuring qualitatively better interaction between student and lecturer and between peers (microtek, 2017) (cf. analysis and interpretation of questionnaires – day 1; post-workshop survey). the combination described above would normally manifest as a flipped classroom approach in a hybrid teaching and learning mode (cf. discussion). this approach requires that students prepare for their face-to-face sessions online and outside the classroom and these preparations usually entail a number of activities (bates, 2016). doing so saves teaching time and allows for more student-centred activities that would encourage deep learning. hybrid learning requires a total redesign of the face-to-face classroom experience, where students spend 50% or more of their time online and the lecturer determines the most effective ways of utilising online and face-to-face activities (bates, 2016). the emphasis on active learning and a reduction of classroom time in the blended learning model is known as hybridisation, which “mixes” the online component and the face-to-face components, creating an environment highly conducive to student learning (vaughan, 2007) (cf. hybrid teaching and learning in context). hybrid courses furthermore utilise significant e-learning activities in addition to traditional classroom face-to-face teaching and learning (vernadakis et al., 2011). the up teaching and learning model requires that students prepare before they attend classes (or synchronous online learning activities), as this enables the new teaching to build actively on their prior knowledge. a plethora of technological developments can prepare students and make learning active and meaningful – these proved extremely useful during the covid-19 pandemic. an inquiry-based approach to teaching and learning is advocated, because research shows that inquiry-based learning motivates students, stimulates critical thinking, and creates opportunities for developing a deeper understanding of concepts. the research also emphasises the importance of explaining: “the learning strategies for which there is evidence of effectiveness include ways to help students retrieve information and encourage them to summarize and explain material they are learning” (national academies of sciences, engineering, and medicine, 2018:106). the final phase of the flipped classroom approach is where consolidation takes place after class. assignments after class provide further 4472021 39(1): 447-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 pienaar & mostert the teaching mix matters opportunity to consolidate students’ knowledge and organise it into meaningful hierarchical patterns. this mastery of concepts facilitates the transfer of learning and allows students to use their knowledge and distributed resources to solve problems. the above described up teaching model is depicted in figure 2 below (department for education innovation, 2020) (cf. the workshop). figure 2: up teaching and learning model (department for education innovation, 2020) up’s teaching and learning approach is based on ibl, hybrid learning and communitybased learning (cf. analysis and interpretation of questionnaires – day 1). the university adopted this approach primarily because it believes that, pedagogically, its benefits (see pp. 2–3) outweigh those of the traditional (only) face-to-face teaching mode. (in addition, it also proved its advantage under lockdown circumstances.) however, it is important to note that hybrid teaching and learning activities should best suit the course, the students’ needs and the curriculum requirements, making it a student-centred approach that is accessible and where the focus is on pedagogy, not technology. for this reason, up favours a mix of blended in-person, blended online, flipped and technology-enabled classes that integrate a range of higher-order learning opportunities for deep and meaningful learning. in the faculty of veterinary science, the aforementioned approaches to hybrid teaching and learning at up was associated with specific challenges. the first challenge – time, access and awareness (warman et al., 2015) – manifested in various ways. academic staff found it difficult to fulfil all of the duties (academic, clinical and research) expected of them and covid-19 only aggravated the situation (rapanta et al., 2020). a lack of access to technology also emerged as a problem: not owning a device (mostly students) and/or occasionally unreliable internet connectivity. since teaching activities had to continue during lockdown, up supplied devices and (free) data where possible, but the situation made it difficult for 4482021 39(1): 448-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) lecturers to choose teaching and learning activities with the available technology in ways that would allow all students to participate in an engaged manner. some lecturers and students lacked the technological skills and competence required for using and applying technology in innovative ways. from a lack of awareness, lecturers sometimes neither focused on the proper use of educational technologies, nor provided experience with online coursework from a student perspective. a lack of skills to meaningfully engage with learning modalities also negatively affected lecturers and students’ motivation. huge workloads, also in hybrid sections of courses, had the same demotivating effect. in some courses, weak online components were another concern raised. the pandemic forced academics to suddenly take on the additional role of instructional designer in order to continue their teaching activities successfully (rapanta et al., 2020). the second challenge is that of motivation and resistance to change (warman et al., 2015). to succeed in bringing about change there must be a personal desire to change, knowledge regarding how to change, a supportive environment and rewards for changes made. not all lecturers were positive about the hybrid teaching and learning modality and not all felt equipped to drastically change their teaching. providing some training and assistance (as per the workshop) was therefore crucial for hybrid teaching and learning to succeed. (covid-19 eventually swayed those who still resisted change.) the third challenge is relevance, recognition and reward (warman et al., 2015). it was important to ensure that the workshop was relevant and addressed the lecturers’ needs. the feedback at the end of each day was therefore crucial to determine how relevant the lecturers had found it (cf. data capturing and analysis). the fourth challenge is the evaluation of programme success (warman et al., 2015) (cf. post-workshop survey). ongoing research is required to gauge the impact of the workshop on the success rates of the two undergraduate programmes. the workshop emphasised two of the pedagogical principles (i.e. theories that govern good educational practice) that are essential for veterinary education, namely active learning (cf. hybrid teaching and learning in context), and valid and reliable assessment (may & silvafletcher, 2015) (cf. analysis and interpretation of questionnaires – day 3). a third pedagogical principle, moving away from lecturer-centred learning to a model of student-centred active learning, was entrenched as one of the goals of the workshop (cf. background and objectives; the workshop). fourthly, the use of technology is the preferred platform in a hybrid model (may & silva-fletcher, 2015), but even though “e-learning technology developed around the hybrid paradigm is beneficial for improving the quality of learning, [it] is useless if it is not based on pedagogical prescriptions” (vernadakis et al., 2011:189). 3. research method 3.1 research design the research is vested in the pragmatic research paradigm that allowed the researchers to use multiple research methods and different forms of data collection and analysis (creswell, 2009). the researchers were concerned with applications or working solutions to enable smarter teaching in the faculty’s hybrid teaching and learning approach that aligns with the university’s teaching and learning model. combined qualitative and quantitative research designs (mixed-methods research) were used to collect and analyse textual and numerical 4492021 39(1): 449-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 pienaar & mostert the teaching mix matters data. subsequently, the research results were used to inform the way the hybrid model of teaching and learning was implemented in the faculty. 3.2 literature review the researchers consulted international and national primary and secondary sources to obtain information for addressing the purpose of the study. published articles, books and official documents that are relevant to the field of study were studied (cf. hybrid teaching and learning in context). 3.3 research process and ethical considerations the population for this research comprised the lecturing staff in the faculty. the sample group comprised those lecturers and library staff who were directly involved in teaching the bvsc and dvn (now the bvetnurs) programmes (n=37) during 2017 and 2018. the researchers applied target sampling to select potential research participants, focusing on a specific group of lecturing staff members. in 2019, the participants were surveyed to determine to what extent they had implemented the training received in the workshop. the researchers were granted ethical clearance by up’s research ethics committee in the faculty of humanities (gw20180731hs). the researchers also obtained informed consent from the deputy dean: teaching and learning of the faculty of veterinary science and from the participants. confidentiality and anonymity were observed. participation was voluntary, and participating staff members were informed that they could withdraw from the study at any time without any consequences to them. 3.4 data capturing and analysis the research was based on sound data and findings obtained from the study in a scientific manner. qualitative data and quantitative data were collected through self-generated online questionnaires. the researchers argued that the questionnaires were appropriate for gathering data since it would elicit relevant information on the effectiveness and the success of the workshop. the questionnaires were created in qualtricsxm, up’s official online survey software. the questions included a variation of closed and open-ended question types to generate useful information (maree & pietersen, 2007) about the level of success of the workshop in terms of the implementation of hybrid teaching and learning. upon completion of the questionnaires, the participants submitted their responses to the qualtricsxm server. data that could inform the effectiveness of the workshop were collected. in the course of the workshop, participants were given opportunities to provide feedback on each day’s presentations and activities. the feedback focused on the participants’ level of satisfaction with the applicability and the presentation of the topics. the participants also shared what they had, and had not, enjoyed. to avoid preconceptions, assumptions and biases, the researchers continually observed dependability, reliability, credibility and conformability. the researchers followed the guidelines proposed by shenton (2004) and addressed dependability by reporting in detail the processes within the study. the reporting of the processes would ensure that if future researchers repeat the study, and not necessarily gain the same result, the research will still be reliable. credibility was provided by instilling honesty in the participants when contributing data. the participants were also allowed to refuse to participate in the research to ensure that the data collection involved only those willing to participate and offer their feedback. furthermore, short, daily debriefing sessions of each day’s sessions during the 4502021 39(1): 450-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) workshop also ensured credibility. through the debriefing sessions, the researchers were able to test their interpretations and recognise their biases. conformability was confirmed by only reporting the experiences of the participants in the findings of the study. 3.5 the workshop despite the practical nature of the veterinary discipline, the faculty adhered to up’s decision to change its teaching strategy to a hybrid delivery mode and thus switched to a hybrid teaching and learning mode. the student-centred teaching and learning strategies implemented had to be innovative, considering the specific nature of the discipline. ei had to empower lecturers to enhance their teaching and educational technology skills for this purpose. the researchers therefore designed and developed the workshop with this in mind. the rationale behind the workshop was to support the academic staff members in revising their course materials to: • develop courses that support hybrid teaching and learning; • embrace technology; • implement the up teaching model; and • use a set of different teaching and learning methodologies, including ibl (cf. hybrid teaching and learning in context). the aim was to guide the participants to develop a deep understanding of the complexities involved and the skills required for revising and quality-assuring academic courses for the hybrid teaching environment. the workshop provided participants with some of the skills required to plan, design and quality-assure new courseware by using a set of different teaching and learning methodologies, including ibl (as stated above under the rationale). at the conclusion of the workshop, the participants would also have been encouraged to adopt the flipped classroom approach in a hybrid teaching and learning mode (cf. hybrid teaching and learning in context). the workshop programme contained strategically selected topics that the researchers presented using the hybrid mode of delivery. these topics included: • the core principles that need to shape the revision of the courses to support hybrid teaching and learning. this topic focused on hybrid teaching and learning characteristics, the integration of information communication technology (ict) into the lesson design, e-learning, a brief overview of the use and development of oer, ibl lesson design and student-centric methodologies. • the latest learning theories. this topic offered an outline of how today’s youth have developed different ways of learning. it also included suggestions for how lecturers should design their teaching and learning environment to support the students’ learning preferences. • a definite focus on how to ensure alignment of the outcomes indicated in the curriculum documents with the needs of an existing module. curriculum critique was also encouraged. • existing course analysis. participants were provided with an interactive course evaluation tool and asked to analyse an existing course. the tool queries course length, course content size, relevance and currency of the content, opportunities for student practise, opportunities for interacting with external experts, pedagogical approaches, use of technology, opportunities for “anywhere, anytime learning”, etc. 4512021 39(1): 451-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 pienaar & mostert the teaching mix matters • hybrid and blended learning. the researchers exposed the participants to exemplary use of up’s lms to create learning environments that use e-learning and face-to-face sessions optimally. • lms functionalities. participants identified those lms tools that they could utilise most effectively. • developing a learning pathway. participants were guided how to develop a learning pathway that would guide students through the blended learning experience. where necessary and applicable, the sequence of learning events was clearly shown. • alternative pedagogies. participants interrogated examples of ibl and had to consider how they might use the same approaches for at least one subtopic of their new design. participants also had to consider how it would affect their assessment strategies. • assessment strategies. the researchers exposed the participants to accountable assessment by discussing the context in which assessment takes place as well as the educational impact of assessment. participants were given the task of developing an assessment plan for their modules that would also indicate to what extent it aligns with the module outcomes and teaching methods, taking into account biggs’ constructive alignment model (biggs, 2003). various types of assessment tasks and tools (including e-assessment tools) were discussed as well as how to implement assessment in a hybrid model. • assessment planning document. participants planned their assessment tasks in group activities and ascertained to what extent they would align with the module outcomes and teaching methods. • exposure to oer and creative commons licensing. • creating digital resources. participants were encouraged to create their own digital resources, such as videos and narrated powerpoint presentation slide decks. the participants had access to a vast array of resources they could utilise. the resources included ict and educational technology tools, including office mix, turningpoint clicker technology, turnitin (to be used as a tool for improving students’ writing) and video-editing software. 4. results and discussion the data was obtained through self-developed online questionnaires and were analysed and interpreted in order to determine the value of the workshop in terms of explicating the skills required for implementing the hybrid mode of teaching. out of a possible 37 participants (n=37), 29 participants (78%) completed the online questionnaires regarding their experiences of the workshop. participants were also requested to complete a follow-up questionnaire to obtain information on the implementation of the hybrid model in their teaching practice and 14 (38%) participants completed the latter questionnaire. the analysis and interpretation of the data obtained are presented below as per each section of the questionnaires. the researchers analysed the data obtained by using a descriptive approach in the form of frequencies, percentages and graphical techniques. feedback was obtained from the participants on their level of satisfaction about the applicability and the presentation of the topics. the participants were also offered the opportunity to share the things they enjoyed and did not enjoy each day. in addition, they could also make suggestions for improvements to any aspect of the workshop sessions. 4522021 39(1): 452-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) 4.1 analysis and interpretation of questionnaires the workshop was presented several times in 2017 and 2018, and based on participants’ feedback (in both the questionnaire and in discussions), some changes were made to the chronological presentation and the content of the various topics. the instruments are available in appendices a to d. day 1 the following main topics were addressed on day 1: • developing a learning pathway • ibl and the hybrid teaching and learning approach • latest learning theories • existing course analysis • using a planning template the results of day 1 of the first workshop are presented in figure 3. it can be summarised as follows: of the 29 participants who completed the questionnaire, 14 (48%) were satisfied to some extent, and 15 (52%) were very satisfied with the applicability of the session on the hybrid teaching and learning approach. concerning the latest theories of learning, 16 (55%) of the participants were satisfied, whereas 13 (45%) were very satisfied. twenty-seven participants (93%) were satisfied to very satisfied with the applicability of the planning template and the existing course analysis activity. the participants appreciated the opportunity to work with the template and analyse their existing courses. figure 3: day 1: applicability of the topics it is encouraging that most of the sessions on day 1 were very well received. this is underscored by a selection of three comments stating what the participants enjoyed: 4532021 39(1): 453-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 pienaar & mostert the teaching mix matters the facilitators applied hybrid teaching and learning methods for the workshop, which provided a practical way of approaching hybrid teaching and learning for participants. i like the group participation and the application during the course of the principles being taught. very creative and diverse course materials – good demonstration of how materials can be presented to students. suggestions for improvement of day 1 included, “time for discussions among participants should be increased to help improve peer-to-peer learning”. day 2 the following topics were addressed on day 2: • alternative pedagogies • hybrid learning examples in the lms • lms functionalities • updating the planning template on day 2, the researchers presented sessions on the implications of using hybrid learning, alternative pedagogies and the lms functionalities. participants also had the opportunity to update their planning templates. all participants indicated that they were satisfied with the sessions. although all participants had been using the lms, it became evident that they were not familiar with all the functionalities and tools the lms has to offer. one participant commented, “i was amazed as to how i am under-utilizing clickup”. participants appreciated the time that was made available to plan and develop their courses. participants could also implement some of the tools and functionalities, as mentioned above. an overwhelming majority (92%) was satisfied or very satisfied with the presentation of these topics. feedback on the applicability of the topics is presented in figure 4. 4542021 39(1): 454-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) figure 4: day 2: applicability of the topics the data indicated that most of the participants regarded the sessions as worth their while. discussions on hybrid learning, the video-conferencing tool in the lms (collaborate), alternative pedagogies, badges and new teaching modalities were well received. some participants expressed the need for dedicated hands-on technical assistance. since ei regularly runs courses that teach the relevant skills, participants should have acquired them before attending the workshop. the opportunity to work on the development of their modules was highly appreciated, and one participant commented, “i enjoy the space to listen to ideas and theories and to apply them immediately”. the only negative comment about day 2 was, “it is a very labour intensive exercise to fully develop a learning pathway!” participants nevertheless found the topics useful and some requested follow-up workshops. day 3 this day was dedicated to various topics on assessment, including: • an overview of the basic principles of assessment • constructive alignment • bloom’s taxonomy • the analysis of a written paper • different assessment methods • the development of an assessment plan all participants indicated that they found the topics and the presentation worthwhile, as is shown in figure 5 below. what participants valued most was their critical evaluation of the composition of existing examination papers, using bloom’s taxonomy. a raised awareness of the importance of changing their assessment strategies when using the hybrid teaching model was achieved. as comments from two participants aptly put it, 4552021 39(1): 455-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 pienaar & mostert the teaching mix matters this made me realise that my assessment is not up to scratch yet!! but after this it will be better. i am going to fundamentally change my assessment plan after today’s lectures. participants joined in the discussions and activities and had to develop an assessment plan during the session – an activity that they found valuable, as the comments show. i found the practical application of what we have learned, through evaluating and reviewing our own assessment documents, to be very useful and it will help me to be cognizant of key factors i should take into consideration when i develop my assessments. i now have a better understanding of the importance of incorporating an assessment plan in course/module planning. the participants likewise found the discussion of their assessment plans with their peers useful, as expressed in the comment, “the discussions with more experienced participants was helpful”. figure 5: day 3: applicability of the topics day 4 day 4 was dedicated to an introduction to oer and to developing alternative learning resources. the programme focused on: • defining oer • finding existing oer applicable to veterinary science training • analysing the value of oer • determining the level of adaptation needed to make the resource appropriate for a veterinary course 4562021 39(1): 456-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) • an investigation into ‘use’, ‘re-use’ and ‘remix’ strategies • creative commons licensing, and the implications of what each license permits as depicted in figure 6 below, only one participant was dissatisfied with the applicability of the session on oer, while 100% rated the session on creating resources as either applicable or highly applicable. the data denotes that participants were less familiar with oer and that they found the information about oer licensing and searching for oer very practical. one participant expressed the view that “there are many opportunities for contributing to oer as limited open veterinary anatomy resources are available”. figure 6: day 4: applicability of the topics the following were positive aspects of the workshop and were well received by the participants: • exposure to examples and demonstrations of how to develop a variety of digitised resources; and • the opportunity to apply principles to which they were exposed during the week with some assistance from the researchers. the opportunity to create their own resources was experienced as highly applicable. one participant indicated that, creating resources was the highlight of the week, perhaps the best educational session ever. this was one of the most valuable aspects of the course which was overall extremely interesting and useful. suggestions for improvements were mostly about the time available and the fact that it was the last session of the workshop: “i honestly don’t feel like being creative at this time of the day and week!“ it was suggested that follow-up lunchtime sessions be offered to assist participants 4572021 39(1): 457-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 pienaar & mostert the teaching mix matters with applying the tools to which they were exposed during the workshop. comments from the participants will be taken into consideration when planning future workshops. 4.2 post-workshop survey the participants were asked (in 2019) to complete a follow-up online survey to determine to what extent they had implemented the training received in the workshop. the instrument is available in appendix e. only fourteen of the 37 participants (38%) (n=14) completed the survey and the results are depicted in figure 7. figure 7: implementation of the hybrid model three participants (21%) extensively implemented hybrid teaching while 11 participants (79%) moderately implemented it. ten participants (71%) extensively implemented the lms and four participants (29%) moderately implemented it. all participants implemented bloom’s taxonomy (36% extensively and 64% moderately) as part of their teaching practice. two participants (14%) did not develop an assessment plan while 10 participants (71%) moderately implemented an assessment plan. participants provided more detail on how they improved their teaching practice after the workshop. the comments below (quoted verbatim) summarise their feedback: i started with a new module and it was difficult to implement most of the things due to time limitations. some of the ideas and skills learned were implemented and further ones will be incorporated as my experience and confidence improves. the course was extremely useful in understanding the students and their needs better. one needs time to really implement all aspects. i change my lectures to narrated powerpoints combined with an enquiry-based and case-based class discussion. bloom’s taxonomy is always kept in mind when developing assessments. 4582021 39(1): 458-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) teaching in all my modules contains at least 25% hybrid content i use clickup to host videos, formative quizzes and ispring lectures, use the module page function a lot make extensive use of the study guide when setting assessments and planning lectures construct assessment questions with awareness of the bloom’s level, try to use the mixture of levels appropriate to which year the students are in/ post grad vs undergrad use ispring. learnt how to get videos from youtube into clickup and make it available for the students. use crossword and word search as revision for students. i found [t]he [m]ix [m]atters workshop very helpful to construct my module vrp 400 – i just didn’t have time to use everything, but i do go back to the mm clickup page and research what i would to do next! awesome workshop! 4.3 discussion the main aim of the workshop was to provide participants with the skills necessary for implementing the hybrid teaching and learning mode, which implied an active learning, student-centred approach in a hybrid teaching model (cf. background and objectives). the implementation of such a blended or hybrid model is challenging for lecturers and students (vaughn, 2007; warman et al., 2015) (cf. hybrid teaching and learning in context). the lecturers require support in redesigning their courses to fit this mode of delivery. addressing this challenge was one of the objectives of the workshop (cf. background and objectives). the findings discussed above clearly attest to the success of the workshop. as the workshop was presented, a complete change in attitude was observed, especially from the clinicians. initially, the participants were quite cynical and sceptical and doubted that the workshop would fulfil all of their needs. although one participant evaluated the workshop as having been a negative experience, describing it as “going outside my comfort zone”, the researchers translate it as a positive comment since it shows that the workshop succeeded in its goal to get lecturers to think differently about their teaching practice. in the end, when the initial scepticism turned into enthusiasm and positive attitudes, the researchers had achieved their goal of bringing about a paradigm shift. as one participant stated, “these four days were extremely stimulating and have encouraged me to get more involved in all the facets of hybrid learning and i am motivated to share with our lecturers and non-believers in our department.” the participants realised that the hybrid and flipped classroom modes of delivery provided them with greater flexibility in terms of time and improved learning outcomes (cf. hybrid teaching and learning in context). hybrid teaching and learning, and the flipped classroom approach, implied better time management by the lecturers and increased participation in the learning process and engagement by the students. the participants also came to realise that the hybrid model would require that they should continually revisit their teaching methodologies (cf. hybrid teaching and learning in context). the researchers believe that despite the concerns about a lack of time, support (cf. analysis and interpretation of questionnaires – day 2) and the use of appropriate resources raised by participants (cf. hybrid teaching and learning in context), the workshop had succeeded in facilitating the acquisition of new and improved teaching and technology skills (cf. hybrid teaching and learning in context). these skills proved essential for the continuation of teaching activities in the faculty during the lockdown due to covid-19. although some concerns about 4592021 39(1): 459-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 pienaar & mostert the teaching mix matters the risk associated with delivering a course in a hybrid mode remain, the researchers believe that the knowledge and skills gained by those lecturers who attended the workshop would have – and did – enable them to manage their teaching during and post-covid-19 well, especially with occasional ei support if and when required. 5. conclusion the workshop succeeded in enabling a successful paradigm shift regarding the implementation of hybrid teaching and learning in the faculty. the renewed efforts of faculty management to involve ei in training academic staff to pave the way for hybrid learning also proved to be successful (cf. analysis and interpretation of questionnaires; discussion). the knowledge gained about hybrid teaching and learning stood the faculty as a whole in good stead when the covid-19 pandemic caused considerable disruption in the academic offering. the conclusion can therefore be drawn that the mix matters workshop was highly significant, because it successfully prepared the faculty’s teaching staff to better implement up’s hybrid teaching and learning model. furthermore, the workshop also prepared the staff to be able to withstand the influence and impact of a pandemic, even though such an event had not been envisaged at the time when the workshop was presented. the researchers wish to encourage and create greater collaboration among academic staff in order to drive hybrid learning in the faculty to uncharted heights in the period beyond covid-19. references bates, t. 2016. online learning for beginners: 1. what is online learning? available at http:// www.tonybates.ca/2016/07/15/online-learning-for-beginners-1-what-is-online-learning/ [accessed 11 july 2017]. biggs, j. 2003. aligning teaching for constructing learning. the higher education academy. available at https://www.researchgate.net/profile/john_biggs3/publication/255583992_ aligning_teaching_for_constructing_learning/links/5406ffe70cf2bba34c1e8153.pdf [accessed 20 april 2018]. brown, n., bower, m., skalicky, j., wood, l., donovan, d., loch, b., bloom, w. & joshi, n. 2010. a professional development framework for teaching in higher education. in m. devlin, j. nagy & a. lichtenberg (eds.). research and development in higher education: reshaping higher education, 33: 133–143. cleveland-innes, m. & wilton, d. 2018. guide to blended learning. canada: athabasca 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https://doi.org/10.3138/jvme.1214-124r1 4612021 39(1): 461-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 pienaar & mostert the teaching mix matters appendix a mix matters: day 1 start of block: day 1 evaluation the mix matters workshop: day 1’s evaluation instructions for completing the evaluation: your feedback on the mix matters workshop is highly valuable to us. please complete both sections of the evaluation questionnaire at the end of the day. section a: quantitative evaluation indicate your level of satisfaction regarding the applicability of the topics to your discipline: very satisfied (1) satisfied (2) dissatisfied (3) very dissatisfied (4) learning pathway (1) o o o o ibl and the hybrid teaching and learning approach (2) o o o o latest learning theory (3) o o o o existing course analysis (4) o o o o the planning template (5) o o o o indicate your level of satisfaction regarding the presentation of the topics below: very satisfied (1) satisfied (2) dissatisfied (3) very dissatisfied (4) learning pathway (1) o o o o ibl and the hybrid teaching and learning approach (2) o o o o latest learning theory (3) o o o o existing course analysis (4) o o o o the planning template (4) o o o o section b: qualitative evaluation: comment on any aspects of the sessions using the following guiding prompts: positive feedback: ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ 4622021 39(1): 462-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ negative feedback: ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ any suggestions for the improvement of any aspects of the sessions? ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ end of block: day 1 evaluation 4632021 39(1): 463-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 pienaar & mostert the teaching mix matters appendix b mix matters: day 2 start of block: day 2 evaluation the mix matters workshop: day 2’s evaluation instructions for completing the evaluation: your feedback on the mix matters workshop is highly valuable to us. please complete both sections of the evaluation questionnaire at the end of the day. section a: quantitative evaluation indicate your level of satisfaction regarding the applicability of the topics to your discipline: very satisfied (1) satisfied (2) dissatisfied (3) very dissatisfied (4) alternative pedagogies (1) o o o o hybrid learning (2) o o o o clickup functionality (3) o o o o updating the planning template (4) o o o o indicate your level of satisfaction regarding the presentation of the topics below: very satisfied (1) satisfied (2) dissatisfied (3) very dissatisfied (4) alternative pedagogies (1) o o o o hybrid learning (2) o o o o clickup functionality (3) o o o o updating the planning template (4) o o o o section b: qualitative evaluation: comment on any aspects of the sessions using the following guiding prompts: positive feedback: ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ 4642021 39(1): 464-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) negative feedback: ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ any suggestions for the improvement of any aspects of the sessions? ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ end of block: day 2 evaluation 4652021 39(1): 465-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 pienaar & mostert the teaching mix matters appendix c mix matters: day 3 start of block: day 3 evaluation the mix matters workshop: day 3’s evaluation instructions for completing the evaluation: your feedback on the mix matters workshop is highly valuable to us. please complete both sections of the evaluation questionnaire at the end of the day. section a: quantitative evaluation indicate your level of satisfaction regarding the applicability of the topics to your discipline: very satisfied (1) satisfied (2) dissatisfied (3) very dissatisfied (4) assessment (all sessions) (1) o o o o indicate your level of satisfaction regarding the presentation of the topics below: very satisfied (1) satisfied (2) dissatisfied (5) very dissatisfied (6) assessment (all sessions) (1) o o o o section b: qualitative evaluation: comment on any aspects of the sessions using the following guiding prompts: positive feedback: ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ negative feedback: ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ 4662021 39(1): 466-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ any suggestions for the improvement of any aspects of the sessions? ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ end of block: day 3 evaluation 4672021 39(1): 467-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 pienaar & mostert the teaching mix matters appendix d mix matters: day 4 start of block: day 4 evaluation the mix matters workshop: day 4’s evaluation instructions for completing the evaluation: your feedback on the mix matters workshop is highly valuable to us. please complete both sections of the evaluation questionnaire at the end of the day. section a: quantitative evaluation indicate your level of satisfaction regarding the applicability of the topics to your discipline: very satisfied (1) satisfied (2) dissatisfied (3) very dissatisfied (4) oer (both sessions) (1) o o o o creating resources (both sessions) (2) o o o o indicate your level of satisfaction regarding the presentation of the topics below: very satisfied (1) satisfied (2) dissatisfied (3) very dissatisfied (4) oer (both sessions) (1) o o o o creating resources (both sessions) (2) o o o o section b: qualitative evaluation: comment on any aspects of the sessions using the following guiding prompts: positive feedback: ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ negative feedback: ____________________________________________________________ 4682021 39(1): 468-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ any suggestions for the improvement of any aspects of the sessions? ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ end of block: day 4 evaluation 4692021 39(1): 469-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 pienaar & mostert the teaching mix matters appendix e mix matters post-workshop survey start of block: post-workshop evaluation in which year did you attend the mix matters workshop? o 2017 (1) o 2018 (2) to which extent did you implement any of the following in your teaching practice? extensively (1) moderately (2) not at all (3) hybrid teaching (1) o o o open education resources (2) o o o inquiry-based learning (3) o o o a learning pathway (4) o o o clickup (5) o o o assessment plan (6) o o o constructive alignment (7) o o o bloom’s taxonomy (8) o o o developed videos (9) o o o sourced videos (10) o o o narrated powerpoint presentations (11) o o o lecture recordings (12) o o o other resources (13) o o o 4702021 39(1): 470-470 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.27 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) elaborate on your answers provided in question 2. ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ any other comments. ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________ end of block: post-workshop evaluation _heading=h.gjdgxs an analysis of family-school collaboration in preventing adolescent violence in urban secondary schools cj gerda bender university of pretoria, pretoria, south africa gerda.bender@up.ac.za annemarie emslie university of pretoria, pretoria, south africa the purpose of this article is to describe how school staff members, learners and parents collaborate to prevent adolescent learner violence in two different urban secondary schools. the increase in acts of interpersonal learner violence has a destructive effect on the safe and positive development of young people. empirical evidence indicates that successfully addressing the issues that can contribute to the development of interpersonal violence requires taking into account the developmental stages of the learners as well as exploring the impact of the learner’s immediate social environment. a qualitative descriptive and exploratory case study, rooted in the sociological interpretive research paradigm, was conducted to explore how school staff members, learners and parents collaborate to prevent learner violence at two urban secondary schools. contrary to current belief, the participating learners explicitly expressed their need for the support and guidance of their parents and also the school staff members in withstanding the peer and societal pressures that can result in their acting in aggressive or violent ways at school. keywords: youth, violence prevention, school climate, collaboration, eco-systemic perspective, qualitative approach, sociological interpretive paradigm, content analysis, framework approach introduction considerable research has explored the school context in an effort to identify the risk factors contributing to academic failure and anti-social behaviour in schools. however, there are major areas that still need to be addressed, including research into the school climate as it relates to the extent that school staff members either promote or undermine positive learner development and effective family-school partnerships (furlong, morrison, cornell & skiba, 2004). much of the responsibility for violence prevention falls on the shoulders of teachers who may themselves feel ill equipped to fulfil this responsibility or who may fear the behaviour of their own learners (kollapan, 2006). a general conclusion in several reviews of positive youth promotion is that there is a need for a more comprehensive prevention approach which should include families and caregivers (adelman & taylor, 2006; christie, nelson & jolivette, 2004; smith & sandu, 2004). according to bronfenbrenner (1979), taking a person-in-context approach to violence prevention allows for a more complete understanding of the development and prevention of aggression among the youth. the main goal of the current study was two-fold: firstly to explore and describe how school staff members, learners and parents collaborate to prevent violence in urban secondary schools and secondly, to provide these stakeholders with a better understanding of the multi-faceted problem of addressing school violence, which should guide them in adopting appropriate strategies for preventing violence. the focus of this article is directed by the following research question: “how do school staff members, learners and parents collaborate to prevent violence in urban secondary schools?” the purpose of this article is to describe how school staff members, learners and their parents collaborated to prevent violence in two different urban secondary schools. perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201056 conceptualisation: youth violence, school climate and family-school collaboration the definition of youth violence that was adopted for this study is that of the world report on violence and health (2002), namely “the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, exerted by or against children, adolescents or young adults, aged 10 to 29, which results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment or deprivation” (in krug, dahlberg, mercy, zwi & lozano, 2002:5). youth violence includes aggressive behaviour (i.e. verbal abuse, bullying, hitting or fighting) as well as serious violent or delinquent acts such as aggravated assault, robbery, rape and homicide (mercy, butchart, farrington & cerdá, 2002). tangiuri (1968) defines climate as the total environmental quality within an organisation, consisting of the following four dimensions: ecology (physical and material aspects), milieu (social dimensions created by characteristics of groups of people), culture (social dimensions created by belief systems, values, cognitive structures and meaning), and social system (social dimensions created by the relationships of people and groups) (tangiuri, 1968:2 in anderson, 1982:368-420). in the context of this study, the term school climate was used for explaining the interrelatedness and interdependence of all the dimensions of the school, namely its ecology, milieu, culture and existing social systems, as suggested by tangiuri (1968). as boyd (1992) explains, bringing all these dimensions of the school together creates its environment or context. according to cowan and his colleagues (2004), a common definition of the term collaboration is to work together towards a common goal or set of goals. family-school collaboration is a reciprocal dynamic process which occurs among systems (e.g. families, schools) and/or individuals (e.g. parents, educators) who cooperate in making decisions toward common goals and solutions related to learners (cowan, swearer & sheridan, 2004:201). in the context of this study, the influence that the collaborative efforts among the school staff members, learners and their families had on the prevention of violence was explored. the whole school and community could collaboratively develop positive links with each other to establish a multi-disciplinary networking approach to combating violence in secondary schools, which could result in safer schools and communities (kgobe & mbokazi, 2008) theoretical framework: eco-systemic perspective the theoretical lens through which the research was contextualised includes the typology of youth violence combined with an eco-systemic perspective, which is an integration of systems as well as ecological theories. systems theory in its broadest sense is the interdisciplinary study of social organisations, such as schools (donald, lazarus & lolwana, 2002). in the context of this study, the school as a system is regarded as a set of units with the capacity to interact within the scope of the school, family and community environments. these interactions influence all the different parts of the system. bronfenbrenner’s ecological model of child development (1979) explains child development as happening within four nested systems, namely micro, meso, exo and macro systems. interpersonal violence viewed in the ecological framework is seen as the outcome of the interaction among factors at all four of these levels, namely individuals, close relationships, communities and society. therefore, from an eco-systemic perspective, the way that the adolescent learner behaves and develops will be influenced by his/her relationships with school staff members, peers, family members and community members (ecological theory) (bronfenbrenner, 1979:2005). the internal characteristics of an adolescent and the external barriers in the systems in the environment (i.e. home and school) continuously develop and interact with one another (systems theory) (von bertalanffy, 1968). research design and methodology the specific research design selected was an exploratory and descriptive case study of a qualitative nature and was aimed at providing an in-depth description of the case (creswell, 2002). as an interpretive, inductive form of research, case studies explore the details and meanings of experiences and do not usually attempt to test a prior hypothesis. instead, we attempted to identify important patterns and themes in the data. a case study examines a case in detail by employing multiple sources of data found in the bender & emslie — an analysis of family-school collaboration 57 settings (mcmillan & schumacher, 2006). we elected to conduct an in-depth investigation into the effect that collaborative efforts among school staff members, learners and their parents have on preventing learner violence in the urban secondary school setting. purposeful selection strategies mcmillan and schumacher (2006) suggest that if the research focus is on a complex micro process (such as school-based learner violence), the sites should be purposefully selected to locate the people involved in that particular phenomenon. the rationale for purposefully choosing two secondary schools in the area where we reside was that although they are situated in the same urban area, their learner populations come from vastly different socio-economic backgrounds as well as representing different racial compositions. the first school is a public, co-educational, english-medium secondary school situated in a middle to lower income residential area. the second school is a co-educational english-medium private school situated in an affluent residential area. according to durlak and colleagues (2007), the nature of adolescent violence can be linked to the community in which a school is situated (durlak, taylor, kawashima, pachan, dupre, celio et al., 2007). empirical evidence indicates that more violent incidents happen at urban secondary schools (leoschut & burton, 2006). it was important to select participants from all the stakeholders at both school sites, as each of these subsystems plays an integral role in the school system. therefore, the population units of analysis for this study included five selected school staff members, a class of grade 9 learners (n = 22, 16 respectively) and six parents from each school. the rationale for choosing specifically grade 9 learners was that empirical evidence suggests that the age for the highest risk of the initiation of serious violent behaviour is between 15 and 16 years (grade 9) (elliot, 1994). a combination of purposeful sampling strategies was employed to select information-rich cases for in-depth study. the selection strategies included criterion sampling and snowball sampling. the goal was not to generalise the findings to a population, but to obtain insight into the phenomenon by purposefully selecting individuals to maximise understanding as well as being willing to participate (miles & huberman, 1994). data collection strategies as qualitative research is concerned with understanding social phenomena from the participants’ perspectives, we employed multi-method strategies to obtain valid data from the participants (mcmillan & schumacher, 2006). after gaining entry to the two school sites, initial in-depth, semi-structured pilot interviews were conducted with the two principals at both sites. this enabled the researchers to build rapport with them and to evaluate the applicability of the interview guide. a four-phase sequential data collection process was followed, in which data were collected from different sources using multiple methods at both the respective schools. in phase one, the researchers conducted key informant interviews with four selected grade 9 teachers at both schools, using the interview guide (polkinghorne, 2005). group interviews were conducted with a class of grade 9 learners at both school sites in phase two. individual, dyad and triad interviews with six parents at both school sites were conducted in phase three. all interview data were audiorecorded, transcribed (verbatim) and incorporated into the data analysis process. the data collection process was concluded by reviewing school documents pertaining to the collaborative nature of the school violence prevention strategies (i.e. school prospectus, code of conduct, grade 9 life orientation curriculum, health and safety policy). comparing the various data sources provided a balanced and multi-faceted inquiry, resulting in enhancing the trustworthiness of the study (bryman, 2008). data analysis procedures: framework approach to give a transparent account of the analytical process we analysed the data manually by following the specific qualitative analytical steps of the “framework approach” described by ritchie and colleagues (2003). this approach develops a hierarchical thematic framework which is used to classify and organise the data according to key themes, concepts and emergent categories (ritchie, spencer & o’conner 2003:219). the researchers applied constant comparative content analysis to select, categorise, compare perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201058 and interpret the collected data from the semi-structured in-depth interviews and the group interviews. the research questions, interview guide, theoretical frameworks, prior knowledge gained through the literature review and the data themselves were used as a guide in coding and interpreting the data. reviewing and analysing the two schools’ documents provided triangulation of the data and concluded the data analysis process (mcmillan & schumacher, 2006). rigour and ethical considerations graneheim and ludman (2004) suggest that credibility, dependability, confirmability and transferability should be applied when reporting findings after conducting qualitative content analysis, as was the case in the current study. the triangulation of data collection methods and sources and the use of “member checking” increased the credibility or internal validity of the study (bryman, 2008:377). we provided enough descriptions so that readers would be able to determine how closely their situations matched the research situation, and hence whether the findings could be transferred (merriam, 1998). adopting an auditing process by keeping complete records for peer review added to the dependability of the study. stakeholder reports contributed to the confirmability of the study by indicating that possible researcher bias did not sway the research findings (bryman, 2008). as strydom (in de vos 2002:66) indicates, it is important to develop an appropriate informed procedure for obtaining consent for each investigation. before starting our fieldwork, we obtained written informed consent from the department of education, the principals and governing bodies of both the selected schools as well as ethical clearance from the faculty research ethics committee at the university of pretoria. the purposefully selected school staff members, grade 9 learners and parents were given participant information letters describing the purpose of the study and the intended use of the data as well as requesting their voluntary participation. informed written consent was obtained from all three population units of analysis as well as proxy consent from the parents/guardians of the minor learners who participated in the focus groups. confidentiality and anonymity were respected and adhered to during and on completion of the study. anonymity was achieved by using pseudonyms as well as by analysing and publishing the data in ways that ensured confidentiality. analysis and synthesis of research findings five main themes emerged from the qualitative analytical steps of the framework approach (ritchie et al., 2003), during which constant comparative analysis and interpretation were used, as depicted in table 1. however, for the purpose of this article, we discuss only the main research findings as they pertain to theme 1: school climate and culture, theme 3: violence prevention strategies, and theme 4: family-school collaboration, by including examples from the raw data. the raw data are the direct quotes obtained from the individual and group interviews with the participants. the thematic framework is depicted in table 1. table 1: thematic framework (code families/categories) theme 1: school climate and culture: • school culture • teacher-learner relationship • family-school collaboration • school safety • learner behaviour • school building and grounds theme 2: violent learner behaviour theme 3: violence prevention strategies: • physical security measures • code of conduct and disciplinary procedures • learner involvement and support systems • staff supervision and training • parent-teacher communication bender & emslie — an analysis of family-school collaboration 59 theme 4: family-school collaboration: • parent involvement • learner voice and connectedness • barriers to collaboration • strategies to promote collaboration theme 5: suggtestions fo addressing school-based violence theme 1: school climate and culture school culture; teacher-learner relationships; family-school collaboration; school safety; learner behaviour and school building and grounds. bronfenbrenner’s (2005) ecological theory describes the school as a microsystem within which the adolescent learner spends considerable time interacting with teachers and peers in a reciprocal manner to help construct this microsystem (bronfenbrenner, 2005). learners spend many years as members of this small society. the school exerts a tremendous influence on the learners’ socio-emotional development and the school environment increases in size and complexity as the learner interacts with more culturally diverse people. secondary-school learners are more aware of the school as a social system and might be motivated to conform to it or to challenge it (wigfield, eccles, schiefde & davis-kearn, 2006). within this lay the main differences between school one and school two regarding the school climate and culture. factors contributing to these differences were the size of the schools, the diversity of the learner populations, the extent of parental involvement and the disciplinary policy structures. at school one the consensus among the participants was that the enhancement of the security measures and good discipline structures, combined with a leadership that followed a more liberal approach, had a positive impact on the overall school climate. however, the school staff members found the learner diversity and school size (approximately 1 000 learners) a major challenge in managing learner behaviour. the diverse cultures, religions and beliefs tend to create inter-cultural tension that may at times result in aggressive or violent behaviour. as one educator explained: although they are safe in this environment we must never under-estimate the fact that we have a melting pot at the secondary school … you have children who under normal circumstances would not be getting along, who are now sharing the same academic space and that i think is the main reason why we are having instances of bullying and verbal threatening taking place on school property because you have different cultures, different languages, different beliefs, all caught up in a little secluded space and they now have to get along (interview mv, 5-6). some teachers found it difficult to accommodate the very diverse group of learners and sometimes felt threatened by them. the learners described the relationship among themselves as good, but stated that idle threats could make them feel scared. disruptive learners, peer pressure and rumours about their school having naughty, disrespectful learners sometimes made the learners experience the school climate as negative. the parents and school staff members felt that parent involvement was lacking at the school. the school staff members believed that the parents were not aware that they were stakeholders in their children’s education. as one educator stated: when you look at the parents it is a great concern of mine … this school is not a crèche … this is one aspect that is lacking (interview mv, 2). the learners, although wanting more independence, would like to see their parents involved in their school life to some extent. at school two the parents and learners felt happy and described the school as a family within a very caring community. as one educator explained: … we have always prided ourselves in just the whole business of traditional values along with innovative teaching and we have a uniform, we have respect for and a pride in our new school. it is communitybased so not only are the children known to us, as members of staff, but many of the families know each other so that adds a great deal to the sense of security within the school (interview bc, 2). perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201060 the learners believed that the positive school climate contributed to good learner integration and they said there was good camaraderie among learners and school staff members. overall the school climate was described as relaxed and positive. one parent stated: you know i think there is a culture of caring, i think there is and there always has been right from the very beginning; because we are a small community school everybody knows one another. the teachers know the kids well and i think there is a culture of caring and i think it does filter down (interview bpm, 12). the good security measures at the school as well as the feeling that the staff and learners could trust one another added to the learners’ feeling of being safe at school. the ethos of the school encouraged learners to conduct themselves in a manner that demonstrated self-discipline and the staff members expected the learners to uphold the dignity of their peers, and to have pride in their school (code of conduct, 2009b:3). the learners experienced no discrimination or serious bullying and believed that the seniors looked after the younger ones. some learners explained: yes, i think it is good because like the teachers they tell us that we can come to them if we have any problems of bullying or anything else so yes, we can trust them with anything (interview ba3, 3). there is freedom of speech so you are able to talk to whomever about anything that you are having troubles with (interview ba2, 2). the parents regarded the positive and warm school atmosphere as resulting in good learner behaviour. these findings confirm what has been found by numerous school climate researchers, namely that the size of the school, its location, the ethnic distribution and discipline policy all play a role in the amount, type and severity of aggressive learner behaviour (dwyer, osher & hoffman, 2000). the “personality” of the school as it relates to the school climate may also contribute to the anti-social behaviours in youth (mcevoy & welker, 2000). spargue and walker (2005) argue that just as schools can be part of the path of violence, they can also provide a positive school climate that fosters supportive and effective bonds with their learners and parents, in turn resulting in positive youth growth and development as seems to be the case at school two in particular. theme 3: violence prevention strategies physical security measures; code of conduct and disciplinary procedures; learner involvement and support systems; staff supervision and training and parent-teacher communication. the defining feature of the social ecological model (bronfenbrenner, 2005) is that it takes into account the physical environment and its relationship to people at individual, interpersonal (relationships), organisational (i.e. school) and community levels. the philosophical underpinning is the concept that behaviour does not occur in a vacuum but that anti-social or pro-social learner behaviour is influenced by interpersonal, social, cultural and physical environment variables. lindstrom (2006) argues that it is imperative for school violence prevention efforts to aim at changing both the individual and the context in which the individual acts. according to the school staff members at school one, upgrading the physical safety measures at the school (i.e. palisade perimeter fence, cctv and security guards), the enclosed layout of the school building as well as issuing access cards to learners had a positive effect on the learners’ behaviour. however, the negative side to all these security measures was that the learners had no outlet for their energy and frustration, which could contribute to aggressive behaviour. the code of conduct (2009a:6-7) was implemented to promote positive discipline and clearly states that the school has a policy of maintaining general order and discipline regarding acceptable learner behaviour and that a policy of “zero tolerance” is taken towards illegal and anti-social learner behaviour. the learners stated that the code of conduct was too cumbersome and they would also like an opportunity to discuss the content and voice their opinion regarding certain rules they disagreed with. as one learner argued: bender & emslie — an analysis of family-school collaboration 61 ma’am i think with the code of conduct it is not right, they should make up rules together with us. then we can decide on the rules we want. that is why we break the rules because there are things in there that we do not agree with then we still do it then that is why ma’am (interview ml13, 37). the school staff members regarded the role of the school councillors (rcls) in preventing learner violence as very successful. however, the learners felt that many of the rcls were ineffective in stopping fighting and bullying, because many learners were chosen to become school councillors because they were popular, not because they had good leadership qualities. some of them also undermined the school rules by participating in illegal or inappropriate behaviour. the staff members shared best practice among themselves but some teachers felt that not all staff members were well prepared for their lessons, which could result in learners becoming unruly and disruptive in the next class. they were very appreciative of the role that the school governing body (sgb) played but they found it difficult to build reciprocal relationships with many parents. at school two, the school staff members and parents agreed that the physical security measures were adequate but that easy access at the entrance gate, the open-plan design of the school, as well as the lack of security measures at reception made the school vulnerable. all the participants concurred that the rules, regulations and consequences were clearly stated in the code of conduct (2009b) and that the learners were well aware that incidents of bullying or any other behavioural misconduct were taken seriously at their school. the code of conduct (2009b) was perceived as an essential document for the successful running of the school and as being based on democratic principles and fundamental rights, such as non-discrimination, non-violence, equity and participation. the school staff members regarded the role of the grade 12 councillors as very important in the daily running of the school. a specific grade tutor staff member is also allocated to each grade, and stays with his/her specific group until grade 12. the grade tutor assists learners through transition phases and provides postural and discipline guidance. the school staff members believed that an informed parent was an equipped parent. as one educator explained: i think it is essential that parents be kept in the loop with regards to everything that is happening in schools. now i think it is essential that we have those one-on-one meetings with parents where we inform them. i think it is essential that you have that connection between the parents and the schools, purely because an informed parent or an informed school is an equipped parent and an equipped school. the bottom line is that if the parents are not told they are not going to know. children at this age do not talk. they do not talk to their parents, they shut down and so we get to hear and that is why it is very important that we inform the parents (interview br, 18). as the findings show, both schools have similar and adequate violence prevention strategies in place. however, the main difference between these two schools regarding their prevention strategies is the extent to which these strategies promote the positive development of their learners. judd (2006) sees positive youth development as “an approach that focuses on young people’s capacities, strengths, and developmental needs – not solely on their problems, risks or health compromising behaviours. it recognises the need to broaden beyond crisis management and problem reduction to strategies that increase young people’s connections to positive, supportive relationships and challenging, meaningful experiences” (judd, 2006:3). the large and diverse learner population, as well as lack of parental support and involvement, act as barriers at school one to implementing prevention strategies that could promote the positive development of their learners. the supportive parents and caring community in which school two is situated contribute immensely to the successful implementation of the school’s discipline strategies because, as bronfenbrenner (1979) and others suggest, taking a “person-in-context” approach to violence prevention allows for a more complete understanding of the development and prevention of aggression in youth (reese, vera, simon & ikeda 2000:61). theme 4: family-school collaboration parent involvement; learner voice and connectedness, barriers to collaboration and strategies to promote collaboration) perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201062 according to minke (2000), family-school collaborative efforts should be guided by specific cooperatively predetermined outcomes for learners, with mutually established academic and behavioural goals. the school staff members at school one cautioned against parent interference versus parent involvement. they found it difficult to build positive teacher-parent relationships, as there was little parental support. however, they felt strongly that learners behaved better when parents were involved in their children’s education. the learners stated that they did want their parents to be involved but they (the learners) needed to decide to what extent. the learners saw their parents’ role as one that supported and guided them. they stated that they would be better equipped to withstand peer pressure if their parents had a trusting relationship with them. they believed it was the parents’ responsibility to approach them (the learners) and to discuss openly and advise them on how to handle possible difficult issues. one learner explained: well ma’am in a way they are our parents because if our parents were not able to teach you selfrespect or able to teach you on how to handle yourself and money then teenage girls would not be going to all the men and asking for money like you know – like if your parents would provide for you or you tell them mom i have got such a problem. i mean you do not have to turn to older men to solve your problems and if your parents – i mean if your parents are not questioning that then what kind of parent is that (interview ml5, 59). although the parents recognised the importance of working in partnership with the school, they admitted that to a large extent family-school collaboration did not exist at their school. as the majority of the families did not socialise, they did not know one another or even know many of parents of their children’s friends. one parent argued: i think there should be more of a partnership between parents and the school and the children. if you only have the parent and the child working and not the school you have a problem. if you only have the school and the parent and not the child or vice versa, so i think it is very important that the family and the school work in partnership, which is not always the case and currently not the case in general (interview mpj, 16). on the whole the learners said that they would not report incidents at school, as they did not trust all the staff members. they also had the perception that the school staff members would construe them as being disrespectful if they voiced their opinions. a learner argued: i feel like this whole learner/educator thing is viewed very differently, people who are expected to behave in a certain way around teachers whereas we are not like – at the same time we are not being ourselves, we are not allowed to say what we really feel because we will be seen as disrespectful or we are just trespassing or stuff like that ma’am (interview ml11, 27). the school staff members stated that because families lived in a very materialistic world, the parents had to work long hours to give their children financial security. this fact could result in absent parents, and no secure family life as children might be sent to live with their grandparents. these circumstances can lead to a breakdown of discipline structures at home and to the parents expecting the school to provide their children with good discipline. other factors that the participants believed could act as barriers to family-school collaboration were the family lifestyles, parents’ level of education, use of public transport, teacher-parent communication, cultural background, parent-child relationship, inferiority complex, language barrier and parent apathy. to promote family-school collaboration, the school communicates regularly with the parents via smses, emails and weekly newsletters. the schools suggested that more should be done to train parents to become active stakeholders in their children’s education, and the learners stated they believed it was the school’s responsibility to support the child-parent relationship. at school two the school staff members believed that open and good communication was essential to any parent-teacher relationship and felt that most parents had established good rapport with the school staff. the learners regarded the role of their parents as being supportive but they (the learners) wanted to decide the extent of this involvement. parents should trust their children and allow them the independence to act responsibly. one learner explained: bender & emslie — an analysis of family-school collaboration 63 i think that it depends on whether or not there is a lot of trust that is involved so your parents need to trust you to know that you will tell them when something is extremely wrong and you cannot handle it (interview ba2, 39). the parents stated that they found the school very supportive of the triangular relationship (learner, parent and teacher). they experienced as excellent the communication between teachers and parents and involving the child. the parents acknowledged that their children wanted more independence but believed that they ought to know that their parents were supportive of them. the school has an open door policy and many parents know one another well because the school is small and many children have been together since primary school. one parent explained: i think for me the school is very much wanting the parents to be part of things that happen to the child, it is not a case of what happens at home is at home, what happens at school is at school, i think they are very pro the whole triangle of the pupil, the parent and the school, and that the triangle does not function effectively if one of those partners are not engaged in that. i think that is the ideal, i think obviously there are a lot of times that part of that triangle is missing whether the child is disengaged or whether the parents are kind of abdicating their roles to an extent for the school to take over, but i think on the whole that is what they are wanting and i find the communication between teachers and parents and then bringing the child in, in my experience has been excellent (interview bpn, 22). the school staff members initiate open communication with the learners and see the positive learnerteacher relationship resulting in creating a sense of family, which builds the learners’ self-esteem, creates a spirit of camaraderie and gives the learners a sense of belonging. the parents believed that there was a culture of mutual respect among the learners and there was no form of initiation or belittling of other people. the supervised after-school facilities, as well as the fact that most of the learners were involved in various extramural activities, built camaraderie and good interaction. the participants described the following factors as the major factors that might act as barriers to family-school collaboration: lack of time and the busy lives (of parents), the developmental stage of the adolescent learner, changing family dynamics; work commitment, parent apathy, busy teachers, divorce and the ethos of younger parents (less involved in their children’s lives). the school staff members have created various avenues to promote family-school collaboration. these include a specific channel of communication (grade tutor to deputy head to head), a parents’ charter explaining the expectations of the school, a parent-teacher forum, and the board of governors. the parents perceived the school staff members as very open and willing to assist the learners and their parents. as the findings indicate, the mesosystemic linkage between the school and home is pivotal to promote the positive development of the adolescent learner. the school staff members at school two have built positive and reciprocal relationships, based on a culture of mutual respect and trust with most of the parents and learners. the result is a happy and secure school environment where the parents and learners feel connected to the school. by contrast, at school one the school staff members, learners and parents acknowledged that parental involvement and family-school collaboration were lacking because of the factors mentioned above. according to bronfenbrenner’s socio-ecological model (1979), the type and quality as well as the presence or absence of the interchange between the adolescent learner and his/her microsystems (such as school and home) will obviously have effects that may either mitigate or exacerbate behavioural or emotional problems. schools should play an important secondary role in supporting the primary relationship (parent-child) and in creating an environment that welcomes and nurtures families (henderson & mapp, 2002). interpretation and discussion of main research findings by definition, the school climate reflects the learners’, school staff members’ and parents’ social, emotional and ethical as well as academic experiences of school life (durlak & weissberg, 2005). recent research reviews indicate that effective risk prevention and positive youth development efforts are associated with a safe, caring, participatory and responsive school climate (catalano, berglund, ryan, lonczak & hawkins, perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201064 2002; greenberg, weissberg, o’brien, zins, fredericks, resnik & elias, 2003). one of the fundamentally important dimensions of a school’s climate is relational, i.e. how connected people feel to one another in the school context as well as how connected the school is to the community (mcneely, nonnemaker & blum, 2002). there is a growing body of research suggesting that school connectedness is a powerful predictor of adolescent health and violence prevention (karcher, 2002a, 2002b). a school’s climate sets the stage for positive learner perceptions of school (centers for disease control and prevention, 2001) and also, as the current study has shown, for how welcome and acknowledged the parents feel. learner and parent connectedness to the school is enhanced by a healthy and safe school environment and a supportive psychosocial school climate. a clean and pleasant physical environment raises expectations of safety and sets the stage for positive, respectful relationships (mcneely, 2003). the psychosocial climate at school is influenced by various factors, such as disciplinary policies, opportunities for meaningful participation and classroom management (centres for disease control and prevention, 2001). the findings of the current study mirror the above empirical evidence. research indicates that in schools where discipline sets a harsh and retaliatory climate, such as adopting a discipline policy of zero tolerance towards illegal and anti-social learner behaviour, as is the case with school one, learner connectedness is lower (mcneely, nonnemaker & blum, 2002). a positive school environment, or school climate, is characterised by caring and supportive interpersonal relationships, opportunities to participate in school activities and decision-making, and by shared positive norms, goals and values (wilson, 2004). in addition, schools with higher rates of participation in extra-curricular activities during and after school tend to have higher levels of school connectedness (blum, mcneely, rinehart, 2002), as reflected at school two. schools should evaluate their existing physical as well as psychosocial school climate to establish to what extent it promotes or prevents learners and their parents from feeling engaged and connected to the school. schools are perceived as a natural setting for violence prevention because they provide regular access to children and young people throughout their developmental years. research has shown that effective violence prevention programmes are aimed at building school capacity by focusing on the three p’s – place, people and purpose (center for the prevention of school violence, 2000). the findings of the current study indicate that at neither of the two school sites have there been incidents of overtly aggressive learner behaviour. this is attributed partially to the existence of adequate physical security measures and clear discipline policies and structures. especially at school one, much attention is given to making the school environment safe and to preventing weapons and illegal substances from being brought onto school property. to ensure the safety of the large and diverse learner population, school one follows a discipline strategy of zero tolerance. however, research has shown that adopting a zero tolerance policy towards illegal and anti-social learner behaviour has not been proven successful. a “one-size-fits-all” approach is ineffective when dealing with culturally diverse and large learner populations (curwin & mendler, 1999:120). from the learners’ perspective, adopting a discipline policy of zero tolerance towards illegal and anti-social learner behaviour contributes to their feeling that they do not have the opportunity to voice their opinions, making them feel disconnected from the school. nor do they feel secure about reporting any knowledge of illegal and anti-social learner behaviour since they do not trust all school staff members to take their concerns or complaints seriously. as the learners acknowledged, they were the ones who actually caused much of the violence at schools and they would like to take responsibility for their actions. however, they stated they needed more opportunities to participate in the school’s violence prevention strategies. the current international thinking about school improvement is a shift from the traditional idea where interventions tended to drive change from the outside into schools; instead, we ought to start by getting close to the learners first (mapp, 2004; flutter, 2007). contrary to general belief, the current study’s findings suggest that adolescent learners do want their parents to be involved in their lives and support their education. however, these young people also want to decide to what extent their parents should be involved. adolescents are at a developmental stage where they need to find their own identity (erikson, 1968) but they also need to know that their parents are willing to support and guide them. therefore, fostering a culture of social trust is important to building family and community involvement with schools (henderson & mapp, 2002). learners are the people bender & emslie — an analysis of family-school collaboration 65 who matter most in schools, and they have unique knowledge of what is going on at school and how to effectively address the problems and issues related to learner behaviour and school safety. at school one, serving a very culturally diverse learner population, the school staff members feel that many parents do not instil good discipline at home as they regard disciplining their children as the sole responsibility of the school. guerra and knox (2008) suggest that culture should be viewed as a key moderator of intervention effectiveness. they define culture as a collection of social norms, beliefs and values that are learned over time and that provide both a worldview and a way of living (guerra & knox, 2008:311). schools should incorporate cultural competence in their prevention strategies by addressing issues of culture as part of the intervention so that culture becomes an asset to be enhanced (guerra & knox, 2008). this is highly relevant for many schools in south africa where the schools accommodate very culturally diverse families such as those at school one. school staff members should assess the various norms and values these different cultures have regarding appropriate behaviour and decide how to address these issues in a culturally sensitive way if they want the learners and their parents to support the school’s violence prevention strategies. it is essential that the learners and parents should be involved in the design and implementation of the various prevention strategies so that they will be motivated to take ownership of these strategies and to support the school’s efforts. the success of the prevention strategies at school two is attributed mainly to the positive, trusting and supportive relationships existing among all the stakeholders. other factors contributing to this success at school two are its discipline policies that focus on the development of the learners’ self-discipline and having various avenues for the learners and parents to participate and voice their opinions regarding acceptable learner behaviour. if schools are to develop prevention strategies that are developmentally focused and culturally appropriate, they ought to acknowledge and accommodate the specific needs and beliefs of their learners and families. promoting better learner and family support and participation would provide them with additional knowledge, skills and resources, which should result in more effective violence prevention strategies. schools are social places and learning is a social process where learners learn in collaboration with their teachers, in the company of their peers and with the support of their families (zins, bloodworth, weissberg & walberg, 2007). schools should become the hub of all efforts to create safe and caring communities. school management and principals are in a position to head and implement school-system change. if the system of education, and specifically schools, is to be successful in the schools’ violence prevention strategies, every aspect of the system must function together with all the other parts. if schools are to design and implement strategies that would successfully address and prevent aggressive or violent learner behaviour, they should give young people and their families the opportunity to be active, productive and collaborative partners in promoting the positive and successful development of these young people. school management has to evaluate its school’s current climate and the existing policies and strategies as these relate to promoting collaborative family-school partnerships. they have to create the leadership and support systems that will enhance family-school collaboration in their violence prevention efforts. school staff members and educators should create welcoming school climates that foster familyschool relationships which surpass context, culture and language (ferguson, 2008). a safe and caring school needs not only effective physical security measures but also a psychosocial school climate that promotes a feeling of connectedness between the school and the families. educators should evaluate their disciplinary policies, existing opportunities for meaningful learner and family participation and effective classroom management to create a supportive psychosocial school climate. young people need to feel connected to their two most important social contexts, namely their homes and the school, by means of reciprocal and supportive relationships between their parents and the school staff members. as the participants of the current study stated, the commitment and participation of the learners and their families were crucial if schools wanted to address school-based learner violence effectively. conclusion and recommendations as the findings of the current study and of numerous others (see leoschut & burton, 2006; steyn, badenhorst & kamper, 2010) indicate, violence has become the norm in many south african adolescent learners’ homes and communities. schools bring together several interacting and equally important groups, namely the school perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201066 staff members, learners and their families, which together can address the problem of adolescent violence more effectively and thus contribute to breaking the cycle of violence. each of these groups has a unique perspective on what is happening at school and in their communities, as well as what should be done to create safe and caring schools. furthermore, the similarities and differences between these perspectives may add important insights into strategies for promoting the effective family-school collaborative partnerships that seem to be essential to preventing school-based learner violence (kgobe & mbokazi, 2008; steyn, badenhorst & kamper, 2010). creating opportunities for the learners and their families to participate collaboratively in creating safe and caring schools, and for school staff members to reach out to these families and communities, should result in comprehensive, ongoing and systematic approaches to ensure the healthy, safe and positive development of these young people and their families. the findings and recommendations of the current study, situated in the qualitative paradigm, may not necessarily apply to schools in general. the diverse nature of the type and levels of school-based learner violence makes it impossible to assume that the contexts or participants in the current study are representative of all urban secondary schools. furthermore, the nature of the family-school collaborative relationships at the two selected schools may not be typical of all the types and levels of existing practices at other urban secondary schools. therefore, policy makers, school staff members, families and learners should evaluate for themselves the virtues of these findings and recommendations, based on their own school and family contexts. however, these findings, supported by the review of existing empirical evidence (see adelman & taylor, 2006; ferguson, 2008; kgobe & mbokazi, 2008) hold important implications for future research into collaborative violence prevention policies, programmes and strategies. based on the conclusions drawn from the analysis and synthesis of the study findings as these relate to the research question, we make the following recommendation for future research in the field of school violence prevention. research should be conducted on school ecology and connectedness. connectedness is a powerful predictor of violence prevention (e.g. karcher 2002a, 2002b) and is a protective factor in risky sexual, violent and drug-use behaviour (e.g. catalano, berglund, ryan, londzak & hawkins, 2002). more research is needed to identify the factors that could promote school connectedness 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of human society through communication. for analysing power relations, issues of social justice and democratic citizenship become central. this article also demonstrates that social justice in research depends on interactions between the participants and researcher(s). i further argue for the need to engage with the methodological expectations of critical emancipatory research (cer), using the power of language and communication. i interrogate and trouble the power of text in the form of spoken or written words or any other means of communication. in addition, the article conceptualises communication as a medium of expression between the researcher(s) and participants; the researcher should not be regarded as aloof from the conditions of the participants. therefore, the argument developed for social justice and democratic citizenship is that researcher(s) should be sensitive to the plight of all participants, recognising their voices or experiences. the article concludes by acknowledging the fact that human language is a product of human communication and that communication is important for knowledge production. keywords: social justice, democratic citizenship, narratives, critical emancipatory research, power relations, discourse analysis introduction socio-political tensions and inequalities in south africa created by colonialism crystallised in apartheid and, boosted by neo-colonial and neo-liberal modes of governments, seems to perpetuate social injustice. one cannot begin to talk of social integration and democratic citizenship for social justice, if the means or modes of constructing knowledge are not socially just and if the research methodology and interaction with participants is itself anti-democratic in the pursuit of democratic citizenship. this has become apparent on the basis of how the researcher conducts empirical research, and the interactions between researcher and participants do not reflect democratic values and social justice. however, this must not be considered an unchallengeable pedagogic fact; this article conceptualises how research can be emancipatory for democratic citizenship and social justice. part of the research process is the promotion of active democratic citizenship. the focus of democratic citizenship is on whether and how people participate in the research process; the contributions they make; the respect they receive, and the extent to which they, therefore, feel that they belong to and have a fair say in the research process or knowledge construction. the promotion of democratic citizenship and social justice in critical emancipatory research (cer) is complementary in any research process that investigates the living beings. the issue of democratic citizenship and social justice has (re)asserted itself over the past years in south africa. the reasons for this awakening are found in the democratic values and social practices enshrined in the constitution of the republic of south africa (act 108 of 1996) which together respect humanity. conducting research located within cer is to promote social justice and democratic citizenship with the aim of showing respect to the participants; this will enhance humanity, social values and equity. 99nkoane — critical emancipatory research for social justice and democratic citizenship conceptualisation of critical emancipatory research i wish to start the discussion by being provocative, taking john 1:1 (good news bible 1994:1504): “in the beginning there was the word and the word was with god and the word was god”. how do we interpret and make meaning of the text put forward by john? what does it say? does it mean that god was not always god? does it mean that the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us? or should we critique when and where this gospel was written and in what language? does ‘the word’ mean speech, uttered by a living voice? the text of john 1:1 has a myriad of interpretations; there is no monopoly on or objective interpretation of this text. the interpretation is affected by the original translation of the verse from greek to english, proper application of grammatical rules, and the philosophical/ideological standpoint or paradigmatic elasticity of the reader. this article will not respond to all these questions. it will rather tweak the text to provide an overview of how language and communication could be used as a powerful tool in critical emancipatory research. the article seeks to use the lens of critical discourse, because there is a link between language, power and ideology. if texts are analysed, they reveal the kinds of power relations buried beneath words. discourses refer to evidence of political and ideological investments behind every text. in this article, language and communication are viewed as a means of social construction. a society can be shaped or created through language. for example, human beings and the material world are labelled differently to construct meaning from them. language is an attempt to give the material world certain meanings, to distribute social goods in a certain way, and to privilege certain symbol systems and ways of knowing over others (e.g. labels such as black or white; rich or poor; able or disabled; first world or developing world; gay or straight) (alsup, 2006). through language choices, signification, discourses and power feed everyday identities. critical emancipatory research (cer) assumes that power relations are discursive. in other words, power relations are exercised or transmitted and practised through language and communication (machin & mayr, 2012). in this article, i argue that it is through texts that we construct representations of the world, that we define and describe relationships and identities; no text is neutral; all texts are ideologically shaped by power relations. the term ‘critical’ in cer refers to ‘denaturalising’ language to reveal the kinds of ideas, absences and subtle meaning which are taken for granted in texts. cer has an agenda to critique and challenge, to transform and empower; it is geared towards social justice and enhances the principles of democracy. as patton (2002) argues, critical research seeks not merely to study and understand society, but rather to critique and transform society. cer has its philosophical roots in several traditions, among which marx’s analysis of socio-economic conditions and class structures; habermas’ notion of emancipatory knowledge, and freire’s transformative and emancipatory pedagogy. cer’s purpose is to analyse the power relations or relations of dominance, discrimination and control – and all these can be manifested in language (wodak, 1995). fairclough (1992, 1995) theorises the importance of language in research and sketches. the words surrounding the faces are text on many levels. words are sections from what we read in literature and what people say in real dialogue. words in discourses present themselves as near abstractions, and words are manipulated into shapes of meaning and coded by interpretations. in cer, both the researcher and the participants are immersed in a quality of conversations and intersections as interpreted from their informed position. how do we dilute the issue of power relations in research? cer requires total immersion of both the researcher and the participants as equal partners in the research process, so that all senses of perception and understanding are simultaneously involved to be able to make as much sense of the myriad of signals and symbols coming from diverse perspectives as possible (mahlomaholo, 2010). it is through this kind of research approach that values such as democracy, social justice, sustainable livelihood and empowerment of relegated or marginalised people could be realised. it is about making sense of other people’s interpretations and understanding their world informed by their experiences. in cer, the researcher is not coding and calculating the number of words spoken by participants as a basis for drawing research conclusions or meaning-making. the researcher and the participants are interested in transforming their social stations to foster and advance democracy, liberation, equity and social justice in a manner that meets the methodological expectations of both the researcher and the participants. research in this fashion is 100 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 sensitive to the plight of human beings, in particular those who were located in the periphery of society, excluded, relegated, marginalised and oppressed. this kind of research wants to liberate or transform and change the subaltern status of the participants. this mode of research encourages the researcher to become an empathetic listener, who is courageous, compassionate about the plight of the marginalised, and who should become closer to the participants to the extent of becoming one of them. the researcher should view the world through the eyes of the participants (mahlomaholo & nkoane, 2002). power of language and communication in critical emancipatory research in this article, language and communication are regarded as powerful research tools that shape our interpretations of the world around us and how others view us as individuals. broader discourses and widely shared social meanings are played out in the language of politics, the news media, literature, institutions of learning, entertainment media and even in mundane contexts (machin & mayr, 2012). research that respects and makes use of texts in the form of spoken or written words or any other means of communication presents an appreciation of the participants as human beings. i argue that it is through language and communication that the world carves in different ways. as a result, when a researcher analyses data, language is not perceived as an underlying layer of given facts; language itself is what initiates such articulations and develops them in meaning-making (stanford encyclopaedia of philosophy, 2012) i further argue that language and communication become a medium of expressing experiences between the researcher and the participants. acts of meaning-making are at the mercy of social constructions called words or texts, and people in various communities, to a large extent, see and hear or experience the habits of their communities through language. there are many ways to define discourse; numerous theorists, researchers, and philosophers have expounded at length on the concept (foucault, 1978; berkenkotter & huckin, 1995; miller, 1984; bourdieu; 1991; gee, 1999). discourse takes into account the holistic nature of human expression and encompasses the material world and individual lives. discourse is not only limited to spoken words or written language, however; it manifests in various forms and shapes in which human beings integrate language with non-language ‘stuff’. foucault (1979) asserts that discourses constrain the terrain in which certain writing, speaking, and thinking can be done. my position in this article is that language and communication are important in cer for the researcher and the participants to make meaning of the world around them. however, language and communication, while important, may also be used to distort reality through dominant discourses. the role of cer is to unmask such potential distortions of reality. our understanding or meaning-making of the world around us is, to a large extent, unconsciously or consciously built up from the language habits of our communities. worldwide, people have attached labels to the material world in an attempt to make meaning or to get a sense of the world around them. this implies that the same physical evidence does not lead different people to the same view of the universe. my stance is that discourses seem to play a pivotal role based on people’s experiences, informed by their social, political and cultural background. no individual seems to be free to describe the world with absolute impartiality or neutrality; everyone is informed consciously or unconsciously by certain modes of interpretation, even while that individual believes that s/he is neutral. when conducting research located within cer, a researcher must take into account subjectivities that participants bring into the discursive act, while recognising that the discourse affects the individual engaging in it. a discursive act could result in multiple subjectivities, and the individual owning them could decide which one s/he will enact within the discourse (alsup, 2006). in cer, texts in various forms, as spoken, written or any other mode of communication, are marked by various discourses and are directed by their grammar or interpretations towards different types of analysis or observations. meaning-making: texts of cohorts of participants as many authors and researchers have pointed out, if the chorus of voices of the marginalised participants does not say who they are, other people will say it badly for or about them (fairclough, 2003; henry, 1998; spivak, 1990). the voices or texts of cohorts of participants in cer need to be heard, read, interpreted and analysed from a myriad of angles. then they will have significant implications in challenging the 101nkoane — critical emancipatory research for social justice and democratic citizenship dominant discourses and disrupting the narrative of the powerful vis-à-vis powerless dichotomy (fox, 2008). texts need to be analysed in order to create meaning from the history or social standing of the participants. it is through these texts that the ‘being’ of participants will be revealed and understood. the researcher will then be able to write the dramas of critical incidents that could change the world of the marginalised by valorising the participants’ voices (freeman, 2004). however, the researcher using cer should be regarded not as a super being, having extreme powers to empower the marginalised, but as magnifying the contexts in order to provide a lens, or mirror, for greater understanding of broad social structural issues under investigation. to gain understanding and meaning-making in cer, one needs to listen to words. texts should be used as a basis for understanding discourses and creating new meanings. however, this relies on interpretations that are often contradictory, not so obvious or subtle, and the researcher should be able to illuminate even the wildest or stormiest texts with serenity. in this article, i argue that a research located within cer must be able to tolerate these ambivalences. the research is based on how a society is organised around language, communication, interaction, excesses and surplus of power, producing oppression and exclusion. in these conditions, cer becomes relevant to transform and advance democracy and social justice (mahlomaholo & nkoane, 2002). voices of participants in cer are a starting point, inviting interactions. the researcher(s) and the participants focus on the salient points of discussions and arrive at a joint construction of meaning in the context of discursive practices grounded on social structures. understanding how texts are produced, distributed, and consumed will inform the understanding of how a researcher works to ensure particular interpretations of text, the analysis of discourse practices and the social arrangements of which participants form a part (fairclough, 2003). fairclough suggests that social arrangements can be thought of as ways of controlling certain structural possibilities and excluding others. analysing the voices or texts of participants offers a promising means of a better understanding of the link between discourses, discursive practices and social arrangements and those who have first-hand experience, thus providing a lens for social transformation. narratives as powerful insights into the participants’ world texts or words of participants provide an insight into their experience of the world. it is through the words of participants that a researcher creates a ‘space of authoring’ (see holland, lanchiotte, skinner & cain, 1998; lopez-bonilla, 2011) and leaves traces of discourses, positioning and identities. when participants share their personal experiences, they make themselves: … an object for another and for oneself ... but it is also possible to reflect our attitudes toward ourselves as objects ... in this case, our own discourse becomes an object and acquires a second – its own voice. (bakhtin, 1986:110). through narratives, people make sense of their existence, create and recreate, adopt and adapt, and engage in a full range of human interactions. at the centre of research located within cer, the language of texts is important and the communication between the participants and the researcher is crucial as they interact with each other. narratives become a means whereby the research occurs. the researcher conducts the study through narratives, and the study produces narratives as a way of knowing. a critical researcher needs to consider the discursive practice, social context and textual analysis in which the narrative occurs (lopez-bonilla, 2011). it is important to note that narratives do not exist in isolation. skinner, valsiner and holland (2001) take this assertion a little further and point out the role of other voices (i.e. participants) in the construction of narratives. the researcher takes a position from which meaning is made and dialogue is entered into in addressing or answering the participants and the world around them. meaning is contextualised in social structural issues such as the history of marginalisation, poverty, exclusion, xenophobia, homophobia, and so on. assisted by texts in any form of communication, people are able to construct themselves through their relationships with others and through the eyes of others who imprint on their own gaze and positioning. this is a self that seeks the collaboration of others with similar experiences and expresses solidarity through collective action. critical and emancipatory research is sensitive to the plight of human beings; 102 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 the researcher and the participants should become more human and more involved. the researcher should raise the participants to the status of equals, and examine the research problem through their eyes (carr & kemmis, 1986; creswell, 1998; guba & lincoln, 1998; mahlomaholo & nkoane, 2002; machin & mayr, 2012). in cer, the interactions of the researcher and the participants are not complex; the researcher and the participants ultimately become one by diluting the power relations. the researcher is and acts like a human being – the researcher should not portray the image of super being in the telephone booth. people integrate language and create new meanings through such interactions. spoken or written text or any form of communication creates a new social order. meaning-making or analysis takes place in the context of discursive practices in the textual and social context of participants. meaning is contextualised in the process of creating and recreating the world by deconstructing the social order that perpetuated inequality or social injustices (nkoane, 2010). according to lopez-bonilla (2011), people use language and other means of communication to create new meanings and social relationships, and to find the means to recreate their existence. narratives should not be taken for granted, homogenised under broad generalisation, or collapsed into deterministic processes, without considering the textual context, discursive practices and social praxis. narratives are not an easy and transparent vehicle for the communication of discourses; a critical researcher reads and responds to cues in the text in order to find meaning. reading narratives or texts is also a social process because it involves social relationships among people: between the readership and the author(s) and between the researcher and the participants. this process involves ways of interacting with others and gaining, respecting, valuing and understanding the feelings of others. defusing or diluting communicative power this article argues that listening to the voices of the participants is central to the methodological expectation of a research seeking or propagating, among other things, social justice, freedom and equity. griffiths (2003:84) asserts that “giving the voice to the participants is just a kind of ventriloquism; or that hearing the voices of relatively powerless people gives relatively more powerful ones a management tool ...”, given the fact that there is more than one understanding of communicative power. nkoane (2010) asserts that listening to the voices of the participants entails playing a role in the process of emancipation and social justice. inevitably, this means creating an enabling platform for participants to own or share the air spaces and makes their voices heard. however, this should not be conflated with power residing in the researcher’s hands, because it could be misconstrued as if the empowerment is a gift of the powerful. empowerment, in this article, is understood as something that the participants in any given research setting could collectively provide for themselves. the logical methodological expectations of cer are to counter the dominant discourse and create a space that will enable the participants to tell their stories. cer is firmly located in the foucault theoretical positioning, because he challenges the hegemony or power wielded by the strong unto the weak (mahlomaholo & nkoane, 2002). one concept that has been addressed by habermas (1986, 1996) is communicative power. the concept of power relations in a research study that is critical and emancipatory is crucial, because undertaking a research located within the cer could be understood as playing a role in the process of assisting the participants to emancipate themselves. excessive power residing in the researcher(s) will be to the detriment of participants. the theoretical foundations of cer require that power should be defused or diluted as a starting point to negotiate equal status with participants. power is the mode of organising society. it is in this context of the exercise of power emerging from dominance over others that excesses and surplus power ultimately produce oppression and exclusion. i argue that research located within cer becomes relevant in these conditions to balance the skewed pendulum, raising the researcher(s) and the participants to the status of equals. according to o’mahony (2010), communicative power from the theoretical standpoint of cer that is striving for social justice and transformation seeks or calls for some kind of new mediation or consensus between the researcher(s) and the participants. habermas (1996) argues for a communicative power that has 103nkoane — critical emancipatory research for social justice and democratic citizenship an idealised equal status, pointing toward future democratic arrangements in research practices that would be fully transparent, inclusive and reciprocal. in cer, communicative power is central to the normative requirements of social justice, democracy and equality; hence, it should be based on justificatory power. these should be the arrangements between the researcher(s) and the participants. forst (2007) asserts that equal distribution of power is the most important methodological expectation in cer studies that seek social justice and transformation, for the methodological expectation allows equal relations of justice to be set in the first instance. conclusion i conclude this article by arguing that we should think of all communication, whether through language, images or sounds, as a means of social construction that shapes our communities. everyday identities are constructed and power relations exercised and transmitted through language choices and communication, signification, discourses and power relations. human language is a product of human communication, and communication is important for knowledge production. people acquire the capacity to have a relationship with the world by virtue of their ability to establish a linguistic relation to the world. therefore, people’s reflective competence cannot be divorced from their communicative competence (susen, 2010). people’s ability to speak about the world is interrelated with their capacity to reflect upon the world. our critical capacity is embedded in our communicative capacity. communication as a social construct is important because texts, as spoken or written words or visual communication of participants in research, provide an insight into the world experience of the participants. people use language and other means of communication to create new meanings, social relationships, and possibilities to recreate their existence. the climate of dialogue is important in a research striving for social justice; communication and discourse play an important part in informing how participants in research can contribute in democratic citizenship. in general terms, the role of the researcher and the structures of authority during the research relationship speak volumes. this article proposes an emancipatory approach to research which promotes social justice, changes the social pattern of democratic participation, and treats participants in research as human beings. references alsup j 2006. teacher identity discourses: negotiating personal and professional spaces. lea research series ncte in literacy and composition. mahwah, nj: routledge taylor & francis group. bakhtin m 1986. speech genre and other late essays. austin: university of texas press. berkenkotter c & hucki, tn 1995. genre knowledge in disciplinary communication: cognition/culture/ power. hillside, nj: lawrence erlbaum associates. bourdieu p 1991. language and symbolic power. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. carr m & kemmis s 1986. becoming critical. london: falmer press. cresswell jw 1998. qualitative inquiry and research design. london: sage. fairclough n 1992. linguistic and intertextual analysis within discourse analysis. journal of discourse soc., 3:193-217. fairclough n 2003. analysis discourse: textual analysis for social research. new york: routledge. forst r 2007. first thing first: redistribution, recognition and justification. european journal of political theory, 6:291-304. foucault m 1978. politics and the study of discourses. journal of ideology and consciousness, 3:7-26. foucault m 1979. power and knowledge: selected interviews and other writings. new york: patheon. fox c 2008. postcolonial dilemmas in narrative research. a journal of comparative education, 38(3):335347. freeman m 2004. data are everywhere: narrative criticism in the literature of experience. in c daiute & c lightfoot (eds), narrative analysis: studying the development of individuals in society. thousand oaks, ca: sage. 104 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 gee jp 1999. an introduction to discourse analysis: theory and method. london: routledge. good news bible 1994. canadian bible society. toronto harper collins publisher ltd. guba eg & lincoln ys 1998. competing paradigms in qualitative research. in nk denzin & ys lincoln, the landscape of qualitative research theories and issues. thousand oakes, ca: sage. habermas j 1986. hannah arendt’s communicative concept of power. in s lukes (ed), power. london: blackwell. habermas j 1996. between facts and norms: contributions to a discourse theory of law and democracy. cambridge: polity press. henry a 1998. taking back control. new york: suny press. holland d, lanchiotte w, skinner d & cain c 1998. identity and agency in cultural worlds. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. lopez-bonilla g 2011. narrative of exclusion and construction of the self. in r rogers (ed), an introduction to critical discourse analysis in education. new york and london: routledge taylor & francis group. machin d & mayr a 2012. how to do: critical discourse analysis. thousand oaks, ca: sage. mahlomaholo mg 2010. towards sustainable empowering learning environments: unmasking apartheid legacies through scholarship of engagement. south african journal of higher education, 24(3):287301. mahlomaholo mg & nkoane mm 2002. the case for an emancipatory qualitative research: reflection on assessment of quality. journal of education as change/onderwys as verandering, 6(1):89-105. miller c 1984. genre as social action. quarterly journal of speech, 70:157-167. nkoane mm 2010. listening to the voices of the voiceless: a critical consciousness for academic industrial complex. south african journal of higher education, 24(3):317-341. o’mahony p 2010. habermas and communicative power. journal of power, 3(1):53-93. skinner d, valsiner j. & holland d 2001. discerning the dialogical self: a theoretical and methodological examination of a nepali adolescent’s narratives [34 paragraphs]. forum qualitatitative socialforschung/ forum: qualitative social research, 2.3, art. 18. retrieved on date? from http:// nbresolving.de/urn:nbn. spivak gc 1990. the post-colonial critic: interviews strategies, dialogues, ed. sarah. new york: routledge. stanford encyclopaedia of philosophy 2012. supplement of relativism: the linguistic relativity hypothesis. retrieved on 11 april 2012 from http://plato.standford.edu/entries/relativism/supplemsnt2.html. susen s 2010. remarks on the concept of critique in habermasian thought. journal of global ethics, 6(2):103-126. wodak r 1995. critical linguistics and critical discourse analysis. handbook of pragmatics. amsterdam: benjamins. design refinement tools for a teacher education curriculum: the example of a service learning course nadine petersen senior lecturer faculty of education university of johannesburg nadinep@uj.ac.za 011 559 3487 011 559 2262 (fax) elizabeth henning professor of educational linguistics centre for education practice research faculty of education university of johannesburg ehenning@uj.ac.za this article addresses the issue of the theory-practice divide in pre-service teacher education from the viewpoint of design-based research (dbr). using the example of a course in service learning (sl), the authors discuss their reflection on a curriculum that failed to help the students convert declarative knowledge to procedures of pedagogy, or to internalise this knowledge to become part of their disposition as teachers. the students’ theoretical work had remained in an epistemological apartheid zone where it did not meet with practice in eitherprocedural, conditional-, or reflective knowledge-making the authors then explore part of a curriculum revision model as proposed by ruthven et al. (2009) who use dbr principles for curriculum refinement, including some of their “intermediary framework” set of tools in a revision that aimed to create an interface for theory and practice. keywords: theory-practice divide, design-based research, intermediary framework, teacher education, service learning introduction few theorists would argue that professional education of any kind struggles with the integration of theory and practice, with much of even procedural knowledge remaining to a large extent of the “declarative”, procedural type (snow, griffin, & burns, 2005). this means that skills are described or “declared” and not necessarily practised. in the education of teachers it is even perhaps more so, as students are required to “apply”, or rather “convert” what they know from text in their pre-service experiences to processes in classrooms. in our practice we have found that most students operate according to the dictates of this divide, thinking that theory will somehow “morph” into practice by itself. our premise is different; we suggest that theory and practice meet each other in the same way that vygotsky argued for the meeting of “scientific” and “spontaneous” concepts through planned, systematic, mediated action (vygotsky, 1978, 1987; kozulin, 1998). strategic curriculum sequencing can be such action. drawing on snow et al. (2005) we argue that, despite our efforts to raise pre-service teachers’ awareness about different epistemological spaces, most of their knowing will remain “knowing that”. these authors refer to this type of knowing as the “first point” in a teacher’s career, while the “second point,” that of novice teacher, will see an increase in situational and reflective knowledge. as curriculum designers in teacher education we have been searching for ways to bring practice closer to theory in perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201062 a shared epistemological space where ideas and action can meet. in a revision of a course in service learning (sl) we introduced what ruthven, laborde, leach and tiberghien, (2009) have recently referred to as an “intermediary framework” in design-based research (dbr). a main tenet of dbr, as development research (van den akker, gravemeijer, mckenney, & nieveen, 2006) is the use of theory-based principles to design educational interventions and then to use certain tools to activate the curriculum accordingly. dbr as tool for inquiring into programme and curriculum development is increasingly used in education to harness design principles and frameworks from theory as well as the empirical world (design based research collective, 2003). we situate our work in a new trend in dbr, which focuses on the detail of the design process tools, searching for ways to navigate the intersection of theory and practice (gravemeijer & cobb, 2006) in education. we begin by describing briefly what initially (2004) constituted the sl curriculum in our case and we give a summary of an inquiry into the first cohort’s (n=178) engagement with it in 2004 (petersen, 2007). we then draw on the work of ruthven et al. (2009) who accentuate the generative aspect of dbr and show how we have used some of their conceptual tools in our own hybrid of their “intermediary framework” tool in the recent redesign of this curriculum. we specifically focus on pre-service teachers’ learning to cross-articulate educational theory and their developing notions of practice. background to the service learning course our programme of sl for pre-service teachers aims to afford students an educational experience of service, framed by an ethos of care and social justice. in constructing the curriculum, the work of a care theorist like noddings (1998) and the work of social justice writers such as scrace (1997) and bell and griffin (2007) was invoked. noddings (1998:196) asserts that “as teachers we are (as) dependent on our students as they are on us”. her ideas form the foundation of the sl curriculum in which teachers could learn what the task of educating young people in a world of “social interdependence” (johnson & johnson, 2009) comprises. this was encapsulated in what schwab (1978) would describe as the “substantive knowledge” aim: learning to become a teacher is learning to serve with a conscience, to serve by way of a caring pedagogy. our premise is that pedagogic care encompasses more than an attitude in the caregiver; that it includes an epistemic position of what counts as caring knowledge (noddings, 1998). we argue that this epistemological shift is vital if teacher educators are to help students recognise that pedagogic care cannot be separated from social justice. we also wish to interrogate prevailing notions of “helping” as social charity (osman & castle, 2006). we furthermore emphasise service as a discursive activity in which we create pathways for action that are grounded in (harsh) reality (butin, 2003; ebersöhn, bender & carvalho-malekane, 2010; morton, 1996). it has been this type of theorising that highlighted the theorypractice disjunction in the evolvement of the course. however, for students theory remained theory and practice comprised a set of skills and techniques of teaching and communicating. students, when they were faced with opportunities to demonstrate care in practice, continued to talk about “how to care” and were not able to make an epistemic shift to actions and dispositions of care. on reflection we realised that we had started in the wrong place (by introducing students to the theory first – see table 1) and subsequently the curriculum lost its sequential logic. we all had fallen into the trap of “converting” theory to practice instead of joining them epistemologically. petersen & henning — design refinement tools 63 table 1: extract of sequential arrangement of academic themes in the first sl curriculum themes in chronological order designers’ comments during revision of the curriculum sl theoretical underpinning and role of reflection “reflection” comprised a set of skills hiv and aids – biological “facts”/ awareness just more information social justice education human rights information/ some “high” theory sl in school curriculum assumed students had internalised noddings revising personal philosophy of education in light of academic themes ambitious expectation: students had internalised “care as social justice” the initial inquiry of the sl course in 2007 the 2004-2007 inquiry about the 2004 course was initiated with some optimism that the theory-rich course would have opened students’ eyes to an attractive pedagogy of sl in a country like south africa. a number of data collectionand analytical tools were used to capture students’ engagement with the course by way of their comprehensive end-of-year portfolios and through interviewing. these included critical discourse analysis of visual material and written work (fairclough, 2003), data content analysis in grounded theory mode (charmaz, 2003; strauss & corbin, 1999) and ethnomethodological analysis (heritage, 2005) of the opening paragraphs of their course portfolios. in the latter instance we wanted to see how students positioned themselves in the recounting of their experience right at the outset of their reporting. petersen (2007) found, in her phd study, that the majority of students were unable to identify with a pedagogical discourse of social justice as care and could not deal with the challenges posed by a curriculum that required deep engagement for deep learning – and thus for epistemological shifting. students separated theory and practice and could not practise what they had learned theoretically, nor theorise what they had practised. the learning loss was thus bi-directional. these findings opened not only a pandora’s box of information about students’ dispositions, but left us with a shocking sense of failure of the curriculum. the curriculum had not moved further than declarative knowledge or “substantive” knowledge (schwab, 1978) as students wished to appear “academic” and thrived on theory citations, without building what schwab (1978) refers to as “syntactical knowledge.” the theory of care and social justice and the overall theory of social interdependence (johnson & johnson, 2009) became new “book knowledge” and were treated and manipulated as such. we realised that the students needed very specific experiences to integrate/amalgamate theory with both their “epistemological and cognitive domain” (ruthven et al.,2009:332), we had to go back to the drawing board. from 2008 to 2009 we worked on ways to refine the curriculum to address the students’ false sense of learning and to cause sufficient perturbation for them to make some epistemological shift. in this process we came across the design tool of ruthven et al. (2009) in the educational researcher and we used it to gain a better understanding of where we went wrong and how we could improve the curriculum. design-based research and a generative process for the refinement of a curriculum having worked with dbr in other projects (greyling, 2007, seligmann, 2008), we decided to use its tools again in the recent revision (van den akker et al., 2006). specifically, we both appropriated and adapted the design tools of ruthven et al. (2009). when they refer to the revision of a curriculum in dbr mode they argue that perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201064 equally revision of design often involves taking into account of aspects of the working situation that were not recognised or prioritised in the original formulation of the design. our argument is that the availability of design tools capable of identifying and addressing specific aspects of the situation under design can support both the initial formulation of a design and its subsequent refinement in the light of implementation. in the revision of the sl curriculum, the findings of the earlier inquiry were valuable. the main finding was the students’ lack of integration of what ruthven et al. (2009) refer to as “two worlds,” the world of declarative knowledge and formal theories and the world of everyday, “lived,” or action knowledge, which is coupled with tacit theories. we used the findings in the process of restructuring the curriculum into what we hope will be a more functional sequence of practiceand theory learning experiences that would scaffold the integration of the two worlds. ruthven et al. (2009) refer to this as the generative component of design and they emphasise that a “systematic apparatus” can be used to make the process of re-design accountable and transparent. this is what we will focus on in the remainder of this article. an intermediary framework — from grand theory to field ruthven et al. (2009:334) make explicit the “bridging between theoretical principles and design processes”. the notion of the explication of principles for design that have been distilled from theory is in itself not new in the dbr discourse (gravemeijer & cobb, 2006). the process itself, however, has not been set out as ruthven et al. (2009) have done it. we will show how we have brought the “grand theories” that underpin the sl curriculum to the university classroom by way of a heuristic tool that these authors describe as an “intermediary framework.” our example is the work of nel noddings (1984, 1998) in our curriculum. we will show how we anticipate that the students will integrate their everyday notions about service practice (and concomitant tacit theories) with those very grand theories that they study. in this sl course the intention is that the students are prepared optimally for the world of work in schools, but with sufficient understanding of the theory so that they can reflect and theorise as they need it in practice. they need to be able to “think on their feet” with theory as a scaffold and a guide. for this they need a comfortable epistemic space where these two domains of theory of sl and practice of sl meet (see figure 1). this design tool highlights the need for integration of various types of knowledge, originating in tacit theories of everyday life, or in grand theories, such as care theory and social interdependence theory, but meeting somewhere around the middle in a shared epistemic space. this meeting can be compared to how vygotsky (1978) described the meeting of “spontaneous” and “scientific” concepts during mediation (minick, 1987; wertsch & tulviste, 1992). the following example demonstrates this conundrum: social interdependence theory, as overall framework of the course, emphasises the reciprocity between participants (school communities and university students) in the sl programme. we use this perspective in sl in order to ensure that students do not see themselves as philanthropists who wish to give service or “do good,” but as teachers whose role in society is to care responsibly and to work collaboratively towards the goal of reciprocity and the overall goal of social justice. the students learn about school life and thus benefit from the experience. in their sl course at the time of the inquiry they wrote and talked eloquently about the construct of social interdependence, but failed to see interdependence when they were confronted with it in practice. their “two worlds” had not intersected. another aspect that was problematic in the original design was the students’ struggle to identify with “relational forms of knowing” (noddings, 1984:4; 1998:218) as it was expected to be practised in a “curriculum of care”. they were thus not able to see how their practice at the service sites became a form of knowledge to be integrated/amalgamated with theory – how the two can become one in what snow et al. (2005) refer to as “situational-reflective” knowledge. they mostly mimicked the discourse of the texts they (thought they) had learned. we thus needed to find a way to make the theory-to-practice design process more transparent and explicit. this is where the value of the ruthven et al. (2009) dbr process was most apparent. perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201066 co-constructors of the epistemological (road) building process that connects the two worlds. they will have the technical tools to do so by seeing their own intermediary frameworks in action (see table 2). this process may assist in the positive objectification of the object of service, much as a health professional sees care as a professional task without getting lost in the suffering of patients. thus, instead of studying social interdependence theory and then “applying” it to sl practice in a subsequent linear activity, they will encounter sequences of learning opportunities that systematically, but inductively, help them make links between everyday life, in which they interact with people who have been marginalised, and their “academic” lives. the notion of a separate “application” process is then removed and students build a repertoire of a language of description, gradually linking theoretical concepts to their experience (see table 2). in this iteration, in this sequence, we argue, the students will begin to see the literature in a different light and they will systematically exchange concepts and descriptions from tacit, everyday theory for concepts and descriptions from “grand theory” (and vice versa). planning topics and sequences in the curriculum – iterations this process will accelerate (again systematically) as students encounter increasingly challenging episodes during service work. at this juncture we propose that they take the empirical knowledge of the service field, and “zig-zag” incrementally from theory to field and back until they have constructed what schwab (1978) describes as “syntactical knowledge” in which they build their own “grammar” of the field. this knowledge will be of a kind that they can use authentically in their reflection journals and that they will be able to describe in a sophisticated, scholarly discourse, which they will gradually build and nurture through a number of iterations. in table 2 we give examples of how the language of description of everyday experience can blend with the discourse of formal theory, as ruthven et al. (2009:335) explain, specific frameworks, intermediary between grand theory and the process of design… extract, coordinate, and contextualise those aspects of several grand theories that are pertinent to developing, analysing, and evaluating teaching designs the object of design activity is thus not just to have an outcome (a new curriculum), but as gravemeijer and cobb (in ruthven et al., 2009:330) argue, one has a way of showing how you are “accountable to the activity of design” itself. the table illustrates some of our thinking made overt. table 2: double categorization as intermediary tool 2007 research findings tacit theory grand theory blend students mimic discourse of theory. service as educational philanthropy social interdependence social justice/ care service is a tangible example of social interdependence, social justice and care theory-in-action where service sites inform theories. conflict between declarative and experiential knowledge. practice and theory are far apart (epistemic apartheid) “…the problems are too big for me to handle.” to care as an educationist means to practice justice at all levels of society i am a social justice practitioner in all of my pedagogic actions. noddings writes about me! pathologising marginalised people. the rules of the world of practice and the world of theory are different people are the cause of their own problems interdependence theory posits psychological processes that opens individuals to shared action and responsibility some people are marginalised because of their circumstances. i can do something about it, but i must learn how. developing a discourse about it is one way to begin. petersen & henning — design refinement tools 67 the next step is to think of a topic and a sequence in the curriculum with which these student responses can be addressed. in deliberating about the issue of applying the intermediary framework, we managed to show, in a double categorisation, that tacit theories and grand theories are often far removed from each other. we use examples from the work of nel noddings (1984, 1998) as a major theorist in our curriculum. first set of epistemic categories “grand theory:” social interdependence, social justice, care, and their integration in an epistemic � position for pedagogy. “double categorisation:” students’ self image of a caring teacher is juxtaposed and later integrated � with noddings’s theory. students examine core concepts to search for an understanding of their work during service (see table 3). tacit theories of care: empirical knowledge of care with students using examples from their peers. � second set of (incremental) categories: a hypothetical case based on a composite from the 2007 research findings how would noddings describe me? students use noddings’s discourse to describe themselves. � students analyse a sl episode with the language of description of noddings, amended with their own � discourse. comparison with tacit theories of service/care/social justice. students write their own personal theory � of care, which is juxtaposed with the earlier vignette. in this iteration the students reflect on the power of tacit theories, for example bias and stereotypes and how language of care is juxtaposed with the language of “othering.” in this hypothetical example the gradual move from high theory to personalised, internalised knowledge is patterned into the design that we try to achieve. students do not “apply theory to practice” but gradually merge their own “languages of description” with the discourse of theory in a parallel process where tacit theory makes more space for the high theory and vice versa. ultimately, we argue, when students invoke terms that noddings uses –they will have merged the two discourses and will have made personalised knowledge. this has become the major design principle for the revision/refinement of the curriculum. using noddings’ discourse in table 3 we place ourselves in the mind of the student and try to envisage what students will be likely to say when they begin thinking and writing like theorists. this portrays the gradual epistemic shift that we envisage – taking grand theory into a more personal space. we foresee that students, in the process of thinking about the theory and what it means for action, will be likely to be more honest and less contrived in their emotional responses as captured in their reflective writing. the second reflections (in italics) give some indication of the type of discourse that also arises around theoretical notions and contrasts somewhat with the carefully worded writing of the first part of the student writing. perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201068 table 3: taking theory home: making it epistemically personal constructs from noddings’s theory of care contrasting examples of student writing: the thinking of a curriculum designer (who places herself in the shoes of a student) caring defined as a “relational ethic” how would i describe the relationship that is developing between me and the pupils i work with at the school where i do service teaching? is this relationship an example of “care as a relational ethic” as noddings’ sees it? my care is to do some things while i am at the school. i don’t really want to think too much about it. my essays are okay when i write about how care theory works. i know how care theory works. i know what a relational ethic is. i don’t like to be with these kids. my point is: can you force someone to care for someone else? the teacher is firstly the “one-caring” and is only thereafter the “enactor of specialised functions” in building my relationship with this pupil i must first understand his/her issues, what affects their lives outside of school, their hopes and dreams and what forms their personality/character. this means that i can describe myself as the “one-caring” only when i know these constituent elements of this learner and genuinely care about him/her. okay – so i can’t teach before i care for a kid? what if i don’t like them? i guess i still sort of care for them because it is my job to care, like a nurse has to help a patient that she does not like or respect. but it’s not care from deep in my heart like for my niece. the theorists make care sound so profound while it just means you do your job well. in this way tacit theories can be explored by way of “grand” theory on a regular basis. we would refer to this as systematic and theoretically-scaffolded, reasoned reflection instead of the usual outpouring of a “flow of consciousness”. the sequencing of this intermediary work would thus be as follows: students would work iteratively, with their inductively described notions (tacit theories) of social justice, care and social interdependence, concomitant with the introduction of service experience and theory. the cycle in figure 2 would be repeated throughout the course, with the three levels becoming more and more integrated. the design tool of double categorisation has helped us to refine the interaction of these three levels of operation. perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201070 of practice” (reckwitz, 2002) are constant partners and that the one does not have to be “converted” or “applied” to become the other. students each have to find a personal epistemic home for their sl pedagogy, a home where theory and practice can reciprocate in their thinking and doing. in the epistemology of this form of knowing, practice and experience meet at the intermediary framework as confluence of theory and experience. this “intermediary” theorising is inherently temporary, as subsequent cycles will possibly reveal other issues. however, what has made the dbr route, and specifically this tool of “go-between” theorising, especially valuable is that it has helped us to “optimise didactical variables,” (ruthven et al., 2009:335), such as conceptions of the divide between epistemological domains. it has also helped us to lift these variables out of the somewhat obscure state in which they may have remained without the deliberate search for the confluence. references bell, la & griffin, p 2007 (eds). teaching for diversity and social justice. part 1. 2nd edition. london: routledge (taylor francis group). bernstein, b 1996. pedagogy, symbolic control, and identity. new york: rowman & littlefield. butin, dw 2003. of what use is it? 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(ed). social justice and third world education. london: garland. snow, c, griffin p & burns s 2005. (eds). knowledge to support the teaching of reading. preparing teachers for a changing world. san francisco: jossey bass. strauss, al & corbin, j 1999. basics of qualitative research. grounded theory procedures and techniques. (2nd ed.). thousand oaks, ca: sage. van den akker, j, gravemeijer, k, mckenney, s, & nieveen, n 2006. introducing educational design research. in j. van den akker, k. gravemeijer, s. mckenney, & n. nieveen (eds), educational design research. london: routledge. van den akker, j., gravemeijer, k., mckenney, s., & nieveen, n. 2006 (eds), educational design research. london: routledge. vygotsky, ls 1978. mind & society: the development of higher psychological processes. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. vygotsky, ls 1987. the collected works of l. s. vygotsky. vol. 1. (in rw rieber & as carton, (eds) (n minick, trans.) new york: plenum. wertsch, j & tulviste, pe 1992. l/s. vygotsky and contemporary developmental psychology. developmental psychology, 28(4):548-557. 30 can low-cost support programmes with coaching accelerate doctoral completion in health science faculty academics? hilary geber university of the witwatersrand alison bentley university of the witwatersrand career development for full-time health sciences academics through to doctoral studies is a monumental task. many academics have difficulty completing their studies in the minimum time as well as publishing after obtaining their degree. as this problem is particularly acute in the health sciences, the phd acceleration programme in health sciences was piloted in 2009 by the faculty of health science research office at the university of the witwatersrand to provide deliberate support to staff members registered for a phd to attain their goals. there is little research on such interventions using coaching and coaching-learning. this article discusses the programme structure, participants’ evaluation of the yearlong intervention and some longitudinal data, using semi-structured interviews in a qualitative paradigm. the findings indicate that staff found the research writing course the most valuable of the skills courses and noted that the individual, goal-directed coaching helped them in many different ways in completing the thesis and managing their professional lives simultaneously. this structured support programme with coaching provides a low-cost, sustainable innovation for full-time academics during doctoral studies. keywords: full-time academics, sustainable, innovative support, research publications, postgraduate degrees, accelerated completion, individual coaching, goal-directed coaching, coaching-learning introduction the academy of sciences south africa reports that the number of full-time academics with doctoral degrees constitutes less than 45% of the total staff component at all south african higher education institutions (assaf 2010). this limits the number of doctoral students who can be supervised and examined by the institution. every staff member who is able to complete a phd increases the number of phd students that can be registered and graduated by the institution. at the university of the witwatersrand (wits) the potential for supervision is particularly problematic at the lecturer level. while 77% of senior academics have phds, the number of lecturers with phds is 24%, with many currently registered for a phd. between 50% and 60% of phd students in the first four years of study throughout south africa are fully employed (assaf 2010), many of them as lecturers in higher education institutions. across the country, faculties of health sciences are most compromised in the area of academic staff holding phds, as only 8% of staff members have a phd (assaf 2010). at wits the number of faculty of health sciences academics holding phds is better, but still not adequate, at 43%. the low number of staff in health sciences with phds is partly due to the nature of their work. while other lecturers are employed solely by their institutions, many health sciences academics are joint staff with the provincial departments of health as their primary employer. they are thus employed full-time to treat patients in addition to the usual teaching, administration and research components of academic life. even for those not employed for clinical duties the teaching load is particularly onerous because the teaching year extends over a longer period than for the rest of the university with students on campus from early january to early december, leaving little ‘research’ time. the contribution of the workload to non-timely completion of the phd was confirmed by the assaf (2010) report, listing the difficulty in balancing work, family, study and social activities and a lack of institutional support in the top four negative themes reported by doctoral candidates. adding the extra time required to complete a 31geber & bentley — can low-cost support programmes accelerate doctoral completion phd to this already time-intensive workload increases the stress on academics. because time is short, academics may concentrate on those activities which are easier, have more urgent deadlines and more tangible outcomes, such as teaching and administration, rather than the years of difficult intellectual work required to complete a phd. two other factors have an impact on the problems of staff members in health sciences registered for phds. graduates with an mbbch are considered to have an msc equivalent and can embark on a phd without any previous research experience. also, owing to the high number of phd graduates required by medical schools, the cost of improving the throughput of staff members with a phd needs to be kept relatively low. what is needed is a low-cost sustainable programme to assist staff members registered for a phd complete the degree. wits implemented such a programme for higher degree candidates in 2007 and a pilot programme for staff members in the faculty of health sciences was launched in 2009. this paper discusses the results of the pilot programme in the faculty of health sciences. literature review adult learning in coaching from the early adult learning theories such as those by lewin (1951), and kolb’s (1984) cycle of learning, a goal-directed approach to learning is often suggested. a goal-directed approach with a clear commitment to action is also one of the central themes of the coaching process (grant, 2003). goal-directed selfregulation consists of a series of processes in which an individual sets a goal, develops a plan of action, begins the action, monitors and evaluates performance and, based on this evaluation, changes the actions to reach the set goals (grant, 2003 in figure 1). the coach’s role is to facilitate individual/coachee movement through the self-regulatory cycle towards goal attainment. the connection between learning and coaching was originally proposed by hurd (2002), with the addition of transformational learning by hargrove (2003). the phases of mezirow’s model of transformation (2000) closely align to the processes involved in coaching. while the theoretical background for coaching alone has not been well studied, griffiths (2005) proposes a model of effective learning within personal coaching, as described by grant (2003). griffiths’ coaching-learning model (2005), which combines adult learning theory and transformational learning (mezirow, 2000) with coaching theory (grant, 2003), is the conceptual model on which this study is based. set a goal develop an action plan act monitor (requires selfreflection) change what is not working do more of what works evaluate (needs insight) figure 1: generic model of self-regulation and goal attainment showing self-reflection and insight. source: grant, 2003. 32 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 coaching postgraduates grant (2003) maintains that coaching is effective in goal attainment and in reducing anxiety and stress. in his study on mature postgraduate candidates, participation in the coaching programme was associated with increased goal attainment, significantly reduced levels of depression, anxiety and stress, and significantly enhanced quality of life and levels of insight. in south africa, doctoral studies are frequently undertaken as an individual research model where the candidate has very little interaction with people outside of the supervisor relationship (backhouse, 2010). while the supervisor may sometimes be able to address all the candidate’s needs, this is not often the case. very few studies have been done on the usefulness of individual, goal-specific coaching in the attainment of postgraduate learning and completion of postgraduate degrees. coaches are not the same as mentors or postgraduate supervisors. the doctoral supervisor has a clear agenda to provide guidance on the completion of the degree, while mentoring, as seen by de janasz and sullivan (2004), is designed to enhance three forms of career competencies: in consolidating professional identities, in knowledge and skills, and in networking and relationships. they suggest that young professionals benefit most from having several mentors to assist in their growth and development. the supervisory relationship lasts as long as it takes to complete the research and the mentoring relationship may last many years, while the individual coaching relationship is usually of shorter duration and goal focused. coaching, and particularly the use of internal coaches, is increasingly popular in institutions where there is an ongoing need for support of staff. frisch (2001) defines internal coaching as: “a one-to-one developmental intervention supported by the organisation and provided by a colleague of those coached who is trusted to shape and deliver a programme yielding individual professional growth”. the internal coach fulfils a role outside line management, and distinct from the line manager, head of school, head of department or discipline, and higher degree supervisor in higher education institutions. internal coaching also implies that a whole programme of coaching sessions is undertaken and the intervention is not restricted to a single informal discussion. the internal coach also knows about academic or research roles in departments or schools, and they have extensive awareness of organisational culture, academic and publication pressures, frustrations, leadership challenges, and anticipated change, which significantly adds to the immediacy and value of their support. this internal knowledge of coaches is important in the context of this proposed doctoral support programme because the coach understands the demands of the teaching load and administrative duties as well as the imperative to conduct research and gain more advanced qualifications in the faculty of health sciences. coaching also provides a sustainable and cost effective strategy for faculty support. coaches need to be trained, but do not need to be discipline experts or chosen from any particular faculty. they need not be psychologists or counselors; scientists and engineers also make good coaches (geber, 2010). one coach can coach a number of colleagues per year from any faculty which provides sustainability and cost-effectiveness for the programme. while measures such as taking a ‘time-off sabbatical’ may help in obtaining a phd, coaching the full-time academic to continue with research writing while taking care of their usual workload enables them to become truly productive academic writers. background to the phd acceleration programme although supervision and mentoring are available to staff members, coaching was not previously available for those completing postgraduate degrees. wits implemented a structured support pilot programme for staff members doing postgraduate research in 2007 (geber 2009). the programme design included individual coaching and specific skills training, including courses on research writing skills; voice and presentation skills; effective speed reading; time and stress management; and writing national research foundation funding proposals. the coaching consisted of 10-12 individual coaching sessions over a period of one year with coaches of the participant’s choice. the participants in a previous pilot programme (geber, 2009) reported that the research writing course was the most valuable of the skills courses. without exception, all participants said that their coaching was invaluable and that their coaches were instrumental in helping them achieve their goals (geber, 2010). goal setting and goal alignment, and support in goal achievement were the primary 33geber & bentley — can low-cost support programmes accelerate doctoral completion intentions of the coaching. the coaching also had much wider effects such as personal development, exploring areas directly linked to the research and writing process, work/life balance, interpersonal skills, communication, assertiveness and dealing with criticism, and managing departmental politics. the success of the pilot programme encouraged the faculty of health sciences, through the health sciences research office, to launch their phd acceleration programme in 2009 with the same mainstream support structure for full-time staff two years into a phd degree. our objectives were to determine whether this low-cost, structured coaching-learning programme assisted full-time health sciences academics to complete their phds and what aspects of the structured programme were most beneficial. a secondary objective was to determine whether the cost of coaching would be worthwhile for the institution in the long run. training of internal coaches at wits for the faculty of health sciences programme, four wits permanent staff members, with discipline expertise in health education, psychology and information technology, and who had previously trained as professional coaches, were selected. the co-active coaching model was used to train coaches to help clients, through a series of questions and accountability agreements, to achieve the goals that the clients set. the co-active coach training programme curriculum involves 124 hours of intensive face-to-face training with a great deal of practicing on real people and issues. (further information is available at: http://www.thecoaches.co.za/index htm.) the initial cost of training the four coaches was zar93 000 for 15 days training over six months. there was no charge for coaching sessions for participants because the internal coaches were required to coach without charge as repayment to the university for their training. duration of coaching participants were paired with coaches of their choice and offered 10-12 coaching sessions over a period of a year, during which most of them spent between 15 and 20 hours in coaching. skills courses participants were given a list of courses offered by the centre for learning, teaching and development to attend during the year. in order to keep the costs low and the programme sustainable only those courses already provided to university staff members in general were offered. the total cost for external trainers in the skills training courses was zar20 000 for all the participants. methodology this is a qualitative interpretative study of the structured support programme for selected staff members registered for a phd in the faculty of health sciences at wits and how it facilitated doctoral degree completion. the four participants were used to obtain intensive, rich and in-depth data about the relationships as described by patton (1990), who suggests using few, information-rich cases in order to learn a great deal about concerns central to the purpose of the research. participants agreed in writing to allow their open-ended questionnaire data and semi-structured interviews to be used in the research study for which an ethics waiver was obtained from the university research office. sample this is a purposive sample as only academics in full-time employment in health sciences who had been registered for phds for two years were selected by the assistant dean for research and postgraduate activities. four phd candidates attended an initial meeting, were paired with coaches and advised of the courses for the year. two african men, one indian woman and one white woman participated: a medical clinician, an allied medical therapist and two from scientific backgrounds. 34 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 data collection a series of questionnaires requiring written prose responses by participants was used to obtain data before and after the programme. participants completed questionnaires about their experience of the programme and the coaching, the effectiveness of the courses and coaching sessions, what research outcomes they achieved and any additional comments. data analysis the data was analysed and categorised according to the themes which emerged. five themes emerged and are discussed in the following section. findings the findings from the data are described in five themes: • overall effectiveness of the programme • effectiveness of the skills courses offered by the programme • effectiveness of coaching during the programme • tangible academic outcomes of the programme • additional components overall effectiveness of the programme the participants had some common expectations of the programme: to ‘provide some of the tools and help to formulate timeframes for goals to be completed’; ‘set and attain goals that would help complete the phd and getting support other than that from the supervisors’; and ‘obtain additional support to meet goals and dreams to obtain my phd’. more specific personal expectations which were not research objectives included ‘gaining an understanding of the programme, so that i could implement it to help others in my field’; and ‘more time to do actual writing.’ one participant who was sure that she wouldn’t need too much support expressed her surprise when she said: the programme has helped me to focus on my phd during a period of marked changes and upheavals in my employment conditions. i have realised that a large part of my current occupation is geared toward research and i really do enjoy my job as well as my phd project. i have already received funding for work i want to continue after my phd. some participants increased their self-awareness and learnt to interact better with others. one man who had difficulty making himself heard said this about the effectiveness of the programme: it made me look at myself critically and point out strengths and weaknesses and suggest ways of dealing with the weaknesses. i learnt to be more assertive in a non confrontational manner, it made a big difference. participants overwhelmed with urgent workload deadlines plus doctoral studies were intrigued by changes in their perception of the time available for coaching. one woman who travelled considerable distances for coaching expressed how pleased she was: coaching was a really valuable experience, despite working out in krugersdorp and having many commitments, clinical, admin, teaching etc, i find myself making the time to fit in a session with my coach. the benefits to her and other participants of coaching support far outweighed the inconvenience of getting to coaching sessions and clearly indicate that participants realised what they would be missing by not 35geber & bentley — can low-cost support programmes accelerate doctoral completion having coaching during their doctoral studies. the phd acceleration programme was effective in fulfilling and exceeding their expectations in ways which surprised and delighted them. effectiveness of the research skills courses offered by the programme research writing the research writing course was voted the most useful course. one participant said about his experience: this was helpful because it taught me how to manage my time, and not be pre-occupied with minor issues such as spelling and grammar issues until the end of the draft. other skills courses participants found the core courses valuable and invigorating as practical skills were especially useful. the voice and presentation skills workshop helped in preparation for public speaking at conference presentations. the time and stress management workshop provided simple, effective ways to avoid time wasting and more efficient ways of managing time. one researcher commented on the skills gained for managing changes in work conditions: a large portion of the way i have managed to accept and adapt to the changes has come through the time and stress management workshop. gaining control of one’s time is crucial to allocating sufficient time to research and writing for the doctorate and has lasting benefits. effectiveness of coaching during the programme the participants mentioned three particular areas that were enhanced by the coaching: goal setting, worklife balance and stress reduction. a really important part of the coaching process was providing the opportunity for explicit and overt goal setting, prioritising and looking at long-term objectives. without exception, all participants said that their coaches were instrumental in helping them achieve their goals. one participant claimed: the value of the coaching has not only been to meet goals for phd but has given me insights into the way i plan and organise myself for all work projects. my coach has helped me to put my work into perspective and helped me to plan for future projects after the completion of my phd. the most valuable aspect of coaching was the built-in systematic internal accountability. participants valued the regular feedback on their ongoing work and studies and found it easier for them to look at short-term achievements in relation to the ultimate goal of obtaining their doctorates. one man noted his coach’s insistence on accountability when he said: my coach made me set goals for phd progress and would use them often. striking a balance between competing forces of work, doctoral studies and life outside of work was an important output of the coaching process. one man said this about his coach’s emphasis on balance: my coach made me realise the importance of family and family support if one is to prosper in the phd task. (she) made me realise that one has to make time for the other activities in life. developing new skills in managing their full-time workload to free up time to work on the doctorate was also an outcome for participants. one overloaded woman asserted: i had to incorporate phd work into my daily routine of managing a busy laboratory. in order to do this i had to train and delegate work to other staff to free up time to do laboratory work for the phd. thus, an important outcome of the coaching was helping the coachees do research within the work environment instead of taking a ‘time-off sabbatical’. 36 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 another output achieved through the coaching process was stress reduction in a number of areas related to the phd work as this comment illustrates: my coach helped put things in perspective, helped set realistic goals by taking into account everything that was happening in my life – and it was a lot! coaches assisted participants to think more laterally when stuck on a particular problem. not being fixated on only one way of doing things reduced the stress involved for one woman who said: my coach looked at options in terms of my goals e.g. i would be rigidly thinking i had to complete a certain section by a certain time; my coach, realising my personality attributes, helped me to look at different options when completion was not possible. making the doctoral process less fraught and more positive is a bonus as one participant realised that she could enjoy doing her doctorate: my coach has helped me to understand that i am not always to blame if my targets were not met for a particular section of my phd. he has helped me to put my phd into perspective and not see it as an enormous hurdle but rather something to enjoy. while such advice could have been given by supervisors it was clear that coaches focus on wider issues than the research and the thesis itself and made the whole process less anxiety producing; thus, accelerating participants’ progress. tangible academic outcomes of the programme the tangible outcomes and other changes experienced by participants contributed to visible progress in their doctoral studies (table 1). at the end of the coaching year these candidates had been registered for doctoral studies for a total of three years, much of it part-time. completion was thus not necessarily a realistic possibility. the outputs must be seen in addition to full-time ward rounds, teaching, administration and supervision of students and as part of the path to completion of the doctorate. table 1: tangible outputs from the phd acceleration programme in health sciences during 2009. outcome women men phd completed 1(a)* phd first draft completed 1 (i)* phd chapters completed (n=3) 1(w)* 1(a) papers accepted for publication international journal 1(a) national journal 1(w) papers under review 1(w) 2 (a) conference presentations conference presentations – international 1 (w) 1 (a) seminars 1(i) (a)* is african; (i)* is indian; (w)* is white. one man completed his doctorate within the expected time and has identified six research articles from his phd. the other three participants made what they reported as considerable progress on their doctorates as well as establishing publication records, a major achievement during doctoral studies, as two participants were not expected to publish in addition to their studies. one participant, who is required to complete his phd by publication, published one article, has another under review and a third article almost complete. at the time of writing, a total of three participants had submitted their doctorates for examination. 37geber & bentley — can low-cost support programmes accelerate doctoral completion completion of the one phd currently earns a university zar382 892.51 and each of the two papers published earns zar180 000, bringing a total income of zar742 892.51 to the university during the year of the study. there will be an additional zar540 000 in earnings when the papers under review are published and an additional zar1 148 667.53 when the other three phds are completed – two were examined in 2010. the outputs from the phd students on the programme could thus generate zar2 431 570.00 in total for the university. additional comments several valuable additional comments were made. two participants went on a week-long faculty writing retreat, which was not part of the programme, but which they found to be very valuable. two participants found a three month mini-sabbatical useful, getting ‘time off ’ from teaching and administration work to write their research. for one man it was critical to his success: time off to write is a very important part of the phd completion process. without ‘time off ’ and writing retreats it would have been impossible for me to complete my study. an unexpected gain was the positive effect that the coaching of participants had on their doctoral supervisors. one participant said: my supervisor has also commented on how useful the programme is i.e. the workshops and coaching as my comments and feedback have given her insight as well. it is clear that the research writing course was considered the most important hard skill learnt during the programme, while the effectiveness of the coaching was not only highly valued but essential to the participants’ progress and outputs in their doctoral studies. discussion and conclusion the explicit message of the phd acceleration programme in the health sciences faculty at wits is that completion of doctorates is crucial and the university is willing to provide extensive internal resources to assist full-time academics in achieving this aim. according to the participants, the programme had a considerable impact on their doctoral studies as well as their personal development. the programme did not, however, replace the need to get ‘time off ’ to write undisturbed. the coaching was crucial to the success of the programme because coaches were able to incorporate the knowledge gained in the skills courses with the goal setting so that participants made important discoveries about themselves and then aligned that knowledge with their set goals. coaching was thus instrumental in integrating the whole programme to make it much more effective than the sum of the parts. the findings of this research show three important outcomes of the coaching. firstly, participants managed their time and workload in more proactive ways than they had before the programme. secondly, as a result of critical shifts in thinking about their work-life balance, participants aligned their selfawareness with their research goals. thirdly, coaching assisted with stress reduction and they found the doctoral process more intellectually stimulating and pleasurable and less stressful, supporting the findings in grant (2003). therefore, we could confirm that the research writing course and the coaching improved the progress of full-time academics in the faculty of health sciences through their doctoral studies. we were interested in whether the programme could be considered as a low-cost intervention by the university finance department. the total cost for four participants attending courses and using four trained coaches for the year-long programme was zar113 000. the university recovers its investment through government funding received as a result of doctoral completion and journal articles published in accredited journals. the total income of zar742 892.51 earned in the one year of the programme is six times the initial investment by the university. future research outputs by these four participants only increases the benefit without any increase in cost. any future coaching by these four trained coaches provides a much higher return on investment. additional costs for ‘time-off sabbaticals’ and writing retreats were not included in this cost estimate as they were not designed as part of this programme. it is not possible to determine what impact the programme had on the outputs and whether they would have been obtained 38 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 without the skills training and coaching but participants themselves stated that the programme accelerated the completion of their doctorates. not only is there a good return on investment in monetary terms but completion of doctorates increases the capacity of the institution in the number of supervisors for incoming doctoral students. the coaching process in this programme may assist the participants to supervise their own students more effectively; thus, decreasing the drop-out rate of future postgraduate students and producing an amplification of the initial monetary gains. the participant’s tangible outputs will percolate down to provide a quantifiable performance measure for the university. less measurable outputs are the changes in attitudes expressed by participants after coaching. they have become more confident in their ability to deal with research while living complicated work lives. they are aware of institutional support which may provide the university with more loyal employees (gardiner, tiggemann, kearns & marshall, 2007). the skills and attitudes learnt during the programme have better equipped the participants to produce research and written outputs in years to come. the results of this study are not limited to staff in the health sciences. we strongly recommend that all staff completing doctoral degrees should be supported during their studies. vital components of such a programme are courses on research writing and time and stress management as well as individual coaching. the use of coaches makes the support offered by the university of the witwatersrand an innovative, lowcost and sustainable programme. these are crucial considerations for all universities wanting to increase the number of staff members with doctorates. references academy of sciences south africa (assaf) 2010. the phd study. consensus report. backhouse j 2010. patterns of practice in south african doctoral education: an empirical study. acta academica supplementum, 1:1-22. de janasz sc & sullivan se 2004. multiple mentoring in academe: developing the professional network. journal of vocational behavior, 64:263-283. frisch mh 2001. the emerging role of the internal coach. consulting psychology journal: practice and research, 53:240-250. gardiner m, tiggemann m, kearns h & marshall k 2007. show me the money! an empirical analysis of mentoring outcomes for women in academia. higher education research & development, 26:425442. geber hm 2009. research success and structured support: developing early career academics in higher education. south african journal of higher education, 23:673-688. geber hm 2010. accelerating research productivity with structured support in a research intensive university. international journal of evidence based coaching and mentoring, 8:64-78. grant am 2003. the impact of life coaching on goal attainment, metacognition and mental health. social behavior and personality, 31:253-264. griffiths k 2005. personal coaching: a model for effective learning. journal of learning design, 1:55-65. hargrove r 2003. masterful coaching: extraordinary results by impacting people on the way they think and work together. san francisco; jossey-bass. hurd jl 2002. learning for life: a phenomenological investigation into the effect of organizational coaching on individual lives. unpublished doctoral dissertation, union institute and university graduate college, usa. kolb da 1984. experiential learning: experience as the source of learning and development. new jersey: prentice-hall. lewin k 1951. field theory in social science. new york: harper. mezirow j 2000. learning as transformation: critical perspectives on a theory in progress. san francisco: jossey-bass. patton mq 1990. qualitative evaluation methods. 2nd ed. thousand oaks, ca: sage. 102 service learning as a response to community/school engagement: towards a pedagogy of engagement gregg alexander university of the free state mokhethi khabanyane university of the free state the promulgation of the white paper on higher education (1997) necessitated higher education institutions (heis) in south africa to avail their expertise in their human resources and physical infrastructure for service learning and community engagement initiatives, in the interest of demonstrating social responsibility, collaborative partnerships with, and a commitment to the development of south african communities. service learning as a thoughtful organised, reflective and engaged service pedagogy is focused on the developmental priorities of communities through the application of knowledge, skills and interaction among communities, academics, students and service providers to the benefit of all participants (council on higher education, 2006). in response to the latter mentioned, this interdisciplinary study, therefore, reports on the results of a service learning component to teach postgraduate students, attached to the department of comparative education and education management, to perform specific skills (management tasks) via the implementation of structured interventions at their selective schools. class presentations, reflective journals on students’ observations, experiences and actions revealed significant parallels between the implemented service learning curricular (management tasks) and the respective ‘engaged’ school communities. keywords: service learning; postgraduate students; community engagement; class presentations; reflective journals; management tasks introduction alexander, van wyk, bereng and november (2009) argue that the purpose of education alludes to the development of human capital towards meeting and achieving the individual and psychosocial needs of schools and communities. in relation to this, striano (2009) postulates that educational issues should be closely connected to the social development agenda of a state, thereby perpetuating aspects such as human capital development and social inclusion. the other important point is that education is expected to be responsive to the needs of society. the south african council of higher education (che) admits that a university and other institutions of higher learning face multiple demands from stakeholders, especially their responsiveness to societal needs and provision of information to the public (che, 1996). if society expects the institutions of higher learning to respond to its needs, then it means the goal of education must be formulated by taking societal needs into account. this seems to be the vital role of a university and other institutions of higher learning. in essence, our statement implies that discourse with regard to education in higher education (he) should constantly be reflective and interrogative of the epistemological assumptions underlying its role in a transformative milieu; in other words, “how knowledge is conceived, constructed and transmitted” should be linked to broader societal issues (hall in report of the ministerial committee on transformation and social cohesion and the elimination of discrimination in public higher education institutions, 2008). in this respect, striano (2009: 382) states: “education systems are therefore required to increasingly be responsive to social needs in terms of instilling knowledge and competencies that should sustain personal and professional development”. 103alexander & khabanyane — service learning as a response to community/school engagement in relation to the above, eyler and giles (1994) as well as peavey and hutchinson (1993) claim that service learning can be regarded as an effective pedagogy for developing social responsibility and change students’ attitudes; thus, by participating in a service-learning experience, students learn pedagogical content knowledge and skills needed to understand issues confined to the broader society. as a response to engage in social change from a higher learning perspective, this article attempts to engage students through service learning, operationalised as a thoughtful organised, reflective and engaged service pedagogy focused on integrating community engagement with academic goals. this article, therefore, aims to highlight the importance of service learning as experienced by postgraduate students for the module mlm 622 (management tasks as basis for an effective school) on its engagement with their community, especially as it relates to the teaching and learning spheres in higher education institutions. we shall briefly outline the intermesh between higher education and community engagement. in relation to the latter, we expound on service learning as a reflective and engaged service pedagogy. our theoretical frame for service learning is further conceptualised within kolb’s experiential learning style model. in conclusion, we present the reflections of our postgraduate students’ service-learning interventions as captured in their respective journals. higher education and community engagement the promulgation of the white paper on higher education (1997) necessitated higher education institutions (heis), such as the university of the free state (ufs), to avail their expertise in their human resources and physical infrastructure for community engagement initiatives, in the interests of demonstrating social responsibility and a commitment to the development of south african communities (che, 2006: 11). in relation to this, waghid (2002) refers to the increasing pressure on institutions of higher learning globally, including those in south africa, to bridge the gap between higher education and society. this then may also translate to our academic endeavours in higher education where engagement with students should not be focused on knowledge production per se, but in essence exposing them during the learning process to opportunities for reflection. therefore, any form of community engagement should be viewed as a means of establishing broader collaboration between institutions of higher learning and their respective local, regional, national, and global communities for the mutually beneficial exchange of knowledge, skills and resources in a context of partnership, joint ownership and reciprocity (schuetze, 2010). according to saltmarsh (1996: 18), reflective inquiry critically connects and breaks down the distinction between “thought and action, theory and practice, knowledge and authority, ideas and responsibilities”. learning is an active engaging process in which the student assumes the roles of explorer, maker and creator as well as being exposed to meaning-making opportunities (cooper, 2007). this implies that meaning is reflected in the social beliefs of a particular community at any point in time. the experience of human interaction significantly affects the scope and sequence of cognitive and social development (jonassen, peck & wilson, 1999; cooper, 2007). it is evident from the above that scholars in higher education need to develop skills which students need in order to be able to actively participate in their learning environment. exposing teachers (lecturers) and students to opportunities in which they could engage in reflective inquiry is crucial to teaching and learning. therefore, the notion of a scholarship of teaching and learning (solt) should be duly pursued as a mechanism in advancing community engagement initiatives. the development of a sot is a process comprised of reflection on experienceand research-based knowledge on teaching (kreber & cranton, 2000; boyer, 1996). these scholars outline three perspectives on sotl, namely: • research on teaching and learning is viewed as one important aspect: knowledge on effective strategies to represent subjects. • excellence in teaching: excellent teachers are identified by student ratings or peer reviews or through the recognition of teaching awards or outstanding evaluations of teaching. 104 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 • application of educational theory and research to practice: practice is developed through a combination of reflection on theory and research and experience base knowledge on teaching. the third perspective, as outlined by kreber and cranton, is especially relevant to this article in highlighting the importance of service learning by mlm 622 students on their engagement with schools/communities. the study, using the reflective journals of four students enrolled for the postgraduate course mlm 622 (management tasks as basis for an effective school), as part of the university of the free state’s distance learning delivery programme, serves as a case for reflective service-learning engagement. towards a pedagogy of engagement – a case for service learning the scope of the south african higher education quality committee’s (heqc) audit system includes all nineteen criteria for institutional audit. one of these, criterion number 18, deals directly with community engagement. at the universities, quality-related arrangements are put in place for community engagement (che, 2006). the che explains that, in the context of higher education, community engagement can take different forms. this is demonstrated in figure 1 (bringle, games & malloy in che, 2006). these forms include distance education, community-based research, participatory action research, professional community service and service learning. the che explains that, in its fullest sense, community engagement is the combination and integration of teaching and learning (e.g., service learning), professional community service by academic staff and participatory action research applied simultaneously to identified community development priorities (che, 2006). the question that arises then is: what is service learning and how can it play a meaningful role in enhancing community-/school-related engagement activities? figure 1: forms of community engagement adapted from council of higher education (2006) service learning is advocated by many authors as a probable instrument for change. while some authors have found it difficult to define service learning, a few of them have attempted to define it. bringle and hatcher (2004) define the activity of service learning as a course-based, credit-bearing educational experience in which students participate in an organised service activity that meets identified community goals. it is also an experience in which students reflect on the service activity in such a way as to gain further understanding of their course content. furthermore, sigmon (in furco, 1996: 49) explains that it is an experiential education approach that is premised on “reciprocal learning”. this means that “because community teaching engagement service research distance education service learning professional community community based participatory action research 105alexander & khabanyane — service learning as a response to community/school engagement learning flows from service activities, both those who provide service and those who receive it ‘learn’ from the experience” (furco, 1996). the che (2006) explains service learning as “… a thoughtfully organised and reflective service-oriented pedagogy that is focused on the development priorities of communities through the interaction between the application of knowledge, skills and experience in partnership between community, academics, students, and service providers within the community for the benefit of all participants”. according to coles (2005) and engstrom (2003), service learning is a method of teaching in which academic subjects, as well as skills, are taught within the context of citizenship through community service. she also refers to the national and community service trust act of 1993 which indicates that the three basic components of teaching effectively, using this method, are to plan sufficiently so that objectives for the learned skills are included in the learning projects or activities that incorporate community service as part of the learning component and provide ample opportunity for students to analyse and mutually discuss and reflect on the work undertaken. since service learning is an experiential education approach that is premised on “reciprocal learning”, and because learning flows from service activities, both those who provide service and those who receive it “learn” from the experience (farco, 1996; jacoby, 2003). with regard to the latter, bender and jordaan (2007) suggest that service learning is a pedagogical philosophy whereby students undergo a cyclical, practice-based learning process of concrete experience, reflective observation, conceptualisation and active experimentation. to ensure that service promotes substantive learning, service learning connects students’ experience to reflection and analysis in the curriculum (bringle, hatcher & clayton, 2006) and also links theory to practice (lantis, kent, kille & krain, 2010). service learning points to the importance of contact with complex, contemporary social problems and efforts to solve them as an important element of a complete education (che, 2006: 14). this study also has its foundation on experiential learning theory (as advocated by kolb). this theory proceeds from the assumption that ideas are formed and reformed through experience. in this instance, “learning is a continuous process grounded in experience” (kolb, 1984:41). kolb clarifies that knowledge is continuously derived from, and tested out in the experiences of the learner (kolb, 1984). students should engage with the community in order to have direct experiences of the ‘real world’, and to transform this experience in order to create knowledge and, therefore, learn from this experience. the field of experiential education is the pedagogical foundation of service learning. service learning is rooted in the theories of constructivism – learners construct knowledge from their experience (che, 2006). theoretical framework in grounding our understanding and highlighting the importance of reflection by the higher education sector on its engagement with the community, especially in the teaching and learning sphere, we will discuss kolb’s experiential learning style. kolb’s learning style model builds on carl jung’s claim that learning styles result from people’s preferred ways of adapting to the world (chapman, 1995). according to wheeler and mcleod (2002), kolb conceptualised learning as the fundamental human process of adapting to changing circumstances. he proposed two basic learning processes, namely the process of grasping information through the mode of either concrete experience or abstract conceptualisation and the process of transforming information through either active experimentation or reflective observation. kolb further indicates that learning requires engagement of these behavioural modes. in this instance, the entire learning process can be modelled as a cycle moving from a concrete experience to a reflective observation about the experience; then to the development of abstract conceptualisations about the experience, and finally to active experimentation around the experience. kolb (cited in wheeler & mcleod, 2002) and che (2006) describe the characteristics of learners in each of the different learning modes. concrete experience promotes the act of learning through direct experience. learners, who prefer to learn through concrete experience, value relationships with other people, make decisions based on intuition and tend to be more concerned with feeling as opposed to thinking. 106 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 reflective observation promotes the act of learning through reflection, thus according to what the experience means to the individual, and requires observation, examination, analysis and interpretation of concrete experiences. learners who apply this learning mode have the ability to consider and appreciate a variety of different viewpoints and perspectives and use observations when making judgements. abstract conceptualisation promotes the act of learning the logic and systematic planning when analysing ideas and solving problems, thus giving meaning to discoveries by relating them to other discoveries and other forms of knowledge. active experimentation promotes learning by doing, thus making connections between learning experiences and the theoretical grounding of these experiences to the real world. kolb’s experiential learning cycle theory provides a conceptual framework for the unique blending of ‘hands on’ experience and learning with reflection as a vital link, e.g., real-life simulations (case studies), role-plays, fieldwork, internships and many more (che, 2006). the implication in terms of reflection as it relates to the above may imply that educators enrolled for the mlm 622 course may acquire and demonstrate adequate knowledge and understanding so as to engage their communities/schools through a service pedagogy. we argue that the repertoire of skills acquired from mlm 622 students (practising educators) may provide a fruitful platform for reflection, thus motivating them through service learning as a pedagogy of engagement. research methodology participant selection as indicated earlier, this study is grounded in the theoretical framework of experiential education. a b.ed. honours group of 100 students attached to the department of comparative education and education management were involved in the study. these students attached to three distance-learning centres in the free state province attended classes for the selected module. procedure in an attempt to foster collaborative partnership with the community, the university of the free state involved its students from the faculty of education. while it was the students from the department of comparative education and education management who participated in this endeavour to form collaborative partnerships with the community, the study was conducted from an interdisciplinary stance. the departments of comparative education and education management and psychology of education, in the faculty of education, collaborated in preparing and guiding students through the process of service learning. during the final stage, both the lecturers and the students reflected on the whole process in which they had been involved. a cyclic reflective teaching approach, proposed by pollard, was applied by both the lecturers and the students (see figure 2). this idea was propelled by heiselt and wolverton’s definition of service learning, which they put forth as “… a teaching and learning method that combines community service with academic instruction and which as such focuses on critical and reflective thinking and civic responsibility” (hennes, 2001: 9). 107alexander & khabanyane — service learning as a response to community/school engagement figure 2: pollard’s cyclical process of reflective teaching adapted from hennes (2001) first, there was a reflection (reflection before community service) process in class so as to reflect on, and discuss current issues in society and their relatedness to broader challenges influencing education and schooling in south africa, but more specifically to school communities at large (eyler, 2002). in our discussion with students, we reiterated the need for a community engagement approach that would indeed develop partnerships and emphasise participatory, collaborative, and democratic processes which, in turn, may provide benefits to all constituencies (bringle & hatcher, 2006). the expectation was that students, via their service-learning interventions in various school communities, would realise the potential to enhance their engagement with the educators, learners, school management members and other relevant stakeholders. the reflection process was facilitated by a cyclic reflective teaching mode suggested by pollard, whereby students first acquainted themselves with the content of the course module mlm 622 in class. according to this mode of teaching, reflective teaching is applied in a cyclical process, in which educators monitor, evaluate and revise their own practice continuously. in this study, both the lecturers and each student had to do a cyclic reflective teaching in their participation in the project. the lecturers completed their own cycle (see figure 2) as the one running on the outside. the students individually followed the cycle (see figure 2) as the one running on the inside. these were not two different cycles, but one cycle that was followed by two groups of people (lecturers and students). while the students were basically reflecting on their participation in the project, the reflections of the lecturers focused more on the whole picture; especially on their own way of handling reflective service-learning classes. this became, in essence, the lecturers’ self-interrogation on their roles as facilitators of such reflective lessons. both cycles would stop running once the stage of reflection had been completed. the students would record their reflections in journals. the entire process of their engagement with the community was recorded. during report-back sessions in class and entries made to their respective journals, educators were tasked to specify how their interventions with the community effected some change towards developing the school community. they would also have to explain what they learnt from the community while they were serving it. the reflective journals were then submitted for evaluation. the lecturers would, in their turn of completing the cycle, listen to the students’ presentations in class and read their reflective journals, and then reflect on the wholeentire process based on students’ service-learning project interventions. the following guidelines were given to students to complete their service-learning project: • to have a full knowledge of the content. with regard to this aspect, students were compelled to have sufficient background knowledge of all four management tasks (planning, organising control and leading/guiding) as prescribed for this b.ed. honours module. • to partner with members of their community (any aspect in the community with which they felt comfortable to partner, e.g., colleague, learner, sgb, soccer team, etc.) for three weeks. with regard reflect pl an mak e prov ision eval uate evid ence an aly se ev id en ce act collect evidence collect evidence reflect pl an an aly se ev id en ce mak e prov ision eva luate evid ence act 108 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 to this aspect, a student had to choose one management task which s/he had studied thoroughly. in relation to this, they could engage with an aspect in a community with which they want to partner, for mutual learning. • to intervene by putting content into practice (e.g., planning, organising, controlling and leading). students could then encourage their partners to deal with the activity or event with which they were busy more effectively. furthermore, they had to explain and demonstrate how to execute the management tasks (planning, organising, controlling and/or leading) in relation to the activity or event in question. students then had to apply a selected management task in their intervention for further development of the activity or event. • to reflect on the activities and the impact of their interventions in the situations. having followed the cyclic process of reflective teaching and learning, the students finally came to the stage of reflection. students had to look back and see how far they had come with the project. they had to reflect on the impact of their interventions within the community at large and possibly notice their role and importance within their respective communities, and the duty that awaits them after completing their studies. • for the purpose of presentation, students had to explain their experiences, interventions and their impacts. furthermore, they had to reflect on what they had learned from their interventions and from the communities and to report back to the lecturer and fellow students in class. • to submit a reflective journal for evaluation. with regard to this aspect, a powerpoint presentation was encouraged and preferred. after the students’ presentations, all journals had to be submitted. students could work as individuals or within groups. one mark was given to the individual or the group. one or more members of a group could do the presentation. since this was an interdisciplinary study, in which two lecturers from separate departments were involved, the students’ reports had to refer to some aspects related to one or more of these departments, namely the department of comparative education and education management and the department of psychology of education. data-collection instruments the lecturers selected four reflective journals, based on the four management tasks (planning, organising, controlling, and/or leading) for mlm 622 and relevant to a common challenging school/community issue. in this respect, we identified ‘academic performance – improvement of grade 12 results’ as one of the issues cutting across the designated management tasks. the contextualisation of the common service-learning intervention was informed by an analysis of the national and provincial (free state province) statistics for grade 12 final results for the period 19992011. students taking mlm 622 analysed these grade 12 pass rates and then, via the four management tasks, reflected on the lecturers’ suggested approach (problem identification, intervention, results and reflection) in intervening in schools within their respective communities with very low grade 12 pass rates. findings and discussion in our findings and discussion thereof, we have attempted to summarise the students’ reflections on the learning content they mastered, the experiences they gained via the interventions they had, and the observations they reported in their journals (see table 1). table 1 also indicates the results of their interventions and their reflections on the entire process of their engagement with the community, in this instance, the schools where they implemented their respective service-learning projects. 109alexander & khabanyane — service learning as a response to community/school engagement table 1: summary of four journal portfolios representing the management tasks intervention on a common issue (academic performance grade 12 learner results) task partner problem intervention results reflection theme planning school high failure rates planned strategies: support team control and monitor catch-up programmes, afternoon classes and vocational schools grade and subject meeting motivational talks improvement on test and examination results the need for various strategies and planning initiatives for implementation optimal learner support organising school work not done as allocated monitor learner absenteeism disorder during running of examinations wasting of teaching time during school re-opening periods poverty and socio-economic issues affecting school attendance and achievement allocation done based on expertise design work programme for examinations structure in organisation of activities organise food-gardening projects with assistance by free state department of education enthusiasm among teachers and learners poverty limited order during examinations organisation creates order and structure teachers to be placed according to their strengths and training, qualifications in teaching strategies in enhancing school improvement guiding/ leading school educators have limited support from subject heads, hods with regard to subject teaching methodology insufficient content background of subjects no opportunities for team teaching, coplanning and information sharing swot analysis development of action plans to prioritise development activities for teachers attend continuing professional development courses improvement in class teaching methodologies confidence in transmitting content knowledge effective leadership capabilities needed by hods and subject heads guidance needed in terms of the interpretation of subject content and pedagogical teaching methods for different subjects capacitybuilding and empowerment initiatives 110 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 task partner problem intervention results reflection theme controlling school lack of coordination and leadership by head of departments and school management teams workshop duties and responsibilities continuing professional development and in-service training better prepared teachers increase in learner class attendance and participation immediate action needed principal to facilitate process opportunities to enhance professional development and personal growth of hods and school management teams senior staff and smt to execute constructive control improvement needed in principal’s control of professional management tasks control of professional management tasks furthermore, relating to table 1, the problems they identified vary from the outcomes of high failure rate in schools, absenteeism as a result of poverty and related socio-economic issues, insufficient content background of teachers and ineffective leadership capabilities by senior teachers and the school management team. students’ interventions in such situations reveal some themes of interest. the following themes were realised under each management task: • planning: optimal learner support is emphasised as a school improvement goal to be established via the implementation of various strategies. the student indicated that the planning task, as outlined in the structure of the course, gave him a sense of what actions should be initiated in assisting the school in enhancing academic performance (van der westhuizen, 2010). in this regard, he indicated through this exercise i’m now much more empowered to assist my school with assisting our grade twelve learners in obtaining better results. i can really say that the way in which the course is structured gave me the opportunity to see how the theoretical aspects of our module content could be applied in a practical manner. • organising: strategies for the enhancement of school effectiveness to be organised as a means of creating opportunities for structure and order. this can be done in practice to demonstrate how teachers can organise their activities for academic success (mullins, 2008). a female student who is part of the school management team came to the conclusion that the organising task challenged her to explore creative means in rendering support to grade 12 teachers, but also to the staff in general. she declared: i started to think different about my role as a management team member in doing an intervention that became meaningful and one which i thoroughly enjoyed – now i could see the need why there should be direction and structure in my school’s activities in supporting the scholastic performance of our learners. 111alexander & khabanyane — service learning as a response to community/school engagement • guiding/leading: capacity-building and empowerment initiatives are emphasised to enhance the school management team’s effective leadership capabilities (evans, 2001). a student (high school principal of 60 teachers and 1500 learners) lamented that the service-learning component of the module gave him the skills to apply theoretical aspects relating to his key job responsibilities in a person-centred and practical manner. he also alluded to the shortcomings of the rest of his management team in not providing adequate guidance and pedagogical support to the teaching staff. responses from him were noted as follows: when i applied the guiding/leading management task, i came to understand that as principal i was also lacking in the execution of some of my key responsibilities. getting good matriculation results is the main priority and as school we get benchmark against it. i had a serious discussion with my management team colleagues – we spoke about what capabilities are needed to make our learners obtain good results and how this should be done. • controlling professional management staff: the need for opportunities to structure professional development and personal growth opportunities as a means of improving the principal’s control of professional management tasks (van der westhuizen, 2010). in this regard, a student engaging with the control task held the view that the principal needs to play a proactive role in facilitating and taking control of professional management tasks – this could encourage staff members and the school management team members to execute allocated responsibilities and tasks more constructively. the student articulated the latter position as follows: the principal acknowledges that things are a bit loose and that he needs to exert control over what is happening in his school. if heads of departments and subject heads have an idea of how they should manage and help us, our learners will perform better at a grade twelve level. conclusion we contend that an understanding and application of service learning is detrimental in transforming school communities and gauging educators and school management teams to think differently about supporting learning and teaching. service learning as a pedagogy of engagement could elicit reflective processes whereby educators through the acquisition of knowledge, skills and resources may facilitate the implementation of authentic community-engagement initiatives. references alexander g,van wyk mm, bereng t & november ip 2009. legitimate peripheral participation (lpp) – the case for recognition of prior learning sites and 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national law to observe and promote human rights. however, given the realities of the limited teaching time available, educators cannot fulfil this obligation solely by teaching the curriculum. another avenue needs to be found for educators to fulfil this obligation. educators are also mandated to follow a positive discipline approach, but they are still finding this mandate difficult to accept. the authors of this article contend that the mutual inclusivity of these mandates might hold the solution to both these challenges. it provides the avenue needed for educators to fulfil their human rights mandate because by implementing positive discipline, human rights are invariably observed and promoted. this is so because positive discipline is grounded in human rights. in this article the authors aim to explain the mutual inclusivity of these mandates to illustrate the fact that, by adopting a positive discipline approach, educators will be fulfilling their theoretical obligation to promote and observe human rights and will thus be making these rights a reality. keywords: educators, human rights, international human rights law, positive discipline introduction human rights violations committed by educators while punishing learners are reported regularly in south african newspapers. such violations include: an educator forcing a learner to put her hands into cold water before hitting her on her wet hands (grobbelaar, 2011); a principal hitting a learner with a hosepipe (mtshali, 2011); and a learner beaten with a board duster such that a wood chip was embedded so deeply in his thumb that it had to be surgically removed (kotlolo, 2011). in 2011 more than 200 educators were investigated for administering corporal punishment (govender, 2011). various recent studies and reports confirm that corporal punishment is still supported and used, and that discipline is still equated with punishment (see: maphosa & mammen, 2011; müller, 2010, 91; olivier, 2010; us department of state 2010; kivilu & wandai 2009, 9-10; naong, 2007, 283, 293; sahrc 2006, 36). this indicates that educators are not fulfilling their mandate of implementing a positive approach to discipline. south african educators are also legally mandated to observe and promote human rights. one way educators can comply with this mandate is through teaching. in fact, the revised national curriculum statement grades r – 12: overview (department of education, 2002, 8) states that the curriculum statement embodies the nation’s social values as expressed in the bill of rights and envisaged that “the goals and values of social justice, equity and democracy ... be interwoven across the curriculum”. however, educators find it difficult to include human rights in their curriculum simply because there is not enough teaching time and, as yet, there is no standard curriculum on human rights (johannes, 2005, 118) to guide them. consequently, many educators still fail to carry out their mandate of promoting and observing human rights. the question, then, is: what can be done to help educators fulfil both their legal obligations of implementing positive discipline and observing human rights? the authors of this article contend that the mutual inclusivity of these mandates might hold the solution to the core challenge of each of these mandates (i.e. that teaching alone does not provide educators with sufficient opportunity to promote human rights and that educators find it difficult to replace corporal punishment with positive discipline).1 88 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 the aim of this article is not only to explain the mutual inclusivity of these two mandates, but also to illustrate how adopting a positive discipline approach provides educators with the opportunity to turn their theoretical obligation of promoting and observing human rights into a reality. to that end, we have used an intensive literature review of education law and policy to, firstly, establish educators’ mandate to promote and observe human rights, and secondly, to indicate how respecting human rights is embedded in the formulation of educators’ mandate to adopt a positive discipline approach. this is followed by a discussion of how understanding the reciprocal relationship between human rights and positive discipline can help educators to fulfil both these obligations. educators’ mandate to observe and promote human rights south africa is bound by international law; not only because south africa ratified the instruments mentioned below, but also according to certain provisions contained in the constitution. section 39 deals with interpreting the bill of rights, section 231 with international agreements, section 232 with international customary law, and section 233 with the importance of international law when interpreting legislation (rsa 1996a, ss 39, 231, 232, 233). it follows that if the state is bound by international law to promote human rights, schools as organs of state (rsa 1996a, s 239) will also be bound and mandated to promote human rights. schools must thus have recourse to international human rights law (ihrl) to give content to human rights (rsa 1996a, ss 39, 233). the mandate for educators to observe and promote human rights can be discerned from the study of even a few relevant ihrl instruments. indeed, one needs go no further than the preambles to find such evidence. in the preamble of the convention on the rights of the child (crc), it is stated that children must be “fully prepared to live an individual life in society, and brought up in the spirit of the ideals proclaimed in the charter of the united nations, and in particular in the spirit of peace, dignity, tolerance, freedom, equality and solidarity”. similar statements can also be found in the preambles of the african charter on the rights and welfare of the child (acrwc): “recognizing that the child, due to the needs of his physical and mental development requires particular care with regard to health, physical, mental, moral and social development …”, the african charter on human and peoples’ rights (achpr): “firmly convinced of their duty to promote and protect human and peoples’ rights and freedoms …”, the universal declaration of human rights (udhr): “shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms …”. similarly, the international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights (icescr) and the international covenant on civil and political rights (iccpr) give recognition to the rights of individuals and emphasise that all individuals have a duty to other individuals and to the community to which they belong to strive for the promotion and observance of human rights. from all these statements, it is possible to deduce that the drafters of these ihrl instruments intended to establish the following as basic principles in human rights law: • individuals have a duty to respect the human rights of other individuals. • state parties must respect and promote human rights. • education is a means of promoting respect for human rights. • children must be educated regarding human rights to enable them to live a socially responsible life and to take their rightful place in a society based on human rights. national law and policy give effect to educators’ international obligation to promote human rights in schools. it should be kept in mind that the children’s rights included in the bill of rights were explicitly drawn from the crc (mahery, 2009, 324). this was confirmed in m v the state centre for child law 2007 jdr 0913 (cc) (at 16). educators and governing bodies, as the functionaries2 of public schools, are bound by the constitution to “respect, promote and fulfil the rights in the bill of rights” (rsa 1996a, s 7(2)). the minister, in terms of section 8(2) of the south african schools act 84 of 1996, adopted guidelines for the consideration of governing bodies in adopting a code of conduct for learners (hereafter referred 89coetzee & mienie — south african educators’ mutually inclusive mandates to as the guidelines for governing bodies) (rsa 1998). the guidelines for governing bodies reflects the principles as set out in the preamble to the schools act. one of these principles is that the rights of learners, parents and educators must be upheld. educators’ mandate to promote and observe human rights is also evident in the south african council of educators’ (sace) code of professional ethics, which requires educators to: • “acknowledge, uphold and promote” basic human rights (item 2.3) • respect “the dignity, beliefs and constitutional rights of learners” (item 3.1) • “enable learners to develop a set of values consistent with the fundamental rights contained in the constitution” (item 3.3) • promote gender equality (item 3.7) it is thus evident that south african educators have a mandate to abide by and promote human rights. they also have a mandate to establish positive discipline in their schools and classrooms and these mandates are interrelated (antonie v governing body, settlers high school). educators’ mandate to establish positive discipline this mandate is expressly stated, but also implied in national law and policy. the guidelines for governing bodies (rsa 1998, paras 1.4, 1.6) provides that the main focus of schools’ codes of conduct “must be positive discipline” and that the “purpose of a code of conduct is to promote positive discipline”. in alternatives to corporal punishment: a learning experience (department of education, 2000, preface), reference is made to the fact that discipline must be positive and constructive. a literature review revealed that the requirements set for discipline in national law and policy legally endorse the interrelated, core principles of positive discipline and, as such, direct educators to follow a positive discipline approach. the first requirement is that all policy must be directed towards the advancement and protection of fundamental human rights (rsa 1996c, s 4(a)). to give effect to this the guidelines for governing bodies demands that schools’ codes of conduct reflect constitutional democracy and human rights, set standards of moral behaviour for learners and equip them to be responsible citizens (rsa 1998, paras 1.3; 1.4). thus it may be argued that the governing body is mandated to adopt a code of conduct that enables educators to educate and discipline learners in a way that promotes respect for human rights. this, in turn, makes positive discipline mandatory, because positive discipline implies that discipline be grounded in human rights (coetzee, 2010b, 480); in fact, this is the main aim of positive discipline. rapcan states: “positive discipline aims to build a culture of human rights where everyone is treated with dignity and respect” (rapcan, 2008, 4). this was also confirmed in antonie v governing body, settlers high school 2002 (4) sa 739 (c) (art 14). the court, referring to the guidelines for governing bodies, made it clear that: [t]he focus in the schedule is on positive discipline (s 1.4 and 1.6) … . this must be done within the context of the democratic values of human dignity, equality and freedom, as enshrined in the bill of rights … . the second requirement is that schools’ codes of conduct must be set “after consultation with learners, parents and educators” (rsa 1996b, s 8(1)). in alternatives to corporal punishment: a learning experience (department of education, 2000, preface), the condition is set that discipline should be based on consensus among educators, learners and all who are associated with schooling. this implies learner participation in both the classroom and school. participation and cooperation are core principles of positive discipline (rapcan 2008, foreword). the third requirement is that discipline and punishment may not amount to torture; in other words, it may not be cruel, inhuman or degrading. in effect, therefore, it may not infringe upon children’s constitutional rights to human dignity and physical integrity (rsa 1996a, ss 10; 12(1)(c), (d), (e)). this requirement implies that educators are barred from administering corporal punishment since corporal punishment constitutes an infringement of children’s right to dignity and physical integrity (christian 90 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 education south africa v minister of education 2002 2 sa 764 (cc) (art 50)) and can even amount to torture (un, 1998, 134). corporal punishment is expressly prohibited in section 10 of the schools act (rsa 1996b), and the national education policy act 27 of 1996 (rsa 1996c, s (3)(n)) prescribes that policy on school discipline must prohibit the use of corporal punishment and any disciplinary measures that subject a learner to psychological or physical abuse. in addition, the children’s charter of south africa (rsa 1992, art 2) states that “all children have a right to freedom from corporal punishment at school ... “. this requirement therefore bolsters positive discipline, which is essentially a non-violent approach (naker & sekitoleko, 2009, 27) and an approach consonant with a child’s dignity (global initiative to end all corporal punishment of children & save the children sweden). the fourth requirement, that mutual respect should be sustained, is a central principle of positive discipline (coetzee, 2010a, 481; rsa 1998, para 2.3). the fifth requirement that supports a positive discipline approach is that discipline should neither be punitive nor punishment orientated (rsa 1998, para 1.4). positive discipline places the emphasis on prevention rather than punishment and requires that discipline should be proactive rather than reactive (coetzee, 2010a, 482). the sixth requirement that demands a positive discipline approach is that discipline in schools should promote self-discipline (coetzee, 2010a, 481; rsa 1998, para 1.6). the seventh requirement, which is also a fundamental principle of positive discipline, is that corrective measures should be proportionate to the offence (coetzee, 2010a, 481; rsa 1998, para 7.6). the eighth requirement is that due process should be guaranteed to any party involved in disciplinary proceedings (rsa 1996b, s (8)(5)(a)). this requirement relates to the underlying principle of positive discipline, which places the emphasis on two-way communication – that is, moving away from the stance of “children should be seen and not heard” (coetzee, 2010a, 481). promoting human rights through positive discipline the argument put forward in this article is that, by following a positive discipline approach, educators can carry out their mandate to promote and observe human rights simply because establishing such an approach requires the firm value base of human rights (du preez & roux, 2010, 13, 24). the process of establishing positive discipline consists of four essential, interrelated steps: distinguishing between discipline and punishment, focusing on relationships, creating a positive and supportive learning environment, obtaining knowledge of and applying constructive ways to respond to misbehaviour (unesco, 2006, 6-7). in order to establish positive discipline, educators firstly need to obtain clarity on the difference between discipline and punishment. in the past, the emphasis was placed on obedience to rules and the inevitable sanctions that followed transgressions. as a result, discipline was, and still is (as the examples given at the beginning of this article show) equated with punishment and, in particular, with corporal punishment (goodman, 2006, 216). reference to the latin origins of the words helps to make the difference between discipline and punishment clear. the word discipline originates from the word disciplinare, which means to teach, and punishment originates from punier, which means pain (siers, 2007, 2). according to le mottee (2005), discipline “has everything to do with ensuring a safe and valuing environment so that the rights and needs of people are respected, vindicated and safeguarded ... ”. to summarise: punishment is external and punitive in nature; it is directed at the short-term goal of exercising control over learners to ensure that they conform to prescribed rules and, as such, undermines their self-esteem (hemstreet & vermeulen, 2007, 7-8; le mottee, 2005; vally, 2005, 3, 4). discipline, on the other hand, is an educative and intrinsic process. its long-term goal is to produce learners who are self-disciplined and with a sense of self-worth (joubert, 2008, 4). south african educators are mandated to emphasise discipline in order “to teach and lead learners to self-discipline” (rsa 1998, paras 7.1, 1.4). in order to fulfil this mandate, it is suggested that rogers’ view (1998, 10-11), endorsed by joubert (2008, 5), of punishment as a form of discipline (i.e. corrective discipline) be followed. the emphasis shifts from inflicting pain to teaching when punishment is viewed 91coetzee & mienie — south african educators’ mutually inclusive mandates as corrective discipline. corrective discipline is rights-based and non-violent; it is aimed at developing self-discipline in learners, guiding children to understand their own behaviour, and enabling learners to take responsibility for their own choices. it is also, of course, aimed at ensuring that learners respect themselves and others (unesco, 2006, 22). an educator who places the emphasis on discipline rather than punishment and who regards punishment as a form of discipline will have regard for, and thereby promote, learners’ right to human dignity and their right not to be treated or punished in a cruel, inhuman or degrading manner (rapcan, 2008, 4; rsa 1996a, s 12(1)(e)). a positive discipline approach and the right to human dignity both require that the child be acknowledged as a person in his or her own right, be regarded as equal in dignity to adults and therefore equally worthy of respect (crc committee 2006, para 47; also see carter & osler, 2000, 350). in the national coalition for gay and lesbian equality v minister of justice 1999 (1) sa 6 (cc) (at 28), the court held that the constitutional protection of human dignity at the very least “requires us to acknowledge the value and worth of all individuals as members of our society”. this can also be applied to the human dignity of the child. the second step in establishing positive discipline is to emphasise trusting, mutually respectful relationships between educators and learners (unesco, 2006, 16). respect here means to “regard with deference, esteem”, to “avoid interfering with, harming, degrading, insulting, injuring or interrupting” and to “treat with consideration” (reader’s digest 1994, s.v. “respect”). without mutual respect the education relationship would be precarious (unicef, 2007, 22, 25). respect is a two-way street: one cannot merely demand respect from others; instead, one has to respect both others and oneself. educators should not equate control with respect and act from a position of power instead of authority (oosthuizen, wolhuter & du toit, 2003, 463). if they do, relationships become dependent on obedience and compliance and the dignity and respect of the adult become the primary focus of discipline (chadsey & mcvittie, 2006). rogers (1998, 120) argues that educators earn respect “by the nature of their treatment and the manner in which fundamental rights are respected”. the importance of the observance and promotion of human rights for establishing trusting, mutually respectful relationships is thus evident. in addition to the right to human dignity and the right to freedom and security of the person, the right to freedom of expression also needs to be observed in order to ensure a mutually respectful relationship between the educator and the learner. viljoen (2009, 314, 338) identifies the right to freedom of expression as one of the “self-asserting rights” because it enhances the child as an autonomous, self-asserting, participating individual. allowing learners to express their views encourages respect and thus promotes sound relationships. as nelsen, lott and glenn (1997, 8) state “[i]n a positive discipline classroom, everyone has the opportunity to voice opinions and give suggestions”. according to lundy’s (2007, 933938) model for conceptualising the right to be heard, this right consists of two elements: the right to express your views and the right to have those views be accorded due regard. educators establishing positive discipline should create the opportunity for learners to express their views and be involved in decisionmaking (space) and encourage children to express or facilitate the expression of their views (voice). in giving effect to the second element of the right, educators should listen to such views (audience) and then act on such views where appropriate (influence). the second part of this right is dependent on the capacity of the child to express his or her view. in a recent case study, geldenhuys and doubell (2011, 326, 328, 334) investigated the extent to which learners in the school were given a voice in school discipline. if this case study is indicative of what is going on in most south african schools, educators need to make a mind shift as a matter of urgency and stop regarding learners’ voicing of their own opinions as disrespectful. they found that learners were not involved in the formulation of classroom rules, and that 87.5% of the participants indicated that they would be more likely to adhere to rules if they were involved in the formulation thereof. previously, learners’ participatory rights were used as mere “window dressing” to get the governing body’s or government’s approval. in this regard, carter and osler (2000, 328, 351) warn that educators should not merely use children’s rights as “cosmetic scaffolding” to uphold existing patterns of authoritarian control. these authors emphasise the fact that the recognition of the importance of human rights generally and of 92 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 children’s participatory rights in particular “can significantly improve relationships and change behaviour within the school community” (carter & osler 2000, 336, 352). relationships of trust will be promoted by recognising learners’ right to just administrative action. the common law rules of natural justice are now embodied in section 33 of the constitution. in terms of this right, learners should be treated in a fair and just manner when disciplinary action is taken against them. to ensure such fairness, the action should be substantively and procedurally fair. when considering a disciplinary measure, an educator should ensure that it will be substantively fair, thus that there is a valid reason for the action and that, based on that reason, the action is justified (coetzee, 2010b, 81). the third step in establishing positive discipline consists in creating a positive, supportive and child-friendly teaching and learning environment. recognising and promoting children’s rights is the best way of creating a child-friendly teaching and learning environment. no one can establish a disciplined classroom that is conducive to teaching and learning in the absence of order, routines, rules and structure (unesco, 2006, 70). in this process one should observe and promote learners’ right to be heard and the right to participate by giving them the opportunity to contribute their input. the international right to education (as guaranteed by the iccpr, the icescr and the crc) includes the right to participate in educational decisions such as school discipline (crc committee 2001, para 8; van bueren, 1992, 214). the last step in establishing positive discipline is that educators need to obtain a knowledge of, and apply, constructive ways of responding to misbehaviour.3 it has been argued that positive discipline requires that learners be led to take responsibility for their mistakes without fear of being punished (nelsen et al., 1997, 9, rapcan, 2008, 20). unless punishment is interpreted here as negative punishment (e.g. punishment that is cruel, inhuman or degrading), this argument is flawed because it implies that there is no place for corrective discipline. the supreme court of appeal emphasised the importance of punishment in mose v minister of education wp and others [2008] cape of good hope provincial division case no: 13018/08 (at 21): with rights come responsibilities. our learners ... must appreciate and understand that misconduct, like in open society, attracts sanctions and in appropriate circumstances, may include expulsion. furthermore, the view that positive discipline implies no punishment is a fallacy. in positive discipline, all actions have consequences: a positive action is acknowledged or rewarded and a negative action is followed up with a corrective disciplinary measure (knott-graig, 2007). punishment-based discipline harms the educator-learner relationship, while reward-based discipline builds trust and fosters a positive attitude between the educator and the learner (maphosa & mammen, 2011, 215). in western cape residents’ association obo williams and another v parow high schools 2006 (3) sa 542 (c) (at 545bc), the court acknowledged that granting a privilege as a reward is an acceptable measure used to teach learners discipline and respect for authority. the court emphasised the fact that withholding a privilege does not constitute an infringement of a learner’s rights to equality and dignity. the court stated that, in fact, it would constitute an infringement of the rights to equality and dignity of those learners who had earned a privilege if that privilege was granted to a learner who had not earned it. carter and osler (2000, 336) state that the recognition of human rights by both educators and learners will radically augment relationships and steer conflict management in a less confrontational and more positive direction. however, this does not mean that learners’ rights protect them from corrective disciplinary measures, but it does impact on the manner in which they are to be disciplined because the emphasis will be on discipline and not punishment (joubert, 2009, 502). disciplinary measures should be decided on and exercised within a human rights framework. if a positive discipline approach is followed, disciplinary measures should be relevant to the misbehaviour, proportional to the offence, aimed at correction and rehabilitation and not at humiliating the learner or at retribution (naker & setkitoleko, 2009, 46). any corrective measure should encourage learners to learn from their mistakes ((maphosa & mammen 2011, 215). as stated above, respect means acting in a manner that does not harm others. this implies upholding the right to freedom and security of the person. thus, if the emphasis is placed on trusting, mutually respectful relationships between educators and learners, this implies that educators cannot use any disciplinary measures that will harm learners in any way. 93coetzee & mienie — south african educators’ mutually inclusive mandates conclusion understanding the inclusive relationship between their mandates to promote and observe human rights and adopting a positive discipline approach provides educators with an alternative avenue by which to carry out their human rights’ mandate. by adopting a positive discipline approach educators can, in effect, merge their mandates to promote human rights and prevent them from committing the sort of human rights violations described above. the requirements set by national law and policy for school discipline clearly support a positive discipline approach as an approach which is non-violent, consonant with children’s dignity, encourages child participation and is grounded in human rights. the crux of positive discipline is that it is an approach that aims at establishing and maintaining good relationships between equal human beings, thereby recognising children as holders of rights; autonomous human beings who are equal in dignity to adults and equally worthy of respect. emphasising discipline and regarding punishment as a form of discipline, namely corrective discipline, result in educators’ observing and promoting the learners’ right to human dignity and the right not to be treated or punished in a cruel, inhuman or degrading manner. corrective discipline is best suited to fulfilling both mandates as it is rights-based, non-violent and aims at leading children to self-discipline, understanding their own behaviour, taking responsibility for their own choices and respecting themselves and others. positive discipline actively promotes children’s participation; it gives children a voice and creates teaching and learning environments that are child-friendly. in this way, rights such as the right to freedom of expression, the right to just administrative action, education and children’s rights are observed and promoted. by employing positive discipline correctly, educators thus inevitably honour learners’ human rights. endnotes 1 most of the studies mentioned above also address the reasons why educators still use corporal punishment despite it being banned. also see morell r 2001. corporal punishment in south african schools: a neglected explanation for its persistence. south african journal of education, 21(4), 292-299; maphosa c & shumba a 2010. educators’ disciplinary capabilities after the banning of corporal punishment in south africa. south african journal of education 30(3), 387-399. the reasons why educators still use corporal punishment fall outside the scope of this study. 2 “functionaries” is the term used in the definition of “organ of state” (see section 239 of the constitution). it refers to the fact that educators fulfil functions in the name of the school as an organ of state. 3 in a recent study conducted in 15 schools in one circuit, maphosa and mammen (2011, 220) found that educators mainly rely on punishment-based disciplinary measures, and that educators’ awareness and use of disciplinary measures that are supportive and help learners to understand why sanctioning is necessary and that encourage learners to develop a sense of responsibility are “virtually non-existent”. references carter c & osler a 2000. human rights, identities and conflict management: a study of school culture as experienced through classroom relationships. cambridge journal of education, 30, 335-365. chadsey t & mcvittie j 2006. the positive discipline school. retrieved on 2 february 2012 from http:// www.positivediscipline.org/resources/documents/pdsbrchr-8-06.pdf. coetzee sa 2010a. discipline in nigerian schools within a human rights framework. african human rights law journal, 10, 478-501. coetzee sa 2010b. organisational behaviour in education and education law: study guide 2 for hbedobg. revised 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presented at the 2005 national union of educators conference, south africa. retrieved on 2 february 2012 from http://www.eisa.org.za/eisa/slm.htm. lundy l 2007. “voice” is not enough: conceptualizing article 12 of the united nations convention on the rights of the child. british educational research journal, 33, 927-942. mahery p 2009. the united nations convention on the rights of the child: maintaining its value in international and south african child law. in: t boezaart (eds) child law in south africa. claremont: juta. maphosa c & mammen kj 2011. maintaining discipline: how do learners view the way teachers operate in south african schools? journal of social sciences, 29, 213-222. mtshali n 2011. principal faces assault charges. iol news, 26 july. retrieved on 2 february 2012 from http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/principal-faces-assault-charges-1.1105820?cache=0%3fcac he%3d0%2f7.120%3freport%3d19.112347.1300881724. müller cjp 2010. regmatige dissiplinêre maatreëls in die klaskamer: ‘n gevallestudie. pretoria: university of south africa (master educationis limited dissertation). naker d & sekitoleko d 2009. positive discipline: creating a good school without corporal punishment. kampala: raising voices. naong m 2007. the impact of the abolition of corporal punishment on teacher morale: 1994-2004. south african journal of education, 27, 283-300. nelsen j, lott l & glenn s 1997. positive discipline in the classroom. usa: prima publishing. 95coetzee & mienie — south african educators’ mutually inclusive mandates olivier, gh 2010. educators’ perceptions of corporal punishment. pretoria: university of pretoria (master educationis dissertation). oosthuizen ij, wolhuter cc & du toit p 2003. preventative or punitive disciplinary measures in south african schools: which should be favoured? koers, 68, 457-479. organization of african unity 1981. african charter on human and peoples’ rights, oau doc cab/ leg/67/3/rev (27 june 1981). organization of african unity 1990. african charter on the rights and welfare of the child oau doc cab/leg/24.9/49 (11 july 1990). rapcan 2008. a teacher’s guide to positive discipline. retrieved on 2 february 2012 from http://rapcan. co.za/file_uploads/resources/teaching%20positive%20discipline%20screen.pdf. reader’s digest. 1994. reader’s digest complete wordfinder. s.v. “respect”. london: reader’s digest. association limited. rogers b 1998. you know the fair rule. london: pitman publishing. rsa see south africa (republic). sace. code of professional ethics. retrieved on 2 february 2012 from http://www.sace.org.za/legal_ affairs_and_ethics/jit_default_21.the_code_of_professional_ethics.html. sahrc 2006. inquiry into school based violence in south africa. retrieved on 2 february 2012 from http://www.sahrc.org.za/home/index.php?ipkcontentid=15&ipkmenuid=19. siers m 2007. rapcan’s positive discipline programme in schools: an overview. article 19, 3,1-4. south africa (republic) 1992. children’s charter of south. retrieved on 2 february 2012 from http:// childrensrightcentre.webhouse.co.za/pages/20733. south africa (republic). 1996a. constitution of the republic of south africa. cape town: government printer. south africa (republic). 1996b. south african schools act 84 of 1996. cape town: government printer. south africa (republic). 1996c. national education policy act 27 of 1996. cape town: government printer. south africa (republic) 1998. government notice 776 of 1998. guidelines for the consideration of governing bodies in adopting a code of conduct for learners. pretoria: government printer. south african human rights commission see sahrc. un see united nations. unesco 2006. positive discipline in the inclusive, learning friendly classroom: a guide for teachers and teacher educators. retrieved on 2 february 2012 from http://www2.unescobkk.org/elib/ publications/086/pos_dis-final.pdf. unicef 2007. a human right-based approach to education for all. retrieved on 2 february 2012 from http://www.right-to-education.org/sites/r2e.gn.apc.org/files/a%20human %20rights-based%20 approach%20to%20education%20for%20all.pdf. un 1948. universal declaration of human rights, ga res 217 (iii), un doc a/810 (10 december 1948). un 1966a. international covenant on civil and political rights, ga res 2200a (xxi), un doc a/6316 (16 december 1966). un 1966b. international covenant on economic, social and cultural rights, ga res 2200a (xxi), un doc a/6316 (16 december 1966). un 1989. convention on the rights of the child 28 ilm 1448, 1577 unts 3 (20 november 1989). us state department 2010. country reports on human rights practices: south africa 2010. retrieved on 2 february 2012 from http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2010/af/154370.htm. vally s 2005. education rights project, book 11: corporal punishment and bullying: the rights of learners. retrieved on 2 february 2012 from http://www.erp.org.za/pdf/punish%20booklet_web.pdf. van bueren g 1992. autonomy and the child: the international educational rights of the child. social education, 56, 214-215. viljoen f 2009. the african charter on the rights and welfare of the child. in: t boezaart (eds) child law in south africa. claremont: juta. pie32(3) book.indb perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 131 stefano barozzi university of granada, spain e-mail: stefb@ugr.es telephone: +34 958 241 325 discussing sexual identities with pre-service primary school englishlanguage teachers from a spanish context stefano barozzi juan ramón guijarro ojeda this article is based on a discussion with seven voluntary spanish pre-service primary school english-language teachers on queer issues. the focus group followed a questionnaire on their knowledge and understanding of sexual identity issues in education. the facilitated discussion enabled the participants to be better prepared on the subject. at first, the researchers guided the discussion based on the main results from the questionnaire and then worked as facilitators for the focus group, prompting critical thinking. through pedagogical suggestions, the participants discussed possible applications of queer theory in primary education in order to counter homophobia and heterosexism. the results of the discussion highlight the absence of queer issues in english-language teaching in primary education in spain and the need for teacher training programmes, as requested by the participants. in this article, sexual identities are related to lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, intersexual (lgbti) as well as heterosexual people. it is the first study realised in spain to use group discussion on these topics. keywords: pre-service primary school teachers, english as a foreign language, queer theory, homophobia, heteronormativity, lgbti introduction this article is inspired by queer theory and is based on a focus group consisting of seven spanish pre-service primary school english as a foreign language (efl) teachers. this qualitative research study is based on an ma dissertation presented by barozzi (2010) at the faculty of education of the university of granada, in andalusia, spain. juan ramón guijarro ojeda university of granada, spain email: jrgo@ugr.es telephone: +34 958 241 325 perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 132 we are both english-language teachers and teacher trainers, hence the interest in this subject area. in this article, ‘queer’ is mainly used as an umbrella term to include all lgbti1 people (jagose, 1996), and all those who feel marginalised as a result of their sexual/ gender identity and orientation. we understand that ‘queer’, as in queer theory, is a fluid term which does not constitute a particular fixed social identity. however, we also believe that ‘queer’ is a problematic term per se, and this is unavoidable. in this article, the term ‘queer people’ includes ‘gender queer’ individuals who do not recognise themselves as ‘she’ or ‘he’ (‘ze’?); pansexuals who are attracted to, and interested in all kinds of people whether they define themselves as having a fixed sexual identity or not, as well as asexual individuals. our only slight objection to using ‘queer’ for lgbti is that it might render some identities ‘invisible’, particularly lesbians, trans2 and intersexual people; however, this is not our intention in this article. sexism, which, in our view, should be termed gender category oppression (rands, 2009), is systematically associated with heterosexism, which is the belief that heterosexuality is the only possible natural sexual identity, whereas all the other identities are considered inferior and deviant. heteronormativity, with its social norms and rules, perpetuates heterosexism; however, unlike homophobia,3 which is intentional in nature, heteronormativity is often subconsciously reproduced in everyday interactions, texts, images and discourses. the exclusion of any lgbti individual from school textbooks is an example of heterosexism, which can also be noticed in the vast majority of adverts, films and television programmes, which are mostly directed to straight people. we believe that heterosexism and heteronormativity are more dangerous than homophobia, because they often go unnoticed, but do promote homophobia and exclusion. in addition, cissexism, which considers trans people as inferior to cissexual/cisgender people, is not often perceived in education. cissexuals/cisgenders, unlike trans people, feel comfortable with their own biological and subconscious sex as well as their gender (serano, 2007). sexual identity issues are not normally treated in the spanish national educational system, especially at primary school level and in private catholic schools. nonetheless, they may be addressed in public (state-run) education through crosscurricular themes in any subject in the last two years of primary school, but generally only the area of sexual reproduction is discussed. thus, it would be relatively safe to admit that heteronormativity and homophobia permeate the spanish educational system. sexual orientation, personal identity and individual differences in education are protected by the spanish constitution (1978) and educational legislation (2006). since 2005, same-sex couples have had the same rights to marriage as heterosexual couples, including child adoption; trans people can change their gender and name following a two-year period of psychological and medical attention and without discussing sexual identities with pre-service primary school english-language teachers from a spanish context stefano barozzi & juan ramón guijarro ojeda 133 having to go through sex re-assignment surgery. unfortunately, psychologists and physicians all over the world still consider transgenderism (and transexuality) a mental disorder (and a dysphoria), as has been the case for homosexuality in the recent past. the only country in the world, to date, that allows people to change their name and gender without going through medical, psychological and legal attention is argentina (since 2012). currently, a similar legislative proposal is being debated in different regions in spain, including andalusia. despite the progressive legislation in spain, efl publishers (from britain) are wary of depicting homosexual family units or queer individuals in english-language textbooks for spanish primary education, because children are deemed to be ‘asexual’ and too young and naïve to ‘understand’ the issues involved (herdt & boxer, 1993). yet primary school pupils are perfectly capable of critical thought when exposed to a whole range of other social issues (sears, 1999). the main objective of this article is to explore seven spanish pre-service primary school efl teachers’ knowledge of, and attitudes towards queer issues in primary education. we also wish to find out what queer pedagogical suggestions participants might propose concerning their own teaching practice. previous research studies some spanish, european and wider international research on teachers’ and students’ understandings of queer issues has been conducted mostly at secondary school level (bickmore, 1999; page & liston, 2002; gallardo & escolano, 2009; pichardo, 2007; gualdi, martelli, wilhelm, biedron, graglia, & pietrantoni, 2008). the main results of these studies suggest that homophobia is still a serious problem in secondary school education in europe. an important queer pedagogical intervention is the ‘glee project’ (bedford, 2009), which provided training courses in europe that empowered in-service secondary as well as primary school teachers to help create safe and affirmative schools for lgbt students and staff. it did not deal with efl, but with a range of different subject areas. as for other international studies, the closest to our research are those undertaken by nelson (1993, 1999, 2003, 2009) in australia and in the united states, although they deal with english as a second language (esl) and adults. one study in education which is worth mentioning and which deals with gay, lesbian and bisexual people and citizenship in south african life orientation textbooks is that of potgieter & reygan (2012); others which are related to diversity in education are le roux and mdunge (2009) as well as pillay and mclellan (2010). another international study which deals with queer issues and foreign-language teaching is that undertaken in australia by de vincenti, giovanangeli and ward (2007). there are other international studies on queer issues in education, also at primary school level, namely kissen (2002), jones and hillier (2012), moita-lopes (2006), and o’móchain (2006).4 however, it is important to emphasise that none of these studies deals with a direct discussion perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 134 with pre-service efl teachers at primary school level; therefore, this current study is an attempt to close the gap. queer issues at primary school level in terms of queer issues and primary school education, parts of our society strongly object to discuss these topics with children, because they are viewed as asexual beings who are “too young and too innocent to comprehend or think critically about what they consider to be ‘adult issues’, such as difference, power, ‘race’, and sexuality” (robinson & jones, 2006: 7). colleary (1999) argues that teachers should integrate sexual identity issues into their primary school curricula, as this would offer possible queer pupils, as well as all the others, a further opportunity to participate in their school community, “thus increasing their own sense of self-worth and achievement and significantly decreasing their chances for isolation, academic failure, or suicide” (colleary, 1999: 153). the documentary it’s elementary: talking about gay issues in schools (chasnoff & cohen, 1996/2006), filmed in six u.s. elementary and middle schools, “provides evidence that many young children know a lot more about homosexuality and gender questions than adults would predict” (bickmore, 1999: 15). the movie clearly shows that primary school children possess knowledge that is incomplete, partly inaccurate and/or negative, and partly neutral (bickmore, 1999). the documentary is a milestone in the development of didactic discourse in primary and secondary teacher training on sexual identity issues. as the film shows, children can learn about queer issues from what their teachers say and from what they leave out, in other words from both teachers’ knowledge and ignorance. queer issues in efl education english-language teaching has become one of the most important school subjects worldwide; nowadays, english is considered the lingua franca that enables billions of people to communicate. nevertheless, apart from heterosexuality, sexual identities are consistently omitted in efl and esl education (thornbury, 1999; nelson, 2009). during her research studies, nelson (1999, 2003) discovered that some of her esl colleagues believed that sexual identities had nothing to do with the teaching and learning of a second language. however, issues pertaining to sexual identities, exclusively heterosexual, are often present in esl/efl education. yet opportunities for queer discussions are often present, and inevitably there will be students and teachers who are queer. moreover, learning a foreign language means learning a new culture in which all social identities should be represented; yet sexual identities are avoided explicitly in efl/esl teaching materials. to demonstrate this, we analysed some efl textbooks for state-run primary schools in spain and noticed how discussing sexual identities with pre-service primary school english-language teachers from a spanish context stefano barozzi & juan ramón guijarro ojeda 135 heteronormativity is present in nearly every unit of the textbooks examined (e.g. blair & cadwallader, 2009; evans & gray, 2003; papiol & toth, 2009). countering homophobia and heterosexism and their impact on the ‘e/quality’ of educational experiences is a pillar within the field of teacher training that directly applies to english language teaching (elt) when incorporating non-homophobic and non-heterosexist issues in the curriculum (ferfolja, 2007; robinson, 2005; szalacha, 2004; halberstam, 2008; stiegler, 2008; hermann-wilmarth & bills, 2010). nelson (1999, 2009) as well as guijarro and ruiz-cecilia (2011) stress the importance of a ‘learner-centred’ language education and recognise that teachers’ and learners’ social identities are an important aspect of everyday interactions in the context of families, schools, communities, leisure activities and workplaces. the focus on the social aspects coincides with the view that knowledge is not discovered, but socially constructed (foucault, 1978) and that learning is a social practice. through queer theory, students and teachers can learn what purpose identities serve, how they work and even discover some contradictions related to them (nelson, 2009). problematising all sexual identities (including heterosexuals) may be more inclusive than simply legitimising subordinate sexual identities, because it offers more possibilities to learn about, and deal with different experiences and perspectives (nelson, 2003). by doing so, heterosexual students would also be interested in discussing sexual identities, since heterosexuality would be included in the discussion. furthermore, problematising all sexual identities can avoid the separation between ‘us’ (heterosexual people) and ‘them’ (queer people), which tends to isolate subordinate identities and make them ‘invisible’ and ‘problematic’ in education. queer students should feel safe and comfortable in their class and, like all heterosexual teachers and students, they should have opportunities to express themselves authentically, spontaneously and confidentially. similarly, queer teachers should be able to work in a comfortable environment in which they can talk freely about their gender identity, if they so wish. nelson (1993: 148) believes that “it is our responsibility to give all of our students a good education”. according to nelson’s experience, a typical esl teacher’s attitude is to believe that only queer people can address queer issues. as a matter of fact, it could be more difficult for lgbti teachers to discuss queer issues, because they might be afraid of being addressed as queer and receive aggressive or negative responses such as rejection. moreover, queer theory makes it possible to examine the linguistic and cultural patterns in which sexual identities are performed (butler, 1990), communicated and formed; teachers and learners can go beyond simply discussing socially constructed people as either tolerated or tolerant (nelson, 1999). cynthia nelson believes that aiming for tolerance presupposes intolerance, and inclusion can serve to reinforce a perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 136 minority status. this aspect was discussed during the focus group, and participants understood the danger of using the word ‘tolerance’ towards people (‘them’) who are considered subordinate, because it might serve to further isolate minority groups. in spain, guijarro-ojeda (2006) offers some queer didactic examples for efl education. nelson (2009: 26) reminds us that queer studies in esl/efl teaching are part of a “nascent area and have yet to engage with international contexts and globalised research as much as one would expect”. methodology participants the participant cohort for the focus group consisted of four men and three women, all spanish nationals, aged between 21 and 31 who took part in this study voluntarily and who participated together. six men and four women answered the questionnaire, previously sent to them by email, but only seven of them could attend the group discussion (the four men and three women mentioned earlier). the participants were selected at the faculty of education of the university of granada where they had been studying. this is one of the leading universities in the country and is ranked first in the field of pedagogy, according to national statistics. the ten initial candidates who were contacted had some interest in the subject and accepted to participate in this research study. from the data obtained from the questionnaire, two men were identified as heterosexual, two as bisexual and another as gay. one woman considered herself bisexual, another did not recognise herself as totally heterosexual, and the other two expressed that they were heterosexual. in the discussion, we only mentioned that half of the cohort did not consider themselves purely heterosexual. their sexual identities were not disclosed, despite the fact that the only gay participant talked freely about his sexuality and another man talked about his bisexuality. one bisexual woman contacted us after the discussion and told us that she felt uneasy during the focus group as she did not feel comfortable to disclose her sexual identity in front of the other participants. instruments and method after reviewing the literature on this topic and based on our own experience as gender experts and efl teacher trainers, some key topics were devised to elicit information from the participants for the group discussion. these topics were chosen after analysing the questionnaires, which served to prompt critical thinking. in the questionnaire, queer issues were addressed and the participants had to answer a series of questions related to their knowledge and understanding of these issues. apart from the initial personal questions, participants had to answer questions related to queer terminology, followed by other questions dealing with sexual identity issues and primary school education, whether it is important to discuss sexual identity discussing sexual identities with pre-service primary school english-language teachers from a spanish context stefano barozzi & juan ramón guijarro ojeda 137 issues with children and how they would do it. the final questions were related to sexual identity issues and efl and whether these matters were relevant to their study and profession. the questionnaire, written in english, was positively evaluated by external experts in the area of qualitative research in education and foreign-language teaching. since queer terminology and issues were new to most of the participants, we decided to organise a discussion in order to clarify some of the topics and answers given in the questionnaire and to further analyse the data we collected from the questionnaire in order to validate our results and findings. the facilitated discussion was partly controlled by the researchers who elicited some of the answers and challenged the participants to deconstruct their ideas and opinions. we sent the on-line questionnaire and, after a deep analysis of the participants’ answers, the focus group took place two months later. it was the first time that a filmed discussion on sexual identities with pre-service primary school efl teachers was used as a research method in spain. for the purpose of this article, we shall only concentrate on the most relevant topics discussed in the focus group. the group discussion was held in spanish. in this article, we have translated some of the most important contributions made by the participants. our work is based on a naturalistic inquiry approach, in which the participants’ voices are central; however, due to restrictions of length for an article, a detailed analysis was not possible. the two-hour discussion was filmed and recorded on two dvds. results and discussion four out of seven participants were surprised to hear that only half of them considered themselves to be exclusively heterosexual (from the data of the questionnaire). all the participants understood the hegemonic influence of heterosexuality in our culture. the term ‘queer’ appeared to be problematic; five participants did not really understand its meaning as in queer theory. however, all the participants understood it as an umbrella term for lgbti people. only one participant knew the meaning of ‘intersexual’. another participant objected that sexual identities always existed in history, which we briefly debated and concluded that identities, as we currently understand them, are social constructions that change in time and space (butler, 1990; nelson, 2009). sex and sexuality were often confused, so we asked the group whether some people could consider themselves gay or straight without having had any previous sexual contact. they all mentioned that this was possible; this partly clarified the fact that sexuality is not exclusively related to sexual acts. in the questionnaire, six out of ten participants did not know the terms ‘heterosexism’ and ‘heteronormativity’. during the group discussion, these terms were analysed in depth and each participant offered some examples of heterosexism and perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 138 heteronormativity from their life experience. ultimately, the participants understood the terms, particularly because of their strict relation to sexism. homophobia was also understood as discrimination towards, and rejection of lgbti people. it was confirmed during the focus group that heterosexuality was not generally recognised as problematic, was mostly taken for granted, and never discussed in terms of power relations. in the questionnaire, the participants were asked to describe a heterosexual person. however, none of the participants answered this question. similarly, in the questionnaire, six out of ten participants ignored the description of lesbians and trans people, thus reinforcing the assumption that lesbians, trans and intersexual people are still invisible in education. during the focus group, four participants admitted that they found it difficult to describe heterosexuality, because it is considered ‘normal’. they all seemed surprised to hear that it was, in fact, unnoticed in the questionnaire. discussing the hegemonic role of heterosexuality is fundamental for queer theory, since talking only about lgbti people is first of all exclusive and, secondly, it might not consider the power relations surrounding sexual identities (foucault, 1978). we then discussed one particular question in the survey, namely “what caused your ‘heterosexuality’?”. four participants admitted being surprised by this question; they observed that normally people ask what caused one’s homosexuality, but heterosexuality is never problematised. they all appreciated the question, because it helped five of them understand that their heterosexuality was, in fact, imposed on them since birth. the only gay participant stated: “my ‘heterosexuality’ was caused by education and the catholic religion”. six participants argued that, like the terms ‘men’ and ‘women’, sexual identities are social constructions. one participant admitted that he was given social roles; therefore, sexual identities were recognised as social constructs, although he added that there is also a natural component (our orientation). another participant, stating that the “family decides the roles when we are born: girls with pink and boys with blue, etc.”, was underlying the presence of heteronormativity and fixed gender roles given to boys and girls. one participant added: “[t]hese fixed roles are reinforced at primary school”. another participant considered homosexuality as ‘normal’. however, the other participants recognised that it is not considered normal in our society. the participants were then asked what they meant by ‘normal’ as in a ‘normal family’. one participant mentioned: “[t]he term ‘normal’ reflects the values imposed by the catholic church”. for two other participants, ‘normal’ meant what is most common. we stressed that often the most common things are not considered ‘normal’ per se, but they are made to be the norm. in fact, another participant added: “[i]t is a case of hierarchy in which heterosexuality is considered superior”; this denotes critical thinking. at this stage, participants took the floor and five of them believed that sexual identities are viewed distinctively according to one’s culture; this could create conflicts in the classroom, due to students’ differing cultural discussing sexual identities with pre-service primary school english-language teachers from a spanish context stefano barozzi & juan ramón guijarro ojeda 139 origins. it is important to recognise that conflicts can also emerge in an efl class, and teachers must be prepared to face them. nelson (2009) reminds us that homophobic statements should be used as pedagogical opportunities. for example, if a child comes from a culture in which homosexuality is considered a sin, as in most religions, and a crime, as in many countries of the world, we can listen to what s/he has to say and compare his/her knowledge with the rest of the class. this could easily be achieved in an esl class. one participant argued that “sexual identities should not be discussed at primary school as primary school pupils are not aware of sexual identities and are not interested in the subject”. another participant strongly disagreed with this statement, suggesting that teachers should be prepared to clarify any doubts pupils may have and deal with sexualities by using their knowledge or lack thereof. as for parents’ reactions to discussing sexual identities at primary school, six out of ten participants admitted, in the questionnaire, that they were afraid of their parents’ reactions if they decided to discuss sexual identities in their class, whereas four out of seven participants added that they were concerned about losing their job, because of their parents’ reactions. however, the other three participants in the facilitated discussion argued that discrimination towards lgbti people should be addressed at primary school, like any other social injustice, and that it should be part of the explicit curriculum. one participant stated that “it would be vital to talk to parents about the importance for their children to learn different sexualities”. in the discussion, six participants compared homophobia with racism and considered that both should be treated at school, although three participants opined that discussing homophobia could be more difficult and problematic. one participant stated: talking about racism does not affect spanish parents as their children are and will be spanish, but discussing homosexuality could be a problem as some parents might think that their children could ‘turn gay’. at this stage, we mentioned a research study carried out in spain (pichardo, 2007), in which parents were contacted beforehand and told about the activities and surveys on sexuality issues that researchers wanted to use with secondary school students. the majority of the parents were in favour of such activities, as they admitted not being able to discuss these issues with their children. all the participants were surprised by this finding. as for queer pedagogical situations, one participant in the questionnaire mentioned his training period in a primary school: during my school practice, children asked me whether i had a girlfriend. i told them that i had a boyfriend. then, they told me that i didn’t look gay. i used this to make them aware of sexual identities, because they really appreciated and admired me. this participant used a very good queer pedagogical example. pupils, like most adults, assume that we are all or that we are supposed to be – heterosexual. however, the perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 140 participant broke this imposed social rule by stating that he had a boyfriend. in the discussion, the same participant mentioned that pupils were surprised by his answer, but that they also seemed to know who could be gay and who was probably not, according to general social norms. another participant pointed out that “children should be asked to describe what a gay person is for them”. this is a perfect queer pedagogical opportunity and children should also be asked what a straight person is for them. one participant, who was teaching in a catholic school, had filled in the questionnaire, but could not attend the focus group. in the questionnaire, she admitted that she would avoid any reference to queer issues in her classroom. in the discussion, six participants in a similar situation identified with her fear of losing their job. yet one participant admitted: i would discuss sexuality issues even if i worked in a catholic school, as part of human rights and multiculturalism, and i would try to convince the parents and the school director about the importance to include sexual identity issues in the classroom just like any other social injustice. participants were then asked how efl textbooks could be used in a pedagogical way, pointing out that queer identities are never present, at least not in spain. four of the participants considered inclusion (but how?). we prompted that children should think critically as to why queer identities are not present and discuss it with the entire class rather than trying to include queer individuals, which could be problematic; five participants agreed. six participants argued that efl textbooks could be ‘queerly’ used by asking the pupils if they knew of other forms of family units and, therefore, discuss what is missing in the textbooks and create a general debate on the issue. the majority of the primary school children are bound to know some queer people in their families or parents’ friends or from the television (chesnoff & cohen, 1996). the sample group was asked to provide some examples of queer didactic activities that could be applied to their english class at primary school. the following are the most salient examples: in group work, girls and boys can work together, thus avoiding typical roles for boys and girls (role plays); in a reading activity, girls can read parts supposed to be for boys and vice versa; use of songs, films and documentaries (probably those with clear queer content or gender ambiguous with gender variant minors); exploit queer and non-queer children’s literature; talk about different family units; talk about queer issues when discussing homophobia, or use traditional tales but change the gender roles. it must be stated that the participants were highly motivated and wanted to learn more about pedagogical implications underlying the fact that they had never received any kind of training on how to deal with queer didactic strategies. discussing sexual identities with pre-service primary school english-language teachers from a spanish context stefano barozzi & juan ramón guijarro ojeda 141 we also wanted to find out why, for more than half of the survey’s cohort, children were described as asexual entities. one participant mentioned that “children are seen as asexual because they do not like sex and do not seem to possess any knowledge of sexuality”; this would appear to be a common remark. however, most children know that being homosexual is considered inferior and deviant (chesnoff & cohen, 1996) and they have also learnt the binary system (boy/girl, heterosexual/ homosexual, and so forth) and tend to follow it as a general norm. after a short debate on the issue, five participants agreed that primary school children possess some knowledge of sexual identity issues and are sexed beings; thus they should not be considered ‘asexual’. in discussing other possible activities which primary school teachers should adopt and which could be relevant to anyone, one participant argued that “sexual minorities are a minority in number and thus they are given less space and importance”. we answered that this is possible; however, in terms of quantity, this is counterproductive. it is likely that women outnumber men in the world; yet they are a social minority. hence, it is not acceptable to think that lgbti people should receive a different (inferior) treatment simply because they are not heterosexual and they are fewer in number. towards the end of the discussion, we talked about some pedagogical implications offered by nelson (1999, 2009) in which, for example, two women holding hands and two men holding hands in the street were discussed. five participants admitted that, in our society (western, spanish), two women holding hands in the street could be lesbians, but they are more likely considered to be friends or family members. this kind of activity is highly motivating, because pupils are encouraged to think about different answers for the same situation and this can be applied to multiculturalism. all participants agreed that two men holding hands in the street in spain would be a gay couple, whereas, for example, in a muslim country, they could be brothers, friends or relatives. the participants enjoyed these examples and considered them constructive for their pupils. they could also recognise the connection between the social aspect of the activity and the study of english grammar: the use of modal verbs as in “they could be friends, they might be sisters, they must be lovers, etc.” (nelson, 1999: 371). at the end of the discussion, all the participants emphasised their lack of preparation and training in how to deal with queer issues. since they all admitted that discussing queer issues with primary school pupils is very important and relevant for their job, they were concerned about not having sufficient skills and knowledge that could negatively influence their working career. one participant made this very revealing statement: “there is a lack of information, we filled in many questionnaires, many questions, but we do not receive any information”. what this participant meant is that queer issues are never approached and that pre-service teachers have to deal with sexual identity dilemmas which often arise at primary school level. all seven participants admitted that multiculturalism and racism were discussed in their perspectives in education 2014: 32(3) 142 teacher training period at university. however, there was no or hardly any discussion on sexual identities. we commented that these findings were similar to the research carried out at the university of málaga (gallardo & escolano, 2009) in which both university students and professors requested professional training on how to deal with sexual identity issues in education. conclusions the discussion with the seven spanish pre-service english-language teachers was constructive; they showed a high level of awareness of the consequences of homophobic bullying on the young victims and were keen on finding solutions to this educational and social problem. they also recognised the absence of queerfriendly materials in their efl teaching and learning experience and hoped for a more progressive and open-minded legislation in education. during the discussion, the participants’ responses revealed a commitment and willingness to become professional, sensitive, understanding and empathetic primary school teachers. pedagogy should involve rigorous critique of our society, why and how we have different identities, and not merely attempt to include, for example, subordinate sexual identities without discussing what made them seem inferior. the most important result emerging from the discussion is their lack of training on queer issues and the demand for it. these findings have led us to develop a new research project based on a training course on sexual identity issues for pre-service english-language teachers at the university of granada in spain. notes 1. we would prefer to use the acronym with small letters: lgbti, as the capital letters stand out almost aggressively in a text. however, lgbti in small letters is not generally employed in english. in addition, hiv/ aids should be written as hiv/aids, especially because the capital letters reinforce the negative social stigma. 2. we use the more inclusive term ‘trans’ in this article to include both transgender and transsexual people. 3. we would prefer to use either the term ‘homotransphobia’ or ‘queerphobia’, as they are more inclusive than ‘homophobia’. nonetheless, these terms are not generally employed in english. ‘homophobia’ can be institutionally, culturally and individually expressed. there is also ‘internalised homophobia’, which affects lgbti people who reject their own sexual identity. discussing sexual identities with pre-service primary school english-language teachers from a spanish context stefano barozzi & juan ramón guijarro ojeda 143 4. there are international educational projects for lgbti people, namely ‘gala south africa’ (http://www.gala.co.za/), ‘belongto’ in ireland (http:// www.belongto.org/), aibai in china (http://www.chinacsrmap.org/org_ show_en.asp?id=1587), and ‘stonewell’ 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5(2): 15-17. markets, equality and democratic education: confronting the neoliberal and libertarian reconceptualisations of education youl-kwan sung kyung-hee university, seoul, south korea associate professor graduate school of education, kyung-hee university 1 hoegie dong, dongdaemoon, seoul, south korea (zip code: 130-701) email: yksung@khu.ac kr tel: +82 2 961 9173 (office) the global emergence of market liberalism marks an effort to decouple the link between citizenship and the welfare state and to rearticulate people’s identity as homo economicus, as independent citizens having the right to property and the freedom to choose in the marketplace. confronting this phenomenon, this paper reviews neoliberal and libertarian understandings of educational equality and democratic education and interrogates the rationale for the justification of markets in education. in the process, i criticise the notion of possessive individualism as a principle of democratic education on the grounds that such a notion explains human action only at the individual level, as a matter of free will, and not as a part of the cultural and political struggle for nondiscrimination. i also provide reasons why the claim to equal respect and recognition needs to be given more importance in education and argue for the social responsibility to secure not only students’ educational opportunities, but also their opportunity to reflectively consider what counts as equal value. keywords: neoliberalism, libertarianism, market-based education reform, democratic education introduction over the past decades, market liberalism has emerged globally as a key topic in educational discourse and reform. market-inspired ideas, at the heart of this phenomenon, have contributed to the decline of the welfare state and underpinned the ideological rationale for the thatcher and reagan administrations’ social and educational policies in the 1980s. although the discussions in this paper center around literatures from western countries, the phenomenon of neoliberal education reform is not limited to these countries, but extends to african and asian ones. for example, waghid (2008) argues that the corporate culture of educational institutions in south africa has increased and there are concerns that neoliberal educational policies would exacerbate the reality of inequality in the hierarchy of the society. similarly, in south korea, the neoliberal model of school choice has resulted in the creation of more elite schools for students from mostly affluent families and the intensification of the long criticised test-driven culture (sung, 2009). this phenomenon overlaps the recent japanese educational reforms. takayama (2007) argues that the japanese government has adopted market-based educational reforms in response to demands from neoliberal business sectors and neoconservative intellectuals and politicians. recent controversial educational reforms in many countries cannot be considered in isolation from neoliberal and libertarian political leadership (olssen, 2009; whitty, power, & halpin, 1998). for example, the most influential scholar of neoliberal and libertarian theory, friedrich von hayek, is called a “philosopher-economist” on the grounds that he contributes to the rejection of the welfarist vision, and at the same time accepts possessive individualism for moral and political leadership. possessive individualism gains “hegemonic power” (gramsci, 1971) to popularise the commonsensical notion that individuals are free to retain or dispose of goods and services without state interference. hence, neoliberalism is not only sung — markets, equality and democratic education 73 an economic term, but it is also a political stance used to alter the subject position and generate discourse around the idea of what constitutes a good society or responsible citizen (apple, 2006). this paper, then, reviews neoliberalism and libertarianism as political-economic terms and provides reasons why the claim to equal respect and recognition needs to be given more importance in education. in the process, the paper has two simple but crucial conceptual research questions: do markets satisfy equality of education? � do markets protect democratic education? � in the past decades, market-based school reform efforts have called for the parental right of decisionmaking in the choice of schools. the ideological formation of parents’ identities is linked with the individual freedom to make educational choices for their own children. in the next section, i review some of the major ethical arguments for individual freedom in libertarianism and neoliberalism that provide economic justifications for markets. market rationale in market liberalism, the nature of the human being is conceived of as rational and competitive. the moral characteristic of this human being is represented by the term homo economicus. indeed, the neoliberal conceptualisation of human nature as homo economicus affects parents and educators in such a way as to produce a change in their view of schooling. this neoliberal perspective is embedded in the public proclamations of chubb and moe (1990), tooley (2000), friedman and friedman (1980), and hayek (1979). their scholarship focuses on a market-inspired reform in which parental school choice in connection with vouchers is thought of as an effective means of holding public schools accountable. at the forefront of these proposals is a voucher plan that sees students as bearers of the particular amount spent on their education. milton friedman (1955, 1960) promoted the idea of unregulated school choice in which every child would be given a voucher of the same value, but affluent parents could add on extra dollars when the school of choice required it. in short, in an unregulated market proposal, the value of the voucher is the same for each child, but schools of parents’ choice are permitted to charge additional tuition fees. in this stance, it is argued that the public schools are forced to compete for students with other schools, including for-profit charter schools or any possible educational service providers (chubb & moe, 1990). this is a very basic idea in market liberalism because it is believed that choice encourages competition and competition increases effectiveness. however, education cannot be a real market. if a school is successful in the market, it cannot grow enough to accommodate the additional demand (astin, 1992). an educational market is different from a real market that allows producers to expand their business to accommodate the increasing demand for their products and services. compared to profit-making sectors, education would not satisfy the market assumption of supply-side elasticity. an “educational pseudo-market” (whitty, power & halpin, 1998) would be selective, because this market solves the demand-side over-subscription by a selective process instead of by increasing supplies. pro-market advocates, then, are in danger of overconfidence. rational choice theory proffers the formula below: ∑ ri = s ri: individual’s rationality, s: structural change interpretation: the end result is that the sum total of parents’ rational pursuit of self-interest (∑ri) raises the level of the structuration (s) of an effective education system as a whole. although i will explain more about the counter-evidence in the next section, the above equation is not necessarily true given the unintended sequences. parents’ choices of better schools can have parallel negative effects on the children left behind. for example, if selective schools are skimming off preferred students, those schools will leave the public schools with less funding to teach the rest, including poor perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201074 students, at-risk students and disabled students (mcneil, 2000; sung, 2009). the following diagram is simple, but hopefully useful, in that it describes the location of the effort within the architecture of the overall debate around market-inspired education reforms. figure 1: conversion of the neoliberal and libertarian rationales consideration of both economic and moral justifications at the same time is a way to provide a complete and comprehensive explanation for recent developments in marketised perspectives of educational reform. markets in education are supported not only on economic grounds (see arrow a in the above diagram), as discussed by chubb and moe (1990), but also on the moral ground (see arrow b) of individual liberty. in this regard, it would be almost impossible to neglect ethical grounds in the process of understanding market proponents’ ideological support (gewirtz, 2002). to satisfy the demand side of market conditions, it would seem to follow that parents function as economically rational individuals (homo economicus), who act out of self-interest. for market proponents, it is believed the sum total of all parents’ rational choices is equated with the structuration of an effective education system as a market scenario would expect. on the other hand, in the moral justification of markets, parents are basically seen as possessive individuals who can exercise their property rights in terms of their individual liberty, especially within educational institutions opened to markets (chubb & moe, 1990). for this reason, to better understand major shared themes between ascendant neoliberalist and libertarian ideas, it is worth reviewing libertarianism from the perspective of influential market advocates who favour property rights and minimal state intervention. in framing market-based arguments, there are at least two prerequisites for protecting individual parental liberty, especially in terms of the moral justification of markets: property rights and the minimal state. nozick’s entitlement theory takes the position that the economic freedom to exercise property rights is a necessary condition for political freedom in a minimal state (wolff, 1991). it is not surprising that hayek (1944), another influential libertarian, was endorsed by nozick (1974). although hayek places more emphasis on the free-market mechanism for protecting economic freedom (and, eventually, political freedom) than nozick did in his justification of the individual’s right to private property, they seem to have little disagreement in viewing state intervention as a violation of individual liberty; thus, if the more extensive state tries to tax a person’s property in order to provide welfare, it becomes an apparent and significant constraint on property rights. hayek (1944) maintains that the progressive preference of the economic justification ∑ ri = s (r = individual rationality, s = structure) moral justification property rights = individual liberty parents & students education choice ba sung — markets, equality and democratic education 75 system of state intervention would lead to “the road to serfdom.” according to hayek, since the market has a spontaneous order and the absence of it brings about all sorts of undesirable consequences, the state should not take any responsibility for planning for the welfare of the people further than the competitive market system. in this regard, for nozick and hayek, personal morality is a private matter, because public morality undermines individual rights (newman, 1984). in the educational field, chubb & moe (1990) see the market-based choice policy as a self-contained reform having its own rationale and justification, and so they recommend it be adopted without other reforms. milton freedman, hayek’s student, also strongly believes the major reason for the failure of the quasi market application in education is that market reform has been incomplete in the absence of a price mechanism and sufficient competing suppliers. in line with freedman (1960), tooley (2000) argues that some school choice experiments fail because their most significant parental choice feature is regulated and mixes the market mechanism with other ideas of public control. in his view, in a genuine choice system, new suppliers would enter the market and create price mechanisms without state intervention. this system calls for a minimal state, large tax reductions and a price mechanism as the best way to privatise schools. the pursuit of the neoliberal ideal of market-based education is made possible by major shifts in our common-sense understanding of citizenship (olssen, 2009; power, 2000). parents and students have come to be seen as educational consumers. hall (1986) calls this signifying practice; he offers a way of understanding politics as articulation, a way in which language is used to convey common sense principles based on human beliefs about a particular issue. this can be achieved through media, research institutes, foundations and state or federal legislation regarding parents’ right to choose the kind of education they want for their children. neoliberalism exercises cultural and institutional leadership by gaining people’s consent instead of by coercing them (gramsci, 1971) and by obtaining the hegemonic and managerial legitimacy of the market approach (apple, 2006). in line with such a signifying practice, neoliberals and libertarians (nozick, 1974; hayek, 1960) confidently assert that market models work better to satisfy the equality of educational opportunity, and democratic education would not be undermined but rather better protected in a market system. in the rest of this paper, i will discuss unsuccessful efforts in neoliberal and libertarian thought to justify markets for equal and democratic education. do markets satisfy equality of education? in challenging the idea that the market can produce maximum social welfare, stone (1997) points out that if market mechanisms are a good way to organise social activity, society should set the rules about “who can sell, what can be sold, what constitutes a valid contract, and how valid contracts will be enforced” (p.79), because people who can control money and property often take advantage of the system. this tells us that power relations must be considered when a mode of organising social activity is being constructed, if a society is concerned with social justice. in order to further assess the libertarian argument, we need to consider definitions of educational opportunity. ennis (1978) provides a useful framework for clarifying the nature of this kind of debate. according to him, equality is a relationship between two things or persons (a dyadic relationship). he suggests an expression to indicate a clear dyadic relationship: if x and y are equal in terms of educational opportunity, then x and y have the same amount of opportunity for it. he further formulates that “x’s having an opportunity to do z consists of the presence of positive factors combined with the absence or insufficiency of negative factors” (p.176). putting tooley (2000)’s argument for adequate minimum education into ennis’ dyadic relationship of educational opportunity, one can understand this dyadic relationship as the way in which schools serve x (a student having greater deterrents) with adequate minimum education, while y (another student having greater facilitators) has unlimited advantages. in this view, the state has no business to consider what the deterrents are to x and how to fix the situation in order to ensure the same amount of opportunity. this way of understanding educational opportunity is reminiscent of rawls’ (1971) criticism of “a callous meritocratic society” in which the utilitarian notion of equality of opportunity is utilised to leave the less fortunate behind. the belief that each person has the right to be treated as a holder of intrinsic human perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201076 dignity shares much in common with rawls’s argument that no one merits a more favourable starting place in society. there is evidence that reality betrays the optimistic market ideal of homo economicus. the weakness in the rational choice theory embedded in neoliberalism, as it relates to issues of equality, comes from cultural capital theory. the pattern of parents’ choice behaviours can be set as follows: b=f(r/c) b=behaviour, f=function, r=rationality, c=conditions (cultural and material) the above formulation of a human being’s behaviours can be interpreted as follows: an agent’s behaviour, b, is a function of individual rational choice, under the given condition, c. but rational choice theory tends to take little account of c, thinking little of cultural and economic conditions. this is a primary reason why this theory has proved difficult to verify empirically. many researchers show that, in its implementation, choice would not be the idealistic picture that many choice advocates paint (fuller, 2000). people are not simply molded according to market assumptions, and they do not always act in an economically rational manner. a number of researchers (ball, 2003; lauder & hughes, 1999) provide evidence that low-income minority parents struggle with limited information, resources, time and available transportation. more important is that the cultural condition (cultural “c” in the above formulation) partly functions as cultural capital (bourdieu, 1984); some will eagerly seek out higher performing schools, while others will not transfer to suburban schools because they have different goals or fear possible maladjustment in these higher status schools. additionally, students of colour may feel they lack the cultural capital to keep up with white students (ball, 2003; olssen, 2009; power, 2000). furthermore, these parents’ material conditions (material “c” in the above formulation) may prevent their being able to afford to drive their children to school. while this example might seem simplistic, it serves as a rather straightforward exemplar of the actual matter of material conditions. furthermore, the market mechanism cannot be fully understood without considering economic marginalisation and poverty in urban areas and the increasing unemployment of poor parents. this condition of growing insecurity and deprivation distracts parents in poverty from concentrating on children’s education, not to mention school choice. it is often the case that the matter of choice is the matter of material conditions. at the same time, one should be careful not to exaggerate material conditions in school choice patterns. in many studies of parents’ experiences with school choice, different patterns of processes and outcomes have been found according to parents’ racial, social, and linguistic backgrounds (wells, 1993). this resonates with henig’s (1994) criticism of market proponents; he argues that the rhetoric of educational “choice restricted choice in the name of choice” (p.191). rational choice theory sees parents as active participants, but the school is not a passive receiver. the result of choice as experienced by schools is nothing like parents expect. do markets protect democratic education? like most of us, neoliberals and libertarians are concerned with what they believe to be a democratic education, but their way of ensuring it is quite different. they think the democratic ideal does not provide justification for state intervention. in this regard, hayek complains that election politics bring about corruption and distortion and so result in the decline of the rule of law. hayek believes that the constitution was intended not to define the functions of government but to define “the limits of its coercive powers” (hayek, 1979: 109) and to prevent the undermining of the norms of a spontaneous social order. therefore, hayek thinks a desirable function of legislation is to sustain a given social order as long as it is designed to guarantee spontaneous order (newman, 1984; vamberg, 1986). market liberalism has deeply engaged in efforts to decouple the link between citizenship and a caring society (hall, 1986). instead, they have tried to link the liberty of citizens with property rights. for example, nozick’s argument against exclusive property rights raises serious problems in directly linking private property rights with personal liberty. the ownership of citizens’ rights is understood such that individuals hold property and benefit from it. nozick does not address the issue of liberty in general but freedom to deal with individual property. however, the political philosophy of education needs to restore sung — markets, equality and democratic education 77 human beings, exercising not only “freedom from” but also “freedom to” in terms of fulfilling the right to liberty. in his criticism of market-based educational reforms, jonathan (1990) notes that parents’ rights are used to secure more popular educational products (e.g., choice of most favourable schools) for their children, while at the same time exercising these rights possibly disadvantages other children. in this way, neoliberalism tends to change the identity of parents into individual decision-makers for their children with insufficient consideration of others. this is the libertarian problem of reducing democracy to selfish individualism. the hayekian concept of rule of law is too unconvincing to fulfill this responsibility. newman (1984) reminds us that the hayekian term “rule of law” is a contestable phrase because the rules may be impartial in enforcement, but the rules themselves can be partial in their shape. instead, it is of critical importance that democracy is much more complicated than establishing regularities in the rule of law. the way to bring democracy to life cannot be neutral and simply fixed; it requires ongoing debate in order to map its real meaning. democratic education is more than simply trusting the rule of law, not because the rule of law is insufficient, but because it is not neutral or impartial. the concept of democracy is closely linked to that of equality because the object of efforts for equality is not merely opportunity but also value, and this value cannot be obtained without a democratic struggle (waghid, 2009). as gutmann (1987) argues, if education is democratic, it should be used to avoid inequalities that deprive children of educational opportunities to participate in democratic political processes and other aspects of democratic life. therefore, if we do not take value judgments into account in thinking about equality of education, we fail to address this issue. kymlicka (1990) argues that liberalism should be amended to avoid the accusation that it lacks full concern for all the possible types of race, class, and gender inequality. kymlicka posits a triadic structure of social levels that is useful, not only in pointing out the limitations of libertarians such as hayek, nozick and friedman, but also in broadening our understanding of equal and democratic education in relation to freedom of choice. kymlicka’s formulation of the concept of this freedom is twofold: first, claims about freedom take the form that agent x is free from repressive condition y to do action z; second, x and y are situated at the triadic intersection of individual, group, and society levels. compared with kymlicka, neoliberalism is not sound in the sense that agent x is thought of only as an individual, which prevents full understanding of the way in which freedom to choose at the individual level is inevitably coupled with the other two broad levels in highly complicated and dynamic ways (komba, 1998). hence, some obvious limitations appear in the use of such libertarian approaches to defining freedom to choose, because competitive individualism treats the matter of this freedom merely as an individual matter. the libertarian’s defense of liberty is flawed because it neglects the notion of “equal liberty of equal value” (plant, in jonathan 1990: 130). it still remains unclear whether even liberal egalitarians can do a better job than fraser (1997) in dealing with cultural injustice. fraser (1997) argues that unfairly biased cultural norms against certain social groups are institutionalised and, at the same time, this institutionalised condition prevents these people from equally participating in the making of a fair culture. if she is correct, we might think even liberalism does not sufficiently emphasise a related point of equal importance, that is, the opportunity to claim “equal treatment” (nieuwenhuis, 2004), because, in its understanding of social responsibility in equality of educational opportunity, liberalism deals only with affirmative redistributed remedies for class injustice. conclusion in the paper, i proffered evidence against the expectation for markets, as there is a misinterpretation of the notion of equality and democratic education in influential libertarian arguments. in the process, i reviewed rational choice theory as an underlying assumption behind neoliberal ideas in recent educational reforms. this theory posits that if individuals make choices by approximating maximum benefits, this then leads to utility maximisation as a result of the aggregate effect of all these personal rational actions. responding to this claim, i demonstrated that many market-oriented proposals and much literature (e.g., chubb & moe, 1990; freedman & friedman, 1980; hayek, 1944; nozick, 1974; tooley, 2000) rests, in large part, on rational choice theory; however, this theory has proved difficult to verify empirically because it disregards perspectives in education, volume 28(4), december 201078 the fact that the playing field is not equal for everyone. different people hold different amounts of cultural capital; parents make use of their cultural capital to enhance their children’ status in the social field of power. more affluent families will no doubt be in a position to make the most of the educational market (ball, 2003; wells, 1993). in the conceptualisation of markets, neoliberals and libertarians have struggled to change the way we think about and participate in our society. neoliberalism developed as a reaction to the economic crisis that is often associated with the welfare state and it gained support from a significant portion of the working class (hall, 1986). it is most significant for changing the very meaning of citizenship and, as a result, moving the concept citizenship from political to that of membership in a caring society in which consumer choices govern individual lives. i point out that neoliberal and libertarian arguments are not sound in the sense that parental decision-making is thought of only at the individual level. political philosophers such as gutmann (1987) and fraser (1997) provide support for theoretical arguments that equality and democracy in education cannot be considered in isolation from participatory citizenship to claim equal value and respect as well as to transform discrimination and repression. in the paper i raised two questions: i asked if market-based education reform can satisfy equality of education and if it protects democratic education. i pointed out that neoliberalism and possessive individualism have produced accumulated evidence of the inability to address the issue of cultural and political struggle. drawing upon some social and political philosophers (fraser, 1997; gutmann, 1987), i maintain that concerns of educational opportunity cannot be divorced from issues of democratic citizenship to claim redistribution and recognition because, in essence, education is responsible not only for students’ opportunity to access schooling but also their opportunity to carefully consider what counts as equal value. in the face of the growing influence of neoliberal forces in education and the decline of an ethical basis for equal and democratic education, a different direction is needed to turn away from homo economicus as calculating citizens changing education into a marketable commodity toward equal and democratic citizens restoring the missing link between the social responsibility of education and membership in a caring society. it is difficult to find evidence that neoliberal education reforms have been effective over the past decades in fulfilling the conditions for equal and democratic education. equal and democratic education is not possible without ensuring active participation in the struggle for redistribution and recognition in order to interrupt the unjust status quo. references apple mw 2006. educating the “right” way: markets, standards, god, and inequality (2nd ed.). london: routledgefalmer. astin aw 1992. educational ‘choice’: its appeal may be illusory. sociology of education. 65 (4), 255260. ball s 2003. class strategies and the education market: the middle classes and social advantage. london: routledgefalmer. bourdieu p 1984. distinction. cambridge, mass.: harvard university press. chubb j & moe t 1990. politics, markets and america’s schools. washington, d.c.: brookings institute. ennis r 1978. equality of educational opportunity. in k strike & k egan (eds), ethics and educational policy. london: routledge & kean paul. fraser n 1997. justice interruptus: critical reflections on the “postsocialist” condition. new york: routledge. friedman m 1955. the role of government in education, in r. solo (ed.), economics and the public interest. westport, ct: greenwood. friedman m 1960. a program for monetary stability. new york: fordham university press. friedman m & friedman r 1980. free to choose. new york: harcourt brace jovanovich. fuller b (ed). 2000. inside charter schools: the paradox of radical decentralization. cambridge, mass.: harvard university press. sung — markets, equality and democratic education 79 gewirtz s 2002. the managerial school: post-welfarism and social justice in education. london: routledge. gramsci a 1971. selections from the prison notebooks. london: lawrence and wishart. gutmann a 1987. democratic education. princeton, n. j.: princeton university press. hall s 1986. the problem of ideology: marxism without guarantee, journal of communication inquiry 10(2), 28-44. hayek fa 1944. the road to serfdom. chicago: university of chicago press. hayek fa 1960. the constitution of liberty. chicago: university of chicago press. hayek fa 1979. law, legislation and liberty. (vol. 3:) the political order of a free people, london: routledge and kegan paul. henig j 1994. rethinking school choice. princeton: n. j.: princeton university press. jonathan r 1990. state education service or prisoner’s dilemma: the ‘hidden hand’ as source of education policy. british journal of educational studies, 38(2), 116-132. komba w 1998. choices in liberal and non-liberal political and educational thought. journal of philosophy of education, 32(2), 195–206. kymlicka w 1990. contemporary political philosophy. oxford, uk.: oxford university press. lauder h & hughes d 1999. trading in futures: why markets in education don’t work. philadelphia: open university press. mcneil l 2000. contradictions of school reform: educational costs of standardized testing. new york: routledge. newman s 1984. liberalism at wits’ end: the libertarian revolt against the modern state. ithaca: cornell university. nieuwenhuis j 2004 from equality of opportunity to equality of treatment as a value-based concern in education. perspectives in education, 23(3), 55-64. nozick r 1974. anarchy, state, and utopia. new york: basic books. olssen m 2009. liberalism, neoliberalism, social democracy: thin communitarian perspectives on political philosophy and education. london: routledge. power s 2000. educational pathways into the middle class(es). british journal of sociology of education, 21(2), 133-145. rawls j 1971 theory of justice. cambridge, mass.: belknap press of harvard university press. stone d 1997. policy paradox: the art of political decision making. new york: w.w. norton. sung y 2009. learning to label: an investigation into ways of conceptualizing curriculum diversity in a korean unregulated school choice area. educational studies in japan: international yearbook, 4: 93-102. takayama k 2007. a nation at risk crosses the pacific: transnational borrowing of the us crisis discourse in the debate on education reform in japan. comparative education review, 54(4), 423–446. tooley j 2000. reclaiming education. london: cassell. vamberg v 1986. spontaneous market order and social rules: a critical evaluation of f. a. hayek’s theory of cultural evolution. economics and philosophy 2: 75-100. waghid y 2008 the public role of the university reconsidered. perspectives in education, 26(1), 19-24. waghid y 2009 education for responsible citizenship. perspectives in education, 27(1), 85-90. wells a 1993. time to choose: america at the crossroads of school choice policy. new york: hill and wang. whitty g, power s & halpin d 1998. devolution and choice in education. philadelphia: open university press. wolff j 1991. robert nozick: property, justice and the minimal state. oxford: polity in association with basil blackwell. 30 revisiting expansive learning for knowledge production and capability development at postgraduate level in higher education studies rita niemann university of the free state higher education in south africa is challenged by academic and social demands. universities, therefore, have to produce graduates who will be able to function optimally within their field of study, as well as act as agents of change in their social environment. the main purpose of this article is to theorise about applying engeström’s expansive learning theory to teaching at master’s level in order to address the academic demands at this level as well as foster essential capabilities. in this theoretical article, a possible framework is proposed for teaching students in a coursework programme in higher education studies. the framework is based on re-conceptualised principles of expansive learning as a means of addressing the demands for producing graduates, who will possess both academic and social capabilities. the framework is an attempt to contribute to the conceptualisation of teaching as a process and a product by providing guidelines for integrating theory and practice. in this regard, it is focused on addressing both the quest for academic rigour as well as for embedding capabilities, valuable for human development. keywords: engeström, expansive learning, postgraduate, capabilities, academic rigour, human development, knowledge production, co-configuration introduction for centuries people have benefitted significantly from the education they have received in the higher education sector, but there has always been a need for the wider society to also benefit from this education in some way. currently, many fields of study in south africa are under increasing pressure to contribute to the wider society and human development by, inter alia, producing knowledge that will extend students’ ability to function in society and to be agents of development in their country. this article explores engeström’s (1998-2008) expansive learning theory as a possible framework for teaching coursework programmes at master’s level, which will deliver the required type of graduates. teaching a coursework programme at master’s level in higher education studies, i became challenged by the notion of aligning the generation of knowledge at master’s level with the capabilities that would enable the students to become agents of change. in guiding the students in gaining the necessary capabilities and the ability to become engaged in research projects have become a necessity as the students are all teaching at higher education institutions. universities can obviously not meet all of society’s needs in terms of human development, but universities, by means of their academic programmes, can make major contributions by delivering graduates who can. by contributing to society, higher education institutions (heis) need to stimulate, among others, deep learning as well as develop capabilities that will enable graduates to bring about changes in their “practical lived” environments (nussbaum, 2000: 78-70).in a developing country such as south africa, the higher education sector also has to generate knowledge that is not isolated from the problems of the country, which means that graduates need to be equipped with capabilities to address those problems. to become equipped with such capabilities entails an expansion of the range of things that a person can be and do, such as being knowledgeable about, and being able to participate in society for public good (fakuda-parr, 2003: 303). in this instance, sen’s work (2002: 86-94), which stipulates that people are “the real wealth of a nation”, emphasises the role universities can play in producing graduates who can contribute to changing their own lives as well as that of others. by building particular capabilities 31niemann — revisiting expansive learning for knowledge production into the education of their students, lecturers in higher education can contribute to developing agents of change, both individually and collectively (sen, 1989; fakuda-parr, 2003) by facilitating learning and teaching modes that will generate new knowledge that is relevant to the contexts in which it will be used. kraak’s (2000) engagement in new forms of knowledge production and the effect that it may have on south african higher education, supported my personal concern. kraak (2002: 55, 74) stressed the development of models of knowledge production that would facilitate patterns of mental interconnections in optimising learning. this challenged me to contemplate innovative ways to stimulate knowledge production in the higher education classroom, as well as equip higher education lecturers with transferrable competencies that will enable them, in turn, to transmit knowledge to, and develop the capabilities of their students. in this regard, i share wehbi’s (2009: 504) concern about the anxiety of higher education teachers to live up to current scholarship standards. wehbi (2009: 505) also expressed concern about the engagement of students in ways that will enable them to “bridge the gap between theory and practice”. in addition, there are concerns about an exclusive disciplinary approach which could lead to students believing that they need merely to master a collection of facts, principles and skills in a particular subject area – instead of learning how these might be used to inform larger, real-life purposes by contributing to “public good” (gallifa & garriga, 2010; winberg, 2006). this social responsiveness of south african hei’s is emphasised by waghid (2008: 19) who refers to the “public role of the university” – a role that is also stressed by albertyn & daniels (2009: 409) in terms of the “production of knowledge and the development of skills needed to live in a diverse society”. this theoretical article focuses on a possible teaching and learning mode that will lead to knowledge production in a coursework programme at master’s level, which will also instil students with capabilities to bring about social change. such experiences could become rather valuable to these students when they embark on their theses or dissertations. in facilitating this type of knowledge production, march (1996) refers to the necessity of learning processes, which requires the transmission of existing knowledge in order to also cope with other new objects and activities, leading to the gradual experimentation with and internalisation of the new knowledge beyond disciplinary boundaries. this means that numerous teachers at universities have to take up the challenge of contributing to public good without compromising academic standards. the above challenge gave rise to my question: how can teaching in coursework master’s programmes in higher education studies facilitate deep learning and produce knowledge that is socially relevant and will foster capabilities for the enhancement of graduate agency?expansive learning, which involves a wide, heterogeneous set of practices and allows for new knowledge creation to be actualised, has been revisited in this article, but before it could be considered for application at a master’s level, it was necessary to view the requirements of teaching and learning at that level. learning thresholds of master’s degrees south africa’s regulatory frameworks seek to advance learning efficiency in terms of which young (2003) emphasises the extrinsic role that universities play in knowledge production as well their role in the broader social order for the enhancement of intellectual development, personal autonomy, meaningful citizenship and the capabilities required to function optimally in these areas. in conceptualising the level of teaching and learning at master’s level and how these level requirements can possibly be reconciled with engeström’s learning theory, i used the higher education qualification framework (rsa, 2007) and south african qualification authority’s (saqa, 2010) level descriptors for level nine. these documents used terms such as “researchers who could contribute to the development of knowledge … including knowledge about professional practice” (rsa, 2007: 41) in relation to imperatives such as “advanced scholarship” (saqa, 2010: 8) and “a high level of theoretical engagement and intellectual independence and by completing and reporting on a research project”(rsa, 2007: 41). these terms create expectations about any teaching at master’s level, as it requires teaching that would stimulate the development and advancement of disciplinary knowledge, theoretical engagement, 32 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 intellectual independence, critiquing existing research and practices, as well as the ability to deal with complex issues, and tackling and solving problems. in doing so, master’s students also have to be led to make sound judgements by using data and information, managing resources, taking responsibility for their own work, interacting effectively within a professional group and communicating their conclusions (rsa, 2007: 41; saqa, 2010: 8-9). the above requirements seem as if the knowledge that has to be generated at master’s level consists of two domains: the production of rigorous academic knowledge and the inculcation of particular capabilities that can be applied to the broader social and developmental context. these two domains are portrayed in figure 1. requirements for academic knowledge production required capabilities for the broader social and developmental context academic rigour revealing aspects such as • disciplinary knowledge • theoretical engagement • research skills • the ability to critique existing research • the ability to communicate findings • managing and exploring resources the capability to, inter alia, • critique practices • deal with complex issues • tackle and solve problems • make sound judgements by using data and information • take responsibility for one’s own work • collaborate • become citizens with sound social and ethical values figure 1: domains to be included in postgraduate teaching as stipulated by the sa learning thresholds the above figure illustrates a number of regulatory learning thresholds for postgraduate programmes, revealing aspects that should be inculcated in terms of both knowledge production and capability development. the challenge for teachers at postgraduate level is to teach in ways that will stimulate the above thresholds. students in higher education studies are in lecturing positions at universities and are expected to become scholars. the reference to the development of “scholarship” in the level descriptors for master’s programmes (saqa, 2010: 8) means that these students cannot escape their research responsibilities. the importance of postgraduate students becoming quality researchers has also been stressed by samuel & vithal (2011: 77). in terms of these scholarship imperatives and its relationship to graduates’ social responsiveness, i recall boyer’s (1997: 23) quotation of oscar handlin’s words when he was in the process of conceptualising the role of scholarship by saying “one can no longer afford the luxury of pursuits confined to an ivory tower ... scholarship has to prove its own worth not on its own terms but by service to the nation and the world”. c on ne ct in g th e do m ai ns how can academic knowledge production be stimulated and capabilities fostered in teaching at postgraduate level? 33niemann — revisiting expansive learning for knowledge production teachers at postgraduate level, therefore, need to be aware of the various dimensions which form part of the postgraduate learning thresholds as well as the capabilities that would enhance graduate agency. however, these teachers need to be given the ‘tools’ to facilitate these learning processes and it is in this context that engeström’s expansive learning theory was viewed as a possible means to provide the required ‘tools’. engeström’s expansive learning theory in addressing university teaching to facilitate rigorous learning and knowledge production that is socially relevant and fosters capabilities for graduate agency, teachers in higher education studies need to be able to connect theory and practice. although expansive theory started as an organisation and workplace learning model in the world of business, it has, over the past few years, emerged as a multidisciplinary approach to learning (engeström, 2004; chaiklin, hedegaard & jensen, 1999). engeström (2000: 960) indicated that most learning concepts draw on basic psychological notions of mental processes and consequently introduce the concept of co-configuration when learning takes place. this notion of learning originated with russian psychologist vygotsky’s (1978: 86) zone of “proximal development”, underpinned by the philosophy of “scaffolded learning”, whereby the “distance of the actual development as determined by independent problem solving and the level of potential development as determined through problem solving under adult guidance, or in collaboration with more capable peers”. students are confronted with real-life problems and provided with the foundations for development and then led by the teacher to reach new levels of learning in collaboration with their co-students. according to engeström (2004: 14), expansive learning has transferable exploitation as its inception, where existing knowledge or sources form the foundation of the new knowledge or activity. as a person gradually acquires and internalises the existing knowledge and skills that underlie the new knowledge or activity to be mastered, adjustable exploitation takes place. the next phase is called incremental exploration where new knowledge or activity is constructed by experimenting with it within a given activity. radical exploration or expansive learning then begins as the experimentation is no longer restricted to the pre-existing knowledge, but when new knowledge and new practices are emerging and the internalisation of the new knowledge or activity is starting to take place. fleck (1994: 638) refers to this process as a process of “learning by trying”: improvements and modifications have to be made to the constituent components before the new knowledge or action can work as an integrated entity – also referred to as a process of co-configuration. co-configuration demands substantial input if it is to be successful. such inputs require actions that will stimulate innovation and efforts to solve the problem or get the system to work. at this stage, engeström’s transitional zone between incremental exploration and radical, expansive exploration comes into play. expansive learning thus begins not only when experimentation aimed at finding solutions within the framework of existing knowledge, but also when there is a search for options from what is not yet there. according to engeström (2004), new knowledge or new practices are produced when students have been challenged by the posing of a problem and they then explore or change the problem that has to be addressed. this cyclic character of expansive learning, brought about through a sequence of learning actions ascending from the initial abstract first phase of learning to the final concrete whole, provides a central framework for the analysis and design of learning in order to reach the stage of coconfiguration. engeström (2004) admits that expansive learning actions are intertwined with other horizontal or sideways movements across cognitive knowledge domains to reach co-configuration, and that these horizontal movements need to be integrated to reach the stage at which expansive learning takes place. when expansive learning happens, students have to apply higher order thinking skills for new scholarly knowledge to be produced. postgraduate levels seem to provide an ideal platform for the facilitation of this type of expansive learning, because students have to construct new knowledge and need to be guided to do so – meaning that students have to be exposed to processes whereby they learn to create new knowledge. engeström (2001: 139) refers to this construction of new knowledge as “heterogeneous patchworks”, where the “loosely interconnected systems” come together by means of certain actions – a 34 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 co-configuration of parts. the process of co-configuration is also referred to as “knot working”, implying the tying, untying and retying of seemingly separate threads of knowledge and practice to generate new theory or practice. the following figure illustrates the stage of expansive learning when insights come together and co-configuration (knot-working) takes place, resulting in new knowledge. figure 2: co-configuration (knot-working) process as the various loosely connected parts (terrains) of the individual’s existing knowledge framework become renegotiated and reorganised, the parts (terrains) become knotted together or co-configured. these knotworks or co-configurations lead to the expansion of the learning that takes place, resulting in the production of new knowledge and practice. it is in this context that the teacher at postgraduate level has a major role to play in facilitating the processes for establishing new cognitive trails. a framework for postgraduate teaching in higher education studies by means of expansive learning according to boyer (1997: 24), teaching is the “dynamic endeavour that builds bridges between teachers’ understanding and students’ learning”. teachers have to stimulate active learning and “encourage students to be critical, creative thinkers and stimulate the capacity to go on learning after their college days and keep the flame of scholarship alive”. different disciplines require a variety of types of knowledge creation and learning. along the lines of the above explanation of learning, spinosa, flores & dreyfus (1997) also emphasised co-configuration or “knot-working”, which implies the tying together of the various dimensions so that a “bigger picture” is created. it is particularly in this process of generating new knowledge and practice that the teacher in higher education studies, which is multidisciplinary in nature, has a major facilitative role to play. engeström (2000) stated additional principles to guide in teaching for expansive learning: first, by ensuring relevance to the context or actual problems; secondly, by fostering continuous relationships between the terrains of existing knowledge; thirdly, by facilitating ongoing involvement and collaboration and, fourthly, by stimulating mutual learning through interaction. teachers of postgraduate students at master’s level seemingly have to facilitate the “co-configuration or knot-working” so that new knowledge can be produced and capabilities can be fostered through expanded learning processes. based on the exploitation and exploration principles of expansive learning expansive learning new knowledge and practice st ud en ts e ng ag e in ty in g, u nt yi ng an d re ty in g/ r en eg ot ia ti on a nd re or ga ni sa ti on (c og ni ti ve tr ai ls e st ab li sh ed ) m ul ti -d im en si on al l oo se ly c on ne ct ed te rr ai ns of a p er so n’ s ex is ti ng k no w le dg e fr am ew or k actions and practices systems concepts and constructs co-configuration/ knot-working teachers have to facilitate these processes 35niemann — revisiting expansive learning for knowledge production (as explained earlier), engeström (2001) supported his model with an expansive cycle of learning actions, which brought a more tangible dimension to the dynamics of learning (figure 3). figure 3: engeström’s expansive cycle of learning actions (2001) by integrating engeström’s model for co-configuration by means of expansive learning and the production of new knowledge (figure 2) and expansive cycle of learning actions (figure 3) with postgraduate learning thresholds (figure 1), a framework for teaching higher education studies at master’s level has been developed. this framework has as its aim the facilitation of expansive learning, the production of new knowledge or practice as well as the fostering of capabilities for the enhancement of graduate agency. figure 4 represents the framework. 1. question/triggering action 6. reflecting on process and reconfiguration 5. framework for implementation 4. examining new solution/ model/framework 3. modelling/suggesting new solution 2. analysis: historical and actual – in search of new pathways (reading and resesearching) 36 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 figure 4: framework for teaching coursework master’s in higher education studies analysing the problem groups of students have to • exploit the existing body of disciplinary knowledge; • critically analyse the problem by engaging in the related theory; • search for options and/ or methods to address the problem; • plan research; and • move beyond disciplinary boundaries in identifying options. implementing the model/strategy/framework students then have to individually implement/ experiment with framework/solution/view/ strategy in • the work environment, and • the community in order to be able to account for their own work. setting triggering question set challenges: connect learning content to real-life complex issues. reflecting on outcomes and finally produce a research report with findings students have to • be self-critical about the outcomes; • reflect on their own intellectual development and experiences; • reflect on their learning in terms of intellectual discourse subject content, research, ethics and citizenship; and • convince the reader/teacher that they have internalised the new knowledge. initial core questions: • subjects of learning? • contents of the learning? suggesting improvement • group has to go back to drawing board to tie up the loose ends according to the critique of the peers. • a collaboratively constructed model/ framework needs to be ready for implementation. communicating new model/strategy/view/ framework/solution students have to • communicate framework/ solution/view/ strategy to their peers; • explain framework for implementation and motivate decisions; • peers have to critique the suggested theories and practices; and • critique the suggested theories and practices of their peers. students work in group context researching the problem students have to • consult and consider multiple resources in conducting the research; • collaboratively take responsibility for the project; and • account for ethics and integrity when using data in order to make sound judgments. 37niemann — revisiting expansive learning for knowledge production discussion of above framework for postgraduate teaching as in any teaching situation, it is crucial that the teacher contemplates the composition of the student population and the disciplinary content that needs to be dealt with. aspects such as diversity, experience, preceding knowledge and the complexity of the content have to be accounted for. in the initial phase of teaching, the teacher has to challenge the groups of students in the class by connecting the learning content to real-life complex issues confronting higher education. it is important that the triggering question should pose a problem that is not isolated from the complexities and realities of the country and that the final outcomes should be focused on arriving at solutions that would contribute to the improvement of the dilemma as well as develop the students’ ability to conduct research in order to ultimately become agents of change. the students are then expected to exploit their existing body of knowledge as they engage in a critical analysis of the problem in seeking possible options and/or methods to address the problem. in dealing with the problem, the students collaboratively have to plan a research project. in this process, they should be prompted to think “outside the box”, even to the point of challenging disciplinary boundaries. during this phase of the process, it could be valuable that the thinking and argumentation about the problem takes place in the group context, as mutual learning is an important learning principle. as the students embark on the research, they have to consult a variety of sources, as well as consider various resources and multiple methods to obtain the necessary data and information in order to deal with the problem. these collaborative actions necessitate that members of the group collaboratively take responsibility for the project. even if they divide the tasks among themselves, they have to collate their newly discovered information and, at some stage, produce a product. during this search for knowledge, a number of capabilities such as collaboration, problem-solving, analysis and decision-making are fostered as they explore the options, make judgments and jointly account for the ethics in, and integrity of the process. the collaboratively constituted framework (or whatever had to be done) then has to be communicated to the class by means of an oral presentation, during which the peers join in discussion and argumentation. as each group explains their framework for implementation and motivate the decisions they have made, they become reflective on what they have done and simultaneously gain from the inputs of the larger group. after this phase of the learning process, the framework can be improved by the new insights that have been added – learning from one another. in the process of exploring new knowledge in both a rigorous and a developmental way, the various members of the groups have to go back to the drawing board after they have learnt from the application of the theoretical framework. the new insights have to be used in order to untie and retie the ends. as this knot-working between theory and practice emerges, the students can re-configure the framework/solution/ view they have developed. as the learning expands, new knowledge and practice emerge. during the next phase, the learning is expanded when the students have to individually implement/ experiment with strategy/framework/solution in their different work environments or communities of practice. issues that lend themselves to community engagement can benefit from such actions. personal autonomy and ownership are encouraged by this phase of individual implementation or experimentation, which necessitates that they become self-critical about the outcomes of their framework. students are continuously involved in learning, application and reflection. they are also required to reflect on their personal intellectual development and experiences, their engagement in the ongoing discourses, and their growth through their exposure to new theoretical and disciplinary knowledge, as well as deliver a research report with findings. the students’ critical thinking and engagement with real-life problems in their field of study are instrumental in the development of their citizenship. the framework presented in figure 4 could provide a platform for the production of new academic knowledge and the fostering of crucial capabilities. postgraduate students are challenged to develop their analytical abilities in a collective and individual context. as they develop these abilities, they become confident and are able to transfer those abilities to other contexts in society and in the workplace. because students are initially functioning in a team, they feel safe as they are exposed to collective thinking and reasoning – a process of mutual learning. when they are exposed to the bigger group of 38 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 peers (the class) in presenting their frameworks, new challenges are posed, which necessitate rigorous debates and compel each group to take responsibility for their analyses and decisions in addressing the complex problems. the initial safe environment is then expanded to individual responsibility, learning and reflection, as the students are exposed to applying their collectively developed new framework/ strategy/view/solution in their own “real-life” situations. as the learning cycle evolves, students become increasingly capable of critical and creative thinking – thinking outside the box, challenging their previous levels of knowledge by moving to new levels of learning. conclusion the above framework for teaching not only stimulates knowledge production, but also fosters socially relevant capabilities. engeström’s expansive learning theory seems to be sufficiently multidimensional to allow for sophisticated knowledge production as well as for capability development. the facilitation of expansive learning will increase the students’ ability to engage in intellectual discourses and research, as well as equip them with capabilities to participate in society, make contributions to existing problems in the country, and develop reflective skills. by drawing on the words of giroux & searls giroux (2004: 251) where universities are regarded as the place where “students can learn to think for themselves, question authority, recover the ideals of engaged citizenship, reaffirm the importance of public good and expand their capacity to make a difference in society”, it becomes crucial to explore ways whereby these goals can be achieved. in this article, sen’s ideas about the development of capabilities for “public good” have been integrated with engeström’s model of expansive learning. the two seemingly irreconcilable paradigms, a social theory and an organisational theory, have been merged to produce a new critical approach to teaching a coursework master’s programme. the framework that emerged from this conceptualisation broadens the discourse on higher education teaching and the quest for academic rigour as well as the embedding of capabilities that have a wider range of applicability than simply the academy. it is particularly in the latter that the framework’s value for human development is locked up. although this article primarily focused on postgraduate teaching by using the national learning thresholds for level 9, the teaching framework (figure 4) can also be adapted to suit the teaching demands at undergraduate level and even for teaching across disciplinary boundaries. this article mainly conceptualised a framework for teaching a coursework master’s programme, which has since been put into practice. the outcomes of the implementation will be reported in another article. with the plethora of challenges confronting teachers in higher education, this framework can also contribute to alleviate the anxiety in respect of stimulating scholarly knowledge production, as well as positively influencing the development of graduate agency. references albertyn r & daniels p 2009. research within the context of community engagement. in e bitzer (ed), higher education in south africa: a scholarly look behind the scenes. stellenbosch: sun press. boyer l 1997. scholarship reconsidered: priorities of the professoriate. new york: carnegie foundation. chaiklin s, hedegaard m & jensen u 1999. activity theory and social practice. aarhus: aarhus university press. engeström y 2000. activity theory as a framework for analyzing and redesigning work. egronomics, 43: 960-974. engeström y 2001. expansive learning at work: toward an activity theoretical reconceptualization. journal of education and work, 14(1): 137-154. engeström y 2004. new forms of learning in co-configuration work. journal of workplace learning, 16: 11-21. fakuda-parr s 2003. the human development paragdigm: operationalising sen’s ideas on capabilities. feminist economic, 9(2-3): 301-317. fleck j 1994. learning by trying: the implementation of configurational technology. research policy, 23: 637-652. 39niemann — revisiting expansive learning for knowledge production gallifa j & garriga j 2010. generic competencies in higher edcation: studying their development in undergraduate social science studies by means of a specific methodology. perspectives in education, 28(3): 70-86. giroux h & searls-giroux s 2004. race, youth, and the cisis of democracy in the post-civil rights era: take back higher education. new york: palgrave macmillan. kraak a 2000. changing modes: new knowledge production and its implications. pretoria: hsrc publication. march j 1996. exploration and exploitation in organizational learning. in m cohen & l sproull (eds), organisational learning. thousand oaks, ca: sage. nussbaum m 2000. women and human development, the capabilities approach. cambridge (uk): cambridge univesity press. rsa (republic of south africa) 2007. the higher education qualifications framework: government notice, no. 30353. polity: creamer media pty ltd. samuel m & vithal r 2011. emergent frameworks of research teaching and learning in a cohort-based doctoral programme. perspectives in education, 29(3): 76-86. saqa (south african qualification authority) 2010. level decriptors for the south african national qualifications framework. retrieved on 23 july 2011 from http://www.saqa.org.za/docs/misc/level_ descriptors.pdf. sen a 1989. development as capabilities expansion. journal of development, 19:41-58. sen a 2002. human development report 2002. deepening democracy in a fragmented world. new york: oxford university press. spinosa c, flores f & dreyfus h 1997. disclosing new worlds: enterpreneurship, democratic action and the cultivation of solidarity. cambridge (ma): the mit press. vygotsky l 1978. interaction between learning and development. in gauvain m & cole m readings on the development of children. cambridge (ma): harvard university press, 79-93. waghid y 2008. the public role of the university reconsidered. perspectives in education, 26(1): 19-24. wehbi s 2009. reclaiming our agency in academia: engaging in the scholarship of teaching in social work. social work education, 28(5): 502-511. winberg c 2006. undisciplining knowledge production: development-driven higher education in south africa. higher education, 51: 159-172. young m 2003. options for the nqf in south africa. a conceptual critique of an interdependent qualifications framework system. london: university of london. 1 understanding and action: thinking with arendt about democratic education lis lange university of the free state taking as its point of departure ahier’s location of the problem of citizenship in the context of the changes that globalisation and neo-liberalism have brought about in higher education, this article focuses on the conceptual preconditions that need to underpin the idea of ‘teaching’ citizenship through the university curriculum. the article takes the republican notion of citizenship and hannah arendt’s contribution to thinking politics, citizenship and education to propose a political pedagogy that can help foster a citizenship identity that counters the individualist identities provided by the insidious influence of the market in higher education. keywords: citizenship, arendt, pedagogy, public sphere the question that has to be asked is whether the very ways in which higher education has been extended to a greater percentage of the population, and re-structured to serve the economy, run contrary to earlier democratic and social hopes and aspirations. do some current developments actually marginalise social understanding and foster only individual means of dealing with problems of society, inhibit connection and collective commitment, encourage despair and a general lack of concern for the fate of others? such critical questioning may lead to one of two conclusions. either one can see that other identities are being fostered by the extension of higher education, at the expense of that of ‘citizen’, or a new form of citizenship is being constructed as an alternative to that which the social democratic state tried to promote. (ahier, beck & moore, 2003:63) introduction ahier’s quote sharply introduces the contradictory context within which tertiary institutions are expected to play a role in the development of citizenship. while processes of democratisation since the end of world war 2 have extended the right of citizenship to many more individuals, this citizenship, far from being conceived and practised as social, has been increasingly characterised by a preoccupation with the needs and aspirations of the individual almost to the exclusion of the social. the pre-eminence of the individual, coupled with the paramount role that market forces have played in determining the skills and competencies required by students in order to succeed in society, are not easily reconcilable with national and international higher education policy injunctions about the role of universities in educating for citizenship. in the uk, the robbins report (1963) indicated that “the transmission of a common culture and standards of citizenship” were among the goals of higher education (ahier et al., 2003:1). more than a decade later, at the height of higher education reform in the uk, the dearing report (1997) confirmed higher education’s role as a transmitter of citizenship and culture. in a very different context, the first democratic government of south africa saw one of the fundamental aims of higher education as “to contribute to the socialisation of enlightened, responsible and constructively critical citizens” (department of education, 1997:1.3). what does this mean at a time when students are increasingly regarded as clients and when the market influences not only the programmes that universities offer, but also the identities fostered in university graduates? it seems to me that any attempt at giving serious expression in higher education teaching and learning to the notion of ‘graduate citizens’ has to start by grappling with the meaning of politics and citizenship and how these intersect. the literature in the field of citizenship and education is vast, encompassing studies on the role of the university as citizen itself and its capacity for, and orientation to community engagement (guni, 2009); 2 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 studies on the contribution that extra-curricular programmes make to the development of civic attitudes in young people (service enquiry, 2003); studies on how institutions teach citizenship in specific curriculum (gross & dynneson, 1991; che, 2006b), and studies on the role that the curricular and the non-curricular can have in educating future citizens and democracy (ahier et al., 2003; bender, 2006; dewey, 2004; ehrlich, 2001; giroux, 2008; guarasci & cornwell, 1997). in this article, i focus specifically on the conceptual preconditions that need to underpin the notion of ‘teaching’ citizenship through the university curriculum. i argue that the intellectual and moral habits that inform citizenship can be developed in the context of higher education. in doing this, i take as my point of departure the republican notion of citizenship and hannah arendt’s contribution to thinking politics, citizenship and education to propose a political pedagogy that can help foster a citizenship identity that counters the individualist identities provided by the insidious influence of the market in higher education. defining citizenship according to ahier et al. (2003:11), citizenship is a source of structuration which is simultaneously legal in the sense of the obligations and rights derived from the status of citizen, and social in the sense of providing an identity derived from the belonging to an identifiable political community. leydant (2009) adds to these components another aspect in the characterisation of citizenship. citizens do not only have rights and obligations determined by their position in the political community, but they also have capacity for agency, that is, to act and, through action, influence the course of events in a given society. the extent to which citizenship is predicated on the exercise of agency and the specific nature of this agency differ across historical periods and the conceptual frame of reference within which citizenship is defined. the liberal and the republican conceptions of citizenship present two markedly different understandings of the nature, purpose and extent of citizens’ political agency (kymlicka & norman, 1995; norman & kymlicka, 2005; leydant, 2009). within a liberal framework, citizenship is a legal status which guarantees the individual the protection of the law rather than his/her participation in the making of the law. this definition of citizenship allows individuals to exercise their freedom of association but does not require active political participation in the public sphere. in fact, the main characteristic of liberal citizenship is that it allows individuals their freedom to live their private lives. citizenship thus understood is measured by the freedom not to act. thus, freedom and agency within the liberal perspective are negative: freedom not to participate or the delegation of the direct agency to others (government). the fact that citizenship is exercised through individuals’ right to live their private lives accentuates the individualistic character of liberal citizenship. it can, therefore, be said that the liberal citizen is, despite his/her right to free association, constituted privately in the exercise of freedom in the private sphere. society plays no role in the constitution of the individual subject and, in turn, his/her main preoccupation is with the self. politics, from this perspective, are about the running of public affairs so as to allow the maximum individual freedom for the self to develop and fulfil his/her needs. it is illuminating that the preoccupation with citizen education in both the us and the uk emerged at a time when neoliberal political dispensations and their impact in the organisation of state and society (harvey, 2007) had taken individual preoccupations with the self to the exclusion of the public to new and concerning heights. it appears that the points of departure and arrival in the 1990s and 2000s ukand us-based studies on citizenship and education are similar: a concern about civic disengagement and low political participation and the will to put forward higher education’s responsibility in the development of citizenship. interestingly, in south africa, the concern comes from almost the opposite angle (jonathan, 2001; singh, 2001). in this instance, the focus on the role of universities in the construction of democracy came at the time of the heightened political participation which followed the first democratic election in 1994 (jonathan, 2006). however, in either case, the concern was about how to use education to (re)instate the social dimension of citizenship in young people. the republican conception of citizenship operates almost in the opposite direction to the liberal frame. citizenship is about the exercise of agency in the public sphere. the individual citizen is constituted through his/her participation in the public sphere. this participation requires a number of virtues, among 3lange — understanding and action: thinking with arendt about democratic education which the ability to think not of the self but of the common (public) good is pre-eminent. the social, the individual in community, is the space of politics and, therefore, citizenship within the republican framework is a social rather than an individual identity. hannah arendt’s thought on politics and the public sphere, as nearly every other issue about which she wrote, is open to interpretation. she has been regarded as a conservative, nostalgic thinker and as a progressive one (benhabib, 1992:91). there is no agreement about the fit between her conception of politics and a republican framework (villa, 1997). in this article, i followed those scholars (benhabib, 1992; canovan, 1998; disch, 1994; young-bruelh, 1982) who view arendt’s thinkingon politics and the public sphere within a republican tradition. this article uses four concepts, namely action, natality, judgement, and understanding, which arendt developed and elaborated, not always consistently, from her study on the origins of totalitarianism to her last, incomplete, work on the vita contemplativa. i couple these concepts with her idea of the purpose of education in an attempt to take further the notion of a political pedagogy. in the next section, i grapple mostly with the notions of action, natality and judgement, leaving understanding and education as essential components of the last section of this article. arendt: politics and the human condition for arendt, there are three modes of being in the world: labour, which is exercised in relation to the conservation and reproduction of human life; work, which refers to the ability to transform the material world, and action, which refers to the human freedom to change the world (arendt, 1998:7). out of these, action is the mode of existence where politics take place. arendt characterises action through the categories of natality, plurality and, as benhabib (1992:123) aptly put it, narrativity. natality refers to the human capacity for change and activity which derives from the act of being born. for arendt, natality defines the fact that human beings are themselves a beginning. on this she bases the possibility of both hope and change (arendt, 2005:321). plurality refers to the fact that human activity is action in concert in the presence of others. therefore, political action is action with others that takes place through public deliberation. this is arendt’s associational understanding of the public sphere (benhabib, 1992:93; disch, 1994:71). the third category that defines action is narrativity, that is, “the identification of our intentions (as actors) in terms of a narrative of which we are the authors” and that reflects both knowledge of the past and aspirations for the future (benhabib, 1992:129). within this conceptualisation, the political is a constantly created space of appearance (manifestation) in which human beings reveal to each other who they are through speech and deeds and, very importantly, through the exercise of judgement, the other concept in arendt’s theorisation that connects thinking with acting. in this context, judging is the process of ascertaining the intersubjective validity of propositions arrived at, or discussed in the public sphere. benhabib has argued persuasively that, in her search for a connection between thinking and morality, arendt found a way of moving kant’s concept of reflective judgement from the aesthetic domain to the terrain of politics. thus, for arendt: (t)he identification of morally correct actions requires ... the exercise of imagination in the articulation of possible narratives and act-descriptions under which our deeds might fall; finally the interpretations of one’s actions and maxims entail the understanding of the narrative history of the self and of others. (benhabib, 1992:132) the domain of action and human capacity to connect thinking and judgement is exercised not only on the public sphere, but also in relation to what arendt calls the “common world”, a shared set of institutions and artefacts that constitute the context of human activity and represents the current knowledge of the world (arendt, 1998; d’entreves, 2008; kohn, 2006).1 taking all of this into account, it can be said that, from arendt’s perspective, citizenship is the enacting of human freedom (action) exercised in relation to two interrelated spheres: the public sphere, where citizens act in concert through deliberation, and the common world. natality, plurality and narrativity as the constitutive elements of action produce an understanding of politics and citizenship that leads not to 4 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 disconnection, isolation and despair as laid out by ahier in the quote that opened this article, but to the opposite, to a web of interrelationships and to hope in the power of concerted action to change the world. this apparent connectedness in arendt, however, has some limitations and contradictions that need to be pointed out. a fundamental one is arendt’s separation of the public and the private and her “depoliticisation” of the social. in both instances, arendt obviates the asymmetrical relations governing the private and the social, and how making these asymmetries public and, especially, correcting them is itself a matter of politics and citizenship (benhabib, 1992:93). i will return to the implications of this limit in arendt’s understanding of politics in the next section when i discuss her characterisation of education. whatever the historical limits of arendt’s understanding of the social, the principles intrinsic to political life in her thought, freedom, equality, justice and solidarity, invite a retracing of our steps to re-imagine politics along a different axis from the one proposed and still entrenched by neo-liberalism. this, however, is not a call for a return to an idealised past that privileged ‘republican politics’ or a call for a utopian public sphere. arendt’s conceptualisation of (political) action as a mode of existence makes it possible to think about ways to rescue human ability to act politically. it is in arendt’s characterisation of the purpose of human action as to change and to conserve the world that her thinking about politics and the human condition intersects with her views on education and where theorists of education have found fruitful ground for a pedagogical elaboration of arendt’s thought. in the next section of this article, i will engage with the meaning of arendt’s political thinking for a reflection of the role of higher education in the development of citizenship. education and politics: a political pedagogy? arendt’s conceptualisation of education takes as its point of departure the concept of natality, that is, human capacity for renewal, which, as noted earlier, is itself intrinsic to the act of being born. thus, natality is both a condition to political action and the essence of education in that every new generation needs to be introduced to the world over which they will have to act. the whole of arendt’s reflection on education is predicated on her theorisation of the human condition and politics. education specialists, who have sought in arendt’s thinking elements to reflect on pedagogy, focus on three aspects of her conceptualisation of politics and education: the social nature of education, its role in conserving and changing the world, and its importance in the development of the capacity to judge. in this section, i would like to elaborate on these three themes and then introduce arendt’s notion of understanding as a link between action and judgement. the aim of education is the introduction of the young to the world, preparing them to change the world without prescribing the direction or the manner of its transformation (levinson, 2001:18). arendt’s most cited quote on education, education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it and by the same token save it from the ruin which, except for renewal, except for the coming of the new and young, would be inevitable. and education too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices, nor to strike from their hands their chance of undertaking something new, something unforeseen by us, but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing the common world (arendt, 2006a:193). indicates the moral and emotional forces at play in the educational process: love of the world and love of the child, as well as the ‘social’ nature of its object: the common world. the introduction of the young to the world implies not only a sense of responsibility on the part of the adults for both the continuance of the world and the young’s process of familiarisation with a world that is new to them, but also a process of progressive taking responsibility for the world on the part of the young. in other words, education is about preparing the young for acting in and on the world. in this sense, the aim of education is twofold: preservation and change or, as arendt (2006a:189) put it, the preservation of the social world by allowing the possibility to change it. nothing could be further from “the marginalisation of social understanding” pointed out by ahier. in the task of renewing the common world, tradition the existing understanding of the world together with all its institutions is handed over to the young as part of the historical process 5lange — understanding and action: thinking with arendt about democratic education of continuity and change. this process allows the young to enter into the web of relations that benhabib calls narrativity, thus being able to express herself as subject and to use the historical knowledge and the social knowledge to (ultimately) communicate and act in the public sphere.2 in this instance, the social, as noted in the previous section, refers to the inter-subjective; the relationship between the i and the others, particularly in the context of the intellectual and moral process of thinking. within the context of arendt’s analysis of the human condition, the pedagogical space is a preparation for action in the public space. at the heart of arendt’s pedagogy is the development of active personhood which is intrinsically social (walker, 2002:48-49). the will to act and to change the world presupposes judgement as to the goodness or suitability of the common world and its tradition and the direction of change. being able to make judgements is, in arendt’s (2006b:120) own view, a fundamental characteristic of the political being. her preoccupation, particularly in her writings between 1950s and the 1960s, was to understand the failure of thought and judgement that allowed the rise of nazism. arendt’s “moral politics” has led to scholars in the field of education to argue that cultivating judgement in the young is a necessary aspect of educating them for democratic participation in the public sphere. for smith (2001:80), education has a role in allowing the young to practise judgement. this is done by teaching how to think representatively (smith, 2001:80-83) or, as arendt (2006b:217) herself put it, to achieve enlarged mentalities, which entails the ability to view the world from many different perspectives, and by providing opportunities to practise judgement through extra-curricular pedagogies (smith, 2001:85). most specialists in education who have sought in arendt the elements of a theorised approach to education as part of a progressive politics have stopped short of incorporating the notion of understanding into the construction of an arendtian pedagogy. in the remaining part of this section, i will present arendt’s notion of understanding and draw the implications that such a concept has for the possibility of an education for democracy. arendt’s preoccupation with understanding developed in the early 1950s in the context of her continued reflections on totalitarian regimes after the publication in 1948 of her book on the origins of totalitarianism, and came to the fore again after her work on eichmann’s trial in 1966. arendt (2005:308) distinguishes knowledge (having the correct information about something) from understanding (the capacity to provide meaning to knowledge). understanding, for arendt, is a “specifically human way of being alive” which as such never ends and, therefore, cannot produce conclusive results. understanding then is a defining existential condition of the human being which allows us to reconcile ourselves with the world in which we live. the relation between knowledge and understanding in arendt is particularly interesting from a pedagogical point of view. for her, understanding precedes knowledge in that human beings have a preliminary understanding of the world that serves as a point of departure for the generation and acquisition of knowledge. both preliminary understanding and understanding that succeeds knowledge produce meaning of the world (arendt, 2005:310-311). thus, understanding is not simply an intellectual operation, but a complex intellectual and moral process that results in judgement (arendt, 2005:313). understanding and its consequence, judgement, are at the origin of political action. according to arendt (2005:321), action is the other side of understanding, and it is associated with imagination as the ability to penetrate the darkness of the human condition (arendt, 2005:322). understanding, which implies and often in arendt’s text equates imagination in the sense of being able to put oneself in the other’s situation, then becomes the key for action, even in times of crisis when common categories of judgement have been lost, as happened in the context of totalitarian regimes. why does this matter for education and for citizenship? for arendt, the need and the justification of education, as indicated earlier, is natality, the origin of action. thus, the introduction of the young to the world, which is one of the purposes of education, requires that they be taught the tradition of the common world. but this knowledge is not sufficient; education has to provide/facilitate the development of understanding for students to make sense of knowledge, of themselves and eventually of their place in the world. from an arendtian perspective, 6 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 no judgement, no action can take place without understanding. otherwise there is an abdication of our humanity that results, among other things, in “thoughtlessness” and the cog-theory that she discusses à propos of eichmann’s trial (arendt 2003a). arendt associates understanding with our ability to penetrate the darkness of the world and our condition not only in the sense of its sombreness but also, especially, in terms of its impenetrability. thus, imagination, the other name that arendt gives to understanding, becomes an essential emotional and intellectual faculty because, as she puts it: (i)f we wish to translate the biblical language into terms that are closer to our speech ... we may call the faculty of imagination the gift of the ‘understanding heart’. in distinction from fantasy, which dreams something, imagination is concerned with the particular darkness of the human heart and the peculiar density which surrounds everything that is real. (arendt, 2005:322) the faculty of understanding/imagination needs development to access the past but also to envisage the future and, therefore, to fulfil the transformative purpose of education. from this perspective, education is a guided process of development of understanding (“a specifically human way of being alive”, (arendt, 2003 a: 308)) as the young are introduced as social beings to the common world. the coupling of understanding/action in arendt’s thinking and her conceptualisation of politics as the epitome of human action suggest that education (an activity that takes place in public, as opposed to the privacy of the home) is education for the public sphere. yet, interestingly, she did not follow her own reasoning in her analysis of the events at little rock, when she argued for the right of parents to decide among whom their children should be educated as a social and not a political issue (cf. endnote 2). if this is the case, then higher education pedagogies need not only introduce students to the common world, but also replicate the public sphere for them to progressively disclose their self in deed and speech, to learn to act together, to learn how fair and unconstrained deliberation can lead to common conviction, and to be prepared to do the unanticipated. this approach to education does not necessarily have to find expression in an especially dedicated curriculum to teach citizenship, although curriculum in the sense of the organisation and selection of knowledge offered to students is crucial for this purpose. citizenship, from an arendtian perspective, can and should be a pedagogy shaping mainstream curriculum as far as the knowledge taught is open (jansen, 2009). put differently, a knowledge base that is open to critique, that is ready to consider different perspectives, and imagine the position of the other is a necessary condition for the exercise of citizenship as pedagogy. in fact, a pedagogy of citizenship can only take place within contrasting knowledge, where students are taught but also invited to imagine/understand and act together. conclusion it is nearly a decade since ahier and his colleagues published graduate citizen? during this time, several events in the world have questioned the viability of the economic and political organisation of society proposed by neo-liberalism, which gave origin to ahier’s reflection: the global financial crisis, unprecedented social protest in places where it seldom happened previously, and political uprisings accompanied by what seems to be the creation of public spheres with direct citizenship participation. this suggests that, although the primacy of the individual consumer over the social citizen has not been substantially altered, it might be possible to push it further back and develop connection, collective commitment, encourage hope, and develop solidarity. higher education can and should play a part in this process. in south africa, the tensions between the neo-liberal and the social model of higher education are not yet totally tilted. much around us suggests that public deliberation and love for the common world and for the new generation are not paramount concerns in the res publica, and worse still, there is a certain acquiescence or defeat among us, who like onlookers, comment in despair on public happenings without engaging. i have argued in this article that (republican) citizenship requires intellectual and moral habits that need to be taught, and that higher education can and should take up the task of doing this. in order to do so, i have proposed the politicisation of education, not as party politics but as education for the public sphere. 7lange — understanding and action: thinking with arendt about democratic education i have argued that hannah arendt’s notion of understanding and action, coupled with her view of the purpose of education, provide a fruitful starting point for the conceptualisation of citizenship as pedagogy. this pedagogy, to be true to arendt’s thinking, has to be permanently reviewed, cannot present itself as conclusive truth and, at the same time, cannot propose a “view from nowhere” (disch, 1996:1-19) that is, a seemingly neutral perspective not fully committed with a particular purpose. it cannot result either in a new sound byte in the higher education vocabulary without depths of knowledge and meaning. it has to test and stretch us and our students in our different roles to take responsibility for the common world. acknowledgments thanks are due to prof. mala singh and prof. melanie walker for their useful and sharp comments of an earlier version of this paper, to one of the anonymous reviewers of this piece for insightful comments on my treatment of arendt, and to rene eloff for reading the final manuscript with a philosophically trained eye. endnotes 1. the ‘location’ of the common world is not obvious. it clearly does not belong in ‘society’ which arendt regarded as the institutional differentiation between a progressively narrower political world and the market and the family. in many respects, the common world seems to arise from the historical depth of the ‘web of interactions’ that benhabib re-interprets as narrativity. see arendt (1998:38-49) and benhabib (1992:90-93). 2. yet, if education was a preparation for entering the public sphere, arendt did not believe that education was political or could be used for political purposes. her controversial position in relation to the events in little rock shows how arendt’s notion of politics excluded the social and the private. it is interesting that in relation to this particular issue, she retracted her position. see arendt (2003 b:193-213) and young-breuhl (1982:316). references ahier j, beck j & moore r 2003. graduate citizen? issues of citizenship and higher education. londonnew york: routledgefalmer. arendt h 1998. the human condition. chicago: university of chicago press. arendt h 2003a. personal responsibility under dictatorship. in responsibility and judgement, new york: schocken books, 17-48. arendt h 2003b. reflections on little rock. in arendt h responsibility and judgement. new york: schocken books. arendt h 2005. understanding and politics (the difficulties of understanding). in arendt h essays in understanding. formation, exile and totalitarianism. new york: schocken books. arendt h 2006a. the crisis in education. in arendt, h between past and future. new york: penguin books. arendt h 2006b. the crisis in culture: its social and its political importance. in arendt h between past and future., new york: penguin books. barnett r 1997. higher education: a critical business. buckingham: the society for research into higher education & open university press. bender cj, daniels p, lazarus j, naude l, sattar k 2006. service-learning in the curriculum: a resource for higher education institutions. pretoria: council on higher education. benhabib s 1992. situating the self. gender, community and postmodernism in contemporary ethics, new york: routledge d’entreves mp 2008. hannah arendt. in en zalta (ed), the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (fall 2008 edition). retrieved on 9 march 2012 from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/ entries/ arendt/. department of education 1997. white paper 3: a programme for higher education transformation. government gazette no. 18207. pretoria: government printer. 8 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 dewey j 2004 (1916). democracy and education. new york: dover. disch lj 1996. hannah arendt and the limits of philosophy. ithaca: cornell university press. ehrlich t (ed) 2000. civic responsibility and higher education. westport: american council on higher education. giroux h 2008. beyond the bio-politics of disposability: rethinking neoliberalism in the new gilded age. social identities, 14(5):567-620. global university network for innovation (guni) 2009. higher education as a time of transformation: new dynamics for social responsibility. hampshire: palgrave macmillan. gordon m 2001. hannah arendt on authority: conservatism in education reconsidered. in m gordon (ed), hannah arendt and education: renewing our common world. boulder: westview press. gordon m (ed) 2001. hannah arendt and education: renewing our common world. boulder: westview press. gross r & dynneson t 1991. social science perspectives on citizenship education. new york: teachers college press. gurasci r & cornewell g (eds) 1997. democratic education in the age of difference. san francisco: jossey-bass publishers. harvey d 2007. a brief history of neoliberalism. oxford: oxford university press. jansen j 2009. the curriculum as an institution in higher education. in e bitzer (ed), higher education in south africa. a scholarly look behind the scenes. stellenbosch: sun media. jonathan r 2001. higher education transformation and the public good. kagisano, 1. pretoria: council on higher education. jonathan r 2006. academic freedom, institutional autonomy and public accountability in higher education: a framework for analysis of the ‘state-sector’ relationship in a democratic south africa. pretoria: council on higher education. kohn j 2006. introduction. in h arendt, between past and present. new york: penguin books. kymlicka w & norman n 1994. return of the citizen: a survey of recent work on citizenship theory. ethics 104(2):352-381. levinson n 2001. the paradox of natality: teaching in the midst of belatedness. in m gordon (ed), hannah arendt and education: renewing our common world. boulder: westview press. leydet d 2009. citizenship. in en zalta (ed), the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (spring 2009 edition). retrieved on 12 january 2010 from http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2009/entries/ citizenship. norman w & kymlicka w 2005. citizenship. in rg frey & c heath wellman (eds), a companion to applied ethics. blackwell publishing. blackwell reference online. retrieved on 3 january 2010 from http://0www.blackwellreference.com.innopac.wits.ac.za/subscriber/tocnode?id=g9781405133456_ chunk_g978140513345618. perold h, stroud s & sherraden m 2003. service enquiry: service in the 21st century. johannesburg: global service institute. singh m 2001. reinserting the public good into higher education transformation. kagisano, 1. pretoria: council on higher education. smith s 2001. education for judgement: an arendtian oxymoron? in m gordon (ed), hannah arendt and education: renewing our common world. boulder: westview press. vill, d 1996. arendt and heidegger. the fate of the political. princeton: princeton university press. walker m 2002. pedagogy and the politics and purposes of higher education. arts and humanities in higher education 1(1):43-58. young-breuhl e 1982 hannah arendt. for love of the world. new haven: yale university press. generic competences in higher education: studying their development in undergraduate social science studies by means of a specific methodology josep gallifa department of psychology, faculty of psychology and education blanquerna, ramon llull university e-mail: josepgr@blanquerna.url.edu jordi garriga consultant, associate professor in education, ramon llull university. e-mail: jordi.garriga@e-motiva.com research into the acquisition of generic competences was carried out with the undergraduate social science programmes offered by the ramon llull university, barcelona (spain). for these programmes an innovative methodology called ‘cross-course seminars’ has been developed. its focus is, amongst others, on developing generic competences. in the first place, generic competences are assessed in terms of whether or not they are perceived as important by final year students, and what the main context of acquisition was. the ‘cross-course seminar’ methodology, characterised in the present study, correlates more closely with the perception of the importance of competences in the professional world than in other contexts – even regular courses or competences acquired outside the university. the research aims to help achieve a better understanding of the best contexts for the acquisition of generic competences in higher education and of their importance in the professional world. a methodology for the study of competence acquisition and for the characterisation of a competence-focused educational model is thus implicitly developed. the aim of the article is to contribute to current reflections on generic competences in higher education. keywords: higher education, generic competences, teaching methods, self-assessment, competence acquisition, employment, professions, spain, bologna process introduction this paper aims to contribute to an understanding of the relevance of generic competences in higher education. to such ends, we first present our reflections concerning the importance of such competences. secondly, to help gain an understanding of the educational contexts which contribute to the acquisition of generic competences, we present the experience of a spanish university with what have been called cross-course seminars. the research presented in the present paper aims in general to help develop a method by which to evaluate educational contexts from the point of view of their contribution to the acquisition of generic competences, and more specifically, to evaluate the impact of the cross-course seminar method used. what are generic competences? mcclelland (1973) proposed the term competence after analysing human motivation and defining it as an interest that energises, guides and selects behaviours. competence is a recurrent motivation for performance (mcclelland, 1973). in the world of the professions, the concept of competence-based human resources has developed, in recent years, from a new technique to common practice. today almost every organisation employing over 300 people uses some form of competence-based human resource management system. major consulting companies and thousands of small consulting firms and independent gallifa & garriga — generic competences in higher education 71 consultants have become worldwide practitioners of competence assessment and development (boyatzis, 2008). competences, in the broader sense of the term, can be classified into different typologies: cognitive competences that capture knowledge and understanding, functional competences that include skills, and competences in the original sense — behavioural and attitudinal, which include emotional and social competences. meta-competences would be concerned with facilitating the acquisition of other substantive competences (le deist & winterton, 2005). competences have emerged as an issue of general importance to european higher education through the bologna process. the objective of the european higher education area is, among others, to adopt a comparable degree framework for both undergraduate and graduate studies. different kinds of studies of european scope (e.g. the tuning project and the deseco project), suggest that, on finishing undergraduate studies, students should have acquired a series of general competences. in 2000, a group of universities took up the bologna challenge collectively and designed a pilot project called “tuning educational structures in europe” (gonzález & wagenaar, 2008). the project aimed at identifying points of reference for generic and subject-specific competences in different fields. tuning is centred on learning outcomes: what a learner knows or is able to demonstrate after the completion of a learning process. the tuning project differentiates between generic competences and subject-specific competences. three kinds of generic competences were identified (gonzález & wagenaar, 2008): instrumental competences: cognitive abilities, methodological capacities, technological skills, linguistic • skills. interpersonal competences: individual abilities such as social skills (social interaction and cooperation).• systemic competences: abilities and skills concerning whole systems (combination of understanding, • sensibility and knowledge). an example of this is the ability to plan change or design new systems. the generic competences that are important include the capacity to learn, to apply knowledge to practice, adapt to new situations, assume responsibility for quality, be able to work autonomously and as a team, assume leadership and employ research skills. the acquisition of general competences, especially the interpersonal and systemic ones, is closely related to the objectives of ethical learning: the training of professionals and citizens who build their knowledge independently and act responsibly, freely and in a committed manner (boni & lozano, 2007). these general competences can also be called transferable skills or transversal competences. their development is one of the basic objectives that the promoters of the ongoing curricular reforms, who are trying to harmonise the european higher education area, emphasise. the new trends point to the need to specifically define competences as learning outcomes in each programme, including transversal competences (baños & pérez, 2005). in the context of the bologna process, some authors present a clarification of the concept of competences related with typologies of knowledge and, among them, they include transversal or generic competences (le deist & winterton, 2005; winterton, delamare-le deist & stringfellow, 2006). why are generic competences important in higher education? besides the aforementioned european trend, over the past decade, in the us, state legislatures have experienced increasing pressure to hold higher education accountable for student learning (klein et al., 2005), and learning in higher education has an important component of learning to develop a future profession. on the other hand, according to allen et al. (2005), in recent years, three major trends have been identified that affect the demands faced by higher education graduates; one trend is the increasing emphasis that has been placed on education and training, which is seen by many as the most important factor affecting economic growth. the term knowledge society has been coined to indicate not only the expansion of participation in higher education or of knowledge-intensive or high-technology sectors of the economy, but also a situation in which the characteristics of work organisations across the world change under the influence of the increasing importance of knowledge. another trend relates to changes in labour market processes through the concept of the transitional labour market that indicates how, in modern society, the demarcation perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201072 lines between work, leisure time, education and care have been blurred, leading to increased mobility and flexibility patterns. the third trend relates to the internationalisation and globalisation of product and labour markets. the aforementioned trends give rise to new demands on the competences that individuals need to be equipped with. higher education graduates have long been expected to become experts in their own professional domain. however, the dynamic nature of the labour market and increased mobility also imply a much higher degree of flexibility and the possession of broad generic competences to ensure employability in a range of situations over an individual’s entire career (allen & van der velden, 2005). generic competences are important in a university context where the traditional professional culture of open intellectual enquiry and debate has been replaced with an institutional stress on performativity, as evidenced by the emergence of an emphasis on measured outputs, and on strategic planning, performance indicators, quality assurance measures and academic audits. in such an environment, the role of higher education for the economy is seen by governments as having greater importance, to the extent that higher education has become the new flagship in the policy fleet of governments around the world. universities are seen as a key driver in the knowledge economy and, as a consequence, higher education institutions have been encouraged to develop links with industry and business in a series of new venture partnerships (olssen & peters, 2005). another related issue is over-education, understood as an oversupply of students for the labour market, a problem that some systems are confronting. the circumstances that promote this situation are (sutherland, 2008): the marked decline in university funding (perhaps resulting in some studentsfailing to acquire the skill • levels associated to students in previous decades) the increase in the supply of university places (sometimes in courseprogrammes not conventionally • associated to “higher” education) to fill these places, there has been a tendency for some institutions to recruit from a lower part of the • ability distribution the continued increase in the number of graduates entering the labour market. • there are two possible consequences of over-education. one is the tendency for average rates of return to decline. the other is for graduates to be employed in non-graduate jobs. there is some evidence of both (sutherland, 2008), and thus individuals in possession of generic competences will find themselves better placed when seeking employment. mora et al. (2007) found that a surplus of qualifications and competences at work is one of the most relevant causes of dissatisfaction among higher education graduates. they tested this outcome through three different variables: use of knowledge acquired during studies, the match between education level and job level, and the comparison between competences acquired and competences needed in the job. in all three cases the results showed a high level of disappointment when graduates could not use their knowledge and competences at work. it is surprising, to some extent, that the opposite situation (being undereducated or having lower competences than required) increases a graduate’s level of job satisfaction. apparently the feeling of being undereducated or undercompetent does not bother young european graduates, probably because they find themselves in a better position than they had anticipated and enjoying unexpected extra benefits (mora, garcía-aracil & vila, 2007). other findings suggest that generic competences, like group functioning, relevant work experience and managerial experience, are predictive for labour market outcomes, like employment opportunities and quality of the job (semeijn et al., 2006). what generic competences should be acquired by students? today’s graduates from the higher education system are expected, if nothing more, to be more or less competent in the following five areas (allen & van der velden, 2005): professional expertise. higher education graduates are expected to become experts in their professional • field. expertise implies, first and foremost, a high degree of mastery of the knowledge and skills that are relevant in one’s own domain of work. a second characteristic feature of experts is an ability to use this mastery to diagnose and solve complex problems in their own area of work. gallifa & garriga — generic competences in higher education 73 functional flexibility. the world of work is dynamic. rapid developments in technology, markets, • organisations and relevant knowledge make it necessary that higher education graduates are able to take up diverse challenges, many not directly related to their own field of expertise, and to quickly acquire new knowledge. they must be broadly employable and have the ability to cope with changes in the job content and mobility within the organisation to another job or mobility to other organisations. in order to be flexible, graduates obviously need a well-developed ability to adapt to changes in the environment, for example by quickly acquiring new knowledge and skills, by possessing a large reserve of general or multidisciplinary skills and an ability to cope with change. innovation and knowledge management. in many sectors of the economy, employers look to highly • educated workers to contribute to expanding and improving the way goods and services are provided. this relates not only to the capacity for innovation of higher education graduates, but also their ability to create an environment in which knowledge production and diffusion is optimised. there are many ways in which graduates may contribute. first of all, graduates who possess a high degree of innovative capacity, creativity, curiosity, willingness and ability to question the status quo and so on, can directly contribute to the development of new knowledge and ideas for the organisation to use. secondly, since not all innovations need to be developed within the firm or organisation itself, graduates can contribute to innovation by gaining access to new ideas developed elsewhere. for this reason, an ability to notice new opportunities and access relevant networks as well as the possession of networking skills, ict skills, foreign language abilities and communication skills in general, may prove of crucial importance when seeking to introduce new ideas into an organisation. mobilisation of human resources. higher education graduates are expected to have the ability to • effectively mobilise their own competences and actively steer and direct their own work as well as that of others. several aspects can be distinguished. first of all, graduates need to possess a strongly developed ability to mobilise and make use of their own competencies, which implies an ability to work autonomously when working alone, to cooperate fruitfully with others when working in a team, to manage their own skills, and to be motivated intrinsically by the work at hand. secondly, graduates may be called upon to mobilise the capacities of others. this is associated with leadership skills, but the concept is broader, involving an ability to communicate ideas and inspire others, to plan and monitor work processes, and where necessary be assertive and take decisive action. international orientation: globalisation and the blurring of national borders increase the importance of a • strong international orientation. this requires not only a good command of foreign languages, but also an ability to understand and empathise with other cultures and a willingness and ability to appreciate the limitations of one’s own national context; in short, the development of intercultural competences. this is an area which has most particularly been articulated in the european countries (robertson, 2006). the aforementioned demands are by no means mutually exclusive (allen & van der velden, 2005) and may appear somewhat idealistic, but here they have been identified as a trend. said demands are closely related to generic competences. more specifically, studies were carried out regarding generic competences. graduates from three schools were surveyed to determine their perception of the contribution that the learning contexts of the university, work placement and postgraduate employment had made to the development of their generic skills (crebert et al., 2004). all graduates involved in the project had experienced work placement as a formal part of their undergraduate studies. the findings showed that while graduates recognised the contribution that the university had made to their generic skills development, they greatly valued the experience of learning in the workplace during placement and subsequently in employment. the importance of team work, being given responsibility, and collaborative learning emerged as the most important factors for effective learning in the three contexts under consideration (crebert et al., 2004). in another study, labour market rewards for a number of required human capital competences were analysed in a sample of young european higher education graduates. factor analysis was applied to classify competences by jobs into eight groups: participative, methodological, specialised, organisational, rule-applying, physical, generic and socio-emotional competences. estimates of perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201074 the total reward for competences were obtained from conventional wage regression, whereas estimates of total reward were derived in terms of job satisfaction through regression. explanatory variables included personal characteristics, job attributes, occupational titles, fields of study, type of higher education institution and country dummies. the outcome with regard to wage rewards showed that jobs with a higher requirement for participative and methodological competences are better paid; conversely, jobs with a higher requirement for organisational, rule-applying and physical competences are worse paid. the results on total rewards suggest that jobs with a higher requirement for competences increase graduates’ satisfaction, the only exception being in the case of rule-applying competences (garcia-aracil, mora & vila, 2004). in another study, a formative evaluation in the context of a university, involving different stakeholders with the implementation of generic competencies, contributed to the development of proposals to improve ongoing educational practices (van der linden & mendonca, 2006). it is easy to derive a classification of generic competences since meaningful coincidences are to be found between the list of generic competences offered by tuning (gonzález & wagenaar, 2008) and other classifications of generic competences. spencer and spencer (1993), following mcclelland’s approach, presented a set of competences (spencer & spencer, 1993; spencer, mcclelland & spencer, 1997) that are included in the isfol competence list (angeli, 1994; 1997). the isfol list also includes the identified managerial competences (thornton & byham, 1982) and 16 developmental needs of managers (mccauley, lombardo & usher, 1989). similarities with other lists can also be found (echeverría, 2002; boyatzis & goleman, 2001). the seminar experience at ramon llull university as a systematic approach to the acquisition of generic competences the work on generic competences in which the author has been involved was carried out at the ramon llull university in barcelona (spain). the ramon llull university is a private university that was created by the merging of several separate higher education institutions. some of these institutions are related to the society of jesus (esade, iqs chemical institute), others to the diocese (blanquerna in social studies and the faculty of philosophy), and to the lasallian brothers (technology and architecture). the joining of these institutions resulted in the first private university in spain, and one of the most relevant. the organisational stucture is federal (as a system of government, not state university), and affords great independance to its federated institutions in such issues as student recruitment, curricula, labour market professional placement, and so on. each institution has its own brand and prestige in its field (gallifa, 2009). a characteristic method of focussing education on student learning was established at the ramon llull university a few years before the bologna process. since 1991, this kind of innovative methodological approach has been implemented in its humanities and social science studies. every year over 6,000 students participate in such methodology. cross-course seminars may be described as the simultaneous learning setting in which a teacher-tutor meets a group of 12-15 students in three 90-minute sessions per week each week of the semester. in the scheduled time all the students enrolled in a year have cross-course seminar sessions, each team with its corresponding teacher-tutor. from the point of view of student, participation in one cross-course seminar per semester, each undergraduate year is compulsory and subject to evaluation. each semester the students are randomly assigned to a new cross-course seminar, under a new teacher-tutor. therefore, during the course of a four-year undergraduate programme, the student will have eight cross-course seminars (one per semester), working with eight different teams and eight different tutors. such a context creates a special, characteristic educational environment. the seminars offer a rather particular educational environment which enhances direct teacher-student interaction, requires the participation of all and allows for the development of different techniques (team work and cooperative learning, case and problem-based learning or portfolio techniques). the content and activities to be developed in this environment are decided upon by the team of teacher-tutors involved in a particular semester. examples of seminar activities are: work placement supervision, implementing research projects or learning professional techniques. the general objectives of seminar work are as follows (lopez & gallifa, 2008): to promote critical reflection on university work; to promote capacity for interdisciplinary synthesis and application of knowledge into gallifa & garriga — generic competences in higher education 75 professional practice; to improve cooperation, respect, dialogue, and capacity for team work; to promote capacity for research. this methodology creates a special kind of educational environment and a way of understanding higher education. all the dimensions of these cross-course seminars are related with developing generic competences. lópez and gallifa (2008) explain how the work of the cross-course seminar is aimed at offering students a general, holistic, and complementary vision, in contrast to the specialised outlook offered by their regular courses. this is done by facilitating the learning and application of personal and group work strategies, the integration of knowledge, interdisciplinary work, the construction of group thinking and critical reflection. the seminars also promote emotional and social competences (oberst et al., 2009) related to subjective well-being (bar-on, 2005). the learning environment is very relevant since it has an effect on workplace competences and training, according to graduates (vaatstra & de vries, 2007). mora (2007) found that in european countries the educational experience was both directly and indirectly related to later job satisfaction and that such links endured at least four years after graduation. from the point of view of the present study it is relevant to point out that those graduates who had a positive educational experience, with an emphasis on practical learning and the provision of work practice during their studies, are more likely to feel satisfied at work afterwards than graduates with poorer educational experiences (mora et al., 2007). on the other hand, a competence-based curriculum may bring together university staff, students and representatives of the world of work. the common goal is the improved training of competent professionals, taking into account the learning process of the students, their professional practices and the specific difficulties they encounter (van der linden & mendonca, 2006). objectives the main objective of this research work is to develop a methodology for the evaluation of educational environments, in terms of the acquisition of generic competences by final-year undergraduate students. by the time students are in the last semester of their final year they will have obtained a comprehensive perspective of their undergraduate training and are in a good position to evaluate the training received. the secondary objective was to specifically evaluate the social science programmes given at the ramon llull university to be able to analyse the impact cross-course seminar methodology has on generic competence acquisition. we wished to discover whether generic competences were seen as important for professional life, and whether or not students consider that they have acquired such competences in the context of their seminars. another issue addressed by the research was the impact on competence acquisition of the seminar approach when compared to that of regular courses in such competences. the students’ perception of their external acquisition of competences will provide interesting information. the third objective was to understand and characterise the cross-course seminar methodology from the point of view of generic competences, and discover which of the traits of seminars are the most meaningful”. methods the method developed is based on the perception of the final-year student. the perception of the student is appropriate both for informing on competence acquisition and on the contribution each different educational context makes to the acquisition of competences. other researchers have similarly employed the perception of the graduates (vaatstra & de vries, 2007; mora et al., 2007). our aim is not to evaluate the individual student but the educational context. the perception of the final-year student is not the only output of higher education, but it is certainly one that may help us attain a better understanding of the dynamics of generic competence acquisition in higher education. questionnaire we developed a questionnaire covering a list of generic competences. the list of competences was created by combining the additional competences employed in the cited approaches (gonzález & wagenaar, 2008; spencer & spencer, 1993; spencer, mcclelland & spencer, 1997; angeli, 1994; 1997; thornton & byham, 1982; mccauley, lombardo & usher, 1989). the final questionnaire comprised the following list of competences: perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201076 table 1: competences code competence spencer & spencer isfol (angeli) thornton & byham mccauley, lombardo & usher tuning 1 interpersonal skills x basic x x 2 communicate no experts technical 3 diversity and multiculturalism transversal x 4 customer guidance x technical 5 analysis and synthesis x basic x x 6 knowledge in practice technical x 7 knowledge in multiculturalism transversal x 8 knowledge of profession technical x x 9 computer skills basic x 10 problem-solving basic x 11 knowledge cultures basic 12 mathematical tools basic 13 it modelling basic 14 mathematical mo delling basic 15 professional experience basic 16 problems company technical x 17 problems external technical x 18 learning capacity transversal x x 19 critical and self-critical transversal x 20 adapt to new situations basic x x 21 work alone technical x 22 ethical commitment transversal x 23 self-conrol under pressure x transversal x 24 self-confidence transversal 25 reaction to failure transversal 26 flexibility x transversal x 27 tolerance to stress transversal x 28 work/life balance transversal x 29 sensitivity transversal x x 30 self-awareness skills transversal x 31 good sense transversal x 32 independence transversal x 33 resourcefulness transversal x 34 tenacity transversal x 35 energy transversal x 36 breadth of interests transversal x 37 decision-making technical x x x 38 teamwork x technical x x 39 leadership x transversal x 40 interdisciplinary team transversal x x 41 international context transversal x 42 development of others x transversal x x gallifa & garriga — generic competences in higher education 77 code competence spencer & spencer isfol (angeli) thornton & byham mccauley, lombardo & usher tuning 43 people management transversal x 44 negotiating skills technical x 45 accepting risks transversal x 46 delegation transversal x 47 lead people with talent transversal x 48 control technical x 49 authority transversal x 50 oral and written communication basic x x 51 oral and written in foreign language transversal x 52 impact on others x transversal 53 networking x transversal 54 organisational awareness x transversal 55 personal and institutional responsibility transversal 56 diagnosis environment and process technical 57 to do the right thing transversal x 58 planning transversal x x 59 research technical x 60 information management skills x basic x 61 creativity transversal x x 62 projecting technical x 63 initiative and innovative spirit x transversal x x 64 quality, order, precision x technical 65 results orientation x technical x 66 preparedness to act transversal x the questionnaire was created in the form of a lickert scale with four items per competence. the first item refers to the extent to which a particular competence is relevant to the chosen profession of the student (the students are in their final year — second semester — and very close to beginning their professional career). the second item asks whether, and to what extent, the competence was mainly acquired as a result of the cross-course seminars. the third item asks the same, but with respect to the student’s regular courses. the fourth and final item enquires whether the student already had the competence before entering higher education or had acquired it outside of the university. we did not enquire whether the students had acquired each individual competence. it would obviously be interesting to ascertain that, but we believed that if we were to do so, the student would be more likely to feel that she or he was being individually evaluated. the understandable desire to do well in the questionnaire and the possibility of feeling the need to over-represent skills and competences would make the results harder to interpret. the questionnaire comprised a list of competences, each having four lickert scales, appropriately adapted in terms of the importance/performance questions. the questionnaire was anonymous and students were asked at the end for explicit signed permission to report the findings. perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201078 sample the sample was composed of social studies students in their fourth year at the ramon llull university. we selected two different specialities in order to minimise any influence an individual field may have had. we chose the areas of clinical psychology and organisational psychology. we chose psychology as we believed the students would have no trouble understanding the language of generic competences since their course work includes such content. thus we believed they would answer the questionnaire with greater precision. with one of the professional fields having a more clinical and individual orientation while the other a more organisational approach, we believed there would be minimum inter-field variation and so the outcomes obtained would be field-independent results. the size of the sample was of 167 students, with 124 from a clinical major speciality and 43 from organisational psychology. methods employed for the analysis of quantitative data when the mean for each item of each competence is 3.5 or higher in a particular situation, we consider the item to express importance or performance. pilot studies showed that when the mean was near or over 3.5, it was equivalent to a median of 4 or 5, or a majority of scores of over 4. that is, agreement or total agreement with the situation tested. we applied a factor analysis (principal component analysis and varimax rotation) to the seminar scores to understand the underlying factors of the seminar experience. we also analysed the items with high loadings for each of the factors, in order to characterise this particular experience results importance of generic competences for professions only three items in the whole questionnaire had a mean of under 3. these were: mathematical tools (2.82), it modelling (2.74), and mathematical modelling (2). 89.4% of the items had means of over 3.5. thus almost all of the items were considered important for the professions. no differences were found between the two groups. acquisition of competences outside the university students say that 72% of their competences were mainly acquired outside of the university. with regard to the remainder, we are not sure whether the students had acquired these competences or not since scores below 3.5 have no clear meaning (they may have been acquired at university or may not yet have been acquired). with regard to the above, we found the following list of competences: table 2: the competence was acquired outside the university 31. good sense 4,59 50. oral and written communication 4,59 29. sensitivity 4,51 1. interpersonal skils 4,46 35. energy 4,36 66. preparedness to act 4,35 26. flexibility 4,31 27. tolerance to stress 4,23 24. self-confidence 4,21 21. work alone 4,18 32. independence 4,18 gallifa & garriga — generic competences in higher education 79 28. work/life balance 4,16 3. diversty and multiculturalism 4,15 58. planning 4,13 61. creativity 4,13 63. initiative and innovative spirit 4,13 22. ethical commitment 4,10 53. networking 4,10 20. adapt to new situations 4,08 51. oral and written in foreign language 4,08 18. learning capacity 4,05 19. critical and self-critical 4,05 30. self-awareness skills 4,05 25. reaction to failure 4,05 65. results orientation 4,03 2. comunicate no experts 4,03 36. breadth of interests 4,03 10. problem solving 4,00 34. tenacity 4,00 9. computer skills 3,97 33. resourcefulness 3,97 64. quality, order, precision 3,97 37. decision-making 3,92 23. self-conrol under pressure 3,87 11. knowledge cultures 3,85 38. teamwork 3,85 57. to do the right thing 3,82 48. control 3,79 55. personal and institutional responsibility 3,77 52. impact on others 3,72 40. interdisciplinary team 3,62 42. development of others 3,56 60. information management skills 3,56 59. research 3,51 6. knowledge in practice 3,50 5. analysis and synthesis 3,46 44. negotiating skills 3,46 45. accepting risks 3,42 7. knowledge in multiculturalism 3,35 12. mathematical tools 3,29 62. projecting 3,28 39. leadership 3,21 46. delegation 3,21 43. people management 3,15 56. diagnosis environment and process 3,11 15. professional experience 3,08 49. authority 3,03 4. customer guidance 2,87 54. organisational awareness 2,82 perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201080 41. international context 2,79 17. problems external 2,45 47. lead people with talent 2,44 16. problems company 2,38 13. it modelling 2,26 8. knowledge of profession 2,18 14. mathematical modeling 1,92 competences mainly acquired through regular courses we found the following list of competences had mainly been acquired through regular courses: table 3: the competence was acquired in the courses 8. knowledge of profession 4,26 22. ethical commitment 3,82 38. teamwork 3,74 5. analysis and synthesis 3,67 59. research 3,62 36. breadth of interests 3,56 60. information management skills 3,56 33. resourcefulness 3,49 56. diagnosis environment and process 3,42 we see 9 of the 66 competences, that is, 13% of the total list. this means that, although competences are valued as important, only a few are perceived as mainly having been acquired through regular courses. competences mainly acquired in the cross-course seminars the following list features the competences students believe they acquired through the seminars: table 4: the competence was acquired in seminars 38. teamwork 4,67 6. knowledge in practice 4,11 59. research 4,10 8. knowledge of profession 4,08 60. information management skills 4,03 4. customer guidance 3,92 33. resourcefulness 3,92 36. breadth of interests 3,82 62. projecting 3,79 5. analysis and synthesis 3,72 66. preparedness to act 3,68 61. creativity 3,67 40. interdisciplinary team 3,64 37. decision making 3,62 19. critical and self-critical 3,59 10. problem solving 3,56 26. flexibility 3,49 42. development of others 3,49 gallifa & garriga — generic competences in higher education 81 58. planning 3,49 30. self-awareness skills 3,46 56. diagnosis environment and process 3,42 20. adapt new situations 3,31 50. oral and writen communication 3,31 65. results orientation 3,29 23. self conrol under pressure 3,28 64. quality, order, precision 3,28 31. good sense 3,26 24. self-confidence 3,23 48. control 3,23 22. ethical commitment 3,21 63. initiative and innovative spirit 3,21 43. people management 3,15 3. diversty and multiculturalism 3,13 57. to do the right thing 3,11 15. professional experience 3,00 27. tolerance to stress 3,00 29. sensitivity 2,95 7. knowledge in multiculturalism 2,95 34. tenacity 2,92 44. negotiating skills 2,92 25. reaction to failure 2,92 1. interpersonal skils 2,90 21. work alone 2,90 18. learning capacity 2,87 39. leadership 2,82 55. personal and institutional responsibility 2,77 45. accepting risks 2,76 52. impact on others 2,69 35. energy 2,67 2. communicate to experts 2,59 32. independence 2,56 46. delegation 2,54 17. problems external 2,50 16. problems company 2,43 54. organisational awareness 2,38 11. knowledge cultures 2,28 53. networking 2,28 49. authority 2,15 28. work/life balance 2,11 41. international context 2,08 47. lead people with talent 2,08 13. it modelling 1,95 9. computer skills 1,67 51. oral and written in foreign language 1,56 12. mathematical tools 1,55 14. mathematical modeling 1,51 perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201082 to study the possibility of the situations overlapping, we correlated scores of importance with each situation and obtained significant correlations in all three cases: the pearson correlation of the “importance of competence” and “seminar acquisition” was 0.70; the correlation of the “importance of the competence” and “acquired in regular courses” was 0.42; and the correlation of the “importance of the competence” and “acquired outside the university” was 0.62. this means that the importance of competences correlated with the cross-course seminar experience is greater than that related to any of the other situations. all three correlations were statistically significant. main traits of the seminar experience to characterise the seminar experience, we factor-analysed the seminar scores with means of over 3.5, analysing the main components of the matrix. we obtained 3 factors which account for 52% of variance. below we have presented the results of the extraction and varimax rotation: table 5: factor analysis total variance explained component initial values sums of the extraction’s squared saturations sums of the extraction’s squared saturations of the rotation total % of variance % accumulated total % of variance % accumulated total % of variance % accumulated 1 6,797 30,895 30,895 6,797 30,895 30,895 4,442 20,190 20,190 2 2,701 12,279 43,174 2,701 12,279 43,174 3,617 16,442 36,632 3 2,082 9,464 52,638 2,082 9,464 52,638 3,521 16,006 52,638 matrix of components component 1 2 3 var00004 ,318 ,540 -,446 var00005 ,488 ,665 ,210 var00006 ,525 ,265 -,273 var00008 ,270 ,584 ,070 var00010 ,627 ,264 -,217 var00019 ,602 ,000 ,113 var00026 ,674 -,394 -,446 var00030 ,550 ,054 -,041 var00033 ,686 ,275 -,099 var00034 ,676 -,141 ,113 var00036 ,623 ,178 -,014 var00037 ,632 ,201 ,159 var00038 ,557 ,130 ,114 var00040 ,548 ,064 -,251 var00042 ,540 -,135 -,537 var00056 ,409 -,369 -,279 var00058 ,445 ,010 ,625 gallifa & garriga — generic competences in higher education 83 component 1 2 3 var00059 ,345 -,219 ,589 var00060 ,676 ,000 ,445 var00061 ,713 -,268 ,255 var00062 ,483 -,669 -,095 var00066 ,546 -,647 ,026 matrix of rotated components component 1 2 3 var00004 ,721 -,030 -,266 var00005 ,699 -,336 ,351 var00006 ,617 ,197 ,028 var00008 ,546 -,323 ,127 var00010 ,666 ,223 ,130 var00019 ,362 ,252 ,425 var00026 ,333 ,833 ,057 var00030 ,415 ,257 ,262 var00033 ,673 ,191 ,259 var00034 ,317 ,393 ,484 var00036 ,538 ,191 ,307 var00037 ,502 ,099 ,451 var00038 ,419 ,134 ,383 var00040 ,491 ,346 ,086 var00042 ,447 ,618 -,126 var00056 ,118 ,604 ,045 var00058 ,094 -,069 ,758 var00059 -,113 ,064 ,705 var00060 ,301 ,137 ,739 var00061 ,210 ,439 ,638 var00062 -,095 ,776 ,279 var00066 -,078 ,737 ,410 method of rotation: varimax normalization with kaiser. rotation converged in 5 iteractions. after studying the loadings in the rotated components for each factor, we labelled each factor obtained as follows: first factor: cognitive instruments and contextualised knowledge, that is, the ability to think.• second factor: capacities to model the context and for leadership, that is, the ability to produce change.• third factor: capacities for creating information.• perspectives in education, volume 28(3), september 201084 the competences with positive and significant scores in the three factors (that is, possessing the three components) are: “being critical and self-critical”, “self-consciousness”, “having resources”, “breadth of interests”, “teamwork”, “management of information” and “creativity”. these are the items common to the three components that represent the core of the competences developed. we found no meaningful differences between the specialty studied in any of the different dimensions. conclusions students value generic competences as important in social science professions. the results coincide in the two specialties studied. the results are highly coincident with prior research, especially the tuning project (gonzález & wagenaar, 2008), in which both students and employers strongly agreed on the importance they attached to generic competences. despite the small scale of our study, it goes beyond previous work in representing the reality that, from the student’s perception, many generic competences are seen as having been mainly acquired prior to or outside of the university. the result points to the need for certain university reformers to acquire a degree of humility with respect to generic competences. generic competences are important but, even in a context in which a great institutional effort has been made and a specific plan developed for competence acquisition, the students perceive that many or part of their generic competences are acquired prior to or outside of the university. one of the expected findings was that regular courses, even in a very supportive and personal environment, are poor in terms of the acquisition of generic competences. only those competences more closely related to cognitive capacities or directly related to the content of the studies are referred to as having been mainly acquired in regular courses. there is one interpretation this brings readily to mind: regular courses in general do not focus on competence acquisition, at least in the context studied. the way this conclusion clashes with the importance attached to generic competences by both students and employers (gonzález & wagenaar, 2008), accounts for the lack of harmonisation between training and employment found in some areas of study, something that greatly influences the level of satisfaction felt by graduates (mora et al., 2007) the good news is that all hope is not lost. it is possible to develop special methodologies aimed at developing generic competences. in this paper, the cross-course seminars methodology has been presented and assessed by students in terms of its ability to promote generic competences. in the eyes of the student, not only has the seminar methodology contributed to the acquisition of generic competences, we must also bear in mind the fact that these competences correlated highly and significantly with the competences perceived as important by the student. previous research emphasises the coincidence of the importance attached both by students and employers to generic competences (gonzález & wagenaar, 2008), and in our study these competences showed a significantly higher correlation with the cross-course seminar experience than with regular courses or even the learning of competences outside of the university. our findings help give to the methodology evaluated a particular profile in the development of generic competences in higher education environments. furthermore, the competences that the students assessed as being acquired in the seminars, and included in table 4, are similar to those previous research has revealed as required competences in the current demands made by the professions (boyatzis, 2008; allen & van der velden, 2005), with small variations; for example, we found that internationalisation, although important, was not perceived as being developed in the seminars. other research carried out in spain likewise attaches importance to the aforementioned list of generic competences (boni & lozano, 2007; fundación universidad-empresa, 2006). the characterisation of the seminar experience through factor analysis resulted in an interesting finding. three factors were identified: cognitive instruments and contextualised knowledge (ability to think); capacities to model the context and for leadership (ability to produce change); and capacities for creating information. there is a meaningful similarity between these three factors and the instrumental competences (cognitive abilities, methodological capacities, technological skills, linguistic skills): interpersonal competences, individual abilities like social skills (social interaction and cooperation) and gallifa & garriga — generic competences in higher education 85 systemic competences, and abilities and skills concerning whole systems (combination of understanding, sensibility and knowledge) of the tuning project (gonzález & wagenaar, 2008). seminar methodology promotes the competences that european employers and students believe to be important in european higher education-related jobs. one general, implicit conclusion of the present research is that a special setting and time is required for the learning of generic competences in the context of higher education — at least within the context studied. regular courses are not enough, and it is only by having the promotion of these competences as a core objective that students can identify the institutional efforts made to move in the direction of competences valued as important for the professional world. a method for evaluating the acquisition of generic competences, based on the perceptions of final year students, has been developed and applied for evaluating the contribution different educational contexts may make to the acquisition of generic competences. the trial was carried out in a particular context, one in which a systematic effort, called 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participating children. data gathering occurred through interviews, observation, documents, field notes and visual artefacts made by the participating children. the findings were that education firstly advances children’s understanding and knowledge of their rights and responsibilities. secondly, basic needs of children have a significant effect on their understanding of their rights and responsibilities with the emphasis on rights. children’s perceptions of their rights and responsibilities were juxtaposed to assist in finding similarities and differences in their perceptions. thirdly, the participant children understood that people have needs and rights; they communicated that these rights must be recognised to safeguard a sustainable standard of life. keywords: children’s rights and responsibilities; comparative analysis; diverse settings; juxtaposition; rights and responsibility education. 1. introduction the constitution of the republic of south africa enshrines the basic rights of every child irrespective of race, colour or creed in chapter 2 section 28 (department of justice and constitutional development, 1997). children are viewed as a person under 18 years of age and children have the right to; a name and nationality, be taken care of, food, a home, health care and social services, be protected, not be detained except as a last resort and not to be used in armed conflict. a child’s best interests are most important in every matter concerning the child. author: dr linda van aardt1 dr roy venketsamy1 dr nkhensani susan thuketana1 prof ina joubert2 affiliation: 1university of pretoria 2sants doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i4.9 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(4): 118-134 published: 6 december 2021 received: 15 september 2020 accepted: 11 november 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9578-3682 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3594-527x http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4182-077x http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6933-6421 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 1192021 39(4): 119-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 van aardt, venketsamy, thuketana & joubert the juxtaposition of rights and responsibilities south africa is a country of many and varied cultures. it can righty be called a world within one nation (humanium, 2019). although many highlights, south africa faces challenges regarding the rights of children. many children are deprived of their basic rights, which raises alarm bells as a society is weakened when its children are ignorant of and uneducated about their rights (kosher, ben-arieh & hendelsman, 2017:v). children ought to have and experience not only their rights but also their responsibilities. it is imperative that they face the responsibility to respect the rights of others as well (colgan, 2009; haugli, & nylund, 2019). children’s rights are a special section of human rights. human rights relate to children as well as to adults, but children have distinct protection rights because they are defenceless against exploitation and abuse (abrahams & matthews, 2011). the historical progress of children’s position and rights has been important in the safeguarding and well-being of children, and reviewing these rights advances understanding of the problem under study. currently one of the most pertinent questions in education is how children experience and perceive their rights and responsibilities in order to address the identified gaps. asking children to voice their thoughts regarding their rights and responsibilities should shed light on how they experience these. abrahams and matthews (2011:52) state that most south african children do not experience their rights and responsibilities adequately. there are major concerns that influence the experience of their rights. it is increasingly acknowledged that children in south africa experience abuse, victimisation, exploitation and maltreatment (leoschut & kafaar, 2017:81). pillay (2016:6) confirms that many children in south africa are often underprivileged, marginalised and discriminated against. many children’s lives are plagued by their needs not being met, defencelessness and the nonexistence of prospects practically in all areas of their lives. the realization of children’s rights index (rcri) shows that south africa’s children’s rights situation reflects “noticeable problems” (humanium, 2014; humanium, 2018). all children have a right to education; this is a vital part of children’s rights (sloth-nielsen, 2016). this right to education is included in many legal documents worldwide; for example, the convention on the rights of the child (unicef, 1989), the african charter on the rights and welfare of the child (acrwc, 1990), the constitution of the republic of south africa (government, 1996), the bill of rights (department of justice and constitutional development, 1997) and so forth. bazaz (2016) argues that education is the backbone of a country’s progress and success, and that education can play a crucial part in realising human and children’s rights. when children are educated about their rights and responsibilities, they can make a valuable contribution to their communities and contribute positively as citizens; without equal educational opportunities, only a selected few can fulfil this role and realise their full potential. the aim of this article is to investigate grade 3 children’s experiences and perceptions of their rights and responsibilities across diverse settings. two major questions were considered regarding the problem; how do grade 3 children experience their rights and responsibilities across diverse settings? how do children’s experiences of their rights and responsibilities compare across diverse settings? 2. different relationships with rights and responsibilities the stakeholders in children’s rights and responsibilities are the child, parents, guardians, family home, school, peers, community and state. each stakeholder plays a vital role in the achievement of children knowing and experiencing their rights and being responsible. the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 1202021 39(4): 120-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) united nations convention of the rights of the child requires governments to deliver the vital fundamentals required to support parents to take care of their children and to encourage safe and positive environments. the right to safekeeping and to be safe from violence is crucial for human rights to be fulfilled (jamieson, richter & cavoukian, 2017). the state should fulfil, respect, promote and protect all the rights contained in the bill of rights (department of justice and constitutional development, 1997). 3. empowerment with rights and responsibilities through education while children’s rights have been and remain vital to secure satisfactory protection for them, it is imperative to move beyond merely safeguarding children’s well-being to empowering them to become guardians of their own lives. children’s rights influence each facet of a child’s life, and young children should be actively supported to flourish and achieve their full potential (bhardwaj, sambu & jamieson, 2017). the theoretical framework employed for the research was created through combining four theories. these combined theories are firstly, maslow’s hierarchy of needs (maslow, 1943) which exposes the rights, experiences and understanding of the children being researched and will assist adults to gain a deeper understanding of the challenges children voice regarding their life-worlds. especially children from challenging households and environments are escorted from being objects of adult work to being competent, contributing social actors while they become more and more familiar with their rights and these rights play a more pertinent role through the second theory, the sociology of childhood (corsaro, 2017). thirdly, the empowerment of the child (freire, 2018) is caused when adults listen and take to heart what children express and understand about their rights and responsibilities. furthermore, if they are given the opportunity to solve their own problems without adult intervention, the child is empowered, and this promotes responsibility in children for themselves and others (corsaro, 2017). finally the fourth theory, the arch of human rights (unicef [pfp], 2014), provides an underpinning for the duty bearer, who creates an environment of education and empowerment for children throughout childhood. these theories perform like gears working well together when there is alignment of these theories and concepts. it becomes a lens through which to view and comprehend children’s rights and responsibility experiences. 4. methodology the research was conducted qualitatively with an interpretive approach in the classroom context. we used the following methods, instruments and data sources, namely prompts and interviews, observations, visual data, photographs and document analysis. interview schedules, an audio recorder, research journal and fields notes were used as data gathering instruments. the grade 3 children were requested to present visual media in the form of drawings, collages, rights and responsibility coins and writings entitled, “if i were president…,” which the researcher prompted by saying for example, “make a drawing of your experiences of your rights and responsibilities…”. during the individual interviews, open-ended questions about their artefacts were asked for example, “please tell me about your drawing you made regarding your rights and responsibilities…”. participant selection was done based on convenience sampling. the sample to which access was granted was chosen for data gathering purposes (cohen et al., 2011:156; http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 1212021 39(4): 121-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 van aardt, venketsamy, thuketana & joubert the juxtaposition of rights and responsibilities baškarada, 2014:7). only those learners whose parents consented were allowed to participate in the research activity. ethical principles were adhered to (viviers & lombard, 2013:13; yin, 2017:230). we built a relationship of trust with the children prior to collecting the data. triangulation of the data occurred by using other sources of information for example, the learners’ drawings, interviews and document analysis. furthermore, the research ensured member checking of the data to avoid misinterpretation and misunderstanding. according to maree (2015) and creswell (2014) triangulation can produce high-quality, reputable and rigorous research therefore multiple cases, sources and designs were used to support the positions and findings to ensure the trustworthiness of this study. as soon as all the data were collected (96 in total), we began to sort and put the data in manageable folders for easy retrieval and reference. each case was augmented by adding the accompanying artefacts, consent and assent letters. the data analysis process involved three vital sections: noticing, collecting and reflecting (maree, 2015). these techniques helped to determine what information belongs together and how similar or different the participating children’s experiences were from those of their peers in other schools. codes and thematic analysis were used to analyse and interpret data that were then subjected to a comparative analysis through juxtaposition to discover similarities and differences (rule & john, 2011). data analysis was inductive and based on individual interviews and artefacts created by the participants (ingleby, 2012; cohen et al., 2011). the data were analysed by using the thematic approach. repeated words or phrases emerged from the data that constituted themes (grbich, 2013:61-62). the following step was used to analyse individual participants’ artefacts. each artefact was viewed and inspected individually while listening to the accompanying interviews. as the participants discussed and explained their thoughts regarding the experiences and perceptions of their rights and responsibilities expressed through their artefacts, the participant numberdescription was added, the code and the category, which later became the themes. the end result was a set of three maps, one for each school, bearing the codes and categories that helped to establish themes (joubert et al., 2016). the research was conducted in three schools from diverse settings. each school’s data set of the grade 3 children was compared with that of the other schools. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 1222021 39(4): 122-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) educational qualitative studies school a school b school c figure 1: comparative design in educational qualitative study table 1 below shows the codes that were used to differentiate between participants and their school. table 1: descriptive codes utilised for labelling participants and schools school a; quintile1 3h [h is the first letter of the school’s name and is used to distinguish between the two schools in quintile 3] q3h school b; quintile 3m [m is the first letter of the school’s name and used to differentiate between the two schools in quintile 3] q3m school c; quintile 5 q5 in the above table it is shown that ninety-six (n=96) grade 3 children from three different public schools in limpopo province, south africa participated in this study. schools were coded a (q3h), b (q3m) and c (q5). participants affiliated to each school were coded with p as well as a number with the correlating school’s code, for example p11q3h. codes and thematic analysis were used to analyse and interpret data that were then subjected to a comparative analysis through juxtaposition (rule & john, 2011). 5. findings and discussion the participants’ perceptions and experiences inspired the themes and sub-themes. often the participants’ understanding of the true meaning of rights and responsibilities overlapped and became muddled when they stated their understanding and perceptions of the concepts. misperceptions emerged that seemed to have developed due to the children’s limited experience and knowledge (hansen et al., 2017). children’s perceptions were juxtaposed 1 the south african department of basic education (dbe) utilises the quintile system to classify all government schools. schools fall into one of five categories: quintile 1 designating the poorest institutions (no-fee-chools or exemption from paying fees), while quintile 5 schools are the most affluent public schools. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 1232021 39(4): 123-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 van aardt, venketsamy, thuketana & joubert the juxtaposition of rights and responsibilities with the intention to place the participants’ views closely together to find the similarities and differences. two main themes emerged from the data analysis. the sub-themes were deliberated and defined in more detail under the two core thematic headings: “my life is my right…” and “my responsibility to take care …” “my life is my right…” was the first theme and mirrors the participating children’s experiences of their rights. “my responsibility to take care…” was the second theme and mirrors the participants’ consideration of their responsibilities. theme 1 “my life is my right…” theme 1.1. i have the right to be taken care of. the following extract from the artefact-coin made by p11q3h shows the written translation made by the assistant researcher (ar). the ar understood xitsonga, the language in which many of the participating children chose to respond:2 p11q3h wrote on their coin of rights and responsibilities in xitsonga: vanavafane le kuhlayisi wa [translated: “children must be cared for”]. p2q3h was asked to talk about his drawing and responded in xitsonga. the ar translated: “children must be protected by parents at home.” the following figure is a drawing by p2q3h showing the understanding this child had of the right to be safe and to be protected. figure 2: drawing by p2q3h on the right to be protected the above drawing represents protection. it is of a mother holding her baby who is safe in her arms with many hearts on the mother and the table resembling love and care. love and care are especially important for children during the early childhood developmental stage (who, 2018). it is during this stage of development that ericsson refers to as the 2 responses are provided verbatim and have not been edited. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 1242021 39(4): 124-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) “basic trust versus basic mistrust” (willock 2018:569). the table has food on it, portraying nourishment. this drawing shows a nurturing and protective environment in which the baby lives (government, 1996, section 28(1) (c)). theme 1.2. i have the right to have fun. p40q3m said in his interview about the drawing he made: “a child is playing uh with uh ball next to a bicycle.” figure 3: drawing by p40q3m on the right to play theme 1.3 i have the right to be educated. the following figure is an extract from an artefact-coin made by p23q3m showing the understanding and experience that this young participating child had of the right to be educated and learn english. figure 4: two extracts from the coin by p23q3m on the right to go to school and speak english http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 1252021 39(4): 125-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 van aardt, venketsamy, thuketana & joubert the juxtaposition of rights and responsibilities theme 1.4. i have the right to make mistakes. p39q3h explained during his interview: “children are allowed to make mistakes.” theme 1.5. i have the right to have things. the ar conducted an interview with p7q3h about their artefact collage. p7q3h spoke about their collage and said the following when being interviewed: “it’s food … it’s a muffin …” ar asked: “what right were you addressing?” p7q3h answered: “the cake’s one (the cake’s right/ the right to have cake)” theme 2. “my responsibility to take care…” theme 2.1. i have the responsibility to take care of others. p36q3m was asked to talk about her artefact-drawing and responded in xitsonga. the ar translated: “i see a boy pushing his sibling in a wheelchair.” the following figure is a drawing made by p36q3m showing the view and perception this participant had of the responsibility to take care of others with special needs by pushing his sibling’s wheelchair. figure 5: drawing by p36q3m on the responsibility to push a wheelchair for someone who is disabled theme 2.2. i have the responsibility to take care of the earth. p24q5 said about her drawing: “my drawing is about keeping the earth clean.” ar then asked: “okay, and how do we keep the earth clean?” p24q5 answered: “by recycling.” the following figure is a drawing made by p24q5 showing the perception this participant had of the responsibility to take care of the earth and recycle. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 1262021 39(4): 126-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) figure 6: drawing by p24q5 of the responsibility to keep the earth clean and to recycle the children’s participation in this research prompted them to become aware of their rights and responsibilities and they could gain and build their knowledge regarding their rights and responsibilities (viviers & lombard, 2013). the young children often mentioned that they enjoyed the artefact creation and were excited to explain what they wanted to say through the artefacts. this was cardinal as it shows that the children’s involvement in the research was a positive experience for the participants (viviers & lombard, 2013). 6. comparing cases the themes and sub-themes that emerged from the data obtained from the three diverse schools were juxtaposed. this juxta positioning provided insight into the similarities and differences in the perceptions children have of their rights and responsibilities (bray, adamson & mason, 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 1272021 39(4): 127-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 van aardt, venketsamy, thuketana & joubert the juxtaposition of rights and responsibilities 6.1 juxtaposing themes and sub-themes to facilitate comparison juxtaposition offers an alternative technique to other methodologies in qualitative research, namely, to compare the unknown to the known, according bereday (1967:171). juxtaposition combined with theory helps to discover connections in the data. it generates better qualitative analysis with a more defined and strengthened outcome than descriptions or pictures considered in isolation. the following figure portrays children’s experiences of their rights through juxtaposing them in a bar chart. it displays whether, how slightly or how strongly the different schools voiced the themes that emerged in the data. figure 7: sub-themes of young children’s experiences of their rights across school settings the following are the six most prominent children’s rights indicated: having a family; being loved; having food and water; having a home; going to school; playing safely, nicely and well; having a clean house and environment. figure 8 portrays children’s responsibilities determined through juxtaposition. it shows whether, how slightly or how strongly the different schools voiced the sub-themes. the juxtaposition of rights and responsibilities figure 7: sub-themes of young children’s experiences of their rights across school settings the following are the six most prominent children’s rights indicated: having a family; being loved; having food and water; having a home; going to school; playing safely, nicely and well; having a clean house and environment. figure 8 portrays children’s responsibilities determined through juxtaposition. it shows whether, how slightly or how strongly the different schools voiced the sub-themes. 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 children's rights school aq3h school bq3m school cq5 % http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 1282021 39(4): 128-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) figure 8: sub-themes of the experience of the responsibilities of the young children in the participating schools in all three school settings the three most prominent sub-themes of children’s responsibilities were keeping the house clean, cleaning the environment and picking up litter, as well as respecting others. it seems as if in all three school settings the responsibilities sub-themes mentioned most frequently were similar, but they were mentioned by different numbers of participants. regarding rights, similarities were evident in respect of having food and water, playing safely, nicely and well, and having a clean house and environment. however, there were marked differences in the number of participants that mentioned other sub-themes. going to school was a sub-theme frequently mentioned by participants in schools b and c, but not in school a. having a home was also a sub-theme frequently mentioned by participants in schools b and c, but not in school a. having money and grants given by government was a sub-theme frequently mentioned by participants in school c, but not in a and b. being loved was a subtheme frequently mentioned by participants in school a and b, but not in c. having a family was a sub-theme commonly mentioned by participants in school b, but not in schools a and c. making mistakes was a sub-theme commonly mentioned by participants in school a but not in schools b and c. taking the themes and sub-themes that emerged across all data sets and data analysis into consideration, it is evident that the experiences of the grade 3 participant children showed numerous similarities and differences. when using diverse places or settings, full advantage can be taken of what the diversity permits in exploring the scope or universality of a phenomenon (lobe, livingstone & haddon, 2007; yin, 2017). considering differences and similarities in the theme, “my life is my right…”, the grade 3 participant children revealed much about having a family, being loved, having food and water, having a home, going to school, playing safely, nicely and well, and living in a clean house and environment. these were the the juxtaposition of rights and responsibilities figure 8: sub-themes of the experience of the responsibilities of the young children in the participating schools in all three school settings the three most prominent sub-themes of children’s responsibilities were keeping the house clean, cleaning the environment and picking up litter, as well as respecting others. it seems as if in all three school settings the responsibilities sub-themes mentioned most frequently were similar, but they were mentioned by different numbers of participants. regarding rights, similarities were evident in respect of having food and water, playing safely, nicely and well, and having a clean house and environment. however, there were marked differences in the number of participants that mentioned other sub-themes. going to school was a sub-theme frequently mentioned by participants in schools b and c, but not in school a. having a home was also a sub-theme frequently mentioned by participants in schools b and c, 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 cleaning the environment (picking up litter) caring for plants and animals recycling keeping the house clean respecting others helping disabled people and treating others well doing as you are told by elders children's responsibilities school aq3h school bq3m school cq5 % http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 1292021 39(4): 129-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 van aardt, venketsamy, thuketana & joubert the juxtaposition of rights and responsibilities strongest, but not the only experiences mentioned. how the participants’ experiences of their rights differed or corresponded in the diverse settings is set out in table 2 below. table 2: children’s experience of their rights experience of “my life is my right…” in diverse settings 1 school a 2 school b 3 school c having nourishment similar to b and c similar to a and c similar to a and b having education different from b and c similar to c different from a similar b different from a being able to play safely similar to b and c similar to a and c similar to a and b having a home different from b and c similar to c different from a similar b different from a being loved similar to b different from c similar to a different from c different from a and b having a clean living space similar to c different from b different from a and c similar to a different from b having a family different from b and c similar to c different from a similar b different from a the rights to having nourishment and playing safely were mentioned at the same frequency by the participants across the three settings. play is a very central experience for all children and one they have a right to. the experience of a right to education, home and family was different across the settings. school a did not give much attention to these experiences, but participants in schools b and c mentioned them as a strong experience. it appears that the children in school a were not as secure in their family and home life, as these experiences were slight. furthermore, the education that the participants from school a received did not feature strongly, and therefore they had not been educated positively in this regard. the experience of being loved was strong in schools a and b and moderate in school c. this implies that the basic right to being loved is a right the participant children experienced. participants from schools a and c spoke about having a clean living environment, but the participants in school b mentioned it only in passing. participants in schools a and c seemed to be aware of the importance of having a clean environment. however, the participants in school b did not often mention having a clean living environment, showing a lower awareness. participants in school a strongly voiced a right to nourishment, safe play and love as they experienced a lack of these and realised their importance. the experience of a right to education and family was low. many of these participants were cared for by their grandmothers who usually had very limited resources. the slight mention of a right to having a family shows an overall low experience of having a family. these participants had a negative experience of education. participants from school b frequently mentioned a right to nourishment, education, safe play, home, love and family. for these participants a right to nourishment, education and love were more important than for the participants in school a. the frequent mention of their rights points to the fact that they had more positive perceptions, although the right to a clean http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 1302021 39(4): 130-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) living space did not receive much attention in this school compared to the other two settings. awareness of rights comes through education and/or experiences. the slight mention of having a clean living environment by the participants could result from both education and experience. participants in school c frequently mentioned the right to nourishment, education, playing safely, having a home, a clean living space and having a family. these rights were very important to these participants, and they mentioned their experiences of these rights more frequently than participants in school a. the right to being loved received the least attention. generally, the participants had deeper and more positive experiences of their rights in this school setting. the setting was more affluent, and education on issues such as bullying were prominent. regarding differences and similarities in the theme “my responsibility to take care…” the grade 3 participant children frequently mentioned respect for others, keeping the earth and environment clean, caring for their home and keeping their home clean. these were the strongest but not the only experiences voiced. how the experiences of participants from the diverse settings corresponded or differed is set out in table 3 below. table 3: children’s experience of their responsibilities experience of “my responsibility to take care…” across diverse settings 1 school a 2 school b 3 school c respecting others different from b and c similar to c similar to b keeping my environment clean (and not littering) similar to c different from b different from a and c similar to a different from b caring for my home and keeping it clean similar to c different from b different from a and c similar to a different from b in terms of the experience of the theme “my responsibility to take care…” vis-à-vis respecting others, keeping my environment clean and caring for my home, school a’s participants voiced their experience of responsibilities more strongly than participants from school b and c. still, learners from all the schools voiced their responsibilities in some way or another. participants from school a strongly mentioned the responsibility of respecting others and keeping the home and the environment clean by picking up litter. participants of school b’s experience of responsibilities was mentioned the least in all three settings. being responsible comes from experience and education, which in turn results from allowing a child to participate and to do things. adults working with children should allow children to participate and experience responsibilities. through such opportunity and experience children become increasingly responsible. the participants in this setting might not have been educated or given much opportunity to participate, which would explain why the perception of responsibilities of the participant children from school b were mentioned the least in all three settings. viewing the above-mentioned coupled with the findings in the three school settings, it is evident that the participants experienced their rights and responsibilities in varying degrees. the participants had individual experiences and group experiences in their setting. individually, each participant’s experience was personal, and these personal experiences were grouped http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 1312021 39(4): 131-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 van aardt, venketsamy, thuketana & joubert the juxtaposition of rights and responsibilities together to tie individual experiences together to form experiences in their setting. being part of a group impacts the individuals in the group and their experiences in such a setting, for example, through education and when there is a culture of being responsible. it influences a school setting and the children being schooled there. education either empowers and uplifts children or disempowers them and lets them and communities down. children’s rights and responsibilities are realised when adults − teachers, parents and community members − work together effectively and resourcefully (calderón, 1999; penttinen et al., 2020). this study contributes to the acknowledged domain of rights and responsibilities education by underscoring a gap identified in the literature regarding the education of both rights and responsibilities. the findings of this study are firstly emphasising that education improves children’s perceptions and experience of their rights and responsibilities. school c educated its learners through the educational visit by good news factory, which demonstrated how to combat bullying and promote good relationships in their school. this equipped the learners with the skills to create a safer and less vulnerable social environment. at school a, the participant children experienced vulnerability due to inadequate education about bullying and the absence of adults. the participants could therefore not report or gain support or assistance to resolve the issue of bullying, leaving them vulnerable and defenceless. secondly, basic needs have a substantial impact on children’s experience of their rights and responsibilities. the participant children experiencing poverty or a lack of resources (such as school b and to a greater degree, school a) had less experience and less understanding of their rights than their more affluent counterparts in school c. thirdly, the participant children understood that people have needs and rights. they knew that these rights must be acknowledged to ensure quality life. 7. recommendations and conclusion much of the data analysed proved that the participants had positive knowledge of their rights and responsibilities. however, some aspects of their rights and responsibilities were unfamiliar, untrue and unknown. similarities and differences of the children’s experiences across the three diverse school settings were further investigated by juxtaposing and comparing their rights and responsibilities. the experiences children have of their rights and responsibilities are largely impacted by rights and responsibility education. the curriculum and assessment policy (caps) document touches on manners and responsibilities for grade 1 on page 32 and rights and responsibilities for grade 3 on page 54. it is recommended that the department of education should integrate the various subtopics focusing on rights and responsibilities from the life skills curriculum and assessment policy statement into other subjects such as mathematics and languages. this would enhance and strengthen learners’ understanding of their rights and responsibilities within the school, home and community environment. the department of education, together with the community, could launch competitions across south africa to promote literary works by young children on their experiences of rights and responsibilities in their schools, communities and county. each school should develop or dedicate a wall space in their schools that promotes rights and responsibilities for children. on this wall artworks, poetry, captivating motivating words http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 1322021 39(4): 132-134 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.9 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) and phrases could be published. this idea would develop pride as well as highlighting young learners’ rights and responsibilities in their environment. within the confine of their classrooms, teachers can create occasions for children to voice their thoughts and experiences regarding their right and responsibilities. it is further recommended that teachers be provided with a toolkit that contains educational materials such as songs, poems, stories and other relevant materials to assist them in promoting rights and responsibilities of children in the classrooms. it is also recommended that the existing academic curriculum can be put in this context and can be enriched by the uncrc through working towards the goal of improving and promoting children’s rights and responsibilities education and society at large. teachers and adults working with children should have a constant rights and responsibilities awareness to effectively educate children about their right and responsibilities. effective rights and responsibility education will contribute significantly to the empowerment of each child, school and community. viewing children’s rights and responsibilities through the lens of the combined theories, starting with maslow’s hierarchy of needs, impoverished settings must first be addressed as soon as possible, only thereafter can we expect children to do higher order thinking. further, in line with the sociology of childhood, children have the potential to think deeply and we must give recognition to their voices. children should be empowered and educated regarding their rights and responsibilities as knowledge of these does not occur by itself. children can make a meaningful contribution to their school, community, country and the world if they are empowered through education regarding their rights and responsibilities. through comparing the experiences of grade 3 children of their rights and responsibilities across diverse school settings, mutuality in children’s experiences occur and gaps in children’s education of rights and responsibilities improve; basic 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https://www.unicef.org/crc/files/unicef_cre_toolkit_final_web_version170414.pdf https://www.unicef.org/crc/files/unicef_cre_toolkit_final_web_version170414.pdf https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872812459066 https://doi.org/10.1177/0020872812459066 https://doi.org/10.1080/10481885.2018.1506228 https://doi.org/10.1080/10481885.2018.1506228 https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/272603/9789241514064-eng.pdf _hlk50305286 _hlk51051473 _hlk55157198 _hlk50360779 _hlk53896675 _hlk2858660 _hlk10270056 _hlk55106810 _hlk48457783 _hlk48489109 _hlk48487697 _hlk18269477 _hlk18279613 _hlk1744851 _hlk11683077 _hlk10719555 _hlk10802927 _hlk11683094 _hlk53930620 39 lesbian, gay and bisexual citizenship: a case study as represented in a sample of south african life orientation textbooks cheryl potgieter university of kwazulu-natal finn cg reygan university of kwazulu-natal over the past two decades, sexual citizenship has emerged as a new form of citizenship coupled with increased interest in the challenges to citizenship and social justice faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (lgbti) people and, in particular, by sexual minority youth within education systems. in south africa, the rights of lgbti people have been institutionalised in legislation, and research has begun to consider how educators may facilitate a more inclusive school environment for lgbti youth. given the focus of the department of education on social justice, the present study examines how selected life orientation (lo) textbooks for grades 7 to 12 in south african schools represent and construct lgbti identities. the study generally finds inconsistency in the representation of these identities. gay male identities are represented in some instances, lesbian and bisexual identities rarely so, and transgender and intersex identities not at all. two of the four series examined are almost entirely silent about lgbti identities. this invisibility negates the different ‘ways of knowing’ of lgbti learners; tends not to facilitate students in critiquing the discrimination, prejudice and social injustices faced by many lgbti people, and lessens the importance of social justice and citizenship education in this field in south africa. keywords: lgbti youth, schools, south africa, sexual citizenship, sexual minorities introduction the south african constitution has been lauded for recognising the rights of persons to full citizenship irrespective of sexual orientation. in addition, given the fact that civil unions of same-sex persons are recognised in south african law, it could be argued that this is recognition of full citizenship irrespective of sexual orientation. however, given the number of violent crimes against gay and lesbian persons, it is clear that they are not recognised by fellow citizens as having the right to full citizenship. in this instance, we digress and explain briefly how we understand, define and engage with the notion of citizenship. we recognise, as many others do, that notions of citizenship are contested, but recognise that citizenship may “refer to membership of communities, relationships between members of those communities but also to relationships between individuals, communities and nations” (keet & carolissen, 2012: 147). in keeping with lister (1997: 41), we conceptualise citizenship as a status that conveys rights and a practice that encompasses the dual mandate of responsibilities and political involvement. we recognise that “tensions have served to perpetuate women’s exile as a group from full citizenship” (lister, 1997:90) and make the point that sexual minorities — lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender and intersex persons, continue to be exiled as a group, even though legal instruments are in place to provide them with full citizenship rights. our research focuses on issues related to full citizenship for sexual minorities within the high school south african education system. we use the terms ‘sexual minorities’ and understand minority not in terms of numbers, but in terms of access to rights or full citizenship. this term is commonly used in the literature. we mostly refer to lesbian, gay and bisexual identities, but note that sexual minorities include transgender and intersex identities. we work from the premise that citizenship has to be inclusive (lister, 2006) and 40 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 that excluding or rendering invisible sexual minorities within the educational system or any other societal space amounts to social injustice. soudien (2012:1) reminds us that the fundamental purpose of education “is to prepare people for full citizenship”. he also points out that a primary goal of education is the ability of people to get to know each other and to become cognisant of both differences and similarities (soudien 2012). our conception for this article was thus an outflow of us wondering how and if high school scholars were being educated to ‘know’ persons who define themselves as gay or lesbian and possibly bisexual, transgender and intersex. we were interested to determine whether high school education is preparing all within the system to recognise sexual minorities as having full citizenship. we were aware that the subject lo was most likely the subject area where learners would engage with the issue. francis (2012) points out that, in south africa, issues related to homosexuality and bisexuality fit into the wider outcomes of the lo curriculum and are in keeping with the post-1994 shift to outcomesbased education (obe). francis (2012) correctly points out that, in the revised national curriculum statements lo (department of education, 2002) and departmental lo teacher guidelines (department of education, 2006), there is a silence on issues which could be labelled ‘sexual diversity’. according to official documents of the south african education department, lo is: … aimed at developing and engaging learners in personal, psychological, neuro-cognitive, motor, physical, moral, spiritual, cultural and socio-economic areas, so that they can achieve their full potential in the new democracy of south africa (department of education, 2002; 2003:9). the learning area of life skills orientation is intended to promote social justice, human rights and inclusiveness as well as a healthy environment (department of education, 2003:5). the revised national curriculum statement (2002) gives the following purpose for teaching lo in grades r to 9: the life orientation learning area aims to empower learners to use their talents to achieve their full physical, intellectual, personal, emotional and social potential … (department of education, 2002: 4) given that one of the goals of the lo curriculum is to promote social justice, human rights and inclusiveness, this article aims to determine whether the lo curriculum of south african secondary schools promotes these in terms of sexual minorities. we are of the opinion that the schooling system and, in particular, teachers and curriculum content, have a crucial contribution in nurturing citizens who are committed to social justice. we believe that the curriculum should assist learners to be aware of discrimination and injustices towards all groups of citizens and that it should contribute to an inclusive notion of citizenship which includes groups who have, to a large extent, been ignored by citizenship studies (lister, 2006). seminal work by francis (2012) and research by, among others, helleve, flisher, onya, mukoma and klepp (2009), deacon, morrell and prinsloo (1999) as well as francis and msibi (2011) point to the general conservatism in teaching and training on sexual diversity. for example, teachers often change the syllabus to avoid challenging sections such as sexuality education, do not challenge existing social norms, view homosexuality as immoral or deviant and, due to religious and cultural beliefs, are reluctant to engage with the topic in the classroom. francis and msibi (2011) also point to slow attitudinal shifts among south african in-service teachers who participated in training on heterosexism and education. francis and msibi (2011) suggest that teachers often reproduce heterosexism in the classroom despite the post-apartheid rhetoric of tolerance and inclusivity. in a study of teachers’ experiences in 11 durban schools, francis (2012) found that sexual diversity issues were mostly ignored or avoided by teachers and that when the topic of homosexuality was introduced in the classroom it was framed in terms of ‘compulsory heterosexuality’. citizenship of lesbian, gay and bisexual youth in the schooling system working within the american context, russell (2002:260) points out that schools (which we, in this instance, interpret as curriculum) have not been vocal about the potential obstacles which sexual minority youth face. the consequence of this silence is that these youth do not have the space or the opportunity to recognise their marginalised status and the repercussions of this for their rights and responsibilities 41potgieter & reygan — lesbian, gay and bisexual citizenship as citizens. essentially, these youth are not prepared for a society that does not always accord sexual minorities full citizenship. the human rights watch (2001) report hatred in the hallways: violence and discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youths in us schools is overwhelming evidence of this denial of sexual minority citizenship and its consequences. although school systems have been fairly silent on issues regarding lesbian, gay and other groups of youth who would be classified as sexual minorities, a growing number of researchers have investigated the experiences and representation of sexual minority youth within these systems. in a study entitled “the ideology of the ‘fag’: the school experiences of gay students”, smith (1998), showed clearly that anti-gay attitudes and thus discrimination are treated as regular everyday behaviour and thus normalised. in an article entitled “how schools play smear the queer”, loutzenheizer (1996), captures how schools entrench homophobia. researchers such as sumara and davis (1999) and kumashiro (2002) have clearly outlined how heteronormative curricula normalise heterosexuality and ‘otherise’ homosexuality. they have strongly argued that these heterosexist classroom discourses be challenged. in a study exploring the school experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth in the republic of ireland, reygan (2009) found that these learners experience a homophobic climate and that they are victims of verbal, physical and emotional abuse. there is, however, limited research both internationally and locally which engages with how sexual minorities are constructed and presented in actual curriculum. however, researchers recognise this invisibility in relation to curriculum. macintosh (2007:35) states: assumptions of student and teacher identities as heterosexual, examples expressed through heterosexual narrative, and curricula seeped in gender normativity are all characteristic of the ways in which non-normative sexualities are ‘inadvertently’ excluded form curricular agendas and various social justice reforms. in south africa, it is positive that researchers have recently begun to investigate the experiences of gay and lesbian youth within the schooling system. regarding south african youth, butler, alpaslan, strumpher and astbury (2003) as well as nel and judge (2011) have investigated the experiences of gay and lesbian youth and concluded that they are exposed to an environment which does not accord them the status of full citizens. human rights watch and the international gay and lesbian human rights commission (2003) have also indicated the consequences of state-sponsored homophobia for all south africans, including the youth of school-going age. other south african research, such as that by nel and judge (2008) and wells and polders (2005), indicates that the commitment that persons of all sexual orientations be treated equally has not materialised in relation to the south african lgbti community. another focus of study which also makes a positive contribution is research which explores the content of teaching training courses in higher education. francis and msibi (2011), richardson (2004), as well as johnson and potgieter (2012) have all investigated what is included in the content of training courses in relation to challenging heteronormative discourses. it is not surprising that, in south africa and internationally, sexual minority youth within the schooling system have been rendered invisible or experienced discrimination, and that sexual citizenship or full citizenship has often been presented in terms of heterosexual coupledom. richardson (2001:163) states: ... the construction of the legitimate citizen is related to the institutionalisation of heteronormative forms of social and cultural life. this is evidenced in the limits to full citizenship experienced by lesbian and gay men. in terms specifically of curricula, macintosh (2007:35) states: assumptions of student and teacher identities as heterosexual, examples expressed through heterosexual narrative, and curricula seeped in gender normativity are all characteristic of the ways in which non-normative sexualities are ‘inadvertently’ excluded from curricular agendas and various social justice reforms citizenship experienced by lesbians and gay men … new models of citizenship, including feminist citizenship (lister, 1997) and sexual citizenship (evans, 1993; plummer, 1995; russell, 2002), have emerged and been recognised for approximately two decades. 42 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 given that researchers have convincingly argued that citizenship is sexualised (richardson, 2000, 2001, 2004; reddy, 2010), the logical question is: why is this commitment to full citizenship not reflected in societal attitudes or in the schooling system? this disjuncture between policy and practice is highlighted and engaged with by francis and msibi (2011) who argue that, despite the equality clause [9(3)] of the south african constitution which includes sexual orientation and a discourse of tolerance and inclusion, institutions in south africa perpetuate heterosexism including in the educational sphere. aim this study explores if and how sexual and gender minorities are presented and engaged with in the lo learners’ textbooks used in grades 7 to 12 in south african state schools. just as the post-apartheid south african schooling system is foregrounded within a paradigm of social justice and non-discrimination assurances, the lo curriculum has a specific commitment to social justice. in this regard, we explored whether the curriculum encouraged full citizenship for sexual and gender minorities. method in order to examine the representation of lgbti identities in lo textbooks in grades 7 to 12, we established and confirmed the list of textbooks used by state schools for teaching lo. interestingly, the list included textbooks from a number of publishers. a number of teachers and/or schools in the kwazulu-natal province were contacted in order to find out which of the books are most commonly used in grades 7 to 12. individual teachers who teach lo were also contacted in other provinces. respondents indicated that they used a number of different textbooks, but in kwazulu-natal we confirmed that the most popular texts were the oxford successful life orientation series and the shuter life orientation series. to determine which series of lo textbooks were most often sold to learners and teachers, we approached adams bookstores in durban, one of the main providers of schoolbooks in kwazulu-natal. the grade 7 to 12 lo textbooks most widely bought are the oxford successful life orientation series by oxford university press; the shuters life orientation series by shuter and shooter; the spot on life orientation series by heinemann, and the life orientation today series by maskew miller longman. informed by these enquiries, we decided to focus our analysis on the four lo series listed above. our analysis of these texts was guided by the following questions: • are people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or intersex represented visually in the texts or in the narrative? • are they represented or engaged with in a way that is non-discriminatory? • are they represented in a way that entrenches/challenges stereotypes in relation to sexual minorities? • how are issues of race and gender represented and engaged with in terms of sexual minorities? bearing the above questions in mind, we read and re-read the textbooks. our initial overall finding was that, in grades 7 to 12, the south africa bill of rights was often cited and sexual orientation would be concurrently mentioned. however, issues relating to gays, lesbians, bisexuals or any other sexual or gender minority were hardly dealt with. based on this initial finding, we decided to undertake a detailed analysis of the lo texts used in grade 7 classes. results one of our overall findings was that the term ‘lesbian’ is never used, although there are images of samesex couples in the texts. potgieter (1997) mentions that lesbian relationships were never criminalised in south africa, the possible reasons being that women were not important or that it was impossible to recognise that women would not be interested in men. not using the term ‘lesbian’ is essentially rendering women in same-sex relationships invisible within discourse. acknowledging ‘lesbian’ would be disputing an aspect of patriarchy and essentially negating the role of men. the fact that the term is not used, but that 43potgieter & reygan — lesbian, gay and bisexual citizenship there are pictures of women in same-sex relationships is possibly a reflection of the denial of an identity, but a tentative acceptance of behaviour. the terms ‘homosexuality’ and ‘homosexual’ were often used and the term ‘bisexuality’ was used once in shuter and shooter (p. 63). the fact that the texts are silent regarding transgender and intersex identities is not surprising, given that often the struggle relating to sexual orientation rights has been argued within a discourse of rights for gays and lesbians. below are our findings based on the analyses of the four series of lo textbooks, with those which were most inclusive of lgbti identities presented first and those which were least inclusive texts presented last. shuters life orientation textbook (shuter and shooter) chapter 3 of the grade 7 learner’s textbook in this series includes a section on sexuality, in general, and on homosexuality and bisexuality, in particular (see figure 1). it reflects some of the anti-oppressive and anti-homophobic pedagogical practices referred to by francis and msibi (2011). given the photograph of a (white) same-sex female couple, the text appears at first sight to be inclusive of both gay and lesbian identities, in particular. although the term ‘lesbian’ is not used, through visual representation the text pulls aside the ‘veil of universalism’ (lister, 1997:72) and uncovers the (lesbian) female non-citizen. closer inspection indicates that the terms ‘homosexual’, ‘gay’, ‘bisexual’ and ‘sexual preference’ are used throughout. the text on pages 62-63, entitled ‘you and your sexuality’, begins with “your sexuality includes how you feel about sex, your feelings about being a girl or a boy, your sexual preferences, and your sexual desires and fantasies”. it is thus broadly inclusive in its use of the term ‘sexual preferences’ in a manner that anticipates the ‘gay-friendly’ stance in the remainder of the text. there are pencil drawings of six youths with attendant speech bubbles and the white girl’s speech bubble reads “i have sex with other girls” (see figure 1). the drawing on the bottom left depicts a potentially androgynous youth whose speech bubble reads “i choose to masturbate rather than have sex”. in this sense, the text may be advocating abstinence, but this is uncertain. the text in the lower left corner provides a definition of ‘sexual preference: who you are sexually attracted to’. according to richardson (2000), citizenship is always sexualised and this shuter and shooter definition of sexual preference challenges heteronormativity by including lgb(ti) learners and thus helps to promote an inclusive and non-oppressive pedagogical space. in addition, in activity 9 below the line drawings, learners are also asked to engage in pair work as far as the issue of sexuality is concerned. in particular, question b asks, “which teen do you identify with most?”, thereby giving lgb(ti) learners the opportunity to discuss their sexualities and/or gender identities. the text indicates its inclusiveness on page 63 where the photograph of the female, same-sex couple is presented and where the text defines sexuality as including heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality. the text offers the term ‘gay’ as an alternative to ‘homosexual’, an apparent recognition that ‘homosexual’ has negative, clinical connotations for many gay people. in contrast with the other texts examined, the shuter and shooter text affirms bisexuality which is often marginalised or ignored in favour of gay and lesbian identities in the literature and in numerous educational material. in addition to presenting visual and textual representations of lgb identities, the text reinforces its inclusive stance when it states “our constitution forbids discrimination against people because of their sexual preference”. the use of ‘our’ underlines the fact that lgb people are part of south african society and challenges the prevalent school-based homophobia recorded in the south african and international literature (human rights watch, 2001, 2003). it also moves in the direction of a form of education that is strongly committed to social justice. in the section on ‘community norms and values’, the text informs learners that opinions regarding lgb sexualities are relative and differ from culture to culture, but has already taken a clear stance by citing the constitutional protections afforded sexual orientation. this contrasts with other texts, such as the heinemann text described below, which are more ambivalent in their approach to sexual orientation rights. it also subtly engages with the topic of sexual citizenship and encourages students to question the conflation of citizenship with heterosexuality. 44 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 figure 1: homosexuality and bisexuality in shuters life orientation overall, the shuter and shooter text is notable for its clear visual representations of lgb(ti) identities and for its informed, nuanced and confident treatment of lgb(ti) life. the text provides learners with a succinct introduction to lgb life and asks them to question their opinions. if presented by teachers as it appears in the text, this portrayal of lgb identities could provide young learners with a sense of safety and foster their inclusion in the classroom. the text is also presented in a way that encourages heterosexual learners to accept sexual minorities and to treat them with respect. oxford successful life orientation textbook (oxford university press) unit 4 of the successful life orientation grade 7 textbook by oxford university press is entitled ‘feelings, norms and values, and social pressures associated with sexuality’ (pp. 16-19). the text presents gay identities in a predominantly heteronormative framework similar to that of curricula which normalise heterosexuality and ‘otherise’ homosexuality. the unit begins promisingly by defining sexuality as “whether we are attracted to people of the opposite or the same sex”. however, group activity 11 (p. 16) soon reverts to heteronormativity, asking learners to “brainstorm ideas about the things that you think: a. attract the opposite sex; b. that the opposite sex does not like about your sex”. the same activity also asks learners “what qualities to you think girls and boys really look for in each other?”. another exercise in the text is entitled ‘factors influencing sexuality’; none of these directly include lgbti learners. nevertheless, the text becomes significantly more inclusive in the section entitled ‘being gay’ (see figure 2 below). this text uses terminology in relation to ‘homosexuality’ competently and presents the commonly used term ‘straight’ instead of the more clinical ‘heterosexual’ and the term ‘gay’ instead of ‘homosexual’. it contributes to fostering sexual equality for minorities and, in so doing, helps reconceptualise the ‘good citizen’ historically understood by default as heterosexual. the text deals sensitively with the common experience of alienation and rejection felt by many young lgbti people and, in the box at the end of page 18, presents the ‘coming out’ story of steve, a young gay man: 45potgieter & reygan — lesbian, gay and bisexual citizenship it was very hard to tell my parents. when i told my mother, she went crazy. my dad supported me. he said i did not have to feel ashamed that i was gay. in my religion there are some gay priests, so i knew the church would still accept me. figure 2: representations of gay and lesbian identities in oxford successful life orientation this vignette reflects the experiences of many young people when ‘coming out’, although the text does not introduce this key lgbti term. the vignette concludes by challenging homophobia and fostering inclusivity: “we all have to accept the way we are and parents must love and accept their children”. the lg(bti) affirming tone of this text continues on the next page with a well-structured group exercise (group activity 14: ‘discuss feelings, attitudes and values about being gay’) that asks: in your group, discuss: 1. your own feelings about gay people 2. your community’s attitudes and values regarding gay people 3. whether gay people are accepted in society (give a reason for your answer). in this instance, learners are asked to examine their attitudes towards gay people and reflect on homophobia in their communities and in society at large. the oxford text also presents an image of same-sex love (in the top right-hand corner of page 19) where a pencil drawing depicts a young, smiling, black, female couple (overshadowed in a somewhat unusual manner by a presumably male, same-sex couple). this endorses a citizenship of the black gay male in contrast with the historical white, male heterosexual citizen. this section of the text concludes with a group activity in which learners are asked to discuss the importance of learning about sexuality and includes a speech bubble that promotes tolerance of diverse sexual orientations. 46 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 while the oxford university press text provides an affirming and informed perspective on lgb(ti) life in the section entitled ‘being gay’, it is also heteronormative in its conflation of sexuality with heterosexuality. this is reflective of the role of the school environment in obstructing the development of full citizenship among sexual minority learners. there is also an absence of representations of lgbti life in the textbook as a whole, a weakness in all four of the texts analysed. when lgb(ti) life is presented in these texts, it tends to be isolated and fails to inform the surrounding section, chapters or the book as a whole. in addition, it is obvious that gay men are given much more visibility than women of any sexual minority group. life orientation today textbook (maskew miller and longman) heteronormativity characterises school curricula internationally, and lgbti youth face disruption to schooling as a result of discrimination (reygan, 2009). the negative psychological dividend of exposure to this violence, as argued by authors such as grossman, haney, edwards, alessi, ardon and howell (2009), has social justice implications in terms of creating barriers to the development of full citizenship among sexual minority youth. the maskew miller longman life orientation today grade 7 textbook does little to ameliorate this situation. for example, in chapter 9 ‘dealing with difficult situations’, sexuality is introduced in a chapter on hiv and tuberculosis: hiv/aids is a big issue in our country because it is a disease that affects millions of peoples’ lives and is very frightening to most people. many people are worried about being infected with hiv. a definition given in the margin reads ‘infected: to cause illness’. given the introduction of homosexuality at this point, the text thus presents the topic in the context of pathology, disease, illness, fear and death. a quiz in activity 1: hiv/aids (p. 99) includes the question “is it mostly homosexual people and drug users who get hiv?”. the text in the margin beside this question reads ‘homosexual: someone who is sexually attracted to a person of the same sex’. in this instance, the text disturbingly conflates homosexuality and hiv/aids in a manner reminiscent of the early view of hiv/aids as a ‘gay plague’. this minimal inclusion of homosexuality in a chapter focused on tb, aids and ill health is also reminiscent of the historical pathologising of homosexuality by the state, institutions and mental health disciplines, including psychology and psychiatry. furthermore, instead of the more commonly used and affirming term ‘gay’ (for men), the text uses the more clinical term ‘homosexual’. the definition of ‘homosexual’ does little to include real-life gay or lesbian experience, identity and culture, and fails to mention bisexual, transgender and intersex identities. the text does little to foster discussion among learners about diverse sexualities and, in a subsequent section of chapter 3 entitled ‘thinking about sexuality’ (an appropriate place to introduce discussion of lgbti identities), the text is silent on non-heterosexual sexuality. homosexuality appears again in the maskew miller longman series of lo textbooks in grade 10 (p. 74), where the text presents different types of discrimination including ‘sexual orientation discrimination’ and states: “for example homophobia, which is prejudice against people who have same sex relationship”. the text then provides the following example of homophobia: “gay men are jailed just because they are gay, for example in malawi and uganda”. in this instance, the text foregrounds gay identities and homophobia, not only using the term ‘homophobia’ but providing real-world and current examples of anti-gay discrimination in africa. however, the potential problem with the latter example is that the ‘homophobe’ is usually black. this leads to stigmatisation and the assumption that the white community is not homophobic. overall, the maskew miller longman texts generally present a pathologised, clinical and abstract figure of the ‘homosexual’ and do little to challenge stereotypes and discrimination against lgbti people. they appear oblivious to the emergence of new models of sexual and intimate citizenship and risk aggravating the challenges faced by lgbti learners in the south african school system (see butler et al., 2003; wells & polders, 2005). 47potgieter & reygan — lesbian, gay and bisexual citizenship spot on life orientation textbook (heinemann) the spot on life orientation grade 7 textbook by heinemann publishers hardly mentions sexual minority identities. in unit 8 ‘what to expect’ (in chapter 3 on personal health, p. 38), the text states that “some teenagers are not even interested in the opposite sex”, but the reference, in this instance, is not to lgb identities, but to activities such as ‘sport, music or achieving good marks’. in a subsequent activity, learners are asked to ‘define the meaning of the word “sexuality”’. this task is followed immediately by the question “have your feelings towards the opposite sex changed since grade 1?”. the summary and assessment section on page 42 includes the statement: “in this module ... you learnt about the importance of understanding sexuality and the changes that take place during puberty ... you learnt how to deal with attractions ...”. this is not the case for learners whose lgbti identities remain invisible in the text. this promotion of heterosexuality and gender normativity potentially denies young lgbti learners agency and hope, negates their own ‘ways of knowing’, and reflects the invisibility of these minority learners internationally. the only other place where gay identities are mentioned is in chapter 5, in an activity entitled ‘spot the prejudice’ (p. 65), where a list of statements that learners are asked to discuss includes the following: “gay men are more likely to abuse children”. in a text devoid of positive treatment of sexual minority identities, the introduction of this homophobic statement is problematic, given the historical and incorrect conflation of paedophilia and homosexuality. it normalises heterosexuality, pathologises the ‘other’, excludes lgbti learners from the school curriculum, and misses an opportunity to educate all learners to issues of diverse sexual orientations. homosexuality appears again in the heinemann series of lo textbooks in grade 11 (p. 50), where various social issues are debated. there is a paragraph on same-sex marriage with opinions for and against. the view of the ‘opponents’ pivots on the ‘tradition of man-woman union’ and the ‘proponents’ on ‘individual equality ... as an extension of the rights of all south african citizens’. given that same-sex unions are legal in south africa as well as the legislative and constitutional protection of sexual orientation rights, debating this ‘issue’ is problematic. in grade 11 (p. 86), a text box on the side of the page provides a perfunctory definition of homosexuality: “homosexuality: sexual attraction to people of the same sex”. the central text on the page explores issues of intimacy and masculinity and posits that a number of factors interfere with the expression of intimacy by (presumably heterosexual) men, including ‘stereotypes about ‘real men and fear of homosexuality’. in this instance, homosexuality is understood solely in relation to normative, heterosexual masculinity and as an obstacle to the development of full masculinity and, therefore, full citizenship. overall, the heinemann lo texts in grades 7 and 11 normalise heterosexuality and ‘otherise’ homosexuality. in so doing, they render lgbti youth invisible and deny these youth voice and recognition. the heinemann texts also appear oblivious to the importance of social justice and anti-oppressive education in this sphere. rather than helping to develop full citizenship among sexual minority learners, the texts would appear to create obstacles to citizenship development. they do little to facilitate teaching and learning that encourage all learners to critique injustice, particularly as this relates to gender, sexual minorities, social justice and citizenship. conclusion russell (2002) points out that there is a tendency in the literature to focus on the marginalisation and exclusion of sexual minority youth in the school system. in the texts analysed in this article, lesbianism is not mentioned (though female couples are visually portrayed) and the term ‘gay’ (when used) is generally understood to refer to gay male identity. bisexuality is mentioned once in one of the texts, and transgender and intersex identities are absent. nevertheless, we found some textual and visual representations of lgb(ti) life that have the potential to foster equality and inclusion in the classroom. the shuter and shooter and the oxford texts re-imagine pedagogical practices in terms of sexual minorities and have the potential to open up new spaces allowing for the development of fully engaged sexual citizenship among lgb(ti) learners. however, while our study has not examined the use of these texts in the classroom, it would appear that there is a disjuncture between policy and practice. many of the texts 48 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 analysed perpetuate the invisibility of lgbti learners in the classroom by denying these learners visual or textual representation of their lgbti identities and by stifling any related discussion in the classroom. in addition, the fact that there is a loud silence concerning lgbti identities in any grade other than grade 7 lessens the possibility of full citizenship development among these learners. the heineman and maskew miller longman texts ignore lgbti youth’s particular forms of knowledge and ‘ways of knowing’, which has implications in terms of access to full citizenship. if these learners and their heterosexual peers are not taught about the constitutional and legislative protection of lgbti people, it is less likely that future generations will insist on the implementation of these rights. if richardson (2004) and seidman (2002) are correct, full citizenship for sexual minorities needs to go beyond a mere tokenism and challenge heterosexism. the literature indicates that an affirming representation and construction of lgbti identities in school systems facilitates the development of a safe school environment for lgbti youth (macintosh, 2007; russell, 2002). however, in the texts analysed in this article, it appears that post-apartheid goals are not being realised in terms of lgbti inclusion. while some of the texts attempt to represent and construct lgbti identities in an affirming way, they generally run the risk on being tokenistic, as happens with lgbti identities in other arenas such as religion in south africa (potgieter & reygan, 2011). our study begins to rectify the knowledge-practice gap identified by francis (2012) by challenging lgbti invisibility in curriculum design and in school textbooks. richardson (2009) also points out that there are impediments to this type of research, as there currently exist no nationwide networks for educators working to combat heterosexism and homophobia. however, a recent colloquium organised by the gay and lesbian archives in memory (gala) in johannesburg indicates that researchers, the national department of education and training and the various teachers unions recognise the importance of including sexual diversity issues in teacher training as well as in the curriculum. francis (2012) found four main reasons why teachers avoid teaching about sexual diversity, including the absence of sexual diversity as an lo policy task; a general lack of uniformity in teacher training in this area; the need for teachers to be more self-reflexive and to understand their own backgrounds, beliefs and prejudices, and concerns about lack of support from school management when teaching about sexual diversity. it is hoped that our study will be used as a basis from which to influence both the didactic materials developed for teaching about sexual diversity and the development of teacher training modules on sexual diversity. our findings highlight the importance of teaching sexual diversity in classrooms, because researchers such as sears (1991) and telljohann, price, poureslami and easton (1995) indicate that the better educated educators are in terms of homosexuality, the more positive their attitudes and, crucially, the more likely they are to feel competent and comfortable teaching about homosexuality. kowen and davis (2006) argue that lgb learners receive little or no education about their sexual identities in south africa. our findings point to the general invisibility of lgbti identities in lo textbooks and thereby emphasise the real and pressing need for a more inclusive and affirming representation of lgbti identities in curriculum design and pedagogy. while social justice education often focuses on discrimination and marginalisation, it also needs to engage with imaginative possibilities in terms of social justice and inclusion. furthermore, one of the core concerns of social justice education is to facilitate students in learning to critique social injustices in the world. by contrast, the texts analysed in this article, with some exceptions, tend not to facilitate students in critiquing the discrimination, prejudice and social injustices faced by many lgbti people. while some of the texts present meaningful representations and constructions of lgb(ti) identities, lgbti invisibility leads others to lessen the importance of social justice and citizenship education in this area. this finding may be of interest to educators and policy makers in education who are focused on facilitating action for change among learners. the representation of sexual minorities in the textbooks analysed in this article does not realise the commitment and spirit of the constitution. therefore, we return to an earlier question: why the disjuncture? surely, those stakeholders responsible for textbook content and the quality assurers are aware of this commitment? arguments put forward on ‘knowing’ and contextualised to issues in south africa 49potgieter & reygan — lesbian, gay and bisexual citizenship (soudien, 2012) provide a way to make sense of this situation. in essence, there are three ways of knowing: the first is an awareness of an issue, but overall ignorance and naivety; the second is a concerted effort to not tell the truth, and the third form of knowing is a ‘switching off’ or ‘blocking out’. this last could be categorised as ‘not wanting to know’ and thus ‘not wanting to act’. our case study of lo texts is possibly a combination of both ignorance and switching off because, while there is a movement towards lgbti acknowledgement, there is a subsequent ‘light switched off experience’ throughout the texts. soudien’s (2012) article, entitled 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new york: oxford university press. 78 difficult conversations: lessons learnt from a diversity programme for pre-service teachers adré le roux university of the free state percy mdunge university of the free state premised on the notion that any educational programme for pre-service teachers pursues excellence in both academics and social justice, teacher educators must capacitate student teachers to work in areas of social justice. pre-service teachers must subsequently be assisted to become professionally qualified teachers who are prepared to move outside their contingent practices and assumptions to recognise and counteract oppressive practices, especially their own. however, to get pre-service teachers to challenge their own assumptions, to question what they know and to seek new understandings involves entering a field that contains complex, incongruous and even conflicting perspectives. in this reflective article we draw on our reflective notes, our observation and student journals to reflect on the lessons we have learnt from a diversity programme offered to final-year pre-service teachers. this article not only foregrounds how teaching for social justice is partial, but also makes room for considering some implications for teacher education. keywords: pre-service teachers, diversity programme, difficult conversations, social justice education, anti-oppressive education, oppression, teacher education introduction framed within the context of a progressive constitution (1996), social justice is regarded as a worthy national goal to bring about a south african society in which individuals are able to develop their full capacity and to interact democratically with others. the centrality of social justice in theorising about education and schooling is underscored by the department of education’s commitment to [n]ew education and training policies to address the legacies of under-development and inequitable development and provide learning opportunities for all [that] will be based principally on the constitutional guarantees of equal educational rights for all persons and non-discrimination (department of education, 1995: chapter 3, section 16). south african teachers are subsequently called upon to focus on classroom pedagogies and practices that seek to deal with and combat different forms of oppression such as racism, sexism and heterosexism (bell, 2007; francis & hemson, 2007). however, a recent report on south african education indicates that the system not only “generally produces outcomes that reinforce current patterns of poverty and privilege”, but there also seems to be little evidence of education challenging and transforming the apartheid socialera structure (van der berg, burger c, burger r, de vos, du rand, gustafsson, moses, shepherd, spaull, taylor, van broekhuizen & von fintel 2011:3). whilst it can be assumed that various forms of oppression still play out in south african classrooms, the role of teacher education institutions in capacitating preservice teachers to work in areas of social justice is foregrounded. as national policy requires all teachers to be socially just teachers, teacher education institutions must assist pre-service teachers to conceptualise and understand the dynamics of oppression, and to think and articulate how they will counteract oppression (kumashiro, 2002). the onus on teacher education to perceive schooling as a social project aimed at bringing about a more just society foregrounds the aim of this article, in which we, as two teacher educators, reflect on the lessons we have learnt from a diversity 79le roux & mdunge — difficult conversations programme introduced to final year b.ed. foundation phase pre-service teachers. it is our contention that a reflection on our missteps and triumphs of our teaching for social justice will strengthen our ongoing attempt to create a space for pre-service teachers to develop an awareness of oppression, to question their own motives and assumptions, and to trouble the many approaches to challenge oppression in and beyond their future classrooms. in addition to the lessons we have learnt from our experience with the programme, we also indicate what should be considered when we think about teacher education. the programme background and rationale as with other institutions of higher education in south africa, the university of the free state was also compelled to reconsider its undergraduate programmes within the context of the newly enacted national policy on the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications (department of higher education and training, 2011). opting for an in-depth reconsideration of its programmes, the ufs faculty of education worked with the assumption that pre-service teachers must ultimately engage in schooling as both an academic and a social project (nieto & bode, 2008:10; kumashiro, 2002:13). the re-curriculation process was the opportune time to consider a module based on the premise that for pre-service teachers to enter the individual maturity process of professional identity construction, they first need to understand and challenge their own multiple identities (bell & griffin, 2007). it is assumed that, by starting to challenge their own multiple identities, pre-service teachers will gradually become professionally qualified teachers who are prepared to move outside their contingent practices and assumptions to recognise and counteract oppressive practices, especially their own (kumashiro, 2002:1). we realised that the cohort of current students have had limited opportunity to engage with their own multiple identities and to reflect on how their own stereotypical beliefs can contribute to the marginalisation of learners. a request to work on issues of diversity with the final-year pre-service teachers resulted in a 7-week programme (1 period of 50 minutes per week) for the foundation phase students. this article is based on our reflection of this particular programme, and insights gained will be used to inform the presentation of the same programme for intermediate phase and further education and training phase students. in addition to creating the space for students to engage in issues of diversity, the programme also afforded us the opportunity to pilot some of the ideas conceptualised for inclusion in our new undergraduate teacher education programme. themes and conceptual lenses during the conceptualisation of the programme and having to decide what frameworks to introduce, we drew on adams, bell and griffin’s (2007) editorial work, teaching for diversity and social justice. although we gained valuable ideas from this source, it was important to frame our programme within the south african context. we wanted our students not to work with issues related to sexism, heterosexism and racism divorced from their own diverse contexts and real-life experiences; rather, we wanted them to start to question their own assumptions about what they regard as ‘normal’ and how their sense of ‘normalcy’ can be complicit with the marginalisation of those learners who are regarded as ‘other’ than the norm. the decision to work with sexism, heterosexism and racism was due to time constraints and is not meant to centralise these issues within the broader context of various forms of oppression. we also acknowledge that marginalisation involves, inter alia, learners from underor unemployed families, learners with disabilities and learners with non-christian religious backgrounds. in addition to working with three themes only, we also realised that we had little time and space to endlessly engage in students learning about and inventing strategies to counter oppression across the foundation phase grade levels and the content areas in which they will be required to work. we had to be realistic and settled on two broad programme outcomes, namely to get the students to start to engage with their own multiple identities and to develop an awareness of oppression and the myriad ways in which it can play out in classrooms. we 80 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 wanted to create the space for our pre-service teachers to scrutinise their own stance to and assumptions about diversity issues (kumashiro & ngo, 2007:x). in order for students to engage with and make sense of the three themes, especially in terms of where their own perceptions and prejudices come from, harro’s cycle of socialisation (harro, 2010) was introduced as a conceptual framework. since the programme was structured in terms of several conceptual organisers and for the students to become familiar with this basic conceptual vocabulary, we drew on hardiman and jackson’s (2007:35-48) theory of oppression. we wanted our students to become conversant with concepts such as agents, targets, privilege, disadvantage, internalised domination, internalised subordination and various forms of horizontal and vertical oppression. assumptions and identities although we agree with kumashiro and ngo (2007) that any approach and practice to work with issues of diversity is partial as it has both strengths and weaknesses, we premised the programme on the assumption that any programme makes some learning and change possible. hence, the position from which we approached our engagement with issues of diversity in our conversations with our students is also the standpoint from which we write this article to reflect on the partiality of our programme; thus to reflect on the lessons we learnt from entering a field that contains complex and conflicting perspectives (kumashiro & ngo, 2007:xix). we knew from the outset that with a diversity programme we were about to enter an uncertain space to which our students bring their own experiences, understandings and socialisations. although we, as facilitators, share the same basic values and commitment to teach about power and privilege in relation to the intersections of, inter alia, gender, sexuality and race, we also enter the programme with our own multiple identities and personal experiences. it is subsequently important to introduce our identities: adré is a middle-aged white female who was raised in a middle-class family during apartheid, buttressed in the comfort of white innocence. working in higher education, she came to the project of teaching for social justice with the realisation that if we want teachers to disrupt the cycle of oppression, pre-service teachers must be assisted to understand oppression and to explore the possibilities that exist for social responsiveness and change within the school context. percy is a 25-year old african male who was raised in a working-class family. during the first year of his training as an undergraduate student he enrolled for an elective module on diversity, and since then his own learning has been dedicated towards teaching for social justice. despite our different identities, we share the same optimism that we could make a difference and, like north (2009:3), we regard our inadvertent biases as inescapable part of the human experience which could, through our interactions with our students, also be exposed to enable us to work through them. our approach, student composition and ethical considerations in our teaching approach we adopted a collaborative facilitation style characterised by informal dialogue and reflexivity, and centred on the notions of care and compassion. whilst explicitly attempting to connect class conversation to our everyday life experience and that of our students, we constantly tried to get them to challenge their own assumptions, to question what they know and to seek new understandings (landis, 2008). due to the institution’s language policy, all lectures are offered on a parallel-medium basis in both afrikaans and english (cf. www.ufs.ac.za). by implication, the 7 periods resulted into 7 sessions for afrikaans-speaking and 7 sessions for english-speaking students. as we collaboratively facilitated all sessions, we constantly engaged in code-switching. although percy only conversed with the students in english, afrikaans-speaking students were encouraged to present their views in afrikaans, with adré translating into english. although we were initially concerned that this approach might inhibit some students to express their views, it was well received: although communication took place in afrikaans and english, it never bothered me. i never felt that i didn’t want to participate in the discussions because of the english. [s24] 81le roux & mdunge — difficult conversations the student composition itself posed certain challenges: all of the 91 final-year b.ed. foundation phase students are females. the lack of diverse voices was further exacerbated by the fact that 86 of the students are white, 3 coloured and 1 african. of the students, 77 are afrikaans-speaking, while 14 are englishspeaking. as percy was the only black male voice in class, we had to ensure that his contributions and narratives were not perceived as representative of all black males. although class attendance is compulsory, not all students attended the sessions on a regular basis, presumably because the sessions did not involve formal assessment. another contributing factor to nonattendance might be a growing feeling of discomfort with new forms of knowledge. kumashiro (2002:6) notices that, although students desire to learn, their belief for normalcy and the affirmation that they do not oppress others often lead to a desire for the repetition of silence regarding difficult issues such as racism, sexism and heterosexism. students were required to keep a journal in which they reflected on their feelings and learning gains from each session. as this article is, in addition to our own experiences of and reflective notes on the sessions, also based on data drawn from students’ journals, we sought and gained permission from the students whose journal entries we report. to protect their identity, no pseudonyms are used; rather, we opted for a reference system whereby students were randomly assigned numbers. lessons learnt: missteps and triumphs our reflection is premised on the belief that we can learn from our students, but also from one another as we bring different experiences and knowledge to our collaborative attempt to work towards social justice. in the next section we reflect on our missteps and indicate how they make room for doing things differently. we also highlight some students’ new realisations and unlearning. this reflection highlights two important aspects of teaching for social justice, namely the partiality of any programme and the partiality of our own teaching and learning. they wanted classroom strategies; we expected them to challenge their prejudices our intention with the programme was for our students to develop a basic understanding of how oppression works and to start to challenge their own assumptions and prejudices. although we realised that due to time constraints it would not be possible to explore strategies to interrupt various forms of oppression, we hoped that the students would develop a commitment to become teachers who will actively and audaciously seek and come up with their own strategies to counter oppression. however, it soon became evident that many students were less interested in challenging their own assumptions and prejudices; rather, they wanted us to give them strategies for classroom practice: i feel the classes could have been better used for techniques about how to teach. [s21] some students were also of the opinion that the topics themselves are problematic in that they are not suitable for discussion in the foundation phase: today we spoke about homosexuality. i think this topic must not be shared with foundations phase learners. these learners are still too small and they will get confused. [s19] although we conceptualised the outcomes for the programme beforehand, we failed to clearly communicate the outcomes for the programme, in general, and for each session, in particular. we soon realised that the students entered the programme expecting to be taught certain strategies to become better teachers. this expectation could also have been fed by the fact that the allocated periods were part of a year module that primarily focuses on teaching practice, including various teaching strategies. as we realised that some students thought that we expected them to actually teach topics such as sexism, heterosexism and racism in their foundation phase classes, we were under no illusion that the outcomes were not going to be reached by many of the students. in an attempt to help our students notice how they themselves were socialised by powerful forces to take up particular roles and to find connection with real-life experiences, 82 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 we continuously referred them to the cycle of socialisation. we hoped that they would realise how they, as future foundation phase teachers, will not only contribute to the socialisation of their learners, but that they can make a conscious decision to interrupt the cycle of oppression and stand up for change (harro, 2010:51). however, some persisted: i feel the classes were an absolute waste of time. i didn’t learn anything. i feel that our time could have been used in better ways. for e.g., they could have offered classes to teach us techniques. [s16] although we will in future set out the outcomes for the programme from the outset and continuously remind our students thereof, we also have to accept that we cannot prepare our students to respond in certain ways. outcomes may serve as guidelines and reminders, but we will have to consciously remind ourselves that our students will respond differently since they use different lenses to make sense and react to what they learn (kumashiro, 2004:112). but, as with all approaches to counteract the many forms of oppression, our programme also opened new spaces for some students: i learnt a lot about myself and my eyes were opened regarding prejudice and stereotyping on my behalf that i never knew was there. now that i am nearing the time to get my degree and become a teacher, i realise the big responsibility i have to teach these young impressionable minds. [s3] the diverse reactions of our students underscore the partial nature of the knowledge they bring to class and how our own views regarding issues of diversity have strengths and weaknesses. however, we soon realised what obear (2007) meant by her comment that “facilitating dialogues about issues of diversity, inclusion and equity can be challenging and stressful work”. racism as a major trigger literature on teaching for social justice is interspersed with reflections on how the introduction of issues of race, class and gender and concomitant oppression “often generates powerful emotional responses in students that range from guilt and shame to anger and despair” (tatum, 1992:1-2; north, 2009). when conceptualising the programme, we discussed the possibility of racism as a trigger event that might evoke strong emotional responses from our students. given the legacy of our racialised past and the emotional reaction often evoked when referring to racism, we decided to first deal with sexism and heterosexism before tackling racism. thus, while we expected race and racism to be a trigger event later in the programme, we were not entirely prepared for our students’ resistance after two periods into the programme. apparently, the lodging of a formal complaint was triggered by the introduction of the theory of oppression; more specifically, reference to white people as agents and black people as targets triggered an almost instantaneous emotional response from some students. unlike our teaching and learning manager who was concerned with a grievance procedure that was set into motion, we were cautiously excited about the new space the students opened. we did not prepare the students for feelings of discomfort we realised that the complaint came from a position of white privilege, but also stemmed from a feeling of guilt. most students equate racism with apartheid, and by claiming that they were not part of apartheid, they work with the assumption that racism ended with the abolishment of apartheid itself. they subsequently find it difficult to recognise their own privilege and to reflect on the possibility that they might unconsciously discriminate in their classes on the basis of race: racism is not something we like to talk about because it is made such a big thing, but we didn’t really live in that time … it is no longer a problem. [s13] the students’ response to the issues of race and racism reminded us of kumashiro’s (2002:4) statement that 83le roux & mdunge — difficult conversations the desire to learn only what is comforting goes hand in hand with a resistance to learning what is discomforting and this resistance often proves to be a formidable barrier to movements towards social justice. whilst the latter was reflected in some journals where students indicated that they have learnt nothing from the programme, we realised that we did not prepare our students for the discomfort they might experience during the programme nor for the possibility of being pushed from their comfort zones, and how to make sense of their discomfort when this happens. to make use of this new space our students created, the programme was put on hold and the concepts of comfort zones, learning edges and triggers were discussed (hardiman & jackson, 2007). the students were encouraged to reflect on discussions in the programme that made them feel uncomfortable. the aim of this session was to help them understand how one is often pushed from a comfort zone when new information is discussed. words and phrases may serve as triggers to stimulate emotional responses. finding oneself on the edge of one’s comfort zone, there is a choice: one may choose to resist the new information, or one could seize the opportunity to expand one’s understanding. we realised that, if this conversation took place during the first session, concepts such as comfort zones, learning edges and triggers could have served as guides for our students. although we will in future prepare our students from the outset for discomfort and unexpected emotional reactions they may encounter during the programme, having this conversation at a ‘late’ stage of the programme was not ‘too’ late: i was also first upset with some of the things we discussed, but when the lecturers explain it in such a way [comfort zones, learning edges and triggers], i had a better understanding ... we can only benefit from it and it will not only enrich you as a person, but as a teacher. [s36] we were too focused on introducing basic conceptual vocabulary once we identified the theory of oppression as the major triggering event, we realised that we were so focused on introducing the basic conceptual vocabulary that we never engaged in a critical discussion of the theory itself. as with all theories, this theory also has its strengths and weaknesses and it was not our intention to present it as a ‘grand theory’. rather, we wanted the theory to provide our students with a lens through which to examine and better understand how oppression operates as a system that maintains advantage and disadvantage based on social group memberships (hardiman & jackson, 2007:58). however, given the defensiveness with which some students responded to the theory, we realised that they perceived the theory as our perception of an ‘absolute truth’: i was very uncomfortable in this class and felt like they want to force a certain feeling and way of being onto us. i do not think their information is very accurate. [s16] in future we will explain the role of theories, in general, and then enter into a critical discussion about the theory of oppression, in particular. it is important for the students to understand that a theory can serve as a helpful conceptual framework to make sense and meaning of new information and awareness. no theory should, however, be uncritically accepted, and a critical discussion of the theory can help students work through their own perceptions of new historical conditions in post-apartheid south africa. navigating and managing our own triggers in our attempt to make sense of our students’ response, we first reflected on our reaction and feelings to the complaint. as facilitators, we also bring to the learning environment our own fears, stereotypes, memories of past traumas and current experiences, and we were unexpectedly triggered by the students’ defensiveness. obear (2007:23) argues that triggering events can be effectively navigated, providing that facilitators are prepared to “effectively manage themselves when they are triggered so that they both model the skills and attitudes they are teaching in the session”. it was subsequently imperative for us to reflect on our own emotions before we continued to work with our students. 84 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 unlike percy who immediately connected the complaint to the possibility of him being black, adré did not even consider her whiteness as a reason for the complaint. whilst the timing of the complaint was unexpected, she was not surprised at the complaint itself, nor at the reasons offered for the complaint. working with issues of whiteness in her own research, she understood and expected that part of the privilege of being white is that one could choose not to hear and not to know (steyn, 2001:9). however, she discovered within herself a hint of impatience with some students’ commitment to not critically interrogate how their own prejudices can feed into contemporary reification and replication of injustices. in this regard, she realised that she has to intentionally navigate her impatience so as not to compromise the upholding of the principle ‘not to harm’. percy’s lived experiences regarding issues of race and racism influenced the manner in which he reacted. having experienced and witnessed racist situations in the past, it was an immediate trigger to see students shying away from discussing racism based on their claim that we are now all equal. the students’ complaint subsequently led to a feeling of guilt as he reflected on questions such as: “had i made the students feel guilty for the continued existence of racism?”; “was my identity as a black person in any way evoking discomfort among the students when it comes to discussing issues of race?”. this led to the realisation that it is important to constantly affirm that they cannot take responsibility for the existence of oppression (harro, 2010), but that at the same time they need to be motivated to work towards challenging its continued existence. not all was always civil landis (2008:i) argues that the art to respectfully argue, including the effort to find mutual solutions, seems to be in trouble. when working with challenging content, we knew that care should be taken that students are not marginalised for their conflicting perspectives. in order to create a space in which students could feel safe to express their opinions, they were asked to collaboratively identify guidelines for class discussions (hardiman & jackson, 2007:54). although the aim of these discussion guidelines was to help with the development of trust and safety, we made the mistake in assuming that the mere identification of such guidelines was sufficient. we did not engage the students in a discussion of each guideline, nor were they asked to identify indicators for each guideline. although the conversations during the sessions evoked conflicting responses, we never experienced any emotional outbursts that spiralled into destructive class discussions. we thought all was well and only reminded the students of the discussion guidelines when they were asked to talk about their own feelings of discomfort. it was only during the final session and while working through the journals that we realised things were not as civil as we thought: unpleasant things that came to the fore during the sessions were that some opinions in class caused friction amongst the students ... some lectures have caused the group to be torn into two. [s39] journal entries reflecting the difficulty some students experienced when they were criticised and labelled after class for their opinions made us realise that we did not provide sufficient support for them to move into the contradiction phase. bell and griffin (2007:76) explain the contradiction phase as the phase in which activities encourage students to not only take risks, but also resist the tendency to relieve uncomfortable moments in class. so what will we need to do different? we will spend more time on the discussion guidelines, ensuring that students really understand the meaning of each guideline. we will visually display the guidelines during each session and remind the students thereof. we hope that the combination of these guidelines with the preparation of the students for feelings of discomfort might make it easier for them to express their own confusion and to reflect on their own struggle with complicated issues as they arise. despite some students feeling judged by fellow students for their opinions, most students expressed an appreciation for the informal approach: i enjoyed being actively involved during each session. it was nice to engage in discussions, to argue at times, to share opinions ... the facilitators treated us as equals and they respected our opinions. [s28] 85le roux & mdunge — difficult conversations however, not all students enjoyed hearing different opinions and some perceived conflicting opinions in a negative light. we were somewhat surprised by this, especially as we thought we succeeded in effectively dealing with controversy: about every time that the class took part in discussions it turned into a negative discussion because students disagree about things and then it made the class very unpleasant. [s17] as we accept that part of our task is to “show students how to transcend the boundaries of their own perceptions, and engage respectfully with new ideas” (landis, 2008:i), we realised that we need to make sense of these negative experiences. from the journal entries it was evident that the students are more used to classes where the lecturing style requires them to be mostly passive recipients. it was noticeable how most students expressed their appreciation for a space in which they felt their opinions were respected and they were treated as equals. however, students who feel safer in what is perceived to be a ‘pleasant’ space where all are in agreement may feel threatened when different perspectives challenge the frameworks they use to affirm their own identities and knowledge. it is this desire for certainty that often compels students to resist learning something that disrupts their common-sense view of the world (kumashiro, 2004). in reflection, we realised that, although our programme will necessarily disrupt what our students perceive as certain, we need to constantly think of different and innovative ways in which we can make our programme inclusive for all voices to be heard. implications for teacher education this article affirms our understanding that, as teaching for social justice is always partial, we as teacher educators are required to be continuously reflexive about how our own teaching and learning are partial. in addition, the lessons we have learnt also highlight some implications for the inclusion of social justice education in initial teacher education (ite). any programme for ite should foremost be informed by the link between the constitutionally protected right to education and the development imperative whereby teachers, among others, are required to “free the potential of each person” (rsa, 1996: preamble). within the context of teacher education, pre-service teachers must be capacitated to advance the “acquisition, integration and application of different types of knowledge practices or learning” (dhet, 2011: section 3), and to confront inequalities and stratification in schools that hamper the freeing of all learners’ potential. the imperative for teacher education to include social justice education is underscored by kollapen’s (2006) argument that the realisation of the right to education, thus the freeing of everybody’s potential, is a precondition to creating “the conditions for the attainment of substantive equality and social justice”. the dual purpose of schooling, namely the pursuit of excellence in academic and social justice (kumashiro, 2004), subsequently highlights the challenge for teacher education programmes to not only find a balance between the two goals, but also strengthen their interconnection. our pre-service teachers’ expectation to be taught strategies to be ‘good teachers’ and their desire for pleasant spaces where all are in agreement highlight the tendency of teacher education programmes to focus on producing “technicists who may be able to replicate performance in similar contexts, but who are severely challenged when the context changes” (dhet, 2011: section 3). as south african education is still producing unequal learning outcomes that reinforce patterns of poverty and privilege (van den berg et al., 2011), teacher education should adopt a systematic approach to critically consider how pedagogy and curriculum are infused with values of social justice. as teacher educators, we should remain reflexive about the way in which the curriculum prepares pre-service teachers to become professional teachers who offer rigorous education of high quality, whilst simultaneously being responsive to the economic, social and political conditions in schools and society that inexorably affect the lives of our learners (nieto & bode, 2008). as such, modules on social justice should not be treated as merely in addition to or as addons in the pursuit of competence in teaching subjects. rather, we argue for the inclusion of modules in teacher education programmes that not only address education for social justice as deeply inscribed habits of feeling and thinking shaped by discursive habits (petrovic & rosiek, 2003), but also infuse pedagogy and curriculum across the board with values of fairness, respect, dignity and generosity. teaching for 86 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 social justice should therefore not be confined to so-called social justice modules and programmes; rather, it is important that all teacher educators become allies in the quest to deliver socially just teachers “who have a sense of their own agency as well as a sense of social responsibility toward and with others, their society, and the broader society in which we live” (bell, 2007:1-2). the disjunction experienced by some of our pre-service teachers between their perceived non-sense and the relevance of our diversity programme stresses the need for teacher education to strengthen the interface between professional identity construction and the development of agency for change. as a dynamic process that begins during teacher education, teacher professional identity construction involves and evolves the way in which pre-service teachers start to imagine themselves as future professionals (beijaard, verloop & vermunt, 2000:750). whilst teacher education sets this individual maturity process into motion, a teacher education programme informed by a meaningful balance between teaching for academic excellence and teaching for social justice has the potential to affect pre-service teachers’ ability to start to imagine themselves as agents of change. it is assumed that, when the process of professional identity construction remains informed by pedagogy of reasoning and action for academic achievement and for social justice, pre-service teachers will become action-oriented professional teachers who are prepared to use power and influence to make decisions that affect positive social change (moore, 2007:592). references bell la 2007. theoretical foundations for social justice education. in m adams, la bell & p griffin (eds), teaching for diversity and social justice. new york: routledge, 1-14. bell la & griffin p 2007. designing social justice education courses. in m adams, la bell & p griffin (eds), teaching for diversity and social justice. new york: routledge, 67-87. beijaard d, meijer pc & verloop n. 2004. reconsidering research on teachers’ professional identity. teacher and teaching education, 20:107-128. department of education 1995. white paper on education and training. pretoria: government printers. department of higher education and training 2011. the minimum requirements for teacher education qualifications. pretoria: government printers. francis d & hemson c 2007. rainbow’s end: consciousness and enactment in social justice education. perspectives in education, 25(1):99-112. hardiman r & jackson b 2007. conceptual foundations for social justice education. in m adams, la bell & p griffin (eds), teaching for diversity and social justice. new york: routledge, 35-48. harro b 2010. the cycle of socialization. in m adams, wj blumenfield, c castaňeda, hw hackman, ml peters & x zύňiga (eds), readings for diversity and social justice. new york: routledge, 45-51. kollapen j 2006. school violence. opening address at a public hearing (transcription), 28 september. kumashiro kk 2002. troubling education: queer activism and anti-oppressive pedagogy. new york: routledgefalmer. kumashiro kk 2004. uncertain beginnings: learning to teach paradoxically. theory into practice, 43(20):112-115. kumashiro kk & ngo b (eds) 2007. six lenses for anti-oppressive education. new york: peter lang. landis k (ed) 2008. start talking. a handbook for engaging difficult dialogues in higher education. anchorage: university of alaska anchorage and alaska pacific university. moore f 2007. agency, identity and social justice education: pre-service teachers’ thoughts on becoming agents of change in urban elementary science classrooms. research in science education, 38:589610. nieto s & bode p 2008. affirming diversity. the socio-political context of multicultural education. 5th edition. boston, ma: pearson. north ce 2009. teaching for social justice? voices from the front lines. london: paradigm publishers. obear k 2007. navigating triggering events: critical skills for facilitating difficult dialogues. generational diversity, 15(30):23-29. 87le roux & mdunge — difficult conversations petrovic j & rosiek j 2003. heteronormative subjectivities of christian pre-service teachers. equity and excellence in education, 36:161-169. republic of south africa 1996. the constitution of the republic of south africa. pretoria: government printer. steyn m 2001. whiteness just isn’t what it used to be. new york: state university of new york press. tatum bd 1992. talking about racism, learning about racism: the application of racial identity development theory in the classroom. harvard educational review, 62(1):1-24. van den berg s, burger c, burger r, de vos m, du rand g, gustafsson m, moses e, shepherd d, spaull n, taylor s, van broekhuizen h & von fintel d 2011. low quality education as a poverty trap. stellenbosch: university of stellenbosch. i editorial this issue of perspectives in education has an interesting collection of national and international contributions. all the contributions deal with the field of education and provide a collection of perspectives on important educational issues, including gender and human rights concerns, challenges in higher education, teacher development, and the application of new educational technologies in schools. discussions in this volume incorporate both theory and practice, and draw on a wide range of research designs and methodologies. south african national education policy is committed to promoting gender equality at school and to facilitating the successful completion of all young people’s schooling, including those who may become pregnant and/or are parents while at school. in the first two timely, thought-provoking articles in this edition of perspectives in education, leaders in the field of gender research in collaboration with colleagues examine the plight of those who became pregnant and/or are parents while in school. drawing on qualitative research involving a group of teachers and principals at 11 schools and 26 learners who are parents at school, in cape town and durban, tamara shefer, deevia bhana and robert morrell argue that dominant moralistic discourses on adolescence, normative gender roles and female sexuality, perpetuating the representation of teenage pregnancy as social decay and degeneration, underpin negative responses to learners. in addition, the school is constructed as a space where pregnancy and parenting are unintelligible. these discourses are shown to be experienced as exclusionary practices by some learners. the article emphasises the need to address the larger ideological terrain that impacts on the successful implementation of policy, and recommends support for teachers in the challenges of providing meaningful guidance, constructive support and appropriate interventions in the nurturance of pregnant and parenting learners. continuing this theme, the article by deevia bhana and sithembile judith mcambi shows how, in a durban school, young women’s experiences are situated within discourses of shame and stigma. such shame works to reduce their agency and increase their vulnerability to drop out of school. the article argues that the experience of pregnancy and parenting is highly gendered, and that addressing the challenges requires a commitment to gender equality and justice. some implications for schools are suggested in the conclusion. whereas the first two articles in this edition examine the vulnerability of pregnant and/or school-going parents, the third article interrogates the gender-based challenges faced by zimbabwean secondary school girls in their academic and occupational prospects. edmore mutekwe and maropeng modiba’s qualitative study among 20 sixth form girls found that, as part of the hidden culture curriculum, teachers’ perceptions, attitudes and expectations of pupils’ gender roles exert a significant influence on their academic achievement and career aspirations. this study concludes that effective intervention strategies are imperative if the zimbabwean school curriculum is to be made gender-sensitive. in their contributions to this edition of perspectives in education, angelopulo, de hart as well as venter, niemann and niven joined the ongoing debates on challenges faced by academics and students at south african universities, and discussions on how best to create optimal teaching and learning conditions at higher education institutions. rita niemann’s article theorises about applying engeström’s learning theory to teaching at masters level in order to address the academic demands at this level as well as foster essential capabilities. in this theoretical article, a possible framework is proposed for teaching students in a coursework programme in higher education studies. the framework is based on re-conceptualised principles of expansive learning as a means of addressing the demands for producing graduates, who will possess both academic and social capabilities. the framework is an attempt to contribute to the conceptualisation of teaching as a process and a product by providing guidelines for integrating theory and practice. in this regard, it is focused on both addressing the quest for academic rigour and embedding capabilities, valuable for human development. whereas niemann’s study considers teaching at the masters level, penelope niven’s article explores the situated nature of the epistemological values of a social science discipline as it finds expression in teaching first-year students. although it explores becher and trowler’s anthropological conception of disciplinary ‘territories’ and ‘tribes’ ([1989]/2001), it finds ii deeper resonances in trowler’s (2009) more recent notion of ‘teaching and learning regimes’. it begins to identify some of the regimes that characterise one political science department, but discovers that these are unstable and diverse, suggesting that, in practice, there are very few unifying ‘tribal’ values or uncontested ‘territorial’ practices at work in this context. the study offers these observations on the basis of an ethnographic account of one intellectual community doing the work of inducting first-year students into a new discipline. it has a particular focus on lecturers’ perceptions of the resources and capabilities of beginning students, describing some of the lecturers’ frustrations with early students’ literacy practices. these are metaphorically represented by the notion of ‘taxi rank analysis’, that is, many new students’ tendency to emotive opinions based in experiential, local knowledge rather than the more guarded, grounded analyses of academic political science. finally, the study considers some of the implications these descriptions could have for more responsive teaching and learning regimes in the social sciences. george angelopulo uses q methodology to categorise the variety and span of subjective opinion on the market-related, service quality and cultural variables that support or undermine student participation in the academic programmes of the department of communication science at the university of south africa. eight richly diverse accounts were derived, reflecting the most salient perceptions on the topic. underlying factors that supported student enrolment and retention were the reputation, credibility and image of the university and the department, and specific academic, disciplinary, technical and administrative competencies. the main factors that undermined enrolment and retention were the scope of research and tuition, institutional performance, inconsistency in teaching quality, and the relative inaccessibility of tuition material. kl de hart and jmp venter’s study investigates the effect of urbanisation (of the area in which a student resides) on the dropout rate of distance students in an introductory taxation course, using kember’s longitudinal-process model of dropout from distance education as a point of departure and interrogating the “characteristics” of students. recommendations are made for specific interventions that could assist in supporting students that are prone to dropout. francine de clercq and rachel phiri’s article examines the challenges of teacher development strategies in post-1994 south africa, by arguing that school-based development initiatives address teachers’ specific development needs and that it is imperative to understand the conditions under which these initiatives can have a positive impact on teachers. a framework is developed in order to examine why teacher development initiatives evolve over time and why teachers do not benefit equally from these. south african educators are mandated by international and national law to observe and promote human rights. however, given the realities of the limited teaching time available, educators cannot fulfil this obligation solely by teaching the curriculum. susan coetzee and cathrine mienie argue that another avenue needs to be found for educators to fulfil this obligation. educators are also mandated to follow a positive discipline approach, but they still find it difficult to accept this mandate. the authors contend that the mutual inclusivity of these mandates might hold the solution to both these challenges. it provides the avenue needed for educators to fulfil their human rights mandate because, by implementing positive discipline, human rights are invariably observed and promoted. this is so because positive discipline is grounded in human rights. in their article, the authors aim to explain the mutual inclusivity of these mandates to illustrate the fact that, by adopting a positive discipline approach, educators will be fulfilling their theoretical obligation to promote and observe human rights and will thus be making these rights a reality. in the last contribution to this volume, djurdjica komlenović, emilija manić and dušica malinić report on their quantitative investigation into the application of new educational technologies in geography classes in serbia. results from the study suggest that the geographical information system (gis) and other icts are still not fully used and that teacher presentation remains the dominant method, which includes less innovative didactic aids. the importance of the application of the gis in teaching and suggestions for enhancing teacher motivation to apply this technology are discussed in the conclusion. corene de wet 159 research article 2022 40(2): 159-174 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) students’ perceived science inquiry process skills in relation to school type and gender abstract seventeen years after the end of the liberian civil war, which is partly blamed for the waning of the standard of education, the country is still grappling with providing a competency-based science educational experience that will enhance the science inquiry process skills of its youth. in this paper we used the constructivist theoretical perspective to compare the science inquiry process skills of grade 11 students in government and private schools. the study employed a descriptive survey design and the quantitative research method. six high schools were selected by cluster random sampling, and a total of 360 students constituted the study sample. this study found that government school students have significantly higher perceived science inquiry process skills than their private school counterparts and that an average of 42% of private school students cannot demonstrate any skills related to experimental design, data representation, communication and presentation. male students indicated having significantly higher science inquiry process skills compared to their female counterparts. however, a varying majority across study groups practise the science inquiry process skills occasionally. keywords: data representation, experimental design, science education, science laboratories, science process skills 1. introduction science is learnt as a process and a product although these two are not always accorded equal attention in the learning process. science inquiry process skills are activities that students carry out in scientific investigations to enable the acquisition of scientific knowledge and skills (abungu et al., 2014). it is fundamental to the understanding and application of scientific investigations (sheba, 2013), and constitutes the core idea in an inquiry-based approach to teaching and learning science. according to çalık and coll (2012), harlen (2005) and huppert et al. (2002), learning science has become synonymous with acquiring the science inquiry process skills and the applications of those skills in scientific investigations. high schools in liberia can be broadly categorised into four; public schools, community schools, private schools author: mr christian bob nicol1 dr emmanuel gakuba1 dr gonzague habinshuti1 affiliation: 1university of rwanda doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i2.12 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(2): 159-174 published: 08 june 2022 received: 05 october 2021 accepted: 07 january 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/00000002-5838-0558 http://orcid.org/0000-002-6130-8565 http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9090-3745 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 1602022 40(2): 160-417 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) and mission schools (lsf, 2012). public schools are established, run and fully financed by the government. community schools are established and run by communities for a brief period before the government fully takes over the running and funding. mission schools are established by religious bodies. they do not depend on the government for support. private schools are established by individuals or groups of individuals with no declared religious affiliation. for the purpose of this study, we based our classification on the government’s financial support to schools. therefore, we have two groups of schools which are government schools (comprising public schools and community schools) and private schools (mission schools and private schools). just more than half of all (53.9%) schools in liberia are government-owned schools (moe, 2016). liberia has a peculiar recent history of a fifteen-year civil war, which significantly hampered the educational system to the point where school facilities – including science laboratories – were looted and destroyed. since then, and because of the loss of learned liberians in the war years, education in post-war liberia is characterised by enormous challenges. according to the world bank (2019), the quality of teaching has fallen to very low levels because of the shortage of schools and qualified teachers. as a result, the government realised the need for skilled labour to rebuild the country and wanted a quick fix. in this desperate effort, a policy to relax academic standards was adopted in 2006 (gberie & mosley, 2016), which resulted in large high school student populations that would translate into correspondingly large numbers of high school and university graduates in order to meet the demands of the workforce for national service. according to the liberian science foundation (lsf, 2012), 84.2% of all schools in liberia had no science laboratories. moreover, subject matter content and pedagogical skills are mostly lacking in teachers of mathematics and science. the report also indicates that only 6% of science teachers have excellent science laboratory-related skills while 32% are said to have poor skills. in a more recent report, the world bank (2019) revealed that out of the 640 junior and senior high schools in the country, only 15% have functioning science laboratories. in the few schools that have science laboratories, it is common to see the teacher on a raised platform demonstrate experiments while students merely watch (chan et al., 2015). as such, the students are missing out on concrete science inquiry process skills that are acquired through hands-on activities. this mode of learning may not be unconnected to the unsatisfactory pass rate in the west african senior secondary certificate examinations (wassce). the only available comparison of high school students’ academic performance by gender is found to be in the liberian senior high school certificate examinations between 2012 and 2017 shown in table 1.1. this table indicates that female students are more adversely affected by the aforementioned factors. table 1: candidates’ percentage pass rate by gender in the liberian senior high school certificate examinations for five years year male (%) female (%) 2012 43.10 29.85 2013 40.05 31.43 2014 26.31 20.51 2016 22.10 18.25 2017 31.27 26.71 source: waec (2017) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 1612022 40(2): 161-174 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 nicol, gakuba & habinshuti students’ perceived science inquiry process skills perhaps a better indication of the level of challenges faced by the education system, particularly in the high schools, was demonstrated in 2013, when all 25000 candidates who sat for the university of liberia entrance examination failed after the university authorities decided to stick to acceptable academic standards. these challenges are perennial and have still not been addressed. the world bank (2019) report further stated that although the system of education is generally faced with challenges, senior high schools face the most challenges due to little government support. according to gberie and mosley (2016:5) “liberia has virtually no record of quality research or knowledge production. it has no national library to collect, consolidate and preserve local publications and research findings”. despite this assertion, a literature search through various research databases including eric, ebsco, google scholar, proquest and research 4 life, resulted in an observation that there is limited published data on liberian high school education, and these omit science inquiry process skills. this observation informed our resolve to gauge the students’ opinion on science inquiry process skills, the outcome of which might serve as the basis for further research and future educational reforms. 1.1 specific objectives • to compare the mean scores of perceived science inquiry process skills for grade 11 students in government and private schools. • to compare the mean scores of perceived inquiry process skills for male and female grade 11 students. • to examine grade 11 students’ pattern of response indicating frequency of use of science inquiry process skills. 1.2 hypotheses h01: there is no significant difference between the mean scores of perceived science inquiry process skills for grade 11 students in government and private schools of bong county. ho2: there is no significant difference between the mean scores of perceived science inquiry process skills for male and female grade 11 students in bong county. the need for learners to develop science inquiry process skills is aligned with the tenets of the constructivist learning perspective. constructivism, which has john dewey as its founding father, with latter modifications by jean piaget and lev vygotsky, emphasises learners’ participation and interaction in the knowledge construction process (yilmaz, 2009). it holds that knowledge is not constructed from an authoritative source, but rather co-constructed through a discourse between and among the parties involved in the learning process. constructivist teachers create hands-on and minds-on learning activities and strategies that develop learners’ science inquiry process skills. because this theory presents learners as being intellectually generative, they should be made to ask their own scientific questions, design experiments, perform experiments, collect and present data, and draw conclusions with appropriate guidance (maclellan & soden, 2004). a classroom that provides this kind of learning opportunity is bound to enhance learners’ science inquiry process skills, conceptual understanding, increased motivation and interest in science (akinbobola & afolabi, 2014). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 1622022 40(2): 162-417 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) 1.3 literature review plenty of empirical evidence support the need for learners’ acquisition of science inquiry process skills. findings include that it is positively correlated with enhancement of conceptual understanding (aktamis & ergin, 2008; feyzioglu et al., 2012) and problem-solving abilities (monhardt & monhardt, 2006). with respect to the effects of teaching strategies on learners’ science process skills, af’idayanii et al. (2018) found that inquiry-based instructional methods enhance learners’ science inquiry process skills significantly. in a similar study, ogan-bekiroğlu and arslan (2014) experimented with two versions of inquiry-based approaches on science process skills; where the experimental group employed using models while the control group did not. while the authors found no significant difference in the overall science inquiry process skills, the control group was found to have significant increases in identifying variables and stating hypotheses. conversely, the experimental group showed significant increases in these two as well as in operational definitions and data and graph interpretations. there is a belief in many cultures that boys are academically superior to girls, especially in mathematics and the sciences. however, research findings by klapproth et al. (2013) and the program for international student association (pisa) competence tests show the contrary. according to this research, girls outperformed boys (oecd, 2013). hannover (2004) believes that the more disruptive tendencies in boys like hyperactivity and bullying could be partly to blame for their lower scholastic achievements as such behaviours divert their mental energy and negatively affect attention management. such tendencies include aggressiveness and hyperactivity. enhancement of science inquiry process skills requires the manipulation of cognitive and physical structures in a purposeful and worthwhile active learning environment, and science laboratories serve to adequately provide this learning environment (bilgin, 2006; ercan & taşdere, 2011; harlen, 2000). cognitive engagement in the form of questions has been greatly emphasised because it is a natural result of curiosity and the quest to learn. appropriate questions generate knowledge and lie at the heart of a science inquiry process. therefore, questioning and question formulation as a process in scientific inquiry should be emphasised in a science learning environment (jesus et al., 2005; nrc, 2000; zandvliet, 2013). such learning environments have been found to excite learners; in fact, much of the pleasure associated with doing science is derived from the mastery of such process skills (rezba, et al., 2003). owing to the pleasure associated with it, learners tend to retain experiences in learning the science inquiry process skills even when the cognitive knowledge is forgotten (akinbobola & afolabi, 2014). considering the size of effect, koksal and berberoglu (2014) reported greater positive effect of inquiry-based instruction on science inquiry process skills than the science concept achievement test. therefore, science inquiry process skills may be considered the single most important contributor to retained learning and transfer of knowledge, and expectedly, some scholars have referred to it as the bedrock of scientific reasoning (aktamis & ergin, 2008; ayodgdu, 2015). in one study, learners demonstrated enhanced science inquiry process skills, which included identifying scientific questions, interpreting data and over time, supporting claims (kuhn & pease, 2008). buntern et al. (2014) found that there was a significant positive difference in science knowledge and science process skills of the experimental and control groups of subjects. these observations present science inquiry process skills as a compelling need for every level of science education, and as such should be emphasised in the curricula. as developing and developed countries alike gradually strengthen their science education programmes (harlen, 2010), liberia should endeavour to follow suit. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 1632022 40(2): 163-174 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 nicol, gakuba & habinshuti students’ perceived science inquiry process skills according to the world bank (2019), only 40% of teachers meet the minimum qualification for teaching in liberia, with science teachers being the least. those who are trained are illmotivated to teach and still carry out teaching practices as novices. teaching and teachers cannot easily support students’ hands-on science learning activities in schools. for the few schools that have science laboratories, a combination of limited laboratory equipment and supplies and overcrowded classes result in demonstrations as the ultimate mode of students learning through experiments. therefore, the liberian students are essentially left with rote memorisation as the predominant mode of learning, which may not enhance science inquiry process skills. the relevance of gender to education is not peculiar to liberia. the dropout rate from school seems to be an issue that cuts across the globe, although its prevalence varies across countries. girls and young women’s dropout rate from school has attracted development partners, especially the world bank. gender advocates seek equal, safe and secure learning environments for female learners. in liberia the retention rate for female students is very low. according to the world bank (2019), only 15 out of 100 girls who start school proceed to grade 10. the report states that the dropout rate is even higher for girls in grades 10 to 12. additionally, 36% of girls get married before 18 (unicef, 2018) and 30% of girls become pregnant by 18 (unicef, 2013). thirty-two per cent of girls who drop out of school cite insecurity in the school environment as the reason for dropping out (world bank, 2019). 2. method this study employed the survey design and quantitative research method. the one instrument called the science inquiry process skills inventory by bourdeau and arnold (2009) was adopted. this instrument was developed in line with the hand , heart, head and health (4h) inquiry-in action model of science instruction by bourdeau (2003). this model is shown in figure 1 below. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 1642022 40(2): 164-417 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) figure 1: the 4-h inquiry-in action model (bourdeau, 2003) the inventory comprises 11 items as shown in appendix a, each of which measures an inquiry process skill. these skills include forming scientific questions, designing scientific procedures, collecting and recording data, analysing results, using models to describe results, and creating scientific presentations. the 4-h inquiry-in-action model is based on the cycle of science inquiry and represents the important steps of the complete science inquiry process (arnold et al., 2013). according to its originators, this model encompasses the experiential and science inquiry learning processes and has a wide application to youth science development programmes. to verify the suitability of this instrument for adoption and application to the liberian context, the instrument was pilot tested with 40 grade 11 students at one of the high schools http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 1652022 40(2): 165-174 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 nicol, gakuba & habinshuti students’ perceived science inquiry process skills in bong county. the cronbach alpha reliability was found to be 0.78, which according to fraenkel et al. (2012), indicates satisfactory internal consistency. using cluster random sampling, six high schools were randomly drawn from a list of 30 in bong county to constitute the sample of subjects in this research. except for one government high school that had 250 grade 11 students in the science stream alone, other schools in the elected clusters had all of their science stream grade 11 students constituting the study sample, with a total of 360. the composite score of science inquiry process skills for each student was computed in microsoft excel for the study groups. thereafter, the pattern of response for each student and group was also analysed to show how frequently students used the science inquiry process skills in doing science. 3. results examination of table 3.1 shows that the students of the two categories of schools have a difference of 4.621 in their perceived science inquiry process skills mean scores, and a difference of 1.167 in standard deviation of their individual scores. an independent samples t-test that was conducted to compare the mean scores of the students’ perceived science inquiry process skills for significance of difference is shown in table 3.2. the results show that there is a significant difference in the scores of science inquiry process skills between the government school students (m=27.921, sd=4.618) and the private school students (m=23.577, sd=5.786) indicated by t (322.813) = 8.310, p=.000. this result suggests that the students of government and private schools are significantly different on perceived science inquiry process skills. table 3.1: group statistics of government and private school grade 11 students group n mean standard deviation standard error of the mean government schools 190 27.921 4.619 .335 private schools 170 23.300 5.786 .444 table 3.2: independent samples t-test result for government and private school students levene’s test for equality of variances t sig (2tailed) t-test for equality of means 95% confidence interval of the difference f sig mean difference standard error difference lower upper equal variances assumed 9.569 .002 8.414 .000 4.621 .549 3.541 5.701 equal variances not assumed 8.310 .000 4.621 .556 3.527 5.715 table 3.3 displays the group statistics of male and female students. it shows a mean difference of 2.14 and a difference in the standard variation of perceived science inquiry process skills of 0.092 between these two groups. an independent samples t-test results to compare scores of the perceived science inquiry process skills of male and female students is shown in table 3.4. an examination of these results shows that there is a significant difference http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 1662022 40(2): 166-417 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) in the scores of perceived science inquiry process skills for the male (m= 26.839, sd = 5.832) and female students (m=24.695, sd= 5.925) conditions, t (358) = 3.458, p=0.001. these results indicate that the male students are significantly different than the female students in perceived science inquiry process skills. table 3.3: group statistics for male and female students group n mean standard deviation standard error of the mean male students 184 26.838 5.832 .428 female students 174 24.695 5.925 .449 table 3.4: independent samples t-test for male and female students levene’s test for equality of variances t sig (2tailed) t-test for equality of means 95% confidence interval of the difference f sig mean difference standard error difference lower upper equal variances assumed .031 .860 3.458 .001 2.143 .620 .924 3.362 equal variances not assumed 3.456 .001 2.143 .620 .924 3.363 table 3.5 shows that while the effect size of the difference between the male and female students is only moderate (pallant, 2005), the size of the difference in the mean scores of perceived science inquiry process skills between government and private school grade 11 students is large enough for theoretical and practical relevance. table 3.5: effect sizes of the differences in the science inquiry process skills study group cohen’s d glass’ delta hedges’ g government and private schools 0.883 1.001 0.888 male and female students 0.365 0.367 0.365 moreover, analysis of the pattern of responses of government school respondents to each item regarding students’ frequency of use of inquiry process skills is shown in table 3.6. an average of 44.5% of students in government schools generally practise science inquiry process skills from time to time, with 68.0% of these related to item 2, which states “i can ask a question that can be answered by collecting data”. on the other hand, only an average of 12.7% of government school respondents indicated that they never practise science inquiry process skills. table 3.6: responses to items by students of government schools in bong county item total never (%) sometimes (%) usually (%) always (%) 1 190 8 43 12 37 2 190 4 68 16 12 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 1672022 40(2): 167-174 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 nicol, gakuba & habinshuti students’ perceived science inquiry process skills item total never (%) sometimes (%) usually (%) always (%) 3 190 16 37 25 22 4 187 14 45 20 21 5 187 10 39 18 33 6 190 17 44 18 22 7 188 23 46 15 15 8 188 12 38 16 34 9 188 9 41 21 29 10 188 19 48 14 19 11 189 8 40 20 32 percent mean 12.7 44.5 17.7 25.1 table 3.7 shows that unlike in government schools, students of private schools showed less of a particular pattern of response. although on average the predominant response (38.9%) was “sometimes”, a significant average percentage (30.9%) of respondents also indicated that they “never” practise skills related to items 3, 6, 7 and 10. the statements for these items are as follows; 3. i can design a scientific procedure to answer a question 6. i can use data to create a graph for presentation to others 7. i can create a display to communicate my data and observations 10. i can use models to explain my results unlike the government schools, the lowest percentage (11.0%) of the private school respondents say that they usually practise science inquiry process skills. table 3.7: responses by grade 11 students from private schools in bong county items total never (%) sometimes (%) usually (%) always (%) 1 170 22 61 9 8 2 169 22 49 12 16 3 170 40 36 14 11 4 170 31 42 12 15 5 169 22 34 13 31 6 170 44 41 6 9 7 169 40 37 12 11 8 170 21 49 10 21 9 170 32 42 9 17 10 169 44 37 7 12 11 170 22 33 17 28 percent mean 30.9 38.9 11.0 16.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 1682022 40(2): 168-417 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) table 3.8 shows that for the male students too, the highest percentage of response across all the items is “sometimes”. however, the lowest percentage mean response (16.4%) is “usually”. table 3.8: responses to items by grade 11 male students in bong county items total never (%) sometimes (%) usually (%) always (%) 1 186 14 46 14 26 2 186 8 63 13 15 3 186 24 34 23 19 4 183 23 39 19 18 5 184 11 32 18 39 6 186 28 38 12 22 7 185 29 41 15 16 8 184 9 40 15 36 9 184 17 39 15 28 10 184 30 44 13 13 11 186 12 34 23 32 percent mean 18.6 40.9 16.4 24.0 table 3.9 also shows that the greatest mean percentage (44.9%) of female students “sometimes” practise science inquiry process skills and the lowest mean percentage (12.5%) of respondents “usually” practise the science inquiry process skills. this implies that female students hardly practise science inquiry process skills. table 3.9: responses to items by grade 11 female students in bong county items total never (%) sometimes (%) usually (%) always (%) 1 174 16 56 7 21 2 173 17 55 14 13 3 174 30 39 15 16 4 174 21 47 14 18 5 172 20 41 12 27 6 174 30 48 13 10 7 172 33 41 14 12 8 174 24 45 11 19 9 173 23 43 15 20 10 173 32 40 9 18 11 173 18 39 13 29 percent mean 24.0 44.9 12.5 18.5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 1692022 40(2): 169-174 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 nicol, gakuba & habinshuti students’ perceived science inquiry process skills 4. discussion of results 4.1 hypothesis testing the null hypotheses were stated as follows: h01: there is no significant difference in the mean scores of perceived science inquiry process skills for grade 11 students in government and private schools in bong county. the independent samples t-test results of the students’ perceived inquiry process skills show a probability value, p < the level of significance (0.05). this implies that the null hypothesis is rejected in favour of the alternative hypothesis. therefore, on statistical grounds, we claim that the difference in the mean scores of the two groups of students cannot be due to chance, and that there is a significant difference between the perceived inquiry process skills of grade 11 students of government and private schools in bong county. ho2: there is no significant difference in the mean scores of perceived science inquiry process skills for male and female grade 11 students in bong county. the independent samples t-test results of the students’ perceived inquiry process skills show that the probability value, p < the level of significance (0.05). this means that the null hypothesis is rejected on statistical grounds. it means that the difference in the scores between the male and female students cannot be due to chance. therefore, we claim that a significant difference exists between the perceived science inquiry process skills of the male and female grade 11 students in bong county. the results show that the government school students have higher perceived mean scores on science inquiry process skill (27.921) than their private school counterparts (23.577). this outcome may be explained by the fact that most technical aid to schools, both external and local, ends up being directed to government schools. typically, technical aids come from the american peace corps and the nigerian technical aid corps. these highly motivated professionals complement the teaching of science subjects in exclusively government schools in a bid to close the gap in the need for trained and qualified teachers. additionally, government schools are indicated to have a greater number of science laboratories as well as a greater percentage of the trained and qualified teachers, because the government offers relatively better pay packages. it is reasonable to expect these teachers to be more extrinsically motivated to teach than their private school counterparts. their students are better placed to learn and acquire science inquiry process skills through demonstrations of experiments with real or improvised laboratory resources. unlike the government schools, the running costs of most private schools are in most cases exclusively dependent on students’ tuition charges. therefore, being a business in a real sense, private schools charge comparatively higher tuition fees in order to cope with the running cost in the form of salary payments, developmental projects and other essential academic and administrative needs. therefore, most private schools offer comparatively lower salaries to teachers, most of whom are untrained. trained and qualified teachers in private schools are mostly disenchanted and less motivated to teach. the indication of private school students not being able to design experiments, represent the data in experiments and communicate the findings is evidence that little practical science work goes on in the private schools. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 1702022 40(2): 170-417 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) although the findings are only expressed opinions, the male superiority epitomised in this study is not peculiar. these findings are corroborated by that of widdina et al. (2018) and the oecd (2013). across school types in this study, the male students expressed acquisition of more science inquiry process skills than female students. these results mirror the prevalent trend of academic performance in the liberian senior high school certificate examination (lshsce) by gender for five consecutive years shown in table 1 (waec, 2017). the gender effect portrayed in this study and in the liberian education system could be due to economic factors and social factors, which traditionally affect female students more than male students. as stated in the world bank (2019), if 32% of girls get married at 18 years of age, this partly explains the figures that present them as trailing behind the male students. in most cases, the female students must reconcile the responsibilities that they assume as wives or mothers at home and their schoolwork. with these responsibilities come challenges in school attendance and attention span in the classroom, which in turn may affect the overall scholastic success of the female students. as indicated for every item, the majority of students, irrespective of gender, opined that they “sometimes” practise the process skills. this implies first, that they acquired some basic skills at junior secondary school, where “scientific inquiry process” is an important topic in the grade 9 general science curriculum and examination. therefore, “sometimes” could mean that students practise these skills whenever they have a teacher who is motivated enough to take them through the processes or whenever they gain admission to a different school where laboratory facilities are available as the schools vary widely in the quality of teaching and learning resources. 5. conclusions this study aimed to compare grade 11 students’ perceived science inquiry process skills for government and private schools, and for male and female students in bong county. the study has indicated that government school students have significantly higher perceived science inquiry process skills than their private school counterparts. more specifically, a significant number of private school students were perceived not being able to design experiments, represent data, communicate and present data. across school types, male students have significantly higher perceived science inquiry process skills than their female counterparts, but essentially all students expressed that they practise the science inquiry process skills only sometimes, probably when they are made to do so. although the study did not explore the reasons behind the responses, the practice of these skills may largely depend on the teachers’ level of training in pedagogy and the availability of laboratory facilities. the gender profile of science inquiry process skills mirrors the general picture of academic performance in the liberian senior high school certificate examinations, which puts male students ahead of their female counterparts. 6. implications and recommendations the implications of these findings are that high schools in bong county need laboratory facilities and qualified science teachers for improvement in science inquiry process skills, although this need is more acute for private schools. female students may be lagging behind in science and this may need to be addressed if women are to be empowered and made to compete with men in the liberian society. based on the aforementioned, we recommend that private school administrators institute in-service professional development programmes for http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 1712022 40(2): 171-174 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 nicol, gakuba & habinshuti students’ perceived science inquiry process skills teachers in need, as well as enforce the minimum teacher qualification criteria for recruitment. in addition, school authorities may need to regularly organise science career day, on which women professionals in science will visit schools to give motivational talks that may get female students inspired to work hard in science classes. one limitation in this study is that its findings are wholly generated from students’ opinions. a study that will observe and measure these skills is needed for future research to establish a baseline for high school students’ science inquiry process skills in bong county. declaration we, as authors of this manuscript do honestly declare that the calculations and interpretations herein are correct to the best of our knowledge. references abungu, h., okere, m. & wachanga, s. 2014. the effect of science process skills teaching approach on secondary school students’ achievement in chemistry in nyando district, kenya. journal of educational and social research, 4(6): 359. https://doi.org/10.5901/ jesr.2014.v4n6p359 af’idayani, n., setiadi, i. & fahmi, i. 2018. the effect of inquiry model on science process skills and learning outcomes. european journal of educational studies, 4(12): 177-182. 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https://www.oecd.org https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.05.202 https://doi.org/10.17509/jsl.v1i2.10146 https://www.data.unicef.org https://www.data.unicef.org https://projects.worldbank.org https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-6209-221-1_1 1742022 40(2): 174-417 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) appendix a: science inquiry process skills inventory (sipsi) section 1: background information of respondent age: ---------sex/gender (circle the option applicable to you) male female name of school _________________________________________________________ section 2: attitude measuring scale below is a scale that has statements/sentences called items in the middle. carefully read each statement and then circle (○) one of the options (n, st, u, a) on the right of the scale that most appropriately applies to you under the response column. in the response column, n = never st = sometimes u = usually a = always item no item responses 1 i can use scientific knowledge to form a question n st u a 2 i can ask a question that can be answered by collecting data n st u a 3 i can design a scientific procedure to answer a question n st u a 4 i can communicate a scientific procedure to others n st u a 5 i can record data accurately n st u a 6 i can use data to create a graph for presentation to others n st u a 7 i can create a display to communicate my data and observations n st u a 8 i can analyze the results of a scientific investigation n st u a 9 i can use science terms to share my results n st u a 10 i can use models to explain my results n st u a 11 i can use the results of my investigation to answer the question that i asked n st u a http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.12 pie32(4) book.indb perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 74 gender representation in contemporary grade 10 business studies textbooks in south africa suriamurthee moonsamy maistry preya pillay there is a distinct attempt on the part of the state to reposition the textbook as a key teaching and learning resource in south african schools. while the textbook industry has responded to the growing demand for better quality textbooks and attempted to embrace the tenets of the country’s constitution, especially as it relates to the issue of gender discrimination, there remains a great deal of uncertainty as to the extent to which attempts at gender equality have moved beyond technical cleansing in south african school textbooks. this article reports on a qualitative study that engaged the tenets of critical discourse analysis as the key analytical frame. the huckin’s (1997) framework for critical discourse analysis was used to analyse data from the selected textbooks. a purposive sample of two contemporary south african business studies textbooks was selected to investigate the phenomenon of gender representation. the findings of this study revealed that stereotypes of women and men are both implicitly and overtly reinforced in the selected textbooks. women were shown more frequently in home settings than were men. men were shown in a wider variety of occupational roles than were women. in both texts, more males were represented in leadership positions in government, economic and corporate institutions. finally, the portrayal of firstness presented the male pronoun first in sentences and conversation as opposed to the female pronoun. the findings have implications for several stakeholders, as it reveals the subtext of business studies textbook content that appears normal and natural. keywords: gender, stereotypes, representation, textbooks, cda suriamurthee moonsamy maistry school of education university of kwazulu-natal e-mail: maistrys@ukzn.ac.za tel 031 260 3457 preya pillay school of education university of kwazulu-natal e-mail: preya04@gmail.com tel: 031 260 2090 gender representation in contemporary grade 10 business studies textbooks in south africa suriamurthee moonsamy maistry & preya pillay 75 introduction and background in the era of political and social transformation that followed south africa’s first national democratic elections in 1994, the country’s education system faced a continuous series of challenges (christie, 1997). numerous policy initiatives have been proposed to reform education practices and equip learners to become critical citizens in changing global and national environments in line with international trends (naicker, 1999). yet, by 2009, and in subsequent years, a number of problems were documented regarding the failings in south african schools. in response to a barrage of criticism, minister of basic education, angie motshekga appointed a task team to advise the department of basic education (dbe) on changes that needed to be made in order to address the education crisis (kgosana, 2010). a new action plan to improve the country’s schools, known as schooling 2025, that has now been set in place by government, targets a wide range of concerns, including teacher recruitment, learner enrolment, school funding, mass literacy and overall quality of education (kgosana, 2010). schooling 2025, in conjunction with the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) documents, attempts to ensure that the performance of south african learners will be improved. one of the ways in which the dbe sees this happening is by reintroducing textbooks in classrooms as a central resource for students and teachers. the department of education’s (doe) (2003: 6) curriculum news for 2010 notes that “textbooks play a vital part in teaching and learning [and] must be used by teachers and learners to enhance their teaching and learning”. while this repositioning of the textbook as a key resource is a positive development, it is based on the assumption that textbooks are inherently useful and will project the values embedded in the country’s constitution. crawford (2000) reminds us that textbooks play an important role in shaping and socialising students. in countries such as south africa, the state is a key actor in preparing and controlling school curricula and textbook production. it is no secret that the state views the educational system as a political project through the fusion of linguistic unification and a coherent curriculum within the education system that enables consolidation of a national unity and a new south african identity (christie, 2000). yet, despite the ideological changes made to the curriculum since 1994, and despite policy statements aimed at publishing textbooks that are gender-friendly, the gender equity task team (gett) report identified a number of obstacles to transformation of the south african education system, one of which was transformation as it relates to gender issues in school textbooks (wolpe, quinlan & martinez, 1997: 23; biraimah, 1998: 44). according to engelbrecht (2006), textbooks, by their nature, tend to both control and transmit knowledge, thus reinforcing selected values and ideologies in the minds of learners. recognising the key significance of textbooks in the south african classroom and the important way in which they articulate a programmatic curriculum, this study explores the gendered characteristics of business studies textbooks. perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 76 literature review the manner in which gender has been represented in school instructional material, including textbooks, has been a concern for several decades. documented findings from different studies across various disciplines clearly indicate (as will be shown) that the two genders have been treated quite differently. this brief literature review will focus on three themes, namely the firstness of pronoun; stereotypical occupational roles, and the depiction of leadership roles. the analysis of gender firstness in textbooks was first undertaken by hartman and judd (1978) in an investigation of several textbooks published over a period of twelve years. hartman and judd investigated the order of mentioning of two nouns paired for sex, such as mr and mrs, brother and sister, and husband and wife, and discovered that, except in the case of ‘ladies and gentlemen’, the masculine word always came first. they argue that this automatic ordering reinforces the secondplace status of women. adding to the findings of hartman and judd (1978), eckert and mcconnell-ginet (2003: 34) assert that the traditional order of mention, which is often found in texts, reflects a widespread perception of male supremacy. in some texts, males also initiate more dialogues than females. five years later, porreca (1984) completed a study adopting a similar criterion in an attempt to determine whether change had occurred since the hartman and judd analysis. women were mentioned half as often as men; firstness for men was three times as prevalent as female firstness, and women were less visible in occupational roles (porreca, 1984). porreca also noted that, when two gender-specific nouns or pronouns such as mother and father or he/she appear as a pair in a text, the one appearing in the first position can be interpreted as having a higher status. this, she maintained, reinforces the stereotypical notion of who in society is regarded as more worthy and important. more recently, ansary and babii (2003) explored firstness in current english first language and english second language textbooks, using both qualitative and quantitative techniques. they found that “women suffered most obviously from a second-place status” (ansary & babii, 2003: 69). similarly, lee and collins (2008) discovered a strong tendency for men to be mentioned first in single phrases in hong kong primary english textbooks, in which two nouns were paired for sex. in the entire series of textbooks, the researchers found 37 instances of male firstness, but only three of female firstness, in a ratio of male to female firstness of 12.3:1. occupational roles are very commonly gendered (bem, 1993), with the traditional division of labour bestowing certain characteristics on women and others on men, based on their roles in society. yaqin (2002: 14) makes the point that books reflect the fixed views of a given social culture with respect to gender roles and contain definite gender characteristic patterns, all of which have an important influence on children and cause them to consciously or unconsciously imitate and learn from them. gender representation in contemporary grade 10 business studies textbooks in south africa suriamurthee moonsamy maistry & preya pillay 77 brickhill, hoppers and pehrsson’s (1996) analysis of gender issues in texts from mozambique, zambia and zimbabwe found that gender stereotyping is most pronounced among adults, whereas children were often shown in gender-neutral roles “with not-so-subtle undertones of boys in assertive, action-orientated roles and girls in supporting or domestic roles” (brickhill et al., 1996: 21). brickhill et al. (1996: 11) question whether one can expect representation of gender equality “in the sense of gender-neuter (or unisex)” approaches to all roles in a context “where custom and culture still respect special and different roles for men and women in community and family”. mattu and hussain’s study of textbooks from pakistan revealed a disjuncture between public statements on women’s rights and patriarchal reflections of masculinity and femininity, with a “false division of space into the domestic, which is associated with women, and the public which is thought to belong solely to men” (mattu & hussain 2004: 92). the authors concluded that the message conveyed by these texts is that women’s only legitimate role is in performing household tasks and caring for the family. they also point to how many stories portray males as active and rational, and females as passive and irrational, and emphasise that such stereotypical representation of masculinity and femininity have negative effects for both boys and girls. a united nations educational, scientific, and cultural organization (unesco) (2006) study of research on textbooks from swaziland, costa rica, egypt, kuwait, lebanon, qatar, saudi arabia, tunisia, yemen and zambia, over the period 19902006, also highlights consistent gender stereotyping and under-representation of girls in relation to boys. the representation of gender in accounting textbooks was the focus of tietz’s (2007) study. she examined the hidden curriculum and analysed the representation of gender in 19 introductory accounting textbooks. she conducted a content analysis of the pictures, stories and homework items, using a qualitative and quantitative methodology. her results revealed that the different representations of males and females in these textbooks reinforce “gender bias and gendered role stratification” which is a replication of stereotypes embedded in society (tietz 2007:91). men have traditionally been regarded as having more power and status than women, and this dominance has, in turn, influenced the gendered depiction of male and female roles in school textbooks (kabira & masinjila, 1997). similarly, in a study of gender content of career materials provided for high school students, by viewing the illustrations of various people in various jobs and the accompanying job descriptions, heshusiusgilsdorf and gilsdorf (1975) found that men were shown in top management jobs more than four times more often than women. if a man and a woman were in the same picture, the male was typically shown as directing the woman, reinforcing the ideology of “the man being the leader – both at home and work” (heshusius-gilsdorf & gilsdorf, 1975: 12). pomerenke, varner and mallar’s (1996) analysis of photographs of women and men in business communications textbooks, published over a 30-year period, revealed that men were depicted as the superior or dominant person far perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 78 more frequently than females. they argued that this contributed to maintaining the glass ceiling faced by women in the workforce. helfat (2006) argued that the glass ceiling continues to operate in textbooks, as evidenced by the low percentages of women illustrated in top executive positions. by being excluded from the higher echelons in business textbooks, women are implicitly projected as unworthy or unable to participate equally in the corporate world. gender as a social construct gained currency through simone de beauvoir’s (1952) influential book, the second sex. beauvoir (1952) asserted that the use of the term ‘gender’ drew attention to the relationship between biological and psychological sex. her ideas led scholars to become more selective in their use of the terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ and to avoid framing research in ways that might hint at biological determinism (poulin, 2007). de beauvoir (1952:35) claimed that “one is not born a woman, but becomes one”. since simone de beauvoir made the assertion that “woman” was not a biological given, but a learnt cultural production, feminism has debated the nature of, and relationship between “gender” and “sex” (butler, 1993:19).later, other feminists began to question the sex/gender distinction. west and zimmerman (1987: 127) define sex as “a determination made through the application of socially agreed upon biological criteria for classifying persons as females or males”. in their article “doing gender”, west and zimmermann (1987) first introduced their notion of gender not as a trait, a social role or a societal representation, but rather as an accomplishment – the product of daily social practices and behaviours which codify and manifest femininity or masculinity. butler (1990: 33) extends this concept to theorise gender as a constantly negotiated performance. she collapses the sex/gender distinction in order to argue that there is no sex that is not always already gender. all bodies are gendered from the beginning of their social existence (and there is no existence that is not social), which means that there is no “natural body” that pre-exists its cultural inscription. however, in her second book, butler sought to clarify her theorisation of performativity to question those accounts which suggested a free or voluntaristic notion: “performativity is neither free play nor theatrical self-presentation; nor can it be simply equated with performance. moreover, constraint is not necessarily that which sets a limit to performativity; constraint is, rather, that which impels and sustains performativity” (butler, 1993: 95). in other words, a gender inclination is, in fact, shaped by what butler (1993: 2) refers to as the “reiterative power of discourse”, which schoolchildren encounter on a daily basis in their textbooks. a brief methodological note this study drew on the principles of critical research which entails, according to cohen, manion and morrison (2004: 28), “… not taking things for granted, opening up complexity, challenging reductionism, dogmatism and dichotomies, being selfreflective in research, and through these processes, making opaque structures of power relations and ideologies manifest”. gender representation in contemporary grade 10 business studies textbooks in south africa suriamurthee moonsamy maistry & preya pillay 79 the sampling for this research was purposive, that is, selecting textbooks to be included in the sample on the basis of their “typicality or possession of the particular characteristics being sought” (cohen et al., 2007:106). two grade 10 business studies textbooks were selected from the doe’s recommended lists. because business studies can be considered a “masculinized subject” (swainson, 2013:11 ), it becomes important to examine how this happens in textbooks, with a view to sensitising potential textbook users of the ideological positions being projected. the methodology employed to address the critical questions in this study is critical discourse analysis (cda). cda affords the potential for detecting meaning and ideologies and focuses on the role that language plays in the construction of hegemonic ideologies. cda concerns itself with relations of power and inequality perpetuated through language (blommaert & bulcaen, 2000). mcgregor (2003) asserts that cda is a powerful approach that enables one to figure out the real meaning behind the written and spoken word (the overt and hidden meaning). cda methods used in the data analysis for this study draw on the work of fairclough (2000) and huckin (1997). it entailed, first, a reading of the chapters selected in the textbook in an uncritical manner, followed by a re-reading with a view to critique by raising questions about them and establishing how they could be constructed differently. the next step was to seek the perspective being presented; this step is referred to as framing the details into a coherent whole. finally, a process of closely analysing sentences, phrases and words, looking (among other things) for language that conveys power relations, insinuations, and tone; the three linguistic elements between which cda particularly seeks to identify connections. the cda protocol devised for this study is indicated diagrammatically in figure 1. the upper boxes name each feature and the lower boxes provide a brief description of the feature. perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 80 figure 1: critical discourse analysis protocol open coding was used to analyse the data from the selected textbooks. this is a “process of breaking down, examining, comparing, conceptualising and categorising data” (strauss & corbin, 1990: 61). drawing on henning (2007), the process entailed reading through the selected chapters in order to get an overall impression of the content, followed by re-reads to identify “units of meaning” in the text. price (2005: 7) calls this first reading “reading with the text” to try and understand the writers’ positioning and why they wrote in the way they did. codes were selected and allocated different “units of meaning”. the related codes were then put into categories which form the theme. findings the portrayal of leadership roles in analysing the portrayal of men and women in leadership positions in both texts, some stark differences between men and women began to emerge in terms of management and leadership at the workplace. men were frequently depicted and described in leadership positions which included top and middle management, and economic leadership. an example of the author’s choice of male as leader and gender representation in contemporary grade 10 business studies textbooks in south africa suriamurthee moonsamy maistry & preya pillay 81 associated characteristics of such leadership is evident in a section on the topic “market environment” in textbook b (p. 39). the foregrounded title, nothing fishy about real enthusiasm, introduces a description and discussion of the leadership of dave kershaw, managing director of the franchise something fishy. the lengthy and descriptive case study presents kershaw as an exceptional leader who saved “something fishy” from financial collapse is now an inspiring role model to millions in the business environment … hands on exceptional management earned the company millions through innovation and improvisation …. a successful story indeed … something for others to follow …. kershaw is not only admired for the exceptional leadership but also the r80,000 profit. as portrayed in the case study, kershaw, a male figure, is described as an exceptional leader who is a role model for others to emulate. the authors of textbook b (p. 26) further intensify the depiction of males as successful top-level managers in the use of a case study of a petrochemical giant, patrick davis. this title is foregrounded and further embellished with an account of davis’s astonishing leadership. sasol ceo davis is described as a “global leader … at sasol” and sasol, under the leadership of davis, is said to be “one of south africa’s top five performers”. throughout the case study, a great deal of emphasis is placed on the strategic management of male figurehead davis and the success he has achieved. davis is portrayed as a powerful, inspiring individual who is an exceptional leader. in addition to the case studies in which only males are represented as successful top-level managers, photographs are also used in both textbooks as examples to reiterate and reify the assumed belief that top management is a ‘male occupation’. one specific example, given by the authors of textbook a, of a male top-level manager is in a description of the hierarchy of a school, where the male school principal in the photograph is identified as a top-level manager. preceding the illustration of the principal, a photograph of yet another male leader, kimal maharajah of taylor & co. ltd, embellishes the account of his success and “stupendous” leadership as ceo (p. 16). the recurring pattern, in both textbooks, of males only being depicted at top management in photographs and narratives reinforces a stereotypical message to learners. when learners are exposed to content material that consistently projects males as powerful figures, both male and female learners are likely to believe that top-management positions are the preserve of males in the business/economic sector.in the depiction of middle-level management, the authors have unambiguously selected males as examples of male success.chris mankayi is described (p. 57) as an “exceptional” manager of a fast food restaurant in a “busy shopping mall”. this case study describes mankanyi as having leadership skills that made him a success. in the case study, mankayni is quoted as saying perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 82 i delegate a task and ensure it is correctly carried out … time is money and therefore it’s important to do a good job once. i am faced with demanding customers and demanding employees; however through the right approach i am able to calm situations. the case study goes on to explain how mankanyi’s management has earned the business a number of accolades. the case study notes that, under mankanyi’s leadership, the business is now expanding in various provinces throughout south africa.in a similar case (p. 153), the title creative staff management foregrounds the “brilliant” management of ravi singh. the case study notes that “... ravi was called by his superiors and praised for the good work that he had done”. we are told that ravi first came up with the idea that the initial plastic company should enter the market for manufacturing and selling make-up. owner jonas is quoted as saying that “the initial thought was outrageous but he managed to make his idea a success. the company has since opened five stores in the areas due to the demand”. ravi commented as follows: “i cannot be at every store but i can ensure quality and satisfaction through effective leadership. with skill and creativity anything is possible”. this lengthy and detailed case study then goes on to describe how he created profitability and stability within the business. he thus presented not only as a competent manager, but also as a team player within the organisation in working well under pressure to launch this venture. men were cited as examples not only of successful and inspiring middle-level leadership, but also as taking a leading role in decision-making in the business environment, where they occupy the vast majority of positions of power and authority. learners who read these textbooks and encounter the success stories of male leadership figures at middle-level management may internalise the misconception of top management as an occupation exclusively for males. in the representation of sole proprietorship, men were characterised in both textbooks as successful and powerful owners of businesses. in the opening page of the chapter on entrepreneurial qualities (p. 103), the authors immediately foreground the content in the subtitle they give to the chapter big dreams, clear vision, energy and passion. closely linked to the title is the additional foregrounding of a “fact focus”, within which two iconic south african entrepreneurs, sol kerzener and richard maponya, are presented as examples of successful, passionate entrepreneurs who lead their new businesses. when students read this fact focus, they are likely to associate success and power with males. the fact focus is further embellished by photographs of these two corporate powerhouses, thus reinforcing the stereotype that males are more often than not successful leaders. the use of the plural term ‘businesses’ illustrates clearly that these two iconic males are successful in the corporate world and also own many companies. in the same chapter on entrepreneurial qualities, the depiction of male iconic leadership figures is immediately continued in a lengthy case study in which real-life gender representation in contemporary grade 10 business studies textbooks in south africa suriamurthee moonsamy maistry & preya pillay 83 business tycoon leaders, bill gates, henry ford and walt disney, are foregrounded in a “fact focus” as three famous successful entrepreneurs “who persevered to overcome obstacles on their path to success” (p. 104). the fact focus describes their business success stories as “outstanding innovation” that is worth more than r90 billion. bill gates is quoted as saying that “as a billionaire focus should not be loss, products still need to be modified and re-marketed. businessmen like myself thrive for success and success comes from passion”. similarly, henry ford and walt disney are described as “powerhouse entrepreneurs with big dreams and billions more to be made” (textbook b, p. 104). in summary, across the two sample textbooks, males were represented 58 times as sole proprietors, whereas there was only one instance of a woman as a business owner – fathima who owns a small tuck shop (textbook a, p. 23). with this single exception, the overall pattern was to depict women in partnerships as opposed to sole proprietorship. in the partnerships, moreover, women provide more of the capital, but receive the same returns as their partner. this portrayal is likely to have a negative impact on learners, as they may be induced to view and understand the world in a distorted way. female learners are also likely to feel excluded from leadership positions, since very few female characters are presented in the textbooks as role models of successful leadership. stereotypical occupational roles analysis of both textbooks reveals that occupations for females are represented as low status and low paid. in an example from textbook a, tracy gilmore and tracy chambers are described as employees of an ngo called in aid of women (p. 67). similarly, in textbook b, susan is described as a member of an ngo in support of undernourished and ill-treated dogs (p. 45). these examples not only depict nurturing and caring occupations as stereotypically “feminine”, but also raise issues of remuneration. an ngo occupation is usually low paid, with low status in a hierarchy of occupations (kang sang-wook, 2001). conversely, in neither textbook are any male characters identified as ngo members. instead, men are portrayed as dominant ceos, managers and owners of businesses, in strong leadership positions, who are both authoritarian and assertive (textbook a, p. 56). the occupations ascribed to male characters in both textbooks represent them as highly paid with high status, as illustrated in the following two examples: pat davis is a global leader who is poised for success. his ceo position earned him not only a top-ranked job but also the attention of global leaders (textbook b, p. 53). richard branson turned a weak company into a brand name “virgin active”, making billions from 88 clubs throughout south africa. regarded as a man with companies and partnership throughout south africa, branson is destined for success (textbook a, p. 29). perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 84 these instances portray men in high leadership positions which have a bearing on their status and economic power. both textbooks deliberately omit women in economic and powerful business positions. therefore, both male and female learners are less likely to be exposed to female role models in high-status or prestigious occupations.in addition to textual accounts of females in domestic occupations, the authors also use photographs to depict low-status, low-paid occupations (figure 2). these show women in stereotypically traditional female roles, predominately in the domestic sphere – such as cooking, fetching water, child-rearing activities, and doing the washing – in which no remuneration is provided. figure 2: depictions of women in low-status occupations the photographs confirm the status quo which most children encounter in their families and communities at large. across the two textbooks, females were represented in domestic occupations 23 times, compared to none for men – reflecting a clear bias on the part of the authors in relation to gender roles. in both textbooks, these stereotypical depictions of women in domestic settings are presented as ‘normal’, and at no time do the authors offer any challenge to the stereotyping. the assumption is that women are solely responsible for private-sphere, nurturing and domestic occupations, whereas men are responsible for high-paying, high-status gender representation in contemporary grade 10 business studies textbooks in south africa suriamurthee moonsamy maistry & preya pillay 85 occupations. learners are, therefore, likely to model themselves on these examples and maintain the status quo of unequal division of labour between males and females in both private and public sectors. firstness of male pronoun firstness refers to the mention in texts of men first before women, as if the masculine gender is more worthy than the feminine. more often than not, in the order of two words paired for sex, such as mr and mrs, brother and sister, and husband and wife, the masculine word comes first. this automatic ordering reinforces the secondplace status of women and is one of the ways in which the power status of men is reinforced. all the instances in which the two genders were mentioned together in the two textbooks were analysed to inspect which appeared first. a count across the textbooks taken together revealed the following: males were in first position 52 times, whereas females were in first position only twice (see table 1) – in each of the two instances being mentioned first by name: “sarah and jake” (book a), “mpumsi and phelo” (textbook b). table 1: firstness of male and female nouns/pronouns firstness of male noun frequency he or she 10 his or hers 12 male name before female (e.g., patrick and lisa) 12 boys and girls 4 businessmen or businesswomen 2 men and women 8 mr and mrs 4 total 52 firstness of female noun frequency female name before male 2 total 2 this pattern reinforces the stereotypical notion that womanhood is a second-place status and, therefore, not as important as the male counterpart. in both textbooks, the authors reinforce the notion of masculine firstness in students’ minds, so that they internalise the subordination of females to males. discussion and implications of findings in terms of leadership positions, more males have been represented in leadership positions in government, economic and corporate institutions, corresponding with perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 86 prior research (pomerenke et al., 1996; helfat, 2006; ferguson, 2008; thomson & otsuji, 2008). many male characters were depicted as successful business leaders, whereas few women were depicted in such roles. in the majority of situations, only males were depicted as topand middle-level managers, sole proprietors and economic leaders. the data revealed a huge gap in terms of leadership – a 58:1 ratio of men to women. the illustration and texts implicitly show who the desired leader in the business and economic world is. conversely, women were predominately portrayed as low-skilled workers or in occupations that are regarded as ‘feminine’. through such representation, girls are likely to be denied models related to leadership. leadership roles, as represented in the textbooks, are taken for granted to be a monopoly of males. ragins, townsend and mattis (1998) as well as timberlake (2005) argue that, although many more men occupy senior leadership positions than women, there are successful business leaders who are women. the failure to portray women in leadership positions in textbooks contributes towards maintaining the glass ceiling faced by women in the workforce (pomerenke et al., 1996). helfat (2006) argues that the glass ceiling reflected in textbooks continues to operate, as evidenced by the low percentages of women illustrated in top executive positions. by being excluded from the higher echelons of business studies textbooks, women are prevented from equally participating in society. to picture predominantly male leaders reinforces the stereotype that successful leaders are male. in fact, at a subconscious level, these texts prepare boys to achieve in the marketplace, while girls are trained to be submissive and to obey at home (ferguson, 2008). these gender stereotypes may adversely affect even the emotional psyche of children by forcing them to perform a set pattern of behaviour pre-determined on the basis of gender discrimination in which boys are taught to associate with leadership activities and girls are confined to low-skilled activities. the data from the findings do not, however, depict the reality of leadership in the south african context. there are female cabinet ministers and leaders such as gill marcus in the business and economic setting. this is supported by the south african government’s introduction of gender-affirmative action to increase the proportion of women in leadership positions (dudu, gonye, mareva & sibanda, 2008). this finding indicates that, when given a choice, authors are more likely to gender a character with leadership as male. this tendency helps to reinforce the stereotype that men make better managers and are more successful in business. tietz (2007) argues that the textbooks present an implied picture of the gendered hierarchy of our society. textbooks currently reflect and reinforce the stereotypes and expectations of our society. if learners are exposed, for instance, to a large number of leaders who are men, and only to a few women, they might conclude that either there are few women leaders, or they are not worth mentioning. the textbooks do not show equality between men and women; instead, they send the message that men are more important than women and that it is in order to portray women as objects. gender representation in contemporary grade 10 business studies textbooks in south africa suriamurthee moonsamy maistry & preya pillay 87 thus the biased portrayal of leadership in textbooks may create a deleterious real world and have damaging pedagogical consequences, especially for women and girls. ‘firstness’ refers to the positioning of the male noun or pronoun ahead of the female noun or pronoun in sentences and conversation. males took firstness 52 times in the two textbooks, and females only twice. females were consistently relegated to second place after males, making men seem superior and more important than women. this reflects another part of the hidden curriculum in learning materials that fosters polarised gender identities and promotes gender inequality. these findings suggest what has been described as discoursal marginalisation of discourse partners, especially females, which indicates male dominance and an engendering of female stereotypes as trivial or unimportant (sano, iida & hardy, 2001). hartman and judd (1978) maintain that such automatic ordering reinforces the second-place status of women which reflects women as unimportant and minor. adding to the findings of hartman and judd (1978), eckert and mcconnell-ginet (2003: 34) assert that the traditional order of mention often found in texts reflects a widespread perception of male supremacy: “let us keep a natural order and set the man before the women”. in some texts, males also initiate more dialogues than females. it is, therefore, important to eliminate sexism in the language use in order to provide an environment where every pupil can learn on equal terms. mills (1995: 95) states that a gender-free language may contribute to the acceptance of each human being without dominance from one group. hence, language determines the sociocultural generalisations of a society and forms a part of society’s collective consciousness. the implication is that the process of manufacture of such knowledge is political and mainly reliant on the choice of language. this discussion indicates that representation in the learning materials are gender biased and gender insensitive and would, therefore, not contribute towards gender equality among learners. despite the efforts of the third millennium development goals (mdgs), convention on elimination of all forms of discrimination against women (cedaw), education for all by the year 2015 (efa), unesco, the commonwealth gender equality policy objectives and the south african constitution, discrimination, subordination, invisibility, degradation and exclusiveness still exist in the textbooks under study. gender discrimination, similar to the discrimination that underpinned apartheid, is still present, as reflected in the textbooks. a great deal of work needs to be done by key role players in the educational sectors to ensure gender-inclusive textbooks which address the aspirations of all children. in the analysis of the two textbooks, one distinct finding revealed gender biases in occupational roles or career. this corresponds with prior research (porreca, 1984; peterson & kroner, 1992; reese, 1994; ansary & babii, 2003). as far as occupational roles are concerned, the textbook authors’ understanding of gender equity, as presented in the two textbooks analysed, appears to fall short of the principles set out in the south african constitution and the national curriculum statement (ncs). the aim of the constitution, as stated in its preamble, is to “heal the divisions of perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 88 the past and establish a society based on democratic values, social justice and fundamental human rights” (republic of south africa, 1996: 1243). the genderbiased representation of occupations portrayed in the textbooks indicates that the textbook producers and other stakeholders have not moved beyond the apartheid and colonial past of south african society with regard to issues of patriarchy. denis lawton has argued that, like curriculum, textbooks always present a “selection from culture” (in de castell, luke & luke, 1989). similarly, the portrayal of women’s limited roles may have a causal association with the writers’ culture. a culture embodies and sustains social values attached to male or female and shapes people’s expectations about what types of jobs men and women should do and how they should behave (yaqin, 2002). renner (2009:71-72) believes that “the impact of this reality may affect classroom practices and restrict female learners’ learning opportunities”. the study revealed that the representation of gender is not neutral, but an act of power in culture. gender representation of occupational roles in the textbooks might be viewed as either reflecting certain ideological values to which society adheres or a subversion of the cultural norms. similarly, representing women in stereotypical occupational roles may be a reflection of the textbook authors’ cultural norms and ideological views on gender-appropriate occupations. yaqin (2002: 14) makes the point that books reflect the fixed views of a given social culture with respect to gender roles and contain definite gender characteristics patterns, all of which have an important influence on children and cause them to consciously or unconsciously imitate and learn from them. therefore, as well as being reflections of sociocultural influences, the textbooks analysed may also tend to expand, reproduce, and strengthen society’s gender biases and perceptions, all of which may affect the way in which children identify with, and subject themselves to the gender role to which they belong.it was also found that men have access to a greater variety of occupational roles than women do. earlier international research confirmed this finding, namely that men were depicted in textbooks in a greater variety of occupational roles than women were (cawyer, bystrom, miller, simonds, obrien & storey-martin, 1994; frasher & walker, 1972). women were mainly represented in positions of unpaid and unrecognised labour that sustains household economies such as cooking, washing, housekeeping, looking after children, fetching water, stitching clothes, and so on. other unpaid occupations and low-paid jobs included ngos and secretarial occupations. in addition, women were represented in usual stereotypical female occupations such as nurse, hair stylist, florist, and factory worker. the portrayal of women in traditional gender roles is also consistent with bason’s (1980, cited in dube, 2006) findings that stereotypes tend to set up a self-fulfilling prophecy and often lead females to behave according to expectation, thus disempowering them and limiting their ability to develop their potential to the full. tietz (2007) concurs that women are shown in fewer occupational roles and more domestic roles. the implication is that female learners may not be exposed to as many potential role models. such portrayal in the textbooks, in gender representation in contemporary grade 10 business studies textbooks in south africa suriamurthee moonsamy maistry & preya pillay 89 which boys are encouraged to view a wide range of occupational possibilities for themselves, while girls are directed towards a narrower range of possibilities, may impede gender equity not only in the schooling system, but also in the community at large. in addition, the implied message is that women are not suitable for a variety of occupational careers. conclusion in an analysis of both the textual and visual language of the selected business studies textbooks, this study attempted to arrive at an understanding of the nature of the representation of gender, as well as the reasons for its representation in a particular way. the findings indicate that textbooks continue to reinforce gender bias. it becomes clear that efforts to write gender-inclusive textbooks have failed. the textbooks under investigation reinforced gender disparity in the schooling of male and female learners. the goals of the ncs for providing equitable and fair education for both genders may not be realised and the messages passed on to learners through the hidden curriculum may negatively affect female learners, because textbooks are viewed as powerful objects that deal with powerful concepts and shape what teachers teach and learners learn. gender is, therefore, a powerful form of social construction. discourse has always played a major role in determining the nature of gender and in defining and supporting certain ideologies in textbooks. therefore, curriculum material in schools needs to be selected carefully, in order to ensure the adoption of equitable pedagogy. endnote textbook a (2011). cape town: maskew miller longman publishers (pty) ltd. textbook b (2011). cape town: via africa publishers (pty) ltd. references ansary h & babii e 2003. subliminal sexism in esl/efl textbooks. asian efl journal, 5(1): 34-35. bem sl 1993. the lenses of gender: transforming the debate on sexual inequality. new haven, 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seen from bao boa’s family classroom. chinese education and society, 35(5): 14-22. 14 a vision of improvement of learning: south african teachers’ conceptions of classroom assessment sethusha mantsose jane university of south africa this article explored conceptions that teachers hold about classroom assessment and how these conceptions influence their classroom assessment practices. the qualitative study employed a case study approach. semi-structured interviews, observations and document analyses were used. the study utilized brown’s (2004) conceptual framework on conceptions of assessment. the findings reveal that teachers’ conceptions of assessment are influenced by the social and education context in which they find themselves and that their personal experiences of assessment also influence their conceptions of assessment. keywords: conceptions; classroom assessment; social context; classroom practice; assessment methods; assessment techniques introduction understanding and communicating assessment information has been identified as one of the most critical teacher professional development needs in the field of educational measurement expertise (harris & brown, 2008). this implies that understanding what teachers believe about assessment is critical in designing and implementing appropriate teacher professional development. irrespective of their level of experience and competence, teachers make what seem to them rational choices and decisions that reflect their attempt to promote student learning. the dynamic quality of teachers is then a product of how teachers conceptualize teaching, learning and assessment (maclellan, 2001). teaching cultures are therefore contextually bound and complex, so understanding and producing insight into this culture requires approaches that explore in depth teachers’ reasoning about teaching, learning and assessment based on specific educational contexts and accounts of experiences within them (akyeampong, pryor & ampiah, 2006). south africa’s post-apartheid education system, known as outcomes-based education (obe), was launched in 1997. in 2007 the south african national department of education published the national policy on assessment and qualifications for schools in the general education and training (get) band (department of education, 2007). this policy provided a framework for assessment and qualifications for all private and public schools as well as community based sites with learners registered in the get band (grade r-9). it consolidated assessment provisions contained in the national curriculum statement grade r-9 (schools) (ncs). the policy repealed the assessment policy in the general education and training band, grade r-9 and adult basic education and training of 1998 and the framework for the assessment and promotion of learners in grade 9: interim policy, 2003. it integrated and consolidated recording and reporting provisions that are contained in the national protocol on assessment, 2005 (department of education, 2007). the national curriculum statement as well as the national policy on assessment places a strong emphasis on assessment as a major tool that teachers have to use as a vehicle for improving the quality of teaching and learning in their classrooms (mbelani, 2008). a critical question is how teachers align their classroom assessment practices to fit in with the demands made by the curriculum, assessment guidelines and assessment policy. since the introduction of outcomes based education in south africa, teachers have been exposed to current trends in assessment through workshops, in-service training and an abundant supply of curriculum documents, all in the quest for fast-tracking transformation and improving quality teaching and learning. however, my experience is that little has improved inside the classroom. it therefore remains important to understand how teachers understand and implement assessment procedures. this 15jane — a vision of improvement of learning article is therefore designed to investigate teachers’ conceptualisation of classroom assessment and how these conceptions influence their classroom assessment practices. the national policy on assessment and qualifications for schools in the get band (department of education, 2007) clearly stipulates that assessment is an integral part of teaching and learning where the teacher has to meet diverse needs of learners in the classroom. this is a challenge in the sense that as designers of the curriculum, teachers are expected to understand policies, so as to meet the needs of the learners. if teachers are required to understand learners’ diverse needs, their conceptions and understanding of different policies are also equally important. only then will they be able to engage in practices that will improve the whole process of teaching and learning. conceptual framework the article utilizes the conceptual framework based on the work of brown (2004:44). in this conversation, four major conceptions about assessment are exhibited; (1) assessment is related to improvement of learners’ learning and teachers’ teaching, (2) assessment certifies that learners have learned or met standards, (3) assessment evaluates the quality of schools and teachers, and (4) assessment is irrelevant to the work of teachers. based on the literature reviewed (brown, 2004; harris & brown, 2008; brown & hirschfeld, 2008) the four major conceptions are considered as filters through which teachers interpret and experience statesponsored or school-wide policies and practices related to assessment. it is appropriate to investigate how teachers interpret assessment as a teaching-learning strategy and how their different conceptions influence their classroom assessment practices in order to get a fuller understanding of what assessment means to teachers in a south african context. methodology the research was conducted in two primary schools in one city in south africa. i focused on two grades (grade 5 and 6) in the intermediate phase, which comprises of grade 4, 5 6 and 7. in this article i focus on two primary school teachers and use a variety of data obtained by means of in-depth semi-structured interviews, classroom observations and analysis of key documents (learners’ books, and teachers’ assessment documents). the interview schedule comprised of questions on teachers’ own understanding and experiences of classroom assessment. observations of teaching and assessment practices were conducted over a four-week period with each teacher. the observations were followed by interviews and these provided teachers with an opportunity to share their understanding and experiences. understanding teachers’ conceptions of assessment case study one alice evans “assessment is my most important focus because it guides me and the learners as well; it tells us where we are and where we aren’t, where we are okay and where we have problems” alice has been teaching at eastridge primary school since 1985. she started her teaching career at this school as a temporary teacher. she has a degree as well as a teachers’ diploma that focused on teaching methodologies. her teacher training encompassed the basics of learning how to teach, with a specialisation in english and assessment mainly focusing on giving examples of theories, on examinations and on teaching practice evaluation. during these teaching practices, lecturers would visit them to evaluate how they taught. alice referred to these visits as ‘crit’ lessons, as they were called in those years. she did not like these visits: to me when i look back, it was very judgemental. in fact, it was not assessment; it was called evaluation and emphasised class tests and examinations. this evaluation relied a lot on the lecturer’s personal judgement, what they know, how they know and how they look at a particular aspect of 16 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 teaching. i think that has changed tremendously now, how we look at teaching has changed, we are far more objective now. during her teacher training years, alice did not get any training on assessment. she gained much assessment knowledge from in-service training in obe in 2002 and 2003, organised by a teachers’ union. assessment was not the only aspect dealt with in these trainings, but it was emphasised as most teachers were experiencing difficulties in understanding and implementing outcomes based assessment (oba). alice also attended a workshop at the beginning of 2009, where one departmental official addressed issues relating to assessment. alice felt that her training needs were mainly related to assessment, which she wished to have more guidance on especially how to conduct classroom assessment. for her, assessment was … something that you need to plan for and need to work through all the time. i don’t think most of our teachers understand that assessment is a well thought out process, you cannot work out marks and submit to your head of department; it must be thought of beforehand. alice who identified fully with the principles of the ncs, seemed eager to learn as much as possible about these and translate them into her classroom practice. she portrayed a good understanding of the curriculum, the ncs, and assessment policy. she was very vocal about the value and benefit of these, convinced that they could yield better results for the school. she also seemed( why seemed???) to utilise every opportunity to learn more about the ncs and its assessment guidelines. for example, during the interview, she highlighted that she took it upon herself to look out for any assessment information, be it from workshops, clusters or district officials. alice expressed her understanding of assessment as follows: i would say assessment is a way of determining where children are in terms of what has been taught; first of all where they are now and then, also to see how much they grasped of what has been done. so it gives you as the teacher direction of where they are, what knowledge they have acquired, and that guides you as to what you still need to do. in other words um… you assess to see what they have gained and how far they have progressed along the way. her understanding was in line with the definition of assessment stipulated in the ncs assessment guidelines for the get band (doe, 2007), which are part of a developmental process aimed at increasing the capacity of the south african education system, teachers, school management teams and the departmental officials. these guidelines aim to enhance the effective implementation of this by developing an authentic assessment system that is congruent with obe in general and the ncs in particular (doe, 2007). the ncs assessment guidelines define assessment as: … a process of making decisions about a learner’s performance. it involves gathering and organising of information (evidence of learning) in order to review what learners have achieved. it informs decision making in education, and helps teachers to establish whether learners are performing according to their full potential and making progress towards the required levels of performance (or standards) as outlined in the assessment standards of the ncs (doe, 2007:10) although the policy indicates how assessment needs to be fair, reliable and valid, literature (vandeyar & killen, 2007) documents an inability or unwillingness of many south african teachers to adapt their assessment practices to the changing demands of the country’s school education. alice was very clear in her mind and in her articulation of her understanding of the assessment policy in that the policy was a guideline, a frame of reference for assisting teachers in executing their tasks: the learning area specialist once came to our school to check on our assessment. she gave us a quiz, to check as to whether our assessments were valid, fair and reliable. she requested us to use an assessment task that we once did in class. i was very happy at the end of the exercise when she told us that my quiz as well as another teacher’s quiz in my department were the best. as can be inferred, alice was very optimistic and enthusiastic about the possibilities of the underlying ncs assessment key principles, that assessment is concerned with issues of reliability and fairness. assessment 17jane — a vision of improvement of learning is conducive to reliability in that learning outcomes are the basis upon which assessment is planned and administered, a constant feature, regardless of who is assessing and who is being assessed. laying down these specifications necessitates the teacher using them as a guide to planning, developing and administering assessment. assessment tasks are regarded as fair and free from bias when they are equally good measures for learners of different linguistic backgrounds, gender, culture and socio-economic groups present in the school population. this also refers to learners having equivalent resources with which to perform the task, at home or at school, and having an equal opportunity to learn. alice identified a number of factors that hindered her assessment practices. she noted with great concern, the amount of paper work involved in assessment, which as head of department (hod) she was worried that most teachers strive to complete rather than helping learners to achieve the learning outcomes and meet the assessment standards. she indicated that in the home language (english) learning area, a teacher is required to assess learners in all learning outcomes, namely listening, speaking, reading and viewing, writing, thinking and reasoning, and language structure and use, and to compile assessment tasks that include more than one assessment standard. the home language assessment standards assume that learners are able to read, understand and speak the language taken at home language level. these assessment standards support the development of the mentioned competencies, especially with regard to various types of literacy, notably reading, writing, and visual (also regarded as critical) literacies. according to alice, assessment consumed most of her teaching time because she believed in providing learners with ample opportunities to achieve the learning outcomes. she believed it was an opportunity to get to know her learners even better, on a personal level. most of the time teachers concentrate on completing the work and recording, without paying extra attention to learners who are struggling to achieve. alice was proud to mention that a learning area specialist for english once visited her, to give her support as hod, and was very impressed with her work. alice’s understanding of the rationale behind provision of expanded opportunities for learners is consistent with the policy as it highlights that learners must be given an opportunity to learn at a varied pace so as to achieve learning outcomes and assessment standards. expanded opportunity is one of the principles of outcomes based assessment. this principle requires that teachers find multiple ways of exposing learners to opportunities that will enable them to demonstrate their full potential. learners are expected to succeed, but not necessarily at the same time and in the same way. the teacher needs to maximise opportunities for every learner by challenging them to achieve and improve as individuals, but not to compete against other learners (doe, 2007). on the question of the difference between the current way of assessing and the one used in the previous old curriculum, alice said that: it is very different. in the past we just wrote tests and exams, we were not given any hint of what to study, and how we would be assessed. again… it was in the form of marks, like ten out of ten. of course when you got ten out of ten we understood it to mean that you did extremely well. as alice posits, her assessment practices were very different from those used to assess her at school and during her training. during one of my classroom observations, i noticed that when she assessed reading she let the children read, whilst listening to their pronunciation and fluency, how they paid attention to reading signs and how they changed their tones. she used a rubric to assess reading, and gave them feedback with comments for improvement. reflecting on her schooling she said “in the past, teachers used to ask us to read and just award marks on whether you could read or not”. assessment of reading is now formal, fair and less subjective. reading is very important because it prepares learners for writing. when alice felt that learners had read enough she gave them a spelling test. she was very strict with spelling, and when a learner missed one letter in a word she marked it as wrong: i’ve heard other teachers saying in content subjects like arts and culture, social studies and life orientation ...as long as the child has got an idea of a word, even when they have missed a letter, they mark it as right. i do not like that at all. it gives learners an impression that correct spelling is acceptable in languages and not in content subjects. 18 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 alice indicated in the interview that during her schooling years they were encouraged to spell correctly, irrespective of whether they were in a history, mathematics or language class. her previous experiences influenced her present practices in classroom assessment. she encouraged her colleagues to pay attention to spelling across all learning areas because she believed it was the right thing to do. alice’s understanding of assessment appeared to be firmly rooted in her interpretation of the ncs policy and assessment guidelines. the ncs, the national policy on assessment and the ncs assessment guidelines were the only sources that alice consulted, and as such were initially assumed to have played a more significant role on her understanding of assessment. her understanding was also embedded in the assessment knowledge and experience that she had acquired over the course of her teaching life, particularly in her role as hod in the school. it also appeared that alice agreed with the principle that assessment improved teaching and learning. alice believed that the purpose of assessment was to inform learners where they stood as compared to their peers as well as to identify their weaknesses and strengths. alice interpreted assessment as increasing the workload of teachers, as it required much paperwork and extra preparation time. in summary, alice conceptualized classroom assessment in the following major ways: as a tool to improve teaching and learning; as providing information on how well teachers were doing their work; as a means of teacher and learner reflection; and as a means to check learner progress against achievement objectives. case study two roshnee rajesh “i assess the learners’ abilities holistically, to determine their competencies and achievement of learning outcomes” roshnee rajesh was in her eleventh year of teaching and was the deputy principal of windyside primary school. she started teaching at this school in april 2009, having been a teacher at another school in the district, where she taught english to grades 4, 5 and 6. roshnee obtained a diploma in adult education and training in 1994 and a degree in education from the university of durban-westville in 1998. at the time of this research she was still studying for a degree in human resource development. she was a full-time teacher, but in between had spread herself out through adult education and teaching at different schools. she has been involved in a number of adult facilitation activities. roshnee was an accredited assessor and moderator. she studied privately for this certificate in 2007 and also trained as an asset manager in the same year. the assessor training was scheduled for a week and they were expected to compile a portfolio, as part of their assessment. the assessor training was conducted by a non-governmental organisation (ngo) known as international competencies network. the idea of imparting new knowledge, as well as interaction with learners, had motivated roshnee to follow a teaching career, despite the fact that there was much pressure as well. she sounded positive and committed towards working hard: i really think there is a lot of pressure on teachers in terms of curricula, assessment and teaching generally. so you have to be able to stand up to it and be ready for the challenges. roshnee’s views on what she understood by classroom assessment were expressed as follows: i would say i assess the learners’ abilities holistically, what the learners’ competencies are and to see if basically they have met outcomes as set per term by the department of education for each learning area. a child has to be able to accomplish something at the end of each year or each term and you basically use the correct means to see if the child is able to meet those goals. in providing her understanding of classroom assessment, roshnee referred to the purpose of assessment, which was in line with the ncs assessment guidelines in that she highlighted “assessing learners’ abilities and competencies holistically”, implying that teachers had to establish whether learners were performing according to their full potential. roshnee was aware that she should use different methods to assess learners, as was evident in her expression of “using the correct means” in her understanding of assessment. 19jane — a vision of improvement of learning according to roshnee, the assessment policy was streamlined and more prescriptive, but there were still loopholes. her major concern was with support and the direction that teachers needed from the doe. she felt if those could be addressed it would make life easier for her, especially with the introduction of the milestones. according to the foundations for learning campaign (fflc), milestones referred to the knowledge and skills from learning outcomes and assessment standards for mathematics and languages per term and per grade to all schools (doe, 2008). roshnee felt that she still needed clearer guidelines on these milestones, as well as much more prescriptive ideas on how she could work with the fflc. roshnee provided me with a copy of the document on milestones. for the third term those identified were oral, reading, writing, spelling and grammar and investigation. for each milestone there were standards suggested for accomplishing the milestones. at the end was the final rating, indicating the level of achievement. based on the information provided by roshnee in the interview, teachers under her supervision did not really have a clear understanding of the assessment policy or its guidelines. she felt teachers still needed much training and workshops on assessment. roshnee thought much assessment in her school did not probe the deeper thinking processes of the learners expected by bloom’s taxonomy, and as a result children did not develop complex thinking skills, and were unable to synthesise, analyse or evaluate. according to roshnee, children might be able to recall and best apply information but they could not go into the deeper levels of thinking. as a deputy principal, she had observed that the questions that some teachers set in their assessment tasks did not probe learners’ thinking and did not take them to a higher cognitive level. she felt teachers needed to attend workshops on assessment, especially on how to implement proper questioning techniques. her personal feeling was that this needed to be done by somebody with experience of the classroom, the hod, an smt member or mentoring teacher. she indicated that before learners wrote the examination in the second term, she requested teachers to send her their examination papers once the hods had checked them. that was for her to ascertain the assessment level. she found that there were some learning areas where the questioning had to be upgraded, and learners’ thinking processes be probed further. however, this was not happening. she found some tasks to be at the level of the learners, but were too simplistic – this did not extend learners’ thinking. teachers in her school needed to move away from the old school of thought, that of relying on tests as the best way to assess. her approach was that learners had to be looked at holistically, that it was important for teachers to look at what the learners’ competencies were, and to base their assessment on that. roshnee also understood that different preferences of learners had to be taken into consideration in assessment: there are children who are more inclined towards practical tasks and those who are actually good at writing things down. a teacher needs to get a good balance in the forms of assessment to be used as well as how to use different tools effectively, like the rubrics and checklists, and not only to rely on tests and memoranda. her understanding was that with assessment it should not only assess where the learners are at that particular moment, but should allow the learner to think laterally, to engage in lateral and critical thinking. the current way of assessing learners, as roshnee posits, was making a difference in the way learners were taught: if teachers assess the way they are supposed to, then they would get a much clearer picture of the holistic competencies of learners. i think previously the focus was more on the learners’ ability to read and write and that was it. now we are giving learners an opportunity to investigate and do. i think we are finding that the results are much better. if assessment techniques are used correctly then assessment results would be interpreted correctly. roshnee displayed a clear understanding of the foundations for learning campaign, as she referred to the fflc milestones, and how she incorporated them into her lessons and in her assessments, as well as for the national policy on assessment and the ncs assessment guidelines. roshnee’s conceptualizations of classroom assessment can be summarised as being that assessment determines how much learners have learned, helps in improving teaching and learning, identifies barriers to learning as well as learners’ strengths and weaknesses, 20 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 discussion and conclusion the two teachers’ conceptions were mostly influenced by their beliefs. they believed assessment was mainly intended for improvement of teaching and learning and for school accountability, hence their practices reflected these two conceptions. findings from this study confirmed what several researchers have argued, that teachers held strong beliefs which influenced their conceptions (korthagen, 1993; calderhead, 1996; pendry, 1997). the most significant contributions of research in education suggest that teachers’ beliefs relate to their classroom practice. according to good and brophy (2003:391), a better understanding of teachers’ belief systems or conceptual bases significantly contributes to enhancing educational effectiveness. based on the evidence gleaned from the study, i posit that to understand assessment from the teachers’ perspectives, it is necessary to understand the beliefs with which they define their work. the beliefs teachers held influenced their perceptions and judgements, which in turn affected their behaviour in the classroom. the interaction of beliefs and practices therefore had strong implications for teaching and learning. furthermore, i posit that this type of interaction is critical for any in-service programme. harris and brown (2008) highlight the important role that personal history plays in shaping the teachers’ conceptions about classroom assessment. it is evident from the findings that teachers constructed their own understanding of assessment, based on their experiences. alice and roshnee had developed a wealth of knowledge and experience, gathered from a life-time exposure to training, workshops and exposure to the curriculum. i argue that the evidence gleaned from this study suggests that alice and roshnee have different conceptions that could be mapped onto the four major conceptions as outlined by brown (2004). they also conducted assessment to comply with requirements, and they included practices that went against their personal beliefs. assessment for improvement was regarded as the major conception. alice and roshnee conceptualised assessment as focusing on individualistic teaching and learning rather than catering for the needs of the whole group. what this study shows is also that teachers’ conceptions of assessment are affected by multiple pressures. these include pressures such as compliance, time management, policy interpretation and implementation, extra administrative workload and paperwork, support from the departmental officials and training. as harris and brown (2008) discovered, these multiple tensions create a much more complex teaching thinking space than the simple dichotomy. notwithstanding the data from these two teachers from culturally different environments, the pattern of conceptions revealed is consistent with previous studies with teachers in different phases and levels of schooling, and in different learning areas. however, the most important point to be made here is that, from the data, more focus was on the improvement and school accountability conceptions and less on student accountability and irrelevance. this article has shown that teachers see assessment as having a range of diverse purposes, and different assessment practices are seen as being aligned with these purposes. while assessment clearly has a range of purposes, it is important that teachers are enabled to move beyond compliance, so that they can actually make educational use of data they collect, which is the critical role of assessment. references akyeampong k, pryor j & ampiah jg 2006. a vision of successful schooling: ghanian teachers’ understanding of learning, teaching and assessment. comparative education, 42 (2) 155-176. brown gtl & hirschfeld ghf 2008. students’ conceptions of assessment: links to outcomes. assessment in education: principle, policy and practice, 15 (1): 3-17. brown gtl 2003. teachers’ instructional conceptions: assessments’ relationship to learning, teaching, curriculum and teacher efficacy. paper presented at the joint conference of the australian and new zealand associations for research in education (aare/nzare), auckland, 28 nov. – 3 dec. brown gtl 2004. teachers’ conceptions of assessment implications for policy and professional development. assessment in education: principles, policy and practice, 11 (3): 301-318. 21jane — a vision of improvement of learning department of education 2007. national policy on assessment and qualifications for schools in the general education and training band. government gazette, 500 (29626). pretoria. good tl & brophy je 2003. looking in classrooms (9th ed.). boston: allyn and bacon. harris l & brown gtl 2008. new zealand teachers’ conceptions of the purpose of assessment: phenomenographic analyses of teachers’ thinking. paper presented to the australian association for research in education (aare) annual conference, brisbane, australia. korthagen faj 1993. two modes of reflection. teaching and teacher education, 9: 317-326. maclellan e 2001. assessment for learning: the differing perceptions of tutors and students. assessment & evaluation in higher education, 26 (4). mbelani m 2008. winds of change in teachers’ classroom assessment practice. a self-critical reflection on the teaching and learning of visual literacy in rural eastern cape high school. english teaching: practice and critique, 7 (3): 100-114. rhodes university. pendry a 1997. the pedagogical thinking and learning of history student teachers. in mcintyre, d. (ed.) teacher education: research in a new context, 76-78. london: paul chapman. vandeyar s & killen r 2007. educators’ conceptions and practice of classroom assessment in postapartheid south africa. journal of education, 27: 101-115. 1322022 40(3): 132-145 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 inclusion and education for sustainable development: the experience of the university of siena abstract according to sdg 4.7, by 2030 all learners will “acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development”. since 2009, with the establishment of the working group on good practices for sustainable development at the university of siena has worked to raise awareness and promote good practices for the sustainable development: the campus became carbon neutral, it encouraged sustainable mobility, it tried to put the 2030 agenda goals into practice, and it expanded the educational activities on sustainability themes. this paper will focus on the educational proposals of the university of siena with specific reference to the promotion of inclusive societies and development of skills in sustainable development (sd) and global citizenship. in this context the university of siena has activated courses and participates into projects to promote dialogue on the above-mentioned issues, to ensure a more sustainable future. along this pattern, for example, the university of siena has organized two multidisciplinary courses on sustainability and gender discrimination and violence. in order to increase sustainable development competencies for students and staff, it promotes practices on sustainability internally as well as in its relationship with other stakeholders. the university, through its project edu4sd, addressed to schools, aims at disseminating agenda 2030 sdgs to promote eu values and fundamental rights through educational tools based on empathy and emotional intelligence. all these experiences demonstrate the potential of a multidisciplinary and holistic approach to sd education, based on non-formal and transformative learning methodologies to enhance inclusive societies. keywords: social inclusion, sustainable development, education, higher education 1. introduction today’s world is facing unprecedented global challenges, including the ongoing global covid-19 pandemic, climate change and economic crisis, the rise of populist, and xenophobic and racist ideologies. these complex author: prof alessandra viviani1 affiliation: 1university of siena doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i3.9 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(3): 132-145 published: 30 september 2022 received: 04 march 2022 accepted: 03 august 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1849-5550 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 1332022 40(3): 133-145 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 viviani inclusion and education for sustainable development phenomena require awareness and sense of responsibility for transforming our world for a more sustainable future for all citizens. the un 2030 agenda on sustainable development, which was adopted by the un general assembly in 2015, represents the global blueprint of this transformation and includes all three dimensions (economic, environmental, and social) of sustainable development, adopting a holistic approach (sachs, 2012). the 17 sustainable development goals (sdgs) and their 169 associated targets, which represent the content of the agenda, are global by nature, universally applicable and interlinked. the 2030 agenda recognises that all states, notwithstanding their diverse characteristics, share the responsibility for conquering the goals. for the first time, this document enshrines an international consensus according to which peace, security, justice for all, and social inclusion are an essential element of sd. there is therefore no doubt that the idea of social inclusion becomes crucial to the achievement of sustainable development, which calls for the engagement of all sectors of society. global mobilisation that sees individual citizens as protagonists alongside institutions and private sectors, both locally and globally, is thus necessary. ours and future generations will necessarily have to defeat extreme poverty, mitigate climate change, and reduce all forms of inequality, keeping the bar straight towards an economic system capable of responding to social and environmental needs. in this context the presence of the theme of education as one of the pillars of agenda 2030 does not come as a surprise. sdg n°4, on quality education and, more specifically, target 4.7, stresses the necessity for all learners to “acquire knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including among others … human rights, gender equality … global citizenship, and appreciation of cultural diversity …” as a key factor for quality education. in other words, the promotion of sustainable development and social inclusion values depends upon education (agbedahin,2019). recent research demonstrates, for example, that better educated persons, notwithstanding their nationalities, tend to consider climate change as a serious concern (fagan & huang, 2019) and to act accordingly (gould, et al. 2018). at the same time, other researchers have shown that increasing the level of education in a population makes them less vulnerable to climate change impacts (o’neill et al., 2020) and contributes to the adoption of mitigation strategies at global level (cordero, centeno & todd, 2020). recently the international conference organised in june 2021 by the european training foundation and unesco, in collaboration with the international labor organization (ilo), the european bank for reconstruction and development (ebrd) and unicef, “building lifelong learning systems: skills for green and inclusive societies in the digital era”,1 has made evident that the challenges brought in our lives, including the effects of the covid 19 pandemic, require “changes in values, mind-sets, attitudes” to make sure that all contribute to and benefit from these changes. there is thus a need to promote the competences of all learners to be able to act as responsible citizens, aware of their roles as consumers and as members of the process leading to more sustainable and inclusive societies, without focusing only on environmental education (short, 2009) 1 the conclusions of the conference are available at https://www.etf.europa.eu/sites/default/files/202112/ skills_for_green_and_inclusive_societies_conference_conclusions.pdf. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 https://www.etf.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2021-12/skills_for_green_and_inclusive_societies_conference_conclusions.pdf https://www.etf.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2021%2012/skills_for_green_and_inclusive_societies_conference_conclusions.pdf https://www.etf.europa.eu/sites/default/files/2021%2012/skills_for_green_and_inclusive_societies_conference_conclusions.pdf 1342022 40(3): 134-145 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) in this paper, with specific reference to the activities promoted at the university of siena, we shall point out that, notwithstanding the great and often successful efforts of the university to include sustainability in its strategies, there is still room for improvement, in particular concerning the efforts towards global citizenship and democracy education as a part to education for sustainable development (esd) (chang, kidman & wi, 2020). 2. education for sustainable development agenda 2030, as stated, envisages to address the inequal conditions existing in our communities, including higher education, that put certain social groups at a disadvantage. it aims at creating an egalitarian society and it brings the notion of sd at the core of democratic systems, considering people’s participation instrumental to ensure an all-inclusive society. an inclusive community where no one is left behind is something that needs time and profound societal transformations, to be achieved. it is a process in which education is the key to success. thus it becomes important to define how education can contribute to sd, which kind of esd the agenda 2030 wishes to promote, and what role higher education institutions can play. in such a perspective, esd must not be intended as the transfer of knowledge from teachers to students, nor the acquisition of technical skills, but rather the process aimed at the development of each and every diverse individual’s potential. although there is a relevant debate on what the most apt pedagogical approaches to esd are (huckle & wals, 2015), there is general consensus on the need to promote active, experiential and participatory learning, to enable learners to make a real difference not only in understanding the complexity of sd, but also on acting towards transforming societies.2 to reach this ambitious goal, themes such as poverty alleviation, global citizenship, democracy, justice, gender equality and the fight against discrimination represent the pillars to any action undertaken in the field of esd. the relevance of esd is demonstrated at international level by several recommendations such as those adopted at the 2012 united nations conference on sustainable development (rio+20) (hopkins, 2012). since the un decade of education for sustainable development (2004-2015)3, unesco has launched a programme aimed at reorienting education systems towards sustainable development through its aichi-nagoya declaration on education for sustainable development. the declaration recognised esd as transformative element of quality education and means that “can empower learners to transform themselves and the society they live in by developing knowledge, skills, attitudes, competencies and values required for addressing global citizenship and local contextual challenges of the present 2 this is clearly stated in the resolution by unesco, titled “global action programme” (a/res/69/211). 3 numerous documents and reports by unesco clarify the relevance of esd as a general perspective. see, for example, 1997. education for a sustainable future: a transdisciplinary vision for concerted action. 2007. the un decade of education for sustainable development (desd2005–2014): the first two years; 2009. bonn declaration at the unesco world conference on education for sustainable development; 2014. roadmap for implementing the global action programme on education for sustainable development; 2016. global education monitoring report. planet: education for environmental sustainability and green growth; 2017. education for sustainable development goals: learning objectives. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 1352022 40(3): 135-145 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 viviani inclusion and education for sustainable development and the future”.4 in the following years, the attention, by both unesco5 and the council of europe, was more precisely focused on the idea that esd must go hand in hand with global citizenship education (gce) (sant, 2018) and education to democratic citizenship (edc) (mcevoy, 2016)6. these are necessary features to reach goal 4 of agenda 2030 (chiba et al. 2021)7 and to encourage learners to take transformative actions towards a sustainable world that starts with individual change of attitudes and behaviours.8 the need for transformative learning and transformative actions is particularly acute when looking at existing social challenges. in line with the idea that the overall objective of agenda 2030 is “to leave no one behind”, the promotion of gce and edc refers to the possibility for all learners to develop a sense of belonging to a broader community acting and relating towards others with attitudes and skills based on universal values and respect for diversity9 (campbell & covell, 2001). although there is an ongoing debate on the relationships between esd and gce, edc and environmental education (ee) (wade, 2008), we consider that esd represents a sort of umbrella framework that needs to include the other dimensions of education towards transformation fostering social inclusion (nevin, 2008). taking a different approach would entail a misrepresentation of what esd is about, for it would underestimate the holistic vision embedded in the very concept of sustainable development and the relevance of societal challenges enshrined in agenda 2030 (khoo & jørgenson, 2021). it has been observed that “esd involves controversial issues, complexity, transdisciplinary approach, system thinking methods, principles and values” (diemer et al., 2019) and today more than ever needs to focus not on the development of individuals but rather on the individual in connection with others (biesta, 2011). it is necessary to continue to stress the relevance of esd and gce as instruments “to combat isolationism … and focus on the interconnectedness of the world and develop global awareness … at the core of global citizenship education is a recognition of our world’s shared humanity” (barrow, 2017). todays’ bigger challenge for esd is the threat represented for the road towards sustainable development by the pandemic of inequalities. to address such a challenge human rights and democracy education cannot be seen as a ‘side’ content of esd (anđić et al., 2021) but need to become more and more the core of it. 4 this has been affirmed clearly during the unesco world conference held in 2014 in aichi-nagoya, which produced the aichi-nagoya declaration on education for sustainable development. 5 the action of unesco in the field of esd and gce has been particularly relevant in recent years see 2019. educational content up close. examining the learning dimension of education for sustainable development and global citizenship education; 2019. unesco education strategy 2014-2021; 2019. international forum on inclusion and equity in education: the cali commitment to equity and inclusion in education; 2020. education for sustainable development: a roadmap; towards inclusion in education: status, trends and challenges: the unesco salamanca statement 25 years on; 2021 world conference on education for sustainable development. 6 council of europe, learning to live together: council of europe report on the state of citizenship and human rights education. see also european commission, european education and culture executive agency, report on citizenship education at school in europe, 2017. 7 this was also reaffirmed in the muscat agreement adopted during the unesco global education for all meeting in may 2014. 8 in this framework, unesco, has made education for sd and global citizenship education as key education objectives for the years 2014-2021. 9 within the european framework, education’s key role against the rise of violence, racism, extremism, xenophobia and discrimination e and in ensuring sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles is reflected in the europe charter on education for democratic citizenship and human rights education, adopted by the coe’s 47 member states (recommendation cm/rec (2010)7). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 1362022 40(3): 136-145 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) from this point of view, it is important to reaffirm that gce, as part to esd, promotes the empowerment of citizens “caring for and caring about all of humanity” (noddings, 2005). in the process of identifying the scope of esd, the democratic perspective is therefore essential, since it stimulates learners to discuss values, norms and standards, giving them the possibility to critically reflect upon such values (ohman, 2008). in this wide perspective, esd represents an essential tool towards social inclusion. on the one hand, it contributes to the full development of learners’ potential as active citizens (pooley & connor, 2000); on the other hand, it has an effect on the educational environment, by producing paths towards a better inclusion of learners belonging to vulnerable groups. finally, it is relevant to recognise that esd, in its broader meaning, requires a conscious and continuous effort by education institutions. it necessitates a curriculum reform as well as the creation of spaces, both physical and virtual, where esd can happen, and students can participate actively, also using non-formal education methods and innovative learning tools (guimarães & finardi, 2021). research on the field of esd in higher education to evaluate its use and its results is still largely incomplete, even though at school level some preliminary steps seem to have occurred (viviani, 2018). the analysis of the activities of the university of siena in this field represents a good example of how the implementation of esd can be a challenge, even in a case where the attention to sustainable development is particularly strong. 3. the university of siena and its road towards sustainable development as stated above, in order to analyse the role that esd has in the life of higher education institutions, we are going to discuss the approach adopted at the university of siena towards sustainable development. in this context, the actions undertaken in siena will be examined looking at the three main areas of activity: research, teaching and public engagement. as we are going to see, the university of siena is active in all these three areas. at the same time, we are going to argue that in the field of teaching, which is in our opinion more directly connected with esd, the adopted tools need still to be improved. the first document certifying the presence of a stadium in siena dates back to 1240, and it indicates the direct organisation of the university by the municipality. the university and the city have since grown together in almost eight centuries of common history, reinforcing each other and contributing to mutual success and prestige. today, siena’s historic city centre represents the natural campus for its university, where thousands of students live mixed with the local population. during its long history, the university has pursued, achieved and consolidated quality objectives in teaching, in research and attractiveness to students from all over italy and the rest of the world.10 the university of siena is strongly engaged in the dissemination of the ‘culture of sustainability’, which is one of the directrices of its strategic plan, having regard to the most deeply felt issues relating to the carbon neutrality, the rational use of water resources, the impact of production systems and lifestyles on climate changes, the relationships between pollution, land, and conservation of natural resources. in this direction, the focus is on the conservation of the territory and the landscape, thanks to the strong bond of the university 10 of the approximately 16 thousand students, 50% come from outside the region, with a consistent contribution (9%) of foreigners, placing the institution among the top five italian generalist state universities for students’ attractiveness. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 1372022 40(3): 137-145 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 viviani inclusion and education for sustainable development with the city, which springs from deep historical roots and from the impact that the institution and its students have on a small city like siena. (in fact, the students comprise a quarter of the city population during the academic year.) in promoting this cultural transformation, the involvement of citizens must be considered strategic and essential, and the university pursues it through thematic seminars, videos and lectures, during which both children and adults, as well as students and staff, can speak with researchers on the various aspects of sustainable development. it must be noted that the university of siena was among the first universities to promote studies and research in the field of sustainability. already at the beginning of the 1980s, scholars of this topic were active in various disciplines. among these, enzo tiezzi, chemist, (e.g. tiezzi, 2003) highlighted the need for human society to move towards biological equilibrium (the word ‘sustainability’ would appear only three years later), and alessandro vercelli, economist, who solicited the attention of his discipline for environmental issues. at the beginning of the 90s, the two scholars, along with others, began an interdisciplinary study path on sustainability, which today is still very relevant for the university of siena’s research (e.g. vercelli & borgehsi, 2012). thanks to its history and its current skills, the university of siena has been entrusted with the coordination of multiple initiatives aimed at advancing sustainable development goals both globally, nationally and locally, such as: • (global level) un sdsn mediterranean (sdsn 2022), reference centre for the entire mediterranean area of the sustainable development solution network of the united nations (un sdsn ); • (national level) italian secretariat of prima – partnership for research and innovation in the mediterranean area (prima, n.d.). it is the connection point between the world of research, innovation and the new generations of entrepreneurs and aims at enhancing knowledge and the productions of the agri-food sector from the point of view of quality, sustainability and perceived value (prima-med.org); • (local level) carbon neutrality siena territorial alliance (2020), which aims at maintaining and improving the province’s greenhouse gas neutrality status (www.siena2030.org), through a project whose objective is to collect and estimate useful indicators for monitoring the province of siena. the relevance of sustainability as one of the strategic directrices of the university of siena has been indicated in explicitly the university’s planning documents for the last decade. a similar vision obviously resulted in adoption of numerous ‘sustainable behaviours’ that have been reported on the university’s sustainability annual report since 2020. the commitment of the university of siena for all dimensions and issues related to sustainability is proven by the numerous and consolidated activities that it has today as one of the leading universities in promoting sustainable development through research, education, and mission. looking at research, for example, comparing the data on publications by researchers at all italian universities (regardless of their dimension and therefore extending the comparison also to the large universities that have a much higher number of researchers), the university of siena is in second place on publications on ecological economics and emission trading issues. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 http://prima-med.org http://www.siena2030.org 1382022 40(3): 138-145 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) the attention to education on sustainability issues has been growing in recent years. more than 60 teaching courses in 25 different degree courses of 12 different departments of the university of siena are dedicated to training their students in sustainable development issues (both in italian and english). in addition, four master’s degree programmes are entirely dedicated to sustainability in different areas: • ecotoxicology and environmental sustainability • economy for the environment and sustainability • social sustainability and welfare management • sustainable industrial pharmaceutical biotechnology in addition, a school on sustainable development that organises summer courses has been created to meet the growing needs of specialist skills in the field of sustainable development and at the same time adapting to the most modern forms of interaction and didactic and scientific collaboration both online and in presence. the school pursues high-level skills that can contribute and strengthen the transformation process in the key sectors of sustainable development, focusing on the basic knowledge on the theories of sustainability, the history of sustainable development and the 2030 agenda goals. the school is organised by asvis italia in collaboration with enel foundation, leonardo company, rus – network of universities for sustainable development, sdsn italy, sdsn mediterranean, thus giving the opportunity to the university to reach out and cooperate with other society’s stakeholders. in order also to enhance the awareness of all the academic community on sustainability issues, the university promotes a series of internal initiatives, for instance, the installation of dispensers for the distribution of drinking water in departmental structures, thanks to the partnership with the local water company and with the municipality of siena. with the same approach, the university has joined the national university mobility manager coordination, an integral part of the rus – network of universities for sustainable development, supporting sustainable mobility initiatives, including a public-transport season ticket agreement for all university employees, and car-sharing services. the university also contributes to raise awareness and increase the percentages of separate waste collection in its buildings, equipping them with special containers as well as devoting particular attention to the management of special waste (such as used toner for printers and electronic and hardware waste). the role of the university as a promoter of a culture of sustainability reaches outside its buildings. in this sense, the university is constantly engaged in organising numerous and heterogeneous non-profit initiatives aimed at communicating and sharing the benefits of research with the overall community. numerous initiatives are therefore implemented promoting knowledge transfer, with specific reference to sustainable development issues, large participation of citizens through conferences, public debates and workshops. a very good example of this effort is represented by the video “from agenda 1338 to agenda 2030: good governance and the sdgs in a fresco”11. on the occasion of the siena food innovation festival, the santa chiara lab of the university of siena in 2017 produced a video that identifies the 17 sustainable development goals in the fresco ‘the allegory of good and bad governance’12 by ambrogio lorenzetti, which is in the municipality palace in the 11 https://www.facebook.com/mufpp/videos/the-good-government-and-the-sdgs/1558307484248675/ 12 https://youtu.be/tjquldfbe1y http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 https://www.facebook.com/mufpp/videos/the-good-government-and-the-sdgs/1558307484248675/ https://youtu.be/tjquldfbe1y 1392022 40(3): 139-145 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 viviani inclusion and education for sustainable development central square of siena. one of the most important civic fresco cycles dating from the middle ages, the 1338 fresco by lorenzetti concerning the consequences of good governance on the city and the countryside is a real political manifesto, highlighting the search for good governance and the common good, as the subordination of private interest to that of the community. the painter dedicated himself to these themes painting their abstract principles and effects, including, in his work, philosophical references that could only be fully interpreted and appreciated by the most educated, but at the same time, using many details of daily life and making the content immediately understandable, even for the less educated public. indeed, the fresco is a true ‘agenda 1338’, and thanks to its communicative effect and the artist’s reflections on universal concepts today it is possible to look at the work as an iconographic map where the 17 key goals of the 2030 agenda can be found. in july 2022, the university took part in the organization of coversazioni carbon neutral a series of event, including workshops with experts. laboratories for children, concerts and exhibitions engaging the whole town in themes concerning carbon neutrality for three days. 4. the university of siena and the social dimension of sustainable development as noted in the previous paragraph, in the last decade, the action of the university to promote a culture of sustainability within and outside the academic community has been particularly relevant. the focus on environmental issues characterises most of the adopted measures and initiatives, both in terms of research and education. at the same time, it must be outlined that the values of the social dimension of sustainability, in particular the values of inclusion, are also part of the picture. in this context we can mention a series of initiatives – including financial support – to facilitate the access to study for students belonging to socially disadvantaged groups, for example through devoted scholarships. within the same approach the university has created services to support students with special learning needs and other disabilities through its dedicated office. moreover, a special administrative unit for the welcoming and the inclusion of refugee students and asylum seekers has been created, together with other specific dedicated initiatives. for example, unisi cares, present since 2015, in collaboration with a group of university experts, offers advice and information and/or training support, free of charge, by intervening at the request of the subjects and institutions that are at the forefront of reception policies in the area. the university also has adhered to the network of ‘universities for peace’ promoted by the crui (the conference of the rectors of italian universities) with the aim of spreading the culture of peace and of increasing the positive effects of the actions implemented by the members of the network, especially in terms of refugees welcome.13 to implement this project, the university has created its own ‘just for peace’ desk, which takes care of the refugee students during their studies. the university has also adopted a series of measures and actions aimed at ensuring the development of inclusion practices also in the field of discrimination based on national, ethnic, and religious origin or in matters of gender identity and sexual orientation. the presence of a service such as ‘the listening desk’ is of particular importance and anyone can access for personal support, to a place where the culture of inclusion is cultivated for all. 13 the university of siena is among the founding universities (february 2019) of the national section of scholars at risk (sar), the international network promoted by the universities of padua and trento which works for the protection of scholars whose freedom of research and teaching is precluded in their respective countries. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 1402022 40(3): 140-145 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) the university has also implemented the internal guarantee commission (cug) that is formed by both staff and academics and aims at evaluating practices and initiatives in terms of welfare of the employees and fight against discrimination. to reach this goal an external guarantor has also been appointed with the task of receiving individual complaints on discrimination cases. as we can see form the above, the university is certainly acting as a player in the field of social inclusion, within and outsides its rooms, but this social dimension is not focusing on educating students. 5. esd at the university of siena as we have stated above, esd is a complex endeavour,14 which needs to encompass not only the transfer of knowledge on the various dimensions of sustainable development, but also the awareness, skills and attitudes that lead to personal and community transformation. the university of siena, as we have seen, works seriously on the environmental dimension of education to sustainable development. at the same time, this per se is not enough to produce the needed transformative personal attitudes capable of fostering social inclusion. the concept of social inclusion at higher education level is a two-faced coin: it looks at the inclusion of marginalized groups within academic life (students with disabilities, migrants, persons belonging to several vulnerable groups); it raises awareness and understanding on the actions needed to fight exclusion and discrimination within society at large. for higher education institutions to participate in the efforts towards sustainable and inclusive societies both coins need to be represented in university life. the question is therefore whether the university of siena is taking both faces of the coin seriously. it is surely so in the case of contributing to inclusion of marginalized groups. although such activities can always be increased, a lot has been done in recent years. at the same time, as we have already affirmed, it seems that the face of the coin concerning education towards social inclusion not so prominent. as stated above, esd needs to embed activities related to gce and de. this holistic approach has somehow been partially adopted at the university of siena in the various activities that have been carried out in recent years. for the first time, in the academic year 2013/2014, the university activated a multidisciplinary course called sustainability which is addressed not only to the overall academic community (students and staff), but also to interested citizens. the idea of the course is to provide the basis for understanding the problems related to sustainability, in all its aspects, analysing the environmental, economic, financial, social and institutional frameworks of sustainable development. within this multidisciplinary approach the course focuses on the interconnected aspects of sustainable development and devotes relevant attention to the themes of social inclusion. the course was also awarded in 2017 as best practice in higher education by the italian university network for sustainable development (rus) and has been attended so far by several hundreds of participants. the multidisciplinary course was, back in 2013, quite a novelty for higher education institutions in italy and it has been followed by many other experiences nationwide. in addition to this experience, since the academic year 2018/2019, a new multidisciplinary course has been launched. in this second example the focus of the course is on the more specific aspects related to goal 5 of agenda 2030 on gender equality. also in this case, the course is open to 14 all the activities led by unesco are moving in that direction, as it has been reaffirmed also in 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 1412022 40(3): 141-145 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 viviani inclusion and education for sustainable development both the academic community as well as citizens and public administrators. the approach is to consider sustainable development from the perspective of gender mainstreaming as one of the most relevant issues to be addressed, especially in italy, in terms of social inclusion and achievement of agenda 2030 goals. more interestingly still, in 2018, the university of siena launched edu4sd. this project comprises various steps and activities enhancing the dissemination of the contents of agenda 2030 and the acquisition of specific knowledge on the issues of environmental, economic and social sustainability, with particular regard to goal 2 (hunger zero), 4 (quality education) and 12 (responsible consumption and production). the course was designed as a training for secondary school teachers and was organised in two parallel paths on content and methodologies. content was provided through lectures given by academics on specific aspects of agenda 2030 concerning the environment and pollution, the structure of agenda 2030, education as a human right and the role of non-discrimination. at the same time, the methodological path was based on the use of non-formal education tools, specifically devoted to the development of transversal skills such as teamwork and emotional intelligence. a second step within the edu4sd project was the production of a handbook on agenda 2030 main issues addressed mainly to secondary school students. the book, divided into 17 chapters, focused on the concept that each of the 17 goals of the agenda has a strong connection with daily life and contemporary relevant issues. the book was published in 2021 in cooperation with asvis, the italian alliance for sustainable development (giovannini & riccaboni, 2021). finally, as a third step, edu4sd established a peer education project connecting university students to secondary schools in 2019. a group of university student tutors are selected from various degree courses. the tutors are chosen according to their competences and commitment to sustainable development. following the selection, they take part in a short, dedicated training session which equips them with the necessary skills to carry out workshops in secondary schools on agenda 2030. each pair of student tutors will meet different secondary school classes and will realise workshops based on a training model that presupposes the use of experiential and non-formal learning methodologies, while discussing issues related to environmental protection and social inclusion. the aim of the peer education workshops is to allow pupils to develop their transversal skills and actively participate in the educational process, sharing ideas and objectives, working in groups, and learning to express their opinions freely, developing transversal skills such as critical thinking, teamwork, emotional intelligence, while addressing the complexities of sustainable development and agenda 2030 (de vreede, warner & pitter, 2014). although in 2020, due to the covid 19 school closures, the project was suspended, it started again this year with great participation from many local secondary schools. the results of this project are very encouraging. the response from both university and school students demonstrates once again the validity of the holistic approach to esd and the necessity to stress the need for combining gce, edc and human rights education, together with raising awareness on environmental concerns. at the same time, the adopted methodology focused on experiential and transformative learning, the use of non-formal education tools and the development of transversal skills on emotional intelligence and empathy seem to be particularly effective in reaching the objectives set by target 4.7 of agenda 2030 (heidenreich & breukers, 2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 1422022 40(3): 142-145 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) despite these encouraging results, the mentioned activities are still based on the efforts of individual researchers and teachers and have yet to produce a systemic impact on the university’s strategy towards sustainable development. notwithstanding this positive approach, by and large the academic community, in fact, continues to be convinced that esd is mainly about transferring knowledge focused on environmental and economic issues. the possibility of esd to become an integral part of all students’ curricula is still far from being achieved. this is even more the case if we look at esd in the sense of raising awareness and understanding on the actions needed to fight exclusion and discrimination. only a small minority of students, for example, chose to take part to the edu4sd project or to other trainings on non-discrimination organized within the framework of erasmus plus strategic partnership projects. moreover, there is no strategic attention towards these themes as essential parts to renewed curricula. the idea that esd is an integral part of higher education institutions’ efforts to promote social inclusion within and outside classroom has yet to find solid ground for its development. universities seem to still believe that promoting the respect for democratic values and nondiscrimination, which are essential elements to social inclusion, is outside their core scope. the international awareness clearly demonstrated by the 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(ed). global citizenship education, multiculturalism and social inclusion in europe: the findings of the project i have rights, 71-90. ius gentium conimbrigae, centro de direitos humanos, coimbra, coimbra, isbn: 978-989-20-8570-8. wade, r. 2008. education for sustainability: challenges and opportunities. policy and practice: a development education review, 6: 30-48. spring. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2021.1889361 https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-0512-y https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916500325007 https://doi.org/10.1177/0013916500325007 https://primaitaly.com/ https://doi.org/10.1016/s0140-6736(12)60685-0 https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474286749 https://doi.org/10.5040/9781474286749 https://doi.org/10.1080/00958960903206781 https://www.sdsn-mediterranean.unisi.it/ https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6419.2010.00635.x 1452022 40(3): 145-145 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 viviani inclusion and education for sustainable development i want to acknowledge the following unesco documents that informed the discussion in this article unesco. 2007. the un decade of education for sustainable development (desd 2005-2014): the first two years. paris: unesco. unesco. 2009. bonn declaration. in unesco world conference on education for sustainable development, bonn: unesco. unesco. 2014. roadmap for implementing the global action programme on education for sustainable development. paris: unesco. unesco. 2016. global education monitoring report. planet: education for environmental sustainability and green growth. paris: unesco. unesco. 2017. education for sustainable development goals: learning objectives. paris: unesco. unesco. 2019. educational content up close. examining the learning dimension of education for sustainable development and global citizenship education. paris: unesco. unesco. 2019. unesco education strategy 2014-2021. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ ark:/48223/pf0000231288. unesco. 2019. international forum on inclusion and equity in education: the cali commitment to equity and inclusion in education https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ ark:/48223/pf0000370910 unesco. 2020. education for sustainable development: a roadmap. paris: unesco. unesco. 2020. towards inclusion in education: status, trends and challenges: the unesco salamanca statement 25 years on. paris: unesco. unesco “global action programme” (a/res/69/211) unesco. 2021 world conference on education for sustainable development https:// en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/esdfor2030-world-conference-concept-note-en.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.9 https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000231288 https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000231288 https://unesdoc.unesco.org/%20ark:/48223/pf0000370910 https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/esdfor2030-world-conference-concept-note-en.pdf https://en.unesco.org/sites/default/files/esdfor2030-world-conference-concept-note-en.pdf _hlk110445325 _hlk110445441 _hlk110445523 _hlk112156307 _hlk112159247 _hlk112160465 _hlk112160410 _hlk112162613 _hlk112162640 _hlk110444567 _hlk110432243 pie32(4) book.indb perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 171 education researchers as bricoleurs in the creation of sustainable learning environments sechaba mahlomaholo higher education has, to date, been unable to provide effective and lasting solutions to challenges of education, because large sections thereof continue to search for knowledge for its own sake. at best, they conduct responsive research, but on a small scale they reduce the complexity that is education to a neat unilinear process which can be studied by individual researchers in isolation. hence, i propose the adoption of bricolage as the perspective that will better enable us to respond to the challenges mentioned above. i argue for a multi-layered and multi-perspectival research approach, conducted by teams of researchers in collaboration with participants who emerge from the research process as co-researchers. this research approach incorporates aspects of the eight moments in research, namely the traditional qualitative, modernity, blurred genres, crisis of representation, postmodernity, post-experimentalism, methodologically contested representation, and the current fractured futures. using data from our research team, i show how we have operationalised bricolage. based on the positive educational outcomes and findings of this project, i come to the conclusion that, as higher-education bricoleurs, we are better able to respond to the complexity of education in a coherent, logical, focused and original manner. background in this paper i argue that, as south africans in particular, and as humanity in general, we need research which is multi-layered and multi-perspectival, conducted by many collaborating teams of researchers throughout their entire life, if challenges facing the provision of quality education are to be attended to meaningfully. bricolage conforms to these requirements because it is: sechaba mahlomaholo university of the free state, school of mathematics, natural sciences and technology education e-mail: mahlomaholomg@ufs.ac.za perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 172 not uni-dimensional, it tolerates and mirrors the messiness of lived experiences of the people, is best suited to create sustainable learning environments at any level and/ or site of education… it deals with change and transformation of discursive practices and social arrangements. … bricolage … enables the researcher/bricoleur to create something out of nothing. it also enables such a researcher to use whatever materials available in one’s contexts to re-create anew processes and artefacts necessary for transformatory and emancipatory agenda. bricolage as research approach is better poised because it thrives paradoxically on making sense of what seems chaotic and contradictory. it also tries to make sense of that which may seem obscure and incomprehensible. bricolage is multi-layered, multi-perspectival and grounded on one research question being approached from a diversity of theoretical positions (mahlomaholo, 2013a:4690-4691). i take it as a given that the debates on whether research should be purely abstract or utilitarian have been resolved in favour of a research that includes both intense conceptualisation which contributes to theory building on the one hand, and practical research which responds to real-life problems on the other. the problems facing the provision of quality education in south africa are many and very complex (research on socio-economic policy – resep, 2013), just like it is the case throughout the world, especially in those countries that have been subjected to the injustices of colonisation, oppression and various forms of apartheid (bereng, 2007; rolleston & james, 2011; sheldon, 2006; spaull, 2011). thus, to respond to these challenges with the intention of ameliorating and remedying them an equally complex research is required, which in my view is the one proposed, theorised and offered as bricolage (baker, miner & easley, 2003; denzin & lincoln, 2005; duymedjian & rüling, 2010; kinchloe, 2005; mahlomaholo, 2013a). these challenges, as dooyeweerd would have quipped, emanate from all the modalities of being human (basden, 2002). some of them are quantitative, referring to measurement and counting in terms of numbers. others are physical in nature, coming from the spaces and localities which are occupied by stakeholders, who are learners, educators, teachers, parents and all instances of civil society in education. these sometimes include a lack of or poor infrastructure such as the school buildings – leading to overcrowding in a few available ones – a lack of teaching and learning materials, and resources (resep, 2013). other problems originate from the physiological dimension of being human. here, reference is made to problems such as poor nutritional practices, malnutrition, poor ventilation due to air pollution and a lack of food security, which might be as a result of poverty (resep, 2013; rolleston & james, 2011; sheldon, 2006). dooyeweerd (1975), through his cosmonomic theory as the conceptual framework, identified 15 such modalities of being human, including the two already mentioned (basden, 2002). other modalities are the kinematic (movement), the biotic (growth and developmental processes), the psychological, the emotional, the cultural-historical (race, traditions, identity, origins, discursive practices, epistemic communities), the analytical, (cognition, thinking, intellect), education researchers as bricoleurs in the creation of sustainable learning environments sechaba mahlomaholo 173 the economic (social-class, socio-economic status, poverty, unemployment, inequality), the aesthetic (art, music, appreciation of beauty), the ethical, the social (community, belonging, neighbourhood, country, affiliation), the linguistic (language, communication, inter-subjectivity) the juridical (legal, fairness, justice), and the pistical (faith, religion, beliefs). these are the basic modalities, because in between them lie relationships between human beings and many other modes of being that have an impact on who we are and how we function as stakeholders in education, among other things. the point i want to make is that individuals, be they learners or whoever, present themselves as complete beings or as individuals, thus, those who cannot be divided any further without destroying who they are. the individual or the undividable consists of these 15 and more modalities but, to date, research has attempted to dis-member him/her for the sake of convenience and expediency. many studies informed by their respective disciplinary boundaries have focused on one or other of these 15 modalities, but never on all of them at the same time. i argue in this paper that this reductionism is the undoing of the good intentions of research to respond to the challenges facing the provision of quality education. margaret archer (1985a; 1985b; 1995) and roy bhaskar (1993; 2000; 2002) support this view of the human being/stakeholder in education as “an undividable” because privileging one dimension or modality over others ensures that, as researchers, we miss the point and the target for change and provision of quality education totally. as humans, our agency is constructed not only in the interstices between the social and the individual (archer, 1985a; 1985b; 1995; bhaskar, 1993; 2000; 2002), but more so within the coming together of all the modalities to constitute who we are in totality. the resolution of human problems, including those in education, has occupied the development of human enquiry from ancient times to date. for example, auguste comte said that, initially, human enquiry centred on faith only (the pistical) as the basis for understanding human nature, the whole of reality, and its problems, as well as for formulating meaningful and long-lasting solutions thereto (comte & bridges, 2009; comte & congrev, 2009; mahlomaholo & netshandama, 2012). for centuries, the power of the shaman, the medicine people, the priest and the diviners were uncontested until metaphysics emerged, questioning the validity of claims informed by religious and faith-based research procedures (comte & bridges, 2009; comte & congrev, 2009; mahlomaholo & netshandama, 2012). the main issue was that, if reasoning and logical argumentation (the analytic) did not couch and inform any research, then it was bound to err because the argument would be illogical and flawed. when the limitations of the purely faith-based research approaches had been exposed, philosophical argumentation informed by syllogistic reasoning came to the fore and reasoning became the new religion to which all research had to bow (comte & bridges, 2009; comte & congrev, 2009; mahlomaholo & netshandama, 2012). this ushered in the birth of positivism which has informed almost all research to date. perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 174 positivism covers well what denzin and lincoln refer to as the traditional period among the eight moments in the development of qualitative enquiry (baker et al., 2003; denzin & lincoln, 2005; duymedjian & rüling, 2010; kinchloe, 2005; mahlomaholo, 2013a). it became the new religion around the beginning of the 20th century. this approach to researching human and social issues, including education, advocated for the use of natural scientific procedures. this meant that, instead of studying the learner in totality, focus was to be on one aspect, such as cognition or behaviour or any one of the modalities referred to earlier (archer, 1995; bhaskar, 2002; denzin & lincoln, 2005; kinchloe, 2005; mahlomaholo, 2013a). other modes of being or aspects thereof were to be controlled for, isolated and taken out of the equation totally. research was to focus on that which remained constant across contexts, that which was universal and immutable (archer, 1995; bhaskar, 2002; denzin & lincoln, 2005; kinchloe, 2005; mahlomaholo, 2013a). denzin and lincoln talk about this as monumentalisation, thus, holding the fluid, the dynamic and changing dimensions of the human being static as if it were finite and incontestable (denzin & lincoln, 2005; kinchloe, 2005). the aim of doing so was that research could be able to determine the relations between cause and effect and then be able to predict future behaviour based on past patterns of functioning. the researcher conducting such research was viewed as an isolated genius who went into foreign territories/other people’s being to understand the “other’s” ways of doing things and to analyse those using the researcher’s tools and frames of reference, just like the colonialist would do (denzin & lincoln, 2005). quality in this kind of research was determined by objectivity, reliability, validity, predictability and formulation of general laws, among other things. the significant marker of this epoch was that the social sciences were kept separate and distinct from literature, because the former was regarded a science and the latter as an art form (denzin & lincoln, 2005). the next phase, according to denzin and lincoln, was called the modernist phase and tended to deepen the achievements of the traditional mode (denzin & lincoln, 2005; kinchloe, 2005). attempts were now made to make qualitative studies “more rigorous” where principles of internal and external validity were applied. establishing the relationship between cause and outcome with the aim of prediction was pursued with more rigour in the belief that human experiences can be subjected to the same processes of quantifiability as the objects of study in the natural sciences. there was still the greatest confidence that this kind of method would reveal the truth. but by the 1970s, researchers began questioning the value of adhering to only one theoretical framing, because it proved difficult to subject all human behaviour to the rule and procedures of positivism. many ways of doing research came to the fore because the methods of positivism could no longer guarantee the uncovering of the truth. then emerged a plethora of theoretical frameworks all covered under the ambit of blurred genres (denzin & lincoln, 2005; kinchloe, 2005). the role of the single researcher who was omnipotent and omniscient was questioned because it became education researchers as bricoleurs in the creation of sustainable learning environments sechaba mahlomaholo 175 clear that the truth was no longer one thing, but an ever-increasing complexity. participants in research were also found to have a great deal to contribute to the research process, and their voices were valourised. emphasis was placed on the multiplicity of perspectives that would yield thick descriptions of the research process, interpretations and findings, more than what positivism had made possible till then (denzin & lincoln, 2005; kinchloe, 2005). there was even greater interaction between the social and the human sciences as the boundaries between them became porous (denzin & lincoln, 2005; kinchloe, 2005). the above led directly to the crises in representation (denzin & lincoln, 2005; kinchloe, 2005). objectivity and the possibility of one truth emerging from research were contested. participants who were in the margins demanded attention and space in the centre of the discussions of research; their truth also had to be told. they could no longer rely on the “expertise” of the sole researcher who could have inserted his/her own understanding into the interpretation of their own experiences and thus destabilised what they had wanted to bring to the fore in the first instance. at the same time, a variety of new interpretive, qualitative perspectives emerged, including hermeneutics, structuralism, semiotics, phenomenology, cultural studies, and feminism. the above views then problematised the whole notion of objective, the truth, validity and reliability as it became apparent that all participants in research had their own ways of making sense of the research process as well as the findings that emerge from it. this led to the fifth moment, namely the postmodern (denzin & lincoln, 2005; kinchloe, 2005) in research where the small narratives of the local were preferred above the grand narratives of the positivists and post-positivists. when doing research, the researcher had to get closer to the research participants so as to understand their stories and ways of making sense better. the participants were to be elevated from the status of mere research subjects to that of participants who influenced the agenda for research from its conceptualisation, data collection and interpretation phases. then came the post-experimental moment (denzin & lincoln, 2005; kinchloe, 2005), which was defined in part by a concern for storytelling and composing ethnographies in new ways which gave back the participants of research their voices. their experiences, fears and aspirations became central to the research project. they could present these in whatever manner they felt comfortable with, for example, through photo voice, visuals or pictures. the above discussion has demonstrated what the seventh and eighth moments were all about the methodological contestation and the fractured futures (denzin & lincoln, 2005; kinchloe, 2005). the eighth moment also asks that the social sciences and the humanities become sites for critical conversations about democracy, race, gender, class, nation-states, globalisation, freedom and community (denzin & lincoln, 2005; kinchloe, 2005), as well as about equity, social justice, freedom, peace perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 176 and hope (mahlomaholo, 2013a), and not only about objectivity, reliability, validity, prediction, causality, generalisability, etc. the discussion of the eight moments above has led me to the conclusion that no single theoretical framework, method or interpretative style is adequate to yield results that can bring about change and transformation in as far as education is concerned. the eight moments show how the certainty of positivism alone can no longer hold because there is no way that one researcher can understand the challenges of learners and other stakeholders in education adequately, research the solutions thereto alone, and even suggest possible strategies to ameliorate them in isolation. creating sustainable learning environment (sule) using bricolage as frame being aware of the complexity of the challenges facing the provision of quality education in south africa, but more specifically in the free state province, we came together as a multiand inter-disciplinary team of 15 academics at the university of the free state (ufs), at both its qwaqwa and bloemfontein campuses, under the theme of sustainable learning environments (sule) (mahlomaholo, 2012a; 2012b; 2013a; 2013b). this theme was informed by various theories of learning describing how quality of education can be improved. these theories recognise that good performance is a result of both environmental factors and individual capabilities working together (mahlomaholo, 2012b; 2013b). for example, from piagetian genetic epistemology we learnt about accommodation and assimilation of images of objects from the environment in the construction of intrapsychic cognitive schema with innate potentialities serving as bases (mahlomaholo, 2012a; 2013b). nikita basov (2012) made us aware of how structural autonomy, which comprises the inherited innate potentialities of individuals, improved functioning through structural coupling with other people from one’s social context to produce structural congruence at a higher socio-intellectual level. teun van dijk (2007; 2009) provided us with the concepts of “socio-cognition” and “epistemic communities,” which implied that our sociality in conjunction with our innate potentialities played a significant role in the construction of who we are and how we make sense of the world. the concept of “learning environment” thus seemed to make sense when theorised in this way as marking the coming together of nature and nurture to produce identities, academic performances, etc. eric de corte, et al. (2003) and barry fraser’s (2002) idea of learning environments complemented our understanding and enabled us to talk about the possibility of improving the quality of education through positive adjustments in the environment where learning took place to such an extent that the whole person/learner could perform better. education researchers as bricoleurs in the creation of sustainable learning environments sechaba mahlomaholo 177 then we linked the notion of the learning environments to the united nation’s ideas of sustainable development and sustainable education, because sustainability was the ultimate intention of improving the learning environments. in fact, in 2015, the un’s sustainable development goals will drive processes and actions across the globe in order to complement the achievements of the millennium development goals. these development goals seem to be centred on economic development, environmental sustainability and social inclusivity (united nations conference on the sustainable development goals – uncsdg, 2014). these capture very aptly what our research team intends to do, which is to improve education in a sustainable manner in such a way that economic development for all is enhanced in a manner that respects and protects the environment and advances the agenda for equity, social justice, freedom, peace and hope for all. sustainability thus theorised implies that, for the performance of a learner (as an example) to be enhanced and sustained, there has to be involvement of all who could support, because the collective ensures inclusivity beyond one generation and one setting or one individual. couched in the abovementioned theorisation, we then used our work in the cohort supervision of 15 phd and 16 med students enrolled with our institution as the centrepiece of the efforts to create sule (mahlomaholo, 2013a; 2013b). these students came from the following provinces: kwazulu-natal, free state, eastern, northern and western cape, north west and gauteng. all these students are mature people working on full-time as teachers, principals of schools and officials in the provincial department of education, among other places. their common concern was to acquire competencies that would enable them to do research with the aim to improve their practices in their respective places of employment. our sule team responded to their needs by refocusing all our research on the improvement of teaching, learning, curriculum and governance in schools. as a team of 15 academics and 31 postgraduate students, we met monthly either in qwaqwa or bloemfontein alternatingly to present progress of our research from the different sites. during these monthly meetings, each of us would be allocated 45 minutes to present our work and members of the team would critique with the aim of improving on the research practice and the intended theorisation thereof. this would normally be preceded by a two-hour workshop on any relevant aspect of the research process. each of the students was also to create teams of co-researchers in their respective schools where they would collectively attempt to improve the quality of education regarding the specific focus of their studies. examples are titles such as: “using service learning to improve the teaching of physical science”, “formulating a strategy to enhance parental engagement at schools”, and “a frameworks to improve on the implementation of quality learning and teaching campaign”. invariably we found that the respective teams were constituted by teachers, learners, parents, the representatives of various instances of civil society, for instance, small business people in the given locality, faith-based organisations, the community based organisations, perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 178 non-governmental organisations, and the different government departments at various sites. it took a great deal of effort on the part of the students to establish these teams respectively and to ensure that they were functional. but once they were formed and working, there was a buzz of excitement and activity. the teams at different stages of their development started with information and brainstorming sessions where the student researchers played an important role initially. they shared turns and responsibilities with other team members to study and report on the relevant legislative imperatives and policy directives pertaining to a particular issue, and what previous research and theory have to say about the issue. each participant was expected to make their own contributions to the discussions through the medium they were most comfortable with. some used different languages, others used pictures, various art forms and so on to express their views. this plethora and multiplicity of voices were valued and validated as they brought into the conversations on improving quality of education different ways of knowing and being which, in many cases, were not readily available in the literature. after the brain-storming sessions had been conducted democratically and successfully, the sessions followed where each of the teams formulated their own vision and mission statements on those issues they were collectively investigating. these were followed by sessions where the teams reflected on their strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (swot analysis) as individuals and collectively with the aim to operationalise their respective vision and mission statements. the swot analysis was followed by another set of sessions where the teams identified five priorities each from the data generated by the swot analysis. these priorities were used to design the strategic plans to actualise them. each priority was linked to another five relevant activities that the teams discussed as being important to achieve their respective priority. each activity was linked to a person and/or task team that would help them organise and ensure that it would take place. particular resources and time frames were also identified and linked to each of the activities and responsible people. finally, the team designed the tools and the instruments that they would use monthly in order to monitor and reflect on their progress towards improving an aspect of education based on the plan described. the various plans were then operationalised by the respective teams. the student researchers’ role was to facilitate and lead those sections of the plan assigned to them by the various teams respectively. the supervisors would be with the teams at their research sites to support and encourage, and to contribute as members of those teams. every meeting, every session, every activity was either audioor video-recorded and were later transcribed to constitute data to be analysed. this information was shared during monthly meetings of students and their supervisors. peers and supervisors to the respective researcher provided further guidance and advice. workshops were conducted on the methods and strategies to analyse data during the abovementioned monthly education researchers as bricoleurs in the creation of sustainable learning environments sechaba mahlomaholo 179 meetings. the student researchers also read and participated in the debates that led to their taking ownership of a method or combination of methods for analysis and reporting of the findings in their dissertation, thesis or article. the collective accompanied each of the students from the beginning until the end of their studies, which is reflected in their theses. discussion and conclusion and conclusion: education researcher as bricoleur a multiplicity of strategies that were also multilayered from the beginning of the studies through to the end were used, and this constituted a bricolage that ensured that performance improved. irrespective of the focus of the research, we found that participation of this wide spectrum of stakeholders brought many advantages with it. the research students, like all other stakeholders, were exposed to many theoretical positions and perspectives beyond what they could have learnt from reading the literature only. they had to dig deep into their own abilities to network with participants from a wide range of backgrounds and interests. furthermore, they had to employ a multiplicity of strategies to generate and analyse an infinite amount of data. making sense of it all, proved to be a big challenge, but with the help of the rest of the team this problem was also overcome. the greatest benefit was for the local community that started to take the education of their children seriously and to discover the power they had in themselves to ensure their success. this kind of participation enhanced the performance of the schools directly as teachers started to learn from one another. confidence was built among them as they began to open themselves up to the constructive critiques of their peers and parent communities. the parents and the community became the integral part of the schools, and their voices became stronger as they also became knowledgeable about the various acts of parliament, policies, theories and strategies employed elsewhere to improve the quality of education. all participants graduated from being mere research subjects and research respondents to becoming co-researchers who even determined the research agenda with our research students on an equal basis. based on the above, it would seem that enhancing the understanding and responding to the challenges of the complexities of education are better served when investigated by an interand multi-disciplinary team of researchers, using a multiplicity of interpretative strategies at multiple layers of meaning. any one problem is linked to many others and requires specialised attention from many perspectives. for example, in order to understand the learners’ poor performance at school, such a research focuses on at least all the 15 modalities as described by dooyeweerd, because the root cause might lie in any one or a combination of them. the team in this case would ensure a dialectical relationship among the disciplinary, the interdisciplinary and the multidisciplinary, thus creating synergy. in other words, the challenge is analysed fully from the perspective of a specialised knowledge discipline, perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 180 but while that is happening, knowledge is brought in from other disciplines in order to yield a richer understanding thereof. bricolage as described above provided ample opportunities for this in our case. academics and students used their own areas of specialisms as the point of entry in understanding and resolving the problem. this was not only enriched by the inputs of peers and supervisors, but was taken to greater heights by the inputs from non-university co-researchers who brought their experiences and tacit knowledges which were shaped by years of trial and error in other sectors of society. bringing teams of researchers together also implies bringing together a diversity of philosophical and theoretical positions, as well as methods of enquiry, as suggested by kinchloe (2005). the discussion earlier has indicated that using a single method is limiting, that one discipline approach is problematic, that there is no longer any certainty about the established modes of knowledge production, that traditional practices of validity no longer hold and that the knower can no longer be separated from the known. bringing teams and all about them together, becomes the first step in the right direction. this move recognises that any one aspect of reality (for example, education or poor academic performance) is a part of a unified universal process. learner performance, as an example, cannot be studied alone; it has to be located in the totality of the learner’s experiences, aspirations and fears. when this contextualisation is made, the interconnected and implicate orders of reality which include the explicate ones (separateness), are revealed, discovered and capitalised upon for the good of the learner (kinchloe, 2005). performance, whatever it is, becomes meaningful when understood in such a setting. in fact, construction of meaning, which is what research is about, is always local, particular and context bound. furthermore, research always involves multiplicity of meanings. research that valourises these is bound to bring the participants’ understanding to the table without blurring it with the researcher’s monolithic interpretation. it is in this way that processes of empowering the participants can be engendered. the approach described above constitutes the complexity of what claude lévistrauss (denzin & lincoln, 2005; kinchloe, 2005) calls bricolage because it starts by taking the living process in which cultural entities are situated as the contexts for understanding and transforming them. the context exists outside of that which is being studied but, at the same time, it operates from the inside (that is, from within that which is being studied). for example, a learner’s intrapsychic cognitive functioning is also a reflection of his/her concrete material social context (although not limited to it) because the images and signals that ultimately constitutes the schema through which she/he makes sense of the world come from that setting. approaching research in this manner problematises the ideas of the truth and objectivity even further because, in actual fact, they are always context bound and not absolute as previously imagined. bringing the context into the process of interpretation and meaning making brings with it: education researchers as bricoleurs in the creation of sustainable learning environments sechaba mahlomaholo 181 … the hidden rules that define what a researcher can and cannot say, who possesses the power to speak/write about particular topics and who must listen/ read, and whose constructions of reality are valid and whose are unlearned and unimportant (kinchloe, 2005:356). this is the primary concern of a bricoleur: to interpret and to analyse reality, such that “more complex ways of producing knowledge that are conscious of the many tacit ways cultural assumptions wander unnoticed within the act of searching” (kinchloe, 2005: 356) are formulated and validated. participation of the parent communities, as well as all the instances of civil society in the research team, made us aware of multiple forms of knowledge and criteria of quality of research. cultural assumptions have embedded within them footprints of power (kinchloe, 2005), which the bricoleur has to uncover and understand because no fact is self-evident or pure. all of us were exposed to different ways in which power circulates among members of the school communities and among our research team. this circulation of power produced different forms of performance among learners, teachers and the whole team. these power differentials had to be negotiated from the beginning until the end because they informed what constituted knowledge worth capturing in the research reports. we became aware of how, as researchers in other modes of doing research, we have come to be invested with power that makes us oblivious of many assets which local communities have and which can be capitalised on in order to produce empowering experiences to all. refrences archer ms 1985a. the myth of cultural integration. british journal of sociology, 36: 3. archer ms 1985b. culture and agency. the place of culture in social theory. cambridge: cambridge university press. archer ms 1995. realist social theory: the morphogenetic approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. baker t, miner as & easley dt 2003. improvising firms: bricolage, account giving and improvisational competencies in the founding process. research policy, 255-276. basden a 2002. the critical theory of herman dooyeweerd? journal of information technology, 17(4): 257-269. basov n 2012. knowledge 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skills and resources from the school, neighbouring schools and wider community outside the school to improve their teaching practices. despite the continuous curriculum changes, the nature of the discipline of accounting and the school’s context, accounting teachers were able to identify and utilise assets at different levels, starting from the talents and capacities of learners. the paper concludes that instead of using the deficits as a starting point in development of accounting teachers, development must build upon the capacities and strengths that exist within the school community. keywords: accounting teachers; asset-based community development; rural school; teachers’ experiences; teachers’ practices 1. introduction the south african education system has experienced major shifts in the curriculum regulatory framework: curriculum 2005 (c2005) and the revised national curriculum statement (rncs) that was implemented in 2006 in the further education and training (fet) phase as the national curriculum statement (ncs). despite the fact that teachers were still unsure of what was expected of them in terms of the curriculum changes (bantwini, 2010), ongoing implementation challenges led to another curriculum review in 2009 that resulted in the introduction of the curriculum and assessment policy statements (caps) in 2012. while these curriculum changes are evident in the subject of accounting, the technical nature of the subject is affected by changes in international reporting standards (evans, 2011). the impact of these can be seen in the accounting caps with significant shifts in the subject matter author: dr jc ngwenya1 affiliation: 1university of kwazulu-natal doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v38i1.6 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(1): 72-87 published: 11 june 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8256-8174 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.6 73 ngwenya assets teachers identify for the teaching of accounting education 2020 38(1): 73-87 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.6 content due to restructuring of the existing content and addition of new topics (department of education [doe], 2008, 2011). the changes, especially in the content covered, also affected the way in which accounting as a subject is conceptualised. these curriculum changes were not easily welcomed by all teachers as they placed new demands on the seasoned teachers who were required to make changes in their classroom practices as well as to teach new content, some of which they themselves had never been taught (mogashoa, 2013). phasing in these new policies therefore meant that all teachers involved have had to adopt new approaches to teaching, learning and assessment (bantwini, 2010; kostina, 2015). teachers were expected to attend workshop offered by the department of education aimed at enhancing teacher professional development to meet changes into the new curriculum policy. however, research shows that these initiatives do not always lead to improvement in teacher learning and classroom practice as they do not take into consideration teachers’ classroom needs (bantwini, 2010; kostina, 2015; mogashoa, 2013; rampa, 2014). in addition, workshops usually take place away from school and separate from the classroom context in which teachers are expected to apply what they have learnt (bantwini, 2010). furthermore, teachers often complain that after attending such workshops, subject specialists do not provide them with follow-up visits to support and monitor implementation thereof in the classrooms, especially in rural school context (bantwini, 2010; mogashoa, 2013; ngwenya, 2012). the assumption is that because teachers attended workshops, they have learnt new knowledge that can change their practices. such workshops focused on teachers’ deficiencies and problems. these workshops are mostly based on what the government assumes will better respond to rural education challenges, without recognising that rural communities have their resources within their context (ebersöhn & ferreira, 2012; stoltenberg, 2015). according to the ministerial report on rural education (doe, 2005), department of education has adopted the needs-based approach as the prominent approach to teacher development initiatives. such a model focused on defining and identifying the teachers’ problems and coming up with a blanket solution without assessing what teachers think will address their challenges better. as a result, the employment of the needs-based model has partly contributed to failure of the department of education to address teacher development challenges. a growing body of literature (myende, 2015; myende & hlalele, 2018; nkambule, 2017; venter, 2010) shows that rural communities and their schools have various forms of capacities, abilities, talents, skills and resources as their assets. basing strategies for development on the assets already existing in the community, entails allowing local people to invest their strengths and capacities towards improving themselves. this implies applying bottom-up approaches where rural schools do not rely on outside experts as sole provider of all solutions to their problems. this means that teachers should be the ones who should plan their own professional development initiatives rather than having those initiatives planned by other people. while there is extensive literature on rural communities internationally and in south africa as having a plethora of challenges (du plessis, 2014; mettler, 2016), few studies have examined rural schools as generative and enabling spaces (balfour, 2012; mukeredzi, 2013; myende & hlalele, 2018; ngwenya, 2012). furthermore, literature shows that most teachers in rural schools only engage in professional learning in an individual capacity and when it is obligatory. this study aims to draw insights from under-resourced schools where teachers’ pedagogy and actions are often viewed as deficient. the aim is not to judge rural teachers 74 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 74-87 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.6 but to understand their practices, taking the perspective that rural communities provide assets rather than provide problems to be solved from external resources only. the study addresses the following questions: what resources do accounting teachers draw on in the teaching of accounting in rural secondary schools in kwazulu-natal? how do accounting teachers use the identified resources in the teaching of accounting? 2. literature review teaching of accounting accounting is generally regarded as the technical language of business used to communicate financial information (barac & du plessis, 2014; myers, 2016). besides the development and mastery of unique accounting skills, concepts and processes, accounting learners need to be equipped with critical thinking, communicating, collecting, analysing, interpreting and organising skills to be able to communicate appropriate financial decisions (barac & du plessis, 2014; department of basic education [dbe], 2011; myers, 2016). to achieve this aim, scholars have called for a shift from the dominant traditional approach used in teaching accounting to a more active approach where learners are fully engaged in the pedagogical process (pereira & sithole, 2020; erasmus & fourie, 2018; evans, 2011). for learners to acquire and develop these skills, erasmus and fourie (2018) suggest that learners should be given a variety of assessment tasks to engage them in discussion while challenging them to think creatively (myers, 2016; pereira & sithole, 2020). in accounting, assessment is viewed as an open dialogue or twoway communication between the learner and the teacher (barac & du plessis, 2014; thomson & washington, 2015). this dialogue foregrounds on-going provision of feedback and learner support during the process of teaching and learning (parr & timperley, 2010). this accentuates the use of different teaching and assessment strategies to stimulate learning of different skills learners require to think critically when solving financial problems. the context of rural schools in sa despite recurring implementation of new education policies, inconsistencies in accessing quality education remain a plague in rural areas (du plessis, 2014; hlalele, 2014). according to balfour (2012), the most pervasive features of rural communities in south african is poverty. inadequate infrastructure in south african rural schools (buildings, icts, etc.) and lack of basic services (water, sanitation, etc.) affects access to and the quality of education (hlalele, 2014). because the schools are located far apart, poor roads limit reliable transport. consequently, learners walk long distances to get to school. furthermore, transport difficulties emanating from long distances to towns and the poor conditions of roads and bridges to schools often constrict subject advisors’ visits. as a result, rural teachers often have less access to support and professional development opportunities than their urban counterparts. furthermore, rural communities are characterised by high illiteracy levels. lower level of education contributes to parents’ inability to monitor and to provide support for their children (du plessis, 2014). in addition, home conditions in rural areas are often not conducive to children studying, as they often lack facilities such as electricity. even though these are the dominant narratives in rural education, my argument in this paper is that rural schools should not necessarily be seen in a context of deficit as communities within the schools have the capacity to sustain initiatives that are locally developed. 75 ngwenya assets teachers identify for the teaching of accounting education 2020 38(1): 75-87 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.6 teaching in rural schools the issue of overcrowded classrooms and lack of resources is of great concern in rural schools as it reduces the quality of education (fasasi & amadi, 2015; marais, 2016; myende, 2015; myende & hlalele, 2018; mtika, 2011). teachers often complain that teaching in overcrowded classrooms does not allow enough time and space for a variety of teaching and assessment strategies to accommodate different teaching and learning styles (marais, 2016). although the doe has made attempts to alleviate rural education challenges, the reality is that the difficulties still persist. studies conducted by fasasi and amadi (2015) and mtika (2011) reveal that although teachers were faced with challenges of teaching in overcrowded classrooms with limited resources, they managed to devise alternate strategies. learners were required to do activities and solve problems collaboratively, where the more capable learners led the discussion within the group. in mtika’s (2011) study, teachers encouraged class participation by dividing learners into small groups. this created a small-class atmosphere in a large-class setting to promote interaction among learners. küçükler and kodal (2019) are of the view that teachers can use peer or group feedback in the classroom to reduce the number of scripts that they had to mark. in the study conducted by fasasi and amadi (2015) on large classes in nigeria, teachers provided feedback by using random marking, and choosing and reading the scripts of a few learners from different groups in class, while other learners marked their work. tucker (2012) suggests that learners can play the role of teachers’ assistants when the teacher entrusts some of the work to responsible and more able learners. in this way, learners become active learners and the teacher’s role becomes that of facilitator who initiates classroom discussions to ensure that all the learners achieve understanding for meaningful and effective learning (moore & teather, 2013; tucker, 2012). küçükler and kodal (2019) expound that assigning duties to learners gives them a sense of responsibility where they feel valued and significant in the classroom. this can increase learner independence as they share responsibilities during the teaching and learning process. the above studies highlight how teachers in disadvantaged contexts manipulated available resources (assets) to further teaching and learning. this article aims to contribute to literature on rural education by foregrounding the resources that teachers in rural kwazulu-natal schools exploited in enhancing teaching and learning. 3. theoretical framework this study is framed by kretzmann and mcknight’s (1993) asset-based community development (abcd) theory. this theory recognises the importance of the capacities of individuals and their associations in building local communities and strengthening relationships. it is an approach to community building that sees community members as active change agents rather than passive beneficiaries. kretzmann and mcknight describe abcd theory as a process of community building that starts with locating the assets, skills and capacities of residents and local institutions. the theory proposes that development should be based on the capacities and assets already existent in the communities. in practice this means that the strategies for community development are not built on what is needed or what is absent or problematic in the community, but instead on what is existent in the community (green & haines, 2012). with this, kretzmann and mcknight refer especially to the individual abilities of the community members as well as the associations and institutions that are present in the community. 76 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 76-87 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.6 asset based community development theory is based on the belief that individuals, families and communities have plenty of unexploited resources that they can utilise to solve their own problems (myende, 2015; stoltenberg, 2015). it shifts the focus from a needs-based approach that is based on deficit thinking or seeing people or communities as lacking, needy and problems to be solved from outside (henry, 2013; myende & hlalele, 2018). the needsbased approach focuses on deficiencies that avert communities from acknowledging their strengths, capacities and consider the possibility of accessing assets and resources in order to improve their schools. green and haines (2012) describe this approach as often top-down and outside-in as it begins with what is absent in the community and relies heavily on the help from external agents (stoltenberg, 2015). this approach encourages the residents within the community to circumvent “local assets and resources as residents come to believe that their well-being depends upon being a client” (kretzmann & mcknight, 1993:2). consequently, this approach creates communities who are consumers rather than the active citizens who can devise problem solving strategies for their community. the needs-based approach is often regarded as the contributory factor to the failure of the government initiatives in developing teachers due to the deficit model in dealing with challenges (ebersöhn & ferreira, 2012; myende, 2015). the asset-based approach, therefore, is presented as an alternative to the needs-based approach. abcd theory encourages collaborative participation of all stakeholders and open access to information, as people offer their talents, time and experiences. the theory is in line with the principles and practice of the integrated strategic planning framework for teacher education and development (ispfted) that emphasises collaborative, collective and self-directed teacher development where learning is a professional responsibility of teachers themselves (dbe; dhet, 2011). several studies (ebersöhn & ferreira, 2012; myende, 2015; myende & hlalele, 2018; venter, 2010) have argued for the value of an asset-based approach in addressing the various challenges faced by learners in general and in rural schools in particular. however, literature reviewed reveals that there is a dearth of studies on the value of asset-based approach in addressing challenges faced by teachers in rural schools particularly in accounting. this framework (kretzmann & mcknight, 1993) is used in this study to present rural accounting teachers as capable individuals who are able to identify and utilise assets and resources from their community as basis for their development. it also shows how teachers’ practices can be an opportunity to see what is available in rural schools to improve accounting teaching. 4. methodology the study that informs this article was conducted in a rural secondary school located in umgungundlovu district in kwazulu-natal. conducting the study in a rural school was based on the belief that individuals and learning contexts have capacities, skills and resources that can contribute to improve teaching and learning (ebersohn & eloff, 2006). i was intending to work with three accounting specialists who were teaching accounting in the fet band i.e. in grades 10, 11 and 12 in the same school. the choice of the school was based on the number of accounting teachers and the experience and expertise of the accounting teachers. while there were three high schools in the ward, i chose to conduct research in one school with three accounting teachers. therefore, three accounting teachers who were teaching 77 ngwenya assets teachers identify for the teaching of accounting education 2020 38(1): 77-87 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.6 accounting in the fet band in three grades were purposively selected in one rural school with the expectation that they would provide the information about their practices in teaching accounting. the number of participants is supported by gay, mills and airasian (2009) and schulze (2003) who assert that in a qualitative research study, the researcher selects a small number of participants who will serve as key informants because its aim is strictly to get an in-depth understanding and description of a given phenomenon under study (farrugia, 2019). the pseudonyms zodwa, bona and lizwi are used to protect confidentiality and anonymity. the interpretivist qualitative case study approach was considered suitable for this study as i was interested in understanding the meaning people have constructed in making sense of their practices and experiences, and how they structure their social world (cohen, manion & morrison, 2018; rule & john, 2011). semi-structured one-on-one interviews were conducted to probe the accounting teachers’ experiences and practices. interviews were conducted at the participants’ workplace during their free periods and took approximately 45 minutes. the ethical procedures that included informed consent, confidentiality and anonymity, and voluntary participation were explained to the participants and adhered to throughout the duration of the study. permission to conduct the study was requested and received from the university of kwazulu-natal and the provincial department of education in kwazulu-natal. the data set obtained from semi-structured interviews was analysed using thematic analyses (cohen et al., 2018). i began the process by familiarising myself with the data through transcribing audio-data to textual-data and reading the transcripts several times to identify units of meaning, in order to access the deeper meaning of the responses received. a process of open coding was used, and categories were established, reviewed and clustered into specific themes to report the findings. 5. findings based on the framework, the following themes emerged: assets of individuals within the school, assets within the rural community and wider community assets. verbatim quotes are provided in the discussion of each theme to ensure that in the presentation of findings, the teachers’ voices are not lost. 5.1 assets of individuals within the school accounting teachers in this rural context gave primacy to a “shared practice” rather than a “transmitted” way of teaching. as a result, they utilised learners, other teachers and senior teachers as assets to one another within the school. 5.1.1 learners as assets to one another learner to learner interaction was repeatedly identified as key asset for enabling effective teaching of accounting by all participants. teachers, therefore, created spaces for learners to work collaboratively while learning from each other. teachers believed that learning accounting individually could be challenging for learners. they felt that learners learn better if they interact with one another and learn in a social manner. teachers saw group discussions as a very beneficial strategy that helped learners to do calculations using different methods, which helped in efficacy and accuracy. this is what lizwi said: “sometimes they use different methods to calculate answers. it is better if they do calculations together and analyse transactions and adjustments as a group”. the nature 78 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 78-87 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.6 of the discipline called for learners to use different methods to get the answers. teachers encouraged learners to share different methods of doing calculations, especially when doing complex calculations thereby helping other learners: if they are doing class work and there are difficult calculations, i ask them to help each other. this helps because someone can come up with an easy method which can help other learners. (zodwa) in accounting learners are frequently faced with challenging financial problems, which they have to solve together in order to develop higher-order reasoning and problem-solving skills. teachers felt that it was valuable and useful if learners could solve financial problems together: when they are solving problems, they are asked to give advice and comments. they come up with different answers. other learners learn from those answers. (bona) findings suggest that learners in accounting classes in the rural school were not merely passive learners; their skills and abilities were used to improve learning. 5.1.2 teacher-learners interaction as assets teachers also identified teacher-learner interaction as key asset for enabling effective teaching of accounting. time pressure hindered accounting teachers from checking thoroughly whether learners had actually done classwork and independent practise before providing solutions in class. consequently, they shared the responsibility of providing feedback with learners. it was the learners’ responsibility to write solutions on the board while their teachers were checking and marking workbooks. this is what zodwa said: i ask one learner to facilitate the marking. he writes corrections on the board and others give the answers. this gives me a chance to check and mark their workbooks. teachers only attend to the whole class when learners were experiencing difficulty and needed assistance. bona confirmed this by saying: “i only intervene if there is a problem”. entrusting the provision of solutions to the learners allowed teachers an opportunity to observe learners, provide assistance as well as mark and check their work. teachers valued the importance of understanding the requirements of the task before attempting it. when learners were given activities, teachers emphasised the importance of understanding instructions. before giving solutions on the board, learners were reminded to review the task requirements and asked to read instructions as a class in order to make sense of every step of the questions together. bona confirmed this, saying: i want them to read the instructions together so that they all know what is expected. i also remind them about the instructions before we mark homework. what is evident is that teachers identify those aspects of their interactions with learners that are valuable in shaping their learning. 5.1.3 teachers as assets to one another at the level of rural school, fellow teachers appeared to be instrumental in accounting teaching. teachers indicated that they often met as commerce teachers within the school and shared the resources that were distributed. this gave them time to discuss new teaching strategies and share their experiences in putting those strategies and new ideas into practice. 79 ngwenya assets teachers identify for the teaching of accounting education 2020 38(1): 79-87 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.6 this view is revealed in what zodwa stated: “we discuss our problems that we face in class. we also share different strategies to teach new topics”. teachers felt that their commerce meetings played a significant role in their understanding of new topics and teaching strategies. considerable changes were evident in the way they taught and assessed in accounting. teachers considered collective lesson planning as a beneficial strategy where teachers planned their lessons together with colleagues across the grades within accounting after prior conversation and deliberation on working strategies through sharing. my problem is with teaching methods. in our commerce meetings we learn a lot about new topics and teaching strategies. that is why we meet and plan lessons together. (lizwi) accounting teachers created a collegial interaction where they shared their resources and expertise. they also used their colleagues as a source of knowledge about instructional practices. 5.1.4 school management-teacher communication accounting teachers spoke glowingly of their management in relation to supporting them. accounting teachers were allowed to meet anytime if the need arose. teachers appreciated how management offered advice and encouragement. during our meetings we also share our problems with assessment and discuss different ways of teaching difficult sections like cash flow statement. (zodwa) each new teacher was paired with a senior teacher who was regarded as a mentor. this was done to help young and inexperienced teachers to adapt quickly in the schoolwork. lizwi, as a novice teacher, enjoyed having unplanned or informal meetings anytime with her seniors: sometimes i do not wait for the meeting, we meet anytime. if i have a problem i go to zodwa or bona…they are my senior teachers. lizwi enjoyed the informal chats she had with her senior colleagues anytime during the day. she acknowledged the advice and support she received from the management and her senior colleagues. lesson observations were also regarded as a strategy to develop new teachers. zodwa, as a mentor, was required to observe lizwi’s class once every month and give suggestions and comments on her lesson. lizwi believed that such classroom visits were extremely helpful for her own teaching practices: “after the lesson we meet, she offered advice and encouragement”. in the same vein, bona commented: “zodwa is our deputy principal and our experienced leader (master teacher) in commerce department. she knows everything”. in this way senior and experienced teachers within the school were viewed as a source of information and guidance by other teachers. 5.2 assets within the rural community teachers spoke of sharing resources with other teachers outside the school community during accounting workshops and cluster meetings. these meetings created spaces for teachers to talk about their challenges and to share skills and practices that were unique to each teacher or to each school. 80 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 80-87 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.6 5.2.1 accounting workshops teachers indicated that accounting workshops they attended to prepare them for implementation of caps were not informative, yet these meetings provided a platform to speak out and ask for support and guidance from different teachers. bona mentioned how they used the doe workshops: we meet with many teachers from a district. we discuss different issues and share all the different ideas about methods of explaining new topics. it encourages me to try new things in my class. teachers got an opportunity to talk about their challenges that they were encountering during the teaching of the new topics. zodwa’s interaction with other accounting teachers when attending workshops revolved around the exchange and sharing of expertise to strengthen their subject matter knowledge and instructional strategies: we discuss our problems, especially in new topics and advise each other about different teaching strategies…i try to incorporate the new strategies with the methods that i have been using. zodwa thus adapted her teaching and allowed more creative ways of teaching and learning through the integration of new knowledge with her existing knowledge. zodwa further indicated that she attended numerous workshops organised by subject advisors for grade 12 teachers only. after she had attended workshops, she met with all accounting teachers within her own school to share information and the resources distributed by the doe: “i gain a lot from grade 12 workshops. we discuss the plan for common tests and guidelines for final exams. we also receive handouts”. zodwa took it upon herself to support and disseminate information and materials obtained from the workshops to other teachers within the department of commerce. this was confirmed by lizwi: we are depending on zodwa because she gives us all the information and documents she receive from her workshops. accounting teachers thus used their meetings during workshops as a place to speak out and ask for support and guidance from different teachers regarding their challenges they were encountering during the teaching of the new topics. 5.2.2 accounting cluster meetings cluster meetings were regarded as a vital source of learning and support. teachers’ responses revealed that they met with other accounting teachers from neighbouring schools as a cluster for the purpose of moderating school-based assessment and supporting each other. after moderation, teachers use the opportunity to discuss issues pertaining to teaching and learning in their classrooms. this is reflected in what zodwa said: “during our meetings we also share our problems and discuss different ways of teaching difficult sections like cash flow statements ...” 81 ngwenya assets teachers identify for the teaching of accounting education 2020 38(1): 81-87 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.6 during cluster meetings teachers deliberated on challenges they faced regarding the teaching and assessment of accounting. bona’s main source of learning about assessment was through collaboration with experienced teachers. he valued the varied expertise and views from different teachers. this also helped him to change his assessment practices. i remember there is a teacher who told me about the easy method of introducing asset disposal. my learners are enjoying this topic now (bona). zodwa shared specific expertise with commerce teachers, and this contributed to the development and learning of her colleagues: my extensive experience as an accounting teacher and a grade 12 nsc [national senior certificate] examinations marker is helping in the department. even the quality of marking and the setting of tests have changed in the commerce department. networking across schools in the cluster gave teachers opportunities for sharing resources and generating solutions to subject-related common problems and instructional strategies. while accounting teachers learn collaboratively, they also use their colleagues as a source of knowledge about instructional practices. 5.3 wider community assets accounting teachers acknowledge the importance of support they received from the wider community. there were frequent references to dbe policies and higher education institutions. 5.3.1 policies as assets teachers mentioned that there were dbe policies, especially those related to accounting education, they were using. these policies helped teachers with content, templates for financial statements, methodologies to be employed, assessment tasks and criteria. i am using the policy documents. there are examples of all the statements like cash flow statement and the work schedules (zodwa). other documents provided teachers with different assessment strategies. “there are documents in school with examples that i use to assess learners using different strategies” (lizwi).teachers valued and were still using curriculum materials that they had received when the new curriculum was implemented and they regarded them as an integral part of their daily work. 5.3.2 postgraduate academic pursuit in higher education institution enrolment in higher education institutions offered teachers the opportunity to access valuable resources necessary to improve their classroom practice in accounting. changes in the curriculum compelled zodwa to upgrade her qualifications. zodwa qualified as a teacher before the implementation of changes in the accounting curriculum. as a head of commerce discipline, she felt that she did not have sufficient knowledge of the new topics in accounting. in addition, studying helped zodwa to improve her knowledge of accounting, thereby influencing her ability to engage with new content. there was new content. i knew that there was a gap. even myself i did not know anything about ethics and control before, until i did auditing. 82 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 82-87 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.6 to keep up to date with the rapid changes in the accounting curriculum, zodwa felt an urgency to continue with her studies in accounting to develop pedagogical content knowledge where she had gaps. besides the need to improve the qualifications, enrolment in higher education institutions offered bona the opportunity to access valuable resources necessary to improve his classroom practice in accounting: even though my aim was to improve my qualifications, i am learning a lot about assessment and teaching strategies from the university of kzn. i am using assignments, presentations and reports to assess my learners. lizwi, who was doing honours, benefitted from discussions and shared pedagogical knowledge related to teaching and assessment: “those classes helped me a lot with teaching and assessment strategies. i also share my study materials with other teachers in school”. 6. discussion the purpose of this study is to explore the resources accounting teachers draw on in the teaching of accounting and how accounting teachers use the identified resources in the teaching of accounting in a rural school. findings showed that accounting teachers used learners as assets to one another in numerous ways. learners were provided an opportunity to share their individual gifts and capacities (ebersöhn & ferreira, 2012; ebersöhn & eloff, 2006) with others with the aim of promoting peer support to facilitate better teaching and learning of accounting. missingham (2017) highlighted that when learners are involved in their learning and the learning of their peers, they often gain a new sense of belonging and respect for each other. this view is confirmed in this study as teachers encouraged learner to learner interaction by creating spaces for learners to learn collaboratively to build on their own and on other learners’ knowledge and ideas to develop thinking in accounting. in addition, teachers valued communal reading of instructions to help learners to make sense of the task requirements together. in addition, rural accounting teachers shared the responsibility of providing feedback with learners to offer both individual and communal feedback. while checking the work and assisting individual learners, teachers allowed learners to lead the process of providing feedback to each other. this is in line with küçükler and kodal (2019) and missingham (2017) who say that for feedback to be effective, it is crucial to ensure that all learners are able to engage with the feedback and construct their own meaning thereof. this learner engagement brought about teaching values of responsibility to the learners and even the possibilities of becoming lifelong learners. allowing learners to provide feedback to their peers taught them peer evaluation as a core value which is also beneficial to their growth. during this teacher-learner interaction the capacities and skills of the teachers and learners were utilised to develop accounting teachers’ practices. accounting teachers further created a collegial interaction during commerce meetings where they used their colleagues as a source of knowledge about instructional practices. as pointed out by jita and mokhele (2012) and henry (2013), these meetings were regarded as core places of learning that encouraged collaboration, sharing of resources and expertise. these meetings also create opportunities for mentoring and support of inexperienced teachers 83 ngwenya assets teachers identify for the teaching of accounting education 2020 38(1): 83-87 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.6 by learning collaboratively and sharing expertise (kostina, 2015). because of informal discussions and constant communication between accounting teachers, help and support was easily accessible from senior and experienced commerce teachers within the school. the status of zodwa as an experienced and seasoned accounting teacher, for an example, was valued by the commerce teachers. this is consistent with rampa (2014) who argue that the school setting is the place where teachers directly interact with their learners and colleagues which allows for the opportunity to deal with issues that directly influence them. accounting teachers identified and utilised assets within the rural community beyond rural schools, especially teachers in other schools. during workshops and cluster meetings, teachers offered each other ongoing support and shared their existing expertise to strengthen their subject matter knowledge and instructional strategies. findings are in accord with mukeredzi (2013) and steyn’s (2011) findings that indicate that workshops and cluster meetings created a platform for collaborative participation and open access to information, as accounting teachers offer their talents, time and experiences. all participating teachers spoke of instances of wider community support for the effective teaching of accounting. dbe policies were beneficial regarding content, methodologies to be employed, assessment tasks and criteria. in addition, enrolment in higher education institutions offered teachers the opportunity to access valuable resources necessary to improve their classroom practice in accounting. this is viewed as an all-encompassing process in which the contributions and support of all are valued and appreciated in the development of accounting teachers (green & haines, 2012; kretzmann, 2010). 7. conclusion in a country that is plagued with recurring curriculum changes, this article sought to explore the resources accounting teachers draw on and how they use the identified resources in the teaching of accounting in a rural school. based on a case study of one school in kwazulunatal, the findings revealed that challenges presented to rural teachers by continuous policy changes in education created a strong need for teachers to devise professional learning strategies for coping with and adapting to the change, especially in a unique subject such as accounting. as a result, accounting teachers in rural contexts recognised the role of other stakeholders as assets in the teaching of accounting. they used capacities, skills and resources from the school, shared practices of accounting teachers from neighbouring schools and the wider community outside the school to improve their teaching practices. despite the school’s context, accounting teachers were able to identify assets at different levels, starting from learners, ideas and strategies from commerce teachers’ meetings and their involvement in continued postgraduate studies in higher education institutions. all of the available assets in the school community were utilised by accounting teachers in ways that extended their knowledge and efficiency in the teaching of accounting. teachers expressed strong pride in learners’ roles as assets in the teaching of accounting. learning from experienced teachers encouraged ongoing development in their discipline. as teachers exercised their capacities, they often found they needed the talents of others inside and outside the school. what was evident in this rural school was that individuals combined their own talents with the capacities of others and this made extensive and valuable contributions to their teaching practices. accounting teachers from nearby schools were working together, sharing teaching 84 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 84-87 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.6 challenges, resources and pedagogical strategies as a community of teachers (kostina, 2015). this encouraged collaborative and collegial learning amongst teachers (steyn, 2011). this paper demonstrates how, instead of using the deficits as a starting point in developing accounting teachers, the strengths of the community of practice can be used to address teachers’ difficulties (kretzmann, 2010). these teachers learnt and worked collaboratively with colleagues sharing their resources and expertise and reversing the notion that being underprivileged only produces problems (kretzmann, 2010). in this way accounting teachers were able to recognise and acknowledge their existing skills, knowledge and expertise and how these may be used to enhance their teaching practices. the accounting teachers in this rural school context were seen as capable people with a sense of how to draw on a range of assets to address the challenges they encountered in the teaching of accounting. the perspective taken by abcd theory demonstrates how accounting teachers deal with curriculum changes and the teaching and learning challenges by nurturing existing assets rather than becoming dependent on other sources (henry, 2013). it has also attempted to deflate the misconception that rural teachers are insufficiently focused on professional growth and learning. there is a need to understand rural teachers’ practices and what is behind these practices instead of judging and condemning them as deficient. focusing on rural communities as having problems may obscure the only internal assets located in rural areas and within rural people (ngwenya, 2012). we see a shift from deficit thinking to a thinking where learners and teachers become assets to one another. finally, being a case study, the results of the article may not be generalised to an entire population. the conclusions are based on the experiences of accounting teachers in one rural secondary school. as such, the outcome derived from a wider sample may differ. moreover, this context therefore paves the way for stakeholders to believe that it is still possible to progress in academic excellence through trust and collaboration as motivational factors for these teachers. however, there is room for further research on the success of using assets within the school in the teaching of accounting. succeeding research could explore if the strategies followed by these accounting teachers are actually working for increased performance and adding to school success. perhaps, subsequent researchers should consider increasing the sample size or even include all other fet commerce subjects to see what sort of findings may be generated. 8. statement regarding ethical clearance the ethical code of conduct and requirements set for empirical research by the tertiary institution’s ethics committee were adhered to in 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queer issues in south african higher education institutions, including the challenging of homophobia and its manifestations. keywords: higher education; transformation; homophobia; queer theory; intersectionality introduction transformation scholarship in higher education has tended to centre on race and, by extension, gender, framed by the political and socio-economic transition from apartheid to a democratic south africa (fourie, 1999). this has been important in addressing the legacy of apartheid within the systemic transformation of higher education institutions. however, the selective focus has done little to address other forms of discrimination such as homophobia– “the individual and societal contempt for and prejudice against [same-sex desiring individuals]” (walters & hayes, 1998: 2). while it is no secret that queer1 students in higher education institutions mostly do not enjoy favourable experiences (see the ministerial report 2008), the general response has been to ignore the issue, with parity in terms of race and sex being the main priority areas for both researchers and institutional administrators. this article contests this static and limited approach, not least on its superficial framing of power and oppression. the reduction to racial and gender parity creates boundaries between those who are perceived as victims and those who are perceived as perpetrators, silencing questions as to how race may be sexualised, how gender may be classed, and how class may be raced. instead, a queer approach towards transformation is needed. this approach would foreground discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, while highlighting the multiple, pluralistic ways in which identification is performed. the article draws on existing research, personal experiences (as a student and now staff member at the university of kwazulu-natal) as well as my current research project aimed at addressing homophobia in secondary schools and higher education institutions in south africa. i begin with a discussion on the meaning of queer theory and its associated concepts. i then present a review of literature on the daily experiences of queer students in higher education institutions internationally and in south africa specifically. this is followed by a discussion that demonstrates the need for the adoption of a queer approach. the article is not driven by the need to quantitatively present experiences of homophobia; rather it seeks to qualitatively highlight the patterns and nature of homophobia, through the experiences discussed, so as to argue for a more inclusive, complex approach towards transformation. jansen (1998: 106) highlighted the importance of using critical incidents in the study of transformation as these “tell us more about the nature and extent of transformation than any official documents or quantified outputs [would]”. radebe and taylor (2010) similarly argue that critical incidents can “bring out” issues which are often ignored in the study of transformation. whiteford and mcalister (2007: 74) write that [critical incidents] are context bound, generate thick description of specific phenomena and allow for iterative processes, that is, the person experiencing and recounting the incident is able to review the story over and over again, understanding it in different ways and with greater degrees of depth. 66 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 in essence, critical incidents in this article serve to foreground issues which are silenced by the politics of heteronormativity, the belief that heterosexuality is the norm in terms of gender and sexuality (warner, 1991). on theory and concepts this work is, to a large extent, based on queer theory, the growing and contested postmodernist body of knowledge which positions forms of identification as fluid and multiple. ‘queer’ is often used by many (but not all) queer theorists, including this study, as an umbrella term referring to gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (lgbt) people. queer theory includes “sexualities and gender identities that are outside [the] heterosexual [identity] and [challenges] gender categories” (renn, 2010: 132). to be ‘queer’ is not necessarily perceived as an ‘identity’ in the stable and fixed sense. as youdell (2010: 88) explains “queer is about interrogating how discourses of sex and sexuality are implicated in processes of subjectivation that constitute subjects who are sexed and sexualized in particular ways”. queer theory challenges modernist forms of ‘identity’ construction as these “rely on fixed definitions of gender and sexuality [which] limit what can be known about the identities and experiences of lgbt students, faculty and administrators” (youdell, 2010: 132). in choosing queer theory, therefore, i seek to move away from a discourse which privileges unitary, static identities, to an understanding that “seeks to place the question of sexuality as the centre of concern, and as the key category through which other social, political, and cultural phenomena are to be understood” (edgar & sedgewick, 1999: 321). queer theory “critically analyzes the meaning of identity, focusing on intersections of identity and resisting oppressive social constructions of sexual orientation and gender” (abes & kasch, 2007: 620). it also locates the multiple, performed nature of identification beyond the category of sexuality to include other forms of identification such as race, class, disability, and so on. understanding how issues of sexism, racism and heterosexism intersect, for example, can be useful in interrogating issues of difference more deeply, thus reflecting society more fully. while the idea of fluidity remains the greatest strength of queer theory, it can also be its key weakness, particularly in repressive contexts. queer theory relies, to a large extent, on the subversion of hegemony; it pushes individuals to refuse “to conform to its practices” (kirsch, 2000: 36). this, therefore, means that power is viewed as a fluid, political exercise which is dependent on individual action. kirsch (2000: 42) argues that [q]ueer theory confuses personal action with structural power, it asserts the primacy of the first or individual aspect, while ignoring the determinants ... resistance to structural power requires the more concerted energy of collective action. in oppressive contexts where agency may be limited due to the rigidity of structure, the reliance on individual action may, therefore, be limited. the notion that individuals can simply act does not necessarily take into account the fact that the individual operates within a social order whose ‘norms’ are regulated and policed individually, institutionally and culturally. to suggest that the individual can subvert hegemony fails to take this into account: it locates oppression only at an individual level. thus, while this article focuses on intersectionality and multiplicity in identification, it nevertheless acknowledges that the forms of human agency advocated by queer theory cannot sufficiently address transformation, particularly with regards to homophobia in the south african context. without a collective effort, individual agency alone is not enough. what do we know about the experiences of queer individuals in higher education institutions? dugan and yurman (2011: 201) note that the development of scholarship in this field is important as “indeed it is within the higher education context that many students begin to explore and/or disclose their sexual identities, positioning college and university environment with potentially high levels of influence in this process”. international literature in this field has tended to focus on campus climate (tomlison & 67msibi — growing researchers from the historically disadvantaged groups fassinger, 2003; tierney & dilley, 1998), identification studies (renn, 2007; abes & karsh, 2007; dilley, 2005; abes & jones, 2004) and visibility (dilley, 2002; tierney & dilley, 1998). while the west has done a great deal to address homophobia in higher education institutions, homophobia still exists. desouza and showalter (2010: 137) writing from a usa perspective note that: anti-lgbt attitudes are frequently manifested through verbal, physical, and psychological harassment. lgbt students at institutions of higher education often face hostile environments, which have been linked to an array of serious consequences that negatively affect their mental and physical health as well as their quality of life, including career development. also in the usa, walters and hayes (1998) report that institutional cultures often delegitimise sexual identifications of queer students and staff, thereby limiting their contributions to learning. while many institutions in the usa explicitly include sexual orientation as a protected right in their policies and institutional vision statements, walters and hayes (1998) note that safe working and learning environments are often not created for those deemed ‘deviant’ due to their same-sex interests. the same findings have been noted in the uk (see valentine & wood, 2010). homophobia is, therefore, not a problem of the ‘developing world’, as often presented in international media platforms, but remains a problem for most countries across the globe. in south africa, there is a paucity of information about how queer individuals experience higher education. this is mainly because queer issues, in general, remain silenced and very much ‘in the closet’. this silence is not surprising, considering the fact that, although racial and gender discrimination are prioritised, south african institutions are still struggling to address these 19 years after the collapse of apartheid. in terms of homophobia, the ministerial report (2008: 46) cites the council on higher education report on discrimination which suggests that “[i]n the area of sexism and homophobia there are no higher education institutions among those audited that can claim to have completely solved these issues”. this is chilling, considering the fact that higher education institutions are ideally placed for leadership on these issues. while homophobia has hardly been addressed in south african higher education institutions, academic scholarship focusing, in particular, on queer research has equally been slim. apart from the ministerial report (whose mandate was not really on homophobia2), little exists in the form of educational scholarship. this is, i argue, owing to the fact that the queer research is, to a large extent, viewed as a dangerous terrain, with those doing research in this area being suspected of ‘deviant’ sexual behaviour (see msibi, 2011). from the few extant studies, it is clear that the experiences of queer individuals remain chiefly negative in our universities. in a masters’ study on queer students at the university of zululand (ukzn), ngcobo (2007) found that queer students experienced homophobia, discrimination, lack of respect, violation of constitutional rights, labelling and difficulties in ‘coming out’. this is the same university where ‘straight’ male student mobs had, for two nights in 2005, “embarked on a massive and fierce protest and ‘toyi-toyied’ (demonstrated) against gays and lesbians staying in their blocks” (the natal witness, 2005). queer students were evicted from their rooms and harassed. the university of zululand is not the only institution with these challenges. queer students, for example, have been ‘correctively’ raped, beaten, verbally abused and ridiculed as well as denigrated in various south african institutions (ministerial report, 2008). often, homophobia is peddled by both students and lecturers. for instance, a student newspaper at the north-west university’s potchefstroom campus reported on a student victimised by a lecturer who had stated that “homosexual people should not exist” and that she “will never agree with [the students’] repellent lifestyle [because] the lord has a big problem with gay people, because two male dogs don’t mate” (hreid, 2013). homophobia has similarly been noted at stellenbosch university where a house committee member reportedly declared his dislike for gay people in a meeting of first-year students, and where a lesbian student reported abuse by male students in residences (harrison & john, 2012). this abuse was sexual, racial and gendered. incidents of hate crime have also been reported at the university of cape town where a wardrobe in celebration of gay pride was set alight by unknown individuals (bailey, 2010). incidents of homophobia at the university of the wiwatersrand prompted the institution to be the first in the country to launch a 68 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 programme borrowed from the usa, known as safe zones@wits, targeted at addressing homophobia and providing ‘safe spaces’ for queer students. in his pioneering work, eric richardson (2008) argues that much of the discrimination that queer learners experience is a result of the lack of both explicit mention of queer issues in national education policies and teaching on these issues. francis and msibi (2010) confirm the need for this direct teaching, as it can assist in addressing homophobia. in higher education, the transformation agenda has assumed an already transformed academic corps. however, as many scholars (soudien, 2010; hemson & singh, 2010; vandeyar, 2010; sehoole, 2005; waghid, 2002) demonstrate, the development of policy is insufficient to drive the transformation agenda as policy and practice are two different things. generally, from the paucity of extant research, it can be concluded that many queer students in south african universities experience higher education in negative ways due to homophobia. on being queer in the current south african higher education institution as indicated earlier, this article uses critical incidents and data from a project i led which is designed to challenge homophobia in south african secondary and higher education institutions. i begin the discussion with two critical incidents from my experiences as a student in the then faculty of education at the university of kwazulu-natal. after presenting these incidents, i draw from my current project work to showcase the experiences of queer individuals in higher education institutions. misinformation, hatred and distrust the first incident i wish to highlight came as a shock to me when i was in the third year of my bed degree. i was attending an english class when a discussion about hiv/aids ensued. the discussion was headed by my lecturer who was white. i mention race, in this instance, as homophobia is often assumed, quite wrongly in south africa, as a ‘black’ thing. my lecturer explained confidently to the class that he felt angered that hiv & aids had to be a problem for everyone now when, in fact, it was gay men who first acquired aids through their ‘unnatural’ sexual acts. some of us (students) who had studied how the virus is transmitted tried to protest, but he insisted, noting that he lived during the 1980s and that gay men were the first to be identified as having aids. we felt defeated as we were too young in the 1980s. the forcefulness with which he pushed his idea on the class left a bitter taste; many students left believing that aids was a gay disease. it was clear to me that the lecturer wanted gay people to be blamed for spreading the disease. the main reason why i began with this incident is to highlight the many insidious ways in which homophobia finds expression. higher education institutions are meant to be places where accurate knowledge and information should be taught, debated and produced. while indeed hiv may have been perceived historically as a ‘gay disease’, its origins remain contested. informing students who would be going to schools to teach young people that hiv is a ‘gay disease’ was not only dangerous and reckless, but also did much to foster homophobia among students. many of the students who had attended the lecture went on to express how hiv was then a punishment of gay people from god, and how they detested gay people. one of the key ways in which oppression is entrenched is through the distrust and suspicion for the ‘other’. tatum (2000: 79), for instance, noted that “stereotypes, omissions and distortions all contribute to the development of prejudice”. what occurred in the example above demonstrates the negative constructions and lies that are told about queer people, and the results of that negativity. students who had publicly not articulated negative attitudes towards queer people previously suddenly found ammunition and reason for disliking gay men for spreading aids. i argue, in this instance, that the lack of appropriate, positive teaching on queer issues in higher education programmes greatly inhibits a broadly inclusive transformation agenda. in addition, the fact that the south african transformation approach has, to a large extent, been built mostly around race contributes to the continued marginalisation of other identifications, with many individuals continuing to feel justified when peddling prejudicial and discriminatory ideas, as long as these are not racial. transformation 69msibi — growing researchers from the historically disadvantaged groups has to take into account the various, multiple ways in which identification is performed, as well as the interconnected nature of all forms of oppression. in other words, focus should move away from racial and gender parity to an investigation into how “social power structures, such as racism, classism and heterosexism [intersect]” (abes & kasch 2007: 619). infection and denial the second incident i wish to highlight occurred in 2007, as i was about to leave for my studies to the united states. at this time, i was already employed on contract at ukzn teaching undergraduate programmes. a colleague i trusted and respected called me to her office to ‘guide’ me before i left. in the meeting, i was warned to be careful in the usa. i was told to particularly be careful of being ‘converted’ by the americans to ‘engaging in despicable homosexual acts’. implicit in this was the suspicion that i may, in fact, be gay, and that a context such as the usa would allow for an easier performance of my supposed gay identity. i was told that homosexuality was demonic and unafrican and that i should guard against this as so many young people were falling into this ‘sin’. i did not know how to respond, as this was an african woman for whom i really had a great deal of respect. after the discussion, i left my colleague’s office with an assurance to her that i would not become gay. i knew in my heart that i should have challenged her on this, yet i remained silent. this incident highlights the many ways that are used to advance homophobic sentiment under the construed notion of care. clearly, my colleague’s statement harboured negative views about homosexuality. it revealed various strategies that often get employed to maintain homophobia. first, is the notion that homosexuality is contagious and can, in fact, be picked up like a disease. it often is not explained how one gets infected and how one can prevent such an infection. secondly, the notion that homosexuality is unafrican is forwarded; the fact that americans are meant to convert me follows the idea of homosexuality as a western import. this argument is often forwarded by most african leaders when trying to denounce homosexuality. this assertion is clearly both false and homophobic. thirdly, religion is often used as a key instrument, as people simply cannot challenge what god says. this strategy goes to the heart of homophobia in that it dehumanises people and makes them feel that who and what they are is sinful. finally, such articulations leave very little room for challenging. remaining silent and colluding only reinforces the status quo instead of destabilising it. an important point to further highlight concerns both the race and gender of the academic concerned. as a black woman who lived and experienced oppression under the apartheid regime, one would have expected a much more compassionate, critical individual who understands the systemic nature of prejudice and discrimination. however, this was not the case at all. in contexts where transformation is synonymous exclusively with anti-racism, individuals are often inhibited from seeing other forms of discrimination being enacted in their day-to-day engagements. the transformation agenda needs to recognise academics as people who have been similarly shaped by both the history and social conditions of this country. the agenda needs to address the limitations presented by social structures and the shared apartheid past, and focus on “the organizational culture and the development and acceptance of new, shared values. this can only be achieved through fundamental changes in the mindset (“cognitive transcendence”) of all stake holders and role-players, amongst which academic staff requires attention” (fourie, 1999: 277). what fourie (1999) points to resonates with work i have been doing with queer students in my university. this is a point i now turn to. the project for the past two years, i have been involved in a project that works with learners, university students and teachers in addressing homophobia in secondary schools and higher education institutions. the project was an interventionist project with teachers, learners and students, and was funded by macaids and recently hivos. of the 14 initial participants, four were ukzn students. these students were joined by an additional two other students who heard about the project from others and wanted to join. a dvd on the experiences of queer students, together with voices from all students, learners and teachers was produced. 70 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 this dvd is currently being used to prepare inand pre-service teachers to teach about same-sex issues in schools and to address homophobia. five training sessions were held fortnightly on saturdays, focusing on the personal development of participants, and offering a platform for participants to share their experiences and how to deal with homophobia. the brief discussions highlighted below are expressions by the university participants during the project’s training sessions. silenced, closeted and feared apart from two participants who joined the project late, all the participants in the project were ‘in the closet’. the reason for this is that many of them fear victimisation once exposed. one participant, zama, noted that part of the fear regards what the students had heard about a former student who became the laughing stock of the campus after he declared his love to a straight student on campus. the ‘straight’ student apparently threatened to beat the queer man and had gone around telling everyone on campus about what had happened. generally, all the students in the project expressed great anxiety about the unwelcoming climate on campus. although not out, suspicions of their ‘deviant’ sexuality abound. nomsa explained her residence life as follows: i really find the residences difficult. i often visit my girlfriend who stays on campus. although i have not told anyone on campus about my sexual orientation, people just know. the difficult part is when i have to go to the bathroom. the other day i went into the bathroom and there was this older lady there who had just finished bathing. she didn’t realise that i had walked in. when she realised that i was inside she nearly fainted. she had one glance at me and started running. i stood there feeling terrible. why was she so scared of me? the fact that the woman would run out of the bathroom points to the negative construction of queer students who are often perceived as sexual predators, ready to have sex with everyone they see. this view has been expressed by nearly all the queer students, including the secondary learners in the project. as lucky noted, straight people always think we want them. the guys get very worried when we go near them as they immediately think that we want them. every time i find myself explaining that gay people don’t find everyone attractive. we are just like straight people. lucky points to the essentialising of ‘gay’ behaviour that often happens as a result of heteronormativity. as muñoz (1999) points out, it is heteronormativity which assembles all forms of sexual difference into one essentialised understanding. the expectation is often that all queer people share similar emotions and characteristics, something which queer theory contests. of key concern in the project, particularly for me as an academic, are the views expressed by students of their lecturers. from the discussions with students, it became clear that the majority of academics are not only very ignorant of queer issues, but also unapologetically homophobic. like me, nomali, a student, was summoned by a lecturer to her office. she notes: she asked me what was wrong with me. why would a beautiful girl like me be in a relationship with other women? there are so many men out there who would kill for me. she told me that god didn’t like what i was doing and that i should stop. i was shocked and could not even answer her. what nomali highlights, in this instance, portrays the reality of many of our campuses across the country. our deep religious history finds expression in the most bizarre ways. for an academic to call a student to her office to lecture her about the evil nature of her sexual orientation may appear strange at first, but the reality is that academic institutions are constituted by people who are heavily influenced by popular perceptions and social expectations. the fact that mrs mnguni suggests that nomali’s appearance is grounds for changing her sexual orientation reveals just how little information some academics have about the meaning of sexual orientation and same-sex desire. this is deeply worrying as “higher education institutions [should] play an important role as site[s] where issues of tolerance, inclusion, access, and structural inequalities could be addressed effectively” (cross, 2004: 391). 71msibi — growing researchers from the historically disadvantaged groups an equally important concern is the policing of sexualities, as is clearly visible in the above narrative, and indeed the personal experience shared earlier. the hegemony of heterosexuality is such that it dictates what is ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ behaviour. difference, therefore, ends up being pathologised as abnormal (foucault, 1990). conclusion the above discussion highlights the need for the adoption of a queer approach towards transformation in higher education. the experiences highlighted in this article, and the findings of the ministerial report clearly indicate that homophobia exists in our campuses and is currently not receiving full attention. the exclusion of issues beyond race and sex distorts transformation, leading to a game of numbers rather than an inclusive and reflective approach that takes the intersections of discrimination into account. a queer approach to transformation examines ways in which various forms of discrimination find expression. it asks higher education institutions to consider the intersectional ways in which race, class, gender, sexuality, disability and other forms of identification mediate the experiences of students and academics. otherwise, the transformation agenda fails to address the insidious ways in which forms of discrimination find expression in the day-to-day experiences of individuals considered to be on the margins of social norms. adopting such an approach is crucial for addressing various forms of discrimination holistically, without privileging some forms of oppression over others. while a great deal has been written about the racist nature of the acts by four white male students at the university of the free state, little has been mentioned about how gender and sexuality may have been implicated. it is, for example, not a coincidence that the four perpetrators were male and the victims mainly female. our understanding of racism fails if we do not simultaneously address the expression of hegemonic heterosexual masculinities. as kimmel (2000) argues, the perceived ‘heroics’ (as in this instance) that men perform have to do with ideas of manhood. the idea of manhood that underlies the racial and sexual violence in this country – and indeed the incidents reported in this article is implicated with compulsory notions of heterosexuality. a queer perspective shows up the current approach to transformation in higher education institutions as atomistic and compartmentalised. to be holistic would require that it takes intersectionality into account. this approach would see the inclusion of sexuality on issues concerning transformation, while simultaneously questioning the rigidity of identification. there are important implications for policy, practice and curricula structures in higher education institutions across the country. first, diversity in all its forms needs to be actively promoted. the focus on race as the raison d’être of transformation is highly problematic. secondly, both academic and student positions as transformed agents need to be actively interrogated. as jansen (2009) aptly observed, we all carry ‘bitter knowledge’. if this knowledge is left uninterrupted, we run the risk of merely dealing with deep, troubling issues only at a superficial level. thirdly, curricula practices need to take into account our history, while seeking to explore the intersectional ways in which identifications find expression. this means understanding all forms of oppression as interconnected and in need of active addressing. endnotes 1 an umbrella term for 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great challenges in delivering podcasts qualitatively and productively. the introduction of technology into distance teaching and learning has often failed to meet the expected outcomes, and the educational landscape contains evidence of students who have been unable to benefit from this particular innovation (dede, 2008). the increasing importance of the podcast as a support technology for online learning has led to intense discussions about how to preserve and enhance its use for all kinds of expected student knowledge. therefore, this paper aimed to explore the types of podcasts that lecturers at an open, distance and e-learning (odel) institution use for teaching and learning. the focus was to explore the practices of the lecturers in the use of podcasts for teaching and learning in an odel institution. from 200 participants, a total of 431 podcast scripts (generated during staff development sessions) from different modules, departments and subjects at an odel institution were collected for data use. the number of podcasts per purpose or type was tallied and recorded in a table. results provided readers with a snapshot of how an odel institution uses podcasts for teaching and learning, the gaps in the effective use of podcasts were discussed and recommendations were provided for a better and future use of podcasts for teaching and learning. the paper offers guidance to better utilisation of podcasts in odel environments in higher education institutions. keywords: higher education; open distance and e-learning (odel); quality; podcasts; support technology; teaching and learning. 1. introduction and background technology has advanced from being used primarily as an instructional delivery medium to an integral part of the learning environment (fouts, 2000; poole, 2001). some recent studies have found that support technologies such as podcasts are used predominantly for administrative matters (warren, 2011; schreiber & klose, 2013). hence, questions like “to what extent does any form of support technology contribute to meeting most students’ learning expectations?” are often neglected by the lecturers during author: dr a. makina1 affiliation: 1university of south africa, pretoria, south africa email: makina@unisa.ac.za doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v38i1.3 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(1): 30-42 published: 11 june 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2602-0347 mailto:makina@unisa.ac.za http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.3 31 makina investigating the use of podcasts in an open, distance and e-learning environment 2020 38(1): 31-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.3 their online teaching. for example, many studies have been carried out about the accessibility of technology to students (richardson, 2006). however, studies on how lecturers use particular technologies to achieve teaching and learning objectives are limited (dede, 2008). the use of technology for high-quality teaching and learning is a critical issue that should be investigated to ensure that it contributes significantly to productive student learning. in higher education, many demands are currently being placed on online learning with technology, as students’ needs receive priority (bonk, 2004). together with other technologies, podcasts are understood to facilitate “unexpected logistic and pedagogical advantages” (bonk, 2004:3). these include the “quick delivery of information at any time and everywhere, genuine possibilities for autonomous learning, more interactivity, more student-orientation, more individualisation, better quality of programmes, and greater learning effectiveness” (burbules & callister, 2000:10). podcasting is described as a process in which “digital audio recordings are broadcast over the internet to users who have signed up to receive them […] like a traditional radio, only it is a cognitive medium and is available on demand for a specific topic” (roy & roy, 2007:481). on the other hand, podcasting is seen as a method of distributing audio files over the internet, usually in mp3 format. these audio files can then be played on several portable media players or devices, such as desktop computers, laptops and mobile phones (rahimi & maral, 2012). some benefits of podcasts pointed out in research include (a) connecting students and instructors; (b) fostering student motivation; (c) personalising the learning environment and (d) offering an alternative approach to teaching and learning (bolliger, supanakorn & boggs, 2010; brown & green, 2007; de souza-hart, 2011; shamburg, 2010; o’bannon, lubke, beard & britt, 2011; lazzari, 2009). therefore, universities offering distance education adopted the use of podcasts because the benefits outweigh the disadvantages mentioned in the literature of podcast use. some of the disadvantages of podcasting include the fact that they are time consuming and have accessibility problems among others (laurillard, 2002). 2. odel and student support owing to environmental and economic challenges in africa, students who wish to enrol at higher education institutions could still face barriers as they live in remote areas where education is not easily accessible. yet, it is increasingly recognised that effective student support contributes to improved retention and success rates in odel institutions (unisa, 2015). in south africa, higher education institutions offered odel in their attempt to address the multitude of challenges that students face. odel environments are understood to be an accumulation of openness and distance in education that seeks to limit transactional distance. odel is characterised by two important factors, namely its philosophy and its use of technology. most odel systems aim to remove barriers to education by expanding access to learning by increasing students’ educational support choices. for example, the university of south africa (unisa) saw odel as a viable means of breaching barriers to higher education by broadening access and participation, as it calls for unique digital and technical support to improve retention and success rates (unisa, 2015). therefore, odel offers many opportunities for a new range of technology-based student support possibilities, such as podcasts, in their bid to improve teaching and learning. in its attempt to bridge the gaps created by some of the challenges mentioned above, some odel higher education institutions, like unisa, used technology to try to promote equity, use resources sustainably, inculcate tolerance of difference, enhance public health and develop 32 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 32-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.3 indigenous knowledge. as part of their vision, the institution embarked on a developmental journey “towards the african university in the service of humanity”, which is guided by the principles of lifelong learning, student-centredness, innovation and creativity, and constant transformation (unisa, 2015). its student-centredness meant making provision for flexibility of learning that adopted blended learning techniques. the blended techniques adopted included the use of integrated and mixed media and courseware with various modalities for learning development, facilitation and support, best described by odel. therefore, podcasts became an important support technology to overcome the challenges that students in odel environments face. however, the quality and use of podcasts needed to be managed to ensure that they contributed to effective learning. to use support technologies effectively, lecturers need knowledge of two main aspects of technology, namely, how to use technology to support learning in a subject area and how to manage student-centred and technologysupported activities (franklin, 2007). a great deal depends on how well lecturers research, plan, structure, prepare for and evaluate the impact of technology on teaching. 3. quality use of podcasts unisa has adopted an agenda for transformation that embraces a range of new technologybased student-support options in its bid to satisfy its vision of an african university in the service of humanity. in this agenda, the entire institution’s “transactional environment” with students is transformed so that all aspects of that environment are fully digitised and thus underpinned by robust, effective and integrated ict applications (col, 2017). therefore, the inclusion of support technologies, like podcasts, has become key to the university’s positive advancement of teaching and learning. given that students learn in different ways in odel environments, support technologies like podcasts can provide learning experiences that appeal to and work for a greater range of students. a notable feature of communication technologies, such as audio podcasts, is their ability to support effective synchronous/asynchronous learning and communication. this is especially important for open and distance learning students who are often separated from their lecturers, tutors and education organisation. therefore, most odel universities require access to some form of digital application, like podcasts, to digitise their services and systems. designing and developing a support technology that is accepted by the lecturers and students must ensure that effective, successful teaching and learning takes place. when technologies such as podcasts are employed by a university, “the agreed-upon principles and goals of an institution’s core business and values, the nature of the intended student market, and the needs of the curriculum” must be supported (davis, little & stewart, 2015:140). however, the choice and use of the technology should be closely aligned to the pedagogical intent of the learning and teaching transaction. therefore, before embarking on the development of podcasts, in part or in whole, the needs of prospective students, the curriculum to be offered and the learning context and expectations must be carefully considered (davis et al., 2015). the facilitation of podcasts must be determined by the subject pedagogy and the students’ learning expectations rather than by the technology. 4. context of the study this paper is the culmination of the analysis of the results of a study by makina and madiope (2016). in this study, students at a higher education institution were asked to participate in a survey to find out what types of podcast they had received from their lecturers 33 makina investigating the use of podcasts in an open, distance and e-learning environment 2020 38(1): 33-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.3 for two successive academic years to support their learning (makina & madiope, 2016). a total of 300 students completed a podcast survey and all students who had received one or more academic podcasts during the two academic years were asked to participate in the study. they had to respond to the following: 1. describe in a few words the types/uses of podcasts that were sent to you by your lecturers for the learning of your modules. 2. how did you experience and feel about the podcasts that were sent to you for learning purposes? the results showed that students were concerned about the quality of the podcasts sent to them. they indicated that the podcasts either repeated what was written in the study guide or dealt with technical issues that had nothing to do with their direct learning of the subject. students indicated some podcasts seemed to have no purpose, or some were boring as the lecturers seemed to lack enthusiasm for their subject. data on the types of podcasts that students received was categorised and is listed, as shown in table 1. the study by makina and madiope (2016) further analysed the literature on the uses of podcasts in distance education (see table 1). the results of this comparative analysis are shown in table1. in the analysis, the types of podcasts identified by the students (makina & madiope, 2016) were much less and more technical than the general uses of podcasts that were derived from the literature (salmon & edirisingha, 2008; mcgarr, 2009; lazzari, 2009; popova, kirschner & joiner, 2008) and thus resulted in the need for this study. table 1: comparing the benefits of podcasts benefits of podcasts according to the literature on the topic students’ responses to unisa’s survey (makina & madiope, 2016) • possible uses of podcasts: • provide a general overview and serve as an advanced organiser before a new topic is introduced. • provide the mental framework needed to acquire the subject skills. • help students to master the procedure before a complex skill is taught. • explain difficult concepts, principles or abstract processes. • introduce an assignment or learning activity. • provide variety in the learning environment. • welcome students at the beginning of the semester. • teach complex and difficult topics. • provide timely module supplements. • alleviate the broad issues faced by odel students. • provide assessment feedback. • provide immediate feedback on assessment. • support students before examinations. • provide study tips. • summarise seminar discussions. • podcasts do the following: • arouse students’ interest and curiosity about a topic. • inform students about learning outcomes and objectives. • inform students about the benefits of learning new content. • affect students’ feelings and attitudes about a topic. • motivate students to learn. • introduce the subject to students. • introduce the lecturers or tutors to the students. the comparative analysis of the results of the study by makina and madiope in table 1 shows that there are great disparities between the possible uses of podcasts according to the literature, and the use of podcasts as reported by students. these disparities have demonstrated that there was a gap in the literature that deals with the efficient use of podcasts 34 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 34-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.3 to facilitate teaching and learning. from the results of the study, it appeared that lecturers were not achieving the teaching and learning goals of podcasts that were similar to those identified in the literature. therefore, the problem was that students did not benefit sufficiently from the podcasts that they received from their lecturers as support for their learning. based on the findings of this study, the current study therefore aimed to investigate the types of podcasts that the lecturers at an odel university used to support teaching and learning. thus, the study’s research questions are: • what types of podcasts are produced and distributed by lecturers to students at an odel higher education institution? • what are the gaps between the actual use of podcasts and what the literature suggests that must be bridged to support effective teaching and learning in an odel environment? 5. methodology in a case study, the researcher deliberately and purposively selected a total of 431 podcast scripts generated during staff development sessions from different modules, departments and subjects at unisa, an odel university in south africa. staff development was initiated at unisa to help academics and support staff to design and develop podcasts for effective online teaching. the process of a podcast recording and uploading always began with the writing of the audio podcast script that was structured in a specific way. prescribed in a particular way, a podcast script included a purpose, outcomes, a word of welcome, an introduction, a breakdown of the presentation and a conclusion. the podcast script template that was used during staff development is shown in appendix 1. through purposive sampling, 200 willing lecturers provided podcast scripts to the researcher for one year during staff development. it must be noted that one lecturer could send more than one podcast script for review. the university ethics committee approved the study. the research design for the study followed the following four summarised steps: • willing lecturers and support staff prepared podcast scripts from their different modules, courses or areas before sending them to the researcher. • the researcher collected the podcast scripts and recorded the purpose within each podcast script during the quality checks. • the use of podcasts per purpose from the podcast scripts was then tallied and quantified against the identified categories. • the percentage use of podcasts per purpose was then analysed and discussed. after receiving the prepared scripts from the staff members, the trainer would then record information from each podcast script manually in a table. manual tallying was used, and the numbers were recorded at the end of each training week. about 30 staff members attended the staff training per day during the week of the scriptwriting workshop. this gave rise to about 30 scripts made available per week. data analysis quantitative methods supported by qualitative data were used to analyse the research data. the purpose was to identify the types of podcasts that were designed and developed for the achievement of student learning objectives during the year of study. podcasts were recorded per subject domain (table 2) and purpose (table 3). 35 makina investigating the use of podcasts in an open, distance and e-learning environment 2020 38(1): 35-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.3 the following were considered: • the demographic information within the study. • the purpose and subject areas of the podcasts. • the number of podcasts used per purpose. 6. results and discussions a description of participants’ demographic information is presented, followed by a presentation of research findings according to the identified percentage themes. results of the demographic profile the podcast scripts were collected from 200 willing staff participants with the following demographics: gender males females total 158 42 200 age (in years) 31–40 41–50 51–60 +61 total 122 35 23 20 200 experience (in years) 5 5–10 11–15 16–20 21–25 26–30 >30 total 49 38 31 28 18 26 10 200 the demographic profile of 200 lecturers who produced podcast scripts shows that 158 male lecturers and 42 female lecturers used podcasts. this appears to imply that either there are more male lecturers than female lecturers at the university or that more male lecturers prefer to use podcasts than their female counterparts. staff members aged 31 to 40 years used more podcasts for teaching and learning than those older than 40 years. those who are relatively new to the teaching profession used more podcasts than those who are more experienced. a total of 431 podcast scripts from different modules/courses within different departments, management and support units were collected during staff development sessions. the different departments exist within seven different colleges at the odel institution. they are the college of law, college of human sciences, college of economic and management sciences, college of accounting sciences, college of science, college of engineering and technology and the college of agriculture and environmental science. there were 19 subject areas within the different departments. the university management and support units included the vice chancellor’s section, the recognition of prior learning unit, the institutional transformation unit, the quality assurance unit, the curriculum and learning development unit and other smaller university support units. the number of podcast scripts per subject domains is shown in table 2. 36 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 36-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.3 table 2: number of podcasts per subject domains subject domain number of podcasts approx. % 1. education 62 14 2. science 39 9 3. social sciences 34 8 4. open and distance learning 33 8 5. humanities 54 12 6. commerce and management: 27 6 7. computers and it 36 8 8. engineering and technology 26 6 9. health sciences 24 6 10. agriculture 23 5 11. interdisciplinary studies 8 2 12. anthropology and archaeology 10 2 13. development studies 7 2 14. religion and spirituality 4 1 15. sociology 11 3 16. afrikaans 8 2 17. african languages 7 2 18. library and information science 8 2 19. other university management units 10 2 total 431 100 table 2 shows that 116 of the 431 podcasts scripts produced were from the subject areas of education and humanities. among these podcast scripts,14% were from education while 12% were from the humanities. generally speaking, it was encouraging to see that in addition to the support units, lecturers from almost all subject areas were participating in the staff development sessions for the production of podcasts at the odel institution. this is good news for podcasting as it shows the link between the academic departments and the support units in their endeavour to use podcasts. this is also a tipping point because, when most academics from different subject areas are in favour of podcasts, adoption usually picks up speed. this has been an important shift from open distance learning (odl) where podcasts were rarely used to odel where podcasts become key in the support of teaching and learning of subject areas. this, in turn, implies that students could start to appreciate the use of podcasts more than previously. the purpose of staff development was to highlight the importance of preparation in the production of podcasts for teaching and learning. the results of the frequencies of types of podcasts used after data analysis, the study identified 13 purposes of podcasts mentioned in the podcast scripts in percentage form. the results are summarised in table 3. discussion table 3 summarises the 13 key purposes that were identified in the case study regarding the use of podcasts at an odel institution. 349 of the 431 podcasts were used for technical issues. this means that about 80% of the podcasts’ purposes suggest that podcasts are mainly used for technical issues in the odel institution. an interesting observation is that “welcoming of students to the course” and “module overview” generated about 48% of the podcasts used in this study. seven out of 13 purposes are for technical issues. the other six purposes can 37 makina investigating the use of podcasts in an open, distance and e-learning environment 2020 38(1): 37-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.3 be directly attributed to the improvement of teaching and learning, which only contribute to 19% of the total podcast scripts analysed. for example, an important aspect of teaching and learning, which is assessment, contributed to only 7% of the podcasts presented. this should be worrying since only 30 podcasts out of 431 were used for assessment purposes. overall, about 20% of the podcast purposes reviewed suggest that university staff use podcasts minimally for improving the student’s academic success. the results could imply that students can still do well without accessing these podcasts. some studies indicate that students’ habits must change because of the availability of podcasts since the use of podcasts has a direct and positive impact on test and skill performance (kay, 2012). table 3: the number of podcast scripts per purpose of podcast purpose of podcasts podcast scripts % 1. welcoming students to the course 130 30.2 2. module overview 75 17.4 3. course orientation 33 7.6 4. student motivation and holding their interest 50 11.6 5. identification of the learner management system tools to be used 43 10 6. special units’ notices 10 2.3 7. protocols for accessing university systems 8 1.9 8. assessment feed-forward 7 1.6 9. assessment feedback 23 5.3 10. final examination preparation (technical issues) 20 4.6 11. pacing of studies 14 3.2 12. further explanations 12 2.8 13. tackling difficult sections of the module 6 1.4 total 431 100 about 5% of the podcasts aimed to prepare students for their final examination. the podcast purposes for the final examination included information about the number of questions that would be asked, the time allocated to questions, the examination venue, the need to arrive early at the examination venue, the need to be confident, and so on. these purposes did not contain any information aimed at improving students’ knowledge and understanding of the content in the study material. there was nothing in the purposes that could explain how students could improve their marks. only about 1% of the podcasts were used to explain difficult concepts or topics in the subjects. it might have been of great value to students if more podcasts aimed to improve their knowledge and understanding of the subject area. about 30% of the analysed podcast scripts (130 out of 431 podcasts) were used to welcome students to the courses or modules. for example, lecturers prepared the welcoming podcasts to introduce themselves to the students, to give students their contact details and to inform them about office hours. welcoming podcasts further motivated students towards their subject areas and encouraged them to have a positive attitude towards assessment. although it is important to welcome students to the modules or sections of modules, it is equally important to produce podcasts that can lead students to a better understanding and knowledge of course contents. they might not have done much to help students to focus on the subject or section. these podcasts contained important information, but students could have benefited more from podcasts that aimed at helping them to master the outcomes of modules. 38 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 38-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.3 about 17% of podcasts gave an overview of the module. these overviews mostly dealt with the number of chapters in the module, what the chapters were about, how to access the module on a student management platform, and so on. although this would get the students started with the module, the information contained in the overview might not help students to focus on important issues in the individual modules. furthermore, 12% of the podcasts aimed to motivate students, but they mainly contained information about the pitfalls of plagiarism and reminding students to work hard to pass the module. much more could have been done in producing podcasts that help students to isolate important information for their examination preparation. additional explanations and clarifications of the subject matter can motivate students to study consistently, yet only about 3% of the podcasts offered such information. finally, table 3 shows that about 80% of the podcasts were used to communicate motivation information, technical issues and management matters. these podcasts did not contain information that could improve students’ knowledge or understanding of the module contents. only 25% of the podcast scripts included important information that could contribute to productive learning. the results in table 3 confirm abrami’s (2010) research results that technology is predominantly used for informative (internet and cd-rom), expressive (word processing), and administrative and evaluative (data-keeping, lesson planning and testing) purposes. it was disappointing to observe that very few lecturers used podcasts to engage students in collaborative or creative activities. podcasts have the potential to increase student engagement and learning. for example, not one lecturer designed an activity that required students to produce podcasts. podcasts have the potential to increase student engagement and learning if, and only if, their support is well thought out and spread evenly across the modules (armstrong, tucker & massad, 2009; lee, mcloughlin & chan, 2008). 7. implications an effective podcast is one in which, if students do not listen to it, some aspects of their learning or performance are disadvantaged and may result in their failure to achieve the objectives of the course. if a higher percentage of podcasts were focused and effective, students would make an effort to listen to them as they cannot afford to miss them. they would further focus on the dates when the podcasts would be available. the results in table 3 show that this was not the case with most of the types of podcasts offered within the modules at the odel university of study. this goes hand in hand with the idea that if instructional material is not properly designed, the use of support technology will be ineffective for students’ learning (supanakorn-davila & bolliger, 2014). if students realise the benefits of podcasts for their learning, and that podcasts can improve the understanding of their individual subject areas, they will appreciate the use of podcasts. it would be unfair to have students who pass with flying colours but never had access to the podcasts, as this indicates the ineffectiveness of the designed podcasts. such results could support the ideas that generally podcasts do not have a significant impact on learning performance. 8. recommendations it is very challenging and complex to understand the nature and use of podcasts for teaching and learning in an odel environment. yet, producing podcasts requires that lecturers acquire new skills to guide them towards the production of useful and quality podcasts for teaching and learning. acquiring those skills and producing podcasts can be a very complex and time-consuming process for already overloaded lecturers. therefore, lecturers need 39 makina investigating the use of podcasts in an open, distance and e-learning environment 2020 38(1): 39-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.3 a proper understanding of the context in which they are working to organise their podcast activities responsibly and effectively. technology is a tool that should help lecturers to meet the educational needs of all students through the consideration of the intended consequences of a learning experience (palloff & pratt, 2010). lecturers need information to fulfil their role in the use of podcasts while remembering that instruction is a goal-directed teaching process that is more or less pre-planned. this is because the types of learning offered through podcasts vary depending on instructional needs, learning objectives and timing of instructional events (frydenberg, 2002). frydenberg looked at the three main theoretical approaches of how students learn, how students are supported and how lecturers teach to promote effective learning with podcasts. lecturers could use this information to fulfil their role when they use podcasts as a support technology for teaching and learning, remembering that instruction is a goal-directed teaching process, which is more or less pre-planned. more so, teaching requires exploring available training opportunities, technical and instructional design support by other responsible institutions when podcasts are considered for the online teaching of individual subjects (palloff & pratt, 2010). it can be beneficial to create reusable learning objects (rlo) in the form of podcasts. rlos are types of self-contained online digital and multimedia educational resources that can be reused, scaled and shared from a central online repository in the support of instruction and learning as they address a focused learning goal or aim (wiley, 2002). rlos are a great way to share lecturers’ stories and expertise since they represent an alternative approach to content development where content is reused as an open resource that everybody can share (seo, 2007; willey, 2002). from a pedagogical perspective, rlos are the centre of e-learning as they can be reused repeatedly in a variety of different e-learning activities, modules and courses with each having its own learning objective (jarvis & dickie, 2010). as rlo podcasts are flexible, versatile and multifunctional, a library of podcasts can be reused or re-purposed multiple times to save time and reduce the workload. this can be a valuable asset to online teaching and learning. the evaluation of the use of podcasts should be an ongoing process within institutions. there is a need for useful and effective teaching and learning podcasts. therefore, research must be carried out to guide the quality use of podcasts in odel universities. research with students as participants on the quality of podcasts is needed. students’ feedback about the types of podcasts that they prefer can give lecturers an idea of the quality of the podcasts. students’ feedback on the problems with the existing podcasts can further help with how podcasts’ development can be improved. this type of research guides lecturers to determine whether their podcasts are valuable to the students. 9. study limitations the study had some limitations. it was conducted at only one university and therefore the geographical area was limited. in future, research from multiple universities might be important to analyse the use of podcasts as this would increase our knowledge of the overall quality and use of podcasts. in addition, the sample size was small because a limited number of educators attended podcast training at the time of the study. lecturers were still resisting the use of podcasts because the technology was new to odel universities. it must be noted that the researcher had no control over the quality of the actual podcast scripts since the purpose of the paper was to quantify podcasts per purpose. 40 perspectives in education 2020: 38(1) 2020 38(1): 40-42 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38i1.3 10. conclusion the provision of high-quality education in higher education institutions can be undermined by the poor or haphazard use of support technologies like podcasts for teaching and learning. technology is neutral until it delivers content and loses its effectiveness if it is not applied in a planned and systematic manner (boulos, maramba & wheeler, 2006). careful reflection and research are needed to find the best ways to leverage emerging support technologies like podcasts so that they can boost teaching and learning productivity, foster better communities of practice and support continuous learning. although it might be a complex task to evaluate the effectiveness of podcasts in online learning, podcasts must fulfil their promise to enhance teaching and learning in odel universities. this study, through the research results, concluded that podcasts were used mostly for technical issues at the expense issues that lead to students’ high academic success rate. by clearly managing podcasts and considering 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(eds.). diy media: sharing creating and learning with new media (pp.51-75). new york: peter lang. supanakorn-davila, s. & bolliger, d. 2014. instructor utilization of podcasts in the online learning environment. journal of online learning and teaching, 10(3). unisa, 2015. strategic plan an agenda for transformation. available at http://www.unisa.ac.za warren, k. 2011. utilising podcasts for learning and teaching: a review and ways forward for e-learning cultures. management in education, 26(2): 52–57. https://doi. org/10.1177/0892020612438031. wiley, d.a. 2002. connecting learning objects to instructional design theory: a definition, a metaphor, and a taxonomy. the instructional use of learning objects (bloomington, in: agency for instructional technology). appendix 1 expected standards podcast series 1 college/department module title target audience length of project/timing purpose learning outcomes welcome introduction purpose breakdown presentation conclusion https://doi.org/10.15663/tandc.v17i2.161 https://doi.org/10.1080/08923640701298688 http://www.unisa.ac.za https://doi.org/10.1177/0892020612438031 https://doi.org/10.1177/0892020612438031 _hlk40371817 wiley _goback 47 research article 2022 40(3): 47-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) education for sustainable development: insights from canadian and south african universities abstract universities can play a key role in contributing to a sustainable future for our planet and its inhabitants. in times of constant changes, there is a growing urgency to reflect on the vision of universities as well as their respective practices and projects that can promote the creation of sustainable societies. as is evident in scholarly literature, there is a need to empower universities and enhance their ability to prepare individuals who can confront global sustainability challenges and pursue sustainable development. the united nations’ adoption of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development in 2015 recognised that societal problems were territorially blind, meaning that no country has sufficient knowledge or research capacity to solve all challenges on its own. to that end, this qualitative, comparative research study represents the unified effort of two very different countries to explore the topic of education for sustainable development (sd) at universities. the study employed a document analysis of selected publicly funded universities in canada and south africa. gathered documents are from the past seven years and include the universities’ mission and vision statements, annual reports, and strategic plans. the three main questions addressed in this work are: (a) what is the status and role of higher education for sd in canada and south africa? (b) what areas of sd are on the agenda of universities under investigation in canada and south africa? (c) what are the main similarities and differences between the two contexts under investigation? findings indicate that universities focus on several aspects of sd, namely sustainable education, sustainable relationships, and sustainable initiatives. the paper discusses these areas for each country in connection to their contextual setting. although the study’s findings cannot be generalised, they can be informative for other universities and contexts and thus contribute to the body of knowledge about education for sd in higher education. keywords: sustainability, education for sustainable development, higher education, un’s 2030 agenda, document analysis, comparative studies 1. introduction in response to growing environmental challenges, nations around the world have committed to sustainable development (sd). the collective commitment is evident in author: prof mary gene saudelli1 prof ewelina k. niemczyk2 affiliation: 1university of the fraser valley 2north-west university, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i3.4 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(3): 47-61 published: 30 september 2022 received: 07 march 2022 accepted: 22 april 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4422-5450 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9381-5449 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 482022 40(3): 48-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) 193 countries formally adopting the united nations’ (un, 2021) 2030 agenda for sustainable development with the intention of alleviating existing challenges and building sustainable future. propelled by the un’s 17 sustainable development goals (sdgs), agenda 2030 seeks to integrate development, peace, social justice and human rights (ferguson & roofe, 2020; zermeno & de la garza, 2020). the 17 sdgs are meant to protect and promote the interests of the most vulnerable people and to safeguard the planet. as we continue to experience the global impact of climate change, exploitation of the natural world, and social inequalities, many discussions across disciplines focus on sustainability. as commonly known, education plays a pivotal role in the development of any society and its capacity to overcome the most pressing challenges. without a doubt, the covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated challenges and revealed inequalities in developing as well as developed countries. the un member states have identified education as a fundamental instrument to promote social, economic and environmental emancipation of countries (novo-corti et al., 2018). furthermore, education as a discipline has started to pay special attention to the implementation and practice of sustainability principles. as indicated by hensley (2017: 3), for sustainability to be achieved, education systems must nourish students’ capacities to participate in the discourse and action towards equal economic and social opportunities and to assume stewardship of the planet. it is important to recognise that although sustainability in education has gained ground, most research studies still explore primary and secondary levels of education in relation to sustainability. based upon the literature review about higher education for sustainable development (hesd) in canadian and south african contexts, we recognise the power universities have in nurturing teachers, researchers, future leaders and decision-makers, who are equipped with the knowledge and skills that will allow them to make sustainable decisions and take sustainable actions. marques et al. (2018) emphasise the importance of research at higher education institutions (heis), which has the potential to inform citizens about their responsibility in environmental, social, and economic stewardship. the authors further note that the attitudes and actions of heis towards sd can serve as an example to other institutions and citizens. engaging with the literature, it became evident to us that there is a need to empower universities and enhance their capacity to prepare individuals who can confront global sustainability challenges. we also learned that societal problems are territorially blind, meaning that no country has sufficient knowledge or research capacity to solve all challenges on its own. to that end, this comparative study discusses the unified effort of two different countries to explore the topic of hesd. the purpose of this study is to explore through document analysis the nature of sustainability mandates and compare the role of sustainability in selected publicly funded heis in one province in canada and one province in south africa. we seek to understand the contribution of universities to sd through their stated public commitments, vision and mission statements, and strategic plans. the next section provides a concept review and contextual background for both countries, namely developed canada and developing south africa. the subsequent section presents the research design and methodology employed in this research. the findings section is divided into three parts, corresponding to each research question. the key considerations and conclusion section culminate this work. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 492022 40(3): 49-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 saudelli & niemczyk education for sustainable development 2. review of concepts and contexts education plays a major role in the development of any nation. the un member states have identified education as a fundamental instrument towards countries’ social, economic and environmental emancipation. given the importance of education in nationhood and citizenry, as well as the global concerns about the human impact on the natural world, education in the last decade has become an important “pillar for ensuring sustainable development” (novo-corti et al., 2018: 817), because this is a space where citizens learn about our shared responsibility to the environment. “studies conducted in the twenty-first century are showing a direct link between the investment in education and economic, social and human development” (novocorti et al., 2018: 817). there have been debates regarding the attribution of the term sustainability (novo-corti et al., 2018) and these can be framed as social sustainability, sustainable living and sustainable future, among other broad definitions. for the purposes of this study, sustainability “involves ethical issues, aiming to achieve a balance between generations in the distribution of wealth, working conditions and human rights” (kopnina, 2014: 931). sd, in turn, refers to a vision of the development of populations, species of animals and plants, ecosystems, natural resources, and to a vision that integrates concerns such as poverty alleviation, gender equality, human rights, education for all, health, human security and intercultural dialogue. (novo-corti et al., 2018: 818) education for sustainable development (esd) refers to education systems that privilege sd across disciplines and education mandates (mcgrath & powell, 2016). such privileging of esd includes institutional strategic plans as well as vision and mission statements. esd aims to instil in students the skills, knowledge, and attitudes that will enable them to make sustainable decisions and take sustainable actions (unesco, 2012). esd as an education movement stems from the need to prioritise the responsibility, transparency and active involvement of various organisations worldwide in a global effort to change the negative effects of human activities on the environment (daub, 2007). it is important also to acknowledge the debates within public sectors globally regarding esd from a demand for a higher level of commitment to a demand for action plans based on the principles of sd (ball & grubnic, 2007). sd is an educational movement involving the sciences, economics, business, cultural studies, health sciences, political sciences, social studies, humanities and all other disciplinary areas. esd is also a “field of distinctive research” (kajikawa, 2008) encompassing methodologies that connect knowledge of esd with action and emphasising the impact of environmental issues (azeiteiro et al., 2015). it is notable that there are correspondingly fewer studies emphasising integration of esd across curriculum and pedagogy (wu jim & shen, 2016) and few studies exploring the value that education places on integration of esd within systems across global contexts. these are notable gaps, and we agree with jämsä (2006), who asserts that esd is or should be a fundamental feature of ethical and moral education. scholarly literature refers to esd as the method with the most potential to change the mentality of citizens, nurture sustainability-related competencies, and achieve the long-term goal of sustainability (novo-corti et al., 2018). esd is a lifelong learning process that entails transformative teaching and learning methods that focus on critical thinking and thorough reflection, as opposed to traditional approaches (lu & zhang, 2013). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 502022 40(3): 50-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) 2.1 canadian context canada is considered a ‘developed’ country (education in developing countries, 2021). the canadian context of education is categorised as pre-school or early childhood education, elementary education, secondary education, and postsecondary or tertiary education, which includes college and university education generally referred to as higher education. “the canadian ‘system’ of higher education is highly decentralized” (jones, 2014: 1), meaning that the operations and functions of higher education are under the purview of individual provinces, with differing mandates, institutional structures, and provincial ministry regulations. canada also “boasts one of the highest participation rates in postsecondary education in the world, with widely respected university and college sectors” (jones, 2014: 1). canada has approximately 223 public and private universities (council of ministers of education, canada [cmec], 2022). while there is no unified vision statement for all tertiary institutions in canada, and as each province has its own mandate, there are common values among universities related to canada’s societal values. for example, in the last decade, two prominent areas of interest affect tertiary education in canada: (a) the truth and reconciliation commission (trc) of canada’s final report on the indian residential school (irs) systems and (b) eds. commonly referred to as “canada’s greatest national shame” (stanton, 2011: 1), the irs institutions were places where first nations, metis and inuit children were forced to go by legislative authority (royal commission on aboriginal peoples [rcap], 1996). the goal of these schools was to “civilise” and to “kill the indian in the child” (rcap, 1996). mental, sexual, physical and emotional violence and neglect were rampant in irs institutions, resulting in both immediate and intergenerational trauma (bombay, matheson & anisman, 2014; rcap, 1996). the irs system operated from the 1880s until the last institution closed in 1996. the trc was later established with a mandate to inform all canadians regarding what happened at irs institutions. the trc documented the truth of survivors, their families, communities, and anyone personally affected by the residential school experience. the trc concluded its work with a truth and reconciliation report (trr) and 94 calls to action, focusing on education, reconciliation, and decolonisation (truth and reconciliation commission of canada, 2015). after the trr was released, all institutions in canada have been encouraged to ‘indigenise’ and to answer the 94 calls to action. indigenisation refers to a: process of naturalizing indigenous knowledge systems and making them evident to transform spaces, places, and hearts. in the context of post-secondary education, this involves bringing indigenous knowledge and approaches together with western knowledge systems … indigenous knowledge systems are embedded in relationship to specific lands, culture, and community. (antoine et al., n.d.: 6). in addition to answering to the trr, and as canada continues to experience the effects of climate change and environmental degradation, sustainability has had an increasing prominence politically, economically, socio-culturally and in higher education. the cmec formally outlined a federal education-focused strategy to promote eds goals that align with the un’s (2015) 2030 sd goal 4: ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all. 2.2 south african context south africa is a developing nation with the most advanced economy on the african continent. the country’s education system is comprised of elementary, secondary and tertiary-level http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 512022 40(3): 51-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 saudelli & niemczyk education for sustainable development education, encompassing 26 public universities located across south africa’s nine provinces. within a south african context, it is essential to recognise that the country has one of the most unequal social and education systems in the world as a direct result of apartheid. the country has been deeply affected by a history of political exclusion, racial and class discrimination, and inequality. apartheid laws resulted in a highly unequal education system that prepared citizens for different and unequal roles within society, depending on their race and ethnicity. the inequality was also evident in differentiation between institutions in terms of financial resources and their allocated roles in society. the post-apartheid era heralded a commitment to decolonisation and thus the elimination of colonial elements causing injustice and inequality. efforts are continually made to foster accessible and inclusive educational opportunities. as indicated by the department of environmental affairs (dea, 2016), from 1994, in transitioning to democracy, south africa has strived to create an inclusive society, providing previously disadvantaged people with access to quality education, health services, and fulfilment of other basic needs. in 2008, the country adopted its vision for a sustainable society which emphasised the interconnectivity of all systems (economic, socio-political and ecological): south africa aspires to be a sustainable, economically prosperous and self-reliant nation state that safeguards its democracy by meeting the fundamental human needs of its people, by managing its limited ecological resources responsibly for current and future generations, and by advancing efficient and effective integrated planning and governance through national, regional and global collaboration (dea, 2008: 19). regardless of its commitment to sustainability, south africa struggles to achieve sustained levels of economic growth and has been labelled as one of the most unequal countries in the world (statistics south africa, 2019). having said that, it is important to acknowledge that the country shows promising progress towards sd. scholarly literature (dea, 2016; statistics south africa, 2019) provides evidence that esd in south africa has grown in quality and scope, which is reflected in the country’s legislation and policies as well as its commitment to the sdgs. to start with, south african legislation and policies entail laws that reflect and promote sd and bring attention to issues such as human rights, environmental conservation, gender equality, peace building, and social justice (unesco, 2013). the constitution of the republic of south africa (rsa, 1996) is the most significant piece of legislation linking environmental concerns with human rights and social responsibilities. in addition, south africa actively participates in strategic planning meetings, programmes, and summits that aim to assist the country in achieving the 17 sdgs. as stated earlier, in 2008, the south african cabinet embraced the national framework for sd that aimed to declare south africa’s national vision to redirect development onto a sustainable path. furthermore, the country participated in the partnership for action on green economy (page) programme aiming to position sustainability at the heart of economic policies and action (dea, 2016). in 2015, south africa linked its national development plan (ndp) with the 17 sdgs and 169 sustainable development targets, resulting in 74% of the sd targets being addressed by south africa’s ndp (statistics south africa, 2019). the review of these concepts and contexts provides the necessary background information to approach this research project, which, as described in the next section, is a qualitative document analysis of selected publicly funded universities in canada and south africa. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 522022 40(3): 52-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) 3. research design and methodology this qualitative study is connected to a larger research project, which has received ethical clearance. in alignment with the requirements of the ethical approval, the anonymity of the heis under investigation was ensured through data analysis and data interpretation. this study is a comparative document analysis of three teaching-oriented, publicly funded universities in one province in canada and three corresponding universities in one province in south africa. as explained by yavuz (2016), relevant data must be accessible to undertake document analysis successfully. the findings of this research study rely on purposefully selected 41 publicly available institutional documents (23 in canada and 18 in south africa) from 2015 to 2021. to fully address research question 1 and thus the status of hesd in both contexts, the institutional documents were complemented by relevant journal articles and government reports. the three main questions addressed in this work are: • what is the status and role of higher education for sustainable development in canada and south africa? • what areas of sustainable development are on the agenda of universities under investigation in canada and south africa? • what are the main similarities and differences between the two contexts under investigation? document analysis is a form of qualitative research that uses a systematic procedure to analyse documentary evidence and answer specific research questions. like other methods of analysis in qualitative research, document analysis requires repeated review, examination and interpretation of data to gain meaning and empirical knowledge of the construct being studied. according to o’leary (2014), there are three primary types of documents in a document analysis: public records (e.g. records of an entity’s activities), personal documents (e.g. notes, letters), and physical evidence (e.g. artifacts found in a study setting, such as flyers or posters). the documents that form data for this study fall within the categories of public records and physical evidence. collected data were publicly available. the documents that were analysed consisted of universities’ mission and vision statements, annual reports, strategic plans, and other relevant documents ,varying in length from five to 200 pages. in terms of data analysis, an informed decision was made to employ content analysis as a qualitative document analysis research tool. the qualitative content analysis process involved three main phases: preparation (collecting data), organisation (coding and categorising), and reporting of results (describing results based on the content of categories). as indicated by busetto wick and gumbinger (2020), the coding process makes raw data more manageable and sortable. therefore, the coding process involved allocating codes to collected documents, then merging codes to categories, and categories to themes relevant for addressing the research questions. bowen (2009: 33) describes the overall concept of document analysis as a process of “evaluating documents in such a way that empirical knowledge is produced, and understanding is developed”; it is not just a matter of lining up a collection of excerpts that convey whatever the researcher desires. as researchers we maintained a high level of objectivity and sensitivity to ensure that the document analysis results would be credible and valid (bowen, 2009). we do, however, recognise that the sample size of the investigated institutions in each context is small; therefore, findings are not generalisable but rather are informative, as is customary with qualitative research designs. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 532022 40(3): 53-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 saudelli & niemczyk education for sustainable development 4. findings the findings section is divided into three parts corresponding to each of the study’s research questions. therefore, the first part addresses the status and role of higher education for sd in both contexts. the second part draws attention to the inclusion of sd on the agendas of universities under investigation. the last part of the findings section provides a comparison of the two higher education contexts (i.e. canada and south africa) where similarities and differences are identified. 4.1 status and role of higher education for sustainable development 4.1.1 canada based on the analysis of all three institutions, it is evident that the leaders within the institutions acknowledge the importance of reshaping higher education to prepare graduates for an uncertain and complex future. the government of canada embraced the united nations agenda for sustainable development 2030. canada has a national strategy for esd entitled “moving forward together: canada’s 2030 agenda national strategy” (government of canada, moving forward together, 2021). there is also a federal implementation plan for the 2030 agenda, which includes a sustainable development goals funding program and a canadian indicator framework for the sustainable development goals data hub, functioning as a monitoring and reporting on progress plan as measured by statistics canada. it is evident in the national strategy that significant attention has been paid to the linkages and interrelationships among the 17 sdgs. however, it is noteworthy that higher education is only marginally represented in the national strategy. the national strategy speaks to industry, private and public sectors, indigenisation, and a vision for the future, but the section devoted to tertiary education primarily speaks to “preparing the workforce to meet the challenges of sustainability” and reports that colleges and institutes in canada are focused on raising awareness of sdgs and recognising the research expertise available in canadian universities and colleges (moving forward together, 2021: 13). all provinces and territories, through the cmec, have contributed to a white paper report entitled “ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education” (cmec, 2015) which outlines sd goals, including goals in relation to indigenisation, global citizenship, and sd. however, to date, there is little available in terms of a funding strategy or accountability measures for this esd plan. while canada does have a national development strategy for esd, fiscal planning and accountability measures, the provincial governments have the main funding responsibility for both provincial mandates in higher education and funding allocations. this means that there may be competing interests between the provinces and between an individual province and the federal government in terms of their dedication to esd. 4.1.2 south africa based on the analysed sources, it is evident that the post-apartheid south african government acknowledges the importance of reshaping higher education to prepare graduates for an uncertain and complex future. as evident in the following quote, the proposed reshaping calls attention to sd, namely a “need for university curricula to be adapted to better prepare graduates for current and future uncertainties also echoes the calls for universities to include more explicitly the critical issue of sustainable development in all university curricula” http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 542022 40(3): 54-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) (padayachee, matimolane & ganas 2018: 290). regardless of the commitment of including sd within the curricula, the analysed sources show that there is very limited research about actual implementation of sd in south african heis. awuzie and emuze (2017: 1176) indicate that the implementation of the sd agenda in south african heis is gradually gaining attention, driven by universities’ “desire to support the national government’s sustainable development (sd) aspirations through their core activities of teaching and learning, research and operations”. yet, most studies look at factors driving the adoption of sustainable practices and not the actual implementation of sd or the outcomes of esd. it is essential to add that as a developing nation, south africa is vulnerable to many social issues such as poverty, high levels of crime, unemployment, and social inequality, which all impact the implementation of esd. as feinstein, jacobi and sisitka (2013) report, the effective implementation of esd is limited due to weak tertiary institutions, inadequate financial and human capital, lack of proper infrastructure, and a lack of prioritisation for esd in the curriculum and teacher training programmes. in fact, the role of esd within the south african curriculum and teacher training is not clearly articulated, leading to its poor integration within heis. this in turn may limit the role of heis to equip students with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes necessary to contribute towards sustainable future. although south africa has a national development strategy towards sd (statistics south africa, 2019) to date, the country does not have national or long-term funding strategies for esd. lack of clear guidelines may potentially impact effective implementation of esd. it is also important to mention that the state is the most important source of financial support for south africa’s public universities, providing the core support for all operating and capital expenses. in recent years, however, state funding has significantly declined, which carries consequences also for implementation of sd initiatives. despite some progress being displayed in hesd, there is still much to be accomplished. 4.2 esd as an agenda imperative for higher education institutions 4.2.1 canada sd, in some form, appears in the mission, vision and strategic planning of all three universities; however, the prioritisation of esd and community engagement appears in different ways and with differing emphasis and scope. all are mandated and funded by the provincial ministry of higher education to be responsive to their respective communities. strategic planning within each university is managed as an internal process within the institution. while sustainability is acknowledged as one of several pressing needs in the province, so too are other factors such as indigenisation and truth and reconciliation calls to action on education, and it is up to the institution to decide the emphasis and scope of sustainability in relation to other provincial mandates. indigenisation is emphasised as social imperative at all three institutions and is specifically connected to sustainability at two of the three institutions. all three universities mention environmentalism in current strategic plans. the first university had esd identified in its vision and mission statements and esd is evidenced in some disciplines and in the campus-wide institutional learning outcomes. the second university briefly mentions environmentalism in its strategic plan and has esd woven into science, horticulture and education programmes, but otherwise esd is not emphasised as a significant commitment. there is no evidence that speaks to accountability for esd as a university commitment. the third university prominently features esd as an http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 552022 40(3): 55-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 saudelli & niemczyk education for sustainable development institutional commitment; it has a specific esd action plan and has esd woven throughout programme learning outcomes, community engagements, as evidenced in most disciplinary descriptions. the third university also provides esd specific definitions and measurable performance indicators. the first university connects esd to indigenisation. this university is in a region that had one of the 18 irs institutions in the province. indigenisation efforts across the institution emphasise respect for indigenous worldviews, which is inherently connected to the land and respect for the natural world. eds at this institution features prominently in the strategic plan and values statement. esd also features throughout disciplines, and in some disciplines (such as education and the social sciences) it is connected to social justice. at this institution, there is a centre of sustainability with a focus on research and pedagogy related to sustainability. community efforts feature prominently across the institution and are connected to indigenisation, social inequities, homelessness (which is a social concern affecting the area) and systemic racism. these efforts are connected to learning and esd, accepted as learning opportunities for students’ academic transcripts (co-curricular record) and often appear as faculty-driven research efforts within disciplines. the second university is a smaller institution in terms of student demographics. there does seem to be some emphasis on esd in relation to community, particularly in relation to inequalities in society and social justice, but this is primarily disciplinary specific, and particularised to representation in humanities and education programmes. otherwise, some opportunities for institutional volunteer engagement and community engagements are apparent, with some connection to esd and global civicmindedness. the third university strongly emphasises and prioritises esd. a connection of esd to indigenisation features, as are connections to environmental climate change, social justice, and collective responsibility. there are many community-engagement projects, research and outreach initiatives that emphasise esd. esd is featured at this institution as a priority, responsibility affecting all areas of study, and of critical importance at this time. all three universities demonstrate evidence of an interest on the community, and sustainability, but for two universities sustainability is disciplinary specific and less comprehensive as a priority. the third university has woven esd throughout all areas of the institution. two of the universities connect esd to indigenisation. there are differences between the universities in relation to community engagement projects to address inequalities in society, systemic racism, and a goal to achieve social justice but these were disciplinary specific in all three universities. the emphasis of esd seems fragmented at the first and second universities in terms of inclusion of some aspects of sd occurring in certain programmes, and other elements are not addressed. there is no evidence that indicates a cohesive effort across academic programming to address all elements of sustainability in holistic manner in the first and second university, but there is evidence of a cohesive effort across most academic programming to address all elements of sustainability in a holistic manner in the third university. 4.2.2 south africa it is promising to see that the heis under investigation aim to achieve sustainability within their respective institutions and the communities that host them. sustainability is mentioned in the strategic planning as well as mission and vision statements. furthermore, all institutions http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 562022 40(3): 56-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) show commitment to achieving the un’s sdgs through research and teaching and learning. it is concerning, however, that the analysed documents do not contain adequate definitions explaining sustainability-related terms. as pointed out by tierney et al. (2016) and da silva et al. (2019), inconsistent definitions and potential misconceptions may hinder the successful implementation of esd. the heis under investigation report their awareness that sustainability is not limited to the environment, and they acknowledge the social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainability. however, only environmental events and policies are extensively implemented and discussed in the analysed documents; thus, a holistic approach towards esd appears not to be followed. the emphasis on environmental sustainability might be partially influenced by lack of clarity about sustainability-related concepts. in fact, the documents show that the environmental dimension of sustainability dominates the curriculum, research and community initiatives. sustainable practices include saving electricity and reducing carbon footprints. some documents explicate that paying attention to their direct ecosystems and preserving their resources allow heis to contribute towards the fulfilment of the social and economic dimensions of sustainability. in addition, using resources optimally and sustainably allows heis to achieve institutional sustainability and strategic objectives. the analysed documents indicate that heis aim to equip their students with the knowledge, skills and attitudes required to contribute towards sd. on numerous occasions, documents across the investigated institutions report their aim to educate citizens able to make sustainable decisions and take sustainable actions. however, in practice, the curriculums of the three institutions mostly incorporate environmental education into their curriculum and academic programmes. the three institutions under investigation prioritise community engagement, which mainly focuses on the environmental dimension of sustainability. only one institution provided a list of community engagement projects linked to both economic and environmental sustainability. in addition, these projects were notably designed to address inequalities in society and foster social justice. financial sustainability receives special attention in the strategic goals of heis. the institutions show concern about their financial sustainability, heavily relying on government funding, external fundraising, and the development of business entities meant to generate a third income stream. student debt and uncertainty about government funding are identified as the key factors threatening financial sustainability. this in turn reveals that south african heis are operating in an environment (country) that is not financially secure or sustainable. to address the above-mentioned issue, heis strive to achieve organisational sustainability and prevent the brain drain by developing highly competent researchers, as well as attracting and retaining high-calibre human capital through fair incentives and policies. 4.3 similarities and differences in contexts the findings indicate that although the two contexts are quite different (mainly in terms of financial stability and available resources), they share several similarities. canada and south africa are both dedicated to fostering sd through engagement in their local communities. students and staff are offered opportunities to engage in environmental community initiatives that focus on the protection of the ecosystem and promotion of social justice. the community initiatives serve as a bridge enabling interaction between heis and their local communities with http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 572022 40(3): 57-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 saudelli & niemczyk education for sustainable development the aim to (a) improve the conditions and the well-being of the communities and (b) develop citizens conscious of and concerned with social and environmental stewardship. through the community engagement projects, heis function as veritable sustainable communities and serve as an example for other social institutions. foci on esd as education for sustainability-oriented citizenship is present in both contexts. this links to the previous paragraph pointing out the goals of community initiatives and empowerment of sustainability-literate citizens. it is important to mention that competencies students potentially could acquire during the initiatives allow them to read the world around them and make links with other social areas. in alignment with the definition of esd and citizenship education, the goal is to nurture citizens capable to act sustainably considering social, economic, and environmental dimensions. in addition, both countries utilize their curriculum to prepare students for active global citizenship, commitment to social justice, and the world of work – all of which reflect sustainability principles. the findings point to the focus on transferring knowledge, but also skills to question knowledge and power, and institutions engage in critical analysis of social structures as well as causes of existing realities. it is interesting to note that two institutions in canada specifically connect esd, social justice, and questions of power and domination, and canada’s reckoning in relation to truth and reconciliation with indigenization is apparent, although somewhat fragmented in terms of emphasis. in south africa, nationally there is a strong emphasis on decolonisation in higher education intertwined with the principles of sustainability. however, none of the analysed institutional documents in the south african context clearly points to the link between decolonisation as a social justice movement and esd. as per key identified differences, south africa’s focus on financial sustainability is unique, compared to canada. this can be justified by vastly different levels of financial stability in both countries, as well as accountability when it comes to the distribution of resources and their respective truth and reconciliation mandates. furthermore, the south african higher education sector has experienced a decrease in public funding, which has hindered student enrolment, research productivity, as well as sd initiatives. while canada has also experienced decreases in public funding, this has been mediated through promoting canada’s universities to international students, who pay significantly higher tuition rates. consequently, all the south african heis under investigation undertook extensive measures to ensure their financial sustainability. some of these strategies include: (a) optimising the income generated from intellectual property and government subsidy by ensuring efficiency in teaching and research; (b) intensifying commercial projects to secure resources through government grants, philanthropy, and private business donations; and (c) expanding internationalisation to attract funding from international sources. indigenization connected to esd was foregrounded on the agenda of two canadian heis under investigation. although south africa is strongly dedicated to decolonisation, which is a component of indigenization, the analysed documents did not display a direct connection to sd. it is possible that the worldview connected to the indigenization of first nations people in canada, which is strongly connected to land and respect for the natural world, naturally connects to sd. decolonisation in south africa, being related to anti-racism and dismantling the colonial structures that resulted from apartheid may not signal instant connection to sd. lastly, there was a noticeable disparity in the level of commitment and implementation to eds across the canadian universities investigated. one university had demonstrable and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 582022 40(3): 58-61 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.4 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) measurable engagement of esd, one had some commitment to activities promoting esd initiatives, while another showed little evidence of demonstrable commitment to esd. in south africa, all three universities showed similar levels of commitment and implementation to esd. 5. concluding remarks it is apparent that all six universities are committed to contributing to sd to varying degrees, which is directly connected to regional contexts. as evident, contexts and universities differ in terms of location, size, resources, philosophical orientations, etc. even across two international contexts, both with truth and reconciliation statements that form mandates for change acknowledging the impact and horrific truths of colonisation, the nature and the scope of change based on these statements in terms of enacting social justice are different. this leads us to deduce that applying the same guidelines does not seem to be a solution for effective implementation of esd. universities are influenced by external determinants (government mandates, local policies, regional interests), which make the situation even more complex. to that end, it is our view that each university should integrate principles of sustainability and engage in sd activities based on their individual conditions and needs, while recognising the impact of the regional to global sd interests. we acknowledge that our comparative document analysis is only a starting point and more comprehensive studies are needed. yet, based on the findings at hand, we recommend holistic shifts towards sustainability – namely, being present in all institutional aspects rather than in scattered areas such as community engagement, or under the purview of discrete disciplines. this would call for revisiting curricula, research agendas, mission and vision statements, leadership practices, community engagement projects, and institutional culture. more attention needs to be devoted to including and clearly describing terms such as sustainability, sd, and esd within institutional documents. in addition, we also would argue for explicit linking of esd to indigenization and decolonisation agendas. references 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https://doi.org/10.1108/ijshe-01-2015-0004 https://doi.org/10.11114/jets.v4i10.1794 https://doi.org/10.11114/jets.v4i10.1794 https://doi.org/10.1108/ijshe-05-2020-0186 https://doi.org/10.1108/ijshe-05-2020-0186 _hlk97351555 1802022 40(4): 180-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 rupturing the laws of discourse: learner agency in the construction of their identity in school discourses abstract utilising the theoretical frameworks of theory of power and theory of performativity, this case study explored how learners exercised agency in the construction of their identity in school discourses. data capture incorporated a mix of a survey, semi-structured interviews and field notes. data was analysed using content analysis. a total of 90 learners participated in the survey. fifteen learners, three teachers and three principals participated in semistructured interviews. this paper reports on findings from the semistructured interviews. findings were twofold. first, schools used foucault’s mechanisms and instruments of constructing learner identity. learners were subjected to a constant gaze at schools. second, learners became agentic in schools and asserted their own identities. some of these identities clashed with the identity of the ‘ideal learner’ of schools. despite established subject positions in schools, learners created their own subject positions to counter limiting and constraining identities that were imposed by the school. keywords: hierarchical observation; ideal learner; identity; learner agency; school discourses 1. introduction and background context disciplinary power is an inherent characteristic of disciplinary spaces such as the hospital, the factory, the prison, and the school (foucault, 1977). for the purpose of this study, we focus on how this power functions in the disciplinary space of the school. central to the disciplinary space of the school lies strict discipline, which walhausen (cited in foucault, 1977:189) regards as “an art of correct training”. embedded in the instrument of correct training is disciplinary power, which functions to ‘train’ individuals. it is through this training that an individual’s identity is forged. disciplinary power functions in a subtle manner. it entails minor procedures of hierarchical observation, normalizing judgement, and examination (foucault, 1977). this power is not a thing that can be seen, the individual only feels its effects. it is an automatic and anonymous power not held by a single authority in the institution, but by everyone that is accorded a position of authority. in many south african author: prof s vandeyar1 lwazi ziqubu1 affiliation: 1university of pretoria, south africa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v40i4.6414 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(4): 180-195 published: 23 december 2022 received: 18 july 2022 accepted: 8 august 2022 research article http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0195-6330 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 1812022 40(4): 181-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 vandeyar & ziqubu rupturing the laws of discourse schools, disciplinary power serves as an instrument to construct individuals into an ‘ideal learner’ identity (venter & van niekerk, 2011). this learner identity is modelled on the ‘ideal learner’ that may vary from school to school. the conceptualisation of the ideal learner is influenced by the dominant discourse of the school. it is the dominant discourse that determines the possible identities that individuals may assume. nevertheless, not only does it do that, it constrains and discourages individuals from inhabiting certain identities. however, in the discourse learners are capable of making their own choices. as power is exercised in the school, learners make their own meanings and consequently exercise their agency (van den branden, 2019) by forging their own identities. some learners opt to be the opposite of the ideal learner while others conform to what the school seeks to construct. the different positions that learners take, highlight the fluidity of identities (gyogi, 2020; vandeyar, 2019). individuals shift and change all the time. the fluidity of identity makes it necessary to explore how learners exercise agency and what informs its exercise (mercer, 2012). the concept of learner identity can be viewed from two perspectives, namely humanism (charteris, 2014) and poststructuralism (zembylas & chubbuck, 2018). the humanist perspective of learner identity highlights the inherent attributes of the individual. upon entering school, a learner is regarded as being in control of his environment and is selfdetermining and self-regulating (charteris, 2014). a learner’s control of his/her environment stems from the idea that he/she is naturally capable and competent. he/she is independent of external discourses and influences and can manage him-/herself in school. humanism attaches sameness to all learners and is universal in its nature. learners are viewed as autonomous individuals who possess inherent agency, which they can exercise at will without any constraints. according to this view, the school and other external discourses have no influence on learner agency. in contrast, poststructuralism contends that a learner is socially constituted (norton & morgan, 2013). the poststructuralist perspective regards a learner as a product of the school. poststructuralism recognises the constitutive force of discourses and discursive practices beyond learners’ control. moreover, it takes into account the possibilities of a dynamic learner identity that may emerge in the school. poststructuralism recognises learners’ agency in taking up and renegotiating subject positions and acknowledges that this agency is constructed in discursive school discourses. since discourses are different from school to school, the manner in which learners exercise agency varies. thus, agency is relational and mediated by the school discourse. for this reason, learners use the school discourse to recognise the subject positions, which they either accept or resist. the advent of democracy witnessed educational transformation in south africa. this implied a shift from the old conceptualisation of learner identity, which was western and whitecentred to a more inclusive conceptualisation that would accommodate black african learners (makoelle, 2014). the shift was evident in policies that were developed to regulate this transformation. these policies gave learners the liberty to assert themselves as individuals and to assume subject positions of their choice. however in practice, the western and whitecentred conceptualisation of the ‘ideal learner’ that emanated from the colonial past of south africa, is still enforced in many schools. thus, there is a disjuncture between the ‘ideal learner’ that the school seeks to construct and the identity that learners, particularly black african learners, desire. learners are aware of the agency they possessed as evident from the historical context of south africa. during the apartheid era learners exercised their agency as evident from the 1976 soweto riots, where the call was made for transformation and equal http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 1822022 40(4): 182-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) education. four decades later, although transformation has happened it has been mainly in the form of desegregation and first order changes, where learners form different racial backgrounds are now within close proximity of each other in educational spaces. integration in the true sense namely, an interrogation of the quality of contact and of second order changes (the curriculum, assessment practices, etc.) is yet to happen. we argue that learner agency is an area worth examining to learn how agency is exercised at school. accordingly, this study asks, how do learners exercise agency in the construction of their identity in school discourses? what mechanisms and instruments do schools use to construct learner identity? how do learners negotiate subject positions in school discourses? 2. exploration of the terrain 2.1 understanding the concept of learner identity the concept of learner identity is complex in nature. learner identity juxtaposes the concepts of learner and identity in its conceptualisation. this study situates the concept learner in a south african school context, to mean any person that is receiving education in a school (department of education, 1996). identity defined in a general sense, is concerned with the state of being of an individual and how they are perceived (brown & heck, 2018). for some, identity can be understood as “a cognitive phenomenon, a cultural process or as personal thing” (leary & tangney, 2003:3). for others identity “refers to the internalized and externalized set of meanings, practices, and distributed resources embedded in ways of life and contexts of learning” (esteban-guitart & moll, 2014: 37). others argue that “identity is dynamic and multidimensional, influenced by social environments, socio-political interests, transnational experiences, and discourse itself” (kim & duff, 2012: 84) furthermore, identity can be understood as characterized by multiplicity of self (vandeyar, 2019). recognising the existence of multiple identities is critical since learners’ identities are contingent, fluid, complex, comprise of multiple and often contradicting identities (vandeyar, 2022; 2019). both conscious and unconscious elements shape an individual’s identity. kumpulainen and rajala (2017: 24) argue that “identity defines how we position ourselves and our actions”. identity is seen as inseparable from the social world. positioning the notion of identity in a school context, brown and heck (2018) conceptualise identity as a community-forming process where learners and teachers express themselves and communicate ideas according to a shared set of principles and practices. the community-forming process that is constructed across time and space provides the backdrop of “how people understand their possibilities for the future” (norton, 2000: 6). social structures constrain the extent to which an identity can be presented. however, despite constraints and restrictions, people have the capacity to change and obviate the very same social structure within which they are located. 2.2 understanding learner agency human beings have the capacity to exercise agency within social structures. consequently, people have the capacity to construct and reconstruct themselves within a social structure. charteris (2016: 193) claims that humans “hybridise discourses to agentically initiate their identities in unexpected ways”. agency is embedded in the actions of individuals in contexts that have clear consequences. giddens (1991: 33) argues that humans “reflexively monitor” their conduct and those of others within a particular structure. they pay attention, to note, calculate and assess the consequences of their actions. the dynamics of the agency is embedded in a “stratification model” (giddens, 1991: 56), which explains the ways in which social http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 1832022 40(4): 183-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 vandeyar & ziqubu rupturing the laws of discourse systems are produced and reproduced in social interaction. this model monitors “discursive consciousness” and “practical consciousness” (giddens, 1984: 4). discursive consciousness denotes the individual’s capacity to rationalise his/her conduct and those of others. practical consciousness refers to knowledge that an individual uses to carry out actions within the structure. according to esteban-guitart and moll (2014: 31) to understand the construction of learner identity and consequently, learner agency, we ought to first understand the “funds of practices, beliefs, knowledge, and ideas”, utilised by learners. 2.3 mechanisms used in identity construction “the construction of the learner in the disciplinary space of the school is made possible through the use of the mechanisms of ‘hierarchical observation’, ‘normalising judgment’ and ‘the examination’” (foucault, 1977). these mechanisms operate as rules and resources that are used in “interaction contexts” of the school, to sustain or reproduce learner identity and relations. rules make it possible for the school and its agents to act on learners and to subjectify them. resources refer to facilities such as the architecture and other material equipment used in the construction of learner identity. linked to these mechanisms is power, which ensures that learners feel its effects and abide by the rules in the construction of their identity (foucault, 1977). the disciplinary power within the disciplinary space of the school takes a form of invisibility, it is not a ‘thing’ that can be seen, we only see its effects (foucault, 1977). giddens (1984) argues that power is not a resource in itself, it is generated from resources. it is through bringing together resources that agents of authority in the school are able to generate their power and act on learners and construct a learner identity. understanding the mechanisms of constructing learner identity is critical to understanding how learners exercise agency. it is critical to consider that the “organization of classroom interaction and choices of discourse either by teachers or learners carry implications for how learners and teachers perceive both themselves and each other” (kumpulainen & rajala, 2017: 5). it is through the rituals of power that the learner’s identity is constructed to ‘become somebody’ (wexler, 1992). that is, the learner does his/her school work, obtains good marks, behaves appropriately, and thus has a better chance of accomplishing something in life. becoming in this sense rests on conforming to the rules and authority of the school. the effects of power, for example, are visible in the spatial arrangements and bodily practices during assembly (silbert & jacklin, 2015). this power constructs a homogenous identity of the learner but it also constructs this identity by differentiating between learners in the school, “it separates, analyses, differentiates, carries its procedures of decomposition to the point of necessary and sufficient single units” (foucault, 1977: 170). the use of disciplinary power sees individuals “hierarchized on the basis of their behaviour and academic performance. individuals are measured in relation to each other and classified according to different abilities” (foucault, 1977: 177). foucault (1977: 170), further asserts that “discipline ‘makes’ individuals; it is the specific technique of a power that regards individuals both as objects and instruments of its exercise”. the act of learning is largely dependent on learners allowing themselves to be disciplined by certain processes that mould them into a particular kind of subject (silbert & jacklin, 2015: 327). it is the interconnection between these two notions that makes it possible for the learner to be subjectified and objectified within the school. silbert and jacklin (2015) argue that learners are shaped in different school contexts based on the school’s imagined learner. linked to mechanisms of identity construction within the school is the notion of language. norton (2010:2) argues that “it is through language that a person gets or is denied access to a social network”. learners use language to assume different http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 1842022 40(4): 184-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) subject positions and to assert their identities in the school. linked to power is the notion of subjectivity, which stresses that a person needs to be understood in relational terms. a person is either in a position of power or in a subordinate, marginalised and reduced position of power. norton (2010: 2) argues that “while some identity positions may limit and constrain opportunities for learners to speak, read, or write, other identity positions may offer enhanced sets of possibilities for social interaction and human agency”. charteris (2016: 191) claims “the degree to which learners can appropriate agentic subject positions depends on the contextual affordances and the resources of identity recognition offered by peers, teachers and others.” thus, the manner in which individuals exercise agency differ from one interaction context to another. 3. theoretical framework theory of power (foucault, 1977) and theory of performativity (butler, 1998) provide the theoretical frameworks of this study. according to marsden (2001: 54) disciplinary power characterises the way in which the “relations of inequality and oppression in modern western societies are (re)produced through the psychological complex”. foucault (1977) claims that learner identity is discursively constructed in school. drawing on bentham’s (1843) disciplinary concept of panopticon, a central observation tower from which a guard can see every cell and inmate, but the inmates cannot see into the tower and thus never know whether or not they are being watched, foucault “moves identity away from biological determinism to examining how identities are forged in society” (besley, 2010: 126). foucault (1977: 170) argues that “linked to the architecture of the school is ‘hierarchical observation’ which emphasizes ‘observation’ by those that are accorded power within the disciplinary space”. observations are to guarantee that learners are constantly under the gaze all the time and that they compose themselves as desired by the school. linked to “hierarchical observation” is the socialisation of the individual into becoming a learner. this socialisation of the learner includes “learning manners, how to dress properly, how to talk to other learners, and what are correct body postures” (althusser, 1971:133). combining both ‘hierarchical observation’ and ‘normalising judgement’ is ‘the examination’. foucault (1977:184) argues that “it is through the examination that the individual is qualified, classified and punished”. power ensures that those to whom it is applied feel its effects, and therefore conform to the rituals initiated in the practice of the construction of learner identity. the theory of performativity conceives “identity as a paradox that is inherently unstable and revealing norms requiring continuous maintenance” (hey, 200: 439). this conceptualisation of identity provides grounds for agency to be conceived as contingent, non-unitary, complex and inter-discursive (charteris, 2016). butler (2009) argues that these norms are used to regulate people through a process of ‘interpellation’ or ‘hail’ (davies, 2012). interpellation is defined as “an act of calling an individual which subjectifies the individual and initiates him or her into the subjected status, and therefore into a certain order of social existence” (davies, 2012: 882). butler (1998) argues that agency is the effect of power and is constituted in the discourse. learners are transformed and acted upon prior to any action that they might take, notwithstanding radically reworking designated or prescribed identity (butler, 2009). learner identities that emerge from the school context are not fully expressed identities. foucault (1970) asserts that there is no presence of power without resistance. discourses, that are constituents of historical processes and power relations that exist in a school, make possible the self-knowledge. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 1852022 40(4): 185-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 vandeyar & ziqubu rupturing the laws of discourse 4. research strategy the meta-theoretical paradigm of this study was social constructivism. according to social constructivism meaning is always social arising in and out of interaction with a human community (crotty, 1998). the historical and cultural setting and context inform the kinds of meanings made by human beings. meanings about the ‘lived world’ are formed through interaction with others and through cultural norms that operate in individuals’ lives (creswell, 2013). the methodological paradigm was a qualitative inquiry and employed a bounded case study and narrative inquiry approach. the case study approach allowed for the holistic, indepth study of the particular individual or event (leedy & ormrod, 2010) and focused on an empirical inquiry that investigated a contemporary phenomenon (the ‘case’) in depth and within its real-world context” (yin, 2014: 16). the case comprised of grade 10 learners and teachers at three different schools. narrative inquiry is a method which is used to collect, analyse, and represent participants’ stories as told by them and relates to the individual’s personal experience (clandinin & connelly, 2000). the research site comprised three south african secondary schools situated in johannesburg, gauteng. school of excellence was a former white english medium, a wellresourced public school that was established during apartheid and catered to learners from diverse backgrounds. independent school was established in 1993, as a private school but subsequently changed to a public school and catered to most african learners with a sprinkling of learners from diverse backgrounds. masibambane high school was a no-fee, english medium less-resourced school. it catered to learners from child-headed homes, some of whom were living in shacks. the rationale for selecting these differing schooling contexts was an attempt to capture rich, thick data and provide different accounts of how learners exercised their agency. in principle, the construction of learner identity, through the use of similar mechanisms and instruments, could possibly be the same. however, learner experiences in exercising agency could likely be different within these schooling contexts. participants of this study were purposefully selected (creswell, 2013) and comprised of grade 10 learners, aged between 14 and 16, teachers who taught grade 10 learners and the principal at each school. grade 10 learners were the main participants of the study. teachers and the principal at each school were interviewed for purposes of triangulation of data. the rationale for selecting grade 10 learners was that they were at the adolescent stage of development where awareness of their identities and the social world became heightened. to aid in the selection of participants, a questionnaire was administered to one grade 10 class of 30 learners in each school. based on the responses received five learners across gender and socio-economic status per class were selected to participate in semi-structured interviews. for the purposes of triangulation of data, one grade 10 teacher who taught these learners and the principal at each school was selected to participate in this study. the teachers and principals were secondary participants in this study and served as multiple sources of evidence to triangulate data to address internal validity (yin, 2014). triangulation is viewed as a useful technique as it provides multiple perspectives on a single phenonmenon (cohen & manion, 1999). data capture comprised a mix of a questionnaire, semi-structured interviews, and field notes. interviews conducted with participants were audio recorded. data was analysed using the qualitative content analysis method. this was achieved through an inductive content http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 1862022 40(4): 186-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) analysis process. the qualitative data was subjected to an iterative, reflexive and interactive open coding process that yielded categories and emergent themes (petty, thomson & stew, 2012). the codes generated from the data were continuously modified by the researcher’s treatment of the data ‘to accommodate new data and new insights about the data’ (sandelowski 2000, 338). research trustworthiness was achieved by applying the principles of transferability, credibility, dependability and confirmability (butler-kisber, 2010). to enhance case to case transferability we adopted a strategy of selecting schools from socio-culturally diverse settings. credibility was enhanced by prolonged and varied engagement with each setting and accomplished through triangulation and in-depth data collection by means of semistructured interviews. to promote dependability we meticulously maintained records of interviews and a detailed explication of the data analysis process for purposes of the audit trail. the trustworthiness construct of confirmability was achieved by employing reflexivity, triangulation, purposeful sampling and data saturation. the ethics committee at the university granted approval to conduct this study. 5. findings findings reveal that learner identity and learner agency were discursively constituted and were twofold. first, schools applied foucault’s disciplinary instruments of hierarchical observation and normalizing judgment in constructing learner identity. learners were subjected to a constant gaze at schools. and second, learners demonstrated that they could either resist or conform to dominant discursive discourses in schools. learners became agentic in schools and asserted their own identities. 5.1 hierarchical observation and normalising judgment the construction of the learner in the disciplinary space of the school was made possible through the use of the mechanisms of ‘hierarchical observation’ and ‘normalizing judgment’ (foucault, 1977). these mechanisms operated as rules and resources that were used by the school, to sustain or reproduce learner identity and relations, which made it possible for the school and its agents to act on learners and to subjectify them. hierarchical observation is linked to the school’s gaze of the learner according to the hierarchical authoritative ranking at the school. perfects (senior learners who is authorized to enforce discipline) were the foot soldiers who meticulously conducted their tasks, at the assembly every morning, our prefects walk between the class-lines checking whether everybody is in their full school uniform, whether students’ hair is of the required length and style… for girls long hair, braids, and plaits. fingernail length is also checked by these perfects. learners must conform to the school’s code of conduct. there will be consequences if they don’t (mr smith, white, male principal, school of excellence). normalising judgement took the form of the school’s code of conduct. it seemed that schools had applied disciplinary instruments in constructing learner identity. participants at all three schools claimed to have received the school’s code of conduct. they claimed to “have read it even though they did not go through the whole document” (annelise, school of excellence). lerato’s (independent school) frustration was that “it was huge … like carrying a bible … stipulating all the rules and regulations”. many of the learners at independent school claimed to have stopped reading the school’s code of conduct. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 1872022 40(4): 187-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 vandeyar & ziqubu rupturing the laws of discourse 5.1.1 reinforcing learner behaviour each of the three schools applied different measures to reinforce learner behaviour. learner behaviour was reinforced through the use of the merit and demerit system. schools made use of accolades to encourage good behaviour and different punitive measures to curb negative behaviour. if bad behaviour was left unpunished, the school’s construction of an ‘ideal learner’ identity may be unsuccessful. the following outlines how each school reinforced learner behaviour. 5.1.2 merit and demerit system at school of excellence, learners seemed to possess the right kind of cultural capital. “this school has good learners; learners that know how to behave. seemingly, they were well brought up” (mr smith, white male principal). it seemed that teachers were not subjected to much disruptive behaviour from learners at school of excellence. the majority of participants at this school expressed that they were there to excel in academics and sports, which were rewarded with incentives there are incentives and rewards. definitely! like for academics and sports. they do things like certificates and colours. umm … they have this new system of like giving gold braiding to the kids that participate in activities at national level. we have a red and white blazer for like your hard work and achievement at school. we have a merit system … badges … this merit system goes to a trophy and like a pro-merit award (mpendulo). all the participants mentioned that the school applied detention to reprimand unacceptable or bad behaviour. one of the participants had the following to say: we have disciplinary measures like with detentions, demerits mainly detentions; break detention, afternoon detentions like we are supposed to sit or stay like that for the entire session … write down the whole code of conduct on a piece of paper … or they call parents if the child is being too troublesome. they take away some of that child’s privileges (mrs. abrahams, coloured female teacher). 5.1.3 talk and no action: lack of an effective disciplinary system at independent school emphasis was placed on “curbing bad behaviour of learners” (mrs. engelbrecht, white female principal). little if any initiatives existed for reinforcing good behaviour. furthermore, learners seemed to exhibit a lack of fear for the disciplinary system of the school. participants expressed that they “did not care much about what the school did to curb negative behaviour” (themba). drawing from participants’ accounts, it seemed that the punitive system was marred with loopholes. there seemed to be inconsistency about how punitive measures were applied: the demerit system only existed for three weeks and it did not work no matter what! this school is all about talk and no action. learners are still waiting for demerits. nobody gets demerits. no one has been to an afternoon detention. all teachers do is shout at learners and after that they let them go (tlhohomelo). there is no discipline … we do what we want … they talk; we don’t take them seriously anymore … there is no action … at the end of the day, aah … they not going to do anything. it’s just nothing … weird. we do as we please. we just don’t care … they don’t care (lerato). http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 1882022 40(4): 188-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) 5.1.4 violation of learners’ human rights at masibambane high school, the reinforcement of good behaviour was unapparent. all effort seemed to be placed on curbing bad behaviour of learners through measures that included corporal punishment. participants claimed “the school resorted to punitive measures such as “teachers inflicting pain on learners” (jabulile) or “chasing learners out of the school” (ayanda), which “violated their human rights”(simon). jabulile expressed her disapproval of having received corporal punishment because her homework was incomplete, “we are also human ... i should not be beaten for not doing my homework”. furthermore, some of the participants claimed to be humiliated by teachers, which often took place in the presence of other learners. one of the participants said: the teacher would take my shoes and i would need to walk barefoot. my shoes will be returned much later in the day (jabulile). some learners feared being subjected to disciplinary measures, while other learners displayed a disregard of disciplinary measures. it was clear that the manner in which some schools punished learners was illegal. learners expressed their discontent of the ways mechanisms and instruments were applied, and how it constrained learner identity, learner agency and suppressed the emergence of possible subject positions. 5.2 learner agency: asserting identities through the school system learners navigated through the mechanisms and instruments, and school discourses to affirm their own subject positions. learners exercised learner agency by asserting and re-negotiating learner identity through conformity and resistance. 5.2.1 crafting the ideal learner school of excellence seemed very clear about the kind of learner they sought to construct. the school prided itself in producing learners who achieved “a high standard of education required to equip them for tertiary education” (mr smith, white male principal). it seemed that this message was equally understood by learners. maria remarked, “i think the school would want someone who is academically sound”. akhona mentioned that the school sought to construct “a learner who was responsible for academics and possessed leadership qualities”. mpendulo claimed “teachers were concerned more about the marks of learners and they would not settle for any low marks”. maria, mpendulo and luyanda, all felt they “had what it took to become the kind of learner the school sought to construct as they did well academically and participated in sports”. zamani, held a different view of school and the ideal learner. it could well have been that he “hated school … hated classrooms and the way the school functioned in general”, that was why he lacked interest in being the kind of learner that the school sought to construct. zamani, further mentioned that “i do have my moments where i’m really, can i say not in the mood … i don’t think i’m that type they are trying to craft”. interestingly, despite possessing the right kind of parental cultural capital, zamani did not see himself as what the school sought to construct. 5.3 a particular brand of learner: identity imposition learners at independent school voiced frustrations over their experiences at school. there seemed to be incompatibility between the kind of experiences independent school provided to learners and the experiences learners desired. miss chavani, (female indian teacher) remarked that the “school sought to construct a learner that would perform well at school”. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 1892022 40(4): 189-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 vandeyar & ziqubu rupturing the laws of discourse performing well at school included “obtaining good grades, completing tasks, attending classes and behaving well”. furthermore, she mentioned, “a learner should have manners and tolerate differences”. however, it seemed that the kind of learner the school sought to construct was resisted by learners. all participants held the view that “the school held a fixed view of the ideal learner”. that view, participants argued, “blinded the school from recognising the kind of learners they were”. nyakallo remarked that the school focused on a “certain group of people instead of checking whether this ideal learner we are looking for … might be like a different brand, but then they focusing on one particular brand”. lerato added, i feel like they trying to make all of us about academics, and they wonder why the child fails … and i feel like they don’t understand that. they don’t get that not every student is going to be academically strong. tlhokomelo seemed frustrated by the school’s persistence to want to construct them into something they were not, they have tried to build me in a particular way, … they will never try to build me in that type of way. i am still who i am, even if they think they are trying, it’s not working at all. i mean there is no difference! according to lerato the school is “trying to enforce ways into your mind so that they can look good”. furthermore, participants chastised the school for “constraining their identities and their potential”. dineo mentioned that “they are not opening up opportunities for us, and who we are”. dineo, lerato and tlhokomelo accused the school of “failing to recognise differences”. learners were, according to dineo constrained as they “did not have many extramural activities from which to choose”. there seemed to be limited choices in subjects and in sporting codes that catered to a particular group of learners: some are good at sport, some are not. when it comes to subject choices you know we have the basics. we don’t have art, even don’t have consumer studies. someone may prefer technical maths, we don’t have it, you understand! subjects are limited. … so you are literally forced to stay in a small box while we as individuals in a high school are trying to build ourselves. we are trying to find ourselves, regarding who we are! (dineo). participants held different views regarding how the school allowed them to freely express themselves. it seemed that participants saw themselves as having two identities; learner identity and personal identity. nyakallo felt constrained by the concept of the ideal learner, hence she “could not be [herself]”. tlhokomelo mentioned, they don’t! they don’t! they don’t allow you to be who you really are…this school is also judgemental of you being yourself, expressing who you are…you fear that you will be judged by the learners and the people in the school. they just do not accept you for who you are…so you just kind of like compose yourself together so to avoid being judged. from the participants’ accounts, there seemed to be limitations to what learners at the school could become. participants felt they could not be themselves. 5.4 freedom with conditions at masibambane, participants felt that the school “allowed them freedom, but with conditions”. all participants mentioned that even though they felt free at school, they felt that every move they made was closely monitored. thandeka claimed “being constrained came in the form of their choice of hairstyle”. she mentioned, “teachers chose for [them] the type of hairstyle”. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 1902022 40(4): 190-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) this “did not sit well with [her] because [she] wanted to be comfortable and beautiful as [she] was unique”. for amahle and jabulile, “constraints came in a form of being instructed about the length of your hair”. within school discourses, learners had different perceptions of and understandings of their identities and the kind of learner that the school sought to construct. some of these identities clashed with the identity of the ‘ideal learner’ of schools. consequently, the way they exercised agency was not uniform. some learners bought into the whole idea of schooling, while other learners resisted and defied school. despite established subject positions in schools, learners created their own subject positions, as they believed that the school was limiting and constraining their abilities. 6. analysis and discussion of finding according to foucault (1977) individuals enter the school without possessing a learner identity. subjecting individuals to hierarchical observation and normalizing judgment construct a learner identity. all three schools in this study used these mechanisms to construct an ‘ideal learner identity’. foucault (1977: 176) argues that “a relation of surveillance is inscribed at the heart of the practice of teaching as a mechanism that is inherent to it and increases its efficiency”. learners were subjected to a constant gaze from the principal, teachers, prefects and peers. the conduct of learners was closely monitored in schools. learners were required to always be on their best behaviour. uniform checks were conducted daily and learners were called out if they were not in full uniform. in some instances, learners who did not wear their full school uniform were refused entry into the school. names of so-called rebellious learners were noted for record keeping so that they could be known by authorities. the purpose of observation was not only to ensure that learners behaved in a seemly manner but “to provide a hold on their conduct … to make it possible to know them, to alter them” (foucault, 1977: 172). interpellation, an act that “subjectifies an individual and initiates him into the subjected status, and into a certain order of social existence” (davies, 2012: 882) was very apparent in these schools. mechanisms of constructing learner identity incorporated power and showed explicitly how power functions in the school. the principal, teachers, and prefects operated in the form of a pyramid (foucault, 1977) to give effect to power. power allowed these authoritative figures to see everything that happens in the school. it seems that hierarchical observation and normalising judgment through the school’s code of conduct constituted the ‘strict discipline’ process of the school and effectively contributed to the construction of an ideal learner identity (foucault, 1977). however, the school’s construction of an ‘ideal learner identity’ seemed to create an ethic of discomfort for some learners as their established identities were challenged and re-constructed. all schools in this study used a demerit and detention system in disciplining learners. this shaped learner identity and fostered the appropriate and desirable behaviour from learners. this finding is aligned with findings in the literature that claim demerit systems, taking away privileges, time-outs, detention and picking up litter are viable options to discipline learners (ebrahim, 2017; deakin, taylor & kupchik, 2018). however, at independent school the inconsistent application of disciplinary measures led to a lack of fear of being disciplined. otto and ukpere (2020) argue that inconsistency of disciplinary decision-making leads to loss of confidence and abuses, which could weaken morale, and affect productivity. learners at this http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 1912022 40(4): 191-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 vandeyar & ziqubu rupturing the laws of discourse school knew that authorities at the school were not going to act against ill behaviour, and thus abused the system. disciplinary measures at masibambane high school took the form of corporal punishment and in some instances a violation of human rights. at times learners were physically assaulted for failing to complete tasks on time or for arriving late to class. “we are human ... i should not be beaten for not doing my homework”. findings in the literature also emphasise the fact that corporal punishment violates internationally recognized human rights to freedom from cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment or punishment, and freedom from physical violence (vohito, 2021). 7. learner agency: asserting identities through the school system learners exercised agency in non-unitary, complex, and inter-discursive ways (charteris, 2016) and navigated through the power to promote their agency. the ‘ideal learner identity’ enforced by the school through hierarchical observation and normalising judgement was seen as inherently stable and revealed norms that required continuous maintenance (butler, 1998). however, the construction of an ideal learner identity was met with resistance from learners as they disapproved of the application of the mechanisms in constructing ‘learner identity’ and sought to affirm their multiple identities. identities are fluid, complex and can change over time ( vandeyar, 2019; 2022; charteris, 2016). learners in all three schools were heterogeneous subjects possessing complex and multifaceted identities. their learners identity shifted and changed based on their interactions with particular actors and particular contexts within the school environment. some learners believed that they were more than just learners. they viewed themselves as having dominant identities that were ignored by the school. learners identified as sport players, dancers, writers and not just an academic learner. they expressed the view that schools ought to be educational spaces where their true selves can be realised. the school should not only be a place for constructing a learner identity, but it should also be much more than that. the school should facilitate learner talents. failure of the school to assume such a role led learners to devalue the school. similar to findings in the literature (omodan & ige, 2021; marais & meier, 2010) at the school of excellence learners were recognised as heterogeneous subjects that held multiple identities, but the school failed to affirm learners’ diverse backgrounds. at times learners’ personal identities clashed with the learner identity that the school sought to construct. as dineo (independence schools) stated, the school was trying to keep them in a box when all they wanted was to build their own identity. being kept in a ‘box’ frustrated learners as their other identities were constrained. lerato stated that not only did learners possess their own learner identity, they were also much more than that. the decision of learners not to read the code of conduct at independent school could be viewed as assuming a subject position of rebelliousness. findings in the literature also suggest that problem behaviours include those breaking explicit rules as well as those infringing implicit norms or expectations (segalo & rambudam, 2018; sun & shek, 2012). it could be that learners chose to exercise their agency. foucault (1970) asserts that there is no presence of power without resistance. discourses, that are constituents of historical processes and power relations that exist in a school, make possible the self-knowledge. it seems that learners in all the participating schools demonstrated ‘double directionality’ as they allowed schools to construct learner identities and they negotiated their own identities (charteris, 2016). as akhona stated that although he allowed the school to shape his learner http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 1922022 40(4): 192-195 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6414 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) identity, he made concerted efforts to negotiate his chosen identity. at masibambane high learners believed that their identity was important and therefore needed to be taken into account by the school. they demanded that they be treated with human dignity. and respect by both teachers and other learners. “we also human isn’t ... i should not be beaten for not doing my homework” mechanisms of constructing learner identity incorporated power and thus learners had to abide by this mechanism and accept the imposed ‘ideal learner identity’. however, it became apparent that despite their awareness of possible repercussions learners attempted to challenge such power and embrace agency. they negotiated their learner identity within the portals of power while constructing their own chosen identities in school. in classrooms, learners took the initiative in their learning and engaged each other on certain subjects. they would discuss topics they found challenging. this was done by forming groups and positioning themselves according to their own abilities. learners expressed how they felt about the school and authority. similar to findings in the literature (west & williams, 2017) in instances where learners felt the school was unaccommodating, they resorted to grouping themselves and forming a community of learners that shared similar values. it was in such a community of learners that they felt they could be anything as they were not judged for who they were. while the school tried to shape their learner identity using traditional western norms of an ‘ideal learner’ (soudien, 2007) these learners bounded by power dynamics of the school superficially accepted this imposed learner identity, but remained true to their own identities. 8. conclusion human relations play an important role in determining learners’ academic progress. attention must be given to the social relations that learners have with fellow learners and most importantly, with teachers and the principal. the discontentment of learners with people in positions of authority directly correlates with a drop in academic performance. people in positions of authority need to be open to opposing views of learners and to encourage dialogue. not all learners who attend upper-middle class schools attend school for the purpose of the acquisition of specialised knowledge. some learners attend school having a dominant identity which is not that of the ‘ideal learner’. learners see themselves being more than learners and schools ought to take into account their contradicting identities. perhaps schools need to assist learners to reach their full potential by letting them decide what they want to be and be supportive of learners’ choices. schools should encourage more subject positions for learners and not impose an identity onto learners. learners were making a call for a new form of learner identity to cater for changing times. the traditional and historically “ideal learner identity’ crafted from a western perspective and imposed on learners by schools were at loggerheads with current interests and experiences of contemporary learners at schools. learners in schools subversively transformed, refused, parodied and ruptured the laws of discourse, thereby reconfiguring and redefining their identities (jackson, 2004). understanding all learners’ experiences and the cultural capital they possess would avoid cultural clashes and the subjection learners to symbolic violence. learners hold multiple identities that are contradictory to the ‘ideal learner identity’. this study 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indigenous language; marginalisation; mixed-methods; methodological triangulation. 1. introduction the study of language attitudes is a global phenomenon (alebiosu, 2016). melander (2003) states that language attitudes can be linked to an affective, cognitive or behavioural index of evaluative reactions towards language varieties. language attitudes towards sesotho in higher education remain an area of sociolinguistics that has not author: dr soyiso khetoa1 dr sara motsei1 affiliation: 1university of the free state doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i2.13 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(2): 175-190 published: 11 june 2021 received: 14 july 2020 accepted: 28 september 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 1762021 39(2): 176-190 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) yet been extensively explored in south africa. african languages, such as sesotho, have experienced decades of marginalisation in south africa, starting with the colonisation of south africa. indo-european languages, such as english and afrikaans, were institutionally imposed on africans while african languages were denied equal treatment under colonial rule. this attitude intensified under apartheid governments prior to 1994. the restrictions imposed on african languages in certain domains gradually came to negatively affect africans’ perceptions of these languages’ ability to perform and function effectively in prestigious domains such as business and politics in south africa. 2. literature review there is a continued decline in the number of students enrolling to study african languages in south africa and other african states. the perception that students who are registered to study african languages are academically inferior has resulted in fewer africans choosing to study their indigenous languages at universities. (owu-ewie & edu-buandoh, 2014). since the beginning of democracy in south africa there has been a growing preference for acquiring english compared to indigenous languages. barkhuizen (2001) suggests that students prefer studying in english because the language is easier and more fun to learn than isixhosa. in pre-colonial africa however, indigenous people effectively used indigenous languages to facilitate communication and negotiate matters relevant to them before the arrival of the settlers. knowledge and life lessons were successfully passed down from generation to generation. in other words, indigenous languages successfully met all societal needs before colonists imposed their worldview on indigenous african people (the ministerial committee report on indigenous african languages, 2003). according to the report, indigenous people were able to acquire knowledge and interpret it in critical areas such as astronomy, medicine, philosophy and history (ibid). the arrival of the settlers completely disrupted the african knowledge system. oral traditions, which transferred knowledge from generation to generation in africa, were undermined by the introduction of european written literature (the ministerial committee report on indigenous african languages, 2003). during this period, writing systems for indigenous languages were developed under the administration of europeans (ditsele, 2014). the goal was to use this language development as a mechanism for the conversion of african people to christianity (ditsele, 2014). although the above constituted a notable contribution to the development of indigenous languages, colonisers did not miss the opportunity to impose their native languages on the indigenous speakers of african languages. according to awobuliyi (1992), all colonists in africa imposed their languages on indigenous people in every colony they controlled, especially with regard to the spheres of administration, commerce, trade and education (bamgbose, 2011). since then, indigenous languages have been relegated to the back seat and have yet to make meaningful inroads into high status usage domains. bamgbose (2011) postulates that the lasting effect of this colonial legacy is that the undisputed hegemony of imported languages, which began in colonial times, has persisted to this day. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 1772021 39(2): 177-190 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 khetoa & motsei an evaluation of the opinions of students enrolled in sesotho modules table 1: moments in south african language history period language official status domain of use supporting sources 1652–1806 dutch yes trade politics religion education negotiation social intercourse steyn (1995). 1795–present english yes judiciary business media education van niekerk (2015). 1830–present afrikaans yes church education work afrikaner: from european to “afrikaner” (saho, 2020). 1994–present indigenous south african languages yes education media zikode (2017). the information contained in table 1 indicates that the coloniser languages in south africa have always been used in the high status domains of society. since the 1600s, european languages have been official languages in the land of africans while indigenous languages have been denied such status until recently. it is only within the recent past that indigenous languages have been granted official status. the declaration of indigenous languages as official languages in south africa have not significantly changed their position in society. post-1994 south africa, similar to many other african states, has inherited without contestation the use of non-indigenous languages (such as english) as high status domain languages. when south africa finally became a democracy, the multiparty government maintained an exoglossic posture. the adjective “exoglossic” refers to the declaration of a foreign language as the official national language in a particular country (mhute, 2015; wolff, 2017). this description fits the situation in south africa very well. although the equal status of english and south africa’s indigenous languages has been proclaimed, english continues to dominate the indigenous languages. the status of colonial languages has largely remained the same. the use of non-indigenous languages as official languages in south africa was met with resistance from students in 1976 when afrikaans was imposed on black students as the language of teaching and learning. marjorie (1982) states that more than 15 000 students marched in the streets carrying banners with slogans such as ‘‘blacks are not dustbins − afrikaans stinks’’ to declare their unwillingness to be educated in afrikaans. the 1976 demonstrations forced the apartheid government to reconsider their decision and afrikaans was later withdrawn as the language of teaching and learning in all south african township schools. although the government’s decision was relaxed, indigenous languages were not elevated to act as mediums of instruction. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 1782021 39(2): 178-190 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) according to the south african constitution (1996), everyone has the right to receive education in the official language(s) of their choice in public educational institutions in cases where that education is deemed to be reasonably practical. this prescription is emphasised by the ministry of education’s education policy (2006), which stipulates that all children have the right to be educated in their mother tongue while having access to global languages (language in education policy, 2006). this statement can be interpreted to mean that learners in south africa have the right to learn and be taught in their primary languages and that languages such as english will be introduced to learners as additional languages. however, the realities observed in public schools in south africa contradict the prescriptions of the policy. indigenous languages are taught as subjects while english takes up about ninety per cent of tuition time in government schools. in south africa the use of mother tongue-based instruction is encouraged in primary classes, but after six years of primary schooling, english becomes the medium of instruction and the mother tongue is retained as a school subject (baine & mwamwenda, 1994). generally speaking, the lack of a rigorous commitment by the government and private sector to adopt programmes that will advance the use of indigenous south african languages beyond low-level domains has negatively affected black south africans’ perception of their languages. against this backdrop, african languages such as sesotho are slowly being withdrawn from public use to become languages only used in households and corridors (moeketsi, 2014). these signs of withdrawal from public function make it difficult to understand why students still enrol at universities to study african languages. 3. language attitudes language attitudes are particularly prominent in a multilingual setting where the knowledge of a particular language is associated with a particular “social type” (fishman, 1970 cited in rudwick & shange 2006). fishman’s sentiments can be observed in countries such as south africa where there is an ongoing practice of fostering linguistic proficiency in indoeuropean languages in preference to indigenous languages because of the social status “promised” by attaining competency in indo-european languages. african languages have been marginalised mainly because people do not recognise them as languages of upward mobility and job interviews are never conducted using african languages, even if the person is applying for a job in an african language department (ntshangase, 2011). ntshangase (2011) further argues that negative attitudes towards indigenous african languages are fuelled by misconceptions about these languages. local indigenous languages supposedly lack the depth to express modern concepts, especially in the field of academia, and these languages also lack the required “buying power” or “market value”, which render them unfit for use as languages of trade. 4. research problem the composition of society during the reign of apartheid in south africa advanced the promotion and development of afrikaans to guarantee its unrestricted use (mesthrie, 2002). mesthrie (2002) posits that african languages were not meaningfully developed because they were never intended for usage in the upper levels of education, economics and politics. african languages have been marginalised to such an extent that pastors and politicians continue to prefer to make lamentations in english when they address their audiences in the townships (mkhombo, 2010). despite being marginalised for decades, african languages continue to http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 1792021 39(2): 179-190 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 khetoa & motsei an evaluation of the opinions of students enrolled in sesotho modules be offered at universities, but their usage is limited, even at that level. in this context, the present enquiry seeks to explore students’ attitudes towards sesotho against the backdrop of observed linguistic practices at a south african university. 5. theoretical framework this section provides a linguistic imperialism theoretical framework for the study. linguistic imperialism refers to a linguistic situation where indigenous people are gradually conscientised to look at their indigenous languages with disdain while adopting foreign languages largely due to the benefits that are expected to be derived from acquiring these languages (agyekum, 2018). agyekum further argues that indigenous people, especially in africa, are encouraged to believe that indigenous languages cannot be used in education, economics, science and technology and that a foreign language is the best language for conducting business or educational training. linguistic imperialism has deepened in african countries to the extent that many families in the cities communicate with their children in english and the children cannot speak their mother tongue. attitudes towards african languages in school and at home are very negative, and people are ashamed of speaking their languages (phillipson, 2009). attitude towards a language is influenced by the status and power associated with that particular language. this study seeks to establish whether it is true that speakers of sesotho are shunning their language and harbouring negative feelings towards sesotho, as suggested by phillipson (2009). 6. research aim this study sought to establish students’ attitudes towards sesotho at university. the responses of students majoring in sesotho at second year and third year level were analysed. the investigation centred on students’ answers to the following questions: • what are students’ attitudes towards sesotho, particularly students majoring in sesotho? • what are students’ opinions about the use of sesotho in other valued domains? 7. research methodology research methodology refers to the procedures by which researchers go about their work of describing, explaining and predicting phenomena under investigation (rajasekar, philominathan & chinnatahmbi, 2013). this includes the study’s design, setting, sample, methodological limitations, data collection and analysis techniques (burns & grove, 2003). the objective of this study was to provide credible and honest responses to the research questions. to achieve this goal, certain processes and procedures were followed. the study therefore used mixed methods to gather data largely because of the benefits it promises. according to creswell and clark (2007), this method is based on the use of qualitative and quantitative approaches in combination that provide a wide and deep understanding of the concepts being investigated. the bias inherent in any data collection tool, investigator or particular method will be cancelled out when used in conjunction with other data sources, investigators or methods (denzin, 1978). to maximise the accuracy and relevance of the findings, this study also relied on methodological triangulation. methodological triangulation involves the use of multiple research techniques, such as observations, surveys, questionnaires and interviews http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 1802021 39(2): 180-190 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) for data elicitation (denzin, 1973). in this study, data were elicited by using interviews and questionnaires. in attitudinal studies such as this one, it is important to use unmatched methods to look at the same phenomenon. using two research techniques to investigate the same phenomenon maximises accuracy and reliability of findings, especially when probing complex concepts such as language attitudes. 7.1 questionnaire the use of a questionnaire represents one of the most common methods of data collection on attitudes and opinions from a large group of participants (ahmed, 2015). questionnaires are probably the best available instruments for obtaining information from a wide number of people, provided they are properly constructed and carefully administered (ary, 1979). questionnaires allow researchers to gather self-reported information by respondents. the questionnaire used in this study contained openand close-ended questions. according to babbie (2001), close-ended questions are popular in research because they provide a greater uniformity of response. open-ended questions allow respondents to add additional information to their responses. forty questionnaires were distributed to students enrolled for sesotho modules. students had a week to complete and return questionnaires to researchers. out of forty questionnaires, thirty-three were completed and returned. 7.2 interviews to supplement the questionnaires, research interviews were also conducted with twenty students. these enabled researchers to probe the same phenomenon while using different research tools. the students who were interviewed were drawn from the same sample used for completion of the questionnaire. an interview is a specialised form of communication in which people interact for a purpose (fakude, 2012). according to seale, gobo, gubrium and silverman (2004), an interview is a social encounter where speakers collaborate in producing retrospective and prospective accounts or versions of their past or future actions, experiences, feelings and thoughts. in this article, students had to share their feelings and thoughts about the use of sesotho in society. 7.3 sampling the sample of respondents used for this inquiry had been structured to fit the purpose of the inquiry. the study required that a sample be drawn from students enrolled for sesotho modules at second year and third year study level at the university of the free state (ufs). purposive sampling was used, which meant that only students who had registered for sesotho modules at the university of the free state were drawn. students were approached and informed about the study on the main campus in bloemfontein. they were then presented with an information sheet and consent note to complete if they wanted to participate in the study. two groups were included in this study primarily because of their unmatched experience with the sesotho language as a language of teaching and learning at university. the second year students had encountered the use of sesotho in a higher education setup over a period of one year while third year students already had advanced experience with the use of sesotho at university level. 7.4 limitations since respondents were required to write their responses, the researcher could not observe their attitudes directly but had to rely on reported accounts in order to deduce from the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 1812021 39(2): 181-190 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 khetoa & motsei an evaluation of the opinions of students enrolled in sesotho modules statements the attitudes held by the respondents towards sesotho. because the study was limited to students enrolled for sesotho via a major module or an elective module, the findings cannot be generalised. the two groups’ encounters and experiences with sesotho were not identical in nature. this, of course, explains the development of differential attitudes towards the matter at hand. 7.5 data analysis brynard and hanekom (1997) argue that during the process of data collection, the researcher is engaged in what can be referred to as a preliminary analysis of the data. that is, the researcher discards that which is not relevant to the research project and retains only the relevant data. once the data collection has been completed, an in-depth analysis of the data is made by means of data filtering and mapping. at this stage, the researcher vigorously checks the responses gathered from respondents and continuously checks for themes from the data corpus. data analysis in this study was conducted by following the principles of reducing, displaying, transforming, correlating, consolidating, comparing and integrating data, as advised by onwuegbuzie and combs (2011). 7.6 reliability and validity reliability and validity are important concepts in research as they are used for reasons that include enhancing the accuracy of assessing and evaluating a research work (tavakol and dennick, 2011). complete adherence to the values expressed in the two concepts can help ensure that fellow scientists (and other stakeholders) accept the findings of a research project as credible and trustworthy (brink, 1993). methodological triangulation was used in this study to mitigate researchers’ interference during the process of data collection. the second reason for using triangulation was to confirm the validity, correctness, accuracy and reliability of the results of the study. essentially, using triangulation would be instrumental in cancelling out any inherent bias from the researchers. 7.7 ethical considerations any research that involves human participation requires ethical clearance. in this study, an application for ethical clearance was submitted to the humanities ethics clearance committee of the ufs before embarking on data collection. prospective participants were informed that participation in this study was voluntary and that every participant had the right to withdraw at any time during the study. moreover, participants were assured that their identities will be kept confidential. this study was granted ethical clearance by the faculty of humanities at the university of the free state in november 2018 with ethical clearance number ufs-hsd2018/0765. 8. findings this section presents all the data collected through the questionnaires and research interviews. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 1822021 39(2): 182-190 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 8.1 questionnaire data presentation ba la nguage practice, 3 ba di vi nity, 3 ba dra ma and theatre, 3 ba art hi s tory, 3 b educti on, 73 ba i n undisclosed progra mmes, 15 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 ba language practice ba divinity ba drama and theatre ba art history b eduction ba in undisclosed programmes respondents' fields of study ba language prac tice ba divinity ba drama and theatre ba art history b eduction ba in undisclosed programmes figure 1: respondents’ fields of study the highest number of respondents came from the faculty of education, as observed in figure 1. the bachelor of language practice, the bachelor of divinity, bachelor of drama and theatre arts and bachelor of art history each drew three per cent. the remaining fifteen per cent belonged to respondents who did not disclose their study fields. figure 2: language commonly used to conduct classes in primary school figure 2 indicates that fifty-eight per cent of the students were taught through sesotho. sesotho played an important role in students’ education in primary school. thirty-six per cent also indicated that english was the language commonly used to teach and discuss ideas or concepts during their primary school years. six per cent indicated that isixhosa was the language commonly used to conduct classes in primary school. teaching and learning took place using the languages of the students. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 1832021 39(2): 183-190 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 khetoa & motsei an evaluation of the opinions of students enrolled in sesotho modules figure 3: language commonly used to conduct classes in secondary school figure 3 shows that sixty-seven per cent of the sample indicated that english was the language mainly used to conduct classes when students attended high school. twenty-seven per cent of students reported that sesotho was the language commonly used to conduct classes, while only six per cent mentioned that isixhosa fulfilled this role during their secondary school years. figure 4: the language that is better understood in class according to figure 4, fifty-eight per cent of respondents indicated that they understood sesotho better in class. thirty-nine per cent indicated that english was the better understood language in class. only three per cent indicated that they perfectly understood sesotho and english in class. faridy and syaodih (2017) argue that the mother tongue has a major influence on children. children who master their mother tongue as a first language tend to have a larger vocabulary in this language compared to the national language (ibid). in south africa students still learn their (indigenous) languages as subjects. accordingly, it is not surprising that students understand sesotho better because it is a language that has accompanied them throughout their academic journey. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 1842021 39(2): 184-190 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) do you think learning sesotho at university will improve your career prospects? table 2: benefits of studying sesotho option: percentage remarks yes 97% -one can become a lecturer, news anchor in sesotho or researcher in indigenous african languages. -the scarcity of sesotho educators will provide me with an opportunity for employment. -because i am going to be a sesotho educator in future. -because i want to end up in the media industry as a user of sesotho. -i can provide deeper subject knowledge. no 3% -no remarks were made. table 2 indicates that approximately ninety-seven per cent of the sample strongly believed that their sesotho studies would improve their career prospects after they had graduated from university. their reasons for this belief are listed in the table. three per cent of the sample indicated that they did not believe that sesotho would improve their career prospects after graduating from university. these students did not provide any reason for holding this belief. 8.2 interview data the researchers conducted interviews with twenty second year and third year students enrolled in sesotho modules. the interview questions probed students’ perceptions, beliefs and opinions about sesotho. the responses offered by interviewees provide a picture detailing the kinds of attitudes students have towards sesotho. the interviews were conducted at a time when students did not have classes to attend or other academic commitments. measures were taken to ensure that data collection did not interfere with the students’ academic responsibilities. should indigenous languages such as sesotho be left to die out because of globalisation? give reasons. many people strongly believe that indigenous languages should not be left to die out. language and culture are inseparable. this notion is supported by the responses of students. students also associate language with identity. students indicated that: future generations will neither be able to communicate with their ancestors nor know their own roots because english would have taken over. because the sesotho-speaking people are going to lose their identity and will be contemptuous of their own tribe. preserving our indigenous languages is very important. nothing brings more pride to a person than knowing his or her mother tongue. in a modern world it is still important to know who we are. indigenous languages are what make us unique. future generations will not have a glimpse of their local cultures. they will be doomed because they will not know their heritage. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 1852021 39(2): 185-190 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 khetoa & motsei an evaluation of the opinions of students enrolled in sesotho modules the statements made by the student sample suggest that they understand that the extinction of indigenous languages would have catastrophic consequences. the way students view this matter is largely influenced by the relationship they observe between language and identity, and language and culture. do you think sesotho should be developed so that it can cater for the needs of all departments at a university? explain your answer. most students feel strongly that sesotho should be meaningfully developed so that it can fully function within a university context. students believe that sesotho must be developed to a degree where its functions are not limited. the general belief among students is that: we are in the free state province, the sesotho language should be embraced in the province and the institution. over the course of many years we have seen afrikaans students flourish because they are taught in their language. i would want that for the next generation of sesotho pupils. the rest of the students believe that sesotho should not be developed to the level where it can cater for all the needs of university departments. this conviction is driven by the reasons listed hereunder: some departments do not need sesotho. it would not be fair to other students who speak other african languages. the university must accommodate all cultures. english is fine as a medium of instruction for everyone. a university is a place of higher education. english should be the only language used to cater for all departments. the sample contained unmatched perceptions on the issue of the development of sesotho. the conviction that sesotho should be developed is associated with the benefits that can accrue as a result of being taught in one’s own language in terms of academic performance as well as the fact that sesotho is the biggest language spoken in this region of the country. however, some students feel uncomfortable with the use of sesotho in all university departments. students believe that sesotho is not necessary for all departments. they feel that english should be the only language used since the use of english accommodates students of diverse cultures in a university. if sesotho were to replace english as a language of teaching and learning would you welcome the change? provide reasons for your response. this notion received favourable responses from students – in fact, they appreciated the idea. students believed that the following would happen if sesotho were to replace english: i will be able to understand and apply what is being said in class. this will improve my knowledge or intelligence. i will learn through a language i understand. there are english terms that i barely understand but they make more sense when they are translated into sesotho. most learners do not fail because they are dumb but simply because they lack understanding. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 1862021 39(2): 186-190 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) i would be comfortable learning something in my own language. another small group of students would not welcome that change. this conviction is guided by the reasons provided below: not all of us know the sesotho language. so, it won’t be fair to other people and it will be difficult for us to adapt to that change. english is our language of instruction. teaching should be done in english because other students do not know the sesotho language. if i get a job that requires english after i have graduated, i will struggle to do what my job requires. i won’t understand what is required of me and how to do it. most of the interviewees stated they would welcome the change. on the other hand, a small group believes that such a change will disadvantage other students who are not speakers of sesotho. do you think sesotho can express educational concepts? explain. there is a general belief among most students that sesotho can express ideas pertaining to education. this group of students is convinced that education-related concepts can be expressed in sesotho. students believe that: english concepts can be translated into sesotho. we have the lexicon of this language. every language has its own set of meanings, so why can’t we express concepts in sesotho?. other students (a small group) believe that sesotho is incapable of expressing educational concepts. these students argue that: sesotho does not have educational concepts or words. i cannot say psychology in sesotho. some concepts are easily understandable in english and it will be difficult to translate them. students’ perceptions about whether sesotho can express educational concepts are unmatched. the larger group believes that sesotho can express educational ideas, while the smaller group does not believe that sesotho can communicate academic notions. do you think the use of african languages as languages of instruction or documentation requires urgent national attention? why? students share the conviction that the use of african languages as languages of instruction requires urgent national attention. according to the students, the use of african languages as languages of teaching and learning across curricula must be urgently considered due to the following reasons: because of the pace at which globalisation is taking place, african languages are at the brink of becoming extinct, and english is dominating. it is important to preserve our languages so that african languages cannot perish. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 1872021 39(2): 187-190 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 khetoa & motsei an evaluation of the opinions of students enrolled in sesotho modules sometimes people need to express themselves in their own african languages, so it would give anyone the potential to participate. some students feel that african languages should not be introduced as mediums of instruction. the shared opinion among this group of students is that: we have so many african languages. it is going to be problematic to let them all be languages of instruction, so english should be kept as the one language. three students feel that it would be problematic to promote all indigenous languages to a level where they can function as languages of instruction. the remaining number of students, on the other hand, believe that the state should urgently institute measures to promote the development of indigenous languages. 9. discussion the discussion of findings will focus on the following aspects: language practice in south african schools; studying sesotho at university, and language preservation and development. 9.1 language practices in south african public schools indigenous languages are commonly used during the first few years of basic education. the information contained in figure 2 seems to support mkhombo’s (2010) sentiments that the use of african languages as mediums of instruction is encouraged in primary classes but after a few years there is a transition to english. african languages are then retained as subjects taught in school. the transition to english can be observed in figure 3. the information contained in figure 3 indicates that approximately sixty-seven per cent of the students received their education through english in secondary schools. this means that most high school classes were conducted in english. the data in figure 5 and figure 6 supports mkhombo’s (2010) sentiments. 9.2 studying sesotho at university according to broekhuizen (2016), south africa is experiencing a shortage of qualified teachers for specific subjects such as mathematics and physical sciences as well as specific languages. the information contained in figure 1 implies that students are studying sesotho because they want to go back to their communities to teach through languages such as sesotho. the overwhelming evidence presented in table 2 indicates that students believe that learning sesotho at university has benefits. ninety-five per cent of the student sample agree that there are benefits to learning sesotho at university. the benefits suggested by students include the ability to completely grasp the academic content shared in lectures and the promise of employment as a language teacher. students will welcome the replacement of english by sesotho as a language of teaching and learning. students believe that learning through sesotho will improve the learning and comprehension process. this study sample also believes that sesotho can express educational concepts. because of this shared belief, students feel that english concepts can be translated into sesotho. moreover, there is a shared perception among the students that african languages should be considered for use as languages of instruction. this means that these languages must be significantly developed so that they can meet student demand in this regard. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 1882021 39(2): 188-190 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 9.3 language preservation and development the general opinion among the student sample is that languages such as sesotho should not be allowed to die out. the implications of letting a language die out are severe and the student sample is aware of this fact. therefore, students believe that the death of indigenous languages will hinder the transfer of local cultures from one generation to the next. students also believe that the death of indigenous languages will disturb the tradition of communicating with their ancestors. moreover, due to the relationship between culture and language, students believe that languages such as sesotho define their identity as a people. accordingly, indigenous languages should not be allowed to die out. students believe that sesotho must be meaningfully developed so that it can be used across departments in a university context, specifically at the ufs. students believe that the development of sesotho will enhance their academic performance across departments. 10. conclusion this study has shown that the majority of those questioned have a positive attitude towards sesotho at the university of the free state. since the study sample is not big, the conclusions cannot be generalised. students think that the use of sesotho should not be limited but must be expanded to domains other than households. according to the data provided in this study, the use of sesotho has made remarkable inroads into high-level domains such as education and technology (e.g. social media platforms). positive attitudes towards sesotho are fuelled by students’ perceptions that sesotho is a beautiful language, especially when the language is spoken by speakers with complete linguistic competence and performance speakers. students believe that the prospect of being taught in sesotho in institutions of higher education, such as the university in question, promises huge educational benefits. students also feel that sesotho must be preserved and should not be allowed to die out because of, for instance, globalisation. 11. recommendations it is recommended that language must be utilised as a tool to acquire skills, information and knowledge in order to promote social justice in all spheres of the university of the free state. practical steps must be taken by policy makers to create a space for indigenous languages to contribute towards the economic and academic wellbeing of students. the free state government must take bold and practical steps to advance the use of indigenous african languages in their programmes to promote social justice. such efforts will encourage the users of indigenous languages to take pride in their languages and continue using the languages publicly. references agyekum, k. 2018. linguistic imperialism and language decolonisation in africa through documentation 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elsevier ltd. seale, c., gobo, g., gubrium, j.f. & silverman, d. 2004. qualitative research practice. thousand oaks: sage. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781848608191 steyn, j. 1995. historical sketch of afrikaans. in v.n. webb. language in south africa: an input into language planning for a post-apartheid south africa. pretoria: university of pretoria. pretoria. van niekerk, g. 2015. multilingualism in south african courts: the legislative regulation of language in the cape during the nineteenth century. fundamina, 21(2): 372–391. https://doi. org/10.17159/2411-7870/2015/v21n2a10 zikode, n.p. 2017. an evaluation of the implementation of the language policy for higher education: african languages as medium of instruction at selected south african universities. unpublished master’s thesis. pretoria: university of pretoria. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.13 https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/language-policy-and-oppression-south-africa https://www.culturalsurvival.org/publications/cultural-survival-quarterly/language-policy-and-oppression-south-africa https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511486692 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511486692 https://doi.org/10.1080/09766634.2014.11885626 https://doi.org/10.2989/16073610609486435 https://doi.org/10.4314/gjl.v3i2.1 https://doi.org/10.4314/gjl.v3i2.1 https://doi.org/10.1080/09571736.2010.511771 http://www.sahistory.org.za/article/afrikaner https://doi.org/10.5116/ijme.4dfb.8dfd https://doi.org/10.4135/9781848608191 https://doi.org/10.17159/2411-7870/2015/v21n2a10 https://doi.org/10.17159/2411-7870/2015/v21n2a10 245 research article 2022 40(4): 245-261 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) exploring perceptions of parents in supporting learning during covid-19 at a south african primary school abstract the study investigated how the school management team of a primary school in gauteng supported parents to ensure academic success during covid-19. therefore, the study explored the perspectives of parents on their experiences and challenges that they had to support learning at home during the covid-19 lockdown. this study used a quantitative approach and participants were selected using quota sampling. the respondents were limited to parents of grade 3–7 learners from a selected school in the johannesburg municipality area. data were collected using an item-format combined questionnaire. this study revealed how parents experienced the online learning process. it is recommended that the school should improve its communication system with its parents, and provide online training and workshops to parents and teachers on how to give support to learners in an online teaching environment. keywords: covid-19, educational development, online learning, perceptions of parents; parental involvement 1. introduction the covid-19 pandemic has changed education forever and schools all over the world were closed down to contain the spread of the virus. this led to more than 1.5 billion children worldwide being schooled at home (strauss, 2020). deacon (2020) claims that 2 million south african children were at home without any form of educational guidance during the lockdown. parents had to step into the role of educator and many found this extremely difficult as they still had to do all their daily activities. madsen (2020) argues that parents battled between being caring parents and conscientious professionals at the same time. as a result, it became clear that many parents had different expectations as to how the online learning process should be conducted. it was however vital that schooling took place, but learners missed out on contact time with their teachers which resulted in setbacks for many learners, as some parents could assist with online learning and support author: ms chane de jager1 dr paul karel triegaardt1 affiliation: 1unisa, south africa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v40i4.6635 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(4): 245-261 published: 23 december 2022 received: 3 august 2022 accepted: 5 december 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2978-3403 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0294-1459 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 2462022 40(4): 246-261 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) their children, whereas others could not. as a result, it became critical for the school, parents, and community to work together to assure that effective learning still took place at home as learners needed to bridge the gap in their education caused by the national lockdown implemented, as explained by moore (2020). 2. research questions deacon (2020) argues that remote learning and teaching success depends on infrastructure and the support learners receive. teachers and learners were physically separated from one another during the pandemic. they had to find ways through technology to keep in contact with one another. the united nations (2020) points out that during the covid-19 pandemic, teachers were immediately tasked with implementing distance learning and had to do this without any guidance, training, or resources. therefore, teachers had to develop new skills and at the same time, provide the child with the needed knowledge. the teacher could not see the child physically and this made the task of teaching very difficult. the teacher could not determine if a child understood a concept or if the child was managing the workload (calarco, 2020). according to saavedra (2020), there is already a global crisis where children are not learning the fundamentals at school with traditional teaching methods. as calarco (2020) points out, it was unclear what schools exactly expected from parents during the crisis. seale (2020) and calarco (2020) further suggest that families needed to be equipped to support learning at home to prevent covid-19 from deepening inequality for an entire generation of children. the south african education system was not prepared for a pandemic like covid-19, and it may have a lasting effect on its education system. the main aim of our research was to investigate how the school management of a primary school in the d12 district in gauteng can support parents to ensure academic success during covid-19 by taking cognizance of parents’ perspective on how the school dealt with the online learning process. to achieve the aforementioned research aim the following sub-questions were developed: • how can school management support parents with the learning process taking place at home? • which problems at home hinder academic success for the learners during covid-19? • how can relationships between senior management, teachers, and parents improve learners’ academic success during covid-19? • what strategies can school management implement to support parents during and after covid-19? 3. theoretical model of epstein’s overlapping spheres of influence the study was framed by the theoretical model of epstein’s overlapping spheres of influence. epstein’s (2006) theory of overlapping spheres of influence describes how the school, parents, and the community have to work together to ensure the child’s development and effective learning. to ensure that this occurs, the school management team (smt) needed to provide all parents with effective measures on how they should conduct the online learning process taking place at home. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 2472022 40(4): 247-261 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 de jager & triegaardt exploring perceptions of parents in supporting learning figure 1: epstein’s overlapping spheres of influence (epstein, 2006) data from the study of grade power learning (2018) suggests that a learner who does not understand a concept properly and moves on to the next concept is left with no foundation to understand the work that will follow; therefore, it is critical for a parent to be informed by the school on what is expected of the child as well as what is expected of the parent – in this way, the parent could prevent a gap in their child’s education. meador (2020) explains that a parent who is involved and provides the child with a good foundation of education will have a child that is educated successfully. the community and parents played a vital role during this pandemic. parents also required support when they could not assist their children due to various reasons. these included a parent working and not having the time to assist their child or a parent that was unable to assist their child because they were not educated themselves. some parents needed assistance with technology to assist their children as they were not fortunate enough to have the technology or the knowledge of how the technology worked. this view is supported by deacon (2020), calarco (2020), and newman (2018). epstein’s theory of overlapping spheres of influence became very important as every sphere needed support from each other to make sure that the child kept developing. 4. literature review the pandemic unfolded across the world leaving many learners in front of closed school doors. the covid-19 pandemic served as a transformative challenge in the educational field as educators had to think on their feet to solve the problems they were faced with. dong, cao and li (2020) found that chinese parents rejected online learning because of online learning’s shortcomings. they found that young children were not able to regulate themselves without the intervention of external bodies. thus, a parent had to help the child with the learning process taking place, but their time was limited as they still needed to focus on their jobs to ensure an income. parents felt that they lacked the time and professional knowledge to http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 2482022 40(4): 248-261 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) support online learning. parents felt that young children did not have the motivation and selfdiscipline to work independently, especially now that they were isolated from other children. in finland, the relationship between schools, parents, and the larger school community is vital to providing contextual and quality education. a study conducted by albiser et al. (2020) shows that during the pandemic, teachers spent on average, 1.2 hours a day communicating and cooperating with parents. in singapore, it was found that higher parental stress levels were associated with poorer parenting-related outcomes such as harsh parenting and poor parent-child relationships (chung et al., 2020). good relationships between parents and teachers can benefit the child. in sweden, schools and homes are seen as complements, and establishing good communication between parents and teachers is seen as paramount. löwenhielm et al. (2017) explain that in sweden, they believe that there should be mutual interest and understanding between teachers and parents. schools in south africa were caught off-guard by the pandemic as they were not at all prepared to be faced with something like this – a situation where a teacher and learner would be separated and had to rely on technology to reach one another. teachers had to think on their feet and find ways to reach their learners – even the learners that were less fortunate and did not have any access to technology and resources. a study done by statistics south africa in 2018 found that just over three million south africans remain illiterate (newman, 2018). bangani (2020) argues that children of parents with low literacy levels and limited education resources were at risk of learning losses as they could not reinforce their children’s learning at home. many of these parents were from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and could not afford access to the internet. according to jansen (cf. ramrathan, 2020), if one did not have access to the internet, google classroom, and other digital learning platforms, one would only get further left behind in an already compromised and divided education system. in south africa, there is a great variance in schools’ infrastructure to support learning and teaching. there is a significant difference between higher socioeconomic and lower socioeconomic families. parents of lower socioeconomic status could not afford data costs or provide their children with devices. reddy, soudien and winnaar (2020) point out that some children did not even have a book or a desk to work on. therefore, not all learners had access to learning materials and these learners would have no learning processes taking place at home. according to venz (2021), the flow of communication from the school to parents and back is the key to creating productive relationships. to be successful in bringing the three spheres together and working in harmony to ensure academic success there should be a clear understanding of what is expected from one another (epstein, 1995). according to bonar et al. (2021) remote learning is even more difficult if english is not the learners’ first language. silver (2018) stresses that teaching is all about communication. clear, effective communication is thus important. the language barrier and lack of understanding impacted the online learning process as parents had to explain the learning content to their children, which became a problem as they did not understand the content. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 2492022 40(4): 249-261 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 de jager & triegaardt exploring perceptions of parents in supporting learning language barrier and lack of understanding impacted the online learning process as parents had to explain the learning content to their children, which became a problem as they did not understand the content. . figure 1: factors that hinder academic success according to garey (2020), if parents do not understand the content and instructions, they cannot assist their children. according to businesstech (2019), only 4.89 million of the south african population speak english. language barriers make online learning very difficult. according to businesstech’s (2019) report 51,1% of the parents who took part in a survey indicated that they cannot speak english. this language barrier may impact negatively on the online learning process. smt will have to implement guidance and support to parents and should be knowledgeable regarding the factors that influence how support should be conveyed (the national education collaboration trust, 2017). garey (2020) points out how difficult single parents found it to be involved with their children’s academic progress while trying to juggle work and get through day-to-day life routines. lansford (2020) points out that parental involvement during the pandemic became vital and more challenging as parents were now more directly responsible for aspects of their child’s education. 5. research methodology 5.1 research sample the target population comprised of parents, both male and female, between the ages of 37 and 45+ from one selected quintile 5 public primary school (school a) based in the city of johannesburg in the province of gauteng (south africa). school a is a primary school in figure 1: factors that hinder academic success according to garey (2020), if parents do not understand the content and instructions, they cannot assist their children. according to businesstech (2019), only 4.89 million of the south african population speak english. language barriers make online learning very difficult. according to businesstech’s (2019) report 51,1% of the parents who took part in a survey indicated that they cannot speak english. this language barrier may impact negatively on the online learning process. smt will have to implement guidance and support to parents and should be knowledgeable regarding the factors that influence how support should be conveyed (the national education collaboration trust, 2017). garey (2020) points out how difficult single parents found it to be involved with their children’s academic progress while trying to juggle work and get through day-to-day life routines. lansford (2020) points out that parental involvement during the pandemic became vital and more challenging as parents were now more directly responsible for aspects of their child’s education. 5. research methodology 5.1 research sample the target population comprised of parents, both male and female, between the ages of 37 and 45+ from one selected quintile 5 public primary school (school a) based in the city of johannesburg in the province of gauteng (south africa). school a is a primary school in roodepoort and was established in 1987. roodepoort is located 24km west of johannesburg. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 2502022 40(4): 250-261 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) for this study, the sample size was 500 and a total of 500 questionnaires were distributed and 374 were returned. this gave a return rate of 74.8% which is good for a study of this nature. the researchers made use of quota sampling, which is a non-probability sampling technique. etikan and bala (2017) hold the view that quota sampling is a technique where some evident characteristic guides the researcher; in this case, the respondent had to be a parent of a primary school learner in grades 3–7. this allowed the researchers to gain insight into parents’ views on how school management can support parents during a pandemic to ensure that effective learning occurs. 5.2 method of data collection the primary data were collected through a structured, newly developed questionnaire that was distributed to the selected parents using hand delivering in a sealed envelope. the parents were asked to complete it anonymously and returned it in a sealed envelope, to ensure that the responses received were truthful and completed honestly. 5.3 ethical consideration approvals from relevant authorities were obtained, and ethical clearance was granted by the university’s research ethics committee (reference number 2021/07/07/61669520/20/am). approval was also obtained from the department of education in gauteng with reference: 8/4/4/1/2 before the commencement of data collection. 5.4 measuring instrument nominal scales were used to categorize the variables in section a of the questionnaire. respondents were grouped according to gender, age, race, mother tongue, educational qualifications, the support given during lockdown, and devices used during the lockdown. sections b and c of the questionnaire were used to gather information on addressing teaching and learning in an online environment during a pandemic and the management of teaching and learning in an online environment during covid-19. the responses from sections b and c were scored on a six-point scale, ranging from 1, strongly disagree to 6, strongly agree. the questionnaire had a cover letter with instructions on how to complete it and the reasons it was conducted. it also assured the respondents of the confidential nature of the research and stated that they were free to remain anonymous if they so wished. 5.5 pilot study a pilot study was conducted to test the likert-scale and item-format combined questionnaire. junyong (2017) describes a pilot study as a study that is conducted on a smaller scale than the main study. a pilot study is important to improve the main study’s quality and efficiency (junyong, 2017). the questionnaire was distributed to a small number of individuals (20 parents) from the same test population. these respondents did not form part of the main study which enabled us to test and validate the questionnaire. the respondents were asked to write notes on the questionnaire if questions were unclear or misunderstood. the pilot study thus allowed the researchers to address flaws in the questionnaire, among other inadequate time to complete the questionnaire, and poor language use. 5.6 statistical analysis the statistical package for social sciences (spss 27.0 for windows) was used to process the raw data from the questionnaire (norusis, 2009). descriptive statistics were initially http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 2512022 40(4): 251-261 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 de jager & triegaardt exploring perceptions of parents in supporting learning compiled to analyse the composition of the sample and so determine its representativeness. correlation coefficients were used to measure the relationship aspects facilitating online teaching and learning during a pandemic and management difficulties and analyses to determine the percentage variance in the dependent variable predicted by the independent variable (maree, 2010). 6. results and discussions 6.1 descriptive analysis the overall majority of respondents were black and all categories were equally represented. a rather small percentage of respondents (20,3%) indicated that had a post-graduate qualification. 6.2 factor analysis results aspects facilitating online teaching and management difficulties consist of numerous variables. to identify which variables are involved in the various constructs, principal axis factoring (paf) was performed to reduce the numerous variables involved to a more parsimonious number of factors, while retaining as much of the information as possible (field, 2018: 249). the following four first-order factors were identified: • fb1.1 online service provision by the school during the pandemic with a cronbach alpha of 0.91. • fb1.2 concerns regarding online teaching and learning with a cronbach alpha of 0.67. • fb1.3 – aspects hindering online teaching and learning with a cronbach alpha reliability of 0.48. • fb1.4 – challenges experienced by online teaching and learning with a cronbach alpha reliability of. 0.46. when the four first-order factors were subjected to a further factor analytic procedure with varimax rotation, only one factor resulted. it was named aspects facilitating an online teaching and learning environment during a pandemic (fb2.0). as all loadings are >0.50 all factors are likely to show converging validity. the low cronbach alpha loadings in the factors are probably due to the negative wording in the items which then had the scales inverted (van sonderen, sanderman & coyne, 2013). there are only 2 items in the last 2 factors and hence one cannot remove any items to improve the possible reliability. table 1 explains the rotated component matrix showing the factor loadings in the factor “aspects facilitating online teaching and learning in an online environment during a pandemic (fb2.0) http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 2522022 40(4): 252-261 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) table 1: rotated component matrix showing the factor loadings in the factor “aspects facilitating online teaching and learning in an online environment during a pandemic (fb2.0) description of the items in fb2.0 component 1 2 3 4 b18.i received sufficient support from the school and its management to assist my child/children with the learning process taking place at home. .812 b7. communication between the school and parents was effective during the covid-19 pandemic. .778 b8. i understood what was expected from me as a parent to help my child in his/her learning process .768 b14.in my opinion, the school management provided enough support to ensure that academic loss was kept to a minimum. .731 b19.the school helped parents in need of resources. .695 b2. resources from the school were widely available to help assist children with the learning process taking place at home. .671 b15. the amount of work done online was sufficient to ensure that learning loss was kept to a minimum .663 b17.i feel all the teachers put in the same amount of effort in the online learning process. .624 b12.i found that my child’s teachers were easily accessible during the covid-19 pandemic. .604 b11.there is a positive relationship between me and my teachers. .579 b9rec. i find it difficult to be involved in my child’s/ children’s education .754 b10rec. i am uncertain of the part that i am responsible for in my child’s/children’s academic programme .720 b6rec. my child is at risk of not progressing with the learning process as i could not assist with the learning process .696 b20rec. i feel that covid-19 has hindered my child’s/children’s academic progress .700 b16.in my opinion, online teaching and learning were just as good as face-to-face teaching and learning. .552 b3rec. i found the online learning process to be overwhelming (scale inverted) .846 b1. it was easy to assist my child/children with online learning. .637 extraction method: principal component analysis. rotation method: varimax with kaiser normalization. a. rotation converged in 10 iterations. factor loadings<0.500 are not shown for clarity a multiple regression analysis was conducted to determine which of the four first-order factors could be classified as being the best predictors of aspects facilitating an online teaching and learning environment during a pandemic factor. the following relevant values were determined: the kmo of 0.723 with bartlett’s sphericity value of p = 0.000 indicated that this was plausible and had a cronbach reliability of 0.890. the data distribution of items in this factor is given in figure 2. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 2532022 40(4): 253-261 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 de jager & triegaardt exploring perceptions of parents in supporting learning the data in figure 2 indicated that the mean for the factor was 3.69 (95% ci – ll = 3.59, ul = 3.79) with a median of 3.71 and sd of 0.923. the kolmogorov-smirnov test for the normality of data had a p-value of 0.200 indicating that the distribution was not significantly different from normal (it is probably normal) (field, 2018: 249). respondents could thus be said to be neutral in opinions about this facilitation factor. at most one could make the assumption they were uncertain tending towards partial agreement. one would have wished for a higher factor mean indicating a larger agreement. however, the aspects influencing online teaching and learning are also relatively new to school management and the relatively low factor mean does inform school management that more effort needs to be put into communication with parents regarding this. 6.2.1 comparing two independent groups for significant differences in aspects facilitating online teaching and learning during a pandemic (fb2.0) when testing for significant differences between the factor means of two independent groups, the independent t-test was used to determine whether the variances are different between the two groups involved. male respondents agreed more strongly with the aspects facilitating online teaching and learning during a pandemic (fb2.0) than female respondents. however, this difference in mean scores was not statistically significant. both gender groups partially disagreed with the items in the management factor. figure 2: histogram and boxplot showing data distribution of aspects facilitating an online teaching and learning environment during a pandemic the data in figure 2 indicated that the mean for the factor was 3.69 (95% ci – ll = 3.59, ul = 3.79) with a median of 3.71 and sd of 0.923. the kolmogorov-smirnov test for the normality of data had a p-value of 0.200 indicating that the distribution was not significantly different from normal (it is probably normal) (field, 2018: 249). respondents could thus be said to be neutral in opinions about this facilitation factor. at most one could make the assumption they were uncertain tending towards partial agreement. one would have wished for a higher factor mean indicating a larger agreement. however, the aspects influencing online teaching and learning are also relatively new to school management and the relatively low factor mean does inform school management that more effort needs to be put into communication with parents regarding this. 6.2.1 comparing two independent groups for significant differences in aspects facilitating online teaching and learning during a pandemic (fb2.0) when testing for significant differences between the factor means of two independent groups, the independent t-test was used to determine whether the variances are different between the two groups involved. male respondents agreed more strongly with the aspects facilitating online teaching and learning during a pandemic (fb2.0) than female respondents. however, this difference in mean scores was not statistically significant. both gender groups partially disagreed with the items in the management factor. in addition, the researchers made use of multivariate analysis of variance (manova). the various assumptions for manova such as independence of residuals, random sampling, multivariate normality, and homogeneity of covariance matrices (box’s test p>0.05) were all met. (field, 2018: 753). the researchers also made use of the wilks’ lambda test at the multivariate level (λ). there was a significant effect of age groups of the parent respondents on the aspects facilitating online teaching and learning during the pandemic. more univariate tests with bonferroni corrections were conducted. the younger age group of parent respondents agreed statistically significantly more strongly with the online service provision delivered by the school than did the older age group of parent respondents. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 2542022 40(4): 254-261 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) furthermore, the religious affiliation groups of parent respondents variable were collapsed into two groups as most parent respondents affiliated themselves with christianity. no significant differences were present between the two religious groups. no significant differences were present between the religious affiliation groups regarding the management of challenges (fc2.0). both groups perceived the impact to be moderate. 6.2.2 comparing three or more independent groups for significant differences between aspects facilitating online teaching and learning during a pandemic (fb2.0) and management difficulties (fc2.0) race as an independent variable when testing the two factors (fb2.0) and (fc2.0) at the multivariate level against the three race groups the following multivariate results for 1000 bootstrapped samples were present: [λ = 0.938, f (4,700) = 5.65, p = .000, r = 0.18] the three race groups differ statistically significantly from one another when tested at the multivariate level. results at the univariate level indicated that this difference was in the fb2.0 factor only namely: in addition, the researchers made use of multivariate analysis of variance (manova). the various assumptions for manova such as independence of residuals, random sampling, multivariate normality, and homogeneity of covariance matrices (box’s test p>0.05) were all met. (field, 2018: 753). the researchers also made use of the wilks’ lambda test at the multivariate level (λ). there was a significant effect of age groups of the parent respondents on the aspects facilitating online teaching and learning during the pandemic. more univariate tests with bonferroni corrections were conducted. the younger age group of parent respondents agreed statistically significantly more strongly with the online service provision delivered by the school than did the older age group of parent respondents. furthermore, the religious affiliation groups of parent respondents variable were collapsed into two groups as most parent respondents affiliated themselves with christianity. no significant differences were present between the two religious groups. no significant differences were present between the religious affiliation groups regarding the management of challenges (fc2.0). both groups perceived the impact to be moderate. 6.2.2 comparing three or more independent groups for significant differences between aspects facilitating online teaching and learning during a pandemic (fb2.0) and management difficulties (fc2.0) race as an independent variable when testing the two factors (fb2.0) and (fc2.0) at the multivariate level against the three race groups the following multivariate results for 1000 bootstrapped samples were present: [λ = 0.938, f (4,700) = 5.65, p = .000, r = 0.18] the three race groups differ statistically significantly from one another when tested at the multivariate level. results at the univariate level indicated that this difference was in the fb2.0 factor only namely: [𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹2.0 − 𝑋𝑋�� = 3.60; 𝑋𝑋�� = 3.91; 𝑋𝑋�� = 3.41; 𝐹𝐹 (2,351) = 11.25, 𝑝𝑝 = .000, 𝑟𝑟 = 0.25] hence, black respondents agreed the most strongly with aspects facilitating online teaching and learning during the pandemic. they differed statistically significantly from white respondents at the 1% level of significance. furthermore, the result shows that respondents from the black race group partially agreed with the items in the factor of online service provision by the school during the pandemic. they differed statistically significantly from the other race group at the 5% level (p=.021) and from the white race group at the 1% level of significance (p=.000) who both partially disagreed with the items in the factor. regarding aspects hindering online teaching and learning during the pandemic the following result was found: hence, black respondents agreed the most strongly with aspects facilitating online teaching and learning during the pandemic. they differed statistically significantly from white respondents at the 1% level of significance. furthermore, the result shows that respondents from the black race group partially agreed with the items in the factor of online service provision by the school during the pandemic. they differed statistically significantly from the other race group at the 5% level (p=.021) and from the white race group at the 1% level of significance (p=.000) who both partially disagreed with the items in the factor. regarding aspects hindering online teaching and learning during the pandemic the following result was found: [𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹1.3 − 𝑋𝑋�� = 2.53; 𝑋𝑋�� = 2.83; 𝑋𝑋�� = 2.23; 𝐹𝐹(2,351) = 8.11, 𝑝𝑝 = .000, 𝑟𝑟 = 0.21] all three race groups partially disagreed with the items in the factor aspects hindering online teaching and learning. however, black respondents differed statistically significantly from white respondents (p=.000) and hence black respondents could be said to disagree least strongly with aspects hindering online teaching and learning. highest educational qualification the educational qualification groups were recoded into three groups. there were statistically significant differences regarding factor fb2.0 (aspects facilitating online teaching and learning in an online environment during a pandemic) and fc2.0 (management difficulties experienced in online teaching and learning during the lockdown). concerning educational qualifications groups, the result of the comparison of the three educational qualifications groups was: [𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹2.0 − 𝑋𝑋���� = 3.18; 𝑋𝑋��.����� = 3.34; 𝑋𝑋��.��� = 3.57; 𝐹𝐹(2,351) = 9.31, 𝑝𝑝 = .000, 𝑟𝑟 = 0.22] although all three groups partially disagreed with management challenges experienced respondents with a b. degree or higher agreed more strongly than the other two qualification groups at the 5% level (p = 0.028 for diploma/diploma + fde group) and the 1% level (p = 0.000). as the management of challenges was composed of three first-order factors it is necessary to see which of the three first-order factors is involved with this significant difference. hence, the three first-order factors differ at the multivariate level (p<0.05) and univariate tests for the three first-order factors gave the following results: all three race groups partially disagreed with the items in the factor aspects hindering online teaching and learning. however, black respondents differed statistically significantly from white respondents (p=.000) and hence black respondents could be said to disagree least strongly with aspects hindering online teaching and learning. highest educational qualification the educational qualification groups were recoded into three groups. there were statistically significant differences regarding factor fb2.0 (aspects facilitating online teaching and learning in an online environment during a pandemic) and fc2.0 (management difficulties experienced in online teaching and learning during the lockdown). concerning educational qualifications groups, the result of the comparison of the three educational qualifications groups was: hence, black respondents agreed the most strongly with aspects facilitating online teaching and learning during the pandemic. they differed statistically significantly from white respondents at the 1% level of significance. furthermore, the result shows that respondents from the black race group partially agreed with the items in the factor of online service provision by the school during the pandemic. they differed statistically significantly from the other race group at the 5% level (p=.021) and from the white race group at the 1% level of significance (p=.000) who both partially disagreed with the items in the factor. regarding aspects hindering online teaching and learning during the pandemic the following result was found: [𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹1.3 − 𝑋𝑋�� = 2.53; 𝑋𝑋�� = 2.83; 𝑋𝑋�� = 2.23; 𝐹𝐹(2,351) = 8.11, 𝑝𝑝 = .000, 𝑟𝑟 = 0.21] all three race groups partially disagreed with the items in the factor aspects hindering online teaching and learning. however, black respondents differed statistically significantly from white respondents (p=.000) and hence black respondents could be said to disagree least strongly with aspects hindering online teaching and learning. highest educational qualification the educational qualification groups were recoded into three groups. there were statistically significant differences regarding factor fb2.0 (aspects facilitating online teaching and learning in an online environment during a pandemic) and fc2.0 (management difficulties experienced in online teaching and learning during the lockdown). concerning educational qualifications groups, the result of the comparison of the three educational qualifications groups was: [𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹2.0 − 𝑋𝑋���� = 3.18; 𝑋𝑋��.����� = 3.34; 𝑋𝑋��.��� = 3.57; 𝐹𝐹(2,351) = 9.31, 𝑝𝑝 = .000, 𝑟𝑟 = 0.22] although all three groups partially disagreed with management challenges experienced respondents with a b. degree or higher agreed more strongly than the other two qualification groups at the 5% level (p = 0.028 for diploma/diploma + fde group) and the 1% level (p = 0.000). as the management of challenges was composed of three first-order factors it is necessary to see which of the three first-order factors is involved with this significant difference. hence, the three first-order factors differ at the multivariate level (p<0.05) and univariate tests for the three first-order factors gave the following results: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 2552022 40(4): 255-261 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 de jager & triegaardt exploring perceptions of parents in supporting learning although all three groups partially disagreed with management challenges experienced respondents with a b. degree or higher agreed more strongly than the other two qualification groups at the 5% level (p = 0.028 for diploma/diploma + fde group) and the 1% level (p = 0.000). as the management of challenges was composed of three first-order factors it is necessary to see which of the three first-order factors is involved with this significant difference. hence, the three first-order factors differ at the multivariate level (p<0.05) and univariate tests for the three first-order factors gave the following results: fc1.1 – f (2,351) = 3.50, 0.003, r = 0.14 fc1.2 – f (2,351) = 5.06, p = 0.007, r = 0.17 fc1.3 – f (2,351) = 8.60, p = 0.000, r = 0.22 all three of the first-order factors involved in the management of challenges factor showed significant differences were present between the three highest educational qualification groups with the highest qualification group agreeing more strongly than the other two groups. using only effect sizes (they are standardised and can be compared) it is observed that the largest effect size occurs for the problems experienced regarding online teaching and learning and hence it is seen as the most important of the three effects. the higher the educational qualifications the larger the extent of the management of challenges of teaching and learning in an online environment during a pandemic was perceived to be. mother tongue groups the various mother tongue groups were recoded into five groups, namely afrikaans, english, nguni, sotho, and other. the results of 1 000 bootstrapped samples using the two factors fb2.0 and fc2.0 as dependent variables and five mother tongue groups as independent variables or predictors were as follows: λ = 0.937, f (8,696) = 2.87, p = .004, r = 0.18 the two factors differ statistically significantly from one another at the multivariate level concerning the five mother tongue groups. univariate tests indicated that the difference was only due to the aspects facilitating online teaching and learning in an online environment during a pandemic (fb2.0). the results at the univariate level were: fc1.1 – f (2,351) = 3.50, 0.003, r = 0.14 fc1.2 – f (2,351) = 5.06, p = 0.007, r = 0.17 fc1.3 – f (2,351) = 8.60, p = 0.000, r = 0.22 all three of the first-order factors involved in the management of challenges factor showed significant differences were present between the three highest educational qualification groups with the highest qualification group agreeing more strongly than the other two groups. using only effect sizes (they are standardised and can be compared) it is observed that the largest effect size occurs for the problems experienced regarding online teaching and learning and hence it is seen as the most important of the three effects. the higher the educational qualifications the larger the extent of the management of challenges of teaching and learning in an online environment during a pandemic was perceived to be. mother tongue groups the various mother tongue groups were recoded into five groups, namely afrikaans, english, nguni, sotho, and other. the results of 1 000 bootstrapped samples using the two factors fb2.0 and fc2.0 as dependent variables and five mother tongue groups as independent variables or predictors were as follows: λ = 0.937, f (8,696) = 2.87, p = .004, r = 0.18 the two factors differ statistically significantly from one another at the multivariate level concerning the five mother tongue groups. univariate tests indicated that the difference was only due to the aspects facilitating online teaching and learning in an online environment during a pandemic (fb2.0). the results at the univariate level were: [𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹1.0 − 𝑋𝑋�� = 3.61; 𝑋𝑋�� = 3.50; 𝑋𝑋�� = 3.91; 𝑋𝑋�� = 4.01; 𝑋𝑋�� = 3.66; 𝐹𝐹 (4) = 4.87, 𝑝𝑝 = .001, 𝑟𝑟 = 0.23] the english home language group had the lowest factor mean and differed statistically significantly from the sotho home language group at the 1% level (p = 0.003) and the nguni home language group (p = 0.009). however, as the aspects facilitating online teaching and learning (fb2.0) are composed of four first-order factors it was necessary to determine which of the four first-order factors is involved in this significant difference between mean factor scores. a manova test using the four first-order factors showed that fb1.1 (online service provision by the english home language group had the lowest factor mean and differed statistically significantly from the sotho home language group at the 1% level (p = 0.003) and the nguni home language group (p = 0.009). however, as the aspects facilitating online teaching and learning (fb2.0) are composed of four first-order factors it was necessary to determine which of the four first-order factors is involved in this significant difference between mean factor scores. a manova test using the four first-order factors showed that fb1.1 (online service provision by the school during the pandemic) and fb1.3 (aspects hindering online teaching and learning) were the only two factors involved in the significant differences at the multivariate level: λ = 0.903, f (16,1057) =2.24, p = .003, r =0.16 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 2562022 40(4): 256-261 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) tests at the univariate level were: the school during the pandemic) and fb1.3 (aspects hindering online teaching and learning) were the only two factors involved in the significant differences at the multivariate level: λ = 0.903, f (16,1057) =2.24, p = .003, r =0.16 tests at the univariate level were: [𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹1.0 − 𝑋𝑋�� = 3.80; 𝑋𝑋�� = 3.66; 𝑋𝑋�� = 4.16; 𝑋𝑋�� = 4.38; 𝑋𝑋�� = 3.95; 𝐹𝐹 (4) = 6.00, 𝑝𝑝 = .000, 𝑟𝑟 = 0.25] the english mother tongue group, with the lowest factor, mean, differed statistically significantly from the nguni (p = 0.009) and the sotho groups (p = 0.000). the sotho mother tongue group agreed the most strongly with the online services provided by the school, followed by the nguni group. the english mother tongue group agreed the least strongly with the items in the factor and possibly were the least satisfied with the online teaching and learning service delivery of the school during the lockdown. race groups are significantly related to issues involved with this factor probably due to cultural and socioeconomic differences. [𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹1.3 − 𝑋𝑋�� = 2.45; 𝑋𝑋�� = 2.38; 𝑋𝑋�� = 2.95; 𝑋𝑋�� = 2.82; 𝑋𝑋�� = 2.30; 𝐹𝐹 (4) = 3.68, 𝑝𝑝 = .006, 𝑟𝑟 = 0.20] concerning the aspects hindering online teaching and learning all groups disagreed with the items in the factor but the english mother tongue group disagreed more strongly than the other race groups and differed statistically significantly from the nguni mother tongue group (p = 0.01). 7. empirical findings the role of parents in supporting learning during the covid-19 pandemic is based on two underlying multifactorial dimensions, namely “aspects facilitating an online teaching and learning environment” (fb2.0) and “management difficulties regarding online teaching and learning” (fc2.0). each of the dimensions was found to consist of sub-dimensions. the “aspects facilitating an online teaching and learning environment” (fb2.0) had the following sub-dimensions, namely “online service provision by the school during the pandemic” (fb1.1); “concerns regarding online teaching and learning” (fb1.2); “aspects hindering online teaching and learning” (fb1.3); and “challenges experienced by online teaching and learning” (fb1.4). all four of these first-order factors exhibited both converging and diverging validity. the second dimension named “management difficulties regarding online teaching and learning” (fc2.0) was found to be composed of three sub-dimensions, namely “training and development the english mother tongue group, with the lowest factor, mean, differed statistically significantly from the nguni (p = 0.009) and the sotho groups (p = 0.000). the sotho mother tongue group agreed the most strongly with the online services provided by the school, followed by the nguni group. the english mother tongue group agreed the least strongly with the items in the factor and possibly were the least satisfied with the online teaching and learning service delivery of the school during the lockdown. race groups are significantly related to issues involved with this factor probably due to cultural and socioeconomic differences. the school during the pandemic) and fb1.3 (aspects hindering online teaching and learning) were the only two factors involved in the significant differences at the multivariate level: λ = 0.903, f (16,1057) =2.24, p = .003, r =0.16 tests at the univariate level were: [𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹1.0 − 𝑋𝑋�� = 3.80; 𝑋𝑋�� = 3.66; 𝑋𝑋�� = 4.16; 𝑋𝑋�� = 4.38; 𝑋𝑋�� = 3.95; 𝐹𝐹 (4) = 6.00, 𝑝𝑝 = .000, 𝑟𝑟 = 0.25] the english mother tongue group, with the lowest factor, mean, differed statistically significantly from the nguni (p = 0.009) and the sotho groups (p = 0.000). the sotho mother tongue group agreed the most strongly with the online services provided by the school, followed by the nguni group. the english mother tongue group agreed the least strongly with the items in the factor and possibly were the least satisfied with the online teaching and learning service delivery of the school during the lockdown. race groups are significantly related to issues involved with this factor probably due to cultural and socioeconomic differences. [𝐹𝐹𝐹𝐹1.3 − 𝑋𝑋�� = 2.45; 𝑋𝑋�� = 2.38; 𝑋𝑋�� = 2.95; 𝑋𝑋�� = 2.82; 𝑋𝑋�� = 2.30; 𝐹𝐹 (4) = 3.68, 𝑝𝑝 = .006, 𝑟𝑟 = 0.20] concerning the aspects hindering online teaching and learning all groups disagreed with the items in the factor but the english mother tongue group disagreed more strongly than the other race groups and differed statistically significantly from the nguni mother tongue group (p = 0.01). 7. empirical findings the role of parents in supporting learning during the covid-19 pandemic is based on two underlying multifactorial dimensions, namely “aspects facilitating an online teaching and learning environment” (fb2.0) and “management difficulties regarding online teaching and learning” (fc2.0). each of the dimensions was found to consist of sub-dimensions. the “aspects facilitating an online teaching and learning environment” (fb2.0) had the following sub-dimensions, namely “online service provision by the school during the pandemic” (fb1.1); “concerns regarding online teaching and learning” (fb1.2); “aspects hindering online teaching and learning” (fb1.3); and “challenges experienced by online teaching and learning” (fb1.4). all four of these first-order factors exhibited both converging and diverging validity. the second dimension named “management difficulties regarding online teaching and learning” (fc2.0) was found to be composed of three sub-dimensions, namely “training and development concerning the aspects hindering online teaching and learning all groups disagreed with the items in the factor but the english mother tongue group disagreed more strongly than the other race groups and differed statistically significantly from the nguni mother tongue group (p = 0.01). 7. empirical findings the role of parents in supporting learning during the covid-19 pandemic is based on two underlying multifactorial dimensions, namely “aspects facilitating an online teaching and learning environment” (fb2.0) and “management difficulties regarding online teaching and learning” (fc2.0). each of the dimensions was found to consist of sub-dimensions. the “aspects facilitating an online teaching and learning environment” (fb2.0) had the following sub-dimensions, namely “online service provision by the school during the pandemic” (fb1.1); “concerns regarding online teaching and learning” (fb1.2); “aspects hindering online teaching and learning” (fb1.3); and “challenges experienced by online teaching and learning” (fb1.4). all four of these first-order factors exhibited both converging and diverging validity. the second dimension named “management difficulties regarding online teaching and learning” (fc2.0) was found to be composed of three sub-dimensions, namely “training and development for online teaching and learning” (fc1.1); “costs of online teaching and learning” (fc1.2) and “difficulties experienced by respondents regarding online teaching and learning” (fc1.3). all factors showed diverging validity and it was only fc1.3 that did not exhibit converging validity due to the poor wording of one of the items. the cr was 0.78 and the cronbach alpha was 0.602, which improved to 0.654 if item c1 was removed. regarding the aspects facilitating online teaching and learning during a pandemic (fb2.0) significant differences were found between the younger (<41 years) and older age groups (42+ years). the younger age group agreed more strongly with the items in this factor. this difference was found to be due to two of the first-order factors namely: • fb1.1 – online service provision by the school during the pandemic. the younger age group agreed significantly more strongly than did the older age group concerning b19 (the school helped parents in need of resources), b8 (i understood what was expected from me as a parent to help my child in his/her learning process) and b14 (in my opinion http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 2572022 40(4): 257-261 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 de jager & triegaardt exploring perceptions of parents in supporting learning the school management provided enough support to ensure that academic loss is kept to a minimum). • fb1.2 – concerns regarding online teaching and learning. the younger age group of parents disagreed significantly more strongly with the items in this factor than did the older age group of parents. the two concerns where significant differences were found between the age groups were b9 (i find it difficult to be involved in my child’s/children’s academic programme and b10 (i am uncertain of the part that i am responsible for in my child’s/ children’s academic programme). in each of these items, the younger age group of parent respondents appear to be more confident (disagreed more strongly) with the items than the older age group of parent respondents. • respondents who had children in the junior phase (grade 1 to grade 3) agreed significantly more strongly with the factor aspects facilitating online teaching and learning (fb1.2) than did parents who had children in the intermediate phase (grade 4 to grade 6) and the senior phase (grade 7 to grade 9). these significant differences were found to be the result of differences in two of the first-order factors, namely fb1.1 (online service provision by the school) and fb1.3 (aspects hindering online teaching and learning). in both first-order factors the lower the grade level, the larger the extent of agreement with the factor. hence, parents who have children in the intermediate and senior phases appear to need more assistance in facilitating online teaching and learning activities which seems logical as the content of the academic programme becomes more complicated. statistically significant differences were found in fb2.0 (aspects facilitating online teaching and learning during the pandemic). black respondents agreed significantly more strongly with the items in the factor than white respondents did. these significant differences were found to be due to two of the four first-order factors, namely fb1.0 (online service provision by the school during the pandemic) and fb1.3 (aspects hindering online teaching and learning). in both first-order factors, black respondents disagreed less strongly with the items involved. fb1.0 (online service provision by the school) had the largest effect size difference between means and could be seen to be the most important of the two factors. the manova test indicated that significant statistical differences were present in the fc2.0 dimension (management challenges experienced during the pandemic). respondents with a b. degree or higher agreed significantly more strongly with this factor than did the other two educational qualification groups. all three of the first-order factors involved in the management challenges factor (fc2.0) indicated that the b. degree or higher respondents agreed significantly more strongly than did respondents with lower educational qualifications. factor fc1.3 (problems experienced regarding online teaching and learning) had the highest effect size and was perceived as the most important of the three first-order factors. the higher the educational qualification the larger the extent of perceived management challenges to teaching and learning in an online environment. significant differences were found to be present between the five mother tongue groups regarding fb2.0 only (aspects facilitating online teaching and learning during the pandemic). the english mother tongue group agreed significantly less strongly than did the nguni and sotho mother tongue groups. this significant difference in the fb2.0 dimension was found to be due to differences in fb1.1 (online service delivery by the school during the pandemic) and fb1.3 (aspects hindering online teaching and learning). in the fb1.1 factor (online service delivery by the school) the english mother tongue group agreed the least strongly with the items in the factor and were the least satisfied group and differed significantly from the nguni http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 2582022 40(4): 258-261 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) and sotho mother tongue groups. concerning aspects hindering online teaching and learning (fb1.3), the english mother tongue group disagreed the least strongly with the items in the factor and differed statistically significantly from the nguni and sotho mother tongue groups. presently english is the language of use in south africa and it appears as if more attention is needed concerning the nguni and sotho mother tongue groups when it comes to aspects concerned with online service providers such as schools. 8. conclusion this study found that there are factors that have an effect on the perceptions of parents supporting learning during covid-19 at a south african primary school, ranging from, inter alia, online services provided by the school during the pandemic, concerns regarding online teaching and learning, aspects hindering online teaching and learning and challenges experienced during online teaching and learning. all the factors require careful management and the schools need to re-evaluate their online teaching and learning programme to be prepared for any future pandemics. therefore, the following recommendations are made: • the school management team should focus its support on the older age group of parents as they seem to need more support. the school could engage parents on a platform where parents could interact and engage with one another to get support from fellow parents. • the school could use its therapists to provide parents with a course on how to assist their children with the online learning process taking place at home to ensure that all parents can help their children succeed academically. • the school should create an online discussion platform where parents with a higher educational qualification take the lead in assisting the parental groups and help parents who do not understand the content or misunderstood instructions. • the school should consider in-depth training of teachers on how to facilitate online learning, as this is a new domain for many teachers, especially the older generation. the school could conduct its training by using its teachers and their knowledge and experience. in that way, all teachers are on the same page and there will be consistency in the online teaching being facilitated. • the school should reconsider its communication system with all the stakeholders. clear communication must take place between the school management team, its teachers, and the parents. there must be visible mutual respect. if mutual respect is not visible between parents and teachers, learners might feel that they do not need to show respect and if no respect is shown, clear and effective communication will not take place. • for the online learning process to be effective and to ensure academic success during and after covid-19, the school must improve its communication channels. the school and teachers should communicate with parents regularly. • to maintain a professional role, a teacher must stay resourceful. it is recommended that a teacher always have additional resources to offer a parent in need. • it is important to support parents and to inform them of the decisions taken. it is important to explain to parents why the decision was taken for them to understand the reasoning behind the decision-making. • the school should provide parents with workshops on how to assist a child with the online learning process, as many parents are unsure of how to assist their child and prevent a http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 2592022 40(4): 259-261 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6635 de jager & triegaardt exploring perceptions of parents in supporting learning learning loss. this will also create an environment where parents feel free to express their concerns and to seek help if they need help. • it is important for the school that parents should be in contact with one another during a pandemic. parents should form support groups to support one another with the learning process. parents could also support one another emotionally, as there are many challenges that parents have to deal with during a pandemic. references albiser, e., echazarra, a., fraser, p., fulop, g., schwabe m. & tremblay, k. 2020. school education during covid-19: were teachers and students ready? finland: oecd. available at http://www.oecd.org/education/finland-coronavirus-education-country note.pdf [accessed 10 september 2020]. bonar, g., keary, a., davies, t. & slaughter, y. 2021. remote learning is even harder when english isn’t students first language. schools told us their priorities for supporting them. the conversation, 7 september. available at https:///www.the.conversation.com/amp/remotelearning-is-even-harder-when-english-isnt-students-first-language-schools-told-us-theirpriorities-for-supporting-them-166957 [accessed 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principals’ role in leadership capacity development of post level one teachers for school leadership abstract this study was undertaken to explore the role of principals in capacity development of post level one teachers for school leadership positions. the success of a school and its attendant learner achievement depends largely on good school leadership. thus, it is highly unlikely that poor or ineffective school leadership will lead to successful schools. this study argues that it is the responsibility of principals to ensure that adequate opportunities exist for leadership development of post level one teachers. a qualitative research approach was selected to investigate the role principals play in building leadership capacity in post level one teachers. semi-structured individual interviews were conducted with ten (10) participants at two (2) schools: one (1) principal and four (4) post level one teachers per school. findings indicate that principals played a fundamental role, notably different, in the creation of opportunities for leadership development in post level one teachers. the opportunities ranged from the formation of committees, which offer exposure to early leadership practices, mentoring and coaching prospects and the availability of leadership training and development resulting from the outcomes of the integrated quality management system appraisal system mandated by the department of education. lastly, the study encapsulates these opportunities in a five-year leadership capacity building programme, to be offered as an in-service internal programme for post level one teachers to support progressive and developmental leadership capacity improvement. keywords: teacher, leadership, capacity building, transformational leadership, distributive leadership, committees, principal 1. introduction the appointment of teachers in leadership positions in south african schools has been controversial, contested and disputed by teachers and teacher unions for many decades (wills, 2015:6; zengele, 2013:18). many teachers have questioned the skills, qualifications and factors surrounding suitability that is required of teachers in order for them to be appointed into school leadership or senior management positions. as part of city press newspaper’s authors: mr. j.g. khanyi1 dr p. naidoo1 affiliation: 1university of johannesburg doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38. i2.11 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(2): 168-184 published: 04 december 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6819-461x https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6074-8721 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 1692020 38(2): 169-184 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 khanyi & naidoo principals’ role in leadership capacity development “jobs for cash” exposé, haper and masondo (2014:2) conducted investigations into the appointments of teachers to school leadership positions. the investigation revealed many allegations of irregularities, ranging from payments for vacant posts, sexual misconduct for posts, unionised members as preferred candidates for posts, enticements/bribery transactions and even assassinations. subsequently, in 2014 a ministerial task team (mtt) was appointed by the minister of department of basic education (dbe), angie motshekga, to investigate the allegations made by city press. the dbe, mtt (2016:140) concluded that there were indeed irregularities in the appointment of teachers into leadership and other positions. these indiscretions put into question the suitability of candidates for leadership positions. thus, this study was undertaken with a view of exploring: how can the current practices and opportunities regarding leadership development of post level one (pl1) teachers in two secondary schools be understood? in 2000, the department of basic education (dbe) introduced the advanced certificate in education in school leadership and management (acelm) to provide formal leadership capacity training programmes for school leadership. notably, this programme was solely and strictly directed at school principals and not pl1 teachers. bush, kiggundu and moorosi argued that the aceslm programme ought to be “redesigned or restructured” (2011:41), since the programme was inadequate in meeting international standards. similarly, in 2013 the matthew goniwe school of leadership and governance (mgslg) revealed that the existing aceslm qualification in leadership and management was inadequate and recommended that it be redesigned to fit the criteria of a postgraduate diploma or a series of in-service training modules (sullivan, 2013). to date, there is no tangible evidence of leadership capacity development programmes having been instituted by the department of education which are aimed at pl1 teachers in schools. 2. context of the investigation leadership positions that become available in schools are awarded either to an outsider (a candidate from another school) or to a member of staff working within the school where the vacant post exists. the authors explain herein the process by which a vacant leadership and/or any other position in gauteng, south africa is filled. a leadership position normally commences with an incumbent being placed in an acting position in the vacant post. the post is subsequently advertised in the government gazette via a gauteng department of education gde 79 form, which is submitted to the relevant authorities for capture and distribution to all schools (gauteng department of education, circular no.1 of 2017). upon the successful appointment of an incumbent into the vacant post, the post then translates into a permanent position. bush, kiggundu and moorosi (2011:31) and nielson (2001) all state that many school leaders or managers begin their school leadership careers without any formal leadership qualification(s) or having attended any formal internal training programmes. the integrated strategic planning framework for teacher education and development in south africa (ispftedsa, [2011–2025]) was established by the department of basic education (dbe) and the department of higher education and training (dhet) on 5 april 2011 (dbe & dhet, 2011). according to the dbe and the dhet technical report (2011:13), teacher leadership development in south africa was identified as being “poorly coordinated, burdensome and in some cases non-existent”. furthermore, the integrated quality management system (iqms) as a tool for leadership capacity building was identified as being “time consuming and bureaucratic, consisting of too much paperwork (administration)” (2011:13). it http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 1702020 38(2): 170-184 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) was felt that it did not serve its purpose, as standard performance scores were inflated and did not reflect reality in the classroom or the school. furthermore, neither the provincial education departments (ped) nor the teachers demonstrated a capacity to implement iqms or benefit from it and, therefore, the report declared that teacher development should be separated from iqms. this opinion is in line with the declaration of the teacher development summit of 2009 (education labour relation council, 2009), which declared that teacher development should be disassociated from teacher appraisal for remuneration and salary progression (dbe & dhet, 2011:13). the dbe and dhet (2011) declared the importance of the declaration of teacher development summit and emphasised that in order to promote teacher leadership capacity, schools should become centres of leadership development. principals need to take the lead in coordinating and facilitating leadership capacity building programmes with the cooperation of, and networking with, all stakeholders, role players, relevant district offices and peds. the summit also concluded that schools should be properly authorised with adequate policy, monitoring, funding and quality assurance. in addition, schools dedicated to training and development should be established to support teacher education and leadership capacity. sullivan (2013) and wafa (2015) both agree that professional development should be more localised, allowing for the participation of districts and peds. school principals should be responsible for monitoring the development of teachers, while teachers, individually or collectively, need to identify their own areas for leadership capacity development. 3. towards conceptualising leadership capacity development of post level one teachers according to stoll (2009) and bush (2007), capacity building and training programmes are essential for the development and success of an organisation and argue that for any organisation to reform and develop, emphasis should be placed on its members’ capacities and commitment to the organisation. qualman and morgan (1996) view capacity building as a process whereby an organisation plans long-term developmental goals. lai defines capacity building as the creation of a bank of skills, knowledge, values, attitudes that an organization banks through its human capital and the creation of a capable workforce that can deal adequately with a variety of school issues and changes that are within and outside the classroom (2014:167). school principals are responsible for identifying programmes (ackerman & mackenzie, 2006) that are suitable for preparing and building leadership capacity for all teachers, while barkley, bottoms, clark and feagin (2004) contend that teachers need to be more involved in decision making at school level as well as other school leadership activities since this brings about change in a school and builds confidence for leadership capacity. leadership capacity building is essential for sustainable quality education; it is about empowering teachers with leadership knowledge and skills that are required for the improvement of the entire school and beyond classroom instructions (stoll, 2009). similarly, fullan (2007) states that leadership capacity building is about creating and maintaining the necessary conditions that facilitate learning and create experiences and opportunities that ensure synergy among relationships. leadership capacity building is about catering for the needs of the present and the future sustainable development of a school (lai & cheung, 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 1712020 38(2): 171-184 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 khanyi & naidoo principals’ role in leadership capacity development the researchers draw on mitchell and sackney (2001), who scrutinise three areas for leadership capacity development, namely: personal capacity, interpersonal capacity and organisational capacity. personal capacity refers to values, beliefs, attitudes, knowledge, assumptions and perceptions that teachers carry within the teaching profession, whilst interpersonal capacity relates to group relations, collegial relations and collective practice among staff within the school. lastly, organisational capacity begins with an awareness of organisational structures that can open doors for teachers to enter school management positions, which is achieved by removing the wall that sometimes persists between management teams and teachers. bennet, wise, woods and harvey (2003) concur with this and believe that in order to remove the wall between management and teachers, leadership duties should be distributed. in distributive leadership, boundaries are broken and a collective leadership style is conceived, thus, building the teachers’ leadership capacity. stoll (2009) suggests that a teacher’s perception and professional beliefs are best challenged and enhanced through dialogue built by a culture that focuses on human development, when people from different backgrounds work and learn collaboratively in teams. the creation of professional learning communities (jones, 2007; steyn, 2016) bring the teachers’ working lives and learning together; the school’s vision and goals are shared, destinies chosen, the necessary adjustments to accomplish their goals are chosen and teachers develop themselves professionally. both authors agree that teachers become actively good learners in the environments in which they lead, and this increases their capacity for leadership. naicker and mestry offer another perspective: leadership capacity building can occur through “job-embedded learning, organizational embedded learning and system embedded learning” (2016:3). job-embedded learning is described as learning that occurs in a school environment where teachers learn whilst entrenched in a job situation and, thus, are able to draw from previous and current experiences. they explain organisational embedded learning as learning that the whole school engages in and system embedded learning as learning taking place within a system. in this article, the researchers argue that developing a teacher’s leadership capacity is one of the core duties of the principal and this can be accomplished through various opportunities such as individual or group mentoring and coaching, where teachers receive individualised or group support and guidance (ghosh, 2013; bass 1999). another strategy according to leithwood, harris and hopkins (2008) is the restructuring or redesigning of the organisation by creating new leadership positions within the hierarchical structure of the school. as transformational leaders, principals have the responsibility of distributing leadership through creating, supporting and overseeing committees and sub-committees that offer leadership roles to post level one teachers (diamond & spillane, 2016). 4. the role of distributive leadership in capacity building distributive leadership according to bennet, wise, woods and harvey (2003), is defined by three elements: emergent property, openness of boundaries and leadership expertise. the authors explain that emergent property is collective leadership where the sum is greater than its parts. leadership roles are distributed, fluid in nature and not fixed, are less hierarchical and allows for “top-bottom” and “bottom-top” flexibility. openness of boundaries is where http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 1722020 38(2): 172-184 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) leadership practices are stretched and shared among the members of the organisation, thus, opening boundaries and building leadership expertise. how does the practice of “distributive leadership” in schools lead to capacity building in pl1 teachers? distributive leadership is about “leadership practice, which is imbedded in interactions between leaders, followers and their situation” (diamond & spillane, 2016:148; spillane, halverson & diamond, 2007). they further explain that situations that include material, organisational structures and cultures are the core variables that shape these interactions, where leadership is stretched across people enabling collaborative, collective and coordinated distributed leadership, resulting in teachers serving in school committees where they work together (collaborate) and make decisions as a collective on behalf of the school (bennet, harvey, wise & woods, 2003). duignan (2007), a critic of distributive leadership, argues that distributing tasks, responsibilities and duties does not guarantee that the school will be successful in terms of leadership development. but a supportive principal who provides strong leadership in teacher development through advocacy and the ability to influence others will ultimately lead to staff’s leadership capacity building (bredeson, 2000). moreover, diamond and spillane (2016) advocate for distributive leadership that is less hierarchical and more linear where teachers belong to committees and sub-committees that provide opportunities for leadership roles and informed decision-making responsibilities. the researchers were guided by an over-arching research question, namely: how can the current practices and opportunities regarding leadership development of post level one teachers in two secondary schools be understood? 5. methodology research design and method the researchers adopted a qualitative research design (creswell, 2009; ritchie, lewis, nicholls & ormston, 2013) to investigate the role of principals in the leadership capacity development of pl1 teachers. qualitative research was executed in a natural setting (source) where the phenomenon (leadership capacity development) occurred, thus, allowing the researchers to collect “live” data from the participants’ own environment, which was familiar and comfortable to them (ritchie & spencer, 2002; denzin & lincoln, 2011). qualitative research aims to provide an in-depth interpretive understanding of the social world through the experiences, material circumstances, viewpoints and history of the participants (creswell, 2009; ritchie, lewis, & ormston, 2003). the empirical inquiry allowed for detailed explorations of leadership capacity development taking place in two schools. by employing qualitative design, the researchers used the case study approach (gustafsson, 2017; yin, 2016), which permitted the researchers to investigate the phenomenon of leadership capacity development. a multiple case study was used in this investigation whereby two secondary schools were chosen as research sites. this approach enabled the researchers to compare data by drawing on differences and similarities between the two cases (baxter & jack, 2008:548). the two schools, named school a and school b were categorised as quintile one schools (education labour relations council, 2003b: b52). the department of education (doe) funding grows incrementally from quintile five to quintile one schools (quintile one being the lowest on the poverty index). school a has an enrolment of one thousand and http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 1732020 38(2): 173-184 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 khanyi & naidoo principals’ role in leadership capacity development twelve learners, with thirty-three staff members, which is inclusive of nine school management team members. school b has an enrolment of one thousand, one hundred and twenty-four learners, with thirty-six staff members, which is inclusive of nine school management team members. the first author works in this sector and he was able to gather anecdotal information indicating the presence of leadership positions (temporary in nature) created by the principal, solely for the purpose of pl1 teachers’ exposure to leadership development opportunities. sample and data collection ten participants, five from each school, purposively selected, constituted the sample (babbie & mouton, 2008). this allowed for different perspectives on the phenomenon under study (leadership development of pl1 teachers) from a humanistic and social behavioural perspective (ary, jacobs, sorensen & razavie, 2010; baxter & jack, 2008; spencer, ritchie & o’connor, 2003). four pl1 teachers and the principal from each school were chosen for this study (ritchie & spencer, 2002). the authors identified participants that were experienced as well as “novice” teachers. another important criterion was the selection of pl1 teachers, who were serving in temporary pl2 acting positions, as it was expected that pl2 acting position incumbents were receiving some level of leadership development. the teaching experience of the pl1 participants ranged from one year to twenty-three years, while the principal of school a admitted to having sixteen years of leadership experience and the principal of school b declared a teaching career trajectory of twenty-nine years. this sampling technique was used because it provided avenues for detailed exploration and understanding of leadership development initiatives in the respective schools (mason, 2006; patton, 1990) considering that these were “no-fee” paying schools and entirely dependent on the doe’s funds for all teaching and learning resources. the method of data gathering was semi-structured individual interviews, conducted with the ten participants in order to understand their views on their leadership capacity development. the main attribute of a semi structured individual interview is its ability to concentrate on the individual (lewis, saunders & thornhill, 2009:322). open-ended questions were posed to the participants in order to understand how they were prepared for leadership positions by their respective principals. the researchers piloted the interview schedule with two teachers, who were not part of the main sample, to test the feasibility and reliability of the study on a small scale (cohen, manion & morrison, 2007: 355). the researchers refined the interview schedule for suitability, relevance and to avoid any biases (bell, 2005). the interviews were conducted at a suitable time and venue, mutually agreed upon to ensure that the participants’ natural settings were not compromised. the researchers aimed to discover meanings that the participants attached to their behaviour; how they interpreted situations and what their perspectives were on issues or processes relating to leadership capacity development (snape & spencer, 2003:3). all interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and stored in a safe place and made available to the participants when requested. in keeping with lincoln and guba, (1985) and merriam, (2009), who emphasise the importance of keeping an audit trail in research, the authors maintained a detailed record of each stage of the data collection process, transcription methods and the data analysis. in so doing, the researchers worked with reliable, trustworthy data sets, which were verified and authenticated by all participants. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 1742020 38(2): 174-184 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) data analysis for this study, the analysis of data explored and interpreted the role of principals in leadership capacity development of pl1 teachers. the interviews were analysed using the content analysis technique (creswell, 2009; creswell, 2014), which is used in qualitative research to describe and explain social occurrences in a natural setting, and from the view of the participants (pope, ziebland & mays, 2000:144). in keeping with the qualitative paradigm, the authors first read through the raw data (ten interview transcripts) to obtain a general sense of the data as a whole; this was achieved using tesch’s method (1990) cited in creswell (2009:186). comprehensive ideas, views and thoughts alluded to by the participants were noted by the researchers. secondly, the interview transcripts (data) were segmented into significant units and coded using clear explanations and meanings. these fundamental meanings were then interrogated; emerging topics, which were similar, were identified and clustered. the topics were then scrutinised and coded into categories; “all related categories were grouped together to identify the common themes or trends in accordance with the research question” (creswell, 2008:251; creswell, 2009:187) and the literature review. this method of analysis made it easier for the researchers to understand and interpret the results of the study (nieuwenhuis, 2012) while the literature review served as a crucial additional avenue to contextualise the findings. research ethics the researchers observed research ethics as “participants being informed in writing of their voluntary consent, their guaranteed confidentiality, protection from any harm and their ability to withdraw at any time without any sanctions (akaranga & makau, 2016; oliver, 2010). the researchers also conformed to the participants’ right to request information and refrain from disclosing sensitive information that might bring discomfort or sanction from their employers. ethical clearance for this study was obtained from the university of johannesburg’s ethics committee and permission to conduct research in public schools in gauteng was obtained from the gauteng department of education. 6. findings and discussion when analysing the results, the researchers identified a common trend in the participants’ discourse. they underscored the various strategies adopted by their principals in leadership capacity development (gibson, 2018), although these initiatives were sometimes haphazardly coordinated and did not always produce the desired results. we now discuss each strategy with quotations from the interview transcripts as well as excerpts from literature to support our claims. the integrated quality management system (iqms) used as tool for leadership development of pl1 teachers the integrated quality management system is aimed at enhancing and monitoring the performance of schools and educators. the system consists of the whole school education, the development appraisal system and the performance measurement (de clercq, 2008: 12). through the implementation of iqms in public schools, the department of education is mandated to provide personal and professional development plans to cater for individual http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 1752020 38(2): 175-184 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 khanyi & naidoo principals’ role in leadership capacity development needs of teachers according to the schools’ improvement plan (sip), which is a direct outcome of the appraisal system (iqms, collective agreement no. 8 of 2003). principals are expected to embrace an all-encompassing leadership role (mahlangu, 2014) in which teachers are supported in the iqms implementation. teachers need to be developed and evaluated according to the appropriate performance standards as per the iqms document. principal 1 (p1) refers to iqms as “the one staff development plan which is a legislative process that must be implemented”. p2 explained in detail, “teachers are evaluated, supported and appraised against the performance standards in iqms, some [teachers] do well, others don’t.” however, both teachers and principals concurred that iqms, as an appraisal tool for leadership capacity building initiative, is challenging with regard to its implementation: “we fill out forms, but we not really sure how does it benefits us, you recommend some things, but you don’t see that much, documents are submitted and nothing happens.” (teacher 1). p2 is “unhappy” about iqms, which is internal, “teachers evaluate each other and they are friends”. p1 concurred, “friendships cloud judgements in scoring, it is not the true reflection of work done.” the participants alluded to teachers awarding maximum scores (16) per performance standard, although some teachers were not deserving of such scores (iqms, collective agreement no. 8 of 2003). p1 stated that the financial gain (annual increment received through a satisfactory performance evaluation) associated with iqms was also problematic: “monetary attachment is problematic; people want to get money without working for it” (p1). the pl1 teachers argued that they were not allowed to select their own areas of development in leadership since they were not incumbents of “practising leadership positions”. hence, participant t3 felt “excluded”, t5 felt, “ignored” and t8 alluded to, “not having any power in decision-making”, as they were not developed for leadership purposes through formal processes. this is evidenced in a direct verbatim extract from t3: no, leadership is for hods, not for pl1, we don’t fill that part, we only fill the classroom areas of development, we only stop at number 7 of development, from 8 to 14 that’s where it starts with leadership, we don’t go to that part because it is not for pl1. [iqms document, collective agreement no. 8 of 2003 outlines the relevant performance standards for the various post level staff in schools] the researchers highlight the deficiencies in the implementation of iqms in schools and we concur with the participants. iqms as an appraisal tool appears to be merely a “paper trail” (t1, t3 and t4) submission to the doe rather than a professional development system. the participants also alluded to schools and education district officials being insufficiently capacitated to manage iqms. t3 states: it is a waste of time and paper because the district never comes and say this is your area of development, … how can we assist you?”, whilst t8 claims: “many of the people who are specialists in district offices have never been into class, so they don’t know what is happening in the class. the authors recognised teachers in both schools having a misguided notion of iqms, which in essence should produce legitimate and positive results, but in reality produces the opposite effects in public education (de clercq, 2008). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 1762020 38(2): 176-184 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) the creation of grade heads and subject heads as a strategy for leadership development what was clear to the researchers is that principals created “leadership positions” in the form of grade heads and subject heads in preparation for succession planning (bush, kiggundu & moorosi, 2011) and transition planning (hamilton, forde & mcmahon, 2018). in school a, “grade heads were operational” (t3) while subject heads were non-existent. in school b, t6 alluded to the principal creating “subject heads” but not in all departments. furthermore, in school a, “vacant hod positions were temporarily filled by teachers on a rotational basis” (t4), and this gave many teachers opportunities to experience working in formal leadership positions before the doe advertised those positions. however, in school a, where the rotation of a vacant position was taking place, some teachers were reluctant to assume a leadership role in a temporary acting leadership position, “if it carried no remuneration, then i’m not interested” (t3). this is problematic for school management teams, since teachers intentionally withdraw from opportunities for teamwork rotational leadership duties, which is crucial for leadership development (leithwood, jantzi & fernadez, 1994: diamond & spillane, 2016). the researchers noted the responses of teachers to the following question: “how does the principal assist in your personal growth for leadership positions? t1 claimed: every term we make sure that there is a grade head responsible for the grade, so there the principal called me aside and said he wants me to be involved in developing the team’s growth plans for iqms. department of history is very huge, many subjects, so it’s difficult for an hod to manage all these subjects, so, last year he appointed me as the head of history and i am serving on several teachers’ developmental support groups? (t8). when principals were asked which leadership roles were assigned to pl1 teachers in order to develop their leadership capacity, they responded as follows: p1: normally in promotional positions like hod, we give people opportunities to act, where we expose them to leadership and see how they perform to see if they must be given that job permanent. p2 explained that other leadership tasks assigned to pl1 teachers were “ltsm coordinators, grade heads and sometimes subject heads”. cliffe, fuller and moorosi (2018) advocate for in-service leadership opportunities to be made available to all staff. these opportunities were limited in both schools. t3, attended one workshop when occupying an hod position in an acting capacity. t4 confirmed that pl2 teachers received “some external leadership training” as t4 had attended two workshops on monitoring and evaluation, whole school evaluation and developing programmes whilst serving in an acting hod position. teachers were eager to assume “leadership responsibilities that were previously reserved for formally appointed school leaders” (t1). this suggests that there is an interest and willingness to participate in leadership capacity development initiatives or programmes. t1 stated that workshops on leadership would be more beneficial than curriculum workshops because teachers are reluctant to apply for leadership positions due to their “lack of leadership abilities and skills”. teachers who had opportunities to attend pl2 leadership workshops attest to those workshops being beneficial to their leadership http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 1772020 38(2): 177-184 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 khanyi & naidoo principals’ role in leadership capacity development development and believe that it would be appropriate to extend them to pl1 teachers. t3: “i think the workshops that i attended when i was an acting hod should be extended to pl1.” t4 rated these workshops for smt members as exceptional “nine out of ten”. the above responses suggest that participants as grade heads or subject heads were exposed to limited internal or external leadership capacity development training programmes that were directed at pl1 teachers, even though teachers were ready to acquire new roles and responsibilities within their schools. mentoring and coaching as an opportunity for leadership development and capacity building the researchers identified mentoring and coaching as a worthy strategy used for leadership development in both schools, where senior members served as mentors assisting with the career development of novice or junior staff members (ghosh, 2013; leithwood, patten & jantzi, 2010). the mentors were the principals, members of school management teams or experienced school managers, who assisted with career and psychosocial support of pl1 teachers (thomas & kram, 1988). the authors therefore considered mentoring as one of the many responsibilities that the principals performed in their schools to build teachers’ leadership capacity (msila, 2012). when teachers were asked what kind of mentoring was afforded, the response from t1 was as follows: principals are supportive, sometimes, there are some departments where normally there is a clash with smt, when the smt does not want something to happen, but overall the smt will have a finally say, only if it is those minor issues where, they would say let the committee decides. t3 also mentioned the guidance and support provided by the smt, “the smt will guide, give advice and direction because we report to them”. t2 indicated that in her school, an smt member is allocated to a team for mentoring and coaching purposes and they “obtain clarification, guidance and support”, from this smt member. however, t6 in school b pointed out that mentoring was different in her school, “the support from the smt in my school was not enough”. we therefore concluded that mentoring opportunities existed in both schools, although approaches were different and executed on wavering levels, since t2 and t3 are from school a while t6 is from school b. promoting the establishment of committees and sub-committees for leadership development of pl1 teachers the study scrutinised the role of collaborative environments (alci, balyer & karatas, 2015) where pl1 teachers worked within smaller teams in committees, established for the execution of duties and responsibilities. the teachers declared that support from the principal contributed to their leadership development, indicated by t6 and t7 as “support” from their respective hods and from the principal who was “knowledgeable” and “accountable”. t7 alluded to receiving support from the principal in the form of “advice on what type of leave to request when one is ill”. t6 indicated support was in the form of “provision of appropriate workshops, in-service training initiatives and a safe place [to go to]” when in need of advice and emotional support. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 1782020 38(2): 178-184 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) the researchers learnt that in both schools, committees were either “low-functional or functional, but with limited powers to make decisions”, and this was corroborated by t1, t7 and t8. some committees existed on record only and “no tangible work was undertaken” (p2). in this regard, it became clear that not all principals were successful in setting direction for their teachers. furthermore, not all committees were “properly constituted” (t6) or “monitored by principals” (t7) and this was a clear indication of monitoring, support and evaluation being inadequate. teachers indicated that minimum power and authority is sometimes bestowed upon committees to make decisions and viewed this as a debilitating factor to their leadership growth. we also examined the teachers’ membership and participation in the various committees. their interest in membership varied, school-based support team (t1; t6; t7); examination committee (t1; t3); learning teacher support material; sports and sgb (t4); arts and culture (t7; t8); finance (t2); ltsm; school assessment team (t1; t5); bereavement committee (t6; t7) and teaching and learning committee (t2; t3 and t7). moreover, both principals were members of all committees, in their capacity as ex-officio, while only two participants in school a served as hods in an acting capacity in school a (t2 and t3). anecdotal evidence from the first author who works in the teaching sector suggests that pl1 teachers were reluctant to serve on the school governing body (sgb), since this structure is responsible for the governance of the school in respect of staff recruitment and recommendations, formation of policies and management of school finances. the researchers attribute this observation to the controversy regarding the “filling” of promotional posts in public schools as a huge deterrent to teachers volunteering to serve on some of the committees (wills, 2015; haper & masondo, 2014). however, t1, t3 and t8 assigned some merit to being members of committees, (t1): committees are responsible for the smooth running of the school because the principal cannot do all the job by himself, so he need assistance, people to handle the minor issues as well as major issues. (t3): school committees’ purpose is the smooth running of the school, so that the management do not do everything by themselves, so they delegate other functions to staff. (t8)” committees play a very important role because the leadership of the school will not be able to do everything all the time, that’s why committees are there. participants concurred on the benefits of working in committees by supporting greenlee (2007), who advocates for increasing teachers’ expertise and leadership development through access to information and resources. we were encouraged that all participants were members of at least one committee. we suggest a framework consisting of a five-year leadership capacity development programme for pl1 teachers to be decisively implemented in all schools to enhance leadership development of pl1 teachers. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 1792020 38(2): 179-184 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 khanyi & naidoo principals’ role in leadership capacity development sgb two (2) defaultcommittees two (2) default committees two (2) default committees two (2) default committees plus, one of the committees below grade head assessment committee sports committeeunion(default) subject head ltsm committee finance committee departmental committee (default) fundraisingentertainmentcommittee year 5 year 4 year 3 year 2 year 1 figure 1: proposed leadership capacity development programme over five-year period 7. conclusion and recommendations the researchers embarked on this study to understand the role that principals play in the leadership capacity development of pl1 teachers for school leadership. this paper answered this research question, “how can the current practices and opportunities regarding leadership development of pl1 teachers in two secondary schools be understood?” in response to this research question, this study has shown that the principal plays a fundamental role in the creation of opportunities that promote and advocate for leadership capacity development among pl1 teachers and therefore this role cannot be underestimated. this study has also demonstrated that pl1 teachers’ requirements in terms of leadership advancement has to be specifically needs-driven and contextualised within each school with the principal leading the process towards leadership capacity enhancement. the authors draw the attention of education policy makers to the contentious issue of non-subsidised “acting leadership positions” in schools. “acting leadership position” in the context of public education refers to a temporary position filled for a limited period until the position is officially occupied by an incumbent. this study alerts teachers, principals and school management teams of the invaluable knowledge gained through assuming leadership positions, albeit in temporary capacities, since “in-practice” leadership experience is immeasurable. considering the participants’ insights from the interviews, the authors therefore recommend a series of incremental opportunities for leadership development captured in a five-year leadership capacity development programme of pl1 teachers to be undertaken during their initial five years of teaching. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 1802020 38(2): 180-184 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.11 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) the findings of this investigation should be viewed in the context of the limited sample, ten participants at two schools. a study conducted with the remaining participants in the same schools or a larger number of participants at other research sites may shed more light on the findings. references ackerman, r. & mackenzie, s.v. 2006. uncovering teacher leadership. educational leadership, 63(8): 66–70. akaranga, s.i. & makau, b.k. 2016. ethical considerations and their applications to research: a case of the university of nairobi. journal of educational policy and entrepreneurial research, 3(12): 1–9. alci, b., balyer, a. & karatas, h. 2015. school principals’ roles in establishing collaborative professional learning communities at schools. procedia-social and 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principals’ role in leadership capacity development 1 editorial 2022 40(2): 1-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.1 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) editorial the unicef report, life in lockdown, published in october 2021 claimed that “although there were negative impacts, especially due to social isolation and loss of learning and networks, there were many positive outcomes and perceived opportunities, especially related to quality time with family, online learning, and time for recreation”. from initial research done on the pandemic the use of digital technology during the pandemic provided social connectedness, remote learning opportunities, and a way to cope with isolation and stress. the unicef report claims engaging in positive coping strategies, prosocial behaviours and online learning opportunities have been key factors in building children’s resilience during this time. in this issue of pie the first three articles focus on the impact of covid-19 on education. in the first article, ventketsamy and hu explore school leaders’ responsibilities for ensuring safe schools for teaching and learning during covid-19. their findings highlighted the importance of establishing an emergency school management team to be the covid-19 point of contact, implementing social distancing, frequent sanitising, mask-wearing, daily screening, encouraging flexible school times and promoting the outdoor classroom. annemie grobler’s research investigated teachers’ experiences of parents’ involvement in foundation phase learning during the covid-19 pandemic. she reported that teachers deemed parental involvement essential in i) providing technological support for their children; and ii) interpreting the tasks set for their grade 1 learners. barriers to effective communication as perceived by teachers were i) the language barrier where parents were unable to speak the language of learning and teaching of the school; ii) the digital divide posed by parents without effective digital support; and iii) the schooling level of parents who could not interpret the assignments for their children. antonia makina focused her research on students experiences of demotivating online formative assessment strategies at an open distance learning university. students identified seven demotivating online formative assessment strategies that should be taken note of. the next group of articles explore several perspectives regarding the experiences of teacher educators managing teaching and learning during times of crises and how young author: jan nieuwenhuis1 affiliation: 1university of the free state doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i2.1 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(2): 1-2 published: 08 june 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.1 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.1 22022 40(2): 2-17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.1 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) learners establish their learning practices in their environmental space. we also look at how the environment in which learners learn and the technology at their disposal influence their learning experiences. in reading through these it is realised how important it is to engage learners in positive coping strategies, prosocial behaviours and online learning opportunities as essential factors in building children’s resilience during times of crisis, and how these need to be highlighted and harnessed through greater investment in mental health promotion and prevention interventions. we hope that you will find this issue of perspectives in education insightful and enriching and that it will contribute to the discourse in education in various meaningful ways. enjoy the reading. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.1 239 research article 2021 39(2): 239-252 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) what are teachers' beliefs, values and attitudes towards the inclusion of learners who experience barriers to learning in south african primary schools? abstract this study examined teachers’ attitudes towards the inclusion of learners who experience barriers to learning in their classrooms. the study implemented the quantitative descriptive design. sixtythree foundation phase (grades 1–3) teachers were recruited through the convenient sampling strategy from the capricorn district in limpopo province in south africa. data were collected through a closed-ended questionnaire adapted from the teaching for all (department of basic education, 2019) student support materials for inclusive education commissioned by the british council. analyses were conducted using the statistical package for social sciences (spss) version 22 for descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. the findings indicated that overall, teachers were well disposed to include learners who experience barriers to learning in their classrooms. however, the teachers expressed concerns regarding some teachers’ abilities that are required in inclusive settings for inclusion of these learners to happen. the study has some important implications for teachers, policymakers and researchers. the study may help to solidify teachers’ positive attitudes as the creators of knowledge rather than always assuming the role of transmitters of information from the government. policymakers may be informed about how to involve teachers in their development of policies on inclusive education. lastly, for researchers these findings may help further research on how to understand problems related to the implementation of inclusive education. keywords: teachers; attitudes; learners; barriers; primary school; inclusive education. 1. introduction inclusive education was officially introduced to south africa in 2001 through the white paper 3 (department of education, 2001). despite its apparent value to the transformation agenda, its implementation has been slow author: joel moketla mamabolo1 medwin dikwanyane sepadi1 rachel basani mabasa-manganyi1 faith kgopa1 simon mfula ndlovu1 mahlapahlapana themane1 affiliation: 1university of limpopo, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i2.17 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(2): 239-252 published: 11 june 2021 received: 28 may 2020 accepted: 03 august 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2095-2821 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 2402021 39(2): 240-252 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) (walton & rusznyak, 2019). researchers have attributed this lack of progress to numerous factors, including lack of resources and teachers not trained in inclusive education (themane & thobejane, 2018). however, information about how teachers’ attitude contribute to this lack of progress has received inadequate attention, especially in rural areas such as the limpopo province in south africa (engelbrecht et al., 2015). such studies are found elsewhere in the world, though scattered. in saudi arabia, a study by alnahdi (2020) found that teachers’ attitudes played its role in the success of inclusive education. in song, sharma and choi (2019) in south korea also found that teachers’ attitudes played a major role in the implementation of inclusive education. in germany, krischler and pit-ten cate (2018) found that teachers’ attitudes are critical in the success of the implementation. such information is important for the improvement of the implementation of inclusive education in south africa. teachers’ attitudes are key to any initiative to take root. 2. inclusive education the concept inclusive education is not new and studies (maguve, 2016; phasha, mahlo & dei 2017) reveal that it has been explored extensively in south africa; as in other parts of the world for the benefit of those who were previously side-lined or disadvantaged, such as students with disabilities and women. the genesis of inclusivity in the teaching of young people is traceable from such efforts as the salamanca statement of 1994, united nation’s conventions on the rights of the child (1989), the universal declaration of human rights (1948) as well as the unesco (1994) guidelines on inclusion of learners in all matters of tuition (florian, young & rouse, 2010; lyons & arthur-kelly, 2014). it is against these measures that countries across the globe have adopted inclusive education. however, the challenge to these noble ideas is at the implementation level. its progress has been tardy. teachers are at the cold face of the implementation of inclusive education (ahsan & sharma, 2018). if teachers are willing and ready to be inclusive in their classrooms, they are likely to be resilient in the face of trouble (agbenye, 2011; phasha, mahlo & dei, 2017; sideridis & chandler, 2009). ballard (2012) summarises the importance of teachers in the implementation of inclusive education by calling them agents of change. therefore, their attitude towards any initiative, including inclusive education, is central for any change to happen. to this end the purpose of this study was to examine the attitudes of teachers towards the inclusion of learners who experience barriers to learning in south african grade 1 to 3 classrooms. to achieve this purpose, we were guided by three research questions. one, what are the teachers’ beliefs about inclusive education and teaching in the inclusion of learners who experience barriers to learning in grades 1 to 3 classrooms? two, how significant is inclusive education and teaching in accommodating learners who experience barriers to leaning in these grades? three, what are teachers’ attitudes in using diverse teaching methods to accommodate learners who experience barriers to learning in their classrooms? in the next section we discuss inclusive education with reference to pre-service and in-service teacher education. 3. teacher education for inclusive education to gain a full perspective of teachers’ attitudes towards the inclusion of learners who experience barriers to their learning there is a need to understand the role of teacher education in preparing teachers for inclusive education. so far, the focus has been on the factors that affect its implementation. factors such as physical infrastructure (tungaraza, 2014), support http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 2412021 39(2): 241-252 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 mamabolo, sepadi, mabasa-manganyi, kgopa, ndlovu & themane what are teachers' beliefs services (alborno, 2017), exclusionary legislations and practices (walton, 2012), resources (materechera, 2014), same curriculum and untrained teachers (walton & rusznyak, 2017). of these identified factors, teacher education training for inclusive education has received little attention especially in south africa. there is a paucity of studies that provide such information. this points to the remaining unresolved questions regarding their readiness, willingness and commitment to make schools inclusive. multiple studies (ngcobo & muthukrishma, 2011; walton 2012; sobchuk & mykytenko, 2020; materechera, 2020; aldani, 2020 walton & rusznyak, 2017; pablo et al., 2018) provide converging evidence for the same conclusion that teachers struggle with the implementation of inclusive education. surprisingly, there is no compelling evidence that this problem is receiving attention by teacher education institutions. specifically, literature on what the teachers' attitudes towards the inclusion of learners who experience barriers to learning are. we agree with walton and rusznyak (2014) that one of the challenges associated with the implementation of inclusive education in south africa is the effective training of teachers to meet diverse learning needs in their classrooms. teacher education locally and internationally is concerned with how best to prepare and equip teachers to be pedagogically responsive to an increasingly diverse learner population. this concern is echoed in south african classrooms that represent diverse learners and learning styles especially after the dawn of democracy (mamabolo; 1998; walton et al., 2014; burke & sutherland, 2004). knowing about the attitudes of teachers is crucial in entrusting teachers with children who have diverse needs. such information is valuable, especially when one is attempting to link together many studies on this topic, either for purposes of reinterpretation or interconnection. unfortunately, there are few studies on teachers’ attitudes on the inclusion of all children regardless of their diversities or their additional needs globally, but particular in developing countries such as south africa. thus, it is difficult to know the problems, weaknesses, contradictions and controversies such studies would provide on this topic. teacher education in south is certainly hard pressed to grow a body of knowledge on how teacher attitudes and commitment is delivering an inclusive education for social justice (mamabolo; 1998; alnadi, 2020). the purpose of this brief literature review on the state of knowledge on the topic was to backtrack these particular moments, review key perspectives that dominated the debates as well as the underlying assumptions and discourses, in order to reconceptualise our current curriculum theoretical and methodological approaches for an inclusive teacher education. in the next section, we discuss the theory that framed our study. 4. theoretical framework to understand teachers’ attitudes towards the inclusion of learners who experience barriers to learning, we employed scaccia’s (2014) readiness theory. he asserts that the willingness and ability of an organisation determines its readiness for the implementation of an innovation (scott et al., 2017). literature has proven that readiness is an essential part of successfully implementing an innovation (hall & hord, 2011). in addition, readiness is a construct that encompasses the conditions that are necessary to ensure quality implementation through the entirety of the innovation lifespan like exploration, preparation, implementation and sustainment (aarons, 2011). these necessary conditions have a direct impact on the successful implementation of any innovation. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 2422021 39(2): 242-252 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) in our study, teachers’ levels of readiness in implementing inclusive education have been explored to understand their willingness and readiness towards the inclusion of learners who experience barriers to learning. to measure their readiness and willingness to accommodate these learners, we independently explored each component of the theory. the theory of readiness’ three components; motivation, the general organisational capacity and the intervention-specific capacity. the theory describes motivation as the cognitive and affective perceptions of an innovation that draws or pushes an organisation towards the use of an innovation. the general organisational capacity is referred to as the human, technical and fiscal conditions that are necessary to successfully implement a particular innovation. and, the intervention-specific capacity is explained as the skills, characteristics and the overall functioning of the organisations that are associated with the ability to implement or improve an innovation. 5. research methodology we followed a quantitative research approach with a descriptive cross-sectional research design recommended by various scholars (creswell, 2009). in so doing we hoped that the quantitative research approach would give us an impetus to engage in an ongoing critical reflection, negotiation and verification factors that underpin the teachers’ attitudes. we felt that a survey design would give us a window to gaze into the teachers’ views. 5.1 sampling a total of 63 teachers teaching grade 1 to 3 were conveniently selected from a population of 100 in-service teachers from the limpopo provincial department of education. the teachers were recruited from five districts (capricorn, mopani, sekhukhune, vhembe and waterberg) in the province by the provincial department of education to participate in the short course on inclusive education. they came from different schools (full-service schools, piloting schools and special schools). 5.2 data collection data were collected through a questionnaire, which was adopted from the teaching for all evaluation and monitoring study (department of basic education, 2019). section a is composed of biographical information about the participants. the biographical information included: age, gender and academic qualification. in section b, the teachers were expected to express their views on seven statements about attitudes on a four-point likert-type scale (strongly agree, agree, disagree and strongly disagree). the statements were as follows: a) i feel it is important to create inclusive classrooms (b1.a); b) i feel that it is important to use diverse teaching methods to accommodate learners who experience barriers to learning; (b1.b) c) i feel it is important to work with other teachers to make my teaching more inclusive (b1.c); d) teaching learners with disabilities is rewarding (b1.d); e) i have high expectations and aspirations for all learners (b1.e); f) in my teaching, i will deal with difficulties/sensitive issues such as racism (b1.f); and g) i am familiar with the resources that learners with disabilities need in order to learn (b1.g). 5.3 procedures of data collection ethical clearance for the research was obtained from the turfloop research ethics committee (trec/84/2019: ir). the nature and the purpose of the study was explained to teachers. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 2432021 39(2): 243-252 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 mamabolo, sepadi, mabasa-manganyi, kgopa, ndlovu & themane what are teachers' beliefs further to this, we also clarified that those who did not want to participate in the study were free to disengage from participation in the research. consent for participation was then obtained from teachers. the questionnaire was administered at the start of the programme. 5 4 data analysis data were analysed through the statistical package for social sciences (spss) v.22 for descriptive statistics. data were analysed based on the three main categories, namely: statements about beliefs, statements about values and statements about attitudes. the data were further subjected to inferential statistics for exploratory factor analysis (efa) were conducted and cronbach alpha value of 0.85 was set. an efa provides information on each item's relationship to a single factor hypothesised to be represented by each of the items. efa results here provided basic information about how well items relate to three constructs: 1 belief about inclusive education and teaching; 2, the significance of inclusive education and teaching, and 3, teaching strategies to be used in inclusive classrooms. 6. results tables 1–5 below present data for this study. table 1 presents descriptive results about inclusive education and teaching. table 2 presents inferential results (correlation of regression) scores with factors 0.95. multiple r square of scores with factors 0.90 for teachers’ beliefs about inclusive education and teaching. table 3 presents descriptive statistics on the significance of inclusive education and teaching in schools as a social justice project. table 4 presents correlational results between the significance or value of inclusive education with factors of teachers valuing of inclusive education and teaching. table 4 presents descriptive statistics on the teachers’ attitudes towards the use of diverse teaching methods in classrooms for inclusive education and teaching. table 5 presents correlational results between the diverse teaching strategies with factors of inclusive education and teaching. table 6 presents results when item g in table 5 is dropped. table 1: descriptive statistics for teachers' beliefs (%) n=63 item beliefs statement strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree belief a including learners who experience barriers to learning in the mainstream classroom hinders the learning of other learners 18 2 30 27 belief b respecting the sexual orientation of all learners is necessary for inclusion in south africa 51 42 7 0 belief c learners who experience barriers to learning are likely to do better academically in the mainstream school 10 44 40 7 belief d learners who experience barriers to learning are likely to improve their social skills in the mainstream classroom 16 56 21 7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 2442021 39(2): 244-252 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) item beliefs statement strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree belief e most learners who experience barrier to learning lack skills to understand the content of a mainstream classroom 14 40 24 21 belief f most learners with learning disabilities such as hearing or visual impairment should not be educated in mainstream classrooms 10 22 48 21 belief g most learners with a physical disability should not be taught in a mainstream classroom 3 4 58 35 table 1 presents descriptive statistics data on the teachers’ beliefs variables as measured by the seven statements on a four-point scale. on the statement (belief 1): “i feel it is important to create inclusive classrooms” 57% of the teachers did not feel that it was important to create inclusive classrooms. this is contrary to their response in belief 2 where 51% strongly agreed and 42% agreed about the importance of using diverse teaching methods to accommodate learners who experience barriers to learning. whereas the teachers did not feel that it was their responsibility to create inclusive classrooms, they were nevertheless positive about using different methods of teaching to accommodate learners who experienced barriers to learning. table 2: inferential statistics for standardised loadings (pattern matrix) based upon correlation matrix on beliefs beliefs mr1 h2 u2 com belief a 0.87 0.75054 0.25 1 belief b -0.26 0.06998 0.93 1 belief c 0.20 0.04146 0.96 1 belief d* 0.02 0.04146 1.00 1 belief e 0.57 0.32814 0.67 1 belief f 0.56 0.30850 0.69 1 belief g 0.36 0.13034 0.87 1 *not related to belief to understand whether these belief statements were related to belief, we conducted exploratory factor analysis for all seven statements. the results thereof are presented in table 2 above. tables 2a and b present inferential statistics for teachers’ beliefs and values about the inclusion of children who experience barriers to learning. from table 2, of the seven statements related to belief, we found that belief d (teaching learners with disabilities is rewarding) was not well related to a belief in including learners who experience barriers to learning because of its low score of 0.02 mr at the threshold of 0.90 correlation of (regression) scores with factors and multiple r square of scores with factors (0.81). in other words, the teachers in this sample did not believe that accommodating these learners was rewarding at all. otherwise from the above results belief can be explained by factor a.b and f. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 2452021 39(2): 245-252 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 mamabolo, sepadi, mabasa-manganyi, kgopa, ndlovu & themane what are teachers' beliefs table 3: descriptive statistics on the significance or value of inclusive education (%) n=63 values statement strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree value a i want inclusive education to address the problem of racism is schools 46 51 0 3 value b i want inclusive education to help promote social justice in schools 65 35 0 0 value c i feel that teaching about diversity and inclusive education is my professional responsibility 58 42 0 0 value d i feel that all teachers are responsible for inclusive education in schools 72 27 1 0 value e i value inclusive education as a right guaranteed by the south african constitution and the bill of rights 65 35 0 0 table 3 above presents teachers’ expression of values on the significance of inclusive education and teaching in accommodating all learners, especially those experiencing barriers to learning. the table shows that most participants strongly saw inclusive education and teaching as a vehicle to drive transformation and social justice in south africa. the teachers also cherished the fact that inclusive education and teaching promote education as basic human right issue and that it was their responsibility to roll it out in schools (65% and 72%) respectively. table 4: inferential statistics for standardised loadings (pattern matrix) based upon correlation matrix on significance or value of inclusive education values mr1 h2 u2com value a 0.50 0.25 0.75 1 value b 0.83 0.69 0.31 1 value c 0.83 0.68 0.31 1 value d 0.85 0.72 0.28 1 value e 0.72 0.52 0.48 1 the high mr1 values show that teachers had a high regard of inclusive education and teaching. table 4: descriptive statistics on teaching strategies for inclusive education and teaching (%) n=63 attitudes statement strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree attitude a i feel it is important to create inclusive classrooms. 71 26 3 0 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 2462021 39(2): 246-252 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) attitudes statement strongly agree agree disagree strongly disagree attitude b i feel that it is important to use diverse teaching methods to accommodate learners who experience barriers to learning. 74 26 0 0 attitude c i feel it is important to work with other teachers to make my teaching more inclusive 74 26 0 0 attitude d teaching learners with disabilities is rewarding 51 38 11 0 attitude e i have high expectations and aspirations for all learners 52 48 0 0 attitude f in my teaching, i will deal with difficulties/ sensitive issues such as racism 46 46 1 6 attitude g i am familiar with the resources that learners with disabilities need in order to learn 27 47 26 0 table 4 above presents descriptive results about the teachers’ attitude regarding the use of diverse teaching strategies towards the inclusion of learners who experience barriers to learning. on the whole teachers were predisposed to inclusive pedagogy. the high values for items a, b, and c are indicative of this observation. however, item g raises eyebrows. these teachers given their profile described in the section under sampling. this may infer that structural and teaching and learning resources are lacking in their schools. table 5: inferential statistics for standardised loadings (pattern matrix) based upon correlation matrix on teaching methods attitudes mr1 h2 u2com attitude a 0.61 0.37 0.63 1 attitude b 0.84 0.70 0.30 1 attitude c 0.84 0.71 0.29 1 attitude d 0.59 0.35 0.65 1 attitude e 0.77 0.59 0.41 1 attitude f 0.34 0.12 0.88 1 attitude g 0.32 0.10 0.90 1 when we realised that item g has lower loading and we deleted it our cronbach alpha increased to 0.78 (and standard cronbach alpha to 0.82) as reflected in table 6 below. we found this quite interesting that the teachers in this sample were not aware of the resources that could help them teach better for inclusive classrooms. table 6: inferential statistics for standardised loadings (pattern matrix) based upon correlation matrix on teaching methods when item g is dropped values raw alpha standard alpha g.6 g6 (smc) r/s/n se.var.r attitude a 0.73 0.78 0.81 0.37 3.6 0.049 0.038 0.35 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 2472021 39(2): 247-252 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 mamabolo, sepadi, mabasa-manganyi, kgopa, ndlovu & themane what are teachers' beliefs values raw alpha standard alpha g.6 g6 (smc) r/s/n se.var.r attitude b 0.71 0.75 0.75 0.34 3.0 0.052 0.022 0.35 attitude c 0.71 0.75 0.75 0.33 3.0 0.053 0.025 0.35 attitude d 0.72 0.78 0.81 0.37 3.5 0.053 0.047 0.35 attitude e 0.70 0.75 0.77 0.33 3.0 0.056 0.039 0.25 attitude f 0.78 0.82 0.84 0.43 4.5 0.040 0.034 0.43 these six tables described above present a positive story, albeit there appears to be underlying misconceptions and perhaps errors above the worth of children who experience barriers to learning. this view is formed by the belief that learners who experience barriers to learning are unlikely to improve their social skills in the mainstream classroom (mr1 0.02). another alarming observation is what we have already alluded to in table 5, item g (mr1 032). perhaps these two observations could find their answers in the section, which discusses the literature review and the theoretical framework that guided this study with these results. 7. discussion this study examined teachers’ beliefs, values and attitudes towards the inclusion of learners who experience barriers to learning in their classrooms. specifically, the study was guided by the following three research questions: what are the teachers’ beliefs about inclusive education and teaching in the inclusion of learners who experience barriers to learning in grade 1 to 3 classrooms? how significant is inclusive education and teaching in accommodating learners who experience barriers to leaning in these grades? what are teachers’ attitudes in using diverse teaching methods to accommodate learners who experience barriers to learning in their classrooms? to answer these questions, the study implemented a quantitative descriptive design. analyses were conducted using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. our study came up with three findings: on the positive side, teachers were generally positively predisposed to include learners who experience barriers to learning in their classrooms and teachers were willing to use diverse teaching strategies to accommodate learners who experience barriers to learning in the classrooms. however, the teachers in our sample expressed doubt about whether learners who experience barriers to learning could improve their social skills in a mainstream school (table 1, item 4). additionally, when asked about their familiarity with the resources that learners with disabilities need to learn, they indicated that they did know about such resources. our findings are consistent with other studies elsewhere in the world. ismailos, gallaghe and bennett (2019) in ontario, canada, surveyed the attitudes of in-service teachers (n=739) prior to their implementation of a district-wide shift from a model of segregation to inclusive classrooms and found that elementary and female pre-service teachers held the most clearly defined inclusive growth mind-set and indicated a greater level of confidence in accommodating inclusion of learners who experience barriers to learning in their classrooms. similar findings were by burke and sutherland (2004) who sought to determine whether a relationship exists between pre-service and in-service teachers' experiences with disabled students and their attitudes towards inclusion. they found that teachers had positive attitudes toward inclusion. however, what is novel to us is that these teachers did not believe that learners who experience barriers to learning are unlikely to improve their social skills in a mainstream school. also, what we found strange was that these teachers were not familiar with http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 2482021 39(2): 248-252 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) the resources they needed to help learners who experience barriers to cope in a mainstream school (bornman & donohue, 2013). the finding on their unfamiliarity with the sources needed to help learners with disabilities is somewhat surprising given the fact teachers in our sample came from schools that are targeted to roll out inclusive education. these include special schools, full-service schools and piloting schools. one possible interpretation of this could be that their schools did not have such facilities given that they are mostly from quartile 1 schools (poor schools). but what is of great concern to us is their disbelief that learners who experience barriers to learning will improve their social skills in a mainstream school. this could be interpreted through the readiness theory that we adopted in this study. the theory of readiness has three components: motivation, the general organisational capacity and the intervention-specific capacity. in our target sample, the teachers appear to be motivated as evidenced by items a, b and f in table 2. however, it appears that this positive belief is not accompanied by the interventionspecific capacity. the intervention-specific refers to a situation where an organisation that wants to change has personnel that is skilled and knowledgeable about the initiative they desire to implement. this looks like it is not the case with the teachers in our sample. this may explain why they do not believe what they preach. they do not see themselves as change agents (themane & thobejane, 2018). contrary to our findings, other studies have found that generally teachers had negative attitudes towards inclusion due to a number of factors. for example, most teachers felt that issues around inclusive education did not concern them because they were more concerned with being competent in the subject they teach than anything else (rose, 2010; hong et al., 2020; alnahdi, 2020). kaikkonen (2010) argues that this type of attitude emanates from the fact that most teachers have a narrow view of their work and responsibility. thus, touching on inclusive education and special education could be regarded as an add-on. undoubtedly, the quality of ongoing professional development they receive has an effect. most teacher education programmes, it would appear, are not tailor-made to address the needs of teachers, including issues surrounding inclusive education (paramit, sharma & anderson, 2020). however, the interpretations and generalisations drawn from this study could be limited due to at least two reasons. one, the sample representing these teachers in south africa, is negligible and therefore conclusions arrived at here should be treated cautiously. given a vast number of uncoordinated trainings on inclusive education in limpopo province, the findings would be affected by variance in curriculum at each training institute, at other districts and other factors impacting the profile of these teachers (some are from full-service schools and others from special schools). thus, caution should be taken when trying to apply the findings to a system with different characteristics than limpopo province. we acknowledge discrepancies that may arise from the decision to ignore the gender and type of teacher training received by these teachers. 8. implications of the study beside the limitations outlined above, the findings in this study have at least three implications. we conclude that lack of progress in successful inclusive education in our sampled schools could be improved by addressing the confidence issues among teachers, building of their positive beliefs, the valuing of inclusive education and teaching, and attitudes to include learners who require special assistance as well as collaborate with other teachers in doing so. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 2492021 39(2): 249-252 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 mamabolo, sepadi, mabasa-manganyi, kgopa, ndlovu & themane what are teachers' beliefs additionally, these results may provide an opportunity to use the strength in attitudes to overcome the challenges relating to training (in-service and pre-service) and professional development as well as practise the skills and the variety of strategies available (swart & oswald, 2008). we conclude that the success of inclusive education is largely dependent on redesigning in teacher education provision that focus on making teacher agency and selfefficacy (antoszewska & bartanikowsa, 2017; forlin, 2012; pantic & florian, 2015). such programmes should also focus on repurposing of teaching programmes to enable practitioners to work together and collaborate from time to time. undoubtedly, the teachers need to master different methods of teaching to be skilful to cater for all learners in some diverse classrooms. we also advocate for teachers to be foregrounded in the value of inclusivity to prevent paranoia and pessimism in appreciating and embracing inclusive education. the in-service and pre-service providers should be underpinned by advocacy for inclusivity to enable teacher trainees to understand profoundly inclusive education to alter the attitude of teachers and to prevent possible stigmatisation of learners with barriers to learning (agenyega, 2007). continuous professional development programmes should focus on life experiences of teachers, taking their context into consideration, where they could be involved in problem solving approaches in their real life experiences, such experiences could be leveraged on programmes such as education for all, children friendly schools and no child-left behind (unesco, 1994), which can inspire teachers to advocate for the rights of children. finally, these findings also may imply that to solidify teachers’ positive attitudes emphasis should be put on teachers being the creators of knowledge rather than always assuming the role of transmitters of information from the government. we argue, as others do (florian & spratt, 2013; ahsan & sharma, 2018) that teachers have the natural skills that they can use in classrooms. such natural knowledge that makes them collaborate and network with teachers, parents and communities instead of working alone. 9. conclusion this article was aimed at investigating the attitudes of primary teachers towards inclusion of learners who experience barriers to learning. while it is important to develop highquality content for a teacher professional learning programme to equip teachers with skills and knowledge the findings of this study indicated that teachers’ attitudes were required to produce the expected outcomes. removal of impediments towards the implementation of inclusive education with direct classroom support may be useful for engendering positive attitudes towards the inclusion of learners who experience barriers to learning. 10. acknowledgement firstly, we want to acknowledge the british council sponsoring for the teaching for all materials. the teaching for all project is a partnership between the british council, the university of south africa, the departments of basic education and higher education and training and miet africa, and is co-funded by the european union. the teaching for all project aims to provide teachers in south africa with the skills, knowledge and attitudes to teach inclusively in diverse classrooms in diverse communities. secondly, we want to acknowledge the cape peninsula university of technology for developing the questionnaire that we used for the study. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.17 2502021 39(2): 250-252 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http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) sustaining evolving teaching practicum models in higher education: a conversational ethnodrama between south african teacher educators abstract this article explores the evolving trajectory of the teaching practicum (tp) models within a selected south african teacher education institution (tei) to accommodate the localised challenges of shifting from face-to-face support of professional learning towards online modes of delivery during covid-19 times. over time, even before the onset of covid-19, the specific institution was characterised by increasing diversification of its student body and increased enrolment of student teachers resonating with similar patterns across other teis nationally. the study draws on the ethnographic tradition of celebrating participants’ lived experiences within the field of teacher education by capturing how a teaching practicum coordinator attempted to deal with complex and multiple challenges to enact and sustain a re-imagined tp programme. the pattern of responsiveness continues even as the pandemic (potentially) wanes. a reconstructed dialogue represents the responses of the internal coordinator within the institution (foregrounding changing operational concerns) and a senior teacher educator external to the institution (foregrounding shifting theoretical and policy considerations). drawing from ethnodrama traditions, this dialogical conversation acknowledges the lived experiences of everyday designing, delivering and using tp models. it includes the hesitance of school mentors, student teachers and teacher educator supervisors to adopt alternative practices to conventionalised rituals of tp. the conversation questions the academic rationale of the various models of tp in their bolstering of student teachers’ professional learning. the study’s findings indicate that the successful implementation of a meaningful and contextualised revised tp curriculum necessitates re-imagining the roles of the various partners involved in the tp endeavour: who are co-responsible for conceptualising and ensuring transformative professional growth and development. keywords: teaching practicum models, under-served teacher education institution, transformation, conversational ethnodrama analysis and representation. author: mr clive jimmy william brown1 prof michael anthony samuel2 affiliation: 1cape peninsula university of technology, south africa 2university of kwazulu-natal, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i3.11 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(3): 163-180 published: 30 september 2022 received: 09 march 2022 accepted: 08 may 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1308-9852 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9425-7186journal http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 1642022 40(3): 164-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) 1. about resistance, recurring resilience and dialogue the arrival of the coronavirus on south african shores created another major challenge in the country’s history. the malaise of an ill society and the morbidity levels infiltrated insidiously, creating turbulence at all levels of society: at macrolevels in the broader global society, within institutional settings in higher education generically and in specific, localised departmental and curricular spaces. the pandemic has exacerbated social and economic challenges and increased mental health risks in south africa as varied practitioners attempt to cope with rapid changes. it has once again tested south africans’ resilience in a society that has become associated with repeated contestations to realise greater transformation beyond historical inequities (mthiyane, naidoo & bertram, 2019). resilience to cope with repeated waves of contagion reverberated, not only nationally, but across the globe. before the global spread of the pandemic of 2019, in his examination of the challenges of the 21st century, historian philosopher harari (2018) suggests that we are entering an era of perpetual revolutions. harari suggests that the influence of technological and bio-algorithmic research and practice infuse our everyday worlds. he argues that higher education as a sacred space would also become contested as the primary source of knowledge-making and development. this calls for higher education practitioners to reexamine their dispositions to the perpetual pandemic envisaged for the future, to re-examine with whom we are dialoguing to find solutions to broader social and systemic challenges (samuel, 2021). an example of such periodic episodes of disruption is the student protests of 2015. the #rhodesmustfall and 2016 #feesmustfall student movements groundbreakingly questioned the epistemological and operational funding of the university systems. higher education institutions were barefacedly intimidated by student intellectuals for the sake of a “decolonised curriculum”. jansen (2017) critically questions the underpinning source of the student movements, suggesting that a reading of disruptions should move beyond surface manifestations of the agenda brought to the negotiation tables within higher education spaces. the protests are opportunities for a re-examination of the deeper rationales underpinning disquiet. he suggests that whilst students might be held accountable for the destructive violence unleashed, the more symbolic violence relates to the state’s failure to provide structural and political support to higher education systems and the sustained impoverished sectors of society. the lessons here are about learning from our contested and recurring resilience-testing spaces, awash with multiple theoretical and pragmatic interpretations. how do we hear the voices around us, and whom do we choose to dialogue with to find a future, more equitable, humanitarian, holistic and sustainable response? aligned with the above macrosystemic forces confronting higher education institutional and curriculum reformulations, this article continues the tradition of finding spaces for dialogue and questioning our theories and practices within teacher education as one of the specific spheres of higher education. this article foregrounds the need to develop resilience at all levels, included within teacher education, which is tasked with producing the next generation of prospective teachers. how did the pandemic usher in new demands and challenges for teacher education providers? how can professional teacher learning be sustained in an environment that disrupted the schooling sector, the laboratories where our student teachers engage their professional craft? in particular, how was the teaching practicum (tp) component http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 1652022 40(3): 165-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 brown & samuel sustaining evolving teaching practicum models in higher education of initial teacher education (ite) affected? what options were employed to react resiliently to the challenges of the new pandemic? these are the questions this article aims to address. we argue that the current covid-19 crisis of designing and managing tp continues the search for relevance and worthwhileness in professional learning curriculum design. the article outlines three phases of exploring an evolving trajectory within a selected teacher education institution as symbolic of the kinds of effort involved in choosing a sustainable direction for the development of quality teachers. we present the phase before the onset of the covid-19 pandemic (the tp curriculum 2019), during the pandemic (2020–2021) and ‘post’ the pandemic (as it hopefully wanes) (2022). we examine how inspiration was drawn from international and local initiatives designed for the tp curriculum, reflecting a growing attempt to develop sustainable new directions for faculties. we question the motives underpinning these initiatives and reflect on whether the transformative goals of social justice are likely to be activated within the evolving curriculum designs. 2. ethnography, ethnodrama and dialogical conversation: a methodological choice of data production and analysis 2.1 ethnography and ethnodrama as data presentation as a branch of interpretivism foregrounding the meaning-making perspectives of those who are researched, ethnographic research accentuates the value of participants’ lived experiences (atkinson, 2007). personal readings of the world are not sanitised from the research process, as is the practice adopted in conventional empiricist/positivistic work. as a form of affirmation (nussbaum, 2015; walker & wilson-strydom, 2017), the voices of both the researcher and the researched as co-constructors are celebrated to provide multiple vantage points on a selected phenomenon. this present article works within this interpretivist paradigmatic framework, as similarly did appadoo-ramsamy (2022). as a researcher of teacher professional development activity, she demonstrates how the principles of ethnography invoke a set of entangled interpretations that resist linear cause-effect relationships. the ethnographic tradition blurs the boundaries between methodologies and analysis as the act of data production itself is considered an analytical engagement and interpretation within the field. appadoo-ramsamy (2022) argues that this entanglement (barad, 2010; 2014) should extend not only to the sources of data evoked in fieldwork but also to the strategies for reporting and representing the data. she chose an ethnodrama representation (saldaña, 2022) to depict the shifting temporal, spatial and contextual factors impinging on the phenomenon that she explored. her final representation of the fieldwork is in the form of a dramatic script presented in various acts to reflect multiple interlocutors across multiple times, contexts and spaces as they engage with the phenomenon of her study. the ethnodrama created represents the teachers’ responses to the national curriculum reform initiatives led largely by a governmental-directed professional development strategy methodologically, analytically and representationally. the approach in ethnographic research extends research possibilities to develop theoretical insights from the fieldwork (data-driven analysis). it is not restricted to only an application of the existing literature/theoretical frameworks for hypothesis testing within fieldwork (theory-driven analysis). ethnographic study embraces activating and generating hypotheses from the fieldwork as a form of celebration of voices from the field. the authors have chosen to acknowledge the ethnographic approach coherently throughout the article (hammersley, 2018). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 1662022 40(3): 166-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) as co-authors, we explore our search methodologically and representationally throughout the article for responsiveness to the unique context of students, academic staff, mentorteachers and school managers as they simultaneously negotiate the recurring challenges of their workspaces. the chosen dialogical representational form presented below constitutes a co-construction of our academic journeys as co-authors. inspired by the tradition of ethnographic research, which examines how people live and experience their lives, we have chosen to represent this article in the form of a dialogue between the two authors as interacting participants. this follows the kind of ethnographic shadowing of one another’s worlds originally introduced seminally by wolcott (1973), but further exemplified by iszatt-white et al. (2004). the ethnographic tradition celebrates robust, interactive immersion into the world of others. however, what we present in this article is not an empirically led shadowing of the persons as they enact their routine practice (wolcott, 1973). instead, the article methodologically foregrounds a repeated probing based on the overarching questions about the reading of our wor(l)ds that we painted in the opening section of this article. we wanted to know how we are making sense of the pandemic and how it affects decision-making around curriculum practices. whose voices are we choosing to listen to and why? the data were produced in response to the first author (author 1) choosing to design a doctoral study project as part of a cohort, seminar-based approach to constructing research studies. this communal approach entails doctoral students repeatedly presenting to the cohort oral draft works in progress about their evolving topics. author 1 chose to examine how his institution was responding to the challenges of addressing diversity within a transformative teacher education agenda. during the course of over a year, author 1 presented various drafts of his study design, showing his mutating interpretations of the contextual landscape of his institution and the responsiveness of multiple stakeholders’ involvement in the tp sessions. moreover, during the period of 2020–2021, the covid-19 pandemic realities led to further adjusting of earlier research proposal drafts to embrace evolving tp models and responses. author 2 was part of the supervisory facilitators who regularly interacted with author 1 about his emerging documentation. the data generated from the interaction during the cohort and responses to the multiple written proposal drafts constitute the raw data that were reconstructed representationally and intentionally into a dialogical script as presented below. author 1 is the designated coordinator of the work-integrated learning (wil)1 course of the selected faculty of education under review. he is simultaneously a doctoral student, lecturer, author, researcher and colleague of those academic lecturers about whom we reflect. as a doctoral student, his studies document the lived experience of student teachers when they are placed in contexts that are unlike their own previous school learning contexts. as an author, the researcher was primarily interested in understanding how student teachers interpret and manage the context of crises and discomfort. author 2 has been involved with designing national and institutional policy within another institutional space different from the first author’s. we chose not to examine both institutional contexts comparatively. instead, we foreground the choice-making that underpins the first author’s world of a faculty of education within a university of technology. the second author’s experiences of coordinating, managing and designing tp experience at his institution provide 1 this work integrated learning (wil) label is more commonly used within universities of technology. traditional universities tend to use the term ‘teaching practicum’ (tp) to refer to this component of the initial teacher education curriculum. both wil and tp agendas aim to intersect the world of academia and the world of work. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 1672022 40(3): 167-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 brown & samuel sustaining evolving teaching practicum models in higher education a set of reflective questions to ask about the first institution. the latter author’s primary interest as an experienced supervisor was the reasons underpinning the curriculum choices being made by the institution of author 1. the questions he posed concerned policy compliance and/or adherence to theoretical conceptions of professional learning in ite. we recognise the embedded hierarchies of power that could potentially exist in these collaborating individual positionalities. thus the authors consciously adopted a methodology of friendship (discussed below) to represent divergent voices more equitably. this strategy of representation of the data is a form of shadowing as decisions being made by the first author are filtered through the lens of the second and dialogically re-imagined to examine the evolving trajectory of tp models in the selected institution. 2.2 friendship as method the voice of a critical friend (émigré) troubling the assumptions of the unfolding data analysis is a recognised qualitative ethnographic analytical strategy (see oojarah, 2018). this methodological approach avoids casting individuals as insiders or outsiders in the research process. such dichotomies create essentialised categories that are suspicious of personal vantage and interrelated co-construction (mcness, lore & crossley, 2015). rather than sanitising our positionalities, this collaborative ethnographic dialogue is a form of recognition of partnerships and friendships which co-produce knowledge. friendship is a resourceful manifestation of a dialogical world of meaning-making resonant with the way we live everyday practice (tillman-healy, 2003). we endorse oojorah’s (2018) celebration of friendship as a method: the fundamentals of friendship as a method are the interpretivist ideas that reality is multiple and constructed through language and action. we have, through our words and action, spun a web of significance around the phenomenon under the research lenses … hence, we are not seeking to control the phenomenon but to understand it (oojorah, 2018: 144). we believe that the representation of the dialogical friendship interaction about choices for a tp model simultaneously infuses method, theory and analysis. therefore, we have not demarcated separate sections for these dimensions in our representation for this article. our conversational ethnomethodology (see below) embeds these three elements permeably. the article is structured to reflect on the original tp 2019 curriculum and explore the possibilities of an international tp model of lesson co-designing partnerships and the nationally endorsed departmental initiative of teachers’ choices in action (the tcia model 2020–2021). key thematic strands from the dialogical interaction are aggregated as lessons from the field in a grounded theory approach (corbin & strauss, 2018) and as an analysis of the narratives constructed (mcadams, 2012). the article concludes by examining further ‘disruptions’ triggered by an unexpectedly large intake of new students at the selected teacher education institution during the current 2022 academic year. recurring challenges of the pandemic emerged to refashion new choices for tp. the closing section of this article will align the context, the phenomenon (with reconceptualised tp models, vision and mission for tp), the methodological approach (ethnography), and methods of presentation and analysis (ethnodrama). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 1682022 40(3): 168-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) 3. voices from the field: an ethnodrama representation 3.1 about analytical approaches this article was driven by its ethnographic interests to accent the contextual, situated decision-making within a specific institution with its unique, multiple and diverse actors. it paradigmatically challenges the notion that hypothesis-testing approaches should only direct research. our research aims not to reduce our interpretations to a single truth, but to complexify our understanding of the phenomenon of tp curriculum design and development. we counteract the theory-led research design, which draws its rationale from natural sciences paradigmatic approaches, elevating the world of theorists. instead, the article adopts a situated, practice-led stance to explore and promote how context can influence and enhance theory. as part of the social sciences, the representational analytical approach draws its data from social contexts, generating hypotheses about our complex world from the field. field-led data characteristically represent the multi-layered, contradictory and complementary elements of intersecting macro-, mesoand micro-spatialities. mariaye and samuel (2021) argue that such an analytical approach is “not a-theoretical but positions the theoretical lens a posteriori. the experience is lived, described and subsequently theoretically interpreted in the closing section” (mariaye & samuel, 2021: 218). 3.2 about representational analysis within the creative potential of qualitative research inquiry, the article expands the resources of social science researchers who argue that we should also explore how we represent research fieldwork explorations. it is suggested that detached, clinical, objectivist, neutral reporting, and feigning and masking anonymity of participants and the researchers deny the fullness of our humanity. numerous traditions of finding alternative forms of representation of research have been established, including the drama representations and theatre performances of the fieldwork from which this article draws its inspiration (gallagher, 2007; mattingly, 2007; appadoo-ramsamy, 2022). here, we intend to expand our audiences who see themselves represented in understandable authentic ways in academic research reports (dallas, 2016 kerrigan & batty, 2016). similarly, a cadre of south african doctoral researchers has contributed to the fluid boundaries and relationships between epistemology, methodology and representation (dhunpath & samuel, 2009). the act of drama scriptwriting itself is considered to form of analysis and affirming of co-constructors of research knowledge (davis, 2018). the representational structure of the ethnodrama script represents research participants’ multiple divergent interactions that morph according to dramatic moments in various times and settings (appadoo-ramsamy, 2022). this underscores clandinin’s (2013) recommendation, which argues that as qualitative researchers, we aim not to establish forensic truths; instead, we aim to show how we live storied lives intersected within interpretations and readings of the world within which we live and help shape. for the sake of this journal article, we have chosen the milder form of a conversational ethnodrama (rather than a full-blown drama script), exploring the fluid interaction between the two authors of this article as they discussed choices concerning the evolving tp design. the emphasis shifts over different times and opens up explorations of new possibilities, concerns and hopes as our contextual landscapes change recurrently. the conversation below represents this fluidity of continuity and change. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 1692022 40(3): 169-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 brown & samuel sustaining evolving teaching practicum models in higher education 3.3 the conversation cb = author 1 mas = author 2 3.3.1 before the pandemic: the first phase of developing a tp curriculum (tp 2019) cb: it’s my eighth year as an appointed academic at this institution, and i still do not think our tp curriculum model has changed much, or achieved what i expected. is it the same as when i was a student here? faces have changed, but i think the tp model has not. we seem to be following a ritual each year of trying to find willing schools that will accommodate our student teachers during their teaching practicum. schools, i believe, are just too busy to deal deeply with their responsibility of providing an in-school professional experience for our students. their hearts are not in it. tp is a necessary blip on the school calendar for most mentor-teachers and school managers. i feel that they are perpetually trying to find ways of opting out. i suppose the department’s instruction that schools are obliged to support the professional development responsibility has added more evidence to launch resistance to yet another directive from above. tp has become a kind of assessment routine that student teachers need to undertake. it seems as if the main purpose is merely to establish a grade assigned to students’ teaching performance. we should rely more on mentor-teachers to provide detailed feedback to students on lesson planning, their professional conduct, their management of the classroom. and also about students as professionals: being a member of a school community. but i think mentors are perhaps put off by the attitude of the student teachers too. the student teachers do not seem to really want to become professional teachers. yes, some want to make a difference, but many students are simply dealing with the teaching practicum field experience to fulfil the requirements of the ite curriculum. they do not want to be disturbed in any way. they just want to get their lessons done and have a mark assigned to them. i wonder if our academic lecturers also contribute to this ritualistic charade that happens during tp. lecturer supervisors seem to lord it over the worlds of their assigned student teachers. they arrive at school in a flurry, rushing to complete one of the many assessments of students to complete their daily tp assessment schedule. then they rush back to campus to lecture some other year group in the face-to-face lecture sessions. in schools, students escort lecturers into the pre-arranged classrooms about which the lecturer comments. i do not know if students even listen to the superficial administrative reporting in the post-lesson observation discussions. students only want to hear good news. “but sir, what mark will i get for my tp? i am concerned that last year i got a distinction for my tp and i want to graduate cum laude so that i can secure a job next year.” (cb throwing his hands in the air) what have i done wrong in the orientation programmes for our students before they go out to tp? i had emphasised how important it is for students to conduct themselves professionally. i had oriented my mentor-teachers in detailed memos sent to the schools about how to assess the student in a more holistic way. what are we doing wrong? tp is all just a performance, and i am not sure that we are guiding the student towards developing the policy expectations of mr teq (the minimum requirements for the graduating professional teacher).2 2 the official policy guidelines regulating tp (department of higher education and training, 2011). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 1702022 40(3): 170-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) mas: do you formally teach students about the mr teq requirements? how is this done? by the way, what does the policy say about the role of mentors in professional learning? cb: this orientation to mr teq is a compulsory component of tp preparation before the students go out to schools. but students just seem to see it as another set of notes that they need to have on file. i do not see that they develop a full and deep understanding of how this will affect them as professional teachers. mas: have you had any discussion with your lecturing colleagues about their understanding of how one learns to become a professional teacher? cb: i think that the majority of the lecturers believe that there is a clear separation between their responsibilities and the responsibilities of the schools. the university is seen to provide the theoretical backdrop, and the school is the space where the applications of that theory are tested. schools are about practice; universities are about developing abstract knowledge. this is how it was for them when they were student teachers, so it’s good enough for the present group. this is how it all was in 2019. it seems like an era long gone by. but we seem to be still missing out on deeply shaping the student teachers’ views about professionality. i am not sure if the students are indeed being adequately prepared for the in-depth knowledge about the curriculum content of the subjects they will be teaching. yes, we cover the demands of the official caps curriculum document in the subject methodology classes at university, but schools still complain that our teachers do not have in-depth basic practical know-how: “they don’t know how to teach; they don’t know the subject matter of the formal curriculum; they don’t know how to organise lesson structures. they can’t do what is expected of us practically every day. universities need to get off their high horses.” but we teach about the caps document in our university curriculum. at least i do in my course. i hope others do too. mas: how do you interact with mentor-teachers? how are they involved in the design of this tp curriculum? cb: well, we are now this year, 2022, establishing an advisory forum to bring schools and the university together. it consists of departmental officials, school managers and some mentor-teachers, and representatives of the faculty of education. but it is still early days. we are still learning how to develop a working relationship. 3.3.2 during covid (tp 2020-2021) mas: so how did you manage tp during the covid pandemic? cb: whew. it was a nightmare of all proportions. our students in this institution largely come from working-class backgrounds. all the fancy possibilities of activating a remote teaching and learning programme simply did not take account of the fact that many of our students do not have access to even electricity in their homes; let alone that some of them do not even have laptops. but teaching online was what everyone was expected to do. and we did it. students soon seized the opportunity to challenge the patterns of provisioning of online teaching and learning from a social justice point of view. “no student left behind” became a wonderful excuse for many individuals to hide behind the problems they were experiencing ... http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 1712022 40(3): 171-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 brown & samuel sustaining evolving teaching practicum models in higher education mas: what problems ... cb: well, prof. … mas: michael will do. cb: well, prof. michael, i had many remote teaching and learning classes (which i got to enjoy, by the way), but the student attendance as such was not very good. i miss my lecture hall classroom. there i could connect with students, read their body language, provoke them into participation. now i find myself repeating, “themba, your microphone is muted. please unmute yourself … nosipho, are you with us? we can see you are online, but …” i am a policeman of online participation. mas: i suppose this is no different to how a relatively small proportion of students chose not to attend or participate in classes when we had in face-to-face teaching? cb: class attendance in a professional degree is 100% important. we need to learn how to engage, critique, interact, and communicate. professionalism is about communication. “but sir, my microphone is not working. i can’t switch my camera on because there are too many people in my house now and there is a lot of noise in the background.” “sir, i cannot hand in my assignment because i don’t have enough data on my cellphone.” (cb holding his hands over his head) “communication, communication and more communication. via blackboard, via teams, via whatsapp, via e-mail, via mobile phone … and yes, there were some students who were supposedly physically present in the online classes, but when asked to speak, simply just froze.’’ an amusing incident happened once. a parent switched on the child’s computer microphone in our teams classroom in response to my provocative invitation, and she reported that her son had just gone out, and that she (the parent) was attending on his behalf! sies tog! (afrikaans expression of dismay) there was no end to my working hours, which seemed to stretch into the wee hours of the morning. we dealt with a range of matters: preparation of online materials, google forms, lesson interactive pedagogies online, including trauma counselling and bereavement counselling. deadlines for students seemed to stretch endlessly, but our academic administrative targets remained firmly fixed. we were cast as the architects who leave students behind and were made to feel guilty for not being sensitive to students’ inability to fully participate. i have not looked at the statistics of how many students dropped out of university during these years, but i am sure i would not be surprised. (pausing) lecturers may have remained on the job, despite their burnout simply because they could read the writing on the wall that their jobs were at stake in an economic downturn. from where could we muster our commitment to the professional learning enterprise? the repeated fabrications of why student participation was being hindered troubled me. sometimes i questioned how many times the same grandmother had died, especially just before an assignment was due. did i believe all these trumped-up excuses of the student challenges? or was this indeed an issue of their lack of a professional commitment? and what about the challenges of administrative professional services support staff? the traditional face-to-face meetings with them had previously allowed me to exercise some kind of management of their activities, like setting up of placements of students in schools. but, how they struggled with offering the technical support all on their own. (another pause) yes, and we must remember that schools too were going through their own challenges. so i suppose administrators had a hard time communicating with schools. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 1722022 40(3): 172-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) our theories of professional learning perhaps got thrown out of the window. we were surviving to stay afloat. in the early stages of lockdown, we simply could not access the school site. schools just refused to accept additional outsiders within their workplace. and they were justified because across all public spaces, the number of people legally admitted was being monitored as a matter of health and safety precautions against the spread of the virus. so where and how were our student teachers expected to learn the craft of becoming a professional teacher? the strategy adopted by the university system was that only our final-year students (whose graduation completion rates admitted them as prospective teacher employees) would be expected to undertake school placements. was this the university assuring their state subsidy for graduation completion, or a strategy to assist potential employment in an uncertain economy? whose economic interests were being sustained here? so the net effect is that over the two years of lockdown (2020 and 2021) firstand secondyear students have not had any exposure to being within a school site as a student teacher. the third-year students have had only one year of exposure in their foundation year across their ite curriculum. tp was now being conducted in a simulated universityclassroom controlled environment, and these “practicums” were being managed in online pedagogical modes of delivery. becoming a professional was a remote affair. we were learning about teaching practice, but not involved by learning in and through practice. what kind of reflective teacher are we likely to unleash into the future? mas: do you think this new strategy under covid shifted the model of tp that was being used? was there more reliance on the university lecturers/tutors to oversee the tp curriculum programme? how did they cope? cb: well, i think we took a step backwards from the gains we were making to challenge students to reflect on their practices during the school-based models of tp. the new covid tp curriculum was something that needed to be ‘covered’, dispensed with ... done. the students needed to be accommodated, because schools could not accept them. deep reflective professional learning lurked silently in the background. you must know that alternative models for managing a more interactive dialogical model of online pedagogies for tp were mooted and supported by the national systems. but our institution chose not be involved in this roll-out. was this choice even explored? did we debate this choice sufficiently within our institution? was lecturing staff adequately informed about the options and values of the teacher choices in action (tcia) model that many other national institutions chose to experiment with? i do not think so. this leads me to question whether our present mechanised version of covid tp routines is a comfortable, safe adopted strategy that many lecturers silently endorsed. it was seemingly less work than what an alternative model would require. i came to know the extent of the tcia approach later when i examined the tcia project in more depth. i learnt more when i came to converse with other institutions who had chosen the tcia initiative. my attendance at a national tp workshop exposed me to the range of possible options that my institution had not yet embraced. (cb remains silent as he reflects) 3.3.3 exploring possibilities from japan (tp 2021) mas: i noticed that you have chosen to look at how tp is being managed in different contexts. i see you have been writing about the possibilities of drawing from a japanese model3 of online pedagogies and strategies for tp? 3 doig and groves (2011). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 1732022 40(3): 173-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 brown & samuel sustaining evolving teaching practicum models in higher education cb: you see, we had to design a strategy for my 195 first-year students who could not go into schools in 2021. i searched the internet to see how we could still use a reflective approach to developing tp. i wanted students to develop deeper reflective thinking about what informs lesson planning. the study i read was about how the institution provides multiple opportunities for students to present draft lesson plans. first, the students presented an initial idea about what the lesson goals were going to be, then they developed a powerpoint description of how they would approach the teaching of the lesson. lecturers reviewed their oral online presentation of their plan and added suggestions about how it could be improved. a week or so later, the students were asked to teach the revised lesson in a mock-simulated classroom with their university peers. the lecturer offered feedback commentary for the presenter and the whole class of student teachers assembled in the online space. i arranged for all our students to meet on one dedicated day in clustered groups with assigned lecturers. the lecturers were expected to provide feedback on the ‘students’ initial design of a written lesson plan, with a further follow-up session on the second delivery of the lesson. the details of the programme were shared on the blackboard learning platform. however, not all first-year students pitched up at the event, which was announced as the examination for tp1. some of the students failed because they did not pitch up. this was even after reminders to them about the importance of the event. another problem was that because of the number of students in the programme, we could not go through all students’ second presentations. we had to rely on a review of the written submissions of their ppt slides based on the principles discussed in the first online session. again, our scale of operations and students’ lack of access to online technologies made this plan challenging to implement. the marks show a relatively poor throughput rate for this innovation. i hope we do not have a boycott from students who demand that they should pass and not be left behind. i wonder if academic staff will support the same programme again. mas: at least you managed to get some students to design and talk about their plans. and there was some degree of feedback about the general principles informing good lesson planning. but i predict that if students succeed in getting their non-attendance condoned because of the high failure rate, this will have a knock-on effect to disregard any future innovative strategies you might design. cb: yes, but there is much more we should be doing. how do we indeed tackle matters of social justice and transformation in our university teacher education programme? i am not sure we are preparing students deeply to tackle these matters. (cb’s mind wanders off in silence) 3.3.4 the tcia initiative (no tp 2020–2021, but 2022?) mas: i believe you want to tell me something about the tcia initiative that was developed nationally. your institution did not use this in 2020–2021. do you think that your institution will adopt the model in the future? i suppose because it is a programme that the national department of education has endorsed and because the national report4 suggests that it was highly successful in producing good tp pass rates, that your institution will adopt it too? cb: i think we will be coerced to make this choice sooner or later. just last week, we were expected to indicate to the organisers of the tcia programme whether our institution will be aligning ourselves to this project. i don’t think that we as an institution have provided the official response as yet. i suppose this may be a budget issue. 4 rusznyak and bertram (2021). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 1742022 40(3): 174-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) i am not so much concerned about the content of the programme of tcia. it seems to argue for a range of personal and professional reflective building exercises. it’s about responding to how and why one chooses to become and be a teacher; how one develops exercises to think about the quality of one’s influence within the classroom with specific learners, within the broader school environment. this is what we should be addressing in our tp curriculum. i am concerned that our administrative and academic staff will need to be much more thoroughly inducted into what is needed in this new form of interactivity between students, the lecturing staff, and the mentor-teachers. this is very much a hands-on interactive project that requires the stakeholders’ commitment: mentor-teachers, lecturers, administrative support staff, and the student teachers themselves. i am not sure we have yet developed this level of commitment to tp as a pivotal agenda of ite and professional learning. we must develop our hearts and minds to follow our actions. moreover, i am concerned that the model presumes that students have continued access to data for the internet and are prepared to devote many hours to reflection on their emerging professional learning. my discussions with colleagues from other institutions suggest that students quickly learnt how to bypass the goals of this online deeper agenda. there are hints of students acting as collective groups to establish strategies to submit their online assignments. this raises new debates around authentic assessment and plagiarism across online pedagogical spaces. i am suspicious that students’ pass rate has suddenly increased so dramatically using the new tcia strategy. have students suddenly developed greater commitment to professional learning? i have not yet resolved in my mind how we will tackle these kinds of challenges at my institution. my earlier comments remain about whether these new technologically rich projects are for the privileged in middle-class homes. i am still concerned about whether this is just a fashionable strategy that looks progressive but will perhaps not tackle deep professional learning for all. mas: it seems that tcia could be said to address some of the challenges of deep professional teacher learning that you were commenting on earlier? what are your views now about the tcia project? cb: well, i think i have come a long way in just a short period over the last few years. i am eager to rethink how tp is designed, managed, resourced and assessed. i think we need a faculty-wide plan to re-imagine our tp programme’s specific goals. what works for our context, our students? what kinds of capacity-building will be needed to activate our whole curriculum of the ite programme? but we must assess how to secure human, physical and financial resources to activate the national policy goals for education and align this with our view of a new society, a new institution. 3.3.5 mass enrolment (tp 2022) cb: i want to tell you how we had to rethink tp curriculum design again in 2022. this year we are faced with a major glitch in our enrolment administration. for some reason or other, our faculty had admitted 244 students when the target was 150 new first-year intake. we could barely cope with the online programme for 2021 with 190 students. how are we going to manage with 244 students? this is a serious concern, especially since the university is unlikely to provide us with additional staffing or financial resources to tackle what is really a problem we created internally. who is going to teach this large group of first-year students? will our japanese model be implemented? (… silence) mas: i also note that your second-, thirdand fourth-year students will be conducting their tp in situ within a school now that covid restrictions have been lifted. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 1752022 40(3): 175-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 brown & samuel sustaining evolving teaching practicum models in higher education cb: (… silence). i am glad that they will be exposed to the reality of schools. i suggest that all students should be placed at schools at the same time in a ‘block period’. this will allow our academic staff to concentrate on only tp during this ‘tp block’. maybe we need to employ different staff to tackle the on-campus first-year programme. we also have to place first-year students at schools at the end of the year, but maybe this should not be a programme assessed by university staff. we don’t have the staffing resources to do so. first-year students should select their own schools, and mentors can give us their reports about the students’ involvement. (cb’s mind races in many directions) the challenge is that schools have been accustomed to hosting students throughout the year at different periods. they may object to all students of different year groups being placed at the school at the same time. maybe we need to think about whether schools should be obliged to host a team of several students clustered around specific subjects/ phases. how many schools do we need for all of this? i think we need to have a special permanent school placement officer in the faculty to manage the partnerships for tp. at the moment, the senior students choose the schools they would like to be placed at. perhaps we need to develop a more controlled arrangement in which we (the tp officers) select the schools that are prepared to host a specific number of students; we develop the number of places that students can choose. this will mean that we can place students in a variety of schooling contexts to expose them to a variety of different models and types of schooling. many students have never been to a school other than the kind they themselves went to. this will be an opportunity to broaden their vision about alternative possibilities. but will schools be willing to participate with us? this is my future area of focus. (cb start writing notes furiously) 4. analytical reflections on the conversational ethnodrama we acknowledge that the narrative dialogue is itself an analytical process showing the complexities of issues when managing and designing the tp curriculum over the selected review period. the models of tp adopted by the chosen institution did not follow an evolving linear trajectory drawn from the designers of the curriculum alone; the past, present and the future of many stakeholders’ interests coincided in the production of the curriculum space. the reflection shows that issues related to tp design are simultaneously engaging several complementary agendas of historical, sociological, political, economic, cultural, managerial and theoretical/academic concerns about professional learning. at the forefront of these reflections is an understanding that national teacher education policy mandates teacher education institutions with a range of deep professional learning responsibilities. however, whilst not focused on by this tp coordinator, government subsidies to manage the scale of tp operations are simply under-estimated, compromising the quality of student teachers’ professional learning that can be enacted at this institution. the challenges confronting the institution’s tp design involve the confluence of theoretical, practical, managerial, financial and administrative decision-making. the institutional contextual space involves established partnerships between individuals and appropriate sectors, as mort and sayed (2021) advocate. however, these partnerships do not connect profoundly around the nature and quality of professional learning. what results is a superficial administrative unfolding of rituals around the placement of students in learning sites. there is relatively under-developed attention to issues concerning the quality of professional learning. the tp coordinator in this study (author 1) shows concerns about extending the scope of what tp could involve. he critiques the mechanistic model of tp, which supports an http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 1762022 40(3): 176-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) applied-science (theory-practice) conception of teacher professional learning. this dated model dominates many teis curricula nationally. it separates the world of academia and the world of work. it suggests that schools are merely sites for the execution of practices professed theoretically at the academic institutions rather than in the realities of everyday schooling contexts (swart, 2013). author 1 embraces the possibility of infusing a reflective practitioner model, which provokes students to ask questions about what informs their pedagogical choices within teaching/learning practices. this tp model has evolved from its original focus on only the individual teacher as an agent of change (schön, 1987) to examine the systemic underpinnings of broader social injustices which impede a transformative teacher education enactment (america, edwards. & robinson, 2021). the search for models of tp, both nationally and internationally, reflects the quest to identify modes of professional learning that are appropriate and feasible within the context of the specific institution, its students, and its particular relationships with the schooling context. the situated approach to tp modelling acknowledges the affordances and challenges unique to the particular human, physical and financial resource context of the tei (sayed et al., 2018). this article has shown that challenging the rituals of tp causes a backlash, since the academic and administrative staff do not fully acknowledge that epistemological and pragmatic changes in curriculum need to dovetail. the overall institutional climate of student challenges and resistance to assert their voices is an undercurrent that threatens to destabilise an agenda towards quality professional education. students hold the curriculum hostage to what they want for their convenience, and curriculum designers could arguably be considered spectators of students’ power. the tp coordinator in this study suggests that his power to move towards quality professional learning is being curtailed as the administrative, academic and pragmatic realities of an iniquitous society infiltrate his world. at first glance, online technological modes appear to be an appropriate solution. still, the pragmatic use in practice, within the context of the massified teacher education system, remains an elusive hope. 5. learning from the field: towards a synthesis of possibilities for the way forward the post-fieldwork ethnographic analysis suggests a need to align the focus on the tp models (the phenomenon of this study) to evolving contextual, situated realities of the institution and its specific historical, social, and political landscape. this landscape is imbued with a conflicting set of practices: consciously designed by curriculum developers (such as the tp coordinator of this study) in one direction, but which is thwarted by divergent alternative agendas. for example, the agendas of students and some lecturing staff are more concerned with models of tp that produce an expedient completion of assessment requirements towards final certification and throughput of the student teachers. additionally, some lecturers are more comfortable adhering to ritualistic practices rather than questioning the deep-seated implications of professional learning enacted during the tp programme. the conversational ethnodrama has highlighted the interactive dialogical engagement depicting the contested, conflicting interpretations of the role of the tp in a changing wider societal and institutional context. the dialogue between the two teacher educators (author 1 and author 2) becomes symbolic of the broader critical conversations that could be produced when examining the search for appropriate models of tp. this dialogue should ideally occur across divergent stakeholders co-responsible for tp, underpinned by quality professional teaching and learning goals. it should include the specific challenges of a world divided by http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 1772022 40(3): 177-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 brown & samuel sustaining evolving teaching practicum models in higher education those who have or do not have access to the technological resources to participate in the pandemic and potential post-pandemic education spaces. in our representation of the specificities of the contextual ethnographic space, we have highlighted the changing teacher education institution as it grappled with social, political and contextual realities relevant to the south african context. the article captures the particularities and nuances affecting this kind of context. a preference for including relevant south african literature sources exploring teacher education and tp models related to similar transformative agendas has been adopted as possible resources for further reflection. the ethnographic analytical representation allows the authors to clarify the complexities of sustaining a coherent and meaningful tp and teacher education curriculum. this article has argued that redesigning models for tp for initial teacher education is a process of choosing ever-expanding sets of influence. such decision-making is likely to be a recurring phenomenon, since we have not exhausted all the possibilities in an ever-changing context of ongoing challenges. among the primary difficulties is expanding student enrolment, which questions the efficacy and efficiency of current tp and professional learning practices. administrative and managerial responses dominate the discourses that influence contemporary tp design. however, a broader theoretical notion of professional learning is being established as discourses shift from training models to embracing collaborative partnerships between mentor-teachers, school managers, and teacher education institutions. an evolving model of collaborative lesson planning between student teachers, mentor teachers, and lecturer supervisors could potentially infuse new partnerships between schools and universities. however, the nationally endorsed pragmatic option of an online technological mode of delivery will trump these collaborative localised avenues. on the one hand, the theoretical professional rationale underpinning new national initiatives has activated focused attention on tp. it has focused on a scholarship of tp as a pivotal component of the ite curriculum. on the other hand, the pragmatics and the cost of implementing and activating this technologically reliant model amongst student populations with limited access and connectivity in their homes and tp school workplaces pose a severe threat to its possible effective roll-out within contexts such as the institution under review. this suggests that the newer models would likely reinforce the pattern of teacher preparation that has characterised many decades of iniquitous provisioning in south africa: one for those who have access to human, financial and physical resources (the privileged) and another for those who do not have these baseline luxuries (the under-served). a theoretical model of a transformative social justice imperative underpinning tp curriculum design is yet to be infused within these evolving models. this is despite the theoretical mantras chanted by ideological actors who profess a discourse of transformation yet perpetuate by their actions, routines of colonised patriarchy and hierarchy in their preference for an agenda of self-promotion. the new challenges of increased enrolment and unplanned coordination of managed enrolment patterns within the institution under study are likely to exacerbate the situation for the new intake and endure until they graduate. the choice of an under-developed practicum experience for these students will also likely be perpetuated. dialogue about these options has opened the realisation that alternatives have to be consciously planned, drawing on the resources of multiple partners. teaching practicum cannot simply be the management and administration of placement of students at schools. it must embed conscious collaborative theoretical, conceptual and pragmatic planning, with all stakeholders involved in nurturing the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 1782022 40(3): 178-180 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) professional capital that student teachers should possess. anything less would be tantamount to reinforcing the past. rather than preparing students for absolute certainties, our tp curricula should prepare them to manage and negotiate the multiple recurring uncertainties they are likely to face as prospective teachers. references america, c., edwards, n. and robinson, m. eds., 2021. teacher 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learning. unpublished phd thesis. university of kwazulu-natal, durban, south africa. tillmann-healy, l.m. 2003. friendship as method. qualitative inquiry, 9(5): 729-749. https:// doi.org/10.1177/1077800403254894 walker, m. & wilson-strydom, m. 2017. socially just pedagogies, capabilities and quality in higher education. london: palgrave macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55786-5 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.11 https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800403254894 https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800403254894 https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55786-5 _hlk97193233 _hlk97573671 96 the geographic information system (gis) in secondary education in serbia djurdjica komlenović institute for educational research emilija manić university of belgrade dušica malinić institute for educational research this study investigates the application of new educational technologies in geography classes. the research involved 126 students from vocational secondary schools in serbia taking geography as a compulsory subject. we developed and applied a questionnaire for this research. the results indicate that out of several icts available, the majority of students are familiar with the gis, but only one third can be said to have theoretical knowledge and practical skills for its effective implementation. students who use the gis stated that it is a useful tool that contributes greatly to the development of cartographic skills, which is a major advantage given the problem-oriented learning approach, and that it is highly interactive, systematic and precise. these findings suggest that the gis and other icts are still not fully used and that teacher presentation remains the dominant method, which includes less innovative didactic aids. the importance of the application of the gis in teaching and suggestions for enhancing teacher motivation to apply this technology are discussed in the conclusion. keywords: geographical information system, information and communication technologies, geography curriculum, vocational secondary schools the utilisation of contemporary teaching aids facilitates the development of functional geographic knowledge and skills in students which is why more attention is paid to using information and communication technologies (ict) and particularly the geographical information system (gis) in geography lessons throughout the world (czerniewicz & hodgkinson-williams, 2005; maree, 2005). research has shown that students who have the opportunity to use modern teaching aids in the learning process develop geographic knowledge, skills and attitudes more effectively (backer, 2002; biebrach, 2005; komlenović & malinić, 2008). the gis, by its nature, enhances inquiry-based skills compared to traditional geographic education (sui, 1995). the use of the gis enables students to participate in activities such as monitoring and predicting the causes, development, and consequences of changes in geographic phenomena, but also to answer key questions including what, where and why, as well as those questions asked at a more advanced level of study: why is some location significant? what needs to be done to promote a certain location (roberts, 2003)? the gis and secondary education the utilisation of contemporary technologies in teaching contributes to the faster achievement of educational goals, which is why the gis may be considered as a technique with the potential of facilitating problem-based learning (pbl) and inquiry-based learning (ibl) (baker, 2002; bednarz, 2004; keiper, 1999; wiegand, 2003). many studies examine the advantages of the gis as a teaching aid in the context of interactivity in geography lessons (johansson, 2006; johansson & pellikka, 2005; kerski, 1999, 2003; roberts, 2003; wiegand, 2003). the gis directs the teaching process towards students; thus allowing them a higher level of acquisition of functional knowledge. it opens up a new approach to geographical 97komlenović et al. — the gis in secondary education in serbia education, i.e. students can use it during empirical and field research, in spatial analysis, as well as the visual representation, interpretation and presentation of research findings. however, notwithstanding its high didactic merits in geography lessons, the gis is far from being widespread in teaching geography in schools worldwide. so far, comparing different cases, gis application in teaching geography has been more as a result of the individual efforts of certain teachers or schools rather than a system-regulated standard in education (hew & brush, 2007; kerski, 2003; wiegand, 2001). there are numerous obstacles and questions involved in the process of the implementation of the gis in schools. some of these issues are more characteristic of developing countries, while others are more prominent in developed ones (lloyd, 2001; van der merwe & mouton, 2005). they include: • lack of or inadequate computer equipment and high cost of hardware and gis software • lack of teacher training and curriculum materials (demirci, 2008, 2009; johansson, 2003; kerski, 1999) • systemic issues influencing the use of innovations in teaching (onwu & stoffels, 2005) • lack of time required for educating teachers about gis • insufficient interest on the part of teachers to educate themselves on applying new technologies (yuda & itoh, 2006) • insufficient presence of gis in the secondary school curriculum. during the 1980s only a few secondary schools in very few countries (the usa, some western european countries) recognised the gis as a new teaching aid in the geography classroom (johansson & pellikka, 2005; wiegand, 2001). ten years later many developed countries had already introduced the gis into the secondary school curricula, albeit without any significant impact on education itself (briebarch, 2007; kerski 2003; scheepers, 2009). although developing countries started to introduce the gis in schools, they lagged some 10-15 years behind the developed ones. aware of the situation, the european union started a project (gisas) in order to strengthen the launch of the gis in secondary schools (johansson, 2003). table 1: the gis in the school curriculum and the current state of its use country year of introducing gis in schools school level actual use of gis in the classroom south africa 2006 secondary school level (grade 10, later in grade 11 and 12) not widely spread usa 1996 us national scientific education standards wide use of digital maps, but small number of schools adopted gis turkey 2005 national curriculum for secondary schools (9th-12th grade) at the beginning of gis adoption in schools england and wales* 1991; 2000 national curriculum programme of study (ks3, ks4 an a level) gis has been compulsory in geography teaching since 2007 norway 2006 secondary school level (upper level, 16-19 years old) advanced use of digital maps and gis finland 2003 national frame curriculum for the upper secondary schools, ge4 not widely spread in schools, except at ge4 level france 2000-2002 secondary school level (only in the tutorials for history/ geography teachers) no general use of gis in schools, except in individual cases 98 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 country year of introducing gis in schools school level actual use of gis in the classroom germany 1998-2001 secondary school level (gis is included in several different curricula) remarkable progress in using gis in schools in the last five years belgium** secondary school level (only the flemish community in 3rd grade) gis is only mentioned in the flemish curriculum source: klonari et al. (2009) * obligation to use it from 2007 ** the situation is different for two ethnic communities, flemish and french; no data about the time of introduction of gis in schools although the gis was introduced at secondary school level (usually in the upper grades) in almost all countries, there were some differences in the way it was used in the teaching process. in those countries where the gis was introduced into the secondary school curriculum, geography teachers were expected to use not only digital maps, images and internet sources, but also certain forms of creative work and advanced options within this tool (andersland, 2006; klonari et al., 2009; lambert, gardner & swift, 2007; rod, larsen & nilsen, 2010; schaffer, 2003). there were also differences among these countries in the level of gis usage in the classroom (the biggest breakthrough was made in british and german secondary schools). on the other side, those countries that have no explicit mention of the gis or have introduced it indirectly into the curricula accelerate the use of ict, not only the gis (e.g. austria, france, denmark). these include those countries where the gis is not mentioned at all, except on rare occasions in tutorials for teachers (france). developing countries are at the beginning of this process (demirci, 2008, 2009; komlenović & manić, 2009). serbia is a case in point. the gis in geography in secondary education in serbia at the end of the 20th century considerable changes were introduced into the education systems of european states, with special emphasis on the development and continuous improvement of vocational education and training the young for involvement in the labour sphere and lifelong learning. keeping up with these trends, significant changes were introduced into the serbian education system at the beginning of this century, with the focus on the reform of vocational secondary education (despotović, maksimović, dimov, šećibović & žugić, 2002). the modernisation of vocational education takes place gradually, through the introduction of experimental projects dealing with the diversification of school programmes and curricula harmonised with the needs of the labour market and european standards (komlenović, 2004, 2009). upon completion of eight years of primary education, students aged 14 and 15 enrol in secondary level education. students can choose between grammar schools (gymnasium) and vocational schools (three-year and four-year schools). after gymnasium, students are expected to continue their education at universities while, after the vocational level of education, young people are able to enter the world of work or proceed with further education. the curriculum of vocational schools is realised through compulsory, elective and facultative subjects. the changes in vocational education were initiated in the 2002/2003 school year in order to respond to the needs of profession and real-market demands. after the long-standing realisation of the experimental programme and a detailed internal and external evaluation of all its segments, the curricula ‘entered the system’. the gis was incorporated into the secondary school geography curriculum in four fields of work: economy, law and administration; chemistry, non-metals and graphic art; transportation; geodesy and construction. the interest among students in these fields is quite high, and they are attended by students 99komlenović et al. — the gis in secondary education in serbia with fairly good academic achievement. after the completion of these secondary school profiles, it is possible to find a job within three or four months (komlenović, 2009). geography is a compulsory subject for these fields of work, accomplished in one school year with two classes per week. the structure of the curriculum comprises several modules which are based on learning outcomes, forming a set of functionally related knowledge, skills and abilities considered necessary to perform a certain job (komlenović, 2004, 2009). the referential framework for modularisation is the concept of professions presented as clusters, which contain a set of functionally and organisationally connected learning packages/units, i.e. modules. the same modules can form part of different profession clusters, which contributes to horizontal and vertical mobility within the education system. for example, those modules dealing with cartography and gis are present in geography curricula in all of the education profiles of the afore-mentioned fields of work, but the depth and scope of teaching contents vary since they are adjusted to the needs of the profession in question (komlenović & manić, 2008). the module entitled gis with all its components figures as an important novelty and has been introduced due to the need for both the development and modernisation of the above-mentioned professions. the objective of this module is to obtain knowledge of the gis and its use. this can be achieved by realising the defined outcomes and suggested contents: (1) the concept and characteristics of geographical information; (2) geographical information technologies: the global positioning system (gps), remote detection, gis; (3) gis – concept, structure and application; (4) using information from the internet; (5) examples from practice (official gazette republic of serbia – educational gazette, no. 5/2011). research methodology • research goal. this research investigates the application of new educational technologies in vocational secondary schools in serbia. we set out to determine whether students acquire knowledge about new educational technologies in geography classes and whether they apply them in teaching processes as defined by the geography curriculum for this level of education. it should be mentioned that certain fields of work in vocational education comprise modules referring to ict including gis, digital map, auto cad map and geomedia professional 3.0, gps. • sample. the participants were 126 firstand second-grade students from vocational secondary schools in four serbian towns. schools where geography is a compulsory subject were included. the student sample was random (40 boys and 86 girls) and encompassed the following fields of work: economy, law, administration; chemistry, non-metals, graphic art; transportation; and geodesy and construction. • instruments. the analytical-descriptive method was used in the research. we developed and applied a questionnaire for this research with two sets of questions. the first set of questions (open-ended and multiple choice) referred to student opinions on the use of icts in geography instruction, while the second (multiple choice) focused on student perceptions of the practical application and usefulness of knowledge about educational technologies in everyday life. • data processing. the data were processed in the spss 11.5 statistical package and appropriate statistical procedures were applied. in the descriptive part, in addition to frequencies and percentages, the mean (m) and standard deviation (sd), depending on the nature of the variables, the t-test was used to determine the significance of the differences among groups. the answers to the open-ended questions were coded according to the categories defined in advance. results the research results indicate that over half the students (57.1%) had been given the opportunity to acquire knowledge about new educational technologies in geography lessons and, in this respect, there is no difference among them as regards their academic achievement (m1=4.56, sd1=.603, m2=4.71, sd2=.498, 100 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 t=-1.527, p<.129). table 2 lists the technologies that students learned about and applied in their geography lessons. table 2: distribution of student answers on the application of new technologies in geography classes educational technologies n m sd significance of differences gis yes 59 4.56 .623 t=-1.262, p<.209 no 64 4.69 .500 digital map yes 14 4.07 .616 t=-4.078, p<.01 no 109 4.69 .522 auto cad map and geomedia professional 3.0 yes 4 5.00 .000 t=1.373, p<.172no 118 4.62 .553 table 2 shows that out of all the mentioned educational technologies, the gis figures as one of the most often used in geography lessons. there was no significant difference in knowledge about the gis among students with different levels of academic achievement. although almost half of the research participants are familiar with the gis, only 37.3% of the respondents were able to define this concept and place gis in the service of cartography. out of 37.3% of those students who were able to define gis, 34.9% could also list its basic elements. bearing this in mind it can be said that around one third of the students in this research are aware of the gis as a new educational technology, which contributes to the development of students’ functional geographic knowledge and skills during the teaching process. it is quite obvious from the afore-presented table that gis software packages such as auto cad map and geomedia professional 3.0 are not used in geography lessons in the serbian schools that participated in the research. these findings are similar to those from other countries in our region, such as bulgaria or hungary (klonari et al., 2009). the situation is slightly better when it comes to using digital maps as a teaching aid. those students who used digital maps were given the task of locating a county, place, town or street. a statistically significant difference was found in using digital maps with respect to academic achievement (t=-4.078, p<.01). somewhat less than half of the students (47.7%) say that, in addition to the already mentioned techniques, they also had had the opportunity to learn more about gps in geography lessons as a technique for collecting data in the field. satellite remote sensing, used to acquire information about the earth’s surface without making contact with the explored objects, was studied in geography lessons in the case of 38.3% of students. although computers are considered to be widespread and an irreplaceable means of communication in the computer era, their use in schools is still not frequent enough for the purposes of education. similar problems occur in other developing countries (demirci, 2008; scheepers, 2009) and even in some developed ones (klonari et al., 2009). for example, in our research, more than two-thirds of students stated that they used computers as a teaching aid in geography lessons extremely rarely or not at all. this is a fairly large obstacle to incorporating the gis into the teaching process, which is practically non-existent in developed countries (klonari et al., 2009). a computer is a constantly available teaching aid with a clear didactic purpose for less than 10% of the students in our research sample, as presented in table 3. table 3: distribution of student answers on computer use in geography classes computer use in geography classes frequency % we do not use computers 72 57.1 we use computers very rarely 18 14.2 we use computers often 25 19.8 we use computers all the time 11 8.7 total 126 100 101komlenović et al. — the gis in secondary education in serbia since computers are a necessary precondition for applying and learning to apply new educational technologies, it becomes clearer why the latter are scarcely present in serbian secondary schools, although some studies show that modern school equipment does not necessary imply great gis breakthrough (kerski, 2003). despite the rare use of computers as didactic aids in geography instruction, most students (86.7%) say that they expand their geographic knowledge via the internet at home, friends’ homes or internet clubs. the respondents estimate that learning new teaching content in vocational secondary schools mostly takes place through teacher lecturing (48.1%). along with this dominant teacher lecturing and frontal teaching, new material in geography is also acquired using analogue maps (91.3%), appropriate texts (69.1%), pictures and illustrations (51.5%) as well as schemata and diagrams (30.1%), and occasionally by means of slides (17.4%) and computers (8.7%), which is shown in histogram 1. histogram 1: most frequently used teaching aids in students’ estimate the majority of students who have used new educational technologies in geography lessons say that, first and foremost, these meet their own interests (25.2%), and then that they make a considerable contribution to a more successful acquisition of geography knowledge (21%), while they also think that knowledge about new educational technologies and the skills for their application would be beneficial in everyday life and for further professional development (10.9%). today, most geographic maps for various purposes are manufactured in digital, and not analogue (paper) format, which implies that mastery of using digital maps, i.e. the basics of the gis, is something necessary for everyday life, and can be especially important for one’s future profession as well. the following were recognised by students as the advantages of applying new education technologies in the function of everyday life and further professional development: faster information accessibility (44.4%), minimising data quantity (21.2%), better offer of information and services (18.3%), as well as the contribution in predicting and decision making (deciding) (16.1%). the students’ opinions on the advantages of using the gis in geography instruction are presented in table 4. table 4: student opinions on the advantages of using the gis as a teaching aid advantages of using gis in geography classes n % total interactivity yes 59 95.2 62 100% no 3 4.8 development of cartographic skills yes 60 96.8 62 100% no 2 3.2 problem-oriented learning approach yes 54 87.1 62 100% no 10 12.9 systematic and precise yes 46 74.2 62 100% no 16 25.8 100 80 60 40 20 0 schemata and diagrams geographic map appropriate texts pictures and illustrations slides computer 102 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 the table shows that the use of the gis in geography classes means most to students because of the possibility of developing cartographic skills – which is in accordance with the basic function of this information system – since cartographic skills are among the key geographic skills that students should develop. the interactive learning approach is another important component of the gis singled out by students, which may be an expression of the need for the modernisation of teaching, as well as an indication of the students’ wish for a more active role in the teaching process. problem-based learning also makes the gis an attractive technology which does not provide ready-made and processed facts but, instead, activates students’ higher mental functions for the purpose of solving a given task. the systematicity and precision offered by the gis, which facilitates the understanding of regularities in thematic maps, are recognised by most students as an important characteristic and advantage of its use. conclusion this paper was aimed at determining whether ict is applied in the geography teaching process in vocational secondary schools in serbia. the research findings show that the gis was singled out from the other offered icts as one of the new and most mentioned education technologies. however, although the majority of students stated that they knew what the gis represented, only one third of them have the knowledge and skills to use this technology in practice. the largest portion of the geography teaching process is based on oral presentations and frontal teaching with the usage of less innovative didactic aids (analogue maps, texts, etc.). if we bear in mind that serbian society is passing through a very turbulent transition process, which has great repercussions on all spheres of life, it can be concluded that, according to the research results, the involvement of the gis in secondary schools is satisfactory. this statement can be supported by the fact that computers are rarely used as a didactic aid in geography lessons and there is very little hardware support for the implementation of the gis in the classroom. however, since most students stated that they have access to the internet and computers outside school, it can be argued that, with adequate teachers’ instructions, the gis could play a more active role in the teaching process in the future. the teacher’s role should be to direct students towards genuine sources of information and data and to help them in the process of self-directed learning. hence, if all circumstances are taken into account, our final conclusion would be that the use of the gis in geography teaching in serbian secondary schools is still in the initial stages of implementation. this conclusion implies the necessity of a systematic approach to the introduction of ict into serbian schools. in this sense, it is necessary to train teachers about the possibilities and obstacles involved in using the gis in schools. this can be achieved through initial teacher training at university level or later, through professional teacher training. in addition, international experience with the use of the gis in schools, students’ interest in it, as well as some examples of good practice could also be useful. our research has shown that students perceive the gis not only as a great potential for cartographic skills development, but also as a teaching aid in the interactive problem-oriented learning process. from the standpoint of knowledge recipients, the gis places students in the position of active creators in the knowledge process and increases their personal geography competences. endnote this article is the result of the projects “from encouraging initiative, cooperation and creativity in education to new roles and identities in society” (no. 179034) and “improving the quality and accessibility of education in modernization processes in serbia” (no. 47008) for the authors komlenović djurdjica and malinić dušica and the project “the state role in the new economy growth model in serbia” (no. 179065) for the author manić emilija, which are financially supported by the ministry of education, science and technological development of the republic of serbia (2011-2014). references andersland s 2006. gis in norwegian lower and upper secondary school. proceedings of the international geographical union commission on geographical education symposium, brisbane, australia. retrieved on 6 february 2012 from http:// trove.nla.gov.au/work/153073515. 103komlenović et al. — the gis in secondary education in serbia baker tr 2002. the effects of geographical information systems (gis) technologies on students’ attitudes, self-efficacy, and achievement in middle school science classrooms. unpublished doctoral dissertation. kansas: university of kansas. 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however, as we emphasise in this paper, the chilean educational system is highly segregated. pm encompasses actions and decisions aimed at safeguarding quality education by focusing on four domains: technological, curricular, methodological and assessment. this descriptive and exploratory quantitative study seeks to explore the challenges facing pm, as perceived by actors working in chile’s three different administrative and financial school governance systems in the framework of remote education during the covid-19 pandemic. our findings highlight the disparities among actors belonging to the three types of administrative and financial governance systems regarding the perceived challenges facing pm. thus, publicly funded schools face greater challenges in practically all four pm domains as compared to private schools. the main differences among schools revolve around the technological and assessment domains. while the technological domain is more of a concern for public schools, the assessment domain presents more challenges for private schools. beyond the schools´ administrative and financial governance system, an important finding was the scant importance attached to the curriculum as a challenging issue as well as an excessive focus on the methodological domain, indicative of a prevailing logic of efficiency as applied to the learning process. keywords: covid-19; remote learning; educational continuity; pedagogical management; chilean schools. 1. introduction internationally, 2020 has been a year marked by the outbreak of covid-19 and its dramatic effects, not only at the health level but in all other realms of daily life. lockdowns and author: dr c. cuéllar1 dr m.a. guzmán1 c. lizama1 m.p. faúndez1 affiliation: 1universidad católica silva henríquez doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i1.4 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 44-60 published: 12 march 2021 received: 9 november 2020 accepted: 20 january 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0298-1995 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9494-7689 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3191-3561 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1443-0653 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 452021 39(1): 45-60 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 cuéllar, guzmán, lizama & faúndez educational continuity during the pandemic physical distancing have been some of the main actions implemented by countries to prevent the spread of the virus (flaxman et al., 2020). the crisis has had a strong impact on educational systems as children were not allowed to physically attend school in most countries, prompting an abrupt shift in pedagogical practices. thus, face-to-face teaching and learning has been replaced by new methods in order to ensure continuity of learning (orellana & salinas, 2020). in chile, schools have adopted remote learning using different formats, such as online platforms, social networks, telephone calls, families picking up materials at the school and, in more isolated locations, teacher visits to students’ homes to provide resources, among others (gonzález et al., 2020). in this context, one may ask: what are the elements guiding pedagogical decision-making at schools? how are they responding to their communities’ educational needs? what challenges are they facing? so far, according to salas et al. (2020), there is insufficient evidence as to whether these decisions belong strictly to schools or if they respond to structural conditions due to unequal educational opportunities; a consequence of the socioeconomic gaps of a highly segregated school system, such as the chilean one. preliminary data, revealed by quiroz (2020), indicate that through the pandemic, private schools seem to have had better chances to develop more sophisticated remote learning modalities than publicly subsidised schools that serve vulnerable students. the imperative of ensuring continuity of learning during this period of school closures and remote education should not be reduced to avoiding school failure, but rather, from a complex perspective, mainly to link continuity of learning to pedagogical aspects. in this new scenario, it is necessary to take note of the point made by guzmán and nussbaum (2009) to manage curricular, methodological and assessment decisions and actions that articulate the learning experience, using technology as a relevant support for the development of these processes. subsequently, the purpose of this study is to identify the main challenges facing pedagogical management, as perceived by educational actors in chilean schools during the pandemic. we explore the differences and similarities between schools within the different administrative and financial governance systems. these findings are indicative of challenges and opportunities to achieve a reflective and situated process of educational continuity within the national educational context. 2. conceptual framework 2.1 segregation in the chilean school system the chilean school system has been recognised as a paradigmatic case of neoliberal influence on education. as villalobos and quaresma point out, this effect has resulted in four characteristics: i) the construction of a mixed system in terms of ownership, with a strong development of the private sector, ii) the consolidation of a financing system based on the demand subsidy, iii) the institutionalization of profit and copayment as mechanisms for organizing the system; and iv) the generation and development of significant incentives and penalties for schools, teachers, and students (2015: 69). in this way, the chilean school system has three types of administrative and financial governance systems: municipal, fully financed through state resources; subsidised schools, with a cost distributed between the state and families and, private schools, in which parents http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 462021 39(1): 46-60 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) bear the full cost of their children’s education1. for corvalán and garcía-huidobro (2016), this division reflects a commodified school system, since access to educational services is regulated by a monetary value, causing an evident school segregation. research links this trend to unequal learning opportunities, as private school students have higher levels of educational achievement than those enrolled in the public system. another expression of inequity lies in the response of educational establishments to curricular prescriptions. evidence indicates that schools that carry out curricular development processes are those with qualified teachers and greater financial resources (ulloa & gajardo, 2017). in terms of the strong tendency towards accountability, which uses state mechanisms that permanently assess schools and have the authority to close establishments based on their performance in standardised tests, national findings indicate that rather than contributing to enhance quality and equity, accountability has had a negative impact on the educational system, impoverishing pedagogical practices, generating hierarchical institutional climates focused on control and highlighting pedagogical actions focused on performance (falabella, 2016). 2.2 learning continuity and remote education as a consequence of the covid-19 pandemic, the concept of learning continuity has gained increased importance in the educational discourse. recent research concludes that the current school priority is to guarantee the continuity of learning for students in this new remote scenario (reimers & schleicher, 2020). in other words, to ensure the continuity of educational processes, regardless of the setting in which they are carried out. however, in the present context learning continuity is at risk since the disruption of education might not only bring about lower levels of learning, but also the potential loss of previous knowledge gains, with a severe impact on students with limited socio-economic resources (reimers & schleicher, 2020), including student attrition rates (carmona & morales, 2020). consequently, educational organisations have focused on promoting learning continuity and on employing to that end the most appropriate means. these are related to various factors that range strictly from curriculum aspects (such as the prioritisation of learning) to the availability of resources for remote learning (such as, for example, technological tools) (carmona & morales, 2020). all in all, learning continuity refers to the multidimensional approach to remote education during school closures and involves a learning scenario in which the educational system implements conditions conducive to learning for every child. thus, the concept transcends the logic of teaching the same courses, but in a different setting, by focusing on the pedagogical management domains described below. 2.3 pedagogical management the literature has studied pedagogical management as a concept referring to the practices of different school actors aimed at improving student learning processes (lizandro-crispín, 2019) by focusing on different domains to enhance the quality of learning. in the present study, four domains are addressed based on the proposal outlined by guzmán and nussbaum (2009): technological, curriculum, methodological and assessment, which are defined according to their function and the specific aspects comprising each domain. 1 a fourth type of administrative and financial governance system called public education local service began functioning in 2018 but given its recent onset was not included in this study. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 472021 39(1): 47-60 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 cuéllar, guzmán, lizama & faúndez educational continuity during the pandemic technological domain refers to the core elements enabling technology to enhance the quality of learning processes and includes instrumental resources and professional skills (guzmán & nussbaum, 2009). in chile, this element is associated with the so-called digital divide and includes access to hardware and networks as well as network management (and the skills and knowledge suited to the task), which are always contingent on pre-existing social inequalities (cortés et al., 2020). the domain includes the following five aspects. networks availability, since remote education requires digital infrastructure for teachers, managers and students (reimers & schleicher, 2020). network stability, that is, the availability of uninterrupted internet services (iadb, 2020). hardware availability for online connectivity such as computers, tablets and mobile phones, among others (reimers & schleicher, 2020). platform technical management, in other words, the training and skills needed by educational actors to implement technology-based education. the fifth aspect is student access and connectivity, which seeks to ensure their access to pedagogical materials, their communication during classes and the time invested in learning (cáceres-correa, 2020). curriculum domain this domain corresponds to the design and implementation of learning programmes and includes learning sequences and trajectories. research in this field has identified the fragility of this scenario in vulnerable contexts and posits that the curriculum is a social construction, of a transformative nature that can promote inclusive learning processes (ferrada, turra & villena, 2013). this domain comprises three specific aspects. curriculum prioritisation has become a focus during the pandemic, giving rise to the need to consider an emergency curriculum (unesco, 2020) which should not be conceived as reducing the curriculum’s contents but that focuses on developing the necessary skills (rojassalgado, 2017). curriculum sequencing refers to the organisation and progression of learning objectives that must respond to the school’s sociocultural context and to the students’ level of development and knowledge (gil-madrona, 2017). and, finally, curriculum coverage, refers to the ability to develop planned learning with adequate depth (volante et al., 2015). methodological domain refers to the strategies and resources mobilised to achieve learning and which, in the covid-19 scenario, involve the integration of technological tools (guzmán & nussbaum, 2009). the literature on pedagogical practices points to a critical review of the situation and highlights that a well-founded learning process has a high transformative potential, especially in vulnerable educational settings (villata, martinic & guzmán, 2011). this domain includes the following three specific aspects. transition from a face-to-face learning modality to a remote learning setting, focused on the transformation of traditional classes to an online format (cabrera, pérez, & santana, 2020). knowledge of methodological strategies adapted to remote learning, centred on the most relevant learning alternatives for a remote setting (salas et al., 2020). and the relevance of available resources and materials to enhance remote learning. assessment domain comprises the feedback and monitoring processes used by teachers to assess student learning and outcomes, including an assessment of content knowledge and the generation http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 482021 39(1): 48-60 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) of instances to improve outcomes (guzmán & nussbaum, 2009). in vulnerable contexts, it is imperative to focus holistically on the learning process by avoiding the use of external standards such as performance tests (martínez, 2012). the assessment domain comprises four specific aspects. formative assessment refers to the formal or informal feedback procedures enabling students to bridge the gap between current and desired outcomes (rosales, 2015). summative assessment, which measures a student´s learning against standardised criteria and which in most cases involves grading (rosales, 2015). monitoring students’ work understood as the actions carried out to accompany the learning processes, which is especially urgent in times of covid-19, especially in schools with more socio-economically disadvantaged students (ramírez, 2020). finally, feedback, the timely information provided on students’ progress with the purpose of enhancing learning outcomes (roberts-sánchez, rodríguez-gómez & silva, 2019). pedagogical management is highly conditioned by the specific sociocultural context, especially in a country with high levels of inequality such as chile. therefore, strengthening pedagogical management reduces school segregation, preventing a reproduction of social inequity based on unequal learning achievements (villalta, martinic & guzmán, 2011). 3. methodology the present study uses a quantitative methodology, with an exploratory, descriptive and comparative approach (cohen & gómez, 2019). from a broad perspective, this approach enables us to address the emerging phenomenon of remote education during the pandemic within the chilean school context and, at the same time, to explore the particularities of schools within the three different administrative and financial governance systems. an online questionnaire was designed and administered in order to investigate the domains and specific aspects of pedagogical management that educational actors within the different administrative and financial governance systems perceive as a challenge in the framework of remote education during the covid-19 pandemic. participants were asked to answer multiple-choice, categorical and nominal questions. we used a convenience sampling method with a total sample of 342 cases of which 106 correspond to participants working in municipal schools (31%), 182 to participants working in subsidised schools (53%) and 54 to participants in private schools (16%). despite the type of sampling, the percentage of schools within each administrative and financial governance system reflects the same distribution pattern existing at the national level2. once the questionnaire data was processed, the variables were operationalised as binary. then, we built a challenges indicator for each domain of pedagogical management by adding their specific aspects. this indicator enabled us to compare the number of specific challenges in each domain broken down by municipal schools, subsidised schools and private schools. see table 1 for detailed information on the indicators’ specific aspects. 2 in chile, municipal schools represent 33,5% of the total number of schools, subsidised schools account for 53,7% and private schools, 9,0%. the remaining 1,8% corresponds to the new administrative and financial governance system called public education local service (mineduc, 2019). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 492021 39(1): 49-60 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 cuéllar, guzmán, lizama & faúndez educational continuity during the pandemic table 1. indicators of challenges to pedagogical management indicator specific aspects of the indicator scale1 technological network availability 0 to 5 network stability hardware availability platform technical management student access and connectivity curriculum curriculum prioritisation 0 to 3curriculum sequencing curriculum coverage methodological transition from a face-to-face (classroom) modality to a remote (non-face-to-face) modality 0 to 3 knowledge of methodological strategies for remote work relevance of available resources and materials assessment formative assessment 0 to 4 summative assessment follow up of students’ work feedback using spss 25 software, a two-phase statistical, descriptive and bivariate analysis was carried out. the objective of the first phase was to establish a comparison between participants working in municipal schools, subsidised schools and private schools regarding the domains they consider most challenging (through calculation of the mean and the mode). the second phase focuses on comparing the different aspects comprising each domain that are viewed as challenging by the three different types of schools. finally, in order to ensure scientific rigour, we adopted the criteria proposed by martínez (2004). thus, this study considers the following i) truth value, ensured by anonymity and the use of a self-administered questionnaire, ii) consistency, given the phenomenon’s stability during the instrument’s implementation and iii) neutrality, given the questions’ absence of bias in addition to previous pilot testing and validation by expert judges. 4. results our findings illustrate participants’ answers to the multiple-choice question: “which of the following specific aspects of pedagogical management have you found challenging during the process of remote education?”, regarding each domain of pedagogical management. table 2. descriptive statistics of the indicators for each domain of pedagogical management broken down by the schools’ administrative and financial governance system indicator administrative governance system mean mode standard deviation minimum maximum technological domain municipal 3,245 4,00 1,285 0,00 5,00 subsidised 2,934 3,00 1,264 0,00 5,00 private 1,777 1,00 1,312 0,00 5,00 where 0 is “no aspect” and the highest number on the scale in each domain corresponds to “every aspect”. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 502021 39(1): 50-60 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) indicator administrative governance system mean mode standard deviation minimum maximum curriculum domain municipal 1,537 1,00 0,852 0,00 3,00 subsidised 1,586 1,00 0,825 0,00 3,00 private 1,185 1,00 0,802 0,00 3,00 methodological domain municipal 1,952 2,00 0,797 0,00 3,00 subsidised 1,983 2,00 0,789 0,00 3,00 private 1,777 2,00 0,768 0,00 3,00 assessment domain municipal 2,320 2,00 1,019 0,00 4,00 subsidised 2,252 2,00 0,958 0,00 4,00 private 2,166 3,00 1,077 0,00 4,00 table 2 illustrates the indicators’ descriptive statistics for the domains representing a challenge for pedagogical management, segregated by schools’ administrative and financial governance system (municipal, subsidised and private). the mode indicates that the technological domain represents the most challenging aspect for the continuity of learning during the pandemic for participants working in municipal schools (mo= 4,00) and in subsidised schools (mo= 3,00). on the other hand, for participants working in private schools, the technological domain is one of the least challenging (mo= 1,00). preliminarily, this might indicate that at present this aspect is more challenging for those educational communities that lack the financial resources to purchase internet connection hardware and services. as opposed to the differences observed between municipal, subsidised and private schools described in the previous paragraph, the curricular domain is the least challenging for all types of establishments (mo= 1,00). likewise, there are no substantial differences between municipal, subsidised and private schools in the methodological domain. this might be explained by the fact that these domains have different levels of visibility. while curricular decision-making is a task carried out invisibly for students and their families, methodological options are continuously verified and experienced by students (gvirtz & palamidessi, 2005). for this reason, and faced with a scenario of abrupt change, greater concerns could be projected for those public aspects than for those that remain “behind the scenes”. as for the assessment domain, it is more challenging for participants working in private establishments (mo= 3,00) than for those who work in municipal and subsidised schools (mo= 2,00). initially this phenomenon might be explained through a credential-type relationship between private sector schools and families, the latter focusing on monitoring their children’s educational path based on their school grades and paying less attention to other issues such as, for example, participating in educational decisions or building a community (saracostti et al., 2019). finally, an analysis of the mean indicates that private schools face fewer challenges than municipal and subsidised schools, since they display the lowest numbers in every domain, as shown in table 2. this overall view suggests that challenges facing pedagogical management at chilean schools during the covid-19 pandemic are not only related to the educational dimension, but also to factors of socio-economic segregation that reinforce inequalities during times of crisis (orellana & salinas, 2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 512021 39(1): 51-60 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 cuéllar, guzmán, lizama & faúndez educational continuity during the pandemic technological domain   59% 52% 7% 62% 47% 48% 68% 64% 20% 49% 50% 69% 87% 80% 33% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% municipal subsidized private private network availability network stability hardware availability platform technical management student acces and connectivity figure 1. percentage of participants who identify aspects of the technological domain as a challenge, segregated by schools’ administrative and financial governance systems. source: own elaboration. figure 1 illustrates those aspects within the technological domain that are considered by participants to be challenging, broken down into administrative and financial governance systems (municipal schools, subsidised schools, private schools). we can observe a similar response pattern among educational actors belonging to municipal and subsidised private establishments, who perceive more challenges in this domain compared to their peers in private establishments. when disaggregating data by the domain’s different aspects, we observe that network availability represents a challenge for most participants in municipal establishments (59%) and subsidised establishments (52%). by contrast, in private schools only 7% of participants consider this aspect to be challenging. this same pattern is repeated with the item hardware availability where once again municipal and subsidised schools display higher percentages than private schools, 68%, 64% and 20% respectively. these results reinforce the notion that the instrumental elements required for remote learning are strongly dependent on students and families’ socio-economic status (orellana & salinas, 2020). with regard to network stability, no substantial differences can be observed between municipal, subsidised schools and private schools, probably due to the fact that in chile, schools do not necessarily have the function of ensuring that their students and teachers have a stable and quality wireless connection (reimers & schleicher, 2020). the aspect technical management of platforms is the main challenge facing private schools (69%). a situation that differs in the case of municipal and subsidised schools in which less than half of the participants consider this aspect to be challenging. the major challenge http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 522021 39(1): 52-60 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) facing municipal and subsidised schools is student access and connectivity (87% and 80% respectively), in contrast to participants from private schools in which only one-third consider this aspect to be a challenge. all the above indicates that while educational actors at schools that have dealt with instrumental problems can now focus on formative issues linked to technology, participants who work at schools with less socio-economic advantages are trying to deal with new issues such as access to networks and the necessary devices for connectivity. as indicated by the literature, this suggests that the digital gap is multidimensional and not only expressed in disadvantages at the instrumental level, but also at the formative level (cortés et al., 2020). curriculum domain   66% 63% 50% 39% 43% 28% 49% 53% 41% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% municipal subsidized private private curriculum prioritization curriculum sequencing curriculum coverage figure 2. percentage of participants who identify aspects of the curriculum domain as a challenge, segregated by schools’ administrative and financial governance systems. source: own elaboration. figure 2 provides information on the specific aspects of the curriculum domain that are viewed as a challenge by participants working in municipal schools, subsidised schools and private schools. as shown in figure 2, these three types of establishments show a similar response pattern. that is, there is a similar prioritisation of aspects, but with different levels of intensity. thus, as compared to private schools, municipal and subsidised schools identify bigger challenges in the domain’s three aspects. of these, curriculum prioritisation is considered the biggest challenge for participants in municipal schools (66%). for participants in subsidised schools the percentage is 63% and in private schools, 50%. that curriculum prioritisation represents a major concern for the three types of schools is probably related to the fact that it has permanently been emphasised by national and international organisations as the cornerstone for educational continuity in the context of remote learning (mineduc, 2020). however, it is still unknown how educational communities in chile are interpreting this imperative. thus, in a school system characterised by standardisation and accountability in http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 532021 39(1): 53-60 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 cuéllar, guzmán, lizama & faúndez educational continuity during the pandemic which non-compliance has strong consequences for schools, as occurs in chile (falabella, 2016), instead of focusing on the selection of contextualised learning contents (rojassalgado, 2017), curriculum prioritisation might be promoting a narrowing of the curriculum, in at least two ways. first, by prioritising conceptual and procedural contents over attitudinal skills, since the former allow students to perform more efficiently in performance instruments. second, prioritising subjects that carry more weight for standardised tests, such as language and mathematics (assael, albornoz & caro, 2018). in turn, the distance between curriculum prioritisation and curriculum sequencing is especially relevant since the latter is considered the least challenging within the three types of schools, with an average difference of 23 percentage points in relation to the described percentages. this would seem to indicate a lack of thorough understanding of the implications of curriculum prioritisation, or, that curriculum prioritisation is effectively being interpreted as an instrumental factor. however, curriculum sequencing is a key aspect when adjusting the curriculum as it is necessary to consider the gradation and progression of procedural and attitudinal contents, as well as the logical sequence of the subjects being taught. finally, it is worth noting that in the three types of schools, curriculum coverage is considered more challenging than curriculum sequencing. this is probably due to the constant pressure to meet performance levels in standardised tests, which leads teachers to overemphasise curriculum coverage as a means for improving academic test scores (assael et al., 2018). methodological domain   76% 77% 63%65% 64% 76% 55% 58% 39% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% municipal subsidized private private transition from a face-to-face (classroom) modality to a remote (non face-to-face) modality knowledge of methodological strategies for remote work relevance of available resources and materials figure 3. percentage of participants who identify aspects of the methodological domain as a challenge, segregated by schools’ administrative and financial governance systems. source: own elaboration. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 542021 39(1): 54-60 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) figure 3 illustrates the aspects of the methodological domain that are viewed as a challenge by participants working in municipal schools, subsidised schools and private schools. as shown, for the three types of schools there are two aspects that participants consider to be the most challenging. however, with a different ranking. the transition from a face-to-face (classroom) modality to a remote (non-face-to-face) modality is the most challenging aspect for municipal schools (76%) as well as for subsidised schools (77%). the greatest challenge facing private schools is the aspect knowledge of methodological strategies for remote work (76%). this probably reveals that participants working in schools with greater socio-economic advantages have more access to tools and hardware enabling them to devise remote learning experiences of a superior quality. given the absence of baseline conditions to grapple with remote educational processes, participants working in municipal and subsidised schools might have to address issues that are more urgent and relevant to the new scenario, such as dealing with the instrumental aspects of the technological domain. private schools’ focus on the aspect knowledge of strategies for remote learning might be due to the fact that, having overcome instrumental and technical challenges, educational actors now need to focus on exploring methodological strategies aimed at remote learning since the strategies employed in a classroom setting (face-to-face) have become irrelevant. this phenomenon is not observed with the same intensity in municipal and subsidised schools, since they are probably using the same methodological options they were previously employing and directing their efforts to dealing with other problems (villalta & assael, 2018). concerning the third aspect of this domain, namely, the relevance of available resources and materials, it is considered to be the domain’s least challenging aspect by participants in all three types of schools and even less relevant in private establishments (39%). in all likelihood, this is related to the disparity of resources between municipal schools, subsidised schools and private schools. thus, it is safe to assume that the most advantaged schools have the appropriate resources and materials suited to their reality (cnn chile, 2020), while municipal and subsidised schools are trying to contextualise standardised pedagogical resources that have been granted to them by educational authorities or they are adapting resources that were already in use. finally, we must not overlook the fact that percentages in municipal and subsidised schools are practically the same; this reinforces the notion of a reproduction of inequalities in the realm of public education that was already present before the pandemic (quiroz, 2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 552021 39(1): 55-60 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 cuéllar, guzmán, lizama & faúndez educational continuity during the pandemic assessment domain   44% 41% 32% 47% 46% 50% 77% 74% 65% 74% 74% 70% 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% municipal subsidized private private formative assessment summative assessment feedback follow up of students’ work figure 4. percentage of participants who identify aspects of the assessment domain as a challenge, segregated by schools’ administrative and financial governance systems. source: own elaboration. finally, figure 4 illustrates the challenging aspects pertaining to the assessment domain within the three different types of schools. as shown, even though there are close similarities between the three types of schools, the similarities between municipal schools and subsidised schools are greater. in both municipal and subsidised schools, formative assessment and summative assessment as well as feedback and follow up of students’ work show slight differences ranging between zero and three percentage points. it would thus seem that an assessment culture is a distinctive characteristic of these two segments, a situation that was also present before the onset of the pandemic, as assessment has been one of the focal points of educational quality assurance policies since 2011 (falabella, 2016). in this framework, it is legitimate to ask what the purpose of school assessments is amid a pandemic. in other words, to what extent is assessment now promoting better learning processes, connected to the current juncture and the respective school contexts, instead of simply responding to external pressures for results. conversely, in private schools, proportions are lower in every aspect, except for summative assessment (50%). since private schools are the clearest example of the chilean educational system’s market orientation – education is now a profitable business – it is not surprising that to the extent that summative assessment is the most visible and concrete product of learning gains, it has become increasingly important. during this period, these families (clients) are demanding learning continuity since they continue paying for educational services; when these services are not provided in the same conditions as prior to the pandemic the demand is for lower fees (cnn chile, 2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 562021 39(1): 56-60 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) the two most challenging aspects for the three types of schools, feedback and follow up of students’ work, (exceeding 65%,) might be related to the fact that by their very nature and circumstances, virtual contexts hinder the development of customised solutions and services to work with students and monitor their learning processes. notwithstanding, teachers’ capacity to provide student feedback has been questioned before. studies on assessment policies in chile underscore the weaknesses in this area, such as, for example, the lack of guidelines that would enable students to identify their mistakes and expected levels of achievement (robert-sánchez et al., 2019). thus, this study’s results might only be pointing to a longstanding problem. finally, it is noteworthy that formative assessment is considered the least challenging aspect by the three types of schools, with a 30-percentage point gap between feedback and formative assessment. this situation is paradoxical inasmuch as the literature indicates that both these aspects should be simultaneously addressed since their objective is to reduce the gap between actual and desired assessment results, but above all, for the whole range of learning processes (canabal & margalef, 2017). 5. conclusion this study was carried out during the covid-19 pandemic and its purpose was to answer the question: what are the challenges to pedagogical management perceived by educational actors in chilean schools within the different administrative and financial governance systems during the pandemic? our findings reveal the differences regarding perceived challenges in the different domains. municipal and subsidised schools face greater challenges in practically every domain of pedagogical management compared to private schools. this situation has been exacerbated in the context of the health crisis, since the need to maintain continuity of learning – despite the capital restriction existing in these schools – has generated a wide range of challenges, which span from the possibility of access to the corresponding platforms to the availability of material and human means to follow up on the students’ learning. this idea ratifies the existing inequities within the chilean school system, which are not only based on limited economic resources, but also on the conditions of professional development achieved in the public sector, making pedagogical management more complex in the current scenario. additionally, two findings emerged that transcend the schools’ different types of administrative and financial governance system and students’ socio-economic level. first, the scant importance attached to the curriculum as a challenging issue. second, the centrality of the methodological domain as a strong concern. the fact that schools’ main focus of interest is the methodological domain indicates a prevailing logic of efficiency as applied to learning processes. this corroborates an excessive focus on pragmatic dimensions accounting for an instrumental approach to educational work at the expense of an in-depth analysis and understanding of learning processes. in other words, the focus on curriculum issues, centred on a thoughtful and critical approach concerning the purposes of learning, is replaced by a utilitarian approach associated with strategies and resources. an interesting result emerging from this study corresponds with the marked concern from private schools’ actors for aspects of pedagogical management related to their own knowledge and capacities, such as, for example, knowledge of methodological strategies for remote work and platform technical management. as opposed to public school actors, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 572021 39(1): 57-60 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.4 cuéllar, guzmán, lizama & faúndez educational continuity during the pandemic who focus on aspects that are more related to issues facing their students, such as student access and connectivity and feedback. this finding might be strongly related to the school segregation experienced in chile, since, given the existing inequality, the focus of the private sector would be placed on taking advantage of the remote education environment as a space for teacher strengthening, in the understanding that basic requirements of online pedagogical interaction are already satisfied, due to the advantageous conditions in which the students live. on the other hand, the attention of the public sector – which is placed on the relationship with students – emphasises the need of understanding that a priority of the precarious sectors in the period of a pandemic, more than achieving a high academic performance, lies in actions of communication and possible containment with the student body. the previous reflection invites to the strengthening of a pedagogical management that promotes continuity of learning, permanently understood in an identity context and committed to the institution’s aims and purposes. in this line, it would be substantial to intend efforts for the professional development of the various actors leading this process, but considering that it should concentrate not only on the improvement of instrumental tools, but should also move towards the promotion of social-emotional skills, especially for those in low-income socioeconomic settings. moreover, in institutional terms, these efforts should aim towards the development of competencies that allow the school to manage autonomous and contextualised decision processes, which guide comprehensive pedagogical actions, always in favour of enriched learning. within this framework, generating spaces for teacher reflection, set on a collegial vision, will allow educational communities to transcend the prevailing neoliberal logic and build a more equitable and fair school culture for all its members. however, enhancing management skills in these scenarios can become a pointless effort if the instrumental barriers preventing students from fully participating in the learning experiences that have been designed for them are not overcome. as long as these obstacles are in place, it is difficult for educational actors to envision a horizon in which professional development is based on critical and situated reflection. it is worth mentioning that this study’s findings are the product of a self-administered online questionnaire focusing on specific aspects of the four domains of pedagogical management. therefore, we recommend complementing this study with future investigations using methodologies allowing for a further in-depth understanding of school actors in chilean schools and the challenges facing learning continuity during the pandemic. in addition to enriching the results of this inquiry with studies including other actors of the educational community, such as students and their families, which could shed light on the impact of these challenges on their learning processes during this period in the context of remote education. in addition, future research studies on the above-mentioned methodologies could open new focal points of interest for which there is currently insufficient evidence, such as the emotional factors pertaining to students and educational actors in remote learning contexts. from a projective view, it might be interesting to study the consequences of this period as well as the decisions adopted by the educational community regarding 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face-to-face university used technology effectively as a delivery tool to sustain teaching and learning during the covid-19 crisis. the review conducted was aimed at answering the research questions: how can continuity of teaching and learning be strengthened during emergency situations such as that posed by the covid-19 pandemic? secondly, what were educators’ and students’ experiences and attitudes towards the use of technology as enabler for sustaining teaching and learning during the covid-19 pandemic? to answer the research questions, i conducted data searches with the help of librarians and other international primary search source indexes such as proquest, ebscohost, educational resource information centre (eric), google scholar, sage and academic search premier. a total of 85 empirical papers were reviewed and analysed so that an aggregated understanding of using technology as enabler could be established. the results of this systematic document review revealed that technology has the potential to provide immediate feedback, improve workloads and access to education, thus making it an agent of sustainability. in addition, the review conducted revealed that covid-19 reinforced the importance of technology and virtual learning in education. keywords: connectivism, coronavirus (covid-19), online learning, pandemic, sustainable development 1. introduction the purpose of this study was to provide a deep understanding about the effectiveness of using technology as a pedagogical tool to sustain teaching and learning during the covid-19 pandemic. within this broad aim, the study intended to explore educators’ and students’ author: dr nkhangweleni patrick mafenya1 affiliation: 1university of venda, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i3.14 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(3): 212-223 published: 30 september 2022 received: 04 march 2022 accepted: 08 may 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.14 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.14 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.14 2132022 40(3): 213-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.14 mafenya exploring technology as enabler for sustainable teaching and learning experiences, perceptions and attitudes towards the use of technology as a learning tool, particularly during the covid-19 pandemic. the outbreak of the coronavirus (covid-19) necessitated an abrupt transition from on campus, face-to-face sessions to online learning at higher education institutions (dhawan, 2020). the advent of the covid-19 pandemic and the resultant worldwide uptake of remote forms of teaching and learning are heralded as the much-needed catalyst to radically transform the ways in which teaching and learning is understood, designed, enacted, and evaluated. digital technology played a significant role in enabling teachers to teach students at a distance, using tools that enable both synchronous and asynchronous communication with whole class, groups and individual children or young people, access to learning materials, and interactive and collaborative activities (starkey et al., 2021). south africa, like many countries across the world, has faced the covid-19 pandemic by implementing rapid and firm measures that have helped to limit the spread of the virus (mahaye, 2020). these measures included imposing curfews across the country and forcing people to stay at home. schools were closed at short notice in most countries, and thus there was little time for planning, distribution of resources and the preparation of teachers, learners and families for the lockdown to come (bozkurt & sharma, 2020). to ensure the continuity of education for students, face-to-face classes were moved online, and all learning activities were conducted remotely. while access to the internet and computers is high in developed countries, african universities – particularly in the south african context – are still battling because of the intensity of the factors that led to the digital divide (mpungose, 2020). it is important for universities to ensure continuity during this pandemic and to consider this a unique opportunity to develop new pedagogical approaches based on the instructional design principles of online teaching and learning (fowler, hill & obradovich, 2020). through this digital transformation, educators were asked to supply students with teaching materials and instruct students directly via remote digital tools. the covid-19 pandemic forced students to be physically, emotionally, and socially separated from their educators, peers, and institutions (dhawan, 2020). in developing countries like south africa, some of the lockdowns and social distancing measures aimed at controlling or stopping the spread of covid-19 created confusion, anxiety, and fear of disease transmission (mpungose, 2020). although the closure of many institutions of higher learning helped to prevent the spread of covid-19, using online education as a substitute for traditional classes was not easy, because most institutions were not technologically and pedagogically ready for online learning. in addition, students and their lecturers were also not prepared for this sudden transition or migration to online teaching and learning. furthermore, the covid-19 pandemic presented opportunities and challenges to all educational institutions, regardless of their nature (fowler, 2020). besides the social and economic challenges inherent there, lecturers and students also faced personal challenges such as lack of access to internet connectivity, lack of equipment for online learning, and unreliable power supply (mahaye, 2020). whereas face-to-face interactions enable both lecturers and students to determine one another’s emotions, online teaching and learning limit this. this study therefore intends to find out if indeed student support using technologies can help students who are geographically, physically and emotionally dispersed to feel less isolated from their educators, the institution and other students. indeed, given the challenges posed by covid-19 in the world, online education is the best method to sustain teaching and learning (teymori & fardin, 2020). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.14 2142022 40(3): 214-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.14 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) 2. literature review covid-19 was first reported in wuhan, hubei province, china in december 2019. covid-19 is a disease that is caused by a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (sars-cov-2). on the 20th of march 2020, the world health organisation (who) declared covid-19 a pandemic because of the rate at which it was spreading and devastating human lives (kamble et al., 2021). this pandemic has caused a lot of harm and disruption to peoples’ lives. for example, many countries have witnessed economic meltdown, reduced working hours, school closures, redundancies in the manufacturing industry and unprecedented unemployment rates (hwang & holler, 2020). governments all over the world, including the south african government, introduced a country-wide lockdown to contain or control the spread of covid-19 (zhang, wang & wang, 2020). south africa reported its first confirmed covid-19 case on the 5th of march 2020 in kwazulu-natal, and by the 15th of march 2020 there were about 1585 confirmed cases (mahaye, 2020). president cyril ramaphosa declared a national state of disaster in terms of the disaster management act 57 of 2002. the main objective of declaring the state of disaster was to promote an integrated and coordinated system of disaster management, with special emphasis on prevention and mitigation by national, provincial and municipal organs of the state, statutory functionaries and other role-players involved in disaster management and communities (mahaye, 2020). the president, in collaboration with the national command council, declared a 21-day national lockdown commencing on the 26th of march 2020 to help curb the spread of the disease and minimise its impact on the south african society. as schools and higher education institutions were ordered to close to contain the spread of the virus, traditional face-to-face classes were moved to an online delivery system. almost twenty years ago, long before having the technologies we are now accustomed to, researchers (brown, bull & pendlebury, 2013; omoroguiwa, 2012) claimed that they witnessing a paradigm shift in higher education, where institutions were migrating from traditional to online learning. this paradigm shift has been enhanced by recent technological developments. the use of modern technologies is still in its infancy in many countries across the world. however, covid-19 presented the opportunity for both students and their instructors to employ technology as an agent to sustain teaching and learning (stauffer, 2020). the sudden transformation into online learning has posed substantial challenges for educational activities globally, and particularly in resource-scarce countries where educational institutions, educators and students are generally not ready for this unexpected disruption to traditional teaching and learning methods (heng & sol, 2020). before the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic, most of the higher education institutions were teaching their students using traditional face-to-face classroom methodologies. however, the outbreak of the covid-19 pandemic brought challenges with the use of technology at public institutions. this included inadequate infrastructure, poor internet connectivity and lack of digitally competent educators (yan, 2020). teachers had to move from a space in which they have years of experience to the unknown and challenging world of online, remote correspondence and socially distanced teaching. research conducted by mpofu (2020) indicates that some of the educators who have to use these technologies are largely ageing and technophobic. the instructional methods used on an online platform differ completely from the traditional face-to-face classroom method that educators use. by its nature, online learning depends entirely on technological devices and the internet; therefore, it is undeniable that technology is the most pressing challenge to online learning, especially if those involved http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.14 2152022 40(3): 215-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.14 mafenya exploring technology as enabler for sustainable teaching and learning in the process of teaching and learning are not digitally competent due to inexperience or insufficient training (jalli, 2020). jalli (2020) further argues that a lack of internet access poses great challenges for students to study online. with online learning as the replacement of the physical classroom amid the pandemic crisis, many students were vulnerable to falling behind in their studies (yan, 2020). the outbreak of covid-19 revealed a serious gap that exists between the rich and the poor, especially in south africa (mahaye, 2020). for example, students from low socioeconomic families are unable to afford broadband connection and pertinent devices such as computers, laptops or tablets to support their online learning. instead, they resorted to the use of smartphones to access lessons and learning materials, complete assignments and take exams (heng & sol, 2020). the unprecedented shift to online learning has also increased concerns regarding cybersecurity, cyberbullying, online violence and exploitation, as well as other psychological issues caused by difficulties and uncertainties associated with online learning during the covid-19 pandemic (yan, 2020). as online learning and technologies continue to evolve, several terminologies associated with online learning are used. for example, they include e-learning, online learning, distance learning, blended learning, and hybrid learning (heng & sol, 2020). with online learning, students submit their work and receive feedback online. students can also connect and interact with their peers online, and sometimes they can be together in an online class with an instructor while working through their digital lessons, materials, or assessments (stauffer, 2020). the use of technology to transform learning and assessment has been a strategic goal for many governments globally. 3. conceptualising learning in the digital era the rapidly evolving technological landscape in the 21st century has meant that university lecturers were forced to adapt their teaching approaches without a clear roadmap for attending to students’ needs (kop & hill, 2008). as a result, george siemens and stephen downes’s (2009) connectivist learning theory is the initial lens through which to conceptualise learning in this digital age because of its varying attributes from traditional face-to-face learning to e-learning. thus, siemens and downes (2009) define their theory as a learning theory for the digital age characterised by the influence of technology in the field of education. the theory argues that learning is the process of building networks of information, contacts and resources that are applied to real-life problems. contrary to the traditionalist view, the basic principle behind connectivism is that knowledge is constructed through social interaction through networks. furthermore, connectivists believe that knowledge is stored on the internet and can be sourced by anyone with access to the internet and to networks on information. connectivism presents a model of learning that acknowledges the tectonic shifts in society where learning is no longer an internal, individualistic activity. connectivism, therefore, inclines towards the belief that knowledge exists outside of the individual who makes connections between information to build new knowledge (siemens & downes, 2009). in their theory, they point out that traditional learning theories such as behaviourism, cognitivism and constructivism have limitations, because they were developed at a time when technology did not have the impact on learning to the degree it does today. siemens and downes’s (2009) assertion that these theories were developed when knowledge was growing more slowly prompts a question: how does connectivism compare to other learning theories and how does it differ from the established paradigms? http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.14 2162022 40(3): 216-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.14 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) in addition, i found this theory useful and relevant for this study because it regards technology as a tool that can be utilised to facilitate student-lecturer-content interaction so that both (lecturer and student) become co-creators of knowledge using emerging technologies as enablers instead of being passive recipients of information as it is alleged in behaviourism and cognitivism. again, connectivist pedagogy makes it easier for students to engage in online discussion groups where they share information freely through this connected web. furthermore, this also provides them with a chance for collaborative learning. the nature of this study, with its focus on exploring the effectiveness of using technology as a delivery system during the covid-19 crisis, is consistent with a connectivist epistemological position. 4. research methodology as previously mentioned, this paper’s objectives were to explore how technology was used effectively to enhance teaching and learning during the covid-19 pandemic. furthermore, the paper wanted to determine educators’ and students’ experiences and attitudes towards the use of technology as a delivery system. before looking for relevant primary studies, i started by identifying the problem, formulating the review question, retrieval process, inclusion, and exclusion criteria. although i recognised that there are many studies on technology as enabler for sustaining teaching and learning that pre-date this period, the timeframe chosen coincided with the rapid growth of qualitative studies on the covid-19 pandemic, which led to a sudden transition to online learning. despite the variations from a typical meta-analysis, i began this review in the manner common to all literature reviews; that is, by circumscribing the time period for inclusion (2019–2022). to identify studies that are related to the topic, objectives and the research question, i completed an electronic literature search by submitting the search terms to the librarians and other international primary search-source indexes such as proquest, ebscohost, educational resource information centre (eric), google scholar, sage, and academic search premier. the following search key terms were used: covid-19, e-learning, distance learning, pandemic, lockdown, social distance, online learning, isolation, the internet, heutagogy, connectivism, transactional distance, distance learning, sustainable development, etc. i used purposive sampling to locate studies on students’ perceptions and experiences regarding the use of ict as a delivery tool for teaching and learning during the pandemic. this literature review was centred around the following two research questions: how can continuity of teaching and learning be strengthened during emergency situations such as that posed by the covid-19 pandemic? what were lecturers’ and students’ experiences and attitudes towards the use of technology as enabler for teaching and learning during the covid-19 pandemic? before obtaining the full text of the identified qualitative studies, i applied inclusion and exclusion criteria. 4.1 inclusion and exclusion criteria the selection criteria for this study had to meet the following inclusion criteria: a primary qualitative research design, english language, relevance to the research topic, a focus on technology-enhanced learning, published between 2019 and april 2022 in peer-reviewed journals, articles, newspapers, or books, magazines, public and government websites, or portals. all studies published before 2019 were excluded, even though they had information on technology as enabler for online teaching and learning. once the processes of retrieval, inclusion and exclusion criteria were completed, the process of systematic review started. to minimise bias against non-published research literature, i conducted a search through proquest dissertations and theses to locate studies published between 2019 and 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.14 2172022 40(3): 217-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.14 mafenya exploring technology as enabler for sustainable teaching and learning before these studies were considered for inclusion, they had to pass through various standards of academic rigour for their suitability for inclusion in the final review. failure to conduct a sufficiently exhaustive search is the most important threat to the validity of any integration. in this case, i stopped searching for more information when the search engines ceased to produce any new relevant studies. the search yielded 85 primary qualitative studies on technology-enhanced teaching and learning. from the 85 studies screened, twenty-seven (27) articles were rejected, because they either did not refer directly to technology as an enabler for sustaining teaching and learning, or they had a quantitative research focus. furthermore, the issue of extracting primary qualitative studies was problematic, because during the search for these studies i came across very good quantitative primary studies that were relevant to the research topic, but i was forced to eliminate them because they were not qualitative by nature. quantitative studies were not included because of the pre-determined clause set at the beginning of the search “only peer-reviewed primary qualitative studies should be included”. after passing various standards of academic rigour, six (6) studies were rejected at the level of research focus. another fifteen (15) studies were rejected because they did not comply with the set criteria for qualitative research. a total of thirty-five (35) studies were included for this synthesis, because they met all the inclusion criteria as shown in table 1 below. each study was scored according to the rating scale and a percentage was calculated. 4.2 screening criteria table 1: screening criteria for inclusion and exclusion 1 articles published between 2019 and 2022 2 research question stated clearly and adhered to 3 relevance to the research topic 4 research design clearly stated 5 aims of the study clearly described 6 sampling procedure clearly described 7 data collection setting identified 8 using english language 9 how were data recorded and ethical aspects described? 10 how were themes and categories identified? 11 credibility (member checks, validation of data) 12 clear statement of findings 13 was research useful and relevant? i followed the directions of a descriptive study in reporting or presenting the results of this study. 5. results and discussion based on a review of several papers on the effectiveness of using technology to enhance teaching and learning, i will present results of the research conducted. since the covid-19 pandemic hit the world, and technology was introduced as a learning tool to bridge the transactional distance that exists between the students and their lecturers, for students in http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.14 2182022 40(3): 218-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.14 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) most of the schools globally, technology-enhanced learning became trendier and more global (rahmat, syakhrani & satria, 2021). a constrained timeframe for this study and the restrictions on communication and travel imposed by covid-19 led to the adoption of a document review research design. in this systematic literature review, the first theme that emerged from the studies reviewed was that of access to icts. adedoyin and sokyan (2020) examined the challenges and opportunities brought by covid-19 on teaching and learning and they found that key challenges that are related to covid-19 are technological infrastructure, digital competence, socio-economic factors, assessment and supervision, heavy workload, and compatibility. by its nature, online teaching and learning depend entirely on technological devices and the internet; therefore, technology is undeniably the most pressing challenge to online learning, especially if those involved in the process of teaching are not digitally competent due to inexperience or insufficient training (adedoyin & sokyan, 2020). for many educational institutions, the sudden shift to online learning has created an unexpected workload, particularly on building e-platforms and integrating external applications into their systems in a timely manner (adodoyin & sokyan, 2020). the above results are in line with those of kamble et al. (2020), who examined learners’ perceptions of transitioning from traditional face-to-face learning to one that uses technology as a delivery system. the findings revealed that the covid-19 pandemic has posed several challenges to developing countries like south africa, including a lack of internet connectivity, access to technological platforms by students and educators, familiarity with online teaching and learning approaches, and adoption of technology. reliance on technology and a lack of continuous internet connectivity hinder the transition of learners towards online learning in less developed countries. in addition, kamble et al. (2020) found that poor network connectivity is exacerbated by lack of technological infrastructure, which in turn limits institutions for higher education to reach out to the students in the online learning environment, thus hampering their learning. in his study entitled, “online learning: a panacea in the time of covid-19 crisis”, dhawan (2020) examines the importance of online learning during a period of a crisis and pandemics such as covid-19. in the study dhawan (2020) identifies problems that are associated with online learning. the results of dhawan’s (2020) study revealed that web learning is a panacea in times of the covid-19 pandemic. similarly, dhawan’s (2020) findings concur heavily with those of heng and sol (2020), who indicate that online learning and its variations such as e-learning and distance learning are a panacea for sustaining teaching and learning during the covid-19 crisis. a similar study was conducted by paschal and mkulu (2020) in which they explored the effectiveness of online learning with a focus on five universities in africa. the findings revealed that university students prefer technology as a delivery tool because it has the potential of overcoming the physical distances that exist between students and educators, students and the institution. mishra, gupta, and shree (2020) conducted a study in which they examined the use of online teaching and learning in higher education during the lockdown period of the covid-19 pandemic. the results revealed that technology has become a game changer, because it has the potential to transform teaching and learning. currently, the proliferation of technologies is seen as a powerful and irresistible force that is happening rapidly. there is a sense that the phenomenon, in this case, technology as a delivery tool, is unstoppable. in addition, internet technology has helped in moving learning from traditional correspondence through traditional post office delivery to a more advanced open learning. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.14 2192022 40(3): 219-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.14 mafenya exploring technology as enabler for sustainable teaching and learning the second theme which emerged from the review was that of migrating from traditional, face-to-face learning to technology-enhanced learning. despite the challenges experienced by higher education institutions globally, covid-19 came as a blessing in disguise (heng & sol, 2020) because it paved the way for the digital transformation of education and enhanced the adoption of ict in the classroom. due to covid-19, many educational activities, including institutional inspections and testing, have been paused. these pauses gave governments and education authorities a rare opportunity to rethink education. furthermore, literature shows that educational institutions need to invest in developing and improving existing online learning platforms. in a study entitled, “move to online during covid-19 lockdown”, ogbonnaya, awoniyi, and matabane (2020) found that the flexibility of online learning increases students’ motivation to learn. however, poor internet connectivity, the high cost of data, unreliable power supply, lack of appropriate devices, the inability to manage their time effectively, and family interruptions were some of the challenges experienced by most students in higher education. besides, online learning enables students to communicate and collaborate actively with their peers and lecturers anywhere anytime. amir et al. (2020) conducted a study in which they examined students’ perspectives of classroom and distance learning during the covid-19 pandemic at the university of indonesia. despite some noticeable challenges, the study found that students are interested in adapting to the new learning methods of full distance learning. in addition, the results of the study by amir et al. (2020) show that covid-19 not only changed the utilisation of technology in education, but also future teaching strategies. mafenya (2021) conducted a study in which lecturers and students’ perceptions of migrating from traditional learning to one that uses technology as a delivery system were explored. the review revealed that the majority of the student population preferred traditional face-to-face classroom learning. the covid-19 emergency has made it clear that technologies alone do not represent a panacea. students and instructors have faced different obstacles in remote teaching due to the existing limitations related to technological, pedagogical and social challenges. the third major theme which emerged from this review is lecturers and students’ attitudes toward technology as a delivery system. the study revealed that there is a belief among lecturers and students that to initiate and implement educational technology successfully in the teaching-learning programmes depend strongly on the participants’ support and attitudes. in this research study, students’ attitudes and acceptance toward e-learning have transpired to be more positive and favourable. again, people’s attitudes play an important role in influencing the effectiveness of using technology for education purposes from a variety of perspectives. the study found that perceptions and attitudes about icts are affected by many factors, such as the users’ experiences, lack of resources, lack of professional training, gender, academic qualification, age, lack of institutional support, and lack of time (zare-ee, 2011). these findings are consistent with the literature that reveals that the successful integration and implementation of educational technologies depend largely on the attitudes of educators who determine how ict is used (uslu & bümen, 2012). from this discussion a conclusion could be drawn that the covid-19 pandemic caused students to develop a positive attitude towards the use of educational technologies for learning purposes. it is also tempting to conclude that, to embrace technology as a delivery tool for sustaining teaching and learning purposes, there is a need to start by altering people’s attitudes so that all stakeholders are prepared to accept and to be educated within the new context or reality. similarly, studies conducted by adnan and anwar (2020) and kamble et al. (2021) report that the development of lecturers and students’ positive attitudes towards icts is a key factor in the enhancement of computer http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.14 2202022 40(3): 220-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.14 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) integration and avoidance of their resistance to computer use. thus, ict attitudes are a key issue in technology adoption and diffusion. although the covid-19 outbreak was a disaster for the health of communities, it should be considered as an opportunity, especially for educational systems around the world, to plan and enhance the substructures of the new educational generation. the present study found that studies conducted in most parts of the world have supported online education, even though there have been challenges with the sudden transition from traditional face-to-face to online teaching and learning. while some believe that the unplanned and rapid move to online learning – with no training, insufficient band-with, and little preparation – will result in a poor user experience that is unconducive to sustain growth, others believe that a new hybrid model of education will emerge, with significant benefits. additionally, the findings show that students in remote/rural and lower socio-economic areas believe that access to technology and reliable internet are a major concern. the literature reviews conducted indicate that distance learning have a negative impact on student learning, citing social isolation of students and social disconnection as areas of major concern. 6. conclusion the present study documented the use of technology as enabler for sustaining teaching and learning during the covid-19 crisis using a systematic literature review as its data collection approach. the study presented evidence that, despite some challenges brought by the covid-19 pandemic, technology has the potential to sustain teaching and learning, especially in times of crisis like the covid-19 pandemic. the sudden closure of universities globally due to covid-19 pandemic, albeit undesirable, presented an opportunity for transformation in the education systems. findings of the study revealed that students and lecturers had challenges with learning online because of the shortage of infrastructure to engage in meaningful online learning. the findings further revealed that if properly utilised, technology has the potential to reduce the gap that exists between the student and the instructor, students and their peers. during the covid-19 pandemic, new communication technologies, particularly the internet and mobile cell phones, appeared to offer exciting possibilities for overcoming geographical access and cost barriers to learning. despite the hardships that people faced, covid-19 led to a total digital transformation of the teaching and learning processes. like any other research undertaking, this document review faced several challenges and criticisms, such as data collection and analyses. according to xu (2007), one should consider a document review premature if there are fewer than 10-12 quality studies on an interesting phenomenon. fortunately, in this study i obtained 35 primary qualitative studies, which were more than adequate to continue with the review. another challenge was the setting up of inclusion and exclusion criteria. however, i dealt with this challenge by setting parameters for time cut-off (2019–2022), location, subjects, language of publication and nature of publication. the availability and accessibility of qualified primary studies were also problematic. to deal with this challenge, i conducted a systematic and exhaustive literature search using multiple databases to search for relevant studies. in addition, a combination of electronic and hand searches was also conducted. data analysis was also a challenge. when conducting this systematic document review, i realised that there were studies that contained both quantitative and qualitative data. to deal with this challenge, i extracted the qualitative component for inclusion into the study. like many studies conducted amid the covid-19 crisis, the study provided a fertile ground for further research on http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.14 2212022 40(3): 221-223 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.14 mafenya exploring technology as enabler for sustainable teaching and learning how covid-19 had an impact on teaching and learning at many institutions across the globe. for example, a study could be conducted to determine how institutions of higher learning managed the spread of the covid-19 pandemic on their campuses. in addition, research could be conducted to measure and determine the effectiveness of technology-enhanced teaching and learning when compared to the traditional face-to-face delivery system. again, a study could be carried out on how institutions that are preparing to move away from the traditional classroom 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(2011). university teachers’ views on the use of information communication technologies in teaching and research. educational technology, 10(3): 318-327. zhang, w., wang, l. & wang, c.h. 2020. suspending classes without stopping learning: china’s education emergency management policy in the covid-19 outbreak. journal of risk and financial management, 13(58): 1-6. https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm13030055 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.14 https://doi.org/10.1097/01.ans.0000286623.84763.e0 https://doi.org/10.1002/hbe2.192 https://doi.org/10.1002/hbe2.192 https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm13030055 _hlk108973850 _hlk114429624 _hlk101646331 _hlk94606241 _hlk68700422 _hlk114433696 pie32(4) book.indb perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 40 gladman thondhlana rhodes university, department of environmental science e-mail: g.thondhlana@ru.ac.za tel: +27-046-603-7007 group work as ‘terrains of learning’ for students in south african higher education gladman thondhlana dina zoe belluigi a common global perception of group work in the higher education context is that it has the potential to act as a platform which can enable student learning by means of interactions, shared diverse experiences, deep engagement with subject concepts and the achievement of tasks collaboratively. indeed, in different socio-economic, historical and institutional contexts, group work activities have become levers by which deeper learning could be achieved. drawing on perceptions and experiences of group work among environmental science students at a south african university, we investigate the ways in which group work could be more expansively viewed as ‘terrains of learning’ for students. the results in general indicate that students have positive perceptions and experiences of group work, though problematic elements are evident. this particular case study points to the attention that should be paid to understanding issues of background, ethnicity and various student personalities which could hinder or enable the desired student learning. such an understanding could contribute to debates regarding the achievement of higher quality learning, given issues of diversity and transformation in the south african higher education context. key words: group work, higher education, diversity, learning introduction and background to the problem in recent years, growing research on higher education teaching and student engagement has drawn together insights about those activities that tend to generate high quality or deeper student learning (rhem, 1995; biggs, 1999; mann, 2001; coates, 2005; haggis, 2006). according to rhem (1995), a deeper approach to learning dina zoe belluigi rhodes university, centre for higher education research, teaching and learning (chertl) e-mail: d.belluigi@ru.ac.za group work as ‘terrains of learning’ for students in south african higher education gladman thondhlana, dina zoe belluig 41 (learning for understanding) is an integrative process in which students synthesise and connect subject material to existing knowledge. whether one’s conception of quality learning relates to the approaches to learning (marton & säljö, 1984; biggs, 1999) or student engagement (mann, 2001; coates, 2005), the active involvement and interactions of students is seen as that which better promotes quality learning. the adherence to such principles could be fostered partially by means of group-based activities. levin (2005) contends that group work provides an educational learning opportunity for students as they are involved in the assessment and processing of alien values and ideas and react to unfamiliar ‘knowledge’ territories. group work is also said to promote team work, creativity, cooperative working methods, understanding one another, opportunities to learn from others’ experiences and perhaps new ways of doing things, ways of dealing with conflicts and disagreements, and preparedness for working in culturally diverse work environments (brownlie, 2001; oakley, felder, brent & eljaj, 2004; levin, 2005). however, group work is not without its challenges, and conflicts at the heart of group work are common (e.g. oakley et al., 2004; knight, 2007). the growing preference for this type of peer engagement might be influenced by the dominance of discourses from socio-cultural theories of learning in ‘western’ education. social learning theories not only provide conceptual lenses for understanding how people learn in social contexts by learning from one another, but also shed light on how those who teach can construct active learning communities. collaborative work in which students work jointly on the same problem is linked with ideas such as situated cognition and scaffolding (edwards, 2009). the notion is that social interactions which are developed in this kind of enquiry arouse group members to think collectively. from vygotsky’s (1978) psychological point of view, this approach drives students to push beyond their individual level of thinking or zone of proximal development and then scaffolds their cognitive processes. while many such psychological theorists might hold that learning is an individual-based process and failure to learn is attributed to individual characteristics, socio-cultural theories of learning have shifted our understanding to one that recognises that learning processes occur within specific contexts that have social and cultural dimensions – a clear departure from the single rationality and a narrow progressive path of learning. with regard to group learning, this allows for a wider and more nuanced focus on social relations and their effect on individual learning within a group. the possibilities of group work become even more relevant given the argument that knowledge is not just an atomistic and fixed deliverable for individual possession, but is socially constructed and contestable, and that the essence of human knowledge is that it is shared. according to edwards (2009: 59), in the group work method, ‘learners work towards a joint understanding through argument as an active process, rather than a mere pooling of information’. in other words, group work recognises the fact that people construct knowledge together. this implies that instructional strategies which promote student learning through collaborative ways ought to be perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 42 encouraged because such arrangements can allow students to engage in higherorder thinking tasks such as analysis, synthesis and evaluation of research results. so, while students might not necessarily work in groups daily, opportunities should be created within the curriculum for them to meet because of the potential imbedded in their interactions – where sharing of information, insights and advices, exploring ideas and solving of problems are typically a collective process. researchers (e.g. levin, 2005; woods, barker & hibbins, 2011) have argued that the values and benefits of group work as a teaching and learning strategy might endure well beyond the teaching class. indeed, most of these group work benefits highlighted above are highly sought after by employers in the working world, especially considering an increasingly globalising world and, as such, this pedagogical method is attractive for those concerned with curriculum responsiveness. there is need for responsible graduates who are global citizens – those who have acquired the knowledge, skills, attitudes and values required for working in a global village (brownlie, 2001) and in a super complex world (barnett, 2004; 2006). however, despite the many seemingly desirable possibilities of the group work method, the various experiences of group work, especially given an increasingly diverse student population nationally, remain underexplored. within the context of south african higher education, the increasingly changing cultural landscape of student populations from previous homogeneity to heterogeneity calls for a re-examination of the different ways in which learning is approached by education practitioners (woods et al., 2011) and experienced by students (mann, 2001). thus, while general studies have been conducted on students’ experiences of group work (e.g. burdett, 2003; hassanien, 2006), our concern is with their perceptions and experiences of the diversity of that group and the impact this has on their experiences. such concerns about the changing composition of students in our national context have resonances with those on our continent, as well as with countries such as canada, australia, usa and uk, with the introduction of massification. the main question that we seek to explore in this paper is whether group work offers ‘terrains of learning’ by facilitating processes of quality learning, using a case study of environmental science students at a south african university. such an understanding could provide ideas for facilitators to be more cognisant of challenges to student learning that could emerge from group work. our representation of this analysis is structured as follows: in the next section, we outline our methodological approach, followed by a presentation and discussion of the implications of the findings, ending with our conclusions and recommendations for future research. our methodological approach the study was conducted with the participation of secondand third-year students in the department of environmental science (des) at a south african higher education institution. secondand third-year students undertake group-based fieldwork group work as ‘terrains of learning’ for students in south african higher education gladman thondhlana, dina zoe belluig 43 projects and a year-long group work research project respectively, so as to echo professional practice where research is most often conducted in teams. group work has been part of des curriculum since 2000 when the department was established. up to six students are placed into groups balanced for diversity in terms of sociocultural backgrounds, gender and their choices of major subject. a move towards diversified groups was a conscious choice of the curriculum developers in des (e.g., see kelly, 2009). over the course of a year, group members work together on a variety of tasks, such as preparing for verbal presentations and preliminary reports, prior to undertaking an individually written examination. critical cross-field outcomes for this group work include the ability to work in a team, identify and solve problems, collect qualitative and quantitative data and use the data effectively, plan and manage a programme of work, and communicate effectively (saqa, 2000: 18). at both second and third-year levels, group work research projects contribute a substantial 32% of the final mark. a peer review system is used to determine an aspect of this grade in an attempt to ensure that group members who are perceived by their fellow group members to have contributed the most earn the highest marks. des’s espoused theory is built on an assumption that group work enriches students’ learning experiences, which motivated this study’s exploration of whether students, indeed, perceived and experienced this to be so. this study sought to elicit responses from these students regarding some important factors that affect the effectiveness of group work, using a hard-copy questionnaire as the data collection method. it is important to note that one of the authors taught the surveyed students; thus, asking students to state who did what in their respective groups could have created a ‘name, shame and blame’ culture which, in turn, could have had a negative impact on group dynamics. therefore, our questionnaire solicited self-reflection of individuals’ positioning in group work rather than the blaming of other group members. using ranked statements, radio boxes and open-ended questions, we designed the questionnaire to capture information on students’ general perceptions of the impact of group work on their learning; their views on and experiences of group work in des particularly; and what they think would work best for them with regard to their learning experiences and perspectives. while it might be a concern in other contexts (andersson, kagwesage & rusanganwa, 2013), multilingualism has not been noted as of concern within this department. students themselves did not explicitly identify language as a major criterion but, in this paper, we make inferences from implicit indications in their open-ended responses of the interplay between culture and language in group work. we also asked questions to obtain students’ views on working in culturally diverse groups, with respect to what they learned about other students’ cultures and what they felt was the most important attitudes for effective group work. a series of likert-type and likert-scale questions (with responses ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree or highest = 1 to lowest = 7) were asked to create a measurement of attitudes towards group work. likert-scale data were analysed based on the composite mean scores from the different series of questions that represented the attitudinal scale, using perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 44 excel. with likert-type items, multiple questions are asked but there is no attempt to combine the responses from the questions into one composite scale (clason & domordy, 1994). categorical analysis was applied to identify and code topics and formulate different themes, the interpretation of which we present in this paper. we collected data after informing students about the intention and purposes of the study. we also highlighted that, while students’ participation was completely voluntary and would not influence their semester grades, their honest responses would be of great value to our understanding of group dynamics and for the improvement of group work exercises in future offerings of courses in des. assurances of participant anonymity and confidentiality were made. in total, the sample consisted of 75 out of a combined total of 106 second and third-year students. second-year students completed their questionnaire in class during the first 15 minutes of the lecture period. out of 68 students, 52 completed the questionnaires because some students were absent and others chose not to participate. third-year students were given the opportunity to complete the questionnaire outside of class and 23 out of 38 students responded. out of all the participating students (n=75), the majority (56%) were white, 32% were black and 12% did not indicate their ethnicity. note that, while we are aware of the problematics of such distinctions, the structural definition we are using for these racial characteristics are to indicate white as of european ancestry and a broad understanding of black as of african descent, including indian and coloured, ‘mixed race’ individuals. this definition remains the predominant separation used within equity discourse nationally. fifty-six percent of the sample students were women, 37% men and 7% chose not to specify. findings and discussions given the diverse backgrounds of the participants, we decided to explore how group work dynamics and effectiveness would be directly or indirectly affected by ethnic background and other individual behaviours and intergroup relations. in this section, we discuss the findings around the key themes that emerged from the study, namely group work and student interactions; group work and student learning experiences; and then, having re-considered those larger contexts, group work dynamics in the face of ethnicity. group work and students’ interactions group work is believed to promote active interactions and negotiations among students given that students have to exchange information and ideas (mann, 2001; knight, 2007). often in group work, students encounter divergent viewpoints which promote exposure to new perspectives and understanding of topics or concepts. however, there are two pedagogical approaches to group work: students can reach final group-based decisions either through consensus or other means. with regard group work as ‘terrains of learning’ for students in south african higher education gladman thondhlana, dina zoe belluig 45 to decision making in group work activities, 40% of the students said that decisions were reached by discussion and consensus, while 27% reported that they arrived at the final decision by voting. the remaining set of the students said one person usually made the decision and others agreed to it. comparison by level of study showed both second(67%) and third-year (65%) students made decisions by voting and consensus. the results in general suggest that the majority of decision making occurred in a seemingly interactive and democratic way. knight (2007) argues that the use of groups can provide a change to the regular classroom routine, but the results are rarely all positive. a common assumption is that, invariably, one or two students in each group might be unwilling to share their insights because they are shy, lack self-confidence or prefer not to perform publically. in this study, most students (61%) reported that, when it came to the verbal presentation of the group work results, they were not at all comfortable. the issue of verbal presentations also came out quite strongly when students evaluated the teaching of a second-year environmental science course that one of the authors teaches. because of these different personalities, the person who becomes the group leader by default or proclamation is often not sensitive to engage the quieter students in conversations (knight, 2007). currie (2007) claims that students who find it difficult to make their voice heard could feel socially isolated which, most likely, promotes alienation rather than active engagement. mann (2001) adds that the issue of voice in higher education should be promoted if students are to engage deeply with certain subject concepts. this is an important proposition in the context of south african higher education which has a history of discrimination against black students. asked about the most important behaviours that influence a group’s ability to be productive, 51%, 40%, 32% and 27% of the students respectively reported the following: group members that express their ideas clearly and listen well; group members that get along very well; groups that are good at brain storming; and members that do what they are told to do. we explored the attitudes of students towards collaborative activities. the means for each subscale (on the five-point likert scale, except for preference variable) are indicated in table 1. the statistical data for the different aspects/variables show mixed indications. most of the attitudinal variables that reflect ability to work in group work, participation and cooperation in group work and preference for diverse group composition were positive as shown by higher means of more than 3.5. perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 46 aspect mean attitudes in group discussions, i always try to participate (5 indicates high level of willingness to participate) 4.3 i feel that i am able to work well in any group (5 indicates high level ability to work in groups) 3.7 cooperation among all group members is necessary for us to accomplish our objectives (5 indicates the majority of respondents believe cooperation is important in group work) 4.5 in our group, my contributions are taken seriously 4 i am expected to make an equal effort towards our group project as all other group members (5 indicates high level of agreement) 4.6 i take on the role of facilitator to move ideas forward or to relieve frustrations (5 indicates high ability to facilitate group work) 3.4 at times, i purposefully do not participate in group discussions (5 indicates high tendency to expend less individual effort when working in a group) 2.1 perceptions perceptions of academic impact of group work (5 indicates high value of group work from an academic statement) 3.5 satisfaction from group work (5 indicates high level of satisfaction) 3.2 i have skills and experience that make me good at work (5 indicates the majority of students have group work experience) 2.4 group composition (5 indicates high preference for group diversity) 3.6 university classes require group projects worth more than 25% of final grade (5 indicates the majority of students support this idea) 2.8 preference (3 indicates high preference to work in groups) 1.3 table 1: means of students’ attitudes and perceptions about working in groups surveys also show that some students felt that their contributions were not taken seriously; hence, they did not actively participate in group work. other students felt that cooperation was not entirely necessary to complete given tasks. with regard to the latter, the findings suggest that groups could be marred by ‘social loafing’ group work as ‘terrains of learning’ for students in south african higher education gladman thondhlana, dina zoe belluig 47 and that, as individuals feel anonymous within large groups, this could further reduce their sense of personal obligation and consequences, what furnham (1997) terms ‘deindividualisation’. however, of specific concern in this paper is how such deindividualisation is problematised in heterogeneous rather than in homogenous groups which might not offer the cover of such individual anonymity. these central concerns are discussed in detail in the next section. in general, the findings show that most students had positive attitudes towards group work, but perceived that group work had not achieved its potential, in part due to the constraints explained below. group work and student learning experience for group work to achieve the desired goal of quality learning, there is need for exchange of information and understanding, which involve the construction of knowledge in which all students contribute and gain new or enriched perspectives (holmes, 2004; knight, 2007). however, group work can be highly frustrating if it is not well planned. several constraints that made group work activities undesirable among students were identified. time management and non-participation of other group members were highlighted as the two main constraints, mentioned by 55% and 39% of the students respectively. free riding by group members in collaborative activities is well documented in the literature (e.g. oakley et al., 2004; levin, 2005; knight, 2007). other constraints mentioned were the dominance of individual group members, personality clashes, coordination issues, intra-group conflicts and different targets or approaches to learning with respect to the final grade. this latter constraint bears further discussion. different academic goals relate to how some might be content with a minimum score to secure a pass, while others might want to achieve higher grades in this particular subject. in this way, we could identify heterogeneous approaches to learning. related to this, less than half of the students (49%) reported that they tried to understand deeply the central concepts of environmental science courses and how these might be applied in practice (deep approach to learning). a further 32% of students said they try to figure out what is required to pass and aim to achieve that, which indicates a strategic approach to learning, while 11% did just enough to pass, and the rest reported a combination of deep and strategic learning depending on factors such as time availability and the weight of the task in relation to the overall grade. those students who were aiming for higher grades claimed that they felt they had ended up taking responsibility and doing most of the group tasks, despite agreements to share the workload equally. the following comment by one participant illustrates this feeling: i dislike that i always have to work harder in group work when other members do not pull their weight. in this regard, in their responses, some of the students stated that they felt as though they were often expected to do more than their group colleagues, while others pointed out that most group tasks or objectives could still be completed with only a few people doing the work. this sense of the group dynamic versus perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 48 individual member performance is revealed in the discrepancy between the higher marks scored by groups as entities (e.g. 75%), compared with when group members were ranked individually by means of peer reviews, where they scored substantially lower marks. as noted in table 1, a substantial proportion of students did not believe university classes should have significant group projects worth more than 25% of their final grade, as was apparent in one student’s remarks: i believe occasional group work can be advantageous but when it becomes relied on too much (such as in the department of environmental science) it is not effective at all. in groups you are only as strong as your weakest member and relying on other people often brings down my marks. this discontent is supported by the fact that most students (68%) said that, given an option, they would work independently. these findings are consistent with findings elsewhere. for example, byrnes and byrnes (2007) argue that most students say they hate groups because the least of the students will drag down the best. referring to these motivated and annoyed students who adopt a deep approach to learning as ‘lone wolves’, byrnes and byrnes (2007) suggest that it might be useful to form a group of such individuals. students reported that they would like group work more if all the group members worked equally hard and had the same vision and desire to excel. group work dynamics and ethnicity with respect to group composition, students had mixed opinions about the effectiveness of composing groups in the manner chosen by des curriculum designers, namely balanced across ethnic backgrounds. more than half (59%) of the students perceived that such balanced groups are likely to achieve the best learning experience for them, arguing that a range of people will in general produce a diverse set of ideas which will be invaluable for the project. one student remarked: with different backgrounds, different and well-rounded perspectives are incorporated into the project. apart from academic benefits, some students also reported that group work offered them an opportunity to learn how to deal with different personalities, which is critical in most organisations, as illustrated in the following statement by a student: my group was not very cohesive but gave me insights on how to deal with problematic personalities in the future. group dynamics are essential and inevitable in life.\ however, a sizeable proportion of the students (41%) felt that diversity was not that important, because group work effectiveness depended on willingness and the proactive nature of those individual members who wanted to work hard and achieve good grades. comparisons of satisfaction measures by preferred learning approach (p = 0.75), gender (p = 0.19) and ethnicity (p = 0.49) yielded statistically insignificant results. perhaps this could be attributed to missing values in an already small data set. hence, some of the results should not be overgeneralised. group work as ‘terrains of learning’ for students in south african higher education gladman thondhlana, dina zoe belluig 49 qualitative responses by the different ethnic groups showed that the majority of students (94%) across the racial and ethnic divide felt, encouragingly, that they could learn from different ethnic backgrounds and experiences. only a smaller proportion (12%) of black students perceived that their views were not considered seriously in group work, as demonstrated in the following statement: sometimes you do learn from people who are different from you in terms of ethnic background but some people do not even consider your opinions because they generalise you to your background. my friends and i have experienced this. this indicates that some black students perceived that ethnicity usually determined whose views in collaborative projects carried more weight, bringing to light the impossibilities of deindividualised anonymity within a culture where individuals still feel constructed as distinct or ‘other’ with regard to their race, culture, gender, language, class, etc. such perceptions are illustrated by remarks from a black student: i think being from different ethnic backgrounds played a huge role as one was judged even before they could present their ideas to the group. the feeling among these students that their ideas were not valued might be a product of history. usher, brynat and johnson (1998) suggest that students’ experience of alienation in higher education context is a function of the socio-historical process. people are positioned differently depending on the discursive practices of socially and historically significant features such as gender, race, class, ethnicity and other marks of difference (usher et al., 1998: 20). in south africa, black communities were discriminated against under apartheid rule and many people still carry these scars and inferiority complexes. in fact, the department of education (2008, cited in thomas 2011: 68) argues that, “in spite of the official dissolution of apartheid in 1994, strained intergroup relations or the perceptions thereof persist in contemporary south africa”. in addition, some cultures are stereotypically viewed as passive, while others are perceived as participative (holmes, 2004; nguyen, terlouw & pilot, 2008). members of social groups that are being discriminated against in general carry the stereotypes associated with their groups into other situations (crocker, 1999). this was apparent in this study: the majority of students who indicated that they were not comfortable with verbal presentation but preferred the traditional teacherstudent lecture were black. this is perhaps attributable to issues regarding language constraints and confidence in exposure, aspects that point to cultural features. such different learning preferences, attitudes and perceptions of others’ learning attitudes from cultural and educational experiences have been found to be problematic in group work (nguyen et al., 2008). ethnicity issues, whether real or perceived, need to be well understood because they might have implications for students’ active participation in group work. the extent to which one can become alienated or engaged in group-based activities has important implications for the effectiveness with which one can perform academic tasks or achieve academically (chemers, hu & garcia, 2001). perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 50 while most students agreed in principle that a mixture of cultures and ethnicity can improve their learning experience, they also highlighted that, while desirable, group work does not always lead to substantive interaction between students or to better academic results. in this study, students from all ethnic groups felt that mixed groups were not always effective because they created challenges with communication. the following statement is testimony to the mixed outcomes of diversity in group work: diversity lends new perspectives but also new problems. if one works with someone who is of similar ethnic group or anything sometimes it helps because you are able to communicate and interact more strongly than someone who is different from you. while the above statement reflects an individual experience, a critical reading might be that communicating across a diversity of viewpoints might force students to make their assumptions explicit, rather than presumed, as might be the case between two individuals from similar backgrounds. while students might prefer what is easiest for them, diversity could offer more learning benefits because the challenges it poses force students to learn about different ways of doing and communicating. nonetheless, it is important to note that all groups (including a culturally homogenous one) mentioned that some of their members did not ‘pull their weight’. according to our interpretation of the analysis, the responses point to some critical aspects. first, gender was a part of our initial concern, because studies have indicated different learning experiences of female and male students (harrop, tattersal & goody, 2007; grebennikov & skaines, 2009) and the course is situated within a national higher education system that has been found to be lacking in pedagogies of sexuality (bennett & reddy, 2009). yet, we found that, with regard to the way in which students conceptualise their peers, gender was not a significant factor in their conscious thinking about group work dynamics, nor with regard to analysing the data according to that filter. secondly, the complexities associated with group work management such as non-participation of group members also seem to transcend the issue of race and hinge more on individual approaches to learning. the diversity of students’ opinions regarding group work within and across different ethnic groups which are discussed in this study support this fact. this has led us to question our own assumptions that race and gender would be issues of considerable concern to the students and the group dynamic. such assumptions might be a matter of transference from the educators’ generation and, thus, while it should continue to be something we are cognisant of, it should not be assumed to be a fixed experience or problem. thirdly, higher education contexts need to go beyond the mere provision of group work skills to previously disadvantaged students or even affective support for them to thrive in ‘alien’ territories. these contexts should endeavour to make such spaces more hospitable and inclusive learning environments (mann, 2001); thus, altering them at a systemic and cultural rather than an agential level. group work as ‘terrains of learning’ for students in south african higher education gladman thondhlana, dina zoe belluig 51 given the rapidly transforming student composition in higher education institutions globally and considering the educational benefits of diversity, it is highly likely that student composition will become even more heterogeneous in the future in south african higher education institutions. this implies a compelling need to provide enabling conditions for students to be at the productive wave-length of working in groups. without such attempts, group work goals of enabling high quality learning might be more difficult to achieve in culturally and ethnically diverse environments, which will add weight to real or perceived prejudice that students might already possess. conclusions and recommendations it has long been recognised that the benefits of group work are not automatic, and that being in an ineffective or dysfunctional team might be inferior to independent study in promoting learning (oakley et al., 2004) and lead to extreme frustration and resentment. it is, therefore, unsurprising that, given the group work constraints discussed, many students reported they would prefer working independently. based on the study, our strong conviction is that these findings are not indicative of the unwillingness of students to engage in group work. instead, the findings perhaps point to the problematic preconditions under which groups are formed and group work is practiced. the seemingly dysfunctional group work might not be due to individuals in the group but instead, as this study suggests, the legacy of assumptions and projections of differences associated with structures such as race. other studies have shown that group work requires group members to have certain attitudes such as respecting other people’s cultures; personality traits such as practice and openness; skills such as building teamwork; integration and knowledge relating to understanding the culture of others (e.g. levin, 2005, woods et al., 2011), which themselves suggest constructions of tolerance and social etiquette which could be culturally based. contemporary discourses construct group work as a good teaching method which provides productive terrains of learning for students in higher education. the assumption is that group work is a neutral method of engaging students and, as such, group work proponents seldom highlight cultural considerations. while group work might be desirable and yield high quality learning, practice on the ground in this case showed mixed conclusions, suggesting a mismatch between the intentions of the curriculum designers and the experience of participants in this context. according to woods et al. (2011: 60), ‘students from diverse backgrounds can have different learning styles and preferences hence it is critical that learning and teaching practices are tailored to meet these diverse needs’. however, we found that it is equally important to understand the factors, including those relating to students’ internal motivation, that make them prefer certain learning styles to others. if group work is to be effective and enjoyable for students, certain steps should be taken to help students become aware that such group work might aid them in skills such as those perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 52 to do with communication, and to equip students to deal effectively with problems that often arise in collaborative learning activities. if the teacher explicitly explains the validity of diversified group work and the worth of the challenges the students might face when problem solving by collaborating, this could lead to more students’ ‘buying in’, increasing the chances of their more willing engagement with the process of group work. our main argument is not that group work is neither desirable nor ineffective, but rather there are exogenous factors that should be explored to gain insight into the attitudes and perceptions of students towards group work. based on the findings, we argue, as have others (e.g. mann, 2001; badat, 2007) that, despite explicit strategies such as group work aimed at developing critical beings for personal engagement in study subjects, inclusion and lifelong learning, the issues and complexities of diversity ought to be paid attention to by facilitators if they are to be harnessed for educational worth. though researchers have argued that the pledge for transformation in south africa higher education has largely missed its target (badat, 2007; hall, 2008; scott, 2009), positive progress has been made. to turn the transformation mandate to full throttle, group work dynamics need to be well understood by means of empirical research, particularly within our national context. in keeping with socio-cultural theories of learning, we believe that the socio-economic and the cultural context of students’ lives and of the institutions where they learn need to be explored further. this is because students might live in different socio-economic landscapes where gender, race, class and other factors, which have an impact on the heterogeneity of the group, might interact significantly in ways that could influence their attitudes to learning in groups. this is fundamental because it has been proven, at least empirically, that it is not the student who matters, but the processes and value systems that shape and direct learning (haggis, 2006; scott, 2009). such an understanding will help to reconfigure how we think about the ability of group work to achieve the goal of high quality learning. to us, this understanding is critical, because it challenges educators to reflect on their teaching strategies and the assumptions that underpin them. on the micro level, in the context of this case study, the nuanced understanding that this research has allowed is being used to not only constructively (re)align (see biggs, 1999) curriculum design regarding group work activities, but also give more consideration of concepts such as voice and the mutual construction of knowledge which have been found helpful for multicultural group work (orr & hulse-killacky, 2006) – with the intention of coming closer to achieving high quality learning. it has also pointed to a need for more reflexivity with regard to the diversity of the educators themselves (simpson, causey & williams, 2007; emirbayer & desmond, 2012). within the context of higher education, we hope this research has resonances for a wider audience and that it would encourage more research on problematising group work as ‘terrains of learning’ for students in south african higher education gladman thondhlana, dina zoe belluig 53 teaching methods in the face of socio-cultural challenges. while the diversity of students in south africa poses the challenge of dealing with the ‘underpreparedness of some students from previously disadvantaged backgrounds’ (boughey, 2004), we maintain that group work could generate high quality learning if properly conceptualised, designed and implemented. as noted earlier, we think these results do not necessarily indicate that collaborative learning strategies do not facilitate learning, rather they point to the need to rethink the factors that could improve the effectiveness of group work. as mann (2001: 8) suggests, ‘critical work must be done to examine the conditions which might promote alienation within higher education contexts’ and the ways in which we can provide hospitality for difference. without this, students could become increasingly alienated from activities which they should be involved in to facilitate their learning. consequently, group work might become ‘platforms of failure’ rather than ‘terrains of learning’. the limitations of our research could be that we drew somewhat tentative inferences regarding diversity and group work. however, we hope our study marks the beginning of and contributes to growing areas of research on the nuances of diversity in group work. if issues of diversity and learning are to be tackled head on and insights into complexities researched, specific details are needed. thus, we hope to contribute to future studies in south african higher education by closely and openly exploring the complex interplays of language, race and class in group work to provide conclusive recommendations references andersson i, kagwesage am & rusanganwa j 2013. negotiating meaning in multilingual group work: a case study of higher education in rwanda. international journal of bilingual education and bilingualism, 16: 436-450. badat s 2007. higher education transformation in south africa post 1994. towards a critical assessment. solomon mahlangu education lecture. 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and ‘tribes’ ([1989]/2001) it finds deeper resonances in trowler’s more recent notion of ‘teaching and learning regimes’ (2009). it begins to identify some of the regimes that characterise one political science department but discovers that these are unstable and diverse, suggesting that, in practice, there are very few unifying ‘tribal’ values or uncontested ‘territorial’ practices at work in this context. the study offers these observations on the basis of an ethnographic account of one intellectual community doing the work of inducting first-year students into a new discipline. it has a particular focus on lecturers’ perceptions of the resources and capabilities of beginning students, describing some of the lecturers’ frustrations with early students’ literacy practices. these are metaphorically represented by the idea of ‘taxi rank analysis’, that is, many new students’ tendency to emotive opinions based in experiential, local knowledge rather than the more guarded, grounded analyses of academic political science. finally, the study considers some of the implications these descriptions could have for more responsive teaching and learning regimes in the social sciences. some examples are offered in the departmental narratives recorded in this study. keywords: academic literacies; epistemology; disciplinary tribes and territories; teaching and learning regimes; teaching the social sciences introduction students entering universities for the first time encounter the phenomenon of disciplinarity in a much stronger form than they have experienced at school. while they may have been aware of the varying literacy expectations of different school ‘subjects’ these were probably neither articulated nor understood as significant. yet the values and practices of different disciplines in universities are widely divergent and many beginner students need help in making sense of these variations. in humanities faculties, students meet ‘new’ disciplines (such as psychology, philosophy or political science) for which they often have only the most reductionist or populist notions. little in their school experiences can have prepared them for the specialised ways of knowing, thinking or practising that they encounter in disciplines such as these. this paper addresses this issue in relation to political science. i will argue that many novice students’ predilection for ‘taxi rank analysis’ can set up both opportunities and constraints in the induction phases of this particular discipline: it is not an entirely negative student attribute. this paper uses this term metaphorically to represent the kinds of emotive language based in everyday experience that students in the social sciences tend to bring to the study of newly encountered disciplines. the term was coined by one of the political science lecturers in this study, and he used it to refer to entrenched, unsubstantiated views about current political issues or events often passionately shared in casual community contexts, such as when travelling in a taxi or waiting at taxi ranks. in south africa the taxi is the major means of public transport for many working-class people but every social group has its own version of such discourses based, for example, around the pub, the gym, the village pump or the sunday ‘braai’. 41niven — teaching political science to first-year university students as a researcher in the field of academic development, i am an ‘outsider’ in the discipline of politics but with a professional interest in what happens on the ‘inside’ of the teaching and learning of various humanities disciplines (jacobs, 2005). for some years i was the coordinator of an extended studies programme which facilitated novice students’ access to various disciplines in the humanities. this role generated a series of small-scale, action research-based projects of which this paper is the most recent. these research papers have now been incorporated into a phd study which explores the meta-theoretical orientations of those, like me, who conduct close-up research into the teaching, learning and assessment (tla) of beginner students and how such orientations have influenced the nature and impact of the knowledge claims that we can make. the data for this study were mostly collected during 2009 for a study that was to explore the conflict of epistemological values between students and their lecturers in a first-level political science module. in practice, however, i soon discovered that i could not do justice to both communities in a single paper and therefore focused my attention on the students alone and wrote ‘intersecting epistemologies: first-year students’ knowledge discourses in a political science module’ (niven, 2011). this earlier paper identified elements in a group of students’ social epistemologies and argued that it is in the intersection of social and disciplinary ways of knowing that student access to academic discourses can be lost or gained. i turn now to the data that concern the teaching and teachers of political science in an attempt to understand how lecturers conceptualise the epistemology of their discipline, whether they share common values or approaches to tla, how they view the learning resources of new students, and how these ideas, often unconsciously held, play out in particular kinds of curricular decisions and pedagogies. using another concept from anthropology, in this paper i understand myself as ‘studying up’ (nader, 1972). this means that the researched have considerably more ‘social’ and ‘symbolic capital’ (bourdieu, 1986) than the researcher in a given research environment. nader (1972:283) writes: “there is a certain urgency to the kind of anthropology that is concerned with power, for the quality of ... our lives may depend on the extent to which [we] understand those who shape attitudes and control institutional structures”. students need to be able to decode and articulate the implicit knowledge assumptions underlying new disciplines and their experts. i understand one of the roles of academic development researchers as initiating this process of articulation on behalf of those who seek access to the social and symbolic capital of disciplinary membership. anthropological understandings of university literacies the central purpose of this paper, therefore, is to develop rich, ethnographic descriptions of a community of political scientists who are inducting newcomers into the cultural ways of knowing that inform their discipline, thereby drawing some insights into the complex processes of ‘epistemological access’ (morrow, 1993:3). in an attempt to unpack the nature of a disciplinary culture, i started out by using becher’s ideas of ‘academic territories’ (the content areas of disciplines) inhabited by ‘tribes’ (the practitioners within the disciplines) (becher and trowler, [1989]/2001). however, trowler’s later work has advanced these conceptions and avoided the potential for ‘epistemological essentialism’ (2009) which is implied in becher’s ([1989]/2001) earlier analyses of the knowledge characteristics of disciplines along two axes – ‘hard/pure’ ‘soft/pure’ or ‘hard/applied’ and ‘soft/applied’. instead trowler (2009) has advanced the more nuanced idea of teaching and learning regimes (tlrs) to represent the complexity and range of underlying values and assumptions that are at work in disciplinary environments. these regimes include eight dynamic and interrelated aspects1: tacit assumptions; implicit theories (of tla); recurrent practices; conventions of appropriateness; codes of signification; discursive repertoires; subjectivities in interaction and power relations. tlrs enable an analysis of the unique configurations of approaches that are contingent on particular disciplinary or departmental environments. an academic literacies understanding of learning in higher education also has an anthropological bias because it understands literacies as cultural phenomena (e.g., street, 1993; baynham, 1995; barton, 2000). ways of using reading and writing are particular to socio-cultural communities – including disciplinary communities. thus, ‘academic literacy’, far from being a generic phenomenon, needs to be understood as 42 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 “complex, contested, specific and ... contextualised” (haggis, 2003:100). it is not a single, unitary concept but each discipline has its own “… peculiar ways of knowing, selecting, evaluating, reporting, concluding and arguing that define the discourse of [the] community” (bartholomae, 1985:134). so teaching any discipline, especially in the early phases, involves being explicit about the values, knowledge frameworks and normative practices that carry these specialised ways of knowing. yet there are also community or social ways of knowing that accompany students as they enter the academy and lecturers need to be aware of these as well. they need to be conscious of potential areas of tension or conflict between different kinds of epistemologies, both social and disciplinary. in an academic literacies model, learning is ‘an apprenticeship’; it needs “a number of years to develop”; “new forms of expression will need to be explicitly modelled and explored” and this can only occur “within the teaching of the subject” (haggis, 2003:101). lecturers are experts who induct novices – the undergraduate students. so the literacy expectations of disciplines cannot be prepared beforehand at schools, or on access or foundation courses through the teaching of generic, transferable skills. they are best taught by the ‘tribal’ specialists in situ and in practice, from within disciplinary ‘territories’. northedge and mcarthur (2009:113) have extended the idea of learning as situated apprenticeship. they explain that “[t]he route to construing unfamiliar meaning is not through formal, logical steps but through experience of participating in the flow of meaning making within relevant discursive contexts” (2009:113). it is about “becoming immersed in the ways of thinking and knowing of a knowledge community” and “learning to partake in its trade in knowledge” (ibid). they avoid the much-used metaphor of ‘scaffolding’ learning for students, seeing it as an ‘arm’s length’ concept (2009:124). rather they see learning as students and teachers “diving into the turbulent waters of the disciplinary discourse community together” (ibid) and entering into “acts of shared meaning making” (2009:113). furthermore, northedge and mcarthur understand learning in higher education as essentially comprising both ‘outer aspects’ (the intellectual-cognitive dimension that privileges the discipline and its discourses) and ‘inner aspects’ (which emphasise personal-social conceptions of learning – a more constructivist notion) (2009:107). they argue that both aspects are necessary for successful learning. collecting and analysing the data i gathered data from a range of different sources during 2009 and into early 2010. first, i conducted extended, semi-structured conversations with five of the lecturers involved in the curriculum design and/ or practical teaching of first-year political science, including an interview with the head of department. i taped and later transcribed all five conversations. i also collected a number of documents: the ‘introduction to political science’ tutorial book that assigns readings and short written assignments; copies of the first and second essay assignments for the semester; a copy of one lecturer’s teaching portfolio in which she sets out her teaching philosophy; a record of an email conversation between a lecturer and the subject librarian responsible for political science; finally, a departmental flyer that introduces the discipline to newcomers. i will represent the lecturers as follows: ‘g’ is the head of department – the general; ‘m’ is a senior lecturer – the mother; ‘ds 1’ and ‘ds 2’ were phd/doctoral students who also teach in the department, and ‘nl’ was a young, junior lecturer – new lecturer – who assumed the running of the firstsemester modules during 2009. i analysed the data with regard to the theories and models briefly outlined in the section above. so i sought out evidence for the territorial or tribal nature of this discipline and department (becher & trowler, [1989]/2001); i attempted to identify particular trls in the department (trowler, 2009); i adopted an academic literacies perspective on learning as situated apprenticeship (haggis, 2003; northedge & mcarthur, 2009) and observed the lecturers adopting their expert roles. i mapped their approaches against northedge and mcarthur’s (2009:110) analysis of teaching in he as emphasising either outer or inner aspects of learning. the lecturers in the study have checked and responded to transcripts of their interviews and read earlier versions of this paper, some responding fully to claims or observations that i have made. i have 43niven — teaching political science to first-year university students incorporated their ideas and comments into the final version of this paper and they have kindly provided written permission for me to offer this paper for publication. the ‘territory’ of politics 101 the course to which this study refers is politics 101, a module specifically designed during the mid-1990s as an introduction to the discipline. the ‘territory’ is, firstly, some of the basic ideas, concepts, institutions and processes in political science (department of politics [dp] flyer, 2009) in which the students are introduced to concepts such as ‘government’, ‘democracy’, ‘constitution’, ‘legitimacy’ or ‘ideology’. this is followed by four country case studies – india, south africa, nigeria and britain – in which basic forms of government of each are compared and contrasted. the traditional expectation during this first semester is that the students write two essays of about 1 500 words each, and three shorter tutorial assignments each of about 500 words. the tutorial assignments are based on full-length academic articles which analyse the political structures of the four countries above. the longer essays are expected to refer to between six to eight reputable academic sources, all of which need to be located by the students, although in 2009 some recommended texts were on ‘short loan’ in the library. the first essay is ‘guided’ in the sense that it is broken down into three sections: 1. define and discuss the concept of democracy; 2. distinguish between liberal and social models of democracy and 3. appraise the problems of democracy in any one african country (excluding nigeria, south africa and zimbabwe) since 1990 (dp, 2009:essay 1). the second essay asked students to critically assess the challenges to federalism and democracy in india or critically examine the contributions of civil society organisations and the mass media to the restoration of electoral democracy in 1999 in nigeria and the role they have played in democratic consolidation since then (dp, 2009: essay 2). roughly, this was the curriculum in 2009. however, this territory is shifting. during 2009 the first essay was being replaced by a multiple choice question (mcq) test and much shorter, mediated pieces of writing. the new, young lecturer in the department (nl) was challenging the values and content of this curriculum, believing that it should have a stronger theoretical and philosophical base. he claimed that [the current course] doesn’t ground [the students] enough – we need to look at classic readings and figures – like plato, machiavelli, js mill, rousseau. this course emphasises democracy, although this is not explicit. my impression was that he understood the curriculum he had inherited as a rather tired, idealistic model developed during the period of the newly established democracy in south africa. he claims that students are now smarter, better prepared, have better english and have more political knowledge ... the ways of learning have changed, and we need to adapt. so at the beginning of 2012 the department was discussing the redesign of the curriculum to give it a stronger theoretical orientation and the modes of assessment were being reconceived too. northedge and mcarthur (2009) describe a traditional ‘oxbridge’ model of teaching and learning which assumes that students will ‘read’ subjects for themselves. students are assumed to have enough background knowledge in the discipline to acquire new content knowledge they encounter: university teachers can assume their students’ independence. similarly, an ‘implicit assumption’ (trowler, 2009) of this department appears to be that students are competent enough, firstly, to locate suitable reading materials for their essays, then to understand and appropriate the readings, to use them in arguments and, finally, to be able to critique or appraise the value of such sources. yet the quietly desperate tone of the following email conversation in march 2009 between the subject librarian and ds 1 shows that the above is probably an unrealistic assumption. the librarian writes: your students are dribbling into our offices in the library – many of them don’t know where to even begin with the essay .... can we not arrange a session to teach them how to find journal articles, newspaper articles and books? the lecturer replies: we have 315 students in this class, with 17 groups of 15–17 students per group. i suppose organising [library] sessions for them will be a logistical nightmare. if we decide to run a session for each group, we will have to do it 17 times. i am not sure how to go about this. any ideas? the librarian responds: the problem is the essay deadline which is sometime next week ... . nevertheless they organised classes on basic information searches for 315 students during the course of a week, showing 44 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 remarkable professional dedication. however, this does appear to be an ‘ad hoc’ response to the realities of students’ actual capabilities at least in the use of information resources. the political scientists: the ‘tribes’ as i came to study this department, my initial response was to problematise becher’s original concept of ‘academic tribes’. this community of lecturers brought such a variety of language and cultural backgrounds, life histories, prior educational and teaching experiences, ages, political views and approaches to the teaching of politics that there appeared to be no characteristic ‘tribal culture’ that i could identify. pace (2009:96) claims that “a host of personal factors mediate between the patterns of a discipline and their expression in a particular situation”. however, pace’s claim was challenged by one of the lecturers in this study: a department sets parameters within which lecturers operate regardless of their personal views or backgrounds: there is an institutional and procedural ethos to which we defer (ds 2). thus, my observations regarding the inherent diversity of this ‘tribe’ of disciplinary experts remains an open, unresolved question. this lecturer is claiming that whatever his personal inclinations or individual history might be, these would be set aside in deference to an ‘institutional ethos’. the head of department is a middle-aged, west african man most of whose tertiary education had been in ‘ivy league’ american universities. he has held the post of head of department since the mid 1990s and his position of leadership and strong personality exert a powerful influence on the departmental culture. the students and junior departmental members seem in awe of him and his nickname is ‘the general’ (g) and although this is respectful and affectionate, it is suggestive of hierarchical ‘power relationships’ in this context. the curriculum territory of the module was mostly designed and taught for many years by a white, zimbabwean woman, now in her late 50s, and although she no longer teaches it, it bears her imprint. she was an undergraduate at a south african university in the 1970s and her postgraduate studies and early academic teaching experience occurred in an embattled, crisis-ridden ex-rhodesia where she was taken on by the local university as a ‘temporary teaching assistant’. she later taught politics in the united kingdom and was appointed to her current post in south africa in the mid-1990s. i have quoted from her teaching portfolio in this study. she is represented as ‘mothering’ the students. as a feminist it is perhaps surprisingly that she is tolerant of the label: if the students are comfortable with that label, if it is enabling ... then there is nothing wrong with it ... we are caught up in a gendered matrix ... students turn things into a family situation and [they] need fathers and mothers ... [i] leave it as it is ... you have ‘the general’ at one end of the system and ‘the mother’ at the other – i guess we balance each other out. it’s important that staff operate together ... the system works. since she accepts this construction, and understands it as enabling, i will refer to her as m. two phd students from a west african country were responsible for the teaching of the politics 101 curriculum in 2009. both were graduates of universities in their home countries but had come to south africa to complete their doctoral studies. their sensitivity towards the institutional culture of a south african university, highlighted by the comparisons they were able to make with their home universities, provided illuminating perspectives. i will refer to them as ds 1 and ds 2 (doctoral students 1 and 2). ds 1 coined the term ‘taxi-rank analysis’. he explains: everyone ... has an opinion about virtually every political issue ... even one who has never been to school. whether they can substantiate their views or offer coherent/logical/factual premises to support such views is a different question. they make arguments from the heart (characterised by emotion) rather than the head (characterised by a reasoned approach). i paint a scenario of a taxi rank ... where one might find people arguing and holding on to entrenched opinions but they are not thinking carefully and close their minds to alternative, perhaps valid, explanations. i do not use this analogy to stifle personal views ... in fact i encourage students to contribute to class discussions but i follow any views with the ‘why’ question ... .2 in mid-2009 a new member of the department (nl) was appointed and he took over the teaching of politics 101 in 2010. he is a young, black south african man in the first years of his academic career, but all his postand undergraduate studies were in the university department and institution in which he is 45niven — teaching political science to first-year university students now employed. his school and family background had not prepared him for university study. he explained that i knew no one who had been to a university, absolutely no one, not even the teachers ... i was a ‘walkin’ student. i walked in to the university and said i wanted to come. his reflections on the introductory curriculum as the lecturer in 2010 and as a novice student himself in 2001 also provided another set of fascinating perspectives. the roles of both metaphorical ‘generals’ and ‘mothers’ in inducting new members into a learning community align with northedge and mcarthur’s model of teaching as fundamentally focused on either outer (discipline-centred) or inner (learner-centred) aspects of learning. these approaches initially appeared to be incompatible and inherently contradictory and i speculated on how early students might make sense of such divergence. yet northedge and mcarthur argue that both aspects are necessary for effective learning. for example, lecturers need to be a primary source of disciplinary knowledge – an outer aspect – but, at the same time, hold back, to provide students with spaces to learn in their own ways – an inner aspect. similarly, lecturers need to gain insights into the minds and lives of their students – an inner aspect – but they also need to keep up with recent developments in their discipline – an outer aspect. again, they need to set the necessary disciplinary standards while, at the same time, encourage students in their own interim understandings and connections. so the students need to acquire “a disciplinary voice ... but also retain and develop their own voices” (northedge & mcarthur, 2009:119). thus, i began to conceive of the department as sustaining the interplay of inner and outer aspects of learning, albeit in a delicate balance represented by two senior departmental figures in this case. each were privileging different aspects of the learning process but there seemed to be a fundamental complementarity along the lines of a traditional family system. new students may well have an intuitive grasp of this system, easily transferring it into a learning domain, and it is possible that they did not experience it as confusing or contradictory at all. teaching and learning regimes there seemed to be various ‘tacit theories’ (trowler, 2009) about the nature of new students and their resources for learning or gathering information. g’s theory, however, was not at all tacit (and indeed not uncommon): students have been socialised like kindergarten children. they have no understanding of what it would take to make them successful. i blame the schools. they come with certain behaviours that are in conflict with university learning ... they don’t know how to behave appropriately. ds 1 contrasted new south african students with his own student experiences in west africa in the late 1990s: you could have power cuts for days so no access to computers, no up-to-date journals. we had to rely on books, sometimes outdated. we didn’t have tutors or mentors that supported us ... they didn’t listen to our stories. there was no ‘spoon-feeding’. we had to exert ourselves to survive the system. [however] ... there were surprisingly few drop-outs ... the environment was so competitive that getting a place at university was a privilege. the social life was nil, zero, we buried ourselves in work. set against this account, south african students present as dependent, disempowered, unsure of how to participate in the “flow of meaning making” or how to “dive in to the turbulent waters of a new discipline” (northedge & mcarthur, 2009) – nor how, even, they might ‘compete’ or ‘bury themselves in work’ in the new context. one example was seen in students’ use of consultation times – a formal, well-established ‘recurrent practice’ in this department. new students tend to misuse this practice, understanding these times as sites for querying assignment marks even when they have not taken time to read the formative feedback provided on their marked assignments (ds 1). regarding students’ office visits, g says: they come to consult me ... but don’t write anything down. they ask for clarification two or three times but don’t write – they come without pen or paper. thus, the students and lecturers find themselves in conflict with departmental ‘conventions of appropriateness’ (trowler 2009). boughey (2006) records a similar frustration: a student knocks tentatively on her office door, requesting a personal, face-to-face explanation for instructions already clearly written down on a notice board outside. she interprets this in terms of an orientation to oral learning grounded in prior educational experiences. 46 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 however, the earlier paper in which i explore beginner students’ epistemological values (niven, 2011) suggests that there is very little in many students’ prior learning experiences that can prepare them for the appropriate conventions at work in university settings – even in such issues as the proper uses or meanings of consultation times or notice boards which may have served rather different purposes in school contexts. when lecturers are strained by students’ violations of the conventions, they reach for resources in their own ‘discursive repertoires’: students must not be spoon-fed ... we must not spoil them ... or they will not develop the necessary coping skills (nl). yet an alternative construction of new students is expressed by m. she claims in her teaching portfolio that one of the controlling ideas of her professional practice is the idea of the teacher as primus inter pares3. she writes: it has been my experience that i can learn as much from my students as they can learn from me, and i make approachability one of the top priorities as a teacher. g wants to unscramble or tease students’ knowledge, almost suggesting a necessary destabilisation of first-year students’ ways of knowing possibly in the vygotskian sense of removing “fossils of old learning” (miller, 1989:158). but m’s discourse is different: if i look at my course evaluations and i see responses that speak of discomfort or alienation i feel i have failed. one feels that discomfort is part of the learning process while the other thinks that students must feel comfortable if they are to learn successfully. although m agrees that new students are bad at ordinary hard work and unwilling to put in the necessary effort as a marxist she interprets these behaviours in terms of a capitalist ethos. competition is necessary to survive and many students are not yet in a position where they can compete ... competition implies hard work which is a scary thing to do because it invites you to fail if you come from a disadvantaged background. the project is just too overwhelming ... they are despairing ... and then they find ways around it such as plagiarising from wikipedia. it’s not just laziness or inherent ineptitude. m’s interpretation of students’ ‘subjectivities in interaction’ (trowler, 2009) also emanates from her marxist outlook: the objective factor is always class ... not race. race is subjective, temporary, short-term, abnormal. in the post-apartheid era class kicks in but students hang on to their subjectivities – race. in marxist terms, she suggests, black students belong to two broad class categories – those who have been to either private or ex-model c schools and those who have been through historically disadvantaged schools – but they are still bound together by the subjectivity of race. students from rural backgrounds try and recreate their cultural ground in inappropriate settings. [yet] ... from any culture there are some very enabling, knowledge-grasping elements, as well as the opposite, so when you know what you are dealing with you know what to appeal to. thus, her disciplinary training in marxism helps her make sense of why novice students present as they do. the final comment in m’s analysis above suggests a pedagogical way forward: lecturers need to identify and use the epistemological resources that students’ various class and cultural backgrounds can yield and make deliberate use of these as resources for building new kinds of cultural networks and values that more closely resemble those of the academic territory of political science. knowledge-grasping elements i turn now to identifying some of the knowledge-grasping elements that are available to beginner students in political science. for example, the lecturers generally agreed that many students are willing to vocalise ... they have got good oral skills. they challenge what you are saying. [their claims] might not be wellgrounded ... and be based on something they have read in the papers, or something someone told them once. we have heated debates ... i see some strongly entrenched positions, they get emotional, they use ideas from their communities or townships. but, in a particularly important comment, i observed that ds 1 was deliberately working with these discourses to introduce a new epistemological stance: i tell [the students] if you proceed on the basis of assumptions you have already got, it doesn’t make you any different from the man at the taxi rank who has [also] got an opinion about something. but i don’t want taxi rank analysis. we do have ways of testing what we say. you need to change your opinions when reason demands that you do so. so rather than mocking ‘taxi-rank analysis’ he uses its creative potential as a knowledge-grasping element. m describes this as the tricky part of teaching political science. we 47niven — teaching political science to first-year university students have to take what they think they know, for example, about political parties ... and reconfigure it in the language of political analysis rather in the language of ordinary conversation. undergraduate lecturers need to consciously model the ways in which this could be done: how students’ everyday experiences of the political and social world can be reconfigured into the formal discourses of a social science. but such a complex reconfiguration needs time, opportunities for practice, frequent immersion, comfort and encouragement as well as discomfort and challenge. another area in which this reconfiguration is required is in the links students tend to make between the academic discipline of political science and urgent issues of practical social justice. this can also be frustrating for lecturers: students think that politics is to do with corruption ... or parliament, or elected officials, or elections, or about us all having jobs ... no, no, no! (nl). yet, ironically, i observed the lecturers themselves making similar links at times. ds 1 explained, for example: i want them [the students] to link the concepts we teach with real-life events ... if they can go home and explain to the little ones, ‘this is an election’, ‘we have parties, proportional representation’, ‘this is our system in south africa ... we did this in our politics class’ ... that is what i want them to be able to do. g too affirms political science’s links with the practice of ethical citizenship: i want them to be engaged, they can be part of a citizenship of the world – not to be great peacemakers, but their lives can contribute. they need to understand each other as human beings, engage with foreign students, respect refugees. so the moral content and humanitarian implications of practical ‘politics’ cannot, it seems, be entirely separable from academic ‘political science’. but this too could work advantageously in the teaching of the discipline: just as ‘taxi rank analysis’ need not be learning constraint, so a personal passion for justice and equity could be gradually reconfigured into discourses of rational, independent critique. concluding remarks teaching political science is a subtle balance between a range of competing discursive regimes – a complex array of those of students, the lecturers and of the discipline itself and none of these, in themselves, is uncontested or predictable. in this study i have observed lecturers making some wise and fruitful links across these discursive boundaries thereby facilitating beginners’ access into new disciplinary territory. the toughness of the disciplinary expectations were, at times, mediated by discourses of support and nurture and there was often explicit help for acquisition of new kinds of literacies or values. the students were not always understood as hopelessly underprepared – there were other, competing discourses at work in the department in which the students were conceived as bearing certain kinds of capital that could be generative during the long processes of disciplinary induction. this department was certainly not a ‘tribe’: there were dramatic divergences of approach, attitudes and values. i could not observe an agreed disciplinary ‘territory’ nor a clear, unitary epistemic order. in fact, these issues seemed to be in flux: the divergences sometimes worked harmoniously, sometimes conflictually. to make sense of current students and their learning resources, lecturers reached for the perspectives of their own learning histories, but although these offered useful insights, they were not always helpful – the lecturers’ learning worlds had been substantially different. others used their own theoretical training in political science to interpret students’ learning behaviours. so the application of marxist frames of class and capital provided a humane interpretation of students’ apparent maladjustment to university learning. the conscious identification of ‘knowledge grasping elements’ from within students’ existing resources was particularly helpful. thus, ‘taxi-rank analysis’ was understood as a useful point of departure into the discipline, as was the notion of political science’s links with issues of practical social justice – although, of course, both ideas needed careful, conscious re-configuring in the context of academic study. other prior literacies were recognised: students’ orientations to oral learning were acknowledged and deemed useful. yet, as a disciplinary outsider, i would suggest that lecturers were unrealistic about the students’ preparedness for academic reading. most students, whatever their class or background, come into universities underprepared in this regard and require explicit guidance in the location and appropriate use 48 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 of academic reading materials. it was not, in my view, ‘spoon-feeding’ or ‘spoiling’ them to offer help with libraries and online searches as in the training offered to the students in 2009: it was excellent, necessary pedagogy and would need to be a part of any effective first-level curriculum. new students need disciplinary experts who dive into turbulent disciplinary waters alongside them, demonstrating and explaining the particular ways of knowing and being in political science. they need many opportunities to observe and practice these ‘strange’ new ways of reading, speaking, arguing or writing. with this kind of help, they will be granted access to powerful disciplinary membership, but without engaged, expert guidance their dialogues will degenerate into superficial, generic ‘chatter’ and opportunities for growing personal confidence in new disciplinary identities could be lost to unchallenged ‘taxi-rank analysis’. endnotes 1 trowler terms these eight aspects of a disciplinary culture ‘moments’ (2009) probably to signify their provisional, unstable character. 2 this explanation was provided by the lecturer after he read an earlier draft of this paper. he felt it needed a fuller, more nuanced account of the notion of ‘taxi rank analysis’. 3 “the first among equals”. references bartholomae d 1985. inventing the university. in: m rose (ed.). when a writer can’t write: studies in writer’s block and other composing-process problems. new york: guilford. barton d 2000. situated literacies: reading and writing in context. in: m hamilton & r ivanic (eds). london: routledge. baynham m 1995. literacy practices: investigating literacy in social contexts. london: longman. becher t [1989]/2001. academic tribes and territories: intellectual enquiry and the cultures of disciplines. milton keynes: open university press. boughey c 2006. academic study as a social practice. in: p sutherland & j crowther (eds). lifelong learning: concepts and contexts. london: routledge. bourdieu p 1986. the forms of capital. in: jg richardson (ed.) handbook for theory and research for the sociology of education. new york: greenwood. haggis t 2003. constructing images of ourselves? a critical investigation into ‘approaches to learning’ research in higher education. british educational research journal, 29: 1. 89-104. jacobs c 2005. on being an insider on the outside: new spaces for integrating academic literacies. teaching in higher education, 10:4. miller r 1989. conceptual issues in theorising about cognition. south african journal of higher education, 3(1):154-159. morrow w 1993. epistemological access in the university. ad issues, 1:3-4. nader l 1972. up the anthropologist: perspectives gained from studying up. in: d hymes (ed.). reinventing anthropology. new york: pantheon books. niven pm 2011. intersecting epistemologies: novice students in a political science module. teaching in higher education, 16(6):641-653. northedge a & mcarthur j 2009. guiding students into a discipline: the significance of the teacher. in: c kreber (ed.). the university and its disciplines. new york: routledge. pace d 2009. opening history’s black boxes: decoding the disciplinary unconscious of historians. in: c kreber (ed.). the university and its disciplines. new york: routledge. street b 1993. cross-cultural approaches to literacy. cambridge: cambridge university press. trowler p 2009. beyond epistemological essentialism: academic tribes in the twenty-first century. in: c kreber (ed.). the university and its disciplines. new york: routledge. 39 research in a south african faculty of education: a transformative approach petra engelbrecht canterbury christ church university national and international developments in higher education and the resultant pressure on universities to demonstrate excellence, including excellence in research, had a far-reaching effect on faculties of education who had traditionally focused more on excellence in teaching than on research. in south africa, as part of transformation policies after 1994, the south african government made a deliberate effort to restructure the higher education landscape, resulting in a number of enforced mergers between universities and teacher education colleges. these complex contextual issues had a profound effect on research development in education faculties. this paper focuses on a transformative approach to research development initiatives in a south african faculty of education over a period of three to four years. keywords: research capacity development, research in education, peer-reviewed publications, transformative approaches to development, research output, transformative leadership, excellence in research introduction current social and economic transitions, particularly those associated with the concept of “globalisation” and the shift to a “knowledge-based economy” have had a profound effect on higher education institutions, including on the ideals of quality assurance and excellence (bitzer, 2010). the resultant escalation of policy concern with respect to accountability in higher education and the adoption of selective performancerelated funding procedures have had a dramatic effect on research development (light & cox, 2001; oancea, engelbrecht & hoffman, 2009). these international developments also had an impact on higher education in south africa in its transition from apartheid to an equal and democratic society, the most important challenge being redressing past inequalities and transforming the education system to serve a new social dispensation and respond to new realities and opportunities (doe, 1997). key policy initiatives over the past decade such as the education white paper 3 (doe, 1997) the higher education act, 1997 (act 101 of 1997) and the national plan for higher education (nphe) (doe, 2000) emphasise the key role of research in affirming the production, acquisition and application of knowledge towards national growth, competitiveness and innovation (buijnath, christiansen & ogude, 2007). in an analysis of the state of research commissioned by the african national congress (anc) in 1992, it was found that the science and technology system inherited from decades of apartheid was internationally isolated, fragmented, uncoordinated and not in the interest of all south africans (oancea et al., 2009; mouton, 2006). it was therefore important for the postapartheid government to revive a culture of research in universities as a basic minimum requirement for claiming to be sites of knowledge generation and for them to be comparable with more research-intensive institutions in other parts of the world (zeleza, zeleza & olukoshi, 2004). new initiatives to increase research output in universities were introduced and funding for universities by the national department of education was allocated for teaching inputs and outputs, and research production (measured by the number of master’s and doctoral graduates and the number of research publications) (inglesi & pouris, 2008). simultaneously, however, faculties of education in south africa faced additional challenges. as part of the government’s initiative to improve the quality of teacher education, the majority of teacher training colleges were closed down in 2001, and the remaining colleges merged with faculties of education at universities, thereby reducing the number of teacher education facilities as well as the teacher education capacity of the country. faculties of education, like other professional faculties (e.g. health sciences and 40 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 engineering), deal with a field of study rather than a discipline and, although faculties of education in south africa vary considerably in size, composition and function, a result of the incorporation of teacher education colleges into universities has been the establishment of two relatively distinctive groups in most education faculties. in the first group, the orientation is to teacher education, and the background of the majority of this group is distinguished professional service in schools and teacher education colleges, with relatively little experience of educational research. the background of the second, much smaller group is likely to be in a foundation discipline, often without any practical experience as a school teacher. members of this group view themselves as academics and researchers, and tend to justify their existence in terms of their scholarly achievements (oecd, 2000). the result has been that education faculties have had severe difficulties in increasing research output, and university managements have tended to refer rather disapprovingly to these faculties as traditional teaching faculties. pressure to merge these groups in order to create a positive research culture with an emphasis on excellence now forms an integral part of the challenge to develop sustainable research cultures. literature on the development of research cultures and capacity development tends to focus, in general, on the development of research design and methodological skills, with the result that the social and organisational contexts within which individuals and groups of researchers function have been neglected (dison, 2004; engelbrecht, 2005). dison (2004) as well as balfour and lenta (2009) point out that the complex and wide-ranging nature of research capacity means that the development of this capacity should be a long-term, multidimensional and multilayered process. this article thus focuses on the description and evaluation of the development of a multidimensional approach to research development within a transformative view of social justice in a faculty of education. development of research in a specific faculty of education in this section the theoretical approach and the cultural-historical context within which this faculty is placed will be briefly discussed, followed by a discussion of a transformative approach to research capacity development and the translation of vision for change into language and action. theoretical approach this article is placed within a transformative view of social justice against the backdrop of the unique south african cultural and historical background. according to christensen (1996), this view of social justice avoids the contradictions that may be created by multiple views of social justice, including the economic and political (distributive) or individualistic views of social justice. individualistic views tend not to acknowledge the social context within which individuals function in society, and can therefore further disadvantage certain communities. communitarian and distributive views often lack specificity in their prescriptions of community-based forms of governance and the recognition of power relationships that shape injustice. a transformative view of social justice, however, confronts individual as well as historical and structural forces. it can contribute to the development of a society in which working, living and learning together can lead to a more reasonable, unbiased and acceptable nation (mahlomaholo & francis, 2011). this research development programme is thus founded on a view of social justice that focuses on the distribution of resources, access and social cohesion, and embraces participatory strategies (artiles, harris-muri & rosenberg, 2006; christensen, 1996). a necessary connection in this article is made between a transformative view of social justice with its emphasis on the transformation of the identity of a group as well as its individual members (in this instance, a group of researchers) and leadership. transformational leadership is defined, in this instance, as behaviour that originates in the deeply held personal values and beliefs of a specific leader who operates out of a personal value system that is based on integrity and justice in advancing human rights (theodaris, 2007; humphreys & einstein, 2003). 41engelbrecht — research in a south african faculty of education cultural-historical context understanding the cultural-historical context is a key step in the process of reframing faculty environments (artiles, 2009; williams, berger & mcclendon, 2005). this is even more important in the case of this specific faculty when its complex history is taken into account. this faculty of education, on one of three campuses of a semi-rural university in the north-west province of south africa, was established in 2001 when a large teacher education college was incorporated into a small research-oriented faculty of education at the local university. this university then merged in 2004 with a neighbouring university to form a new university with three distinct campuses. this institution experienced similar challenges arising out of merger activities to universities in other parts of the world (e.g. in the united kingdom and australia), and these are reflected elsewhere in its merger history (geertsema & van niekerk, 2009; harman & meek, 2002). in line with the global emphasis on the research function of a university, the vision and mission of the new combined university now focus strongly on the establishment of a more balanced teaching-research culture within the institution, in contrast to the strong teaching focus of the individual pre-merger universities of the past. in addition, in 2006 the campus management decided to restructure the faculty of education in order to align its structural and organisational processes to those of the newly merged institution. this process also involved planning the physical removal of the majority of staff to other buildings and was concluded at the end of 2006. the dean at that time also unexpectedly resigned in july 2006. as it is highly specialised, the faculty is segmented into subject groups in three schools and a research section, and consists of 120 academic staff and over 80 support staff on campus. these discrete groups, in combination with the multiple strategic goals of the faculty (excellence in teaching and research, adequate student support, diversification of student and staff profiles) have led to highly differentiated and, in some instances, conflicting interests. the majority of the academic staff, in line with the general division in a faculty where a teacher education institution has been incorporated, made the transition from school teaching into academic life. most of them still viewed themselves as teachers, with a strong sense of commitment to their students, and teaching as their main purpose in the academic setting (griffiths, thompson & hryniewicz, 2010). as a result, research projects and the completion of doctoral degrees were not regarded as their top priorities. research in the faculty was externally evaluated by peers in 2006, in accordance with the regulations of the university (acu, 2006). the evaluation followed the format of an extensive self-evaluation, followed by an external review by peers (geertsema & van niekerk, 2009). although the effect of the mergers was taken into account, the evaluation report was still overwhelmingly negative. it was pointed out that, with limited exceptions, researchers in the faculty did not enjoy national or international standing, and that the number of accredited publications had considerably declined between 2002 and 2005. the demographics at the time of the evaluation did not reflect the demographics of the country in any way and the faculty was still dominated by white, male and middle-aged researchers. the report recommended that leadership provision, quality productivity and support for younger and less experienced researchers that would better reflect the demographics of the country should receive urgent attention (acu, 2006; mouton, 2006). at the beginning of 2007, i was appointed as the new dean, the first woman to be appointed as dean and only the second to be appointed as full professor in this faculty. as an established researcher with experience in research management, i was explicitly tasked by the university management with the development of research in the faculty. it soon became clear to me that strategic choices had to be made in respect of the theoretical framework within which i wanted to place my own leadership style, the amount of planning required and the active involvement of interested parties (van der westhuizen, 2007). at the heart of the development of research in the faculty was my view that transformative and participatory leadership within a transformative view of social justice would be particularly appropriate to the dynamic environment in which this faculty was functioning. i view a participatory approach to research capacity development as a dynamic enabling process that occurs in a cultural-historical context; it is always “situational”, strives to be pro-active rather than re-active, and includes my underlying personal view that fairness, justice and other human rights values are an integral part of the approach (engelbrecht, 2011; 42 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 ramsden, 1998). in the case of this faculty, with its complex history of mergers and restructuring together with a more autocratic leadership approach, emphasising transparency, consensus-building, shared power and the identification of common commitments and aspiration had to form an integral part of the change process. this approach also involves creatively mediating opposing forces that include tensions such as tradition versus change in organisational behaviour, management versus leadership, and coping with often inflexible external forces. the strategic implementation of this approach therefore focused on challenging the traditional research process and who should be involved in research, inspiring shared vision, enabling others to act, modelling the way, and celebrating achievement (ramsden, 1998). as dean and as researcher, i took a leading role in the development of a research capacity-building programme in the faculty and carried on with my own research, despite a heavy workload. i also continuously emphasised that research and academic leadership should be viewed as multi-level and participatory in its operation, and that it exists at multiple levels: within the institution, campus, faculty, schools and subject groups. i therefore endeavoured to model a participatory approach to planning and implementation. one of the first steps i took in order to plan and develop transformative change was to analyse, in collaboration with colleagues, the dynamic interaction between multiple layers of external factors that influenced the faculty (as discussed earlier), as well as the organisational culture and behaviour within the faculty, wider campus and institution by using a systemic approach. the following dimensions (based on williams et al., 2005) were identified as important factors for future strategic planning for research within the faculty: the dual administrative and collegial nature of higher education that distinguishes it from other types of organisations; the complex political nature not only of the faculty itself but also of the institution that may influence organisational dynamics, and the symbolic dimension in which longstanding traditions in the faculty could be called into question. as a second step, an internationally renowned leader in educational research was contracted to analyse the focus of research in the faculty and to consult with academics in order to provide input on the development of a stronger research culture. in his report the most common barriers to greater research activity were identified as lack of time, due to heavy teaching loads, and the traditional divide between teaching and research. a major recommendation was that the faculty should focus its research effort on a limited number of priority areas in order to increase the body of knowledge and to make leading contributions in the chosen fields (hegarty, 2007). a more focused approach would also bring the faculty in line with the institution’s overall research approach that advocates the formation of a small number of focus areas in which research and postgraduate education are integrated, and which are based on existing strengths aligned with national priorities (geertsema & van niekerk, 2009). translating vision for change into language and action: a participatory approach against the above background, a multidimensional and integrated approach to research capacity development was initiated. the components included a transformative and participatory leadership style and a strong focus on a transformative view of social justice (access, resources and social cohesion), as discussed earlier. organisational factors, clearly defined overall objectives, refined shorter term outcomes and collective ownership formed the basis of the strategy. these components were in continuous dynamic interaction with one another as well as with multiple contextual influences, and will now be discussed in more detail. transformative change cannot happen unless the necessary financial, human and symbolic resources are made available to drive the process (williams et al., 2005). the result was that the faculty had to seriously reconsider the allocation of available resources on an organisational level in order to make the proposed changes. the challenge was therefore to know when and how to redistribute ever-diminishing resources and how to access additional resources in order to ensure a fair distribution. despite the fact that senior administrators of the university supported the notion that change was necessary, convincing the budget committee of the university to provide increased funding for research proved to be a difficult task. 43engelbrecht — research in a south african faculty of education to some extent, increasing the research budget was successful and the development and implementation of the programme could proceed. the overall long-term objective of the programme was the establishment of a productive, internationally connected, focused and self-producing community of scholars that would be more representative of the demographics of the country, and who would produce research of a quality comparative with peers anywhere in the world (e.g. puryear, 2005). an integrated development approach was decided upon, focusing not only on the acquisition of knowledge in so-called basic research skills, but also on the development of the personal and professional research skills of researchers within a supporting transformative research climate, while also integrating these activities into the wider research community (engelbrecht & monteith, 2007). this implied that shorter term outcomes should not only focus on individual development strategies, but also include a research strategy which emphasises outcomes that are in the collective interest of all the research groups and the faculty as a whole over a period of time (rowley, 1999). within the faculty, access to the programme was open and transparent. the following groups of researchers were collectively identified for specific individual support after a participatory consultation process: a group of academics who had not yet obtained a doctoral degree and who traditionally had no access to research resources; those who had recently (in the past four to five years) obtained a doctoral degree; so-called semi-established researchers (those who had published a few articles but who were not known outside their own circle of colleagues), and the already established researchers in the faculty. based on the individual and collective needs of all involved, the individualised and collective programmes shared the same overall goal: the development of clearly defined, focused research to which everyone in the faculty would have access and that would enable participants to develop a long-term research identity (jansen, 2006). in addition to these support programmes, a retired researcher, three full-time research professors, as well as three internationally renowned extraordinary professors were contracted and appointed in order to establish larger research groups in the faculty, to increase the research image of the faculty and to mentor less experienced researchers. a series of research training workshops based on needs analyses conducted in the faculty were also planned and presented by international experts over a period of three years. the development of a more focused approach to research development in the faculty was also regarded as an opportunity to develop not only dynamic research groups within the faculty but also social cohesion within this research community. the development of foci with the help of the external facilitators was therefore formulated as a priority, with an emphasis on the fact that the foci should be participatory and permissive rather than restrictive, that the foci would be allowed to emerge from the strengths of the various groups, and that they should have long-term validity within the south african education context (hegarty, 2007; rowley, 1999). outcomes were regarded as the specific building blocks necessary to achieve the overall objective of the programme over a period of six to seven years. specific initial quantitative outcomes, to be evaluated over a period of three years, were formulated and based on the criteria set by the institution for research output (geertsema & van niekerk, 2009). these included the development of a more focused research approach; an increase in the number of academic staff holding doctoral degrees; an increase in the number of publications in high-impact journals, preferably internationally accredited ones (vaughn, 2008); significant growth in research funds obtained from outside the university; the development of the number of nationally and internationally known researchers in the faculty, and the finalisation of international cooperation agreements with other universities in order to extend networks and achieve a wider research profile for the faculty. in order to encourage a shared vision and ownership in the faculty, the draft research development programme was presented to colleagues after consultation, and discussed at a faculty forum meeting in 2007, and then again widely distributed for comments. comments were, for example, solicited from senior management of the university, including the institutional research office, as well as international research partners and members of the faculty. in addition, informal discussions were held with the various groups 44 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 identified in the programme, and open and frank discussions encouraged about the challenges being faced with research development. the feedback received from the various discussions was then incorporated into the programme. many colleagues also accepted my open invitation to discuss their views on research with me individually, which contributed to my increasing awareness of the potential for research in the faculty. research design and methodology a mixed-method approach was used in the evaluation of progress, thereby enabling us to collect both quantitative and qualitative data that was needed to address the complex and potentially interrelated issues and concerns of this programme. the results also provided further insight into, and understanding of the factors that influenced the programme’s effectiveness and the relationships between the general attainment of outcomes, participants’ perceptions and the professional development of all involved (mertens, 2005). as mentioned earlier, research output with specific reference to journal articles, the number of academics with doctoral degrees, and research projects that received outside funding were measured in compliance with university regulations, over an initial period of three years. in order to enhance the quantitative data and allow for more probing and in-depth exploration of the particular views of participants in the programme, semi-structured individual interviews were also held with a wide range of researchers, both experienced and less experienced, over a period of six months in 2009/2010 (babbie & mouton, 2001; leech & ongwuegbuzie, 2007). the interview schedule focused on their own personal views of the process, as well as possible reasons for the increase or decrease in their research output. in addition, a group of experienced and less experienced researchers (using simple random sampling) were asked to reflect on their own research experiences by answering the following open-ended question in writing: to what extent do you think you have been able to develop as scholar who is well known in your field over the past three years? (jansen, 2006). where further clarification was needed, these descriptions were followed up with individual interviews. qualitative data were analysed using a constant comparison analysis (leech & ongwuegbuzie, 2007; merriam, 2009). membership checks were used as a strategy to ensure the validity of the qualitative data, and the reliability of the quantitative data was checked by comparing it with institutional data on research outputs. the evaluation of progress also took into account the complex environment in which the faculty as a whole still found itself within the turbulent external higher education environment as it specifically relates to teacher training in south africa. ethical principles for the evaluation of the programme included voluntary participation and guarding the privacy and confidentiality of all participants. results a steady increase in the number of publications in well-known journals was apparent: table 1: number of publications in well-known journals year number of publications (n) 2006 23 2007 27 2008 30 2009 42 45engelbrecht — research in a south african faculty of education the fact that a wider group of researchers had published in high-impact journals was encouraging. an analysis of the qualitative data indicated that the following factors played a role in the increase in quality publications: workshops that specifically addressed writing a scientific article and the fear of failure, and on a more individual level, the encouragement of more senior researchers to involve more inexperienced colleagues in co-authoring articles. the establishment of a stronger overall culture of research support also played a role. the number of academics with a doctoral degree also increased (the number of academic staff remained constant for the period 2007-2009): table 2: number of academics with doctoral degrees year number of degrees (n) 2006 29 2007 37 2008 47 2009 54 according to the qualitative data, the following factors played a role in the increase: the now clearly defined policy of leave of absence to complete the research and sufficient financial support to do so; the structured development of effective supervision skills in the faculty since 2007, and the increased role of mentoring played by senior researchers. in addition, opportunities to develop a personalised approach to postdoctoral work also motivated academics to complete their initial research in order to take up some of these opportunities, which included research opportunities abroad. funding for larger research projects from outside the university, especially funding on an international level, increased if the following comparison is taken into account: table 3: funding for larger research projects year amount 2007 r428,338.00 2009 r4,535,901.00 better communication and support strategies in the faculty for both occasional and regular funding opportunities played a role in this instance. however, if the funding is compared to those of more researchintensive faculties of education elsewhere, it is clear that a great deal of work still needs to be done in this area. what also became clear during the evaluation of research output is that typical measurable outcomes that are required by the institution, for instance, should include a more in-depth analysis and additional criteria. these could include, for example, the number of keynote papers presented by invitation to national and international conferences; the number of international researchers as visitors to the faculty; postgraduate student activities and performances, and the number of researchers who serve on the editorial boards of prestigious journals. 46 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 the analysis of the open-ended reflections of the researchers on their scholarship development and the interviews also proved to be illuminating. the following barriers to, and indicators of success in research development were identified in the qualitative data analyses. the quest for a balance between research and teaching the majority of the participants pointed out that finding a balance between teaching and research proved a challenge. teacher education programmes are highly teaching-intensive and, as has been reported elsewhere (griffiths et al., 2010), lack of time for research is a universal challenge in education faculties. it became clear that, despite the input of senior faculty management, funding for replacement staff, staff exchanges and the mentoring of researchers regarding time management, finding a balance between time for teaching and research remains problematic. as one emerging researcher put it: “my heavy teaching load means that i cannot see myself as a developing scholar but rather see myself as more of a survivor in trying to develop my own research …”. encouraging the group of more inexperienced researchers to explore and understand their own conceptions of the relationship of research to other activities, including teaching, proved to be valuable. a strong research group, for example, consisting of members, some of whom had not traditionally been involved in research, emerged with a focus on the development of self-directed and problem-based learning in the faculty. their research activities are closely aligned with their classroom practices. low self-confidence lack of confidence was cited by some of the emerging researchers as an initial barrier, but it was also clearly defined as being part of the process of change. the positive role that senior researchers (including the research professors who were more representative of the demographics of the country) played in addressing this issue was clearly articulated. for example: “i have been privileged to work with wellknown researchers … i have made a ‘pay [it] forward promise’ to myself to always try my utmost best to provide academics-in-the-making with exactly the same opportunities that i have so abundantly received ….” and “knowing that the senior researchers really care about what is happening to me as a new researcher really helped me in becoming more self-confident…”. development of an overall research focus in the faculty in accordance with the recommendation by hegarty (2007), efforts to develop a more focused research approach that was in line with the institution’s approach included faculty discussions facilitated by external experts. this has enabled the faculty to increasingly focus its research effort on a limited number of priority areas of national importance. in the data analysis it became clear that the emerging researchers, in particular, have taken ownership of this process, adapting their own emerging foci to the overall focus of the faculty. however, despite these positive developments and that diverse views were accommodated in the more focused approach, a minority of senior researchers found this new direction disconcerting. for example: “i have had some success with my own individual research efforts so far, why should i now have to change my focus in order to satisfy research management in the faculty and the university …” and “i find this emphasis on focused research rather patronizing …”. it became clear that, in the movement towards a more focused approach to research, the longstanding tradition of the faculty that senior researchers were permitted to have a strongly individual approach to whatever they wanted to research has been called into question. aligning the expectations of senior researchers to bring about deeper change therefore proved to be more difficult than anticipated. building and developing research networks understanding the systemic dimension enabled us to plan the development of new alliances with external parties, engage in intentional institution-based efforts to align research priorities and develop collegial relationships. it also prompted the development of marketing and dissemination strategies 47engelbrecht — research in a south african faculty of education (e.g., presentations at high-level conferences) to increase awareness of research in the faculty. three international cooperation agreements with faculties of education at three universities were finalised in the period 2007-2009. these agreements include the exchange of researchers and students. in addition, two prestigious research seminars held over a period of three years and led by internationally renowned researchers on relevant topics in educational research (e.g., issues regarding diversity in educational research) also exposed the faculty to international views and opinions, and in this way also promoted research development and potential in the faculty. all the participants viewed these developments as invigorating and exciting. some of these opportunities included the transparent identification of, and financial support for attendance at important international conferences, and the identification of role models and peers. they also helped to emphasise the importance of published work and the need for support to develop academic writing and publishing skills, as this quotation confirms: “the financial support to visit and work with two of the leading international researchers in my field has enabled me to develop the skills and self-confidence to present at an international conference and to submit an article to the leading journal in this field. the article was accepted …”. summary and conclusion as mentioned earlier, the research capacity development programme in this faculty was, due to my own deeply held personal beliefs, based on a transformative approach to social justice and leadership, in which historical as well as structural forces were channelled in an effort to develop a positive research culture. the distribution of resources, access and social cohesion formed the basis of the development programme in the faculty, with participatory strategies and clearly defined quantitative and qualitative outcomes guiding the process. the development of supportive leadership styles by research professors and the then research manager in the faculty played key role. over time, however, it became obvious that i, as dean, however committed to leading research in the faculty, had too many other responsibilities to be involved in the micromanagement of research in the faculty. as a result, an internationally known and established researcher was appointed in 2009 (following the retirement of the previous research director) to lead research management and organisational factors, including the day-to-day financial management, human resource management and profile and reputation enhancement of research in the faculty. key organisational issues pertaining to the establishment of a continuing research income stream and the stability of relationships with research councils and other research funding organisations could now be developed, along with a functioning research information system. consequently, since 2009, the faculty has benefited from a better research infrastructure that has a stronger focus on participatory, postgraduate student activities, an increase in the number of both research support staff and postdoctoral fellows in the faculty. as mentioned earlier, this faculty has a history of an approach to leadership where faculty ownership of developments, for example, was not explicitly addressed. my efforts as dean to develop a more transformative and participatory approach had some successes, notably in the improvement of the general understanding and acceptance that research participation is integral to the activities of the faculty, and that the distribution of resources and access to research opportunities should be transparent. however, it is important to record that previous power relationships and structures continue to influence the complex collegial structure within the faculty. although the majority of faculty members have enthusiastically taken part in the collaborative contribution to the increase in achievements, some participants still tend to view the programme as owned by senior faculty management, especially where the issues are experienced as threatening by a small minority (e.g., the development of larger research groups and changing the demographic profile of the faculty). it is thus important for senior research leadership in the faculty to understand that remnants of previous interests and power issues may still play a major role in shaping the tangible and intangible aspects of the programme. developing the content of the programme should therefore also continue to be participative and transparent, and research planning should become a central 48 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 and shared activity in strategic planning activities on all levels in order to establish sustainable social cohesion in this research community. according to puryear (2005), a strong research community should be self-sustaining and selfregenerating. it is also clear that the best environment for such development is a faculty that is strong, agile and committed to the participatory development of scholarship within a transformative milieu that embraces social cohesion and access. developing research capacity in faculties of education requires a deliberate, intensive and sustained effort and, as has been illustrated, efforts that foster a transformative approach can contribute much towards the development of supportive research communities. such an approach could give both established as well as new generations of scholars the support they need to enable all faculties of education in south africa to take their rightful place as outstanding sites of knowledge generation. acknowledgements the author would like to thank every colleague in the faculty of education sciences, potchefstroom, as well as colleagues in the institutional research support office and campus management team, northwest university for their positive support in the development 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universities in the 21st century: knowledge and society. dakar, senegal: codesria. 9 the potential of critical feminist citizenship frameworks for citizenship and social justice in higher education vivienne bozalek university of western cape ronelle carolissen stellenbosch university there is a paucity of south african literature that uses feminist critical approaches as a conceptual tool to examine intersections of social justice and citizenship. this article aims to address this gap by examining the potential of critical feminist approaches to transform conceptions of citizenship in higher education. it outlines how traditional normative frameworks of citizenship can be contested by drawing on feminist approaches. more specifically, the article focuses on feminist contributions regarding ontological constructions of human beings as citizens, the public-private binary, the politics of needs interpretation, participatory parity and belonging, illuminating these concepts with illustrative examples from the higher education context. the article concludes by suggesting recommendations based on the identified feminist conceptions. keywords: social justice, citizenship, feminism, south africa, higher education introduction while some work exists on both social justice and citizenship in educational contexts in south africa (see badat, 2010; enslin, 2003; hill, baxen, craig & namakula, 2012; soudien, 2006; walker & unterhalter, 2007; vally, 2007), there is a paucity of literature which uses feminist frameworks to integrate social justice and citizenship. we propose that one of the ways in which we can consider an integration of social justice and citizenship is by using feminist critical approaches as a conceptual tool to interface these two concepts. we regard this as a useful analysis since, with some exceptions (see enslin, 2006; pendlebury & enslin, 2004; walker & unterhalter, 2007), feminist critical approaches have been used infrequently in educational analyses on citizenship and social justice in south africa and more widely, too (tormey & gleeson, 2012). in this article, we posit that traditional normative frameworks are, for several reasons, limited and that it is necessary to find alternative ways of thinking about citizenship in higher education (he). the reason for this is that normative frameworks produce hegemonic discourses by conferring power on certain speaking positions and vocabularies, and thus include and exclude certain modes of speaking and thinking about citizenship (sevenhuijsen, 1998, 2003). feminist approaches are particularly helpful for deconstructing hegemonic discourses implicit in ideas of citizenship, difference and social justice in south african he. these critical political feminist approaches have the potential to create alternative discursive or rhetorical spaces (code, 1995) that can move ideas and practices residing at the margins of debates to the centre of political discourse (hooks, 2000). insights gleaned from this process can then be used to consider possible ways in which critical citizens may be developed in and through he, as suggested in the national plan for higher education white paper (department of education, 1997). citizenship has been foregrounded in south african he policy documents. for example, the education white paper 3: a framework for transformation of higher education (department of education, 1997:1.3) argues that one of the roles of he is to contribute to socialising students who are the “enlightened, responsible and constructively critical citizens”. the higher education south africa (hes) statement to the higher education summit (2010) also quotes saleem badat, the vice chancellor of rhodes, as saying that one of the key roles of he is to contribute to “forging a critical and democratic citizenship” and 10 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 “developing students who are sensitive intellectuals and critical citizens” (retrieved from http://www. cepd.org.za/?q=summit_document_submissions, june 2012). in order to examine these issues in south african he, we make use of feminist theorists such as fraser (2008, 2009), nussbaum (2010), tronto (1993, in press); sevenhuijsen (1998, 2003), yuval-davis (2011) and young (2011) who have all made alternative contributions to debates on citizenship, belonging, social justice and inclusion. what is core to all their contributions are the alternatives that these theories provide to traditional normative frameworks through their incorporation of difference into social justice and citizenship, which we believe to be of central importance for he. in this article, we first elaborate on how traditional normative frameworks envisage citizenship and then outline the contributions which feminist approaches make in contesting these traditional views of citizenship. in perusing the literature, we identified common themes central to difference, citizenship and social justice across the major theorists mentioned earlier. the following themes were central: ontological constructions of human beings as citizens; the public-private binary; the politics of needs interpretation; participatory parity, and belonging. throughout the article, we provide examples of how these feminist contributions to citizenship can be used to analyse and inform he practices. finally, we provide some recommendations for he regarding these identified themes. traditional normative frameworks at its most basic level, citizenship is viewed as a legal status or membership of a nation state (lister, williams, anttonen, bussemaker, gerhard, heinen, johansson, leira, siim & tobio, 2007). most scholars of citizenship use th marshall (1950) as a starting point for debates on citizenship (lister, 2003; tronto, in press; yuval-davis, 2011). marshall (1950) argued that all who have citizenship status are equal with respect to rights and duties. he classified these rights as civil, political and social or welfare rights. at the time of his writing, he was a pioneer in terms of his progressive attitude to and emphasis on social class inequalities in terms of citizenship. he advocated for the provision of public goods for meeting educational, health and other needs which are not provided for by the market. however, his views on social inclusion were premised on the notion of the breadwinner husband and a stay-at-home wife with a few children. he believed that citizenship rights are conferred only on those who take up the duty to work in public spaces in order to contribute to the public good (lister, 2003). his view of citizenship assumed a traditional patriarchal view of citizenship that valorises men’s contribution to society. this assumption was formulated in a context in which men had greater access to paid work during the 1950s when marshall was writing. he valued women’s unpaid work, mainly in private spaces of the family and home, in their roles as caregivers for dependents, but did not associate this with citizenship. ontologically, he therefore viewed human beings as workers and the work ethic (defined as those engaged in paid labour) as making human beings worthy of citizenship. the work ethic excludes unpaid labour as valuable work and maintains that hard work will be rewarded. this is also based on methodological individualism where the worth of human beings is dependent on how hard they can work for themselves in the public sphere. it, therefore, excludes interdependency, collaboration and social sharing as valid and desirable practices in society. this view may be regarded as decontextualised and ahistorical, as it obscures the systematic privileging and oppression of citizens such as that observed in racism or gender discrimination (tronto, in press). feminist authors have critiqued this view, not only because women and dependents (such as infants, children, the elderly and those living with disabilities) have been excluded as citizens (kittay 2001, 2002; nussbaum, 2006), but also as a result of the moral assumptions guiding marshall’s views. we will now consider ways in which critical feminists have defined citizenship and the alternative perspectives they have offered. the themes central to feminist writing, in this instance, are the constructions of human beings as citizens; the politics of needs interpretation; the public-private binary; participatory parity, and belonging. we consider the implications that these themes have for citizenship and social justice in south african he. it is important to recognise that real-life examples from he contexts do not necessarily neatly 11bozalek & carolissen — the potential of critical feminist citizenship frameworks fit into these categories as mutually exclusive entities. there is considerable overlap between various thematic categories. constructions of human beings as citizens critical feminists believe that autonomy can be possible only through social relations with others. relational ontology rejects ideas of a rational, independent and self-sufficient self (rawls, 1971), but rather views human beings as interdependent, vulnerable and temporal beings (benhabib, 1992; cockburn, 2005; o’brien, 2005; nussbaum, 2012; sevenhuijsen, 1998; tronto, 1993). universalist discourses’ constructions of autonomous human beings obscure alternative feminist normative constructions which regard the moral agent as “an ‘encumbered self’, who is always already embedded in relations with flesh-and-blood others and is partly constituted by these relations” (keller, 1997:152). these feminist views of human beings incorporate difference, particularity, concreteness and situatedness (dahlberg & moss, 2005), rather than a rawlsian universal or ‘generalised other’ devoid of specific characteristics and separated from day-to-day relationships with others (benhabib, 1992; cockburn, 2005). a useful theory of citizenship should not explain away difference and situatedness in its emphasis on the homogeneity of citizens, but should provide theoretical tools to incorporate the possibility that all human beings in their differential positioning’s and in the contexts of concrete relationships should be able to lead flourishing lives (benhabib, 1992; nussbaum, 2012). models of citizenship generally ascribed to in he are chiefly informed by rights-based models such as those proposed by th marshall (1950) and male enlightenment theorists such as rawls (1971). inherent in these he discourses is the assumption that we are all equally positioned and that differential access to social, economic and cultural resources are not taken into account. since he policies and practices generally operate from implicit assumptions that individuals are the same, higher education institutions (heis) are not geared towards accommodating difference. feminists such as iris young would insist that social, economic and cultural inequalities advantage some in he over others, thus democratic equity in he would need to recognise this and provide compensation for this unfairness to citizens in order for them to flourish in this sector (young, 2004). ultimately, these institutions expect individuals and ranges of difference to accommodate them rather than institutions adjusting to individuals (young, 1992). heis would, for example, position a student from a rural eastern cape school in the same way as a middle-class child from an urban privileged school in the city. similarly, the student who has to perform multiple caring duties after work is placed on an equal footing with a student who has access to multiple supports such as supportive partners, parents and/or domestic workers. differential positionalities in relation to he also apply to staff. many women academic staff have repeatedly raised the issue of the double shift, central to women’s work, as impacting on their abilities to keep abreast with the current demands to publish or perish in the academy (raddon, 2002; mills & berg, 2010). however, if individuals do not succeed in he, their underperformance is construed as individual deficit. the pathologising of individuals arises because traits such as hard work, individual success, selfdiscipline and personal responsibility contribute to the discourse of autonomy in which people are held personally responsible for their own educational success, irrespective of their differential circumstances. the academy is structured to be an institution that privileges white, male, middle-class normativity and all who are positioned differently in terms of location/positionalities have to make numerous accommodations to fit into the established normative structure and institutional discourses. this is particularly evident in discourses of neoliberalism which currently underpin he policies and practices (dahlberg & moss, 2005; lister, 2003; tronto, in press). students are constructed as consumers and universities as corporate structures. this gives rise to technical-instrumental orientation in which the state plays a diminished role, but maintains control through an audit culture. in this audit culture, control can be situated from a distance, because the expectations are discursively interiorised and performed by individuals such as students and lecturers within the heis (foucault, 1977). in this way, academic subjectivities are constructed through internalisation and performance of hegemonic practices. the dynamics inherent in the audit culture have a number of implications for he. when students are thought of as consumers, the potential exists that the 12 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 teaching and learning project can be negatively affected (vally, 2007). for example, student evaluations of modules and lecturers may be skewed when students engage in limited self-reflexivity and have a reduced capacity to engage with difference, particularly when the lecturer is constructed as different by the students. the public-private binary as noted earlier, a denial of difference disguises ways in which relationships are politically skewed and unequal in society (o’brien, 2005; young, 2004). assumptions implicit in marshall’s (1950) view of citizenship construct men as autonomous breadwinners, women as carers, and as living in nuclear families. women and children are constructed as being dependent on men and as obtaining their status through men’s position in society. these assumptions still tend to dominate traditional discourses on citizenship (tronto, in press). young (1992:9-10) identifies the origins of citizenship in this conceptualisation: in this image of the republican citizen is a self-sufficient head of household, who supports himself and his dependents by means of his own property and labour. on this burger model, women, children, servants and others without independent means of producing a living, all those unable to work, are essentially dependent, either not citizens at all, or not full citizens. the work ethic and separation between public and private life prevailed in the late nineteenth century, where only men and women slaves were engaged in work, leaving the responsibility of care to women in the home. the work ethic reinforces the idea that if we work hard, we are deserving and will succeed (tronto, in press). from this perspective, a citizen in he is one who can present himself as being ready and available to work at all times, unencumbered by household responsibilities, and whose needs are fully taken care of by a woman in the private sphere. in the public world, teaching in he can be regarded as a form of care. race, rank, gender and class impact on how academics often engage differently with teaching and learning (omolade, 1994). in the context of marketization, casualization of academic labour has become ubiquitous (dahlberg & moss, 2005) and is regarded as a cheaper way of getting more work done for less pay (mills & berg, 2010). teaching is often outsourced, while more senior white men are able to concentrate on research activities, which are more valued than the hands-on work of teaching. these categories of people are also generally better placed, because they are inclined to take on researcher positions focused on individual accomplishments and success, minimising teaching rather than adopting a teaching and supportive presence for students. this is in sharp contrast to the caring roles of women and, more particularly, black women in academia (see omolade, 1994 regarding the “mummification” of black women in the public and private life). such models of citizenship informed by the boundaries between public and private life depend on the citizen worker and support staff (tronto, 2001). this model of citizenship has been reinforced by neoliberalism which concentrates only on economic contributions by citizens, obfuscating care as a valuable and essential activity in human life. tronto (2001) develops a convincing argument for including care as a necessary criterion or even precondition of citizenship. this would have the effect of making private considerations of care into public ones, and transcending the false dichotomy of the public/private spheres in views of citizenship. the politics of needs interpretation as mentioned earlier, following the ideas of th marshall (1950), most contemporary views of citizenship highlight the importance of rights and obligations. feminists adopt a broader view of citizenship which incorporates the politics of needs interpretation as an area of contestation (fraser, 1989). in an interview with bozalek (2012), nancy fraser asserts that needs are not objective or absolute, but are constructed by discourses in society. these discourses are informed by neoliberal markets, experts and social movements. contestations arise about where needs should be located – in the public or private sphere. feminists would argue that needs are political and should be located publicly. neoliberal 13bozalek & carolissen — the potential of critical feminist citizenship frameworks discourses would view needs as located in the individual where the responsibility for meeting needs is then located in private spaces of homes with individuals and families, absolving states from the responsibility for meeting needs. the process of needs interpretation is political and should be democratically decided by both caregivers and receivers – in other words, taking he as an example by policymakers, academics and students. these debates would be considered central to discursive political struggles about citizenship. an example of the politicisation of needs in he is particularly evident in how community engagement is construed in he. all south african heis are now required to include community engagement as part of their core function (department of education, 1997). over the past few years, community engagement in south africa has been regarded as important for attracting symbolic legitimacy for social responsibility in institutions. the idea of community engagement is generally that a well-meaning institution engages with communities outside of the university to provide services (research, intervention). yet community is seldom constructed as work within the university and, at times, curricula including community issues themselves are stigmatised (carolissen, rohleder, swartz, leibowitz & bozalek, 2010). all universityrelated actors are viewed as independent, resourced individuals and those outside as the antithetical poor, less resourced and marginal. this view constructs others outside the university as having needs and those within the institution as not having needs. when all are constructed as independent and resourced, the effect is that differential needs within the university are silenced. this, in turn, maintains the status quo of the university being constructed as a space of white, middle-class, male belonging. it is thus important for citizenship in he to ask questions regarding who is involved in setting the agenda for what people’s needs are. it is problematic if these needs are entirely driven by market-related or professional discourses without recourse to the recipients of care – students and on the ground providers of care in he. participatory parity we regard participatory parity as a crucial concept for citizenship and social justice. nancy fraser (2005, 2008, 2009) equates social justice with the ability to participate as equals and full partners in social interaction. social arrangements that promote participatory parity are a prerequisite to enable people to interact on an equal footing. fraser foregrounds three different dimensions which affect participatory parity – the economic, cultural and political spheres, all of which require social arrangements to be in place for participatory parity. table 1 visually represents fraser’s view of participatory parity, which will be explained systematically in the following paragraphs. the political sphere that is of direct relevance to this article will be emphasised. table 1: fraser’s contribution to citizenship participatory parity economic cultural political mal-/distribution mis-/recognition mis-/representation misframing fraser regards these three dimensions as distinct species or genres of social justice, all of which necessarily affect people’s abilities to interact as equals. since our article focuses specifically on citizenship, we regard her third dimension of the political sphere as the most important to concentrate on. however, as north (2006) points out, the economic and the cultural are also both important. the picture will be incomplete if one considers only the economic or material aspects of justice in he (the way resources or social goods are distributed) – how heis are resourced or under-resourced, without the cultural aspect. similarly, if only the cultural aspect is considered, this view will also be diminished, as it will only focus on middleclass interests and the normalising of values through hegemonic discourses and not on needed resources for participatory parity. it is important to note, however, that north (2006) identified these aspects before fraser (2008, 2009) added a third dimension belonging, which we will discuss in more detail when 14 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 considering its importance for citizenship. in the following section, we briefly discuss the economic and cultural spheres and then pay more attention to the political sphere which includes belonging. the economic or class-based sphere alluded to by fraser pertains to the distribution of material resources and how this affects citizenship in he. participatory parity would be influenced by issues such as maldistribution of resources, disparities in income, leisure time and labour. the cultural sphere referred to by fraser denotes the ways in which people’s attributes are either valued or devalued – as fraser (2005, 2008, 2009) explains it – how these attributes are either recognised or misrecognised. being either recognised or misrecognised and one’s differential access to material resources would have dire consequences for being able to participate as peers in the he context. firferey and carolissen (2010) show how the dynamics of poverty in he impact on poor students’ ability to hand in assignments timeously and how shame about poverty, constructed as the individual’s fault, perpetuates silences about the existence of poverty among he students. these micro dynamics of poverty remain invisible and impact on throughput rates, but are minimally addressed because of their invisibility. fraser’s (2008, 2009) third political dimension, which she has recently developed, is directly pertinent to citizenship, as it has to do with participatory parity in relation to representation and voice. this dimension was developed as a response to the need to move to a post-westphalian view which transcends an obsession with the nation-state as a frame, and one which acknowledges globalisation. this dimension allows us, from a citizenship perspective, to incorporate an analysis of how injustices are perpetrated by transnational powers and how predator states affect citizens across geographical locations. to view these injustices from a nation-state perspective only would be an instance of what fraser refers to as “misframing”. the political sphere of society should enable all people involved in he to have a voice and influence in decisions which affect them – this has to do with representation. in addition to being able to vote and participate in social movements such as students’ representative councils (srcs) on campuses, fraser introduces a second level of representation which pertains to the aspect of boundarysetting. this arises when he establishes boundaries which exclude some groups or institutions and include others – what she calls “misframing” them. the notion of political framing and misframing thus allows us to also examine who is included and excluded from justice claims in he. if one is excluded from he, or from making claims, for example, if one is a cleaner in an hei, one is not eligible to be counted as a citizen and would be excluded from justice claims. it could, therefore, be argued that this third dimension of social justice is more severe than either the economic or the cultural, as one may be wrongly excluded from consideration for distribution, recognition and representation. in the contemporary he landscape, historically disadvantaged institutions (hdis) are judged against the same criteria as historically advantaged institutions (hais). these equal but not necessarily equitable positioning’s in relation to ‘standards’ or quality assurance processes allow hdis to become excluded from resources, from obtaining recognition as institutions, and from petitioning with strong voices for a recognised place in the he landscape. fraser refers to the exclusion from consideration for first-order claims against maldistribution and misrecognition as a form of “misframing”. those who are excluded could only be supplicants for the benevolence of others in that it serves to prevent those who may be poor (economic dimension) or despised (cultural dimension) from challenging injustices against them. for these reasons, fraser regards misframing as the defining form of injustice in the globalised era. bozalek and boughey (2012) point out how exclusion takes place at institutional and systemic levels, and how either individual students or lecturers are held responsible for success or failure, even though systemic factors deeply affect success. the universalization of low participation and throughput rates in south africa, for example, blurs inequities within the he sector, as political issues are presented in apolitical and ahistorical contexts, obfuscating how historically black universities (hbus) have fewer resources and more poorly prepared students that are enrolled. another instance of misframing occurs when the default student is hegemonically constructed as a white, middle-class male and excludes the fact that students are differently positioned with regard to epistemological access to engage with curricula. all three dimensions – economic, cultural and political – must be present for participatory parity to occur. although they may be complexly intertwined, none of them alone is sufficient for participatory parity and 15bozalek & carolissen — the potential of critical feminist citizenship frameworks one cannot be reduced to the other dimension. for each dimension of social justice, fraser has distinguished between affirmative and transformative approaches for dealing with injustices. she views affirmative approaches as only ameliorative. while they may correct inequities created by social arrangements, they do not disturb the underlying social structures that generate these inequities. transformative approaches, on the other hand, do address underlying root causes or the underlying generative framework. in the economic dimension, transformative approaches make entitlements universal so that vulnerable groups of people are not regarded as citizens who are a burden to society, supplicants, or as benefiting from special treatment. in the cultural dimension, transformative approaches acknowledge complexity, deconstructing and destabilising binary categories, rather than entrenching identity politics or multiculturalism. in the political dimension, affirmative politics of framing accepts that westphalian state boundaries are appropriate and attempts to redraw these state-territorial boundaries or create new ones. in the transformative approach, injustices are not only regarded as residing in state-territorial boundaries, but also beyond territorial boundaries, in the global economy, information and communication networks (the digital divide), environmental sustainability issues, and other non-territorial powers. these spaces are increasingly important for citizenship debates, as the digitalisation of knowledge and the new impact of social networks and media have potentially powerful impacts on participatory parity (see, for example, boler, 2008). in addition to contesting the boundaries of the frame and invoking a post-westphalian principle, the transformative politics of framing also proposes to change the way in which the boundaries are drawn. fellow subjects of justice would not be constituted in geographical locations, but with regard to particular structural issues which promote advantage or disadvantage – appealing to an “all-affected principle” (fraser, 2009:24-25). this “all affected principle” means that everyone who is affected by a particular social structure or institution could be claimants of social justice. people’s collective justice claims are thus not dependent on geographical location, but on common claims against structures that affect them. according to fraser (2009:24), they come together through “their co-imbrication in a common structural or institutional framework, which sets the ground rules that govern their social interaction, thereby shaping their respective life possibilities of advantage and disadvantage”. examples of groups of claimants of social justice against structures that harm them who have applied this “all affected principle” across state-territorial boundaries or higher educational contexts could be indigenous peoples, firstgeneration students, feminists and critical race-theorists. rather than people in a particular geographical location, people who work together on an issue such as racism in he, or the digital divide, will join forces across essentialist boundaries of differences and act on structures that affect them. social movements such as anti-racism network in higher education (arnhe) and open educational resources (oer) are examples of such cross-hei movements, instigated by the “all-affected principle”. belonging yuval davis’s (2011) transversal politics of belonging are similar to fraser’s (2008, 2009) “all-affected principle”, as they both argue for working across differential positions or locations to address structural issues.1 this means that a focus on common values and political symbolism, rather than identification on the basis of similar socially constructed (and unitary identity) features such as gender and race only, is important. for both these theorists, collective action is, therefore, constructed from the perspective of common epistemologies and understandings rather than from identity politics. the notion of dialogical engagement is central to belonging for yuval-davis (2011) and fraser (2009) as well as for the political ethics of care (tronto, 1993). however, yuval-davis (2011) alerts us to the important consideration that dialogue alone will not contribute to effecting transformation. dialogue needs to be part of a component of engagements that have reflexive self-problematisation (reflexive justice) as a central goal. this may mean that academics and students should reflect not only on their own histories of marginalisation, but also on histories of current and on-going privilege within and outside the frame of he contexts (pease, 2010). 16 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 conclusion in this article, we have argued for a set of themes inherent in critical feminist approaches that may be useful for contesting traditional views of citizenship in he. the themes are ontological constructions of human beings such as citizens, the public-private binary, the politics of needs interpretation, participatory parity, and belonging. these critical feminist perspectives signal the limitations of human rights discourses within citizenship (for example, th marshall’s views) and are not sufficiently nuanced to address citizenship issues in he; they should, therefore, not be accepted uncritically. countries with democratic constitutions, such as south africa and india, are still locations in which the majority of the population experience enormous inequities in he and live with structural injustices. in this conclusion, we reconsider the themes developed to make some recommendations that pertain to he. human beings as citizens he needs to incorporate and embrace the realisation that all involved (for example, both academics and students) are interdependent and vulnerable. heis need to be able to accommodate difference, rather than participants having to adapt to rigid institutional cultures. nussbaum (2010) observes that vulnerability should not be feared or shamefully regarded as a weakness, but as a central part of being human. transcending the public-private binary social arrangements in he need to be more inclusive of people’s lives from a holistic perspective. for example, university calendars could be set up to cohere with school terms and timetables, and to accommodate caring activities, without it being assumed that staff and students have access to alternative caring facilities. in order to promote this view of citizenship, nussbaum (2006) argues that public education should cultivate and incorporate the importance of care for both men and women to break down the reluctance that many men feel to do caring work. such teaching should facilitate the shift in engaging men to take responsibility for care. the politics of needs interpretation it is important for he to recognise that needs are constructed and that multiple discourses about needs exist and can be contested. this recognition may create opportunities to disrupt dominant and singular hegemonic discourses about needs in he such as the neoliberal view of students as consumers. it is thus important to involve all participants in democratic dialogue about how these needs should be prioritised and met. participatory parity and belonging to create opportunities for people to participate on an equal footing in he, we should consider imaginative ways to achieve transformative approaches to citizenship, including redistribution, recognition and belonging. for example, we need to consider ways in which to achieve transdisciplinarity, collaboration across professions, differently placed institutions, and geographical locations. in addition, we need to be able to question authority and tradition and perceive ourselves in a complex web of relationships at local and global levels. this article has aimed to incorporate critical feminist ideas into south african he debates on citizenship and social justice by highlighting five themes central to a critical feminist framework. we have made recommendations regarding citizenship and provided examples from the south african he context that may be considered and extended in future work. endnotes 1. we recognise that many of the theorists’ views are contested and that they themselves contest each other’s’ views (olson, 2008). it is beyond the scope of this article to 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politics of belonging: intersectional contestations. london: sage. walker m & unterhalter e (eds) 2007. amartya sen’s capability approach and social justice in education. basingstoke: palgrave macmillan. 88 the animal experimentation controversy: ethical views of prospective teachers rian de villiers university of pretoria vivisection (live animal experimentation) is a controversial issue for many people. the purpose of this case study is to examine the attitudes of prospective teachers toward vivisection in education and research, to determine if gender has an influence on these attitudes, and to discuss the implications of these attitudes with regard to teaching of the disciplines in the life sciences. a sample of 100 prospective life sciences and natural sciences teachers from a south african university responded to a questionnaire on vivisection in education and scientific research. the responses were analysed qualitatively and quantitatively. the results showed that most prospective teachers are in favour of animal rights and that females are more averse to vivisection than males. a number of suggestions are made with regard to vivisection in schools and tertiary institutions. keywords: vivisection, animal experimentation, education, research, teachers, students, learners, ethics introduction every year millions of animals are used as objects for experiments in education and many are harmed or killed for this reason. the animal studies group (2006) argues that almost all areas of human life are at some point or other involved in the killing of animals (pedersen, 2010). currently, most people are concerned about the protection of our natural world and have a great respect for animals. at the same time, however, our rapidly growing knowledge of science and technology presents us with increasingly complicated moral issues. horsthemke (2010) points out that animals and humans have equal moral subject status. animals, and especially mammals, are currently seen as convenient objects for education and research simply because we are prejudiced in favour of our own species – homo sapiens. there are few areas as controversial and emotional as that of the use of animals in education and scientific research. an animal can be defined as a living organism that feeds on organic matter, typically having specialised sense organs and a nervous system, able to respond rapidly to stimuli and can move voluntarily. the use of animals in education and research can be considered from two aspects: “whether it is ethical to use animals, and whether animals are used ethically” (mitchell, 1990: 69). the debate on values is likely to create considerable controversy in life sciences, natural sciences, veterinary sciences, zoology, physiology and anatomy classrooms where topics like animal dissection and vivisection unite to challenge the deepest emotions of academics, learners1, students2 and the public. what is vivisection? the word ‘vivisection’ was originally used to describe the cutting up of live animals in scientific experiments. today, the term is used more to describe any experiment that causes pain, distress or harm to a living animal. vivisection involves animals that are poisoned, starved, blinded, deprived of water, subjected to electric shocks, subjected to invasive surgery and infected with dangerous diseases. in some cases, animals are subjected to more than one experiment (animal experiments, 2000). the list of mammalian animals used is almost endless: from rabbits, guinea pigs and farm animals, to monkeys and ‘companion animals’ such as cats and dogs. in schools in south africa, revised national curricula in the natural sciences and life sciences (previously known as biology) have been introduced (department of education 2002, 2003) and implemented. a re-writing of the curriculum has meant that many of the old assumptions about what should be taught, to whom, at what stage, and how, have been under sharper scrutiny than in other countries where change has been less radical (de villiers & monk, 2005). a requirement is that learners, as responsible 89de villiers — the animal experimentation controversy citizens, need to evaluate the past and make informed decisions about the present and future use of science and technology in society. the national curriculum statement: life sciences (department of education, 2003) raises learners’ and students’ awareness of the existence of different viewpoints in a multicultural society, and encourages open-mindedness towards perspectives that are based on scientific knowledge, beliefs, ethics, attitudes, values and biases. however, the consequences of these requirements for training teachers are a major concern. from my own experience, most teachers are unfamiliar with the approaches needed to develop the necessary skills of argumentation and debate in their learners. despite the fact that the attitudes of people with regard to the use of animals could form barriers to effective learning (de villiers & sommerville, 2005), little is known about prospective south african life sciences and natural sciences teachers’ opinions in this area. vivisection is a mandatory component of the grade 12 life sciences curriculum (the final year of secondary schooling) under the theme ‘animal responses to the environment’. some examples of these sections include: observation of the response of some invertebrates to light and humidity; observing and relating the sensory organs of groups of animals in relation to the mode of life; observation of papillary mechanism; and investigating behavioural, physical and/or physiological adaptations for thermoregulation in animals. some people may feel that animal research is simply wrong, regardless of the crucial role it plays in medical progress, while others may feel that its morality depends on the objectives and achievements. it may also depend on whether it is carried out humanely and what the consequences might be if it were not carried out at all (hobsons academic relations, 2001). this is an issue on which there are many conflicting views, and the opinion of any one individual may change with additional information and experience within a few days. on the one hand, the anti-vivisectionists are asking for educators and educational institutions to recognise that animals are sentient beings and that we have a duty to represent them as something other than disposable instructional objects. on the other, it makes sense for vivisectors to have first-hand experience of what one is teaching and, as in the case of veterinarians and physicians, vivisections could be classified as vocationally necessary for life sciences and natural sciences teachers. taking the wider view, medical and scientific research have made the lives of many people better than their lives would otherwise have been. nonetheless, medical, scientific, and technological breakthroughs bring with them even more difficult questions: should researchers and educators employ data obtained from inhumane experiments on animals? is it morally justifiable to take the lives of healthy animals in the name of education and research? should we draft one set of moral guidelines for primates and another for the lower orders? should dissection and vivisection be classified as vocationally necessary for life sciences and natural sciences teachers? the answers any society finds to such questions, at any stage, are located within wider political and socio-economic frameworks. globally in universities, colleges and schools, the debate about the role of vivisection in education continues, especially in regard to mammals. different practices are possible, and these practices evolve as wider debates about differences and similarities, rights and responsibilities seep into the academic realm, classrooms and laboratories. what is considered acceptable in the laboratory is an indicator of the state of such debates in the wider society (de villiers & monk, 2005). south africa is not the first to raise questions about animal use in education and research. in some countries, particularly in the united states (see capaldo, 2004; orlans, 1991; vollum, buffington-vollum & longmire, 2004) and europe (see foster, stannistreet and boyes 1994, guerrini 2003, smith & smith 2004, stannistreet, spofforth & williams 1993), some controversial questions regarding vivisection have long been debated. smith and smith (2004) found that the exposure of students to animals (whether alive or dead) is a dramatic event for most of them, and the effect it has will depend heavily on their previous experience with that species, their moral values and the perceived necessity of the practical application. a study conducted by stannistreet, spofforth and williams (1993) revealed that 87% of secondary school learners believed vivisection to be wrong. according to foster, stannistreet and boyes (1994), nearly three quarters of the learners found vivisection for educational purposes unacceptable. guerrini (2003) argues that it is not for scientists alone, but for all of us to determine the values of our society. however, in developing countries such as those in southern africa, the debate on vivisection in education and research is new to the public 90 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 domain. the study of de villiers and sommerville (2005) revealed that 70% of the south african life sciences students had positive attitudes in regard to animal dissection. however, this study was limited to prospective teachers’ attitudes to dissection only. it identified a need for a survey of wider ethical views of prospective teachers. research questions the following are the research questions that guided the data collection and research methods: • what are the attitudes of prospective life sciences and natural sciences teachers towards vivisection and using animals in scientific research? • does gender influence these attitudes? • what are the implications of the prospective teachers’ attitudes in regard to the teaching of life sciences and related subjects? research methodology lecturer, sample and participants: the researcher in this study is a lecturer teaching zoology for prospective life sciences teachers. a quantitative research method was used to generate data to address the research questions above. to select participants for this research, purposive sampling was utilised. a sample of 100 bachelor of education (bed), prospective life sciences and natural sciences teachers at a single, urban university in south africa, participated in this empirical study. only prospective teachers enrolled for the courses in zoology or the learning area science (it was compulsory for all prospective teachers who passed zoology in the third year to enrol for this module) were involved in the preliminary study. instrument: information was collected by means of a questionnaire, which prospective teachers completed voluntarily during routine classes. the questionnaire was approved by the faculty research ethical committee. the research met the ethical guidelines laid down by our university for educational research, including voluntary participation, informed consent, confidentiality, anonymity, trust and safety in participation. the instrument contained both open-ended and closed questions, which elicited responses in regard to individual beliefs, experiences and actions. the responses yielded demographic data as well as information on prospective teachers’ personal experiences of and attitudes towards vivisection and animal rights. the demographic items had bearing on age, year of study, gender, religion and cultural group. the attitudinal items on the questionnaire consisted of 29 statements in total, divided into sections that dealt with vivisection (16 statements) and using animals in scientific research (13 statements). most of these statements were obtained from wasted lives (animal aid education department, 2001). in each case the prospective teachers were required to tick one of five options on a likert scale to indicate to what extent they agreed or disagreed with each statement: (1 = strongly agree, 2 = agree, 3 = uncertain, 4 = disagree, 5 = strongly disagree). ten open-ended questions were included in the questionnaire. data analysis procedure: the responses to the open-ended questions were analysed qualitatively. emerging patterns and themes were used to code the qualitative data. the responses to the closed questions were analysed only quantitatively. statistical analysis (summary statistics and two-way tables) of the survey data was used to elaborate and enhance the discussion. the likert responses were reduced to two: agree (‘strongly agree’ and ‘agree’ combined) and disagree (‘strongly disagree’ and ‘disagree’ combined). negatively worded statements were ‘reversed scored’ to be aligned with the ‘positive’ statements. the responses to all the statements in the sections were tested for association with demographic characteristics of the respondents. religion could not be tested because the majority (93%) of the respondents were christian. the chi-squared test was used to test for association with gender. fisher’s exact test was used to test for association with culture because the 2-way contingency tables were sparse with some expected frequencies less than 5, which makes the chi-squared test inappropriate. results are presented as percentages rounded to whole numbers. cronbach’s alpha coefficient test was used to measure reliability. only those statements with statistically significant associations (see table 1) will be discussed. 91de villiers — the animal experimentation controversy validity and reliability: the questionnaire’s content validity was face-validated by three experts in the field of life sciences, who are competent to judge whether the questionnaire reflects the content domain of the study. the questionnaire was pilot-tested with 15 students enrolled in the third year of the zoology course. based on the feedback of the pilot study and from the experts, the questionnaire was revised. ambiguities and redundancies were removed to improve the clarity in the formulation of items in the questionnaire. the reliability of the questionnaire was tested using cronbach’s alpha coefficient (cohen, manion & morrison, 2007). findings biographical information one hundred (91%) out of 110 questionnaires were returned. the ages of the respondents ranged mostly between 20 and 22 years. thirty-six per cent were first year students, 12% second-year students, 16% thirdyear students and 36% fourthyear students. all these students were prospective teachers and the majority of students (74%) were female. regarding religious background, 5% had no religious background, 93% were christian and 1% hindu. one student indicated his religion as “other”. the sample represented diverse south african culture groups: afrikaans (33%), tswana (15%), northern sotho (12%), english (12%), zulu (9%), swazi (9%), ndebele (7%), southern sotho (3%), xhosa (1%) and indian (1%). demographic comparisons gender the study revealed that there are decided differences in the responses of the genders. males and females respond differently to vivisection and using animals in research. the likert scale analysis of the results provided statistical evidence that male and female students respond differently to vivisection and animal rights statements. in general, male students gave less sympathetic responses than females. nine questionnaire statements (table 1) show a statistically significant association between gender and the students’ response statements. all these statements were statistically significant at the 0.05 probability level. the responses from students were 0.90 (a high reliability) for the scientific research statements and 0.87 (a moderate reliability) for vivisection statements when testing gender associations using cronbach’s alpha coefficient. according to pietersen & maree (2008), reliability estimates of 0.80 are regarded as acceptable by researchers. table 1: results of statistically significant associations between gender and responses to animal research and vivisection statements (statistical probability value, p < 0.05) statements x̄ s p-values more males agree than females: the use of monkeys in drug experiments to develop a vaccine against heroin addiction 3.56 1.40 0.0285 genetically engineering sheep to produce medicines in their milk 3.06 1.48 0.0041 experiments on cats to test the effectiveness and safety of a specific pill 3.58 1.35 0.0426 the use of dogs in heart disease research 3.48 1.31 0.0418 92 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 statements x̄ s p-values use of hamsters for research into malaria 3.11 1.41 0.0017 cloning cattle 3.23 1.41 0.0050 animal experimentation yields more benefits than abuses 3.27 1.08 0.0375 it is morally justifiable to take the lives of healthy animals for the sake of education 3.70 1.20 0.0324 more females agree than males: we don’t have the moral right to conduct painful experiments on animals or make them suffer for our benefit 2.10 1.28 0.0153 p = probability value; x̄ = mean; s = standard deviation the results revealed that more male than female students agreed with eight statements (table 1) at a 0.05 statistically significant level. more than half (54%) the males were in favour of monkeys being used in drug experiments to develop a vaccine. this was unexpected because monkeys are high on the phylogenetic scale and are anatomically closely related to human beings. sixty-five per cent of the female students were against this type of practice. more males (69%) than females (49%) were in favour of genetically engineering sheep in order to produce medicines in their milk. less than half of the male students showed positive responses to the use of cats and dogs (46% and 38% respectively) in experiments. fifty-six per cent of the females disagreed with these two statements. this affirms expectations because cats and dogs are common household pets. many male students (35%) were uncertain about the use of dogs in heart disease research. although hamsters can also be seen as pets, 60% of the males were in favour of the ‘use of hamsters for research into malaria’. forty-eight per cent of the females disagreed with this statement. the statement regarding the cloning of cattle elicited positive responses from only 56% of the males and 22% of the females. more males (39%) agreed that animal experimentation yields more benefits than abuses. a high percentage of females (45%) indicated that they were uncertain. surprisingly, two-thirds of the female students thought it was not morally justifiable to take lives of healthy animals in the name of education. however, the responses of the males were more or less equally distributed: 31% agreed, 31% were uncertain and 38% disagreed. there are few differences between the standard deviation ranges (s = 1.08-1.48) of the nine statements (table 1). the relatively low standard deviation suggests that students were quite consistent in relation to the vivisection statements. the mean scores (x̄ = 3.06-3.70) indicate that there are no statistically significant differences between statements grouped under ‘more males agree than females’. more females than males agreed with only one statement (see table 1), which had a statistical probability value less than 0.05. just more than three-quarters (77%) of the females agreed that we, as human beings, don’t have the right to conduct painful experiments on animals. experiences exposure to vivisection almost all the students (98%) have had exposure to experiments with live animals (table 2). some students indicated more than one exposure type. more than three-quarters (81%) of the respondents had watched a tv programme, video or film and had read or heard about live animal experiments. only 9% indicated that they have had exposure to all four items mentioned in the table. 93de villiers — the animal experimentation controversy table 2: responses (%) of students’ exposure to live animal experiments types of exposure male female total read or heard about 10 32 42 watched a tv program, video, film 11 28 39 watched your instructor 3 7 10 done it yourself 2 6 8 none at all 0.5 0.5 1 emotional reactions participants were asked to describe their emotional reactions when they first saw or participated in a live animal experiment. their responses to the open-ended question were classified as positive (18%), mixed (21%), or negative (61%). most of them had seen animal experiments with mammals through the media. more females (83%) than males (50%) responded negatively about vivisection. the following responses reflect some prospective teachers’ views. typical positive responses provided by five prospective teachers were: “i liked it very much, loved being directly involved. did not feel disgusted, but we did it in an orderly way” (female) “the experiment was professionally done. i do not feel offended. i do not feel that the animal suffered” (female) “it was an exciting moment for me” (female) “it felt like i’m really getting in touch with science at first hand. it felt good” (female) “i was very amazed and i was happy to see such a thing in my life” (male) some prospective teachers experienced mixed feelings towards vivisection: “at first i didn’t like it and after the description of the experiment and stating the results of the experiment, i felt it was of importance” (male) “it was painful to see animals treated that way but what make me feel better, it was for the human benefits” (male) “interesting, enjoyable, can be quite emotional and sometimes sad!” (female) “i felt bad about it but i understand the reason behind it. according to me the act was justifiable and necessary for knowledge purpose” (male) “it depends on how the experiment was done. some experiments were shocking and disturbing. but in some cases it was understood” (female) the following comments reflect some prospective teachers’ negative reactions: “it is the cruellest thing anybody can do. all animal experiments should be banned” (female) “it hurt me a lot, and i don’t want to experience it again” (female) “i was angry and disgusted by the actions of the people who were doing those experiment. i actually cried and was very hurt. people like this give mankind a bad name” (female) “i was very scared and emotional because animals have a right as much as human beings. they are god’s creation” (female) “it was sad an animal had to lose its life for the benefit of human beings. what gives us the right to justify it?” (female) 94 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 attitudes towards vivisection one section of the questionnaire showed thirteen of the methods society used live animals for scientific research. in response to the question, ‘do you think any of the experiments should be banned?’ the highest number of responses indicated that eyeirritancy tests on rabbits to test a new shampoo are morally wrong (52 responses), followed by the use of monkeys in drug experiments (41 responses), experiments on cats to test the effectiveness and safety of a specific pill (38 responses) and the use of dogs in heart disease research (36 responses). interestingly, in all the abovementioned tests mammals were involved. only 14 responses were noted regarding experiments on chickens to develop new veterinary products for use on factory farms. in response to the question ‘are you for or against animal rights?’ 90% indicated that they were for it. not many more females (92%) than males (85%) were in favour of animal rights. the students’ responses to the open-ended, follow-up question as to ‘why are you for animal rights?’ were classified into six categories (table 3). the main reason for prospective teachers’ positive responses involved the ‘treat with respect’ category. responses included: “we need to protect our animals” (female); “they are able to feel pain” (female); “ they are god’s creatures” (male); “ they deserve to be treated the way humans are treated” (female); “they should have the same rights as humans” (female); “the abusing of animals is morally wrong” (male); “it doesn’t mean if they can’t talk they don’t have feelings” (male); “we depend on animals for food, clothes” (female); “they will be extinct” (female) and “they should be treated with respect” (female). table 3: positive responses (%) as to why prospective teachers were in favour of animal rights categories elicited from students’ comments in support of animal rights male female total treat with respect 6 15 21 pain/feelings/emotions 2 17 19 compare with human beings 2 15 17 abuse/cruel/inhumane 2 8 10 created by god 1 11 12 conservation/extinction 2 6 8 more prospective teachers favour vivisection in research than in teaching. a large number (63%) of the respondents favour vivisection in research – more males (81%) than females (56%). fewer prospective teachers (51%) favour vivisection in teaching – again, more males (80%) than females (41%). positive responses included: “it stimulates career opportunities” (male); “understand learning content better” (female); and “hands-on experience – learn more” (male). just less than half (48%) the prospective teachers indicated that they consider it right to use live mammals to help find treatments for human illnesses. once again, more males (58%) showed a positive response. some 69% of the prospective teachers disagree (responded either ‘disagree’ or ‘strongly disagree’) that is morally wrong to do research on live animals if their physical appearance is considered, followed by the size (57%), rareness (52%), adaptability to the temperature of the environment (49%), intelligence (49%) and the position on the phylogenetic scale (39%). these findings support pedersen’s (2010) results where the animal’s physical appearance and accessibility for cuddling seemed to be highly valued by many students. the present results showed that a large number of students (28%) were uncertain about the importance of animal positions on the phylogenetic scale. there was no remarkable difference between the mean evaluation scores of the six statements; they varied between 3.18 and 3.94 out of a possible 5.0. 95de villiers — the animal experimentation controversy discussion and conclusion seeing that some of the demographic groups in this research were too small for statistical testing and to identify significant relationships (e.g. religion and culture), the focus fell on larger groups (e.g. gender). despite these limitations, the information gleaned from the small number of participants in this study can be used to raise issues and possibly initiate some debate in terms of vivisection in education and research. a new sensitivity is emerging about the appropriate use of living animals in education. this study showed that many prospective teachers of different cultures and gender have a deep respect for an animal’s life and oppose vivisection in teaching. educators (teachers and lecturers) have to instil in learners and students (i.e. prospective teachers) a respect towards nature. in addition, some religions (e.g. buddhism and hinduism) do not support the killing of animals. students (i.e. prospective teachers) and learners should appreciate the fact that solutions to ethical problems are influenced by what is culturally acceptable. according to conner (2010), an awareness of different cultural perspectives helps to develop appreciation and tolerance of other viewpoints. the responses of prospective teachers to the attitude statements have important implications for those teaching any life sciences component of a science curriculum. educators’ attitudes towards animals can affect learners’ and students’ attitudes towards animals. the study by pedersen (2010) showed that students easily adopt their teacher’s point of view. since educators are mediators between the general scientific view and the learners’ and students’ views of the world, their attitudes have important implications for the learners or students they teach. educators need to understand their learners’ or students’ concerns and feelings about vivisection and should endeavour to meet their intellectual, emotional, and moral needs. learners’ and students’ negative attitudes may impinge on the subject the educator is teaching and result in detracting from or resisting effective learning. an educator’s opposition to vivisection could inhibit the intellectual needs of some learners and students. according to van rooy (1997), the main purposes of using animals in teaching are observing, selecting relevant observations, looking for patterns in observations, and seeking to explain these patterns by suggesting hypotheses. however, the question arises whether it is critically important to do these observations in the classroom or laboratory. although vivisection has lessened human suffering, saved human lives and advanced scientific understanding, the same research can cause distress and pain for the animals involved and may result in their deaths. it is hardly surprising that vivisection raises complex questions. does a learner or student have a right to conscientiously object to practical sessions that involve harming or destroying animals? does the educator have the academic freedom to provide a complete and accurate lesson/lecture to learners and students? do animals have just as many rights as humans to be free of pain, abuse and exploitation? the decisions about the use of animals in scientific research and education are critical in making decisions in the broader context of ethical and social values. learners and students with scientific, religious, moral and ethical objections to vivisection have a right not to be discriminated against because of their compassion and respect for life. educators may not exclude from a course learners and students who are strongly concerned about the rights of animals. they have to re-examine the morality and instructional effectiveness of this practice. learners and students have the right to learn and animals have the right to live. therefore educators may find it difficult to accommodate both principles in an acceptable manner. the national department of education in south africa has remained silent on animal experimentation in life sciences and natural sciences education and leaves the issue open. according to hopkins (2008), animals have no rights under south african law. mechanisms, and especially in schools in south africa, should be put in place to ensure that all use of animals is in compliance with the principles of the south african national standard (sans) published in 2008. the purpose of this publication is to ensure the ethical and humane care of animals used for teaching activities as well as scientific purposes. its clause, “the use of animals to demonstrate knowledge or techniques in scientific disciplines in schools and tertiary institutions” (sans, 2008: 16), refers to three important general principles. firstly, animals should be used for teaching activities only when there are no suitable alternatives for achieving the educational objectives. secondly, students should be given the opportunity to discuss the social, ethical, and scientific issues 96 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 that are involved in the use of animals for teaching activities and scientific studies. thirdly, all teaching activities which involve the use of animals must have the approval of an animal ethics committee. this committee has to indicate that they are satisfied that there is no suitable alternative to the use of animals, and that the number of animals involved and the impact on them is minimised. (in south african schools, such animal ethics committees do not exist). where students are involved in the use of animals as part of their professional training, curricula in that academic discipline should include material on such issues. educators must be sensitive to students’ and learners’ needs, and should create an awareness of alternative instructional tools such as films, videos, models, and multimedia computer simulations. despite numerous educational alternatives (merikangas, 2011), vivisection is included in many courses, e.g. life sciences, natural sciences, anatomy, physiology and zoology courses. given the alternatives in schools and tertiary institutions, prospective life sciences and natural sciences teachers and lecturers teaching these disciplines should receive training in these alternatives. as a result of objections to practices of vivisection in schools and tertiary institutions, groundbreaking work has been done by many volunteers and professionals to develop alternatives to these practices. one is the international network for humane education (interniche) whose main focus is on the replacement of animal use and the implementation of alternatives in education. studies have shown that skills, knowledge and ethical awareness can be gained more effectively using progressive, alternative methods (downie & meadows, 1995; greenfield et al., 1995). another crucial issue is that we as educators do little to prepare our learners and students to overcome many scientific ethical obstacles they may encounter in their occupations. a bioethics component should be included in all anatomy, physiology, life sciences, natural sciences, veterinary sciences and zoology courses. there is still debate about the extent to which ethics should be taught within life sciences and related courses (reiss, 2010). ethics programmes should aim to heightening ethical sensitivity, to provide opportunities for increasing ethical knowledge, and to improve deliberation and justification skills (buntting & ryan, 2010). south africa is at the start of an entirely new chapter in the history of animal rights, human rights and social awareness. being informed about scientific ethics is critical, not only for learners, students, researchers and educators but for all members of society. all south african citizens will occasionally make bioethical decisions as a result of today’s biotechnology revolution. acknowledgements the author wishes to thank jacqui sommerville in the department of statistics at the university of pretoria for her constructive comments and stimulating feedback. endnotes 1. a term used in south africa if people are trained in schools. 2. a term used in south africa if people are trained in tertiary institutions. references animal aid education department 2001. wasted lives: student activities. kent: animal aid education department. animal experiments: a reference guide for schools 2000. london: british union for the abolition of vivisection. animal studies group 2006. killing animals. urbana and chicago: university of illinois press. buntting c & ryan b 2010. in the classroom: exploring ethical issues with young pupils. in a jones, a mckim & m reiss (eds), ethics in the science and technology classroom. the netherlands: sense publishers. capaldo t 2004. the psychological effects on students of using animals in ways that they see as ethically, morally or religiously wrong. atla-alternatives to laboratory animals, 32: 525-531. 97de villiers — the animal experimentation controversy cohen l, manion l & morrison k 2007. research methods in education. london and new york: routledge. conner l 2010. in the classroom: approaches to bioethics for senior students. in a jones, a mckim & m reiss (eds) ethics in the science and technology classroom. the netherlands: sense publishers. department of education 2002. revised national curriculum statement grades r-9 (schools) policy, natural sciences. pretoria: department of education. department of education 2003. national curriculum statement grades 10-12 (schools) life sciences. pretoria: department of education. de villiers jjr & monk m 2005. the first cut is the deepest: reflections on the state of animal dissection in biology education. journal of curriculum studies, 37: 583-600. de villiers jjr & sommerville jem 2005. prospective biology teachers’ attitudes toward animal dissection: implications and recommendations for the teaching of biology. south african journal of education 25: 247-252. downie r & meadows j 1995. experience with a dissection opt-out scheme in university level biology. journal of biological education, 29: 187-194. hobsons academic relations 2001. finding out: about animals in medicines research, london: hobson’s academic relations. foster c, stannistreet m & boyes e 1994. children’s attitudes to the use of animals in education and research: what are their justification and reservations? the school science review, 76: 39-44. greenfield cl, johnson al, shaeffer dj & hungerford ll 1995. comparison with surgical skills of students trained using models or live animals. journal of the american veterinary medical association, 206: 1840-1845. guerrini a 2003. experimenting with humans and animals: from galen to animal rights. baltimore, md: johns hopkins university press. hopkins k 2008. a legal argument against vivisection. retrieved on 14 january 2011 from http://www. animalrightsafrica.org/vivisectionlegalargument.php. horsthemke k 2010. the moral status and rights of animals. porcupine press: johannesburg. merikangas r 2011. students opposing vivisection. retrieved on 14 march 2011 from http://www. animalrightsafrica.org/vivisectionstudentsopposing.php mitchell g 1990. procedures for the control of the care and use of animals for teaching and research. south african journal of science, 86: 69-75. orlans f b 1991. forum: dissection. the case against. the science teacher, 58: 12-15. pedersen h 2010. animals in schools: processes and strategies in human-animal education. west lafayette: purdue university press. pietersen j & maree k 2008. standardisation of a questionnaire. in k maree (ed), first steps in research. pretoria: van schaik publishers. reiss m 2010. ethical thinking. in a jones, a mckim & m reiss (eds), ethics in the science and technology classroom. the netherlands: sense publishers. smith a j & smith k 2004. guidelines for humane education: alternatives to the use of animals in teaching and training. atla-alternatives to laboratory animals, 32: 29-39. stannistreet m, spofforth n & williams t 1993. attitudes of children to the uses of animals. international journal of science education, 15: 411-425. south african national standard (sans) 2008. the care and use of animals for scientific purposes. pretoria: sabs standards division. van rooy w 1997. controversial issues and the teaching of a-level biology: possibilities and problems. phd thesis. oxford: oxford university. vollum s, buffington-vollum j & longmire dr 2004. moral disengagement and attitudes about violence toward animals. society and animals, 12: 209-235. 22 development of verbal thinking and problem-solving among tshivenda-speaking primary school children azwihangwisi e muthivhi university of cape town the paper presents findings of primary school children’s performance on classification and generalisation tasks to demonstrate the fundamental connection between their verbal thinking processes and problemsolving, on the one hand, and the practical activities of their society and culture, on the other. the results reveal that, although children generally classify (or group) objects in ways that suggest abstract categorical relations, they in fact employ heterogeneous thought processes rather than simply employing either concrete-functional or abstract-theoretical modes of thinking. in addition to the concrete and abstract modes, a third cognitive mode termed abstract-functional mode is posited as revealing the fundamental connection between verbal thinking processes and the modalities of the specific sociocultural context of these children’s learning and development. the findings have crucial implications for children’s schooling and curriculum development, as they call for classroom pedagogy that accounts for, and interrogates the heterogeneous nature of children’s thinking and conceptual development. keywords: vygotsky, verbal thinking, classification, cognitive development introduction a recent study by cubero, de la mata and cubero (2008) elaborated on the question of what and why changes occur during participation in formal learning processes. the study compared the classification performance between advanced and novice adult education learners on classification tasks involving lists of domestic menus. participants had to classify the lists of local, mediterranean menu in two different ways: formal and local-spontaneous and everyday modes related to familiar domestic meal-preparation activities. the study found that both the novice and the advanced learners employed everyday modes of classification when using familiar objects in familiar task situations such as preparing domestic meals using local menus, whereas the advanced learners were more adept to employing an alternative, formal mode of classification with abstract justifications when requested to employ an alternative mode of classification. their novice counterparts, on the contrary, resorted to the everyday mode of classification that resembled familiar, domestic food-preparation activities and were thus unable to employ an alternative, abstractcategorical mode of classification. these findings extended luria’s (1976) original results in that they elaborate on the differentiated ways in which people engaged in similar activities may apply their cognitive processes to problem situations depending on the nature and extent of their engagement. cubero, de la mata and cubero (2008) argue, on the basis of these findings, that what accounts for the different forms of thinking is the use of different mediational means in different activity settings. that is, the use of formal, abstract forms of knowledge in school accounts for a change in the conceptual tools people use for thinking, and this change is accounted for by the activity setting (that is, the formal learning context) in which the cognitive processes are applied. however, this change does not necessarily supplant existing modes of thinking and problem-solving, but rather contribute to differentiation of thought processes that are applied to a problem situation according to its specific demands. while beginning to elaborate on the nature and extent of the developmental changes that occur during the course of formal schooling, cubero, de la mata and cubero’s (2008) analysis was questioned for not mentioning anything new that was not known, in that it essentially confirms vygotsky-luria’s original hypothesis, showing us how deeply schooling can modify and develop people’s modes of expressing themselves and of understanding their environment (zittoun, 2008). zittoun argues that such studies 23muthivhi — development of verbal thinking and problem-solving should rather consider the ambiguous meanings and the possible interpretations that could be derived, not from the results, but from the experimental processes. zittoun’s (2008) critique, while perhaps emphasising individuals’ meanings and interpretations at the expense of the role played by activity setting and the associated cultural-psychological tools, may, at the same time, be crucial for understanding potential manifestations of differentiated, plural forms of thinking and problem-solving in a specific activity setting such as formal schooling. that is, learners may manifest forms of thinking and problem-solving that derive both from their formal learning experience and from their spontaneous, everyday learning and developmental settings simultaneously within their formal learning, classroom context. this proposition demands that the notion of ‘activity setting’ and ‘cultural tools’ be extended or re-conceptualised, so as to be conceived not as binaries that exist in separation and as having a neat influence and cognitive consequences on learning and development and hence applied neatly according to the specific demands of the activity setting in question. at this point, the present study becomes relevant. the cultural contexts of learning and development for tshivenda2-speaking learners are, as is generally the case in most rural south african and african settings, very diverse to what is normally encountered in relatively stable social settings. the region that forms part of what is generally called venda comprises the zoutpansberg mountains. this is a remote rural part of northern south africa with three smaller urban centres of thohoyandou in the east, makhado in the west and musina in the far north bordering zimbabwe. the region is mostly subtropical with plush vegetation, but with some arid areas in the far north and north-western parts. subsistence cropand livestock-farming activities still abound, although these are gradually being supplanted by modern labour-based economic activities, forced upon the area by the historical loss of land and changing climatic conditions (see muthivhi, 2010). the far eastern part of the region is bordered by the national game park, while several smaller game parks dot the entire region. relatively larger commercial farming, mainly crop-farming activities chiefly in the hands of white farmers, constitutes a major economic activity in the region. the study was, however, conducted in two primary schools situated on the border of the semiurban “township” of makwarela and the more traditional, yet transforming village of mbaleni. although it comprises an emerging urban environment, this area is essentially rural and traditional in its outlook and cultural traditions. in this instance, the modern and the traditional exist together in intriguing contradiction, with traditional villages sprawled where relatively large urban residences dot the landscape. motorised vehicles contest for the right of passage with livestock such as goats and cattle in the streets, while village women plant mealies along the pavement of town streets for lack of subsistence land, which is fast disappearing as a consequence of urbanisation. the modern is in a constant tug-of-war with the traditional, and the contradictions reveal themselves everywhere and not least within formal schooling. tshivenda is the language predominantly spoken in the entire region and is also the language for just over a million people in south africa predominantly residing in this region. the language is also an instructional medium for some quarter of a million primary school children below the age of twelve, according to a 2005-snap survey statistics of the vhembe district administration. tshivenda is used as the medium of instruction from grades 1 to 3, while english is the official medium of instruction from grades 4 to 12. this does not, however, mean that english is, in practice, the dominant language used for classroom instructional purposes in grade 4 and above, as tshivenda continues to be the dominant language in this area – in what teachers often describe as “code switching” (see muthivhi, 2008; fleisch, 2008). this study explores the contradictions that manifest in learners’ development of verbal thinking through a series of experimental tasks adapted from luria’s (1976) original study in order to uncover the connection of thought to sociocultural settings and the specific institutional practices of formal schooling. 24 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 methodology design of experiment the design of the experiment was informed by the theoretical assumption that participants with the experience of schooling solve problems using the psychological tendencies that are shaped by the practices of formal school learning. when faced with problems that require classification of objects, schooled participants use a formal mode of classification that characterises school-specific forms of knowledge and learning, emphasising a systematic organisation of knowledge through linguistic concepts, rather than a purely experientially derived organisation of knowledge to establish object relations. participants were presented with questions that embodied problem solutions resembling the increasingly complex sociocultural practices in which they participated. that is, the task problems embodied the alternative modes of classification that characterised daily spontaneous activities, on the one hand, and formal school, abstract-categorical modes of classification, on the other. the experimental conditions required that participants be familiar with the procedures and content of the experimental tasks, while questions took the form of ‘clinical’ interviews, during which a question is posed and the participant’s response leads to further probing questions by the experimenter, with the aim of uncovering the meanings that underlie the participant’s initial response. participants could respond in each of the alternative modes of classification that resembled the activity settings in which their learning and development took place, namely formal school learning and the spontaneous, daily life situations of practical rural sociocultural contexts (luria, 1976; moll, 1994; cubero et al., 2008). participants eighty pupils took part in the experiment. participants were randomly selected from the class registers of grades 1, 3, 5 and 7. the average age of the participants was six years in grade 1, eight years in grade 3, ten years in grade 5 and twelve years in grade 7. twenty participants were selected from each grade. participation in the interview was voluntary and participants who expressed unwillingness to continue participating in the interview were allowed to withdraw. participants were selected from the class registers, and names of selected learners were sent to teachers who invited learners to join the researcher, one at a time, in a room were interviews were conducted. teachers were not involved in nominating learners, as the random selection ensured that learners of different learning abilities within a single class were represented in a sample. the interviews for all learners took place at the same period of time, and the results were compared, during the analysis, only across the selected grades. consent for the children’s participation in the experiment was obtained from the school whose principal and teachers sought the consent of the parents, advising that any child was free not to participate and to withdraw his/her participation at any stage during the study. it was impossible at the time to obtain written consent from the majority of the parents in the community, as most children did not stay with their parents but, mostly, with illiterate grandparents. anonymity of the participants was strictly adhered to throughout the different stages of data-processing and analysis. materials the materials comprised four a4-size white cardboard sheets, each having a group of four black ink drawings. the following objects were represented for each of the tasks: • task a: pick, panga, hoe and wheat. • task b: kraal, giraffe, goat and cow. • task c: tree, donkey, lizard and cow. • task d: hut, wheat, tree and mealie. 25muthivhi — development of verbal thinking and problem-solving an additional a4-size cardboard sheet, with drawings of a knobkerrie, bow and arrow, spear, and antelope, was used for the pre-testing or demonstration stage. the tasks were adapted from luria’s (1976) original study and were first adapted for use in south african rural settings by moll (1994) (see also muthivhi, 1995). the task items represented natural objects found or used in the participants’ culture such as plants that grow naturally or are planted; animals found in the environment or kept as livestock, and tools that were traditionally employed for subsistence farming purposes. however, some items such as donkey and pick were more recently introduced into the culture, but have since become an integral part of, and are more widely used in daily life activities of the participants’ sociocultural settings. procedures in the demonstration stage, the participant was shown the task materials and the procedures were explained to him/her. the participant was encouraged to touch the task materials and ask what the different pictures represent. the drawings of a knobkerrie, bow and arrow, spear and antelope were used during this stage. the demonstration stage was followed by the testing stage, with the experimenter asking the participant to classify the objects, using one of the two alternative classification modes. the experimenter started by asking a question that required classification, namely “which of these does not belong with the others?” or “which three of these four objects belong together?” after the participant had classified the objects by pointing to or naming one object that did not belong with the others, or pointing to or naming the three objects that belonged together, the experimenter asked a second question for which the participant had to provide the reason for his/her chosen mode of classification. this was the crucial question, because it determined the quality of the participant’s thinking regarding the actual classification mode of the participant’s overall response or solution to the task’s problem. the question seeking the participant’s reasoning behind his/her classification was “why do you think the object (naming it) does not belong with the others?” or “why do you think the three objects (naming them) belong together?” probing questions were asked in situations where a participant provided a concrete, functional classification to determine whether the participant would change his/her classification and adopt the formal, categorical classification proposed by the experimenter. for example, the experimenter proposed an alternative classification mode by posing the question “what if i take this (naming the object) out?” or “what if i group these three objects (naming them) and take this one (naming it) out?” should the participant maintain his/her chosen classification mode, the classification pattern was determined to be characteristic of his/her chosen mode of object classification. interviews took place between the researcher and a participant, one at a time. all interviews were conducted in the medium of tshivenda, in which both the researcher and the participant were fluent. participants were more open and free in their interaction with the researcher, by contrast to the ‘unnatural’ appearance of normal classroom behaviour which is usually strictly controlled from the outside by the teacher. children were aware that the interviews were less formal than classroom lessons and that they did not risk failure, as is normally the case with formal learning in class, which is almost always followed by assessment of learning and allocation of scores. recording of data the interview was tape-recorded at the same time that the pattern of the participant’s responses was recorded in a notebook. the participant’s response to the question requiring him/her to classify the objects was recorded as either ‘functional-graphic’ or ‘abstract-categorical’. a classification was recorded as graphic and functional if it reproduced the relations that objects had in real-life situations or if it emphasised the concrete form of the objects to be classified. for example, a panga and hoe may be grouped together with wheat, or a goat and cow grouped together with kraal. a classification action alone was not considered sufficient to make a decision about the fundamental nature of the participant’s thought processes. the participant’s reasoning behind each of his/her classification was always probed. the participant’s overall response was recorded as categorical only if 26 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 it was supported by reasoning based on the use of linguistic concepts such as ‘animals’, ‘tools’, ‘plants’, and so on. these concepts denote the category to which the objects identified are deemed to belong. however, if the participant revealed reasoning based on the functional relations of objects or their concrete manifestation, the overall response was recorded as functional and graphic. method of analysis of the results the analysis focused on whether the participants’ responses revealed a functional-graphic or an abstractcategorical classification mode. a functional-graphic classification mode involved the classification of objects according to their appearance and functional significance. the abstract-categorical classification mode involved the classification of objects according to their abstract linguistic categories, established on the basis of the use of linguistic terms or conceptual relations. for an abstract-categorical classification of a group of drawings that comprises a giraffe, goat, cow and kraal, the giraffe, goat and cow will be grouped together and a kraal excluded because the former are animals. on the contrary, a functional-graphic classification would emphasise the real-life relations the objects are deemed to have as experienced by the participant. therefore, the goat and cow would be grouped with the kraal, because the goat and cow are kept inside the kraal, but the giraffe, as a wild animal, will not be kept in the kraal. a reasoning pattern that justifies a categorical classification (giraffe, goat and cow) in functional terms was identified as a functional mode of classification. this comprised reasoning patterns that classified these objects together, because they all eat grass or would be found together in the bush. the emphasis that the participant placed in justifying his/her classification determined what underlying mode of reasoning s/he used to obtain such classification. the data in tables 1 to 3 illustrate only two classification patterns: the abstract and the concrete classification, when all reasons (including abstract-functional reasons) are interpreted (following luria’s (1976) original study) as concrete, because they employed no explicit linguistic terminology to subsume objects in a single class structure. this is however, re-interpreted later on in the discussion of results section to include the third, abstract-functional mode which the present research contributes to knowledge in the field. a total of 20 participants in each grade responded to the 4 task questions comprising tasks a, b, c and d. there were, therefore, a total of 80 responses per grade which are reported on in terms of percentages for each grade. in the discussion of the results for the three grades (grades 3, 4 and 5 combined), the percentages refer to the total scores for each of the three grades, added together into a total of 240 responses per task. results grade 1 the grade 1 participants emphasised a functional and graphic mode of object classification. only 2.5% of their responses to the task questions were, in appearance, abstract and categorical (see table 1 for a full breakdown of results). only on two occasions, in task a and task b, did the grade 1 participants offer such responses. in some instances, the grade 1 participants offered what appeared to be categorical classification, which was accompanied by functional reasons. for example, in task a, the grade 1 participants classified a pick, panga and hoe together, but were unable, except for a single instance, to justify their classification by using the term ‘tools’ as a basis for their classification. the grade 1 participants did not, therefore, use the linguistic concepts to establish conceptual relations among the objects. almost all of the reasons for the grade 1 participants’ classification (97%) emphasised the graphic and functional relations that the objects have in concrete, everyday situations where they are encountered. 27muthivhi — development of verbal thinking and problem-solving table 1: summary of the subjects’ overall response patterns grades grade 1 (n=20) grade 3 (n=20) grade 5 (n=20) grade 7 (n=20) abstract-categorical classification 2 2.5% 36 45% 39 49% 45 56% functional-graphic classification 78 97% 44 55% 41 51% 35 44% grades 3, 5 and 7 the performance of the participants in grades 3, 5 and 7, with regard to the use of the abstract-categorical classification mode, was not significantly different. the grade 3 participants obtained an overall performance of 45%, grade 5 participants 49%, and grade 7 participants 56%. the results showed that these participants used both the functional-graphic and the abstract-categorical modes, with equal emphasis. none of the two distinctive modes stood out as particularly dominant. a one-way anova procedure was conducted to determine whether the change in performance across the four grades is significant. the results of the anova procedure (see table 2) indicate that there is a significant difference (f (3, 76) = 22.52, p < .0001). a post hoc bonferroni correction indicated that the significant difference is located between grades 1 and 3, and between grades 3 and 7. table 3 shows the means and standard deviations in each of the four grades. figure 1 shows the developmental trend demonstrated by the participants’ performance. it is also clear from the means and standard deviations in table 3 that there is little improvement in performance between grades 3 and 5 and between grades 5 and 7, respectively. table 2: results of the anova procedure on classification and generalisation tasks source df anova ss mean square f value pr > f grade 3 175.1 58.4 22.52 <.0001 model 3 175.1 58.3 22.52 <.0001 error 76 196.9 2.6 corrected total 79 371.95 table 3: mean and standard deviations on classification and generalisation tasks grade n mean standard deviation 1 20 2.4 1.54 3 20 4.85 1.39 5 20 5.15 1.93 7 20 6.5 1.54 28 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 figure 1: developmental trend in participants’ performance across the four grades discussion of the results grades 3, 5 and 7 the pattern that dominated the responses of these participants revealed an interesting phenomenon. two distinctive modes of object classification were used. these modes were either categorical or concrete. however, subsequent justification of the initial classification actions revealed that there were three, rather than two modes of reasoning underlying the participants’ classification performance. task a • concrete classification only 10% of the participants’ classification was concrete in that it included wheat together with two of the three remaining items. the reasons provided to support these were similarly concrete and functionalgraphic, that is, emphasising the concrete appearance and the functional relations of the objects. for example, a panga, hoe and wheat were grouped together and the pick excluded from the grouping. the common reason for this classification was that a panga and hoe are used in the fields for planting wheat, while a pick is not used for that purpose. alternatively, the objects would be grouped together for the reason that a panga and hoe can be used at various stages of the preparation of the fields for planting wheat. unlike the hoe and panga, which have always existed in venda society, a pick is a relatively new tool that is not extensively used in venda homes. total responses on task 2 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 0 2 4 6 8 grade 29muthivhi — development of verbal thinking and problem-solving • abstract classification the majority of the participants’ responses (90%) classified a pick, panga and hoe together and excluded wheat as not belonging with the others. however, when it came to supporting this classification mode with appropriate reasons, only 45% of the responses made use of linguistic terms such as ‘tools’, ‘animals’ and ‘plants’ as a sole basis for their classification action (for example, a pick, panga and hoe belong together, because they are tools). • abstract-functional classification a third mode of classification seems to be peculiar to the participants’ specific sociocultural and linguistic context. in this task, 45% of the 90% apparently categorical classifications were, in fact, ‘abstractfunctional’ in that the participants argued that a pick, panga and hoe belong together, because they complement each other in their use. this mode of performance manifests a pattern that is peculiar to the specific sociocultural context of schooling and the linguistic experience of the participants. the participants employed the available tshivenda categories which, according to the analytical framework derived from the vygotsky-luria study (cole et al., 2006; luria, 1976; 1979) would probably be classified as functional because, although the objects are classified in an abstract manner, they are subsequently justified in terms of their functional relations or how they are used, or work, in relation to each other. the participants, therefore, employed multiple linguistic categories, derived from tshivenda, which would be undifferentiated in english and, possibly, in russian. task b • concrete classification twenty per cent of the participants’ classification was concrete. they grouped the goat, cow and kraal together, for example, and argued that goat, cow and kraal belong together, because a goat and cow are kept in the kraal at night, whereas a giraffe is a wild animal that is found in the bush and that cannot be kept with domestic animals. children in this context become familiar with these concrete functional categories at an early stage in their life from the subsistence activities of their everyday life experiences. goats and cows are still kept in most families and boys participate in their care, whereas animals such as giraffes are common in the game parks. the latter are also a common feature of their environment. • abstract classification a similar pattern as in task a is evident in this instance. in this task, 80% of the participants’ classification responses appeared to be categorical. the participants classified a giraffe, goat and cow together and excluded a kraal as not belonging with the others. however, only 61% of the reasons the participants provided were based on an abstract linguistic term such as ‘animals’. valid to the requirement of the task, 61% of the participants thus argued that a giraffe, goat and cow belong together, because they are animals. • abstract-functional classification the 19% responses comprising the reasons for the apparently abstract classification of task objects above were abstract-functional, in that the grouping of the objects was abstract and could have been justified by using a single linguistic terminology which, however, did not happen probably due to the fact that tshivenda language does not seem to emphasise such class relations. for example, participants argued that giraffe, goat and cow could be grouped together, because they eat plant leaves or that the giraffe, although a wild animal, would not harm the other two. in essence, the reasons participants provided for their classification action avoided using a single linguistic terminology that subsumes the relations implied. 30 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 task c • concrete classification the participants’ responses that classified the objects using a concrete classification mode (20%) usually excluded lizard from their classification and argued that the lizard was not ‘an animal’, or that the lizard did not eat plant leaves and would, therefore, not need to feed on tree leaves, as would a donkey and cow. these participants generally disagreed with the experimenter’s identification of a lizard as an ‘animal’. they preferred to identify it as a ‘creature’ (tshikhokhonono), or something similar to the concept ‘organism’. in tshivenda, a donkey and cow are identified as zwifuwo (domestic animals). a lizard would not normally be identified as a ‘domestic animal’ (tshifuwo) or a ‘wild animal’ (tshipuka), because it is neither kept domestically as a pet or as livestock, nor does it live in the ‘wild’, as other wild animals such as a giraffe or elephant. a lizard is identified as a ‘creature’ (tshikhokhonono), a concept that seems to suggest that it is neither ‘wild’ nor ‘domestic’, but is a creature that is found both in the wild and in the home. the concept ‘animal’ in tshivenda does not, therefore, seem to equate directly to the english concept as it seems to be more differentiated in its tshivenda occurrence. as a result, the participants would argue that they cannot group a lizard (tswina) with domestic animals (zwifuwo), because a lizard is not kept in the home like domestic animals. • abstract classification for task c, 80% of the participants’ classification responses were categorical, but only 58% of the reasons for these classifications were based on abstract-linguistic concepts. the 58% of the participants who offered reasons based on an abstract-linguistic category to justify their classification argued that a donkey, lizard and cow belong together, because they are ‘animals’. • abstract-functional classification of the 80% of the participants’ responses where donkey, lizard and cow were grouped together, 22% of these responses provided what could be referred to as abstract-functional reasons as basis for the classification. for example, participants argued that these could be grouped together, because they eat the leaves of the tree or that they have blood, whereas tree does not have blood or does not move. the reasons seem to resist subsuming task objects under linguistic terminology that could serve as basis for the classification. this could possibly be explained by reference to the differentiated nature of the concept ‘animal’ in tshivenda. task d • concrete classification for this task, 17% of the participants’ classification responses were concrete and functional. that is, they classified hut, mealie and wheat together and argued that the mealie and wheat would be stored in the hut when harvested. these forms of reasoning dominated participants’ justifications of the objects’ classification. the possible object relations implied in this task may have invoked images, on the part of these participants, of the subsistence activities which still dominate their daily domestic activities in which participants actively participate. • abstract classification for this task, 83% of the participants’ classification was abstract and categorical. that is, participants identified wheat, tree and mealie as belonging together, and excluded hut as not belonging with the others. however, only 33% of the reasons offered made use of the linguistic term ‘plants’ as a conceptual basis for the classification. 31muthivhi — development of verbal thinking and problem-solving • abstract-functional classification of the 83% classification responses, 50% of the reasons given to justify this initial classification were abstract-functional in that, although they emphasised the objects’ categorical relations, the reasons seem to appreciate the contextual relations of objects as experienced in the participants’ daily life experiences. the participants argued, for example, that wheat, mealie and tree provide food, whereas hut does not. some argued that a hut can be used for storing wheat and mealies at harvest, but that a hut is not built in the fields where wheat and mealies grow, because the roots of the tree growing next to it would cause it to crack and collapse. even in situations where a linguistic term zwimela (the equivalent of ‘plants’) was used to justify the classification, this was further extended to relate to the functional relations of these objects in their concrete situations. in tshivenda, tree is called muri, whereas wheat and mealies can collectively be called zwimela, which is generally equivalent to the concept ‘plant’. there is, therefore, in tshivenda a peculiar distinction between plants that are miri (trees) and plants that are zwimela (such as mealies and wheat). there is, therefore, an apparent tension, in the responses of the participants, between the school-specific concepts such as ‘tree’, on the one hand, and the tshivenda-derived concepts such as zwimela (plants other than trees), on the other. conclusion performance in these tasks suggests that the acquisition and development of concepts, and the specific modes of thinking and problem-solving, are related to the sociocultural context and the learning activities in which learners participate. the cultural context in which children’s learning and development takes place is multifaceted and multilayered, encapsulating the traditions of learning in their specific schooling as well as their development in a rapidly changing sociocultural context of rural venda and south africa. with no substantive improvement on the quality of tshivenda as a crucial cultural-psychological tool, the relational processes of classroom teaching and learning will continue to be constrained, remaining largely at levels such as described in muthivhi (2008) where teaching comprised mere reiteration of the concrete, spontaneous concepts, while learning did not lead to the transformation (and transcendence) of spontaneous concepts and empirical forms of knowledge into formal-abstract concepts and theoretical forms of knowledge that should characterise formal schooling. the fundamental difference between tshivenda and english concepts seems to derive essentially from their respective levels of development for use as instructional mediums within classroom teaching and learning situations. while tshivenda concepts arise from, and through the specific sociocultural activities that make this society distinctive, curriculum development (and language development) for instructional purposes needs to take the psycho-pedagogical realities of tshivenda-speaking learners into serious account, by ensuring that curriculum and pedagogical demands are explicit and that instructional tasks are structured so as to provide learners with opportunities to transcend potential conceptual constraints immanent in their everyday, spontaneous activities. for example, translation activities that characterise curriculum development for tshivenda-medium classrooms need to elaborate on the formal concepts in ways that clearly engage with and eliminate the ambiguities that may persist when the world is conceived from the perspective of someone whose conceptualisations may have been influenced by, and shaped through participation in sociocultural activities that constitute the tshivenda life-world. meanwhile, classroom pedagogy could similarly proceed from the perspective that thought, language and sociocultural activities such as domestic life or classroom teaching and learning are inextricably intertwined, and that concepts arise out of (and through) participation and engagement with these activities. as a result, teaching and learning would, therefore, emphasise the use of language as a cognitive (or cultural-psychological) tool rather than as a carrier of meaning and facts, and thus privilege learners’ meaningful engagement with ideas and knowledge. teachers would, for instance, clarify and elaborate on areas of potential sources of ambiguity and misunderstanding, while simultaneously probing learners’ ideas 32 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 and conceptualisations so as to provide them with conceptual resources for transcending the constraints of spontaneous concepts and empirical forms of knowledge. references cole m, levitin k & luria a 2006. the autobiography of alexander luria: a dialogue with the making of mind. london: lawrence erlbaum associates. cubero m, de la mata m & cubero r 2008. activity settings, discourse modes and ways of understanding: on the heterogeneity of verbal thinking. cultural and psychology, 14 (4): 403-430. fleisch b 2008. primary education in crisis: why south african schoolchildren underachieve in reading and mathematics. cape town: juta. luria ar 1976. cognitive development: its cultural and social foundations. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. luria ar 1979. the making of mind. cambridge, ma: harvard university press. moll i 1994. school was far away: the formal perceptions, classifications and syllogistic reasoning of kokwane ndlovu. perspectives in education, 15 (2): 189-217. moll i 1995. cultural people and cultural contexts: comments on cole (1995) and wertsch (1995). culture and psychology, 1 (3): 361-371. muthivhi ae 1995. the cognitive consequences of the disruption of schooling. master’s dissertation. university of the witwatersrand, johannesburg. muthivhi ae 2008. language policy, classroom practice and concept learning in a grade one tshivenda classroom. southern african review of education, 14 (3): 23-35. muthivhi ae 2010. ploughing new fields of knowledge: culture and the role of community schooling in venda. journal of education, 48: 137-153. zittoun t 2008. speaking in tongues: commentary on cubero, de la mata and cubero. culture and psychology, 14 (4): 431-441. 81 i want to publish but ...: barriers to publishing for women at a university of technology a garnett north west university fe mahomed vaal university of technology this article documents the experiences of a community of practice (cop) of female academics with regard to the notion of publishing. the non-probability, purposive sample utilised in the study, comprised a group of female academics who were involved in a women in research programme at a university of technology (uot). the purpose of the article was to explore the personal and professional barriers the women may have experienced with regard to academic publishing. a qualitative paradigm was used, by means of a case study approach. it was expected that the data might indicate a specific gendered overload for the sample group with regard to publishing, as well as produce anomalous outcomes as a result of the uot setting. however, women were not found to be specifically conscious of their gendering, but rather experienced barriers to publishing mainly as a result of high administrative workloads in the institution. the article adds to the body of knowledge in that it (1) maintains that the main barrier to publishing in this case is not compounded by gender. (2) shows that workload pressure is similar in a university of technology environment as in a traditional university environment, and (3) documents the experiences of a cop and the success thereof, which could be duplicated in other environments. keywords: academic publishing; women; research; personal and professional barriers; gender introduction and background it is widely acknowledged that there is pressure on academics in higher education to research and publish as well as to maintain a full teaching load. in addition, davies, lubeska and quinn (1994), greenwood (1998) and roth (2002) contend that research and publication outputs are central to an academic’s life world and occupational identity. where teaching was once the core function of university academics, research and publishing have now become far more integrated into the university milieu (waghid, 2009:211). sweeney (2001) further submits that scholarly publications produced by researchers are part of their jobs and do count significantly towards salary and job security. this is reiterated in the words of sullivan (1996: 40-46) publication in recognised scholarly outlets is the prime indicator of academic worth, paving the way to rewards such as promotion, tenure and research funding … scholarly publishing, in all its manifestations remains both the bedrock and the currency of academic life. however, the ability to publish is evidently an outcome that some seem to attain with more apparent ease than others. hemmings, rushbrook and smith (2007) show that the publishing front line is fraught with perils, yet academics are urged by their employers to meet set criteria with regard to publishing. they refer to the term “research active” which entails that academics contribute to four types of publication, namely refereed conference papers, refereed journal articles, scholarly books, and scholarly book chapters. this definition of research activity will be used as the notion of what publishing entails in this article. 82 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 the difficulties of publishing (hemmings et al., 2007) may be further compounded when the researchers are female and when the institution at which they are based does not have an established publishing culture (davies, lubelska & quinn, 1994:5; gottlieb & keith, 1997; martin, 2010:12). much scrutiny has been placed on gender equity in academia and there is substantial literature devoted to gender inequality and difficulties women have in the academic arena (etzkowitz, kemelgor, neuschatz & uzzi, 1994; peterson & gravett, 2000; maürtin-caincross, 2005; easterly & pemberton, 2008). moreover, “gender equity is one of the fundamental principles underpinning the transformation of the south african education system” (dieltiens, unterhalter, letsatsi & north, 2009: 365-374). from a gendered standpoint then, this article focuses on the experiences with respect to academic publishing of a group of women, or community of practice (cop), a term coined by lave & wenger (1998). this cop took the form of a “women in research” (wir) programme at a university of technology (uot) in south africa. this article attempts to explain why such a group of women find publishing challenging. compounding the pressure to publish is the fact that universities of technology (previously technikons in the south african higher education sector) are now viewed in the same vein as traditional research universities. this means that similar yardsticks and pressures apply with regard to national research benchmarks. however, these uots have traditionally been considered to be “less research-driven”, much like the “historically black universities” (hereafter hbus) which maürtin-caincross (2005) denotes as promulgating inadequacies and barriers to publishing that have “translated into institutional cultures that are characterised by a very strong emphasis on teaching and community-based research, while publications are relegated to a more peripheral component of the academic project”. perishing instead of publishing is potentially par for the course in these circumstances. given the context of this research, two key assumptions underpinned the project. the first was that the absence of a research tradition at uots was likely to negatively affect the research activity of academics at the institution. the second was that women academics at the uots were likely to have experienced a number of gendered challenges to the publishing imperative. therefore, while research on inequalities can adversely affect women’s advancement in academia (reid & comas-diaz, 1990; bronstein, rothblum & solomon, 1993; etzkowitz et al., 1994; peterson & gravett, 2000; maürtin-caincross, 2005; hemmings et al., 2007; easterly & pemberton, 2008; kargwell, 2008), potentially new themes were anticipated to emerge within a uot setting. an additional novel issue we feel has been captured in this article is that it focuses specifically on the experiences of women academics with regard to publishing and its potential barriers, rather than merely on being unable to advance in academia due to being female. how the idea came about … the university of technology where the research was conducted is not immune to having to conform to national pressure to produce publications; arguably even more so due to having to transform from a technikon to a university of technology.1 to stimulate publishing outputs, the research directorate of the institution decided to initiate a “women in research” (wir) programme at the institution with the aim of establishing a cop to encourage women academics at the institution to write and publish accredited academic articles. women from all fields within the institution were invited to participate in the programme. some of us were nominated by our respective faculties or line managers. an original group of twenty women signed up for the programme which was conducted for two days roughly every month for the duration of one year. the publishing challenge was intrinsic from the first meeting. we talked at length about why publishing was difficult for all of us and many other academics, specifically women, although all of us admitted to wanting to publish. the women in the group began to share their experiences (or lack thereof) of publishing and this gave rise to the initial concept of documenting the experiences of the group. as the aim behind the initiation of the group was to stimulate publishing, the specific focus of the research was on identifying those barriers or obstacles which prevent(ed) us from publishing, as this seemed to be a challenge to most of the group. 83garnett & mahomed — i want to publish but ... conceptual framework the literature focuses mainly on barriers to advancement of women academics within traditional or comprehensive universities. reference to such examples are made in the work done by petersen and gravett (2000) who refer broadly to experiences of women academics within a traditional afrikaans university in south africa. they give credence to the notion of women being outsiders in academia and document concerns regarding the unequal distribution of male and female academics according to job level as well as the poor representation of women at the professorate level. other issues raised in their study are constraints regarding the lack of adequate child-care facilities, gender discrimination and the continuation of sexual harassment, and violence. while literature also addresses the concept of barriers in academic careers experienced by ethnic minority groups in academia (vokwana, 2008; bronstein et al., 1993; wyche & graves, 1992), this article will reflect on gender issues, rather than on ethnic minority issues. moreover, selected research conducted on women in academia focuses on barriers to participation and promotion relative to perceived institutional supports or hindrances (acker & armenti, 2004; georgia tech research news, 2004; kargwell, 2008), while a large majority of research depicts more personal gender barriers such as the impact of pregnancy and child-rearing on women’s academic careers, low levels of self-confidence, domestic responsibilities, and other family demands (etzkowitz et al., 1994; hughes, 1999; theron, 2002; hemmings et al., 2007). the literature does not specifically document women’s experiences of publishing, which this article will reflect on, as well as both the professional and personal barriers of the sample group. finally, as the research was conducted within a specific group or community of practice (cop), we adopt, as the conceptual framework of the article, the learning theory of wenger and snyder (2000) who characterise cops as groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they are involved in and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly. these cops are stipulated, in part, as a process of social learning that occurs when people who have a common interest in a subject or area collaborate over an extended period of time, share ideas and strategies, determine solutions, and build innovations (lave & wenger, 1998). the wir group met regularly over the course of a full calendar year, sharing experiences, voicing their concerns and assisting one another with various challenges that emerged. we thus felt it appropriate to document the experiences of the cop. methodology design and sample a qualitative paradigm was used for the study, utilising a case study approach (namely all the women in the cop). non-probability, purposive sampling was used, as we actively selected the most productive sample to answer the research question (marshall, 1996). our inclusion criteria comprised all the women who had initially joined the wir programme, irrespective of whether they chose to remain in or withdraw from the programme. of the original group of twenty women who joined the programme, nine were unable to fulfil their commitment to complete it. the eleven that remained in the wir programme agreed to participate as respondents in our research project, and ethical clearance was obtained from the research directorate of the university in this regard. we, as the researchers, also decided to attempt to solicit responses from the nine women who had left the wir programme, as we felt that they might also be able to give additional insights into publishing barriers at our institution that the women remaining in the wir group might not. only one participant who left the programme consented to be involved in our research project, eventually resulting in a total of twelve participants in the sample. this is concomitant with qualitative research sample sizes, as documented by bineham (2006) who states that qualitative research should involve approximately ten to twelve people or events due to the large amount of data generated and the complexity of analysing qualitative data. 84 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 the involvement of the participants was of a voluntary nature. the group was all female, but fairly diverse, ranging in age from mid-twenties to mid-fifties and comprising five white females, four african females and three indian females. the participants were also from various academic departments, varied in levels of seniority, and one was non-academic. we also all had various degrees of research and publishing experience. instrumentation and procedures for data collection a relevant literature study utilising both national and international sources was conducted. the researchers examined a number of articles (skolnik, 2000; le grange, 2003; garnett, 2005; hemmings et al., 2006) on barriers to publishing experienced by both male and female academics across geographical boundaries and decades. while we expected that the participants in our study may have some similar experiences identified in the literature, we were also keen to understand whether the particular academic context of uots was significant to understanding the barriers to publishing, and we wanted to examine publishing from a female perspective and document the experiences of our cop. after six months of conversations with all the women in our regular meetings, a few questions started to emerge. an interview guide was developed from our conversations and used to explore the participants’ perceptions regarding their professional and personal barriers to publishing. three questions were identified. the first was “why did you join the women in the research programme?” this was to ascertain the motivational factors attributable to the participants. the second was “what are the personal and professional barriers to publishing that you experience?” and the third was “are you still part of the women in research group. why or why not?” we purposefully chose questions that did not mention gender and deliberately did not draw attention to the fact that they are women academics in relation to their barriers to publishing. we wanted to investigate whether the gender issue would come up ‘naturally’, rather than in response to leading questions. we discussed the best method of data collection with the participants in the cop and came to the agreement that the participants would prefer to write their responses in a narrative form and submit them electronically, rather than be interviewed. this method was in keeping with the approach that we had been using in the wir group for the duration of our meetings. the facilitator of the group required that we keep a journal and write at least a page a day to keep record of our thoughts and document our feelings. this was done to stimulate the urge to write and so enable the women in the group to be able to write up additional matters, such as research findings. we acknowledge that utilising this narrative writing method may have been a limiting factor in the richness of the data produced due to the time constraints of the participants. to mitigate this, however, we requested participants to write their responses during the wir sessions, where they focused only on their writing and arguably would not have been under the same time pressure as within the office. we also requested at least a two-page narrative from each participant to ensure that sufficient data was generated. participants were then requested to submit their responses electronically to one of the researchers within the week following the wir session. all participants were conversant with the purpose of the study, their participation was voluntary and they were able to opt out at any point if they so desired. the data was collected within a two-week period, following the six months of meetings and conversations held in the wir group. owing to the fact that the researchers were involved in the wir group as a cop and interacted with the group over the course of a year also contributes to the trustworthiness of the data which, according to sandelowski (1993), becomes a matter of persuasion whereby the scientists are viewed as having made their research practices visible and, therefore, auditable. a record was kept of the dates of all responses received (which on average was a two-page written, narrative response), as well as of the participants’ details. we did not use any of the respondents’ names and all responses were coded in a collective summary. however, we recognise that due to the wir group being fairly well-known within the university, anonymity could not be guaranteed.2 85garnett & mahomed — i want to publish but ... analysis of the data the documented responses of the participants were analysed by the researchers using atlas ti. a list of twenty-two codes was generated. after re-examining the summary, we decided to collapse some of the codes as they were repetitive. we agreed that data saturation had been reached owing to the amount of data we had collected and the repetitive themes that emerged in the coding. each researcher coded independently and then compared codes. this amounts to analyst triangulation which, according to patton (2002), occurs when multiple analysts review findings. two or more persons may independently analyse the data and compare their findings. this implicitly reflects the credibility of the data analysis. where participants mentioned items more than once in their responses, these items were coded accordingly. we then assigned these collapsed codes to different families. eventually, seven families were created and fourteen codes assigned within each family (refer to table 1). we called the seven families: extrinsic motivators, intrinsic motivators, personal barriers, professional barriers, personal reasoning for joining, professional reasons for joining, and why they stayed. findings and discussion the findings indicate that the majority of the women joined the programme voluntarily. some of the responses were: “i always wanted to publish an article and i hoped that i would be able to learn the ‘how to’ through this initiative”; “the reason i joined the wir programme was to broaden my outlook in research and to further develop myself”; “i joined the wir programme as it seemed like a perfect opportunity to gain skills to improve my writing”. the women also displayed high intrinsic motivator-type behaviour as there were high loadings on the codes meeting intended outcomes, overcoming barriers and self–exploration/development which is indicative of an inward strive for competence (in this case the ability to write) and to reward themselves (via the publishing of an article). this relates to whether the women joined the programme for personal reasons, as intrinsic behaviours are characterised by key “motivators” such as knowledge, accomplishment, stimulation, responsibility, challenge, achievement, variety, need for competence, autonomy, and advancement opportunity (herzberg, 1966; kasser & ryan, 1996; weinberg & gould, 2003). this indicates that by joining this cop they expected to be involved in a learning process, resulting in a specified outcome (lave &wenger, 1998), which is the original intent expressed by a cop. extrinsic motivator-type behaviour towards the programme was also demonstrated. some of the women joined because they felt it would allow them the opportunity to network with other women and receive a level of social support (ganster, mayes, sime & thorp, 1982) and encouragement. participants expressed this as follows: “i also envisaged it as a place where women could share their experiences regarding research”; “i hoped to find personal and professional support for research”; “network with colleagues in the broader institutional context”; “as women we have an overload of personal and professional work, maybe we will be advised on how to cope”. it appears that the women wanted to form part of a cop like the wir group where they would feel encouraged and supported. this notion is supported by cook (1977) who indicates that networks of love and support are critical to the ability as women to work in a hostile world where they are not expected to survive. the data indicates that the extent of personal barriers experienced by the women was far less significant than the professional barriers. lack of self-confidence and role stress were the two main codes attributed to personal barriers and some of the women expressed that they lacked self-confidence and 86 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 writing skills. role stress can be experienced by a person due to their role (job) in the organisation and constructs such as role conflict, role ambiguity and role overload (aziz, 2004) were coded under the ambit of role stress. in this case we are using the term to denote stress in a personal capacity and not solely in terms of organisational work roles. table 1: data codes and families families codes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 total extrinsic motivators academic work expectations 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 2 1 0 1 0 6 actions that result in the attainment of externally administered rewards, including pay, material possessions, prestige, and positive evaluations from others (ryan & deci, 2000) total: 14 networking, support and interaction 0 2 0 0 2 0 0 0 2 0 2 0 8 intrinsic motivators an individual’s need to feel competency and pride in something, derived from within the person or from the activity itself, positively affecting behaviour, performance, and wellbeing (mccullagh, 2005). meeting intended outcomes 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 7 overcoming barriers 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 2 0 1 1 0 7 total: 22 self-exploration and development 0 1 1 1 0 2 1 1 1 0 0 0 8 personal barriers lack of selfconfidence and skill 2 0 0 1 1 2 2 3 0 0 1 0 12 total: 23 role stress 0 0 1 1 1 0 2 2 2 1 1 0 11 personal reason for joining total: 10 intrinsic reasons for joining 0 2 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 1 1 10 professional barriers lack of infrastructure, research and organisational support 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 4 2 0 2 0 10 limited opportunity for promotion/reward 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 3 total: 29 work overload/ time 1 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 2 1 1 2 16 professional reason for joining total: 3 extrinsic reasons for joining 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 3 why they stayed total: 20 commitment and perseverance 1 3 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 13 meeting intended outcomes 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 1 1 7 totals 7 14 5 10 9 11 11 21 12 5 12 4 121 87garnett & mahomed — i want to publish but ... the data indicates that the extent of personal barriers experienced by the women was far less significant than the professional barriers. lack of self-confidence and role stress were the two main codes attributed to personal barriers and some of the women expressed that they lacked self-confidence and writing skills. role stress can be experienced by a person due to their role (job) in the organisation and constructs such as role conflict, role ambiguity and role overload (aziz, 2004) were coded under the ambit of role stress. in this case we are using the term to denote stress in a personal capacity and not solely in terms of organisational work roles. the results support and add to the findings of previous research (seyed, al-haji umar & al-hajji, 2004), which shows that a high level of confidence in relation to academic publishing is exceedingly important, as more productive academics compared to less productive academics display greater confidence in their ability to carry out research activities. according to wills (2007), many academics experience barriers to writing such as inadequate knowledge and writing skills, lack of confidence, and low motivation regarding writing for publication. the following excerpts from our data reiterate this notion: “the ability to express my thoughts in general on paper”; “the ability to write in english”; “i don’t feel confident to write”; “i don’t believe i have the skills” and “suffer from bad inferiority complex with regard to research”. our findings show that this is an important supposition for women too, rather than merely for male academics as the previous research suggests. the overload of home and personal life was mentioned, albeit to a lesser extent than the other barriers. some women mentioned that they had young children and some were single mums, and that this contributed to role overload as they also had family commitments. some women revealed the stress and time pressures they felt with regard to travelling time: “travelling to and from johannesburg is timeconsuming and stressful because that leaves me with limited time in the mornings and afternoons”; “i am a single mum and the responsibility is enormous”; “i am a single parent, time is against me because when i knock off i have to think of the kid.” this is unique in the context of academic publishing, but not unique with regard to academic careers, as research conducted at another traditional university revealed that the women in that instance felt they were encumbered with a double workload, i.e. traditional family responsibilities and as academics with career responsibilities, thus impacting on their personal lives and their career development (petersen & gravett, 2000). if research expectations are added to the mix in this context, arguably women are then encumbered with a triple workload. it is interesting to note that the workload strain the women experienced in the traditional university setting concurs with the experiences of the women in the university of technology environment. professional barriers seemed to be the highest contributor to the lack of writing and publishing. the most frequent complaint was lack of time and work overload, which was mentioned by nearly all the participants. many other studies found that the lack of time, administrative load and juggling research and teaching responsibilities was problematic for many academics (petersen & gravett, 2000; garnett, 2005; maürtin-cairncross, 2005; hemmings et al., 2006). some strong feelings were expressed by participants as follows: “there is too much administrative work required which does not allow me much breathing space” and i want to be able to do things which i consider as work during working hours, but unfortunately in my office, there is no chance of that, as students and staff wander in and out all day long, with or without appointments, the phone rings non-stop, so it is not a conducive environment for focusing on research. as this is an issue that emerges so frequently in academic writing regarding publishing, we suggest that it is about time that university management takes such concerns seriously and works on real, effective solutions to mitigate this. despite the workload issues, professional barriers and other demands, the women appear to be committed to the process of publishing, and willing to overcome barriers. the women were determined to finish the wir programme as they wanted to meet the intended outcome, namely to ultimately produce a publishable article in keeping with cop norms (wenger & snyder, 2000). exact phrases from the women were “this initiative had an expected outcome publishing an article which kept me in the process”; 88 perspectives in education, volume 30(2), june 2012 “should result in an article being published for us”; “i joined the programme with the hope of realising my own barriers to furthering my studies”; “very important to me to have a published article”; “i need to learn other forms of research”. concluding remarks and recommendations the main objective of the article was to document the experiences of a group of women in a cop at a university of technology and their views on publishing. although the article focuses on the barriers to publishing from the perspective of a group of women, the ‘gender issue’ did not emerge strongly in the data. contrary to expectations (petersen & gravett, 2000; hemmings et al., 2006; easterly & pemberton, 2008), women are not conscious of their gendering as the primary barrier to publishing. professional barriers were rated as the biggest contributor to lack of publishing (specifically workload and time constraints) this supports the findings of various other studies (petersen & gravett, 2000; garnett, 2005; maürtin-cairncross, 2005), albeit in traditional university settings. the article documents the observation that workload and time constraints are as prevalent in the university of technology context as in the traditional university space. three women out of a sample of twelve mentioned being a single parent as contributing to a gendered overload, which could be attributed to personal circumstances rather than as being a specific commentary on inequalities experienced by women alone. nine of the total participants have children, but the majority of women did not mention this as being a problem factor. personal circumstances and mothering took a back seat in this case and organisational constraints were highlighted as being more prevalent in terms of barriers to publishing. high workloads and administrative responsibilities emerged as their most timeconsuming activities versus their home responsibilities. we conclude that uots are also guilty of creating environments that contribute to this administrative overload, as is the case in other traditional universities, but possibly do not promulgate an environment of gender inequality. this may be attributed to being more sensitive to issues such as race and gender owing to the fact that they were previously denoted as “historically black universities” (maürtin-caincross, 2005). the article adds to the body of knowledge in that it: • maintains that the main barrier to academic careers in this case is not specifically compounded by gender which is contradictory to other research; • shows that workload pressure is similar in a university of technology environment as in a traditional university environment; • demonstrates that many of the personal and professional barriers to publishing documented in previous research on academic careers from the perspective of both genders also holds true for women in this case, and • documents the experiences of a cop and the success thereof3, which could be duplicated in other environments. implications for practice the high level of commitment expressed by this group of women would lead one to believe that they have the willingness to publish and if their time was more structured and perhaps freed up somewhat, many research outputs could potentially be expected. this requires a strong commitment from the management team in this university (and, in fact, all universities) to create an enabling environment, rather than a hindering one. purely administrative tasks should be duly shifted from academics to administrators in light of this. learning did take place in this cop, articles were produced and it can for this reason be labelled as a success story. therefore, universities should consider implementing these formal or informal cops, by inviting groups of women into a common space where they can tackle the publishing challenge. it is clear from the findings that women are seeking such an outlet. 89garnett & mahomed — i want to publish but ... in conclusion, at this university of technology, this cop does not feel victimised; by happening to be female academics, we are just academics and we want to publish. references acker s & armenti c 2004. sleepless in academia. gender and education, 16(1):3-24. aziz m 2004. role stress among women in the indian information technology sector. women in management review, 19:356-363. bineham g 1996. qualitative research: information sheet 15, education centre, united kingdom. bronstein p, rothblum ed & solomon se 1993. ivy halls and glass walls: barriers to academic careers for women and ethnic minorities. new directions for teaching and learning, 53:17-31. cook bw 1977. female support networks and political activism. usa: chrysalis. davies s, lubeska c & quinn j (eds) 1994. changing the subject: women in 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participation. psychology of women quarterly, 16:429-437. endnotes 1 prior to 2004, a total of 36 higher education institutions existed in south africa. thereafter, through a series of mergers advocated by the south african department of education, the original institutions were consolidated into 26 institutions at the time the research was conducted, and former technikons were now renamed universities of technology. 2 participants were informed of this at the time of collecting their responses, and they gave their permission for the data to be written-up under these circumstances. 3 after the conclusion of the wir programme, a total of three articles were generated as a result; these are under review at present. if success is arguably measured by article outputs, then this group can be labelled as successful. 267 research article 2021 39(2): 267-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) teaching higherorder comprehension strategies to a grade 2 learner who struggled to read for meaning: a case study abstract higher-order comprehension skills are necessary to understand a text, yet many south african learners have not been taught these skills. the aim of this study is to explicitly teach higherorder reading comprehension strategies to a grade 2 learner who could not read for meaning. this study is based upon vygotsky’s social constructivist theory. data were collected through preand post-tests, an intervention programme, interviews and classroom observations. the findings suggest that the learner acquired higher order thinking skills after being taught reading comprehension strategies. the teacher guided, paced and modelled the learner’s reading progress, creating a safe learning environment. the results suggest that teaching higher-order comprehension strategies and creating safe learning environments had an impact on developing the grade 2 learner’s higher-order thinking skills. keywords: explicit teaching; higher order thinking skills; inferences; reading comprehension; reading for meaning; social constructivist theory. 1. introduction the ability to read for meaning is important since, according to klapwijk, the average person starts reading the minute they open their eyes in the morning: checking for messages on mobile phones, reading labels on breakfast food containers, reading and signing children’s school notices, scanning newspaper headlines on the way to work, reading road signs and subway notices (2015: 1). yet, globally (world bank, 2018) and in south africa, most learners lack the higher-order comprehension skills that enable them to read for meaning. acknowledging the reading crisis in south africa, president cyril ramaphosa, author: ms pralene schmidt1 prof janet condy1 dr chantyclaire tiba1 affiliation: 1cape peninsula university of technology doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i2.19 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(2): 267-282 published: 11 june 2021 received: 05 june 2020 accepted: 22 july 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1063-4109 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8083-7200 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1800-9199 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 2682021 39(2): 268-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) in his 2019 and 2020 state of the nation address, stated government’s commitment to improve reading comprehension in the early grades. in the recent progress in international reading literacy study (pirls) assessments conducted in 2016, south africa scored 320 points which is below the pirls centre point of 500. this score indicates that grade 4 south african learners who did not reach the lowest benchmark (below 400 points), cannot read for meaning nor retrieve basic information from a text to answer simple questions (howie et al., 2017). the findings from howie et al. (2017: 11) suggest that on the pirls scale: “south africa may be six years behind the top performing countries … about 78% of south african grade 4 learners do not have basic reading skills by the end of the grade 4 school year”. extensive tests conducted by pirls prove conclusively that south african primary school learners' text comprehension is extremely poor. the annual western cape systemic tests show similarly dire results. these tests are conducted to monitor the performance of western cape education department (wced) learners in language and mathematics. these tests allow the provincial department to identify specific areas where intervention is required to improve learners’ abilities. the department’s targeted efforts to improve these scores in early grades will ultimately lead to better pass rates throughout the education system and in the national senior certificate examinations (wced, 2020). the systemic tests, which have a pass mark of 50%, take place in grades 3, 6 and 9. table 1 shows the provincial pass results for language from 2015 to 2019. table 1 provincial pass results for language (2015–2019) 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 grade 3 pass % 42.4 41.6 46.6 45.8 44.9 grade 6 pass % 36.8 40.1 38.7 38.5 42.8 grade 9 pass % 53.0 53.1 53.0 52.6 53.6 based on table 1, although an overall improvement is evident from 2015, it clearly indicates that learners in grade 3 and 6 are underachieving and falling short of the 50% accepted pass rate. in addition, the national education evaluation and development unit (needu), in a fairly dated document, reported that “while south african teachers did relatively well on questions requiring the simple retrieval of information explicitly stated in the test (75,1%), scores dropped dramatically as soon as the higher cognitive functions of inference (55,2%), interpretation (36,6%) and evaluation (39,7%) were invoked” (taylor et al., 2012: 26). the report found that many educators were themselves unable to comprehend texts at higher evaluative levels. in light of these national and international results, the current study conducted a small research project using preand post-tests, a four-week intervention programme, interviews and an observation schedule. the aim was to explicitly teach higher-order comprehension strategies to a grade 2 learner who struggled to read for meaning. the researcher asked the following two research questions: i. what higher-order comprehension strategies were used to teach a grade 2 learner who struggled to read for meaning; and ii. how did the learning environment create an opportunity for the grade 2 learner to read for meaning? http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 2692021 39(2): 269-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 schmidt, condy & tiba teaching higher-order comprehension strategies existing evidence suggests that when higher-order comprehension skills are explicitly taught to learners, comprehension is increased (beck & condy, 2017; cekiso, 2012). within the south african educational context, this study sought to explicitly teach higher-order comprehension strategies and create classroom environments that may increase a grade 2 learner’s higher-order comprehension skills. 2. literature review in this literature review, the following three concepts pertinent to this study are discussed: reading comprehension and explicit teaching, inference making within the caps requirements and encouraging constructive classroom environments. 2.1 reading comprehension and explicit teaching comprehension is key to understanding all subjects across the curriculum. mcnamara, ozuru and floyd (2011) claim that comprehension requires the reader to metacognitively combine the meanings of individual words into a coherent sentence and then to assimilate multiple sentences to create an overall understanding of the text. from this definition, it is noteworthy that teachers need to teach learners metacognitive strategies necessary to read a text meaningfully. this intention is linked to vygotsky’s social constructivist theory (1978 as quoted in mcleod 2014; cambourne, 2004) which stresses the importance of social interaction in enhancing a learner’s understanding of subject matter. the teacher (more knowledgeable other) and learner have a role to play because they both collaborate to make meaning of a text. swärd (2013) goes on to state that collaboration between teachers and their learners, enables learners to use metacognitive thinking and to reach awareness about their learning process. a considerable number of studies suggest that learners develop higher-order thinking skills when they are explicitly taught reading comprehension strategies (beck & condy, 2017; cekiso, 2012; rupley, blair & nichols, 2009) and apply these to reading texts in a meaningful way. in explicit teaching, teachers give students rules to practise and students make conscious efforts to learn (talley & hui-ling, 2014). explicit teaching, according to cambourne refers to the practice of deliberately demonstrating and bringing learners’ conscious awareness to those invisible processes, understandings, knowledge and skills they need to acquire if they are to become effective readers (2004: 33). rupley et al. (2009: 125) assert that “struggling readers are more likely to learn essential reading skills and strategies if they are taught explicitly”. according to cekiso (2012), without being taught explicit reading comprehension strategies, learners will seldom be able to find meaning in a text in any sustained or coherent manner. studies conducted in south africa, such as that by beck and condy (2017), reported that some teachers are reluctant to, or do not explicitly, teach reading comprehension because the curriculum and assessment policy statement (caps) does not provide teachers with adequate knowledge concerning pedagogical approaches for teaching reading comprehension strategies. the needu report states that teachers often lack the knowledge to impart reading skills themselves. klapwijk and van der walt explain that … despite the existence of research that shows the benefits of reading instruction, it seems that teachers seldom teach reading strategies explicitly in south african schools, thereby depriving learners of the strategies they need to think about the process of meaning making when they encounter texts (2011: 27). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 2702021 39(2): 270-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) muijselaar et al. (2017) concur that comprehension plays an important role in the reading process but that learners are seldom taught such skills. 2.2 inference making within the caps requirements inference making is one of the skills needed for higher order thinking and is crucial for comprehension (currie & cain, 2015). bos et al. (2016) support this notion as their findings suggest that teaching learners inference making improved their comprehension skills. after teaching inference making, learners in bos et al.’s study were motivated and began to enjoy reading. kispal (2008) defines “inference” as the ability to use two or more pieces of information from a text in order to arrive at a third, implicit piece of information. according to lee (2013), drawing inferences from a text requires the reader to make a connection to their experiences and world knowledge. these definitions imply the need for teachers to activate learners' prior knowledge when teaching inferences in order for learners to make meaning of a text since information is not (always) explicitly stated. an example of “inference can be as simple as associating the pronoun ‘he’ with a previously mentioned male person. or, it can be as complex as understanding a subtle implicit message conveyed through the choice of particular vocabulary by the writer and drawing on the reader’s own background knowledge” (kispal, 2008: 2). existing studies suggests that poor reading comprehension often occurs because: (i) inference skills have not been systematically taught to learners and (ii) learners are introduced to content of which they have no prior knowledge (lee, 2013; hara & tappe, 2016). in this current study, the primary researcher taught reading explicitly using the following four strategies: “my turn – your turn”, “think aloud”, “anticipation guide” and “magic square”. the “my turn – your turn” strategy involved the researcher sharing an aspect of what was read, for example “this reminds me of the time when…” or “how do you think the character is feeling…?”. the learner then shared something in return. this developed predictive, reasoning and thinking skills by posing higher-order questions. this type of questioning helped the learner engage in active thinking during reading to gain a deeper meaning of the reading passage. this procedure focused on reading as a thinking process. the intention was to teach learners to make predictions throughout reading. the “think aloud” was an activity that allowed the learner to make predictions through open-ended questioning and reading. according to mclaughlin (2006: 223), the “think aloud” process provides a “… model for active thinking during the reading process” when teaching reading strategies such as: “previewing, visualizing, monitoring, self-questioning, making connections, knowing how words work, summarising and evaluating”. the “anticipation guide” was used as an activity, to activate the learner’s prior knowledge, as she responded to various statements relating to texts and her own experiences. for example, the learner had to provide her own opinion on why she “agrees” or “disagrees” with the statements from text that links to her experiences. “anticipation guides” was used by a teacher, as she engaged the learners in the exploration of new information by challenging them to think critically about what they knew or thought they knew about a topic (mckenna, 2002; duffelmeyer, 1994). the “magic square” was an activity whereby the learner had to match definitions or words from one column with those in the other and find out why the square was “magic”. the learner matched the numbers from the one column to letters of the other column and wrote the letters in blocks of the corresponding letter. when you add the numbers across, down or diagonally, they always add to the same number. this activity required a great deal of concentration and logical thinking, posing a http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/attention 2712021 39(2): 271-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 schmidt, condy & tiba teaching higher-order comprehension strategies considerable challenge to the brain (danesi, 2015). this once again developed justification and active thinking skills. the caps document indicates that the literacy skills learners in the foundation phase (grades r–3) should acquire include: listening and speaking, reading and phonics, and writing and handwriting, while thinking and reasoning, and language structure and use are underlying skills (dbe, 2011: 6). to acquire these skills, the survival guide to the caps for the foundation phase (longman, 2020) indicates that teachers should ask higher order thinking questions to promote literacy. learners are encouraged to justify their reasons, answer open-ended questions and express their feelings, giving reasons when listening and speaking, involve themselves in shared reading and group-guided reading experiences. this document suggests that thinking and reasoning skills are to be integrated into general teaching pedagogies. 2.3 encouraging constructive classroom environments according to bucholz and sheffler (2009), the type of classroom environment that a teacher creates can either increase or decrease comprehension. comprehension is increased when a teacher creates a welcoming environment through interaction with the learner (cohen, thapa & ice, 2013). this welcoming environment creates a safe and comfortable environment for learners to achieve their full potentials (cohen et al., 2013). in line with this view, cohen (2012: 88) suggests that teachers should create an environment conducive to learning, one in which learners feel at home. findings from firdaus’s (2015) study provides evidence that creating an environment in which learners are verbally praised improved comprehension, thereby encouraging learning. positive feedback from teachers boosted learners’ self-esteem: learners engaged more in the classroom since they were motivated (firdaus, 2015). motivation is an important factor that contributes to a learner's active and authentic engagement (saeed & zyngier, 2012). hattie (2009) observes that teachers’ competencies, engagement and positive responses to each student are important to encourage learning. one way of creating an encouraging environment that increases comprehension is for teachers to cater for the different learning styles while teaching (makarova, 2014) because some learners are visual, others are auditory, tactile or kinaesthetic. similarly, swärd (2013) believes that teachers need to know and understand how learners learn in different ways, that all individuals are unique and have different experiences and backgrounds. this belief links to the suggestion made by bucholz and sheffler (2009) that teachers should use instructional methods that foster cooperation and acceptance of all learners in their classrooms. 3. theoretical framework this study is based on vyotsky’s (1978) social constructivist theory with specific focus on the social interactions between the more knowledgeable other (mko) who is the teacher and the learners (vygotsky, 1978 as quoted in mcleod, 2014). the theory of social constructivism suggests that teachers need to do more than simply provide learners with information and answers (cambourne, 2004). teachers are mkos who facilitate learning environments that help learners construct their own authentic understanding by building upon their pre-existing knowledge. a conducive learning environment provides a less anxious environment in which learners can interact and learn from the mko to make their own understandings of texts. social constructivism emphasises the collaborative nature of learning between the mko, who http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 2722021 39(2): 272-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) could be the teacher, peers or coach, and the learner. according to jones and araje (2002), the mko is anyone who has a better understanding or a higher level of ability than that of the learner, with respect to a particular task, process or concept. learning through social interactions with the mko occurs through a zone of proximal development (zpd), a type of guided learning that the child and the mko co-construct (mcleod, 2014). the zpd is explained by macblain (2018: 58) as the difference between what a child can do and achieve alone versus what a child can do and achieve with the guidance and help provided by a skilled mko. the teacher provides guidance to the learner, who then in turn uses the guidance to adjust his/her own understanding of concepts. the mko scaffolds the reading process by gradually granting responsibility for learning to the learner. in this current study, the teacher (mko) first modelled her thinking processes when responding to a higherorder literacy question, and then stepped back to allow the learner to attempt it alone, while supporting and guiding the learner (a less-skilled person). the mko has the responsibility to scaffold the learners within their zpd so that they may experience achievement. this study was based on the needs of learner l (pseudonym). the teacher allowed learner l to construct her own knowledge through interactions with the texts, and her teacher (the primary researcher) and her own world. the teacher used constructivist learner-centred approaches such as problem-centred learning and collaboration, when explicitly teaching reading comprehension strategies. by means of explicit teaching, the primary researcher systematically guided and modelled reading comprehension strategies which enabled learner l to apply the strategies taught to her, to understand text independently. a systematic, planned approach was presented slowly, allowing learner l time to learn and practise, and master newly acquired skills before new skills were introduced (cambourne, 2004). 4. methodology a qualitative design was selected that allowed the researcher to collect in-depth data that answered the two research questions (mcleod, 2017). qualitative designs help to explain the complexities of real-life situations that may not be captured through experimental or survey research. the research took place in r primary school (a pseudonym) located in an urban area in the western cape, south africa. the school is located in an affluent residential area. most of the learners do not live in this area as they come from outlying poorer areas. their parents work in the area and enrol their children at this school. the language of learning and teaching (lolt) in this school is english which is the second language of many of its learners. r primary school is a quintile 5 school, which means it is a fee-paying school. schools in south africa are classified using the quintile system (wced, 2013). the poorest schools, where learners do not pay fees, are in quintile one, two and three, while in quintile four and five schools, learners are required to pay fees (wced, 2007; gower, 2008). the ranking considers the surrounding communities and infrastructure. in r primary school, the teacher to learner ratio is 1:30. the researchers used purposive and convenience sampling. learner l was “purposively chosen” (creswell, 2014: 159) because she “fitted the criteria of desirable participants” (henning, van rensburg & smit, 2004: 71). learner l was a learner in the primary researcher’s grade 2 class: she had been in the “middle” reading group where she was able to decode words but struggled to read for meaning. she had previously attended extra learning support http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 2732021 39(2): 273-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 schmidt, condy & tiba teaching higher-order comprehension strategies classes in her school yet continued to experience challenges in making “inferences”. the past grade 1 class teacher was interviewed to contribute to the understanding of learner l’s literacy journey (henning et al., 2004). one parent of learner l was interviewed to gain a deeper understanding of the home culture of literacy. convenience sampling was chosen based upon learner l’s accessibility and availability (creswell, 2014) which facilitated data collection. 4.1 intervention programme (ip) as part of the data collection instruments, the researcher administered one week of pretests, a four-week intervention programme (ip) and one week of post-tests. the pre-tests were developed by a group of postgraduate students at a university of technology in the western cape, south africa. these comprehension tests comprised one passage and one question from each of the pirls comprehension questions: “focus on retrieving explicitly stated information”, “make straightforward inferences”, “interpret and integrate ideas and information” and “evaluate and examine content, language and textual elements” (howie et al., 2017: 23) from a text. the pre-tests were conducted over a week until the learner reached her frustration level because the tasks became too challenging (treptow, bums & mccomas, 2007). the pre-test results are shown in table 2. table 2 pre-test results comprehension skills: number of questions: number of errors: per cent of errors: focus on retrieving explicitly stated information 8 1 12,5 make straightforward inferences 8 5 62,5 interpret and integrate ideas and information 8 1 12,5 evaluate and examine content, language and textual elements 8 0 0 from table 2, the “make straightforward inference” comprehension skill was identified as a specific higher order thinking skill that needed the greatest amount of attention. the goal of the ip was for learner l to read with understanding and enjoyment, develop higher-order thinking skills (specifically inference skills) and to have a positive self-esteem where she accepted and worked on her challenges and utilised her strengths. the teacher explicitly taught higher-order comprehension by deploying the following strategies: “my turn – your turn”, “think aloud”, “anticipation guide” and “magic square”. the researcher used a motivational chart in order to improve learner l’s self-esteem and to motivate her to reflect on the activities done. after every lesson, learner l recorded in her own writing what she felt she did well for that day. each comment was written on a puzzle piece and each puzzle piece was stuck together after every lesson so that at the end of the programme, the puzzle pieces revealed the picture of a completed flower. the aim of this exercise was for learner l to reflect on her learning, boost her self-esteem and motivate her to continue engaging in texts. using the motivation chart encouraged a positive learning environment. by allowing learner l to reflect and share in her own learning and growth, the researcher created a warm and non-threatening environment that inspired conducive learning of the taught skills. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 2742021 39(2): 274-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) after the four-week ip, the same comprehension tests as those used in the pre-test, were given to her as a post-test. the aim was to determine whether the percentage of errors in the 2nd level of questions (make straightforward inference) during the pre-test had reduced after the ip. 4.2 interviews the researcher collected data using one-on-one interviews. a semi-structured interview schedule was used that allowed the researcher to probe for more information in a flexible manner (cohen, manion & morrison, 2007; kumar, 2011). learner l’s grade 1 teacher and her one parent were interviewed. the interview schedules were developed to gather data about the grade 1 teacher’s philosophy of teaching reading for meaning and the parent’s home culture of reading. both the previous teacher and one parent were contacted for suitable dates, venues and times for interviews. on the day of each interview, the previous teacher and one parent were reminded through sms. the one-on-one interview lasted for 50–60 minutes. after each audio-recorded interview, the researcher made reflective notes. all interviews were conducted once. 4.3 observations in order to collect first-hand data in the learner’s natural environment (the classroom), the researcher observed learner l during the preand post-tests and the ip. the focus of these observations were about: i. learner l’s responses to the higher-order questioning strategies; and ii. how the learning environment created an opportunity for learner l to read for meaning (kumar, 2011). the researcher was a participant observer, working with the learner; and she made notes on the open-ended observation schedule. according to cohen et al. (2007), participant observations yield more valid or authentic data than would otherwise be the case with mediated or inferential methods. in total, 24 lessons (including preand post-tests) were observed since the researcher had a limited period in which to collect data. the observed lessons were conducted after school in the classroom. the data collected from the interview and observation schedules were qualitatively analysed (struwig & stead, 2013). the interviews were transcribed and the researcher manually read all the data sources to familiarise herself with and gain an overall picture of the data. on the transcribed texts, codes were written next to issues that were related to the research questions and these codes were highlighted with different colours (maree, 2007), and similar codes were joined to form themes. the themes were related to the research questions. the data from the observation schedules (preand post-tests and ip) were typed into a microsoft word document and a similar process to that of analysing the interviews, was used. to ensure trustworthiness, the researcher triangulated the data sources. triangulation, as explained by cohen et al. (2007), refers to different methods of data collection producing substantially the same results. triangulation is aimed at gaining more insight from different standpoints and increasing validity. this method was employed through collecting data from the preand post-tests, the ip, the interviews and the observation schedules. the data were then thoroughly analysed by grouping similar concepts together to ensure credibility and gain http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 2752021 39(2): 275-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 schmidt, condy & tiba teaching higher-order comprehension strategies a holistic understanding of the issues under study (cohen et al., 2007; shenton, 2004; lincoln & guba, 1985). the fact that there was considerable evidence of alignment between the three methods of data collection substantially enhanced the significance and reliability of the findings. the strategy of member-checking was used to ensure trustworthiness. the interview transcripts were sent back to the past teacher and parent to verify that the information was captured adequately and reflected their experiences (creswell, 2009). the previous teacher and one parent were satisfied with the transcribed data. ethical clearance and written permission to conduct the study were granted by the university where the researcher was doing her postgraduate study (ethics number: efec 37-13/2019) and by the western cape department of education for access into r primary school. permission was sought from the school’s principal, the learner’s one parent and the previous teacher. the participants were assured of the principles of privacy, anonymity and confidentiality. to honour that agreement, the researcher referred to the participants as teacher 1 (t1), parent 1 (p1) and learner l. participants were aware that participation was voluntary and that they could withdraw at any stage (arthur et al., 2012). 5. findings and discussion the research questions that guided this study were: i. what higher-order comprehension strategies were used to teach a grade 2 learner who struggled to read for meaning; and ii. how did the learning environment create an opportunity for the grade 2 learner to read for meaning? from data collected by using preand post-tests, ip, interviews and observation schedules, the following two themes became evident: • teaching higher-order comprehension skills; and • creating a safe environment. these themes are discussed in the following section. 5.1 teaching higher-order comprehension skills table 3 shows the comparison of results between the preand post-tests after the four-week ip. it should be noted that the preand post-tests data were collected qualitatively but reported using percentages for clarity and ease of understanding. table 3 preand post-test results comprehension skills pre-test % of errors post-test % of errors focus on retrieving explicitly stated information 12.5 0 make straightforward inferences 62.5 12.5 interpret and integrate ideas and information 12.5 12.5 evaluate and examine content, language and textual elements 0 0 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 2762021 39(2): 276-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) the pre-test results showed that learner l found “making straightforward inferences” a challenge, however after the ip the percentage of errors dropped from 65.5% to 12.5%. the “focus on retrieving explicitly stated information’s” percentage in errors also dropped (12.5% to 0%). the “evaluative and examine content, language and textual elements” and “interpret and integrate ideas and information” remained the same as those of the pre-test. from the pre-test, it was evident that learner l needed support with the second level of questioning which is “make straightforward inferences”. during the interview with the past teacher (t1), she stated the following in response to how she taught comprehension: … asking questions, making predictions, inferences, ja, predictions, cause and effect … scrutinising a passage from inside out, what can we get out of it relating that to the learners themselves, their context. learner l’s ability to explicitly retrieve information, evaluate texts, justify and give reasons was developed which correlates with the way in which t1 taught comprehension skills the year before. when asked what teaching strategies t1 focused on the year before, she asserted that: the focus was on detail, you know your level one…building on that to higher-order questioning, cause and effect. despite t1 sharing this detail, a year later, learner l still experienced problems with understanding “inference questions”. throughout the ip, the researcher incorporated a variety of teaching strategies in order to develop learner l’s higher order thinking skills, predicting skills, linking to her own world and making connections to her prior knowledge. the ip specifically focused on developing inference skills in order to enable learner l to read for meaning. the researcher made the following observations: my turn – your turn, anticipation guide, and magic square were all learner-centred and the learner made predictions and inferences based on her prior knowledge. based on cambourne’s (2004) idea of systematic and contextual teaching, the researcher planned the ip logically and sequentially allowing learner l to move from the known to the unknown by gradually increasing the level of difficulty of the fiction and non-fiction texts. the researcher observed the following after implementing two different comprehension strategies: the theory observed was systematic teaching whereby what was taught the week before was reinforced. it made the learner more knowledgeable and confident in her learning. when the strategies were applied, learner l made sense of them and applied them in order to answer open-ended questions. everything she was exposed to was based on the reading and activity done the day/week before. teaching was contextual and fitted into her own world. this observation explained how learner l was gradually developing higher order thinking skills. in the beginning of the ip, she answered questions with limited detail; however, as the ip continued, she began adding details and discussions to her answers and linking the content to her own lived experiences. this suggested to the researcher the extent to which she was developing critical higher order thinking skills. the researcher observed how learner l used pictures in the texts to help her make meaning. the pictures served as a reading strategy http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 2772021 39(2): 277-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 schmidt, condy & tiba teaching higher-order comprehension strategies guide especially when she got stuck with difficult words. learner l’s parent (p1) stated the following regarding pictures: she is interested with books with pictures … she understands better if the book has got pictures. the teacher was the mko and assisted learner l in co-constructing knowledge by making use of scaffolding. after modelling, the teacher allowed learner l to attempt the strategy alone while providing assistance where needed. through this scaffolding within learner l’s zpd, a sense of achievement and success was reached. it was apparent that teaching higher-order comprehension skills had a positive effect on the development of learner l’s predictive, critical thinking and inference comprehension skills, as shown in the post-test results. as the four-week ip continued, her ability to use longer and more detailed sentences, critically justify and predict outcomes of stories, all developed in order to answer higher-order questions. 5.2 creating a safe environment throughout the ip, it became evident that the creation of a conducive learning environment played an essential role in enhancing learner l’s higher-order comprehension skills. according to bucholz and sheffler (2009), a warm classroom environment can lead to increased academic achievement, as comprehension is improved. t1 stated the following concerning how she reacted in the past: …the environment must definitely be an environment that is non-threatening in order to obtain optimal … level. or in order to unlock those things that she isn’t confident about because that is what the inferencing is about. the researcher observed how learner l was initially confident with the texts but became slightly withdrawn when she came across difficult words. various comprehension strategies such as “think aloud”, “anticipation guide” and “magic square” ensured that she learnt in a fun and anxiety-free way. this suggests that she was learning without the focus being on learning but rather on having fun. this development contributed to her feeling of safety and confidence in her learning environment. on the second day, after learner l felt withdrawn the day before, the researcher made the following reflection: learner l was engaged today and was stimulating her higher order thinking skills by justifying and giving reasons for her answers. after teaching her reading techniques to tackle difficult words, i was surprised with her confidence in committing to her answers and having a valuable reason for her choice. this shows that with guidance and a welcoming environment she was able to gain confidence in applying what she had learnt. t1 added to this by saying the following when asked about learner l’s confidence: when she is not confident in something, she would pause and [remained] stuck there not being able to move on or to put something down which she knows just because there’s that one barrier that she doesn’t know how to cross … maybe having someone that you fear can even mute you. applying cambourne’s (2004) social constructivist theory allowed learner l to coconstruct her own knowledge and form her own understandings. the ip took place in the classroom after school where there were no disruptions, so the one-on-one interactions with http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 2782021 39(2): 278-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) learner l assisted in making her own real-life meaning. a welcoming atmosphere in which she felt safe and knew that her opinion was valued, allowed her to speak out more and share longer sentences. t1 stated the following as a general, overall comment to comprehensions, teaching and the learner: …to continue the culture of verbalising so we can build more confidence in, in her and maybe asserting herself on all levels and to have a welcoming atmosphere that whatever she contributes is valuable. i don’t know, i see you as that kind of person that values the learners. educational research supports creating an atmosphere of mutual respect, where students feel relaxed in asking questions and expressing their thoughts and feelings (stronge, 2002). the researcher cared for learner l and the content in the ip was about what she selected which made her feel that she was valued. by praising and encouraging her, the researcher helped to create a safe environment conducive for learning, which enhanced comprehension. the use of the motivational chart contributed in creating an encouraging environment by allowing learner l to reflect and explain in her own words what she had learnt in the lesson. the motivation chart boosted her self-esteem and allowed her to work on her challenges through reflection. having learner l choose her own theme and sub-themes, relating it to things she was interested in and wanted to understand better, created a safe and non-threatening learning environment. through the social constructivist theory, learner l decided on the theme of “nature” with a focus on flowers. learner l used her own prior knowledge to construct new knowledge, based on what she had read. choosing her own theme motivated learner l and created an overall conducive environment where higher order comprehension skills were developed and learnt. 6. conclusion and recommendations this small project was undertaken to determine higher-order comprehension strategies used to teach a grade 2 learner who could not read for meaning in a sustained and coherent manner. the learning environment created an opportunity for learner l to read for meaning. the results suggest that teaching higher-order thinking skills and creating a safe environment had an impact on developing learner l’s higher-order thinking skills. from the findings, the following conclusions and recommendations were made: teaching comprehension strategies explicitly, contextually and systematically (cambourne, 2004) had a positive effect on learner l. she became aware of higher-order strategies that she could use to read a text meaningfully. therefore, the researchers conclude that when learners are exposed to a repertoire of higherorder reading comprehension strategies, they would use these strategies taught to them to understand texts. the teacher, during the ip, provided an opportunity for learner l to feel safe and secure which made her become confident in her academic ability and motivated her to learn. the teacher addressed learner l’s literacy thinking and reasoning needs one-on-one, whereby she tailor-made exercises based on learner l’s ability and interests which at the time was “nature”. learner l learnt in a non-threatening and non-anxious environment. the researcher concludes that a one-size-fits-all approach in addressing learners’ academic needs may not be effective, especially for learners who lack comprehension skills. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 2792021 39(2): 279-282 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.19 schmidt, condy & tiba teaching higher-order comprehension strategies from the findings, it is recommended that higher-order reading comprehension strategies should be explicitly and systematically taught to learners so that they use these skills to meaningfully read a variety of texts. it is also recommended that schools organise reading comprehension workshops for parents to assist their children at home. these parents can be taught how to ask higher-order questions to their children which will then enable them to explore and justify their own thinking. due to the importance of higher-order thinking skills in understanding subjects across the curriculum, teachers across the world and in south africa in particular, should be trained in higher-order comprehension strategies that they can integrate into their classroom reading programmes during curriculum delivery. teachers need to be followed-up by subject advisors and curriculum specialists to ensure that they are using the strategies taught to them. teachers may stop using comprehension strategies explicitly if they face problems and if there is no-one to support them. the intervention programme was limited to one grade 2 learner who presented difficulties in understanding inference skills. the improvement in her reading for meaning cannot be assumed for all learners. though the focus of the study was on one learner, it yielded important information for schools and, teachers in particular, who want to improve their learners’ comprehension skills. further research with a larger sample of learners is recommended for generalisation. references arthur, j., waring, m., coe, r. & hedges, l.v. 2012. research methods and methodologies in education. new delhi: sage. beck, s. & condy, j.l. 2017. instructional principles used to teach critical comprehension skills to a grade 4 learner. reading & writing, 8(1): 1–8. https://doi.org/10.4102/rw.v8i1.149 bos, l.t., de koning, b.b., wassenburg, s.i. & van der schoot, m. 2016. training inference making skills using a situation model approach improves reading comprehension. frontiers in psychology, 7(116): 1–13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00116 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© 2015 university of the free state 1 dr ken ngcoza rhodes university, education department telephone: 046 6037269 e-mail: k.ngcoza@ru.ac.za dr sue southwood rhodes university, centre for higher education research teaching & learning (chertl) telephone: 046 6037389 e-mail: s.southwood@ru.ac.za professional development networks: from transmission to co-construction ken ngcoza sue southwood this article offers an extract of a qualitative case study focused on collaborative professional development of science teachers in a transformative continuous professional development (tcpd) network, whose aim is the professional development of science teachers with a view to improving praxis. teacher narratives generated through an iterative process of active interviews are analysed inductively and themes are identified. insights shared in this article focus on teachers’ ways of working with knowledge and how this was influenced. the study reveals that the ways in which the teachers are taught at times inhibit innovation, perpetuating transmissive approaches to teaching and learning. lack of professional development and support, and tensions between policy formulation and implementation, also exacerbated the problem. the study, however, reveals a shift in ways of working with knowledge – a shift from the transmission of knowledge to the co-construction of knowledge. keywords: professional development, networks, reciprocity, reflexivity, responsibility, transmission, co-construction, knowledge context triggered by the demands of south african post-apartheid curriculum transformation, this study was underpinned by socially critical-emancipatory principles in conjunction with a participatory action research approach. it was further located within an interpretive qualitative research paradigm. it focused on doing research in democratic and egalitarian ways through working with, rather than on teachers. central to the study was the development of both participatory and emancipatory approaches to teacher professional development, premised on mutual and collaborative support (southwood, 2000). at its heart was the assumption that teachers are capable agents perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 2 who, if provided with opportunities, are capable of taking responsibility for their own professional development. this research was located geographically in the eastern cape of south africa, and ideologically in relation to curriculum transformation, focusing on the improvement in pedagogical practice. it is recognised, and should be borne in mind, that south africa’s contextual, historical and social factors such as educational and socio-political conditions substantially influenced the direction of the research. it is contextually characterised by intense debates on the importance of teacher support, and most importantly, the nature of the support and the context. the macro-context of south africa and the micro-context of the schools involved in the study are all the more important in a country riddled by the tragic legacies of the apartheid education system. despite the curriculum ambitions, however, the post-apartheid era of transformation has been a period of turbulent political change replete with many challenges (scholtz, watson & amosun, 2004). for example, the new curriculum catering for the transformation of teachers’ pedagogical practices has proved to be a challenge to the teaching fraternity. serious tensions between policy formulation and implementation have exacerbated such challenges. as rogan, grayson, van der akker, ndlalane, dlamini and aldous (2002) note, the details on how to implement the curriculum at school level are often neglected. instead, the emphasis is on the development of the curriculum at the expense of the implementation process. concept this research focused on the development of a professional network of science teachers. in this instance, the concept of ‘network’ is used in the sense of a learning community, where professionals participate in their own development, rather than being ‘developed’ by outside ‘experts’. networks are organized around the interests and needs of their participants, building agendas sensitive to their individual and collective development as educators (lieberman, 2000: 221). similar to the characteristics identified by parker (1977) in relation to school improvement networks, this network was characterised by commitment, shared purpose, the sharing of information and emotional support, voluntary participation and an egalitarian ethos. as lieberman (2000: 222) points out, through the mobilisation and motivation of teachers to engage in their own learning, such mechanisms have, in both the us and the uk, become a significant force for teacher development. in south africa, however, the notion of ‘clusters’ (jita & ndlalane, 2009; de clercq & phiri, 2013) is more widely used than ‘networks’, but, as mitchell and jonker (2013) point out, the research remains limited. whether ‘networks’ or ‘clusters’, the activities are very importantly school based. as spanneberg and brown (2003) note, one of the potential values for engaging teachers in school-based support is that they can learn professional development networks: from transmission to co-construction ken ngcoza & sue southwood 3 from one another in a relaxed and non-threatening environment, and in this way learn to believe in themselves. this study focused on what was referred to as a transformative continuous professional development (tcpd) network, with the emphasis on collaborative professional development with the view to improving praxis. professional development is regarded, in this instance, as being transformative and continuous, as ongoing capacity and knowledge-building, with a view to bringing about change in praxis, are central to it. as a process of transformative learning (kreber, 2006), it is regarded as the co-construction of knowledge focused on the ultimate goal of improving praxis and, ultimately, learners’ learning (loucks-horsley, love, stiles, mundry & hewson, 2003). the approach highlighted in the study was based on three fundamental principles of professional development, namely responsibility, reciprocity and reflexivity, ‘the 3rs’. responsibility requires viewing the individual within a broader social, institutional or structural context (nickel, 2007). that is, responsibility results from being part of a group and members need to be assigned agency and be made aware of their responsibilities. the locus of agency has implications for transformative approaches, which require genuine participation (babikwa, 2004). it is recognised that, within such contexts, different people take on responsibility in different ways and participate to different extents. experience of those in the tcpd network suggested a sense of reciprocity, characterised by a style of negotiation where the teachers were encouraged to view themselves as co-learners throughout the collaborative process. this does not mean that conflicts and contradictions would be reduced; but negotiation might help to put the teachers on an equal footing so that they are comfortable in expressing their disagreements. this is ideally based on relationships of mutual respect and appreciation (southwood, 2000; southwood & ngcoza, 2009). reflexive practice means that the practical knowledge and action of teachers are vital. bleakley (1999) explains that reflexivity entails dimensions of informed action or praxis. embedded in reflexivity is informed action and a level of self-awareness in order to extend and further their understanding of their situations. reflexivity can be a process for both the inexperienced and the experienced practitioners, whereby practitioners are afforded an opportunity to stand back from the demands of the classroom and be open to available support from their peers or colleagues. to be reflexive “not only contributes to producing knowledge that aids understanding and gaining insight into the workings of our social world, but also provides insights on how this knowledge is produced” (pillow, 2003: 178). perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 4 design aim of the research the aim of this research was to explore how a participatory approach to professional development such as the tcpd network, which positions the educators at the centre of their own development, could help facilitate and enhance processes of development, with the view to improving the teaching and learning of science. methodology this research study was located within the qualitative interpretive research paradigm, and based on an understanding that individuals are subject to a confluence of personal, historical and cultural influences that ensure that each has an individualised and distinctive experience and outcome when confronted with the task of interpreting and making sense of what is required of them and their teaching/learning arrangements (nikkel, 2007: 549). within this paradigm, the broader study was situated within the socially criticalemancipatory (sce) orientation in conjunction with the participatory action research (par) approach. according to carr and kemmis (1986), an sce orientation has empowerment and emancipation of actors at its heart, while par helps to transform actors’ lives by having them play an integral role in their own research (kemmis & wilkinson, 1998; bhana, 1999). nickel (2007) suggests that working with other teachers could influence teachers’ perceptions of their responsibility and agency. as kemmis and wilkinson (1998) argue, par attempts to help people investigate and change their social and educational realities by changing some of the practices that constitute their lived realities. in this respect, blending of the sce orientation and the par approach was realistic, since they both have an emancipatory and empowering focus embedded in their principles. participants the study investigated the benefits of engaging science teachers in a tcpd network with the view to improving their practice at a particular time and situation, during the transformation in curriculum in south africa. the study participants included six senior science teachers from four schools, whose teaching experience ranged from 13 to 28 years. they were identified and approached to reflect distribution of gender, grades taught, as well as teaching experience. the purposive sample reflected diverse personal, professional and subject-content knowledge backgrounds. these science teachers could be regarded as pioneers in a tcpd network, as they had never been exposed to such an experience. ethical considerations the methodological approach had to be designed to be sensitive to the individual needs of the participants, acknowledging the potentially diverse ways in which professional development networks: from transmission to co-construction ken ngcoza & sue southwood 5 they would value the tcpd network. for instance, activities were designed to work with the participants’ diverse levels of content knowledge. for ethical reasons, the participants were further given an opportunity to choose their own pseudonyms, and the schools where they worked were not identified. data generation, analysis and validation given the espoused emancipatory goal and framework for this study, from the start participants were involved in the generation, analysis and validation of the data. for the purposes of this study, data was generated using active interviews and follow-up informal active interviews. active interviews are conversational in style allowing interaction between the interviewer and the interviewee (holstein & gubrium, 1995; dupuis, 1999). holstein and gubrium (1995: 37) point out that “treating the interview as active allows the interviewer to encourage the respondent to shift positions in the interview so as to explore alternate perspectives and stocks of knowledge”. this process resulted in rich descriptive accounts in the form of narratives (clandinin & connelly, 1998) of individual understandings. techniques to help validation and trustworthiness of data included following up on interviews for clarification and extension and member checks or face validity (cohen, manion & morrison, 2011). the participants, for example, had an opportunity to comment on the interview transcripts. data was analysed inductively and themes were identified in relation to the research focus. insights and issues: implications for development the analysed data suggested that the tcpd network was an effective and meaningful space for development. in the broader study, many issues emerged from the data, offering insights into aspects affecting such spaces. for the purpose of this article, however, the focus is on knowledge and ways of working with it. transmission when i was asked to teach biology, i told my hod that i did not major in it, but she said that i should use my method skills, which i did. i used to believe that one has to prepare so that you can be able to give the information to your learners. and that it was very important that you were fully prepared before you could go to class … (nomfundo). during tests or examinations, what i wanted from my learners was for them to give me back what i taught them. so, i would say the emphasis was on writing notes and the learners would be required to reproduce those notes as they were … (ngwenya). it could be argued that the science teachers in this study saw their role and responsibility in the past as being transmitters of information, while their learners were viewed as receivers. it emerged from the analysed data that the teachers’ perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 6 assumptions about teaching and learning were heavily influenced by the way in which they were taught at the teachers’ colleges. this was characterised by transmission of information from the textbook to their passive learners, for them to regurgitate during tests and examinations. smyth (1996) reminds us that teachers’ professional knowledge is shaped by how they have been socialised in the teaching profession. teachers who have been socialised into transmission and rote learning will tend to teach that way. this suggests that the ways in which teachers were ‘trained’ cannot be downplayed during any transformation process; it is bound to affect their world view. ironically, even in the workshops where teachers were being ‘trained’ for the new curriculum, it appears that the methods used were somewhat transmissive themselves, thus encouraging the perpetuation of such approaches: teachers were shown how they should prepare lessons, how they should assess … they do not worry about the actual implementation … but what they want is the end product, that is, how assessment is done. exactly the same notion of the old curriculum, that the end result is most important (zapholo). the problem is that we were trained for a certain period of years at the teachers’ college, and we were taught to teach in certain ways. in this new system, however, we were just trained for two days and shown how to do the new curriculum … (neon). professional development networks: from transmission to co-construction ken ngcoza & sue southwood 7 subject-content knowledge in my school some of the teachers who teach in grade 8 and 9, for example, are teachers who … have limited science knowledge … thus they tend to concentrate on the topics they are comfortable with, only neglecting other sections of the work. as a result of this, learners struggle to grasp science concepts in grade 10 (khwezi). although in this new curriculum learners should be actively involved and take responsibility for their learning, but you as a teacher you should be in a position to explain things to them, that is, you should be knowledgeable in your subject content knowledge (ngwenya). it is still my belief that if as educators we are not clear about the subject content knowledge we will struggle to put it across to our learners. in my case, ever since i improved my subject content knowledge many things began to dawn to me. i could see things with a new set of lenses … i feel that my science content knowledge has rendered me invaluable in our research team … (zapholo). when i first joined our research team … i was reluctant thinking that it was a waste of time. but as the time went by, through attending our workshops, i obtained useful information and i thus felt motivated because each and every time i found that i was enriched and improving in my science content knowledge and conceptual understanding … but i feel the level at which i was teaching in the past has deprived me of opportunities to participate fully in our network as tended to have a limit in terms of science-content knowledge. i think if i was given an opportunity to teach senior classes in the past i could have gained more knowledge and that could have enhanced my level of participation (leo). some of the challenges facing the science teachers in this study have been addressed in studies that examined the link between teachers’ subject-content knowledge and pedagogical-content knowledge (shulman, 1986; schoultz & hultman, 2004). such studies have shown that teachers’ subject-content knowledge influences aspects of their pedagogical-content knowledge. insufficient subject-content knowledge might lead to science being taught in superficial and uninteresting ways, the teachers’ subject-knowledge base needing to be greater than that of their learners. the teachers also mentioned that their lack of understanding was exacerbated by the fact that some of the curriculum facilitators themselves were not confident about the fundamental principles. instead of acting as catalysts and providing a positive influence on the teaching and learning of science in new ways, many of the facilitators seemed to add to the confusion. teachers who are not knowledgeable in their subject-content were likely to embed misconceptions in their lesson plans, passing these on to their learners. it is thus vital for teachers’ misconceptions to be cleared; and all the more so, taking into account the point in osborne and simon (1996) that a teacher with inadequate perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 8 science knowledge may not be aware of learners’ misconceptions. however, as many teachers know, they may find it difficult to provide clear explanations to the learners. this confirms that ongoing professional development should target teachers’ subjectcontent knowledge and pedagogical-content knowledge as well as other skills. as edwards (2002) emphasises, knowledge-capacity-building is essential for teachers to be effective in their classrooms. co-construction [w]e are supporting one another because we come with our problems and share our teaching experiences of the lessons we’ve taught in our schools … in the past i used to plan on my own. that is, i now have a variety of sources of information rather than relying only on the textbook as i did in the past. planning and discussing with colleagues also helps to answer some of the learners’ challenging questions (ngwenya). in the network some of my misconceptions have been cleared. i feel that being exposed in this network is an empowering experience for me; as a result the idea of allowing learners to brainstorm, which i learnt from the network, is very helpful. initially, i thought brainstorming was intended just to while away time so that you could hear the learners’ ideas, and not taking seriously the things they have mentioned during the process. also, i never bothered to link what is taught at school with my learners’ everyday life experiences. it was only my information that i regarded as important … (neon). my involvement in our team has helped me to explain things to my colleagues better than i would have done three years ago. also, my teaching and learning approaches have improved; as a result, i am changing all my old worksheets and my old notes to suit the present style of teaching and learning … (zapholo). being involved in our network has been useful since my background to teaching was the old one from the teachers’ college, that is, ‘chalk and talk’. that is, i used to read the textbook only and teach all that information as it is to my learners. but now, through being involved in our research network, i started to grow and then i was exposed to finding more information rather than only relying on the textbook … (leo). it is evident that these teachers benefited in many ways from their experience of the tcpd network. jita and ndlanane (2009) found that engagement in the network proved to be a space wherein both teachers’ subject-content and pedagogicalcontent knowledge were improved through sharing. it was not only experienced as motivating and conceptually enriching, but also afforded opportunities to improve practice, planning and potential responses. regarding pedagogy, one of the aspects which teachers also found useful from the network was the idea of mobilising and incorporating learners’ prior knowledge in professional development networks: from transmission to co-construction ken ngcoza & sue southwood 9 class, linking knowledge to their everyday lives. the teachers mentioned that, in the past, they used to explain everything to the learners themselves, but now, as a result of being involved in the network, they also afforded the learners an opportunity to share their ideas, taking into consideration their everyday life experiences, and be actively involved in constructing an understanding of the knowledge. the teachers’ knowledge was constructed in collaboration with colleagues, enabling them to view themselves as both coand lifelong learners. knowledge was viewed more as something to work with, share and build on rather than merely transmit. this was echoed both in the way in which the teachers worked with each other in the network and in the ways in which they were now reporting to work with their learners. concluding remarks the study focused on particular ways in which a tcpd network developed science teachers’ praxis. the design of the network was based on three fundamental principles underlying and running through a collaboratively based experience of professional development: responsibility, reciprocity and reflexivity, ‘the 3rs’. these three interrelated concepts are regarded as fundamental dimensions to the development of a tcpd network. insights from the study suggest that the tcpd played an important role in the professional development of the science teachers in this study. it became evident from this study that the science teachers saw the need for change and demonstrated change in their practice as a result of being involved in the tcpd network. through a process of mutual and reciprocal empowerment (babikwa, 2004), the science teachers interacted with colleagues, expanded their science-content knowledge as well as their pedagogical-content knowledge, and knowledge of how learners learn, demonstrating a shift from, among other things, a pedagogy based on the transmission of knowledge to one based more on knowledge construction. this was demonstrated both in the way in which they learned together in the network and how they talked about their teaching of science in the classroom. while this study was restricted to a small pilot group, it led to insights into and understandings of some of the complexities of teachers’ professional development. it also highlighted some of the potential of tcpd networks. the engagement of teachers collaboratively in participatory methods demonstrates the potential to generate remarkable results, despite the many contextual problems. networking is viewed as a useful strategy for teachers and curriculum developers to collaborate in constructive and supportive ways. perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 10 references babikwa dj 2004. tensions, contradictions and 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http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) ubuntu in south africa: hopes and disappointments – a pedagogical perspective abstract the indigenous sub-saharan african philosophy of ubuntu that comes down to the expression: “i am a human being because of being with other human beings”, developed over centuries. this philosophy, embodying the notion of deep respect for all human beings, is rooted in a humane inclination towards kindness and sound relationships among all people. before its adoption as a principle in the south african interim constitution of 1993, ubuntu had never been referred to, or codified in any statutory format. since then, however, although not mentioned in the final constitution of 1996, the humane undertones of the ubuntu philosophy have often surfaced in south african jurisprudence, particularly in cases involving citizens’ constitutional right to human dignity (section 10). this paper examines the phenomenon that the actual modern-day practical, day-to-day life in south africa does not seem to attest to application of the ubuntu ideal of maintaining and improving the human condition. after examining a number of possible reasons for this phenomenon, ubuntugogy is presented as a possible remedy for this condition. this paper reports on an interdisciplinary analysis involving philosophical, societal, anthropological, legal and pedagogical perspectives. a mixed method research methodology in the form of a social science based interpretive-constructivist qualitative approach combined with a legal approach was followed. keywords: crime; education; human dignity; jurisprudence; south african constitution; ubuntugogy; ubuntu. 1. introduction ubuntu has for centuries been the informal and largely tacit philosophy of life or life-view of africans south of the sahara. it has only relatively recently, particularly after the introduction of writing, been variously formulated and still more recently been adopted as a philosophical guideline in the south african interim constitution (1993), in subsequent legislation and in jurisprudence. this paper concentrates on the question of whether the ideals and values encapsulated in the ubuntu concept can be observed in the everyday lives and conduct of ordinary south africans, and if not, what pedagogical remedies could be applied in an effort to address their inability to have an impact on the daily conduct of south africans. author: prof johannes (hannes) van der walt1 prof izak oosthuizen1 affiliation: 1north-west university doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i4.7 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(4): 89-103 published: 6 december 2021 received: 27 may 2021 accepted: 02 july 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9243-5973 http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1193-4699 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 902021 39(4): 90-103 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) 2. problem statement the ubuntu philosophy of life or life-view of the indigenous people of sub-saharan africa emerged in south africa during the 13th to 15th centuries (shutte, 2001: 9). the term “ubuntu” itself has been appearing in south african written sources only from the mid-19th century onwards. in essence, as explained in more detail below, the word “ubuntu” simply refers to the conviction that a person can only be a complete person in togetherness with other people, that one’s existence is intimately entwined with the fate and well-being of others. (the meaning of the word, which appears in a variety of forms, formulations and configurations all over southern africa, has recently been considerably amplified, as also explained below.) the purpose of this paper is to report on our investigations into how, on the one hand, the ubuntu tenets and ideals have been adopted and incorporated in south african constitutional and education-related legislation and jurisprudence to serve as a basis for adjudging the appropriateness of south african citizens’ conduct and, on the other hand, the extent to which south africans on the ground have been conducting themselves in accordance with these guiding principles or values. the investigation was sparked by our inference that many, even most, south african citizens seem to be either ignorant of the demands and guidelines encapsulated in ubuntu for proper, ethically and socially justifiable behaviour, or that they prefer to overlook this moral guideline. we revisit this inference in the concluding sections of the paper. 3. research method and theoretical orientation this paper is the product of hermeneutical-constructivist investigations into various aspects of the problem as outlined above (guba & lincoln, 2005). we first applied hermeneutics, the science of text interpretation (babbie & mouton, 2007) for the purpose of interpreting the relevant statutes (botha, 1996), court reports and other literature. purposive sampling was done to identify the court cases relevant to this study. a computer search centring on the term “ubuntu” and on concomitant human rights principles as per the south african constitution (1996) allowed the court cases discussed below to surface. the reports resulting from these court cases were interpreted from a legal-historical perspective (venter et al., 1990). we then applied the interpretive-constructivist method by utilising the data flowing from the first – the interpretive – phase of the investigation to construct, develop and conceptualise new perspectives regarding the research problem (van der walt, 2020). the investigation reported in this paper was inspired by our concern as educationists about the socio-cultural conditions prevailing in south africa in the second decade of the 20th century, particularly the apparent lack of moral consciousness that we observe in the daily conduct of south africans, a matter that we return to in the section below entitled “the conduct of south africans as viewed in the ubuntu mirror”. our attention was drawn to this problem by lahti and weinstein’s (2005: 48) proposition that there seems to be “a significant variation that humans exhibit in individual commitment to moral norms”, such as those encapsulated in the ubuntu philosophy or lifeand worldview. we were intrigued by their assumption that the variation in people’s moral behaviour could be ascribed to what could be referred to as “adaptive responses to dynamic social environments” and “social influences”. they base their assumption on what they refer to as group stability theory. the theory holds that, despite moral absolutism (as, in this case, arguably embodied in ubuntu principles), people’s lives exhibit variation in commitment and adherence to the moral rules that they supposedly recognise. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 912021 39(4): 91-103 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 van der walt & oosthuizen ubuntu in south africa: a pedagogical perspective people’s behaviour does not always match the moral rules espoused by them; the moral rules might be absolute but people’s adherence to them is facultative (lahti & weinstein, 2005). our study can be construed as a test for the validity of this proposition. 4. the meaning of the term “ubuntu” when literally translated from, for instance, the zulu version, the term simply means “a person is only a person when he or she is with, or together with, other people”. “ubuntu,” a somewhat elusive concept that can be explored in a variety of contexts (cilliers, 2008), encapsulates a basic tenet of traditional life and existence, namely that the communal well-being of an individual depends on togetherness, on living in close proximity, and in caring relationships with others in the community (cilliers, 2008; shara, 2008; van der walt, 2010). in other words, life centres on teamwork and brotherhood; a person is connected to others, and brings life with them (lundin & nelson, 2010). ubuntu can also display a dark side, according to cilliers (2008), in that it can degenerate into an oppressive conformity and blind loyalty to the group or clan. failure to conform might be met with harsh punitive measures. a lively debate towards attaining consensus during a meeting (indaba) could result in “stifling conformity”. even in such conditions, the essence of ubuntu remains to affirm unity and at the same time to value and endorse diversity. bangura (2017: 89, 95) summarised the meaning of “ubuntu” as simply “showing humanity towards others”. it is interesting to note, as vervliet (2009: 55, 58) did, that ubuntu displays similarities with philosophies that originated in non-african civilisations, such as the islamic shakçânnye and christian-democratic personalism. gradually, however, the semantic field of the term was expanded to also embrace and denote humanness, humanity, virtue, goodness and kindness. bishop desmond tutu (1999), for instance, extended its meaning by explaining that the characteristics of an ubuntu person included that he or she is one that is interconnected in a network of togetherness, who attempts to understand rather than take vengeance, who strives towards reparation instead of retaliation, who is generous and hospitable, friendly, caring and compassionate, who shares what he or she possesses, who is open to the avail of other humans – affirming them instead of feeling threatened by their successes since they are secure in belonging to the unimpaired oneness with a bigger whole. lundin and nelson (2010: 118), likewise, expanded its meaning by stating that it contains a ‘’formula for human happiness”. according to them, …ubuntu [is] the ancient african philosophy that draws on the fact that we are all one human family. we are brothers and sisters, traveling this earth together. when one man is poorly fed, all are malnourished. when one is abused, we all feel the pain. when a child suffers, the tears wash over us all. by recognising the humanity of one another, we recognise our unbreakable bond – our unbreakable link to the whole of humanity (lundin & nelson, 2010: 118). other authors similarly amplified its meaning. bower (2005: 285) contended that it means that “we are created in and through our relationships with other people” and that it embraces “the infinitely complex set of reflective relationships between individual and community”. van der walt (2010) suggested that it encapsulated the values of human dignity, humanism, empathy, respect, interactive dependency, collective responsibility, peace, friendliness, forgiveness, sharing, a sense of connectedness, altruism, understanding, respect for individual differences, knowledge of self and others, goodness, generosity and benevolence. bangura (2017), in turn, contended that ubuntu meant humanity, fellow-feeling or kindness. it “articulates a basic respect and compassion for others, which can be interpreted as both a http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/semantic_field 922021 39(4): 92-103 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) factual description and a rule of conduct or social ethic. it both describes the human being as ‘being-with-others’ and prescribes what that should be” (bangura, 2017: 96). the south african ministry of (basic) education’s (2001) manifesto on values, education and democracy (rsa, 2001: 1–3) arguably contains one of the most detailed expositions of the term “ubuntu”: “…ubuntu embodies the concept of mutual understanding and the active appreciation of the value of human difference…” based on this, equality, non-racism, nonsexism, openness, reconciliation and respect to be instilled in young people should be striven for (rsa, 2001: 4). out of these values of ubuntu and human dignity (should): flow the practices of compassion, kindness, altruism and respect… equality might require us to put up with people who are different, non-sexism and non-racism might require us to rectify the inequities of the past, but ubuntu goes much further: it embodies the concept of mutual understanding and the active appreciation of the value of human difference. it requires you to know others if you are to know yourself, and if you are to understand your place – and others’ – within a multicultural environment. ultimately, ubuntu requires you to respect others if you are to respect yourself (rsa, 2001: 14). former south african president, thabo mbeki, as part of his african renaissance campaign, reverted to the values contained in the ubuntu philosophy in his search for the roots of african identity (pityana, 2017). prozesky (2009: 5) concluded that it is important to take cognisance of ubuntu due to its admirable and respectful approach towards humankind and community. in his opinion, as a philosophy, it is relevant “in a world beset by violence, greed and environmental damage of potentially catastrophic kind” (ibid). given such positive assessments of ubuntu, it is no wonder that the ubuntu ideal began reverberating in the post-1993 south african constitution and in subsequent legislation. 5. the recognition of ubuntu tenets in the south african constitution, legislation and in jurisprudence 5.1 adoption in the constitutional domain the post-1993 south african constitutional dispensation witnessed the accelerated emergence of ubuntu applications, not only in the form of local academic publications but also in the legal spheres of legislation and jurisprudence. by 2018, it was not only referred to in the interim constitution of south africa (1993), but also in at least 39 reported court cases, including 19 constitutional court cases and two supreme court cases of appeal (bennet, munro & jacobs et al., 2018: 60).1 ubuntu got a foothold in the south african constitutional domain when it was recognised in the interim constitution (1993) and consequently became the ratio decidendi for many of the judgments in south african courts (pityana, 2017). 1 we are indebted to one of the anonymous reviewers of this article drawing our attention to the research of masehela and pillay (2014) who examined the sexual abuse of young girls in a rural area in limpopo. based on their research, they inferred that the ubuntu philosophy can sometimes lead to a violation of the constitution of south africa (1996). ubuntu historically occurred in an environment that did not possess a constitution as the supreme law of the land or the community. according to them, one could to an extent blame the ubuntu philosophy for the fact that girls are being sexually abused. one of the precepts of ubuntu is that one should not look for punishment for perpetrators outside of the community in which they live but that the community itself should accept responsibility for «rehabilitating» the offender (masehela & pillay, 2014: 31–32). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 932021 39(4): 93-103 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 van der walt & oosthuizen ubuntu in south africa: a pedagogical perspective its epilogue refers to the ideals of ubuntu as the basis for the formulation of constitutional objectives: the promulgation of this constitution lays the secure foundation for the people of south africa to transcend the divisions and strife of the past, which generated gross violations of human rights, the transgression of humanitarian principles in violent conflicts and a legacy of hatred, fear, guilt and revenge. these can now be addressed on the basis that there is a need for understanding, but not for vengeance, a need for reparation but not for retaliation, a need for ubuntu but not for victimisation (south africa, 1993). 5.2 its manifestations in jurisprudence an analysis of court cases since the adoption of the south african constitution in 1996 reveals that ubuntu precepts came to the fore in a relatively small number of cases where the judges found such principles to be ad rem. in the 2011 equality court case of afriforum and another v malema and others, justice colin lamont described ubuntu as an important source of law in instances of broken human relationships between individuals, and even communities. he argued that the application of the tenets of ubuntu could assist in providing solutions that might contribute to therapeutic remedies between aggrieved parties. this verdict also served to expand the meaning of the ubuntu concept and philosophy of life to embrace much more than its original meaning of well-being through togetherness. human dignity the right to human dignity was a pivotal argument in the state v makwanyane court case which dealt with the abolition of the death penalty. six of the eleven judges of the constitutional court emphasised the philosophy of ubuntu to be the major reason for the abolition of the death penalty (bennett et al., 2018). in the main judgement delivered by justice chaskalson, he linked the culture of ubuntu and its human inclinations to the constitutional value of human dignity (himonga, 2011). among others, he said that: …to be consistent with the value of ubuntu, south africa should be a society that wishes to prevent crime …not to kill criminals simply to get even with them. the court also noted that the constitutional right to human dignity (section 10) was “an integral part of ubuntu” (himonga, 2011: 45). the ubuntu concept is now well established in south african jurisprudence dealing with human dignity (keep & midgley, 2007), also in an educational context, for example, regarding corporal punishment in schools. in the constitutional court case of christian education south africa (cesa) v minister of the government of the republic of south africa of 2000, justice sachs dismissed cesa’s appeal regarding their biblical approach to the infliction of corporal punishment in schools. with reference to article 37(a) of the united nation rights of the child (un, 1989), the judge typified corporal punishment as a (human) degrading practice. conflict resolution, also in pedagogical context the 1997 bophuthatswana british broadcasting corporation (bbc) v ramaphosa and others court case emphasised the ubuntu approach to conflict resolution (cf. bennett et al., 2018: 63). referring to various moral systems such as ubuntu, justice khumalo ruled that the union’s right to petition may not “unduly violate’’ the bbc personnel’s right to freedom of movement. the same principle was also applied in educational contexts where conflicts arose. the principle of “the best interest of the child” was applied as a fundamental human http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 942021 39(4): 94-103 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) right in the court case of mec for education in gauteng province and other v governing body rivonia primary school and others. in this matter, the hostility between the particular school governing body and the provincial department of education left a young learner helpless in that it denied her access to the “filled to capacity” primary school in question. the verdict was in favour of the learner. emphasis on equality the constitutional court case of hoffmann v south african airways (2001) dealt with the applicant’s unsuccessful application for the vacancy of cabin attendant. the reason for the rejection came as a result of his hiv-positive status. he petitioned that, in view of his constitutional right to equality, the refusal constituted unfair discrimination. justice ngcobo held that the refusal to appoint mr hoffmann indeed constituted unfair discrimination of people living with hiv, and that, in actual fact, it constituted unfair discrimination to a person from a vulnerable group prone to severe societal prejudice. moreover, not only did this refusal contravene his right to equality, but it also infringed on his right to human dignity. unethicality of delay in new clicks of south africa (pty) ltd v minister of health and another (2005) the appellant petitioned the lower court’s delay in their application for leave to appeal to the high court. once it did enter the high court, justice harms, in referring to the maxim that “justice delayed is justice denied,” held that the spirit of ubuntu not only applies between individuals; it also applies to the relationship between citizens and organs of state – and hence it also applies to relationships between courts and organs. the matter of delay arose also in an educational context. in 2000, the issues of equality as well as of delay was emphasised in the matter of harris v minister of education. in her application, the mother of a child (nancy) contended, on the basis of a psychological report confirming her daughter’s readiness for school, that the department of education’s refusal to provide her under-aged daughter access to grade one constituted unfair discrimination on the basis of age. the judge ruled in favour of the plaintive. the question now arises whether the ideals and aspirations embodied in the ubuntu philosophy and ideal, and as encapsulated in the constitution and in subsequent legislation and jurisprudence, can be seen as coming to expression in the everyday lives of ordinary south africans. 6. the conduct of south africans as viewed in the ubuntu mirror crime statistics released in july 2020 show that south africans have in the two previous years in many ways acted in ways that are in contravention of the values and the spirit typical of the ubuntu philosophy of life. tables 1 and 2 below present the actual numbers of some of the most severe forms of inhumane conduct of one person against another such as murder, attempted murder and sexual assault. table 1 presents the actual numbers of serious contact criminality against the most vulnerable sector of the population – women and children, and table 2 presents the numbers of such crimes perpetrated against males. all these crimes are in direct violation of ubuntu values. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 952021 39(4): 95-103 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 van der walt & oosthuizen ubuntu in south africa: a pedagogical perspective table 1: serious contact crimes against women and children (u.18) in 2017/18 crime numbers: women numbers: children (u.18) totals per crime murder 2,783 985 3768 sexual offences 28,632 23,488 52,120 serious assault 52,101 7562 59,663 common assault 79,678 10,466 90,144 total: 205,695 source: saps annual report 2017/18, www.saps.gov.za table 2: serious contact crimes against males in 2017/18 crime totals murder 16,440 attempted murder 13,668 serious assault 106,692 common assault 64,867 total: 201,667 source: saps annual report 2017/18 these two tables paint a dismal picture of life and conduct in south africa: a total of more than 400 000 reported serious contact crimes against south african females, children and males committed in a single year. a comparison of south africa’s crime rate with those of other countries reveals that south africans, despite the legal support given to ubuntu, have in the recent past displayed levels of misconduct comparable with those of countries infamous for violence and crime. according to numbeo crime rankings by country (2020), south africa ranked fourth among 133 countries in 2019 (after venezuela, papua new guinea and honduras); its condition had deteriorated crime-wise by the middle of 2020 – it now ranks third after venezuela and papua new guinea. its score on the crime index has also gone up, from 76.80 in 2019 to 77.29 by mid-2020. the following comparison provides further insight into the dreary state of affairs in south africa. south africa and hungary became fully democratic countries at around the same time in the early 1990s. in 2016, south africa recorded 58.94 crimes per 100 000 of its population whereas hungary recorded 41.42. the statistics for all crimes in south africa are consistently higher than those in hungary. the most disturbing of these statistics is the murder ratio: 1.34 murders per 100 000 of the population in hungary, as opposed to 34 per 100 000 in south africa in 2017 (nationmaster.com, 2017). the latter number has increased to 36 per 100 000 of the population in 2019 – an average of around 58 murders per day. (the same number for australia in 2019 was only 9.5 per 100 000 of the population) (owen, 2020: 11). in a recent address, ike (2017: 18) referred to several “cases of scandals” perpetrated by south africans. the perpetrations include corruption and nepotism, even during the covid-19 epidemic, among others, the supply of personal protection equipment to the government at around ten times the normal price. at the same conference, lemmer (2017: 91) spoke about “gross violations of ethical behaviour”. according to baijnath (2017: 184), the social, political http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 http://www.saps.gov.za http://nationmaster.com 962021 39(4): 96-103 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) and economic volatility that has plagued south africa for the past two to three decades has found expression on the ground in the form of conflicts and protest action. osman (2017) came to much the same conclusion about the state of society in south africa: there seems to be a lack of accountability among south africans, and this leads to many kinds of violence (including gender-based) and ill-discipline. in the same vein, daniel (2018) mentions perpetrations such as angry behaviour, including the use of knives and guns. he has observed community-based violence being perpetrated throughout society. a few years before that, matolino and kwindingwi (2013: 197) began their paper by describing a disturbing incident in the streets of the city of bloemfontein in the free state province of south africa. pityana (2017: 139, 141) summarises the situation in south africa as follows: south africa can do without the aggressive and angry conduct that has become our national pastime, violence-ridden, selfish, and self-centred, living with distrust and mutual suspicion. […] only listen to politicians decry to high heaven the incidence of crime and threatening that action will be taken against any found guilty of corruption. in truth, we know, that in the same vein the same politicians are engaged in corrupt dealings, and that resources of the state are being diverted to non-legitimate purposes … huge deals are to be made, … divert the resources of the state … the word ‘honour’ no longer has meaning. all this has become a common signifier of being a south african. it is important to note that one cannot posit a direct causal link or a clear relationship to exist between (non-)adherence to ubuntu precepts and values among south africans, and their daily conduct. societies are too complex and highly variegated for such a surmise. we can observe, however, that although in theory most south africans should be acquainted with the values of ubuntu as the centuries-old and traditionally ingrained philosophy of life of africans south of the sahara, and although this philosophy has found expression in legislation and in jurisprudence, the values associated with the ubuntu philosophy of life seem not to have found expression in the daily conduct of south africans. it seems as if south africans today lack the inspirational moral force of the ubuntu philosophy in their dealings with other people. this conclusion ties in with willemse’s (2021: 14): “something has gone amiss in our country. it is as if the morality that has bound us together as a society is slowly on the wane”. observations such as the above about the conduct of south africans moved bennett, munro and jacobs (2018: 6) to conclude that the modern-day application of the african ethos of ubuntu appears to be a far cry from its core tenets. in their opinion, ubuntu now appears to be ‘‘nothing more than an empty ideal”. the following section explores a number of possible reasons for this condition. 7. possible explanations for the absence of an ubuntu sense of morality the question now arises: to what can this condition be ascribed? what could be the reasons for south africans to demonstrate an unawareness of the traditional values that form the core of the ubuntu philosophy of life? more than two decades ago, van binsbergen (2002) proffered the following explanation. according to him, many africans have always been unaware of the fact that their traditional philosophy of life is referred to as “ubuntu”. for them, the name remains implicitly in the background; they simply live according to ubuntu precepts in as far as they are conscious of http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 972021 39(4): 97-103 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 van der walt & oosthuizen ubuntu in south africa: a pedagogical perspective them. as mentioned, the ubuntu concept only crystallised because of careful analyses and discursive philosophical arguments by more westernised examiners (as a form of retrodiction), and also in legislation and jurisdiction. many ordinary south africans might not even be aware of these scholarly efforts. pityana (2017: 143) offers a different explanation. he suggested that the term ubuntu as well as what it stands for has become rather nebulous, “a referent for all things that may sound vaguely good”. for many, it has become a distant ideal that makes one feel good but has no real application in the modern world. its demands could be unbearable and onerous for people to adhere to in current conditions. he (pityana, 2017: 143-144) quotes nigerian philosopher, emmanuel eze, who declared that ubuntu is both “not enough” and “too much”. it is too much, in his opinion, since it relies on the extraordinary such as luck, miracles and an ambiguous concept of human goodness. it is, at the same time, not enough since it fails to supplement or moderate its innate optimism about the goodness of humankind. eze’s conclusion was that ubuntu is deficient because it promises more than it can deliver. it cannot deliver on the moral challenge of moving from what is to what ought to be. pityana (2017: 144) himself entertains a slightly different reservation about ubuntu, namely that “in pointing to some imaginary past, that does not appear to be grounded in present realities of life, ubuntu may be guilty of undermining the challenge of revolt and critical consciousness,” thereby leading to forms of paralysis, atrophy and complacency. another explanation for the lack of ubuntu morality in south african society is offered by matolino and kwindingwi (2013). they contend that although it is worthwhile to adhere to the precepts of ubuntu in some circumstances, ubuntu could be seen as a romanticised and possibly outdated narrative of return to an unsophisticated parochial past that no longer exists (also see vervliet, 2009: 30-31). in their opinion, the values contained in ubuntu do not sit well with a modern, sophisticated, industrialised and sophisticated way of life. pityana (2017) finds their explanation also acceptable, stating that modern society arguably may no longer be compliant in terms of ubuntu expectations, cultures are more intermingled in our time, and there is a lot more reliance on modern technologies that affect human conduct. for these reasons, ubuntu may no longer be as abiding as was once assumed. there might be yet another explanation for south africans showing ignorance or a deliberate departure from the precepts of ubuntu. since the advent of democracy in south africa, there has been an effort on the part of the political and legal authorities, as discussed, at reviving the notion of ubuntu. variously conceived, it is seen by these authorities as an expression of an authentic african ethical concept, a way of life, an authentic mode of being african, an individual ideal, the appropriate public spirit, a definition of life itself and the preferred manner of conducting public and private business. among other public displays of the spirit of ubuntu, the south african government, therefore, has deliberately chosen its service delivery mantra and its public slogan as batho pele (the people first) in order to inspire obeisance to ubuntu. the courts, as we have seen, occasionally also resorted to the values of ubuntu in their verdicts. it is possible, however, that south african citizens on the ground question such a public, widespread, and concerted “ubuntu-isation” of the intellectual, business, public and private lives. the relatively aggressive promotion of ubuntu in post-apartheid south africa might be regarded by the “ordinary citizen in the street” as a project conceived by those in power and hence not meaningful for all people. an increase in crime might be one of the ways in which they show their discontent with the processes of “unbuntu-isation” of life and business (matolino & kwindingi, 2013: 197). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 982021 39(4): 98-103 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) yet another explanation for the current condition on the ground is that ubuntu has in recent years been conceived as a restorative move aimed at securing the dignity of the black masses as well as an attempt at forging a so-called black identity. this line of reasoning relies on similar historical cases on the continent that sought to aggressively promote an african mode of being, which coincided with both the end of colonialism and the rise of a black upper-class. according to matolino and kwindingi (2013: 197) such attempts have so far always ended in public social and political failure. in their opinion, efforts at reviving the ubuntu philosophy have been informed by afrocentric political aims, but these aims might currently be deemed by “ordinary” people to be inappropriate or undesirable given the new (post-traditional) conditions that they now live in and conduct their business in, such as a neoliberal capitalist market environment (in which competition and performatism are rife), globalisation, cosmopolitanism and democracy. as a philosophy, ubuntu might have been appropriate and satisfactory in situations when communities were still small and undifferentiated (matolino & kwindingi, 2013), but might not be deemed appropriate or applicable in modern communities characterised by high(er) levels of sophistication and differentiation. this explains why, despite the efforts of authors and lawyers to take pains at amplifying the meaning and application potential of the ubuntu concept and philosophy, this philosophy has not seemed to find fertile soil in the daily conduct of south africans. it is, of course, also possible that the trauma that the south african society has undergone due to apartheid, together with the current corruption and state-capture, might have more explanatory value for the “fractured-ness” of south african society, also for the high crime rate, than only the fading of ubuntu values in society. ubuntu may for all these reasons not be as long-lasting today as assumed by south african legislators and the powers that be. south africans, as pityana (2017) observed, are today under the influence of a variety of new/non-traditional african cultural and philosophical presuppositions. a more precise determination of the degree to which ubuntu is still alive and well on the ground will require further research in which this problem is disaggregated across different social institutions and assessed with different social scales. because society is a highly complex entity, ubuntu might indeed be tacitly prevalent in working class households, in various configurations of social solidarity and in a range of social interactions. vervliet’s (2009) observation that progress and change is part and parcel of society ties in with this view. society cannot be frozen into imagined cultural and historical identities. meiring (2016) agrees with him in stating that in some circumstances ubuntu cannot be seen as a static phenomenon or set of rules. it represents many truths, depending on context; it should not be regarded as a closed system but rather as a history that is open-ended and constitutively dialogical. in her opinion, the ethics of ubuntu is based on the view that humans are creators of the truth for themselves and their communities rather than living by a truth “out there”. ubuntu ethics, therefore, is active and continual. several of the explanations for the non-adherence to ubuntu principles enumerated above seem to be reconcilable with the group stability theory of lahti and weinstein (2005), namely that the behaviour of the south african at street level could be ascribed to “adaptive responses to dynamic social environments” and “social influences”. meiring’s (2016) finding that ubuntu should in some circumstances be seen as an open-ended and ongoing discourse and not an absolute and static set of rules, and vervliet’s (2009) observation that society is subject to constant change, however, are contrary to lahti and weinstein’s (2005) group stability theory’s background assumption that people tend to treat moral rules as deserving of absolute http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 992021 39(4): 99-103 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 van der walt & oosthuizen ubuntu in south africa: a pedagogical perspective adherence, and that they consider moral rules as absolute in the sense that they carry an implication of permanence across time and space (lahti & weinstein, 2005). this brief overview of the perceived absence of a true ubuntu mentality in the lives and conduct of modern-day south africans does not detract, however, from the fact that ubuntu embodies the enduring principle of the common good and of harmonious relations among people, and that south africans have to strive for, and be educated towards, compliance with this love-principle, which inherently forms the core of ubuntu. south africans cannot evade or ignore the fact that they do exist in community and are indeed bonded by relationships that are part of their identity (pityana, 2017). 8. ubuntugogy as a possible solution to the problem although ubuntu seems to have been conceived as a social-political tool for the promotion of peaceful society in southern africa, its values have of late been viewed in a new light, namely in terms of ubuntugogy, that is, education in accordance with the ubuntu spirit. as mentioned, the south african ministry of (basic) education effectively created in its manifesto on values, education and democracy (rsa, 2001: 1–3) a conceptual bridge between ubuntu as basic philosophy of life or life-view, and ubuntugogy as a form of pedagogy by affirming the need for the ubuntu values of equality, non-racism, non-sexism, openness, reconciliation and respect to be instilled in young people (rsa, 2001: 4). upcoming generations have to be equipped to know and understand others in order to know and understand themselves and their place – and those of others – in a multicultural environment (rsa, 2001: 14). lutomia, sibeyo and lutomia (2018: 104–106) similarly recognised the pedagogical potential of ubuntu in the form of ubuntugogy. although they do not employ the word “ubuntugogy” in their discussion, they note that knowledge, rituals, means of making a living, and meaningful culture-making have through the ages been passed on from generation to generation. communities that value ubuntu precepts have always taught these precepts to the upcoming generations so that the latter could go on to take up their roles in the family and – relevant to the core argument of this paper – their communities and the larger world. ubuntugogy can take many forms, ranging from idioms and terminology associated with ubuntu values in the curriculum and extra-curricular activities. kafanabo (2019) maintained, for instance, that curriculum designers should take note of what historians have discovered about indigenous ideas and practices before colonialism, such as those relating to personhood and relationships, and integrate them into the curriculum where applicable. a measure such as this, according to ali (2011: 72), could play “a … salient role in shaping children’s character development”. dasen (2011) goes somewhat further than ali by claiming that ubuntu could be regarded as a main goal of education, namely the forming of a complete human being, a person of good character. magano (2018: 238–241) agrees with this view: ubuntu could be adopted as an overarching philosophy since it forms the basis of cooperation and collaborative environments. it encourages all in a community or group to participate, share and support in a particular activity and promotes virtues of kindness, compassion and concern for others. ubuntu embodies a moral principle that promotes social responsibility and solidarity, the duty of care, the virtues of sensitivity, selflessness and devotion to duty, and a vision of a society based on justice and equality (pasha & moichela, 211).the adoption of ubuntu as overarching philosophy of education, according to maunganidze, kasayira and mudhovozi (2011), will lead to the creation of a healthy society since it would prepare the young people to enter the moral order of responsible adult life. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 1002021 39(4): 100-103 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i4.7 perspectives in education 2021: 39(4) the solution to much of the current moral malaise of south african society seems to lie in resorting in a more concerted manner to the pedagogical potential of ubuntugogy, that is, the teaching of the moral order that forms the core of the ubuntu ideal. to do so would help the south african society at large to overcome much of the social ills outlined in this paper. 9. conclusion we do not agree with matolino and kwindingwi (2013: 198) that “ubuntu ought to reach its end”. the view or philosophy of life known as ubuntu has found a foothold in the legislation and the jurisprudence as well as in education (in the manifesto and other documents referred to) in south africa, and has been viewed up to now as a standard for, on the one hand, promoting behaviour and conduct among south africans that could contribute to the general well-being of all and of the nation in general, and on the other hand, serve as a norm for judging the appropriateness of the conduct of south africans. for various reasons the principles contained in the notion of ubuntu, particularly as they have been explicated by scholars, theoreticians and judges, seem not (yet) to have found a clear and obvious place in the hearts of “ordinary” south africans. ubuntu either only exists somewhere in the historical or traditional backgrounds of south africans and hence has no say in, or impact on daily conduct, or acquaintance with its values and has dissipated through the years. it is, of course, also possible that the lack of ubuntu may be ascribed to the fact 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_hlk48732930 1 teenage pregnancy and parenting at school in contemporary south african contexts: deconstructing school narratives and understanding policy implementation1 tamara shefer university of the western cape deevia bhana university of kwazulu-natal robert morrell university of cape town south african national education policy is committed to promoting gender equality at school and to facilitating the successful completion of all young people’s schooling, including those who may become pregnant and parent while at school. however, the experience of being pregnant and parenting while being a learner is shaped by broader social and school-based responses to teenage pregnancy, parenting and female sexuality in general. drawing on qualitative research with a group of teachers and principals at 11 schools (over 80 interviewees) and 26 learners who are parents at school, in cape town and durban, the article argues that dominant moralistic discourses on adolescence, normative gender roles and female sexuality, perpetuating the representation of teenage pregnancy as social decay and degeneration, underpin negative responses to learners. in addition, the school is constructed as a space where pregnancy and parenting are unintelligible. these discourses are shown to be experienced as exclusionary practices by some learners. the article foregrounds the imperative of addressing the larger ideological terrain that impacts on the successful implementation of the policy, recommending support for teachers in the challenges of providing meaningful guidance, constructive support and appropriate interventions in the nurturance of pregnant and parenting learners. keywords: teenage pregnancy, parenting, gender equality, female sexuality school, policy introduction pregnancy and parenting among school-going learners is not uncommon in south africa. nearly a third of women have children before they reach the age of 20 (nrc-iom 2005; vundule, maforah, jewkes & jordan, 2001). since education is compulsory until the age of 16, and many learners continue to attend school until they are 20 and beyond, pregnancy and parenting is apparent at many south african schools. in 2007, for example, nearly 50.000 learners became pregnant while at school, with high rates in poorer provinces such as kwazulu-natal and limpopo (department of basic education, 2010). while the constitution and current educational policy ensure that pregnant and parenting learners may continue schooling, the context of teenage pregnancy is shaped by a wide range of discourses relating to teenage sexuality, pregnancy and motherhood (luttrell, 2003; macleod, 2011). as evident in a recent article in a national newspaper, entitled ‘pregnancy tsunami’ (the times, 21 february 2011), teenage pregnancy is an emotive issue in south africa, constructed in the popular media as well as in much of the scientific literature as essentially problematic, “disastrous” and “damaging”, not only for the young women, but also for broader society (macleod, 2001, 2011). at the core of this popular representation of teenage pregnancy is a range of normative assumptions about what young people should or should not do with respect to sexuality and reproduction, infused by dominant moral, cultural and ideological positions on pregnancy, parenting and families. in a rigorous account of scientific and public discourse, macleod (2011) unpacks the way in which such responses are framed in a discourse of ‘degeneration’ in which the pregnant teenager 2 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 is viewed as a threat to the social order, both symptom and cause of social problems. macleod (2011: 5) argues that the “[p]ublic discussions of ‘teenage pregnancy’ and abortion, for the most part, construct a threat of degeneration, in which young women are positioned as contributing, through their sexual and reproductive status, to social decline”. as a result of the dominant discourses on adolescence, and moralistic positions on young female sexuality, in particular, the position of young parents as learners in schools remains highly contested. a number of recent local studies at schools and with pregnant and parenting learners highlight how the translation of the legal measures supporting pregnant and parenting learners is mediated by the context of the school and the broader community, including the views of principals, teachers and community members (bhana, clowes, morrell & shefer, 2008; bhana, morrell, shefer & ngabaza, 2010; ngabaza, 2011; nkani & bhana, 2010). these studies illustrate that there are supportive and nurturant teachers and principals, yet they also highlight a continued resistance and discomfort with pregnant and parenting learners that extends to peers. in 1996, the south african schools act (no 84) was an important moment in translating the broader constitutional commitment to gender equality into the schooling environment. prior to the act, it had been fairly legal (and common) for pregnant learners to be expelled. the act (9(2) (b)) now limited the grounds on which expulsion was permissible to the commission of an act of “serious misconduct”. it also terminated the power of a school principal or governing body to expel a learner unilaterally. however, loopholes in the act were identified almost immediately. the gender equity task team (gett), established to examine the state of gender in south african education, called for special attention to pregnant learners and young mothers at school, recommending that the department of education “facilitate the schooling of pregnant adolescents and young mothers, and provide affordable and accessible childcare facilities” (wolpe, quinlan & martinez, 1997: 230). however, until the publication of measures for the prevention and management of learner pregnancy (department of education, 2007), schools were left to interpret the law and put it into practice. the 2007 document, designed to make explicit the rights and obligations of schools, teachers and learners, is framed in a discourse of prevention of pregnancy, but also attempts to provide guidelines with respect to pregnancy and parenting at school. the document emphasises the responsibility for parenting as that of the learner, recommends that “a period of up to two years may be necessary for this purpose”, and that “no learner should be re-admitted in the same year that they left school due to pregnancy” (5). on the other hand, schools are told to “encourage learners to continue with their education prior to and after the delivery of the baby” (6). anecdotal evidence presented in both newspaper articles and a growing number of empirical studies (ngabaza, 2011; shefer, fouten & masuku, 2012; shefer, bhana, morrell & manzini., 2012) suggests that this particular aspect of the guidelines is interpreted in diverse ways by schools and not always necessarily in the interests of the learners. as morrell, bhana & shefer (2012: 7) argue “despite the document’s attempts to erase ambiguity, the guidelines are not clear, leaving much interpretive discretion with teachers and school managers, particularly in relation to how long a young mother should be away from school before and after birth”. the rulings with respect to the stipulation not to return to school in the same year, and the guideline that learners are allowed to take up to two years, are particularly open to a wide range of interpretations that do not always necessarily suit the needs of learners. media examples and the findings of the study on which this article is based (see bhana et al., 2008) suggest that learners are frequently turned away from school earlier than they would like on these grounds. this article examines the way in which schools interpret policy within a specific ideological framework and focuses on how discourses shape and, in some instances, undermine a more supportive interpretation and attitude towards pregnant and parenting learners. we are interested, in this instance, in the complex discursive and material context in which pregnancy and parenthood at school is located, and concerned to unpack, in particular, the ways in which policy intention is affected and undermined by continued normative assumptions about gender, sexuality, teenagers and parenthood. 3shefer et al. — teenage pregnancy and parenting at school methods the article draws on qualitative data from a larger study conducted in two provinces in south africa, namely kwazulu-natal (kzn) and the western cape (wc), between 2005 and 2007. a diverse group of schools was included in the study, representing the historical divides of apartheid, including schools in historically black, coloured and white areas of durban and cape town.2 few significant differences between the various school systems and across the regions were identified, and in this article we were less concerned with identifying differences between schools and regions and focused instead on identifying themes that emerged in the interviews and focus group discussions that were key features of the methodology. the study included interviews with 26 learners (21 female, 5 male) who were pregnant and/or parenting, and 19 focus groups with a total of 79 teachers, and individual interviews with 11 principals, deputy principals or life-orientation teachers at these schools. the ages of the teachers and principals ranged between 22 and 64 years. most learners interviewed were from lower socio-economic households, some extremely poor, while a number of the cape town sample was slightly more affluent. their ages ranged from 16 to 20 years at the time of the interview. all interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and translated, where necessary. this study primarily represents the voices of young women, as they constituted the majority of those interviewed. interviews with the teachers and principals tended to assume a discussion about young women in talking about pregnancy and parenting at school. locating fathers to participate was difficult and only possible at one school, so their voices regrettably are mainly unheard.3 this article uses discourse analysis that is located in a social constructionist framework and is sensitive to gender and power. we were concerned with unpacking the way in which participants’ narratives reveal dominant aspects of “the macro-social and cultural environment of public discourse and practice” on teenage pregnancy (macleod, 2011: 130). our analysis is geared towards assessing the extent to which national policy is able to meet its intentions, and how meanings and belief systems impact implementation. we interrogate how school teachers and principals speak about pregnancy and parenting, and juxtapose their views with the reported experiences of a group of learners. this analysis focuses particularly on narratives that illustrate the way in which macleod’s argument about the dominant discourse on teenage pregnancy, which marks teenage mothers as a ‘threat of degeneration’ and as inevitably a social problem, is enacted in current practices in schools. while acknowledging the presence of positive experiences and more supportive schooling contexts, we identify obstacles that continue to stand in the way of the successful implementation of policy designed to assist pregnant and parenting learners. findings findings are presented in two themes that speak to ways in which some school authorities continue to stigmatise and ‘other’ pregnant and parenting learners, thus rationalising and legitimising their exclusion and marginalisation in the school, and reflected also by the reported experiences of learners. these include a moralistic discourse bolstered by images of pregnancy and parenting at school, as both reflecting and generative of moral and social decline, and hinging around normative prescriptive and punitive responses regarding adolescence and young female sexuality, and an exclusionary discourse in which schools are sites of learning in which pregnancy and parenting do not belong. moral panic and ‘disgraceful’ young women teachers’ discourses and learners’ stories reveal that pregnancy and parenting at school continue to be constructed within a framework of shame, disgrace and concerns about the moral integrity of broader society. reflecting the arguments of macleod, the pregnant teenager and parent who continues to attend school is constructed as a child and yet has illustrated her adult capacity to reproduce, thus destabilising the normative adult-child binarism, which appears integral to the responses of educational authorities. it is within this context that moralising discourses on pregnancy at school emerged frequently in the qualitative interviews with principals and teachers. even while well aware that the policy expected them 4 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 to be supportive of such learners, some participants’ language reflected their underlying disapproval of such learners and disagreement with the policy. discourses on the deterioration of the moral fibre of society, with the paradoxical image of the pregnant and/or parenting learner representing a loss of ‘proper’ relations of authority and systems of morality, were evident: i also think that this sort of thing has seeped into all aspects of our society – from government level down and today everything is acceptable, we are no more strict about what is right and what is wrong – all the wrongs are now acceptable, that is why we are having the problems that we are having. there are no morals anymore. (female teacher, nehru high, kzn) the state and its relatively new policies, which are supportive of the sexual and reproductive rights of young people, was criticised for actively encouraging ‘moral degeneration’, both regarding sexual practices and for undermining ‘normal’ family and maternal responsibilities: … the government’s policy states that after child birth, a learner has to return to school to carry on with her studies; this somehow promotes pregnancy because the learner knows that after child birth, she’ll go back to school as usual and she will not suffer the consequences of having a child and raising one. (female teacher, dingiswayo high school, kzn) pregnancy and parenting at school is thus entangled within regulatory discourses about what young people should or should not do or be, hinging around normative notions of the child-adult binarism and lines of authority and control. teachers’ responses to teenage mothers appear to be troubled by tensions which situate normative notions of childhood/adolescence against the broader human rights policy context. participants drew on religious and moralistic discourses to articulate their concern about the deconstruction of traditional lines of authority. for example: i cannot accept a school child being pregnant and in school. coming from the old school of thought, a modern teacher may accept that but i can’t accept that. from a religious background, our teachings do not accept that kind of thing. if we accept it, what kind of message are we sending out to the other learners. it is ok to get pregnant because we allow you in school and everything is fine … as a teacher we also have to watch what we say and how we treat these learners … but there is a fine line. you are still a youngster and i am still the teacher, a senior person. (male teacher, nehru high, kzn) the perceived blurring of the child-adult boundary is somehow exacerbated by its evidence in the school, an institution bound up with notions of childhood and preparation for adulthood, in which any show of assumed adulthood is taboo: i don’t think it is wise to have learners being pregnant at school. first and foremost they’re supposed to be children, what precedent are they setting? i would have understood if they didn’t get pregnant whilst at school or if they took time off and had their children. (male teacher, maputo secondary, wc) constructions of the pregnant teenager as an object of shame were common in the narratives of school authorities and also reflected in the lived experience of the teenage mothers interviewed. punitive narratives and notions of disobedience, through the construction of the pregnant learner as a ‘naughty child’ that refuses ‘to listen’, to conform to the expectations of childhood, were interwoven in schools’ responses to these young women, as elaborated by one of the principals: [w]e are not happy, we are not happy that our learners young as they are, fall pregnant and we are surprised as to why and how because we preach the gospel of abstinence or at least those who cannot resist … must practise safe sex but the problem is still there. (male principal, lillian ngoyi high, kzn) teachers and principals also expressed their outrage and resistance to what they regarded as young women’s lack of shame, for they remain convinced that being pregnant at school is shameful, and that the problem with government policy is that it is diffusing this shame, making it acceptable, thus undermining public ‘moral standards’: 5shefer et al. — teenage pregnancy and parenting at school they come to school, have their baby, leave it home, come back to school, and carry on. and most of them are proud of it! and they don’t feel at all ashamed! i mean when i was at school and someone fell pregnant it was: “oh my word! biggest secret!” but today they flaunt it. (female teacher, munster high, kzn) that teenage mothers at school also experience this ‘othering’ through discourses of shame was apparent from the narratives of the participants themselves: sometimes teachers make comments and use me as an example when they are talking about young girls who fall pregnant. i laugh it off but it actually hurts and it makes me feel embarrassed. then once in drama, my teacher was talking about “fallen women” and then she said “like [name of participant]”. (thabisile, munster girls, kzn) there is an evident disjuncture, in this instance, between national policy script and the moral discourse of teachers. implicit in the policy is an acceptance that pregnancy may happen at school and that parenting learners should be protected from censorious discourses and institutional prejudice that have prevented them from continuing their education successfully in the past. to continue at school with a pregnant body, and to return to school, possibly still breastfeeding and now parenting as well, requires actively discarding such a discourse of shame. particularly evident in teachers’ talk was a construction of the teenage mother as ‘contaminating’. those pregnant or parenting at school were constructed as infectious to, and polluting of other learners. the rationalisation that such learners would inevitably provide a negative role model for others and necessarily ‘influence’ others served to legitimise the exclusion of pregnant learners as soon as their pregnancy became visible: firstly, i think for them to be at school it’s not right coz it’s creating the other kids to do exactly as they are doing, to get pregnant and then go to school … so the others will be encouraged by that and they will go to school being pregnant, all of them will do that. (male principal, lilian ngoyi high, kzn) i think that they should not be in school. it encourages the other girls to do the same-if she can get away with it why can’t i do it. although the education department is saying that we must accept them, etc., my personal opinion is that they should not be allowed in school. (male principal, nehru high, kzn) underlying the discourse of disgrace is the denial and rejection of sexuality implicit in the pregnant and parenting body. being pregnant at school is shameful not only because pregnancy among unmarried teenage mothers who attend school defies normative expectations of school-going learners, but also because the pregnancy hails an active sexuality which underlies the ‘moral decay’ discourse. epstein & johnson (1998) argue that sexuality is both produced and silenced in schools. teachers’ construction of schools as regulatory institutions for sexuality was evident in their insistence that pregnancy was a marker of secrecy and shame. in this study, teachers appeared to be strongly entrenched in normative notions about when it is appropriate to be sexual and to parent. some teachers and principals expressed ambivalence about accepting the agency of young women enshrined in the human rights framework if it means that they may illustrate their right to be sexually active. thus, even while teachers were aware that pregnancy could be the result of sexual abuse and linked to poverty and other disadvantage, they appeared to assume pregnancy as a show of sexual precociousness: i think some of the teachers are more sympathetic than others, but nobody’s really sympathetic because all the girls have had warnings. they have been told how to protect themselves and we’re not sure how many of them ... most of them, when you get them in and you say “who is the father of the baby? is it a boyfriend?” “yes it’s my boyfriend.” and so it’s not rape. if they were all products of rapes, one would be much more sympathetic. we know we have girls who are indulging in unprotected sex. (female principal, munster girls, kzn) moralistic and blaming discourses regarding young women’s sexuality were also evident in learners’ reported experiences as they spoke about being ‘othered’ and shamed publicly in the classroom and, in 6 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 some instances, actively punished by teachers. the following quote shows the sexualisation of this young woman within a blaming discourse: there is this lady teacher [names and describes her], she really is on my case. she always shouts at me, about my not doing school work, my absenteeism and she always accuses me of enjoying boys’ company all the time. i had to openly tell her before the whole class that i was struggling with my school work because i was a mother. i missed lessons because i would have taken my child to the clinic. (molly, josiah gumede, wc) practices of exclusion and the sanctity of the school the notion that pregnant girls and parenting learners do not belong in school was evident in interviews with principals, but also in interviews with some teachers and learners. the presence of pregnant learners was clearly discomforting, constructed as reflecting ‘badly’ on the school, and the desire to render such learners invisible as far as is possible was present in the narratives of teachers and principals: let me be honest … it looks nasty, you know … grade twelve learners with a big tummy in the school with small kids, grade eight learners you know, didn’t look pleasant at all. (male principal, dingiswayo high, kzn) teenage mothers confirmed that schools privilege reputation above their needs and best interests: yes, and he makes a mockery out of you in front of the whole school, because he says that you are giving the school a bad name. when you want him to fill in some forms for you so you can carry on with your schooling somewhere else, he just tells you that he doesn’t deal with pregnant school girls. so that really puts a strain on the person concerned. i could be in tertiary now, doing my first year, but i couldn’t because of that principal. (ayanda, dingiswayo high, kzn) the oft-quoted argument that the school does not have facilities for child-bearing, implying the improbable conclusion that many workplaces and other public spaces (such as supermarkets) do, as well as calls for their safety and medical care, was used to rationalise the exclusion of pregnant learners as soon as their pregnancy was evident. some learners recognised the exclusionary logic of what principals and teachers said and took steps to avoid detection. pheli, at maputo secondary, described this experience: at school when teachers notice that your pregnancy is showing they call you and ask the stage of your pregnancy. if you happen to say around eight months they ask you to stay at home as it would be dangerous for you to come to school, as you could possible deliver at any time or you could be knocked down by other students and things like that. so they ask you to come back to school after you have delivered. as a result most learners conceal their pregnancy because they don’t want to stay home, and i also did the same, and no teacher noticed or approached me. one funny thing is that it is only lady teachers who seem to be telling learners to stay away from school, male teachers do not seem to care at all. in pheli’s account, pregnant learners would like to attend school as long as possible. in concealing their pregnancies, pregnant learners may expose themselves and their babies to detrimental health consequences. this narrative also highlights the way in which female teachers may serve as agents in policing young women’s respectability and morality, taking responsibility for ensuring subscription to ‘proper’ femininity. what appears common is that the school authorities (as opposed to the pregnant learners) make the decisions about when learners should leave school, and it seems that decisions are in the interests of ‘sanitising’ the school from ‘bad press’, rather than the learners’ needs. ntombi, at munster girls elaborated: i was pregnant in grade 11 and i missed three weeks of school. i had to come back and write the june exams without knowing what had been taught in those three weeks. i had missed all that work and no-one was getting the work for me. luckily i coped, but i don’t know how. i don’t think that the teachers are doing this for our benefit, but for the school. it’s not really about concern for us. it’s all about reputation these days. 7shefer et al. — teenage pregnancy and parenting at school pregnant learners find themselves caught between their own academic needs (to attend as much school as possible) and the demands of the school to avoid the ‘disruption’ of learners in an advanced state of pregnancy or in the early stages of motherhood. this response is rationalised by concerns for their safety and a lack of medical resources to cater for their birthing and nursing needs. on the other hand, it is evident that pregnant learners themselves would rather continue until they feel it is necessary to withdraw from school. for some participants, concern about school attendance may shape their decisions about birthing. fear of missing work and examinations may encourage learners to intervene in the timing of birthing. thus, some participants induced birth in order not to inconvenience their schooling, since the policy stipulates that the learner may not return to school in the same year in which the baby is born. state policies and material contexts routinely impact on women’s choices about where, when and how to give birth (joesch, 1994; simonds, 2002), although, in this case, the choice of young mothers is shaped by responses of school authorities. the general lack of empathy and construction of parenting as an intrusion in a space that ‘should not’ accommodate parenting was evident: the thing that really annoys the staff and me and the secretaries is when they’re given a note to say that they baby is sick and they had to take the baby to the clinic. but that’s usually the type that drops out. (female principal, munster girls, kzn) the learners also articulated a general lack of support and understanding of their parental demands at school, although they often identified individual teachers who provided assistance: the teachers are usually a problem because in most cases they do not understand. suppose you have taken the baby to the clinic and you bring evidence to that effect, you get shouted at or they ask why you decided to be a mother if you still wanted to be in school. so really teachers are very unpredictable. few are understanding, but in most cases learner mothers have to make up stories so that they do not get shouted at or embarrassed in front of the whole class. (thuli, maputo secondary school, wc) the lack of sympathy for their role as parents may facilitate further concealment on the part of learners: i prefer to be secretive. i am young and still a student. a baby is not supposed to be a topic at school. my baby is “restricted” to my “outside” life … babies and baby talk should not be entertained at school. (tatum, vespa senior secondary, wc) similarly, little space for bringing the parenting role into the school grounds was offered, and instead strong arguments against the possibilities of children being cared for at school were made: we cannot allow [learners] to breast feed here … and we also discourage them from bringing the kids to school. because we also work with learners between the age of thirteen and nineteen and we also concerned about the message that can sort of, ja, it can, mostly junior in situations learners can pick up, you know, they can see it as an encouragement ( in audible) its fine to be pregnant just come out of school. (male principal, southside senior secondary) discussion while studies have shown that there are many teachers and schools who take on caring roles in relation to sick, pregnant and parenting learners, and are aware of their challenges (bhana, morrell, epstein & moletsane, 2006; bhana et al., 2010), this article highlighted the continued evidence of discourses of teenage sexuality, pregnancy and parenting that inadvertently or consciously work to undermine the support of such learners in schools. thus, even though most of the teachers and principals in this study appear to be aware of the stipulations of the national policy, there are also ambivalent and discordant voices in this respect. discomfort is articulated primarily through a discourse of ‘moral decay’, where the presence of a clearly pregnant or parenting learner is viewed as undermining the school’s reputation and even the broader social fabric of society. key to that is a notion that pregnant or parenting learners at 8 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 school destabilise traditional notions of authority and order. such a notion may be linked to the dominant construction of the child-adult binarism, in which there is a constant attempt to interpret school-going youth as children rather than as adults. displays of what is considered adult, such as pregnancy and parenting, are viewed as a challenge to the ‘normal’ and to social order. in addition, pregnant learners are judged as infringing prescriptions of sexual modesty that are linked to larger social constraints on young female sexuality. in terms of this global register, sexually active women, in particular those who are assumed to be too young or outside the heteronormative frameworks of marriage and family, are ‘othered’ by dominant moralities and values, as has been illustrated internationally and locally (geronimus, 2003; jewkes, morrell & christofides, 2009; macleod, 2011; ngabaza, 2011; pillow, 2006). the response to the teenage mother is thus inscribed within broader regulatory practices related to young sexuality and young female sexuality, in particular (bhana et al., 2008, 2010). schools further appear to construct themselves as spaces in which pregnancy and parenting (at least of learners) are unintelligible and undermine the integrity of the institution. in an increasing context of academic competition and government surveillance of efficiency, schools fear for their public face, afraid that the presence of such learners will devalue their status and ‘reflect badly on them’. thus, a wide range of rationalisations for exclusionary practices of pregnant and parenting learners are articulated, and pregnant learners respond to these in strategic ways to avoid disruptions to their schooling and/or to maintain secrecy regarding their pregnancy, some of which may be dangerous to themselves or their babies. the responses of schools and the experience of learners to parenting and pregnancy have been shown to be powerfully gendered. young women bear the brunt of pregnancy and parenting, mostly simply because they are more visible as our research and other local work indicates, many teenage fathers do not take responsibility for the child and frequently deny paternity (mkhwanazi, 2010; ngabaza, 2010) – but more importantly because responses of teachers and principals and even their own peers buy into dominant moralising discourses that stigmatise young women who step out of the normative expectations of school-going female learners. conclusion all policies are open to interpretation, although the 2007 guideline document of the south african department of education is particularly conducive to facilitating widely divergent implementation approaches. normative and gendered expectations of teenagers will shape how teachers and principals relate to pregnancy and parenthood. when dominant systems of morality frown upon learners being sexually active and having children, it is likely that policy will be interpreted in ways that are not always supportive of learners who fall pregnant and parent at school. addressing key role players at schools as well as in communities, not only to clarify the goals of the policy and implementation, but also to unpack subjective responses to teenage sexuality, pregnancy and parenting, therefore remains a priority. there is clearly still a need among learners for more effective education regarding sexuality and safe sexual practices, which has also been evident with respect to the imperative of halting the spread of hiv, as well as possibly more life skills related to parenting. since the responses of teachers and school authorities also reflect strong moralistic and judgmental positions, the need to facilitate an interrogation of their own positions on sexuality, gender, and teenage pregnancy and parenting emerges as a priority. in this respect, it is important to avoid a blaming discourse, viewing teachers and principals as those responsible for the challenges that young parents may face. since these role players are also shaped by their social and cultural contexts, it cannot be expected that they will necessarily have all the skills, knowledge and understanding required to intervene in meaningful ways. research has, for example, highlighted the challenges that teachers may have in talking about sexuality with young people and generally in providing life-orientation education (for example, adonis & baxen, 2009; macleod, 2009; motalingoane-khau, 2010; rooth, 2005). teachers and schools need to be adequately supported in the challenges of providing meaningful guidance, constructive support and appropriate interventions in the nurturance of pregnant and parenting learners. 9shefer et al. — teenage pregnancy and parenting at school endnotes 1 we acknowledge the financial support of sanpad (south africa-netherlands research programme on alternatives in development), grant number 05/45. we express our gratitude to the learners, teachers and principals who extended hospitality to us during the course of the research project. 2 pseudonyms are used for schools and participants. the following participating schools are cited in this article: dingiswayo high (durban): former det township co-educational school; exclusively black and working class, with a large number of learners from impoverished circumstances. lilian ngoyi (durban): co-educational township school, with an exclusively black learner body that includes some from impoverished home circumstances. munster girls (durban): all-girl, former white model c school; currently more integrated and relatively middleclass with a majority of black learners. nehru high (durban): former hod school; includes both middleand working-class learners, most of whom are black. josiah gumede high school (cape town): former township coeducational school; remains working class with many from impoverished home circumstances, and predominantly black learners. maputo secondary school (cape town): former township school; remains working class with many from impoverished home circumstances and predominantly black learners. southside senior secondary (cape town): former hor school; remains working class with some from impoverished home circumstances and predominantly coloured learners. vespa senior secondary (cape town): former hor; remains working class with some from impoverished home circumstances and still predominantly coloured learners. 3 swartz & bhana (2010) provide a valuable account of young fathers’ experiences of teenage pregnancy and parenting. references adonis b & baxen j 2009. school culture, teacher identity and hiv/aids. in j baxen & a breidlid (eds), hiv/aids in sub-saharan africa. understanding the implications of culture and context. cape town: uct press. bhana d, morrell r, epstein d & moletsane r 2006. the hidden work of caring: teachers and the maturing aids epidemic in diverse secondary schools in durban. journal of education, 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south african schools. in r morrell, d bhana & t shefer (eds), books and babies: pregnancy and young parents in school. cape town: hsrc press. motalingaoane-khau msc 2010. women teachers talk sex: a gendered analysis of women teachers’ experiences of teaching sexuality education in rural schools in the age of hiv/aids. dphil dissertation. durban: university of kwazulu-natal. national research council & institute of medicine (nrc & iom) 2005. growing up global: the changing transitions of adulthood in developing countries. panel on transitions to adulthood in developing countries. in cb lloyd (ed), committee on population and board on children, youth and families. division of behavioral and social sciences & education. washington dc: the national academies press. ngabaza s 2011. an exploratory study of experiences of parenting among a group of school-going adolescent mothers in a south african township. phd dissertation. cape town: university of the western cape. nkani v & bhana d 2010. 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559-570. swartz s & bhana a 2009. teenage tata: voices of young fathers in poor communities in south africa. cape town: hsrc press. the times 2011. pregnancy tsunami. 21 february. vundule c, maforah f, jewkes r & jordaan e 2001. risk factors for teenage pregnancy among sexually active black adolescents in cape town. south african medical journal, 91: 73-80. wolpe a, quinlan o & martinez l 1997. gender equity in education: a report of the gender equity task team. pretoria: department of education. 74 the influence of gender, parents and background factors on grade 7 students’ beliefs and attitudes towards mathematics in mozambique adelino evaristo murimo monash the third study by the southern and eastern africa consortium for monitoring education quality (sacmeq) revealed that achievement in mathematics among grade 6 children in mozambique is declining, and gender differences favouring boys persist. this study examined the contribution of parents, economic resources and cultural factors on grade 7 students’ beliefs and attitudes towards mathematics. no gender differences were found, but age, geolocation, number of siblings, education of parent, and possession of economic resources were statistically significant predictors of students’ perceived usefulness of mathematics. keywords: perceived achievement; perceived usefulness of mathematics; equity in mathematics learning; affective domain; cultural factors in most developed countries, research on the factors contributing to gender differences in mathematics education have a long tradition, and a variety of explanations for the disparities have been postulated (e.g., fennema & peterson, 1985; leder, 1990). reyes and stanic (1988) stated that inequalities in mathematics are reinforced by socioeconomic status, race and gender. the studies by the national assessment program on literacy and numeracy in australia (naplan, 2011) show that achievement in mathematics among primary and secondary school students is influenced by parental and background variables. similar accounts have been reported by the trends in international mathematics and science studies (timss) among grade 4 and 8 students (mullis, martin & foy, 2008). although gender differences in mathematics achievement have declined in some countries, a recent report from the united nations shows that grade 6 girls continue to b disadvantaged in many countries in sub-saharan africa (unesco, 2012). examination of the timss results (mullis et al., 2008), as well as studies from the southern and eastern africa consortium for monitoring education quality (sacmec) (saito, 2010), show that the magnitude and direction of gender differences in mathematics achievement vary across countries, and are unstable within countries. hanna (2003) maintained that the fluctuations of gender differences in mathematics achievement indicate that inequalities in mathematics education are more likely to be influenced by socio-cultural contexts than by students’ biological characteristics. hanna (2003) defended this position by observing that in countries with a tradition of supporting mathematics learning for females, gender differences are small. interestingly, the results from the timss 2007 for grades 4 and 8 reveal statistically significant gender differences in mathematics performance favouring girls in many islamic countries (thomson, wernert, underwood & nicholas, 2008), even though gender equality has not yet been attained in these countries (see unesco, 2012). in africa, research studies examining the factors that perpetuate gender differences in mathematics achievement are scarce (asimeng-boahene, 2006). however, the studies by sacmeq have provided valuable information about mathematics achievement among grade 6 students across countries from the sub-saharan region. for example, the second and the third study revealed that in kenya, malawi, mozambique and tanzania, boys are performing better than girls in mathematics. seychelles is the only country from the region where girls performed better than boys in both studies (saito, 2010). in regard to mozambique, the sacmeq studies revealed that boys outperform girls in mathematics and slightly in reading (saito, 2010). sacmeq also reported that mozambique is the country where achievement in mathematics has deteriorated the most over recent years. 75murimo — the influence of gender, parents and background factors on grade 7 students inspired by the sacmeq results, the current study was conducted in mozambique with the purpose of examining the influence of parents, socioeconomic status and background factors on grade 7 students’ beliefs and attitudes towards mathematics. some of the research questions addressed were: 1. are there gender differences among grade 7 students’ perceived achievement levels in mathematics and other school subjects? 2. do boys and girls differ with regard to their perceived usefulness of mathematics? is mathematics viewed by parents as important for their children, and to get a job? 3. which selected parental background variables best predict students’ perceived achievement in mathematics, and perceived usefulness of mathematics? 4. do students who possess selected economic resources hold more positive views of perceived achievement in mathematics, and perceived usefulness of mathematics than students who do not possess these resources? theoretical considerations the affective domain in mathematics education mcleod (1992) conceptualised the affective domain in mathematics education as comprising three components: beliefs, attitudes and emotions. debellis and goldin (1999) consider value, interest and aspirations to be part of affect. mathematics-related beliefs are viewed as the individuals’ subjective knowledge: (a) about mathematics, (b) about the self, (c) about mathematics teaching, and (d) about the social context where mathematics learning takes place (mcleod, 1992). else-quest, hyde and hejmadi (2008) related affect with feelings and emotional reactions that students experience during mathematical activities. they indicated that positive emotions (e.g., interest, joy and pride) are associated with better performance, while negative emotions (e.g., anxiety, tension, frustration or panic) yield poor performance in mathematics. among other scholars, grootenboer and hemmings (2007) and leder and forgasz (2010) have focused their studies on another dimension of affect – beliefs and attitudes. aiken (1980) described an attitude towards mathematics as the predisposition to respond favourably or unfavourably to mathematics tasks. he viewed an attitude as having three attributes: cognition (beliefs, knowledge), affect (emotion, motivation), and performance (behaviour, action). beliefs and attitudes were examined in this study because they influence cognitive processes and willingness to engage in mathematical activities (grootenboer & hemmings, 2007). also, the development of positive beliefs and attitudes towards mathematics is a desirable goal of mathematics education in many countries (mullis et al., 2008). in mozambique, for example, the primary mathematics curriculum stipulates that all children must view mathematics as a useful working tool, and must hold positive beliefs and attitudes towards mathematics learning (ministério da educação, 2008). notions of perceived achievement in mathematics (pam), and perceived usefulness of mathematics (pum) are framed within the affective domain. pum is defined as “students’ beliefs about the usefulness of mathematics currently and in relationship to their future education, vocation, or other activities” (fennema & sherman, 1976:5). luttrell, callen, allen, wood, deeds and richard (2010) viewed pum as incorporating four dimensions: interest, general utility, need for high achievement, and personal cost. gender differences in pam and pum tend to favour boys (fennema & sherman, 1976); and perceived competence, prior achievement, and mathematical background also influence pum (luttrell et al., 2010). theoretical framework for the study leder’s (1990) model of gender differences in mathematics education, and the model of parent socialisation (eccles, 2005) were used to identify variables of interest to this study. leder (1990) postulated that gender 76 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 differences in mathematics learning are influenced by environmental (e.g., society, home and school) and learner-related factors (e.g., belief systems, and differential development of verbal and spatial abilities). leder’s (1990) model was used because it emphasises factors that are modifiable rather than innate characteristics of the learner. eccles’ (2005:127) model postulated that parents influence their children’s achievement related behaviours “through their roles as models, and through their roles as expectancy and value socializers”. the model further suggests that children imitate and adopt the behaviours of parents and significant others. that is, if mothers exhibit more mathematics ‘avoidance’ than fathers, then daughters and sons might develop different mathematics expectancies and subject value. the model stresses the role of parental education on students’ educational outcomes. it was thus viewed as having implications for education in mozambique because the total adult illiteracy rates in 2007 were 39.5% in urban areas, and 79.5% in rural areas (instituto nacional de estatistica, 2011). methods study site this study was conducted in five public schools in sofala province in mozambique; the schools represented three regions: urban (3), rural (1) and remote (1). participants in general spoke one of the following three languages in their homes: sena, ndau and portuguese; a small percentage of participants spoke other languages. portuguese is the medium of instruction in mozambique, and was inherited from the country’s portuguese colonial masters. ethics approval to conduct this research study in mozambique was granted by the monash university human research ethics committee. permission to access schools in sofala province was obtained from relevant authorities and institutions, and all participants consented to participate in the study. recruitment and characteristics of the participants a convenience sample of 300 grade 7 students (134 boys and 166 girls) and 225 parents (118 males and 107 females) participated in the study. the average age of the children was 12.9. the districts where the study was conducted were selected by the researcher, but the schools were determined by the education, youth and technology services. instruments: surveys and interviews due to a lack of previous research focused on gender and mathematics education in primary schools in mozambique, a mixed methods research approach was considered the most appropriate. first, parents and children completed paper-and-pencil surveys at the schools in the presence of the researcher. assistance was provided, as needed, to assist in reading and understanding the survey items. a month later, ten parents were interviewed to explore further their responses to the survey items. to examine students’ perceived achievement levels, students were asked how good they are in each of nine school subjects taught in primary schools in mozambique. each response was reported on a fivepoint rating scale varying from weak (1) to excellent (5). for each subject, high scores indicated high perceived achievement level. to measure students’ pum, 14 items were selected from the mathematics valuing inventory (mvi) (luttrell et al., 2010). the items were translated into portuguese with the authors’ permission. to maintain scale reliability, items were back translated into english with the assistance of a person fluent in both languages. an example of an item from the mvi for students was: “there are almost no benefits for me to learn mathematics”. the corresponding item for parents was: “there are almost no benefits for my son/ daughter to learn mathematics”. responses were reported on five-point likert-type formats ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). to ensure that high scores indicated high pum, negatively worded items were reverse scored. 77murimo — the influence of gender, parents and background factors on grade 7 students to collect data in regard to parental background, cultural factors and possession of economic resources, the students completed a questionnaire asking for school geolocation, home language, number of siblings, number of books, parent education, parent occupation, and whether they have electricity, piped water, a tv, a computer, and the internet in their homes. with respect to personal items, the students were asked whether they possessed calculators, reading and mathematics textbooks, school uniforms, and cell phones. during the interviews, all parents were asked whether mathematics is important for their children, and whether knowing mathematics helps to get a job. in this article, representative responses to these questions are presented. data analysis the quantitative data were analysed using the statistical package for the social sciences (spss) for windows (version 20) following pallant’s (2009) guidelines. all categorical variables were coded as ‘dummy’ variables. the data from quantitative variables measured on equal interval scales were inspected for out-of-range values, plausibility of means, standard deviations, and non-violation of the assumptions of parametric statistical techniques (tabachnick & fidell, 2007). parametric statistical tests were used because they are more robust than the equivalent non-parametric ones when sample sizes surpass 200, and when the data meet the necessary assumptions (tabachnick & fidell, 2007). as only ten parents were interviewed, the interview data were analysed manually, following creswell’s (2003) guidelines. first, all interviews were transcribed and each parent’s answers were coded. second, all relevant themes were refined using words that defined them better. to ensure reliability of the codes, the interview transcripts were re-coded three months later. results and discussion t-tests for independent groups were conducted to compare mean scores on perceived achievement for girls and for boys in every subject using a p-value cut-off of .01 (bonferroni adjustment). a stringent level of statistical significance was used in order to prevent type 1 errors (pallant, 2009) as several separate tests were performed. mean scores on perceived achievement, and the results of t-tests for independent groups are presented in table 1. table 1: means on perceived achievement, results of t-test for independent groups, and results of one-sample t-test by gender (boys: n = 134; girls: n = 166) subject means results of t-test for independent groups boys girls t p physical education 3.76** 3.94** ns music education 3.67** 3.87** ns portuguese 3.74** 3.69** ns english 3.59** 3.68** ns visual education & technology 3.61** 3.67** ns natural sciences 3.44** 3.64** ns social sciences 3.31 3.39** ns moral & civic education 3.27 3.57** 2.4 <.01 mathematics 3.17 3.16 ns response format: 1 = weak, 2 = below average, 3 = average, 4 = good, 5 = excellent **means are statistically significantly higher than the mean for mathematics at p <.001 78 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 as can be seen in table 1, gender differences in perceived achievement were only found for moral and civic education, and favoured girls. interestingly, the aim of this subject in mozambique is teaching children to: recognize the importance of good behaviour in the family, school, and in the public place, and to respect the rules of personal and public hygiene. to develop love, patriotic spirit, and pride for their country (ministério da educação, 2008:348). as shown in table 1, one-sample t-tests were conducted to determine whether mean scores for perceived achievement in mathematics (pam) for boys ( = 3.17) and for girls ( = 3.16) differed from the means in other subjects. a bonferroni adjustment was made to the more rigorous p-value of .001 due to the number of t-tests conducted (pallant, 2009). it is evident that both the girls’ and the boys’ lowest perceived achievement was in mathematics. remarkably, both the girls and the boys believed they were best at physical education; the children’s highly perceived achievement for physical education is likely to be associated with the nature of the subject. physical education is an outdoor activity and assessment is generally qualitative. to explore students’ pum, the sum of the scores on the 14 pum items was divided by 14 (number of items) to facilitate interpretation of scores within the range 1-5. then, a t-test for independent groups was conducted to compare boys’ and girls’ mean pum scores. however, no statistically significant gender differences were found (girls: m = 3.61, sd = .57; boys: m = 3.71, sd = .53). parental and background factors (parent education, parent occupation, geolocation, siblings, and books) were used to examine the variability of pam and pum scores individually and in combination. to do so, a standard multiple regression analysis was applied. pum and pam scores were entered into the regression equation as dependent variables; parent educational and occupational levels and the other background factors were entered as independent variables. the independent variables that best predicted pum and pam as revealed by the standard multiple regression statistics are shown in table 2. table 2: standard multiple regression statistics and the predictor variables of pum and pam scores independent variables perceived usefulness of mathematics [pum] perceived achievement in mathematics [pam] b se β t p b se β t p parent education .05 .02 .20 2.97 <.01 .03 .04 .07 .95 ns parent occupation .01 .03 .01 .18 ns .13 .07 .13 1.80 ns geolocation .19 .05 .24 3.56 <.001 .14 .11 .09 1.25 ns siblings .13 .04 .19 2.95 <.01 .01 .09 .01 .14 ns home language .06 .06 .06 1.09 ns .01 .12 .01 .02 ns books .04 .03 .03 1.15 ns .01 .08 .01 .17 ns notes: b = unstandardised coefficients, se = standard error, β = beta coefficient, t = t-test statistics, p = significance level, ns = not statistically significant at p < .05. the standard multiple regression analysis revealed that the six independent variables shown in table 2, as a group, explained 18% of the variance of pum scores (r2 =.18), and the result was statistically significant [f(7, 215) = 6.8, p < .001]. although pam scores were normally distributed and met the basic assumptions related to linearity, homoscedasticity, and independence of residuals (pallant, 2009), the same group of independent variables explained only 3% of the variance of pam scores (r2 =.026), and the result was not statistically significant. this means that 97% of the variance of pam scores was not explained by the variables examined. table 2 also indicate that no single variable examined made a statistically significant contribution to the prediction of pam scores. but, geolocation (β=.24, t = 3.56, p <.001), parent education (β=.24, t = 2.97, p <.01), and the number of siblings (β=.24, t = 2.95, p <.01) predicted pum scores. after observing that these variables influenced pum scores, and, as all independent variables had more than 79murimo — the influence of gender, parents and background factors on grade 7 students two levels, one-way anovas were conducted together with a tukey or games-howell post hoc test to identify which groups differed from each other (pallant, 2009). it was found that: • students whose parents had university education had higher mean pum scores (m = 4.04; sd = 0.56) than the students whose parents had less than grade 6 (m = 3.46; sd = 0.41; p <.01). • students from urban schools had higher mean pum scores (m = 3.79; sd = 0.58) than students from rural (m = 3.47; sd = 0.42; p <.001) and remote schools (m = 3.39; sd = 0.43; p <.001); and • students with fewer than three siblings had higher mean pum scores (m = 3.89; sd = 0.56) than those with three or more siblings (m = 3.63; p <.01). one-way between-groups multivariate analyses of variance (manovas) were conducted to determine whether students possessing selected economic resources had higher mean scores on a linear combination of the dependent variables, pam and pum, and on the individual variables. the economic resources selected were electricity, piped water, tv, computer, internet, calculator, reading and mathematics textbooks, cell phone, and school uniform. each resource was entered into the spss multivariate equation individually, but the dependent variables were entered as a group. the univariate test results were considered statistically significant at p <.025 (bonferroni adjustment); wilks’ lambda was preferred over other possible statistics because it is more popular when conducting a multivariate analysis of variance (pallant, 2009). the results are shown in table 3. table 3: pam and pum mean scores, frequencies, multivariate, and univariate test results by selected economic resources (n = 300) economic resources dep. var. possession status means multivariate results wilks’ lambda univariate results yes no val f p φ1 f p φ2 electricity pam 208 3.23 90 3.02 .92 13 <.001 .82 2.2 ns .01 pum 208 3.76 90 3.42 25 <.001 .08 piped water pam 148 3.12 150 3.21 .97 3.7 <.01 .03 .50 ns .01 pum 148 3.74 150 3.58 6.6 <.01 .03 television pam 208 3.20 90 3.10 .94 9.7 <.001 .06 .48 ns .01 pum 208 3.75 90 3.45 19 <.001 .06 computer pam 60 3.22 238 3.16 .95 7.8 <.001 .05 .14 ns .01 pum 60 3.90 238 3.60 16 <.001 .05 internet pam 33 3.52 265 3.13 .96 6.3 <.01 .04 3.6 ns .01 pum 33 3.93 265 3.62 9.7 <.01 .03 calculator pam 89 3.34 209 3.09 .99 1.5 ns .01 2.9 ns .01 pum 89 3.66 209 3.65 .02 ns .01 cell phone pam 114 3.25 184 3.11 .99 1.3 ns .01 1.1 ns .01 pum 114 3.61 184 3.69 1.3 ns .01 reading pam 223 3.18 75 3.15 .99 .14 ns .01 .04 ns .01 textbook pum 223 3.67 75 3.63 .25 ns .01 mathematics pam 224 3.19 74 3.14 .99 .32 ns .01 .08 ns .01 textbook pum 224 3.67 74 3.61 .59 ns .01 school pam 271 3.18 27 3.07 .98 2.1 ns .01 .21 ns .01 uniform pum 271 3.68 27 3.45 4.1 ns .01 80 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 notes. response formats: economic resources (independent variables): yes, no; pam: 1 = weak, 2 = below average, 3 = average, 4 = good, 5 = excellent; pum: 1 = disagree strongly, 2 = disagree, 3 = unsure, 4 = agree, 5 = agree strongly; φ 1: the proportion of variance on combined dependent variables explained by the independent variable; φ 2: the proportion of variance on individual dependent variables explained by the independent variable; val = wilks’ lambda statistics. as can be seen in table 3, there were statistically significant differences in the mean scores on the linear combination of pam and pum scores for children having electricity, piped water, tv, computer, and the internet in their homes when compared to students without these resources. a follow-up analysis of the estimated marginal means (pallant, 2009) showed that the children possessing these resources had higher mean scores than the students who did not. however, when the results of the dependent variables were considered separately it was noted that only pum was influenced by resources. table 3 also shows that possession of calculators, cell phones, school uniforms, and reading and mathematics textbooks did not influence pum scores. in mozambique, there are some possible explanations for this. calculators are not part of the official mathematics curriculum, so they may not be perceived as useful. textbooks are offered to children by the government. thus, to have a textbook does not necessarily indicate the level of socioeconomic status of the child. about 40% of the students reported having a cell phone. as most questions on the survey asked about items that the child had at home, it is possible that some children declared the possession of a family cell phone, whether or not it was used by or belonged to the child. this study also explored whether parents viewed mathematics as important for their children and for getting jobs. all parents interviewed believed mathematics was important for their children, but the majority believed mathematics did not help to get jobs. the responses of all parents interviewed were examined and representative ones are presented below. for example, parents indicated that mathematics was important for their children because “it opens capacity and improves reasoning” (father); “it helps to make calculations, for example, to check whether the money you were paid out by your employer corresponds to the number of days you worked” (mother); “mathematics is intelligence. if you know mathematics you can do anything you like. you can do physics, chemistry, or geography. mathematics is the foundation of everything. carpenters, shoemakers, or builders rely on mathematics” (father); and “it is through mathematics that we can carry out calculations, and perform some services” (mother). during the interviews parents frequently used words such as ‘reasoning’, ‘memory’, ‘calculations’, ‘counting’, ‘salary’, ‘money’, and ‘change’. only three parents believed mathematics helps to get a job. they argued that “people who understand mathematics can work in big industries, laboratories and plants. in these jobs, advanced mathematics is used, precision is required, and no mistakes are allowed” (father); “any employment uses mathematics” (father); and “companies like people who are good at mathematics” (mother). seven parents believed mathematics was not important to get jobs, but only three clearly articulated reasons, saying that “advertisements for jobs never talk about mathematics, they talk about fluency in english – written and spoken, and computer skills” (father); “mathematics alone does not help to get a job. the person must be good in all subjects” (mother); “not these days. in the past, i would agree that to know mathematics helped to get a job. these days jobs are for friends and not for the right people” (father). conclusions, limitations of the study and recommendations the data from this study revealed no gender differences in students’ perceived usefulness of mathematics (pum) or perceived achievement in mathematics (pam). gender differences were noted only for perceived achievement level in moral and civic education, and the difference was in favour of girls. both girls and boys believed mathematics was their worst subject and physical education their best. however, geolocation (urban), parent education (university), number of siblings (fewer than three), and having electricity, piped water, a tv, a computer, and the internet at home were related to higher level of pum, but not pam. furthermore, parents believed mathematics is important for their children, but the majority did not associate mathematics with jobs. 81murimo — the influence of gender, parents and background factors on grade 7 students the results of this study did not challenge previous research findings with respect to the influence of economic resources, parental education, and other background variables on mathematics learning outcomes (e.g., grootenboer & hemmings, 2007; mullis et al., 2008; naplan, 2011). the findings did reveal, however, that parental education, number of siblings, and possession of selected economic resources are the best predictors of pum among grade 7 children in sofala, mozambique. none of the variables examined predicted pam in a statistically significant way; this calls for further research to identify factors that may explain the variance of pam scores. to ensure equity in educational outcomes, the findings from this study have implications for government policy and mathematics teaching in mozambican primary schools. the data also revealed that parents only associate mathematics with low level use such as counting, calculating, and developing reasoning skills. strikingly, the majority of parents did not know how mathematics is related to jobs. the results from this study are concerning because mathematics is a gateway to accessing higher education and to rewarding jobs (leder, pehkonen & töner, 2002). if children view mathematics as the most difficult subject, and if their parents associate mathematics only with low-level use and do not relate mathematical knowledge with jobs, the country will have difficulties competing with others in the global and the technological world of the 21st century. one limitation of this study was that it was conducted only in one province, sofala, in mozambique. thus, to increase understanding of the cultural factors influencing children’s pam and pum it would be important to replicate the study in other provinces and to examine more independent variables. some children and parents in this study had difficulty reading the likert-type items. until the issue of illiteracy is overcome in mozambique, future studies should also include interviews, particularly in rural areas. with the recent discoveries of large reserves of oil, gas and mineral resources in mozambique, children and parents need to more fully appreciate the importance and relevance of mathematics, science and technology in order to seize opportunities and increase the likelihood of being able to work in these sectors. if they do not, mozambique will continue depending on foreign skilled workers while the majority of nationals have no jobs. references aiken lr 1980. attitude measurement and research. in da paine (ed), recent developments in affective measurement. san francisco: jossey-bass. asimeng-boahene l 2006. gender inequity in science and mathematics education in africa: the causes, consequences, and solutions. education, 126: 711-728. creswell jw 2003. research design: qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches, 2nd edn. thousand oaks: sage. debellis v & goldin ga 1999. aspects of affect: mathematical intimacy, mathematical integrity. in o zaslavsky (ed), proceedings of the 23rd conference of the international group for the psychology of mathematics education (vol. 2). haifa, israel: pme. eccles js 2005. influences of parents’ education on their students’ educational attainments: the role of parent and child perceptions. london review of education, 3: 191-204. else-quest nm, hyde js & hejmadi a 2008. mother and child emotions during mathematics homework. mathematical thinking and learning, 10: 5-35. fennema e & peterson p 1985. autonomous learning behaviour: a possible explanation of sex-related differences in mathematics. educational studies in mathematics, 16: 309-311. fennema e & sherman j 1976. fennema-sherman mathematics attitude scales: instruments designed to measure attitudes toward the learning of mathematics by females and males. journal supplement abstract service. american psychological association (ms. 1225), washington, dc. grootenboer p & hemmings b 2007. mathematics performance and the role played by affective and background factors. mathematics education research journal, 19: 3-20. hanna g 2003. reaching gender equity in mathematics education. the educational forum, 67: 204-214. 82 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 instituto nacional de estatistica 2011. taxas de analfabetismo em mocambique. retrieved on 10 march 2011 from http://www.ine.gov.mz/dashboards.aspx?key=511616. leder gc 1990. gender differences in mathematics: an overview. in e fennema & gc leder (eds), mathematics and gender. new york: teachers’ college press. leder gc & forgasz h j 2010. i liked it till pythagoras: the public’s views of mathematics. in l sparrow, b kissane & c hurst (eds), shaping the future of mathematics education, proceedings of the 33rd annual conference of the mathematics education research group of australasia, fremantle. sydney: merga. leder gc, pehkonen e & töner g (eds) 2002. setting the scene. beliefs: a hidden variable in mathematics education? dordrecht: kluwer academic publishers. luttrell vr, callen bw, allen cs, wood md, deeds dg & richard dcs 2010. the mathematics value inventory for general educational students: development and initial validation. educational and psychological measurement, 70: 142-160. mcleod db 1992. research on affect in mathematics education: a reconceptualization. in da grouws (ed), handbook of research on mathematics teaching and learning. new york: macmillan publishing company. ministério da educação 2008. programa do ensino basico (6a e7a classes). maputo: inde/mined. mullis ivs, martin mo & foy p 2008. timss 2008 international report. retrieved on 20 january 2010 from http://timss.bc.edu/timss2007/mathreport.html naplan 2012. national reports. retrieved on 20 may 2012 from http://www.nap.edu.au/test_results/ national_reports/index.html. pallant j 2009. spss survival manual. a step by step guide to data analysis using spss, 3rd ed. nsw: allen & unwin. reyes lh & stanic ma 1988. sex, socioeconomic status, and mathematics. journal for research in mathematics education, 19: 26-43. saito m 2010. the gender gap in learning – back to square one. a need to change the focus from access and participation to learning achievement. retrieved on 25 october 2010 from http://www.iiep. unesco.org/fileadmin/user_upload/info_services_newsletter/pdf/eng/2010/2010_3en.pdf tabachnick bg & fidell ls 2007. using multivariate statistics, 5th ed. boston: pearson education. thomson s, wernert n, underwood c & nicholas m 2008. timss 2007: taking a closer look at mathematics and science in australia. retrieved on 10 january 2012 from http://research.acer.edu. au/timss_2007/2 unesco 2012. the world atlas of gender equality in education. retrieved on 12 may 2012 from http:// www.unesco.org/new/en/education/themes/leading-the-international-agenda/gender-and-education/ resources/the-world-atlas-of-gender-equality-in-education/. pie32(4) book.indb perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 21 mee-ok cho faculty of education university of pretoria pretoria 0001 e-mail: meeokcho@yahoo. com vanessa scherman faculty of education university of pretoria pretoria 0001 e-mail: vanessa.scherman@ up.ac.za tel: 012 420 2498 estelle gaigher faculty of education university of pretoria pretoria 0001 e-mail: estelle.gaigher@ up.ac.za tel: 012 420 5663 exploring differential science performance in korea and south africa: a multilevel analysis mee-ok cho vanessa scherman estelle gaigher this paper reports on secondary analysis of timss 2003 data with the aim of explaining the difference in science achievement of korean and south african learners. the question asked by this research, i.e. which factors at various educational levels influence science achievement in korea and south africa respectively, is addressed from the perspective of school effectiveness. data from korea included 5 300 learners from 151 schools, while approximately 9 000 learners from 265 schools were tested in south africa. the background data were analysed in conjunction with the achievement data by means of factor, reliability, correlation and multilevel analysis. the multilevel analysis revealed that the strongest predictor of science achievement is attitudes towards science in both countries at learner level while, at classroom/ school level, the strongest predictors are learner background in korea and safety in school in south africa respectively. in addition, factors specifically significant in korea included educational resources, out-of-school activities, high expectation, professional development, and school size, while south africa showed factors such as ethnicity and ses-related factors, textbook use, teacher age, teacher qualification, sts-based teaching, physical resources, and class size. keywords: science education; school effectiveness; south africa; korea; multilevel analysis; timss. perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 22 introduction high-quality science education is an indicator of economic success around the world as research has shown that scientific literacy has a strong relationship with the level of economic growth (hanushek, jamison, jamison & woessmann, 2008). for this reason, education systems want to monitor science education and improve its quality. in the trend in international mathematics and science study (timss), administered in 49 countries in 2003 under the auspices of the international association for the evaluation of educational achievement (iea), south korea and south africa were found to be at the opposite ends of the spectrum. while south korea is ranked among the higher-performing countries, south africa is ranked among the lower-performing countries in both science and mathematics. korea has a centralised education system and a homogeneous population with a single race, language and culture. aspirations for higher education have led to intense competition (paik, 2001). however, in contrast to their high performance, korean students have low self-confidence and negative attitudes towards science (martin, mullis, gonzalez & chrostowski, 2004b). on the other hand, south africa is a multicultural country characterised by poor resources, reform endeavours, multiple official languages and poor performance. this article aims to explore factors related to science education at various levels, from the perspective of school effectiveness research (ser). the following research question was addressed: which factors at various educational levels influence science achievement in korea and south africa respectively? the identification of effective factors at the various levels can lead to recognising similarities and differences that are related to learner achievement from a perspective of international comparative studies. literature review in light of teaching and learning theory (creemers, 1994), time on task and opportunity to learn have been emphasised as factors that influence learner performance. ‘time on task’ refers to time spent on the learning task by learners and is also called ‘effective learning time’ (scheerens & bosker, 1997: 125) or ‘academic learning time’ (creemers, 1994: 28). at the learner level, time on task contains the time spent on doing homework, private tutoring or outside-school activities (cooper, lindsay, nye & greathouse, 1998). opportunity to learn, as opposed to learning time, is defined mostly as content covered or curriculum alignment, and is measured in terms of the correspondence between learning tasks and the desired outcomes (scheerens & bosker, 1997). wang (1998) found that content exposure, i.e. opportunity to learn, was the most significant predictor of learner test scores, especially written test scores, in grade 8 science. exploring differential science performance in korea and south africa: a multilevel analysis mee-ok cho, vanessa scherman & estelle gaigher 23 aptitude, sometimes known as prior knowledge, refers to what the learner already knows and has been identified as the most important factor that influences achievement (lindemann-matthies & kamer, 2006). the ability to understand instruction depends on learner aptitude (creemers, 1994). brookhart (1997) found that prior science achievement and general reading ability had the greatest impact on science achievement. attitude can be defined as a tendency or propensity to react to situations and ideas (simpson, koballa, oliver & crawley, 1994). bloom (1976: 104) reports that 25% of the variance in school achievement could be accounted for by attitudes; research has consistently shown a correlation between attitudes and achievement (shen & tam, 2008). learners’ social contexts refer to their socio-economic status (ses), ethnicity, language and gender. goldhaber and brewer (2000) report that family background variables explain a considerable amount of the variance in grade 12 mathematics and science test scores. besides, the ses of learners is determined by their parents’ occupation and educational level. factors at classroom and school levels also influence learner outcomes, particularly in developing countries where teacher and school factors prove to have a deeper effect on learners’ science achievement than in developed countries (heyneman & loxley, 1983). moreover, factors such as teacher academic skills, teacher experience, teaching assignment, and professional development were documented as effective (mayer, mullens, moore & ralph, 2000). high-quality professional development that is provided consistently improves science teachers’ instruction (desimone, porter, garet, yoon & birman, 2002). educational leadership by principals has also been consistently reported to be an effective factor of achievement (tate, 2001). effective teaching practice and teacher background in science can influence learner achievement directly (johnson, kahle & fargo, 2007). scheerens and bosker (1997) propose structured instruction, including structure and preparation of lessons, direct instruction and monitoring as important factors. physical resources assist in understanding scientific knowledge and developing skills by means of hands-on activities (rogan, 2000). while textbooks are important, class size has been shown to influence learner achievement (blatchford, russell, basset, brown & martin, 2007). most teachers use a textbook as the primary basis or a supplementary resource for their lessons (martin et al., 2004b), which helps them to make decisions on the implemented curriculum (opportunity to learn). the literature mentions many other factors such as classroom and school climates (scherman, 2005); an orderly school atmosphere and a positive disciplinary climate (mulford, 1988); high expectations from the school, community and home (phillips, 1997); and the location of the school (park & park, 2006). perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 24 conceptual framework for the study the conceptual framework developed for the current research (see figure 1) is based on the creemers (1994) and the scheerens (1990) models, known as integrated and multilevel educational effectiveness models. the key concepts in this framework are time, opportunity and quality (see cho, 2010 for further details). school-level and context-level factors are defined in terms of quality, time and opportunity which, in turn, influence the classroom and learner levels. teacher experience or budget as inputs, and educational leadership, opportunity to learn, structured teaching and curriculum as process are seen to be important (scheerens, 1990). for a detailed discussion, please refer to cho (2010). figure 1: a proposed model of effectiveness of science education methodology sample and data collection this research is a secondary analysis of the survey for timss 2003. this survey was undertaken with 5 300 learners from 151 schools sampled from 14 to 19 april 2003 in korea, and with approximately 9 000 learners of 265 schools in south africa from 21 october to 1 november 2002 (martin, mullis & chrostowski, 2004a). exploring differential science performance in korea and south africa: a multilevel analysis mee-ok cho, vanessa scherman & estelle gaigher 25 instruments timss 2003 consisted of achievement test items and questionnaires. the science achievement test assessed knowledge and skills based on school curricula for grade 8 learners. the questionnaire data provided a context for the performance scores, focusing on learners’ backgrounds and attitudes towards science, the science curriculum, teachers of science, classroom characteristics and instruction, school context and instruction (martin et al., 2004a). data analysis factor and reliability analyses confirmed that the items are unidimensional and internally consistent. scores were added to make scales, and variable names and labels were assigned for further analysis. correlation analysis was undertaken to ascertain the relationship between the scales or factors identified so that these factors could be included in the multilevel analysis (table 1). perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 26 ta bl e 1 th e va ri ab le s in cl ud ed in m od el ko re a so ut h a fr ic a fa ct or s in th e re se ar ch fr am ew or k va ri ab le in pr el im in ar y an al ys is va ri ab le in m lw in d es cr ip tio n of va ri ab le s n m sd ra ng e va ri ab le in pr el im in ar y an al ys is va ri ab le in m lw in d es cr ip tio n of va ri ab le s n m sd ra ng e ti m e on ta sk tu to rs ci ex tu to r ex tr a tu to ri ng in sc ie nc e 48 76 1. 51 1. 33 03( 3) tu to rs ci ex tu to r ex tr a tu to ri ng in sc ie nc e 67 84 1. 47 1. 09 03( 3) st ud ya fs ch ti m af sc h st ud y aft er sc ho ol 48 76 2. 40 1. 32 08( 8) atti tu de to w ar d sc ie nc e li ke sc ie nc e li ks ci li ki ng s ci en ce 48 76 16 .6 7 4. 12 728 (2 1) se lfc on sc i se lfc on se lfco nfi de nc e in s ci en ce 67 84 7. 41 2. 42 312 (9 ) so ci al c on te xt bo ok ho m bo kh om bo ok s at h om e 48 76 3. 21 1. 28 15( 4) a ge sy a ge st u st ud en t a ge 67 84 3. 26 1. 20 15( 4) ed ud ad ed ud ad ed uc ati on le ve l of fa th er 48 76 5. 13 1. 65 18( 7) st uc on bo nc nt y co un tr y of b ir th 67 84 0. 65 0. 48 01( 1) ed us tu ed us tu sc ho ol le ve l ex pe ct ed b y st ud en t 48 76 3. 99 0. 74 15( 4) la ng ua s la ng ua g st ud en t la ng ua ge a t ho m e 67 84 1. 33 0. 94 03( 3) co m us e co m us e# co m pu te r us e 48 76 4. 73 2. 44 012 (1 2) bo ok ho m bo kh om @ bo ok s at h om e 67 84 1. 97 1. 13 15( 4) h om po s h om po s h om e po ss es si on 67 84 6. 13 2. 99 011 (1 1) w at vi m ed ia w at ch t v or vi de o aft er sc ho ol 67 84 1. 67 1. 41 04( 4) sc ie nc e cu rr ic ul um te xt us e te xt us e te xt bo ok u se 19 8 0. 92 0. 27 01( 1) te xt us e te xt us e te xt bo ok u se 19 8 0. 92 0. 27 01( 1) te ac he r ba ck gr ou nd tc ht ot ch pm tc ht ch pm # te ac he r in te ra cti on b y in fo rm ati on o r pe da go gy 13 7 2. 80 1. 26 06( 6) a ge tc he r a ge tc h te ac he r ag e 19 8 3. 05 0. 82 15( 4) exploring differential science performance in korea and south africa: a multilevel analysis mee-ok cho, vanessa scherman & estelle gaigher 27 re qg ra d 1s td eg co m pl et e th e fir st d eg re e 19 8 0. 18 0. 38 01( 1) tc ht ot ch vo tc ht ch vo # in te ra cti on by v is it or ob se rv ati on 19 8 1. 20 1. 45 06( 6) te ac hi ng pr ac tic e le ct ur ea g le ct ur ag *# le ct ur ece nt re d te ac hi ng 13 7 2. 39 0. 22 1. 66 2. 8( 1. 14 ) u se ofh w ba si ch w # u se o f ho m ew or k( ba si c ho m ew or k) 19 8 3. 72 0. 60 14( 3) st s st s st sce nt re d te ac hi ng 19 8 7. 13 2. 40 212 (1 0) cl as sr oo m cl im at e h ix pe ct h ix pe ct h ig h ex pe ct ati on 13 7 15 .2 8 2. 80 824 (1 6) ph ys ic al re so ur ce s ph yr es ou rc e ph yr es ph ys ic al re so ur ce fo r sc ie nc e le ss on 19 8 9. 94 4. 16 015 (1 5) ph yr es ou rc e ph yr es ph ys ic al re so ur ce fo r sc ie nc e le ss on 19 8 9. 94 4. 16 015 (1 5) cl as iz e cl as iz e n um be r of st ud en ts in cl as s 19 8 4. 41 1. 58 17( 6) cl as iz e cl as iz e n um be r of st ud en ts in cl as s 19 8 4. 41 1. 58 17( 6) ti m e fo r le ar ni ng tti m ew ti m sp w # ti m e sc he du le d/ w ee k 13 7 2. 25 0. 37 1. 53. 5( 2) tti m ew ti m sp w # sc he du le d tim e/ w ee k 19 8 2. 87 1. 38 15( 4) tti m ts tti m pw # sc ie nc e te ac hi ng ti m e/ w ee k 19 8 4. 40 1. 86 18( 7) pr of es si on al te ac hi ng fo rc e pr of de ve lo p pr of de ve pr of es si on al ev el op m en t 13 7 4. 48 1. 65 110 (9 ) pc ad du a dm in dt pr in ci pa l ad m in is tr ati ve du ty 19 8 3. 33 1. 55 17( 6) pc su ev t su pe vd t su pe rv is e or ev al ua te a s pr in ci pa l d ut y 19 8 2. 05 1. 05 17( 6) pr oft ch in gf pr oft ch f# pr of es si on al te ac hi ng fo rc e 19 8 13 .9 7 2. 46 720 (1 3) sc ho ol c lim at e en rt ot sc hs iz e en ro lm en t o f a ll gr ad es 13 7 4. 25 1. 36 17( 6) en rt ot sc hs iz e# en ro lm en t o f a ll gr ad es 19 8 3. 04 1. 35 17( 6) ci ty si ze ci ty si ze # ty pe o f co m m un ity 13 7 5. 05 1. 21 16( 5) ci ty si ze ci ty si ze # ty pe o f co m m un ity 19 8 3. 12 1. 58 16( 5) perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 28 st ud is d is ad va pe rc en ta ge o f di sa dv an ta ge d st ud en ts 13 7 2. 01 0. 91 14( 3) st ud is d is ad va pe rc en ta ge o f di sa dv an ta ge d st ud en ts 19 8 3. 76 0. 68 14( 3) h ix pe ct h ix pe ct # h ig h ex pe ct ati on 19 8 5. 67 1. 64 210 (8 ) lo w m or al s lo m or al se ve ri ty o f l ow m or al e 19 8 4. 37 2. 16 08( 8) sa fe sc ha g sa fs ch ag * sa fe ty in sc ho ol 19 8 2. 39 0. 54 1 . 2 7 3. 87 (2 .6 ) n ot e: * a gg re ga te d va ri ab le # n on -s ig ni fic an t v ar ia bl es a cc or di ng to th e m ul til ev el a na ly si s @ d el et ed v ar ia bl e du e to lo w d ev ia nc e im pr ov em en t exploring differential science performance in korea and south africa: a multilevel analysis mee-ok cho, vanessa scherman & estelle gaigher 29 one class in a school was sampled to allow data to be collected in a natural situation, although effects of both individual and group level variables need to be taken into account (keeves & sellin, 1997). the research method entailed a multilevel approach to analysis, allowing the researchers to examine influences between the levels as well as each level’s impact on learner achievement. in addition, the multilevel analysis involves the interaction between and within each level, allowing factors specific to learners, classroom and school to be studied simultaneously. since timss 2003 addressed one classroom per school, there are no betweenclass variations. therefore, a two-level model was compiled that represents the learner and class/school level. based on the null model, the explanatory variables from the learner and class/school levels were entered step by step into the null model, thus, compiling the full model by adding cross-level interactions. the model developed here is to explain the variation in science scores between learners (within schools) and between schools by the explanatory variables. the mlwin software was used to specify the two-level model. results korean learners scored an average of 558 (sd 1.6), while south african learners achieved an average score of 244 (sd 6.7) in science in timss 2003. as a result of the factor, reliability and correlation analyses, effective factors were identified for the two countries. fifteen variables in the korean data were identified as important and selected for the multilevel modelling: eight variables, including one aggregated variable at the learner level, three variables at the class level, and four variables at the school level. as for south africa, 27 variables were identified as important and remained for the multilevel modelling: nine variables, including one aggregated variable at the learner level, 10 variables at the class level, and eight variables at the school level. there is a large discrepancy in the number of significant factors for the two countries at the class and school level. a possible explanation might be that more factors at the class and school level influence learner achievement in south africa than in korea. perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 30 table 2 multilevel analyses of the korean data model null model learner model class/school model fixed effects learner level coefficient (se) coefficient (se) coefficient (se) intercept 558.307(1.878) 329.016(5.459) 319.418(9.634) attitude toward science liksci 4.821**(0.212) 4.759**(0.211) social context bokhom 11.901**(0.701) 11.779**(0.698) edustu 18.901**(1.199) 18.993**(1.195) time on task timafsch 5.715**(0.659) 5.683**(0.656) social context edudad 3.352**(0.551) 2.878**(0.554) time on task extutor 3.360**(0.639) 3.309**(0.636) class/school level school climate disadva –5.417**(1.181) schsize 1.656*(0.776) hixpect 0.747*(0.371) professional teaching force prodeve 1.305*(0.614) random effects σ2e 4646.078(95.445) 3225.629(66.264) 3223.994(66.223) σ2u0 350.446(58.353) 91.298(22.076) 43.997(16.357) deviance 55187.250 53325.210# 53281.750# note: n=4876 learners in 137 schools, ** t-value > 2.58 a confidence interval of 99%, * t-value > 1.96 a confidence interval of 95%, # deviance from null model to present model is significant at 0.01 exploring differential science performance in korea and south africa: a multilevel analysis mee-ok cho, vanessa scherman & estelle gaigher 31 in the final model of eight class/school-level variables in the korean data, only four variables were statistically significant, as shown in table 2. among 19 class/school variables tested for in the south african data, 11 variables remained statistically significant, as depicted in table 3. an aggregated variable, ‘safety in school’ as reported by learners, was the strongest predictor at the class/school level, while variables concerning school climate, such as ‘percentage of disadvantaged learners’ and ‘severity of low morale’ were also significant. table 3 multilevel analyses of the south african data model null model learner model class/school model fixed effects learner level coefficient(se) coefficient(se) coefficient(se) intercept 245.040(7.223) 92.750(7.032) 135.674(29.915) attitude toward science selfcon 8.162**(0.412) 8.102**(0.411) social context boncnty 43.060**(2.204) 41.934**(2.183) agestu 10.809**(0.739) 10.868**(0.733) time on task extutor –10.638**(0.967) –9.983**(0.963) social context media 6.360**(0.701) 6.453**(0.699) languag 13.319**(1.351) 13.029**(1.323) hompos 2.805**(0.413) 2.809**(0.408) class/school level school climate safschag 49.986**(5.295) disadva –27.896**(4.566) physical resource phyres –3.050**(0.703) teacher background 1stdeg 16.977**(7.322) professional teaching force admindt 3.809*(1.813) teacher background agetch 10.891**(3.171) perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 32 science curriculum textuse –28.560**(10.153) resource clasize –2.878*(1.598) teaching practice sts –2.197*(1.109) professional teaching force supevdt –6.592**(2.718) school climate lomoral –2.165*(1.217) random effects σ2 e 7034.088(122.582) 5609.017(97.749) 5608.399(97.738) σ2 u0 10109.060(1037.217) 4633.674(482.463) 1089.370(126.504) deviance 80118.130 78475.770# 78210.480# note: n=6784 learners in 198 schools, * t-value > 1.96 a confidence interval of 95%, ** t-value > 2.58 a confidence interval of 99%, # deviance from null model to present model is significant at 0.01 with regard to resource variables, ‘physical resource for science’ and ‘number of learners in a class’ turned out to have significant effects. a science curriculum variable, ‘textbook use’, was also statistically significant. among the teacher background variables, ‘completion of the first degree’ and ‘teacher age’ were statistically significant. for school principals, ‘administrative duty’ and ‘supervising or evaluating teachers’ explained learner achievement through statistical significance. south africa has more variables that are significant at the class/school level than korea. particularly, resourceand teacher background-related factors such as ‘physical resource for science lesson’ or ‘completion of first degree’ influenced learner science achievement in south africa. interestingly, only a single variable, ‘percentage of disadvantaged learners’, is significant in both countries in the classroom/school model. for korea, 93% of total variance in science achievement occurred at the learner level, while only 7% was attributed to the classroom/school level, as shown in table 4. for south africa, 41% of the total variance was assigned at the learner level and 59% at the class/school level. in the learner-class/school model, the class/schoollevel variance is estimated at 87%, whereas 31% is estimated on the learner level in korea. for the south african data, 20% of the variance can be attributed to the learner level, while 89% of the variance was attributed to the class/school level. the unexplained variance in both korea and south africa might imply that other variables which are not included but significant do exist, particularly at the learner level. exploring differential science performance in korea and south africa: a multilevel analysis mee-ok cho, vanessa scherman & estelle gaigher 33 ko re a so ut h a fr ic a n ul l m od el le ar ne r m od el cl as s/ sc ho ol m od el n ul l m od el le ar ne r m od el cl as s/ sc ho ol m od el le ar ne r le ve l va ri an ce 0. 93 0( 93 % ) 0. 30 6( 30 .6 % ) 0. 30 6( 30 .6 % ) 0. 41 0( 41 .0 % ) 0. 20 3( 20 .3 % ) 0. 20 3( 20 .3 % ) cl as s/ sc ho ol le ve l v ar ia nc e 0. 07 (7 % ) 0. 73 9( 73 .9 % ) 0. 87 4( 87 .4 % ) 0. 59 0( 59 .0 % ) 0. 54 2( 54 .2 % ) 0. 89 2( 89 .2 % ) a ic 55 19 3. 25 53 34 3. 21 53 30 7. 75 80 12 4. 13 78 49 5. 77 78 25 2. 48 ta bl e 4 ex pl ai ne d pr op or ti on o f v ar ia nc e by c on se cu ti ve m od el s ko re a so ut h a fr ic a n ul l m od el le ar ne r m od el cl as s/ sc ho ol m od el n ul l m od el le ar ne r m od el cl as s/ sc ho ol m od el le ar ne r le ve l va ri an ce 0. 93 0( 93 % ) 0. 30 6( 30 .6 % ) 0. 30 6( 30 .6 % ) 0. 41 0( 41 .0 % ) 0. 20 3( 20 .3 % ) 0. 20 3( 20 .3 % ) cl as s/ sc ho ol le ve l v ar ia nc e 0. 07 (7 % ) 0. 73 9( 73 .9 % ) 0. 87 4( 87 .4 % ) 0. 59 0( 59 .0 % ) 0. 54 2( 54 .2 % ) 0. 89 2( 89 .2 % ) a ic 55 19 3. 25 53 34 3. 21 53 30 7. 75 80 12 4. 13 78 49 5. 77 78 25 2. 48 ta bl e 4 ex pl ai ne d pr op or ti on o f v ar ia nc e by c on se cu ti ve m od el s perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 34 discussion while the learner level contributed more than the class/school level to variance for korea, the opposite held for south africa. this pattern aligns with earlier evidence indicating that the economically developed countries show a pattern of large influence by family ses with smaller school impact, and a reverse pattern in lessdeveloped nations (heyneman & loxley, 1983). some factors were generic in both korea and south africa. firstly, at the learner level, attitudes towards science are the strongest predictors of science achievement between individuals in both countries according to the results of multilevel analyses. this result also confirmed previous findings that were reported in the literature (howie, scherman & venter, 2008; shen & tam, 2008). at the school level, the percentage of disadvantaged learners is important in both countries. the relationship between ses and achievement has been well documented in ser and is likely a stronger predictor at the school level than at learner level (beaton & o’dwyer, 2002). it was reported that the ses of a school influenced teaching practice more than either principal supportiveness or available resources (supovitz & tuner, 2000). therefore, learners attending schools that have more advantaged learners can benefit in that they have more opportunity to learn content because the school offers more content and highly qualified teachers than do ones in disadvantaged areas (ramírez, 2006). on the other hand, each country showed unique patterns. at the learner level, korean data revealed that educational resources in the home influence learner achievement. the results show that the father’s education, school level expected by the learner, and books at home are significant in contributing to the model. with respect to time on task, out-of-school activities are significant in which more time on task is associated with learner achievement. many korean parents force their children to take extra tutoring in private institutes, called hakwon, after school. nonetheless, from a teaching and learning perspective, it is obvious that more time on task increases achievement (šetinc, 1999). at the classroom level in korea, it is argued that teachers’ high expectation towards learners in class could be one of the ways that facilitates and increases learners’ self-concepts (muijs, campbell, kyriakides & robinson, 2005). at the school level, ‘professional development’, and ‘school size’ are specific to korea. high-quality professional development improves teaching and prepares teachers to meet the diverse needs of today’s learners which, in turn, closes achievement gaps (desimone et al., 2002). as it is a single alterable factor that can be manipulated by policymakers, high-quality professional development in science should be provided intensively and steadily, and teachers should be immersed in inquiry-based and subject matter tasks. ‘school size’ remained significant in korea, because this influenced learners’ and parents’ educational zeal. exploring differential science performance in korea and south africa: a multilevel analysis mee-ok cho, vanessa scherman & estelle gaigher 35 in south africa, more significant factors include ‘learner age’, ‘language at home’, ‘home possession’, ‘born-in country’, and ‘media’, while educational factors are important in korea. some researchers document that minority ethnic groups fare worse than majority groups (adigwe, 1997). this phenomenon is understandable, because learners from minority ethnic groups have to learn science knowledge in an instruction language that is different from their mother tongue (rollnick, 2000). such language barriers hold true for south africa, which has 11 official languages and where language was found to be a strong predictor of learner achievement (howie, 2002). the older the learners, the less well they performed in south africa. lower learner age in south africa, however, has a positive relationship with achievement. it might be related to learner ses along with home possessions, which showed a positive relationship with science achievement. learners from educationally and economically poorly resourced homes are likely not to attend school regularly, or go to school later than supposed. as a result, they have less opportunity to learn and have to repeat grades because they have failed to pass the standard demanded by the curriculum (fiske & ladd, 2004). the classroom level has even more significant factors that are more specific to south africa than korea, notably textbook use, teacher age, teacher qualification, ‘sts’-based teaching, physical resource, and class size. textbook use is significant in south africa; however the use of textbooks showed a negative relationship to performance. this was a surprising result because, in terms of opportunity to learn, textbooks can provide content of what should be taught in classrooms (valverde & schmidt, 2000) as well as the methods to be employed. the negative impact might be an indication that teachers use textbooks without reconstructing content for learners to make meanings for themselves. these aforementioned findings can be reconsidered in terms of teacher qualification and age, which is significant in south africa and in agreement with heyneman and loxley (1983), who found that teacher and school quality was more important in developing countries. at the school level, educational leadership, safety in schools and learner morale are good predictors of learner achievements in south africa. educational leadership has been proven to influence learner achievement since it was identified within effective schools in early ser (scheerens & bosker, 1997; tate, 2001). south african results showed that a school performed better when the principal was involved in administrative duty instead of supervising and evaluating teachers. previous findings (reynolds, creemers, stringfield, teddlie & schaffer, 2002) have indicated that, where education systems are more decentralised, less engineered and less ordered, principals’ leadership is more important than in centralised and better organised systems. it was found that south african schools were closer to the former. according to the results of multilevel analysis, ‘safety in school’ is the strongest predictor of science achievement at the class/school level, which explains the high perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 36 variance between schools in south africa. this might indicate south african-specific educational, social contexts and ‘low morale’ as also significant. recommendations from this comparative study, it is recommended that learner-centred teaching practices be developed to address negative attitudes to science at the context level in korea, because it was proved that ‘professional development’ at the class/school level influences learner achievement. the professional development opportunities have to inform pedagogical content knowledge and teachers who are encouraged to change their practice to meet learners’ needs, especially with regard to high achievement and positive attitudes at the context level. on the other hand, basic issues such as improving teachers’ subject knowledge, developing language skills, and fostering a culture of learning should be addressed to improve science performance in south africa. endnotes 1. the proportion of 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scherman & estelle gaigher 39 tate w 2001. science education as a civil right: urban schools and opportunity-tolearn considerations. journal of research in science teaching, 38: 1015-1028. valverde ga & schmidt wh 2000. greater expectations: learning from other nations in the quest for ‘world-class standards’ in us school mathematics and science. journal of curriculum studies, 32: 651-687. wang j 1998. comparative study of learner science achievement between united states and china. journal of research in science teaching, 35: 329-336. i editorial this edition of perspectives in education seeks to add to education discourses by exploring experiences in both school and higher education settings. i was struck by the fact that most of the papers challenged hegemonic systems and how teaching and subsequently, effective learning, can contribute to the development of agency to address pertinent social issues. the paper of wood, de lange and mkumbo on the implications of aids for the re-curriculation of teacher education programmes reflected on teachers’ awareness of the social injustices that fuel the aids pandemic. they pointed out that it is rather lamentable that teachers do not regard themselves as agents of social change, which urges teachers to address the social dilemmas that come with the pandemic. this article sets the scene for the discourse about the role education can play in the improvement of social challenges. along the same line of reasoning around the influence of the social environment, sethusha revealed that teachers’ conceptions of dimensions of teaching, such as assessment, are influenced by the social and cultural context in which they find themselves. the other papers in this edition also contain nuances of justice and transformation in teaching and learning contexts. these papers range from teaching in a church refugee house to emotional intelligence and community engagement. in opening up the debates, it is clear that researchers have moved from a mere content-based teaching and curriculum approach to the inclusion of transformation as core element. transformation implies change in view of improvement and here the paper of muthivhi highlights the fundamental connection between the verbal thinking processes and problem solving abilities of tshivenda-speaking primary school children and how such abilities can be improved if linked to practical activities generally applied in that particular society or culture. additionally the paper of wootton and roets focusses on the relationship between cognitive, emotional and behavioural processes, which have implications for helping learners with attention deficit disorder (add) if their emotional intelligence could be developed. the tansformative angle of the papers in this edition, generated some new thought about justice and it is not surprising that quite a number of the papers deal with marginalised groups. pausigere’s paper on zimbabwean economic migrants and political refugees, dreyer’s focus on learners with learning impairments and msibi’s paper on homophobia and queer theory also enter the social justice debate. the inter-sectionality and multiplicity of the various social identities, addressed in these papers, also bring to the debate issues such as throughput, patterns of behavior, silencing, education for repatriation, learner support and vocational skills. the critically reflective papers of murimo, treptow and mda shifts the education dialogues as they challenge current practices and pedagogies that facilitate learning in order to develop the potential to transform society. similarly, the papers of alexander and preece, take the learning into the community and explore how learning and research at higher education could benefit by engaging in collaborative community partnerships. these papers address the responsibility that higher education institutions have in being socially responsive and the need for dialogue for mutual understanding between all stakeholders. the focus on the agency of the higher education sector in the development of capabilities and graduateness, was particularly framed by the contributions of ivala, kioko, treptow and mda as they addressed student engagement, workplace demands and the potential value of research interns. using qualitative methods, such as ethnography, the twelve papers in this edition embraced the personal narrative as a meaningful way of deconstructing education at both school and tertiary level. these papers clearly set the tone for extensive theorization on the inter-connectedness between curriculum, teaching and learning and society as they advocate the development of agency to provide all learners access to quality education and the opportunity to improve their success. rita niemann 1 research article 2020 38(2): 1-19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) curriculum transformation: a case in south africa abstract despite the worldwide interest in transforming curricula, there have been limited case study examinations of what really happens within an open distance and e-learning (odel) south african university context. by using the psychosocial and social identity theories, we highlight the complexities involved in transforming decades of teaching and learning practices. the reports from five colleges highlighted three key themes, namely curriculum responsiveness, decolonisation and identity issues. from these we developed a framework to help capture some of the complexities, identified implications and charted a new direction for future studies within the south african post-colonial and post-apartheid arena. keywords: odel; curriculum, transformation, social, identity, teaching and learning. 1. introduction whilst the important role that universities play in contributing to developed and developing countries citizens’ educational, socio-political and economic emancipation has been highlighted (freire, 1996) previous studies have noted south africa’s educational development in this area (botha, 2002). the challenges of curriculum transformation are global (west, 2014) but the educational crisis in balancing teaching and learning content and its transformation have received limited attention (mendy, 2018b; spaull, 2013). despite research highlighting the usefulness of curriculum transformation in society, localised higher education (he) settings in which such renewal occurs have mostly gone unnoticed (denson & bowman, 2013). the south african odel education context is one of the key neglected examples. curriculum transformation, referred to as curriculum reform or renewal, includes changes made to teaching and learning content (esakov, 2009; clark, 2002; shay, 2015). the term/concept also refers to the practices and processes that higher education institutions (heis) use as part of their social responsibility, engaging with and responding to concerns and problems such as the need for africanisation (west, 2017). however, the extent to which authors: dr john mendy1 dr maria madiope2 affiliation: 1lincoln international business school, uk 2university of the free state, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38. i2.01 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2020 38(2): 1-19 published: 04 december 2020 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 22020 38(2): 2-19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) curriculum transformation really affects the lives of people in localised contexts and addresses the africanisation problem remains an undeveloped area. although one would like to think that aspects such as teaching and learning (t&l), research and innovation (r&i) and community engagement (ce) and partnership may resolve curriculum transformation-related problems linked to capacity development and identity issues (alderuccio, 2010), there is no available framework in the education transformation literature to show how this can be done in an odel situation in south africa (see figure 1 as an attempt to capture the various aspects). t & l c e r & i figure 1: south african university’s teaching and research plan the implementation of curriculum transformation lies at the heart of figure 1. it involves teaching and learning, research investment and engagement and curriculum emancipation for all stakeholders (watson et al., 2011; jongbloed et al., 2008). some reasons for reforming teaching and learning include addressing the wider challenges faced by the country, the market environment and education stakeholders clamouring for change. such an approach is expected to address a (potential) developmental crisis (mackinnon, 2011; nakabugo & siebörger, 2001) both locally (chisholm & leyendecker, 2008; chisholm, 2005) and internationally (savage & o’connor, 2015). despite the plethora of research on human resources and governance issues that also need to be developed within heis (igwe et al., 2019; ramrathan et al., 2016; phillips et al., 2013), the “communities of transformation” that are being advocated for are not resource proof (kezar et al., 2018) to achieve what is being wished for if such transformation is to have significant value in its reach and scope (lotzsisitka & lupele, 2015; higgs, 2016). by using the theoretical foundation of the psychosocial theory, we examine curriculum reform in the context of south africa to see what africanisation (i.e. a renewed focus on using the curriculum to transform africa (horsthemke, 2004; chikoko, 2016; msila & gumbo, 2016) means in the south african context and how it has been used to extend erikson’s (1963) and karkouti’s (2014) psychosocial identity development theory. by so doing, we contribute to hogg’s (2016), jenkins’s (2014) and burford’s (2012) social identity theory (see literature review for details). to contribute to the literature, a framework is developed to better understand the process of implementing curriculum reform in a local african context. we contribute to a deeper understanding of psychosocial theoretical issues in teaching and learning by showing how infusing african epistemologies and philosophies into programme and qualification mixtures (pqms) helps in demonstrating the creation of a new post-colonial and post-apartheid south african social identity through various transformations in 1) pedagogy; 2) scholarship; 3) epistemologies; 4) student-centredness and 5) monitoring and evaluation practices (see the driver-outcome-based curriculum transformation framework in http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 32020 38(2): 3-19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 mendy & madiope curriculum transformation: a case in south africa figure 2). this socio-education framework is the paper’s main contribution to the contested and fragmented nature of curriculum transformation within the south african environment (luckett, 2016; mendy, 2018a; banks, 2001; msila & gumbo, 2016). 2. literature review this paper’s theoretical foundation is based on curriculum transformation issues, some of which partly include, but are not restricted to, an infusion of culture, customs, practices and languages into curriculum design and implementation (nakabugo & siebörger, 2001). although scholars such as webb (2017), among others, believe that the attempt to deliberately ignore these issues led to the marginalisation and exclusion of african epistemologies and knowledge systems from educational practices and he systems in africa, others opine that such omission should not be misconstrued to imply that western and european epistemologies should not still be incorporated in african epistemologies and curriculum transformation (kayira, 2015). those who subscribe to this inclusivity approach therefore believe that education provision is firmly anchored in the intellectual and cultural environment of the communities in which they are situated (odora-hoppers, 2002; le grange, 2004; maweu, 2011). however, we do not know whether a framework that helps in understanding the complexities and potential ways of resolving them within a localised environment exists. msila and gumbo (2016) postulate that infusion of indigenous african epistemologies into the curriculum will enable educators and learners to gain confidence and a sense of pride in what they do especially in contexts with a colonial past such as south africa’s. however, infusing african epistemologies in curricula does not necessarily highlight the extent to which local citizens show inclusivity nor does it identify a localised transformation. highlighting the benefits of ideas such as ubuntu and communalism (kaphagawani, 2000; moruve 2009) has not totally addressed the challenges associated with africanisation and localised inclusivity nor has it clarified some of the complexities of curriculum transformation. additional recommendations such as humanism (mabovula, 2011), for example, have not fully explained the difficulties faced by curriculum transformation implementers, including how people cooperate (karlberg, 2004) or even whether spirituality (donald et al., 2012) might play a role in developing what is essential: that is, a framework to help practicalise the africanisation and inclusivity recommended. in order to examine what else might help answer the research question and achieve the study’s aim, the authors examine curriculum transformation using erikson’s (1963) psychosocial perspective to ascertain the nature of the curriculum developmental process to achieve change and see whether identity plays a role in this transformation. other aspects related to our main theoretical anchor are also captured using the cognitive-structural and social identity theory from a pedagogic and change perspective (mendy, 2018b). such a theoretical selection has been made based on the need to understand what the local issues are and how these have been addressed to achieve curriculum transformation and africanisation simultaneously. 2.1 psychosocial theory erikson (1963) was the first among a group of successive scholars to develop a psychosocial model highlighting the importance of being able to surmount conflicts, similar to the challenges associated with africanising and localising teaching and learning within curriculum transformation. he introduced a stage approach to personal growth and linked identity development with broader community values and culture, history and way of life (hoare, 1991). psychosocial theory has been extended to focus on personal and interpersonal issues influencing learners’ life (evans et al., 1998). the theory proposed the need for internal http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 42020 38(2): 4-19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) psychological change to occur as individuals respond to conflicts/clashes between external social demands and internal capacity to deal with challenges. some of the external demands associated with curriculum transformation include, for example, the need to decolonise the south african curricula by infusing african methodologies and epistemologies in line with africanisation and inclusion. however, proponents of the theory have been quick to point to a psychological crisis because of change, leading to a positive or negative impact on behaviour, feelings, thinking and interpersonal interactions (chickering & reisser, 1993). similarly, erikson (1963) and evans et al. (1998) view these as vital stages of development and adopt a sequential approach to transformation as a way to understand some of the apparently conflicting issues raised. although they noted wider societal cultural influence in bringing about the changes needed for localisation, they missed students’ development of competence, the way learners manage emotions and changing identities as they navigate curriculum transformation (chickering & reisser, 1993). most proponents of psychosocial development focus on the effects of the support needed on challenges such as transitions, career development changes and interpersonal relationship hurdles (elder, 1995) but neglect local identity issues that cultural interference could evoke. implied in psychosocial theory are aspects of equality and equity in education although these are not explicitly enunciated in the concept. some students have unique personal and societal issues and need institutional as well as personal support to succeed as they deal with identity and psychosocial problems. it has been ascertained from literature that students with disabilities or from certain disadvantaged communities face unique challenges that can be addressed through universal instructional design (chickering & reisser, 1993). the possibility for such students to exhibit lower competence in some areas compared to their colleagues is greater especially when the required support or a strong sense of agency are lacking. however, the identity, psychosocial and competency related issues of students from more advantageous backgrounds and communities are not included in the theorising. therefore, psychosocial theory highlights the importance of inclusion in curriculum transformation implementation but only from a single (i.e. non-complex) perspective. next, we examine cognitive-structural theory. 2.2 cognitive-structural theory cognitive-structural theory focuses on individual reasoning/thinking processes to describe changes experienced at the individual level (evans et al., 1998). according to its proponents, intellectual development is influenced by heredity and environmental factors. in other words, the individual must have some innate capability to deal with challenges including universities’ curriculum transformation. in this respect, this aspect of the concept has sought to develop psychosocial theory’s lack of explicit emphasis on individual competence. evans et al. (evans et al., 1998) identified sequences that individuals go through as they try to (re)organise and (re)shape their environments in their individualised effort to become competent in order to deal with the challenges that africanisation and inclusivity may pose. cognitive-structural theorists suggest that people first endeavour to make sense of the current situations when confronted with new information before developing new strategies for their change and competence development (evans et al., 1998). however, other developments, namely intellectual, epistemological, moral and the ability to reflect (magolda, 1992; kohlberg, 1976) has been the extended focus of other scholars who believe that students’ complexity http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 52020 38(2): 5-19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 mendy & madiope curriculum transformation: a case in south africa of cognitive reasoning influences their learning and ability (i.e. the competence) to change (magolda, 1992). proponents of the theory who lean towards the moral strand ascertain that students make sense of moral dilemmas that may be associated with curriculum transformation in different ways (kohlberg, 1976) thereby highlighting why some students may cheat for grades (evans et al., 2004). although achieving higher grade bands may show a student’s mastery of a new curriculum and their competent development in it, proponents who highlight the importance of a person’s spiritual development such as fowler (1981) underscore why some people within an instructional design or learning environment change might develop a greater sense of self-acceptance rather than self-competence as others. however, researchers leaning towards self-evolution suggest that people develop a sense of self as a result of interacting with others (banks, 2001), thereby explaining how students deal with situational challenges and their broader expectations within fluctuating situations (watson et al., 2011). accordingly, individuals rely heavily on others for their self-worth in the earlier stages of their development rather than on a structured curriculum transformation. cognitive-structural theory proponents point to mechanisms of support needed to embrace change whilst self-actualisation/worth could be dependent on other aspects that have not been captured by cognitive structural theorists. the social aspects related to actualisation are discussed next. 2.3 social identity theory social identity theory reminds us about the broader frame through which people understand their wider social identities (hogg, 2016) via constructs such as gender, culture, race/ethnicity and class and what roles these may play in multiple identities (atkinson et al., 1998; cross & fhagen-smith, 2001; d’augelli, 1994; ferdman & gallegos, 2001). given their variances and contextual dissimilarities, national, geographic and cultural environments have been used to explain why identities may change especially in transformation contexts (jones & mcewen, 2000). however, structural hierarchies (i.e. in terms of privilege and oppression) such as the ones that existed in apartheid south africa are not fully accounted for in explaining identity construction and change within a localised curriculum transformation context. in order to help explain this anomaly, power relationships between and amongst individuals are examined although the shaping of people’s perceptions within their wider socio-political contexts has only been partially explored (nakabugo & siebörger, 2001). proponents of the theory signal multiple identities influenced by socially and individually lived experiences and the way these may be of benefit to change processes (jenkins, 2014). as such social identity theory provides us with insights into wider socio-cultural processes that may influence individual identity development and how transformation may occur (kezar et al., 2018). one such example is atkinson et al.’s (1998) minority identity theory that focuses on how minorities measure their capability against those considered as the majority. again, atkinson et al. (1998) adopt the stage/sequential approach to highlight attitudes needed for identity recognition but the emphasis is on a non-complex, individualised competency development. however, on their own, these theories do not actually indicate what type of framework might resolve curriculum transformation issues within a localised context. 3. methodology in 2018 the university of south africa (or unisa) conducted a curriculum renewal programme with the aim of reshaping students’ learning. the university of south africa is the largest http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 62020 38(2): 6-19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) in the country with the bulk of its students from south africa while a minority of students come from other parts of the world (unisa, 2020). the slightly more than 30% academics come from seven colleges namely law; accounting; education; life, science, engineering and technology; business, economics and management (the largest with over 25% of total student numbers). all staff representing all the institution’s schools, with the exception of the school of business, were involved in the education renewal exercise because the university wanted to obtain as wide a spectrum of viewpoints on curriculum transformation as possible to gauge impacts of reforms (higgs, 2016), internally and externally (niehaus & williams, 2016). the study’s research design is a qualitative case study. this is described in the literature as investigating a real-life or organisational phenomenon (see yin 2003). yin’s (1994) proposal to initially identify a research question before proceeding to propose a research objective has been adhered to in this study (see introduction). such research procedure compliance has also been acknowledged by miles and huberman (1994) as part of a necessary step that can lead to the identification and analysis of appropriate and relevant literature in order to contribute to the issues relating to curriculum transformation. this paper’s research question and objective pointed the authors to the examination of the psychosocial theory to see what it can contribute to a localised curriculum transformation context (mackinnon, 2011; msila & gumbo, 2016). the socio-political aspects of curriculum transformation and south africa’s colonial and apartheid past (nakabugo & siebörger, 2001) warrant the selection of the theoretical and methodological frameworks. such a combination necessitated collecting data of a case study type (i.e. the study’s set of curriculum transformation reports from seven colleges) and identifying the analytical frame best suited. this procedure helped in contextualising the information received iteratively (lewis, 1998) and in meaningfully (husserl, 1965) developing themes following such a case study protocol (eisenhardt & graebner, 2007). a case study affords the opportunity to probe deep into a situation to find out how people experienced (jones & mcewan, 2000) or are experiencing a problem (e.g. a hei confronting the challenges of curriculum transformation (darcy et al., 2014) and the stages for maintaining some identity (erikson, 1963). the justification of the case study is further premised on the desire to investigate the fundamental factors behind the south african university’s quest to break from its past pedagogic orientation to an africanised one (higgs, 2016). to do so we examined seven colleges’ commissioned curriculum reports in april 2019 to understand what the curriculum transformation issues were (mendy, 2018b). the meaning-making process included a process of interpreting the reports obtained from the colleges as part of what schutz (1967) highlighted as fundamentally crucial in case study methodology and finding the subjective meanings of individuals/participants involved (thanh & thanh, 2015). these subjective meanings are the ones that motivate and trigger people’s actions on a wider social issue that has the potential of transformation (freire, 1996) or in higgs’s (2016) words “renaissance”. qualitative data analysis helped in exploring subjective meanings within natural, real-life settings. the aim of adopting a qualitative research approach was to explore the social meanings of individuals and groups on phenomena in situ. qualitative research facilitated the explanation of subjectivities and was therefore appropriate for case studies and secondary sources of data (college reports), where people may have chosen to interpret their immediate realities. in the present study, the reports provided the springboard for our education transformation process and framework contribution within a local context. however, the case study methodology does not allow for generalisations to other contexts. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 72020 38(2): 7-19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 mendy & madiope curriculum transformation: a case in south africa content analysis was used to give readers an impression of what happened at the university. the aim of doing so was to identify the intentions of the respective colleges’ staff members and how the emerging areas signalled actions taken to deal with the challenges. by using the two predominant content analyses of concepts (i.e. how often a concept appears in the reports) and their relation (checking whether there are any relations between the ideas/ concepts) a framework was developed to help understand the curriculum transformation issues. however, concepts outside of the paper’s methodological and theoretical frame could not be used to make sense of the localised data. each type of analysis may lead to different results, conclusions, interpretations and meanings. based on driscoll et al. (2007), qualitative data analysis through content analysis was adopted because of its appropriateness in raising contextual issues within a specific odel case at the university of south africa to see whether a thematic pattern may arise. this is fundamental to this study as previous studies have not done so in the south african context. 3.1 south african context curriculum transformation research is a global issue (watson et al., 2011). most of it has focused on attempts to deal with challenges locally or globally (alderuccio, 2010; webb, 2017). whilst certain he providers have enjoyed some success as a result of the positive steps taken in reconfiguring a nation’s identity through curriculum transformation (pollard et al., 2013; hogg, 2016), a good number still struggle owing to poor management (coleman et al., 2003) and a framework-lag. when changes to pedagogy and teaching and learning content are being executed, it is anticipated that universities and colleges will have identified a process of resolving their wider socio-economic and political challenges irrespective of where they may be located (phillips et al., 2013). research in this area seems to suggest that this can happen in emerging economies (higgs, 2016) with massive constraints on resources although we are yet to be enlightened how this happens locally (hong & lu, 2016). these aspects are of crucial importance, especially in south africa given its political and historical legacy of colonialism, apartheid and the emerging multicultural, developing environment with heavy dependence on services provided by the third sector, including universities and colleges. the findings from universities and colleges in developed countries are not used in this paper as they are not considered advantageous in achieving our study objective (botha, 2002). however, due recognition is given regarding research that looked at attempts to resolve curricula crises more broadly although localisation and inclusivity are generally neglected (spaull, 2013; le grange, 2016). whilst the challenges faced by the respective colleges are highlighted, an attempt is made to note the types of reforms in each of the colleges in the south african odel institution under study in efforts to see the extent to which an africanised curriculum may have led to developing further understanding of africanisation and inclusivity. a framework highlighting the key issues was developed to show what has been contributed to the open distance and e-learning university context (erikson, 1963; karkouti, 2014, west, 2014; hogg, 2016) (see figure 2). although the south african context has unique political, economic, social and cultural needs due to its history to provide justification for curriculum transformation, it still has to deal with fundamental psychosocial, identity and pedagogical issues identical to erikson’s (1963) and freire’s (1996). south african heis have begun to implement curriculum transformation partly because the educational system the country inherited from its colonial legacy has http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 82020 38(2): 8-19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) been thought not to be responsive to the needs of the country and its students’ teaching and learning experiences. additionally, the transformation being yearned for in the south african educational system has, historically speaking, not accommodated or kept pace with changes in technology, the role of the student in the implementation of pedagogies that are aligned with the country’s changes in politics, the type of language, history and student participation to be included as part of the change. although south african academics are developing teaching and learning curricula that contribute to their society, achieving and sustaining a dignified life for all africans is beset with fundamental political and social constraints. such transformation involves decolonising the curriculum (i.e. reforming teaching and learning to address local and current economic and socio-political challenges). 4. data analysis we conducted content analysis of the collected data to ascertain what the themes were, how recurrent they became and what relationships may have emerged (if any). overall, there were three themes derived from the data via an iterative research question-research objective-qualitative case study material analysis process involving three other independent researchers. this was done for data credibility and reliability purpose as advised by guest et al. (2012). in order to conduct the analysis, the researchers looked at the drivers for curriculum transformation, including the various colleges’ renewal of teaching and assessment practices, african epistemologies and philosophies, being student-centred, and monitoring and evaluation strategies in each of the colleges. 4.1 limitations this paper’s limitations include the fact that only one south african hei was part of the study and thus the study findings and analysis are non-generalisable to other heis faced with similar challenges in developed countries for example. the authors examined psychosocial, cognitive and social identity as a theoretical foundation although other education models and theories abound (thomas et al., 2016). their analysis could have led to other vistas into curriculum reform (watson et al., 2011) although the social aspects needed highlighting and exploring given the contextual setting of south africa. 5. findings the paper’s findings are reported here. the case study methodology of the previous section provides the basis for relative analytical depth. the meaning-making entails what the respective colleges did as they responded to the need for curriculum reform in the south african context in the tradition of schutz (1967) and husserl (1965). three themes are reported that highlighted the actions of the colleges in responding to their challenges (see table 1) and the form that the curriculum reforms took (see table 2 below). the initial analysis of the reports revealed the following seven themes, namely, 1) decolonising the curriculum, 2) student support, 3) technology-enhanced teaching and learning, 4) reinventing assessment through alternate assessment systems, 5) excellence in quality assurance, 6) student retention and throughput and 7) student access and accessibility. the themes were narrowed to three, namely 1) curriculum responsiveness, 2) decolonising curriculum content and 3) practical pedagogy, as these encapsulated the nature of the reforms and the overall process for its successful implementation (see thematic categorisations and process involved hereunder). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 92020 38(2): 9-19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 mendy & madiope curriculum transformation: a case in south africa the reforms were initiated to achieve pedagogic renewal and review of respective college programmes. at the same time, academics were tasked with an intensification of research into their teaching and development of novel assessment and feedback mechanisms in such ways that helped boost graduate employability and enhanced the africanisation of the learning content (higgs, 2016). these activities invited greater scrutiny in the form of monitoring and evaluation from the management to ensure relevance of programmes delivered and collaborative partnerships among faculty as well as between academics and their immediate local communities. activities such as supervision and mentoring of academics constituted a new type of internal scholarship development that all colleges were expected to carry out. it could be discerned from these responses/actions that each college was developing a new language that they thought might help communicate their willingness to cooperate with the management whilst signalling individual college responses to the challenges they each faced internally and externally (see table 1 below). table 1: challenges faced by colleges and actions taken during curriculum transformation colleges challenges actions law encourage collaboration & inclusivity offer new undergraduate modules, monitor & evaluate progress accounting make curriculum africa-relevant & boost employability teach employability skills, infuse african content in teaching materials education greater teaching-informed research, encourage peer teaching review teaching and learning practices, assessment and feedback & develop new glossaries economics & management change modules & college operations & facilitate studentled approaches introduce variety of assessment methods, develop new modules and change delivery patterns life, science, engineering & technology adopt a mixed approach & ensure quality programmes review doctorate provision & introduce quality enhanced programmes the themes appeared to highlight a new type of social identity that the university, through its seven colleges, was adopting in line with hogg’s (2016) and west’s (2014) notion of transformative learning via social identity. the reports suggested that the university appeared to adopt a moral anchor in its education provision as part of their new identity development (nakabugo & siebörger, 2001) and in recognition of the need to act for society’s benefit when the latter has been challenged by a complex range of socio-political factors as highlighted by webb et al. (2017) and msila and gumbo (2016). however, the activities and actions to deal with the challenges indicated something more transformative than kezar et al.’s (2018) transformative communities identified earlier. this is the fact that the colleges were using curriculum transformation to communicate how they wished to be viewed by their competitors and the wider society in line with camaioni (2017) and berger and luckmann’s (1966) communicative sociology (the fact that communication entails a sociological process of meaning-giving and meaning-making by respective parties). although the various aspects involved are captured in a three-stage process identical to erikson’s (1963) psychosocial development, it highlighted something more complex, which was that curriculum transformation involved the extent to which the participants wished to be included in pedagogic renewal as part of the social transformation process. additionally, our framework is proposed to show what this may lead to in terms of developing education http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 102020 38(2): 10-19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) content that could address the internal and external challenges faced by the respective colleges effectively (see figure 2). the study’s results and the proposed framework serve as an extension of hogg’s (2016) and karkouti’s (2014) social identity theories by presenting a more complex nature of how seven colleges went about reshaping not only their individual but collective identity as a university via a transformative process of teaching, curriculum redesign and implementation and student, staff and community (re)engagement. the various intentions to do so are communicated via the development of a new, multilingual set of glossaries (see table 2) and the study’s three major themes reported hereunder. 5.1 curriculum responsiveness and digital identity the colleges reported their attempts to ensure curriculum content that is relevant to and equipped the students to succeed in life. the curriculum transformation was primarily responsive to the needs of the contemporary and future community at large and the global changing market the university was increasingly serving. it was reported how increasing demands of global competition from other providers heightened by advancements in digital technologies has pushed the colleges to implement distance learning through the myunisa platform. this involved the use of recent advancements in technologies that each college acknowledged as vital to transform the curriculum. this facilitated the potential to reach a wider audience. utilising cutting-edge technology in the most effective and innovative way was considered essential to the efficient transfer of knowledge in an active and collaborative way although plans to do so were still at an initial stage. the university was in the process of creating a new digital identity of itself and its learners and communicated this initiative through its renewed pedagogy. 5.2 decolonised curriculum content and african identity the analysis of reports also showed that colleges were offering a more decolonised learning content. this meant the removal of education content that had been characterised in the past by language, culture, political views, knowledge and traditions that mirrored a minority’s dominance over the wider south african population. such one-sidedness in the seven colleges’ curricular content and teaching over the decades resulted in the incorrect belief that indigenous culture and an africanised curriculum was inferior. such decolonisation included the africanisation of curricula whereby learning content is considered to have a distinctively african feel to foster an african curriculum identity (i.e. infused with african epistemologies and philosophies whose aim is to advance knowledge systems considered to be indigenous). 5.3 practical pedagogy and employability identity each of the colleges thus far provided diversified educational content in the different disciplines (law, accounting, education, economics, management, life science, engineering and technology). such an approach was geared to meet a practical necessity, which was higher graduate numbers and employability that enhanced meeting external demands from statutory and other agencies. the academic faculty were inspired to design and implement pedagogies that support the achievement of these goals and be seen responding to the pressures. when they did, they were enhancing overall human welfare in the forms of employment growth, income equality and eradication of poverty. they took practical steps to make learning content accessible to all, recruited diverse student groups from a multitude of cultural backgrounds, physical disabilities and levels of access to technology and educational backgrounds. by adopting these measures, the colleges ensured inclusivity in the transformation of the http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 112020 38(2): 11-19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 mendy & madiope curriculum transformation: a case in south africa curriculum as the change would have been seen by the wider communities and external agencies to be cognisant of race, age, gender, faith, sexual orientation, language, culture and disability issues. in the university colleges’ view, developing and transforming curricula should be non-judgemental and non-political. there is another discovery though. the transformation of curricula focused on the development of critical thinking and ethical creative problemsolving skills as these were considered necessary for a new student identity and aligned to resolving the country’s wider socio-economic challenges. the colleges’ programmes needed student-centred methodologies and models that boosted students’ graduate numbers as well as employability and personal development. table 2: findings from the various colleges colleges pedagogy scholarly activities knowledge creation studentcentredness monitoring law renew and/ or review all programmes offer all undergraduate modules applying emerging and established pedagogies development of multilingual glossaries collaborative learning ongoing monitoring and evaluation accounting renew and/ or review cac programmes development of an oer in conjunction with the professional body saica to provide a multilingual glossary to students learning content is africanised teaching in a way that assists students to graduate and become employable. inclusivity ongoing monitoring and evaluation education renewal of methodologies in teaching and assessment academics and support staff to research on their teaching, assessment, tutor involvement, markers, supervisors and mentor involvement in teaching and learning. development of multilingual glossaries a studentcentred approach is followed in the college ensuring the material is suitable, relevant, transformed and that a framework for team approach is followed economics & management renewal of methodologies in teaching and assessment departmental transformation plan in line with new modules. incorporate africanisation into module development a studentcentred approach is followed in the college formative and summative assessments life, science, engineering & technology review of doctoral programmes and module development for blended teaching mode quality assurance in the programmes multilingual glossaries; infusion of african epistemologies not available not available http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 122020 38(2): 12-19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) 6. study contributions figure 2 below has been developed from the previous three-stage process and highlights the multiple identities created as a result of the reforms. the process is further broken down into fundamental causes/drivers and actions to deepen understanding of the various activities undertaken at different levels for pedagogic transformation and incorporated into a new framework. this framework also highlights the nature of the relationships/interactions between key aspects and agents in an education environment that were missed by psychosocial theorists earlier (erikson, 1963; chickering & reisser, 1993; west, 2014). our framework identifies the way a set of policies, stakeholder engagement and changing mind-set interact to lead to faculty and student development in order to holistically deal with the internal and external challenges compared to previous attempts to do so (alderuccio, 2010; chisholm, 2005). as part of the analysis, it appeared that “adapted mindset” (identical to erikson’s [1963] psychosocial theory) and “concise policy framework” were considered by participants as key if transformation and inclusivity were to happen in local practice. identifying a framework and its essential aspects for such operationalisation, where it has been lacking, has been derived from the earlier three-stage thematic categorisation process in the sense-making tradition of yin (2003), schutz (1967) and husserl (1965) respectively. the nature of the changes and the various themes can therefore be summarised as the way the participants instituted a new mindset or a multiplicity of identities to deal with curriculum transformation issues requiring “holistic stakeholder engagement”. although the focal finding of the framework points to “faculty professional development” as the glue, other aspects such as a change in perceptions/thinking, the adoption of appropriate policies, a sensitivity towards context and students’ learning needs are pivotal for successful curriculum transformation (mendy, 2018b). the comprehensive nature of our framework that captured what each college did to successfully achieve education reform has not been attempted in the south african and e-learning context before (see chisholm, 2005; le grange, 2016; webb, 2017). figure 2: the curriculum transformation framework analysis of the framework we have developed a framework and identified its characteristics using the contextualised challenges and actions taken by participants from seven colleges at a south african open and distance e-learning provider. we have identified not only the individual colleges’ respective difficulties but also the activities and communicative strategies used to resolve their local and more collective problems associated with curriculum reform. a socio-educational framework that takes into account the social (stakeholder engagement, new identify, change in thinking, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 132020 38(2): 13-19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 mendy & madiope curriculum transformation: a case in south africa decolonisation) and educational (curriculum reform, professional development, quality enhancement, student support) aspects is proposed to add to the earlier analysis of the psychosocial, political and historical contextualised factors faced by the institution as it tasked its members with achieving a new plan (see figure 1). the results of our three themes should form part of a revised and improved “psychosocial” and “social identity” theory contributing to the works of erikson (1963), pollard et al. (2013), hogg (2016) and nakabugo and siebörger (2001) among others. 7. discussion the importance of curriculum transformation at the university of south africa is precipitated by sectoral and wider demands in society (see ramrathan et al., 2016; watson et al., 2011). the transformations include changes in technology, a practical pedagogy responding to unemployment, student support, the implementation of african pedagogies in line with corresponding changes in the politics of language, history and student participation. these changes are consistent with the student and educator development and identity theories outlined in psychosocial theory (erikson, 1963), sense-making (yin, 2003) and higgs’s renaissance (2016). colleges appear to be africanising their curricula not only via content reform but also through student inclusivity. unisa’s seven colleges under study have taken steps to address students’ race, age, gender, faith, sexual orientation, language, culture and disability in the development of curricula. this is consistent with the study’s main theoretical framework but differences between this study and others abound as follows. although there is empirical and theoretical evidence suggesting that intellectual and other developments (i.e. epistemological development, moral) is influenced by heredity and environmental factors (evans et al., 1998) and that educators should provide opportunities (magolda, 1992; fowler, 1981; gilligan, 1982; kegan, 1994; kohlberg, 1976) for moral (gilligan, 1982; kohlberg, 1976), special needs (evans et al., 2004) and self-development (kegan, 1994) we have shown a process and framework for doing so in practice and within a specific context. it has become important to address curriculum transformation challenges and unisa chose to do so through decolonising teaching and learning content leading to africanisation. however, this concept has also encouraged multiple social, educational, employability and digitisation identities as highlighted in the study’s three-stage process. atkinson et al. (1998) highlighted that social identities are constructed within hierarchies of privilege and oppression although they missed to address the capacity development that nakabugo and siebörger (2001) suggested for curriculum transformation. we have gone further by developing a framework that showed characteristics of localised education transformation suggested by denson and bowman (2013) thereby achieving the africanisation that west (2017) and msila and gumbo (2016) called for. ultimately, the implementation of student-centred education in institutions of higher learning should focus on not only the personal competency development that influences students’ lives (banks, 2001; evans et al., 1998) but also recognising the need to deal with potential psychological crises as a result neglecting everyone’s developmental needs (ramrathan et al., 2016; chickering & reisser, 1993). although it is the university’s civic responsibility to support a student’s career and interactional development needs (elder, 1995; fiske & chiriboga, 1990; sanford, 1966; super, 1990), implications for theory, practice (including management issues) and research abound as follows. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 142020 38(2): 14-19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) 8. implications 8.1 theory the theoretical implications of this paper’s findings highlight that curriculum transformation is central to addressing the social and educational challenges faced by a developing country such as south africa. transforming the curriculum is also part of how best to design and implement a change management programme and research in the transformative way yearned for by kezar et al. (2018). in recognition of this fundamental basis, the paper has borrowed and analysed erikson’s (1963) psychosocial theory not only to underscore its relevance in curriculum transformation, but also its cross pollination with evans et al.’s (1998) cognitive structural and hogg’s (2016) social identity theory. such a framework has implications on how we conceptualise education and change management reforms by highlighting the value in treating the social-related aspects (i.e. of all people) with dignity. appropriate human resource policies should be adopted to produce the right type of communication, glossaries and actions for effective curriculum redesign and implementation. herein lies the type of practical as well as theoretical revival that higgs (2016), msila and gumbo (2016) and colleagues earlier yearned for in order to address ramrathan et al.’s (2016) wider socio-political concerns within curriculum transformation. 8.2 practice practically, the findings suggest that managers and others in supervision or monitoring roles should be aware of the process(es) of adopting reformed curriculum delivery and the different identities they begin to manage. the use of e-learning technology should be done in an inclusive and innovative way to address local and global challenges simultaneously. the participants have shown what types of practical actions are required to achieve the renewal they have been tasked to accomplish. as such education stakeholders should be cognisant of the benefits of the framework proposed here and the need to respect emerging identities (individual and collective) even if these do not comply with managers, supervisors and mentors’ aspirations and demands. human resource management professionals should develop a suite of developmental programmes, in the short and longer term, to use the framework to identify potential problem areas in curriculum delivery and in the development of people for social and curriculum good. emerging management activities, actions, policies and procedures should include local cultural issues in (re)shaping management practice and wisdom as this paper’s notion of africanisation has shown. 8.3 research the proposition of an education framework that combines a range of psychosocial, cognitive and multiple social identity aspects is a significant research development in curriculum reform as previous studies have narrowed their focus on either barriers, race issues (esakov, 2009), decolonisation (le grange, 2016) or african renaissance of teaching and learning (higgs, 2016) – (see literature section). we have not only examined these issues but shown how they can be used in a thematic categorisation process leading to a practical framework for implementation. the latter can help academics and practitioners alike to be aware and understand the fundamental combination of factors/challenges that can bring about curriculum transformation failure and how best to use available human and technological capacity to avoid the capacity development problems that alderuccio (2010) or the social identity crisis that burford (2012) highlighted in previous studies. current and emerging research should http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 152020 38(2): 15-19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 mendy & madiope curriculum transformation: a case in south africa examine the drivers, challenges and potential outcomes in order to better comprehend the practicalities of rejuvenating pedagogic programmes and their psychosocial ramifications. 9. conclusion this paper has used college reports to analyse the implementation of curriculum transformation not only in one but in the university of south africa’s seven colleges. it was noted that the implementation, which was driver-outcomes-based, needed to engage all faculty members in order to be successful. this helped in creating a new way of thinking and a new multi-layered psychosocial identity similar to erikson’s (1963). a new framework that highlights curriculum responsiveness, decolonising curriculum content and practical pedagogy has drawn focus on the scholarly activities undertaken by colleges within myunisa. our framework has highlighted the structural and socio-cultural transformations needed (e.g. fine-tuning programme content, decolonising teaching methodologies in line with the emerging political and economic realities and supporting students’ development in order to alleviate wider unemployment in society). this paper’s research question has been answered and its objective of developing an education framework has been achieved within a challenging and challenged south african he institution context. the authors have done this by identifying an hei pedagogy that needed to reform its curriculum to meet the socio-political and economic challenges of an emerging country’s economy such as south africa’s. the treatment of the topic by previous studies such as those of ramrathan et al. (2016), west (2017) and msila and gumbo (2016) missed highlighting a contextualised framework that could help address the wider socio-political, africanisation and inclusivity issues linked to curriculum reform. the report data was used to highlight three key themes that erikson’s (1963) psychosocial, burford’s (2012) social identity and evans et al.’s (1998) cognitive structural theory missed before. the concept of africanisation introduced by msila and gumbo (2016) and west (2017) has helped not only to highlight the transition into more african-based epistemologies but to identify the new identities (individual and collective), whilst creating room for the adoption of a new language and new technology needed to do so. these did not feature in the previous studies examined here. a socio-education framework has highlighted what is fundamentally needed to implement curriculum transformation and to do so successfully and contextually, aspects missed previously by le grange (2016), banks (2001) and shay (2015). the three-stage process involving 1) curriculum responsiveness, 2) decolonising curriculum content and 3) practical pedagogy features a multi-layered set of pedagogic, political and socio-cultural identities that erikson (1963) and hogg (2016) missed in holistically targeting aspects for individual and collective development. future research should examine the skills’ mix needed in the new framework. these will include how to make effective and efficient use of new technologies and platforms in the new curriculum dispensation and dissemination programmes. on a more strategic level, our hei should also be thinking of how their initial localised/contextualised reforms are positioned within wider, global platforms of reform to gauge the extent to which the initial gains can be sustained in a transformational way in the longer term amidst growing local and global competition (watson et al., 2011). new research should also examine how curriculum reform is perceived as an opportunity for bridging the socio-economic inequalities worldwide and how localised changes within a university may help in reshaping global futures and mindsets. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 162020 38(2): 16-19 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v38.i2.01 perspectives in education 2020: 38(2) references alderuccio, m.c. 2010. an investigation of global/local dynamics of curriculum transformation in sub-saharan africa with special reference to the republic of mozambique. compare, 40(6): 727–739. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2010.523228. atkinson, d.r., morten, g. & sue, d.w. 1998. counselling american minorities: a crosscultural perspective, 5th ed. dubuque, ia: mcgraw hill. banks, j.a. 2001. approaches to multicultural curriculum reform. multicultural education: issues and perspectives, 4: 225–246. botha, r.j. 2002. outcomes-based education and educational reform in south africa. international journal of leadership in education, 5(4): 361–371. https://doi. org/10.1080/13603120110118831. burford, b. 2012. group processes in medical education: learning from social identity theory. medical education, 46(2): 143–152. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2923.2011.04099.x. camaioni, l. 2017. the development of intentional communication: a re-analysis. in j. nadal & l. camaioni (eds). new perspectives in early communicative development, (pp. 82–96). london: routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315111322-6. chickering, a.w. & reisser, l. 1993. education and identity, 2nd ed. san francisco: jossey-bass. chikoko, v. 2016. issues in africanising higher education curricula. v. msila & m.t. gumbo (eds.). africanising the curriculum: indigenous perspectives and theories, (pp.71–82). stellenbosch: sun press. chisholm, l. 2005. the making of south africa’s national curriculum statement. journal of curriculum studies, 37(2): 193–208. https://doi.org/10.1080/0022027042000236163. chisholm, l. & leyendecker, r. 2008. curriculum reform in post-1990s sub-saharan africa. international journal of educational development, 28(2): 195–205. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. ijedudev.2007.04.003. clark, c. 2002. effective multicultural curriculum transformation across disciplines. multicultural perspectives, 4(3): 37–46. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327892mcp0403_7. coleman, m., graham-jolly, m. & middlewood, d. 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extended curriculum programme; pal; ecp; academic performance; assessment. 1. introduction and background in south africa, many universities have designed and implemented some form of foundational provision programmes to accommodate racially divided and previously educationally disadvantaged students (boughey, 2005; department of education [doe], 2001). to respond to this need (boughey, 2005), the faculty of health and environmental sciences (fhes) at the central university of technology (cut) in bloemfontein, south africa, also implemented such extended curriculum programmes. author: mr rֶóan slabbert1 dr jeanette du plessis1 affiliation: 1central university of technology, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i2.8 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(2): 95-112 published: 11 june 2021 received: 10 september 2020 accepted: 30 october 2020 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2046-8466 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 962021 39(2): 96-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) through this programme, students could be equipped in advance to avoid under-preparedness (slabbert & friedrich-nel, 2015) for a course they would otherwise not have been able to access. the main reason students were denied access was due to non-adherence to admission requirements for a specific qualification. in the south african context, some students interested in attaining a higher education (he) qualification lack the necessary knowledge, skills, values and attitudes to meet the minimum requirements for access to a higher education institution (slabbert & friedrich-nel, 2015). in addition, poor science education offered during the basic education phase leads to many fallacies and academic misconceptions by school leavers and instil a degree of underpreparedness in some prospective students (scott, 2009). the latter can be caused by many factors, such as institutional, human resource and financial challenges. the development of the foundation provision concept intended to redress accessibility of disadvantaged students who, due to inadequate access to quality education, might be at risk of not successfully completing their tertiary studies (doe, 2006; mabila et al., 2006). various structural modifications to the foundation provision in the fhes at cut were implemented since the first introduction as the context advancement programme (cap) in 2004. this early form of foundation provision was converted to foundation programmes in 2006 and then to extended curriculum programmes (ecp) in 2007. these modifications were informed by a request from the former department of education to formally structure foundation provision within ministerial approved qualifications (doe, 2006; slabbert & friedrich-nel, 2015). following a process of reflection on teaching philosophies, support structures, assessment models and teaching and learning activities in the ecp programme at cut since first implementation, various remedial actions and academic interventions were developed and implemented. these interventions were aimed at improving the success rate of academic under-prepared students and to scaffold their learning to reach desired outcomes successfully; thus, focusing on provision of epistemological access and student academic development as the cornerstones of these initiatives (boughey, 2005, 2010; slabbert & friedrich-nel, 2015). this paper reports on one such intervention, namely peer-assisted learning (pal) by comparing preand post-intervention academic results of the 2017 ecp student cohort. this was done in order to establish if pal could be a valuable interventional strategy to address the under-preparedness of many students, improve academic progress, assist students to succeed in their studies and quality-assure pal intervention. 2. peer-assisted learning in context historic philosophers such as plato, aristotle and socrates were the first to employ the concept of pal through questioning each other’s ideas and statements (herrmann-werner et al., 2017; walberg, 1998). development of the concept of pal has ever since been an ongoing process and found its way into the curricula of many so-called “high risk” academic programmes, such as health sciences programmes (dawson et al., 2014; meertens, 2016). a comprehensive definition for pal was formulated by capstick (2004) who collated the wider facets of this concept into the following: pal is portrayed (when it works) as an open, informal, cooperative environment, in which students are able to set the agenda and raise their concerns, which is overseen by a trusted and approachable individual, and is of value in adjusting to university, understanding course material, enhancing the ability to do well in assessed work and building confidence (capstick, 2004: 48). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 972021 39(2): 97-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 slabbert & du plessis quality assurance of peer-assisted learning a survey conducted in 2010 revealed that 25% of medical schools in the united states (us) have implemented pal into their curricula to support students towards successful completion of their studies (soriano, blatt & coplit, 2010). to shed light on the concept of pal, topping and ehly (2001) indicated that pal consists of various delivery methods, which include peertutoring, -modelling, -education, -counselling, -monitoring and -assessment. however, as emphasised by hermann-werner et al. (2017), irrespective of the mode of delivery, pal is not intended to replace conventional teaching and learning, but should rather be designed as supplementary assistance focusing on improving the academic performance of students. pal refers to the informing processes employed to improve academic performance, whereas peer-tutoring, -mentoring and -learning refer to the specific procedures used for and aimed at the development of learning processes (lincoln & mcallister, 1993). two basic forms of pal are applied, namely “same-year/level pal” and “cross-year/level pal”. same-year/ level pal implies that the tutors and tutees are in the same academic year or level and this type of learning focuses on mutual teaching and training (blohm et al., 2015; weyrich et al., 2008). some researchers also classify this type of learning as peer-assisted learning schemes (pals) (meertens, 2016). according to tai et al. (2016), pals are implemented through informal, yet structured additional tutorials and practicals or study sessions that are less complicated to arrange, since the tutor and tutee share the same class timetable. on the other hand, for cross-year/level pal more experienced (senior) students are requested to assist more junior students. this type of pal primarily consists of discussions on broader academic topics such as study methods and non-academic issues such as language barriers, cultural differences, socioeconomic difficulties and adapting to university life (blohm et al., 2015; weyrich et al., 2008). the problem identified prior to departure on this enquiry was the absence of a structured pal strategy in an undergraduate health sciences programme. this shortcoming had a negative influence on students’ academic performance and the development of skills and competencies towards successful completion of their studies. to address this problem, the researchers implemented, as part of an action research project, informal, yet structured sameyear/level pal activities in the 2017 ecp student cohort in the fhes at cut, and analysed the preand post-intervention results. the question set to guide the activities in the investigation was: “what is the effect of a structured pal intervention on the academic performance of ecp students, and will this intervention assist the under-prepared student to be academically successful and thus improve articulation into the consecutive mainstream programmes in the fhes?” 3. methods 3.1 study design the study design was based on the principles of action research. action research in the educational environment is beneficial since it can combine the use of different research designs, such as descriptive and exploratory designs. an action research design was adopted for this investigation because it aims to address a particular challenge and allows for the proposal of guidelines for improvement of practice (denscombe, 2010). the mode of enquiry to accumulate the data for the phase of the study reported in this article was quantitative to facilitate objective measurements and statistical analysis of the data. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 982021 39(2): 98-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) 3.2 research process all registered students from four ecp programmes in the fhes were included in the study. these programmes were the bachelor of radiography in diagnostics, national diploma in environmental health, national diploma in clinical technology and diploma in biomedical technology, which accounted for a total of 41 registered students. from the total of 41 registered ecp students, 10 academically strong students were identified to act as tutors during the second semester. these students were purposively sampled according to the marks (ranging between 70% and 80%) that they had obtained in the first semester’s assessments for physiology, which is a year module. the physiology module was selected because ecp students from all the aforementioned learning programmes in the faculty were enrolled for this module. the remaining participants (n=31) were randomly placed in groups of four to five students, including the selected tutor for each group. since pal is an academic intervention strategy, no control groups were included to adhere to the inclusivity rules of the fhes. however, to have some degree of control during the analysis of the results, all variables such as pre-class reading/activities, interactive facilitation of learning units, formal feedback, reflection sessions and the assessment method were kept the same to allow for comparison of the pre-intervention and post-intervention results. similar to semester one (pre-intervention) and according to normal practice in the programme, formal feedback sessions took place after each of the four scheduled assessment activities in semester two. all 41 students attended these feedback sessions. after each formal feedback session, class time was scheduled for a structured pal intervention activity (four pal activities in total). the activities were designed by the researcher (also the facilitator of the physiology module) to address problem areas identified during the grading of the individual assessments conducted in semester two. before each pal activity, a structured information session was held with the tutors. during these sessions, which varied between 40 and 60 minutes, the facilitator of the module guided the tutors on the problem areas identified, which mostly included comprehension of difficult course content, the lack of skills to link the assessment question with the learning outcomes and assessment criteria, and/or understanding some basic scientific principles, such as conversion of units during calculations. these problem areas intended to be addressed by a specific pal activity were highlighted. the tutors were requested to complete the pal activity with their tutees, paying specific attention to these areas. during the sessions scheduled for the pal activities, the facilitator was present and listened actively, while roaming the venue, checking whether information/ content was correctly conveyed to the tutees and intervened when required to guide or when requested by one of the tutors. 3.3 data capturing and analysis all results (preand post-intervention) analysed in this study were verified in accordance with the cut assessment policy. after each assessment, formal feedback was given to the students (study population) and then marks were captured on an excel spreadsheet before being transferred to the official database for verification by the moderator, head of department (hod) and the student cohort. preand post-intervention results included in this study comprised the same amount of assessment events and the same weighting towards the final assessment mark. analysis of the respective results was done by means of statistical analysis software (sas) version 9.2 (sas institute inc.; cary, nc). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 992021 39(2): 99-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 slabbert & du plessis quality assurance of peer-assisted learning descriptive statistics (frequencies and percentages) were calculated for categorical data and numerical data were analysed according to means and standard deviations. the differences in preand post-intervention results with its respective mean differences were reported for tutors, tutees and the total group. furthermore, 95% confidence intervals (ci) were calculated for the mean differences for tutors, tutees and the total group. the dependent t-test was used to investigate the significance of the mean differences with a significance level (α) of 0.05. 3.4 ethical considerations the research formed part of a bigger action research project on pal (ufs-hsd 2018/0628/2808) in the fhes that was approved by the health sciences research ethics committee (hsrec) at the university of the free state (ufs). permission to conduct the study was granted by cut and the fhes. informed consent was obtained from the participating students and confidentiality of personal information was confirmed. participation was voluntary and students were informed that they may withdraw from the study without consequences. 4. results and discussion all 41 students participated in all the assessments in both preand post-intervention phases of the study. the difference in percentage between preand post-intervention results for each individual participant is displayed in figure 1. the figure illustrates the average percentage change in results obtained during the preand post-intervention assessments for the whole study population. twenty-eight students (68.3%) achieved an increase in their average assessment results, 12 students (29.3%) experienced a decrease in their average results and one student (2.4%) showed no change from preto post-intervention. the range noted in the average change of results when the whole study population’s preand post-intervention results were compared, was between an increase of 40% and a decrease of 24.5% (figure 1). an average increase was calculated at 13.1% for those students who yielded higher postintervention results and an average decrease of 10.8% was noted in the student group who experienced a decrease. when taking the whole study population (n=41) into consideration, the observed mean difference between the preand post-intervention results was 6.1% (cl [1.68%, 10.49%] and standard deviation [sd] 13.94), as shown in table 1. these changes reflected a statistically significant difference with t (40) = 2.67 and p=0.0079. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 1002021 39(2): 100-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) figure 1: differences between preand post-intervention results for the 2017 ecp cohort (n=41) the effect of pal on student performance has been reported with most studies focusing on three major outcome areas that include (i) how effective pal is on tutor performance; (ii) how effective pal is on tutee performance and (iii) whether students subjected to pal perform comparable to those subjected to normal faculty teaching and learning (batchelder et al., 2010; herrmann-werner et al., 2017; hughes, jiwaji et al., 2010). the results from these studies also yielded mixed outcomes, similar to the current study’s results. with 29.3% of the current study population yielding lower post-intervention results and 2.4% showing no impact of pal on assessment outcomes, these findings were consistent with studies by batchelder et al. (2010) and hughes et al. (2010), who reported no impact of pal on student performance. however, most of our study’s population (68.3%) did benefit from this intervention, which corresponded with results of studies on pal in medical curricula reporting an increase in student academic performance in objective simulated clinical evaluations (osces) (burke et al., 2007; jünger et al., 2005; weyrich et al., 2009) and increased clinical skills or knowledge in gastroenterology and haematology of students who participated in pal activities (knobe et al., 2010; peets et al., 2009). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 1012021 39(2): 101-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 slabbert & du plessis quality assurance of peer-assisted learning table 1. change in average results for preand post-pal intervention for all 10 student groups. group number change in average results for preand post-pal intervention (%) tutor results (%) combined group results (tutors & tutees) (%) preintervention postintervention difference preintervention postintervention difference 1 68.5 78.5 10.0 61.125 66.5 5.375 2 73.0 73.0 0 62.5 65.25 2.875 3 68.5 56.5 12.0 55.25 52.37 –2.875 4 80.5 92.5 12.0 55.5 65.5 10.0 5 74.5 86.5 12.0 57.125 72.25 15.125 6 79.5 80.0 0.5 51.5 60.125 8.625 7 69.5 80.5 11.0 60.0 68.0 8.0 8 69.0 71.0 2.0 59.25 61.25 2.0 9 65.5 75.0 9.5 50.75 51.0 0.25 10 66.5 77.0 10.5 53.6 64.1 10.5 avg 71.5 77.0 5.6 56.6 62. 7 6.1 sd 5.22 9.63 7.86 12.60 15.47 13.94 avg = average; sd = standard deviation. 4.1 effectiveness of pal for tutees the differences noted between the preand post-intervention results for all the tutors and their respective average group results are captured in table 1. this table provides a holistic view on how each pal group’s tutor and their combined average tutees’ academic performance was influenced by this intervention. preand post-intervention average assessment results for the 10 different pal groups’ individual group members are illustrated in figures 2–11. nine pal groups (90.0%) delivered an increased combined average result after the implementation of this intervention, while one group (10.0%) showed a decrease in post-intervention results. on average, a 6.1% difference between preand post-intervention results for the whole population (all groups) was noted, with the highest group increase recorded as 15.1% and the biggest group decrease as -2.9% (table 1). eight tutors (80.0%) experienced a positive effect on their own academic progress by scoring higher post-interventional results, one tutor (10.0%) delivered no change and another tutor (10.0%) experienced a decrease in post-intervention results. the average difference noted between preand post-intervention results for all tutors was an increase of 5.6%, with the highest increase for two tutors at 12.0% and the biggest decrease for one tutor recorded at -12% (table 1). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 1022021 39(2): 102-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) figure 2: preand post-intervention results for pal group 1 figure 3: preand post-intervention results for pal group 2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 1032021 39(2): 103-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 slabbert & du plessis quality assurance of peer-assisted learning figure 4: preand post-intervention results for pal group 3 figure 5: preand post-intervention results for pal group 4 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 1042021 39(2): 104-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) figure 6: preand post-intervention results for pal group 5 figure 7: preand post-intervention results for pal group 6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 1052021 39(2): 105-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 slabbert & du plessis quality assurance of peer-assisted learning figure 8: preand post-intervention results for pal group 7 figure 9: preand post-intervention results for pal group 8 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 1062021 39(2): 106-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) figure 10: preand post-intervention results for pal group 9 figure 11: preand post-intervention results for pal group 10 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 1072021 39(2): 107-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 slabbert & du plessis quality assurance of peer-assisted learning figure 12: preand post-intervention results for group of tutors literature on academic benefits of pal for tutees are contradicting. a scoping review by williams and reddy (2016) reported on randomised studies recording significantly higher academic performance in assessment of pal tutees. the authors also recorded no difference or in some cases a reduced academic performance for the tutees (williams & reddy, 2016). these contradicting outcomes were not noted in the current study since a statistically significant difference was calculated between the preand post-intervention results for the tutees. the calculated mean difference between the preand post-intervention results for this group was 6.3% cl [0.59, 11.96], showing a statistically significant difference with t (30) = 2.25 and p=0.0318. the majority of the 2017 ecp student cohort were tutees (n=31; 75.6%) who benefited academically from this intervention. it could be argued that tutors had a better understanding of the various learning difficulties experienced by the tutees and that tutors might have been in a better position to assess tutees’ existing knowledge than faculty staff (kassab et al., 2005). assessing existing knowledge and then modifying it is paramount for learning to take place. therefore, the close difference between the knowledge networks of tutors and tutees could have increased the potential for identifying and ultimately resolving academic challenges – as postulated by the theory of “cognitive congruence”, which entails harmony and internal consistency arising from compatibility among students’ attitudes, behaviour, beliefs and/or knowledge (bulte et al., 2007; cornwall, 1979; lockspeiser et al., 2008; ten cate & durning, 2007). furthermore, for learning to take place, a certain difference in cognitive “space” between existing and new knowledge is required, as underpinned by vygotsky’s “zone of proximal development”, which points to the difference between what a learner can do without help and what s/he cannot do without assistance (vygotsky, 1978). this space was probably better sensed by the same-year/level tutors (smaller difference in cognitive space) in the current study than by the lecturer where the cognitive space is assumed to be bigger, given the noted increase in tutee post-intervention results (topping, 2005). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 1082021 39(2): 108-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 perspectives in education 2021: 39(2) participating in pal activities have the added advantage for tutees to express learning challenges in their own mother tongue, which is not always possible in the interaction between student and lecturer. the atmosphere during same year/level pal activities is also less tense, “mistake forgiving” and cooperative in nature and facilitates cognitive closeness between tutors and tutees. this in turn provides group members with a better stance of communicating at a familiar cognitive level (bulte et al., 2007). since the academic module included in this study (physiology) requires critical thinking and some level of clinical reasoning from students, pal activities might have facilitated deeper learning processes in the tutors and tutees, such as mutual problem solving, reasoning skills and brain-storming. this deep learning could also have been an explanation for the overall positive increase noted in the study population’s post-intervention results (lincoln & mcallister, 1993). 4.2 effectiveness of pal for tutors the difference between the pre(m=71.5, sd=5.22) and post-intervention (m=77.0, sd=9.63) mean results for the tutor group was also investigated, as shown in figure 12. the observed difference between means was 5.6% ci [-0.12, 11.12], although this difference was not statically significant, with t (9) = 2.21 and p=0.0541. although a non-significant difference was recorded with a p-value slightly higher than 0.05, the majority of tutors (80.0%) did generate an increase in their post-intervention results, confirming the pal intervention to be a strategy that can increase academic progress. however, one of the tutors obtained an average of 12% less during the post-intervention assessments. pursuing the possible personal reasons for this relapse in academic performance was beyond the scope of the study. coincidentally, this tutor’s group was also the only group that did not show an increase in their combined average post-intervention results. according to the literature, optimal tutor-tutee pairing should ideally shuffle regularly to encourage learning from various students in the classroom setup and taking up the responsibility of a tutor should also take turns (kassab et al., 2005). this suggested pairing, however, was not applied in this study, which might have caused non-optimal group dynamics in this particular group. positive outcomes of tutoring on various learning aspects, such as higher assessment results after acting as a tutor and better communication skills development, were also noted by knobe et al. (2010), solomon and crowe (2001), and dandavino, snell and wiseman (2007). it could therefore be argued that acting as a tutor entails a substantial amount of verbalisation (during preparation and actual pal activity), which supplies the tutor with an alternative approach to the module discourse and mastering of the content. pre-determined learning goals established by the tutor for his/her tutees during the structured pre-pal sessions with the facilitator, also enable tutors to make learning more meaningful (schmidt, 1989; ten cate & durning, 2007). these recorded academic benefits of tutoring can be substantiated by paradigms (such as the self-determination theory and cognitive dissonance), which explain that acting as an expert in a certain field, allows tutors to feel like real experts (festinger, riecken & schachter, 1956; ryan & deci, 2000). the higher post-intervention results of tutor assessments noted in the current study could be explained by acknowledging the possible effect that “teaching your peer”’ and “assessment” have in common – it drives learning (ten cate & durning, 2007). the famous french moralist, joseph joubert said: “to teach is to learn twice” (snell, 2011). tutors attended a structured session with the facilitator before every pal activity, which, in addition to the more time spent on preparing for the actual activity, enabled them to retain more knowledge on the module http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 1092021 39(2): 109-112 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 slabbert & du plessis quality assurance of peer-assisted learning content than the tutees (peets et al., 2009). some researchers have been of the opinion that the preparation done by tutors supply better knowledge-gaining skills as comprehension of teaching others and the underlying principles of teaching become clear (tang, hernandez & adams, 2004). this in turn makes tutors in some cases better learners themselves, as teaching peers seems to nurture internal motivation to study course material with more determination than to simply attend the same informative classes (bulte et al., 2007; dandavino et al., 2007; ryan & deci, 2000), which was also evident from this study’s results. during the actual tutor-tutee contact and the structural pre-pal sessions, the researcher noted that tutors exhibited more self-confidence as the sessions continued throughout the second semester. tutors also became increasingly more comfortable posing questions to the facilitator and acknowledging their own academic shortcomings as the intervention progressed. this phenomenon has also been noted by hudson and tonkin (2008). 5. conclusion we reported on the quantitative impact of a same year/level structured pal intervention on the academic performance of students in an ecp undergraduate health sciences programme. findings from the study highlighted several academic and developmental advantages for the majority of the tutees and tutors, although not all participants benefited from the intervention. it was also evident from the results that the use of an informal, yet structured same-year/level pal intervention in the classroom can assist the under-prepared ecp student to be academically successful, and thus improve articulation into the consecutive mainstream programmes in the fhes. important to note, however, is that although pal was found to be an effective academic intervention fostering remedial action to address educationally disadvantaged students’ academic success, it should not be considered as a replacement for conventional teaching, irrespective of previously documented economic advantages (capstick, 2004). although the scope of this paper was focused on the quantitative effect of pal on academic performance, additional research is warranted on the qualitative aspects such as students’ experience of the intervention and their self-reported perception regarding its impact on their academic performance, motivation and understanding of subject content. future research should also focus on optimising the ultimate student support offered by pal interventions by exploring the links between academic success and different student learning styles, selfesteem and pal group dynamics. 6. acknowledgements the authors gratefully acknowledge the students for their participation in the project; the tutors for being willing to assist during pal sessions and dr daleen struwig, medical writer/editor, for technical and editorial preparation of the article. 7. declaration of interest the authors do not have any conflict of interests to declare. references batchelder, a.j., rodrigues, c.m., lin, l.y., hickey, p.m., johnson, c. & elias, j.e. 2010. the role of students as teachers: four years’ experience of a large-scale, peer-led programme. medical teacher, 32(7): 547–551. http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/0142159x.2010.490861. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i2.8 http://dx.doi.org/10.3109/0142159x.2010.490861 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http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s15328015tlm1601_12 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01421590701606799 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01421590701606799 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410500345172 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01443410500345172 http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s1532768xjepc1202_03 http://dx.doi.org/10.1207/s1532768xjepc1202_03 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/ 1472-6920-8-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/ 1472-6920-8-18 http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2923.2008.03252.x http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2016.03.024 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2016.03.024 782022 40(3): 78-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 sustainable development of a researcher’s career trajectory abstract the ongoing covid-19 pandemic has taught everyone that longterm planning and execution, which have always been taken for granted, are not a given. in many contexts, stagnation was the initial outcome of hard lockdowns. as international travel ground to a halt, the lack of mobility seriously hampered scholarly personal interaction as an essential part of the career development of especially early-career researchers. while the focus of this paper is not on the current or future effects of the pandemic, the temporary inaction associated with covid might be seen as a wake-up call for an active, rigorous effort towards sustainable development. education faculties and their research entities have a duty towards both earlycareer and established researchers to develop strategies through which a steady development path can be maintained despite local, national and international disruptions. the notion of sustainable development of researchers’ career trajectories implies a long-term approach to incessant growth, expansion and skills improvement, leading to maintained and increased productivity as well as higherquality research outputs. this paper explores strategies that may be followed by authorities and individuals that focus on a positive career trajectory for both early-career and established researchers. the question to be answered is how continuous development can be facilitated. the answers lie, inter alia, in stimulating a lifelong interest in research during pre-graduate and doctoral students’ introduction to research theory and practice, constantly building capacity through increased research skills levels. mentorship offered by established researchers can also be seen as part of their own prolonged development. in addition, of equal importance is the development of the ability among individual researchers and project groups to take responsibility for their own career trajectory. keywords: sustainable development, career trajectory, earlycareer researcher, capacity building, research productivity 1. introduction and background anything said about a researcher’s career trajectory should be considered against the background of a transformed and ever-changing research environment. the industrial economy of the previous century has subsided to make way for a “global, digital, knowledge economy” (levine & van pelt, 2021: par. 1). in order to serve such an economy, higher education has metamorphosed since the 20th century, with specific implications for the modern-day researcher: new rules for the game have emerged, and a new game author: prof jp rossouw1 affiliation: 1north-west university, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i3.6 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(3): 78-94 published: 30 september 2022 received: 04 march 2022 accepted: 14 june 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 792022 40(3): 79-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 rossouw sustainable development of a researcher’s career trajectory plan is required. the principle followed by the uk concordat is that researchers should be empowered to be “adaptable and flexible in an increasingly diverse, mobile, global research environment” (vitae, 2022: par. 3). the current global economy already showed significant development at the turn of the millennium (conlon, 2004: 779). of special importance is the significant influence this economy has on workplace and career choices. this author points at the fact that early research on career development entailed amongst others personal characteristics, career decisions and assessment tools, and adds that these theories may no longer be of much value, given the current “emerging economic competitiveness in a global economy”. the above-mentioned changes in the global economy happened gradually over a number of decades, offering everyone time to adapt according to new needs and priorities that emerged. in most cases, strategies dependent upon long-term planning could be executed with good effect. the current and ongoing covid-19 pandemic has taught everyone that such long-term planning and execution, which have always been taken for granted, are not a given. sureties of a previous year can be taken away instantly, and during a pandemic of such severity, every human’s adaptability is tested to the extreme. within such an unstable environment, which includes their workplaces, researchers must find a way to make steady and sustained progress as scholars. the central purpose of this paper is to explore possible strategies towards the optimal development of a researcher’s career that will enable both early-career and more established researchers to be, and remain, highly effective and productive in this modern era. while this paper does not focus on current or future effects of the covid-19 pandemic as such, following such strategies will enable them to stay in tune with the needs of the day, whether these are covid-ridden or post-covid. this paper also argues that the mere development of a career is not sufficient: a distinct element of sustainability will have to be part of the fibre of such a career trajectory to ensure success in the post-covid years to come, where the threats of the pandemic have subsided, but the necessity of sustainable development has remained. sustainable development is not easy to achieve. as bansal (2019: 1) notes, the development of technology and the changing nature of social institutions create “a perfect storm”. in effect, sustainable development has become increasingly difficult to maintain. this statement was made pre-covid-19, and it may be even more true in the new era that began with the start of this highly disruptive pandemic. furthermore, reunamo and pipere (2011: 1) warn that, for effective enquiry into the multifaceted topic of sustainable development, scholars “need to be aware of their preferences and orientations”. this examination of possible strategies towards sustainable development of researchers’ careers therefore requires a careful approach and a thorough analysis of available research. the paper identified well-contemplated strategies and initiatives that can be considered by individuals and authorities who focus on an upward career trajectory for both early-career and established researchers. a career trajectory is also referred to as a career life cycle (gordon, 2005: 1), the researcher’s career path (health research board (hrb), 2016), or career pathway (university of southampton, 2022: par. 4). the primary question to answer is how the employment of identified strategies can facilitate sustainable development of researchers’ career trajectory. the notion of sustainable development of researchers’ careers implies a long-term approach towards incessant growth, the expansion and improvement of skills, leading to maintained productivity as well as higher-quality research outputs to meet the increasing demands of a knowledge economy. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 802022 40(3): 80-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) 2. methodology in order to answer the research question on how sustainable development of a researcher’s career trajectory can be strategised, this paper offers a systematic review of available literature on the topic. during a focused search for electronic versions of scholarly journals and books based on pre-defined criteria, publications on the nature and implementation of strategies were collected and reviewed. from this, a basic conceptual framework could be structured, including concepts such as the profile of an accomplished researcher, exactly what a strategy entails, and how the concept of sustainability is linked to researcher development. this literature data were complemented by a search across higher education websites, because universities and other institutions of higher education are primarily the context within which researchers’ careers start developing. on the respective websites some of these institutions provide guidance on career trajectories and other relevant publications that produce open-access programmes and strategies. this include documentation containing practical advice that is made available to early-career and more established researchers to assist them with plotting their own career trajectories. after collecting an adequate volume of such documentation, a critical analysis of the variety of sources was conducted. the data contained in these sources were subjected to thematic analysis – a method for “identifying, analysing, and reporting patterns (themes) within data” (braun & clarke, 2006: 6). during this analysis, the strategies for the sustainable development of a career trajectory, as reported in this paper, emerged. the themes that emerged during this analysis relate to the different phases of a researcher’s career development, from novice to established researcher, where different strategies have to be applied, depending on the needs and exact position of a researcher in that specific phase of his or her career. following the technique of deep reading (kilburn, nind & wiles, 2014), the sources gathered were analysed carefully and (intentionally) slowly by means of a process of reading and rereading. to get to the required depth on the matter at hand, it was essential to engage in higher-order critical thinking skills so that i could “distinguish fact from fiction; synthesize and evaluate information; and clearly communicate, solve problems and discover truths” (university of connecticut, n.d.: par. 2). deep reading entails, amongst others, the use of cognitive skills like analysis, creating a synthesis, and problem-solving. new meaning is created from the text data by focusing on the underlying intention of the author (hermida n.d.: par. 4). this approach enabled me to gain a deeper understanding of sustainable development and construct new meaning from the analysed sources. 3. conceptualising a strategy in the formulation of any strategy or strategic plan, one essential element stands clear: determining a clear goal. the northern ireland online channel for business advice, nibusinessinfo (n.d.: par. 1), in its definition of strategic planning, points out that an ambition has to be formulated, followed by certain steps of how to achieve it. the purpose is to define the mission of the business, the vision that has to be achieved, and the plan in the form of action steps. in a strategy, or a set of strategies for a researcher’s career trajectory, there must be clarity on the nature of such a scholarly “end product” or vision. in such a strategic plan for research development, there must be no uncertainty about what the characteristics of an accomplished researcher are. in terms of the abovementioned nibusinessinfo guidelines, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 812022 40(3): 81-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 rossouw sustainable development of a researcher’s career trajectory there must be a clear mission and vision, which, in this case, is the profile of a researcher that has developed to what can be described as a consummate academic, scholar and researcher, as will be discussed next. 4. profile of the accomplished researcher the university of southampton (2022: par. 1-3) describes the path towards the end product of a researcher’s career as progressing from an early-career researcher to becoming a principal investigator (pi). becoming a pi is the most senior position a researcher can hold; such a professor is regarded as an established researcher who acts as a mentor, supervisor, and the leader of projects. adding to formulating such a profile, stefanadis (2006: 52) offers a set of characteristics of a successful researcher. he contends that successful researchers possess cutting-edge knowledge and skills, obtained by studying recent publications in their fields and interaction with peers. they are also resourceful team players and possess “uncontrolled unreasonableness” – the ability to think creatively outside the box. stefanadis (2006: 53) contends that, in the development of young scientists, there is no certain method of mentorship, and that one crucial element that distinguishes good researchers from excellent ones is giftedness, which cannot be taught. what is important to note from the above discussion is that to be an accomplished researcher requires an above-average level of knowledge on a certain academic discipline, where such a person is regarded as a leader in his/her field. secondly, and based on the above competencies, these researchers have the ability to engage in interdisciplinary projects where their specific expertise is merged with that of other scholars to achieve a common goal. to complete the building of the profile, the university of cape town (hereafter uct) researcher development academy (rda) is more specific regarding the activities and competencies of a successful researcher when they offer four key requirements such a senior scholar should meet: understanding context and planning research goals; pursuing and supervising a master’s degree or a phd; publishing and sharing research; identifying funding opportunities; and writing a winning grant proposal (uct, 2022a). all these competencies can be demonstrated at a basic as well as at a higher level, with the distinguishing factor as to whether these capabilities have been demonstrated in a sustained way over a considerable period of time. that would determine whether the person can be regarded as an established researcher. against such a background, where a specific profile of an individual scholar is seen as the ultimate goal, a career trajectory should be plotted that would, despite disruptions and delays, result in full achievement of the goal that was formulated during the initial stages of a research career. 5. a researcher’s upward or downward career trajectory on completing phds, doctoral students must make decisions regarding their careers. some may proceed to teaching as lecturers and reap the benefits of this higher qualification such as salary increases and promotion. in these cases, the limited development of their research capacity is to a certain extent due to the strong focus on and specialising in teaching. this may be the result of faculty priorities on how to deploy their available staff, or personal preference. of specific concern to this paper, others may be interested in pursuing a career specialising as a researcher at either a university or another research institution. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 822022 40(3): 82-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) the university of southampton, in its guidance to their early-career researchers (hereafter ecrs), offers these academics the perspective that, up to obtaining the doctorate, they gain knowledge in their field of specialisation, and in some cases also an initial exposure to interdisciplinary work. their advice is to develop and improve their proficiencies as professionals, but more importantly for this paper, to manage their careers with a greater sense of purpose and direction (university of southampton, 2022: par. 1). as part of plotting an ideal career trajectory, the university of southampton points out two routes to becoming a pi: firstly, someone following the “funding/fellowship route”, who specialises in research, where the major part of their time is spent on engaging in research projects; secondly, a scholar may opt to follow the human relations route, “taking on teaching and/or enterprise roles as well as research” (university of southampton, 2022: par. 4). it is foreseeable that the second option may eventually not lead to becoming a pi, or may take significantly longer, compared to a scholar that is primarily focused on research. considering the advantages and disadvantages of opting for a research career, inomics team (2021: par. 1) states that, over and above engaging in further research, other career paths exist in, for example, business, education and journalism. consequently, inomics team (2021: par. 3-8) offers specific guidance for those that stand before the career choice of becoming a researcher or not, and weighs up a number of advantages against the possible disadvantages. table 1: the advantages and disadvantages of a research career advantages disadvantages travel and relocation due to a limited number of positions, becoming a researcher most often has the implication of relocation to a new city or country. research offers a unique opportunity to travel to new places, experience life in different countries and cultures, meeting new people and gaining experience of jobs at a variety of institutions. for some, it is hard to make new friends and create a social circle in a new city. those with families are less mobile and may find relocation very demanding. relocating can be stressful, causing some to slip into depression. independence and interest as compared to many other careers, researchers have relative freedom and can work with some independence. one advantage of a career in research is how interesting the work is. researchers can also organise their own working schedule and priorities, provided that adequate funding is available. researchers can often choose the topics of research which are of the most pressing interest to them. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 832022 40(3): 83-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 rossouw sustainable development of a researcher’s career trajectory advantages disadvantages security and career prospects one particularly challenging aspect of a research career is the lack of job security, especially in the initial stages. more phds and post-docs are working than there are professorships available. post-docs are typically employed on short-term contracts, whereafter they must find another position, and there is no guarantee of longterm stable employment. progressing from a post-doctoral position to a professorship can be extremely competitive – the number of professor positions are being reduced due to budget cuts. transferable skills researchers master certain valuable and widely applicable skills and expertise. to alleviate the risks and uncertainties associated with the initial stages of a career as researcher, the skills and expertise one acquires, for example, critical thinking and writing expertise, can be transferred to many other fields and occupations. (adapted from inomics team, 2021: par. 3-8.) the weighing of the pros and cons by young researchers, as illustrated here, was an important matter in the context of career planning, which resulted in the uk careers in research online survey (cros). the respondents were asked where they would like to see themselves in the following five years. the majority opted to stay in higher education, while 38% preferred to proceed with their career outside of higher education. nineteen percent (19%) expressed an interest in a non-research career in business, industry or the public sector (vitae, 2022: par. 19). after careful consideration of the implications, and eventually opting for a career as a researcher, another decision for an ecr comes to the fore: the decision whether to proceed within a university (higher education) context or starting a career at another type of research institute. the decision whether to become a researcher, and at what type of institution, can be made early in a person’s research career, but switching to another type of research environment can also happen later. vitae (2022: par. 17) warns, however, that a researcher may detect some suspicion or even antagonism on the side of managers when they look for career opportunities outside of the academic world. despite facing such resistance and possible reproach, researchers should feel free to make their career decisions independently (vitae, 2022: par. 18). the decision will be influenced significantly by the availability of positions the specific individual qualifies for, combined with their mobility and willingness to relocate. a scholar who has opted for a career as a researcher should follow certain strategies towards sustained development to ensure an upward research career trajectory. finding strategies to maintain a predominantly upward career trajectory, or preventing stagnation and even a downward trajectory, is not applicable to ecrs only. it is a common phenomenon that competent and productive researchers are recruited for leadership or administrative positions, where they can act as mentors and advance an entity’s research productivity based on their experience and managerial capabilities. this may result in not maintaining their scholarly productivity that in the first place earned them the promotion. kawaguchi, kondo and keiji http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 842022 40(3): 84-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) (2016:1), in their survey conducted among japanese researchers, found that a decrease in research time and outputs prevailed because of an increased administrative load. these authors recommend proper inducements and job designs for established researchers to prevent a decline in their research outputs. career transitions from junior to senior ranks must be monitored and strategised carefully, both by the individual researchers themselves and the management of the institution, to ensure sustained high productivity. during the thematic analysis of the literature, several strategies emerged which can be utilised jointly or separately towards the sustainable development of a researcher’s career trajectory. 6. a phase-by-phase approach to sustainable career development strategies every phase in a researcher’s career poses unique challenges and needs sustainable development. strategising the development trajectory of any individual researcher needs to be done against the background of the researcher’s level of development, as well as new needs and demands that arise when a new phase commences. in the search for successful approaches and strategies towards career enhancement, the establishment of a well-structured, highly focused, capacity-building programme for an institution emerged as the most ideal strategy towards sustainable development. (uct, 2022a; university of southampton, 2022; health research board (hrb), 2016). instances do prevail where a highly motivated mentor with adequate experience and knowledge promotes a promising junior scholar’s career significantly, based on an individualised process. such a career enhancement process outside of a formal institutional structure might lead to significant short-term successes, but unfortunately it does not include the element of sustainability. it has been observed that, once one of these two parties moves out of the partnership, and in the absence of an existing structure, the necessary scaffolding might not be in place, to the detriment of the developing scholar. all indications are that established, well-funded and well-managed institutional programmes lead to increased skills levels, higher productivity and the advancement of individual researchers’ career prospects. moreover, these programmes ensure the maximum sustainability of career development and a prolonged upward career trajectory. as stated under methodology, this paper draws on strategies, inter alia, from published programmes of a selection of higher education institutions. a number of distinct phases in researchers’ career trajectory have been identified, as is discussed next, ranging from novice researchers to principal investigators, and eventually post-retirement associates. 6.1 pre-doctoral introduction to research theory and practice the management of higher education institutions devotes time, energy and funding to the development and advancement of their researchers. it therefore makes sense to focus on the development of younger or less experienced staff members to maximise the outcome of the investment. kawaguchi et al. (2016: 3) underscore that “the trajectory of a whole life may be set in a person’s youth”. the uk concordat concurs by stating that the structured development of a career should start early, “by encouraging your researcher to begin to consider their career goals early in their contract you can ensure they have sufficient time to develop the skills and experience to help them work towards those goals.” (vitae, 2022: par. 2). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 852022 40(3): 85-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 rossouw sustainable development of a researcher’s career trajectory in the criteria according to which intra-university bursaries and grants are allocated, the age of applicants is normally taken into account. potential is often regarded as a more important criterion than proven expertise or established maturity. based on this approach, preference is usually given to promising younger applicants who have a longer career path ahead of them. funding agencies such as the south african national research foundation have specific sections for younger academics where they can apply for funding, eventually towards gaining a national research foundation (nrf) rating (nrf, 2021: 5). the pre-doctoral phase of a scholar’s career ranges from being a pre-graduate student, with an initial introduction and limited exposure to research activities, to the phase when a master’s degree has been awarded with the prospect of enrolling for doctoral studies. throughout this phase, promising scholars, often as part of a larger group, should be carefully guided, and an interest in research should be created, stimulated and secured. courses and modules specifically designed to expose pre-graduate students to the basics of research theory and practice have the potential to create enthusiasm among academics on the brink of pursuing one career or another. these modules are to a great extent theoretical by nature. as an example of such initial exposure to research, the pre-graduate bed course at the faculty of education of the north-west university (nwu), south africa, includes two modules particularly focused on research in education (nwu, 2020: iii). at the end of the first semester, fourth-year students must demonstrate their knowledge of the key concepts, principles and theories of social science research. this includes the ability to reflect critically on the theory related to their preferred research topic. upon completion of the second-semester module, students must prepare a research proposal without actually engaging in any empirical work. on completion of such a proposal, they should be able to demonstrate the following: • integrated knowledge and understanding of scientific research principles; • comprehensive knowledge of research methodology relevant to the research topic; • ability to select, evaluate and apply a range of different research methodologies; • capacity to reflect on values and ethical conduct appropriate to scientific research. (nwu, 2020: iii.) students enrolled in this programme are formally or informally recruited to consider advancing their studies at honours level. as part of their curriculum for the bedhons degree, they have to complete a limited-scale research project with more or less the same outcomes as the pre-graduate module, also showing competence in generating and analysing data. during honours studies, and being part of a much smaller group, these students are carefully nurtured and recruited for their master’s and eventually phd studies, building on the enthusiasm and interest created in the earlier years of study. of special importance in this phase, and as is discussed next, is to ensure a positive experience that will not discourage students with potential to keep up their interest in research. central to this stands the relationship with the study supervisor. 6.2 doctoral researchers’ interests almost without exception, a career as a researcher becomes a serious consideration during and shortly after the completion of a phd. if the completion of a phd can be regarded as the first formal step towards a research career, specific attention should be given as to how http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 862022 40(3): 86-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) mentors and other leaders in the research context guide these researchers towards fulfilling their potential and ideals. several studies on the experiences of doctoral students highlight that phd studies have specific challenges and demands and that not everyone enrolling for a phd follows through successfully. of specific importance is the challenge not to relate primarily to the intellectual and cognitive level, but also to the interpersonal and emotional level. sverdlik et al. (2018: 361) refer to concerns regarding mental and physical health, which sometimes lead to attrition among doctoral students. in their investigation into the positive and negative experiences related to doctoral study conditions, corcelles et al. (2019: 1) found that, “during their doctoral studies, students undergo an emotionally and intellectually intensive process involving a wide range of positive and negative experiences”. clark et al. (2016: 4572) list several matters of importance for researchers, of which one is “understanding the coproduction relationships through which knowledge making and decision-making shape one another in social-environmental systems”. although this study was directed at developing researchers, the findings can rather be made applicable to supervisors, promoters, examiners and mentors, who have tremendous influence over the way doctoral students experience their early research endeavours. doctoral studies that include severely negative experiences on the part of doctoral students do not necessarily end in termination of the study. experience shows that students also complete their studies, obtain their phd, and then, because of such harmful or demoralising experiences, refuse to engage in any further research activities as part of their careers. in any strategy devised for ecrs, the social and interpersonal aspect should be fully factored in. a spanish survey conducted by corcelles et al. (2019: 1) confirms the importance of interpersonal relationships within the context of research endeavours. one of the main findings regarding negative challenges that were reported is the influence of the research community, and primarily that of the supervisor. in their report, corcelles et al. (2019: 1) provided several findings related to positive and negative occurrences that should be included in strategies designed to enhance doctoral students’ experiences as ecrs: • opportunities for phd students to communicate their scientific advances, receive expert feedback and interact with other researchers have a high positive influence on their doctoral journey; • funding difficulties, particularly for students in the social sciences, was one of the main negative challenges. • experiences related to research design, data collection and analysis were perceived either negatively or positively (corcelles et al., 2019: 1). corcelles et al. (2019: 1) recommend that these results may be used in doctoral programme policies to assist in ways to provide support. clark et al. (2016: 4570) add the importance of specific support for young scholars who have recently completed their phd, which might be a very positive, inspiring experience. however, “when scientists and engineers first venture out of the laboratory or library with the goal of linking their knowledge with action, the outcome has often been ineffectiveness and disillusionment”. kodama (2017: 255) argue that reality shock, which presents risks for career development, is characterised by an increase in unmet expectations and burnout, while work engagement decreases. as a valuable recommendation for improved strategic career planning and enhanced preparation of ecrs, kodama (2017: 1) found that coping with changes and being optimistic about the future could prevent http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 872022 40(3): 87-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 rossouw sustainable development of a researcher’s career trajectory the experience of reality shock. although the possibility of reality shock cannot be totally eliminated, good social skills may prevent the experience of reality shock from inhibiting career development. uct introduced a support programme for staff members appointed without doctorates. the emerging researcher programme (erp) offers support in the form of workshops on phd studies as well as preparation for postgraduate supervision (uct, 2022b: par. 2). based on individual discussions with senior academics, the programme prepares staff members for challenges as postgraduate students as well as being supervisors. it can be assumed that such staff members would work simultaneously under the mentorship of a promoter towards their own phd and start supervising master’s students. this programme is consistent with uct’s commitment “to transform the demographic profile of its academic staff and includes consultations, targeted seminars, workshops and modest research grants” (uct, 2022c, par. 3). based on merit and ongoing participation in this and other researcher development initiatives, upcoming researchers are encouraged to apply for development grants, depending on available funding. on the grounds of its position in the overall best global universities rankings, uct as research-intensive institution is ranked number one in africa. the evaluation is based on every institution’s research outputs. in addition, members of the academic community around the world and in the region contribute to the eventual outcome (us news, 2022: 1). uct describes the nature and goal of its erp as assistance to early-career scholars regarding the planning of their career trajectories in order to be prepared for the demands of a research-intensive university. the university specifically refers to support towards completing these staff members’ doctoral studies, writing successful grant proposals, engaging in supervision and obtaining nrf rating (uct, 2022b: par. 2). 6.3 post-doctoral fellows’ interests as international travel ground to a halt during the initial phases of the covid-19 pandemic, the lack of mobility seriously restricted scholarly personal interaction as an essential part of the career development of especially ecrs such as post-doctoral fellows (schiffer & walsh, 2020: par. 4). postdoctoral fellows form a group of ecrs that is heavily dependent on welldesigned strategies for career development. in these strategies, mobility should be factored in. in addition to pandemic-related challenges, particularly between 2020 and 2022, from every cohort of doctorandi, a relatively small percentage actually have the opportunity and privilege to embark on careers as postdoctoral or permanent researchers within a higher education environment. postdoctoral fellows have made a clear-cut decision about their intention to follow research as a career, but they meet specific challenges. they must cope with relocation, adapt to a new environment, most often a new country (cox et al., 2008: 19), and must start building interpersonal relationships from zero (cox et al., 2008: 58). within the academic context of a university faculty, postdoctoral fellows form an intergroup, no longer being students, but also not being regarded by all as staff members and colleagues yet. it has been observed that some have to cope with mentors that give little encouragement or pay inadequate attention to their endeavours and provide them with little development opportunities. while there is institutional pressure for researchers to get published (rónay & niemczyk, 2020: 241), this should be conducted in a controlled way. in extreme cases some mentors may regard postdoctoral fellows as publishing machines who are obliged to deliver regular publications, primarily for the benefit of the faculty. clark et al. (2016: 4571) highlight http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 882022 40(3): 88-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) the importance of young researchers’ sense of “producing usable knowledge”, which starts at mentors with an encouraging, supportive approach and a process that is concluded with a successful publication after a rigorous peer-review process. on the positive side, postdoctoral fellows are in a unique position to build their academic profiles rapidly, working in a structured, established environment under the supervision of a knowledgeable scholar and researcher. they normally have limited, if any, teaching or administrative duties, and for this passing period of their careers, they can fully engage in research only. referring to the fact that they have “the time, the energy and the ideas”, the university of southampton regards a postdoctoral fellowship as an opportunity to establish an academic career properly. in the light of the importance of a well-structured strategy towards maximum progress during a postdoctoral fellowship, this university cautions that this phase should be characterised by building a reputation as scholar by adopting a strategic approach towards their careers: “it is not enough to keep your head down, to keep working hard, and hoping for the best. you need to maximise your chances.” (university of southampton, 2022: par. 7). important here is the scholar’s active, planned involvement to ensure success. the guidance they consequently offer is to adopt a threeto five-year career plan to find and work with a suitable mentor; to have a carefully devised networking strategy; to be sensitive to opportunities for professional development; and to get to know their strengths and areas of improvement. this university further accentuates the importance of postdoctoral fellows demonstrating the ability to secure research funding, to publish, and to add value to the institution or research entity. leadership skills should also be actively developed in the light of possible “future roles as a pi or manager of research,” for which certain competencies are needed (university of southampton, 2022: par. 10). because of the relatively short duration of a postdoctoral fellowship, these researchers have an additional challenge: to get published. if they embark on a new project at the commencement of their fellowship period, the conceptualisation of such a project and obtaining ethical clearance before any empirical data can be generated also cut back on the time available for publication. the notoriously long turnaround time of some prestigious academic journals is due to the time-consuming review process in especially paper-based journals (björk & solomon, 2013: 1). according to björk and solomon, these obstructions hamper the dissemination of findings, but more seriously, within the context of career planning and advancement, these delays can add a significant hindrance to the upward trajectory in the academic careers of authors. in the present publishing system, it commonly happens that there are delays of over a year. “journals are the gatekeepers of knowledge, defining when and where manuscripts get published and who can obtain access” (sarabipour et al., 2019: 2). some publications may therefore only be scheduled for publication towards the end of a fellowship period. despite their continuous effort, these scholars do not obtain the very necessary acknowledgement for their scholarly efforts at a time when it is needed the most. sarabipour et al. (2019: 1) provide one solution for the above-mentioned problem when they describe peer-reviewed journal publications as “the de facto currency for career progress” and point out the value of preprints for the ecr. this approach to being published offers an opportunity that could be included in a strategic plan for a post-doctoral fellow or any other ecr. these authors point out that preprints are online and open-access manuscripts “posted by authors on dedicated servers prior to peer review and publication in an academic journal” http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 892022 40(3): 89-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 rossouw sustainable development of a researcher’s career trajectory (sarabipour et al., 2019: 2.) submitted papers are only screened to ensure applicable content and disseminated immediately (sarabipour et al., 2019: 2). from this definition, the benefits of pre-printing are clear: quick spreading of scholarly work, open-access, and timely feedback, together with the enhancement of such a researcher’s network. some scholars utilise pre-printing as the sole route to disseminate their findings. two noteworthy pre-printing servers are arxiv (for the natural sciences) and biorxiv (for the life sciences) (sarabipour et al., 2019: 6). 6.4 mid-career researchers’ interests the erp at uct, as discussed earlier, includes workshops towards professional development which are also open to more established researchers on the staff. notable characteristics of this strategic initiative, with a growth recorded of 45 academics involved in 2003 to 871 by the end of 2018, are the following: • the amount and type of support depend on an individual’s needs. • participants can take full advantage of the erp’s set of offerings over a number of years. • once a scholar attains an nrf rating or is promoted to associate professor, such a staff member has officially ‘emerged’ from the programme and no longer qualifies for erp funding (uct, 2022b). the sustainability of this extended programme is made possible through the substantial, ongoing support from university funding and the involvement of national and international funding agencies. running parallel to the erp as part of the bigger institutional initiative, the uct researcher development academy (rda) (uct, 2022a) advances research development in africa by providing professional training and capacity-building programmes to researchers. by establishing partnerships and in collaboration with institutions on the african continent, seminars on most of the topics included in the erp are also made available to upcoming researchers from african countries. the university of southampton encourages those staff members who have already developed beyond that of an ecr to prepare themselves for the demands of becoming a pi. they can become involved with “public engagement, policy, enterprise, contributing to education, supporting students or putting on conferences/events” (university of southampton, 2022: par. 7). at this stage of the researcher’s career, they should step back for a while and plan for the stages to follow. mid-career researchers need to establish themselves in a new role, characterised by collaborations with established researchers and then emerge from that as independent researchers. this might have the implication of moving out of one’s comfort zone and relocating to another institution or even another country, depending on personal mobility and opportunities that may arise (cox et al., 2008: 26). part of such strategic career planning is that the developing scholars should measure their progress against their initial ambitions. (university of southampton, 2022: par. 9). questions to ask include the following: • are you on the right career path? are you ready for the next step? • why do you enjoy what you do? what are your strengths? what motivates you? • is your work-life balance as you want it to be? what needs to change to make it more the way you want? (university of southampton, 2022: par. 21-23). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 902022 40(3): 90-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 perspectives in education 2022: 40(3) a thorough and honest assessment of the progress by utilising this set of questions can identify much-needed action steps to be taken. 6.5 established researchers’ interests once researchers have reached this point of being established researchers, they have a different set of questions to ask and answers to give regarding their future in research. complacency can lead to stagnation, which, in turn, can result in a downward trajectory in the career path. a position of ‘having arrived’ is particularly troublesome when scholars, after a number of years of diligent and focused work by following a certain strategy to maintain an upward trajectory, find themselves in the bracket of being an established researcher already, with two decades or more to go to retirement. in such a case, new goals will have to be set in order to retain enthusiasm. one potentially rewarding position is that of becoming a mentor and facilitator for upcoming researchers. based on the model of the uct the “researcher development cycle” (uct, 2022d: par. 1), the researcher development trajectory can be illustrated as follows: sustainable development of a researcher’s career trajectory with two decades or more to go to retirement. in such a case, new goals will have to be set in order to retain enthusiasm. one potentially rewarding position is that of becoming a mentor and facilitator for upcoming researchers. based on the model of the uct the “researcher development cycle” (uct, 2022d: par. 1), the researcher development trajectory can be illustrated as follows: figure 1: researcher development trajectory in countries and higher education systems where the system of mandatory retirement prevails, some researchers end their full-time employment career at the age of around 65. this, however, need not be the end of these senior academics’ careers as researchers, as will be discussed next. 6.6 post-retirement associates’ interests post-retirement associates, based on their experience and extensive knowledge of research, can continue to make a significant difference in the research environment, through further publications and by acting as mentors for upcoming younger staff: uct specifically refers to the engagement in seminars of retired academics with excellent research and supervision experience (uct, 2022b: par. 3). topics covered are, inter alia, research planning, getting published, research impact, optimising conference attendance, sabbatical planning, research ethics, reviewing a publication, examining a thesis, and grant proposal writing. with a wealth of experience as a basis, post-retirement associates or research fellows who obtain short-term contracts may find this period of their careers as researcher rewarding, especially in those cases where they were in management positions towards the end of their official careers, which, as discussed, often bring about a decline in productivity as a researcher. not being involved in such time-consuming faculty activities any longer gives them doctoral researchers pre-doctoral researchers post-doctoral fellows mid-career researchers established researchers post-retirement associates figure 1: researcher development trajectory in countries and higher education systems where the system of mandatory retirement prevails, some researchers end their full-time employment career at the age of around 65. this, however, need not be the end of these senior academics’ careers as researchers, as will be discussed next. 6.6 post-retirement associates’ interests post-retirement associates, based on their experience and extensive knowledge of research, can continue to make a significant difference in the research environment, through further publications and by acting as mentors for upcoming younger staff: uct specifically refers to the engagement in seminars of retired academics with excellent research and supervision experience (uct, 2022b: par. 3). topics covered are, inter alia, research planning, getting published, research impact, optimising conference attendance, sabbatical planning, research ethics, reviewing a publication, examining a thesis, and grant proposal writing. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 912022 40(3): 91-94 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 rossouw sustainable development of a researcher’s career trajectory with a wealth of experience as a basis, post-retirement associates or research fellows who obtain short-term contracts may find this period of their careers as researcher rewarding, especially in those cases where they were in management positions towards the end of their official careers, which, as discussed, often bring about a decline in productivity as a researcher. not being involved in such time-consuming faculty activities any longer gives them the opportunity to become a co-author or mentor for ecrs, which can be an enriching experience. in the above sections, institution-based creation and facilitation of programmes were portrayed as essential to ensure the sustainable development of researchers’ career trajectories. the final word on the successful process towards a sustained upward career trajectory has, however, not been spoken yet. no programme or strategic process, however well-designed, can succeed without the necessary self-motivation and sustained enthusiasm on the part of the individual researcher. 7. taking responsibility for own development the uk concordat to support the career development of researchers (vitae, 2022: par. 2) attaches significant importance to the career development of researchers, which includes the notion of the researcher taking responsibility for their own development. they formulated a set of principles towards career development and enhancement, most notably that upcoming researchers have to engage keenly in the development of their personal career trajectory. although being dependent on the experience and encouragement by a mentor and institutional support, the final responsibility rests with the individual researcher. the process of sustainable development of a researcher’s career trajectory is excellently summed up as follows: supporting career development involves encouraging researchers to give careful and informed consideration to their future career path and enabling them to gain the skills and experience that will allow them to work towards those goals (vitae, 2022: par. 6). 8. conclusion in the quest of finding suitable, workable strategies for sustainable career development for researchers, it became clear in this analysis that higher education institutions see it as their task to provide the necessary support and guidance for staff members. a variety of structures and programmes for researchers in different phases have been put in place, and the possibility of development is created. the big test for such strategies is whether they will lead to sustainable development despite adverse circumstances that may arise. the most prominent prerequisite for sustainability that was found is the fact that researchers should ultimately take responsibility for their own development through every phase of their career. to conclude, to be effective towards this goal of sustainable development, every strategy should have the type of long-term approach that will ensure continuous growth. during every phase of researchers’ careers, they should be prepared for immediate challenges as well as challenges in the upcoming phase. the sustainable development of researchers’ careers should result in increased or at least maintained productivity as well as higher-quality research outputs consistent with the increasing demands of a global knowledge economy. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i3.6 922022 40(3): 92-94 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http://www.researchsupport.uct.ac.za/emerging-researcher-programme-erp http://www.researchsupport.uct.ac.za/targeted-support-academics-without-doctorates http://www.researchsupport.uct.ac.za/overview-29 https://www.southampton.ac.uk/waar/your-career/career-steps.page https://www.southampton.ac.uk/waar/your-career/career-steps.page https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/africa https://www.usnews.com/education/best-global-universities/africa https://www.vitae.ac.uk/doing-research/leadership-development-for-principal-investigators-pis/developing-individual-researchers/supporting-researcher-career-development https://www.vitae.ac.uk/doing-research/leadership-development-for-principal-investigators-pis/developing-individual-researchers/supporting-researcher-career-development https://www.vitae.ac.uk/doing-research/leadership-development-for-principal-investigators-pis/developing-individual-researchers/supporting-researcher-career-development _hlk96440893 _hlk96854041 _hlk96969685 _hlk96955519 _hlk96608386 _hlk96608730 _hlk96504650 _hlk96440914 _hlk96608089 _hlk96962145 i editorial a number of articles in this edition of perspectives of education investigate critical issues in higher education. whereas some of these articles examine complex social issues in racially and culturally mixed educational environments, others probe ways to enhance student learning and scholarship among academics. this issue also highlights articles that interrogate ethical issues on vivisection in education and research, teachers’ competence to teach the physics part of the fet physical sciences curriculum, and teachers’ levels of engagement with mathematics tools and resources. discussions in this volume incorporate both theory and practice, and draw on a wide range of research designs and methodologies. in the first contribution to this edition “conversations among black staff members at a historically white afrikaans university campus on issues of race, social justice and reconciliation”, willy nel reveals clear psychopolitical awareness and strong discourses of fear, powerlessness and bitterness, as well as a discourse of non-engagement among black staff members at a historically white afrikaans university. these discourses are apparent in all three domains of analysis: local, institutional and societal. theoretical explication for these findings is sought in resistance theory for the discourse of non-engagement and the scarcity of responses located in the local domain. in the second article in this issue, elmarie costandius and sophia rosochacki argue that tolerance, cultural diversity, democratic participation and social cohesion are prerequisites for plural democracies and that educational institutions such as universities, as prominent organisational structures, have an obligation to address these social issues. whereas nel suggests transformative resistance as a means to inculcate alternative discourses, costandius and rosochacki interrogate the aptness of education for critical global citizenship in promoting attitudes of tolerance and social cohesion among students in a racially and culturally mixed educational environment. in a thought-provoking article entitled “drama education in the age of aids”, lorraine singh draws on the theories of applied drama and argues for workshopping as a cogent means of researching and representing social issues. the article describes a workshop theatre project that was aimed at allowing drama students to explore and expose the myths, practices and world view associated with the sexual behaviour of young people in two townships and on two campuses. she concludes her article with a discussion on how the methodology reflected the beliefs and attitudes of the participants in a contextualised manner, exposing a flaw in their image of the sexually liberated and independent young woman. the next two articles focus on academic scholarship. hilary geber and alison bentley describe the usefulness of ‘the ph.d. acceleration programme in health sciences’ of the faculty of health science research office at the university of the witwatersrand to provide deliberate support to staff members registered for a phd to attain their goals. their findings indicate that staff found the research writing course the most valuable of the skills courses and noted that the individual, goal-directed coaching helped them in many different ways in simultaneously completing the thesis and managing their professional lives. they conclude that this structured support programme with coaching provides a low-cost, sustainable innovation for full-time academics during doctoral studies. in her article “research in a south african faculty of education: a transformative approach”, petra engelbrecht focuses on a transformative approach to research development initiatives in a south african faculty of education over a period of three to four years. joining the ongoing debates and discussions on how best to create optimal teaching and learning conditions at institutions for higher education, cecilia maxine dube, sandra kane and miriam lear explore the effectiveness of tutors and feedback of students redrafting continuous assessment tasks. they found that students benefit from an opportunity to resubmit assessment tasks, provided that they are sufficiently motivated; clear, specific, constructive feedback is given, and tutoring is of a good quality. chih-min shih’s article draws our attention to taiwanese universities’ quest to improve their students’ english proficiency by imposing an english graduation benchmark on university students as one of their degree requirements. using the theoretic framework for education policy analysis proposed by haddad and ii demsky (1995), shih found that the english graduation benchmark policy in taiwan did not achieve the intended goals. he therefore suggests that policymakers reconsider this english graduation benchmark. whereas shih’s article focuses on language efforts of taiwanese students to improve their english proficiency, elizabeth henning’s article interrogates multilingual education in urban grade 1 classrooms in south africa. her article addresses the issue of excessive linguistic ‘code-switching’ in early school education. she invokes post-piagetian and neo-vygotskian ideas on children’s cognitive development and its interplay with language in an argument for a linguistically ‘stable’ pedagogy that prepares learners for the world of written language in which they have to express most of their learning in school. she argues that language development, literacy learning, and the development of concepts are intertwined phenomena in a child’s development and that semantically and semiotically unambiguous and systematic classroom communication is therefore vital for learning success in the early grades when the foundations for cognitive academic language proficiency are laid. she calls for longitudinal research of young children’s learning, investigating how language hybrids in classroom communication may impact it. taking cognisance of linguistics theory that posits language as fluid, she hypothesises that if language use, in mixed code, is excessive, it may lead to cognitive instability and insecure academic discourse. the next four contributions to this volume focus on teachers and prospective teachers. in their contribution to this issue “difficult conversations: lessons learnt from a diversity programme for pre-service teachers”, adré le roux and percy mdunge contend that in any educational programme for pre-service teachers that pursues excellence in both academics and social justice, teacher educators must capacitate student teachers to work in areas of social justice. according to them, it is imperative that pre-service teachers be assisted to become professionally qualified teachers who are prepared to move outside their contingent practices and assumptions to recognise and work against oppressive practices, especially their own. in this reflective article the authors draw on their reflective notes, observation and student journals to reflect on the lessons they have learnt from a diversity programme offered to final-year pre-service teachers. in an article entitled “the animal experimentation controversy: ethical views of prospective teachers”, rian de villiers interrogates the attitudes of prospective teachers towards vivisection in education and research. the study shows that the majority of prospective teachers are in favour of animal rights and that females are more averse to vivisection than males. the article concludes with various suggestions regarding vivisection in schools and tertiary institutions. sarah bansilal, thokozani mkhwanazi and patisizwe mahlabela’s study investigates teachers’ varying levels of engagement with mathematics tools and resources, as well as varying levels of skill in using the mathematics and contextual resources and tools. ilsa basson and jeanne kriek’s study aims to ascertain whether or not teachers could be considered equipped to teach the physics part of the fet physical sciences curriculum. she found that, although teachers are positive about the curriculum, the problems identified with training, support and resources as well as the lack of teachers’ subject content knowledge, particularly in rural and township schools, cannot be blamed on the curriculum and therefore cannot be solved by changes in the curriculum. corene de wet 55 research article 2022 40(4): 55-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) the effectiveness of a firstyear module presented as an accelerated learning programme to repeating students for subsequent learning abstract the use of an accelerated learning programme as an intervention to allow failing students to repeat a module in an accelerated format instead of having to redo a module over a semester or academic year has various academic, economic, and social benefits. accelerated learning programmes are, however, often criticised in the literature for surface learning that may influence subsequent learning. using a quantitative approach, this study statistically analysed the grades achieved by three distinct groups of students for a first-year financial accounting module and their subsequent second-year financial accounting module. the study found no statistical difference between students who repeated a module over the traditional academic period and those who repeated the module in an accelerated format. this study contributes to the limited research on accelerated learning programmes for repeating a module. the results provide empirical evidence that supports the questioning of the notion that accelerated learning programmes only lead to surface learning, and results are presented that advocate for the implementation of accelerated learning programmes as an effective mode for repeating students to follow to achieve academic success, given the various benefits. keywords: accelerated learning programme, financial accounting, first year, subsequent learning 1. introduction the shift from high school to university is a challenge that often leads to students failing their first-year modules (broos et al., 2020; mckay, o’bryan & kahu, 2021). many first-year modules act as prerequisites for subsequent modules; not passing a prerequisite can thus lead to delays in completing degrees. within the south african context, the universally accepted challenging first-year transition to higher education is often magnified for students from disadvantaged backgrounds; for instance, first-generation students (yorke & thomas, 2003). south african students author: mr juan m. ontong1 mr armand bruwer1 ms chrystal schonken1 affiliation: 1university of stellenbosch, south africa doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/ pie.v40i4.6469 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(4): 55-69 published: 23 december 2022 received: 22 june 2022 accepted: 1 august 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5097-8988 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0951-8397 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0447-2454 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 562022 40(4): 56-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) at university face challenges such as coming from households with limited financial resources and reliance on the national student financial aid scheme, which requires a certain number of credits to retain their funding (mckay, naidoo & simpson, 2018). the disruptions caused by load shedding, which is the term used in south africa for the rationing of electricity (bohlmann & inglesi-lotz, 2021), and the covid-19 pandemic (world health organization, 2020) created increased challenges with the swift move from residential learning to online learning (mckay et al., 2021). in the face of the challenges, tertiary institutions expected an increase in first-year repeating students and proposed various interventions to increase the success rate of the first attempt at a module. interventions to assist students in successfully navigating the first year of university studies include peer mentoring programmes, as addressed by du preez steenkamp and baard’s (2013) study, and providing additional resources in the form of extra classes such as tutorials, extra lessons, and mentoring sessions, as addressed by ontong, bruwer and dreyer (2020). these interventions, however, fall short in assisting students who, at the end of the academic year, are still unable to pass their modules. for these students, an accelerated version of the module was created. the literature is, however, limited on the effect of accelerated learning programmes on subsequent learning. this study therefore aimed to contribute to the existing literature to address this research gap. 1.1 background to the design of the first-year accounting module’s accelerated learning programme students are able to obtain grades of 0% to 100% for the first-year financial accounting module. a grade of 50% is required to pass the module. the accelerated learning programme provides an opportunity for students who failed the first-year financial accounting module to complete the module as an alternative to repeating the module over an entire year. only students who registered for the previous academic year and failed with a final grade below 50% (but at least 40%) are eligible to register for the accelerated learning programme. this therefore creates a group of students who failed the module but demonstrated a limited level of understanding of the module. the authors acknowledge the limitation in terms of the participants of this study; however, this is suggested as an area for future research. the accelerated learning programme covers the same content as the full year module and has moderated assessments of the same standard as the traditional module. participants passing the accelerated learning programme are able to register for the second-year financial accounting module, for which the first-year financial accounting module is a prerequisite. the accelerated learning programme that forms the focus of this study is a first-year financial accounting module for which the accelerated learning programme was introduced for the 2019 academic year onwards. anastasi (2007) found that accelerated learning programmes yielded similar academic performance as full-semester modules. austin and gustafson (2006) found that improved grades in accelerated learning programmes compared to traditionallength semester programmes; specifically, a four-week programme was demonstrated as being the most beneficial. eames, luttman and parker (2018) found no significant difference between candidates who attempted the certified public accountant (cpa) examination for those who completed an accelerated versus a traditional undergraduate programme. while previous studies have compared the success of students in traditional versus accelerated learning programmes (austin & gustafson, 2006; anastasi, 2007; eames et al., 2018), this study investigates the performance of students who repeated the first-year financial http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 572022 40(4): 57-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 ontong, bruwer & schonken the effectiveness of a first-year module accounting module over a full year and in an accelerated format, in a second-year module that requires the first-year module as a prerequisite, while using students who achieved the passing minimum as a control group – this is an area of limited focus in the existing literature. the first-year accelerated learning programme traditionally runs in the recess period, prior to the start of the subsequent academic year, normally for around a two-and-a-half-week period. this accelerated period allows contact hours equivalent to the hours spent on a module over an entire academic year. the content and assessment are the same in the accelerated learning programme as in the full year module. in addition, the lecturers who facilitate the accelerated learning programme remain the same as those involved in the full year module. hearing the principles a second time from the same perspective assists students to reflect on their previous learning experience. the only aspect that changes in the accelerated learning programme is that the accelerated learning programme is concentrated and a level of adult learning and high-level preparation are expected from students to include all the content in the shortened duration without condensing any of the learning material. the second-year financial accounting module is grounded in the principles taught in the first-year financial accounting module; consequently a sufficient understanding of the principles of the first-year financial accounting module is deemed crucial for success in the second-year financial accounting module (york, gibson & rankin, 2015). accelerated learning programmes result in more students passing the module and thus has a positive impact on the success rate of first-year students. accelerated learning programmes are often criticised for potentially allowing students to cram knowledge and engage in surface learning, which may affect knowledge retention (beattie, collins & mcinnes., 1997; eames et al., 2018). the intervention proposed in this study does not recommend an accelerated learning programme as an alternative for a full academic year of studies but seeks to understand whether the accelerated learning programme sufficiently prepares students, after failing a full academic year, for the subsequent secondyear accounting module. there are many student motivations for this accelerated learning programme in a first-year financial accounting module at a south african residential university. firstly, the completion of the first-year financial accounting module, referred to as the base module, is a prerequisite module for the subsequent second-year financial accounting module in the second year of studies for many students. repeating a first-year module often leads to various clashes between classes and assessments of second-year modules, which leads to students having to manage a complicated workload and potentially having to decide between assessments and success in certain modules. this research seeks to contribute to the existing literature by investigating if accelerated learning programmes, which are often critiqued in the literature (eames et al., 2018), will affect future performance in succeeding modules. the specific focus is on comparing the grades of students who attended accelerated learning programmes to the grades of students who repeated the traditional-length introductory accounting module. this study contributes to the literature and theory on accelerated learning programmes in accounting and may assist decision making by institutions regarding accelerated learning programmes by providing empirical results on the impact of accelerated learning programmes in an introductory accounting module on the subsequent performance of students in successive modules. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 582022 40(4): 58-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) the objective of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of an accelerated learning programme by analysing the performance of participating students in a subsequent module, namely a second-year financial accounting module, of which the module included in the accelerated learning programme (first-year financial accounting) is a prerequisite. the analysis of the accelerated learning programmes was performed by comparing all the students included in the programme, referred to as group 1, to two other student groups, namely group 2, students who failed the first-year financial accounting module and repeated the module for an entire subsequent academic year, and group 3, students who passed first-year financial accounting with an overall final grade of 50%. group 3 was considered a control group to assist in understanding whether there is a difference between students who repeat the module in an accelerated and the traditional format. consequently, two research questions were identified: • research question 1: does the grade of the second-year module differ significantly for students of the accelerated learning programme versus students who repeated the full year module? • research question 2: is there a difference between the final grades obtained for the three groups in the second-year financial accounting module, adjusting for the students’ performance in the first-year financial accounting module? 2. literature review the literature review commences with defining student success in order to frame what constitutes success in terms of an accelerated learning programme. secondly, the review investigates theories on deep learning versus surface learning constructs. finally, the literature review concludes with a review of the effect of future performance on subsequent modules when considering an accelerated learning programme. 2.1 academic success following an accelerated learning programme academic success is a widely used term in educational research in higher education although it has no distinct definition (york et al., 2015). in their aim to provide a more precise definition of academic success, york et al. (2015) performed a literature review of the term “academic success” in higher education. york et al. (2015) included 31 research articles in their review and found academic achievement in the specific module to be the most prevalent metric used in the literature to measure academic success. specifically, in 21 (67.7%) of the research articles, academic achievement in the form of grade point averages and grades was used as a measure of academic success. there is often a lack of consideration of the impact of passing one module on a subsequent module’s grades. this is problematic as researchers often use the term “academic success” when only one narrow metric, namely academic achievement in a specific module is considered (york et al., 2015). this study focused on the academic success in a second-year financial module, considering previous academic success in the prerequisite first-year financial module, which therefore contributes to existing literature on academic success. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 592022 40(4): 59-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 ontong, bruwer & schonken the effectiveness of a first-year module 2.2 theories on deep learning versus surface learning constructs in accelerated learning programmes york et al. (2015) provide a theoretically grounded definition of academic success, of which academic achievement is one of six components, namely (1) academic achievement, (2) satisfaction, (3) acquisition of skills and competencies, (4) persistence, (5) attainment of learning objectives, and (6) career success. york et al. (2015) found academic achievement to be a proxy for the achievement of learning and the attainment of skills and competencies. this study uses academic achievement to evaluate the acquisition of skills and competencies and the attainment of learning objectives. this study considers the principle that academic achievement in an accelerated learning programme is not purely academic achievement in the form of passing a module but also the acquisition of skills and competencies and the attainment of learning objectives, which will be used in a subsequent module. academic achievement is often burdened by the argument that in an accelerated learning programme, students are able to, on a short-term memory basis, do surface learning in order to study the work that will be assessed (beattie et al., 1997; eames et al., 2018). this study contributes to the existing literature by evaluating whether an accelerated learning programme can provide academic success, as measured through deep learning. eames et al. (2018) point out that accelerated programmes give students less time to absorb and internalise concepts, which often requires critically analysing information and large volumes of technical material. it is thus important to understand the efficacy of accelerated programmes within the accounting field of study (beattie et al., 1997; eames et al., 2018). beattie et al. (1997) provide an overview of the literature on deep learning versus surface learning and specifically highlight the need for empirical research into these in accounting education. deep learning refers to learning with understanding, as opposed to surface learning, i.e., rote learning (beattie et al., 1997). the authors argue that the deep learning versus surface learning literature often oversimplifies these in opposing the learning approaches in two ways (beattie et al., 1997). firstly, the specific context in which the deep versus surface learning distinction is made needs to be defined as aspects of learning (beattie et al., 1997). beattie et al. (1997) also argue that one cannot assume that a deep learning approach is always preferred as the nature of the knowledge that one wishes to learn dictates whether deep learning or surface learning is required. secondly, deep learning versus surface learning is only one of the components that affects a student’s learning orientation (beattie et al., 1997). as such, several learning orientations, which refer to the learning style and learning approach, rather than only two approaches, i.e., deep learning versus surface learning, provide insights into students’ learning processes (beattie et al., 1997). beattie et al. (1997) highlight the need for empirical research on accounting education in terms of these matters. as this study focuses on a second-year financial accounting module and the population of the study only focused on students who need the base module as a prerequisite for the subsequent year of study, students who applied surface learning to pass were removed from the study. it is, however, necessary to consider whether students who have limited time still take into account the need for deep learning in their learning process during an accelerated learning programme. beattie et al. (1997) argue that, in order to move towards a more conceptual form of learning, rather than a procedural form of learning, deep learning rather than surface learning is required for accounting education. in the call for empirical research into deep learning http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 602022 40(4): 60-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) versus surface learning in accounting education, beattie et al. (1997) note that accounting often attracts reproducing (surface) learning and achievement orientated students. dolmans et al. (2016) provide an overview of the literature regarding deep learning versus surface learning with regard to problem-based learning. from reviewing 21 studies, dolmans et al. (2016) concluded that problem-based learning did seem to enhance deep learning only, although the studies included in the review provided conflicting results. dolmans et al. (2016) further concluded that further research into the effect of problem-based learning on deep learning over longer periods of time and using high-quality measuring instruments is needed. during written assessments, students’ conceptual understanding of the accounting subject matter is assessed and since the focus of the accelerated learning programme is on the concepts that students struggle with the most, one can conclude that, as noted by beattie et al. (1997), deep learning is considered to be the required form of learning for the introductory accounting module. furthermore, since students need to approach the accelerated learning programme with their prior knowledge of completing the introductory accounting module, although unsuccessfully, and bearing in mind the concepts with which they struggled the most, it is concluded that deep learning occurs. 2.3 the effect of an accelerated learning programme on future performance in order to address the declining number of candidates who attempt the cpa examination in the united states of america, santa clara university introduced accelerated accounting certificate programmes in order to increase opportunities for students to attempt the cpa examination (eames et al., 2018). when studying the candidates who completed the accelerated accounting certificate programmes versus candidates who completed an undergraduate accounting programme, eames et al. (2018) found no significant difference between the candidates in terms of passing the cpa examination or the number of attempts required to pass the cpa examination. from eames et al.’s (2018) results, one can infer that deep learning, as described by beattie et al. (1997), did in fact take place in the accelerated accounting certificate programme. this study differs from eames et al.’s (2018) research, which addressed the results of a professional examination, whereas this study aimed to analyse the results of a subsequent second-year financial accounting module. the accelerated accounting programme in eames et al.’s (2018) research also served as a substitute for an undergraduate accounting programme, whereas the accelerated learning programme in this study served as an additional programme for students who, albeit unsuccessful, completed the traditional-length programme with a minimum grade to enter the accelerated learning programme. van rooyen, ontong and mitchell (2021) investigated the perceptions of first-year accounting students regarding accelerated learning programmes for repeating students. contrary to previous literature, the authors found that the accounting students had an overall positive perception of accelerated learning programmes with regard to finance-related modules as the perceived benefits of accelerated learning programmes outweighed their costs (van rooyen et al., 2021). the main perceived benefit of completing an accelerated learning programme was not having to repeat the module in a subsequent academic year and thus reducing the students’ second-year workload. the literature is limited in terms of examining the effect of repeating a previously failed module on an accelerated basis rather than a traditional-length module. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 612022 40(4): 61-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 ontong, bruwer & schonken the effectiveness of a first-year module 3. methodology the research project will be based on the positivist paradigm of exploring social reality which is centred on the idea that one can best gain an understanding of behaviour through observation and reason. a deductive approach will be followed using archival research which is grounded in theory. a quantitative research approach, using a longitudinal approach over a period of two years. in order to answer the research questions, quantitative data in the form of class lists and final grades were obtained. the sample in the research study comprised all students enrolled in the second-year financial accounting module in the 2020 and 2021 academic years, and either enrolled in the first financial accounting accelerated learning programme during january 2020 or january 2021, or who repeated the first-year financial accounting module preceding enrolment in the second-year financial accounting module. as a control group, students who obtained an exact grade of 50%, which constitutes a pass grade in the first-year financial accounting module, were also included in the sample. in order to answer research question 1, this study analysed the final module grades of the students through the use of parametric test, namely an analysis of variance (anova), as well as a further evaluation of the module grades of the subsequent learning modules through the use of analysis of covariance (ancova). to enable the researchers to apply the parametric tests the data needs to conform to the requirement of normality. due to the spread of grades of the students, a result of multi-peaked data was obtained through the test of normality. in order to normalise the data an angular transformation was performed to obtain the arcsine transformed values of the data. the results of the parametric tests using the arcsine data was similar to the original data thus the data results were used in the result discussion. the data results as presented in a grade format is a clearer interpretation of the results as the interpretation of the arcsine values could lead to misinterpretation of the spread of the results. the grades for the first-year financial accounting module, as well as the accelerated programme and second-year financial accounting module, were used in the analysis. anova was applied to evaluate the variance between the grades for the base module, first-year financial accounting, and the grades obtained during subsequent learning in the second-year financial accounting module as the study focused on the subsequent performance per group, which was performed in a similar manner as the study conducted by anastasi (2007). to evaluate the difference in variance of the groups, fisher’s least significant difference (lsd) test was performed. a 95% confidence level was used and all items with p-values of <0.05 were deemed statistically significant. in addition to using anova to evaluate the performance, and changes thereto, ancova was used to evaluate the difference in the performance of the groups in the population in the subsequent learning module while considering the base module as the covariant. 4. results the presentation of the results commences with a descriptive analysis of the sample, followed by the results of the anova, and conclude with the results from the ancova. 4.1 descriptive analysis the descriptive analysis of the final grades achieved by the sample as divided into the three groups are presented in table 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 622022 40(4): 62-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) table 1: student performance measured through final module grades category n mean std. err. first-year financial accounting grade in the year of passing the module secondyear financial accounting final grade first-year financial accounting in the year of passing the module secondyear financial accounting final grade group 1: students who participated in the accelerated learning programme 15 63.40% 40.8% 1.61% 5.05% group 2: students who failed the module and repeated the first-year module over an equivalent length of time 33 59.61% 44.21% 1.08% 3.40% group 3: students who passed the first-year module with a final grade of 50% (without repeating it or participating in the accelerated learning programme) 75 50.00% 47.33% 0.71% 2.26% from the table above the population of the different groups, group 1 (n = 15), group 2 (n = 33), group 3 (n = 75), are noted. to evaluate whether the results presented are sufficiently large enough to obtain reputable results from the statistical tests the statistical power of the test was evaluated. the results of the comparison of the different groups and the different modules indicated a statistical power of 0.9842. the observed power of the statistical tests performed as described in the methodology was above 0.8 and it is considered that the data is sufficient for statistical analysis. from table 1, it is noted that the mean final grade of the students who participated in the accelerated learning programme was 63.4% for the first-year module, while the other groups did not achieve a similar result above 60%. this suggests that attending the accelerated learning programme results in an overall basis in higher grades for the first-year module compared to students who repeated the module over an entire year. as group 3 was used as the control group, the mean of 50% will not be analysed further. it is, however, noted that while group 1 had the highest mean in the first-year financial accounting module, the group returned to having the lowest mean module grade in the subsequent second-year module, while the group that repeated the first module over the entire year also experienced a significant drop in the mean grade achieved when comparing the firstand second-year financial accounting module grades. the results suggest a reflection of the learning approach in accounting, as suggested by beattie et al. (1997), who state that a form of surface learning occurs during the accelerated learning programme intervention and that deep learning, which may be required in order to be successful in the second-year financial accounting module, may not have taken place. this occurrence is evaluated further in the second section of the results where the impact that the results of the first-year financial accounting module performance could have on subsequent performance is isolated through the use of the ancova. the change in the module grades, as well as the difference between the different groups, will be evaluated for significance of the changes further in the next section. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 632022 40(4): 63-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 ontong, bruwer & schonken the effectiveness of a first-year module 4.2 statistical analysis of academic achievement in the subsequent year module a repeated-measures anova was performed to analyse the change in the final module grades of the first-year and subsequent second-year financial accounting module. the results are presented in table 2. table 2: change in final module grades, including the p-value of fisher’s lsd test category first-year financial accounting grade in the period of passing the module second-year financial accounting final grade p-value group 1 63.40% 40.80% 0.000*** group 2 59.61% 44.21% 0.000*** group 3 50.00% 47.33% 0.219 from the results in table 2 it is noted that the decrease in the grades of groups 1 and 2 is considered to be significant (p-values <0.05) in both scenarios, which suggests that neither repeating the first-year financial accounting module nor the use of an accelerated learning programme is given a final grade in the first-year financial accounting module that could accurately predict their performance in the second-year financial accounting module. this suggests that students who must repeat the first-year financial accounting module should, on average, expect a significant decrease in their final grades for the second-year financial accounting module. the control group, however, did not experience a significant change in their final grades for the first-year financial accounting grade versus their second-year financial accounting grade, as the p-value amounted to 0.219. the results discussed above regarding the change from firstto second-year financial accounting grades are presented in figure 1. significance (p-values <0.05) is displayed via the plot-point items having corresponding letters assigned to them on the anova graph. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 642022 40(4): 64-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) current effect: f(2, 120)=10.134, p=.00009 effective hypothesis decomposition vertical bars denote 0.95 confidence intervals group 3 group 1 group 2first-year module second year-module 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 70 75 b bc a c a bc figure 1: graphical representation of the results of the anova for the change in final module grades from figure 1 it is evident that the module grades of the first-year financial accounting module for groups 1 and 2 are significantly different than those of the control group. both groups 1 and 2 had a consistent a-indicator, while the control group had a differing b-indicator. it is, however, noted that the change from an indicator a-level to the b-level and bc-level in the subsequent module shows a significant decrease in the final module grades of groups 1 and 2. furthermore, it could be suggested that the accelerated learning programme is the least successful in preparing students for the subsequent second-year financial accounting module as the students of group 1 experienced the largest decrease in their secondyear financial accounting grades. the similarity of the c-indicator in the module grades of the second-year financial accounting module for all three groups indicates that there was no significant difference in the final results. this could suggest that with both the use of an accelerated learning programme and repeating a module, there is no significant difference in the academic performance of the different students in the subsequent module. to evaluate whether the study reflects eames et al.’s (2018) results, a further evaluation was performed. while acknowledging that both groups attending the accelerated learning programme, as well as the students who repeated the first-year financial accounting module, have experienced a significant decrease in grades, the results of the evaluation, regarding whether the final module grade after the decrease was significantly different, are reflected in fisher’s lsd analysis as presented in table 3. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 652022 40(4): 65-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 ontong, bruwer & schonken the effectiveness of a first-year module table 3: fisher’s lsd test indicating the significance of differences between final secondyear financial accounting module grades group second-year financial accounting mean grade group 1 group 2 group 3 group 1 40.80% 0.4509 0.1127 group 2 44.21% 0.4509 0.3042 group 3 47.33% 0.1127 0.3042 as shown in table 3, there is no significant difference in the performance of the students of the different groups in the subsequent module and the intervention therefore does not impact on the students’ academic performance. this reflects the results as found by anastasi (2007). as all the groups reflected an average final module grade of below 50%, the pass rate of the different groups in the subsequent module was compared, as shown in table 4. 4.3 statistical analysis of academic success, measured through pass rates in the second-year financial accounting module in order to answer research question 2, the students’ academic success in the subsequent second-year financial accounting module was analysed. we first compare pass rates per group and follow by further statistical analysis of the results. table 4: pass rates of students in the second-year financial accounting module group n second-year financial accounting module pass rate group 1 15 46.67% group 2 33 57.57% group 3 75 69.33% from the pass rate analysis, it is evident that while the mean final grade in the secondyear financial accounting module was below 50% for all three groups, the pass rates of the second-year financial accounting module were 46.67% for the group that attended the accelerated learning programme, 57.57% for the group that repeated the first-year financial accounting module, and 69.33% for the control group. while these results suggest a lower success rate for the accelerated learning programme, an evaluation was further performed by taking into account the size difference in the population of the different groups, as well as the impact that academic performance and learning in the first-year module could have on future academic performance. to evaluate whether a form of deeper learning occurred, the students’ grades for the second-year financial accounting module were evaluated through ancova. the ancova used the academic achievement of the students in the three different groups in the base module as a covariant, considering the impact of prior academic achievement on subsequent academic achievement. the study included the principles of york et al. (2015), who address controlling for the impact of base module academic achievement on subsequent module success. using the ancova, the mean of the groups was recalculated using the final module grades in the second-year module and the base first-year module as the covariate. the ancova therefore aimed to evaluate whether the format of learning, either repeating the module or attending the accelerated learning programme, affected the students’ performance in the http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 662022 40(4): 66-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) subsequent second-year financial accounting module; excluding the impact of the students’ final grades for the base first-year financial accounting module. if the effect of the base firstyear financial accounting module is statistically removed from the analysis, the effect of the intervention is more evident through the calculation of the estimated marginal means, as shown in table 5. table 5: student performance mean final grade adjusted for covariate category n adjusted mean pre-adjusted mean second-year financial accounting second-year financial accounting group 1 15 34.69% 40.80% group 2 33 40.50% 44.21% group 3 75 50.47% 47.33% from the results shown in table 5, it is suggested that while the grades as shown in table 2 for group 1 in the base-year module were higher than that of group 2, this could indicate that the academic performance achieved in the base-year module could be due to possible surface learning and the absence or limited occurrence of deep learning. this would thus not lead to improved academic performance in the subsequent second-year financial accounting module as is evident in the lower adjusted mean after the first-year financial accounting results are controlled for; 34.69% of group 1 when compared to the adjusted mean of 40.50% of group 2. these estimated marginal means were compared in an lsd test and the returned p-value of 0.33 indicates that while a difference of 5.80% is noted between the final module grades, the difference between the two groups is not considered to be significant. the overlapping of the confidence intervals of the adjusted means is indicated in figure 2. http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 672022 40(4): 67-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 ontong, bruwer & schonken the effectiveness of a first-year module figure 2: graphical representation of the results of the ancova for the final module grades in the subsequent second-year financial accounting module, while controlling for the base first-year financial accounting module the impact of the academic achievement in the first-year financial accounting module in its various forms on the grades achieved in the subsequent second-year financial accounting module is evident when considering the differences between the accelerated learning programme and the repetition of the full academic year as a means to pass the first-year financial accounting module. the impact of the duration would be the first consideration as the students in group 1 attended the accelerated learning programme for two and a half weeks, while the students in group 2 repeated the module in a full academic year. in addition, students who attend the accelerated learning programme are expected to work through certain parts of the content before the accelerated learning programme commences. this programme’s main focus is similar to the year module, but it allows students the opportunity of dedicated teaching and learning for a short period, while the students who repeat the module receive guidance on the content throughout the academic year and complete the module in conjunction with other modules. as this study was programme focused and not student-focused, individual student characteristics and other contextual factors that drive student learning orientation, as pointed out by beattie et al. (1997), could not be controlled for. as illustrated by figure 2, the results indicate that there is no significant difference in the students’ performance (f(2,12) = 3.53, p = 0.03) in a subsequent second-year financial accounting module among the three different study groups. thus, regardless of the form of learning, the academic performance in the subsequent module was similar and not statistically http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 682022 40(4): 68-69 http://dx.doi.org/10.38140/pie.v40i4.6469 perspectives in education 2022: 40(4) different. it is, however, noteworthy that the sharp decrease in the mean of group 1, the group that attended the accelerated learning programme, after controlling for the performance in the base module, could suggest that a form of surface learning took place during the shorter duration of the accelerated learning programme, which is consistent with dolmans et al.’s (2016) results. 5. conclusion the results of this study suggest that the performance of students in a subsequent secondyear financial accounting module is not significantly different for repeating students regardless of failing the first-year module and having to repeat the accelerated or year-long module. although all students, regardless of the programme followed, experienced a significant decrease in academic performance from the first-year module to the second-year module, and while students who repeated the first-year module over an entire year achieved a higher pass rate than the students who attended the accelerated learning programme, the final results of the subsequent second-year module for both groups after controlling for population size and performance were not significantly different. thus, based on the results, it is suggested that an accelerated learning programme that aims to allow students to repeat a module in an accelerated instead of a traditional repetition mode is an appropriate and effective alternative. the results from this study could, however, suggest that the skills acquired or objectives achieved in the base module are not different for the two groups in the study; however, the final module mean grade could suggest that neither of the groups achieved the objectives. the results on an accelerated learning programme in accounting could thus imply that while it could address the cross-over from a base module to a subsequent module without requiring a full academic year repetition, the aimed objectives need to be highlighted and addressed in the accelerated programme. module planners of accelerated programmes should critically evaluate whether the aimed objectives and skills required in the base module are not only addressed by the programme but also taken into account in assessments that determine a student’s access to subsequent programmes. ethical considerations and declaration of interest this article followed all ethical standards for research of the humanities and social sciences research ethics committee at the 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https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---11-march-2020 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/pare/vol20/iss1/5 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/pare/vol20/iss1/5 https://doi.org/10.1080/13600800305737 https://doi.org/10.1080/13600800305737 _hlk99445649 _hlk99448830 _hlk99449064 _hlk99449208 _hlk99449773 _hlk99610387 rudi _hlk99523347 _hlk99524980 101perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 learning to teach in south africa wa lly mo rr o w r ev iew ed b y m a u r een ro b in so n in the decade between 1989 and 2000 south african underwent profound political and educational change. as the introduction to the book, learning to teach in south africa reminds us, the period included the release of n elson m andela, the first two democratic elections, and the adoption of the constitution. it also saw the launch and review of curriculum 2005 and the promulgation of the norm s and standards for educators. during this period w ally m orrow wrote 11 essays, all from the viewpoint of the truly engaged intellectual (with one essay being written later in 2005). t hese have been compiled in a volume that combines the conceptual with the practical, the historical with the prophetic, the analytic with the anecdotal, and which, in its own piercing style, offers a penetra ting comment on the times. t he 11 essays are roughly divided into three interweaving themes, namely, teaching, teacher education and issues of relativism and multiculturalism. t hroughout the discussion of these themes a few central points are reiterated, encapsulated in the following quotes: • “w e need to retrieve a sense of the centrality of teaching” (p. 2) • “t he task of professional teachers is, centrally, to organize systematic learning that kind of learning which leads to epistemological access” (p. 3) • “… without a shared moral discourse it is not possible to have a significant discussion on the aims of education” (p. 142). t he argument for retrieving the centrality of teaching is captured most directly in essay 6, entitled, in m orrow’s inimitable crisp style, “w hat is teachers’ work?” here he argues that the sensible idea underpinning outcomes based education, that “what matters at the end of the day is what learners learn” is unfortunately “suffocatingly wrapped in a range of other matters, which, piled on top of each other, take the workload of teachers towards impossibility” (p. 94). t he suffocating wrapping he refers to includes continuous assessment, often manifested as an “unbroken stream of tests, pro jects, exercises that merely spread the misery”, the challenge of learner centred education for tea chers who may have a couple of hundred learners, and the seven roles of the teacher in the norm s and standards for educators that “inflate the work of teachers beyond the capacity of all but the exceptionally talented and obsessively committed” (p. 96). t he burden is compounded by the ex tensive care giving functions that teachers are often expected to perform; m orrow argues that it would be more effective to leave this task to others and to let teachers do what they have been em ployed to do, namely, to teach. t he refrain of teaching being essentially to “organize systematic learning” echoes throughout the book. an apparently simple concept, it takes on depth and resonance in its application through practical examples. so, for instance, in an essay written in august 1994, three months after the first democratic elections, he argued that “it would be an error for us to think that political measures are going to be a sufficient remedy [for our ills] … k ey agents in the success of any schooling system are the professional teachers who work in it” (p. 29). indeed, 15 years later, this warning continues to ring true, as the matric results disappoint once again and the 2009 budget allocates funds to set up a national unit for teacher accountability. m orrow’s call for teacher professionalism and systematic learning is not couched in an idea listic co ncept of schooling or society. on the contrary, essay 4, delivered in 1999 to a un esco colloquium in paris, vividly illustrates the devastating conditions of basic education in south africa at the time, with crime, unemployment, high rates of hiv, slums and illiteracy prevailing. w here such contexts are matched by endemic disorder in schools, irregular attendance o f teachers and learners and lack of routine, together with teaching that demands nothing more than simple data 102 perspectives in education, volume 28(1), march 2010 recall, learners, he argues, stand little chance of breaking through their cycle of poverty. m orrow’s writing, while strongly concep tual, is not the work of an armchair critic or philo sopher, content to pronounce on what should be. for three years during the period when no essays were written, he chaired the m inisterial committee on t eacher education which produced a report entitled a national fram ework for teacher education in south africa (20 05 ). in these recom mendations he gives practical shap e to some of the views espoused in the essays. t hus we read recommendation a1: retrieve the word ‘teaching’, understand it as the practice of organizing systematic learning, and relocate it at the heart of how we think about, plan and organize the education system (p. 101). essay 11 deals with the thorny issue of the politics of difference in south african education. m orrow argues that the politics of difference, where individual identity is dependent on group iden tity, can flourish in relatively secure and stable societies. in a society like south africa, he argues, we would be better served by a politics of equal dignity, “with its commitment to the presumption that all people are potential participants in the discourses of reason” (p. 195). m anifestations of the politics of difference, like affirmative action and calls to ‘pass o ne, pass all’, he argues, do not do justice to the learners of the country since “those [disadvantaged] communities are hardly likely to be benefited by licencing teachers ill prepared for their professional responsibilities” (p. 188). w ith these strong views, the book offers an excellent base to take this discussion forward. t his review would not be true to the spirit of the book and its author if it did not raise some points of debate. one of these draws on the strong distinction that m orrow makes between the different goals and disciplinary sources of “academic” and “professional” education. if we accept this distinction, one could ask who the audience of the essays is meant to be. t he “academic” reader seeking a literature review or empirical findings could be disappointed. equally disappointed would be the “professional” reader seeking clear tips for action. and yet, both would probably be fasci nated by the way in which m orrow himself crosses this so called divide, arguing that “theorizing about teaching is one of the principal ways of improving the practice” (p. 15). few educationists in south africa have so ably and sharply commented on this era of our history and the ideas penned in learning to teach in south africa have had a lasting impact on a generation of scholars and teachers. t hese ideas include the distinction between formal and episte mological access to learning, the call for a shared moral discourse on the aims of education and the acknowledgment that large class teaching is a reality in south africa. w ith the publication of these essays, we have an excellent testament to one of the most influential contributors to education in our country. m aureen robinson 50 the effectiveness of students redrafting continuous assessment tasks: the pivotal role of tutors and feedback cecilia dube university of johannesburg sandra kane university of johannesburg miriam lear university of johannesburg in order to improve academic language competence, students in two academic literacy modules at the university of johannesburg were given opportunities to resubmit continuous assessment tasks utilising tutor feedback to improve performance. despite the potential benefits to the students, not all of them were taking advantage of this opportunity. the main purpose of this study was to establish the reasons for this and to describe a strategy that could be used to enhance learning. performance records were kept on each student to determine the number of students resubmitting and whether or not marks subsequently improved. data was also gathered through a questionnaire to establish the reasons for taking advantage or not of the opportunities provided. small group interviews were conducted to follow up on some questionnaire results. it was found that when students are provided with an opportunity to resubmit assessment tasks, they do benefit, provided that they are sufficiently motivated; clear, specific, constructive feedback is given; and tutoring is of a good quality. keywords: continuous assessment; tutor development; feedback; motivation introduction proficiency tests taken by entering first-year students at 11 south african universities between 2008 and 2009 reveal that only 47% are proficient in academic literacy (blaine, 2010). this suggests that a majority will require support in order to be successful academically. in order to assist with the transition between high school and university and, at the same time, develop those attributes deemed essential for success, various foundational courses are offered by south african universities to first-year students who are identified as underprepared, as part of ‘extended degree’ programmes. in these courses, learning is scaffolded to assist students to acquire academic language competence. this article describes a study involving two academic literacy courses at the university of johannesburg (uj) in 2009. in order to improve performance and enhance learning, students were given opportunities to redraft and resubmit continuous assessment tasks for reassessment and, possibly, higher marks. this practice of providing an opportunity to resubmit assessment tasks is not unique to uj. evidence from case studies (wesley institute, 2009; james cook university, n.d.; university of the western cape, 2003; tipperary institute, 2005), as well as research by chuck and young (2004) and alam (2004), indicates that it is practised worldwide. wherever it is found, the aim seems to be the same, namely to support student learning and progress. what differs from one institution to the next is the criteria for determining which students are allowed to resubmit tasks and whether to apply the full range of marks or place a cap (usually 50%) when marking resubmitted tasks. 51dube et al — the effectiveness of students redrafting continuous assessment tasks the present study was motivated by the fact that it was not clear why not all students were taking advantage of this opportunity to improve their performance on each worksheet. resubmissions were received each week by the tutors, but it seemed that not every student was making the expected effort. further, on occasion, resubmitted tasks were no better in quality than the original ones. some students did not resubmit any tasks. it was thus necessary to establish the effectiveness of this method. this article aims to describe a strategy that could be used to improve the academic literacy competencies of students and thus enhance student performance. it will also be explained why certain elements must be in place in order for the resubmission process to be successful. the description of this strategy is followed by an examination of factors that have an impact on the success of this process, namely motivation, utilisation of feedback and, especially, tutor competence. finally, the significance of and reasons for the importance of these other factors are discussed. theoretical framework this study was informed by theories on motivation, feedback and learning benefits of a tutor system. levy (2008) maintains that academic motivation derives largely from the social cognitive motivation theory, which posits that the role of students in the education process is (potentially) a fairly dynamic one, requiring that students take ownership of their own education and become actively involved. ahmed and bruinsma (2006) mention several other pertinent factors such as self-concept, self-determination, interest, attribution and goals. according to ahmed and bruinsma (2006, citing ryan and deci, 2000), self-determination theory postulates that behaviour is driven by intrinsic, extrinsic or even a-motivation, with the last of these being fairly synonymous with ‘learned helplessness’ and the least self-determined. this implies that only when students have a desire to learn do they engage meaningfully with learning activities. deci (1992) believes that the complex relationship between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation is influenced by other factors such as interest, competence, self-determination/autonomy, personality characteristics, cultural conventions and various situational elements. ultimately, however, intrinsically motivated students generally perform better academically than their extrinsically motivated counterparts do. also very relevant here is the “central role that social and emotional learning can play in enhancing developmental outcomes” (zins, elias & greenberg, 2003:63). this suggests that students with a solid sense of self and the concomitant emotional and social skills are more likely to be motivated and to succeed academically. some of the above factors probably influence students’ attitudes towards or understanding of their tutors’ feedback. in a process of resubmitting tasks, feedback is essential for accelerating learning and for enabling better learning outcomes (hounsell, 2004). ramaprasad (1983) and sadler (1989) maintain that quality feedback helps students recognise shortcomings in their own performance compared to the standard required and assists them in attaining that goal. the ability to acquire and apply appropriate learning strategies does not come naturally to all: it must be learned. according to gibbs and simpson (2002, citing saljo, 1982), many students have an unsophisticated surface approach to learning which hinders understanding of feedback. some feel that tutor feedback is only sometimes useful in helping them understand their marks (gibbs & simpson, 2002, citing maclellen, 2001). this appears particularly true for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, where the norm is overcrowded, under-resourced schools, an authoritarian, teacher-centred style of teaching and an emphasis on rote learning (grayson, 1996). the benefits of feedback do not depend solely on the quality of tutor feedback. gibbs, simpson and macdonald (2003) maintain that some students do not even bother to read it. such students need to be encouraged to read feedback and to use it to improve their work. in their research, gibbs, simpson and macdonald identified several approaches as helpful in focusing student attention on feedback. for example, providing feedback with no marks or using two-stage assignments, where feedback is provided for the first part but not for the second. it is clear, however, that in order to improve performance, students must actually read and then act upon the feedback given. the importance of ensuring that students understand 52 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 why they receive the marks they do and what constitutes quality work for a particular task cannot be underestimated. many students struggle with what constitutes ‘good’ work. this lack of ‘evaluative expertise’ (sadler, 1989:119), or an inability to come to a concept of quality roughly equal to that held by the tutor, constitutes a significant stumbling block for many students. in order to improve, students must develop the capability to engage in the measures required to close the gap between their own work and the desired standard. if feedback has not resulted in improved learning, gibbs, simpson and macdonald (2003) suggest several possible reasons for this. feedback might come too late to be of any real value because the student has already moved on to something else. in fact, “imperfect feedback from a fellow student provided almost immediately may have much more impact than more perfect feedback from a tutor four weeks later” (gibbs & simpson, 2002:12). alternatively, feedback might be ‘backward looking’ as opposed to ‘forward looking’ (gibbs & simpson, 2002:16). in order to be effective, feedback needs to provide guidance for future learning. furthermore, feedback might be too vague to be of any real value to the student. some students, however, might simply choose to ignore the feedback entirely, either because they do not understand it or because they assume nothing will happen to them if they decide to ignore it. well-trained tutors also play a pivotal role in the facilitation of student success (underhill & mcdonald, 2010). the major benefits of a tutor system are that tutors and students are usually peers and tutorial groups are far smaller than lecture classes. there is, therefore, a less intimidating and more informal atmosphere which is conducive to enhanced engagement, interaction, participation and concentration. research has also shown that many students are more receptive to feedback provided by peers who have been trained to peer assess than feedback provided by more ‘expert’ lecturers who are sometimes perceived as ‘overly directional’ (niven, 2009:280). in a tutor system, students can receive holistic, individualised instruction as well as considerable content clarification (goodlad, 1998). they also get the opportunity to practise nascent academic skills and are assisted to acquire the specific discourse of their discipline. tutor feedback is both more immediate and extensive – which promotes the assumption of individual responsibility for learning as well as increased confidence, motivation and commitment (topping, 1998). tutors constantly monitor students and, hence, are in a position to detect and appropriately address any learning problems. overall, the potential benefits of intellectual and psychological support by tutors are enormous (falchikov, 2001). methodology this study incorporated both quantitative and qualitative research. records of student performance and improvement were kept. in order to gather information about students’ perceptions and experience of resubmitting tasks, a questionnaire was used, followed by small group interviews. all students enrolled in two academic literacy courses on one uj campus in 2009 were targeted. the courses were language for the economic sciences (les) (a core module in the first year of an extended degree programme in the faculty of economic sciences) with 84 students and english for law (efl) (a full-credit mainstream module in the faculty of law) with 109 students. two of the authors of this study coordinated these two modules. at the beginning of the week, they each delivered a lecture on some aspect of academic literacy. this was followed by three tutorials, facilitated by tutors, in which groups of 20 to 25 students were given various tasks and worksheets aimed at applying the concepts covered in the lecture. performance records both modules employ continuous assessment which allows students’ progress to be assessed on the basis of work completed throughout the year, with a wide variety of assessment opportunities rather than final examinations. according to the relevant uj policy, traditional summative assessment opportunities in the form of examinations may be included in a continuous assessment schedule. only one of the modules, efl, had a combination of class exercises and examinations; for les, students were required only to complete class exercises. tasks in both modules consisted of short as well as more extended assignments 53dube et al — the effectiveness of students redrafting continuous assessment tasks which were marked and filed in student-compiled portfolios for final evaluation at the end of each of the four terms. the aggregated marks (which include the examination marks in efl) were then used to calculate each student’s final grade. this type of assessment also provides opportunities for extensive written feedback to be given in order to scaffold and promote learning. during the first semester, between eight and eighteen tasks were completed by students. each task was marked and returned with written feedback. at the beginning of the year, lecturers announced that any task could be resubmitted within a given time period for remarking. tutors kept a record of students’ marks for each task, as well as marks for any resubmissions. the survey a pilot study was conducted with 15 randomly selected students in les who completed the questionnaire, after which adjustments were made to it. the final survey questionnaire included the following questions: 1. did you take advantage of the opportunities to resubmit work? (students were required to answer either yes or no). 2.1 if you resubmitted work, did your marks improve? 2.2 if your marks did improve, why do you think they did? 2.3 if your marks did not improve, what do you think the reasons were for this? 3. in what ways was tutor feedback helpful/not helpful? give reasons for your answer. 4. do you think it is helpful to offer students opportunities to resubmit work? give reasons for your answer. the questionnaire was completed by 76 les students and 92 efl students. the les students completed hard copies of the survey because it was not possible to separate the research participants online from the larger cohort based on a different campus. all of the efl students were on one campus and were able to complete the questionnaire online. small group interviews three small group interviews were conducted: two with les students and one with efl students. for the first group, eight students were identified from two les tutorial groups. two students from each of the following categories were included per interview: those who took advantage of the opportunity to rework, those who did not, those whose marks improved and those whose marks did not. where possible, consideration was also given to gender and ethnic group representation. each interview was conducted by a researcher who had not had any previous contact with the students involved. the interview questions were designed based on the questionnaire results. these were: to what extent and how students understood the written feedback; how relevant and useful the feedback was; how they dealt with the feedback they did not understand; and how they incorporated the feedback into redrafting. recordings of the interviews were transcribed. data analysis the data was analysed both quantitatively and qualitatively because the researchers were interested in finding out not only the numbers of students using the opportunity to improve their performance, but also the reasons for their actions. because the responses on the questionnaires consisted of text data only, these were summarised into themes and the frequency of occurrence was established. principles of content analysis were applied, with the focus being on both ‘manifest and latent content’ (graneheim & lundman, 2004:105) in order to identify both conscious and unconscious messages conveyed by the text that was obtained through transcription of the interviews. the data was coded according to a number of ‘meaning units’ (ibid.), which were subsequently abstracted into categories and then themes: these being students’ reasons for submitting or not submitting assessment tasks, the role of feedback and the role of tutors. in order to increase the trustworthiness of the findings, all three researchers analysed the data and reached consensus on the categories as well as themes. 56 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 in both modules, the overall average improvement in marks was 16%, although results varied across the different tutorial groups. this indicates that, in most cases, participation in the redrafting process leads to improved performance (and marks). reasons for resubmitting the results from the group interviews revealed that the main reason for students’ resubmission was that of trying to attain a higher mark, as evidenced by statements such as: “for me it’s all about improving my marks.” this is unsurprising, given that there is such an emphasis on marks throughout the schooling system. however, several students expressed a desire to clarify or improve understanding of either the requirements of a specific assessment or of tasks in general. this substantiates the value of small group instruction (ideally with a maximum of 20 students), with the concomitant one-on-one interaction and provision of detailed individual feedback. there was also a perception that resubmitting work would enable students to cope better with future assessments, as shown by statements such as: “you have better skills on how to tackle the next task [sic].” such a comment emphasises the importance of scaffolding work for students. affective factors, such as self-perception, were mentioned. for example, one student stated: “the reason why i want to do better is to show myself that i can really write good in english ... so it’s like a challenge for me to do better [sic].” other students referred to their self-image/esteem and their desire to maintain their own standards. there were remarks, too, indicating strong appreciation of positive, motivating comments by tutors. this supports the findings of ahmed and bruinsma (2006) about the positive relation of intrinsic motivation and other such affective factors to student performance. reasons for not resubmitting several reasons for not resubmitting were provided. students who were satisfied with their original mark did not resubmit, as is shown by this student’s remark: “i was satisfied with my marks, so there was no reason for me to resubmit the work.” on occasion, students did resubmit, only to find that there was either no or very insignificant improvement in their mark, which was unlikely to inspire them to resubmit again. there were also instances when students received lower marks for a resubmission, which could have a demotivating effect. some students commented that no matter how hard they tried, it appeared that they would never be given full marks, as indicated by: “even if the tutor told you to follow these steps … you won’t get a total mark [sic].” the students found this frustrating and ultimately demotivating. one or two students said they had not needed to resubmit as they had obtained peer feedback before their initial submission: “once i’m done with it i ask a friend to go through it, just to see whether it makes sense. is it relevant to what i’m asked?” such peer interaction plays an important role in the development of learning communities. some students mentioned that they had ensured that they had followed instructions, so that they did not ‘lose their way’ while completing assignments, while others sought assistance at the writing centre and, having done so, worked through their tasks prior to submitting. being given insufficient time was also referred to, for example: “because when we are told that we can resubmit, they always say, but tomorrow is the last day, so …” it seems likely that this particular student had missed some classes, which caused the lack of time for additional research before redrafting. a lack of time appears to be a significant factor, because many students lack basic time management skills. one student claimed that all assessments for resubmission were given back to students simultaneously. this seems very unlikely, as resubmissions happen after each individual assessment. there also appeared to have been a lack of uniformity among tutors in the amount of time allocated for resubmission. connected to the lack of time was the pressure of work in other subjects, which increased during the year: “so when we went to term two, we were approaching the exams, so i didn’t have a lot of time like in the beginning of the year to rework my assignments and tasks.” one student claimed ignorance 57dube et al — the effectiveness of students redrafting continuous assessment tasks of the resubmission practice: “i didn’t know about this resubmission that we can actually resubmit … we are not encouraged to resubmit work.” to sum up, the main reasons given for resubmitting were to achieve higher marks or to broaden understanding: both relate strongly to affective factors such as motivation and self-esteem. students chose not to resubmit if they were satisfied with their original mark or thought they were unlikely to be given a significantly higher mark if they resubmitted. the role of feedback feedback played a major role in determining students’ responses to the opportunity to resubmit assessment tasks. some students mentioned that the feedback given was effective as it was both clear and specific; as a result, they were able to apply it directly to those parts that needed attention when redrafting a task. effective feedback also helped students understand tasks and assessment criteria better. at the same time, because it focused on both strengths and weaknesses, it served as motivation for students to do even better in the future. communication between tutors and students was thus facilitated. as one student pointed out: “it all comes back to the fact of laying a basic, a strong foundation of understanding … the main theme of the assignment.” it was only when the students were able to read and understand the feedback that they were able to use it effectively. those students who took note of the feedback and used it to guide the redrafting process were able to improve their performance. many students linked improved performance to their ability to use the tutor feedback: “i think it’s because we took into consideration all [our] tutor’s comments … [doing so] put us in advantage [sic].” however, not all students found tutor feedback effective or easy to apply. there were a few negative comments suggesting that some tutors’ comments were either not clear or not specific enough. in addition, some tutors did not individualise their feedback, so that almost everyone in the class had the same comments. students’ dissatisfaction in this regard was reflected in observations such as: “she just goes on and on, almost everybody … has the same comments, or similar comments, she just changed a word here and there.” in some cases, when students had difficulty understanding the tutor’s feedback, they sought the assistance of fellow students instead. this suggested the need to provide opportunities for peer feedback, which some students find easier to understand and relate to than that given by the less competent tutor. the role of the tutor what also emerged from the study was that the role of the tutor and level of tutor expertise were crucial to the success of this strategy. the extent to which tutors understood, ‘bought into’ and encouraged the redrafting process appeared to relate to the degree to which students in the various tutorial groups engaged with the process themselves. the quality of feedback provided by the tutors was clearly instrumental in determining whether or not students were able to evaluate their work critically and take the steps required to improve upon it. as gibbs and simpson (2002, citing maclellen, 2001) have pointed out, many students experience difficulty in understanding feedback and do not find it particularly useful in helping them understand exactly what is expected of them. although tutors do undertake training in the provision of feedback at the beginning of each academic year, it emerged that not all tutors achieve the optimum level of proficiency and that ongoing training, mentoring and supervision are required if the redrafting process is to achieve its goal of improving student performance. furthermore, it became apparent that strong facilitation skills and the ability to establish a rapport with students also have an impact on the success of this strategy. students mentioned repeatedly in the discussion groups how much they valued positive comments written by tutors about their work. this ability on the part of the tutor to encourage and use feedback in a manner that is constructive yet nonthreatening appeared to motivate students to become more engaged in the process and was more likely to lead to improvement. 58 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 conclusion the findings of this study highlight some important issues with regard to the effectiveness of a strategy designed to improve the academic language competencies of students, by using continuous assessment opportunities. overall, the resubmission process proved successful for many students. feedback was read, understood and applied effectively by some to effect those changes, which resulted in an improved piece of work. other students, however, struggled to make sense of the feedback provided by their tutors – seemingly unable to grasp how to use it to improve performance. still, other factors appeared to come into play in determining whether or not students in the study chose to participate in the redrafting process. first, the desire to achieve, learn more or simply improve oneself can be a significant motivating factor for students and this sentiment was expressed by many during the small group discussions. second, the motivation to resubmit often seemed linked to other affective factors as well, namely individual personality characteristics and self-esteem. third, feedback is an integral component of the resubmission process, provided that it is both clear and specific and comments focus not only on weaknesses but also on strengths in students’ writing. in order for it to be of use, students must actually read and attend to the feedback they receive. in the end, however, it was the role of tutors that was identified as being pivotal to the success of this approach to continuous assessment. an ability to understand and support a process approach to learning while, at the same time, communicate its importance to students was instrumental in its success (or failure). similarly, the ability of the tutor to establish rapport with students and provide timely and effective feedback also proved decisive. these findings could be of interest across disciplines wherever tutor involvement is a key component of academic programmes. to conclude, the practice of allowing students to resubmit tasks for reassessment can add value to the teaching and learning process, provided that students are sufficiently motivated, that clear, specific and constructive feedback is given and that tutoring is of a high quality. acknowledgments the authors would like to thank ms andile mamba for assistance with the 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climate of deliberation will emerge in which, ultimately, the rights of all people are recognised and respected (waghid, 2010:198-199). after a decade of implementing liberal conceptions of democratic citizenship education in public schools in south africa, questions need to be asked about its credibility and success. we commence this article by analysing the department of basic education’s (dobe, 2011) recently produced building a culture of responsibility and humanity in our schools: a guide for teachers – a practical guide for teachers that can hopefully engender democratic citizenship education in public schools. thereafter, in reference to a post-graduate teacher training programme at a south african university, we argue for a renewed and enhanced version of democratic citizenship education. keywords: education, democracy, citizenship, compassion and responsibility a guide for teachers of citizens the department of basic education’s (dobe, 2011) recently produced building a culture of responsibility and humanity in our schools: a guide for teachers – a practical guide for teachers that can hopefully engender democratic citizenship education in public schools. that is, it can be assumed that the democratic citizenship education agenda in south africa perhaps only partially succeeded in bringing about meaningful change in public schools. hence, a ‘practical guide’ is thought to be apposite to perhaps address some of the difficulties teachers had, in particular in implementing the existing democratic citizenship education agenda. and, since the new ‘practical guide’ actually provides examples of: … how a rights and responsibilities based culture can be built into school and classroom management … [and that it] further gives teachers practical examples across a number of learning areas on how to develop a variety of lessons around rights, responsibilities and values as individuals and as citizens in a democracy (dobe, 2011:iii), it would not be unreasonable to claim that democratic citizenship education in south africa has not as yet achieved favourable results, as initially envisaged by policy makers. at face value, the practical guide is a well organised, concept driven and colourful (user friendly) text using many examples of how to acquaint learners with terms and ideas in and about harnessing “responsibility and humanity”. it seems as if the practical guide is meant to make learners understand, clarify and enact ideas associated with cultivating a liberal form of democratic citizenship education. quite sophisticatedly, it seems to be presented as a practical guide that aims to guide learners in engaging in activities in and about democratic citizenship education. yet, it does not seem to come up with plausible explanations and ways for how mechanical iterations and blind patriotism can be avoided, and for safety to be responsibly ensured at schools. instead, the examples and explanations about these pertinent issues 20 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 seem to further compound the polemic about inculcating in learners a commitment towards responsibility and humanity. let us explain. first, democratic iterations are explained through the use of terms such as ‘dialogue’, ‘debate’, ‘negotiation’ and ‘discussion’. in fact, the guide’s own explanation of dialogue seems to be biased towards reaching ‘agreement’: “… an exchange of ideas and opinions on a particular issue, esp. [sic] a religious or political issue with a view to reaching an amicable agreement or settlement” (dobe, 2011:16). the practical guide not only gives a parochial understanding of dialogue, but also seems to conflate the concept with other concepts, such as debate, negotiation and discussion. considering the aforementioned explanation of dialogue, the practical guide introduces quite mechanically how learners should engage with one another, coming up with very prescriptive and anticipated prompts with the aim, of course, to make learners agree on pedagogical issues. in this sense, the practical guide does not do much to reduce or attend to the conceptual misinterpretation of democratic iterations. if it really wants to serve the purpose of a guide, it needs to couch dialogue in a practical way by making suggestions as to what learners might do or what conditions ought to be in place, without casting dialogue as some mechanical exercise that should make learners reach agreement or a settlement. of course, dialogue is not the same as debate, discussion and negotiation. if one debates and has a discussion, the outcome is not always an inevitable agreement. sometimes people debate and discuss issues with others without an agreement being reached, which does not make the dialogue superfluous. similarly, agreement cannot be a precondition for dialogue, for that would mark the end of dialogue, but rather is an outcome of dialogue. if one engages with someone with the aim of reaching some kind of agreement, the possibility exists that the agreement might be plausible but, equally, also contrived, which would possibly render the consensus and even the dialogue a mechanical procedure. instead, dialogue should be presented as a practice that allows learners to open up to one another with the possibility that they (learners) might even come to some kind of disagreement among themselves. the problem with a mechanical form of dialogue is that the possibility exists that the dialogue be ‘policed’ by teachers, who would want to see that an agreement is attained. in this way, learning to talk back might even be curtailed, because the possibility exists that one’s aspirations to be heard might prematurely be stunted because of an obligation to reach agreement. secondly, the practical guide depicts a notion of ‘storytelling’ that borders on the edge of breeding dogmatism in schools. in fact, an allegiance to uphold national symbols patriotically, yet blindly, might become exacerbated through the practical guide’s insistence that teachers tell imaginary stories and that learners listen to their stories. it is one thing to narrate a story to give learners insights into the heroic lived experiences of individuals with the aim of encouraging them, through listening, to emulate such heroic examples. however, it is another thing how the story is, in fact, narrated. teachers can convey moral lessons through storytelling, but it is the way in which the story is told that potentially stifles its promise. if learners are just being told stories, the possibility exists that they might be denied opportunities to critically evaluate stories, especially heroic ones. such forms of listening could result in learners not challenging the portrayal of heroic characters, which could lead to them accepting things blindly. (how many children heroically worship the hulk movie character without even beginning to problematize his use of excessive physical power when provoked to anger?) it could be that, through storytelling, learners actually develop a kind of passivity whereby they merely endorse heroic stories without critically disrupting the storylines. this potentially makes storytelling a debilitating pedagogical activity, especially when learners accept things blindly without questioning the underlying assumptions of the stories. simply put, the practical guide seems to prepare learners to accept things more dogmatically, thus undermining its intention to engage them or “to capture their (learners’) imagination” (dobe, 2011:44). and, if this happens (that is, stories being told in a way that actually blinds learners’ critical judgments), the fact that children are learning to become blind patriots might become of real concern for the dobe and the critical implementation of its democratic citizenship education programme. thirdly, the practical guide’s focus on teaching learners to become proponents of safety and security in schools is linked to producing both safe schools and classrooms, and environments where they (the learners) live. and the guide hopes to achieve this through teaching learners how to deal with gangsterism 21davids & waghid — re-imagining democratic citizenship education and bullying. there is nothing pernicious about teaching learners about the ills of the gangsterism and bullying that are operative in schools. however, it seems to be an ambitious demand that learners should become responsible for ensuring that the environments in which they live should be safe and secure, and free from gangsters and bullies. of course, we are not suggesting that learners should not be taught to distance themselves from gang activity and bullying, however, it is rather overwhelming and demanding to expect of learners to be responsible to prevent unsafety and insecurity in their communities. this is expecting too much of schools and learners, and too little of the state police and security. it cannot be the learners’ responsibility to ensure safe schools (although admittedly some learners do become caught up in gang-related activity). rather, the government and its agencies for security and safety have the responsibility to ensure safety and security, both in schools and in the environments in which people live. we think the practical guide overextends the responsibilities of learners by insisting that they become involved in securing safe schools and environments. in fact, such a view of responsibility, it seems, is grounded in an understanding that schools are appropriate places where community issues such as the prevention of gang violence and disrespect for the other can be taught. we think this is taking away the responsibility of families, community carers and the government to become credible agents of safety and security. if the dobe guide is meant to address some of the difficulties encountered by teachers in implementing the existing democratic citizenship education agenda, then what practical training is being provided to student teachers in preparation for their future profession? in examining the latter, we will first turn our attention to a postgraduate certificate in education (pgce) programme at a south african university, followed by an account by one of the authors of her own experiences as a student teacher. cultivating citizenship education a pgce student is taught about concepts of diversity, multiculturalism, respect for differences, fostering a classroom of deliberation and engagement, recognising the other, extending friendship, forgiveness and compassion. during the class we are able to discuss the effects of apartheid, we can imagine what it may feel like to be marginalised or oppressed, we debate on how best to include the voices of all our students, we learn how to forgive and extend compassion, and when we disagree with each other’s viewpoints we do so politely and respectfully, never maintaining that our view is the only one that matters. the majority of pgce students, however, during practice teaching, certainly at the institution where we teach, are predominantly exposed only to that which they already know. most of them attended high schools in the surrounding areas of the university. most of them grew up and continue to live in the same environment of the university. when they go out to various schools to complete the practical component of their pgce qualification, they will do so by returning to if not the very same school which they had previously attended, then a school which is indeed very similar. in other words, one which is well known to them and where they will in all probability, encounter the same type of learners that they once were. so they are seldom exposed to others who they may encounter when they actually commence training for their chosen profession, which, ultimately, means that because they have never experienced the other, they have not acquired the values and norms required to know the other. the stories and rhetoric that they will encounter at these schools will not offer them insight into anything new. but, can someone truly know or imagine the experiences of another without actually having similar experiences? can we lay claim to truly understanding love or grief if we have never experienced these emotions? by the same token, can we ever say we know what happiness feels like if we have never experienced unhappiness? if the argument is that we can only know the experience of another by also experiencing similar experiences, then what is actually being said is that because we have never experienced what the other has experienced, we can never lay claim to understanding it. this, of course, brings into question our capacity to empathise or demonstrate compassion. and it would be unwise and unreasonable to expect everyone to have had a similar or shared experience – and even if they have experienced a similar experience, their experiences thereof would not necessarily be a shared one. 22 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 so, what exactly are we saying? it is our argument that there are different ways of understanding and knowing the otherness of the other. first, from a basis of compassion, it is possible to place oneself in the position of the other and imagine the experiences and perspectives of the other. this requires that the individual temporarily engages the world from the perspective of the other. and second, by deliberately placing oneself in the position of the other, the experiences of the other becomes the actual experiences of the individual. of course, the latter is not always feasible, nor necessarily desirable, since it presumes that, in order to know what it feels like to be burned, we need to burn ourselves. however, it is feasible, and we will argue, necessary, for student teachers to actually experience teaching and learning in environments other to those from which they have emerged. we are asserting that, when it comes to the training of teachers, and this should probably be extended to other forms of public service employment (regardless of whether one’s intention is to enter the private sector), training institutions should be under obligation to expose teachers to a reasonably concise and diverse spectrum of society. when it comes to teaching it is not enough to simply talk about diversity, inequality, multiculturalism, and the legacy of apartheid on our schooling system. teaching is not confined to imparting of knowledge; teaching is a value-based practice, the core of which should be socially and morally based awareness, not only of our own condition, especially of the condition of society as a whole. by placing students in contexts of unfamiliarity and otherness, we are exposing them both to the norms and values which are being taught, and those that are not. to simply rely on the lecturer’s capacity and ability to adequately relate an experience of teaching in a broader south africa is at best naive. like the students in our pgce class, certain lecturers, too, have only been exposed to one particular brand of schooling, and within the south african experience, this is a profound comment on what lecturers do not bring to student teachers. during the first author’s own experiences as a pgce student in 1993 – a year before the country’s very first democratic elections – her first teaching practical took place at a ‘whites only’ (at that stage) afrikaner school. she was completely intimidated at the thought of having to teach in this environment, since she would be expected to teach learners from a different race group with whom she had never been allowed to learn. the choice of this school, as for other student teachers, was not her own, since she was assigned there on the basis that one of the teaching subjects was afrikaans first language. and so there was no deliberative action on the part of the university to expose her to anything different – it was a simple matter of finding a school close to the university that taught in the afrikaans medium. besides the expected top class resources and facilities, she encountered a particular type of learner. although deeply respectful of her as a teacher, they embraced and displayed a citizenship, which she knew existed, but had never experienced. during every assembly, the head prefect would walk into the hall, carrying the (old) south african flag. this was followed by a sermon from the local dominee (minister), and ended with the singing of the die stem (the national anthem at the time). on closer scrutiny, the school had numerous cultural activities and groups, which included a volkmusiek (folk music) club and an afrikaner weerstandsbeweging (awb) (afrikaner resistance movement) youth group. the first author’s discomfort and disbelief were countered only by her acute awareness that she was experiencing something that she would never have understood had she not experienced it. the spatial and teaching environment of the school were completely laced in one version of what it meant to be an afrikaner – it was tied to the numerous flags fluttering around the expansive rugby fields (there were no flags at the high school she had attended, since anything associated with the government at the time was considered racist and oppressive), it was tied to the words of the national anthem on a plaque in the school foyer, it was tied to the literature in the classrooms, it was tied to the songs being sung in the school choir, and it was tied to an identity and citizenship to which the second author had no claim and no allegiance. based on these aforementioned accounts, it becomes apparent that, inasmuch as teachers set out to mould a particular student in their classroom, teacher training programmes set out to mould a particular type of teacher. teacher training institutions, if they purport to prepare teachers to both teach and make a deliberative contribution to the society in which they operate, have a moral obligation to ensure that the teachers which they groom by the end of each pgce year, have been exposed and fully prepared for teaching in any schooling environment, and not just those with which students have been familiar, or 23davids & waghid — re-imagining democratic citizenship education with those which the institution believes their students should be familiar. to pre-decide the teaching environments of prospective teachers, is assuming that the students are incapable of operating in any other kind of environment, and perhaps more precariously, assuming that the institution does not have the responsibility of acknowledging the existence of any other types of schools, and all that they encompass and face, or worse, being unwilling to prepare its students for the full spectrum of a multicultural society. by simply re-considering the types of schools that the university sends its students to, the university will immediately extend and enhance the teaching and experience of democratic citizenship education in two critical and pedagogical ways. one is that, by sending the pgce students to a deliberately different environment from that which they have always known, the university will ensure that their students are exposed to both a greater spectrum of south african society, as well differently manifested citizenship – most likely one shrouded in hardship and disadvantage, rather than one adorned by privilege and social rights. secondly, by advocating and implementing a teacher training year, which boldly centralises an acknowledgement of a radically skewed and damaged society, the university ultimately fulfils its primary purpose of offering an enhanced preparation and contribution to society. at the core, then, of the pgce teaching is a clearly stated goal for students to get to know the otherness of the other, so that their own citizenship can begin to take on perceptible forms and evidence of recognition, understanding and compassion, and hence, responsibility. that the dobe has chosen to develop a practical guide to assist teachers to engender democratic citizenship education in public schools means that schools are, in fact, not fulfilling this brief credibly enough. taking this into consideration, we will now argue for a renewed and enhanced version of democratic citizenship education. re-imagining democratic citizenship education prevalent in benhabib’s (2002) depiction of a democratic citizen is the presumption of belonging, meaning that every inhabitant would want to be party to a citizenship which incorporates these three inter-related elements: collective identity, privileges of membership, and social rights and benefits. but, a collective identity is only plausible and sustainable if the majority of individuals that constitutes the collective want to be recognised as being a part of that collective. so, what happens when an individual is deliberately excluded from being a part of that collective, and all its accompanying privileges? can such an individual still be considered to be a citizen, or is he or she merely an inhabitant? and what can or ought to be done to ensure that (1) this type of exclusion does not occur; and (2) that the marginalised citizen becomes a fully integrated citizen, and thus have access to the privileges, and social rights and benefits of a democratic society? perhaps it may not be enough to only pay attention to the types of values and norms that a notion of citizenship espouses, but also to those values and norms that are not being taught and learned. education, says tarrant (1989:39), is an intentional enterprise – not because of empirical considerations, such as school-going age, but because of a conceptual point that education as a venture involves the prescribing of a programme of learning with the intention that certain objectives – social and political – ought thereby to be attained. to socialise someone, tarrant (1989:40-41) continues, is to introduce him or her to a particular way of life, skills and accomplishments of a particular and predetermined role. citizenship, like education, is an acquired attribute, which, in our opinion, is entirely shaped by the condition of the individual’s social, political, economical and emotional habitat. it is informed and shaped by the individual’s own historicity, from which he or she can never be divorced. in this respect, much of the connotations associated with a notion of citizenship, as they are with an ‘educated’ individual, are pre-determined by the individual experience of exposure and access, or the lack thereof. as taylor (1989:34) explains, who we are, is determined and essentially defined by what matters, and has significance to us. this means that, inasmuch as we have gone through an educational process, which has taught us the value of education and being educated, we are taught to subscribe to a particular notion of citizenship, based on our own exposure and experience thereof. our identity formation is often shaped and determined by in inward reaction to external experiences. either way, we hold the capacity to determine to which extent we wish to immerse ourselves in either systems, that is, to which extent we buy 24 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 into the value of our own educational experience, and to which extent we choose to define ourselves as citizens or in relation to a notion of citizenship. the decision-making authority that we hold in choosing how we respond to our educational experience, or how we enact our conception of citizenship is not unlike young’s (2000:5) understanding of democracy, when she describes it as “not an all-or-nothing affair, but a matter of degree; societies can vary in both the extent and the intensity of their commitment to democratic practice”. of course, what we are referring to here is the privileged position of indeed having received an education, and laying claim to a notion of citizenship. young (2000:17-18), however, is also referring to those who are not included in the discussions and the decision-making processes by virtue of their minority status or by virtue of their otherness, ultimately calling for a widening of democratic inclusion in order to counter what she labels as external exclusion and internal exclusion. if we have experienced either young’s (2000:53-54) external exclusion, which she describes as the deliberate exclusion of individuals or groups, or her more subtle internal exclusion, where we are excluded, even when we have been allowed access to procedures of decision making, then we have been exposed to and acquired at least two sets of experiences: knowledge of the experience of exclusion, and knowledge of how to exclude others, or not. we might tie these experiences into our particular understanding of a notion of citizenship. or we might decide that our experience of exclusion has, in fact stripped us of our citizenship, as might have been the experience of the apartheid system, where notions of citizenship and belonging were overtly and inhumanely linked and determined by classifications and representations of race. the concept of benhabib’s (2002) collective identity, which speaks to notions of inclusivity and unity, is then fractured not only by individual and exclusive constructions of identity, but also holds the real possibility of the re-enactments of exclusionary practices, as evidenced in rancière’s (2007:24) example of the growing tension between french nationals and immigrants in france: for example, you hate arabs because you are unemployed and they have jobs. yet again, the seductiveness of coincidences, wretched as they might be: in this hypothesis you hate because you are deprived, you exclude because you are excluded. this happens, of course. but everyday experience still teaches us that the pleasures of exclusion scarcely diminish with the comfort and stability of one’s own position. so, how, does one begin to construct a citizenship that is truly democratically inclusive, and thereby facilitates real and visible enactments of social justice? if the ultimate goal of education is the production and reproduction of the systemic norms and values of society, one of which encapsulates the notion of a ‘good’ citizen, then what is actually being worked towards is a notion of change: change so that past injustices are corrected, change so that the people know more than they knew before, change so that those who have previously been excluded will, in future, be included, change so that the ills and hatreds of the past do not repeat themselves – all of this so that all voices can lay claim to be included in a democracy. in attempting to combat the hatred and the practices of exclusion, young (2002:53) argues for three modes of political communication: (1) greeting or public acknowledgement, which she describes as a recognition of the subjectivity of the other, thereby fostering trust; (2) rhetoric, which contributes to inclusive and persuasive political communication, including situating speakers and audience in relation to one another; and (3) narrative, which counters exclusive tendencies by striving towards a dialogical understanding. roots or traces of these three modes of political communication are also found in benhabib’s (1992:78-79) call for a political agency in the form of engagement as opposed to mere reconciliation or participation in order to solve the dilemmas of modern identity and estrangement. any form of engagement would, by its nature, necessitate a form of greeting, a rhetoric, which moves the heart or engages the imagination (young, 2002:63), and a narrative through which we can understand the experience of others and counter any pre-understanding (ibid:73). cooke (2001:130) describes the pre-understandings or images we have of each other as part of the baggage that we bring to any dialogue, which can lead to what taylor (1994:25) describes as the misrecognition of others. taylor expounds that misrecognition or non-recognition can impose harm, and can be a form of oppression since it distorts someone into a reduced state of being, and a less-than form of citizenship. 25davids & waghid — re-imagining democratic citizenship education waghid (2010:20), too, argues that active participation and belonging are both conceptually connected to some form of engagement in relation to someone else. in essence, the arguments advocated by young (2002), benhabib (2002) and waghid (2010), is that meaning can only be produced when there is an other. to taylor (1989), authenticity of the self is defined through articulation (i.e. language). he asserts that, in order to understand the intimate connection between identity and recognition, close attention has to be paid to the dialogical character of the human condition. to him the dialogical character of the human condition is critical, since our identity is always defined in dialogue with others (ibid:32-33). to this end, argues taylor, the development of an ideal of inwardly generated identity provides recognition with a new importance: our own identity critically depends on our dialogical relationship with others. of interest to us, at this stage, is to what extent, if any, our identity is (mis)shaped by not having a dialogical relationship with others. we link this interest to our earlier assertion that it might not be enough to only pay attention to the types of values and norms that are being taught, but also to those values and norms that are not being taught and learnt. we also link it to tarrant’s (1989) argument that, while one is trained for an occupation, one is never trained to be critical thereof. and so we can conclude that much of our knowledge is shaped and determined by factors we are not conscious of. towards enacting our responsibility in conclusion, what ought pgce students to be taught so that their own teaching will lead to a credible form of democratic citizenship education in south african public schools. one way of doing the aforementioned is to teach pgce students some of the virtues of social justice because the latter constitutes a reason for cultivating democratic citizenship education. for young (2000:31-33), social justice comprises two ideals: (1) self-development, which entails meeting people’s needs, such as shelter, food and healthcare, depending on their need, so that they reach equal levels of capability as others, and (2) self-determination, which she defines as the ability to determine one’s actions and the condition of one’s action. another way, then, of ensuring a credible form of democratic citizenship education, is by entering the public discourse not as democratic citizens, but as participants in a debate (benhabib, 2002). as such, says benhabib, rather than participating with pre-conceived notions and principles, we create a space for intercultural dialogue, thereby creating a space for what we have in common, instead of what we do not. by meeting (greeting), understanding (rhetoric) each other in open dialogue or debate (narrative) and by creating a space for intercultural dialogue, we open up a mutual space of comparison of differing understandings of citizenship – ultimately setting the landscape for a healthy democratic society. benhabib’s argument for intercultural dialogue is not unlike rancière’s (2006) call for intellectual equality whereby we all have the right to speak, listen and understand, and therefore to interrupt so that we, and others, are never excluded. another way of ensuring credible democratic citizenship education – and here we are responding to both young (2000) and laclau’s (2001) understanding of self-determination – is that meeting (greeting) the other with credibility and countering unfounded pre-understanding (narrative) is only possible when a notion of self-determination is enacted in relation to the action or inactions of others. this means that our ability to determine our own actions and the condition of our actions should always be actioned in relation to whether it is for the collective good. our individual self-determination, therefore, should not be at odds or at the expense of the collective. conversely, the collective good is only good if it does not unfairly limit individual self-determination. this means that a credible form of democratic citizenship education can only be ensured if the collective identity to which benhabib (2002) refers, is shaped not just by the recognition of commonalities and the respecting of differences, but in the realisation that the individual is not greater than the collective, and that the individual’s right to self-determination cannot oppose or oppress the same right to self-determination among the collective. linked to the notion of a collective identity, is benhabib’s privileges of membership and exposure to social rights and benefits. but perhaps the two stipulations of privileges of membership and access to social rights and benefits are better understood when it is explained as that which informs and nurtures the collective identity, rather than separate conditions of democratic citizenship. this means that the very claim to a collective identity is in itself the privileged condition of membership, and that the right to 26 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 social benefit and rights are what constitutes democratic citizenship – premised only by a proviso that it be extended by all and to all in equal measure. in linking this to rancière’s notion of intellectual equality, what we are arguing for is that any notions or determinations of exclusion are immediately erased on the basis that there is nothing which makes one individual better or more privileged than the other. in looking at ways for a renewed and enhanced version of democratic citizenship education – one which is credible and distinct, rather than elusive – we have to, ultimately, look at the philosophical underpinnings of what shapes a citizen and how that citizenship is enacted and entrusted. when we teach pgce students to become the teachers of tomorrow’s citizens, then we are also calling for a profound teaching of the condition of humanity. we cannot divorce the teaching of democratic citizenship education from the experiences that have tarnished our south african past. and we cannot overcome it by not acknowledging and deliberating about the injustices that permeated the lives of the vast majority of south african citizens. any conversation about social justice, therefore, as any conversation about democratic citizenship education, would need to reach each individual on an individual and collective basis. only when democratic citizenship education is able to achieve this, will it be possible to reach beyond the residues of an unjust history, so that we, as a collective, can finally realise that at the core of citizenship is not identity, privileges or social benefits. all that connects is our humanity, and that all that depends on us, and that allows us to depend on others, is how we enact that humanity. to enact one’s humanity, therefore, requires that one recognises the frailties and vulnerabilities within oneself and others, and actually acts upon someone else’s vulnerability. in other words, recognising another’s humanity implies that one does not begin to ostracise or sever ties with others. cavell (1979:433) posits that, related to one’s connection with the other is the view that one has to acknowledge humanity in the other, of which the basis for such action lies in oneself. a teacher’s relationship with learners ought to be shaped by an acknowledgement that they be considered as fellow human beings. in acknowledging others as human beings worthy of respect, one should simultaneously acknowledge oneself as a person who should exercise respect. this is what we think cavell (1979:435) has in mind when he claims: [a]nother may be owed acknowledgement simply on the ground of his humanity, acknowledgement as a human being, for which nothing will do but my revealing myself to him [her] as a human being, unrestrictedly, as his or her sheer other, his or her fellow, his or her semblable. surely this is, if anything, nothing more than half the moralists who ever wrote have said, that others count, in our moral calculations, simply as persons; or that we have duties to others of a universal kind, duties to them apart from any particular stations we occupy. of importance to the cultivation of humanity is an understanding that one even has to engage others by doing the improbable, in this instance, learning to forgive and temporarily forget, and doing the unexpected, even though it goes against the grain of one’s beliefs. arguing in favour of ‘forgetting’ elicits all kinds of emotions. surely, as krondorfer (2008:234) argues: to speak about forgetting in the context of the holocaust, or of any genocidal atrocity for that matter, is an act bordering on immorality or, in any case, on callousness, for it seems to refuse empathy to, and acknowledgment of, the suffering of the victims. to advocate forgetting, it seems, moves dangerously close to denying the historical events and to erasing memory itself. but it is also the case, as he develops in his in-depth study dealing with holocaust remembrance and the task of oblivion, that “... scholars recognize that memory and remembrance are not uncomplicated processes but are formed and informed by individual styles, personal trauma, narrative choices, cultural forces, political agendas, and national interests” (ibid:238). he does not pair forgetting with denial and amnesia, but suggests the more neutral term of ‘oblivion’, distinguishing between wilful acts of neglect and denial (which constitute political or psychological forms of forgetting) and “unavoidable modes of memory production based on sedimenting, condensing, suppressing, and expunging lived experiences of the past” (ibid:242), which he labels ‘oblivion’. by suppressing and expunging lived experiences of the past, ‘forgetting’ assumes a different meaning. and arguing for ‘forgetting’ is to do the unexpected – that is, going against one’s wishes (not to actually forget). if we suppress our feelings of resentment towards others and momentarily expunge bad memories, we do the unexpected. this is so because we wilfully 27davids & waghid — re-imagining democratic citizenship education suppress thoughts of something horrible that had been perpetrated before. thus, forgetting something that we otherwise would not have done if we were not suppressing our bad memories of an event, amounts to doing something ‘improbable’. now that we have examined some of the challenges that confront the implementation of the dobe’s practical guide to ensure that responsibility and humanity are present in schools, we offer some thoughts on enacting our responsibility in schools. in the first instance, to be responsible implies that one possesses at least the capacity to ‘respond’ or to do something about a situation, and also the ‘ability’ or authority to change a situation – that is, to amend or improve it. cavell (1979:441) argues that being answerable/ responsible for what happens to the other means that their (the other’s) views are acknowledged, although one might not be in agreement with them. rather, one conceives the other from the other’s point of view, with which one has to engage afresh (ibid). in so doing, one does not compromise one’s relations with others, for that would mean a complete breakdown of society. one might find another group’s actions (whether of gangs or bullies) repugnant (what cavell would refer to as living my scepticism), but this does not mean that one views this group as outcasts unworthy of any form of engagement. that would be an abdication of one’s responsibility. in demonstrating one’s responsibility towards others, one immediately acknowledges one’s capacity for intimacy with others – thus limiting one’s idiosyncratic privacy. it is for this reason that cavell (1979:463) claims that “human beings do not necessarily desire isolation and incomprehension, but union or reunion, call it community”. our private actions may lead to a betterment of our communal actions. if one’s privacy remains restricted to one with the intention not to exercise one’s responsibility to others, one’s practices would remain unshared and separated from the people with whom one happens to live. so, one’s privacy opens a door through which someone else can tap into one’s thoughts – which might be of benefit to society. now, for one to be taught (as the dobe’s practical guide suggests) to enact one’s responsibility on the basis of some mechanical and uncritical (dogmatic) initiation into dialogue is tantamount to learning what it means to engage others. but then one might not get very far in connecting with others, because democratic engagement also requires that one does so critically and at times provocatively (that is belligerently). we cannot imagine engaging with bullies and gang members without being prepared to deal with the unexpected. and, to be nurtured to engage the ‘unknown’ other is to be taught also what it means to act with belligerence and distress, or at least to deal with provocation. we cannot foresee a bully not being provocative, or a gang member not being hostile and, if one has not been initiated into what it means to encounter distress and belligerence, one would not begin to enact one’s responsibility in engaging with the unexpected. to put it differently, one would not have learnt to do something about an undesirable situation – that is, to enact one’s responsibility. references benhabib s 1992 situating the self: gender, community and postmodernism in contemporary ethics. cambridge, polity press. benhabib s 2002. the claims of culture: equality and diversity in the global era. princeton, new jersey: princeton university press. cavell s 1979. the claim of reason: wittgenstein, skepticism, morality, and tragedy. oxford:clarendon press. cooke m 2001. women claim islam: creating islamic feminism through literature. london: routledge. department of basic education (dobe) 2011. building a culture of responsibility and humanity in our schools: a guide for teachers. pretoria: government printers. krondorfer b 2008. is forgetting reprehensible? holocaust remembrance and the task of oblivion. journal of religious ethics, 36(2):233-267. laclau e 2001. democracy and the question of power. constellations, 8(1):3-14. rancière j 2006. hatred of democracy. corcoran s (trans.) london & new york: verso. rancière j 2007. on the shores of politics. heron l (trans.) london & new york: verso. tarrant jm 1989. democracy and education. london: ayerbury. 28 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 taylor c 1989. sources of the self: the making of the modern identity. cambridge: cambridge university press. taylor c 1994. multiculturalism: examining the politics of recognition. new jersey, princeton university press. waghid y 2010. education, democracy and citizenship revisited: pedagogical encounters stellenbosch: sun press. young im 2000. inclusion and democracy. oxford: oxford university press. 33 emotional intelligence in learners with attention deficit disorder carol anne wootton johannesburg h e roets university of south africa this study was undertaken to analyse and evaluate the nature and quality of emotional intelligence in learners with attention deficit disorder (add), and to investigate whether their emotional intelligence was enhanced, and whether the symptoms and behaviour of these learners improved, after exposure to a programme on emotional intelligence. learners with add were identified from within a larger group of grades 4 and 5 learners. the whole group was exposed to a programme on emotional intelligence and the results were examined and compared qualitatively. at the beginning of the study, the learners with add displayed an inaccurate appraisal of their emotional intelligence as being at a higher level than that of their peer group. after exposure to a programme on emotional intelligence, these learners were able to accurately appraise their emotional intelligence. the results of this study indicate that the symptoms and behaviour of learners with add are improved after exposure to a programme on emotional intelligence. the enhancement of emotional intelligence, therefore, appears to be related to the symptoms and behaviour of learners with add. keywords: attention deficit disorder, emotional intelligence, education and emotional intelligence, paths programme introduction emotional intelligence as a construct has come under the spotlight in an increased number of publications, in terms of what it means for moral education, academic performance and, specifically, for the impact of intervention programmes on learners with special needs (durbin, klein, hayden, buckley & moerk, 2007; hartley, 2004; kristjansson, 2006; leckman & mayes, 2007; vanhatalo, 2007). research suggests that learners with attention deficit disorder (add) are more susceptible to lowered emotional efficacy, otherwise termed emotional intelligence, which may be defined, generally, as behavioural dispositions and self-perceptions related to the manner in which they recognise, process and use emotion-laden information (petrides, frederickson & furnham, 2004). this study was generally aimed at analysing and evaluating the nature of emotional intelligence as well as the different aspects of add, and how these constructs are manifested in the symptoms and behaviour of learners with add. the question explored in this article is therefore: to what extent can the enhancement of emotional intelligence alleviate the symptoms and behaviour of learners with ad/hd? exploring the concepts of emotional intelligence and attention deficit disorder emotional intelligence is a term that has gained prominence in a field that is growing rapidly. many of the definitions are complementary and propose that emotional intelligence may be conceptualised as the set of verbal and non-verbal abilities that enable individuals to generate, recognise, express, understand, and evaluate their own and others’ emotions, in order to guide thinking and action to successfully cope with the environment (bar-on, maree & elias, 2006; salovey & mayer, 1990; van rooy & viswesvaran, 2004; weare, 2006). although many closely related terms such as emotional literacy, emotional competency, 34 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 mental health, and well-being (weare, 2006) are used to explain this construct, they all seem to describe a common construct, or at least aspects related to that construct (bar-on et al., 2006). for the purposes of this study, the term ‘emotional intelligence’ will be used, which can be understood as a set of social and emotional skills that enable the individual to translate intellectual raw material into action and accomplishment (bar-on et al., 2006). there appears to be a lack of consensus about the social-emotional difficulties relative to the cognitiveacademic disabilities among learners with add, and it seems widely accepted that social cognition can be considered to be one of the most difficult areas for these learners (bauminger, edelsztein & morash, 2005). it appears that the concept of add has been in use since the turn of the 20th century (amen, 2001a; barabasz & barabasz, 1996; davison, 2001; sears & thompson, 1998). add has been part of the diagnostic and statistical manual of the american psychiatric association since its inception in 1952, albeit under different labels. the latest version of the dsm iv-r encompasses a cluster of symptoms, including a short attention span for routine tasks, distractibility, organisational problems, impulsivity, and the presence of hyperactivity in certain cases (diagnostic statistical manual of mental disorders, 1994). the diagnosis requires an accumulation of several symptoms, emphasising the fact that no single symptom is definitive of the disorder, with a typical onset by the age of seven years. there is some criticism of this diagnostic classification on the grounds that it focuses on the behavioural deficits of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity, and fails to explain the cognitive and executive functions that are associated with the disorder (barkley, 1997a). researchers state that conduct disorder is co-morbid in approximately 15 to 35% of learners with add and that these learners are at a greater risk of developing symptoms of other disorders such as substance use disorders, learning disabilities and depression (amen, 2001; cukrowicz, taylor, schatschneider & lacono, 2006). specific descriptions of the difficulties of a learner with add may be of greater benefit to providing an intervention strategy than the narrow confines of a category. during middle childhood, learners with add are not only dealing with the complex emotional behaviour typical of that stage of development, but also demonstrating social and cognitive difficulties when processing social-emotional information (bauminger et al., 2005). it seems that learners with add are often unable to understand the intentions of others or their perspective on a situation, and lack planning strategies and the ability to develop social goals (bauminger et al., 2005; gottman, katz & hooven, 1997). as far as verbal and non-verbal abilities are concerned, learners with add appear to experience difficulties with recognising and talking about their own and others’ emotions (bauminger et al., 2005). bar-on (2000) defines this even further, by including self-regard, emotional self-awareness, assertiveness, independence and self-actualisation, and includes assessment of each of these factors in the bar-on emotional quotient inventory (bar-on eq-i). the symptoms and behaviour of learners with add may be linked with both intrapersonal and interpersonal difficulties within their personal intelligence, in that they often experience difficulties understanding complex emotions, or hidden and mixed emotions, which play an important role in efficient peer interactions in middle childhood (bauminger et al., 2005; mayer & salovey, 1993; salovey & mayer, 1990). petrides et al. (2004) propose a clear conceptual distinction between two types of emotional intelligence, namely trait emotional intelligence (hereafter referred to as trait ei) and ability emotional intelligence (hereafter referred to as ability ei). trait ei is measured through self-report questionnaires, and relates to behavioural dispositions and self-perceptions. this concept incorporates dispositions that are different from the personality domain such as empathy, impulsivity and assertiveness, as well as elements of social intelligence proposed by thorndike (1920), and personal intelligence proposed by gardner (1999). trait ei has been used in this study, because it relates to the symptoms and behaviour of learners with add, and takes into account their behavioural dispositions and self-perceptions, and both their social and personal intelligence. whilst the diagnosis might be stressful to the individual and his/her family, add represents a crisis, since it often leads to a negative identity, as well as lowered self-confidence and self-esteem for the learner. one can also expect reduced academic achievement, weak social relationships, conflicted family 35wootton & roets — emotional intelligence in learners with attention deficit disorder life and poor adjustment (cukrowicz et al., 2006). outcome data suggest that between 5 and 75% of adults still show significant levels of the symptoms of add, indicating that this is a long-term dysfunction that requires immediate and effective treatment during childhood (wasserstein, 2005). if the learner with add is treated with support and nurturance, aspects of this disorder can be channelled into creative productivity, as well as helping to decrease social maladaptation which is so stressful to relationships (wasserstein, 2005). many secondary psychological problems tend to develop in relation to the primary neurological problem of add. therefore, this article focuses particularly on those problems pertaining to social and emotional intelligence. from a young age, the learner with add is exposed to repeated failures, misunderstandings, labelling, rejection, and other emotional mishaps which slowly erode his/her selfesteem and confidence (hallowell & ratey, 2002; levine, 2002). the learners with add frequently misinterpret social situations, because they experience difficulties interpreting and communicating the feeling part of language, using an appropriate tone of voice, recognising a tone in others, using a correct choice of words, or following the rhythm of language (levine, 2002). the learners with add may also find it hard to use ‘code-switching’, an essential language function, which refers to being able to converse in a different and appropriate manner depending on the situation. other critical areas in social language are the ability to use humour appropriately, to request something without alienating others, to understand and match the mood of another – using the right language – and to compliment another person to make them feel good (levine, 2002). it is of vital importance for the learners with add to learn to express their feelings accurately, and to be able to use good social language. learners with add often struggle with social feedback cues, because they misinterpret body language and facial expressions. these learners often experience difficulty with self-monitoring, thus failing to notice when they are annoying or infuriating another person, and they continue their behaviour with disastrous consequences. learners with add struggle to work in a team, in that they either dominate the team and want to be in control, or refuse to co-operate and contribute to the team, which alienates them from the group. the programme known as promoting alternative thinking strategies programme (paths), used in this study, works on recognition of body language and facial cues while, at the same time, labelling feelings and helping members to work in groups in order to act out different emotional scenarios. the aim is to improve social and emotional functioning in an attempt to lessen the symptoms and behaviour of add. ongoing brain research suggests that increased connectivity between the amygdala, which is the seat of emotional behaviour, and the cortex, which controls more cognitive thought patterns, could restore much of the harmony and balance between reason and emotion (morris & casey, 2005). previous research outlines the success of the programme in multiple contexts, and shows that the emphasis is placed on the cognitive and developmental aspects of the child (kelly, longbottom, potts & williamson, 2004). this programme has been shown to be effective in raising the levels of emotional intelligence in learners who do not have add (bar-on, 2003; greenberg, 2007; kelly et al., 2004; morris & casey, 2005; sharp, 2001; weare, 2006). the paths programme is based on the abcd (affective, behavioural, cognitive, and dynamic) model, with special emphasis on the developmental integration of affect, the vocabulary of emotion, and cognitive understanding as they relate to emotional and social competence (kelly et al., 2004). in terms of intervention, the question is whether it is possible to educate learners with add to raise their ability not only to recognise the feelings of others, but also to become more cognisant of their own emotions. bar-on (2003) discusses research which showed that emotional intelligence was enhanced after exposure to educational programmes. the two emotional intelligence competencies, which were enhanced the most after these programmes, were emotional self-awareness and empathy, and it seemed that the individuals who began the programme with the lowest eq-i scores were those who made the most progress. this is particularly encouraging in terms of this study, since it is posited that learners with add would have low scores in emotional intelligence and would, therefore, benefit from a programme aimed at improving these competencies. 36 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 procedure qualitative research, which may be defined as the different use of qualitative techniques and data-collection methods in relation to social interaction (de vos, 1998), was used in this study. a quasi-experimental research design with a purposive sampling technique was also used. the entire sample group of grades 4 and 5 learners, including the eight learners with add, completed the assessment to evaluate their emotional intelligence (bar-on eq-iyv) at the beginning and at the end of the study. the teachers of the learners with add completed the connors rating scale (ctrs-r) at the beginning and at the end of the study to determine the symptoms and behaviour of the learners with add. the researcher then conducted the semi-structured interview with the learners with add to establish their personal feelings about their symptoms and behaviour. the researcher attempted to ensure that the study can be replicated by other researchers with different subjects, and that the study will be able to inform and enhance the reader’s understanding of the subject (myers, 2000). sample in this particular study, non-probability sampling was completed without the use of randomisation. purposive sampling was used in that the researcher included in the sample group eight learners, who had been medically diagnosed with add, within the larger group of students in grades 4 and 5 at an international school in johannesburg. the predominant language is english and each grade consists of three co-educational classes with approximately 15 students in each class. (age, grade and language spoken were similar across the sample group.) these learners were diagnosed as having the most characteristics, representativeness, or typical attributes of the phenomena under study, namely the symptoms and behaviour of learners with add. two of these learners were south african, four were american, one was from saudi arabia and one was british. five of these learners were from intact marriages, two had single mothers and one was from a divorced family with a stepmother. of the eight learners with add, six showed a low academic level (50%-60%), and two learners showed an average academic level (60%-70%). none of the learners displayed high academic achievement (70%+). the general sample group consisted of 49 male learners and 29 female learners between the ages of nine and eleven, who had not been diagnosed with add. the intelligence levels of these learners were found to be average to above average as assessed by an educational psychological evaluation, entrance assessment by the school, and/or scholastic records. this group supported the literature which showed general trends in emotional intelligence after exposure to a programme on emotional intelligence. this group was also used to compare their levels of emotional intelligence with those of the learners with add, in order to gain insight into the possible enhancement of emotional intelligence, after exposure to a programme on emotional intelligence. data collection the data on learners with add was collected by means of assessments, interviews, participant observation and some interpretative enquiry. all learners completed the pre-test on the bar-on emotions quotient inventory – youth version, short version (bar-on eq-iyv s) and the post-test on the same measure. all learners received the treatment which consisted of the promoting alternate thinking strategies (paths) programme aimed at improving emotional intelligence, over a period of eight months. the eight learners who had been medically diagnosed with add were rated by the teacher, using the connors teachers rating scale – revised, long version (ctrs-r l) at the beginning and at the end of the study. the semistructured interview was used to follow up on the learners with add, after the intervention programme had been completed and they had undertaken the assessments described above. the bar-on eq-iyv (bar-on, 2003) was designed to assess the emotional intelligence of children and adolescents between the ages of seven and eighteen. this is a self-report measure, which provides an estimate of the underlying social and emotional intelligence of the individual, and is underpinned by the theoretical base of the bar-on emotions quotient inventory (bar-on eq-i). a consensus of approximately 37wootton & roets — emotional intelligence in learners with attention deficit disorder 60 studies demonstrates that the eq-iyv is a reliable, valid and robust measure of the construct involved (bar-on, 2005). a validation summary of results shows that the bar-on eq-i yv scales identify core features of emotional intelligence in children and adolescents (bar-on & parker, 2000). in this study, the connors teacher rating scale revised (ctrs-r) was used to obtain data on the students with add in the sample group. this rating scale is one of the most widely used add scales in clinical practice and adheres closely to the dsm-iv criteria, addressing a wide spectrum of add symptoms (opposition, cognitive/inattention, hyperactivity, anxious/shy, perfectionist/obsessive, social, dsm iv inattentive, dsm iv hyperactivity/impulsivity, dsm iv total), including poor self-image (wasserstein, 2005). researchers have recommended that normative-based criteria be used in addition to the categorical criteria (placing individuals into diagnostic categories) so frequently in use (barkley, 1990; connors, 2004). the connors rating scale provides such a framework by reporting on the degree and severity of the problem by means of a score on a continuous scale (connors, 2004). this is of particular importance in the context of this study, since the focus is on the degree and severity of the symptoms and behaviour of learners with add. the connors rating scale also provides a measure of functioning that is manifested overtly, as well as internal states indicative of emotional problems, psychosomatic conditions and perfectionism. because the paths curriculum is extensive and, in its entirety, covers a two-year period, it was decided to complete the first year of instruction, which would cover a 25-lesson extract, addressing feelings and relationships. the programme was applied to all the learners in the sample group. the researcher wanted to use a programme that was already shown to be successful in improving the emotional intelligence of students, so that, in this study, the aim is not to evaluate the programme, but to evaluate whether it would improve the symptoms and behaviour of learners with add. the semi-structured interview was used to follow up on the learners with add, after the intervention programme had been completed and they had undertaken the assessments described above. the semistructured interview covered the following topics: anger management; organisational skills; completion of tasks; concentration issues; restlessness; impulsivity; anxieties; sensitivities; shyness; perfectionism; friendships and socialisation; confidence, and loneliness. data analysis this data was then analysed in a systematic manner within the qualitative paradigm (de vos, 1998). results of the pre-test and post-test of emotional intelligence in terms of the traditional manner in which emotional intelligence is measured, scores on the bar-on eq-iyv should increase to show growth. as can be seen on the graph (figure 1), the learners with add, contrary to research findings, displayed an unrealistically high perception of their emotional intelligence in the pre-test and their scores decreased in the post-test. these results show that learners with add have difficulty evaluating themselves with regard to emotional intelligence, and this provides valuable insight into, and information on this group of learners. the researcher suggests that, after exposure to a programme on emotional intelligence, this group of learners became more able to evaluate themselves accurately, having developed a better awareness of their emotional intelligence. 38 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 figure 1: comparison of pre-tests and post-tests for emotional intelligence for learners with add by contrast, the larger group of learners, who do not have add, appeared to evaluate themselves accurately and in the traditionally accepted manner in the pre-test, in that their scores were initially lower and then improved after exposure to a programme on emotional intelligence (figure 2). figure 2: comparison of pre-tests and post-tests for the whole group on emotional intelligence the pre-test profiles of the learners with add on the connors rating scale (ctrs-r) showed that these learners were rated by their teachers as within the categories for add on 8 of the 9 subtests (figure 3). the post-test results of this study showed that the symptoms and behaviours of the learners with add were lowered (improved) on 7 of the 9 subtests after exposure to a programme on emotional intelligence. 39wootton & roets — emotional intelligence in learners with attention deficit disorder this shows that the learners with add improved their symptoms and behaviours of add at the end of the study. figure 3: comparison of add learners’ results in the pre-tests and post-tests for add on the semi-structured interview, the learners with add did not show agreement with either their individual teachers or their individual mothers’ perceptions of their emotional states or their symptoms and behaviour at the beginning of the study. however, these learners showed growth in self-awareness after participating in a programme on emotional intelligence, in that they were not only able to appraise themselves more accurately in this regard, but they agreed with their teachers’ perceptions of them, and also improved their symptoms and behaviours in relation to add at the end of the study. this means that the perceptions of the learners with add were in keeping with the teachers’ perceptions and their mothers’ perceptions after the programme on emotional intelligence. this would suggest the importance of exposing learners with add to programmes to enhance their emotional intelligence, since there seems to be a link with this development, and the amelioration of the symptoms and behaviour related to add. recognising the limitations while recognising the programme on emotional intelligence as an important mechanism in the enhancement of emotional intelligence in learners with add, the contribution by a complex interaction of other components such as peer influence, maturational development, teacher interaction, and the impact of other significant members of the family, is not disputed. the profile of learners with add may indicate enhancement and development of emotional intelligence after exposure to the paths programme. the researcher recognises that there is no literature to support this view and that more research is required before this phenomenon can be verified. it is more than likely that a longitudinal study on the same subjects over a longer period of time, in which they are exposed to the programme on emotional intelligence to its completion (three years), would yield more conclusive results and generate valuable longitudinal data. discussion from the findings of this study, it has become evident that the symptoms and behaviour of learners with add improved as their emotional intelligence was enhanced and developed. it is of significance that learners with add experience difficulty being able to accurately appraise themselves. whereas prevailing research shows the expectation that learners with add experience lowered emotional intelligence (and 40 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 this has been borne out by the perceptions of their mothers and teachers), these learners initially appraised themselves as having higher emotional intelligence than their peers who did not have add. however, after exposure to a programme on emotional intelligence, their growth and enhancement of emotional intelligence was shown in their ability to appraise themselves more accurately and to acknowledge their difficulties. another area of interest that was highlighted in this study is the fact that, as the emotional intelligence of these learners developed and they became more self-aware and accurate in their perceptions of themselves, there was also better congruence between their perceptions of their symptoms and behaviour relating to add and those of their teachers. although the bar-on eq-iyv is generally recognised as an accurate reflection of emotional intelligence, in the case of learners with add the results were quite unexpected. this brings into question the nature of self-report questionnaires in the case of learners who have difficulty with self-awareness. it is interesting to note that the learners who did not have add were able – in the expected manner to appraise themselves accurately on a self-report measure and to show improvement in their behaviour and symptoms after exposure to a programme on emotional intelligence, in the expected manner. this study might be replicated using an ability-based assessment which could then be linked to the academic achievement of these learners. the mixed ability assessment was better suited to this particular study, because the researcher was investigating the symptoms and behaviour of learners with add, and not their abilities; however, further research into this area might lead to interesting comparisons. conclusion it can be concluded from this study that interventions aimed at developing the emotional intelligence of learners with add would both enhance their ability to appraise themselves more accurately, and improve their behaviour and symptoms. this study has resulted in a better awareness of, and insight into how learners with add perceive themselves, and this has important implications for establishing appropriate intervention and treatment programmes. further research into the efficacy of such programmes in south african schools may be advantageous. references amen dg 2001a. healing add. the breakthrough program that allows you to see and heal the six types of add. new york: berkley. amen dg 2001b. why don’t psychiatrists look at the brain? the case for greater use of spect imaging in neuropsychiatry. neuropsychiatry reviews, 2: 1-11. american psychiatric association 1994. diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders – 4th edition (dsm-iv). washington, dc: american psychiatric association. barabasz m & barabasz a 1996. 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9: 185-211. sears w & thompson l 1995 the add book. new understandings: new approaches to parenting your child. new york: little brown & company. sharp p 2001. nurturing emotional literacy. london: david fulton. thorndike r l 1920. intelligence and its uses. harpers magazine, 140: 227-235. vanhatalo m 2007. from emotional intelligence to systems intelligence. systems intelligence in leadership and everyday life. espoo: helsinki university of technology. van rooy dl & viswesvaran c 2004. emotional intelligence: a meta-analytic investigation of predictive validity and nomological net. journal of vocational behaviour, 65: 71-95. wasserstein j 2005. diagnostic issues for adolescents and adults with adhd. jclp/in session, 61: 535-547. weare k 2006. developing the emotionally literate school. london: paul chapman. 98 mathematical literacy teachers’ engagement with contextual tasks based on personal finance sarah bansilal university of kwazulu-natal thokozani mkhwanazi university of kwazulu-natal patisizwe mahlabela department of basic education, kzn this article reports on a study carried out with a group of 108 practising mathematical literacy (ml) teachers who participated in an advanced certificate in education (ace) programme. the purpose of the qualitative study was to identify and describe the teachers’ varying levels of engagement with mathematics tools and resources. the teachers were given questions based on financial mathematics as part of a routine assessment, including questions based on other aspects of the module. their written responses to the selected test items were analysed. thereafter 13 teachers were interviewed individually with the purpose of confirming or disconfirming the categories identified by the initial script analysis. the analysis identified varying levels of skill in using the mathematics and contextual resources and tools. the study also found that success in the items required flexible participation in both the mathematics and contextual domains. keywords: mathematical literacy, ace, mathematics of finance, situative perspective, local community of mathematical literacy practice, direct problem, inverse problem, process-object duality introduction and literature review in south africa, authorities are most concerned that our past education has resulted in very low levels of numeracy in our adult population. international studies show that south african learners’ performance in mathematical literacy test items is very poor when compared to other counties (soudien, 2007) in response to this widespread problem, one of the interventions from the department of education was to introduce the subject mathematical literacy (ml) as a fundamental subject in the further education and training (fet) band in order to help develop numeracy skills among south african citizens. ml seeks to produce learners who are participating citizens, contributing workers and self-managing people (doe, 2003). its purpose is not for learners to do more mathematics, but more application and to use mathematics to make sense of the world. the department of education (doe 2003:9) defines ml as follows: mathematical literacy provides learners with an awareness and understanding of the role that mathematics plays in the modern world. mathematical literacy is a subject driven by life-related applications of mathematics. it enables learners to develop the ability and confidence to think numerically and spatially in order to interpret and critically analyse everyday solutions and to solve problems. curriculum documents emphasise that in ml, context and content should be inextricably intertwined in any teaching and learning situation: when teaching and assessing mathematical literacy, teachers should avoid teaching and assessing content in the absence of context. at the same time teachers must also concentrate on identifying and extracting from the context the underlying mathematics or ‘content’ (doe, 2007:7). the stipulation about the relationship between content and context offers us as mathematics educators an exciting opportunity to deepen our own understanding about how students engage with mathematics concepts which are embedded in real-life contexts. 99bansilal et al — mathematical literacy teachers’ engagement with contextual tasks assessment at school level in ml is guided by the ml assessment taxonomy (doe, 2007:27-28), which specifies 4 levels in the hierarchy. venkat, graven, lampen and nalube (2009) have criticised the taxonomy for a number of reasons, one of which is that “combining content (in terms of facts and procedures) and context oriented complexity within a single hierarchy appears to suggest that both these aspects become more complex together”. this is in contrast with the case of the uk subject functional mathematics where the categories suggest that these two aspects can vary independently of each other (venkat et al., 2009:46). berger, bowie and nyaumwe (2010) argue that the mathematics assessment taxonomy (doe, 2008), like other taxonomies, highlights an intrinsic difficulty of conflating cognitive level with mathematical activity. berger et al. (2010:30) state that the taxonomy assumes that cognitive level increases with the type of mathematical activity, an assumption which they question. in the taxonomy, memorisation is the lowest cognitive level, followed by routine procedures, complex procedures and finally problem-solving. it is hoped that this article, while examining students’ responses to items set within a particular context, will add insight into the issue concerning the relationship between context, mathematics content and mathematical activity and the use of the taxonomy in categorising assessment items. it is important to note that the use of contexts in ml is different from the ways in which it is used in mathematics assessment. contexts in ml demand a greater “real-life” authenticity. the emphasis of ml is on life-related applications of mathematics; the purpose is for learners to use mathematics in order to make informed decisions in everyday life. this should be done by taking contexts in real life (like the billing systems of different cellphone providers) and using mathematics to explore the meaning and implications of the information, thereby helping them make more informed decisions. it is expected that, by studying these life-related applications, learners will inculcate the habit of seeking to be more informed before they make decisions. the decision to introduce ml in all secondary schools resulted in various challenges. there were few mathematics teachers available, who understood the subject and who were willing to facilitate the subject with the fet learners. the faculty of education at the university of kwazulu-natal (ukzn) responded to the challenge by offering teachers the opportunity to enrol for an ace (ml) to upgrade or retrain themselves to teach ml. in this article, both the words “teacher” and “student” are used to describe our participants because they are practising ml teachers who are part-time university students. the study reported in this article was carried out with a group of 108 ml teachers who were studying towards an advanced certificate in education (ace). the assessment items under scrutiny were part of a module that focused on exploring mathematical applications in real-life contexts. as part of the module, the teachers studied a unit on personal finance, including aspects of bond repayments, transfer duties, simple and compound interest, and loan repayments. this article explores their engagement with two tasks based on the context of transfer duties. the tasks under scrutiny are the transfer duty formulae used to calculate the transfer duty payable to the government when one buys a house. the costs that are payable are described in different levels and can be explained as an example of a piecewise function, where each piece is defined by a separate rule or formula over a specified domain. luthuli (2000) wrote an account of real-life applications of such piecewise functions by describing how one could use integer-valued functions to derive formulae to describe them. however, this article does not intend to examine the specific algebraic formulae that can be used to represent the transfer duty rule. theoretical framework this research is underpinned by a situated learning perspective – a broad set of understandings which conceptualise the learning process as changes in participation in socially organised activity (lave, 1988). learning is located in increased access of learners to participation rather than in the acquisition of structure. situative perspectives focus on the social and contextual nature of knowledge and emphasise the notion that much of what is learnt is specific to the situation in which it is learnt. this perspective is compatible with a study of students’ engagement with ml tasks which involve the use of mathematics to solve problems arising from a real-life context. consistent with the situative perspective, greeno 100 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 (1991) describes a conceptual domain in mathematics as an environment with resources at various places in the domain (instead of the usual view of a subject matter domain as a structure of facts, concepts, principles, procedures, and phenomena that support the cognitive activities of knowing, understanding, and reasoning). to know the domain is to know one’s way around the environment and also includes the ability to recognise, find and use those resources productively (greeno, 1991:175). this perspective implies that learning can be described as the increasingly skilled use of tools and resources in the domain. our perspective is that ml is a subject that entails the use of mathematical tools and resources together with those from the contextual domain in order to solve mathematical problems which must be interpreted in the context. we therefore find it useful to examine the group of ace (ml) teachers as constituting a community that can be described as a local community of ml practice (lcmlp), in a similar manner that watson and winbourne (2008) described an lcmp as a local community of mathematical practice. similar to watson and winbourne’s notion of lcmp, the ace was structured with these goals in mind: students are engaged in ml problem-solving activities; there is public recognition of developing competence during class discussions and in assessments; the students work together towards the achievement of a common understanding; in each class there are shared ways of language, values, and tool-use; the class is constituted by the active participation of both students and tutors, and students consider themselves engaged in the ml activities. an important aspect of their participation is the communication with tutors and other students. however, unlike the lcmp described by watson and winbourne (2008), our lcmlp involves participation within two domains, namely a contextual domain and the mathematics domain, because of the nature of ml. this implies that the objects, tools and resources used to participate in the lcmlp are drawn from both domains. within any community, individual learning is an important aspect of the dynamics between the participants. in fact, bowers, cobb and mcclain (1999) demonstrated that the relationship between classroom practices and individual learners’ learning is reflexive. that is, learners contribute to the development of practices within the classroom community; these practices, in turn, constitute the immediate context for their learning. similarly, sfard introduces the term commognition, a combination of communication and cognition, and emphasises “that interpersonal communication and individual thinking are two facets of the same phenomenon” (sfard, 2008 xviii). an individual’s cognitive understanding is enhanced by communicating with other learners. as newcomers communicate with more experienced participants, they begin to use the tools and resources of the domains more appropriately; this enhances their participation as their practices become endorsed by the community. we argue that communication by text is an important element of the communication within the lcmlp and that written responses of participants serve as an important indicator of their varying skills in the use of necessary tools, thus also serving as one (but not the only) indicator of participation within the lcmlp. the written responses allow us to make inferences about the levels of the use of tools and resources found in the contextual and mathematics domains. our central research question is: what do the teachers’ responses to ml assessment tasks based on financial mathematics reveal about their skills in using tools and resources drawn from the contextual and mathematics domains? financial mathematics involves calculations based on simple and compound interest, monthly bond instalments, transfer duties, and so on. it is an area rich in opportunities to help teachers understand and make more informed decisions about their lives. this article focuses on two tasks concerning transfer duties. we are also cognisant of the fact that, in our attempt to offer students the authenticity of tasks drawn from their real-life experiences, aspects of the authenticity disappear in the transformation that takes it from a real-life experience to a class-based task. in a real-life situation, decisions are based on extraneous factors which may not be recognised by the task designers or instructors. in a classroom or examination setting, the driving force is the desire to pass the assessment by providing responses judged to be what the examiner wants. students’ desire to obtain high marks, rather than to demonstrate the ability to use mathematics and contextual tools appropriately and accurately may influence their responses to tasks. 101bansilal et al — mathematical literacy teachers’ engagement with contextual tasks methodology a naturalistic inquiry with an emphasis on interpretive dimensions was used. the goal of the researcher is to understand reality (cohen, manion & morrison, 2000). according to cohen et al. (2000), the interpretive research paradigm assumes that people’s subjective experiences are substantive and worthy of study. the sample of 108 students for the study was drawn from a group of students who are enrolled for the ace (ml). students were given questions based on financial mathematics as part of a routine classroom assessment which included questions based on other aspects of the module they were studying. this article reports on the 108 students’ responses to two specific test items described below. the teachers were drawn from different backgrounds and took part in the programme on ml. to this end, the purpose of this small-scale study reported in this article is to explore the engagement with ml tasks based on the calculation of transfer duties. we argue that students’ responses to specially designed test items can add to knowledge about their participation practices in a developing community of ml practice. the analysis of the responses can be viewed as content analysis which could be used in the analysis of educational documents and throws “additional light on the source of communication, its author, and on its intended recipients, those to whom the message is directed” (cohen et al., 2000:165). in addition, neuman (2011:323) states that content analysis is “nonreactive” because those who are being studied are not aware of that fact; therefore, “the process of placing words, messages, or symbols in a text to communicate to a reader or receiver occurs without influence from the researcher who analyses its content”. a sample of 13 students was selected to be interviewed based on their responses to assessment items across the module. individual interviews were held with the 13 students, with the purpose of confirming or disconfirming the categories identified by the initial script analysis. the purpose of the interviews was to find out more about why students responded in the manner in which they did. we distinguish between direct and inverse problems (groetsch, 1999) in this study. a direct problem is one which asks for an output, when given the input and the process. for an inverse problem, the output is given, and the problem could ask for the input or the process that led to the output. in this study the inverse problem asks for the input. the test items presented in this article are described below. the first is a direct problem and the second an inverse one. in order to analyse the mathematical demand of this task, we use the process-object duality notion to distinguish between the uses of the transfer duty rule. sfard’s (1991) process-object model1 for the learning of mathematical concepts asserts that a concept can be conceived in two fundamentally different ways: operationally when a mathematical concept is viewed as a process, and structurally when a mathematical concept is viewed as an object. sfard (1991) argues that the ability of learners to view a mathematical concept both as a process and as an object is indispensable for a full understanding of mathematics. mason’s (1989:2) description of “a delicate shift of attention [that] proceeds from seeing an expression as an expression of generality to seeing the expression as an object or property” captures the process-object movement of thought. the suggested solutions discussed in table 1 allow us to disentangle to some extent what we mean by contextual tools and the use of mathematical tools and resources. contextual tools refer to the context-specific rules, language, terminology, objects or visual mediators and reasoning used by those who interact within these contexts. the description of the context-specific rule with the three options is the contextual tool. skill in using the tool can be inferred by whether the person can identify the correct option and use the rule to calculate the transfer duty that is payable on specific houses. carrying out this procedure for question 1 is not particularly mathematically demanding and demonstrates a routine-driven use (sfard, 2008:182) of the rule, requiring the calculation of a percentage on a subtraction. the rule is applied in the form in which it is presented and the user needs to substitute the input and obtain an output. however, question 2 requires a more sophisticated object-driven use (sfard, 2008:182) of the same rule. in order for a rule, process, manipulation or transformation to be used in further processes, it needs a shift of attention by the student so that it is perceived as an object or entity that can be operated upon. such a shift will enable a student to view the entity (transfer duty payable) as the result of, but separate from the process that produced it. only when the entity is encapsulated/reified (dubinsky, 1991; sfard, 102 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 2008:44, 170; gray &tall, 1991:173) into an object (the result of the transfer duty rule) can the person carry out further transformations on the rule. thereafter the solution of the inverse transfer duty problem involves a transformation of the rule, which entails an object-driven use of the rule. table 1: test items context: the formula that is used to calculate the transfer duty, payable by a new home owner, is as follows: • for a purchase price of r0-r500 000, the transfer duty is 0%. • for a purchase price of r500 001 to r1 000 000, the transfer duty is 5% on the value above r500 000. • for a purchase price of r1 000 001 and above, the transfer duty is r25 000 + 8% of the value above r1 000 000. question solutions and comments 1. calculate the transfer duty payable on a house that is valued at r895 000. direct problem: input (purchase price) given, asked to find output (transfer duty). • identify second option as relevant to the amount of r895 000. • calculate that r895 000 is more than r500 000 by the amount of r395 000 (r895 000 – r500 000). • find 5% of r395 000= r19 750 my friend paid transfer duty of r45 280 on the house that she bought. 2. how much did her house cost? inverse problem: output (transfer duty) is given, asked to find input (purchase price). set up of equation: one solution would be to let the amount above r1000 000 be p. then r45 280 = r25 000 + 8% of p • solution of equation: r20 280 = (8/100)p p = r253 500 • cost of house = 1 000 000 + r253 500 = r1 253 500 another acceptable solution would be a series of calculations which systematically “undo” the operation in the original rule. thus basic skill in using the context rule in ml tasks can be judged by whether a person can appropriate a routine-driven use of the rule, in this case by correctly calculating the output of the context rule for particular inputs as in question 1. formulating an equation to solve an inverse problem where the output is known and the input is unknown demands a more mathematically sophisticated use of the rule by drawing on mathematics tools and resources such as equation and the percentage concept. the demonstration of such skill is evidence of what we term an object-driven use of the context-specific rule. a shift from using the contextual tool in a routine-driven to object-driven manner depends on the participants’ skill in using available mathematical resources. results this section discusses the results of both question 1 and question 2. question 1 as described in the preceding section, the solution required a routine-driven use of the context-specific rule. the responses to question 1 were classified as correct, nearly correct or misinterpretation of the context-specific rule. these categories are described below. 103bansilal et al — mathematical literacy teachers’ engagement with contextual tasks correct or nearly correct for this question there were 87 (81%) students whose responses were classified as correct because they correctly calculated the transfer duty payable on the house. two students correctly identified the first step, but did not successfully complete the calculation, because of slips with additional zeros or subtraction errors. misinterpretation of the context-specific rule we classified twelve responses as a misinterpretation of the context rule. there were several types of misinterpretation. table 2: summary of students who misinterpreted the rule eight students found 5% of the full price: house price = r895 000 r895 000 x 5% = r44 750 two students found 8% of the amount over r500 000 895 000 – 500 000 = 395 000 8% of 395 000 = 31 600 two students made other errors, e.g. 100 000 – 895 000=105 000 5% of 105 000 = 5 250 the eight responses of column 1 suggest that the students did not fully understand the instruction “the transfer duty is 5% on the value above r500 000”. this context-specific rule indicates first that 5% is the applicable tariff per cent for those amounts above r500 000, and secondly that the 5% is calculated on the difference between the full price and r500 000. when asked why he took 5% of the full amount, one student mentioned “i thought that this is this 5% ... ngicabanga ukuthi 895 ufalo [i think that it falls] under 5%”. this shows that the student only considered that part of the instruction which indicated the tariff per cent. a second student explained similarly that, since r895 000 was above r500 000, she thought she needed to use the figure of 5% in her calculation. her explanation only considered part of the contextspecific rule. the two students in column 2 misinterpreted the rule by confusing options 2 and 3. two students in column 3 made fundamental errors. in the one instance, the student took 5% of the difference between r1 000 000 and r895 000, showing that, although he opted for the relevant option, he applied the rule incorrectly. the student commented during the interview: “yes, r895 000, it is closer to r1 000 000 than r500 000, so we have to find r1 000 000 – r895 000”. this shows a misinterpretation of the context-specific rule. table 3 summarises the above discussion. table 3: summary of students’ responses to question 1 question 1 response number correct or close to correct 89 (82%) misinterpreted context rule 12 no attempt 7 total 108 the mathematics (calculation of 5% of a value) was not demanding, requiring merely a procedural application of the percentage concept after identifying the amount that had to be operated upon. in summary, for this question, the majority of the students (82%) were able to use the context-specific rule appropriately in order to calculate the transfer duty that was due, displaying a routine-driven use of the rule. however, 19 students were unable to carry out the procedure in a routine-driven manner. the engagement of twelve students, who found it difficult to make an attempt, was restricted because of a misinterpretation of the context rule which prevented them from performing the routine. their misinterpretation of the rule 104 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 also hampered their responses to question 2, with 4 of them presenting an incorrect equation and the others presenting no equation. hence, none of these students were able to work out question 2 correctly. some students indicated that their difficulties with the transfer duty rule were caused by their unfamiliarity with the real-life context of transfer duty. one student remarked: “i was not used to [this question] … i did not understand it”. these comments reveal a dilemma faced by mathematics educators. to fulfil the mandate of ml, students need opportunities to engage in real-life contexts, yet when the context is unfamiliar, their engagement is limited. in this group, the transfer duty was covered in their lectures and calculations were also discussed in class; however, it seems that this exposure was still insufficient for the twelve students (and perhaps the seven students who did not respond). question 2 this question required a more sophisticated use of the transfer duty rule, in a way that can be described as an object-driven use of the tool. the responses to this question are used to typify varying levels of mathematical skill in using the context tool. these are labelled as non-recognition of mathematical demand; incorrect set-up of equation, object-driven use but with calculation errors, and object-driven use of context rule. varying levels of skills the data allows us to distinguish between varying levels of mathematical skills in the use of the tools. knowing the domain in a situated cognition perspective includes the ability to identify, find and use the appropriate resources skilfully (greeno, 1991:175).the four blocks below illustrate that, as we move to the right, the responses indicate increasingly skilled use of the procedure starting from a non-recognition of the mathematics resources that were needed and moving towards being able to use the tools in a mathematically productive – that is, in an object-driven manner. low skills non-recognition of mathematical demand responses of 13 students (12%) who did not set up an equation → intermediate identified need for set-up of equation, but set up incorrect equation responses of 15 students (14%) who set up an inappropriate equation → object-driven with errors set up the equation appropriately, but did not compute the input correctly responses of 14 students (13%) who set up an appropriate equation but made computation errors → object-driven use of contextual tool responses of 59 students (55%) who set up and correctly solved the appropriate equation figure 1: indications of increasing mathematical skill in using the transfer duty rule as pointed out earlier, question 2 is an inverse problem and requires the identification of the unknown, an appropriate set-up of an equation, substitution into the equation, and the solution of the equation. non-recognition of mathematical demand the 13 students described in category 1 did not recognise the mathematical demand because they were unable to distinguish between a direct and an inverse problem. below are three students’ responses indicating different reasons why they did not set up the equation. 105bansilal et al — mathematical literacy teachers’ engagement with contextual tasks table 4: examples of responses considered as non-recognition of mathematical demand student a 1000 000 – 45 280 = r954 720 + 8% 1 000 000) = r1034,720 student b r1 000 000 student c property value = r45 280 x 5% + r500 000 x/100 = 45 280/100 × (100 × 0.05) x = 226 400 first, student a did not understand the question, although he understood the transfer duty rule because he was able to work out the first question. this student first subtracted the transfer duty from r1 million and then added 8% of r1 million to the result. his interview responses are translated for clarity: “i was told her house cost r1 000 000 and i was given transfer duty” showing that he thought the price of the house was r1 000 000. after some discussion, he asked: “are they asking what her house cost?”, showing that he did not originally understand the question because of his language skills. he said: “… i write so slowly so sometime i run out of time … that’s why i can’t do certain problems right”. this student did not set up an equation because he did not understand the instruction. student b, who wrote an estimated amount of r1 000 000, explained that he was optimistic after answering the first question but when he moved to the second question, things changed: i was stuck and … then maybe my problem was understanding the question correct and i must say i am not poor in maths … i realize what i did was wrong i just estimated the value and just decided to write 1million … so i need to know a correct formula that why everything was wrong if you look at my answer there is no formula there is nothing you can write. you draw a formula, you must correct substitute, you must know which are you looking for, it can be an unknown value than you need to work out in order to get the [answer] correct. so once there is no formula everything was totally wrong. this excerpt conveys the student’s frustration in trying to identify a formula he could use to work out the unknown value and he expresses why he resorted to merely estimating an answer of r1 million. he knew that he was being asked for the house price but he could not identify the mathematical resource needed to solve the problem. the third response (student c) in table 4 was classified as non-recognition of the mathematical demand. although the student used an x (unknown) in the calculation, the unknown was the output of a series of calculations. student c was unable to set up an equation to find the input. when asked to explain his strategy, he said that he “blundered” and felt he needed more practice at this kind of problem: [i need] proper practice and to do more of the exercises that will make me familiar with these problems ... because if you don’t give yourself time … you fail … in class i was understanding it very well and i told myself i have no problems here but i realized that i need to practice this. this shows that the student knew he was not familiar with the different types of problems and could not identify the difference between the two types of questions. incorrect set-up of equation a second level of mathematical skill in using the context tool was evidenced by those students who recognised that an equation was needed but who set up an inappropriate equation. table 5 presents three such examples. 106 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 table 5: examples of students who set up an incorrect equation student c (incorrect equation) t.d = 5/100 × x r45 280 = 5x/100; [not all steps captured] 4 528 000/5 = 905 600 the property costs r905 600 student d (incorrect equation) r45 280 = p +(8% of p + 25 000) [not all steps captured] p = 18 111 2,77 student e (incorrect equation) 45 280 = 25 000 + 8% (x – 500 000) [not all steps captured] x = 253 000,00 student d, who set up an equation, responded as follows when asked why she used 5%: “45 thousand is for the transfer duty … i thought that with r45 thousand i have to apply 5%”. this response shows that she misinterpreted the option at which the transfer duty was calculated, revealing that she did not access a routinedriven use of the rule, which also prevented her from progressing to using the rule in an objectdriven manner. although she recognised the need for the set-up of an equation, her set-up was influenced by the interpretation of the rule as 5% of the cost of the house. an example of a student who recognised the need for a reversal was student e, who said: “to get exactly the same price, i think is the reversing of the transfer duty to get the actual price … it goes back to that it’s a reversal thing”. this student recognised the need for a reversal strategy but found it difficult to write the appropriate equation. it is worth noting that this student got question 1 correct. therefore, it is not the interpretation of the context rule that hindered her as much as the skill of setting up the appropriate equation to capture the information. object-driven use, but with calculation errors figure 1 reveals that there were 14 students who set up the correct equation; unfortunately, they did not carry out the mathematics procedures correctly. below are two examples of such students’ responses, showing an appropriate set-up of a relevant equation, but containing algebraic manipulation errors. table 6: examples of students who made computation errors although they set up the correct equation student f 45 280 = 25 000 + 8%p 20 280 = 8p p = 2 535 p = 1 000 000 + 2 535 = r1 002 535 student g 25 000 + 8% (x – 1000 000) = 45 280 25 000 + 8x – 8 000 000 = 45 280 25 000 + 8x = 8 000 000 – 45 280 8x = 7 930 000 x = 9 912 250 we regard these 14 students as demonstrating higher levels of skills in this instance, because they showed more facility with the available resources and tools than the students who responded at the previous two categories. they set up the relevant equation, but their slips or errors in algebraic manipulation let them down. object-driven use of rule clearly, the responses of the 59 students who recognised the problem as an inverse problem and then went ahead, set up and solved an appropriate equation correctly, demonstrate a highly skilled use of the rule with respect to this particular problem. there were many constraints to using the rule in the manner required, as described in the difficulties experienced by the other students. it required a procedural understanding of the rule as well as a deep understanding of the mathematics of equations and concept of percentage, although it is possible that a student who wrote the correct solution could have learnt of the 107bansilal et al — mathematical literacy teachers’ engagement with contextual tasks procedure. an excerpt from an interview with one student who found the correct price reveals that she has a sound understanding of the mathematical resources and context tools: number one we have to check the transfer duty … there are less than 25 000 because the house which is above 1000 000 has a transfer duty of 25 000 plus 8% ... now we are able to find out the real amount of the house and including the transfer duty. we have to find the number it above because this 25 to 45. this 45 280, that was the transfer duty of the house so we have to subtract the 25 000 which is 1000 000 of the transfer duty then after that you have to calculate 20 000 remain 280 [r25 280] remain from when you minus 25 000 then after that we multiply by this times 8% which gives is 253 500 then we take 1000 000 … then the house total amount is 1 253 500”. her explanation [unedited] conveys her understanding of the systematic reversal of each step, first subtracting the r25 000 (corresponding to a price of r1 million) from the given amount of r45 280, then equating that r20 280 to 8% of the amount [above r1 million], calculating that amount as r253 000 and then finally adding the r1 million back to the calculation. summary of responses to question 2 table 7 contains a summary of the responses discussed above. table 7: summary of responses to question 2 correct 59(55%) set up an appropriate equation, but made computation errors 14 set up an inappropriate equation 15 did not set up an equation 13 no attempt 7 total 108 concluding remarks in this article we presented a summary of 108 teachers’ responses to two ml assessment items set within the context of transfer duty, one of which was a direct problem and the other an inverse problem. by considering the transfer duty rule as the contextual tool and the use of equations and the percentage concept as the mathematical tools and resources, we used sfard’s process-object theory to distinguish between a routine-driven and an object-driven use of the context rule. the written responses of the 108 students and the interview responses of 13 students were used to show varying levels of skill in the ways in which the mathematics tools and resources were activated to use the contextual tool. it is evident from tables 3 and 7 that the students found the first question easier than the second one. eighty one per cent (81%) got the first question correct while only fifty-five per cent (55%) got the second one correct: a 26 percentage point difference. we have already noted that question 1 is a direct problem (it required a substitution into a given rule), while question 2 is an inverse problem (it required the set-up and solution of the input, of an equation). both question 1 and question 2 required an application of the mathematical concept of per cent to a context-specific rule. however, success in question 2 was dependant on a more sophisticated object-driven use than that of the routine-driven use (of the same context rule) for question 1. the responses to question 2 allowed us to distinguish between varying levels of engagement (with the context rule) displayed by the students. these levels of engagement were related to the varying use of the mathematical resources. the analysis also revealed some complexities in trying to classify items at particular levels of the ml assessment taxonomy referred to earlier in this article. the two items would be classified at level 2 of the ml assessment taxonomy because both involve a routine procedure using a familiar context. the context is deemed to be familiar because all the students encountered it during their coursework and classroom assessments. the procedure is considered routine because “all of the information required 108 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 to solve the problem is immediately available to the student” (doe, 2007:27). however, this analysis has shown that the two items differ in mathematical complexity although they are based on the same procedure. the solution to question 2 required a different use of the same procedure used for question 1. it supports the assertion by venkat et al. (2009) that mathematical complexity and contextual complexity may vary independently of each other. in these two items, the contextual complexity was similar but the mathematical complexity differed. it was found that students who performed poorly in question 1 were hampered by their interpretation of the context-specific rule. this misinterpretation also limited their movement to an object-driven use of the rule as required for question 2. four of the students who misinterpreted the rule in question 1 presented an incorrect equation and the others presented no equation for question 2. thus none of these students were able to work out question 2 correctly. students’ participation practices can be constrained by their access to, and use of contextual tools and resources. they may then be limited to peripheral participation because of their inability to interpret and use the contextual rules, which may be attributed to their limited experience of transfer duties. the article has also shown that flexible participation within and across both the contextual and mathematical domains was necessary for success in these ml tasks. flexible participation in the two domains requires students to use resources from both the contextual and the mathematics domains in an intertwined manner. in fact, the relationship between practices in the contextual domain and practices in the mathematics domain can be considered reflexive. as practitioners become more skilled in the use of mathematics resources, their participation practices in the contextual domain are enhanced because their use of the mathematics tools and resources helps them engage more deeply with aspects of the context. conversely, their participation in the contextual domain adds insight to the constraints and affordances of the mathematics resources and tools, thus enabling them to develop their skills in the mathematics domain. endnote 1. sfard’s process-object duality construct can be regarded as a contraction of the more comprehensive apos (action, process, object, schema) theory of dubinsky (1991), in that the former does not include actions and schemas. an action is an externally driven, repeatable physical or mental manipulation that transforms objects. according to the apos framework, actions and processes are operations on previously established objects and each action needs be interiorised into a process and then encapsulated into an object before being acted upon by other actions/processes. references berger m, bowie l & nyaumwe l 2010. taxonomy matters: cognitive levels and types of mathematical activities in mathematical examinations. pythagoras, 71:30-40. bowers js, cobb p & mclain k 1999. the evolution of mathematical practice: a case study. cognition and instruction 17:25-64. cohen l, manion l & morrison k 2000. research methods in education. london: routledge falmer. department of education (doe) 2003. national curriculum statement, grades 10-12 (general): mathematical literacy. pretoria: government printers. department of education (doe) 2007. national curriculum statement, grades 10-12 (general). subject assessment guidelines. mathematical literacy. pretoria: government printers. department of education (doe) 2008. subject assessment guidelines 10-12 (general). mathematics. pretoria: government printer. dubinsky e 1991. reflective abstraction in advanced mathematical thinking. in d tall (ed.), advanced mathematical thinking. dordrecht: kluwer, 95-123. gray e & tall d 1991. duality, ambiguity and flexibility in successful mathematical thinking. paper presented at the pme 15. greeno jg 1991. number sense as situated knowing in a conceptual domain. journal for research in mathematics education, 22(3):170-218. groetsch cw 1999. inverse problems. washington: the mathematical association of america. 109bansilal et al — mathematical literacy teachers’ engagement with contextual tasks lave j 1988. cognition in practice: mind, mathematics and culture in everyday life. new york: cambridge university press. luthuli d 2000. some everyday applications of piecewise functions. pythagoras, 53:22-27. mason j 1989. mathematical abstraction as the result of a shift of attention. for the learning of mathematics, 9(2):2-8. neuman w 2011. social research methods. boston: pearson. sfard a 1991. on the dual nature of mathematical conceptions: reflections on processes and objects as different sides of the same coin. educational studies in mathematics, 22:1-36. sfard a 2008. thinking as communication: human development, the growth of discourses and mathematizing. new york: cambridge university press. soudien c 2007. the ‘a’ factor: coming to terms with the question of legacy in south african education. international journal of educational development, 27:182-193. venkat h, graven m, lampen e & nalube p 2009. critiquing the mathematical literacy assessment taxonomy: where is the reasoning and the problem solving? pythagoras, 70:43-56. watson a & winbourne p 2008. new directions for situated cognition in mathematics education. new york: springer. 4102021 39(1): 410-426 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.25 addressing the wicked problem of feedback during the teaching practicum abstract covid-19 affected the teaching practicum placement of approximately 650 fourth year bed foundation phase student teachers at university n in april and july 2020. the teaching practicum is seen as a purposeful, organised, supervised, mentored and assessed educational activity required for the completion of a teacher education programme. during the teaching practicum, the provision of feedback from teacher educators as well as mentor teachers forms an integral part of the learning process and enriches student teachers’ learning experiences. however, student dissatisfaction with feedback during the teaching practicum presents a “wicked” problem that requires a strategic partnership approach between the university and partnership schools as well as between the triad partners of teacher educator, mentor teacher and student teacher. the purpose of this exploratory case study is to provide an overview of student teachers’ perspectives on the innovative use of a social annotation platform to ensure greater collaboration on the “wicked” problem of feedback by all partners during the “learning from practice” component of the teaching practicum. the results indicated that student teachers, teacher educators as well as mentor teachers were actively engaged “on the same page” with constructive dialogic feedback that assisted student teachers to make crucial adjustments to the core practice of explaining/modelling content. keywords: feedback; perusall; teaching practicum; annotation tools; communities of practice; partnerships; student teachers. 1. introduction covid-19 necessitated the rapid move to teaching in an online or remote mode by most universities in south africa as well as internationally (asma, 2020; moorhouse, 2020). this meant that many initial teacher education programmes (ite) had to find ways to facilitate tasks that had traditionally been done in a face-to-face mode such as the teaching practicum component of these programmes. from a review of one university’s communiques and the department of higher education and training (2015) policy and communiques as well as personal communication with partnership schools, it became clear that universities and schools would have to react innovatively to the challenges author: prof c nel1 dr e marais1 affiliation: 1north west university, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i1.25 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 410-426 published: 12 march 2021 received: 6 november 2020 accepted: 20 january 2021 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2330-7350 https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8674-7206 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.25 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.25 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.25 4112021 39(1): 411-426 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.25 nel & marais addressing the wicked problem of feedback during the teaching practicum posed by covid-19. one of these challenges included arranging the online collaboration between teacher educators as well as mentor teachers in order to observe, assess and provide feedback to final year student teachers so that they could complete their teaching practice successfully. approximately 650 fourth year bed foundation phase student teachers at university n were scheduled for their teaching practicum sessions in april and july/ august 2020. although the teaching practicum has been described as a crucial component of teacher preparation that has a “profound impact on student teachers” (hammerness, darling-hammond & shulman, 2002: 409), the results of the initial teacher education research project (iterp) indicated that the teaching practicum (i.e., work-integrated learning) was characterised by inconsistencies in the amount and quality of feedback and assessment (deacon, 2016). similarly, mcneilage (2013: par 18) states that teachers in australia “don’t get the feedback they need to improve their teaching”. this feedback is even more crucial for student teachers who are on a steep learning curve from their first year. sadler (2010: 535) states that, “for many students, feedback seems to have little or no impact”. research has also shown that the quality of mentor teacher and teacher educator feedback varies, and that student teachers are often dissatisfied with the feedback they receive (clarke, triggs & nielson, 2014). in this paper we assert that feedback, as perceived by student teachers, is a “wicked” problem (rittel & webber, 1973). wicked is not meant to suggest that it is “evil”, but that feedback within an online “learning from practice” teaching practicum is a challenging problem that is difficult to solve because it involves multiple stakeholders with differing views and needs (department of higher education and training, 2015: 10). being a “wicked” problem infers that relationships and interactions between key stakeholders are central to addressing the feedback issue, especially within an online environment, and that there is no single elegant solution. in order to address “wicked problems”, collective engagement is emphasised (grint, 2008). this paper focuses on addressing the following research question, namely what are student teachers’ perspectives on the use of perusall, a social annotation platform, to address the “wicked” problem of feedback during the “learning from practice” teaching practicum? 2. feedback during the teaching practicum wenger’s (1998) communities of practice (cop) theoretical framework forms the foundation for this study. wenger, trayner, and de laat (2011: 9) defined cop as a “learning partnership among people who find it useful to learn from and with each other about a particular domain. they use each other’s experience of practice as a learning resource”. a cop between the student teacher, the mentor teacher and the teacher educator (i.e., university teachers) will develop if they come together around ideas or topics of interest (the domain) and interact with each other to learn together. practice is defined as “the body of knowledge, methods, tools, stories, cases, documents, which members share and develop together” to address recurring problems (e.g., wicked feedback) in their specific contexts (wenger, 2004: para 15). tackling the wicked problem of feedback in this study calls for an acknowledgment and acceptance that responsibility for addressing the problem lie collaboratively with all partners within the teaching practicum community of practice. learning occurs through social interaction with opportunities to negotiate meaning related to the complexities of lived situations. cops are not limited to face-to-face interactions (murillo, 2008). in this study, the cop is based on the premise that if all partners in the teaching practicum experience are given a space to complete tasks founded on social learning approaches, they will engage in social discourse through 4122021 39(1): 412-426 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.25 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) their common purpose and shared experiences, thereby building collective knowledge and sustaining the online community of practice. maheady et al. (2019: 356) state that university-school partnerships are “essential to the successful development, implementation and refinement of clinically based teacher education programs”. the teaching practicum involves the placement of student teachers in the classrooms of mentor teachers who provide opportunities for professional learning experiences through collaboration in planning, teaching and assessment (robinson, 2015). according to haigh, ell and mackisack (2013), the success of the teaching practicum is one of the indicators of the success of teacher education programmes. du plessis et al. (2010: 328) state that “if, as research indicates, practice teaching is the single most powerful intervention in teachers’ professional preparation; then supervision [mentoring] is the single most powerful process in such intervention”. the ability of teacher educators and mentor teachers to provide effective feedback is key to the quality of the teaching practicum and the student teachers’ professional learning (ambrosetti, 2010; ellis & loughland, 2017). the use of feedback is regarded as one of the most powerful strategies to improve learner achievement (hattie, 2009) and the south african council for educators (2018:12) has listed feedback as one of the professional standards for teachers, namely “teachers provide learners with constructive feedback that helps them understand how they can improve their learning”. boud and molloy (2013: 205) define feedback as …a process whereby learners obtain information about their work in order to appreciate the similarities and differences between the appropriate standards for any given work, and the qualities of the work itself, in order to generate improved work. boud and molloy (2013: 698) state that “higher education institutions are being criticised more for inadequacies in the feedback they provide to students than for almost any other aspect of their courses”. according to boud (2015), feedback in clinical settings (i.e., teaching practicum) should be focused not only on the information that is given, but also on the effects that result. the only way to determine if information given during feedback has resulted in learning and, therefore, improved performance is if student teachers are allowed to act on the information in order to complete the feedback loop (sadler, 1989). feedback should be an ongoing dialogue between teaching practicum partners and student teachers should be observed repeatedly to ensure that they react to the feedback and make changes to their teaching practices. hattie and timperley (2007: 88–90) identified three important components of effective feedback, where am i going? (i.e., establishing a clear purpose of goal), how am i going? (i.e., information about progress that is being made towards the goal), and where to next? (i.e., further improvements that need to be provided in order to enhance progress). providing high quality feedback involves the ability to identify next steps for all student teachers on their learning journey during the teaching practicum after noticing a “gap” in their teaching of a core practice (sadler, 1989). according to the australian institute for teaching and school leadership (2017:11) this requires: • understanding what high quality performance looks like; • the capacity to diagnose how the student’s work falls short of that level; and • the ability to help the student see the gap and how to address it. 4132021 39(1): 413-426 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.25 nel & marais addressing the wicked problem of feedback during the teaching practicum feedback supports student teachers to understand what is to be done and how to improve their performance. it also enables a student teacher to judge and self-assess the extent to which their teaching practice must change in order to attain the criteria or standards of professional practice and which teaching and learning strategies are more likely to be effective with learners (brooks et al., 2019). 3. perusall and university n’s teaching practicum 3.1 features of perusall perusall is an online, social learning platform that was originally designed to promote “high pre-class reading compliance, engagement, and conceptual understanding” (miller et al., 2018: 3). a recent addition to the perusall platform is the use of video and podcasts. in this study, we utilised the perusall platform in an innovative way to allow student teachers, mentor teachers as well as the teacher educators to engage in a learning cycle focused on core teaching practices (e.g., explaining/modelling content) by utilising the platform not only for reading, but also for video analysis. teacher educators (i.e., university teachers) create an online course on perusall by uploading the materials they wish to assign. the platform can handle a wide range of material types, including documents in pdf, e-book format, word documents, excel documents, snapshots of web pages, videos and podcasts. once a library of readings or videos have been uploaded to the perusall course page (cf. figure 1), teacher educators can create reading assignments or video assignments/tasks (cf. figure 2). 4142021 39(1): 414-426 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.25 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) figure 1: library of readings and videos https://app.perusall.com/courses/work-integrated-learning-877641249/_/dashboard/ documents/add https://app.perusall.com/courses/work-integrated-learning-877641249/_/dashboard/documents/add https://app.perusall.com/courses/work-integrated-learning-877641249/_/dashboard/documents/add 4152021 39(1): 415-426 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.25 nel & marais addressing the wicked problem of feedback during the teaching practicum figure 2: video assignment https://app.perusall.com/courses/work-integrated-learning-877641249/_/dashboard once the student teachers have joined the teaching practicum course by using a code provided by the teacher educator, they are ready to begin. all their reading or video analysis assignments are stored in one location with clearly indicated due dates. the student teachers asynchronously annotate the assigned reading or video by posting (or replying to) comments or questions in a chat-like fashion (cf. figure 3). however, perusall is designed to be collaborative (clarke, 2019). in addition to the student teachers, the teacher educators as well as the mentor teacher can contribute to conversations asynchronously by providing feedback on comments or questions made by the student teachers. the student teachers, teacher educators as well as the mentor teachers can also flag common inquiries by selecting an orange question mark or they can provide positive reinforcement to peer annotations by selecting a green checkmark (cf. figure 3). figure 3: collaborative engagement on a video assignment https://app.perusall.com/courses/work-integrated-learning-877641249/ whatsapp-video-2020-10-06-at-11-36-57?assignmentid=3mgpbskzcaubahelb&part=1 https://app.perusall.com/courses/work-integrated-learning-877641249/_/dashboard https://app.perusall.com/courses/work-integrated-learning-877641249/whatsapp-video-2020-10-06-at-11-36-57?assignmentid=3mgpbskzcaubahelb&part=1 https://app.perusall.com/courses/work-integrated-learning-877641249/whatsapp-video-2020-10-06-at-11-36-57?assignmentid=3mgpbskzcaubahelb&part=1 4162021 39(1): 416-426 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.25 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) perusall1 has a built-in tool for teacher educators called the confusion report (miller et al., 2018) (cf. figure 2). this report automatically summarises the most important areas within either their reading or video analysis that causes confusion or that is not clear to the students them about the core teaching practice being discussed so that the teacher educators or mentor teachers can address this in future discussions related to the practice. perusall, therefore automatically mines questions that students are asking about a particular reading assignment and, using a topic modelling algorithm, groups questions into three to four conceptual areas of confusion (miller et al., 2018: 6). 3.2 the learning cycle employed within perusall within the perusall platform we used an adapted version of the learning cycle framework developed by mcdonald, kazemi and kavanaugh (2013). the framework was used to conceptualise the preparation of student teachers around core practices (e.g., modelling/ explaining content) they needed to master in order to become effective teachers while receiving feedback from teacher educators, the mentor teacher and from their peers (cf. figure 4). the learning cycle is aligned with wenger’s (1998) communities of practice that see learning as a collective activity between the triad of partners during the teaching practicum. figure 4: the learning cycle used on the perusall platform (adapted from http://inspire.washington.edu/index.php/the-learning-cycle/) 1 for a detailed discussion of perusall’s functionality the article by miller et al. (2018) can be consulted. http://inspire.washington.edu/index.php/the-learning-cycle/ 4172021 39(1): 417-426 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.25 nel & marais addressing the wicked problem of feedback during the teaching practicum during stage one, the student teachers are introduced to a core teaching practice, namely explicitly modelling/explaining content (university of michigan, 2020). the student teachers learn about the core practice and develop a lens for noticing important characteristics of what good practice looks like. teacher educators (i.e., lecturers) introduce the core practice by uploading a video representation of the core practice (e.g., a teacher modelling/explaining content) onto perusall. during this stage, the feed forward question: where am i going? is explicitly addressed. the teacher educators use a rubric that outlines the core features of good modelling/explaining practice (e.g., clarity, coherence and cohesion, sequence, accuracy, sufficiency, connection with learners’ experiences, metaphor, analogy, simulation or model usage, example, demonstration, experiment, graphic or image usage, misconception illustration, etc.) and they also link the criteria used in the rubric to the exemplar video used in this stage so that student teachers know what they are trying to achieve in their practice. the teacher educators as well as the mentor teacher make annotations on the video, highlighting the core characteristics that student teachers should strive for (cf. figure 3). each participants’ annotations are highlighted in a different colour (cf. bottom of figure 3). the student teachers are also given the opportunity to ask clarification questions or to make comments on perusall (i.e., engage with the feedback). during the planning and preparation stage the teacher educators and mentor teacher prepare the student teachers to engage with the core practice of modelling/explaining content. teacher educators, mentor teacher and student teachers collaborate to think more deeply about the structure of the core practice, and plan and try out their tasks. on perusall, the student teachers were given an article to read about effective instructional explanations (cf. kulgemeyer, 2018). the teacher educators, mentor teacher as well as the student teachers could comment or ask questions by annotating the text. student teachers could also tag their peers to engage with them on any issue they wanted clarification on or just wished to share ideas. the confusion report highlighted that student teachers were not sure how to choose explicit examples to explain concepts and how to ensure that their explanations were relevant to the grade level. during this stage, the teacher educators provided all participants with the opportunity to rehearse, in the form of an online micro-teaching session, their “lessons” with a focus on modelling/explaining content that needed to be covered in the foundation phase curriculum and assessment policy statements2. the student teachers made powerpoint presentations with voiceovers or powerpoint presentations with self-recordings of themselves in the corner of the powerpoint to model/explain the content. they then sent the recordings to the teacher educators via whatsapp and the teacher educators uploaded the recordings to perusall where all participants in the teaching practicum triad could engage with their lessons. the lessons were no longer than five minutes in length and only focused on modelling/ explaining the content. rehearsals/micro-teaching within the perusall environment allowed the provision of a space where student teachers could approximate enactment of the lesson. during the rehearsal/micro-teaching, the student teachers could try the practice in a safe space with access to the feedback (i.e., how am i going?), thinking and expertise of peers as well as the teacher educators and the mentor teacher. the student teachers, therefore, received clear guidance on how to act upon the feedback in order to improve their enactment of the lesson towards the stated criteria and standards. 2 the curriculum and assessment policy statement is a single comprehensive and concise policy document, introduced by the south african department of basic education for all the subjects listed in the national curriculum statement for grades r–12. caps gives teachers detailed guidance on what they should teach and how to assess in south african schools. 4182021 39(1): 418-426 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.25 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) during the enactment stage, student teachers had the opportunity to enact the lessons they had planned, prepared and rehearsed during the previous stage. the student teachers once again submitted a powerpoint presentation with voiceover or powerpoint with an insert of them modelling/explaining the content to the teacher educators who uploaded the video files to the perusall platform. once uploaded the teacher educators, the mentor teacher and peers engaged with the lesson by making annotations asynchronously. the student teachers had the opportunity to participate in the dialogue with the other partners. in addition, the mentor teacher used the powerpoint with voiceover or powerpoint with video insert in her own classroom with the grade 3 learners as part of her own lesson where she would have explained the content (e.g., a life skills explanation on how animals help us – the bee) to the learners. the mentor teacher then commented on the student teacher’s lesson on the perusall platform providing her own feedback on the lesson as well as giving the learners’ feedback (e.g., did they understand? what was confusing? etc.). during this stage, student teachers were provided with additional feedback in terms of how am i going? during the debriefing and analysis stage, student teachers revisit and learn from their enactments, making sense of the core practice and how it was delivered. the student teachers commented on their lessons by applying the criteria set at the beginning of the learning cycle. the comments made by the student teachers also reflected their judgements about the level to which they satisfied the criteria and they could engage with the teacher educators, the mentor teacher as well as their peers on how successful they had been (cf. boud, 2013). during this stage, participants analyse practice in order to address the feed up question, namely where to next? this required student teachers to take into consideration all previous feedback provided by the teacher educators, the mentor teacher and their peers as well as the learner comments reported by the mentor teacher. 4. methodology 4.1 research design in this article we chose to use a qualitative approach that originated from our desire to gain an understanding of final year student teachers’ perspectives on receiving feedback on their teaching practicum videos from peers, teaching practice lecturers as well as a mentor teacher on a social annotation platform called perusall. the qualitative research design chosen for this study was a single exploratory case study. the case study allowed for the “exploration of a ‘bounded system’ or case through a detailed in-depth data collection involving multiple sources of information rich in context” (creswell, 1998: 61). bounded systems are typically bounded by time and place, and a case may be a programme, event, activity or individual (creswell, 1998). the case study “allows investigators to retain the holistic and meaningful characteristics of real life events” (yin, 2009: 4). yin (2009) states that the case study is often used when the purpose of the research is to answer how or why questions. within the bed initial teacher education programme at the university, a group of five student teachers who would have been placed at the same partnership school for their teaching practicum was the bounded system to be investigated. this case study was viewed as instrumental as the question of interest was the participants’ perspectives on the formative feedback received from peers, teacher educators and a mentor teacher on a core teaching practice, namely their modelling/explanation of content. zeichner (1999: 9) notes that case studies in teacher education programmes have “provided a close-up and detailed look at particular teacher education activities and show what a teacher education program looks like from the 4192021 39(1): 419-426 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.25 nel & marais addressing the wicked problem of feedback during the teaching practicum inside, from the perspectives of students and faculty”. the pre-service teachers’ individual perspectives of receiving formative feedback by various partners in the teaching practice component of an initial teacher education programme will provide a richer, fuller “inside” perspective; essentially, the study of the lived experience (glesne, 2006). 4.2 participants and participant selection in this study purposive participant selection, also called judgement participant selection, was used in order to deliberately choose participants that possess certain qualities and that were located in specific contexts. one school in a district in one of the provinces in south africa was selected to participate in the study. the school was chosen because it functions as a partnership school for the faculty of education that accommodates final year students for their compulsory teaching practicum placements. one teacher within the foundation phase who regularly acts as mentor teacher to the student teachers volunteered to participate in the study. the researchers are two teaching practicum lecturers at the university responsible for the work-integrated learning module of the bed programme with specialisation in foundation phase (grade r up to grade 3). five student teachers who would have completed their teaching practicum session at the partnership school were invited to participate in the study. during the study, which took place while the university was implementing online teaching, the student teachers were situated within four of the nine provinces in south africa. the student teachers participating in the study, were in their final year of the programme and specialised in the foundation phase. ethical clearance was obtained from the university ethical committee as part of a larger work-integrated learning national project and all expected protocols were followed. an independent person, a parent at the partnership school, sent a document to all the invited participants via whatsapp explaining the collaborative purpose of the study and what would be required from each of them. participants indicated their consent by signing a consent form and sending it to the first author via whatsapp. participation was voluntary and any participant could withdraw at any time without providing reasons. 4.3 data collection methods and procedure the following data collection methods were used in this study: semi-structured individual interviews via whatsapp video call as well as a short survey conducted via mentimeter (interactive presentation software). in addition, the comments on the lesson artefacts (i.e., feedback on the video lessons) were analysed to determine the type of feedback that was given by the participants. 4.4 data analysis when analysing the data, the guidelines provided by erlingsson and brysiewicz (2017) were used for doing content analysis. the initial step of the content analysis entailed reading and re-reading the transcribed whatsapp video calls, the survey data conducted via mentimeter, as well as the comments made on the video artefacts by all participants in order to get an overview of all the datasets. the text was then divided up into meaning units. this was followed by labelling the condensed meaning units by formulating codes and then grouping these codes into themes such as perusall as platform, where am i going? how am i going? and where to next? 4202021 39(1): 420-426 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.25 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) 5. findings and discussion at university n, student teachers get feedback from their mentor teachers during the first three years of their teaching practicum. it is only during their fourth year that teacher educators (i.e., university teachers) go out to the schools and summatively assess the student teachers’ lessons. they are assessed twice in their fourth year and they are assessed by different teacher educators. in addition, during this summative assessment, the mentor teachers are not present and there is seldom, if ever, any dialogue between the teacher educator, mentor teacher and the student teacher. against this background, the student teachers made the following comments that relate to the theme of perusall as platform: this is the first time, that i received feedback from my teacher educator, my mentor teacher and even my peers at the same time – within perusall we are literally on the same page. while watching the video, i could see exactly where the teacher educators, the mentor teacher or my peers were making comments or asking questions. usually we receive feedback when the mentor teacher has time and then it is at the end of the day, because after my lesson, the teaching must carry on. by the time i get my feedback which is usually no more than 5 minutes, i will have forgotten what i had said when and exactly how my lesson unfolded. the feedback we received via perusall was definitely more of a dialogue between all of us – during the teaching practicum it is often a monologue from the mentor teacher and i just listen. here i could engage with my teacher educator and mentor at the same time and their comments were focused on the same thing. it actually felt as if i was getting help to improve my practice. on this platform, i am actually learning something because my lecturer and mentor are giving me feedback on the same thing. during teaching practicum, the one comments on my classroom discipline and the other one talks about content or my good introduction. here i felt we were all focused and pulling in the same direction. the cool thing about perusall was that i could see good examples of the practice, we could discuss it, i could practise as well as actually read about something specifically related to what i was trying to do. i experienced an alignment between theory and practice. the findings seem to indicate that perusall provided the opportunity for student teachers to actively work together with all key stakeholders in the teaching practicum to critically engage with their teaching practice and receive feedback that was timely, constructive and aimed at improving their practice. all stakeholders were also “on the same page” and pulling in the same direction. the focus seemed to be on closing the gap between their current practice and the criteria or standard that was set for the practice and which they were striving to achieve. the word cloud presented in figure 5 summarises the student teachers’ perceptions of the feedback they received by the triad of partners on perusall. word clouds or a word collage are visual representations of words that give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently. the words indicate that the student teachers were of the opinion that the feedback they received on perusall was helpful, focused, timely, rigorous, to the point, helped them to improve on specific aspects and that the feedback functioned as a global positioning system (gps) for them (i.e., where am i going?). 4212021 39(1): 421-426 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.25 nel & marais addressing the wicked problem of feedback during the teaching practicum figure 5: word cloud on feedback received on perusall regarding the theme of where am i going? the student teachers stated that: in the past, i only received a mark. i never received any feedback which i actually had to react to – meaning i couldn’t show the mentor teacher whether i actually improved on my practice or did something better. i would do a next lesson and get more or less the same feedback or feedback on something totally different. i was always chasing marks and didn’t really think about how good my teaching was. the discussion we had around a good lesson at the beginning and how the teacher educator and mentor teacher made us aware of what to look for in a good explanation and the questions that guided us, really made me think about the practice and what i had to do to achieve that. nicol and macfarlane-dick (2006) noted that exemplars are effective ways to depict the required criteria or standards and enable the student teachers to make a direct comparison between their own teaching of the core practice and that of the exemplified standard in the exemplar. brooks et al. (2019: 15) state that the “clarification of criteria and standards at the beginning or at least during the learning cycle orients learners towards purposeful actions designed to satisfy or exceed the learning intent or goals”. the student teachers’ comments related to how am i going? included: you are doing well! but i never got any feedback in terms of where or on what aspects i needed to improve. i usually got a well done, or i liked this activity, your confidence is very visible. i thought i was really good at this teaching thing. on perusall i could really engage with not only my lecturer but also the mentor and my peers with whom i would have been placed at the same school on my teaching. i could ask so many questions and while reading up on the practice, which was also put on perusall, i could actually ask my lecturers or the mentor for clarification and support if i didn’t get it. 4222021 39(1): 422-426 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.25 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) i was starting to really think and reflect on what i was doing. the findings indicated that the student teachers were far more aware of their practice and getting the input on how to improve from the triad partners; the allocation of marks and boring repetition of the same lesson format was not the focus. the perusall platform allowed for feedback not to be given in isolation, but rather with guidance with the feedback message (hounsell et al., 2008). the dialogue between the triad partners seemed to promote thinking, reflection and the exploring of understanding. comments made by the student teachers that relate to the where to next? theme include: i kept on getting feedback in terms of what i should focus on and what i should address in a next lesson. i knew what to do to improve my practice. i have been getting 85-90% for all my lessons during my teaching practicum from year 1 to year 3. i always thought what i was doing was really good. this experience of focusing on only a small component of teaching – modelling to grade 3 learners really made me realise how much i’ve got to learn. i was exposed to so many mentor teachers’ teaching that i didn’t know what was acceptable or what was unacceptable. having exemplars and criteria to work towards really provided a guiding light. i know exactly what to focus on next to make my explanation even better. i could take action immediately. the findings indicate that the student teachers were allowed to self-reflect on their lessons as well as incorporate the guiding feedback from the other stakeholders. each of the student teachers also knew where they were going. the collective input to the individualised feedback process seems to support what sutton (2012: 39) calls an “ethos of care”. findings from this study where perusall was utilised as a platform to provide the student teachers with a safe space to facilitate their “learning from practice” (department of higher education and training, 2015: 10) have implications for the feedback provided by the triad collective during the teaching practicum component of initial teacher education programmes. where am i going? was identified as an important process to help clarify for the student teachers the learning intent and success criteria of the teaching practices they need to enact. teaching that emphasises feeding up principles can facilitate student self-regulation (nicol & macfarlane-dick, 2006) and enable students to be more likely to receive and use feedback (hattie & timperley, 2007). how am i doing? should not be focused only on the allocation of marks and “well done” “good job” feedback. where to next? is a vital stage of the feedback process as it closes the gap between where student teachers are now and where they need to be (sadler, 1989). 6. conclusion providing feedback during the teaching practicum is a wicked problem at the best of times. depending on who you ask and what the context is, perceptions on the type, quality, nature and effectiveness of feedback will differ. covid-19 forced most higher education institutions online and allowed many teacher educators within faculties of education to reflect critically on how they were supporting their student teachers. internationally and in south africa, teacher quality and effectiveness are under constant scrutiny (bahr & mellor, 2016; deacon, 2016; 4232021 39(1): 423-426 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.25 nel & marais addressing the wicked problem of feedback during the teaching practicum gravett, 2020). research has highlighted the inadequacies of the feedback provided to student teachers during the teaching practicum (deeley et al., 2019; ellis & loughland, 2017). by their very nature, wicked problems involve numerous stakeholders, each with different perspectives on the problem, its causes and possible ways of addressing the problem. any attempted solution will fall short and will require further improvement. we support the argument of alford and head (2017:397), calling for a more “realistic standard of success in dealing with wicked problems”. to state that these problems can be solved is to set up a standard that “is not only impossible but also perhaps unnecessary”. we argue that stakeholders (e.g., teacher educators, student teachers, and mentor teachers) should not try to “solve” the wicked problem of feedback but make progress towards improvement or towards better managing the feedback. wicked problems involve changing behaviour. we believe that perusall is a valuable tool, one of many, for teacher educators to have in their toolkit to ensure that “learning from practice” experiences provided within faculties of education for the teaching practicum are utilised far more effectively. the provision of formative assessment check points throughout the learning from practice learning cycle within perusall provided the student teachers with multiple opportunities to demonstrate their knowledge, understandings and 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https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x028009004 https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2012.647781 https://doi.org/10.1080/14703297.2012.647781 https://doi.org/10.1017/cbo9780511803932 https://iveybusinessjournal.com/publication/knowledge-management-as-a-doughnut/ https://iveybusinessjournal.com/publication/knowledge-management-as-a-doughnut/ https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x028009004 _hlk54866317 _toc_250023 17 research article 2022 40(2): 17-31 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) teachers’ experiences of parents’ involvement in foundation phase learning during covid-19 abstract this interpretive study documents experiences of teachers regarding the impact of parental participation on the learning process of foundation phase learners during the covid-19 pandemic in 2020. the period investigated stretched from the “hard” lockdown in south africa instituted on 26 march 2020, until the reopening of the physical classroom for foundation phase learners on 24 august 2020. a qualitative approach was taken to generate data from participants who taught grade 1 classes during 2020, using a self-constructed questionnaire with open and closed-ended items. the study population was localised to the mangaung municipal area in the free state, south africa. the theoretical framework of socio-constructivism informed the inquiry. the key elements in this learning theory are the learners, curriculum, teachers and society. during the mentioned period, learners were deprived of the two key inputs of teachers and society, leading to an intensified dependency on parental involvement as a source of guidance. the questionnaire afforded teacher respondents the opportunity to voice their concerns, frustrations, successes and recommendations for future management of similar situations. coding of the responses identified the theme of communication to emerge. further thematic analysis refined the findings to indicate that teachers deemed parental involvement essential in i) providing technological support for their children; and ii) interpreting the tasks set for their grade 1 learners. barriers to effective communication as perceived by teachers were i) the language barrier where parents were unable to speak the language of learning and teaching of the school; ii) the digital divide posed by parents without effective digital support; and iii) the schooling level of parents who could not interpret the assignments for their children. the recommendation is that going forward, i) parents should have access to and embrace technological advances to support their children’s learning; ii) themselves practice a learning culture at home, and iii) model positive values to their children by active involvement in their learning. keywords: foundation phase teaching; transfer of learning; pandemic; impact, lockdown; parental involvement; covid-19 1. introduction in south africa, the coronavirus pandemic resulted in severely reduced hours of schooling in 2020. the original school year was trimmed from a planned 199 days as author: dr annemie grobler1 affiliation: 1university of the free state doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v40.i2.3 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2022 40(2): 17-31 published: 08 june 2022 received: 15 october 2021 accepted: 13 january 2022 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1909-9998 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 182022 40(2): 18-31 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) published on 11 january 2018 to only 158 days under the disaster management act published on 11 august 2020 (department of basic education [dbe], 2020). this was a result of the contingencies caused by the sars-cov-2 virus pandemic (world health organization [who], 2020). school closure during a five-week period in south africa was part of the hard lockdown response to the pandemic. from 8 june 2020, foundation phase schooling was offered through a virtual learning platform (vlp) or in some or other online fashion (sabc news online, 1 may 2020). physical school attendance by grade 1 learners only resumed formally on 24 august 2020 (dbe, 2020). the united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization (unesco) recognised the immensity of the changes brought to the educational scene by the pandemic and declared it a calamity in its own right (unesco, 2020). this acknowledgement by unesco is equally applicable to the situation in south africa where we had disparities in education even before the pandemic (jansen, 2019:360) which aggravated the predicament posed by the pandemic, specifically in terms of education. 2. problem statement the reduced contact time had an adverse effect on the learners, who had to cope with the curriculum load in a novel mode of learning (jansen & farmer-phillips, 2021; jones, 2020) but also on the teachers, who had to redesign their teaching to support their charges (kirby, 2021; mccallum, 2021; jones, 2020). grade 1 learners had hardly grown accustomed to the formal school day, having spent the first 11 weeks of their schooling career in the physical classroom, before schools were closed indefinitely on 18 march 2020. the process of adapting to the school routine was jeopardised by contingencies pertaining to the environment and the various role-players that assist grade 1 learners in their learning (timmons et al., 2021). in a normal school year, grade 1 learners would make a gradual entry into the formal school situation under the wakeful eye of an educational expert, the grade 1 teacher. however, much of the gradual accompaniment offered by the grade 1 teacher was foregone in 2020. instead, this responsibility was by necessity (partially) delegated to the parents of foundation phase learners; to individuals and couples who had previously relied on the socio-constructivist system that heavily involved the teacher as knowledgeable partner (jacobs, vakalisa & gawe, 2012) in the learning process. during the hard lockdown period (up to 8 june 2020) and the months thereafter in 2020, teachers were challenged to adapt their teaching engagement with their grade 1 learners. the situation called upon teachers to employ novel teaching methods that had not been tested by time (wolhuter & jacobs, 2021) and may loosely be referred to as emergency remote learning (erl). kirby (2021) and mccallum (2021) acknowledge the demands that were made on teachers to perform in these uncertainties. i conducted an investigation in 10 mangaung urban and peri-urban primary schools in the second half of 2021 to gauge teacher responses to the changed reality in 2020 brought about by the pandemic. according to the teachers interviewed, the parents of foundation phase learners were partly to blame for the poor transfer of learning. the directives of the disaster management act (2020) resulted in the indefinite closing of schools, bringing all attempts towards collaborative learning and meaning making as intended by the national curriculum statement (ncs) effectively to a standstill. when the schools reopened on 8 june 2020 it was only in an online or virtual fashion – an unprecedented challenge for the teachers, society and the parents involved. the situation brought new impediments to successful learning (taylor, 2020; jones, 2020) through a variety of role-players. some http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 192022 40(2): 19-31 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 grobler teachers’ experiences of parents’ involvement in foundation phase learning schools were not ready to move to any form of online learning due to various factors (spaull & jansen, 2019; motsa, 2021; wolhuter & jacobs, 2021; jones, 2020). some teachers were not keen on the change in curriculum delivery (taylor, 2020; kirby, 2021; mccallum, 2021) due to the lived principle of collaborative teaching and learning as promoted in the national curriculum statement (ncs, 2012), which emphasises the input of teachers and peers. at the time of writing this article, research on covid-19 and its impact on the world was in full production. the keywords “lockdown, covid-19, education, grade 1 plans” typed into the google search engine on 13 september 2021 provided no fewer than 7 650 000 hits. an attempt to narrow down the search for local south african research included searches on 7 databases of the ebscohost platform and sabinet with “grade 1, covid-19, education” as keywords. the result was little, if any, research localised to south africa to assess the experiences of foundation phase teachers regarding the role and impact of parental involvement in schooling during the pandemic. this investigation therefore attempted to provide further insight into the experiences of teachers of the role and involvement of parents in the success of the schooling provision for their grade 1 children during 2020. with this context as backdrop, the question that guided this investigation was: what were the experiences of grade 1 teachers regarding the role and impact of parental involvement on the transfer of learning to grade 1 learners during covid-19? the theoretical framework that guided the empirical research is described below. the findings are subsequently presented, together with conclusions on pertinent issues raised in the problem statement. the implications of the findings in terms of the theoretical framework (socio-constructivism) are considered to propose a direction for future management of this phenomenon. 3. theoretical framework the investigation was framed by the socio-constructivist theory of learning. this theory posits that four role-players constitute the essential learning process, viz. the learner, the teacher, the subject matter or content and the environment (jacobs, vakalisa & gawe, 2012). constructivism emphasises the transfer of skills (ibid, 41) over the attainment of content knowledge. in normal (pre-pandemic) times, the teacher as knowledgeable other facilitated a collaborative process that requires the active engagement of learners (litshani, 2017: 22). the phenomenon of learning was thus augmented by “collaboration and the complexity or diversity of input” (oguz, 2007: 9). during 2020, with the restrictions on physical attendance of school, teachers were unable to physically provide their usual teaching and learning support to learners. this situation created a gap in the extant framework of socio-constructivist teaching and learning. with learners stuck at home, parents were almost ambushed into taking up the responsibility of providing the guidance that would have come from teachers. the last crucial role-player in the socio-constructivist theory of learning is provided by the environment. to borrow from vygotsky’s (1978) sociocultural theory, interactions with society create a multi-layered cultural experience that inherently influences the learning context of the learner. the specific family in which the learner grows up forms the most intimate circle of interaction, followed by the school and societal communities and other associations that may figure as important in the life of the child. due to the new situation posed by the pandemic, parents were thus required to fulfil a double role. even before the pandemic, fru and seotsanyana (2017) pointed to the need to further investigate the effect of sociocultural http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 202022 40(2): 20-31 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) interactions on learners’ learning practices. they specifically pointed to a renewed attempt to determine the impact of the environment on a learner’s success. likewise, matlabe (2017) mentioned that parental involvement led to improved learner performance, specifically mentioning that parents as the first circle of engagement should communicate to the class teacher any deterrents that they observe in the learner’s learning. all of these theorists’ views date from the pre-covid era; thus, it is now even more pressing to investigate the limitations to deliver curriculum content in the collaborative learning environment, such as when learners were prevented from attending the physical classroom. the current investigation, therefore, reports on the experiences of teachers of parental involvement in the foundation phase teaching and learning process, specifically during the pandemic in 2020. various factors that could affect parental involvement in the schooling situation of their grade 1 children will now be considered. atiles et al. (2021) rightly maintain that the element of surprise posed by the sudden embargo on physical schooling should in future be expected. therefore, equitable access to technological resources and wi-fi will in future be of quintessential importance for parents to support their children’s learning (timmons et al., 2020; kirby, 2021, motsa, 2021). williams, macintosh and russell (2021) confirm that equitable access to technology will also influence the equity of distance education. however, the element of parental preparedness in terms of technological savoir faire has been underestimated and may prove to be a decisive factor in learner success or failure (taylor, 2020; formosinho, 2021). ironically, it seems that parents may in fact detract from the successful transfer of basic learning to their children due to their own ineptitude, irrespective of the nature of their inability. in addition, a report by nelson and sharp (2020) indicated that learners in general had fewer opportunities to engage with learning material as a result of the reduction in school hours. when parents had to facilitate their children’s learning, it seems that they did not afford the same length of time on tasks for their children to master the curriculum content – inevitably leading to heightened feelings of failure or ineffectiveness among foundation phase learners. mochida et al. (2021) state that learners generally experienced heightened stress throughout 2020. they investigated factors that affected learners’ stress during this period. one of their major conclusions is that parenting styles made a significant contribution to their children’s levels of stress. it is therefore possible that parents inadvertently added to their children’s stress levels due to their level of engagement in their children’s learning. it is worth mentioning that education should teach learners resilience, especially in these times of change and uncertainty (van der walt, 2020), if we are to prepare them for the future at all. konstantinou (2021) investigated the opportunities opened up by the pandemic to teach values. he reiterated the importance of character-building courses, especially in the new post-lockdown context. similarly, nelson and sharp (2020) noted the possibility to establish positive behavioural traits during the lockdown. konstantinou’s (2021) research proposed the introduction of an intervention aimed at adolescents to develop perseverance. the conclusion of the researcher, therefore, is that the post-pandemic world will increasingly require youngsters to possess positive behavioural traits and values that have been integrated and established as personal strengths. these values should already be established in the foundation phase. it is therefore argued that parents should co-assume the responsibility for teaching and modelling these values when they are involved in the teaching and learning of their children – something that, according to the interviews with teachers mentioned above, seemed to lack in their engagement with teaching and learning during the pandemic. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 212022 40(2): 21-31 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 grobler teachers’ experiences of parents’ involvement in foundation phase learning the interpretivist paradigm, known for its focus on establishing meaning through interpretative actions, underpinned this investigation (denzin & lincoln, 2018). this paradigm is distinct from the positivist paradigm that features predominantly in portraying a single reality. the current study aimed at interpreting the research data presented by the respondents on the experienced influence of parental involvement and cooperation in learner success. a qualitative research approach allowed the researcher to examine data of the phenomenon at hand (denzin & lincoln, 2018), namely of how teachers experienced the role and level of parental involvement in foundation phase learning transfer. transfer of learning refers to the effective process through which learners attain the knowledge and skills demonstrated in the teacher’s facilitation of material. the above context framed the empirical investigation on the experiences of foundation phase teachers on the impact of parental involvement on the educational adaptation and success of their foundation phase children during the covid-19 pandemic. 4. empirical investigation 4.1 aim of the investigation the aim of this investigation was to document and investigate the experiences of grade 1 teachers regarding the role and impact of parental cooperation on the transfer of learning to grade 1 learners during the covid-19 pandemic in 2020. 4.2 research design a qualitative research approach allowed me to examine a phenomenon in its natural setting to make sense of this experience (denzin & lincoln, 2018). the design can be described as phenomenological as it was tailored towards describing a phenomenon in its natural setting, namely the authentic experiences of foundation phase teachers during the covid-19 pandemic, and interpreting the implications of these perceptions (cohen, manion & morrison, 2018). the phenomenological research design allowed me to pose questions that would yield rich data from which themes emerged (cohen et al., 2018; denzin & lincoln, 2018). based on an interpretivist paradigm, a process of inductive reasoning was followed, commencing with the specific phenomenon of teacher experiences on parental involvement and cooperation, in order to move towards the general in formulating conclusions. 4.3 research instrument in qualitative research, the researcher is already the instrument himself (cohen et al., 2018: 289), as no data generation is otherwise possible (denzin & lincoln, 2018). the socioconstructivist theory of learning, as discussed above, provided the theoretical framework for constructing a questionnaire for teachers concerning their lived experiences in these times. the questionnaire comprised 32 items in three sections. the first section (questions 1–6) established the biographical-experiential profile of the teacher and the type of school. the second section (items 7–13) used closed-ended questions to determine the approach of the school to the pandemic immediately after lockdown. the last section (items 14–31) explored the impact of the pandemic on the approach to teaching and learning in the classroom. teachers were prompted to expatiate on the strategies they used; insights gained, frustrations and recommendations for future application. four open-ended items (items 25, 26, 27 and 32) specifically requested respondents to share their insights on the situation that evolved; their http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 222022 40(2): 22-31 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) frustrations; their proposals for future management of similar situations; and their thoughts on the future of schools in the current format. as noted by cohen et al. (2018: 475), a semistructured questionnaire with open-ended items may catch the gems that might have been unnoticed in a more structured type of questionnaire. the focus in this investigation falls on the above-mentioned four open-ended items. 4.4 pilot study once permission had been obtained from the free state department of education and the general human research ethics committee (ghrec) of the university of the free state with reference ufs-hsd2021/0280/21, a pilot study consisting of an electronic survey through surveymonkey was conducted. of the four questionnaires sent out, only one was completed and returned. after finetuning the items, it was decided to present the questionnaire as a hard copy. the results of the pilot study were not included in the research findings reported below. 4.5 sample ten primary schools in the mangaung metropolitan municipality were conveniently sampled (cohen et al., 2018) as being in accessible proximity to the area where the researcher lived. the approximate number of primary schools in the mangaung urban municipal area is set at 114 (schools4sa, 2021). these schools serve a population of 775 184 residents with 29.3% aged below 15 years (municipalities of sa, 2021). the ten schools included a range of socioeconomic spheres, including former model c, quintile 1–3, single gender and co-education schools. the geographic area covered by these schools is around 30km and stretched from the well-to-do suburbs in the north to the southern blue-collar precinct. the sample further represented the densely populated urban core and the agricultural smallholdings in the east. i visited schools in person to request participation. one school was only able to furnish one questionnaire while the others each provided data by two teachers. finally, a sample of 23 questionnaires was collected from 12 schools, still within the constraints of the original geographic and socio-economic area. participants were selected based on i) having taught a grade 1 class ii) during 2020 iii) at one of the schools in the sample. all three criteria were deemed essential for inclusion in the sample. table 1: number of years’ experience of participants, n=23 number of years teaching grade 1 number of years overall teaching experience 1–9 11 teachers 1-9 6 teachers 10–19 10 teachers 10-19 13 teachers 20–29 1 teacher 20-29 1 teachers 30– 1 teacher 304 teachers 4.6 qualitative data generation, capturing and analysis i solicited participation by visiting the principal of each of the selected schools. the principal provided permission for two teachers who had taught grade 1 learners during 2020 to participate on behalf of their school. i left the hardcopy questionnaires and an information letter with the participants and collected them at a date that was acceptable to all. covid-19 protocols were followed during all physical interactions. after the above process, i captured http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 232022 40(2): 23-31 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 grobler teachers’ experiences of parents’ involvement in foundation phase learning and coded all the raw data manually. key findings emerged from which pertinent themes were identified. 4.7 ethical considerations this study adhered to principles of ethicality as indicated by cohen et al. (2018: 471), and by obtaining permission from the ghrec of the university of the free state (ufs) and the free state department of education (fsdoe). principals of schools were invited to approve participation by the foundation phase teachers in their schools. an information letter was appended to the questionnaire. i undertook to disseminate research results to all schools involved, thus satisfying the principle of beneficence. there was no risk of harm or loss due to participating in the research. responses were completely anonymous as no personal identifiers were requested. the only personal detail requested was the number of years of teaching experience. the identity of the school was also protected as participants were only requested to name the category of the school. the questionnaire was thus deemed to satisfy the requirements of confidentiality, anonymity and non-traceability in the research findings (cohen et al., 2018). the principle of methodological rigour and fairness was promoted by phrasing the open-ended questionnaire items in a neutral and unbiased manner. all covid-19 protocols in place at the time of the investigation were upheld in personal interaction with the principals and the participants. the submission of questionnaires remained anonymous. for administrative purposes a number was allocated to each questionnaire upon collection. 5. findings the key finding from the authentic experiences of the teacher sample indicated that communication between teachers and parents, or lack thereof, presented an important stumbling block for the successful delivery of quality teaching and learning during the covid-19 pandemic. the communication theme further diversified into problems relating to parental education and technological provision. parental education can be further divided into the language barrier and the ineptitude with technology. these findings came from thematic analysis of the data collected through the open-ended items on questionnaires. verbatim quotations from the responses will be provided below as applicable. school and teacher profiles the first section of the questionnaire profiled the type of school and the teacher’s experience. although the researcher attempted to target schools from across the socio-economic spectrum, the diversification of schools was not maintained in coding the data. it is therefore not possible to indicate the origin of a specific response. this was done in the interest of confidentiality and because the researcher was not concerned with establishing different categories of responses. the teachers self-reported the category of their schools to be as follows: 1 private school, 2 no-fee schools, 15 ex-model c schools, and 5 quintile 1–3 schools. teachers had an average of 10.5 years of experience teaching grade 1. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 242022 40(2): 24-31 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) table 2: number of years’ experience teaching grade 1, n=23 number of years teaching grade 1 number of participants 1–9 11 10–19 10 20–29 1 30– 1 the empirical investigation zoomed in on the aspect of teacher experience of the involvement of parents. teachers were sensitive to the obligation that they had to respond to their learners with new and novel solutions for the adapted reality that did not include the collaborative environment of the classroom anymore. the teachers mentioned their deliberate efforts to compensate for the disrupted classroom situation. from the responses to this section, the issue of the extent of parental involvement regarding the success of learner adjustment and curriculum delivery emerged with surprising consistency. a major category that emerged from the coding process was concerned with communication. it became clear that the process of communicating with learners through their parents caused additional problems per se. these concerns pan out in several themes. overview of themes communication • challenge to establish contact with parents • tolerance for the dilemma of essential workers vs impatience with non-compliance • parental compliance • parental incompetence • technological deficit of parents • dissatisfaction with indirect communication • language barrier • incorrect relaying of information • uncertainties relating to loss of contact time • desire to return to school theme: the challenge to establish contact with parents from 8 june to 24 august 2020, teachers sent work home to their learners without fail. although the strategies to deliver the content varied, a common frustration reported by teachers was the uncertainty whether parents had received the work and had indeed conveyed the learning task to their children. one participant stated: “not all parents came to fetch books.” parents frequently did not inform the school when their cellphone numbers changed, which resulted in silence from some parents when teachers asked for feedback on the whatsapp group: “some parents did not communicate back at all. their children just fell behind. other parents did not have access to whatsapp or even a smartphone,” according to one respondent. to complicate the problem, it was impossible to gauge whether parents had conveyed the learning task accurately and as the teacher had intended. one respondent remarked in this regard: “language was a problem. parents did not understand the assignments and could http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 252022 40(2): 25-31 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 grobler teachers’ experiences of parents’ involvement in foundation phase learning therefore not explain to their children.” another teacher added: “parents didn’t cooperate and due to the language barrier, kids struggled to complete work on their own.” yet another teacher added: “parents were not always assisting at home and some learners would not work at home but most did.” theme: tolerance for the dilemma of essential workers vs impatience with non-compliance due to reasons beyond their control, some parents could not support their grade 1 learners in the way that the teachers would have wanted. some parents were prevented from supporting their children due to long hours at work, sometimes in the frontline of the health response to the pandemic. one teacher concluded: “not all parents could assist the learners on the same level due to their own work responsibilities.” another teacher observed, “some parents were essential workers and did not have the time to do the work with their children.” both taylor (2020) and jones (2020) also noted in their research the strong sympathy displayed to parents in the current sample group; however, this respect was challenged by their observations that many parents just did not seem to care enough. one teacher remarked, “parents did not do their part.” and: “parents didn’t cooperate.” one teacher voiced the frustration as such: “the deficit will never be erased.” theme: parental compliance teachers observed that many parents struggled to follow the instructions that they had provided to assist the learners to complete learning activities at home. one teacher expressed their sentiment as follows: “parents did not all cooperate with work to be done at home. this can be because of lack of knowledge, their own work pressure and lack of resources.” another teacher added: “some parents did not understand what had to be done, others did not complete the work.” the general feeling was echoed by yet another teacher: “parents could not/did not copy the work from their phone.” this may suggest that parents were non-compliant; a situation that reverberated negatively on the success level of their children’s learning. as an open-ended item, teachers were invited to divulge any further insights or comments that they might wish to express. parent involvement was repeatedly cited as the most problematic issue. it was clear that well-weathered teachers found themselves exasperated by the level of disregard exhibited by parents. one teacher voiced it as follows: “parents should take more responsibility for their children’s education during a time where it is impossible for teachers to educate their children.” this was reiterated by yet another teacher: “…parents not being able to explain concepts and new phonics to learners.” this situation is worrisome, especially considering that teachers are not directly charged with the responsibility for parents, but for the learners in their care. it therefore seems that parental non-compliance has surfaced as a variant of concern, to borrow and re-apply some of the covid-19 terminology. one teacher complained: “parents had many cellphone numbers so they did not all receive the whatsapps. their data was limited.” theme: parental incompetence the level of ineptitude displayed by parents not only perplexed the teachers but found some overcompensating on behalf of the learners. several teachers attested that they had printed or couriered learning material to the learners at their own expense or provided parents with data bundles in order to enable them to download the learning material. one teacher remarked, http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 262022 40(2): 26-31 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) “teachers did above and beyond all they could [to] assist learners buy[ing] data for parents to download. print[ing] books and couriered it. our kids worked. we went the extra mile.” another one added, “teachers did everything they could in order for our kiddies to continue with their work at home.” theme: dissatisfaction with indirect communication with learners via parental mediation teachers freely voiced their dissatisfaction and frustration at having to depend on parental mediation in order to reach their learners. one teacher declared: “learners need face to face time with [the] teacher – to motivate them and explain.” many teachers experienced the indirect communication via parents as a stepdown from the direct engagement that had previously been a characteristic of the trust relationship between teacher and learners. a teacher explained: “language was a problem. parents did not understand the assignments and could therefore not explain to their children.” another teacher elaborated: “it was challenging at times in the sense that i had to compile lessons for the parents (who mostly have little knowledge in the area of education instruction) and had to then rely on them to disseminate the knowledge/strategies etc. to their children.” yet another teacher declared: “nothing can replace or imitate an actual physical classroom environment. you form a rapport with your learners and create a unique classroom atmosphere.” theme: technological deficits of parents any communication with learners was subject to the level of technological aptitude of parents. in addition, a limitation in digital services due to provision of connectivity or socio-economic level was also a factor. one teacher noted, “some parents could not view the video clips due to data problems.” a second teacher added, “data was not freely available. some did not have whatsapp, some had phones with sms that could not read photos.” if parents were able possess the required smartphone at all, they often could not afford the additional expense of data to access the lessons (atiles et al., 2021; formosinho, 2021). one teacher observed, “not all parents have data or the facilities to use technology at home.” theme: communication impeded by the language barrier another cause of ineffective assistance by parents had its origin in the language barrier that is prevalent in many communities in south africa. effective communication with the parents was impossible when parents were not conversant with the language of learning and teaching of the school where they had enrolled their children. a teacher noted: “some parents did not understand what had to be done, others did not complete the work.” another teacher remarked: “…only unfortunate […] is that parents cannot help learners sufficiently since we are english medium and they come from sotho homes.” semi-literate parents were not able to assist their children to interpret written assignments as provided by the teachers: “some parents did not understand what had to be done.” the practice of enrolling learners in a school that uses a language of learning and teaching that differs from the home language (mother tongue) in this case disadvantaged the learners and left the teachers unable to communicate with the learners. a teacher observed: “language was a problem. parents did not understand the assignments and could therefore not explain to their children.” yet another added, “… due to the language barrier, kids struggled to complete work on their own.” http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 272022 40(2): 27-31 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 grobler teachers’ experiences of parents’ involvement in foundation phase learning theme: incorrect relaying of information by parents teachers mentioned the uncertainty of knowing whether tasks had been relayed correctly to learners and correctly interpreted by the learners. a teacher expressed their helplessness as follows: “not knowing whether learners did not understand the work.” another teacher added: “parents not being able to explain concepts and new phonics to learners.” yet another remarked: “it was challenging at times in the sense that i had to compile lessons for the parents (who mostly have little knowledge in the area of education instruction) and had to then rely on them to disseminate the knowledge/strategies etc. to their children”. theme: uncertainties caused by loss of contact time another concern revolved around uncertainties triggered by the loss of contact time. due to the limited contact with teachers, it was nearly impossible to gauge whether transfer of learning had taken place. the reduced contact hours resulted in less time for learners to practise their skills; consequently, skills and knowledge were possibly not captured correctly. whereas in the pre-covid era, teachers would in good faith act in loco parentis, the recent events found teachers asking parents to act in loco magistri. how parents managed this teaching role at home was not divulged to the teacher, who could only hope for the best. it is understandable that teachers felt powerless after the extra mile that they had covered in order to deliver curriculum content to their learners, only to be defeated by the (non-)involvement of an unwilling or inept parent. as one teacher remarked, “at school learners repeat work, at home they just do it to get it done.” theme: desire to return to school environment the questionnaire concluded with an open-ended enquiry on the desires of educators for the future. teachers were unanimous in professing the need to return to school for maximum contact time: “learners should come to school every day. they like the routine and stability. emotionally it is also better for them to come to school. the school is a safe haven for them.” the wish to maintain rapport with their learners informed this request. the teachers remarked: “learners need to attend school on a regular basis” and another added: “i don’t think online classes are effective for 6-year-olds, as it takes physical presence to engage with them and help them maintain focus and actively learn.” the collaborative environment created by peers and teachers confirms the applicability of the sociocultural theory. another teacher echoed this, saying: “school must continue as it is, because learners need contact of other learners and teachers to prepare them for lifelong learning.” this finding confirms the value of the school environment, inclusive of the collaborative learning offered by peers and the expert guidance of teachers and corroborates the validity of a socio-constructivist teaching and learning theory. 6. discussion with the above exposition of parents’ less than satisfactory contribution to their children’s successful learning, it can be argued that parents need training in order to have a significant impact on the need of their children for learning support during a pandemic. this is affirmed by formosinho’s plea for “schoolification” of parents (2021: 141). a caveat is expressed by jones (2020) who warns that parents should not try to recreate the traditional school environment at home; rather, learners should be allowed greater freedom in dealing with curriculum content. as remarked by one of the respondents: “the curriculum should be adapted so that the idea of catching up and being behind can be erased from teachers’ and learners’ perspective and attitude towards everyday life.” http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 282022 40(2): 28-31 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 perspectives in education 2022: 40(2) the respondents in the sample were convinced that teachers had not only provided what they would have done in normal times but had sacrificed on a personal and emotional level in order to assist their learners to function as normally as possible. these measures included buying airtime for parents, photocopying and dispatching learning material to offsite destinations and recording time-consuming video clips at their own expense on a frequent basis. teachers were perhaps most painfully aware of the absence of collaborative learning as envisaged by the national curriculum statement (ncs, 2012) for their learners during the pandemic. learners were deprived not only of the physical support of their peers (landsberg et al., 2012), but also of the first-hand expertise of the subject experts, the teachers, who were now dependent on the collaboration of parents in order to reach their grade 1 learners. this calls to mind the words of fru and seotsanyana (2017: 9): “there is a need for social agents other than teachers to complement the classroom learning processes, since these agents embody the overall knowledge experiences of learners”. thus far, the months spent in lockdown due to the pandemic have confirmed the veracity of this theoretical statement. in addition, teachers had to improvise and compensate for parents’ performance ((jansen & farmer-phillips, 2021; matlabe, 2017). it is ironic that the pandemic resulted in the teacherparent responsibility roles frequently being swopped with the parent now acting in a double capacity – and often failing desperately. as mentioned above, mochida et al. (2021) concluded that higher levels of stress experienced by learners during the pandemic point to the lack of school and peer support and the necessity to rely on parental input. in line with the socioconstructivist theory of learning, it is likely that the inability of parents to provide the required level of support to their children had contributed significantly to this stress. a report for the national foundation of educational research (nfer) in england by nelson and sharp (2020) similarly observed that the challenge of parents without the technological support of data or connectivity was a major issue for teachers in their attempt to provide teaching and learning material to the learners. notwithstanding the low level of satisfaction expressed by teachers in the present study in this regard, whatsapp group messages were regarded as the best way to communicate with parents. a variation of this challenge was encountered with parents who were not digitally literate and who could not assist their children due to insufficient technological savoir faire. timmons et al. (2020) documented the anguish of parents during the pandemic who realised that their inability to provide technological support would negatively affect their children’s learning. atiles et al. (2021) flagged this concern as the most likely decisive factor in future scenarios that will separate the empowered from the deprived. finally, the quintessence of effective communication with parents was reiterated by various researchers around the globe (jansen & farmer-phillips, 2021; formosinho, 2021, kirby, 2021; atiles et al., 2021) and was reiterated by the teacher responses in the current investigation. with the fourth industrial revolution steadily gaining ground in all aspects of life, it is inevitable to adapt to the demands of digitalisation. as previously discussed, van der walt (2020) stresses the importance of setting the example for our learners in embracing innovation. socio-constructivism emphasises the influence of an enabling environment for enhancing the learning transfer by our learners (landsberg et al., 2012) in which parents can intimately influence the situation of their children. it is ironic that some parents, who are expected to guide and protect their children, are apparently rendering themselves increasingly impotent in decision-making processes due to their inadequate mastery and control of technology. it is crucial that parents keep abreast of innovation to retain their social relevance. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 292022 40(2): 29-31 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v40.i2.3 grobler teachers’ experiences of parents’ involvement in foundation phase learning 7. possible limitations the investigation targeted a small and relatively urbanised area in the central free state of south africa. for this reason, the results cannot be generalised to the rest of the country or abroad. further investigations on the availability of technological aids are advised. it is likely that the profile of parental involvement in other communities would portray similar trends, assuming that parents of grade 1 children are broadly from the same generation. it cannot be guaranteed that similar results would be replicated in other areas of south africa, yet this conclusion is in line with the characteristics of phenomenological research (cohen et al., 2018). 8. conclusion the lingering issue identified through the responses of teachers remains the lack of expected parental cooperation. this factor seems to be decisive for learner success at foundational level, as expressed by teachers. it is critical that parents realise that their obligation to their children’s schooling includes donating their attentive time and honouring the responsibility of developing their own digital skills. if the uncertainties of the future prevent a full return to the physical classroom with maximum contact time, parents will have to become more involved. parents will need to increase their input in their children’s schooling activities if they wish to significantly augment a conducive learning environment at home. additionally, equitable and fair access to technology is crucial to facilitate learning that is aligned to fourth industrial revolution requirements, repeating the imperative for parents to fulfil their obligations towards their children. the findings underscore the principles of collaborative teaching and acknowledge the inherent necessity of all the elements of the socio-constructivist theory of learning in south african educational settings. finally, these glimpses into teacher experiences suggest that a more detailed investigation of the possible neglect of the parental role and its consequence may shed more light on the attainment of schooling objectives by learners during times of crisis. references atiles, j.t., amodóvar, m., chavarría vargas, a., dias, m.j.a. & zúñiga león, i.m. 2021. international responses to covid-19: challenges faced by early childhood professionals. european early childhood education research journal, 29(1): 66-78. https://doi.org/10.1080 /1350293x.2021.1872674 cohen, l., manion, l. & morrison, k. 2018. research methods in education, eighth edition. london: routledge. 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https://doi.org/10.17159/2224-7912/2020/v60n4-2a6 https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/technical-guidance/naming-the-coronavirus-disease-(covid-2019)-and-the-virus-that-causes-it https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/technical-guidance/naming-the-coronavirus-disease-(covid-2019)-and-the-virus-that-causes-it https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/technical-guidance/naming-the-coronavirus-disease-(covid-2019)-and-the-virus-that-causes-it http://dx.doi.org/10.46303/ressat.2021.1 http://dx.doi.org/10.46303/ressat.2021.1 https://doi.org/10.46303/ressat.2021.13 _hlk85048093 _hlk81468756 _hlk83993318 11 when schoolgirls become mothers: reflections from a selected group of teenage girls in durban deevia bhana university of kwazulu-natal sithembile judith mcambi university of kwazulu-natal schools are obliged to support young women who become mothers. drawing from an interview study of young women in a durban school, this article shows how their experience is situated within discourses of shame and stigma. such shame works to reduce their agency and increase their vulnerability to drop out of school. both teachers and peers are complicit in this. the participants argue that schools do not support the management of pregnancy, parenting and learning, with negative effects for learning outcomes. however, schools are not only sites of social reproduction, since the participants point to glimmers of hope as a consequence of care work among friends, some teachers and support groups in the school. the article argues that the experience of pregnancy and parenting is highly gendered, and addressing the challenges requires a commitment to gender equality and justice. some implications for schools are suggested in the conclusion of the article. keywords: girls, pregnancy, young mothers, schooling, sexual shame, teachers, peers, disruption, care work introduction schoolgirls becoming mothers is often perceived to be a problem. having a child hinders progress at school, leads to dropping out and forecloses the possibility of educational and economic success (grant & hallman, 2006). in south africa, hiv and aids has exacerbated the problem, since the prevalence among women is heightened in their late teens, almost five years before men (human sciences research council, 2009). of the 15-24-year age group in south africa, 10.2% are infected, and estimates suggest that 15.5% of young women aged 15-24 years are infected compared to 4.8% of men of the same age (pettifor, rees, steffenson, hlongwa-madikizela, macphail, vermaak & kleinschmidt, 2004). in kwazulu-natal province, where this study is situated, 17.260 pregnancies were recorded in 2010. between 2006 and 2007, 29.473 pregnancies were reported in kwazulu-natal schools (department of education, 2010). over 59% of all pregnancies in south african schools are located in this province. the high rate of teenage pregnancy challenges hiv prevention strategies based on abstinence and condom usage. the special health risks for young women increase the already substantial implications of having a child while at school. teenage pregnancy also complicates the efforts towards the legal expansion of girls’ empowerment. support for gender equality has been regulated by the legal framework under the south african schools act (department of education, 1996). this act provides a legal premise for the expansion of girls’ freedoms and is designed to remove any obstacles to their educational success. in relation to teenage pregnancy, the act permits pregnant schoolgirls to remain at school, allowing for their re-entry after having a child. available statistics indicate that 32% of 14-19-year-olds living in kwazulunatal, who had ever been pregnant, were currently attending school (grant & hallman, 2006); this has major implications for schools. supporting pregnant teenagers and teenage mothers in schools is important (chigona & chetty, 2008), but remains a formidable task (panday, makiwane, ranchod & letsoalo, 2009). recent research has seen the emergence of a more qualitative and theoretical understanding of the experience of teenage pregnancy and teenage mothers in schools, and illustrates some of the challenges facing young women 12 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 at school (chigona & chetty, 2008; bhana, morrell, shefer & ngabaza, 2010; nkani & bhana, 2010; morrell, bhana & shefer, 2012). the evidence suggests that schools’ support is critical for both increasing the educational aspirations of young women and addressing gendered poverty and women’s marginalised position in society – all key to south africa’s developmental agenda. principals and teachers can mediate the deleterious effects that are often attributed to early pregnancy. the challenge remains for schools, pregnant teenagers and teenage mothers to grapple with the demands of being a young mother at school. negotiating schooling under these competing circumstances requires that school teachers, learners and principals be amenable to the specific needs of young women. such support has long-term implications for gender equality (romo & nadeem, 2007). a major implication for schools is that they must recognise that, when schoolgirls become mothers, their experience is rooted within broader gendered social environments. recognising gender as a key factor in the experience of being pregnant and being a young mother is vital to effective responses from schools. however, as the evidence shows, the ability of pregnant teenagers and teenage mothers to exercise their freedoms in schools remains problematic. young people have agency and do exercise such agency – but this is constrained by an ethos of sexual shame and othering. it must be noted, in this instance, that the girls in this study should not be perceived as victims without agency. however, this is limited in a context where teenage sexuality is scorned and punished and where power relations between teachers and learners are intact. specifically, the agency of young women is limited when the dominant ideological framing assumes that pregnancy is unacceptable. this dominant discourse puts learners who are pregnant in a predicament, as this constrains their power. media reporting about high rates of teenage pregnancy has increased. alongside this focus are invocations of sexuality, contestation over rights, and the burden that having a child places on social grants and on schools. the burgeoning discussion is evident in newspaper headlines such as ‘bored teens bonk – mec’; ‘just kids having kids’ (sunday tribune, 20 march 2011), and ’pregnant pupils, please bring your own midwives to school’ (sunday times, 28 november 2010). the visibility of teenage pregnancy and teenage mothers is also implicated in long-contested views about children’s sexual rights, and moralising discourses about an active teenage sexuality (pillow, 2004). this increased discussion and visibility is deeply implicated in the challenges present when schoolgirls become mothers. it is argued that schools are not necessarily supportive, as bhana et al.’s (2010) study of south african teachers demonstrates. teachers’ responses are often situated within stigmatising and moralistic arguments. teachers and principals (see nkani & bhana, 2010) wish sexual innocence upon teenagers and regard the public display of sexuality as deviant. the research also shows that they are dissatisfied with the challenge of dealing with a policy which they do not even support. thus, when schoolgirls become mothers, schools mobilise against them and stigmatise. in so doing, they contribute towards the reproduction of gender inequalities. some schools, as bhana & nkani (2010) note, only tolerate pregnant teenagers, because they are threatened by the policy environment. in this instance, the policy provides an enabling tool to provide the platform from which any attempt to create obstacles to girls’ education may be challenged. however, as we go on to show, the effects will be limited, if policy cannot mandate the exercise of girls’ freedom. as chigona & chetty (2008) note, those learners who go back to school after giving birth face a number of challenges, and a lack of support from schools and teachers may impede their ability to succeed. recently, controversy about schools’ management of learner pregnancy was raised in a case of law. on 12 may 2011, judgment was passed in favour of two schools in the free state, harmony and welkom high, whose school policy restricted access to pregnant learners and young mothers. according to the department of education and the south african human rights commission, this restriction was in direct contravention of the schools act. using the controversial department of education’s (2007) guidelines on managing learner pregnancy, the schools argued that no learner should be readmitted to school in the same year in which they had left due to pregnancy. in view of these guidelines and the anomalies in the interpretation of them, it was ordered that, within 24 months, the national department of education 13bhana & mcambi — when schoolgirls become mothers should produce nationwide regulations on learner pregnancy policy that are in keeping with the spirit of gender equality and empowerment of women, as specified in the schools act and the bill of rights. against this moral, legal and political backdrop, this article asks the following: how do schoolgirls who become mothers experience schooling? it is argued that their experiences are gendered and have effects in schools. we argue that their experiences point to the ways in which teenage sexuality is constructed and stigmatised. with little recognition of gender equality, schools remain unsupportive. while teenage pregnancy has been understood as having implications for schooling, there has been little work which examines the situated and gendered experiences of young women in schools (as an exception, see chigona & chetty, 2008). examining this omission is key to this study. despite the formal protection of access to education under the schools act, there is some evidence – as this article will reiterate – that the actual experience of schooling is unsupportive. the 12 may 2011-case provides fertile ground for contributing towards the development of nationwide regulations, as mandated. this article is, therefore, particularly relevant, given the current social and political climate regarding teenage pregnancy. girls bear the burden of having a child and grapple with the conflicting roles when they become mothers. the punitive environment, as noted in newspaper headlines such as the sunday times (28 november 2010) ‘pregnant pupils, please bring your own midwives to school’, stands in direct contrast to the schools act – and the girls themselves are deemed responsible for the problem. through a study of selected african girls at a secondary school in durban, this article shows how their experiences with teachers and peers are regulatory and reproduce gender inequalities. gender is invoked when schoolgirls become mothers, and positioning the focus of teenage pregnancy and young mothers at school on gender has important implications for the development of national regulations required in this country within 24 months. these regulations must explicitly seek to enhance gender equality and empower young women in schools. schools are accountable. they are obliged to provide opportunities to empower and develop, to prevent pregnancy, and to support young mothers at school. while we will demonstrate that there are glimmers of hope, pointing to caring environments within some schools, a great deal more needs to be done to ensure the promise of educational empowerment and gender equality. research methods using focus group interviews we sought to explore the experiences of schoolgirls who had become mothers (mcambi, 2010). the department of education in kwazulu-natal allowed access to a formerly white school, oakleigh high (pseudonyms used), which is located in a middleto lower middle-income context. like many formerly white schools, racial transformation of learner enrolment has taken place since 1994. many african parents live in higher status suburbs than was the case during apartheid, and others with lesser but some means are enrolling their schoolchildren into better resourced formerly white schools outside their township residences. seven african schoolgirls who attend oakleigh high participated in this study. interviews were conducted by the second author, who is both a former learner at the school and a teacher there. when the study was conducted in 2010, the school’s racial profile of learners was 71% african, 14% indian, 11% white and 4% coloured. learners at oakleigh high come from a range of socio-economic groups, including those in the middle-class suburb in which it is situated, but the majority of learners are from the neighbouring african townships, including ntuzuma, umlazi and kwamashu. most learners from the townships depend on public transport such as taxis and buses to get to school, since many parents do not have their own means of transport. between 2005 and 2010, there were 92 recorded pregnancies at the school, of which 89 were in african and 3 in coloured schoolgirls. in south africa, pregnancies among african and coloured schoolgirls are more common, with jewkes, morrell & christofides (2009) noting that stigma and termination are possible 14 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 explanations for the low numbers of pregnancies among indian or white schoolgirls. oakleigh high had no school-specific guidelines on teenage pregnancy, although the national policy governs all schools. the study sample of seven african participants, aged between 15 and 18 years, were all young mothers. in 2010, there were 19 recorded pregnancies at the school, all among african schoolgirls. the final selection of participants at oakleigh high was based on their willingness and availability to take part, and completion of all consent forms. data were collected by means of focus group interviews, where all seven participants formed part of the focus group. focus group interviews were deemed to be appropriate, as the intention of the research was to understand the experience of becoming a young mother at school. putting young women together who shared these experiences provides a cascading effect in discussing their experiences. four focus group discussions of approximately two hours, over a period of three months each, were held with the participants. during these interviews, both isizulu and english were used, since the second author’s mother tongue (like the schoolgirls’) is isizulu. we wanted to know from the girls how they experienced their schooling, about their relationships with teachers and peers, and how these affected the navigation of schooling, pregnancy and parenting. only certain parts of the data were translated from isizulu into english; these data were translated and analysed. a thematic analysis was conducted, which involved repeatedly going through the entire data set in order to discern patterns of meanings. different codes were produced whereby potential themes were recognised. themes were further defined and refined in relation to the entire data set. findings and discussion pregnant – “i was scared, very scared” the assumed hierarchies between adults and children are disrupted when schoolgirls become mothers. reproductive rights are assumed to be on the side of adults. teenage pregnancy confronts such ideologies. it is judged within moral discourses through which childhood innocence is valorised and teenage pregnancy ostracised. participants reported feelings of despair and fear, both in and outside school, while pregnant. sibongakonke: i was very afraid of … my mother … how was she going to respond to this whole mess and what the father of the child was going to say. i did not know how the father of the child was going to respond to this, whether he would be willing to take care of the child, at school what were they going to say and how were the people from the community going to react to all this … i was still dependent on my parents for everything. where were they going to get the money for the baby and me? i just caused trouble for myself. mkhwanazi’s (2010) study of pregnancy in a township community in south africa notes that teenage pregnancy is often perceived negatively among parents, while peers laughed at pregnant teenagers, nurses ridiculed them and the teenagers themselves felt ashamed. in this instance, sibongakonke expresses similar concerns, and the burden of supporting the child financially adds to her anxiety. during the interview, sibongakonke stated that she was also afraid of not knowing how to cope with “being a mother at such a young age”. while all the participants’ families accepted the fact of the pregnancy, desiree reported that she had more support from her mother, who “was the first person to accept the fact that i was now pregnant”. she received counselling and support from her. none of the participants had considered abortion as an option, and all mentioned that it was morally inconceivable to them to terminate. it has been argued that termination of pregnancy is rooted within particular cultural practices and, among many africans, termination is considered to be a cultural violation (mkhwanazi, 2010). while all of the participants eventually communicated with family members about the pregnancy, such communication with teachers was strained. 15bhana & mcambi — when schoolgirls become mothers sibongakonke: some of them [teachers] just delete you from their system … they pretend as if you do not exist any more. they stop talking to you. they sometimes don’t even look towards your direction ... it’s hard. it makes you think twice about coming to school. angel: whenever i was around, she [teacher] would talk about young girls who sleep around with old men and end up being pregnant with children they would not even be able to support. the other teacher would always speak about how the government uses their money as taxpayers to feed children born to irresponsible ‘brats’. so for me, knowing that i was going to be a mother caused me to have fear. i was scared, very scared. when a schoolgirl becomes a mother, her experiences must be understood within gendered social environments and the subordinate and unequal ways in which young women are positioned. age inequalities (carrim, 2011) are deeply implicated in teachers’ constructions of girls who become mothers, contributing to their fear. fear stifles agency. the above testimonies confirm earlier findings (see bhana et al., 2010) which show that most teachers objectify and shame teenage pregnancy, which is premised upon a contaminating discourse and vilified. the effect of such treatment of schoolgirls who are pregnant leaves the mark of fear, stigma and shame. sibongakonke shows how teachers interpret and situate teenage pregnancy as a consequence of sugardaddy relationships (girls who sleep with older men) and a burden of the state. instead of a supportive environment to deal with disclosing pregnancy, none of the participants could communicate with teachers, which left them to “have fear”. sibongakonke: they decide to completely forget about you and your worries. they do not ask you about how you are feeling or how you are coping with all that stuff that goes through your head. they make sure that they give all other learners attention and then leave you out in the cold. sibongakonke confirms what chigona & chetty (2008) state, namely that teenage mothers require support. teachers are framed as insensitive to the particular needs of young women, without much care. feelings of being “left out in the cold” suggest the harmful and exclusionary environment through which young women have to navigate, within the climate of gender equality in the country. the pregnant schoolgirl is constructed as a site of alarm, fear and scorn (pillow, 2004). it must be noted, in this instance, that power relations mark the experience between learners and teachers and, while the exercise of agency by learners remains a constant feature of school life, it remains difficult to enact, particularly when the pregnant learner is constructed as having brought shame and is ostracised. not only the teachers, but also the schoolgirls’ peers created unfriendly gender environments. other learners are not outside the discourses of sexuality and the notion of childhood sexual innocence, and they too were caught up in the network of meanings where teenage pregnancy was scorned and ridiculed. hazel: some kids here at school think that if you have a child, you are just stupid. ntwenhle: … there was this one girl who told me straight that at home she was told to stop associating herself with mothers. miss, i was hurt. worse of all, this she said in front of other kids. it would have been better if she said this while it was just the two of us … desiree: … my mum had told me what to expect, because she was a teenage mother herself who had her first child while at school. thank god she prepared me for this …. when they [peers] asked me questions, i just told them to leave me alone and mind their own business. reproducing the discourses of contamination, ntwenhle shows how peers considered her to be unfit for school (pillow, 2004). feelings of humiliation and pain often described the ways in which the participants expressed their views about peers. “i cannot cope”: being a mother and a learner at school in addition to the school climate of hostility and shame, the participants found it difficult to cope with the demands of both schooling and being a young mother. all of them spoke about being tired and unable to 16 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 hand in work on time, with little support or understanding from teachers. it must be noted, in this instance, that women play a significant role in childcare; none of the participants had the support of the fathers of the children. malaika: … having a baby has definitely affected my studies. sometimes i cannot cope … my marks are dropping. sometimes teachers complain if there is some work that i have not done. they do not even bother to ask me the reason why i did not do it … if my work is not done because i was absent, they will insist on seeing a doctor’s note. they do not compromise. ntwenhle: sometimes i am unable to attend school maybe because my child is sick … sometimes she becomes restless, and she would not want any other person to touch her other than me. just imagine if i am writing a test the following day, i would end up not being able to study properly. what i do these days is that when i come back from school i try and do my homework while i also attend to her. as soon as she falls asleep which is mostly very late at night, i then take my stuff and learn for upcoming tests or exams. sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t. sometimes when she wakes up in the middle of the night, i am busy with work. some other days she sleeps throughout the night. being a teenage mother must be understood as a gendered experience. care is a highly feminised activity, and the burden of care rested with the mothers. none of the participants had relationships with the fathers of their children and, as stated above, none supported them with managing childcare and schoolwork. ntwenhle described the reality of coping with a sick child and writing a test. while she, like the other participants, was deeply affected by the hostility of the school and the difficulty of raising a child while at school, none suggested that they would leave. ntwenhle’s agency is apparent in this instance. despite the overwhelming difficulties, she tries to strategise the needs of the child with her need to produce work for school. as she mentions, due to the unpredictability of raising a child, “sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t”. other strategies were developed as a direct consequence of the “no compromise” position of the teachers: ntwenhle: sometimes they [friends] do projects for me and hand them in as if i did them. but that does not happen all the time. when schoolgirls become mothers, the support required is evident. desiree realised how much friends’ support was necessary in managing the dual role of learner and mother: desiree: my friend zodwa from school came to stay with us when there were taxi strikes. she is still with us. what we do is we take turns looking after my baby. when i am with the baby, she will read and summarise what she has read and when the baby is asleep i then read her summaries. when i am absent, she brings me handouts from teachers, takes down homework and informs me about the things that were happening at school. if it wasn’t for her, i would be in trouble. i was begging my friend not to go back to her home after the taxi strikes were over because i do not know what i will do without her. the circumstances described above were facilitated by the inability of zodwa to come to school as a result of a taxi strike. the major point, in this instance, is that support for success at school is necessary both in and outside the school. however, at school the support (if any) was limited, causing further barriers to girls’ education and creating vulnerabilities to failure, as noted by chigona & chetty (2008). “we can still make it in life”: the value of care despite the overwhelming environment of hostility and a lack of support, there were many forms of caring practices by friends, a minority of teachers, and the ‘we care’ group at school. ‘we care’ is a christian-based informal group that meets in the school to provide support to girls at school. participation is voluntary. in all of this, the emotional engagement was valued and upheld as a positive side of schooling: angel: my friends at first were angry with me but as time went by they became nice again. 17bhana & mcambi — when schoolgirls become mothers researcher: what do you mean? angel: they fought for me when people were saying bad things about me. they even bought me baby clothes. one day they organised a surprise baby shower for me. in contrast to the negative environment discussed earlier, friends are important resources through which young women feel validated. under very constraining circumstances in school, there are spaces where young women feel validated. the baby shower is an acknowledgment of angel and offers care and respect rather than exclusion and judgement. while not many participants talked about caring teachers, there were exceptions: ntwenhle: only mrs. dexter ever said something to me … and said ‘my child what has happened has happened, just pull yourself up and carry on with your life’. miss, when she approached me i was very scared, but when she said that to me i became relieved. whenever i see her i just feel happy. i just did not expect that from her. since that day she has never said anything about it. but i know that she cares. malaika: hey, you are lucky my friend, they [teachers] never said anything. bhana et al. (2010) state that, despite teachers’ negative construction of pregnancy in schools, they do have the potential to care. the example of the teacher, mrs dexter, above confirms this. it also shows that those teachers who can and do care have a positive impact on the ways in which pregnancy and mothering is experienced in schools – although not all teachers do care, as malaika demonstrates. instead of the punitive environment through which young women experience schooling, the capacity for teachers to show care is important in changing the experiences for educational success. mrs dexter said very little; nonetheless, the affirmation received was valued greatly by malaika. care is significant to the supportive environment and must be taken seriously in working to create gender-friendly school environments. another important means whereby young women accessed a caring environment was a religious organisation, ‘we care’: angel: the people from ‘we care’ encouraged us to share our experiences of being mothers with other learners … it’s the people from some church who come to our school every second wednesday to talk to us about church things and they also encouraged us to form a support group for all the girls with kids. a supportive group is key to addressing the feelings of estrangement and the difficulties of being a learner and a mother. the caring environment took the form of these girls being taken seriously and acknowledged: malaika: we talk about the difficulties that we face with our schoolwork and dealing with being mothers. sibongakonke: they give us tips on how we can cope with schoolwork. it’s nice going there because we also share our secrets and fears. nobody judges us there. ntwenhle: yes, i enjoy it there. those people listen to us. they always tell us that it’s not the end of the world. we can still make it in life. the participants express the care work in ways that draw on and facilitate better schooling environments and contribute towards gender equality, as ntwenhle states, importantly, that “we can still make it in life”. agency is facilitated and enhanced, which is in contrast to the despair illustrated earlier. the ‘we care’ group at school provided the most support to young mothers, and is perhaps an important element in the path to enhancing the girls’ educational aspirations and gender equality. conclusion this is a small-scale study of young women at school, and it is, therefore, impossible to generalise from it. our intention was to provide insights into the experiences related by schoolgirls who become mothers. pregnant teenagers and teenage mothers are not supported as they should be at school. discourses of 18 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 sexual shame situate their experiences within the domain of negativity, which arises from the home, from peers and from teachers. this creates vulnerabilities for young women at school, hurt and pain. with little or no support from teachers, many of whom do not compromise, young women are expected to grapple with the daily battles between the demands of schooling and of having a child. however, schools are not only places of reproduction of sexual shame and stigma – within the context of changing policy environments there are glimmers of hope and opportunities which can promote care and gender equality . first, interventions must address the persistence of stigma and shame that continues to harm young women. such interventions must be designed for all constituents in the school, including other learners. pregnancy and young mothers are hyper-visible, and the punitive gaze upon them must be ended. such interventions must be rooted in the schools act; the persistence of stigma goes against the promotion of access to school of pregnant teenagers and teenage mothers, and blocks gender equality. this will go some way to enhancing the agency of young women in school and to speaking out against the hostile environment in schools. none of the girls in this study did so, since the discourse of fear was so great. however, desiree’s confidence was boosted and she did react against condemnations, precisely because her mother prepared her for such experiences and supported her. bringing in parents to such interventions is also critical for the achievement of gender equality and for ensuring gender-friendly schools. secondly, as bhana et al. (2010) note, interventions must address the work description of teachers, which includes providing them with professional development and specific guidelines to assist these pregnant girls and young mothers with tests, examinations, projects and homework. understanding that having a child and care work are highly gendered is important, since the burden for care of the child falls on the young mother – and such a burden is far greater in the context of poverty. girls from different social backgrounds have different challenges, and this must be considered in the development of guidelines. importantly, childcare is feminised, and it is women and young women at school who are expected to care for the children. this is a part of gendered social environments and the subordinate position of women in society. interventions should also challenge these unequal positions. investigation into the provision of child care in schools could be considered to alleviate the burden that young women face. finally, care work in schools is important and needs to be encouraged. teachers are considered to be in loco parentis. emotional engagement is an important aspect of care. none of the girls in this study talked about the grinding poverty that creates further vulnerability. in 2010, each girl paid r6.500 to attend oakleigh high. they do not emerge from wealthy families, but they can and do afford to pay for the daily expenses of the child through family support and the child grant. their expectation at school was for emotional care, understanding and respect – not judgement. while it is not a certainty, it is likely, considering how positive the participants in this study considered the care group and the glimpse of care among teachers and friends, that caring will contribute to the process of better schooling outcomes and achievement of gender equality. care work must be an explicit goal of the interventions aimed at ensuring that many more teachers such as mrs dexter can work towards better schooling experiences and gender-just ideals and practices. engaging pregnant teenagers and teenagers in general within a logic of gender equality should be part of a more comprehensive approach to addressing the problems in schools and creating supportive spaces. acknowledgement this material is based upon work supported financially by the national research foundation. any opinion, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and therefore the nrf does not accept any liability in regard thereto. references bhana d, morrell r, shefer t & ngabaza s 2010. south african teachers’ responses to teenage pregnancy and teenage mothers in schools. culture, health & sexuality, 12(8), 871-883. 19bhana & mcambi — when schoolgirls become mothers carrim, n 2011. modes of participation and conceptions of children in south african education. perspectives in education, 29: 74-82. chigona a & chetty r 2008. teen mothers and schooling: lacunae and challenges. south african journal of education, 28, 261-281. department of education 1996. south african schools act no. 84. pretoria: department of education. department of education 2007. measures for the prevention and management of learner pregnancy. pretoria: department of education. department of education 2010. annual school survey reporting 2006-2007. pretoria: department of education. grant m & hallman k 2006. pregnancy-related school dropout and prior school performance in south africa. policy research division, working paper 212. new york: population council. human sciences research council (hsrc) 2009. south african national hiv prevalence, hiv incidence, behaviour and communication survey, 2008: a turning tide among teenagers? cape town: hsrc press. jewkes r, morrell r & christofides n 2009. empowering teenagers to prevent pregnancy: lessons from south africa. culture, health and sexuality, 11(7), 675-688. mcambi s 2010. exploring young women’s experiences of teenage motherhood in schools: a gendered perspective. med dissertation. durban: university of kwazulu-natal. mkhwanazi n 2010. understanding pregnancy in a post-apartheid south african township. culture, health and sexuality, 12(4), 347-358. morrell r, bhana d & shefer t (2012) books and babies: pregnancy and young parents in schools. cape town: hsrc press. nkani v & bhana d 2010. no to bulging stomachs: male principals on teenage pregnancy in inanda durban. agenda, 83: 107-113. panday s, makiwane m, ranchod c & letsoalo t 2009. teenage pregnancy in south africa – with a specific focus on school-going learners. pretoria: department of basic education. pettifor ae, rees hv, steffenson a, hlongwa-madikizela l, macphail c, vermaak k & kleinschmidt i 2004. hiv and sexual behaviour among young south africans: national survey of 15-24 year-olds. johannesburg: reproductive health research unit, university of the witwatersrand. pillow w 2004. unfit subjects. new york: routledge. romo lf & nadeem e 2007. school connectedness, mental health and well-being of adolescent mothers. theory into practice, 46: 130. 49 the drivers of student enrolment and retention: a stakeholder perception analysis in higher education george angelopulo university of south africa this study identified the drivers of student participation in the academic programmes of a south african university department. first, it explored the determinants of student enrolment and retention from earlier research and literature. second, it discussed the utility of q methodology in the identification of subjective perception. finally, it isolated dominant perceptions of the factors that govern enrolment and retention in the academic programmes of the department of communication science at the university of south africa. the research was undertaken amongst a diverse group of students, faculty, support and oversight staff, chosen to represent as wide a range of opinions on the topic as possible. q methodology was used to categorise the variety and span of subjective opinion on the market-related, service quality and cultural variables that support or undermine student participation in the department’s academic programmes. eight richly diverse accounts were derived, reflecting the most salient perceptions on the topic. underlying factors that supported student enrolment and retention were the reputation, credibility and image of university and department, and specific academic, disciplinary, technical and administrative competencies. the main factors that undermined enrolment and retention were the scope of research and tuition, institutional performance, inconsistency in teaching quality and the relative inaccessibility of tuition material. the research framework described in this paper offers a promising resource for the student development strategies of academic institutions. keywords: student enrolment, student retention, higher education, q methodology, student development strategy, unisa, communication, solution meaning, perception analysis, brand perception, university marketing introduction this paper describes a study of the dominant factors governing student enrolment and retention in communication studies at the university of south africa (unisa). a range of variables other than pure academic performance are discussed and framed within a q study that investigated the primary perceptions associated with enrolment and retention in the academic programmes of the department of communication science amongst current students, faculty, support and oversight groups. student enrolment, retention and the factors related to these issues have been widely explored (ammann, frauendiener & holton, 2010; hagedorn, 2006; murtaugh, burns & schuster, 1999; st. john, 2000), most commonly in terms of single variables or single dimensions of the broader phenomenon. traditionally such approaches have focused on a range of variables related to pedagogy (kaya, 2009; stewart, myers & culley, 2010). in southern africa a number of such variables have been identified, including the quality of prior education (du preez, steyn & owen, 2008; reddy, 2005), language of tuition (de klerk, 2002; veloso, 2002), educators’ acceptance of diversity (london, ismail, alperstein & baqwa, 2002), thinking style (steyn & maree, 2003) and the relationship between course content and job opportunities (kruss, 2002). increasingly, student participation in academic programmes has been associated with factors that are not purely pedagogical. safety and security (thro, 2006), relationships between academic institutions and their stakeholders (benneworth & jongbloed, 2010), service and student satisfaction (marozzi, 2009), institutional assessment and development (malott & martinez, 2006) and social class (anderson, 2004) have been identified as individual dimensions of the phenomenon, while in south africa students’ immigrant status (sookrajh, gopal & maharaj, 2005), fee structures (fleisch & 50 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 woolman, 2004), degree of access (carol, 2003) and the individual aspiration of the student (fataar, 2010) have also been considered in related research. student enrolment and retention cannot, however, be ascribed to a single factor (paulsen, 1990). the reasons for studying at a particular institution and remaining with that institution for the duration of study vary extensively. they are formulated from the unique perspective of the individual student and are highly subjective (yasin, noor & mamat, 2009). this study took cognisance of this complexity and allowed for the range and interrelationship of causes associated with student enrolment and retention in its methodology and theoretical framework. the study was approached from a marketing perspective which, despite substantial resistance in the academic arena (sung, 2010), has become increasingly important in an environment where higher education is integrated in the market economy and exposed to market competition (litten, 1980; newman & couturier, 2001). aim of the research the aim of the research was to identify the ‘solution meaning’ of unisa’s communication studies. ‘solution meaning’, as originally conceptualised by grönroos (2000), is the perceived quality of the relationship between a customer and a specific organisation, service or product, and the factor that contributes most directly to their consumption. in this paper the term refers to the perceived quality of the relationship between communication students, unisa and the department of communication science, and the degree to which unisa’s communication studies are perceived to offer the department’s students the solution to their academic needs. the study focused on drivers of student enrolment and retention other than academic success or failure and student drop-out based on academic performance. the department of communication science the department of communication science was established at unisa in 1969. the department has been the largest in the communication discipline in africa, with approximately fifty academic and administrative staff and 26 000 students in south africa and around the globe (unisa, 2009; unisa, 2011). this study was undertaken to gain insight into specific stakeholders’ dominant perceptions of the department, its academic products and service, and the factors that supported or undermined its competitive position in short, its drivers of enrolment and retention. the solution meaning of unisa’s communication studies the solution meaning of an academic institution may be seen as the consolidated reasons why people use or reject its academic offerings. the solution meaning of a university, faculty, college, school or department is the body of reasons, other than purely academic performance or failure that determine student enrolment and retention. its variety explains why people study at an institution or do not. enrolment and retention are caused by the variables that make up the solution meaning of a particular institution. solution meaning shares many of the attributes of brand perception and may be assessed in similar ways. aspects such as perception of service quality (haelsig, swoboda, morschett & schramm-klein, 2007), recall and likeability (baharun, 2004; fam & waller, 2004), salience (laurent, kapferer & roussel, 1995) or perceived cost (aydin & özer, 2005; leblanc & nguyen, 1999) affect the selection or rejection of organisations in general and academic institutions in particular. however, the relative influence of each of these varies extensively and it is more fruitful to consider such variables holistically as market-specific variables, service and corporate culture. the solution meaning of an academic institution, or put another way, the drivers that govern student enrolment and retention, are similarly operationalised as marketspecific variables, service and corporate culture. market-specific variables the relative advantage of an organisation’s core solution – in the case of a university its academic solution – may determine its consumption, but only where it is clearly evident. increasingly this is no longer evident 51angelopulo — the drivers of student enrolment and retention in organisations’ core solutions. consumption may be influenced by the variables of the marketing mix (diamond & oppenheim, 2004), market structure, prevailing economic conditions, dominance, supplier concentration, competition, size, legislation or cost of entry (porter, 1980; scherer, 1980). while these may explain institutional preferences to some extent, they are far better at explaining the consumption of packaged goods (grönroos, 1997). service service, service quality and service relationships have an increasingly direct bearing on the success of organisations and corporate brands because the comparative advantage of other variables has diminished. service quality is the most powerful competitive trend in the determination of strategy in marketing and business (abdullah, 2006; buzzell & gale, 1987). the challenge is to manage a company and its market relationships in such a way that the company’s total offering is perceived to be the best of the alternatives availablewith ‘best’ defined by the customer, not the company (grönroos, 2000). service quality has a number of dimensions: a technical dimension (perceived quality of the solution – ‘what’ the customer obtains); a functional dimension (perceived quality of obtaining the solution – ‘how’ it is obtained); and an image-filter or brand aura dimension (perception ‘filters’ such as image that affect overall perception) (caceres & paparoidamis, 2007; grönroos, 2000). service quality variables include location, responsiveness, tangibles, assurance, friendliness, empathy, access, reliability, servicescape (service environment), waiting times, availability, convenience and relatedness (andreassen & lanseng, 1997; brady & cronin, 2001). grönroos (2000) redefines and consolidates these with professionalism and skills as technical dimensions; attitudes, behaviour, accessibility, flexibility, reliability, trustworthiness, service recovery and servicescape as functional dimensions; and reputation and credibility as image-filter dimensions of service quality. service quality is generated at different and distinct points in the organisation but the customer (or student) perceives it as a single undifferentiated entity. corporate culture organisational culture has been widely linked to service quality, organisational performance and effectiveness (kotter & heskett, 1992; lee & yu, 2004; wilson, 2001). angelopulo (1990) defines perception of that dimension of corporate culture that relates to effectiveness as a bipolar construct, with ‘active outward orientation’ at the one pole and ‘passive inward orientation’ at the other. active outward orientation is perception of an organisation as environmentally aware, adaptable, predisposed to integration, information rich, open to its market and environment, and being proactive. passive inward orientation is its opposite. actively outward orientated organisations tend to draw customers more than those perceived to be passively inward orientated. in parallel research the constructs of the active outward orientated–passive inward orientated typology have been linked to corporate performance and effectiveness in a number of studies (collins & porras, 1994; de geus, 1997; gordon & ditomaso, 1992). few organisations are entirely actively outward or passively inward orientated. most fall between these extremes. methodology solution meaning is subjective. moriarty (in harris, 1998: 293) observes that the brain “gathers information from an untold number of contact points and assimilates it into one picture” making every institutional product, service or brand perception the unique formulation of the individual. every student has unique reasons for choosing one institution over others. a university has as many solution meanings as it has students, and these may coincide to a greater or lesser degree. while all students’ solution meanings affect their interaction with a university, it is the commonly held, dominant solution meanings that drive enrolment. in this study a methodology that could identify such meanings was required, and q methodology was selected. 52 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 q methodology has characteristics of qualitative and quantitative methodology. qualitative, because it does not impose a priory constructs upon respondents, it elicits subjective opinions and beliefs, and small samples are sufficient to obtain the diversity of opinion on a topic; quantitative, because of the rigour of its statistical and mathematical data collection and processing (baker, thompson & mannion, 2006). this study followed a typical q study sequence. the concourse was identified, q and person samples selected, the q sample assessed and ranked, and data captured, processed, analysed and interpreted (du plessis, angelopulo & du plessis, 2006; stricklin & almeida, 2004). a range of individual items representing the primary factors for enrolment and retention was drawn from the literature and submitted for assessment to the participants in the study. participants arranged these to reflect their individual perceptions, and participant responses were factored to identify the dominant drivers of student enrolment and retention and the participants who clustered around these perceptions. these findings were interpreted in order to identify the specific conditions and processes that undermined or supported student enrolment. the research began by identifying the broad spectrum of communicated ideas on the topics of communication study, student registration and retention, in what cross (2005) and brown (1980) term the ‘concourse’. from the concourse the representative q sample was selected with a smaller number of items. because it is characterised by theoretical categories and subcategories, a structured q sample was developed to reflect its theoretical framework (brown, 1980). the 49 items of the q sample were divided into four categories: technical competence, process quality, brand aura, markets and marketing. the items were simultaneously divided into seven subcategories termed professionalism and skills, attitude and behaviour, accessibility and flexibility, reliability, trustworthiness and service recovery, servicescape, reputation, credibility and image, core solution, market structure and marketing mix. the 49 items of the q study are attached as appendix a. all items were separately categorised as active outward orientated or passive inward orientated in roughly equal numbers. roughly half the number of items were stated in the positive and the remainder in the negative to “avoid confounding the measure of the attitude itself with acquiescent response style” (kidder & judd, 1986: 204). upon completion of the q sample, it was reviewed, pretested and refined. respondents in a q study are termed the ‘person sample’ and are selected for their ability to contribute to the full explanation of majority and minority views – a process governed by the researcher’s judgement (stainton rogers, 1995). where the person sample is comparatively large and randomisation is desirable, selection may be enhanced through disproportional stratified sampling (p schmolck, pers. comm.), a method used in this study to refine the student sample. the overall perception of an organisation and its services is not the direct function of the customerorganisation relationship alone but also of the relationships that predetermine it – those existing between the customer, organisation and all other significant stakeholders (balmer & greyser, 2006). for this reason the universe in this study was specified as 1050 students, academic and administrative staff, unisa support and oversight personnel who influenced the department’s performance and were accessible through interactive online media. the person sample comprised three primary stakeholder groups, each with its own subgroups. the three primary stakeholder groups were students, support and oversight, and the department of communication science (see table 1). subgroups were developed to ensure the inclusion of the fullest range of views within them, with due consideration given to aspects such as residence, courses, study level, occupation, language, etc. in all, 120 participants were selected. consideration was given to extending the study to potential students and students at competing institutions, but this was rejected because of the extra resources required and the inductive, exploratory nature of the study. table 1: the person sample students n 1st year south african 22 1st year international 3 2nd year south african 23 2nd year international 4 53angelopulo — the drivers of student enrolment and retention students n 3rd year south african 26 3rd year international 5 honours south african 10 honours international 1 masters and doctoral 2 support and oversight staff college of human sciences 1 assignments 2 directorate of curriculum & learning development (dcld) 3 library 1 production 3 department of communication science professor 1 associate professor 1 senior lecturer 1 lecturer 3 junior lecturer 4 external assessor 2 administrative 2 total 120 q studies are commonly paper based and undertaken in the presence of the researcher. items are written on cards, one per card. participants then sort these cards onto a grid that allows their placement in order of some continuum such as degree of agreement. the completed grid is termed a ‘q sort’. in this study this process was impossible given the dispersion of participants, and an online assessment was undertaken. software was developed for the purpose as a survey in three parts. the first was an 11-point likert-type scale that assessed disagreement or agreement with the 49 survey items. the second was a refinement of items and the third allowed free comment on participants’ perceptions. this replicated the paper-based q sort process and generated data in a format suitable for processing. the pcq for windows package was used for the q factor analysis. factors were derived using centroid factor extraction and varimax rotation, and these were subjected to judgemental rotation to further explain the derived factors. factors were individually assessed, their principal characteristics identified, and each given a title. results nine factors were generated. one was rejected as it did not meet the criterion of significance, set at a loading of .37 or more for at least one sort (one participant’s data) that registered on the factor. the remaining eight factors were retained (see table 2). table 2: eigenvalues and the percentage variance of the eight significant factors factors 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- eigens 36.77 11.05 4.58 4.34 4.46 3.21 3.62 3.91 % variance 31 9 4 4 4 3 3 3 each of the remaining factors identified strong, unique perceptions of communication study at unisa, and combined these accounted for 61% of the variance. the 39% variance that was unaccounted for 54 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 represented perceptions that were insufficiently salient or that fractured amongst factors. the following were the composite perceptions that made up each of the eight factors. academic excellence (factor 1) this factor was called academic excellence (see table 3). accounting for 31% of the variance, it was the strongest and most salient perception of communication study at unisa. the department was seen to be exceptionally active outward orientated with a high student orientation and its students’ needs were accurately identified. academic content, operational processes and courses were what students wanted. perception was dominated by reputable and highly credible images of unisa, the department and its personnel. unisa was the university of choice for studying communication, and its systems worked well. the service environment (campuses, online, face-to-face, tuition material) was perceived very positively. at a lower level reliability, trustworthiness and the ability to recover from service failures were also associated with the department. factors driving enrolment and student retention were firstly unisa’s communication science brand, and secondly the academic excellence of staff. process quality, marketing and relative market position had a slightly positive effect on student enrolment. this perception was evident in all student categories but was not as pervasive amongst support and oversight staff or in the department. table 3: the dominant items of the academic excellence factor unisa bad, department good (factor 2) in the unisa bad, department good factor the department was favourably viewed but many aspects of the unisa system were not (see table 4). institutional culture was biased towards passive inward orientation: the department considered its students seriously but the institution as a whole lacked the capacity to identify student needs consistently negative perceptions of unisa dominated. unisa “does not respond to students’ problems immediately”, it offered “poor administrative support” and “administrative systems work poorly”. certain perceptions of the department were positive but less salient. the department’s staff “are friendly” and the department “is highly innovative”. this factor reflected mildly positive perceptions of the department’s credibility and image, market position and the attitude of its staff. opposed to this were negative views of unisa’s reliability, trustworthiness and ability to recover from service failures. the strongest influences on enrolment and retention were unisa technical competence (negative), departmental brand aura (positive), process quality (negative) and marketing variables (positive). very strong agreement unisa’s communication lecturers are the best in their field i do associate myself with unisa’s image unisa’s communication qualification is highly respected unisa’s communication qualifications prepare students for the real world strong agreement communication staff meet my expectations myunisa* does help students with their studies most students study communication at unisa even though they have an alternative communication lecturers’ academic knowledge is excellent unisa’s communication studies reflect the latest knowledge in the subject the communication department’s tuition material is easy to use * myunisa is a web-based system for academic collaboration that is accessible to students and staff 55angelopulo — the drivers of student enrolment and retention south african students in the first, third and honours years, second-year international students, master’s and doctoral students clustered around this factor. it was evident in a significant spread of support departments, dcld, the library and production, amongst lecturers and external assessors. table 4: the dominant items of the unisa bad, department good factor very strong agreement communication department staff are friendly unisa does not respond to students’ problems immediately students receive poor administrative support at unisa problems at unisa often remain unresolved strong agreement unisa’s administrative systems work poorly unisa is not in tune with its students’ needs students are not kept informed about the status of their problems at unisa communication lecturers’ academic knowledge is excellent unisa adapts too slowly to students’ needs the communication department is highly innovative no student orientation (factor 3) the no student orientation factor represented the most negative perception of communication study at unisa (see table 5), representing a view of institutional culture that was the most passive inward orientated of all factors. perceptions of unisa and the department were predominantly negative. tuition and administrative material were perceived favourably, but response rates, problem resolution, access to and consistency of staff were viewed negatively throughout. unisa and the department focused on internal interests; student needs were secondary. the greatest problems associated with communication study at unisa were reliability, trustworthiness and service recovery, poor accessibility and flexibility. in order of salience, three inhibitors of enrolment and retention dominated: poor operational processes, negative brand associations and a lack of technical competence. only the university’s market position and its relatively unique and protected position in the market were seen as slightly positive. participants clustering on this factor were undergraduate students (second-year south african and thirdyear south african and international students) and production. very strong agreement e-mailing communication staff does not get a quick response students are not kept informed about the status of their problems at unisa some communication lecturers are much better than others the communication department’s tuition material is easy to use strong agreement unisa does not respond to students’ problems immediately myunisa does help students with their studies the communication department is not innovative it’s difficult to get hold of the communication department’s staff problems at unisa often remain unresolved unisa’s online tuition system works well table 5: the dominant items of the no student orientation factor 56 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 expensive quality education (factor 4) factor 4 was called expensive quality education because unisa’s communication studies were perceived to be amongst the best available. unisa was seen to offer quality education and sound operational systems, but costs were seen to be too high (see table 6). institutional culture was perceived to be active outward orientated. with the exception of cost, communication studies met student expectations. perception was dominated by three positive attributes: servicescape, the skills and professionalism of departmental staff, and reputation. the strongest negative attributes but at lower levels of significance were inconsistent teaching quality, high costs, low reliability and trustworthiness. of the underlying variables, three contributed to and only one inhibited enrolment and retention. the strongest contributor by a significant margin was the technical competence (knowledge and teaching ability) of departmental staff. brand aura and process quality were also positively perceived. aspects of unisa’s marketing, in particular its pricing, deterred student enrolment. this perception was evident only amongst south african students in their first and second years of study. table 6: the dominant items of the expensive quality education factor very strong agreement most students do not study at unisa simply because it is a distance learning university unisa does not offer students the best access and teaching quality at the lowest price some communication lecturers are much better than others unisa is too expensive strong agreement students receive good administrative support at unisa i like unisa’s campuses myunisa does help students with their studies unisa documentation is easy to complete i feel part of the unisa community unisa’s communication qualifications prepare students for the real world unisa good, department mixed (factor 5) factor 5 was named unisa good, department mixed because unisa was consistently regarded very highly while the department received a mixed response (see table 7). the institution was seen to be predominantly active outward orientated, strongly focused on students’ needs, but with aspects of culture that were inward looking and static. the most significant attributes of this view were reputation, credibility and image, followed by accessibility and flexibility. next were the views that unisa’s communication studies were not the best available as discrepancies existed in lecturer and service quality, exacerbated by tuition material which was difficult to use. the attitude and behaviour of departmental staff were poor and the department was not perceived to be particularly reliable, trustworthy or able to recover from service problems. the service environment of communication studies was, however, perceived favourably. communication study at unisa was seen to be driven by a favourable image, positive perceptions of the department’s technical quality and the university’s process quality. the department’s primary problems were poor competitive position and inconsistency in service quality. this view was evident amongst south african students at the second-year, third-year and honours levels of study. 57angelopulo — the drivers of student enrolment and retention table 7: the dominant items of the unisa good, department mixed factor very strong agreement myunisa does help students with their studies unisa’s communication course content is not the best available some communication lecturers are much better than others i feel part of the unisa community strong agreement students do not find unisa to be too inflexible problems at unisa rarely remain unresolved i do associate myself with unisa’s image the communication department’s service to students is sometimes good and sometimes bad the communication department is not prepared to go out of its way to serve students e-mailing communication staff gets a quick response critical but positive (factor 6) factor 6 was named critical but positive (see table 8). perception was strongly skewed towards an active outward orientation and an exceptionally good perception of the service environment. tuition material was easy to use, turnaround times, online tuition and interaction were good. the favourable image of the department was supported by that of unisa. attitude, behaviour and the professionalism of staff were good, but tempered by service lapses, inflexibility and the supply of information that was sometimes incorrect. the department’s qualifications, however, would not prepare students for the real world. in order of importance, students enrolled and remained with the department because of brand aura, processes and operations, and functional ability. people would not study communication at unisa because its curriculum was not exactly what students require, qualifications would not prepare them for employment, and the cost of study. this perception was only evident amongst south african first-year students. table 8: the dominant items of the critical but positive factor very strong agreement i like the way the communication department presents itself to students unisa’s communication qualifications do not prepare students for the real world the communication department’s tuition material is easy to use unisa documentation is easy to complete strong agreement unisa explains what it needs from students clearly enough i do associate myself with unisa’s image unisa does not offer students the best access and teaching quality at the lowest price students find unisa too inflexible unisa’s online tuition system works well i have been critical of the communication department to others admin undermines good tuition (factor 7) factor 7 represented a mixed view of communication studies at unisa (see table 9). it was called admin undermines good tuition because, with the exception of its range of courses, the department 58 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 was well regarded, but this perception was tempered by strongly negative perceptions of the university’s administration. perception of culture was slightly biased towards an active outward orientation. servicescape, reputation, accessibility and flexibility were good. it was easy to reach staff, deadlines were satisfactory, information was easily accessed and tuition material easy to use. professionalism, skills and marketing were perceived to be poor. unisa administration was unsatisfactory and communication subjects did not adequately meet students’ needs. students were deterred from studying communication because of poor administration, tuition turnaround times and a subject mix that did not meet all requirements. primary factors attracting students were department and unisa images, and to a lesser degree the quality of processes such as interaction with lecturers. this factor was only evident amongst south african firstyear students. table 9: the dominant items of the admin undermines good tuition factor very strong agreement unisa’s administrative systems do not work well most students study communication at unisa even though they have an alternative students receive poor administrative support at unisa the communication department does not offer all communication subjects that students need strong agreement it’s easy to get hold of the communication department’s staff unisa has managed to bridge the distance between lecturers and students i do like the way the communication department presents itself to students communication department deadlines work well for students communication students find information on their studies without any trouble the communication department’s tuition material is easy to use excellent relationship over a distance (factor 8) factor 8 was named excellent relationship over a distance because it described a positive, friendly, caring approach and an exceptional active outward orientation (see table 10). favourable attitude and behaviour were the strongest characteristics of the department, while perceptions of trustworthiness, service recovery, servicescape, reputation, core solution, and the marketing mix were also positive. unisa and the department benefitted from the university’s dominant position as a distance learning institution. the department and university enjoyed a good reputation, were positively disposed to their students and actively engaged them. on the other hand, unisa was associated with a lack of accessibility and flexibility. the institution did not respond well to students. these negative factors were, however, less significant than the positive attributes associated with communication study at unisa. the key reasons for enrolment and retention were perceived to lie roughly between the value of the communication qualification, brand aura and process quality. participants clustering around this factor were south african third-year students and dcld staff. 59angelopulo — the drivers of student enrolment and retention table 10: the dominant items of the excellent relationship over a distance factor very strong agreement communication department staff are friendly myunisa does help students with their studies the communication department always acts in the best interests of its students most students study at unisa simply because it is a distance learning university strong agreement unisa is interested in solving students’ problems the communication department is prepared to go out of its way to serve students i have not been critical of the communication department to others the communication department gives high quality responses to enquiries unisa has not managed to bridge the distance between lecturers and students there is too much administration at unisa consolidated perceptions of communication study at unisa the study generated eight separate, strong perceptions of communication study at unisa. by assessing the cumulative value of the theoretically framed variables within these perceptions and compensating for variance, it was possible to generate a range of consolidated perceptions of corporate culture, underlying perceptions of communication study at unisa, and the main drivers of student enrolment and retention. corporate culture the consolidated perception of corporate culture was strongly active outward orientated, reflecting a strong student orientation. underlying perceptions of communication study at unisa two underlying perceptions of communication study at unisa dominated: highly positive reputation, credibility and image; and a favourable service environment. professionalism and skills were also associated strongly with the department and unisa, but at a lower level. the drivers of student enrolment and retention the strongest driver of student enrolment and retention was brand aura. unisa’s position as the dominant provider of tertiary distance education in (primarily) south and southern africa played a large role in attracting communication students. considerable value also resided in the image of the department itself. the high degree of technical competence ascribed to the staff of the department and unisa was also a factor in enrolment. process quality was rated positively, but at a lower level than brand aura and technical competence. the same applied to markets and marketing which was positively ranked, but at a low level. while its market position as a provider of distance education was relatively entrenched and protected, this alone was insufficient to draw students. views held by a number of participants were that the subject spectrum was inadequate and qualifications would not prepare communication graduates for employment. the study identified positive and negative factors that affected enrolment and retention in communication studies at unisa, which would require attention in the student acquisition strategy of the institution. unisa’s overall administrative performance was inconsistent and in some cases was experienced as poor. service expectations of flexibility, response rate, trust, tuition turnaround time, access and problem resolution were not consistently met. the quality of the department’s staff was perceived by numerous stakeholders to vary greatly. other minority perceptions were that tuition material was difficult to use, costs were too high, unisa’s communication studies were suitable for elementary, not advanced study and the department’s qualifications would not prepare students for employment. 60 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 the dispersion of factors within the person sample is noted in table 11. of primary interest is the location amongst students of the factors because it is student perceptions that determine enrolment. other stakeholders clustering around the factors indicate the extent to which these perceptions were shared by those who determined or influenced student perceptions by their strategies, decisions and actions. table 11: dominant factors and person sample group clusters stakeholder group factors 1 a ca de m ic e xc el le nc e 2 u ni sa b ad , d ep ar tm en t g oo d 3 n o st ud en t o ri en ta ti on 4 e xp en si ve q ua li ty e du ca ti on 5 u ni sa g oo d, d ep ar tm en t m ix ed 6 c ri ti ca l b ut p os it iv e 7 a dm in u nd er m in es g oo d tu it io n 8 e xc el le nt e du ca ti on o ve r a d is ta nc e d ep ar tm en t professor associate professor senior lecturer lecturer junior lecturer external assessor administrative su pp or t/ o ve rs ig ht college of human sciences assignments dcld library production st ud en ts 1st yr south african 1st yr international 2nd yr south african 2nd yr international 3rd yr south african 3rd yr international honours south african honours international masters & doctoral the q factor analysis clearly identified major reasons for student uptake and retention in the programmes of unisa’s department of communication science. the q factor analysis also identified major reasons for student drop-out, and possibly the avoidance of study at unisa by potential communication students. 61angelopulo — the drivers of student enrolment and retention perhaps more significantly, and because of the nature of q methodology, the q factor analysis identified the participants that clustered around the factors, and therefore the stakeholders who should be the focus of any interventions undertaken to improve student enrolment and retention. discussion and conclusion in this study q methodology was used to identify the range and structure of the discourse around student enrolment and retention in communication studies at unisa. it identified the characteristics of that discourse, not the characteristics of those engaging in it. “q is not a technique for large-scale generalizable research along logical-positivistic lines where the proportion of individuals subscribing to a point of view is deemed important” (baker et al., 2006: 44). to explore the demographic characteristics of the population segments holding these views, a quantitative methodology would be more appropriate. the study would certainly have yielded more universal results had it included potential students and those studying at competing institutions, but in consideration of the resources required to do so and the exploratory nature of the study, it was limited to the population of unisa’s accessible stakeholders. nonetheless, the study attained the objective of crystallising the solution meaning of unisa’s communication studies – the dominant perceptions that governed enrolment and retention in communication studies at unisa – from the perspectives of existing students, staff and oversight groups. the study identified questions that may be tested in large-scale empirical research where, and if, extrapolation to the broader population is required. this study yielded eight richly diverse accounts of communication study at unisa. while each of these identified the most significant variables affecting student uptake and retention amongst a particular group of stakeholders, it is possible to distil from these a set of the most important. amongst the stakeholders assessed, the strongest perceptions underpinning recruitment and retention were the unisa and departmental brands and unisa’s unique distance education credentials, followed by the academic, disciplinary, technical and administrative competencies that resonated strongly in a number of factors. variables that undermined recruitment and retention amongst certain students were the scope of research and tuition which should be reviewed in the light of industry and employer requirements; lapses in institutional performance in terms of flexibility, access and problem resolution; inconsistencies in teaching quality; accessibility of tuition material by students whose first language is not english; and the cost of study. while the study derived a range of findings specific to unisa and its department of communication science, it also generated a theoretical and methodological resource for the student development strategies of a broad range of academic institutions. the research framework offers the scope and means to identify the most important factors that enhance or undermine enrolment and retention. it allows for the formulation of these factors by students and other significant stakeholder groups from their own unique points of view as opposed to the view of the researcher, and it generates findings that are highly suggestive of the strategies and solutions that would improve student enrolment and retention. 62 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 appendix a: the 49 items of the q study item 1. unisa’s communication lecturers are not the best in their field item 2. communication lecturers’ academic knowledge is excellent item 3. students receive poor administrative support at unisa item 4. the communication department’s service to students is sometimes good and sometimes bad item 5. unisa’s administrative systems work well item 6. information given by communication department staff is consistently accurate item 7. unisa’s communication studies reflect the latest knowledge in the subject item 8. unisa is uninterested in solving students’ problems item 9. communication department staff are unfriendly item 10. unisa is in tune with its students’ needs item 11. the communication department is highly motivated to serve its students item 12. unisa does not explain what it needs from students clearly enough item 13. the communication department gives high quality responses to enquiries item 14. the communication department is not prepared to go out of its way to serve students item 15. communication department deadlines work well for students item 16. students find unisa too inflexible item 17. it’s difficult to get hold of the communication department’s staff item 18. e-mailing communication staff gets a quick response item 19. unisa adapts too slowly to students’ needs item 20. turnaround time for assignments is good item 21. communication students find information on their studies without any trouble item 22. communication staff take too long to resolve their students’ problems item 23. students are kept informed about the status of their problems at unisa item 24. some communication lecturers are much better than others item 25. the communication department always acts in the best interests of its students item 26. unisa responds to students’ problems immediately item 27. communication staff do not meet my expectations item 28. problems at unisa often remain unresolved item 29. unisa’s online tuition system works well item 30. the communication department’s tuition material is easy to use item 31. unisa documentation is easy to complete item 32. unisa has not managed to bridge the distance between lecturers and students item 33. there is too much administration at unisa item 34. i don’t like unisa’s campuses item 35. myunisa does not help students with their studies item 36. unisa’s communication qualification is highly respected item 37. the communication department is highly innovative item 38. i don’t like the way the communication department presents itself to students item 39. i have been critical of the communication department to others item 40. i feel part of the unisa community item 41. i don’t associate myself with unisa’s image item 42. the communication department needs to improve its reputation in industry 63angelopulo — the drivers of student enrolment and retention item 43. most students study communication at unisa because they don’t have an alternative item 44. most students study at unisa simply because it is a distance learning university item 45. unisa is too expensive item 46. unisa’s communication qualifications prepare students for the real world item 47. unisa offers students the best access and teaching quality at the lowest price item 48. students study communication at unisa because its course content is the best available item 49. the communication department does not offer all communication subjects that students need references abdullah f 2006. measuring service quality in higher education: three instruments compared. international 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terms upon which these students can meaningfully be engaged in their school going. such engagement, i argue, has to contend with the cultural resistance displayed by disadvantaged students towards their schooling which they view as being against their classcultural interests. the article suggests that teachers’ pedagogical practices at the site of the school present one key space to leverage the socially just pedagogies necessary for productive school engagement. i consider the conceptual bases upon which such a pedagogical approach can proceed. i advance the argument that student engagement ought to proceed on the basis of a combination of a ‘social relations of pedagogies’ orientation, on the one hand, and what i refer to as an ‘explicit pedagogies’ approach to recontextualisation of work, on the other. it is the main argument of this article that pedagogical justice for disadvantaged students lies in providing a pedagogical scaffold between their life world knowledge’s and accessing the school knowledge codes. such an approach supports induction into the vertical logic of the school code as central to students’ school success, but it argues for pedagogical incorporation of horizontal knowledge’s central to securing active engagement with their schooling. keywords: pedagogical recontextualisation, socially just pedagogies, life world knowledge’s, school code, social relations of pedagogy, school engagement, disadvantaged students introduction this article is a conceptual consideration of the pedagogical bases on which student engagement, with particular reference to disadvantaged or working-class students, can be transacted in the south african schooling context. the key assumption at work here is the view that, in the history of modern schooling, working-class students have made tenuous connections with formal school going. this is aptly captured in willis’s (1977) seminal study on the resistance practices of the ‘lads’ in a working-class uk context. these male students chose to resist the message system of their schooling, actively opting instead to take on the cultural systems of working-class life which, in effect, led to them turning their backs on the promised meritocratic emergence associated with successful schooling. they chose to align themselves with the message system of their working-class culture, which secured them access to their neighbourhood’s popular socialisation, lifestyles and employment prospects. working-class student failure can be understood in part in the light of the lack of everyday functional engagements with their schooling. these students adopt attitudes and identifications in opposition to the school’s disciplining and knowledge-acquisition processes. in other words, they generally refuse to imbibe the message system of their schools which, in turn, has a negative impact on the quality of their school engagement. this consequently prevents them from successfully passing through the school system and into higher education. by opting out, or refusing to opt in, their opportunity to learn is diminished as a result of the ways in which they ‘read’ the cultural dissonance that they experience during their schooling. in other words, they come to evaluate their school going as fundamentally against their own class interests. 53fataar — pedagogical justice and student engagement in south african schooling this raises an enduring problem faced by concerns over the relationship between schooling and social justice regarding the necessity of making schools more meaningful places of cultural and intellectual inclusion and engagement for disadvantaged students. a fatalistic approach would have it that there is hardly anything that schools can do to narrow this gap, instead placing the onus for these students’ improved school encounters on the amelioration that broader structural processes are meant to ensure. disadvantaged students would only be properly engaged by the culture of the school when their poverty is addressed and they have acquired the necessary infrastructural, material and symbolic support in stable family arrangements for there to be a meaningful and positive association between their social contexts and their schooling. on such a view, schools have no direct responsibility for addressing the school cultural gap associated with this form of exclusion experienced by disadvantaged working-class students during their schooling. the literature on the sociology of school development suggests two broad views with regard to this challenge: an optimistic school effectiveness and improvement view, which suggests that schooling could make the difference in leveraging a productive platform for shifting students’ cultural registers and engagement attitudes; and a social reproductionist outlook, which suggests that schooling simply reproduces already existing social inequalities and, in the process, legitimates them. these, i suggest, are reductive views about the actual potentialities of schools to address social justice concerns, especially in the way that they consider the potentialities involved in leveraging a meaningful school engagement platform that could connect disadvantaged students to a productive engagement with school disciplining and knowledge-generation processes. i suggest that the reality associated with the impact of schooling in bridging the gap between the working-class culture and school engagement is complex and that only a careful consideration of the conceptual terrain of schooling will provide some space to insert social justice concerns into everyday school processes. mcfadden and munns (2002:359) support this when they suggest that: the persistence of culturally supported school resistance [as in the case of the lads in willis’s study] intensifies the challenge for educators committed to opening pathways so that students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds have greater chances of educational opportunity and success. this article is a consideration of the conceptual terms on which such a school engagement platform can be founded. central to this is what basil bernstein (1990) labels ‘the pedagogic relay’ in reference to pedagogical processes established by teachers in school and classroom knowledge practices as a key site for considering a conception of responsive student engagement. it is the pedagogical site of teachers’ practices that offers the conceptual space for an alternative approach to the ways in which schools can engage students from disadvantaged background; bernstein (1990) refers to this as the relatively autonomous curriculum and teaching practices that play out in the pedagogic recontextualising field (prf) of the school’s knowledge message system. unlike the bifurcation suggested by those who favour a strict separation between horizontal and vertical knowledge discourses (moore & muller, 1999), i suggest that establishing a pedagogical relationship between these two knowledge discourses – one which respects the importance of the vertical logic of school knowledge – would provide a useful bridge between the life world contexts of disadvantaged students and the knowledge codes that inform school knowledge. creating such a bridge provides one way of transacting a more dynamic interactive approach to engaging disadvantaged students in their schooling and the school’s codes. in the light of this, pierre bourdieu (1973:17), the other key theorist whose work underpins the analytical task of this article, suggests that pedagogies of a particular kind could make a difference to disadvantaged students’ experiences and knowledge take-up in schools. he explains: if all pupils were given the technology of intellectual enquiry, and if in general they were given rational ways of working (such as the art of choosing between compulsory tasks and spreading them over time) then an important way of reducing inequalities based on cultural inheritance would have been achieved. 54 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 in the next section of this article i consider, firstly, what hattam, brennan, zipin and cober (2009) refer to as the cultural capital misalignment that characterises the schooling engagement experiences of workingclass students and, secondly, the nature of student engagement in the south african urban context as an example of the complex ways in which students in the post-apartheid order assemble their modalities of educational engagement. the suggestion here is that pedagogical recontextualisation in schools and classrooms has to attend to the nature of these subjective constructions if our schooling processes have some chance of leveraging an engaging school platform. this section is followed by a principled consideration of the nature of pedagogical recontextualisation in the light of the discursive and political contexts of schooling and classroom practice. the argument proffered here is that the south african curriculum implementation field – what bernstein (1990) refers to as the official recontextualisation field (orf) – is characterised by what could be described as a ‘thin pedagogical platform’, with reference to the kinds of pedagogies that teachers have discursively been positioned to implement as the consequence of a hegemonic state logic of performance that is more concerned with instrumental results-based outcomes than an acknowledgment, valuing and promotion of an internally referenced commitment to teacher professional development. such a view, based on a ‘pedagogy of same’ (lingard, 2007), impedes a socially responsive and just approach to student engagement in the country’s schools. the final section of the article is a conceptualisation of the pedagogical terms upon which a socially just and inclusive pedagogical platform can be launched. such a perspective would have to take account of the nature of the subjective engagements that students have with their schooling and its knowledge codes on the one hand, and the need to rescue the pedagogical identifications of teachers from an instrumental pedagogical base and mobilise a deeper professional knowledge engagement orientation. the argument is made in this article for an explicit or visible pedagogical approach where the teacher is able to take charge of the scaffolding from horizontal to vertical discourse knowledge insertion. it is in this scaffolding where space for engagement with students’ life world contexts can meaningfully be used as a bridge into the school knowledge code. conceptually, the aim is neither a simple valorisation of everyday knowledge nor an uncritical acceptance of the school knowledge code. the challenge is to provide students with the intellectual tools for taking up and critically interacting with the school code. this is a sophisticated approach which many educational theorists argue has to be pursued on the basis of a long-term vision of pedagogical renewal founded on a vision of teachers whose professional lives are more informed by internal accountability systems than external monitoring and control (rizvi & lingard, 2010:93-116). it is clear that such an approach will depend on a vastly improved teacher education platform able to produce teachers who can work across different knowledge forms as a way of engaging diverse students in their classrooms. cultural capital misalignment and the nature of students’ school engagements the starting point for this section is bourdieu’s insight that people enter schooling from different structural positions associated with different social habits (hattam et al., 2009:304). they embody distinctive qualities of cultural disposition, or ‘habitus’, acquired through early life immersion in particular contexts. bourdieu explains that dispositions, in turn, operate selectively in schools as ‘cultural capital’ of stronger or weaker species (bourdieu, 1986). bourdieu (1986:20) suggests that the “educational system … maintains a preexisting social order, that is, the gap between pupils endowed with unequal amounts of cultural capital”. hattam et al. (2009:20) explain that in schools “the dispositions of children’s life contexts favour those with alignment to the cultural arbitrary of the … middle-class schools”. the dispositions of workingclass students are, in effect, out of alignment with the middle-class cultural or knowledge capital that guarantees school success. in this sense pedagogical ‘injustice’ refers to the lack of fit between the cultural capital of working class children and the school’s cultural and knowledge processes, i.e. the school code. understanding the school code as involving a dispositional receptivity for middle-class capital at the institutional site of the school helps explain why the school’s ability to actively engage disadvantaged 55fataar — pedagogical justice and student engagement in south african schooling students is circumscribed. as a result, as cultural institutions, schools are unable to provide a productive engagement platform for these students. the key reason for the lack of school success generally manifested by disadvantaged students is not only that they come to school with the ‘wrong’ cultural capital, but also that schools, in their fixation on providing access to the school code facilitated by a narrow institutional culture, fail to provide a conceptual bridge between the diverse forms of cultural capital of these students and access to the school code. it therefore follows that these students’ engagements are impeded by their possession of the ‘wrong’ capitals, which schools struggle to recognise and leverage institutionally and pedagogically. teese and polesel (2003:50-71) provide an explanation of how students whose embodied capital does not match the schooling code miss out on meaningful school engagement. they argue that the curriculum makes no connection with their community contexts, so there is no intrinsic value to engaging students in the school’s educational experience, and secondly, as a result of this lack of connection, workingclass students miss out on the extrinsic value afforded by school success that gives access to further education and employment. through the inability of schools to connect with and engage their forms of cultural capital, these students miss out on the critical knowledge’s that schooling could provide as well as on the opportunity of insertion into the educational and occupational structure beyond schooling. the pedagogical injustice that schools visit on disadvantaged students therefore has pernicious consequences for their ability to value the exchange meritocratic worth of school and the intrinsic use value to inform their critical life dispositions and choices. the assumption of this article is the view that pedagogical justice has to mean that student engagement with respect to disadvantaged students, i.e. the 80% of children in south africa’s schools who can be regarded as working class, impoverished and destined structurally for educational disengagement – must focus on a pedagogical engagement platform that connects school-based learning with students’ own life worlds experiences. in other words, the connection between the instrumental exchange value of schooling and its intrinsic use value has to be drawn. drawing on political philosopher, nancy fraser (1996:3-6), i suggest that making a pedagogical connection between life world and school codes is a challenge that moves beyond binary social justice thinking. commitment to pedagogical justice is based on the imbrications of two types of claim: an egalitarian redistributive claim that emphasises the redistribution of elite capital (read the school code) and a recognition claim that values social-cultural identity formations (read life world code). such a redistribution versus recognition tension would issue in a classroom pedagogical approach that simultaneously involves knowledge generation and identity negotiation, both of which processes are intimately linked to the inequalities of broader social structures. lingard (2007:246) explains that “we need to acknowledge the weave between identity negotiation and the production and reproduction of knowledge in the pedagogical encounter and its effects”. in other words, engagement favours neither one nor the other dimension but, instead, insists on working with both dimensions in generating a responsive student educational platform. lingard (2007:246) reminds us that teacher pedagogies can be seen to be deeply therapeutic in their care of students, but “indifferent in terms of working with difference and making a difference in academic and opportunity senses”. he seems to be warning against a form of student engagement that lapses into over-compensatory or pastoral behaviour, but fails to work progressively with either the demands of recognition and inclusion, on the one hand, and academic or knowledge engagement, on the other. my own work on subjective engagement by students with their schooling in urban context reveals an almost complete lack of understanding by schools of what i called the ‘educational subject on the move’ (fataar, 2012), resulting in the lack of a pedagogical reception for these students’ cultural and educational backgrounds, coupled with an inability to work productively with their dispositions and knowledge’s. as an illustration, i draw on my research in a range of urban sites to exemplify the discursive gap between the complex make-up of student subjectivities in urban south african contexts and their schools’ engagement and educational modalities. my work highlights the geographic, affective and educational contours of their school going as they precariously move across the city space to access their schools of choice. i described the nature of their school interactions thus: 56 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 the children of the black working classes and unemployed poor go to great lengths to access what they perceive as better schools across the city, where they end up receiving a modernist curriculum that strips them of their access to their cultural knowledge and social survival epistemologies, on the assumption that modern middle-class education is what will emancipate them from their parochial cultural identifications. the assumption of cultural assimilation is hard at work in the urban postapartheid school, albeit with multicultural genuflection to the newer incoming kids’ backgrounds. assimilationist curriculum practices are alive in the city’s classrooms, which ostensibly provide the vehicle for their induction into modern life (fataar, 2012:7). the schools in my research deny these students any discursive recognition of their physical and ontological worlds and their epistemic forms, instead inducting them into a one-dimensional, modern racial-colonial canon, i.e. the dominant school knowledge code (fataar, 2009). these tropes collectively translate into unproblematised pedagogical approaches that conceptualise student learning as a problem in isolation, understood apart from the reconfiguring social forms that swirl around it. the socio-cultural forms of the black working and urban poor, coupled with the everyday deployment of their cultural knowledge’s, are not given curricular currency. heeding lingard’s view, i suggest that the reception discourses of the wide range of schools in which i did my research indicates that they have not recognised this complex school-going subject in their midst, nor have they provided attenuated inclusive orientations to adjust to these subjects’ cultural and everyday knowledge’s and identifications. instead, the schools have discursively positioned themselves as offering culturally assimilationist school experiences and induction into the narrow school code (dolby, 2001; johnson, 2007; fataar, 2007). my research shows how schools go about sustaining this exclusivist culture in which the teachers, often predominantly from racial backgrounds dissimilar to the incoming students, play the leading role in retaining their schools’ hegemonic orientations (fataar, 2009; fataar & du plooy, 2012). the student engagement platforms of these schools play little to no role in recognising and working with the cultural capital and survival and everyday knowledge’s of the students, nor have they demonstrably adapted their registers to work with and mediate the cultural registers of these students. in the ensuing sections of the article i discuss ‘pedagogical recontextualisation’ as a way of responding to the pedagogical injustice implicit in the lack of interaction between the cultural capital arising from the life world contexts of disadvantaged students and their schools’ educational engagements, especially their pedagogical orientations. the task here is to develop a conceptual grounding for a responsive and inclusive pedagogical approach, on the one hand, and academic immersion into the school’s knowledge code, on the other. having worked with a stance that emphasises the importance of understanding the impact of the ever-changing socialities that now co-construct the educational subjectivities of learners and their schools’ institutional platforms, the focus on pedagogical recontextualisation takes us into the how of the pedagogic relay, in other words, the conceptual bases on which pedagogical processes are able to combine a focus on life world and the school codes. the cultural capital misalignment that schools and teachers normally operate within has to be addressed and challenged by an incorporation of the life world contexts of their students. there has to be greater connection between the everyday knowledge’s deployed by the students and the school curriculum and teachers’ pedagogical practices. as hattam et al. (2009:305) suggest: “only when schooling is organised to make this link can the experience of intrinsic value in education become established, and enable scaffolding to success in the mainstream curriculum, leading to extrinsic rewards from schooling”. it is to a principled consideration of this pedagogical scaffolding that i now turn. pedagogical recontextualisation as a site for social justice-oriented schooling practices teacher pedagogy is not the silver bullet for resolving the school engagement dilemma. the ability of pedagogy to leverage an engaging educational orientation to receive and induct students into a critical knowledge orientation is circumscribed as much by the extant professional teaching culture, of which pedagogy forms a crucial part, as it is by the conceptual limitations placed on its ability to challenge the 57fataar — pedagogical justice and student engagement in south african schooling class culture-school gap. the intractable nature of this gap is extremely difficult to mitigate by classroom pedagogy. notwithstanding this pessimistic view, pedagogy remains the key leveraging site for providing an ameliorating platform for social justice in education. what has emerged from the school effectiveness literature over the last two decades – subsequent to the coleman report in the usa in 1966 that found the impact of context to be the overriding factor in determining schooling success – is that teachers and their pedagogies are the one factor that contribute most to improved student achievement. coleman, campbell, hobson, mcpartland, mood, winefield and york (1966) explain that, of all the schooling factors, it is teachers and their pedagogies which contribute most to better learning outcomes for all, particularly for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. this brings into view the challenge of conceptualising pedagogy, which is located at the intersection between knowledge production and its reproduction at the site of the school. this intersection could be regarded as a mediating space where knowledge recontextualisation via the implementation of the curriculum takes place through the classroom pedagogical work of teachers – what i referred to earlier as the recontextualisation field of pedagogic discourse. teachers and their pedagogies are central to this recontextualisation. as a concept ‘pedagogy’ refers to the process through which knowledge is produced in interactive knowledge production processes between the teacher and students. pedagogy addresses the how of this transmission and the reproduction of knowledge involved in its production, i.e. the techne of the knowledge transfer as well as its knowledge substance. lusted (1986:3) explains that the concept of pedagogy enables us “to question the validity of separating these activities so easily by asking under what conditions and what means we ‘come to know’”. he explains that, seen through the prism of pedagogy, what we teach is inseparable from what is being taught and how one learns (ibid:4). this perspective brings pedagogy into the realm of cultural production and exchange, opening up the techne of teaching for questioning about its implicit assumptions about the nature of the knowledge transferred and the cultural assumptions embedded in these processes. pedagogy is part of what bernstein (1971) refers to as the three-message system of schooling: curriculum, pedagogy and assessment, and the complex symbiotic relationship between the three. it is the particular emphasis on aspects of this message system that determines the scope for socially engaging pedagogies. recent policy developments in education in south africa and the broader international context have resulted in a preponderance of policy discursivity that has had pernicious consequences for teachers’ ‘relative autonomy’ (apple, 2002). in other words, the school’s message system has been dominated, and arguably corroded, by the curriculum policy dimension, emanating from the orf. the restricting curriculum policy orientation (spreen & vally, 2010), that currently informs schools’ pedagogical work, has struggled to leverage an engaging pedagogical orientation. the policy-regulated orf has not put schools that are in impoverished circumstances in a position to mitigate their material conditions and discursive teaching orientations, impacting negatively on their prf. socially engaging pedagogies in these circumstances have very little chance of being established. work by myself and my students (fataar, 2007; fataar & du plooy, 2012; watson, 2011; visagie, 2005) on teachers’ professional practice in selected poor schools of cape town provides evidence of the existence of teaching environments empty of generative material circumstances and pedagogies. what we found were one-dimensional school sites where teachers were discursively positioned to fulfil the performative requirements of a narrow set of curriculum implementation expectations. watson (2011) and visagie (2005), for example, show how teachers’ work is dominated by the pastoral dimension of teaching brought on by the exigent impact of poverty and desperate socialities that flow daily into school (bhana, morrell, epstein & moletsane, 2006). fataar and du plooy’s (2012) work on students’ learning assemblages across their township living discusses the impact of the reductive educational environment of their school on the homogenising pedagogical approaches of teachers who ignore the rich knowledge’s that students carry with them to school. these are the kinds of contexts that the majority of students in these schools encounter, which the governmental policy platform, i.e. the orf, failed to leverage productively as inclusive engagement sites. 58 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 on the contrary, south africa’s curriculum policy orientation is characterised by a circumscribed, ‘teacherproof ’ implementation approach (spreen & vally, 2010) that provides a tight, if not constricted, curriculum classification and framing orientation on the assumption that the country’s poorly prepared teachers require a strict regulatory regime to govern curriculum implementation. it is therefore apparent that what has characterised curriculum framings in the usa, uk and other contexts have come to characterise the school message system in south africa. that is, the message system is dominated by a curriculum and a broader performative policy regime that tightly regulates the realm of pedagogy in schools. what this orientation issues in is what lingard (2007) and hayes (2003) describe as thin pedagogising based on ‘pedagogies of same’. this involves an emphasis on a narrow school knowledge code, framed by regulative routines that teachers are meant to comply with, and in-service teacher training sessions aimed at preparing them to implement the school code. i argue that this school code is based on a ‘pedagogy of same’ that is emptied of an ability to incorporate the life world or socially generated knowledge’s by which disadvantaged students can be engaged and stimulated. pedagogies of same focus on a fairly uniform imbibing of the school code with little space for addressing the redistribution-recognition tension that is at the heart of fraser’s (1996) conceptualisation of social justice. emphasis on the redistribution of the school code leaves little to no space for working with identity constructions of difference and the attendant life world-acquired knowledge’s that students carry with them to school. such pedagogies therefore fall short in addressing the class culture-school gap which, i argue, is decisive for engaging disadvantaged students in their take-up of, and critical engagement with, the school code. the resultant engagement platform has tended to be narrow, circumscribed by a curriculum orientation that provides very little space for socially just pedagogies. while the moral logic for offering students a narrow pedagogical platform to access the school code cannot be faulted in emphasising the exchange value of schooling, the limiting conceptual logic of such an approach fails to take account of its inability to provide pedagogical traction to engage disadvantaged students in their own learning. in addition, it also falls short of providing them with knowledge for critical life use (zipin, 2005). acknowledging the limitations that the existing pedagogical platform of teachers set for teachers’ work, as well as the reductive impact of the regulative policy regime that governs teachers, i now go on to offer a conceptualisation of an engaging pedagogical platform that can leverage deep student engagement with the knowledge codes of their schooling. the case for explicit pedagogy based on a ‘social relations of pedagogy’ approach this section is a consideration of the challenge involved in recontextualisation work at the pedagogical site of the school and classroom. i work here with different theoretical strands of work done on what has been described as ‘new pedagogies for postmodern times’, especially by a group of australian academics. i make an argument for combining an approach described as ‘explicit pedagogies’ with a ‘social relations of pedagogy’ approach. the latter is an attempt to theorise the relational basis of pedagogy, which i argue is the key to gaining disadvantaged students’ consent necessary for leveraging their active engagement with school knowledge. explicit pedagogies, in turn, refer to an attempt to make visible the intellectual parameters of an engaging pedagogical approach that would mitigate what is normally left implicit in school knowledge transfer. explicit substantive framing of such a pedagogical approach is the key to socially just pedagogies. drawing on bourdieu, lingard (2007:250) explains that pedagogies which are not “intellectually demanding, and which make implicit cultural assumptions, benefit those with the requisite cultural capital obtained through socialisation within the home, and disadvantage the already disadvantaged in terms of such capital”. making the approach to school knowledge and its intellectual and pedagogical parameters visible is one key way of creating a bridge between the cultural capital forms of working-class students and their school engagement. it opens up the unequal distribution of capitals through schooling and allows for an insertion of a critical orientation to school processes. explicit pedagogies involve a conceptualisation of pedagogy that includes an emphasis on intellectually demanding content, on the one hand, and active recognition and working with life world knowledge’s, on the other. i 59fataar — pedagogical justice and student engagement in south african schooling put forward an argument for using life world knowledge’s as a bridge into school knowledge and as a key to a critical dispositional orientation to such knowledge. while explicit pedagogies, developed below, refer to the substantive properties of socially just pedagogies, an emphasis on the ‘social relations of pedagogy’ refers to the ‘how’ of getting disadvantaged students engaged in their school and knowledge constructions. the suggestion i make here is that the ‘what’ of pedagogies and the ‘how’ of its social relations in the classroom are entwined in socially just pedagogical recontextualisation work. emphasis on the relational dimension of pedagogies is presented as the key to unlocking the recognition of the cultural presence of disadvantaged students and gaining their consent with the idea that schooling is in their interest. this position would counteract the view that these students have that schooling is not in their own interests. as suggested earlier, given the class cultural-school gap, students have to be actively acknowledged and engaged by a compelling pedagogical orientation for there to be a chance for their genuine inclusion and consent. emphasising an engaging relational approach is therefore meant to persuade students that their schooling and its knowledge construction activities are genuinely in their interest. a key challenge for a socially engaging approach in the quest for pedagogical justice is therefore the provision of a relational platform that could secure such engagement. developing such a view, mcfadden and munns (2002) suggest that the logic of school rejection by students is based on their developing a negative attitude founded on individual rejection of education from within the cultural solidarity of the group. they explain that “culturally supported school resistance intensifies the challenge for educators committed to opening pathways so that students from educationally disadvantaged backgrounds have greater chances of educational opportunity and success” (ibid:359). what is going to make students buy into attempts at engaging with their schooling is a convincing account of the idea that schooling is beneficial for them by providing a rationale for how they can become insiders in the culture of the classroom. school engagement depends on a view of one’s presence in a school site where one has self-understanding of playing a meaningful role in such a site. a positive view of their co-presence in their schools is fostered when students are given an opportunity to actively respond to daily experiences and events in their lives, and where the pedagogical focus is on their own cultural interpretations. in this way they would become engaged in producing classroom practices of resistance, compliance, play and creative construction, which would mitigate the school as an alienating cultural site. mcfadden and munns (2002:362) explain that “students come quickly to understand when school is not working for them and when the practices of teachers are not of any use in their own lives, or more pointedly, when their use is illusionary”. conversely, pedagogical approaches that connect with, and engage the cultural and linguistic materials of these students, their socio-historical backgrounds, and their daily navigational practices across the complex spaces of their school going stand a chance of countering the class capitalschool misalignment. connecting with the subjective or relational aspects of their lives and school going holds the potential for providing a compelling, if not unproblematic, platform for socially just pedagogies. it is clear that it is the students’ depth and quality of school engagement relations and experiences that will determine whether the class cultural-school gap is successfully being closed. mcfadden and munns (2002:364) explain that gaining students’ active consent would be the result of their own determination of whether schools are serving their interests: it is the students themselves who will be able to tell us that they are engaged and who will say whether education is working for them in a culturally sensitive and relevant way. it is the students who will be able to tell us whether the offers that education purports to provide are real or illusionary. it is at the messy point of teachers and students responding to each other culturally in relation to classroom discourse and assessment practices where we are truly going to see whether students feel that school is for them. it is within this space that education can provide a chance that is not illusionary, and that can indeed be engaging and lead to purposeful, relevant and productive educational outcomes. while emphasis on a compelling consent-generating relational approach is a necessary condition for meaningful school engagement, it is the substantive nature of the pedagogical platform that will determine 60 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 its success. this brings me to the rationale for explicit pedagogies meant to unveil and work with the culturally arbitrary connection between middle-class capital and the school code. lingard (2007:174) explains that the need for the explicitness of performance criteria and teacher goals for every lesson is a way of opening up pedagogical processes to ensure that schooling is not allowed to work in unequal ways. key to this conception of pedagogy is the conceptual basis on which the distribution of capitals is made visible. developed by australian academics working on what they labelled ‘productive pedagogies’ (lingard & mills, 2007) and another group who labelled their work ‘redesigning pedagogies in the north’ (rpin) (hattam & zipin 2009), an approach to pedagogical recontextualisation to engage disadvantaged students emerged that explicitly sought to combine a focus on intellectual rigour and depth with an emphasis on connectedness and relevance. a view of pedagogy is advanced that incorporates both dimensions as a basis for students to access and work critically with school knowledge. aligned to assessment orientations able to elicit rigorous engagement, this pedagogical approach emphasises higher-order thinking, substantive critical conversation and generative connections to the world beyond the classroom. valuing and working with difference is also intended as a key dimension. the emphasis on integrating the redistribution of school capital with critical connectedness to the lives of students is based on actively mediating the recognition-redistribution tension proffered by fraser (1996), which she regards as key to social justice work. this approach is meant to bring the various forms of capital of disadvantaged students into a generative interaction with the required school code, in effect, laying a basis for critically accessing the school code. this active mediating approach to knowledge production is intended as a means of developing a knowledge engagement basis that would convince students that schooling is in their interest. in other words, such pedagogical recontextualisation is intended to substantially leverage students’ productive engagement with their schooling and is regarded as a crucial component in augmenting the relational dimension of pedagogy discussed above. this pedagogical approach is meant to open space for inserting what is described as students’ life world knowledge’s as a constitutive component of a school’s teaching platform. eschewing a deficit view of students, such an approach assumes that students’ lives and knowledge’s are assets worthy of valorisation and critical engagement. hattam et al. (2009) explain that the ability to engage students in learning depends on infusing the curriculum and pedagogy with the rich familiarities of life world knowledge and practice. these context-dependent knowledge’s are valorised for their important relational benefit, i.e. students begin to value school connections made to their own lives that allow teachers to gain students’ active consent as participants in schooling which they begin to recognise as meant for them. it also provides a pedagogical platform to engage them in their own critical understanding of their life world knowledge’s, while enabling the pedagogical recontextualisation process to establish an interactive and mediating relationship with the school knowledge code. the use of the ‘funds of knowledge’ approach in the rpin project is an example of working pedagogically with the students’ life world knowledge’s. foregrounding rich connectivity with students’ life worlds, the rpin project used the funds of knowledge approach, developed by moll, amanti, neff and gonzalez (1992) among hispanic american communities in the usa to capitalise on the students’ household and other community resources in the classroom. funds of knowledge refer to the historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skills that households use for their daily functioning and survival. these funds include the social and labour histories of families, their social networks, technological use and literacy resources. as context-specific knowledge’s these funds are then treated as intellectual resources in school history, geography, art and language classrooms. in this way schools are able to signal that they value the capitals of disadvantaged students as well as establish a platform for critical interaction with their knowledge’s. an active consent generating pedagogy based on acceptance that schooling is in their interest would be facilitated, in other words, what life world knowledge use in pedagogies allows is the idea that schooling is for them. i argue that a further pedagogical modality is required: the necessity of scaffolding from life world knowledge engagement to explicit and practical learning of the cultural codes needed for success in mainstream school work. this view respects vertical insertion into the school code, which holds the 61fataar — pedagogical justice and student engagement in south african schooling promise of induction into the context-independent knowledge of power. disadvantaged students ought to be given access to the knowledge of power and its exchange value which will enable them to enter into further and higher education and professional employment. the emphasis on life world or horizontal knowledge forms in school is not meant to cut them off from vertical knowledge acquisition. this dimension secures active student engagement and connecting points into the vertical school code. these two knowledge forms are thus held in critical juxtaposition, and as delpit (1988:296) explains, “we must keep the perspective that people are experts on their own lives … but in the second instance, students must be assisted in the learning the culture of power”. a key conceptual challenge remains, as expressed in the work of bernstein around the commensurability of horizontal (life world) knowledge and vertical school knowledge (bernstein, 1999; moore & muller, 1999). there remains deep scepticism about mixing the two forms on the basis that there is a structural difference between these two knowledge forms. important theoretical work has emerged to question this position. wilson and williams (2012:3), for example, base their critique of this bifurcation on western epistemological thinking, which emphasises “a dualistic framework of thinking and practices, endemic in education systems, which constructs intellectual challenge (or ‘academic rigour’) and relevance as incompatible – or at least as antagonistic to each other.” zipin (2005) calls the pursuit of both life world and school knowledge an exquisite tension which remains unresolvable, yet ought to be pursued. the view adopted in this article is based on an acknowledgement of the difficulty of working across these knowledge forms, especially given the relatively sophisticated pedagogical platform such an approach would necessitate. i favour an intermediate approach that conceptualises the pedagogical relationship between them as involving careful processing and scaffolding of life world knowledge’s onto school knowledge. it is in the scaffolding activities led by the teacher, through strong classification, i.e. control of substantive knowledge acquisition in the classroom, and in active interaction with students, in which the potential resides for deeper recognition and incorporation of their knowledge’s into classroom processes. life world knowledge’s would therefore serve as a bridge into deeper and more meaningful school engagement. mcfadden and munns (2002:363-364) suggest that pedagogical framing in such scaffolding processes, i.e. control over the pacing, sequencing and control of the knowledge production processes, should be relaxed in order for students to meaningfully engage in the social relations of the classroom pedagogy on the assumption that a more relaxed interactive approach to framing is meant to secure such engagement. this, in turn, would encourage a more productive approach to engaging in the knowledge construction work in the classroom. the risk of having the life world knowledge’s co-opted by, or assimilated into, school knowledge is worth taking, despite the warning that this might mean the failure of recognition of difference on the basis that co-optation would mean that the life world knowledge’s would become something else, i.e. school knowledge. bernstein (1999) warned that recontextualising everyday knowledge into the school curriculum would not lead to more effective acquisition of school knowledge. here i suggest that the potential of incorporating life world knowledge’s into teachers’ pedagogies for persuading students that schooling is in their interest would trump considerations about what knowledge form is eventually produced. in this light, i would argue that life world knowledge’s have to be conceptualised as a bridge into induction and critical engagement with the school code. such a view holds the potential for engaging disadvantaged students through the pedagogical incorporation of life world knowledge’s into an interactive relationship meant to secure students’ interest in and consent for their schooling. this would provide the basis for socially just and inclusive pedagogical recontextualisation in schools. such an orientation, i suggest, provides some chance of persuading students that schooling is in their own interest, while also providing them with access to the code of power necessary for accessing their future education and employment aspirations. conclusion this article adopts a heuristic approach for considering the basis for generating pedagogical justice for disadvantaged students who are generally excluded from school success as a result of a mismatch between their working-class cultural capital and the capital associated with successful school going. it is this basic 62 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 pedagogical injustice that this article has sought to bring into view. it asked how we can get these students to actively engage in their school going, despite their alienation from the culture and knowledge practices of their school. the pedagogical recontextualisation that i favour is meant to challenge the current prevalence of a ‘thin pedagogies’ approach to curriculum implementation in south african schools. i argued that this approach is neither capable of engaging disadvantaged students in their schooling, nor would it succeed in providing a pedagogical platform for deep critical interaction with the school knowledge code. it issues in a ‘pedagogies of same’ orientation that favours the middle classes as a result of their close cultural capital alignment with the school code. i am not oblivious to the reductive policy environment in which teachers have to do their professional work, nor to the generally weak pedagogical and content knowledge capacities of teachers in this country. socially just pedagogical recontextualisation would have to be understood as a long-term project aimed at the considerable improvement of the conditions for teachers’ socialisation as members of an internally regulated profession in materially enabling work environments, on the one hand, and their intellectual and pedagogical improvement, on the other. the article has nonetheless argued that teacher pedagogies are the key to leveraging a social justice orientation in school. i have argued that it is in a re-oriented pedagogical recontextualisation approach at the site of the school where such a productive engagement can be established. working with the redistributionrecognition tension that constitutes fraser’s (1996) approach to social justice, i propose a pedagogy founded on a rich relational approach that has the ability to leverage students’ consent for their active engagement with school. this approach is motivated by the need to persuade students to internalise the view that schooling is in their interest and meant for them. such an engagement platform is connected to what i have labelled an explicit pedagogies orientation that makes the substance of the pedagogical work visible. intellectual rigour, relevance and recognition of difference are the conceptual cornerstones of this pedagogical orientation. this translates into pedagogies that incorporate the life world knowledge’s of the students into the pedagogical process and use them as a link into knowledge construction associated with the school’s knowledge code. valorising the life contexts and knowledge’s of students is meant to secure the disadvantaged students’ engagement with their schooling and the acquisition of the school knowledge necessary for exercising their future educational aspirations. it also provides a basis to work with their schooling knowledge construction processes beyond utilitarian use by also providing intellectual material for application in their lives. such a critical pedagogical recontextualisation platform has the potential to realise pedagogical justice in meaningfully engaging working-class students in their schooling. references apple m 2002. does education have independent power? bernstein and the question of relative autonomy. british journal of sociology of education, 23(4):607-616. bernstein b 1971. on the classification and framing of educational knowledge. in m young (ed.), knowledge and control. london: collier-macmillan. bernstein b 1990. the structuring of pedagogic discourse. london: routledge. bernstein b 1999. vertical and horizontal discourse: an essay. british journal of 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(what is the influence of school culture on the role identification of teachers at a primary school in the western cape?). med dissertation. stellenbosch: stellenbosch university. willis p 1977. learning to labour. farnborough: saxon house. wilson s & williams c 2010. pedagogies for social justice: did bernstein get it wrong? international journal of inclusive education, 14(4):417-434 zipin l 2005. the pedagogical challenge: facing the aporetic madness of social justice. retrieved on 2 april 2012 from http://www.aare.edu.au/05pap/zip05584.pdf/. 64 the spatial practices of school administrative clerks: making space for contributive justice abdullah bayat university of the western cape this article discusses the work practices of the much neglected phenomenon of the work of school administrative clerks in schools. popular accounts of school administrative clerks portray them as subjectified – assigned roles with limited power and discretion – as subordinate and expected to be compliant, passive and deferent to the principal and senior teachers. despite the vital role they play in schools, their neglect is characterised by their invisible, largely taken-for-granted roles in a school’s everyday functioning. this main aim of this article is to make their everyday practices and contributions visible, to elevate them as indispensable, albeit discounted, role players in their schools, whose particular expressions of agency contribute qualitatively to a school’s practices. using the theoretical lens of ‘space’, and based on in-depth semi-structured interviews in the qualitative research tradition, the article discusses how selected school administrative clerks’ production of space exceeds their assigned spatial limitations, i.e. they move beyond the expectations that their work contexts narrowly assign to them. they resist the contributive injustice visited upon them and through their agency they engage in spatial practices that counters this injustice. they carve out a productive niche for themselves at their schools through their daily practice. this niche, i will argue, embodies practices of ‘care’, ‘sway’ and ‘surrogacy,’ understood through a vigorous ‘production of space’. through these unique spatial practices they reflect their agency and their appropriation of existing spatial practices at their schools. thus, they produce personalized meanings for their existing practice as well as generate novel lived spatial practices. key words: school administrative clerks, space, spatial practices, lived space, contributive justice introduction the article aims to contribute to our analysis of social justice by suggesting that we broaden our focus on social justice to include issues of contributive justice. it highlights how those who are denied contributive justice do not simply lie down and accept their fate but that they actively counter the contributive injustice visited upon them. contributive injustice is where workers’ opportunities for self-development, gaining self-esteem and recognition by others is thwarted by the unequal division of labour that assigns them simple, mindless, and routine tasks (gomberg, 2007; sayer, 2009, 2011). i agree with the assertion by the proponents of contributive justice that the unequal division of labour leads to the curtailing of opportunities for self-development for those who are denied complex work (sayer, 2011). however, i posit that administrative clerks do not passively accept this inequality of opportunity but through their agency, reflexivity and tactics, carve out spatial practices of self-development and, in the process, gain self-esteem and recognition at school level. literature on the practice of school administrative clerks in south africa is sparse (van der linde, 1998; naicker, combrinck & bayat, 2011). these clerks suffer inequalities of opportunity because of the division of labour which relegates them to a role that offers low remuneration, little recognition and limited participation. studies of the roles of administrative clerks in schools (casanova, 1991; van der linde, 1998; thomson, ellison, byrom & bulman, 2007; conley, gould & levine, 2010; naicker, combrinck & bayat, 2011), higher education institutions (szekeres, 2004; mcinnis, 2006; whitchurch & london, 2004) and businesses (fearfull, 1996, 2005; truss, 1993) found that they are regarded as marginal and invisible even though their contributions are essential for the smooth running of their workplaces. secretarial work is regarded as a ghetto occupation (truss, 1993; truss, alfes, shantz & rosewarne, 65bayat — the spatial practices of school administrative clerks 2012). it is precisely this low esteem and lack of recognition attached to it as an occupation that confirms that those who fill these roles are subjected to contributive injustice. this article sheds light on school administrative clerks’ spatial practices within the exigencies of their everyday professional contexts. it highlights their noteworthy contributions to the on-going functioning of the school, especially the surreptitious and sometimes very concrete impact on the lives of students, teachers, the principal, parent governors and auxiliary staff. in authoring their spatial practices they counter and subtly resist the marginalisation and contributive injustice of their occupation. the article reveals their largely invisible spatial practices and unacknowledged contributions to the daily operation of their schools in which they engage to counter contributive injustice. since the recent emphasis on ‘space’ in social studies (harvey, 1989; lefebvre, 1991; soja, 1989) and education in south africa (see jacklin, 2004; fataar, 2007, 2009; dixon, 2007), researchers contend that we cannot ignore that human behaviour and space are interrelated and overlap. the theory of the production of social space argues that space is not empty or devoid of formative power. it opposes those arguments that consider space to be a container in which events occur and takes a perspective that space is firmly intertwined with social events. space is thus regarded as constitutive of social relations. jacklin (2004) draws our attention to the constituent nature of spatial practices in the pedagogical routines of teachers and students in classroom contexts. dixon (2007) argues that there is a relationship between classroom order and spatial organisation and that social space is used to manage, regulate and produce specific kinds of students enmeshed in knowledge and power constructions. fataar’s (2007) spatial lens highlights the agency and reflexivity of students from ‘other’ social spaces as they move to middle-class social spaces and the bodily adjustments they make to fit into these spaces. my article builds on their perspectives of the constituent nature of space of everyday practice. the data was collected from a qualitative research study of three administrative clerks in public schools in the western cape. there was one male and two women participants. they are referred to as p, m and f. the research included both semi-structured interviews with them as well as participative observations at school. the data was analysed thematically through the spatial lenses discussed earlier. there are other themes in the data but i focus on those yielded by the specific lens used in this paper. i spent one school term observing the three administrative clerks at their schools, during which time i interviewed them over several days. i also interviewed their principals as well as members of the teaching staff. i spent several days at the schools making observations, taking field notes and interviewing the administrative clerks about their practices as they worked. in the next section i advance my theoretical lens and thereafter use it to analyse the data collected on the spatial practices of the three school administrative clerks. three sets of spatial practices are identified through which administrative clerks counter their experiences of contributive injustice and through it contribute significantly to the functioning of the school and the positive experiences of students, teachers and the principal. theoretical considerations social justice is considered to be primarily about distributive justice – concerned with what people get. of late it has been complemented by cultural/identity recognition and political participation perspectives of social justice (fraser, 2008). a further development around the ideas and theories of social justice is the contributive justice perspective. contributive justice asks us to turn our attention away from what people get to what people do. focusing on what we do is based on the aristotelian perspective that what we do has as much an influence on the quality of our lives as what we get. thus, the contributive justice perspective urges us to consider social justice as arising from the variety and quality of practices that workers are able to engage in (gomberg, 2007; sayer, 2009). contributive justice is a normative framework which suggests that the unequal divisions of labour within an organisation and within the economy subject workers to unequal opportunities for realising their potential. this is an aristotelian approach which emphasises the human development of dispositions and abilities through work and practice. 66 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 the type of work one does is directly related to the psychological and economic rewards that one receives which, in turn, have an effect on our well-being (sayer, 2011). work is not only a source of economic rewards but also of fulfillment, whether through self-satisfaction or recognition by others. the contributive justice argument is that the type of work that one does, affects what one can become, how one views oneself and is viewed by others. it shapes the capabilities of the individual (sayer, 2011). for example, the administrative clerk develops her financial management skills through doing the budget of her school, feels a sense of accomplishment for doing a complex task and is lauded by the school management team. if she is only restricted to capturing financial data, her financial management capabilities would be limited, her sense of accomplishment would be less than in the previous example and this basic task would not get her much recognition. sayer (2009:1) citing gomberg (2007) argues that: as long as the more satisfying and complex kinds of work are concentrated into a subset of jobs, rather than shared out among all jobs, then many workers will be denied the chance to have meaningful work and the recognition and esteem that goes with it. contributive justice is where workers receive the types of work that enable them to develop their capabilities, receive internal goods of satisfaction and external goods of recognition (sayer, 2011). however, most schools are organised with an unequal division of labour. this unequal division of labour situates the administrative clerk in an occupation that is assigned routine and mundane tasks. they have fewer opportunities for developing their capabilities, gaining satisfaction or receiving recognition. the argument is that the unequal division of labour leads to inequality in the development of capabilities. murphy (1993) cited in sayer (2011) mentions studies that those who do complex work see their capabilities improve over time, whereas those who are subjected to routine work capabilities stagnate and deteriorate. however, i propose that administrative clerks do not let the division of labour dictate their practices, but through their agency, carve out practices that allow them to counter the contributive injustice of their occupation. a focus on agency locates administrative clerks’ daily practice as practice oriented towards personal action and meaning making. in foregrounding school administrative clerk’s agency, i do not deny that they develop certain routine and habitual actions through role internalisation. however, within the everyday complex interplay of people, situations and events, administrative clerks exercise creative expressions of agency even if they are circumscribed and largely discounted. it is apparent that their exercise of agency is coloured by context, relationships, culture and existing spatial practice, aspects of which the analysis below sets out to capture. i am specifically motivated by archer’s position on agency which she views as an outcome of reflexive internal deliberations within oneself around a course of action in relation to personal projects (archer, 2007). these internal conversations and deliberations about personal projects lay the foundation for the production of administrative clerks’ spatial practice. i theorise space using schmid (2008) and zhang and beyes’ (2011) reading of lefebvre. the premise is that human beings produce social space through their everyday spatial practices and they, in turn, are shaped by it. this novel approach shifts the focus from material space to the practices that constitute or produce social space. i forward the argument that administrative clerks exercise agency in their production of space. they are not the only producers of space – certainly the principal and teachers as well as students produce spatial practices – but my focus in this article is on the administrative clerks. lefebvre (1991) argues that social space is produced through three dialectically interconnected processes. the spatial triad of ‘spatial practices,’ ‘representations of space’ and ‘spaces of representation,’ or, ‘perceived’ (production of material), ‘conceived’ (ideological-institutional) and ‘lived’ (symbolicexperienced) space respectively. the triad corresponds to lefebvre’s three-dimensional conceptualisation of social reality: material social practice, language and thought, and the creative poetic act (schmid, 2008). spatial practices are in reference to the material dimension of social activity and interaction. it is the activities, networks, relations, interactions that are constitutive of all spaces. the empirical relationship between the body and its physical environment is referred to as perceived space (lefebvre, 1991:39). perceived space is concrete, tangible and recognised directly through the senses. the representations of space, i.e. conceived space, emerge at the level of discourse and speech and constitute conceptual frameworks of material spaces. these are the maps, plans and organisational charts 67bayat — the spatial practices of school administrative clerks and organograms that aim to structure or construct spaces (schmid, 2008). this is the intellectual and conceptual language or discourse of a particular space. the lived space “dimension denotes the world as human beings experience it through the practice of their everyday life” (schmid, 2008:40). it describes what a particular space means to an individual. representational spaces or lived spaces overlay “physical space, making symbolic use of its objects” (lefebvre, 1991:39). this is the experiential dimension of space. however, it is important to note that the three spaces are not separate realities but rather “features of a single – and ever-changing – reality” (lehtovuori, 2010:55). fiske’s (1988) conceptualisation of the ‘locale’ as the micro level of spatial practice, where those in subordinate positions in society ‘produce’ their own meaning of images and events in everyday life, exemplifies the insertion of agency into the production of space. the locale is the space of agency and ‘little victories’ (fiske, 1988). de certeau (1984) sees space as the micro relations, where the subordinates spatially appropriate their conceived spaces ascribing new meanings to spatial practices. “the work of de certeau … frames the everyday as the sphere of creativeness par excellence …” (brownlie & hewer, 2011:248). thus, users or consumers of space do not passively enter spaces, but produce their own lived space by negotiating, changing and ‘metaphorizing’ spaces, thereby producing singular concretions at the same time that they are subjected to the framing of the conceived space. the “production of space is an embodied process” (zhang & beyes, 2011:17). it is to be found in the moment of bodily action. thus, “bodies …‘produce’ or generate spaces” (mccormack, 2008:1823). what the body does in a particular material space is what the space becomes in that moment. it is what we pay attention to when we research space (zhang & beyes, 2011). there is a generative relationship between space and the bodily movement therein (mccormack, 2008). so my focus on the production of space is on bodily movement, i.e. spatial practice as embodied action. the spatial practices of administrative clerks are dialectically produced. the office space is conceived by educational authorities as a space of routine and mundane activities. the administrative clerks reproduce the objectives of the designers of the conceived space and employ their agency and tactics to construct their personalised spatial practices with their attendant lived space experience. their spatial practices are everyday practices influenced by what is expected of them as well as what they intend to accomplish through their practices. this can lead to spatial practices that have one physical form for the principal, school management team (smt), school governing body (sgb) or educational authorities but multiple meanings for the administrative clerks themselves. social space is thus a spatial production fuelled by both structure and agency, domination and appropriation, and power and resistance (lefebvre, 1991). the production of the spatial practices of administrative clerks is simultaneously fuelled by their conceived, perceived and lived space. my premise is that administrative clerks’ agency gives rise to their creative poetic spatial practice: a new spatial practice, a new meaning for an existing spatial practice or a modification of an old spatial practice. through these novel spatial practices and lived space moments, administrative clerks counter the contributive injustice of the unequal division of labour. in the next section, i briefly introduce the three administrative clerks and their school contexts. thereafter, i identify and discuss three major sets of their spatial practice: spatial practices of care, spatial practices of sway, and spatial practices of surrogacy. these spatial practices reflect their agency in countering the contributive injustice of their occupational role. introducing the spatial practitioners in this section, i introduce the three administrative clerks and their schools. this provides us with the contextual backdrop to make sense of their spatial practices. m has worked at y primary school (yps) since 1999. she started off in the position of personal assistant to the principal and became the school secretary/administrative clerk when the senior administrative clerk retired in 2004. she grew up in the area and attended the school as a child. she has a matric certificate and worked in secretarial and administrative positions for more than ten years before she joined the school. 68 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 she is currently the only administrative clerk at yps. she has a close relationship with the principal, mr k. he is a disciplinarian who runs the school with a firm hand. m is a member of the sgb and acts as both secretary and treasurer to the sgb. she actively participates in its meetings. she is not part of the smt. p was part of the community committee that initiated and urged the educational authorities to establish a primary school in the area. subsequently, he worked at the school soon after the school was established in 2001. he is the more senior of the two administrative clerks at the school. he has a friendly relationship with the principal and with most of the teachers. he is currently a member of the smt. he was previously a member of the sgb and served in the capacity of financial officer which he still occupies even though he has resigned from the sgb. the principal depends on him to do many of his administrative and managerial tasks. p has an honours degree in social development and is currently doing his masters’ degree in public administration at a local university. f has been an administrative clerk since 1997. she has been at her current school since 2002. she is one of two administrative clerks at the school. she serves on the sgb and had previously served on the smt. f handles the school finances. she has a somewhat turbulent relationship with some of the teachers. f has completed an adult basic education and training diploma course and has been teaching adults. she is currently registered for an undergraduate degree in education at a distance learning university. during the course of the research study the incumbent principal resigned and an acting principal was appointed and thus f’s spatial practice became even more important and pivotal. the acting principal relies extensively on her experience and knowledge to manage the school. they have a congenial but not close relationship. the three administrative clerks have many years of experience working in three primary schools that impose different constraints upon their spatial practices. they have served and continue to serve on the smts and sgbs of their schools. i contend that it is their many years of experience, as well as the varied types of work they are engaged in, which has given rise to their spatial practices that will be discussed in the next section. towards contributive justice: the spatial practice of three school administrative clerks the contributive justice thesis emphasises that the work we do affects the extent to which we are able to realise and develop our capacities and gain internal and external goods. in the following section i demonstrate how administrative clerks engage in spatial practices that are instances of agency within a circumscribed role. these spatial practices counter the contributive injustice of the administrative clerks’ role and occupation. spatial practices are the locale of agency and tactics of appropriation. these spatial practices are not only beneficial to the administrative clerks’ development, but are integral and essential for the running of the school. their spatial practices are simultaneously an outcome of their conceived, perceived and lived space. the conceived space refers to the discourses and designs of the educational authorities of what should occur in the school office space. at school, the space designed for the administrative clerk is the school reception, office or administration block. this conceived space forms part of a broader conceptualisation of schools as spaces where the principal does all the strategic planning and thinking and the administrative clerks simply execute all the routine tasks. it is the space where the administrative clerks work is conceived as routine non-essential, non-pedagogic or involving non-strategic tasks. yet, as i show below, this study has found that their hub is vital as a space of thought, creativity and strategy. perceived space refers to the immediate bodily feedback of enacting spatial practices. it refers to those bodily sensations that accompany three spatial practices of the administrative clerks, i.e. their everyday perceptions of the school space. an example of this is their routine response to a student requesting their help. in the spatial practices highlighted below, i provide examples of students’ and teachers’ routine perceptions of the administrative clerks’ spatial practices. lived space is the affect and personal meaning making – the meaning ascribed to the spatial practice. it refers to the affective dimension of their spatial practice. in the next section their affective experiences are described as important to their spatial practices. 69bayat — the spatial practices of school administrative clerks i highlight three sets of spatial practices. these spatial practices of care, sway and surrogacy are particular spatial practices that demonstrate how administrative clerks’ agency in the form of spatial practices dialectically interacts with the conceived space which gives rise to particular lived spaces. it shows how the agency inspired moments of spatial practices operate side by side with the subordination of the administrative clerks. these practices demonstrate instances of spatial practices that counter, but are also intertwined, with the hegemonic conceived space. spatial practices of care ‘spatial practices of care’ refer to the practices of administrative clerks where they interact with students, teachers or the principal, with care and affection in their spatial domains. students regularly come to m when they feel ill and she responds by undertaking a range of practices that reflect her care. this is akin to hochschild’s (1983) emotional labour. she asks them to sit on the couch in the reception foyer and attends to them when able. she touches their foreheads to check their temperatures. if she decides that they are ill she informs the teacher and then, depending on the severity of the illness, informs the parents. sometimes after some attention, students feel better and return to class without further intervention. m’s emotional work is embodied. this means that she responds to students’ cries for help with motherly postures and expressions. p has assisted a number of novice teachers and helped them with their assignments. he reads their assignments and gives them feedback. he even assisted a teacher in preparing lessons related to budgeting and accounting. he also assisted teachers with word processing and using the computer lab. his caring for the students extends to him prodding and urging the principal to do more to improve the quality of teaching at the school, which sometimes leads to a fractious relationship with the principal. he expressed that he felt he had let down the school when he resigned from the sgb. he is always ready to go the extra mile because he cares about the students. the school is facing a great deal of social problems and he is currently participating in the school as a sign of node care and support (snocs) initiative. he says that students are being abused sexually, emotionally, physically and verbally. snocs aims to identify these students and help them. he is involved in several community projects that aim to uplift the community around and within the school. f also engages in practices of care. commenting on an interaction where she had played a significant role in the decision taken, she describes her lived space experience: “yes, at the end of the day you also feel good because you were helping someone else and not just that you doing the job. and you doing it because it’s your passion and it is your work”. f cares about the students and receives them warmly when they come to pay their school fees. she is welcoming if they request any assistance and sees herself as contributing to their development. she says: “i like working with the learners and … [when] one or two or some learners come visit that was at the school and finished with high school and … tell you that they achieved so much in life, you feel … you were a part of their education, you feel so good”. she also provides the sgb chairperson with food and spent many afternoons making the sgb chairperson feel comfortable in her new position. poor students receive food and money from m. in one incident she bought a pair of shoes for a needy student. she provides support for the teachers, giving information about educational authority-related matters such as issues regarding salaries or how to access the web-based integrated school administration and management system. all of these practices go beyond her job description. pedagogic support a subset of their practices of care is their pedagogic support for students. when students come to m’s office complaining about other students, m tries to teach them to be fair and kind towards one another. she models good behaviour to them. when students are hungry or she knows that their parents are in need, she provides money or food and assigns the hungry students to receive food from the school kitchen. m’s school is a bilingual school that has many foreign language speakers. the policy of the school states that foreign students must not be placed in bilingual english and afrikaans classes. when she 70 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 encountered a foreign learner who had been placed in a bilingual class, she immediately brought the matter to the attention of the head of department (hod), who moved the learner to the english class. p’s pedagogic concern extends to leading and coaching students outside of the school curriculum and formal structures about being aware of their bodies and themselves. he acts as a life skills mentor. his involvement in such activities is based on his personal project of wanting to make a difference in his community. this is what drives him in many of his spatial practices. f regularly assists students with their projects especially where they need information from the internet. she would search and download information for them even consulting with their teachers to ascertain what information they needed. m, f and p produce these spatial practices of care because they perceive the “school as a home away from home”. although their principals consider their spatial practices as contributing toward a better functioning school, for them, these spatial practices make them feel better about themselves and who they are or want to be. this means that they derive internal goods of satisfaction from embodying spatial practices of care. in producing a caring social space they are appropriating the office space and using their agency to transform it through their bodily action into spaces of care, hope and potential. they are poaching conceived spaces with their tactical spatial practice. through their spatial practices of care, these three administrative clerks simultaneously embody their workspaces as spaces of care and work. spatial practices of sway ‘practices of sway’ are practices where the administrative clerks manoeuvre themselves into positions where their everyday practices allow them to transform moments of their spatial practice into moments of influence. these spatial practices are deliberate manoeuvres by the three administrative clerks to influence decisions at school. it includes coaxing, lobbying and negotiating. f lobbied and was influential with a previous principal who allowed her to be part the smt meetings. he needed her insight and support as he was new to the school. via his support she attended and influenced the school management. she remarks about the influence she used to have: “… the … senior teacher comes in – ‘nee juffrou, ek gaan nou eers my regterhand vra’ [no teacher, i am first going to ask my right hand]. then he will call me in: mrs f, what do you think of the idea? what should we do now?” this previous principal acknowledged that she used her position on the smt to influence decisions that improved the effectiveness of the management of the school. once he left, she lost much of her direct influence on the smt, yet she continued to influence the school management in more subtle ways. for instance, f proposed that mr p, a retired educational authority official who had been the institutional management and governance (img) manager assigned to the school, attend the recruitment and selection meetings to ensure that the school followed the educational authorities’ policies and procedures. f not only briefs the sgb chairperson before sgb meetings on the correct policies and procedures, but also on what she can expect from the principal and teachers. she acts as an ‘unofficial’ adviser to the chairperson. she has influence in the sgb meetings since she is responsible for school finance, which includes drawing up the budget. she also influences the sgb by proposing how the funds should be spent. she is very forthright in the meetings having developed her confidence over her many years of experience. f’s spatial practices of influence and sway were evident when she tactically manoeuvred herself to appropriate the school office spaces (sgb and smt meetings) as spheres of influence for herself. these opportunities for self-development, satisfaction and recognition have increased especially with the appointment of the acting principal who now relies upon her for direction and guidance. m also embodies practices of sway. she has made herself indispensable to the principal and teachers through the spatial practice of doing some of their administrative and even personal tasks. this seems to be a tactic that all the school administrative clerks embody. they are prepared to do extra tasks, whether through subtle coercion or through commitment, which gives them room to negotiate influence within their social spaces. 71bayat — the spatial practices of school administrative clerks m describes her influence on decision making in the school saying: “mr k [the principal] won’t have me in the school management team meetings but he … discuss(es) what was discussed at the meeting or ask(s) me, ‘have you got money for this’ or ‘what do you think of this’… so i play a huge part in the decision making”. m’s school is a fee-paying school. according to the south african schools act 1996 (sasa), parents can apply for a full or partial exemption from school fees. m’s official task is to record all the applications and present them to the sgb. however, her practice goes beyond this expectation. she has developed techniques and tactics to gather information about parents who apply for the fee exemption, noting among other things the quality of their clothing and the cars that they drive. during the fee exemption application process studies the bodily practices of the parent applicants when they deliver their fee exemption documents as well as observing their children’s attire to ascertain their financial status. she then produces a comprehensive summary of what that family or individual should receive in terms of a fee exemption. once she has gathered all the relevant documents, as prescribed by the sasa, she presents her data along with her interpretation and recommendation regarding an exemption based on her visual analysis of the bodily movements of parents, students and the spaces they occupy. p has been influential both on the sgb and the smt. he requested to be on the smt even though this is conceived as the teachers’ and principal’s space. he says: “i asked ... to be part of the smt and the intention was that being an administrative clerk is not challenging for me and it doesn’t give me any opportunity, maybe to give my views on the way the school is being run.” once on the smt, he influenced the principal’s decision to adopt a standard agenda for the smt meeting. on the sgb, he worked tirelessly to inform the parent governors about correct policy and procedure. whenever they would decide something that was contrary to the education authorities’ policies, he would explain why that decision was incorrect. for example, with the appointment of a second deputy principal, the sgb wanted to appoint a junior teacher, even though there was a more senior teacher who was qualified for the post. he intervened and explained to them that this was not correct procedure. he exerted his influence and experience on the sgb to ensure that the new post selection was done correctly. however, because he felt that the principal was commandeering the sgb, he stepped down from the sgb. f was on the smt and is currently on the sgb. she remarked that teachers and even the principal did not follow the local educational authorities’ policies and procedures. the school had experienced money going missing and many procedures were being ignored. she said that she constantly had to fight the tendency by staff to do their own thing, especially if it was contrary to the educational authorities’ policies. she says she would reproach them: “… you don’t come with you[r] knoeiery [cheating and corruption] and then i must go and explain to the [education] department this and that. i am not going to do that and i am not going to allow it. when i see, i see right through you. don’t come with an agenda and i say it just like that in the meeting”. this shows the extent of her influence. m acts as a sensitive conduit between the principal and the teachers, where she selectively communicates the information that she informally acquires, to the principal. sometimes she omits information that she knows will upset the conservative principal in order to keep the organisational climate favourable. f passes on important ‘insider’ information to the new sgb chairperson not only to socialise, but also to alert her to vested interests in school decisions. but f also does it so that she may have influence with the sgb chairperson. p’s son attends the school, so he cares about the school’s success. he constantly passes on information to the principal in the hope that the principal will consider some of these suggestions (for instance, doing something about the poor annual national assessment scores of the school’s students). when p was a member of the sgb he made it his duty to inform parents of what was happening in the school, at a day-to-day level, so that they could make ‘better’, more informed decisions. all three administrative clerks have been given or have taken responsibility for financial matters at the school. through their ‘control’ of the purse strings, they influence financial decisions. whenever the principal wants to access petty cash, he has to go via the administrative clerk. teachers know that they will have to go via the administrative clerk if they want to solicit petty cash for purchases or local travel related to the school. 72 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 these spatial practices of sway reveal the tactics they employ to increase their participation in decision making. it demonstrates how they have extended the range of their tasks in order to develop their capabilities and gain internal and external goods. from the above, we note that the administrative clerks engage in a multitude of spatial practices despite the limited tasks assigned to their occupational role and, in so doing, counter the contributive injustice of their ghetto occupation. practices of surrogacy ‘practices of surrogacy’ refer to those practices where the administrative clerks act as a substitute for the principal or the management of the school. these spatial practices include making management-related decisions when the principal is absent as well as making important management-related decisions while the principal is present at school. when the principal is physically absent, all three school administrative clerks are able to reproduce the spatial practices required. this also applies to when the principal does not do his job. for example, p will gather and compile the documents that the educational authorities require and make sure they are correct and submit them to the correct recipient. when the principal is absent, m and f support the deputies and hods, if the latter are not familiar with the task at hand. f is an important surrogate for the acting principal when she is faced with something with which she does not have experience. all of the school administrative clerks know the requirements of the educational authorities and their principals well enough to be able to act on their behalf. whenever the administrative clerk is absent from the school, the principal and even the teachers complain when they return. one of the teachers commented: “if [the administrative clerk were to] leave now … i think we will be lost …” this is because so many of their tasks cannot be done without information or insight from the administrative clerk. their spatial practices have become integral to the work of the other stakeholders at school. when p was absent from the school for a few days due to study leave, he came back to school and found that the requisite forms for the submission of the financial subsidy application for grade r, that had been due while he was on leave, had not been submitted. even though this task is the responsibility of the principal, he waited for the administrative clerk to do it. the reason he did not do it was because p had exercised his agency and done many of the principal’s work in the past and now the principal had become reliant on him. p does the finances even though he is not officially the financial officer. he also assists in the computer laboratory as the local area network administrator, helps with the school policy documentation, helps administer the school feeding scheme and assists with fundraising. all these activities are not part of his contracted work description but derive from the fact that the principal or the responsible person is not doing his or her job. at the sgb meetings, p endeavoured to inform parents about their rights and responsibilities as well as the policies and procedures of the educational authorities. he acted as their facilitator. this is the responsibility of the principal and the educational authorities but he stepped in. he transformed the sgb meeting space to include a pedagogic space. the img manager responsible for p’s school says that p is practically “running the school”. f does the management-related tasks that are necessary at the school, even though these tasks are not part of her remit, taking on some of the responsibilities of the acting principal. because the school does not have sufficient students to qualify for a deputy principal, she does some of what would have been the deputy principal’s work. this arises out of her need to extend her capabilities but is chiefly a response to the urgency and immediacy of the situation at school. this sense of immediacy of problems that crop up at school is what honed the spatial practices of surrogacy of the administrative clerks. in the aftermath of funds going missing from the school premises, f insisted that nobody else be allowed to deal with finance matters at school other than her. despite grumbling from some of the teachers, she was given this responsibility and most of them are satisfied with her financial management. f’s spatial practices extend outside the school sphere. she is the coordinator of the school’s fundraising efforts. she has coordinated the high tea fundraiser of the school for the past few years. she raised about 73bayat — the spatial practices of school administrative clerks r25 000, which is the biggest fundraising contribution on the budget. she visited donors to collect donated goods and to drop off letters of thanks. this takes place both during school hours and in her personal time. because principals have to see to many different responsibilities, the administrative clerks sometimes fulfil the managerial school requirements and the on-the-ground activities of the school. in doing all of these management-related tasks, the administrative clerks’ spatial practices counter the inherent contributive injustice of their occupational role. these spatial practices complement their existing capabilities as well as help them to develop new capabilities. this self-development affords them respect and recognition from their peers. main conclusions i used the normative framework of contributive justice to analyse the spatial practices of administrative clerks in public schools in the western cape. i found that even though administrative clerks were thought of as non-teachers and non-managers their spatial practices included pedagogic and managerial practices. even though administrative clerks suffered contributive injustice through the unequal division of labour of their occupational role, which relegated them to doing mundane and routine tasks, they countered this injustice and engaged in complex practices that led to self-development, self-satisfaction and recognition by those around them. this article confirms that administrative clerks are producers of, as much as they are positioned by their school space. as producers of their social spaces, i argue that they counter the unequal division of labour which denies them opportunities for self-development, satisfaction and recognition. in producing their personal, yet social spaces, they reflect their reflexively arrived at personal projects. they do not resist the contributive injustice inherent in their occupational role merely to counter managerial control, they resist to achieve self-development and to gain internal rewards of satisfaction and external rewards of recognition by their peers. through their spatial practices of care, sway and surrogacy the school administrative clerks countered the contributive injustice – by using their spatial practices to generate new spatial relationships with the teachers, students and principals. this led to their deep participation in the school and substantial benefits for the functioning of the school. their novel spatial practices can be seen as personal projects that they want to see come to fruition at school as well as reactions to the spatial practices of the principal, teachers or the educational authorities representatives. administrative clerks, as they go along every day, change their spatial practices, invent new ones, and appropriate existing spatial practices. as they do that, they deploy their agency toward an imagined space – a space of possibility. through their creative acts of bringing about new practices in the midst of existing spatial practice, they have appropriated and transformed their spaces of work into spaces of care, and in doing so they have transformed their spaces of subordination into potential spaces of participation. administrative clerks’ occupational role provides them with lowly tasks which limit their ability for self-development. yet, this investigation into their spatial practice shows them to be active agents, i.e. active readers, interpreters, articulators of space while simultaneously still having to reproduce the demands of their conceived space. this research demonstrates that administrative clerks, even as they occupy marginalised positions, engage in spatial practices that increase their capabilities, recognition and participation. it demonstrates that the lived spaces of administrative clerks are filled with little victories. one of the most important findings is that the administrative clerks’ spatial practices, with tangible effects, are precisely successful because it is unrecognised and remains invisible. if it becomes visible, it may be shut down and troubled by the authorities. i view their spaces as spaces of enablement, operating in the shadows. administrative clerks are placed in particular spaces and are expected to enact particular spatial practices. yet, they have agency (however circumscribed) and embody subjective understandings of their spatial practices amidst institutional expectations. in this study m, f and p creatively embody spatial practices that reflect citizenship behaviour, kindness and care while, at the same time, being very competent at the work that they are required to do. in doing so, they counter the contributive injustice of their occupational role and make space for contributive justice in their schools. 74 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 acknowledgement the author wishes to thank the national research foundation (thuthuka) for providing funding for the research. references archer ms 2007. making 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presents insights gained from interviews conducted in 2009 with employers of doctoral graduates (located outside the higher education sector) regarding their expectations of doctoral education. the implications thereof for wil are discussed and, based thereon, recommendations are made to facilitate greater workplace relevance for doctoral education in south africa. keywords: doctoral education; work integrated learning (wil); heqf; doctoral graduates; doctoral education; south africa introduction academic literature is replete with discussions and theories that seek to explain current changes in knowledge production and the effect of knowledge production on higher education. gibbons, limoges, nowotny, schwartzman, scott and trow (1994) postulate that we have moved from mode1 to mode2 knowledge production and that this change has resulted in a more “interdisciplinary, pluralistic, ‘networked’ innovation system, in contrast to the previous system in which major corporate or academic research institutions were less closely linked with other institutions” (mowery & sampat, 2005:213-214). the ‘triple helix’ similarly describes how universities, the state and private enterprise interact and overlap in national and global knowledge production and innovation systems and that this interaction can create an environment conducive to technology-based enterprise and related innovative services (etzkowitz & leydesdorff, 2000; etzkowitz, 2003). the relationship between universities, the state and business has, therefore, become increasingly complex and interdependent. this has also led to the proposition of the socalled ‘third mission’ of universities with a greater mandate of contributing to innovation and technology transfer. it is in this evolving climate that the nature and form of doctoral education are being reconsidered. concern regarding the appropriateness of doctoral education has mounted, as studies show that fewer graduates are entering the academic profession (pearson, cowan & liston, 2009:101). in the uk, only approximately a third of doctoral students pursue academic careers (uk grad, 2004). a similar tendency is distinguishable in the usa, where less than half of the doctoral graduates surveyed ended in academia (wulff & austin, 2004). according to a tracer study conducted as part of the academy of science of south africa (assaf) investigation into the status and place of the south african phd (discussed below), the scenario in south africa is similar: only slightly more than half of the respondents are employed in the academic sector.1 the prevalence of doctoral graduates employed outside academia has led various commentators to call for the development of a broader skills set. boud and lee (2009:11) suggested the development of graduates who are “work-ready and knowledgeable about research policy, including such matters as intellectual property and commercialization”. various universities and departments as well as national bodies have, therefore, sought appropriate changes to doctoral education. within the south african higher education context, the most significant effort to align doctoral education with the world of work has been the introduction of work integrated learning (wil) within the higher education qualifications framework (heqf). 84 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 work integrated learning significant confusion followed the incorporation of wil into the heqf regarding its precise definition and implications. the south african technology network produced a position paper on wil and concluded that neither the higher education quality committee nor the department of education present adequate guidelines specifying how workplace concerns can or should inform the development of appropriate tertiary-level education (engel-hills, garraway, jacobs, volbrecht & winberg, 2008). the paper emphasises that wil is not synonymous with workplace learning,2 as the heqf document seems to imply. the paper also emphasises that the field of wil is under-researched in the south african context. four distinct curricular modalities were subsequently presented. in addition, the council on higher education published a good-practice guide, developed explicitly for teachers of career-focused and professional programmes, to accompany wil (2011); this guide also utilises these four curricular modalities. the guide defined wil as an “umbrella term to describe curricular, pedagogic and assessment practices, across a range of academic disciplines that integrate formal learning and workplace concerns” (council on higher education, 2011:4). using the position paper and the good-practice guide, the four distinct curricular modalities applicable to wil at the doctoral level are discussed below. these modalities are not considered mutually exclusive and the potential exists for the development of hybrid combinations. the first modality concerns work-directed theoretical learning, which includes the theoretical components of a doctoral study that may be applied within the world of work. it stresses the importance of both group learning and autonomous learning. professional doctorates are presented as examples of work-directed theoretical learning (council on higher education, 2011:26). it is not clear, however, why the professional doctorate is considered distinctly applicable to this curricular modality. the second modality concerns problem-based learning, which involves research that is oriented towards the solution of sequenced, real-world problems and that leads to the predetermined outcomes and objectives of a curriculum. in its purest form, problems rather than subjects become the organising structure of the entire curriculum and may include problem-based activities, assignments and projects. research occurs within the context of small, self-directed groups; facilitators are appointed for each group to offer appropriate support and help with team dynamics – not to dictate what should be learned or which resources should be used (council on higher education, 2011:34). this approach has been successfully applied in the field of health care, typically in the form of cases derived from authentic medical settings. the third modality concerns project-based learning, which refers to learning that occurs through engagement with projects and that generally involves research guided by both workplace and university supervisors and mentors. solutions to workplace problems with no clear answers, as yet, are pursued, with focus on the understanding of essential concepts and the development of relevant skills that draw on multiple disciplines. students take the lead and make critical decisions. this approach, therefore, facilitates planning, management and communication skills. an example of this type of learning is service learning, as students engage with communities, service partners and academic experts. “r&d-type research” in respect of master’s and doctoral studies is another example of this type of learning and is centred on the design, implementation, study and evaluation of a product or intervention (council on higher education, 2011:23). workplace learning incorporates significant institution-based assistance, as students are placed in work environments. the modalities serve as a rough framework around which appropriate support may be directed; their definitions, however, require refinement. despite this limitation, findings from employer interviews in respect of the assaf investigation into the status and place of the south african phd are presented below to uncover the extent to which the employers of doctoral graduates consider the implementation of the various aspects of wil necessary. unfortunately, the interviews were conducted before the publication of the good-practice guide to wil and the curricular modalities were, therefore, not explicitly discussed with the employers. 85treptow — the south african phd: insights from employer interviews assaf investigation into the status and place of the south african phd the centre for research on evaluation, science and technology (crest) was contracted by assaf in 2009 to contribute to an investigation into the status of the south african phd. several studies were commissioned, including a tracer study, employer interviews and an attrition study. the study on which this article is based is the employer interviews. this study investigated why employers specifically sought phd graduates, what skills and attributes they expected of phd graduates, what employer satisfaction with the actual performance of phd graduates was, what employer perceptions of the available pool of phd graduates were, what employer relations with higher-education and other professional research institutes were like and what intellectual-property issues existed. methodology locating the employers of phd graduates was not unproblematic. for the purposes of this study, newspaper advertisements placed in the sunday times and mail & guardian (from 10 march 2006 to 11 march 2007) and seeking specifically phd graduates for employment were inspected. a list of the non-academic employers was compiled and relevant e-mail addresses and telephone numbers were recorded. thirtytwo institutions were identified in this way and were then contacted by e-mail and telephone. twenty employers (representing sixteen of these institutions) agreed to be interviewed. all the interviews were conducted by telephone and, with the consent of the interviewees, they were audio-taped and subsequently transcribed. eight of the interviewees represented four of the major national research councils: the human sciences research council (three interviewees), the agricultural research council (two interviewees), the council for scientific and industrial research (two interviewees), and mintek (one interviewee). three of the interviews were conducted with non-profit, non-governmental organisation (ngo) employers. interviews were also conducted with employers located in the government sector. two were with employers in national government focusing on marine and coastal management, and on science and technology. two worked for government organisations: one was the executive portfolio manager of an organisation creating innovative biotechnology products and services, and the other worked at a public health-service provider of cost-effective and professional laboratory medicine. unfortunately, only two employers of phd graduates in the private sector were located, one a director and the other a manager of technology, both in the mining sector. finally, the trustee of a postdoctoral funding trust and former vice chancellor of a prominent university was also interviewed. atlas.ti was used to analyse the transcriptions and to produce the codes on which the subsequent reports were based. results the results section is divided into three parts. the first part examines what the employers expected from doctoral graduates, exploring the general characteristics, skills and knowledge that the employers expected. the second part identifies specific weaknesses based on doctoral graduates who were previously employed. the third part comprises suggestions offered by the employers on how to improve doctoral education. employer expectations the employers expected newly appointed phd graduates to embody the future leadership of their organisations. in various instances, the new employees were required to assume positions of responsibility immediately: … if you are hiring and looking for candidates because there is an ageing leadership, an ageing academy and there are issues of continuation, succession, etc. then it becomes fairly critical that the people you hire already have finished almost all of the background work of a phd and can enter 86 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 into this world to take on some of the roles and responsibilities associated with academic leadership. within the space of five years they might find themselves in a fairly responsible position. (science council) [w]e also look for somebody in those senior positions who will be able to act as a mentor to our junior side … where a person will be in a supervisory capacity, over a more junior scientist, and where the nature of the job requires and carries high level of responsibility. (government sector) the employers also expected phd graduates to have well-developed project-management and peoplemanagement skills. this requires that the traditional skills related to the phd (conceptualisation, proposal writing, various technical skills, and the synthesis and editing of research reports) be augmented with people-management, project-management, time-management, financial management and some business skills: [p]eople who have some project management skills. and project management is a range of things that would include budgeting, financial management, managing the basic operations of a project. secondly people management skills. you know we get phds in here even with work experience who are just clueless about interpersonal skills and how to work with people … you know people come to us with relatively good writing skills, but interpersonal skills and presentation skills often don’t come in the package. (ngo) they need project managing, business skills, business administration … [t]here are also other attributes like professional integrity, good interpersonal skills, good communication skills. (private sector) in the field of agriculture, one employer emphasised practical experience: the more experienced the guy is the better … [i]f a person has had a postgraduate career, in other words has gone from undergraduate into honours into masters into phd, we often find that they don’t have the practical hands on experience that we are looking for … [w]hat we are looking for are those guys with experience. (science council) employers, therefore, sought individuals that could lead research projects. for this, basic report writing and researching skills are essential, but these need to be supplemented with general project-management and interpersonal skills. business and management skills were also prized, as was practical experience. specific weaknesses identified the private-sector employers reported that the phd did not currently have much relevance to the world of work, but that it would offer significant value if it were closely associated with a relevant area of enterprise: if it is done as part of the field it does bring in some elements to the research that is already in place and this adds to the world of science, but these are generally peripheral to the progress of the technology – and in commercial r&d we deal with technology mainly. if the phd is too academic it could in a sense actually hold you back from progressing your technology as fast as possible. in such a case the option is to either have the mop-up work done by people in the academia or by your academic phds or by your own people. at this point in time it is generally then not such a distraction for staff to engage in phd studies because it is already taking place in the course of their normal work, but it will add to their workload which would otherwise not be so heavy. then again, those people that do engage in phd studies, in general it does not increase the value to the company but it does increase their self-image, peer-standing. (private sector) i don’t want to sound too harsh, but actually a phd generally may mean very little in the mining exploration consulting business. you can do your phd on a glorified crystal or the alteration corona of a garnet crystal in the three to four impact structures which have very limited to no benefit for the work environment. it just shows that you can apply scientific principles and that you can add 87treptow — the south african phd: insights from employer interviews something new to science. so all it actually testifies to is the ability that you’ve got. for us the ideal thing would be a phd combined with the relevant practical experience, that for us would be the ideal combination. (private sector) some of the employers also underlined the absence of various management-related skills, including project, people and financial-management skills: look the main issue for us is that a lot of them [doctoral graduates] come with very good substantive background and good training in their substantive areas. we would have political scientists and lawyers and people with good substantive knowledge and capacity to do that work. however within the context of our work those people at the senior researcher level and above also need to have other skills such as project management skills, people management skills. often technical people are going into programme head positions where they need to know how to manage and that is the area where we are having the biggest problem. like every other field, take engineering for example, you get really good engineers that get promoted into management positions then struggle with knowing how to manage the finances. (ngo) … for instance project management is going to be a big deal, and if you don’t have a clue, on what it is going to be about, obviously that is going to have to be developed … so they know nothing about project management, they know nothing about clients and working with difficult staff members, and working with tight budgets. it is all the stuff that goes along with the real world. (science council) phd graduates were described as overspecialised and academically isolated. some employers stated that doctoral graduates did not get sufficient exposure to the broader intellectual environment within which their specialised studies were situated, and emphasised the importance of interdisciplinary training: this is a sort of a personal feeling, sometimes people that are going on to do a phd level are inclined to become a little too specialised and they lose the broad background of their degree and they try to live in their little corners and not go out and be able to think out of the boxes. they become too specialised in many instances, so you would like to make sure that they keep a broader touch in their field and if they are going to do – let’s say molecular genetics – that they don’t lose touch with the practical, the ordinary old genetics of physically making the crosses and all that sort of stuff. (science council) well i think that the one area, which i am personally getting involved in, is exposure of doctoral candidates to a broader range of disciplines. traditionally the doctorate can be a super specialised degree. so people know one issue in extraordinary depths and might even be the leading authority on that topic when they finish their phd programme … i think there is a need for exposure – not necessarily coming out with a certificate but exposure to other disciplines rather than the super specialist. the super specialist tends to run the risk of leading to the ivory tower type academic, which there is a place for, but you need plenty of phds that can go out there and work with society and make a difference as well. (science council) other employers emphasised problems with the ‘typical’ or ‘basic skills’ associated with the phd, such as writing or researching skills. significantly poor were quantitative research skills, particularly in statistics: then the training in methodology is often quite weak. i mean there are very few south africans that can write a proper bibliography, unbelievable i mean, and that’s the kind of thing in america that you learn at school and they discipline you there to make sure that you do it. for some reason we don’t do that here. most people that come through at any level don’t know how to do a proper bibliography and then you have to go through all of that and they don’t take time to go to a website and see how to do it there … so we set pretty low standards. (science council) [t]here is a gap, in terms of stats and i need to say this, we are weak mathematically. i got an f or e or something like that but then i am churning out the stats here so now how did that happen? … people come in who have had training in stats and they don’t know what i am doing. now that’s disappointing. that means the next generation have not been properly trained. so our stats in the 88 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 bigger sense, i don’t mean just crunching numbers, i mean in terms of understanding the nature of that number. how did you get to it, how did you cross tabulate, what really does this all mean and was it really significant? quite important how you deal with all the statistical tests i mean just thinking vigorously. (science council) several weaknesses were, therefore, identified. employers complained that the phd did not currently have much relevance to the world of work; that there was a general absence of managerial skills and a lack of experience; that there were problems with the ‘typical’ or ‘basic skills’ associated with the phd, such as writing and researching skills, and that phd graduates were overspecialised and academically isolated. employer suggestions several suggestions were given by the employers on how to prepare phd graduates better for the work environment. the need for greater exposure to the broader intellectual climate was emphasised, as was the importance of attending international conferences. the prevalence of international collaborations should also be increased: i know that american and european universities are very good at that. a student is expected to go to so many conferences during the time that they are doing their phd and not only regional conferences but international conferences as well. in this way they will be exposed to experts in their field and to obtain those networks. we sometimes suffer from the syndrome where the supervisor being the person who always wants to be exposed to conferences and talking about the work that the students are doing without giving the students those opportunities. so if the supervisor gives the student those opportunities then definitely you will find the person coming with those networks. i think that is slightly lacking in the south african set-up. (science council) more emphasis on international exposure. it is extremely important that young phds go to international conferences – it is part of their essential experience. to hear what is going on, to hear about how other people tackle problems, to develop collaborations and links … that is one of the things that south african phd students don’t get as much of as for example people in the united states and europe do where it is relatively cheap for somebody based in paris to go to a conference in london or in munich or around the united states whereas we have very few meetings within south africa, in africa in fact. (national research facility) i would say the networking – so if you rapidly want to go up the ladder it is international networking that is important. international networking, international exposure, forcing some form of collaboration/ cooperation across boundaries would be good. this is so that they already have their networks by the time they hit the job market. being part of the global network. (private sector) the suggestion was made to improve the phd by introducing set training courses, thereby generating greater emphasis on methodology training: there should be a programme of training that ensures that there are basic core skills that the master’s/phd student actually has. by comparison with a lot of international programmes – the us phd etc. – every one of them have to undertake a significant methodology course, statistics course and including a whole bunch of qualitative data analysis courses. part of the problem has been that if you look across the number of people that are numerate in terms of being able to apply statistical skills to data etc. is just like – you can’t even see it. (science council) if they come from a discipline specific background and then in our context if that discipline specific background includes a lot of methodology training, they do excellent. so people who come with weak research training experiences, they actually also struggle with their phds as well. so i think that the extent to which people can be trained into – i don’t really care in what they do their phds or where they do it. i think one of our biggest problems in terms of productive phds has to do with the fact that a lot of them don’t get the core training across the board around methodology. (science council) 89treptow — the south african phd: insights from employer interviews employers also suggested that university leaders pursue and maintain ties with business leaders and the world of work: i don’t want to put stumbling blocks in universities, but what would improve the preparedness is if high-level university leaders, head of department and deans – they could have closer interaction with the business world which would then enable the universities to propose potential topics to phd candidates that not only would get funded but would also be more applied … (private sector) then the last thing is whatever phd you do it should be relevant, there is no use doing a phd for a job that there is no demand for, and that you get, am telling you i am seeing it. the only people that can make that happen are the supervisors in the departments. they shouldn’t allow people to do phds on topics that are irrelevant and have no demand and i know you guys will not agree with me because it’s my academic freedom. i don’t believe in that. i don’t think south africa can afford that kind of approach with all the shortages that we have. (science council) employers, therefore, suggested that phd students should have greater exposure both to the practical demands of the work environment and to intellectual discussions taking place within relevant fields globally. for the latter, the attendance of international conferences was considered necessary, as was collaboration with researchers from other faculties and regions. furthermore, various employers indicated that training courses in methodology should also be presented at the phd level. finally, employers insisted that university heads of departments, deans and supervisors need to maintain closer relations with the world of work. discussion the introduction of wil within the heqf has been the principal initiative to facilitate greater relevance of higher education in the workplace in south africa. the four curricular modalities summarised earlier, however, offer the only conceptual framework to direct the implementation of wil. these modalities require further definition and would benefit from clearer examples of implementation, particularly at the doctoral level. unfortunately, the study was conducted before the council on higher education published its good-practice guide to wil, with its elaboration on the definitions of each curricular modality (2011). the modalities were, therefore, not discussed during the interviews. despite these shortcomings, however, the four curricular modalities are discussed below, with reference to the key concerns of the employers of phd graduates. the incorporation of problem-based learning and project-based learning could be useful in the facilitation of management and related communication skills. employers emphasised that phd graduates are expected to embody future leadership and, therefore, consistently underlined various desirable management skills, including financial, people and project-management skills. prospective phd graduates could best acquire these skills by participating in studies or projects in which they are given the responsibility of managing specific components of the research process. in this regard, the formation of groups of phd students to tackle projects and problems would be useful, although it is not clear how this would work in practice and within which fields this would best be applied. documented evidence from the council on higher education good-practice guide to wil (2011) does not include examples of problembased learning or project-based learning at the doctoral level. workplace learning could also present doctoral students with the opportunity of fostering relevant management-related skills if they are presented with opportunities to direct the research process within the working environment. this, however, seems less likely to occur when phd students are new to a particular working environment or have only recently been introduced as team members. the increased prevalence of workplace learning could, however, meet the stated desire for practical experience and could also help foster business-related skills in instances where the nature of employment includes business-related tasks. in this regard, it is imperative that relations between the employers of phd graduates and the academic supervisors of phd graduates be encouraged in order to facilitate relevant and effective work placements that enable learning pertinent to doctoral education. furthermore, instances where prospective 90 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 phd students are already employed should be effectively utilised and the role of workplace employers in the doctoral education process made clear. the general format of the south african phd emphasises the development of a traditional thesis. within this model, it is, therefore, essential that co-supervision between academic and workplace supervisors does not lead to contradictory instructions to prospective phd graduates, and a clear division of labour should be constructed, agreed upon and adhered to from the outset. it could also be worthwhile introducing alternative doctoral outputs that contribute towards the doctoral degree. these could include the completion of specific projects applicable to specific work environments. the application of work-directed theoretical learning could help expose students to the broader intellectual climate and could facilitate connections with various practitioners within specific fields. exposure to the broader intellectual climate could include wider exposure to related disciplines and exposure to developments at international level. employers particularly stressed the need for greater exposure to international conferences. other important components of work-directed theoretical learning could include guest lectures and supplementary course work directed towards the world of work. although not exclusively work-oriented, employers’ dissatisfaction with the basic research skills of doctoral students is cause for concern. without proper attention to the acquisition of basic research skills, changes to doctoral education will be superfluous. the recommendation for the implementation of relevant courses is deemed prudent and could be considered to form another (fundamental) component of work-directed theoretical learning. recommendations first, the curricular modalities presented need proper definition. it is not clear, for instance, how professional doctorates could be considered examples of work-directed theoretical learning. excessive overlap also seems to exist among some of the modalities; an anthology of examples at the doctoral level would, therefore, be extremely useful. it is also imperative that the recurrent employers of phd graduates for various fields of study be made known and that innovative ways of facilitating greater interaction between leaders in these fields of employment and study be facilitated. once these ties are made known, forums could be established to discuss the expectations from both these parties with regard to appropriate doctoral as well as general higher education. secondly, universities and policymakers should investigate the feasibility of introducing alternative doctoral models and consider, in particular, introducing professional doctorates. international developments in the changing structure of phd education should be closely monitored as reports on the strengths and weaknesses of various alternative doctoral-programme structures are generated. investigation into the application of these structures globally could facilitate the implementation of valuable programmes within the local context. thirdly, phd students should be exposed to international conferences and guest lecturers to ensure exposure to various methodological and theoretical paradigms. in this regard, universities and policymakers should consider the feasibility of introducing graduate or doctoral schools or academies. this could help ensure that methodological foundations are sound, international perspectives are presented and developments within emerging multidisciplinary fields are discussed by experts from a variety fields. finally, it is imperative that universities ensure that the south african phd is up to international standards. deterioration in the standards of south african phds could hamper the proliferation of networking capabilities and destroy funding opportunities, as the international community could lose confidence in our ability to generate local expertise and run research projects. greater emphasis on quantitative data-analysis training would be particularly useful. endnotes 1 notable areas of employment outside academia included industry (18.8%), government (9.4%) and science councils and the non-profit sector (10%). 2 learning that occurs as a result of work placement during a course of study. 91treptow — the south african phd: insights from employer interviews references boud d & lee a (eds) 2009. changing practices of doctoral education. oxon: routledge. council on higher education 2011. work integrated learning: good practice guide. he monitor, 12. engel-hills p, garraway j, jacobs c, volbrecht t & winberg c 2008. position paper on work integrated learning (wil) in the new heqf [online]. retrieved from http://satnonline.net/papers/position%20 paper%20on%20wil.pdf on 20 november 2011. etzkowitz h 2003. innovation in innovation: the triple helix of university-industry-government relations. social science information, 42 (3): 293-337. etzkowitz h & leydesdorff l 2000. the dynamics of innovation: from national systems and ‘‘mode 2’’ to a triple helix of university-industry-government relations. research policy, 29: 109-123. gibbons m, limoges c, nowotny h, schwartzman s, scott p & trow m 1994. the new production of knowledge. london: sage. mowery dc & sampat bn 2005. universities and innovation. in j fagerberg, dc mowery & rr nelson (eds), the oxford handbook on innovation. oxford: oxford university press. pearson m, cowan a & liston a 2009. phd education in science: producing the scientific mindset in biomedical sciences. in d boud & a lee (eds), changing practices of doctoral education. oxon: routledge. uk grad 2004. what do phds do? a regional analysis. cambridge: uk grad. retrieved from www. grad.ac.uk/crms/showpage/home_page/resources/what_do_phds_do_/p!execcla on 3 june 2012. wulff dh & austin ae 2004. paths to the professoriate: strategies for enriching the preparation of future faculty. san francisco: jossey-bass. pie33(1).indb perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 12 melanie walker centre for research on development and higher education, university of the free state. e-mail: walkermj@ufs.ac.za telephone: 051 4017020 faith mkwananzi centre for research on development and higher education, university of the free state. e-mail: mkwananziwf@ufs.ac.za telephone: 051 4017020 theorising multiply disadvantaged young people’s challenges in accessing higher education melanie walker faith mkwananzi this paper sketches an innovative conceptualisation of disadvantaged youth, shaped dialogically by the interactions of theorising and data from a case study at orange farm informal settlement in south africa in 2013. the study focused on the challenges for the young people in this area in accessing higher education. drawing on sen’s and nussbaum’s capability approach, complemented by a theorisation of vulnerability by misztal and of oppression by young, the study illustrates how the concepts should be interconnected to generate a framework for understanding the experiences of multiply disadvantaged youth, as well as issues of equity for them in accessing he. the paper highlights the need to understand young people’s experiences and aspirations using multidisciplinary theorising, in conversation with empirical lives. overall, advantage is understood as having the freedoms (or capabilities) to live a life each person has reason to value, with genuine opportunities for secure functionings now and in the future. a disadvantaged life, by contrast, would have less or neither. keywords: higher education, youth, disadvantage, capability approach, vulnerabilities, oppression introduction in this paper we develop a conceptual approach to understanding youth in one south african informal settlement, their aspirations for, and their realistic access to higher education (he) opportunities. we suggest that these young people are both neglected in the access literature in south africa and multiply disadvantaged along dimensions of the personal, social and economic. we develop a normative theorising multiply disadvantaged young people’s challenges in accessing higher education melanie walker & faith mkwananzi 13 and analytical yardstick for the analysis of disadvantage by drawing together the capability approach (sen, 1999; nussbaum, 2000, 2011), with a conceptualisation of vulnerabilities (misztal, 2011), and oppression (young, 1990) to frame disadvantage in access to he for the assessment of public policies and social arrangements as a matter of social justice. following the capability approach, we assume that education is both intrinsically and instrumentally valuable: being educated is a valuable achievement in itself and education can help an individual to do many things that are valuable, such as increasing employment opportunities and developing voice and aspirations for, among other things, participating in public life (sen, 1999). although he is the focus of the paper, the framework could be applied to other education sectors. capabilities and disadvantage of interest then is which theoretical framework can explain the complex lives of young people and capture the dimensions of multiple dis/advantage in intersecting biographies and structural conditions, while also taking into account their voices and aspirations. we draw on data from a case study (see walker and mkwananzi, forthcoming, for a detailed account) to help us advance our conceptual approach through a dialogue between theory and research data. the study was descriptive in nature, using qualitative interviews to elicit illuminative data from eight young people and three of their guardians in one orange farm orphanage, and two graduates from within orange farm. we did not seek comprehensive data on what all young people in orange farm thought; rather we sought a small amount of rich and illuminative data to help us understand how disadvantage worked out in their experiences and perceptions. given the sensitive nature of the study, participants were made aware that participation was voluntary and that the studywas intended for academic dissemination. the young people interviewed had been living in the orphanage for between two and five years. all had lost at least one parent, and most of them knew little about their extended families. the three guardians interviewed had been working with young people for over four years. their own experiences, combined with the number of years they had lived in orange farm, provided illuminative data about issues of poverty and other challenges that young people in the community experience. the female graduates were both residents of orange farm and they shared valuable insight into the challenges they had faced in accessing he, and those that young people continue to face. we deliberately selected an informal settlement as our site of investigation, because this group of young people does not appear in the access literature. on the other hand we also sought out a best case scenario by speaking to young people living in an orphanage; while they had lost their parents, they were materially well cared for and supported by the orphanage staff, more so than many of their peers. perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 14 however, this care ends at the age of 18 so that having future security based on current achievements is especially significant. we used the capability approach (sen, 1999; nussbaum 2000) as our overarching normative framework to investigate and understand disadvantage with regard to young people’s ability to aspire to and access he. the approach offers a normative framework to evaluate well-being and quality of life as a matter of justice. it has been pioneered by amartya sen who (1992, 1999) challenged mainstream development approaches which focus on income and wealth, arguing that increased income should be viewed as a means to improve human well-being, rather than as an end in itself. for sen, development involves expanding freedoms (human capabilities) and, hence, removing structural unfreedoms that stand in the way so that people have effective opportunities to undertake the actions and activities they want to engage in and to achieve who they want to be. these beings and doings are what sen (1999) calls ‘functionings;’ valued functionings (being in decent work, reading a newspaper every day, doing well at school, having friends, providing for one’s family, and so on) are chosen from the person’s capability set. the well-being of persons is then evaluated with regard to how a person can function compared with others. for example, going to university would be the functioning; having the real opportunity to choose to go university would be the corresponding capability. sen (1999) argues that, in evaluating well-being, it is also vital to look at the real opportunities that an individual has in order to lead a valued life. in other words, the quality of life that an individual enjoys is not only about what he or she achieves, but also about the options that he or she had the opportunity to choose from as an agent (sen, 1999). in the case of a disadvantaged young person who does not choose to go to university, compared to a well-off young person who also does not go to university, we need to ask whether they both had the real opportunity to choose to go or not to go university. importantly, education can reduce disadvantage: the formation of human capabilities and the use of the acquired capabilities can be enabled through education, while education can act as a capability multiplier. education contributes to the development of other human capabilities so that promoting access to a good education for young people will contribute to building their set of capabilities (such as the ability to read and write critically and confidently), as well as form them in a way in which they can pursue their goals (walker, 2006). however, basic capabilities need to be in place for higher learning. sen (1992: 45) identifies these as a subset of all capabilities that have the ‘ability to satisfy certain elementary and crucially important functionings up to a certain level’. in other words, this refers to the freedom to have access to basic things that are considered necessary for survival, for example, basic education, health and shelter, and adequate nutrition. our orange farm participants had these basic capabilities in place. theorising multiply disadvantaged young people’s challenges in accessing higher education melanie walker & faith mkwananzi 15 the realisation of functionings is dependent on individual and structural conditions and contexts, because functionings require resources of different kinds to be achieved. for example, access to education requires finances (for tuition, books and other related costs), and these vary from individual to individual. but, while monetary resources are important means to functionings, they are not an end in themselves, nor do they tell us how well each person is doing. also important are other conversion factors which comprise the personal (e.g. age, gender, language), environmental (physical environment and geographical location), and social (policies, social norms, social class) conditions of each individual’s existence (robeyns, 2005). according to sen’s (1992) example, we might be interested in a bicycle because it can take us to places in a faster way than walking. however, two individuals might not have the capability to utilise the bicycle in the same way due to their ability/ inability to ride it. thus, the bicycle might not provide the same function in enhancing mobility for two different individuals. or if one’s home is far from a university (an environmental conversion factor), and the roads are unsafe (a matter of public policy and a social conversion factor), it would not be possible to ride the bicycle safely, even if one knew how to. thus, the capability approach accounts for interpersonal variations – how one person is able to ride and use the bicycle to get around and another is not – in the conversion of available resources into functions. in doing so, the capability approach acknowledges human diversity (sen, 1992) by focusing on: (i) the plurality of functionings and capabilities as important evaluative indicators these wide dimensions of well-being include dimensions that might be of importance to some groups of people and not others; and (ii) personal and socio-environmental conversion factors that make it possible to convert resources into functionings, considering that each individual has a unique profile of conversion factors. interpersonal variations in conversion factors can then occur due to different personal and socio-environmental factors intersecting (robeyns, 2005). social arrangements will influence capabilities; thus, in this study, the location of orange farm influences the social and economic activities that take place in the area which, in turn, affect young people’s aspirations, opportunities and the extent of their agency in deciding on their futures and their freedom to bring about their goals (sen, 1992). the question of ‘who decides’ (okkolin, 2013) will be crucially determined by a wide capability set and plural functionings. disadvantage would be signalled by the lack or absence of choices and the lack of freedoms to live a life a young person has reason to value. it would also be signalled by insecure functionings, for example, finishing school today would not guarantee secure income in the future unless other functionings were also in place. at this point, we might define ‘disadvantage’ as a state ‘when one’s functionings are or become insecure’ (wolff & de-shalit, 2007: 72), and a ‘lack of genuine opportunities to secure functionings’ (wolff & de-shalit, 2007: 84). both aspects are shaped by conversion factors, and both have an impact on agency pathways and possibilities. perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 16 the capability approach has been further advanced by martha nussbaum (2000, 2011). she proposed a list1 of what she identifies as the core central capabilities which are important public policy entitlements that all humans should have in order to be and to do well. more recently (2011), she has made clear that human dignity is foundational to her approach. though nussbaum’s and sen’s views are closely related, sen (1999) disputes the idea of endorsing one fixed list of capabilities, stating that communities should draft their own lists through an inclusive deliberation process. but, regardless of these differences, the essence of the approach is its focus on the development of individual well-being, understood as the formation of a wide capability set from which to choose plural functionings, as an agent. we found the ideas helpful for our study in a number of ways. firstly, functionings and capabilities are properties of individuals, meaning that each person is – ethically – taken into account in normative judgements about well-being (robeyns, 2005). thus, statistics which show that increasing numbers of black south africans are accessing he, while important, do not tell us about the lives of individuals who make up the statistics. by also taking into account social and environmental conversion factors that shape each person’s life chances, we are able to account for societal influences such as communities and cultural influences on aspirations. the concept of ‘conversion’ recognises that converting a bundle of resources will differ from person to person. for instance, a black female from a poor and marginalised community will need more resources to access he than one from an affluent home. secondly, the approach deliberately seeks input from poor and disadvantaged populations in order to generate contextualised data which reflect individuals’ capabilities, interpretations of freedom and the values they ascribe to their lives (srinivasan, 1994). lastly, due to its recognition of interpersonal and intercultural variations, and focus on freedoms and agency, we can look underneath choices at the real opportunities and challenges young people face in accessing he, the capabilities and functionings that might enable them to have real choices, and the social arrangements needed to support their decision making. in this way, the capability approach can provide the ‘informational basis of justice’ (sen, 1999) for policies that enhance the capacity of young people to determine, pursue and achieve their aspirations. from the interviews with the young people, it was evident that each had their valued functionings and capabilities. theorising multiply disadvantaged young people’s challenges in accessing higher education melanie walker & faith mkwananzi 17 table 1: summary of the young participants’ demographic profiles participants (pseudonyms) gender age origin years living in orphanage john male 18 mpumalanga 5 themba male 19 eastern cape 5 ruth female 27 zimbabwe 4 antony male 18 lesotho 5 thabo male 15 mozambique 5 tshepo male 13 gauteng 5 thuli female 15 gauteng 3 abie female 17 gauteng 2 we do not wish to draw up a list (although this could be done, it is not our purposes here), but rather to choose some of the functionings evident in the data to indicate what young people valued being able to be and to do. these functionings (as proxies for capabilities as potentials) that were identified as being necessary or present are discussed in the following paragraphs. affiliation – showing concern for others, being respected and, in turn, respecting others (see nussbaum, 2000) – was indicated to be important. some of the young people were concerned for their peers at school who smoked nyaope because it affected their school performance. thabo noted that he wanted to be a policeman ‘[s]o that i can arrest thieves and people who smoke nyaope. they shouldn’t smoke nyaope. nyaope kills’. most of the participants stated that they hoped for careers both to lead a successful life and to be able to help their community, with ruth adding that, ‘i would want to be able to take care of people, show them love and show them how life is’. having a good job was seen as significant. ruth explained that, ‘i wanted to study as well so that i could get a job and be able to support myself and be independent’. this ability to do work of one’s own choice is then a guarantee of one’s freedom (nussbaum, 2011). having access to information was noted as an important functioning that was crucial for young people to be able to realise their aspirations. one of the graduates interviewed explained that it was important for universities to go to schools in disadvantaged communities to tell young people about the different programmes that they could choose, arguing that sometimes young people do not have the necessary means to attend orientations that take place at the universities. in other words, those who do not have the financial resources are deprived of information. perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 18 having the finances to realise one’s own aspirations was another valued functioning which was identified. themba commented that, ‘law is the thing that i want to do and i don’t have doubts about it so it’s the issue of money that will affect my studies. it will be painful because there is nowhere else where i can say i depend on right now. the orphanage is the one that i depend on’. the functionings further suggest young people’s longing for an opportunity and freedom to use their senses and reasoning to achieve their aspirations through an adequate education. however, the personal stories of the young people indicated that they have valued goals, but no or limited means to get there. they have aspirations. but ‘thin’ pathways (appadurai, 2004) to work towards these. figure 1 capabilities and insecure functionings as indicator of disadvantage figure 1 presents the relationship between capabilities and disadvantage. it illustrates how the process of converting basic and ‘higher’ capabilities into accessing he is dependent on various conversion factors (economic, social and personal) influencing individual agency and aspirations for he. access to he should lead to achieved functioning, whereas a lack of access could lead to the deprivation of individual wellbeing (depending on what other choices are on offer) and what the person values being and doing. achieved functionings allow individuals to live a life that they have reason to value, as well as to be and do what they value which, in turn, leads to more social justice and more advantage. our framework asks that we evaluate social justice in the space of capabilities – who gets to develop valued capabilities and functionings and who does not – and this is supported or constrained by social arrangements and public policy. but, because the capability approach is normative yet open-ended, it often has to incorporate theorising multiply disadvantaged young people’s challenges in accessing higher education melanie walker & faith mkwananzi 19 other vocabularies to account for conditions which are fair and just and to develop multi-dimensional accounts of justice, under the umbrella of the capability approach (deneulin, 2014). vulnerability and disadvantage in their work, sen (1999) and nussbaum (2001) emphasise development as a process of widening individual capabilities and promoting valuable functionings, and so expanding the real freedoms that people have for a decent quality of life. it further requires that we broaden the informational base on disadvantage by investigating the deprivation of functionings and capabilities that enable and secure capabilities. in effect, what does disadvantage as insecure functionings look like? in this way, we have sought to complement and provide more sensitive dimensions of disadvantage to our broad definition by using misztal’s (2011) three forms of vulnerability – having secure capabilities would reduce vulnerability across her three dimensions. dependence on others limits individual freedom, for example, economic dependence poses the threat of future poverty. thus, the young people at the orphanage are economically dependent on the orphanage, yet have poor future economic prospects of their own. in this way, they are vulnerable. the unpredictability of human actions can be linked to any unforeseen influences on future well-being and functioning of individuals, resulting in the inability to tell what one will be able to do and be in the future. however, having a wide capability set ought to enable one to deal better with bad luck or reversals in the future. the vulnerability of irreversibility can be linked to capability deprivation caused by a multitude of factors such as family background and a history of poverty, which make it difficult or impossible to reverse bad circumstances. disadvantaged youth would be more vulnerable to the three types of vulnerability, and the dimensions would be evident in their lives. these forms of vulnerability will be discussed below. the predicament of dependence on others interdependence is potentially positive and desirable, as the valued capability of affiliation suggests. in the wider context of interdependency there are stages where we depend on others (misztal, 2011; nussbaum, 2000). but, because interdependence is a fundamental feature of the human condition, and because of the commonly approved affirmations about interdependence, we might fail to notice the issue of dependency. the young people we interviewed depend on the orphanage for the realisation of their basic capabilities such as food, accommodation, shelter and education. in addition, they all indicated that the orphanage is the only place from which they will be able to obtain financial assistance for he. thus, the relation of their aspirations to the resources available to them could lead to a compromised possibility of realising these aspirations. hart (2013: 111) suggests that, in order to convert aspirations into a ‘capability to realise,’ positive conversion factors should be present. thus, the inability to realise one’s aspiration – noted by the young perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 20 people as a functioning that they value – might result in this type of vulnerability. it can be argued that, for a large number of people in disadvantaged communities, dependency is produced by society. this structured dependence is constructed by social policies and practices discriminating against disadvantaged people in matters crucial to their well-being, such as income, education, housing and other social needs. the manufactured dependence of most of the people in orange farm, created by the societal framework of institutions and rules, represents financial consequences of the past and present economic policies and social issues. the predicament of unpredictability the young people at the orphanage are faced with threats to their human security, particularly the issue of a home, because they may not stay at the orphanage forever. as they grow older, they will leave to make room for others needing care. as misztal asserts (2011: 75), the inability to predict what the future holds makes us feel ‘insecure and fragile’. a bleak scenario for these young people is the risk as to whether they will have a source of income, since poverty and unemployment rates are extremely high for young people. their greatest uncertainty is that of entry into the labour market and the fragility of their social support system. these two factors of uncertainty and fragility infringe on the young people’s need for security, reliability and stability (misztal, 2011). rising unemployment is a major cause for concern in regards to the unpredictability of future experiences of these young people. the issue of crime and drug use among high school students contributes further to the unpredictability of human actions. such actions pose a huge threat to social relations and security of the community of orange farm and lead to an unpredictable social environment. finally, the issue of high pregnancy rates among high school students and high rates of hiv/ aids in the community also poses unpredictable future challenges. the predicament of irreversibility the risk associated with the past is that we cannot free ourselves from the consequences of past deeds, wounds, pains and traumas (misztal, 2011). this is relevant for young people who have experienced not only losing their loved ones, but also finding themselves with no one within their families to care for them. the experiences of the young people interviewed depicted ordinary lives with past pains and sufferings. misztal (2011) states that this form of vulnerability stems from painful experiences that diminish the emotional capacities of individuals, lower the possibilities of realising individual life plans, and reduce the chances of collaborative relationships with others who are seen as responsible for the experienced trauma and emotional vulnerability. even though the orphanage guardians indicated that the young people are resilient, more than half of the young people indicated that they had no relations with either their families or extended families. one of the graduates also noted this form of vulnerability in her response: theorising multiply disadvantaged young people’s challenges in accessing higher education melanie walker & faith mkwananzi 21 i didn’t have enough money. my uncle was paying for me and due to family problems and his wife did not approve of it, i had to drop out when he was no longer paying. not having parents is a challenge on its own. at times you might not get the support that you need from family, like family members. some will want to crush you, saying, ‘your mother died without a qualification, isn’t it, you say you want to go to university, what do you think you will go there and do, will you pass, you are from a disadvantaged background, you have nothing, how will you pay for the university fees? (mpho) yet, in spite of the challenges identified by the young people, guardians and the graduates, a majority of the young people had high hopes for the future, for example, to become airline pilots or lawyers. such hope is important, but it is equally crucial to provide support in order to promote potential aspirations, and for public policy and social arrangements to expand capabilities and reduce vulnerabilities. hope without addressing dimensions of vulnerability could simply generate ‘cruel optimism’ (berlant, 2006), potentially leaving young people worse off than before. oppression thus far we have a normative framework which evaluates well-being in terms of individual opportunities for secure functionings, sees education as a capability multiplier, and draws attention to dimensions of vulnerability which may compromise functionings, including being able to access he. to further elaborate on what might stand structurally in the way of functionings to lead a decent life we draw also on young’s (1990) five faces of oppression. less oppression would suggest lessdisadvantage and less vulnerability in actual lives. moreover, the capability approach is somewhat vague on appropriate social and political arrangements and on how we might judge one context as more or less just, or on how we promote social arrangements where the achievement of young people’s flourishing lives are at the centre of public policy and political arrangements. here, young is especially helpful. on the other hand, her focus on groups means we still need the capability approach for attention to individual lives and interpersonal comparisons. the first face of oppression is marginalisation. it is evident from our empirical findings that young people in orange farm are socially and economically marginalised. firstly, as recounted by the young people, universities do not visit their schools or community, yet they do go to others to encourage access. this lack of information leads to a lack of knowledge – which the young people identified as a necessary capability for the realisation of their aspirations. they end up being left out from accessing information, either directly from universities or through research on the internet, due to their lack of monetary means (as one graduate explained). lastly, the fact that the young people still face similar challenges with regard to resources (conversion factors) as the graduates interviewed had faced (one of whom graduated over 15 years ago) is an indication of persistent inter-generational marginalisation. young (1990) perceives this to be the most dangerous form of oppression as it restricts groups of people from participating actively in social life, subjecting them to perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 22 material deprivation. for example, if young people were not able to realise their he aspirations, it would result in a lack of professional skills and they would be left out of the high-skills labour market. they would be unable to get decent, career-based employment because of low educational levels, a lack of jobs in their community, and the conditions of poverty, in this way increasing marginalisation. finally, in addressing marginalisation, fair equality of opportunity needs to be realised. according to brighouse (2000:112), young people should not have ‘significantly better access to education simply because they have wealthy parents, or live in wealthier communities than others’. for example, in order to realise fair equality of opportunity, a young person growing up in rural south africa as the child of a farmworker, ought to be just as likely as the child of a senior executive at an urban quality school to reach the position of the latter’s parent, should she so wish. secondly, geographical isolation has contributed to orange farm’s being pushed to the outer edge of society and excluded from useful participation in social and economic life. a lack of resources, with regard to both financing and information on access to he, opens room for exploitation, young’s third face of oppression. the desperation for opportunities such as employment and access to he might put young people at risk of exploitation by those who have resources and unscrupulous private colleges that notice the gap in accessing he. finally, owing to their lack of skills and minimum education, disadvantaged young people are prone to accept minimum wage jobs in future, which will expose them to further exploitation. exploitation challenges the valued functioning of being treated as a dignified being who is worth of equal treatment to that of others. although young people have basic freedoms for survival, most of them have their freedom impeded when they do not have the power to communicate their thoughts and feelings, that is, to have a voice. the issue of powerlessness as young’s fourth face of oppression, can be further linked to misztal’s (2011) notion of the vulnerability of dependence on others and the predicament of irreversibility, which are additional examples in which young people have no power or control. in the case of orange farm, poverty is a key issue for social justice and a problem for freedom. as a result of the low levels of education, young people will end up in low status jobs; they will experience more powerlessness, both on the job and in the sphere of political participation, compared to their peers with professional jobs. similar to exploitation, powerlessness cripples the ability to freely live with and towards others. in an oppressed society there is an absence of institutions that protect individual freedom and strengthen forms of affiliation. finally, from the discussion on marginalisation it can be noted how the environment, as a conversion factor, is crucial in realising ones aspirations. as noted by one of the guardians, the environment plays a huge role in an individual’s life, since it shapes one’s abilities so that such conversion factors could be a form of, and ultimately contribute to, a cycle of powerlessness and exploitation. fourthly, according to young (1990), violence is usually directed at members of a social group simply because they are members of that group; for example, it theorising multiply disadvantaged young people’s challenges in accessing higher education melanie walker & faith mkwananzi 23 can be in the form of exploitation or marginalisation due to poverty, vulnerability or being orphaned. such oppression reduces and humiliates people by reducing their abilities to freely interact with their surroundings. this relates to violation of the right to human dignity in the south african constitution, which states that everyone has inherent dignity that has to be respected and protected (republic of south africa, 1996). the concern by one of the guardians that the use of drugs is ruining young people and putting their lives in danger provides a dimension of a form of violence or harm, not to be taken lightly. high levels of crime also threaten physical safety. unless young people’s aspirations are fostered and he access improved, it is a challenge to identify activities that will keep them away from violent and selfdestructive behaviour and the predicament of irreversibility. finally, cultural imperialism involves the dominant meanings of a society that generates stereotypes and the universalisation of the dominant group’s experience and culture. dominant groups may have little or no understanding or desire to understand the lives of the disadvantaged who are blamed for their own failure to progress or do well. or some forms of cultural capital might be more valued in accessing and succeeding in he than others. sen (1999) also notes that the lack of material goods associated with poverty is caused by social behaviour (influenced by culture) which is a form of rejection, exclusion and isolation by those whose culture is dominant, resulting in little realistic possibility of young people attaining their aspirations under conditions of dominance. while we have no direct evidence for this form of oppression in what our participants said, we can infer from the highly unequal social context that cultural imperialism is more rather than less likely. conclusion the capability approach advocates the ethical freedom of individuals as its first principle; thus promoting individual choices and freedoms. but these freedoms vary from context to context. in a just society, access to knowledge and information is an access freedom allowing for informed decision making on the choice of programme, and the choice of he institution, as well as the choice as to whether or not to proceed to he. secondly, in a just society, conversion factors would be in place for the freedom/ capability to aspire, allowing for a positive force that drives agency. therefore, deprivation of freedoms – disadvantage – can be viewed as a form of injustice, and failure to address these injustices can lead to the continuation of reduced access to he for multiply disadvantaged young people. this means the marginalised will remain marginalised and powerless. we have conceptualised disadvantage as evidenced by insecure functionings and unfreedoms as obstacles to having a flourishing life. a wide capability set and the agency to choose plural functionings would reduce disadvantage. but more vulnerability – dependence, unpredictability and irreversibility – would increase perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 24 disadvantage. we also suggest that social arrangements should promote flourishing lives; conversion factors are crucial in aspirations and realising functionings. these factors are shaped positively or negatively by the presence of more or less oppression: marginalisation, exploitation, violence, powerlessness and cultural imperialism in the society and among groups. to be disadvantaged is to have insecure functionings seen in vulnerabilities and compounded by oppressions. the capability approach aligned with dimensions of vulnerability and oppression provides an expanded understanding of the challenge of he access in our study. it helped identify the actual opportunities that are available to young people in pursuing their valued lives and improving their well-being. misztal’s dimensions enabled more specific attention to vulnerability, and incorporating young enabled us to address young people’s issues of access in the face of conditions of group oppression. the disadvantage framework that we have developed identifies, first, the influence of conversion factors on individual freedoms and agency and, secondly, the need for interventions to promote social justice, that is, reducing disadvantage and securing people’s functionings. public policy is crucial in this respect and should incorporate a comparative informational base of capabilities and functionings. the period of youth ought to be a ‘capability space’ to develop knowledge, skills and life plans. we propose, therefore, a capabilities-friendly social justice perspective to provide a comprehensive approach to all dimensions that influence access to he for disadvantaged young people, indicating also the usefulness of a multi-dimensional theoretical approach to understand multiple disadvantage in young people’s lives. references appadurai, a. 2004. the capacity to aspire: culture and terms of recognition. in: v rao & m walton (eds). culture and public action. california: stanford university press. berlant, l. 2006. cruel optimism: differences. journal of feminist cultural studies, 17(5): 20-36. brighouse, h. 2000. school choice and social justice. oxford: oxford university press. deneulin, s. 2014. wellbeing, justice and development ethics. abingdon: routledge hart, c.j. 2013. aspirations, education and social justice: applying sen and bourdieu. london & new york: bloomsbury. misztal, b.a. 2011. the challenges of vulnerability: in search of strategies for a less vulnerable social life. england: palgrave macmillan. nussbaum, m. 2000. women and human development: the capabilities approach. cambridge: cambridge university press. nussbaum, m. 2011. creating capabilities: the human development approach. harvard: harvard university press. okkolin, m.-a. 2013. highly educated women in tanzania: constructing educational well-being and agency. phd thesis, university of jyväskylä, finland. theorising multiply disadvantaged young people’s challenges in accessing higher education melanie walker & faith mkwananzi 25 republic of south africa. 1996. constitution of the republic of south africa, act 101 of 1996. robeyns, i. 2005. the capability approach: a theoretical survey. journal of human development, 6(1): 93-114. sen, a. 1992. inequality re-examined. oxford: oxford university press. sen, a. 1999. development as freedom. new york: oxford university press. srinivasan, t.n. 1994. human development: a new paradigm or reinvention of the wheel? aea papers and proceedings, 84(2): 238-243. walker, m. 2006. higher education pedagogies: a capabilities approach. maidenhead: open university press and the society for research into higher education. walker, m. & mkwananzi, f. forthcoming. challenges in accessing higher education: a case study of marginalised young people in one south african informal settlement. international journal of educational development. wolff, j. & de-shalit, a. 2007. disadvantage. oxford: oxford university press young, i. 1990. justice and the politics of difference. princeton: princeton university press 231 research article 2021 39(1): 231-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.14 published by the ufs http://journals.ufs.ac.za/index.php/pie © creative commons with attribution (cc-by) covid-19 and multicultural education in brazil abstract the paper aims to discuss the effects of covid-19 on the brazilian educational scenario. it analyses educational directives in the pandemic times, gleaning possibilities and challenges for the curriculum in the different levels of schooling. the focus of the study is two-fold: it theoretically discusses the need for multicultural intersectional educational perspectives in culturally diverse countries and it analyses educational policies issued by the brazilian national council for education at the time of the covid-19 pandemic, suggesting ways by which they could enhance a multicultural, intersectional perspective in their recommendations. based on a multicultural perspective, the paper argues that the technical dimension that permeates educational directives, relevant though it may be, should arguably be accompanied by ideas that could enhance the students’ emotional, affectionate and cultural dimensions, in complex times as those lived by them and by all in the middle of a pandemic. keywords: educational policies; multicultural perspectives; covid-19; brazil; curriculum; cultural diversity. 1. introduction the present article aims to glean the challenges and potentials unravelled by the onset of the covid-19 pandemic in brazil. it discusses multicultural and intersectional educational perspectives and it analyses educational policies issued as a response to it in brazil. the article presents possible recommendations so that a more multiculturally oriented approach could embed educational policies in culturally diverse countries. the main argument is based on the need to understand the effects and the possibilities brought about by covid-19 in education in an intersectional and multicultural perspective. an intersectional analysis of the covid-19 pandemic means to perceive the interrelatedness of economic, social, cultural, political and even ideological factors that have impacted the way in which the pandemic has been dealt with and affected educational institutions. multiculturalism refers to the valuing of cultural diversity and the recognition of the specificities of cultural identities, including individual, collective and institutional ones author: prof a. ivenicki1 affiliation: 1federal university of rio de janeiro doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39. i1.14 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 231-241 published: 12 march 2021 received: 11 november 2020 accepted: 9 january 2021 http://www.statssa.gov.za/?p=11341 http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/530481521735906534/overcoming-poverty-and-inequality-in-south-africa-an-assessment-of-drivers-constraints-and-opportunities https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7315-5500 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.14 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.14 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.14 2322021 39(1): 232-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) (ivenicki, 2018; 2019; 2020). such a perspective should help uncover the contradictions and challenges of educational contexts that deal with cultural plurality and that have been uncovered by the onset of the pandemic. it should be noted that even though the onset of covid-19 in 2020 has made an astounding mark worldwide, similarities and differences among the countries showed that a pandemic not only means the onslaught of an epidemic, but also it uncovers challenges that were already present either in similar or in peculiar ways in different societies. by showing the brazilian case, the article may be relevant comparatively. it could hopefully promote reflections on how multicultural perspectives should be useful to think of education in a more equitable way than the one prior to the onset of the 2020 pandemic. based on that, the paper firstly addresses the meanings of multicultural and intersectional perspectives in education and curriculum, pointing to their possibilities in unequal and multicultural contexts. it then gives an in-depth overview of contemporary brazilian educational policies directed at mitigating the impact of the covid-19 pandemic on the brazilian education system. it includes a narrative of the multicultural brazilian society and digital learning in the country’s education system. it concludes by making recommendations based on the multicultural and intersectional framework adopted in the study. 2. a multicultural and intersectional look at education and curriculum thinking multiculturally about curriculum in the context of schooling and of higher education, including teacher training, implies acknowledging its potential to promote the valuing of cultural diversity and to challenge racism, inequalities, prejudices and silencing of voices of subordinated groups in the face of race, ethnicity, gender and other identity markers (banks, 2004; ivenicki, 2018; 2019; 2020; warren & canen, 2012). in this perspective, possibilities of transformative, curriculum dialogues are sought in a curriculum horizon conceived multiculturally as a space for differentiation and the valuing of otherness. the concept of intersectionality has been used in multicultural perspectives and is considered relevant in the context of this project. according to coleman (2019), intersectionality was first popularised by kimberlé crenshaw who, in an article written in 1991 called “mapping the margins”, explained how subjects present themselves as women and also people of colour, marginalised by discourses that, although well-intentioned multiculturally, are structured to respond to one or other identity marker, without the necessary articulated vision of gender and ethnic-racial identity. such considerations start from the idea that we live complex lives intersected by systems of privilege and oppression. at the same time, curricular experiences that develop from multiculturally oriented themes, focused on life stories and perspectives of marginalised cultural identities, such as ethnicracial identities, can be interwoven with what we have called more conventional themes linked to school and pedagogical curricular areas, in teacher training. this is because, in addition to the focus on identities, illustrated above, the question of knowledge is another relevant aspect in the curricular area. in this case, narrated curricular experiences, with multicultural sensibilities, turn to ways in which knowledge is “multiculturalised”. in this horizon, which emphasises multiculturalised knowledge, boaler and senguptairving (2012) bring such a dimension of multicultural curricular experiences to the context 2332021 39(1): 233-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.14 ivenicki covid-19 and multicultural education in brazil of mathematics teaching, a discipline normally associated with “universalist” perspectives and devoid of gender. these authors show that the traditional way of teaching mathematics, through demonstrations and then through practise and memorisation, ends up perpetuating the failure of plural gender identities, which are not represented in such a method. furthermore, the research evidence cited by boaler and sengupta-irving (2012) demonstrates that such a way of presenting mathematics in an abstract and decontextualised way turns out to be more “alienating” for female rather than male identities, for example, and for group minority cultures, perpetuating gender inequality, particularly in the most advanced grades. these authors therefore propose that mathematical knowledge be used as a discursive, contextualised discipline. stein (2017) points to the need to incorporate critical post-colonial and decolonial views, which allow problematising access to historical and differential processes of power accumulated in the ways in which hegemonic institutional knowledge is perpetuated in educational contexts within the scope of higher education. such a more critical view can be encouraged in what stein (2017) calls the multicultural curriculum perspective of “thick inclusion” (stein, 2017). in this perspective, the curriculum in teacher education and in the context of higher education would be aimed at encouraging students to constantly problematise the “good intentions” of the curriculum and to incorporate non-western and non-hegemonic traditions in the curriculum approach. such a critical perspective, however, according to stein (2017), still develops curricular multiculturalism within the scope of the dominant curriculum itself, even though it advances in relation to the previous perspective. in the scope of the international curriculum, stein (2017) points out that these multiculturalist views of weak or strong curricular inclusion have predominated, together with others that advocate interdisciplinarity and alternative institutions, which the author points out as not favouring emancipatory ways of promoting alternative epistemes hegemonic views of the curriculum. it suggests, in this line of argument, post-colonial and decolonial views in an approach she calls “ecology of knowledges approach”. such a view would be constituted by the challenge to the universality advocated by western thought, articulating, to the criticism of this pseudo-universalism, the study of knowledge delegitimised by colonialist perspectives. in this perspective, stein (2017) argues that a range of knowledge can coexist in specific curricular contexts, without an intention to show the ability that this knowledge has to “objectively” represent reality in all contexts. in this ecology of knowledge in post and decolonial views, multiple knowledge and knowledge do not fight for curricular hegemony, since each one is partial, provisional and linked to specific contexts, always promoting problematic and “incomplete” answers. at the same time, authors such as vargas and sanhueza (2018) point out that it is important to develop research that seeks to deepen curricular strategies for management and attention to diversity that can go beyond their recognition practices, but that involve a critical problematisation of the inequalities that are legitimated and reproduced in educational spaces, through multiculturalist models of teacher education that surpass the exclusive preparation in technical skills relevant to areas of study. in this sense, the category of identity is “de-essentialised”, which, according to this perspective, could help teachers, future teachers and students to understand the relevance of challenging dichotomous approaches that end up freezing “me” and the “other”. on the contrary, these approaches advocate that the difference should be understood as linked to colonisation processes that underestimate the knowledge of the “colonised”. such processes, in this view, would still be inherent in our 2342021 39(1): 234-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) curriculum and in the training of teachers and, therefore, could be challenged in pedagogical perspectives of multiculturally oriented curricular experiences with critical, post-colonial and decolonial sensibilities. linking such ideas to the brazilian context, it is important to note that brazil is a huge country, the biggest in south america, with a population of 211 755 692 people, according to the brazilian institute of geography and statistics (ibge, 2020). racial and ethnic composition of the population as self-declared by the subjects in the survey is as follows: 42,7% selfdeclared as white, 9,4% as black, 46,8% as brown and 1,1% as indigenous, according to the same institution (ibge, 2020). social and economic inequality is high. according to neves and costa (2020), 1% of the brazilian population belongs to upper social and economic classes, their income being 85% higher than that of the 50% poorer segments of the population. in that sense, research developed by almeida et al. (2018) in brazil confirms the relevance of multicultural, intersectional approaches to education, by signalling ways in which the categories race and ethnicity are often intertwined with other social configurations, such as class, gender and sexuality. the referred authors emphasise the importance of recognising such overlapping for the formulation of teaching strategies and learning aimed at understanding and respecting cultural diversity and combatting inequality in brazil. considering those views in the context of the onset of covid-19, tate iv (2020) argued that a most infectious pandemic has been on for a very long time among us, the “segregation pandemic”, namely an ideology of racial biology that has been “infecting” the world, causing a disease – racism – that spread globally, including brazil, which reinforces the need for multicultural and intersectional perspectives in education. 3. educational policies in pandemic times: the brazilian case the process that preceded adoption of education policies geared towards mitigating the covid-19 effects on education in brazil was based on the need for the ministry of education to provide instructions for schools and higher education to consider alternatives to keep curriculum on board. the public educational system in brazil comprises primary, secondary and higher education. primary schools are the responsibility of municipal authorities, secondary ones by state authorities and public higher education institutions can be municipal, state and federal ones. the conselho nacional de educação (brazilian national council of education [cne], 2020) is a counselling federal institution that advises the ministry of education about educational affairs concerning all those levels of schooling, including higher education. at the onset of covid-19 in brazil, the cne issued directives to be taken in the pandemic times by all public educational institutions (cne, 2020). again, the process that preceded the issuing of those directives had to do with the fact that the covid-19 crisis resulted in the end of classes in schools and universities, affecting more than 90% of the students in the world. in fact, in brazil, children have been kept out of schools since march 2020 and even in october 2020, municipal, state and federal government declared there was little condition for schools to start on-site classes again before a vaccination to combat covid-19 is in place. also, on 20 may 2020, after strong pressure from academics and students, the ministry of education decided to postpone the national exam for the secondary system (enem). it should be noted that this exam is applied to students at the end of secondary school who intend to pursue higher education studies. according to the grade obtained, they can be apt to attend higher education institutions that accept those grades for their specific career choices. such an exam 2352021 39(1): 235-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.14 ivenicki covid-19 and multicultural education in brazil was due to take place in november 2020, however due to the inequality of access to online classes from most of the population, it was postponed to january 2021. it ended up happening in january 2021, even though most students’ associations still pointed out to the persisting inequality issues that could jeopardise minorities’ success in the exam. by the time the pandemic appeared, the ministry of education decided to issue educational policies that should guide the public educational system to deal with the extraordinary situation. looking at those directives, it is noteworthy that the referred document starts by acknowledging that the census carried out by the national institute for studies and educational researcher, anisio teixeira (inep), confirms that brazil has 8740338 students in all areas and courses, and distant online courses cover 40% of the total of 3445935 of the students that entered higher education in 2018, the public sector of higher education is responsible for 60000 registrations of students. the cne document also states that registration of students in online distant higher education courses doubled since 2008, particularly emphasising teacher education courses (cne, 2020). on the other hand, it states that even though 7170567 places were opened for higher education online distant courses, only 19% of them were filled. the possibility of all higher education courses providing 40% of their curricula online was suggested in another ministry of education document (brazil, ministry of education, 2019). however, the extent to which institutions have (or have not) adhered to that model has not been assessed so far. that way, even though distant online courses in brazil apparently increased, the cne document (cne, 2020) states that it still lacks a more widespread coverage. it then goes on to stress the importance of widening the offer of distant online higher education courses and to offer conditions so that the access to technological computer platforms may be successful, even though it is not stated how that could be done. the document specifically refers to the importance of hybrid mechanisms and goes on to refer to the covid-19 pandemic and to the portaria (law) nº 345/2020 (cne, 2020) that authorises higher education institutions to change on-site classes by others that use digital technologies, including theoretical disciplines of medicine, with the exception of laboratories and teaching practice disciplines. also, it suggests that extension higher education projects – which are those geared towards society at large, including lifelong learning projects – should also be benefited by digital technologies in areas such as teacher continuing education; environmental education and sustainability; human development and social responsibility; supporting teachers and future teachers in creating digital curricular materials as well as educational actions geared towards preventing the contamination by covid-19. additionally, the referred document recommends that higher education institutions should replace on-site classes by remote, distant learning classes through digital technologies, including assessment practices as well as organise teacher training in a way that could prepare teacher educators to deal with those. among those measures, there is also the recommendation that the entry selection of students should be done in a digital way and that higher education institutions should use social media such as whatsapp, facebook, instagram etc. in order to foster and supervise studies and the projects. concerning primary and secondary schooling, the document (cne, 2020) was issued as a guideline for schools to respond to covid-19 and the need for social isolation. again, its emphasis is on online learning. in fact, it begins by suggesting that the realisation of 2362021 39(1): 236-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) non-classroom pedagogical activities must enable the realisation of the learning rights expressed in the development of competences and skills, provided for in the national curriculum references (base nacional comum curricular [bncc]), in the curricula and in the pedagogical proposals, which can be achieved through these practices, considering the curricular replanning adopted by schools due to the onset of covid-19. it then suggests that teaching and learning should happen through media such as digital means (video classes, content organised on virtual teaching and learning platforms, social networks, electronic mail and blogs among others); through television or radio programmes; by the adoption of printed teaching material with pedagogical guidelines distributed to students and their parents or guardians and for the guidance of readings, projects, research, activities and exercises indicated in the didactic materials. it recommends that the school institutions must prepare guidelines for the routines of non-classroom educational activities to guide students and families, under the supervision of teachers and school managers, as a record of the activities carried out during the isolation period. it states that the management of the education department or school institution, during the period of isolation, must monitor and verify whether the non-classroom activities were received by the students, in addition to identifying the difficulties encountered. also, article 15 of the policy document states that, for the purpose of fulfilling the workload, at the discretion of the education systems, non-classroom teaching activities can be computed, considering mandatorily the indication of the learning objectives related to the respective curriculum or pedagogical proposal to be reached; the forms of interaction (mediated by digital information and communication technologies) with the student, to achieve these objectives; the estimate of equivalent workload to achieve this learning objective, considering the forms of interaction expected; the form of registration of student participation, inferred from the performance of the activities delivered (digitally during the period of suspension of classes or at the end, with digital or physical presentation), related to the study plans; the forms of nonface-to-face assessment during the emergency situation or face-to-face, after the end of class suspension; the provision of alternatives to guarantee the fulfilment of the learning objectives for students and/or school institutions that have difficulties in carrying out non-classroom teaching activities; ways of carrying out a process for the pedagogical training of teachers to use the methodologies, with technological mediation or not, to be used in non-classroom activities and conducting an orientation process for students and their families on the use of methodologies. they should develop guidelines and suggestions to parents or guardians about activities that can be carried out with children in their homes, during the period of social isolation. in addition, the referred policy document states that school units, public and private, are exempt from frequency control of pupils. concerning the first years of primary schooling, the referred document gives the following instructions: non-classroom, synchronous or asynchronous classes should be organised by the institution or school network, according to the national curriculum references (base nacional comum curricular [bncc]), the previous national curricular guidelines, the principles of the national policy for literacy (pna), and the curriculum proposal and knowledge objects related to the previous national curricular guidelines ; a system for monitoring non-classroom activities under the guidance of the institution and faculty should be developed and, where possible, with the accompaniment of parents or children guardians; the schools should provide a list of activities and exercises, didactic sequences, learning paths by complexity flow related to the learning objectives and the respective skills; orientations to parents or guardians 2372021 39(1): 237-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.14 ivenicki covid-19 and multicultural education in brazil for carrying out students about the organisation’s daily routines; suggestions for parents or guardians, with the pedagogical support of schools, to perform readings for students or family literacy practices; the use of open tv schedules for educational programmes appropriate to the children’s age and guidance to parents or guardians for what they can watch; elaboration of printed materials compatible with the child’s age, for reading, drawing, painting, cutting, folding, gluing, among other activities; provision of regular asynchronous online activities, in relation to the objects of knowledge, according to the technological availability and familiarity of the user. it ends up advising that education systems, education departments and education institutions may propose their own formative or diagnostic assessment instruments. concerning final years of primary and secondary education, as well as youth and adults education (eja), the referred document at article 22 (cne, 2020) suggests the following possibilities: elaboration of didactic sequences built in accordance with the competencies and their skills advocated in each area of knowledge by national curriculum references (base nacional comum curricular [bncc]) – previous national curricular guidelines; the use, when possible, of open tv schedules for educational programmes compatible with children and adolescents; distribution of educational videos (of short duration) through online platforms, but without the need for simultaneous connection, followed by activities to be carried out supervised by parents or guardians; performing synchronous online activities, according to availability of technological means; the offer of asynchronous online activities, according to technological availability; directed studies, research, projects, interviews, experiences, simulations and other activities should be fostered; conducting online assessments or through printed material to be delivered at the end of the suspension period for classroom classes and the use of long-range social media (whatsapp, facebook, instagram etc.) to stimulate and guide studies, according to the age classification for the use of each of these social networks. 4. a multicultural intersectional critique of educational policies during covid-19 the present section will provide critical engagement with the substance of the mentioned policies. as can be noted, the cne document (cne, 2020) issued by the national council of education intended to offer possibilities for the concrete organisation of schools and to mitigate the effects of the pandemic in the school academic year. the proposed document was partly suitable for achieving that purpose. however, on the one hand, it seemed to put a lot of strain on schools and on the teaching staff, who also have been called to develop online classes from their own homes with little preparation to do that. additionally, the technical dimension within the emphasis on online learning that permeates those regulations, relevant though it may be, should arguably be accompanied by multicultural perspectives that could take on board students’ emotional, affectionate and cultural dimensions. that is arguably crucial considering the highly multicultural context of brazil as well as the peculiar and complex onset of the covid-19 pandemic. in a critical, multicultural and intersectional perspective, we claim those directives have been too oriented towards online learning to the detriment of articulating it to curricular perspectives that take inequality and cultural diversity on board. the extracts of that document in the last section seemed to support that argument. in fact, the covid-19 pandemic evidenced hindrances that have affected the brazilian public educational system, the children as well as young and adult students that attend it. in 2382021 39(1): 238-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) reality, in multicultural and unequal countries such as brazil, there were mixed effects related to multicultural and equity sensitive concerns. those concerns related to both aspects referred to: (i) the challenges of access to digital artefacts; (ii) the need for multicultural curriculum practices. therefore, a critical, multicultural and intersectional analysis of the issued brazilian educational policies at the onset of covid-19 is important at this point. in terms of the first aspect, namely, the challenges of access to digital artefacts, it is important to note that online learning was the main focus of the educational policies issued as a response to the onset of covid-19 in brazil. however, a multicultural, intersectional analysis points that inequality should hinder the success of that digital learning focus. in fact, brazil has faced challenges similar to those of other brics countries (steyn et al., 2018). for instance, in big cities such as rio de janeiro and são paulo, a high percentage of the population lives in shanty towns (the “favelas”), many of which have limited access to basic needs such as adequate sewage systems, water supplies or to digital technologies. in addition to that, many of those people live in areas that have been struck with violence due to a constant war between drug dealers and militia for the domination of territories for their illegal activities, affecting the attendance to local schools. many of these schools constantly close their doors in days of intense exchange of gun shots. therefore, it is understood that the onset of covid-19 and the measures to ensure social distancing and hand washing had problems in many of those places. however, on the other hand, those were places where initiatives of help and communities’ feelings also blossomed, as a series of initiatives by the communities themselves and by other agencies that helped people, with handing out of alcohol in gel, food and other supplies. federal government made monthly cash deposits of half a salary, called emergency help, for families that filled in the forms and were recognised as in financial need. again, queues in front of the banks where the payment is due have been huge, and it has been a challenge to keep social distance there. that way, prior to the pandemic, those factors were already present. in rio de janeiro, for instance, agglomeration in the favelas is big, and a high percentage of students attending public schools come from those. that way, by focusing almost exclusively on online learning, the cne above analysed document seemed to silence cultural, social and economic diversity, as well as inequality issues. in fact, whilst private schools could develop online classes, public ones have struggled to do that, particularly considering inequality of digital access by pupils. in fact, brazilian news have consistently pointed out that most students in brazil, including adult students, have not had access to digital learning. some schools have developed ways of distributing printed materials for pupils, but teacher education and continuing teacher education should also be arguably part of the intersectional thinking concerning multicultural and digital curriculum development. whilst many of the teaching staff of schools tried hard to understand how to use digital means, the majority did not have adequate training and compatible salaries in order to have digital means to operate online classes. such an unequal access to online and digital artefacts has also been felt at the higher education level itself. the panacea by which digital learning has been perceived in educational policies suffered a reality check. the lack of access to digital technologies in order to be able to attend online higher education classes also impinged on the decision of the majority of brazil’s public universities to suspend the academic calendar of 2020 rather than go on with it through online and digital learning strategies. 2392021 39(1): 239-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.14 ivenicki covid-19 and multicultural education in brazil however, from august 2020 onwards, multicultural, intersectional solutions seem to have been presented by public universities in that questionnaires were distributed to faculty, staff and students in order to gauge the kind of digital access they all had. after that measure, public universities provided the distribution of internet modems and financial support for those in need, and virtual, remote, online classes started in september for undergraduate and graduate students. an experimental period was set online between september and november 2020. then the first semester of 2020 is to take place totally online from november 2020 until march 2021, the second one happening from then until june 2021. that means that the academic calendar corresponding to the year of 2021 was decided in such a way as to minimise the disruption of the academic activities and the academic calendar. most importantly, multicultural teacher training would arguably be needed so that teachers’ practices could have a positive effect on plural pupils’ learning. on the other hand, the second aforementioned aspect to consider is the need for multicultural curricular practices. that means to include cultural diversity and its potential for transformative curriculum development in the text of educational policies geared towards mitigating the effects of covid-19. in fact, multicultural perspectives should arguably be geared towards focusing on the potentials of students through dialogues with their cultural plural backgrounds to provide meaningful learning for all. additionally, such a multicultural educational perspective (ivenicki, 2018; 2019; 2020) should be relevant in that it could combat racism, sexism and other prejudices, raising students from marginalised and from privileged backgrounds to respect and value cultural diversity. recommendations for improvement or consideration by drafters of similar policies in multicultural countries should arguably include suggestions of ways that could deepen curricular strategies for management and attention to diversity through multiculturalist models of teacher education that surpass the exclusive preparation in technical skills relevant to areas of study; incorporate critical post-colonial and decolonial views, which allow problematising access to historical and differential processes of power accumulated in the ways in which hegemonic institutional knowledge is perpetuated as well as illustrate ways in which more traditional curriculum syllabi could be linked to multicultural concerns by discussing their impact on the valuing of decolonial knowledges (ivenicki, 2018; 2019; 2020; warren & canen, 2012; boaler & sengupta-irving, 2012; stein, 2018) and work out how covid-19 had impacted students’ lives by including their life histories in the curriculum development activities and help them to positively deal with those challenges. even though the onset of covid-19 in 2020 has made an astounding mark worldwide, similarities and differences among the countries showed that a pandemic not only means the onslaught of an epidemic, but also it uncovers challenges that were already present either in similar or in peculiar ways in different societies. in a constructive and positive way, we claim those challenges brought about by covid-19 could serve as an incentive to improve those areas in which educational inequality and curriculum development deficiencies have been pervasive. 5. conclusions the present paper discussed the impact of the pandemic of covid-19 in the text of educational policies issued as a way to combat the effects of the pandemic in schools and higher education in brazil. it argued that the onset of the pandemic and its impacts on education tend to uncover 2402021 39(1): 240-241 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.14 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) challenges that had already been present in educational realities. the paper addressed the concepts of multicultural, intersectional curriculum approaches and provided suggestions for the improvement or consideration by drafters of similar policies in multicultural countries. future research could delve into evaluation of the impacts of those policies on the everyday lives of educational actors and schools. the analysis showed that the mentioned educational policies seemed to highlight the need for digital learning. however, in a multicultural, intersectional approach, it seemed to be clear that concepts of learning and digital learning should be developed hand in hand. within a multicultural framework, it seemed central to problematise the extent to which educational policies enhance teachers’ role in valuing cultural diversity and inclusionary perspectives in the teaching and learning process. therefore, digital learning should not be limited to technology issues. apart from providing the means for socially and culturally diverse groups to have access to digital learning, other measures should be seriously considered in future educational policies in multicultural countries. that way, in order for effective learning to take place, there seems to be a need for supporting teachers and university professors for a cultural change in the learning strategies. in a multicultural perspective, this means to value cultural diversity and promote ways of using digital learning to support it. digital learning is, after all, about learning itself. multiculturalism and intersectionality uncover inequalities, racisms and prejudices that prevent students and staff from making the most of their potentials, resulting in segregation and marginalisation of cultural identities in the lines of race, ethnicity, gender and the intersection of other identity markers. in terms of curriculum, decolonial and postcolonial multicultural perspectives uncover hegemonic knowledges selected and the need to put marginalised cultures to the forefront to empower them. based on those ideas, recommendations for the drafting of educational policies in a multicultural perspective were presented in the paper. it is hoped the present paper could contribute to discussions that could challenge educational inequality in the present and in the post-pandemic time towards a more promising and multicultural educational future for all. references almeida, n.f.p., de amâncio, m.h.; santos, s.p. dos & sales, l.v. 2018, formação docente e a temática étnico-racial na revista brasileira de educação da anped (1995–2015). revista brasileira de educação, v. 23, e230033. https://doi.org/10.1590/s1413-24782018230033 banks, j.a. 2004. 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_hlk47020069 _hlk55929448 _goback pie32(4) book.indb perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 121 patriarchy: a case of women in institutions of higher education eunice tressa dlamini jabulile dorothy adams this article presents research on women’s experiences of patriarchy in a higher education institution x. this is a qualitative study located within the interpretivists’ paradigm. the research problem of this study is articulated through the following research questions: how do female academics experience patriarchy? how does patriarchy impact on their upward mobility? and, how does patriarchy affect their academic output? a purposive sample of eight black female academics that have experienced the phenomenon under study participated in this research. data were collected by means of an interview schedule and through self-written stories of experiences that have been thematically analysed. the findings revealed that women at institution x experienced male supremacy, disempowerment, and disrespect of womenfolk. another finding is that patriarchy impacts on their upward mobility and deprives them of promotions they deserve. the participants also felt that the reigning patriarchal environment does not only impact on their academic output but also on their intellectual and emotional wellbeing and their person. suggestions for corrective measures were put forward for use by the department of higher education, higher education institutions and other stakeholders. key words: patriarchy, transformation, gender equality, power analysis introduction educational transformation is a buzz word in south african educational circles. it is driven by the quest of south africa on behalf of all citizens of the country, not only to access education in any institution of choice, but to quality education. indices that underpin transformation include gender equality. dieltiens, unterhalter, letsatsi and north (2009) argue that gender equity is one of the fundamental principles underpinning the transformation of the south african education system. eunice tressa dlamini mathematics science & technology education, university of zululand e-mail:eunicet.dlamini@gmail.com tel: 035 340 1294 jabulile dorothy adams department of educational psychology & special education, university of zululand e-mail : jdadams@telkom.net tel: 035 792 2048 perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 122 women in particular are targeted for education due to the intricate link between the education of women and girls and sustainable development. this is expressed in a common saying: “when you educate a woman, you educate the nation.” in the academic environment this expression does not hold because women appear to be an endangered species. according to the authors a saying that can express this observation appropriately is: “when you educate a woman, you pose a threat to male power.” in essence it means that the issue of transformation and equal rights should be broadened to include patriarchy, particularly in the academia. the quest for equal rights of women in south africa dates as far back as the 1950s, when women in the african congress raised the question of gender discrimination as a gross violation of human rights. as violation of human rights was linked to apartheid, their quest for equal rights continued up to the time that democracy arrived in south africa in 1994. the united nations economic commission for africa (1995: 29) states succinctly, with regard to women’s rights, that “parties should take all appropriate measures to eliminate discrimination against women in order to ensure equal rights with men in the field of education.” fifteen years after the dawn of democracy, it is appropriate and very necessary to examine the socio-cultural norms associated with patriarchy, as these threaten our democracy – particularly in institutions of higher learning. the south african constitution considers equality of men and women as a fundamental part of its human rights, which should be observed in all sectors of the country, including higher education institutions. however, pennefather (2008:81) is concerned that “…despite the enormous positive changes in south africa after 1994, the country is still characterized by great inequalities.” ramani and malema, in the mail & guardian, 13 to 19 april (2012), commenting in an article titled “sisters in the academic struggle,” say: “that there continue to be many disparities between men and women at universities is clear from many publications, including the council on higher education’s 2007 report on the status of women in academia.” they highlight the point that “…despite progressive legislation on employment equity and other initiatives aimed at the advancement of women in academia, many factors make it difficult for women to achieve success in what has traditionally been and remains a male-dominated field.” the authors opine that disparities due to pervasive patriarchal attitudes are a major barrier to women academics. these manifest in various forms, such as blocking women from climbing the academic ladder, exclusion from research supervision, and production of knowledge, among others. survey data, as reported by gumbi (2006), showed that in 2003, nine years after south africa achieved democracy, the average percentage of women in senior management positions was only 24% across all the heis in the country. it was also surprising and disappointing for the authors to note that the hesa magazine for 2009 featured men only, while it is known that there were at least three (3) women vicechancellors in the country at that stage. this apparent exclusion of women’s voices in the magazine may appear patriarchal to observers. kiamba (2008), in describing patriarchy: a case of women in institutions of higher education eunice tressa dlamini, jabulile dorothy adams 123 barriers to women obtaining leadership positions, states that traditional beliefs and cultural attitudes regarding the role of women in society are still prevalent in the african context and that these act as deterrents to the promotion of females. at face value men at higher education institutions tend to mask patriarchy and pretend to treat women as equals (miroiu & dragomir, 2002). the researchers are of the opinion that female students and women employees in tertiary education need female role models in terms of professors and administrators in senior management. it is therefore clear that the issue of gender equality and patriarchy deserve serious attention from the powers that be. purpose of the study patriarchy is of concern to the researchers because of its negative impact on women. in many ways it prevents women from reaching their potential. this study therefore explores the experiences of black female academics that have been exposed to patriarchy in a historically disadvantaged institution (hdi) – institution x. the paper mainly seeks answers to the following research questions: 1. how do black female academics experience patriarchy? 2. how does patriarchy impact on the upward mobility of black female academics? 3. how does patriarchy affect the academic output of black female academics? objectives of the study the main objective of this study is to unravel the state of patriarchy of the hei identified as “institution x” in this study. the secondary objectives are: 1. to determine how black female academics experience their existence in a patriarchal environment. 2. to determine how patriarchy impacts on the upward mobility of black female academics. 3. to research the effect of patriarchy on black female lecturers’ academic output. theoretical and conceptual framework there are several theories which attempt to explain “the how and why questions” of patriarchy. of the existing ones, the researchers chose the the theory of gender perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 124 and power. connell, 1987 states that the theory of gender and power addresses the wider social and environmental issues relating to women, such as gender-based power imbalances. connell (1987) further argues that self-protection by women is swayed by economic factors, abusive partnerships, and the socialization of women to be sexually passive and ignorant. the rationale for choosing this theory is that it offer more insight into the origin of power relations between males and females in heis. the power analysis theory examines the social structures through which men collectively dominate women through bureaucracy. the typical practice in bureaucracy is to appoint men in top positions while women are concentrated in the lower positions despite their qualifications, experience and potential (martin, 1990). martin explains that bureaucrats ensure that they use their power in bureaucracy to keep women in their subordinate place. this manifestation of bureaucracy, according to martin (1990), takes place in several ways, including, for example, exclusion of women in top positions (when they qualify); discrimination against women (in hiring and promotion); promotion of the bureaucratic value of emotional aloofness and technical rationality as a reason for deterring and restraining women, and to claim that men operate best in a given environment. the gender role theory relates to gender roles that are inculcated since birth. men use gender roles, including stereotypes, to maintain their positions, to exclude and to discriminate against women at all levels. according to this belief, men are portrayed as leaders and women as subordinates (taylor, peplau and sears,2000:331). the rationale for this action is usually that these are roles that cannot be altered. socialization is used to endorse patriarchy. women are restricted to roles of nurturing, where they are given responsibilities such as, for example, looking after children and caring for everybody at home – the responsibility which often extends to the work situation. patriarchy is indeed “one of the strongest ideologies in cultures worldwide and in the context of the modern western culture it is operative on more or less the whole spectrum of hyper normative discourses” (visagie, 1997:7). it is a system of gender domination by males over females and has been institutionalized to emphasize the preservation of roles, attitudes and social stereotypes between males and females (bhasin, 1993:3). witz (1992;1) argues that to speak of the patriarchal structuring of gender relations is to describe the ways in which male power is institutionalized within different sites of social relations in society. boonzaaier and sharp (1998;155) define patriarchy as a system of domination over women which transcends different systems, eras, regions and class. it is a social group or system ruled or controlled only by men (longman contemporary english dictionary (1985). according to mngxitama (2010), patriarchy is part of sexism. it puts the interests of men before those of women and uses culture, religion, tradition and even love to justify the enslavement of women. it reduces women to being the property of men. according to jones (2006:27), men are a prized commodity, yet there appears to be no clear consensus patriarchy: a case of women in institutions of higher education eunice tressa dlamini, jabulile dorothy adams 125 on the type of skills and qualities they exhibit besides being physically different from women. patriarchy in this study refers to an ideology that elevates males to positions of leadership and to a status of recognition of importance and superiority over women, which ignores their ability, qualifications and potential, among others. research design and methodology the study is located in the qualitative approach, because it provides in-depth information on the experiences of individuals (nieuwenhuis, 2007). it is also positioned within the interpretivists’ paradigm. according to robson (1994), interpretivists believe that truth and reality are socially constructed. in this sense, participants were afforded an opportunity to present the truth within the framework of their understanding and beliefs about the phenomena under investigation. the researchers identified a purposive sample of eight black female academics that had encountered patriarchy in their departments. individuals were researched with respect to their own experiences of patriarchy in the hei. data were colleted by means of an interview schedule and the method used was an unstructured interview of the narrative type. the participants narrated their experiences of patriarchy in the workplace, stated how patriarchy impacted on their mobility as academics and gave their perceptions on how patriarchy affect their academic output. four participants opted to write down their experiences rather than talk about them only. before the subjects participated in the investigation the researchers discussed with them the need to talk about patriarchy if it is to be exposed and dealt with. the participants were also assured that their participation was voluntary and that the findings derived from their analysed responses would be used to highlight the situation of women in heis and to influence the gender policies, including promotion and employment policies. the subjects were also informed that information derived from their analysed responses would be disseminated to the professional community. qualitative data was thematically analysed using the following steps: 1. all the descriptive responses were read several times; 2. the responses to each question were examined separately to ascertain similarities and differences; 3. names were given to categories descriptive of responses; 4. the themes identified were explicated to reveal the respondents’ responses to how female academics experience their existence in a patriarchal environment; how patriarchy impacts on their upward mobility and their academic output. perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 126 thematic interpretations were obtained in relation to their experiences. both common and contrasting responses were included, thus enabling qualitative research findings to be inductively derived (maykut & morehouse, 1994). findings findings of the data collected from the eight female participants are presented following interviews with them. the interviews focused on examining the experiences of black female academics in a patriarchal environment and the impact that patriarchy has on their upward mobility and academic output. the results have been categorized according to the aims of the study. the following themes were identified with regard to experiences of patriarchy: male supremacy, disempowerment, disrespect of women folk, and insensitivity to women’s issues. two themes relating to impact on upward mobility were identified. these are withholding promotion and manipulating promotion criteria so as to favour men. experiences of participants in a patriarchal environment male supremacy interviews conducted with women who have experienced patriarchy revealed that patriarchy is the order of the day in some faculties within institution x. this situation is typical at institution x. all eight of the women in the study have experienced this oppression from all male management, seemingly for the sole purpose of ensuring male dominance and female submission. three participants had the following to say, respectively, on this point: “…it is a known fact in my department that if you are a woman you must know your place… that is, you are a woman and therefore you are a subordinate, irrespective of your rank and qualifications.” another woman added the following: “i have been subjected to male domination and humiliation since 2006 to date and the head of the faculty is not taking my issues seriously.” and: ‘he (the manager) called a staff meeting one day and instructed that nobody must utter a word, nor ask questions. the subject of the meeting was another female colleague who was present in the meeting and we had to look on helplessly as a colleague was dressed down… yes, he acted as a real traditional man wielding power in his homestead… what a privilege!” miroiu (2003) argues that patriarchy is part and parcel of the organization of institutions and daily practices. miroiu highlights the point that patriarchal patriarchy: a case of women in institutions of higher education eunice tressa dlamini, jabulile dorothy adams 127 organizations make men, at any level of society, “bosses” of women. the assumption is that men’s supremacy at the workplace has been intentionally institutionalized by men to perpetually entrench it and to strengthen men’s power base. disempowerment interviews showed that female participants were prevented from achieving goals related to their tasks by excluding those responsibilities which will empower them or by destabilizing them in their study endeavours. all the female participants expressed concern that they are deliberately disempowered by senior male colleagues in various ways: “…i have experienced a situation where i decided to further my studies and he pretended to support me but at the time when i was about to taste success, he dumped me.” “… if you want to be in good books of these males, you must ensure that you remain less qualified than them.” “…those who seem knowledgeable are enemies to male leaders to be specific.” “… obstacles to prevent success are always placed on ones way.” all participants agreed that disempowerment was also expressed in a form of excluding women participating in committees, decision making and perpetually allocating them teaching loads with abnormal numbers of students. disrespect of women folk according to the findings of this study, the participants stated that male leaders did not respect them. one of them expressed their concern as follows: “students would be encouraged to write petitions of false accusations about me by the male manager.” still on the same issue, another female participant had this to say: “if a manager feels that according to his perception you have crossed his path, he will embarrass you by calling the protective services personnel to remove you from his office as though you were a criminal.” it was apparent from the interviews that women in one particular faculty do not have a voice and that those who are vocal about patriarchal issues are labeled “disrespectful” by male colleagues. another female participant stated (quoted verbatim): “colleagues in my section had told me to shut up not only in meetings because my challenging issues were blocking my upward mobility. i considered that to be unfair, for the reason that promotion should be based on identified criteria and on how rigorously one debates academic issues and perhaps treads on some sensitive toes.” perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 128 insensitivity to women’s issues all of the participants agreed that higher education institutions pay lip service to gender equity. there is usually a gender desk, which in most cases is not functional and not actively supported by top management, most of whom are male. in summary, the general sentiments of the respondents could be best expressed in the rather clichéd form, as follows (quoted verbatim): “males publicly support equity, but behind closed doors work to promote the interests of the boys’ club, while women are put in their place, in the kitchen where they belong. this is why women are not visible in the management structures of hei. it has become apparent that the main function of the gender desks in institution x is window dressing.” taylor, peplau and sears (2000: 326), state that gender roles are seen as binary opposites in some societies. the authors state that masculinity has become associated with ambition, dominance, independence, power, control, aggression, ambition and logic. femininity is associated with attributes such as tactful, dependence, emotionalism, gentleness and talkative. four of the female participants wrote about harassment by their male manager, who accused all of them of having slept with someone in order to obtain their positions. one of them said (verbatim quote): “i shudder when i think about the day he told us that we had sex with someone in order to be employed.” in other words, it should be accepted as typical of women to get their jobs through promiscuity. the women further mentioned that their complaints were reported to a senior male manager and their claims were dismissed, as one respondent puts it: “the senior manager said that i was lying and that i was aggressive and that i must behave as expected of women. i realized that he was defending his male colleague and the integrity of males.” issues regarding the academic promotion of women withholding promotion the swelling numbers of young women in tertiary educations indicate the need for female role models – professors and administrators in senior management. unfortunately professorship, particularly in some historically disadvantaged institutions in south africa, is a male domain as evidenced by the following utterances from three of the participants: “a good example is one of the faculties in institution x, where there is not a single female professor. however, this is not due to a lack of capable women who have published and participated in the delivery of papers internationally. one typical chauvinist reason put forward for the lack of female professors, is that some of the women who qualify for promotion are emotional in meetings.” another one added: patriarchy: a case of women in institutions of higher education eunice tressa dlamini, jabulile dorothy adams 129 “these are, in fact, women who challenge patriarchal tendencies. they are labeled and shamed in order to silence them in meetings, but we know from time immemorial that male chauvinists are inclined to use emotionalism in women as an excuse to silence women of substance.” and lastly, one participant testified that: “some positions that should be voted for are allocated administratively by the senior manager in order to avoid the power of the female vote.” the situation portrayed with regard to the progression status of institution x agrees with the exclusion model of the gender gap (miroiu , 2003), which argues that women are excluded from well paid jobs (senior positions) for socio-cultural reasons and are identified as unimportant workers or second rate professionals. from data collected from female subjects who had a first-hand encounter with patriarchy, the authors are of the opinion that institution x is role modeling the exclusion model. all the women interviewed perceived the future of women in this institution as bleak, particularly in their section as they do not see a way of climbing the academic ladder even if they could meet the promotion criteria, because senior male colleagues manipulate the promotion criteria to suit their ‘male buddies’.” manipulating promotion criteria all respondents complained about the fact that men rally around each other in order to ensure they retain power and senior positions undeservedly. this happens because, according to (mirroiu,2003) these top academic positions which men have been holding for centuries, have enabled these men to structure these institutions to establish moral codes and to shape culture in ways that perpetuate the power of men over women by means of gender power. an example of this misapplied patriarchy, as mentioned by the respondents, is portrayed as follows (verbatim quote): “male superiors always ensure that they install other males in senior positions…. the appointment of male professors in fields in which they do not qualify is an open secret.” a similar case from another respondent was (quoted verbatim): “one male had no qualms in admitting he did not qualify to be in his managerial post and had been given the post to protect him from being under women, although they were highly qualified.” and another adds: “this is done in order to undermine female candidates who qualify in all respects and to continue locating power in men.” and another participant added: “you can meet the promotion criteria, but if you pose a threat to males you will never be promoted, instead they will ensure that they use all strategies they have at their disposal to frustrate you.” perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 130 it is in such situations where one finds constant harassment of women who are considered as threats to insecure managers. these women are abused to the point that they are forced to resign, or continue to work in extremely unfriendly environments because they are seen as “professional misfits”. impact on academic output the researchers found that those female academics subjected to patriarchy work hard to satisfy students as their primary clients under these difficult circumstances. they also mentioned that the positive feedback that they receive from students keeps them going. two of them expressed this satisfaction. one respondent said: “educating people is my passion and teaching and lecturing is a calling to me. my students cannot suffer because of problems that affect me at work because they are the reason for my survival and i am a reason for their future. i always make sure that i do my best… they appreciate my work…they give me positive feedback and they are proud of their performance…sometimes i feel pity for them when they are manipulated against me … but they are mature because they understand.” and another said: “my students love and respect me because they claim i am one of the lecturers who come to class well prepared. that makes me proud that i can still cope despite the odds.” participants revealed that though they try hard not to affect their clients (students) with their problems created by a patriarchic academic situation, this does not suggest that patriarchy does not have a negative impact on their academic output. one of them mentioned that: “i experience difficulty in doing research because i am not supported, as some of these males sit in these committees and block whatever we as women attempt to produce as research…. i feel so sad and stupid when this happens.” the participants were also of the opinion that as long as the institution is plagued by patriarchy, it means they will remain in the lowest lecturing positions: “i will never see progression because my manager makes sure that he gives me huge classes both in the first and second semester; as a result i cannot do research.” according to the findings of the study, the female participants felt that the reigning patriarchal environment impacts on their intellectual and emotional wellbeing and their person (duczek, 2008). their interpretations of reality become frustrated, to such an extent that they become restricted in their thinking (schoeman, 1998). summary of findings the study led to the following illumination of the experiences of women and the effects of patriarchy on both upward mobility and academic output. generally, patriarchy: a case of women in institutions of higher education eunice tressa dlamini, jabulile dorothy adams 131 the findings have revealed that an unfriendly academic environment prevails in respect of female academics at institution x. women are victimized through the patriarchal culture, which this case study has shown is reinforced by cultural and gender stereotypes. this does not suggest that universities in other settings are immune from this tendency. the findings also suggest that women are reduced to the position of insubordinates through male supremacy, disempowerment, disrespect and insensitivity to their issues. patriarchy has emerged as a barrier to women’s upward mobility, as evidenced by the fact that men exercise control by excluding them from participating in activities that would result in promotion. it is also clear from the findings that patriarchy “does not tolerate” opposition, and as a result females who oppose it are subjected to different forms of punishment, or are labeled “abnormal” or defiant. it deprives women of the opportunity to benefit from existing promotion policies as men tamper with these to enhance their superiority. patriarchy affects the research output and the self-esteem of women as it affects their psychological wellbeing. these findings imply that institutions of higher education must take stock of their employment policies and conduct impact studies on staff; by so doing they will be able to identify malpractice or injustices directed towards women. conclusion based on the findings of this study, it is clear that patriarchy is a historical reality that thrives not only in homesteads, but as part and parcel of academic institutions and the daily bread of female academics. it is not an easy task for women to challenge patriarchy, but this has to be done if women are to reach their full potential and aspire to those positions presently dominated by men. it is recommended that women vote other women into influential structures in order to ensure equality; in the present structure, this will weaken the dominance of men over women. women should also mitigate the issues of equity, equality and discrimination against women by means of policy documents. women should develop their skills by means of workshops and seminars so that they are able to develop additional skills and the necessary confidence to occupy various managerial positions. men seem to be united in their patriarchal attitude towards women, while the opposite seems to be true with women. it is therefore recommended that the women, in the case study, must start women’s groups. it is through such groups that women can promote agendas such as raising their research profiles through publications, refereeing journals and encouraging women to supervise research. it is also recommended that women in the academia should network with females at other academic institutions in order to overthrow patriarchy. only the oppressed can free themselves. perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 132 references bhasin k 1993. what is patriarchy? new delhi: ray press. boonzaaier e & sharp s 1988. south african keywords – the uses and abuses of political concepts. claremont: david phillip publishers. brayton j 1995. history of feminist approaches to technology studies. in: em truth (ed). the encyclopedia of gender and information technology. 2: 759-764. idea group reference: london. commission on gender equity (1998). annual report of the commission on gender equality. pretoria: government printer. connell,rv (1987) gender and power : society, the person and sexual politics. california: stanford university press. dieltiens v, unterhalter e, letsatsi s, & north a 2009. gender blind, gender – lite: a critique of gender equity in the south african department of 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k smit (eds.) ideologies in south african higher education. bloemfontein: technikon free state. witz a 1992. professions and patriarchy. new york : routledge. 1 conversations among black staff members at a historically white afrikaans university campus on issues of race, social justice and reconciliation willy nel university of the free state in an ethnographically designed study, guided by a critical community psychology framework, black staff members at a historically white afrikaans university campus conducted email conversations relating to issues of race, social justice and reconciliation. the conversations were initiated by the author (black) who mainly used prompts found in the local institutional context to elicit responses from colleagues. a critical discourse approach to thematic analysis of the email conversations was followed. the main findings are: compared to the potential number of respondents (32 black staff members or 18% of all faculty staff), very few colleagues (9 or 28% of black staff members) responded via email to the invitations but, when met in person, all expressed strong views on the topics or prompts used in the initialising emails. the critical discourse approach revealed clear psychopolitical awareness and strong discourses of fear, powerlessness and bitterness, as well as a discourse of non-engagement. these discourses appeared in all three domains of analysis: local, institutional and societal. theoretical explication is sought mainly in resistance theory for the discourse of non-engagement and the scarcity of responses located in the local domain. transformative resistance is suggested so that alternative discourses are inculcated, at least, in faculties of education at some historically white afrikaans university campuses. keywords: black staff, historically white afrikaans university, race, social justice, reconciliation, critical discourse approach, transformative resistance introduction in the ensuing paragraphs i will attempt to contextualise the constructs of race, social justice and reconciliation as they play out in higher education, with the aim of indicating the complex and often even contradictory nature of these constructs. owing to space limitations, i will not discuss the rich debates on the nature and form of these constructs and will, therefore, opt for the following operational definitions. race is not regarded in biological terms nor as “undiscussible” (rusch & horsford, 2009:303), but rather as a social construct which uses skin colour as point of departure to indicate human diversity. the categories of black and white are used in this article, with black signifying the apartheid-designated groups of black african, coloured and indian (luescher, 2009:416), troubling and insulting as such categorisation might be for some people (francis & hemson, 2007:101). social justice is simply regarded as those actions and awarenesses that work against the creation and perpetuation of social wrongs on account of power imbalances (stovall, 2006:244). reconciliation is regarded as a softer, interpersonal and intergroup process of social justice where people from different sides of a divisive history extend dignity and esteem, in a thoughtful manner, to cross the historical divides for the sake of mutual healing in social and psychological terms (gibson, 2004:202). race and social justice in higher education moderate success is being claimed as higher education in south africa negotiates the challenges posed by massification, marketisation and managerialism (council on higher education, 2009:91; seepe, 2006:56; singh, 2006:74). some of these successes involve increasing the number of black africans who are rated by the national research foundation as researchers of note; a higher number of student enrolments in 2 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 higher education with a steady increase in enrolments of black students, and a percentage split of 40:30:30 that has been attained in the student enrolments for the human and social sciences; business, commerce and management, and science, engineering and technology (council on higher education, 2009:91-92). as is to be expected in the development of the sector, there are still areas of concern. the slow pace in the increase of appointments of black staff is cited as a source of concern (bitzer & albertyn, 2011:82; cassim, 2005:658; gibbon & kabaki, 2006:132). the argument for greater staff equity in terms of racial profile is not new, as thaver (2003:146) illustrates with her citation of studies dating back to the late 1980s. the diversification of higher education is also not only an enterprise to entice more black students into higher education, contrary to the assumptions prevalent at historically white universities (steyn, 2007:10). in south african higher education race is still a social construct with a strong influence on social and academic life (finchilescu, tredoux, mynhardt, pillay & muianga, 2007:732; jawitz, 2012:3; tredoux, dixon, underwood, nunez & finchilescu, 2005:429). at least one of the influences of race on the academic character of higher education in south africa is, as thaver (2003:144) argues, that the numeric predominance of white academics leads to a disproportionate heavy anchorage of the higher education sector in the life and world experience of this one sector of south african society. similarly, the disjuncture between the rhetoric of change and the privately held convictions of those “whose everyday choices, decisions and manner of operating serve to create and maintain the status quo institutional culture” (steyn, 2007:5) is a stumbling block towards fulfilling the transformative intentions of higher education legislation. jonathan jansen, a respected public intellectual who regularly throws his readership off balance by his challenges to the familiar (maodzwa-taruvinga & cross, 2012:132; nel, 2009:48), disputes the equity practices of some institutions by expressing concern about the “declining state of the south african professoriate” (jansen, 2003:9) resulting from fast-tracking practices whereby some black academics enter the professoriate. these fast-tracking practices led jansen (2003:10) to arrive at the conclusion that it leads to a “dumbing down of the professoriate”. this is, however one looks at it, a harsh judgement of black professors who obtained their university positions through the fast-tracking mechanisms. lamenting the fast-tracked entry of black academics into the professoriate is to some extent odd, given jansen’s (2005:311) self-acknowledged fast-tracked exit of white academics during his stint as dean at another institution. the power to effect such entry and exit is held by certain seats in higher education, not by ordinary staff members. the point i want to make is that an unfortunate perception can be created about black professors and academics in the vein of “white excellence/black failure” (robus & macleod, 2006:473). such black staff can be perceived as the favoured fast-entrants of those higher education leaders sympathetic to the new social justice discourse or even as the (deanly) cause for the ejection of perceived experienced white academics. with a respected black scholar making such statements as “dumbing down of the professoriate” (jansen, 2003:10), the potential for the adverse reception of such black academics in higher education is created. couple this with the resistant mindset of some white staff in higher education (steyn, 2007:5) and the scene is set for an environment, post-1994, in which white-dominated higher education can become an inhospitable space for ordinary black staff who cannot fast-track the exit of resistant white staff, nor the entry of black staff. thus, the issue of the meaningful inclusion of black staff is the terrain of social justice. inclusion ought to be a transformative enterprise which is undergirded by social justice practices such as the examination of ideological and historical assumptions about difference, and resistance against the marginalisation of groups (artiles, harris-murri & rostenberg, 2006:267). reconciliation and intergroup contact criticism against a focus on the experience of black staff can be expected because it might not be regarded as contributing to the reconciliation project in south africa. the critics may argue that black academic staff should show more resilience since black people have the numerical majority in the seats of political power. such critics may also cite the numerical advances made by black entrants to higher education as students and staff. these forms of criticism may raise substantive points, but it would still sound dishonest 3nel — conversations among black staff members at a historically white afrikaans university if it were suggested that, in the main, historically white afrikaans university campuses are the most hospitable spaces for black academics to enter. durrheim, tredoux, foster and dixon (2011:276) found that whites are pressured by changed societal norms to express less prejudice but, at the same time, they evidence very little historical change in the larger social distance that they prefer for black others to hold. bearing contact theory in mind (tredoux & fichilescu, 2007:668-669), it then seems almost logical that, if more black staff enter historically white universities, more harmonious group relations between black and white should result. this logic is, however, challenged by studies which found that having different racial groups in the same educational space does not necessarily lead to a decrease in prejudice (keizan & duncan, 2010:481; walker, 2005:53). reconciliation, then, cannot be read only from the increasing numbers of black staff added to higher education institutions. contact facilitated by increasingly racially integrated higher education workplaces is also not a panacea towards reconciliation. tredoux and finchelescu (2007:675) cast aspersions on the value of intergroup contact by suggesting that some forms of contact may be detrimental to the ideals of reconciliation and even social justice. active resistance to contact may even be, in some circumstances, a better strategy to improve intergroup relations (tredoux & finchelescu, 2007:675). as is evident from these introductory remarks on the place of race, social justice and reconciliation in higher education, i take a critical view of the concepts and how they play out in higher education. this view is informed by the theoretical framework of critical community psychology within which this study is couched. theoretical framework guiding the study staying true to my discipline, i use a critical community psychology framework. this is a form of community psychology which, like all community psychology strains, still focuses on the relation of the individual with his/her social context (kitching, roos & ferreira, 2011:247). the ‘critical’ part of this framework assesses any engagement for its psychopolitically valid ways of dealing with power (prilleltensky & prilleltensky, 2003:198). psychopolitical validity refers to the need to consciously investigate the presence, role and configuration of power in people’s relations within and with their social environment (prilleltensky, 2003:199; prilleltensky, 2008:129). therefore, the inclusion of arguments from spheres such as critical race theory (ladson-billings & tate, 1995:48; stovall, 2006:244) comes naturally to a study which is guided by critical community psychology. community psychology in south africa has, from its appropriation by radical, critical psychologists in the years of struggle against apartheid, always been informed by a critical agenda (seedat & lazarus, 2011:244). another characteristic of critical community psychology is that its notion of community allows for diversity within. a community is therefore understood as containing both overt and covert differences, which make it very difficult for anyone to claim to understand and know a particular community in all its complexity, even when the physical rootedness and social cohesion in a community are apparent (mannarini & fedi, 2009:223). some of the values guiding a critical community psychology include addressing oppression; social justice; building a psychological sense of community, and personal and political empowerment (lazarus, 2007:6971; nelson, prilleltensky & macgillivary, 2001:652). problem statement with the literature review and theoretical framework as backdrop, the problem identified for this research is that the official narratives and reporting of numbers by higher education institutions mostly do not provide the depth that smaller narratives about racial dynamics and experiences can provide. this small-scale research project attempted to determine the breadth and depth of conversations relating to issues of race, social justice and reconciliation, among black staff members in a historically white afrikaans university. the above cursory literature review intends to indicate the complexity and the often contradictory nature of the issues under discussion. 4 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 background this study was conducted in an education faculty of a three-campus merged university in south africa. the first campus consists of a former rural homeland university where a large majority of black african students and lecturers still form the predominant racial demographic of the campus; the second campus consists of a former black distance education university campus and a campus of a former white afrikaans university. the third campus, where this research took place, consists of the main campus of a former white afrikaans university with white afrikaans speakers still forming the predominant racial demographic of students and staff on-campus. as a disclaimer it should be mentioned that this university is not the one to which the author is attached at the time of submission of this article. for ethical reasons, direct references to the identity of this university campus will be avoided to protect the participants; thus, no documentation from this campus will be cited in the reference list. according to the education faculty’s annual report for 2011, of the 174 staff members, 32 are black, which represents 18% of the staff total. the percentage of black undergraduate students in the on-campus b.ed. programme is 25% out of the 2840 students. in the distance education programmes 87.5% of the more than 30 000 students are black. the rationale behind the research is found in a string of email correspondence (sent to all who were on the address list) between myself and a fellow black colleague. this correspondence ensued after another black colleague attempted to organise a combined birthday party for a few black colleagues in his school in the faculty who had their birthdays in the preceding few weeks. this type of all-black gathering was a regular occurrence, but the first colleague suggested the inclusion of all members of the school in which the birthday people were employed. bearing the precedent of previous gatherings in mind, i responded to express the opposite viewpoint by stating that social gatherings of this nature did not have to be inclusive affairs. the colleague disagreed with my viewpoint and reiterated her stance that all her colleagues should be invited as she valued them in the workplace. i replied in a lengthy way arguing about the need to have gatherings that run counter to the white staff hegemony in which we are daily engulfed in our faculty. i also posed two challenges to those on the address list: did we really have such racially blind social practices in our ordinary social lives outside of work that inviting white colleagues to this gathering would be a normal occurrence? did we really contemplate how much of our desire to include or exclude white colleagues reveals psychological damage? again, the colleague responded and stood by her point, this time lamenting my missive as making the correspondence “a sounding board for political beliefs” and making “the smallest thing a racial issue”. my reply was that “by closing such discussions about uncomfortable issues prematurely, we miss opportunities for growth”. our correspondence on this topic ended, a little acrimoniously, thereafter. through this whole process of correspondence no-one else participated, but the colleague and me. this lack of participation sparked my research interest. methodology design this research was designed as an ethnography since i would assume the role of participant-observer (du plooy, 2009:210). through this research i attempted to place the social conversational encounters with my colleagues, and the understandings derived therefrom in a meaningful, meaning-making context (tedlock, 2000:455). given my active, direct participation that preceded the formal research process and that i participated in the research process itself, it could not be ruled out that elements of an auto-ethnography would also form part of the design. the autobiographical style of writing is a strong indicator of the autoethnographic nature of some of the data provision (ellis & bochner, 2000:739). some critique against auto-ethnography is that it is “essentially lazy” research due to the lack of distance between characters (delamont, 2007:2), but i maintain that such research can add value. ethnography and auto-ethnography create space for the validation of personal experience by linking its different layers of consciousness to an area of knowledge (ellis & bochner, 2000:739; tedlock, 2000:455). 5nel — conversations among black staff members at a historically white afrikaans university ethics i emailed an invitation for participation to my 31 black colleagues with whom i served in the faculty at the time. the invitation included an ethical consent understanding that when they reply to my work email, private email, office telephone, mobile phone or in person, they do so in the knowledge that their responses are for research purposes only, and with protection of their personal identifying particulars (christians, 2000:139). owing to my intimate role in this research, as someone who was in collegial and friendship relations with my colleagues, it is imperative that, for the sake of relational ethics, i also protect mutual respect together with dignity (ellis, 2007:211). invitation to participate and prompting drawing their attention to the correspondence that i had with the colleague who disagreed with me, i invited black colleagues to supply their thoughts regarding issues of race, social justice and reconciliation. in the ensuing months, i elicited responses by adding, at the end of 2011, a notice written in afrikaans that i had photographed in an examination room in our faculty. this notice requested silence for the sake of students writing examinations, but singled out cleaning workers and pets (‘skoonmakers en troeteldiere’ in afrikaans) as the special audience for that message. in 2012, i added (with the knowledge of the official) email conversations that i had had with a university official about a tragic event that had occurred during the first-year students’ reception programme. in that incident a black first-year student had drowned during one of the activities that formed part of the official reception programme. data analysis the data obtained were thematically analysed by making use of a critical discourse approach. ‘approach’ is chosen above ‘analysis’, following advice from keet (2012:9) who argues that the forms of discourse analysis and critical discourse analysis that became popularised by linguists were not really true to the concept as devised by foucault. in order to avoid criticism about the technical deviation from linguistic methodology or preference for larger scale evidence, i call the form of thematic analysis utilised in this article, a critical discourse approach. gee (2004:20) acknowledges that such forms of thematic analysis that are not rooted in a linguistic background, but that nevertheless utilise socio-political critique and theory, can still be recognised as critical discourse analysis. my use of ‘approach’ gives less of an expectation for deep rigour that might be expected by critical discourse analysis purists. recognising that these email conversations were language in interaction and therefore political (gee, 2004:34), i utilised the ‘critical’ part of the approach, which concerns itself with power relations (rogers, 2004:3). to do so, the responses were read and re-read to uncover the psychopolitical awareness that participants may hold of the relationships that are shaped by power in their workplace. following this exercise, the presence of different discourses was determined through the loads of socio-political, economic, racial and psychological content (rogers, 2004:6) present in the conversations. lastly, the data were read to determine whether the responses cut across all three structural domains: local, institutional and societal (rogers, 2004:7). findings in total, nine (28%) of the 32 black colleagues responded; two females and seven males. the ages of the participants ranged from 26 to 60 years. participants included seven lecturers and two administrators. some responded once, and others more than once. three colleagues responded to the initial invitation, five to the invitation with the afrikaans note as prompt, and five to the invitation with the emails regarding the tragic incident as prompt. the female colleague with whom i engaged in the email debate preceding the research did not submit any response. 6 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 psychopolitical awareness it was clear that all participants had an unequivocal understanding of the balance of power in that faculty as favouring white colleagues. responses such as the following were received: “there is too big a gap between my life-world and that of my white colleagues for them to really understand me”; “the white colleagues don’t have to say it; they send an aura that they regard you as inferior”; “the notice (requesting silence) smacks of subtle racism because cleaners who are lumped together with pets are black; i have never seen a single white cleaner on this campus”. two colleagues experienced the workplace as a place where, despite the general knowledge about the real power-bearers, “people wear masks” and as a “fantasy place where we have to be nice to one another”. discourses three strong discourses could be discerned from the responses: a discourse of fear; one of powerlessness, and another of bitterness. one discourse is read from the scarcity of responses: a discourse of nonengagement. in one school in the faculty there was a pervasive discourse of fear as evidenced by: “i suffer in silence as i need the job, even after i’ve been addressed like an animal”; “in the birthday gathering i would not feel free with white colleagues present as they will tell management about our behaviour and discussions”, and “it can probably be regarded as a weakness that i don’t express my opinion in this environment that still does not accept that change has occurred”. this discourse of fear follows from some colleagues’ perceptions of their employment vulnerability as contract workers (“i need the job”) and the sense of being numerically outnumbered as a black staff member: “it is sad to be reminded of your skin colour in such a negative way in a modern workplace”. the discourse of powerlessness manifests itself in the face of a powerful, transformation-resistant institution that can keep itself exactly as conservative as it wants to be, without interference from outside. evidencing quotations in this regard are: “white people who are originally from this city are arrogant compared to white people from outside”; “they allow people of colour in their territory for statistical purposes and to ease their conscience”, and “following the drowning of the student and the insistence that nothing is wrong with the reception practices, i still wonder if this reception programme really adds academic value”. there is also a discourse of explicit and implicit bitterness against the dominant white hegemony: “this notice is a reminder of the complete lack of appreciation for their (cleaning workers’) work and a belief that a black person will always break the rules of civility”; “where is ‘human dignity’ and all those beautiful words in our code of conduct?”; “remember that the white student (referred to in a derogatory afrikaans term, ‘boer’) died drunk; he is going to hell”, and “when a black person is dead, life goes on for white people” (these last two comments were made after it became known that a church service was organised by campus authority figures for a senior white student who died in a motorcycle accident on campus during the reception programme. this is in contrast to the absence of such a church service for the black first-year student). the discourse of non-engagement is read from the low number of responses and the fact that i had to use prompts to elicit responses. domains the local domain of discourse drew very few responses, as only one participant indicated that “raising difficult issues among colleagues in the academy is in the nature of personal engagement”; “having these conversations anchors the issues for our personal scrutiny”, and “i disagree with any idea that discards reading and theorising about issues of our immediate concern”. at the institutional level of discourse many examples were found: “i agree with ... [name of a colleague]; this notice is totally contradictory to our faculty’s code of conduct”; “this campus can do with what i remember from my previous employer where we had what we called ‘fierce conversations’ 7nel — conversations among black staff members at a historically white afrikaans university as standard institutional practice”, and “[regarding the drowning of the student] the institution lied to us and tried to make us believe every word they said”. from all the responses it was abundantly clear that colleagues contributed to an awareness of a larger societal domain of situatedness. evidencing quotations that can be offered are: “was it kept in mind by the organisers of the reception event (where the student drowned) that there are neighbourhoods without swimming pools?”; “after 18 years of democracy this campus finds itself in the same situation in which the dinosaurs found themselves”, and “we want to say we’re proudly south africans when we can’t properly address or respect one another”. discussion the conversations, as fairclough (2004:229) confirms, were understood as shaped by the social structure of the faculty within which they were produced. social practices such as the day-to-day intimations in the workplace and the formal exercise of duties also shaped these conversations. in line with the critical community psychology prediction, and as expected from educated people taking part in a discussion on such overtly political topics such as race, social justice and reconciliation, the presence of a psychopolitical awareness does not come as a surprise. the racialised nature of the work environment in this study also made the awareness of the unequal racial balance of power in favour of white colleagues inevitable, given the social and political weight that race still carries in south africa. this finding therefore broadens, rather than deepens, the research field on the nature of racial power relations in south african higher education. it demonstrates that black staff members in the micro-context of this campus, at least, hold distinctly historical notions of racial power relations because the distribution of power in this institution still mirrors the apartheid-era racial configuration. although the female colleague, whose email debate with me formed the rationale behind the research, did not participate in the research, her stance regarding racial relations indicates that the black staff members are not a homogenous group, as far as racial sensibilities and argumentation are concerned. her stance illustrates the critical community psychology assertion that a community is complex even as the research participants displayed near-uniform psychopolitical awareness about their perception of the lay of the land in their faculty. the discourses of fear, powerlessness, bitterness and non-engagement present a theoretical challenge because all of them coalesce around negativity, leaving little space for progress. nothing was even mentioned about reconciliation as a concept or a strategy. hook (2004:692) offers a way out by his elegant treatment of abjection (kristeva, 1982:1) in the analysis of racism. he (hook, 2004:693) acknowledges the intensity of emotions associated with racism. using this understanding, one can then interrogate the wisdom of conventionally steering away from allowing emotion-laden discussions on topics in the workplace where racism might become a focal point. the reasoning followed by hook (2004:692) indicates that by not steering the data collection more strongly into the terrain of the affective and subjective, i may have missed a stronger attachment to progress than these negative discourses. nevertheless, human beings have agency in the discourses of which they are a part (fairclough, 2004:229). at least these discourses, present among black staff in this faculty, can be read with keet’s (2012:20) understanding of critique as a growth point for invigoration. the discourses of fear, powerlessness and bitterness are self-explanatory when read against the assertion by thaver (2003:144) of the south african higher education sector being anchored by the experiences and knowledge of white people, in the main. the discourse of non-engagement needs a short explication. writing about strife and pain can be therapeutic (roodt, 2007:144-145), as it allows more space for reflexivity than active, bodily interaction with others. non-participation in the email conversations could then be read in different ways, one of which being the inability to reflect on one’s social world through the medium of email writing. regarding this inference of inability, van der merwe’s (2007:19) argument that a strong leaning in favour of vocationalism among some in higher education can be responsible for a disinterested engagement with topics of the nature discussed in this research, is instructive. marais and de wet (2009:39) contribute to this argument of inability when they, in the aftermath of the infamous reitz video at the university of the 8 perspectives in education, volume 30(3), september 2012 free state, concluded that the intellectual elite displayed many symptoms of being ignorant about issues which fall outside their area of expertise. this non-participation can also be read as resistance against the topics or against my stance which was widely visible in the pre-research debate. reading resistance into the discourse of non-engagement is not too implausible when interpreted through the lens provided by solorzano and delgado bernal (2001:316319). these authors pose a continuum of four different forms of resistance: reactionary behaviour; selfdefeating resistance; conformist resistance, and transformative resistance. the continuum is based on the extent of the critique against oppression, and a concern for social justice. reactionary behaviour is regarded as devoid of critique against oppression and lacking a concern for social justice. self-defeating resistance contains some critique of oppressive conditions but the behaviour is not transformative; in fact, it perpetuates stereotypes. conformist resistance is undergirded by social justice concerns but contains very little critique of oppressive systems, nor does it really aim to change such systems. conformist resistance is rather prone to blaming the self and the own culture for adverse social conditions. at the progressive end of the continuum transformative resistance contains significant critique of oppression and has a strong concern for social justice. drawing on my knowledge as an intimate participant-observer, i interpret the resistance that i read into the participants’ discourse of non-engagement as mostly not reaching the transformative part of the continuum of resistance, thus appearing to fluctuate between reactionary behaviour, self-defeating resistance and conformist resistance. the finding that the discourses featured more prominently in the institutional and societal domains of functioning was also not surprising, since the topics are widely discussed in the world outside the institution and in institutional documents, at least. the prompts that i used were strongly institutional in nature and thus could lead participants to locate the discourse in this domain. it was surprising to find that the local domain was not much dwelled on, given that the research was located in the local domain of personal, collegial and friendship relations. this finding can probably be explained in much the same way as the discourse of disengagement. the shortage of written responses that could be located in the local domain can be interpreted as unwillingness or even as an inability to speak from the inner, intimate circle and the self, about the issues discussed in the social conversation. in addition, i interpret the scarcity of the local domain location in the discourses as situated on the lower levels of resistance (solorzano & delgado bernal, 2001:316), because of the lack of close reflexivity displayed by keeping the conversations at a more distant level than on the personal. limitations the limitations of this study are acknowledged, the chief being the low number of participants and the restriction of the conversations to those of black staff only. the low number could have had an effect of homogenising the responses. conversations among white staff at the same institution on the same topics would also produce interesting discourses, confirming or dispelling expectations. obtaining such conversations is a challenge posed to trusted white participant-observers. conclusion this small-scale ethnography indicates that black staff members at a historically afrikaans university campus have a psychopolitical awareness relating to issues of race, social justice and reconciliation when they engage in social conversation. this shows that the staff members who participated are not unthinking, ignorant people who take their psychopolitical environment for granted. in addition, discourses of fear, powerlessness and bitterness were discerned from the responses; one could reasonably expect this from a group of black people as a minority in a majority white space. these discourses should sound alarm bells about the kind of psychosocial experiences and environmental climates that can give rise to the construction of fear, powerlessness and bitterness. the discourse of non-engagement can be interpreted as an expression of agency by those who made conscious choices not to participate, when perceived from a positive angle. however, this discourse can 9nel — conversations among black staff members at a historically white afrikaans university also be interpreted as a worrying expression of acquiescence which reveals an inability to ignite the own agency. given the general visibility of debates on the issues of race, social justice and reconciliation in the institutional and public domains, these discourses were also mainly anchored in those domains. a concerning finding was made about the lack of placement of the discourses in the domain of the local – the personal and immediate relational. this finding can also be read as an expression of disengagement of the personal with the political, contrary to what critical community psychology would expect from people in a position of numerical minority status or even oppression (prilleltensky, 2001:766). in closing, i make suggestions which can be considered in an effort to thwart the generally negative discourse because “anger and bitterness cannot be a life a person chooses” (ratele, 2011:255). i restrict my suggestions to the level of the intrapsychic. vice (2010:334), in reflecting on the position of white people in south africa, suggests an active silence of reflexivity which ponders the moral complexities in racial situations in order to minimise the potential for mistakes in this area. this position is not without its critics. for example, keet (2011:36) is not convinced about the wisdom of this type of silence as a strategy for white people, because it is so difficult to distinguish from other forms of silence such as resistant silence or patronising tut-tutting. such critique notwithstanding, i nevertheless suggest, in an inversion of vice’s (2010:334) logic, that black staff members, who do not want to engage in overt acts of disruption, can use strategic silence to make “strange what was previously normal” (vice, 2010:337). for instance, by stopping mid-sentence when a white discussant diverts her attention to attend to the lone white person entering the room, the shameinduced self-vigilance and thinking-twice that vice (2010:334) advocates for white people, of the ilk as perceived by the black colleagues in my research, may perhaps take root and lead to greater reflexivity on the part of white staff. kristeva (1982:4) holds that “abjection disturbs identity system order”. when applied to this research, i suggest that black staff closely scrutinise what is so disturbing at an intimate personal or psychic level (hook, 2004:693), that keeps some from even participating in collegial social conversations about issues of race, social justice and reconciliation. doing so would bring the uncomfortable truths home, productively directing the focus away from only the distant social aspects of racial injustice. by applying self-critique and social critique, based on the disturbance of the normal channels of identity formation, black staff members open themselves up for growth opportunities in relation to issues of race, social justice and reconciliation. for black staff members to become the organic intellectuals who aim to be respected scholars, as argued by mahlomaholo and netshandama (2012:37), they can rather engage in transformative resistance. this form of resistance expects, at once, covert and overt behaviour which provides productive critique of oppressive conditions as the person him-/herself engages in socially just actions (solorzano & delgado bernal, 2001:324). such a form of resistance may even require the adoption of permeable identities in the vein of the “specular border intellectual” (janmohamed, 1992:114; janmohamed, 1993:113). this person activates her/his own agency to subvert essentialising positions through deliberate border-crossing into unknown psychopolitical territory (janmohammed, 1992:118). reasoned argumentation and honest deliberation on issues of race, social justice and reconciliation contribute to the ideals of democratic and compassionate citizenship (november, alexander & van wyk, 2010:788; waghid, 2004:47). by engaging in such deliberation black staff members may be able to create alternative discourses among themselves, their white colleagues and ultimately their students. references artiles aj., harris-murri n & rostenberg d 2006. inclusion as social justice: critical notes on discourses, assumptions, and the road ahead. theory into practice, 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initiated learning and training programmes which resulted in the establishment of a combined school, namely st albert street refugee school, an adult education programme, a pre-school, an infant day care, an adult basic education training (abet) and vocational training centres for sewing, basic computer studies and waitering courses. the research presented here was conducted over a period of five months. it used an ethnographic approach and employed three primary strategies for gathering data: non-participant observation, interviewing and document collection. using the theoretical framework of the community based approach (cba) to refugee education development, the article explains how the weekly refugee and school council meetings served as forums for initiating education and training programmes and for important decisions that influenced the refugees’ education and training policies and curriculum guidelines. the refugee school’s adoption of a modified cambridge curriculum resulted in ‘renewed education for repatriation’, whilst the vocational skills centres orientated themselves towards the ‘adjusted education for integration’, which prepares adult refugees to integrate into the host country’s economic communities. keywords: refugee-emergency education, community based approach (cba), central methodist church (cmc) . introduction it is estimated that about 3 million zimbabweans have migrated to south africa, mainly because of their country’s economic crisis which started in the late 1990s (lubbe, 2008). by november 2008; zimbabwe’s annual inflation rate was 89.7 sextillion (hanke, 2009). political violence, economic collapse and mismanagement and the violation of property rights led many zimbabweans to flee their country into neighbouring south africa. some zimbabwean economic migrants and political refugees have been given refuge and provided with shelter at the central methodist church (cmc) in the central business district of johannesburg. built in 1965, the five-storey cmc today serves a humanitarian function by sheltering zimbabwean (adult and child) refugees, a small number of migrants from other african countries and a few south africans. between 2004 and 2005 zimbabweans desperate for accommodation, basic provisions and financial assistance began to seek help at the church from the generous bishop paul verryn. most of them had no alternative accommodation and were sleeping in the open at park station. the cmc housed these immigrants, beginning with fewer than 10 in 2004, 50 at the beginning of 2005 and over 300 by the end of that year (climb, pers. comm.). between 2006 and 2007 there was a marked increase in the number of people seeking shelter at the cmc refugee centre. by the end of 2007 more than 1 500 refugees were staying at the refugee house, sleeping on the bare floors, corridors, steps and different halls in the five-storey building (parra, 2009). at the peak of the zimbabwe crisis between 2008 and the first quarter of 2009 the church housed about 4 000 political refugees, asylum seekers and economic migrants, with some refugees sleeping on the pavements and streets outside the building (seale, 2009). the accelerated rise in the number of refugees at the church house is attributable to a wave of violence experienced by foreigners in south african townships during the may 2008 xenophobic attacks (waghid, 2009). this ugly form of ‘cosmopolitan justice’ affected 43pausigere — education and training initiatives foreigners living in some johannesburg townships and in the inner city (waghid, 2009, 88; kruger & osman, 2010). during and after the xenophobic attacks many affected foreigners sought refuge and shelter at the cmc (zhou, pers. comm.). it is within this context that the need for education and training was felt. thus the refugee community has established a combined school – st albert street refugee school – and, early childhood, adult education and vocational training centres that offer courses in sewing, basic computer studies and waitering. this paper investigates the education and training developments at the cmc refugee centre. refugee education is an emerging field of study that is under-researched in south africa, though cognate articles dealing with immigrant learners’ experiences in public schools have appeared in this journal (sookrajh, gopal & maharaj, 2005; kruger & osman, 2010). the present article focuses rather on educational initiatives by a homogenous refugee group in a challenging context. it raises issues of importance in the field of adult education and innovatively attends to questions of education and training in disadvantaged communities. the article also empirically reports on two variations on the existing forms of refugee education, namely ‘renewed education for repatriation’ and ‘adjusted education for integration’. research methodology this article comes out of my masters’ research report¹ submitted to the wits school of education. in carrying out my research i used the ethnographic approach or more precisely what merriam, (2001, 14) calls ‘educational ethnography’ – to elicit information about the development of a refugee centre in an urban environment and how the zimbabwean refugee community initiated and provided education and training programmes in such a context. ethnography is a qualitative research approach used to study a group’s social and cultural system (mcmillan & schumacher, 2001; merriam, 2001). both writers concur that the term ‘culture’ refers to beliefs, values, attitudes and life patterns of a specific group of people. i have borrowed the ethnographic methodology from cultural anthropology and applied it to this emergency education study. in this research therefore the educational ethnography approach interprets and describes the education and training initiatives of the zimbabwean refugee community taking into account their social and cultural setting. i employed three strategies for gathering data – non-participant observation, interviewing and document collection, over a period of five months, from mid-june to mid-november 2009. it is typical of the ethnographic approach to use a variety of data collection techniques with the primary strategies for gathering data being observations, interviews and document collection (mcmillan & schumacher, 2001; merriam, 2001). i attended and observed 20 weekly refugees meetings, five school council meetings and teaching and learning interactions in grade 1 and form 3b classes for one week. i also spent two hours a day for seven continuous days observing the vocational training and early childhood centres. during this nonparticipant observation, field notes were compiled. i obtained the minutes of refugee, school council, and school staff meetings and school principal reports. i used two sets of standardised open-ended interview schedules to elicit information from key, knowledgeable members of the refugee community. in compiling this paper i used information from interviews conducted with the church bishop (paul verryn), one senior elder member (climbs), the principal of st albert street refugee school (zhou) and heads of the following training centres: abet (leon), computer centre (william), sewing project (vhiriri) and the day care centre (rute). during the interview sessions i took notes. i have used fictitious names for the refugee informants in this study, however i have disclosed widely known and commonly used names like the cmc, st albert street refugee school and that of bishop paul verryn. as my research dealt with refugees who are considered vulnerable, for the original masters research study, i sought ethical clearance from the wits school of education. this was granted and a copy of the letter of permission is appended to this paper. before entry into the research site i was given permission to carry out my research by the church bishop and also by the head of the refugee school. prior to interviewing or observing participants i secured their ‘informed consent’ having explained to them the purpose of my study and how the findings would be disseminated. 44 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 a detailed data analysis and most of the ethnographically rich data are contained in the masters research report¹; however in writing this article i explored and made sense of raw data and information using an ethnographic deductive data analysis strategy (mcmillan & schumacher, 2001; merriam, 2001). under this ethnography data analysis mode i made use of pre-existing or predetermined category schemes to organise and analyse data (mcmillan & schumacher, 2001; merriam, 2001).thus in analysing and selecting data for this paper i was guided by the key research question, the theoretical framework and existing literature on forms of emergency education. on the basis of the study’s main research question (which focused on investigating education and training initiatives at the refugee centre), and in the next section in this article, i give a chronological account of how the refugees at the cmc started their educational and training programmes. the theoretical framework (cba) provided me with templates for data on the main forums used by the refugee community (refugee and school council meetings) to initiate and deliberate education and training programmes and issues. towards the end of this paper, literature on the forms of refugee education illuminates my empirical findings regarding new variations on the categories of emergency education. as a zimbabwean doing research on my fellow countrymen, i may have been susceptible to bias although i attempted as much as possible to be objective in the collection of data and reporting of my findings. i also had the advantage of speaking the same language as most of the refugee participants (shona), and in some of the interviews the refugees would respond in our indigenous language. adult education and training centres at cmc refugee house vocational training provides trade and craft skills that lead to gainful employment, self-employment or livehood supplementation, both in refugee situations and after repatriation (dickerson, 1974). according to the unhcr (1995), vocational courses must relate to labour market conditions, match the needs of the host as well as the country of origin and wherever possible such skills training initiatives should also enrol local students. the vocational training courses offered at the cmc centre appear to meet all these requirements, having trained many refugees as well as local citizens to secure jobs in south africa. also important in emergency settlement is adult education which teaches literacy and numeracy amongst adults and children who would have not attended formal schools (betheke, 1996). the cmc has two such centres. abet centre the abet centre is perched on the fourth floor of the building and has been one of the most successful adult education programmes initiated by the refugees. one of its students went on to enrol for full-time undergraduate degree studies. the programme was started in the last quarter of 2006 by four zimbabwean adult refugees in collaboration with a south african educator. the initiators found that there was need to provide literacy and numeracy skills to some of the illiterate members of the refugee community. in the past few years, tuition has been provided for zambians, congolese, mozambicans and the south africans as well as zimbabweans. the centre has enjoyed financial support from lonehill methodist church and media works, who have provided study materials, learners’ workbooks and computers, and trained the facilitators (leon, pers. comm.). but the key donors have withdrawn their funding and the programme faces imminent closure. the centre is currently being used as a sleeping area by school-going learners. one of the former facilitators of the programme is alleged to have stolen four computers and fled with them to zimbabwe. most of the remaining computers and furniture at this centre have been vandalised. computer centre a total of 778 people from the refugee community and all the learners from grade 3 to form 5 at st albert street refugee school have become computer literate. on the 5th of august 2007, and with no computer, the founder of this centre started computer theory lessons in the ‘chapel’ with 10 students. the centre received a donation of five computers from the anglo american company in october 2007 and moved 45pausigere — education and training initiatives into the spacious ‘boardroom’, on the second floor. today the centre boasts 20 computers donated by various ngos. the computer centre offers basic short computer courses with trainees being issued with certificates from gifford college, and has managed to maintain a 100% pass rate throughout. the majority of the trainees have been zimbabweans though mozambicans, congolese, burundians, malawians, cameroonians, swazis and south africans have also been trained (william, pers. comm.). sewing project mr vhiriri trained as a high school teacher specialising in cutting and design in zimbabwe. in consultation with the bishop, he decided to start the garment making training centre with an initial enrolment of 21 refugees. the students are trained in the various aspects of garment making over a period of 3 months. in partnership with loveck college, the trainees are offered a certificate in cutting and designing. although the centre has three industrial sewing machines, like the other refugee-initiated training programmes at the cmc, it lacks adequate space as well as sufficient money to buy fabric and other clothing accessories. nevertheless, the project has trained 66 refugees; a third of these have been employed at mama africa clothing and singer clothing factory, while some are working in local small sewing business ventures. hotel and catering training centre the hotel and catering training centre was started at the same time as the sewing project when the community recognised the need for skills so as to get employed in the host country. it was mr zhou, the current head of st albert street refugee school, who announced in the refugee meetings that they needed to train refugees in hotel and catering. the hotel and catering training centre trains members of the community to be waiters, waitresses and barmen for eight weeks, with half of that time being spent on practicals in hotels and fast food outlets in johannesburg. to date, the programme has trained over 400 people, with most of the trainees being highly sought after at places like chicken inn, nandos, spurs, kentucky fried chicken, indaba, emperors palace and beachwood hotel. the trainees who complete their courses are examined and given certificates by gifford college. st albert street refugee school the st albert street refugee school is about a kilometre away from cmc refugee centre and was opened on the 7th of july 2008 by four volunteer refugee teachers. by the end of the first week the refugee school had enrolled 35 students. the volunteer teachers decided to start the school after they found out that there was an increase in the number of loitering refugee children at the cmc centre who were not attending school (zhou, pers. comm.). when i left the research site on 15 november 2009, the school had a total of 21 teachers and – 534 learners, of whom 421 were, ‘accompanied students’ and 113 ‘unaccompanied students’ (see table 1). the term ‘unaccompanied students’ denotes learners living at the cmc refugee house who came from their country of origin without parents or guardians, most of them zimbabwean. the term ‘accompanied students’ means learners who came from their countries with parents or guardians and who, do not stay at the refugee house. the same term is also applied by the school authorities to the few south africans learners who attend the refugee school (zhou, pers. comm.). table 1: student enrolment, categories and teaching staff establishment at st albert street refugee school date school total enrolment accompanied students unaccompanied students teaching staff 14 july 2008 35 8 27 4 12 september 2008 140 57 83 9 21 october 2008 180 84 96 11 7 december 2008 220 120 100 11 46 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 date school total enrolment accompanied students unaccompanied students teaching staff 5 january 2009 561 487 74 21 20 february 2009 456 341 115 21 13 july 2009 523 399 124 18 11 september 2009 531 394 137 18 14 october 2009 528 394 134 22 15 november 2009 534 421 113 21 the st albert school curriculum the combined school provides tuition from grade 0 (r) to form 5. in addition it also feeds the unaccompanied children, provides counselling and sporting activities, and the teaching staff act in locoparentis. the school follows the cambridge curriculum, which also externally examines the learners. this decision was reached by the refugee community when the school was started. the cambridge curriculum followed by the refugee school is used in most private schools and colleges in zimbabwe. the zimbabwean government had localised school examinations in 1995, through the zimbabwe school examination council. the cambridge curriculum was identified by the refugees as internationally recognised (school council meeting, 13 april 2009), and the learners could use their school leaving certificates on return to zimbabwe. the decision to follow this british-based curriculum was necessitated by the fact that the refugee learners could not register for the south african matric as they did not have identity documents. the local cambridge examination centre run by the british council did not require the refugee examwriting candidates to have identification cards, birth certificates, asylum seeker or refugee status papers. it is on these grounds that the refugees collectively decided to adopt their former country’s curriculum and examining body. the refugee school’s cambridge curriculum was slightly modified to incorporate life orientation (l-o), computers studies, music and drama, arts and physical education, which are done by learners from grade 3 to form 4 (see table 2). these subjects are not externally examinable except for computer studies, in which learners are issued with a certificate endorsed by gifford college. l-o was adopted from the south african’s revised national curriculum statements (rncs) and the teachers used south african textbooks in facilitating this learning area. table 2: the refugee school curriculum. subjects school levels primary school secondary school grade 1-3 grade 4-7 form 1-2 form 3-4 form 5 english language √ √ √ √ maths √ √ √ √ √ science √ √ √ life orientation √ √ √ √ computers √ √ √ art √ * √ music & drama √ * √ physical education √ * √ √ √ geography √ √ √ 47pausigere — education and training initiatives subjects school levels primary school secondary school grade 1-3 grade 4-7 form 1-2 form 3-4 form 5 history √ √ √ english literature √ √ b k/divinity √ √ accounts √ √ business management √ * subject(s) only done from grade 3 adult education the adult education programme was started immediately after the main refugee school had been opened. this programme, which strictly follows the cambridge curriculum, is an after-work free programme that accommodates adult refugees and working immigrants. the adult education school uses the same premises as the st albert street refugee school and the lessons start at 5:00pm and finish at 7:00pm. by mid november 2009, the adult education programme had an enrolment of 20 adults, with 18 students doing ‘ordinary’ level and two students ‘advanced’ level studies. in south africa the ‘advanced’ level is at least the equivalent of matric and is accepted as a university entry qualification. the four volunteer teachers of this adult programme are untrained ‘advanced’ level certificate holders from the refugee community. early childhood development centres there are some people, according to sinclair (2001), who think that pre-schools or kindergarten activities are a luxury. this view is not shared at the cmc, where refugees’ children have access to two early childhood development centres. early childhood learning is an important aspect of the refugee curriculum which assists child development and prepares the child for school learning (bird, 2003; pigozzi, 1999). flock pre-school prepares south african and refugee children for primary school, whilst the refugeeinitiated day care centre is a babysitting establishment serving resident refugee mothers when they go off to look for work or to work (mostly as shop assistants, housemaids or security guards). flock pre-school flock pre-school was established in 1989 by the south african central methodist inner-city church congregants. this inner-city, all races pre-school is situated in the basement of the church building. it has an enrolment of 35 children between the ages of 2 and 5. a third of the children’s parents are either refugees or economic migrants from zimbabwe. the centre is managed by south africans and has a well-run learning programme and a kitchen that serves nutritious meals to the learners. the pre-scholars’ parents pay r200.00 every month, a sum that is beyond the reach of some zimbabwean refugees. day care centre the cmc day care centre was opened on 17 july 2007 and is currently run by three female volunteer child carers. more than 20 children are left by there by their mothers every morning and collected at the end of the day. the idea of the day care centre came from a refugee, mr zhou, who consulted with working mothers in the community and after holding discussions at the refugee meetings decided to start the programme. the centre gets financial support and donations from the bishop and other charitable individuals (rute, pers. comm.), but is sometimes short of food for the children, while some refugee 48 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 mothers cannot afford the r150.00 a month fee payment. finally at 20 square metres the day care centre’s room is too small for the children whose number rises at times to as high as 30. theoretical framework: the cba i investigated the education and training initiatives in this urban refugee centre as framed by the central features of the “community based approach” to education development (bird, 2003, 67). under this model, refugees or refugee education committees initiate, collectively decide, cooperatively plan and manage education and training activities in the emergency settlement population (bird, 2003; unhcr, 1995). the cba to refugee education development was formally recognised by the unhcr in mid1996 after it had been successfully undertaken by rwandan refugees at ngara refugee camp in tanzania (bird, 2003). other successful community based rapid responses to education were recorded at mayukwayukwa refugee camp, in zambia between 1999 and 2000 within congolese and angolan refugees, amongst bhutanese refugees in nepal, in the late-1990s (sinclair, 2001; williams, 2001). the cba to refugee education provides the study with a theoretical lens and a language to describe the cmc’s refugee community’s training and educational initiatives just as was the case amongst the above cited refugee education examples which were initiated and continued to be run predominantly by the refugees themselves. the cba to education development has revolutionised emergency education. this model ensures and promotes continuity, sustainability, effectiveness and is cost-effective (betheke, 1996). according to sinclair (2001), the other advantage of the cba is that it gives the refugees control over one important element of their social function education. if refugee communities participate in their education programmes this will promote self-reliance and reduce dependency on external support (bird, 2003). self-initiated refugee education approaches stand a high chance of being successful and help to improve the refugee capacity to meet their own needs and solve their own problems (mwaba, 2007). the fact that the community collectively decides what to learn promotes dialogue within the community, a basic ingredient of democracy and empowerment. it is because of these advantages that the cba to education is currently the preferred approach to refugee education development. at the cmc refugee centre the two major committees or forums for initiating learning and training programmes, and developing education policies and curriculum guidelines, have been the refugee meetings and the school council meetings. it was through the refugee and school council meetings that decisions on educational matters were made, as different choices were considered and evaluated before, consensus solutions were reached. refugee meetings the first refugee meeting was held in 2005 and led to the election of the first refugee committee. refugee meetings are held in the church’s ‘main sanctuary’ every friday from 7pm and last for 2 to 3 hours. the meetings are chaired by bishop paul verryn with the refugees’ secretary recording the minutes. all members are free to make contributions and air their views during the communal deliberations. attendance at the refugee meetings is compulsory for refugees (refugee meeting minutes, 23 october 2009). the ‘main sanctuary’ is filled to capacity during these refugee meetings. the first important education-related decision made by the refugee committee during a refugee meeting was to endorse that the abet centre be established. the collective decision to establish the day care centre was grounded on the premise that resident refugee women needed to leave their children somewhere as they go for work or to look out for employment. between august and september 2007 the refugee community reached major decisions regarding vocational training. the need for computer, tailoring and hotel and catering courses was recognised by the refugees in collaboration with the bishop. the main reason for starting these training projects was the immediate and crucial need to provide skills to the refugee community which would make it easier for them to find employment. it was also agreed in several refugee meetings that trainees be issued with certificates from south african private colleges. 49pausigere — education and training initiatives another unanimous educational decision taken by the refugees that affected the content of what was taught in the school, as well as the teaching and learning styles, was the adoption of the cambridge curriculum. it was felt that the cambridge curriculum should be followed by the st albert street school and the adult education programme as it was both acceptable in zimbabwe and internationally recognised. the south african’s rncs was regarded as inferior by the refugees and rejected (refugee meeting minutes, 24 july 2009). the school council the st albert street school council comprises – the refugee school principal, three senior teachers, bishop paul verryn, church leaders, and student and parent representatives. other members of the refugee community are free to join and participate in the school council’s educational deliberations. the idea of a school council was mooted three months after the school had been opened and school council meetings are held once or twice a month. the school council has made a number of important decisions on curriculum, teaching and learning and school governing principles. for example, at the school council meeting of 21 october 2009 it was decided to adopt english as the medium of instruction. the phrase ‘integration centre’ was crafted in school council meetings. it meant that the school was seen as catering for “displaced children, less privileged, and traumatised children from low income families” and from different countries (zhou. pers. comm.). its enrolment policy is inclusive, embracing zimbabwean refugees and immigrants from other african countries as well as south africans. school council meetings have also functioned as plenary sessions for making important teaching and learning decisions, for example in a feedback report of the school council deliberations; the school principal urged educators to enhance teacher-pupil interaction in the classroom (school meeting minutes, 25 july 2009). the supreme school body also decides on extra-curricular issues. through decisions of the school council, the sports day was changed from friday afternoon to thursday afternoon in a move aimed to accommodate accompanied learners (school council meeting minutes, 29 august 2009). the school council meeting also agreed that entertainment such as movies, music, drama, dancing and indoor games be provided (school council meeting minutes, 8 december 2008). it is the school council that also made the resolution that fees be pegged at r125.00 per month for accompanied learners (school council meeting, 21 october 2009). the issue of student discipline cropped up in school council deliberations, and it was agreed that delinquent children were to be sent to reformatories (school council meeting minutes, 5 january 2009). at times the school council meeting dealt with challenges facing the refugee learners: for instance, council resolved that learners would be made to wear their school uniform at all times so as to elude police arrests (school council meeting minutes, 07 december 2009). to deal with the problem of the acute shortage of learning space, the school council first made the decision to relocate the classes for grades 3 to 7 to the cmc building (school council meeting minutes, 12 february 2009). when a similar problem surfaced in secondary school classes the council agreed on partitioning the form 2 and form 3 classrooms. in the same meeting the principal told school council members that learners would write tests and classes would be screened according to the results thus the form 2 and form 3 classes were divided into a and b cohorts, with each group of learners being assigned a partitioned classroom. the decision to adopt the cambridge curriculum must be credited to a series of both refugee and school council meetings. it was in a school council meeting of 13 april 2009 that it was suggested that the cambridge curriculum be adopted. the school council generally reached conclusions pertaining to core education matters, in the process developing and shaping their own curriculum. the forms and types of refugee education at cmc refugee centre there have been traditionally three forms of emergency or refugee education: ‘education for repatriation, education for integration and mixed curriculum’. education for repatriation is consistent with core elements 50 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 of the curriculum of the country of origin and prepares children for return to their home country (preston, 1991). learning the curriculum of the country of origin has a positive psychosocial impact as it “lessen the shock of exile to the children”, utilises refugee teachers, allows refugee communities to contribute towards their schools and enables refugees to continue their studies on return to their home country (unhcr, 1995, 19). an example of the concept of ‘education for repatriation’ recorded by preston (1991) is that of mozambican refugees in malawi and zimbabwe in the mid-1990s, who followed the mozambican curriculum, using portuguese as the medium of instruction. education for integration utilises the core elements of the host country’s curriculum and prepares learners to integrate (sinclair, 2001). education for integration allows refugees to easily integrate into the local and economic communities (preston, 1991). a classical example of education for integration is recorded by bird (2003) at ngara refugee camp amongst the burundians. the cmc’s abet programme and its curriculum is a typical example of ‘education for integration’. the key elements informing the abet learning programme are outcomes-based education, integration and learner-centredness, and these are core design features of the south african rncs. in-between education for integration and education for repatriation lies what has been called a “mixed curriculum” (unhcr, 1995, 10) that “faces both ways” (sinclair, 2001, 26) and “incorporates core elements of the curricula of the country of origin and country of asylum” (betheke, 1996, 11). this concept prepares refugees for both eventual return and settlement, and provides linguistic skills for children whose families can repatriate or integrate (sinclair, 2001; williams, 2001). such a mixed curriculum system was evident amongst bhutanese refugees in nepal (williams, 2001). following an extensive review of the literature on forms of refugee education and my own research empirical findings and subsequent critical reflection, i have identified two variations on existing forms of emergency education which i have called ‘renewed education for repatriation’ and ‘adjusted education for integration’. the terms ‘renewed’ and ‘adjusted’ can be used interchangeably. these varieties of refugee education involve slight or moderate changes to the curriculum. if the changes are extensive the result is better described as a mixed curriculum. the three main forms and variations on the existing forms of refugee education can occur sequentially, as presented in figure 1, or they can occur in any order. the continuum serves to show how forms and variations of refugee education can evolve or change: in some cases, from one form or variation into the next form or variation on the continuum, while in other situations the change can occur in any order. this model is informed by key international and influential bodies and authorities in emergency education such as the unhcr (1995), sinclair (2001), william (2001) and betheke (1996). the refugee school curriculum has been slightly adjusted resulting in what i have called ‘renewed education for repatriation’. most of the core elements of this hybrid school curriculum are from the country of origin, with some modification and incorporation informed by the host country’s curriculum. thus the st albert street refugee school curriculum had been modified through the incorporation of nonexaminable subjects of l-o, computer courses, art, music and drama and physical education. l-o is a learning area in the south african rncs that would assist the refugee learners to acquire life survival skills and to know about south africa’s career and study opportunities, its religious and cultural life. the ‘renewed education for repatriation’ is a convenient variant of curriculum adjustment in emergency education practices. the ‘adjusted education for integration’ hybrid type of refugee education was evident in the refugees’ vocational training programmes, which had adopted the host country’s training curriculum and its certification modalities. this was done in cooperation with local private colleges. most of the key elements informing this hybrid curriculum emanates from the host country’s curriculum. however the refugees’ teaching and learning or training approach within the vocational training centres was teachercentred or resembled the social efficiency orientation. the ‘adjusted education for integration’ training initiative allowed the refugees to be assimilated more easily into the economic communities of the receiving country. 51pausigere — education and training initiatives figure 1: the forms and variations of refugee education (curriculum) ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ education for renewed mixed curriculum adjusted education education for repatriation education for for for repatriation integration integration conclusion about 3 million zimbabweans have migrated to south africa because of their country’s deteriorating economic and political situation. some zimbabwean economic migrants and political refugees sheltered at the cmc refugee house have initiated successful education and training programmes. using the theoretical framework of the cba to emergency education i have described how the weekly refugee and school council meetings have provided decision-making forums whose deliberations led to the development of the st albert street refugee school, and the early childhood, adult education and vocational training centres. the success story of the cmc’s education and training initiatives follows in the footsteps of other renowned refugee-centred community responses to learning and training. the article has identified the emergence of certain ‘hybrid’ or variations on the traditional main types of refugee education. the paper identified the cmc’s vocational training centres as having adopted the ‘adjusted education for integration’ which prepare adult refugees to integrate into south africa’s economic communities, whilst the refugee school’s adoption of a modified cambridge curriculum has resulted in ‘renewed education for repatriation’. these are convenient forms of education and training curriculum modification within the emergency education context. endnotes * peter pausigere is a former zimbabwean high school teacher who completed his masters of education, specialising in curriculum studies at the wits school of education. his interests are in teaching and learning, refugee education and teacher education. he is currently pursuing his phd studies in numeracy teacher education at rhodes university under the supervision of professor mellony graven, however the broader study from which this article arises was written under the guidance of dr devika naidoo, a senior lecturer at the wits school of education, whose efforts are highly appreciated. 1. pausigere p 2010. curriculum development in an urban refugee centre in south africa. med dissertation. johannesburg: university of the witwatersrand. references betheke l 1996. education and training in emergency settlement situations. paper presented at the international emergency settlement situations conference, the university of wisconsin, madison, usa. bird l 2003. surviving school education for refugee children from rwanda 1994-1996. retrieved on 24 april 2009 from http://www. unesco.org/iiep/pdf/pubs/rwanda_ss, pdf. dickerson g 1974. education for the palestine refugee. journal of palestine studies, 3 (3): 122-130. hanke s h 2009. r i p zimbabwe dollar. retrieved on 21 march 2009 from http://www.cato.org/ zimbabwe . kruger d & osman r 2010. the phenomenon of xenophobia as experienced by immigrant learners in johannesburg inner city schools. perspectives in education, 28 (4): 52-60. lubbe g 2008. victims of xenophobia: african immigrants in south africa. retrieved on 29 october 2009 from http:// www.desmondtutudiversitytrust.org.za. mcmillian j m & schumacher s 2001. research in education. new york: longman. merriam s b 2001. qualitative research and case study applications in education. san francisco: jossey-bass publishers. 52 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 mwaba j 2007. education for refugees in meheba refugee camp settlement in zambia. unpublished masters’ research. pretoria: tshwane university of technology. parra v 2008. refugees international condemns police raid in johannesburg. retrieved on 26 april 2009 from http://www-refugeesinternational.org. pigozzi mj 1999. education in emergencies and for reconstruction: a developmental approach. working paper series. new york. unicef. preston r 1991. the provision of education to refugees in places of temporary asylum: some implications for development. comparative education, 27 (1): 61-81. seale l 2009. refugee mayhem in johannesburg cbd hits business severely. the star, march 10, 6. sinclair m 2001. education in emergencies. in j crisp, t talbot & b c diana (eds). learning for a future: refugee education in developing countries. geneva: unhcr. sookrajh r, gopal n & maharaj b 2005. interrogating inclusionary and exclusionary practices: learners of war and fight. perspectives in education, 23 (1):1-13. unhcr 1995. revised (1995) guidelines for educational assistance to refugees. retrieved on 23 september 2009 from http://www.unhcr.org. waghid y 2009. education for responsible citizenship. perspectives in education, 27 (1): 85-90. williams j h (2001). on school quality and attainment. in j crisp, t talbot & b c diana (eds). learning for a future: refugee education in developing countries. geneva: unhcr. 53pausigere — education and training initiatives appendix a: ethical clearance letter 66 comparison of urban and rural dropout rates of distance students kl de hart university of south africa jmp venter university of south africa south africa has one of the highest university dropout rates in the world. as a country, it also has a history of forced location and the withholding of resources, including quality education, from certain rural areas. this study investigates, the effect of urbanisation (of the area in which a student resides) on the dropout rate of distance students in an introductory taxation course. using kember’s longitudinal-process model of dropout from distance education as a point of departure and interrogating the “characteristics” of students, it was found that the effect of urbanisation on its own only accounted for a 1% higher dropout rate for rural students over their urban peers. when urbanisation, as a variable, was combined with other demographic variables, the outcomes were sometimes unexpected. ten multi-variable comparisons indicated that rural students always represented the students who dropped out the most. however, in four of these multi-variable comparisons, rural students were also those who dropped out the least. a further study could examine the characteristics of population groups and language groups within rural communities to ascertain why certain students drop out more than others. recommendations are made for specific interventions that could assist in supporting students that are prone to dropout. keywords: student profile, dropout, retention, demographics, urban, rural, open and distance learning, distance education introduction south africa’s graduation rate is one of the lowest in the world (15% based on headcount enrolments) and it is even lower for black students (letseke, cosser, breier & visser, 2010: 1). forty per cent of south african university students drop out during their first year of study and 20% during their second or third year (letseke et al., 2010: 3). the reasons for dropout are complex and numerous, and include financial issues, lack of resources and substandard schooling. this high dropout rate means that scarce financial and human resources are being allocated to support students who ultimately will not attempt a summative assessment. this is even more crucial in south africa where there are limited government resources, a shortage of skilled workers and a history of social divide (macgregor, 2010). for south africa, where social divide was based on discriminatory urbanisation controls, the effect of student location could be more pronounced than reported results of international studies. urbanisation controls in the apartheid south africa not only forced certain race groups to live in certain areas, but also withheld education and resources from these areas. students in rural areas lack access to resources, infrastructure and opportunities afforded to students in urban areas and are, therefore, disadvantaged (pennefather, 2008). since democratisation, there has been an increase in urbanisation in south africa, a result of which is improved access to opportunities such as tertiary education for previously disadvantaged groups (ieasa, 2010: 14). improved access to opportunities, resources and better quality infrastructure have led to a substantial change in the profile of students who study at tertiary educational institutions, especially at south africa’s largest distance education institution, the university of south africa (unisa). over the past 70 years, retention, throughput and dropout research has received a great deal of attention (reason, 2009; steenkamp, baard & fick, 2009). various models were developed to explain this complex issue (spady, 1970; tinto, 1988; montmarquette, mahseredjian & houle, 2001). these models 67de hart & venter. — comparison of urban and rural dropout rates of distance students focus mainly on specific issues affecting student retention in residential students. due to the nature of distance education, alternative models were developed to explain phenomena in these institutions (bean & metzner, 1985; kember, 1989; laing & robinson, 2003). this study will expand the knowledge in the field of distance education, by elaborating on the work done by kember (1989) and others. in this study, the following will be investigated: can the students who are likely to drop out be identified by their location combined with other demographic attributes? does urban development of the area in which a student resides influence his/her dropout rate either on its own or when combined with other factors? the results of this study will determine whether programmes should be developed for specific groups of students so that they receive additional support. for the purpose of this study, kember’s longitudinal-process model of dropout from distance education was chosen as a point of departure in order to form a basis for the explanation of student retention. based on an analysis of previous research, kember’s model purports that the retention cycle commences with a student’s unique characteristics. studies using this model found various demographic factors, for example, student location (urban or rural), combined to influence a student’s propensity to drop out. it follows that a student who is likely to dropout due to these pre-determined circumstances might be retained in the system if better support is provided. in this article, kember’s model was expanded to include other demographic variables that had been identified in other studies investigating student retention. during the first phase of the analysis, students were divided based on their location (urban or rural) to determine whether location had any impact on the dropout rate. subsequently, location of the student was combined with other demographic variables to ascertain the profile of students who have a high risk of dropping out. the data was also combined to analyse multi-variable combinations of demographic factors and the urban or rural location of students. based on its historical legacy, south africa is in a unique position compared to the rest of the world, and this research aims to fill a part of this gap, by examining the effect of location on south african students. the benefit of the study is that it enables tertiary educational institutions to identify the profile of students who are at risk of dropping out. this will facilitate the developing of study material, and support interventions can be adapted and targeted towards students with these demographic characteristics. research method the descriptive study used secondary data analysis of distance students’ university records to determine whether the urban/rural status of the student combined with other demographic factors could describe those students who tend to drop out. for the purpose of this study, ‘drop out’ means that the student did not attempt the examination for this module. as this article will consider the effect of the students’ location on the probability of their dropping out, the concept of location, urban versus rural, needs to be defined. there is no nationally or internationally accepted definition of urban areas as opposed to rural areas (pennefather, 2008). according to the south african department of rural development (2009), rural areas differ in “nature, location and circumstances”. these areas, which are usually dependent on agriculture, can include small towns and settlements. usually rural areas do not have adequate resources such as water, educational facilities and employment opportunities (molefe, 1996). in order to divide students into rural or urban area groups, for this study, a new variable (referred to as the urbanisation variable) was developed. this variable was based on the level of urbanisation in each magisterial district in south africa. the following three decision rules were applied to classify the magisterial district as either urban or rural: • the urbanisation profile of all magisterial districts in south africa was obtained from the all media product information survey (saarf, 2009). the eight types of settlements were grouped into rural areas (farming, traditional, sparse and small-holding settlements) and urban areas (informal settlements, urban settlements, industrial areas, hostels and institutions). 68 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 • the percentage of people living in each type of settlement was established for each magisterial district. • using these percentages, all the magisterial districts were classified as follows: rural: magisterial district where less than 50% of the people live in urban settlements. urban: magisterial district where more than 50% of the people live in urban settlements. the urbanisation variable per magisterial district, based on the above decision rules, was incorporated into the data set as an independent variable. population and data the study was conducted using student records of students registered (2.615 students) for a taxation module offered as part of various bcom qualifications, on second-year level. to ensure comparability between the groups, only data of students registered in the first semester of 2010 was used rather than data from different years that might have incorporated other external factors. • to comply with ethical requirements, no individual student’s characteristics were reported on. only trends in group information were used for the purposes of this study. • the unisa student database was used to gather the demographic information (magisterial district, age, gender, language, employment status, population group, and previous academic performance) of all students registered for the selected module. this included the magisterial district in which the students resided. once the urbanisation variable had been determined (as described above), it was incorporated into this data set. data editing and validation with the aid of a statistician, various statistical tests were performed on each of the data elements in the data set to ensure reliability and validity of the data. after adding the independent urbanisation variable, a final data set was prepared in microsoft excel. the final data set contained 2.615 students (2.352 urban students and 263 rural students). this set was subjected to various descriptive analyses and statistical tests to ensure the validity and integrity of the data. a reliability test using the cronbach’s alpha test found a 0.7 alpha value. this value meets the minimum reliably of 0.7 (pallant, 2009). where the combination of demographic variables had fewer than five elements, these groups were not used in the analysis. an initial descriptive analysis was done to determine whether urban students compared to their rural peers had a lower risk of dropping out. even though the intention of the reported results was not generalised beyond the scope of the study itself, profiles could be ascertained from the data. the results and analyses are provided in the following sections. due to limitations in the data distribution between subgroups, inferential statistical techniques could not be performed in this study. the results presented in this article are based on a descriptive analysis of the data obtained. dropout, location and demographics location on its own has an effect on dropout and thus the effect of location was considered regarding the cohort of students involved in this study. according to the literature, each demographic variable can also individually affect dropout (müller, swanepoel & de beer, 2010). this article considers the effect that each demographic variable can have on dropout and how the combination of location and any two selected demographic variables result in different trends. international research shows that urban students outperform their rural peers (dawes, yeld & smith, 1999), and students from rural areas/small towns have higher dropout rates than their urban counterparts (pantages & creedon, 1978). it has also been reported that students from rural backgrounds require greater support to pass their subjects (stevens & walker, 1996). 69de hart & venter. — comparison of urban and rural dropout rates of distance students urbanisation the analysis shows that rural students had a dropout rate (16.73%) that was 1% higher than that of urban students (15.73%). this is in line with previous studies, mostly international, that found that the location of a student in isolation had a marginal effect on the dropout rate. the difference in the dropout rates between urban and rural students, reportedly, becomes more pronounced when combined with other demographic variables (peltier, laden & matranga, 1999; reason, 2009). various international studies have found that there is an interaction between different independent variables (peltier et al., 1999; reason, 2009; tumes, shilruf & hattie, 2008) affecting dropout rates of students. during the next phase of analysis, different demographic variables were combined to determine whether any consistent patterns emerged. kember (1989: 285) suggests that, in the case of distance students, variables relating to their background and characteristics take on more importance. in this study, the following endogenous variables (gender, age and language) and exogenous variables (sector of employment and previous academic performance), identified in previous studies (bean & metzner, 1985; kember, 1989; laing & robinson, 2003; reason, 2009) were analysed to determine their effect on dropout, when combined with urbanisation. table 1 presents the summary of results when student location was combined with two demographic variables, and indicates which combinations produce the highest and the lowest dropout rates. table 1: summary of multi-variable comparisons variables combined with urbanisation highest dropout rate lowest dropout rate age, language rural, nguni-speaking, 29-72 yrs afrikaans, rural, 25-28yrs other language, rural, 29-72yrs age, gender rural, male, under 21 yrs urban, female, under 21 age, employment sector rural, not employed, 29-72 yrs urban, not employed, under 21yrs age, population group rural, coloured, under 21 yrs rural, white, 25-28 yrs rural, indian, 22-24 yrs age, previous academic performance urban, 22-24 yrs, above 80% for accounting rural, 25-28yrs, 50-59% for accounting rural, 22-24yrs, 70-79% for accounting gender, language rural, male, other languages urban, female, english-speaking gender, employment sector rural, male, employed in finance urban, male, employed in finance gender, population group rural, male, coloured rural, male, indian (5.56%) gender, previous academic performance rural, male, above 80% for accounting rural, female, 50-59% for accounting 1 employment sector, language rural, nguni-speaking, not employed urban, english-speaking, employed in finance employment sector, population group rural, black, employed in finance rural, indian, not employed employment sector, previous academic performance rural, not employed, 70-79% for accounting rural, finance, 50-59% for accounting population group, language rural, coloured, afrikaansspeaking urban, white, speaking other languages 70 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 variables combined with urbanisation highest dropout rate lowest dropout rate population group, previous academic performance rural, african, 70-70% for accounting rural, white, 50-69% for accounting rural, indian, 70-79% for accounting urban, coloured, 70-79% previous academic performance, language rural, other languages, 60-69% for accounting rural, afrikaans-speaking, 5059% for accounting rural, afrikaans-speaking, above 80% for accounting rural, english-speaking, 70-79% for accounting urban, nguni-speaking, above 80% for accounting each of the demographic variables and its effect on dropout is subsequently discussed. each discussion also encompasses the combination of that demographic variable with the location of the student and its effect on dropout. a discussion on the effect of student location and the combination of two demographic variables concludes each section. age the effect of age, when considered as an independent variable, was found to be an indicator of student retention (byrne & flood, 2008; kaighobadi & allen, 2008; tumes et al., 2008). it often appears that younger students drop out less than older students; however, it has been found that when other demographic factors such as gender, population group and urbanisation/location are adjusted, younger students drop out more than older students (tumes et al., 2008). for the purposes of this study, students were divided into four age groups, namely under 21; 22-24 years; 25-28 years, and 29-72 years. age and urbanisation as populations in developed countries continue to grow older, so the diversity of student age increases. in this study, both ends of the age scale showed higher dropout rates for rural students. it is suggested that the younger rural students could be first-generation learners (letseke et al., 2010: 78) and, therefore, support structures could be lacking. with this group, student support systems could be designed to assist these students specifically. since the older group also showed a high dropout rate, it is suggested that this age group is responsible for providing for families and that this responsibility takes preference over studies. it is suggested that, for this group, where a provider is attempting to study, the government could introduce a structured financial support instrument or some form of incentive. age, location and other demographic variables in this study, when age was combined with other demographics, two age groups, namely the youngest and the oldest group, showed the highest dropout rates in four of the five combinations. in these combinations, the rural students also had the highest dropout rate. when age was combined with location and language groups, the highest dropout rate was found among the oldest group of students, who speak nguni. historically, nguni speakers live in chiefdoms 71de hart & venter. — comparison of urban and rural dropout rates of distance students or small tribal settlements and the older members of the community are usually responsible for raising families with absent parents. these responsibilities might have a negative impact on their ability to complete their studies (nguni, n.d.). when age was combined with location and gender, the results confirmed the findings of previous studies, namely that females drop out less. although research has shown that age is an indicator of dropout (kaighobadi & allen, 2008), there are mixed findings about it being a predictor. in this study, the dropout rate was found to be higher for younger students if they were male and lower if they were female. it is suggested that the younger females would be at home and expected to care for younger children. they could perhaps manage their time to incorporate time for studies. on the other hand, young males are expected to find work and would spend their time “job hunting” or working and, therefore, would have less time for studies. the context in which young rural males and young rural females find themselves and the definition of their roles in the rural community would have to be investigated in more detail to further explain this result. the combination of age, location and employment yielded an interesting result, because it was the unemployed students who were seen to drop out the most and the least. the youngest group of students who were not employed and located in an urban area dropped out the least. a reason for this could be that these students had just left school, were staying at home, were not working and were studying full-time at a distance. in this situation, all their needs were met with little or no stress of providing for themselves while studying. the older unemployed rural students dropped out the most. as discussed earlier, the older people are responsible for providing food, shelter and other needs in the rural community, and these pressures, especially if the students are not employed, could cause them to drop out. there was no clear trend in the data when age, location and population groups are combined. of the five combinations, only one combination showed that urban students had the highest dropout rate. these are students who did well in the first-year (accounting) module. anecdotal evidence suggests that students who passed accounting at an urban school could find this module to be manageable and do well in it, whereas taxation was new to these students. they found taxation to be difficult and decided not to write the examination. further research would need to be done to investigate whether this is the case. gender studies are varied in their results on the effect that gender has on student dropout. some studies found that gender significantly affected dropout rates of students (tinto, 1987; tumes et al., 2008). reason (2009) conducted a retention study and found that gender was not a strong indicator of retention. reason (2009: 490) claims that gender was a significant predictor of student retention in a simple model, but not in a step-wise regression, indicating that gender has an interaction with other variables such as age, language, family circumstances, ethnic background and previous academic performance. gender and urbanisation previous research (byrne & flood, 2008: 204) does not provide conclusive results as to whether gender affects the dropout rate of students. the results of this study indicate that urbanisation did not have a major effect on the dropout rates of female students, but that it did affect male students. rural males had the highest dropout rate. gender, location and other demographic variables the effect of the combination of age, gender and location was discussed earlier. where gender, language and location were combined, the trend followed a similar pattern to that reported in other research. the addition of language as an independent variable seems to indicate that studying in a second language adds to the dropout rate of male rural students. 72 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 ‘rural male employed in finance’ was the largest group to drop out and ‘urban male employed in finance’ was the smallest group to drop out. it appears that the geographical situation of the student was once again the dominant factor. when gender was combined with location and population group, both the highest and lowest dropout rates are noted in rural male students. it is, therefore, suggested that the characteristics of the different population groups have a dominant effect on students dropping out. more research is needed to examine the dynamics of the different population groups and the general characteristics of these communities, in order to determine the effect on dropout. when considering previous academic performance combined with gender and location, both the highest and lowest dropouts are rural students. it is apparent that further research is required into the reasons why rural students who do well in accounting drop out more than those who just passed. language studies conducted among university students in south africa found significant differences in the success of students who studied in their home language compared to those who studied in a second language; no studies have shown whether language affects the student dropout rate or not (du plessis, muller & prinsloo, 2005; pretorius, prinsloo & uys, 2007). south africa has 11 official languages. the most common home language spoken by south africans is zulu (23%), followed by xhosa (18%) and then afrikaans (13%). english is the fifth most commonly spoken language in the homes of south africans; it is also the language that is the most understood in urban areas and the main language used by government and the media (statistics south africa, 2001: 8). only two of these languages (afrikaans and english) are used in the teaching of taxation at unisa, which could, therefore, affect the dropout rate. however, language is often a proxy for other circumstances and, therefore, a more complex variable. in order to simplify the interpretation of the data, the languages were divided into five groups, namely afrikaans, english, nguni languages (zulu, xhosa, swati and ndebele), other african languages (for example, sesotho, setswana, and so on) as well as other foreign languages (for example, french and german). language and urbanisation the results from the current study clearly indicate that learning in a second language has a negative impact on a student’s retention. the analysis found that nguni-speaking students dropped out more, although it is interesting to note that afrikaans-speaking students were not far behind urban nguni-speaking students. the combination of language, location and other demographic factors is discussed under each of the other demographic factors. population group ethnic background has been found to be an accurate predictor of dropout, although teaching practices can reduce the effect of this (georg, 2009). as a result of south africa’s previous dispensation, different population groups have different experiences relating to education (steenkamp et al., 2009) and, therefore, this variable could have good predictor values. race as an indicator of dropout has had a consistently significant relationship throughout approximately 70 years of study of student retention in the usa. however, recent studies in the usa have shown that the impact of race on dropout is less consistent (reason, 2009). in south africa, race is proxy for other factors, including educational background. the most under-resourced schools in south africa are rural schools that were part of the blacks only education (letseke et al., 2010: 77). the link between population group and previous schooling will, therefore, have a strong relationship in south africa. when considering dropout, shure, jansen & harskamp (2007) found past performance to be a significant contributor to predicting student dropout in the netherlands. studies in the us also found previous achievement to be a good indicator of retention (tross, harper, osher & kneidinger, 2000). 73de hart & venter. — comparison of urban and rural dropout rates of distance students population group and urbanisation race, population group and ethnicity have all been highly researched when it comes to predicting retention of students. in south africa, educational differences still persist and it is suggested that this effect on dropout could be closely in line with what research found in the past. the analysis of the data indicated that rural coloured and rural black students had a higher dropout rate than their urban peers. the coloured students showed the biggest difference in dropout rates between rural and urban students. population group, location and other demographics when combining race, location and language, rural coloured, afrikaans-speaking taxation students were seen to drop out the most. the urban rural trend is an expected one; however, the result related to language goes against what is expected, as afrikaans is one of the teaching languages. therefore, it is submitted that other factors are influencing these students in dropping out. when previous performance in first-year accounting is combined with location and population group, the result is a curious one. rural black students who achieved between 70% and 79% in accounting were the group with the highest dropout rate in this classification. previous academic performance prior academic performance has been identified as an important factor in identifying dropout in students (byrne & flood, 2008). as the students being examined in this study were second-year students, the previous achievement indicator was based on their mark obtained for accounting, which is a compulsory prerequisite module. previous academic performance and urbanisation the trend regarding previous academic performance and urbanisation is rather disturbing for rural students, as it appears that the higher they achieved in accounting, the greater the chance they had of dropping out. for urban students, the trend is an expected one in the opposite direction. previous academic performance, location and language when academic performance was combined with location and language, the highest dropout rate was found for rural students speaking other languages who obtained between 60% and 69% for accounting. again, students who did well in accounting dropped out more than other students. employment previous studies investigating students’ performance found employment to be an important factor (welman, 2003). employment and urbanisation studies (kember, 1989; welman, 2003) have shown that what distance students do while they are studying does not have a big effect on their dropout rate. the data in this study indicates that employment as opposed to non-employment is an indicator of dropout rather than location; both rural and urban students who were not employed had the highest dropout rate. employment, location and other demographic variables the combination of employment, language and location yielded results indicative of the traditional view regarding urbanisation combined with other variables. the rural nguni-speaking students who were not employed dropped out the most. 74 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 it is interesting to note that the employment sector combined with the population group did not show a similar trend to the combination of language and employment sector. this combination again indicates that the rural students dropped out the most and the least. rural students employed in finance dropped out more than those who were not employed. there was no clear trend in this information and the characteristics of the different population groups would once again shed more light on the situation. as expected, when location, previous academic performance and employment were combined, rural students who were not employed were shown to drop out the most. however, what was unexpected was that these were the students who did well in accounting (achieving between 70% and 79%). conclusion in view of the fact that the apartheid dispensation in south africa had a forced location policy, entrenched in law, it was not surprising that the initial comparison of rural and urban students found that rural students had a slightly higher dropout rate than their urban peers. when combining the urbanisation variable with other demographic variables, the highest dropout rate in all but one of the 15 multi-variable comparisons was found among rural students. rural students also had the lowest dropout rate in four of the 15 multivariable comparisons (see table 1). a limitation of the study was that no trend analysis was performed, as no longitudinal information was available. from a synthesis of the data available, rural males who are black or coloured and not employed were identified as the group that most often has the highest dropout rate. the multi-variable comparisons highlighted that, besides location, the characteristics of different rural settlements of the different population groups and language groups could be a dominant cause of drop out. if these characteristics could be understood in the context of dropout, support systems could be put in place to reduce the dropout rate of south african university students and to improve our standing globally. a few recommendations are made as a result of this study: first, that a longitudinal study be undertaken in order to find stronger trends in the dropout rate of taxation students and to ascertain which is the most predominant trend. secondly, it is recommended that specific interventions be researched, especially for rural students. these could be in the form of support that is taken to the student in the rural area. lastly, as rural older males most often form the group who drop out, it is suggested that the government offer some form of incentive to students who can prove that they are family providers. as we progress further into our democracy, we must remember the words of nelson mandela: 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1987. leaving college: rethinking the causes and cures of student attrition. chicago: university of chicago press. tinto v 1988. stages of departure: reflections on the longitudinal character of student leaving. the journal of higher education 59(4): 438-455. 76 perspectives in education, volume 31(1), march 2013 tross sa, harper jp, osher lw & kneidinger lm 2000. not just the usual cast of characteristics: using personality to predict college performance and retention. journal of college student development, 41: 323-334. tumes s, shilruf b & hattie j 2008. student pathways at the university: patterns and predictors of completion. studies in higher education, 33(3): 233-252. welman jc 2003. work status as a predictor of academic performance in the field of distance higher education. south african journal of industrial psychology, 29(1): 44-51. 92 growing researchers from the historically disadvantaged groups through internships thobeka mda cape peninsula university of technology this article provides an overview of the nature and quality of research supervision and mentorship practices employed by supervisors and mentors of interns in a south african research council in an attempt to increase the pool and change the face of researchers in the country. through a series of studies conducted by the research council, the success of this intervention is investigated. the article provides insight into the difficulties of attaining the goal of increasing researchers from this group through internships. the practices viewed as being generally successful in supervision and mentorship of master’s and doctoral research interns inside and outside sa, are highlighted. from this analysis, models of effective supervision and mentorship of research interns are identified. keywords: internship; mentorship; supervision; research councils; research capacity building introduction recent studies and evidence-based reports in south africa (sa) reveal that the country’s universities produce very low numbers (and quality) of research-degree graduates (assaf, 2010; cloete & galant, 2005; moodie, 2010). the need to increase throughput rates in research degrees has been identified as a national imperative, as this is expected to boost research quality and output, and help meet the highlevel skill demands of the sa emerging economy (assaf, 2010; moodie, 2010). the development of a “knowledge-based economy in which the production and dissemination of knowledge leads to economic benefits and enriches all fields of human endeavour” (dst, 2007:iv) is the goal of the attempts to increase the number of research graduates. institutions of higher learning as well as funding agencies, including the national research foundation (nrf), have developed and implemented a variety of interventions to help improve throughput and the graduation rates in research degrees. this is intended to increase the number of researchers, to change the profile of researchers and to improve the quality of knowledge production in the country. interventions to address the crisis of the poor graduation rates and low participation in higher degrees of the previously disadvantaged include aggressively recruiting students to postgraduate degree programmes, rewarding supervisors for their supervisees who complete master’s and doctoral research degrees, and creating and funding internship programmes in research councils/organisations such as the south african medical research council (mrc) and the human sciences research council (hsrc), whereby the master’s and doctoral students, especially from the above-mentioned groups, are mentored by senior staff at the research councils. despite the various interventions, graduation rates in these programmes indicate that many of the students who are admitted either spend many years in the programmes or drop out before graduation – average completion for doctoral students being 4.8 years in 2007; 1 274 doctoral graduates in 2007; out of 22 000 sa honours students, 10 000 pursued master’s and doctoral studies, and out of those 1 182 graduated with a phd in 2008 (assaf, 2010; dell, 2010). another concern is the negligible number of students from the historically disadvantaged groups who are admitted to the senior degree programmes, particularly at phd level, and from those, an even smaller number, actually graduate with a research degree (assaf, 2010; buhlungu & metcalfe, 2001). this article provides an overview of the nature and quality of research supervision and mentorship practices employed by supervisors and mentors of interns in sa research councils, using the hsrc, the author’s organisation, as a case study. this includes an insight into the difficulties of attaining the 93mda — growing researchers from the historically disadvantaged groups goal of increasing researchers from this group, through internships. the practices/strategies viewed as being generally successful in supervision of research students (master’s and doctoral), in higher education institutions inside and outside sa, are highlighted. from this analysis, models of effective supervision and mentorship of research interns are identified. conceptualising internships the term “intern” is a generic term for all advanced students or recent graduates undergoing supervised practical training at the research council, as researchers, or as professionals in areas such as editing, cataloguing and data capturing. at the hsrc there are sometimes two categories of student interns: those who are registered postgraduate students and are attached to research programmes, and those who may not be registered as students but who are receiving practical training in other professional services of the research council, such as the press division, or corporate communication. the first group of interns is also referred to as “researcher trainees.” researcher trainees are employed by the research council to contribute towards research activities undertaken at the council as well as research outputs, gaining experience on various aspects of conducting research projects, and being provided with relevant academic assistance, knowledge and experience under partial supervision and mentoring by a senior researcher to pursue and complete a postgraduate degree. it is specifically this last category of interns that is of concern to this article, and the generic term “intern” will be used throughout the article for those students undergoing research learning or training in research. the description by jansen, herman and pillay (2004:90) below of research learning in the university context contains the same elements as are found in research learning at a research council and, therefore, it is argued that research learning in the two contexts can be regarded as the same thing. [research learning] encompasses but extends beyond the knowledge of how to complete the specific research project (usually the dissertation). it is the totality of learning events that includes the technical competence to deliver a research report (such as a dissertation) as well as the emotional, social, political and cognitive experiences that together constitute such learning. the aims and objectives of the research internship programmes research internships in sa address two national imperatives, namely the skills shortage in general, and the scarcity and dwindling pool of researchers and scholars in the social, human, and natural sciences in particular. at the mrc, the main purpose of the research training internship programme is: … to train and mentor young black researchers and to prepare them up to a level of suitability to be appointed as researchers and, to increase the human resource base of health researchers in the country ... (samrc, 2010:1) the researcher training policy of hsrc includes the following purposes and goals for the internship programme: • to renew and increase the pool of researchers and scholars in the social and human sciences capable of taking up positions at the hsrc and other institutions nationally; • to identify areas of scarce skills and develop researchers in such disciplines or areas of need; • specifically to provide research training and mentoring opportunities for postgraduates from designated groups through participation in hsrc research activities (hsrc, 2010:2). while the aims and objectives of the mrc’s and hsrc’s research internship programmes are general in scope, they have a specific target group, the historically disadvantaged. the research capacity building programme for sa universities of the south africa-netherlands research programme on alternatives in development (sanpad) education and research trust (santrust) is different in that it does not seem to be as limited as to its target group. it aims, among others, are to: 94 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 • increase the critical mass of phd graduates at the respective university and retaining them within the institutions; • train supervisors to ensure a higher and quicker success rate of phd graduates; • increase the number of phd graduates and supervisors with lower internal investment of institution (santrust, n.d.:3) the practice of internship the practice of internship is accompanied and supported by mentoring and supervision. mentoring is defined as a teaching and learning process in a one-to-one career development relationship between two individuals where one serves as the teacher and counsellor, on the basis of his or her experience, professional status and credentials, and having gone through a similar experience (in this case, as a young or junior academic and researcher) (roberts, 1999; stewart & krueger in mills, francis & bonner, 2005; wadee, keane, dietz & hay, 2010). the difference between workplace supervision and mentoring is that supervision is usually performed by someone with authority in the programme, who oversees the performance of a number of people, not in a one-to-one relationship as with the mentor, and who may also not be tasked with coaching the junior to improve performance, as in the case with the mentor. this supervision is different from that of a thesis or postgraduate supervisor where the supervisor oversees the student’s master’s or doctoral research project until completion. clinical and educational supervision are more relevant for the purpose of the discussion in this article. “clinical supervision”, which is applicable to the context of interns in research councils, is used ... in the sense of the everyday supervision of a trainee’s performance ... [and] involves being available, looking over the shoulder of the trainee, teaching on the job with developmental conversations, regular feedback and the provision of a rapid response to issues as they arise (roberts, 1999:313-329). “educational supervision”, which is a related term, ... involves the teaching of specific skills and competencies, helping the learner to develop selfsufficiency in the on-going acquirement of skills and knowledge ... [and] sometimes includes an element of assessment and may require the provision of pastoral care for some students or trainees (london deanery, 2011:2). in summary, supervision means the act of watching over the work or tasks of another who may lack full knowledge of the concept at hand. it does not mean control of another, but guidance in a work, professional or personal context. the purpose is to assist the junior or new practitioner to improve expertise to meet organisational objectives. the programme of internships at the hsrc is classified as a (research) capacity enhancement programme. this term is preferred over the terms “capacity development” and “capacity building.” enhancement implies improvement and enrichment of what already exists, whereas the term “development” tends to be associated with deficiencies or deficit (delgado, 2001). the classification of the internship programme as a capacity enhancement initiative takes into consideration that the interns are already graduates, with academic background in a specific discipline, and with some experience, however limited, in conducting research. the research council, therefore, makes available its resources (human, financial and infrastructural) to the interns to augment what research competence they already possess. while capacity enhancement and the related concepts, such as capacity building and capacity development, are viewed as positive and moral obligations, there is no agreement on how to measure the success of enhancement. ogiogio (2004:1) explains this difficulty thus: “... the benefits often associated with capacity building are not conveniently quantifiable and consequently the rate of return to investment in capacity building cannot be defined for a number of interventions without a significant margin of error.” 95mda — growing researchers from the historically disadvantaged groups he further argues: ... what should constitute generic measures [in the assessment of the performance of an intervention in capacity building] should be defined not simply on the basis of inputs, processes, outputs and impact, but on the need to establish a basis for assessing relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, ownership, impact, and sustainability of an intervention (ogiogio, 2004:2). description of the study the findings on which this article is based emerged from data from two internal studies1 of the internship programme at the hsrc, the internship policy documents of the mrc and the hsrc, and the report on a two-day indaba (“congress”) in february 2009, “growing researchers,” hosted by the hsrc. for the first study, interviews were conducted with 19 interns at the hsrc from september 2009 to april 2010. some were leaving the council and others were still continuing as interns. in addition, five interns who had already left the research council were contacted by telephone to confirm their current employment status and job descriptions. data from interviews with seven executive directors of the research programmes on their internship programmes were also included for consideration. the second internal study was a mini study on phd interns conducted in february 2011 at the request of the hsrc’s board members. this study was limited to one research question, and had four doctoral interns as participants. in preparing a report on the mini study for the hsrc board, the 2010 report, “the phd study,” of the academy of science of south africa (assaf) served as the backdrop to this study. the indaba was intended as a gathering of members of the hsrc’s capacity development unit (cdu), currently known as capacity enhancement, the internship coordinators representing the various research programmes, other internal stakeholders, and external stakeholders from other research councils or organisations, universities, the department of science and technology (dst), civil society groups that do research capacity enhancement or development work, and donor groups. thirty-four delegates participated in the two-day indaba. informed by an analysis of the above studies, this article addresses the following research questions: a) what purpose do the research internships actually serve and achieve? b) what are the challenges reportedly experienced by mentors and mentees? c) what lessons should we learn from these experiences to enhance research internships? findings the following findings, gleaned from the various studies already mentioned, answer the research questions listed in the previous section. increasing the pool of trained researchers with regard to the goal of increasing the pool of trained researchers and changing the profile of researchers in the country, the internship programme does seem to be making a difference, though both the increase and the change are not as much or as quick as desired. the interns who left the hsrc, especially those who left before their appointment contracts had expired, report that they were offered attractive positions: one as a lecturer at a nearby university, another as a researcher in parliament, and another as a director in a government department in the northern cape. most interns at the hsrc are involved in big and significant national and international research projects. they receive exposure to conducting big surveys, drafting grant proposals and writing research reports. as a result, a number of them get to publish in peer-reviewed publications, often in teams with senior researchers, but also as sole authors. for example, in the hsrc’s 2009/10 research outputs, 46 interns contributed to 39 peer-reviewed articles, and in 2010/11, 70 interns contributed to 51 peer-reviewed 96 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 articles (hsrc annual reports). it is this experience and demonstration of competences which make them marketable as research practitioners. the reported growth by the interns themselves is qualitative, and with regard to skills transfer they gain experience in working in projects; being “part of a project team that won a tender;” working with data, especially large data sets; learning from training workshops organised by cdu; “working in a multidisciplinary academic environment;” and learning by “observing people work, their passion and patience;” and working under pressure. all interns reported growing as researchers and as academics, from mentors, senior researchers, and project teams. the environment was also credited for growth of interns. it is important to note that this growth is not easy to measure. a “win-win” situation through the internship programmes, the research councils win by meeting the intern targets which form part of the strategic objectives agreed upon with the minister of science and technology, as part of addressing the national priorities outlined in the medium-term strategic framework, and the funds provided through the medium-term expenditure framework. through the 2008 act (replacing the 1968 act), the hsrc is mandated to help build research capacity and infrastructure in sa and in the wider continent in its mandated sciences. to carry out the mandated work, including building research capacity, the hsrc is provided with funds through the parliamentary grant every year. students benefit in that they undergo training or academic development while receiving salaries. in response to the question of the benefits of doing a phd part-time (hsrc, february 2011), these were some answers from the students, “it is killing two birds with one stone, as while doing studies one is also keeping in touch with the working environment;” “resources: access to the use of computers, internet, photocopying and financial support;” and the “benefits of doing a phd part-time include the fact that i am also employed, earning a salary and therefore my other aspects of life are not suffering.” having access to resources, especially financial support in the form of salaries, is the benefit all interns mentioned. interns also receive funding to attend local and international conferences, thereby getting exposure to the wider scientific community. another benefit was described by one student as follows: “being in an academic environment provides a marvellous space to interact with academics in different aspects and it gives [me] a place to grow.” the “win-win” situation is, however, not agreed upon by all participants. some students claim that research organisations get cheap labour through the internships, suggesting that the organisation benefits at their expense, and that they, the students, do not benefit. there is also the perception that the organisations succeed in meeting targets only with regard to numbers of interns rather than making a meaningful contribution to the goal of increasing researchers. one phd reported: the workload in our specific research unit is overwhelming and the fact that not one phd intern has graduated whilst working in our unit for the duration of my phd is testament to that fact. while not all research units have such a poor record of graduation among interns, the situation described by this intern is cause for concern, considering the objective of increasing phd graduates in the country. challenges considering the negligible number of graduating interns (eight out of 38 master’s interns) and two phds (out of 35 doctoral interns) during 2009/10 year, and two with master’s degrees (out of 37 master’s interns) and no doctoral graduate (out of 25) during 2010/11 year), an important finding is that the number of researchers increases as a result of these programmes, but not the number of people who graduate with master’s and doctoral degrees. the challenges experienced by research councils, the mentors, and the interns in meeting this objective are varied. for example, national priorities regarding scarce skills have a significant influence on the type of training which is prioritised by government and funders. the need for people trained in the specific area may be short-term or long-term. in some fields, such as epidemiology and statistics, there 97mda — growing researchers from the historically disadvantaged groups is such scarcity that the potential employers cannot wait for two to three years for trainees to complete formal and practical training, and the interns cannot commit to long-term internships as there may be a plentiful supply of jobs, even for people with limited training in the specific area. organisations have to find a balance between training interns according to national priorities and scarce skills, and offering basic and general training on an on-going basis, with no guaranteed jobs for interns at the end of training, but for the sole purpose of increasing the pool of qualified people with practical experience. in a social sciences research council, with broad areas of research, interns apply for positions and are placed in units that may be far removed from their areas of specialisation. for instance, a research student in early childhood development may not have any contact with young children, crèche or nursery school, and is thus getting very limited practical experience in his or her area of study. some students cannot find any research project in their areas of specialisation in the organisation. this is especially the case in the research organisation where units are theme-based (poverty alleviation, service delivery, hiv/ aids) as opposed to being based on disciplines such as economics, sociology or education. buhlungu and metcalfe (2001:75) report the same “lack of specialisation” from their study of a local university internship programme, where “interns are moved from project to project depending on where the need for data collection is.” the internship policies of organisations reviewed for this article state that the organisation is not obliged to employ the interns. consequently, interns continue looking for permanent employment even as they start their internships, and as soon as they secure permanent employment, not necessarily in research or academia, leave the research council without completing the internship programme. for those interns who take up employment not in research environments, the research training they received may be wasted. this is especially true of the targeted groups such as the historically disadvantaged groups, who may also come from poor backgrounds, where the need to earn a decent living may be urgent and investing in longterm internship viewed as a luxury (indaba report, 2009). buhlungu and metcalfe (2001:74) also found from their study that many students from the historically disadvantaged backgrounds, “[facing] a wide range of social hurdles, take a vocational and instrumental approach to learning which makes the field of intellectual production a luxury only the well-off and highly talented can afford.” personally, i suspect that, after interns have been exposed to the work of a research organisation where there are set targets for raising project funds and publishing, a predominantly donor-driven research agenda, long work hours, and generally, researchers’ performance appraisal tied to these targets, a career in research may not be that attractive, especially to those who are still trying to find a career. brian o’connell, cited by macgregor (2008:1), also found that attracting good graduate students to academia in africa, and “to excite students, draw them into the academic world and get them committed to an academic career” is a big challenge. if this is a problem in most african countries, then the difficulty in retaining young academics and researchers is commonly experienced by research organisations and universities. since the internship programme is a redress measure, these research councils are not at liberty to select only the best candidates for the internship programme. often the best applicants for the programme are not south africans, but young africans from other southern african development countries, but then south africans have to be prioritised, as a redress measure, and to meet the objective of increasing the pool of researchers in the country. another challenge reported by both mentors and interns is the limited time most mentors have to provide meaningful mentorship to the interns. the demands on the senior researchers’ time (the urgent need to obtain donor funds and report to donors, project managing, networking and publishing attached to researchers’ performance appraisal) make the senior researchers’ work stressful and allow them little time to focus on interns who need significant guidance and advice (indaba report, 2009; wadee et al., 2010). there is limited scope to discuss all the findings in this article, but other noteworthy challenges are: the lack of role models and mentors among the target groups; mismatch of expectations between the organisation and the students; non-immediate rewards or recognition for research; systemic structural impediments to hosting interns in historically disadvantaged institutions; and the inadequate academic literacy in english, and limited research training of many interns. 98 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 enhancing the practice of research internships a study of the findings from this investigation of the internship programme (especially from interviews), the reports from related studies, and internships of other higher education institutions and research organisations suggests a number of practices for successful internship programmes. for example, to ensure effective transfer of research skills, knowledge and attitudes, interns could be appointed on the bases of skills needed by the unit, and the work of the intern in the unit aligned with their studies. once appointed, the intern should be allocated a mentor before or on arrival at the organisation, and both should sign a mentorship agreement outlining planned activities, competencies to be developed and expected outputs, including a plan for monitoring and evaluation of the intern’s progress, per month and per quarter. second, interns grow as researchers when their set assignments at the research councils are meaningful, academic and professional. interns must not be assigned menial tasks such as doing photocopying, making tea, or being sent to buy food and other such items from the shops for the assigned mentors or other senior staff members in their units (as reported by one intern). an internship programme to be emulated is the “carter center mentorship program” (the carter center, 2011:1) where programme documents state upfront that less than 30 per cent of an intern’s responsibilities include administrative duties, and that interns are provided with substantive work experience directly in their field of study, so that they gain valuable knowledge which can enhance their professional development. third, the role of the mentor is crucial in the intern’s growth professionally. all the interns spoken to acknowledged the important role the mentor had played in their growth in the organisation. three interns who had some negative experiences in the research council, had had negative relationships with the mentors assigned to them, and it was after they had asked for different mentors that their experiences of internship turned to positive ones. an intern also has a great chance of success when the research council mentor works closely with the university supervisor, and when the work at the research council is aligned with the studies of the intern. sanpad, for instance, which has run an internship programme in partnership with local universities since 1997, working with students and their university supervisors, in 2010 reported a 93% graduation rate in three to four years from their local phd students, and 0% drop-out rate from the programme. one hsrc board member sharing his insights from having worked with phd students in university programmes inside and outside sa, also stressed the important role the university supervisor plays in the internship programme. there needs to be a formal and clearly outlined internship learning programme or course, as established at the indaba. the ideal is to have a proper in-house course that is followed by every intern, even though interns join at different levels of development. the major themes or areas of study are identified and covered. the programme could be divided into terms or semesters. for research interns, for example, the major topics are: information search, research methodologies, data management, writing (academically and for publication), and oral presentations (of data or research results) in the context of research work conducted by the council, and research as business. practical and applied training should supplement university preparation. the idea is to provide interns with practical and professional experience, and not to duplicate what universities teach. the internship programme should focus on assisting the interns with applying the scientific work (the postgraduate subject content) to the realities of the particular context. the internship programme must also incorporate preparation for the post-internship phase. the preparation may include professional skills and preparation for entrance into the work world, for example, by incorporating training in compiling a résumé. the organisation needs to develop indicators to determine the success of the programme and of interns. some universities whose internship programmes were studies, have developed success indices with variables which they measure. for example, the department of economics at san diego state university (sdsu), has identified 17 variables under the following categories: application of academic major (domain knowledge), cognitive skills, social skills, personal traits, on-the-job training, cross-cultural experience (also using a second language), computer skills and job offer (offered full-time employment at the internship site or through a networking opportunity) (adler, bansak & wolf, 2004:9-10). 99mda — growing researchers from the historically disadvantaged groups of course, not all research or academic capacity development interventions may be measured as above, nor is it necessary to do so. therefore, organisations and capacity development programme directors should develop own indicators, based on, among others, the main issues of interest to the organisation. a consideration in determining the success of interventions in research capacity building, especially if the latter is considered a skills shortage area, is articulated by ogiogio (2004:5) thus: “…the real success of a capacity building intervention is its ability to develop local skills and institutions, which can effectively draw on global information and knowledge to address national development problems.” it is thus important for the hsrc to have regular tracer studies on its interns. from the study being reported here, there are strong indications that we need to profile and understand the target group for the relevant research internships. while the internship programmes in the research councils in this study target historically disadvantaged groups, there is no indication that the unique characteristics of this group have been studied. in north america, for instance, studies on first-generation graduates or college students have grown tremendously. a number of interns in the sa historically disadvantaged group also fall under the category of first-generation university students; hence the mismatch between the expectations of the research council and government on one side, and of interns and their families on the other. to address the challenges mentioned earlier, it is recommended that research councils consider creating a few permanent positions to absorb their best interns. research councils should also aggressively recruit the best students in the field to keep them in the chosen field. doctoral students’ internship terms could be increased to five years, so as to match the period it takes for a part-time student to complete a doctoral degree. this would take the pressure off doctoral interns, who often feel the need to start looking for a job while the doctoral degree may be far from completion. the challenges of retaining interns until they complete internship, the mismatch between the organisation and interns, the pursuit of internships for financial purposes rather than actual research, and the urgent need to get permanent jobs could be minimised if interns were employed in research, training and work within their areas of specialisation and interest. in fields where internships have been a feature for a long time, such as medicine and law, interns are placed in contexts where they would practise, for example, in hospitals for medical students, and in law practices for law students. it is also a requirement that they take up internship to get full qualification. the interns are therefore gaining practical experience through internships in fields where they already have the theoretical knowledge. for the research councils, partnerships may be arranged with relevant organisations or workplaces, so that the interns may spend some time at the workplaces where they are likely to work in future. to match the interns with the research councils, the research councils should also consider making practitioners researchers, or creating and growing researchers from committed practitioners and workers at the organisation, that is, from people who are already doing (and enjoying) the work of the organisation. at the research councils these would be staff members whose jobs do not involve actually doing research, but providing professional services, for example, staff in the press section, information technology, and project administration. this is an example of “growing own timber” as well as of making practitioners researchers. senior researchers assigned the task of mentoring interns should be compensated for mentoring, not necessarily in monetary terms, but through allocation of hours for mentoring, and the actual mentoring linked to the progress of an intern may form part of a mentor’s performance appraisal. while it may be disappointing to note that the internships are not sufficiently or quickly helping to meet the objective of increasing researchers, it has to be understood that measures of redress are long term, and efforts have to be made to secure support for internship programmes from various quarters, for example, the private sector and donor organisations. to ensure the experience of being a researcher seeps into the pores of interns, long-term internships should be considered, whereby an intern spends a specific period at the university and another set period at the research council, with, therefore, enough focused time on the dissertation and on practical knowledge. the two periods should complement each other for the intern’s success in both. an alternative is to have 100 perspectives in education, volume 31(2), june 2013 the interns employed by the universities, but formally assign to them time to spend at a research council. the dst could channel funds for this purpose directly to the universities. conclusion this paragraph presents a tentative conclusion about the findings of the study, but what is more important is that the study has implications for what can and will work to make research internships effective and successful. in consideration of the challenges above, some systemic and others local, it would be tempting to reach the conclusion that, increasing the pool of researchers through the current programme of internships in research councils, is not successful. such a conclusion would, however, be too simplistic. for instance, to conclude that the non-completion of the twoor three-year internship programme means that the resources have been wasted, is to ignore or devalue the day-to-day practical involvement of the intern at the research council, and the total tuition role of the experience of apprenticeship. this would also be ignoring the intrinsic development and transformation of interns which may be taking place. it is also worth noting that all the interns describe the experience as a positive period of growth. the models for effective internships and mentoring at a research organisation identified in this article can only further enhance an experience regarded as already valuable by the beneficiaries of the practice. endnotes 1 a) the impact of research trainee programme (rt programme) on career trajectories of master’s and doctoral interns and post-doctoral fellows in the human sciences research council (hsrc): the 2007-2009 cohorts (2010) b) the challenges of doing a phd part-time whilst working: a mini-study (2011) references academy of science in south africa (assaf). 2010. the phd study: an evidence-based study on how to meet the demands for high-level skills in an 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research training internships for black scientists. retrieved on 20 january 2011 from http://www.mrc.ac.za/researchdevelopment/ restrainblack.htm. the carter center 2011. the carter center internship program. retrieved on 5 april 2011 from http:// www.cartercenter.org/involved/internship/index.html?printer friendly=true. wadee aa, keane m, dietz t & hay d 2010. effective phd supervision, mentorship and coaching. amsterdam: rozenberg publishers. 64 the spatial practices of school administrative clerks: making space for contributive justice abdullah bayat university of the western cape this article discusses the work practices of the much neglected phenomenon of the work of school administrative clerks in schools. popular accounts of school administrative clerks portray them as subjectified – assigned roles with limited power and discretion – as subordinate and expected to be compliant, passive and deferent to the principal and senior teachers. despite the vital role they play in schools, their neglect is characterised by their invisible, largely taken-for-granted roles in a school’s everyday functioning. this main aim of this article is to make their everyday practices and contributions visible, to elevate them as indispensable, albeit discounted, role players in their schools, whose particular expressions of agency contribute qualitatively to a school’s practices. using the theoretical lens of ‘space’, and based on in-depth semi-structured interviews in the qualitative research tradition, the article discusses how selected school administrative clerks’ production of space exceeds their assigned spatial limitations, i.e. they move beyond the expectations that their work contexts narrowly assign to them. they resist the contributive injustice visited upon them and through their agency they engage in spatial practices that counters this injustice. they carve out a productive niche for themselves at their schools through their daily practice. this niche, i will argue, embodies practices of ‘care’, ‘sway’ and ‘surrogacy,’ understood through a vigorous ‘production of space’. through these unique spatial practices they reflect their agency and their appropriation of existing spatial practices at their schools. thus, they produce personalized meanings for their existing practice as well as generate novel lived spatial practices. key words: school administrative clerks, space, spatial practices, lived space, contributive justice introduction the article aims to contribute to our analysis of social justice by suggesting that we broaden our focus on social justice to include issues of contributive justice. it highlights how those who are denied contributive justice do not simply lie down and accept their fate but that they actively counter the contributive injustice visited upon them. contributive injustice is where workers’ opportunities for self-development, gaining self-esteem and recognition by others is thwarted by the unequal division of labour that assigns them simple, mindless, and routine tasks (gomberg, 2007; sayer, 2009, 2011). i agree with the assertion by the proponents of contributive justice that the unequal division of labour leads to the curtailing of opportunities for self-development for those who are denied complex work (sayer, 2011). however, i posit that administrative clerks do not passively accept this inequality of opportunity but through their agency, reflexivity and tactics, carve out spatial practices of self-development and, in the process, gain self-esteem and recognition at school level. literature on the practice of school administrative clerks in south africa is sparse (van der linde, 1998; naicker, combrinck & bayat, 2011). these clerks suffer inequalities of opportunity because of the division of labour which relegates them to a role that offers low remuneration, little recognition and limited participation. studies of the roles of administrative clerks in schools (casanova, 1991; van der linde, 1998; thomson, ellison, byrom & bulman, 2007; conley, gould & levine, 2010; naicker, combrinck & bayat, 2011), higher education institutions (szekeres, 2004; mcinnis, 2006; whitchurch & london, 2004) and businesses (fearfull, 1996, 2005; truss, 1993) found that they are regarded as marginal and invisible even though their contributions are essential for the smooth running of their workplaces. secretarial work is regarded as a ghetto occupation (truss, 1993; truss, alfes, shantz & rosewarne, 65bayat — the spatial practices of school administrative clerks 2012). it is precisely this low esteem and lack of recognition attached to it as an occupation that confirms that those who fill these roles are subjected to contributive injustice. this article sheds light on school administrative clerks’ spatial practices within the exigencies of their everyday professional contexts. it highlights their noteworthy contributions to the on-going functioning of the school, especially the surreptitious and sometimes very concrete impact on the lives of students, teachers, the principal, parent governors and auxiliary staff. in authoring their spatial practices they counter and subtly resist the marginalisation and contributive injustice of their occupation. the article reveals their largely invisible spatial practices and unacknowledged contributions to the daily operation of their schools in which they engage to counter contributive injustice. since the recent emphasis on ‘space’ in social studies (harvey, 1989; lefebvre, 1991; soja, 1989) and education in south africa (see jacklin, 2004; fataar, 2007, 2009; dixon, 2007), researchers contend that we cannot ignore that human behaviour and space are interrelated and overlap. the theory of the production of social space argues that space is not empty or devoid of formative power. it opposes those arguments that consider space to be a container in which events occur and takes a perspective that space is firmly intertwined with social events. space is thus regarded as constitutive of social relations. jacklin (2004) draws our attention to the constituent nature of spatial practices in the pedagogical routines of teachers and students in classroom contexts. dixon (2007) argues that there is a relationship between classroom order and spatial organisation and that social space is used to manage, regulate and produce specific kinds of students enmeshed in knowledge and power constructions. fataar’s (2007) spatial lens highlights the agency and reflexivity of students from ‘other’ social spaces as they move to middle-class social spaces and the bodily adjustments they make to fit into these spaces. my article builds on their perspectives of the constituent nature of space of everyday practice. the data was collected from a qualitative research study of three administrative clerks in public schools in the western cape. there was one male and two women participants. they are referred to as p, m and f. the research included both semi-structured interviews with them as well as participative observations at school. the data was analysed thematically through the spatial lenses discussed earlier. there are other themes in the data but i focus on those yielded by the specific lens used in this paper. i spent one school term observing the three administrative clerks at their schools, during which time i interviewed them over several days. i also interviewed their principals as well as members of the teaching staff. i spent several days at the schools making observations, taking field notes and interviewing the administrative clerks about their practices as they worked. in the next section i advance my theoretical lens and thereafter use it to analyse the data collected on the spatial practices of the three school administrative clerks. three sets of spatial practices are identified through which administrative clerks counter their experiences of contributive injustice and through it contribute significantly to the functioning of the school and the positive experiences of students, teachers and the principal. theoretical considerations social justice is considered to be primarily about distributive justice – concerned with what people get. of late it has been complemented by cultural/identity recognition and political participation perspectives of social justice (fraser, 2008). a further development around the ideas and theories of social justice is the contributive justice perspective. contributive justice asks us to turn our attention away from what people get to what people do. focusing on what we do is based on the aristotelian perspective that what we do has as much an influence on the quality of our lives as what we get. thus, the contributive justice perspective urges us to consider social justice as arising from the variety and quality of practices that workers are able to engage in (gomberg, 2007; sayer, 2009). contributive justice is a normative framework which suggests that the unequal divisions of labour within an organisation and within the economy subject workers to unequal opportunities for realising their potential. this is an aristotelian approach which emphasises the human development of dispositions and abilities through work and practice. 66 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 the type of work one does is directly related to the psychological and economic rewards that one receives which, in turn, have an effect on our well-being (sayer, 2011). work is not only a source of economic rewards but also of fulfillment, whether through self-satisfaction or recognition by others. the contributive justice argument is that the type of work that one does, affects what one can become, how one views oneself and is viewed by others. it shapes the capabilities of the individual (sayer, 2011). for example, the administrative clerk develops her financial management skills through doing the budget of her school, feels a sense of accomplishment for doing a complex task and is lauded by the school management team. if she is only restricted to capturing financial data, her financial management capabilities would be limited, her sense of accomplishment would be less than in the previous example and this basic task would not get her much recognition. sayer (2009:1) citing gomberg (2007) argues that: as long as the more satisfying and complex kinds of work are concentrated into a subset of jobs, rather than shared out among all jobs, then many workers will be denied the chance to have meaningful work and the recognition and esteem that goes with it. contributive justice is where workers receive the types of work that enable them to develop their capabilities, receive internal goods of satisfaction and external goods of recognition (sayer, 2011). however, most schools are organised with an unequal division of labour. this unequal division of labour situates the administrative clerk in an occupation that is assigned routine and mundane tasks. they have fewer opportunities for developing their capabilities, gaining satisfaction or receiving recognition. the argument is that the unequal division of labour leads to inequality in the development of capabilities. murphy (1993) cited in sayer (2011) mentions studies that those who do complex work see their capabilities improve over time, whereas those who are subjected to routine work capabilities stagnate and deteriorate. however, i propose that administrative clerks do not let the division of labour dictate their practices, but through their agency, carve out practices that allow them to counter the contributive injustice of their occupation. a focus on agency locates administrative clerks’ daily practice as practice oriented towards personal action and meaning making. in foregrounding school administrative clerk’s agency, i do not deny that they develop certain routine and habitual actions through role internalisation. however, within the everyday complex interplay of people, situations and events, administrative clerks exercise creative expressions of agency even if they are circumscribed and largely discounted. it is apparent that their exercise of agency is coloured by context, relationships, culture and existing spatial practice, aspects of which the analysis below sets out to capture. i am specifically motivated by archer’s position on agency which she views as an outcome of reflexive internal deliberations within oneself around a course of action in relation to personal projects (archer, 2007). these internal conversations and deliberations about personal projects lay the foundation for the production of administrative clerks’ spatial practice. i theorise space using schmid (2008) and zhang and beyes’ (2011) reading of lefebvre. the premise is that human beings produce social space through their everyday spatial practices and they, in turn, are shaped by it. this novel approach shifts the focus from material space to the practices that constitute or produce social space. i forward the argument that administrative clerks exercise agency in their production of space. they are not the only producers of space – certainly the principal and teachers as well as students produce spatial practices – but my focus in this article is on the administrative clerks. lefebvre (1991) argues that social space is produced through three dialectically interconnected processes. the spatial triad of ‘spatial practices,’ ‘representations of space’ and ‘spaces of representation,’ or, ‘perceived’ (production of material), ‘conceived’ (ideological-institutional) and ‘lived’ (symbolicexperienced) space respectively. the triad corresponds to lefebvre’s three-dimensional conceptualisation of social reality: material social practice, language and thought, and the creative poetic act (schmid, 2008). spatial practices are in reference to the material dimension of social activity and interaction. it is the activities, networks, relations, interactions that are constitutive of all spaces. the empirical relationship between the body and its physical environment is referred to as perceived space (lefebvre, 1991:39). perceived space is concrete, tangible and recognised directly through the senses. the representations of space, i.e. conceived space, emerge at the level of discourse and speech and constitute conceptual frameworks of material spaces. these are the maps, plans and organisational charts 67bayat — the spatial practices of school administrative clerks and organograms that aim to structure or construct spaces (schmid, 2008). this is the intellectual and conceptual language or discourse of a particular space. the lived space “dimension denotes the world as human beings experience it through the practice of their everyday life” (schmid, 2008:40). it describes what a particular space means to an individual. representational spaces or lived spaces overlay “physical space, making symbolic use of its objects” (lefebvre, 1991:39). this is the experiential dimension of space. however, it is important to note that the three spaces are not separate realities but rather “features of a single – and ever-changing – reality” (lehtovuori, 2010:55). fiske’s (1988) conceptualisation of the ‘locale’ as the micro level of spatial practice, where those in subordinate positions in society ‘produce’ their own meaning of images and events in everyday life, exemplifies the insertion of agency into the production of space. the locale is the space of agency and ‘little victories’ (fiske, 1988). de certeau (1984) sees space as the micro relations, where the subordinates spatially appropriate their conceived spaces ascribing new meanings to spatial practices. “the work of de certeau … frames the everyday as the sphere of creativeness par excellence …” (brownlie & hewer, 2011:248). thus, users or consumers of space do not passively enter spaces, but produce their own lived space by negotiating, changing and ‘metaphorizing’ spaces, thereby producing singular concretions at the same time that they are subjected to the framing of the conceived space. the “production of space is an embodied process” (zhang & beyes, 2011:17). it is to be found in the moment of bodily action. thus, “bodies …‘produce’ or generate spaces” (mccormack, 2008:1823). what the body does in a particular material space is what the space becomes in that moment. it is what we pay attention to when we research space (zhang & beyes, 2011). there is a generative relationship between space and the bodily movement therein (mccormack, 2008). so my focus on the production of space is on bodily movement, i.e. spatial practice as embodied action. the spatial practices of administrative clerks are dialectically produced. the office space is conceived by educational authorities as a space of routine and mundane activities. the administrative clerks reproduce the objectives of the designers of the conceived space and employ their agency and tactics to construct their personalised spatial practices with their attendant lived space experience. their spatial practices are everyday practices influenced by what is expected of them as well as what they intend to accomplish through their practices. this can lead to spatial practices that have one physical form for the principal, school management team (smt), school governing body (sgb) or educational authorities but multiple meanings for the administrative clerks themselves. social space is thus a spatial production fuelled by both structure and agency, domination and appropriation, and power and resistance (lefebvre, 1991). the production of the spatial practices of administrative clerks is simultaneously fuelled by their conceived, perceived and lived space. my premise is that administrative clerks’ agency gives rise to their creative poetic spatial practice: a new spatial practice, a new meaning for an existing spatial practice or a modification of an old spatial practice. through these novel spatial practices and lived space moments, administrative clerks counter the contributive injustice of the unequal division of labour. in the next section, i briefly introduce the three administrative clerks and their school contexts. thereafter, i identify and discuss three major sets of their spatial practice: spatial practices of care, spatial practices of sway, and spatial practices of surrogacy. these spatial practices reflect their agency in countering the contributive injustice of their occupational role. introducing the spatial practitioners in this section, i introduce the three administrative clerks and their schools. this provides us with the contextual backdrop to make sense of their spatial practices. m has worked at y primary school (yps) since 1999. she started off in the position of personal assistant to the principal and became the school secretary/administrative clerk when the senior administrative clerk retired in 2004. she grew up in the area and attended the school as a child. she has a matric certificate and worked in secretarial and administrative positions for more than ten years before she joined the school. 68 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 she is currently the only administrative clerk at yps. she has a close relationship with the principal, mr k. he is a disciplinarian who runs the school with a firm hand. m is a member of the sgb and acts as both secretary and treasurer to the sgb. she actively participates in its meetings. she is not part of the smt. p was part of the community committee that initiated and urged the educational authorities to establish a primary school in the area. subsequently, he worked at the school soon after the school was established in 2001. he is the more senior of the two administrative clerks at the school. he has a friendly relationship with the principal and with most of the teachers. he is currently a member of the smt. he was previously a member of the sgb and served in the capacity of financial officer which he still occupies even though he has resigned from the sgb. the principal depends on him to do many of his administrative and managerial tasks. p has an honours degree in social development and is currently doing his masters’ degree in public administration at a local university. f has been an administrative clerk since 1997. she has been at her current school since 2002. she is one of two administrative clerks at the school. she serves on the sgb and had previously served on the smt. f handles the school finances. she has a somewhat turbulent relationship with some of the teachers. f has completed an adult basic education and training diploma course and has been teaching adults. she is currently registered for an undergraduate degree in education at a distance learning university. during the course of the research study the incumbent principal resigned and an acting principal was appointed and thus f’s spatial practice became even more important and pivotal. the acting principal relies extensively on her experience and knowledge to manage the school. they have a congenial but not close relationship. the three administrative clerks have many years of experience working in three primary schools that impose different constraints upon their spatial practices. they have served and continue to serve on the smts and sgbs of their schools. i contend that it is their many years of experience, as well as the varied types of work they are engaged in, which has given rise to their spatial practices that will be discussed in the next section. towards contributive justice: the spatial practice of three school administrative clerks the contributive justice thesis emphasises that the work we do affects the extent to which we are able to realise and develop our capacities and gain internal and external goods. in the following section i demonstrate how administrative clerks engage in spatial practices that are instances of agency within a circumscribed role. these spatial practices counter the contributive injustice of the administrative clerks’ role and occupation. spatial practices are the locale of agency and tactics of appropriation. these spatial practices are not only beneficial to the administrative clerks’ development, but are integral and essential for the running of the school. their spatial practices are simultaneously an outcome of their conceived, perceived and lived space. the conceived space refers to the discourses and designs of the educational authorities of what should occur in the school office space. at school, the space designed for the administrative clerk is the school reception, office or administration block. this conceived space forms part of a broader conceptualisation of schools as spaces where the principal does all the strategic planning and thinking and the administrative clerks simply execute all the routine tasks. it is the space where the administrative clerks work is conceived as routine non-essential, non-pedagogic or involving non-strategic tasks. yet, as i show below, this study has found that their hub is vital as a space of thought, creativity and strategy. perceived space refers to the immediate bodily feedback of enacting spatial practices. it refers to those bodily sensations that accompany three spatial practices of the administrative clerks, i.e. their everyday perceptions of the school space. an example of this is their routine response to a student requesting their help. in the spatial practices highlighted below, i provide examples of students’ and teachers’ routine perceptions of the administrative clerks’ spatial practices. lived space is the affect and personal meaning making – the meaning ascribed to the spatial practice. it refers to the affective dimension of their spatial practice. in the next section their affective experiences are described as important to their spatial practices. 69bayat — the spatial practices of school administrative clerks i highlight three sets of spatial practices. these spatial practices of care, sway and surrogacy are particular spatial practices that demonstrate how administrative clerks’ agency in the form of spatial practices dialectically interacts with the conceived space which gives rise to particular lived spaces. it shows how the agency inspired moments of spatial practices operate side by side with the subordination of the administrative clerks. these practices demonstrate instances of spatial practices that counter, but are also intertwined, with the hegemonic conceived space. spatial practices of care ‘spatial practices of care’ refer to the practices of administrative clerks where they interact with students, teachers or the principal, with care and affection in their spatial domains. students regularly come to m when they feel ill and she responds by undertaking a range of practices that reflect her care. this is akin to hochschild’s (1983) emotional labour. she asks them to sit on the couch in the reception foyer and attends to them when able. she touches their foreheads to check their temperatures. if she decides that they are ill she informs the teacher and then, depending on the severity of the illness, informs the parents. sometimes after some attention, students feel better and return to class without further intervention. m’s emotional work is embodied. this means that she responds to students’ cries for help with motherly postures and expressions. p has assisted a number of novice teachers and helped them with their assignments. he reads their assignments and gives them feedback. he even assisted a teacher in preparing lessons related to budgeting and accounting. he also assisted teachers with word processing and using the computer lab. his caring for the students extends to him prodding and urging the principal to do more to improve the quality of teaching at the school, which sometimes leads to a fractious relationship with the principal. he expressed that he felt he had let down the school when he resigned from the sgb. he is always ready to go the extra mile because he cares about the students. the school is facing a great deal of social problems and he is currently participating in the school as a sign of node care and support (snocs) initiative. he says that students are being abused sexually, emotionally, physically and verbally. snocs aims to identify these students and help them. he is involved in several community projects that aim to uplift the community around and within the school. f also engages in practices of care. commenting on an interaction where she had played a significant role in the decision taken, she describes her lived space experience: “yes, at the end of the day you also feel good because you were helping someone else and not just that you doing the job. and you doing it because it’s your passion and it is your work”. f cares about the students and receives them warmly when they come to pay their school fees. she is welcoming if they request any assistance and sees herself as contributing to their development. she says: “i like working with the learners and … [when] one or two or some learners come visit that was at the school and finished with high school and … tell you that they achieved so much in life, you feel … you were a part of their education, you feel so good”. she also provides the sgb chairperson with food and spent many afternoons making the sgb chairperson feel comfortable in her new position. poor students receive food and money from m. in one incident she bought a pair of shoes for a needy student. she provides support for the teachers, giving information about educational authority-related matters such as issues regarding salaries or how to access the web-based integrated school administration and management system. all of these practices go beyond her job description. pedagogic support a subset of their practices of care is their pedagogic support for students. when students come to m’s office complaining about other students, m tries to teach them to be fair and kind towards one another. she models good behaviour to them. when students are hungry or she knows that their parents are in need, she provides money or food and assigns the hungry students to receive food from the school kitchen. m’s school is a bilingual school that has many foreign language speakers. the policy of the school states that foreign students must not be placed in bilingual english and afrikaans classes. when she 70 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 encountered a foreign learner who had been placed in a bilingual class, she immediately brought the matter to the attention of the head of department (hod), who moved the learner to the english class. p’s pedagogic concern extends to leading and coaching students outside of the school curriculum and formal structures about being aware of their bodies and themselves. he acts as a life skills mentor. his involvement in such activities is based on his personal project of wanting to make a difference in his community. this is what drives him in many of his spatial practices. f regularly assists students with their projects especially where they need information from the internet. she would search and download information for them even consulting with their teachers to ascertain what information they needed. m, f and p produce these spatial practices of care because they perceive the “school as a home away from home”. although their principals consider their spatial practices as contributing toward a better functioning school, for them, these spatial practices make them feel better about themselves and who they are or want to be. this means that they derive internal goods of satisfaction from embodying spatial practices of care. in producing a caring social space they are appropriating the office space and using their agency to transform it through their bodily action into spaces of care, hope and potential. they are poaching conceived spaces with their tactical spatial practice. through their spatial practices of care, these three administrative clerks simultaneously embody their workspaces as spaces of care and work. spatial practices of sway ‘practices of sway’ are practices where the administrative clerks manoeuvre themselves into positions where their everyday practices allow them to transform moments of their spatial practice into moments of influence. these spatial practices are deliberate manoeuvres by the three administrative clerks to influence decisions at school. it includes coaxing, lobbying and negotiating. f lobbied and was influential with a previous principal who allowed her to be part the smt meetings. he needed her insight and support as he was new to the school. via his support she attended and influenced the school management. she remarks about the influence she used to have: “… the … senior teacher comes in – ‘nee juffrou, ek gaan nou eers my regterhand vra’ [no teacher, i am first going to ask my right hand]. then he will call me in: mrs f, what do you think of the idea? what should we do now?” this previous principal acknowledged that she used her position on the smt to influence decisions that improved the effectiveness of the management of the school. once he left, she lost much of her direct influence on the smt, yet she continued to influence the school management in more subtle ways. for instance, f proposed that mr p, a retired educational authority official who had been the institutional management and governance (img) manager assigned to the school, attend the recruitment and selection meetings to ensure that the school followed the educational authorities’ policies and procedures. f not only briefs the sgb chairperson before sgb meetings on the correct policies and procedures, but also on what she can expect from the principal and teachers. she acts as an ‘unofficial’ adviser to the chairperson. she has influence in the sgb meetings since she is responsible for school finance, which includes drawing up the budget. she also influences the sgb by proposing how the funds should be spent. she is very forthright in the meetings having developed her confidence over her many years of experience. f’s spatial practices of influence and sway were evident when she tactically manoeuvred herself to appropriate the school office spaces (sgb and smt meetings) as spheres of influence for herself. these opportunities for self-development, satisfaction and recognition have increased especially with the appointment of the acting principal who now relies upon her for direction and guidance. m also embodies practices of sway. she has made herself indispensable to the principal and teachers through the spatial practice of doing some of their administrative and even personal tasks. this seems to be a tactic that all the school administrative clerks embody. they are prepared to do extra tasks, whether through subtle coercion or through commitment, which gives them room to negotiate influence within their social spaces. 71bayat — the spatial practices of school administrative clerks m describes her influence on decision making in the school saying: “mr k [the principal] won’t have me in the school management team meetings but he … discuss(es) what was discussed at the meeting or ask(s) me, ‘have you got money for this’ or ‘what do you think of this’… so i play a huge part in the decision making”. m’s school is a fee-paying school. according to the south african schools act 1996 (sasa), parents can apply for a full or partial exemption from school fees. m’s official task is to record all the applications and present them to the sgb. however, her practice goes beyond this expectation. she has developed techniques and tactics to gather information about parents who apply for the fee exemption, noting among other things the quality of their clothing and the cars that they drive. during the fee exemption application process studies the bodily practices of the parent applicants when they deliver their fee exemption documents as well as observing their children’s attire to ascertain their financial status. she then produces a comprehensive summary of what that family or individual should receive in terms of a fee exemption. once she has gathered all the relevant documents, as prescribed by the sasa, she presents her data along with her interpretation and recommendation regarding an exemption based on her visual analysis of the bodily movements of parents, students and the spaces they occupy. p has been influential both on the sgb and the smt. he requested to be on the smt even though this is conceived as the teachers’ and principal’s space. he says: “i asked ... to be part of the smt and the intention was that being an administrative clerk is not challenging for me and it doesn’t give me any opportunity, maybe to give my views on the way the school is being run.” once on the smt, he influenced the principal’s decision to adopt a standard agenda for the smt meeting. on the sgb, he worked tirelessly to inform the parent governors about correct policy and procedure. whenever they would decide something that was contrary to the education authorities’ policies, he would explain why that decision was incorrect. for example, with the appointment of a second deputy principal, the sgb wanted to appoint a junior teacher, even though there was a more senior teacher who was qualified for the post. he intervened and explained to them that this was not correct procedure. he exerted his influence and experience on the sgb to ensure that the new post selection was done correctly. however, because he felt that the principal was commandeering the sgb, he stepped down from the sgb. f was on the smt and is currently on the sgb. she remarked that teachers and even the principal did not follow the local educational authorities’ policies and procedures. the school had experienced money going missing and many procedures were being ignored. she said that she constantly had to fight the tendency by staff to do their own thing, especially if it was contrary to the educational authorities’ policies. she says she would reproach them: “… you don’t come with you[r] knoeiery [cheating and corruption] and then i must go and explain to the [education] department this and that. i am not going to do that and i am not going to allow it. when i see, i see right through you. don’t come with an agenda and i say it just like that in the meeting”. this shows the extent of her influence. m acts as a sensitive conduit between the principal and the teachers, where she selectively communicates the information that she informally acquires, to the principal. sometimes she omits information that she knows will upset the conservative principal in order to keep the organisational climate favourable. f passes on important ‘insider’ information to the new sgb chairperson not only to socialise, but also to alert her to vested interests in school decisions. but f also does it so that she may have influence with the sgb chairperson. p’s son attends the school, so he cares about the school’s success. he constantly passes on information to the principal in the hope that the principal will consider some of these suggestions (for instance, doing something about the poor annual national assessment scores of the school’s students). when p was a member of the sgb he made it his duty to inform parents of what was happening in the school, at a day-to-day level, so that they could make ‘better’, more informed decisions. all three administrative clerks have been given or have taken responsibility for financial matters at the school. through their ‘control’ of the purse strings, they influence financial decisions. whenever the principal wants to access petty cash, he has to go via the administrative clerk. teachers know that they will have to go via the administrative clerk if they want to solicit petty cash for purchases or local travel related to the school. 72 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 these spatial practices of sway reveal the tactics they employ to increase their participation in decision making. it demonstrates how they have extended the range of their tasks in order to develop their capabilities and gain internal and external goods. from the above, we note that the administrative clerks engage in a multitude of spatial practices despite the limited tasks assigned to their occupational role and, in so doing, counter the contributive injustice of their ghetto occupation. practices of surrogacy ‘practices of surrogacy’ refer to those practices where the administrative clerks act as a substitute for the principal or the management of the school. these spatial practices include making management-related decisions when the principal is absent as well as making important management-related decisions while the principal is present at school. when the principal is physically absent, all three school administrative clerks are able to reproduce the spatial practices required. this also applies to when the principal does not do his job. for example, p will gather and compile the documents that the educational authorities require and make sure they are correct and submit them to the correct recipient. when the principal is absent, m and f support the deputies and hods, if the latter are not familiar with the task at hand. f is an important surrogate for the acting principal when she is faced with something with which she does not have experience. all of the school administrative clerks know the requirements of the educational authorities and their principals well enough to be able to act on their behalf. whenever the administrative clerk is absent from the school, the principal and even the teachers complain when they return. one of the teachers commented: “if [the administrative clerk were to] leave now … i think we will be lost …” this is because so many of their tasks cannot be done without information or insight from the administrative clerk. their spatial practices have become integral to the work of the other stakeholders at school. when p was absent from the school for a few days due to study leave, he came back to school and found that the requisite forms for the submission of the financial subsidy application for grade r, that had been due while he was on leave, had not been submitted. even though this task is the responsibility of the principal, he waited for the administrative clerk to do it. the reason he did not do it was because p had exercised his agency and done many of the principal’s work in the past and now the principal had become reliant on him. p does the finances even though he is not officially the financial officer. he also assists in the computer laboratory as the local area network administrator, helps with the school policy documentation, helps administer the school feeding scheme and assists with fundraising. all these activities are not part of his contracted work description but derive from the fact that the principal or the responsible person is not doing his or her job. at the sgb meetings, p endeavoured to inform parents about their rights and responsibilities as well as the policies and procedures of the educational authorities. he acted as their facilitator. this is the responsibility of the principal and the educational authorities but he stepped in. he transformed the sgb meeting space to include a pedagogic space. the img manager responsible for p’s school says that p is practically “running the school”. f does the management-related tasks that are necessary at the school, even though these tasks are not part of her remit, taking on some of the responsibilities of the acting principal. because the school does not have sufficient students to qualify for a deputy principal, she does some of what would have been the deputy principal’s work. this arises out of her need to extend her capabilities but is chiefly a response to the urgency and immediacy of the situation at school. this sense of immediacy of problems that crop up at school is what honed the spatial practices of surrogacy of the administrative clerks. in the aftermath of funds going missing from the school premises, f insisted that nobody else be allowed to deal with finance matters at school other than her. despite grumbling from some of the teachers, she was given this responsibility and most of them are satisfied with her financial management. f’s spatial practices extend outside the school sphere. she is the coordinator of the school’s fundraising efforts. she has coordinated the high tea fundraiser of the school for the past few years. she raised about 73bayat — the spatial practices of school administrative clerks r25 000, which is the biggest fundraising contribution on the budget. she visited donors to collect donated goods and to drop off letters of thanks. this takes place both during school hours and in her personal time. because principals have to see to many different responsibilities, the administrative clerks sometimes fulfil the managerial school requirements and the on-the-ground activities of the school. in doing all of these management-related tasks, the administrative clerks’ spatial practices counter the inherent contributive injustice of their occupational role. these spatial practices complement their existing capabilities as well as help them to develop new capabilities. this self-development affords them respect and recognition from their peers. main conclusions i used the normative framework of contributive justice to analyse the spatial practices of administrative clerks in public schools in the western cape. i found that even though administrative clerks were thought of as non-teachers and non-managers their spatial practices included pedagogic and managerial practices. even though administrative clerks suffered contributive injustice through the unequal division of labour of their occupational role, which relegated them to doing mundane and routine tasks, they countered this injustice and engaged in complex practices that led to self-development, self-satisfaction and recognition by those around them. this article confirms that administrative clerks are producers of, as much as they are positioned by their school space. as producers of their social spaces, i argue that they counter the unequal division of labour which denies them opportunities for self-development, satisfaction and recognition. in producing their personal, yet social spaces, they reflect their reflexively arrived at personal projects. they do not resist the contributive injustice inherent in their occupational role merely to counter managerial control, they resist to achieve self-development and to gain internal rewards of satisfaction and external rewards of recognition by their peers. through their spatial practices of care, sway and surrogacy the school administrative clerks countered the contributive injustice – by using their spatial practices to generate new spatial relationships with the teachers, students and principals. this led to their deep participation in the school and substantial benefits for the functioning of the school. their novel spatial practices can be seen as personal projects that they want to see come to fruition at school as well as reactions to the spatial practices of the principal, teachers or the educational authorities representatives. administrative clerks, as they go along every day, change their spatial practices, invent new ones, and appropriate existing spatial practices. as they do that, they deploy their agency toward an imagined space – a space of possibility. through their creative acts of bringing about new practices in the midst of existing spatial practice, they have appropriated and transformed their spaces of work into spaces of care, and in doing so they have transformed their spaces of subordination into potential spaces of participation. administrative clerks’ occupational role provides them with lowly tasks which limit their ability for self-development. yet, this investigation into their spatial practice shows them to be active agents, i.e. active readers, interpreters, articulators of space while simultaneously still having to reproduce the demands of their conceived space. this research demonstrates that administrative clerks, even as they occupy marginalised positions, engage in spatial practices that increase their capabilities, recognition and participation. it demonstrates that the lived spaces of administrative clerks are filled with little victories. one of the most important findings is that the administrative clerks’ spatial practices, with tangible effects, are precisely successful because it is unrecognised and remains invisible. if it becomes visible, it may be shut down and troubled by the authorities. i view their spaces as spaces of enablement, operating in the shadows. administrative clerks are placed in particular spaces and are expected to enact particular spatial practices. yet, they have agency (however circumscribed) and embody subjective understandings of their spatial practices amidst institutional expectations. in this study m, f and p creatively embody spatial practices that reflect citizenship behaviour, kindness and care while, at the same time, being very competent at the work that they are required to do. in doing so, they counter the contributive injustice of their occupational role and make space for contributive justice in their schools. 74 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 acknowledgement the author wishes to thank the national research foundation (thuthuka) for providing funding for the research. references archer ms 2007. making our way through the world: human reflexivity and social mobility. cambridge: cambridge university 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whitchurch c & london c 2004. administrative managers – a critical link. higher education quarterly, 58(4):280-298. zhang z & beyes t 2011. a different lefebvre: the everyday production of organizational space. proceedings of the 7th cms conference, naples 11-13 july, 1-44. retrieved on 23 february 2012 from http://www.organizzazione.unina.it/cms7/proceedings/proceedings_stream_19/zhang_ and_ beyes.pdf. 122021 39(1): 12-28 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 resetting education priorities during covid-19: towards equitable learning opportunities through inclusion and equity abstract worldwide, covid-19 has affected the most deprived communities the hardest and exposed many systemic inequalities, leaving nations vulnerable and destitute. the need for quality education, while heeding to international mandates, including enacting the sustainable development goals (sdg), has become more apparent in promoting equitable and inclusive education for all, which remains a challenge in south africa with its inherited inequalities. the purpose of this study was to understand how the covid-19 challenge refocused the commitment of five principals from rural schools in two education districts of the northern cape province of south africa to address resurfaced historic inequalities, including digital access and fluency to attain an equitable learning environment. semi-structured emailed interviews were conducted with the participants. a thematic analysis of their experiences of the pandemic through the lens of flexible learning theory, revealed that teachers and learners often experienced discrimination-related stress, especially with virtual learning approaches, as schools often cannot offer remote services to advance learning. furthermore, the participants voiced their uncompromising commitment to inclusion while engaging teachers and learners in identifying possible problems and proposing solutions post-covid-19. though the current crisis seems to have perpetuated and deepened existing inequalities in disadvantaged rural south african schools, some school principals are hopeful that as the reality has now been laid bare, it may prompt more urgent action. the paper recommends that school principals and teachers will have to refocus teaching practices towards flexible, inclusively delivered teaching through working collaboratively across disciplines so that they build their personal resilience and advance their technological skills to meet the demands of remote and online learning during a pandemic and beyond. keywords: covid-19; flexible learning theory; inclusion and equity; inclusive learning cultures; sustainable development goals (sdg); virtual learning approaches. author: dr e.d. de klerk1 dr j.m. palmer2 affiliation: 1sol plaatje university, south africa 2central university of technology, south africa doi: http://dx.doi. org/10.18820/2519593x/pie. v39.i1.2 e-issn 2519-593x perspectives in education 2021 39(1): 12-28 published: 12 march 2021 received: 10 november 2020 accepted: 27 january 2021 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 http://orcid.org/0000-000333-0218-5371 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 132021 39(1): 13-28 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 de klerk & palmer resetting education priorities during covid-19 1. introduction education is broadly known as an indispensable apparatus for growth, a means of attaining equal opportunities, inclusion of the marginalised – an additional influential transformative power to support human rights, accomplishing sustainability and building a better future for all (united nations educational, scientific and cultural organization [unesco], 2017a). launched in 2015, the 2030 agenda with its sustainable development goals (sdgs) offers a structure that all united nations (un) member states vowed to achieve (united nations [un], 2015). the sdgs are a worldwide agenda that comprise numerous, possibly differing policy objectives, relevant to the environmental, economic and social spheres, considering that some goals are reciprocally supportive (kroll, warchold & pradhan, 2019). sustainable development goal 4 (sdg4), which aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (un, 2015) will serve as a guide for this paper to unpack how school principals may enact transformative, inclusive learning cultures in their schools. according to unesco (2017a), sdg 4 can be interpreted as ensuring more equitable access to all stages of education, including people from poverty-stricken areas as well as effective learning to acquire applicable knowledge and competencies. significantly, the sustainable development goals report indicated that, before the covid-19 pandemic, development (also in sdg4) remained uneven and that the world is not on track to meet the sdgs by 2030 (un, 2015). lately, owing to covid-19, causing visible and aggravated prevailing disparities and inequalities in education resulting in an unparalleled financial, social and educational catastrophe has increased the challenges in attaining sdgs. in terms of achieving inclusion and equity in rural schools, the addition of alternative distant teaching, buttressed by the provisioning of digital access, did not ensure that many individuals would immediately be digitally fluent. the supposition of digital confidence, for teachers and learners, in the absence of familiar use, became a supplementary obstacle to inclusion (czerniewicz et al., 2020). this was documented as the largest intimidation in terms of online learning and teaching. the acquisition of digital literacy skills became difficult to fully pursue and, given the restricted resources and time, constant digital challenges morphed into new forms of educational inequalities (chinembiri, 2020). harris and jones’s observation, “that in order to connect to learn, teachers need to learn to connect” (2012: 8) describes the everyday truths of learners and teachers who try to work collectively during this pandemic. in ensuring equitable learning opportunities, particularly for underprivileged learners amid covid-19, it is unavoidable that rural school principals should re-learn their conceptions about leadership to foster inclusive learning environments (lambrecht et al., 2020; makoelle, 2020). certain complex issues continue to complicate the work of rural school principals to promote inclusive learning (nilholm, 2020) including an understanding of how to build an inclusive learning environment through differentiated instruction. as such, this paper addresses the question: how can rural school principals foster equitable learning spaces through equity and inclusion during and post-covid-19? 2. equity and inclusion in inclusive learning cultures to build inclusive learning cultures, there should be a fundamental focus on fostering equity and inclusion (organisation for economic co-operation and development [oecd], 2018). equity is considered a universally just attitude, which carries the impression that the philosophies of justice are agreed on an initial condition that is fair (chroust, 1942). there are indications http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 142021 39(1): 14-28 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) of an augmented awareness in the idea of constructing education that is more equitable and inclusive. however, some confusion exists as to the activities required to move practices and policy forward (ainscow, 2020). scholars agree that the application of fairness, individual and social conditions, may be impediments to attaining the scholastic potential (rawls, 1971 as cited in kelly & elliot-kelly, 2018). obstacles to educational equity are relatively easy to mention, but rather difficult to overcome, especially in times of a global pandemic. garcia and weiss (2020) posit that equity challenges during covid-19 raise questions of teacher efficacy (ferguson et al., 2020), if adequate mechanisms to identify struggling learners exist and how lost learning and teaching time is measured (garcia, 2020). it is, therefore, imperative that school principals seize the opportunity to restructure plans to fostering inclusion and equity (starr, 2020). although the focus on inclusivity has been amplified, barriers such as teacher competencies (abdrasheva et al., 2016) and readiness to deal with inclusion and diversity in classrooms, exist (scalcione, almurzayeva & shynkeyeva, 2016). when covid-19 ambushed the world, it exposed glaring unequal teaching practices including online and blended learning, which increasingly contribute to educational exclusion (unesco, 2020). 3. the impact of covid-19 in fostering equitable learning opportunities covid-19 is construed as a “wake-up call” that has reshaped the intersections of equity, inclusion, teaching and learning online and ultimately how school principals will respond to the influence of this pandemic on education (czerniewicz, 2020). whilst some teaching and learning activities continued through digital technology (zhang et al., 2020), some schools were challenged with poor internet access, lack of ict knowledge, a reduced system structure and faintness of content expansion (almaiah, al-khasawneh & althunibat, 2020). furthermore, issues such as corporeal detachment and inadequate opportunities to reach and connect, as well as emotional distress exacerbated existing barriers to teaching and learning (huber & helm, 2020). school leadership practices that foster inclusive, multidimensional learning will require new programmes that sufficiently include leadership actions that create equitable learning opportunities for all learners (leifler, 2020). arakal (2020) contends that the aim of creating equitable learning opportunities should be to promote mastery of the relevant competence development that will be feasible only when learners have the flexibility to pursue learning beyond the artificial boundaries set by an academic calendar and formal assessment. to this end, teachers should vigorously engage in activities such as pre-class preparation, post-class reflection, assignment delivery and project mentoring (arakal, 2020). in a study on flexible learning as an instructional modality during covid-19, cortes (2020) found that learners were elated at the prospect of flexible learning. learners embraced the programme because the learning activities they engaged in provided opportunities for authentic learning, active learning and learner autonomy. in a similar study, learners were confident that they could easily adapt to new learning methods if teachers inspire flexible and equitable learning spaces (amir et al., 2020). covid-19 requires transformation in the way teaching and learning have been perceived, and, therefore, this historical moment poses for the need to conduct studies that explore http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 152021 39(1): 15-28 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 de klerk & palmer resetting education priorities during covid-19 educational directions as far as resetting educational priorities and reconceptualization of the learning space are concerned (cahapay, 2020). 4. theoretical framework flexible learning represents scholastic ideas concerned with providing learners with opportunities of how, what and when learning happens (shurville, o’grady & mayall, 2008). this implies that teachers should implement a learner-centred educational strategy that offers a range of choices from the location and time of learning to learning activities, resources, instructional methods as well as educational support for learners and teachers (huang et al., 2020). such a strategy may be an ideal adaptive response to radically changing situational demands, such as covid-19, and may be regarded as the flexible application of knowledge in new contexts (huang et al., 2020). flexible learning incorporates an element of transactional distance encouraging teacher and learner interaction, the arrangement of instructional programmes and learners’ selfdirectedness (moore, 1990). first, flexible learning requires specific behavioural attributes. second, structure indicates the inflexibility or tractability of the programme’s didactic goals, the teaching strategies and the capacity for differentiation. third, learner self-directedness is the extent to which the learner may determine the objectives, experiences and evaluate decisions of the learning programme. we argue that an application of flexible learning theory in this paper is relevant as learners and teachers may be equipped to improve their competencies and make their learning productive and dynamic. flexible learning provides skills to individuals to plan their actions according to their importance, occupy their minds with positive thoughts, removed from external fear while promoting equitable, quality education (joan, 2013). thus, when individuals, “function within and act under conditions of unavoidable uncertainty” (shulman, 2005: 13), the aim should be to flexibly, “provide effective and inclusive education, during pandemics [such as] covid-19” (huang et al., 2020: 1). school principals should motivate stakeholders to think beyond their circumstances and include them in educational actions that challenge the taken-for-granted expectations of learning. in this way, tasks may be executed more carefully to imitate the situations in which education specialists act (cassidy et al., 2016). learning may transpire in different ways, including online learning (virtual classes offered over the internet); e-learning (applying automated skills to access an instructive curriculum outside of a conventional classroom) and m-learning (a form of distance education where mobile device educational technology is used) (joan, 2013). 5. research design this paper employed a qualitative research approach. busetto, wick and gumbinger (2020) assert that qualitative research studies the realities of individuals and is particularly suitable for responding to questions about what works for whom, why, how and when, whilst concentrating on enhancement of intervention programmes (valverde-berrocoso et al., 2020). a qualitative research approach was apt for this paper for its distinct emphasis on responsivity, openness and flexibility to context (russell & gregory, 2003). fossey et al. (2002: 717) reiterate that “sampling, data collection, analysis and interpretation are related, rather than following one after another in a stepwise approach”. semi-structured email interviews were conducted, containing open-ended questions in afrikaans and english, which were then emailed to the participants (mcgrath, palmgren & http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 162021 39(1): 16-28 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) lijedahl, 2019). the participants’ home language is afrikaans, although they were also able to converse in english. due to safety regulations and because of challenges sometimes experienced with zoom or microsoft teams, the best possible mode of engagement was through email interviewing. email interviews are online, semi-structured and asynchronous low-cost instruments, which offer participants relative privacy and afford participants time to reflect on research questions in their own free time (james, 2016). semi-structured interviews (dejonckheere & vaughn, 2019) encouraged two-way communication and allowed enough time to the participants to open up about their experiences during covid-19 and provided qualitative data to compare with previous and future data. a multiple case study design was used as five schools were purposively identified for data gathering to capture the real-life experiences of school principals in rural areas (baxter & jack, 2008). creswell postulates that a multiple case study, “explores a real-life, contemporary bounded system (a case) or multiple bounded systems (cases) over time, through detailed, in depth data collection involving multiple sources of information and reports a case description and case themes” (2013: 97). multiple case studies can be applied to either calculate conflicting outcomes for anticipated reasons or predict comparable outcomes in research projects (yin, 2011; 2017) and in this way the findings may be validated as authentic and valuable (gustafsson, 2017). this qualitative case study was undertaken from the view of relativist ontology, as the researchers believe that there is no impartial world or facts, because everything is comparative and generated by people (guba & lincoln, 1994). the world and the truth of the participants’ experiences about education priorities during covid-19 reflect products of their own mind and creations of their individual thinking. 5.1 population and sampling the focus of the study was on rural school principals in the northern cape province of south africa. five school principals from different rural schools in two education districts were purposively selected. the principals’ experiences ranged from three to ten years. purposive sampling is valuable when the research is angled towards an explicit case and when academic scholars know what they want to do research on (barglowski, 2018). the sampling procedure was thorough in choosing the precise collection of participants in order to circumvent deceptive findings that may not epitomise the populace being studied (yount, 2006). the selection was based on the geographical location (rural location) of the schools and five principals were interviewed and pseudonyms were ascribed. 5.2 data analysis after the email interviews were completed, the entire conversations were pasted onto an ms word document. the participants were identified through a two-step coding process (fritz & vandermause, 2018) and thematic analysis was used to analyse the data to provide a comprehensive, sensible clarification of the respondents’ lived experience (riessman, 2008). the researchers worked through all the transcriptions to develop an original coding structure that they critically assessed. the data were coded in order to capture the significances of proclamations and the codes were scrutinised to recognise relationships and patterns. thematic analysis is advantageous in that the methodical procedures include the explanation of the recognised themes, exploring dissimilarities and comparisons between the themes, connecting the participants’ distinct experiences to the broader social framework and connecting the interpretations to the literature (nowell et al., 2017). http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 172021 39(1): 17-28 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 de klerk & palmer resetting education priorities during covid-19 5.3 trustworthiness and ethical considerations qualitative research frequently lends itself to the potential of researcher bias as researchers collect and analyse data (miles & huberman, 1994). reducing the potential for researcher bias is the ideal and may be achieved by dynamically linking the research participant in inspecting and authorising the results, a process known as member-checking (doyle, 2007). such member-checking is regarded as a mechanism of maintaining credibility (merriam, 2009). the researchers applied member-checking by returning the interview transcriptions as well as written findings and conclusions to the principals via email to validate its accuracy and assess the trustworthiness of the results. the email interviews were conducted in afrikaans and english to ensure that the respondents understood all the questions and to allow them to verbalise themselves completely and in-depth, therefore ensuring more credible accounts of their realities. informed consent was obtained from the participants and the northern cape department of education. preceding the interviews, researchers engaged participants in a short discussion via zoom where they were informed about the purpose of the study. participants consented voluntarily to partake in the study and for the conversations and email responses to be transcribed and used (mcgrath, palmgren & lijedahl, 2019). 6. findings scholars acknowledge that the notion of inclusive education has moved beyond uniquely referring to persons with special educational needs (sen) to extend to all persons at risk of exclusion or marginalisation in society. the inclusion of learners in disadvantaged rural communities facing poverty and potential learning difficulty, is the focus of this paper. three overarching questions shaped the data collection and analysis: • how would you characterise the learning that takes place in your school? what type(s) of learning approaches were implemented during the covid-19 pandemic? • what teaching strategies help to increase the participation and achievement of all children, including those identified as having special educational needs or requiring additional support for learning? • which examples of inclusive pedagogy can you cite that was useful for teachers to support learners? several themes related to flexible, inclusive learning cultures and promoting inclusion and equity were derived from the data and included (1) principals’ commitment to inclusion and equity; (2) fostering inclusive learning cultures and (3) principals advancing flexible learning and practising care. 6.1 principals’ commitment to inclusion and equity as nations continue to navigate the covid-19 pandemic, school principals face the enormous responsibility of ensuring the well-being of staff and learners, while ensuing quality delivery of education priorities. although principal chris indicated that he frequently felt overwhelmed by the pressures of his job at this time, he added that they created opportunities for learners to be included in teaching and learning activities. what we tried to do was to use workbooks for subjects, inform parents what to do and learners were afforded opportunities to complete certain activities. the books were http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 182021 39(1): 18-28 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) collected once a week for marking, keeping all safety protocols in consideration. we are not a big school, so this was easy. principal chris’s action indicates a teaching and learning transaction to ensure inclusivity. first, access to resources may positively influence learners’ willingness to learn and enable them to learn at their own pace (tety, 2016). second, schools’ efforts to ensure inclusion by supplying learning materials to learners may enable them to feel a sense of belonging within the constraints imposed by the pandemic (oecd, 2020). principals were unanimous about learner disadvantage but were optimistic regarding their goal to create inclusive learning environments. principal jodie mentioned that people do not always acknowledge that, although inclusivity is difficult to achieve, the possibilities are endless. some learners experience a lot of psychological and psycho-social problems. but we expected this. with the help of the department of education, motivational pamphlets were distributed in the community and we asked parents to use our whatsapp group to tell us about learners’ behaviour and how they engage with learning activities at home. the province of nova scotia in canada concedes that this kind of interest in learners’ wellbeing is important because “inclusive education is a commitment to ensuring a high-quality, culturally and linguistically responsive and equitable education to support the well-being and achievement of every student” (2019: 1). principal manny expressed his appreciation to the department of education (doe) for the support it provides in terms of resources and promoting inclusivity. they especially help us with learning material for learners with special education needs. this is difficult, but at least we are trying out something to ensure that these learners and their parents feel part of our teaching and learning efforts in these times. generally, these kinds of efforts are framed within a belief that, “diversity, be it based on ability, racial, cultural or linguistic communities, socioeconomic status or gender identity, is valued and that a quality education for all students is a human right” (unesco, 2017b). it is evident that in an effort to promote inclusion and equity during covid-19, this principal embraced a commitment to dismantling exclusions that are representative of academic oppression of individuals with special educational needs (slee, 2019). principal grace added that her school is a multi-grade school and that they receive curriculum support from the department of basic education (dbe) with regard to planning, limited educational resources and books. she mentioned: the teachers received tablets from a mobile operator and were trained how to use it. teachers use the tablets as an additional source for teaching. it should be borne in mind that multi-grade schools are disadvantaged in that we have to cover the same amount of content in the curriculum as other schools. principal grace indicated that the school governing body (sgb) approved that teachers may use the tablets adding: “when teaching went online, the educators continued working with their tablets. an educator has been appointed to monitor the use of tablets as well as access to the school’s wi-fi within the school premises.” the use of tablets, seemed to have helped the teachers to gain competences to design programmes so that they could prepare to work with learners with diverse learning needs, including those who need additional learning http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 192021 39(1): 19-28 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 de klerk & palmer resetting education priorities during covid-19 support. notably, organising and using digital technology may assist with the alignment of learning content and existing curricula while providing teachers with a way to ensure that learning opportunities correspond to educational objectives of inclusion and equity (ali, 2020). challenges associated with teaching and learning amid covid-19 raise significant issues about the quality of education provided in rural schools. notwithstanding this fact, principal steve noted that learning becomes “easy” amid the disadvantaged learners’ experience: we also invite different community leaders to share their experiences and insights with the learners, like on world-events, the current epidemic and they even participate in penpal partnerships and inter-school activities with local and international schools. further probing revealed that learners were encouraged to share their experiences by writing to learners from other schools. principal steve elaborated: we organised with schools in our area and some contacts abroad that learners write about their experiences so that we learn from such experiences, to see what others do to improve learning. the teachers retype learners’ letters and forwarded it to schools. alawamleh, al-twait and al-saht (2020) reiterate the importance of knowledge and information exchange whilst it has the ability to improve individuals’ learning experiences. such activities may contribute to the acquisition of knowledge and creativity in addressing the needs of learners (leifler, 2020). 6.2 fostering inclusive learning cultures to the question on the teaching strategies utilised to help intensify the involvement and attainment of all learners, including those requiring additional learning support, principal manny answered: visual learning is very effective in our situation. i encourage teachers to sometimes send short video clips to learners’ parents to show them at home and parents are asked to share those videos in case others don’t get it from the teachers. we hold the view that such an inclusive approach may contribute to transformation that embraces social justice (ngwenyama, 1991 as cited in dube, 2020). sharing these sentiments, principal grace mentioned: we realised that the use of tablets to make teaching and learning interesting is very functional, particularly for learners with physical disabilities; we use it to improve their reading skills, as well as their creative and critical abilities. we probed principal grace on how the use of tablets by learners are managed. principal grace circumvented this question therefore we speculate that learners may not be in possession of tablets. since learners are at home because of the lockdown, tablets might have been used only at the school. in contrast, principal jodie said: “because our learners are mostly physically challenged an acceptable amount of interest is being shown when it comes to homework and test dates.” principal steve was convinced that it is the school principals who should determine the direction and learning culture within schools. he said adamantly: the onus is on us to ensure that all learners have equal opportunities to learn, we have to be the creators and directors of their learning. we focus on their abilities and not http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 202021 39(1): 20-28 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) their inabilities and parents should help with this by telling us what works or not for their children. mcclain-nhlapo and d’addio (2020) assert that such accountability contributes to inclusivity. by insisting parents are accountable to the school, positive and pro-social attitudes are cultivated. this may also contribute to showing acceptance and appreciation of ideas and being sensitive to the educational needs of learners. before covid-19, many schools adopted the use of digital technology. principal chris reflected on the online teaching situation at her school, proclaiming: during the covid-crisis my teachers were available for their learners and parents on whatsapp. also, we were lucky at our school, because we use a programme called future fun caps even before the lockdown period. on the other side, some teachers engage with learners on whatsapp and aid learning through the use of facebook messenger. the capacity for shifting teaching strategies and pace stand out as a valued source of inclusivity and equity (anderson, 2011 as cited in rapanta et al., 2020). principal chris concluded: “this was by no means easy because we were so careful about what we have to do to include learners and also what learners should be doing to learn.” 6.3 principals advancing flexible learning cultures and care school principals are liable for interceding between extremely multifaceted demands of inclusive education and the structures at the particular school within their range of action, including the distribution of resources and development of lesson improvement, as well as nurturing collaboration between teachers and other academic employees. it appears that principals who embrace an inclusive learning culture, value and respect difference and empower learners to reach their full potential. moreover, school principals in inclusive schools must ensure the improvement of learning opportunities for all (lambrecht et al., 2020) by communicating with and supporting their stakeholders. this may be achieved through encouraging inclusive behaviours by fostering high expectations of learners and implementing more effective instructional practices to close the achievement gap. with respect to flexible learning opportunities, principal jodie indicated that they are very sensitive to learners’ learning needs as they recognise that not all learners learn at the same pace. she mentions pertinently: “the use of technology is particularly useful for learners with physical disabilities – it provides them a sense of belonging and that they have something which they can master.” although principal jodie regarded the use of technology as significant, tasks online demand time, effort and resources. this led principal jodie to remark: “the idea of flexible learning is good, but is never easy, but we try because resources and teacher skills are real problems.” principal steve retorted that they use what they can: “we use messages, whatsapp and emails for those parents who have. we make assignment easier to accommodate everyone and the teachers have to learn how to adapt”. with little or no warning, teachers had to transition to an online environment. in tandem with shifting learning and teaching to the online sphere, school cultures have also moved online, and the challenge remains to maintain their vitality. principal manny said: i would say that relationships in our school have strengthened, because we realise that we need each other now more than ever… so there is a culture of support, hey. teachers http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 212021 39(1): 21-28 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 de klerk & palmer resetting education priorities during covid-19 frequently share how to make their lessons and virtual interactions flexible, but most importantly as a school we always try to stay positive and optimistic. in meeting the challenges that inclusion brings, every person will have to attain new knowledge, attitudes and ways of doing. more importantly, members of the school community should be included in furthering the schools’ educational goals where team diversity results in promoting an inclusive climate (schneider et al., 2013; mor barak, cherin & berkman, 2016). it was evident that principals engaged with their teaching staff on how to navigate the pandemic by setting an example of what behaviours define the school during remote learning. collectively, teachers in their schools set examples through modelling, consistent response and repetition, lesson creation, being innovative, setting and maintaining communication and giving feedback to parents and learners. 7. discussion as diversity has become a fixture in our communities and schools, the divide between the privileged and the underprivileged intensified. inequality does not happen haphazardly but shows discrete patterns that are regularly related with social class, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, language and mental and physical ability (ryan, 2006). inclusion is best served in schools that emphasise teaching and learning as an imperative to improve the quality of education for all, while developing the capacities and commitment of professional teachers. consequently, derived from the analysis, this paper suggests the following education priorities principals should consider in answer to the research question: how can rural school principals foster equitable learning spaces through equity and inclusion during and post-covid-19? figure 1: towards equitable learning opportunities albeit being under pressure, the principals’ responses reiterated the fact that covid-19 requires a rebuilding, reconnecting and reimagining of schools’ education priorities to ensure equitable learning opportunities. first, to ensure access to resources, principals should (di pietro, 2020): (a) rethink the role of broadcasting educational activities because it complements online programmes and it delivers teaching to those who do not have access to the internet; (b) approach various http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 222021 39(1): 22-28 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 perspectives in education 2021: 39(1) stakeholders like the doe and digital network companies to get access to virtual learning environments (vle). this may provide learners with educational resources, connect them with teachers who facilitate remote lessons; and (c) encourage teachers and parents to strengthen communication to ensure that everyone understands what they should be doing regarding new teaching and learning approaches. in so doing, principals are ideally positioned to seize moments to redesign educational priorities to ensure inclusion and equity for all (garcia & weiss, 2020). second, for a post-pandemic understanding of how education should be provided to ensure equitable learning opportunities, schools should consider a more robust implementation of blended learning. in the realm of technology, blended learning is dubbed as the “new normal” which can simply be understood as an instructional approach that integrates traditional classroom methods and online digital methods in teaching for the future (bernardo, 2020). the implementation of blended learning requires that teachers and learners should be prepared to ensure control over time, setting, track and pace (huang et al., 2009 as cited in anoba & cahapay, 2020). in transforming learning and practising the belief that a child’s ability to learn is not inert nor pre-determined, but that it may be transformed by teachers, parents and learners engaging in a partnership, school principals should take the lead (hart & drummond, 2014; ashikali, groeneveld & kuipers, 2020). 8. conclusion this paper attempted to answer the question: “how can rural school principals foster equitable learning spaces through equity and inclusion during and post-covid-19?” principals’ beliefs, understandings and experiences of equity and inclusion during covid-19 are representative of the brave faces they have to show whilst attempting to find new ways to collaborate. principals emphasised that, although it is work in progress, efforts can be made to ensure learners experience equitable learning opportunities. school principals’ efforts to ensure an inclusive learning environment with equal opportunities may be regarded as a start to bolster feelings of continued efficacy and development. this paper supports other findings in the academic literature on equitable learning opportunities during covid-19. for instance, popa’s (2020) study suggests that covid-19 presents education and learning with a unique challenge: to further define the nature of education against the backdrop of the current, highly volatile context to search for a more efficient way to transform education in schools. bubb and jones’s (2020) study found that the pandemic has given an opportunity to rethink education and focus on the “what, how, and where of learning”, including the relationship between teachers and parents. the study suggested that all stakeholders (teachers, parents, learners) should learn from and help each other to see what was achieved and investigate ways how to improve learning opportunities. future debates on how to prepare school principals to effectively reset education priorities amid a pandemic in the quest for equitable learning opportunities through inclusion and equity incorporating fourth industrial revolution principles. we argue that access to resources and adaptive teaching skills may be regarded as possible ways to lead innovation and to think beyond the shadow of the pandemic towards transformed learning. http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 232021 39(1): 23-28 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 de klerk & palmer resetting education priorities during covid-19 references abdrasheva, b.z., nurzhanov, a.d., ishanov, p. z., rymhanova, a. r. & zhumataeva, m.a. 2016. problems and prospects of development of 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of case study research. thousand oaks, ca: sage. yin, r.k. 2017. case study research and applications: design and methods. thousand oaks, ca: sage. yount, w.r. 2006. research design and statistical analysis for christian ministry. w.r. yount: fort worth, tex. zhang, w., wang, y., yang, l. & wang, c. 2020. suspending classes without stopping learning: china’s education emergency management policy in the covid-19 outbreak. journal of risk and financial management, 13(3): 55. https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm13030055 http://dx.doi.org/10.18820/2519593x/pie.v39.i1.2 https://doi.org/10.3390/su12125153 https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm13030055 _goback pie33(1).indb perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2015 university of the free state 26 avasha rambiritch university of pretoria, unit for academic literacy e-mail: avasha.rambiritch@up.ac.za telephone: (012) 4204834 accountability issues in testing academic literacy: the case of the test of academic literacy for postgraduate students (talps) avasha rambiritch applied linguists should strive to ensure that the tests they design and use are not only fair and socially acceptable, but also have positive effects – this, in light of the fact that tests can sometimes have far-reaching and often detrimental effects on test-takers. what this paper will attempt to do, is highlight how this concern for responsible test design is articulated in an emerging framework for applied linguistics. the paper begins by questioning the role of applied linguists working within this framework before focusing specifically on the concepts of accountability, dual accountability, public accountability and academic accountability with particular reference to their use in language and academic literacy testing. the last part of this paper sees the practical application of the concept of (academic) accountability to the test of academic literacy for postgraduate students (talps). with regard to the accountability of the test developers, which is the focus of this article, the intervention programme which follows the test must be considered. keywords: applied linguistics, language testing, academic literacy, accountability, academic accountability, intervention, public accountability, theoretical accountability 1. responsible applied linguistics unfair tests, unfair testing methods and the use of tests to restrict and deny access have ensured a negative attitude to tests. in light of this, it is essential that, as applied linguists, we ensure that we design and use tests that are fair and socially acceptable. weideman (2009) proposes a responsible agenda for applied linguistics, arguing accountability issues in testing academic literacy: the case of the test of academic literacy for postgraduate students (talps) avasha rambiritch 27 that applied linguistic work should be backed by some foundational framework to ensure that the notions of responsibility and integrity can be articulated in a theoretically coherent and systematic way. the framework he refers to is based on a ‘representation of the relationship among a select number of fundamental concepts in language testing’ (weideman, 2009: 241). this theoretical foundation or framework can be understood more easily when viewed in the form of a table: table 1: fundamental concepts in language testing applied linguistic design aspect/ function/ dimension/ mode of experience kind of function retrocipatory/anticipatory moment numerical unity within a multiplicity of sets of evidence and conditions for (test) design is founded upon kinematic constitutive internal consistency (technical reliability) physical internal effect/power (validity) organic technical differentiation feeling technical perception and intention analytical foundational design rationale (construct validity or theoretical defensibility) is qualified by technical qualifying/leading function (of the design) lingual articulation of design in a blueprint/plan social implementation/administration is disclosed by economic technical utility, frugality aesthetic regulative harmonisation of conflicts, resolving misalignment juridical transparency, public defensibility, fairness, legitimacy ethical accountability, care, service (weideman, 2007a: 602) the table and the theoretical framework it articulates seem to suggest that, if conditions such as consistency, validity, theoretical and social defensibility, transparency, accountability and fairness are anticipated in the design of a test, then perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 28 that test will fulfil the requirements of being a (psychometrically and socially) good test. this framework highlights a number of important concepts in testing. what, then, is the role of applied linguists working within this framework? how do we apply these concepts in our designs? should we be active participants or passive observers, hiding behind the ‘scientific’ (weideman, 2006: 80) justifications for our designs? or are we, like members of other professions, responsible for the designs we create? if we are responsible for our work and to the people affected by it, how do we ensure that we undertake this responsibility with integrity, ethicality and professionalism? these are some of the questions this article will attempt to answer. in order to do this, the focus will be on the aspect of the accountability of the test developer. however, one of the main aims of the test developers of the test of academic literacy for postgraduate students (talps) was to design, develop and administer a socially responsible test. for a detailed discussion of how other concepts in the framework have been applied to talps to satisfy the requirements of responsible and ethical test design and development see rambiritch (2012; 2013; 2014a & 2014b). 2. defining accountability explained simply, accountability has to do with taking responsibility for your actions. accountability, however, does not stop there but requires, in addition to accounting for one’s actions, that one be willing to face the consequences of these actions. according to sinclair (1995: 220), accountability entails a relationship in which people are required to explain and take responsibility for their actions. bovens (2005: 7) argues that accountability should be defined as a relationship between an actor and a forum, in which the actor has an obligation to explain and to justify his or her conduct to the forum, which then becomes a platform that can pose questions and pass judgment, and even sanction the actor. the next section turns to the discussion of the following question: how does the concept of accountability, as defined above, relate to the field of testing? 2.1 understanding accountability in the field of (language) testing, emphasis seems to have revolved around two aspects of accountability: the need to ‘professionalise’ the field and the need for codes (ethics and practice). however, while codes (of ethics and practice) have been put in place to help regulate the profession and those associated with it, codes are not enough. they might help satisfy the need for accountability to the profession, but make no real contribution to public accountability. because such testing is so closely linked to social issues, it is imperative that test developers also become publicly accountable for their designs. often, however, language testers work in isolation. it is quite possible that there is little or no contact with the people who are most affected by their designs. working in isolation, or relative isolation, means that it is much accountability issues in testing academic literacy: the case of the test of academic literacy for postgraduate students (talps) avasha rambiritch 29 easier not to be held accountable for your actions or designs. for real progress to be made in the field of language testing, test designers and developers cannot, and should not, ignore the voices of the lay communities they are serving. in addition, they need the input, advice and opinion not only of their peers, but also of those affected by the implementation of their designs. in the field of language testing, shohamy (1997; 2001) and others have stressed the need for dialogue between all those affected by the testing process. professionals such as lawyers, doctors, social workers and language testers cannot function in isolation. they are accountable to the profession they belong to and to the people most affected by their practices. bygate (2004: 19) refers to this as being ‘doubly accountable’. he explains that applied linguists need to be accountable to the discipline within which they work, and to the communities that they serve. he also makes mention of the relationship between the ‘scholarly apparatus of the academy and the social reality which is under scrutiny’ bygate (2004: 7), pointing once again to the fact that those working within a particular profession or discipline cannot function effectively without consideration for the very people they claim to serve. weideman (2007b: 43) is in agreement with bygate’s contention that applied linguists need to be doubly accountable. he explains that our applied linguistic designs must be accessible not just to experts, but also to users and the general public, and that we cannot only defend our designs by ‘reference to other expert opinion’ (weideman, 2007b: 43). he states further that ‘the technical defensibility of a design which links the technical and the juridical’ (2007b: 43) (see table 1) does not depend only on its theoretical defensibility, and that, in addition to being able to defend the theory on which the design is based, we need to publicly defend the design. the design should be accessible and the defence understandable to the expert, the user and the lay public. it is, therefore, not enough that the test is based on a theoretically sound construct (that of academic literacy). this ‘theoretical accountability’ or ‘theoretical justification’ is only one part of the picture. this information needs to be available but, more importantly, understandable to those affected by the use of the test results. clearly, the concept of ‘accountability,’ as used by weideman (2003; 2006; 2007b; 2009), moves beyond a concern with the need to account for something or account to someone. accountability, according to weideman (2006; 2007b; 2009), focuses on the element of responsibility without neglecting the need for fairness, care and concern for those who are affected by the use of the test results. what this means is that, in addition to ensuring that we design tests that are valid and reliable and based on theoretically sound constructs, our concerns should extend to the effects of our tests on test takers and others affected by the use of the test results. how do test designers, in becoming accountable for their designs, ensure that they work with integrity and that their tests do good and have positive effects? perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 30 a good starting point would be to look at the way the concept of accountability relates to these issues. at first glance, accountability has two dimensions: theoretical accountability or accountability to the profession, and public accountability. there is, however, one other kind of accountability that needs to be considered. it is the aspect of the academic accountability that the language tester must consider, which will be touched on later in this article. 2.2 theoretical accountability theoretical accountability, as defined by weideman (2007b: 43), refers to one’s being able to defend the theory on which the design is based. a test designer cannot claim to be truly accountable if theoretical accountability has not been considered. theoretical accountability is synonymous with construct validity (see rambiritch, 2012). nevertheless, theoretical accountability is often the one type of accountability least neglected. experts in many fields have, almost always, felt the need to be accountable to their peers – by publishing their research in accredited journals and/ or by presenting their research at national and international conferences. in the case of the design of the test of academic literacy levels (tall), research regarding the construct, blueprint, piloting and refinement of the test was presented by the designers to other experts at conferences and in published research papers – presenting a forum for other experts to comment, question and provide valuable input or critique. with tall, this sharing of information led to other institutions’ choosing to become partners in the design and use of the test. the same has been done with talps (see rambiritch, 2012; 2013). for an overview of such discussion and scholarly debate, the ‘research’ tab on the website of the inter-institutional centre for language development and assessment (icelda) directs one to more than two dozen studies on these tests (http://icelda.sun.ac.za). one cannot deny that a first step in becoming accountable requires being accountable to those working within the profession. theoretical accountability is crucial in the design process. it must, however, be followed closely by an accountability to the public who are affected by or interested in the use of the test. 2.3 accountability to the public the need for public accountability has been alluded to by many in the field. boyd and davies (2002: 312) call for the profession of language testing to have high standards, with members who are conscious of their responsibilities and open to the public. rea-dickins (1997: 304) argues for relationships between all stakeholders (learners, teachers, parents, testers and authorities) in the field of language testing. she states that ‘a stakeholder approach to assessment has the effect of democratising assessment processes, of improving relationships between those involved, and promoting greater fairness’ (rea-dickins, 1997: 304). as can be seen from these discussions, the accountability of the language tester must extend to the public who is being served. defining public accountability, however, is a fairly easy task, ensuring accountability issues in testing academic literacy: the case of the test of academic literacy for postgraduate students (talps) avasha rambiritch 31 accountability to the public less so. public accountability means exactly that – to be open to the public one serves, thus allowing the ‘open dialogue’ referred to above. it is not enough that test designers defend their designs to the experts or their peers in the field. equally, if not more so, those affected by the use of the test scores must be well informed as well. this is where bovens’s (2005) point becomes important – that one must be aware of the kind of information that is made available. it is not enough that the information is made available. the information must be understandable to the very people who need to understand it most and not a ‘…monologue without engagement. to qualify as public accountability there should be public accessibility of the account giving’ (bovens, 2005: 10). in the case of talps, the website and the pamphlets distributed to interested students will go a long way in ensuring that the public is provided with information regarding the test. importantly, the test designers have ensured that the language used in both these mediums is understandable to the lay person. the point here is that care must be taken with the way information is dispensed to the public. what is available for the experts in the field may not be accessible to the lay person taking the test. the challenge, to a certain extent, is to translate technical concepts into more readily accessible, non-specialist language while, at the same time, relating their theoretical meaning to real or perceived social concerns. all the while, it is incumbent on the test designer to be mindful of the limitations inherent in theoretical explanations, and in the technical measuring instrument (the test) that is being employed. 2.4 academic accountability strictly speaking, academic accountability may very well be a subset of public accountability, both of which (public and academic accountability) can be classified as being a part of social accountability. the concepts of public and academic accountability are separated here, despite the fine line between them, to allow us to ‘separate from each what is conceptually distinct’ (weideman, 2009:249). the specific purpose here is to emphasise or highlight every aspect of accountability. what academic accountability has in common with certain other kinds of accountability is that it is an institutional kind of accountability. it is particularly relevant here, as will become clear below, because it relates strongly to the context – in this case an institutional context – in which the test under discussion is being employed. 2.4.1 defining academic accountability the main focus of academic accountability, according to dill (1999: 127), is to ensure that universities maintain or improve the quality of their teaching and learning. he explains that universities should become ‘learning organisations’ where the focus should be on ‘creating knowledge for the improvement of teaching and learning’ (dill, 1999: 127). according to kearns (1998: 140), academic accountability has to do with a ‘strong institutional commitment to quality teaching’. he points out that perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 32 this should provide students with the ‘prospect for gainful employment or other opportunities upon graduation’ (kearns, 1998: 140). academic accountability, as used here, refers to the accountability of the language tester in respect of the teaching and learning that follows, or should follow, a test, with the specific aim of ensuring that this teaching and learning has some positive outcome. within academic accountability one needs to consider the ‘public’ versus ‘private’ aspect of accountability: ‘public’ referring to those outside of the institution, and ‘private’ referring to accountability within the institution. with regard to accounting to those within the institution there are two groups one needs to be concerned with: the one refers to the faculties, stakeholders and management of the institution. an effective method would be through seminars, presentations and workshops where information, as well as research conducted about the test, is shared. another would be the standard set of routine meetings within the institution where such matters might be expected to form part of the agenda. the second group that needs to be considered are those who have the most at stake – our students who take the test. does our responsibility end here? if it does, then what have we achieved, except perhaps to have made supervisors and students aware of the fact that the academic literacy levels of their students’ places them at risk? how has testing these students really contributed to the care and concern for others that weideman (2009: 235) makes reference to? is it acceptable to be satisfied that we have designed and administered a socially acceptable test, yet have done nothing to assist those students who are shown to be at risk? can the test be considered socially acceptable if this is the case? have we at all prepared them for the responsible experience and outcomes that kearns (1998: 140) mentions? the reality is that testing the academic literacy of students but doing nothing to help them might be considered a futile exercise. issues of accountability dictate that, if we test students, we should do something to help them improve. the responsibility of ethical language testers extends into the teaching that follows. this part of the study is aimed at determining the effects that the test could have, if any, on the intervention and the teaching that follow the test. with regard to the accountability of the test developers, which is the focus of this article, the intervention programme which follows the test must be considered. in the case of talps, the intervention or the course came first and had been in operation for a while before the test was designed and implemented. the test came about as a result of the course – the course is not an effect of the test. despite this, the intervention provided to students who are shown to be at risk by the results of the test is still an important one here. research has shown that testing (whether it comes before or after the intervention/course) causes people to behave differently or to do things differently (see smith, 1991). accountability issues in testing academic literacy: the case of the test of academic literacy for postgraduate students (talps) avasha rambiritch 33 3. about talps the test of academic literacy for postgraduate students (talps) was developed because of the need to test the academic literacy of postgraduate students. in deciding on a construct on which to base the test, the test developers chose to base talps on the same construct as tall (see van dyk & weideman, 2004). tall has, in many ways, been the sounding board for talps. moreover, the success of tall has, in part, been the justification for talps. tall and talps are designed to test the same ability – the academic literacy of students – undergraduate in the case of tall, and postgraduate in the case of talps. with regard to talps, it was decided to include a section on argumentative writing. at postgraduate level it is essential that students follow specific academic writing conventions and it is important to test whether students are equipped with this knowledge. in addition, there is a question that tests students’ editing skills. talps was first piloted in may 2007, with the final draft version of talps being piloted in september 2007. based on evidence collected at the a priori stage of test development, talps proved to be a highly valid and reliable test (see rambiritch, 2013). the story of talps, i.e. its design and development, is also the focus of a doctoral study (rambiritch, 2012). 4. the postgraduate academic writing module (eot 300) the intervention that is relevant in this specific instance is the postgraduate academic writing module (eot 300), which was developed by the unit for academic literacy, university of pretoria, because of the need to assist postgraduate students with their academic writing problems. the module was offered to students from the faculty of natural and agricultural sciences, specifically the department of agricultural economics and rural development, as well as students from the faculty of humanities. students from these faculties were taught separately, in their respective disciplines. before the development and administration of talps, all honours and master’s students were required to enrol for the module which was not creditbearing. students were also expected to pay for this additional module. butler’s (2007) study highlights this and the fact that, in addition to the course, there was a need for a reliable testing instrument to determine students’ academic literacy levels before they entered the module. the test and the course work hand in hand. the test is used to determine the academic literacy levels of postgraduate students. students who are shown to be at risk could be expected by their faculties at the university of pretoria to take the eot 300 module. having students take the test before the course means that students who are not at risk do not have to sit through a module they might not need. already there are positive effects – without the test students might not be aware of their academic literacy levels. in addition to an awareness of their abilities, students who are required to take the course are provided with an intervention that could help them succeed in their studies. while the module remained non-credit bearing, and students still had to pay for the module, the test results served to indicate to students their academic literacy levels perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 34 and provided them with the opportunity to develop these abilities. poor academic writing skills are bound to hamper their studies, and an intervention designed to help develop these skills could mean the difference between success and failure. writing, especially in the academic context, however, cannot function in isolation and is dependent on other abilities the student should acquire. a student who is a poor reader, for example, cannot be a good writer. good writing depends on a student’s being able to read critically, to be able to summarise effectively what was read, and to use what was learned in the reading/research process to construct a logical, well-argued piece of academic writing. in addition, it is essential that students’ writing be free of spelling and vocabulary/grammatical errors, that they know how to use a dictionary to avoid these very errors, that they are aware of the conventions of academic writing and that this be evident in their work. as a result, the writing process must be taught in conjunction with these other abilities. based on this, the designers of eot 300 point out that the aim of the course is the ‘further development and transfer of academic literacy’ and that the ‘skills acquired and developed during this course should be applied to the wider context of their studies’ (butler, pretorius & van dyk, 2009: viii). butler’s study (2007) is focused on a framework that should be employed when designing a writing course for tertiary-level students. this section will concentrate on the design and implementation of the course and specifically on determining whether there is alignment between the test and the course. 4.1 the design of a postgraduate academic writing course butler (2007: 42) identified 13 ‘requirements or conditions’ that function as principles for writing course design in general. these are: 1. include an accurate determination of students’ current levels of academic literacy; 2. include an accurate account of the understandings and requirements of lecturers/supervisors in specific departments or faculties regarding academic writing; 3. engage students’ prior knowledge and abilities in different literacies to connect with academic literacy in a positive way; 4. consider learners’ needs (and wants) as a central issue in academic writing; 5. create a learning environment where students feel safe to explore and find their own voices in the academic context; 6. give careful consideration to the most important mode for teaching and learning academic writing; accountability issues in testing academic literacy: the case of the test of academic literacy for postgraduate students (talps) avasha rambiritch 35 7. determine whether primary and additional language users should be treated differently in writing interventions; 8. provide ample opportunity to develop revision and editing skills; 9. acknowledge assessment and feedback as central to course design; 10. provide relevant, contextualised opportunities for engaging in academic writing tasks that students feel contribute towards their development as academic writers in the tertiary context; 11. include productive strategies that achieve a focus on language form; 12. support and encourage the use of technology in writing; 13. focus on the interrelationship between different language abilities in the promotion of writing (butler, 2007: 42-55). the conditions above do not function in isolation but are a combination of factors affecting the course designer, the students and the supervisors in different faculties and departments. the first requirement, according to butler (2007), is to determine the academic literacy levels of students. this is where talps features. in addition to the test, butler (2007) suggests that, to determine the writing abilities of students, they should be required to write an essay. he states that, while this might not be as reliable as the empirical analyses from a test like talps, it entails a ‘more credible and appealing’ (butler, 2007: 43) method. it is an excellent idea to combine both assessment types. often students take a test but do not see or understand how this is related to the abilities they are expected to have, i.e. they might not see the correlation between the different sections in talps and how these are related to their academic literacy levels, especially their writing skills. these essays can be evaluated individually, in groups and with the lecturer and the supervisor concerned. this first writing exercise can generate discussion between the lecturer and students, and ties in directly with the need to create a learning environment where students are comfortable enough to voice their fears, struggles and concerns about their academic literacy, specifically academic writing. it also helps open up a dialogue about students’ needs – if the lecturer knows what students need, it will be easier to help them. the teaching and learning of academic writing is, of course, not limited to the classroom. the lecturer and the course designers accept that the students sitting in their lecture room will eventually be writing for someone else, in a different department or faculty. furthermore, butler (2007: 43) stresses the need to recognise the match between the texts that students produce and what their lecturers expect from such texts. he points out that it is important to be aware of the different conventions in different disciplines and to make students aware of this. it goes without saying that this requires a dialogue between the course designer and the supervisors in the different departments/faculties. perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 36 lecturers will have to find ways to deal with a lecture hall filled with students with different language ability. butler’s (2007: 49) advice is to have quicker learners assist struggling students. in terms of the writing course, there is a need to develop the revision and editing skill of students – this can be done by teaching writing as a process and encouraging students to revise their work as well as the work of their peers. condition 9 above emphasises the need for assessment practices to be ‘transparent’ (butler, 2007: 51) so that students are aware of the requirements of a task. also, butler (2007: 52) points out the need for, and importance of, the correct kind of feedback to students: he says that there is a ‘strong need to balance positive and negative feedback to students,’ that lecturers should maintain a careful balance, and not just criticise a piece for its ‘inadequacies’. another consideration in the design of the academic writing course is the question of whether to teach using disciplineor subject-specific material. butler points out that, in general, students have a negative attitude to such remedial courses – students need to see that the course is in some way related to their field of study. material used should therefore be seen by students as ‘contributing purposefully to their studies’ (butler, 2007: 54). other considerations focus on productive ways of teaching grammar, using technology in writing and seeing the interrelationship between writing and other language abilities, such as reading (butler, 2007: 42-55). have the other requirements been incorporated in the design of the course? to answer this question we need to take a closer look at the course and the tasks that students have to complete and then determine whether these are aligned with the test. the eot 300 module is divided into two themes. theme 1 presents students with an introduction to academic discourse (butler et al., 2009). the focus here is to ensure that students recognise the characteristics of academic writing, apply academic reading strategies, take effective notes, learn to deal with vocabulary difficulties, make functional use of a dictionary and recognise important principles of academic writing (butler et al., 2009). below is a table for each theme indicating the tasks that students have to complete: table 2: theme 1: an introduction to academic discourse task topic task 1 mind maps task 2 componential structuring task 3 interviews (to determine lecturer expectations regarding students’ academic writing) task 4 style and register task 5 scrambled text (general text structure) task 6 text type task 7 text type task 8 scrambled text task 9 facts and opinions task 10 logical connectors task 11 referencing/bibliography task 12 interpreting graphs and visual information task 13 text editing (butler et al., 2009) accountability issues in testing academic literacy: the case of the test of academic literacy for postgraduate students (talps) avasha rambiritch 37 theme 2 focuses specifically on the writing process. tasks in this part of the course are aligned with the steps in the writing process. table 3: theme 2: the writing process applied step tasks step 1: identifying a research problem (+ pre-writing) students are given a topic by the lecturer. tasks here focus on pre-writing activities where students are asked to write down everything they know about the topic/theme. they are asked to write down questions they have about the topic and these are discussed in groups. step 2: gathering information (+ pre-writing) research skills structuring a bibliography step 3: synthesising and structuring information in-text referencing integration of information using mind maps developing criteria for quality academic writing step 4: writing the first draft step 5: revision (+ subsequent drafts following from revision) tasks in step 4, 5 and 6 focus on the writing, revision and editing of students drafts and those of their peers using the checklists/revision tables provided by the lecturer. step 6: editing and writing the final draft (butler et al., 2009) the table below highlights the alignment between the sub-tests in talps and the tasks that students have to complete in eot 300: perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 38 table 4: aligning talps and eot 300 sub-tests in talps what each sub-test tests relation to module code 1. scrambled text recognising different parts of a text, forming a cohesive whole. task 5, 8 2. academic vocabulary testing students knowledge of words used in a specific context. theme 1 and 2 3. graphic and visual literacy interpreting information from a graph, summarising the data, doing numerical computations. task 12 4. text type identifying/classifying different genres/text types. task 4, 6, 7 5. comprehension reading, classifying and comparing, making inferences, recognising text relations, distinguishing between essential and non-essential information. task 1, 2, 9 6. grammar and text relation sentence construction, word order, vocabulary, punctuation. task 8, 10, 13 7. editing correction of errors in a text. task 13 8. writing argumentative writing, structuring an argument, recognition of sources. task 3, 11 and theme 2 especially the tasks students are expected to complete, which were outlined above, demonstrate that there is alignment between the intervention and its outcomes, the tasks students have to complete, and the test. important, also, is that the test and the course are based on the same definition of academic literacy (see rambiritch, 2012). the abilities that are tested by the test are the same ones the course is designed to develop. the module strives to develop, in as much detail as is possible in one year, the academic literacy abilities a student would need to cope at postgraduate level. texts used in the course, as well as the topics for the major assignment relate directly to the field of study of students. the major assignment is to be discussed personally with the lecturer after it has been marked. the study component of the study guide outlines the focus of the course and points out that, while the course will address all four language abilities: listening, reading, writing and speaking, the emphasis is on developing ‘effective listening, reading and writing in an integrated manner in a postgraduate academic environment’ (butler et al., 2009: vi). the course has been designed to provide a number of different ways of learning – individual, small groups and one-on-one interaction with the lecturer, providing ample opportunity not only to share their opinions and ideas, but also to evaluate one another’s ideas (butler et al., 2009: vii). the workbook and the course are designed to be interactive. there is constant communication and discussion between the lecturer and the students. accountability issues in testing academic literacy: the case of the test of academic literacy for postgraduate students (talps) avasha rambiritch 39 students meet with the lecturer once their assignment has been assessed. such a meeting is valuable in helping the student understand where problems lie and what can be done to resolve them. it is not enough to address these problems generally when teaching. because the academic literacy levels of students depend on individual students’ abilities in language, as well as their background, schooling, family life, race or region, these problems are best addressed individually. the focus here, however, is not to critique the course, but to determine whether the test, which is written before the course but was developed as a result of the course, is aligned with the intervention. testing students makes them aware of their academic literacy levels, and providing them with an effective intervention designed to help them improve, means that they might be able to graduate in the required time, which might not have been possible without the intervention. weideman (2007b) sums this up effectively when he states that: our designs are done because we demonstrate through them the love we have for others: it derives from the relation between the technical artefact that is our design and the ethical dimension of our life. in a country such as ours, the desperate language needs of both adults and children to achieve a functional literacy that will enable them to function in the economy and partake more fully of its fruits, stands out as possibly the biggest responsibility of applied linguists (weideman, 2007b: 53). 5. conclusion this article focused on the concept of accountability, asking, also, the all important question of how test designers can ensure that they become accountable for their designs. the detailed discussion of the different types of accountability has attempted to answer this question. in a nutshell, test designers can do this by: • designing fair tests that can be justified, explained and defended publicly; • being transparent and opening up a dialogue between all those involved in the testing process; • designing tests that do good and that have positive effects; • being committed to the test takers we serve and by ensuring that our responsibility does not end with a score on a sheet, but is followed by effective teaching and learning which will have potentially far-reaching, positive consequences for the society in which these test takers live and work. this article has also considered the concept of accountability as it relates to the test designers and the process they followed in the development of talps. clearly, accountability, as defined here, has many facets. each of these, as explained, is a vital consideration in ensuring accountability. the article has shown through the practical application of the concept of (academic) accountability to the talps and the teaching that follows, that the test and the teaching are well aligned. importantly, the article has highlighted important considerations for test developers who consider accountability a necessity in the field of (academic literacy) testing. perspectives in education 2015: 33(1) 40 references bovens, m. 2005. public accountability: a framework for the analysis and assessment of accountability arrangements in the public domain. in: e ferlie, l lynne & c pollitt (eds), the oxford handbook of public management. oxford: oxford university press. 1-36. boyd, k. & davies, a. 2002. doctors’ orders for language testers. language testing, 19(3): 296-322. butler, h.g. 2007. a framework for course design in academic writing for tertiary education. unpublished doctoral thesis. pretoria: university of pretoria. butler, h.g., pretorius, r.e. & van dyk, t.j. 2009. unit for academic literacy eot 300. unpublished class notes. pretoria: university of pretoria. bygate, m. 2004. some current trends in applied linguistics: towards a generic view. aila review, 17: 6-22. dill, d.d. 1999. academic accountability and university adaptation: the architecture of an academic learning organisation. higher education, 38: 127-154. kearns, k.p. 1998. institutional accountability in higher education: a strategic approach. public productivity & management review, 22(2): 140-156. rambiritch, a. 2012. transparency, accessibility and accountability as regulative conditions for a postgraduate test of academic literacy. unpublished doctoral thesis. bloemfontein: university of the free state. rambiritch, a. 2013. validating the test of academic literacy for postgraduate students (talps). journal for language teaching, 47(1): 175-193. rambiritch, a. 2014a. towards transparency and accountability: the story of the test of academic literacy for postgraduate students (talps). journal for language teaching, 48(1): forthcoming. rambiritch, a. 2014b. accessibility issues in testing academic literacy: the case of talps. per linguam, 30(1): forthcoming. rea-dickens, p. 1997. so, why do we need relationships with stakeholders in language testing? a view from the u.k. language testing, 14(3): 304-314. shohamy, e. 1997. testing methods, testing consequences: are they ethical? are they fair? language testing, 14(3): 340-349. shohamy, e. 2001. the power of tests: a critical perspective on the uses of language tests. london: longman. sinclair, a. 1995. the chameleon of accountability: forms and discourses. accounting, organisations and society, 20(2/3): 219-237. smith, m.l. 1991. put to the test: the effects of external testing on teachers. educational researcher, 20(5): 8-11. van dyk, t. & weideman, a. 2004. switching constructs: on the selection of an appropriate blueprint for academic literacy assessment. saalt journal for language teaching, 38(1): 1-13. weideman, a. 2003. towards accountability: a point of orientation for post-modern applied linguistics in the third millennium. literator, 24(1): 83-102. accountability issues in testing academic literacy: the case of the test of academic literacy for postgraduate students (talps) avasha rambiritch 41 weideman, a. 2006. transparency and accountability in applied linguistics. southern african linguistics and applied language studies, 24(1): 71-86. weideman, a. 2007a. the redefinition of applied linguistics: modernist and postmodernist views. south african linguistics and applied language studies, 24(1): 589-605. weideman, a. 2007b. a responsible agenda for applied linguistics: confessions of a philosopher. per linguam, 23(2): 29-53. weideman, a. 2009. constitutive and regulative conditions for the assessment of academic literacy. south african linguistics and applied language studies, 27(3): 235-251. pie32(4) book.indb perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 134 does deafness spell disaster? an analysis of the written english levels of deaf children in the nelson mandela metropole, south africa carolyn weir, diana ayliff this article presents the findings of an empirical comparative study in the nelson mandela metropole investigating the difference between the written english of deaf children and the written english of hearing children and makes recommendations on how to improve the writing of deaf children. the psycholinguistic approach was used for the theoretical framework. within the framework of psycholinguistics, the acquisition and development of language and writing are discussed from the perspective of (1) emergent literacy and (2) the critical period hypothesis. the findings of this research indicate a significant difference between the writing of the deaf and hearing children who participated in this study. in order for deaf children in south africa to develop their writing, immediate government assistance is necessary in order to implement newborn screening country wide followed by medical and/or language-based intervention to minimise the impact of deafness on the language and writing abilities of deaf children. this is an essential foundation on which parents and teachers can build in helping deaf children reach age-appropriate levels of written english. key words: deaf, deaf, children, english, writing, emergent literacy, t-units mrs carolyn weir (postgraduate student at nmmu during the time of research; graduated 2010) port elizabeth e-mail: carolynlweir@hotmail.com tel: 076 476 7684 fax: 086 550 0706 dr diana ayliff department of applied languages nmmu po box 77000 port elizabeth e-mail: diana.ayliff@nmmu.ac.za tel: 041 504 2266 fax: 041 504 2229 does deafness spell disaster? an analysis of the written english levels of deaf children in the nelson mandela metropole, south africa carolyn weir, diana ayliff 135 introduction there are different views of on whether or not to consider deaf people as disabled. one view is that promoted by ladd (2003: xviii ), who is himself deaf, and who has written extensively on what he terms “deafhood”. he views deaf people as having a separate and proud culture that constructs its own “identity around several differently ordered sets of priorities and principles, which are affected by various factors such as nation, era and class”. in our south african nation, and in this postapartheid era, there are enormous challenges to overcome to bring deaf children’s written language up to acceptable standards. one of the authors of this article, who is herself a member of the deafhood culture, explored how the written english of deaf children is being taught in xxx. the results of this research are probably typical of what is happening in many schools that cater for the deaf across our nation. according to the world health organization (who) (2009:35), deafness is one of the “most common causes of disability worldwide”. globally, based on 2005 estimates from the who, 278 million people live with moderate to profound bilateral deafness (who, 2006). in south africa, according to swanepoel, störbeck and friedland (2009:784), about 6116 babies every year or 17 per day “will be born with or acquire permanent bilateral hearing loss in the first few weeks of life with approximately 92% born in the public health sector”. although some of those 6116 babies will grow up to define themselves as “deaf”, others will refer to themselves using the capitalised term “deaf”, referring to an alternative view of hearing loss. while the term “deaf” generally refers to the medical condition of hearing loss (cf. ladd, 2003:33; luterman, 2007:43), being “deaf” is about being part of a cultural group which uses sign language (cf. ladd, 2003:33; scheetz, 1993:20). thus, as aarons and akach (2002:154) state, “[t]here is a sense in which deaf people regard themselves, and may be regarded by others, as being members of an oppressed linguistic minority (i.e., as users of a natural signed language which is not accorded the same rights as other national languages).” in terms of this definition, deaf people reject the term “disabled” and see themselves instead as “oppressed, marginalised and disempowered” (aarons & akach, 2002:154). however, as aarons and akach (2002:154) explain, those who are deaf are also “disabled” if their particular language needs are not accomodated: this is clearly the case in south africa, where not only the majority cannot converse in sign language but even teachers of deaf children: in south african schools for the deaf, only 14% of teachers are fluent in sign language, according to the deaf federation of south africa (deafsa) (2009). since the advent of democracy in south africa in 1994, there has been a growing concern for the welfare of minorities, including those with disabilities, such as those who are deaf/deaf. this concern is clear from the constitution of the republic of perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 136 south africa (2003:1247), which states that neither the state, nor any person, may “unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone” on grounds of disability. however, while this desire for equality has resulted in a great deal of talk, in reality, the prospects of those with disabilities still often remain grim, and this is particularly the case for those who are deaf. in order for the acquisition of either spoken language or sign language to be most successful, detection and intervention for the deaf child needs to happen as early as possible (cf. marschark, 1993; pauw, 2002; schröder, 2004). although cochlear implants can make a significant difference to those who have access to such technology (cf. waltzman, mcconkey-robbins, green & cohen, 2003:757-758) and many developed countries, such as the united states, have made strides towards early detection and intervention with universal newborn hearing screening (unhs) (downs, 2007), this is not the case in south africa. in south africa, both a developed and a developing country, advanced technology, such as cochlear implants, is not available to many, and unhs is still not a reality countrywide. thus, deafness may go undetected, and untreated, for some considerable time. in south africa, as swanepoel, delport and swart (2007:3) indicate, most identification of hearing loss initially happens not through screening but passively, when parents become concerned that there is something wrong with their child. according to deafsa (2009), in south africa, sometimes deafness is only diagnosed when the child is between four and eight. as a child develops language best in the first two years of life, late diagnosis often means that children start grade r with “little or no language” and the “average deaf school-leaver leaves school with a reading age of 8” (deafsa, 2009). a case in point is the grade 12 class at a school for the deaf in the eastern cape, which obtained a 0% matric pass rate (matomela, 2008). thus, the aim of this research is to make a contribution to a field needing more investigation, in an attempt to determine if the gap between the ideals of the south african constitution and the reality, in which an entire grade of deaf matric learners can fail to pass their final year at school, are present in the nelson mandela metropole. the following quantitative study was focused on children in grades 4 to 7 in the eastern province and aimed to determine their level of written english. theoretical framework the theoretical framework used by this study is a psycholinguistic approach. the field of psycholinguistics is a wide one, as explained by johnson and johnson (1998:267): “[p]sycholinguistics is concerned broadly with how linguistic knowledge is acquired (developmental psycholinguistics), how it is put to use in comprehending and producing utterances (language processing) and how it can be impaired by brain injury (aphasia).” psycholinguistics is a highly appropriate framework for this research because firstand second-language acquisition are important areas of study in psycholinguistics. does deafness spell disaster? an analysis of the written english levels of deaf children in the nelson mandela metropole, south africa carolyn weir, diana ayliff 137 within the field of psycholinguistics, the notion of an interlanguage, a term coined by selinker in 1972, is relevant because it neatly describes the separateness of a second learner’s language system that is constantly changing as the learrner acquires, and becomes more proficient in, a second language. this notion of an interlanguage is applicable to deaf children in the study whose first language is not english, as like their hearing counterparts, they develop an “independent grammar” (johnson and johnson, 1998:175) that at a given time is not simlpy a copy of the adult grammar, but has a system of its own. in terms of this definition, the english of all children is some form of interlanguage, and it is the specific interlanguage of deaf children, whether firstor second-language english learners, that is the subject of this research project. deaf children’s interlanguage in order to understand deaf children’s interlanguage, within the framework of psycholinguistics, it is also necessary to understand the acquisition and development of language and writing from the perspective of (1) emergent literacy and (2) the critical period hypothesis. emergent literacy according to the emergent literacy view, reading, writing and oral language are processes that develop in children very early and that are interdependent. this is expressed in an article by whitehurst and lonigan (1998:848), who state that emergent literacy is a term “used to denote the idea that the acquisition of literacy is best conceptualized as a developmental continuum, with its origins early in the life of a child, rather than an all-or-none phenomenon that begins when children start school”. very early writing probably finds its roots in patterns which emerge soon after birth. as explained by whitehead (2004:170), in the first few weeks after birth, eating, sleeping and waking “form regular and predictable patterns” which are the baby’s first experiences of “early representation”. in terms of actual writing, state those supporting emergent literacy, the development of writing takes place in stages. according to the document stages of children’s writing (n.d.), an adaptation of project elipss (macomb projects, western illinois university), writing progresses through scribbling, mock letters, invented spelling and conventional spelling, when children produce increasingly recognisable spelling. important to note is that these stages do not take place linearly. as indicated by whitehead (2004:170), all these stages, “once established, continue to exist and interact, affecting and supporting each other”. perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 138 emergent literacy and deaf children in summary, emergent literacy is the simultaneous development of oral language, reading, and writing from a very young age. the vast majority of the participants in this study had not been exposed to sign language in their homes and this, together with their lack of full exposure to sound, impacts on their development and understanding of spoken language. this in turn affects the child’s awareness of the world around him or her as much communication and learning are conveyed through speech and sound. furthermore, as spoken/heard language and writing and reading are interlinked, according to the emergent literacy view, when deafness limits spoken/heard language, it in turn can affect the development of a child’s reading and writing. this opinion is supported by research such as that by lipson and wixson (1991:129) showing the link between oral language and reading and writing. some disagree—for instance, evans (2004:17) argues for the usefulness of sign language in developing reading and writing in the contexts/culture in which they occur. critical period hypothesis while it is true that deaf and hearing children of some deaf parents acquire south african sign language (sasl) at a very early age the vast majority of participants in this study did not fall into this category. however, regardless of what language a deaf child uses, acquiring it too late can impact on his or her development of that language, in turn affecting reading and writing, and in south africa, even if a child learns sign language, this linguistic acquisition is unlikely to take place as early as oral language acquisition would in a hearing child because hearing detection usually happens passively (swanepoel, delport et al., 2007:3). according to the critical period hypothesis, language acquisition happens most effectively at a young age. the father of this theory is lennenberg (1967:176), who notes about puberty that “automatic acquisition from mere exposure to a given language seems to disappear after this age, and foreign languages have to be taught and learned through a conscious and labored effort”. other authors, such as mayberry and lock (2003) have supported the findings of lennenberg that early language acquisition has a significant impact on later language learning. delage and tuller (2007:1301) also argue that there is “strong psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic evidence” of a critical language acquisition period. research aim the aim of the research was to provide further insight into the writing abilities of deaf children by answering the following research question: are there significant differences between the written english of deaf children and the written english of hearing children in the nelson mandela metropole? does deafness spell disaster? an analysis of the written english levels of deaf children in the nelson mandela metropole, south africa carolyn weir, diana ayliff 139 the research design used to answer this question revolved around t-units. the t-unit, a term coined by hunt (1965), is well-known as a reliable measurement of writing ability. gass and selinker (1994:41) explain hunt’s term as “an independent clause and any associated dependent clauses, that is, clauses that are attached to or embedded within it”. thus, a t-unit always contains a subject and a finite verb. if a t-unit begins with a coordinate conjunction, the coordinate conjunction would be the first word of the new clause (hunt, 1965). below are illustrations from gass and selinker (1994:41) to illustrate what does/ does not constitute a t-unit. in the examples, 2-77 and 2-78 are t-units, unlike 2-79, which is not an independent clause as it starts with a subordinate conjunction: (2-77) john woke up. (2-78) john woke up, although he was tired. (2-79) although he was tired. the t-unit was the most appropriate choice for this research project for several reasons. first, it is suitable for the study as this research project focuses on written work. according to gass and selinker (1994:41), the use of t-units is “most reliable with written data”. second, t-units can be used to test the written work of deaf children as seen in works published by white (2007) and klecan-aker and blondeau (1990) third, most of the deaf and hearing children were english second-language (esl) speakers, and t-units are also an appropriate method for such learners (van der walt and hattingh, 2007). experimental design the experimental design took the form of a quantitative comparison between the writing of 30 deaf children and 30 hearing children. the essays were divided into t-units, and length and errors were identified. to determine fluency and accuracy, various calculations were used, as quoted below (van der walt & hattingh, 2007:19): • fluency frequencies: average number of words per composition (w) and average number of t-units (t); • fluency ratios: average number of words per t-unit (w/t) and average number of words per error-free t-unit (w/eft); • accuracy frequency: average number of error-free t-units per composition (eft); • accuracy ratio: average number of error-free t-units per t-units (eft/t). sample and participants the sample for this study came from schools in the nelson mandela metropole where all schools known to cater for children with hearing loss were contacted. after permission had been granted by the schools, letters were sent to the parents/ perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 140 guardians of all the deaf children with hearing loss ranging from mild to profound in grades 4 to 7 requesting permission for the children to take part in the research and for the results of the research to be presented at scientific conferences or in specialist publications. those children whose parents/guardians responded positively were asked to write three writing pieces in english. of the children who wrote these pieces, those for whom all the necessary matching-up information was available, namely grade, gender and spoken home language, and whose academic marks were retrievable, were selected. to select the hearing children from the same school as the deaf children when a school catered both for hearing and deaf, the procedure was repeated. where more than one hearing child could be matched with one specific deaf child, just one of these possible matches was randomly chosen. after all the data had been collected, while some deaf children could have had several matches, other deaf children were not able to be matched to hearing children in the criterion of spoken home language. to rectify this, purposive sampling was used to select two further schools likely to match this language criterion: purposive sampling was conducted by selecting schools whose language of instruction was the same as that of the deaf children who had not yet been matched. both schools were already known to the researchers as institutions where the required home language was spoken, and both were in relatively close proximity to the researchers, ensuring ease of access. the same process was followed in order to gain permission to include in the study children who matched up with deaf counterparts. the total number of participants was 60. this group consisted of children who were in grades 4 to 7 in 2008 and whose parents/guardians and principals had permitted the analysis of their writing. the participants consisted of two groups: group 1 consisted of 30 deaf children, with hearing losses ranging from mild to profound in grades 4 to 7 in 2008 while group 2 was a group of 30 hearing children in grades 4 to 7 in 2008. ethical considerations first, ethics approval was obtained from the nelson mandela metropolitan university. permission was also granted by the department of education, after which schools were contacted and heads asked for permission to conduct research. because the participants in the study were children, permission from parents/ guardians was necessary and this was obtained as explained in the previous section. the participants’ confidentiality was maintained by avoiding any mention of their names in the study. moreover, the analysis focused on group comparison, not on individual writing levels. this further protected the confidentiality of the children. does deafness spell disaster? an analysis of the written english levels of deaf children in the nelson mandela metropole, south africa carolyn weir, diana ayliff 141 findings for each child, the results of the three essays were combined to give a more accurate idea of the child’s ability than would be obtained through one or two essays. to determine the statistical significance based on mean differences, the t-test (α = 0.05) was used with cohen’s d statistic to measure the effect size (practical significance). the chi-square test (α = 0.05) was an additional measure to evaluate if the differences between frequency distributions were statistically significant with cramer’s v statistic to measure the effect size. the limits for practical significance for cohen’s d and cramer’s v statistics are in table 1: cohen’s d cramer’s v (df* = 1) from to from to small 0.20 0.49 0.10 0.29 medium 0.50 0.79 0.30 0.49 large 0.80 plus 0.50 plus the mean differences between the deaf and hearing learners with regard to their age, academic results, and the essays written by the learners were significant in some cases but not in others. the mean difference in age between the two groups was 1.07. according to the t-test (p = .008) this difference is statistically significant. the observed cohen’s d statistic (0.71) indicated a medium difference. the chi-square test was not statistically significant (p = .262). the mean differences between the hearing and deaf groups were 0.16 for languages and 0.38 for maths. the mean differences for other subjects were 0.12 and 0.23 for the overall mark. based on the t-test and the chi-square test, there are no significant differences between the hearing and deaf groups in terms of the mean or frequency distribution. therefore, cohen’s d and cramer’s v are not applicable. analysis of the essays, however, revealed highly significant differences in the writing ability of deaf and hearing children. the mean differences between deaf and hearing children are significant in all categories. in each case, the results of the hearing group are significantly higher than the results of the deaf group, and the size of the difference is usually large. in terms of fluency frequencies, the results indicate that there is a significant difference between the mean number of words per essay written by deaf children and the mean number of words per essay written by hearing children. as it is “generally accepted that more developed learners write longer compositions” (van der walt & hattingh, 2007: 21), it appears that hearing children have a significant advantage over deaf children. this is illustrated in figure 1: perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 142 figure 1: fluency frequencies: the mean number of words per essay based on t-unit fluency frequencies, there is a significant difference between the mean number of t-units per essay produced by deaf children and the mean number of t-units per essay produced by hearing children. this is evident in figure 2, which shows the mean number of t-units produced by deaf children was less than half of the mean number of t-units written by hearing children. figure 2: fluency frequencies: the mean number of t-units per essay in terms of fluency ratios, there is a significant difference between the mean number of words per t-unit produced by deaf children and the mean number of words per t-unit produced by hearing children. this suggests that the members of the hearing group are writing far more complex t-units than the deaf group. does deafness spell disaster? an analysis of the written english levels of deaf children in the nelson mandela metropole, south africa carolyn weir, diana ayliff 143 figure 3: fluency ratio: the mean number of words per t-unit furthermore, the mean number of words per error-free t-unit for the deaf group is less than half the mean number of words per error-free t-unit for the hearing group. thus, the deaf learners are also producing significantly shorter error-free t-units: figure 4: error-free fluency ratios: the mean number of words per error-free t-unit in terms of accuracy frequency, there is a significant difference between the mean number of error-free t-units per essay produced by deaf children and the mean number of error-free t-units per essay produced by hearing children. error-free writing is important as it increases the credibility of a learner’s writing as well as making it easier to read. the significantly higher mean number of error-free t-units per essay written by the hearing children indicates that their work is likely to be viewed as more credible and to be seen as more readable than that of deaf children. figure 5 indicates the differences in the mean number of error-free t-units per essay: perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 144 figure 5: accuracy frequency: the mean number of error-free t-units per essay finally, accuracy ratios show a significant difference as the mean number of errorfree t-units per t-units was far lower than that of the hearing children, indicating that the accuracy of hearing children is much greater than that of deaf children. figure 6: accuracy ratio: the mean number of error-free t-units per t-unitsdiscussion the results from the previous sections on the inferential statistics indicate that deafness has a significant impact on the academic and writing abilities of deaf children. all of the differences between the deaf group and hearing group are statistically significant. in terms of the mean difference, the size of the difference is large for all six categories. in terms of frequency, the size of the difference is medium does deafness spell disaster? an analysis of the written english levels of deaf children in the nelson mandela metropole, south africa carolyn weir, diana ayliff 145 for the mean number of words per t-unit while for all other categories, the difference is large. conclusions overall, the results for the data on the essays indicate that deaf children in the nelson mandela metropole struggle a great deal more than hearing children in writing english. this is particularly worrying as there is no significant difference between the academic results of the two groups. based on academic scores, deaf children in the nelson mandela metropole appear to have no problems with schoolwork in general or with languages. the analysis using t-units indicates that this is misleading. this in turn calls into question the validity of the scoring system used to grade the academic abilities of schoolchildren. others have also raised concerns regarding the scoring system and its accuracy, such as schöer, ntuli, rankin and sebastiao (2010:11), in their article on the grading of matric mathematics. furthermore, these results mean that deaf children are likely to find it difficult to complete their schooling and pursue higher education. even those who are hearing may often struggle with written language. for instance, van der walt and hattingh (2007:15) in their study of esl matric learners, conclude that the results “paint a poor picture of learners’ performance in writing, and suggest that grade 12 esl learners are ill-prepared for tertiary study”. ayliff (2010:1) also notes that many “learners and tertiary students” struggle with writing. for children with the added challenge of deafness, finishing high school and continuing to further education are likely to be significantly more difficult, which in turn impacts on their ability to find employment. in an ideal world deaf children should be instructed in a language that is clear and understandable to them and they should be achieving academic results that are comparable to their hearing counterparts, but this is clearly not happening in xxx. according to deafsa (2009), three quarters of deaf people are “functionally illiterate” and 70% do not have work. addressing this major challenge is not easy, particularly in a developing nation. there are several different ways of tackling the low levels of writing in deaf children, which are discussed elsewhere (see weir, 2010), such as what parents/guardians and teachers could do and choices regarding the language of instruction. however, as an even greater priority, the government needs to implement country-wide unhs, followed by early intervention. research in south africa has already shown the feasibility of unhs: for instance, an infant screening pilot study was conducted at two immunisation clinics (swanepoel et al., 2006:1241). for unilateral screening, the researchers had 95% coverage. for bilateral screening, they obtained 93% (swanepoel, louw & hugo, 2007: 323). these figures clearly show the effectiveness of early testing of babies. not only will such testing confirm deafness in babies at high risk of hearing loss: of those children who are deaf, only 50% are known to be at risk (yoshinaga-itano, 2003:265), perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 146 so screening will also identify the other 50% whose hearing loss may have gone unnoticed for months or years. such screening, followed by effective and affordable intervention, should be compulsory in hospitals and immunisation clinics nationwide: only then will the equal rights for deaf children enshrined in the constitution become a reality. references aarons d & akach p 2002. inclusion and the deaf child in south african education. perspectives in education, 20(1):153-170. ayliff d. 2010. “why can’t johnny write? 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still evolving, which frame a humanising pedagogy. keywords: humanising pedagogy, humanising praxis, narrative inquiry, liberatory education, emancipatory methodology introduction south africa’s societal legacy of disempowerment and dehumanisation, particularly within education contexts, is long and in critical need of repair. despite years of struggle, and solidarity of the majority of its citizens that resulted in the transition to a more democratic political order in south africa, the educational arena remains a battlefront, in which the struggle to build voice, agency and community continues. beyond the rhetoric of describing and analysing that struggle, a powerful praxis related to citizenship and social justice within the contextual realities of south african education is required. we believe a humanising pedagogy is one such form of praxis. literature review freire (1993:43) asserts: “concern for humanization leads at once to the recognition of dehumanization, not only as an ontological possibility, but also as a historical reality”. both the historical and the contemporary realities in education related to south africa’s dehumanising past and present, in education across several contexts, have been well documented and analysed (alexander, 2002; chisholm, 2004; jansen, 2009; nelson mandela foundation, 2005; soudien, 2012). what stands out as a central issue in relation to this dehumanisation is its presence in education, from schools to institutions of higher education. educational researchers have explored the nature and impact of policy changes in the south african educational arena. some examples include regular changes in curricula, which include the importation of educational philosophies and practices that are not aligned with the contextual realities in south african schools, as well as the background and material conditions faced by the majority of south african teachers (jansen & christie, 1999; chisholm, motala & vally, 1998). these policy changes have also impacted on pedagogical engagements which have resulted in classrooms in which teachers are unable to interpret the curricula or what is expected of them in terms of teaching and learning and their roles as teachers (jansen & christie, 1999; harley et al., 2000;). power relationships within these settings have also been impacted: those between schools and departmental authorities, between teachers and students/learners, in issues of language use, and among students themselves (jansen, 2009; mckinney, 2007). what emerges from this substantial and growing body of literature is evidence of the manner in which the legacy of dehumanisation has been absorbed, wittingly and unwittingly, into relationships within educational arenas which mirror and depict hierarchies of power, cultures of compliance, fear, as well as the suppression and loss of voice. 77zinn & rodgers — a humanising pedagogy: getting beneath the rhetoric this article focuses, in particular, on this last aspect. the issue which we seek to address and consider to be at the heart of work of a humanising pedagogy is to re-centre and restore voice as a key characteristic of what it means to be human. within the context of south africa and the african continent, the power of voice, story, and oral tradition is particularly pertinent. for example, gyekye (1995:10) speaks to its significance in the transmission of african philosophical ideas, where “traditional african philosophy is not a written philosophy. such ideas were embodied in proverbs, aphorisms, or fragments …”. we argue that marginalisation and loss of voice is one aspect of dehumanisation that requires attention if we rethink the purposes of education and its importance to what a humanising pedagogy means in terms of theory and action. the act of ‘rethinking’ requires that we analyse what has contributed to the features outlined earlier as evidence of a legacy of dehumanisation. connell (2007) argues that the notion of ‘agency’ be evaluated critically. he makes an important and paradoxical point that we “recognise the agency involved in colonial dispossession, military dictatorship and neoliberal restructuring alike” (connell 2007:216, italics in original). in other words, both the fact and forms of the ‘agency’ of oppressive regimes have to be taken into full account, as they have implications for the ways in which both the theoretical and the practical issues of citizenship and social justice, and indeed the practice of humanising pedagogies, are conceptualised and addressed. such agency needs to be countered by a citizenry that feels its own agency to speak back to these powers. one such conceptualisation is odora-hoppers & richards’s (2011:1) challenge to higher education to “rethink thinking” and to examine its “current default drive of knowledge production, accompanied by the deep exclusionary practices inherent in it”. in other words, they speak to the specific conditions in south african society and the roots of apartheid, where “the combined dispossession, the forced metamorphoses of entire societies, the transformation of the native’s mind … were packaged as common bruises to be redressed through shallow ameliorative measures” (odora-hoppers & richards, 2011:2). how does one create the conditions to reverse those exclusionary practices, to get beyond the “shallow ameliorative measures” to tap into the deep wells of knowledge and experience that reside in those who have been marginalised through a history of dispossession and various forms of oppression? we propose a humanising pedagogy as one mode of redress. in counterpoint to the agency of dispossession, as depicted by connell, francis and le roux (2012) advocate for the agency of “social actors” – those ‘ordinary’ people who we enlisted in our humanising pedagogy investigation. they make the point that “social justice involves social actors who have a sense of their own agency, as well as a sense of responsibility towards and with others, their society and the broader world” (francis & le roux, 2012:16). in the context of education, ayers (1998) exhorts educators to attend to what makes us human. he writes that “teaching for social justice is teaching that arouses students, engages them in a quest to identify obstacles to their full humanity, to their freedom, and then to drive, to move against those obstacles” (ayers, 1998:xvii). the relationship of the individual ‘social actor’ to society invokes the intersection between citizenship and social justice. lister (1997:3) defines citizenship very simply as “the relationship between individuals and the state and between individual citizens within [the] community”. if these relationships have been fraught with and characterised by systemic injustice, as has been the case in south africa, then this has necessarily damaged and distorted conceptions of citizenship. the pursuit of social justice becomes an imperative and driver, as citizens strive both to be fully recognised and to have their right to belong fully to that society restored. the concept of ‘restorative justice’ (braithwaite, 2004) is particularly relevant in this regard. restorative justice focuses on repairing the harm done to survivors of injustice, and emphasizes the participation of those most directly involved and affected. towards this end, we argue that deliberative action is required to undo or counter the agency and impact of a dehumanising and socially unjust past, perpetuated in many respects in current socio-political and educational contexts. this action is necessary in order to restore a full sense of both individual and collective humanity, and to re-centre and reclaim voice. we regard a humanising pedagogy as part of that 78 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 deliberative action, with a particular focus on re-storying voice and owning the knowledge that comes with that restoration. in the remainder of this article, we provide an account of a project that sought to get beneath the theoretical and rhetorical explications of a humanising pedagogy, most frequently espoused and referenced within the field of critical pedagogy (see, for example, leistyna, woodrum & sherblom, 1996). critiques of these theoretical and rhetorical positions as impenetrable and exclusionary (ellsworth, 1992), deeply western and homogenising (grande, 2004), and ‘ethnocentric and eurocentric’ in their pedagogical perspectives (hao, 2011), exist. jansen (2009) recognises the contribution of critical theory, but points to its limitations “in post-conflict situations for making sense of troubled knowledge and for transforming those who carry the burden of such knowledge” (jansen, 2009:256). we seek to bring an african sensibility to the issues of a humanising pedagogy and to ground our understanding in the clear language of story and people’s daily experiences. the following question informed the work described in this article: how do we get beneath the rhetoric to the praxis of a humanising pedagogy? what does it look and feel like? what does it require of us in the context of teaching and learning environments and interactions? methodology the effort to uncover the essential experience of a humanising pedagogy started out as a staff development project rather than research. nonetheless, our story-gathering methods were based in hermeneutic phenomenology and narrative, which respectively value lived experience and voice. these approaches provided a fertile ground in which a theory of a humanising pedagogy could take root. we describe our methodological rationale, frameworks and process at some length, as they were, in fact, part and parcel of the project itself. van manen (1990:9) describes hermeneutic phenomenology as “the study of the lifeworld – the world as we immediately experience it pre-reflectively rather than as we conceptualize, categorize, or reflect on it. … [it] asks ‘what is this or that kind of experience like?’”.1patton (1990:69) writes that phenomenology asks, ‘what is the structure and essence of experience of this phenomenon [a humanising pedagogy] for these people [learners and teachers in south africa]?” he points out that the data are both particular in their detail and unique to each individual person, but they also hold within them an essential aspect of the phenomenon. in listening to multiple stories, we were, as van manen notes, able to bracket, analyse, and compare the experiences of different people “to identify the essences of the phenomenon …” (van manen, 1990:70). it was these essences that we explored, and from which we hoped to build both theory and practice (praxis) of a humanising pedagogy grounded in a storied south african experience. the use of narrative is a methodological device that allows us “to make comprehensible some notion that easily eludes us” (van manen, 1990:116), in our case a humanising pedagogy. van manen (1990:116) suggests that narrative connotes “things unpublished”, “things not given out”. given the silencing and fear coupled with oppression and poverty, many of the stories that were told may not have been previously “published” or “given out”, at least in diverse company. it is important to note that we sought to gather narratives that would be useful not primarily to academics but to those people who were telling their stories. we gathered participants’ stories, using a methodology developed by patricia carini (2000; 2001) and her colleagues: a process of descriptive inquiry2 called ‘recollections’. for this project, we asked for the recollections of humanising and dehumanising learning experiences. according to carini (2001), the intention of the use of recollections is a deeply human one. she writes in her book of essays, starting strong, i rely on the animating power of story to connect your story with mine, and both of ours to larger public stories, stories of the era, stories of the race, stories of loss and sorrow, stories of hope and fulfilment, stories of human degradation and destructiveness, stories of human strength in the overcoming of stunning blows of fate; in sum, stories of how humanness happens in the making, unmaking, and remaking of it (carini, 2001:2). 79zinn & rodgers — a humanising pedagogy: getting beneath the rhetoric it was deeply important to us that humanness and humanising remain at the heart of both the stories and our process for gathering them. these recollections were told and heard in various communities of learning (described in more detail later), and we were committed to creating compassionate communities of inquiry that would share the hard work of extracting meaning from the narrated experiences and listening with open hearts. it was hoped that such communities would not only learn from each other and feel the power of one another’s stories, but also serve as evolving spaces where loss, sorrow, hope, fulfilment, strength and weakness could be safely shared. the process of recollections seemed perfectly aligned with these intentions. the process of sharing recollections of humanising, dehumanising, and healing learning experiences began with prompts. the aim was to generate details sufficiently vibrant and personal to remain in the minds of the group over time, something that a more abstract list of, say, “characteristics of a humanising pedagogy” could not do. the prompt for a humanising learning experience read as follows: think of a time when you as a learner felt supported, expanded, and made more fully yourself ... when you drew upon your capacities and stretched them in ways that took you to a new place where you felt more powerful and capable as a result. this can be a learning experience that happened either in or out of school. your recollection may or may not have a teacher or other learners in it. the most powerful recollections are those that are full of details. rather than telling a general kind of learning story (e.g. my grandmother taught me to cook), tell about a particular time when she taught you to cook a particular dish with note taken of the details of the experience: the setting, the utensils, the smells, the colours, the feel of the tools and ingredients in your hands, the emotions evoked, the steps taken. as time went on, we moved to the telling of dehumanising stories in the hub3. as we began to recognise the existence of broader, invisible forces (the political, historical, and social “force fields”) that lie beneath some of these stories, the prompt shifted slightly to hint at these: think of a time when you as a learner felt unsupported, diminished, made small, or invisible. a learning experience that caused you to question or doubt who you are, where you were made to feel inadequate or stupid as a result. as with the account of a humanising learning experience above, this can be a learning experience that happened either in or out of school. your recollection may or may not have a teacher or other learners in it. the most powerful recollections are those that are full of details. rather than telling a general kind of learning story, think of specific details – what happened step-by-step, how it made you feel, the context in which it all happened, from the physical context to relational and political elements if they were a part of your experience. settings and participants in contrast to other studies that have gathered data from south african students, (rohleder et al., 2008) the participants in this project included students, university staff such as academics, leadership, administrative support staff and teachers in both urban and rural contexts. in addition, the work is unique as it took place not in course modules but in various forums within and outside the university. in all, stories were told in fifteen different forums, all associated with the university in different ways. the forums included: the humanising pedagogy hub (hp hub), a humanising pedagogy study group, which included teachers and children from three different intermediate-phase schools, a law faculty forum, the faculty of education teaching and learning committee, three curriculum development groups within the faculty of education, a faculty of education administrative staff retreat, and four professional development ‘tutor’ forums (see table 1). nearly 300 stories were told. while not all stories were heard by everyone, and only 25 were recorded, in every case everyone had a voice. every person had the opportunity to tell his/her story (participants could pass if they so chose). it is important to note that, in the speaking, they created a platform from which to be more present to each other’s stories. in this instance, carini’s (2001:2) words bear repeating: “i rely on the animating power of story to connect your story with mine, and both of ours to larger public stories, stories of the era …” 80 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 the hp hub formed the nexus of our work and it is on this that we will concentrate. it met every other week for an hour beginning on 1 april 2011 until 30 november of that year. (it continues to meet but is in the process of regrouping to determine the best way forward.) at the beginning of the 2011 academic year we sent an invitation to all staff and students at the university to apply for a place in the newly forming humanising pedagogy hub. we were “seeking participants from across the university – lecturers, deans, and students – interested in participating in an inquiry group to explore the philosophical and practical dimensions of a ‘humanising pedagogy’” (extract from electronic invitation, march 2011). we received approximately 30 applications and selected a total of 15 (not including ourselves). our selection was based on a desire for broad representation across disciplines and faculties, staff and students, gender and “race”.4 we regarded 17 as a manageable size, given what we were setting out to do. although there were more than enough applicants in the pool, they were predominantly white females, and we actively recruited additional black members, primarily from the faculty of education. we also ensured that there was a gender balance within the group. among the applicants there were approximately half a dozen students from whom we selected four. data collection and analysis the ‘data’ we collected were stories of humanising, dehumanising, and healing learning experiences. in the hp hub, we also gathered stories of practice that recounted how the work within the hub was affecting our teaching practice. stories were told in segments of no longer than six minutes. as the stories were shared (across all groups), rodgers asked participants to listen both to the story and to the embedded themes that could portray what a humanising pedagogy might entail. she also listened carefully for these themes. it is important to note that she unconditionally accepted the value of each story to our shared task. as some stories elicited discomfort, revulsion, and pain, or were slightly removed from the issue at hand, it was essential to be fully present to each teller, and to see and affirm his/her humanness and experience. the space was an intentional one of what keet, zinn and porteus (2009) refer to as “mutual vulnerability” and it needed safeguarding. as facilitator, rodgers tried as much as possible to embody the notion of a humanising pedagogy, even as we were unearthing what that might be. we believed that this kind of alignment and integrity were essential in our work, or it risked failure. as we generated the themes that emerged from our stories, we (particularly those of us in the hub) grouped them into categories, much as a qualitative researcher would. rodgers created “maps” of these general categories, referencing both the particulars of the stories and their tellers. in subsequent meetings of the hub, we revisited these maps, adding to and revising them. in addition, rodgers revised the maps according to the stories she heard in the other venues, sharing the stories and changes with the members of the hub as the year unfolded. thus, the themes generated by the stories were constantly revised and refined. for example, in the initial gathering of stories, elements of context – e.g., a lack of resources in black schools, the challenge of learning in a second language – went unnamed in the stories themselves. in time, the fact that these matters were taken for granted and went unnamed became an important finding. again, it is important to note that these revisions were as much for the growth of the understanding of the participants as they were in developing ‘findings’ for the purposes of research. all hub sessions were digitally recorded and notes were taken by a scribe. in the other forums, stories that were volunteered to be shared in front of the entire group were recorded. approximately 25 stories were recorded and are currently in the process of being transcribed. in addition, rodgers kept a reflective journal after each hub meeting and after meetings in the other forums. leadership roles the roles played by each of us were distinct. as dean of the faculty of education, zinn needed to have a bird’s eye view of the positioning of all stakeholders. this included the university’s imperative to take the lead in the project of realising a humanising pedagogy across the university, as reflected in its vision 2020 strategic plan [2010]). an awareness of the historical, political, social, and economic threads that wove through the humanising pedagogy work was also central. although rodgers facilitated all the sessions, 81zinn & rodgers — a humanising pedagogy: getting beneath the rhetoric the planning and debriefing were done collaboratively, with zinn filling the role of sounding board and boundary-setter, simultaneously affirming and being conscious of the imperatives present. rodgers, a fulbright scholar from the university of albany in new york, who was at the nelson mandela metropolitan university (nmmu) for the 2011 academic year, facilitated all 18 sessions. she understood the incorporation of a humanising pedagogy into both the nmmu’s vision 2020 strategic plan and its new teaching and learning policy, and came to nmmu expressly to work with the faculty of education on the development of a humanising pedagogy. limitations issues of race, role, language, and institutional history complicate this work. zinn is a so-called ‘coloured’ south african woman academic and activist in the apartheid and post-apartheid south africa. rodgers is a white american from a relatively privileged background. in addition, each of us, zinn as dean and rodgers as a visiting fulbright scholar, embodied the authority and deference that those roles can call forth. while none of the stories were forced, participants always had the option to remain silent, whether they felt that freedom or not must be left open to examination. finally, language remains a factor that must be taken into account. english is a first language for both of us, although zinn is also fluent in afrikaans, but english was a second language to a vast majority of the participants, both black and white, and it is likely that their stories underwent translation and may, therefore, have been told at a distance from their essential spirit. in addition, nmmu, as a former all-white afrikaans-language university, was at one time hostile to many of those who now told their stories within its walls. each of these factors – race, role, language, and institutional history – must necessarily be part of one’s understanding of the stories. findings we now present thandi’s (a pseudonym) story. thandi is a middle-aged black woman, university staff member and member of the humanizing pedagogy hub. we chose this story as it represents many of the stories we heard from participants, and not only black participants. it contains humanising and dehumanising as well as healing aspects. my story happened at the age of 14. i grew up with my granny and my parents were working here and had no time to look after us. my granny was very poor; we were poor. i was at a village school and every student at standard 6 had to pay 50 cents for examination in november. i had to pay this to write exams and my granny did not have it. i went to school that day depressed because i knew it was the last day for this 5 shillings (50 cents). teachers were not in classes. they were all in one room compiling alphabetically the names of students that were going to write the exam. all the children in class were excited because they were going to write the exam in november. and they were talking about their future, what they were going to learn at secondary school, and all those things. and i left the class because i was depressed. i went to a corner in the schoolyard. there was a big tree and i ended up lying under this tree, and i ended up sleeping because i was depressed and i was afraid of a future without education. in my sleep i was shocked by the children running to me and shouting [in isixhosa] ‘simfumene! simfumene’!, (‘we’ve got her, we’ve got her!’). they dragged me to the teacher. the teacher had arrived in the class and asked where i was and they found me, and the teacher could see i was very depressed. he made me sit down and tell him my story. i told him that … i was not going to write. he listened and listened and took me out of the class to a big room where lady teachers were compiling this alphabetical list. when he entered with me, they said, ‘don’t tell us that b. is going to be in this list’. my surname … starts with b and they were in the j’s and h’s and they did not want to start the list from the beginning. and one of the lady teachers came to me and ‘klapped’ [smacked] me and i fell, dizzy. and then the teacher paid my 50 cents and he told me to go back to class. i went to class and i was so depressed and disappointed and embarrassed, but i told myself that i am going to learn. the teacher has given me an opportunity and i grabbed it with both hands. at secondary he followed me and checked my work all the time, and i did not want to 82 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 disappoint him. to me, humanising pedagogy is one in which academics are aware and they address this social economic background of the students in class. if it were not for that teacher i wouldn’t be here now. and that is why every time in my classrooms i always make sure i am aware of what my students bring to class – their backgrounds and everything they bring to class so that i could address it. that is my story. (t.b. 15 april 2011)5 the themes in this story reflect many of those in other stories told. poverty, lack of access to resources, despair and hope, depression, resilience, the power of being seen, relationship and mutual vulnerability, as well as an awareness of teaching as a political act, were common. we address each of these and discuss how each informs us about the praxis of a humanising pedagogy. poverty deprived thandi of 5 shillings needed to take the examination. it thwarted her access to education and, as she notes, she was “afraid of a future without education”. in essence, a lack of resources threatened to deprive her of her own humanness and her right to inscribe herself on the world. this is captured in her image of her classmates, “talking about their future, what they were going to learn at secondary school, and all those things”. “all those things” represented the dream of a life of value. the desire to secure such a life for herself is palpable in thandi’s story: “i told myself that i am going to learn”, and she “grabbed [the opportunity that her teacher offered her] with both hands”. despite what is often the deadening experience of school, for thandi, there was a deeply held knowledge that without it she would be sacrificing her very self. to regard teaching and learning (pedagogy) as humanising acts is to view them not as tasks set out by government, not as curricula to be ‘covered’, not as steps leading merely to more school, but as a shared endeavour leading to a meaningful life in which the value of each learner and teacher adds value to the world. the feelings of depression resulting from the prospect of hopelessness and exclusion are responses to the dehumanising circumstances of poverty, racism, neglect, scorn, and low expectations. thandi’s story, however, also reflects resilience, getting up after she was literally and figuratively beaten down; she overcame her feelings of depression, disappointment, and embarrassment that caused her to retreat under the tree. the deep humanness evident in her determination to learn also reveals her strength and human capacity. human strength and capacity are things we can count on in learners. we can trust that, as human beings, our learners are resilient, and have strengths and a great capacity to learn. what this means in terms of a humanising pedagogy is that we come into the classroom with respect for what students already know, with curiosity about what that might be, with trust that given the opportunity, they will show us. this means that we must learn to know students, what they know, and create challenges that meet them at the edge of their knowing. the relationship between learner and teacher is central to thandi’s story. in our work in all the groups, participants named this relational aspect as the most critical dimension of a humanising pedagogy. what we hear in thandi’s story is that her teacher rescued her from the financial crisis of the moment and saw in her something worth following and caring for. in turn, thandi felt seen, recognised, acknowledged, valued, and supported not merely once but over and over again. he saw in her something that she may not yet have seen in herself, and this caused her to want not to disappoint either him or, ultimately, herself. at the same time, although thandi did not name it, the teacher risked his own position, resisting and acting in defiance of the judgment of the teacher who had beaten thandi, choosing what he regarded as the rights of a child over the authority of a colleague. we have identified the mutual vulnerability, whereby both thandi and her teacher risked exposure and failure, as another dimension of a humanising pedagogy. in fact, the relational dimension of a humanising pedagogy extends beyond one teacher and one student and points to community and, beyond that, to the interconnectedness of all human beings. while thandi’s story emphasises person-to-person relationships, we also came to understand that learners’ evolving relationship with the world – with society as well as with the natural world – is critical to their humanness. finally, thandi’s story has a strong political dimension. according to freire (2005:129), “[teachers] have much to teach through the example of fighting for the fundamental changes we need, of fighting against authoritarianism and in favour of democracy”. the teacher’s acts of finding her, paying for her 83zinn & rodgers — a humanising pedagogy: getting beneath the rhetoric examination, and finally “following” and “checking” her throughout her schooling were political acts and not merely acts of kindness. freire (2005:129) notes: let’s repeat, then, that the educator is a politician. in consequence, it is absolutely necessary that educators act in a way consistent with their choice—which is political—and furthermore that educators be ever more scientifically competent, which teaches them how important it is to know the concrete world in which their students live, the culture in which their students’ language, syntax, semantics, and accent are found in action, in which certain habits, likes, beliefs, fears, desires are formed that are not necessarily easily accepted in the teachers’ own worlds. the power of the example of thandi’s teacher is thus “paid forward” and becomes not an act between two people, but a gradual changing of society. “[t]hat’s why”, she says, “every time in my classrooms i always make sure i am aware of what my students bring to class – their backgrounds and everything they bring to class so that i could address it”. freire declares that acts of those like thandi and thandi’s teacher, who dare to take even the smallest steps toward social justice, are “radical” (freire, 2005:104). “we are”, he writes, “political militants because we are teachers” (freire, 2005:104). ultimately, as we say in our statements about a humanising pedagogy “a humanising pedagogy reaches toward a just and democratic society”. (see addendum). discussion in considering what makes this work, both the process of gathering stories and the contents of these stories, significant, we return to notions of agency, voice, and community as well as the central role of awareness, mutual vulnerability, love, and the role that story played. the themes identified in thandi’s story were both new to participants and deeply familiar. by creating a space for their stories of humanising and dehumanising learning experiences, especially a space within the academy, they perceived that their own knowledge was recognised, valued, and legitimised. some regarded their knowledge, namely ubuntu and namaste, co-opted by what they perceived as white people wrapping their practices in western language – “humanising pedagogy”. it is fair to say that when the themes were pulled from their stories, they were not new themes, but familiar themes of vulnerability, appreciation, physical and emotional pain, interdependence, caring, humiliation, joy, worry, and love. through the process of gathering themes we collectively named the essential and enduring elements present in their everyday experience. such “naming”, according to freire (1970/1993:88), is a powerful and humanising act: to exist, humanly, is to name the world, to change it. once named, the world in its turn reappears to the namer as a problem and requires of them a new naming. human beings are not built in silence, but in word, in work, in action-reflection [praxis]. (italics in original. places such as family, community, and church were often mentioned as places that embodied these themes. conceptions of god, love, and acceptance were part of an existing frame of knowledge. and it was through these frames that they often made sense of a humanising pedagogy. but naming them affirmed their value and gave them permission to trust what they knew. to observe that these themes could also live in the context of school (and the academy), and that they, as teachers, could reflect and act upon them (praxis) with the same power of agency in school as they did out of school, was to be affirmed in acting from that knowledge. suddenly theirs was not only relevant but essential knowledge. so, indeed, a humanising pedagogy may have been a new phrase, but it was not a new concept. they were able to rely on their own sense-making, their own knowledge, and they could be agents of change. and participants did report changes, not necessarily in what or how they taught (these are the next steps in our work), but in their way of being and interacting in the classroom. for participants, story was the vehicle for voice. their voices became valuable, political, cogent, and expert, powerfully rooted in their own experience. a third element at play in our work was community. the stories told in all our sessions were told and listened to in community. we found that community formed in two places, namely in the moment of telling, the room where the stories were shared, and in memory. once we heard each other’s stories, 84 perspectives in education, volume 30(4), december 2012 we also carried them with us. we not only had ‘a’ voice, we had access to the strength and wisdom of a community of voices. these three elements – voice, agency, and community –enlarged through story, were keys to transformation in both the individual and the collective. they are not the whole of a humanising pedagogy, but provide ground for further inquiry and work on practice – praxis. the statements of awareness we developed point the way to some of this work (see addendum) . students also need to become a part of this same practice. inquiring with students into their learning, and into the things that support and hinder, that are relevant and irrelevant to that learning, and listening with genuine curiosity and respect to their experiences as learners in our classes is another forum for inquiry. such dialogue implicates our teaching and makes us vulnerable, but it also creates a space for us to grow with students. our power can then become power with rather than power over. conclusion this work is not without its challenges. the challenges are substantial, especially when we examine a humanising pedagogy as a national project. our work at this point is at the level of the university and the neighbouring communities. perhaps our biggest challenge, even at a local level, is sustaining the work in the hub and elsewhere over time. at this point, with the statements of awareness in place, the sustaining work is located in praxis, where the statements meet the realities of practice. the imperative of inquiry, which lies at the nexus of these two universes, where the evolution of a humanising pedagogy also lives, cries out for leadership, a second challenge. without clear-sighted champions for this work, it can easily slide beneath the demands of the everyday exigencies of the university and schools. the fact that nmmu has formally embraced a humanising pedagogy at both the university and faculty level is critical. but there is also the need for a daily kind of leadership to organise meetings, to ‘hold the whole’, and to keep the vision of a humanising pedagogy alive in both theory and practice. the humanising pedagogy project is as fragile – and as strong – as those who embrace it. it is, therefore, essential that it be as widely distributed as possible without losing its key purpose. voice, agency, and community all depend on a sense of belonging. together, these elements comprise the task of citizenship, a citizenship that engages all of what it means to be human. only when these ideas and consequent practices are kept central, can there be social justice. endnotes 1. hermeneutics refers to the interpretation of experience, whereas phenomenology refers to the “facts” of experience that are interpreted. 2. in this instance, descriptive inquiry is understood as “that part of reflection that focuses on the active searching for and gathering of evidence in the service of a thoughtful analysis and intelligent action for the purposes of growth in the context of an evolving democracy” (rodgers, 2010, p. 49). 3. a “hub” was a formally sanctioned entity that served as a staff-led forum within the faculty of education where members could explore pertinent issues in particular areas of interest. 4. we put the term in quotation marks to show that we believe there is only one human race, that we recognise the term as a social construct, but do not understand that to mean different “races” exists as a valid signifier of difference between human beings 5. when we asked t.b. to clarify what had happened when she was “klapped” by the teacher, she added the following details via an email: “that was not all, she grabbed a cane and beat me up while i was rolling on the floor. when i got a chance to stand up i started to run towards the door but the teacher who brought me there, and who was watching disapprovingly after payment of the 50 cents, grabbed me and i felt safer. brushing myself and still crying i was told by the teacher to go to the classroom. 85zinn & rodgers — a humanising pedagogy: getting beneath the rhetoric i was very embarrassed because other children could just see that something had happened to me” (1 june 2012). references alexander n 2002. an ordinary country: issues in the transition from apartheid to democracy in south africa. pietermaritzburg: university of natal press. ayers w 1998. 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creativity, imagination, and interaction with others and the world. 2. teaching is a political act. classroom and school environments as well as political and social contexts are always in play. they impact learning and can restrict or enhance learning. teaching (students and teachers and schools) also has the power to impact these contexts. ultimately, a humanising pedagogy reaches toward a just and democratic society. it, therefore, requires interaction among learners and between learners and the world. 3. teaching requires awareness: listening closely, being present, communicating, and paying attention. teaching requires work on oneself. awareness of prejudices and limiting assumptions about what is possible frees up space for learners to be fully present, which frees the teacher as well. teaching requires the teacher to be fully present, to attend, and to communicate openly, which is easier when there is room for the teacher’s real self. 4. ubuntu, connectedness, relationship, and community – feeling a part of something larger than oneself is central to the purposes of education. teaching and learning happen in relationship – with oneself, with others, and with the world. learning extends beyond the self to include the other, and the natural world, where there is mutual vulnerability and mutual change. education is for the sake not only of the individual but of the community, the nation, and the world. we are all connected to each other and to the planet. learning requires hope for a future that includes oneself. 5. learning requires teachers and learners to have a respect for, a genuine interest in and curiosity about themselves as learners and the act of learning. a learner is not knowable except through what they do and create that comes from who they are. teaching is a process of discovery about learners and their learning. without genuine interest in who the students might be and respect for them as human beings, doors to discovery will be closed. 6. learners need to be recognised, appreciated, acknowledged, and seen. as human beings, all learners and teachers benefit from appreciation of who they are and the capacities they possess. these must be seen in order to be appreciated and acknowledged. 7. space and a safe space for student voice/student self, the teacher’s genuine voice/teacher self must be created. without a safe space, the self, like a snail, pulls back into its shell. without the presence of the student’s self, little learning will happen. without the presence of the teacher’s self, relationship will not flourish, fear will dominate teaching, and joy will be absent. 8. teaching and learning are courageous acts of discovery. they require one to enquire/move into what feels like someone else’s non-sense, relinquishing one’s own “sense”, and temporarily suspending one’s own identity. they require the courage to own one’s questions, create one’s own knowledge, and connect that knowledge to other knowledge. they require self-expression and vulnerability. they require interaction with others and with the world outside the classroom. teaching and learning require health (physical, mental, emotional, spiritual) and freedom from fear. basic human needs must be met before learning can flourish. pie32(4) book.indb perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) http://www.perspectives-in-education.com issn 0258-2236 © 2014 university of the free state 149 entering an ambiguous space: evoking polyvocality in educational research through collective poetic inquiry kathleen pithouse-morgan inbanathan naicker vitallis chikoko daisy pillay pholoho morojele teboho hlao we explore how the participatory, literary arts-based methodology of collective poetic inquiry can facilitate awareness of, and insight into polyvocality in educational research. using found poetry and haiku poetry, we present a poetic performance in which we engage with diverse voices that manifest in multiple data sources: a student participant’s photographic collage and unstructured interview transcript; audiorecorded discussions with research team members and a conference audience, and research team members’ written reflections. we aim to contribute to methodological conversations about poetry as research, with a particular focus on understanding more about the potential of collective poetic inquiry for evoking polyvocality in educational research. drawing on notions of ‘un-knowing’, ‘not-knowing’ and ‘productive ambiguity’, we conceptualise our participatory research process as polyvocal and invite readers to join us in considering how cultivating polyvocality in educational research might bring about change in ourselves and in our ways of kathleen pithouse-morgan school of education university of kwazulu-natal e-mail: pithousemorgan@ ukzn.ac.za tel: 031 260 3460 inbanathan naicker school of education university of kwazulu-natal e-mail: naickeri1@ukzn. ac.za tel: 031 260 3461 vitallis chikoko school of education university of kwazulu-natal e-mail: chikokov@ukzn. ac.za tel: 031 260 2639 daisy pillay school of education university of kwazulu-natal e-mail: pillaygv@ukzn.ac.za tel: 031 260 7598 pholoho morojele school of education university of kwazulu-natal e-mail: morojele@ukzn.ac.za tel: 031 260 3432 teboho hlao school of education university of kwazulu-natal e-mail: hlao@ukzn.ac.za tel: 031 260 1613 perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 150 knowing as members of research communities. the article highlights our evolving understanding that how we research shapes and reshapes what we come to know and un-know and how we communicate that knowing. keywords: collective poetic inquiry, literary arts-based methodologies, participatory research, performativity, polyvocality, productive ambiguity introduction polyvocality in research as academic researchers, we are required to refer to published work to acknowledge the roles that others have played in our thinking. thus, we value conventions of academic citations and referencing in distinguishing and bringing into dialogue our own voices and the voices of diverse scholars in our research texts. this polyvocal dimension of research has been described with the metaphor of a conversation. for example, clandinin and connelly (2000: 136) advise researchers preparing for a new study to “ask questions about what scholarly conversations we want to engage in”. similarly, badley (2009a: 107) explains academic writing “as a process of reflecting upon our experience and on the experience of others in an attempt to make useful suggestions for change and growth as part of a conversation in progress”. polyvocality, voice and voicelessness have been the focus of scholarly conversations in which educational researchers have sought to address a perceived absence of the voices of those most directly affected by the research: learners or students (and their families and communities) and teachers or educators. regarding teachers’ voices, gitlin (1990: 443) argued for “educative research [as] a dialogical approach that attempts to develop ... teachers’ voices” as producers of research knowledge. subsequently, hargreaves (1996: 12-13) acknowledged that teachers’ voices have “frequently been silenced … and suppressed or distorted within educational research”, but cautioned that diverse teachers’ voices are too often reduced to “the teacher’s voice” and that certain teachers’ voices tend to be “represented and sponsored in isolation from or to the exclusion of other voices”. more recently, mitchell, de lange, moletsane, stuart and buthelezi (2005: 258) proposed that educational researchers should aim not only to elicit and communicate teachers’ voices, but also to assist “groups such as teachers and community health workers, … [to] hear each other”. in response to concerns about voice, voicelessness and polyvocality, an increasing number of educational researchers are turning to participatory (often arts-based) methodologies in order to engage learners, teachers and community members as vocal partners in studies that aim to address educational and social challenges (e.g., mitchell et al., 2005; theron, 2012). however, tensions with respect to polyvocality, voice and voicelessness are also apparent in debates on participatory research, particularly forms of participatory entering an ambiguous space: evoking polyvocality in educational research through collective poetic inquiry kathleen pithouse-morgan, inbanathan naicker et al 151 research where “community members, or stakeholders in communities, collaborate with researchers in addressing needs and enhancing resilience and well-being in societies” (ferreira, 2012: 512). on the one hand, the principal intention of such participatory research is to give community members a voice in public research conversations (bergold & thomas, 2012). on the other hand, concerns are raised about whose voices are indeed present, how diverse voices are re-presented, and which voices dominate in participatory research analysis and research texts (for example, borg, karlsson, kim & mccormack, 2012; riecken, strong-wilson, conibear, michel & riecken, 2005). hence riecken et al. (2005: paragraph 2) argue for paying specific attention to “an ethic of voice and voicing” in participatory research. polyvocality is thus a central and challenging issue in scholarly conversations that seek to understand how educational and participatory research can make a qualitative difference to the lives of ‘the researched’. as mitchell (2008: 257258) explains, in these conversations “questions of the social responsibility of the academic researcher (including postgraduate students as new researchers, along with experienced researchers expanding their repertoire of being and doing) are critical”. from another perspective, smith (1997) considers the social responsibility of the academic researcher in relation to how researchers within the broad educational research community engage each other in conversation. he (smith, 1997: 10) argues that, within this community, “different vocabularies … are being used to tell different stories to ourselves and to others about research and about who we are as educational researchers”. smith (1997: 11) raises a concern about educational researchers dividing into warring factions that appear to be unwilling to participate in polyvocal conversations “to cultivate and maintain a pluralism of vocabularies and stories”. sparkes (1991: 103), who is similarly concerned “to enhance the possibilities of critical dialogue [across factions] within the [educational] research community so that understanding might prevail”, suggests that factionalism might be mitigated by researchers developing “critical and reflective self-awareness” of the “taken-forgranted” ways in which we construct research texts. he argues that a heightened consciousness of research texts as “literary enterprises” could be a “vital first [step] in opening up the possibilities for entertaining alternative views and exploring the intellectual landscape of others”. likewise, vasudevan (2011: paragraphs 2-4) proposes that “at a time when evidence of human diversity is in abundance and accessible like no time before”, educational researchers should participate in self-reflexive conversations in which we inquire into “how our [diverse] ways of knowing come to be established”. in this article, we take up this challenge of making visible our ways of knowing, as we explore the potential of collective poetic inquiry for evoking polyvocality in educational research. our conceptualisation of polyvocality is dialogic, as we focus on what perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 152 emerges through the “interillumination” or “interanimation” (holquist, 1981: 429430) of diverse voices. poetry as research increasingly, qualitative researchers within and beyond the domain of educational research have been exploring poetry as a literary arts-based research medium. poetry is understood as a means of representing the distinctiveness, complexity and plurality of the voices of research participants and researchers (kennedy, 2009; richardson, 2000). in addition, poetry is acknowledged as a mode of research analysis that can heighten creativity and reflexivity (lahman, geist, rodriguez, graglia, richard & schendel, 2010; richardson, 2003). there is also a growing awareness of the participatory potential of poetry as research. for instance, mackenzie (2012) engaged participants in creating individual and collective poems during a participatory research process, whereas hopper and sanford (2008) used their poetic representations of participants’ responses to involve the participants in data analysis. co-researchers lahman et al. (2010: 45) offered a reflexive account of how their participatory methodological journey as a research poetry group enabled them to “create meaning from one another and to construct their individual and shared meanings of this creative and thought provoking process”. researchers who pay particular attention to the performative dimensions of poetry as research have proposed that notions of research participation should include the live or virtual performance of poems and engagement with audience or reader responses as a way of assisting researchers to contextualise, deepen and rethink their research learning and knowing (lapum, 2008; wiebe, 2008). scholarly conversations about poetry and research have also taken into account debates on polyvocality, voice and voicelessness in participatory research. in particular, researchers have paid attention to issues of ethics concerning the voices of participants whose words serve as ‘raw material’ for poems created by researchers or who contribute their own poems to the research (kennedy, 2009; richardson, 2000). we aim to contribute to methodological conversations about poetry as research, with a focus on understanding more about the potential of collective poetic inquiry for evoking polyvocality in educational research. this article is written as a poetic performance to bring into conversation our diverse researcher voices and perspectives, as well as those of our research participants and research audiences. we encourage readers to read the poems aloud, to engage with them through multiple senses, and to be aware of thoughts and feelings that they might evoke (lapum, 2008; leggo, 2008). while we do not make any claims about the inherent artistic or literary merit of our poems, we offer them as demonstrations of our “knowing in the making” (badley, 2009a: 108) and as invitations to join us in continuing participatory inquiry. the poems are interwoven with research discussions in which we take a reflexive stance to make visible how we are coming to know as educational researchers (badley, entering an ambiguous space: evoking polyvocality in educational research through collective poetic inquiry kathleen pithouse-morgan, inbanathan naicker et al 153 2009a; vasudevan, 2011; vinz, 1997). through these discussions we endeavour to open up our research knowing for ongoing questioning and meaning-making. setting the scene we are a research team of five academics and one postgraduate student, all located in a school of education at one university. we teach, study and research within the disciplines of educational psychology, teacher development studies, social justice education and education leadership, as well as management and policy studies. accordingly, we participate in varied theoretical and methodological conversations within the broad educational research community. while we are all currently situated in kwazulu-natal, south africa, we grew up in diverse social and linguistic contexts in lesotho, south africa and zimbabwe. over the past two years, we have been working together to research the phenomenon of internationalisation and related possibilities for knowledge-making and knowledge interchange within our university community. our shared interest in this topic stems from experiences of having been international students ourselves and of studying, teaching and researching within international university communities. student enrolment records at our university indicate a strong representation of international students in a range of undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. we have been asking questions as to what lies beyond the statistics in order to better understand what we can learn from international and local postgraduate students’ stories of social and academic experiences within our university community. prior to conducting our research, we obtained full ethical clearance from our institution. the first phase of our research project focused specifically on stories told by african international postgraduate students (students from african countries outside of south africa). part of this research has been communicated in a recent article (pithouse-morgan, morojele, pillay, naicker, chikoko, ramkelawan & rajpal, 2012), in which we took a narrative inquiry stance to explore what we could learn from one student’s stories of his experiences (clandinin & connelly, 2000). we used narrative vignettes – brief evocative scenes or accounts– to re-present data generated through unstructured interviews and collage-making. the vignettes portrayed how this student’s daily life on campus was constrained by his anxiety about xenophobic harassment and violence. hence, we argued that the pedagogic setting for his learning was educationally unsound, even when effective teaching and learning activities might be occurring in designated spaces. to conclude, we deliberated on possibilities for cultivating pedagogic settings that are favourable and safe for all those who learn and teach within them. after writing the article, we decided to explore the concept of ‘pedagogic settings’ in more depth for a conference presentation. as discussed in pithousemorgan et al. (2012), we were working with an understanding of setting as a literary or narrative element (coulter & smith, 2009). from a narrative perspective, a setting perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 154 is more than a backdrop for stories of experience; it is an intrinsic and influential (yet often intangible) element in these stories. our view of pedagogy was influenced by humanist and phenomenological perspectives that emphasise experiential, formative and relational aspects of learning and teaching processes (allender, 2004; van manen, 1990). deciding to try collective poetic inquiry research discussion we scheduled a three-day writing retreat to prepare for our upcoming presentation. prior to the retreat, kathleen, who had used found poetry (extracts from data sources re-presented in poetic form) in her phd research (pithouse, 2007), emailed other team members to suggest poetic inquiry as a literary arts-based methodology that would resonate with the conception of setting as a literary element. she also sent team members an article on poetic inquiry by butler-kisber (2002). we began the retreat with an animated and heated conversation about poetry as research, using the butler-kisber article (2002) to orientate us. some team members, who were unfamiliar with poetic inquiry, expressed some reservations about using this ‘non-traditional’ methodology. kathleen explained that she had not been involved in collective poetic inquiry previously, so this would be a new experience for her. we realised that poetic inquiry would require each of us to take “a non-expert stance”, which is risky for educational researchers who are “called upon more often to demonstrate expertise than to render visible the ‘unexpected’ in their stances of inquiry” (vasudevan, 2011: paragraph 2). we audio-recorded and transcribed this initial conversation and, at a subsequent writing retreat, we returned to the recording and transcript to construct found poems to capture the polyvocal content and tone of our discussion (pithouse, 2007). in co-creating these poems, we listened to the recording and viewed the transcript projected onto a screen. we found that listening to the recording enabled us to re-experience the discussion in a more direct and vivid manner (pithouse, 2007). it was also useful to view the transcript so as to pay close attention to each word. we used the highlighting function in word to colour-code sections of the transcript that seemed significant and to resonate with each other. we then reworked these extracts into found poems. this involved repeating or removing words and phrases that seemed more or less important, constructing lines and stanzas by rearranging words and phrases and inserting breaks and spaces, while noting visual patterns and listening to rhythms (leggo, 2008). thus, we had to pay close and sustained attention to “the relation of part to part and parts to the whole” (leggo, 2008: 167). in keeping with the conventions of found poetry, we did not add any words or phrases that did not appear in the transcript (butler-kisber, 2002). entering an ambiguous space: evoking polyvocality in educational research through collective poetic inquiry kathleen pithouse-morgan, inbanathan naicker et al 155 the poetry-making process required continual reading and re-reading (both silent and aloud) of the transcript and the emerging poems. it also involved bringing into dialogue our individual memories of the discussion and our retrospective responses to the recording and transcript. commonalities and differences in what we remembered revealed diverse ways in which we had made meaning of the discussion, and pointed to its most significant aspects. the poetry-making process demanded that we explain our understandings and come to consensus on what to portray and how to do so through the found poems. this required what leggo (2008: 167) expresses as “poet’s commitment [which] entails a zeal for attending, and questioning, and perceiving”. poetic performance the found poem, ‘what’s traditional and non-traditional?’, portrays our deliberations about ‘traditional’ and ‘alternative’ modes of research, while ‘not just presenting data’ conveys our musings about the possibilities and limitations of poetry as research. ‘shakespeare??’ re-presents our discovery that, despite our diverse schooling contexts, we all had vivid memories of studying shakespeare’s plays in english classes. (kathleen suggested shakespeare to stimulate discussion about setting as a literary element, and about how particular words and arrangements of words can evoke mood and tone.) ‘creating usable poems’ conveys our thinking about how we might re-present data in the form of found poems and analyse data through creating haiku poems (brief, three-line poems that follow a pattern of a number of syllables per line). perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 156 what’s traditional and non-traditional? what do we mean by traditional? which are traditional methods? we often make assumptions. . . in the traditional way you code report categories and you move on and on . . . presenting it in traditional form wouldn’t capture the richness we have to go beyond. . . not just presenting data poetry as re-presenting data also as analysis we want to participate shift open it up capture emotion, empathy embodied understanding use with caution never a neutral process ways in which we re-present influence meaning whatever we do we can’t get away from ambiquities subjectivities positioning entering an ambiguous space: evoking polyvocality in educational research through collective poetic inquiry kathleen pithouse-morgan, inbanathan naicker et al 157 shakespeare?? using poetic inquiry to understand the concept pedagogic settings everybody did shakespeare no way you could avoid shakespeare . . . if you remember . . . words carefully used this way rather than that word to create feeling to create setting we are talking about atmospheric conditions we are talking about enviroment it all comes together in creating a feeling a mood it’s intangible creating usable poems answering research questions requires creative thought create found poems use haikus to respond looking at data as potential poetry how does that create change? start to see beautiful profound rather than “so and so said x” how do we know what words? be aware of bias? position? playing with words: this way what will emerge? that way what will emerge? text jump out how can you arrange? present? see what emerges leave critical self for the moment bring up imaginative self engaging in a different way perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 158 constructing found poems to re-present stories of experience research discussion having agreed to try poetry to explore the concept of pedagogic settings, we began by observing a photographic collage made by an african international postgraduate student to portray his experiences of campus life. (not the same student whose collage and interview data we had drawn upon for our previous article.) the student was asked to create a collage of photographs that he had either taken or found to depict significant aspects of his campus life, giving each photograph “a caption … that [reflected] what [he had] to say about the visual texts” (mitchell, 2008: 367). in an unstructured interview, he explained his choice of photographs and elaborated on what each meant to him. a postgraduate student research assistant facilitated the collage-making and interview process, because we anticipated that student participants might feel more comfortable sharing their stories of campus life with fellow students. the student researcher was mentored by the project team members. we decided to try to create a found poem for each of the six photographs, using extracts from the interview transcript to build them and developing titles for the poems based on the photograph captions. we each chose one photograph to work with. the student team member worked together with an academic. the remaining two photographs were set aside for us to work with collectively. as explained in the previous discussion, we discovered that constructing poetry to re-present data was a non-linear process. we started by highlighting keywords and phrases in the transcript, and then deconstructed and reconstructed the transcript by electronically ‘cutting and pasting’ selected words and phrases together. we experimented with word combinations to create rhythm, pauses and emphasis (leggo, 2008). this required returning to the photographs and transcript many times in order to create a ‘mental kaleidoscope’ of sights, sounds and silences in the data. once we had constructed a first draft of each poem, we projected these and read them aloud. because poetry has integral auditory and performance dimensions (leggo, 2008), this helped us ‘hear’ our own poems and interact with others’ responses. we then collectively reshaped the poems to enhance flow, tone and coherence. after finalising the first four poems, we worked together to create poems for the remaining two photographs. each of the six found poems is a display of “knowing in the making” (badley, 2009a: 108), provoked by using poetic inquiry to engage with data. significantly, we did not know who the student participant was, because as per the confidentiality agreement the collage and transcript were given to us without his real name. our african international student participants were very concerned about remaining entering an ambiguous space: evoking polyvocality in educational research through collective poetic inquiry kathleen pithouse-morgan, inbanathan naicker et al 159 anonymous. this heightened sense of the need for protection of identity could be linked to anxiety about xenophobia (as discussed in pithouse-morgan et al., 2012). our only means of connecting with our participant was through his ‘voice’ as conveyed by the photographs, captions and transcript. constructing and reconstructing the poems engendered a sense of empathetic participation in his lived stories (eisner, 1997). however, while we felt that we were coming to ‘know’ our participant in a complex way, we also became aware that we were making our own meanings through the found poems, both individually and collectively. we realised how data re-presented as poetry could allow us to communicate an evolving, provisional, polyvocal understanding of a university campus (and of educational experience, more generally) as a pedagogic setting, evoked through interacting poetically with one person’s voice (van manen, 1990). poetic performance ‘creating the poems’ offers a polyvocal account of our knowing in the making through collective poetic inquiry. we co-constructed this found poem from individual written reflections and audio-recorded conversations about our poetry-making. creating the poems collaboratively putting things together sharing ideas spark off each other things start to move on their own momentum read and re-read immerse extract meaning live the experiences words and pictures entangled in most unexpected ways we created the following found poems to re-present different dimensions of what we were coming to know through engaging with our participant’s stories through a poetic inquiry lens: ‘lecture theatre’, ‘snakes on campus’, ‘strikes and violence’, ‘my brother, stabbed to death’, ‘my family’, and ‘i miss my wife’. (our student participant was working part-time as a contract lecturer and the ‘lecture theatre’ poem relates particularly to his lecturing experience.) using a poetic format allowed us to re-present data in a way that “[did] not aim at closure so much as raising further doubts and questions” (badley, 2009a: 108). perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 160 snakes on campus snakes not friendly i don’t even want to see them places you don’t like i don’t even want to see them run away switch it off i don’t even want to see them a picture or life i become worried i don’t even want to see them lecture theatre i have a fear about the lecture theatre i go to the lecture theatre and it is extreme it is big and they are many there thay will be scattered all over i always perform badly there a lecture room is a nightmare stikes and violence demonstrations i see in south africa i don’t normally understand i don’t know why you find people burning, breaking breaking and being violent is another thing i don’t like them it’s like a norm since i arrived here in this university these people are not actually striking for good reason i don’t normally understand they just look for anything that can make them strike i don’t like them entering an ambiguous space: evoking polyvocality in educational research through collective poetic inquiry kathleen pithouse-morgan, inbanathan naicker et al 161 my brother, stabbed to death my younger brother was killed here in durban is this the one who killed my brother? we didn’t know who killed him for what is this the one who killed my brother? it took time to know that actually he was killed is this the one who killed my brother? better if i knew who killed him is this the one who killed my brother? my family my family, actually we are seven my brother and sisters three sisters and three brothers my brother and sisters all in all, we are seven my brother and sisters four boys and three girls my brother and sisters so i am the sixth in the family my brother and sisters there is only one after me my brother and sisters mother and the father have passed away my brother and sisters they have gone my brother and sisters the middle ones are remaining i miss my wife they make me miss my wife i miss my wife so much i miss my wife always there is a space here i am here alone my wife alone there she is alone there is a space here perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 162 collective poetry-making as analysis research discussion after we had created found poems based on the interview transcript and photographic collage, daisy and kathleen explained to the research team how they had recently adapted an activity developed by samaras (2010) to use haiku poetry-writing in a research workshop with their masters’ students. a participatory process of creating, sharing and responding to haiku poems, written to express research topics, had generated dialogic re-thinking among students and staff, and had evoked new ideas and questions about ways of knowing in educational research (pillay & pithousemorgan, 2012). consequently, we decided to experiment with creating a haiku poem to respond to the six found poems we had constructed as data re-presentation. haiku poetry is a “structured poetic form” (lahman et al., 2010: 40) with the following pattern: line 1 – 5 syllables; line 2 – 7 syllables; line 3 – 5 syllables. samaras (2010) explains that creating haiku poetry can assist researchers with concise expression of ideas. janesick (2001) demonstrates how she composed haiku poems to reflect on her research learning and knowing. using a haiku format to offer a collective understanding was again a complex and iterative process. we spent time viewing and reading out the six poems in order to see and hear recurring narrative patterns and tensions (clandinin & connelly, 2000). after a great deal of discussion and some contestation, we reached a negotiated understanding of these patterns and tensions. together (with one of us as a scribe, in a word document projected on a screen) we wrote down words and phrases to capture this emerging understanding. we consulted a thesaurus to find alternative words to best reflect our sense-making. we then tried to select and regroup words and phrases to create a coherent interpretation within the structure of a three-line haiku poem. using the haiku format for analysis often felt ‘messy’ and discomforting as we grappled with finding words to “[shape] and [re-shape] our limited knowing and understanding of where we currently [were]” (badley, 2009b: 218). significantly, we spent time debating whether to use the word ‘ambiguous’ in the poem. during this heated discussion, we discovered that ‘ambiguous’ had different connotations for us – probably because of our diverse theoretical, methodological and linguistic backgrounds. some of us interpreted ‘ambiguous’ to mean ‘vague’ or even ‘misleading’, while others read it as ‘open to more than one interpretation’ or ‘subject to change’. recourse to the thesaurus revealed that, indeed, ‘ambiguous’ could convey all or any of these meanings. this contestation (as with our initial heated conversation about poetry as research) could have led to us dividing into warring factions that refused to engage with “a pluralism of vocabularies” (smith, 1997: 11). however, perhaps because of our growing trust in each other and our participatory process, we took the time to explain and listen to our diverse understandings and to acknowledge entering an ambiguous space: evoking polyvocality in educational research through collective poetic inquiry kathleen pithouse-morgan, inbanathan naicker et al 163 that each of us was working with a “taken-for-granted” definition (sparkes, 1991: 103). this critical conversation allowed us to realise that, while we had to come to some agreement about what we regarded as the function of this word in this particular poem, we also had to acknowledge that potential audiences would bring new perspectives. we had to accept that we could not direct how others should make meaning from our poem, and that we could rather look forward to engaging with multiple perspectives as a way of extending our own knowing (leggo, 2008). in this instance, we recalled eisner’s (1997: 8) concept of “productive ambiguity”, which we had come across in our preliminary reading on poetry as research (butler-kisber, 2002). reference to eisner’s thinking helped us to appreciate how “the open texture of the [poetic] form increases the probability that multiple perspectives will emerge [to] make our engagement with the phenomena more complex” (eisner, 1997: 8). poetic performance the haiku poem ‘pedagogic settings’ reveals our evolving knowing about the concept of pedagogic settings and about poetry as analysis. in limiting ourselves to the concise haiku format, we had to choose what we believed was most important to express; therefore, the understandings we offer in this instance are necessarily incomplete. in using this particular form, we acknowledge that other modes could offer different insights (eisner, 1997). however, we are emboldened by richardson’s (2003: 515) reminder that “when we read or hear poetry, we are continually nudged into recognising that the text has been constructed. but all texts are constructed – prose ones, too”. pedagogic settings ambiguous space scattered dreams and feelings moving amidst time collective poetic performance as polyvocal inquiry research discussion we had originally planned to engage with several students’ photographic collages and interview transcripts in developing our conference presentation. however, after constructing the six found poems and the haiku poem, we realised that our interaction with only one student’s stories had given us sufficient material for a 30-minute conference presentation. due to our growing awareness of the performative and polyvocal potential of poetry as research, we deliberated on how to communicate our research knowing in a way that would provoke our audience to participate in our collective poetic inquiry. perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 164 we began our presentation by performing the six found poems, without any introduction or prior explanation. we stood in a row at the front of the room, and each of us performed a poem one after the other. as we had anticipated, this surprised the audience and we could see from their faces that it elicited a direct and powerful interaction with the poems. we then offered a brief overview of our process of developing the found poems to re-present data, and explained how we had used the haiku format as analysis. to end, we read our haiku poem and invited discussion. during the ensuing vigorous and challenging conversation, it became evident that poetic inquiry was, to a large extent, an unfamiliar research genre for this audience of educational researchers (who appeared mostly to be working or studying in south african universities). some audience members showed great enthusiasm for research as poetry, whereas others (as expected) expressed doubts about its validity. because this conversation had prompted us to deepen our thinking, we agreed that, immediately after the conference, each of us would email a page of written reflections on the performance and resultant discussion to the other team members. a month later, we held another writing retreat where we talked through our reflections and viewed a transcript of our audio-recorded conversation with the audience. our written reflections and the transcript highlighted how the poetic performance had evoked emotional and intellectual engagement among both performers and audience (lapum, 2008). we decided to portray the reflections and audience discussion in the form of found poems. poetic performance ‘research as performance’ re-presents our collective, multifaceted experience of the conference session. the poem reveals apprehensions about moving away from more familiar and comfortable forms of research presentation to the ‘risky’ mode of poetic performance. it also portrays how the emotionality and intensity of the shared performance experience evoked dynamic, embodied ways of research knowing. ‘where are we coming from?’ re-presents the complexity of the multiperspective audience response that provoked us to acknowledge the tentativeness of our knowing about or through poetry as research, and also makes public our growing appreciation of the promise of collective poetic inquiry as a participatory educational research methodology. entering an ambiguous space: evoking polyvocality in educational research through collective poetic inquiry kathleen pithouse-morgan, inbanathan naicker et al 165 research as performance they saw us st anding there everyone wanted to know what’s happening here? what’s going to happen? we were nervous we didn’t know what’s happening here? what’s going to happen? the poem: human experieces and emotions insight into inner life personal and intimate performing the poem i felt the ‘air’ change the performance moved me to become one with the experience i struggled not to become tearful i was not only one listening to the others inserting themselves the poems come alive the audience connecting forgetting who they are in this entanglement the poems come alive us and them and those merged swirled around rousing emotion in the body and the mind we all felt different we connected together performing audience connecting provoled jolted nobody neutral connected in a new way we came together we responded perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 166 where are we coming from? whatever the data you bring analysis to llife you are actually seeing getting that feeling there is a bit of you it’s human experience in our different worlds they actually talk to me where we are coming from the human aspect i have a problem not talking me reliability? how will they look at this? those in different cultural setting? how do you measure? what do you lose? we should be doing more we need to go this way you must invent you must experiment take changes break the rules have fun conceptualising our collective poetic inquiry process as polyvocal research discussion we began our journey of collective poetic inquiry with the intention of exploring the concept of pedagogic settings. while reflecting on the experience of performing our poems at the conference, we realised that our poetic exploration of this concept had been a catalyst for an inquiry that took us in the divergent, unexpected direction of deconstructing and re-constructing our ways of knowing and being as educational researchers. we, individually and collectively, are not the same as when we started. we have changed in how we think about who we are, what we know and how we feel about what we know and do not know. entering an ambiguous space: evoking polyvocality in educational research through collective poetic inquiry kathleen pithouse-morgan, inbanathan naicker et al 167 looking back, we recognise a shifting that began when we, as researchers and educators whose job it is to know and tell others what we know, ventured into an unsettling space of what vinz (1997: 139-140, italics in the original) describes as “un-knowing” and “not-knowing”. vinz explains “un-knowing” as “giving up present understandings (positions) … to make gaps and spaces through which to … discover a multiplicity of meanings” and “not-knowing” as “[acknowledging] ambiguity and uncertainty – dis-positioning from the belief that [researchers and] teachers should know or be able to lead or construct unambiguous journeys toward knowledge”. far from constructing an unambiguous journey toward knowledge, our collective poetic inquiry pushed us to the precarious point of confronting and publicly revealing ambiguities in what and how we come to know. eisner (1997: 8) describes this as a “productive ambiguity” that is generated through arts-based forms of research, in which “the material presented is more evocative than denotative, and in its evocation, it generates insight and invites attention to complexity … [and results] in less closure”. while another participatory arts-based research methodology might have had similar consequences, our exploration of poetry as research suggests that this literary arts-based medium has particular qualities that facilitate a polyvocal engagement with, and immersion in research knowing, un-knowing and not-knowing. poetic performance we co-constructed the poem, ‘ambiguous space’ to portray our evolving understanding of the polyvocal promise of collective poetic inquiry. this poem is a hybrid of the found poem and haiku poem forms. the six lines are made up of ‘poetic fragments’ from our collection of research poems, which were shaped into a ‘doublelayer’ haiku pattern of lines 1 and 2 having 5 syllables, lines 3 and 4 having 7 syllables, and lines 5 and 6 having 5 syllables. ambiguous space ambiguous space this entanglement scattered dreams and feelings live the experiences moving amids time us, them and those merge concluding thoughts as educational researchers, we have a critical social responsibility to keep returning to this question: “what difference could this make to learners or students (and their families and communities) and teachers or educators?” thus we ask why it should perspectives in education 2014: 32(4) 168 matter to anyone else if we are “expanding our repertoire of being and [knowing]” (mitchell, 2008: 258). what we have experienced through our process of collective poetic inquiry is that how we research shapes and reshapes what we come to know and un-know and how we share that knowing with others. if we genuinely seek to use participatory methodologies to become “partners in knowledge generation and sharing” (ferreira, 2012: 512) rather than to establish and demonstrate our expertise, then we need to take risks and open ourselves to ways of researching that provoke ongoing, complex, polyvocal 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